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Facing Health Crisis, Puerto Rico Protests Unequal Federal Payments for Medicare, Medicaid
A mass protest is set for Puerto Rico on Thursday over the federal government’s unequal payments to the island’s Medicare and Medicaid programs. For decades, Congress has capped federal reimbursements of Puerto Rico’s healthcare costs, bringing the system to the brink of collapse. The Obama administration has warned Puerto Rico faces a humanitarian crisis unless Congress takes steps to address its crushing debt. We get analysis from Democracy Now! co-host and Daily News columnist Juan González.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: Juan, before we begin with the election results around the country, Puerto Rico is in the news with a major march going to be happening tomorrow.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yes. I wrote a piece in the Daily News today, in my column, talking about this massive march that’s going to occur in Puerto Rico tomorrow, basically around the discriminatory practices of Medicaid and Medicare in its funding toward Puerto Rico. And what’s unusual is that both the governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, and the mayor of New York, Bill de Blasio, will be going to San Juan tomorrow. They’ll be participating in the march. There’s also an annual conference of Latino elected officials in San Juan that they’re attending, but the idea that the mayor and the governor will be participating in a march against the federal government and its treatment of Puerto Rico is really unusual. The governor is also working with Puerto Rico to try to produce a Medicaid waiver that would allow at least a billion dollars more from the federal government to go to Puerto Rico.
But the reality is the health crisis in Puerto Rico is as severe, if not more severe, than the debt crisis, with over 300 doctors fleeing the island last year, with the healthcare system near collapse because of the unequal reimbursements. For instance, Medicaid does not pay for nursing home care or for long-term care in Puerto Rico. So if anyone has to go into a nursing home or has to be cared for, families have to pay for it out of their pockets. You have hospital waits, situations where most people who go to public hospitals have to pay for private nurses, because there aren’t sufficient nurses on hospital staffs to be able to properly care for them. And now Puerto Rico is only getting—has been historically capped, getting about 15 percent of its costs in healthcare, whereas New York state, for instance, gets 50 percent from Medicaid. Poorer states like Mississippi and Alabama get 80 percent. Yet Puerto Rico has been historically getting about 15 percent. The result is, about $20 billion of the $72 billion debt that Puerto Rico has was incurred by the Puerto Rican government specifically to borrow funds to be able to pay its healthcare costs. So that’s why this huge march about saving the healthcare system in Puerto Rico will be so important in the coming days.
AMY GOODMAN: And we’re going to be playing, in part of our two Thanksgiving Day specials, your speech, Juan, this major address you gave at New York University on the Puerto Rico debt crisis, but going to the context, the historical context, of colonialism and the United States.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And which, by the way, is accelerating, because the Puerto Rican government has already announced that starting next week they’re going to be cutting hours of all government workers. By the end of this month, they will run out of money to be able to pay their normal expenses, not to mention their debt. So, this is going to accelerate in the next few weeks. ... Read More →
Power Wars: How Obama Continued Bush's National Security State After Campaigning Against It
With just over a year left in office, President Obama is running out of time to fulfill his longstanding promise to close the U.S. military prison at Guantánamo Bay. The imprisonment of foreigners at Guantánamo is one of several Bush-era policies that continue under Obama’s presidency. While Obama has shut down the CIA’s secret prisons and banned the harshest of Bush’s torture methods, many others—the drone war, presidential secrecy, jailing whistleblowers and mass surveillance—either continue or have even grown. The story of the Obama administration’s counterterrorism legacy is told in the new book, "Power Wars: Inside Obama’s Post-9/11 Presidency," by Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times correspondent Charlie Savage.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: With just over a year left in office, President Obama is running out of time to fulfill his long-term promise to close the U.S. military prison at Guantánamo Bay. Obama signed an executive order for Guantánamo’s closure in one of his first moves as president. But for the last six years, the administration has backed down in the face of staunch Republican opposition. Now that showdown could be revived. Just last month, Obama vetoed a Republican-backed military spending bill that would have made it more difficult to close Guantánamo.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: This legislation specifically impedes our ability to close Guantánamo, in a way that I have repeatedly argued is counterproductive to our efforts to defeat terrorism around the world. Guantánamo is one of the premier mechanisms for jihadists to recruit. It’s time for us to close it. It is outdated. It’s expensive. It’s been there for years. And we can do better, in terms of keeping our people safe while making sure that we are consistent with our values. So, I’m going to be be vetoing this authorization bill. I’m going to be sending it back to Congress. And my message to them is very simple: Let’s do this right.
AMY GOODMAN: The imprisonment of foreign citizens at Guantánamo is one of several Bush-era policies that continued under Obama’s presidency. While Obama has closed the CIA’s secret prisons and banned the harshest of Bush’s torture methods, many others—the drone war, presidential secrecy, jailing whistleblowers, mass surveillance—either continue or have even expanded. The story of the Obama administration’s counterterrorism legacy is told in the new book, Power Wars: Inside Obama’s Post-9/11 Presidency. It’s by the Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter Charlie Savage.
Charlie Savage, welcome back to Democracy Now! It’s great to have you with us.
CHARLIE SAVAGE: Thanks so much for having me on.
AMY GOODMAN: So talk about why you wrote this book and called it Power Wars.
CHARLIE SAVAGE: So I’ve been covering these sorts of issues, post-9/11 legal policy issues about collective security and individual rights, since about 2003, when I first went to Guantánamo, and then expanded out from there to issues like surveillance and torture and all the rest of these things that you just mentioned. And I remember in 2009, when Obama came in and he issued executive orders like the one you just mentioned, Juan, and was going to close the prisons, and there was going to be no more torture and so forth, I was thinking, "What am I going to do with myself? You know, this is my specialty. This is what I get up in the morning and come to work and think about. This is what all my sourcing is. And I need to find something else to do. Maybe there’s an opening in the sports department or something, right?"
