Meet the world’s first travel-optimized playing cards

Long flights, cramped train rides, and fully booked hostels — traveling can be fun, but also especially uncomfortable and tiring without the right distractions. Instead of immediately hopping on your phone or opening a book, it can be nice to play with something a little more interactive, like this Air Deck.

Most playing decks notoriously show wear and tear over time. The cards bend or start to crumple with overuse, making them unplayable. But these durable cards are lightweight, waterproof and even washable. So you can take them on your next beach trip, dinner or anywhere else, and they’ll stay safe with a durable,  protective matte varnish.

It even comes in a waterproof deluxe tuck box, so they stay pristine. Just toss them in your bag, and you’re ready for your next ice-breaker or casual game: usually, this two pack of Air Decks is $17.90, but you can get it now for $13.99.

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Italian writer Edoardo Nesi on the illusions of global capitalism: “We have lost our way”

(Credit: Getty Images)

We all know all about globalization and its consequences, to note the obvious. But how many of us know how well we know this phenom? How many of us are clear in our minds about these things? How many of us look at a potholed road or at falling plaster in a third-grade classroom, or drive past blighted towns and abandoned farms and factories, or know some of the many millions who now drift toward poverty in a state of excruciating insecurity — how many of us are aware of a thousand such threads in the fabric of our lives and say, “Yes, well, this is the era of globalization”?

Some but not so many, by my reckoning.

“Globalization” became accepted shorthand for many complex matters instantly at the end of the Cold War — Cold War I, I should say. I have always found our near-universal approval of this term suspect. It is a mask, obscuring more than it reveals. For most of us, the process signified is reduced to statistical matter that abstracts reality even as it purports to describe it. This is reliably the result when one mistakes data for understanding, as our age insists on doing. A state of ignorance prevails, and I do not resist the thought that this is just as intended. Our humanity is dehumanized, if you can manage the paradox.

A book and an author bring these thoughts to mind. I just read the one and met the other. Edoardo Nesi stands at the front edge and the far end of the globalization phenom all at once. It’s broken, he tells us. It failed us. Then he tells us, This is how it worked and what it looked like at very close range. Most of all, this is what it felt like. Then Nesi asks two questions: What do we do now? What’s the way forward? All these are why I want to tell you about Nesi and the book he just published: He brings us to the rock face of our circumstance.   

There are moments when uncertainty is useful because it makes alternatives available, and ours is such a moment, in my read. A lot hangs in the balance since Donald Trump’s astonishing victory over the quintessential representative of the liberal consensus — the globalizing elite. Variants of this circumstance are evident in other countries. What now? What’s next? I greatly like the chance to ask these questions and can think of no better time to consider them.  

“At the heart of our civilization we find a huge problem,” Nesi reflected when I met him in New York a couple of weeks ago. “We have lost our way, haven’t we?”

Among Nesi’s various questions, this one requires no answer.

*  *  *

“Ignorance” is a strong term. I had better explain what I mean by it, and a brief story will do.

Years ago, when our post–Cold War triumphalism was in its ripest phase, I was on the foreign desk of one of the big weeklies (big then, anyway). There was a Paris correspondent named Gail, and there is no need to note a last name. Gail seethed at the French and their Sunday laws and small-merchant protections and restrictions against Carrefour, “Home Despot,” as I called it, and all the other hypermarchés. “They don’t get it,” Gail would complain with shrill conviction over the telephone. “They don’t see the globalization logic.” Then she would sigh: “The French!”

Gail went on holiday one summer. When she returned and I asked where she had gone, she swooned over a village she knew on the south slope of the Pyrenees. “Every evening they gather in the square and drink the local wine under these strings of twinkling lights, and the bread they bake every morning is the best I’ve ever had.” Then Gail scheduled her next piece — another harangue against France’s commercial and labor protections.

This is what I mean by “ignorance.” She was a sleepwalker — as so many of us are, now as then. In our somnambulism we destroy much of what we love — certain it must be right because the data tell us so.

Edoardo Nesi is now a writer and has a seat in the Italian Chamber of Deputies. If I had to explain his intent in a single phrase, I would say he rehumanizes the dehumanized. He is an antidote to ignorance. He watched at intimate range during the 1990s and 2000s as all that was close to him — families, a family business, an ancient industry, an Italian city — was destroyed in the name of globalism’s logic. He is an articulate victim of our culture of data, we might say. And now he is not letting go of the “why?” and the “what next?” of it.

Nesi is from Prato, which is, or was, “an entire city based on the textile industry,” as he puts it. This had been so for a century or more. There was an industrial culture that could also be called a design culture or an artisanal culture or a social culture or a family culture — and where one ended and another began it would be impossible to say: The city’s weave was very dense. There was a long history of pride. Nesi, born in 1964, took over his family firm while still in his 30s.   

Then came the globalizing 1990s. Long story short, the quality Prato had long lived on gave way to cheap production and price. It could not compete with non-Western suppliers, China chief among them. In a city of 200,000, jobs evaporated by the tens of thousands; factories closed by the hundreds. Nesi was lucky when, in 2004, he surrendered and sold Lanificio T. O. Nesi & Figli, the family’s 78-year-old woolen mill; most other companies simply drew down the shutters, no interested buyer in sight.

Nesi now has 10 books behind him, seven of them novels. His latest is “Everything Is Broken Up and Dances,” a title deriving from a line on an old Doors recording. His co-author on this one is Guido Maria Brera, a lifelong friend. By way of brief, alternating chapters, the book is a conversation we are invited to listen to. The two talk about their initial delusions when globalization’s salesmen came a-calling and sold them Brooklyn Bridge. They talk about the systematic destruction of small enterprises, long-established industries and whole cities. Brera is now a fund manager in London, which is useful when they come to the financial mechanisms at work. The two of them are excellent on “the inferno of deflation,” as they call the fates of Greece, Spain, Italy and Portugal at the hands of the European Union during the post–2008 crisis — a complex topic they, once again, rehumanize.

Nesi and Brera get granular in a way I find usefully illuminating — and rare among American writers on this topic. They show us how to understand globalization more realistically, without all the abstraction. Example: Nesi tells the story of a friend in Prato, the owner of another textile factory, whose bank cuts long-standing lines of credit because the bank’s algorithms indicate that mills in Prato have become too big a risk. This is where the tale gets good.

“I don’t even know what an algorithm might be,” Nesi’s friend protests.

“Let me give you a piece of advice,” his banker replies. “If you move your offices in Prato just three or four miles away, say to Sesto Fiorentino, where there is no textile industry, maybe up in Milan they might give you back some of the line of credit you used to have. That way you can trick the algorithm, you see what I mean?”

I have no trouble seeing: This is the diabolical logic of globalization — an excellent example of what I call the irrationality of hyper-rationality.

I sense Nesi still nurses heartbreak — an impression that meeting him did not dispel. I know no one else who captures “the lack of meaning in everything,” as he puts it in “Everything Is Broken,” when the globalizing process hits a city like Sherman’s march into Atlanta. It is hard not to share the inner desolation he describes — a topic we Americans scarcely touch upon. “When globalization finishes, you have nothing,” he said as we conversed. “You’ve lost not only your job, or any general sense of well-being. It’s more. You no longer have” — he paused briefly — “even any philosophy of life.”

Not bad as a definition of nothing.

Brera, like Nesi in many passages, is properly bitter and properly blunt in ways one wishes more Americans were. Here is Brera on the essential American perversity of the post–Cold War era — the simultaneous rise of obsessive consumer culture and the dismantling of the social democratic norms so hard won in the mid–20th century: “Rights in exchange for merchandise. Social safety nets bartered for illusions of prosperity.”

I ask you, reader: Do you know a more succinct diagnosis of our current “political exchange,” as Brera calls it?

