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Juan González: Puerto Rico's Economic "Death Spiral" Tied to Legacy of Colonialism
The White House has rejected a bailout package for Puerto Rico days after the U.S. territory failed to pay a small portion of the massive $72 billion it owes to bondholders. It was the biggest municipal bond default in U.S. history. Unlike U.S. states and municipalities, Puerto Rico cannot declare bankruptcy. Juan González discusses how the roots of the crisis are deeply tied to Puerto Rico’s colonial status.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: Juan, you just wrote a piece in the New York Daily News today called "Puerto Rico’s Economic 'Death Spiral.'" Explain what’s happening.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, there was news again this week that Puerto Rico missed a bond payment, its first, $58 million in one of the bonds that it owes in the $72 billion debt load that it has. Of course, there was not much news that it did pay about $500 million in other bond payments that were due. But this is technically the first default in what is expected to be a string of defaults over the next several months, because the reality is, the island of Puerto Rico, the government, cannot pay the amount of debt it has. This year alone, Puerto Rico has to pay about $3 billion in debt service. That’s about 17 percent of its entire revenues of the government. Next year it’s going to go up to 20 percent of its entire revenues. If you were an individual and you had that much credit card debt, you couldn’t meet all your bills. If you were a corporation facing that amount of debt service, you would probably have to declare bankruptcy, a reorganization, then try to restructure your debts. But the problem is, Puerto Rico can’t do that. And it’s amazing to me how so many journalists are reporting this reality that unlike states in the United States, Puerto Rico does not have the ability to have its municipalities or its public corporations reorganize under bankruptcy protection, but no one questions why this is so. They just say it’s an anomaly.
And one of the points I tried to make in a column today, that this is part of a 117-year relationship of colonialism. This is part of the colonial status of Puerto Rico. Even the Marxist historian Richard Wolff this week claimed that Puerto Rico was a semi-colony. No, Puerto Rico is not a semi-colony; Puerto Rico is a colony of the United States. And I pointed to the decisions of the Supreme Court that ratified this colonial situation. It’s called—a bunch of decisions that were rendered in the early 1900s, called the Insular Cases, when Puerto Rico had just been acquired after the Spanish-American War. And in a five-four decision back then, the same five judges, by the way, that decided Plessy v. Ferguson, the separate but equal situation, that same five-judge conservative majority back at the turn of the century said in their decision—it was called Downes v. Bidwell—"the island of Puerto Rico is a territory appurtenant and belonging to the United States, but not part of the United States within the revenue clauses of the Constitution," basically saying that the Constitution only applied in Puerto Rico those portions that Congress decided, deemed necessary to apply. So the problem for Puerto Rico has been for 117 years that all major decisions about the island are made by Congress, not by the elected officials of Puerto Rico themselves.
And you’ve had numerous examples. One example I gave—people forget—about the current crisis really originated with Bill Clinton. In 1996, Bill Clinton was attempting to get a new federal minimum wage passed. Newt Gingrich and the Republicans in Congress were resisting it, so Clinton cut a deal with the Republicans: Congress would raise the federal minimum wage but would provide billions of dollars in tax benefits to small businesses. Where would they get the money for that? Clinton agreed to do away with a special tax exemption that corporations in Puerto Rico had that was worth billions of dollars. And as a result of that—and it was to be phased in over 10 years, between 1996 and 2006. So over those 10 years, that special tax exemption was lost, taken away by Congress, and thousands of jobs left the island, as pharmaceutical companies, electrical—medical equipment companies, chemical firms decided it was no longer profitable for them, so they left the island. The best-paying jobs were lost. And Puerto Rico has been basically in economic contraction since 2000, for the last 10 years. So you have the reality of the decision that was made in Congress that began setting the basis for what’s happening in Puerto Rico now.
And so now, once again, Puerto Rico is having to go to Congress, asking for the right to reorganize, like General Motors did, like Detroit did, like Orange County did, to be able to reorganize under bankruptcy protection, and Congress is resisting. And President Obama, the White House, as you saw, is only paying lip service, is not really fighting over this issue. So, it remains to be seen how it will be resolved. But the reality is that the—all of this is rooted in the fact that Puerto Rico remains a colony of the United States, with no voting representation in Congress.
AMY GOODMAN: And how does the debt crisis face the—affect the people of Puerto Rico?
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, it’s unbelievable. I mean, right now you have a situation where just a few weeks ago the government raised the sales tax from 7 percent to 11 percent. It has already effectively eliminated all the defined-benefit pension funds of government workers. Now, between the hedge funds and the economists, the IMF economists who are coming in, saying the only way to get out of this is by more austerity, they now want to eliminate protections from overtime. They want to—they want to encourage the island of Puerto Rico now to sell off all of its publicly owned—it’s already sold off its airport, privatized its airport, and some of its toll roads. Now they want it to sell the ports, to sell government buildings, to basically sell any government assets as a means to raise money. They want to reduce Medicaid. They want to lower the minimum wage. They want Congress to lower the minimum wage below that of the federal minimum wage. They want to create an even deeper cut in wages for young people. They basically want the population to bear the brunt of the economic problems of the island.
And I think that what the leaders of Puerto Rico are saying: "Hey, we’re in this together. All of these Wall Street firms kept pedaling loans to us." Just last year, $3.5 billion in new bonds were issued, largely bought up by hedge funds, because Puerto Rico already had junk bond status for its debt, so it couldn’t raise money. So the hedge funds came in, and they said, "We’ll give you $3.5 billion in new loans; however, it comes at an 8 percent interest rate." Now, understand, Puerto Rico is triple tax-exempt for anyone in the United States. That’s the great secret of how people—the finance community has made money off of Puerto Rico. That 8 percent is worth about 12 or 13 percent to—if it’s triple tax-exempt to anybody who invests in those bonds. So they’ve been making a killing, but they specifically said, "Not only do we get first priority—we’re the general obligation bonds. We get first priority for any payments of money that the government gets in. But if there’s a dispute, this dispute will not be heard in Puerto Rican courts, it will be held in New York courts." So they were already preparing for the possibility that the island would default, but they wanted to have the courts on their side.
So you see that this—the hedge funds, especially, are demanding they’re first in line, they want payments. And the government of Puerto Rico is saying, "Look, if we’re going to suffer, if we’re going to make further cuts in Puerto Rico," as they said in Greece, "the bondholders have to suffer, as well. They have to accept losses. They have to restructure the debts." And that’s the problem, is that the Puerto Rico government can’t do that right now, given the reality of its colonial situation. So, we’ll see what happens in the coming months.
AMY GOODMAN: And we’ll link to your column at democracynow.org.
When we come back, you may have heard about the proliferation of presidential candidates. What about the crackdown on the people who get to vote for them or who they want to? It’s been 50 years since the Voting Rights Act was passed. Today we’ll speak with Ari Berman. He’s author of Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America. Stay with us.
