SamPratt.com

Baba and Corona

My great grandfather, Dr. Burrill Crohn, for whom the disease was named, was born in June 1884, and lived until July 1983. So unlike most children of my generation, I got to know a great-grandparent.

Today, thanks to modern medicine, getting to know a great-grandparent is a lot less rare.

“Baba,” as we called him, was considered a medical pioneer in two main respects: First, because he distinguished (what was eventually called) Crohn’s Disease from a host of other gastrointestinal ailments. Crohn’s was not just distinct, but required its own study and treatment.

Unfortunately, there is still no cure.

Secondly, he also was known for taking the mental state of a patient into account, far more than was usual for the time. He had observed that anxiety, stress and other agitations of the mind had a strong relation to people’s ability to cope with or overcome illness. 

We now take this approach for granted—some may even overemphasize it. But at the time, this too was rare.

Though a compassionate doctor, he also had a low tolerance for whining, exaggeration and other nonsense.

If one of us kids ran inside crying with a skinned knee, or some other complaint, 19 times out of 20 he would take a look then dismiss the parent with a wave: “There is nothing wrong with this child. Send him back out to play.”

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All this is a preamble to me imagining Dr. Crohn’s reaction to COVID deniers, mask-haters, and others who for one reason or another believe that the virus should be waved off like a trivial bruise.

89 years after he discovered it—invented it is the family joke, one corona skeptics may appreciate—there still is no solution for Crohn’s, only methods for minimizing or managing its chronic and debilitating symptoms. Few of these methods are very satisfactory. 

Had a cure for Crohn’s been discovered in Baba’s lifetime—something that might not fully resolve the disease, but would prevent 99.8% of sufferers from having to endure its torments—here’s what I would expect he’d do, just like millions of other doctors have done with COVID. Once he had examined the data, and a credible consensus had formed among his peers, he would have advocated strongly for the use of COVID vaccines, as well as a continued emphasis on masking, until it subsided. He would have told people to take great precautions, and social distance as much as possible.

I feel confident inferring his likely opinion not just because he was celebrated as diligent and objective researcher. Family  members have recounted how another relative nearly died as a child, but was saved after he directed her to a doctor who had recently found an experimental cure for meningitis.

I also expect that had he encountered any patient who refused the cure based on quack opinions, YouTube rants, political ideology, or some cussed insistence on “freedom” from the tyranny of expert advice, his compassion would have been sorely tested. From what I knew of him, he was given to kindly care, but also quite capable of giving a foolishly self-destructive ward a stern talking-to.

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Now: There are several people I know well, who I have collaborated with, and/or whose work I follow closely, and whom I still respect, but who have gone down the proverbial rabbit hole of anti-vaxxism, or worse.

My history with them as friends, mentors, artists, activists, skeptics or critics inclines me to consider their peculiar beliefs about COVID more seriously than such beliefs typically deserve. I have tried to consider their arguments sincerely, and see their points of view.

No dice.

Here’s the main logical leap many seem take—off the cliffs of selfishness, careerism, self-defeat, or just reflexive contrarianism.

Since (they say) our government, institutions, and industries have shown themselves before to be so corrupt, or so sloppy, or so lazy, or all three, therefore the pandemic itself must be fraudulent.

Problem is: Just because our elites do practice Disaster Capitalism does not mean that COVID is not real, and that urgent precautions should not be taken.

We should be able to hold these two disparate ideas in our minds: that the pandemic is a real and present danger, even as we question of the motivations and competence of powerfully opportunistic interests. Just because major mistakes have been made in the handling of the pandemic does not mean all such mistakes were deliberate. Never put down  to deviousness what can be explained by garden-variety incompetence.

Dr. Burrill B. Crohn, in his 60s

I fully agree that the United States government is highly untrustworthy; that the pharmaceutical industry is often predatory; and that our captains of industry will look at most any calamity and find an opportunity to buy low and later sell high. I also agree that various official responses have too often been misplaced, delayed, half-baked or botched. 

For instance: Anthony Fauci deliberately fibbed about the need for mask-wearing early in the pandemic, even as we were told to focus instead on hand sanitization. Correction, this was more than a fib, it was a stupid and damaging lie. One intended to preserve masks for hospitals, but which instead extended the pandemic, and filled up those same hospitals.

Fauci’s ad hoc dishonesty did much to undermine public trust in U.S. official guidance. All he accomplished was to give the paranoid more reason to ignore future mandates.

But Fauci is not the only doctor in our world, and the U.S. is not its only country. Virtually every other (non-quack) across the globe has strongly recommended the use of masks to contain the pandemic. It should been advocated earlier, and for a more sustained period, since the premature lifting of mask mandates has contributed to the development of new variants and helped prolong the crisis.

My own preference would have been for a 4-6 month “lockdown” early on, with the government guaranteeing a basic universal income and full health care during that period, so that the virus could be contained in a few months, and to squelch the emergence of variants. (If you think we couldn't have afforded it, take a look at the receipts for our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.) This could have been over by the end of 2020; instead, we are back to levels of infection and hospital crowding from a year ago.

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Say COVID did begin, as some believe, as a top-down plot hatched by billionaires, enacted by the politicians who serve them, to further enslave people to drug makers, to institute more authoritarian restrictions on our movements and privacy, and to further impoverish people so their homes and jobs can be taken from them.

Why then are doctors in places like Cuba “going along” with the supposed plot by running dog capitalists? Isn’t Cuba known for defying American power, and having no allegiance to western corporations?

Likewise: why would our medical industry be calling for people to take measures that keep people out of hospitals, rather than denying the seriousness of the pandemic? 

After all, the profits from administering 5-second jabs are nothing compared to the astronomical billings related to hospital care. The equipment, testing, medication, and emergency measures necessary to try to save a single life incur hundreds of thousand of times  the billing for a hundreds of quick, simple injections by a CVS or Walgreens pharmacist.

