The Revolving Door of American Medical Bankruptcy

“Too many Americans have been shocked by surprise medical bills 

and forced to pay up through credit report coercion.” 

Rohit Chopra, director of the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB)

As the only major developed country that does not have universal healthcare for its residents, the United States continues to have the most expensive healthcare system on earth. Over 19% of our GDP is spent on healthcare, almost double the percentage of the next most expensive system. We still pay more than double per capita on health coverage and prescription drugs than the average cost in the rest of the developed world. While the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare or the ACA) addressed healthcare for millions of Americans, there are millions still left behind with no coverage. Even those with health insurance often find that co-pays, exclusions and deductibles are well beyond their capacity to pay.

The ACA Medicaid expansion provision offered to the states, helping low-income Americans, was uniformly accepted by blue states and rejected by virtually all red states. In 2010, in order to pass Congress, the nascent ACA was modified to cater to the special interests (read: major contributors to political campaigns on both sides of the aisle) by guaranteeing that private insurers would not face new government competition and that the new ACA healthcare exchanges would not use their massive bargaining power to negotiate lower prescription drug rates from the big pharmaceutical companies. Congress and the courts have further limited the ACA, eliminating a major source of financial support by killing the healthcare mandate.

In California, a frustrated legislature and governor have begun exploring what the ACA could not do nationally: a single payor universal healthcare system for the entire state. Red states have drawn a dark red line against exploring this alternative. While this legislation is a long way from reaching a vote, pressure is mounting. But what is equally clear, too many Americans simply cannot afford healthcare in any format, even when covered by insurance. True that many services were provided by the government for COVID prevention, but it crystal clear that our private healthcare system was not remotely able to handle this catastrophe.

For those struggling to deal with medical costs, they are faced with a double whammy: heartless collection agencies, armed with threats and legal remedies that are life destroying and outrageous costs. Including: Unscrupulous practices, like hospitals billing even insured patients extra for “out of plan” specialists called in emergencies that were not even requested by those patients, often massive add-ons. The federal No Surprises Act bans this billing practice, but that law did not come into effect until January 1st.

Los Angeles Times columnist, David Lazarus, presents the nasty details in his January 18th contribution: “A 2019 study found that medical bills were a primary factor in about two-thirds of U.S. personal bankruptcy filings. More than half a million U.S. families go bankrupt annually because they can’t afford healthcare… 

“But the new [No Surprises] law won’t help people already feeling the squeeze from unpaid medical bills… The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau warned debt collectors and credit agencies last week that they need to step more carefully when it comes to trashing people’s credit scores because of stratospheric medical bills.”

Routine minor medical procedures – like getting stitches – join more complex procedures administered in hospitals where huge mark-ups jack hospital costs through the stratosphere – many in the 575%-675% multiple range automatically added by standard hospital billing software – to help defray other unreimbursed hospital costs and to insure profitability. See also, my January 9th Americans - The Biggest Healthcare Suckers on Earth blog. The excuse, as Lazarus discovered, is that “nearly all medical facilities, charges patients not just for treatment but also for the cost of maintaining healthcare resources and treating anyone who seeks emergency care.” 

In short, those who pay big hospital bills subsidize those who don’t or against whom big insurance carriers have successfully negotiated vastly lower rates. Simply put, “it’s completely intolerable for residents of the richest, most powerful country in the world to have to choose between a livelihood (or paying the rent, or putting food on the table) and receiving healthcare,” says Lazarus. Enter heavy handed debt collectors, ready to put the squeeze on ordinary Americans trying to stay healthy and alive faced with a medical system that top-to-bottom places the needs of medical facilities, carriers, pharams and doctors well above the welfare of their patients.

While Lazarus notes that “most hospitals [say they] will work with patients facing financial difficulties. [But if] such contingencies were sufficient, though, there’d be no need for debt collectors or other strong-arm tactics. The fact that medical bills drive so many people into bankruptcy shows that whatever financial assistance hospitals offer, it isn’t doing the trick… According to the CFPB, 17% of U.S. adults ‘had major, unexpected medical expenses’ in 2020, with the median bill running as much as $2,000. Nearly a quarter of Americans ‘went without medical care due to an inability to pay,’ the agency said.”

