Jonathan P. Baird

I think it is fair to say that any news of Brazil is scarce in the United States. We generally pay little attention to news outside our country, unless it is about terrorism.

When I was recently in France, I was surprised how much TV news coverage there was about the impeachment of the Brazilian president, Dilma Rousseff. It was the lead news story everyday I was there in early May.

Rousseff is currently suspended from office for 180 days, pending a full impeachment trial in Brazil’s Senate.

To the extent Americans are paying attention to Brazil, focus turns to the Zika virus and the upcoming Olympic games this summer, The Olympics will be held in Rio in August.

Much of the discussion about Brazil on French TV looked at the question of whether the impeachment of President Rousseff was, in fact, a coup d’etat by the right wing opposition. The reasons for President Rousseff’s removal seem murky at best. She has not been charged with stealing money or any crime.

Brazil’s legislature voted to suspend President Rousseff from office over accusations that she had tampered with government accounts to hide a budget shortfall. On its face, this hardly seems like any basis for impeachment. Governments of the political left or right routinely do misleading things to try and look better. I would say the Brazilian impeachment effort is on a par with the effort to impeach President Clinton for his affair with Monica Lewinsky.

The common thread is the bogus use of impeachment to try and reverse an electoral verdict. The party that cannot win an election resorts to a shortcut replacement strategy. In politically polarized countries, especially those with a weaker democratic tradition than our own, impeachment then becomes an undemocratic substitute for legitimate election.

Out of frustration, Brazil’s political right has now embarked on the shortcut method because it has not been able to win an election in the last four election cycles.

Noam Chomsky, the famous scholar/activist, called the Brazil impeachment ” a kind of soft coup”. He said Rousseff is “being impeached by a gang of thieves”. Chomsky is alluding to the fact that many of the figures behind the impeachment effort are themselves being investigated for corruption.

Folha de Sao Paulo, a Brazilian daily paper, ran a widely-read story which suggested the aim of the impeachment process was an effort to stifle a massive corruption inquiry known in Brazil as the “Car Wash” probe. Many of the figures in Brazil promoting impeachment against Rousseff are themselves being investigated.

Leaked recordings show the planning minister in the new government, Romero Juca, discussing the impeachment process as a way of stopping the Car Wash inquiry into corruption at Petrobus, the state oil company. Petrobus is Brazil’s largest corporation and it is one of the world’s largest oil companies. There are actually seven ministers in the new government implicated in the investigation.

The leaked conversations also revealed that some of the politicians under investigation were secretly conspiring with members of the Brazilian Supreme Court and the military. So we have a situation where the right wing interim president and some of his allies face actual corruption charges while they engineer the ouster of a president charged with no crime.

To appreciate this black comedy, it helps to place Brazil’s current political situation in a historical context. The writer Eduardo Galeano described Brazil this way:

“There is no country in the world as unequal as Brazil. Some analysts even speak of the Brazilianization of the planet in sketching a portrait of the world to come. By “Brazilianization”, they certainly don’t mean the spread of irrepressible soccer, spectacular carnivals or music that awakens the dead, marvels that make Brazil shine brightest; rather they’re describing the imposition of a model of progress based on social injustice and racial discrimination, where economic growth only increases poverty and exclusion.”

Galeano’s words were written in the late 1990’s before the election of Lula and the center-left Workers’ Party, Since the early 2000’s, the Workers’ Party has won four consecutive national elections. Luis Ignacio da Silva or as he is known in Brazil, Lula, has been the leader of the Workers’ Party and he is probably the most popular president in Brazil’s history. He left office in 2010 and Dilma Rousseff replaced him. Rousseff was first elected in 2010 by a 56-44 per cent margin and she was reelected in 2014 with a reduced margin of 52-48 per cent.

During Lula’s presidency, Brazil’s economy boomed. He also presided over a very significant redistribution of wealth. The real minimum wage rose 70%. The government created 21 million new jobs and it also created the Bolsa Familia, a federal assistance program which provided financial aid to poor Brazilian families.

Lula has been widely credited with dramatically reducing poverty and hunger. Lula called his program Zero Hunger. He also promoted an expansion of higher education. Professor Alfredo Saad-Filho of the University of London described the Brazilian change:

“For the first time, the poor could access education as well as income and bank loans. They proceeded to study, earn and borrow, and to occupy spaces, literally, previously the preserve of the upper-middle class: airports, shopping malls, banks, private health facilities, and roads, with the latter clogged up by cheap cars purchased on seventy-two easy payments. The government enjoyed a comfortable majority in a highly fragmented Congress, and Lula’s legendary political skills managed to keep most of the political elite on his side.”

But then, on President Rousseff’s watch, things deteriorated. The present crisis is very much the product of a declining economy, a strengthened right wing opposition, corruption, including in the Workers” Party, and powerful right wing media controlled by the Brazilian oligarchs. Imagine Fox News as every network. That is close to the Brazilian reality. The confluence of these factors created the political power grab opportunity.

Democracy remains fragile although Brazil has made enormous strides toward the construction of a more inclusive and just social system. It is not that long ago in 1964 when the Brazilian military staged a coup and overthrew the democratically elected government of then-President Joao Goulart, a mild social democratic reformer.

For 21 years until 1985, the Brazilian military imposed a brutal dictatorship on the people. The military became infamous and hated for, among other things, the use of extreme torture techniques applied against dissidents. Torture victims included President Rousseff herself. During the military dictatorship in the late 60’s until 1970, Rousseff was an underground guerrilla, fighting the regime. Rousseff was captured by the military in 1970 and she was detained for three years without trial.

Her interrogations started with punching, electric shock and then there were sessions of “pau de arara” (suspension from a rod by the hands and feet). She was often beaten and her torturers threatened to disfigure her. They dislocated her jaw and that problem still causes her difficulty. In court proceedings later, Rousseff denounced her own torture and named names of those who tortured her.

A Truth Commission found 434 people were killed or disappeared during the dictatorship. Thousands more experienced beatings, electric shock, sexual violations and psychological torture. The report named 377 people it said were involved in human rights abuses, of whom 196 are still alive. The torturers have so far escaped criminal prosecution. There is a 1979 amnesty law which prevents those who committed abuses from being tried or punished.

Since the military coup in 1964, a body of evidence has appeared showing the role of the United States in assisting the Brazilian military in its coup efforts. The extent of the U.S. role remains in dispute. There is also strong evidence showing the American and British role in training the Brazilian military in torture techniques.

To appreciate the gravity of the present crisis, the history of the military dictatorship must be mentioned. It remains a tricky challenge how Brazil will be able to constructively move forward without reverting to increased economic injustice and authoritarianism. The impeachment of President Rousseff is a step in the wrong direction.

It is common to hear that our upcoming national election is a change election. Sometimes the success of the candidacies of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump are explained by saying that they are change candidates running against the status quo. The appeal is that both are not “more of the same”.

The problem with that characterization is the meaninglessness of the word “change”. It is just a cloudy vagueness with multiple possible interpretations.

On the Democratic side, we have the debate between the incrementalist change represented by Hillary Clinton and the big change represented by Bernie Sanders. I think we have a pretty good idea what incrementalist change is about but what would big change mean now for the United States?

You rarely see a fleshed-out vision of that so I will offer my own take. In offering this vision, I have not reviewed the platform of any candidate, including Sanders, nor have I consulted with any campaign.

Before outlining my ideas, I would add that both progressives and conservatives can be legitimately criticized for the staleness of their ideas. Neither major party has kept up with the magnitude of the changes we actually do need. I should also say that I offer this vision with a keen awareness of the obstacles in the path of its realization.

