Wednesday, July 08, 2020

Enough Is Enough': 44 Groups Slam House Democrats for Including Hyde Amendment in Spending Bill


"It is long past time for our elected officials to put an end to abortion coverage bans once and for all, so no one is denied abortion care because of how much money they make or how they get their health insurance."

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Pro-choice activists supporting legal access to abortion protest during a demonstration outside the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., March 4, 2020. (Photo: Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)
Pro-choice activists supporting legal access to abortion protest during a demonstration outside the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., March 4, 2020. (Photo: Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)
A coalition of 44 reproductive health, justice, and rights groups called out House Democrats for including the decades-old Hyde Amendment, which blocks federal funding for abortion services with limited exceptions, in a fiscal year 2021 appropriations bill that advanced Tuesday evening.

"We say: enough is enough," the groups declared in a joint statement Tuesday night. "For 43 years, the Hyde Amendment has banned abortion coverage for people enrolled in Medicaid health insurance. It is long past time for our elected officials to put an end to abortion coverage bans once and for all, so no one is denied abortion care because of how much money they make or how they get their health insurance."

Since 1973, there have been various versions of the Hyde Amendment. Since 1994, Medicaid has covered abortion care in cases of incest, rape, and if continuing the pregnancy endangers the patient's life. Reproductive rights groups long have pressured lawmakers to repeal the amendment, often emphasizing that it "is particularly harmful to people with low incomes, people of color, young people, and immigrants—who all disproportionately rely on Medicaid for their healthcare coverage."
The coalition's statement—circulated by the group All* Above All—made a similar point while putting the amendment's impact into the context of the current moment:
Bans on abortion coverage, like the Hyde Amendment, have long disproportionately impacted Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) communities and the time has come to end these bans. We need healthcare that works for everyone. There is too much at stake to stand in the way of someone's decision of whether to become a parent. Anti-abortion politicians and the Trump administration are working to push abortion care out of reach entirely, which most harms women of color.
BIPOC communities have long bore the brunt of the racial and economic inequities exposed by the Covid-19 pandemic. The threats to reproductive healthcare, including abortion, have never been more present, as our nation faces an unprecedented public health emergency while also experiencing a long-needed reckoning on how systemic racism permeates our society and institutions.
The statement also cited a September 2019 poll showing (pdf) the majority of U.S. voters support Medicaid coverage of abortion and an April 2019 poll showing 84% of female voters of color believe political candidates should support patients making their own reproductive health decisions.

"This Congress has chosen to ignore what women of color have been saying for decades, and what the majority of national voters now agree with—however we feel about abortion, no one should be denied access to it just because they are struggling to make ends meet," the coalition's statement concluded.

Other groups backing the statement include the Abortion Care Network, ACLU, Center for Reproductive Rights, Guttmacher Institute, NARAL Pro-Choice America, National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR), National Women's Law Center, Physicians for Reproductive Health, and Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

The House Appropriations Committee and multiple subcommittees are holding sessions on annual spending bills throughout the week. The Subcommittee on Labor, Health, and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies (LHHS) approved its fiscal year 2021 bill that includes the Hyde Amendment on Tuesday evening. The vote followed reporting last week that despite internal debates among Democratic leaders, the amendment would be included in this year's appropriation bills.

In addition to supporting the coalition statement, NCLR executive director Imani Rupert-Gordon put out a statement expressing disappointment in the LHHS bill.
"It is appalling that as our nation is undergoing significant upheaval as we continue to grapple with how to end systemic racism, Congress is perpetuating a decades-old policy that disproportionately harms people of color," said Rupert-Gordon. "We applaud the Black women members of the House who continue to fight for the end of the Hyde Amendment, and we will stand with them until this shameful policy is a thing of the past."

Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) declared in a Monday statement about the Hyde Amendment that "this first ever pro-choice majority in the House of Representatives has a mandate and a responsibility to stand up for reproductive rights and justice for all, not just those who can afford it. This is a racial justice issue."

Pressley said that she was "deeply disappointed" that the amendment was included in the LHHS funding bill. The congresswoman, who is not on the Appropriations Committee, added: "I intend to work with my colleagues to finally repeal Hyde when the bill comes to the House floor and I will file an amendment to do just that."
Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), chair of the LHHS subcommittee, delivered remarks during the Tuesday session. The congresswoman celebrated pieces of the bill—from support for programs like Early Head Start and Social Security to emergency Covid-19 appropriations—but also addressed the inclusion of the Hyde Amendment.
"The Hyde Amendment is a discriminatory policy," DeLauro said. "This is a long-standing issue of racial injustice and one that is routinely considered—every year as a legislative rider—but we are in a moment to reckon with the norm, with tradition, and view it through the lens of racial justice. So, although this year's bill includes it, let me be clear we will fight to remove the Hyde Amendment to ensure that women of color and all women have access to the reproductive health they deserve."


