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America's 690 mile-long yard sale entices a nation of deal hunters
Arguably the biggest bargain hunt anywhere, the Route 127 Yard Sale stretches clear across America.
Starting in the Deep South, the annual event runs 690 miles to within a few hours' drive of Canada. Beginning in the rural Alabama town of Gadsden, it spans six states and attracts vacationing motor home enthusiasts, antique pickers and anyone who just loves to haggle. The sale is actually hundreds of little sales in hundreds of front yards, and perhaps just as many commercial vendors.
Farms, church parking lots and empty fields play host to table after table of secondhand merchandise all along the route. Tools, clothes, vintage glassware, boxes of old matchbox cars and "junktiques" abound. Traffic jams clog two-lane roads as columns of motorists slow down to gauge whether they should stop.
Rows of pop-up canopies and folding tables covered with dusty treasure fill roadsides that sit empty the rest of the year. "Make me an offer," reads one vendor's sign. "Yes, I will go lower on price," proclaims another.
Whether you're looking for a bin of old roller skates or a dozen surplus swivel chairs, there's something for everyone at the 127 Yard Sale, which started in the late 1980s. There are $2,500 porcelain Coca-Cola signs and 25-cent golf balls. From the boring to the bizarre, there's no telling what will turn up.
Leaving Alabama behind, the sale passes through Georgia along Lookout Mountain Parkway. In one driveway, a pair of lawn fertilizer machines and a set of zebra-striped luggage are for sale in front of a breathtaking view of the valley 1,500 feet below. Crossing the Tennessee River, the sale finally meets up with its namesake: Route 127.
Legend has it that the event, which takes place on the first weekend of August, began in Tennessee. Hundreds of sales and larger vendor stops punctuate the route from Signal Mountain, an affluent suburb of Chattanooga, north to Pall Mall, the humble hometown of World War I hero Alvin C. York, near the Kentucky border.
In the historic frontier town of Harrodsburg, Kentucky, the local Baptist church fires up the barbecue every year and serves free hot dogs to sale-goers. Just up the road from the quaint downtown, a field filled with more than 50 vendors includes local sellers and nomadic antiques dealers who arrive every year in beat-up school busses and Airstream trailers. All weekend long, deal-seeking couples push strollers throughout the temporary encampment, on the hunt for rare finds and retro decor.
With the horse farms and bourbon distilleries of Bluegrass country in the rearview mirror, Route 127 follows the Ohio River north before skirting Cincinnati. In western Ohio, endless cornfields provide a backdrop for the thickest grouping of yard sales along Route 127. The uniform patterns of neatly planted rows stretch to the horizon mile after mile, punctuated by the occasional circus tent filled with potential loot.
Somewhere North of Hamilton, Ohio, the "yard sale" signs become few and far between. They're eventually supplanted by signs advertising "garage sales." For one reason or another the South is yard sale territory. The Midwestern states, on the other hand, call them garage sales. (In the Northeast, they're called tag sales). Aside from the difference in nomenclature, there seems to be no discernible difference.
As Route 127 crosses into Michigan and nears the event's northern end in Addison, the frequency of garage sales begins to decline. Perhaps by Sunday afternoon, sellers have simply had enough of manning their cash boxes. With another Route 127 yard sale in the books, vendors began to pack up their unsold wares, fold up card tables and pull up tent stakes. Until next year.
A Colorado county offers glimpse of America's future
Nearly a quarter century ago, when Maria de Lourdes Zavala moved here from Michoacán, Mexico, Commerce City was a hub for mostly White agricultural and oil refinery workers.
"There weren't any Mexicans, almost nobody spoke Spanish," said Zavala, 65, reflecting on a time when the surrounding county was more than two-thirds White. "Now it's all different."
As she makes her way to her restaurant each morning, she passes by quinceañera venues, a tamale cafe, a Mexican candy store and shops for wire transfer services. Her customers often greet her in Spanish, standing at the counter below a string of papel picado - colorful Mexican banners - and in front of a menu with a mix of Spanish and English words, advertising items like "chicken nuggets con papas" - with fries.
The changes Zavala has witnessed are reflected in a momentous shift in the 2020 Census figures released Thursday: For the first time in its history, the majority of Adams County, Colo., residents are people of color.
In fact, the Census figures confirm, the entire American West has flipped to majority-minority - the first major geographical region in the United States to do so. The South is not far behind. And by the 2040s, the entire nation is expected to follow.
Adams joined 64 other counties that shifted to majority-minority in the last decade, and together they offer a glimpse into the future of America, a nation undergoing a rapid demographic transformation. Only four decades ago, 80% of the U.S. population was White. Now, it's 57%, marking the first time the population's share of White people has dipped below 60%.
With the change has come a struggle, and a question of whether a country that has historically offered preferential treatment to its White majority can evolve its power structures to better reflect the new multiracial reality.
In Adams, the question has become especially relevant: A proslavery colonel was one of the first settlers in the area in the mid-19th century, and for most of its history, its leaders have been White. But in recent years, communities of color - predominantly Mexican American - have begun to gain political representation and speak up against conditions they feel adversely affect them, including environmental pollution and substandard schools.
Still, advocates here say there remains a long road ahead for non-White groups to achieve representation and services in proportion to their growing size.