Why would an exploitative capitalist system run by the 1% of the 1% want to squelch its own lifeblood: Tamping down travel, global shipping and supply chains, and the nonstop consumerism of billions of customers? Whatever has been allegedly gained by telling people to stay home, wear masks, and avoid getting sick is nothing compared to the profits which were reaped during the status quo ante. (Sure, Jeff Bezos is richer than ever… But that was already happening without COVID.)

If you care about your freedom, the very last thing you should do is expose yourself to unnecessary risk of hospitalization, let alone death. You may survive a long hospital stay, but a lifetime of insurmountable medical debt will truly enslave you. Not to mention the strong possibility of Long COVID complications, which for some reason are not considered as seriously as the infinitesimal risk of side effects from vaccines.

Really, it’s hardly worth getting into the weeds of such debates. My experience is that those who have already decided to minimize or deny the seriousness of such threats are all but impervious to facts and patient persuasion. It reminds me too much of folks I sometimes tried to reason with during the seven-year St. Lawrence Cement battle. You can patiently and methodically knock the legs out of each of their pat arguments and shallow slogans. Then they just shrug and change the topic to some other excuse for sticking with their original  “gut feeling.”

Much of this—in America, at least—seems to come down to a dimestore version of “personal” Freedom. But such rugged individualists rarely project any form of well-considered and principled libertarianism. They sound a lot more like tantrum-throwing children who don’t wanna take a bath, or demand ice cream for dinner.

Oldschool  libertarians used to cite the “swing-your-fist” test: My rights end where your nose begins. Now, these Sons of Liberty aren’t even willing to cover their noses to protect yours. Our concept of freedom has devolved into the right to sneeze on your neighbor’s face.

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Anyway.

I was indeed lucky to have known my great-grandfather, the accomplished Dr. Crohn. Even President Eisenhower had digestive problems, and asked for his services. With COVID, many kids born recently won’t get to know some of their parents and grandparents, let alone great-grandparents.

Today, I’m sure Baba would’ve had some tart things to say about COVID deniers, who place their solipsistic attachment to never being inconvenienced over the vast consensus of doctors—dedicated to data, and sworn to do no harm. Sure, there are a few bad and even dishonest doctors, as in all professions. That’s why we rely on scientific consensus, not a Series of One.

I never knew my other three great-grandfather. But I do have a hunch what one of them might have advised about this pandemic. My father’s grandfather was an engineer named Robert Winthrop Pratt, who among other things designed the waterworks and sewers of places like Cleveland and Havana. Some of the public infrastructure he created more than a century ago is still in use today. 

But in January 1920, at RYT age of 43, he came home from the hospital where he’d seen his newborn daughter Mary for the first time. He told his young son Lawrence that he wasn’t feeling so well, and closed himself in his bedroom.

Where he died of the Spanish Flu.

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P.S.: I mentioned this to a COVID-denying friend—how I didn’t want to suffer the same fate as my ancestor. His all-too-predictable OAN-grade response was: “How can you be sure he really died of the Spanish Flu?”

Resistance is Temporary

 

The real reason why Trump makes people so furious? It’s not that his cruel, exploitative, ignorant and belligerent policies are so very different from those of the other Presidents of our lifetimes.

 

It’s that his crass, moronic and selfish personality has forced a previously-complacent majority of citizens to finally glimpse the longstanding nature of American government and society. The mask is both literally and figuratively off.

 

It’s important to that complacent majority to see Trump as an aberration, rather than someone who has finally put an appropriately hideous face on our country’s ugly politics.

 

Now: If we would just elect a grandfatherly figure like Biden to whisk the Orange Man off the stage, then centrist Democrats and Republicans alike can go back to ignoring the deep, institutionalized violence and rapaciousness of our society.

 

Nevermind that we’ll be going back to the same conditions which, under Clinton and Bush and Obama, caused so much hopelessness among Americans, that voters finally said: “What the hell... Let’s give a shot to a freakishly offensive gameshow host whose businesses keep going bankrupt.”

 

And if one points out that Biden has been embedded and complicit in the steady debasement of American government over the past 50 years—and who, by his own boast to Wall Street donors, will not change anything—this makes people doubly furious.

 

Because the most likely outcome is that we just put a blander, more personable face on the same old nightmare, and let those who are less touched by its viciousness to drift back to sleep.

 

One wouldn’t want to actually have to keep paying attention, stay involved, or, gosh forbid, do the hard work of demanding structural change after November.

 

Elect Biden so we can stop feeling we have to care, and not feel so guilty about it.

 

As we learned from the many who did not speak out when Obama killed innocent Middle Eastern kids with drone strikes, or prosecuted whistleblowers to the fullest extent of the law, or further expanded Homeland Security powers, or deported a record number of immigrants: These are only problems when the Evil Red party is in power.

 

Vote Biden/Harris, so we can get back to shopping and Netflix, and resume pretending that America has no kids in cages, no crushing poverty, no imperial colonizations of countless other countries most Americans can’t find on a map.

 

The standard, knee-jerk retort is that if you don’t vote for Biden, that’s because you must be privileged in some way. But the true “privilege” at work in this election is the desire to stop having to resist, and return to apathy.

 

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After Biden is elected—and he will be elected, barring some colossal blunder on the debate stage, or some other medical meltdown—at least a third of Americans will remain one missed paycheck away from insolvency.

 

People will still not be able to afford their healthcare; and Pelosi and Schumer will invent a new set of excuses for why they can’t change that.

 

Much of people’s income, or all of it, will continue to go to rent, or credit card interest, or medical bills. It will still be the case that almost no one can save even a penny, because our whole economy is structured to create perpetual debt.

 

Bad cops will continue abusing and bashing and murdering innocent people, especially people of color. Our jails will stay full, and remain virtual plantations for private gain.