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'Dangerous Complacency': UN Expert Issues Scathing Report Denouncing Global Failures to Tackle Poverty Even Before Covid Pandemic

"Poverty is a political choice and it will be with us until its elimination is reconceived as a matter of social justice."

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Published on Tuesday, July 07, 2020 
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The report warns that the coronavirus pandemic is set to make things worse for the poorest people in the world.
 The report warns that the coronavirus pandemic is set to make things worse for the poorest people in the world. (Photo: AFP/Getty Images)
The former United Nations special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights on Sunday released his final report, a scathing denunciation of global efforts to combat extreme poverty and a warning that the hurdles in front of such efforts will not disappear when the Covid-19 pandemic is finally brought under control. 

"Even before Covid-19, we squandered a decade in the fight against poverty, with misplaced triumphalism blocking the very reforms that could have prevented the worst impacts of the pandemic," Philip Alston, who stepped down from his position as rapporteur in May, said in a statement.

Alston's final report (pdf) excoriates world leaders for using what he describes in the report as "the World Bank's flawed international poverty line" as a measure of poverty. The bank's poverty line, the report says, is based on purchasing power and represents a universal measure that is insufficient to address changes from society to society, does not allow for gender inequality or different family resource allocations of resources, and under-represents marginalized groups whose data is difficult to track. 
"The line is scandalously unambitious, and the best evidence shows it doesn't even cover the cost of food or housing in many countries," said Alston.

 "The poverty decline it purports to show is due largely to rising incomes in a single country, China. And it obscures poverty among women and those often excluded from official surveys, such as migrant workers and refugees."

"The result is a Pyrrhic victory, an undue sense of immense satisfaction, and dangerous complacency," Alston continued. "Using more realistic measures, the extent of global poverty is vastly higher and the trends extremely discouraging."
The report warns that the coronavirus pandemic is set to make things worse: 
If social protection floors had been in place, the hundreds of millions left without medical care, adequate food and housing, and basic security would have been spared some of the worst consequences. Instead, endless pressures to promote fiscal consolidation, especially over the last decade, have pushed social protection systems closer towards nineteenth century models rather than late twentieth century aspirations. When combined with the next generation of post-Covid-19 austerity policies, the dramatic transfer of economic and political power to the wealthy elites that has characterized the past forty years will accelerate, at which point the extent and depth of global poverty will be even more politically unsustainable and explosive.
Rather than a continuation of austerity and other inequality-fueling policies, Alston said, world governments must choose a different path.
"It's time for a new approach to poverty eradication that tackles inequality, embraces redistribution, and takes tax justice seriously," he said. "Poverty is a political choice and it will be with us until its elimination is reconceived as a matter of social justice."
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The Racist Underpinnings of the American Way of War

The deadly interplay of racism, genocide, and denial at the heart of American white society has been reproduced in the country’s wars.

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Tuesday, July 07, 2020 
Foreign Policy In Focus
The military is an institution of American society, and as such its origins and development have been centrally influenced by the political economy of U.S. capitalism. (Photo: Shutterstock)