In a world where the rich are loath to pay more taxes, where wealth per se is almost never taxed (just revenue) with a “line in the sand” political party protecting the rich from paying their fair share, we are still willing to render the health of so many Americans as expendable to preserve the luxurious lifestyle of the billionaire one percenters who own the majority of asset value in the nation. And there is no national outrage pushing to fix this anomaly.

I’m Peter Dekom, and when I look at the German universal healthcare system – one where insurance companies act as administrators for coverage that includes vision care, dental and hearing care – I see what a nation governed by special interests and not the people looks like: the United States of America

 

I Agree and Accept

 

How many times have you downloaded an app, a program, content, etc. and faced that interminable question, often accompanied by rolling legal language that must scrolled before you “accept” that mandate to consent to whatever restrictions, planted cookies or approval to commercial usage of your information, either anonymously or as sales leads to other vendors? How many times have you actually read that scrolled information or gone to the sites “privacy policy” to see what you are “accepting”? And if you reject, how many times has that site simply allowed you to continue? Never? How about those sites that allow you to customize your settings? Easy to use?

Privacy statutes are stricter in the European Union (such as the General Data Protection Regulation or GDPR), but here… we are trying. Like those numerous state statutes (led by California’s Consumer Privacy Act) and potential even federal legislation in that space. The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) has rules when Websites address children’s vulnerability with strict regulation. But let’s face it, when you read those “privacy policies” or click “I accept” corporate consents for cookies, tracking and more, you are on the other side of phalanxes of well-trained lawyers – studied in legal verbiage and aware of what it takes to be “in compliance” with the law – and policy experts, regulators and folks who know a whole lot more about the space than you do. And those companies are trying to make money and grow their business.  

Simply put, do you trust the “I accept” box under the masterful watch of Mark Zuckerberg and the other mavens of social media as well as other purveyors of content and software. You against them! Let me summarize the utter failure of the entire US governmental structure, from the FCC, FTC, Bureau of Consumer Protection, Congress and each and every state regulatory and legislative body. Almost nobody really reads those legal disclosures and consents. Almost nobody really understands what they are agreeing to. And if consumers don’t accept, and the service/content/software is important, there’s not much they can do about it.

I’d like to propose a radical but meaningful system of government approved standardized consent forms, each with a clear summary of what you are giving up and what you can do if you object to the process. The joy in this approach is a tiered approach with an accurate and short description of the rights you are giving up. It would look a lot like the motion picture or television ratings systems. 

With the correct labels, we just might see some pretty onerous practices disappear. Online purveyors would simply have to display their rating code on every page of their online presence. A letter system, perhaps A through E applied against three categories, could be a start: One – Use of personal information/tracking for internal use only. Two – Use of personal information/tracking for internal or anonymous data collection use only. Three – Use of personal information/tracking may be made commercially available. Government agencies (e.g., Bureau of Consumer Protection) or an association like the film industry’s MPAA rating system might define the meaning of the A through E levels of exposure of personal information through standardization with simple summaries.

Consumers have to know that where materials are provided “free,” there is a cost. It can be in the ads carried on the app/site/content and provided to the consumer, the use of personal information as a commodity that can be bought and sold or a hybrid model. Should consumers be offered a “privacy” reasonable fee alternative as a legal mandate? For those charging a fee for their app/site/content, perhaps they should be banned from trading in personal information (other than an anonymous data collection function) absent a clear “opt-out” choice which does not impact the availability of the app/site/content to the consumer.