Give Us the Ballot: The Struggle Continues 50 Years After Signing of the 1965 Voting Rights Act
This week marks the 50th anniversary of a landmark achievement of the civil rights movement. It was August 6, 1965, when President Lyndon Johnson signed into law the Voting Rights Act, as Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks and now 14-term Congressman John Lewis looked on. The law has been under constant attack ever since. Just two years ago, the Supreme Court struck down parts of the measure in a case called Shelby County, Alabama v. Holder when it ruled states with histories of voting-related racial discrimination no longer had to "pre-clear" changes to their voting laws with the federal government. One month later, North Carolina passed sweeping voting restrictions that cut early voting and eliminated same-day registration. During the midterm elections in 2014, these new rules prevented thousands from casting their vote. We speak to Ari Berman, author of the new book, "Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America."
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: "We Shall Not Be Moved," recorded by amateur audio documentarian Carl Benkert, who made recordings of the third March on Selma. Benkert wrote of the experience, "music was an essential element; music in song expressing hope and sorrow; music to pacify or excite; music with the power to engage the intelligence and even touch the spirit." This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, as the Republicans prepare to hold the first presidential debate of the 2016 race, the media are focusing largely on which candidates will be heard. On Tuesday, Fox News announced Republican Governors Chris Christie and John Kasich had grabbed the last spots in Thursday’s 10-candidate debate. Fox News said it calculated its top 10 list by averaging five national polls, a process which came under fire from polling agencies earlier this week.
Well, today, we look at who will be able to vote in the upcoming election. This week marks the 50th anniversary of a landmark achievement of the civil rights movement. It was on August 6, 1965, when President Lyndon Johnson signed into law the Voting Rights Act, as Reverend Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks and now 14-term Congressman John Lewis looked on. This is an excerpt from Johnson’s address to Congress that day.
PRESIDENT LYNDON JOHNSON: This act flows from a clear and simple wrong. Its only purpose is to right that wrong. Millions of Americans are denied the right to vote because of their color. This law will ensure them the right to vote. The wrong is one which no American in his heart can justify. The right is one which no American true to our principles can deny.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: That was President Lyndon Johnson speaking 50 years ago on August 6, 1965, just before he signed the Voting Rights Act into law. The law has been under constant attack ever since. Just two years ago, the Supreme Court struck down parts of the measure in a case called Shelby County, Alabama v. Holder when it ruled that states with histories of voting-related racial discrimination no longer had to "pre-clear" changes to their voting laws with the federal government. One month later, North Carolina passed sweeping voting restrictions that cut early voting and eliminated same-day registration. During the midterm elections in 2014, these new rules prevented thousands from casting their vote.
AMY GOODMAN: Voting rights could become a pivotal issue in the 2016 race. On Tuesday, former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley, who’s running for the Democratic presidential nomination, called for a constitutional amendment to protect every American’s right to vote. Meanwhile, California announced Tuesday it’s dropping its challenge to a court ruling allowing thousands of newly released felons to vote. The move effectively extends voting rights to 60,000 to 73,000 former prisoners.
Well, for more, we go to Ari Berman. He covers voting rights for The Nation, and his new, exhaustive new book has just been published. It’s called Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America.
Welcome back to Democracy Now! It’s great to see you again, Ari.
ARI BERMAN: Great to see you again, too. Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: I saw you in Selma, where you begin your book—
ARI BERMAN: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: —on the 50th anniversary of the 1965—
ARI BERMAN: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: —first Selma march, where John Lewis was front and center this time, introducing the first African-American president, as he said, to his own shock.
ARI BERMAN: Yeah, it was an amazing moment to see John Lewis, who nearly died in Selma 50 years earlier, introducing Barack Obama, hugging him on stage, and basically Lewis saying, "I never thought I would see this day," and the president saying, "I never thought I would see this day, either." It was very emotional to be there. And I was glad that I was there, because I really wanted to get that moment into my book. And I snuck it in. It was basically the last thing I was able to add.
And, you know, then history comes full circle, of course, because they’re in Selma celebrating the Voting Rights Act, but the Voting Rights Act has also been gutted. So the same thing they fought for, 50 years later, was now under siege. And that gave some real tension to the anniversary of Bloody Sunday. It wasn’t just a commemoration; it was really a call to recognize the importance of the Voting Rights Act and to restore it going forward.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, for—a lot of people nowadays take voting for granted, and they have no knowledge of this history.
ARI BERMAN: Yeah.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: But you—in your early chapters, you talk about it as being the second Emancipation and then the second Reconstruction.
ARI BERMAN: Yeah.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Could you—those analogies, why you use those analogies, and could you go through some of that early battle?
ARI BERMAN: Absolutely. Well, the second Emancipation and the second Reconstruction is what’s so important to remember, because in 1870 we passed the 15th Amendment, that said the right to vote "shall not be denied or abridged on the basis of race, color or previous condition of servitude." Then we essentially ignored the 15th Amendment for almost 95 years. Reconstruction, when there was a flourishing of black political power in the South, lasted for basically a decade after federal troops pulled out of the South as a result of the disputed 1876 election. States like Mississippi and Alabama started passing things like poll taxes, literacy tests to disenfranchise black voters. And so, what you saw is, after the Civil War, an explosion of black political power, basically followed by the total absence of black political power just a decade later. And so, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 essentially was passed just to enforce the 15th Amendment, which we shouldn’t have needed to enforce in the first place, because it was already on the books. And so, what the Congress and what President Johnson did with the Voting Rights Act was make sure that we didn’t have to have a third Reconstruction, a third Emancipation, that we would solve this problem of voting discrimination once and for all.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go back to Dr. Martin Luther King speaking in Washington, D.C., on May 17th, 1957, his speech, "Give Us the Ballot."
REV. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.: Give us the ballot, and we will fill our legislative halls with men of goodwill and send to the sacred halls of Congress men who will not sign a Southern manifesto because of their devotion to the manifesto of justice. Give us the ballot, and we will place judges on the benches of the South who will do justly and love mercy, and we will place at the head of the Southern states governors who will—who have felt not only the tang of the human, but the glow of the divine. Give us the ballot, and we will quietly and nonviolently, without rancor or bitterness, implement the Supreme Court’s decision of May 17th, 1954.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Dr. Martin Luther King, May 17th, 1957, in his speech, "Give Us the Ballot." Ari Berman, where are we today?
