01 June 21
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William H. McRaven | The Crosses (A Poem for Memorial Day)
William H. McRaven, The Atlantic
McRaven writes: "I have stood before the crosses as we laid a soldier down. They cast a simple shadow upon the upturned ground."
This poem is dedicated to all the men and women, regardless of faith, who made the ultimate sacrifice for this nation.
have stood before the crosses
as we laid a soldier down.
They cast a simple shadow
upon the upturned ground.
The bugler sounds taps
as each cross its witness bears
to the journey of a soldier
released from earthly cares.
I have stood before the crosses
and prayed a lonely prayer,
in hopes of some redemption
as I struggled to compare
My life of long contentment
with the soldier’s hallowed call
to warrant with his dying breath
a better world for all.
I have stood before the upturned ground
and struggled to compare
my courage and my character
with the man or woman there.
Would I have died a valiant death
in a foreign land,
upon a distant battlefield,
to save my fellow man?
I have stood before the crosses
as the sun was going down,
watching as the shadows faded
upon the upturned ground.
I have looked upon the hillside of
the crosses, row on row,
upon the young and brave of heart
never to grow old.
I have knelt before the crosses
at night, before I sleep,
and made upon my bended knee
a covenant I keep:
To live a life of service,
to honor all our losses,
for those who went before us,
those beneath the crosses.
Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders. (photo: Brynn Anderson/AP)
Biden's $6 Trillion Budget Proposal Would Rebuild America's Social Safety Net
Cameron Peters, Vox
Peters writes: "President Joe Biden's fiscal year 2022 budget, released on Friday, lays out an ambitious plan for the country. It calls for just over $6 trillion in total spending in the coming fiscal year and reimagines how - and for whom - the American economy works."
Biden’s first budget aims to herald a new era of big government
resident Joe Biden’s fiscal year 2022 budget, released on Friday, lays out an ambitious plan for the country. It calls for just over $6 trillion in total spending in the coming fiscal year and reimagines how — and for whom — the American economy works.
As proposed, the budget would reinvest in infrastructure and education, raise taxes on the wealthy and corporations, and meet many — but not all — of Biden’s campaign promises. It also represents the most substantial expansion of the federal government’s spending powers since World War II and a direct rebuttal of the small-government principles of his Republican, and even many Democratic, predecessors.
The budget is also notable for what it does not include: a renewal of the Hyde Amendment, which bars federal funding for abortions. That rule, in place for more than four decades, has been criticized for contributing to economic and racial inequality — and its absence is one of several ways that this budget aims to affirmatively target root causes of inequality.
“It is a budget that reflects the fact that trickle-down economics has never worked, and that the best way to grow our economy is not from the top down, but from the bottom up and the middle out,” Biden wrote in his budget message to Congress. “If we make that understanding our foundation, everything we build upon it will be strong.”
When the Biden administration unveiled a partial budget request framing its discretionary spending proposals in early April, Vox’s German Lopez wrote that the plan was “grounded in a clear vision: The government can — and should — do much more to solve the many problems facing the country.”
Biden’s full budget continues to reflect that philosophy while fleshing out Biden’s broader presidential agenda, including legislative proposals like the American Jobs and American Families plans.
However, nothing in Biden’s budget is binding, nor is the ambitious plan likely to be enacted in full. The president’s budget is a regular feature of the broader budget process, but it’s by no means the final word. That’s up to Congress, which will eventually pass its own budget resolution and a series of appropriations bills to actually fund the government into the next fiscal year.
As Vox’s Dylan Matthews explained during the Trump years, the president’s budget is instead best viewed as a messaging document: a sketch of the administration’s spending priorities and a way to set the tone for Congress as lawmakers hash out the particulars of the budget. It’s also a statement about which of Biden’s campaign promises he wants to focus on — and which are no longer a priority of his White House.
Democrats are mostly happy with Biden’s budget. Republicans are not.
Biden’s budget has been greeted gladly by Democrats in Congress. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) heralded it as “an unequivocal declaration of the value that Democrats place on America’s workers and middle class families” in a statement Friday, and the House Progressive Caucus highlighted Biden’s “strong commitment to making our tax system fair for working people.”
The GOP, meanwhile, struck a more apocalyptic note in response to the Biden budget. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) described the plan as “the most reckless and irresponsible budget proposal in my lifetime” and warned of “dire fiscal and economic consequences” in a Friday statement, while Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) dismissed it in a tweet as “dead on arrival.”
And both parties pushed back on one aspect of the budget: military spending. Progressives argued in a statement that the budget spends too much on national defense, further expanding an “already-bloated $740 billion Pentagon budget.”
“At a time when America’s military budget is larger than those of the next ten countries combined,” the Congressional Progressive Caucus wrote, “we believe it is essential to identify and cut military waste, fraud, and abuse in the budgetary process.”
