Category: Injustice Anywhere is a Threat to Justice Everywhere, MLK jr

Stories of injustice and justice

Afghanistan’s Music School Falls Silent, Its Future Is Uncertain Under The Taliban

NPR – Music

Afghanistan’s Music School Falls Silent, Its Future Is Uncertain Under The Taliban

Students practice the cello during class at the Afghanistan National Institute of Music on Sept. 26, 2010 in Kabul. Paula Bronstein/Getty Images

 

The doors of the Afghanistan National Institute of Music in Kabul are closed. The music school’s young students, teachers and faculty are staying home — they have reason to fear. According to founder and director Ahmad Sarmast, “armed people entered school property” recently. He says they tried to steal cars the school uses for transportation and destroyed musical instruments. Under the Taliban in the 1990s, music was strictly forbidden. Performing, selling or even listening to music at home could get you in trouble.

Read What The Taliban Told NPR About Their Plans For Afghanistan

ASIA
Read What The Taliban Told NPR About Their Plans For Afghanistan

Now ANIM’s future is uncertain. With the disorder caused by the Taliban’s takeover of the city, “The situation is very unpredictable,” says Sarmast. “Things are changing very fast in Kabul nowadays.”

Sarmast, who spoke to NPR from Australia where he’s visiting family, is in constant contact with the school’s faculty. He says some students did not bring their instruments home, “because of the fear that if Taliban will be searching door to door, if the instruments will be found in the house, it might cause them some trouble.” When he reported the recent break-in, he says a policeman in the area, “blamed our security people for failure that they opened the gates of the school.”

Eden MacAdam Somer of the New England Conservatory performs at the Afghanistan National Institute of Music in Kabul on Jan. 9, 2013. Musadeq Sadeq/AP

It’s Afghanistan’s leading music school

With help from donors including the World Bank and the National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM), ANIM opened in Kabul in 2010. Boys and girls study music and academics in the same classrooms. Students learn to play instruments from both the Afghanistan and Western classical traditions.

The school has been held up as a great success story in the effort to renew cultural life and the arts in Afghanistan. Ensembles from the school, including the all-female Zohra orchestra, have performed around the world. From Carnegie Hall in New York to the World Economic Forum in Davos, these young musicians, many from impoverished communities, have shown audiences a side of Afghanistan that often gets lost in news accounts.

Making music can have deadly consequences

Making music has long been a risky endeavor in Afghanistan. Over the years, musicians have reportedly been threatened, kidnapped or killed. During one of ANIM’s concerts in 2014, a suicide bomber sitting behind Sarmast exploded. Two people were killed and several others were injured. Sarmast lost his hearing for a time and had an operation to remove shrapnel from his head and body. “Luckily, no students have been injured or killed,” he says, “But of course, the trauma that they received during this bombing probably would have stayed with them all their life.”

Students play the xylophone and drums during class at the Afghanistan National Institute of Music in Kabul on July 30, 2016. Wakil Kohsar/AFP via Getty Images

While the Taliban have presented themselves to the media as less violent than they were in the 1990s, Sarmast is skeptical. “Today the Taliban are promising that they would be respecting human rights and they will be having respect for diversity,” he says, “But … the video footage emerging with the social media is not very encouraging.”

Music entertains, strengthens and heals

Sarmast is concerned about the future of the school’s students. He says 10 of its graduates have received scholarships to study music in the U.S., including pianist Elham Fanoos who attended Hunter College in New York and recently got his master’s from the Manhattan School of Music. Speaking from his home in New York, Fanoos credits ANIM as, “the reason I am here.” He, too, is worried for the safety of everyone involved with the school and hopes Afghans can continue making music.

“I think a culture makes the country and give the country the strength that it needs to have and to represent the country,” says Fanoos. “Without … cultural activities, a country is completely incomplete.”

Young Afghan musicians perform in Kabul on Feb. 2, 2012. Shah Marai/AFP via Getty Images

Sarmast seems determined not to let the Taliban get in the way of the progress ANIM has made. The school had recently expanded to a larger building to accommodate more programs and ensembles. “Music is not just a type of entertainment. It’s not just an art,” he says. It’s a “powerful force” to help Afghans heal “from the years of civil war.”

Sarmast plans to reopen the Afghanistan National Institute of Music because, he says, “the nation needs it.” He hopes the international community will “keep an eye” to make sure the Taliban keep its promises to respect human rights, “to make sure that the musical rights of the Afghan people [are] not toppled again.”

Former NC lawmaker got off easy. No wonder people are losing faith in democracy.

Former NC lawmaker got off easy. No wonder people are losing faith in democracy.

