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“3 Years of Torture Is Enough”: A Transgender Inmate Sues Georgia Prisons

by PhyllisRamsden Posted on March 2, 2015

Mother Jones

In December 2013, Ashley Diamond, a transgender woman locked up at a men’s state prison in Georgia, found herself in solitary confinement. Rutledge State Prison warden Shay Hatcher, she says, put her there for “pretending to be a woman.” The 36-year-old Diamond, who was first diagnosed with gender dysphoria as a teenager, had been denied hormone therapy since entering the prison system in 2012. She still identified as a woman, even as her body was becoming more masculine, causing her extreme anxiety and physical pain.

Later that month, Diamond claims, Hatcher sent her to solitary for a second time after she met with lawyers. About six days later, still in isolation, Diamond told him that she was not pretending, but rather had serious medical needs requiring treatment—and that she was suicidal due to her lack of care. That same day, Diamond tried to cut off her penis with a razor and kill herself; she was hospitalized on an emergency basis. She then received a letter from the medical director of the Georgia Department of Corrections (GDC), saying that the officials who had confiscated her women’s clothes and refused to provide her with hormone therapy had handled matters “appropriately.”

Now, Diamond is taking her grievances to court. Earlier this month, the Southern Poverty Law Center initiated a lawsuit on her behalf that accuses eight current and former GDC employees of wrongfully denying her hormone therapy against the recommendations of doctors, and of failing to protect her from at least seven cases of sexual assault. Court documents, including copies of correspondences between Diamond and prison authorities, allege numerous incidents in which officials mistreated and outright harassed her. (The GDC declined to comment.)

Since stopping her hormone therapy, Diamond says she has experienced chest pain, muscle spasms, heart palpitations, vomiting, dizziness, hot flashes, and weight loss. Stephen Sloan, a GDC psychologist who met with Diamond in both December and January, noted that she is staying in a prison where the atmosphere is homophobic, with little support for sexual minorities. “She continues to require hormone therapy and gender role change if she is to receive adequate care,” he wrote in a report after the second meeting. “Withholding this therapy from her increases her risk of self-harm.”

As her body has transformed, Diamond has tried to kill herself at least three times and has tried to castrate herself four times, in addition to attempting to cut off her penis. She is seeking an injunction requiring the resumption of hormone therapy; the right to express her female identity through grooming, pronoun, and dress; and safe placement in a medium security or transitional facility. She secretly filmed a video statement from behind bars; here’s what she had to say:

Transgender women inmates are among the most vulnerable in American prisons, facing a high risk of sexual violence and harassment from other inmates as well as staff, who often house them with men and refer to them with the wrong pronoun. One study in 2007 found that 59 percent of transgender women detained in men’s facilities in California were sexually abused, compared with 4 percent of male inmates. Laverne Cox, the first openly transgender actress to be nominated for an Emmy, has helped bring broader attention to some of these issues with her role on as Sophia Burset, a trans inmate forced to stop estrogen therapy on the hit TV show Orange Is the New Black. And in a high-profile legal case earlier this month, Chelsea Manning (formerly Bradley Manning, the soldier who was convicted of sending classified documents to WikiLeaks) made national headlines when she received the go-ahead to begin hormone therapy in a military correctional facility after suing the government.

Federal prisons are required to provide inmates with individualized medical care, including hormone therapy, but at the state level it’s a different story. While some states do require individualized medical care at prisons, others, like Georgia, have policies in place that specifically prevent transgender inmates from accessing treatment despite recommendations from medical professionals. (BuzzFeed‘s Jessica Testa has written at length about the state’s treatment of trans inmates, including Diamond and Zahara Green.)

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“3 Years of Torture Is Enough”: A Transgender Inmate Sues Georgia Prisons

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Some Climate Engineering Ideas Are Insane. This One Isn’t.

by EusebiaBailey Posted on February 26, 2015

Mother Jones

This story originally appeared on the Slate website and is reproduced here apart of the Climate Desk collaboration.

According to technological optimists, in the next two or three decades, humanity will embark on a new era of possibility. Super-smart computers and other advances may even make certain types of less risky, large-scale climate actions a reality. Open any number of sci-fi books from the last few decades and you have an idea of how nanotechnology could make planetary-scale engineering possible. (Kim Stanley Robinson’s work comes immediately to mind.) Maybe swarms of self-replicating photosynthetic nanobots will be able to quickly and cheaply suck CO2 from the air? What about coating all the world’s rooftops in organic solar panels? Or optimizing biofuel production from algae on the molecular scale? The possibilities are mind-boggling.