First and foremost, big change in 2016 requires an assault on income inequality. I think that is central. We need to be increasing the power and income of ordinary working people. Things have been way skewed in America toward the accumulation of extreme wealth for the 1%. Now it should be everybody else’s turn.

People in more equal societies live longer, healthier, and happier lives. Although not widely recognized, equality benefits everyone.

It is not just raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour. We need a moratorium on all layoffs and wage cuts. We should be reducing the interest rates on all credit cards and mortgage debt. Predatory lending needs to be more closely scrutinized and prohibited.

We need a massive rebuilding of our infrastructure, especially mass transit. Such a publicly subsidized program could offer good job opportunities to millions of people who are on the margins. This would be a modern day new New Deal.

We have a genuine career crisis in America. Good-paying, stable jobs with benefits and pensions have become an endangered species. Instead of long-term career jobs rewarded by greater income commensurate with lengthy service, more jobs have become temporary, contingent or part-time. We need better quality jobs that offer a future – not just a chance to be exploited.

Our brand of capitalism has failed to address so many crises. Young people, if they are fortunate enough to go to college, are paying ridiculous sums to emerge into an economy with not enough opportunity. Public college should be free or way less cost than it is now. The cost of college is a scandal. Young people should not be coming out of college buried in debt.

Those not going to college also need career paths that offer vocational opportunity at a liveable wage. Jobs like caring for children, older people and the sick deserve greater pay based on the principle that such jobs are a public good.

We need to totally rethink the role of senior citizens who will be becoming a larger part of our population. There is a wealth of knowledge and experience there. Seniors need to be treated as a valuable resource. Instead of putting people out to pasture early, we need to integrate seniors and use them more as mentors. Too many seniors are shunted aside when they could be contributing and could be a part of community life. Seniors deserve so much better than lives of loneliness, isolation, and financial privation.

We should consider a 30 hour work week for 40 hours pay. People could have six hour shifts and be paid for eight hours. I believe people would come to work with more energy and focus. It has been roughly 80 years since we moved to the 40 hour week. I think it is time for a shorter work week. A shorter work week would allow more people employment while allowing workers time for other pursuits outside work.

I also like the idea of five week mandatory paid vacation for all Americans. People in America are working too much for too little. Everybody needs a break.

We should have free, publicly provided quality childcare as well as paid family and medical leave. France has very successfully created such a national childcare system so that families pay far less out of pocket than we do.

We should move in the direction of publicly financed, affordable multiple-dwelling rental housing. Along with a universal right to health care, we should create a right to housing. There are way too many evictions and foreclosures. We need a major program to finance high quality, affordable housing. Homelessness is not acceptable in the 21st century.

I know many will say we cannot afford all of these ideas. My answer would be a stronger, progressive tax code. Progressive taxation is an absolutely honorable and time-tested principle. The current tax system grossly favors the rich and they can easily afford to pay much more. Creative tax lawyers should not be able to give the rich a free ride by stashing money in tax shelters , Swiss banks and the Cayman Islands.

Nor should the rich be able to buy elections. Citizens United and its ilk must be overturned. It is utterly undemocratic for billionaires to purchase election results like they are just another commodity for sale.

For a country of such extraordinary wealth and natural resources, the Unites States has devolved into a country with shocking levels of poverty. These places of poverty are what the journalist Chris Hedges has called “sacrifice zones”.

I grew up in the Philadelphia area so I will cite the familiar example of Camden, New Jersey. I think that city is typical of how a city dramatically declines. I will mention some features of such places: environmental degradation, job flight followed by joblessness, poor schools, too much violence and drugs, bad housing, and lower life expectancy. These places are largely ignored and written off by the powers-that-be.

Big change would mean we do not ignore such places. Progressives must stand for abolition of poverty. Places like Camden or Flint, Michigan might be the worst examples but hopelessly poor neighborhoods exist in many parts of this country and they are not limited to any racial group. Such poor neighborhoods should become a thing of the past.

In the United States, we need to regain a sense of the collective mission and purpose of our country. The country needs to be for the people – not for a handful of billionaires. We need to be asking: what do the masses of people in the United States need?

It is not more wars and militarism. Over the last generation, we have been led astray on imperialist adventures. We should be done with stupid wars. Between Vietnam and Iraq, we have more than had our fill. While there are real threats out there, we must be much more circumspect about what constitutes a genuine threat to our national security. Our military-industrial complex is too large and its appetites will promote much more needless loss of life.

We do need to recognize climate change and we must stop ignoring the overwhelming consensus of scientists who warn us about it. The climate change deniers are an absurdity and have had too much sway. Moving beyond fossil fuels and toward environmentally sustainable energy is a no-brainer. The environmental challenges cut far deeper than is being acknowledged. We need to fight the ongoing mass extinction of biodiversity and we need to protect wilderness and prevent habitat destruction. Human life is integrally intertwined with our fellow species. We are failing to recognize that exterminating other species threatens humanity.

I would be remiss if I did not mention our original sins – racism against Native Americans and African-Americans. It is not like that has been adequately addressed. Denial still reigns. It is past time to own up and figure out an agenda that is intellectually honest and just. At the very least we need to stop allowing suppression of the vote. Such a low percentage of people vote in America. We should be doing everything to increase popular vote. I agree with Senator Sanders’ idea that we have a Democracy Day national holiday so that everyone has the time and opportunity to vote. We also may want to allow weekend voting.

I also feel compelled to mention defense of women’s reproductive rights. The anti-choice movement has chipped away for years now at the rights established by Roe v Wade. The extremism of that movement has created an environment where fanatics feel justified targeting and murdering doctors. Progressives must defend choice. It is sad that in an article about progressive vision, I am advocating an undeniably defensive action but there is a clear and present danger to women across the country and these rights must be protected.

Also we need to stop blaming undocumented immigrants. They did not bring the economy to its knees or move jobs to China. They are being scapegoated. Ideas like building a wall or banning Muslims from entry in the United States do not constitute change; such ideas are know-nothing reaction.

I know plenty of people will read these ideas and they will attack them as socialist. In this, they will be wrong. Socialism is about control over the means of production by working class people. The big changes I have outlined are only about fairness and fit more in the social democratic tradition.

The range of ideas allowed for serious discussion by Republicans and Democrats is far too narrow. I offer these ideas as a basis for further discussion and debate. Capitalism is consigning masses of working people, including in New Hampshire, to a permanent underclass. Maybe it is time to think big.

May 10, 2016.

Dear Readers:

I just had a chance to visit Paris for two weeks. What an awesome, friendly city! If there is a more beautiful, majestic city anywhere, I have not seen it. As has been written, Paris is a moveable feast. The art, the architecture, the history, the people, the food – so vital and alive.

Do not believe the hype scaring people into staying home and not travelling. Even in early May, the city is packed with tourists from everywhere. While security is heightened, Paris has quickly moved on from the terrorist attacks of last year.

I arrived in Paris right before May Day, international workers’ day. It is one of the biggest holidays of the year in France. There was a huge demonstration turnout of the French labor movement and all left wing political parties.

The left political tradition remains very vibrant in France. It appears to me that workers in France are more aware of their rights as well as being more class conscious than their American counterparts. The labor movement in France is certainly stronger than it is in the United States.

Interestingly, May Day actually originated in America. In the late 19th century American workers were fighting for an 8 hour work day. It was quite common for workers in America to be working 10 to 16 hours a day in unsafe conditions. May Day started as a commemoration of the Haymarket affair in Chicago which was part of the effort for legal establishment of the 8 hour day.

This year, France is bitterly divided over a new proposed labor law reform. Much of the focus of the May Day demonstration was on the law, dubbed “El Khomri’s law”, after Myriam El Khomri, France’s Labor Minister. The Socialist government of President Francois Hollande initiated the reform, ostensibly to address high unemployment which stands at over 10%.