Staff                      

 

Rep. David Lewis

Is anyone else upset that former N.C. Rep. David Lewis got a $1,000 slap on the wrist and avoided prison for taking nearly $400,000 for his personal use? (Aug. 17)

He had raised these funds for his campaign and to support other Republican politicians. He admitted guilt under a plea bargain and has to pay back $365,000. But Lewis once chaired the House Rules Committee and was a leader on election law, voter ID and redistricting and restricting others’ rights to vote.

No wonder people are losing faith in our democracy. We have one set of rules for the powerful and well-connected, another set for everyone else. What a travesty. It’s disgusting! Our democratic fabric is fraying.

James D. Joslin, Raleigh

Redistricting

Wake County was excluded from the list of 10 proposed public hearing sites for the upcoming round of redistricting. In addition, hearings have only been scheduled prior to maps being released, which prevents the public from providing meaningful feedback on maps once they have been drawn.

Wake is now the largest county in the state and its citizens should have an opportunity to provide public testimony before and after new voting maps are drawn. If the General Assembly is committed to and open and transparent redistricting process, then opportunities for public participation must be broadened to provide more opportunities for citizen participation.

Laurel Voelker,

Redistricting Chair, League of Women Voters of Wake County

Afghan war

In his “United States of Incompetence” (Aug 22 Opinion) Jay Ambrose makes his case for President Biden’s incompetent leadership around the tragic conclusion to the Afghanistan war.

This conclusion seems to be the nature of war in our lifetime. Even WWII had its refugees, reprisals, devastated civilians, unintended consequences and political turmoils — and we “won” that one.

We act as if war, especially one thousands of miles from our shores in a place few people can find on a map, can be used for geopolitical purposes that leave us feeling proud, honorable and secure.

Our veterans deserve respect, compassion and appreciation for their sacrifices. But, we should not act as if recent U.S. miscalculations, incompetence or malice are responsible for the mess that is Afghanistan. We chose war in 2001. Now we must live with the natural, sad and tragic results of that choice.

Doug Jennette, Raleigh

Child care

Our elected leaders must do everything in their power to end America’s child care crisis. If we look at current policies, it’s obvious that child care is not a priority. Families are left to figure it out on their own, which, in the past 18 months has led women to leave the workforce, causing businesses to suffer.

My brother and sister-in-law have two small children. He works for a nonprofit. She is a nurse at Duke. The pandemic has been hellish for them as they struggle with $3,000 a month in child care costs and the constant pivots required each time one of their kids has a runny nose.

It has caused my sister-in-law to wonder whether she should quit nursing. The last thing we need in this country right now is fewer nurses.

I know that when America decides something is a common good, we find the funding. We need a child care system that meets the needs of children, families, communities and child care providers.

Kristin Baker, Durham

Invest in people

As a Raleigh resident I’ve seen firsthand how the state budget affects my community.

I want N.C. lawmakers to commit to expanding Medicaid so my neighbors feel safe and can care for their families and themselves.

I want all children in my community to receive a sound, basic education. I want all in N.C. to have access to affordable housing. I want our leaders to listen to constituents, not just the powerful few and rich corporations that benefit from tax breaks.

There is much uncertainty and fear right now, particularly as students and teachers return to school and the health of our communities and economy remain in jeopardy. By building a budget that work for all, state leaders can make a huge difference in easing those fears and the very real suffering.

Katherine Hirscher, Raleigh

Big oil coined ‘carbon footprints’ to blame us for their greed. Keep them on the hook

Big oil coined ‘carbon footprints’ to blame us for their greed. Keep them on the hook

Rebecca Solnit                  
<span>Photograph: Salvatore Cavalli/AP</span>
Photograph: Salvatore Cavalli/AP

 

Personal virtue is an eternally seductive goal in progressive movements, and the climate movement is no exception. People pop up all the time to boast of their domestic arrangements or chastise others for what they eat or how they get around. The very short counterargument is that individual acts of thrift and abstinence won’t get us the huge distance we need to go in this decade. We need to exit the age of fossil fuels, reinvent our energy landscape, rethink how we do almost everything. We need collective action at every scale from local to global – and the good people already at work on all those levels need help in getting a city to commit to clean power or a state to stop fracking or a nation to end fossil-fuel subsidies. The revolution won’t happen by people staying home and being good.

But the oil companies would like you to think that’s how it works. It turns out that the concept of the “carbon footprint”, that popular measure of personal impact, was the brainchild of an advertising firm working for BP. As Mark Kaufman wrote this summer:

British Petroleum, the second largest non-state owned oil company in the world, with 18,700 gas and service stations worldwide, hired the public relations professionals Ogilvy & Mather to promote the slant that climate change is not the fault of an oil giant, but that of individuals. It’s here that British Petroleum, or BP, first promoted and soon successfully popularized the term “carbon footprint” in the early aughts. The company unveiled its “carbon footprint calculator” in 2004 so one could assess how their normal daily life – going to work, buying food, and (gasp) traveling – is largely responsible for heating the globe.