There are a few proposed efforts in Congress to deal with this tsunami of obvious failure. Such as: “The Terms of Service Labeling, Design and Readability (TLDR) Act directs the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to issue rules requiring companies to include a ‘short-form’ terms of service summary on their website as well as a graphic data flow diagram explaining relevant terms. While the bipartisan bill, introduced by Congresswoman Lori Trahan (D-MA-3) and Senators Bill Cassidy (R-LA) and Ben Ray Luján (D-NM), is arguably aimed at tech companies, the law would apply to any entity that operates a website or an online service for commercial purposes (the TLDR Act does contain a ‘small business’ exemption, however)…

“With bipartisan support, it’s possible that the TLDR Act could benefit from the momentum we’re seeing on the Hill to rein in Big Tech, but it remains to be seen whether the act will have the votes to pass the House or the Senate. The TLDR Act is just one of several attempts aimed at improving the readability of terms of service, and whether or not this bill passes, it is a reminder that regulators remain focused on making online terms more accessible to consumers.” Robyn Mohr, Tanya Forsheit and Jessica Lee of the law firm of Loeb & Loeb, in the January 21st Lexology.com. Civil penalties and empowerment at the state enforcement level are part of this effort.

What is absolutely clear is that the privacy notices, the “I agree” non-choice, the lengthy legalese that virtually no one at a consumer level ever reads and the pervasive effort of app/site/content providers to find simple ways to “disclose” their often rather cavalier practices, pushed within the edge of envelopes of “what is legal,” are simply a sham, at best a corporate panacea with no genuine effort to be real. The practice does not remotely create true consumer choice or provide any meaningful accessible information of corporate intent. IT MUST STOP.

I’m Peter Dekom, and if you also believe that these de facto deceptive practices must stop, please write your representatives in Congress and tell them… and you may find bipartisan support for this necessary approach to privacy protection.

Here’s the Deal… On COVID

 

Anti-vax protests are on the rise worldwide, still building here in the United States. Despite clear and convincing statistical evidence of the life-saving efficacy of vaccination (one that seems to invite boosters as new variants appear and work against immunity wanes after the passage of time), there are millions of Americans who still refuse the shots. Some for political reasons, even though their leaders, including Donald Trump, seem to have repudiated their own resistance to accept not just the basic inoculation but the boosters as well. Others operate out of fear based on a serious pattern of disinformation that seems to defy correction.

Hospitals across the nation remain packed to the gills with new COVID patients, often occupying critical space needed for the “normal” influx of critical care patients. Accident victims, folks facing heart attacks and strokes and other serious, life threatening ailments requiring hospitalization. All across the United States, people are dying from what was supposed to be a less-damaging but more infectious Omicron variant, which no one believes will be the last variant in this SARS-family mega-disease. Here in Los Angeles Country, fairly reflective of hospital results all over the United States, that “less dangerous” Omicron variant is still killing with alarming efficacy. Omicron, to put it mildly, is fast.

“The spread of the latest coronavirus variant has moved with unprecedented speed since December, although officials have said people who get infected with Omicron generally get less severe symptoms than with the earlier Delta variant. Even so, officials say it is fatal for some… Of 102 deaths reported Thursday [1/20] — the highest single-day tally since March 10 — 90% involved people who became ill with COVID-19 after Christmas, and 80% were among those who fell ill after New Year’s Day, indicating a high likelihood of Omicron infection, Los Angeles County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said.

“It appears that people who are dying from the Omicron variant are deteriorating much more quickly than those infected by earlier variants, Ferrer told reporters… ‘It means that for the people who are, in fact, ending up passing away from COVID, if they were infected with Omicron, it looks like they get hit pretty hard earlier on,’ Ferrer said.

“During the summer Delta wave, COVID-19 patients were diagnosed with a coronavirus infection or started having symptoms four to five weeks before their deaths. But among fatalities reported late last week, many had an initial onset of symptoms or first diagnosis three weeks or earlier before their deaths… ‘That’s a relatively short period of time between the time somebody gets infected, gets their symptoms and then passes away,’ Ferrer said.” Los Angeles Times, January 25th.

