https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usFt5Nh42ik
Monday, August 24, 2020
THE CIA DEMOCRATS IN THE 2020 ELECTIONS
By Patrick Martin, WSWS.
August 22, 2020
https://popularresistance.org/the-cia-democrats-in-the-2020-elections/
In the course of the 2018 elections, a large group of former military-intelligence operatives entered capitalist politics as candidates seeking the Democratic Party nomination in 50 congressional seats—nearly half the seats where the Democrats were targeting Republican incumbents or open seats created by Republican retirements.
Some 30 of these candidates won primary contests and became the Democratic candidates in the November 2018 election, and 11 of them won the general election, more than one-quarter of the 40 previously Republican-held seats captured by the Democrats as they took control of the House of Representatives.
In 2020, the intervention of the CIA Democrats continues on what is arguably an equally significant scale: besides the reelection campaigns of the 11 representatives who won seats in the House in 2018, half a dozen of those who lost 2018 races are running again in 2020. Some of these are running for House seats again, while others have been promoted by the Democratic Party leadership and are running for the US Senate. And an entire new crop of military-intelligence operatives is being brought forward, some running for Republican seats targeted by the Democratic leadership as possible takeovers, others in seats not currently considered competitive.
The bottom line: at least 34 Democratic candidates for the House of Representatives have a primarily military-intelligence background, up from 30 in 2018, as well as three of the party’s 35 candidates for the US Senate, compared to zero in 2018. For each branch of Congress, this represents about 10 percent of the total.
As we explained in 2018, the extraordinary influx of candidates coming directly from the national-security apparatus into the Democratic Party is a two-sided process: the Democratic Party establishment welcomes such candidates as a demonstration of the party’s unshakeable devotion to the interests of American imperialism; and military-intelligence operatives are choosing the Democratic Party over the Republican Party in large numbers because they are attracted by the Democrats’ non-stop campaign against the Trump administration as too “soft” on Russia and too willing to pull out of the Middle East war zone.
CIA Democrats For US Senate
Three Democrats seeking US Senate seats in November have a primarily military-intelligence background, including two who ran unsuccessfully for House seats in 2018. In each case, the CIA Democrat won a contested primary, with the support of Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC), defeating a more liberal candidate.
Cal Cunningham was the choice of the Democratic Party establishment to be the party’s candidate for US Senate from North Carolina, challenging first-term incumbent Thad Tillis. He defeated Erica Smith, an African-American state senator who ran on a more liberal platform, supporting Medicare for All and the Green New Deal.
While Cunningham served one term in the North Carolina state senate, beginning in 2001, his principal role has been as an attorney, both in private practice and in the military. He enrolled in the Army Reserve after the 9/11 attacks, joining the Judge Advocate General (JAG) corps, and was sent to both Iraq and Afghanistan to handle criminal cases involving members of the US military and military contractors in the two war zones.
According to his campaign biography, “Cal has served with various units from Fort Bragg, including XVIII Airborne Corps and First Special Forces Command (Airborne). In recent years, Cal has trained special operations forces at the U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School. Cal continues to serve in the rank of Lieutenant Colonel with an Army Reserve unit that trains one weekend a month.”
Cunningham is relying heavily on his association with the military in a state which hosts the fourth largest number of military personnel, including such bases as Fort Bragg (Army) and Camp Lejeune (Marines). His campaign web site declares, “At Fort Bragg and abroad, the paratroopers, Reservists and special operators Cal served with in the Army taught Cal a deeper form of patriotism and honor.”
Also running for US Senate seats are two female former pilots, Amy McGrath and Mary Jennings Hegar, who are challenging Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in Kentucky, and former Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn in Texas, respectively. McGrath defeated Charles Booker, an African American state legislator backed by Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, to win the Democratic nomination in Kentucky. Hegar defeated state senator Royce West of Dallas, also African American, to win the Democratic nomination in Texas.
McGrath was perhaps the most heavily publicized of the military-intelligence candidates in 2018, when she narrowly lost a race against Republican Congressman Andy Barr in Kentucky’s 6th Congressional District, centered on Lexington. She has been able to raise phenomenal amounts of money, partly because of her high-profile military career—she retired as a lieutenant colonel as a Marine Corps fighter pilot—and partly because her opponent, McConnell, is so widely hated.
Despite her war chest of more than $40 million, however, McGrath is a decided underdog against McConnell, who himself has a huge campaign fundraising machine and is finishing his sixth six-year term in the Senate.
MJ Hegar was an Air Force helicopter pilot who spent three tours of duty in Afghanistan on search and rescue operations, in the course of which she was shot down once by Taliban fire, wounded, and received a Purple Heart. She came to prominence through a lawsuit against the Pentagon policy of barring women from combat. She narrowly lost a 2018 race against Republican Congressman John Carter in a district outside Austin, Texas, in the course of which her five-minute campaign video, promoting her military record in a noxious combination of militarism and feminism, became a viral sensation and raised millions in donations over the internet.
Hegar received the nod from the DSCC after former congressman and failed presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke declined to challenge Cornyn. She survived a primary and runoff, but is considered a longshot candidate against Cornyn, a three-term incumbent.
Eleven Campaigns For Reelection
All 11 CIA Democrats first elected in 2018 are running for reelection. Five are considered prohibitive favorites to win: Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey, Chrissy Houlahan and Connor Lamb in Pennsylvania, Elissa Slotkin in Michigan, and Jason Crow in Colorado. The remaining six are in competitive races: Jared Golden in Maine, Max Rose in New York, Tom Malinowski and Andy Kim in New Jersey, Abigail Spanberger and Elaine Luria in Virginia.
