cogitoergofun

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Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, on Wednesday launched an investigation into the “outrageously high prices” of Novo Nordisk’s respective diabetes and weight loss drugs, Ozempic and Wegovy.

On Wednesday, Sanders penned a letter to Novo Nordisk’s chief executive officer, Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen, notifying him of the investigation and laying out his concerns with various price discrepancies between the drugs and pointing out concerns about the drugs’ pricing.

“The scientists at Novo Nordisk deserve great credit for developing these drugs that have the potential to be a game changer for millions of Americans struggling with type 2 diabetes and obesity,” Sanders said.

“As important as these drugs are,” Sanders continued, “they will not do any good for the millions of patients who cannot afford them.”

Ozempic and Wegovy have the same active ingredient – semaglutide – but they have different doses and strengths. Ozempic is FDA-approved for type 2 diabetes while Wegovy is approved for weight loss.

In his letter, Sanders questioned why the two medications would be priced differently from each other and priced differently from other countries.

Ozempic costs $969 a month for type 2 diabetes in the United States, but it costs $155 in Canada and $59 in Germany, Sanders said. Wegovy costs $1,349 a month for weight loss in the U.S., compared to $140 in Germany and $92 in the United Kingdom.

Sanders cited a recent report from Yale University that he said found the drugs could be profitably manufactured for less than $5 a month.

“The result of these astronomically high prices is that Ozempic and Wegovy are out of reach for millions of Americans who need them,” Sanders said. “Unfortunately, Novo Nordisk’s pricing has turned drugs that could improve people’s lives into luxury goods, all while Novo Nordisk made over $12 billion in profits last year — up 76 percent from 2021. That is unacceptable.”

Sanders warned the high prices could bankrupt key programs like Medicare and Medicaid, “if the prices for these products are not substantially reduced,” adding, “The United States Congress and the federal government cannot allow that to happen.”

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When you’re looking to an investment advisor to help roll over your 401(k), you might assume the one you choose has your best interests in mind: They’ll help minimize fees and pick the investments best suited for your age, risk tolerance, and financial goals. Because after all, it’s their job.

But until Tuesday, that actually wasn’t a guarantee. Instead, some were able to advise clients to invest in financial products that lined the advisor’s own pockets, rather than what would likely lead to the best returns for clients. Now, though, the Biden administration is requiring more financial professionals to adhere to a higher standard when providing financial advice, a move experts are calling a win for the average retirement saver. In fact, it could help workers keep as much as $5 billion of their own money each year related to one insurance product alone, according to the Council of Economic Advisers.

Called the fiduciary standard, the rule means investment professionals have to act in their client’s best interests rather than their own when advising them on their individual retirement accounts, 401(k)s, and other similar products. It’s meant to prevent conflicts of interest by deterring financial advisors and insurance agents and brokers from promoting products purely because they stand to collect a commission from them.

401(k) plan administrators at companies must already adhere to this standard, and financial advisors typically must as well when recommending certain securities, like mutual funds. The new rule, introduced by the Department of Labor last fall, expands to include advisors and brokers who give one-time advice to savers rolling those employer-sponsored assets into an IRA or annuity.

That’s a big deal given Americans rolled over almost $800 billion from 401(k)s and other employer plans into IRAs in 2022, the White House said when it introduced the rule in October 2023. A rollover typically happens when workers move jobs, retire, or want to combine multiple accounts.

Under the guidance, financial professionals making retirement recommendations must “establish, maintain, and enforce written policies and procedures reasonably designed to … identify and at a minimum disclose, or eliminate, all conflicts of interest associated with such recommendations.”

“These rules are already many of the same standards set for CFP professionals,” says Andrew Fincher, a Virginia-based certified financial planner. “This is great that practice standards will now encompass a wider net to include others within the financial professional industry.”

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Minnesota senators are expected to adhere to “the highest standard of ethical conduct,” according to the legislative body’s rulebook.

House members, similarly, must show “good citizenship and high personal integrity,” according to the House code of conduct.

But living up to those standards has proven to be a challenge for at least six current lawmakers who have been arrested for various crimes while in office. 

As the Senate debates how to respond to the arrest of Sen. Nicole Mitchell, DFL-Woodbury, on first-degree burglary charges, here is the complete list of legislators — that we know of — who have committed criminal offenses while serving as elected officials.

As of this writing, all remain in office.

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The Biden administration finalized nursing home staffing rules Monday that will require thousands of them to hire more nurses and aides — while giving them years to do so.

The new rules from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services are the most substantial changes to federal oversight of the nation's roughly 15,000 nursing homes in more than three decades. But they are less stringent than what patient advocates said was needed to provide high-quality care.

Spurred by disproportionate deaths from COVID-19 in long-term care facilities, the rules aim to address perennially sparse staffing that can be a root cause of missed diagnoses, severe bedsores, and frequent falls.