The main reason to defeat the fossil fuel corporations is that their product is destroying the planet, but their insidious propaganda, from spreading climate-change denial to pushing this climate footprint business, makes this goal even more worthwhile.

Carbon footprints caught on, and I routinely see people on social media zooming in on individual consumption habits when climate chaos is under discussion. Bill McKibben made the case against them in 2008:

Say you have a certain amount of time and money with which to make change – call it x, since that is what we mathematicians call things. The trick is to increase that x by multiplication, not addition. The trick is to take that 5 percent of people who really care and make them count for far more than 5 percent. And the trick to that is democracy.

That is, private individual actions don’t increase at a rate sufficient to affect the problem in a timely fashion; collective action seeking changes in policy and law can.

Too, the goal of personal virtue is merely not to be part of the problem. It’s not good enough for a bystander to say “I personally am not murdering this person” when someone is being stabbed to death before them (and those of us in the global north have countless ties to systems that are murdering the climate, so we are not exactly bystanders). The goal for those of us with any kind of resources of time, rights and a voice, must be being part of the solution, pushing for system change. To stop the murder.

Underlying this is a conflict in how we imagine ourselves, as consumers or as citizens. Consumers define themselves by what they buy, own, watch – or don’t. Citizens see themselves as part of civil society, as actors in the political system (and by citizen I don’t mean people who hold citizenship status, but those who participate, as noncitizens often do quite powerfully). Too, even personal virtue is made more or less possible by the systems that surround us. If you have solar panels on your roof, it’s because there’s a market and manufacturers for solar and installers and maybe an arrangement with your power company to compensate you for energy you’re putting into the grid.

In my own case, some of what I could tout as personal virtue is only possible because of collective action. I have 100% clean electricity at home because people organized to make that option and the solar and wind power behind it available. I do some of my errands by bicycle because the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition worked for decades to put bicycle paths across the city and otherwise make it safer to get about on two wheels. I can take public transit because there is public transit. Across the Bay, the city of Berkeley led the way in making all-electric houses the standard for the future; more than fifty California cities and counties have followed suit. Paired with the clean electricity California has committed to, this mandate matters. Having an all-electric house or driving an electric car fueled by renewables won’t be a virtuous choice in the future; it’ll just be the norm.

But individual and collective action don’t have to be pitted against each other. Individual choices do add up (they just don’t, in McKibben’s terms, multiply). That vegan options are available at a lot of fast-food chains is because enough consumers have created a profitable market for them. We do influence others through our visible choices. Ideas spread, values spread, habits spread; we are social animals and both good and bad behaviors are contagious. (For the bad, just look at the contagiousness of specious anti-vaccination arguments.)

Vegetarian and vegan diets (and low-meat or no-red-meat diets) have become far more common, creating markets for new products and different menus. But they have not made the beef industry go away or reformed its devastating climate impact. Climate chaos demands we recognize how everything is connected. Seeing yourself as a citizen means seeing yourself as connected to social and political systems. As citizens we must go after the climate footprint of the fossil-fuel corporations, the beef industry, the power companies, the transportation system, plastics, and so much more.

  • Rebecca Solnit is a Guardian US columnist. She is the author of Men Explain Things to Me and The Mother of All Questions. Her most recent book is Recollections of My Nonexistence

‘We’re peons to them’: Nabisco factory workers on why they’re striking

‘We’re peons to them’: Nabisco factory workers on why they’re striking

Michael Sainato                     
<span>Photograph: Mark Lennihan/AP</span>
Photograph: Mark Lennihan/AP

The pandemic drove many people to the cookie jar and helped Nabisco, maker of Oreos, Chips Ahoy!, Fig Newtons and other sweet treats weather the worst of the outbreak. But as the company’s profits continue to recover, workers at its US plants are striking over the outsourcing of jobs to Mexico and concessions demanded by their employer in new union contract negotiations.

On 10 August, about 200 workers in Portland, Oregon, represented by the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers (BCTGM) went on strike. Union workers in Aurora, Colorado, began their strike on 12 August, followed by those in Richmond, Virginia, on 16 August and Chicago, Illinois on 19 August.

Through the pandemic, Nabisco’s parent company, Mondelēz International, has recorded billions in profits; in the second quarter of 2021, the company reported more than $5.5bn in profits and spent $1.5bn on stock buybacks in the first half of 2021. The CEO of Mondelez International received $16.8m in total compensation in 2020, 544 times the company’s median employee annual compensation of $31,000.

