Saturday, July 11, 2020
Trump, Tulsa, and the Rise of Military Dissent
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176725/tomgram%3A_danny_sjursen%2C_antiwar_vets_in_the_belly_of_the_beast/#more
Undercover Patriots
Trump, Tulsa, and the Rise of Military Dissent
By Danny Sjursen
It was June 20th and we antiwar vets had traveled all the way to Tulsa, Oklahoma, in the midst of a pandemic to protest President Trump’s latest folly, an election 2020 rally where he was to parade his goods and pretend all was well with this country.
We never planned to go inside the cavernous arena where that rally was to be held. I was part of our impromptu reconnaissance team that called an audible at the last moment. We suddenly decided to infiltrate not just the perimeter of that Tulsa rally, but the BOK Center itself. That meant I got a long, close look at the MAGA crowd there in what turned out to be a more than half-empty arena.
Our boots-on-the-ground coalition of two national antiwar veteran organizations -- About Face and Veterans for Peace (VFP) -- had thrown together a rather risky direct action event in coordination with the local activists who invited us.
We planned to climb the three main flagpoles around that center and replace an Old Glory, an Oklahoma state flag, and a Tulsa one with Black Lives-themed banners. Only on arrival, we found ourselves stymied by an eleventh-hour change in the security picture: new gates and unexpected police deployments. Hopping metal barriers and penetrating a sizable line of cops and National Guardsmen seemed to ensure a fruitless trip to jail, so into the under-attended indoor rally we went, to -- successfully it turned out -- find a backdoor route to those flagpoles.
Once inside, we had time to kill. While others in the group infiltrated and the flagpole climbers donned their gear, five of us -- three white male ex-foot soldiers in America’s forever wars and two Native American women (one a vet herself) -- took a breather in the largely empty upper deck of the rally. Nervous joking then ensued about the absurdity of wearing the Trump “camouflage” that had eased our entrance. My favorite disguise: a Hispanic ex-Marine buddy’s red-white-and-blue “BBQ, Beer, Freedom” tank top.
The music irked me instantly. Much to the concern of the rest of the team, I’d brought a notebook along and was already furtively scribbling. At one point, we listened sequentially to Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean,” The Beatles’ “Let It Be,” and Queen’s “We Are The Champions” over the arena’s loudspeakers. I couldn't help but wonder how that black man of, let’s say, complicated sexual orientation, four outspoken British hippies, and a gay AIDs victim (Freddie Mercury) would feel about the way the Trump campaign had co-oped their songs. We can guess though, since the late Tom Petty’s family quickly denounced the use of his rock song “I Won’t Back Down” at the rally.
I watched an older white woman in a “Joe Biden Sucks, Nancy Pelosi Swallows” T-shirt gleefully dancing to Michael Jackson’s falsetto (“But the kid is not my son!”). Given that “Billie Jean” blatantly describes an out-of-wedlock paternity battle and that odds were this woman was a pro-life proponent of “family values,” there was something obscene about her carefree shimmy.
A Contrast in Patriotism
And then, of course, there was the version of patriotism on display in the arena. I’ve never seen so many representations of the Stars and Stripes in my life, classic flags everywhere and flag designs plastered on all manner of attire. Remember, I went to West Point. No one showed the slightest concern that many of the red-white-and-blue adaptations worn or waved strictly violated the statutes colloquially known as the U.S. Flag Code (United States Code, Title 4, Chapter 1).
That said, going undercover in Trumplandia means entering a universe in which it’s exceedingly clear that one political faction holds the flag hostage. They see it as theirs -- and only theirs. They define its meaning, its symbolism, and its proper use, not to speak of whom it represents. The crowd, after all, was vanilla. (There were more people of color serving beers than cheering the president.)
By a rough estimate, half of the attendees had some version of the flag on their clothing, Trump banners, or other accessories, signaling more than mere national pride. Frequently sharing space with Old Glory were images of (often military-grade) weaponry, skulls (one wearing an orange toupee), and anti-liberal slogans. Notable shirts included: the old Texas War of Independence challenge “Come And Take It!” above the sort of AK-47 assault rifle long favored by America’s enemies; a riff on a classic Nixonian line, “The Silent Majority Is Coming”; and the slanderous “Go To Your Safe Space, Snowflake!”; not to mention a sprinkling of the purely conspiratorial like “Alex Jones Did Nothing Wrong” (with a small flag design on it, too).
