Trump Adviser Worried He’s Not Getting Enough Credit for Trying to Ruin American Democracy
Tim Dickinson December 28, 2021
Ted-Cruz-Paul-Gosar-Jan-6 – Credit: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc/Getty Images
For most patriotic Americans, Jan. 6 represents a day of national shame and terror at what could have been the end of our democracy. But when former Trump economic adviser Peter Navarro reflects on that day, what he dwells on is that he doesn’t get nearly enough credit.
Navarro recently published a memoir, and is now pushing out interviews to reporters, bragging of a scheme he dreamed up with former Trump adviser Steve Bannon to overturn the results of the 2020 election. They even had a cringey name for it: the Green Bay Sweep.
The plot sought to keep Trump in office by exerting maximum pressure on Vice President Mike Pence to block the certification of the Electoral College votes from pivotal swing states, by drawing out the proceedings on national television for as long as 24 hours. “It was a perfect plan,” Navarro told the Daily Beast. “We had over 100 congressmen committed to it.”
Navarro’s anti-democratic plot was intended to keep Trump in office without violence, he’s fast to insist. In fact, Navarro blames the bloody insurrection at the Capitol for what he calls the “inglorious” result of Congress certifying the (100 percent legitimate) election of Joe Biden, foiling the autogolpe that could have continued Trump’s reign of “populist economic nationalism.”
Navarro is a Harvard-educated economist whom Trump tapped, originally, to escalate his trade war with China. But as coronavirus struck, Navarro’s role at the White House expanded to include pandemic response, in which he pushed the quack treatment of hydroxychloroquine. By the bitter end, Navarro was compiling cockeyed dossiers of (now-exhaustively-debunked) allegations of election fraud — “receipts” Navarro believed justified tin-pot measures to keep Trump in the White House.
So what was the Green Bay Sweep? The plot, Navarro writes, was named after a famous football play designed by storied 1960’s NFL coach Vince Lombardi, in which a Packers running back would pound into the end zone behind a “phalanx of blockers.”
For the 2021 Green Bay Sweep, Navarro writes, Bannon played the role of Lombardi. The plan was to have members of the House and Senate raise challenges to the counts of Electoral College votes from six pivotal battleground states.
“The political and legal beauty of the strategy,” Navarro writes, is that the challenges would force up to two hours of debate per state, in each chamber of Congress. “That would add up to as much as 24 hours of nationally televised hearings,” Navarro writes. The hearings would enable Republicans to “short-circuit the crushing censorship of the anti-Trump media,” Navarro hoped, and broadcast their Big Lie that Democrats had stolen the election “directly to the American people.”
The goal was not to get the election overturned on Jan. 6. Instead, they aimed to create such a spectacle that Pence would be forced to exercise his authority as president of the Senate to “put the certification of the election on ice for at least another several weeks” while Congress and the state legislatures pursued the “fraud” allegations. The dark particulars for how Trump would remain in office after that are not spelled out, and Navarro did not immediately answer an email seeking clarification. But he writes that the Green Bay Sweep was the “last, best chance to snatch a stolen election from the Democrats’ jaws of deceit.”
The problem with the plot was that its success hinged on “Quarterback Mike” — and Pence wasn’t solidly on board. Navarro writes that he tried, with Trump’s backing, to brief Pence on his claims of election irregularities, but that Pence was kept off-limits by his chief of staff, Marc Short. (Navarro seethes that Short was part of the Koch brothers wing of the GOP, having previously worked for a nonprofit backed by the Kochs. When Short came to work for the vice president, Navarro writes, “it was like the Soviet Union taking over Eastern Europe. As an Iron Koch Curtain fell over the vice president, the only way you could speak to VPOTUS was to go through Short.”)
Regardless, Jan. 6 began auspiciously — to Navarro’s view of things. He told the Daily Beast that Trump was “on board with the strategy,” which he writes also had the backing of “more than 100” members of Congress. Navarro elaborated that the plan started off “perfectly” as Congress opened the proceedings to count Electoral College votes. Rep. Paul Gosar objected to results from his home state of Arizona, seconded by Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas — an action that received standing applause from GOP colleagues in the chamber.
Navarro writes that the insurrection at the Capitol actually undermined the Green Bay Sweep by disrupting the official proceedings. When the Capitol was finally cleared of rioters and the joint session of Congress reconvened, Pence and leaders of both parties used “the excuse of the violence” to block other challenges to certification, Navarro writes. “In the inglorious way,” the Green Bay Sweep ended. Call it a sack, a fumble, or an interception, Navarro writes, Pence blew the play and “secured his place in history as the Brutus most responsible for the final betrayal of President Trump.”
It is unclear whether the Jan. 6 committee is probing the Green Bay Sweep as part of its investigation. Bannon, for his part, has been charged with criminal contempt for defying a subpoena from the congressional body. Navarro did not immediately respond to questions about whether he’s been contacted by the committee, or whether he was concerned about having potentially implicated himself in an attempted coup.
This Simple Breathing Technique Could Help Fend Off Illness and Ease Stress
Mary Anderson December 28, 2021
If you hum while you read this, your body could experience beneficial side effects from the vibrations. For one, the resulting oscillation as you exhale helps circulate healthy nitric-rich air within the nasal sinuses, which creates a better environment to help protect against pathogens. “If you do 10 seconds of humming, all the air is exchanged,” says Eddie Weitzberg, M.D., a researcher at the Karolinska Institute and an intensive care physician at Karolinska University Hospital in Sweden. “With normal breathing, it takes between a half-hour and one hour.” The better ventilation may help guard against sinus infections, especially in those prone to recurrent ones, he says.
Previous research by Dr. Weitzberg and his colleague also found that people who hummed as they steadily exhaled through their nose for five seconds increased the amount of nitric oxide in their nasal cavity (pumped in from the sinuses, which have stores of it) by 15 times compared with exhaling normally for five seconds. That spike in nitric oxide presents an opportunity to get more of the salubrious gas into the lungs, says Lou Ignarro, Ph.D., an emeritus professor of molecular and medical pharmacology at UCLA who won a Nobel Prize for his findings about nitric oxide. “After you finish humming, if you immediately breathe in through your nose, you can capture quite a bit of the nitric oxide,” he says.
The huge benefits of getting that injection into your lungs (which work to produce the gas themselves): Nitric oxide helps cells throughout the body destroy pathogens, and it’s also both a vasodilator (it helps blood vessels open wider) and a bronchodilator (it expands airways). “Nitric oxide dilates the pulmonary arteries and veins so more blood can get into the lungs and therefore pick up the oxygen,” Ignarro says. “It also widens the airways, the trachea, and the bronchioles so more oxygen can get in and get picked up by the increased blood getting in.” Better circulation means your body is getting more fuel for all its inner workings, immune functions included. Then there’s this crucial direct detox: “Nitric oxide in the lungs will kill or inhibit the growth of many bacteria, parasites, and viruses, especially the coronavirus,” he says. (Related: How Improving Your Cardiorespiratory Fitness Can Strengthen Your Immune System)
Meanwhile, your humming is also creating vibrations in the inner ear that are being picked up by the vagus nerve, the longest nerve in the body, which starts at the brain stem and runs to the belly. “This power cord is the bidirectional highway of communication between body and brain,” says Arielle Schwartz, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist in Boulder, Colorado. A study in the International Journal of Yoga that five minutes of humming (the humming-bee breath in yoga) increased vagus nerve activity as measured by improved heart rate variability. “That rhythmic rise and fall of the heart rate in synchronization with the breath in its optimal zone is actually putting the brain into what’s often referred to as flow state,” she says. Having your system in flow translates to many health benefits, including less stress.
