The Smoke Eater for Sept. 25, 2020
Juneteenth, Behind the Thin Blue Line, and Uncle Sam's skidmarks.
Washington D.C., photo by Dominic Gwinn, July 3, 2019
Good evening, this is The Smoke Eater for Friday, September 25, 2020, and hungry anti-fascists finally have an official theme song.
Quick Hit
* Another Trump scam * The Thin Blue Line hides dildos and guns * Lori Lightfoot hates the light * Benjamin Netanyahu's dirty laundry * Facebook is worse than booze and cigarettes * "Swagger" *
NOTE: I thought I'd highlight some of the stories that seemed to get lost this week. That happens a lot these days. Maybe I’ll make that a thing? Either way, it’s probably a good thing The Smoker Eater is mobile friendly, ad-free and supported by you, the super awesome readers, amirite!? If you want to be super awesome, tip me on Ko-Fi, find me on Venmo, or Paypal, or subscribe to my Patreon!
Juneteenth
Mclatchy reports Trump is considering making Juneteenth a federal holiday in an effort to reach out to black voters. Trump is expected to make the announcement in Atlanta later this evening. NOTE: “Sure, Jan…”
A Need to Know Basis
Thanks to an ongoing sexual harassment lawsuit, Roll Call has a damning report about a long pattern of misconduct by US Capitol Police. This one goes beyond dumbasses leaving fully loaded weapons in bathrooms and basements to include sexual harassment, dick pics, sex toys, some Craigslist casual encounters, using slurs to describe protestors, and insulting students with disabilities at Galludet University, a nationally known higher education institution for the hearing impaired. Because the USCP is part of the legislative branch, misconduct records aren't publicly available and are immune from FOIAs. When Roll Call reached out to members of Congress in a position to actually do something, nobody wanted to comment beyond a rather boilerplate letter (penned by staffers) that was co-signed by senators Amy Klobuchar and Roy Blunt.
Police departments across the country have a long history of attempting to hide potentially damning information about officer misconduct, Hannah Knowles writes in the Washington Post. Some police departments are now attempting to use HIPPA and victims privacy laws to avoid releasing body camera footage even when the victims or their families advocate on behalf of its release. In New York, some legislators are fighting to make misconduct reports publicly available via a database, but police unions fear that this will create reprisals for officers. These kinds of moves have led to the Buffalo police to institute a new policy that says police only have to wear badge numbers instead of name tapes.
FUN FACT: The Citizens Police Data Project is database of police misconduct for the Chicago Police Department. It's common for protesters to search for the names or badge numbers of officers at protests, then start reading off misconduct reports. When a rather embarrassing report is read, a commanding officer tends to pull the officer under scrutiny off a protest line. Even though it's difficult to obtain misconduct reports from the CPD, Fraternal Order of Police Lodge #7 are currently fighting for officer misconduct complaints to be erased after five years. In a related story, FOP Lodge #7 President John Catanzara, who was stripped of his policing powers a few years ago, pushed back on reform proposals (on top of ignoring a consent decree) and instead demanded more money and house in the suburbs.
Speaking of Chicago...
Mick Dumke writes in Pro Publica that Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot is now pulling a Dick Daley (or a Trump) in saying that government transparency laws don't apply under certain circumstances. It's long been a joke that Chicago's legislators are but mere vassals to the city's mayor, but nobody has dared to make it a legal argument. Dumke was investigating possible violations of the Open Meetings Act early in the pandemic, and found Lightfoot was holding off-records calls with city alderman about the city's response. Lightoot argues to state AG Kwame Raoul that those calls, "had no legislative aspect whatsoever," and that aldermen were acting as "community-based first responders." Dumke reports that transparency groups lost their fucking minds, so now her office simply working around the law by holding smaller meetings with her thralls.
A Room With A Moose
One of the lesser noticed congressional races this year involves the longest-serving member of the House, Alaska Republican Rep. Don Young. Political fortune tellers predict this race swinging in Young's favor, but nonpartisan candidate, Alyse Galvin, is hoping to give him a literal run for his money. A majority of Alaskan's have only a modest income that's often tied to the energy (oil) sector and tourism, but COVID-19 has crippled both industries. Galvin won the Democratic nomination and the party is backing her in the hope of picking up an extra (moderate) seat. Republicans are hoping Young can hold on to his seat with signs that says Galvin is, "Alaska's [Nancy] Pelosi" because she doesn't want to the state so dependent one big, oily, cash cow.