The banners were even more aggressive. “Trump 2020: Fuck Your Feelings” was a fan favorite. Another popular one photo-shopped The Donald’s puffy face onto Sylvester Stallone’s muscle-bound physique, a machine gun at his hip. That image, of course, had been lifted from the Reagan-era, pro-Vietnam War film Rambo: First Blood Part II, a fitting accompaniment to Trump’s classically plagiarized Reaganesque rallying cry “Make America Great Again.” Finally, a black banner with pink lettering read “L G B T.” Above the letters, also in pink, were logos depicting, respectively, the Statue of Liberty, a Gun (an M16 assault rifle), a Beer mug, and a profile bust of Donald Trump. Get it?
For our small group of multi-war/multi-tour combat veterans, it was hard not to wonder whether many of these flag-and-weaponry enthusiasts had ever seen a shot fired in anger or sported Old Glory on a right-shoulder uniform sleeve. Though we were all wearing standard black veteran ball-caps and overtly Trump-friendly shirts, several of us interlopers feared the crowd might somehow guess what we actually were. Yet tellingly, the closest we came to outing ourselves -- before later pulling off our disguises to expose black “About Face: Veterans Against The War” shirts -- was during the national anthem.
Nothing better exemplified the contrast between what I’ve come to think of as the “pageantry patriotism” of the crowd and the more complex “participatory patriotism” of the dissenting vets than that moment. At its first notes -- we were still waiting in the arena’s encircling lobby -- our whole team reflexively stood at attention, removed our hats, faced the nearest draped flags, and placed our hands upon our hearts. We were the only ones who did so -- until, at mid-anthem, a few embarrassed passersby followed our example. Most of the folks, however, just continued to scamper along, often chomping on soft pretzels, and sometimes casting quizzical glances at us. Trumpian patriotism only goes so far.
Our crew was, in fact, rather diverse, but mostly such vets groups remain disproportionately white and male. In fact, one reason local black and native communities undoubtedly requested our attendance was a vague (and not unreasonable) assumption that maleness, whiteness, and veteran’s status might offer their protests some semblance of protection. Nevertheless, my old boss on West Point’s faculty, retired Colonel Gregory Daddis, summed up the limits of such protection in this phrase: “Patriotic” Veterans Only, Please. And just how accurate that was became violently apparent the moment we “unmasked” at the base of those flagpoles.
Approximately three-dozen combat tours braved between us surely didn't save our nonviolent team from the instant, distinctly physical rancor of the police -- or four members of our group from arrest as the climbers shimmied those flagpoles. Nor did deliberately visible veteran’s gear offer any salvation from the instantly jeering crowd, as the rest of us were being escorted to the nearest exit and tossed out. “Antifa!” one man yelled directly into a Marine vet’s face. Truthfully, America’s “thanks for your service” hyper-adulation culture has never been more than the thinnest of veneers. However much we veterans reputedly fought for “our freedom,” that freedom and the respect for the First Amendment rights of antiwar, anti-Trump vets that should go with it evaporates with remarkable speed in such situations.
Three Strands of Veteran or Military Dissent
Still, the intensity of the MAGA crowd’s vitriol -- as suggested by the recent hate mail both About Face and I have received -- is partly driven by a suspicion that Team Trump is losing the military’s loyalty. In fact, there’s evidence that something is indeed astir in both the soldier and veteran communities the likes of which this country hasn't seen since the tail end of the Vietnam War, almost half a century ago. Today’s rising doubt and opposition has three main components: retired senior officers, younger combat veterans, and -- most disturbingly for national-security elites -- rank-and-file serving soldiers and National Guardsmen.
The first crew, those senior officers, have received just about the only media attention, even though they may, in the end, prove the least important of the three. Many of the 89 former defense officials who expressed “alarm” in a Washington Post op-ed over the president’s response to the nationwide George Floyd protests, as well as other retired senior military officers who decried President Trump’s martial threats at the time, had widespread name recognition. They included former Secretary of Defense and retired Marine Corps General Jim (“Mad Dog”) Mattis and that perennial latecomer, former Secretary of State and Joint Chiefs Chairman Colin Powell. And yes, it’s remarkable that such a who’s-who of former military leaders has spoken as if with one voice against Trump’s abhorrent and inflammatory recent behavior.
