Everyday Erinyes #329

 Posted by at 8:12 am  Politics
Jul 312022
 

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

I’m confident everyone here has heard of the Sacklers and Purdue. And I expect everyone here would, if we thought about it , have realized that no one corporation, even a conglomerate, and no one family is ever the problem by itself. There are always competitors and imitators. But I for one could never have come up with this kind of detail from my own thinking, not even combined with my own research.
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The opioid crisis isn’t just the Sacklers’ fault – and making Purdue Pharma pay isn’t enough on its own to fix the pharmaceutical industry’s deeper problems

Many companies have sold dangerous prescription drugs.
Peter Dazeley/The Image Bank via Getty Images

David Herzberg, University at Buffalo

You may have heard of the Sackler family and the role that they and their privately held company, Purdue Pharma, played in the opioid crisis. One TV series depicting the family as a villainous clan has earned 14 Emmy nominations. Another is in the works.

Purdue is infamous for its hard-sell marketing of its powerful, long-acting opioid OxyContin. Among its troubling tactics: co-opting legitimate medical organizations to spread messages overstating the drug’s effectiveness and understating its addiction risks. Sales boomed, making its owners fabulously wealthy and building what journalist Patrick Radden Keefe memorably calls an “empire of pain.”

Purdue’s profit-seeking became a model for other drugmakers, distributors and pharmacy chains. The ensuing sales frenzy led to skyrocketing rates of opioid addiction and related harms by the early 2000s – perhaps the worst pharmaceutical crisis in U.S. history.

So when Purdue Pharma’s bankruptcy settlement was revised in March 2022 to make the family pay US$6 billion, mostly to local and state governments, the news was greeted with at least some satisfaction. Although it looks as though no members of that family will go to prison, the people often regarded as the saga’s primary villains were at least paying a price for their misdeeds.

But as a historian of addictive pharmaceuticals, I see a danger in associating the opioid crisis too closely with the Sackler family. My research has shown that the crisis isn’t an aberration caused by the individual misdeeds of bad actors. Punishing people who broke the law, and making business leaders pay to repair the harms they caused, surely helps. Yet broad reforms are also needed to prevent similar disasters from happening again.

Who are ‘the Sacklers’?

Despite the many individuals and companies involved, the Sacklers became the public face of the opioid crisis. In part this acknowledged their status as pioneers: They were the first to hypermarket strong opioids, and they led the pack in blaming the resulting catastrophe on consumers who became addicted to those prescription painkillers.

But who are they? Their story began with Arthur, Mortimer and Raymond Sackler, three brothers who were all doctors and made a collective fortune in medical marketing. They acquired what was then called Purdue Frederick Co. in 1952.

After Arthur died in 1987, Mortimer and Raymond bought their brother’s stake in the company from his family for $22 million. For that reason, Arthur Sackler’s heirs aren’t involved in opioid-related litigation that’s on track to be resolved through Purdue’s bankruptcy settlement.

“The Sacklers” I refer to here – and when you read about them elsewhere – are Mortimer and Raymond and their heirs who benefited from Purdue’s profit machine, many of whom worked there, served on its board – or both.

Richard Sackler ran the company for years and subsequently became a micromanaging board member. His cousin Kathe Sackler, another former Purdue executive, repeatedly claimed that OxyContin was her idea, Patrick Radden Keefe has reported. Pinpointing exactly how much money they collectively extracted from Purdue is impossible, but in 2021 those two branches of the Sackler family were estimated to hold about $11 billion in assets.

Pop culture villainy

The Sacklers used their profits to protect the family’s reputation through lavish charitable donations to museums like the Guggenheim and the Louvre, and several universities – including Tufts and Yale.

Their philanthropy produced an aura of respectability but also made them highly visible. Eventually journalists connected the dots, leading to a cottage industry of books and media coverage of the opioid crisis casting the Sacklers as the bad guys responsible for historic levels of addiction and overdose.

The Sacklers-as-comic-book-villains story is on full display in actor Michael Stuhlbarg’s Emmy-nominated performance as a remarkably creepy Richard Sackler in the Hulu series “Dopesick,” based on Beth Macy’s book by the same name.

Viewers can probably expect similar fare from Michael Broderick, who will play Richard Sackler in “Painkiller,” an upcoming Netflix limited series about how the opioid crisis began.

Dopesick, a Hulu series, dramatizes Purdue’s role in bringing about the opioid epidemic.

‘White market drugs’

As satisfying as it may be, focusing on the Sacklers’ misdeeds can obscure as much as it reveals about the deeper causes of the opioid crisis.

Purdue did not invent the tactics it used to sell OxyContin. Pharmaceutical companies discover and sell genuinely miraculous products, but they also routinely wield troubling influence over every step of the production and circulation of knowledge about drugs, which can make it difficult to understand the true value of a medicine. They oversee the research that demonstrates drug effectiveness. They write or help write the publications based on the research.

Drugmakers script or influence the professional guidelines that encourage prescribing. They underwrite professional organizations and pay medical experts to spread the word. They fund and channel patient advocacy organizations into supporting the medicines they manufacture.

And then they lobby for legislation, regulations and anything else that can gin up more demand for their drugs.

Until the Food and Drug Administration approved OxyContin in 1995, these marketing techniques were forbidden for opioids, which authorities considered to be too dangerous for them.

As I explain in my book, “White Market Drugs,” federal regulators, supported by cautious medical authorities, appointed leading pharmacologists to test the addictiveness of new opioid products. They scrutinized advertisements to make sure the risks were fully and accurately conveyed.

Old-fashioned article warns readers to be wary when the 'Prescription says 'DOPE''
This 1944 article decried the dangers of prescribed opioids.
David Herzberg/National Archives

Pharmaceutical companies tried to outfox regulators with a parade of now-forgotten “miracle opioids” long before OxyContin. Indeed, one of these would-be wonder drugs was none other than oxycodone, OxyContin’s main ingredient.

Oxycodone, discovered in 1916, had been sold in the U.S. for most of the 20th century.

In 1949, Endo Products claimed that Percodan, its new oxycodone product, shouldn’t face strict federal controls because it was chemically similar to codeine, a relatively weak opioid used in cough syrups. The company insisted it wasn’t addictive when used as prescribed.

Expert pharmacologists working with federal regulators pushed back. Noting that oxycodone produced an “intense” addiction, they pointed out that people did not always follow doctors’ orders – especially with addictive drugs.

Purdue’s real innovation with OxyContin was commercial, not scientific. The company was the first to market a powerful opioid using the most aggressive strategies other drug companies regularly used to get pharmaceutical innovations into bodies with great speed and efficiency – while maximizing profits.

Once Purdue showed it could be done, competitors quickly followed suit. The industry replaced U.S. medicine’s century-old habits of opioid precautions with a reckless boosterism.

Complicity of many industries

Purdue, that is, didn’t act alone.

Other drugmakers such as Endo and Janssen imitated and even surpassed Purdue’s example once the taboo had been broken.

Generic manufacturers such as Allergan and Teva then profited by expanding and prolonging the boom, as did wholesale drug distributors and retail chain pharmacies. Even the prestigious McKinsey consulting firm got into the game, advising others how to maximize sales.

The complicity of so many industries makes opioid litigation complex and hard to follow. Cities, states and other plaintiffs didn’t just sue Purdue. They turned to the legal system to make sure that all the other companies pay to repair the harms they caused in building the historic opioid boom that has contributed to more than 500,000 overdose deaths since 1996.

To date the largest national opioid settlement is with the three main opioid distributors and Johnson & Johnson, manufacturer of the Duragesic and Nucynta opioids. It totals $26 billion, significantly more than what Purdue and the Sacklers are paying.

