 22 November 19 Come on Folks, Give Us a Hand
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22 November 19
Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Blog
Reich writes: "Republicans and even some Democrats are out to scare you about Medicare for All. They say it's going to dismantle health care as we know it and it will cost way too much. Rubbish."
But that’s not all, because some of the taxes you now pay are for health insurance, too — for Medicare and Medicaid and for the Affordable Care Act. So let’s add them in, again for the typical American household. That comes to a whopping $8,975 a year. Oh, and this number is expected to rise in the coming years.
Not a pretty picture. If you’re a typical American, you’re already paying far more for health insurance than people in any other advanced country.
And you’re not getting your money’s worth. The United States ranks near the bottom for life span and infant mortality. Or maybe you’re one of the 30 million Americans who don’t have any health insurance coverage at all.
Ambassador Gordon Sondland. (photo: LA Times)
Noah Bierman, Los Angeles Times
Bierman writes: "Minutes after he took his seat Wednesday in the House impeachment hearing, Ambassador Gordon Sondland made himself clear: He had come to save his own reputation, not the president's."
Then, with a batch of private emails he was able to recover and fresh recollections in hand, he let loose.
“Was there a quid pro quo?” he said. “The answer is yes.”
Speaking slowly and clearly from a long prepared statement, he implicated President Trump’s entire inner circle as part of a scheme to demand Ukraine investigate Trump’s political rivals in exchange for U.S. military aid and a White House visit.
Vice President Mike Pence, Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo.
“Everyone was in the loop,” Sondland said repeatedly, denying he was heading a “rogue operation.”
“We followed the president’s orders,” he said at another point.
Donald Trump Jr. (photo: Angela Weiss/Getty)
The Republican National Committee Bought Nearly $100,000 Worth of Donald Trump Jr.'s Book Last Month
Henry J. Gomez, BuzzFeed
Gomez writes: "Donald Trump Jr.'s new book, Triggered, hit the top of the New York Times' bestsellers list this month with the help of nearly $100,000 in purchases from the Republican National Committee."
When Triggered appeared on the Times' bestsellers list, it was accompanied by a dagger symbol, indicating bulk purchases instead of organic sales. A Trump campaign official told BuzzFeed News in early November that the campaign had “no plans” for book purchases.
If the RNC "just wanted books to resell, they could have gotten them for less money, direct from the publisher," a New York literary agent told BuzzFeed News. "They spent more, of donors' money, to buy them from BooksAMillion, clearly in an effort to look like 'real' sales."
U.S. soldiers deployed in support of Operation Inherent Resolve await aerial extraction during an exercise in Iraq. President Trump made an uneasy connection between veterans and violence that experts say is not supported by evidence. (photo: 1st Lt. Leland White/US Army National Guard)
Joseph Zeballos-Roig, Business Insider
Zeballos-Roig writes: "Federal spending on post-9/11 military action in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere around the world stands at $6.5 trillion through fiscal year 2020, according to a new study from the Cost of War project at Brown University."
The study said military action taken after the 9/11 attacks has now expanded to more than 80 countries, making it "a truly global war on terror."
Its human costs have been profound as well. Over 801,000 people died as a direct result of the fighting — 335,000 of them being civilians, according to the report.
The report said the US government should expect to spend at least $1 trillion in benefit payments and disability claims for veterans in the next several decades. Last year, there were 4.1 million post 9/11 war veterans, making up around 16% of all veterans served by the Department of Veterans Affairs.
"Even if the United States withdraws completely from the major war zones by the end of FY2020 and halts its other Global War on Terror operations, in the Philippines and Africa for example, the total budgetary burden of the post-9/11 wars will continue to rise as the U.S. pays the on-going costs of veterans' care and for interest on borrowing to pay for the wars," study author Neta Crawford wrote.
Back in March, the Department of Defense estimated that the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria have cost each US taxpayer around $7,623 to date.
The estimate drew attention from one of the leading Democratic presidential candidates: Sen. Bernie Sanders, who quipped on Twitter about its colossal price tag on Thursday. The Vermont senator had previously slammed "costly blunders" made in US foreign policy over the years.
