Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) wrote in a 2009 op-ed in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel about the Affordable Care Act: "Before members even had time to read the 1,000-page bill, it already has cleared two major House committees." "Those members of Congress who voted for this bill already in their committees did so without knowing what the legislation costs."
The Affordable Care Act took months to enact, and in that time there was extensive committee consideration, outreach to the major healthcare organizations and opportunity for public input. The GOP's American Health Care Act was rushed through in seventeen days from introduction to the first scheduled vote. Three House committees jammed the bill through in one marathon session each and the GOP even waived the one-day rule between the House Rules Committee's release of the bill and the first scheduled vote. After the first two scheduled votes were scrubbed due to insufficient votes for passage, amendments were being done on the fly and the last amendment, that brought over enough votes for a two-vote margin, was negotiated among two GOP lawmakers and President Trump -- Trump had become a legislator in that process.
Ryan also criticized the Democrats for voting on the bill before the Congressional Budget Office had time to score it; however, he was rushing to get a vote on AHCA before the CBO had time to score it, because he knew the score was going to be very bad. Ironically, the addition of $8 billion to the bill was the thing that brought over just enough votes to squeeze it through the House with a two-vote margin, was supposed to help fund the high-risk pool for those who would otherwise lose insurance coverage, but was only four percent of what was needed to fill a shortfall, and didn't even mention "high-risk pool" in the amended language.
In regard to high-risk pools, Speaker Paul was either badly informed or flat-out lying when he informed the nation and the world that high-risk pools have performed well in the past. High-risk pools have significantly raised premium costs for the insured, are expensive to administer, and have been characterized by high deductibles, low annual and lifetime caps. A $74,000 annual cap found in one instance, would not come close to covering a $300,000 drug a patient must take.
Ryan, a devotee of Ayn Rand, who hated collective action and made a hero of the rugged individual who made his way in life without the help of any collective entity, is so rhetorically linked to freedom, that he has said it is a good thing that people have the freedom not to have to buy insurance. What if FDR had included in his Four Freedoms, the freedom not to have to buy insurance?
GOP hypocrisy is not limited to Speaker Ryan, by far, as GOP lawmakers in the Senate have gone along with Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's open declaration that his intent was to make Barack Obama a one-term president, and not to even give Supreme Court nominee, Merritt Garland, a hearing. President Trump's Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch, was not only rushed through the confirmation process but McConnell used the "nuclear option" --requiring only 51 votes -- to get Senate approval.
The GOP even abused the committee process to try to rush through Trump's Cabinet appointees with the least possible public examination of their qualifications. The attempt was to schedule as many of the committee hearings as possible to begin on the same day, so as to limit media coverage. It was only the absence of required paperwork that caused some hearings to be delayed. Senator Grassley scheduled his hearing for Education Secretary designee, Betsy DeVos, to begin at 5 in the afternoon and limited committee members to one round of questioning.
Even now, thirteen GOP senators, all men, are meeting behind closed doors to try to hammer out a substitute for the highly unpopular ACA replacement bill sent over from the House. No Democrats are welcome and the public is in the dark.
Turning now to the assault on a Guardian newspaper reporter by the GOP candidate for the U.S. House from the state-wide district in Montana --Montana has only one House representative. On the night before the election, the candidate, Greg Gianforte, assaulted the reporter. Although there was no video of the assault, the audio clearly indicated that Gianforte was doing the assaulting. At the end, he ordered the reporter out of the room.
The Gianforte campaign put out a statement placing the blame on the assault on the reporter, because he had been too aggressive in trying to get Gianforte's views on the AHCA. It also identified the reporter as a "liberal," knowing that many GOP rank-and-file members have a highly negative impression of liberals. Fortunately for the cause of some measure of truth prevailing, a Fox News reporter present said that Gianforte put his two arms around the reporter's neck, pulled him down to the floor and began punching him.
Reaction to the assault by GOP members and lawmakers was rather mild for the most part: one voter for Gianforte said he had heard of the assault but didn't know how serious it was; a second said the assault made no impression on him; one U.S. House member had no criticism to make of Gianforte; and Speaker Ryan only asked for Gianforte to apologize. Senator Ben Sasse (R-Nebraska) registered perhaps the strongest criticism of the assault.
Rush Limbaugh, once considered to be the GOP kingmaker, called the assault "manly" and "studly."
Not only could Gianforte be sentenced to six months in jail, filing a false report to law enforcement is considered to be a crime in some legal jurisdictions.
ADDENDUMS:
*President Trump was thrilled with his audience with the Pope. When confronted by power, Trump becomes very deferential.
*Today, Trump announced U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Agreement on climate change. This goes against the advice of the Secretary of State and, apparently, against an appeal from the Pope. Details are in the offing and Trump could change his mind. Gary Cohn, a chief economic adviser to Trump, had recently said that Trump's views on climate change were "evolving." Apparently they evolved to his long-held position.
*Trump told Philippine President Delerte that the U.S. had two nuclear-armed submarines near North Korea. Information about the location of U.S. subs is considered to be highly classified.
*Trump also praised the Philippine President for his conduct of the drug war. Thousands of people have been killed in the drug war, with Delerte being personally involved in some of the killings.
*Both Jeff Sessions and Jared Kushner failed to disclose contacts with Russian officials on their security forms. The defense being offered for Sessions is that as a senator he had so many contacts that he couldn't mention them all.
*President Trump said at the G7 summit that he would not call terrorists "monsters;" instead, he would henceforth call them "losers." Given that Trump has called so many people "losers", it might be hard to distinguish which are ordinary "losers" and which are terrorists.
Wednesday, May 31, 2017
Tuesday, May 30, 2017
A Successful Trump Presidency Based on Campaign Promises
What would a successful Trump presidency look like based on his campaign promises? Listed below are 20 promises that Trump made, although these 20 fall far short of the some 262 promises that the Washington Post is tracking.
1. He will build a "great wall," which Mexico will pay for.
2. Based on his definitive Arizona speech, all 11 million Mexican undocumented immigrants will be sent back home.
3. He will re-introduce torture that will go "well beyond" waterboarding.
4. He will authorize military personnel to commit war crimes. Although he made a later statement that he will follow the law on war crimes, he also told CNN's Anderson Cooper that laws in this area were too restrictive.
5. He pledged at least twice that he would order the killing of suspected terrorists' families and has never repudiated that pledge.
6. He initially proposed a ban on immigration of Muslims and then in a "Sixty Minutes" interview, he said he would impose the ban on territories, which he then did in two executive orders directed at heavily-Muslim nations.
7. When asked in the primaries if he supported the federal minimum wage, the first time he said wages were already too high; the second time he said he would leave it up to the states; and the third time, he supported an increase to $10, with the figure coming from Fox's Bill O'Reilly.
8. On Planned Parenthood defunding, he initially was against it, but now supports defunding at the national government level.
9. On right-to-work, he would apparently leave it up to the states.
10. Before the Wisconsin primary, Trump told an interviewer that pregnant women who have an abortion must pay a penalty, yet by 5 p.m. Eastern time that same day, he said such women were "victims." About three months later, Trump told John Dickerson of CBS News that abortion is murder.
11. On policy toward ISIS, he gave several ways he would do it during the primaries, but at the Commander-in-Chief town hall meeting, he said he had a secret plan, which could not be revealed to ISIS. He also had said he knew more about ISIS than did the generals, but he would give selected generals 30 days to come up with a plan.
12. MSNBC's Joe Scarbrough said that when Trump met with a foreign policy expert, Trump asked the expert three times why we can't use nuclear weapons.
13. He advocated the proliferation of nuclear weapons by saying that nations like Japan, South Korea and Saudi Arabia should get them.
14. He opposed so-called "common sense" restrictions on guns.
15. On North Carolina's HB2, he initially opposed it, but then said that gender bathroom use should be left up to the states.
16. His income tax plan would reduce revenue by $7.2 trillion over ten years and $20.9 trillion over 20 years, according to the Tax Policy Center; also, the after-tax savings would range from 10 to 16 percent for the top one percent and 0.8 to 1.9 percent for the bottom 80 percent of tax filers.
17. Trump called the U.S. military a "disaster" and "miserable" and needs a major rebuilding.
18. He supported the police shootings of unarmed citizens, except in the one case were the shooter was a female.
19. He was a strong foe of efforts to reduce human-created global warming and once said global warming was a Chinese hoax. He later told a Miami, Florida newspaper that it should be left up to local jurisdictions.
20. He said on several occasions that he would not support a replacement of the Affordable Care Act that did not cover everyone and reduce premiums, but, of course, he has strongly supported a replacement that doesn't do either.
1. He will build a "great wall," which Mexico will pay for.
2. Based on his definitive Arizona speech, all 11 million Mexican undocumented immigrants will be sent back home.
3. He will re-introduce torture that will go "well beyond" waterboarding.
4. He will authorize military personnel to commit war crimes. Although he made a later statement that he will follow the law on war crimes, he also told CNN's Anderson Cooper that laws in this area were too restrictive.
5. He pledged at least twice that he would order the killing of suspected terrorists' families and has never repudiated that pledge.
6. He initially proposed a ban on immigration of Muslims and then in a "Sixty Minutes" interview, he said he would impose the ban on territories, which he then did in two executive orders directed at heavily-Muslim nations.
7. When asked in the primaries if he supported the federal minimum wage, the first time he said wages were already too high; the second time he said he would leave it up to the states; and the third time, he supported an increase to $10, with the figure coming from Fox's Bill O'Reilly.
8. On Planned Parenthood defunding, he initially was against it, but now supports defunding at the national government level.
9. On right-to-work, he would apparently leave it up to the states.
10. Before the Wisconsin primary, Trump told an interviewer that pregnant women who have an abortion must pay a penalty, yet by 5 p.m. Eastern time that same day, he said such women were "victims." About three months later, Trump told John Dickerson of CBS News that abortion is murder.
11. On policy toward ISIS, he gave several ways he would do it during the primaries, but at the Commander-in-Chief town hall meeting, he said he had a secret plan, which could not be revealed to ISIS. He also had said he knew more about ISIS than did the generals, but he would give selected generals 30 days to come up with a plan.
12. MSNBC's Joe Scarbrough said that when Trump met with a foreign policy expert, Trump asked the expert three times why we can't use nuclear weapons.
13. He advocated the proliferation of nuclear weapons by saying that nations like Japan, South Korea and Saudi Arabia should get them.
14. He opposed so-called "common sense" restrictions on guns.
15. On North Carolina's HB2, he initially opposed it, but then said that gender bathroom use should be left up to the states.
16. His income tax plan would reduce revenue by $7.2 trillion over ten years and $20.9 trillion over 20 years, according to the Tax Policy Center; also, the after-tax savings would range from 10 to 16 percent for the top one percent and 0.8 to 1.9 percent for the bottom 80 percent of tax filers.
17. Trump called the U.S. military a "disaster" and "miserable" and needs a major rebuilding.
18. He supported the police shootings of unarmed citizens, except in the one case were the shooter was a female.
19. He was a strong foe of efforts to reduce human-created global warming and once said global warming was a Chinese hoax. He later told a Miami, Florida newspaper that it should be left up to local jurisdictions.
20. He said on several occasions that he would not support a replacement of the Affordable Care Act that did not cover everyone and reduce premiums, but, of course, he has strongly supported a replacement that doesn't do either.
Thursday, May 25, 2017
Military Matters
37 - Military actions authorized by Congress since 2001.
14 - Countries attacked by the US since 2001.
1942 - Last year that Congress formally declared war.
11 - Number of formally declared wars fought by the US since its founding in 1776.
138 - Countries that the US is currently involved in militarily. (Source: Mariam Elba, "DC By the Numbers," The Nation, May 8/15, 2017).
New Labor
IM - People who marched in 2006's A Day Without Immigrants.
680 - People swept up in ICE raids the week before 2017's A Day Without Immigrants.
100+ - People fired the day after the march for participating.
1,488 - Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) statuses revoked under Trump and Obama combined as of April 19. (Source: Skanda Kadirgamar, "DC By the Numbers, The Nation, May 12/19, 2017).
GOP Lies About the AHCA
1. It protects people with preexisting conditions. Fact: States may waive coverage and high-risk pool costs may be too high.
2. It protects older Americans from increased premium costs. Fact: A 5 to 1 ratio in premium cost exceeds the 3 to 1 ratio found in the ACA.
3. It charges everyone the same for insurance. Fact: See 1. and 2.
4. It allows for every person to have access to kind of coverage that they want. Fact: I could have access to a $10 million home but wouldn't have anywhere near enough money to buy it. Also, the tax credits are, in many cases, insufficient to cover insurance costs.
