Trevor Timm at The Guardian writes—America gives $700bn to the military – but says healthcare is a luxury:
When Bernie Sanders released his much anticipated healthcare plan last week, countless pundits and members of Congress asked why the government should pass such a bill given its potential cost. Now that Congress on the verge of sending a record-setting $700bn Pentagon spending bill to Trump’s desk, you can bet those deficit scolds will be nowhere to be found.
On Monday evening, the Senate passed – in bipartisan fashion – a policy bill that set the parameters for military spending in 2018 that tops $700bn, including tens of billions in spending for wars Trump has been expanding in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.
Amazingly, the bill far exceeds even the increase in spending that the Trump administration was asking for, and as the Associated Press reported, it would put “the US armed forces on track for a budget greater than at any time during the decade-plus wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
Only eight senators voted against the bill – three Republicans and five Democrats. It passed with an overwhelming bipartisan majority. Even in a time of hyper-partisanship, you can always count on Congress to come together and spend hundreds of billions of dollars to build weapons and bombs for killing people overseas, even as our infrastructure crumbles at home and thousands of people die each year without healthcare.
Adam Rogers at Wired writes—Cities Turn to Others for Help in Fighting Climate Change:
MAYBE THE UNITED States is sticking with the Paris Climate Agreement? Maybe it isn’t? But even if the US bails out of the international accord to limit climate change, well, nations aren’t the only players. If every city with a population over 100,000 stepped up, they could account for 40 percent of the reductions required.
But that’s no small if. “It requires drastic action in the next three or four years,” says Michael Doust, program director for measurement and planning at C40, a coalition of 90 cities trying to fight climate change. “The decisions city leaders are going to make are really going to set the tone.”
So after last year’s Deadline 2020 report, in which C40 detailed the reductions cities would have to make to keep warming below 1.5 degrees by 2050, many city leaders had one critical question: How? On Monday at “C40 Talks,” part of a series of Climate Week events in New York, C40’s steering group cities announced a step toward an answer, with plans for the leadership team—New York, Paris, Mexico City, Durban, and others—to prepare and share detailed climate roadmaps as a way to spin up everyone else. [...]
Even in advance of the C40 plans, scientists already have some pretty good ideas. The real problem, though, will be knowing if any cities are getting it right. “If all you have is a blunt instrument, you can make some dents. You can do the broad transportation policies that lots of cities do. You can poke at building codes,” says Kevin Gurney, a biogeochemist at Arizona State University who studies urban carbon cycles. “But if you want to go beyond that, you need more information than is typically available.”
Arwa Mahdawi at The Guardian writes—Hollywood should call out lying politicians. Jimmy Kimmel shows how:
Hold the front page: in today’s breaking news, it would appear that politicians are liars. We’ve got late-night host Jimmy Kimmel to thank for this shocking revelation. Kimmel opened up Tuesday’s show by calling out Louisiana senator Bill Cassidy for lying to him about his plans to remove healthcare for millions of Americans.
In May, “after my son had open heart surgery, which was something I spoke about on the air [Cassidy] was on my show and he wasn’t very honest,” Kimmel said. “He said he would only support a healthcare bill that made sure a child like mine would get the health coverage he needs, no matter how much money his parents make.”
Just a few months later Cassidy went on to vote yes on the Senate’s failed July bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Now, alongside Lindsey Graham, Cassidy is pushing yet another bill to repeal Obamacare and take healthcare away from the Americans who need it the most. [...]
That Kimmel has so publicly called Cassidy out as a liar is commendable. So is the fact that Kimmel is turning himself into Hollywood’s moral voice on healthcare.
But it’s also worth asking why on earth Kimmel believed Cassidy in the first place. No one goes on a late-night TV show to tell America that they think babies from poor families deserve to die.
At The New Republic, Graham Vyse writes—The Democrats Aren’t Ready for Trump’s First War:
Back in March, roughly two months after Donald Trump assumed the presidency, Ben Wikler began working in earnest to prevent another war. As the Washington director for the progressive group MoveOn—which fought doggedly but unsuccessfully against the United States invasion of Iraq in 2003—Wikler has been meeting regularly with colleagues from CREDO Action, the American Civil Liberties Union, Win Without War, and ReThink Media, gaming out conflict scenarios under Trump. How might the president exploit a national security crisis? Would there be a law-and-order domestic crackdown? What exactly would it take to stop war with North Korea or Iran?