ARI BERMAN: Well, we’re in a, I think, very disturbing and ironic position, where we’re celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, but the Voting Rights Act has been gutted, and there’s been a much broader attack on voting rights. So, from 2011 to 2015, 468 new voting restrictions have been introduced in 49 states. So this is a battle that’s taking place all across the country to try to make it harder to vote. Half the states in the country have passed new laws making it harder to vote since 2010. So that was the backdrop to the Supreme Court’s decision that gutted the Voting Rights Act and allowed those states with the worst histories of voting discrimination, places like Alabama, Texas, Mississippi, to no longer have to approve their voting changes with the federal government. So, people—voters are being hit from all sides here. They’re being hit by new voting restrictions making it harder for young people, minorities, women to be able to vote, and they’re also being hit by a Supreme Court that gutted the Voting Rights Act, ironically, at the very moment when the Voting Rights Act was needed so much, after all these new voting restrictions had been passed.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: In one chapter, chapter eight, you begin your story with Willie Steen, a Navy veteran of the Persian Gulf War, who was attempting to vote in the 2000 election in his hometown in Tampa, Florida. Could you talk about his situation and also the importance of the Florida election and then the Supreme Court Bush-Gore decision on that? I want to turn to comments made by Justice Antonin Scalia during oral arguments in Shelby v. Holder. He suggested certain provisions of the Voting Rights Act were a form of, quote, "racial entitlement."
JUSTICE ANTONIN SCALIA: I think it is attributable, very likely attributable, to a phenomenon that is called a perpetuation of racial entitlement. It’s been written about. Whenever a society adopts racial entitlements, it is very difficult to get out of them through the normal political processes.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yeah, that was Justice Scalia. But we do actually have a video having to do with Willie Steen. I want to turn to investigative reporter Greg Palast, one of the leading journalists to expose voter disenfranchisement in Florida during the 2000 election. This is an excerpt of the film Bush Family Fortune.
GREG PALAST: Thousands of black voters, when they showed up to vote, were turned away because they were listed on voter registers as convicted criminals. But were they? I met with Willie Steen. Like 94,000 others, he had been tagged a criminal. He was not allowed to vote in Florida because Jeb’s elections officials said he was a felon. So, Willie, fess up. Are you a criminal?
WILLIE STEEN: No, no criminal at all. Never been convicted of any crime.
GREG PALAST: But they had you down as a felon.
WILLIE STEEN: Yes, they did. But not me. Wrong person. I never been arrested in my life. You know? Was in the military for four years, got out of the military, been in the medical field ever since. I mean, you can’t even work for a hospital being a convicted felon. And I was in the Persian Gulf War in '91, fought in the war. So, you know, it's pretty screwed up how they did me, but what can I say?
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: That was Willie Steen, who I was referring to earlier.
Ari Berman: Virtually Every GOP Candidate Has Been on Wrong Side of Voting Rights Issues
As the Republicans prepare for their first debate of the 2016 race, we look at the candidates’ records on voting rights. In 2000, Jeb Bush was governor of Florida during the infamous recount that helped his brother, George W. Bush, take the White House. As governor of Ohio, John Kasich has signed a number of voting restrictions. Former Texas Governor Rick Perry is known for signing a controversial voter ID law. We speak to Ari Berman, author of the new book, "Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America."
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Could you talk about the importance of what happened in Florida in 2000 and in relationship to all these efforts now of disenfranchisement?
ARI BERMAN: So, in Florida, they had a felon voter purge. Basically, what happened is the state sent a huge list of people that they said were felons who were on the voting rolls, and told the county supervisors in Florida to purge them in advance of the 2000 election. It turned out that that list was littered with errors, and it was disproportionately African-American. African Americans were 11 percent of Florida’s electorate but 44 percent of those who were wrongly labeled felons. And so what happened was, thousands of people showed up on Election Day, were told that they were felons—wrongly—and weren’t able to vote. After the election, the state ran the numbers again and found that 12,000 people were wrongly labeled as felons and potentially purged from the rolls. That was 500—that was 22 times Bush’s 537-vote margin of victory. So, this purge could have very well decided the Florida election.
And it was significant for a few different reasons. Number one, it led to a new wave of disenfranchisement efforts. Republicans realized after Florida that small manipulations in the electoral process, like this voter purge, could swing close elections. The second thing it did is the Bush administration empowered a new generation of counterrevolutionaries who sought to gut the Voting Rights Act, to hype the threat of voter fraud, to restrict voting rights more broadly. That laid the groundwork for the assault on voting rights in the Obama era. And it also led to two justices being put on the court, John Roberts and Sam Alito—Roberts who, I might add, went to Florida during the 2000 recount to help the Bush team, on the invite of Ted Cruz, who was running Bush’s legal team at the time. So, a lot of people who are present today—Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz, John Roberts—were active in Florida 2000. But the Bush administration led to this Supreme Court, this remaking of the Supreme Court, that then gutted the Voting Rights Act. So I think Florida was a pivotal turning point in the weakening and assault on voting rights.
AMY GOODMAN: In a 2001 report by the Civil Rights Commission on the 2000 election debacle in Florida, it accused then-Governor Jeb Bush and his secretary of state, Katherine Harris, of "gross dereliction" of duty, saying they chose to ignore mounting evidence of problems. It read, quote, "despite the closeness of the election, it was widespread voter disenfranchisement and not the dead-heat contest that was the extraordinary feature in the Florida election. ... After carefully and fully examining all the evidence, the Commission found a strong basis for concluding that violations of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act occurred in Florida." Now, this, you know, obviously led to who would be president of the United States, President George W. Bush, but right now Jeb Bush is running for president, the former governor of Florida, who this commission is criticizing.
ARI BERMAN: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk more about Jeb Bush’s role, which is so significant this year.
ARI BERMAN: I think that Jeb Bush has a lot of questions to answer about his role during the 2000 election in Florida. By all accounts, he was a very hands-on governor. He was involved in every aspect of the state. But when he was asked, "What role did you play in supervising Florida’s elections?" he said, "I didn’t play any role. It was all Katherine Harris’s fault," which is totally at odds with his profile as governor. And the problems on this voter purge list emerged well before the election. In May 2000, elections supervisors themselves found themselves wrongly labeled as felons. So it was clear that this purge list was gravely flawed, and elections supervisors went to the state and said, "You have to disregard this." And the state refused to. So, Jeb Bush should have known well in advance of the election that this was going to be a problem, that it could lead to chaos. Instead, he did nothing. And afterwards, he took no responsibility.
And it’s unfortunate that we then had a new administration, the Bush administration, which instead of investigating these violations under the Voting Rights Act, instead sought to gut the Voting Rights Act and politicize the Justice Department and hype the nonexistent problem of voter fraud, instead of the very real problem of voter disenfranchisement that we saw in the 2000 election in Florida, that we saw in Ohio in 2004, and moving forward.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I wanted to ask you about one aspect of the Voting Rights Act that, to my view, actually did not help advance equal treatment of racial minorities, which is the effort to insist that you could not gerrymander districts to dilute minority voting power.
ARI BERMAN: Yeah.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: But what actually happened, at least throughout the early ’90s, is that minority officials sought to create supermajorities in their districts to prevent, I guess, challenges to them. But the result was that you had this enormous concentration of African-American and Latino votes in certain districts—
ARI BERMAN: Yeah.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: —and therefore, it allowed more conservative candidates to gain power in other congressional districts and create, in places like Texas or other areas, a situation where really there’s a disproportionate conservative and white vote in Congress compared to the actual populations in those states.