Still, a little caution is in order before canonizing a crew that, lest we forget, has neither won nor opposed a generation’s worth of unethical wars that shouldn't have been fought. Recall, for example, that Saint Mattis resigned his post not over his department’s complicity in the borderline genocide underway in Yemen or pointlessly escalatory drone strikes in Somalia, but in response to a mere presidential suggestion of pulling U.S. troops out of the quicksand of the Syrian conflict.
In fact, for all their chatter about the Constitution, oaths betrayed, and citizen rights violated, anti-Trumpism ultimately glues this star-studded crew together. If Joe Biden ever takes the helm, expect these former flag officers to go mute on this country’s forever wars waged in Baghdad and Baltimore alike.
More significant and unique is the recent wave of defiance from normally conservative low- to mid-level combat veterans, most, though not all, a generation junior to the attention-grabbing ex-Pentagon brass and suits. There were early signs of a shift among those post-9/11 boots-on-the-ground types. In the last year, credible polls showed that two-thirds of veterans believed the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria “were not worth fighting,” and 73% supported full withdrawal from the Afghan War in particular. Notably, such rates of antiwar sentiment exceed those of civilians, something for which there may be no precedent.
Furthermore, just before the president’s controversial West Point graduation speech, more than 1,000 military academy alumni signed an open letter addressed to the matriculating class and blatantly critical of Trump’s urge to militarily crack down on the Black Lives Matter protests. Mainly ex-captains and colonels who spanned graduating classes from 1948 to 2019, they briefly grabbed mainstream headlines with their missive. Robin Wright of the New Yorker even interviewed and quoted a few outspoken signatories (myself included). Then there was the powerful visual statement of Marine Corps veteran Todd Winn, twice wounded in Iraq, who stood for hours outside the Utah state capitol in the sweltering heat in full dress uniform with the message “I Can’t Breathe” taped over his mouth.
At the left end of the veterans’ community, the traditional heart of antiwar military dissent, the ranks of the organizations I belong to and with whom I “deployed” to Tulsa have also swelled. Both in that joint operation and in the recent joint Veterans for Peace (largely Vietnam alumni) and About Face decision to launch a “Stand Down for Black Lives” campaign -- encouraging and supporting serving soldiers and guardsmen to refuse mobilization orders -- the two groups have taken real steps toward encouraging multi-generational opposition to systemic militarism. In fact, more than 700 vets publicly signed their names (as I did) to About Face’s provocative open letter urging just such a refusal. There were even ex-service members among the far greater mass of unaffiliated veterans who joined protesters in the streets of this country’s cities and towns in significant numbers during that month or more of demonstrations.
Which brings us to the final (most fear-inducing) strand of such dissent: those in the serving military itself. Their numbers are, of course, impossible to measure, since such resistance can range from the passive to the overt and the Pentagon is loathe to publicize the slightest hint of its existence. However, About Face quickly received scores of calls from concerned soldiers and Guardsmen, while VFP reported the first mobilization refusals almost immediately. At a minimum, 10 service members are known to have taken “concrete steps” to avoid deployment to the protests and, according to a New York magazine investigation, some troops were “reconsidering their service,” or “ready to quit.”
Finally, there’s my own correspondence. Over the years, I’ve received notes from distraught service members with some regularity. However, in the month-plus since George Floyd’s death, I’ve gotten nearly 100 such messages from serving strangers -- as well as from several former West Point students turned lieutenants -- more, that is, than in the preceding four years. Last month, one of those former cadets of mine became the first West Point graduate in the last 15 years to be granted conscientious objector status. He will complete his service obligation as a noncombatant in the Medical Service Corps. Within 36 hours of that news spreading, a handful of other former students expressed interest in his case and wondered if I could put them in touch with him.
Intersectional Vets
In a moment of crankiness this January, using a bullhorn pointed at the University of Kansas campus, I decried the pathetic student turnout at a post-Qasem Soleimani assassination rally against a possible war with Iran. And it still remains an open question whether the array of activist groups that About Face and Veterans for Peace have so recently stood in solidarity with will show up for our future antiwar endeavors.
Still, the growth across generations of today’s antiwar veterans’ movement has, I suspect, value in itself -- and part of that value lies in our recognition that the problem of American militarism isn’t restricted to the combat zones of this country’s forever wars. By standing up for Black lives, pitching tents at Standing Rock Reservation to fight a community-threatening pipeline, and similar solidarity actions, this generation of antiwar veterans is beginning to set itself apart in its opposition to America’s wars abroad and at home.