“It’s greed. They don’t have any respect for their workers that gave them the opportunity to make that kind of money. We’re peons to them, and everyone is at the point where enough is enough,” said Darlene Carpenter, business agent of BCTGM local 358 in Richmond and a former employee at the plant. “We’re at the point where we’re saying this is how the cookie is going to crumble now because we can’t do this.”

According to Keith Bragg, president of BCTGM local 358 who has worked at the Nabisco plant in Richmond for 45 years, during a discussion about contract negotiations with management, the company said that when the company does well, employees do well.

He took offence to this notion, citing his concerns about the treatment of workers over the past few years and the recent concessions being asked of them. During the pandemic, many workers had to work 12-hour shifts, six to seven days a week for several months and were praised as “heroes” for their roles as essential workers. But now workers are being asked to give up overtime pay and concede to a two-tier healthcare system, Bragg said, which would downgrade benefits for new employees and cut overall wages.

“They’re doing well, we’re losing all the way around,” said Bragg. “They shut down two plants this year, they’re cutting overtime, they’re making profits, but we lost half of our union membership. How is it that we’re doing well?”

In 2012, Kraft Foods split into two companies, with Mondelēz International formed as the parent company of Nabisco. Since the split, the union has been pressed to accept concessions during drawn-out contract negotiations, such as eliminating union pension contributions in May 2018 and switching to 401 retirement plans.

“A lot of folks were very close to retirement, and were able to do so under the old plan, but when the company pulled out that basically meant that they had to continue working, they were no longer eligible to retire,” said Mike Burlingham, who has worked at the Nabisco plant in Portland since 2007 and serves as vice-president of local 364. “It impacted all of us in a way that we can no longer count on this as being a place we can retire comfortably from.”

Mondelēz International has shuttered several Nabisco plants in the US over the past several years, offshoring much of the work to Mexico. The plight of its workers briefly became a campaign issue during the 2016 election cycle, with both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump attacking plans to shift jobs overseas. “I’m not eating Oreos any more,” Trump told voters in New Hampshire.

But despite the political heat the trend has continued. In 2021, Nabisco plants in Fairlawn, New Jersey, and Atlanta were closed, resulting in the loss of about 1,000 jobs. Mondelēz International denied that jobs from the two plants shut down in 2021 were offshored to Mexico, but a petition for trade adjustment assistance alleging outsourcing by the union at one of the plants is under review by the Department of Labor. In 2016, hundreds of workers were laid off at the Nabisco plant in Chicago and a plant in Philadelphia was shut down in 2015.

“We can’t compete with the Mexican workers,” said Cameron Taylor, business agent at Local 364 in Portland. “They just want to exploit cheap labor. If we were to accept all of what they want us to, accept all the working conditions and the two- tiered system of healthcare, this job would turn into a job not even worth fighting for.”

In 2016, the union launched a “check the label” boycott campaign that was endorsed by the AFL-CIO, asking consumers to refuse to buy Nabisco products that are made in Mexico. Workers have frequently reported finding Nabisco products for sale near their plants that were produced in Mexico.

“We are disappointed by the decision of the local BCTGM unions in Portland (OR), Richmond (VA) and Aurora (CO) to go on strike,” said a spokesperson for Mondelēz International, noting the company has a continuity plan in place at the facilities where workers are on strike. “Our goal has been – and continues to be – to bargain in good faith with the BCTGM leadership across our US bakeries and sales distribution facilities to reach new contracts that continue to provide our employees with good wages and competitive benefits, including quality, affordable healthcare, and company-sponsored Enhanced Thrift Investment 401(k) Plan, while also taking steps to modernize some contract aspects which were written several decades ago.”

I served in Afghanistan as a US Marine, twice. Here’s the truth in two sentences

I served in Afghanistan as a US Marine, twice. Here’s the truth in two sentences

Lucas Kunce                       

What we are seeing in Afghanistan right now shouldn’t shock you. It only seems that way because our institutions are steeped in systematic dishonesty. It doesn’t require a dissertation to explain what you’re seeing. Just two sentences.

 

One: For 20 years, politicians, elites and D.C. military leaders lied to us about Afghanistan.

Two: What happened last week was inevitable, and anyone saying differently is still lying to you.

I know because I was there. Twice. On special operations task forces. I learned Pashto as a U.S. Marine captain and spoke to everyone I could there: everyday people, elites, allies and yes, even the Taliban.

The truth is that the Afghan National Security Forces was a jobs program for Afghans, propped up by U.S. taxpayer dollars — a military jobs program populated by nonmilitary people or “paper” forces (that didn’t really exist) and a bevy of elites grabbing what they could when they could.

You probably didn’t know that. That’s the point.

And it wasn’t just in Afghanistan. They also lied about Iraq.

I led a team of Marines training Iraqi security forces to defend their country. When I arrived I received a “stoplight” chart on their supposed capabilities in dozens of missions and responsibilities. Green meant they were good. Yellow was needed improvement; red said they couldn’t do it at all.