ARI BERMAN: Yeah, well, this is a good point. It’s a complicated issue and one that—I deal with it with quite a bit of nuance in the book, because what you had at the time, in the '80s and ’90s, was an incredible underrepresentation of African-American and Latino candidates in Congress and at the state level. Before John Lewis was elected to Congress in 1987, for example, there were only two African Americans elected from the South in Congress, which is absolutely shocking. They were 25 percent of the population in the South and only two black members of Congress. So there was a big push to create these districts to get more representation, so that's why people wanted them to be drawn. At the same time, there were a lot of Democrats, black Democrats and white Democrats, who were wary of the point you just made, of drawing these districts, because they knew that Republicans, if black voters or Hispanic voters were packed in certain districts, would win these other seats. What happened was that there was this flourishing of minority political power, and there was also a flourishing of Republican political power, as well.
And what happened as a result of the 2010 redistricting cycle, when Republicans had even larger majorities in these states, is they further packed these districts. So they took a district that was already 60 percent African-American, and they made it 65 percent African-American to further weaken minority voting strength. And there’s now been a backlash against this. And what you’re seeing in the South is black candidates are actually saying, "We don’t want to have these packed districts anymore. We’re OK with a 45 percent district, a 50 percent district. We don’t need a 70 percent black district anymore." So I think, in some ways, it was a response to underrepresentation, but I also think that Republicans, in many ways, have turned the Voting Rights Act on its head.
AMY GOODMAN: So, I want to go back to some of these presidential candidates, like one who just made the cut. This is from ThinkProgress: "Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who barely made the cut for the debate,"—he was like number 10, with a margin of error that made him really equal to Rick Perry—"has worked to restrict where and when state residents can register to vote, vote early, and vote absentee—policies that have brought lawsuits from students and people of color who say they’ve been disenfranchised. Kasich has also approved several bills to change election dates, while his secretary of state has been accused of intimidating voters and throwing out eligible provisional ballots." Now, Ohio is another key battleground state. So he was fighting to be heard in this presidential debate Thursday night. But will his—
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And it’s going to be the site of the Republican convention.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s right. But will his voters be heard?
ARI BERMAN: Well, and there’s just been a relentless attack on voting rights in Ohio. We saw seven-hour lines in 2004, because there wasn’t enough polling machines at predominantly Democratic and predominantly minority voting locations. We saw thousands of voters turned away in that election. Ohio then expanded early voting and gave more voting opportunities in 2008 to voters. It worked very well. So then, after that, Republicans cut early voting both in 2012 and in 2014 in Ohio. Some of this was done under John Kasich’s watch.
Not just John Kasich, but remember, Rick Perry, who is not in this debate but is very prominent, has been a strong supporter of voter ID laws. Ted Cruz, who is in the debate, very strong supporter of voter ID laws. Marco Rubio, strong proponent of Florida cutting early voting and doing other things like that, shutting down voter registration drives. Chris Christie has opposed early voting and automatic voter registration in New Jersey. So virtually all of these candidates in the Republican debate have been on the wrong side of the voting rights issue. None of them, to my mind, are supporting restoring the Voting Rights Act. Only—Rand Paul is the only one who has talked about the need, for example, for felons—nonviolent felons to get their voting rights back. He’s the only one who’s said some stuff that’s positive on the voting rights front. But these candidates have been united in opposing strong protections for the Voting Rights Act. And ironically, their debate is going to be on the 50th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act. I hope Fox—I’m not holding my breath, but I would hope Fox would ask them about this.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, let’s turn to one of those you mentioned, former Texas Governor Rick Perry. In 2012, he defended his state’s voter ID law on Fox News.
GOV. RICK PERRY: We had multiple cases where voter fraud was in various places across the state. And this isn’t a Democrat or Republican issue. I think any person who does not want to see fraud believes in having good, open, honest elections, transparent. And one of the ways to do that, one of the best ways to do that, is to have a identification, photo identification, so that you prove you are who you are, and you keep those elections fraud-free.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: That was former Texas Governor Rick Perry.
ARI BERMAN: Well, there’s been two trials over Texas’s voter ID law, so there’s a long record in this case of facts. We know that 5 percent of Texas’s electorate doesn’t have a government-issued ID. We know that they have to pay for the underlying documents to get this ID, like a birth certificate, which is why it’s been called a poll tax. We know that people have difficulty obtaining an ID because a third of counties in Texas don’t even have a DMV office. So, if you live in rural Texas, you don’t have a driver’s license, you don’t have a DMV office, how are you supposed to get to an adjoining county with no public transportation in a state like Texas? We also know that thousands of voters are now being turned away in Texas as a result of this law. We saw story after story after story in the 2014 election of people who had been voting all their lives, who couldn’t vote for this ID law, based on no record of voter fraud. The state presented no evidence of voter impersonation in court to justify its law. And so, I think, on the surface of it, things that Perry says makes a lot of sense. Doesn’t everyone have an ID? But the record in Texas shows that not everyone has an ID, that it is very burdensome, that it is turning voters away from the polls.
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, the critical voter battlegrounds, the issues of voting laws that will be battled, as we move into this critical 2016 election?
ARI BERMAN: So, the 2016 election is going to be—in 15 states, they have new voting restrictions in place for the first presidential cycle. So a lot of states are going to have this battle for the first time in a presidential year. These are crucial swing states, like North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia, Wisconsin. And without the full protections of the VRA and without—and amongst the backdrop of this broader attack on voting rights, I think voting rights is going to be a big issue in this election.
And the 50th anniversary of the VRA should be an opportunity for people to recognize the importance of this law. And so, I wanted to write the book so people could understand the history of the act, what it did, understand the backlash to the act, as well, and realize this is not just something that’s in the history books, this is a fight that’s ongoing today, including in the 2016 election.
AMY GOODMAN: Before we go, very quickly, felons, prisoners, ex-prisoners, like what California has done?
ARI BERMAN: It’s very significant, and California is one of those big blue states that’s moving, I think, very rapidly to expand voting rights. And I think that’s a good thing that states now, in response to the backlash, are trying to expand voting rights. I do worry we’re headed to a two-tiered election system, where blue states expand voting rights and red states restrict voting rights. I don’t think that’s a very good thing for our democracy.
AMY GOODMAN: Ari Berman, we want to thank you so much for being with us. His new book is called Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America. Thanks so much.
ARI BERMAN: Thank you so much, Amy, Juan.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. Stay with us.
