How the mighty are fallen

I wrote last week that the walls were closing in on Dan Snyder, the majority owner of the professional football team associated with the city of Washington DC that has a racist name and logo. Snyder is an awful person who had said in 2013 that he would never change the name despite decades of criticism. He seemed to delight in rejecting the calls for changes, even calling the team’s name a ‘badge of honor’, as if he thought that it made him look tough.
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The Ghislaine Maxwell puzzle

There is one thing that puzzles me over the arrest of Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein’s one-time lover and later friend, business associate, and allegedly the chief procurer and groomer of underage girls to have sex with Epstein and his friends, and that why she stayed in the US at all. She was arrested in a secluded mansion that she owns in New Hampshire and is being held without bond in that town pending her transfer to New York City where the charges were brought against her.
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Ghislaine Maxwell arrested in Jeffrey Epstein case

Maxwell was Jeffrey Epstein’s close associate and sometime lover and was accused by his victims as being the person most involved in procuring and grooming young girls to be abused by him. Geoffrey Berman was the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York who arrested Jeffrey Epstein and he had said that Epstein’s death in jail while awaiting trial did not mean the end to the investigation. But when US attorney general Bill Barr fired Berman last month for reasons that are still murky, it was not clear what would happen to those investigations. Now Berman’s replacement Audrey Strauss has ordered the arrest of Maxwell and charged her with conspiracy to entice minors to engage in illegal sex acts and also with perjury. Berman had refused to resign as demanded by Barr until he agreed to appoint Strauss, Berman’s deputy and a respected career prosecutor, as his replacement. (You can read the 17-page indictment here.)
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More changes caused by the recent demonstrations

One of the things that struck me about the recent moves to remove monuments honoring leading figures of the confederacy is how many such symbols there are all over the country, especially, of course, in those states that formed part of the confederacy. It is encouraging that even deep Republican states are reconsidering their identification with such symbols. A good example is Mississippi where I was surprised to learn that the confederate flag forms part of the current state flag. But this solidly Republican state has just voted to start the process to remove it.
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Jon Stewart talks about the current unrest

In an interview about his new film Irresistible, Stewart gives his opinion on the current situation.

Early on in the interview, he addressed the police killing of George Floyd: “I’d like to say I’m surprised by what happened to him, but I’m not,” he said. “This is a cycle, and I feel that in some ways, the issue is that we’re addressing the wrong problem. We continue to make this about the police — the how of it. How can they police? Is it about sensitivity and de-escalation training and community policing? All that can make for a less-egregious relationship between the police and people of color.”

“But the how isn’t as important as the why, which we never address,” he continued. “The police are a reflection of a society. They’re not a rogue alien organization that came down to torment the black community. They’re enforcing segregation. Segregation is legally over, but it never ended. The police are, in some respects, a border patrol, and they patrol the border between the two Americas. We have that so that the rest of us don’t have to deal with it. Then that situation erupts, and we express our shock and indignation. But if we don’t address the anguish of a people, the pain of being a people who built this country through forced labor — people say, ‘I’m tired of everything being about race.’ Well, imagine how [expletive] exhausting it is to live that.”

Yep, that’s right.

“No shirt, no shoes, no masks – no service”

The above sign, without the mask requirement, is commonly found posted at the entrance to many business establishments in the US and has been so for a long time. As far as I am aware, it has not caused any controversy and shirtless or shoeless people have not threatened the businesses with lawsuits. And yet, because mask wearing has been made into a culture war issue by Donald Trump, we now have the bizarre spectacle of people doing just that. Take this case:

Hugo’s Tacos, a beloved LA chain, announced Sunday that it was temporarily closing both its taco stands after its employees reported increasing harassment from customers who refused to wear masks during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

The harassment – ranging from racial slurs to food and objects being thrown at employees – “has taken a toll” on staff, CEO and part-owner Bill Kohne told BuzzFeed News. Kohne said he wants to give his employees a break as the company works toward solutions to better protect them.

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How newspapers are being destroyed

Hasan Minhaj has another excellent show about how private equity firms are destroying the newspaper industry the way they have destroy so many other companies, by borrowing money to buy troubled companies, saddling those companies with that debt, squeezing as much money as they can by cutting jobs and selling assets and paying themselves huge fees, and then walking away leaving the companies to die.

Ah, the glorious working of capitalism!

The racist counter attacks begin

One of the encouraging signs about the recent demonstrations against police brutality and systemic racism is that they have not been confined just to the big cities but have also extended to small towns across the country. However, it was only a matter of time before there was a backlash against this and we saw one such incident in Bethel, Ohio when a woman in that town decided to organize a rally to show solidarity with the demonstrations that were taking place in cities across the country.
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Yesterday’s abortion ruling was underwhelming

On the surface, the ruling by the US Supreme Court in the case of JUNE MEDICAL SERVICES L. L. C. ET AL. v. RUSSO to strike down Louisiana’s law that made access to abortion very difficult was a big win for abortion rights. But a closer examination reveals that it may have just set up the next legal challenge.

To understand the ruling, we must note that the Louisiana law under scrutiny was just the latest in a long line of so-called ‘trap’ (targeted regulation of abortion providers) that anti-abortion legislators pass that try to circumvent the right to abortion not by banning them but by imposing regulations on providers that are highly burdensome and unnecessary under the guise of protecting the health of the women seeking abortions. The aim of these laws is to shut down as many abortion clinics as they can because they cannot meet the requirements. This would primarily affect poor people since rich people will be able travel long distances or out of state or even out of the country to get abortions.
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