President Joe Biden’s proposed $2.25 trillion infrastructure spending bill is more than just a huge barrel of federal cash for road, bridge, and rail projects. It is also a vehicle for reauthorizing America’s surface transportation laws, providing an opportunity for special interests to write new rules and mandates into federal policy.
While most of those niche fights are unremarkable, the one shaping up between the railroad industry and its labor unions presents an interesting conundrum for the Biden administration, and it could have significant ramifications for the economy and even for efforts to reduce carbon emissions. At issue: How many people does it take to drive a train?
Labor unions such as the Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers have been lobbying federal regulators to mandate that all freight trains operate with two-person crews in the cab. That’s long been the standard industry practice for safety reasons. The engineer drives the train, while the rail conductor handles equipment inspections and monitors track signals. Unions worry that advanced automation will allow railroads to run safely without a second person in the engine—and they want the government to step in to protect those jobs.
This dreaded automation is indeed occurring. All major rail systems in the U.S. now use positive train control (PTC), essentially a computer-based override system that monitors speed and track signals to avert collisions. The adoption of PTC—mandated by Congress since 2008—has helped dramatically reduce rail accidents. Data from the Association of American Railroads (AAR), an industry group, show accidents are down 30 percent since 2000, while employee injuries have fallen by more than 40 percent. Railroading is safer now than it has ever been, in large part due to those technological advances.
With PTC systems handling many of the in-cab duties that were formerly the rail conductor’s responsibility, railroads are seeking to reassign some of those workers. Because rail conductors typically do equipment inspections and perform other duties before trains depart from rail yards and after they return, some will continue to work in that capacity. But any changes to the employment structure have to be approved as part of collective bargaining.
The unions’ lobbying efforts can best be understood as a way to gain the upper hand in those negotiations. If the federal government mandates two-person rail crews, railroads won’t be able to negotiate other arrangements.
During the waning days of the Obama administration, the unions nearly got what they wanted. In 2016, the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) proposed a rule mandating two-person crews. But after investigating the issue for several years, the FRA concluded in 2019 that the mandate was not “necessary or appropriate for railroad operations to be conducted safely.”
Case closed—unless Congress gets involved, which is exactly what could happen this year as part of Biden’s infrastructure plan.
The president, as you may have heard, is a big fan of trains. And the White House has set ambitious goals for reducing America’s carbon emissions during the next few decades. Trains could be a major part of that, because moving one ton of cargo one mile by truck emits several times as much carbon dioxide as moving it by rail.
But mandating that the railroad industry employ twice as many people to drive each train means higher costs. A 2015 study by Oliver Wyman, a consulting firm, and the AAR found that switching from two-person to one-person crews could save railroad companies as much as $2.5 billion over a decade. Those savings could reduce the cost of rail freight, making train transportation more economical. That in turn could mean fewer exhaust-spewing trucks on America’s highways.
Despite the potential environmental benefits, siding with the railroads could alienate Biden’s labor union allies. Still, without clear and convincing evidence that two-person crews are necessary for trains to operate safety—and with PTC doing a better job of preventing accidents than humans used to—there’s no compelling reason for the government to get involved in this dispute. Private railroads and unions can make their own arrangements.
If Biden needs more convincing, he should check in with his beloved Amtrak. The government-run passenger rail system dropped its own two-people-in-the-cab mandate back in the 1980s.
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In June, Democrats failed to sell the federal takeover of state elections known as H.R. 1/S. 1 to the American people. The bill was a laundry list of left-wing fantasies, including using taxpayer dollars to fund political candidates, undermine widely supported voter ID requirements, and totally destroy the authority of states to run their own elections. Americans saw the bill for what it was — a Democrat power grab — and it failed.
Now, Democrats are coming back to the table with new legislation called H.R. 4. They’re dishonestly calling it a compromise. Don’t fall for their partisan lies: H.R. 4 has the same rotten core as H.R. 1 and would make our elections far less secure.