Earlier this month, delegates from virtually every country on Earth gathered in Geneva to produce the initial draft of a global climate agreement to be signed in Paris later this year. In it were several references to net zero or negative emissions after 2050.

On our current path, humanity is still tracking at (or even slightly above) the worst-case climate scenario laid out about a decade ago. The latest comprehensive update from the world’s climate scientists outlined a best-case scenario that is now likely to require a ramp-up of carbon capture-and-storage to meet emissions targets. If it works, sucking excess carbon dioxide from the air could result in net negative global carbon emissions by the end of the century, and likely provide our best hope for returning concentrations to pre-industrial levels in our lifetimes. If it works.

We’re still far, far from that trajectory—emissions continue to increase each year at the global level. We’ve waited so long to address escalating carbon emissions that we must honestly consider research into these technologies. And, let’s face it, trying to shift humanity off fossil fuels any time soon feels increasingly like a lost cause.

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Some Climate Engineering Ideas Are Insane. This One Isn’t.

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Republican Congressman to DC Mayor: “You Can Go to Prison” for Legalizing Marijuana

by WilburnRichard Posted on February 25, 2015

Mother Jones

On Wednesday, a tense back-and-forth between congressional Republicans and the District of Columbia government over marijuana laws escalated into a dramatic showdown. In November, DC voters passed Initiative 71, which legalized marijuana—though with some major caveats—by an overwhelming margin. Mayor Muriel Bowser declared this week that the law would take effect at 12:01 a.m. Thursday. But Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), who chairs the House committee that oversees District governance, has taken a hard line, suggesting that Bowser and other city officials could be arrested for moving forward with the law because it goes against the will of Congress. Here’s the breakdown of what’s happening in our nation’s capital.

What Initiative 71 does: The bill, which was approved by two-thirds of DC voters, is relatively modest in its aims, compared to the more robust legalization laws of states like Colorado.* It makes the possession of two or fewer ounces of marijuana legal for people 21 and over, and it permits consumption on private property, as well as the cultivation of a limited number of marijuana plants. Marijuana sales remain strictly prohibited—although people can transfer as much as an ounce to each other as long as no money or goods changes hands—and smoking in public is forbidden, too.

How Congress fought it: Congress’ central role in overseeing DC law presented obstacles for the implementation of Initiative 71 from the beginning. Chaffetz, a conservative Republican who won a tight contest to become chairman of the House oversight committee, is a longtime foe of legalizing and decriminalizing marijuana. Once the new Congress convened, it had 30 days in which to approve or disapprove the law. Instead, Republicans chose to undermine it through the federal budget: They attached a rider, or amendment, on this year’s $1.1 trillion budget that shuts down the pot law. The rider bars DC from using any funds to “enact or carry out any law, rule, or regulation to legalize or otherwise reduce penalties associated with the possession, use, or distribution of any schedule I substance.”

How DC fought back: The city government has argued that since voters passed the law before Congress attached the rider, the prohibition is not valid, and the law should stand. Pro-pot Washingtonians have insisted the only legitimate way Congress can block legalization is through a Resolution of Disapproval, in which the entire body votes against the law after the review period. No such action was taken.

Chaffetz’s threat: Bowser has communicated her intent to implement the law, repeatedly citing what she calls DC’s solid legal standing as well as her obligation to carry out the will of the voters. On Tuesday, Chaffetz and Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) sent a letter to Bowser in which they urged her to reconsider. “If you decide to move forward tomorrow with the legalization of marijuana in the District, you will be doing so in knowing and willful violation of the law,” they wrote. Chaffetz was more blunt in an interview with the Washington Post: “You can go to prison for this,” he said. “We’re not playing a little game here.”

What next: At a press conference Wednesday afternoon, Bowser, surrounded by city officials, accused Chaffetz of “bullying the District of Columbia.” She reaffirmed her intention to enforce the law beginning at midnight. “We are on very strong legal ground,” she said. “Congress shouldn’t be so concerned about overturning what 7 out of 10 DC residents are in favor of.”

Will Bowser be getting booked as DC residents prepare to get baked, legally? The Washington Post reports that House Republicans could back down and hand off the issue to the Department of Justice, which is far less likely to act as aggressively as Congress. (President Barack Obama came out in favor of Initiative 71 last December.) The legal battle will likely be protracted, but DC pot advocates are already planning to celebrate: The city will welcome Cannabis Academy, a “cannabis education and entrepreneurship” convention, this weekend.