Local officials "use this term 'We are Adams,'" said Maria Gonzalez, who runs Adelante, an area nonprofit that helps Mexican immigrant small businesses. "What does that really mean?"
The answer to that question has been changing rapidly.
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In the United States and in Colorado, "our fastest growth is in our Asian and Hispanic populations, especially at the youngest ages," state demographer Elizabeth Garner said. "In Adams County, it's even faster."
Most of this growth in the county has been caused by natural increase, via births. But there has also been strong growth among new arrivals, with people moving here from elsewhere in Colorado, from other parts of the U.S. and from beyond America's borders.
Latinos have contributed most of the growth to the county: They were 29% of the population two decades ago and account for 41% of the population today. Black, Native and Asian American groups represent between 2% and 4% of the population.
There are many reasons Adams has become such a magnet. The county is seen as a less expensive and more tranquil place to live compared to Denver, which has experienced skyrocketing housing prices and increasingly congested roads. And then there are the jobs. Construction is Adams' number one industry, according to Garner, followed by transportation and warehousing, as well as state government work.
The growing diversity in Adams is reflected in the county's coronavirus testing materials, which are issued in English, Spanish, Hmong and Farsi.
Latinos, predominantly Mexican Americans, are largely concentrated in the county's Southwest corner, near Denver. Several years ago, the county fair decided to re-create its final day, which was often the least attended, as "Dia de la Familia." Now it's the most popular, bringing in about 30,000 visitors, county officials said.
In Aurora, which straddles three counties, including Adams, thousands of refugees from the world over have made themselves at home. With them came West African restaurants, Asian supermarkets and multicultural church services.
Farther north, though still in the Denver suburbs, Japanese Americans are an integral part of Brighton, the county seat. A historic farm named after a Japanese family offers agricultural education and workshops to the public.
The county sprawls for dozens of miles to the east through sparsely populated farmland that resembles what much of the county used to look like, before the suburbs and exurbs began to boom.
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With that growth, of course, has come some tension. And nowhere are the fraught dynamics more visible than in Commerce City, a 60,000-person municipality near Denver that is increasingly regarded as two cities, with the southern half lower-income and more Hispanic than the north.
"There's a big disconnect," said Debra Bullock, co-founder of the Commerce City Historical Society.
The city's northern and southern neighborhoods are physically divided by a nature preserve - once a chemical weapons arsenal during World War II - that is wedged in the middle.
On the northeast side, in a neighborhood called Reunion, cars wind along tree-lined streets with tidy homes. It's quiet except at the edges, where developers are feverishly building replicas.
The homes here are cheaper than in Denver, but remain out of reach for many of those who live in downtown Commerce City, near the county's southwest side. Known as the Derby Downtown District, it's a historic neighborhood and was once the city's beating heart.
But, the area is no longer a focal point for many of its residents. Unhoused people, who local residents say were pushed out of Denver, wander the streets and sleep on park benches. Unlike the school district in the north - which receives passing grades from the state - the district serving the south, which is predominantly Latino, is being run by a consulting company after repeatedly failing state benchmarks.
In 2010, a civil rights complaint against the school district alleged that bilingual teachers were being harassed and that students were banned from speaking any language but English, among other forms of discrimination. Four years later, the federal Office of Civil Rights issued a scathing report that charged the district with violating civil rights and creating a hostile environment for Latinos. District officials reached a settlement agreement with the agency.
The district has also struggled with how to teach its students for whom English is not their first language - more than half the population. At the end of 2017 and into 2018, an uproar broke out among parents and community members when the new superintendent announced plans to shrink the biliteracy program. The district has since revised its plans.
Infrastructure has also been a flash point. Voters have defeated bond proposals that would have paid for school renovations that community advocates say are acutely needed.
"In the core city there's a lot of immigrants and our whole school district has changed," said Bullock, who is White and was raised in the area. "A lot of people don't welcome that and don't want that."
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On a recent day, a rhythmic drum emanated from the center of Fairfax Park in Commerce City's south side as the smell of tamales, rice and beans wafted through the air.
Olga Custodio, executive director of the nonprofit Cultivando, sat down on a park bench facing several signs demanding clean air and corporate accountability. It was EcoFiesta, the launch of a community effort to install air monitoring systems throughout the city to evaluate pollution levels caused by the nearby oil and gas refinery, operated by Suncor Energy.
The company agreed to pay up to $9 million in a settlement with the state last year to resolve several violations of air pollution regulations dating back to 2017.
In one instance that still haunts local memory, the refinery emitted a billowing, orange cloud that settled like fine mist on top of cars and homes. The company later said the substance was harmless.
Around $2.6 million of the settlement money was reserved for community programing, and a panel put together by the state selected Cultivando's proposal to establish an independent evaluation of air pollution in the area, granting it $1.7 million, Custodio said.
She sees the program as one of many ways that Commerce City's Latinos are finally speaking up for themselves.
"You hear stories from community members that say their children have had headaches, and problems breathing, and frequent nose bleeds, and some have developed cancer. They are wondering now if that's tied to what's coming out of Suncor," Custodio said.