H.R. 4’s goal is to eviscerate the right of states to manage their own elections with appropriate transparency and ballot-security safeguards. It will attempt to misuse the 1965 Voting Rights Act to achieve this goal. “Preclearance” is central to H.R. 4 — this plank of the law would require every state election official to submit any election law changes to the Department of Justice for approval. In short, Democrats want states to ask Washington, D.C., for permission to pass local laws that would, for example, require voter ID — a policy that polls consistently findroughly 80% of Americans in support. Joe Biden and Democrats want their politicized Department of Justice to control how states manage their own elections. This is the same Department of Justice that recently sued the State of Georgia over its new election integrity laws. The RNC intervened to protect Georgia in that lawsuit, and we expect another win there for Republicans on the heels of our recent victory in Brnovich v. DNC, which banned ballot trafficking in Arizona. This Department of Justice is currently trying to strong-arm states into making their elections less secure and transparent, and Joe Biden wants to expand its mandate to control every aspect of state-level elections.
That is big-government totalitarianism at its very worst. It bears mentioning that the Supreme Court found old preclearance formulas to be unconstitutional in the 2013 Shelby County v. Holder case. Preclearance’s subjugation of state law to Washington overreach undermines the rights of states to develop and apply best voting practices informed by local knowledge. Democrats are trying to revive an outdated, unconstitutional provision from the 1960s in their stop-at-nothing efforts to undermine election integrity.
H.R. 4 contains other provisions that should concern every American who wants elections to be free, fair, and transparent. The bill takes aim at efforts to clean up voter rolls, attempting to handcuff local officials who attempt to keep their voter lists up-to-date and accurate. For example, the bill would prohibit states from participating in an inter-state accountability process to ensure accurate lists. The bill would also force federal courts to take inaccurate census data and subject every existing strict voter ID requirement to Department of Justice review.
This is not what the American people want. Polling shows that Americans — including a majority of Democrats and minority voters — support voter ID. Polling also shows that 68% of voters believe that state legislatures should decide the voting rules and regulations for their state, not the federal government. That number alone should invalidate Democrat attempts to strip all local authority from state-level election officials.
Democrats are upset that states like Georgia, Florida, Arizona, and Iowa have taken the initiative and passed strong election integrity laws. They can’t bear the thought that states might act without input from D.C. bureaucrats. That concept is antithetical to their power-grab mentality, and so they want to suppress state-run elections.
Democrats failed to pass H.R. 1, and H.R. 4 will meet a similar fate. H.R. 4 is totally out of line with public opinion and an extreme power grab that Americans will reject. As Democrat lies and schemes continue to fail, Republicans will continue to ensure the security and transparency of our elections.
Pentagon Claims Only One Explosion Occurred During Kabul Airport Attack As Death Toll Hits 170
Crowds continued to throng Kabul airport on Friday despite the deadly attacks that rattled the airport yesterday, even as the death toll climbed to north of 170 and the British government released new information about UK personnel who were killed.
But despite the fact that multiple reporters on the ground reporter hearing at least two explosions, the Pentagon has just announced that, actually, only one suicide-bombing took place during the “coordinated” attack on the airport. Despite early reports to the contrary, the Pentagon insists that there was only one explosion that rocked the perimeter of Kabul’s airport, not two.
Army Major General William Taylor told reporters that officials now believe there was only one suicide bomber.
“We do not believe that there was a second explosion at or near the Baron Hotel, that it was one suicide bomber,” Gen. Taylor said.
He explained that “very dynamic events” like those on Thursday often lead to some misinformation being reported.
Additionally, the reported toll of the bombing rose sharply, with local health officials saying that as many as 170 people were killed and at least another 200 were wounded. According to the NYT, that estimate has been corroborated by interviews with people on the ground.
In other news, Spain’s leftist PM slammed the US withdrawal, while celebrating Spain’s success when it comes to evacuating 2,206 people via 17 flights, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said at a news conference, calling the rescue operation “mission accomplished.”
Still, the situation inside Afghanistan is “a tragedy, a crisis, a failure,” he added. Spain had harbored “many doubts” about the US decision to pull out. “All of this is going to bring a series of consequences from the point of view of geopolitics, security and migratory flows that evidently we will have to have to reconsider, and take measures jointly.”
When pressed by reporters, Gen. Taylor declined to detail how U.S. will follow through on Biden’s vow to “hunt down” ISIS-K terrorists while also withdrawing troops: “We have options there right now, that we can ensure the commander has the ability to take action as those opportunities present themselves”
UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab confirmed Friday that two British nationals and the child of another British national were killed during Thursday’s attacks. Raab said he was “deeply saddened” by the deaths and added that “Yesterday’s despicable attack underlines the dangers facing those in Afghanistan and reinforces why we are doing all we can to get people out. We are offering consular support to their families.