That distinction made, however, “competitive” is a relative term. All six are favorites to win reelection, particularly because President Trump is projected to lose heavily in each of their states—Maine, New York, New Jersey and Virginia. Only in Maine, where the state awards its electoral vote by congressional district as well as statewide, is Trump mounting a significant campaign, seeking to take the electoral vote of Golden’s 2nd Congressional District, as he did in 2016.
From a fundraising standpoint, the most reliable indicator of success—and ruling class support—in American legislative contests, the 11 CIA Democrats must be considered overwhelming favorites to retain their seats. They have raised a combined total of $42 million. Their 11 Republican opponents have raised a combined total of $10 million. Only Republican Thomas Kean, opposing Malinowski in New Jersey’s 7th Congressional District, has a campaign war chest comparable to the incumbent’s, but still only half as large.
Let us recall briefly who these 11 representatives are and their military-intelligence background:
Jason Crow, Colorado’s 6th Congressional District: Paratroop commander in Iraq war, then Army Ranger special forces in Afghanistan for two tours.
Jared Golden, Maine’s 2nd Congressional District: The only rank-and-file soldier in the group, spent four years as a Marine infantryman, deploying to Afghanistan in 2004 and to Iraq in 2005-2006.
Chrissy Houlahan, Pennsylvania’s 6th Congressional District: A 10-year veteran of the Air Force, leaving it as a captain.
Andy Kim, New Jersey’s 3rd Congressional District: Civilian war planner and adviser to US military commanders in Afghanistan, Iraq director for National Security Council under President Obama.
Connor Lamb, Pennsylvania’s 17th Congressional District: Marine Corps captain and Judge Advocate General (prosecutor) until 2013, now major in the Marine Corps Reserves.
Elaine Luria, Virginia’s 2nd Congressional District: Navy commander, deployed six times to Middle East and Western Pacific, commanded assault craft supporting a Marine Corps deployment.
Tom Malinowski, New Jersey’s 7th Congressional District: Assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor in the Obama administration.
Max Rose, New York’s 11th Congressional District: Army combat officer in Afghanistan 2012-2013, still in the active reserves.
Mikie Sherrill, New Jersey’s 11th Congressional District: Navy helicopter pilot, with 10 years’ active service in Europe and the Middle East.
Elissa Slotkin, Michigan’s 8th Congressional District: CIA agent with three tours in Iraq, National Security Council for both Bush and Obama, assistant to Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte, then principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs.
Abigail Spanberger, Virginia’s 7th Congressional District: CIA operations officer stationed in Europe for nearly a decade.
In each case, the candidates moved seamlessly from positions as military commanders, intelligence operatives or foreign policy officials to running for Congress as candidates of the Democratic Party. Only Golden ran for a lower office, winning a seat in the Maine state legislature, before seeking a seat in Congress.
In their first two years in Congress, the CIA Democrats carried out two significant common actions. The five women—Houlahan, Luria, Sherrill, Slotkin and Spanberger—formed a joint fundraising committee to promote female candidates who shared their military-intelligence background. And six of them—Crow and the five women—co-signed an op-ed in the Washington Post in September 2019 calling for an impeachment probe into President Trump’s dealing with Ukraine. This was a crucial turning point in the effort that culminated in Trump’s impeachment three months later.
Likely Reinforcements For The CIA Democrats
Four of the military-intelligence candidates who lost congressional races in 2018 are running again in 2020, and are likely to win seats in Congress.
Dan Feehan, Minnesota 1st Congressional District: A military officer who served two tours in Iraq between 2005 and 2009, where he headed an Army Ranger sniper team, Feehan then joined the Obama administration, first as a White House aide, then as an acting assistant secretary of defense. He narrowly lost a race in 2018 for the southern Minnesota seat previously held by Democrat Tim Walz, now governor of Minnesota. Republican Jim Hagedorn, who won by only 1,312 votes in 2018, announced in February that he was being treated for stage-four kidney cancer, but he remains a candidate for reelection. Feehan has substantially outraised Hagedorn, by $2.2 million to $1.6 million, according to reports filed with the Federal Election Commission through July 15.
Gina Ortiz Jones, Texas 23rd Congressional District: An Air Force intelligence officer in Iraq, Ortiz Jones followed up a 12-year military career with continued work as a US government adviser in Latin America, South Sudan and Libya, then reviewed foreign investments from a national security standpoint for the Office of the US Trade Representative. In 2018 she lost a tight contest, by a margin of 340 votes out of more than 200,000 cast, against Republican incumbent Will Hurd, himself a former CIA agent, in the congressional district that comprises most of the Texas-Mexico border region, from El Paso to Laredo. Hurd has now retired, leaving Ortiz Jones the likely favorite to succeed him. This will be another “spy vs. spy” contest, against whichever Republican hopeful prevails in a lengthy primary recount. Tony Gonzales is a 20-year Navy veteran and intelligence officer specializing in cryptology; Raul Reyes is a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel specializing in cyberwarfare operations. Ortiz Jones has raised a massive $4.1 million for her campaign, more than double the sums raised by Gonzales and Reyes combined, and leads them by 10-1 in terms of cash on hand.
