Injustice Anywhere is a Threat to Justice Everywhere, MLK jr – Page 88

Rail Industry Pushes Sensors Over Brakes After Ohio Train Crash

Bloomberg

Rail Industry Pushes Sensors Over Brakes After Ohio Train Crash

Thomas Black – February 26, 2023

(Bloomberg) — The train derailment that spilled toxic chemicals into a small Ohio town has revived a long-running debate about railroad safety — and some industry players think they have just the thing to resolve it.

The Feb. 3 crash of the Norfolk Southern Corp. train in East Palestine, Ohio, has renewed a push for railroads to adopt electronic brakes that could help prevent a malfunctioning train from endangering people and property. Electronically controlled pneumatic, or ECP, brakes have been touted for their capacity to bring trains to a halt in shorter distances and prevent dangerous pileups.

The Biden administration has blamed industry stonewalling for blocking regulations that would have mandated use of the systems on some trains — even though it isn’t clear that ECP brakes would’ve done much to mitigate an accident similar to the one in Ohio, and the proposed rules wouldn’t have applied to the train that crashed.

The railroad industry has found itself in a tight spot as the political furor around the accident grows, with former President Donald Trump turning up in East Palestine, and the derailment becoming a talking point on cable news and Capitol Hill. The episode has aggravated fears about the safety of sending chemicals and other hazardous materials over the rails, and raised the specter of new regulation at a time when railroads are coping with restive workers and annoyed customers.

Installing ECP brakes that the Biden administration and safety advocates favor would be expensive and cumbersome for a business beset by complaints about delays and lackluster service. The brakes need to be installed on each car to work properly — a daunting prospect for an industry with some 1.5 million cars on the tracks and little idle capacity.

A coalition that includes railcar makers, shippers and two large railroads say they have a different idea. They want to place sensors on railcars that could flag faulty equipment immediately to a train’s crew and others monitoring remotely. The system is being tested on 400 railcars and could be available commercially by the end of this year, according to the group, which calls itself RailPulse.

Such sensors could potentially catch problems like the overheated wheel bearing that likely caused the East Palestine wreck. Electronically controlled brakes, on the other hand, may not have even done much to mitigate the derailment if they were installed, based on a 2017 study by the National Academy of Sciences.

Notably, a sensor apparatus also would likely be much less expensive for the industry to put into place. RailPulse says its system would cost about $400 to $900 per railcar.

Smart Railcars

The use of remote sensing technology on the railroads isn’t entirely new. Currently, sensors known as wayside heat detectors placed along the tracks screen train cars for defects — and they sniffed out the trouble in Ohio. Wayside detectors were voluntarily adopted by railroads to reduce accidents; Norfolk Southern said it has nearly 1,000 of them.

According to a preliminary report by the National Safety Transportation Board, Norfolk Southern’s wayside detectors in Ohio were working, but caught the overheated wheel too late. The NTSB found that a wayside detector about 20 miles before the crash site measured the wheel bearing at 103 degrees Fahrenheit above ambient temperature — hot, but below a level that calls for the crew to stop and take a look.

However, the next detector, just ahead of the crash site, recorded a wheel temperature at 253 degrees above, a critical level. The sensor sounded an alarm, but it was too late. The wheel failed and caused 38 of the train’s 149 railcars to careen off the rails.

Sensors mounted directly on railcars could diagnose the issue sooner and buy critical time, backers say. Railcars will likely have multiple sensors in the near future that can detect anything from open doors to signs that equipment is in danger of failing, said David Shannon, general manager of RailPulse.

“Our objective is to make railcars smart,” Shannon said.

The group’s pilot program, which is testing five types of sensors, will be on 1,000 railcars by this summer, he said, and should be ready for real-world use by the end of this year. RailPulse plans to provide a subscription service to transmit the data to the cloud, and is counting on manufacturers to design the sensors the industry needs.

ECP Debate

Norfolk Southern was on the forefront of testing ECP brakes before the US Department of Transportation decided to require them on high hazard flammable trains in 2015. The company opposed the mandate because of cost, the brakes’ reliability and the inability to mix locomotives and railcars that didn’t have the system.

One of the biggest drawbacks of ECP brakes is that all the railcars on a train must have them or the system doesn’t work, making it impossible to phase in gradually. The rule followed a spate of derailments by trains shuttling crude oil from fracking hotspots where there were no pipelines to refineries.

As part of an infrastructure bill in 2015, Congress required the transportation department to justify the need for ECP braking. The National Academy of Sciences was ordered to examine computer modeling the department used to support its position that they had a significant safety advantage over conventional brakes.

After tests at a Norfolk Southern rail yard in Conway, Pennsylvania, and the New York Air Brake Facility in Watertown, New York, the academy said in a 2017 report that the department’s efforts to validate its modeling “do not instill sufficient confidence in DOT’s comparison of the estimated emergency performance of ECP braking systems” with other systems. That paved the way for the Trump administration to rescind the mandate.

In a Feb. 19 letter to Norfolk Southern Chief Executive Officer Alan Shaw, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg faulted the industry for opposing ECP brakes. “Rather than support these efforts to improve rail safety, Norfolk Southern and other rail companies spend millions of dollars in the courts and lobbying members of Congress to oppose common-sense safety regulation,” Buttigieg wrote.

However, others in the federal government have pushed back on the idea that the ECP mandate would have prevented the Ohio crash.

“Some are saying the ECP (electronically controlled pneumatic) brake rule, if implemented, would’ve prevented this derailment. FALSE,” NTSB Chairman Jennifer Homendy said in a Feb. 16 tweet. She went on to explain why the Norfolk Southern train wasn’t designated as high hazard flammable. “This means even if the rule had gone into effect, this train wouldn’t have had ECP brakes.”

Uphill Battle

The prospect that regulators would swiftly put the electronic-braking rules in place following the Ohio crash is remote. To reinstate the mandate would be an uphill battle, a senior White House official acknowledged during a Feb. 17 briefing. The rulemaking process takes years and it would be difficult to pull off after Congress weighed in against the technology.

Similarly, persuading the entire railroad industry to go along with RailPulse’s sensors could be a tall order.

Workers are wary of new safety technologies that the industry touts, especially if they are aimed at replacing human inspections, said Mark Wallace, vice president of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen. For the past five years, the railroads’ first priority has been profit, not safety, Wallace said. Operating profit margin for North American railroads increased to 39% last year from 34% in 2017.

“If you’re going to implement the technology, then you have to maintain the technology and you have to have somebody in place to make sure that it’s working properly,” he said.