I was delighted to see how far along they were on paper — until I actually began working with them. I attempted to adjust the charts to reflect reality and was quickly shut down. The ratings could not go down. That was the deal. It was the kind of lie that kept the war going.

So when people ask me if we made the right call getting out of Afghanistan in 2021, I answer truthfully: Absolutely not. The right call was getting out in 2002. 2003. Every year we didn’t get out was another year the Taliban used to refine their skills and tactics against us — the best fighting force in the world. After two decades, $2 trillion and nearly 2,500 American lives lost, 2021 was way too late to make the right call.

You’d think when it all came crumbling down around them, they’d accept the truth. Think again.

War-hungry hawks are suggesting our soldiers weren’t in harm’s way. Well, when I was there, two incredible Marines in my unit were killed.

Elitist hacks are even blaming the American people for what happened this week. The same American people that they spent years lying to about Afghanistan. Are you kidding me?

We deserve better. Instead of politicians spending $6.4 trillion to “nation build” in the Middle East, we should start nation building right here at home.

I can’t believe that would be a controversial proposal, but already in Washington, we see some of the same architects of these Middle Eastern disasters balking at the idea of investing a fraction of that amount to build up our own country.

The lies about Afghanistan matter not just because of the money spent or the lives lost, but because they are representative of a systematic dishonesty that is destroying our country from the inside out.

Remember when they told us the economy was back? Another lie.

Our state of Missouri was home to the worst economic recovery from the Great Recession in this part of the country. I see the boarded-up stores and the vacant lots — one of which used to be my family’s home. When our country’s elites were preaching about how they had solved the financial crisis and the housing market was booming, I watched the house I joined the Marine Corps out of sit on the market for two years. My dad finally got $43,000 for it. He owed $78,000.

The only way out is to level with the American people. I’ll start. With the two-sentence truth about what we are seeing in Afghanistan right now:

For 20 years, politicians, elites and D.C. military leaders lied to us about Afghanistan.

What happened last week was inevitable, and anyone saying differently is still lying to you.

Cole County native Lucas Kunce is a Marine veteran and antitrust advocate. He is a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate.

GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger rips into Trump and Mike Pompeo for ‘getting rolled’ by the Taliban

GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger rips into Trump and Mike Pompeo for ‘getting rolled’ by the Taliban

Oma Seddiq                        

adam kinzinger
Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL). Andrew Harnik-Pool/Getty Images
  • Rep. Adam Kinzinger slammed Trump and Pompeo for their negotiations with the Taliban last year.
  • “They set this up to fail,” Kinzinger told CNN.
  • Kinzinger also blamed Biden over the current failure in Afghanistan.

Rep. Adam Kinzinger slammed the former Trump administration’s deal with the Taliban, saying on Sunday that it set the stage for the current failure in Afghanistan.

The Illinois Republican said former President Donald Trump and his then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo are at fault for America’s “disastrous” withdrawal from the country.

“Donald Trump was publicly saying, ‘We have to get out of Afghanistan at all costs. It’s not worth it.’ Mike Pompeo meets with the Taliban and tries to ‘negotiate’ something,” Kinzinger said during an appearance on CNN.

Read more: Trump’s enablers: Meet the 125 people and institutions most responsible for his rise to power

“They ended up getting rolled almost as bad as Neville Chamberlain,” he continued, referring to the British prime minister who negotiated the 1938 Munich Agreement, which was widely panned as enabling the Nazi invasion of Poland.

“They set this up to fail,” Kinzinger said.

GOP Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming on Sunday also blasted Trump’s deal, calling it a “surrender” to the Taliban.

“We sat down and negotiated with terrorists,” Cheney told NBC News. “We gave credibility to the Taliban … We completely undercut the Afghan national government. We absolutely emboldened the Taliban.”

While president, Trump was eager to remove American troops from Afghanistan and end the US’ longest-running war. But he took an unprecedented step to try and fulfill that aim: negotiate directly with the Taliban. His administration engaged in a series of talks with the militant group in Qatar, and even invited them to a secret meeting at the presidential retreat Camp David for the 9/11 anniversary in 2019. Trump later reversed this decision after a Taliban attack killed a US service member in Afghanistan.

Still, Trump reached a deal with the Taliban in February 2020, which stipulated that US troops would be withdrawn from Afghanistan within 14 months on the condition that the Taliban not turn the country into a terrorist base. The agreement had been widely criticized at the time for acceding to the Taliban and excluding the Afghan government. Pompeo attended the signing ceremony and took photos alongside Taliban leader Abdul Ghani Baradar, who is anticipated to head the next Taliban government in Afghanistan.