An Indigenous group blessed the land at the park, while community members took the microphone, giving testimony about the illnesses they faced and calling for the closure of the facility.
Concerns over the refinery's emissions have troubled community members for years, but it wasn't until recently that they started to take action.
"People got fed up," Custodio said.
In a statement, Suncor said it is actively listening to community concerns and helping with the installation of third-party air monitors.
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Not all the tensions exist along racial lines, or between communities and companies.
Several residents described a fault line within the Mexican American community - between those whose families recently arrived in the United States and those who have been in the country for generations, known as Chicanos.
"They're the ones that say the border crossed them," said Gonzalez, the Adelante executive director. "That's where you get the majority of your racism from."
She was one of four candidates of color who unsuccessfully ran for mayor in 2019. The incumbent, a White man, won. The city has never had a non-White mayor.
She said on the campaign trail, there was a sense that Chicanos looked down on her for being a first-generation Mexican American. She met Mexican Americans who pronounced their Hispanic last names with Anglicized accents.
Many Mexican Americans whose families have been here for generations don't speak Spanish because their grandparents were punished as children for speaking it in American schools.
The tension "is everywhere," said Maria Zubia, a community advocate and southern Adams County school board member.
But the community still comes together for historic firsts.
Raymond Gonzales is Adams' first county manager of color, and he began prioritizing inclusivity and culturally accessible services soon after he was appointed in 2017. He has also sought to eliminate questionable practices that appeared designed to favor Whites.
In one instance, he discovered the county had an informal policy that required board approval to hire a bilingual speaking staff member - a step in the vetting process that English-only staff members didn't have to go through.
He wasn't sure why it was there, or who began the practice, but he saw it as an extra obstacle for non-White prospective employees and it was soon eliminated. Instead, Gonzales built incentives to hire and retain bilingual employees.
This year, Lynn Baca was the first woman of color elected county commission in Adams. Baca, who is half Filipina, half Mexican, grew up in Brighton as a second-generation American.
Since her election, Baca has helped to stage vaccine clinics that target communities with historically poor access to health care, including agricultural workers and the Hmong population. She is optimistic about the future for non-White communities in Adams.
"We're no longer in the shadows. We are at the forefront. We sit on nonprofits, and we're engaged in our community," Baca said. "We are finding our way."
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Zavala works in the kitchen and at the counter of her restaurant, Birrieria La Guera Michoacana, every single day. She no longer relies on her daughter to translate when she interacts with customers or store clerks. She speaks a little more English, and more people speak Spanish. Sometimes people post discriminatory comments on her restaurant's Facebook page, she said, but her son deletes them so she doesn't have to see them.
After more than two decades in Commerce City, Zavala has no plans to move. Her children and grandchildren were born here, and she's found prosperity in the United States, just as she had hoped when she came here.
Her restaurant started as a business out of her house. Now it has four walls, a Google Maps location and 183 reviews.
"The U.S., what it is, has helped so many people get ahead," Zavala said. "There's everything you need."
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The Washington Post's Ted Mellnick contributed to this report.
With stress on officers spiking, New York joins wave of police agencies using therapy dogs
NEW YORK - New York Police Department First Deputy Commissioner Benjamin Tucker knows that what an officer sees on the job can have an impact for many years. He still remembers the deadly gang-related arson when he was a beat cop in Brooklyn in the 1970s, and the unsolved murder of a man he found lying on the pavement, the bullet wound behind his ear not yet visible.
In 2019, when the nation's largest police department grappled with a record wave of officer suicides, Tucker brought those memories with him as he and other department brass brainstormed how to alleviate job-related stress.
Enter Jenny and Piper - newly-minted yellow Labrador retriever detectives with the NYPD's Employee Assistance Unit. Their cuteness and caring demeanor will help connect with officers who face growing tension on the streets and may be quietly suffering from work or personal issues.
In the wake of the killing of George Floyd in police custody and the Jan. 6 breach of the U.S. Capitol, anti-police fury is "tremendous" and "exponentially more palpable than it has been in the past, said Tucker, who presided over Jenny and Piper's swearing-in ceremony at police headquarters earlier this month.
Assaults on officers are increasing, and communities across the country are facing calls to "defund the police." Beat cops routinely face catcalls - and a wall of cellphone cameras set to "record" - when carrying out daily duties.
Lt. Janna Salisbury, who heads New York's Employee Assistance Unit, said the dogs and their handlers "will respond to critical incidents involving on and off-duty members of the department . . . breaking down traditional mental health barriers, reducing stigmas that often prevent officers from seeking care."
Services provided by the EAU are confidential, and the unit will refer troubled cops to counselors outside of the department anonymously if they wish.
Law enforcement agencies around the country increasingly are turning to emotional support dogs - a departure from K-9 programs where animals search for drugs, weapons and explosives, control crowds or track down missing people.
In the month after Jan. 6, four police therapy dogs from two Northern Virginia departments - Fairfax County and Arlington County - spent time with U.S. Capitol Police officers and National Guard soldiers, said Allison Cutright, who runs the Fredericksburg, Va.-based FRK9 that trained those dogs. She estimated that dozens of departments have launched K-9 programs in recent years.