Additionally, railcars are mostly owned by shippers and by leasing companies. Shippers are pushing to be able to track their freight cars just as they can for trailers on trucks, the railroads’ main competitor for freight. Some large railroads, including CSX Corp. and BNSF Railway, aren’t part of the coalition.

In Town Where Train Derailed, Lawyers Are Signing Up Clients in Droves

The New York Times

In Town Where Train Derailed, Lawyers Are Signing Up Clients in Droves

Campbell Robertson – February 25, 2023

A welcome sign on the outskirts of East Palestine, Ohio on Feb. 23, 2023. (Maddie McGarvey/The New York Times)

EAST PALESTINE, Ohio — In the three weeks since a freight train derailed in East Palestine and released more than 100,000 gallons of toxic chemicals, lawyers have poured into the little town, signing up clients, gathering evidence and already filing more than a dozen lawsuits in federal court on behalf of local residents.

They have held information sessions nearly everywhere a crowd can gather, including at a nearby Best Western, at the American Legion hall and in the packed cafeteria at East Palestine High School. Their message overall has been one of warning: It may be months, years or possibly even decades before the derailment’s ultimate effect on people’s health, property values or the soil and water becomes clear.

Further, the lawyers say, early moves by Norfolk Southern, the operator of the train, suggest that getting comprehensive answers from the company will not be easy.

Among a public that is deeply skeptical of official test results — Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, and other state and federal officials say they have not shown anything alarming so far — or camera-friendly efforts at reassurance, these warnings have resonated.

The distrust has been deepened by a sense that politicians are not being diligent enough in their response to the disaster; on Friday, President Joe Biden said that he had no plans to visit, although he pointed out that federal officials had arrived there within hours of the crash, and that he was “keeping very close tabs on” the situation.

“They get what’s happening,” Rene Rocha, a lawyer with supersize personal injury firm Morgan & Morgan, said during a state hearing about the derailment Thursday in Beaver County, Pennsylvania, just across the border from East Palestine.

Referring to residents there who had spoken at the hearing about headaches, coughs and other classic symptoms of chemical exposure, he added: “They see they’re not getting the truth from the politicians and the company. That leaves the lawyers.”

Norfolk Southern declined to comment Friday on matters involving litigation.

The huge scale of the chemical burn-off and the harrowing images of the fire, as well as the intense politicization of it all, have made the derailment in East Palestine among the most high-profile environmental disasters in the country in years.

Television cameras are still routine fixtures on the sidewalks of the town’s central street. On Friday night, Erin Brockovich, the famed environmental activist who years ago exposed corporate wrongdoing that polluted drinking water, spoke to a packed town hall at the East Palestine High School auditorium.

The event, billed as an “educational seminar” and organized by a law firm based out of Akron, Ohio, consisted mostly of a detailed presentation by Mikal Watts, a prominent Texas lawyer, about the potential health effects of the derailment and the legal landscape that plaintiffs would be facing. But it began with a short speech from Brockovich to the hundreds sitting in the auditorium and watching an overflow screen in the gym.

“You’re going to be told it’s safe, you’re going to be told not to worry: Well that’s just rubbish,” she said. Of the derailment in East Palestine, she said, “I’ve never seen anything in 30 years like this.”

To some local attorneys, the army that has descended on the town is exasperating. “Did they even know where East Palestine was prior to this accident?” fumed David Betras, a lawyer who has spent his career just up the road in Youngstown, Ohio, and is planning to file a suit on behalf of hundreds of local residents. “They come in with this star power. Like, ‘Oh, Erin’s gonna solve it.’”

On Thursday night, Steve and Kelly Davis sat down in a yet-to-be-opened wine bar a short walk from where the train cars left the tracks nearly three weeks earlier. Thousands of their bees had been found dead after the burn-off, thousands of dollars’ worth of boxes that had housed the bees were now in questionable condition and the reputation of the family honey business was in jeopardy.

Their son, on the verge of buying a house downtown, was suddenly getting a cold shoulder from the bank. No one had come to test their well water. And to top it all off, Steve Davis had developed a cough.

They had come to meet with Robert Till, a Texas-based investigator for the law firm of Cory Watson who for weeks has been meeting people at a table set up in the empty bar. Till has met with hundreds so far, he said, talking with people about their health conditions, learning how their businesses have been affected and asking whether they have cleaned their homes — and if they have held onto the cleaning materials, which he said would contain critical data about contamination.

“I’m putting you guys on for priority testing,” he told the Davises.

“For the water?” Steve Davis asked.

“For everything,” Till said.

The legal machinations are in their early stages. Cases might ultimately be consolidated as class-action or multidistrict litigation; most of the suits will almost surely end up bundled before one or several federal judges in an Ohio courtroom.

Norfolk Southern may offer some sort of resolution voluntarily, whether by setting up a compensation fund with an independent administrator, as BP did after the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, or establishing a court-supervised medical monitoring program, where people could come for free testing related to possible health effects.

The company has already been paying $1,000 in “inconvenience compensation” to people who had to evacuate. Although Norfolk Southern insists that the payments do not curtail anyone’s right to sue, many are skeptical.

Lawyers point to certain moves made by the company — including a letter sent Thursday notifying plaintiffs’ attorneys that they had two days to inspect the rail cars before the cars were removed or destroyed — as signs that it would be combative.

There is no shortage of experience among the members of the plaintiff’s bar arriving in town: Train derailments are not unusual in the United States, nor are oil spills, chemical leaks or industrial accidents.

“It looks like these dadgum railroads would get it right after that many years and stop falling off the tracks, but they just can’t do it,” said Calvin Fayard Jr., a Louisiana lawyer who took the lead in a suit after a train carrying vinyl chloride — one of the substances that spilled and burned in East Palestine — derailed in a small Louisiana town in 1982.

As part of a $39 million settlement arising from the 1982 derailment, a commission was set up to monitor long-term health effects and oversee the decontamination of soil and water. That commission continued its work for more than 30 years, dissolving less than a decade ago, said Fayard, whose law partner has been in East Palestine talking with potential clients.

But a program of that magnitude is never a sure thing. After a train carrying vinyl chloride derailed in Paulsboro, New Jersey, in 2012, a federal judge ruled against any medical monitoring program and dismissed the suit; settlements were ultimately reached in state court.

No sooner had Till signed up the Davises as clients Thursday evening than another couple walked in, keeping him at work. The Davises stepped outside to talk with Michael McKim, the owner of the wine bar, which so far remains on track to open next month.

McKim had met Till in a hotel lobby during the town’s initial evacuation, and had been letting him use his place as an office ever since. This was all new to both couples.