Activity at the airport picked up again on Friday, though the size of the crow thronging outside the airport perimeter had shrunk considerably from the levels from earlier in the week. The US military and the Taliban tried to exert what authority they could, as militants with Kalashnikov rifles helped keep crowds farther away from the airport’s entrance gates, guarding checkpoints with trucks and at least one Humvee parked in the roads. The American military resumed evacuation flights, and the White House said early Friday that 12,500 people had been evacuated from Afghanistan in the previous 24 hours, despite the attacks.
Still, an estimated hundreds of thousands of Afghans and western citizens remain in Afghanistan despite being desperate to escape from the rule of the Taliban.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has continued to develop an array of anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons designed to overwhelm U.S. assets in space, even as advisers to the Biden administration issued calls for cooperation between the two nations.
The CCP’s growing arsenal of space weapons now includes missiles, cyberweapons, satellite jamming devices, space robots with grabbing arms, and high-powered lasers designed to blind satellites from the ground as they pass overhead.
Development of these capabilities has been ongoing since at least 2007, when the CCP successfully exploded a satellite with a missile in low-earth orbit. And earlier this year, the chief of operations for the U.S. Space Force testified that both Russia and China were continuing the development of electronic warfare packages, signal jammers, and directed energy weapons.
Underscoring the centrality of space in modern military doctrine, the CCP has continued ASAT launches disguised as rocket tests, increased Sino-Russian cooperation in space, and developed new technologies, including so-called inspector satellites capable of grabbing other objects in space, and “nesting doll” systems consisting of seemingly harmless satellites that then release other, smaller satellites of unknown capabilities.
Experts say that China’s emerging ASAT technologies present an immediate threat to U.S. and international security, but disagree on the exact nature of that threat and the United States’ ability to effectively deter and counter it.
A Persistent Threat
Bill Woolf, the president and founder of the Space Force Association, told The Epoch Times that space-based capabilities were vital to contemporary security strategy, but warned that the proliferation of new technologies likely meant that the CCP and other actors had the ability to attack U.S. space infrastructure.
“Space is such a critical capability to all of our military operations in the U.S., and with our allies and partners,” Woolf said. “So, talking about the technology, it’s safe to presume that there’s technology out there that can disrupt, degrade, or deny our space capabilities.”
With that in mind, however, Woolf stressed that the military-centric development of ASAT technologies in space was not novel and presented merely one more layer of complexity to the international security space.
“People get pretty animated when they say that space has become a military domain,” Woolf said. “[But] space has been a military domain since we deployed military capabilities into space.”
The militarization of space has been ongoing from the Cold War up through the present. In the 1970s, for example, the Soviet Union successfully mounted a bomber-defense gun to a satellite and performed the only publicly known test fire of a ballistic weapon in space. Similarly, Russia was caught last year testing a new space-based ASAT weapon.
Likewise, the CCP has repeatedly been observed developing classified ASAT technologies since its explosive demonstration in 2007 and, in 2019, the Pentagon issued a report acknowledging that the CCP’s primary goal was to target the United States and allied satellite capabilities.
Woolf explained that the CCP was specifically pursuing a course of action aimed at undermining the United States and allied space assets, but that this militarization of outer space was a natural evolution of the domain given the technologies there.
“In their doctrine they discuss that they will attempt to degrade or deny all of our space capabilities,” Woolf said of the CCP.
For Woolf, the primary challenge facing the United States and its allies in space is determining which threats present the most immediate danger, and how to deter and counter them.
“Regardless of the threat, because the threat’s out there,” Woolf said, “the key becomes what are the warnings?”
Deterrence Difficult in ‘Most Obscure Battlefield’
The problem of determining what constitutes a reliable warning is something that Paul Szymanski has often thought about. Szymanski is an author and researcher specializing in space strategy, and has spent the last 43 years studying space warfare, during which time he helped to develop intelligence indicators to signal possible enemy actions in space.
According to Szymanski, notable risks facing the United States in space are the relative difficulty of determining who is doing what in space and why.
Particularly in the era of cyberwarfare and false flag attacks, or those designed to look like they are perpetrated by someone other than the actual culprit, Szymanski worries that current technologies simply do not have sufficiently accurate sensors and algorithms to effectively determine what is happening to space infrastructure in real time.