"For residents, this will mean more staff, which means fewer ER visits potentially, more independence," Vice President Kamala Harris said while meeting with nursing home workers in La Crosse, Wisconsin. "For families, it's going to mean peace of mind in terms of your loved one being taken care of."

When the regulations are fully enacted, 4 in 5 homes will need to augment their payrolls, CMS estimated. But the new standards are likely to require slight if any improvements for many of the 1.2 million residents in facilities that are already quite close to or meet the minimum levels.

[...]

The plan was welcomed by labor unions that represent nurses — and whom President Joe Biden is counting on for support in his reelection campaign. Service Employees International Union President Mary Kay Henry called it a "long-overdue sea change." This political bond was underscored by the administration's decision to have Harris announce the rule with SEIU members in Wisconsin, a swing state.

The new rules supplant the vague federal mandate that has been in place since the 1980s requiring nursing homes to have "sufficient" staffing to meet residents' needs. In practice, inspectors rarely categorized inadequate staffing as a serious infraction resulting in possible penalties, federal records show.

Starting in two years, most homes must provide an average of at least 3.48 hours of daily care per resident. About 6 in 10 nursing homes are already operating at that level, a KFF analysis found.

CMS also mandated that within two years an RN must be on duty at all times in case of a patient crisis on weekends or overnight. Currently, CMS requires at least eight consecutive hours of RN presence each day and a licensed nurse of any level on duty around the clock. An inspector general report found that nearly a thousand nursing homes didn't meet those basic requirements.

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The USPS announced on Tuesday it will follow through with its plan to reroute Reno-area mail processing to Sacramento, a move that drew bipartisan ire from Nevada lawmakers while raising questions about the rate at which mail ballots can be processed in a populous part of a crucial swing state.

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy has cast the permanent measure as a cost saving move, but federal, state and local lawmakers have complained about a lack of transparency in the process that could slow mail throughout the region.

Under the plan, all mail from the Reno area will pass through Sacramento before reaching its destination — even from one side of the city to the other.

Democratic Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar, the state’s top election official, previously said moving operations could slow the processing of mail ballots, and “has the potential to disenfranchise thousands of Nevada voters and would unquestionably impact the results of Nevada’s elections.”

In the Tuesday statement, the USPS said “the business case” supported moving the processes to California, because most of the mail processed in Reno is destined elsewhere. The Reno facility will stay open as an area that prepares mail before it’s sent out. USPS will invest $13.4 million in the facility, mostly for renovations, per the agency.

[...]

Northern Nevada’s congressional delegation — which includes Rosen, Democratic U.S. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto and Republican U.S. Rep. Mark Amodei — sent a letter to USPS opposing the move and have long spoken out against it.

Other opposition came from Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo and the Washoe County Commission, which includes Reno.

In a statement following the announcement, Rosen said she was “outraged that out-of-touch Washington bureaucrats think they know what’s best for our state.”

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U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-San Antonio, ripped into his party’s right flank for voting against billions in foreign aid for U.S. allies last week, castigating his ultraconservative peers as “scumbags” and klansmen.

“These people used to walk around with white hoods at night. Now they're walking around with white hoods in the daytime,” Gonzales told CNN’s Dana Bash in an interview Sunday. “It didn't surprise me that some of these folks voted against aid to Israel.”

Gonazales, a rare flame-throwing centrist who is battling it out against YouTube gun enthusiast Brandon Herrera in the first serious primary challenge, singled out two sitting Republicans by name who have endorsed against him.

“It's my absolute honor to be in Congress, but I serve with some real scumbags like [Florida Congressman] Matt Gaetz. He paid minors to have sex with them at drunk parties,” Gonzales said, before calling out Rep. Bob Good for earlier this month endorsing Herrera, whom he called a “known neo-Nazi.”

Federal prosecutors declined to charge Gaetz after investigating allegations of sex trafficking, though the House Ethics Committee is continuing to investigate the matter.

Gonzales made the remarks in reaction to several Republican members voting against their party’s leadership on Saturday on military and civilian aid packages for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. The hardline House Freedom Caucus asserted Congress should not pass the bills, which would include over $90 billion in assistance to the U.S. allies, before more securing aggressive measures on the U.S.-Mexico border. The foreign aid packages passed the House with large bipartisan support.

[...]

The Texas Republican Party censured Gonzales last year, citing his opposition to Roy’s border bill and the rules package, as well as his support for gun safety legislation after the Robb Elementary shooting in his district. The party also cited his support for legislation protecting same-sex marriage.

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Congress passed and President Biden signed a reauthorization of Title VII of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), approving a bill that opponents say includes a "major expansion of warrantless surveillance" under Section 702 of FISA.

