10 November 19
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Marc Ash
Founder, Reader Supported News
Founder, Reader Supported News
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09 November 19
Paul Krugman | Centrists, Progressives and Europhobia
Paul Krugman, The New York Times
Krugman writes: "Will the Democratic presidential nomination go to a centrist or a progressive? Which choice would give the party the best chance in next year's election? Honestly, I have no idea."
EXCERPTS:
You can see this in politics, where Joe Biden has repeatedly declared that Republicans will have an “epiphany” once Donald Trump is gone, and once again become reasonable people Democrats can deal with. Given the G.O.P.’s scorched-earth politics during the Obama years, that’s a bizarre claim.
By all means, let’s talk about whether “Medicare for all,” wealth taxes and other progressive proposals are actually good ideas. But trying to shoot them down by going on about how terrible things are in France is a sure sign that you have no idea what you’re talking about.
READ MORE
The Capitol in Washington, D.C., is seen at dawn. (photo: AP)
Paul Krugman, The New York Times
Krugman writes: "Will the Democratic presidential nomination go to a centrist or a progressive? Which choice would give the party the best chance in next year's election? Honestly, I have no idea."
EXCERPTS:
You can see this in politics, where Joe Biden has repeatedly declared that Republicans will have an “epiphany” once Donald Trump is gone, and once again become reasonable people Democrats can deal with. Given the G.O.P.’s scorched-earth politics during the Obama years, that’s a bizarre claim.
By all means, let’s talk about whether “Medicare for all,” wealth taxes and other progressive proposals are actually good ideas. But trying to shoot them down by going on about how terrible things are in France is a sure sign that you have no idea what you’re talking about.
READ MORE
The Capitol in Washington, D.C., is seen at dawn. (photo: AP)
Tom McCarthy, Guardian UK
McCarthy writes: "Summoning the full force of its constitutionally vested powers, Congress last week called 13 witnesses to appear for questioning in the impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump. Two of them showed up."
ummoning the full force of its constitutionally vested powers, Congress last week called 13 witnesses to appear for questioning in the impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump.
Two of them showed up.
Four of the would-be witnesses – the acting White House chief of staff, two senior officials in the budget office and a state department lawyer – failed to appear in spite of congressional subpoenas, as distinct from requests.
A fifth witness, former national security adviser John Bolton, warned that he would reply to any subpoena with a lawsuit.
The story of the Trump presidency is one of repeated power struggles between branches of government and within the executive branch. But the standoff that has developed between the White House and the legislature during the impeachment inquiry, constitutional experts say, is loaded with dangerous potential to upset the balance of power and wreck the ability of Congress to check the president.
“This is about as intense a conflict as we could imagine between the branches,” said Michael J Gerhardt, a professor at the University of North Carolina school of law and an expert on impeachment and the constitution.
“It is unusual, though not unprecedented. This may be a great example of what we call constitutional hardball, where everybody’s kind of pushing their powers at least to their boundaries, if not beyond.”
The refusal of executive branch officials to comply with lawful congressional subpoenas has been compared to Richard Nixon’s refusal to turn over recordings of Oval Office conversations to investigators in the Watergate affair. In that standoff, Congress ultimately prevailed.
But the third article of impeachment against Nixon, for obstruction of the House impeachment inquiry, “rested on far more limited withholding of information from the House” than that which is being pursued by Trump, said Frank O Bowman III, author of High Crimes and Misdemeanors: A History of Impeachment for the Age of Trump and a professor at the University of Missouri school of law.
“It’s completely abnormal,” Bowman said of the witness absences. “Inasmuch as the no-shows are in response to presidential orders or strong admonitions, they amount to obstruction of the House’s constitutional impeachment function and are therefore a free-standing ground for impeachment.”
The Trump administration has withheld more than just witnesses. Top officials – including vice-president Mike Pence, secretary of state Mike Pompeo, energy secretary Rick Perry and acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney – have defied subpoenas for documents. So have agencies including the defense department and budget office.
Witnesses with no formal role in the administration have defied Congress, too – at times rather punchily.