Sara Jacobs, California 53rd Congressional District: An Obama State Department official turned Hillary Clinton campaign aide, Jacobs was engaged in counterterrorism work in Nigeria and elsewhere in Africa, according to her campaign website, and advised Clinton on foreign policy. She lost a Democratic primary in 2018 in the adjoining 49th Congressional District, where millionaire attorney Mike Levin went on to win the seat for the Democrats. After longtime incumbent Representative Susan Davis announced her retirement in the heavily Democratic 53rd District, Jacobs switched districts in an attempt to capture the vacant seat. She finished first in the all-party primary in June, and will face another Democrat, state legislator Georgette Gomez, in the November election. While Gomez is a local elected official who is running on the basis of her Hispanic identity, Jacobs has far more financial resources, as the granddaughter of Qualcomm founder and CEO Irwin Jacobs.
Sri Preston Kulkarni, Texas 22nd Congressional District: After running an unexpectedly competitive race in 2018 against Republican Representative Pete Olson, Kulkarni is now considered the favorite following Olson’s decision to retire rather than seek reelection. Kulkarni is a career State Department official who boasts of his role in defense of American imperialism. His campaign website declares: “From Jerusalem to Iraq to Russia, Sri served in some of the toughest places in the world, representing the interests of the United States…” Of South Asian descent on his father’s side, Kulkarni is running in a district in the southwest suburbs of Houston—once held by right-wing Republican Tom DeLay—which has undergone rapid demographic change due to an influx of Asian immigrants.
There is a fifth military-intelligence candidate who is considered a likely winner in 2020, Jackie Gordon, a retired career military police commander, who is seeking the seat left vacant by the retirement of Republican Peter King in the 2nd Congressional District of New York, on Long Island. Gordon spent 29 years in the military, including multiple tours of duty in combat zones: “as a battle captain in Baghdad during the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, and as Commander of the 310th Military Police Battalion in Afghanistan in 2012” according to her campaign website, as well as “an operations officer at Guantanamo Bay,” the US base which is the site of a notorious prison and torture center. Gordon, who is African American, was elected to the Babylon Town Council while still on active duty and retired from the Army Reserve in 2014 with the rank of lieutenant colonel.
https://popularresistance.org/the-cia-democrats-in-the-2020-elections/
In the course of the 2018 elections, a large group of former military-intelligence operatives entered capitalist politics as candidates seeking the Democratic Party nomination in 50 congressional seats—nearly half the seats where the Democrats were targeting Republican incumbents or open seats created by Republican retirements.
Some 30 of these candidates won primary contests and became the Democratic candidates in the November 2018 election, and 11 of them won the general election, more than one-quarter of the 40 previously Republican-held seats captured by the Democrats as they took control of the House of Representatives.
In 2020, the intervention of the CIA Democrats continues on what is arguably an equally significant scale: besides the reelection campaigns of the 11 representatives who won seats in the House in 2018, half a dozen of those who lost 2018 races are running again in 2020. Some of these are running for House seats again, while others have been promoted by the Democratic Party leadership and are running for the US Senate. And an entire new crop of military-intelligence operatives is being brought forward, some running for Republican seats targeted by the Democratic leadership as possible takeovers, others in seats not currently considered competitive.
The bottom line: at least 34 Democratic candidates for the House of Representatives have a primarily military-intelligence background, up from 30 in 2018, as well as three of the party’s 35 candidates for the US Senate, compared to zero in 2018. For each branch of Congress, this represents about 10 percent of the total.
As we explained in 2018, the extraordinary influx of candidates coming directly from the national-security apparatus into the Democratic Party is a two-sided process: the Democratic Party establishment welcomes such candidates as a demonstration of the party’s unshakeable devotion to the interests of American imperialism; and military-intelligence operatives are choosing the Democratic Party over the Republican Party in large numbers because they are attracted by the Democrats’ non-stop campaign against the Trump administration as too “soft” on Russia and too willing to pull out of the Middle East war zone.
CIA Democrats For US Senate
Three Democrats seeking US Senate seats in November have a primarily military-intelligence background, including two who ran unsuccessfully for House seats in 2018. In each case, the CIA Democrat won a contested primary, with the support of Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC), defeating a more liberal candidate.
Cal Cunningham was the choice of the Democratic Party establishment to be the party’s candidate for US Senate from North Carolina, challenging first-term incumbent Thad Tillis. He defeated Erica Smith, an African-American state senator who ran on a more liberal platform, supporting Medicare for All and the Green New Deal.
While Cunningham served one term in the North Carolina state senate, beginning in 2001, his principal role has been as an attorney, both in private practice and in the military. He enrolled in the Army Reserve after the 9/11 attacks, joining the Judge Advocate General (JAG) corps, and was sent to both Iraq and Afghanistan to handle criminal cases involving members of the US military and military contractors in the two war zones.
According to his campaign biography, “Cal has served with various units from Fort Bragg, including XVIII Airborne Corps and First Special Forces Command (Airborne). In recent years, Cal has trained special operations forces at the U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School. Cal continues to serve in the rank of Lieutenant Colonel with an Army Reserve unit that trains one weekend a month.”
Cunningham is relying heavily on his association with the military in a state which hosts the fourth largest number of military personnel, including such bases as Fort Bragg (Army) and Camp Lejeune (Marines). His campaign web site declares, “At Fort Bragg and abroad, the paratroopers, Reservists and special operators Cal served with in the Army taught Cal a deeper form of patriotism and honor.”
Also running for US Senate seats are two female former pilots, Amy McGrath and Mary Jennings Hegar, who are challenging Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in Kentucky, and former Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn in Texas, respectively. McGrath defeated Charles Booker, an African American state legislator backed by Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, to win the Democratic nomination in Kentucky. Hegar defeated state senator Royce West of Dallas, also African American, to win the Democratic nomination in Texas.