*  *  *

Nesi’s previous book, “Story of My People,” won the Strega Prize, Italy’s equivalent of the Pulitzer or the Prix Goncourt, the year after publication in 2010. He wanted me to read it, and I did: It is a hymn to the life and the city that Nesi now knows only in memory, and so makes a kind of preface to the more analytically rigorous new book. “A gracefully nostalgic memoir,” the Financial Times called the earlier volume.

This brings me to something I urge all of us to think about.

Nesi still wonders  whether the project now is to turn back — from the politics of Trump and the rightist parties in Europe, from globalization’s countless calamities, from the decline of the liberal order altogether — and correct the errors in the name of a restoration. One understands the question — it is commonly posed — but my answer is emphatically no. Globalization and the post–Cold War “order” — here I insist on the quotation marks — were fated from the first to fail because they were fashioned fraudulently and in the interests of too few. There is no going back from where we find ourselves, in my view. The project is to begin again and anew. I have always detested nostalgia as a form of depression, I should add, and consider now the very worst time to indulge in any.

“I’m very afraid, I’m very pessimistic,” Nesi said as we finished conversing. “I don’t think there’s any way forward.” One understands this, too. But pessimism prevails only when looking back. Face forward, and there are no more grounds for pessimism than for optimism. The future, by definition, will take whatever shape we in the present choose to give it. This we call history. The making of history is up to us.

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The Coca-Cola invasion is causing Mexico’s slow death by junk food

(Credit: AP Photo/Jim Cole)

A new Coca-Cola-run shop opens roughly every eight hours in Mexico. But despite this full-scale corporate takeover of Mexico’s cities, towns and diet, most people believe the severe obesity and diabetes problems here are down to local culture and individual choices. They would be wrong.

A block and a half from where I live there’s an Oxxo, a corner store owned by Coca-Cola that stocks chips, biscuits, soft drinks, nachos, cigarettes, beer, bottled water and sweets. There are two more Oxxos two and four blocks to the west, and another one a few blocks to the south. With predictable stock, bill-paying facilities and open 24 hours, even the most health-conscious and anti-consumerist people go to an Oxxo a few days a week.

 The Coca-Cola colonization

Oxxos have grown from 300 shops in Mexico in 1990 to nearly 16,000, and FEMSA (Coca-Cola) claims it serves 10 million people a day. Ironically, in addition to its chain of retail service stations, and its real estate division which aids the block-by-block colonization, FEMSA also has a health division which includes four pharmacy chains, acquired in 2013 and 2015. The Oxxos stock their own brands, including Heineken beer (minority owner) and Santa Clara milk. Together with the 400,000 other corner shops around the country — which also stock Coca-Cola and focus exclusively on junk food — the Oxxos are a saturation strategy that makes no-nutritious fake-food the easiest product or service to obtain.

Reinforcing that is the growth in chain restaurants at twice that of independent ones, and the massive informal workforce that buy junk food at wholesale prices and sell it outside stations, at bus stops and on buses, throughout the streets, at schools, in plazas and parks, and outside hospitals. Many of the street food vendors get supplies like cheese, mayonnaise and ground beef from Walmart’s Sam’s Club.

This fake-food colonization is bolstered by aggressive marketing strategies where products are packaged with pictures of colorful natural foods, though little real food is left in them, and absurdly, U.S. brands are associated with high quality. A McDonald’s burger costs around double the price of a street vendor’s burger, and brands like Snickers cost double that of the local equivalent.

Though in 2014 the Mexican government banned junk food advertising during children’s television shows at certain times, there is still an intense campaign aimed at getting children addicted early — on the internet, radios, and in newspapers and billboards, with mascots a common technique to develop a child’s emotional connection to a food, and half of all advertising offering a gift or linking to a website where kids can play games with the personalities and products.

At the end of last year, multinationals participated in a forum called Mercakids in Mexico, where they analyzed how to better reach children. Participants included Kidzania, a company that uses games to plant brands in the minds of kids, and Bonafont, which has a line of kids’ drinks that are full of sugar and artificial coloring.

The U.S. and multinationals are dumping their junk food in Mexico

This Coca-Cola and mass-junk food distribution was facilitated by NAFTA, an agreement that came into effect in 1994. It allows the U.S. to send its junk food here, while the U.S. imports tomatoes, chilies, cucumbers, limes, avocados, mangoes, and more from Mexico. In the 1990s, NAFTA meant that Mexican family farms couldn’t compete with the U.S. agricultural giants, and five million Mexican farmers were displaced into the cities. It was a forced conversion of sorts, where U.S. fast food restaurants and corporations that specialize in selling cheap poison in pretty packets were given even more room to take Mexican resources and run the show. U.S. investment into Mexican food companies also escalated from US$2.3 billion before NAFTA to $10.2 billion in 2012.

Mexico also became Walmart World: from Walmart-owned and -run pharmacies and food distributors, to its smaller Aurrera supermarkets and its sprawled drab department stores, Walmart is now Mexico’s largest food retailer. Its billion-dollar purchase of Cifra in 1997, under NAFTA’s foreign investment guidelines, was a major part of converting Mexico’s distinctive streets into mall-land and its diet into mall-diet.

The transnationals don’t understand that Mexico is corn

Before the era of a bacon-wrapped hot dog and Coca-Cola for breakfast, there was corn.

“Corn is Nanj jm’e, which means mother provider,” Andres Martinez Garcia tells me. He is a Mazatec artist and art restorer who grew up in the community of San Andres Hidalgo, in Huautla de Jimenez, Oaxaca, where 82.5 percent of the population speak an indigenous language, and only 3 percent of the buildings have internet.

“Our ancestors learned to domesticate corn around 8,000-12,000 years ago. Experimenting, they found they could use its leaves and kernels to make all sorts of things and food. The process of growing and using corn taught us to organize, and corn was also the start of science, for us — observation and theories. Without corn we wouldn’t have developed as we did, we wouldn’t be who we are. So for us, it means history, identity, life, science, culture, and organization. It is a way of life, and a way of coordinating with the land and the gods,” Martinez said.

For many indigenous Mexicans especially, corn is like a flag. It’s a “living identity.… We are no one without it,” Martinez explained.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t taken into account when NAFTA was signed, nor are any transnationals concerned about what Mexico’s indigenous people need, or about their land that they are taking for themselves.

“Now, our corn comes from overseas. Most of it is transgenic. That’s the impact of these transnationals: you buy from them, and they give you their worst food. They don’t respect the rights of life and they don’t care that there’s a ritual behind the corn. They just want a product that makes them more powerful, gives them money,” Martinez said.

From a diet of corn, beans and zucchini to a forced dependence on rubbish

Today, Mexicans come fourth in the world for the amount of highly processed food they eat per person, at 212 kilos per year. According to Kantar WorldPanel, Mexican families or households spent 30 percent of their expenses on junk food in 2014, with the lower and middle classes spending the highest proportion. This sort of diet is a recent change, and not part of Mexican culture, as many people assume.

“Before the Spanish invasion, the food we produced was healthy, organic and natural, and planted according to the climate, the time of year. The food system was part of a long ritual. Food wasn’t about stuff that came in packets. It — and the planting and harvesting — was a structure that life was organized around. Food wasn’t just something to satisfy you, it was a mental state,” Martinez said.

The Mexican indigenous food pyramid — known as the “sacred trinity” — revolved around three key foods: corn, beans and chili. Now, Martinez’s indigenous community consumes soft drinks, candy and other junk food, he says, as that is what is sold there. “We used to eat healthy food like beans, herbs, corn, and meat… but now people ask for pizza and hamburgers. If you serve them a plate of beans, they throw it out.”

Even in urban areas, the food Mexicans consume isn’t so much their choice or culture, but rather it is the result of the lack of variety provided by the transnationals and of exploitative work conditions. Mexicans work very long days, six to seven days a week. My neighbors, for example, sell clothes in the street from 9am to 8pm, seven days a week. These sorts of conditions make it hard to find the time to cook, and a low income means people seek high-carb and sugary foods that make them feel full and that are quick to consume and easy to buy.