The reform has been met by furious opposition from the left. Much of the right wing and business community response seems favorably disposed to the law changes.

France’s labor code applies to all workers in the country so the labor law reform is hugely consequential.

The reform has multiple components. Among other provisions, it could lengthen the prescribed work week to 48 hours or even more. The French work week is currently 35 hours. As someone said to me this week, the French do not live to work – they work to live. The legislation considerably reduces the bonus paid to employees who work more than 35 hours in a week.

It also would allow employers greater flexibility in hiring and firing employees. In France, workers who lose their jobs without “just cause” are eligible to seek compensation. So if you are laid off, you can seek legal damages for unfair dismissal. Employers typically have to make a settlement based on your length of employment.

The new proposed law would lower the limit on money damages. Under the reform, workers would get less compensation.

The reform would also permit firms to negotiate “offensive agreements” at the company level. Such agreements could undercut existing standards on pay rates, working hours and other aspects of the labor contract. Previously, employers have not had the ability to do this as such changes were a violation of labor law.

The changes would be highly beneficial to business. French business has long complained that workers in France have too many rights. They believe French law is full of too rigid labor law restrictions and too many regulations.

The struggle over the labor law reform has prompted the creation of a new movement, Nuit Debout, which has been compared to our Occupy Wall Street. Nuit Debout means “arise at night”. For several months now, Nuit Debout activists have occupied Place de la Republique, a part of Paris, much like how Occupy activists camped out in New York City, Manchester and other cities.

Nuit Debout reflects an anger French young people feel at the French system as well as disillusionment with the dominant political parties. Nuit Debout demonstrations have popped up all over France. It remains unclear where Nuit Debout is heading but every night activists have been gathering in public assemblies at Place de la Republique and venting. Nuit Debout does want the bill on the labor law withdrawn.

I have been struck by historical parallels and convergences with things American in France. Our revolutions happened only 13 years apart, in 1776 and 1789. Thomas Jefferson helped Lafayette to write the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, passed by France’s National Constituent Assembly in August 1789, which was a founding French revolutionary document. That Declaration recognized rights to liberty, property, safety and resistance to repression. The document asserted that all citizens were equal.

Jefferson was actually in Paris in 1789. He was the United States Minister to France, succeeding Benjamin Franklin. When the Bastille fell in 1789, Lafayette sent the key of that prison to Washington to express his sense of indebtedness to the Americans. Jefferson felt the French Revolution would act to confirm the American Revolution.

Although it is not well known, in February 1794, the French government voted to abolish slavery. This was 69 years before President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. France was the first government in history to abolish slavery.

France has had and still continues to have profound issues with racism. Napoleon reversed many of the racial gains made by the French revolutionaries. He reinstated racially discriminatory laws. Napoleon was supported by slavers and plantation owners.

The history of the struggle against slavery in France is quite fascinating. Going all the way back to the 1750’s, French lawyers fought the powerful colonial sugar lobby to establish rights for people of color. One hundred years before the infamous Dred Scott decision issued by the U.S. Supreme Court, French lawyers represented slaves taken to France from colonies. Through lawsuits, these slaves won freedom from their masters.

While people in the United States tend to associate the French Revolution with the Terror period, the French Revolution did open doors of emancipation for millions of enslaved people.

There are so many things to like about France. In closing, I will offer my personal list: public displays of affection, the Metro, Bordeaux red wine, universal health care coverage, love of dogs, Shakespeare and Company Bookstore, apricot flan pie and bakeries to die for, the Eiffel Tower at night, TV that covers politics seriously, including international news, the photography of Lore Kruger as displayed at the Jewish Museum of History and Arts, escargot and sidewalk cafes.

Au revoir, Jon

This piece appeared in the Concord Monitor on April 29, 2016 under the title “The party that lost its way”.

When historians of the future assess what happened to the Democratic Party in 2016, they will need to look at the issue of class. Americans do not typically talk about it. Class is a dirty secret in American politics. We all pretend that everyone in America is middle class, even when it is so obviously not true.

That buzzword phrase “income inequality” has shattered the myth that everyone in America is middle class. The divide between the top 1% and everyone else has become an enormous chasm. As Bernie Sanders has articulated, over the last 40 years or so, the economic gains have not been equally distributed. The 1% has, in extraordinarily greedy fashion, hogged a hugely disproportionate share of wealth.

Some seem to think it is class warfare just to state the obvious and acknowledge these facts. But there are so many millions of Americans who have been left behind and left out. These folks are everywhere around the country. I do think there has been massive denial about the extent of the dysfunction.

Here is my short list: lousy education and too expensive colleges, exploding college tuition debt, low paying jobs with not enough hours and benefits, high rent and too many evictions, mass incarceration of the poor and minorities and millions still without health care coverage. And that is just for starters.

Historically, at least since the time of FDR, the Democratic party has liked to think of itself as the political party that defended the interests of working class Americans. The legacy of FDR has been powerful. For a long time Democrats were able to ride on FDR’s great accomplishments and prestige.

However, that time is now gone. Many Democrats profess shock at the emergence of Donald Trump and worry about his white working class base. How, they wonder, can these voters support someone like Trump who is a billionaire and hardly a person who can be mistaken as a supporter of worker causes? I think these mystified Democrats are missing the point about why Trump has the followers he has. It has much to do with the failure of the Democrats to offer these left-behind voters anything or to care about them.

Although phony and demagogic, Trump is speaking to real needs. He has been talking to the reality that working class people, including white working class people, are being consigned to being a permanent underclass. Since the 1970’s, the American dream has been wrenched away from these workers. Or to quote George Carlin: “It’s called the American dream because to believe it, you have to be ASLEEP.”

I think the problem for the Democrats is that party leaders have lost their way. They gave up on being the party of the working class, a class that has massively suffered over the last 30 years. Instead they decided to become the party of young professionals, the upper 10%, and they adjusted their message that way. So unlike the Republicans who support the upper 1%, the Democrats support a broader strata of high income people who are comfortably ensconced in capitalism.

The Democrats just assumed the working class would hang around and support them because they had nowhere else to go politically.

Of course, many Democrats have not been reconciled to this shift away from concern about the working class. The struggle between the Sanders and Clinton forces reflects this tension and it is, in fact, a struggle for the future direction of the party.

Many progressives in the party, whether supporting Sanders or Clinton, do want an aggressive attack on income inequality. And when I say aggressive attack, I mean an FDR-style agenda with major job programs, serious infrastructure repair, support for the labor movement, and a new offensive against poverty. The progressives are dead set against more Middle Eastern wars and the interventionism that has characterized American foreign policy for a generation. Serious progressives want a 21st century New Deal.

Part of the concern about Democrats taking large campaign contributions is a recognition that a party beholden to powerful interests is unlikely to do more than window dressing on income inequality. The party has a credibility gap around whether the talk about tackling income inequality is real or meaningless gestures.

Since the 2012 election, the media has featured many stories about Republican autopsy reports. You don’t hear about a Democratic autopsy report. While Democrats have retained the White House for the last two presidential elections, the Republicans have cleaned their clock in state legislatures, governorships, and Congress.

If the Democrats are so successful, how come they keep losing as much as they have all over the country?

I would cite two authors who have most clearly described the class issues inside the Democratic coalition. They are the late Joe Bageant and Thomas Frank, the author of Listen, Liberal or Whatever Happened to the Party of the People?

Bageant, the author in 2007 of the very entertaining, humorous and astute book, Deer Hunting With Jesus, returned home to Winchester Virginia, a solidly working class town, after a 30 year absence. He zeroed in on the class issues and the general decline in the quality of life of his neighbors.