Republicans argued the opposite, saying the proposed budget underspends on military operations and defense. While the Pentagon’s budget would increase by 1.6 percent under Biden’s proposal — representing a record military expenditure — it’s still the smallest increase of any federal agency.
House and Senate Republicans released a statement arguing that the proposed military budget “is wholly inadequate” and represents a spending cut in the face of inflation.
“A budget like this sends China and our other potential adversaries a bad signal — that we’re not willing to do what it takes to defend ourselves and our allies and partners,” the statement reads.
The era of big government is back
As Lopez and many others have pointed out, the first months of Biden’s presidency can be seen as a repudiation of former President Bill Clinton’s famous line that “the era of big government is over.”
Biden’s fiscal year 2022 budget fits squarely into that pattern. It includes two substantial, signature proposals: a $2 trillion American Jobs Plan — which would embrace an expansive definition of infrastructure, not only to modernize America’s road and bridges, but to invest in broadband and elder care — and a $1.8 trillion American Families Plan, which would establish free higher education and expand child care, health care, and tax benefits for needy families.
As a whole, the budget calls for a sweeping rejuvenation of the social safety net and for expanded investment in programs like universal pre-K, affordable child care, and paid leave. It also puts the climate crisis front and center, with proposals dedicated to reducing US emissions, creating jobs in the clean energy sector, and funding climate research.
And it reinvests in aspects of daily life, from public transit to the arts, that were slashed under the Trump administration. The idea, as Biden outlined it in his budget message Friday, is “not simply to emerge from the immediate crises we inherited, but to build back better.”
Among other details, the Biden budget specifically requests funding for two free years of community college; expanded Pell Grants and other programs to make college more affordable for low- and middle-income students; an extension to the expanded child tax credit included in the already-passed American Rescue Plan, which experts have said could cut child poverty in half; and universal paid family and medical leave programs “that would bring the American system in line with competitor nations that offer paid leave programs.”
And if enacted, Biden’s budget would invest tens of billions in advancing racial equity and addressing systemic racism in the US, according to a tally of equity-focused budget items “big and small” by the New York Times.
Additionally, according to Roll Call, 17 out of 22 sections in the proposal “explicitly mention new or expanded programs focused on racial disparities, inequality or civil rights. By comparison, President Donald Trump’s 150-page fiscal year 2020 budget request did not once mention the words ‘race,’ ‘racial’ or ‘civil rights.’”
In particular, Biden’s budget calls for increased funding for historically Black, tribal, and minority-serving colleges and universities; investment in environmental justice initiatives; and programs designed to reduce racial disparities in health care.
On the campaign trail, Biden made his racial equity plan one of the pillars of what he called the “Build Back Better Agenda” — branding that he has carried through into the White House — and he pledged to boost minority-owned businesses, address racial disparities in home ownership, and end pay discrimination, among other issues.
Philosophically, Biden’s first budget as president is also a marked departure from the last time he was in the White House, then in the No. 2 job. As Lopez wrote in April, Biden avoids the occasional concessions to austerity politics that cropped up under former President Barack Obama and offers “a largely tacit and sometimes explicit criticism of the past few decades of public disinvestment in public services — arguing that failures to put more money toward pandemic preparedness, clean energy technologies, and programs to help the poor and disadvantaged have helped lead the US to its current crises.”
Some progressive economic experts, like Bob Greenstein, the founder of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and a current visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution, have praised the document for its potential to redress causes of inequality and financial hardship.
“Having followed Presidents’ budgets for >40 years, I think it’s fair to say that while I might modify some things in the new Biden budget, it would, if enacted, do more to reduce poverty and inequality than any other budget in modern US history,” he said in a Friday tweet.
On health care and student debt forgiveness, Biden holds back
As sweeping as Biden’s budget is, however, there are also some conspicuous absences compared to his campaign platform. Specifically, proposals on health care don’t go as far as some advocates would like — and student debt forgiveness doesn’t make an appearance at all.
As a candidate, Biden distinguished himself from more progressive presidential hopefuls like Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT), both of whom endorsed Medicare for All, by promising to keep the existing American health care system mostly intact — but he also pledged to build on the existing Affordable Care Act and expand health care access in the US.
The centerpiece of that plan was to be a public option: As Vox’s Dylan Scott has explained, a “Medicare-like government insurance plan would be sold on Obamacare’s marketplaces, where roughly 12 million Americans buy their own insurance. It would add more competition to areas where only one or two other insurance plans are available. The public option would also cover low-income Americans who are currently denied insurance because of their state’s opposition to Obamacare.”
Biden’s fiscal year 2022 budget doesn’t abandon that plan. In fact, it emphasizes that health care “is a right, not a privilege” and says specifically that he “supports providing Americans with additional, lower-cost coverage choices by creating a public option that would be available through the ACA marketplaces.”
However, the budget also doesn’t do anything concrete to advance a public option, and funding for one isn’t included in the $6 trillion in overall spending requested in the budget.
