For foodies, you can have a frozen yogurt with toppings out on 9th Avenue, then top it off with strawberry shortcake on the 5th floor patio. Who needs dinner anyway??
Opinion by Jennifer Rubin. Jennifer Rubin writes reported opinion for The Washington Post. She is the author of “Resistance: How Women Saved Democracy from Donald Trump.” Twitter
I recently traveled to the Netherlandswith family. One evening, after an exhilarating performance at Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, we decided to walk to our hotel. It was a 30- to 40-minute walk, but the weather was pleasant. At times, our path took us near parks that weren’t very well-lit. It was late on a weeknight, so some streets were rather deserted. Yet I never once felt nervous, defensively clutched my purse or wanted to reroute us to main thoroughfares. Now, I also feel safe walking in most parts of New York City. But that’s largely because police are everywhere. Visible on the street, in cars, on horseback.
And that got me thinking. What are the choices about crime each country made, and what are the costs of those decisions?
In the Netherlands, there are roughly 2.6 guns for every 100 people; there are more than 120 guns per 100 people in the United States. In the Netherlands, it is very, very hard to get a gun; in the United States, it is ridiculously easy to get guns. In fact, according to a report by Mariel Alper and Lauren G. Beatty in the Bureau of Justice Statistics, roughly “21% of state and 20% of federal prisoners said they possessed a gun during their offense. … About 29% of state and 36% of federal prisoners serving time for a violent offense possessed a gun during the offense.”
In the Netherlands there are about 27 gun homicides a year. Not 27 per 100,000. Total. In the United States, the Pew Research Center reports, 48,830 people died from gun-related injuries in 2021. (The U.S. population is about 20 times that of the Netherlands; U.S. gun homicides are more than 1,777 times the number in the Netherlands.)
Also, the Dutch do not incarcerate people for drug addiction. It’s one reason they have locked up so few people. The Guardian reported, “Since 2014, 23 prisons have been shut, turning into temporary asylum centres, housing and hotels. … The number of prison sentences imposed fell from 42,000 in 2008 to 31,000 in 2018 — along with a two-thirds drop in jail terms for young offenders. Registered crimes plummeted by 40% in the same period, to 785,000 in 2018.”
By contrast, a report from the Prison Policy Initiative found that in the United States, “Drug offenses still account for the incarceration of over 350,000 people, and drug convictions remain a defining feature of the federal prison system. And until the pandemic hit … police were still making over 1 million drug possession arrests each year, many of which lead to prison sentences.” As a result, “Drug arrests continue to give residents of over-policed communities criminal records, hurting their employment prospects and increasing the likelihood of longer sentences for any future offenses.” In short, the United States has 163 times the number of incarcerated people as the Netherlands, more than eight times as many per 100,000 people.
Tomorrow is the federal holiday honoring Juneteenth, the celebration of the announcement in Texas on June 19th, 1865, that enslaved Americans were free.
On April 9, 1865, General Robert E. Lee surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia to General Ulysses S. Grant of the U.S. Army, but it was not until June 2 that General Edmund Kirby Smith surrendered the Trans-Mississippi Department, the last major army of the Confederacy, to the United States, in Galveston, Texas. Smith then fled to Mexico.
Seventeen days later, Major General Gordon Granger of the U.S. Army arrived to take charge of the soldiers stationed there. On June 19, he issued General Order Number 3. It read:
“The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor.”
The order went on: “The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere.”
While the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution abolishing enslavement except as punishment for a crime had passed through Congress on January 31, 1865, and Lincoln had signed it on February 1, the states were still in the process of ratifying it.
So Granger’s order referred not to the Thirteenth Amendment, but to the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863, which declared that Americans enslaved in states that were in rebellion against the United States “shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free; and that the Executive Government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons.” Granger was informing the people of Galveston that, Texas having been in rebellion on January 1, 1863, their world had changed. The federal government would see to it that, going forward, white people and Black people would be equal.