But financial settlements cannot solve every problem that made this crisis possible. Purdue and its competitors were able to put profits over consumer safety for so long, in part, because their marketing strategies closely approximated how other medicines are sold in the U.S.

The opioid crisis, in other words, revealed in an exaggerated fashion problems prevalent in the pharmaceutical industry more generally. Until those broader problems are resolved, the unhappy history of addictive prescription drugs will keep repeating itself.The Conversation

David Herzberg, Associate Professor of History, University at Buffalo

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, I certainly don’t have the answers. And I might add, the comments on this article are not reprinted here, but I did read them (disagreed strongly with a couple of points and said so on one), and the dialog only made it more complicated. Of course whenever there is a tug-of-war between those profiting from pharmaceuticals of any kind, and those non-medical persons sincerely trying to spare people agony (while often unintendedly making it worse), people are going to get hurt. And that’s a kind of pain which pretty well is not amenable to medication of any kind.

The Furies and I will be back.

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Everyday Erinyes #328

 Posted by at 12:10 pm  Politics
Jul 242022
 

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

Separration of church from state is enshrined in our constitution, and for goos reason. It’s a short and sweet line item in the First Amendment, but there is also plenty of commentary on it in the writings of, to name just two, Jefferson and Madison, and the Treay of Tripoli (negotiated under and signed by John Adams). How any Christian could be in favor of theocracy, when Jesus Christ Himself is recporded as having said, “Render therefore unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s, and unto God that which is God’s,” is quite beyond me. (Incidentally, he also spoke about government officials doing their duty to that government, in a context which to me implies that anyone in any form of employment has a duty to their employer, different and separaate from their religious duties.)

Of course, everyone who reads the Bible has their own favorite and other not-so-favorite parts of it, and I am no different, and likely have some things wrong – and the same is probably true of all religious scriptures. But history cannot show us any state, any time, any where, in which a theocracy was compatible with our founding principle that “all men are created equal,” or a theocracy existed under which living conditions were not godawful. So it’s understandable that this report from ProPublica distresses me.
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Right-Wing Think Tank Family Research Council Is Now a Church in Eyes of the IRS

by Andrea Suozzo

ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.

The Family Research Council’s multimillion-dollar headquarters sit on G Street in Washington, D.C., just steps from the U.S. Capitol and the White House, a spot ideally situated for its work as a right-wing policy think tank and political pressure group.

From its perch at the heart of the nation’s capital, the FRC has pushed for legislation banning gender-affirming surgery; filed amicus briefs supporting the overturning of Roe v. Wade; and advocated for religious exemptions to civil rights laws. Its longtime head, a former state lawmaker and ordained minister named Tony Perkins, claims credit for pushing the Republican platform rightward over the past two decades.

What is the FRC? Its website sums up the answer to this question in 63 words: “A nonprofit research and educational organization dedicated to articulating and advancing a family-centered philosophy of public life. In addition to providing policy research and analysis for the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of the federal government, FRC seeks to inform the news media, the academic community, business leaders, and the general public about family issues that affect the nation from a biblical worldview.”

In the eyes of the Internal Revenue Service, though, it is also a church, with Perkins as its religious leader.

According to documents obtained via the Freedom of Information Act and given to ProPublica, the FRC filed an application to change its status to an “association of churches,” a designation commonly used by groups with member churches like the Southern Baptist Convention, in March 2020. The agency approved the change a few months later.

The FRC is one of a growing list of activist groups to seek church status, a designation that comes with the ability for an organization to shield itself from financial scrutiny. Once the IRS blessed it as an association of churches, the FRC was no longer required to file a public tax return, known as a Form 990, revealing key staffer salaries, the names of board members and related organizations, large payments to independent contractors and grants the organization has made. Unlike with other charities, IRS investigators can’t initiate an audit on a church unless a high-level Treasury Department official has approved the investigation.

The FRC declined to make officials available for an interview or answer any questions for this story. Its former parent organization, Focus on the Family, changed its designation to become a church in 2016. In a statement, the organization said it made the switch largely out of concern for donor privacy, noting that many groups like it have made the same change. Many of them claim they operated in practice as churches or associations of churches all along.

Warren Cole Smith, president of the Christian transparency watchdog MinistryWatch, said he believes groups like these are seeking church status with the IRS for the protections it confers.

“I don’t believe that a lot of the organizations that have filed for the church exemption are in fact churches,” he said. “And I don’t think that they think that they are in fact churches.”

The IRS uses a list of 14 characteristics to determine if an organization is a church or an association of churches, though it notes that organizations need not meet all the specifications. The Family Research Council answered in the affirmative for 11 of those points, saying that it has an array of “partner churches” with a shared mission: “to hold all life as sacred, to see families flourish, and to promote religious freedom.” The group says there is no set process for a church to become one of the partners that make up its association, but it says partners (and the FRC’s employees) must affirm a statement of faith to do so. It claims there are nearly 40,000 churches in its association, made up of different creeds and beliefs — saying that this models the pattern of the “first Christian churches described in the New Testament of the Bible.”

Unlike the Southern Baptist Convention, whose website hosts a directory of more than 50,000 affiliated churches, the FRC’s site does not list these partners or mention the word “church” anywhere on its home page. The FRC’s application to become an association of churches didn’t include this list of partner churches, nor did it provide the names to ProPublica.

To the question of whether the organization performs baptisms, weddings and funerals, the FRC answered yes, but it said it left those duties to its partner churches. Did it have schools for religious instruction of the young? That, too, was the job of the partner churches.

The FRC says it does not have members but a congregation made up of its board of directors, employees, supporters and partner churches. Some of those partner churches, it says, do have members.

Does the organization hold regular chapel services? According to the FRC’s letter to the IRS, the answer is yes. It wrote that it holds services at its office building averaging more than 65 people. But when a ProPublica reporter called to inquire about service times, a staffer who answered the phone responded, “We don’t have church service.” Elsewhere in the form, it says that the employees make up those who attend its services.

The organization’s claim to be an association of churches is disingenuous, said Frederick Clarkson, who researches the Christian right at nonpartisan social justice think tank Political Research Associates.

“The FRC can say whatever bullshit things they want to,” he said. “The IRS should recognize it as a bad argument.”

Three experts told ProPublica that the IRS is failing to use its full powers to determine who gets the special privileges afforded to churches. And when a group like the FRC appears to push the limits of what charities are allowed to do — particularly relating to their partisan political activity — the IRS doesn’t often step in to crack down. The IRS did not answer a list of detailed questions for this story or make anyone available for an interview.

David Cary Hart, an activist and writer who received the FRC’s reclassification documents via a Freedom of Information Act request, wrote a letter to the IRS questioning the decision, saying the approval “defies regulatory logic.”

When ProPublica relayed details of the FRC’s new church designation to Senate Finance Committee Chairman Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., he decried the loss of transparency and lax IRS oversight. “It is far too easy for powerful special interests to hide their donors using webs of nonprofits,” he said in a statement. “Form 990 filings provide valuable, and often the only, insight into a tax-exempt organization’s income and spending. But lax enforcement at the IRS and DOJ encourage more game-playing, which leaves the door wide open for enterprising dark-money schemes to exploit the system further.”

A Wave of Conversions

The current wave of nonprofit-to-church conversions appears to have gained steam after 2013, when the head of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Associationaccused the IRS of targeting BGEA and another charity he heads with audits after the group took out newspaper ads supporting a North Carolina constitutional amendment defining marriage as between one man and one woman. The groups, BGEA and Samaritan’s Purse, retained their tax-exempt status, and in 2015, they applied for church status and got it.