People gather in West, Texas, in memory of those who lost their lives in an explosion at the West Fertilizer Co. plant in 2013. (photo: Dan Zak/The Washington Post)
Juliet Eilperin, The Washington Post
Eilperin writes: "The Environmental Protection Agency weakened a rule Thursday governing how companies store dangerous chemicals. The standards were enacted under President Barack Obama in the wake of a 2013 explosion in West, Tex., that killed 15 people, including 12 first responders."
Standards were adopted in 2017, about four years after an explosion in West, Tex., killed 15 people
he Environmental Protection Agency weakened a rule Thursday governing how companies store dangerous chemicals. The standards were enacted under President Barack Obama in the wake of a 2013 explosion in West, Tex., that killed 15 people, including 12 first responders.
Under the new standards, companies will not have to provide public access to information about what kinds of chemicals are stored on their sites. They also will not have to undertake several measures aimed at preventing accidents, such as analyzing safer technology and procedures, conducting a “root-cause analysis” after a major chemical release or obtaining a third-party audit when an accident has occurred.
In a statement, EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler said the revised “Risk Management Program” rule addresses concerns raised by security experts, who feared that releasing the location of the country’s chemical stores could provide a road map for terrorists, as well as others. Wheeler’s predecessor at the EPA, Scott Pruitt, suspended the Obama-era rule in his first month on the job after chemical companies and refiners complained that the 2017 guidance imposed too much of a burden on them.
“Under the Trump Administration, EPA is listening to our first responders and homeland security experts,” Wheeler said. “Today’s final action addresses emergency responders’ long-standing concerns and maintains important public safety measures while saving Americans roughly $88 million per year.”
Michael P. Walls, vice president of regulatory and technical affairs at the American Chemistry Council, said in an email that his group commends the EPA for ensuring that the federal government’s Risk Management Program “continues to deliver solid results when it comes to regulating safety at chemical facilities.”
Federal regulators sought to tighten handling procedures for flammable and toxic chemicals after more than 80,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate stored at a fertilizer plan in the Central Texas town of West caught fire April 7, 2013, killing 15 people and injuring 160. Federal investigators concluded in 2016 that the company had stored the ammonium nitrate in an unsafe manner, though arson was the direct cause of the blaze.
In a document released by the EPA on Wednesday, the agency said one of the reasons it decided to revisit the standards, which apply to more than 12,000 facilities across the country, is that the 2013 fire “was caused by a criminal act (arson) rather than being the result of an accident.”
Mason G. Lindsay, who is the chair of the Calcasieu Parish Local Emergency Planning Committee, in Louisiana, said in a statement that the changes to the rule “will help us to collect emergency contacts, conduct drills, review plans and incidents.”
But environmental and public health groups said the changes would leave chemical and refining operations vulnerable to future accidents.
“Given the EPA is first and foremost a public health agency, it is unconscionable that the Trump administration would gut key protections for emergency responders and people living near facilities that handle potentially dangerous chemicals,” said Elena Craft, senior director of climate and health at the Environmental Defense Fund. “We need more-detailed emergency plans, increased transparency and safer technology. This action moves in the wrong direction when it’s clear that the cost of chemical disasters is far greater than keeping communities safe.”
Dangerous accidents continue to occur at U.S. chemical plants. Last week nearly 40 House Democrats wrote Wheeler and asked him to maintain the Obama-era rule, noting that 73 accidents and leaks have taken place since it was suspended.
Last year, a grand jury indicted Arkema North America and two of its executives for what federal officials called “recklessly” releasing a cloud of toxic chemicals during Hurricane Harvey in 2017. The company denied the allegations in a statement at the time, saying, “It is hard to believe anyone would seek to criminalize the way in which one facility was impacted by such a crushing natural disaster.”
Hussein Yasser Hassan is afraid to return home because he says al-Qaeda and others who fought U.S.-led forces in Iraq see him as a traitor. (photo: Fahrinisa Campana/Al Jazeera)
'Condemned': The Fate of an Iraqi Refugee Deported by the Trump Administration
Fahrinisa Campana, Al Jazeera
Campana writes: "Once part of US-trained SWAT teams in Iraq, Hussein Yasser Hassan got asylum in America but is now running for his life."
