Tuesday, May 31, 2022
Did Joe Manchin block climate action to benefit his financial interests? | Joe Manchin | The Guardian
Did Joe Manchin block climate action to benefit his financial interests?
"Nancy Hilsbos, a former coalminer living in the West Virginia county that Senator Joe Manchin calls home, barely noticed the nondescript office block she passed almost daily.
The property, at the top of a rise on the road out of the small city of Fairmont, bears a large sign: “Manchin Professional Building”. Nameplates announce the offices of accountants, financial advisers and insurers. But there is no mention of the most profitable and influential company registered at the address – the Democratic senator’s own firm, Enersystems.
Manchin was recently revealed to have quietly made millions of dollars from Enersystems over the past three decades as the only supplier of a low grade coal to a high-polluting power plant near Fairmont. That came as news to Hilsbos and just about everyone else in the city.
“What surprised me was that we didn’t know it. One of the most shocking things was that I’ve driven by that place thousands of times in the last 30 years and I had no idea that’s where his business operation was headquartered because there’s no sign,” said Hilsbos.
“I wonder why he’s not prouder of what he’s done. Why doesn’t he have a big sign that says Enersystems?”
In 2020, Manchin earned nearly half a million dollars from the company, and $5.6m over the previous decade.
But Hilsbos, who worked underground for 13 years and was also a union activist, is less bothered by the senator keeping the source of his wealth shielded than by what else may have been hidden from view.
For years, Manchin has justified voting against curbs on the burning of fossil fuels and other measures to tackle the climate crisis on the grounds that they were bad for West Virginia, whose economy and culture are rooted in coal mining. Last year, he used his vote in a hung US Senate to block President Biden’s $3.5tn economic plan in part because he said he was “very, very disturbed” that its climate provisions would kill the coal industry.
But after the revelations that Manchin has made what most West Virginians would regard as a fortune from the Grant Town power plant, Hilsbos was left wondering if US climate policy, and by extension the global response to the crisis, has been held hostage to the senator’s financial interests.
“If he used it to slow the responsible addressing of climate change issues then that’s an international responsibility,” she said. “What’s wrong is him throwing so much weight against the public interest when he has so much to gain by the continued existence of this kind of facility.”
Hilsbos is not alone in her concern.
Christopher Regan, a former vice-chair of the West Virginia Democratic party who worked as an aide to Manchin, recalled a time when the senator painted prominent Republican officials in the state as “involved in self-service as opposed to public service”, a line Regan then promoted.
“This thing with the coal plant turns that around on him. What’s he doing? Is this for West Virginia? Or is this just strictly for his own narrow pecuniary interest?” he said.
Regan said that’s a question that could haunt Manchin as he considers a run for re-election in two years.
Manchin founded Enersystems in 1988 with his brother, Roch, at about the time the state was considering an application to build a power plant in Grant Town, a small former mining community less than 20 minutes’ drive north of Fairmont.
Manchin, then a state senator, helped clear the way for the construction of the power plant while negotiating a deal to become the only supplier of its fuel. Not just any fuel but discarded coal known as “garbage of bituminous”, more popularly called “gob”, which is even more polluting than regular coal.
When the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) raised concerns that the Grant Town plant was too close to other coal burning facilities, increasing pollution levels in the area, Manchin intervened and the objections went away. Later, as his state’s governor, Manchin used his political influence to win approval for an increase in the rate charged for electricity charged by the plant, which increased bills for ordinary West Virginians. The New York Times reported that, in a highly unusual arrangement, the senator has been getting a cut of those bills.
After his election to the US Senate in 2010, Manchin sat on the energy committee, and then became its chair, from where he has blocked environmental regulations that would have hit the Grant Town plant and other gob-burning facilities. Manchin also stood in the way of Biden’s multi-trillion dollar Build Back Better plan which could have threatened the power plant with tighter federal climate regulations. The senator defended the move as necessary in the midst of the Covid crisis, economic uncertainty, and with fuel supplies threatened by Russia’s war on Ukraine.