Black people in Galveston met the news Order No. 3 brought with celebrations in the streets, but emancipation was not a gift from white Americans. Black Americans had fought for the United States and worked in the fields to grow cotton the government could sell. Those unable to leave their homes had hidden U.S. soldiers, while those who could leave indicated their hatred of the Confederacy and enslavement with their feet. They had demonstrated their equality and their importance to the postwar United States.
The next year, after the Thirteenth Amendment had been added to the Constitution, Texas freedpeople gathered on June 19, 1866, to celebrate with prayers, speeches, food, and socializing the coming of their freedom. By the following year, the federal government encouraged “Juneteenth” celebrations, eager to explain to Black citizens the voting rights that had been put in place by the Military Reconstruction Act in early March 1867, and the tradition of Juneteenth began to spread to Black communities across the nation.
The Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) met yesterday, June 15th, to discuss and make recommendations on the selection of strain(s) to be included in the periodic updated COVID-19 vaccines for the 2023-2024 vaccination campaign. The discussion included consideration of a monovalent vaccine targeting XBB-lineage for fall to winter, 2023-2024.
In an Association of Immunization Managers (AIM) statement to members yesterday, it was said that the Committee voted unanimously ‘yes’ to recommend “an update of current vaccine composition to a monovalent XBB-lineage” for the 2023-2024 formula of COVID-19 vaccines in the U.S.
AIM goes on to say that “the Committee heard from Pfizer, Moderna, and Novavax on their updated COVID-19 vaccine products. Overall, manufacturer data suggested that while efficacy remains strong after 6 months since bivalent booster, efficacy wanes over time. An additional dose of XBB-adapted vaccines offers improved responses against circulating strains, with higher responses with monovalent than bivalent vaccines. All three manufacturers are prepared to have vaccine available in fall 2023. Manufacturing of XBB.1.5 sub lineage vaccines may be complete as soon as July, but FDA clarified that an updated COVID-19 vaccine rollout would likely not occur until the fall. Because of the robust data presented and that speed of manufacturing, the Committee felt that the XBB.1.5 sub lineage (versus other sub lineages) should be selected for the fall 2023 vaccine.”
Slides and a recording of the live advisory committee session are available at the link below:
llinois Governor J.B. Pritzker delivers remarks at the North America’s Building Trades Unions (NABTU) 2019 legislative conference in Washington, U.S., April 9, 2019. REUTERS/Jeenah Moon/File Photo
CHICAGO, June 13 (Reuters) – Illinois has become the first state to legislate against the banning of books in public libraries, a practice that has been on the rise across the United States as conservatives look to suppress some books dealing with race, history and LGBTQ topics.
Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, a Democrat, signed the historic measure into law on Monday in a Chicago library. The law goes into effect on Jan. 1, 2024, the governor’s office said in a statement.
“Here in Illinois, we don’t hide from the truth, we embrace it,” Pritzker said. “Young people shouldn’t be kept from learning about the realities of our world; I want them to become critical thinkers, exposed to ideas that they disagree with, proud of what our nation has overcome.”
Under the new law, Illinois public libraries can only access state grants if they adopt the American Library Association’s Library Bill of Rights, which stipulates that “materials should not be proscribed or removed because of partisan or doctrinal disapproval.”
During the 2021-2022 school year, the push to ban books has accelerated, as issues such as transgender rights and critical race theory, which highlights how racism is systemic part of U.S. legal history, have become political and social flashpoints, especially in conservative Republican-dominated states such as Florida and Texas.
Conservatives have called on public schools and libraries to remove more than 1,600 titles, according to a report published in September by PEN America, an advocacy group that says its mission to protect freedom expression.
In Illinois alone, there were 67 attempts to ban books in 2022, according to the Chicago-based American Library Association (ALA), which has been tracking censorship attempts nationwide. It says the majority of books targeted were written about or by LGTBQ people or people of color.
Some advocates for restrictions on books in schools and libraries say some materials are sexually explicit. They also call for parents to have more control over what materials are available to their children.
