RSN: RootsAction | Announcing "No Honeymoon" for Biden

 

 

16 December 20

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RSN: RootsAction | Announcing "No Honeymoon" for Biden

RootsAction
Excerpt: "The progressive activist group RootsAction.org announced today the launch of 'No Honeymoon' - a sustained campaign that will mobilize grassroots pressure on Joe Biden from across the country."

he progressive activist group RootsAction.org announced today the launch of “No Honeymoon” — a sustained campaign that will mobilize grassroots pressure on Joe Biden from across the country.

With an email list of 1.2 million supporters nationwide, RootsAction backed Bernie Sanders in the primaries before conducting its #VoteTrumpOut campaign that reached millions of mostly progressive voters in swing states during the summer and fall.

RootsAction said on Wednesday: “The ‘Vote Trump Out’ campaign always had a second part to it — ‘Then Challenge Biden.’ We are now fulfilling that commitment by organizing throughout the United States for a truly progressive agenda.”

The group’s NoHoneymoon.org website, unveiled on Wednesday, invites activists “to join with RootsAction to push back against the destructive forces of corporate power, racial injustice, extreme income inequality, environmental assault and the military-industrial complex.”

The No Honeymoon campaign’s demands of the Biden administration will include a $15 federal minimum wage, cancelation of student debt, a major rollback of mass incarceration, the Green New Deal, and ending U.S. military intervention.

Commenting about the launch on Wednesday, RootsAction co-founder Jeff Cohen said: “One reason our Vote Trump Out campaign was so successful and persuasive with progressive voters, especially those not friendly toward Biden, was our pledge to continue the battle by challenging Team Biden to support policies that put the multiracial working class ahead of corporate greed and profiteering. No Honeymoon is how we’re honoring that pledge.”

Added RootsAction national director Norman Solomon: “We have no intention of going silent about progressive principles just because the president will be a Democrat. Far from the chatter of party power brokers and Biden insiders, the energized progressive base around the country is paying attention and cannot be mollified by smiles and symbolic gestures. We have a progressive agenda and we’re going to fight like hell for it, without delay.”

In support of the #NoHoneymoon launch, former Bernie Sanders 2020 campaign national co-chair Nina Turner speaks on a video, released today and posted on the No Honeymoon website.

In recent weeks, RootsAction helped lead the grassroots opposition to Michèle Flournoy for Secretary of Defense.

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RSN: Norman Solomon | The Collapse of Michèle Flournoy's Hopes for the Top Pentagon Job Shows What Can Happen When Progressives Put Up a Fight

 