Antivaxxers operate under the clearly misguided belief that their constitutional rights are being violated by health mandates, self-righteously believing that not getting vaccinated or being able to enter unmasked workspaces and schools, any place where people are allowed to congregate, is their most fundamental right, despite the 1905 Supreme Court case, Jacobson vs Massachusetts, that has long since held otherwise. The movement has expanded of late to oppose school vaccinations in general. That we have contained crippling diseases such as polio, smallpox, tetanus/typhus and measles through school-mandated vaccinations seems irrelevant. They seem to believe that they have a “right to infect” and that those with whom they deal have to live with this reality.

On January 13th, the self-appointed neo-legislative body, the Supreme Court, drilled down into the OSHA’s expertise to impose their own, conservative and medically unsustainable view of protecting workers: except for healthcare workers (logic defies how this category found exemption), Biden’s big-company healthcare vaccine-or-test OSHA mandate for workplaces was reversed. The Court stated that this level of medical micromanagement required specific congressional approval. 80 million workers were instantly impacted. Seriously? Congress should review deeply researched workplace rules that have, to date, been well within the statutory purview of OSHA experts?

The conservative justices who voted to reverse this rule were openly aware that their decision would result in thousands of unnecessary deaths and hundreds of thousands of unnecessary hospitalizations. They knew that our economy was still reeling, reflected in labor shortages and inflationary supply chain disruption, in significant part because too many potential workers were scared to go back to work for fear of COVID exposure. Breakthrough infections, though generally not super-serious, made that return to work even more terrifying. So what?!

“The Labor Department estimated the rule would have saved thousands of lives and prevented more than 250,000 hospitalizations during the six months after implementation [of this ruling]… ‘Workplace transmission has been a major factor in the spread of COVID-19,’ said Dr. Gerald Harmon, president of the American Medical Association, which supported the [OSHA] requirement… The rule would have boosted the nationwide vaccination rate, which has been stuck at around 60% of the U.S. population.

“At least 90% of the population needs to be either vaccinated or have some immunity from an infection to minimize the effects of COVID-19 on daily life, according to three experts who were on Biden’s COVID-19 transition team. They outlined that estimate and the importance of mandates in a paper published this month in the Journal of American Medicine… ‘Few countries have achieved such levels of coverage of any vaccine without vaccination requirements,’ they wrote.” USA Today, January 17th. 

The harsh reality is that COVID-19 is a global pandemic, and even when the infection and mortality numbers subside, humanity still faces potential new variants… perhaps other comparably infectious new diseases as well… because we are so hideously behind in containing this coronavirus. Even as new treatments evolve, and older vaccines and treatments lose their effectiveness against variants, we are likely to live in a world where COVID is endemic (part of ordinary life) for the foreseeable future. 

For example, Regeneron has lost most of its effectiveness against Omicron, and it matters which vaccine is applied, a clear signal that future variants may simply evolve to resist existing vaccines, particularly those that are not mRNA based. The results from the Chinese vaccine, Sinovac (a non-mRNA inoculation), are less than stellar: “An analysis of blood serum from 101 individuals from the Dominican Republic showed that omicron infection produced no neutralizing antibodies among those who received the standard two-shot regimen of the Sinovac vaccine. Antibody levels against omicron rose among those who had also received a booster shot of the mRNA vaccine made by Pfizer-BioNTech.

“But when researchers compared these samples with blood serum samples stored at Yale, they found that even those who had received two Sinovac shots and a booster had antibody levels that were only about the same as those who’d received two shots of the mRNA vaccines but no booster shot. In other studies, the two-shot mRNA regimen without a booster has been shown to offer only limited protection against omicron.” Yale News, January 20th. 

We are still facing an uphill battle, our economy will not resume a reasonable path to normalcy, unless we can begin to contain this virus… and those who absurdly believe that vaccines and masks are unacceptable intrusions into their lives. What is their responsibility for the unnecessary deaths and suffering? It should be significant. But it isn’t.