"Law enforcement officers go to work every day and do a job most people wouldn't do for a million bucks," said Patrick Yoes, National President of the Fraternal Order of Police, describing how officers on patrol have been villanized over the past 18 months. "To have people turn on us the way that they did . . . I think it took a toll on every officer."
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A program called Puppies Behind Bars is responsible for bringing Jenny and Piper to New York's employee assistance unit. To learn how to handle dogs, four EAU officers recently spent two weeks embedded at the Bedford Hills Correctional Center, a maximum security women's prison in Westchester County where inmates raise puppies to become therapy and service animals.
The women are housed in their own unit; their K-9 trainees sleep beside them in cells.
Tiffany Richway, 29, is serving an 11-year sentence on a high-level drug conviction in a remote upstate county, near the Canadian border. Richway said the K-9 program has given her purpose as she works through her sentence.
"It makes prison so much easier," she said. "It gives you something to wake up for."
Richway said she and her colleagues in the program only recently began training therapy dogs for use in police departments. They were already training dogs for other jobs, including to comfort veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD.
At the prison, the NYPD officers were paired with inmates who trained them to become Jenny and Piper's handlers and backup handlers. The pairing of convict coaches and cops was odd at first, according to some of the inmates and officers. But they quickly saw the importance of their common purpose.
Sgt. Anthony Manza, who is Piper's backup handler, said the dogs "have an uncanny ability to spot a person in need and offer unconditional compassion." Some therapy dogs are used to ease the stress of domestic violence and sexual assault victims, often with a tactic called "tell me a story," in which the therapy dog sits on the lap of an ailing person as they are asked to convey a traumatic event.
"It is our intention to bring techniques like this to cops in crisis, to smash through the wall that stigma behind mental health has built, to get officers to open up in situations where they might not normally open up, including thoughts of suicide," Manza said.
In Fairfax County, three police dogs make several rounds of random check-ins with officers each week, while also responding to critical incidents and any situation that may be difficult for officers, said Lt. Christopher Sharp, who commands the Incident Support Services unit.
The dogs tend to disarm officers who could benefit from help but might not otherwise feel comfortable talking freely with a colleague, Sharp said. They are also used in the community - appearing at National Night Out and other public events.
Patrick Yoes, the national FOP president, said police therapy dogs are "sorely needed," especially if used in a way that keeps officers from feeling like they will face reprisal for seeking help or counseling. The dogs, he said, are skilled at getting big "manly" cops to "sit on the floor and play with them."
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Blue H.E.L.P., an organization devoted to promoting mental health for law enforcement, says at least 89 officers have died by suicide so far this year. That is compared to 239 law enforcement suicides in 2019 - the year 10 New York officers took their own lives - 174 in 2020 and 182 in 2018.
Four officers who were at the Capitol on Jan. 6 have since taken their own lives.
Many officers who survived the attacks at the Capitol continue to suffer from mental as well physical injuries.
Attacks on officers across the country are on the rise, according to statistics complied by the FOP, with 185 officers shot, including 35 killed, through July. The organization said ambush-style attacks are up 126 percent from last year, with 67 cops shot in 52 incidents. Earlier this month, two Chicago police officers were shot, one fatally, during a traffic stop.
Betsy Brantner Smith, a retired police sergeant and longtime dog owner who worked in suburban Chicago, used to supervise her agency's K-9 unit.
Now a spokeswoman for the National Police Association and a police trainer, Smith often brought Marley, her German shepherd rescue, to courses she teaches with her husband around the country.
Marley, who died recently, had a knack for cozying up to officers in her training sessions who had been in a shooting or who had experienced another kind of trauma, Smith said.
While she was on the job, her pets were always a source of comfort. In her recent eight-month stint of treatment for breast cancer, her pair of terrier mixes were a loving presence that helped her get through.
"That's one of the reasons I so strongly believe in these programs - is because I have seen with my own personal experiences what dogs mean to people, [and] what dogs have meant to our family," Smith said.
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It's liberals who are the tough-minded realists about policy
E.J. DIONNE COLUMN
Advance for release Monday, Aug. 16, 2021, and thereafter
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By E.J. Dionne Jr.
WASHINGTON -- Over the decades, conservatives have been enormously successful at selling a parody of liberalism. Liberals are cast as dreamy idealists who think "throwing money at problems" is the way to solve them. They're painted as hostile to a tough-minded examination of their programs and indifferent to whether they work.
This parody has things exactly backward. In 2021, it's liberals who want citizens, politicians included, to look rigorously at the evidence. It shows how many public programs make a substantial, positive difference in the lives of Americans, especially kids from low-income families. It's conservatives who prefer ideology and moralism to the facts.
The spending that liberals favor these days -- much of it included in President Joe Biden's American Families Plan that Democrats are pushing through Congress -- is for government interventions that have been tested and proved.
The phrase "laboratories of democracy" refers to how state governments are free to try different policy approaches, giving all of us a chance to see which are successful and which aren't.
The idea is often misused by opponents of federal action to argue that we should leave as much as possible to the states. Thinking of the states as "laboratories" points in a different direction. If states -- red and blue -- show that certain policies plainly improve people's opportunities and circumstances, doesn't it make sense to apply them to the whole country? Key programs, starting with Social Security and Medicare, are national for a reason.