But the suspicion remains that he was, at least in part, acting in his own interests. Hilsbos said that the first she knew about the source of Manchin’s wealth came from recent revelations in the Intercept and later the New York Times. They prompted demonstrations outside the power plant in April to demand its closure because of the additional pollution caused by gob.
Although Hilsbos said she sympathised with the protesters’ concerns, she also understood the fears of people in Grant Town, once home to the largest underground mine in the world by the amount of coal produced. The mine closed in the mid-80s, shedding hundreds of jobs. Now the power plant, with about 50 workers, is the only large private employer in a town without a gas station or convenience store.
“Some neighbours came forward and said, I’ve always hated that place. But when we went to the town council meeting and tried to explain to them why people were coming from everywhere to demonstrate here, they said, ‘We don’t want you here, don’t come,’” said Hilsbos.
“A lot of the people involved in the town council have worked in the mines themselves. They feel like this is what we can do to hold on to our homeland, not have to move away, have this little plant as long as we can.”
While few in neighbouring Fairmont knew where Enersystems was, Manchin maintained a highly visible campaign office opposite the county courthouse in the heart of the city, between Bill’s Bail Bonds and a yoga studio. From there, he built a strong loyalty among West Virginia voters as a conservative Democrat prepared to stand up to the liberal wing of his party and to defend coal.
Regan said the senator spent years cultivating an image of himself as his own man, above party politics.
“He’s done a good job of it. He had his famous rifle ad, shooting the climate bill during the Obama administration, that he used to gain distance from the Democratic party on the national scale. But the effectiveness of that strategy may be running out. The magnitude of the shift within the state is too large for it to work any more,” he said.
In 2010, Democrats had a firm grip on the West Virginian legislature. Today, the Republicans are in control and they hold the governor’s office.
All of West Virginia’s congressional seats have fallen to the Republicans, leaving Manchin as the last Democrat holding statewide office. Manchin won his Senate seat in 2012 with nearly 61% of the vote, beating the Republican candidate by more than 24 points. Six years later, his margin of victory was just three points and he took less than half the vote after openly criticising Donald Trump in a state where he was hugely popular and remains so.
For all that, Greg Thomas, a prominent West Virginia Republican operative and Manchin opponent, does not think the coal plant revelations will damage the senator with most voters.
“If you’re a West Virginia politician and you’re not under some sort of investigation, you’re not trying hard enough to help your people,” he said. “No one here cares about environmentalists protesting Joe Manchin’s personal financial holding. It’s gotten to the point where it’s like, who cares if he does? We assume they’re all corrupt.”
Thomas said that Manchin’s political stands against his fellow Democrats have reinvigorated support.
“His popularity in West Virginia is coming back after it dropped over his fights with Trump. Pushing back against Biden has helped. His position on energy issues has been big,” he said.
Manchin’s approval rating among West Virginia voters has surged to 57% from just 40% early last year – and is even higher among Republicans.
Regan disagreed, saying that suspicions about his actions over the power plant are “threatening” to the senator because they come on the back of disenchantment among the state’s dwindling band of Democratic voters over his failure to support Biden’s agenda. Manchin’s vote against establishing abortion rights in federal law as the supreme court appears poised to strike down Roe v Wade will further alienate some Democratic voters in the state.
Regan said the last election left Manchin with a margin of victory of fewer than 20,000 votes – a narrow cushion to soak up the loss of angry Democrats who will not turn out to vote for him. He said the Grant Town power plant revelations are likely to stoke the dissatisfaction within that part of the electorate.
“Those Democrats he has alienated by being against Build Back Better and the child tax credit, and those very, very popular provisions among Democrats, may cost him in terms of people who don’t vote or people who just simply won’t vote for him any more. That may cost him the margin he has left and leave him in a bad situation in 2024.”
Then there is Trump. West Virginia voted for him in both presidential elections by the largest margin of any state except Wyoming.
“I think anybody in 2024 who is not prepared to say that Trump won the election is not going to be an acceptable candidate any more,” he said. “He can’t walk into the Republican camp, and he’ll have alienated too many Democrats to win.”