I’m Peter Dekom, and there appears to be dwindling level of accountability, particularly in the United States, for selfish decisions from COVID containment to political violence and voting rights, that is slowly destroying us.

Americans Turning Away from Religious Affiliation

As the evangelical movement seems to have taken over as the primary political-values compass in a Trump-dominated Republican Party, a party that has refused to articulate a true party platform and one that is withdrawing from political debates among candidates, there is an accelerating trend across the United States: defection from organized religion. In rural communities and small towns, churches still represent a local “glue” for the people who live there. But as the Census tells us, we are now overwhelmingly urban, a far cry from the 1789 reality when 94% of the nation was rural and agricultural… an agricultural reality that skewed our political system to favor rural votes (two Senators from every state regardless of population) to this day.

Indeed, as religious affiliation dwindles, those remaining and deeply religious sectors are often raising their voices, literally screaming, and pushing for that rural inequality to increase at the expense of urban voters. They are drowning in change, feeling as if society is leaving them behind. Diversity is the enemy. To many, religious homogeneity and dominance justify the means. This may be one of the most important factors pushing the culture wars, the pushback against free choice and minority voting rights. But this is a segment of the population that has never, until now, been a defined minority within the United States. How have the numbers changed?

It first was recorded, officially, in a recently conducted Gallup Poll, reported by Gallup on March 29th. Here are some of their findings: “Americans' membership in houses of worship continued to decline last year, dropping below 50% for the first time in Gallup's eight-decade trend. In 2020, 47% of Americans said they belonged to a church, synagogue or mosque, down from 50% in 2018 and 70% in 1999… U.S. church membership was 73% when Gallup first measured it in 1937 and remained near 70% for the next six decades, before beginning a steady decline around the turn of the 21st century…

“The decline in church membership is primarily a function of the increasing number of Americans who express no religious preference. Over the past two decades, the percentage of Americans who do not identify with any religion has grown from 8% in 1998-2000 to 13% in 2008-2010 and 21% over the past three years.” Some, with more agnostic or spiritual leanings, remain affiliated with their religious heritage, even celebrating religious holidays for social as opposed to religious reasons. But segregating those passionate evangelical believers produces about a quarter of all American religious affiliations, a distinct minority within the general population. 

The above chart breaks down that religious segment into great detail; it was released by the PRRI (Public Religion Research Institute), a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization dedicated to conducting independent research at the intersection of religion, culture, and public policy, on July 8th. As you can see, a mere 14% of the US is represented by white evangelicals, a core and increasingly vociferous segment of the GOP. To many political analysts, the polarization and increasing acceptance of violence as justified to expand or limit political realities is a powerful, last and desperate gasp of white evangelicals to exert what many in that constituency believe is their God-given mandate to preserve their definition of the pure American spirit. Even if that means the end of democracy or civil war.

But the decline in religious affiliation combined with the harsh impact of the pandemic are producing an additional crush on so many religious institutions. In addition to the massive economic liability facing the Catholic Church from a long-standing pattern of sexual abuse, even local churches that have remained true to their religious values are facing economic devastation. As a January 19th report by Holly Meyer and Haleluya Hadero, writing for the Associated Press, tells us, “Churches suffering during pandemic With less money in the collection plates, some congregations have struggled to stay afloat…

“Biltmore United Methodist Church of Asheville, N.C., is for sale… Biltmore is just one of an untold number of congregations across the country that have struggled to stay afloat financially and minister to their flocks during the pandemic, though others have managed to weather the storm, often with help from the federal government’s Paycheck Protection Program, or PPP, and sustained levels of member donations…

“The coronavirus hit at a time when already fewer Americans were going to worship services — with at least half of the nearly 15,300 congregations surveyed in a 2020 report by Faith Communities Today reporting weekly attendance of 65 or fewer — and exacerbated the problems at smaller churches where increasingly lean budgets often hindered them from things like hiring full-time clergy… ‘The pandemic didn’t change those patterns, it only made them a little bit worse,’ said Scott Thumma, director of the Hartford Institute for Religion Research and co-chair of Faith Communities Today.