This underscores the importance of a report released this month by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), a think tank devoted to careful policy analysis aimed at lifting up those who have been left out. Citing study after study, the report concludes that "a large body of research" demonstrates the policies in Biden's package and other forms of assistance to the needy "would make a substantial difference in the lives of children and youth."
Just a few particulars from the report written by Arloc Sherman, Ali Safawi, Zoë Neuberger and Will Fischer:
"When children grew up in a household receiving additional cash benefits, their academic achievement increased on a lasting basis."
"When elementary and middle school students received access to free school lunches, their academic performance improved."
"When children had access to quality pre-kindergarten at age 4, they were likelier to enter college on time."
"When high school students were guaranteed grants to pay for community college, they were likelier to complete community college."
"When parents had access to paid family leave, rates of early births and low birthweights declined."
There's much more about what works. Footnoting proves nothing by itself, but this document's 108 footnotes are a measure of how many high-quality, nonpartisan studies have tested the effect of various policies.
Sharon Parrott, president of the CBPP, said in an interview that the research pulled together underscores that programs Biden and other progressives are proposing are bold but not radical. (It's one reason the polls show them to be popular.)
"Many of them are building on successful but underfunded programs" nationally and in the states, she said, or programs that work well in other well-off democracies. Without intending an ideological pun, she added that Biden's proposals are not "out of left field."
Parrott offered a common-sense point, often overlooked, about why a society that says it cares about "family values" should want to help parents with young children through programs such as the child tax credit.
On the whole, earnings rise as people get older, but they tend to have children when they are younger. "We ask people to spend a lot of money" on child-rearing "at the time when they're earning the least," she noted. Smoothing out the imperatives of the life cycle for middle-class and poor families is good for parents and children alike.
There is no rational reason the child poverty rate needs to be as high as it is in the United States. The percentage of children living in poverty in this country based on market incomes is not all that different from the share in most of 18 other rich countries. But an analysis of pre-pandemic data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development -- that is, from before the covid-fueled surge of social spending -- found that when public policies relating to taxes and benefits were taken into account, the United States ranked dead last.
We should do better. With smart policies, we can.
A major obstacle to more energetic efforts to help the least advantaged, Parrott says, is "the cynicism that it doesn't matter what we do." But it does matter. When it comes to public programs, the antithesis of cynicism is reality itself: We know a great deal about what works. Let's do it.
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E.J. Dionne is on Twitter: @EJDionne.
Like any woman over 60, Barbie has some life lessons to share
KATHLEEN PARKER COLUMN
Advance for release Sunday, Aug. 14, 2021, and thereafter
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By Kathleen Parker
Though never her biggest fan, I've been fascinated by Barbie ever since her birth as a full-blown hottie on March 9, 1959, through decades of reincarnations.
Today's new "it" girl is a British scientist of global renown -- one Sarah Gilbert, who co-created the Oxford/AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine. Gilbert's resume is chock-full of accolades, including having been knighted by the Queen, but being a Barbie shouldn't get lost in the footnotes.
Barbie Gilbert is no Pamela Anderson look-alike or a celebrity fashion plate, as earlier Barbie iterations usually were. She's a redhead with shoulder-length hair who wears black glasses and a navy pantsuit. All very sensible and thoroughly modern. A female scientist certainly isn't as rare today as it was during Barbie's early life, but men still dominate the top echelons in science and Gilbert is keen to change that. Embracing her new place in Mattel history, she has said: "I hope it will be part of making it more normal for girls to think about careers in science."
Barbie's creators Ruth and Elliot Handler, who also founded Mattel Inc. in 1945, always intended that their doll be a way for girls to imagine the future. As a child who owned the first swimsuit-clad Barbie, I'm not sure how I was supposed to envision my future. As a swimsuit model? A suntan lotion rep? I do remember wondering whether my future curves would resemble Barbie's. But for my tender age, I might have guessed the answer given the raucous laughter as my mother and her friends examined the impossible body of this new, strange plaything.
Over time, Barbie became many other things, though I had long lost interest by the time she became an astronaut in 1965 and flew to the moon -- four years before Neil Armstrong. The first celebrity Barbie was supermodel Twiggy in 1967. The first Barbie of color was Barbie's friend Christie, but an official African American Barbie didn't come along until 1980, along with a Latina Barbie.
You get the idea that Barbie grew up to become a Democrat. She ran for president in 1992, which was true even if his name was Bill Clinton. (I kid.) She became a drag queen. (True.) But she was also a cancer patient to help little girls through a tough time. One version used a wheelchair. Mattel's motto for its Barbie line might have been: Hey girl, you be you.
And sales, which just five years ago were in a steep decline, are booming again. Frankly, few would have projected her longevity. But for the past 62 years, Mattel has proved that evolutionary adaptation is essential to survival. Today, as our lives are circumscribed by a pandemic and a variant that has begun targeting children and teens, how should girls imagine their future?
Mattel's answer has been to pay homage to front-line nurses, doctors, activists and, yes, Gilbert. Instead of playing sick, hoping for Dr. Ken to make her well, Barbie is helping to cure others. She's a Canadian psychiatry resident who battled systemic racism in health care and a Brazilian biomedical researcher who led sequencing of the genome of a covid-19 variant in Brazil. She's an Australian doctor who pioneered a surgical gown that can be washed and reused by front-line workers. She's the New York doctor who treated the first covid-19 patient and a front-line doctor in Las Vegas who fought discrimination.