But it turned out that there was quite a lot to keep me busy in the years that followed. These issues were not so simple. There weren’t going to just be turned off, notwithstanding that first week of executive orders. In fact, very quickly, it became clear that there was going to be a lot more continuity with the counterterrorism policies that Obama had inherited from George W. Bush than the expectations created by his campaign rhetoric. I think by February of '09, I was over at the White House talking to Obama's new White House counsel about why that was. And so, for the last few years I’ve been chronicling all this and continuing to go to Guantánamo and think about executive power issues. And then, of course, with the Edward Snowden leaks, we saw how much the surveillance state that Obama had inherited had remained intact.
And it became clear to me that there was a big story here that could not be told in individual newspaper articles, which—you put all this together systematically, but also go behind the scenes and talk to people. I talked to 150 current and former government officials. I gained access to lots of documents that hadn’t been public. And I was attempting to explain what happened. How did this—how did it turn out like this? People on the left say Obama is acting like Bush. Is that true? What does it mean to act like Bush? Maybe it’s true in one respect, but not others. But also, when you look at these, over and over, these sort of—these episodes where things are happening in the world, and the sort of liberal Obama lawyers are grappling with, and policymakers, what are we going to do about it, and the rules are not clear, and it’s not as simple as it seemed to be on the campaign stump—"Oh, we’re just going to end the war on terror"—when it’s your administration that is going to be blamed and maybe go down in flames if there is a successful terrorist attack.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And you point out that the—that there was a pivotal moment early on with the Christmas Day underwear bomber of 2009 and the impact that that had on the debate within the Obama administration?
CHARLIE SAVAGE: Absolutely. So this is one of my arguments in the book, and the book opens with a trio of chapters about the Christmas 2009 moment and the sort of political fallout from it. So your listeners or your viewers may remember that a al-Qaeda terrorist attempted to blow up a plane with a bomb in his underwear on Christmas Day in 2009, and, thankfully, the bomb failed to go off.
But it quickly became this enormous political and policy event. And the FBI read the terrorist his Miranda rights, and that—suddenly Mirandizing terrorists became a political issue. In New York, even Democrats who had sort of cautiously favored having the 9/11 trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and others in a normal court in New York, suddenly there was this wave of fear, and the political support for that option collapsed. Obama was forced to—by politics, to put a moratorium on transferring Yemenis from Guantánamo, which basically killed the effort to close Gitmo, because so many of the low-level prisoners are from Yemen—because the affiliate was based in Yemen, that had sent the operation. And most importantly, Scott Brown, the Republican, wins Ted Kennedy’s seat in deep blue Massachusetts a couple weeks later. And he does that by pounding on this issue of Obama’s trying to use—you know, give rights to terrorists, and he should just be sending this guy to Guantánamo.
And I think inside the administration, all this culminated in a sense that they really can’t sustain an attack. Everything they would try to do, on totally unrelated issues—healthcare and so forth—would collapse. Obama would be a failed, one-term president. And at that point, this sort of ambiguous, ambivalent first year he had had, where he’d sort of kept this but got rid of that, was going to keep this but ratchet it back, shifts, and he takes a much harder line on counterterrorism issues than he had before as an individual. And within the administration, security-minded voices, many of whom are permanent parts of the government, not part of the political appointees who come in, and who don’t—who are reluctant to let this guy out of Guantánamo or put this tool back in the toolbox and say we’re not going to use it anymore, they have a lot more influence. And the sort of reformer-minded faction gets quiet. And I chronicle that through sort of fly-on-the-wall meetings through these disputes that—some of which we knew kind of what happened, but we didn’t know why and who was taking what position and what was going on behind closed doors. And others of the stories I’m telling in here, we didn’t know at all.
AMY GOODMAN: You were warning about surveillance long ago, long before Edward Snowden, though Edward Snowden revealed so much. President Obama had a decision to make: whether to continue the mass surveillance state, the mass surveillance of Americans, not to mention others. Talk about the decision that he made, the difference he has now made in history.
CHARLIE SAVAGE: So, in this book, I have two chapters about surveillance. And one of them is only about what happened under Obama, both before and after Ed Snowden. And the other one tries to take everything that we now know, because of the Snowden leaks and then the government’s declassifications as a result of the Snowden leaks, of how surveillance developed from the '70s up until 2009, and put it together into a coherent story, because there's like this whole secret history of how technology and spying powers changed that we didn’t know. Now it’s knowable.
But I open that historical chapter with a briefing that Obama received on February 4, I think it was, 2009—right at that moment where I was thinking there was nothing left for me to do, but was also starting to realize, "Wait, what about these things they say they’re going to keep?" But we didn’t know about this at the time. So Obama comes into the Situation Room to receive a briefing on all these surveillance programs and, you know, the program that’s keeping records of all Americans’ domestic phone calls and emails, that we don’t know about until after the Snowden leaks. But he finds out about it at this briefing. And the sort of permanent security state—the FBI and the NSA and the CIA and the intelligence community—want to tell the new president, "Here’s what you’ve inherited."
And they brief him on all this stuff, and they also explain how George W. Bush had sort of put it in unilaterally, by fiat—"I’m the commander-in-chief. The law doesn’t matter. We’re going to do this"—after 9/11. But also, over time, it had become—it had been secretly put on a stronger legal basis. The intelligence court had begun issuing orders for it. They come up with this PATRIOT Act theory about why maybe it was authorized, counterintuitively, by statute. And so, their argument was: It’s OK now, because the legal basis for it is OK. And over and over, we see the pattern in the Obama administration of "What was the problem with Bush? Is it the problem that these programs are inherently bad, or is the problem that Bush was putting them in place in a way that violated statutes?"
And the very lawyerly minded Obama administration—Obama himself being a lawyer, a lot of the policymakers around him being lawyers—were overwhelmingly focused on the problem with Bush, if there was one, being a legal problem. And so, Obama says, "Well, I’m comfortable"—when he learns about these programs—"I’m comfortable with what you’re telling me, but I want my lawyers—Eric Holder, Greg Craig—to take a look. And are they satisfied?" And they were satisfied. I talked to Greg Craig on the record about why he didn’t—you know, they were fighting the security establishment in other ways; why did Obama not stop this when he first heard about it? He was like, "Well, you know, the court had approved it, and there was a statutory basis for it. The intelligence communities know about it. It did not seem to be a legally rogue program. We just needed to make sure we obeyed what the court was telling us to do, and then it was fine, because the problem is law, not the problem is individual rights."