 

We will keep spending the bulk of our nation’s wealth on our decades-old undeclared wars, plus all the lesser-known proxy wars in those places where we are not yet ready to admit we are the aggressor.

 

We‘ll keep slaughtering people by drone, including children and even American citizens; and also giving governments like the Saudis or Israelis all the weapons necessary to wreck their own perceived enemies.

 

Our government will keep spying on its citizens, and persecuting whistleblowers who try to show the public what its leaders are really up to.

 

Big donors, especially corporate donors, will continue to have vastly more influence been 99.8% of Americans.

 

More tax breaks and deregulation will continue to make the rich richer; and they can keep throwing a few coins to charity now and then to deflect from our staggering wealth inequality.

 

We will continue to do nothing meaningful about the climate catastrophe now fully upon us.

 

Almost everyone will forget about protest, or engaging in (mostly impotent) organizing with the likes of Indivisible. Or going to local meetings. Or making whatever other gestures they hoped might dent the impending fascist dictatorship of Trump. Because, you know, there was nothing fascistic about the United States before he beat Hillary... Right?

 

Vote for Joe Biden, because the man at least knows how to modulate the tone of his voice properly, and to stick to his focus-grouped talking points... (At least, up until late afternoon.)

 

And that will give give the other 2/3rds, both Republican and Democrats, license to tune back out.

 

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One of the favorite dodges of those who insist that we all must swallow hard and ignore Biden and Harris’s appalling records, is: “Look, first we just have to get rid of Trump.

 

“Then we can talk about all that other... stuff... after the election. Unlike Trump, we can work on Biden and Harris. We’ll push them to the left!”

 

This longtime activist honestly cannot think of a single time that a candidate on any level—local, county, state or federal—became more progressive once in office than they were on the campaign trail.

 

During a campaign, the general public is the candidate’s audience. The candidate needs their votes, or at least will pretend to need them. After the votes are cast, their audience shifts. It becomes their new colleagues. And those colleagues mainly want to ensure that the incoming class won’t rock the boat, and understands that they had better go along to get along. If they want to get anything but an office in the back of a basement closet.

 

If they don’t promise something explicitly during their campaign, sorry: it ain’t happening after they win.

 

And even when they do make explicit promises (ex: Obama vowing to get out of Iraq, or Guantanamo), it rarely happens once the old guard sits the newly-elected down in private and explains to them “how things really work.” 

 

Biden is, of course, the immensely proud author of the disastrous 1994 Crime Bill, and also claims covert credit for the Patriot Act—two of the main tools Trump is using to oppress protesters.

 

Biden has stated flatly that he could veto a Medicare for All bill if it hit his desk, dismissively adding that it’s a non-issue, because no such bill will ever reach said desk.

 

His history of blatantly racist remarks, bizarre reminiscences, and creepy fondling of women in public, can’t be ignored as just misleading right-wing email memes, as they are are readily verified on unedited, cringemaking video.

 

And again: Biden is on record reassuring his Wall Street donors that if elected, “Nothing will change.”

 

He can make those private pledges, because Biden can rest assured that the Blue No Matter Who crowd’s votes are in the bag. No need to make any concessions to “unify the party,” when everyone from Elizabeth Warren to Tulsi Gabbard to Bernie Sanders to AOC to even Cornel West and Noam Chomsky have pledged their fealty.

 

And that after the election, they will be too scared to criticize or challenge the Democratic establishment. If you speak out, you’re helping Trump come back—or someone even worse, if that is possible.

 

So: Assuming you gave been doing any of the following to “resist” Trump, here are some challenges to the self-described Resistance for after November:

• Will you continue to march for racial and social justice?
• Will you demand that Democrats in power pass Medicare for All?
• Will you keep writing irate letters to the editor about the state of our “nation”?
• Will you remember to go to local meetings, and lobby in your state capitol for change?
• Will you stay concerned about the plight of immigrants in our country?
• Will the government spying on you and me and everyone else continue to concern you?
• Will our illegal, undeclared and/or covert wars abroad occupy any of your attention?
• Will campaign finance reform be on your agenda?
• Will students loan debt, credit card debt, and other predatory lending practices still be on your radar? 
• Will you fight for at least a living minimum wage, if not universal basic income?
• Will you take tangible action to reverse global warming—before we all drown, fry, or kill each other to stay alive?

Or will you just be satisfied that Trump is gone, and just go back to the “normal” conditions which led to his election in the first place?

 

... And then insist four years from now that we all better swallow hard again and settle for lifelong prosecutor Kamala Harris, or whoever the DNC foists on us 2024 after Biden’s health presents a reëlection campaign. Because we wouldn’t want to go back to the bad old days of Trump, by criticizing or pressuring Democrats, now would we?

 

Even though those bad old days began long before Trump, and will hardly end the moment he most deservedly gets his comeuppance.

Philmont: 1987 photos of Oliver North Day

For several years, I’ve been badgering my grade school friend Noah Elkin—who grew up in East Chatham—to find the photographs he took of Larry (“Ollie”) North Day, which took place in Philmont in 1987. 

Lo and behold, Noah has managed to find ’em... A gallery of a dozen or so images, depicting both pro-Ollie marchers and anti-U.S.-imperialism protesters on August 15th, 1987 can be found here. 

The gallery includes a short essay of Elkin’s memory of the day, the mood of the crowds, and how people reacted to the sudden national media attention.

North had grown up in Philmont, but no longer lived there, and declined to attend. Since then, he has been a FOX News commentator, and now heads the National Rifle Association. To this writer’s knowledge, he has not visited Philmont in the past few decades.