Not only are these women impressively accomplished, but some have performed herculean tasks while also fighting obstacles that shouldn't exist. The message, not just to girls, is that women are leaders now and into the future -- and we are grateful for that. Mattel will have to crank up its production given the plethora of role models all around us these days. From gymnast Simone Biles, who had the courage and strength of character to forgo some of the Olympics in deference to her mental health, to the United States' most decorated track-and-field Olympian, Allyson Felix -- Mattel's elves are likely busy preparing Olympic Barbies in time for Christmas.
To their list, they might add soon-to-be New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, set to replace Andrew M. Cuomo following his resignation amid a sexual harassment scandal. One thing that girls might infer, indirectly, from the existence of a Gov. Hochul doll is that they don't have to put up with sexual harassment -- anytime, anywhere.
From Biles and Felix, they could learn that success is preceded by hard work, commitment and discipline -- and there are other things that are more important than winning.
Same as any 60-plus woman, Barbie has accumulated some wisdom, despite her refusal to grow older. As a doll with purpose, she proffers lessons worth learning early in life and suggests futures worthy of imagination. They sure beat obsessing over how you look in a dadgum bathing suit.
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Kathleen Parker's email address is kathleenparker@washpost.com.
CFPB keeps pressure on mortgage companies to assist struggling homeowners
MICHELLE SINGLETARY COLUMN
Advance for release Sunday, Aug. 15, 2021, and thereafter
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By Michelle Singletary
WASHINGTON -- The housing crisis of 2008 was a hellish time for financially strapped homeowners.
Mortgage lenders often ignored pleas for assistance when borrowers fell behind on their loans. Or, a payment plan would offer a glimmer of hope, only to collapse into a sinkhole of paperwork and delays.
In the summer of 2008, the Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America staged an event that promised a fast track for struggling borrowers to avoid foreclosure. The five-day event at the Capital Hilton in Washington D.C. was called "Save the Dream of Homeownership." Hundreds of NACA counselors, certified by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, were stationed throughout the hotel facilitating same-day mortgage restructurings that reduced people's interest rates, their loan balances or both.
I watched as desperate homeowners formed a line that snaked around the block. Folks were sweating and, in some cases, swearing, holding folders stuffed with information about their financial situation.
Homeowners drove from as far afield as Mississippi and Massachusetts. I interviewed one Worcester, Mass., couple who were able to renegotiate their 11.875 percent loan to a fixed 5.25 percent for a monthly savings of $830. A homeowner from Jackson, Miss., was able to cut her mortgage debt by $20,000.
They were the fortunate ones. So many others couldn't cut a deal and lost their homes during the Great Recession. Between 2007 and 2010, there were about 3.8 million foreclosures, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
With homeowners now facing another crisis, this time prompted by a pandemic, things are better, says Bruce Marks, chief executive and founder of NACA.
Marks should know. He saw the worst of the housing crisis and was highly critical of the response borrowers were getting from their mortgage servicers. Marks knew then, as he does now, that mortgage servicers are key to assisting borrowers when they can't pay their mortgages.
This time, the government was quick to push companies to get people into forbearance plans without the hassle and heartache that was standard procedure during the housing crisis, Marks said. The sooner the problem is addressed, the more likely folks can keep their homes.
"I think servicers learned the lesson of the last mortgage crisis," Marks said in an interview. "They realized that it was a failure to do modifications the old way, in which monthly payments would go up. I'm cynical of the banks, and I'm cynical of servicers. But I've got to say that, for the most part, it's a good news story."
Under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (Cares) Act, borrowers with federally backed loans could ask for an initial forbearance of up to 180 days. If additional relief was needed, they were entitled to a 180-day extension. Interest still accrues, but fees and penalties are waived. The Biden administration has extended the forbearance enrollment window through Sept. 30.
A new report by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau reviewed data from 16 large mortgage servicers from December through April. The CFPB found that many servicers were initially overwhelmed as the pandemic resulted in millions of people losing their jobs. For example, one large servicer received about 650,000 inquiries to its call center in February 2021. The number increased to 750,000 in March and then dropped to 625,000 in April.
The uptick in March tracked the expiration of forbearances for borrowers who enrolled at the beginning of the pandemic and who were probably calling to discuss additional relief, the CFPB said.
As of July, more than 1.8 million borrowers were enrolled in active forbearance plans, the CFPB said.
"Many borrowers have already exited forbearance, and borrowers who remain on active plans are anticipated to exit through Fall 2021," the agency report said.
There were some major stumbles at first. People couldn't get through to their mortgage servicers, and when they did reach someone, they were told they could get a forbearance but would need to pay the full amount that was in arrears in a lump sum once the pause was over. This wasn't true, and it unnecessarily frightened a lot of homeowners.
Borrowers with loans covered by the Cares Act have a number of payment options once their forbearance period ends. One option might involve taking the delinquent balance and adding it to the back end of the loan. The past-due payments would effectively extend the term of the loan.