Front-line workers describe symptoms they’ve observed in latest Covid wave
Daniella Silva December 29, 2021
Health NBC News
Physicians around the country facing the latest surge of Covid-19 cases, driven by the highly contagious omicron variant, have a straightforward message based on what they’re seeing in their emergency rooms: Vaccinations and boosters are having a positive effect.
“The general trend that I’m seeing is, if you’re boosted and you get Covid, you really just at worst end up with bad cold symptoms. It’s not like before where you were coughing, couldn’t say sentences and were short of breath,” said Dr. Matthew Bai, an emergency medicine physician at Mount Sinai Queens in New York City.
“There are obviously exceptions like if you start out with a very weakened immune system, your immune response won’t be as strong with a booster. But in your average person, a booster’s definitely going to make a difference is what I’m seeing,” he said.
Dr. Joseph Varon, chief of critical care services and the Covid-19 unit at Houston’s United Memorial Medical Center, said of the roughly 50 patients admitted to the hospital’s Covid unit in the last four weeks, 100 percent of them were unvaccinated.
He said patients who needed to be admitted typically have “shortness of breath, high fevers, being dehydrated like crazy.” He said those who are unvaccinated also “have more illness. What I mean by more illness is more pneumonia, not just a little bit of pneumonia, you have a lot of pneumonia.”
“The people that are coming in unvaccinated have a much larger burden of illness in the lungs than those who are vaccinated,” he said.
Meanwhile, those who had received the booster shot were “almost back to normal” within several days, he said. Those who had not received the booster have tended to “still feel sick after a week, a week and a half or so,” he added.
Patients who have received the booster shot may still have symptoms such as a sore throat, a lot of fatigue and muscle pain, said Dr. Craig Spencer, director of global health in emergency medicine at New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center. Those who are vaccinated but have not got the booster “looked worse, they looked like they felt pretty darn bad. But, again, they didn’t need to be hospitalized,” he said.
“I’m not seeing people who have got two doses and a booster and are coming in profoundly short of breath,” he said. “It’s just not happening.”
Those who are vaccinated but have not got a booster have shown symptoms such as more coughing, more fever and more fatigue than those who had received a booster, he said.
Meanwhile, Spencer said almost every patient he has seen who needed to be admitted was unvaccinated.
“We’ve known that there are multiple presentations of this disease, that hasn’t changed. What has changed is that we know that those who are vaccinated are significantly less likely to end up seeing me in the hospital and needing to be admitted. That’s for certain,” he said.
The new omicron variant continues to spread rapidly in the United States, making up about 58 percent of all new Covid cases for the week ending Dec. 25, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Early evidence suggests that for most people, at least for those who are up to date on their Covid vaccines, omicron appears less likely to cause severe illness.
And last week, reports out of the United Kingdom found that people who were infected with omicron in November and December were about two-thirds less likely to be hospitalized, compared with the delta variant.
Physicians still stressed the importance of getting the vaccine and getting a booster, even if omicron appears less likely to lead to severe illness than delta.
“Especially for those that are above 50-55, anyone with underlying medical conditions, we know that it can decrease the likelihood of you needing to be hospitalized with severe Covid,” Spencer said.
For those who are younger or without underlying medical conditions, he said, “if you can prevent infections in younger folks, you can hopefully prevent infections in older folks, their grandparents, their parents or people that they see and mingle with, especially around the holidays.”
“So, I think from an infection prevention and control standpoint, getting a booster dose in younger folks, in addition to the benefit in terms of severe disease, is quite important,” he said.
‘Slow-motion insurrection’: How GOP seizes election power
December 29, 2022
Capitol Riot Weakening the Guardrails
FILE – Republican Rep. Mark Finchem speaks May 2, 2018, at the Capitol in Phoenix. In the year since the Jan. 6 riot, Donald Trump-aligned Republicans have worked to clear the path for next time. In battleground states and beyond, Republicans are systematically taking hold of the once overlooked machinery of elections, weakening or replacing the checks in place to prevent partisan meddling with results. (AP Photo/Bob Christie, File) ASSOCIATED PRESS
In the weeks leading up to the deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, a handful of Americans — well-known politicians, obscure local bureaucrats — stood up to block then-President Donald Trump’s unprecedented attempt to overturn a free and fair vote of the American people.
In the year since, Trump-aligned Republicans have worked to clear the path for next time.
In battleground states and beyond, Republicans are taking hold of the once-overlooked machinery of elections. While the effort is incomplete and uneven, outside experts on democracy and Democrats are sounding alarms, warning that the United States is witnessing a “slow-motion insurrection” with a better chance of success than Trump’s failed power grab last year.
They point to a mounting list of evidence: Several candidates who deny Trump’s loss are running for offices that could have a key role in the election of the next president in 2024. In Michigan, the Republican Party is restocking members of obscure local boards that could block approval of an election. In Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, the GOP-controlled legislatures are backing open-ended “reviews” of the 2020 election, modeled on a deeply flawed look-back in Arizona. The efforts are poised to fuel disinformation and anger about the 2020 results for years to come.
All this comes as the Republican Party has become more aligned behind Trump, who has made denial of the 2020 results a litmus test for his support. Trump has praised the Jan. 6 rioters and backed primaries aimed at purging lawmakers who have crossed him. Sixteen GOP governors have signed laws making it more difficult to vote. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll showed that two-thirds of Republicans do not believe Democrat Joe Biden was legitimately elected as president.
The result, experts say, is that another baseless challenge to an election has become more likely, not less.
“It’s not clear that the Republican Party is willing to accept defeat anymore,” said Steven Levitsky, a Harvard political scientist and co-author of the book “How Democracies Die.” “The party itself has become an anti-democratic force.”
American democracy has been flawed and manipulated by both parties since its inception. Millions of Americans — Black people, women, Native Americans and others — have been excluded from the process. Both Republicans and Democrats have written laws rigging the rules in their favor.
This time, experts argue, is different: Never in the country’s modern history has a a major party sought to turn the administration of elections into an explicitly partisan act.
Republicans who sound alarms are struggling to be heard by their own party. GOP Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming or Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, members of a House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection, are often dismissed as party apostates. Others have cast the election denialism as little more than a distraction.
But some local officials, the people closest to the process and its fragility, are pleading for change. At a recent news conference in Wisconsin, Kathleen Bernier, a GOP state senator and former elections clerk, denounced her party’s efforts to seize control of the election process.
“These made up things that people do to jazz up the base is just despicable and I don’t believe any elected legislator should play that game,” said Bernier.
LOCAL CONTROL
Bernier’s view is not shared by the majority of the Republicans who control the state Legislature in Wisconsin, one of a handful of states that Biden carried but Trump wrongly claims he won. Early in 2021, Wisconsin Republicans ordered their Legislative Audit Bureau to review the 2020 election. That review found no significant fraud. Last month, an investigation by the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty came to the same conclusion.
Still, many Republicans are convinced that something went wrong. They point to how the nonpartisan Wisconsin Elections Commission — which the GOP-led Legislature and then-Republican governor created eight years ago to run the state’s elections — changed guidance for local elections officers to make voting easier during the pandemic.
“We feel we need to get this straight for people to believe we have integrity,” said GOP Sen. Alberta Darling, who represents the conservative suburbs north of Milwaukee. “We’re not just trying to change the election with Trump. We’re trying to dig into the next election and change irregularities.”
Republicans are also remaking the way elections are run in other states. In Georgia, an election bill signed this year by the GOP governor gave the Republican-controlled General Assembly new powers over the state board of elections, which controls its local counterparts.
The law is being used to launch a review of operations in solidly-Democratic Fulton County, home to most of Atlanta, which could lead to a state takeover. The legislature also passed measures allowing local officials to remove Democrats from election boards in six other counties.