Over the weekend, the Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act was approved by the Senate in a 60-34 vote. The yes votes included 30 Republicans, 28 Democrats, and two independents who caucus with Democrats. The bill, which was previously passed by the House and reauthorizes Section 702 of FISA for two years, was signed by President Biden on Saturday.

"Thousands and thousands of Americans could be forced into spying for the government by this new bill and with no warrant or direct court oversight whatsoever," Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said on Friday. "Forcing ordinary Americans and small businesses to conduct secret, warrantless spying is what authoritarian countries do, not democracies."

Wyden and Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) led a bipartisan group of eight senators who submitted an amendment to reverse what Wyden's office called "a major expansion of warrantless surveillance under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that was included in the House-passed bill." After the bill was approved by the Senate without the amendment, Wyden said it seemed "that senators were unwilling to send this bill back to the House, no matter how common-sense the amendment before them."

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said he voted against the reauthorization "because it failed to include the most important requirement to protect Americans' civil rights: that law enforcement get a warrant before targeting a US citizen."

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A LOT MORE comes to the surface at an oil and gas well than just the oil and gas. The U.S. oil and gas industry produces 3 billion gallons of brine a day, and despite the innocent name, it can contain toxic levels of salt, elevated levels of heavy metals like lead and arsenic, and dangerous amounts of the radioactive element radium. My reporting journey into this topic started when an Ohio community organizer told me someone made a liquid de-icer out of oilfield brine. The product contained enough of the radioactive element radium to be defined by EPA as a radioactive waste. Yet, the company behind the product advertised it was to be used on home driveways and patios and that it was “Safe for Pets” — they had even been selling it at Lowe’s. 

Unraveling how that came to be turned into a 20-month Rolling Stone magazine investigation, which won an award with the National Association of Science Writers, and eventually became my book, Petroleum–238: Big Oil’s Dangerous Secret and the Grassroots Fight to Stop It, which will be published on Wednesday. Shielded by a system of lax regulations and legal loopholes, radioactive oilfield waste has been spilled, spread, injected, dumped, and freely emitted across America. My book relies on community activists, scientists and health experts, a century of academic research, and a trove of never-before-released industry and government documents to lay out a series of game-changing reveals into the world’s most powerful industry. But my most important sources are the oil and gas industry’s own workers. None have been more deceived. 

Across America, they haul trucks of toxic radioactive waste labeled as nonhazardous, thanks to an extraordinary nearly half-century-old industry exemption, and must crawl inside tanks to clean out radioactive sludge, armed with no knowledge or appropriate protection against radioactivity. Some of the biggest dangers occur at treatment facilities where highly radioactive oilfield waste is mixed with less radioactive items like lime and ground up corn cobs so the sludge can be hauled to local landfills rather than taken to secure radioactive waste disposal sites. While these facilities often remain a secret even to the very communities in which they are located, over my years of reporting, I was able to learn about them through industry and government reports and whistle-blowing workers. But none has a story like Jesse Lombardi. 

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Tom Cotton has never seen a left-wing protest he didn’t want crushed at gunpoint.

On Monday, the Arkansas senator demanded that President Joe Biden send in the National Guard to clear out the student protests at Columbia University against the Israel-Hamas war, which he described as “the nascent pogroms at Columbia.” Last week, Cotton posted on X,  “I encourage people who get stuck behind the pro-Hamas mobs blocking traffic: take matters into your own hands. It’s time to put an end to this nonsense.” He later deleted the post and reworded it so that it did not sound quite so explicitly like a demand for aspiring vigilantes to lynch protesters.

This is a long-standing pattern for Cotton, who enjoys issuing calls for violence that linger on the edge of plausible deniability when it comes to which groups, exactly, are appropriate targets for lethal force. During the George Floyd protests of 2020, Cotton demanded that the U.S. military be sent in with orders to give “no quarter for insurrectionists, anarchists, rioters, and looters,” insisting unconvincingly in a later New York Times op-ed that he was not conflating peaceful protesters with rioters. Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, who had raised a fist in apparent solidarity with the mob that assaulted the Capitol on January 6 before fleeing through the halls to avoid them once the riot began, echoed Cotton’s call for deploying the National Guard to Columbia. (Both men, as it turns out, are in favor of some quarter for “insurrectionists” who happen to be on the right side.)

What Cotton and Hawley are doing is simple demagoguery. When Donald Trump was inaugurated president, he spoke of an “American carnage” that he would suppress by force. Trump’s attempts to apply the maximum level of violence to every problem did not solve any of them. Migration at the southern border surged in 2019 until a crackdown in Mexico and the coronavirus pandemic brought it down; Trump’s presidency ended with a rise in violent crime (another likely pandemic effect, among other factors) and with widespread civil-rights protests.

[...]