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And you also reveal that at one point the government was actually considering the physical tracking of Americans through their cellphones, and basically where they were—and the entire population. And you talk—that degree of surveillance, I don’t think has been talked about in the past.
CHARLIE SAVAGE: It was sort of edged out and on the side, but so much was coming out that, you know, which target are you going to pay attention to? This is the 2013 flurry of disclosures. That’s true. So there’s this bulk phone records program, famously, right? It does not keep track of cellphone locational data, but it just says who called whom, when. But there was—the NSA was playing around with "Could we also add another layer of metadata, which is which cellphone tower is this phone proximate to? Can we ingest that in bulk so that everyone’s location at any given moment in the day would also be in our databases? And then we could use that to figure out, if we’re interested in someone or the people that person’s been in contact with, you know, where were they physically." And they actually got some data, and they started testing the system and then shut it down. That was before Snowden. But it sort of shows you the surveillance state or the people who play with toys at the NSA see the technological operational capabilities of something as interesting, and they play with it, and sometimes the technology gets way beyond what policymakers have decided is actually a good idea and is certainly way beyond what the rules were written to regulate.
AMY GOODMAN: And the prosecution of whistleblowers? I mean, you know it very well, intimately, at The New York Times. Your colleague, James Risen, who was gone after as a journalist by the Obama administration—intensified after Bush. He thought, with Obama, these charges would be dropped; instead, it went the other way. Although, ultimately, it was resolved.
CHARLIE SAVAGE: The charges of his alleged source.
AMY GOODMAN: Yes, and also the questioning of him, demanding that he release information and face jail.
CHARLIE SAVAGE: That he testify, that’s right, mm-hmm.
AMY GOODMAN: What about the whistleblowers? You write about them in this book.
CHARLIE SAVAGE: That’s right. So I have—you know, in some ways, Obama sort of continued at least the outlines maybe of what he inherited from Bush. In some ways, like torture, he ratcheted it back. In a few ways, he goes beyond Bush. He uses drones and does targeted killings at a much more intense clip.
And another way in which things are different, in a more aggressive way under Obama, is that this administration is overseeing now the criminal prosecution of nine leakers. I mean, as a side issue, I’d quarrel with calling them all whistleblowers. I think that makes it too easy for defenders of what’s happening to say, "Well, this guy’s not a whistleblower," and then it sort of discredits the whole critique. But I would say the people who are providing information to the public, for public education purposes, without authorization, of information that higher-ranking people of the government want kept secret. Nine prosecutions in this administration versus three in all of American history combined. A radical change, right? And when there is a—so I have a whole chapter looking at each of the nine cases and trying to figure out, behind the scenes, where did this come from, because when you see something that turns on a dime like that, a sea change, you really want it to be—to make sense. You want someone to have at least decided to do that. So I—
AMY GOODMAN: We have 20 seconds.
CHARLIE SAVAGE: OK. And part of what I came up with was this just happened because—this goes back to Snowden. Because of technology, it’s impossible to hide who’s in contact with whom anymore, and cases are viable to investigate now that weren’t before. That’s not something Obama did or Bush did. It’s just the way it is in the 21st century, and investigative journalism is still grappling with the implications of that.
AMY GOODMAN: But did you expect Obama to do better, since he had attacked Bush so much on these issues?
CHARLIE SAVAGE: Well, I don’t want to say better or worse—that’s not my role. I’m just trying to explain why did this happen, this amazingly surprising turn of events.
AMY GOODMAN: Part 2 at democracynow.org. Charlie Savage, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist at The New York Times. His new book, Power Wars: Inside Obama’s Post-9/11 Presidency.
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With Historic Release of Drug Offenders & Help for Re-entry, U.S. Takes "First Step" on Prison Crisis
In the largest one-time release of federal prisoners in U.S. history, more than 6,000 inmates have been freed early under a resentencing effort for people convicted of nonviolent drug crimes. Decisions by the U.S. Sentencing Commission last year reduced prison terms for certain drug offenses and applied those changes retroactively. Most have been released to halfway houses and home confinement, while close to one-third—about 1,700 people—are undocumented immigrants who now face immediate deportation. The release comes as President Obama has announced a series of steps to help former prisoners readjust to society, including "banning the box"—barring federal agencies from asking potential employees about their criminal records on job applications. We discuss the Obama administration’s steps and the societal challenges for newly freed prisoners with three guests: Susan Burton, founder and executive director of A New Way of Life Reentry Project, which provides support to former prisoners after their release; Five Mualimm-ak, a former prisoner and founder of Incarcerated Nation Collective, a collective of previously incarcerated people; Victoria Law, a freelance journalist and author of "Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women."
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We turn now to the largest one-time release of federal prisoners in U.S. history. More than 6,000 inmates have been freed early under a resentencing effort for people convicted of nonviolent drug crimes. Decisions by the U.S. Sentencing Commission last year reduced prison terms for certain drug offenses and applied those changes retroactively. The move came as part of an effort to ease prison overcrowding fueled by the harsh crime laws of the 1980s and 1990s. Prisoners eligible under the new guidelines were allowed to apply before a federal judge. The federal government began releasing those who were approved on Friday. Most of the prisoners have not been let go entirely—the majority are living in halfway houses or under home confinement. Close to one-third—about 1,700 people—are undocumented immigrants who now face immediate deportation.
AMY GOODMAN: More releases are expected in the coming months, with more than 40,000 federal drug prisoners eligible to apply. But even a record-breaking one-time release will barely make a dent in the U.S. mass incarceration crisis. With 2.3 million people behind bars, the U.S. jails nearly a quarter of the world’s prisoners, despite having less than 5 percent of the world’s population. Sixty percent of U.S. prisoners are people of color. A bipartisan criminal justice reform bill recently introduced in the Senate would shorten mandatory minimums for drug crimes, but advocates want the minimums abolished entirely.