Fahrinisa Campana, Al Jazeera
Campana writes: "Once part of US-trained SWAT teams in Iraq, Hussein Yasser Hassan got asylum in America but is now running for his life."
Once part of US-trained SWAT teams in Iraq, Hussein Yasser Hassan got asylum in America but is now running for his life.
ust 10 years after the United States granted him asylum, 34-year-old Hussein Yasser Hassan is on the run again.
Tearing open four packets of sugar pinched tightly between his tattooed fingers and dumping them into a small glass of tea at a cafe in the Turkish capital, Ankara, the Iraqi refugee sighs deeply and brings his story back to the beginning of his problems - the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Originally from Baqubah, a small town just over an hour's drive north of the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, Hassan was drafted into the military and assigned to the Diyala police force shortly before US forces entered the country to topple longtime president, Saddam Hussein.
On the day foreign troops entered the town of al-Khalis near Baqubah, Hassan says he returned to his hometown to be close to his mother. He only returned to work five months later, when US forces called for him.
He was fast-tracked into one of Iraq's first US-trained SWAT teams and became a bodyguard for the head of the counterterrorism police in Diyala province, Ghassan Adnan al-Khadran.
The work was dangerous, with armed groups, including al-Qaeda, waging a violent campaign against US-led and government forces. Al-Khadran frequently came under attack. One suicide attack targeting his convoy killed 48 civilians.
'Killed like his brother'
Hassan, a Shia Muslim, says al-Qaeda and other Sunni militias fighting US-led forces in Iraq saw him as a traitor.
In 2005, the Ansar al-Sunna armed group posted a "threatening letter" at the homes of several men who worked with al-Khadran. Hassan was among them.
In a matter of days, five of the men on the list had been killed. Fearing he would be next, Hassan fled to Lebanon from where he applied for refugee status in the US.
Three years later, he was on his way to the US and a new life, but not before his twin brother, Ali, had been kidnapped back in Iraq.
Hassan says someone messaged him on Yahoo messenger to tell him they were going to kill his brother "because they wanted me to come back".
Ali's whereabouts are still unknown, although Iman Mohammed Nawroz, Hassan and Ali's mother, told the police she had heard that suspects in the 2007 case had confessed to killing him on the day he was abducted.
"I was destroyed and my life just stopped," says 61-year-old Nawroz, speaking by phone from Iraq.
Although Hassan's initial instinct was to return to Iraq to be near his mother, she insisted that he remain in Lebanon to continue his application for refugee status in the US.
"If he [had] stayed [in Iraq], I knew he would get killed like his brother, so it was better that he went to the US, and me not seeing him, than him staying in Iraq and getting killed," Nawroz explained.
A new life in Utah
In July 2008, Hassan arrived as a refugee in Salt Lake City, Utah, and quickly became a permanent resident.
For nearly a decade, he lived happily in Utah.
"I loved everything about the US," he says softly, "the freedom, the weather, the people were really nice, I felt safe there. Everything was nice."
At 183cm (6 feet) tall and weighing 90kg (200 pounds), Hassan found work as a security guard in bars and nightclubs. Compared with his job in Iraq, it felt safe and undemanding - and it paid the bills.
As the years passed, he put down roots, surrounding himself with a tight-knit group of friends and marrying an American woman.
But there was one thing he failed to do that would later haunt him: become a naturalised US citizen. He took the naturalisation exam once but failed due to his poor English, and never tried again.
In 2016, after two years of marriage, Hassan's relationship with his wife started to unravel. He began taking drugs and "mixing with the wrong crowd". Not long after, he was arrested over a drunken fight at the house of a friend of a friend. He was charged with burglary, a felony.
Hassan says he had not realised it at the time, but because he had never become a naturalised citizen, he could be stripped of his green card and deported if he committed one in a long list of crimes that range from petty misdemeanours, such as possession of cannabis, to felonies such as rape and murder and burglary.
