WARS ABROAD, WARS AT HOME
DEMOCRATIC PARTY EARTHQUAKE?
You’ve all read stories about the stunning New York primary victory of socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez over a senior establishment incumbent Democratic Rep. Joe Crowley. Here is her stunning 2-minute campaign video if you haven’t seen it. The message is very powerful. (Click on the still below to watch it on YouTube)
Among other progressive stances, Ocasio-Cortez has also broken with the Democratic establishment in vocal opposition to Israel’s occupation and its massacre of Palestinians in Gaza.
Local media has compared the NY contest to the challenge to incumbent Rep. Mike Capuano, but there are differences too. Capuano is a member of the House Progressive Caucus (Crowley wasn’t) and Ayanna Pressley supported Hillary Clinton for President, while Ocasio-Cortez was an organizer for Bernie Sanders.
HOW AMERICA'S WARS FUND INEQUALITY AT HOME
During prior wars, the U.S. adjusted its budget accordingly by, among other options, raising taxes to pay for its conflicts. Not so since 2001, when President George W. Bush launched the “Global War on Terror.” Instead, the country has accumulated a staggering amount of debt. Even if Washington stopped spending on its wars tomorrow, it will still, thanks to those conflicts, owe more than $8 trillion in interest alone by the 2050s… However little the public may realize it, Americans are already feeling the costs of their post-9/11 wars. Those have, after all, massively increased the Pentagon’s base budget and the moneys that go into the expanding national security budget, while reducing the amount of money left over for so much else from infrastructure investment to science. In the decade following September 11, 2001, military spending increased by 50%, while spending on every other government program increased only 13.5%... President Trump's proposals for future spending, if accepted by Congress, would ensure that, by 2023, the proportion of military spending would soar to 65%. More
'Morally Bankrupt': After Tax Cuts for Richest, House GOP Unveils $5.4 Trillion Attack on Nation's Safety Net
With the nation's attention rightly fixated on President Donald Trump's horrific treatment of immigrant children, House Republicans on Tuesday quietly unveiled their 2019 budget proposal that calls for $537 billion in cuts to Medicare, $1.5 trillion in cuts to Medicaid, and four billion in cuts to Social Security over the next decade in an effort to pay for their deficit-exploding tax cuts for the wealthy. "It's morally bankrupt, patently absurd, and grossly un-American," the advocacy group Patriotic Millionaires said of the GOP's budget proposal, which calls for $5.4 trillion in spending cuts from major domestic programs… "Each GOP budget is more fraudulent than the last," Seth Hanlon, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, wrote on Tuesday. "We know what they stand for: tax cuts paid for with healthcare cuts."
In addition to proposing devastating safety net cuts, the House GOP budget also calls for partial privatization of Medicare and the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, a move that would throw tens of millions off their health insurance. More
Look Who's Making a Killing on Killing
So why the constant drive to fuel more and additional conflict? As the saying goes, follow the money: who profits from all this death and devastation? The merchants of war who have shaped U.S. foreign policy since the end of WWII have a foothold so strong, the act of extracting ourselves from the war economy has become incredibly complex. In 2017, the U.S. gave more than $750 billion to the Pentagon, which turned around and handed $350 billion of that to weapons manufacturers—companies like Boeing, Lockheed, Raytheon, General Dynamics, and Northrop Grumman, some of whom are also currently profiting from the construction of immigrant detention facilities. The CEOs of those companies took home a combined salary of $96 million. More
The Janus Decision Was Never About the First Amendment. It Was About Destroying Labor.
The objective of the Court majority, along with their political allies, has always been the destruction of labor unions. Of course they will not confirm that, but their actions have been continuously telegraphed. Janus is a decision that aims to weaken the ability of public sector unions to represent their respective workforces. As the Supreme Court majority knows, from any assessment of “open shop” situations, when a union is compelled—at its own cost—to represent workers that they must represent by law, their resources are drained. The moves towards “open shop,” that is, no forms of union security, have been underway for a long time. There have been, throughout the history of labor unions in the United States, periodic offensives by the employer class to either eliminate unions altogether or weaken them significantly. In the current moment, at the federal, state, county and municipal levels, public sector unions are perceived as an obstacle to the political Right and much of corporate America that seeks to eliminate the social safety net, privatize all that can be privatized, and weaken government to the point that its only relevance is in the realm of police, fire, prisons and, of course, the military. More
As Kennedy Retires, the Court’s Attack on Labor Unions Is a Sign of Things to Come
The ruling on Wednesday didn’t come about by accident, however. It marks the culmination of a decades-long anti-union campaign by conservative groups and billionaires tied to the Republican Party, such as the Koch brothers, the Uihlein family, and their allies. By funnelling money through tax-exempt organizations like the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, the Liberty Justice Center, and the Center for Individual Rights, these ultra-wealthy people have helped to finance a series of legal attacks on labor unions that represent ordinary working people who earn modest wages… For years, conservatives complained about activist liberal judges making it up as they went along. Today, they are the activists. Under the guise of “originalism,” they are rewriting the nation’s laws to further the reactionary political agenda of the Republican Party and its biggest donors. More
WHY WE NEED A WIDER FOREIGN-POLICY DEBATE
A reckoning with America’s failed national-security policy is long overdue. Donald Trump’s reckless machinations are destructive, but so too is the bipartisan establishment consensus that has defined our role in the world for decades and remains remarkably unshaken, despite its evident bankruptcy. Our calamitous misadventures in the Middle East and the global financial collapse of 2008 dramatically exposed the failures of this consensus. Yet while citizen movements have begun to transform domestic politics, they have been virtually invisible when it comes to foreign policy… Progressive reform would begin by discarding the notion that America is uniquely permitted to use force. We should recognize that, while we are a global superpower, it is in the US interest to defend international law. We can best bolster our security by respecting the law, not holding ourselves above it. More
SYRIA
As the Syrian government moves to retake areas in the south of the country around Deraa that had been occupied by opposition fighters – with the support of Israel and US-Jordan – news reports are filled with reports of atrocities by the Assad forces and poignant stories about refugees fleeing toward the Israel-occupied Golan. It’s nothing new that civilians try to escape the fighting during a brutal war, but what you won’t see in our mainstream media is that many residents in the liberated towns and villages are welcoming the Syrian army. The Syrian army has made efforts to help civilians to leave the war zones – an action which is condemned as “ethnic cleansing” in rebel propaganda that is echoed relentlessly in the Western press. Videos here and here are in Arabic, but the interviewees are expressing thanks to the Syrian Army and government, while others wave the Syrian state red, white-and black flag (the rebels use the old mandate-period green, white and black flag). Meanwhile, joyful Syrian refugees in Lebanon are beginning to return to their homes. Expect new and dubious reports of alleged government chemical weapons attacks, as has been the pattern in this war whenever the government advances.
'We’re so happy': Hundreds of Syrians refugees return home from Lebanon
Hundreds of Syrian refugees left northeast Lebanon yesterday morning in pick-up trucks jam-packed with their belongings: mattresses, gas stoves, crockery, children’s toys as well as the occasional bird cage. They were headed for the Qalamoun region of Syria, just a few hours drive from the camps they had lived in for the past few years in Arsal, a Lebanese border town. All of them reported having fled the intense fighting back in 2013… Relatives and friends waved tearful goodbyes. “I hope you arrive safely and that we’ll see each other soon in Syria," sobbed an elderly lady as she embraced Hajer Darwish, a young mother of two sitting in the front of a pick-up truck driven by her husband. “She’s crying because we’re leaving and she’s staying,” explained Darwish, smiling. “We’re so happy to go back to our country. I haven’t slept all night.” More
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