Saturday, December 7, 2019
With Support of Just One Republican, House Passes 'Historic' Bill to Restore and Expand Voting Rights
Friday, December 06, 2019
Common Dreams
"Brings us one step closer to restoring the Voting Rights Act."
Jake Johnson, staff writer
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/12/06/support-just-one-republican-house-passes-historic-bill-restore-and-expand-voting
Just one Republican—Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania—joined a united House Democratic caucus on Friday to pass what rights groups hailed as "historic" legislation to restore and expand voter protections that were gutted by the Supreme Court in 2013.
Lisa Gilbert, vice president of legislative affairs for Public Citizen, said passage of the Voting Rights Advancement Act (H.R. 4) is a "critical step" in combating Republican voter suppression efforts that have proliferated in the six years since the Supreme Court's infamous decision in Shelby County v. Holder.
"Numerous state legislatures have undertaken targeted and deliberate steps to limit or impede the right to vote for communities of color, students, the elderly, and people with disabilities," said Gilbert. "Americans who are eligible to vote but are denied that right due to fabricated or illegal barriers are being deprived of the full privilege of our democracy."
"If we want a true democracy, we must protect the right to vote for all," said Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. "The Voting Rights Advancement Act is critical to getting there."
The legislation now heads to the Senate, which is controlled by Republicans. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has refused to allow a vote on Democrats' For the People Act (H.R. 1), to which the Voting Rights Advancement Act was previously attached.
"To Majority Leader McConnell, we ask: why are you afraid of all Americans having their full right to vote?" Sylvia Albert, director of voting and elections at Common Cause, said in a statement.
As Ari Berman of Mother Jones reported, H.R. 4—sponsored by Rep. Terri Sewell (D-Ala.)—would "initially cover 11 states: nine in the South, plus California and New York, which have more recently been found to discriminate against Latinos and Asian Americans."
"The bill would also require all states to get federal approval for election changes that are known to disproportionately affect voters of color, such as strict voter ID laws, tighter voter registration requirements, and polling place closures in areas with large numbers of minority voters," Berman noted.
Vanita Gupta, president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, applauded the House for passing H.R. 4 and demanded that McConnell bring the bill up for a vote in the Senate as soon as possible.
"The passage of H.R. 4 in the House of Representatives today brings us one step closer to restoring the Voting Rights Act and undoing the tremendous damage of Shelby," Gupta said in a statement. "The VRAA is too important—and the right to vote is too fundamental—to end up buried in the McConnell legislative graveyard."
Vowing to Deliver High-Speed Broadband for All, Sanders Plan Would Enshrine Internet as Public Utility
Friday, December 06, 2019
Common Dreams
"Access to the internet is a necessity in today's economy, and it should be available for all."
Jake Johnson, staff writer
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/12/06/vowing-deliver-high-speed-broadband-all-sanders-plan-would-enshrine-internet-public
Vowing to take on the telecom giants that have monopolized the web for private profit, Sen. Bernie Sanders on Friday unveiled a $150 billion plan to make the internet a public utility, break up and tightly regulate corporate behemoths like Verizon and AT&T, and provide high-speed broadband for everyone in the United States.
Sanders vowed that, if elected president in 2020, he will ensure that every American household has affordable and high-speed internet by the end of his first term."It is outrageous that across the country millions of Americans and so many of our communities do not have access to affordable high-speed internet," Sanders, a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, said in a statement. "Access to the internet is a necessity in today's economy, and it should be available for all."
"Just as President Roosevelt fundamentally made America more equal by bringing electricity to every farm and rural community over 80 years ago, as president, I will do the same with high-speed internet," Sanders said.
Sanders' plan, posted on his website, would provide $150 billion in federal funding through the Green New Deal to help states and municipalities "build publicly owned and democratically controlled, co-operative, or open access broadband networks."
The proposal also calls for:
Reinstating the net neutrality protections that President Donald Trump's telecom-friendly FCC repealed in 2017;
Using anti-trust laws to break up internet and cable monopolies;
Ensuring that all public housing in the U.S. offers free broadband;
Requiring all providers to "offer a Basic Internet Plan that provides quality broadband speeds at an affordable price"; and
Guaranteeing that all new broadband infrastructure is "resilient to the effects of climate change" and "capable of managing high amounts of renewable energy."