Bageant sympathetically shows how many of his Red State neighbors became Republican by default. He says many of his neighbors have never even met anyone who would self-describe as a liberal. The world Bageant described isn’t politically competitive. It’s Rush Limbaugh or Michael Savage on the radio, or contemporary Christian stations. Ultraconservatism is a given.

Bageant did not see liberals or leftists seriously engaging and trying to counter Republican fallacies.He complained yuppie professionals tended to stereotype and look down their noses at blue collar people. He thought the attitude was snobbery but what he described was primarily an absence of effort on the part of progressives to reach his community.

Thomas Frank comes at these issues in quite a different way. He shows how the Democrats instead of being a left party confronting an epic economic breakdown became a party of professionals talking about entrepreneurship. The Democrats have been the party of liberal plutocracy, supporting terrible trade deals and ideas like bank deregulation.

Frank depicts how professional class liberalism is a progressive mirage bathed in its own sense of high self-regard. Listen, Liberal brilliantly unpacks the liberal class ideology: the cult of expertise, the reliance on Big Money, the obsession with meritocracy, passivity toward the destruction of unions and love for techno-innovation.

Like Frank, I would argue that, to date, the Democratic Party has failed to seriously grapple with income inequality. It remains to be seen what kind of Democratic Party we will get. Recent history shows it is not enough simply to assume the Republicans will be so horrible that voters will have no choice but to vote Democratic.

Losing interest in working people is a recipe for Democratic disaster.

This piece appeared in the Concord Monitor on April 15, 2016 under the title “Why did Jeffrey Pendleton die in jail?

Over the last couple years, these names have come into our collective lives: Sandra Bland, Eric Garner and Tamir Rice, There are quite a few others who experienced the same fate I am not naming, All were African-American and all died in police custody or at the hands of the police in circumstances that could best be described as questionable.

The deaths contributed to the creation of the national movement known as Black Lives Matter. The people who died lived in places all over the United States. None, however, were from New Hampshire – until now.

Now we have the little known, terrible story of a New Hampshire man, Jeffrey Pendleton, which has received scant local media attention. Pendleton’s story is New Hampshire’s version of Sandra Bland, the Black woman who was pulled over by a policeman in Texas for a lane change and who inexplicably died in jail a few days later. Like Bland, Pendleton was wrongly jailed and he died mysteriously alone in his jail cell.

The question has to be asked: where is the outrage? Why so little reaction to Pendleton’s death?

On March 13, Pendleton, a 26 year old, homeless, African-American man from Nashua was found dead in a jail cell at Valley Street Jail in Manchester. Pendleton had been in jail for five days when he died. He had been arrested on March 8 on a misdemeanor charge of marijuana possession. The Nashua District Court had set Pendleton’s bail at $100 cash, an amount he could not afford to pay. As a result, he went to jail.

No one seems to have any explanation for why he died. State and prison officials have had precious little to say. A Union Leader article quotes a Nashua police captain who says the Nashua police did everything correctly in the case.

Dr. Jenny Duval, deputy chief medical examiner for New Hampshire, performed an autopsy and said from her examination there was no evidence of any natural disease or physical trauma. The exam found no needle marks. Dr. Duval looked into Pendleton’s medical history and she said that he had appeared to be in good health.

Dr. Duval ordered additional tests and hoped that test results will determine the cause and manner of death.

While for me the Pendleton case prompts many reactions, I would begin by asking: why was he in jail? And why would an apparently healthy young man just die?

The jailing of Pendleton for failing to pay $100 bail on the pot charge is all too typical of the callous and uncaring way poor people are treated in New Hampshire. No way would most people be going to jail for that. They would come up with $100. Pendleton was jailed for being too poor to pay $100. Why is the state using such a harsh penalty, jail time, for such a minimal charge? The cost of incarceration, housing and feeding, so exceeds the charged offense.

When people talk about the criminalization of poverty, this is a good example. Pendleton was not a danger or a flight risk. Those are the reasons typically invoked for bail. I would also point out that pot is now legal in multiple states and when our state decides to enter the 21st century, it will be legal here. Everyone who is honest knows it is only a matter of time until pot will be legal in New Hampshire. New Hampshire remains the only state in New England that has not decriminalized marijuana possession.

It is both sad and wrong that Pendleton was jailed for a non-violent activity that would not have been punished at all in multiple jurisdictions.

One prominent New Hampshire defense attorney told me that he thought if Pendleton had not died he would have served 30 days. Then, when he appeared in court, he would have been released on time served and the case would have gone away.

Poor people so don’t count. Money-based bail regularly means that poor defendants are punished before they get their day in court. Probably poor people end up doing more time than if they had a court hearing and were convicted immediately.

The day after Jeffrey Pendleton died, the U.S. Justice Department released a letter to state chief justices and court administrators around the country suggesting they change their practices on fees and fines. The letter explicitly stated:

“Courts must not employ bail or bond practices that cause indigent defendants to remain incarcerated solely because they cannot afford to pay for their release.”

The letter came a day too late for Jeffrey Pendleton. How does the state plan to make amends to a dead man? I don’t see anybody jumping up to take responsibility.

Ever since the events in Ferguson Missouri, awareness has increased about the broader problem that many courts in America have been imposing exorbitant fees and fines on people who have committed relatively petty offenses. It is and remains modern-day debtors’ prison.

Too many cities and towns are relying on court fines and fees to pay down municipal debt. In a report released by the White House’s Council of Economic Advisors on Fees, Fines, and Bail, the authors note the increasing municipal reliance on these fines in America. The report states that in 1986, 12% of those incarcerated nationally were also fined. In 2004, the number had climbed to 37%.

Prior to his death, Jeffrey Pendleton was not some marginal, unknown homeless person. He had been a plaintiff in two lawsuits brought by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of New Hampshire. In the first case in March 2015 the court forced the town of Hudson to pay damages for the unconstitutional and illegal way they treated people who were peaceful panhandlers. In the second case, Pendleton spent 33 days in jail for walking in a park adjacent to the Nashua Public Library. The police charged him with criminal trespassing for walking through the park after he allegedly violated a verbal “no trespass” order. Nashua had to pay Pendleton and his attorneys for violation of his constitutional rights.

At this point, it is impossible to know if Pendleton’s activism played any role in what happened to him. I would hope that a thorough and fair investigation will get to the bottom of Pendleton’s tragic death. It is hard to fathom how and why a 26 year old spontaneously dies if that is what happened..

The New York Times reported that Pendleton had arrived in Nashua in 2009. He had worked low wage jobs in fast food restaurants. After a divorce in 2013, he became homeless and he started sleeping in the woods. He spent the winter of 2013-14 outside in a tent.

Pendleton worked at a Burger King in Nashua. In the press, a co-worker was quoted saying he made $8.50 an hour at most. That money is a little above New Hampshire’s paltry minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, far and away the lowest in New England. The money Pendleton made was not enough for any kind of apartment and it was apparently not enough to pay bail.

In February, Pendleton had participated in the Fight for $15 campaign which advocates for a higher minimum wage. He had demonstrated outside the Burger King where he worked. Maybe if Pendleton had been making a higher wage none of these events would have happened.

In an article that appeared in the Huffington Post, Attorney Gilles Bissonnette, the legal director of the ACLU of New Hampshire and Pendleton’s lawyer, described Pendleton as a “really sweet” and “kind” person whose troubles with the law were primarily a result of his poverty. Attorney Bissonnette also said the following:

“He got involved in these cases not because he thought he would obtain some sort of financial windfall but because he believed these cases could bring relief to other poor people who were struggling to get by and who were having interactions with law enforcement. He cared about how the cases that we were handling could potentially change police practices in the future.”

I must say I remain puzzled by how little coverage Pendleton’s death has received in New Hampshire media since March 13. Most of the stories that have been done come from outside news outlets like the New York Times and the Guardian. I did hear one story on New Hampshire Public Radio. When I have asked friends and acquaintances about Pendleton’s death, they have invariably not heard about it.