“I feel like a baby seal in the middle of the ocean surrounded by great white sharks,” McKim said. But with as big a shark as Norfolk Southern as the defendant, he said, joining up with a law firm was his best chance. “It’s kind of nice to at least hang out with a shark that maybe understands.”

Putin’s energy war has flopped (so far)

Yahoo! Finance

Putin’s energy war has flopped (so far)

Rick Newman, Senior Columnist – February 24, 2023

When Russia invaded Ukraine a year ago, President Vladimir Putin had a lot more in his war plan than tanks and missiles. Putin also planned an energy war in parallel with his military war on the ground in Ukraine.

Putin’s military war has gone badly, his army decimated after failing to seize Ukraine, as planned. Putin’s energy war has failed, too. Neither war is over, but the many nations now allied against Russia have done a remarkable job blunting Putin’s most potent economic weapon.

Putin clearly anticipated sanctions against his country in response to the 2022 invasion. He also thought he could counter those sanctions using Russian energy, which Europe in particular was dependent on. Russia is the world’s third-largest oil and natural gas producer, and at the time of the invasion, it was Europe’s top source of gas, needed to produce electricity.

At first, Putin’s energy war worked as planned. Sanctions imposed by the United States and other nations largely exempted Russian energy, to protect consumers from price spikes. But the unpredictable nature of those sanctions, plus instability caused by the war itself, generated a “fear premium” in energy markets that pushed prices up. Oil prices spiked from about $90 before the invasion to nearly $125 four months later.

U.S. gasoline prices hit $5 per gallon last June, damaging President Biden’s popularity and making inflation a bigger everyday concern for Americans than the war in Ukraine. Natural gas prices rose by far more than oil and gasoline. Russia started reducing gas flows to Europe last June, then completely shut the main gas pipeline to Europe in September.

https://flo.uri.sh/story/1836372/embed?auto=1

By late August, European natural gas prices were four times higher than before the war. Wintertime rationing seemed likely, along with a recession caused by sporadic business shutdowns and painful energy inflation. Gas prices surged in the United States as well, though not by as much in Europe, given that gas is not as transportable as oil, generating regional price differences.

Soaring energy prices were exactly the kind of pain Putin planned for nations opposing his war. His hope was that high energy prices among Ukraine’s allies would wreck their economies, undermining public support for sanctions and for aid to Ukraine.

https://flo.uri.sh/visualisation/12840951/embed?auto=1

The full-blown energy crisis Putin tried to create never materialized, however. Prices tell the story. Oil, gasoline and natural gas prices are now lower than they were before Putin invaded, as the chart above shows. Russia is still a crucial source of energy, but the nations it tried to bring to heel have reconfigured their energy supply chains with speed and skill nobody foresaw a year ago.

“The last year may be remembered as the twilight for Russian energy leverage,” Richard Morningstar, founding chairman of the Atlantic Council Global Energy Center, wrote in a January report. “Moscow’s energy strategy is not working, and its ability to wield energy chaos as a geopolitical weapon is waning.”

Several concerted actions by Ukraine’s allies parried Putin’s energy offensive. In the United States, President Biden released an unprecedented amount of oil from the strategic reserve, with other countries releasing smaller amounts. Though not huge relative to total oil supply, those releases seem to have reassured markets and brought price relief at the margins.

TOPSHOT - Workers repair high-voltage power lines cut by recent missile strikes near Odessa on December 7, 2022, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine. - A new barrage of Russian strikes on December 5, left several Ukrainian cities without power, including the eastern city of Sumy and the southern city of Mykolaiv, according to officials. In Odessa, the water services operator said — TOPSHOT – Workers repair high-voltage power lines cut by recent missile strikes near Odessa on December 7, 2022, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine. – A new barrage of Russian strikes on December 5, left several Ukrainian cities without power, including the eastern city of Sumy and the southern city of Mykolaiv, according to officials. In Odessa, the water services operator said “there is no water supply anywhere” and officials in the central city of Kryvyi Rig said “parts of the city are cut off from electricity, several boiler and pumping stations are disconnected.” (Photo by OLEKSANDR GIMANOV / AFP) (Photo by OLEKSANDR GIMANOV/AFP via Getty Images)

Putin himself blinked. He could have slowed or stopped Russian oil sales, which would undoubtedly have sent prices soaring, given that Russia produces about 10% of the world’s oil. But he never did. Oil sales are Russia’s biggest source of revenue, and Putin desperately needs that funding to pay for a war that is far costlier than he anticipated. Russian oil production has actually remained stable for most of the past year, which is helping Putin keep the war going but also keeping global prices under control.

Europe also dramatically revamped its natural-gas supply chains, with the portion of gas coming from Russia dropping from 40% to less than 10%. And much of that gas goes to Turkey and Balkan nations not fully participating in sanctions. Gas shipped on tankers from the United States and Qatar backfilled much of the supply lost from Russia. Some European power plants also switched from gas to coal, which boosted carbon emissions, but is also likely temporary.

The United States and other large nations have also developed novel ways to begin sanctioning Russian energy while keeping supplies on the market and prices low. In December, a U.S.-led group of large nations imposed a price cap of $60 per barrel on Russian oil. Barrels from Russia generally sell for less than that, since global prices have been around $80 and the market demands a discount for the risk and complexity of purchasing from Russia. But this “buyers cartel” can lower the price and pinch Russia harder.

On February 5, another set of price caps went into effect for Russian petroleum products such as diesel fuel. Putin has vowed to withhold oil from any buyer participating in the price-cap regime, but so far nothing has changed.

Putin may still have some ammunition in reserve. “Given that Washington has strongly signaled an aversion to higher oil prices, and has gone to quite extraordinary lengths to keep a lid on them, there remains an elevated risk that Putin will seek to exploit this pain point in 2023,” Helima Croft, head of global commodity strategy at RBC Capital Markets, wrote in the January Atlantic Council report. “We may be entering a particularly precarious phase in the conflict. Putin may endeavor to demonstrate that he is not a spent force.”

One concern is Russian sabotage of energy facilities in regions where it has some influence, similar to the mysterious explosions that ruptured two undersea gas pipelines running from Russia to Germany last September. Russia has links to mercenary groups in oil-producing nations such as Iraq, Algeria, and Libya, and direct involvement in some energy facilities operated by former Soviet Republics. Some analysts think a surprise slowdown in production from two fields in Kazakhstan last April may have been a dress rehearsal for future Russian sabotage.

Russia has also announced an oil production cut of 500,000 barrels per day—about 4.5% of its total output—starting in March. Since other tactics haven’t worked, Putin may be testing new ways to gain an edge, similar to Russian troops trying to adapt and survive on Ukraine’s bloody battlefields. What Putin hasn’t accounted for is the ability of his adversaries to adapt, too.