On Monday, the final day of the early releases, President Obama unveiled an effort to help the formerly incarcerated. Speaking in Newark, New Jersey, President Obama announced he’s "banning the box"—barring federal agencies from asking potential employees about their criminal records on job applications.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: The federal government, I believe, should not use criminal history to screen out applicants before we even look at their qualifications. We can’t dismiss people out of hand simply because of a mistake that they made in the past.
AMY GOODMAN: For more, we’re joined by three guests. We’re joined by Susan Burton. Susan Burton is joining us from San Francisco, founder and executive director of A New Way of Life Reentry Project.
And joining us here in New York, Victoria Law, freelance journalist, author of Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women. Her most recent article for Truthout is headlined "After Spending Years in Prison, 2,000 Federal Drug War Prisoners Will Face Deportation."
And we’re also joined here in New York by Five Mualimm-ak, a human rights and prison reform advocate, founder of Incarcerated Nation Collective, a collective of previously incarcerated people. He spent 11 years, nearly, in New York’s prison system.
We welcome you all to Democracy Now! Victoria, let’s begin with you. Just lay out what’s taken place, the historic release, but barely making a dent in the U.S. prison population.
VICTORIA LAW: When we look at this historic release, we have to understand that, as you said earlier, with 2.3 million people behind bars, 6,000 barely makes a dent. And the push has been—the safe push, political push, has been to look at people who are convicted of nonviolent drug offenses, which then leaves out huge categories of people who perhaps have violence in their criminal record. And violence doesn’t necessarily mean egregious violence. It might even just mean I’ve done something to you, which may or may not have a—may or may not have a lasting physical impact, but because it’s done onto a person, it’s considered violent. It also leaves a lot of room for the prosecutor to be able to charge—overcharge people to be able to get them to plead guilty. And what we’ve seen with this 6,000 is, again, if we’re not looking at everybody who’s in prison and we’re only looking at a certain segment of the population, we’re not going to be making any inroads into reducing mass incarceration.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: But even with these numbers, as we noted, about a third of those being released are going to be deported.
VICTORIA LAW: Yes.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Could you talk about that? Have those folks already been deported or are in the process now?
VICTORIA LAW: So, people are in the process of being deported. So, approximately 2,000 people are foreign-born, so—which means that because they did not have the luck of being born on U.S. soil, or their parents were not able to apply for citizenship for them, they—unlike everybody who supposedly is getting a second chance, the 4,000 U.S.-born federal drug war prisoners—don’t get that second chance. So what happens is they are technically discharged from the federal prison system. They don’t get to walk out the gates to their family or their friends, or even get on a bus and go home and see their children. They are instead picked up by ICE and taken to an immigration detention facility, where they await deportation.
And we see that there’s a twisting, a merger of the criminal justice system and the immigration system dating back to 1996, when Clinton passed the [Antiterrorism and] Effective Death Penalty Act and the Illegal Immigration Reform and [Immigrant] Responsibility Act, both of which are mouthfuls, which basically expanded the list of criminal offenses which would subject people to detention and deportation. So, something like a drug crime, which mandates one year in prison, now makes somebody eligible for deportation, whereas in the past it was five years. So—
AMY GOODMAN: So there’s a difference between an undocumented person and a, quote, "foreign citizen"?
VICTORIA LAW: Yes, so even if you have legal permanent residency, you’re still subject to deportation, because—
AMY GOODMAN: Can you appeal this?
VICTORIA LAW: You can, and I am not a lawyer, so I don’t want to comment on how likely it is, but you go before an immigration judge, and the judge has to decide what is and is not possible. But also, if you are perhaps not well versed in the law, not well versed in English, you might have a harder time understanding the process and also knowing what your rights are.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And I’d like to ask Five Mualimm-ak, your response to this mass release, even though it is such a tiny portion of the total prison population?
FIVE MUALIMM-AK: Yes. I think that, first of all, you said it and framed it in the right way, that this is a first step in the right direction, but it is a small dent. I would also like to see more previously incarcerated individual organizations who do re-entry being supported, as well. Yes, we do know that this money and this funding will go to organizations who have a résumé of paying more for salaries than they are for services. So I would like to see the—even though we are a part of that—you know, you have Daryl Atkinson, who is a part of the re-entry formation of these projects. But let’s just see those incarcerated also have an input involved in the re-entry of those coming home.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And what about this re-entry issue? You went through it yourself.
FIVE MUALIMM-AK: Yes.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And clearly, the president this week attempted to address that issue by ordering at least federal agencies to ban the box.
FIVE MUALIMM-AK: Right. Banning the box will, of course, assist those who are returning citizens to be able to find fair employment. Those things are what he’s supposed to do. These are talking about returning citizens who are returning to our community and should be treated like community members, as well. But we’re not talking about full restoration of disenfranchisement. You know, felony disenfranchisement started here in New York state, sad to say. And it’s still a big part of this. Banning the box for higher education—how are we going to teach people to grow without any change, right? We need to have that. I think that that is a small step forward, but a great step in the right direction. We need to see—
AMY GOODMAN: What about—
FIVE MUALIMM-AK: —reforms like this.
AMY GOODMAN: What about housing?
FIVE MUALIMM-AK: Housing is one of the bigger issues, right? And that bill you see today leaves it up to HUD to actually come up with recommendations. Now, this is an organization that has historically banned people previously incarcerated and have difficulties. In New York state, you have chronic homelessness, which doesn’t include incarceration. So if you spent 15 years in a state penitentiary, you come home, you’re considered homeless one day. I lived two blocks from here, right at BRC, for two years, where they couldn’t place me because I’m a felon. And they created special housing for that. That’s what we need. We need housing catered to helping those re-enter society, and help them, assisting them into the community, you know?
AMY GOODMAN: Does banning the box apply to housing?