Last week, Wikler told me “the threat of an armed conflict with North Korea is ever-present, and the risk that Trump will steer us toward war with Iran.” Both of those threats are now more acute after Trump’s terrifying speech to the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, in which he threatened to “totally destroy” North Korea, called its leader Kim Jong-un “rocket man,” and called the Iran nuclear deal “an embarrassment.” In a joint statement, MoveOn, CREDO, and Win Without War said, “We need to stop this slow roll toward a catastrophic war and work towards defusing the North Korean crisis diplomatically. Trump’s U.N. speech represents yet another reckless escalation in the ongoing tit-for-tat between North Korea and the United States that does nothing but edge us closer to nuclear war.” They added, “There is no military solution to this problem.”
Given the constant domestic crisis of the Trump administration—the latest insanity being another last-ditch effort to repeal Obamacare—it’s understandable that the Democrats haven’t focused as much on his foreign policy. Yet Trump’s U.N. speech heightens the need for the opposition to communicate its own international agenda, clearly articulating how Democrats would engage with the world if they retook power. Senator Bernie Sanders plans to outline his vision for a progressive foreign policy in a speech on Thursday to Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri. But Democrats on Capitol Hill haven’t laid the groundwork. “We don’t have a clear progressive foreign policy,” Representative Ro Khanna of California told me this week. “I’m not confident we have enough mobilization, enough awareness, and enough coherence of perspective to avoid another intervention that gets us entangled abroad.”
Alex Shepard at The New Republic writes—Donald Trump's rambling, incoherent speech to the U.N. General Assembly was proof that the president only has one audience in mind—and it isn't a global one:
Most strikingly, the speech made stabs at a foreign policy vision. “As long as I hold this office,” Trump intoned, “I will defend America’s interests above all else. But in fulfilling our obligations to our own nations, we also realize that it’s in everyone’s interest to seek a future where all nations can be sovereign, prosperous, and secure.” This has been interpreted by some supporters and some detractors as a return to realpolitik, but in fact there’s no overarching principle, not even Trump’s notion of “sovereignty,” which explains the various, sometimes schizophrenic approaches to foreign problems outlined in the speech. Rather, Trump gave what could be called his Global Carnage speech, ranting about crises—“Major portions of the world are in conflict and some, in fact, are going to hell,” he said—while proposing policies that would only make those crises worse. [...]
The speech’s cognitive dissonance is the result of a president—and a group of presidential advisers—who have not thought deeply about the role of U.S. power or the value of international cooperation, where it’s necessary for nations to cede sovereignty in the hope of a greater good. But it also stemmed from the fact that this was a speech that wasn’t intended for Trump’s audience in New York City.
Instead, in the grand tradition of crazy United Nations speeches by the likes of Muammar Qaddafi and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Venezuela’s own Hugo Chavez, it was also aimed at a domestic audience. It was a speech for his base, which has become increasingly restless as Trump has backed away from key campaign promises. Far from opening a new chapter on American foreign policy, it was fundamentally [un]interested in it.
Heather Digby Parton at Salon writes—Trump’s UN speech: Democracy and human rights? Fake news! National sovereignty is meaningless. Let’s blow stuff up:
If one were to believe Donald Trump's speech before the United Nations, in his short tenure as president he has already fixed the domestic problems he outlined in his "American Carnage" inaugural address and is now prepared to apply his methods to the rest of the planet. One might even call this speech "Global Carnage." Trump described a Hobbesian world in which decent countries everywhere are under assault from "small regimes" trying to undermine their sovereignty and destroy their ways of life. Or, as he elegantly phrased it: "Major portions of the world are in conflict, and some, in fact, are going to hell."
This was very much the way he described America on the day he was sworn in. It too was a desolate, dystopian hellscape of smoldering ruins and abandoned cities, where bands of foreigners and gangsters roamed the land, raping and pillaging and leaving carnage in their wake. He promised to take the country back (reclaim its sovereignty, if you will) from people who were trying to impose their values and culture on the Real Americans. He told the world on Tuesday morning that he had largely accomplished that task.
Contrary to popular belief among the chattering classes, the people who loved his promise to "make America great again" were undoubtedly pleased to see him pledge to get the world in order as well. Trump was saying that it's none of America's business how you treat your own citizens (unless it interferes with business), and we are not going to honor any international treaties, laws or institutions that we don't like. But that doesn't mean other countries can do the same. We are a sovereign nation but we are also the richest and strongest superpower on earth, and we will decide when and where other people are allowed to exercise control over their own countries.