As both the Covid-19 crisis and the militarization of the police in the streets of American cities have made clear, the imperial power that we veterans fought for abroad is the same one some of us are now struggling against at home and the two couldn’t be more intimately linked. Our struggle is, at least in part, over who gets to define patriotism.
Should the sudden wave of military and veteran dissent keep rising, it will invariably crash against the pageantry patriots of Chickenhawk America who attended that Tulsa rally and we’ll all face a new and critical theater in this nation’s culture wars. I don’t pretend to know whether such protests will last or military dissent will augur real change of any sort. What I do know is what my favorite rock star, Bruce Springsteen, used to repeat before live renditions of his song “Born to Run”: Remember, in the end nobody wins, unless everybody wins.
Still, a little caution is in order before canonizing a crew that, lest we forget, has neither won nor opposed a generation’s worth of unethical wars that shouldn't have been fought. Recall, for example, that Saint Mattis resigned his post not over his department’s complicity in the borderline genocide underway in Yemen or pointlessly escalatory drone strikes in Somalia, but in response to a mere presidential suggestion of pulling U.S. troops out of the quicksand of the Syrian conflict.
In fact, for all their chatter about the Constitution, oaths betrayed, and citizen rights violated, anti-Trumpism ultimately glues this star-studded crew together. If Joe Biden ever takes the helm, expect these former flag officers to go mute on this country’s forever wars waged in Baghdad and Baltimore alike.
More significant and unique is the recent wave of defiance from normally conservative low- to mid-level combat veterans, most, though not all, a generation junior to the attention-grabbing ex-Pentagon brass and suits. There were early signs of a shift among those post-9/11 boots-on-the-ground types. In the last year, credible polls showed that two-thirds of veterans believed the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria “were not worth fighting,” and 73% supported full withdrawal from the Afghan War in particular. Notably, such rates of antiwar sentiment exceed those of civilians, something for which there may be no precedent.
Furthermore, just before the president’s controversial West Point graduation speech, more than 1,000 military academy alumni signed an open letter addressed to the matriculating class and blatantly critical of Trump’s urge to militarily crack down on the Black Lives Matter protests. Mainly ex-captains and colonels who spanned graduating classes from 1948 to 2019, they briefly grabbed mainstream headlines with their missive. Robin Wright of the New Yorker even interviewed and quoted a few outspoken signatories (myself included). Then there was the powerful visual statement of Marine Corps veteran Todd Winn, twice wounded in Iraq, who stood for hours outside the Utah state capitol in the sweltering heat in full dress uniform with the message “I Can’t Breathe” taped over his mouth.
At the left end of the veterans’ community, the traditional heart of antiwar military dissent, the ranks of the organizations I belong to and with whom I “deployed” to Tulsa have also swelled. Both in that joint operation and in the recent joint Veterans for Peace (largely Vietnam alumni) and About Face decision to launch a “Stand Down for Black Lives” campaign -- encouraging and supporting serving soldiers and guardsmen to refuse mobilization orders -- the two groups have taken real steps toward encouraging multi-generational opposition to systemic militarism. In fact, more than 700 vets publicly signed their names (as I did) to About Face’s provocative open letter urging just such a refusal. There were even ex-service members among the far greater mass of unaffiliated veterans who joined protesters in the streets of this country’s cities and towns in significant numbers during that month or more of demonstrations.
Which brings us to the final (most fear-inducing) strand of such dissent: those in the serving military itself. Their numbers are, of course, impossible to measure, since such resistance can range from the passive to the overt and the Pentagon is loathe to publicize the slightest hint of its existence. However, About Face quickly received scores of calls from concerned soldiers and Guardsmen, while VFP reported the first mobilization refusals almost immediately. At a minimum, 10 service members are known to have taken “concrete steps” to avoid deployment to the protests and, according to a New York magazine investigation, some troops were “reconsidering their service,” or “ready to quit.”
Finally, there’s my own correspondence. Over the years, I’ve received notes from distraught service members with some regularity. However, in the month-plus since George Floyd’s death, I’ve gotten nearly 100 such messages from serving strangers -- as well as from several former West Point students turned lieutenants -- more, that is, than in the preceding four years. Last month, one of those former cadets of mine became the first West Point graduate in the last 15 years to be granted conscientious objector status. He will complete his service obligation as a noncombatant in the Medical Service Corps. Within 36 hours of that news spreading, a handful of other former students expressed interest in his case and wondered if I could put them in touch with him.