According to the Washington Post’s Jeff Stein and Tyler Pager, the public option was a casualty of last-minute caution by the administration. They reported last week that “the White House jettisoned months of planning from agency staff as their initial plan could fuel criticisms that the administration is pushing new spending programs too aggressively.”
The same appears to be true of student debt forgiveness, according to the Post. Just as he did with a public health insurance option, Biden promised on the campaign trail and as president-elect to “immediately” forgive up to $10,000 in student debt for all borrowers. But that promise gets short shrift in the budget, with only one brief mention in regard to “changes ... that ease the burden of student debt,” and, again, no funding dedicated to that project.
Still, while student debt forgiveness didn’t make it into Biden’s budget, it isn’t off the table. Congressional Democrats could push to include it in a congressional budget resolution, if they choose, and Biden directed Education Secretary Miguel Cardona earlier this year to create a memo outlining Biden’s options for forgiving up to $50,000 in student debt. That’s the amount that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and others have supported.
Biden’s budget proposal could hinge on Joe Manchin
As the Post reported, one reason a public health care option and student debt forgiveness didn’t get more space in Biden’s fiscal year 2022 budget is that the administration already has an ambitious slate of legislative priorities before Congress. With negotiations still in flux, the dollar amounts laid out in the budget could change dramatically — and the final decisions over that spending will likely be subject to the same partisan back-and-forth as any other spending package that reaches Congress.
In short, if the White House wants to pass spending bills through regular order — without resorting to the budget reconciliation process — Democrats will always need at least 10 Republican votes to clear the filibuster.
Biden has already fought for, and won, one costly package: the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, known as his Covid-19 stimulus package. In his budget proposal, he is now also pushing for $1.8 trillion to expand on child care and health care benefits established in that plan, and $2 trillion for infrastructure, elder care, and broadband.
First up before Congress is the $2 trillion infrastructure and jobs plan, which has already been the subject of a series of offers and counteroffers between the White House and Senate Republicans. So any bipartisan agreement would likely set the total price tag far lower than Biden’s budget currently requests.
Under reconciliation, though, Democrats could potentially get a much larger package — one that more closely resembles the one initially proposed by Biden and present in his budget — passed through Congress without any Republican support.
Previously, Democrats passed their coronavirus relief package via reconciliation, and they could do so again. However, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), defender of the filibuster and the critical (and conservative) 50th vote in the Democrats’ slim Senate majority, has remained publicly optimistic that negotiators can reach a bipartisan deal, telling reporters that “I don’t know why you need reconciliation.”
“We have to find something reasonable and I’m always looking for that moderate, reasonable, middle if you can,” Manchin said Tuesday, according to Politico. “It might not be as big as they want and then you have people on the right that don’t want to do that much or do nothing at all. I probably wouldn’t be there either.”
As Paul Waldman and Greg Sargent wrote in the Washington Post earlier this month, it’s possible the White House is aware that the current talks with GOP senators won’t yield much and are simply letting negotiations play out for Manchin’s sake before pivoting to reconciliation.
But whatever the case, progressives are growing impatient, and are wary of what concessions might be extracted by the Senate GOP on the path to a bipartisan deal.
“Just like we did with the American Rescue Plan, we believe we must go big, bold, and act with urgency,” the House Progressive Caucus said in a statement Friday following the release of Biden’s budget proposal. “We simply cannot afford to limit our ambitions for Republicans or continue to wait for an offer that will never materialize.”
German troops parade in front of Adolf Hitler and Nazi generals. (photo: Keystone/Getty Images)
Greene's Ahistorical Claim That the Nazis Were Socialists
Glenn Kessler, The Washington Post
Kessler writes: "Those who apparently do not know history are doomed to make basic mistakes."
ou know, Nazis were the National Socialist Party. Just like the Democrats are now a national socialist party.”
— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), speaking at an “America First” rally, May 27
Those who apparently do not know history are doomed to make basic mistakes.
It seems so simple. The official name of the Adolf Hitler’s political party — the Nazis — had the word “socialist” in it. Ergo, it must have been a socialist party. And that means that Democrats, some of whom call themselves socialists, must be Nazis. Or something like that.
Greene is not the first Republican lawmaker to make this facile observation. So here’s a quick history lesson. (The video above also provides a useful primer on socialism.)
The Facts
The full name of Hitler’s party was Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei. In English, that translates to National Socialist German Workers’ Party. But it was not a socialist party; it was a right-wing, ultranationalist party dedicated to racial purity, territorial expansion and anti-Semitism — and total political control.
Let’s take a look at the first eight of the “25 points” in the 1920 Nazi party platform.
1. We demand the unification of all Germans in the Greater Germany on the basis of the right of self-determination of peoples.
2. We demand equality of rights for the German people in respect to the other nations; abrogation of the peace treaties of Versailles and St. Germain.
3. We demand land and territory (colonies) for the sustenance of our people, and colonization for our surplus population.