Trump has now attempted to absolve himself from the situation and pinned responsibility solely on President Joe Biden for the Taliban’s takeover and the Afghan government’s collapse.

Though Kinzinger on Sunday attacked Trump, he also placed blame on Biden, who “could’ve easily turned this around” once he became president.

“The Republicans are putting out talking points to make Biden look bad. The Democrats are putting out talking points to point out the past administration. In truth, they’re both responsible,” Kinzinger said.

“Both parties have failed the American people,” he added.

Biden agreed to carry out Trump’s deal and pull out of Afghanistan. This week he defended his withdrawal of US troops, despite receiving widespread criticism from both sides of the aisle amid disturbing scenes coming out of Kabul of people clamoring to leave the country and the resurgence of the Taliban.

Rural NC counties are shrinking. Republican policies aren’t helping at all.

Rural NC counties are shrinking. Republican policies aren’t helping at all.

Ned Barnett                        

 

The General Assembly’s Republican majority overwhelmingly represents rural North Carolina, but rural North Carolina has little to show for it.

Actually, it has less to show for it. Of the state’s 100 counties, 51 mostly rural counties lost population in a census report issued this month, even as booming urban areas increased the state’s population by 9.5 percent. Rebecca Tippett, the director of Carolina Demography at UNC-Chapel Hill, said, “More counties than expected lost population and the losses were larger than expected.”

The shift refutes the low-tax, low-spending policies Republican legislative leaders have slavishly followed since taking control of the General Assembly in 2011. While the movement from rural to urban areas is a national trend, the legislative majority has accelerated the exodus by blocking or neglecting policies and investments that would spur rural job growth.

Norris Tolson, a former Democratic state legislator and former state secretary of transportation and secretary of commerce, now leads Carolinas Gateway Partnership, a group trying to boost economic development in Tolson’s native Edgecombe County. Since 2010, the county has lost 14 percent of its population. “The migration of the population speaks for itself,” he said. “People are moving to where they think the jobs are.”

Republicans have hurt the very people who elected them. Consider what the majority has done:

• Blocked Medicaid expansion for seven years. That has left hundreds of thousands of working poor without medical insurance and denied the state billions of dollars in federal aid. The impact has fallen hardest on rural hospitals. Since 2010, five of North Carolina’s 50 rural hospitals have closed and another nine are considered at risk of closing, according to a report from the Chartis Center for Rural Health.

• Slowed spending on public schools. Public schools are the main employer in 59 counties. Starving them for operating and capital funds stymies the local economy. Urban counties have raised property taxes to compensate. Rural counties don’t have the tax base to do that.

• Cut income taxes in ways that give the biggest breaks to large corporations and higher earners. The reductions mostly benefit white-collar urban workers even as they reduce the state’s ability to invest in rural areas.

• Opposed state borrowing. Republican leaders prefer a pay-as-you-go approach over approving state bond issues. What rural governments need most is money for roads, water and sewer, but the legislature has not supported the level of borrowing needed to fund major rural infrastructure projects.

• Bungled broadband expansion. In 2011, the legislature, kowtowing to telecommunications companies, blocked municipalities from operating their own broadband networks. Ten years later, access to high-speed internet – an essential tool for businesses, remote work, virtual schooling and telemedicine – is still unavailable or of poor quality in much of rural North Carolina.

• Targeted undocumented immigrants. Hispanic immigrants are a key part of the rural workforce in meatpacking and agriculture and their share of the rural population is growing. In Duplin, Sampson and Lee counties, for instance, 20 percent of the population is Hispanic, and that’s likely an undercount. Rather than helping the undocumented among the Hispanic population gain legal status, Republicans have encouraged their arrest and deportation.

Tolson said there is no single “silver bullet” to help rural counties, but “good, conscientious government policy” can make a difference.

On the other side, bad, callous government policy also has an effect.

Ten years ago, rural voters put their faith in Republican promises to lift their communities. Now, feeling the effects of those broken promises, rural residents are increasingly voting with their feet.

Associate opinion editor Ned Barnett can be reached at 919-829-4512, or nbarnett@ newsobserver.com

Minnesota GOP ‘in ruins’ after shocking scandal

Politico

Minnesota GOP ‘in ruins’ after shocking scandal

David Siders and Paul Demko                  

 

Less than a year ago, Minnesota looked every bit a swing state. Donald Trump was pouring millions of dollars into his campaign there, after nearly flipping the state in 2016, Republicans were making inroads in the ancestrally Democratic Iron Range. In the Twin Cities suburbs, nervous Democrats feared protests following the police murder of George Floyd could turn some voters to the GOP.

That all fell apart with Joe Biden’s victory in November. And nine months later, the resignation of the Minnesota Republican Party’s embattled chair, Jennifer Carnahan, on Thursday night marked a new low for a state party in decline.