In Pennsylvania, the GOP-controlled legislature is undertaking a review of the presidential election, subpoenaing voter information that Democrats contend is an unprecedented intrusion into voter privacy. Meanwhile, Trump supporters are signing up for local election jobs in droves. One pastor who attended the Jan. 6 rally in the nation’s capital recently won a race to become an election judge overseeing voting in a rural part of Lancaster County.
In Michigan, the GOP has focused on the state’s county boards of canvassers. The little-known committees’ power was briefly in the spotlight in November of 2020, when Trump urged the two Republican members of the board overseeing Wayne County, home to Democratic-bastion Detroit, to vote to block certification of the election.
After one of the Republican members defied Trump, local Republicans replaced her with Robert Boyd, who told The Detroit Free Press that he would not have certified Biden’s win last year.
Boyd did not return a call for comment.
A similar swap — replacing a traditional Republican with one who parroted Trump’s election lies — occurred in Macomb County, the state’s third most populous county.
The Detroit News in October reported that Republicans had replaced their members on boards of canvassers in eight of Michigan’s 11 most populous counties
Michigan officials say that if boards of canvassers don’t certify an election they can be sued and compelled to do so. Still, that process could cause chaos and be used as a rallying cry behind election disputes.
“They’re laying the groundwork for a slow-motion insurrection,” said Mark Brewer, an election lawyer and former chair of the Michigan Democratic Party.
The state’s top election official, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, warned: “The movement to cast doubt on the 2020 election has now turned their eyes … to changing the people who were in positions of authority and protected 2020.”
TRUMP’S RETRIBUTION
That includes Benson.
Multiple Republicans have lined up to challenge her, including Kristina Karamo, a community college professor who alleged fraud in the 2020 elections and contended that the Jan. 6 attackers were actually antifa activists trying to frame Trump supporters.
Trump has been clear about his intentions: He is seeking to oust statewide officials who stood in his way and replace them with allies.
“We have secretary of states that did not do the right thing for the American people,” Trump, who has endorsed Karamo, told The Associated Press this month.
The most prominent Trump push is in Georgia, where the former president is backing U.S. Rep. Jody Hice, who voted against Biden’s Electoral College victory on Jan. 6, in a primary race against the Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger. He rejected Trump’s pleas to “find” enough votes to declare him the winner.
Trump also encouraged former U.S. Sen. David Perdue to challenge Gov. Brian Kemp in the GOP primary. Kemp turned down Trump’s entreaties to declare him the victor in the 2020 election.
In October, Jason Shepherd stepped down as chair of the Cobb County GOP after the group censured Kemp. “It’s shortsighted. They’re not contemplating the effects of this down the line,” Shepherd said in an interview. “They want their pound of flesh from Brian Kemp because Brian Kemp followed the law.”
In Nevada, multiple lawsuits seeking to overturn Biden’s victory were thrown out by judges. A suit aimed at overturning his congressional loss was filed by Jim Marchant, a former GOP state lawmaker now running to be secretary of state, and it too was dismissed. The current Republican secretary of state, Barbara Cegavske, who is term limited, found there was no significant fraud in the contests.
Marchant said he’s not just seeking to become a Trump enabler, though he was endorsed by Trump in his congressional bid. “I’ve been fighting this since before he came along,” Marchant said of Trump. “All we want is fair and transparent elections.”
In Pennsylvania, Republican state Sen. Doug Mastriano, who organized buses of Trump supporters for Trump’s rally near the White House on Jan. 6, has signaled he’s running for governor. In Arizona, state Rep. Mark Finchem’s bid to be secretary of state has unnerved many Republicans, given that he hosted a daylong hearing in November 2020 that featured Trump adviser Rudolph Giuliani. Former news anchor Kari Lake, who repeats Trump’s election falsehoods, is running to succeed Republican Gov. Doug Ducey, who stood up to Trump’s election-year pressure and is barred from another term.
Elsewhere in Arizona, Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, who defended his office against the conspiratorial election review, has started a political committee to provide financial support to Republicans who tell the truth about the election. But he’s realistic about the persistence of the myth of a stolen election within his party’s base.
“Right now,” Richer said, “the incentive structure seems to be strongly in favor of doing the wrong thing.”
HIGH STAKES RACES FOR GOVERNOR
In Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, Democratic governors have been a major impediment to the GOP’s effort to overhaul elections. Most significantly, they have vetoed new rules that Democrats argue are aimed at making it harder for people of color to vote.
Governors have a significant role in U.S. elections: They certify the winners in their states, clearing way for the appointment of Electoral College members. That raises fears that Trump-friendly governors could try to certify him — if he were to run in 2024 and be the GOP nominee — as the winner of their state’s electoral votes regardless of the vote count.
Additionally, some Republicans argue that state legislatures can name their own electors regardless of what the vote tally says.
But Democrats have had little success in laying out the stakes in these races. It’s difficult for voters to believe the system could be vulnerable, said Daniel Squadron of The States Project, a Democratic group that tries to win state legislatures.
“The most motivated voters in America today are those who think the 2020 election was stolen,” he said. “Acknowledging this is afoot requires such a leap from any core American value system that any of us have lived through.”
Record Beef Prices, but Ranchers Aren’t Cashing In
By Peter S. Goodman December 29, 2021
Photographs by Erin Schaff
“You’re feeding America and going broke doing it”: After years of consolidation, four companies dominate the meatpacking industry, while many ranchers are barely hanging on.
Steve Charter on his 8,000-acre ranch on the high plains of Montana. Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York Times
SHEPHERD, Montana — Judging from the prices at supermarkets and restaurants, this would appear to be a lucrative moment for cattle ranchers like Steve Charter.
America is consuming more beef than ever, while prices have climbed by one-fifth over the past year — a primary driver for the growing alarm over inflation.
But somewhere between American dinner plates and his 8,000-acre ranch on the high plains of Montana, Mr. Charter’s share of the $66 billion beef cattle industry has gone missing.
A third-generation cattle rancher, Mr. Charter, 69, is accustomed to working seven days a week, 365 days a year — in winter temperatures descending to minus 40, and in summer swelter reaching 110 degrees.
On a recent morning, he rumbled up a snow-crusted dirt road in his feed truck, delivering a mixture of grains to his herd of mother cows and calves. They roam a landscape that seems unbounded — grassland dotted by sagebrush, the horizons stretching beyond distant buttes.
Mr. Charter has long imagined his six grandchildren continuing his way of life. But with no profits in five years, he is pondering the fate that has befallen more than half a million other American ranchers in recent decades: selling off his herd.
“We are contemplating getting out,” Mr. Charter said, his voice catching as he choked back tears. “We are not getting our share of the consumer dollars.”
The distress of American cattle ranchers represents the underside of the staggering winnings harvested by the conglomerates that dominate the meatpacking industry — Tyson Foods and Cargill, plus a pair of companies controlled by Brazilian corporate owners, National Beef Packing Company and JBS.
Since the 1980s, the four largest meatpackers have used a wave of mergers to increase their share of the market from 36 percent to 85 percent, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Their dominance has allowed them to extinguish competition and dictate prices, exploiting how federal authorities have weakened the enforcement of laws enacted a century ago to tame the excesses of the Robber Barons, say antitrust experts and advocates for the ranchers.
One landmark piece of legislation, the Packers & Stockyards Act of 1921, was adopted by Congress to “safeguard farmers and ranchers” — among other market participants — from “unjustly discriminatory and monopolistic practices.”
Today’s record high beef prices are most directly reflective of scarce stocks, another manifestation of the Great Supply Chain Disruption accompanying the pandemic. The initial spread of the coronavirus swept through slaughterhouses, killing scores of workers, sickening thousands and halting production. That caused shortages of beef.