“We object to gender influencing, indoctrination of our kids toward anti-racism and leftist agendas,” Laura Hois, co-chair of a chapter of Awake Illinois in Downers Grove, a Chicago suburb, said to a local ABC affiliate. “We’re objecting to those things yet Governor Pritzker keeps taking more and more steps to extinguish parental rights.”
Utah, Missouri and several other states have enacted laws that allow school administrations to restrict books that they deem inappropriate for young readers, according to PEN America.
“The books in our libraries should be chosen by librarians, not extremist politicians. Other states may choose to embrace prejudice and divisive ideologies, but our state is going in a better direction,” said Democratic State Representative Anne Stava-Murray, who represents Downers Grove, in support of the Illinois measure.
One of the most frequently banned book has been “Gender Queer: A Memoir” by Maia Kobabe, while the late Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, whose works largely deal with African-American history, has been one of the most banned authors.
Just this spring, a school in Miami-Dade County removed a book containing the poem that young Black poet Amanda Gorman recited at President Joe Biden’s inauguration from its library used by elementary students. The poem “The Hill We Climb,” offers a hopeful vision for a deeply divided country.
Hidden Brain Media is an independent production company that aims to help curious people understand the world, and themselves.
Our host and Executive Editor Shankar Vedantam has been reporting on human behavior and social science research for more than 25 years. In 2010, he published a book further exploring these topics and introducing the idea of “the hidden brain.”
What, exactly, is the “hidden brain”? This is a term Shankar created to describe a range of influences that manipulate us without our awareness. Some aspects of the hidden brain have to do with mental shortcuts or heuristics; others are related to errors in the way memory and attention work. Some deal with social dynamics and relationships. The “hidden brain,” in other words, is a metaphor, much like the “selfish gene.” Just as there are no strands of DNA that shout, “Me first!” no part of the human brain is disguised under sunglasses and fedora. By drawing a simple line between mental activities we are aware of and mental activities we are not aware of, the “hidden brain” subsumes many concepts in wide circulation: the unconscious, the subconscious, the implicit.
Our exploration of these ideas can be heard every week on the Hidden Brain podcast and radio show. Shankar and NPR launched the podcast in 2015, and it now receives millions of downloads per week, and is regularly listed as one of the top 20 podcasts in the world. Our radio show, which debuted in 2017, is heard on more than 400 public radio stations across the country.
In 2019, we launched Hidden Brain Media to allow us to connect more deeply with our audience and to experiment with new ways of telling Hidden Brain stories across a range of different platforms.
Here are links to 2 recent podcasts discussing how science is studying meditation:
You’re invited to celebrate Alzheimer’s and Brain Awareness Month this June! Join your First Hill neighbors for our first annual Brain Health Block Party. From 12:30 – 2:30 p.m. on Wednesday June 21, stop by any participating site to enjoy an outdoor brain-healthy activity such as bike-powered smoothie making, games and more. A free event for all ages. Event passports available at each activity station. Start wherever you like, and visit at least three stations for a chance to be entered into a drawing for a special brain-health raffle prize! Walking between all six stations is about 1 mile. Learn more and View Map
Mr. Appelbaum is a member of the editorial board. Ms. Keller is a photographer based in Seattle.
Electric vehicles are rare in Moses Lake, Wash., a small city in the fertile Columbia Basin about a three-hour drive east of Seattle. In that conservative farms-and-factories community, few people have the cash or the inclination. The only electric vehicle I saw during a two-day visit last month was a Tesla in the hotel parking lot.
Over the next few years, however, hundreds of Moses Lake residents are going to be entering the electric vehicle business. Two different companies, attracted by cheap hydropower, are opening plants there, each backed by $100 million in federal money, to produce a key ingredient for electric vehicle batteries.
The investment is part of the roughly half a trillion dollars the Biden administration is marshaling to transform an economy fueled by carbon into one fueled by clean, renewable energy, and it illustrates a gamble at the heart of that broader effort.