“It’s the most obscure battlefield,” he said.
Further, there is great difficulty in conceptualizing space conflict, Szymanki noted, because assets in orbit can be physically distant but mathematically close for the purposes of carrying out attacks. And once a vital system goes down, it may be too late for a nation to recover.
“That’s the big thing about space,” Szymanski said, “it’s always worldwide.”
“I don’t think you can defend in space,” he added. “It might just be whoever shoots first wins.”
Concerning the CCP’s expanding arsenal of ASAT technologies, Szymanski said that “inspector” satellites equipped with arms likely presented a more serious threat than laser technologies, as the use of ASAT lasers would take time to correctly target satellites on orbit, while human-controlled inspectors could easily be used to knock rival satellites out of orbit.
“I was surprised that [the U.S. is] already admitting that China has these inspector satellites with manipulator arms,” Szymanski said. “If you’ve got something like that, you can do just about anything.”
“I can say that [the CCP is] certainly going for it,” Szymanski said. “Certainly, this manipulator satellite is an ASAT, though they can conveniently call it a ‘maintenance satellite.’”
The CCP has disguised the military applications of such technologies for years by developing dual-purpose technologies that offer an innocuous research function that conceals military functionality. Experts have previously called such dual-use technologies and programs a direct threat to the United States.
Szymanski also noted that there are immense political difficulties concerning decisions about which space systems should be funded first, as most space systems provide information rather than hard assets and it is difficult to define a specific monetary or strategic value to them.
“The trouble with space is it’s all information,” Szymanski said. “How do you measure the value of communications versus imagery?”
Many Threats, Few Ripostes
Ultimately, Woolf and Szymanski offered competing views on the status quo of the new space race, and what it might mean for the future of U.S. strategy.
For Woolf, the answer lies primarily in developing, supporting, and enforcing a rules-based order in outer space that complements the order commonly recognized throughout the international community.
“Just like every other domain, there needs to be identified norms of behavior, clearly articulated, that say this is how folks behave in space,” Woolf said.
Szymanski, meanwhile, expressed weariness with the idea that the United States should continue to seek a rules-based order with a rival apparently set on violating rules-based norms. He felt that the United States’ dedication to deterring the CCP rather than confronting it might only result in buying the CCP more time to prepare a first and, perhaps, fatal blow.
“I get the impression that we’re going to self-deter and the space war is going to be over before we can do anything about it,” Szymanski said.
“The only purpose of the Space Force is to support terrestrial forces,” Szymanski added. “If you lose a war in space, you may as well not even start the war on the ground.”
“They want to say, ‘we have the technologies, we’ll win,’ but we had the technologies in Afghanistan. Why aren’t we winning?”
To that end, Woolf noted that persistent threats have always been a reality of politics and that it is the job of the military and government to uphold the rules by doing the best they can based on knowledge of extant and emerging threats.
“There is a threat,” Woolf said. “We just have to be prepared for that eventuality and have the systems in place to mitigate the impact of that potential threat.”
Andrew Thornebrooke is a freelance reporter covering China-related issues with a focus on defense and security. He holds a MA in military history from Norwich University and authors the newsletter Quixote Hyperdrive.
Japan Plans To Build Undersea Tunnel To Help Dump Radioactive Water From Fukushima Into The Pacific
In a world where the UN is pressuring the west (but oddly not China) to drastically lower emissions to save the world from global warming, where ESG investing is the hottest new trend in the investment universe, it’s remarkable that the government of Japan would do something so retrograde as to dump treated wastewater from the ruined Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant off shore.
TEPCO has finally settled on a plan to get rid of the nuclear wastewater that has been building up in the ruined reactors of the nuclear power plant at Fukushima Daiichi. The utility will construct an underwater pipeline 1 kilometer long to dump the water directly from the ruins of reactor No. 1 into the Pacific Ocean, where experts believe currents will quickly dilute it and carry it away.
The undersea tunnel will be constructed by hollowing out bedrock on the seabed near the No. 5 reactor at the Fukushima plant, and will stretch 1km east to the sea, according to the Japan Times.
The news, which was reported Tuesday, isn’t exactly a surprise. TEPCO, the Japanese utility tasked with overseeing the cleanup of the plant, which became the epicenter of a major nuclear disaster when an earthquake and ensuing tsunami struck the plant, causing three reactors to melt down. Aside from Chernobyl, Fukushima is the only nuclear incident to earn a Level 7 designation on the International Nuclear Event Scale.