Correction: An earlier version of this article misstated the margin by which Initiative 71 passed.

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Republican Congressman to DC Mayor: “You Can Go to Prison” for Legalizing Marijuana

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Obama Just Vetoed the GOP’s Keystone Bill, and This Democratic Presidential Hopeful Is Pissed

by pawel Posted on February 25, 2015

Mother Jones

Jim Webb is sounding increasingly serious about running for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016. Last week, National Journal‘s Bob Moser wrote a cover story wondering whether the former Virginia senator could “spark an anti-Hillary uprising,” in which Webb explained that his absence from the campaign trail this winter was, in part, the result of major knee surgery to fix problems leftover from his days in the Vietnam War.

Webb struck his first blow against his fellow Democrats on Wednesday. But rather than targeting Clinton, his likely presidential opposition, he struck out against the party’s incumbent, President Barack Obama. In a series of tweets, Webb lashed out at the president for vetoing a bill that would have approved construction on the Keystone XL Pipeline.

Webb’s tweetstorm doesn’t tell the whole story. A letter from the EPA released earlier this month argued that, thanks to recent drops in oil prices, Keystone XL could prove disastrous for carbon emissions.

As I detailed in December, Jim Webb had an atrocious record on climate change and environmental issues while he served in the Senate. Standing up for Virginia’s roots as a coal state, Webb tried to thwart Obama’s efforts to regulate greenhouse gasses through EPA regulation, and he helped block Democratic attempts to pass a cap-and-trade law.

Clinton, for her part, has regularly sidestepped addressing whether she wants to see the pipeline constructed, though she has generally been supportive of other environmental efforts made by the Obama administration.

While Webb objected to Obama’s decision to veto this specific bill, it’s still unclear whether the two Democrats disagree on the underlying issue. Obama has strenuously rejected attempts by congressional Republicans to force immediate approval of the pipeline, but his administration has not yet said definitely if it intends to let the project go forward eventually.

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Obama Just Vetoed the GOP’s Keystone Bill, and This Democratic Presidential Hopeful Is Pissed

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Natural gas drilling is causing earthquakes in Europe too

by Clement62M Posted on February 19, 2015

Natural gas drilling is causing earthquakes in Europe too

By on 19 Feb 2015commentsShare

Shell and ExxonMobil, as well as the Dutch government, ignored for decades that drilling in Europe’s largest gas field was causing earthquakes that put human lives and property at risk. That’s the takeaway of a new report out this week from an independent group advising the Dutch government.

As the natural gas beneath the Netherlands has dwindled in recent years, residents of Groningen County have experienced an increasing number of earthquakes. Last year, the area was hit with 84. The New York Times summarized what’s going on in a feature last summer:

A half-century of extraction has reduced the field’s natural pressure in recent years, and seismic shifts from geological settling have set off increasingly frequent earthquakes — more than 120 last year, and at least 40 this year. Though most of the tremors have been small, and resulted in no reported deaths or serious injuries, they have caused widespread damage to buildings, endangered nearby dikes and frightened and angered local residents.

Though the quakes started in the 1990s, the strongest came in 2012 when a 3.6 magnitude quake caused widespread damage to buildings in a region where structures were not designed to withstand seismic activity.

It was only after that quake that the government and the drilling company started taking the welfare of residents into account, according to the recently released findings of a year-long inquiry by the Dutch Safety Board, a government-funded but non-governmental organization.

“The Dutch Safety Board concludes that the safety of citizens in Groningen with regard to induced earthquakes had no influence on decision-making on the exploitation of the Groningen gas field until 2013. Until that time, the parties viewed the impact of earthquakes as limited: a risk of damage that could be compensated,” the report concluded.

Residents have been putting pressure on the Dutch government to force production cuts at the gas field, and it has responded; most recently, the government ordered a 16 percent cut for the first half of 2015 on top of cuts already in place. The field is a major source of revenue for the Dutch government, bringing in billions of euros each year. It also accounts for one third of the natural gas produced by the European Union.

The government and the joint venture between Shell and Exxon (NAM, short for Nederlandse Aardolie Maatschappij, of course) are also trying to win over Groningen residents by paying for damages. From the Times:

The company and various government authorities have also agreed on a five-year, €1.2 billion package to repair and reinforce homes and other buildings, including more than 20 of the medieval churches in the region that have sustained substantial damage.