Opinion | Merrick Garland's Harvard commencement speech was full of obfuscation - The Washington Post
Opinion Garland’s mushy speech to Harvard grads does not inspire confidence
Attorney General Merrick Garland, whose slow-motion investigation of the plot to overthrow the 2020 election has frustrated defenders of democracy, spoke at a Harvard commencement ceremony on Sunday. He delivered a sincere, high-minded ode to democratic ideals and public service. But the address illustrated two fundamental complaints about his leadership of the Justice Department.
First, in an effort to appear nonpartisan, he inoculated the party responsible for the assault on American democracy. On Jan. 6, “as the United States Congress was meeting to certify the vote count of the electoral college, a large crowd violently forced entry into the Capitol,” Garland said. “We all watched as police officers were punched, dragged, tased and beaten. We saw journalists targeted, assaulted, tackled and harassed.” He added: “Members of Congress had to be evacuated. And proceedings were disrupted for hours — interfering with a fundamental element of American democracy: the peaceful transfer of power from one administration to the next.”
It is apparently a mystery who motivated the insurrectionists — and which party set the stage for the insurrection and now perpetuates the “big lie” of a stolen election. Garland intoned that “the preservation of democracy requires our willingness to tell the truth” and declared that “we must ensure that the magnitude of an event like January 6th is not downplayed or understated.”
Is there not one party “downplaying” or “understating” the events of that day? Can we not identify who has called this sort of domestic terrorism “legitimate political discourse”?
“At the same time that we are witnessing efforts to undermine the right to vote,” Garland said, “we are also witnessing violence and threats of violence that undermine the rule of law upon which our democracy is based.” He lamented the “dramatic increase in legislative efforts that make it harder for millions of eligible voters to vote and to elect representatives of their own choice.”
We are “witnessing efforts” by whom? Garland’s fuzzy talk disguises the culprits behind the intense campaign, well underway, to suppress and subvert American elections. One would never know listening to him that there is one party to blame — the Republicans — or that there has yet to be a single instance in which a Democratic legislature or Democratic governor has pursued such tactics.
The attorney general’s excessive use of the passive voice and refusal to clarify who did what and who is lying about what provide rhetorical cover for a party that has gone all in on the “big lie” and runs candidates who rationalize the Jan. 6 insurrection.
Garland would not prejudice his investigation were he to say something like this:
On that day, as the United States Congress was meeting to certify the vote count of the electoral college, the defeated president, Donald Trump, assembled a large crowd. He called for them to march on the Capitol. They followed his directive and violently forced their way into the building. The mob inspired by the lie that the election was stolen proceeded to punch, drag, tase and beat police officers. The mob acting in support of Trump forced members of Congress to evacuate. Just as Trump intended, the mob disrupted the proceedings for hours, interfering with a fundamental element of American democracy: the peaceful transfer of power from one administration to the next.
How hard would it be to provide that minimum level of candor?
Second, Garland limited his remarks, as he habitually does, to the violence of Jan. 6 — leaving out the fact that to properly account for what happened that day, officials have a duty to investigate the overall conspiracy to install the 2020 loser as president.
The coup attempt began long before Jan. 6, even before the 2020 election. An entire universe of conduct should be under scrutiny, from Donald Trump’s lies about absentee ballots, to his lawyers’ frivolous lawsuits to overturn the election, to Trump’s attempts to strong-arm the Georgia secretary of state to “find” votes, and to compel the Justice Department to somehow invalidate the election.
Garland may very well believe such conduct is illegal. But we are left wondering. If he does not, this will set a dismaying precedent under which losing presidential candidates will feel empowered to solicit a phony slate of electors, or to scheme to force the vice president to short-circuit the electoral-vote proceedings.
Granted, Garland does not want to publicly list the particulars of an ongoing investigation. But surely, he could confirm that the Jan. 6 violence was just one aspect of the coup attempt. Surely, he could reiterate that the Justice Department is tasked with investigating attempts to invalidate the election by both peaceful and non-peaceful means.
Supporters of democracy should not root for the sort of blatant partisanship from the attorney general that we saw from his predecessor. But Garland has an obligation not to obfuscate. If he aims to restore the credibility of the Justice Department, he can at the very least acknowledge that the threat to democracy is not bipartisan. It emanates from a right-wing political movement led by a former defeated president and his enablers.