There have been a lot of stories about bobcats and also about the St. Paul’s preppy and the tragedy of his temporary detour from Harvard but almost nothing about a dead young black man. Based on the coverage, maybe black lives don’t matter.

As someone who follows news about pro football, I would have to acknowledge how often these days football news is punctuated by stories about the deaths of former players. Usually they die young. The most recent example is Kevin Turner.

Turner, who died at age 46, had an 8 year NFL career. He had been a blocking fullback for the Patriots and the Philadelphia Eagles back in the 1990’s. He had played college ball at Alabama. Turner was an extremely talented offensive player who spent much of his career plowing into linebackers and defensive linemen which was often not a glory role.

More recently, Turner was one of the lead plaintiffs in the concussion lawsuit filed by the players against the NFL. He was widely respected and popular in the NFL player community. After he died, I saw innumerable tweets from former NFL players remembering and honoring him.

In 2010, Turner received the diagnosis of ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. He had suffered more concussions than he could count. As a player he had been prone to “stingers”, which are injuries to the neck and spinal cord. Turner was certain football contributed to his medical condition. He was quoted in 2011:

“Football had something to do with it. I don’t know to what extent, and I may not ever know. But there are too many people I know that have ALS and played football in similar positions. They seem to be linebackers, fullbacks, strong safeties. Those are big collision guys.”

Turner used to tell a story about a Packers-Eagles game in which he played in 1997. He took a brutal hit on the opening kickoff where he saw stars. After that, he did not miss a play. Midway through the second quarter, he found himself on the sideline. He turned to his teammate Bobby Hoying and he said:

“Bobby, I know we’re playing the Packers. Are we in Philadelphia or Green Bay?”

Hoying then called the team doctors. The doctors held Turner out for two series. He played the whole second half as well as the rest of the season. That was the norm back then.

By 2013, Turner’s ALS had progressed. He had great difficulty using his hands. He described the progression this way:

“There’s so many things you can’t do. I’ll list the things you can. I can still walk around. I can’t carry anything. It takes away all of your independence. I can’t bathe myself. I can’t brush my own teeth. I can’t eat. I can drink but I can’t bring it to my mouth. I can’t dress myself. I can’t tie my shoes. If I can’t do it with my feet, I can’t do it.”

In his last years, Turner selflessly advocated for former players and he fought for more research on the connection between repetitive brain trauma, chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), and ALS. Turner pledged his own brain for research.

A key scientist in this research is Dr. Ann McKee from Boston University and the Concussion Legacy Foundation. She has studied the brains of 94 deceased NFL players. 90 had CTE. CTE can only be diagnosed posthumously. The Concussion Legacy Foundation has put out the best definition of CTE that I have seen.

“CTE is a progressive degenerative disease of the brain found in athletes (and others) with a history of repetitive brain trauma, including symptomatic concussions as well as asymptomatic subconcussive hits to the head…This trauma triggers progressive degeneration of the brain tissue, including the build-up of an abnormal protein called tau. These changes..can begin months, years, or even decades after the last brain trauma or end of active athletic involvement. The brain degeneration is associated with memory loss, confusion, impaired judgment, impulse-control problems, aggression, depression, and eventually progressive dementia.”

Shockingly, after years of denial, the NFL may now be signaling a new stance. In testimony he just gave before the House Energy and Commerce Committee in Congress, the NFL’s senior vice president for health and safety, Jeff Miller, forthrightly stated that there is a link between football and degenerative brain disorders like CTE. Miller went on to recognize that Dr. Ann McKee and her colleagues at BU had found the disease in many players who died.

It is hard to overstate what a departure Miller’s testimony represents from previous NFL positions. For many years the NFL argued that research had not established any causal link between repetitive head trauma in football and CTE. It is hard to square Miller’s testimony with recent statements from Commissioner Roger Goodell. Goodell, while acknowledging Miller, still seems to be downplaying the risks of playing football. Here is Goodell this February:

“From my standpoint, I played football for nine years through high school and I wouldn’t give up a single day of that. If I had a son, I’d love to have him play the game of football because of the values you get. There’s risk in life. There’s risk in sitting on the couch.”

The NFL’s seeming new position does not appear to be reflected in recent statements by well-known owners of NFL teams. Jerry Jones, the owner of the Dallas Cowboys, said he is not convinced that medical and scientific research have established a link between football and brain disease. Jones claims a lack of data and research.

Jim Irsay, the Indianapolis Colts owner, compared the dangers of playing football to the risks associated with taking aspirin. Irsay was quoted:

“I believe this: that the game has always been a risk. Look at it. You take an aspirin, I take an aspirin, it might give you extreme side effects of illness and your body…may reject it, where I would be fine. So there is so much we don’t know.”

On March 28, speaking to the media at the NFL owners’ annual meeting, Irsay went on to say, “Obviously, we are not going to go to a situation where we put players in almost balloon-like equipment, where it becomes a pillow fight, so to speak.”

Around the same time on March 24, the New York Times published an important story that showed the NFL’s concussion research was far more flawed than had been previously known. The Times showed that research done from 1996 through 2001 omitted more than 100 diagnosed concussions and calculated the rates of concussions using incomplete data. The NFL made concussions appear less frequent than they actually were.

The Times also found out that along with teams failing to report all of their players’ concussions, some teams completely failed to report any concussions. The Times’ article cites the Dallas Cowboys as an example. It also goes on to cite overlapping and intersecting interests between the NFL and tobacco companies. The two businesses shared lobbyists, lawyers, and consultants.

Given the contradictory statements from the NFL and its owners, it is hard to know if they have, in fact, evolved. For years the NFL used their resources to push the message that concussions were a non-issue. They cherry picked data, elevated flawed research and attacked scientists opposed to their party line. At this point, it is hard to believe any change of heart is sincere.

I believe the NFL is following a path described by authors Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway in their book, Merchants of Doubt. The NFL has been merchandising doubt to mislead the public about the connection between brain injuries and football. It is the same strategy followed by the tobacco companies who for years denied the connection between smoking and lung cancer. As one tobacco executive wrote, “Doubt is our product.”

The NFL can always in a cagey way say it is on the side of science and more research. They can say the science is in its infancy but the science is way more settled than they are acknowledging. Promoting an alleged controversy and doubt-mongering give space for the NFL to continue with minimal disruption and cost. It is actually a formula for inaction and delay.

In honor of Kevin Turner and the other players who have died prematurely, we need to be keeping it real with intellectual honesty. I am not arguing for any ban on football because players can make their own choices about whether they want to play but they should know: football can rob you of critical life capabilities while short-circuiting your life. It is a Faustian bargain.

For those who have followed the slow motion train wreck that is the Republican presidential race, there is a surreal quality to much of the policy discussion. Like gray clouds going by, noxious ideas contrary to the public interest are regularly floated. Nowhere is this better illustrated than in the routine denunciation of federal government regulation. It is and has been the mantra of all the Republican presidential candidates.

Typically, they will say regulations are strangling business and sucking the life blood from capitalism. The current leader in the Republican field, Donald Trump, promises to abolish the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

The other contender, Senator Ted Cruz, is equally hostile to regulation. Cruz is on record favoring repeal of all federal climate change regulations in the United States. He wants to gut the Clean Air Act. He also wants to eliminate the newly created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, designed to prevent another subprime meltdown.

For Republicans, conservatives, and libertarians, federal government regulation is a manifestation of the hated nanny state. Their approach has been to pursue emasculation of federal regulation. At the same time, they have pushed states to be in charge of things like enforcing drinking water standards.