In 2018, Liberty Counsel, a Florida-based legal nonprofit, was reclassified as an “association of churches” — though it had been categorized as a “church auxiliary” affiliated with Jerry Falwell’s megachurch since 2006, granting the organization many of the same exemptions that churches get. The organization represents Kim Davis, the Kentucky county clerk who refused to issue licenses for same-sex marriages. Just days after the Supreme Court cited a Liberty Counsel brief in its June decision overturning Roe v. Wade, a staffer for the organization was recorded saying she prays with conservative justices inside the court building — raising questions about conflicts of interest. (Liberty Counsel denies that the staffer prayed with justices.) In a written statement, founder and chairperson Mathew Staver said that the organization’s legal work is just one part of its activity, and that it made the change “to accurately reflect the operation of the ministry.”

The American Family Association, a Tupelo, Mississippi-based group that runs the influential American Family Radio network, as well as a film studio and magazine, changed its designation to a church in early 2022, according to IRS data. The association sends out frequent “action alerts” to subscribers asking them to sign petitions opposing government appointees or boycott media and brands that it has identified as supporting LGBTQ rights or abortion access. The organization declined to respond to a request for comment.

In its letter to the IRS, the FRC argued that the classification change would protect its religious liberty rights. As an example, it pointed to Treasury Department rules exempting church organizations from the mandatory coverage requirements for contraceptives.

Churches also have a “ministerial exemption” to hiring discrimination laws for religious leaders — meaning, for example, that a Catholic church may exclude women when hiring priests. Courts have interpreted this protection broadly, shielding churches from claims of discrimination for sexual orientation as well. Recent Supreme Court rulings have broadened the umbrella of staffers who may be included under the exemption.

According to IRS data, the FRC has submitted a 990 tax return for its 2021 fiscal year, but the agency has not yet released the filing. The organization is also a member of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability, a voluntary membership organization that collects revenue, expenses, assets and a small number of other top-line financials from its members. The organization does not collect more detailed financial data reported on the 990.

Over the five years ending June 2020, the FRC saw average revenues of $15.9 million each year, and it spent an average of $15.6 million. In its fiscal year 2021, the FRC reported to ECFA, it brought in $23.1 million and spent $20 million. In the most recent 990, Perkins made about $300,000.

The IRS did not answer questions about how many groups apply to become a church and how many applications it denies. Samuel Brunson, a law professor specializing in religion and tax exemption at Loyola University Chicago, said the federal government, and especially the IRS, are typically very cautious when it comes to making judgments about defining religion.

“The First Amendment makes [defining a religion] really hard,” he said.

Brunson pointed to the Satanic Temple, which received IRS church recognition in 2019, as an example of an organization that people may not consider one. The group has made headlines over the years for mounting First Amendment challenges such as suing to have a statue of the goat-headed occult icon Baphomet placed next to statues of the Ten Commandments in public places. The temple is now suing Texas, claiming that the state’s abortion restrictions inhibit the liberty of the organization’s members to practice their religious rituals.

Lucien Greaves, a founder of the Satanic Temple, said groups like Liberty Counsel and the FRC have for years implied his organization is too political to be a church — one of the reasons the group finally sought official recognition. The fact that those same organizations are now themselves churches, he said, is hypocritical.

“People act like … we’re trying to get away with something: ‘Look, these guys want to be a church, and yet they’re active in these public campaigns,’” he said. “And they never apply those same questions to the other side.”

Politics and the Pulpit

The Southern Poverty Law Center classifies the FRC, Liberty Counsel and the American Family Association as hate groups for their anti-LGBTQ stances and advocacy. But Clarkson, the researcher, said focusing on that designation misses the larger sphere of the FRC’s political influence. In recent years, he said, the FRC’s rhetoric and actions have influenced politics away from democracy and in a direction that is “distinctly theocratic.”

“Abortion and LGBT issues are not the war,” he said. “They’re battles in the war.”

IRS rules prohibit public, tax-exempt charities including churches from “directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office.” That rule, known as the Johnson Amendment, dates back to 1954. Short of explicit political endorsements, these groups may participate in what’s known as “issue advocacy” including voter education. They can also lobby for political causes connected to their core missions, as long as the lobbying activity is not a “substantial part” of their activities.

To run its more direct political activities, the FRC has another tax-exempt organization, called a social welfare organization, that actively endorses candidates and lobbies for legislation — Family Research Council Action. The arms separate out messaging on two websites, with the FRC hosting issues-based content supporting its Christian worldview and linking to the Family Research Council Action website for content that explicitly endorses candidates.

Family Research Council Action is registered at the same address as the FRC and shares all five of the part-time employees it lists on its tax form, including Perkins. This is legal so long as the organizations are careful to separate activities and accounting, such that tax-deductible charity dollars aren’t supporting political work by the social welfare organization, said Philip Hackney, a tax law professor at the University of Pittsburgh. Experts say ideally a group like Family Research Council Action would have at least one independent staffer to indicate that it’s actually operating as an independent entity.

But FRC Action lists zero full-time employees on its most recent tax filing. When Perkins — who is president of both organizations — is speaking, he rarely makes a delineation about whether he is speaking as the head of the FRC or the head of Family Research Council Action.

But even for charitable operations, the lines around political activities are open to interpretation. While the FRC and other evangelical groups have pushed for the removal of all restrictions on political speech by churches for years, the FRC also releases guidelines encouraging pastors to discuss political matters while staying within the bounds of the law, noting that “there are legal limits to what churches may do, but your hands are not completely tied. In fact, you may be surprised at how much influence you can have.”

On Perkins’ radio show, “Washington Watch,” he hosts a bevy of pro-Donald Trump lawmakers and political figures every day. Its annual Pray Vote Stand Summit, formerly known as the Values Voter Summit, is one of the largest and most influential gatherings for those on the Christian right, where politicians, including Trump during his presidency, talk strategy with religious organizers. In 2021, the event’s schedule included “The Battle for America’s Classrooms: Fighting Indoctrination on a National Scale,” “The End of Roe and Beyond: The Outlook for the Unborn in America” and “A Mandate for Disaster: How States Are Fighting Biden’s Vaccine Tyranny” — the last event featuring the Ohio and Arkansas attorneys general and Perkins. The event was hosted by both the FRC and FRC Action.

In December 2020, Perkins — reportedly a close confidant of Trump’s during his presidency — signed a letter containing the false claims that state officials violated election laws and that “there is no doubt President Donald J. Trump is the lawful winner of the presidential election.” The letter called on state lawmakers to appoint a new slate of electors to override the election President Joe Biden won. Perkins signed as “President, Family Research Council.”

Experts say it’s not clear whether seeking to influence an election after it’s already happened would run afoul of the nonprofit campaign prohibitions.

But it’s rare for a nonprofit to face a challenge for political campaign speech. A 2020 Government Accountability Office report found that, between 2010 and 2017, the IRS examined just 226 of more than 1.5 million tax-exempt organizations for political activity. It sent a written warning to 56% of the organizations it examined and took additional action in just 10% of cases.

Scrutinizing the fuzzy line between FRC and FRC Action, or getting involved in how far out of the gray area a charity may have strayed, is not something that authorities are keeping a close eye on, said Frances Hill, a law professor specializing in tax and election law at the University of Miami. “It would take some sort of an earthquake to make the IRS use its time looking into these matters,” she said.