Rick Newman is a senior columnist for Yahoo Finance.

People Boycott Popular Beer After Producer Breaks Promise to Pull Out of Russia

The Street

People Boycott Popular Beer After Producer Breaks Promise to Pull Out of Russia

It’s not a good look.

Colette Bennett – February 24, 2023

People Boycott Popular Beer After Producer Breaks Promise to Pull Out of Russia

More than 10,000 people are spending their Friday morning on Twitter calling for a boycott of Dutch beer company Heineken.

A tweet featuring an incendiary fan-made image first used the hashtag on Feb. 23, which transformed Heineken’s signature green bottle into pointed bullets and stated “proud supporter of Russian genocide.”

The post also stated: “Heineken launched no less than 61 new products on the #Russian market last year after promising to stop investing there because of the war in #Ukraine.”

Heineken in March 2022 had vowed to pull its business from Russia after the country invaded Ukraine. But an investigative report from Netherlands-based website Follow the Money states that the company’s reports showed its Russian arm “launched 61 new products ‘in record time’ and sold 720,000 hectoliters more beer and soft drinks.”

Heineken was quick to respond to the controversy in a formal statement: “We’re working hard to transfer our business to a viable buyer in very challenging circumstances and we expect at a significant financial loss to the company, amounting to around €300M.

“In the meantime, our local colleagues at Heineken Russia are doing what they can to keep the business going, after fully delisting the Heineken® brand, to avoid nationalisation and ensure their livelihoods are not at risk.”

Ukrainian soldiers with life-changing war injuries posed for portraits saying they are ‘living monuments’ of a brutal war

Insider

Ukrainian soldiers with life-changing war injuries posed for portraits saying they are ‘living monuments’ of a brutal war

Mia Jankowicz – February 24, 2023

A photo by Marta Syrko of Ukrainian soldier Sasha, whose lower legs were amputated. Sasha, lying on his side and propped up by one elbow, is naked except for a strip of cream cloth over his loin, and looks down. He is muscular, has multiple tattoos and is bathed in a pearly, blue-and-cream light. — Oleksandr lost both his lower legs to a Russian missile.Marta Syrko

Ukrainian photographer Marta Syrko has asked war-injured soldiers to sit for her.
Oleksandr, who lost his lower legs, said he wanted to show that injured bodies can be powerful.
The pictures, both stark and tender, are a reminder of the human cost of Putin’s war.

Last summer, 26-year-old Oleksandr was resting in a trench.

Exactly six months earlier, he had been working as a barista while he trained in graphic design. But after Russia invaded, he became a leader in a mortar batallion.

He was exhausted. The safest place to rest would have been under tree cover along with his squad, but there was no more room there. So he drifted off in the trench.

The next thing he knew he was buried in soil, his legs in excruciating pain. After his friends had scrabbled through the earth, they laid him on his front, not wanting him to glimpse his legs.

It was August 24, Ukraine’s independence day, and Ukrainians suspected Russia would seek grim trophies.

Oleksandr’s lower legs were later amputated.

He told Insider he accepted his injuries “from the first moment” the missile hit him. (He spoke to Insider through an interpreter.)

So when photographer Marta Syrko asked Oleksandr to sit for her, he felt he could send a message with his body: among other things, to show the world the carnage Putin is inflicting and the cost of defending his country.

‘We need an artist, not just a photographer’

One of Syrko’s main subjects is bodies. A skim through her Instagram feed shows the human form in all its glory, from an advertising-perfect washboard stomach to the soft millefeuille creases of her grandmother’s skin.

After Russia’s invasion, however, more and more people were returning to her hometown of Lviv with life-changing wounds.

So she approached a rehabilitation clinic near the city to ask if any of the soldiers — whose bodies had been radically transformed by war — would let her take portraits of them.

Four men agreed, three of whom lost limbs and one who received serious burns.

A black-and-white photo by Marta Syrko of Sergiy, Ukrainian soldier who lost his left lower leg. He is sitting up in a chair, mostly unclothed with tattoos on his torso, and his prosthesis visible. He looks down at a baby swaddled in a white cloth that partially covers him. Part of the foreground is blurred. — Serhii agreed to become one of Syrko’s “Heroes.”Marta Syrko

Among the soldiers was Serhii, pictured above cradling his second child, who had his leg torn off in the shockwave of a blast near Izyum, in Kharkhiv Oblast.

Another, Stanislav, also lost a leg last summer, in Bakhmut — one of the most fiercely contested cities in the entirety of Russia’s bloody war.

Syrko said she was inspired by the classical statues she saw in museums like the Louvre.

Foundational for Western art history, they, too, through wear and tear, are often missing limbs.

A photo by Marta Syrko, of Ilya, Ukrainian soldier who was badly burned. A top-down view shows his bare white legs, one bent sideways at the knee, and his lower arms, both partially burned. He wears a red cloth and sits on a grey floor with dark blue paint marks. — Illya Pylypenko received severe burns in a tank.Marta Syrko

Later, Neopalymi, a charity devoted to treating and rehabilitating people with severe burns, approached Syrko with a request. They asked her to photograph Illya Pylypenko, a soldier who had burns on much of his body after his tank caught fire.

Syrko’s unflinching photos of Pylypenko show how his face, in particular, was transformed.

A photo portrait by artist Marta Syrko of Ukrainian soldier Ilya, who was badly burned. Ilya is seen topless in a three-quarter view, chin in hand, looking ahead. Skin on his hand and arm, and much of his face, is badly damaged with red-colored burns on his otherwise white skin.

Neopalymi, a burns rehabilitation center, asked Syrko to photograph Illya Pylypenko.Marta Syrko

Maksym Turkevych, Neopalymi’s CEO, told Insider in an email that the project needed “an artist, not just a photographer.”

‘We don’t know what to say. How to behave.’

Syrko’s work has many fans, but she said she’s had occasional comments from people who say she’s exploiting disabled people through her work.

Asked about this, Syrko — who is able-bodied — said her aim is to make a real and complex discussion happen.

“It’s a hard question for Ukrainians now, because we don’t know how to act near them,” she said. “We don’t know what to say, how to behave. And so that’s why we have to discuss it.”

A photo by Marta Syrko of Stanislav, Ukrainian soldier whose right lower leg was amputated. He is seen bathed in golden light through wet glass, wearing a cloth round his waist, sitting on the floor. One knee is up, while his amputated leg rests on the ground. Stanlislav rests his forehead on his arm, propped on his raised knee. — Stanislav also lost his lower leg.Marta Syrko

For Oleksandr, the decision to become a “monument” for Syrko’s photos, as he put it, was a deliberate choice that he embraced.