Intersectional Vets
In a moment of crankiness this January, using a bullhorn pointed at the University of Kansas campus, I decried the pathetic student turnout at a post-Qasem Soleimani assassination rally against a possible war with Iran. And it still remains an open question whether the array of activist groups that About Face and Veterans for Peace have so recently stood in solidarity with will show up for our future antiwar endeavors.
Still, the growth across generations of today’s antiwar veterans’ movement has, I suspect, value in itself -- and part of that value lies in our recognition that the problem of American militarism isn’t restricted to the combat zones of this country’s forever wars. By standing up for Black lives, pitching tents at Standing Rock Reservation to fight a community-threatening pipeline, and similar solidarity actions, this generation of antiwar veterans is beginning to set itself apart in its opposition to America’s wars abroad and at home.
As both the Covid-19 crisis and the militarization of the police in the streets of American cities have made clear, the imperial power that we veterans fought for abroad is the same one some of us are now struggling against at home and the two couldn’t be more intimately linked. Our struggle is, at least in part, over who gets to define patriotism.
Should the sudden wave of military and veteran dissent keep rising, it will invariably crash against the pageantry patriots of Chickenhawk America who attended that Tulsa rally and we’ll all face a new and critical theater in this nation’s culture wars. I don’t pretend to know whether such protests will last or military dissent will augur real change of any sort. What I do know is what my favorite rock star, Bruce Springsteen, used to repeat before live renditions of his song “Born to Run”: Remember, in the end nobody wins, unless everybody wins.
Looming Eviction Crisis Will Endanger Public Health And Economic Recovery
Economic Recovery
By: Jaisal Noor | July 9, 2020
https://therealnews.com/columns/looming-eviction-crisis-will-endanger-public-health-and-economic-recovery
Last week, Baltimore housing advocates held a “Truth Commission” in front of Baltimore City Hall, declaring that elected officials had failed to protect residents from a housing crisis worsened by COVID-19. The group, which included members of Fair Development Roundtable, Housing Our Neighbors, and United Workers, warned of a looming eviction catastrophe if a city moratorium on evictions is allowed to expire on July 25 as currently planned.
Community members said they were putting the housing system on trial, and highlighting how official policy had failed to protect renters and the homeless.
“We’re going to put Baltimore City on trial today,” said Mark Counsel, a leader with Housing Our Neighbors who has experienced homelessness for five years.
“The pain and precarity that was already felt in our communities has only deepened and expanded,” said Adriana Foster, an organizer with United Workers. “We know that people have been without food, without healthcare, losing jobs and resources and left without protection. But this is an important moment where people are rising up, demanding transformative change like defunding the police and an end to state violence against black people, and demonstrating important shows of resistance in the movement for Black lives.”
Nearly half of U.S. households have lost employment income, and nearly one in four renters were having difficulty paying rent, according to the Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey. COVID-19 has worsened already dire situations facing many residents of cities like Baltimore, where a 2017 report found two in three Black families face liquid asset poverty, or lack the savings to cover basic expenses for three months if they lose their jobs.
On May 29, Pennsylvania allocated $175 million to rental assistance and an additional $10 million to homeless assistance. On July 1, New York State passed a law preventing the eviction of tenants who faced hardship due to COVID-19. Advocates are calling on lawmakers to do the same in Maryland, as well as ending the practice of putting those experiencing homelessness into shelters.
“These shelters are not the answer,” said Counsel, who said it’s impossible to socially distance within them.
Speakers at the Truth Commission called for relocating anyone experiencing homelessness into hotels or other alternative housing: “They have the money in the city, they have the houses,” Counsel said.
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“We have distributed hundreds of masks to shelter residents because places like the Greenspring Shelter fail to provide them. Residents have also reported on my shelter outreach visits not getting soap or hot water. Even these emergency shelters put in place because of COVID-19 are putting people at risk,” said Gerardo Benavides, an organizer with Housing Our Neighbors.
Baltimore City has launched a $13 million rental assistance program, while Gov. Larry Hogan has allocated $30 million statewide. But this falls far short of the need.
In a letter signed by 52 organizations and over 500 residents, The Public Justice Center called on Maryland to allocate $175 million from the $1.3 billion received from federal funds to stave off a looming eviction crisis caused by COVID-19.
“Such a wave of evictions and homelessness will jeopardize public health and the early stages of economic recovery,” the letter says.