“Attendance has been a persistent challenge. As faith leaders moved to return to in-person worship, first the highly transmissible Delta variant and now the even faster-spreading Omicron have thrown a wrench into such efforts, with some churches going back online and others still open reporting fewer souls in the pews… More broadly, various other surveys and reports show a mixed picture on congregational giving nationwide.

“Gifts to religious organizations grew by 1% to more than $131 billion in 2020, a year when Americans also donated a record $471 billion overall to charity, according to an annual report by Giving USA. Separately, a September survey of 1,000 Protestant pastors by the evangelical firm Lifeway Research found about half of congregations received roughly what they budgeted for last year, with 27% getting less than anticipated and 22% getting more.” 

The vast majority of those attending houses of worship represent the best values our nation can embrace, but increasingly a minority within that constituency feels marginalized by a world that is changing beyond their generational experience. They seem to have sacrificed their religious teachings to “survive.” Politicians, offering simple, “go back to an earlier era” panacea, one that can never work, are increasingly adopting what appears to be a “throw the baby out with the bathwater” approach, one that threatens our entire system of government. As younger, less religious generations, redefine our nation, the big question is whether that vast demographic of rising voters can take over running this nation in time to save it from itself.

I’m Peter Dekom, and it becomes necessary to understand the many underlying variables that have eroded what was once and could be again the greatest democracy on earth, the United (?) States of America.

 

Bye, Bye Breyer

  

“The president has stated, and reiterated, his commitment to nominating a Black woman to the Supreme Court and certainly stands by that.”                                                                                  

White House Press Secretary, Jen Psaki on January 26th.

It not completely official, but it is all but certain that U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice, 83-year-old Stephen Breyer, one of the three remaining liberal justices on the Court, is retiring. Pressure from high-ranking Democrats for Breyer to leave has been mounting, spurred in significant part by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg (then 89) in 2020, allowing a lame duck Donald Trump to cement a conservative majority on the Court. Thus, a close look at what I believe are the most viable candidates is worthy of consideration. After all, there have only been two African American Supreme Court Justices, both men (Thurgood Marshall and current Justice Clarence Thomas). 

So, purposely in no particular order, here is my list of viable African American women for that appointment. There are hundreds of qualified candidates, but I settled on these choices. Just my opinion. Age is critical, since these appointments are currently for life, and unless a justice is impeached, permanently disabled or retires, a sitting president normally want his or her appointment to sit on that bench for the longest time possible. 

While judicial appointments are exempt from the filibuster rule, Senate Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell (R-Ky) has pledged to oppose Biden-sponsored judicial appointments, which require Senate confirmation. If the GOP takes the Senate this year, the current vacancy may be Biden’s only appointment to the highest court in the land. Here’s my short list:

Stacy Abrams, 48, is a former member of the Georgia House of Representatives (minority leader) and “almost” governor, losing to Republican Brian Kemp by a whisker in 2018. She’s Yale law grad who practiced law in Atlanta (tax, healthcare and public finance). She is also a highly regarded civil rights activist. Would Ms Abrams be willing to give up her current run for Governor of Georgia for the opportunity, and would Joe Biden risk losing that governorship accordingly? Probably not. But she would be one hell of a justice!

Leslie Abrams Gardner, 48, Stacey Abrams’ sister, also a Yale Law grad, rose from private practice to being appointed as an assistant US Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia before being appointed as a federal District Court Judge by Barack Obama in 2014.  Gardner might be too far down the line to make the leap to the Supreme Court, but her age is a definite plus.