He liked Syrko’s thinking about statues, saying in an Instagram post that people like him are “living monuments, who have been close-up witnesses to war.”

A closely-cropped black-and-white-photograph by Ukrainian photographer Marta Syrko, showing soldier Serhii and his son. Serhii is seated and unclothed except for long bands of white cloth, under which his tattoos can be seen. He looks down at his baby son in his arms. In the lower half of the picture, his prosthetic lower leg is visible. — Serhii, pictured here with his son, lost part of his leg near Izyum.Marta Syrko

But public attitudes can be disappointing, even though he was injured defending their homeland, he said. People “look away, and they break into lively talk when ‘monuments’ walk past.”

Society, he said, stops seeing these bodies as beautiful.

“I wanted to become something that would inspire others like me to feel that people are looking at them not with shame, but with exaltation!” he wrote.

This was Neopalymi’s goal, too. “The main reason for us to do it is to show the society that there is a beauty in it, and that they should not be scared or disgusted by this,” said Turkevych, the CEO.

A photo by Marta Syrko of Ilya, Ukrainian soldier who was burned in combat. A closely-cropped overhead view of his hand, red with burn marks, as well as part of his thigh, other hand, and a swathe of red cloth. — Syrko’s unflinching images of Illya show the effects of his burns.Marta Syrko

With a 122,000-strong Instagram following, Syrko said she had conversations with her subjects about the exposure the pictures could bring.

“I told them that they are probably going to be a little bit popular,” she said. And so they turned out to be — her pictures have been shared by the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Twitter account, and by newspaper Ukrainska Pravda.

Oleksandr told Insider, laughing, about his surprise when he arrived at the studio and realized that Syrko wanted him to pose nearly nude.

But he quickly got comfortable. “Marta’s the kind of person with whom you can feel comfortable and free,” he said.

Rebuilding an accessible Ukraine

Oleksandr spoke to Insider from the US, where thanks to a partnership with Ukrainian organization Without Restrictions, he has been undergoing intensive rehabilitation.

There, he’s learning to walk and run on high-tech prostheses. But for some weeks before he flew out, he was using a wheelchair.

A photo by Marta Syrko of Stanislav, Ukrainian soldier whose right lower leg was amputated. He appears to have been photographed through gauzy white fabric, seated on the floor with his right knee up, arm resting on it. Mostly unclothed, his waist is wrapped in white fabric. — Syrko photographed Stanislav in her contemplative artistic style.Marta Syrko

While the Ukrainian government has not confirmed exact numbers of casualties, the number of people with life-changing injuries — whether civilian or soldiers — is likely to make accessibility a key concern for the country’s future.

It’s a realization echoed by disability organizations supporting relief efforts in Ukraine, who at a joint conference last year issued the Riga Declaration, a document calling for the country’s rebuilding to employ universal design principles.

“A lot of cities are in a rebuilding phase,” Syrko said, envisioning a new, post-war Ukraine. “We can start to build it from zero — why can’t we do it correctly?”

Republicans pushing a plan to remove you (yes, you too) from Arizona’s voter rolls

AZ Central – The Arizona Republic – Opinion

Republicans pushing a plan to remove you (yes, you too) from Arizona’s voter rolls

Laurie Roberts, Arizona Republic – February 24, 2023

Voters wait in line at a polling station at Mesa Community College in Mesa, Ariz. on Election Day.

In August, the attorney general of Arizona wrapped up his investigation into the Cyber Ninjas’ claim that hundreds of dead voters cast ballots in the 2020 election.

To the surprise of absolutely no one, braindead or alive, Attorney General Mark Brnovich concluded that the Senate’s vaunted auditors didn’t know what they were talking about. There was no vast graveyard full of dead voters determined to deny Donald Trump his due.

Not even so much as a small crypt of conspiracy.

So naturally, there’s a bill in the Arizona Legislature to take care of this nonexistent problem … by cancelling your voter registration.

I am not making this up.

Senate Bill 1566 would wipe Arizona’s voter rolls clean every 10 years, requiring millions of Arizonans to re-register to vote.

It is but one of the dozens of kooky bills born of MAGA zealots and their absolute refusal to consider the fact that maybe they are losing statewide races because their candidates just aren’t acceptable to a statewide electorate.

Both the Senate and House election committees are chaired by election deniers.

The chairwoman of the Senate Elections Committee is Sen. Wendy Rogers of Flagstaff, who wanted to decertify the 2020 election and regularly calls for the arrest of elections officials. After being tapped by Senate President Warren Petersen to run point on election bills this year, Rogers vowed to engineer a do-over of Maricopa County’s 2022 election, though it seems more like a fundraising gimmick than an actual plan.

The chairwoman of the House Municipal Oversight and Elections Committee is Rep. Jacqueline Parker of Mesa, who, like Rogers, was a co-sponsor of then-Rep. Mark Finchem’s 2022 proposal to decertify Arizona’s 2020 presidential election. Her panel is packed with election deniers.

Every week, we are treated to veritable buffet of bad bills designed to fix problems that exist only in their fevered imaginations.

There’s a bill to do away with early ballots, the voting method of choice by 8 in 10 voters.

There’s a bill to ban ballot tabulators, never mind that hand counts are considered less accurate and more expensive. Or that a hand count of up to 70 races on 3 million or more ballots is likely to last until Christmas.

There‘s a bill to ban unmonitored ballot drop boxes out of some undocumented fear that Eeyore is lurking about and another to return to voting in precincts, never mind it leads to more voters being disenfranchised when they show up to the wrong place to vote.

There’s a bill that would require elections officials to post online the name, year of birth and address of every voter and another that would allow representatives of the Republican and Democratic parties to challenge your signature on an early ballot.

Then there is SB 1566, requiring you to reregister every 10 years if you want to continue exercising your constitutional right to vote.

In pushing the bill, Sen. Sonny Borrelli, R-Lake Havasu City, noted that he decided to look into the issue after the Attorney General’s Office spent “thousands of hours” investigating claims of dead voters.

“So I had my audit team go through voter registrations on dead voters and bounced that against the people that voted,” he recently told the Senate Elections Committee. “They looked at 30 ballot envelopes. Within 45 minutes they found 17 people that somehow voted after they died.”

Fifty-six percent? Clearly, our elections are being determined by those whose forwarding address lies somewhere near the Pearly Gates … or perhaps a good ways south of there.

Curiously, Borrelli didn’t mention the findings of the Attorney General’s Office after all those hours of investigation.