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ProPublica does not allow us to use their images (not that this story had a lot), and I respect that.  But I don’t think they’ll mind if I slip in the short (uner two minutes) video, which is not from them, but from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC)

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Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, the IRS (not by that name, it has had a couple of name changes) originated in 1862 as an entity in the Executive Branch, under the Deartment of the Treasury. After the Civil War, it was allowed to lapse until 1913, when the Sixteenth Amendment was ratified, and it has been reorganized a few times, notably in the 1990s (some of its teeth which were pulled then might have been helpful to maintain church-state separation now as applied to taxation.) It is still in the Executive Branch, but the IRS Code is a Congressional product, and of course the courts have had a few things to say also about how it is run.

I sympathize with the IRS, which I have often seen work to maintain proper shurch-state separation and get slapped down repeatedly. And, just as no matter how you define a gun (such as an assault rifle), manufacturers will tweak the product slightly so that the definition no longer applies, so no matter how you define a church, grifters and theocrats will tweak their organization to get it classified as one when it isn’t. And, frankly, the theocrats scare me far more than the grifters. This is our job, Furies, not yours. But if you have any ideas….

The Furies and I will be back.

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Everyday Erinyes #327

 Posted by at 8:27 am  Politics
Jul 172022
 

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

I thought this was timely – and also something that didn’t require a lot of response from me – and if you have read the Open Thread, you know yesterday was rather hectiuc. Not that it’s especially timely for Lona – but it will be – in January or thereabouts – and she has an excellent filing system. For now, I want to keep everyone who thinks here safe and in good health Hence this advisory.
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How hot is too hot for the human body? Our lab found heat + humidity gets dangerous faster than many people realize

Long-term exposure to high heat can become lethal.
Mark Wilson/Getty Images

W. Larry Kenney, Penn State; Daniel Vecellio, Penn State; Rachel Cottle, Penn State, and S. Tony Wolf, Penn State

Heat waves are becoming supercharged as the climate changes – lasting longer, becoming more frequent and getting just plain hotter. One question a lot of people are asking is: “When will it get too hot for normal daily activity as we know it, even for young, healthy adults?”

The answer goes beyond the temperature you see on the thermometer. It’s also about humidity. Our research shows the combination of the two can get dangerous faster than scientists previously believed.

Scientists and other observers have become alarmed about the increasing frequency of extreme heat paired with high humidity, measured as “wet-bulb temperature.” During the heat waves that overtook South Asia in May and June 2022, Jacobabad, Pakistan, recorded a maximum wet-bulb temperature of 33.6 C (92.5 F) and Delhi topped that – close to the theorized upper limit of human adaptability to humid heat.

People often point to a study published in 2010 that estimated that a wet-bulb temperature of 35 C – equal to 95 F at 100% humidity, or 115 F at 50% humidity – would be the upper limit of safety, beyond which the human body can no longer cool itself by evaporating sweat from the surface of the body to maintain a stable body core temperature.

It was not until recently that this limit was tested on humans in laboratory settings. The results of these tests show an even greater cause for concern.

The PSU H.E.A.T. Project

To answer the question of “how hot is too hot?” we brought young, healthy men and women into the Noll Laboratory at Penn State University to experience heat stress in a controlled environment.

These experiments provide insight into which combinations of temperature and humidity begin to become harmful for even the healthiest humans.

A young man in shorts walks on a treadmill with a towel beside him in a glass-enclosed room while a scientist monitors his body temperature and other conditions on computer screens on the other side of the glass.
S. Tony Wolf, a postdoctoral researcher in kinesiology at Penn State and co-author of this article, conducts a heat test in the Noll Laboratory as part of the PSU Human Environmental Age Thresholds project.
Patrick Mansell / Penn State, CC BY-NC-ND

Each participant swallowed a small telemetry pill, which monitored their deep body or core temperature. They then sat in an environmental chamber, moving just enough to simulate the minimal activities of daily living, such as cooking and eating. Researchers slowly increased either the temperature in the chamber or the humidity and monitored when the subject’s core temperature started to rise.

That combination of temperature and humidity whereby the person’s core temperature starts to rise is called the “critical environmental limit.” Below those limits, the body is able to maintain a relatively stable core temperature over time. Above those limits, core temperature rises continuously and risk of heat-related illnesses with prolonged exposures is increased.

When the body overheats, the heart has to work harder to pump blood flow to the skin to dissipate the heat, and when you’re also sweating, that decreases body fluids. In the direst case, prolonged exposure can result in heat stroke, a life-threatening problem that requires immediate and rapid cooling and medical treatment.

Our studies on young healthy men and women show that this upper environmental limit is even lower than the theorized 35 C. It’s more like a wet-bulb temperature of 31 C (88 F). That would equal 31 C at 100% humidity or 38 C (100 F) at 60% humidity.

A chart allows users to see when the combination of heat and humidity becomes dangerous at each degree and percentage.
Similar to the National Weather Service’s heat index chart, this chart translates combinations of air temperature and relative humidity into critical environmental limits, above which core body temperature rises. The border between the yellow and red areas represents the average critical environmental limit for young men and women at minimal activity.
W. Larry Kenney, CC BY-ND

Dry vs. humid environments

Current heat waves around the globe are approaching, if not exceeding, these limits.

In hot, dry environments the critical environmental limits aren’t defined by wet-bulb temperatures, because almost all the sweat the body produces evaporates, which cools the body. However, the amount humans can sweat is limited, and we also gain more heat from the higher air temperatures.

Keep in mind that these cutoffs are based solely on keeping your body temperature from rising excessively. Even lower temperatures and humidity can place stress on the heart and other body systems. And while eclipsing these limits does not necessarily present a worst-case scenario, prolonged exposure may become dire for vulnerable populations such as the elderly and those with chronic diseases.

Our experimental focus has now turned to testing older men and women, since even healthy aging makes people less heat tolerant. Adding on the increased prevalence of heart disease, respiratory problems and other health problems, as well as certain medications, can put them at even higher risk of harm. People over the age of 65 comprise some 80%-90% of heat wave casualties.

How to stay safe

Staying well hydrated and seeking areas in which to cool down – even for short periods – are important in high heat.

While more cities in the United States are expanding cooling centers to help people escape the heat, there will still be many people who will experience these dangerous conditions with no way to cool themselves.

The lead author of this article, W. Larry Kenney, discusses the impact of heat stress on human health with PBS NewsHour.

Even those with access to air conditioning might not turn it on because of the high cost of energy – a common occurrence in Phoenix, Arizona – or because of large-scale power outages during heat waves or wildfires, as is becoming more common in the western U.S.

A recent study focusing on heat stress in Africa found that future climates will not be conducive to the use of even low-cost cooling systems such as “swamp coolers” as the tropical and coastal parts of Africa become more humid. These devices, which require far less energy than air conditioners, use a fan to recirculate the air across a cool, wet pad to lower the air temperature, but they become ineffective at high wet-bulb temperatures above 21 C (70 F).

All told, the evidence continues to mount that climate change is not just a problem for the future. It is one that humanity is currently facing and must tackle head-on.The Conversation

W. Larry Kenney, Professor of Physiology, Kinesiology and Human Performance, Penn State; Daniel Vecellio, Geographer-climatologist and Postdoctoral Fellow, Penn State; Rachel Cottle, Ph.D. Candidate in Exercise Physiology, Penn State, and S. Tony Wolf, Postdoctoral Researcher in Kinesiology, Penn State

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone are well aware that human bodies vary wildly on how they react to heat – or for that matter cold – since they vary so wildly in other factors. (And I use the term “wildly” deliberately – not a typo for “widely” – because some of the variations really are wild. Nevertheless, general guidelines such as these are valuable as guidelines if one wants to avoid the worst effects of seasonal phenomena, particularly when those are exacerbated by climate change. And the Furies, as I do, want everyone to stay well.