"High-speed internet service must be treated as the new electricity—a public utility that everyone deserves as a basic human right," reads Sanders' website. "It's time to take this critical 21st century utility out of the hands of monopolies and conglomerates and bring it to the people while creating good-paying, union jobs at the same time. This is not a radical idea."
Demand Grows for Buttigieg to Come Clean About His Time at 'Corporate Greed Machine' McKinsey
Friday, December 06, 2019
Common Dreams
"The political risk is not that his former employer, a multibillion-dollar corporate entity that promotes fraud across the globe, will be mad at him. It's what he would have to disclose."
Julia Conley, staff writer
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/12/06/demand-grows-buttigieg-come-clean-about-his-time-corporate-greed-machine-mckinsey
Days after reports surfaced about the global consulting firm McKinsey's work advising the Trump administration on immigration policy, calls are growing louder for South Bend, Indiana mayor and 2020 presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg to disclose details about the work he did for the company.
Political observers took notice Thursday evening when the New York Times editorial board joined ethics watchdogs in demanding that Buttigieg release the information, saying his claims that he is bound by a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) create a situation that is "untenable."
"Mr. Buttigieg owes voters a more complete account of his time at the company. Voters seeking an alternative to Mr. Trump should demand that candidates not only reject Mr. Trump's positions, but also his behavior—including his refusal to share information about his health and his business dealings," the editors wrote. "This standard requires Mr. Buttigieg to talk about his time at McKinsey."
Buttigieg worked for McKinsey from 2007 to 2010 and claims he worked in a junior position. He wrote briefly about his time at the company in his memoir, "Shortest Way Home," acknowledging consulting work he did in Iraq and Afghanistan and in retail and corporate sectors.
The company, denounced by one critic as a "corporate greed machine," has advised authoritarian regimes, including Saudi Arabia's monarchy, state-owned companies in China, and the autocratic government of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. In 2017 McKinsey consultants advised President Donald Trump's Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency on "detention savings opportunities," recommending ways to reduce the amount of food and medical care immigrants were given while being detained by the U.S. government. The proposed cuts made "some career ICE workers uncomfortable" with the effects they would have on immigrants' wellbeing, the New York Times and ProPublica reported.
Although Buttigieg no longer worked for McKinsey when the company advised CBP and ICE, Jeff Hauser of the government watchdog Revolving Door Project told the Huffington Post that Buttigieg must confirm whether his work was guided by the same worldview that led the company to recommend letting asylum-seekers go hungry to save money.
"We have plenty of experience that shows us how seeing the whole world in dollars and cents can be pretty harmful to vulnerable and poor people," Hauser said. "Is that Pete Buttigieg's approach to governance? If he can show he rebelled against that approach, that would be material to people, too."
Hauser was among the critics who scoffed this week at the notion that McKinsey would take legal action against a high-profile presidential candidate who counts McKinsey employees among his top donors:
The NDA is about as legitimate an excuse as Donald Trump claiming an IRS audit is the reason he can't release his tax returns to the public. There is no scenario whereby McKinsey would sue Pete Buttigieg, a rising political star and possible president of the United States, for violating a nondisclosure agreement.
The political risk is not that his former employer, a multibillion-dollar corporate entity that promotes fraud across the globe, will be mad at him. It's what he would have to disclose.
On social media, journalist Irin Carmon agreed.
"Looking afraid of a company that advised cutting food and medical services to immigrant detainees is a great look for a Democratic primary," Carmon added sarcastically.
On Thursday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) demanded transparency from her opponent in the Democratic presidential primary, noting that aside from the secrecy surrounding Buttigieg's work for McKinsey, the mayor should "open up the doors" to his private high-dollar fundraisers and let the media and the public know the names of his bundlers—major donors who solicit large contributions from others.
"Those doors shouldn't be closed, and no one should be left to wonder what kind of promises are being made to the people that then pony up big bucks to be in the room," Warren said.
Buttigieg's campaign attempted to turn Warren's comments back on her, with communications advisor Lis Smith calling on the senator to release her tax returns from her time as a corporate lawyer.