Kamala Harris, 58, former California attorney general, then US Senator from California and currently Vice President of the United States. A graduate of the University of California, Hastings School of Law, Harris worked her way up from a local Bay Area district attorney, rising to City Attorney for San Francisco to S.F. District Attorney. Harris would be my call, but she would probably have to renounce running for President after Biden leaves office. However, her experience is exactly what is needed on the Supreme Court. Her appointment would have the benefit of lifting her out of the tsunami of criticism that she and the President currently face and allow Biden to name a new Vice President that could give him an opportunity to rebuild his public persona, something he desperately needs. She would face stiff GOP resistance, however, and without any GOP support, she might not be able to break a deadlock and vote for herself. There is a catch: Biden has so far taken the position that she will not be his nominee. Psaki: “The president has every intention, as he said before, of running for reelection, and running for reelection with Vice President Harris on the ticket as his partner.”

Letitia James, 64, began her post Howard University Law legal career as NYC public defender, eventually becoming an assistant Attorney General in NY, then serving on the New York City Council before running for and becoming the New York State Attorney General herself. Deeply involved in the investigation of Donald Trump and his business operations in New York. Her efforts against Mr. Trump might make her a lightening rod for GOP opposition. 

Judge Johnnie B. Rawlinson, 70, is a sitting justice on the Federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. A graduate of the McGeorge School of Law (University of the Pacific), she moved from private practice in Nevada to the Las Vegas Office of the District Attorney before being appointed as a federal District Court justice by Bill Clinton in 1998, with a second appointment by Mr. Clinton to the federal appellate court two years later. While Justice Rawlinson would be an excellent choice, her age might provide too few remaining years for a Biden appoint her to the Supreme Court.

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, 51, is a justice on the prestigious federal Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. After graduating from Harvard Law and serving in several judicial clerkships, she moved from private practice to the US Federal Sentencing Commission as assistant special counsel. After a stint in D.C. as a federal District Court judge, she was named to the above Court of Appeals, both appointments by Barack Obama. She has ruled in controversial cases against both the Obama and Trump administrations and is highly qualified for a Supreme Court appointment. Her age also works in her favor. My guess is that Brown Jackson is the likely nominee. So, she is appropriately pictured above.

Justice Leondra Kruger, 46, is the youngest California Supreme Court justice (appointed by Governor Jerry Brown) in modern history and the fourth Black person on that bench. Her reputation is as a conservative Democrat, a trait that might overcome GOP resistance to a Biden appointment. Also graduate of Yale Law School, she moved from high-level judicial clerkships and private practice in some of the most discerning firms in the nation, before segueing into government with appointments as assistant to the US Solicitor General and later Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel within the US Department of Justice. A tad too conservative for my mind’s eye, but not a bad choice for a purportedly centrist president.

 Melissa Murray, 55, is the Academic on my list. Another Yale Law grad, who also enjoyed high-level judicial clerkships, Murray began her academic career at the University of California, Berkeley School of law before becoming a tenured professor at the NYU School of Law. Murray’s outspoken liberal bent – she is a leading expert in constitutional law, family law and reproductive rights and justice – might make her popular with Democrats but a difficult appointment to get by the GOP.

All impressive academics, prosecutors and/or judges. Any one of these superlative legal minds would make an honorable and excellent Supreme Court justice. It’s time for Biden to make that call… and for the Senate to confirm that choice without the expected partisan grandstanding from the right.

I’m Peter Dekom, and since a Supreme Court appointment is one of the most impactful decisions a sitting US president can make, I thought it might be a good idea to think about who should get that nod.

Aiding and Abetting Big Oil’s-Coal’s Environmental Disaster

 

“As scientists who study and communicate the realities of climate change, we are consistently faced with a major and needless challenge: overcoming advertising and PR efforts by fossil fuel companies that seek to obfuscate or downplay our data and the risks posed by the climate crisis.”                                                                

From an open letter, signed by over 450 scientists, to the public relations industry

Not entirely different from the public relations efforts of Big Tobacco years ago and social media giants today, the fossil fuel industry continues to spend tens of millions of dollars every year to discredit scientific evidence of their global acceleration of climate change and its concomitant natural disasters. They continue to shift blame to others, even to consumers as individuals not doing enough to counter the issue, sometimes attacking the scientists who are performing the necessary research and publishing the results… with dire results. 