08 December 20 It's Live on the HomePage Now: Reader Supported News RSN V. WALL STREET - STABILITY V. GROWTH - We raise money, companies listed on Wall Street “make” money. The difference is profits, specifically profits defined by Wall Street investors. We raise money to achieve financial stability for our organization that provides services directly to the community we serve. Wall Street companies make money to distribute as “profits” to investors. The investors serve themselves. And they run the game. Simple enough? / Marc Ash, Founder Reader Supported News Sure, I'll make a donation! RSN: Norman Solomon | The Collapse of Michèle Flournoy's Hopes for the Top Pentagon Job Shows What Can Happen When Progressives Put Up a Fight Norman Solomon, Reader Supported News Solomon writes: "Just a few weeks ago, super hawk Michèle Flournoy was being touted as a virtual shoo-in to become Joe Biden's nominee for Secretary of Defense."  But some progressives insisted on organizing to raise key questions, such as: Should we accept the revolving door that keeps spinning between the Pentagon and the weapons industry? Does an aggressive U.S. military really enhance “national security” and lead to peace? By challenging Flournoy while posing those questions – and answering them in the negative – activism succeeded in changing “Defense Secretary Flournoy” from a fait accompli to a lost fantasy of the military-industrial complex. She is “a favorite among many in the Democratic foreign-policy establishment,” Foreign Policy magazine reported on Monday night, hours after news broke that Biden’s nomination will go to Gen. Lloyd Austin instead of Flournoy. But “in recent weeks the Biden transition team has faced pushback from the left wing of the party. Progressive groups signaled opposition to Flournoy over her role in U.S. military interventions in Libya and the Middle East in prior government positions, as well as her ties to the defense industry once she left government.” Of course, Gen. Austin is a high-ranking part of the war machine. Yet, as Foreign Policy noted: “When Biden pushed to draw down troops from Iraq while vice president, Flournoy, then Pentagon policy chief, and then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen opposed the idea. Austin did not.” Video of war-crazed Sen. John McCain grilling Austin several years ago shows the general willing to stand firm against zeal to escalate killing in Syria, a clear contrast to positions that Flournoy had staked out. Flournoy has a long record of arguing for military intervention and escalation, from Syria and Libya to Afghanistan and beyond. She has opposed a ban on weapons sales to Saudi Arabia. In recent years, her advocacy has included pushing military envelopes in potentially explosive hotspots like the South China Sea. Flournoy is vehemently in favor of long-term U.S. military encroachment on China. Historian Andrew Bacevich, a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy and former Army colonel, warns that “Flournoy’s proposed military buildup will prove unaffordable, unless, of course, federal deficits in the multitrillion-dollar range become routine. But the real problem lies not with the fact that Flournoy’s buildup will cost a lot, but that it is strategically defective.” Bacevich adds: “Strip away the references to deterrence and Flournoy is proposing that the United States goad the People’s Republic into a protracted high-tech arms race.” With a record like that, you might think that Flournoy would receive very little support from the leaders of organizations like the Ploughshares Fund, the Arms Control Association, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and the Council for a Livable World. But, as I wrote more than a week ago, movers and shakers at those well-heeled groups eagerly praised Flournoy to the skies – publicly urging Biden to give her the Defense Secretary job. Many said they knew Flournoy well and liked her. Some lauded her interest in restarting nuclear-arms negotiations with Russia (a standard foreign-policy position). Many praised her work in high-ranking Pentagon posts under Presidents Clinton and Obama. Privately, some could be heard saying how great it would be to have “access” to the person running the Pentagon. More traditional allies of militaristic policymakers chimed in, often vilifying the left as it became clear in late November that progressive pushback was slowing Flournoy’s momentum for the Defense Department’s top job. Notorious war enthusiast Max Boot was a case in point. Boot was evidently provoked by a Washington Post news story that appeared on November 30 under the headline “Liberal Groups Urge Biden Not to Name Flournoy as Secretary of Defense.” The article quoted from a statement issued that day by five progressive organizations – RootsAction.org (where I’m national director), CodePink, Our Revolution, Progressive Democrats of America, and World Beyond War. We conveyed that a Flournoy nomination would lead to a fierce grassroots battle over Senate confirmation. (The newspaper quoted me saying: “RootsAction.org has a 1.2 million active list of supporters in the U.S., and we’re geared up for an all-out push for a ‘no’ vote, if it comes to that.”) Reporting on the joint statement, Common Dreams aptly summarized it in a headline: “Rejecting Michèle Flournoy, Progressives Demand Biden Pick Pentagon Chief ‘Untethered’ From Military-Industrial Complex.” Such talk and such organizing are anathema to the likes of Boot, who fired back with a Washington Post column within hours. While advocating for Flournoy, he invoked an “old Roman adage” – “Si vis pacem, para bellum” – “If you want peace, prepare for war.” He neglected to mention that Latin is a dead language and the Roman Empire collapsed. War preparations that increase the likelihood of war may excite laptop warriors. But the militarism they promote is madness nonetheless. Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction.org and the author of many books including War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death. He was a Bernie Sanders delegate from California to the 2016 and 2020 Democratic National Conventions. Solomon is the founder and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.

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RSN: Norman Solomon | Hey Joe, Where You Going With That Pentagon in Your Hands?

 

 

23 November 20

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TO THE PEOPLE WHO ARE DONATING NOW: THANK YOU! - Just want to take a moment to give a special shout out to the people who are responding to the donation appeals for this drive. When it’s tough sledding the people who step up are the backbone of the organization. This is one tough fundraising drive, make no mistake about it. But 464 people so far have said Reader Supported News is worth my time and my contribution. That is inspiring. / Marc Ash, Founder Reader Supported News

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RSN: Norman Solomon | Hey Joe, Where You Going With That Pentagon in Your Hands?