The Making of Leopoldo López: An Investigation into Venezuela's Most Prominent Opposition Figure
"The Making of Leopoldo López: A Closer Look at the Democratic Bona Fides of the Rock Star of Venezuela’s Opposition." That’s the headline to a new investigation into Venezuela’s most prominent opposition leader who has been jailed since February 2014. President Nicolás Maduro dismisses him as a criminal. But López’s supporters call him a political prisoner and accuse Maduro of silencing a dissenting voice. We speak with Roberto Lovato about his new piece in Foreign Policy. Lovato is a writer and visiting scholar at the UC Berkeley Center for Latino Policy Research.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We end today’s show with a major investigation into the jailed leader of Venezuela’s opposition movement, Leopoldo López. Last February, López turned himself in to authorities after they issued a warrant for his arrest for inciting violent anti-government protests that left more than 40 people dead. President Nicolás Maduro dismisses him as a criminal. But López’s supporters call him a political prisoner and accuse Maduro is silencing a voice of dissent.
AMY GOODMAN: In a new report in Foreign Policy, journalist Roberto Lovato draws on interviews, U.S. State Department cables released by WikiLeaks, archived video to profile López. His article is titled "The Making of Leopoldo López: A Closer Look at the Democratic Bona Fides of the Rock Star of Venezuela’s Opposition." Roberto Lovato will join us in a minute, but first to a clip of Leopoldo López speaking in 2004, two years after the 2002 coup, which briefly ousted President Hugo Chávez from power.
LEOPOLDO LÓPEZ: [translated] We should be proud of April 11th. I don’t know if there’s someone who is not proud about April 11th, when we overthrew Chávez with a march. Now, on April 12th, it happened, and the history is there, and we will criticize, and we will see. But April 11 doesn’t put them in the swamp. We have to claim the 11th, the march of the 11th, the power of the people from the 11th, and that the man resigned on the 11th. He put his tail between his legs and left, and that is the reality.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Leopoldo López speaking in 2004.
For more, we go to San Francisco, California, to be joined by Roberto Lovato, author of this new profile of López. Roberto is a writer and visiting scholar at UC Berkeley Center for Latino Policy Research.
Welcome back to Democracy Now!, Roberto. Tell us why Leopoldo López is so significant.
ROBERTO LOVATO: Well, glad to be on the show again, Amy.
Leopoldo López is a unique phenomenon, I think, in Latin American political—recent Latin American political history, in terms of being someone who, on the one hand,Newsweek calls a "revolutionary who has it all" and, quote, someone who has, quote, "twinkling chocolate-colored eyes." I’ve never seen in all my time covering social movements and revolutionary movements in Latin America—seen this kind of attention paid to a figure of an opposition movement in Latin America, a Latin America that, remember, has turned away from U.S. policy and from the U.S. And so, you have someone who’s called a revolutionary by Newsweek, who at the same time is unlike—you know, his movement, unlike most Latin American movements, is opposed to U.S. policy—is supported by U.S. policy, as versus opposed to it. The opposition in Venezuela gets U.S. funding, instead of being opposed by U.S. funding.
So, you know, last year, we saw a lot of violence. We also saw people killed. And one of the reasons that I undertook this story was that I noticed that there was a difference between what we saw last year, in terms of the immense awakening in Hollywood suddenly to Venezuela, from Jared Leto, Madonna, Cher tweeting and talking about the opposition and López, and what was actually on the streets, which was that there were 43 people killed. But you didn’t hear about the people that were Chavistas that were killed, people like a young man named Elvis Duran, 29-year-old cyclist, motorcyclist, who was beheaded by barbed wire put out by the opposition in Venezuela. So, I decided I wanted to look at the opposition. And I thought, "Well, what better way to look at the opposition than to look at one of its rising stars, its leader, Leopoldo López?"
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Roberto, give us a thumbnail sketch. Who is Leopoldo López? Especially what are his family and—who is he descended from?
ROBERTO LOVATO: Leopoldo López is descended from Simón Bolívar through his mom, who has a line that runs to Simón Bolívar’s sister. And he’s been compared to Gandhi and Mandela and other prominent figures in global human rights. And he, by his own admission, comes out of the 1 percent. He did an interview with his high school newspaper, at Hun High School, which was a high school where Saudi princes have gone, where the children of CEOs, Fortune 500 CEOs, and the son of a president have gone. So, by his own admission, he comes from the 1 percent and has risen to where he is now because he comes from a prominent family and because he’s a capable organizer, according to U.S. State Department cables. You know, what’s interesting about López, if you look at those cables, is that at the same time that the—
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Roberto, just to get back to that for a second, though, his mother, as you say in your article, is from the—is one of the executives of the Cisneros Group, which is probably the largest media company in South America, certainly?
ROBERTO LOVATO: Yeah, one of the largest media conglomerates in the world is the Cisneros Group, with stations and networks all over the world. His mother is a senior executive. It’s interesting. He has a lot of family connections that are in media. His mother is with the Cisneros Group, this large conglomerate. His father is on the editorial board, according to El Espectador in Colombia, of El Nacional newspaper. His wife is a reality show star, TV—former TV host and radio jock. And he’s also very connected to people here in the U.S., like former Republican operatives like Robert Gluck, who runs a PR firm and previously was working on Lamar Alexander and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s campaign, for example, to get Gray Davis out of office. And he also has connections to people like a gentleman named Leonardo Alcivar, who did communications for the Romney administration and—for the Romney—I’m sorry, for the Romney campaign, and worked with the Bush administration.
So, you know, I looked into statements by different figures. I interviewed members of his family. I interviewed his allies. And I had people like Gluck, Robert Gluck, tell me that he was—you know, that they have this volunteer effort called Friends for a Free Venezuela. And when I asked Gluck if he was being paid for his—for what he did, he stalled, and then he said, "Yes," and told me that he was being paid by Leopoldo López’s family. So—and this is the gentleman who said in the news—and I quote—that to call Leopoldo López right-wing is the, quote, "ultimate in Orwellian doublespeak."
So, Leopoldo López comes from a very wealthy, influential, well-connected family that I think serves him in his rise to power through, first, Primero Justicia party, up to now, his party, Voluntad Popular. And throughout, you see a figure that’s also been very divisive. If you look at State Department cables that say that he is, quote, "power-hungry and vindictive," quote-unquote, and at the same time describing him as a good organizer.
AMY GOODMAN: So talk about his circumstances today. Why is he in jail?
ROBERTO LOVATO: He’s accused of, you know, arson and incitement in last year’s upheavals that we saw in Venezuela. And he had a lot of other charges against him, but those were dropped. And, you know, his trial has had these fits and starts, and it’s been going on for quite some times. And he is—you know, according to a pollster, being in—according to one of the preeminent pollsters of Venezuela, Vicente León, Luis Vicente León, he’s actually—his time in jail is benefiting his political career, because he’s perceived as a political prisoner. That’s surely the case in the international arena, although in Venezuela the opinion about Leopoldo López is divided, as is public opinion generally. And that’s not really come out in our media, just like those Chavista dead that I mentioned early up front, that you don’t hear about the beheaded—the people that were beheaded by the opposition. You don’t hear about the Chavista dead. You heard about the people that the Chavistas killed.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Roberto, shortly after Leopoldo López’s arrest last year, his opposition Popular Will party released a video of him speaking before he surrendered to government troops. This is part of what he said.