According to Nikkei, TEPCO is planning to officially announce the decision Wednesday. The final plan will then be presented to Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority next month for review. The fishing industry in the area is understandably opposed to the measure, but few analysts expect their resistance to scuttle the plan, given the lack of alternatives for disposing of the radioactive wastewater.
Since the Japanese government first approved the plan in April, TEPCO has explored whether it should release the water along the shore, or further out at sea.
The plan to dump it further from shore eventually won out, as experts decided that this strategy had a better chance of seeing the wastewater flushed away by Ocean currents (apparently, the flow of the currents can greatly complicate the dumping).
Innkeepers and other business operators in Fukushima were also in favor of discharging the wastewater far enough away to prevent reputational damage (or any potential blowback). Before releasing the wastewater, TEPCO plans to remove as much radioactive material as it can, then dilute what remains with at least 100 parts of seawater.
Before dumping the water, TEPCO says it will remove as much radioactive material as it can, then dilute whatever is left with 100 parts of seawater.
To be sure, Japan’s fishermen aren’t the only party opposed to the plan. Back in April, China slammed Japan’s plans to dump the wastewater in the Pacific, even going so far as to threaten retaliation.
Pumping the water out of (at least one) the rectors is an important step toward cleaning up Fukushima Daiichi, but the effort remains a long way from finished. Last year, TEPCO outlined a 44-year plan to decommission reactor No. 2.
It all but guarantees that Japan will be dealing with the cleanup of the disaster at Fukushima for some time. It might not even be finished by the time Japan hosts its next Olympics.
The chaos in Afghanistan created by the appalling organisation of withdrawing from the country by the Biden administration has already prompted globalists to begin fresh calls for a new US military occupation of the country, with Obama’s former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta declaring that US forces will have to return.
In an interview on CNN, Panetta, also a former CIA head, proclaimed “The bottom line is, our work is not done. We’re going to have to go after ISIS.
Following the suicide bombings Thursday that killed over 100 people, 13 of them US marines, Panetta said “We’re going to have to go back in to get ISIS. We’re probably going to have to go back in when Al Qaeda resurrects itself, as they will, with this Taliban. They’ve gave safe haven to Al Qaeda before, they’ll probably do it again.”
“We can’t leave the War on Terrorism, which still is a threat to our security,” Panetta added.
Watch:
“There’s no question that it’s probably Joe Biden’s worst nightmare to lose 13 Marines as a result of what’s happened here,” says former CIA director Leon Panetta of the deadly attacks in Afghanistan.
Panetta’s comments come as it has been revealed that The 20 year occupation of Afghanistan has cost $2.3 TRILLION, according to new figures published this week by the Brown University Costs of War project.
“We’re probably going to have to go back in” to Afghanistan, Leon Panetta tells CNN. Was that the plan along with flooding middle America with refugees or are they that incompetent?
Under president Trump ISIS had been practically wiped out, with what remnants were left over severely weakened, yet now the extremists are the biggest threat to America again.
Everyone who voted for Biden in the name of restoring “normality” to US foreign policy is, at best, a fucking idiot.
Watch: Mexican Standoff As Protesters Block AMLO’s SUV For Two Hours
It’s not very common when the president of a country is surrounded by angry protesters and is not allowed to leave their motorcade. That’s what happened to Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) on Friday morning when a radical group of demonstrators blocked his SUV and other vehicles en route to a military base in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas.
The CNTE teachers union protesters prevented the president from entering the military facility where he typically delivers his daily press briefing in person, according to Bloomberg.
Video of the incident shows AMLO in the front seat of the SUV as more than 100 protesters surrounded the motorcade.
At one point in the standoff, AMLO spoke in a live stream from within the vehicle, saying he “cannot allow myself to be blackmailed by anybody.” The video was aired at his daily press briefing, where Chiapas Governor Rutilio Escandon filled in for the president.
Mexico president Andrés Manuel López Obrador spoke at a press conference via his car this morning after protestors blocked his arrival pic.twitter.com/6FTeNM1uQd
Newly sworn-in New York Gov. Kathy Hochul is wasting no time taking sides in the school mask wars. Even before taking the top job, she told NBC’s “Today” that she intends to mandate masks for all public school students in the state.