McGrath was perhaps the most heavily publicized of the military-intelligence candidates in 2018, when she narrowly lost a race against Republican Congressman Andy Barr in Kentucky’s 6th Congressional District, centered on Lexington. She has been able to raise phenomenal amounts of money, partly because of her high-profile military career—she retired as a lieutenant colonel as a Marine Corps fighter pilot—and partly because her opponent, McConnell, is so widely hated.
Despite her war chest of more than $40 million, however, McGrath is a decided underdog against McConnell, who himself has a huge campaign fundraising machine and is finishing his sixth six-year term in the Senate.
MJ Hegar was an Air Force helicopter pilot who spent three tours of duty in Afghanistan on search and rescue operations, in the course of which she was shot down once by Taliban fire, wounded, and received a Purple Heart. She came to prominence through a lawsuit against the Pentagon policy of barring women from combat. She narrowly lost a 2018 race against Republican Congressman John Carter in a district outside Austin, Texas, in the course of which her five-minute campaign video, promoting her military record in a noxious combination of militarism and feminism, became a viral sensation and raised millions in donations over the internet.
Hegar received the nod from the DSCC after former congressman and failed presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke declined to challenge Cornyn. She survived a primary and runoff, but is considered a longshot candidate against Cornyn, a three-term incumbent.
Eleven Campaigns For Reelection
All 11 CIA Democrats first elected in 2018 are running for reelection. Five are considered prohibitive favorites to win: Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey, Chrissy Houlahan and Connor Lamb in Pennsylvania, Elissa Slotkin in Michigan, and Jason Crow in Colorado. The remaining six are in competitive races: Jared Golden in Maine, Max Rose in New York, Tom Malinowski and Andy Kim in New Jersey, Abigail Spanberger and Elaine Luria in Virginia.
That distinction made, however, “competitive” is a relative term. All six are favorites to win reelection, particularly because President Trump is projected to lose heavily in each of their states—Maine, New York, New Jersey and Virginia. Only in Maine, where the state awards its electoral vote by congressional district as well as statewide, is Trump mounting a significant campaign, seeking to take the electoral vote of Golden’s 2nd Congressional District, as he did in 2016.
From a fundraising standpoint, the most reliable indicator of success—and ruling class support—in American legislative contests, the 11 CIA Democrats must be considered overwhelming favorites to retain their seats. They have raised a combined total of $42 million. Their 11 Republican opponents have raised a combined total of $10 million. Only Republican Thomas Kean, opposing Malinowski in New Jersey’s 7th Congressional District, has a campaign war chest comparable to the incumbent’s, but still only half as large.
Let us recall briefly who these 11 representatives are and their military-intelligence background:
Jason Crow, Colorado’s 6th Congressional District: Paratroop commander in Iraq war, then Army Ranger special forces in Afghanistan for two tours.
Jared Golden, Maine’s 2nd Congressional District: The only rank-and-file soldier in the group, spent four years as a Marine infantryman, deploying to Afghanistan in 2004 and to Iraq in 2005-2006.
Chrissy Houlahan, Pennsylvania’s 6th Congressional District: A 10-year veteran of the Air Force, leaving it as a captain.
Andy Kim, New Jersey’s 3rd Congressional District: Civilian war planner and adviser to US military commanders in Afghanistan, Iraq director for National Security Council under President Obama.
Connor Lamb, Pennsylvania’s 17th Congressional District: Marine Corps captain and Judge Advocate General (prosecutor) until 2013, now major in the Marine Corps Reserves.
Elaine Luria, Virginia’s 2nd Congressional District: Navy commander, deployed six times to Middle East and Western Pacific, commanded assault craft supporting a Marine Corps deployment.
Tom Malinowski, New Jersey’s 7th Congressional District: Assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor in the Obama administration.
Max Rose, New York’s 11th Congressional District: Army combat officer in Afghanistan 2012-2013, still in the active reserves.
Mikie Sherrill, New Jersey’s 11th Congressional District: Navy helicopter pilot, with 10 years’ active service in Europe and the Middle East.
Elissa Slotkin, Michigan’s 8th Congressional District: CIA agent with three tours in Iraq, National Security Council for both Bush and Obama, assistant to Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte, then principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs.
Abigail Spanberger, Virginia’s 7th Congressional District: CIA operations officer stationed in Europe for nearly a decade.
In each case, the candidates moved seamlessly from positions as military commanders, intelligence operatives or foreign policy officials to running for Congress as candidates of the Democratic Party. Only Golden ran for a lower office, winning a seat in the Maine state legislature, before seeking a seat in Congress.
In their first two years in Congress, the CIA Democrats carried out two significant common actions. The five women—Houlahan, Luria, Sherrill, Slotkin and Spanberger—formed a joint fundraising committee to promote female candidates who shared their military-intelligence background. And six of them—Crow and the five women—co-signed an op-ed in the Washington Post in September 2019 calling for an impeachment probe into President Trump’s dealing with Ukraine. This was a crucial turning point in the effort that culminated in Trump’s impeachment three months later.
Likely Reinforcements For The CIA Democrats
Four of the military-intelligence candidates who lost congressional races in 2018 are running again in 2020, and are likely to win seats in Congress.