FIVE MUALIMM-AK: No, it doesn’t. The allows for HUD to come up with their own regulations and suggestions for dealing with arrests and how people are banned from housing. And they haven’t been too progressive in the past.
AMY GOODMAN: Section 8 housing?
FIVE MUALIMM-AK: Yes. I have Section 8 housing. I’m one of the only felons in the project who does. And these type of special projects are small. It’s 26 apartment units in my building. And it needs to be changed. And this is why we will be doing other—INC itself will be moving forward to address the issue of re-entry and show America what re-entry really looks like.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, in previous public housing policies, at least here in New York, I know that if—even if you had a convicted felon in your family—
FIVE MUALIMM-AK: Yes, exactly.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: —you had a problem with being able to stay in public housing.
FIVE MUALIMM-AK: Yeah, you’re not allowed on federal property. You can’t be on government property, no city property. You can’t get a FHA first-time homebuyers’ loan, nothing. So this leaves thousands of people. We have 600,000, over half a million people, returning citizens from state and federal facilities per year. We need to provide for them and think about where are these people going to live. Are they going to live in three-quarter housing, that’s going to feed the privatization and exploitation of people constantly? Or are we going to provide comprehensive services with honest housing, that people can house their family with, as well?
AMY GOODMAN: Susan Burton, you’re joining us from Los Angeles. You are part of A New Way of Life Reentry Project.
SUSAN BURTON: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about your own story and what you found were the greatest difficulties to re-enter society after you were imprisoned.
SUSAN BURTON: So, my five-year-old son was killed by a LAPD detective. After that, I used drugs, used alcohol, and was incarcerated. And for the next 15 years, I was in a cycle in and out of prisons, and, leaving prisons, not able to access any help.
In 1997, someone helped me, and I was able to get my life on track. Someone helped me in a higher-income area of Santa Monica, California. And what I found there is people in that community were able to access so many different types of services. And I’m from South L.A., and I couldn’t understand why there was such a buffet of services in Santa Monica and actually none in South L.A., where it was so badly needed.
So I returned, after getting help with my grief and with my addiction, to South L.A. and got a little, small bungalow and began to welcome women leaving prison into that bungalow. So, today, we have over—we’ve helped over 850 women return back from prisons and jails. But the discrimination and the systemic barriers are just a lot to actually have to work through—too much to have to work through. Once you have served your prison sentence, you should not be—we should not be excluding people from basic living needs and services, such as housing, such as jobs, such as family reunification.
So, you know, I wanted to go to school. I was banned from getting aid back in 1998 when I tried to get into a nursing school. They told me I would never be able to be a healthcare provider. And coming back into the community, you want to be able to be an asset, a viable asset to your community.
And what is also so striking to me is that we spend hundreds of thousands a year on a person just warehousing and incarcerating them. In California, it runs out about $67,000 a year, depending on how healthy you are, up into the hundreds of thousands. And when you get back to the community, you can’t get any types of supports or services. It just doesn’t make sense to us—to me. And, you know, my thought is: What are we doing here? Women are the largest-growing segment of the prison system, and California houses the biggest women’s prison in the world. And my thought is: What are we doing here?
And, you know, I agree with the other speakers today: This release is only a start. And we have people who have been prosecuted so many different types of ways to say that they’re violent. And, you know, I believe in rehabilitation, not only for drug addiction, but for other areas. And we cannot continue to warehouse people and not provide levels of rehabilitation, re-entry services, training, jobs, and allow them to be an asset and add to this economy in America.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I’d like to bring Victoria Law back into this discussion. There was a recent New York Times article talking about the heroin epidemic in various communities around the United States and how suddenly there was this gentler approach to dealing with drug addiction. But what they didn’t say, these are largely white communities, compared to how the government was dealing a few decades ago with the mandatory sentences for drug convictions that mostly affected black and brown communities.
VICTORIA LAW: Yes. I mean, so what we’re seeing now is that we’re talking about having a kinder, gentler, more merciful, second-chance approach, because we’re seeing it—we’re seeing white, middle-class, more affluent communities being affected—which is not to say that there weren’t drug addiction problems and substance abuse problems in those communities before. But now we’re seeing this come to the forefront, and people are saying, "I don’t want my child locked up. You know, my child is a good child. So he or she should get a second chance." Whereas these same people might have looked at this issue 10 years ago and said, "Well, I think this person is a criminal based on all these racist stereotypes I’ve been fed from day one, since I, you know, was learning how to read, write and imbibe media."
AMY GOODMAN: Before we wrap up, Five, your first day out of prison, describe what happened.
FIVE MUALIMM-AK: Dropped off at 42nd Street, Times Square. Spider-Man’s fighting the Statue of Liberty. I’m navigating through that, have to make it to parole. Majority of people don’t make it past that point.
AMY GOODMAN: How much money do you have in your pocket?
FIVE MUALIMM-AK: I have $40 and a bus ticket receipt, right? This is what they give you when you’re released. Thousands of people, roughly 2,000 people, per year is released directly from solitary confinement, like myself, right into the bus station. I had a panic attack that time, ended up going to the hospital that day. Majority of people then have to go from parole, and the majority then are shipped off to Wards Island, where we’re isolating for people previously incarcerated and moving them over to another entire island. And then, from there, I went to Bellevue, and then, from there, to BRC, because of my mental illness. But that was after spending months of cycling in and out of Bellevue, because it’s just an overnight shelter. So that means you’re there for the night, and you have to take everything that you own and make it through the day and find somewhere or whatever you have to do for your appointments.
And this is how it’s unnavigated, unsupported, and we are hopelessly in this country and unequivocally financially addicted to caging our citizens. So we’re going to face this problem every day. And we have—like I said, we over half a million returning citizens. How are we addressing that? You have organizations like INC, myself, JustLeadership, Center for New Leadership, as well, who address these issues from a population directly impacted. Are they being supported? No. We’re one of the most unsupported organizations and underfunded businesses there, because funders don’t direct—don’t fund organizations who do direct service. The catch-22 is that people previously incarcerated are exempt from direct services.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, we will continue to follow this story, of course. Five Mualimm-ak is the founder of Incarcerated Nation Collective. Victoria Law, we will link to your articles. And thank you very much to Susan Burton, who founded and heads A New Way of Life Reentry Project, speaking to us from Los Angeles.