5. Health and housing secretary Tom Price says that the elimination of $880 billion in Medicaid spending over ten years would allow the states to experiment more. Fact: This should stand as one of the most absurd statements made in U.S. political history. Because states and insured individuals couldn't pick up this mass money loss, the only alternative is to drop millions of people off the rolls.
ADDENDUM:
*A prisoner in Ohio, Ricky Jackson, spent 39 years on Death Row before a key witness admitted to lying in the testimony that led to his conviction.
*Wind industry jobs increased from about 50,000 to sightly over 100,000 from 2008 and 2016. Coal mining jobs dropped from about 260,000 in 1984 to about 50,000 in 2016. (Sources: American Wind Energy Association, US Department of Commerce, and Bureau of Labor Statistics).
37 - Military actions authorized by Congress since 2001.
14 - Countries attacked by the US since 2001.
1942 - Last year that Congress formally declared war.
11 - Number of formally declared wars fought by the US since its founding in 1776.
138 - Countries that the US is currently involved in militarily. (Source: Mariam Elba, "DC By the Numbers," The Nation, May 8/15, 2017).
New Labor
IM - People who marched in 2006's A Day Without Immigrants.
680 - People swept up in ICE raids the week before 2017's A Day Without Immigrants.
100+ - People fired the day after the march for participating.
1,488 - Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) statuses revoked under Trump and Obama combined as of April 19. (Source: Skanda Kadirgamar, "DC By the Numbers, The Nation, May 12/19, 2017).
GOP Lies About the AHCA
1. It protects people with preexisting conditions. Fact: States may waive coverage and high-risk pool costs may be too high.
2. It protects older Americans from increased premium costs. Fact: A 5 to 1 ratio in premium cost exceeds the 3 to 1 ratio found in the ACA.
3. It charges everyone the same for insurance. Fact: See 1. and 2.
4. It allows for every person to have access to kind of coverage that they want. Fact: I could have access to a $10 million home but wouldn't have anywhere near enough money to buy it. Also, the tax credits are, in many cases, insufficient to cover insurance costs.
5. Health and housing secretary Tom Price says that the elimination of $880 billion in Medicaid spending over ten years would allow the states to experiment more. Fact: This should stand as one of the most absurd statements made in U.S. political history. Because states and insured individuals couldn't pick up this mass money loss, the only alternative is to drop millions of people off the rolls.
ADDENDUM:
*A prisoner in Ohio, Ricky Jackson, spent 39 years on Death Row before a key witness admitted to lying in the testimony that led to his conviction.
*Wind industry jobs increased from about 50,000 to sightly over 100,000 from 2008 and 2016. Coal mining jobs dropped from about 260,000 in 1984 to about 50,000 in 2016. (Sources: American Wind Energy Association, US Department of Commerce, and Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Wednesday, May 24, 2017
Higher Education Racism and De-Escalation Training
The Georgia Board of Regents, which oversees the university system, has instituted a policy barring undocumented students from the state's top five public schools. Georgia has thirty-five public colleges, serving about three hundred and ten thousand students, of which some five hundred are undocumented; only twenty-nine undocumented students are enrolled at the top five schools. Only two other states -- South Carolina and Alabama -- ban undocumented students from public universities. [1]
"Each year, about three thousand undocumented students graduate from high school in Georgia, but their opportunities for college are severely limited. At the public universities they're still allowed to attend, they must pay out-of-state tuition, more than double what state residents pay. To matriculate at private colleges, they have to apply as international students."
"The University of Georgia in Athens, did not accept black students until 1961. The following year, in an effort to maintain segregation, the state spent four hundred and fifty thousand dollars on grants and scholarships to send black students from Georgia to institutions in other states."
"Between 1954 and 1965, black children in Mississippi made up fifty-seven per cent of school-age students, but received only thirteen per cent of the state's spending for education." "In Prince Edward County, Virginia, in 1959, the local government shut down the public school system in order to resist integration." [2]
Police Need De-Escalation Training
Diane Dimond's Saturday column for the Albuquerque Journal often focuses on law enforcement issues, which, to my mind, too often reflect the "them against us" mentality of police officers; moreover, she adheres to Jeff Sessions's strong opposition to consent decrees. Yet, at times, she can present an informed insight into law enforcement failings, such as the article on de-escalation training appearing in this past Saturday's issue.
"Databases maintained by the Washington Post and the Guardian newspaper conclude that there were about 1,000 fatal encounters between police and civilians in 2016. So far this year, the Post reports more than 350 people have died at the hands of a duly sworn officer of the law. " Mental health figured into one in five of the fatal cases. [3]
"According to a recent American Public Media analysis, 34 states do not offer or require officers to take courses on the best ways to defuse a potentially explosive situation." "Teaching law enforcement recruits to demand immediate and total compliance from a citizen or that they should always 'shoot to kill' are outdated strategies."
ADDENDUMS:
*Mexican Economy Minister Guajardo told the Mexico Business Forum that "if you guys [the U.S.] think we're going to start negotiations with a trigger pulled on a U.S. exit in six months, forget about it." He added: "If you do that, just get out already -- because there's no way we're negotiating under those conditions."
*Despite Trump administration claims that the raid in Yemen netted extensive intelligence, reports surfaced that there were at least 30 civilian deaths. According to Reuters, U.S. military officials said that Trump approved his first counterterrorism operation without sufficient intelligence, ground support or adequate backup preparation.
Footnotes
[1] Jonathan Blitzer, "American Studies," The New Yorker, May 22, 2017.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Diane Dimond, "Officers need better de-escalation training," Albuquerque Journal, May 20, 2017.
"Each year, about three thousand undocumented students graduate from high school in Georgia, but their opportunities for college are severely limited. At the public universities they're still allowed to attend, they must pay out-of-state tuition, more than double what state residents pay. To matriculate at private colleges, they have to apply as international students."
"The University of Georgia in Athens, did not accept black students until 1961. The following year, in an effort to maintain segregation, the state spent four hundred and fifty thousand dollars on grants and scholarships to send black students from Georgia to institutions in other states."
"Between 1954 and 1965, black children in Mississippi made up fifty-seven per cent of school-age students, but received only thirteen per cent of the state's spending for education." "In Prince Edward County, Virginia, in 1959, the local government shut down the public school system in order to resist integration." [2]
Police Need De-Escalation Training
Diane Dimond's Saturday column for the Albuquerque Journal often focuses on law enforcement issues, which, to my mind, too often reflect the "them against us" mentality of police officers; moreover, she adheres to Jeff Sessions's strong opposition to consent decrees. Yet, at times, she can present an informed insight into law enforcement failings, such as the article on de-escalation training appearing in this past Saturday's issue.
"Databases maintained by the Washington Post and the Guardian newspaper conclude that there were about 1,000 fatal encounters between police and civilians in 2016. So far this year, the Post reports more than 350 people have died at the hands of a duly sworn officer of the law. " Mental health figured into one in five of the fatal cases. [3]
"According to a recent American Public Media analysis, 34 states do not offer or require officers to take courses on the best ways to defuse a potentially explosive situation." "Teaching law enforcement recruits to demand immediate and total compliance from a citizen or that they should always 'shoot to kill' are outdated strategies."
ADDENDUMS:
*Mexican Economy Minister Guajardo told the Mexico Business Forum that "if you guys [the U.S.] think we're going to start negotiations with a trigger pulled on a U.S. exit in six months, forget about it." He added: "If you do that, just get out already -- because there's no way we're negotiating under those conditions."
*Despite Trump administration claims that the raid in Yemen netted extensive intelligence, reports surfaced that there were at least 30 civilian deaths. According to Reuters, U.S. military officials said that Trump approved his first counterterrorism operation without sufficient intelligence, ground support or adequate backup preparation.
Footnotes
[1] Jonathan Blitzer, "American Studies," The New Yorker, May 22, 2017.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Diane Dimond, "Officers need better de-escalation training," Albuquerque Journal, May 20, 2017.
Tuesday, May 23, 2017
Sex Laws Go Back and Forth, and More
A Very Brief History of Sex Laws
There is a narrative in which the laws and conventions around sex have moved from more to less permissive and back again many times over. "The federal Comstock Act of 1873 made it a crime to send contraceptives or instructions to their use through the mail, and numerous 'little' Comstock acts introduced similar restrictions in the states." In 1972, the Supreme Court ruled in Eisenstadt v. Baird that the Constitution didn't permit states to treat married and unmarried couples differently with respect to contraceptive laws. In effect, the ruling defined a constitutional right to use birth control. [1]
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Buck v. Bell that forced sterilization didn't violate the Constitution. A consequence was that countless blacks and Native Americans were forcibly sterilized after being falsely diagnosed as "feeble-minded," a practice that lasted in some places into the 1970s. [2]
The Death Penalty Doesn't Deter and Kills the Innocent
"The Eighth Amendment prohibition against 'cruel and unusual' punishment served as a measure of the elastic morality that facilitates the death penalty." "Data from the Death Penalty Information Center show that, in the past forty years, there have been eleven hundred and eighty executions in the South, compared with four in the Northeast, yet homicide figures in 2015 were nearly seventy per cent higher in Southern states than in Northeastern ones." "Since 1973, a hundred and fifty-eight inmates on death row have been exonerated of the crimes for which they were sent there." [3]
"The condemned men perpetrated a litany of horrors, but the rationales for putting them to death -- a decades-delayed catharsis for the victims' families, a lottery-slim chance that some future violence will be deterred -- are as close to their extinction as Arkansas's supply of midazolam."
President Trump's Real Base
The polling firm designated as "Five-Thirty Eight" reported in May 2016 that "the median income of a Trump voter so far in the primaries is about $72,000," or roughly 130 percent of the national medium. "Trump's real base, the actual backbone of fascism, isn't poor and working-class and affluent whites." "Trump's most institutionally entrenched middle-class base includes police and Border Patrol unions."
"Location became the first rule of real estate, suburban homeowners nurtured racist attitudes, whites deluding themselves that they weren't excluding black people for reasons beyond their pocketbooks." "To the contrary, the form of economic anxiety propelling the racism of devoted Trump supporters is associated with paying taxes; with jealously guarding their modest savings; with stopping black people from moving nearby and diminishing the value of their property and thus the quality of their kids' schools; and with preserving the patriarchal family structure that facilitates it all." [4]
ADDENDUM:
*The San Antonio Express News has reported that the Texas state House has passed a bill that includes an amendment banning doctors from vaccinating children who are new entries to the foster care system.
Footnotes
[1] Anna North, "The Work of Equality," The Nation, May 22/29, 2017.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Jelani Cobb, "Out of Time," The New Yorker, May 8, 2017.
[4] Jesse A. Myerson, "White, Black & Red," The Nation, May 22/29, 2017.
There is a narrative in which the laws and conventions around sex have moved from more to less permissive and back again many times over. "The federal Comstock Act of 1873 made it a crime to send contraceptives or instructions to their use through the mail, and numerous 'little' Comstock acts introduced similar restrictions in the states." In 1972, the Supreme Court ruled in Eisenstadt v. Baird that the Constitution didn't permit states to treat married and unmarried couples differently with respect to contraceptive laws. In effect, the ruling defined a constitutional right to use birth control. [1]
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Buck v. Bell that forced sterilization didn't violate the Constitution. A consequence was that countless blacks and Native Americans were forcibly sterilized after being falsely diagnosed as "feeble-minded," a practice that lasted in some places into the 1970s. [2]
The Death Penalty Doesn't Deter and Kills the Innocent
"The Eighth Amendment prohibition against 'cruel and unusual' punishment served as a measure of the elastic morality that facilitates the death penalty." "Data from the Death Penalty Information Center show that, in the past forty years, there have been eleven hundred and eighty executions in the South, compared with four in the Northeast, yet homicide figures in 2015 were nearly seventy per cent higher in Southern states than in Northeastern ones." "Since 1973, a hundred and fifty-eight inmates on death row have been exonerated of the crimes for which they were sent there." [3]
"The condemned men perpetrated a litany of horrors, but the rationales for putting them to death -- a decades-delayed catharsis for the victims' families, a lottery-slim chance that some future violence will be deterred -- are as close to their extinction as Arkansas's supply of midazolam."
President Trump's Real Base
The polling firm designated as "Five-Thirty Eight" reported in May 2016 that "the median income of a Trump voter so far in the primaries is about $72,000," or roughly 130 percent of the national medium. "Trump's real base, the actual backbone of fascism, isn't poor and working-class and affluent whites." "Trump's most institutionally entrenched middle-class base includes police and Border Patrol unions."
