TRUMP AS NEW COLD WAR HERETIC
As has every American president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1943, President Trump held a summit meeting with the Kremlin’s leader—Russian President Putin, in Helsinki on July 16. As with every president since Eisenhower, the underlying and overriding purpose was to reduce the chances of war between the two nuclear superpowers… Historically, in what were once “normal” Cold War times, these summit achievements would have been widely supported, even applauded, across the American political spectrum, as they were, for example, even under President Nixon. But not Trump’s, which elicited an unprecedented torrent of denunciation by the US mainstream bipartisan (primarily Democratic but far from only) political-media establishment. More
In case you missed it. . .
BACEVICH: Curb the paranoia, anti-Trumpers
The point here is not to suggest cutting Trump any slack. On the contrary: Every administration requires rigorous and relentless oversight, this president and the dubious cast of characters surrounding him more than most. Yet until elites who have allowed themselves to become mesmerized by Trump recover a modicum of balance and equilibrium, issues of far greater moment than the president’s latest idiotic statement will continue to receive short shrift. Foremost among those issues are the very matters that paved the way for Trump’s election in the first place: egregious economic inequality, radical changes in the nation’s moral landscape, purposeless wars that never end, and an increasingly unsustainable relationship between the human species and the rest of nature. The likelihood of Trump himself addressing any of these problems is nil. But unless we get on with the process of identifying solutions, there will likely be more Trumps in our future. More
Is Trump-Putin Summit a “Danger to America” or Diplomacy Between Nuclear Powers?
[Greenwald:] We deal with regimes all the time that are incredibly repressive. The United States government is often repressive. We destroyed Iraq. We set up a worldwide torture regime. We still have a prison in Guantánamo where people have been imprisoned for 17 years on an island with no trial. We have to deal with other countries who violate human rights. Our own governments deal with human rights—abuse human rights. And I think to look at dialogue with other countries as legitimizing human rights is the kind of rhetoric that the right used for seven decades to delegitimize attempts to reach peaceful negotiations with the Soviet Union. And that is what I worry about… it is true that Trump has never criticized Putin, although he has taken all the steps I just outlined against Putin. But he’s also never criticized Benjamin Netanyahu. He’s also never criticized the incredibly repressive leaders of Saudi Arabia. He’s never criticized the fascist president of the Philippines. It is true President Trump likes fascist and authoritarian leaders, and that is a problem, but it’s not like Putin is the only leader that he doesn’t criticize. More
I posted a little history lesson here:
Making Sense of U.S. Moves in the Middle East
With President Trump and his secretary of state now talking openly about a possible “escalation between us and the Iranians,” there is a real risk that some combination of the United States, Israel, and Saudi Arabia could initiate a war with Iran. If there’s one lesson to be learned from U.S. wars since 9/11, it’s “don’t start another one.” For more than 70 years, Americans have largely ignored the effects of U.S. foreign policy in the rest of the world. Rubble in Syria? Famine in Yemen? It’s terribly sad, yes, but what, we still wonder, does it have to do with us? That Part of the World doesn’t wonder about how U.S. actions and policies affect them. That Part of the World knows -- and what it knows is devastating. It’s time that real debate about future U.S. policy there becomes part of our world, too. More
With Iran Deal on Life Support, White House Looks to Finish the Job
Since the Trump administration’s unilateral withdrawal from the Iran agreement, Europe and Iran have been scrambling to negotiate measures that would maintain Iran’s economic and political incentives to stay in the agreement in the face of renewed U.S. sanctions. After all, the big carrot Iran got for agreeing to strict limits on its nuclear program was relief from crushing economic sanctions. Sanctions relief and the economic benefits associated with it was the only way Iran was able to sell the accord to its domestic audience. Without those benefits, Iran’s continued adherence to the terms of the deal is politically untenable. With the full spectrum of U.S. sanctions set to kick in by November, the clock is running out for Iran and Europe to find a solution, and the Trump administration is playing some serious hardball… Whatever the Trump administration’s true motivations may be, its actions are bringing us closer to war with Iran by the day. More
2-Minute Video: THE UNITED STATES OF ARMS
(Click on the image below to watch in your browser)
HOW TO START A NUCLEAR WAR
While Bush and Obama were at the helm, their untrammeled power to launch excited little public concern, even though both men were prone to initiating conventional wars. Obama’s commitment to “modernize” America’s entire nuclear arsenal at a reported cost of at least $1.2 trillion generated no public outrage, or even much concern. According to Jon Wolfsthal, Obama’s senior director for arms control and nonproliferation at the National Security Council, “There is no clear understanding of how much these weapons systems actually cost.” … But the arrival of Donald Trump, irascible, impulsive, and ignorant, was a different matter, especially given his threats to destroy North Korea with fire and fury… In September 2016, Ted Lieu, a Democratic congressman from California, introduced legislation, along with Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts, to prevent the president from calling a first strike without congressional approval. Lieu, a former member of the Air Force judge advocate general well versed in the laws of war, could not see any legal justification for the president to unilaterally launch such an attack. The framers, he pointed out when we discussed the matter recently, gave Congress the power to declare war. “There’s no way they would have let one person launch thousands of nuclear weapons that could kill millions of people in less than an hour and not have called that war. If you don’t call that war, you run down the Constitution.” More