The report from the CFPB is significant because the agency is making it clear that it intends to prioritize monitoring mortgage servicers and how they are dealing with struggling borrowers.
"The recently released metrics report indicated that many servicers are doing a reasonable job handling requests for assistance," said Mark McArdle, the CFPB's assistant director for mortgage markets, adding, "It also indicated that some servicers are outliers and will need additional follow-up."
The agency has warned mortgage servicers to take proactive steps to assist borrowers, including dedicating resources and staffers to stay in contact with borrowers to ultimately reduce foreclosures and foreclosure-related costs. The CFPB said about 569,000 borrowers are in the early stages of delinquency but aren't participating in a forbearance plan.
"The overall message is that the bureau will be watching closely this fall to see how servicers handle the wave of forbearance exits and take appropriate action as needed," McArdle said.
Some homeowners will not be able to resume making payments on their mortgages, and that means some foreclosures are unavoidable. But the CFPB is doing what should have been done during the housing crisis. The agency is holding mortgage servicers accountable if they don't do enough to help people avoid losing their homes.
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Readers can write to Michelle Singletary c/o The Washington Post, 1301 K St., N.W., Washington, D.C. 20071. Her email address is michelle.singletary@washpost.com. Follow her on Twitter (@SingletaryM) or Facebook (www.facebook.com/MichelleSingletary). Comments and questions are welcome, but due to the volume of mail, personal responses may not be possible. Please also note comments or questions may be used in a future column, with the writer's name, unless a specific request to do otherwise is indicated.
We could cut carbon emissions tomorrow - if we really wanted to
FAREED ZAKARIA COLUMN
Advance for release Friday, Aug. 13, 2021, and thereafter
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By Fareed Zakaria
To understand the tension in the United States' energy policy, consider the events of this week. On Monday, the United Nations released a new report warning that climate change is coming faster than predicted and that the world is losing time to act. President Biden tweeted in response, "We can't wait to tackle the climate crisis." Two days later, his national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, urged Saudi Arabia and other major oil producers to increase production of petroleum beyond the agreed-upon targets. Biden backed him up. The Financial Times wrote this headline: "Biden to OPEC: Drill, baby, drill."
America's energy policy reflects one of the oldest attitudes in human history. As Saint Augustine once prayed to God, "Make me chaste and celibate -- but not yet."
The White House this week illustrated the central reason U.S. energy policy is failing. It promises that we can get to a carbon-free future without imposing real costs on the American people, and without having to make some very difficult trade-offs.
Let's start by recognizing some basic facts. In 1990, fossil fuels made up about 85 percent of U.S. energy consumption. That number today? Around 80 percent. And according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, in 2050, under current policy, that percentage will have dropped to about 75 percent.
The reasons for this are not simply that oil companies are influential. Fossil fuels are amazingly abundant and versatile. They are powerful and portable, providing energy whenever and wherever it's needed. That is why we use fossil fuels to run our cars, power our factories, cook our food and heat our homes. Plus, we use them to make everything from plastics to textiles to aspirin.
This is not an argument to do nothing. On the contrary, it's an argument to do much more. The only rational way to lower the use of fossil fuels in all of these varied applications is to make them all more expensive. That means a carbon tax, so that everything that emits greenhouse gases becomes more expensive and everything that is clean becomes more affordable.
But that's not enough. We keep proclaiming lofty climate goals and yet never meet them. In 2015, President Barack Obama announced targets for reducing U.S. emissions by 2025. Many regarded those goals as not nearly ambitious enough. Thanks to President Donald Trump, we are not on track to achieve them. Now Biden has set even more ambitious goals.
The biggest problem in U.S. energy policy is climate denialism from the right. But on the left, there is another potent danger: magical thinking. Too many believe we can lower emissions with no hard choices.
The University of California at Berkeley released a report last year that says we could feasibly get to a 90 percent clean electricity grid by 2035, reducing coal consumption to zero and natural gas by 70 percent. But note -- that wildly optimistic scenario is based on the assumption that the United States would quickly and massively upgrade its power grid to become smart and responsive, build new transmission lines, expand storage dramatically, and change the way power systems operate across the 50 states. In reality, just building a single new transmission line has often proved an impossible task. One recent effort to build lines from renewable energy projects to population centers collapsed after 10 years of battles over permits. There is another continuing battle over a line to bring Canadian hydropower into New England.
We should continue to subsidize renewables. We should fund new technologies -- from hydrogen fuel to electricity storage -- that, in a decade or two, might prove extremely effective substitutes for fossil fuels. There are ways to expedite upgrading the grid. But meanwhile, we need to reduce emissions sharply, and now. Here's what we could do right away.
First, stop retiring nuclear power plants and start building new ones. Nuclear power is a zero-emissions fuel that is always on.
Second, we need to get coal -- the dirtiest fuel -- from 20 percent of our electricity supply down to zero. Where possible, we should replace it with wind, solar or biomass. But the easiest, quickest way will often be to use natural gas, which still produces half the carbon emissions. We should also get the developing world to stop building coal-fired plants, many of them Chinese-sponsored, and instead help them build power plants to run on U.S. natural gas.
Third, electric cars have come of age and can replace internal combustion vehicles, and we should speed this transition by building out thousands of charging stations.