This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. When we come back, Power Wars: Inside Obama’s Post-9/11 Presidency. We’ll speak with the Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalist Charlie Savage. Stay with us. ... Read More →
Election Day 2015: GOP Takes Kentucky, Ohio Rejects Pot Monopoly, and Houston Shuns LGBT Equality
Tuesday was Election Day in the United States as voters across the country decided ballot initiatives and elected city and state leaders. In one of the most closely watched races, tea party favorite Matt Bevin won the governorship in Kentucky, becoming just the second Republican to hold the post in more than four decades. In Houston, Texas, voters repealed a City Council measure barring discrimination over factors including sexual orientation and gender identity. Opponents ran what critics called a fear-mongering and anti-LGBT campaign. In Ohio, voters rejected a measure that would have legalized marijuana for medical and recreational use. Many legalization advocates ended up opposing the effort because it called for giving wealthy investors who funded the campaign the exclusive rights to growing commercial marijuana in Ohio. In San Francisco, voters rejected a measure to limit short-term rentals, which would have restricted the website Airbnb. We discuss Tuesday’s election results with John Nichols, political writer for The Nation.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: And now to the national state and local elections around the country.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Tuesday was an off-year Election Day in the United States, falling between the 2014 midterms and the 2016 presidential campaign. The focus was local, with votes deciding ballot initiatives as well as city and state offices.
In one of the most closely watched races, tea party favorite Matt Bevin won the governor’s race in Kentucky, becoming just the second Republican to hold that post in more than four decades.
In Houston, Texas, voters repealed a City Council measure barring discrimination over factors including sexual orientation and gender identity. Houston’s Equal Rights Ordinance, or HERO, is modeled on similar laws nationwide intended to stop bias in housing, employment, business transactions and city contracts. Opponents ran what critics called a fear-mongering and anti-LGBT campaign. The pro-repeal side claimed that allowing transgender women in bathrooms could lead to attacks by sexual predators on women and girls, with ads declaring, quote, "No men in women’s bathrooms." City officials have warned the city could face a backlash similar to the national uproar over Indiana’s so-called religious freedom law earlier this year.
Utah, meanwhile, saw a step forward on LGBT equality with the election of Jackie Biskupski as Salt Lake City’s first openly gay mayor.
AMY GOODMAN: Meanwhile in Ohio, voters rejected a measure that would have legalized marijuana for medical and recreational use. But many legalization advocates actually opposed the effort over fears it would create a marijuana monopoly. The measure called for giving wealthy investors who funded the campaign the exclusive rights to growing commercial marijuana in Ohio. Voters also approved a second initiative banning the use of ballot measures for personal profit. Another Ohio measure to curb gerrymandering in drawing legislative districts was overwhelmingly approved.
And in San Francisco, voters rejected a measure to limit short-term rentals, which would have restricted the business of the home-sharing giant Airbnb.
In state races, Republicans kept control of the Virginia Senate despite millions in spending from a pro-gun-control advocacy group of billionaire Michael Bloomberg.
Meanwhile in New Jersey, voters ousted three Republican members of the state Assembly in a rebuke of governor and Republican presidential hopeful, Chris Christie.
For more on Tuesday’s off-year election results, we’re joined by John Nichols, political writer for The Nation.
John, let’s start in Kentucky. You have a Republican victory for the first time for governor in 40 years.
JOHN NICHOLS: Well, it’s not the first time. There was a Republican elected once over the last 40 years. But—
AMY GOODMAN: Second time.
JOHN NICHOLS: —you’re right that this is a—this is a remarkable win for the Republicans, and it ought not be underestimated. The key thing to understand here is that Matt Bevin, the winner of that election, was a—he’s a total outsider. He is a millionaire who a year ago challenged Mitch McConnell for the Senate nomination from the far right. He won his Republican gubernatorial nomination this year by only 83 votes. Everybody was saying, "You know, this guy is way too extreme, he’s way too far out, he says way too outrageous things." He was sometimes referred to as Kentucky’s Donald Trump. And yet he won.
And this is an important thing to understand, in the state where Democrats have held their own at the state and local level up to this point. Democrats ran an incredibly cautious campaign against Bevin. They basically said, "Look, you know, he’s too extreme, he’s too out there. Vote for the status quo." Bevin said he would change things, and he prevailed in a very low-turnout election—only about 30 percent. There are real lessons here for national Democrats. When you run cautious, when you don’t mobilize a high turnout, you don’t—you end up in a situation where somebody that you think would be easy to beat, you think is too extreme to win, could prevail. That’s a lesson for 2016.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: From what happened in Ohio, especially with the vote on the redistricting?
JOHN NICHOLS: Well, that was a really good result. And I will say that while there is simply no doubt that Democrats had a bad night nationally on Tuesday, reformers actually had a very, very good night. In Ohio, there was a ballot initiative—a constitutional amendment to ban gerrymandering. It effectively said that if you pass this amendment, from here on out, district lines for the state Legislature will be drawn to be competitive. There will be restrictions on, you know, one party sort of setting up its own situation, essentially, drawing a map where because of a good election result in one year, you may be able to define the next 10 years. This is a really essential reform, because gerrymandering of legislative districts—and, frankly, of congressional districts—defines elections to a far greater extent even than money in politics. At the end of the day, if you draw a district that’s overwhelmingly to one side, it is unlikely to be competitive. So Ohio did a good thing.
But it’s important to note that Maine also passed a very good clean elections law that really beefed up their state financing systems as an alternative to big money. And Seattle appears to have passed in incredibly innovative public financing law that allows citizens to have vouchers that they then give to candidates, so that you actually have citizen-funded elections rather than big money-funded elections. So, if you look around the country, at the same time that very cautious Democrats are losing a lot of important races for them, you see reformers, people who are actually proposing big changes to a broken political system, winning.