The Furies and I will be back.

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Everyday Erinyes #326

 Posted by at 9:22 am  Politics
Jul 102022
 

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

Republicans (by whatever name, and throughout history) do tend to buy into conspiracy theories, whereas Democrats (throughouy history and by whatever name) generally do not – not even if there is evidence – not even if the conspiracy is real. Because some conspiracies are real. People do work together in groups if nexessary to get something done which can be accomplished no other way. We are humans, and that’s what we do. And, if whatever that something is, is illegal (or maybe just discreditable), that’s a conspiracy. I remember when Hillary spoke of a vast right-wing conspiracy and was universally mocked. But subsequent events have shown that, though not 100% correct in all details, she was right. But you won’t hear a Democrat today allow the phrase “right-wing conspiracy” pass his or her lips.
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A protester holds a Q sign as he waits to enter a campaign rally with then-President Donald Trump in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., in August 2018.
AP Photo/Matt Rourke

Donovan Schaefer, University of Pennsylvania

Conspiracy theories have been around for centuries, from witch trials and antisemitic campaigns to beliefs that Freemasons were trying to topple European monarchies. In the mid-20th century, historian Richard Hofstadter described a “paranoid style” that he observed in right-wing U.S. politics and culture: a blend of “heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy.”

But the “golden age” of conspiracy theories, it seems, is now. On June 24, 2022, the unknown leader of the QAnon conspiracy theory posted online for the first time in over a year. QAnon’s enthusiasts tend to be ardent supporters of Donald Trump, who made conspiracy theories a signature feature of his political brand, from Pizzagate and QAnon to “Stop the Steal” and the racist “birther” movement. Key themes in conspiracy theories – like a sinister network of “pedophiles” and “groomers,” shadowy “bankers” and “globalists” – have moved into the mainstream of right-wing talking points.

Much of the commentary on conspiracy theories presumes that followers simply have bad information, or not enough, and that they can be helped along with a better diet of facts.

But anyone who talks to conspiracy theorists knows that they’re never short on details, or at least “alternative facts.” They have plenty of information, but they insist that it be interpreted in a particular way – the way that feels most exciting.

My research focuses on how emotion drives human experience, including strong beliefs. In my latest book, I argue that confronting conspiracy theories requires understanding the feelings that make them so appealing – and the way those feelings shape what seems reasonable to devotees. If we want to understand why people believe what they believe, we need to look not just at the content of their thoughts, but how that information feels to them. Just as the “X-Files” predicted, conspiracy theories’ acolytes “want to believe.”

A blue and green poster shows a UFO above a forest and the words 'I want to believe.'
Our desire to feel a certain way can drive our beliefs.
Olexandr Nitsevych/iStock via Getty Images Plus

Thinking and feeling

Over 100 years ago, the American psychologist William James noted: “The transition from a state of perplexity to one of resolve is full of lively pleasure and relief.” In other words, confusion doesn’t feel good, but certainty certainly does.

He was deeply interested in an issue that is urgent today: how information feels, and why thinking about the world in a particular way might be exciting or exhilarating – so much so that it becomes difficult to see the world in any other way.

James called this the “sentiment of rationality”: the feelings that go along with thinking. People often talk about thinking and feeling as though they’re separate, but James realized that they’re inextricably related.

For instance, he believed that the best science was driven forward by the excitement of discovery – which he said was “caviar” for scientists – but also anxiety about getting things wrong.

A black and white photograph shows two men posed next to each other in suits.
Psychologist William James, right, next to his brother, the famous novelist Henry James.
Bettmann/Bettmann via Getty Images

The allure of the 2%

So how does conspiracy theory feel? First of all, it lets you feel like you’re smarter than everyone. Political scientist Michael Barkun points out that conspiracy theory devotees love what he calls “stigmatized knowledge,” sources that are obscure or even looked down upon.

In fact, the more obscure the source is, the more true believers want to trust it. This is the stock in trade of popular podcast “The Joe Rogan Experience” – “scientists” who present themselves as the lone voice in the wilderness and are somehow seen as more credible because they’ve been repudiated by their colleagues. Ninety-eight percent of scientists may agree on something, but the conspiracy mindset imagines the other 2% are really on to something. This allows conspiracists to see themselves as “critical thinkers” who have separated themselves from the pack, rather than outliers who have fallen for a snake oil pitch.

One of the most exciting parts of a conspiracy theory is that it makes everything make sense. We all know the pleasure of solving a puzzle: the “click” of satisfaction when you complete a Wordle, crossword or sudoku. But of course, the whole point of games is that they simplify things. Detective shows are the same: All the clues are right there on the screen.

Powerful appeal

But what if the whole world were like that? In essence, that’s the illusion of conspiracy theory. All the answers are there, and everything fits with everything else. The big players are sinister and devious – but not as smart as you.

QAnon works like a massive live-action video game in which a showrunner teases viewers with tantalizing clues. Followers make every detail into something profoundly significant.

When Donald Trump announced his COVID-19 diagnosis, for instance, he tweeted, “We will get through this TOGETHER.” QAnon followers saw this as a signal that their long-sought endgame – Hillary Clinton arrested and convicted of unspeakable crimes – was finally in play. They thought the capitalized word “TOGETHER” was code for “TO GET HER,” and that Trump was saying that his diagnosis was a feint in order to beat the “deep state.” For devotees, it was a perfectly crafted puzzle with a neatly thrilling solution.

It’s important to remember that conspiracy theory very often goes hand in hand with racism – anti-Black racism, anti-immigrant racism, antisemitism and Islamophobia. People who craft conspiracies – or are willing to exploit them – know how emotionally powerful these racist beliefs are.

It’s also key to avoid saying that conspiracy theories are “simply” irrational or emotional. What James realized is that all thinking is related to feeling – whether we’re learning about the world in useful ways or whether we’re being led astray by our own biases. As cultural theorist Lauren Berlant wrote in 2016, “All the messages are emotional,” no matter which political party they come from.

Conspiracy theories encourage their followers to see themselves as the only ones with their eyes open, and everyone else as “sheeple.” But paradoxically, this fantasy leads to self-delusion – and helping followers recognize that can be a first step. Unraveling their beliefs requires the patient work of persuading devotees that the world is just a more boring, more random, less interesting place than one might have hoped.

Part of why conspiracy theories have such a strong hold is that they have flashes of truth: There really are elites who hold themselves above the law; there really is exploitation, violence and inequality. But the best way to unmask abuses of power isn’t to take shortcuts – a critical point in “Conspiracy Theory Handbook,” a guide to combating them that was written by experts on climate change denial.

To make progress, we have to patiently prove what’s happening – to research, learn and find the most plausible interpretation of the evidence, not the one that’s most fun.The Conversation

Donovan Schaefer, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, University of Pennsylvania

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, yes, conspiracy theories are exciting. And therefore can be dangerous. But can it not also be dangerous, maybe even more dangerous, to ignore a real conspiracy which is fully or practically right out in the open? Sure, if you are hooked on living (and governing) by reason and compassion and equality, excitement – or at least that kind of excitement – can be uncomfortable or worse.. But not nearly as uncomfortable as living in a fascist theocracy. If we want to reach more people, to have a big tent, to fill it with people who are not exactly like us, we need to learn to make our messaging more exciting. And it certainly would not hurt to expose a few right wing conspiracies and cabals along the way.

The Furies and I will be back.