4. Only a member of the race can be a citizen. A member of the race can only be one who is of German blood, without consideration of creed. Consequently no Jew can be a member of the race.
5. Whoever has no citizenship is to be able to live in Germany only as a guest, and must be under the authority of legislation for foreigners.
6. The right to determine matters concerning administration and law belongs only to the citizen. Therefore we demand that every public office, of any sort whatsoever, whether in the Reich, the county or municipality, be filled only by citizens. We combat the corrupting parliamentary economy, office-holding only according to party inclinations without consideration of character or abilities.
7. We demand that the state be charged first with providing the opportunity for a livelihood and way of life for the citizens. If it is impossible to sustain the total population of the State, then the members of foreign nations (non-citizens) are to be expelled from the Reich.
8. Any further immigration of non-citizens is to be prevented. [Note: this was aimed at Jews fleeing pogroms.] We demand that all non-Germans, who have immigrated to Germany since the 2 August 1914, be forced immediately to leave the Reich.
As Ronald Granieri of the Foreign Policy Research Institute has noted, in that platform there are also passages denouncing banks, department stores and “interest slavery.” That could be seen as “a quasi-Marxist rejection of free markets. But these were also typical criticisms in the anti-Semitic playbook, which provided a clue that the party’s overriding ideological goal wasn’t a fundamental challenge to private property.”
The Nazi party was largely supported by small-business men and conservative industrialists, not the proletariat. Still, left-wing parties such as the Communists and Social Democrats were major parties in 1920s Germany so the inclusion of “socialist” in the party’s name was attractive to working-class voters who might also be anti-Semitic. Hitler adamantly rejected socialist ideas, dismantled or banned left-leaning parties and disapproved of trade unions. In many countries, trade unions played important roles in socialist movements or helped launch political movements that eventually adopted socialist platforms.
In fact, one of the most famous quotes of that era, enshrined on a wall at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, is by Martin Niemöller, a prominent Lutheran pastor who spent seven years in Nazi concentration camps. His words provide a flavor of what the Nazis thought about socialists.
- First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a socialist.
- Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a trade unionist.
- Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out — because I was not a Jew.
- Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak for me.
[Update: Some readers pointed out there are different versions of Niemöller’s quote, as he said it at various times after the war. The New England Holocaust Memorial, for instance, substitutes communists for socialists and adds Catholics. This history — critical of the version on the wall in Washington — says that Niemöller generally mentioned communists and Jews and then in the middle rotated socialists, Social Democrats or trade unionists.]
We sought comment from a Taylor spokesman but did not get a response.
The Pinocchio Test
We suggest Greene brush up on her history of the Nazi party. It was not a “socialist” party and cannot be compared, either in the United States or in Europe, to today’s socialists. She earns Four Pinocchios.
Voters at a polling precinct. (photo: Jessica McGowan/Getty Images)
Democrats and Republicans Agree That High Turnout Hurts the GOP. But What if They're Wrong?
John Ward, Yahoo! News
Ward writes: "For two decades, many top Democratic strategists have supported the idea that demography is destiny and that high turnout will automatically benefit their party at the ballot box."
As such, they’ve increasingly designed political strategies around the idea that if they get enough voters to the polls — especially the young and people of color — they can win elections and create a permanent governing majority.
Republicans, for their part, have also spent the last 20 years believing that high turnout and immigration rates hurt the GOP. Last year, then-President Donald Trump warned that high voter turnout would doom Republicans. And in the last few months, Fox News personalities have told their viewers that immigrants are going to “replace” native-born Americans and dilute their share of the vote.
And now, in Washington, members of Congress are locked in a bitter struggle over legislation to expand voting rights that is straining the Senate’s ability to function.
The apocalyptic language and heated tempers of the voting wars, however, are based to some degree on a myth. There’s little evidence that when more people vote it helps Democrats more than Republicans, according to two academics who have studied the impact of turnout on election outcomes.
“I assume that there are, you know, genuine beliefs on both sides. You know, the conservatives want election integrity and Democrats want access, but it is the case that it fits their partisan strategic motives as well. At least they think it does,” said Daron Shaw, a professor of government at the University of Texas, who co-authored the book “The Turnout Myth” with John Petrocik, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Missouri.
“There's really not much evidence supporting the strategic partisan motivation for Democratic and Republican positioning on these issues,” Shaw said in an interview on “The Long Game,” a Yahoo News podcast. “They've politicized issues that ought to be more thoughtfully considered.”
In their book, Shaw and Petrocik compile data showing that vote switching among casual voters — whom they call “peripheral” and others call “low-information” — is the biggest driver of who wins and who loses. And this vote switching, they argue, is driven by the short-term external forces shaping the race, such as the economy, as well as by the broad messages, performances and identities of the candidates.
These short-term forces, they contend, “produce shifts in the decisions of [voters] who consistently show up for elections. They have an even larger effect on those who are not consistent [voters].”