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WARS ABROAD, WARS AT HOME
THE UNITED STATES OF INEQUALITY
The problem facing the working poor isn’t just low wages, but the widening gap between wages and rising prices… Workers in the lowest 20% have lost the most ground, their inflation-adjusted wages falling by nearly 1% between 1979 and 2016, compared to a 24.7% increase for the top 20%... According to a Harvard study, between 2001 and 2016, renters who made $30,000-$50,000 a year and paid more than a third of their earnings to landlords (the threshold for qualifying as “rent burdened”) increased from 37% to 50%. For those making only $15,000, that figure rose to 83%. In other words, in an ever more unequal America, the number of low-income workers struggling to pay their rent has surged… The bottom line: more than 75% of “at-risk” renters (those for whom the cost of rent exceeds 30% or more of their earnings) do not receive assistance from the government… It's time to rethink the American national security state with its annual trillion-dollar budget. For tens of millions of Americans, the source of deep workaday insecurity isn’t the standard roster of foreign enemies, but an ever-more entrenched system of inequality, still growing, that stacks the political deck against the least well-off Americans. More
Why Real Wages Still Aren’t Rising
But stagnant wages for factory workers and non-managers in the service sector — together they represent 82 percent of the labor force — is mainly the outcome of a long power struggle that workers are losing. Even at a time of low unemployment, their bargaining power is feeble, the weakest I’ve seen in decades. Hostile institutions — the Trump administration, the courts, the corporate sector — are limiting their avenues for demanding higher pay. Looking at the historical relationship between working-class wages and unemployment, wage growth should be rising about a percentage point faster than it is right now. In June, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports, wages were growing at a yearly rate of 2.7 percent before inflation… More than ever, the dynamics of this old-fashioned power struggle between labor and capital strongly favor corporations, employers and those whose income derives from stock portfolios rather than paychecks. This is evident in the large, permanent corporate tax cuts versus the small, temporary middle-class cuts that were passed at the end of last year. It’s evident in the recent Supreme Court case that threatens the survival of the one unionized segment of labor — public workers — that still has some real clout. More
KRUGMAN: THE G.O.P.'S WAR ON THE POOR
Last week, Donald Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers issued a new report on poverty, recognizing what most experts in the field have said: The standard poverty measure is badly flawed, and a better measure shows substantial progress. In fact, these advisers went so far as to assert that poverty is no longer a problem. (Do these people ever get out into the real world?) Anyway, the war on poverty, said the report, “is largely over and a success.” And our response, says the Trump administration, should be to … slash spending on the poor. O.K., the report doesn’t openly call for benefit cuts. Instead, it calls for the widespread imposition of work requirements for Medicaid, food stamps and other programs. But that would have the effect of sharply reducing those programs’ coverage. This decline in coverage wouldn’t be the result of large numbers of people earning their way out of poverty. Instead, many poor Americans would, for a variety of reasons — poor health, job instability for low-wage workers, daunting paperwork imposed on those least able to deal with it — find it impossible to meet the requirements, and be denied aid despite remaining poor. So whatever the evidence, Republicans always reach the same policy conclusion. Was the war on poverty a failure? Let’s stop helping the poor. Was it a success? Let’s stop helping the poor. More
62 House Democrats (out of 193) Demand Healthcare for Every American
"Healthcare cannot be a luxury that's only available for the wealthy and well-connected—it is a human right," declared Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), who helped found the new caucus alongside Reps. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) and Keith Ellison (D-Minn.). "Medicare for All is the way forward." … According to recent polling data, most Americans—and more than 70 percent of Democratic voters—support Medicare for All. As Public Citizen president Robert Weissman argued Thursday's event, the primary obstacle in the way of achieving a single-payer is not public opinion, but the entrenched interests of insurance and pharmaceutical companies… While just 62 House Democrats signed on as original members of the Medicare for All Caucus (view a full list of the members here), that number is expected to swell rapidly in the coming weeks, given that 122 Democrats are currently co-sponsoring the House Medicare for All bill, reintroduced by Rep. Ellison earlier this year. More
Cosponsors include Capuano, Clark and McGovern from Massachusetts
Will Democrats realize that Americans are tired of war?