'The Future Does Not Belong to You,' Climate Campaigners Say to Big Oil After Cancellation of 600-Mile Atlantic Coast Pipeline
"Duke and Dominion did not decide to cancel the Atlantic Coast Pipeline—the people and frontline organizations that led this fight for years forced them into walking away."
by
Jake Johnson, staff writer
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/07/06/future-does-not-belong-you-climate-campaigners-say-big-oil-after-cancellation-600
Following years of widespread grassroots opposition led by vulnerable local communities and national environmental organizations, two U.S. energy behemoths on Sunday abruptly cancelled the planned Atlantic Coast Pipeline, a sprawling project that would have transported dirty fracked gas along a 600-mile route through West Virginia, Virginia, and North Carolina.
"Today is a historic victory for clean water, the climate, public health, and our communities," said Sierra Club executive director Michael Brune. "Duke and Dominion did not decide to cancel the Atlantic Coast Pipeline—the people and frontline organizations that led this fight for years forced them into walking away. Today's victory reinforces that united communities are more powerful than the polluting corporations that put profits over our health and future."
Duke and Dominion's statement announcing their decision to pull the plug—citing "ongoing delays and increasing cost uncertainty"—came even after the Supreme Court delivered the companies a major victory last month by removing a regulatory hurdle in the way of the $8 billion pipeline, which would have cut through two national forests, tunneled under the Appalachian Trail, and crossed Indigenous lands.
"Lumbee leaders have scored a tremendous victory in stopping this fossil fuel pipeline," tweeted the Indigenous Environmental Network, referring to the North Carolina tribe that helped lead opposition to the pipeline.
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) chief Dan Brouillette, a former corporate lobbyist, issued a statement late Sunday blaming what he called the "well-funded, obstructionist environmental lobby" for killing the fossil fuel project as the Trump administration works to accelerate pipeline approvals and construction under the cover of the Covid-19 pandemic.
"In reality," said Gillian Giannetti of the Natural Resources Defense Council in response to Brouillette, "many of those who led the #NoACP movement were ordinary landowners of all political stripes who were tired of being ignored by Dominion."
In a statement, Greenpeace USA climate director Janet Redman noted that "people living along the proposed path of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline have said from the beginning that it would be a disaster, and now Dominion and Duke have had to admit their opponents were right."
"Luckily, today's news is only a disaster for those fossil fuel executives hoping to squeeze their last millions out of catastrophic climate change, not for people invested in a livable future," said Redman. "Duke and Dominion had hoped to carve up beautiful mountains, ignore catastrophic climate change, and delay a just transition to renewable energy to build this pipeline."
"Thanks to the courageous activists who stood up to them, they have failed," Redman added. "Their epic failure should be a warning to other fossil fuel companies hoping to double down on dirty pipelines—the future does not belong to you."
Sanders Calls on 'Do-Nothing' Senate to Approve $2,000 Monthly Checks, Cancel Rent, and Expand Medicare
"This I know: nothing will happen unless the American people stand up, fight back, and demand, in overwhelming numbers, that the Senate act."
by
Jake Johnson, staff writer
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/07/06/sanders-calls-do-nothing-senate-approve-2000-monthly-checks-cancel-rent-and-expand
Sen. Bernie Sanders on Sunday slammed the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate for refusing to act to address the coronavirus-induced public health and economic crises that continue to intensify, throwing millions more out of work, overwhelming hospitals, and endangering countless lives.
"As you read this, the number of Covid-19 cases is skyrocketing in this country to levels far greater than at any point in this crisis," Sanders wrote in an email to supporters Sunday evening. "The United States—with just 4 percent of the world's population—accounts for 25% of the world's coronavirus cases and deaths. And the Republican Senate is doing nothing."
The Senate is not expected to return to session until July 20, just 11 days before the $600 weekly boost in unemployment benefits is set to expire.Last Thursday, the Senate departed the nation's capital for a two-week recess without taking any action on Covid-19 relief—even amid dire warnings that millions of additional workers could lose their jobs if Congress doesn't urgently approve aid to state and local governments.
"Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has focused on other issues in recent weeks, such as an annual defense policy bill and confirming President Trump's nominees," the Washington Post reported Monday. "When the Senate comes back into session July 20, McConnell plans to turn his attention back to the coronavirus, giving lawmakers just three weeks to negotiate and pass a big rescue bill before they adjourn again through Labor Day."