The implications of this are significant. It means that much of the broad-scale strategy of the two political parties for a good part of this century has been, to put it mildly, unscientific.
Shaw and Petrocik’s hypothesis does not discount the importance of voting rights at a time when much of the Republican Party has committed itself to making it harder to vote. And they do not argue that turnout rates don’t matter. But their findings do have two significant implications.
One is for the way Democrats think about how to win elections. They have leaned too heavily in recent elections on mobilizing hard-core supporters and not focused enough on persuading voters, especially those who don’t pay a lot of attention to politics. The second implication is for how Republican voters think about the country becoming less white.
Many Democrats were influenced by a 2002 book called “The Emerging Democratic Majority,” by journalist John Judis and political scientist Ruy Teixeira. They argued that Democrats could regain the kind of political dominance they held for much of the 20th century, in part because the country was becoming more racially diverse. This argument — and the way it was oversimplified — also likely informed the way Republicans have thought about elections since then.
But Teixeira has since written extensively about how the book was misinterpreted. “We also emphasized that building this majority would require a very broad coalition, including many voters drawn from the white working class. This crucial nuance was quickly lost. And so, many Democratic pundits, operatives and elected officials have falsely come to believe that demographics are destiny,” Teixeira wrote last year.
By 2008, Teixeira said, many Democrats had lost sight of the nuance entirely.
“After Obama’s historic victory [in 2008], our theory morphed from provocative projection to sacred gospel. Instead of focusing on the fact that this emerging majority only gave Democrats tremendous potential if they played their cards right, many progressives started to interpret it as a description of an inevitable future,” Teixeira wrote. “Democrats came to believe that demographic changes were saving them from the need to appeal to voters beyond the ranks of their most supportive groups.”
“That was a huge mistake,” he said. Teixeira noted that in the 2020 election, white working-class voters still represented 44 percent of all eligible voters in the country. That was down from 51 percent in 2008, but still accounted for nearly one out of every two Americans eligible to cast a ballot.
In their zeal to lean in to their most loyal supporters, Democrats have also glossed over the fact that Latinos are not a slam dunk for them.
“The data shows that many Latino voters, who represent the fastest-growing share of the electorate, are not firmly part of the Democratic base. Instead, they seem to be persuadable voters, presenting a potential opportunity for both Democrats and Republicans,” Nicole Narea wrote recently for Vox.
“This is especially true for voters who aren’t hyper partisan: new and infrequent voters, as well as people who flipped their votes in 2020 or who decided to sit the election out entirely.”
These “new and infrequent voters” are the same group that Shaw and Petrocik refer to as “peripheral voters.” And even though turnout in 2020 soared to its highest level in decades, it’s worth noting that there were 70 million Americans who were eligible to vote and did not do so, representing a massive group whose behavior at the polls is hard to predict and open to persuasion efforts by both parties.
Narea also wrote, based on data from the progressive data firm Catalist, that while a majority of Latinos supported Joe Biden in 2020, the demographic saw an 8-point swing toward Trump compared with 2016.
And this gets to the second major implication of the turnout myth: Republican fears of a more diverse country appear to have been largely unfounded.
The 2020 election was a perfect example of this. The GOP lost the presidency but won most of the competitive U.S. Senate races and gained seats in the House. It also did much better in state legislative races than expected.
This all took place with what Catalist declared was the “most diverse electorate ever.”
Earlier this month, Nate Cohn explained in the New York Times that voters’ increasing diversity stems mainly from the fact that there are more Hispanics, Asian Americans and multiracial people eligible to vote. “Those groups back Democrats, but not always by overwhelmingly large margins,” Cohn said. So while Black voters remain overwhelmingly Democratic — although somewhat less so than they did in the Obama era — newer immigrants and their descendants don’t always vote as a liberal bloc.
In addition, population growth is exploding most in the South and West, often in states that lean Republican, and “where the Democrats don’t win nonwhite voters by the overwhelming margins necessary to overcome the state’s Republican advantage.”
“The increasing racial diversity among voters isn’t doing quite as much to help Democrats as liberals hope, or to hurt Republicans as much as conservatives fear,” Cohn concluded.
As for the voting wars in Congress, political scientist Lee Drutman agreed with Shaw and Petrocik’s conclusions but added a note of caution about the flurry of voting restrictions being passed by Republican state legislatures.
“Mostly, political scientists have found minimal effects of changes in voting laws on turnout. However, the effect is not zero, and given how knife’s-edge close many elections are, even a minimal effect can be consequential,” said Drutman, a senior fellow in the political reform program at the New America Foundation. “More significantly, these laws are being passed by politicians who are explicitly stating partisan goals, violating the most basic norms of democratic fairness.”
Still, Drutman said that partisan gerrymandering, in which congressional districts are drawn in such a way to give one party an advantage, are a much bigger problem for American democracy in terms of impact.