A study suggests that a pivotal moment in the Democratic collapse happened in a Republican presidential debate in 2015, when Donald Trump established his reputation as an opponent of interventionism in the Middle East. During the debate, Jeb Bush chided Trump for his lack of foreign policy experience, and Trump unleashed a roundhouse punch that not only flattened Bush but ultimately Hillary Clinton. While our infrastructure crumbles, Trump asserted that the United States spends trillions running around the Middle East “toppling” dictators. Trump doubled down and said, “We have done a tremendous disservice, not only to the Middle East. We have done a tremendous disservice to humanity. The people that have been killed, the people that have been wiped away, and for what? It’s not like we had victory.” … Democratic members of the “War Party” like Clinton and others in the establishment should not expect the support of small patriotic towns in the Midwest that regularly welcome back dead and legless soldiers from distant wars seemingly unrelated to American national interests. More
Reps. Gabbard and Jones Lead Bipartisan Resolution to End Presidential Wars
Reps. Tulsi Gabbard (HI-02) and Walter Jones (NC-03) hosted a press conference today to introduce a bipartisan resolution reclaiming Congress’s constitutional right to declare war. H.Res. 922 would define presidential wars not declared by Congress as impeachable “high crimes and misdemeanors.” Rep. Tulsi Gabbard said: “For decades, Congress has ceded its Constitutional responsibility of deciding whether or not to declare war, to the President. As a result, we have found ourselves in a state of perpetual war, without a declaration of war by Congress and without input from the American people… “We are here today because Congress is not meeting its constitutional responsibility,” said Congressman Jones. “If Congress does not debate sending your son or daughter to fight for this country, then we don’t need a Congress anyway. Nothing is more sacred or important than sending a man or woman to die for this country.” More
CORTEZ-STYLE UPSET IN MASSACHUSETTS?
An African-American lawyer, Amatul-Wadud has spent most of her life in the Springfield area. She has been Muslim since the age of 4, when her parents converted to the religion. Now 44, Amatul-Wadud has run her own law practice since 2009… But Amatul-Wadud’s campaign isn’t focused on her identity — professional, racial, religious, or any other. It is focused on her politics. Amatul-Wadud is confident that a progressive agenda is her best selling point. Her campaign platform centers “Medicare for All,” a strong social safety net, and civil rights protections as top priorities. It’s a vision that has netted her endorsements from Indivisible and the Progressive Democrats of America. More
This from Tahira Amatul-Wadud’s web site:
MASSACHUSETTS PEACE ACTION STANDS UP FOR FREE SPEECH AND WINS!
On our behalf, the ACLU of Massachusetts sued the City of Cambridge. We are pleased to announce a settlement has been reached. The settlement, effective immediately, resolves that, going forward, the City of Cambridge will not charge for public safety services for "Demonstration Events" – non-commercial expressive events like rallies, vigils, protests, and marches – in the City’s parks. The City’s websites will be updated to reflect this new policy. Per the settlement, the City of Cambridge will waive all charges for public safety services it arranged for in connection with the Women’s March. More