Refusing a subpoena for documents, lawyers for Rudy Giuliani condemned the impeachment inquiry as “unconstitutional, baseless and illegitimate”. A lawyer for Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, Ukrainian Americans arrested last month on campaign finance charges, asserted attorney-client privilege in withholding documents, because the two men “assisted Mr Giuliani in connection with his representation of President Trump”.
Neither man is a lawyer. Parnas has since switched lawyers and said he will cooperate.
‘Political talking points, and no law’
In defying Congress, the would-be witnesses have relied, explicitly and implicity, on an overarching case for non-participation made in a pugnacious eight-page letter sent to Congress in October by White House counsel Pat Cipollone.
“Given that your inquiry lacks any legitimate constitutional foundation, any pretense of fairness, or even the most elementary due process protections, the Executive Branch cannot be expected to participate in it,” the letter said.
A half-page letter from lawyers for Giuliani said the former New York mayor “adopts all the positions set forth in Mr Cipollone’s letter”.
The acting director of the office of management of the budget (OMB), Russell Vought, invoked the White House gag order in a dismissive tweet defying his subpoena.
“I saw some Fake News over the weekend to correct,” he wrote. “As the WH letter made clear two weeks ago, OMB officials – myself and Mike Duffey – will not be complying with deposition requests this week. #shamprocess”
As a legal document, the White House letter is weak, according to experts.
“I think it was filled with a number of political talking points, and no law,” said Gerhardt.
Bob Bauer, a former White House counsel under Barack Obama, wrote: “On the merits, it is an exceptionally weak performance. Add to this another deficiency: its glaring failure to effectively represent the institutional interests of the presidency.”
The noncooperation of executive branch officials could have serious implications for the impeachment inquiry, potentially depriving Congress and the public of crucial evidence.
Mulvaney might testify about how, exactly, the order came down for the OMB to suspend military aid for Ukraine. Perry attended several key meetings and could add to previous firsthand testimony about the precise nature of the deal Trump was pursuing. Bolton has said he might someday testify to relevant firsthand conversations he had with the president.
Pompeo could supply evidence that might help explain why the Ukraine plot gave rise to a moment of truth for so many career foreign service officers.
The 18 witnesses from the executive branch to have spoken to the impeachment committees so far have done so in defiance of the White House gag order.
Adam Schiff, chairman of the House intelligence committee, told reporters this week the executive branch refusal to cooperate amounted to evidence of obstruction of the inquiry, suggesting Trump, like Nixon, might face an article of impeachment along those lines.
“The White House excuses keep changing,” Schiff said. “First it was: the House hasn’t held a vote. Then, a claim of immunity never upheld by a court. Now they want their lawyers to participate, which is against the rules Republicans wrote.
“It doesn’t add up – except as evidence of obstruction.”
Bernie Sanders. (photo: Antonella Crescimbeni)
Bernie Sanders's New Immigration Proposal Is Incredibly Strong
Daniel Denvir, Jacobin
Denvir writes: "Bernie Sanders has set the bar on a just and humane immigration, border, and labor policy agenda - and made it clear that immigrants are central to a united, insurgent American working class."
ernie Sanders released his immigration plan yesterday. It’s a plan that rejects and redresses the entirety of Trump’s xenophobic agenda, then goes far beyond that to radically break with the decades-long bipartisan war on immigrants that made Trump possible.
Daniel Denvir, Jacobin
Denvir writes: "Bernie Sanders has set the bar on a just and humane immigration, border, and labor policy agenda - and made it clear that immigrants are central to a united, insurgent American working class."
ernie Sanders released his immigration plan yesterday. It’s a plan that rejects and redresses the entirety of Trump’s xenophobic agenda, then goes far beyond that to radically break with the decades-long bipartisan war on immigrants that made Trump possible.
Sanders without question now sets the bar on immigration, border, and labor policy, and he has made it clear that immigrants are central to an insurgent American working class and that the working class must be united to win.
“Democrats risk losing the election unless and until they can articulate and advance a unifying agenda that raises wages and conditions for ALL workers across race, gender, class, and, importantly, nationality,” National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON) director Pablo Alvarado said in a statement responding to Sanders’s plan. “The deep divisions caused by the exploitation of immigrant work was the dry timber on which Trump poured his racist kerosene, and the populist fire that is now raging as the result of this arson can only be extinguished when Democrats confront, head on, the centrality of work and workers’ rights within the debate about the future of US immigration policy.”