For example, as Adele Peters, writing for the January 19th edition of FastCompany.com reports: “‘I have been at the receiving end of attacks for decades funded by fossil fuel interests and facilitated by fossil-fuel-funded PR firms like Edelman [a public relations consultancy with 65 offices worldwide and 275 active professionals],’ says Michael Mann, a climatologist at Pennsylvania State University, who has written several books, including 2021’s The New Climate War, which examines the decades-long campaigns waged by fossil fuel companies… ‘I have been publicly vilified, experienced death threats, faced demands that I be fired from my job,’ Mann says, noting that those actions are the result of ‘PR firm-orchestrated character attacks.’ He adds, ‘Until these PR firms refuse to work for fossil fuel companies, they are part of the problem, no matter what greenwash campaigns they may engage in.’…

“The billions of dollars that fossil fuel companies have poured into advertising and PR campaigns over the past few decades have helped play a major role in slowing down climate action, convincing the public that their actions and product weren’t as harmful as the companies knew them to be. Now, hundreds of climate scientists are asking ad and PR agencies to drop polluters as clients… [As the above scientist-authors also wrote in that open letter above:] ‘In fact, these misinformation campaigns represent one of the biggest barriers to the government action science shows is necessary to mitigate the ongoing climate emergency.’…

“Edelman, one of the largest public relations firms in the world, recently told employees that it would ‘put science and facts first’ when working with clients. In an internal review, the company looked closely at 20 ‘emissions-intensive’ clients, though it hasn’t said that it would drop those clients. (Edelman declined to comment.)

“A recent study detailed some of the ways that PR firms have helped slow down support for climate policy. The PR agency Ogilvy, for example, created a campaign for BP [British Petroleum] in the year 2000 that popularized the idea of individual ‘carbon footprints,’ offering an online calculator that people could use. The approach ‘sought to divert attention from the fossil fuel industry by reframing climate change as an issue of individual responsibility,’ the study authors wrote. Among other campaigns, PR agencies also helped promote the term clean coal, and branded natural gas as ‘clean burning,’ though gas is a major source of emissions.” Clean coal is nothing more than pumping the polluting and greenhouse-contributing effluents underground for future generations to deal with.

Spinning is a big part of the problem. ExxonMobil, for example, is running a campaign as if it were a concerned corporation, making huge concessions to environmental realities. But if you just scrape the surface, you get… “Six months after the activist hedge fund Engine No. 1 helped get three new members voted onto ExxonMobil’s board—with the goal to help the company focus on the existential risks of fossil fuels—the oil company has announced an ‘ambition’ to reach net zero emissions by 2050. But if you just saw the headline, you would miss the fine print. The commitment is to reach net zero ‘in its operations.’ But almost all of the emissions that the company is responsible for come from burning its products. Those emissions aren’t included.” FastCompany.com, January 21st. Delay. Delay. Spin!

The lack of accountability for the damage that fossil fuel companies have caused, directly, is the product of massive PR efforts, fortunes in campaign contributions to political candidates on both sides of the aisle and playing the “millions of jobs at stake” card, pretending that alternative energy is a job killer… as opposed to the job creator that sector truly is. If they can continue to avoid that financial liability and delay the necessary corrective efforts, these polluters can continue without facing that accountability. But the writing is on the wall.

“The [energy sector’s] campaign approaches have changed over time, [Jamie Henn, director of Fossil Free Media] says, in the same way that the tobacco industry’s messaging changed. ‘The fossil fuel industry has moved from outright denial to predatory delay,’ he says. ‘So the whole strategy is to convince the public, and by extension their representatives, that the fossil fuel industry is already working to solve the climate crisis, and that fossil fuels can be part of the solution. They want to delay the adoption of renewables by just another year or two so that they can continue to profit off of oil and gas.’” Peters. Or a few more years beyond that.

I’m Peter Dekom, and what are just a few more devastating wildfires, storm surges, searingly hot temperatures, droughts and horrific tornados or hurricanes anyway?