This all raises questions about U.S. natural gas production and earthquakes. In recent years, wastewater disposal from fracking has caused a dramatic uptick in earthquakes in a number of states; Oklahoma has been hit particularly hard. Though the geological processes involved with the Dutch quakes are different — and Groningen was developed using traditional drilling, not fracking — some of the policy questions are the same. Namely: How bad do earthquakes have to get before the state or federal government considers limiting production?

At the moment, the more business-friendly U.S. government isn’t looking at curtailing fracking. In fact, one state hit by a recent spate of earthquakes, Ohio, is making sure that local authorities don’t interfere with state decisions about when and where drilling is allowed.

In Groningen, the relationship between the gas company and local residents got quite bad before things started to turn around. And at this point it might be too late. “NAM has spoiled trust over the last 20 to 30 years,” Jacques Wallage, a former member of the Dutch cabinet and a former mayor of Groningen, told the Times last summer. “The main question is, Can you rebuild trust?”

Oil and gas drillers across America may someday be forced to cough up an answer to the same question. But for now, fracking in the U.S. just continues — and Americans can only dream of getting more than a billion bucks to compensate for quake damage.

Source:
Earthquake Dangers in Dutch Gas Field Were Ignored for Years, Safety Board Says

, The New York Times.

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Natural gas drilling is causing earthquakes in Europe too

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Bill O’Reilly Has His Own Brian Williams Problem

by LesleeScotto Posted on February 19, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

After NBC News suspended anchor Brian Williams for erroneously claiming that he was nearly shot down in a helicopter while covering the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, Fox News host Bill O’Reilly went on a tear. On his television show, the top-rated cable news anchor declared that the American press isn’t “half as responsible as the men who forged the nation.” He bemoaned the supposed culture of deception within the liberal media, and he proclaimed that the Williams controversy should prompt questioning of other “distortions” by left-leaning outlets. Yet for years, O’Reilly has recounted dramatic stories about his own war reporting that don’t withstand scrutiny—even claiming he acted heroically in a war zone that he apparently never set foot in.

O’Reilly has repeatedly told his audience that he was a war correspondent during the Falklands war and that he experienced combat during that 1982 conflict between England and Argentina. He has often invoked this experience to emphasize that he understands war as only someone who has witnessed it could. As he once put it, “I’ve been there. That’s really what separates me from most of these other bloviators. I bloviate, but I bloviate about stuff I’ve seen. They bloviate about stuff that they haven’t.”

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Bill O’Reilly Has His Own Brian Williams Problem

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What is a ‘sky river,’ and why is Miss Piggy flying in it?

by BDRWilliam Posted on February 18, 2015

What is a ‘sky river,’ and why is Miss Piggy flying in it?

By on 17 Feb 2015commentsShare

Earlier this month, Miss Piggy took an epic seven-hour trip on the Pineapple Express, reminding everyone that the she still knows how to party. A video documenting the experience shows Miss Piggy and her crew clearly flying high and soaking up the Northern California weather. There’s also this one dude who’s just devouring some snacks.

Of course, by “Miss Piggy,” I mean the decked-out government airplane built to fly through hurricanes, and by “Pineapple Express,” I mean the river of water vapor that flows over the Pacific Ocean and brings California about 40 percent of its annual precipitation. But you guys knew that, right?

Anyway, atmospheric rivers like the Pineapple Express are major players in the Earth’s water cycle. The big ones can transport up to 15 times the amount of water flowing through the mouth of the Mississippi River, and when they hit land, mountain ranges like those on the California coast push the vapor up higher into the atmosphere, where it condenses into rain and snow.

During the first week of February, for example, the Pineapple Express hit the West Coast and doused parts of Northern California for days. It wasn’t enough rain to end California’s drought, but it was enough to make going places suck for lots of people.

Understanding how these atmospheric rivers work is important for both short-term weather forecasting and climate modeling, which is why during this last Pineapple Express, scientists flew directly into the thick of it.

Miss Piggy is part of a fleet of planes known as “hurricane hunters” that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration uses to take data from inside hurricanes. Kermit and Gonzo are also part of the fleet (read about the collaboration between the NOAA and Jim Henson Productions here).