People are converted to a corporate U.S. diet early. Children are going to school with just soft drink for breakfast, believing it will give them energy for the day. In one study, 59 percent of primary school kids in selected rural and indigenous communities were consuming soft drinks at least three times a day, with coffee as their next most common drink, and the traditional and more nutritious atole only coming in fourth. The coffee is usually instant Nescafe, rather than from locally grown coffee beans. Most schools sell fried food and sweets, but provide no or few healthy food options, and soft drinks have become part of the family in these communities. Coca-Cola is the preferred drink, to the point where offering a guest a Pepsi is almost insulting.

Researchers found it was the corner stores in the communities making the difference, as they have shifted from selling fruit and vegetables to junk food over the last decade, with most of these stores also covered in Coca-Cola advertising and merchandise. In schools, such advertising is prohibited, but Coca-Cola finds ways to “sponsor” sports courts, decorating them in its brand’s colors, and in one example school, the unsubtle text “hydrate after exercising.”

The great profits from selling junk food to the poor

Mexico is facing a serious health crisis, with diabetes claiming 80,000 lives a year. That is largely a result of a greedy industry making money out of selling junk food to the poor. There are four transnationals in Mexico that hog 95.9 percent of the soft drink market and 89.4 percent of the sweet and salty snacks market. FEMSA (Coca-Cola) and Alsea dominate the food service industry, with Alsea managing and operating restaurants like Domino’s, Starbucks, Burger King, Chili’s, and the Cheesecake Factory. In 2017, Alsea’s revenue was MXN 43 billion (US$2.3 billion).

These industries don’t just determine what food we have access to; they are also instrumental in determining Mexico’s health policies. At least half of the members of the Oment — the Mexican Observatory of Non-transmittable Diseases, which is meant to be the organization overseeing and promoting policy to combat Mexico’s obesity and diabetes problems — have a connection to, or are financed by the food and drink industries.

“Capitalism has decided for us. They tell us what we’re going to eat. They don’t care if our food is healthy, they are invading us with their food… what they do interferes with our territory, our way of life, our way of thinking. They don’t respect what we’ve had and done for thousands of years,” Martinez said.

The junk food invasion has contaminated Mexico’s culture and identity

The consequences of an imposed junk food diet go beyond diabetes.

“These foods are… extremely tasty, sometimes almost addictive. They imitate (real) food, and they are erroneously seen as healthy… they are publicized and sold aggressively, and they are culturally, socially and economically destructive,” says the World Health Organization.

In Mexico, U.S. companies and other industry giants are displacing indigenous and Mexican culture while pretending to consume it within the U.S., and spurring racism toward Mexicans and Mexican immigrants. Even the children in the study of rural and indigenous communities were clear. They told researchers that the junk food invasion causes contamination through the media, “contaminates our land, the water, our culture, our delicious traditional food.”

It brings transnational abuse and market domination that benefits only the rich and affects the poorest people.

“Capitalists see NAFTA as a space for satisfying their desires, not their needs, and for extending their power. They don’t care what indigenous people think, or about our autonomy. They don’t respect our way of life, or care about where we get our water from or what we use the land for. These companies are dedicated to displacing us,” Martinez concluded.

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Trump: “We are preparing for the military to secure our border”

A section of the US/Mexico border fence. (Credit: Getty/AP/Photo Montage by Salon)

President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that he is gearing up to order the U.S. military to police parts of the Mexican-American border. The president’s remarks intensified his recent rant regarding his desperate desire to see through his campaign promise to tighten border security.

“We have very bad laws for our border, and we are going to be doing some things. I’ve been speaking with General Mattis. We’re going to be doing things militarily,” Trump said at the White House, during a meeting with visiting Baltic leaders. “Until we can have a wall and proper security, we’re going to be guarding our border with the military. That’s a big step. We really haven’t done that before — or certainly not very much before.”

Trump reportedly reiterated to reporters on Tuesday: “We are preparing for the military to secure our border between Mexico and the United States. I think it’s something we have to do.”

The president also corroborated his remarks on Twitter:

WE WILL PROTECT OUR SOUTHERN BORDER! pic.twitter.com/Z7fqQKcnez

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 3, 2018

During the last couple of days, Trump has actively blustered about the need for stricter border control on Twitter, citing an increased urgency after hearing that a group of migrants from Honduras were traveling through Mexico. The story had been reported by his media outlet of choice, Fox News.

The big Caravan of People from Honduras, now coming across Mexico and heading to our “Weak Laws” Border, had better be stopped before it gets there. Cash cow NAFTA is in play, as is foreign aid to Honduras and the countries that allow this to happen. Congress MUST ACT NOW!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 3, 2018

Mexican government authorities intervened and have agreed to provide humanitarian visas to some of the 1,200 migrants who were reportedly part of the “caravan,” including infants and elderly individuals, according to the New York Times. The caravan is an annual event intended to draw attention to the growing refugee crisis in Central America, the Washington Post reported.

This would not be the first time that troops have been deployed to the border. In 2010, then President Barack Obama’s administration sent 1,200 National Guardsmen to support Homeland Security’s CBP and ICE amid heightened concerns about drug trafficking.

Advocacy groups highlighted how such patrol is harmful to border communities on social media.

https://twitter.com/RI4A/status/981290747667206145 

Trump’s latest remarks appear to be another attempt for the president to deliver to his base. Indeed, last week, Trump reportedly suggested in a private meeting with House Speaker Paul Ryan that funding for the construction of the border wall could come from the U.S. military budget, according to CNN. Reports of that plan were met with derision from both sides of the aisle.

“First Mexico was supposed to pay for it, then U.S. taxpayers and now our men and women in uniform? This would be a blatant misuse of military funds and tied up in court for years. Secretary Mattis ought not bother and instead use the money to help our troops rather than advance the president’s political fantasies,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer , D-N.Y., said in a statement.

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Bill Cosby’s defense granted two huge wins ahead of retrial

Bill Cosby arrives for jury selection in his sexual assault retrial, April 3, 2018, in Norristown, Pa. (Credit: AP/Corey Perrine)

The judge in Bill Cosby’s retrial for sexual assault handed the embattled comedian’s defense team two huge wins on Tuesday.

The first ruling allows Cosby’s lawyers to call a witness who claims one of his accusers spoke of framing a famous person prior to reporting the alleged assault to police in 2005. In addition, Judge Steven O’Neill ruled that the defense can tell jurors the amount of the 2006 civil settlement that Cosby paid accuser Andrea Constand.

The ruling allowing Marguerite Jackson’s testimony is a reversal from Cosby’s first trial. The same judge previously blocked her testimony, ruling it as hearsay.

Both decisions are substantial for the defense, who is trying to depict Constand as “a greedy liar,” the Associated Press reported. Constand’s lawyers say Jackson’s testimony isn’t true. With the ruling, the judge added a caveat that he would be able to revisit it after Constand testifies.

The blows continued to pile up for the prosecution on Tuesday.

“O’Neill also hinted during a pretrial hearing last week that he could keep jurors from hearing Cosby’s prior testimony in a deposition about giving quaaludes to women before sex,” the AP said. “He said he won’t rule on that until it’s brought up at the retrial.”

Cosby was originally tried last year for allegedly drugging and sexually assaulting Costand at his Philadelphia home in 2004. Cosby admitted to having sexual relations with her but called the encounter consensual, and the first trial resulted in a hung jury.

Jury selection is currently underway for the retrial this week, with seven of the 12 jurors seated so far – four men and three women. All seven say they have read reports about Cosby’s case, but claim they haven’t formed opinions yet and can remain fair and impartial.

Aside from new evidence, how and if #MeToo will creep into Cosby’s retrial has been a topic of hot debate inside and outside of the courtroom. “With the current atmosphere, it’s going to be hard enough to get the jury to focus on the trial at hand,” defense lawyer Becky James said during a pretrial hearing last month, warning of a hemorrhage from #MeToo into the court proceedings. The defense argued the same in court filings.

Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin R. Steele argued that Cosby, “after casting blame on everything but his own conduct and everyone but himself, now claims Harvey Weinstein is to blame for his continued prosecution.”

Just one potential juror said they had never heard of the #MeToo movement, a rallying call that ignited in Hollywood to demand the entertainment industry address systematic sexual harassment and violence by some of the most powerful men in the business — a fraternity which Cosby once certainly belonged. It’s been a movement so widespread, that notably, the person who claimed they hadn’t heard of #MeToo was not invited back.

There is a chance that the social movement will have an effect on both legal teams by making some jurors more sympathetic to the idea that the mounting accusations against Cosby are a bandwagon phenomenon, but it may make others more convinced of his guilt.

In a potentially positive ruling for the prosecution, the judge will allow five additional Cosby accusers to testify, a fraction of the more than 50 women who have levied accusations against him, but four more than the one additional accuser that O’Neill allowed to testify in the first trial. The prosecution had asked for 19 accusers to be able to testify to demonstrate a similar pattern in the alleged crimes. The introduction of five additional accusers may carry weight in an era where a series of allegations have often made the difference between the presumption of guilt and the presumption of innocence.

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“The Last O.G.”: Tracy Morgan’s unexpected fresh start

Tracy Morgan and Allen Maldonado in "The Last O.G." (Credit: TBS/Francisco Roman)

Tracy Morgan knows a thing or seven about second chances and starting over. Fresh off of a solid run in an NBC series, and on the verge of a production deal with FX, Morgan’s fame was at its height when on June 7th, 2014, an 18-wheeler slammed into the rear of a chauffeured van Morgan hired to drive him home from a gig. The accident left Morgan in a coma for eight days with multiple fractures, and claimed the life of his longtime friend. There was a very real fear Morgan would not recover, or if he did, he would be fundamentally changed.

That makes his new TBS series “The Last O.G.,” premiering Tuesday at 10:30 p.m., a miracle by its very existence.  Not only has Morgan returned, he still has the chops to headline a half hour. Make no mistake, however — Morgan’s comedic style and presence has noticeably transformed whether due to or despite that terrible accident.

Expectations are high for “The Last O.G.” for many reasons, some based in a curious desire to see Morgan whole and in action again, and some stemming from a residual love for his memorable “30 Rock” performer Tracy Jordan. And the continued prominence of “30 Rock” in the sitcom pantheon could mean that Morgan’s character in “The Last O.G.,” Tray, may have a tougher time winning over anyone expecting see the same freeform foolishness Morgan employed in his previous work.

Tray’s life is nothing like Tracy Jordan’s. Rather, he’s a man frustrated and subdued by life, the opposite of the “30 Rock” star’s absurdist master of navigating fame’s rapids and tidal pools.

Morgan’s Tray is a born and bred Brooklynite fresh out of prison after a 15-year prison stint for drug dealing. Much has changed in the decade and a half Tray spent in the cooler, and the initial half-hours of “The Last O.G.” pull a great deal of fish-out-of-water humor out of that truth. When Tray went down his corner was ground-zero for dealing crack. In fact, he was the dealer.

Now its brownstones and stoops are clean and restored, and the only things making the block hot are the popularity of its nearby artisanal coffee shops, airy and overpriced eateries and designer boutiques.

Pulling apart of the irony of a Brooklyn’s hipster gentrification is far from fresh territory in TV or film. Spike Lee’s series version of “She’s Gotta Have It” explicitly explored the clash and merger of the old and largely black Brooklyn and the new version that’s been hipsterized into banality. It looked back with kindness, but it also viewed where Brooklyn is today with acceptance and celebration as well as bitterness.

“The Last O.G.” plays with this dynamic in an entirely expected way, commencing with jokes about the high price of coffee and the ways the local demographic script has flipped. The main shocker for Tray is that his great love Shay (Tiffany Haddish), the woman who was still very much his round-the-way girl when he went away, is now married to a white guy named Josh (Ryan Gaul) who’s been raising his two kids.

Within its first two episodes “The Last O.G.” deftly skips through all the predictably difficulties Tray faces upon his release. Getting used to the new neighbors takes a moment, and he soon realizes that the dreams and talents he nurtured during his time in prison don’t match up with his ability to be hired.

But once those are out of the way the series views Tray’s life through a wider lens, transforming “The Last O.G.” into a thoughtful story about what we leave behind when we make certain choices and the gains and price of adapting to change.

This makes “The Last O.G.” an atypical work likely to clash against common expectations of what a Tracy Morgan comedy should feel like. It looks like a standard single-camera affair, mind you. With Morgan on the marquee and Jordan Peele and John Carcieri in the creators’ seats, the bidding war that preceded the 10-episode comedy’s landing at TBS is understandable.

Seeing the final product also makes it clear why FX, the network that initially ordered the pilot, ended up passing on it: “The Last O.G.” is all compassion and heart and not at all outrageous. Indeed, it is a less of a sitcom than a weekly stroll with a guy with numerous strikes against him — he’s a black, middle-aged ex-con with no work record. The odds will never be in his favor.

Yet Morgan emphasizes Tray’s streetwise qualities and innate goodness, which runs counter to the image of the comedian’s superior ability to clown up his parts. Tray circumstances are nothing to laugh at even though his story is the hook for a basic cable comedy.

Instead, he is awkward and stubborn, an old-school nasty flirt in a “cleaned up” neighborhood where the flavor’s been watered down. In a new Brooklyn where white people feel safe, his aggressive overtures are laughed off as “authentic” color. But he’s slow to catch on to these strange social cues, galumphing his way into situations he’s not cut out for and refusing to accept that this this new Brooklyn may be a place that reared him but is no longer the home he once knew.

To make this show work, then, Morgan cannot play his character as a pure jester. The funniest person in the series, in fact, is neither Morgan nor Haddish, but Cedric the Entertainer, serving regular doses of comic relief as the head of the halfway house where Tray lands. Cedric the Entertainer is pretty much the same hilarious guy that he usually is, which “The Last O.G.” needs.

Haddish, too, may be perceived as coming up short in her portrayal of Shay to those who have fallen in love with her over-the-top stand-up style. While it does feel odd to see her in a comedy she’s not toplining — her career took a stratospheric leap between the time when this series went in production and now — the series writes Shay as a woman who has changed with the times and the culture and Haddish believably fills that role.

She’s stretching beyond her routine here, allowing the story to shape Shay instead of jamming her comedic persona into the form of a woman astride a past she can’t forget and the lucrative present of the new Brooklyn, where her kids attend private school and she can debate the merits of a fresh bruschetta recipe with her husband.

In the scenes they share, Haddish’s chemistry with Gaul works well enough for us to pull for Josh as much as for Tray when the ex-con inevitably sets his sights on winning back his girl. Their contrasting dynamic is the highlight of one of the show’s best episodes, in fact, a half-hour rooted in an examination of masculinity. Through Tray and Josh, seen in separate situations, the writers portray with simple finesse very different versions of what it means to be a man and a father without assigning greater or lesser value to either take.

“The Last O.G.” brims with such thoughtful notes, even if it takes a few episodes to settle into its soul and embrace what it aspires to be. It looks like a straightforward comedy, and the fact that is it not as broad and more restrained than what viewers may have been expecting, could work against it. But if nothing else, it’s a sanguine look at all the ways life changes us and the world around us; that’s true of Tray and the man who plays him.  It’s good to have Morgan back. It’s even better to see him in a show that allows a glimpse at the ways that he has evolved.

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Alex Jones hit with $1 million defamation lawsuit for false Parkland accusation

Alex Jones (Credit: YouTube/The Alex Jones Channel)

Alex Jones, who runs the far-right website Infowars, is facing another defamation lawsuit, this time for falsely depicting a 24-year-old man from Boston as the Marjory Stoneman Douglas shooter who opened fire at the high school on February 14 and killed 17 people.