Shaw, meanwhile, said that the fraught political battles in Washington over voting accessibility reflect an inability or unwillingness to focus on the facts when it comes to what decides elections.
“I think we’ve somewhat lost our way in most of our willingness to try to articulate a politics that is engaging to peripheral voters and draws them in. There’s a sense that it’s a sucker’s bet among political professionals and they don’t want to do it,” Shaw said.
“Our argument is that if you really want to expand your coalition, you’ve got to figure out how to do that. And neither party seems to be all that interested in doing it.”
A hand typing on a computer keyboard. (photo: Westend61/Imago Images)
Human Rights Groups Call for an End to Digital Surveillance of Immigrants
Kari Paul, Guardian UK
Paul writes: "Human rights groups are calling on the Biden administration and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to put an end to a digital surveillance program that keeps tabs on nearly 100,000 immigrants."
The Biden administration and the immigration agency tracks more than 96,000 immigrants, using tactics that ‘inhibit progress’
uman rights groups are calling on the Biden administration and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) to put an end to a digital surveillance program that keeps tabs on nearly nearly 100,000 immigrants.
A new report called Ice Digital Prisons, authored by the Latinx organizing group Mijente and immigration legal rights group Just Futures Law, highlights how Ice uses apps, GPS-tracking ankle monitors and facial recognition software to monitor people – saying these tactics “do more harm and inhibit any true progress in providing the social and economic tools for immigrants to thrive in their communities”.
The report says that the use of such technologies further criminalizes immigrants and affects their social and economic wellbeing.
The Biden administration is under growing pressure to right the wrongs of the Trump administration’s immigration policies and keep families out of detention facilities. One of its solutions has been to stress the importance of funding digital methods for tracking immigrants rather than physically imprisoning them. The digital alternatives program has been growing in recent years, with funding increasing from $28m in 2006 to $440m in 2021.
The “alternatives to detention” program tracks 96,574 individuals, but the Biden administration’s 2022 budget request calls to increase that number by approximately 45,000 to 140,000.
These alternatives “support migrants as they navigate their legal obligations”, the Biden administration has said, and are meant to be less-harmful alternatives to physical detention. But Julie Mao, an immigration attorney with Just Futures Law and an editor on the report, said that is not the case.
“There are so many ways ankle shackles cause physical and emotional harm for folks,” she said. “It’s deeply stigmatizing to have the ankle monitor, it can create sores, it must be charged often. Having that on you 24/7 creates a huge mental strain on people.”
In addition to ankle monitors, immigrants are forced to consent to unscheduled home and office visits, check in with immigration officials via a smartphone app or over the phone, or some combination of all three as part of the program.
One such app, called SmartLINK, requires immigrants to check in by uploading a selfie for facial recognition while confirming their location. The app “raises a number of privacy and surveillance concerns” the study says, as it has the ability to monitor user location in real time.
Despite being put forward as an alternative, the report underscored that digital surveillance can, in many cases, ultimately lead to real-life detention, due to minor mistakes made in the app or technology issues with an immigrant’s required check-in.
Ice has, in some cases, used data from the alternatives to detention program to track down immigrants for arrest. In 2019, historical data from ankle bracelets was used to raid Koch Foods in Mississippi, resulting in the arrest of more than 600 individuals.
“Policymakers and advocates should reject calls to invest in carceral alternatives to detention programs and focus on solutions that put an end to all forms of immigrant surveillance and detention,” the report said.
Women shout slogans during a demonstration against the Colombian government's proposed tax reform, in Bogota, on May 1. (photo: Fernando Vergara/AP)
Colombia to Probe Police Who Stood By as Civilians Shot at Protesters
Luis Acosta, Reuters
Acosta writes: "Colombian authorities are investigating 10 police officers who allowed civilians to shoot at demonstrators in Cali, a high-ranking official said on Monday, while the attorney general's office linked three more deaths to protests."
The Andean country has seen more than a month of protests against the social and economic policies of the government of President Ivan Duque. The demonstrations were sparked by a now-withdrawn proposed tax reform.
Since the tax reform was withdrawn, protesters' demands have expanded to include a basic income, opportunities for young people and an end to police violence, including the dissolution of the feared anti-riot unit ESMAD.
Protests have been marked by violence. The attorney general's office on Monday said 20 deaths have been linked to demonstrations - three more than a previous tally - while rights groups report dozens more protesters have been killed by security forces.
Colombia's third-largest city Cali, which has become an epicenter for protests, once more saw bloodshed on Friday with civilians and even an off-duty agent of the attorney general's office shooting at demonstrators, the attorney general said.
An investigation has been launched to identify those who broke the law in Cali, General Jorge Luis Vargas, director of Colombia's national police, said on Monday, adding that information concerning officers who may have broken the law or not performed their duties has been sent to the military justice unit.
Over the weekend Cali Mayor Jorge Ivan Ospina reported more than a dozen violent deaths took place in the city on Friday and reported armed men shooting at demonstrators in the presence of the police.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, on Sunday called for those responsible for the violence in Cali to be held accountable.