Sanders’s immigration plan is dedicated to immigrant freedom. It contains no talk of border security or targeting “criminal aliens.” He rejects the establishment’s comprehensive immigration-reform model that has traded draconian enforcement as a putative down payment to buy Republican congressional support for a mass legalization of undocumented immigrants. In other words, Bernie’s plan identifies presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama’s strategies as a failure.
As the proposal makes clear, the problem with this approach for the last twenty years is that the more anti-immigrant measures were offered and implemented, the more hostile Republicans grew to legalization. Bernie, the plan states:
will not accept delays from Congress, and will not trade limitless and unaccountable funding for border militarization, detention beds, and deportation forces for a deal that has yet to materialize. Bernie will use the constitutional authority vested in the president to take bold and necessary executive action if Congress fails to enact the commonsense immigration reforms supported by the vast majority of Americans.
He promises an immediate moratorium on deportations and pledges to use strong executive action to ensure that a large proportion of undocumented Americans will not be banished from their homes. His fight to win legislation to grant them citizenship will be a fight for legalization as a stand-alone cause, rejecting additional immigration enforcement to woo the Right into backing a compromise they will never accept.
For decades, establishment politicians have deported millions and built hundreds of miles of fencing on the border with Mexico in a quixotic effort to convince Republicans that they are serious about “border security.” This strategy has not only implemented right-wing nativist policy in exchange for nothing, but ratified nativist rhetoric portraying immigrants as threats and the border as insecure. Bernie is right to reject it.
Sanders pledges to increase the number of refugee admissions, including a new climate refugee program to welcome those fleeing the unfolding global environmental disaster that American capitalism has played the lead role in creating. Sanders also proposes greater opportunities for legal immigration by increasing the number of visas based on the principle of family reunification rather than US corporations’ dictates.
Sanders recognizes that US foreign and economic policy — including climate change — is complicit in fomenting migration from Central America, and that we must remake the global economy and deliver economic justice so that people are free to not migrate and stay put if they choose.
In the 1980s, Sanders was a vociferous critic of murderous US intervention against left-wing revolutionaries in Central America. His immigration proposal stays true to that solidarity by recognizing that our deep complicity in making the region unlivable for so many imposes an ethical obligation on us to welcome immigrants and refugees. Bernie’s immigration plan, like his foreign policy, is refreshingly internationalist, calling to “end global inequality and the international race to the bottom so that no human being needs to migrate for survival.”
Sanders calls for radically decriminalizing immigration and breaking the bonds that Democratic and Republican leaders have forged between immigration enforcement and mass incarceration. As the plan rightly notes: “The criminalization of immigrants has wasted billions of taxpayer dollars, dehumanized vulnerable migrants, and swelled already-overcrowded jails and prisons.”
He wants to decriminalize unauthorized border crossings, repealing the statute that Trump has used to separate families. But he won’t wait on Congress to change border policy. Sanders pledges to take executive action to end the systematic prosecution of immigrants for the federal misdemeanor of illegal entry that has been commonplace since the Bush administration. He also wants to end programs that have turned the country’s police, jails, and prisons into the entryway to a massive deportation pipeline, including 287(g), Secure Communities, and the Criminal Alien Program. These programs have simultaneously fueled deportations and mass incarceration. Ending them would curb both.
Specifically, Sanders calls for the repeal of historic anti-immigrant measures signed by President Bill Clinton in 1996 that have made deportations incredibly tough to fight, required mandatory detention for many immigration offenders, barred deportees from lawfully entering for three to ten years, and expanded the number of crimes that subject non-citizens to all but certain deportation. He also calls for checks on the Border Patrol’s police-state powers to question and search people with impunity throughout large swathes of this country.
The criminalization of immigration enforcement — the rise of what activists and scholars call “crimmigration” — has not only been disastrous policy but dangerous politics as well. For decades, politicians including Clinton, Bush, and Obama engaged in rhetoric and implemented policies that portrayed immigrants as a criminal threat. In doing so, they created the political template for Trump to demonize immigrants as just that.