The military is an institution of American society, and as such its origins and development have been centrally influenced by the political economy of U.S. capitalism. (Photo: Shutterstock)
The U.S. military command’s pushback against President Donald Trump’s attempt to use the military against people demanding racial justice has received a lot of good press.
But let’s not overdo the praise. For most of their existence, the U.S. Armed Forces were racially segregated. It was only in the 1950s that the slow process of integration began, with racial discrimination still a major problem in the ranks today.
While race has been widely discussed with respect to the composition and organization of the military, much less attention has been paid to the way racism has been a central feature of how the United States has waged its wars.
The military is an institution of American society, and as such its origins and development have been centrally influenced by the political economy of U.S. capitalism.
The political economy of the U.S. is built on two “original sins.” One was the genocide of Native Americans, the main function of which was to clear the ground for the implantation and spread of capitalist relations of production. The second was the central role played by the slave labor of African Americans in the genesis and consolidation of U.S. capitalism.
These original sins have had such a foundational role that the reproduction and expansion of U.S. capitalism over time have consistently reproduced its racial structures.
So powerful were its racial impulses that providing the legitimacy necessary for capitalist democracy to function necessitated the radical ideological denial of its racial structures. This radical denial was first inscribed in the Declaration of Independence’s message of radical equality “among men” that was drafted by the slaveholder Thomas Jefferson. Later it appeared in the ideology that the mission of U.S. imperial expansion was to universalize that equality among the non-European, non-white societies.
Why do we focus on war-making? First, because war is an inevitable event in the political economy of capitalism. Second, because it has been said that the way a nation wages war reveals its soul, what it’s all about, or to use that much derided term, its “essence.”
The deadly interplay of racism, genocide, and radical denial at the heart of American white society has been reproduced in that society’s military, and it has been especially evident in America’s Asian wars.
War in the Philippines: A Genocidal Mentality
Racialized warfare was practiced in the Philippines, which was invaded and brutally colonized by the United States from 1899 to 1906.
In charge of the enterprise were so-called “Indian fighters” like Generals Arthur MacArthur and Henry Lawton, who fought against the Apache fighter Geronimo, who brought to the archipelago the genocidal mentality that accompanied their warfare against Native Americans in the American West.
Filipinos were branded “n—ers” by U.S. troops, though another racist epithet, “gugus,” was also widely used for them. When Filipinos resorted to guerrilla warfare, they were dehumanized as barbarians practicing uncivilized warfare in order to legitimize all sorts of atrocities against them. The war of subjugation was carried out without restraints, with General Jacob Smith famously ordering his troops to convert Samar into a “howling wilderness” by killing any male over 10 years old.
But at the same time that it was waging a barbaric war that took the lives of some 500,000 Filipinos, Washington was justifying its colonization of the archipelago as a mission to extend the benefits of democracy to them. Rudyard Kipling’s “Take Up the White Man’s Burden,” written in 1899 to glorify the American conquest of the archipelago, resonated throughout white America.
World War II in the Pacific: Racism Unbound
The war in Europe waged by the U.S. during the Second World War was promoted among the American public as a war to save democracy. This was not the case in the Pacific theater, where all the racist impulses of American society were explicitly harnessed to render the Japanese subhuman.
This racial side to the Pacific War gave it an intense exterminationist quality. To be sure, this was a face-off between two racist militaries. Both sides painted the other as barbarians and people of inferior culture, in order to license atrocities of all kinds. Violation of the rules of the Geneva Convention was the norm, with neither side preferring to take prisoners. When prisoners were taken, they were subjected to systematic brutality.
Even as the U.S. waged war against Japan, it waged a domestic war against Americans of Japanese descent, declaring them outside the pale of the Constitution and incarcerating the whole population, something that was unthinkable when it came to Americans of German or Italian descent, though Germany and Italy were also enemy states.
But perhaps the most radical expression of the racial exterminationist streak of the American war against Japan was the nuclear incineration of Nagasaki and Hiroshima in August 1945, an act that would never have been entertained when it came to fellows of the white race like the Germans.
War in Korea: “Everything Is Destroyed.”
The Korean War of 1950-1953 also saw the dialectic of racism, genocide, and denial come into play. The war was justified as one of saving Koreans from communism, but it came close to exterminating them.
General Douglas MacArthur, who was supreme commander, advocated the use of nuclear weapons. His plan was to use atomic bombs against the Chinese and North Koreans while retreating and then spreading a belt of radioactive cobalt across the Korean peninsula to deter them from crossing into South Korea. This was disapproved by Washington in favor of unlimited aerial bombing using both conventional blockbusters and the new terrifying napalm bombs.
The result was the same. The U.S. dropped more tons of bombs in Korea in 1950-1953 than in the Pacific during the whole of World War II. The result was described this way by U.S. General Emmett O’Donnell, head of the U.S. Air Force Bomber Command: “Everything is destroyed. There is nothing left standing worthy of the name.”
Before Congress, General MacArthur unwittingly admitted the exterminationist quality of the war he waged. “The war in Korea has almost destroyed that nation of 20 million people,” he said. “I have never seen such devastation.”
It was in Korea that the marriage of racism to advanced technology to produce the overwhelming devastation that is a central characteristic of the American Way of War was perfected. Precious white American lives had to be expended as little as possible, while taking as many cheap Asian lives as possible, through technology-intensive unlimited aerial warfare.
Vietnam: “Bomb Them Back to the Stone Age”
The streak of racial exterminationism emerged again during the Vietnam War.
Labeling the Vietnamese “gooks” — a term derived from the term for Filipinos, ”gugus,” in an earlier colonial war — dehumanized them and made all Vietnamese, combatant and non-combatant, fair game.
As in the Philippines at the turn of the century, Vietnamese guerrilla tactics frustrated the Americans — and the racist underpinnings of the American military mind allowed Washington to wage a war without restraint in a desperate effort to win it, one that ignored all the principles of the Geneva Convention. As in Korea, the U.S. waged in Vietnam a “limited war” in the sense of confining it geographically so that it would not escalate into global war, but it waged this limited war with unlimited means.
The racial dehumanization of the Vietnamese found its classic expression in the words of General Curtis LeMay, head of the Strategic Air Command, who said that America’s aim must be to “bomb the Vietnamese back to the stone age.” And Washington tried to do just that: From 1965 to 1969, the U.S. military dropped 70 tons of bombs for every square mile of North and South Vietnam — or 500 pounds for each man, woman, and child.
At the same time that they were killing them indiscriminately, Washington was insisting that its mission was to save the Vietnamese from communism and bring American-style democracy, just as it had brought it to the Philippines, Japan, and Korea, and that it would not take no for an answer.
Again, U.S. political and military strategy cannot be understood without reference to the subliminal racial assumptions that guided it. The costs exacted by a war marked by a racist and exterminationist streak were devastating: some 3.5 million Vietnamese killed in less than a decade.
The American Way of War
In sum, what we might call the “American Way of War” has emerged from a convoluted historical and ideological process.
This war-making cannot be divorced from the racism that is fundamentally inscribed in the capitalist political economy of the United States and is structurally reproduced in its growth and expansion.
This structural inscription stems from two original sins: the genocide of Native Americans to clear the social and natural path for the rise and consolidation of capitalism, and the slave labor of African Americans that played an essential role in laying the foundations for industrial capitalism.
Owing to the foundational role of genocide and racism, the ideological legitimation necessary to make the system function has involved a radical denial in the form of a declaration of equality “among men,” and the claim that the aim of U.S. imperial expansion is to extend this equality throughout the world.
This tortuous dialectic of genocide, racism, and radical denial gave America’s imperial wars in Asia an exterminationist streak.
Finally, the American Way of War is marked by the marriage of advanced technology and racism that is intended to limit the expenditure of lives on one’s side while inflicting massive devastation on the other side — under the guiding assumption that white lives are precious and colored lives are cheap.
Walden Bello is the co-founder and current senior analyst of the Bangkok-based Focus on the Global South and the International Adjunct Professor of Sociology at the State University of New York at Binghamton.  He received the Right Livelihood Award, also known as the Alternative Nobel Prize, in 2003, and was named Outstanding Public Scholar of the International Studies Association in 2008.
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The 'Camo Economy' Hides Military Costs and Exacerbates Inequality