But the shock landed atop decades of takeovers that closed slaughterhouses. The basic laws of economics suggest what happens when the packers cut their capacity to process beef: The supply is reduced, increasing consumer prices. At the same time, fewer slaughterhouses limits the demand for live cattle, lowering prices paid to ranchers for their animals — an advantage for the packers.
“Their goal is to control the market so that they can control the price,” said Marion Nestle, a professor of food studies and public health at New York University. “The pandemic exposed the consequences of the consolidation of the meat industry.”
JBS, the largest meatpacker in the United States, declined to discuss the impact of consolidation on the market, instead referring questions to a Washington lobbying organization, the North American Meat Institute.
“Concentration has nothing to do with price,” said a spokeswoman for the organization, Sarah Little. “The cattle and beef markets are dynamic.”
As slaughterhouses work through a glut of live cattle, ranchers have in recent weeks received rising prices for their animals, she added.
Cassandra Fish, a former senior executive at Tyson who now runs a beef industry consultancy, said the shuttering of slaughterhouses by meatpackers in recent decades was prompted by the simple fact that many were losing money.
“The packers are not masterminds,” she said. “The packing industry was unprofitable for several years, so they closed plants.”
But ranchers complain that the game is rigged.
They generally raise calves, allowing them to roam across grassland until they are big enough to be sold to so-called feed lots that administer grains to bring them to slaughtering weight. The feed lots — the largest concentrated in Texas, Nebraska, Kansas and Colorado — then sell their animals to the packers.
Because the feed lots face relentless pressure from the packers for lower prices, they in turn demand cut-rate terms from the ranchers.
“A lot of people don’t understand how trapped ranchers are in this really broken system,” said Jeanie Alderson, whose family has run cattle in southeastern Montana for more than a century. “We don’t have a market.”
Billions for Meatpackers
Many of the cattle raised in Montana are eventually hauled to slaughterhouses run by JBS, the world’s largest meat processor.
The two brothers who control the enterprise, Wesley and Joesley Batista, possess a fortune estimated by Bloomberg News at $5.8 billion. Four years ago, they went to prison after pleading guilty to participation in a Brazilian bribery ring that secured loans from government-owned banks. (They have since been released.) A $20 billion international acquisition spree put JBS in control of one-fourth of the American capacity for slaughtering beef.
While ranchers have been tallying losses, JBS has been celebrating gains — revenues of $18 billion between July and September, which represented an increase of 32 percent compared with the same quarter in 2020.
In past decades, when beef prices rose, so would payments to cattle ranchers, who claimed over half of what consumers paid for meat. But that relationship began to break down in 2015. Last year, cattle ranchers received only 37 cents on every dollar spent on beef, according to federal data.
“You’re having consumers exploited on one end of the supply chain, cattle producers exploited on the other,” said Bill Bullard, a former rancher who now heads an advocacy group, the Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund. “The meatpackers are making all-time record profits.”
His organization is a plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit that accuses meatpackers of manipulating prices by sharply reducing their purchases of cattle at so-called sale barns — open marketplaces where animals are inspected and purchased on the spot, with the prices disclosed publicly.
Instead, the packers now overwhelmingly rely on private contracts with feed lots. Those contracts provide the feed lots with certainty that the packers will buy their animals. In exchange, the feed lots must lock into a price structure that tracks those in public auctions, where buyers are scarce.
According to industry experts, this system allows packers to lock up the overwhelming supply of cattle at prices they impose, under terms hidden from public view. Given the market dominance of the four largest packers in their regions, feed lots lack alternative places to sell their animals once they reach slaughtering weight.
“There’s no competition,” said Ty Thompson, an auctioneer at the public auction yards in Billings, Mont., who also operates his own feed lots. “We have so much supply and so little capacity, that there’s no negotiation whatsoever.”
Losing the Family Legacy
In the rolling hill country of northern Missouri — a tableau of grain farms dotted by compact towns — Coy Young, a fifth-generation rancher, has concluded that raising cattle is pointless.
“You’re feeding America and going broke doing it,” he said. “It doesn’t pencil out to raise cattle in this country anymore.”
How the Supply Chain Crisis Unfolded
Card 1 of 9
The pandemic sparked the problem. The highly intricate and interconnected global supply chain is in upheaval. Much of the crisis can be traced to the outbreak of Covid-19, which triggered an economic slowdown, mass layoffs and a halt to production. Here’s what happened next:
A reduction in shipping. With fewer goods being made and fewer people with paychecks to spend at the start of the pandemic, manufacturers and shipping companies assumed that demand would drop sharply. But that proved to be a mistake, as demand for some items would surge.
Demand for protective gear spiked. In early 2020, the entire planet suddenly needed surgical masks and gowns. Most of these goods were made in China. As Chinese factories ramped up production, cargo vessels began delivering gear around the globe.
Then, a shipping container shortage. Shipping containers piled up in many parts of the world after they were emptied. The result was a shortage of containers in the one country that needed them the most: China, where factories would begin pumping out goods in record volumes
Demand for durable goods increased. The pandemic shifted Americans’ spending from eating out and attending events to office furniture, electronics and kitchen appliances – mostly purchased online. The spending was also encouraged by government stimulus programs.
Strained supply chains. Factory goods swiftly overwhelmed U.S. ports. Swelling orders further outstripped the availability of shipping containers, and the cost of shipping a container from Shanghai to Los Angeles skyrocketed tenfold.
Labor shortages. Businesses across the economy, meanwhile, struggled to hire workers, including the truck drivers needed to haul cargo to warehouses. Even as employers resorted to lifting wages, labor shortages persisted, worsening the scarcity of goods.
Mr. Young, 38, carries credit card debts reaching $55,000. He plowed most of that debt into artificial insemination technology aimed at producing premium breeding cows.
His payoff was supposed to come early last year, with a sale that Mr. Young anticipated would fetch $125,000. But the day that he trucked his herd to a nearby auction, panic over the pandemic assailed markets. Traders in Chicago pushed down the price of live cattle by more than 10 percent. Mr. Young received a bid of only $32,000.
It was a crushing blow, a price that seemed certain to trigger his financial unraveling. Still, he had no choice but to take it. Cattle are perishable goods. Holding on to them after they reach slaughtering weight entails the costs of feeding them. They begin to add more fat than muscle.
A week later, the bank began calling Mr. Young demanding repayment. Sinking into despondency, he waited for his wife to drive to her nursing job — their means of paying the bills. He planned to kill himself, he said. When she pulled back into the driveway, having forgotten something, he reconsidered.
“You put your heart and soul into something, and then you lose your ass,” he said. “You don’t see any other way out.”
He plans to sell off his herd early next year and start a barbecue catering business.
“You’re raised a farmer, and that’s what you’re supposed to do,” he said. “It’s my family legacy. It’s like I’m losing my image as a man.”
What Gets Lost
Ever since the Reagan administration, the federal government has taken a lax approach to antitrust enforcement, investing in the popular notion that when large and efficient companies are permitted to amass greater scale, consumers benefit.
That notion may now be up for readjustment.
The Biden administration and members of Congress are pressing to diminish the dominance of the meatpackers as inflation concerns intensify.
The Federal Trade Commission last month opened an inquiry into how anticompetitive practices by major companies have contributed to supply chain problems.
“The meat price increases we are seeing are not just the natural consequences of supply and demand,” senior White House economists recently declared in a blog post. “They are also the result of corporate decisions to take advantage of their market power in an uncompetitive market, to the detriment of consumers, farmers and ranchers, and our economy.”
Last year, as the pandemic began, the Charter family recognized a full-on market failure.
“You could see a cow across the road, and you couldn’t find ground beef in Billings, Montana,” said Mr. Charter’s daughter, Annika Charter-Williams, 34.
As they made arrangements to sell about 120 head of cattle in March 2020, they reached out to a friend who owns a feed lot that sells animals to a JBS plant in Utah.