"Location became the first rule of real estate, suburban homeowners nurtured racist attitudes, whites deluding themselves that they weren't excluding black people for reasons beyond their pocketbooks." "To the contrary, the form of economic anxiety propelling the racism of devoted Trump supporters is associated with paying taxes; with jealously guarding their modest savings; with stopping black people from moving nearby and diminishing the value of their property and thus the quality of their kids' schools; and with preserving the patriarchal family structure that facilitates it all." [4]
ADDENDUM:
*The San Antonio Express News has reported that the Texas state House has passed a bill that includes an amendment banning doctors from vaccinating children who are new entries to the foster care system.
Footnotes
[1] Anna North, "The Work of Equality," The Nation, May 22/29, 2017.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Jelani Cobb, "Out of Time," The New Yorker, May 8, 2017.
[4] Jesse A. Myerson, "White, Black & Red," The Nation, May 22/29, 2017.
Monday, May 22, 2017
Some Perspectives on President Trump
Trump: the Populist Demagogue
"He [Trump] inherited his father's outer-borough real-estate empire -- a considerable enterprise distinguished by racist federal-housing violations -- using the language of populist demagogues, from Huey Long to George Wallace to Silvio Berlusconi, the new President implied that he, the Leader, was in perfect communion with the People, and that together they would repair the landscape of 'American carnage' and return it to its [prior] state of grace." [1]
"Trump has left open hundreds of important positions in government, largely because he sees no value in them." "[His] language, his tone, his personal behavior, all suggest, and foster, a politics of resentment."
"If we were ever naive enough to believe that progress in political life is inevitable, we are experiencing the contradiction." "Trump forces us to recognize the fragility of precious things." "The task now is to not merely recognize this presidency for the emergency it is, and to resist the assault on the principles of reality and the values of liberal democracy, but to devise a future, to debate, to hear one another, to organize, to preserve and revive precious things."
"Tearing Off the Mask"
There is a "more frightening thought than calling Trump a lunatic and an abomination. He is the logical extension of the way the Republican Party has been operating since Barry Goldwater. This is how the Republican Party has gotten votes for 50 years -- Trump is just tearing off the mask. Now he just says right out the racism that was only barely hidden for so long. An accurate history would show that it's always been there. We shouldn't just talk about how weird Trump is." [2]
Culture Wars
"Roughly 750,000 of the estimated 11 million people living in the United States without permission have successfully proven themselves to fit the DACA qualifications and thus have been deemed worthy neighbors." "[The] Trump administration isn't actually debating immigration policy; it seeks an ongoing debate about the criminality of people of color, a constant parsing of which among us are rapists, drug dealers, and terrorists, and which are the 'great people' that Trump allows do exist. If we accept these terms of debate, we accept our inhumanity, which is the point." [3]
"The Trump administration is staffed by people -- Jeff Sessions, John Kelly, Steve Bannon, the president himself -- who have been waging a cultural battle against the idea of the hero immigrant for years, choosing instead to emphasize immigrant criminality."
ADDENDUMS:
*President Trump's gallery of strongmen includes: Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Um, Rodrigo Duterte, Recep T. Erdogan, and Abdel Fattah Sisi.
* Trump says he hasn't spoken to Roger Stone for "a long time;" Stone says they spoke recently.
*Preet Bharara, U.S. Attorney in New York, was fired after Trump told him personally he would not be fired, because he was involved in a very sensitive case that might have a connection to Trump.
*Alone in the Oval Office with James Comey, Trump opened the discussion by saying that Comey should consider putting reporters in prison for publishing classified information.
*Trump said that the Russians "tricked us" by having their photographer get exclusive pictures in the Oval Office.
"He [Trump] inherited his father's outer-borough real-estate empire -- a considerable enterprise distinguished by racist federal-housing violations -- using the language of populist demagogues, from Huey Long to George Wallace to Silvio Berlusconi, the new President implied that he, the Leader, was in perfect communion with the People, and that together they would repair the landscape of 'American carnage' and return it to its [prior] state of grace." [1]
"Trump has left open hundreds of important positions in government, largely because he sees no value in them." "[His] language, his tone, his personal behavior, all suggest, and foster, a politics of resentment."
"If we were ever naive enough to believe that progress in political life is inevitable, we are experiencing the contradiction." "Trump forces us to recognize the fragility of precious things." "The task now is to not merely recognize this presidency for the emergency it is, and to resist the assault on the principles of reality and the values of liberal democracy, but to devise a future, to debate, to hear one another, to organize, to preserve and revive precious things."
"Tearing Off the Mask"
There is a "more frightening thought than calling Trump a lunatic and an abomination. He is the logical extension of the way the Republican Party has been operating since Barry Goldwater. This is how the Republican Party has gotten votes for 50 years -- Trump is just tearing off the mask. Now he just says right out the racism that was only barely hidden for so long. An accurate history would show that it's always been there. We shouldn't just talk about how weird Trump is." [2]
Culture Wars
"Roughly 750,000 of the estimated 11 million people living in the United States without permission have successfully proven themselves to fit the DACA qualifications and thus have been deemed worthy neighbors." "[The] Trump administration isn't actually debating immigration policy; it seeks an ongoing debate about the criminality of people of color, a constant parsing of which among us are rapists, drug dealers, and terrorists, and which are the 'great people' that Trump allows do exist. If we accept these terms of debate, we accept our inhumanity, which is the point." [3]
"The Trump administration is staffed by people -- Jeff Sessions, John Kelly, Steve Bannon, the president himself -- who have been waging a cultural battle against the idea of the hero immigrant for years, choosing instead to emphasize immigrant criminality."
ADDENDUMS:
*President Trump's gallery of strongmen includes: Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Um, Rodrigo Duterte, Recep T. Erdogan, and Abdel Fattah Sisi.
* Trump says he hasn't spoken to Roger Stone for "a long time;" Stone says they spoke recently.
*Preet Bharara, U.S. Attorney in New York, was fired after Trump told him personally he would not be fired, because he was involved in a very sensitive case that might have a connection to Trump.
*Alone in the Oval Office with James Comey, Trump opened the discussion by saying that Comey should consider putting reporters in prison for publishing classified information.
*Trump said that the Russians "tricked us" by having their photographer get exclusive pictures in the Oval Office.
Sunday, May 21, 2017
Some Trump Administration Lowlights
A Threat From the DOJ
Sanctuary policies lead to threats from the Department of Justice. The DOJ letters ask officials to show documentation validating their compliance with federal statute U.S.C. 1373, which prohibits any federal, state or local government entity from restricting government entities or officials from sharing information about an individual citizenship or immigration status. "Failure to comply with this condition could result in the withholding of grant funds...or other actions, as appropriate," the DOJ said in the letters. In the letters, the DOJ asks for proof of cooperation with immigration authorities, citing the terms of a specific funding mechanism, the Byrne Justice Assistance Grant or JAG program.
A report by the Pew Research Center, based on 2014 data, estimated the population of undocumented immigrants in New Mexico -- my state of residence -- at 85,000.
Trump Lowlights
Tamara Draut, writing in the 4/29/17 "The Hill," lists some Trump lowlights: Unraveling Dodd/Frank; repealing a host of EPA regulations; repealing Internet privacy protection; repealing work safety rules; and rescinding a rule that would have given 4 million workers access to overtime pay.
Draut says that Trump campaigned to serve the "forgotten men and women" and then proposed tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy, deregulation that enriches industries, and has proposed cuts to a whole host of agencies and programs that serve the very people he proposed to serve.
Easing Johnson Amendment Enforcement
A Trump executive order will ease enforcement of the Johnson Amendment, that bars religious institutions from endorsing or opposing political candidates and parties. The order directs the IRS to "exercise maximum enforcement discretion" of the amendment. Also, it orders regulatory relief for those who object to Obamacare's preventive service mandate on religious grounds.
High-Risk Pool Funding
The last-minute addition of $8 billion to the American Health Care Act was the action that swayed enough votes in the U.S. House to approve the bill by a two-vote margin. Those members who switched their votes due to it, probably didn't realize how little impact the $8 billion will have. The Center for American Progress has calculated that the funding will cover only 76,000 more people. To put this figure into perspective, the Center projects a need for $327 billion over ten years to offer a moderately subsidized high-risk pool coverage for the 1.5 million plus who qualify. The $8 billion to be paid, over five years added to the $130 billion already in the AHCA, will leave a shortage of $193 billion. The $8 billion will thus cover about four percent of the projected shortfall. It is important to keep in mind that this would be a "moderate" subsidy. Also, the 1.5 million figure is for those who fit into a high-cost preexisting condition category; it is a small percentage of those who have a preexisting condition. The Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that about a quarter of those adults under the age of 65 have a preexisting condition.
Trump's War Fever
Katrina vanden Heuvel of The Nation magazine opines that: "It is a testament to the absurdity of the 'Washington playbook' that one of the most irresponsible acts of Trump's madhouse presidency has also been one of the most applauded." [vanden Heuvel is referring to the U.S. attack on a Syrian airstrip after a chemical attack generally attributed to the Syria government].
"After railing against the foreign-policy establishment as a candidate, Trump has made it clear that his non-interventionist rhetoric, like his supposed economic populism, was a farce." "In March alone, according to "Airwars," more than 1,400 civilians were killed by US bombings in Syria and Iraq, far more than in Assad's apparent chemical attack." (Source: "Trump's War Fever," The Nation, May 8/15, 2017).
ADDENDUMS:
*A Reuters poll taken over March 28 trough April 3, found 36 percent rating the danger of racism and bigotry in America as an "imminent threat" to the country; 22 percent rated it a "serious threat;" and 18 percent rated it a "moderate threat." This poll lends weight to another poll taken in 2010, 2015 and early 2016, after a spate of police shootings of unarmed African Americans. The first poll found 30 percent of respondents believing the United States has a racial problem; the second found 60 percent believing that; and the third poll found the percentage raised to 63. The linkage here appears to be the highly publicized police shootings of unarmed, primarily minority males.
*Press secretary fill-in Sarah Huckabee Sanders said that Trump was apparently unhappy over Comey's "disloyalty" in not supporting his charge that Obama wiretapped him. He was also angry about Comey not pursuing leaks.
* CNN's Chris Cuomo told Kellyanne Conway: "Kellyanne, I've got to check what you're saying. I've got to provide the context for it. Because you're creating an image that doesn't reveal itself in facts." Kellyanne told CNN's "New Day" that it is "inappropriate" to raise questions about the timing of Trump's decision to fire James Comey. She said: "He'll do it when he wants to, just like he fired FBI Director Comey when he was faced with evidence that was unignorable."
*A new analysis has found that Wisconsin's voter-ID law reduced turn-out by 200,000 voters.
Sanctuary policies lead to threats from the Department of Justice. The DOJ letters ask officials to show documentation validating their compliance with federal statute U.S.C. 1373, which prohibits any federal, state or local government entity from restricting government entities or officials from sharing information about an individual citizenship or immigration status. "Failure to comply with this condition could result in the withholding of grant funds...or other actions, as appropriate," the DOJ said in the letters. In the letters, the DOJ asks for proof of cooperation with immigration authorities, citing the terms of a specific funding mechanism, the Byrne Justice Assistance Grant or JAG program.
A report by the Pew Research Center, based on 2014 data, estimated the population of undocumented immigrants in New Mexico -- my state of residence -- at 85,000.
Trump Lowlights
Tamara Draut, writing in the 4/29/17 "The Hill," lists some Trump lowlights: Unraveling Dodd/Frank; repealing a host of EPA regulations; repealing Internet privacy protection; repealing work safety rules; and rescinding a rule that would have given 4 million workers access to overtime pay.
Draut says that Trump campaigned to serve the "forgotten men and women" and then proposed tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy, deregulation that enriches industries, and has proposed cuts to a whole host of agencies and programs that serve the very people he proposed to serve.
Easing Johnson Amendment Enforcement
A Trump executive order will ease enforcement of the Johnson Amendment, that bars religious institutions from endorsing or opposing political candidates and parties. The order directs the IRS to "exercise maximum enforcement discretion" of the amendment. Also, it orders regulatory relief for those who object to Obamacare's preventive service mandate on religious grounds.
High-Risk Pool Funding
The last-minute addition of $8 billion to the American Health Care Act was the action that swayed enough votes in the U.S. House to approve the bill by a two-vote margin. Those members who switched their votes due to it, probably didn't realize how little impact the $8 billion will have. The Center for American Progress has calculated that the funding will cover only 76,000 more people. To put this figure into perspective, the Center projects a need for $327 billion over ten years to offer a moderately subsidized high-risk pool coverage for the 1.5 million plus who qualify. The $8 billion to be paid, over five years added to the $130 billion already in the AHCA, will leave a shortage of $193 billion. The $8 billion will thus cover about four percent of the projected shortfall. It is important to keep in mind that this would be a "moderate" subsidy. Also, the 1.5 million figure is for those who fit into a high-cost preexisting condition category; it is a small percentage of those who have a preexisting condition. The Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that about a quarter of those adults under the age of 65 have a preexisting condition.
Trump's War Fever
Katrina vanden Heuvel of The Nation magazine opines that: "It is a testament to the absurdity of the 'Washington playbook' that one of the most irresponsible acts of Trump's madhouse presidency has also been one of the most applauded." [vanden Heuvel is referring to the U.S. attack on a Syrian airstrip after a chemical attack generally attributed to the Syria government].
"After railing against the foreign-policy establishment as a candidate, Trump has made it clear that his non-interventionist rhetoric, like his supposed economic populism, was a farce." "In March alone, according to "Airwars," more than 1,400 civilians were killed by US bombings in Syria and Iraq, far more than in Assad's apparent chemical attack." (Source: "Trump's War Fever," The Nation, May 8/15, 2017).
ADDENDUMS:
*A Reuters poll taken over March 28 trough April 3, found 36 percent rating the danger of racism and bigotry in America as an "imminent threat" to the country; 22 percent rated it a "serious threat;" and 18 percent rated it a "moderate threat." This poll lends weight to another poll taken in 2010, 2015 and early 2016, after a spate of police shootings of unarmed African Americans. The first poll found 30 percent of respondents believing the United States has a racial problem; the second found 60 percent believing that; and the third poll found the percentage raised to 63. The linkage here appears to be the highly publicized police shootings of unarmed, primarily minority males.
*Press secretary fill-in Sarah Huckabee Sanders said that Trump was apparently unhappy over Comey's "disloyalty" in not supporting his charge that Obama wiretapped him. He was also angry about Comey not pursuing leaks.
* CNN's Chris Cuomo told Kellyanne Conway: "Kellyanne, I've got to check what you're saying. I've got to provide the context for it. Because you're creating an image that doesn't reveal itself in facts." Kellyanne told CNN's "New Day" that it is "inappropriate" to raise questions about the timing of Trump's decision to fire James Comey. She said: "He'll do it when he wants to, just like he fired FBI Director Comey when he was faced with evidence that was unignorable."
*A new analysis has found that Wisconsin's voter-ID law reduced turn-out by 200,000 voters.
Thursday, May 18, 2017
Creating Freedom Excerpts
Excerpts from: Raoul Martinez, "Creating Freedom" (New York: Pantheon Books, 2016)
p. 34 - "The incidence of recidivism in the US and UK hovers between 60 and 65 per cent. This is roughly 50 per cent higher than rates in less punitive nations such as Sweden, Norway, and Japan."
After reading 50 studies of recidivism, Canadian criminologist Paul Genheau could not find a single one that indicated imprisonment reduced recidivism. In fact, longer sentences were associated with a three per cent increase in reoffending rates, supporting the theory that a prison can function as a "school for crime." "In the US, almost seven out of ten males will find themselves back in jail within three years of release. And of the countries with the highest homicide rates, the top five that employ the death penalty average 41.6 murders per 100,000 people, whereas the top five with no death penalty average roughly half that number at 21.6 murders per 100,000 people." One explanation is that severe institutional punishment has a brutalizing impact on the general culture.
p. 37 - In "supermax" prisons, inmates are kept in solitary confinement 23 hours a day. It's estimated that 80,000 prisoners are currently living under these conditions.
p. 39 - Norway has a prison in which prisoners live in comfortable houses, six men to a house. That prison has a reoffend rate of 16 percent, versus an average of 70 percent for Europe.
One of the most effective strategies to stop criminals from reoffending has been to provide inmates with the opportunity to study and earn formal qualifications.
p. 41 - The U.S. Department of Education for the 2011 to 2012 school year saw 130,000 students expelled from school and seven million suspended (one for every seven students).
p. 44 - "The most established environmental determinant of violence in a society is income inequality."
p. 45 - "In the US, ten times as many people with serious mental illnesses -- such as Bipolar disorder and schizophrenia -- are in prison than in a state hospital."
p. 46 - "Across the US today, black people are more than six times as likely to be imprisoned than whites, 31 per cent more likely to be pulled over while driving than white drivers, and twice as likely to be killed by a cop (and more likely to be unarmed when killed)."
p. 47 - "A study from the University of Wisconsin in 2015 found that states with private prisons have higher rates of reoffending, and that private prisons are keeping inmates locked up longer."
p. 49 - "Today, a quarter of the world's convicts reside in America. In 2004, 360 of these [convicts] were serving life sentences for the heinous crime of shoplifting."
p. 54 - "The sea of inequality on which the legal system floats makes a mockery of the principle of equal rights before the law."
p. 64 - "For instance, in the US, only 9 per cent of students in elite universities come from the poorer half of the population."
p. 137 - The data shows that ordinary citizens have virtually no influence over what their government does in the United States. Economic elites and interest groups have a substantial degree of influence.
p. 161 - "That poverty reduces economic freedom has long been ignored or denied by the political right."
p. 167 - "Decades of studies have produced robust results confirming that advertising and the materialism it fosters is psychologically damaging."
"In the US, 10 per cent of children have moderate or severe difficulties in the areas of emotions, concentration, behavior, or being able to get along with people, and more than half of adults will suffer from some form of mental illness in their lifetimes."
p. 187 - "Two wire agencies, Associated Press (AP) and Reuters, provide the majority of the international news, pictures and video for the media."
p. 203 - "The forces that shape media output combine to create a structural bias which favors the selection of information and perspective that are supportive of elite interests. ..."
p. 274 - "Trillions of dollars rest in international tax havens while billions of people go without clean water, a nutritious diet, life-saving medicine or basic liberties."
p. 293 - "Even in the richest countries, the need for social spending is immense -- to reduce university fees, to increase the supply of affordable housing, defend adequate pensions and provide universal healthcare. To close the gap between rich and poor there is also great need for a living wage, capped incomes, comprehensive child support, stricter inheritance laws, and increased investment in deprived areas."
"In 1945, corporate tax accounted for 35 per cent of federal receipts; by 2003, it was 7 per cent."
p. 205 - In 2009, the top five health insurance companies increased their profits by an impressive 56 per cent, despite the fact that 2.9 million Americans lost their health insurance that year."
p. 315 - "The world's fossil fuel reserves are owned by corporations and governments. In 2011, these reserves were estimated to be worth $27 trillion. Market valuations change, but, barring a miraculous advance in technology, if we are to stay within a safe carbon budget, we will need to write off trillions of dollar's worth of fuel."
p. 333 - "The optimum scale of the economy is one that enables the health of the ecosystem to be preserved, renewable resources to be extracted at a rate no faster than they can be regenerated, non-renewable resources to be consumed at a rate no faster than they can be replaced by renewable substitutes, and waste to be deposited into the environment at a rate no faster than it can be safely absorbed."
p. 335 - "For every $100 of global economic growth that occurred between 1990 and 2001, only 60 cents went to those living below the $1 per day household."
p. 356 - "As of November 2014, attempts to kill forty-one targeted individuals under the US drone program sacrificed an estimated 1,147 innocent people."
p. 34 - "The incidence of recidivism in the US and UK hovers between 60 and 65 per cent. This is roughly 50 per cent higher than rates in less punitive nations such as Sweden, Norway, and Japan."
After reading 50 studies of recidivism, Canadian criminologist Paul Genheau could not find a single one that indicated imprisonment reduced recidivism. In fact, longer sentences were associated with a three per cent increase in reoffending rates, supporting the theory that a prison can function as a "school for crime." "In the US, almost seven out of ten males will find themselves back in jail within three years of release. And of the countries with the highest homicide rates, the top five that employ the death penalty average 41.6 murders per 100,000 people, whereas the top five with no death penalty average roughly half that number at 21.6 murders per 100,000 people." One explanation is that severe institutional punishment has a brutalizing impact on the general culture.
p. 37 - In "supermax" prisons, inmates are kept in solitary confinement 23 hours a day. It's estimated that 80,000 prisoners are currently living under these conditions.
p. 39 - Norway has a prison in which prisoners live in comfortable houses, six men to a house. That prison has a reoffend rate of 16 percent, versus an average of 70 percent for Europe.
One of the most effective strategies to stop criminals from reoffending has been to provide inmates with the opportunity to study and earn formal qualifications.
p. 41 - The U.S. Department of Education for the 2011 to 2012 school year saw 130,000 students expelled from school and seven million suspended (one for every seven students).
p. 44 - "The most established environmental determinant of violence in a society is income inequality."
p. 45 - "In the US, ten times as many people with serious mental illnesses -- such as Bipolar disorder and schizophrenia -- are in prison than in a state hospital."
p. 46 - "Across the US today, black people are more than six times as likely to be imprisoned than whites, 31 per cent more likely to be pulled over while driving than white drivers, and twice as likely to be killed by a cop (and more likely to be unarmed when killed)."
p. 47 - "A study from the University of Wisconsin in 2015 found that states with private prisons have higher rates of reoffending, and that private prisons are keeping inmates locked up longer."
p. 49 - "Today, a quarter of the world's convicts reside in America. In 2004, 360 of these [convicts] were serving life sentences for the heinous crime of shoplifting."
p. 54 - "The sea of inequality on which the legal system floats makes a mockery of the principle of equal rights before the law."
p. 64 - "For instance, in the US, only 9 per cent of students in elite universities come from the poorer half of the population."
p. 137 - The data shows that ordinary citizens have virtually no influence over what their government does in the United States. Economic elites and interest groups have a substantial degree of influence.
p. 161 - "That poverty reduces economic freedom has long been ignored or denied by the political right."
p. 167 - "Decades of studies have produced robust results confirming that advertising and the materialism it fosters is psychologically damaging."
"In the US, 10 per cent of children have moderate or severe difficulties in the areas of emotions, concentration, behavior, or being able to get along with people, and more than half of adults will suffer from some form of mental illness in their lifetimes."
p. 187 - "Two wire agencies, Associated Press (AP) and Reuters, provide the majority of the international news, pictures and video for the media."
p. 203 - "The forces that shape media output combine to create a structural bias which favors the selection of information and perspective that are supportive of elite interests. ..."
p. 274 - "Trillions of dollars rest in international tax havens while billions of people go without clean water, a nutritious diet, life-saving medicine or basic liberties."
p. 293 - "Even in the richest countries, the need for social spending is immense -- to reduce university fees, to increase the supply of affordable housing, defend adequate pensions and provide universal healthcare. To close the gap between rich and poor there is also great need for a living wage, capped incomes, comprehensive child support, stricter inheritance laws, and increased investment in deprived areas."
"In 1945, corporate tax accounted for 35 per cent of federal receipts; by 2003, it was 7 per cent."
p. 205 - In 2009, the top five health insurance companies increased their profits by an impressive 56 per cent, despite the fact that 2.9 million Americans lost their health insurance that year."
p. 315 - "The world's fossil fuel reserves are owned by corporations and governments. In 2011, these reserves were estimated to be worth $27 trillion. Market valuations change, but, barring a miraculous advance in technology, if we are to stay within a safe carbon budget, we will need to write off trillions of dollar's worth of fuel."
p. 333 - "The optimum scale of the economy is one that enables the health of the ecosystem to be preserved, renewable resources to be extracted at a rate no faster than they can be regenerated, non-renewable resources to be consumed at a rate no faster than they can be replaced by renewable substitutes, and waste to be deposited into the environment at a rate no faster than it can be safely absorbed."
p. 335 - "For every $100 of global economic growth that occurred between 1990 and 2001, only 60 cents went to those living below the $1 per day household."
p. 356 - "As of November 2014, attempts to kill forty-one targeted individuals under the US drone program sacrificed an estimated 1,147 innocent people."
Wednesday, May 17, 2017
American Criminal Justice Excerpts
Excerpts from: William J. Stintz, "The Collapse of American Criminal Justice" (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011)
p. 92 - "Felony courts 'often' docked 60 felony indictments in a day. Court business is conducted in a swirl of activity as judges seek to 'move' crowded calendars."
p. 105 - "[There] exist in some places a culture of resistance among prosecutors even to providing the discovery that is legally required." "As measured by DNA evidence from the crime scenes, approximately 25 percent of those the police initially believed to be the perpetrators were not guilty."
p. 117 - "Increasing punishment was driven by public moods of fear and then punitiveness..."
p. 120 - "Recommendations are to have many more cases go to juries and not be plea bargained; less bureaucracy; and more public funding for public defenders."
p. 141 - "And we could require probable cause as determined by an 'impartial magistrate' as a precondition for interrogation at all, conceding, in effect, that detectives will inevitably want to win the 'game' of interrogation of the 'competitive' enterprise of ferreting out crime." "Interrogations should be taped and there should be a prohibition on deceptiveness in the interrogation process, especially lying about the existence of physical evidence."
Excerpts from: Raymond Bonner, "Anatomy of Injustice" (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2012)
p. 34 - In the mid-1960s: "Nearly half the individuals being executed were black (even though they made up some 13 percent of the population)."
p. 37 - "The Court's decision in Furman overturned the death penalty in the forty states where it could be applied and in the District of Columbia as well for the federal government."
p. 147 - "Innocence alone does not entitle a defendant to a new trial. In Herrera v. Collins, Chief Justice William Rehnquist said in the majority opinion that after a defendant has had a fair trial, 'the presumption of innocence disappears.' " "Justice Blackmun said that it was 'contrary to any standard of decency to execute someone who is actually innocent.' He said it 'comes perilously close to simple murder.' "
p. 268 - "In Atkins v. Virginia, the Supreme Court, in a 6 to 3 decision, ruled that the execution of someone mentally retarded was proscribed by the Eighth Amendment."
ADDENDUMS:
*Of 192 questionnaires in the [Phil, music impresario] Specter case, 40% of the jurors believe a criminal defendant is obligated to prove his or her innocence. (Source: Richard Gabriel, "Acquitted" (New York: Berkley Books, 2014, p. 38).
*"American children spend an average of 900 hours per year in school; they spend 1,500 hours per year watching television." (Source: Gabriel, p.25).
*"And while almost 60 percent of Americans can name the Three Stooges, only 17 percent can name three justices on the Supreme Court." (Source: Gabriel, p. 25).
*Just this year, up to mid-February, 46 bills had been introduced in 21 states to make it harder to vote. (Source: The Nation Reports, February 2017).
p. 92 - "Felony courts 'often' docked 60 felony indictments in a day. Court business is conducted in a swirl of activity as judges seek to 'move' crowded calendars."
p. 105 - "[There] exist in some places a culture of resistance among prosecutors even to providing the discovery that is legally required." "As measured by DNA evidence from the crime scenes, approximately 25 percent of those the police initially believed to be the perpetrators were not guilty."
p. 117 - "Increasing punishment was driven by public moods of fear and then punitiveness..."
p. 120 - "Recommendations are to have many more cases go to juries and not be plea bargained; less bureaucracy; and more public funding for public defenders."
p. 141 - "And we could require probable cause as determined by an 'impartial magistrate' as a precondition for interrogation at all, conceding, in effect, that detectives will inevitably want to win the 'game' of interrogation of the 'competitive' enterprise of ferreting out crime." "Interrogations should be taped and there should be a prohibition on deceptiveness in the interrogation process, especially lying about the existence of physical evidence."
Excerpts from: Raymond Bonner, "Anatomy of Injustice" (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2012)
p. 34 - In the mid-1960s: "Nearly half the individuals being executed were black (even though they made up some 13 percent of the population)."
p. 37 - "The Court's decision in Furman overturned the death penalty in the forty states where it could be applied and in the District of Columbia as well for the federal government."
p. 147 - "Innocence alone does not entitle a defendant to a new trial. In Herrera v. Collins, Chief Justice William Rehnquist said in the majority opinion that after a defendant has had a fair trial, 'the presumption of innocence disappears.' " "Justice Blackmun said that it was 'contrary to any standard of decency to execute someone who is actually innocent.' He said it 'comes perilously close to simple murder.' "
p. 268 - "In Atkins v. Virginia, the Supreme Court, in a 6 to 3 decision, ruled that the execution of someone mentally retarded was proscribed by the Eighth Amendment."
ADDENDUMS:
*Of 192 questionnaires in the [Phil, music impresario] Specter case, 40% of the jurors believe a criminal defendant is obligated to prove his or her innocence. (Source: Richard Gabriel, "Acquitted" (New York: Berkley Books, 2014, p. 38).
*"American children spend an average of 900 hours per year in school; they spend 1,500 hours per year watching television." (Source: Gabriel, p.25).
*"And while almost 60 percent of Americans can name the Three Stooges, only 17 percent can name three justices on the Supreme Court." (Source: Gabriel, p. 25).
*Just this year, up to mid-February, 46 bills had been introduced in 21 states to make it harder to vote. (Source: The Nation Reports, February 2017).
Tuesday, May 16, 2017
Energy and Climate Matters and More
XL Pipeline
Candidate Trump said that the Keystone XL pipeline, which would transport tar-sands oil from Canada to refineries in Texas, would boost energy independence, put Americans to work, and be built with U.S. steel. The truth is that the Keystone oil would be sold on the global market, create almost no permanent jobs in the United States, and rely on foreign steel. On March 28, Trump issued executive orders aimed at undoing other key elements of President Obama's climate record: the Clean Power Plan; a moratorium on new coal leases; restrictions on methane emissions; and a requirement that federal agencies consider the social cost of climate damages in their decision-making. [1]
Robert Murray, the CEO of Murray Energy, is skeptical of Trump's claim that he can bring back the coal industry. In an interview with the Guardian, Murray said that government regulations aren't what killed the industry; it was increased automation of coal mining and competition from cheaper natural gas and renewable energy.
Contrary to President Trump trying to do away with measures to lessen global warming and switch from a fossil-fuel to a renewable energy future, China is going in an opposite direction. The Chinese Premier announced at the annual National People's Congress on March 5 that China was canceling 50 gigawatts -- roughly equivalent to 50 large power plants -- of coal-fired electricity production. Fully one-sixth of China's coal-fired power capacity may be either shut down, or in the case of planned capacity, not get built, according to Zhang Chun, a senior researcher at the independent publication, "chinadialogue."
China's decision to scale back on coal could strand $1 trillion worth of assets, according to a study by the Smith School of Energy and the Environment at Oxford University. There is a strong consensus among the world's climate scientists that only one-third of the world's remaining coal, gas and gas reserves can be burned while still limiting the increase in temperature to two degrees Celsius.
Ferguson Cops
The Ferguson Police Department in Missouri routinely issues orders that have no legal basis and then arrests civilians who refuse those orders for 'failing to comply.' "It's a neat little circular bit of authoritarian reasoning." "This great land of ours was founded by men who, to borrow a phrase, refused to comply, who not only resisted lawful orders but rebelled against the government that issued them." "In fact, smuggling was so embedded in colonial society that British officers complained they couldn't find anyone to enforce the law who wasn't somehow connected to it." "Between 1710 and 1760, as the population of the colonies quintupled to over 15 million, the total number of customs agents rose from 37 to 50." [2]
"Like the customs officers who interdicted smugglers to bring in traffic, the police in Ferguson were ordered to write tickets to bring in money. That kind of law enforcement had nothing to do with public safety or welfare, and the public knew it." "In 2009, in a city of just 21,000, there were 24,000 traffic cases in the Ferguson municipal court, and by October 31, 2014, that figure had grown to 53,000." "By 2015, fines and fees would make up more than one-fifth of the city of Ferguson's total revenues." "But for subjects of authoritarian rule, humiliation is the permanent state of existence." [3]
Jeff Sessions' Tectonic Shift
"Attorney General Jeff Sessions is leading the Justice Department through a tectonic shift, threatening more deportations and [bringing back] the decades-old failed 'War on Drugs.' " "Before long, right-wing groups like the Heritage Foundation began referring to 'The Ferguson Effect' claiming consent decrees or any other types of judicial or civilian oversight of police actually increases crime by tying the hands of law enforcement. This argument has no basis in fact." [4]
The statute that governs these investigations and consent decrees is the Law Enforcement Misconduct Statute, 142 U.S.C. 1414, was enacted as part of the 1994 crime bill as a result of the Rodney King assault and the acquittal of those officers in the first trial. Shereilyn Ifill, the president and director-general of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, said: "[It] authorizes the attorney general to investigate unconstitutional policing, to engage in these consent decrees. To the extent that he [Sessions] is a law-and-order attorney general this is the law he's willing to completely ignore."
Footnotes
[1] Mark Hertsgaard, "Climate's Trump Card," The Nation, April 17, 2017.
[2] Chris Hayes, "Policing the Colony," The Nation, April 17, 2017.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Amy Goodman & Denis Moynihan, "Sessions' review on consent decrees alarming," The Albuquerque Journal, April 15, 2017.
Candidate Trump said that the Keystone XL pipeline, which would transport tar-sands oil from Canada to refineries in Texas, would boost energy independence, put Americans to work, and be built with U.S. steel. The truth is that the Keystone oil would be sold on the global market, create almost no permanent jobs in the United States, and rely on foreign steel. On March 28, Trump issued executive orders aimed at undoing other key elements of President Obama's climate record: the Clean Power Plan; a moratorium on new coal leases; restrictions on methane emissions; and a requirement that federal agencies consider the social cost of climate damages in their decision-making. [1]
Robert Murray, the CEO of Murray Energy, is skeptical of Trump's claim that he can bring back the coal industry. In an interview with the Guardian, Murray said that government regulations aren't what killed the industry; it was increased automation of coal mining and competition from cheaper natural gas and renewable energy.
Contrary to President Trump trying to do away with measures to lessen global warming and switch from a fossil-fuel to a renewable energy future, China is going in an opposite direction. The Chinese Premier announced at the annual National People's Congress on March 5 that China was canceling 50 gigawatts -- roughly equivalent to 50 large power plants -- of coal-fired electricity production. Fully one-sixth of China's coal-fired power capacity may be either shut down, or in the case of planned capacity, not get built, according to Zhang Chun, a senior researcher at the independent publication, "chinadialogue."
China's decision to scale back on coal could strand $1 trillion worth of assets, according to a study by the Smith School of Energy and the Environment at Oxford University. There is a strong consensus among the world's climate scientists that only one-third of the world's remaining coal, gas and gas reserves can be burned while still limiting the increase in temperature to two degrees Celsius.
Ferguson Cops
The Ferguson Police Department in Missouri routinely issues orders that have no legal basis and then arrests civilians who refuse those orders for 'failing to comply.' "It's a neat little circular bit of authoritarian reasoning." "This great land of ours was founded by men who, to borrow a phrase, refused to comply, who not only resisted lawful orders but rebelled against the government that issued them." "In fact, smuggling was so embedded in colonial society that British officers complained they couldn't find anyone to enforce the law who wasn't somehow connected to it." "Between 1710 and 1760, as the population of the colonies quintupled to over 15 million, the total number of customs agents rose from 37 to 50." [2]
"Like the customs officers who interdicted smugglers to bring in traffic, the police in Ferguson were ordered to write tickets to bring in money. That kind of law enforcement had nothing to do with public safety or welfare, and the public knew it." "In 2009, in a city of just 21,000, there were 24,000 traffic cases in the Ferguson municipal court, and by October 31, 2014, that figure had grown to 53,000." "By 2015, fines and fees would make up more than one-fifth of the city of Ferguson's total revenues." "But for subjects of authoritarian rule, humiliation is the permanent state of existence." [3]
Jeff Sessions' Tectonic Shift
"Attorney General Jeff Sessions is leading the Justice Department through a tectonic shift, threatening more deportations and [bringing back] the decades-old failed 'War on Drugs.' " "Before long, right-wing groups like the Heritage Foundation began referring to 'The Ferguson Effect' claiming consent decrees or any other types of judicial or civilian oversight of police actually increases crime by tying the hands of law enforcement. This argument has no basis in fact." [4]
The statute that governs these investigations and consent decrees is the Law Enforcement Misconduct Statute, 142 U.S.C. 1414, was enacted as part of the 1994 crime bill as a result of the Rodney King assault and the acquittal of those officers in the first trial. Shereilyn Ifill, the president and director-general of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, said: "[It] authorizes the attorney general to investigate unconstitutional policing, to engage in these consent decrees. To the extent that he [Sessions] is a law-and-order attorney general this is the law he's willing to completely ignore."
Footnotes
[1] Mark Hertsgaard, "Climate's Trump Card," The Nation, April 17, 2017.
[2] Chris Hayes, "Policing the Colony," The Nation, April 17, 2017.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Amy Goodman & Denis Moynihan, "Sessions' review on consent decrees alarming," The Albuquerque Journal, April 15, 2017.
Wednesday, May 10, 2017
Arkansas's Drug Lust to Legally Kill
Killing Drugs Dry Up
Arkansas was in a big rush to kill eight men on Death Row before the end of April, because the drug midazolarn, part of a three-drug killing cocktail, would not be available anymore. Midazolarn is the first of the drugs in Arkansas's death mix. The European Union has banned companies in Europe from selling execution drugs since 2011.
Those languishing on America's Death Rows are generally poor, disproportionately of color, and most likely to have been found guilty of a crime that had a white victim. They are incapable of mounting the type of vigorous defense wealthier defendants can.
Damien Echols knows Arkansas's Death Row all too well: He spent more than 18 years on it after he and two companions were convicted of killing young boys. After improved DNA testing became available years later, he and his two co-defendants were freed in 2011.
In a related development, the McKesson Corporation claimed that the Arkansas Department of Corrections deceived them in order to acquire a bromide, another of the lethal drugs in the state's execution cocktail. [1]
Consent Decrees Under Fire
As much as anyone in the Trump administration, Jeff Sessions seems eager to eradicate any trace of Barack Obama's tenure. According to the Washington Post, "Sessions will work on new policies with a veteran federal prosecutor named Steven H. Cook, who is a long-time enthusiast of the kind of severe drug-war penalties that provoked the mass incarceration crisis in the first place."
Since 1994, seventy police and sheriff's departments have come under investigation; forty-one entered into reform agreements, including consent decrees." "The Justice Department found no systematic abuse in twenty-four of its investigations, and declined to pursue oversight." What this shows is that the Justice Department has not been willy-nilly investigating law enforcement agencies, but, nonetheless, found serious misconduct in well over half of those agencies investigated. Sessions is against consent decrees, because he contends that they undermine morale in police departments and tar officers with the misdeeds of a few rogues. The problem is that a them-against-us culture produces a Blue Wall of Silence by which officers will not bring to light misdeeds of fellow officers. [2]
"From 2012 through 2015, the Chicago Police Department paid out two hundred and ten million dollars to settle more than six hundred lawsuits, many of them alleging misconduct." Chicago's mayor, Rahm Emanuel, said: "We're on the road to reform. We're not getting off." [3] Just a few months ago, Donald Trump threatened to "send in the feds" to fix Chicago's crime problem. To the hypocrisies of his presidency we may add this one: the dangers in Chicago are compounded by his Attorney General's refusal to do just that. If Obama's proposed criminal justice reforms do not survive the Trump era, the problems they sought to address certainly will.
Big-Tent Feminism
"Like it or not, abortion rights are at tremendous risk right now. A political movement that doesn't defend them and promotes instead some vague notion of 'unity' is bound to be weak too to the women who are the movement's strongest activists. After all, nothing prevents anti-abortion women from being active in other feminist and progressive causes." [4]
"If you demand that every girl and woman who becomes pregnant bear a child no matter the consequences to herself, and if you call on the government to back that up through criminal law, there isn't a lot left to the ideals of equality and self-determination that is fundamental to feminism." "I just don't see how restricting and criminalizing abortion, bullying women on their way into the clinic, and pushing lies -- that abortion will give you breast cancer, make you infertile, or lead to a life's worth of misery -- are compatible with respecting other women's right to make their own moral decisions in an area where people disagree strongly and probably always will."
Footnotes
[1] Amy Goodman & Denis Moynihan, "Arkansas's mass executions facing mass challenge," The Albuquerque Journal, April 22, 2017.
[2] Jelani Cobb, "Reversal of Justice," The New Yorker, April 24, 2017.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Katha Pollitt, "Too-Big-Tent Feminism," The Nation, March 27, 2017.
Arkansas was in a big rush to kill eight men on Death Row before the end of April, because the drug midazolarn, part of a three-drug killing cocktail, would not be available anymore. Midazolarn is the first of the drugs in Arkansas's death mix. The European Union has banned companies in Europe from selling execution drugs since 2011.
Those languishing on America's Death Rows are generally poor, disproportionately of color, and most likely to have been found guilty of a crime that had a white victim. They are incapable of mounting the type of vigorous defense wealthier defendants can.
Damien Echols knows Arkansas's Death Row all too well: He spent more than 18 years on it after he and two companions were convicted of killing young boys. After improved DNA testing became available years later, he and his two co-defendants were freed in 2011.
In a related development, the McKesson Corporation claimed that the Arkansas Department of Corrections deceived them in order to acquire a bromide, another of the lethal drugs in the state's execution cocktail. [1]
Consent Decrees Under Fire
As much as anyone in the Trump administration, Jeff Sessions seems eager to eradicate any trace of Barack Obama's tenure. According to the Washington Post, "Sessions will work on new policies with a veteran federal prosecutor named Steven H. Cook, who is a long-time enthusiast of the kind of severe drug-war penalties that provoked the mass incarceration crisis in the first place."
Since 1994, seventy police and sheriff's departments have come under investigation; forty-one entered into reform agreements, including consent decrees." "The Justice Department found no systematic abuse in twenty-four of its investigations, and declined to pursue oversight." What this shows is that the Justice Department has not been willy-nilly investigating law enforcement agencies, but, nonetheless, found serious misconduct in well over half of those agencies investigated. Sessions is against consent decrees, because he contends that they undermine morale in police departments and tar officers with the misdeeds of a few rogues. The problem is that a them-against-us culture produces a Blue Wall of Silence by which officers will not bring to light misdeeds of fellow officers. [2]
"From 2012 through 2015, the Chicago Police Department paid out two hundred and ten million dollars to settle more than six hundred lawsuits, many of them alleging misconduct." Chicago's mayor, Rahm Emanuel, said: "We're on the road to reform. We're not getting off." [3] Just a few months ago, Donald Trump threatened to "send in the feds" to fix Chicago's crime problem. To the hypocrisies of his presidency we may add this one: the dangers in Chicago are compounded by his Attorney General's refusal to do just that. If Obama's proposed criminal justice reforms do not survive the Trump era, the problems they sought to address certainly will.
Big-Tent Feminism
"Like it or not, abortion rights are at tremendous risk right now. A political movement that doesn't defend them and promotes instead some vague notion of 'unity' is bound to be weak too to the women who are the movement's strongest activists. After all, nothing prevents anti-abortion women from being active in other feminist and progressive causes." [4]
"If you demand that every girl and woman who becomes pregnant bear a child no matter the consequences to herself, and if you call on the government to back that up through criminal law, there isn't a lot left to the ideals of equality and self-determination that is fundamental to feminism." "I just don't see how restricting and criminalizing abortion, bullying women on their way into the clinic, and pushing lies -- that abortion will give you breast cancer, make you infertile, or lead to a life's worth of misery -- are compatible with respecting other women's right to make their own moral decisions in an area where people disagree strongly and probably always will."
Footnotes
[1] Amy Goodman & Denis Moynihan, "Arkansas's mass executions facing mass challenge," The Albuquerque Journal, April 22, 2017.
[2] Jelani Cobb, "Reversal of Justice," The New Yorker, April 24, 2017.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Katha Pollitt, "Too-Big-Tent Feminism," The Nation, March 27, 2017.
Tuesday, May 9, 2017
The ICWA Under Attack and Labor Union Decline
The ICWA Under Attack
The Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) requires that before private and public agencies place Native American children in foster care or with an adoptive family, they try to keep nuclear families together, or, if that fails, to place children with the extended family, their tribe, or a member of another tribe. The Goldwater Institute is now trying, in the Washburn case, to overturn the ICWA. Many tribal members fear that if Goldwater is successful, it could undermine the legal scaffolding of Native American self-determination. [1]
"From the mid-1800s into the 1970s, tens of thousands of Native American children were taken from their homes, sometimes forcibly, and sent to government-run boarding schools, often hundreds of miles away. Intended to "kill the Indian...save the man," the schools prohibited students from speaking Native languages, or practicing tribal ceremonies." "Studies have found that when Native youth are connected to their culture and feel pride about it, they're more likely to have better grades and to attend college." "A 2011 investigation by National Public Radio found that 32 states were in violation of the IWCA." [2]
Declining Union Membership
"From its mid-20th-century peak in which about 35 percent of workers were in a union, organized labor has seen its numbers shrink to about 11 percent of all workers and around 6 percent in the private sector -- the lowest figures since the early 20th century, before industrial labor took off in the United States." "Moreover, the automation of countless jobs over the last several decades has led to fewer full-time positions, thus marginalizing the role that collective bargaining can play in creating a more equal America." Only about 8 percent of U.S. jobs today are in manufacturing, compared with about 24 percent in 1960. The 700,000 coal-mining jobs that existed a century ago have dwindled to 50,000 today, and the 650,000 steel jobs in the early 1950s are down to less than 150,000. [3]
Recognizing that recreating the large labor unions of the past is not a feasible undertaking, Jane McAlevey, a labor union reformer, has proposed three models for progressive political activism today: advocacy, mobilizing and organizing. She and other labor reform leaders trying to resurrect labor unions as a force in the nation, have suggested that the new organizing fights, like the one in Seattle, be intensely local, not national. Andy Stern, former president of SEIU, and Eli Lehrer have proposed seeking state waivers in order to experiment with wage and hour rules, union organizational structure, and benefit provisions. The SEIU has put issues related to gender, reproductive rights and racial justice at the center of its programs.
ADDENDUM:
*A University of New Mexico economist has calculated that 250,000 New Mexicans could lose their health insurance coverage if the GOP's AHCA bill was enacted into law. The state could lose 31,792 jobs by 2026 through the enactment of the AHCA.
Footnotes
[1] Rebecca Clarran, "Our Children Have a Bounty on Their Heads," The Nation, April 24/May 1, 2017.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Rich Yeselson, "At Labor's Crossroads," The Nation, March 27, 2017.
The Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) requires that before private and public agencies place Native American children in foster care or with an adoptive family, they try to keep nuclear families together, or, if that fails, to place children with the extended family, their tribe, or a member of another tribe. The Goldwater Institute is now trying, in the Washburn case, to overturn the ICWA. Many tribal members fear that if Goldwater is successful, it could undermine the legal scaffolding of Native American self-determination. [1]
"From the mid-1800s into the 1970s, tens of thousands of Native American children were taken from their homes, sometimes forcibly, and sent to government-run boarding schools, often hundreds of miles away. Intended to "kill the Indian...save the man," the schools prohibited students from speaking Native languages, or practicing tribal ceremonies." "Studies have found that when Native youth are connected to their culture and feel pride about it, they're more likely to have better grades and to attend college." "A 2011 investigation by National Public Radio found that 32 states were in violation of the IWCA." [2]
Declining Union Membership
"From its mid-20th-century peak in which about 35 percent of workers were in a union, organized labor has seen its numbers shrink to about 11 percent of all workers and around 6 percent in the private sector -- the lowest figures since the early 20th century, before industrial labor took off in the United States." "Moreover, the automation of countless jobs over the last several decades has led to fewer full-time positions, thus marginalizing the role that collective bargaining can play in creating a more equal America." Only about 8 percent of U.S. jobs today are in manufacturing, compared with about 24 percent in 1960. The 700,000 coal-mining jobs that existed a century ago have dwindled to 50,000 today, and the 650,000 steel jobs in the early 1950s are down to less than 150,000. [3]
Recognizing that recreating the large labor unions of the past is not a feasible undertaking, Jane McAlevey, a labor union reformer, has proposed three models for progressive political activism today: advocacy, mobilizing and organizing. She and other labor reform leaders trying to resurrect labor unions as a force in the nation, have suggested that the new organizing fights, like the one in Seattle, be intensely local, not national. Andy Stern, former president of SEIU, and Eli Lehrer have proposed seeking state waivers in order to experiment with wage and hour rules, union organizational structure, and benefit provisions. The SEIU has put issues related to gender, reproductive rights and racial justice at the center of its programs.
ADDENDUM:
*A University of New Mexico economist has calculated that 250,000 New Mexicans could lose their health insurance coverage if the GOP's AHCA bill was enacted into law. The state could lose 31,792 jobs by 2026 through the enactment of the AHCA.
Footnotes
[1] Rebecca Clarran, "Our Children Have a Bounty on Their Heads," The Nation, April 24/May 1, 2017.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Rich Yeselson, "At Labor's Crossroads," The Nation, March 27, 2017.
Monday, May 8, 2017
Daddy's Girl
Ivanka Trump
"[The] Trump manipulation machine wants us to think that Ivanka is really his women's-rights representative." "In other words, Ivanka is a wholly owned subsidiary of 'My Father,' as she almost religiously called him at the Republican convention."
"Ivanka is like the token black or Latino employee of the 1970s -- the one exceptional person who is hired and then used to prove that everything is fine for everyone else of their kind, when patently it is not." "Women -- so many of whom are underpaid, undervalued, disregarded and abused -- shouldn't think that they can put their fate into the hands of someone who, no matter hard she's worked in her father's company, has no clue of what struggle really means. The fact that Ivanka is supposedly guiding women's policy shows just how little -- not how much -- My Father cares about it." [1]
The proposal (six weeks of maternal leave), that Ivanka supposedly sold to her father, is unclear, as it seems to exclude half of same-sex mothers (only a birth mother can receive the benefit), all unmarried mothers, all mothers of adopted infants, and certainly all fathers, whether in heterosexual or same-sex marriages.
Jeff Sessions: Foe of Consent Decrees
Attorney General Jeff Sessions is re-negotiating the consent decree struck between the Justice Department and the city of Baltimore. The decree includes a community oversight task force, an independent federal monitor, and the requirement that officers receive instructions about implicit bias. He has asked his subordinates to review agreements with other police departments to be sure that they accomplish such goals as boosting morale and the recruitment of police. A memo from Sessions states flatly: "It is not the responsibility of the federal government to manage non-federal law enforcement agencies."
When city and town elected officials sign consent decrees, they are agreeing that their police departments have fallen well short of standards expected of them. These officials then agree to a set of remedies to fix the problems. What Sessions is doing will allow these problems to fester, further driving a wedge between communities and those they have expected to serve and protect.
Destroying Our Democracy
"After a month in office, Donald Trump has already proved himself unable to discharge his duties; the disability isn't laziness or inattention. It expresses itself in paranoid rants, non-stop feuds carried out in public, and impulsive acts that can only damage his government and himself." "The notion that at some point, Trump would start behaving 'Presidential' was always a fantasy." [2]
Senator John Coryn (R-TX), the Republican whip, made it plain: Trump can go on being Trump "as long as we're able to get things done." Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) explained: "We'll never even get started with doing the things we need to do, like repealing Obamacare, if we're spending our whole time having Republicans investigate Republicans."
"An authoritarian and erratic leader, a chaotic presidency, a supine legislature, a resistant permanent bureaucracy, street demonstrations, fear abroad: this is what illiberal regimes look like. If Trump were more rational and more competent, he might have a chance of destroying our democracy." [3]
Unequal at Birth
"Each year in the United States, more than 23,000 infants die before reaching their first birthday. Across the United States, black infants die at a rate that's more than twice as high as that of white infants." [4]
One study found that black women living in poorer neighborhoods were more likely to have low-birth-weight infants, regardless of their own socioeconomic status. The more segregated cities have greater black/white infant-mortality disparities; women whose babies are born severely underweight are more likely to report experiences of discrimination.
When it comes to the practice of discrimination, the state of Wisconsin stands out as being unique, as it locks up more of its black men than any other state in the country. Last year, the state stripped hundreds of thousands of dollars in funding from Milwaukee's home-visiting program. Wisconsin Republicans have also fought efforts to increase the minimum wage, which could have a positive effect on the infant-mortality rate. [5]
Footnotes
[1] Amy Wilentz, "This Particular Daddy's Girl," The Nation, February 20, 2017.
[2] George Packer, "Official Duties," The New Yorker, February 27, 2017.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Zoe Carpenter, "Black Births Matter," The Nation, March 6, 2017.
[5] Ibid.
"[The] Trump manipulation machine wants us to think that Ivanka is really his women's-rights representative." "In other words, Ivanka is a wholly owned subsidiary of 'My Father,' as she almost religiously called him at the Republican convention."
"Ivanka is like the token black or Latino employee of the 1970s -- the one exceptional person who is hired and then used to prove that everything is fine for everyone else of their kind, when patently it is not." "Women -- so many of whom are underpaid, undervalued, disregarded and abused -- shouldn't think that they can put their fate into the hands of someone who, no matter hard she's worked in her father's company, has no clue of what struggle really means. The fact that Ivanka is supposedly guiding women's policy shows just how little -- not how much -- My Father cares about it." [1]
The proposal (six weeks of maternal leave), that Ivanka supposedly sold to her father, is unclear, as it seems to exclude half of same-sex mothers (only a birth mother can receive the benefit), all unmarried mothers, all mothers of adopted infants, and certainly all fathers, whether in heterosexual or same-sex marriages.
Jeff Sessions: Foe of Consent Decrees
Attorney General Jeff Sessions is re-negotiating the consent decree struck between the Justice Department and the city of Baltimore. The decree includes a community oversight task force, an independent federal monitor, and the requirement that officers receive instructions about implicit bias. He has asked his subordinates to review agreements with other police departments to be sure that they accomplish such goals as boosting morale and the recruitment of police. A memo from Sessions states flatly: "It is not the responsibility of the federal government to manage non-federal law enforcement agencies."
When city and town elected officials sign consent decrees, they are agreeing that their police departments have fallen well short of standards expected of them. These officials then agree to a set of remedies to fix the problems. What Sessions is doing will allow these problems to fester, further driving a wedge between communities and those they have expected to serve and protect.
Destroying Our Democracy
"After a month in office, Donald Trump has already proved himself unable to discharge his duties; the disability isn't laziness or inattention. It expresses itself in paranoid rants, non-stop feuds carried out in public, and impulsive acts that can only damage his government and himself." "The notion that at some point, Trump would start behaving 'Presidential' was always a fantasy." [2]
Senator John Coryn (R-TX), the Republican whip, made it plain: Trump can go on being Trump "as long as we're able to get things done." Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) explained: "We'll never even get started with doing the things we need to do, like repealing Obamacare, if we're spending our whole time having Republicans investigate Republicans."
"An authoritarian and erratic leader, a chaotic presidency, a supine legislature, a resistant permanent bureaucracy, street demonstrations, fear abroad: this is what illiberal regimes look like. If Trump were more rational and more competent, he might have a chance of destroying our democracy." [3]
Unequal at Birth
"Each year in the United States, more than 23,000 infants die before reaching their first birthday. Across the United States, black infants die at a rate that's more than twice as high as that of white infants." [4]
One study found that black women living in poorer neighborhoods were more likely to have low-birth-weight infants, regardless of their own socioeconomic status. The more segregated cities have greater black/white infant-mortality disparities; women whose babies are born severely underweight are more likely to report experiences of discrimination.
When it comes to the practice of discrimination, the state of Wisconsin stands out as being unique, as it locks up more of its black men than any other state in the country. Last year, the state stripped hundreds of thousands of dollars in funding from Milwaukee's home-visiting program. Wisconsin Republicans have also fought efforts to increase the minimum wage, which could have a positive effect on the infant-mortality rate. [5]
Footnotes
[1] Amy Wilentz, "This Particular Daddy's Girl," The Nation, February 20, 2017.
[2] George Packer, "Official Duties," The New Yorker, February 27, 2017.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Zoe Carpenter, "Black Births Matter," The Nation, March 6, 2017.
[5] Ibid.
Sunday, May 7, 2017
Transgender Bathroom Use and More
Transgender Bathroom Use
Lawmakers in more than a dozen states -- most famously in North Carolina -- have introduced bills that would require transgender people to use public restrooms corresponding to the sex they were assigned at birth rather than with their gender identity at the present time. In February, the Trump administration sided with those states, telling schools they could go back to blocking trans kids from using bathrooms based on their current identity. [1]
HB2, the transgender bathroom law in North Carolina, may cost the state more than $3.76 billion in lost business over a dozen years, according to an analysis by the Associated Press. This could be an underestimation of the law's true costs, as the AP was conservative in its estimations of if HB2 was the principal reason a company pulled out.
Noise Pollution
The World Health Organization describes noise pollution as a environmental health burden "second only to air pollution." European Union data shows that 40 percent of the EU's population is exposed to unhealthy noise levels. There is a social injustice component to a chronic overexposure to noise, as low-income children, for example, attend louder schools. Patients are misdiagnosed more often in dangerously noisy hospitals. Silence is at risk of becoming a rich person's plaything.
U.S. Military as Giant Polluter
The U.S. military is likely the "largest organizational user of petroleum in the world," according to a congressional report released in December 2012. Beyond its immediate carbon footprint --difficult to measure -- the U.S.military has placed countless countries under the thumb of oil giants. In 2007, the Brookings Institute found that the U.S.Department of Defense uses more energy than 100 nations.
The U.S. military is exempt from any required reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.
ADDENDUMS:
* According to a 2014 study conducted by 5 Gyres [Institute] and a team of international scientists, 5.25 trillion particles of plastic, weighing approximately 268,940 tons, pollute the world's oceans.
*Dozens of companies currently get waivers that allow them to avoid following "Buy America" provisions. Trump could revoke the waivers any time he wants.
*Iran Nuclear Deal
The Trump administration has confirmed that Iran has continued to comply with the Iran nuclear deal; however, the National Security Council will lead any interagency review of whether easing economic sanctions as part of the accord "is vital to the national security interests of the U.S."
Iran has reduced its uranium stockpile by 98 percent and removed two/thirds of its centrifuges. A unilateral withdrawal would create diplomatic chaos with the other powers that signed the accord and the European Union, which had a representative at the negotiations.
Lawmakers in more than a dozen states -- most famously in North Carolina -- have introduced bills that would require transgender people to use public restrooms corresponding to the sex they were assigned at birth rather than with their gender identity at the present time. In February, the Trump administration sided with those states, telling schools they could go back to blocking trans kids from using bathrooms based on their current identity. [1]
HB2, the transgender bathroom law in North Carolina, may cost the state more than $3.76 billion in lost business over a dozen years, according to an analysis by the Associated Press. This could be an underestimation of the law's true costs, as the AP was conservative in its estimations of if HB2 was the principal reason a company pulled out.
Noise Pollution
The World Health Organization describes noise pollution as a environmental health burden "second only to air pollution." European Union data shows that 40 percent of the EU's population is exposed to unhealthy noise levels. There is a social injustice component to a chronic overexposure to noise, as low-income children, for example, attend louder schools. Patients are misdiagnosed more often in dangerously noisy hospitals. Silence is at risk of becoming a rich person's plaything.
U.S. Military as Giant Polluter
The U.S. military is likely the "largest organizational user of petroleum in the world," according to a congressional report released in December 2012. Beyond its immediate carbon footprint --difficult to measure -- the U.S.military has placed countless countries under the thumb of oil giants. In 2007, the Brookings Institute found that the U.S.Department of Defense uses more energy than 100 nations.
The U.S. military is exempt from any required reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.
ADDENDUMS:
* According to a 2014 study conducted by 5 Gyres [Institute] and a team of international scientists, 5.25 trillion particles of plastic, weighing approximately 268,940 tons, pollute the world's oceans.
*Dozens of companies currently get waivers that allow them to avoid following "Buy America" provisions. Trump could revoke the waivers any time he wants.
*Iran Nuclear Deal
The Trump administration has confirmed that Iran has continued to comply with the Iran nuclear deal; however, the National Security Council will lead any interagency review of whether easing economic sanctions as part of the accord "is vital to the national security interests of the U.S."
Iran has reduced its uranium stockpile by 98 percent and removed two/thirds of its centrifuges. A unilateral withdrawal would create diplomatic chaos with the other powers that signed the accord and the European Union, which had a representative at the negotiations.
Friday, May 5, 2017
Trump on Israel, Policy Theft, and Sessions' Crime Plan
Trump on Israel
On February 15, the Washington Post editorial board said that by President Trump saying he could live with a single state for the Israelis and Palestinians, he had made the "already slim prospects for an accord even more remote -- and increased the chances that one of the relatively few peaceful corners of the region will return to conflict." Palestinians say a single state would have to grant them equal rights, including full voting rights.
Most Israelis who favor a single state imagine an apartheid-like system in which Palestinians would live in areas with local autonomy, but without either sovereignty or the same democratic rights as Jews.
President Trump has embraced a diplomatic approach in which Israel would develop closer ties with Arab Sunni states who would help broker a settlement with the Palestinians. But Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan will never support a deal in which Palestinians do not have full political rights. In 2002, Saudi Arabia proposed relations with Israel in exchange for its withdrawal from occupied territories; it was adopted by the Arab League but didn't go anywhere.
Trump's plea to Israel to stop settlement building for a "little bit" of time will not move the peace process along unless and until he imposes a penalty on Israel, such as cutting off funding.
Trump Stealing From Obama
Trump has taken credit for the placement of a THAAD missile defense battery in South Korea. Obama reached a deal with South Korea last July. Similarly, Trump has taken credit for a reduction in the cost of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. The announcement of the cost reductions took place on December 19, 2016, well before Trump took office. Richard Aboulafia, analyst with the aerospace consulting firm, Teal Group, said there is no evidence of any additional cost savings as a result of Trump's actions.
Trump has also taken credit for a $12 billion decline in the national debt. The debt normally fluctuates; furthermore, Trump had made no changes in spending policy nor tax cuts. Trump's planned large tax cuts and proposed spending increases, if enacted, will drive up the debt a lot.
Trump's credit theft seems to have no bounds. He has taken credit for $20 billion of investments in the Gulf Coast and the Gulf Coast region. ExxonMobil says the investments actually started in 2013 and are continuing.
Sessions' Crime Reduction Plan
Attorney General Jeff Sessions wants to reduce crime by federalizing prosecutors who deal with violent crime at the state and local level. Jeffrey Fagan, professor of law at Columbia University and senior research scholar at Yale Law School, says that "What offenders respond to is the treat of being caught and punished, not the severity of the punishment." He cites a deterrence effort between federal and local authorities launched in 1997 in Richmond, Virginia, called Project Exile. "It was not terribly effective," he says.
ADDENDUMS:
*Conservatives are upset with EPA head, Scott Pruitt, because he hasn't acted to overturn the 2009 Endangerment finding that greenhouse gases are a threat and can be regulated. They want to remove the legal obligation under the Clean Air Act to regulate carbon dioxide, removing a key tool that environmentalists are counting on to keep Obama's policies like the Clean Power Plan in place. Pruitt apparently believes that to try to remove it would be a significant lift and he might also be labeled as anti-science.
*Trump has said that Hillary Clinton shouldn't have run for the presidency because she was under FBI investigation. Since President Trump is under FBI investigation, we await his resignation.
On February 15, the Washington Post editorial board said that by President Trump saying he could live with a single state for the Israelis and Palestinians, he had made the "already slim prospects for an accord even more remote -- and increased the chances that one of the relatively few peaceful corners of the region will return to conflict." Palestinians say a single state would have to grant them equal rights, including full voting rights.
Most Israelis who favor a single state imagine an apartheid-like system in which Palestinians would live in areas with local autonomy, but without either sovereignty or the same democratic rights as Jews.
President Trump has embraced a diplomatic approach in which Israel would develop closer ties with Arab Sunni states who would help broker a settlement with the Palestinians. But Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan will never support a deal in which Palestinians do not have full political rights. In 2002, Saudi Arabia proposed relations with Israel in exchange for its withdrawal from occupied territories; it was adopted by the Arab League but didn't go anywhere.
Trump's plea to Israel to stop settlement building for a "little bit" of time will not move the peace process along unless and until he imposes a penalty on Israel, such as cutting off funding.
Trump Stealing From Obama
Trump has taken credit for the placement of a THAAD missile defense battery in South Korea. Obama reached a deal with South Korea last July. Similarly, Trump has taken credit for a reduction in the cost of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. The announcement of the cost reductions took place on December 19, 2016, well before Trump took office. Richard Aboulafia, analyst with the aerospace consulting firm, Teal Group, said there is no evidence of any additional cost savings as a result of Trump's actions.
Trump has also taken credit for a $12 billion decline in the national debt. The debt normally fluctuates; furthermore, Trump had made no changes in spending policy nor tax cuts. Trump's planned large tax cuts and proposed spending increases, if enacted, will drive up the debt a lot.
Trump's credit theft seems to have no bounds. He has taken credit for $20 billion of investments in the Gulf Coast and the Gulf Coast region. ExxonMobil says the investments actually started in 2013 and are continuing.
Sessions' Crime Reduction Plan
Attorney General Jeff Sessions wants to reduce crime by federalizing prosecutors who deal with violent crime at the state and local level. Jeffrey Fagan, professor of law at Columbia University and senior research scholar at Yale Law School, says that "What offenders respond to is the treat of being caught and punished, not the severity of the punishment." He cites a deterrence effort between federal and local authorities launched in 1997 in Richmond, Virginia, called Project Exile. "It was not terribly effective," he says.
ADDENDUMS:
*Conservatives are upset with EPA head, Scott Pruitt, because he hasn't acted to overturn the 2009 Endangerment finding that greenhouse gases are a threat and can be regulated. They want to remove the legal obligation under the Clean Air Act to regulate carbon dioxide, removing a key tool that environmentalists are counting on to keep Obama's policies like the Clean Power Plan in place. Pruitt apparently believes that to try to remove it would be a significant lift and he might also be labeled as anti-science.
*Trump has said that Hillary Clinton shouldn't have run for the presidency because she was under FBI investigation. Since President Trump is under FBI investigation, we await his resignation.
Thursday, May 4, 2017
The Problems With the Strike on the Syrian Airstrip
This post is based on the Peace Action policy memo on the U.S. strike on a Syrian airstrip.
A summary:
#The military strike targeting a Syrian government air base violated U.S. law.
#Congress should demand the president seek authorization (AUMF) prior to any further action against the Assad government.
#The strike violated international law.
#The strike was ineffective and counterproductive.
#U.S, policy in Syria should focus on diplomacy, foreign aid and refugee resettlement.
1. The strike violated U.S. law
#Congress has not authorized the use of military force against the Syrian government.
#The War Powers Resolution Section 2(c) states:
The constitutional powers of the President as Commander-in-Chief to introduce the United States Armed Forces into hostilities, or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances, are exercised only pursuant to (1) a declaration of war, (2) specific statutory authorization, or (3) a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces.
#Clearly, none of those conditions were met.
#According to Michael Glennon, a professor of international law at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, and Legal Counsel to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 1977-1980, "military action against Syria exposes the United States to the risk of retaliation and involvement in a wider war. No national emergency requires that the decision to incur those risks be made by the president alone. The Constitution places that decision in the hands of Congress, not the President."
2. Congress should demand the president seek authorization prior to any further military action against the Assad government.
#The strike should not have occurred without congressional approval.
#Now that the strike has taken place, pursuant to the War Powers Resolution, the president should consult with Congress prior to any further military action against the Assad government, and should cease all military action against the Assad government after a sixty-day period absent an authorization of military (AUMF) from Congress.
#Given that the military strike took place without congressional approval and was not in response to "a national emergency created by attack upon the United States," Congress should not take for granted that the president will respect the War Powers Resolution, and so must proactively reassert its constitutional jurisdiction on matters of war and peace.
#Congress should exercise its constitutional war powers and repeal the two outdated AUMFs and hold a thorough debate on the current use of U.S. military force.
3. The recent unilateral military strike violated international law.
#In international law, the use of force against a sovereign nation is only legal if the United Nations has authorized it, or if force is used in self defense.
#The U.N. Security Council made no such authorization, and the administration's justification for the strike was that it was "intended to deter the regime from using chemical weapons again," which is clearly not a claim of self defense.
#While Secretary of State Rex Tillerson pointed to the Chemical Weapons Treaty in an effort to justify the strike, nothing in the treaty authorizes the use of force in retaliation for violations of the treaty.
4. The strike was ineffective and counterproductive.
#The Syrian government's ability to launch both chemical and conventional attacks on its people have not been diminished by the strike. While U.S.missiles damaged or destroyed some jets, hangers and runways at the Shayrat aid base, Assad controls a dozen other bases.
#The strike is unlikely to deter further attacks by Syrian and Russian forces on civilian areas. Following the strike, the same town that was targeted in the chemical weapons attack was hit with conventional airstrikes, likely by either Russian or Syrian planes.
#The strike has dangerously escalated tensions with Russia. In response to the strike, Russia suspended its participation in an agreement with the U.S. meant to prevent mid-air incidents between U.S. and Russian planes, elevating the risk of confrontation.
#The strike makes the U.S. a more active participant in the Syrian civil/proxy war, which undermines the United States' ability to encourage and facilitate a diplomatic solution to the war, which is historically the only way conflicts like these end.
#The escalation of U.S. military involvement in Syria serves as a valuable recruitment tool for violent extremists, undermining our efforts to combat extremism and promote stability in the region.
5. U.S. policy in Syria should focus on diplomacy, foreign aid and refugee resettlement.
#Sustainable peace in Syria is only possible through a political solution, yet President Trump is seeking major cuts to State Department funding which would negatively impact our ability to advance a political solution.
#Humanitarian aid is a critical tool for promoting stability and alleviating human suffering in Syria, yet President Trump is seeking cuts to U.S. funding for U.N. humanitarian aid programs like the World Food programme, and cuts to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
#Refugee resettlement is another valuable tool for promoting stability and alleviating suffering in Syria. Despite our active participation in the Syrian civil war, now even more active, President Trump has persisted in his efforts to prevent Syrian refugees from entering the United States. While the president claims empathy for the people of Syria, his policies demonstrate otherwise.
#The U.S. should support international processes to investigate the use of chemical weapons and other war crimes, which may include the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the UN, International Criminal Court or an international tribunal. The U.S. needs to strengthen and abide by the treaties meant to rid the world of weapons of mass destruction, including chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.
#The U.S, needs to invest more in the long-term solutions that prevent conflicts and violent extremism in the first place by supporting education, religious tolerance, poverty alleviation, civil liberties and freedom.
A summary:
#The military strike targeting a Syrian government air base violated U.S. law.
#Congress should demand the president seek authorization (AUMF) prior to any further action against the Assad government.
#The strike violated international law.
#The strike was ineffective and counterproductive.
#U.S, policy in Syria should focus on diplomacy, foreign aid and refugee resettlement.
1. The strike violated U.S. law
#Congress has not authorized the use of military force against the Syrian government.
#The War Powers Resolution Section 2(c) states:
The constitutional powers of the President as Commander-in-Chief to introduce the United States Armed Forces into hostilities, or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances, are exercised only pursuant to (1) a declaration of war, (2) specific statutory authorization, or (3) a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces.
#Clearly, none of those conditions were met.
#According to Michael Glennon, a professor of international law at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, and Legal Counsel to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 1977-1980, "military action against Syria exposes the United States to the risk of retaliation and involvement in a wider war. No national emergency requires that the decision to incur those risks be made by the president alone. The Constitution places that decision in the hands of Congress, not the President."
2. Congress should demand the president seek authorization prior to any further military action against the Assad government.
#The strike should not have occurred without congressional approval.
#Now that the strike has taken place, pursuant to the War Powers Resolution, the president should consult with Congress prior to any further military action against the Assad government, and should cease all military action against the Assad government after a sixty-day period absent an authorization of military (AUMF) from Congress.
#Given that the military strike took place without congressional approval and was not in response to "a national emergency created by attack upon the United States," Congress should not take for granted that the president will respect the War Powers Resolution, and so must proactively reassert its constitutional jurisdiction on matters of war and peace.
#Congress should exercise its constitutional war powers and repeal the two outdated AUMFs and hold a thorough debate on the current use of U.S. military force.
3. The recent unilateral military strike violated international law.
#In international law, the use of force against a sovereign nation is only legal if the United Nations has authorized it, or if force is used in self defense.
#The U.N. Security Council made no such authorization, and the administration's justification for the strike was that it was "intended to deter the regime from using chemical weapons again," which is clearly not a claim of self defense.
#While Secretary of State Rex Tillerson pointed to the Chemical Weapons Treaty in an effort to justify the strike, nothing in the treaty authorizes the use of force in retaliation for violations of the treaty.
4. The strike was ineffective and counterproductive.
#The Syrian government's ability to launch both chemical and conventional attacks on its people have not been diminished by the strike. While U.S.missiles damaged or destroyed some jets, hangers and runways at the Shayrat aid base, Assad controls a dozen other bases.
#The strike is unlikely to deter further attacks by Syrian and Russian forces on civilian areas. Following the strike, the same town that was targeted in the chemical weapons attack was hit with conventional airstrikes, likely by either Russian or Syrian planes.
#The strike has dangerously escalated tensions with Russia. In response to the strike, Russia suspended its participation in an agreement with the U.S. meant to prevent mid-air incidents between U.S. and Russian planes, elevating the risk of confrontation.
#The strike makes the U.S. a more active participant in the Syrian civil/proxy war, which undermines the United States' ability to encourage and facilitate a diplomatic solution to the war, which is historically the only way conflicts like these end.
#The escalation of U.S. military involvement in Syria serves as a valuable recruitment tool for violent extremists, undermining our efforts to combat extremism and promote stability in the region.
5. U.S. policy in Syria should focus on diplomacy, foreign aid and refugee resettlement.
#Sustainable peace in Syria is only possible through a political solution, yet President Trump is seeking major cuts to State Department funding which would negatively impact our ability to advance a political solution.
#Humanitarian aid is a critical tool for promoting stability and alleviating human suffering in Syria, yet President Trump is seeking cuts to U.S. funding for U.N. humanitarian aid programs like the World Food programme, and cuts to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
#Refugee resettlement is another valuable tool for promoting stability and alleviating suffering in Syria. Despite our active participation in the Syrian civil war, now even more active, President Trump has persisted in his efforts to prevent Syrian refugees from entering the United States. While the president claims empathy for the people of Syria, his policies demonstrate otherwise.
#The U.S. should support international processes to investigate the use of chemical weapons and other war crimes, which may include the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the UN, International Criminal Court or an international tribunal. The U.S. needs to strengthen and abide by the treaties meant to rid the world of weapons of mass destruction, including chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.
#The U.S, needs to invest more in the long-term solutions that prevent conflicts and violent extremism in the first place by supporting education, religious tolerance, poverty alleviation, civil liberties and freedom.
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