The march took place shortly after the conclusion of the Iran-Contra hearings, and just a few days after President Ronald Reagan made his first public statement on the scandal, in which his administration ignored the specific prohibition of Congress not to arm the anti-Communist Nicaraguan CONTRAs. Reagan offered a tepid apology, sloughing most of the blame off on National Security Adviser John Poindexter.

North had been instrumental in enacting the plan, likely devised by then-CIA director Bill Casey, and had been caught among other things shredding evidence of the illegal plot. George H.W. Bush infamously pardoned five of the convicted conspirators during his first year in office, including Eliot Abrams (who is back in the news as Trump’s point man in the effort to foment a coup in oil-rich Venezuela).

The Ollie rally was big local news, but happened to coincide with another potentially-explosive local event, the start of the Wyley Gates trial. Gates was a Canaan teenager who confessed roughly six months earlier to “shooting his father, his father's girlfriend, his brother and a 3-year-old cousin,” according to The New York Times. However, the local jury eventually “acquitted the youth of murder charges, citing shoddy police work and a coerced confession,” and Gates was only convicted of felony conspiracy.

As a result, the Philmont rally became only the second most important story of the day in local papers. A look at the stories of the day adds some additional details to the North Day festivities (or outrage, depending on how you look at it). Reports in the Register-Star stated that:

— North’s mother “called the village hall and said upon the advice of counsel, her son will not attend.”

— Catholic Reverend Charles Gaffigan declined to participate in an “ecumenical church service” planned for the occasion, saying it was “an inappropriate occaison for a religious service,” and it was scrapped.

— Copake resident Paul Marcel said he bought a commemorative t-shirt because “someday this thing will be a collector’s item.” (Is it someday yet?)

— The parade was organized by Sharon Johnson “to support [North] in his time of trouble, with the indulgence of Mayor “Po” Mossman, who was eager to boost flagging attendance at Philmont’s annual community day. Johnson claimed it would be Philmont’s “biggest celebration since servicemen returned home at the end of World War II.”

– 20 State troopers, County sheriffs, and Philmont's own “constabulary” monitored the event; Mayor Mossman “denied reports that he had alerted the National Guard” about it.

— North proponents “warned the crowd that Communist-backed forces are coming dangerously close to the southern borders of the United States,” a sentiment which seems to have recrudesced decades later among Trump supporters.

— There were some “heated arguments,” but mostly prior to the start of the parade. These included a controversy about the intention of a longstanding activist group, Columbia County Citizens for the Prevention of Nuclear War, to hold a press conference. Kathy Stumph of the group said that “I feel the responsibility and obligation to my children and to other young Americans to stand up and take issue with a celebration that mocks the very concept of true heroism.”

— The protesters declined to be a part of the parade, preferring to line the parade route. A teenaged Eddie Coons of Mellenville stated that protesters “have no right coming here and ruining it for everyone.”

— Millerton resident James Brandt held a $15 clambake fundraiser at the Rod & Gun Club to raise funds for a North Defense Fund.

— Then-Senator Al D’Amato and Congressman Jerry Soloman “sent letters of support” but begged off attending.

 

My fellow Democrats...

 

It’s truly dismaying to watch so many of my fellow Democrats devolve into pure partisanship, as a way of coping with the trauma of Trumpism.

 

One sees countless Dems suddenly unwilling to hold our own party accountable, uninterested in issues which require more attention than just knee-jerk outrage, and unable to assess media skeptically unless it helps our “team.”

 

The end result is Dems sounding like either Birchers (crying treason) or a liberal version of Birthers (latching onto any piece of negative info about the GOP even if it can’t be supported by evidence).

 

Meanwhile, the Democratic base gets more and more disaffected, as leadership serves donors rather than voters. This is a recipe for failing to retake a chamber of Congress in 2018, and for Trump to be re-elected in 2020.

 

The party needs to stand for something that ordinary Americans actually care about, when they are considering their bills and their predicament around the proverbial kitchen table. (And by ordinary, I mean pretty much everyone who has never attended a $10,000-and-up political fundraiser.)

 

Stand for a living minimum wage. For health care which does not drain people’s savings while denying them essential medical attention. For an end to predatory lending, including student loans. For the rights of immigrants. For an end to police brutality, and racial equality. For more oversight of our out-of-control “security” agencies, and an end to spying on Americans. For the rights of workers to unionize to protect their incomes and safety. For the meaningful regulation of Wall Street and corrupt mortgage and other banking practices. For the removal of the influence of money on elections.

 

Stand for press freedom, and protecting whistleblowers who expose government and corporate malfeasance. For a reduced military budget, an end to our seven undeclared wars, and cessation of killing people by remote controlled drones. For the future of our planet, including clean air and water.

 

Stand for something besides hoping that some distant spooks and cops will relieve each of us of the urgent need for citizens to participate, tangibly, not just symbolically, in reforming our deeply corrupt and distorted democracy.

 

Demand that candidates take these stands, too, with no hedging and weasel-words, and don’t be conned into accepting merely the lesser of two evils.

Instant takeaways from the NY-19 Democratic primary

The results of this highly unusual seven-candidate regional primary will take a long time to fully digest, but here are some immediate takeaways:

• As predicted, the projected winner is in line for victory without a solid mandate. Antonio Delgado as of 11:15 pm on Tuesday is ahead with less than 1/4 (22%) of the votes cast, with some results still rolling in.
• Looked at one way, this means that 78% of Dem primary voters go to bed disappointed.
• Gareth Rhodes was in second place as of 11:15 pm. He won Columbia County, with Delgado second.
• Turnout in Columbia was about 30% among registered Dems; turnout districtwide was more like 26%. About 35,000 participated, much better than the less-contested Teachout-Yandik primary in 2016. But that still means almost 100,000 Dems did not bother to make a choice.
• Delgado appears to be a candidate virtually all Dems will get behind, especially with the fever to blunt Trump and the GOP in Congress. His GOP opponent, John Faso, can be expected to go after his heavy funding from by New York City law firms and lobbying connections.
• Erin Collier’s belated attempt to capture the women’s vote fizzled, earning less than 5% despite women making up more than 50% of the electorate.
• Brian Flynn’s campaign underperformed many expectations, coming in 5th slightly behind firebrand ex-CIA agent Jeff Beals as of 11:15 pm.
• Many of the candidates may look tomorrow at Dave Clegg as the spoiler in the race. Clegg garnered the vast majority (over 70%) of his votes in one County, Ulster. His votes in Ulster alone would have put any of the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th contenders into contention with or ahead of Delgado. While this could be said of some others as well, Clegg is the only one whose support came pretty much exclusively from his home turf.
• Thankfully, corporate spook Pat Ryan did not win. (Maybe now he will be liberated to get back to his true passion, getting paid by big business and spy agencies to snoop on union leaders, journalists and activists.)
• Beals, once expected to finish near the bottom of the heap, did a good deal better than expected, most likely due to extensive late exposure via an “This American Life” profile. (One suspects that a large number of likely primary voters are also WAMC listeners.)
• One is left wonder what would have happened in a two- or three-way race between Delgado and one of the other top contenders. He might well have won narrowly, but with so many candidates cannibalizing each others’ support, it is very hard to say whether the best candidate won, or just the best-funded.
• Notably, pretty much none of the candidates had any district-wide profile prior to running, and little if any experience serving in local elected positions. One again wonders what would had happened if, say, someone like New York State Assembly member Didi Barrett had run. Would as many challengers have come forward, if any? That the Dems fielded seven new faces could be a sign of fresh blood, or a symptom of not having much of a bench from which to draw.

Tuesday CD-19 primary: Anyone but Ryan

Email leaked during the HBGary/Berico/Palantir scandal 

 

Got a second for a Stop the Plant war story? It will help explain why Patrick Ryan absolutely must not be your choice in Tuesday’s crowded Democratic primary, which will determine who runs against John Faso for Congress next November.

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During the nearly seven-year fight to stop the massive, coal-burning St. Lawrence Cement proposal in Columbia County, I was spied on clumsily by a private investigative firm from the Albany area. This surveillance activity came to light after several ham-handed attempts to dig dirt about me from my neighbors and family.

My neighbor Joanne Krasowsky (R.I.P.) was the first to report that a peculiar man was prowling lower Warren Street, asking odd questions about me.

A man in a minivan approached Joanne near the corner of 1st and Warren. He claimed that he was from a finance company, and that her neighbor Sam Pratt had applied to them for a loan. The man said that they were planning to approve the loan, but needed to verify some personal information first. Would she be able to answer some questions to help her neighbor out?

Joanne immediately smelled a rat. After all, what kind of lending institution sends out reps to verify loan info via their neighbors? She asked the man for identification to verify that he was who he said he was. The gumshoe stuttered that he forgot his wallet at the office, and quickly excused himself—getting into his car, ostensibly without his driver’s license.

Stop the plant campaign ad designed by S.P.

Of course, I had applied for no such loan.

Next up was my family. A man called my parents’ house and tried to quiz my mother about my finances, using the same flimsy pretext.

Then there was my tenant and friend, Jackie Thomas, a DJ and local shopowner who lived in the garden apartment of my house on Warren Street. Jackie was approached again on the same pretext, but cannily told the man that yes, he would be glad to help... However, Jackie said, he was in a rush to get to work, so could he call him later? The man provided a phone number, which Jackie immediately passed along to me.

It did not take long to trace the phone number to the Albany-area private investigation firm. (Note: Though it had an office in Greenport, the Greenport Project’s law firm and State corporate HQ were both in Albany.)

I called the firm and asked to speak to its president. I told the man that I was well aware that they were falsely representing themselves as a lender to surveill and harass me. If it did not stop immediately, I said, they would find themselves in court—along with their client St. Lawrence Cement for violating laws against suppressing public participation in regulatory processes. The firm’s president denied it all, of course. But there were no further incidents.

Joanne wrote up the incident in a very funny letter to the editor of the Register-Star, and the entire episode reflected poorly on our adversary, SLC. As often happens with overweening corporate tactics like this, they come back to bite the corporation.

Overall, my sense was that the attempted surveillance was so amateurishly done that either SLC, in its usual inept way, had hired a really lame firm; or, the goal was less to gather information than to make their presence known, and thereby intimidate me. If I did have something to hide, they might not find it. But I would hear they were looking, and if I had something to worry about, the threat alone might be enough to get me to back off the fight, or even move away entirely to escape exposure. Unfortunately for the company and its parent Holcim, I neither had any juicy secrets, nor neighbors who wanted to play ball with creepy corporate spies.

Several years later, I also discovered that someone around this same time had filed a request for a criminal background check on me, which was itemized in the records the County Clerk’s office. However, that office claimed that they could not find the original records to see who was responsible.

*   *   *   *   *

Corporate surveillance and harassment of activists, watchdogs and whistleblowers is is all too common. It’s only made easier in the Internet Age, with so much more info being available (both legally and illegally) online. Such harassment may be most familiar to the public from films such as Erin Brockovich, The Insider, or Michael Clayton, which dramatize the way big business uses espionage and gaslighting activity to deal with pesky citizen nuisances.

Pat Ryan (from Daily Freeman)

If it turns out that the journalists, or activist, or union organizer, or whistleblower has a drug problem, or is cheating on their spouse, or watches extreme porn, or has gambling debts, or some other skeleton in their closet, then that info can be used to try to silence them.

And here’s where we circle back to NY-19 Democratic Congressional candidate Pat Ryan.

Back in 2011, I followed closely a developing scandal involving three “data mining” firms: Palantir, HBGary, and Berico. The trio had banded together to seek lucrative contracts from corporations bedeviled by public relations problems. Their potential clients included the huge U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a notoriously anti-labor lobby, and Bank of America, also no friend of working people, notorious for fraudulent, predatory and discriminatory lending practices.