The president infamously announced his campaign in 2015 by declaring that Mexican immigrants are “bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.” It was not just the far right but also excruciatingly ordinary bipartisan politics that linked immigration to the war on crime and so gave Trump this language and made it resonate.
Sanders is also clear that making immigration into a national security issue after the September 11 attacks was a disaster, and that “immigration is not a threat to national security.” He calls for breaking up the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and Customs and Border Protection, restructuring and thus taming the enforcement machine.
The integration of immigration enforcement into the War on Terror national security state has turbocharged funding for enforcement while portraying immigrants — particularly Muslims — as a terrorist threat. This is another issue where establishment leaders from both major parties helped create the demonized caricature of the immigrant other that Trump would exploit and take to a new and dangerous level.
Sanders challenges nativist rhetoric that portrays immigrants as a threat to taxpayers through the use of public benefits and to jobs by driving down wages. Since California voters passed Proposition 187 in 1994, the depiction of immigrants as an economic danger has been critical to the power of anti-immigrant politics. But immigrants are far from the only people who have been harmed: the use of racist scapegoating has served to undermine the welfare state for everyone and to divide workers against one another.
Critically, Sanders’s core universal programs are truly universal: Medicare for All and College for All are for all regardless of immigration status. Sanders’s proposal makes clear that immigrants are fellow workers and pledges that his administration would prioritize enforcement of immigrant worker labor rights over immigration enforcement. One way he pledges to do that is by protecting undocumented workers who report labor violations from deportation, a measure long pushed for by NDLON. Allowing immigrants to receive legal status when they blow the whistle on workplace abuse wields the law to erode the very two-tier labor market that the persecution of undocumented immigrants has created.
The politics of this immigration policy agenda are important: by emphasizing that immigrants are core to the working class rather than a threat to it, Sanders strengthens the multiracial coalition that is this country’s only hope for transformative change. Sanders had deep support among Latinos before releasing the immigration plan, and he is counting on their massive turnout to win.
“The issues that we are talking about appeal to the Latino community and young people in general, and that is a lot of Latinos are working for starvation wages — they want to see that minimum wage raised,” Sanders recently told Politico. “I’m the son of an immigrant myself, my father came from Poland without any money. I think I know a little bit about the experience.”
Latinos support Sanders for the same reason everyone else does. They support his working-class agenda — a universal agenda of which this immigration plan now forms an important part.
Bernie has a good record on immigration and consistently voted against the sort of draconian enforcement and border militarization bills embraced by many establishment Democrats. But he has also described immigration in troublingly nationalist terms in the past. This plan shows that Bernie has come to understand that bosses and government repression of immigrants, and not immigrant workers, are what undermine labor standards.
People say that Bernie never changes his mind. That’s not entirely true. It’s just that when he does, he moves in the right direction.
READ MORE
An immigrant detention center. (photo: ABC)
Andrea Castillo, Los Angeles Times
Castillo writes: "Private prisons are a multibillion-dollar industry in the U.S. and hold the vast majority of immigrants who are detained for deportation. Facilities in California hold 8% of the 49,000 people currently in ICE custody."
Private prisons are a multibillion-dollar industry in the U.S. and hold the vast majority of immigrants who are detained for deportation. Facilities in California hold 8% of the 49,000 people currently in ICE custody.
Three separate companies manage four private facilities between Bakersfield and Calexico. Together, they have space for nearly 4,000 immigrants. Contracts for each of the facilities end next year and under AB 32 could not be renewed.
With 1,940 beds, the Adelanto ICE Processing Center in San Bernardino County is the second-largest adult detention center in the nation. GEO Group runs Adelanto and the Mesa Verde ICE Processing Center near Bakersfield. CoreCivic operates the Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego. Management & Training Corp. runs the Imperial Regional Detention Facility in Calexico.
CoreCivic is planning a 500-bed expansion of the Otay Mesa facility by the end of this year, which would bring it to nearly 2,000 beds.