Instead of delivering electric vehicles, solar panels and other green technologies at the lowest possible cost, no matter their country of origin, the Biden administration is determined to use this opportunity to expand domestic manufacturing. And it is concentrating much of that effort in rural and Rust Belt communities, where reactionary politics have taken hold most strongly. The plan to combat global warming is also a bid for industrial revival and a transformed political landscape.
There is a real risk that President Biden’s economic and political aims will come into conflict with his environmental goals. If domestic production results in higher costs, that could suppress demand for electric vehicles. Political opposition to renewable energy, on the rise in many conservative communities, could impede production. But giving people an economic stake in the transition to green energy may well be the nation’s best chance to build a durable political consensus in favor of confronting global warming.
My cell phone started ringing just as I turned the key in my front door. George, my dear friend and neighbor in downtown Los Angeles, was calling.
We had just shared a celebratory lunch, and an unwelcome surprise awaited him when he returned to his apartment. Building management had installed a new digital lock on his front door while we were out.
And he didn’t have the code.
“One person’s efficiency tool can be another’s obstacle.” | Credit: Getty
On the eve of his 90th birthday, George found himself shut out of his long-time home.
I rushed across the plaza that separates our buildings. I had a hunch what must have occurred.
Can’t drive anymore? “Just call Uber” isn’t a solution for someone who doesn’t own a smartphone.
Building management, it seemed, had been alerting tenants about the upcoming change via email and text — methods of communication my friend didn’t use. As his eyesight had been faltering, George hadn’t been getting online much lately. His sole lifeline to the world was his ever-ringing flip phone.
Apps for All (Who Can Use Them)
In the name of efficiency, more companies are driving customers to conduct business digitally. QR codes for menus in restaurants. COVID-19 vaccines scheduled exclusively online. Apps for everything, from banking to health care to travel to routine maintenance requests.
The presumption that everyone’s life is fully digital — and that everybody is, or wants to be, comfortable with screens — shuts out many who may not be deft with the technology, or even have access to it.
George panicked last year when his building’s management company shut down its on-site office and began requiring tenants pay rent digitally. Having to mail in the check he used to deliver in person increased the possibility of late fees. Paying online was not something with which he felt comfortable.
Texted to Distraction
My 85-year-old mother just had a medical issue — the first in her life — and suddenly found herself barraged with texts directing her at an already stressful time to upload documents, respond to surveys and confirm appointments. Perhaps even worse, finding an alternative method of contact (such as . . . a phone number) was usually impossible.
Last year, the appliance store from which she’d purchased a new refrigerator demanded that she fill out a detailed form sent to her via text, and to upload a picture of the defective merchandise before a repairperson would respond.
Can’t drive anymore? “Just call Uber” isn’t a solution for someone who doesn’t own a smartphone.
One person’s efficiency tool can be another’s obstacle, said Dr. Caroline Cicero, a gerontology professor and director of the University of Southern California’s Age Friendly University Initiative. While helping her father recently to deposit a check at a bank, she found herself frustrated when the branch manager tried to steer him to instead use an app.
“I don’t think we should assume that everyone, young or old or middle-aged, is better off using an app to do our banking,” she said. “Companies need to provide humans to talk with. Automation and robots cannot handle questions that may not be pre-written.”
Like the situation with George. That afternoon during his lockout, we each stood in his hallway on our respective phones, frantically calling various numbers in search of help.
The digital keypad company representative petulantly told my friend that the records indicated he’d been emailed and texted codes.
Blinded by Technology
“But I can’t receive texts, and I’m locked out,” said George, indignant. “I’m not able to access my computer.”
To the millennial on the other end of the phone, the idea that one couldn’t access information on their phone was preposterous.
“Check your email on your phone,” he insisted, oblivious to the idea that someone couldn’t. “I also texted you a code.”
After an hour, a friendly building maintenance person showed up, extolling the virtues of the new system as if he were a salesperson.
“People just love these new digital locks,” he said, ignoring the addled state of the tenant before him. “You can give the code to friends. You don’t have to bother with a key!”
Looking at me, he added, “You can use the app to open the door for him, from wherever you are.”
“Can’t I just have a key?”