"It is essential that all those who are reportedly involved in causing injury or death, including state officials, are subject to prompt, effective, independent, impartial and transparent investigations and that those responsible are held accountable," she said.
As the death toll rises, negotiations between the government and protest leaders have stalled. The government says protesters must condemn and reject road blocks before further negotiations take place. Protest leaders accuse the government of backtracking on earlier commitments.
The national strike committee has called for more protests to take place on Wednesday.
A diver swimming over coral. (photo: JW Porter/University of Georgia)
As Tourism Returns, We Can't Allow Cruise Companies to Destroy Coral Reefs for Profit
Kelly Heber Dunning, The Revelator
Dunning writes: "As summer approaches, reports of the return of leisure travel are beginning to emerge following the unprecedented shutdown during the coronavirus pandemic."
s summer approaches, reports of the return of leisure travel are beginning to emerge following the unprecedented shutdown during the coronavirus pandemic. Many of the world's most popular tourism destinations have begun to plan an eventual reopening, exploring what their "new normal" will look like.
The COVID-19 pandemic caused most of these sites to fall silent, including one of the world's busiest cruise-ship ports: the docks on Grand Cayman Island. In April 2020, the global pandemic shut down the island's port, which normally saw the arrival of dozens of cruise ships and thousands of tourists every month. The Cayman Islands was the only Caribbean nation to voluntarily halt its cruise economy, prioritizing the safety of its residents. Local businesses, hurt by the loss of tourism dollars, have already started going under; iconic local spots that make up much of the community's social fabric, for tourists and locals alike, are being lost.
Soon, though, the ban on cruise ships will undoubtedly lift, and tourism will slowly return. And when that happens, the residents of Grand Cayman and nearby islands may find themselves worrying about another major threat posed by these cruise companies, one that runs the risk of being drowned out by the disruption caused by the pandemic.
In 2019 the Cayman Islands government announced a plan to move forward on a massive new port project in George Town Harbor, supported by two major cruise-ship operators. Without this project, cruise ships visiting the island must anchor offshore and shuttle passengers back and forth with smaller vessels — an important aspect of the local economy with historic roots in the coastal community.
The new project, estimated to cost $200 million, would allow cruise ships to come all the way to shore by building deep new docks capable of accommodating four cruise ships at a time, each of which could bring thousands of additional visitors to the island, according to the cruise companies and government supporters.
But getting to this point would require dredging 22 acres of George Town Harbor's seabed, destroying 10 to 15 acres of fragile coral reefs in the process.
If that happens, another vital part of the fabric of Grand Cayman life would be lost.
Coral vs. Corporate Influence
Given its role in the global financial industry, the Cayman Islands may seem like the last place in the world where rule of law and good governance would be a problem. Yet even here, the ever-growing power of multinational corporations to transform environmental policy is starting to be felt.
It didn't used to be this way.
As I wrote in my recent scientific study on the Cayman Islands, their effective marine park system has stood out as a model for coral-reef management since it was put in place in the 1980s. This area is known for its vibrant coral reefs, well-protected through the ever-expanding network of marine parks. The Cayman Islands have strict constitutional provisions and laws for protecting coral reefs, as well as international environmental policy commitments. Caymanian history and culture are also closely tied to the reefs. The first dive tourism spots in the Caribbean blossomed from Bob Soto's little backwater dive shop on "Cheeseburger Reef" into today's multimillion-dollar dive tourism trade.
Despite the history and good governance, the cruise industry — notably Carnival and Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines — had, prior to the pandemic, announced plans to move ahead with their plans to build the new docking facility on George Town Harbor.
Fragile Reefs, Questionable Science, Vague Promises
Those docks would devastate the local ecology. A 2015 environmental impact assessment estimated that the project would not just destroy 15 acres of reef but also negatively affect another 15 to 20 acres of adjacent habitat and pose risks to the 26 coral species in the harbor — two of which are critically endangered.
Coral disease and bleaching from elevated surface temperatures have already put the Cayman Islands' coral reefs on the ropes; this could be the knockout punch.
The cruise companies pushing the infrastructure project have argued that there's a way to mitigate this damage, but their proposed solution doesn't hold much water.
They worked with the government on a plan that would pay an engineering company and a Florida-based NGO to relocate every coral lost or replant lab-grown corals in place of the ones they can't relocate. By my estimation, the partners would need to replant and grow more than 3 million corals to make up for this destruction — triple the stated replanting goal.
The government's replacement goal is based on the absurd notion that a reef is simply an independent collection of corals humans can easily re-create — a bold assumption, and one yet to be supported at the proposed scale.
The reality is that reefs are slow-growing, highly complex assemblies of living and non-living things that take centuries to develop. This promised "replanting" technology is scientifically unproven at best and greenwashing at worst — meant to soothe the conscience of those troubled by the grave choice to destroy a beloved coral reef with deep meaning to its community.
