13 August 20
It's Live on the HomePage Now:
Reader Supported News
Robert Reich | How Mitch McConnell's Republicans Are Destroying America
Robert Reich, In These Times
Reich writes: "Senate Republicans’ shameful priorities are on full display as the nation continues to grapple with an unprecedented health and economic crisis."
While a lethal pandemic and economic crisis wreak havoc on working families, McConnell and the GOP are dead set on protecting business interests and enriching the wealthy.
enate Republicans’ shameful priorities are on full display as the nation continues to grapple with an unprecedented health and economic crisis.
Mitch McConnell and the GOP refuse to take up the HEROES Act, passed by the House in early May to help Americans survive the pandemic and fortify the upcoming election.
Senate Republicans don’t want to extend the extra $600 a week in unemployment benefits, even though unemployment has soared to the highest levels since the Great Depression.
Even before the pandemic, nearly 80 percent of Americans lived paycheck to paycheck. Now many are desperate, as revealed by lengthening food lines and growing delinquencies in rent payments.
McConnell’s response? He urges lawmakers to be “cautious” about helping struggling Americans, warning that “the amount of debt that we’re adding up is a matter of genuine concern.”
McConnell seems to forget the $1.9 trillion tax cut he engineered in December 2017 for big corporations and the super-rich, which blew up the deficit.
That’s just the beginning of the GOP’s handouts for corporations and the wealthy. As soon as the pandemic hit, McConnell and Senate Republicans were quick to give mega-corporations a $500 billion blank check, while only sending Americans a paltry one-time $1,200 check.
The GOP seems to believe that the rich will work harder if they receive more money while people of modest means work harder if they receive less. In reality, the rich contribute more to Republican campaigns when they get bailed out.
That’s precisely why the GOP put into the last Covid relief bill a $170 billion windfall to Jared Kushner and other real estate moguls, who line the GOP’s campaign coffers. Another $454 billion of the package went to backing up a Federal Reserve program that benefits big business by buying up their debt.
And although the bill was also intended to help small businesses, lobbyists connected to Trump – including current donors and fundraisers for his reelection – helped their clients rake in over $10 billion of the aid, while an estimated 90 percent of small businesses owned by people of color and women got nothing.
The GOP’s shameful priorities have left countless small businesses with no choice but to close. They’ve also left 22 million Americans unemployed, and 28 million at risk of being evicted by September.
For the bulk of this crisis, McConnell called the Senate back into session only to confirm more of Trump’s extremist judges and advance a $740 billion defense spending bill.
Throughout it all, McConnell has insisted his priority is to shield businesses from Covid-related lawsuits by customers and employees who have contracted the virus.
The inept and overwhelmingly corrupt reign of Trump, McConnell, and Senate Republicans will come to an end next January if enough Americans vote this coming November.
But will enough people vote during a pandemic? The HEROES Act provides $3.6 billion for states to expand mail-in and early voting, but McConnell and his GOP lackeys aren’t interested. They’re well aware that more voters increase the likelihood Republicans will be booted out.
Time and again, they’ve shown that they only care about their wealthy donors and corporate backers. If they had an ounce of concern for the nation, their priority would be to shield Americans from the ravages of Covid and American democracy from the ravages of Trump. But we know where their priorities lie.
Protesters outside the Minneapolis 1st Police precinct during a demonstration against police brutality and racism in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on Saturday. (photo: Kerem Yucel/Getty)
Poll: Americans' Confidence in Police Falls to Historic Low
N'dea Yancey-Bragg, USA TODAY
Yancey-Bragg writes: "Americans' confidence in the police fell to the lowest level recorded by Gallup in the nearly 30 years it has been tracking such data, driven in part by a growing racial divide on the issue."
READ MORE
Post Officer worker. (photo: Getty)
Trump Says Postal Service Needs Money for Mail-In Voting, but He'll Keep Blocking Funding
Jacob Bogage, The Washington Post
Bogage writes: "President Trump says the U.S. Postal Service is incapable of facilitating mail-in voting because it cannot access the emergency funding he is blocking, and made clear that requests for additional aid were nonstarters in coronavirus relief negotiations."