But unlike Buttigieg, Slate journalist Jordan Weissman wrote, Warren has a long, public record of fighting powerful corporations on behalf of working people. She has also released a list of clients she worked for in the private sector.
"This whataboutism might be more effective if Warren hadn't gotten into politics by fighting the bankruptcy bill and creating the CFPB," tweeted Weissman.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington said Buttigieg's refusal to release information about his time at McKinsey could soon draw comparisons to President Donald Trump's failure to disclose his tax returns.
"It's a real fear of ours that Democrats and future Republican candidates for president will say, 'Well, Trump got away with it, so we are going to, too,'" CREW communications director Jordan Libowitz told the Huffington Post. "Part of that is not letting Trump get away with it, part of that is holding Democrats to the same standard."
'Where's the Party? Come On, Man': Biden Claims Democrats Not Down for AOC-Style Progress Like Medicare for All
Friday, December 06, 2019
Common Dreams
"OK boomer," progressives responded.
Jon Queally, staff writer
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/12/06/wheres-party-come-man-biden-claims-democrats-not-down-aoc-style-progress-medicare
Accusing the media of "getting it all wrong" after Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton for the U.S. presidency in 2016, former Vice President Joe Biden said the real lesson of that year's result—which progressives at the time declared as "unutterably horrifying"—was not that Democrats overall shifted to the left but that most remain enamored with the kind of moderate, corporate-friendly policies that Clinton exemplified as opposed to the kind of inspiring, progressive vision championed by Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren or the newer generation of elected lawmakers such Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
"It's just bad judgment," Biden explained to journalist Mike Allen in a clip released Friday morning of an interview scheduled to air in full on "Axios on HBO" Sunday night.
"You all thought that what happened was the party moved extremely to the left after Hillary—AOC was a new party," said Biden. "She's a bright, wonderful person. But where's the party? Come on, man."
Asked specifically about Medicare for All, Biden said that while his more progressive rivals Sanders and Warren support it, "The party's not there. The party's not there at all."
Watch the clip:
In its reporting, Axios described the intra-party fight over Medicare for All as "the central battlefield for go-big-or-go-home Democrats like Warren and Sanders vs. go-biggish-but-not-so-big-you-scare-moderates Democrats like Biden."
Progressives, though likely unsurprised by Biden's latest comments about Medicare for All or what he perceives as the future direction of the Democratic Party, voiced their displeasure with his latest comments:
Countering Biden's claim that Democrats "are not there" on Medicare for All, a Politico/Morning Consult poll in August showed that 65 percent of Democratic primary voters are more likely to support a 2020 presidential candidate who backs Medicare for All over incremental fixes to Obamacare. Earlier this year a Politico/Harvard poll revealed that a full 84 percent of Democrats didn't only support Medicare for All, but wanted their elected officials to make achieving it an "extremely important priority."
Imperiling Progressive Change 'For as Long as We Live,' One in Five Federal Judges Now a Trump Appointee
Published on
Friday, December 06, 2019
by
Common Dreams
"Without a meaningful plan for court reform any presidential attempts to make needed change will simply be blocked by the courts."
by
Jake Johnson, staff writer
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/12/06/imperiling-progressive-change-long-we-live-one-five-federal-judges-now-trump
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell rammed through eight of President Donald Trump's lifetime judicial picks in just three days this week, accelerating the far-right court takeover that one commentator warned is "absolutely going to hamstring efforts to make the U.S. into a responsible, civilized country, for as long as we live."
"Nearly all are in their 40s or 50s with lifetime appointments and positioned to shape American law for generations," Kapur noted on Twitter. "It gets a tiny fraction of attention compared to other stuff he does but this is the Trump legacy that'll echo for generations after he's gone."The latest slew of confirmations, according to Bloomberg's Sahil Kapur, means that Trump and his Federalist Society allies have now hand-picked "about one in every five American federal judges," or 170 judges total.
The Republican-controlled Senate confirmed one lifetime judicial nominee Tuesday, five Wednesday, and two Thursday. The rapid confirmation of Trump nominees was made possible by McConnell's decision earlier this year to invoke the so-called "nuclear option," which slashed debate time on judicial nominees from 30 hours to just two.