LEOPOLDO LÓPEZ: [translated] I would like to tell all Venezuelans that I do not regret what we have done thus far, like the call we put out for the protest, which is what we’ve been doing for some time. But on the 12th of February, on the Day of Youth, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets of Venezuela, not only in Caracas like in the past, but in all of Venezuela. In the cities and in the towns, there were 10 or 50 or a thousand or 10,000, or even 70,000, but the people came out. The people woke up. Venezuela today, more than ever, needs you who are watching this, and that each one of us takes on the commitment to want change. But that commitment cannot be passive. That commitment has to be active.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: That was Leopoldo López last year. So, Roberto, we only have about a minute. In terms of his role in achieving greater or less democracy in Venezuela, what do you—how do you judge that?
ROBERTO LOVATO: I think you look at the constitution and the way that people around López, as I document in my article, are or aren’t committed, or in López himself, are committed to democracy in terms of the constitution, and the constitution that was shredded by something called the Carmona Decree and the coup. López and his lawyers, Jared Genser and José Maes, make statements denying that he had any role, when in fact, if you look at my article, López was involved in activities like a PDVSA general strike and a protest, and has made statements like on your early tape where he’s clearly supporting the coup, even though he was not a signator to the document, the Carmona accord, that his own father, who I interviewed also, signed. I interviewed López’s father, not López, and his father told me that he had signed not a—not the Carmona accord, but—
AMY GOODMAN: We have 10 seconds.
ROBERTO LOVATO: He signed—he told me he signed an attendance sheet, when, you know, you can see videos that there was a call to sign the accord.
AMY GOODMAN: Roberto Lovato, I want to thank you very much for being with us. We’re going to link to your article in Foreign Policy called "The Making of Leopoldo López: A Closer Look at the Democratic Bona Fides of the Rock Star of Venezuela’s Opposition."
That does it for our show. I’ll be speaking in Manhasset, New York at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation at Shelter Rock tomorrow night, Thursday night, for the 70th anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima. And next week at theVenice Biennale, we’ll be broadcasting from Venice, Italy.
We have a job opening for a social media editor, full-time job here in New York. Go to democracynow.org.Headlines:
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We end today’s show with a major investigation into the jailed leader of Venezuela’s opposition movement, Leopoldo López. Last February, López turned himself in to authorities after they issued a warrant for his arrest for inciting violent anti-government protests that left more than 40 people dead. President Nicolás Maduro dismisses him as a criminal. But López’s supporters call him a political prisoner and accuse Maduro is silencing a voice of dissent.
AMY GOODMAN: In a new report in Foreign Policy, journalist Roberto Lovato draws on interviews, U.S. State Department cables released by WikiLeaks, archived video to profile López. His article is titled "The Making of Leopoldo López: A Closer Look at the Democratic Bona Fides of the Rock Star of Venezuela’s Opposition." Roberto Lovato will join us in a minute, but first to a clip of Leopoldo López speaking in 2004, two years after the 2002 coup, which briefly ousted President Hugo Chávez from power.
LEOPOLDO LÓPEZ: [translated] We should be proud of April 11th. I don’t know if there’s someone who is not proud about April 11th, when we overthrew Chávez with a march. Now, on April 12th, it happened, and the history is there, and we will criticize, and we will see. But April 11 doesn’t put them in the swamp. We have to claim the 11th, the march of the 11th, the power of the people from the 11th, and that the man resigned on the 11th. He put his tail between his legs and left, and that is the reality.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Leopoldo López speaking in 2004.
For more, we go to San Francisco, California, to be joined by Roberto Lovato, author of this new profile of López. Roberto is a writer and visiting scholar at UC Berkeley Center for Latino Policy Research.
Welcome back to Democracy Now!, Roberto. Tell us why Leopoldo López is so significant.
ROBERTO LOVATO: Well, glad to be on the show again, Amy.
Leopoldo López is a unique phenomenon, I think, in Latin American political—recent Latin American political history, in terms of being someone who, on the one hand,Newsweek calls a "revolutionary who has it all" and, quote, someone who has, quote, "twinkling chocolate-colored eyes." I’ve never seen in all my time covering social movements and revolutionary movements in Latin America—seen this kind of attention paid to a figure of an opposition movement in Latin America, a Latin America that, remember, has turned away from U.S. policy and from the U.S. And so, you have someone who’s called a revolutionary by Newsweek, who at the same time is unlike—you know, his movement, unlike most Latin American movements, is opposed to U.S. policy—is supported by U.S. policy, as versus opposed to it. The opposition in Venezuela gets U.S. funding, instead of being opposed by U.S. funding.
So, you know, last year, we saw a lot of violence. We also saw people killed. And one of the reasons that I undertook this story was that I noticed that there was a difference between what we saw last year, in terms of the immense awakening in Hollywood suddenly to Venezuela, from Jared Leto, Madonna, Cher tweeting and talking about the opposition and López, and what was actually on the streets, which was that there were 43 people killed. But you didn’t hear about the people that were Chavistas that were killed, people like a young man named Elvis Duran, 29-year-old cyclist, motorcyclist, who was beheaded by barbed wire put out by the opposition in Venezuela. So, I decided I wanted to look at the opposition. And I thought, "Well, what better way to look at the opposition than to look at one of its rising stars, its leader, Leopoldo López?"
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Roberto, give us a thumbnail sketch. Who is Leopoldo López? Especially what are his family and—who is he descended from?
ROBERTO LOVATO: Leopoldo López is descended from Simón Bolívar through his mom, who has a line that runs to Simón Bolívar’s sister. And he’s been compared to Gandhi and Mandela and other prominent figures in global human rights. And he, by his own admission, comes out of the 1 percent. He did an interview with his high school newspaper, at Hun High School, which was a high school where Saudi princes have gone, where the children of CEOs, Fortune 500 CEOs, and the son of a president have gone. So, by his own admission, he comes from the 1 percent and has risen to where he is now because he comes from a prominent family and because he’s a capable organizer, according to U.S. State Department cables. You know, what’s interesting about López, if you look at those cables, is that at the same time that the—
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Roberto, just to get back to that for a second, though, his mother, as you say in your article, is from the—is one of the executives of the Cisneros Group, which is probably the largest media company in South America, certainly?