In March 2017 Hassan pleaded guilty to second-degree burglary and two third-degree felonies - extortion and witness tampering - and was sentenced to 230 days in county jail. He also agreed to undergo a mental health check and attend anger management classes.
'Condemned to death'
The previous autumn, Donald Trump had been elected president. One of his main campaign promises was to crack down on immigration.
First, it was the so-called "Muslim Ban" - an executive order barring nationals from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the US that Trump signed just a week after his inauguration in January 2017. Iraq was originally one of the seven countries on this list.
A few months later, as the spotlight turned to the US-Mexico border, where Trump was promising to build a wall to stem the flow of undocumented migrants from Central and South America, the Trump administration quietly began deporting Iraqis with criminal records.
The US had stopped deporting Iraqi permanent residents following the 2003 invasion, with the Iraqi government refusing to take them back. However, following Trump's election, Iraq agreed to start taking back its nationals who had committed crimes in the US.
According to Reuters, in total, nearly 150 Iraqis have been deported back to Iraq since April 17, 2017 - the day the first flight returned eight to Iraq.
After Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested more than 100 Iraqis in the Detroit area in one weekend in July 2017, the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan (ACLU) filed an emergency lawsuit against ICE in an attempt to stop the deportations, in what is called the Hamama v Adducci case.
In their petition, the ACLU stated that Iraq was not a safe place and that many of those facing deportation were at risk of persecution, torture or even death upon their return.
"The removal of any Iraqi from the United States to the country of Iraq, especially those with ties to the US and/or religious minorities, would put the individual at high risk of persecution or torture and is therefore in violation of federal and international law," testified Rebecca Heller, the director and cofounder of the International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP) and an expert witness supporting the lawsuit.
A federal judge ruled in favour of the ACLU, blocking the government from deporting most Iraqis with standing deportation orders - with immediate effect - until they had a chance to argue their individual cases in court based on current country conditions.
This victory was short-lived, however. In December 2018, a Court of Appeals overturned the stay on deportation orders and some 1,400 more Iraqis with old removal orders were again at risk of being deported.
"What is happening here is that people are being condemned to a life of persecution or torture, or they are being condemned to death," says Miriam Aukerman, senior ACLU staff lawyer. "We are not supposed to send people to a place where they're going to be persecuted, tortured or killed."
'My heart stopped'
"I know I did wrong," says Hassan of the crimes he committed.
He sighs often as he talks about his life in the US and sometimes stirs his tea absentmindedly as he gathers his thoughts.
"I know I shouldn't have drank and I shouldn't have hung out with bad people at parties. I shouldn't have done that. I was wrong."
During his sentencing, his immigration status was only briefly addressed. In a recording, the judge can be heard asking Hassan directly: "Do you understand that by entering these pleas they may affect your ability to stay in the United States and there may be an order that you be deported from the United States?"
Hassan confirms he understands this. However, following this statement, Hassan's lawyer can be heard telling the judge: "I don't think he'll be deported … it's my understanding that currently, the United States is not deporting our refugees to the country of Iraq, so I don't believe there's a detainer, but as we all know those immigration issues can be in flux. So, right now I expect him to be able to do probation. He's here, he's here legally."
But when Hassan was released from county jail after serving his sentence, ICE was waiting for him. He was arrested on the spot and taken to immigration detention, where he spent roughly a year and three months, including six months in solitary confinement.
"I signed my deportation orders, [because] they told me if I didn't sign they would keep me in detention for years and years," Hassan says.
And so, on July 10, 2018, he boarded a commercial flight in Texas, along with two ICE officers, and started his long journey back to Iraq.
"When they took me to the airport and put me in the aeroplane, my heart stopped," he says. "I really didn't want to go [back to Iraq], but they told me not to act crazy so they wouldn't have to handcuff me. I didn't have a choice."
'Coerced'
"For a plea to be valid, a person needs to be informed of the immigration consequences," explains Aukerman. "Here, particularly because Hussein didn't speak English well, it seems very likely that he didn't understand that his plea could get him deported."