Dan Feehan, Minnesota 1st Congressional District: A military officer who served two tours in Iraq between 2005 and 2009, where he headed an Army Ranger sniper team, Feehan then joined the Obama administration, first as a White House aide, then as an acting assistant secretary of defense. He narrowly lost a race in 2018 for the southern Minnesota seat previously held by Democrat Tim Walz, now governor of Minnesota. Republican Jim Hagedorn, who won by only 1,312 votes in 2018, announced in February that he was being treated for stage-four kidney cancer, but he remains a candidate for reelection. Feehan has substantially outraised Hagedorn, by $2.2 million to $1.6 million, according to reports filed with the Federal Election Commission through July 15.
Gina Ortiz Jones, Texas 23rd Congressional District: An Air Force intelligence officer in Iraq, Ortiz Jones followed up a 12-year military career with continued work as a US government adviser in Latin America, South Sudan and Libya, then reviewed foreign investments from a national security standpoint for the Office of the US Trade Representative. In 2018 she lost a tight contest, by a margin of 340 votes out of more than 200,000 cast, against Republican incumbent Will Hurd, himself a former CIA agent, in the congressional district that comprises most of the Texas-Mexico border region, from El Paso to Laredo. Hurd has now retired, leaving Ortiz Jones the likely favorite to succeed him. This will be another “spy vs. spy” contest, against whichever Republican hopeful prevails in a lengthy primary recount. Tony Gonzales is a 20-year Navy veteran and intelligence officer specializing in cryptology; Raul Reyes is a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel specializing in cyberwarfare operations. Ortiz Jones has raised a massive $4.1 million for her campaign, more than double the sums raised by Gonzales and Reyes combined, and leads them by 10-1 in terms of cash on hand.
Sara Jacobs, California 53rd Congressional District: An Obama State Department official turned Hillary Clinton campaign aide, Jacobs was engaged in counterterrorism work in Nigeria and elsewhere in Africa, according to her campaign website, and advised Clinton on foreign policy. She lost a Democratic primary in 2018 in the adjoining 49th Congressional District, where millionaire attorney Mike Levin went on to win the seat for the Democrats. After longtime incumbent Representative Susan Davis announced her retirement in the heavily Democratic 53rd District, Jacobs switched districts in an attempt to capture the vacant seat. She finished first in the all-party primary in June, and will face another Democrat, state legislator Georgette Gomez, in the November election. While Gomez is a local elected official who is running on the basis of her Hispanic identity, Jacobs has far more financial resources, as the granddaughter of Qualcomm founder and CEO Irwin Jacobs.
Sri Preston Kulkarni, Texas 22nd Congressional District: After running an unexpectedly competitive race in 2018 against Republican Representative Pete Olson, Kulkarni is now considered the favorite following Olson’s decision to retire rather than seek reelection. Kulkarni is a career State Department official who boasts of his role in defense of American imperialism. His campaign website declares: “From Jerusalem to Iraq to Russia, Sri served in some of the toughest places in the world, representing the interests of the United States…” Of South Asian descent on his father’s side, Kulkarni is running in a district in the southwest suburbs of Houston—once held by right-wing Republican Tom DeLay—which has undergone rapid demographic change due to an influx of Asian immigrants.
There is a fifth military-intelligence candidate who is considered a likely winner in 2020, Jackie Gordon, a retired career military police commander, who is seeking the seat left vacant by the retirement of Republican Peter King in the 2nd Congressional District of New York, on Long Island. Gordon spent 29 years in the military, including multiple tours of duty in combat zones: “as a battle captain in Baghdad during the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, and as Commander of the 310th Military Police Battalion in Afghanistan in 2012” according to her campaign website, as well as “an operations officer at Guantanamo Bay,” the US base which is the site of a notorious prison and torture center. Gordon, who is African American, was elected to the Babylon Town Council while still on active duty and retired from the Army Reserve in 2014 with the rank of lieutenant colonel.
ANTIFASCISTS ARE FACING OFF AGAINST THE FAR-RIGHT, BACKED BY LOCAL COPS
By It's Going Down.
August 22, 2020
https://popularresistance.org/antifascists-are-facing-off-against-the-far-right-backed-by-local-cops/
https://popularresistance.org/antifascists-are-facing-off-against-the-far-right-backed-by-local-cops/
Every Friday In Sunland-Tujunga, A Small Neighborhood In The San Fernando Valley Region Of The City Of Los Angeles, Just 15 Minutes From Downtown LA, A Group Of Violent Far-Right Trump Supporters Meets Under The Guise Of Rallying In Support Of The Police.
Here’s how local antifascists have responded.
They assemble out front of a Big 5 on Foothill Blvd from around 11 am to sundown every Friday and have since the start of the George Floyd uprising. Their hate has been countered by members of the local community since day one. Early demos would have 2-3 Black Lives Matter protesters standing across from a group of 10 violent fascists. A large counter-demo was called for on June 19th, with the far-Right stepping up to mobilize their forces on that day as well.
Far-Right organizers included Luke Vella, Randi Berger, Shirley Marinacco of Sunland, who gave a Nazi salute to the BLM counter-protest, and Brendan Recor (who participated in the attack on a demo in Huntington Beach), as well as known members of various far-Right groups, were in attendance. The fascist side had about 20-25 members; the BLM side had about 30. There was a few altercations and scuffles, Luke Vella assaulted a teenage girl and destroyed her “Fuck Trump” sign.