AMY GOODMAN: Speaking of Seattle, Kshama Sawant, can you talk about the socialist city councilmember who was one of those who spearheaded a $15-an-hour minimum wage, was up for re-election?
JOHN NICHOLS: Yes, Kshama Sawant is running for re-election in Seattle. Now, Seattle has a early voting system and a mail voting system that leads to a situation where you don’t get all the results always on election night. You get a bunch of them. And the initial results from election night, in a very tough, very hard race, where she had a lot of money spent against her, she was winning 52 percent of the vote. Now, this does not guarantee that she wins, but it creates the likelihood. It certainly looks like a strong showing for her.
And that’s a big deal, because Kshama Sawant has been running for re-election on positions that are every bit as bold as what she did two years ago. Two years ago, she ran for the City Council as a proud, open socialist, saying that if she’s elected, she would fight like heck for a $15-an-hour wage. She did that. Now she’s back saying that she wants to fight for rent control, she wants to fight to tax the wealthiest people in Seattle, and she wants to fight for municipal broadband, to create a situation where we take the innovations of the digital age and make them freely, inexpensively available to all, rather than having, you know, all of the corporate overlay on it.
AMY GOODMAN: And it looks like the Seattle—
JOHN NICHOLS: Now, for that to happen in Seattle, that’s a big deal.
AMY GOODMAN: It looks like the Seattle City Council will become for the first time majority-female.
JOHN NICHOLS: Yes, and there’s a lot of progress as regards women getting elected in Seattle. There’s also a lot—Seattle is really one of the most interesting places in the country right now. They appear to have passed a massive funding initiative for pedestrian, bike, public transit, pouring huge amounts of money into alternatives to, you know, fossil fuels, looking for real environmental advancement there. King County looks to be passing a expansion of their oversight of the County Sheriff’s Department. It’s going to allow a lot more citizen involvement, citizen oversight. So you really do see a lot happening in Seattle that positions it as a very progressive city.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, John, the referendum in San Francisco involving Airbnb spending huge amounts of money to be able to continue their social sharing business model?
JOHN NICHOLS: Yeah, that was a, I think, very important referendum. And it was one of the first times where we’ve put this so-called gig economy, sharing economy, new economy, up to citizen oversight, to some sort of engagement by citizens to say, "How do we regulate this? How do we control it?" And the important thing to understand there is, Airbnb knew the stakes. They spent an estimated $8 million in an effort to prevent this initiative from being enacted. And they won. That should not be missed. But I do think that this is the beginning, not the end, of a lot of votes on these issues, because people are going to have to figure out some sort of structure to deal with this.
And remember, in San Francisco, the Airbnb vote was related to affordable housing, the idea that if you’re renting out your place all the time, you’re not going to make it available for somebody to rent it, you know, in a permanent way. And so, there are all sorts of housing issues involved with this Airbnb fight there. It’s a much more complex fight than a lot of the media coverage has given. And again, I would suggest to you that this isn’t the end of a debate over these issues, it’s probably the beginning.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about Houston? Very significant development. Houston is the most fourth populous U.S. city. It rejected a measure that would have banned discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation. Explain what’s taken place.
JOHN NICHOLS: Yeah, it’s, frankly, a real rough result. In Houston, they enacted a very good piece of anti-discrimination legislation. It essentially wasn’t just for the LGBT community and—it was actually on a host of issues, saying there’s a long list of protected classes, folks that we are going to watch out for make sure that we don’t see discrimination on. And it was just commonsense. It’s not very different from what we’ve seen in a lot of other cities. But what you saw there was a brutal, brutal campaign—with, frankly, a lot of money—that in many ways reminded me of the fight in California some years back on some of the LGBT issues, where you had a lot of money come in very late for very negative advertising. And in a low-turnout election, they were able to prevail by a pretty big margin. This is a—clearly, in Houston, it’s a setback.
But in your setup, you folks were noting also the alternative result in Salt Lake City, where Jackie Biskupski—and we’re all learning to pronounce her name right—has been elected as the mayor there. And she was the first LGBT member of the Utah state Legislature. She now, as an out lesbian, is going to be the mayor of Salt Lake City. And so, we see these fits and starts across the country. But the Houston result is one that I think people are going to be—they’re going to be examining. And they should examine it, because it is a setback in a place where I think a lot of people thought that this could be a win.
AMY GOODMAN: John Nichols, we want to thank you for being with us.
JOHN NICHOLS: A win for LGBT rights. Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: Political writer for The Nation, author of Uprising: How Wisconsin Renewed the Politics of Protest, from Madison to Wall Street and other books.
This is Democracy Now! When we come back, it’s the first time in U.S. history—well, the largest release of prisoners in U.S. history, 6,000 prisoners released over the last three days. We’ll have a conversation about what happens next. Stay with us. ... Read More →Headlines:
Tea Party Favorite Wins Kentucky Governor’s Race
Tuesday was Election Day in the United States as voters across the country decided ballot initiatives and elected city and state leaders. In one of the most closely watched races, tea party favorite Matt Bevin won the governor’s race in Kentucky, becoming just the second Republican to hold the post in more than four decades.
Election Day: Pot Legalization, LGBT Rights, Airbnb Limits Defeated
In Houston, Texas, voters repealed a City Council measure barring discrimination over factors including sexual orientation and gender identity. In Ohio, voters rejected a measure that would have legalized marijuana for medical and recreational use. Many legalization advocates ended up opposing the effort because it called for giving wealthy investors who funded the campaign the exclusive rights to growing commercial marijuana in Ohio. In San Francisco, voters rejected a measure to limit short-term rentals, which would have restricted the website Airbnb. We’ll have more on local and state elections after headlines.
War-Torn Yemen Battered by Historic Cyclone
War-torn Yemen has been battered by a tropical cyclone, marking the first time in recorded history a tropical storm has ever made landfall there. Parts of Yemen saw as much rain in 24 hours as they usually see in several years. The port city of Mukalla, controlled by al-Qaeda militants, has been particularly hard hit by flooding. Scientists have warned of a link between stronger tropical storms and climate change.