But then, along came the Flint Michigan water crisis. No recent event more directly shows the absurdity of the Republican position on rolling back federal government regulation. Flint powerfully shows the necessity for strong consumer protection everywhere in the country. Sadly, there could be multiple Flints out there.

An estimated 9000 children under age 6 in the Flint area have been exposed to toxic levels of lead from corrosive drinking water flowing through the city’s water pipes. There are also other heavy metals and carcinogens in that water. That is like poisoning a generation. I think it is fair to say that all others in Flint who were drinking, bathing, showering , cooking with, and using the water have not exactly been benefited. Flint residents are having many adverse health consequences.

Lead is a known neurotoxin. It can silently damage developing brains impairing cognitive function and it can also slow growth. It has caused hair loss, skin irritation and rashes, and vomiting. The skin rashes have been widespread with Flint residents’ skin burning and peeling off. Many people in Flint have shockingly had their hair falling out in clumps.

Research has shown that even exposure to low levels of lead can profoundly affect childrens’ functioning. Lead exposure has been linked to learning disabilities, limited attention span, problems with fine motor coordination and violent behavior. Lead is a cumulative poison.

Because Flint’s water has been infested with bacteria, the city has poured chlorine into the water. That created a cancerous chemical called trihalomethane. Flint also has experienced an outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease, caused by a water-borne bacteria, killing 10 people and sickening many.

Flint was already an impoverished community. About 57% of Flint’s 99,000 residents are black and 40% live in poverty. Since the beginning of the water crisis, Flint residents have been protesting the water but they were ignored by the powers-that-be. You don’t have to be a political genius to know this would never happen in an affluent white community.

So how did it happen that Flint’s water got so poisoned? An appointee of Republican governor Rick Snyder , the emergency manager, decided to unhook the people of Flint from their fresh water drinking source, Lake Huron, in 2013 and substitute water from the polluted Flint River. Flint had been using Lake Huron water for 50 years before the switch. The reason was simple: to save money.

Pumping water out of the Flint River was free. Flint had been in terrible financial straits and Snyder’s emergency manager was all about cutting costs. He believed he could save $5 million a year by changing the water supply. He ignored the fact that the Flint River was tainted by farm runoff, sewage, and decades of industrial effluent.

Almost immediately, Flint residents began complaining about discolored and foul-smelling water. The water was yellow and smelled like a sewer. They were not the only ones who complained. Shortly after Flint switched water sources, General Motors’ executives told Governor Snyder that the Flint River water was causing their car parts to corrode when being washed on the assembly line. Snyder spent $440,000 and rehooked GM back to the fresh water from Lake Huron. However, Governor Snyder ignored the repeated complaints from Flint’s residents. The lead and other heavy metal exposure continued for 17 months.

Flint water bills were among the highest in the nation even though the water was undrinkable, contaminated, and unusable. Many Flint residents received shut off notices for not being able to pay the water bill. They were being made to pay a premium price for poisoned water.

Federal law requires that water systems which are sent through lead pipes must contain an additive that seals the lead into the pipe and prevents it from leaching into the water. Michigan authorities knowingly chose not to do that because of the cost. The Flint River water literally corroded the entire infrastructure of Flint. Now Governor Snyder is sorry but being sorry hardly begins to address his responsibility. Flint needs to have its entire infrastructure of lead pipes removed and replaced. Time will tell but the harm inflicted is almost incalculable.

By devolving authority to the states, Congress has turned the EPA into a toothless tiger. There will, no doubt, be conservatives who try to flip blame for this fiasco primarily onto the EPA but the blame here clearly rests on Governor Snyder and state officials. That is the conclusion reached by the Flint Water Advisory Task Force, appointed by Governor Snyder, which just released its report on the water crisis. The report called the Flint water crisis “a story of government failure, intransigence, delay, inaction, and environmental injustice “.

Unfortunately, the problem of lead tainting drinking water is not isolated to Flint. On March 18, USA Today published an investigative report which showed that lead taints drinking water in hundreds of schools and daycare centers across the United States.

The USA Today report estimated that 20% of water systems nationally test above the EPA’s action level of 15 parts per billion. The federal government requires only about 10% of the nation’s schools and a tiny percent of daycares to be tested for lead.

Clean, safe water is a national problem. The real problem is that agencies like the EPA have been made too weak. That is why there is potential for many more Flint-like situations. By not regulating, we are failing the people of the Unites States and potentially exposing them to great harm. We should not be taking the purity of our tap water for granted. Many cities around the country rely on pre-World War I-era water delivery systems and treatment technology.

The Flint water crisis is a tale that recapitulates the history of consumer protection in the United States. That history is the story of specific legal and political responses to crises which generate great public outrage. You can go back 110 years to Upton Sinclair’s novel The Jungle with its expose of the horrible conditions in the meat packing industry. Outrage then lead to the creation of the Food and Drug Administration and regulation of food safety.

In the 1960’s, Ralph Nader published Unsafe at any Speed and he targeted the need for federal auto safety standards. His great work led to the creation of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration which oversaw the creation of federal safety standards for automobiles and allowed for recall of unsafe vehicles. Nader’s efforts brought about a marked decrease in traffic fatalities per vehicle mile.

Since 1966, Nader assisted in the creation of eight major federal consumer protection laws, including the launching of federal regulatory agencies such as the Occupational Health and Safety Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Consumer Product Safety Administration. He also advocated for access to open government through the Freedom of Information Act of 1974.

I mention the history because the Flint water crisis needs to be seen in the context of the national history of consumer protection. American consumers need to be protected from unsafe products, fraud, deceptive advertising and unfair business practices.

Republican presidential candidates who want to eviscerate federal government regulation are fighting a war against consumer protection. They are in la-la land about the dark side of capitalism and our aging infrastructure.  Really, in the aftermath of the Great Recession and now Flint, consumer protection should be a widely debated topic. I would have to say though that for thirty years deregulating has been a much hotter topic than consumer protection. That needs to change.

Without consumer protection at the national level, Americans can expect to be fleeced, scammed, swindled, and victimized. There never seems to be a shortage of predatory lenders, con men, and other bad actors. For clean and safe water, we need consumer protection – not a war against it.

Maybe some readers saw this story which appeared in the Washington Post on March 9. A Jacksonville Florida woman, who was a gun rights enthusiast, was accidentally shot in the back by her 4 year old son. Before it happened, the lady had bragged on Facebook that her boy “gets jazzed up to target shoot”.

Somehow the child managed to get hold of the mother’s .45-caliber handgun that he found on the floor of her pickup truck. The child shot his mother in the back through the seat while she was driving. Fortunately, the mother lived through it.

Then there was the February shooting deaths of two 15 year old girls at a Glendale Arizona high school. The police believe it was a murder-suicide. A suicide note was found. Apparently the shooter approached another 15 year old student on the day before the shooting and asked him to lend her the gun for protection. The male student gave her the gun which he obtained from his house without his parents’ knowledge or permission.

While it remains unclear, the two sophomore girls were in a romantic relationship. The girl who was the shooter had just been informed that the other girl did not love her romantically any more. The two girls both had single gunshot wounds and a weapon was found near the bodies.

I offer these stories because, unfortunately, they are not that unusual. Unintentional, accidental shootings and especially suicides comprise a significant chunk of gun deaths that happen in America every year. These deaths do not fit neatly into the narrative spun by the pro-gun lobby.

In that narrative, the good law-abiding citizens need guns to protect themselves from the bad criminals. Really the world is divided up into these two categories of people. This dichotomy leads the pro-gun lobby to argue for virtually no restrictions on the law-abiding citizens and for harsher penalties for the criminals.

The pro-gun lobby routinely argues that all gun control laws are futile because criminals are indifferent to the law. They are so sociopathic that denying access to guns will not matter because the criminals will find another way to kill if that is their goal.