The three-company scheme came to light after hackers obtained a vast trove of HBGary emails, with many communications and memoranda including Berico. The exploit was motivated by public boasts by HBGary that they were turning the tables on hackers by using similar tools to infiltrate them.

At the time, Patrick Ryan was the Deputy Director for analysis at one of these three firms. As investigative reporter Lee Fang wrote at The Intercept,

Seven years ago, Ryan, then working at a firm called Berico Technologies, compiled a plan to create a real-time surveillance operation of left-wing groups and labor unions, hoping business lobbyists would pay top dollar to monitor and disrupt the actions of activist groups across the country. At one point, the proposal included the idea to spy on the families of high-profile Democratic activists and plant fake documents with labor unions in a bid to discredit them.

The pitch, a joint venture with a now-defunct company called HBGary Federal and the Peter Thiel-backed company Palantir Technologies, however, crumbled in 2011 after it was exposed in a series of news reports. 

Fang is not some far-out kook, or a right-winger out to discredit a Democratic candidate who has raised a lot of money for this race. Rather, Fang is best known for his research on the Koch brothers’ influence on GOP politics. He’s a former employee of prominent Democrats in Congress, and a writer for The Nation and many other well-known liberal- or left-leaning publications. Most recently, he published an op-ed in The New York Times about Trump lawyer Michael Cohen. Of Ryan, he and others also reported:

The emails show Ryan at every step of the process to pitch the chamber. He was on the initial email thread on October 19, 2010, discussing the idea. Ryan, responding to a unique opportunity to sell “a complete intelligence solution” using “social media exploitation,” said it “sounded like a great opportunity.”

Later that month, after a meeting with the chamber’s attorney, Ryan announced to his business partners that a “client of theirs is targeted by another entity, specifically a labor union, that is trying to extract some kind of concession or favorable outcome.”

Ryan’s Congressional candidacy brought this mostly-forgotten scandal back to light. A ton of documentation dating back to 2011-12 was archived online, no doubt to the candidate’s chagrin. A 2011 day-by-day timeline of events published by ThinkProgress mentions Ryan by name over 20 times, demonstrating that he was hardly at the fringes of this scheme. (The players eventually branded their triumvirate “Team Themis.”) For example, on November 5th, 2010, 

Ryan asks [Chamber lawyer] Woods what data [it] has, wondering if it includes “Financial Records, Union Rosters, IP addresses” and “access to the union in question’s membership lists”. Ryan attaches a $200,000 cost proposal.

The $200K figure was just for Phase I of the campaign. Phase II was to cost $2,000,000. On November 18th of the same timeline, when the partners have a debate about how to divvy up the spoils from this caper, they settle on a 40/30/30 split—and “Ryan agrees on behalf of Berico.” The proposal includes, among many other tasks, developing a “target list” for whom they will “develop in-depth target dossiers for key entities and groups,” including “key biographic data, relationships, intentions.”

Ryan’s evasive responses have attempted to neutralize and deflect a sordid part of his resumé he had neglected to disclose to voters. And his various excuses only raise further questions about the candidate’s integrity. In his initial reply to The Intercept—whose editor, Pulitzer Prize and Oscar winner Glenn Greenwald, was someone this team also discussed targeting with a campaign to discredit him—Ryan’s third-person press release stated:

Pat worked at a small software firm and was assigned to develop a proposal, but had concerns about the nature of the work, especially in relation to the protection of American citizens’ privacy and civil liberties. The project did not move past the proposal stage.

This statement employs a number of shady public relations tricks to attempt to minimize and deflect the issue.

first, there is his spurious reference to Berico as “a small software firm.” Leaving aside how small or large Berico was at the time, this seeks to trivialize Ryan’s time there. It was just some small firm, no big deal... But what difference does it make how big the company was? It’s the noxious nature of their activity which is under scrutiny, not their market cap... And if it truly was a small firm, that would only mean that Ryan had to be that much more involved with what happened. 

Next, Ryan claims that he “had concerns” about what he and his company was doing. In other interviews and appearances, he has added the claim that the leaked email trove did not include any of his internal protests about those concerns. How convenient: Somehow, among the tens of thousands of documents published online, none have come to light in which Ryan objects. But many—like the one at the top of this post, in which Ryan states to his colleagues how “excited” he is to be “part of” this project. If such emails exist, why has Ryan not released them himself to clear his name?

Thirdly, and most dishonestly, Ryan uses the deflection that “the project did not move past the proposal stage” to again minimize its importance.

But why did it not move forward?

Because Berico and its partners got caught with their pants down.

Once their scheme to surveill and intimidate people deemed irritating by big business was exposed, it was inoperable. Per my account above, it’s a lot harder to spy on people when they know you’re doing it. And the scandal was a p.r. disaster for all three firms (one of which folded as a result), whose only remaining move was to beat a retreat.

Ryan has also tried to suggest that he was just along for the ride as someone who was incidentally a low-level employee. But he is listed on key memoranda and proposals as the key point-person for such projects, for example in the cover sheet above (highlight added). The full memo can be downloaded here. Ryan can also be seen in other messages acting as a principal actor among the partners, for example in trying to figure out how much they can charge the Chamber without losing the contract.

Ryan in his various responses is deploying what is known in corporate rhetoric as “weasel words.” These are phrases which appear to be benign and narrowly factual themselves, but are intended to mask, evade, twist, or otherwise dodge the truth. Sure, Berico was not as big as General Motors. Sure, the project technically didn’t “move forward.” Sure, he was not the CEO. But none of those things disclose the full scope of Berico’s involvement, or Ryan’s role.