Pentagon contractors like Lockheed Martin exploit their political connections to maintain a system that generates huge corporate profits and executive pay at taxpayer expense.
STATE CAPITALISM THE AMERICAN WAY
SOCIALISM FOR THE MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX
DEBT AND POVERTY FOR THOSE WHO FOOT THE BILL

by Heidi Peltier



In 2018, Lockheed Martin Corporation earned $8 billion in profits. About 85 percent of their business was government contracts. (Photo: Lockheed Martin)


Military contracting was sold to the American people as a way to reduce the cost of military operations, yet the result has been quite the opposite. Recent research of mine has shown that rather than reduce costs, military contracting—or what I call the “Camo Economy” because it camouflages human and financial costs—has resulted in higher costs to taxpayers. It has also distorted labor markets and contributed to rising inequality, as military contractors earn excessive profits that enable them to pay their employees and particularly their top executives much more than their counterparts in the public sector and most other private sector jobs.

Military contracting serves a public purpose and uses public funds, while contractors earn profits at the taxpayer’s expense and are often not subject to the competitive pressures of private markets.

In 2019, $370 billion—more than half of all Department of Defense (DOD) spending—went to contractors. While contracting is sometimes called "privatization," I think this is an inaccurate description, since military contracting serves a public purpose and uses public funds, while contractors earn profits at the taxpayer’s expense and are often not subject to the competitive pressures of private markets.

Many contractors operate more as monopolies than as competitive firms. Last year, 45 percent of DOD contracts were classified as "non-competitive." And even among competitive contracts, many of these are "cost-type" contracts, which means that the firm will be reimbursed all its reasonable costs, and therefore has no incentive to reduce costs as competitive, non-monopolistic firms would. Additionally, firms such as Lockheed Martin have created monopolies for themselves by selling weapons systems (like the F-35 fighter aircraft) and other equipment to the DOD that come with “lifetime service agreements” in which only Lockheed can service the equipment.