In an era with mass shootings and terrorism so highlighted in the media, the narrative of the pro-gun lobby gets legs. Fear is the engine.

The problem as I see it though is that there are a huge number of shooting situations that are not fundamentally about good guys and bad guys. The world is so much more complex and multi-dimensional than a dualistic model.

The child who accidentally shoots his mother or the child who accidentally shoots another child is a scenario played out over and over. Is the child who accidentally shoots his mother a bad guy? I think not.

The public health researcher David Hemenway writes that between 1965 and 2000, more than 60,000 Americans died from unintentional firearm shootings. He writes that those 60,000 deaths are more Americans than were killed in our wars fought during the same time.

Hemenway estimates there are two to three accidental firearm deaths each day in the United States and he says that it is just the tip of the iceberg. He writes that more than 30 people are shot unintentionally everyday but do not die. Young people are the primary victims.

As for suicides, Hemenway writes that 50 people a day kill themselves with guns in the United States. In 2010 in the U.S. 19,392 people committed suicide with guns compared to 11,078 who were killed by others with guns. So gun suicides actually outnumber gun homicides almost two to one.

Hemenway says that more people kill themselves with guns than by all other methods combined including hanging, poisoning or overdose, jumping or cutting. For people who want to do themselves in, guns are the most lethal means. About 85% of suicide attempts with a firearm end in death. That is significantly higher than the rate with other suicide methods. Less than 3% of drug overdoses result in death.

Is the distraught lover or the despairing young person caught in a personally overwhelming crisis a bad person? Again I would say no. Life can deal unbearable adversities. I have always liked this Ernest Hemingway quote:

“The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places.”

Contrary to the myth that suicides are typically long-planned deeds, much empirical evidence suggests that many people in crisis act impulsively. In a moment of heightened vulnerability, the psychologically wounded person can act irretrievably.

There was an interesting 2001 study in Houston of people ages 13 to 34 who had survived a near-lethal suicide attempt. The survey asked how much time had passed between when they decided to take their lives and when they made the attempt. 23% said less than 5 minutes; 48% said less than 20 minutes; 70% said less than one hour; and 86% said less than 8 hours.

A Harvard School of Public Health study says that 9 out of 10 people who attempt suicide and survive do not go on to die by suicide later. Interventions, awareness, and denying access to lethal weapons at key moments would likely save many lives.

I know now is the time when pro-gun folks would expect me to offer the usual anti-gun remedies. There is no doubt that the easy availability of guns contributes to both unintentional shootings and suicides. Still, I would like to go in a different direction.

Not every gun reform is about taking away precious guns which seem to be more loved than life itself. Many reforms do not implicate the Second Amendment. I would suggest that people on both sides of the polarized debate could come together in ways they have not in the past.

For example, states could adopt stronger laws to prevent children from accessing unsecured guns. On the positive, New Hampshire already has a chapter in its criminal code about negligent storage of firearms. Many states lack this. Congress could also increase funding for public health research on children injured and killed in unintentional shootings.

There is a sad lack of research on guns and suicide. Just like public health researchers studied cigarettes and lung cancer, we could at least try and obtain accurate data about guns and suicide.

The lack of such public health data is not an accident. Since 1996, the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention has been prohibited from doing firearm research. Firearms are the last consumer product manufactured in the United States that is not subject to federal health and safety regulation.

Getting good data on gun-related topics should not be that controversial. It is hard to imagine that anyone would oppose learning more about what mental health treatment would be most effective against suicide as well as what practical steps could reduce the incidence of suicide by gun. It should be clear that what we have done to date has not resulted in decline in unintentional shootings or suicides. We need strong and effective fact-based public health policies that significantly reduce gun death and injury.

It is not anti-gun to want to talk about public health problems related to guns. Public health is about living with guns – not dying from them.

Once again, the detention facility at Guantanamo has reemerged as a partisan issue. President Obama wants to fulfill his 2008 campaign pledge and close Guantanamo. Republicans remain opposed and desire a continuation of the prison camp. They do not want those held at Guantanamo transferred to maximum security prisons in the United States.

The opponents of Guantanamo closure raise the spectre of Isis or Al Qaeda attacks on supermax prisons in the United States where the terrorist prisoners might be held.

The problem with this narrative is how much is left out. Focusing on Guantanamo as a Democratic versus Republican debate misses the historical context of the place as well as deeper related issues.

A deeper perspective needs to look at how the United States gained possession of territory that is part of another country. The story of how Guantanamo became an American possession deserves attention.

It is a story that is a throwback to an earlier era of great power colonialism and gunboat diplomacy. In that era, great powers competed to carve up the Third World and its resources, including the Caribbean and Latin America. Going back to the Monroe Doctrine, the United States, like all the other major colonial empires, had an interest in promoting and protecting its business interests overseas. Part of the effort was the establishment of military bases to advance the American empire.

Guantanamo, the oldest existing American naval base outside the United States, is an expression of our own imperialism. While I expect it would be politically unpopular to say so, a just result would be returning Guantanamo to Cuba. Guantanamo is, quite obviously, part of Cuba. As relations warm between Cuba and the United States, I fully expect some future American administration will return the base. Guantanamo is an unneeded imperialist relic.

The United States gained control of Guantanamo in 1898 when Cubans rose up against the Spanish who then controlled Cuba. Siding with the Cubans, the United States, after vanquishing the Spanish, forced Cuba to accept the Platt Amendment into its constitution. The Platt Amendment granted the United States the right to intervene freely in Cuban affairs, including access to naval bases. The marines would land in Cuba in 1906, 1912, 1917 and 1920 to exercise those rights.

The Cubans were adamantly opposed to the Platt Amendment. For those looking to understand some of the historical reasons for the Cuban revolution, I would look at how the Platt Amendment humiliated Cuba. The Cubans rightly feared the amendment would turn them into a vassal people.

The United States essentially delivered an ultimatum to the Cubans: incorporate the Platt Amendment into your constitution or we will not withdraw our troops on the island. In spite of this affront to their sovereignty, the Cubans reluctantly bowed to the greater power in 1901.

In 1903, the United States made a further agreement with Cuba which gave the U.S. 45 square miles of land and water for the naval base that was to become Guantanamo. Under the deal, the United States was to pay Cuba rent of $2000 a year. There was no time limit specified.

In 1934, President Franklin Roosevelt made the lease permanent. Guantanamo was leased for both coaling and naval purposes. The United States later upped the amount it paid for the lease to $4085 a month.

To protest the base, the Cuban government has refused to cash these less-than-munificent lease checks sent by the United States government as payment for Guantanamo.

Before the War on Terror, Guantanamo was not exactly a center of attention. In the early 1990’s, President George H.W. Bush decided to use Guantanamo Bay as a place to shelter Haitian refugees but really Guantanamo did not serve much purpose. It does have a deep water port and a decent airstrip but it is less important in a world of nuclear submarines, aircraft carriers and drones.

The War on Terror did, however, give Guantanamo a new purpose. After the prison was built in 2002, it became what Amnesty International has called “the gulag of our time”. It became a sort of behavioral science lab to test out psychological torture techniques on the international detainees imprisoned there.

Guantanamo transformed into a legal black hole. Being outside the sovereign territory of the U.S., the George W. Bush Administration believed that fact of geography would remove all legal protections of both American and international law. The Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld team played out some dark fantasy of omnipotence. For many detainees, the terms “innocent” and “guilty” became passe. They reside in a Kafkaesque hell. Those who think I am exaggerating might want to check out Guantanamo Diary by Mohamedou Ould Slahi.