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Everyday Erinyes #325

 Posted by at 7:41 am  Politics
Jul 032022
 

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

Armies (and Navies etc.) are made up of human beings, and human beings need everything that all human beings need. This is almost simplistically obvious. But it also leads to the inference that almost anything can turn out to be vital to our national security – and therefore, the production of almost anything can be justifiably encouraged under the Defense Production Act. But inarguably, energy is right up there. To be secure as a nation, we need energy to keep our people from dying from harsh weather conditions (hi, Texas!) Also, in battle conditions, reliable sources of energy are needed to keep tanks moving and communications effective –  to name just two of many reasons.
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President Joe Biden authorized use of the Defense Production Act to ramp up production of several climate-friendly technologies.
Werner Slocum/NREL

Daniel Cohan, Rice University

Solar panels, heat pumps and hydrogen are all building blocks of a clean energy economy. But are they truly “essential to the national defense”?

President Joe Biden proclaimed that they are in early June when he authorized using the Defense Production Act to ramp up their production in the U.S., along with insulation and power grid components.

As an environmental engineering professor, I agree that these technologies are essential to mitigating our risks from climate change and overreliance on fossil fuels. However, efforts to expand production capabilities must be accompanied by policies to stimulate demand if Biden hopes to accelerate the transition from fossil fuels to clean energy.

Energy and the Defense Production Act

The United States enacted the Defense Production Act of 1950 at the start of the Korean War to secure materials deemed essential to national defense. Presidents soon recognized that essential materials extend far beyond weapons and ammunition. They have invoked the act to secure domestic supplies of everything from communications equipment to medical resources and baby formula.

For energy, past presidents used the act to expand fossil fuel supplies, not transition away from them. Lyndon Johnson used it to refurbish oil tankers during the 1967 Arab oil embargo, and Richard Nixon to secure materials for the Trans-Alaska oil pipeline in 1974. Even when Jimmy Carter used the act in 1980 to seek substitutes for oil, synthetic fuels made from coal and natural gas were a leading focus.

Today, the focus is on transitioning away from all fossil fuels, a move considered essential for confronting two key threats – climate change and volatile energy markets.

A field of solar panels in the desert with Las Vegas casinos and mountains in the background.
Utility-scale solar is now cheaper than fossil fuels. This installation is at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada.
Ethan Miller/Getty Images

The Department of Defense has identified numerous national security risks arising from climate change. Those include threats to the water supply, food production and infrastructure, which may trigger migration and competition for scarce resources. Fossil fuels are the dominant source of greenhouse gas emissions that are driving global warming.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine highlights additional risks of relying on fossil fuels. Russia and other adversaries are among the leading producers of these fuels. Overreliance on fossil fuels leaves the United States and its allies vulnerable to threats and to price shocks in volatile markets.

Even as the world’s top producer of oil and natural gas, the United States has been rocked by price spikes as our allies shun Russian fuels.

Targeting 4 pillars of clean energy

Transitioning from fossil fuels to cleaner energy can mitigate these risks.

As I explain in my book, “Confronting Climate Gridlock,” building a clean energy economy requires four mutually reinforcing pillars – efficiency, clean electricity, electrification and clean fuels.

Efficiency shrinks energy demand and costs along with the burdens on the other pillars. Clean electricity eliminates greenhouse gas emissions from power plants and enables the electrification of vehicles, heating and industry. Meanwhile, clean fuels will be needed for airplanes, ships and industrial processes that can’t easily be electrified.

The technologies targeted by Biden’s actions are well aligned with these pillars.

Insulation is crucial to energy efficiency. Solar panels provide one of the cheapest and cleanest options for electricity. Power grid components are needed to integrate more wind and solar into the energy mix.

Heat pumps, which can both heat and cool a home, are far more efficient than traditional furnaces and replace natural gas or heating oil with electricity. Electrolyzers produce hydrogen for use as a fuel or a feedstock for chemicals.

Generating demand is essential

Production is only one step. For this effort to succeed, the U.S. must also ramp up demand.

Stimulating demand spurs learning by doing, which drives down costs, spurring greater demand. A virtuous cycle of rising adoption of technologies and falling costs can arise, as it has for wind and solar power, batteries and other technologies.

The technologies targeted by Biden differ in their readiness for this virtuous cycle to work.

Insulation is already cheap and abundantly produced domestically. What’s needed in this case are policies like building codes and incentives that can stimulate demand by encouraging more use of insulation to help make homes and buildings more energy efficient, not more capacity for production.

Solar panels are currently cheap, but the vast majority are manufactured in Asia. Even if Biden succeeds in tripling domestic manufacturing capacity, U.S. production alone will remain insufficient to satisfy the growing demand for new solar projects. Biden also put a two-year pause on the threat of new tariffs for solar imports to keep supplies flowing while U.S. production tries to ramp up, and announced support for grid-strengthening projects to boost growth of U.S. installations.

Electrolyzers face a tougher road. They’re expensive, and using them to make hydrogen from electricity and water for now costs far more than making hydrogen from natural gas – a process that produces greenhouse gas emissions. The Department of Energy aims to slash electrolyzer costs by 80% within a decade. Until it succeeds, there will be little demand for the electrolyzers that Biden hopes to see produced.

Why heat pumps are most likely to benefit

That leaves heat pumps as the technology most likely to benefit from Biden’s declaration.

Heat pumps can slash energy use, but they also cost more upfront and are unfamiliar to many contractors and consumers while technologies remain in flux.

Pairing use of the Defense Production Act with customer incentives, increased government purchasing and funding for research and development can create a virtuous cycle of rising demand, improving technologies and falling costs.

A worker in ballcap and short sleeves installs a large hat pump, hooking up hoses next to a house.
Heat pumps, which can both heat and cool, are far more efficient than traditional furnaces and air conditioning.
Phyxter.ai/Flickr, CC BY

Clean energy is indeed essential to mitigating the risks posed by climate change and volatile markets. Invoking the Defense Production Act can bolster supply, but the government will also have to stimulate demand and fund targeted research to spur the virtuous cycles needed to accelerate the energy transition.The Conversation

Daniel Cohan, Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Rice University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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AMT, It’s indeed true that increasing demand is vital to motivating increased production.  And, as long as himans are resistant to change (which I assume will be true until the race becomes extinct), there will be challenges to replacing old technology with new. However, it has happened in the past. If our experience with the automobile is any guide, that means that producers are going to have to accept smaller profit margins than they are acustomed to – at least for a while – at least until the new technologies are firmly established and production costs go down. It would also not hurt for income levels to go up – remember it was the New Deal with all its effects, as well as unions, which actually turned us all into consumers – and gave us the ability to keep up consumption. Wealthy oligarchs were not happy with it then, and they won’t be happy with it now. But if wealthy oligarchs don’t capitulate and start to “bite the bullet” soon, they will end up with no customers and will lose everything.

The Furies and I will be back.

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Everyday Erinyes #324

 Posted by at 12:39 pm  Politics
Jun 262022
 

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

Overtrning Roe isn’t all the Supreme Court did this week which was disastrouus. It also weakened the rights of states to administer their own policies, with its decision to overtuen New York’s concealed carry law, and that opens another wholw can of worms. As well, it made the separation of church and state unconcstitutional. But what I want to address here is the overturning of Roe v Wade.