Military contractors, then, act more as commercial monopolies than as competitive private firms. And using their monopoly powers they are able to earn excessive profits. In 2018, Lockheed Martin Corporation earned $8 billion in profits. About 85 percent of their business was government contracts.

High profits allow military contractors to pay high wages, which contributes to rising inequality. While the average wage across all occupations in the U.S. last year was about $53,000, at Lockheed Martin the average wage was about $115,000, over twice as much. KBR, a contractor that provides various services in the Middle East, had an average wage of $104,000, nearly twice the national average. The CEO of Lockheed earned nearly $2 million in base pay, well above the national average of $193,000 for CEOs; once we include stock options and other compensation, however, Lockheed’s CEO earnings shoot up to over $24 million.
The Camo Economy has made war more politically palatable by camouflaging its various costs. Contractors now outnumber troops in the Central Command (CENTCOM) region that includes Iraq and Afghanistan, 53,000 to 35,000. Deaths of U.S. contractors since September 2001 are approximately 8,000, compared to 7,000 troops. Yet contractors receive neither the public recognition nor the honor of serving abroad, despite the increased risks they face. The Camo Economy is politically useful, as the White House can claim troop reductions while at the same time increasing U.S. presence abroad by relying more heavily on contractors.

The financial costs of military contracting are also opaque. While we know some top-line numbers, we know very few details about where our tax dollars go once they are paid out to contractors. We do know that contracting is more expensive, as contractors have limited incentives to reduce costs and they build profits into their contract agreements. As contractors then use sub-contractors, who also build in profits, there can be multiple layers of guaranteed profits built into a contract between the sub-contractors performing the work and DOD paying the prime contractor. Add in the waste, fraud, and abuse in addition to the excessive profits, and the costs to government quickly balloon.

It will not be easy to reform the Camo Economy. Firms such as Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Raytheon each spent about $13 million on lobbying last year. Political connections operate alongside high profits and paychecks to keep the Camo Economy entrenched and growing. But reforms can be made. Reducing the size of the military budget is a vital first step. The National Priorities Project at the Institute for Policy Studies has detailed various ways to do this.

Next, the portion of military spending that is paid to contractors should be reduced and some services should be brought back in-house, including those on and near the battlefield. And third, the contracting process itself should be reformed, so that more contracts are legitimately competitive and create incentives for firms to reduce costs.


Heidi Peltier is Director of "20 Years of War," a Costs of War initiative based at Boston University’s Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future. She is also a board member of the Institute for Policy Studies




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The War on Logic: Contradictions and Absurdities in the House’s Military Spending Bill


There is simply no logic to it—other than the inexorable logic of war profiteering and global control.

