citationsneededpodcast

Newsletter 12.03.19

Added 2019-12-03 22:01:09 +0000 UTC

Hello everyone!

We've supercharged this week's newsletter with a whole lot of articles we've been reading.

Thanks again for all your support; there is truly no way to thank you enough. Another new episode drops tomorrow, so watch out!

-- Marco, Nima, Florence and Adam

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The My Favorite Murder Problem - Andrea DenHoed The New Republic (November 22, 2019)

The popular true crime podcast My Favorite Murder advertises itself as a humorous and feminist take on the true crime genre. Its dispassionate and retributive approach to punishment, however, can play into toxic tough on crime beliefs. Check this out as a companion to our latest episode on forensic pseudoscience.

The New York Times Is Spreading Charter School Lies - Diane Ravitch, Jacobin (November 30, 2019)

A New York Times article about charter schools argues that non-white parents support charter schools. The article, rightly excoriated in Jacobin by Diane Ravitch, ignores movements by Black and Hispanic activists to fight charter schools and relies on questionable proof provided by charter advocates.

Nancy Pelosi Is Sitting on a Bill that Would Strengthen Unions - Rachel M. Cohen, The Intercept (December 2, 2019)

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has not brought a bill that would strengthen unions to the house floor for a vote despite the wide support from Democrats and union efforts to push for it. Pelosi seems more focused on passing the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Trade Agreement to appease centrists, an agreement that many unions believe does not have effective labor enforcement mechanisms.

Why 15,000 Indiana Teachers Just Walked Off the Job - Jeff Schuhrke, In These Times (November 19, 2019)

Indiana teachers held a day of action to protest policies that Republican lawmakers put in place that add extra stress to schools. The policies include cuts to education to pay for raises in teachers’ salaries, a new standardized test that where student performance is tied to teacher compensation and a required 15-hour “externship” where teachers must work with a local business in order to renew their teaching license.

Appalachia vs. the Carceral State - Sam Adler-Bell, The New Republic (November 25, 2019)

Organizers in rural Kentucky have fought efforts by their Congressman and local officials to build prisons in the region. Friend-of-the-show Sam Adler-Bell notes that the activists believe increasing the carceral state will be harmful to the region and the economic investment in prisons would be better spent helping to address other issues in the community.

The Costs Of Not Releasing People From Prison - Vaidya Gullapalli, The Appeal (November 27, 2019)

America’s carceral state has created an aging prison population. State costs for prison healthcare have ballooned as prisoners have aged. Advocates have called for laws that will allow prisoners to be released if they no longer could pose a threat.

Fingerprint Analysis Is High-Stakes Work — but It Doesn’t Take Much to Qualify as an Expert - Jordan Smith, The Intercept (November 29, 2019)

A test to qualify to be an expert in fingerprint analysis has been shown to be very easy to pass. Easily passing such tests leads to little accountability in assuring quality of fingerprint analysis, especially troubling in a field with a high rate of false-positives.

20 Years After Seattle, the Clash of Globalizations Rages On - Quinn Slobodian, The Nation (November 29, 2019)

The 20th anniversary of protests against the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Seattle come as the Trump Administration is letting the WTO die off. Some argue that opposing the WTO means that you must be aligned with Trump, but the original protests called for an economic restructuring with an emphasis on racial and environmental justice. The right-wing attack on globalization is merely an acceleration of neoliberal politics.

See also Dan Denvir's look back at the WTO protests and their legacy today.

Bloomberg’s Scandals Ignored or Underplayed by Press Cheerleaders - Ari Paul, FAIR (November 25, 2019)

Op-ed writers were quick to lavish praise on billionaire Michael Bloomberg as the new centrist alternative to Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren and as someone who ran New York CIty like a business. These editorials ignore Bloomberg’s corruption scandals while serving as mayor, his documented history of sexism and his enabling of racist policing tactics.

Media Wonder: Why Can’t Venezuela Be More Like Bolivia? - Joshua Cho, FAIR (November 26, 2019)

After the coup in Bolivia, journalists have started to openly wonder why there has been no domino effect leading to a coup in Venezuela. Reporters have tacitly bemoaned that the Venezuelan military has not turned against Maduro.

Amazon's On-Site Emergency Care Endangers Its Employees - H. Claire Brown, The Intercept (December 2, 2019 )

Amcare, Amazon’s on-site medical unit, has been sweeping workplace injuries under the rug and not referring workers to outside medical services when they have been injured on the job. The units are meant to only provide basic first aid, but the medical decisions they have made extends past that.

Is It Imperialist to “Green” the Military? - Emily Tamkin, The New Republic (November 27, 2019)

Elizabeth Warren’s calls to make the U.S. military more environmentally friendly have been criticized by members of the Left. They believe making the military a central part of a climate plan would lead to increasing military funding, which could be used in imperialist pursuits.

The OAS has to answer for its role in the Bolivian coup - Ha-Joon Chang, James K Galbraith, Thea Lee, et al., The Guardian (December 2, 2019)

The Organization of American States (OAS) played a key role in legitimizing the coup in Bolivia. The OAS contested the results of the Bolivian presidential elections, but they misrepresented the country’s quick vote with the official vote and discounted the time it took for rural areas to have their votes collected.

Why The Latest Moderate Criticisms of Free College Don’t Make Sense - Mark Huelsman, Demos (November 22, 2019)

Democratic candidates opposed to free public college make the argument that tuitionless higher education would lead to the rich children not paying their fair share. Yet, there is little evidence that the children of wealthy parents would be the largest beneficiaries of free college and the argument ignores that few complain about free public elementary and high school for everyone.

It’s Not Enough to Be Against “the Monopolies” - Nicole M. Aschoff, Jacobin (November 21, 2019)

Matthew Stoller’s new book Goliath describes the history of the 20th century Left becoming more corporate and pins the blame on monopolies. Stoller dismisses anti-capitalist critiques in favor of supporting broad antitrust language, but his critique misses that anti-trust alone cannot alter the economy or the corporate drive.

'They're profiting off pain': the push to rein in the $1.2bn prison phone industry - Michael Sainato, The Guardian (November 26, 2019)

Two companies control more than 70% of the prison phone market. They increase profits by adding undisclosed consumer fees that drain money from families and friends of incarcerated people. Prison reform advocates are pushing to make phone calls free for prisoners or significantly lower and cap the high rates and fees charged.

It’s not thanks to capitalism that we’re living longer, but progressive politics - Jason Hickel, The Guardian (November 22, 2019)

As usual, Hickel's latest is a must-read: Capitalists like Jordan Peterson, Bill Gates and Steven Pinker argue that capitalism and industrialization brought about a massive improvement of the life expectancy. However, history shows that industrialization actually harmed people’s life expectancy until social movements won the fight for government officials to implement sanitation.

Pete Buttigieg says marijuana arrests signify "systemic racism." His South Bend police fit the bill - Ryan Grim, Akela Lacy, The Intercept (November 26, 2019)

Pete Buttigieg has frequently brought up the disparities in marijuana arrests between black and white people, citing that black people were 3.7 times more likely to be arrested for pot than whites. While he was mayor of South Bend, the disparity of marijuana arrests was worse than the national and state disparities between 2012 and 2018.

Pete Buttigieg Is a Lying MF - Michael Harriot, The Root (November 25, 2019)

In 2011, Pete Buttigieg said in an interview that many non-white children did not have role models to motivate them to achieve in school. This argument, coming from a white man who attended a prestigious private school before going to prestigious universities, ignores the systemic disadvantages in funding that schools in minority communities face and the racism that non-white children deal with in the education system.