"We're appalled," the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights tweeted Thursday in response to the latest confirmations.
In addition to being overwhelmingly young and far-right, a number of Trump's judicial appointments have also received a "not qualified" rating from the American Bar Association. One such judge, Federalist Society member Sarah Pitlyk, was condemned as particularly horrifying by rights groups following her confirmation Wednesday.Progressive advocacy groups and legal experts have warned that these right-wing judges will have the power to shape U.S. law on climate, reproductive rights, and other major areas for decades to come. At a rally in Kentucky last month, McConnell bragged that he and Trump are "changing the federal courts forever."
"Sarah Pitlyk's confirmation to the district court in Missouri is a dream come true for the anti-choice movement and a profound danger to women and families in the state," Ilyse Hogue, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, said in a statement. "Putting judges like Pitlyk on the bench who will spend their lifetime appointments working to roll back reproductive freedom is further proof that Donald Trump is paying back his debts and then some to the anti-choice movement that got him elected."
In the face of the ongoing right-wing takeover of the federal judiciary, advocacy groups are pressuring 2020 Democratic presidential candidates to explain how they would work to reform the nation's court system in order to enact progressive policy changes.
"Without a meaningful plan for court reform any presidential attempts to make needed change will simply by blocked by the courts," said Emma Janger, co-director of the People's Parity Project, a nationwide network of progressive attorneys and law students.
As Common Dreams reported in October, advocacy group Demand Justice launched a campaign urging Democratic presidential contenders to emphasize the importance of the federal courts and tell the public how they plan to break the right's stranglehold on the judiciary.
"The GOP has hijacked our nation's courts," said Demand Justice, "and voters need to hear plans to fight back."
CIA Helped Shape Tom Clancy’s ‘Jack Ryan’ Series into Bigoted Venezuela Regime-Change Fantasy
By Max Blumenthal
December 5, 2019
https://consortiumnews.com/2019/12/05/cia-helped-shape-tom-clancys-jack-ryan-series-into-bigoted-venezuela-regime-change-fantasy/
Actor John Krasinski is one of the CIA’s biggest fans.
“The CIA is something that we should all not only cherish, but be saying thank you every single day,” he declared.
“The coolest thing ever for me, I mean I totally nerded out when we got to the CIA,” Krasinski effused. “They were the most unbelievably generous, kind, smart people.”
Krasinski’s comments flowed directly from his experience as the star of the second season of the Amazon series “Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan.”
In a new video analysis of the show (embedded at the end of this article), researcher Tom Secker exposed the show as straightforward U.S. imperial propaganda which was produced in direct collaboration with the CIA and Pentagon.
The editor of the website Spy Culture, Secker has elucidated the role of Hollywood in disseminating propaganda aimed at instilling a militaristic mindset in the public. Through FOIA documents, Secker has methodically demonstrated the role of the Pentagon, CIA and FBI in shaping scripts and setting the agenda of some of the most popular American films and TV shows.
In analyzing Amazon’s Jack Ryan series, Secker revealed that the CIA’s direct role in crafting the show’s content was concealed from viewers.
Even though the show was one of the first to film at the CIA’s Langley base in years, the following disclaimer appeared at the end of each episode:
“This is government propaganda conducted in secret without the audience knowing,” Secker stated. “Their aim is to manipulate how you see the world.”
CIA Consultants
Inspired by the Cold War kitsch of pulp action author Tom Clancy, Amazon’s Jack Ryan series was the product of extensive and direct collaboration between the show’s producers and the CIA.
In off-the-cuff comments during a recent USO tour of military bases, Krasinksi revealed that he was eager to “do a show that would interface more with the military and intel community.” The actor said he requested direct engagement with the CIA, “so we did a lot of conversations about really making Jack Ryan fun as well as to make him relevant.”
Krasinksi revealed that Jack Ryan relied on “so many different consultants and people who are always checking in with us… It’s really just about asking questions and making sure we’re not doing anything too far beyond the pale.”
His co-star, Wendell Pierce, mentioned in a separate interview that he based his character on someone he met during one of the many trips the cast took to the CIA’s headquarters. In fact, many scenes in the show were filmed on the agency’s Langley, Virginia campus.