The proximate cause of Carnahan’s departure was a firestorm that engulfed the party in recent days, after a GOP donor she was close to, Anton “Tony” Lazzaro, was indicted on federal sex-trafficking charges. A pile-on ensued, with Carnahan, the wife of Republican U.S. Rep. Jim Hagedorn, accused by party officials and former staffers of running a toxic, retaliatory workplace, mismanaging party finances and, through the use of non-disclosure agreements, squashing transparency.

“The party is in ruins,” Michael Brodkorb, a former deputy chair of the Minnesota GOP, said on Friday.

He added, “I don’t know if the party has hit rock bottom yet.”

There are reasons to think the party might not have. Even with Carnahan gone, Republicans are confronting what will likely be a months long slog of internal reviews and ongoing headlines about the saga — a drag on the party just over a year ahead of the midterm elections. In addition to the charges against Lazzaro, the chairwoman of the University of St. Thomas College Republicans was arrested on charges she assisted him in trafficking minors for sex, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported.

Four former executive directors of the state party have called for an external financial audit.

First term state Sen. Julia Coleman, who was among the first GOP elected officials in the state to call for Carnahan’s ouster, said a big reason she decided to run for office was to get more young people, particularly women, to embrace the Republican Party, but that the current scandal has undermined those efforts.

“When you have woman after woman after woman coming out and saying that they had an issue with abuse or sexual assault and that our chairwoman stifled their story, that’s concerning to me,” said Coleman, whose father-in-law is former Republican U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman. “If I was a young woman recently graduating, I wouldn’t want to come anywhere near the MN GOP.”

Republicans in Minnesota were losing ground statewide long before Carnahan was forced out. Trump, who viewed Minnesota as one of his few pick-up opportunities in the November election, lost to Biden by more than 7 percentage points. And though Republicans flipped one rural congressional seat and maintained a majority in the state Senate last fall, they ceded ground in the state’s populous — and growing — suburbs, an ominous sign for the party’s future in a once-promising state.

Minnesota’s Democratic governor, Tim Walz, is expected to easily win reelection next year, while one of the state’s most prominent Republicans is now pillow salesman-turned-conspiracy promoter Mike Lindell.

In the wake of Carnahan’s departure, some Minnesota Republicans see reason for optimism. The party had rid itself of a “terrible chair” who “wielded a hammer and kept power in this state through intimidation and false accusations and all the things people hate about politics,” said Amy Koch, a former Republican state Senate majority leader.

“What happened this week,” she said, “is that a bunch of activists and legislators and former legislators, all those folks stood up and said it’s not OK. It’s not OK. We’re not going to allow this to go forward.”

But the party is nowhere close to moving forward in unison. Carnahan did not exit quietly, casting the deciding vote on Thursday to give herself a severance of about $38,000. Carnahan maintained in a statement that she had no knowledge of Lazzaro’s alleged activities, and decried a “mob mentality” that she said sought to “defame, tarnish and attempt to ruin my personal and professional reputation.” An attorney for Carnahan said she neither knew of nor covered up any harassment of staffers and that she expects to file defamation suits based on claims against her that he said are false.

Carnahan, after winning reelection as chair earlier this year, continues to retain some support within the party, and the rift between those supporters and her critics is now hanging over the GOP.

“The party’s going to have to suffer to some extent,” said Joe Polunc, a former GOP chair in Carver County, a fast-growing area southwest of Minneapolis that Trump carried in 2020, but where Republicans have been losing voting share. “I mean, the media’s all over it … so there’s going to be a period of time, it will be difficult.”

Polunc, who said Carnahan was unfairly tarnished by innuendo, said the GOP is “going to have to rebrand itself, come together, and move forward. It’s unfortunate, to be sure.”

Stanley Hubbard, the billionaire Minnesota Republican donor, said he has “no idea whether [Carnahan] did anything they said she did” but that jettisoning her may have been the product of a “panic-driven rush to judgment.” As a result, he said voters — and donors — may view Carnahan as an “innocent victim.”

At the moment, the midterm outlook for Minnesota Republicans is bleak. The marquee election in the state next year will be the governor’s race, where the Democratic incumbent, Walz, defeated his last Republican opponent, Jeff Johnson, by more than 11 percentage points.

Walz’s public approval ratings remain relatively strong. And the Twin Cities metro area has become so prominent in Minnesota’s statewide elections — and so Democratic — that Republicans now face a reality where they would have to run up gigantic margins in the state’s rural areas to overcome it.

Regionally, Minnesotan Republicans remain competitive in rural swaths of Minnesota. But in statewide elections, they have not won a contest in 15 years, and the GOP has been shut out of presidential races even longer — with the state last voting for a Republican, Richard Nixon, in 1972. Now the party has an internal maelstrom to overcome on top of that.