ICE’s recent request for detention centers in California appears to closely match the existing facilities. According to the solicitation notice, officials were looking for a facility within 50 miles of Calexico to hold at least 700 detainees; another within 50 miles of San Diego to hold up to 1,400 detainees; a third within 75 miles of Bakersfield to hold up to 1,150 detainees; and a fourth within 75 miles of Los Angeles to hold up to 1,950 detainees.
ICE later amended the notice to increase the beds near San Diego to 2,100 and near Los Angeles to 2,800, bringing the total request to 6,750 beds around the state. Proposals were due Monday, after less than three weeks.
Archaeologists excavate one of the Ancestral Puebloan pit houses in the path of the planned highway in southern Colorado. (photo: Ali Budner/KRCC)
Colorado Highway Expansion Routed Over Ancient Native American Sites
Ali Budner, NPR
Budner writes: "Just outside Durango, Colorado, archeologist Rand Greubel stands on a mesa surrounded by juniper trees. He points to a circular hole in the ground, about 30 feet across and more than 8 feet deep."
ust outside Durango, Colo., archeologist Rand Greubel stands on a mesa surrounded by juniper trees. He points to a circular hole in the ground, about 30 feet across and more than 8 feet deep. There's a fire pit in the center of an earthen floor, ventilation shafts tunneled into the side walls and bits of burned thatching that suggest how the structure once continued to rise above the ground. It's a large pit house from what's known as the Pueblo I period.
Ali Budner, NPR
Budner writes: "Just outside Durango, Colorado, archeologist Rand Greubel stands on a mesa surrounded by juniper trees. He points to a circular hole in the ground, about 30 feet across and more than 8 feet deep."
ust outside Durango, Colo., archeologist Rand Greubel stands on a mesa surrounded by juniper trees. He points to a circular hole in the ground, about 30 feet across and more than 8 feet deep. There's a fire pit in the center of an earthen floor, ventilation shafts tunneled into the side walls and bits of burned thatching that suggest how the structure once continued to rise above the ground. It's a large pit house from what's known as the Pueblo I period.
"We knew right away that it was highly significant just because of the sheer size of it," Greubel says.
It's amazingly well preserved. Greubel thinks this particular pit house was probably a center for ceremonies or gatherings for the Ancestral Puebloan people who lived here roughly 1,200 years ago. That was before they are believed to have migrated west to the Mesa Verde area and then south to become the ancestors of the Hopi, Zuni and various Pueblo tribes.
"When we were working down here, you kind of have a sense of peace and you feel like you're accomplishing something good," Greubel says. "I know not all people think that way, but we treated the site with respect and a sense of awe."
Greubel is with Alpine Archaeological Consultants, which the Colorado Department of Transportation hired to work on the dig. His company, based in Montrose, Colo., will do subsequent analysis of the artifacts after the excavation is complete.
It is awe inspiring, standing inside this space that has held human history for so long. But its existence will be short-lived. This pit house is about to be filled in and covered up by a highway, as are six other important ancient sites on this mesa.
The path of "progress"
Dan Jepson, an archaeologist with the Colorado Department of Transportation, says all of these cultural resources were discovered as a result of the highway project itself. Under federal law, potential sites for things like road expansions must be surveyed and then sometimes excavated to see what important historical features might lie below the ground. And that's how these pit houses were found.
Over the last two decades, Jepson says, the department has explored scores of other possible routes for the road to avoid destroying cultural artifacts. But because southwest Colorado is so full of Native American history, every option would have hit potential archaeological sites.
When it comes to laying down the new road, Jepson says the agency doesn't have a choice. The state is rerouting a steep, narrow 1 1/2-mile stretch of highway that it says was too dangerous for the increasing volume of traffic in the area.
"This is all about balance between the ethics that I have as an archaeologist in the context of working for an agency that destroys things in the name of progress," Jepson says.
His agency reached out to dozens of tribes in the region to offer them a chance to participate in the project and give feedback. The Southern Ute tribe agreed to consult with the agency. The new construction site will cross the outer boundaries of the tribe's reservation.
But some Southern Ute citizens are still upset that the digs are happening at all, and they don't feel empowered to stop them.