And if Garland is “following the facts” as they relate only to armed insurrection, he should know that this is dangerous, too — that he would be giving a pass to dozens of executive officials, including the president (and perhaps members of Congress), who plotted to wreck our democratic election process.
We can only hope his vision is more comprehensive than his public remarks."
U.S. sees at least 12 mass shootings over Memorial Day weekend - The Washington Post
U.S. marks Memorial Day weekend with at least 12 mass shootings
"Since the Uvalde, Tex., elementary school tragedy, there have been at least 15 other shootings that had at least four victims
After a shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Tex., that claimed the lives of 19 children and two teachers last week, many politicians, public figures and gun-control advocates said the U.S. government should ensure mass shootings could not happen again.
But mass shootings have already happened again — and again. At least 15 mass shootings have taken place across the United States since Tuesday, from California to Arizona to Tennessee.
This Memorial Day weekend alone — spanning Saturday, Sunday and the federal holiday on Monday — there have been at least 12 mass shootings.
These incidents, gleaned from local news reports and police statements, meet the threshold for mass shootings as defined by the Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit research organization.
GVA defines a mass shooting as one in which “four or more people are shot or killed, not including the shooter.” Several of those shootings occurred at parties, and one at a Memorial Day event.
At least eight people have been killed and 55 injured in the mass shootings over the holiday weekend, according to GVA and local news sources. Since the Uvalde shooting last Tuesday, at least 11 people have been killed and 67 injured in mass shootings.
Brian Stelter, chief media correspondent and news anchor at CNN, interrupted a broadcast Sunday about the response to the mass shooting in Uvalde to tell viewers about another — in Tennessee.
“Mass killings like Buffalo and Uvalde become national news, but many mass shootings do not. They just end up being local stories,” Stelter said, in a clip that has been viewed over 370,000 times on Twitter.
On Saturday evening, six teenagers were injured by gunfire in Chattanooga, Tenn., in what Mayor Tim Kelly said was probably “an altercation between other teenagers.”
The victims, who were between the ages of 13 and 15, were transported to a hospital, and two had life-threatening injuries, according to the Chattanooga Police Department.
Kelly said he was “heartbroken” for the families of the victims and “angry” about political inaction on gun laws during a news conference following the shooting.
The Chattanooga shooting was one of at least five mass shootings that took place on Saturday alone, according to GVA.
On Sunday, there were at least another five mass shootings, including one at a Memorial Day festival in Taft, Okla.
Authorities said one person was killed and seven people were injured, including a minor. The Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation said a suspect turned himself in and was in custody.
Meanwhile, one person died and three others were injured during a shooting at a party in Merced County, Calif., the sheriff’s office said. One victim was still in “critical condition” Sunday afternoon.
The shootings continued into Monday, when police in Benton Harbor, Mich., were called to an area around a liquor store where a shooting had taken place in the early hours of Monday. One man was dead, and six were injured by gunfire, according to WNDU.
Around the same time, two people died and two others were injured during a shooting at a party in Port Richmond, Pa., according to statements from law enforcement. The victims ranged in age from 14 to 21, and police told FOX 29 Philadelphia they found 47 shell casings at the scene.
It was the city’s “2nd DOUBLE HOMICIDE scene in two hours,” according to Steve Keeley, a reporter for FOX 29 Philadelphia, after a father and his 9-year-old son were shot inside their car in Philadelphia on Sunday evening, law enforcement said.
The grim litany of mass shootings began even before the official start of the holiday weekend, when police in Anniston, Ala., said gunfire erupted after a graduation party attended by more than 150 young adults and teenagers as young as 14. Six people were injured by gunfire.
And on Friday afternoon in Michigan, officers in Mecosta County found three children under the age of 10 and a woman dead of apparent gunshot wounds when they responded to a report of a man with a gun and shots fired at a private residence. They also found a man with a gunshot wound to the head, who was taken to a hospital. Relatives told a local news outlet that the children were siblings and were 3, 4 and 6 years old, and that the woman was their mother.
In the aftermath of the Uvalde shooting, many local leaders and community representatives issued emotional pleas for action. As The Washington Post has reported, it is unlikely that Congress will be able to pass gun-control measures.