The next Friday, the local community and antifascists got together to organize another large counter-demonstration. We had over 80 participants mobilize while the fascists stayed in their cars – too scared to show their faces. Luke Vella drove past the BLM demo in his dark Tahoe, flying Trump flags and yelling the N-word with a hard R. He was joined in this by members of the Gordt family in their older white Mercedes sedan. After a successful and peaceful march through the community behind a “Smash Fascism” banner, our group disbanded.
In response to us scaring them into their cars, the organizers of the hate rally, especially Randi Berger, got very active on Facebook; calling for violence against BLM protesters, including vehicular assault. Over the next few weeks, things seemed to be at a stalemate, the hate rally had the same 25ish people coming out, while the counter-protest drew about the same. Space was made for those who wanted to dialogue with the other side, but often those who attempted to would return to our side in tears, traumatized, or re-traumatized by the experience. A particularly harrowing example was when a woman in a MAGA hat said to a black woman, who had shared her assault story and how it relates to Trump’s treatment of women, “prove that you were raped.”
The fascists have been escalating recently by taking space on our side of Foothill, which led to us organizing for more support from within the local area and the wider community. On Friday 7/31, there was a large showing of antifascists, and the fascists responded by calling in a false report of someone shining a laser pointer at them, at 3 pm, on a sunny day, in Los Angeles.
Then, an antifascist burned a Blue Lives Matter flag and was arrested violently by the LAPD for it. The LAPD then attacked anti-fascist demonstrators and journalists, sending two people to the hospital; one with broken ribs. This police violence was followed by attacks by the fascists which resulted in a few scuffles.
Fascists then spit on a community member who upon leaving the shopping center had flipped them off through the open window of her car then started attacking her vehicle but were forced to back off by antifascists. Members of the Gordt family then started driving by the antifascists in their dark grey Dodge Charger swinging a Trump Rambo flag at them. This was countered by a splash from an open water bottle into the vehicle. In response to getting wet, they got out of the vehicle and called the police, and more fascists came across the street including one armed with a baseball bat. Scuffles ensued, a chud in a MAGA hat shoved an antifascist, and another chud who was decked out in American flag pants sucker punched someone. After that scuffle, the community members and antifascists when to the local jail to await the release of their comrades which happened early the next morning.
The week of 8/7 we had a strong showing and a street party/ BBQ to show the fascists in and out of uniform that they cannot scare us. Those who were injured and arrested all came out and stood together with some of their family members. We outlasted the fascists and even though there were minor scuffles, our numbers kept the chuds in check. Two chuds got in a fight with each other and at the end of the day, we got to watch Luke Vella soil himself as he tried to scoot away after his bike ran out of gas.
This brings us to last week 8/14. We got there around 4:30 pm, and already there was a group of 10-20 fash surrounding the growing BLM and anti-fascist demo. Most of the fash remained on the opposite side of the street, but the numbers of those trying to provoke a fight with our side grew steadily.
The fight started when Philip Young (pictured above) pepper-sprayed a black community organizer. Philip was then tackled by another community organizer, who was hit over the head with a skateboard by David Dempsy, one of Brando Reccors’ associates, and later transported to the hospital.
According to Left Coast Right Watch:
A large group of right-wingers crossed the street towards the antifascists. Upon arrival, they repeatedly instigated violence with protesters. This included people of all ages–middle-aged right-wingers picking fights with teenagers, women, and senior citizens. Black Lives matter protesters were greatly outnumbered, at least 2:1, most individually standing their ground while multiple far-right supporters screamed threats.
“I’ll smash your face into the curb,” one of the right-wingers shouted.
“Black lives don’t matter here,” another said.
Proud Boys, along with III% Militia Movement members were identified in the crowd. Some instigators identified in attendance were “Based Spartan” John Turano, Proud Boy Brandon Recor, and David Dempsey. Turano was the subject of ‘The Rise and Fall of an Alt-Right Gladiator”, an early 2018 Vice documentary. The piece highlighted that after fighting antifascist protesters in gladiator armor he had “realized that some of the people he’d aligned himself with were neo-Nazis, homophobes, and racists…going from alt-right celebrity to pariah overnight”. His opinions seem to have changed.
Proud Boy Brandon Recor has attended LGBTQ Pride rallies and BLM protests in the past, often posing as a journalist while attempting to incite violence. Filming for the youtube account ‘That’s The Point With Brandon,’ Recor has been recorded using the N-word and striking people with weapons, fighting against antifascists. Another documented Proud Boy, David Dempsey, often joins him.
There was a bit of a brawl, which was broken up when a smoke bomb was thrown. After the smoke cleared, one community leader was transported to the hospital, one refused transport, and a NLG legal observer was treated at the scene. The police made no arrests, and the day continued with tense stare downs and standoffs.
Again from LCRW:
The events leading up to Friday, August 14 demonstrate a continuing and predictable pattern for law enforcement. LAPD will respond swiftly to the concerns of their right-wing supporters, while refusing to protect those assaulted by instigators.
“I’ve seen ambulances drop those treated on scene at their car to make sure they get home safe since the cops won’t protect us,” Chris said.
Antifascists LCRW spoke to have infiltrated the far-right crowd and claim many of them have the personal phone numbers of specific local police officers.
“They don’t call 911 to get us busted, they call their racist cop buddies,” Chris told LCRW. “They aren’t going to help us against the Nazis, since they are on the same side.”
Many protesters have experienced police surveillance immediately following protests as well; being followed and even pulled over by officers, forced to incessantly drive in circles until their police tail gives up.
Many of these protesters live in close proximity to the right wing and white supremacist agitators. Activists told LCRW that some of the right-wingers who engage in violence at these protests are local small-business owners–the same kind of people that you would bump into shopping at the local grocery store.