Tribal input
Just down the road, crews are using pickaxes, shovels and brushes to finish excavating the last of the seven sites. Trucks barreling up the hill behind them are a reminder of the regular heavy road traffic that already passes through this area.
Sam Maez, a member of the Southern Ute tribe, is here too. The Transportation Department invited him to talk with the archaeologists about their work and the highway project as a whole. The tribe isn't fighting the construction legally. But Maez isn't afraid to speak his mind.
"You know, after generations and generations of basically exterminating us and getting rid of everything that we believe in, and here we are picking the scabs of Mother Earth, you know, and wondering what, why and who these people were," Maez says. "Well, they're us."
He alludes to the human remains that the archaeologists found while excavating several of the sites under the proposed highway path.
"You know, those are my family's bones in there," Maez says. "We don't have a ceremony to dig them up and put them somewhere else."
He says projects like this have forced tribes to adapt to that process and create new rituals to remove and rebury remains.
Even though local tribes didn't have ultimate veto power to stop this highway project from moving forward, Maez says he does see a silver lining.
"It's quite interesting to see how we lived, you know, and to compare in how we live today. But on the other hand, it's very hurtful and sad too."
Artifacts from these excavations will be analyzed in a local lab and then eventually moved to the Canyons of the Ancients museum in Dolores, Colo. Construction on the highway itself is set to begin in the spring.
READ MORE
Former Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva delivers a speech after being released from prison, in Curitiba, Brazil, November 8, 2019. (photo: Reuters)
teleSUR
Excerpt: "Former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was released on Friday, one day after Brazil's Supreme Court decided to end the mandatory imprisonment of convicted criminals after they lose their first appeal."
Curitiba Judge Danilo Perreira Jr. ordered his release after Lula's defense lawyer Cristiano Zanin met with him this Friday afternoon and submitted a request for immediate release.
"Lula has not committed any crime and is a victim of the law, which, in the case of the former president, is the strategic use of the law for the purpose of political persecution," emphasized his lawyers.
A sea lion. (photo: Robin Riggs)
Jordan Davidson, EcoWatch
Davidson writes: "The rapid loss of sea ice is creating a fertile breeding ground for viruses as animals travel to areas they have never been before."
Goldstein and her colleagues looked at 15 years of data and realized that the spike in the virus was commensurate with Arctic sea ice loss. The data, published in a new study in the journal Scientific Reports, finds that the loss of Arctic sea ice allowed otters and other mammals to move west and spread the virus. The study shows that global heating is opening new avenues for diseases to spread, as National Geographic reported.
"The loss of sea ice is leading marine wildlife to seek and forage in new habitats and removing that physical barrier, allowing for new pathways for them to move," said Goldstein in a press release. "As animals move and come in contact with other species, they carry opportunities to introduce and transmit new infectious disease, with potentially devastating impacts."
The rapid loss of sea ice is creating a fertile breeding ground for viruses as animals travel to areas they have never been before. The phenomenon was first observed 17 years ago.
"It was a perfect storm in 2002," said Goldstein, as NBC News reported. "It was the lowest ice year on record at the time, and at the same time, in August and September, there was a really large outbreak."
To study the outbreak, the researchers took blood and mucous samples from seals, sea lions and otters from arctic and subarctic areas, from southeast Alaska to Russia. The swab samples allowed the scientists to determine which populations had been infected with the Phocine distemper virus, or PDV, and which specific strain they had been exposed to, as NBC News reported.
PDV is a common canine virus that vets vaccinate for. It spreads easily when an animal comes into direct contact with an infected animal. The virus manifests in seals much like the canine version does in dogs — goop discharged from the eyes and nose and a fever. With marine mammals, it also leads to erratic swimming, according to National Geographic.
The study adds to a growing body of research signaling trouble for marine mammals, including an increase in marine heat waves that deplete their food supply and an increase in toxic algal blooms that can infect fish with a toxin that causes brain damage in marine mammals, as NBC News reported.
"When we see these changes happening in animals, we can't ignore them, because the impacts on people and the planet are not far behind," said Elizabeth VanWormer, the study's lead author, as NBC News reported. "This shows how interconnected these things are — the health of people, animals and the planet."
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