I do not see the current debate as fundamentally about where to place the terrorist prisoners: Guantanamo or the U.S.. That may be an immediate practical problem but for lawyers and civil libertarians, the deeper question is how we end indefinite detention without trial. As the international lawyer Philippe Sands has written, such practices violate the most fundamental principle of the English common law and all civilized legal systems. The right to habeas corpus is the cornerstone of the rule of law. Those who are held deserve, at minimum, a trial and due process.

Demagogues will scream and push the fear factor. They will assert we would possibly be releasing people they have characterized as “the worst of the worst”. They will point to examples of released terrorists who returned to the battlefield. There are such cases. But the truth is so much more nuanced.

I am reminded of the famous quote from John Adams:

“It is more important that innocence be protected than it is that guilt be punished, for guilt and crime are so frequent in this world that they cannot all be punished. But if innocence itself is brought to the bar and condemned, perhaps to die, then the citizen will say, whether I do good or whether I do evil is immaterial, for innocence itself is no protection, and if such an idea as that were to take hold in the mind of the citizen that would be the end of security whatsoever.”

While there once were as many as 700 people held at Guantanamo, there are now 91. A military task force of 2000 troops now watches this relatively small group. Considering just the numbers, closing Guantanamo hardly seems like it should be a big deal. We already hold a number of convicted terrorists in the United States. Our judicial and prison system is more than competent to address the small number of remaining Guantanamo prisoners, whatever the result of judicial process.

It is estimated that 40 to 50 of the remaining prisoners are hardened Al Qaeda members. Some cannot be charged because there is insufficient evidence against them or what there is has been tainted by their treatment in custody. These are the most problematic prisoners.

In the case of 34 detainees, mostly from Yemen, it has already been determined that they can be released without a security risk. However, it has been determined they cannot be returned to Yemen. A place must be found for these detainees.

One wild card that needs to be mentioned: according to a study by Seton Hall Law School, 86% of the detainees were arrested by non-American forces who were, essentially, bounty hunters. These detainees were arrested by Afghan and Pakistani mercenaries eager for the $5000 bounty on each capture. Leaflets dropped across Afghanistan had invited people to inform intelligence services to get the big prize. It is impossible to know whether some of the detainees are simply innocent victims of greedy bounty hunters.

A rational look at the Guantanamo detainees presents a vastly different view than the hysterical fantasies spun by those opposed to Guantanamo closure. In saying that, I do not minimize the threat posed by isis or Al Qaeda. It is just that a close look at Guantanamo defies what might be expected.

I would suggest that the abuse of detainees at Guantanamo and elsewhere has tremendously hurt America’s cause in the War on Terror. It is contrary to the rule of law and America’s best values. Somehow the cost of that abuse has not registered with the American public. The abuse endangers American service members and it is a useful recruiting tool for our adversaries.

The wise and late historian Chalmers Johnson once wrote a book entitled The Sorrows of Empire. Guantanamo is one of those sorrows.

One of the surprising and lesser-remarked upon aspects of this campaign season has been the endorsement of waterboarding by the leading Republican presidential candidates. To quote candidate Trump: “I would bring back waterboarding and I’d bring back a helluva lot worse than waterboarding.”

Not wanting to be left behind, contenders Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio have concurred with Trump. Neither wants to take so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques” off the table. Cruz has argued waterboarding is not torture. Rubio thinks we should not be talking about what tactics we might use.

A number of current and former Republican candidates including Ben Carson, Jeb Bush and Carly Fiorina also have embraced the euphemistically described enhanced interrogation techniques.

While I suppose these positions can, in part, be attributed to trying to look tough, they reflect a medieval mentality and a profound ignorance of the law. Torture, which includes waterboarding, is both illegal and immoral. Also, as has been widely recognized in the intelligence community, it does not work.

Life is not an episode of 24 but there seems to be some confusion about that.

Waterboarding is a very well-established, brutal form of torture, dating back to the 16th century. Many tyrants of all stripes have used it. It was used during the trial portion of the Spanish Inquisition. Church interrogators used torture both to obtain confessions and to punish. After beating the body , arms and legs, the Spanish introduced cloth into the mouth of the victim and poured quantities of water over the mouth and nose to create the impression of drowning.

The U.S. Army used waterboarding in the Philippines during the Spanish-American War of 1898. Then it was called the water cure.

During World War II, the Japanese used waterboarding to torture. The United States executed Japanese soldiers for multiple forms of mistreatment including water torture. The Japanese secret police, the Kenpeitai, used two methods of water torture. Waterboarding was one method and the other method involved tying prisoners to a ladder and sliding them down into a tub of water until the prisoner almost drowned. These methods were discussed in the Tokyo War Crimes trial held by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East.

In the 1950’s, during the Algerian War, the French used the practice against the Algerians and against perceived enemies. A French journalist, Henri Alleq, who was tortured by French paratroopers, wrote about the experience of being strapped to a plank, having his head wrapped in cloth and being positioned beneath a running tap:

‘The rag was soaked rapidly. Water flowed everywhere: in my mouth, in my nose, all over my face. But for a while I could still breathe in some small gulps of air. I tried, by contracting my throat, to take in as little water as possible and to resist suffocation by keeping air in my lungs for as long as I could. But I could’t hold on for more than a few moments. I had the impression of drowning, and a horrible agony, that of death itself, took possession of me.”

On January 21, 1968, the Washington Post published a front page photograph of two American soldiers and one South Vietnamese soldier waterboarding a North Vietnamese POW near Da Nang. The article described the practice as “fairly common”. Torture was an integral part of U.S. policy in Vietnam. The Tiger Cages on Con Son Island come to mind first but American advisors taught the South Vietnamese better methods for how to torture, including waterboarding.

The Khmer Rouge, the British Army in Northern Ireland in the 1970’s, and the apartheid regime in South Africa all waterboarded.

In recent years, documents released by our own government show a sickening degree of sadism in our treatment of terror suspects from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. In an article that appeared in Salon.com in 2010, Marc Benjamin wrote:

“Interrogators pumped detainees full of so much water that the CIA turned to a special saline solution to minimize the risk of death, the documents show. The agency used a gurney “specially designed’ to tilt backwards at a perfect angle to maximize the water entering the prisoner’s nose and mouth, intensifying the sense of choking – and to be lifted upright in the event that a prisoner stopped breathing.”

Torture and cruel acts like waterboarding have been internationally outlawed since the end of World War II. The 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights stated, ” No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment or punishment.” There are no exceptions.

The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the American Convention on Human Rights, the Geneva Convention III and the 1984 Convention Against Torture all would clearly prohibit waterboarding. The 1984 Convention Against Torture, promoted by President Reagan, criminalized torture and sought to end immunity for any torturer.

I would be remiss if I did not mention our own federal Constitution’s 8th Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. There are also prohibitions in the United States Code which criminalize torture.

So how did we get to a place where candidates can unashamedly and without any seeming awareness endorse practices that are criminal? Also, how is it that the public response has been utterly muted?

I think the historian Alfred McCoy has best explained it. Professor McCoy says there is a pattern of expose of torture, momentary public awareness, no sustained investigation, no prosecution and no penalty. As a society, we do not punish the torturers. Professor McCoy says this pattern has repeated six times over the last 45 years, starting with Vietnam.

Professor McCoy calls it impunity: the failure to punish a wrongful act. Both political parties are implicated. The problem he sees is that without binding and serious prosecution, torture will continually recur. Without a consequence, torture is legitimated.

Contrary to the minimizing assertions of former Vice President Dick Cheney, our Darth Vader, there is no debate in the international community about whether waterboarding is torture. It is widely recognized in the civilized world as reprehensible.

Wanting to do worse than waterboarding reflects moral and legal cluelessness. It is know-nothing anger run amok. Torture leaves an indelible stain. For our country it can only guarantee ugly blowback.