As we approach the summer of 2024, the economy is growing, migration to the border has declined at least temporarily owing to what appears to be a new crackdown by Mexican authorities, and in many major cities, crime is returning to historic lows, leaving protests as the most suitable target for demagoguery. The Biden administration’s support for Israel divides Democrats and unites Republicans, so the longer the issue remains salient, the better it is for the GOP. More broadly, the politics of “American carnage” do not work as well in the absence of carnage. Far-right politics operate best when there is a public perception of disorder and chaos, an atmosphere in which the only solution such politicians ever offer can sound appealing to desperate voters. Social-media bubbles can suffice to maintain this sense of siege among the extremely online, but cultivating this perception among most voters demands constant reinforcement.

This is why the Republican Party is constantly seeking to play up chaos at the border and an epidemic of crime in American cities, no matter what the reality of the situation might actually be. Cotton and Hawley are demanding that Biden use force against the protesters not just because they consistently advocate for state violence against those who support causes they oppose as a matter of principle, but also because any escalation in chaos would redound to their political benefit. They don’t want to solve any problems; they want to make them worse so that the public will warm to “solutions” that will continue to make them worse. They don’t want order, or safety, or peace. What they want is carnage.

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Two framed documents from a long career at Boeing hang side by side in Merle Meyers’s home: A certificate from 2022 that thanks him for three decades of service. And a letter he received months later reprimanding him for his performance.

The documents reflect his conflicting emotions about the company. Mr. Meyers, who worked as a Boeing quality manager until last year, holds deep affection for the aircraft manufacturer, where both he and his mother worked. But he is also saddened and frustrated by what he described as a yearslong shift by Boeing executives to emphasize speed over quality.

“I love the company,” said Mr. Meyers, 65, who is publicly sharing his concerns for the first time, supported by hundreds of pages of emails and other documents. For years, he said, quality was the top priority, but that changed over time: “Now, it’s schedule that takes the lead.”

Boeing is revered by many aviation professionals as a lasting symbol of ingenuity and an engineering and manufacturing powerhouse. It is so important to the U.S. economy that presidents have effectively served as salesmen for its planes abroad. The company is a dominant force in Washington State and a top employer in the Seattle area, where it was founded and produces the 737 and other planes.

A job at Boeing is often a source of pride, and many employees have intergenerational ties to the company. In addition to his mother, Mr. Meyers said, his wife’s father and grandfather also worked there.

But that shared pride has been badly bruised in recent years. The company’s reputation was tarnished by a pair of fatal crashes of the 737 Max 8 in 2018 and 2019 and an episode when a panel blew out of a 737 Max 9 plane on Jan. 5. That flight reignited intense scrutiny from regulators, airlines and the public.

[...]

While aviation remains exceedingly safe — far fewer people die on planes than in cars, trucks or buses — the Jan. 5 flight highlighted quality concerns raised by Mr. Meyers and other current and former employees. Many who have spoken out say they have done so out of respect for Boeing employees and their work, and a desire to push the company to restore its reputation.

[...]

Mr. Meyers, who wears a ring on his right hand commemorating his 30 years at Boeing, said he had begun to notice slipping in the company’s high standards after its 1997 merger with McDonnell Douglas. He said Boeing’s engineering-first mentality had slowly given way to a stronger focus on profits after executives from McDonnell Douglas assumed top jobs at Boeing.

Mr. Meyers said he was particularly troubled that workers at Boeing’s Everett factory felt such pressure to keep production moving that they would find unauthorized ways to get the parts they needed. That included taking parts assigned to other planes, taking newly delivered components before they could be inspected or logged, or trying to recover parts that had been scrapped. To Mr. Meyers, managers did little to dissuade or punish workers from such shortcuts.

“What gets rewarded gets repeated,” he said. “People get promoted by hustling parts.”

Thousands of people work at the Everett building, which is generally regarded as the world’s largest by volume, and Mr. Meyers acknowledges that his observations were limited to a portion of the work carried out there. But the pressures he described are similar to those identified by other current and former employees.

[...]

Mr. Meyers said that he would notify corporate investigators of such incidents when he believed that the practices he uncovered were widespread and that the company should do more to stop them.

But emails he shared with The New York Times also show that his efforts to get the attention of those investigators often ended in frustration. In some cases, the investigators said they could not substantiate his findings. Mr. Meyers frequently pushed back, succeeding in some cases in prompting additional action, he said.

By early last year, Mr. Meyers had received that written reprimand, which said he was responsible for creating “defective work product, service or output” but didn’t provide any details about what he had done wrong. He felt both that his concerns were not being taken seriously and that if he stayed at Boeing he might eventually be pushed out. He was offered a financial incentive to quit, so he took it.

It was not the departure he had expected or planned for.

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Rep. James Comer apparently wants to put the whole matter behind him.