The ACLU, which is trying to find a lawyer to reopen Hassan's case, also says he was actively coerced into signing his deportation orders.
"There are two levels of coercion," explains Aukerman. "There's outright coercion … where people were lied to and told that they would be criminally prosecuted if they didn't sign the forms stating that they wanted to go to Iraq." And then there were the threats of indefinite incarceration, she adds.
Shot at
Hassan could not be sure what was waiting for him back in Iraq but, boarding that flight, he says he knew it was nothing good.
Two months later, he found out.
Hassan and his sister were returning to their mother's house one evening after running some errands. As they approached, they were shot at five times by two men who had been following them.
One bullet hit him in the arm, one struck his sister in the back and the rest burrowed into the walls and door of the house.
Hassan's sister recovered, but after being treated for his wounds at a nearby hospital, he went into hiding.
Two weeks later, Hassan says, his father suffered a stress-induced heart attack and later died.
When asked about Hassan's case and if ICE had assessed possible harm to Hassan from returning to Iraq, Matthew Albence, acting director of ICE, said: "Foreigners who are subject to removal under our immigration laws receive extensive due process."
He added: "If they claim fear of returning to their home country or wish to assert other legal defences to removal, they have every opportunity to pursue those."
Albence did not comment on Hassan's case.
"If this administration values human life, it should immediately stop all deportations to Iraq," says Aukerman. "At a bare minimum, the government should agree to automatic reopening of all Iraqi cases … Congress cannot just stand by while people are being deported into such a dangerous situation. It must pass the bipartisan Deferred Removal for Iraqi Nationals Including Minorities Act, which would pause deportations for two years to allow the immigration courts to review old removal orders."
'I have no future'
Hassan now says he would rather have spent the rest of his life in prison in the US than be deported back to Iraq.
"Immigration custody is better than living in Iraq," he says. "If I knew, I would never have signed my papers."
After surviving what he believes was an assassination attempt and spending eight months in hiding, Hassan says he was on the verge of a mental breakdown.
So in August, a year after his return to Iraq, he fled to Turkey.
His problems, however, are far from over.
With a 60-day tourist visa, his time in Turkey is limited. Even if he overstays his visa and manages to avoid the authorities, he would have few ways of supporting himself.
Fearful of being stopped on the street and asked for identification and immigration documentation, Hassan mostly stays indoors, waiting for the Iraqi friend he is staying with to return from work so that they can smoke cigarettes and drink tea together.
"[There's] nothing to do but sleep and wake up, wake up and sleep. That's it. That's all I can do," he says.
The only other option Hassan has considered is continuing onwards towards Europe, following the well-beaten refugee trail. This would require approximately $4,000 and several risks he is not sure he is ready to take.
"I'm thinking about going to Europe in the boat, but I don't have the money to go [right now]," he explains.
"I don't know what I'm going to do, I'm [just] waiting," he says.
"I have no future, I don't have any choices, but I'm not going back to Iraq."
All major fossil fuel-producing nations - including the United States and China - planned to greatly increase production of oil, gas, and coal in the next decade. (photo: George Steinmetz/National Geographic)
Dangerous Levels of Warming Locked In by Planned Jump in Fossil Fuels Output
Stephen Leahy, National Geographic
Leahy writes: "Carbon emissions from fossil fuel use totaled 37.1 billion tonnes in 2018, a new record."
Stephen Leahy, National Geographic
Leahy writes: "Carbon emissions from fossil fuel use totaled 37.1 billion tonnes in 2018, a new record."
Plans by the world’s biggest oil, gas, and coal producers to vastly increase their output guarantees those countries will miss their stated Paris climate goals.
lobal governments plan to produce 120 percent more fossil fuels by 2030, drastically at odds with the 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 degrees Celsius) warming limit they all agreed to under the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. All major fossil fuel-producing nations—including the United States, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, India, Canada, and Australia—have ambitious plans to increase production, according to a new report by leading research organizations and the United Nations.