She’s got President Joe Biden and the Democratic Party on her side, but the science is against her. There are no studies that demonstrate forcing young kids to wear masks reduces the spread of COVID-19 in schools.
Mandating masks also ignores the fundamental fact that not all masks are created equal. That should be the basis for a truce in the mask wars breaking out all over the nation. Mandates that settle for cloth masks with cartoon characters on them are a joke.
Most of the masks kids are wearing are laughably ineffective. A cloth mask blocks only 3 percent of viral particles from reaching the wearer, according to a study in the British Medical Journal. For such a minuscule difference, who would force kids to struggle with masks all day?
Instead of mandating masks, school districts should hand out effective masks, such as N95 or KN95 masks, at the beginning of the school day to kids whose parents request them. These masks block 95 percent of incoming viral particles. The masks were in short supply at the beginning of the pandemic, but no longer.
Flat surgical masks made from nonwoven polypropylene would be an improvement over what most kids wear. They block out 56 percent of virus particles, according to the same British study. But note that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns a surgical mask “does NOT provide the wearer with a reliable level of protection from inhaling smaller airborne particles and is not considered respiratory protection” in a health care setting.
Helping families who favor masking is smarter than producing classrooms full of kids with soiled, ineffective masks and many outraged parents.
The delta variant accounts for 98 percent of U.S. cases now and appears to be more dangerous to children. But would masks at school make a difference?
Not according to a CDC study of 169 Georgia elementary schools last winter. CDC researchers found that schools requiring staff and teachers to mask up had 37 percent fewer cases of COVID, and schools that improved air quality and ventilation had 39 percent fewer cases. Those approaches work. But mandating that students wear masks had no statistically significant impact on the spread of COVID. Mandating masks and letting masks be optional produced the same results. Not surprising considering the kinds of masks most kids wear.
Yet a week after releasing the Georgia study, the agency reversed course and recommended universal masking in school without offering new findings to justify that 180-degree flip. Perhaps the agency looked at the rising cases among children and panicked.
No surprise. Over the course of the pandemic, the CDC has earned a reputation as the “Centers for Disease Confusion.” The agency should have been guided by its own research.
Instead, it kowtowed to political correctness. Only a minority of Republicans support mandating masks, while 92 percent of Democrats agree, according to an Aug. 17 Axios/Ipsos poll.
Ten states—mostly blue states like Connecticut, New Jersey, and California—mandate masks. Other states leave it up to local school boards. And eight red states, including Florida, ban local school boards from mandating masks, insisting parents get to decide.
Last week, Biden escalated the mask wars by threatening federal Department of Education lawsuits against the seven states. The New York Times followed with a full-throated endorsement of Biden’s maneuver, calling mandatory masking a “common-sense public health” policy.
Sorry. The science doesn’t support it.
Hochul argues that the New York Health Department has the authority to require masking in the state. According to the letter of the law, she’s right. But the Health Department has lost credibility after forcing nursing homes to take in COVID-positive patients and covering up the deadly results. The Health Department can’t be trusted.
Instead, Hochul should put parents in charge and provide effective masks for families who want them.
That’s good advice for governors in every state. Mandating masks that don’t work is a farce.
Plaintiffs, consisting primarily of small businesses, small business owners, and property owners in Baltimore City, seek to recover for damages suffered during the civil unrest that occurred after the arrest and subsequent death of Freddie Gray in April, 2015….
Maryland’s Riot Act provides that “if a structure or personal property is stolen, damaged, or destroyed in a riot, the injured party may recover actual damages sustained in a civil action against the county or municipal corporation of the State in which the riot occurred.” However, the county or municipal corporation is not liable unless it:
(1) had good reason to believe that the riot was about to take place or, having taken place, had notice of the riot in time to prevent the theft, damage, or destruction; and
(2) had the ability, either by use of the county’s or municipal corporation’s police or with the aid of the residents of the county or municipal corporation, to prevent the theft, damage, or destruction.
Moreover, a plaintiff may not prevail under the Riot Act if the county or municipal corporation, “used reasonable diligence and all the powers entrusted to them to prevent or suppress the riot.” Because the City has moved for summary judgment, it bears the burden to show that the Plaintiffs have not produced sufficient evidence to raise a genuine dispute of material fact about whether the City may be held liable under the Riot Act. Viewing the facts, as this Court must, in the light most favorable to the Plaintiffs, the City has not met its burden….