As a hurricane hunter, Miss Piggy is equipped to collect all kinds of weather data. Here’s a sample of the measurements she took during the Pineapple Express, from the LA Times:

Radar equipment mounted on the aircraft’s exterior measured precipitation and cloud thickness. Probes attached to the wings measured the number and size of liquid cloud droplets. Another of the plane’s radar devices measured the height of ocean waves.

Three other planes joined Miss Piggy on the sky river that day back in early February. Two collected data at higher altitudes, and one collected water droplet samples. There was also a ship taking measurements 230 miles off shore, and a satellite measuring surface winds. The International Space Station also got in on the action, measuring how dust particles (aka the nuclei at the center of vapor droplets) mix above the ocean. Scientists hope all the data will help them better understand how these rivers behave as they flow over land so places like Northern California can adequately prepare for them.

In a statement to the LA Times, Ryan Spackman, the lead researcher on board Miss Piggy, said the day’s mission was “an unprecedented interrogation of an atmospheric river event in landfall.”

Way to go, Miss Piggy. You still got it!

Source:
Scientists go high and low for data on drought-fighting ‘sky rivers’

, LA Times.

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What is a ‘sky river,’ and why is Miss Piggy flying in it?

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Oil trains are blowing up all over the place

by VernellClouse Posted on February 17, 2015

Oil trains are blowing up all over the place

By on 17 Feb 2015commentsShare

Two tanker trains full of crude oil have derailed and burst into flames in the last few days, one in West Virginia and one in Ontario. They’re the most recent examples of a phenomenon that’s increasingly common as fracking for oil becomes a top American pastime.

The West Virginia accident happened on Monday — and the aftermath stretched well into Tuesday. The AP reports:

Fires burned for hours Tuesday after a train carrying 109 tankers of crude oil derailed in a snowstorm alongside a West Virginia creek, sending fireballs into the sky and threatening the nearby water supply.

Hundreds of families were evacuated and two water treatment plants were shut down after dozens of the cars left the tracks and 19 caught fire Monday afternoon, creating shuddering explosions and intense heat.

Part of the formation hit and set fire to a house, and one person was treated for smoke inhalation, but no other injuries were reported, according to a statement from the train company, CSX.

The train was carrying crude from North Dakota’s Bakken shale and was on its way to a terminal in Yorktown, Va., not far from where another train headed to the same terminal derailed last April.

The West Virginia derailment was the second in 48 hours — the first occurred Sunday in a remote area of Canada. The CBC reports:

The Transportation Safety Board and environment officials were investigating Sunday at the scene of a derailment of a Canadian National Railway train near Gogama, in Northern Ontario.

Seven rail cars caught fire when a train carrying crude oil derailed late on Saturday night, CN said on Sunday.

The train, heading to eastern Canada from Alberta, derailed shortly before midnight about 80 kilometres south of Timmins, Ont., a CN spokesman said. Canada’s largest rail operator said 29 of 100 cars were involved and seven had caught fire.

An unknown amount of oil spilled into the snow at the site of the derailment.

Oil shipments by rail have increased by more than 400 percent since 2005, and with the trains have come many minor disasters and a few major ones. The worst yet occurred in 2013, when a derailment in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, killed 47 people.

Since then, U.S. and Canadian officials have started moving toward requiring railroads to switch from 1960s-era tanker cars to sturdier, less accident-prone ones, but a timeline for the shift hasn’t yet been set. Even when it is, the new rules may not be effective enough — Reuters reports that the train that derailed in West Virginia was pulling newer, supposedly tougher railcars.

The West Virginia derailment is also the latest in a series of fossil fuel-related disasters to affect that state’s water supply. The biggest recent example came a year ago when Freedom Industries dumped 10,000 gallons of MCHM — an industrial chemical used in the coal-cleaning process — into the Elk River. A month later, more than 100,000 gallons of coal slurry poured into Fields Creek, a tributary of the Kanawha River that swallowed up an oil-filled railroad car yesterday.

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Here’s How Countries All Over the World Are Making Polluters Pay

by bestleanmusclesupplementwix Posted on February 13, 2015

Mother Jones

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Solving climate change is essentially an economic problem: How do you force companies and consumers to pay for the damage caused by the fossil fuels they consume?