The lawsuit, which was filed on Monday, lists Jones, Infowars, Free Speech Systems and the author of the article, Kit Daniels, as defendants in the case. Marcel Fontaine, a 24-year-old Massachusetts resident, is the plaintiff.

“The day the shooting happened Infowars published an article alleging that the Florida shooter was a communist and depicted a photograph of our client,” Bill Ogden, a lawyer representing Fontaine told Salon. “It was shared on Google, Instagram, and had millions of shares, because of that our client started getting pushback, responses and was contacted with death threats; it has emotionally affected him.”

The original article, which has since been retracted, displayed a photo of Fontaine wearing a satirical “communist party” t-shirt —adorned with communist leaders like Stalin, Lenin and Mao drinking from red Solo cups. In the original iteration, preluding the image, Daniels wrote, ”and another alleged photo of the suspect shows communist garb.” As the lawsuit explains:

“It appears that Mr. Fontaine was targeted by InfoWars due to the t-shirt he was wearing in his photograph. That novelty t-shirt, sold by online retailer Threadless.com, makes a visual pun on the phrase “communist party” by depicting 11 communist historical figures in a state of merriment and intoxication, complete with German economist Karl Marx wearing a lampshade on his head.”

Ogden isn’t sure where the photo came from, or exactly how Infowars obtained it, but he speculated that it originated from a post on a “Japanese cartoon image board, which was soon taken down after.”

Fontaine’s lawsuit concedes that it’s difficult to estimate how many people saw the false accusation, but contends that it likely reached “hundreds of millions.” Ogden told Salon that Fontaine is seeking emotional support and treatment following the incident, citing reputational damage.

“Due to Defendants’ conduct, Plaintiff’s image has been irreparably tainted. InfoWars’ story became a lie told ’round the world,” the lawsuit states. “Further compounding the defamation is the fact that Mr. Jones, Mr. Daniels, and other employees have used InfoWars’ various media platforms to cast doubt on the facts surrounding the Florida shooting, just as InfoWars has done with prior national tragedies.”

This isn’t the only defamation lawsuit Jones is currently facing.

In mid-March, Jones was also slapped with another defamation lawsuit, filed by Brennan Gilmore, who had captured footage of the car that killed Heather Heyer at the “Unite the Right” rally. Gilmore was painted as “being a CIA or “deep state” operative who helped orchestrate Fields’ attack as a “false flag,” according to the lawsuit.

In the most recent lawsuit, Ogden explained that Infowars isn’t a “mom and pop shop.” It’s a website that gets roughly 30 million page-views per month.

“Mr. Jones feeds his audience a steady diet of false information intended to convince them that a shadowy association of global elites are hatching countless insidious schemes to destroy their way of life or threaten their bodily fluids,” the lawsuit states.

“There has been a lot of talk about ‘fake news,’ and that we are trying to make a bigger change. We aren’t,” Ogden told Salon. “We hope it has that effect, but this case is about our client and the injustices that were done to him.”

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Democratic congresswoman won’t seek re-election after shielding abusive staffer

Rep. Elizabeth Esty, D-Conn. speaks on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, March 4, 2015, about bipartisan legislation on gun safety. Esty was joined by others at the news conference including former Arizona Rep. Gabby Giffords, who returned to Capitol Hill to join forces with advocates of expanded criminal background checks on all commercial firearms sales. The measure is considered a longshot because of opposition by the National Rifle Association. Giffords was shot in the head during a 2011 rampage in Arizona that left six people dead and a dozen others wounded. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster) (Credit: AP)

Congresswoman Elizabeth Esty, a Connecticut Democrat, announced on Monday that she would resign from her post and would not be seeking re-election amid scrutiny for how she handled the departure of her former chief of staff, Tony Baker, who has been accused of violence, death threats and harassment by female staffers in her congressional office.

“It is one of the greatest honors of my life that the people of Connecticut’s Fifth District elected me to represent them in Congress,” Esty wrote in a Facebook post published Monday evening. “However, I have determined that it is in the best interest of my constituents and my family to end my time in Congress at the end of this year and not seek re-election.”

Earlier Monday, Esty asked the House Ethics Committee to conduct an expedited review of her handling of the staffer’s departure.

“Although we worked with the House Employment Counsel to investigate and ultimately dismiss this employee for his outrageous behavior with a former staffer, I believe it is important for the House Ethics Committee to conduct its own inquiry into this matter,” Esty said in a letter Monday morning. “In seeking this inquiry, I want to clarify whether there was any wrongdoing on my part,” the statement concluded.

Esty’s previous public statements Monday came after The Washington Post revealed last week that her then-chief of staff kept his job for three months in 2016 after he threatened to kill a former colleague, despite the abuse allegations against him being brought to Esty’s attention.

She had been considered a champion of the #MeToo movement on Capitol Hill. Before news of her own controversy broke, Esty had issued a press release calling for tougher harassment protections for congressional staffers and was among those calling for Rep. John Conyers of Michigan to step down over allegations of sexual misconduct.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., endorsed Esty’s call for an ethics review and said that the congresswoman’s actions had not protected a former staffer in her office. Pelosi did not call on Etsy to resign, however.

In a statement, Pelosi praised Esty’s former staffer Anna Kain, who came forward and told her story involving alleged abusive behavior Esty’s former chief of staff.

“As Congresswoman, Esty has acknowledged, her actions did not protect Ms. Kain and should have. Congresswoman Esty has now appropriately requested an expedited review by the Ethics Committee,” Pelosi said in her statement.

Pelosi used the incident to highlight relevant legislation, the Congressional Accountability Act, which would reform Congress’s sexual harassment policies but has stalled in the Senate. “Nearly 8 weeks ago, the House passed the bipartisan #MeToo Congress legislation to address the broken Congressional process,” Pelosi said. “The Senate is overdue in passing that legislation.”

Earlier this week, Esty apologized for how she handled harassment allegations against her former chief of staff, and said she was “inspired by the courage this young woman is demonstrating by speaking up — in the one company town of DC — to say MeToo.”

“Too many women have been harmed by harassment in the workplace. In the terrible situation in my office, I could have and should have done better,” Esty wrote. “To the survivor, I want to express my strongest apology for letting you down.”

In the statement, the congresswoman also called for “stronger workplace protections and to provide employees with a platform to raise concerns, address problems, and work to reduce and eliminate such occurrences.”

“In my final months in Congress, I will use my power to fight for action and meaningful change,” Etsy said.

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What could have saved the Hart children?

The pullout where the SUV of Jennifer and Sarah Hart was recovered off the off Pacific Coast Highway 1, near Westport, Calif. (Credit: AP/Alameda County Sheriff's Office)

The tragedy seemed to unfold in slow motion. First there was the news that an entire family had been involved in a mysterious crash on March 26 that had left five people confirmed dead and three presumed so. Then the stories of abuse began to emerge. Then on Sunday came reports that the plunge off a California cliff may have been deliberate. How did this happen to the Hart family children? And who, if anyone, could have saved them from their own mothers?

Until the March crash in Mendocino County, the Hart family was best known for a viral photograph of one of its members. In 2014, a then 12 year-old Devonte Hart appeared at a Portland protest over the Ferguson verdict. He was weeping and carrying a sign offering free hugs. Portland Police Sergeant Bret Barnum stepped forward to take him up on the offer, and the image — of a white cop and an African American kid locked in a tearful embrace — went viral. As another photographer there at the event said at the time, “Devonte is doing the healing while the rest of us still need to do the work.”

But the media frenzy had an impact on the Harts, who reportedly “stayed locked in their house until slowly the reporters and photographers subsided.” Now, however, there are questions about whether that desire for privacy had a more sinister element. And Devonte is presumed dead, along with the rest of his family, including his siblings Hannah and Sierra.

Jennifer and Sarah Hart had been on Child Protective Services’ radar for years before the crash — long before the famous photograph. In the days following the wreck, KATU reported that Sarah Hart pleaded guilty to a domestic assault charge in Minnesota in 2011 after her daughter revealed several bruises all over her body to a teacher. Sarah explained at the time that she had “resorted to spanking” over the child’s misbehavior.