READ MORE
Medical staff at a hospital treating patients with COVID 19. (photo: AP)
The True Coronavirus Toll in the US Has Already Surpassed 200,000
Denise Lu, The New York Times
Lu writes: "Across the United States, at least 200,000 more people have died than usual since March, according to a New York Times analysis of estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This is about 60,000 higher than the number of deaths that have been directly linked to the coronavirus."
READ MORE
Jeffery Ryans, shown in his attorney's office, Aug. 5, 2020, is suing Salt Lake City police after he says officers used excessive force when they commanded a police dog to attack him repeatedly while he was on his knees with his hands in the air. (photo: Leah Hogsten/The Salt Lake Tribune)
Salt Lake Police Suspend K9 Program After Video Shows Dog Biting Black Man With His Hands Up
Tim Stelloh, NBC News
Stelloh writes: "The Salt Lake City Police Department suspended its K9 program on Wednesday, one day after the release of an officer's body-camera footage that showed his dog appearing to repeatedly bite a Black man kneeling on the ground with his hands up."
U.S. House of Representatives primary race winners Cori Bush (D-MO), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) (photo: AP)
The Squad Ends Primary Season With a 4-0 Record Against Right-Wing, 'Pro-Israel' Groups
Allison Kaplan Sommer, Haaretz
Sommer writes: "Champagne corks were popping in pro-Israel circles on Tuesday night following the announcement that Joe Biden had chosen Senator Kamala Harris to be his running mate."
The victories of Jamaal Bowman, Rashida Tlaib, Cori Bush and Ilhan Omar are worrying for groups like AIPAC, the Democratic Majority for Israel and their allies
Among the list of finalists who were under consideration by the Biden campaign for the VP role, Harris had the clearest record of support for Israel. Her selection helped guarantee that the 2020 Democratic presidential ticket would be impervious to insinuation from the Trump campaign that Biden’s Israel policy could somehow be hijacked by the more progressive Bernie Sanders-led camp.
But the jubilant celebrations regarding the top of the ticket obscured a far less pleasant reality for groups like AIPAC, the Democratic Majority for Israel and their allies – the reality of the congressional primaries, where these pro-Israeli groups suffered a string of painful losses.
On the same day as the Harris announcement, the decisive victory by Rep. Ilhan Omar in her Minnesota primary sealed a 0-4 string of losses for pro-Israeli groups in their efforts to beat back the growing strength and popularity of the group known as the “Squad” – young, largely female progressive candidates of color.
The Squad originally contained four members of Congress who were first elected in the 2018 midterm election: Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Ayana Pressley (D-MA), and the two first-ever Muslim women elected to Congress, Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) and Ilhan Omar (D-MN). The group has been at the forefront of Congressional criticism against the Israeli government, and its members have joined Senator Bernie Sanders’ call to condition military aid to Israel.
In this year’s Democratic primaries, a battle line had been drawn, with the Squad and other left-wing Democrats on one side, and pro-Israel groups on the other. So far, in every major contest, the Squad emerged victorious. The pro-Israel groups hoped to knock down at least one of the group’s members, but instead, the group is likely to expand in the next Congress.
The first big sign of trouble for AIPAC and its allies began on June 23 in the primary for New York’s 16th district where challenger Jamaal Bowman, a progressive educator, defeated Eliot Engel, a 16-term Jewish veteran congressman and the chairman of the powerful House Foreign Affairs Committee.
When the mail-in ballots were finally counted and the final result announced on July 17, the tally showed a humiliating loss for an established incumbent – Engel only won 40% of the vote to Bowman’s 55%. It was a far cry from Engel’s cakewalk in the primaries two years earlier in 2018, when Engel had effortlessly beaten back his primary rival Jonathan Lewis 73% to 16%, and viewed as a repeat performance of a New York upset two years earlier – when Ocasio-Cortez beat Democratic Caucus chair Joe Crowley in the 2018 primaries.