“When you have these sorts of breakups, so to speak, it causes angst in the party,” said Eric Langness, vice chair of the GOP in the state’s 6th Congressional District. “It causes relationships and trust to be compromised. I think our party has some serious challenges ahead. We really need to look deep and say, ‘OK, here’s the wrongs of our past. How do we make it so that this is not going to happen again?’”

Jennifer DeJournett, president of Voices of Conservative Women and a longtime GOP activist, said there needs to be a thorough outside investigation of the alleged personnel abuses, as well as an independent audit of the party’s finances before there can be any hope of moving forward.

“But the operation of politics doesn’t stop,” DeJournett said. “There’s a ton of alphabet soup groups out there that are still doing the work to help push causes and candidates … Politics doesn’t stop while the state party is getting its act together.”

DeJournett and other veteran party activists were around a decade ago when the Minnesota Republican Party faced a similar crisis after running up huge debts and the party leadership collapsed. She sees a silver lining in how quickly Carnahan resigned.

“The last time we went through this, it took months and months and months of media stories to get to the ultimate end where there needed to be a change at the top,” DeJournett said. “This time, it took less than seven days.”

Before the party can begin to pick up the pieces, it will need to elect a new party chair, along with other leadership positions. State Sen. Mark Koran, who unsuccessfully challenged Carnahan earlier this year for party chair, is a likely candidate. Other names being floated: former state Rep. Kelly Fenton, former state Senate Minority Leader David Hann, lawyer and longtime GOP activist Harry Niska and Republican National Committeeman Max Rymer.

“There’s definitely healing that needs to occur,” Koran said.

Outside of the party, it remains unclear how the electorate will respond to the state party’s implosion. An early test will come next week, at the Minnesota State Fair.

Polunc, who will be at the state party’s booth there, said, “It will be interesting to see what kind of response we get from the public at large as they walk by, and we’ll see what kind of comments.”

He added, “It might be challenging at times.”

Multiple people missing amid ‘catastrophic’ flooding in Tennessee, North Carolina

Multiple people missing amid ‘catastrophic’ flooding in Tennessee, North Carolina

Jeanine Santucci, USA TODAY                

 

Multiple people are missing across Tennessee and North Carolina amid heavy rainfall that brought on severe flooding. North Carolina was recently battered by the remnants of Tropical Storm Fred, causing at least four deaths in Haywood County.

Rainfall in middle Tennessee has shattered records for water levels on the Piney River, according to the National Weather Service. More than 11 inches of rain was dumped on parts of Hickman County early Saturday morning. A state of emergency is in effect through Saturday afternoon in Dickson, Hickman, Houston and Humphreys counties.

McEwan, Tennessee, saw 14.5 inches of rain, the Tennessee Valley Authority said. A flash flood emergency is also in effect in Waverly, McEwen and Tennessee Ridge through Saturday evening.

The situation was “life-threatening,” the Nashville National Weather Service said in a tweet Saturday.

“People are trapped in their homes and have no way to get out,” NWS Nashville meteorologist Krissy Hurley told The Tennessean, part of the USA TODAY Network. “Water is up to their necks. It is catastrophic, the worst kind of situation.”

Several people are missing in the region, according to Hickman County Chief Deputy Rob Edwards.

An additional 1 to 2 inches of rain is possible in areas that already received between 8 and 12 inches Saturday morning, the National Weather Service said.

In North Carolina, four people have been confirmed dead in the flooding brought on by Fred this week, after two bodies were recovered Saturday. Their identities have not been made public. Franklin McKenzie, 67, and Frank Mungo, 86, were previously identified among the dead.

Seven people are still missing in Haywood County, including Judy Ann Mason, who has been missing since around 3 p.m. Tuesday from Laurel Bank Campground in Canton, a family friend told The Asheville Citizen Times.

Mason’s daughter, Naomi Haney, said the last text she got from her mother was, “Anything can happen to anyone any time.”

Day three of search and rescue was underway Saturday in Haywood, with teams from the other side of the state assisting in the search of miles of riverbank and rugged terrain.

Haywood County flood survivor: ‘I just saw everything floating away’

Cruso, North Carolina, is a small town that received some of the worst damage in the storm.

“It’s gone. There’s nothing there,” Sherrie McArthur, who owns Laurel Bank Campground in the area, told the Citizen Times. “I had 100 sites, and they’re all gone. I had campers in there — most all of them are gone, except maybe 10. What is still left is squashed, crushed. Some of them went totally down the river — I don’t know where they’ll be.”

Emergency officials with cadaver dogs were on site Thursday, McArthur said.

Contributing: Brinley Hineman and Rachel Wegner, Nashville Tennessean; John Boyle and Joel Burgess, Asheville Citizen Times