WARS ABROAD, WARS AT HOME
More Americans Died From Hurricane Maria Than 9/11. Does Anyone Care?
A new study shows that, even by conservative estimates, more people were killed by Maria than those who died during the terrorist attacks of 9/11. The 3.5 million Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens, a fact not understood by more than half the U.S. stateside population, according to a poll from September 2017. Still, the Trump administration and majority-GOP Congress treated post-Maria Puerto Rico with malignant neglect, delivering help expeditiously to the parts of Louisiana and Texas hit hard by Hurricane Irma earlier that month while failing to prepare for or launch an effective response to the two-hurricane punch delivered to Puerto Rico. As the 2018 hurricane season fast approaches, Puerto Rico remains in dire straits. Ultimately, however, the blame for the death and destruction in Puerto Rico really lies with all of us, their fellow Americans. More
TAKING ON THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE
Last week, with little fanfare, Connecticut governor Dannel Malloysigned a bill that officially adds his state to the National Popular Vote Compact. The compact, which only goes into effect when states totaling 270 electoral votes legally enter into it, allocates all participating states’ electoral votes to the presidential candidate that wins the national popular vote… The compact had widespread public support in the state: with 92 percent of Democrats, 62 percent of Republicans and 76 percent of unaffiliated voters in support. “The vote of every American citizen should count equally, yet under the current system, voters from sparsely populated states are awarded significantly more power than those from states like Connecticut…This is fundamentally unfair,” explained Governor Malloy when the bill passed the CT state senate. The electoral vote total of the compact’s members now reaches 172. More
FEDERAL WORKERS UNION SUES DONALD TRUMP
The nation's largest union of federal workers filed suit against the Trump administration on Wednesday over an executive order signed by President Donald Trump that seeks to deny workers the right to job site representation—an established guarantee in existing labor law… "This president seems to think he is above the law, and we are not going to stand by while he tries to shred workers' rights," said AFGE national president J. David Cox Sr., in a statement announcing the lawsuit. "This is a democracy, not a dictatorship. No president should be able to undo a law he doesn't like through administrative fiat." …"This is more than union busting – it's democracy busting," Cox said on Friday after the president's signing of the orders was announced. More
THE TRUMP EFFECT:
New study connects white American intolerance and support for authoritarianism
…many political observers are concerned that increasing political polarization on left and right makes compromise impossible, and leads to the destruction of democratic norms and institutions. A new study, however, suggests that the main threat to our democracy may not be the hardening of political ideology, but rather the hardening of one particular political ideology. Political scientists Steven V. Miller of Clemson and Nicholas T. Davis of Texas A&M have released a working paper titled "White Outgroup Intolerance and Declining Support for American Democracy." Their study finds a correlation between white American's intolerance, and support for authoritarian rule. In other words, when intolerant white people fear democracy may benefit marginalized people, they abandon their commitment to democracy… In practice, the GOP has increasingly been embracing a politics of white resentment tied to disenfranchisement. "Since Richard Nixon's ‘Southern Strategy,’ the GOP has pigeon-holed itself as, in large part, an aggrieved white people's party," More
PENTAGON PAID FOR NFL 'PATRIOTISM'
A key component is missing from the current controversial discussion surrounding football players and the national anthem. In the recent days of argument over whether NFL players havethe right to protest racial inequality and systemic injustice in the United States, few have brought up the fact that less than a decade ago, professional football players didn’t even appear on the field during the national anthem. That changed in 2009, as the Department of Defense poured millions of dollars into the NFL in exchange for displays of patriotism during games. “Until 2009, no NFL player stood for the national anthem because players actually stayed in the locker room as the anthem played,” ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith explained in 2016. “The players were moved to the field during the national anthem because it was seen as a marketing strategy to make the athletes look more patriotic. The United States Department of Defense paid the National Football League $5.4 million between 2011 and 2014, and the National Guard $6.7 million between 2013 and 2015 to stage onfield patriotic ceremonies as part of military-recruitment budget line items.” More
U.S. House Makes Clear That There is No Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iran
On Tuesday night, the House unanimously passed an amendment making clear Congress’s position that no law exists which gives the President power to launch a military strike against Iran. Today, that amendment passed the U.S. House as part of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2019. “The unanimous passage of this bipartisan amendment is a strong and timely counter to the Trump administration’s withdrawal from the Iran deal and its increasingly hostile rhetoric,” Rep. Ellison said. “This amendment sends a powerful message that the American people and Members of Congress do not want a war with Iran. Today, Congress acted to reclaim its authority over the use of military force.” More
MOTIVATIONS FOR THE DEAD-END POLICY ON IRAN
The attraction of forever keeping Iran as a bête noire for the United States is even more obvious for Iran’s regional rivals. This especially means Saudi Arabia, along with its sometime ally the United Arab Emirates and its satellite Bahrain, and Israel. Those regimes are content to see a dead-end U.S. policy toward Iran that offers no prospect of any thawing of relations between Washington and Tehran. Such a policy assures that Washington always will take their side in their local disputes. It means continued U.S. cover for their own excesses and contributions to regional instability, with blame always focused on Iran. Thus Saudi leaders were delighted to hear Pompeo demand an end to Iranian aid to Houthi rebels in Yemen, while he said nothing in his speech about the far larger role of Saudi bombardment in turning Yemen into a humanitarian disaster. Israeli leaders were delighted to hear demands about ending Iranian aid to Hamas, in a speech that made no mention of the role of the Israeli military in the killing of scores and the wounding of thousands of what were overwhelmingly unarmed protestors in the Gaza Strip. More
TRUMP’S KOREAN SHELL GAME
Donald Trump wants a summit with Kim Jong Un. He wants the spectacle. He wants to demonstrate that he’s better than all the presidents who came before and failed to solve the nuclear crisis. He wants to prove that he, alone, can do diplomacy the right way (and so why not cut the State Department budget by a third?). But ham actors are acutely aware of the prospect of being upstaged. Trump wants a Korean drama, but only one that he controls… Pay attention to the key person in this account. It’s not Trump, who remains as always blithely unaware of what lies beneath the froth of current events. It’s John Bolton. Ostensibly he’s just the bearer of bad news in this story. But the national security advisor knew exactly how to play the president. He provided just the intelligence necessary to further Bolton’s own agenda: undermining the summit. More
THE HYPOCRISY OF THE WEST'S SYRIA POLICY
American diplomats do not try to justify, or even explain, their inconsistent attitudes towards the authority of the UN veto, despite the starkness of the contradiction. Perhaps it is a textbook example of what psychologists call cognitive dissonance. More accessibly, it is a prime instance of American exceptionalism. The US, as the anointed guarantor of virtue and perpetual innocence in world politics, is not bound by the rules and standards by which we judge the conduct of others, especially adversaries… The end result is the reigniting of the Syrian war just when it seemed to be nearing its end, with the widespread recognition that Damascus prevailed, for better or worse. Now Israel has been given the opportunity to pour oil on the dying embers in Syria to sustain its policy of making sure that chaos and conflict persist, with neither side being allowed to win and end the violence. In the process, the West, led by the US, has again shown its contempt for international law and UN authority. More
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