Mr. Charter was taken aback by the terms for the first load: The slaughterhouse demanded that he commit to delivering his cattle, with the price to be dictated by JBS.
“I wanted to tell him to go to hell,” Mr. Charter says. “But what choice did I have?”
His break-even point was $1.30 a pound. “Without any consulting or any dealing, they just decided that they were going to pay me $1 a pound,” he said.
His daughter took the disaster as the impetus for creativity. She engaged a small, local slaughterhouse to process some of their remaining animals. Then she sold the beef directly to consumers across Montana, marketing it on social media.
This resonated as a triumph — the successful sidestepping of the packers.
It was also not enough.
“It looks like we’re going to have to liquidate almost all the cattle,” Mr. Charter said.
When family ranches like his disappear, he added, so do the values that have governed their operations for generations — a commitment to caring for land and producing quality beef, rather than catering exclusively to the bottom line.
“People shouldn’t be worried about us because we’re kind of quaint and it’s nice to have the cowboys out there,” Mr. Charter said. “We need a food system that serves everyone, and not just a handful of companies.”
Peter S. Goodman is a global economics correspondent, based in New York. He was previously London-based European economics correspondent and national economics correspondent during the Great Recession. He has also worked at The Washington Post as Shanghai bureau chief.
Want to be happier? Science says buying a little time leads to significantly greater life satisfaction.
Buying things won’t make you happier. But research shows that buying time can, as long as you do it the right way.
By Jeff Haden December 29, 2021
Remi Muller/Unsplash;Sharon McCutcheon/Unsplash]
In 1930, the influential economist John Maynard Keynes assessed how technological and economic advances had reduced the number of hours the average person worked. He predicted that within two generations, most people would work only three hours a day.
Working hard wouldn’t be a problem. Filling all that free time would, for most people, be the problem.
While Keynes got a lot of things right, he swung and missed on that one. Technological advances have not freed up the average person’s time. Neither have broader economic advances.
Nor has increased wealth. In fact, some studies show that the more money people make, the less time they think they have.
Add it all up, and money can’t buy you happiness.
Unless, purposefully and consciously, you use a little money to buy a little time.
In a 2017 study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers surveyed thousands of people who sometimes paid other people to perform tasks they didn’t enjoy or didn’t want to do. Like mowing the lawn. Or cleaning the house. Or running errands. Stuff they needed to do, but didn’t particularly want to do.
Unsurprisingly, people who were willing to spend a little money to buy a little time were happier and felt greater overall life satisfaction than those who did not.
Correlation isn’t always causation, though. Maybe the people who spend money to buy time are happier simply because they have the money to buy time?
Nope. While relatively wealthy people who spent money to buy a little time were happier than relatively wealthy people who did not, people at the bottom end of the economic spectrum who spent money to buy a little time were happier than those at the bottom end of the economic spectrum who did not.
No matter how much you make, no matter how wealthy you are, buying a little time makes you happier. (With a couple of catches; more on that in a moment.)
Just to prove the causation point, the researchers conducted a further experiment. One week, participants were given $40 and told to spend it on any item or items they chose. The only restriction was that they had to use the money to buy “things.”
The next week, participants were given $40 and told they had to spend it on freeing up time. Cleaning. Maintenance. Delivery. Paying someone to do something they didn’t want to do so they could use that time to do something they did want to do.
You’ve already guessed the result: When the participants bought time instead of things, they felt happier, less stressed, and more satisfied.
There is a catch. The researchers found that “spending too much money on time saving services could undermine perceptions of personal control by leading people to infer that they are unable to handle any daily tasks, potentially reducing well-being.”
Granted, most of us can’t afford to spend so much money buying time that we feel inadequate or incapable. But still: Making a conscious decision about which tasks to occasionally farm out is key.
And why you decided to farm out that task. If someone always cuts your grass, then you’ve likely made that your new normal. You probably still feel too busy. You probably still feel time is scarce.
The key to buying time is to consciously decide how you will use the time your money freed up. Buying time will make you happier only if it feels intentional and purposeful–not because you don’t have the time, but because you want to use the time you have differently.
Instead of cutting the grass, you might decide (again, to make this work you have to decide)to spend the time with family or friends. Or working on that side project you can’t seem to get to. Or reading. Or working out.
In short, doing something you enjoy–doing something you want to do–with the time you bought.
Pro-Trump Group Invented Voter Fraud Claims Months Before Election
Kelly Weill – December 27, 2021
Sergio Flores
A well-funded far-right group—that made inroads with Stop The Steal organizations, paid a former police captain more than $200,000 to hunt ballots, and became entangled in a roadside stickup—was making war plans for Election Day 2020 months ahead of time, documents reveal.
The fringe group, the Liberty Center for God and Country (LCGC), led a lucrative fundraising blitz in the run-up to the election and quietly networked with now-notorious election denialists. Their work came to light in October of that year when former Houston Police captain Mark Aguirre allegedly rammed his SUV into a man’s truck, forced the man onto the ground at gunpoint, and accused him of transporting 750,000 fraudulent ballots. Aguirre’s claims were baseless—his victim was an innocent air conditioner technician—and no widespread voter fraud has been found in the 2020 election. Aguirre was indicted this week for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.
The criminal charges outed the LCGC, which had quietly moved hundreds of thousands of dollars in the name of preventing voter fraud in the months before the election, launching a website and fundraisers in the months before Nov. 3.
In the fall of 2020, as Donald Trump trailed Joe Biden in the polls, Republican activists sought ways to sow doubt in the event of a possible Trump loss. Aguirre and LCGC were among them.
“We are private investigators in the State of Texas who have uncovered an illegal ballot harvesting operation in Harris County,” Aguirre wrote in a GoFundMe campaign in late September 2020. “Our team is spearheaded by Mark A. Aguirre retired Captain of the Houston Police Department Lic.#C14256. We have collected evidence from 2018 displaying the massive absentee mail in voting fraud. We are currently in the process of collecting more evidence and information that will directly impact the upcoming 2020 election.”
Aguirre’s description of himself as a “retired” police captain (he’d actually been fired for a disastrous raid) was the least of the fundraiser’s lies. Although the fundraiser shed little light on Aguirre’s “team,” the fundraiser was launched one day after Aguirre signed an affidavit in a lawsuit accusing Houston-area Democrats of widespread voter fraud.
The lawsuit, filed by Republican activist Steven Hotze, accused Texas Democrats of a plot to defraud voters, in part by offering early voting and more voting locations. Some of its claims rested on supposed evidence collected by Aguirre and a former FBI agent who, like Aguirre, later became a private investigator.
“Based on interviews, review of documents, and other information, I have identified the individuals in charge of the ballot harvesting scheme,” Aguirre wrote.
Aguirre’s involvement with Hotze went deeper than the lawsuit suggested. In late August, according to business records, Hotze formed the LCGC. The group’s earliest web presence called on Trump to designate three days “for national repentance, fasting, and prayer.”
Hotze was already a known figure in Texas and Republican politics. An anti-LGBT crusader since the 1980s, Hotze made inroads with the state’s conservatives, aided by money from his medical practice where he offered “hormone replacement.” Before the 2020 election, Hotze filed a flurry of lawsuits attempting to restrict expanded voting in Texas, like early and drive-through voting. In September and October 2020, he also charged headlong into conspiracy theories about the upcoming election, making long Facebook videos and posts detailing what he said would be a Democratic effort to steal 2020 via voter fraud in Harris County, Texas.
“The Socialist Democrats know that Harris County, where Houston is located, is ground zero for the upcoming general election in Texas and nationwide,” he wrote in a post shared by the LCGC. ”As Harris County goes, so goes Texas. As Texas goes, so goes the nation.” (This is not true, either of Harris County’s significance in Texas elections, or of Texas’s role in national elections.)