E.J. Dionne Jr. at The Washington Post writes—Trump shows ‘America First’ is utterly incoherent:
The worst aspect of President Trump’s speech at the United Nations on Tuesday was not his immature taunting of a dangerous foreign leader when the stakes far outweigh those of a schoolyard fight.
Calling North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un “Rocket Man” may make Trump happy by reminding him of the glory days of “Little Marco,” “Lyin’ Ted” and “Crooked Hillary.” But it does nothing to win over the allies we need.
And his threat “to totally destroy North Korea” is what you’d expect to hear in a bar conversation from a well-lubricated armchair general, not from the leader of the world’s most powerful military.
But the most alarming part of an address that was supposed to be a serious formulation of the president’s grand strategy in the world was the utter incoherence of Trump’s “America first” doctrine.
Doyle McManus at the Los Angeles Times writes—Will Trump's 'Rocket Man' speech lead us to war?
The ostensible purpose of President Trump’s speech at the United Nations on Tuesday was to explain to the world why “America First” is an idea other countries should embrace. It was to be “a deeply philosophical address,” a White House official promised. Instead, the speech will inevitably be remembered for just two words: “Rocket Man,” Trump’s derisive nickname for North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
Never mind grand strategy. Trump made sure the media’s favorite soundbite would be a schoolboy taunt and a threat of mass annihilation.
“Rocket Man is on a suicide mission for himself and his regime,” the president told the world’s diplomats. “The United States has great strength and patience, but if it is forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea.”
Alice Pettway at The Progressive writes—Equal Pay for Women Supported by the U.N.—Trump, Not So Much:
Out of twenty-one countries with 2015 wage gap data analyzed by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the United States ranks 17th.
At the 2016 Republican National Convention, Ivanka Trump said of her father Donald Trump—then the Republican nominee—“He will fight for equal pay for equal work, and I will fight for this too, right alongside of him.”
Seven months into Trump’s presidency, Ivanka Trump blessed her father’s decision—based on concerns over “confidentiality” and “burdensome” regulation—to end an Obama-established rule that would have required businesses to begin collecting wage data in March 2018. The Republican-controlled House of Representatives followed a few weeks later by voting down an amendment that would have maintained financial support of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s equal pay data collection initiative.
The Washington Post reported in July that the White House’s own gender-pay gap has tripled under Trump.
Celestine Bohlen at The New York Times writes—American Democracy Is Drowning in Money:
The tide of money swelling around the American political system continues to rise. In 2016, candidates running for federal office spent a record $6.4 billion on their campaigns, while lobbyists spent $3.15 billion to influence the government in Washington. Both sums are twice that of 2000 levels.
So what does all that money buy? No one seriously thinks that the quality of American representative democracy has doubled in value. Has it instead become doubly corrupt? [...]
The flood of money unleashed by the Citizens United decision has swept away the effectiveness of those [Watergate era] controls, according to Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, a nonprofit organization dedicated to campaign reform. He dismissed as “illusory” the argument that contributions from supposedly independent groups known as “super PACs” don’t corrupt the political process because they don’t work directly in concert with the campaigns they support.
Daniel Epps is an associate professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis, where he teaches criminal law and criminal procedure, At The Washington Post, he writes—Police officers are bypassing juries to face judges:
The city where I live and work has been roiled by protests after the acquittal of former city police officer Jason Stockley on first-degree murder charges for his 2011 shooting of Anthony Lamar Smith. Again, to many of us, the justice system seems unwilling to hold law-enforcement officers to account for violence against people of color.
The outcome is unquestionably troubling. Prosecutors alleged that Stockley planted a gun in Smith’s vehicle to fabricate a self-defense claim. There was evidence to support that theory: The victim’s DNA was not found on the gun, but Stockley’s DNA was present. The defense maintained that Stockley’s partner had spotted the gun in Smith’s hand before the stop and that Stockley’s DNA was present because he unloaded the weapon to render it safe after finding it in Smith’s car.
But perhaps as important as the decision is who rendered it. The fact-finder in Stockley’s trial was not a jury of 12 St. Louisans but instead one man employed by the state: Judge Timothy J. Wilson of Missouri’s 22nd Judicial Circuit. That’s because Stockley, over the prosecution’s objection, requested what’s known as a “bench trial.”