Neighbors Bruce and Dana Dekalb told KATU News they’d called CPS as recently as days before the crash, claiming that the children “came over to their house, asking for food, eventually several times a day.” They also said one of the children tried to run away last fall. CPS had reportedly identified the children as “potential victims of alleged abuse or neglect.” After a case worker knocked and received no response on March 23, witnesses say they saw the family pack their SUV and take off.  Yet other neighbors thought the family seemed happy. “Jen and Sarah really were the kind of parents that I think the world desperately needs,” a longtime friend told Portland’s KOIN last week.

On Sunday, a California Highway Patrol representative told KOIN that the crash appears to have been an “intentional act,” saying that based on their investigation, “It was pure acceleration from last break application until it hit the bottom of the ocean — the edge of the ocean.” The SUV’s speedometer was stopped at 90 mph. Mendocino County Sheriff’s Lt. Shannon Barney cautioned, however, that’s it’s still “too early” to say for certain what happened.

It’s notable that at some point between the assault charge and the March car crash, the Harts reportedly began home schooling their six adopted children, whose ages ranged from 12 to 19. Yet the Oregonian reports that the mothers “never filed the proper notices [to home school] in Oregon and Washington, according to agencies in both states.” The local school districts likewise have no record of the children. David Holmes, superintendent of schools in La Center, Washington, told the paper that it is ” totally up to the family to notify.”

As unusual as the Hart’s horrific fate is, their story bears echoes of another shocking family case from early this year — that of the Turpins. In January, California couple David and Louise Turpin made headlines for allegedly abusing and keeping their thirteen children — ages 2 to 29 — in captivity. Their alleged crimes came to light when their 17-year-old daughter escaped through a window and managed to call 911. Like most of her siblings, the girl was so malnourished that she appeared several years younger than her true age. When police arrived at the home, three of the children were chained up. Authorities described the entire home, riddled in filth, as “a crime scene.” And Reuters reported in January that “It may have been easier for the parents to shield their children from scrutiny because they were home-schooled.” That pathologically controlling behavior was also on display in the case of Gypsy Rose Blanchard, whose abusive mother Dee Dee convinced the home-schooled girl she had an array of debilitating illnesses, until Gypsy and her boyfriend killed her. 

It’s not that home schoolers are prone to abusing their children — the vast majority of the community is made up of loving, involved families. But as a recent LA Times op-ed argued with some staggering statistics, the concern is that abusers can exploit the home schooling system. A 2014 study of child torture reported that “47% of school-age victims had been withdrawn from school for homeschooling and an additional 29% had never been enrolled.” Other sources dispute the figure, however, and assert that home schoolers suffer no more neglect and abuse than traditionally schooled children. 

Yet our erratically regulated American home schooling system and the way abusers operate can make a devastating combination. Nearly 60 percent of child abuse reports come from professionals who have regular contact with children, and have a system of reporting requirements. Take that safety net away, and a child becomes more vulnerable. Presciently, five years ago, the Coalition for Responsible Home Education explored the potential for abuse in the community, noting red flags that now seem like hallmarks of the Turpin and the Hart cases, including “confinement and food deprivation,” “isolation and totalistic” behavior that verges on “cult-like” and targeting “adoption and special needs” children, with particular regard to families with “large numbers” of children. “In some cases,” the organization observed, “parents may start out honestly wanting to do their best, but end up becoming abusive. Ignorance can be as damaging as malice.”

In the cases of the Harts and the Turpins, there are still so many lingering questions regarding what precisely happened to their children. Yet the picture that emerges of both families so far involves extreme isolation and deprivation. These cases involve 19 children, many of them teenagers, but you’d be hard pressed to find any accounts yet from their own peers. The Turpin children appear to have been cut off from outside community for years, emerging only for tightly regimented, photo-op family trips. A former classmate recently recalled the bullying one of the older Turpin girls received when she was still in a traditional school, but that would have been 20 years ago. And while the “family friends” of Jennifer and Sarah Hart have described the women as “loving, inspiring parents,” where were Devonte’s friends? Where were Markis and Jeremiah and Abigail and Hannah and Sierra’s? Where were the peers to advocate for them?

Over the past several weeks, parents and their kids have taken to the streets and to their representatives’ offices to demand safer conditions for them within our schools. That is a fight borne of unfathomable loss, a fight with momentum that cannot be lost. But while the Turpins and the Hart family sagas are dramatic, they underscore another reality that can’t be ignored — that the most dangerous place in the world for many kids is in their own homes, with their own parents. And that same American culture of “Don’t you dare tread on my freeeeeeedom” that gave us our gun obsession also feeds the lack of accountability in families that circumvent the intervention systems that schools can provide. 

Last week, Dana Dekalb told KOIN News about one of her last encounters with the Hart kids, an incident that prompted her to call CPS. “Their daughters telling us, ‘Please, please, please,’ begging us not to make her go back and that they were abusing her,” she said. “And then Devonte, coming over here and telling us he’s being starved to death.”

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Winnie Mandela, known as the “Mother of the Nation,” dead at 81

Nelson Mandela and Winnie Mandela cheering crowd upon Mandela's release from Victor Verster prison. (Credit: Getty/Walter Dhladhla)

Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, the iconic anti-apartheid activist known as the “Mother of the Nation,” died Monday. The former wife of South African President Nelson Mandela was 81 years old.

Family spokesman Victor Dlamini said Madikizela-Mandela “succumbed peacefully in the early hours of Monday afternoon surrounded by her family and loved ones” at the Netcare Milpark Hospital in Johannesburg, South Africa. He added that Madikizela-Mandela struggled with “a long illness, for which she had been in and out of hospital since the start of the year.”

The #Mandela Family statement on the Passing of #WinnieMandela. #RIPWinnieMandela. #SABCNews pic.twitter.com/u7O7sK8WdV

— Thabiso Sithole (@ThabisoSithole) April 2, 2018

Madikizela-Mandela was married to Nelson Mandela for 38 years – the majority of which he spent incarcerated on Robben Island near Cape Town. The pair divorced in 1996, two years after Mandela’s election as South Africa’s first black president. The head of state later died in 2013.

But Madikizela-Mandela’s political contributions were not defined by her relationship to her famous husband. “While he was in prison, she took on an increasingly political role, partly because of constant harassment by the South African security police,” the BBC reported. “She became an international symbol of resistance to apartheid – and a rallying point for poor, black township residents who demanded their freedom.”

In light of Mandela’s incarceration, Madikizela-Mandela was officially “banned” from society, including being barred from moving and working freely. Five years later, in 1969, she was arrested and imprisoned for 18 months for anti-apartheid activities, 13 of which she spent in solitary confinement. Inside, she was beaten and tortured repeatedly. Madikizela-Mandela was incarcerated again for five months in 1976, the year of the Soweto Riots, and then banished to Brandfort – a remote and conservative white town.

“I am a living symbol of whatever is happening in the country,” she wrote in her 1984 memoir “Part of My Soul Went With Him.” “I am a living symbol of the white man’s fear. I never realized how deeply embedded this fear is until I came to Brandfort.”

When Madikizela-Mandela returned to Soweto in the mid-1980s, it was more violent as a result of police brutality and gangs. Her image began to shift as her rhetoric and tactics became more violent, too. “We have no guns — we have only stones, boxes of matches and petrol,” she said at a rally in April 1986. “Together, hand in hand, with our boxes of matches and our necklaces, we shall liberate this country.” Here, she referred to “necklacing,” where suspected police informants or traitors were killed by forcing a gasoline-soaked tire around their necks and setting it ablaze. Later, she was protected by a vigilante gang, Mandela United Football Club. And in 1991, Madikizela-Mandela was convicted of ordering the kidnapping of four young people from Soweto from years prior.

