Citizen Cartwright

On Bike to Work Day, celebrating personal, eco health

Friday is Bike to Work Day, a part of National Bike Month promoting the benefits of cycling for our personal health and the global environment.

 

The Associated Press is highlighting what cities are doing to promote cycling.

 

In Washington, D.C., for example, in 2001, cyclists had three miles of (unprotected) bicycle lanes. By 2019, the network exceeded 100 miles, and cycling as a share of all travel in the city increased fivefold. In 2020 and 2021, the city built nearly 20 miles of protected lanes to be safer than merely marked lanes on streets shared with cars.

 

A study of 20 cities that expanded cycling infrastructure in the Americas, Europe and Australia in recent decades shows that ridership surged while cyclist fatalities and serious injuries dropped.

 

In D.C., cycling increased 435 percent between 2000 and 2017, and cyclists’ fatalities and serious injuries dropped 54 percent, according to global urban planning researchers Ralph Buehler of Virginia Tech and John Bucher of Rutgers University.

Biden says he won't veto GOP-led legislation blocking D.C. crime law

"I support D.C. Statehood and home-rule — but I don’t support some of the changes D.C. Council put forward over the Mayor’s objections — such as lowering penalties for carjackings,” the president tweeted on Thursday.

 

Biden’s reversal of his previous position came after Republicans seized on the law as a way to put Democrats on the spot about crime, says long-time New York Times congressional reporter Carl Hulse. It's an issue the GOP has been working to turn into a major liability for Biden and his party, portraying them as lax on enforcement.

 

Biden’s shift eases pressure on Senate Democrats, sparing them a vote defying a veto threat and potentially a decision on whether to override him.

 

Crime long has been a complicated political issue for Biden, who helped write a 1994 tough-on-crime bill. Then he had to backtrack on it during his 2020 presidential race, when deadly police assaults on people of color, mass incarceration and violations of civil rights by law enforcement were top issues for Democrats, particularly the party’s progressive base, says the Times.

 

Now, with public worries about crime increasing, Biden is pivoting again with his decision to allow the District code to be overturned.

Biden’s decision is a blow to D.C. home rule, and the issue is likely not the last time Republicans will challenge local laws in the heavily Democratic capital city, the Times says.

 

The district lacks the rights that states have to make and amend laws, explains The Associated Press. While Congress has allowed the city’s residents some powers of home rule, it's retained veto powers over district government actions. District residents also don't have voting members of Congress.

 

If the legislation is signed into law, it would be the first time in three decades that Congress has overturned a District law.

 

Republicans are joining Biden in citing the decision by Mayor Muriel Bowser to veto the law as a persuasive factor. She later was overridden by the D.C. Council.

“First rule of politics,” says Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. “Don’t get to the left of D.C.’s mayor.”

 

Here is the local reaction to Biden’s switch, from The Washington Post.

 

And here, from DCist/WAMU.

What investment firms' home purchases can mean for individual buyers

"Across the Sun Belt, investment firms are extracting wealth where families normally build it: the single-family home,” says an Atlanta Journal-Constitution investigation.

 

Since the Great Recession, large investors — private equity firms and publicly traded companies — have bought up more than 65,000 homes in metropolitan Atlanta and converted them to rentals, the AJC says. And the Wall Street cash is pushing homeownership out of reach for many middle-class families.

 

Investors are buying in all but the wealthiest neighborhoods, but their homes disproportionately are in African American communities, the AJC says.

 

Priced out of buying, families that end up renting from these same firms "can face deplorable conditions, exorbitant fees and frequent eviction filings by out-of-state landlords driven to maximize shareholder profits," says the AJC.

 

David Howard, CEO of the National Rental Home Council, told the AJC that housing market dynamics are too complicated “to come to a consensus” over whether investors are affecting homeownership. Collectively, NRHC member firms own 450,000 single-family rental homes across the country, the AJC says.

Voting guides for the 2022 midterm elections

This morning, ProPublica is welcoming us to its User’s Guide to Democracy, which I gotta say is a very clear primer on the 2022 midterms.

 

And Vox has come out with its “what to expect this Election Day.”

 

With new laws restricting voting in 18 states, "knowing how and where to vote, and what to expect — including your rights on Election Day — has never been more important,” Vox says.

What’s expected as hearings start for Supreme Court nominee Jackson

The Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday begins four days of confirmation hearings for Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, who would be the first African American woman on the Supreme Court.

 

It’s unclear how aggressively Republicans will go after Jackson, given that her confirmation wouldn't change the court’s 6-3 conservative majority, says The Associated Press.