In order to crack down on alleged fraud pre-election, the LCGC allegedly hired Aguirre to investigate people it suspected of running fake ballot rings. According to charging documents, Aguirre admitted to surveilling the home of air-conditioning technician David Lopez-Zuniga, on the suspicion that the Houston man was running a scheme to force children to sign 750,000 fraudulent ballots. Aguirre allegedly rammed Lopez-Zuniga’s car off the road, forced him onto the ground at gunpoint, and knelt on his back before an actual police officer was able to intervene. The day after the incident, the LCGC sent $211,400 to Aguirre’s bank account.
The LCGC was pulling in big money, its fundraisers suggest. In addition to Aguirre’s GoFundMe, which earned at least $2,600, the group operated its own GoFundMe, which raised nearly $70,000 from mid-October to mid-December.
The LCGC also registered as a nonprofit—a status that would be useful when networking with a burgeoning movement of voter fraud hoaxers.
Shortly after Trump’s loss in November 2020, a website called Every Legal Vote purported to show evidence that Trump had actually won. The site billed itself as something of a supergroup among the emerging field of election-denialist organizations.
“This site is a labor of love by American citizens,” Every Legal Vote’s now-deleted “about us” page reads. “Our Founding Sponsors: The Economic WarRoom, Allied Security Operations Group, Liberty Center for God and Country are building a coalition concerned with protecting our sacred elections from tampering and fraud.”
The Economic War Room is a web series run by Kevin Freeman, a senior fellow at an Islamophobic thinktank, the Colorado Times Recorder noted when a local politico promoted the Every Legal Vote site.
Allied Security Operations Group (ASOG) became notorious in its own right, after it was involved in an effort to “audit” voting machines in Antrim County, Michigan. Its founder, Russell Ramsland Jr., authored a report about their findings that was wildly misleading, in part because he confused the states of Michigan and Minnesota, using their voting data interchangeably. The ASOG report nevertheless became a popular document in Trumpist circles, with Rudy Giuliani citing it as evidence of fraud.
The ASOG was also a leading candidate to conduct a doomed “audit” in Maricopa County, Arizona, although they were dropped after observers pointed to their botched Antrim County report. Texts from officials involved in the Maricopa County audit reveal that ASOG was also working with Phil Waldron, a retired Army colonel credited with distributing a now-infamous PowerPoint presentation on how lawmakers could invalidate the 2020 election and install Trump as president.
The LCGC did not return requests for comment about its relationship with the ASOG. But at least one ASOG fundraiser underscored a financial link between the two groups.
“ASOG urgently needs your help to continue their vitally important research,” read the fundraising plea on an election-denial website early this year. The fundraiser encouraged donors to give their money to LCGC, which was a nonprofit.
“For 501c3 Donations: Write checks to Liberty Center for God and Country,” the fundraiser said. It did not include LCGC’s address in Katy, Texas. Instead it asked supporters to send money to ASOG’s Addison, Texas offices, where a staffer “will get them to LCGC and insure your donation receipt.”
Hong Kong is clinging to ‘zero covid’ and extreme quarantine. Talent is leaving in droves.
Theodora Yu and Shibani Mahtani – December 27, 2021
Aerial drone shot a Hong Kong Corporate Buildings streets (Getty Images/iStockphoto)
HONG KONG – Ellie May Paden, 26, came to Hong Kong over a year ago for a new opportunity and a budding relationship. Her LinkedIn page says she is “fortunate enough to be teaching English as a foreign language in a beautiful city,” with a photo of the glittering downtown skyline.
Paden, who runs a side business selling scented candles, found herself isolated by extreme quarantine rules that require anyone returning from abroad to spend weeks in confinement at a cost of thousands of dollars, irrespective of vaccination status. She missed her grandfather’s funeral and the birth of her niece, but she hoped that as vaccination rates rose, Hong Kong might open up.
It wasn’t to be. Paden is now selling her stock of candles and heading back to the United Kingdom before relocating to Canada, joining the swelling ranks of expatriates leaving Hong Kong over its approach to the pandemic.
“No other country takes it as far as three weeks,” Paden said. “It is kind of insane.”
With China exercising ever-tighter control over Hong Kong, the city is hewing to the country’s strict “zero covid” policy extolled by Beijing as evidence of a superior political system. Yet the approach has largely cut off Hong Kong from both China and the world – a severe blow for a place that built its success on global connections. Even more than recent political changes, the authorities’ refusal to adapt to living with the virus is eroding Hong Kong’s viability as an international city, according to almost two dozen diplomats, chambers of commerce, recruiters, pilots and other expatriates.
The resultant brain drain is altering the face of the financial hub, which some Western companies now consider a hardship post, as fewer people are willing to take the places of those leaving. The number of overseas professionals and investors admitted to Hong Kong under its general employment program dropped from about 41,000 in 2019 to 15,000 last year and 10,000 through the third quarter of 2021, immigration data shows. With quarantine rules unlikely to be lifted within the next year, departures of foreign businesspeople and other expatriates are set to accelerate.
“The long-term damage has already been done to Hong Kong’s viability,” said one senior Western diplomat. “There is an absolute lack of predictability that businesses don’t like.”
Authorities have defended the approach, insisting on the need to keep the virus out – a goal health experts say is unsustainable – as they prioritize reopening to mainland China. The strict measures already included collecting stool samples from young children in hotel quarantine. This month, the omicron variant’s spread led Hong Kong to further tighten rules, lengthening quarantines for most arrivals and threatening holiday travel plans with sudden flight bans for airlines that unwittingly bring in even a few infected passengers.
In a survey released this month, the British Chamber of Commerce found that 70 percent of respondents hoping to add staff in Hong Kong had encountered difficulties, with many citing quarantine restrictions.
“As the rest of the world opens up to international travel, there is a risk that Hong Kong will become increasingly isolated as an international business center,” an overview of the results said, adding that senior executives were relocating to Singapore or Dubai, where borders are more open.
Jan Willem Moller, chairman of the Dutch Chamber of Commerce, said that about a quarter of Dutch businesspeople have left this year, and that the departures would “increase significantly” if the quarantine rules stay in place. “Inflow has pretty much dried up, as well,” he said, adding that colleagues at other chambers reported similar patterns.
– – –
On the front line of quarantine restrictions are pilots, especially at Hong Kong carrier Cathay Pacific. Some have been on “closed loop” rotations, alternating between working and isolating for extended periods before they can reenter the community. On layovers, pilots and aircrews are forbidden to leave their hotel rooms, keeping them in a hermetically sealed bubble.
Cathay has occasionally tried to force hotels overseas to provide its pilots and aircrews with single-use card keys to stop them from leaving their rooms, two pilots said. Eight pilots spoke to The Washington Post for this report on the condition of anonymity, fearing repercussions from their employers.
“A lot of colleagues are at breaking point,” said one pilot who resigned recently after more than 15 years flying for Cathay. “I’m tired, and I can’t see the future.”
At least 240 Cathay pilots have quit since May, according to employees who reviewed internal numbers. The carrier is reeling, with staff morale at “rock bottom” after hefty pay cuts last year and more departures imminent, several pilots said. In a statement, Cathay Pacific acknowledged that the regulations were a burden on aircrews, and said it plans to employ “several hundred pilots in the coming year.”
“Our goal was to protect as many jobs as possible, whilst meeting our responsibilities to the Hong Kong aviation hub and our customers,” the airline said.
Resentment spilled over last month when more than 120 students were ordered to a government quarantine camp known as Penny’s Bay after they were deemed to be contacts of a pilot who was among three who tested positive on return from Germany. In a statement this month, the Oneworld Cockpit Crew Coalition, a federation of pilot unions from the Oneworld network, which includes Cathay, said the airline’s pilots faced “untenable” working conditions.