The fash called in multiple false reports to the cops, including a false report of a gun. One BLM activist who parked behind the fascists blaring, “Fuck Donald Trump” from his car was taken into police custody, “for his own protection,” and then released without any charges. His car was damaged by the fash.
ROTTING FOOD, DEAD ANIMALS AND CHAOS AT POSTAL FACILITIES
By Laura J. Nelson and Maya Lau, LA Times.
August 22, 2020
https://popularresistance.org/rotting-food-dead-animals-and-chaos-at-postal-facilities/
NOTE: Tuesday, August 25 is a national day of action to save the US Postal Service. Find an action near you or plan one at APWU.org.
Six weeks ago, U.S. Postal Service workers in the high desert town of Tehachapi, Calif., began to notice crates of mail sitting in the post office in the early morning that should have been shipped out for delivery the night before.
At a mail processing facility in Santa Clarita in July, workers discovered that their automated sorting machines had been disabled and padlocked.
And inside a massive mail-sorting facility in South Los Angeles, workers fell so far behind processing packages that by early August, gnats and rodents were swarming around containers of rotted fruit and meat, and baby chicks were dead inside their boxes.
Accounts of conditions from employees at California mail facilities provide a glimpse of what some say are the consequences of widespread cutbacks in staffing and equipment recently imposed by the postal service.
Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, responding to a national outcry over service disruptions and fears of voter disenfranchisement, said this week he would suspend many planned changes until after the election. But postal workers say significant damage has already been done, including the removal of mail-sorting machines, which may not be replaced.
While the long-term effect of the cuts on U.S. mail service is unclear, the evidence of serious disruptions appears to be mounting, according to postal employees interviewed by The Times as well as customers, lawmakers and union leaders.
Until this week, the postal service was implementing a sweeping plan to remove 671 mail-sorting machines, or about 10% of its total, from facilities across the U.S. — including 76 in California. Officials also slashed overtime pay and imposed a new policy that could delay outgoing mail.
The cuts have had a ripple effect in California, snarling the operation of one of the biggest mail-processing facilities in the country and delaying the delivery of prescriptions, rent payments and unemployment checks. Some people have complained of going days without receiving any mail at all.
At least five high-speed mail-sorting machines have been removed from a processing plant in Sacramento, said Omar Gonzalez, the Western regional coordinator for the American Postal Workers Union. Additionally, two of the machines have been removed in Santa Ana and six in San Diego, Gonzalez said.
Processing plants serve more than 1,000 California post offices, some of which deliver to far-flung, rural addresses that could be faced with high delivery costs if serviced by private mail carriers.
Inside one sprawling facility at Florence and Central avenues in Los Angeles, which serves 92 L.A.-area post offices, seven delivery bar code sorters were removed in June, leaving three, Gonzalez said.
Each of those machines, which would handle mail-in ballots, can process up to 35,000 pieces of mail per hour.
“A lot of the machinery has already been gutted. Some of it has been dismantled and relocated or trashed,” Gonzalez said. “Although we welcome the news of the suspension of these changes, it’s just that — a suspension. The attacks and undermining of our operations will resume, maybe at the worst possible time, in December, our peak season.”
Before the recent cuts, workers at the facility were working six days per week, and were still struggling to keep up with the volume of packages driven by an influx of online shopping during the COVID-19 pandemic, said mail handler Aukushan Scantlebury, 47.
When DeJoy restricted overtime two months ago, Scantlebury and other workers saw their schedules cut back to five days per week. Within days, he said, the facility was in chaos.
Packages piled up, blocking the aisles and the heavy sorting machinery. Boxes of steaks, fruit and other perishables rotted. Rats dashed across the floor. At one point, Scantlebury said, the “whole building was filled with gnats.”
The delays were particularly tragic for live animals, including baby chickens and crickets, that are transported through the U.S. Postal Service. Usually, mail handlers say, they can hear the birds peeping and rustling around in their boxes.
This month, one worker said, she found a box with air holes in a pile of packages. Instead of hearing the gentle sounds of baby chicks, she heard nothing.
Workers sometimes see shipments of crickets jumping around inside their packaging, said Eddie Cowan, a mail handler and the president of a local chapter of the National Postal Mail Handlers Union. Now, he said, “you can see in the packages those crickets are dead.”
Sumi Ali, the co-owner of the Yes Plz coffee subscription company, arrived July 25 to mail a batch of freshly roasted beans to customers. A frequent visitor to the complex, he was shocked at what he saw.
The parking lot was crammed with semi trailers piled high with unsorted mail; the warehouse-like facility was packed “wall to wall” with mail; and there were very few employees in sight.
“It was like Armageddon,” Ali said. “It was a total maze. You could not walk through the facility without having to move things out of your way. I don’t know how they got forklifts through there. There were only inches of space between containers.”
Since then, Ali said, the backlog of packages seems to have improved a little. But, he said, the chaos continues to be as bad, if not worse, than the usual holiday season.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) said Wednesday that DeJoy informed her he did not intend to restore the sorting machines or blue mailboxes that have been removed in several cities, nor did he have plans to allow for adequate overtime for workers.
As for the November election — the spark that ignited a national firestorm over USPS cutbacks — postal service and California elections officials say there’s less concern here than in other states.
USPS spokesman David Partenheimer did not comment on the reductions, but referred to a statement from DeJoy that said the postal service is equipped to fully handle election mail this fall.