The ninjas, as part of their five-month audit of Maricopa County’s election, reported that 282 dead voters cast ballots in the November 2020 election. The AG’s Office then said it spent hundreds of hours investigating those claims.

The conclusion: 281 of those 282 voters were alive and kicking when they cast ballots.

“Our agents investigated all individuals that Cyber Ninas reported as dead, and many were very surprised to learn they were allegedly deceased,” Attorney General Brnovich wrote in an August letter to then-Senate President Karen Fann.

AG investigators also checked out four other reports of up to 6,500 supposedly dead people who either cast ballots or were on the voter registration rolls. They came up with “only a handful of potential cases,” all of them isolated instances.

Yet another conspiracy gone kaput – consigned to the graveyard of crazy to rest in peace alongside Sharpies, green buttons, bamboo ballots, hacked machinery and all the other supposedly nefarious ways in which Arizona’s 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump.

Only to rise again in the Senate Elections Committee, and to heck with federal law.

The National Voter Registration Act outlines how and when a person’s name can be removed from the voter rolls, for example if he or she requests it or moves or dies.

The act also requires states to make “a reasonable effort to remove ineligible persons by reason of the person’s death, or a change in the residence of the registrant outside of the jurisdiction.”

I’m guessing a wholesale wipeout of every Arizonan’s registration every 10 years might be considered a tad, I don’t know, unreasonable?

“It violates federal law,” Jen Marson, of the Arizona Association of Counties, warned the committee. “It’s totally in conflict with NVRA.”

Even some Republicans were queasy about the proposal. Sen. T.J. Shope, R-Coolidge said he doesn’t view the bill as legitimate. Sens. Ken Bennett, R-Prescott, and John Kavanagh, R-Fountain Hills, agreed.

Then all three voted yes and the bill passed on a party line 5-3 vote.

Voters may not be dead but when it comes to the state Capitol, common sense is a goner.

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Toxic wastewater from Ohio train derailment headed to Texas

Associated Press

Toxic wastewater from Ohio train derailment headed to Texas

February 23, 2023

FILE – This photo taken with a drone shows portions of a Norfolk Southern freight train that derailed Friday night in East Palestine, Ohio are still on fire at mid-day Saturday, Feb. 4, 2023. Toxic wastewater used to extinguish a fire following a train derailment in Ohio is headed to a Houston suburb for disposal. Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo says “firefighting water” from the East Palestine, Ohio train derailment is to be disposed of in the county and she is seeking more information.(AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)

DEER PARK, Texas (AP) — Toxic wastewater used to extinguish a fire following a train derailment in Ohio is headed to a Houston suburb for disposal.

“I and my office heard today that ‘firefighting water’ from the East Palestine, Ohio, train derailment is slated to be disposed of in our county,” Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo said in a Wednesday statement.

“Our Harris County Pollution Control Department and Harris County Attorney’s have reached out to the company and the Environmental Protection Agency to receive more information,” Hidalgo wrote.

The wastewater is being sent to Texas Molecular, which injects hazardous waste into the ground for disposal.

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality told KTRK-TV that Texas Molecular “is authorized to accept and manage a variety of waste streams, including vinyl chloride, as part of their … hazardous waste permit and underground injection control permit.”

The company told KHOU-TV it is experienced in managing this type of disposal.

“Our technology safely removes hazardous constituents from the biosphere. We are part of the solution to reduce risk and protect the environment, whether in our local area or other places that need the capabilities we offer to protect the environment,” the company said.

The fiery Feb. 3 derailment in Ohio prompted evacuations when toxic chemicals were burned after being released from five derailed tanker rail cars carrying vinyl choride that were in danger of exploding.

“It’s … very, very toxic,” Dr. George Guillen, the executive director of the Environmental Institute of Houston, said, but the risk to the public is minimal.

“This injection, in some cases, is usually 4,000 or 5,000 feet down below any kind of drinking water aquifer,” said Guillen, who is also a professor of biology and environmental science at the University of Houston-Clear Lake.

Both Guillen and Deer Park resident Tammy Baxter said their greatest concerns are transporting the chemicals more than 1,300 miles (2,090 kilometers) from East Palestine, Ohio; to Deer Park, Texas.

“There has to be a closer deep well injection,” Baxter told KTRK. “It’s foolish to put it on the roadway. We have accidents on a regular basis … It is silly to move it that far.”

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who visited the derailment site Thursday, has warned the railroad responsible for the derailment, Norfolk Southern, to fulfill its promises to clean up the mess just outside East Palestine, Ohio, and help the town recover.

Buttigieg has also announced a package of reforms intended to improve rail safety while regulators try to strengthen safety rules.

Pritzker Will Do What It Takes to Keep Both DeSantis and Trump Out of the White House

Bloomberg

Pritzker Will Do What It Takes to Keep Both DeSantis and Trump Out of the White House

Laura Davison and Shruti Date Singh – February 23, 2023

(Bloomberg) — Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker said he’s willing to spend what it takes in the next election to help President Joe Biden keep his job — and keep Republicans like Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump out of the White House.

“It’s very important to me that we elect a Democratic president and that we make sure to keep DeSantis, Trump and the retrograde views that they carry out of the White House,” Pritzker, a longtime Democratic donor, said in an interview Thursday with Bloomberg News in Chicago. “I’ll continue to support Democrats in the best way I can to help them get elected.”

Pritzker, 58, is a member of one of the world’s wealthiest families, with a net worth of $3.7 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The Democrat has been in the middle of recent spats with DeSantis, Florida’s Republican governor, and is a long-running nemesis of Citadel founder and GOP mega-donor Ken Griffin, who has said he’d back a DeSantis bid for president in 2024.

DeSantis, who visited Illinois this week, has criticized Chicago’s crime under Pritzker’s watch. Pritzker shot back, saying that DeSantis is trying to lower public education standards by banning the teaching of racial history.

Pritzker also said Griffin moved his financial empire headquarters to Miami from Chicago last year out of “embarrassment” after spending $50 million trying to defeat him in the gubernatorial race by backing Richard Irvin, the mayor of Aurora, Illinois.

“That person lost badly in the Republican primary,” Pritzker said in an interview Thursday with Bloomberg TV.

National Attention

Trading barbs with prominent Republicans sets up Pritzker for national political attention.

Pritzker, who was re-elected as Illinois governor in 2022, said he has been approached about potentially running for president, but declined to give any details about those discussions. He said he’s happy as governor, intends to serve the rest of his term and will back Biden this cycle.