Let me explain: Without a price on carbon emissions, big polluters don’t pay for the greenhouse gases that they release into the atmosphere. The real cost of that pollution is borne by the planet in the form of global warming. So one of the most common strategies for reducing emissions is “cap-and-trade”: Polluters purchase or bid on a limited number of permits, which allow them to emit a certain amount of CO2. A regulated market is then created in which permits can be bought and sold. The cost of the permits—in other words, the carbon price—creates an incentive to reduce carbon pollution.

A new report out this week from the Berlin-based International Carbon Action Partnership shows that in the decade since the first major carbon trading program was adopted by the European Union, cap-and-trade systems have enjoyed remarkable popularity around the world—becoming the mechanism of choice for governments who want to act on climate change. The graphic below gives you a sense of just how widespread these markets have become:

What’s also remarkable is the economic clout that these jurisdictions carry, something that will continue to increase:

China’s national carbon program will start in 2016, but it already has several test programs up and running, together representing the world’s second largest carbon market, after the European Union:

Asia is fast becoming a global hub for carbon trading, as you can see from the maps below, which show the total number of programs around the world either in place, under consideration, or currently in development:

Each cap-and-trade program is different—there’s no one-size-fits-all approach, say the authors of the report. All of the programs cover CO2, but some take on other greenhouse gases, such as refrigerants. The programs also differ in the number of industries covered. Nearly all cover heavy industry, but only three cover aviation, for example. Here’s a snapshot of that diversity:

The report’s authors say that the fact that each country can tailor solutions to its own economy is one of the great strengths of cap-and-trade. “Flexibility is certainly one reason why emissions trading has become such an appealing tool for policy-makers,” said ICAP’s Co-Chairs—Jean-Yves Benoit, head of carbon markets at the Québec Environmental Ministry, and Marc Allessie, head of the Dutch Emissions Authority—in a statement.

But that means “harmonizing”—that is, joining the disparate trading systems into a global market—is now a big challenge. Quebec and California have already linked their systems, as have Tokyo and Saitama in Japan.

In the United States, President Barack Obama proposed a cap-and-trade system in 2009, but the plan died in the Senate. Efforts to develop a federal program have all but been abandoned in favor of regulations dished out by the EPA. There’s no sign of that changing any time soon. Still, some US states have adopted their own systems. In addition to California’s program, a group of northeastern states participate in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. And Washington state is actively considering a cap-and-trade program, as well.

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Here’s How Countries All Over the World Are Making Polluters Pay

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There’s a Labor Dispute at West Coast Ports, But No One Will Say What It’s About

by RoseannStrempel Posted on February 12, 2015

Mother Jones

West Coast port operators are shutting down for a few days because “they don’t want to pay overtime to workers who, they allege, have deliberately slowed operations to the point of causing a massive bottleneck.” This is part of an increasingly rancorous labor dispute, but as usual, we really have no idea what the dispute is about:

Dockworkers are among the best paid blue-collar workers in the country, earning between $26 and $41 an hour, depending on experience and skill.

Union spokesman Craig Merrilees has said the two sides are very close to a deal, but has declined to say what is tying up the talks….According to employers, a major hurdle is a union demand that both sides have the ability to unilaterally remove local arbitrators at the end of a labor contract….Employers say that if such a change is made, alleged union slowdown tactics would become constant, because the union could “fire judges who rule against them.”

The union said Wednesday that employers are “grossly” mischaracterizing its current bargaining position. “It seems to us that the employers are trying to sabotage negotiations,” union President McEllrath said.

This is pretty normal, and it’s one of the things that makes it hard to unilaterally support either side in labor disputes like this. We already know that dockworkers are very well paid, and that’s apparently not a bone of contention. But what’s the deal with the arbitrators? Who has the better of the argument? There’s no telling.

The public probably doesn’t care much about this unless it eventually gets nasty enough that it affects the ability of stores to keep stuff in stock. So maybe public opinion doesn’t matter. But to the extent it does, it sure seems like unions would have a better chance of getting public support if they were more forthcoming about exactly what it is they’re holding out for.

(Or maybe not. One of the big problems with the huge decline in union density over the past few decades is that the public no longer has much of a stake in supporting unions. In the past, there was some sense of solidarity. If one union negotiated a healthy raise, it increased the odds of everyone else getting a healthy raise too. But not anymore. If the dockworkers do well, they’re just the last of the lucky bastards with good union jobs. The rest of us get nothing from it except maybe higher prices for the goods and services we buy. It’s hard to see a way out of this dynamic.)

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There’s a Labor Dispute at West Coast Ports, But No One Will Say What It’s About

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