Ryan compounds the sin with this approach. Rather than acknowledging that he made a grave error of judgement, one which he could have learned from and vowed not to repeat, he instead telegraphs an ugly message: That he (or his handlers) seem to think that the voting public is either too inattentive or too gullible to look into and understand what occurred. It suggests a dismissive and cynical attitude to one’s potential constituents.

One might shrug this off as an isolated incident. Say, a youthful mistake seven years ago... But after leaving Berico, Ryan moved onto another firm, Dataminr, which sought much the same type of work and was “funded through an investment from In-Q-Tel, the venture capital arm of the CIA.” As Fang reported,

The firm amassed law enforcement clients, including the FBI and Joint Regional Intelligence Center, a fusion center used by the government to alert multiple law enforcement departments in the Los Angeles region of potential threats. Documents, uncovered by the ACLU of California through a public records investigation of social media monitoring software, show that Dataminr monitored tweets mentioning Black Lives Matter on behalf of the JRIC. The emails show that Dataminr’s alerts vacuumed up tweets from now-Intercept columnist Shaun King, among other activists, in reports sent to law enforcement.

In another email obtained by the ACLU of California, Dataminr pitched the Los Angeles Police Department to use its tool to track protests, among other events of interest to law enforcement. Dataminr’s social media tracking tools are “highly valued by our clients at FBI CTD, NYPD, DoD and all ‘big five’ intel agencies,” the pitch continued.

In other words, Ryan’s interest in spying on fellow Americans to assist corporate and government clients cannot be shrugged off as a one-time thing.

 *     *     *     *     *

There are seven Democratic candidates in Tuesday’s primary. Three of them—Ryan, Delgado and Flynn—have the blessing of the out-of-touch, center-right, neoliberal DCCC, the same gang of insider Dems who along with the DNC helped deliver the November 2016 election debacle. These establishment interests expect candidates to shut up about popular progressive policies, aiming to protect their big donors against the interests of rank-and-file liberal voters.

My vote will go to one of the other four, most likely Gareth Rhodes. Rhodes unlike most of his competitors does not appear to have any obvious knock against him that Faso can exploit. He has also shown unusual commitment to the district through grassroots campaigning, managing to visit every single town and city in the sprawling district at least once, sometimes more.

Rhodes is very responsive to dialogue, answering calls and emails from all comers at an astonishingly quick pace. His relative youth to me is not a disadvantage: It could help bring in younger voters, and means he is less wedded to the status quo. I might add that when we started fighting SLC, I had just turned from 29 to 30—and faced resistance from grayer opponents who though that was “too young” to spearhead such a battle. Fortunately, I had a lot of help and allies, and we prevailed, in spite of corporate money and dirty tricks.

But whoever you wind up choosing from this smorgasbord of options, in my view Ryan should be off the menu.

NY-19 Dem Primary: Can anyone get a mandate?

Normally, a political party wants its nominee to enter the general election race with a sense of momentum and a mandate from the people. But with seven Democrats vying in the June 26th primary to determine the party’s congressional nominee, it seems likely one of them will win with barely 1/3 of the vote, or even less.

When this point was made to a prominent Columbia County Democratic Committee officer, he seemed surprised. But it’s just a matter of simple mathematics. With seven options, there just aren’t enough votes to go around for one to win with more than 33.3%, let alone a majority — unless most of them perform abysmally and one of them truly distinguishes him- or herself from the field.

 

With only a few weeks to go, no clear frontrunner has emerged. So one can reasonably expect the winner to have trouble cracking even 30% unless several people drop out in the next two weeks.

 

Start with a baseline of seven generic candidates who are equally popular (or, more likely equally unknown). That gives each of them a roughly 14% share of the vote out of the gate:

 

After nearly a year of campaigning, that level playing field has tipped and dipped and deformed into a lumpy, uneven terrain. No one seems to have a good sense of who the frontrunners are, though each candidate has tried to project an image of leading the field.

 

Let’s go through some scenarios where some candidates excel, some slightly overperform, some are average, some underperform, and some stumble badly. Here is an example of a smooth progression of support among the candidates:

 

 

Above, though five candidates get only 15% or less of the vote, that still leaves the top three candidates fighting over just 45% of the electorate. The “winner” prevails with just 25% of the vote.

 

Now, consider what it would look like if one of the candidates somehow manages to reach a 50% majority of Democratic voters, facing just one other moderately strong challenger:

 

This scenario requires five of the candidates to get only 2-6% of the votes. It doesn’t seem like any of the candidates are quite that pathetic, or that anyone is that far ahead.

 

Now, let’s get to the starting premise: What would it take for a candidate to just crack 1/3 of the vote?

 

This requires the improbable scenario of fully five of the candidates garnering 10% or less of the vote each, and only one other candidate cracking 20%. Is the field really that weak?

 

Reading this election is difficult. The general perception is that the Rhodes, Flynn and Delgado are doing somewhat better than the rest, but none of those three has gained separation — meaning they all are wallowing somewhere in the 20%s. Collier, who entered the race late as the sole woman among the contenders, doesn’t seem to have caught fire, and might finish at 5% or less. Ryan and Beals have some intense supporters, but also have generated strong negatives, while Clegg has his local credentials going for him. But the presence of four other contenders means these, too, are having trouble breaking out.

 

But all that is just guesswork, and ultimately the names don’t matter for this exercise. If you have three candidates averaging between 20-30% each, that means the rest have to average 10% or less, and at least one of them has to gain virtually no support at all.

 

Could this situation have been avoided? Generally, spirited primaries seem like a good idea for the health of a party, though establishment Dems often rail against them. The competition ideally means that more people pay attention to, get involved with, and care about the race than if both major parties just anoint a predictable standard-bearer. Committee insiders nominating whomever they choose, in private, is terrible for the party in the long run. Any idea that primaries are inherently “divisive” is bunk, intended to shoo off pesky outsiders.