One pilot who has flown with Cathay for more than 20 years said the exodus “is only just beginning.”
“Another year, two years, three years or more of quarantine in Hong Kong and there will be almost nobody left. Some pilots haven’t seen their wife and children for two years,” the person added.
Tightened quarantine measures have led other carriers, including British Airways and Swiss International Air Lines, to suspend Hong Kong flights. Cargo operator FedEx said last month that it would shut its crew base in the city and relocate pilots over the next 16 months.
One FedEx pilot decided he could not wait that long and will leave permanently early next year.
“With pretty much every expert agreeing that unfortunately covid-19 is here to stay, what exactly is China or Hong Kong’s end game?” he said.
– – –
On top of the quarantine rules, Hong Kong temporarily bans flights by airlines found to be carrying at least four passengers who test positive for the virus on arrival. Qatar Airways, Nepal Airlines, Air India, Korean Air and Cathay Pacific routes from some cities are currently subject to bans, which are often announced with little warning, throwing travel plans into disarray. Three of these routes, including Cathay Pacific flights from London to Hong Kong, were banned just before Christmas.
Flight changes have prevented people from seeing dying relatives and complicated travelers’ efforts to return to Hong Kong. A shortage of rooms at quarantine hotels has added to the frustration. Meanwhile, businesses including banks, media and restaurant groups have begun to pay staff thousands of dollars to offset the costs of quarantine, adding to the burden of operating in one of the world’s most expensive cities.
“We understand that it doesn’t make a lot of business sense,” said Syed Asim Hussain, co-founder of Black Sheep Restaurants, which is shelling out about $650,000 to help employees with quarantine fees. “But we heard murmurs that the rules will stay in place for most of next year, and so we knew we had to act.”
The Hong Kong government has acknowledged the disruptions, but maintains that the regulations are essential from a public health standpoint and to allow the city to reopen to the mainland. China appears to have put those plans on hold because of the omicron variant.
Officials have tried to offer sweeteners in the interim. In an interview with local media, Eddie Yue, chief executive of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, the de facto central bank, said that it had put together a team to deliver “wine and gourmet food” to quarantined finance workers in hopes of making them “less angry with Hong Kong.”
‘I thought I would never get it, and boy was I wrong’
Abbey McDonald December 27, 2021
Gigi Thompson doesn’t remember the August night when she knocked on her neighbor’s front door, desperate for help. She doesn’t remember getting in the neighbor’s truck to go to the hospital, or saying goodbye to her husband and asking him to watch over their pets.
She doesn’t remember being transferred from Providence Seaside Hospital to St. Vincent Medical Center in Portland the next day, or getting the scars on her neck.
What she does remember, from moments in and out of consciousness, is the feeling of the oxygen mask tight on her face and her sense of suffocation.
She remembers a nightmare that seemed so real, where she died and cold hands pulled her into the darkness of a mortuary drawer as she kicked at them and begged God for more time. She doesn’t think she’ll ever forget that.
Thompson spent 122 days in the hospital after contracting COVID-19.
Her neighbor drove her to Providence Seaside on Aug. 15, and she was quickly transferred to St. Vincent, where she stayed until early November. She then spent another month back in Seaside, getting less-intensive treatment and physical therapy.
Thompson has pieced together what happened through conversations with doctors, family and friends.
Her neighbor filled her in about the night she was admitted. Her daughter told her she had approved the emergency tracheotomy that cut into her neck, leaving scars but saving her life. After she woke from a monthlong coma, a doctor told her she had nearly died twice.
Grateful
There’s a lot to be grateful for, Thompson said. She can walk a little bit and can dress herself. And she has hope that her health will improve with time.
“That experience with COVID, that actually changed my life for the better,” Thompson said. “I have a better outlook on certain things, and I always try to keep a positive attitude.”
Thompson, who is 72 years old, was discharged from Providence Seaside on Dec. 15 after several months of treatment for the virus. She exited the hospital in “Rocky” themed attire, wearing boxing gloves, an American flag and a nasal cannula.
The hospital staff lined up and clapped, some teary-eyed, as they said goodbye to the long-haul COVID patient.
Two days later, Thompson sat at home after her nurse left for the evening. Her cat, “Amara,” which will have her 22nd birthday in March, sat on Thompson’s lap as she told her story over the phone.
“She just won’t leave me alone. She has to sleep on me and keep touching me to make sure I’m still there,” Thompson said.
Being back home has been an adjustment. When she first arrived, her husband, her son and a neighbor had to carry her wheelchair up the stairs to the front door. They’re looking for first-floor apartments, but finding few options.
She can’t make dinner anymore, and for now has resigned to observing and critiquing her husband’s work in the kitchen.
“I’m doing OK. It’s time-consuming, that’s what healing is,” Thompson said. Her statements were sometimes punctuated by brief coughing fits.
Thompson’s daughter, Carol Dickeson, said she is amazed her mom got through her battle with COVID.
“She had one foot in the grave there, and that scared us,” Dickeson said.
She talked to the hospital daily for updates on her mom, calling from her home in Colorado.
“Just the thought of losing her? Oh man, that was — it really, really scared me,” Dickeson said. “She’s a feisty woman. She’s very, very feisty and she’s a fighter. She won’t let nothing keep her down.”
Thompson worked in the fishing industry her whole life, from shrimp picking in Gold Beach to Pacific Seafood in Warrenton, and up to Alaska for a time. She retired in her 50s after an on-the-job shoulder injury while hauling 35-pound crab buckets.
Dickeson described her mom as selfless, and said she always had a place at her table for neighborhood kids. She said her fried chicken recipe was so good that her siblings would ask her to make extra just so they could share it at school.
“With my mom, she’s always …” Dickeson said, before getting emotional. “There’s not enough time to say enough good about my mom. She always — always — is looking to help other people.”
A struggle to get vaccinated
Prior to her hospitalization, Dickeson and her siblings had struggled to convince their mom to get vaccinated.
“Now that she’s had this COVID, and went face to face with that. She’s taking it seriously now,” Dickeson said. “So I’m glad she went through this to realize that it’s not funny or anything, and I’m glad that she survived it. I’m happy that my mom’s still with us, and we get to put up with her wittiness.”
Now Thompson can assure them that she received two vaccine doses during her stay at Seaside, having changed her mind after dealing with the virus firsthand. She plans on getting the booster as soon as she is eligible.
“I thought I would never get it, and boy was I wrong. It smacked me down like nothing. And I’m glad I got those two shots,” Thompson said.
Thompson is a mother of eight, including two stepchildren and an adopted daughter. She described the support of her family and her faith as her strengths.
“With my strength in the Lord, and my kids and my husband, we all got together. And so many people — people I didn’t even know — were texting my phone and saying, ‘God bless you Gigi. We’re so happy you made it. You’ve been through the wringer.’ And I said, ‘I have literally been at hell’s door and came back,'” she said.
She thanked the hospital staff for their work and said that she’s glad to be alive.
“There’s still things that I want to do, and things I want to see. I’ve been a fish filleter for over 40 years. I did a little bit of logging for three years, and raised my children before all that. Life has been alright, you know, it’s like a roller coaster,” she said. “I’m here and I’m so grateful that I am here, and I want to thank everybody for everything that they have done.”