“He’s my friend, not my father,” I said, annoyed that this person didn’t understand how demoralizing it was for a person not to be able to open his own front door. “How would your grandmother deal with this system?”
Well, he shrugged, she probably couldn’t. Then, he called up a temporary code that allowed us to enter George’s unit. Inside, we logged onto his email, and retrieved the company-assigned digits that would now serve as his lock. They hadn’t even paid for the upgrade that allowed you to choose your own code.
How Will He Remember?
George panicked. How would he remember these random series of numbers, much less punch them in on a tiny keypad?
“Can’t I just have a key?” George asked, pointing to the old-fashioned keyhole above the keypad. “There’s no way I’ll remember that, much less be able to see those numbers.”
In the meantime, I rooted on the countertop for a pen, and began writing out cheat-sheets. Sticking a piece of paper in George’s wallet, I also made a record of it for myself.
“This is your new key,” I said, trying to feign optimism.
Landlord with a Heart
Later on, I, along with George’s daughter — a lawyer who lives in a different city — composed stern emails to management explaining the severity of having locked a tenant out of his apartment — and installing a system that was challenging for him to navigate.
The next morning, the friendly maintenance man appeared at the front door of George’s apartment — old-fashioned key in hand.
George was happy, and relieved, at this work-around that relieved him from digital jail.
Later that day, I ran into another neighbor, Nicole, who just turned 83.
“Did you hear we got new locks?” she said. “They’re amazing! I love not having to carry a key.”
Lisa Napoli covered the dawn of the World Wide Web for The New York Times, MSNBC and Marketplace on National Public Radio. She is the author of four books, most recently about the “founding mothers” of NPR.
BY JESSICA GRESKO, ASSOCIATED PRESS – 06/08/23 3:08 PM ET from The Hill
Thanks to Sylvia P.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled for the family of a nursing home resident with dementia that had sued over his care, declining to use the case to broadly limit the right to sue government workers.
The man’s family went to court alleging that he was given drugs to keep him easier to manage in violation of his rights. The justices had been asked to use his case to limit the ability of people to use a federal law to sue for civil rights violations. That outcome could have left tens of millions of people participating in federal programs, including Medicare and Medicaid, without an avenue to go to court to enforce their rights.
The Supreme Court has previously said that a section of federal law — “Section 1983” — broadly gives people the right to sue state and local governments when their employees violate rights created by any federal statute.
The court by a 7-2 vote reiterated that Thursday, with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson writing that Section 1983 “can presumptively be used to enforce unambiguously conferred federal individual rights.” Both liberal and conservative justices joined her majority opinion while conservative Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented.
The court had been asked to say that when Congress creates a federal spending program — giving states money to provide services such as Medicare and Medicaid — they shouldn’t face lawsuits from individuals under Section 1983. The court rejected that invitation.
The specific case the justices heard involves the interaction of Section 1983 and the Federal Nursing Home Reform Act, a 1987 law that outlines requirements for nursing homes that accept federal Medicare and Medicaid funds. The court was being asked to answer whether a person can use Section 1983 to go to court with claims their rights under the nursing home act are violated. The answer is yes, the court said.
The Biden administration had argued to the high court that Congress did not intend to allow Section 1983 lawsuits when it enacted the nursing home legislation.
The case in front of the court involved Gorgi Talevski, who was a resident of Valparaiso Care and Rehabilitation, a government nursing home in Indiana. His family said the nursing home found it difficult to care for Talevski, and so gave him powerful drugs to restrain him, then involuntarily transferred him to another facility. The facility says Talevski repeatedly acted violently and in a sexually aggressive manner and that drugs were prescribed by doctors.
Talevski’s family sued under Section 1983, saying his rights had been violated. A trial court dismissed the case, but a federal court of appeals said it could proceed. Talevski died in 2021.
The opinion was one of four the court issued Thursday, including a 5-4 ruling in favor of Black voters in Alabama in a congressional redistricting case. That case had been closely watched for its potential to weaken the landmark Voting Rights Act.
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