The City argues that Plaintiffs have not raised a factual dispute as to whether the City “had good reason to believe” that the rioting on April 27, 2015 “was about to take place or, having taken place, had notice of the riot in time to prevent the theft, damage, or destruction.” First, the City argues that the Plaintiffs’ damages were not caused in a riot at all, but rather by “individuals opportunistically taking advantage of unrest in order to commit crimes and property destruction.”
As Plaintiffs point out, however, the City’s attempt to distinguish between individuals who were rioting and individuals who were “opportunistically taking advantage of unrest” is a distinction without a difference. The Riot Act only requires plaintiffs to show that their damages occurred “in a riot[,]” and the Plaintiffs here have offered evidence to support their contention that they were….
Second, the City argues it was not on notice that any rioting would occur on April 27, 2015. But the Plaintiffs have provided evidence that: between April 18th and April 25th, protests in response to Freddie Gray’s death had, at times, turned violent and destructive; that the City was preparing for, and expecting, larger and more volatile protests throughout the City on April 27th, the day of Freddie Gray’s funeral); and that the City and the BPD had received credible intelligence suggesting that those protests could turn violent. On those facts, a jury could reasonably decide that the City “had good reason to believe” that rioting would occur on April 27th….
The Riot Act precludes a finding of liability against a defendant county or municipal corporation if the defendant “used reasonable diligence and all the powers entrusted to them to prevent or suppress the riot.” This limitation, therefore, raises two questions: first, whether the defendant used “reasonable diligence,” and, second, whether the defendant used “all the powers entrusted to them to prevent or suppress the riot.” Here, there are genuine disputes of material fact on both questions.
Plaintiffs have adduced the following relevant evidence. Once Freddie Gray died, the City anticipated that rioting might occur. Despite that concern, the City closely monitored the BPD’s response to the protesters to ensure that the officers did not appear overly aggressive. The City knew that the BPD was understaffed, and that it was making, with little success, mutual aid requests to attempt to call in additional officers and resources.
The City knew that the protests on April 25th turned from peaceful to violent and destructive. Nonetheless, the City coordinated with the BPD to ensure that, to the greatest extent possible, the BPD did not engage with protesters. After the April 25th protests, the Mayor initially admitted that the City “gave those who wished to destroy space to do that[.]” The City anticipated that protesting on April 27th—the day of Freddie Gray’s funeral—might again turn violent and destructive. As predicted, the protests on April 27th did, in fact, lead to violence and property damage. The City did not declare a state of emergency, which would have allowed it to assist the BPD in obtaining additional police resources, until several hours after rioting had begun on April 27th. Finally, the City did not announce a curfew until several hours after rioting began, and that curfew did not go into effect until 10:00 PM the following day.
To be sure, the City argues that it did everything it could to quell the unrest and to assist the BPD in limiting the violence and property damage that resulted. The City argues that Plaintiffs’ suggested responses either would have made no difference in preventing or suppressing the riot, or, in some cases, would have made matters worse. The City relies on City of Baltimore v. Silver, which it cites for the proposition that the Riot Act only requires the City to use “reasonable means” to quell unrest.
But the Silver case undermines, rather than strengthens, the City’s position that summary judgment is warranted. In Silver, the Maryland Court of Appeals affirmed the denial of the City’s motion for summary judgment and held that, “it is for the trier or triers of facts to determine just what action the City could or should have taken, if any, in the exercise of ‘reasonable diligence’ to prevent or contain the situation.” That holding comports with the general rule that “reasonableness is a question of fact for the trier to determine based on all of the circumstances.”
The City accuses the Plaintiffs, with the benefit of hindsight, of “Monday morning quarterbacking” the City’s and the BPD’s response to the unrest. It focuses on the overall reasonableness of its strategy, noting that, in comparison with other jurisdictions facing unrest following police-involved civilian deaths, Baltimore’s unrest spanned a shorter duration and resulted in no loss of life.
This Court is not charged with second-guessing the actions of the BPD or the City during an unprecedented time in the City’s recent history. The question the Riot Act poses, however, is not one of overall reasonableness or of good policy, but one of actions taken to prevent “theft, damage, or destruction.”