Men across America are getting vasectomies ‘as an act of love’
Emily Wax-Thibodeaux December 26, 2021
A demonstrator holds up a placard reading ‘Against Abortion ? Have a vasectomy’ during a demonstration against Poland’s near-total ban on abortion in Berlin on November 7, 2020. – Mass protests began in Poland in October when Poland’s Constitutional Court ruled that an existing law allowing the abortion of damaged foetuses was “incompatible” with the constitution. The government has defended the verdict, saying it will halt “eugenic abortions”, but human rights groups have said it would force women to carry non-viable pregnancies. Poland, a traditionally devout Catholic country of 38 million people, already has one of the most stringent abortion laws in Europe. (Photo by Tobias Schwarz / AFP) (Photo by TOBIAS SCHWARZ/AFP via Getty Images)
After Andy and Erin Gress had their fourth child, Andy decided it was time for him to “step up” and help with the family planning. So he did something that the mere thought of makes some men cringe: He got a vasectomy.
It was early one morning last winter – a brief moment of peace, before juggling getting the kids ready for online school and work Zoom calls. He happened to see a local news story about discounts being offered during “World Vasectomy Day.” He made an appointment that day.
His wife had taken birth control pills, but she struggled with the side effects. She had worked as a night nurse through four pregnancies, and the couple had children ranging in age from 2 to 11.
“The procedure was a total relief, almost like the covid shot – like I’m safe now,” said Gress, who works in higher education. “I wanted to man up.”
But Gress’s action wasn’t just about his family. He also believed he should do more to support his wife and other women who don’t think the government should decide what they do with their bodies. “I’ve seen the miracle of life,” he said. “But I’ve also seen kids who are born into poverty and misery and don’t have a fair shot.”
With the Supreme Court set to decide the fate of Roe v. Wade next year and with more than 20 states poised to ban or impose restrictions on abortion depending on what the court decides, some reproductive rights advocates say it is time for men to take a more active role in both family planning and the fight for reproductive rights.
In their own form of protest, state lawmakers in Alabama, Illinois and Pennsylvania introduced legislation that highlights the gendered double standards with regards to reproductive rights.
Pennsylvania state Rep. Chris Rabb, a Democrat, introduced “parody” legislation this fall in response to the Texas law that amounts to a near-total ban on abortion. Rabb’s proposal would require men to get vasectomies after the birth of their third child or when they turn 40, whichever comes first. It would be enforced by allowing Pennsylvanians to report men who failed to comply, for a $10,000 reward.
“As long as state legislatures continue to restrict the reproductive rights of cis women, trans men and nonbinary people, there should be laws that address the responsibility of men who impregnate them. Thus, my bill will also codify ‘wrongful conception’ to include when a person has demonstrated negligence toward preventing conception during intercourse,” Rabb wrote in a memo about his proposal, as reported by the Keystone.
Rabb, a father of two who had a vasectomy in 2008, noted that he only had to discuss his choice with his wife and his urologist. The point of his proposal, he said, was to highlight the sexism, double standard and hypocrisy inherent in the antiabortion debate. But it blew up in a way he didn’t expect.
“I underestimated the vitriol this proposal brought,” Rabb said in an interview, adding that he received thousands of hate-filled emails, Facebook posts and even death threats. “The notion a man would have to endure or even think about losing bodily autonomy was met with outrage, when every single day women face this and it’s somehow OK for the government to invade the uteruses of women and girls, but it should be off limits if you propose vasectomies or limit the reproductive rights of men.”
Since Dec. 1, when the Supreme Court heard a case that is expected to decide the future of Roe v. Wade, social media has been filled with tweets, memes and quips using tongue-in-cheek humor to point out how men’s role in reproduction is almost never talked about. “Against abortion? Have a Vasectomy,” says one bumper sticker.
Koushik Shaw, a doctor at the Austin Urology Institute in Texas, said his practice saw about a 15% increase in scheduled vasectomies after the Sept. 1 Texas abortion ban went into effect.
Patients are saying “‘Hey, I’m actually here because some of these changes that [Gov. Greg] Abbott and our legislature have passed that are really impacting our decision-making in terms of family planning,’ so that was a new one for me as a reason – the first time, patients are citing a state law as their motivating factor,” Shaw said.
Advocates say they want to be clear: They are not pushing vasectomies as a replacement for the right to obtain an abortion, nor do they believe men should have a say in the decision to have an abortion. In 1976, the Supreme Court ruled in Planned Parenthood v. Danforth that the father’s consent to an abortion was no longer required, largely because of a risk of violence or coercion in a relationship.
Doctors who perform vasectomies say they want men to be open and comfortable talking about the procedure instead of recoiling in horror at the idea, said Doug Stein, a urologist known as the “Vasectomy King” for his billboards, bar coasters and ads at child support offices around Florida.
“An act of Love,” for their partners, “the ultimate way to be a good man,” is how he and others market the procedure.
“It’s a remarkable trend in the family planning community of recognizing and promoting vasectomy and birth control for men, where this was once considered more fringe,” said Sarah Miller, a family medicine doctor who has a private practice in Boston and joined Stein’s movement.
Advances in the needle- and scalpel-free 10-minute procedure need a cultural push and maybe some fun to make men less bashful around doctors coming near their “junk,” Stein said.
He has a full-time vasectomy and vasectomy-reversal practice in Tampa and has traveled the world performing the procedure. He was inspired by his concern about population growth, but he also wanted to empower men to be responsible.
Stein, a father of two, had his own vasectomy more than 20 years ago.
Reliable statistics on the number of men who have sought vasectomies since the Texas ban and the U.S. Supreme Court hearing aren’t available, doctors say. But, Miller said, she has seen an increase in patients at the small clinic she opened in Boston less than three years ago because she couldn’t believe “the paucity of options for men and people with men parts.”
At one point, she was told that vasectomy was not considered part of family planning, and she had to make her own arrangements to get the necessary training.
“It warms my heart to hear men say, ‘I am so nervous, but I know this is NOTHING compared to what my wife has gone through,'” she said in an email.
“It’s outrageous that we don’t have more contraceptive options for people with man parts,” Miller said. “There’s even a misguided sense that birth control is not a man’s job. That men can’t be trusted, or that they would never be interested, and that has led to lack of funding and development,” she said.
Engaging men in the abortion debate is tricky, experts say, because on the abortion rights side, men don’t want to be viewed as questioning a woman’s right to choose. And on the antiabortion side, the procedure is viewed as murder. But some abortion rights advocates contend that men have a huge stake in legal and safe abortions, and “the fact we’re not out there fighting every bit as hard as women is shameful,” said Jonathan Stack, a co-founder with Stein of World Vasectomy Day.
“The quality of life for millions of men will be adversely affected if this right is taken from women,” said Stack, a documentary filmmaker who made a film about Stein called “The Vasectomist.”
Stack said that while filming the documentary, he would ask men: “Why are you choosing to do this?”
“They expressed something rarely heard in films about men – love or kindness or care,” he said.
“I had already come to believe that there was a story about masculinity that was not being told – not of power and control or rage, but of alienation, of insecurities, of uncertainty and of fear,” he said.
“We already know that men don’t always want to wear condoms, or they don’t work, or well, they take them off,” Esgar Guarín said with a sigh and chuckle. He is a family medicine doctor who runs SimpleVas in Iowa and performed Gress’s vasectomy.
Guarín trained under Stein and joined his movement. “We have to invest in helping men understand how easy and safe vasectomies are,” he said. After having two children, Guarín performed a vasectomy on himself.
The doctors also started “Responsible Men’s Clubs,” chat groups where men can share information such as how sexual performance is just fine after the procedure, and that it “doesn’t take away their manhood, but in fact makes them a better man,” Guarín said.
One man asked for a sort of “vasectomy passport,” a letter from Guarín to show his wife that sex would now be free of worry.
Brad Younts, 45, said his wife, Lizz Gardner, wants him to become a “vasectomy evangelist,” after he had the “simple procedure” without any problems.
“Men are big babies. Considering everything women go through – menstruation, Pap smears, OB/GYN visits,” said Younts, who lives in Chicago. “I’m proud I did it. And I went on to tell two friends who are also looking into it, too.”