The chairman of the House Oversight Committee reportedly told at least one of his colleagues he’s ready to be “done with” the impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden after more than a year of investigations have turned up nothing.

According to CNN: “Comer has grown increasingly frustrated as his investigation appears to be at a dead end, with Republicans resigned to the reality that they don’t have the votes to impeach the president, multiple sources with direct knowledge of the situation told CNN.

“Sources say the Kentucky Republican is now focused on tactfully wrapping up his work – all while Comer, a five-term congressman, has another matter on his mind: ambitions to run for higher office one day, including potentially running for governor, according to lawmakers who have spoken to him.”

And maybe more to the point:

“Comer is hoping Jesus comes so he can get out,” one of the GOP lawmakers who spoke to Comer told CNN, per the report. “He is fed up.”

In December 2023, the House authorized the impeachment inquiry into Biden, with every Republican rallying behind the politically charged process despite lingering concerns among some in the party that the investigation has yet to produce evidence of misconduct by the president.

The committee has asserted for the past year that the Bidens traded on the family name, by trying to link a handful of phone calls or dinner meetings between Joe Biden, when he was vice president or out of office, and Hunter Biden and his business associates.

But despite dedicating countless resources and interviewing dozens of witnesses, including the president’s son Hunter Biden and the president’s brother James Biden, Republicans have not produced any evidence that shows Joe Biden was directly involved or benefited from his family’s businesses while in public office.

Ousted GOP congressman Adam Kinzinger had another take for Comer: “Nope. You can’t just walk away. You must admit to America you lied and found nothing.”

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Recently Jon Stewart did a segment poking satire at the promises of AI highlighted by tech CEOs. I don't think automating your toasters is the best way to show the potential of AI, as Jon did, but I do agree with the central premise of his argument that disruption caused by AI will be harnessed to prioritize profits over people. It will likely cause one of the largest and fastest labor displacements in human history.

I run an AI company based in Silicon Valley focused on solving climate change, and I am a former policymaker for the government of India. At the World Economic Forum Davos 2024, my discussions with media, heads of state, and CEOs of Fortune 500 companies underscored global perspectives on AI, where AI was widely discussed to unlock the next productivity revolution, foster wealth creation, and uplift people out of poverty by democratizing and reducing the cost of access to information/education. Most of the risk conversations for AI focused on AI's extinction risk and the regulatory guardrails we needed to hedge against that future. My conversations about political and societal risk coming from the biggest labor displacement from AI were met with skepticism even by my community of fellow AI founders. 

The reality is what we are witnessing through AI is a force that multiplies the pace of structural displacement of labor. As an example, the internet era and globalization enabled US firms to outsource customer support to developing countries such as India, Vietnam, and Thailand at the expense of the middle class in some U.S regions; now, a chatbot developed on an LLM enterprise stack is proving to be more/equally effective as humans in the customer support making them redundant. This impact will be even more severe in high-income countries. A recent report by the IMF mentioned that closer to 60% of jobs will be impacted by AI, likely leading to an increase in inequality. Half of them will benefit, but the other half will made redundant/less effective, leading to lower wages, reduced purchasing power, and a lower standard of living in an inflationary era. 

[...]

This brings me to the uncomfortable truth of accepting our responsibility as AI founders to decide the course of this transformation along with the governments. Our obsession with profitability has often led us to focus more on applications such as creating more intelligent chatbots to replace customer support or sales reps rather than the most challenging yet purposeful problems for humanity, such as improving productivity for smallholder farmers in the developing world or solving cancer. 

Secondly, we need to work with governments and regulators to ensure that some of the wealth created in this process is redistributed fairly and equitably. As an example, we can co-fund the creation of NGOs such as Coalfield Development. This community-based non-profit engages coal miners who couldn't transition into renewable energy jobs by helping them acquire construction, agriculture, and solar installation skills.

Third, governments can learn lessons from Norway's efforts to ensure the fair redistribution of wealth created by the oil boom in the 1970s. Norway established the Government Pension Fund Global (Norwegian Oil Fund) in 1990 to steward oil revenues for future generations, aiming for economic stability through global diversified investments. It now has the second lowest inequality in the world. 

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Jesus “Chuy” Juarez was only 17 when he enlisted in the Marine Corps.

He’d convinced his parents to sign a waiver so recruiters would allow him to sign up, and he served for three years during the Vietnam War.

While taking part in a military training exercise, he fell off a truck and was badly hurt.

The injuries he suffered on that day were misdiagnosed and never treated properly, according to family and friends.

“That accident back in 1975 caused him a life from that point forward of pain,” said Robert Vivar, of the Unified U.S. Deported Veterans Resource Center. “He struggled to be able to deal with the pain from the injuries he sustained.”

Juarez also struggled with being away from home.

He was raised in Sherman Heights near downtown San Diego.