Norman Solomon, Reader Supported News
Solomon writes: "By all accounts, the frontrunner to be Joe Biden's pick for Secretary of Defense is Michèle Flournoy. It's a prospect that should do more than set off alarm bells."

It’s a prospect that should do more than set off alarm bells — it should be understood as a scenario for the president-elect to stick his middle fingers in the eyes of Americans who are fed up with endless war and ongoing militarism.

Warning and petitioning Biden to dissuade him from a Flournoy nomination probably have scant chances of success. But if Biden puts her name forward, activists should quickly launch an all-out effort to block Senate confirmation.

As the Biden administration takes office, progressives have an opportunity to affirm and amplify the position that Martin Luther King Jr. boldly articulated when he insisted that “I never intend to adjust myself to the madness of militarism.” In the present day, the pernicious and lucrative aspects of that madness are personified in the favorite to be Biden’s Defense Secretary.

Days ago, the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) published a detained analysis under the headline “Should Michèle Flournoy Be Secretary of Defense?” The well-documented answer: No.

Citing “extensive defense industry ties,” POGO provided an overview of Flournoy’s revolving-door career. When she wasn’t oiling the war machine in the Clinton and Obama administrations, Flournoy was profiteering from servicing that machine:

• “In 2002 she went from positions in the Pentagon and the National Defense University to the mainstream but hawkish Center for Strategic and International Studies, which is largely funded by industry and Pentagon contributions.”


• “Five years later, she co-founded the second-most heavily contractor-funded think tank in Washington, the highly influential Center for a New American Security. That became a stepping stone to her role as under secretary of defense for policy in the Obama administration.”


• “From there she rotated­­ to the Boston Consulting Group, after which the firm’s military contracts expanded from $1.6 million to $32 million in three years. She also joined the board of Booz Allen Hamilton, a consulting firm laden with defense contracts. In 2017 she co-founded WestExec Advisors, helping defense corporations market their products to the Pentagon and other agencies.”

Running parallel to Flournoy’s financial conflicts of interest was her long record of advocacy for military conflicts.

“Flournoy was widely considered to have been one of Obama’s more hawkish advisers and helped mastermind the escalation of the disastrous war in Afghanistan,” Arwa Mahdawi pointed out in a Nov. 21 Guardian piece. “She has called for increased defense spending, arguing in a 2017 Washington Post op-ed that Trump was ‘right to raise the need for more defense dollars.’ She has complained that Obama didn’t use military force enough, particularly in Syria. She supported the wars in Iraq and Libya …”

The president-elect is hardly in a position to hold such a record against prospective appointees. He has never fully acknowledged, much less renounced, his own roles in advocating for disastrous U.S. wars — most notably and tragically, the war in Iraq.

Biden hasn’t gotten his story straight or come clean about supporting the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. His specious claims that he didn’t really support the invasion have been gross misrepresentations of the historical record. Actually, Biden was the Democrat in the Senate who exerted the most leverage in support of the Iraq invasion, and he did so with public enthusiasm.

The foreseeable dangers of picking Flournoy to run the Pentagon are compounded by Biden’s selection of Antony Blinken to be Secretary of State. It was Blinken who, 18 years ago, served as staff director for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee while its chairman, Joe Biden, oversaw the pivotal and badly skewed two-day hearing in summer 2002 that greased the Congressional skids for approving an invasion of Iraq.

Blinken, along with Flournoy, co-founded WestExec Advisors, which The Washington Post’s breaking-news coverage of the Blinken nomination gingerly described as “a political strategy firm.” It was a nice euphemism, in contrast to how POGO describes the WestExec Advisors mission — “helping defense corporations market their products to the Pentagon and other agencies.” The term “war profiteering” would be even more apt.

If past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior, there are ample reasons for apprehension about the top of the military and foreign-policy team that Biden has begun to install for his presidency. But realism should not lead to fatalism or passivity.

Extricating the United States from the grip of the military-industrial complex will require massive and sustained organizing. With that goal in mind, a grassroots campaign to prevent Michèle Flournoy from becoming Secretary of Defense would be wise.

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Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction.org and the author of many books including War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death. He was a Bernie Sanders delegate from California to the 2016 and 2020 Democratic National Conventions. Solomon is the founder and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy.

Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.