Not America
Venezuela's struggling oil industry is in hot water as fresh crude continues to bubble out from ruptured, broken, and abandoned wells. Environmentalists and bean counters are concerned that the country's inability to export oil (due to a U.S. embargo) is only exacerbating the situation. The head of an anti-government group in Venezulea has been begging for help from international groups and with the country's dictator, Nicolás Maduro, after video surfaced of a rusting tanker with 1.3 million barrels of crude taking on water in the Gulf of Paria.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has a curious habit of bringing his literal dirty laundry to D.C. whenever he makes a state visit to the U.S., the Washington Post reported earlier this week. Israeli officials deny that Bibi abuses the free service American officials provide visiting dignitaries, calling the allegation "absurd," though the revelation does add to the ever growing list of corruption scandals surrounding the indicted and embattled leader.
Fucking Facebook
One of Casey Newton's final pieces for The Verge shows (and tells!) how Facebook has coasted through the summer relatively unscathed despite serious public backlash and a major boycott. Leaked audio from Q&As with headcheezus, Mark Zuckerberg, and comments from insiders show that the company tried to brush off criticism and a lack of free snacks by staying laser focused on growing user engagement. Despite lunatics and crackpots bitching about censorship on the right, and social justice warriors burning their own Facebook profiles on the left, Facebook is still increasing user engagement and making shareholders money.
Yesterday, Tim Kendall, who served as Facebook's first Director of Monetization from 2006 to 2010, testified to the House Energy and Commerce Committee's subcommittee on Consumer Protection and Commerce that Facebook, "sought to mine as much human attention as possible and turn into historically unprecedented profits." Kendal explains that Facebook aped Big Tobacco, "working to make our offering addictive at the outset." According to Kendall, Facebook was designed to get people "sucked in," adding that the company ignored the "real life consequences" because, "engagement always won, it always trumped. There's no incentive to stop, and there's an incredible incentive to keep going...The incentives to keep going, to keep the status quo, are just too lucrative at the moment. The objective is to create value for shareholders which is about giving -- driving revenue, driving profits. And that's just a function of how much time people spend on the service. And people spend more time, the more we make them angry, the more we enrage them, the more we addict them." [Full Hearing / Prepared Testimony]
FUN FACT: Back in 2012, the University of Chicago's Booth Business School published a study that found social media is more addictive than alcohol or tobacco, and that people would even ignore sexual urges to check for social media updates/validation.
One More Thing...
Nobody should expect the rest of the world to welcome a Biden administration -- if there is one -- with open arms. Donald Trump spent the last four years putting on a fashion show while wearing Uncle Sam's skid mark-filled underwear, and we're all going to have to take turns washing scrubbing out the shit stains. The "swagger" Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said he'd bring back remains lost in whatever golden toilet the Trump administration flushed it down, and foreign policy nerds are warning that the United States is about to be given a seat at the kids table if we don't at least try to act like adults.
Writing in Foreign Affairs, William Burns and Linda Thomas-Greenfield argue that the U.S. needs to fill the shoes of senior diplomats who've retired or been quit-fired, and push for legislation that updates the aging standards of the foreign service (like increasing the number of career officials, and placing limits on political appointees). Multiple administrations have thoroughly gutted, sidelined, and ignored the State Department over the years that there's nobody left to offer the critical cultural input that forges or fractures alliances. We're going to need an army of talkers, not tankers.
Jumping off on this point, Mira Rapp-Hooper and Rebecca Lissner write in their new book, "An Open World: How America Can Win the Contest for 21st Century Order," that America's newly diminished role in the world can be used to our advantage by leveraging our existing assets, like market capital, technical expertise, and progressive socio-cultural values, to create something beyond the post-Bretton Woods Neo-Liberal order of the last century. [Lawfare Podcast]
Additionally, James Goldgeier and Bruce W. Jentleson write that the U.S. needs take a mutual support role, rather than a leadership role. The myth of American exceptionalism has allowed us to make hypocritical demands of allies and adversaries that we ourselves can't achieve, like racial, gender, or financial equality, all while we peddle an almost schizophrenic view of the world that can change every two, four, or eight years.
We can't continue Zap Brannigan diplomacy. Spending an infinite number of lives for finite amount of resources just to create a world more hostile to our own survival is ... illogical. Simply embracing the suck of violence, corruption, disease, debt, and depression is not the mark of a people who are flirting with Kardashev Type 1 civilization status. Humanity won't survive if we become a generation of social media addicted hikikomori, pumping clicks into inexcusably shitty internet connections for a smiley face. Like Monty Python's dead parrot, we will cease to be.
OK, here's a cute critter video: IT'S AKOBI!
Follow Dominic on Twitter and Instagram.
The Smoke Eater is mobile friendly, ad-free and relies on your tips and subscriptions. It takes a lot of time and energy to put each issue together, so consider tipping me on Ko-Fi, or Venmo, or Paypal, or just subscribe to my Patreon.
Questions? Comments? Complaints? Shoot me an email or slide into my DMs!