The Editorial Board of The Nation concludes—The Political Genius of Bernie’s ‘Medicare for All’ Bill. It blends a principled stand with a crafty incremental approach:
The basic premise isn’t novel: Medicare for All has been introduced in the House of Representatives by Congressman John Conyers for over a decade, as well as promoted by groups like Physicians for a National Health Care Program and the National Nurses United. Four years ago, when Sanders proposed a similar measure, he found exactly zero co-sponsors. Today he has 16, including prospective 2020 presidential candidates Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, and Cory Booker. So what changed?
Galvanized by the economic and social movements that found expression in Sanders’s campaign, Democrats are undeniably more willing to embrace big ideas, even and especially in the age of Trump. As Hillary Clinton observes in her memoir What Happened, “the conclusion I reach from this is that Democrats should redouble our efforts to develop bold, creative ideas that offer broad-based benefits for the whole country.” On health care in particular, according to a recent Pew survey, a majority of Americans now believe that the federal government should be responsible for making sure everyone has coverage, and a majority of Democrats think that single-payer is the best way to achieve that goal. All of this forms the context for the sudden popularity of Medicare for All, but there is also a quieter genius to Sanders’s particular bill that helped bring about this moment. [...]
Canvassing his fellow senators, including those who have taken a wait-and-see approach, was key to Sanders’s ability to build a surprisingly broad base of support, as was the backing of dozens of outside groups, from MoveOn.org to the Working Families Party to the United Mine Workers. That Sanders was one of the most vocal defenders of Obamacare—even as he consistently criticized it as insufficient—helped build credibility, too.
Joel Bleifuss at In These Times writes—Heed the Lesson of 1932: Only Left Unity Can Defeat the Racist Right:
Polls indicate that most Americans are alarmed by Trump; the man lost the popular vote, after all. But will the opprobrium of the majority be enough to stop his program? In 1932, Hitler came to power in Germany with only 33 percent of the vote, winning 196 seats (a plurality) in the Reichstag. The left parties, together, had 221 seats and could have formed a government—had not the German Communists obeyed orders from Comintern to demonize the “social fascists,” i.e. the rival Social Democrats. It was only after Nazi Germany’s imperial designs threatened the Soviet Union that Moscow instructed Communist parties to form fronts against fascism with other left parties.
In short, fascists were able to consolidate power in Germany because they exploited a division within the Left. Today, in the United States, the only obstacle to wresting power from an evermore-extreme Right would be a collective inability of progressive forces to unite against this emboldened enemy. The earnest liberals of the Women’s March, antifa, the growing movement for Black lives, the Berniecrats, the campus theorists, the democratic socialists, et al., must soberly assess this perilous moment, pause their Twitter wars, and unite against the white supremacists, the vote-suppressors, the GOP mega-donors and the religious hucksters that make up Trump’s “movement.”
Those of us on the Left do not need to paper over our important distinctions or suppress the discussion of controversies. Nevertheless, Left unity against the racist Right will be essential to protecting vulnerable communities, and to halting the expansion of Trumpism in the 2018 and 2020 election cycles.
We must stand shoulder to shoulder with those who were the objects of the hate we saw in Charlottesville—Blacks, immigrants, Jews and others who don’t conform to the white nationalist ideal. The terror that was directed at them is a not-so-distant cousin of the state-sanctioned violence municipal police and ICE agents visit upon Black and Latino communities every day. These communities are already on the front lines. Their fight is ours.
The Editorial Board of the Los Angeles Times concludes—Entitled drivers are getting in the way of California’s climate change efforts:
For all the talk in California about leading the world in fighting global warming and resisting President Trump’s climate-denial agenda, the state faces one powerful obstacle that limits its environmental activism: Touch their cars and Californians will revolt.
Any effort that limits, constrains or makes driving one’s car more expensive or inconvenient — no matter how civic-minded the proposal — is immediately controversial in California, and often a nonstarter. Getting between Californians and their cars can spell the end of a political career. Just ask former Gov. Gray Davis, who was recalled in large part because of his decision to triple the state’s vehicle license fee.
Two separate, unrelated efforts launched last week are a reminder of just how difficult it is to make public policy when it involves people’s cars.
At the state level, a group calling itself “Reform California” announced that it was proposing an initiative to repeal the new gas tax and vehicle fee increases approved by Gov. Jerry Brown and the Legislature in April. The increases, including a 12-cent-per-gallon tax hike, were passed after years of negotiations over how to pay for an estimated $73 billion in deferred road repairs and infrastructure maintenance. [...]