The basis for the Roe v Wade decision in the first place was the concept that, though it nowhere says so in so many words, the Constitution guarantees every American a right to privacy, including a right to make personal decisions for oneself, without interference from the government. It is that which the Court has stripped away (and pretty explicitly too.) It has been stripped from men as well sa from women, from children as well as adults, from white people as well as from black and brown people, fron straight people as well as from LGBTQIA+ people. Those who are worried about this decision have mentioned Loving and Obergefell and whichever decision it was that guaranteed access to contracepton. All these depend on the right to privacy. And now that’s gone. What now?
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Privacy isn’t in the Constitution – but it’s everywhere in constitutional law

Who’s allowed to watch what you do and say?
Shannon Fagan/The Image Bank via Getty Images

Scott Skinner-Thompson, University of Colorado Boulder

Almost all American adults – including parents, medical patients and people who are sexually active – regularly exercise their right to privacy, even if they don’t know it.

Privacy is not specifically mentioned in the U.S. Constitution. But for half a century, the Supreme Court has recognized it as an outgrowth of protections for individual liberty. As I have studied in my research on constitutional privacy rights, this implied right to privacy is the source of many of the nation’s most cherished, contentious and commonly used rights – including the right to have an abortion – until the court’s June 24, 2022, ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson.

A key component of liberty

The Supreme Court first formally identified what is called “decisional privacy” – the right to independently control the most personal aspects of our lives and our bodies – in 1965, saying it was implied from other explicit constitutional rights.

For instance, the First Amendment rights of speech and assembly allow people to privately decide what they’ll say, and with whom they’ll associate. The Fourth Amendment limits government intrusion into people’s private property, documents and belongings.

Relying on these explicit provisions, the court concluded in Griswold v. Connecticut that people have privacy rights preventing the government from forbidding married couples from using contraception.

In short order, the court clarified its understanding of the constitutional origins of privacy. In the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision protecting the right to have an abortion, the court held that the right of decisional privacy is based in the Constitution’s assurance that people cannot be “deprived of life, liberty or property, without due process of law.” That phrase, called the due process clause, appears twice in the Constitution – in the Fifth and 14th Amendments.

Decisional privacy also provided the basis for other decisions protecting many crucial, and everyday, activities.

The right to privacy protects the ability to have consensual sex without being sent to jail. And privacy buttresses the ability to marry regardless of race or gender.

The right to privacy is also key to a person’s ability to keep their family together without undue government interference. For example, in 1977, the court relied on the right to private family life to rule that a grandmother could move her grandchildren into her home to raise them even though it violated a local zoning ordinance.

Under a combination of privacy and liberty rights, the Supreme Court has also protected a person’s freedom in medical decision-making. For example, in 1990, the court concluded “that a competent person has a constitutionally protected liberty interest in refusing unwanted medical treatment.”

Limiting government disclosure

The right to decisional privacy is not the only constitutionally protected form of privacy. As then-Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist noted in 1977, the “concept of ‘privacy’ can be a coat of many colors, and quite differing kinds of rights to ‘privacy’ have been recognized in the law.”

This includes what is called a right to “informational privacy” – letting a person limit government disclosure of information about them.

According to some authority, the right extends even to prominent public and political figures. In one key decision, in 1977, Chief Justice Warren Burger and Rehnquist – both conservative justices – suggested in dissenting opinions that former President Richard Nixon had a privacy interest in documents made during his presidency that touched on his personal life. Lower courts have relied on the right of informational privacy to limit the government’s ability to disclose someone’s sexual orientation or HIV status.

All told, though the word isn’t in the Constitution, privacy is the foundation of many constitutional protections for our most important, sensitive and intimate activities. If the right to privacy is eroded – such as in a future Supreme Court decision – many of the rights it’s connected with may also be in danger.

This story was updated on June 24, 2022, to reflect the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health.The Conversation

Scott Skinner-Thompson, Associate Professor of Law, University of Colorado Boulder

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, without the right to privacy, and with this particular Court comprising these particular justices, there may be no limit to the rights which may be stripped away, from all of us. In fact, with this Court, it may not even matter if progressives achieve commanding majorities in Congress and the White House. We may already be living in a fascist country, details to be released as the fascists deem appropriate.

The Furies and I will be back.

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Everyday Erinyes #323

 Posted by at 12:28 pm  Holiday, Politics
Jun 192022
 

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

This is not the first time I (or TC) have written about Juneteenth, but I don’t like to let it slip away. Confederates of the 1860’s (and earlier and later) could certainly give today’s Republicans a run for their money on delusion and denial – and mean spirited arrogance. “Well, just don’t tell them they’re free, and they’ll have to stay enslaved.”  I apologize if that prompted a Barf Bag – especially when there are so many delicacies to celebrate with.
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Juneteenth celebrates just one of the United States’ 20 emancipation days – and the history of how emancipated people were kept unfree needs to be remembered, too

Emancipation Day celebration, June 19, 1900, held in ‘East Woods’ on East 24th St. in Austin, Texas.
Austin History Center

Kris Manjapra, Tufts University

The actual day was June 19, 1865, and it was the Black dockworkers in Galveston, Texas, who first heard the word that freedom for the enslaved had come. There were speeches, sermons and shared meals, mostly held at Black churches, the safest places to have such celebrations.

The perils of unjust laws and racist social customs were still great in Texas for the 250,000 enslaved Black people there, but the celebrations known as Juneteenth were said to have gone on for seven straight days.

The spontaneous jubilation was partly over Gen. Gordon Granger’s General Order No. 3. It read in part, “The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free.”

But the emancipation that took place in Texas that day in 1865 was just the latest in a series of emancipations that had been unfolding since the 1770s, most notably the Emancipation Proclamation signed by President Abraham Lincoln two years earlier on Jan. 1, 1863.

As I explore in my book “Black Ghost of Empire,” between the 1780s and 1930s, during the era of liberal empire and the rise of modern humanitarianism, over 80 emancipations from slavery occurred, from Pennsylvania in 1780 to Sierra Leone in 1936.

There were, in fact, 20 separate emancipations in the
United States alone, from 1780 to 1865, across the U.S. North and South.

In my view as a scholar of race and colonialism, Emancipation Days – Juneteenth in Texas – are not what many people think, because emancipation did not do what most of us think it did.

As historians have long documented, emancipations did not remove all the shackles that prevented Black people from obtaining full citizenship rights. Nor did emancipations prevent states from enacting their own laws that prohibited Black people from voting or living in white neighborhoods.

In fact, based on my research, emancipations were actually designed to force Blacks and the federal government to pay reparations to slave owners – not to the enslaved – thus ensuring white people maintained advantages in accruing and passing down wealth across generations..

Reparations to slave owners

The emancipations shared three common features that, when added together, merely freed the enslaved in one sense, but reenslaved them in another sense.

The first, arguably the most important, was the ideology of gradualism, which said that atrocities against Black people would be ended slowly, over a long and open-ended period.

The second feature was state legislators who held fast to the racist principle that emancipated people were units of slave owner property – not captives who had been subjected to crimes against humanity.

The third was the insistence that Black people had to take on various forms of debt in order to exit slavery. This included economic debt, exacted by the ongoing forced and underpaid work that freed people had to pay to slave owners.

In essence, freed people had to pay for their freedom, while enslavers had to be paid to allow them to be free.

Emancipation myths and realities

On March 1, 1780, for instance, Pennsylvania’s state Legislature set a global precedent for how emancipations would pay reparations to slave owners and buttress the system of white property rule.

The Pennsylvania Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery stipulated “that all persons, as well negroes, and mulattos, as others, who shall be born within this State, from and after the Passing of this Act, shall not be deemed and considered as Servants for Life or Slaves.”

At the same time, the legislation prescribed “that every negroe and mulatto child born within this State” could be held in servitude “unto the age of twenty eight Years” and “liable to like correction and punishment” as enslaved people.

After that first Emancipation Day in Pennsylvania, enslaved people still remained in bondage for the rest of their lives, unless voluntarily freed by slave owners.