The government has promised vague jobs and economic benefits if the project is built. And the CEO of Royal Caribbean, Michael Bailey, promises no taxpayer money will be used to pay for the dock.
This is not true. The Caymanian government will hand over $2.32 in tourism taxes per passenger to the cruise lines that it would otherwise collect for the citizens of Cayman. Caymanians are, therefore, paying for this infrastructure, despite mounting environmental problems on the island including a trash pile so large that locals call it "Mount Trashmore."
Votes and Courts
There is some hope in this case, thanks to Caymanian community organizing.
Two years ago, Caymanian citizens successfully organized and secured a referendum through a robust people's movement. Community groups like Cruise Port Referendum Cayman (CPR Cayman) implemented an aggressive ground campaign with no outside financial backing, organized only by volunteers. They focused on educating the public on the risks and uncertainties underpinning this project. Their efforts triggered a public referendum, originally scheduled for Christmas 2019, the first in Caymanian history.
The status of the referendum is currently being worked out in the courts, and it's important that we pay attention. Currently, prominent members of CPR Cayman are acting as watchdogs to ensure the referendum, if it is ultimately held, will take place in a fair and impartial way. Before the court challenge, activists protested the original referendum, which was intentionally scheduled at the holidays, a time when many are simply not on the island — an incredibly cynical move, since under the Cayman constitution a missing vote counts as a de facto "yes" for the port.
Despite community opposition, cruise corporation leaders are actively speaking out in support of this project's resumption, with Michael Bayley, the CEO of Royal Caribbean, saying that they will make a decision to resurrect the pier project in the coming months.
That's why it's so important that we follow this ongoing case — CPR Cayman makes regular updates to their Facebook page — as local community activists continue to contest the project in court. Should our "New Normal" following the COVID-19 pandemic allow companies to break environmental laws for private gain?
Democratic Reefs
Why do these reefs matter so much? They're what we would call "democratic reefs," easily accessed from the shore by the public using free parking lots and open stairs. Multiple generations of Caymanians have taken the quick swim out and snorkeled with their children. One man who spoke up at a 2019 community meeting told the story of how his father, he, and now his son all took the name "Eden" after the iconic Eden Rock Reef, which will be wrecked by this project.
For people like Eden and his family, this isn't just an environmental issue — this is about social justice. Coral reefs come with benefits for communities. They protect islands from hurricanes, provide food, attract tourism dollars and have deep cultural meaning. Lower-income people feel the loss of these services more intensely than those with more. Will the "replanted" reefs replace natural ones effectively? Or will low-income communities bear the consequences while foreign companies and scientists-for-hire sail home with increased profit? The losses for locals will stack up with eroding beaches erode, exposed homes, empty fishing grounds empty, and an end to their snorkeling trips with their children.
New Normal
The number of people standing up to this project continued to grow in 2020, even during the pandemic. This drew scorn of powerful government leaders such as McKeeva Bush, the speaker of the Legislative Assembly, who called community organizers "rascals" in public.
What happens next? Premier Alden McLaughlin hinted back in mid-April 2020 that he had grown weary of this dispute, suggesting that the vote will not happen during the current political term due to the pandemic.
That doesn't mean the port project is dead. It's just been pushed down the line for the next people who take office. "It will be another government that deals with that," McLaughlin said. Given the support expressed by leaders in the cruise industry, many believe this project will resume when cruise tourism resumes.
It may seem odd to talk about this while the world is just beginning to emerge from the pandemic, but the attention we pay to COVID-19 may distract us from closely watching corporations that stand to gain from the proposed destruction of coral reefs. This may be the window of opportunity the government needs to quietly move ahead while we're distracted with recovery.
We must unify as "rascals" to oppose corporations that continue to push their anti-environment agendas forward around the world. We must reject the false promises of scientists-for-hire.
If being a "rascal" means opposing the immoral destruction of coral reefs, consider me a rascal.
When and if the vote happens, I encourage the people of the Cayman Islands to vote no on the referendum. Likewise, I urge the people of the Cayman Islands to unite against companies violating their environmental laws. The returns are not worth the risks, namely the loss of their iconic reefs.
I encourage the U.S. public, and the wider world, to hold the cruise industry accountable for these types of immoral bypasses of domestic and international environmental policy. The industry's shocking record of customer safety amidst the pandemic remains in the news, but this is hardly its only sin. You only need to look to the industry's poor environmental record in the Bahamas to see what might happen in the Caymans moving forward.
If the reefs are destroyed and the restoration fails or even partially succeeds, the Caymanian people will be left to clean up, while the cruise industry continues to rake in record profits.
It is unethical to destroy coral reefs because they do not belong to us. They belong to everyone, and that includes future generations. If the project goes ahead, I hope that corporate leadership from the cruise industry will explain to young Eden, and other young Caymanians, why they cannot snorkel the reefs that their parents once did.
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