Still, he’s raised his national profile by visiting New Hampshire and Florida, and has taken stances on expanding abortion access and banning assault weapons, stoking speculation that he has lofty ambitions beyond the Illinois statehouse in Springfield.

Regardless, the billionaire’s wealth promises to play a role in the 2024 race.

He poured more than $300 million of his own money into his two successful bids for governor. He spent about $51 million for a failed campaign to change Illinois’s flat income-tax structure to one that increases taxes on the rich.

Outside of Illinois, Pritzker and his wife have donated more than $39 million since 2011, according to campaign finance disclosures. Topping the list of recipients is Priorities USA Action, the super-PAC that’s supported Democratic presidential nominees since it was launched in 2011.

The Pritzkers have also given $2 million to support Hillary Clinton’s 2016 general election campaign and $1.4 million to back Biden in 2020.

–With assistance from Bill Allison.

Dems consider break with tradition to get Biden more judges

Associated Press

Dems consider break with tradition to get Biden more judges

Kevin Freking – February 22, 2023

FILE – Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, leads a hearing about the rise in threats toward elected leaders and election workers, at the Capitol in Washington, Aug. 3, 2022. Democrats recently celebrated the 100th judicial confirmation of Joe Biden’s presidency and are clamoring for more. To make it happen, some are flirting with ending a century-long Senate practice that a “blue slip” from a senator could make or break a nomination.(AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Even as Democrats celebrated the 100th judicial confirmation of Joe Biden’s presidency, they are clamoring for more — and some are flirting with ending a century-long Senate practice to help make it happen.

The rising friction over what in Washington parlance is known as the “blue slip” is creating tensions on the Senate panel that handles judicial nominations and prompting stern warnings from Republicans about a dangerous escalation in the partisanship that already dominates the judicial confirmation process.

The clash over Senate procedure could have major ramifications for Biden as he seeks to fill as many court vacancies as possible during the final two years of his term. Aghast at the speed with which Republicans approved judges during the Trump era, Democrats have made the confirmation to the courts a top priority, vowing to fill every seat possible. Their focus on the nominations is even greater now that Republicans control the House and can stall much of Biden’s broader legislative agenda.

Since at least 1917, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee has sent a blue-colored form, or “blue slip,” to the senators representing the home state of a judicial nominee. A blue slip returned with a positive response signals the senator’s approval of moving forward with a nomination hearing. But if the blue slip is not returned or comes back with a negative response, that means the home state senator objects, which can doom the nomination.

Republicans during Donald Trump’s presidency determined the lack of a positive blue slip would not stop them from moving forward with considering appellate court nominees — and they did so 17 times. Democrats were livid, pointing out that Republicans blocked several of President Barack Obama’s appellate nominees by declining to return a positive blue slip.

Now, Democrats are being encouraged to follow suit and do away with the blue slip when it comes to the district judges whose courts serve as the starting point for federal civil and criminal cases.

”In many respects, it is an archaic holdover from a different era,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn. “I think we’re maybe reaching the point of deciding whether it will be continued.”

Advocates for doing away with the blue slip say fast action is critical if Democrats want to have the kind of success Trump had in year three of his presidency, when he secured more than 100 judicial confirmations out of 231. They believe Democrats can’t afford to wait months on Republican senators to give their go-ahead for a nominee.

Besides, they argue, if Democrats don’t do away with the blue slip now, Republicans will abolish it when they return to the majority.

“Democrats would be chumps to say, ‘Oh well, we’re not going to do this because it’s a tradition,'” said Russ Feingold, the former three-term Democratic senator from Wisconsin who now serves as president of the American Constitution Society. The group is a liberal counter to the conservative Federalist Society.

The New York Times editorial board also weighed in recently, saying it was “far past time” for the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee to end the blue slip practice.

The chairman, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., has clearly heard some of the concerns voiced by progressives. He has made it a point recently to emphasize how Democrats submitted 130 positive blue slips for district court nominees during the Trump presidency, but so far, Republicans have only done so about a dozen times.

That’s essentially because Biden has been filling judicial vacancies of predominately Democratic-appointed judges in blue states. Soon, it will get harder. There are about 40 district court vacancies that will require a blue slip from at least one Republican senator. Many of those vacancies don’t have a nominee yet, and Durbin is clearly sending a signal to GOP senators to work expeditiously with the White House on submitting prospective nominees.

Durbin said he wants to continue with the blue slip tradition, but he’s adding a caveat: that they aren’t used for “discriminatory purposes” to block consideration of nominees based on race, gender or sexual orientation.

His comments have alarmed Republican senators. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said the blue slip courtesy is “very much at stake and at risk here.” He also questioned how Durbin is going to discern the motivations of Republicans senators if they object to a nominee.

“The last thing left in this body that makes the Senate the Senate, in my view, and gives a senator a say about a consequential decision in their state that will last a lifetime is the blue slip process,” Graham said. “So I would just hope we could agree, if possible, that no matter how frustrated we get, we’re going to honor this system.”

So far, only one Biden nominee for a district court has had their nomination derailed because a senator withheld a blue slip, William Pocan, nominated to the Eastern District of Wisconsin. Republican Sen. Ron Johnson withheld his blue slip, saying he had heard concerns from the Green Bay legal community that they needed a judge locally based and active in their community.

Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said complaints about the blue slip are “orchestrated and contrived.” He said that he and Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, were asked by the White House to submit names for an appellate court vacancy within three weeks, which they did.

“And eight months later, the administration finally gets around to nominating somebody,” Cornyn said. “We’ve got two district court vacancies where we have not been contacted at all by the White House counsel. So, most of the delay is because the administration has been slow in filling these nominees, these vacancies.”

Cornyn likened the efforts to ending the blue slip to Democratic calls for ending the filibuster so that legislation would only need a simple majority to advance rather than 60 votes.

“They want to fully dismantle the Senate as an institution,” he said.

Proponents of the blue slip say its most important feature is to encourage collaboration and compromise. Durbin said he provided eight positive blue slips after negotiating on nominees with the Trump White House. “I had to give a little. They did, too,” he said.

But Feingold, who served 16 years on the Judiciary panel and 18 years in the Senate, said he believes presidents will continue to consult with senators on judicial openings even without the blue slip, because they need a lawmaker’s votes on other priorities.

“You need to consult them anyway because if you try to jam somebody really bad down their throat, they are going to remember it,” Feingold said.

Blumenthal said he will bring lessons learned from the Obama years to the debate, and he’s determined not to let Republicans block district judges through the blue slip process the way they did appellate court judges.

“The history is undeniable that Republicans succeeded in blocking many of the Obama nominees, and therefore held open judgeships, which they then filled with alacrity,” Blumenthal said. “We’re not going to let that happen again.”