McConnell said last week that he has no intention of delaying the August 10 recess.
Sanders condemned the Senate for dragging its feet "in the midst of these unprecedented crises" and noted that the pandemic has been made worse by "a president who thinks the coronavirus will just 'disappear' and that he has a 'natural ability' to understand this deadly virus."
"It will not, and he does not," the Vermont senator said. "People are dying every day because of his lies and incompetence."
Upon its return, Sanders wrote, the Senate must approve sweeping Covid-19 stimulus legislation that:
Uses federal funds to cover workers' paychecks and prevent more layoffs;
Extends the $600-per-week boost in unemployment benefits;
Expands Medicare to cover the uninsured;
Provides emergency funding to prevent the collapse of the U.S. Postal Service;
Sends a $2,000 monthly check to every working-class person in the U.S. until the end of the pandemic;
Cancels rent and mortgage payments until the end of the pandemic;
Increases federal nutrition benefits; and
Requires the federal government to manufacture and distribute free face masks to everyone in the U.S.
The Vermont senator urged his supporters to sign a petition pressuring the Senate to "act and pass legislation to protect the health and economic well-being of the American people."
"These are ideas that the American people support, and it is time that the do-nothing Senate implement them," Sanders wrote. "But this I know: nothing will happen unless the American people stand up, fight back, and demand, in overwhelming numbers, that the Senate act."
'The Swamp Is Alive and Well': Trump-Connected Lobbyists Have Raked in $10 Billion in Covid-19 Aid for Corporate Clients
"The crisis offered an especially lucrative opportunity for those lobbyists who enjoy close ties to President Donald Trump and his administration—and they seized it."
by
Jake Johnson, staff writer
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/07/06/swamp-alive-and-well-trump-connected-lobbyists-have-raked-10-billion-covid-19-aid
In yet another sign that the "swamp is alive and well in Washington, D.C." despite President Donald Trump's repeated promises to drain it, consumer advocacy group Public Citizen released a new report Monday morning identifying at least 40 Trump-connected lobbyists who have raked in over $10 billion in federal Covid-19 relief for their corporate clients since the pandemic began.
The dozens of lobbyists with ties to Trump through his campaigns, his administration, and/or his transition team "collectively have represented at least 150 clients on Covid matters," Public Citizen notes in its new report titled "COVID Lobbying Palooza" (pdf). Those clients include such corporate behemoths as Pfizer, Comcast, McDonald's, MasterCard, and American Airlines.
Public Citizen found that 27 clients of Trump-connected lobbyists have secured $10.5 billion in taxpayer coronavirus aid—a sum that is likely an underestimate because it does not include data from the $650 billion Paycheck Protection Program, which the White House has worked to keep under wraps."The crisis offered an especially lucrative opportunity for those lobbyists who enjoy close ties to President Donald Trump and his administration—and they seized it," reads the report, which briefly profiles all 40 of the lobbiysts and details some of their activities. "They have reported lobbying to obtain special industry carveouts for aid, government approval of their clients' products and, most commonly, Covid-related aid across a myriad of programs."
The $10.5 billion total, according to Public Citizen "consists of $6.3 billion in grants, $4.2 billion in loans, and $67 million worth of support in the form of corporate bond purchases by the Federal Reserve."
Five of the lobbyists identified by Public Citizen—including former Transportation Department official Geoffrey Burr and former Treasury adviser Jordan Stoick—"may have violated a Trump executive order that restricts lobbying activities by former officials," the group said.
"In many cases, the forms indicate that the former officials' agencies were directly lobbied," the report reads.
Craig Holman, a registered lobbyist for Public Citizen and a campaign finance expert, told the Associated Press that the group is planning to file ethics complaints with the White House over the apparent violations.
"There does not appear to be anyone who is enforcing the executive order," said Holman. The report says an investigation into the activity is warranted.
Arguing that sweeping reforms will be necessary to prevent such profiteering in the future, Public Citizen said "few scenarios would better embody most people's image of the Washington 'swamp' than dozens of hired-gun lobbyists cashing in on their government connections during a public health emergency."
"In the short term, the government, of course, should do everything it possibly can to offer the public an unobstructed window into the details of where the trillions in public dollars are going," the group said. "In the long term, future administrations and the Congress should embrace systemic reforms to sever the conflicts of interest that incentivize government officials to favor the wealthy and well-connected over the constituents whom they are hired to serve."
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