Engel’s defeat was a devastating blow for AIPAC and its allies, since his position as the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee made him a key asset for Israel supporters. Engel consistently lined up with the pro-Israeli lobby on issues like Iran, Palestinian statehood and Israeli settlements. He was a Democrat who had actively promoted moving the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, and supported President Donald Trump when he made the move – one of many times he reached across the aisle and worked together with Republicans when it came to legislation, resolutions and letters of concern, regarding Israel.
Because of this, Engel had been vigorously backed by pro-Israel PACs. According to the campaign funding website Open Secrets, Engel was the member of Congress who received the largest amount of pro-Israel funds for his primary race – $546,213. That included a controversial television attack ad against Bowman funded by the Democratic Majority for Israel, hitting Bowman for non-payment of taxes. Bernie Sanders publicly decried the ad, tweeting that the Democratic Majority for Israel PAC “is a corporate/Republican-funded super PAC that runs ugly, negative ads against progressives. This is establishment big-money politics at its worst, and why we have to transform the Democratic Party.” Ultimately, Engel felt compelled to ask the PAC to remove the ad.
Then, on August 4, came a double whammy. Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib – a supporter of BDS and opponent of a two-state solution – easily won her primary in Michigan’s 13th district, defeating Brenda Jones, president of the Detroit city council, with 66% of the vote to Jones’ 34%. Tlaib’s margin of victory over Jones was far wider than it had been when the two faced off in 2018, defying the assessments of local Israel supporters earlier in the race that Tlaib was “beatable.”
In fact, she proved far less beatable than she had been in 2018, when the roles were reversed – Jones was the incumbent and Tlaib the newcomer – when Tlaib only squeaked ahead by fewer than 1,000 votes.
On the same day as Tlaib’s victory, Missouri’s Cori Bush, a progressive activist prominent in the Black Lives Matter movement and a supporter of BDS, scored her upset primary win against another powerful incumbent – Rep. William Lacy Clay Jr. – whom she had unsuccessfully challenged two years earlier.
Bush’s victory was slim but definitive – with 48% of the vote to Clay’s 45%. Her victory over Clay beat back a campaign that attacked her for her BDS support and cooperation with activist Linda Sarsour. Her win against a member of a political dynasty whose family had held that Misouri’s 1st congressional seat for five decades, was hailed as the biggest progressive triumph since the ascendance of Ocasio-Cortez two years earlier.
The Bush-Clay contest, like Tlaib’s Michigan primary, was a rematch. Bush had challenged Clay in 2018, but was heavily outspent and lost to him 56%-36%. This time around, she seriously upped her fundraising game, coming closer to matching the funds Clay had assembled than in their first race. Her victory in this heavily Democratic district all but ensures that come January 2021, when the next Congress is sworn-in, the Squad will add a new members to its ranks.
Finally, on Tuesday, August 11, the final blow came with the victory of Omar, who successfully retained her seat in Minnesota’s fifth district. Omar and Tlaib have become heroes for Israel’s opponents on the left, demonized and targeted on the far right, and have attracted lots of media attention and controversy for their views regarding Israel, the Palestinians and BDS. In August of 2019, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu banned Omar and Tlaib from a planned visit to Israel and the West Bank, citing regulations that “forbid the entry of people calling for and acting to placing a boycott on Israel.”
Almost a year later to the day, final election results had Omar devastating her challenger, attorney Antone Melton-Meaux, 57%-39%, overcoming the fact that, although Omar initially led in fundraising, in the months running up to the primary, Melton Meaux’s financial war chest dwarfed Omar’s six-fold.
According to the Minnesota Post, 20 percent of total large-dollar donations to Melton-Meaux came from pro-Israel Political Action Committees. Melton-Meaux “raised $382,000 in donations bundled by the Pro-Israel America PAC, a nonpartisan political committee that supports both Republican and Democrat pro-Israel candidates. He also raised nearly $106,000 in bundled donations through NORPAC, a political action committee that supports conservative policies in Israel,” the Post reported, adding that an additional $34,000 came in from a long list of pro-Israel groups, including “Citizens Organized, Friends of Israel, Grand Canyon State Caucus, Heartland PAC, Maryland Association for Concerned Citizens, Mid-Manhattan PAC, Pro-Israel America PAC and Sun PAC.”