“They were the most generous, unbelievably giving people,” Krasinski said of the CIA officers he met in Langley.
Tom Clancy’s Military-Intelligence Connection
Tom Clancy, the late bestselling author of the Jack Ryan series, sold tens of millions of books to a massive fanbase of Cold War-crazed readers during the Reagan era. His pulp novels depicted galavanting U.S. spooks and soldiers playing unheralded roles in undermining the Soviet Union and its proxies on foreign frontiers while keeping the homeland safe.
A lifelong right-wing Republican, he dedicated his book, “Executive Orders,” to then-President Ronald Reagan. Clancy was subsequently invited to speak at the NSA, FBI and Pentagon.
During an appearance at the NSA, Clancy boasted of being taken on a US Navy frigate, then of trundling around in an M1A1 Abrams tank during a tour of an Army base.
The author even volunteered his work to be reviewed by the CIA’s office of public affairs, requesting secrecy in a missive to the agency on the grounds that that his publisher would be displeased if it found out about the exchange.
One of Clancy’s most popular books, “The Hunt for Red October,” was edited by the Pentagon when it was adapted to film.
The Clancy film, “Patriot Games,” was supported by the CIA, which volunteered its Langley headquarters as a shooting location to enhance the public relations value of the film.
His next jingoistic action flick, “A Clear and Present Danger,” was carefully reviewed during an advance screening at Washington DC’s Kennedy Center by a CIA officer.
Season One: Anti-Muslim Propaganda
Jack Ryan: Season One was launched in 2018, five years after Clancy died as a multi-millionaire part-owner of the Baltimore Orioles MLB club.
The show was filmed in Morocco, and was set in the paranoid environment of the so-called war on terror. The Pentagon rejected the show, probably because it depicted the U.S. military guarding CIA black sites and paying off local jihadis in Yemen. But it received support from the U.S. Coast Guard, which offered the producers free usage of its ships and helicopters.
Jack Ryan executive producer Carlton Cuse claimed that the show presented a nuanced perspective on Muslims and Islam. However, as Secker explained, the show’s Muslim characters consisted of desperate refugees and irrational evildoers – terrorists, rapist terrorists, child molester terrorists and child terrorists.
The viewer learns in Jack Ryan: Season Two that Ryan was a former Marine who became the lone survivor when a child suicide bomber killed his entire unit in Afghanistan. The child’s motives are left unexplained.
Season Two: Venezuela Regime-Change Fantasy
The second season of Jack Ryan takes place in Venezuela, the current target of a real-life Trump administration coup attempt and crushing U.S. economic sanctions.
The plot centers around a barely coherent international conspiracy led by Nicolas Reyes, a cartoonishly evil Venezuelan dictator obviously based on Nicolas Maduro, the country’s elected leftist president.
But the Jack Ryan producers stand reality on its head by depicting Reyes as a deeply unpopular right-wing kleptocrat with close ties to the oligarchy. Meanwhile, the CIA’s white knight, Ryan, enters the country to help Gloria Bonalde, a left-wing feminist depicted as a warrior for “social justice.”
As anyone with a basic knowledge of the CIA’s history of subversion knows, Reyes is exactly the kind of character the Agency has supported and propped up across the world in form of right-wing dictators like Augusto Pinochet, Ephraim Rios-Montt, and Shah Reza Pahlavi. Today in Venezuela, the CIA and its cut-outs are supporting Juan Guaido, a figure supported by his country’s upper classes and right-wing governments in the region.
The show was shot in Bogota, Colombia, not Caracas, Venezuela. And as in the previous season, viewers are bombarded with negative stereotypes of The Natives. Venezuelans who appear on screen are depicted as violent protesters, murderers, corrupt officials, evil zombies who support the dictator, and once again, as killer kids.
While touting the role the CIA played in creating Amazon’s regime change fantasy thriller, Krasinski denied advancing any ulterior agenda. “Assumptions were being made that the US was attacking Venezuela,” he said in response to criticism from the Venezuelan government, “but that has nothing to do with our show.”
To Secker, the researcher who so clinically exposed the spooks behind the curtain of the Amazon series, Jack Ryan was designed to indoctrinate viewers into a “paranoid bigoted militarized mind fuck of a world view.”
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