In 2003, Madikizela-Mandela was implicated in another scandal, when a court convicted her of fraud and theft in connection to a bank scam. However, her motivations were viewed by some as admirable. “The sentencing magistrate compared her to a modern-day Robin Hood, fraudulently acquiring loans for people who were desperately short of money, but he said that as a prominent public figure she should have known better,” the BBC wrote.

Throughout her later life, Madikizela-Mandela’s popularity remained as a politician and revered freedom fighter. “Without condoning her misdemeanors, we must acknowledge that she is a victim. She is damaged and hurt,” South Africa’s future president Kgalema Motlanthe, who at the time was the secretary general of the African National Congress (ANC), said. “When someone is subjected to the kind of consistent persecution and harassment she suffered from the apartheid system, something is bound to snap. We understand that, and will always be there for her.”

As the news of Madikizela-Mandela’s death became public, largely that is how she is being remembered — for her bravery and unwavering commitment to racial equality.

Herman Mashaba, Johannesburg’s mayor, wrote on Twitter: “My deepest condolences to the Mandela family for the passing away of the mother of our nation, Winne Mandela. She served our nation with distinction. May her soul rest in peace.”

My deepest condolences to the Mandela Family for the passing away of the mother of our nation, Winnie Mandela. She served our nation with distinction . May her soul Rest In Peace

— Herman Mashaba (@HermanMashaba) April 2, 2018

South Africa is heartbroken again. We are in mourning. RIP Winnie Mandela. A liberation icon who has inspired and empowered so many to fight against oppression and hate!

— Luke Waltham (@lukewaltham) April 2, 2018

https://twitter.com/idriselba/status/980818943400067072

In the darkest hours of the struggle to free South Africa, with Nelson Mandela in prison, the face of hope and courage was #Winnie Mandela. May she forever rest in #Power. pic.twitter.com/VrJ6PjMr1F

— Rev Jesse Jackson Sr (@RevJJackson) April 2, 2018

The Most Famous Footage of the #Mandela Family… Via @SABCNewsOnline LIVE on @SABCTVNews & Rolling Coverage on #SABCNews Channel 404. #RIPWinnieMandela #WinnieMandela pic.twitter.com/fYqeEVon9z

— Thabiso Sithole (@ThabisoSithole) April 2, 2018

Retired Archbishop Desmond Tutu said in a statement that Winnie was a “defining symbol of the struggle against apartheid. She refused to be bowed by the imprisonment of her husband, the perpetual harassment of her family by security forces, detentions, bannings and banishment. Her courageous defiance was deeply inspiration to me and to generations of activists.”

ANC National Chairperson Gwede Mantashe said, “With the departure of Mama Winnie, [we have lost] one of the very few who are left of our stalwarts and icons. She was one of those who would tell us exactly what is wrong and right, and we are going to be missing that guidance.”

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Here’s one issue blue and red states agree on: preventing deaths of expectant and new mothers

(Credit: effe45 via Shutterstock)

Alarmed that the U.S. is the most dangerous affluent country in which to give birth, state and local lawmakers around the country are adopting a flurry of bipartisan bills aimed at reforming how maternal deaths are identified and investigated.

In Indiana earlier this month, Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb signed a bill creating a maternal mortality review committee to scrutinize deaths and near-deaths among expectant and new mothers and make policy recommendations to improve maternal health.

Oregon’s governor and Washington, D.C.’s mayor, both Democrats, are expected to sign similar legislation in the coming days. Proposals are pending in Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Maryland and New Jersey.

Legislators from several of these states credited the ProPublica/NPR “Lost Mothers” series with raising their awareness and concern about the issue. Maryland Delegate Jheanelle Wilkins, who introduced a bill there, said that the series, especially articles looking at why black mothers are at greatest risk of dying and nearly dying, inspired her and her fellow lawmakers.

“A friend of mine posted one of the stories on Facebook and she challenged her elected officials — Who’s going to do something about it?” Wilkins said.

About 35 states have now established review committees or are in the process of doing so, as well as four cities: New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington. Two federal bills introduced last year, which would create a grant program to help states introduce or improve review committees, remain stalled in committee.

Between 700 and 900 women die each year in the U.S. from causes related to pregnancy or childbirth, and the rate has risen even as it has declined in other wealthy countries. The rate of life-threatening complications has also soared since the 1990s, endangering more than 50,000 U.S. women a year. A new report by the CDC Foundation — a nonprofit created by Congress to support the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — suggests that more than 60 percent of pregnancy- and childbirth-related deaths in the U.S. are preventable.

The “Lost Mothers” project highlighted a number of reasons the U.S. has fallen behind other countries, including a greater focus on the health of the baby than of the mother, treatment guidelines that vary from one doctor or hospital to the next, and government failures to collect accurate data and to study maternal deaths and near-deaths to understand how they might be prevented.

Maternal mortality review committees can play a key role in this process, public health experts say, by identifying pregnancy-related deaths that might otherwise be overlooked, analyzing the factors contributing to those deaths, and translating the lessons into policy changes. That’s what happens in Great Britain, where a national committee investigates every maternal death and the findings help set women’s health policy across the country.

As recently as 2016, only about half the states had such panels. The number has been growing quickly, said Andria Cornell, senior program manager for women’s health and maternal health lead at the Association of Maternal & Child Health Programs, a nonprofit advocacy group.

“This is a time of unprecedented political and social will for establishing maternal mortality review committees,” she said. “We’ve definitely come to a tipping point.”

Cornell credited two forces for driving the change: journalism focused on maternal deaths and a national project led by AMCHP, the Centers for Disease Control and the CDC Foundation.

With money from Merck for Mothers, a charitable initiative created by the pharmaceutical giant, the project has funded a web portal that provides information on starting and improving review committees and a tool, the Maternal Mortality Review Information Application, that shows jurisdictions how to standardize data collection from review panels so that it’s comparable from one state to the next.

Review committees do have limitations. Many are understaffed and poorly funded, with limited authority to dig deeply into systemic problems or implement meaningful reforms. It generally takes several years for them to produce their reports, in part because committee members — including doctors, public health experts, medical examiners, and the like — have other demands on their time and aren’t compensated.

Also, committee records and reports are de-identified — stripped of any information that might point to a particular woman, caregiver or hospital. Thus the review is of little use in assigning responsibility for individual deaths, or evaluating whether some hospitals, doctors or nurses are especially prone to error. Still, recommendations and findings from reviews have proven helpful in states such as California in shaping preventive efforts that have reduced maternal mortality rates.

Indiana epitomizes the national movement to use the review committee process to scrutinize maternal deaths. There, the focus had long been on reducing infant mortality: The state has the highest rate of neonatal deaths outside the South. Maternal deaths weren’t on the radar, even though the state’s maternal mortality rate is around 41 women per 100,000 births, according to a new analysis of federal data by United Health Foundation — or double the rate of maternal deaths in neighboring Illinois and Ohio.

“I’ll be honest,” said state Sen. Jean Leising, a Republican from rural southeastern Indiana. “I’m on the Health Committee … and I had no idea our maternal statistics were so lousy.”

The bill she sponsored — creating a committee for the next five years to study not just maternal mortality but also life-threatening complications, or severe maternal morbidity — sailed through the legislature, in part because of a change in governors. Holcomb, who replaced Mike Pence and is seen as more of a pragmatist, appointed a female obstetrician-gynecologist to be his new health commissioner.

The bill’s supporters drew a connection between maternal and infant mortality, said Dr. Brownsyne Tucker Edmonds, legislative chair for the Indiana chapter of the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists: “We could bring forth the idea that healthy moms have healthy babies.”

Oregon’s bill, which also passed easily this month, creates a review committee that will start by focusing on maternal deaths; by 2021, it will also begin looking at severe maternal morbidity. Over that period, it will cost the state more than $450,000 — a significant public commitment to a women’s health initiative.