China Burned More Coal Than Initially Disclosed
Newly disclosed data shows China has been burning up to 17 percent more coal than the Chinese government previously reported. The news comes just weeks before international negotiators meet in Paris to try to reach an agreement on addressing climate change.
Leaders of Taiwan, China to Hold Historic Meeting
The leaders of China and Taiwan will hold a historic meeting in Singapore Saturday, marking the first such talks since the end of the Chinese civil war 66 years ago. Defeated by the Communists in 1949, the Chinese Nationalists fled to Taiwan and set up their own government. China still considers Taiwan a breakaway province.
U.S. Continues Keystone Pipeline Review, Despite TransCanada Request
The Obama administration says it will continue its review of the Keystone XL oil pipeline, despite a request from TransCanada, the company behind the pipeline, to suspend the process. On Monday, TransCanada told the State Department it wants to wait until Nebraska, a state along the pipeline’s route, gives its approval. But critics say TransCanada is trying to buy time until Obama leaves office, since he’s expected to reject the pipeline. State Department spokesperson Elizabeth Trudeau said the review will continue.
Elizabeth Trudeau: "TransCanada has not withdrawn their permit application. In a letter to Secretary Kerry, they requested a pause in the review process. We have received their letter to Secretary Kerry. We’re in the process of sending a response. Our review process is ongoing. So, at this stage, we’ve received the letter, we will issue a response, but we’re going to continue our review process."
Report: Syrian Rebels Caging Civilians as Human Shields
Reports have emerged rebel groups in Syria are placing detained soldiers and civilians in cages to use as shields against Syrian government attacks in Eastern Ghouta. Video footage appears to show a number of people in cages being transported by trucks. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has accused the armed group Jaysh al-Islam of being behind the actions.
Doctors Without Borders Marks 1 Month Since U.S. Bombing of Hospital
Doctors Without Borders has marked one month since the United States bombed its hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, killing 30 people. The Pentagon has still not issued a long-delayed preliminary report on the attack. Hundreds of people gathered in Geneva Tuesday to pay tribute to the victims and continue the call for an independent probe. Doctors Without Borders President Joanne Liu said the bombing cannot be allowed to pass as a "non-event."
Joanne Liu: "I think that we need to remember that. We need to tell the world that it’s completely abnormal. We need to not normalize such an event. If we allow this to be a non-event, then it is giving a blank check to all the countries at war in the world, to just say, 'Do whatever you want. And you know what? We don't think that a hospital is a protected space anymore.’ This is not what we want. The message today is, we do believe that the last, last patch of humanity that there is in the chaos of war is basically a hospital."
Maldives President Declares State of Emergency Ahead of Opposition Rally
The president of the Maldives has declared a state of emergency, giving sweeping powers to security forces ahead of an opposition rally planned by the party of jailed former President Mohamed Nasheed. Nasheed was the Maldives’ first democratically elected president, known internationally for his work on climate change. He was ousted in 2012 in what he called an armed coup by supporters of his predecessor, Maumoon Abdul Gayoom. Nasheed is now serving a 13-year sentence for ordering the arrest of a judge appointed by Gayoom. The current president, Abdulla Yameen, is Gayoom’s half-brother.
EPA Accuses Volkswagen of Additional Emissions Cheating
Volkswagen’s emissions cheating scandal is widening. The company has acknowledged it understated carbon dioxide emissions for about 800,000 vehicles sold in Europe. The announcement comes after U.S. regulators accused Volkswagen of installing devices in diesel-powered vehicles to increase nitrogen oxide emissions up to nine times the allowable levels. Volkswagen has already recalled millions of cars across Europe.
U.S. Fines Takata $70 Million over Fatal Airbag Flaw
Meanwhile, Honda has cut ties with Japanese airbag maker Takata after U.S. regulators fined Takata $70 million on Tuesday. Takata airbag inflaters have been linked to at least eight deaths; the airbags have exploded, shooting out metal fragments.
Hundreds of Refugee Women on Hunger Strike in Texas
Hundreds of refugees and migrants are now on hunger strike at the all-women T. Don Hutto detention center in Austin, Texas. The vast majority of the women are asylum seekers fleeing violence in Central America. They are demanding an end to abusive treatment—and their immediate release.
Report: Drug Overdoses Fuel Higher White, Middle-Aged Death Rate
A new study finds the death rate for white, middle-aged Americans is rising, even as it declines among other groups. The spike appears to have particularly impacted people who lack a college education. Princeton economists Angus Deaton and Anne Case said the deaths appear to be the result of an epidemic of suicides, heroin and painkiller overdoses, and alcoholic liver disease.
St. Louis Officers Avoid Charges for Killing of Kajieme Powell
Two police officers in St. Louis, Missouri, will not face criminal charges for killing an African-American man last year. Kajieme Powell was accused of stealing energy drinks and donuts from a convenience store. Cellphone video appears to show police shot him within 20 seconds of arriving at the scene. He appears to have a knife in his hand. The St. Louis prosecutor said officers Nicholas Shelton and Ellis Brown acted in self-defense. Powell was shot 10 days after the police killing of Michael Brown in nearby Ferguson.
Colorado Shooting: 911 Caller Was Told About Open Carry Law
Meanwhile, scrutiny is growing over the response by Colorado Springs police to a man who ended up fatally shooting three people on Saturday. That morning, Naomi Bettis called 911 to report seeing her neighbor with a rifle. But the dispatcher reportedly told Bettis about Colorado’s open carry law, which allows guns to be carried in public. A police official told Mother Jones the call was not given "the highest priority." When Bettis called back, her neighbor, Noah Harpham, had opened fire. He killed three people before police killed him. Critics have drawn comparisons between the police response to Harpham, who is white, and the police killings of African Americans Tamir Rice and John Crawford in Ohio, which is also an open carry state. Crawford was shot for handling an unloaded BB gun in a Wal-Mart, where it was on sale; Tamir Rice, who was 12 years old, was playing with a toy gun in a park.
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