The City may ultimately be right that it acted reasonably as a matter of overall policy and prioritization, and a reasonable juror could certainly agree. However, a reasonable juror could also (and perhaps simultaneously) conclude that the City remains liable for the ensuing property damage arguably attributable to the “trade-off” between more traditional anti-riot measures and the City’s policy decisions in April of 2015. Regardless, at this stage, the Plaintiffs have produced enough evidence to allow a reasonable jury to find that the City’s response fell short of its obligation to act with “reasonable diligence and all the powers entrusted to [it].” …
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“I Demand Accountability”: Marine Commander Fired For Viral Video Ripping ‘Inept’ Afghan War Decisions
Though there’s abundant examples of retired and former military officers publicly demanding accountability of the Biden administration over how the horribly bungled and now utterly tragic Afghan draw down and evacuation is going, it’s incredibly rare and almost unheard ofto see an active duty officer voice criticisms directed at top Pentagon brass on a public level.
But one high ranking Marine officer has done just that in a now viral video. Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller until Friday was a sitting Marine infantry battalion commander in good standing, but late in the day it’s been confirmed he was promptly relieved of his command over his statements. “I am willing to throw it all away to say to my senior leaders, ‘I demand accountability,'” the Lieutenant colonel said in the Facebook video which already racked up millions of views across various platforms.
“I have been fighting for 17 years. I am willing to throw it all away to say to my senior leaders, I demand accountability.” – Marine Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller on the failures in Afghanistan that led to American servicemen dying. pic.twitter.com/JPH3nTctrG
Following the horrific deaths of 13 American soldiers and over 160 Afghans during yesterday’s suicide attack on Kabul airport, Scheller shredded the “ineptitude” of the military’s top leadership, even questioning whether the entirety of the botched withdrawal and evacuation effort means Americans have “died in vain” over the course of the whole two-decade long war.
His focus in the scathing critique was to question whether top brass stood up to the Biden administration, even while knowing that the administration’s decision-making would lead to chaos, disaster, and possible deaths – as is tragically playing out now…
“I’m not saying we’ve got to be in Afghanistan forever, but I am saying: Did any of you throw your rank on the table and say ‘hey, it’s a bad idea to evacuate Bagram Airfield, a strategic airbase, before we evacuate everyone,'” he said.
“Did anyone do that? And when you didn’t think to do that, did anyone raise their hand and say ‘we completely messed this up.’” Scheller questioned further. What makes the short video unprecedented and raw is also that he’s in uniform, sitting in what appears to be his base office (such ‘political speech’ in open contradiction of the chain of command while in uniform violates DoD policies). The long-serving officer of 17 years knows this, as he later acknowledged in a short follow-up message. “Did any of you throw your rank on the table…” – and question? …Sheller himself does just that, and is now paying the price for it.
Politico and others later in the day Friday confirmed that not only was Scheller quickly relieved of command within 24 hours, but that action is being taken which will lead to discharge from the service altogether, likely pending UCMJ proceedings.
Marine Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller, who posted a viral video demanding accountability from military leaders over Afghanistan, has been relieved of his duties and will leave the Marine Corps, the service confirms.
“I’ve been in the Marine infantry for 17 years. I started my tour with Victor 1-8, that’s the current unit that’s doing perimeter security, dealing with the mess that’s going on there,” Scheller explained in the video.
It’s being widely reported that until being relieved on Friday, he was commander of the School of Infantry East (SOI-EAST) at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.
In the video he ripped everyone from top Marine commanders to the Secretary of Defense for failures in Afghanistan which led to more senseless deaths.
“But we have a secretary of defense that testified to Congress in May that the Afghan National Security Forces could withstand the Taliban advance,” he said. “We have Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs — who the commandant is a member of that — who’s supposed to advise on military policy. We have a Marine combatant commander. All of these people are supposed to advise.”
1. Lt Col Scheller is substantively 100% right.
2. When I was in, and if he made this, I would’ve relieved him of command. No politics.
3. But the standard has changed. The leadership changed it. The rule is now uniformed military can do politics. So I would give him a medal. https://t.co/ruHzagEQf0
Should things continue to spiral downhill in Kabul over these coming days, possibly with more terror attacks looming, could the American public witness more such symbolic acts of ‘rebellion’ to come within the ranks of active duty US troops against the Biden administration?
