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WARS ABROAD, WARS AT HOME
A DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC?
The partial victory of the Democrats on Election Day is a reminder of the limits on popular sovereignty built into our political system. The word “:democracy” appeared nowhere in our constitution, and this was no accident. The document was prepared by white men of property and tailored to maintain the “right people” in power, while keeping the “rabble” at bay. It was also framed to maintain the power of slaveholders by giving disproportional power to the slaveholding states.
Centuries of reform have broadened the electorate, but the system continued to guarantee that all votes were not equal. Despite all kinds of barriers, 10 million or more cast their votes for Democrats rather than Republicans in the last election and yet they succeeded in eking out a slight majority in the House, while Republicans deepened their control of the Senate. A Senator from California represents dozens of more voters than a similarly elected Senator from say Wyoming. Yet both Senators have an equal vote in Congress. The Supreme Court remains firmly in Republican hands – possibly to be deepened under the remaining years of the popular-vote-losing but electoral-college-chosen Trump administration – and will continue to rule in favor of money over people. Even the Democratic Party leadership is more accountable to wealthy donor interests than to its voter base.
We need to struggle to gain more victories under the present skewed system, but we also need to reform it. “One-person-one-vote” is a powerful idea supported in principle by most Americans. We should work strategically to make that a reality.
YES, THERE WAS A BIG BLUE WAVE LAST WEEK
Make no mistake: It was a blue wave. Democrats won at least 35 seats in the House, and as results continue to come in from California and elsewhere, that number could go as high as 40. Meanwhile, although 10 incumbent Democratic senators were running in states Trump carried, only two of them lost (there is one recount), while the party picked up Republican Senate seats in Nevada and Arizona. So far, their popular-vote margin seems to be close to 7 percent; as Vox’s Matthew Yglesias wrote, that surpasses the margin in the GOP wave elections of 1994 and 2010. As the truth of the Democrats’ success begins to dawn on the pundit class, a new half-baked narrative emerges: that the Democrats are in danger of “overreach,” or overreliance on progressive candidates and issues that are out of step with an imaginary “mainstream.” More
Midterm Takeaway: WE NEED A LOT MORE DEMOCRACY
Suppression may have helped the GOP governor candidates fend off strong challenges inFlorida and especially Georgia, where tens of thousands of voters were scrubbed from the rolls and lines in Democratic precincts ran up to five hours long. And thanks to gerrymandering, it took an extraordinary effort for Democrats to win even a slim House majority. They’re up only a few seats despite decisively winning the popular vote by at least 9 points. Had it been “only” a 4 or 5 point win, Vox’s Matthew Yglesias estimates, the GOP might have retained its majority. Also worth noting: Democratic Senate candidates actually racked up over 10 million more votes than Republicans, even as Republicans picked up Senate seats on a GOP-tilting map, More
When Media Say ‘Working Class,’ They Don’t Necessarily Mean Workers
—but They Do Mean White
Since the 2016 elections, corporate media narratives about US politics have fixated on the “white working class” as a pivotal demographic, presented as a hardscrabble assortment of disaffected outsiders. Piece after piece has been published in establishment outlets attempting to decipher the motivations of this racialized socio-economic group, depicted as fighting from the Heartland against “cultural elites” on both coasts… But the media focus distorts the composition of this class, racially and otherwise… Americans who make their living by selling their labor (mostly in the service industry) are in fact disproportionately people of color, who are projected by the Economic Policy Institute (6/9/16) to constitute an outright majority of the working class by 2032… Despite the significant number of people of color in the working class, non-white members of this class are rarely talked about as such. While use of the phrase “white working class” has been ubiquitous in political journalism in the lead-up to the 2018 midterm elections, the “black working class” is discussed much less often. More
'Straight-up racist;' Massachusetts Democrats raise concerns with party leadership
Massachusetts Democrats, who won race after race in Tuesday's elections, appear to have a some racial tensions within their party. In a televised interview that aired Friday night on WGBH, Suffolk County District Attorney-elect Rachael Rollins and state representatives-elect Nika Elugardo and Liz Miranda, all of Boston, pledged to be forceful agents of change, discussed how they built winning campaigns, and raised serious concerns with leadership in the Democratic party, with Elugardo describing the party as "straight-up racist." "What I found was a little disappointing was that I think that the Democratic party of our commonwealth and across the country needs to take a look at themselves," Miranda told Basic Black host Callie Crossley. "We all won without major support for our primaries." "Or any," added Rollins. "Stop being nice." More
You can watch the program here:
PHYLLIS BENNIS, REV. DR. WILLIAM J. BARBER II:
“After the Election, We Have Movement Work To Do”