“I did think, wow, that’s more money than I thought it was going to be, but no one blinked an eye,” said Rep. Alissa Keny-Guyer of Portland, the bill’s chief sponsor. “That just shows how much support this idea has.”

In the District of Columbia, concerns about the high maternal mortality rate— in 2014, it stood at about 40.7 deaths per 100,000 births, according to the analysis by United Health Foundation, substantially exceeding the U.S. rate and those of neighboring Virginia and Maryland — have periodically sparked talk of a review committee, but not enough to push a measure through.

Last year, after two hospitals in Northeast and predominantly black Southeast Washington closed maternity units, concerns grew over access to quality care, particularly for low-income and minority women. Nationally, black women have a maternal mortality rate three to four times higher than white women, and the District suspects its gap is even wider.

“Those disparities were the more acute driver of why we felt we needed to take this action,” said Councilmember Charles Allen, who introduced the measure to establish the panel. “You have to know what is driving this wide disparity before you can really have the strategies for how to fix it.”

The D.C. bill still must be signed into law and, like all District legislation, reviewed by Congress before it becomes effective. It calls for one full-time employee to assist the panel’s work, a position that Allen said he expects to be funded in the budget that will be passed later in the year. In addition to health care professionals, a social worker and representatives of community groups that specialize in women’s health, the D.C. committee will also include “one person who has been directly impacted by a maternal mortality or severe maternal morbidity.” Maternal health advocates say listening to such voices is a critical step in addressing how disparities in race, income and education affect outcomes.

That’s what prompted Wilkins, the Maryland delegate, to introduce her bill, which passed the House this month and will be taken up in the Senate in April. Maryland established its review committee in 2000, but in the panel’s most recent report, the participants consisted almost exclusively of medical professionals, mostly doctors and nurse-midwives. Wilkins’s bill would require the committee to meet at least twice a year with a group that includes representatives from the Maryland Office of Minority Health and Health Disparities, the Maryland Patient Safety Center, women’s health advocacy organizations, and a relative of a mother who died, and to incorporate their recommendations into its final report.

“The women who are impacted and the organizations that work with the communities they live in — we need to make sure they are at the table,” Wilkins said.

Other pending proposals would revamp New Jersey’s 80-plus-year-old review process and establish a new review committee in Connecticut.

Pennsylvania, which ranks sixth in the number of births in the U.S., is currently the largest state without a maternal mortality review committee, but lawmakers are advancing a measure to change that. It passed the House in December and recently cleared a Senate committee; it’s now headed for consideration by the full Senate.

State Rep. Ryan Mackenzie, R-Lehigh, introduced the bill last October after doctors from his district showed him grim data on rising maternal mortality rates in the nation and the state. Pennsylvania’s rate has more than doubled since 1994, according to a December 2017 report in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. When Mackenzie ran the idea of creating a statewide review process past House colleagues, several responded that media reports about maternal mortality, including our “Lost Mothers” series, had spurred them to consider similar measures.

Mackenzie’s bill calls for a committee of at least 14 members, most of them health care professionals, with a special emphasis on members working in communities most affected by maternal deaths and a lack of access to care. The measure does not include funding, and specifies that committee members would be unpaid, but Mackenzie said the state Department of Health would redirect existing staff to support it.

Another important aim in creating a statewide review process is making sure maternal deaths are being defined and tracked consistently, Mackenzie said. The state health department has tabulated annual totals for years, but counts only deaths that occur up to 42 days after pregnancy and not those that happen within a year, the standard used by the CDC and most review committees. When Philadelphia’s maternal mortality review panel compared the state’s numbers with its own for the city from 2010 to 2012, the state’s count was about 30 percent lower. Mackenzie’s bill would align Pennsylvania’s committee with the one-year standard.

“We’re hoping to save lives,” Mackenzie said in proposing the review committee. “Based on the results in other states, we think this is realistic.”

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Trump’s Washington: Drowning in conflicts of interest?

(Credit: Getty/Alex Wong)

Not a single day passes without new tales of the ganefs in the Trump Administration. “Ganef” in Yiddish means swindler. These are mostly small-time crooks, but not always.

The New York Times just highlighted the activities of Elliott Broidy, the deputy finance chairman of the Republican Party National Committee and a wealthy old friend of Donald Trump.

Broidy seems to have taken some lucrative payments for helping friends associated with the governments of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to see that U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is fired (he was), to influence U.S. foreign policy against Qatar, and to strengthen personal ties for the Saudi and UAE rulers with Trump.

When it comes to lobbying and the expense accounts of government officials, not to mention conflicts of interest, U.S. law — which is generally described as very tough in many other domains — is often as flexible as a rubber band.

Unified by questionable ethics

At a minimum, the Trump team is unified by questionable ethics — small, big and sometimes ridiculous.

The Veterans Affairs Administration runs U.S.-based hospitals. Nevertheless, its chief, David Shulkin, needed to go on business to London and Copenhagen last summer with his wife. One of the highlights was a day watching tennis at Wimbledon.

The entire trip was billed to the Veterans Administration at a cost of over $100,000. When the details leaked, Shulkin first claimed that there were misunderstandings. Then he agreed to make a reimbursement.

Efforts at excuses or repayments are not, however, the style of his Trump cabinet colleagues, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and Environmental Protection Agency chief Administrator Scott Pruitt. They just feel entitled.

Pruitt, who has a penchant for flying first class, for example, spent over $120,000 in public funds visiting Italy, including a private tour of the Vatican.

Zinke is a regular on private plane trips to national parks in the U.S. and, for example, billed the government $12,375 for a private helicopter trip from a meeting in Las Vegas to his ranch in Montana.

But, he is also in hot water for purchasing beautiful doors for the Interior Department at a cost of $129,000. He said the staff made the purchase.

 Dangerous coffee tables

That sounds a bit better than Housing Secretary Ben Carson. When it emerged that he ordered a new dining table and chairs for his office at a cost of $31,000, he declared that the choice of the furniture and the decisions were all taken by his wife — and besides the old table, he said, “was actually dangerous.”

Still closer to the president are the advocates for protecting U.S. steel companies by imposing 25% tariffs on imported steel. Leading the charge is Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross who became a billionaire by investing over in bankrupt U.S. steel companies, merging them and selling them off.

It also appears that Ross only very recently divestedhimself of his business investment in a Chinese(!) shipping company called Diamond S. Shipping.

Of course, there are also the Trump children. The Trump organization has major deals in India, where White House Advisor Ivanka Trump made an official visit (exact purpose unknown) in January just before her brother Donald made a business trip there.

The Trumps generated huge and positive press in India, all the more so after both met individually with Prime Minister Modi. Business partners ran prominent advertisements offering dinner with Donald to people who would put down cash to buy apartments in Trump-licensed buildings.

Neither Ivanka Trump, nor her husband Jared Kushner, who is also an official White House advisor, have totally separated themselves from their business interests and, of course, neither has the president. Some of Kushner’s property dealings are now said to be part of the investigations being pursued by U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

CREW vs. Trump

No single group has been more concerned to expose the conflicts of interest and ensure that there is justice than Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Government (CREW) whose board is chaired by president Obama’s former White House chief ethics officer Norman Eisen. CREW is suing Trump for violations of the emoluments clause of the U.S. Constitution.

At the same time, it has undertaken an exhaustive investigation into every instance in which government and special interests interacted with the president’s private businesses. The 2017 results at Trump Inc.: A Chronicle of Presidential Conflicts recorded more than 500 entries related to potential conflicts of interest.

So many of the activities of Trump, his family and his associates are secret — they may take place on the private planes that the government is paying for, or just on all the Trump-named golf courses that they have a penchant of visiting. All manner of campaigning and political events are now staged at Trump hotels, with expenses finding their way into the Trump family coffers.

The Republican Senators and Congressmen abuse their majority status by making sure that none of the oversight committees are pressing any of the cases, big or small. In fact, not a single Congressional Committee is looking into the abuse and utter mockery that is being made of official U.S. government ethics rules.

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