In rural America, right-to-repair laws are the leading edge of a pushback against growing corporate power

The Conversation

In rural America, right-to-repair laws are the leading edge of a pushback against growing corporate power

Leland Glenna, Professor of Rural Sociology and Science, Technology, and Society, Penn State – February 22, 2023

Waiting for repairs can cost farmers time and money. <a href= — Waiting for repairs can cost farmers time and money. VW Pics/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

As tractors became more sophisticated over the past two decades, the big manufacturers allowed farmers fewer options for repairs. Rather than hiring independent repair shops, farmers have increasingly had to wait for company-authorized dealers to arrive. Getting repairs could take days, often leading to lost time and high costs.

A new memorandum of understanding between the country’s largest farm equipment maker, John Deere Corp., and the American Farm Bureau Federation is now raising hopes that U.S. farmers will finally regain the right to repair more of their own equipment.

However, supporters of right-to-repair laws suspect a more sinister purpose: to slow the momentum of efforts to secure right-to-repair laws around the country.

Under the agreement, John Deere promises to give farmers and independent repair shops access to manuals, diagnostics and parts. But there’s a catch – the agreement isn’t legally binding, and, as part of the deal, the influential Farm Bureau promised not to support any federal or state right-to-repair legislation.

You can listen to more articles from The Conversation narrated by Noa.

The right-to-repair movement has become the leading edge of a pushback against growing corporate power. Intellectual property protections, whether patents on farm equipment, crops, computers or cellphones, have become more intense in recent decades and cover more territory, giving companies more control over what farmers and other consumers can do with the products they buy.

For farmers, few examples of those corporate constraints are more frustrating than repair restrictions and patent rights that prevent them from saving seeds from their own crops for future planting.

How a few companies became so powerful

The United States’ market economy requires competition to function properly, which is why U.S. antitrust policies were strictly enforced in the post-World War II era.

During the 1970s and 1980s, however, political leaders began following the advice of a group of economists at the University of Chicago and relaxed enforcement of federal antitrust policies. That led to a concentration of economic power in many sectors.

This concentration has become especially pronounced in agriculture, with a few companies consolidating market share in numerous areas, including seeds, pesticides and machinery, as well as commodity processing and meatpacking. One study in 2014 estimated that Monsanto, now owned by Bayer, was responsible for approximately 80% of the corn and 90% of the soybeans grown in the U.S. In farm machinery, John Deere and Kubota account for about a third of the market.

New tractors are increasingly high-tech, with GPS, 360-degree camera and smartphone controls. <a href= — New tractors are increasingly high-tech, with GPS, 360-degree camera and smartphone controls. Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images

Market power often translates into political power, which means that those large companies can influence regulatory oversight, legal decisions, and legislation that furthers their economic interests – including securing more expansive and stricter intellectual property policies.

The right-to-repair movement

At its most basic level, right-to-repair legislation seeks to protect the end users of a product from anti-competitive activities by large companies. New York passed the first broad right-to-repair law, in 2022, and nearly two dozen states have active legislation – about half of them targeting farm equipment.

Whether the product is an automobile, smartphone or seed, companies can extract more profits if they can force consumers to purchase the company’s replacement parts or use the company’s exclusive dealership to repair the product.

One of the first cases that challenged the right to repair equipment was in 1939, when a company that was reselling refurbished spark plugs was sued by the Champion Spark Plug Co. for violating its patent rights. The Supreme Court agreed that Champion’s trademark had been violated, but it allowed resale of the refurbished spark plugs if “used” or “repaired” was stamped on the product.

Although courts have often sided with the end users in right-to-repair cases, large companies have vast legal and lobbying resources to argue for stricter patent protections. Consumer advocates contend that these protections prevent people from repairing and modifying the products they rightfully purchased.

The ostensible justification for patents, whether for equipment or seeds, is that they provide an incentive for companies to invest time and money in developing products because they know that they will have exclusive rights to sell their inventions once patented.

However, some scholars claim that recent legal and legislative changes to patents are instead limiting innovation and social benefits.

The problem with seed patents

The extension of utility patents to agricultural seeds illustrates how intellectual property policies have expanded and become more restrictive.

Patents have been around since the founding of the U.S., but agricultural crops were initially considered natural processes that couldn’t be patented. That changed in 1980 with the U.S. Supreme Court decision Diamond v. Chakrabarty. The case involved genetically engineered bacteria that could break down crude oil. The court’s ruling allowed inventors to secure patents on living organisms.

Half a decade later, the U.S. Patent Office extended patents to agricultural crops generated through transgenic breeding techniques, which inserts a gene from one species into the genome of another. One prominent example is the insertion of a gene into corn and cotton that enables the plant to produce its own pesticide. In 2001, the Supreme Court included conventionally bred crops in the category eligible for patenting.

Genetically modified seeds, and even conventionally bred crops, can be patented. <a href= — Genetically modified seeds, and even conventionally bred crops, can be patented. Sean Gallup/Getty Images

Historically, farmers would save seeds that their crops generated and replant them the following season. They could also sell those seeds to other farmers. They lost the right to sell their seeds in 1970, when Congress passed the Plant Variety Protection Act. Utility patents, which grant an inventor exclusive right to produce a new or improved product, are even more restrictive.

Under a utility patent, farmers can no longer save seed for replanting on their own farms. University scientists even face restrictions on the kind of research they can perform on patented crops.

Because of the clear changes in intellectual property protections on agricultural crops over the years, researchers are able to evaluate whether those changes correlate with crop innovations – the primary justification used for patents. The short answer is that they do not.

One study revealed that companies have used intellectual property to enhance their market power more than to enhance innovations. In fact, some vegetable crops with few patent protections had more varietal innovations than crops with more patent protections.

How much does this cost farmers?

It can be difficult to estimate how much patented crops cost farmers. For example, farmers might pay more for the seeds but save money on pesticides or labor, and they might have higher yields. If market prices for the crop are high one year, the farmer might come out ahead, but if prices are low, the farmer might lose money. Crop breeders, meanwhile, envision substantial profits.

Similarly, it is difficult to calculate the costs farmers face from not having a right to repair their machinery. A machine breakdown that takes weeks to repair during harvest time could be catastrophic.

The nonprofit U.S. Public Interest Research Group calculated that U.S. consumers could save US$40 billion per year if they could repair electronics and appliances – about $330 per family.

The memorandum of understanding between John Deere and the Farm Bureau may be a step in the right direction, but it is not a substitute for right-to-repair legislation or the enforcement of antitrust policies.

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Leland Glenna does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.