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Congress seems to approach military interventions as if it were building mousetraps. It makes it easy to get into them, but almost impossible to get out. (Photo: Scott Nelson/Getty Images)
Congress seems to approach military interventions as if it were building mousetraps. It makes it easy to get into them, but almost impossible to get out. (Photo: Scott Nelson/Getty Images)
The House Armed Services Committee just passed a defense appropriations bill filled with moral contradictions and illogical absurdities. Consider:
It removes some racist symbols in the military, but preserves Trump’s ability to use the military against anti-racist demonstrators.
It abdicates Congress’ responsibility to declare war, but prevents the executive branch from moving toward peace.
It was passed by elected officials, but gives a single general the ability to overrule an elected branch of government.
It requires officials to state definitively that removing troops won’t harm security interests, but not to say whether keeping them there will—despite the destabilizing and destructive impact of our troop presence to date in the Middle East.
It is supported by deficit hawks, but would result in 50 percent higher military spending than the last Cold War budget.
The Military and Racism
The Committee’s version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) requires the removal of Confederate names and flags from military bases. That is an unequivocally good and important thing. Most Americans now understand that the Confederacy was a brief and violent insurrection against lawful authority, conducted solely to help a few wealthy people keep holding other people in brutal bondage. Forcing Black servicemembers and civilians to live and work in the presence of these names and symbols was an extension of slavery culture.
But a number of House Democrats joined with Republicans to block restrictions on Trump’s ability (or a future president’s) to use the military against peaceful protestors, as Trump threatened to do against Black Lives Matter protesters in early June of this year. Another Republican, Sen. Tom Cotton (considered a potential presidential candidate) tweeted: 
If necessary, (use) the 10th Mountain, 82nd Airborne, 1st Cav, 3rd Infantry—whatever it takes to restore order. No quarter for insurrectionists, anarchists, rioters, and looters."
Cotton, a former military officer, understands that "no quarter" means refusing to accept the lawful surrender of an enemy. Cotton and Trump were talking about the Insurrection Act, a 213-year-old law which gives the president the power to use the military inside the country under certain circumstances. Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-Texas) drafted an amendment in response to these threats, and to the misuse of paramilitary police forces against BLM demonstrators which would have limited that power. It was killed, however, with the help of Democrats on Committee like Reps. Kendra Horn (Okla.), Xochitl Torres Small (N.M.), Jared Golden (Maine), Elaine Luria (Va.), Anthony Brindisi (N.Y.) and Gil Cisneros (Calif.)
Some people point out that the Insurrection Act has been used for good, most notably when Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy used troops to protect brave Black children who were integrating Southern schools. But the Escobar amendment would not have prevented that. It would have merely required the president to certify that states were unwilling or unable to quell an unlawful disturbance or rebellion, and have given Congress the ability to terminate a president’s use of the Act.
The result? Trump can still send troops to attack Black demonstrators, but they’ll be deployed from bases with more politically correct names.
The Opposite of Authority
Democrats also helped passed two amendments that would make it harder for Trump to reduce troop levels in Afghanistan and Europe. The Constitution gives Congress the sole authority to declare war, which it has not done in countries where we are currently at war.  It gave the president authorization to use military force in the Middle East in 2001, but there is considerable controversy about the extent of that authorization. Trump has not provided Congress with an annual report on his administration’s view of its warmaking authority, which he was legally obligated to do on March 1.
Congress has not demanded that report, nor has it declared war. And yet, in a bizarre inversion of its constitutional authority, The Committee passed two amendments barring a president from reducing military presence without Congressional authority—in places where it never declared war in the first place!
One amendment, introduced by Democrat Jason Crow of Colorado, restricts the president’s ability to reduce troop levels in Afghanistan unless he reports to Congress about the effect of troop reductions on a list of factors that is several pages long. This is a bureaucratic snarl and an exercise in predicting the unpredictable. It’s clearly designed to impose an impossible burden, as is made clear by the requirement that all of the following officials must concur with the report:
- the Secretary of State;
- the Director of National Intelligence;
- the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs;
- the Commander of United States Command;
- the Commander of US forces in Afghanistan; and,
- the US Permanent Representative to NATO.
All of these officials must put their careers on the line by stating that none of the many bad things listed in the amendment will happen. How many people would take that risk?  The amendment doesn’t require them to declare that keeping troop levels higher will have no negative consequences, even though that is also clearly possible. This makes it clear: if you want to protect yourself, block these withdrawals.
The Crow amendment even requires the officials to certify that troop reduction “will not unduly increase the risk to United States personnel in Afghanistan.”  A complete withdrawal would reduce that risk to zero, but the amendment doesn’t address that possibility.
The General’s Veto
The other such amendment, from Democrat Ruben Gallego of Arizona, blocks the president from reducing troop levels in Germany and elsewhere in Europe until Congress receives separate certifications from the Defense Secretary and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff that it would not threaten military and security goals.
To my knowledge, these two amendments are the first time a military officer (currently US Army General Mark Milley) has been given the power to overrule a president, simply by withholding his “concurrence.” The president could theoretically fire him, but that would trigger a political firestorm.
It doesn’t take a rose-colored view of Trump to see the dangers in this approach. Trump is no peace president. He hasn’t ended our presence in Iraq and Afghanistan, despite his campaign promises, and he has dropped more bombs in the Middle East than either Bush or Obama. He’s brought us to the brink of war with Venezuela and North Korea, and he has heaped praise on brutal authoritarians like Bolsonaro of Brazil, Duterte of the Philippines, and Modi of India.
But Congress hasn’t acted to end any of those threats and escalations. It has chosen to block the president when, and only when, he might reduce our military presence in other countries.
The War Dividend
Then there’s the sheer size of this appropriation. The Orwellian-named “defense budget” was already larger than that of the next ten countries combined – three times China’s and eleven times Russia’s, according to estimates. And that’s not counting the intelligence budget. Or Homeland Security’s. Or the cost of the Department of Energy’s work on nuclear weapons.
In 1991, as the Cold War was ending, the budget was $280 million, which is $527 billion in 2021 dollars. The House Armed Services Committee just unanimously approved a budget of more than $740 billion. That doesn’t include the “Overseas Contingency Operations” budget that funds the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, for which the Defense Department is requesting $69 billion. When this cost is added to the NDAA budget, the total is approximately $810 billion – an increase of more than 50 percent over the country’s defense spending in 1991, at the close of the Cold War.
Where’s that “peace dividend” we were promised?
Speaking of peace: This figure is more than 14 times larger than the “international budget” line item for diplomacy. And yet, the Trump Administration is proposing to cut its international budget request by nearly $12 billion, from $55.8 billion in fiscal year 2021 to $43.9 billion in FY 2021.
The War on Logic
There is simply no logic to it—other than the inexorable logic of war profiteering and global control. Even if you believe intelligence reports about election hacking and bounties on US troops, neither of those activities will be stopped by high-cost items like the F-35 fighter or the Navy’s billion-dollar. This bill was approved by a vote of 56-0, so it is highly likely to pass.
A few representatives fought for common-sense ideas. Rep. Escobar introduced her Insurrection Act amendment. Reps. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) fought the Gallego amendment on troops in Germany.
And there was one piece of good news: the Committee adopted an amendment from Khanna to end logistical support for the Saudi-led bombing campaign in Yemen. The Saudi assault on that country has created a humanitarian catastrophe, one Congress should have prevented.
But Congress seems to approach military interventions as if it were building mousetraps. It makes it easy to get into them, but almost impossible to get out.
Richard Eskow
Richard (RJ) Eskow is Senior Advisor for Health and Economic Justice at Social Security Works and the host of The Zero Hour with RJ Eskow on Free Speech TV. Follow him on Twitter: @rjeskow 