Elections are not how we change history. But they are a big part of how we—social movements, poor and disenfranchised and marginalized people, communities of color—engage with power. So when we win electoral victories, it matters. A lot. It's not because of which party wins, which state turns from red to purple or back again. Elections are not a box of crayons. It's because of what happens when people are sent to congress or to the state house by and from our movements, and voted in by mobilized, engaged and enraged constituencies who will hold them accountable for what they do. We didn't win everything last night—we never do. But we did see amazing victories in diversifying who serves in Congress (including topping 100 women for the first time) and expanding who gets the right to vote… But to mobilize, to organize, to build the movements and the organizations we're going to need to fight for power. We have a long way to go – last night was only the latest of our beginnings. We have movement work to do. More
What If Only Men Voted? Only Women? Only Nonwhite Voters?
Imagine if only one group of Americans cast their ballots this November. What would happen to the electoral map? We’veconducted this kind of thought experiment before; it can help shed light on why the parties are hoping that certain groups — such as suburban women for Democrats, white working class voters for Republicans — will help them win seats in 2018… If only nonwhite Americans could cast ballots, they would elect a gigantic Democratic majority (the largest projected majority out of any group we looked at). While white voters on the whole are Republican-leaning (Trump won them by about 15 to 20 percentage points in 2016), nonwhite voters are strongly Democratic (Hillary Clinton won them by more than 50 points). African-Americans, Asian-Americans and Latinos all overwhelmingly vote Democratic, although there are exceptions. More
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HOW MASSACHUSETTS HEALTH CARE COMPANIES DEFEATED QUESTION 1
On the face of it, the appeal of Question 1 seems obvious: Would you rather be cared for by a nurse who has three other patients, or a nurse who has seven other patients? Safe patient limits are the Holy Grail for nurse unions. While many union contracts establish nurse-to-patient ratios, only in California have nurses won universal ratios at the legislature. The results speak for themselves. “In California they have lower instances of avoidable readmissions and their patient outcomes are better,” said Nora Watts, a forty-three-year nurse at Newton-Wellesley Hospital outside Boston. “The morbidity and mortality rates from hospital-associated problems are decreasing faster than anywhere else in the country.” So how did employers persuade the public to vote no? The Massachusetts hospital lobby spent upwards of $30 million to drum up fear and confusion in a campaign that strongly resembled an anti-union drive. Question 1 pitted MNA’s ground game against the deep pockets of the state’s $28 billion hospital industry. More
Boston dodged a bullet. . .
AMAZON HQ2 WILL COST TAXPAYERS AT LEAST $4.6 BILLION
Amazon’s announcement this week that it will open its new headquarters in New York City and northern Virginia came with the mind-boggling revelation that the corporate giant will rake in $2.1 billion in local government subsidies. But an analysis by the nation’s leading tracker of corporate subsidies finds that the government handouts will actually amount to at least $4.6 billion. But even that figure, which accounts for state and local perks, doesn’t take into account a gift that Amazon will also enjoy from the federal government, a testament to the old adage that in Washington, bad ideas never die. The Amazon location in Long Island City, in the New York City borough of Queens, is situated in a federal opportunity zone… Supporters claim opportunity zones spur renewal and revitalization in impoverished areas. It’s a decades-old bipartisan fantasy that sits uncomfortably at odds with the demonstrated results. Researchers who have studied opportunity zones find that these tax schemes rarely ever help cities, and often financially cripple them. More
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NEW WARS / OLD WARS – What Could Possibly Go Wrong
New Study Details 'Staggering' $6 Trillion (and Counting) Price Tag of Endless US War
While the human costs will remain impossible to calculate, a new analysis shows that the Pentagon barely scratched the surface of the financial costs of U.S. wars since September 11, 2001 when it released its official estimate last August regarding how much the U.S. has spent on fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and elsewhere. The Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs reports (pdf) that by the end of the 2019 fiscal year, the U.S. will have spent $5.9 trillion on military spending in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and other countries, as well as veterans' care, interest on debt payments, and related spending at the Homeland Security and State Departments. More
US 'WAR ON TERROR' HAS KILLED AT LEAST HALF A MILLION PEOPLE
The report, which was published on Saturday by the Brown University's Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, put the death toll between 480,000 and 507,000. The toll includes civilians, armed fighters, local police and security forces, as well as US and allied troops. The report states that between 182,272 and 204,575 civilians have been killed in Iraq; 38,480 in Afghanistan; and 23,372 in Pakistan. Nearly 7,000 US troops were killed in Iraq and Afghanistan in the same period. The paper, however, acknowledged that the number of people killed is an "undercount" due to limitations in reporting and "great uncertainty in any count of killing in war". More
You can read the full report here. Other studies have suggested that these numbers are very conservative and that the actual toll is in the millions.