Monday, May 30, 2022
Sunday, May 29, 2022
Opinion When Southern Baptist victims reported abuse, lawyers stood in the way
Opinion When Southern Baptist victims reported abuse, lawyers stood in the way
Victims of sexual abuse at Southern Baptist institutions no doubt hoped they would find a caring reception when they took their stories to the denomination’s leaders in Nashville. But for decades, what they received was legal stonewalling.
The grim story is told in abundant detail by investigators hired to review the denomination’s stubborn failure to address abuse by clergy and other church employees. Again and again, their report shows, victims and their supporters went in search of atonement only to find attorneys in their way. Neither Jesus nor the Bible figures prominently in the internal documents quoted in the report, but risk management and dodging liability are constant concerns.
“Over the years, the EC’s response to sexual abuse allegations” — the “EC” referred to is the executive committee of the Southern Baptist Convention — “was largely driven by senior EC staff members, particularly D. August ‘Augie’ Boto, the EC General Counsel,” investigators found. Boto retired in 2019 after more than two decades spent guarding the stone wall. Yet he was a tenderfoot compared with attorney James P. Guenther, “the SBC’s long-serving outside counsel,” as investigators put it, who “had provided legal advice since 1966.”
The “main concern” of these legal graybeards “was avoiding any potential liability for the SBC.” Victims and others concerned about abuse “were often ignored or told that the SBC had no power to take action.” But the lawyers advised more than mere statements of helplessness. They warned denomination leaders not to “elicit further information or details about reports of abuse, so that the EC not assume a legal duty to take further action.”
Imagine that: These soldiers of Christ were urged to go AWOL on a matter of great moral importance out of fear that if they showed any interest or concern, they might be expected to do something about it.
Behind the scenes, however, the lawyers condoned a secret list of credible abuse reports. “Basically, we are stuffing newspaper clippings in a drawer,” attorney Boto remarked dismissively in one internal memo. They needed a very big metaphorical drawer, it seems; investigators found that the list, drawn from more than 10 years of reports, contained more than 400 likely “SBC-affiliated”names, including repeat offenders.
For the victims, there is no difference between the worldwide sexual abuse scandal inside the Catholic Church and this calculated coldheartedness at the top of the United States’ largest Protestant denomination. Structurally, though, there is a difference — and the Baptist lawyers have clung to it fiercely.
Roman Catholicism is a formal hierarchy in which parish churches run by priests are part of dioceses run by bishops, and the bishop of Rome — also known as the pope — has authority over them all. By contrast, each Southern Baptist church is its own independent operation. The national convention has no authority except to say if a church is allowed to claim the brand.
Victim support groups have long argued that the national organization should refuse to allow churches to be part of the fellowship if they ignore abuse, fail to report abuse or hire known abusers. Enforcing that standard would entail the very eliciting of “information” and “details” that the lawyers have preached against — and so, nothing has been done.
And here the distinction between Catholics and Baptists evaporates. In both cases, leaders have hidden behind their lawyers. Some 20 years ago, Boston Globe reporters began digging into the history of coverups and victim silencing by the Catholic Church. Almost immediately, they ran into attorney Wilson D. Rogers Jr. What Boto and Guenther have been for the Baptists, Rogers was for Boston’s Cardinal Bernard F. Law: “an architect of the archdiocese’s years-long adversarial handling” of sexual abuse victims, in the words of the Globe.
There is a place for lawyers, of course. But they should never have been the first figures to meet the victims of abusive pastors and priests.
By leading with the lawyers and hunkering down behind them, religious leaders abdicated their moral duty to acknowledge errors, repair mistakes and care for the vulnerable. They lost a chance to show the world what it means to take responsibility.
Two days after the report came the apology, so long overdue. Willie McLaurin, interim president of the executive committee, told a virtual meeting of the group that “now is the time to change the culture.” Thankfully, he had the self-awareness to add that this is “the bare minimum” the SBC leadership can offer.