 

Still, seven candidates on the ballot seems like far too many. It dilutes the vote too much, limits fundraising, and may risk inspiring needless acrimony or resentment among candidates’ supporters.

 

Sure, most every Democrat including the candidates themselves are saying that they will support whoever the voters choose to run against Faso. (Not me—I wouldn’t vote for Ryan, who has a sordid and well-documented record of participating in schemes to spy on and harass union leaders, journalists and activists). That’s an easy promise for people to make now, before the primary.

 

The reality is that some of those fired up for a candidate who winds up losing on June 26th will themselves lose interest, and neglect to vote in November. That just happens; after all, barely half of Americans even participate in Presidential elections, let alone contests for Congress.

 

A better outcome might have been for the leadership of the various County Dem committees in the district to have diplomatically but persuasively convinced a few of the weaker candidates to drop out. This would be a positive use of such leadership roles, to the extent that there’s little point remaining in a seven-person race if you’re running 5th, 6th, or 7th. It just saps energy from the rest. A 3- or 4-person primary would lead to more clarity about the differences among the candidates, while still generating interest and competition, while having a better chance of one person actually pulling away from the field, and winning a primary mandate.

 

The unfortunate reality is that there isn’t much “there” there with our County committees. Their operations and leadership is mostly invisible or mysterious to voters, with Dem officers having little or no real pull among the populace. And so, we are more likely to see someone “win” on June 26th, maybe, 28% of the vote, if that.

 

 

 

Quotable Roosevelt

“We have to prove to our own people that we are cognizant of the qualities that it will require to meet the future years. The courage, the vision, the imagination, the honesty… I know we need a united [Democratic] party, but it cannot be a united party that gives up its principles. I want unity but above everything else, I want a party that will fight for the things that we know are right home and abroad.” 

– Eleanor Roosevelt, responding to Harry S. Truman at a Dec. 1959 dinner

While you were fretting about Putin

While Democrats put all their energy into checking for Russians under the bed, rather than organizing for the 2018 midterms, right-wingers are busy expanding their social networks.

Every day on Twitter, one can find thousands of posts like the above, in which “MAGA Patriots” urge their contacts to follow other Trump fans. The movement is sometimes referred to as the Trump Train.

Why should we care? Because today’s election campaigns are less and less focused on traditional persuasion, and more on identifying base supporters, then making sure they turn out to vote.

By having one’s own contacts mutually follow like-minded friends (and friends of friends, and even strangers), Tea Partiers and other far-right groups are building a massive turnout engine. It also has other political benefits, such as reinforcing the feedback loop of ideological news, while providing adherents with a built-in network of contacts who will defend their politics and attack critics.

Another political phenomenon which mainly occurs out of view of liberals and progressives: Many of these Twitterers also have an odd habit of regularly wishing each other “good morning” or “good night” on social media—posts usually accompanied by sunrises or sunsets featuring flags, soaring eagles, Jesus, and other canned patriotic or religious imagery. This, too, seems to have some kind of network-building function, which could be merely political, or could be used for more sinister purposes in a crisis.

(Note: I discovered this by accident—while searching for news of the New England Patriots.)

The one key attitude which draws people to Trump

 

A couple of times a month, I’ll tune into right-wing radio in the car to hear what they are saying. A singular theme has been constant across the years: The outrage of both hosts and callers at the mere thought that they should ever have to think before opening their mouths.

 

Their repetitive rants about political correctness, or reverse racism, or “having to apologize,” etc., etc., all boil down to this... Not ever feeling compelled to consider the feelings or perspective of anyone else. Not even a little.

 

Facts, analysis, research, sensitivity, decency, even common sense—these are deemed outrageous impediments to the instant gratification of shooting one’s mouth off, based on gut feelings. It goes beyond ordinary anti-intellectualism. There is a more selfish component, the notion that the first thought which jumps first into your head is inherently valid, and must be not just heard, but accepted as unquestioningly as the person who uttered it.

 

That’s why there are some Republicans who will stand by Trump, no matter what. It’s what made him their hero in the last election: that Trump blurts out the first thing which pops into his head, then refuses to apologize for saying something stupid and offensive. It validates their own impatient need to air their id.

 

And it’s why even his two astonishingly dumb and intemperate outbursts about the right-wing hate speech and violence in Charlottesville still doesn’t shake their support. The content of his tantrum is irrelevant; only its tone of unabashed bluster matters.

 

Estimates are that something like two thirds of the 40% who still support Trump feel this way, i.e. about 27% of the adult population.

 

Where does this feeling come from? Some lingering childhood resentment of being told what to do by parents and teachers? Or is about a quarter of the population just built this way, genetically?

Quotable Douglass

“The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims, have been born of earnest struggle. 

“The conflict has been exciting, agitating, all-absorbing, and for the time being, putting all other tumults to silence. It must do this or it does nothing. If there is no struggle there is no progress. 

“Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.

“This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. 

“Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. 

“The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. ...  Men may not get all they pay for in this world; but they must certainly pay for all they get. If we ever get free from the oppressions and wrongs heaped upon us, we must pay for their removal. 

“We must do this by labor, by suffering, by sacrifice, and if needs be, by our lives and the lives of others.“

– Frederick Douglass (1857)

Who won your town, Trump or Clinton?

Who did better in your Columbia County town, Trump or Clinton? Below is Board of Elections data this site has tabulated to answer that question, showing what percentage of the vote Trump got in each place.

Note that towns in blue went for Hillary, towns in red went for Donald; in some of these towns, Trump won with less than 50%, since some votes went to Stein, Johnson, or write-in candidates.

Countywide, Clinton won by 1.4%; Interestingly, however, Trump would have won by 3% countywide if not for the overwhelming result for Clinton in Hudson.

PERCENTAGE FOR TRUMP: