WARS ABROAD, WARS AT HOME
SO LONG, SCOTT PRUITT. WE KNEW YOU ALL TOO WELL.
Good riddance, of course, though there is little doubt that his replacement will be any less destructive of the EPA’s mission. However, if you haven’t read the text of Pruit’s resignation letter, you are missing something startling – an evangelical-inflected, Nazi-sounding tribute to Trump that only seems to lack the “Dear Führer” salutation.
“No Happy Ending” for Planet as Coal Lobbyist Andrew Wheeler Takes Over EPA
“Before everyone gets excited about Pruitt, remember we’re going to get all the same horrific policy under Andrew Wheeler, without any of the comic, attention-drawing personal corruption,” Vox environment writer David Roberts tweeted after President Donald Trump announced on Thursday that he had accepted Pruitt’s resignation. “Pruitt’s departure may cost us some jokes,” added Public Citizen president Robert Weissman in a statement, “but it won’t change the Trump administration or help save the planet or Americans’ health. Next in line to run the EPA is a coal lobbyist.” Judith Enck, an Obama-era former EPA regional administrator, told Mother Jones in an interview ahead of Wheeler’s confirmation as deputy EPA administrator in April that Wheeler serving as EPA chief would be comparable to “having a tobacco lobbyist heading up the American Lung Association.” More
Real Border Security Comes From a Moral Foreign Policy
Half a century ago, Martin Luther King Jr. argued that “a true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies.” Turning to the Western Hemisphere, King said, “It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say, ‘This is not just.’” The time is now for such a revolution: By decisively breaking with long-standing US policy, we can ease the violence and misery south of our borders, so that people may finally lead dignified lives in stable communities throughout the Americas… A progressive vision for the hemisphere, then, must first end any US military support for repressive governments throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. Second, as President Trump has blithely entertained a “military option” for Venezuela, we must stop the pursuit of interventionism and regime change against governments that Washington dislikes, and instead support peaceful negotiations. Finally, a humane hemispheric policy must also overhaul the corporate-dominated trade and investment pacts that rob nations of their economic agency. On Capitol Hill and throughout Latin America, the beginnings of that moral revolution articulated by Martin Luther King Jr. are finally emerging. More
WEAPONIZED KEYNESIANISM IN WASHINGTON
Other than shouting about building a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, one of Donald Trump’s most frequently proclaimed promises on the 2016 campaign trail was the launching of a half-trillion-dollar plan to repair America’s crumbling infrastructure (employing large numbers of workers in the process). Eighteen months into his administration, no credible proposal for anything near that scale has been made. To the extent that the Trump administration has a plan at all for public investment, it involves pumping up Pentagon spending, not investing in roads, bridges, transportation, better Internet access, or other pressing needs of the civilian economy… In reality, Pentagon spending is the Trump administration’s substitute for a true infrastructure program and it’s guaranteed to deliver public investments, but neglect just about every area of greatest civilian need from roads to water treatment facilities… . The $683 billion extra that the administration proposes putting into Pentagon spending over the next 10 years pales in comparison to the trillions of dollars the American Society of Civil Engineers claims are needed to modernize U.S. infrastructure. More
TRUMP’S AMERICAN CARNAGE
Whether American institutions would be resilient enough to resist Trump was one of the questions raised by his victory. We received a bleak answer last week from the Supreme Court, which voted by 5-4 both to weaken the collective bargaining power of public unions and to uphold the Muslim travel ban. Janus v. American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees was a striking example of the topsy-turvy logic of Trump world, invoking the First Amendment right to free speech against the right of public unions to collect dues from non-members. Some commentators argued that the Muslim ban, an obvious case of animus against members of a religious minority, contradicted the Court’s recent decision in support of an Evangelical baker who refused to make a wedding cake for a gay couple. But the upholding of the ban was consistent in spirit, if not in logic, with the Court’s decisions in favour of the strong against the weak. In its judgment, the court took the opportunity to overturn the 1944 decision that authorised the Japanese-American internment camps. Like Trump’s pardon of the black boxer Jack Johnson, the decision used the victims of an earlier injustice as cover for new injustices… Voting him out may turn out to be the easy part. Repairing the damage he has caused, and containing the domestic forces he has unleashed, will be far more difficult. More
Ocasio-Cortez', Peace Candidate
By labeling her foreign policy platform “A Peace Economy,” Ocasio-Cortez, using a phrase popular with the peace movement, makes the financial connection without shying away from
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