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Why Trump Wants To Kill The Biggest Environmental Law You've Never Heard Of


NEPA is one of the biggest federal policies ever enacted to protect our environment. But Trump is out to gut it—here's why.

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NEPA requires federal agencies to consider the environmental impacts of their actions, including direct action by an agency or the permitting of private activity. (Photo by Ronen Tivony/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
NEPA requires federal agencies to consider the environmental impacts of their actions, including direct action by an agency or the permitting of private activity. (Photo by Ronen Tivony/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Following the rapid industrialization and population boom of the early 1900s, the environment stood as a casualty of society’s capitalistic growth. Rivers caught fire, DDT crashed bird populations, and scientists feared devastating harms caused by the escalating concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. These issues were exacerbated by the lack of federal regulation, as states led a “race-to-the-bottom” where environmental protections were slashed to ease the way for industry. Something had to be done to prevent the rapid destruction of natural resources and the planet.
After analyzing the vast web of issues leading to environmental damage, Congress passed the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA). In enacting NEPA, Congress recognized “the profound impact of man’s activity on the interrelations of all components of the natural environment… [and] the critical importance of restoring and maintaining environmental quality to the overall welfare and development of man[.]” 
Over the past 50 years of implementation and interpretation in the courts, NEPA has become the foundational cornerstone of U.S. environmental law, and nations worldwide have replicated its model.

NEPA Requires Federal Agencies To Understand Environmental Impacts

Within NEPA, Congress declared “that it is the continuing policy of the federal government… to use all practicable means and measures… to create and maintain conditions under which man and nature can exist in productive harmony, and fulfill the social, economic, and other requirements of present and future generations of Americans.” The entire premise of this law is to make sure that the federal government looks before it leaps – forcing it to understand the ramifications of its actions and how those decisions will ripple out over time.
To this end, NEPA requires federal agencies to consider the environmental impacts of their actions, including direct action by an agency or the permitting of private activity (like when an agency issues a permit for a private company to frack). The primary decision-making agency is tasked with doing an environmental assessment of the project. If it imposes a significant impact, then a more in-depth environmental impacts statement is required. That next step is a collaborative process where meaningful involvement from affected communities and stakeholders is absolutely vital because they typically have the most knowledge of the local conditions and history.
Legal interpretation of NEPA led to the White House Council for Environmental Quality (CEQ) being formed to craft regulations on how agencies implement NEPA. These rules have been consistent for more than 40 years, requiring consideration of all direct, indirect and cumulative impacts of any project under review.
But the Trump administration is looking to change this.