PENTAGON FAILS ITS FIRST-EVER AUDIT, OFFICIAL SAYS
The Pentagon has failed what is being called its first-ever comprehensive audit, a senior official said on Thursday, finding U.S. Defense Department accounting discrepancies that could take years to resolve. Results of the inspection - conducted by some 1,200 auditors and examining financial accounting on a wide range of spending including on weapons systems, military personnel and property - were expected to be completed later in the day. “We failed the audit, but we never expected to pass it,” Deputy Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan told reporters, adding that the findings showed the need for greater discipline in financial matters within the Pentagon. It was an audit on a $2.7 trillion dollar organization, so the fact that we did the audit is substantial,” Shanahan added. More
House GOP Moves Swiftly to Keep US Involved in Saudi-Led War on Yemen
Anti-war groups have been cautiously hopefully in recent weeks that the U.S. would withdraw support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen following widespread outcry over Saudi Arabia's murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi—but those hopes were dashed late Tuesday when House Republicans moved to stop a long-planned-for vote from going to the floor… The Republican maneuver was denounced as "disgraceful" by the anti-war group Peace Action. "Apparently, neither Saudi Arabia's brutal murder of Jamal Khashoggi nor its mid-summer bombing of a school bus packed full of children were enough to break the ice surrounding House Majority Leader Paul Ryan's heart," said Kevin Martin, president of the group, in a statement. More
On the positive side, in a nearly party-line vote, nearly all the Democrats voted to allow a vote on the Yemen War resolution, including all House members from Massachusetts (except for Lynch, who did not vote). Rollcall here: http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2018/roll418.xml
A Flawed American Sanctions Policy on Iran
The Trump Administration’s decision to reimpose sanctions on Iran is animated by a deeply flawed grasp of Iranian politics and an incoherent strategy, one that will not be realized by dreams of regime change in the country. Rather than force Iran’s capitulation in the coming months, the administration will confront a tumultuous regional and global map whose contours will be shaped by three intersecting waiting games: one played by the United States, another by the Islamic Republic, and a third by a group of countries seeking to sustain the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). While these competing moves play out, Iran will continue to try to shape the region’s geostrategic map in ways that will protect its basic interests. The capacity of the United States and its regional friends to affect this map could diminish further as flaws in the American strategy become more evident. More
LISTEN TO THE GOVERNOR OF OKINAWA
The first step the United States should take to reduce the chance of confrontation is to listen to Denny Tamaki, the new governor of Okinawa, Japan’s southernmost prefecture and most complicated constituency. Home to over half of the 50,000 US troops stationed in Japan and to American nuclear assets as well, Okinawa is the East China Sea’s most valuable piece of real estate to American security interests. Governor Tamaki, currently on his first trip to the United States since taking office in early October, is meeting with anyone and everyone who will hear his plea to stop construction of a new American military facility in his prefecture. Okinawans already host 70% of the existing American bases in Japan in their territory, which comprises 1% of the mainland. This new one, which has been 20 years in the making, would add six helipads off of Okinawa’s northeast coast in Oura Bay, adjacent to Camp Schwab, the U.S Marine base in the town of Henoko. More
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