But he was deported for having undocumented migrants in his car and would spend almost 30 years waiting to come back home to the U.S.

Vivar says a few weeks back, he got a message from Juarez asking for help. He had called others, too, complaining of intense pain in his leg.

By the time they got him to a hospital in Tijuana, it was too late. Juarez died the next day on March 17.

The official cause of death has not been made public.

“He died waiting to come home,” said Vivar.

Juarez was among the hundreds of foreign-born veterans of the U.S. armed forces who lost their lawful immigration status after being convicted of crimes.

Even when his mother was dying, his request for permission to visit her was rejected, Vivar said.

“Mother was dying, his request for permission to visit her was rejected,” Vivar said.

“We thought at least he would be able to be with her in her last days, but that was impossible, we thought at least he would be here for her funeral, that was not possible either, it got denied.”

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Last Thursday, in the music humanities class I teach at Columbia University, two students were giving an in-class presentation on the composer John Cage. His most famous piece is “4'33",” which directs us to listen in silence to surrounding noise for exactly that amount of time.

I had to tell the students we could not listen to that piece that afternoon because the surrounding noise would have been not birds or people walking by in the hallway but infuriated chanting from protesters outside the building. Lately that noise has been almost continuous during the day and into the evening, including lusty chanting of “From the river to the sea.” Two students in my class are Israeli; three others, to my knowledge, are American Jews. I couldn’t see making them sit and listen to this as if it were background music.

I thought about what would have happened if protesters were instead chanting anti-Black slogans or even something like “D.E.I. has got to die,” to the same “Sound Off” tune that “From the river to the sea” has been adapted to. They would have lasted roughly five minutes before masses of students shouted them down and drove them off the campus. Chants like that would have been condemned as a grave rupture of civilized exchange, heralded as threatening resegregation and branded as a form of violence. I’d wager that most of the student protesters against the Gaza war would view them that way. Why do so many people think that weekslong campus protests against not just the war in Gaza but Israel’s very existence are nevertheless permissible?

Although I know many Jewish people will disagree with me, I don’t think that Jew hatred is as much the reason for this sentiment as opposition to Zionism and the war on Gaza. I know some of the protesters, including a couple who were taken to jail last week, and I find it very hard to imagine that they are antisemitic. Yes, there can be a fine line between questioning Israel’s right to exist and questioning Jewish people’s right to exist. And yes, some of the rhetoric amid the protests crosses it.

Conversations I have had with people heatedly opposed to the war in Gaza, signage and writings on social media and elsewhere and anti-Israel and generally hard-leftist comments that I have heard for decades on campuses place these confrontations within a larger battle against power structures — here in the form of what they call colonialism and genocide — and against whiteness. The idea is that Jewish students and faculty should be able to tolerate all of this because they are white.

I understand this to a point. Pro-Palestinian rallies and events, of which there have been many here over the years, are not in and of themselves hostile to Jewish students, faculty and staff members. Disagreement will not always be a juice and cookies affair. However, the relentless assault of this current protest — daily, loud, louder, into the night and using ever-angrier rhetoric — is beyond what any people should be expected to bear up under, regardless of their whiteness, privilege or power.

Social media discussion has been claiming that the protests are peaceful. They are, some of the time. It varies by location and day; generally what goes on within the campus gates is somewhat less strident than what happens just outside them. But relatively constant are the drumbeats. People will differ on how peaceful that sound can ever be, just as they will differ on the nature of antisemitism. What I do know is that even the most peaceful of protests would be treated as outrages if they were interpreted as, say, anti-Black, even if the message were coded, as in a bunch of people quietly holding up MAGA signs or wearing T-shirts saying “All lives matter.”

And besides, calling all this peaceful stretches the use of the word rather implausibly. It’s an odd kind of peace when a local rabbi urges Jewish students to go home as soon as possible, when an Israeli Arab activist is roughed up on Broadway, when the angry chanting becomes so constant that you almost start not to hear it and it starts to feel normal to see posters and clothing portraying members of Hamas as heroes. The other night I watched a dad coming from the protest with his little girl, giving a good hard few final snaps on the drum he was carrying, nodding at her in crisp salute, percussing his perspective into her little mind. This is not peaceful.

I understand that the protesters and their fellow travelers feel that all of this is the proper response, social justice on the march. They have been told that righteousness means placing the battle against whiteness and its power front and center, contesting the abuse of power by any means necessary. And I think the war on Gaza is no longer constructive or even coherent.

However, the issues are complex, in ways that this uncompromising brand of power battling is ill suited to address. Legitimate questions remain about the definition of genocide, about the extent of a nation’s right to defend itself and about the justice of partition (which has not historically been limited to Palestine). There is a reason many consider the Israeli-Palestinian conflict the most morally challenging in the modern world.

[cogitoergofun]

A white family in Atlanta, Georgia today has 46 times as much wealth as a Black family; a racial wealth gap that is exactly the same as it was nationally in 1863 when Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation ending the era of legalized enslavement. Over forty years of neoliberal economic policy have profoundly exacerbated income and wealth inequality especially across racial lines. The crisis of the immoral racial wealth gap will remain until we deploy evidence-based policies that address both historical and contemporary barriers to wealth generation.

Increasing people’s income through higher wages and guaranteed income is critical, but income is only one facet of wealth and it’s not enough to start to close the wealth gap by itself. Unlike income, which generally speaking comes as a paycheck, wealth takes many forms. The nature of compounding interest has always meant that a great way to make money in America is to have money; to graduate college debt-free and start a job with a 401-K, to have your parents float you a down payment on your first house, or to inherit “startup capital” from a beloved auntie to start your dream business. If we are serious about closing the racial wealth gap, our financial and political strategies must stabilize income and generate wealth.

Poverty is not inevitable, but it is entrenched. To meaningfully address American poverty requires strategies that address the full financial picture of providing steady, stable income, and generating meaningful wealth building. Americans who are struggling to make ends meet today need steady cash flow through guaranteed income programs and wealth-building interventions like baby bonds.

A “baby bond,” or guaranteed inheritance, is a public fund paid out as a lump sum when the recipient reaches a certain age. Children shouldn't be limited in achieving their economic potential because of the family they are born into or the zip code where they live. Baby bonds are already part of the state programming in California and Connecticut and are under consideration in six other states. Connecticut’s newly launched baby bond program automatically invests $3,200 for any child that qualifies for Medicaid, allowing a young adult to claim those funds to purchase a home, save for their retirement, invest in a business, or pay for tuition or job training. And there are pending bills in Massachusetts, Vermont, and Rhode Island to do the same.  On the federal level, Senator Cory Booker (D-N.J.) made baby bonds a cornerstone of his presidential campaign in 2021 and with U.S. Representative Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) introduced the American Opportunity Accounts Act, which would create savings accounts for every child for $1,000 at birth, dramatically changing the trajectory of a child's life.

Now, new research on cash transfers reinforces the existing evidence on guaranteed income and provides further backing for the power of significant, lump-sum payments like baby bonds as a critical strategy for addressing entrenched generational poverty. Here in the U.S. we already have over 300 studies and 150 pilot programs across the country that prove just how powerful guaranteed income is as a tool for economic stability with outsized impacts on improving mental health, employment, and a sense of self-determination. Unsurprisingly, the new Kenyan-based research found that lump sum and longer-term monthly payments are each more effective than short-term financial support. The case for sustained, consistent, and scaled investment could not be clearer.

[cogitoergofun]

One of only two Muslim women in the U.S. Congress, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) has always been a vehemently outspoken critic of Israel. She explained her recent vote against the Israel Security Supplemental Bill, for example, as a refusal to “support unconditional military aid that further escalates the already horrific humanitarian situation” in Gaza. 

Often accused of antisemitism, Omar has maintained, as many others do, that she strongly condemns Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, while accepting the nation itself as “America’s legitimate and democratic ally.” 

There can indeed be a valid distinction between anti-Zionism and antisemitism — with the first aimed at the policies and actions of Israel’s government, and the latter directed against Jewish people and institutions. Although anti-Israel activists, often echoing Omar, typically assert that their protests are leveled only at Zionism, some have lately demonstrated a shocking inclination to employ classically antisemitic themes and images.  

One appalling instance recently surfaced at the University of California’s Berkeley Law School, when Dean Erwin Chemerinsky announced a series of three dinners for graduating students, to be held at his home. Although the event had nothing to do with Gaza’s agony, the Berkeley chapter of Law Students for Justice in Palestine seized on Chemerinsky’s Jewish identity to call for a boycott of the celebration. 

They placed posters throughout the law school, as well as on their Instagram account, featuring a grotesque caricature of Chemerinsky holding a bloody knife and fork, with the caption “No Dinner with Zionist Chem While Gaza Starves.” Chemerinsky and I are friendly acquaintances, having coauthored a short essay on judicial ethics in 2004. 

Chemerinsky recognized the image as “blatant antisemitism,” invoking the “horrible antisemitic trope of blood libel” and attacking him for “no apparent reason other than I am Jewish.”  

He wasn’t exaggerating. 

The portrayal of Jews as leering blood drinkers — historically known as a “blood libel” — dates back to Medieval times, and it has been used ever since as an excuse for pogroms, expulsions, and worse. It was a staple of Germany’s Der Stürmer in the Nazi era and can be seen today in its American descendant, the far-right, neo-Nazi publication The Daily Stormer. Louis Farrakhan antisemitically refers to Jews as blood-suckers and the myth of evil Jewish vampires — not the moon children of “Twilight” — has been widespread in Europe and the Middle East. 