Yet maybe there is a silver lining. The scandal is out in the open now, forced into the light by rank-and-file Baptists who are determined to face the truth. That’s not the way the lawyers wanted it, but it is the right thing to do.“
Opinion When Southern Baptist victims reported abuse, lawyers stood in the way
Opinion When Southern Baptist victims reported abuse, lawyers stood in the way
Victims of sexual abuse at Southern Baptist institutions no doubt hoped they would find a caring reception when they took their stories to the denomination’s leaders in Nashville. But for decades, what they received was legal stonewalling.
The grim story is told in abundant detail by investigators hired to review the denomination’s stubborn failure to address abuse by clergy and other church employees. Again and again, their report shows, victims and their supporters went in search of atonement only to find attorneys in their way. Neither Jesus nor the Bible figures prominently in the internal documents quoted in the report, but risk management and dodging liability are constant concerns.
“Over the years, the EC’s response to sexual abuse allegations” — the “EC” referred to is the executive committee of the Southern Baptist Convention — “was largely driven by senior EC staff members, particularly D. August ‘Augie’ Boto, the EC General Counsel,” investigators found. Boto retired in 2019 after more than two decades spent guarding the stone wall. Yet he was a tenderfoot compared with attorney James P. Guenther, “the SBC’s long-serving outside counsel,” as investigators put it, who “had provided legal advice since 1966.”
The “main concern” of these legal graybeards “was avoiding any potential liability for the SBC.” Victims and others concerned about abuse “were often ignored or told that the SBC had no power to take action.” But the lawyers advised more than mere statements of helplessness. They warned denomination leaders not to “elicit further information or details about reports of abuse, so that the EC not assume a legal duty to take further action.”
Imagine that: These soldiers of Christ were urged to go AWOL on a matter of great moral importance out of fear that if they showed any interest or concern, they might be expected to do something about it.
Behind the scenes, however, the lawyers condoned a secret list of credible abuse reports. “Basically, we are stuffing newspaper clippings in a drawer,” attorney Boto remarked dismissively in one internal memo. They needed a very big metaphorical drawer, it seems; investigators found that the list, drawn from more than 10 years of reports, contained more than 400 likely “SBC-affiliated”names, including repeat offenders.
For the victims, there is no difference between the worldwide sexual abuse scandal inside the Catholic Church and this calculated coldheartedness at the top of the United States’ largest Protestant denomination. Structurally, though, there is a difference — and the Baptist lawyers have clung to it fiercely.
Roman Catholicism is a formal hierarchy in which parish churches run by priests are part of dioceses run by bishops, and the bishop of Rome — also known as the pope — has authority over them all. By contrast, each Southern Baptist church is its own independent operation. The national convention has no authority except to say if a church is allowed to claim the brand.
Victim support groups have long argued that the national organization should refuse to allow churches to be part of the fellowship if they ignore abuse, fail to report abuse or hire known abusers. Enforcing that standard would entail the very eliciting of “information” and “details” that the lawyers have preached against — and so, nothing has been done.
And here the distinction between Catholics and Baptists evaporates. In both cases, leaders have hidden behind their lawyers. Some 20 years ago, Boston Globe reporters began digging into the history of coverups and victim silencing by the Catholic Church. Almost immediately, they ran into attorney Wilson D. Rogers Jr. What Boto and Guenther have been for the Baptists, Rogers was for Boston’s Cardinal Bernard F. Law: “an architect of the archdiocese’s years-long adversarial handling” of sexual abuse victims, in the words of the Globe.
There is a place for lawyers, of course. But they should never have been the first figures to meet the victims of abusive pastors and priests.
By leading with the lawyers and hunkering down behind them, religious leaders abdicated their moral duty to acknowledge errors, repair mistakes and care for the vulnerable. They lost a chance to show the world what it means to take responsibility.
Two days after the report came the apology, so long overdue. Willie McLaurin, interim president of the executive committee, told a virtual meeting of the group that “now is the time to change the culture.” Thankfully, he had the self-awareness to add that this is “the bare minimum” the SBC leadership can offer.
Yet maybe there is a silver lining. The scandal is out in the open now, forced into the light by rank-and-file Baptists who are determined to face the truth. That’s not the way the lawyers wanted it, but it is the right thing to do.“