ROBERTO LOVATO: Yeah, one of the largest media conglomerates in the world is the Cisneros Group, with stations and networks all over the world. His mother is a senior executive. It’s interesting. He has a lot of family connections that are in media. His mother is with the Cisneros Group, this large conglomerate. His father is on the editorial board, according to El Espectador in Colombia, of El Nacional newspaper. His wife is a reality show star, TV—former TV host and radio jock. And he’s also very connected to people here in the U.S., like former Republican operatives like Robert Gluck, who runs a PR firm and previously was working on Lamar Alexander and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s campaign, for example, to get Gray Davis out of office. And he also has connections to people like a gentleman named Leonardo Alcivar, who did communications for the Romney administration and—for the Romney—I’m sorry, for the Romney campaign, and worked with the Bush administration.
So, you know, I looked into statements by different figures. I interviewed members of his family. I interviewed his allies. And I had people like Gluck, Robert Gluck, tell me that he was—you know, that they have this volunteer effort called Friends for a Free Venezuela. And when I asked Gluck if he was being paid for his—for what he did, he stalled, and then he said, "Yes," and told me that he was being paid by Leopoldo López’s family. So—and this is the gentleman who said in the news—and I quote—that to call Leopoldo López right-wing is the, quote, "ultimate in Orwellian doublespeak."
So, Leopoldo López comes from a very wealthy, influential, well-connected family that I think serves him in his rise to power through, first, Primero Justicia party, up to now, his party, Voluntad Popular. And throughout, you see a figure that’s also been very divisive. If you look at State Department cables that say that he is, quote, "power-hungry and vindictive," quote-unquote, and at the same time describing him as a good organizer.
AMY GOODMAN: So talk about his circumstances today. Why is he in jail?
ROBERTO LOVATO: He’s accused of, you know, arson and incitement in last year’s upheavals that we saw in Venezuela. And he had a lot of other charges against him, but those were dropped. And, you know, his trial has had these fits and starts, and it’s been going on for quite some times. And he is—you know, according to a pollster, being in—according to one of the preeminent pollsters of Venezuela, Vicente León, Luis Vicente León, he’s actually—his time in jail is benefiting his political career, because he’s perceived as a political prisoner. That’s surely the case in the international arena, although in Venezuela the opinion about Leopoldo López is divided, as is public opinion generally. And that’s not really come out in our media, just like those Chavista dead that I mentioned early up front, that you don’t hear about the beheaded—the people that were beheaded by the opposition. You don’t hear about the Chavista dead. You heard about the people that the Chavistas killed.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Roberto, shortly after Leopoldo López’s arrest last year, his opposition Popular Will party released a video of him speaking before he surrendered to government troops. This is part of what he said.
LEOPOLDO LÓPEZ: [translated] I would like to tell all Venezuelans that I do not regret what we have done thus far, like the call we put out for the protest, which is what we’ve been doing for some time. But on the 12th of February, on the Day of Youth, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets of Venezuela, not only in Caracas like in the past, but in all of Venezuela. In the cities and in the towns, there were 10 or 50 or a thousand or 10,000, or even 70,000, but the people came out. The people woke up. Venezuela today, more than ever, needs you who are watching this, and that each one of us takes on the commitment to want change. But that commitment cannot be passive. That commitment has to be active.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: That was Leopoldo López last year. So, Roberto, we only have about a minute. In terms of his role in achieving greater or less democracy in Venezuela, what do you—how do you judge that?
ROBERTO LOVATO: I think you look at the constitution and the way that people around López, as I document in my article, are or aren’t committed, or in López himself, are committed to democracy in terms of the constitution, and the constitution that was shredded by something called the Carmona Decree and the coup. López and his lawyers, Jared Genser and José Maes, make statements denying that he had any role, when in fact, if you look at my article, López was involved in activities like a PDVSA general strike and a protest, and has made statements like on your early tape where he’s clearly supporting the coup, even though he was not a signator to the document, the Carmona accord, that his own father, who I interviewed also, signed. I interviewed López’s father, not López, and his father told me that he had signed not a—not the Carmona accord, but—
AMY GOODMAN: We have 10 seconds.
ROBERTO LOVATO: He signed—he told me he signed an attendance sheet, when, you know, you can see videos that there was a call to sign the accord.
AMY GOODMAN: Roberto Lovato, I want to thank you very much for being with us. We’re going to link to your article in Foreign Policy called "The Making of Leopoldo López: A Closer Look at the Democratic Bona Fides of the Rock Star of Venezuela’s Opposition."
That does it for our show. I’ll be speaking in Manhasset, New York at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation at Shelter Rock tomorrow night, Thursday night, for the 70th anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima. And next week at theVenice Biennale, we’ll be broadcasting from Venice, Italy.
We have a job opening for a social media editor, full-time job here in New York. Go to democracynow.org.Headlines:
Fox News Chooses 10 Candidates for First Debate of 2016 Election
Fox News has chosen the top 10 Republican candidates to participate Thursday in the first debate of the 2016 presidential election. The candidates include front-runner Donald Trump, Jeb Bush, Scott Walker, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Ben Carson, Mike Huckabee, Chris Christie and John Kasich, who eked out a spot as the 10th-highest polling candidate. The remaining seven Republican candidates who will participate in a forum earlier in the afternoon are Carly Fiorina, Rick Perry, Bobby Jindal, Lindsey Graham, Rick Santorum, George Pataki and Jim Gilmore. Fox News said it calculated its top 10 list by averaging five national polls, a process which came under fire from polling agencies earlier this week. The Marist Institute for Public Opinion temporarily suspended its polling, saying Fox’s debate criteria ignores the margin of error. Another top pollster, Monmouth University, said, "Based on current polling, there’s no good rationale for arbitrarily selecting a top ten."
Jeb Bush "Not Sure We Need Half a Billion Dollars for Women’s Health"
In more news from the campaign trail, Republican candidate Jeb Bush has sparked outrage with his statement that women’s healthcare is overfunded. Bush made the comments when responding to an interviewer’s question about the Planned Parenthood sting videos, which are edited to appear to suggest that the organization sells fetal tissue, an allegation Planned Parenthood vehemently denies.
Interviewer: "Shouldn’t we make that an issue and say not one more red cent to Planned Parenthood?"
Jeb Bush: "We should, and the next president should defund Planned Parenthood. I have the benefit of having been governor, and we did defund Planned Parenthood when I was governor. We tried to create a culture of life across the board. The argument against this is, well, women’s health issues are going to be — you’re attacking — it’s a war on women, and you’re attacking women’s health issues. You could take dollar for dollar, although I’m not sure we need a half a billion dollars for women’s health issues."
Jeb Bush later partially walked back the statement, saying he was not speaking about community health centers but only about Planned Parenthood’s "hard-to-fathom $500 million in federal funding." He had a Twitter war with Hillary Clinton, who was questioning his saying he did not support women’s healthcare in America.
FBI Opens Probe into Hillary Clinton’s Use of Private Email Server
The Washington Post is reporting the FBI has opened a preliminary probe into the security of the private email setup Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton used while she served as secretary of state. The probe is looking into whether any classified material that may have moved through the private server was handled improperly. The FBI inquiry was confirmed by Clinton’s lawyer, who said they are cooperating with the probe. This comes 10 days after The New York Times incorrectly reported that two inspectors general had asked the Justice Department to open a formal investigation into the private email account, a story that the Times later retracted.
Wrongful Death Suit Filed over Death of Sandra Bland in TX Jail Cell
In news from Ohio, the mother of Sandra Bland has filed a lawsuit over the death of her daughter, who was found dead in a Waller County, Texas, jail cell last month. Bland was arrested on July 10 by Texas State Trooper Brian Encinia, who alleged that Bland failed to signal a lane change. Dash cam video of her arrest shows Encinia forcibly removing Bland from her car and threatening to "light [her] up" after she refused to put out her cigarette. She can later be heard accusing police of slamming her head into the ground. Authorities have said Bland committed suicide in jail, a claim her family has disputed. The wrongful death suit filed Tuesday argues Encinia used an inappropriate level of force during the arrest and that Bland should not have been arrested in the first place. The suit also contends Bland was placed in a cell containing a large garbage can, garbage bags and exposed beams, even after Bland told authorities she had attempted suicide in the past. The suit names State Trooper Encinia, two Waller County Jail guards, the Texas Department of Public Safety and Waller County.
NC: Cop Faces 11 Years in Prison for Killing Unarmed Black Man in 2013
Meanwhile, in news from North Carolina, the trial has begun for a white police officer who fatally shot an unarmed African-American man who was seeking help after a car crash in 2013. Randall Kerrick, a white police officer, is facing charges of voluntary manslaughter for allegedly shooting 24-year-old Jonathan Ferrell. According to prosecutors, Ferrell had sought help from a nearby homeowner after a car crash, but the woman had believed she was being robbed and called the police. When the officers arrived, one pointed the laser of his taser at Ferrell’s chest. Ferrell fled in fear and attempted to hide between the two police cars. This brought Ferrell close to Kerrick, who then opened fire, striking Ferrell 12 times. If convicted, Kerrick could face up to 11 years in prison.
White House: No Bailout for Puerto Rico as New Debt Payments Loom
In news on Puerto Rico, the White House has said that it is not considering a bailout for the U.S. territory, which did not make a $58 million debt payment Monday. White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said that Puerto Rico needs to "restructure its liabilities," but that a bailout was off the table.
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest: "We believe Puerto Rico needs an orderly process to restructure its unsustainable liabilities. ... But as I’ve said before, there’s no — the administration does not envision a bailout for Puerto Rico. But where available federal assistance can be leveraged to assist the leaders of Puerto Rico in meeting some of their financial obligations, we stand ready to help."
This comes as The New York Times is reporting that Puerto Rico has also temporarily stopped its monthly payments to a fund that is used to pay back investors who hold general obligation bonds. Puerto Rico has a $370 million payment to this fund due January 1. A bill before Congress would allow Puerto Rico to declare a limited bankruptcy, a move currently permitted only for cities and municipalities inside U.S. states. We’ll have more on Puerto Rico after headlines.
Report: Methane Emissions Could Be Significantly Higher Than Thought
In science news, a new report shows significantly more methane gas could be leaking into the atmosphere than previously thought. The study found that a device used to measure methane escaping from natural gas facilities was consistently underreporting the emissions as a result of a technical glitch. Methane is a greenhouse gas that fuels climate change. The study’s findings could mean that natural gas fracking, which emits methane, is more detrimental to the climate than previously thought, and that climate change could be happening at an even faster rate than current estimates.
Afghanistan: U.N. Reports "Record-High Levels" of Civilian Casualties
In news from Afghanistan, the United Nations is reporting civilian casualties are at "record-high levels." The U.N. says nearly 1,600 civilians have died since January, the highest number of any similar time period since 2009. The majority of the deaths are reportedly from Taliban forces. However, the report notes a 60 percent increase in deaths caused by U.S.-backed government forces. Danielle Bell, the director of the United Nations Human Rights Unit in Afghanistan, spoke earlier today.
Danielle Bell: "The vast majority, or 90 percent, of all civilian casualties resulted from ground engagements, improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, complex and suicide attacks, and targeted killings. This destruction and damage to Afghan lives must be met by a new commitment by all parties to the conflict to protect civilians from harm."
Mexico: Gov’t. Releases Footage of Suspects in Rubén Espinosa Killing
Mexican authorities have released footage of three suspects leaving the apartment of photographer Rubén Espinosa, who was murdered alongside human rights activist Nadia Vera and three other women in the capital city Friday. According to human rights advocates, Epinosa’s death signals a new level of violence against journalists in Mexico, who had previously considered Mexico City a safe zone. Mexico City Attorney General Rodolfo Ríos said the office is pursuing an investigation. The office has come under fire this week for appearing to focus on robbery as a potential motive of the killings, despite the fact that Espinosa had been repeatedly threatened for his reporting in the southern state of Veracruz. To see our full coverage of Rubén Espinosa’s murder, go to democracynow.org.
Israel Jails Jewish Setter Without Charges After Fatal Firebombing
Israel has arrested and jailed a Jewish settler for six months without charges or trial. The detention comes as Israel attempts to crack down on Jewish extremism following a firebombing of a Palestinian home in the West Bank last week, which killed an 18-month-old baby. The government has expanded the use of detention without trial to include Jewish Israeli citizens suspected of attacks against Palestinians. It also said authorities can use harsh interrogation methods against jailed Jewish extremists.
Israel Arrests Grandson of Infamous Jewish Extremist Meir Kahane
Israel authorities have also arrested Meir Ettinger, the grandson of Meir Kahane, for his "involvement and activities in extremist Jewish organizations." Meir Kahane is considered the father of right-wing Jewish extremism. He founded Israel’s anti-Arab Kach political party, which called for the forced removal of all Palestinians. He was murdered in 1990.
West Bank & Gaza Soccer Teams Allowed to Play for First Time Since 2000
A Palestinian soccer team in the West Bank will face off against its rival team in Gaza for the first time in 15 years. Israel approved the travel plans for the West Bank team after Palestine threatened to call for Israel’s suspension from FIFA over the government’s attempts to restrict soccer players’ and coaches’ movement in and out of Palestinian territories. Islam Batran from the West Bank team Al-Ahly spoke about his excitement over the visit.
Islam Batran: "I cannot describe this feeling. This is a historic visit. This is the first time that we visit Gaza, and we are surprised how much the Gazans are amazing people. We also thank the people of Gaza for the hosting, and the audience of the Shejaiya club for their festive welcoming, and the journalists and everybody. It is a truly amazing thing."
California City Appoints Two Undocumented Immigrants as Commissioners
Two undocumented immigrants have been appointed to serve as commissioners in the Southern California city of Huntington Park. It is reportedly the first time undocumented commissioners have been appointed in the state. Huntington Park Mayor Karina Macias lauded the appointments, saying, "They have every right to be at that table, because they are part of our community."
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