But despite the financial support from such groups, Omar triumphed by an even larger margin than in 2018, when she received 48.2 percent of the vote – with her closest competitor, Margaret Kelliher trailing with 30.4 percent. Her overall share of the vote grew by almost 10%, ensuring that she will return to Washington for at least one more Congressional term.
The results in these primary races, from New York to Missouri and Minnesota, show that the Squad is here to stay. And while pro-Israeli groups are relieved to have Biden and Harris at the top of the ticket, the Sanders-led wing of the party is far from negligible, and will continue to try and push the party to the left on Middle East policy.
A large patch of leaked oil travels on ocean currents near the Pointe d'Esny in Mauritius on Saturday. The worsening oil spill is polluting the island nation's famous reefs, lagoons and oceans. (photo: AFP)
The Oil Spill at Mauritius Is a Disaster. And It Could Soon Get Worse
Camila Domonoske, NPR
Domonoske writes: "A Japanese cargo ship struck a reef off the coast of Mauritius more than two weeks ago and has now leaked more than 1,000 metric tons of oil into the pristine waters and unique ecosystems of the island nation."
Mauritius has declared a state of environmental emergency, and the French government has sent technical support to assist with the disaster response. In addition, independently-organized local volunteers have been working to clean up and protect beaches with improvised materials.
But an even bigger danger looms.
A crack inside the ship's hull has been growing, and government officials warn the entire ship could split in half, releasing all the oil remaining inside the vessel.
Efforts are underway to pump that oil out of the ship before it breaks apart. As of Tuesday, just over 1,000 metric tons of oil had been pumped out of the ship, while some 1,800 metric tons of fuel oil and diesel remain on board, according to the company that owns the ship.
The ship, the Wakashio, was a cargo ship, not an oil tanker, carrying 4,000 metric tons of fuel to power its engines (in comparison, supertankers can carry hundreds of thousands of metric tons of oil.) However, any oil spill larger than 700 metric tons is classified by industry groups as a large spill, and this spill has already released more oil than the combined total from every tanker spill documented in 2019.
Mauritius has declared a state of environmental emergency, and the French government has sent technical support to assist with the disaster response.
The Mauritian government has urged residents to stay home and leave the clean-up to authorities, the BBC reports, but residents have organized themselves anyway and assembled home-made oil booms — floating barriers to contain and absorb the toxic spill.
Reuters reports that sugar cane leaves, plastic bottles and human hair (cut off and donated by residents) are being sewn into makeshift booms.
"People have realized that they need to take things into their hands. We are here to protect our fauna and flora," environmental activist Ashok Subron said, according to AFP.
Subron told a local news outlet the collective action by everyday citizens demonstrated "the failure of the state," and other residents are angrily asking why action wasn't taken sooner to prevent this unfolding disaster.
"The authorities did nothing for days," Fezal Noordaully, a taxi driver from a coastal village in Mauritius, told The Guardian. "Now they are but it's too late."
When the Wakashio initially ran aground on July 25, its hull was intact and no major oil spill was detected. A Dutch company was brought in to refloat the ship and prevent spills.
But late last week, oil began to escape from the ship's tanks; the ship's owners issued a statement blaming bad weather and rough seas for the breach. The vessel's operators acknowledged "the regretful harm to the beautiful nature in Mauritius."
The island nation of Mauritius is located east of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean. It's home to a number of endemic species, or plants and animals that live nowhere else — from the pink pigeon, recently saved from extinction, to the blue-tailed day gecko, which pollinates a rare flower that only has 250 plants remaining.
The Mauritian Wildlife Foundation, which is dedicated to protecting endangered plants and animals that exist only in Mauritius, says it has helped lay booms to protect the Ile aux Aigrettes nature preserve as well as protected wetlands on the main island.
But the key challenge is stop the flow of oil, the group says; until the source of the leak is addressed, shoreline clean-up will accomplish little.
In addition to environmental devastation, the spill could have "dire consequences for Mauritius' economy, food security and health," Greenpeace Africa warns. Tourism is an important part of the economy and had already taken a hit from the coronavirus pandemic.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.