What Happened Today: Feb 17, 2022
Trudeau justifies emergency powers; China sanitizes court records; Sandy Hook settlement
The Big Story
The majority of the $10 million in donations for the truckers protesting vaccine mandates in Canada has been given by Canadian residents, but Jacob Wells, co-founder of GiveSendGo, the online platform that’s become the predominant clearinghouse for protest donations, told The Washington Post yesterday that he’s relying on U.S. banks rather than Canadian financial institutions to distribute the funds to the truckers. The U.S. banks are necessary to get the funds to the Canadians after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act on Monday, which gives him expansive power to not only seize personal and business assets of those involved in the protests but also investigate and prosecute any Canadian financial service providers abetting the protest effort. Reserved for existential threats to protect national sovereignty, the government’s emergency powers were last deployed in Canada 51 years ago by Trudeau’s father, when he was prime minister contending with terrorist bombings carried out by Quebec separatists. But the protestors have largely been peaceful, and outside of the ongoing protest in downtown Ottawa, most of the occupations on economically significant border crossings to the United States were cleared prior to the evocation of the Emergencies Act, which has raised questions about what existential threat Trudeau is actually fighting.
“If you are a member of a pro-Trump movement who’s donating hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars to this type of thing, then you ought to be worried,” Canadian Justice Minister David Lametti told a Canadian news broadcaster after hackers leaked GiveSendGo donor information that showed about 40% of the protest donations were from the United States. The depiction of the Canadian protest effort as a Trump political campaign maneuver is part of the Trudeau administration’s evolving narrative about alleged foreign threats—made in order to substantiate the unprecedented use of emergency powers. “We will not let any foreign entities that seek to do harm to Canada or Canadians erode trust in our democratic institutions,” Emergency Preparedness Minister Bill Blair said yesterday, echoing rhetoric about dangerous international extremists from Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino, who described the protestors as a “group that is organized, agile, knowledgeable, and driven by an extremist ideology.”
The Rest
→ Scroll readers will remember yesterday’s coverage of Quintez Brown, the Kentucky activist charged on Monday with the attempted murder of Craig Greenberg, the Jewish Democrat candidate for Louisville mayor. As Rabbi Shlomo Litvin, a Louisville local, points out, Brown was active on social media promoting antisemitic conspiracy theories about Jewish influence in politics in the weeks before the shooting.
→ Families of the 20 first-graders and six school employees murdered in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting have won a landmark $73 million settlement against Remington Firearms, maker of the AR-15 assault rifle used in the shooting, marking the first time a gunmaker has been found legally liable for a mass shooting. Following a 2005 law passed by President George Bush under pressure by gun lobbyists to protect gunmakers from liability for the use of their powerful military-grade weapons in mass casualty shootings, the relatives of gun victims have struggled to hold gun manufacturers accountable. The lawsuit focused on a provision within the 2005 law that allowed for gunmakers to be deemed liable because of how they marketed their products, with the plaintiffs arguing successfully that Remington’s ad campaigns, including an AR-15 advertisement in Maxim magazine that said “consider your man card reissued,” nefariously targeted troubled young men like the shooter in the Sandy Hook attack. Legal analysts predict the settlement will prompt new lawsuits against gunmakers and likely force arms manufacturers to change how they position their products in the marketplace.
→ Once touted for the transparent view it offered into the Chinese judicial system, China Judgments Online, an online portal for the nation’s court cases, has been radically altered in recent months, according to a new report from ChinaFile. Since its launch in 2013, the portal has hosted more than 100 million cases and counted 48 billion visits to the system, but as the report found, at least 11 million cases have been removed from the portal since last year. “It seems clear that the (Supreme People’s Court) views certain kinds of cases as embarrassing to the Party: Some of the purged cases highlight official corruption or illustrate the Party’s use of the criminal justice system to crack down on its critics. Other cases present an unflattering view of Chinese society, and have likely been removed for that reason,” the analysis found.
→ Trinity Fund Partners and other private equity firms are snapping up companies that serve vulnerable and at-risk kids, including foster-care centers and institutions serving children with intellectual and developmental disabilities. A new report from the nonprofit Private Equity Stakeholder Project finds that at Elevations, a youth treatment facility in Salt Lake City, “calls to local police increased 40 percent after [Trinity] took over, with state citations over abuse, lack of food, mold in bathrooms, and sexual offenses. Suicide reports also increased markedly.” Other such care facilities are traded from one private equity fund to another, like Sevita, which has been passed between at least five private equity owners. During one 10-year period, Sevita facilities counted 86 children who died in their care, a death toll 42% higher than the national average.
→ YouTube influencers are making million-dollar deals selling their back catalogs of YouTube videos to investors like Spotter, a Los Angeles startup that announced yesterday a $200 million funding round from the influential Japanese conglomerate SoftBank. The deals give the YouTubers big advances in exchange for advertising revenue that may accrue from future visitors to their videos. Several startups have been using this model to invest in popular YouTube-maker catalogs, but Spotter has been the most successful of the pack, with the new round of funding pegged to its $1.7 billion valuation. The growing popularity of this type of startup investment further strengthens social media creators as part of an increasingly powerful global entertainment economy that weakens the grip on audiences once held by legacy Hollywood studios. Following his deal with Spotter, MrBeast, one of the most popular YouTube creators in the United States, was able to dub his viral stunt videos for Spanish-speaking viewers, which helped him grow his audience 300% and accumulate an average of 1.35 billion views each month.