Only the newborn children of enslaved women were nominally free after Emancipation Day. Even then, these children were forced to serve as bonded laborers from childhood until their 28th birthday.

All future emancipations shared the Pennsylvania DNA.

Emancipation Day came to Connecticut and Rhode Island on March 1, 1784. On July 4, 1799, it dawned in New York, and on July 4, 1804, in New Jersey. After 1838, West Indian people in the United States began commemorating the British Empire’s Emancipation Day of Aug. 1.

The District of Columbia’s day came on April 16, 1862.

Seven white men gather around a table to watch President Abraham Lincoln sign the Emancipation Proclamation.
President Abraham Lincoln signs the Emancipation Proclamation.
Getty Images

Eight months later, on Jan. 1, 1863, President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation that freed the enslaved only in Confederate states – not in the states loyal to the Union, such as New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky and Missouri.

Emancipation Day dawned in Maryland on Nov. 1, 1864. In the following year, emancipation was granted on April 3 in Virginia, on May 8 in Mississippi, on May 20 in Florida, on May 29 in Georgia, on June 19 in Texas and on Aug. 8 in Tennessee and Kentucky.

Slavery by another name

After the Civil War, the three Reconstruction Amendments to the U.S. Constitution each contained loopholes that aided the ongoing oppression of Black communities.

The Thirteenth Amendment of 1865 allowed for the enslavement of incarcerated people through convict leasing.

The Fourteenth Amendment of 1868 permitted incarcerated people to be denied the right to vote.

And the Fifteenth Amendment of 1870 failed to explicitly ban forms of voter suppression that targeted Black voters and would intensify during the coming Jim Crow era.

In fact, Granger’s Order No. 3, on June 19, 1865, spelled it out.

Freeing the slaves, the order read, “involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property, between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them, become that between employer and hired labor.”

Yet, the order further states: “The freed are advised to remain at their present homes, and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts; and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere.”

The meaning of Juneteenth

Since the moment emancipation celebrations started on March 1, 1780, all the way up to June 19, 1865, Black crowds gathered to seek redress for slavery.

with a blue sky in the background, a Black woman stands over a crowd of people, raising her fist in the air.
A Black woman raises her fist in the air during a Juneteenth reenactment celebration in Galveston, Texas, on June 19, 2021.
Mark Felix /AFP/Getty Images

On that first Juneteenth in Texas, and increasingly so during the ones that followed, free people celebrated their resilience amid the failure of emancipation to bring full freedom.

They stood for the end of debt bondage, racial policing and discriminatory laws that unjustly harmed Black communities. They elevated their collective imagination from out of the spiritual sinkhole of white property rule.

Over the decades, the traditions of Juneteenth ripened into larger gatherings in public parks, with barbecue picnics and firecrackers and street parades with brass bands.

At the end of his 1999 posthumously published novel, “Juneteenth,” noted Black author Ralph Ellison called for a poignant question to be asked on Emancipation Day: “How the hell do we get love into politics or compassion into history?”

The question calls for a pause as much today as ever before.The Conversation

Kris Manjapra, Professor of History, Tufts University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, I know you’re busy, but if you can manage, you might just want to track down some of those slaveowners in the underworld and give them a piece of all our minds. Not that they probably haven’t heard it – but those are mighty thick heads to try to get it through to.

The Furies and I will be back.

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Everyday Erinyes #322

 Posted by at 2:31 pm  Politics
Jun 122022
 

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

I don’t suppose the headline of this article is a surprise to anyone – nor that it is the first time the thesis has crossed your mind. (And there are a lot of those groups. Besides the Proud Boys, the article mentions Oath Keepers, The Base, the Aryan Brotherhood, the KKK, and Hutaree. In addition to those, there’s the Three Percenters, Opus Dei, whatever the cult is that Amy Coney Barrett wwas a “handmaiden” in – and more others than I could possibly remember (unless maybe I set them to music, as Tom Lehrer did with the chemical elements.) The thing they have in common is that all are bad news – and, of course, all are white.
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Regardless of seditious conspiracy charges’ outcome, right-wing groups like Proud Boys seek to build a white nation

Members of the Oath Keepers stand at the east front of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta

Matthew Valasik, University of Alabama and Shannon Reid, University of North Carolina – Charlotte

As the House Select Committee held its first public hearing on the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, far-right groups including the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers were a prominent topic of discussion.

At the same time, both of those groups’ leaders are facing criminal charges of seditious conspiracy. They are alleged to have worked together “to oppose by force the authority of the Government of the United States.”

Those charges can be difficult to prove in court. But regardless of the outcome of any prosecution that alleges these groups worked to overthrow the government, our research has shown that the more committed members of these and other extreme right-wing groups believe that the U.S. government, as currently constituted, is illegitimate and should be overthrown and replaced with one that is based on white supremacy.

Violent racism

Proud Boys have identified themselves as “Western chauvinists” who focus on opposing political correctness and white guilt. But these claims have generally been seen as cover for deeper racist and antisemitic sentiments. For some Proud Boys members, this group was a steppingstone to more extreme groups, such as The Base.

Like any street gang, the Proud Boys as a national group is made up of semi-autonomous chapters of varying numbers and abilities. They are in different degrees of contact and coordination with other chapters. It’s not clear the level of interest – or capability – that most members have in actually following through with overthrowing the government.

Oath Keepers is an anti-government group that calls itself a “militia” focused on defending the Constitution and fighting tyranny. Former Oath Keepers spokesman Jason Van Tatenhove stated that the group is actually “selling the revolution,” meaning that the group is pushing conspiracy theories and propaganda to facilitate confrontations with federal law enforcement.

While members of the Proud Boys have concentrated their confrontations on anti-fascists or other protesters, Oath Keepers have participated in several armed standoffs against the government.

In 2014, the Oath Keepers joined an armed standoff between far-right patriot groups in Nevada on behalf of Cliven Bundy. In 2015, Oath Keepers showed up heavily armed in Ferguson, Missouri, during protests over the killing of Michael Brown. And in 2016, Oath Keepers were present at the armed takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon.

A crowd, including a person carrying a megaphone.
Members of the Proud Boys, along with others, march toward the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster

A challenging road

Historically, prosecutions of seditious conspiracy charges succeeded against militant Islamist or Marxist groups.

But prosecuting far-right groups has tended to be much more difficult. In 1988, Louis Beam, a figurehead in the white power movement, and 13 white supremacists from groups such as the Aryan Brotherhood and the Ku Klux Klan were acquitted of conspiring to kill a federal judge and an FBI agent and plotting to overthrow the federal government to establish an all-white nation in the Pacific Northwest.

In 2012, charges of seditious conspiracy against members of Hutaree, a militant far-right Christian nationalist group, were dismissed after the judge concluded the government had not proved there was an actual conspiracy.

But it is clear from the charges stemming from the Jan. 6 insurrection – involving hundreds of alleged participants – that police and prosecutors are taking seriously the threat of violent action by Proud Boys, Oath Keepers and other far-right groups against individuals, organizations and local and national governments.The Conversation

Matthew Valasik, Associate Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Alabama and Shannon Reid, Associate Professor of Criminal Justice and Criminology, University of North Carolina – Charlotte

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, members of these groups think they are in the right. Yet, on some level, they must know they aren’t – they know they need to hide from law enforcement certainly. I would speak in favor of departation – except that – who would have them? Even Russia, Belarus, Hungary, the Phillippines (not that they’s want t go there) – I can’t imagine anyone wanting them. We certainly don’t. We need solutions – and we need them faster than we may realize.

The Furies and I will be back.

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