Fourth, industry releases about a quarter of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions and is hard to decarbonize. (Very high heat is often needed, and some chemical processes unavoidably release carbon dioxide.) So we should require the use of currently available carbon-capture technologies, including a massive expansion of the oldest one we know of: trees.
Yes, I know there are problems with all of these approaches, but there are problems with every solution. (Producing solar energy on an industrial scale requires massive use of plastics, i.e. petrochemicals, as well as the mining of many raw materials, including scarce minerals.) But the actions I describe here would all cut emissions tomorrow. Not 10 years from now, and not after development and research. Tomorrow.
So the question really is this: Do we want to cut carbon emissions tomorrow?
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Fareed Zakaria's email address is fareed.zakaria.gps@turner.com.
Afghanistan is nearing a final tipping point
DAVID IGNATIUS COLUMN
Advance for release Friday, Aug. 13, 2021, and thereafter
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By David Ignatius
WASHINGTON -- The bloody war in Afghanistan is nearing what may be a final tipping point this week, as the Taliban races to encircle Kabul and the United States pumps in 3,000 troops to protect the evacuation of Americans from the Afghan capital.
Don't "wait until it's too late," Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told reporters Thursday, explaining the sudden decision to send in extra U.S. forces to safeguard the departure of Americans who might otherwise be trapped in the war's brutal endgame. "It's doing the right thing at the right time to protect our people."
For President Biden, who had hoped for an orderly U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, the chaos in Kabul carries echoes of the fall of Saigon in 1975 -- precisely the image he wanted to avoid. And the Taliban's drive for military victory -- ignoring pledges to negotiate a transition of power -- will raise questions about whether its promises to prevent al-Qaeda from rebuilding safe havens in Afghanistan can be trusted.
Biden was said by close associates to be "resolute" in his decision to withdraw U.S. forces, despite the rapidly deteriorating situation and the temporary return of troops to shepherd the sharp reduction in U.S. Embassy personnel. Biden has felt strongly since 2009 that the United States should pursue only a limited mission in Afghanistan, and as president he moved quickly to withdraw troops despite contrary advice from Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The speed of the Taliban's advance has been a stunning demonstration of battlefield momentum, in which one victory fuels another, and of the immense psychological impact of Biden's decision to withdraw all U.S. combat troops without a solid plan to stabilize the country afterward. For Biden and other senior officials, the biggest surprise is that the Afghan military hasn't performed better on the battlefield since the president announced he would pull the plug.
Against those who argue that Biden should have retained the 2,500 U.S. troops stationed in Afghanistan when he became president, administration officials contend that maintaining the status quo with such a small force would have been impossible. The Taliban would have resumed attacks on U.S. forces, prompting the United States to consider adding more troops and perhaps beginning another fruitless cycle in what seems like an endless war.
The Taliban's blitz has surprised senior administration officials. Since Biden's withdrawal announcement in April, the insurgents have swept across the country. Maps of Afghanistan compiled by the Long War Journal have shown Taliban control spreading like a massive ink blot, with only a small area of government control in the center.
The Taliban escalated its campaign a week ago, moving to seize provincial capitals that have fallen like a row of dominoes and mounting a surprisingly sophisticated campaign. They moved early in the north, knowing that this region had spawned the Northern Alliance under Ahmad Shah Massoud that drove the Taliban from power in 2001. The Taliban deployed their own version of special operations forces, known as "red units," which helped break government defenses. When they seized provincial capitals such as Kunduz, they freed prisoners held there, augmenting their forces.
The Taliban also control major exit routes from the country, after seizing what U.S. officials say were more than half of the 14 crossing points in recent days. The sense of entrapment is likely to increase the panic among Afghan civilians. The Biden administration has pledged to aid the departure of Afghans who worked with U.S. forces, one reason for the additional troops. But amid the chaos, those promises will be hard to keep.
What appears ahead is a battle for Kabul itself, a bloody confrontation from which the Biden administration is trying to extricate as many Americans as possible. The Taliban, having nearly encircled the approaches to the capital, may decide to delay the final battle.
U.S. officials hope the Taliban will be deterred by a warning this week from neighbors -- Pakistan, Russia, China and Turkey -- that they won't recognize a Taliban government if the insurgents take power by force. This diplomatic pressure is welcome, but late and limited. Many key countries have been displaying the diplomatic equivalent of schadenfreude -- savoring America's predicament rather than considering their own future difficulties.
The Taliban will have difficulty swallowing Afghanistan, for all its success on the battlefield. Afghanistan has become an increasingly urban and modern society since the U.S. invasion in 2001. The Taliban's military forces number only about 80,000, in a country of about 39 million. For millions of Afghan women, who have been attending schools and universities the past two decades and sharing in a freer country, the prospect of a Taliban return to power is especially bleak.
On paper, the Afghan government's military is nearly four times larger than the Taliban. But they lack the organization, discipline and will to combat the insurgents. As Carter Malkasian writes in "The American War in Afghanistan," his superb new history, "The Taliban exemplified something that inspired, something that made them powerful in battle, something closely tied to what it meant to be Afghan."
That story was written in blood across the country this week.
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Contact David Ignatius on Twitter @IgnatiusPost