Carbon emissions from fossil fuel use totaled 37.1 billion tonnes in 2018, a new record. Substantially reducing those emissions will never happen without reducing fossil fuel production, says Michael Lazarus, a lead author of “The Production Gap Report” and the director of Stockholm Environment Institute’s U.S. Center.
Using publicly-available government documents, the report found that countries’ plans to increase production of coal, oil, and gas amounts to 120 percent more in 2030 than would be consistent with limiting global warming to 2.7 degrees F. Those plans include producing 280 percent more coal. That puts the world on a path to more than 7.2 degrees F (4 degrees C) of warming, says Lazarus.
“This report shows, for the first time, just how big the disconnect is between Paris temperature goals and countries’ plans and policies for coal, oil, and gas production,” Lazarus says. “Even countries claiming to be climate leaders like Canada and Norway say they want to maximize their fossil fuel exports,” he said in an interview.
Such a rise in global temperatures would hasten the melting of Earth's ice sheets, raising sea levels; increase the number of big storms and the amount of rain they dump; force the migration of animals to new habitats as their homes heat up; and heighten the danger of infectious diseases to humans, among other effects.
In the report, UNEP Executive Director Inger Andersen says it introduces “the fossil fuel production gap, a new metric that clearly shows the gap between increasing fossil fuel production and the decline needed to limit global warming.”
“Consider me shocked, but not surprised” by the report, says energy economist Gernot Wagner at New York University. If the world uses even 20 percent more fossil fuels in 2030 than today it is “bound to create massive systemic risks,” says Gernot, who was not involved in the report.
“The incentives around fossil fuel extraction are all screwed up. Globally, we are still subsidizing fossil fuel use to the tune of half a trillion dollars per year,” he writes in an email.
Investments in new fossil fuel infrastructure today “locks in” fossil fuel production. If it continues as planned countries will end up producing between 40 and 50 percent more oil and gas by 2030 than would be consistent with limiting warming to 3.6 degrees F (2 degrees C). In a landmark report last year the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that 2 degrees C of warming would have enormous impacts and costs on the environment.
“For the first time the UN has presented the crystal clear science: we must stop the expansion of the fossil-fuel industry immediately,” said May Boeve, Executive Director, 350.org, an environmental organization.
Governments are key
Of the 27 fossil fuel-producing countries, the top nine account for over two-thirds of global fossil fuel CO2 emissions, the report says. The U.S. currently produces more oil and gas than any other country, and is the second largest producer of coal. Oil and gas production will increase to 30 percent above current levels by 2030 predicts the Energy Information Administration (EIA). The U.S. has begun the process of withdrawing from the Paris agreement.
Governments issue the extraction permits and provide production and consumption subsidies, so they’ll have to take the lead on phasing down fossil fuel production, says Stephen Kretzmann of Oil Change International, a U.S. non-profit research organization focused on the costs of fossil fuels.
Yesterday, California, the sixth largest oil producing state, announced a comprehensive action to phase out California’s oil and gas production, Kretzmann says. “That’s what real climate leadership looks like.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom has stopped approval of new hydraulic fracturing for oil and gas in the state pending reviews by an independent panel of scientists. This was a step toward the phase-out of “our dependence on fossil fuels and focus on clean energy sources,” Newsom said in a statement.
Countries have numerous options for closing the production gap, including limiting exploration and extraction, removing subsidies, and aligning future production plans with climate goals. The report details these domestic policy options by governments that can restrain—or at least not subsidize—the supply of fossil fuels, says Steve Davis, a climate researcher at the University of California, Davis, a contributor to the report.
Phasing down fossil fuel production needs to be done in ways that ensures those affected by social and economic change are not left behind, the report concludes. Germany, one of the world’s largest coal producers, will phase out coal power plants entirely by 2038, as well as lignite coal mining. It has set aside $47 billion in government support to compensate those affected.
“Despite more than two decades of climate policy-making, fossil fuel production levels are higher than ever,” says Stockholm Environment Institute’s Executive Director, Måns Nilsson. “This report shows that governments’ continued support for coal, oil, and gas extraction is a big part of the problem. We’re in a deep hole—and we need to stop digging.”
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