 

Some Republicans have signaled that they may use Jackson’s nomination to try to brand Democrats as soft on crime, an emerging theme in GOP midterm election campaigns. Jackson was a public defender and served on the U.S. Sentencing Commission, an independent agency created by Congress to reduce disparity in federal prison sentences.

 

Here are some notable Jackson opinions, from AP.

 

Here is an AP fact check of some GOP statements about Jackson’s record.

 

Here is a viewer’s guide, from AP.

Biden administration issues new 60-day eviction moratorium

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced on Tuesday the new order barring people from being evicted in many parts of the country, saying “the evictions of tenants for failure to make rent or housing payments could be detrimental to public health control measures” aimed at slowing the coronavirus.

 

The order will expire on Oct. 3, the CDC says, and applies to areas of the country “experiencing substantial and high levels of community transmission” of the virus.

 

President Biden said in remarks before the order was issued that the moratorium is expected to reach 90 percent of renters.

 

But he still seemed hesitant about whether the new moratorium could withstand lawsuits about its constitutionality (see my item yesterday), saying he sought the opinions of experts as to whether the Supreme Court would approve the measure.

“The bulk of the constitutional scholarship says that it’s not likely to pass constitutional muster,” he said. “But there are several key scholars who think that it may and it’s worth the effort.”

Biden added that the moratorium — even if it's challenged in court — “will probably give some additional time” for states and cities to release billions of dollars in federal relief to renters.

 

“Today is a day of extraordinary relief,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said in a statement. “Thanks to the leadership of President Biden, the imminent fear of eviction and being put out on the street has been lifted for countless families across America."

Did extending the federal eviction moratorium fall through the cracks?

Since the moratorium expired on July 31 — just as people face the new challenge of the coronavirus’ delta variant — I’ve been trying to understand what’s going on.

 

President Biden is facing "stinging criticism," including from some in his own party, that he was slow to address the end of the moratorium, says The Associated Press.

 

The Biden administration announced last Thursday that it would allow a nationwide ban on evictions to expire, arguing that its hands were tied after the Supreme Court signaled the moratorium could only be extended until July 31.

 

Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh had written, “In my view, clear and specific congressional authorization (via new legislation) would be necessary for the CDC to extend the moratorium past July 31.”

 

The White House said Biden would have liked to extend the moratorium due to the delta variant. Instead, Biden called on “Congress to extend the eviction moratorium to protect such vulnerable renters and their families without delay.”

 

Lawmakers said they were blindsided by Biden’s inaction as the deadline neared, says a separate AP article.

 

A bill was introduced on Thursday in the House to extended the moratorium until the end of the year. But whoever heard of Congress turning anything around in two days?

 

In a statement on Monday, the White House said the federal government has provided $46.5 billion to keep renters in their homes. But it accused states and cities of being “too slow to act,” preventing that aid from making its way to tenants whose livelihoods have been upended by the pandemic.

 

Only about $3 billion of the first tranche of $25 billion had been distributed through June by states and localities, says AP. Some states like New York have distributed almost nothing, and several only have approved a few million dollars.

 

The difficulty getting rental assistance to those who need it has prompted the Biden administration to hold several events in the past month aimed at pressuring states and cities to increase their distribution, coax landlords to participate and make it easier for tenants to get money directly.

Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta also has released an open letter to state courts around the country encouraging them to pursue measures to keep eviction cases out of the courts. Last Wednesday, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau unveiled a tool that helps tenants find information about rental assistance in their area.

 

And apparently, people facing eviction need all the help they can get. 

 

A chronic complaint from legal aid lawyers and landlords is that the process of applying for rental assistance is too cumbersome and that Washington underestimated the negative effect of creating a painstaking process intended to combat fraud, reports The New York Times.

Biden’s effort to revitalize Middle America making locals 'giddy'

It once was thought that economically lagging regions and more successful ones would converge over time, and that the government should focus on helping people navigate a changing economy rather than try to save faltering communities, says The New York Times’ Neil Irwin.

 

But, he says, it's become increasingly apparent that there are big problems when a handful of superstar cities thrive and much of the country struggles: 

 

"It means vast human potential goes untapped and lots of capital — existing cities and towns — goes underutilized. And it can fuel political polarization and damage democracy, as people in declining regions feel less connected to their more prosperous countrymen.”

 

The debate often is framed as between “people” (policies to help individuals affected by economic change) and “places” (policies aimed at communities that are languishing).

 

“I don’t think we can ignore the role of place in public policy any longer and just allocate investments to people,” says Ross DeVol, president of Heartland Forward, a think tank based in Bentonville, Ark. “Because that creates a hollowing out in places that affects the entire country negatively."