→ A new Thomas Jefferson University study found that more than 30% of patients who were taking daily doses of opioids for chronic pain were able to cease the opioid regiment and substitute the treatment with medical marijuana. The trial of 186 non-cancer chronic pain patients is consistent with previous research on medical marijuana efficacy, researchers said in their report, adding to the growing body of science that’s been used by 37 states where the plant has been legalized for medicinal treatment.
→ Six weeks into his mayorship, Eric Adams is ready to write off the New York City press corp. “If this is how this is going to be,” he said in a news conference, “then I’m just going to come in, do my announcements, and bounce.” Reacting to critical coverage of his efforts to sway state senators on bail reform, Mayor Adams accused the predominantly white press corp of racial bias. “I’m a black man that’s the mayor, but my story is being interpreted by people that don’t look like me. We got to be honest about that. How many Blacks are on the editorial boards?”
→ Next week, dozens of trucks carrying wheat from India will be allowed by Pakistan officials to cross their border and enter into Afghanistan, where the economy has essentially collapsed after the United States left the country in the hands of the Taliban. With at least 1 million children at risk of starving, according to the United Nations, the permission from Pakistan to allow India, their geopolitical rival, to deliver the 50,000 metric tons of wheat will help alleviate some of Afghanistan’s pressing food shortages. Pakistan has also deployed some emergency medical supplies to the struggling Afghan people.
→ A new study released by the Institute of Labor Economics finds that poor indoor air quality “significantly” hinders cognitive performance. By testing the air at chess tournaments and analyzing players’ moves through a chess engine, the authors concluded that an increase in the concentration of fine particulate matter—one of the air pollutants regulated by the National Ambient Air Quality Standards—resulted in a 26.3% greater chance that a chess player would make a mistake. The study demonstrates the catastrophic impact poor air quality has on chess performance—a headline sure to make waves—but its wider implications are deeply disconcerting: A recent study found that, in New York City alone, “244 public schools are within 500 feet of a highway, truck route, or other vehicular artery.” Proximity to such roads are tied directly to increases in an area’s concentration of particulate matter.
Tablet music writer David Grossman on a new album from Spoon
Minimalism has never been a big theme in rock music, but Spoon has been trying their best to make it work for nearly 30 years. Their sound, a specific and focused style that led The New York Times to once refer to them as “molecular gastronomists,” has befuddled and transfixed critics for about a similar amount of time. Detractors will say that most Spoon songs sound more or less the same—Britt Daniel’s mysterious lyrics accompanied by tightly controlled riffs—but to their fans, this is part of their charm.
Forever hunting for variations on a theme, Spoon offers a variety for hardcore fans to analyze and pick apart in their 10th album, Lucifer on the Sofa. But for everyone else, it’s a great rock album with large hooks and rhythms that allow for grooving or shredding with ease.
Daniel, Jim Eno (the other founding member still left), Gerardo Larios, and Ben Trokan (two first-time Spooners) went into the recording booth with the intention of capturing the band’s live sound. This can be heard in the shaggy and joyful “On the Radio,” a fairly straightforward song by Spoon standards. A little like Pavement’s “Stereo,” Daniel recounts the joys of listening to the radio late at night as a kid. “They’re talking to me!” he says with emphatic delight.
The opener, “Held,” is actually a cover of “Held” by the band Smog. Spoon and Smog are similar in several ways, beyond the obvious fact that their names are one-word nondescript nouns starting with S. They embrace mystery and clarity in equal measure. “Held” by Spoon starts out with heavy blues-rock riffs, a sense of swagger. “For the first time in my life / I let myself be held, yeah, like a big old baby.” It’s funny and surprising, not the least because Spoon is singing a song about spooning. And then he continues as the guitars blare: “For the first time in my life / I am moving away.” Moving from where? From what? There’s no suggestion, leaving space open for listeners to create any narrative they want. Moving away from toxic masculinity? From an older version of the band? From the road, which the band did as they recorded in their rapidly changing hometown of Austin, Texas, only to get stalled out by the sudden spread of the novel coronavirus in March 2020?
There are rarely clear answers in Spoon lyrics, but there are many clear sounds. This is a rock album with more riffs than you can shake a stick at, as becomes clear on the Jack Antonoff-produced “Wild.” “Wild” builds steadily and with speed, opening up first for a guitar riff and then a piano. It’s a tight sound that recalls, more than anything, George Michael’s “Freedom! ’90.” No matter how content Daniel has been living as a modern citizen, “the world, still so wild, called to me.”
This is a surprisingly direct album by Spoon’s standards. There’s wanderlust on “Wild” and love on “My Babe,” where Daniel declares he would “get locked up / Hold my breath, sing my heart out / Beat my chest for my babe.” It’s simple, earnest, and surrounded by swirling melodies that promise not just steadiness, but an excitement within that steadiness.
Spoon has been more adventurous in other albums, such as Hot Thoughts and Kill The Moonlight. This album calls to mind a band looking to explore their earliest days, where the greatest exploration was in understanding what a rock band was doing onstage. The search for Spoon’s sound continues on, and we’re all stronger for it.
David Grossman is a freelance writer based out of Brooklyn and is on Twitter at @davidgross_man.
The majority of donors (56%) to the protesting Canadian truckers live in the United States. "American donors, however, outnumbered Canadians: 51,666 donations were registered as coming from the U.S., 56 per cent of the total. Canada, in contrast, was the stated country of origin for 36,202 donations." https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-data-leak-reveals-canadians-americans-donated-millions-to-fund-convoy/
If foreigners funded a major demonstration in, say, Chicago, Americans would rightly be incensed.