Trump Gutting NEPA Aids Polluters And Muzzles The Public

First, Trump’s CEQ is trying to remove requirements to review related and cumulative effects of agency action. This intentionally prevents agencies from considering issues like overall emissions from fossil fuel infrastructure networks or related projects under development within a region. These new amendments to the regulations are tailored to allow industry-favoring regulators to ignore climate change and the foreseeable consequences of their policies and permitting.
The proposed rules also expand “categorical exclusions” to allow far more projects to skirt the review stage, excusing polluting projects from even the most basic review of the environmental impacts they will cause. For example, these exemptions would allow the federal government to issue multi-million dollar loan guarantees to private factory farms — basically subsidizing the largest source of pollution in American waterways.
Even worse, the administration is attempting to restrict public engagement within the NEPA review process: shortening timelines, limiting the scope of comments, and providing bureaucrats great freedom in how they exclude the public from the review process.
To top it all off, in proposing these regulatory changes, CEQ refused to perform an environmental justice review (as required by law) that would look at how these sweeping regulatory changes impact the most vulnerable communities.
Adam Carlesco is the Climate & Energy Staff Attorney at Food & Water Watch.
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Teachers Say Rush to Reopen Schools Without Covid-19 Safety Plan Shows Trump and DeVos 'Do Not Care About Students'


"America must listen to the health experts on when to reopen schools and to educators on how to return to in-person instruction."

AS A PROFESSIONAL SCHOOL CUSTODIAN I SAY THE CDC RULES ARE THE ONES TO FOLLOW FOR PROPER SAFETY OUR JOB IS TO DISINFECT THE SCHOOLS SINCE WE ARE LARGELY MINORITY WORKERS OUR SAFETY IS OUR FAMILIES AND OUR COMMUNITIES 

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A girl wears a face mask as students sit in a classroom of the Petri primary school in Dortmund, western Germany on June 15, 2020. (Photo: Ina Fassbender/AFP via Getty Images)
A coalition representing millions of American teachers and parents slammed President Donald Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos on Tuesday over their push to reopen schools by the fall without first presenting a concrete plan to protect students and educators from Covid-19.
"The White House and the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] have offered at best conflicting guidance for school reopening, and today offered little additional insight," the National Education Association (NEA), the National Parent Teacher Association, and four other groups said in a joint statement late Tuesday.
"No one should listen to Donald Trump or Betsy DeVos when it comes to what is best for students."
—Lily Eskelsen García, National Education Association
The groups warned that "without a comprehensive plan that includes federal resources to provide for the safety of our students and educators with funding for personal protective equipment, socially distanced instruction, and addressing racial inequity, we could be putting students, their families, and educators in danger."
The statement came hours after Trump said during a roundtable discussion at the White House that his administration is going to "put pressure on governors and everybody else to open the schools, to get them open."
"We're going to be putting a lot of pressure on: Open your schools in the fall," Trump said after accusing local officials of keeping schools closed "for political reasons."
DeVos, a billionaire advocate of school privatization, echoed Trump. "Under the president's strong leadership, our economy is roaring back," DeVos said. "Our schools must do the same."
Trump and DeVos both applauded Florida's Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis for ordering public schools to reopen for in-person classes at least five days per week beginning in August despite surging Covid-19 cases in the state.
Following the White House event, NEA president and sixth-grade teacher Lily Eskelsen García said in a statement that "no one should listen to Donald Trump or Betsy DeVos when it comes to what is best for students."
"If Donald Trump and Betsy DeVos have proven anything over the past four years, it's that they do not care about students. They have zero credibility for how to best support students, and how to re-open classrooms safely," said García.
"I dare Donald Trump and Betsy DeVos to sit in that classroom where the kids don't have what they need to be safe, and the school doesn't have enough money to provide a hotspot or a device for them because of the Senate’s failure to finish their job," García added. "Where they, and educators, don't have the masks and PPE they need. Where they can't socially distance because there are 40 kids in the class."
In the absence of a cohesive school reopening strategy from the Trump White House, NEA—the largest teachers union in the U.S.—released its own reopening guidelines last month to "ensure the safety of our members, students, and our most vulnerable communities while still providing a way forward."
"America must listen to the health experts on when to reopen schools," García said, "and to educators on how to return to in-person instruction."
In testimony before the House Financial Services Committee Tuesday morning, García demanded that congressional Republicans "abandon their wait-and-see approach and act quickly" to approve desperately needed education funding.
"To stave off the elimination of thousands of critical educator positions, NEA urges Congress to provide at least $175 billion more for the Education Stabilization Fund," said García. "In addition, we are calling for at least $56 million in directed funding for protective equipment, and at least $4 billion to create a special fund to help close the 'Digital Divide.' Even when schools do open, they will very likely need to incorporate online learning."
García also urged Congress to pass Rep. Pramila Jayapal's (D-Wash.) Paycheck Guarantee Act, which would use federal grant dollars to cover 100% of worker benefits and salaries up to $100,000 for three months.
"Even now, NEA members have not lost hope that we can come out of this as a stronger nation, able to provide the opportunities that every student deserves," said García. "We stand ready to work with this committee to ensure that students in every school have the support and educators they need."
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