 

The Biden administration’s American Jobs Plan incorporates ideas from the bipartisan Endless Frontier Act, a bill reintroduced in Congress last month. Among other things, it aims to provide "opportunities for the regions across the country – most importantly the Midwest – to become a global center of emerging industry.” 

 

The idea is to invest in cutting-edge research with potential for commercial spinoffs, worker training and other steps to create the kinds of virtuous cycles of innovation and jobs that already occur in places like Boston, Irwin says.

 

And financial help for cities and states was included in the American Rescue Plan enacted in March.

 

"Many of those directly involved ... are downright giddy with the possibility that they can seize this moment to prepare their cities and towns for the future,” says Irwin.

 

“I think there was a sigh of collective relief among mayors of cities this size you could hear around the country” when the American Rescue Plan passed with money for local governments, says Leirion Gaylor Baird, mayor of Lincoln, Neb. “Everything about this moment feels like it has the potential to be transformational.”

 

Steve Williams, the mayor of Huntington, W.Va., says, “Covid was a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic, but it’s also a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity as people realize they can work remotely if they have access to broadband and clean water and a safe and solid community.”

‘Underfunded and under threat’: Public health officials during coronavirus pandemic

Across the United States, state and local public health officials have found themselves at the center of a political storm as they combat the worst pandemic in a century, says the latest article in a series by The Associated Press and Kaiser Health News.

 

With the federal response fractured, the usually invisible workers charged with preventing the spread of infectious diseases have become a public punching bag and their expertise often disregarded, AP and KHN say.

 

Some of them have been targeted by far-right activists, conservative groups and anti-vaccination extremists who've coalesced around fighting mask orders, quarantines and contact tracing with protests, threats and personal attacks.

 

And the backlash has moved beyond the angry fringe, AP and KHN say. In the courts, public health authorities are being undermined. Lawmakers in at least 24 states have drafted legislation to weaken public health powers, which could make it harder for communities to respond to health emergencies in the future.

 

“What we’ve taken for granted for 100 years in public health is now very much in doubt,” says Lawrence Gostin, an expert in public health law at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.

 

At least 181 state and local public health leaders in 38 states have resigned, retired or been fired since April 1, according to the ongoing AP/KHN investigation. Experts say it's the biggest exodus of public health leaders in American history. An untold number of lower-level staffers also have left their jobs.

 

One in 8 Americans — 40 million people — lives in a community that's lost its local public health department leader during the pandemic. Top public health officials in 20 states have left state-level departments. North Dakota has lost three state health officers, one after another, since May.

 

“I’ve never seen or studied a pandemic that has been as politicized, as vitriolic and as challenged as this one, and I’ve studied a lot of epidemics,” says Dr. Howard Markel, a medical historian at the University of Michigan. “All of that has been very demoralizing for the men and women who don’t make a great deal of money, don’t get a lot of fame, but work 24/7.”

Should America’s elections need to depend on donations?

Nonprofits are donating hundreds of millions of dollars to help state and local officials run elections during the pandemic — a sudden infusion of private cash in what once was considered a core government function, reports The Associated Press.

 

The cash comes with new questions about donor transparency, motivations and the influence of groups and individuals who aren't democratically accountable, says AP.

 

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, announced earlier this month that they'll donate $300 million to two nonpartisan nonprofits. Those groups, the Center for Tech and Civic Life and the Center for Election Innovation and Research, will direct the money to local officials working “to ensure that everyone can vote and every vote can be counted,” Zuckerberg said in announcing the donation.

 

The Center for Tech and Civic Life already had handed out more than $20 million from other donors — money that enabled the city of Philadelphia to double its election budget and quadruple its mail-ballot-processing capacity. In Milwaukee, its contribution is helping to recruit as many as 1,000 new poll workers. In Fulton County, Ga,, the cash will help keep open more polling places after a June primary was plagued by last-minute closures.

 

The nonprofits’ involvement has been welcomed by election officials who've been pleading with state and federal lawmakers for help paying for new equipment, protective gear and staff needed to adjust for the surge of mail-in voting expected this year. 

 

The CARES Act, passed by Congress in late March, allocated $400 million to election agencies to help update voting systems. The Brennan Center for Justice, a voting rights advocacy group, estimated that it could cost $4 billion to prepare the election offices across the country.

House Democrats in May approved a second coronavirus relief bill that included an additional $3.6 billion, but Senate Republicans didn’t act on the legislation. The “skinny” bill the Senate GOP proposed last week didn't contain any election money.

“Congress allocated $60 billion to the airlines and only $400 million to thousands of election offices across 50 states,” says Amber McReynolds, whose nonprofit Vote from Home hopes to begin distributing small grants to help local offices pay for ballot drop boxes and electronic tracking of mail ballots.