Other campuses have also seen antisemitic imagery. At Harvard, for example, the Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee and the African and African American Resistance Organization posted a drawing depicting a hand bearing a Star of David and a dollar sign holding nooses around the necks of two Black and Arab men. Even worse, a group called the Harvard Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine shared the post on its social media account. 

After the Harvard administration condemned the “vile and hateful antisemitic tropes,” the groups took down the posts. The students claimed that the offensive image had been “negligently included” due to “a combination of ignorance and inadequate oversight.”  The faculty group apologized without explanation, saying only that they removed the content after it “came to our attention.” 

Neither group explained how the blatantly hateful accusation of Jewish financial manipulation could so readily be embraced by students and faculty at America’s premier university. 

Berkeley’s Law Students for Justice in Palestine did not have the decency to apologize. They somewhat sanitized the social media version of the poster, removing the blood from Chemerinsky’s utensils but leaving the ghastly grin with flecks on his lips. 

They followed up by posting a quote from the late George Habash, founder of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and originator of airplane hijacking. 

Here is another quote from Habash, whose tactics were too extreme even for Yasir Arafat: “To kill a Jew far from the battleground has more of an effect than killing 100 of them in battle.” 

The subsequent disruption of Chemerinsky’s dinners generated considerable press coverage, much of it devoted to the absurd claim of a First Amendment right to give amplified speeches at the dean’s backyard party. It is important, however, not to miss the antisemitic undertone of their protest.  

The Berkeley Law Students for Justice in Palestine denounced Chemerinsky’s dinners as “no more than PR events for Zionist admin to distract us from the genocide in Gaza.” The group claimed to have targeted him because he failed to take a public position on “U.S. complicity with the unfolding genocide,” and “continues to approve of UC investments into weapons companies.” 

As Chemerinsky has repeatedly pointed out, however, his student dinners have been annual events, he has said “nothing in support of what Netanyahu’s doing,” and neither he nor the law school plays any role in university investments. 

In fact, Chemerinsky has been supportive of Palestinian rights, even stressing that the student group’s antisemitic posters “were protected by the First Amendment.” In 2007, he represented the family of Rachel Corrie, a pro-Palestinian activist who was killed in an Israeli military operation while she was attempting to save a Gazan home from destruction. His wife, Berkeley law professor Catherine Fisk, told the protesters, “We agree with you about what’s going on in Palestine.”  

Chemerinsky has dedicated much of his long career to the protection of individual and minority rights, only to be hounded and vilified, alone among Berkeley administrators. As he sorrowfully acknowledged in an interview, “It’s hard for me to see any reason why they are coming after me, other than I am Jewish.” 

[cogitoergofun]

Republican Senate candidate Kari Lake expressed regret in a recent interview that Arizona’s century-old abortion ban was not being enforced by the state’s Democratic leadership, remarks that appear at odds with her recent public opposition to the law.

“The Arizona Supreme Court said this is the law of Arizona, but unfortunately, the people running our state have said we’re not going to enforce it. So it’s really political theater,” Lake said in an interview with Idaho Dispatch on Saturday during a visit to the state.

“We don’t have that law as much as many of us wish we did,” she added.

The Arizona Supreme Court ruled on April 9 that the state must adhere to a 160-year-old law barring all abortions except in cases when “necessary” to save a pregnant woman’s life. The court delayed enforcement of the ban for at least 14 days to allow plaintiffs to challenge the law, and Arizona’s Democratic attorney general, Kris Mayes, told CNN that her office does not intend to prosecute providers or patients under the near-total ban. The attorney general’s website states that “the earliest the 1864 territorial abortion ban may take effect is June 8, 2024.”

CNN has reached out to Lake’s campaign for comment.

Lake’s latest remarks come as she confronts criticism from within the anti-abortion movement over her recent shift on the law.

In 2022, as a candidate for governor, the former TV news anchor praised the 1864 law in a podcast interview after Roe v. Wade was overturned, saying that she was “incredibly thrilled” that Arizona would have a “great law that’s already on the books” go into effect.

But as a candidate for Senate, Lake has flipped her position on the abortion law.

Lake came out against the Arizona Supreme Court’s abortion ruling earlier this month and called on the state’s Democratic governor and GOP-controlled Legislature to find an “immediate common sense solution.”

Two days after the ruling, Lake released a five-minute video explaining her stance. She declared that the “total ban on abortion” is “out of line” with where Arizonans are on the issue and said she supports exceptions for cases of rape and incest. She also actively lobbied state lawmakers to overturn the law, CNN previously reported.

Lake acknowledged during a campaign event in Scottsdale last week that she had a “little bit of a shift” in her stance on the abortion law but insisted she was “still pro-life.”