The postal service also said DeJoy was expanding a task force to strengthen coordination with election officials to handle mail-in ballots. The postal service had earlier warned 46 states, including California, that some ballots might not be delivered in time to be counted.
In June, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law requiring that all ballots postmarked by election day and delivered by Nov. 20 be counted — five times longer than California’s normal grace period. Still, Secretary of State Alex Padilla said the concerns raised in other states merit close scrutiny.
“Given this administration’s track record with the truth, seeing is believing,” Padilla said in a written statement. “My office will continue constant communication with the U.S. Postal Service, and will continue to monitor for any signs of disruption to service.”
At the Santa Clarita processing and distribution center, two delivery bar code sorters were padlocked and gutted of their cameras and computers in July so that workers couldn’t plug them in and start using them again.
For an unknown reason, the devices came back online Wednesday, but a third delivery bar code sorter was missing from the facility, according to a worker who did not want to be named because they were not authorized to speak on behalf of the agency.
Merchant Stephen Tu of Pasadena said in the past two months he has noticed his first-class packages have been getting stuck for as many as 10 days in the Santa Clarita facility, whereas normally they would pass through in one day. Tu, who tracks shipments of baby clothing and accessories he sells on EBay and Facebook Marketplace, said he’s never endured delays this long — up to 20 days for packages sent outside Southern California — in the 15 years he has been selling items online.
Tu said his customers sometimes ask him whether he has even shipped their goods at all. In order to guarantee on-time deliveries, he said, he’s considering switching to private services like FedEx and UPS.
About six weeks ago on a Wednesday morning, postal clerk Kenny Diaz, 35, showed up to work at the Tehachapi post office and saw something new in his nine years on the job: a plastic tub full of mail that should have gone out for delivery the night before.
Every afternoon, Diaz said, a truck driver picked up the post office’s outgoing mail and took it to a processing facility in Bakersfield. If the post office was running behind, the last driver of the day would wait to pick up every bill, package and letter, he said.
“They always waited — they always waited,” Diaz said. “Our No. 1 priority is getting the mail where it has to go. We’d rather delay the truck by two hours than delay the mail by a whole day.”
Now, Diaz said, the truck drivers have been instructed to leave on time, regardless of whether all the outgoing mail is on the truck. That means some mail is arriving a day later at the processing facility, where it could be delayed again, he said.
“Just think of our little town, times a million across the nation,” Diaz said. “You can see the domino effect that it’s going to have.”
https://popularresistance.org/rotting-food-dead-animals-and-chaos-at-postal-facilities/
NOTE: Tuesday, August 25 is a national day of action to save the US Postal Service. Find an action near you or plan one at APWU.org.
Six weeks ago, U.S. Postal Service workers in the high desert town of Tehachapi, Calif., began to notice crates of mail sitting in the post office in the early morning that should have been shipped out for delivery the night before.
At a mail processing facility in Santa Clarita in July, workers discovered that their automated sorting machines had been disabled and padlocked.
And inside a massive mail-sorting facility in South Los Angeles, workers fell so far behind processing packages that by early August, gnats and rodents were swarming around containers of rotted fruit and meat, and baby chicks were dead inside their boxes.
Accounts of conditions from employees at California mail facilities provide a glimpse of what some say are the consequences of widespread cutbacks in staffing and equipment recently imposed by the postal service.
Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, responding to a national outcry over service disruptions and fears of voter disenfranchisement, said this week he would suspend many planned changes until after the election. But postal workers say significant damage has already been done, including the removal of mail-sorting machines, which may not be replaced.
While the long-term effect of the cuts on U.S. mail service is unclear, the evidence of serious disruptions appears to be mounting, according to postal employees interviewed by The Times as well as customers, lawmakers and union leaders.
Until this week, the postal service was implementing a sweeping plan to remove 671 mail-sorting machines, or about 10% of its total, from facilities across the U.S. — including 76 in California. Officials also slashed overtime pay and imposed a new policy that could delay outgoing mail.
The cuts have had a ripple effect in California, snarling the operation of one of the biggest mail-processing facilities in the country and delaying the delivery of prescriptions, rent payments and unemployment checks. Some people have complained of going days without receiving any mail at all.
At least five high-speed mail-sorting machines have been removed from a processing plant in Sacramento, said Omar Gonzalez, the Western regional coordinator for the American Postal Workers Union. Additionally, two of the machines have been removed in Santa Ana and six in San Diego, Gonzalez said.
Processing plants serve more than 1,000 California post offices, some of which deliver to far-flung, rural addresses that could be faced with high delivery costs if serviced by private mail carriers.
Inside one sprawling facility at Florence and Central avenues in Los Angeles, which serves 92 L.A.-area post offices, seven delivery bar code sorters were removed in June, leaving three, Gonzalez said.
Each of those machines, which would handle mail-in ballots, can process up to 35,000 pieces of mail per hour.
“A lot of the machinery has already been gutted. Some of it has been dismantled and relocated or trashed,” Gonzalez said. “Although we welcome the news of the suspension of these changes, it’s just that — a suspension. The attacks and undermining of our operations will resume, maybe at the worst possible time, in December, our peak season.”
Before the recent cuts, workers at the facility were working six days per week, and were still struggling to keep up with the volume of packages driven by an influx of online shopping during the COVID-19 pandemic, said mail handler Aukushan Scantlebury, 47.
When DeJoy restricted overtime two months ago, Scantlebury and other workers saw their schedules cut back to five days per week. Within days, he said, the facility was in chaos.
Packages piled up, blocking the aisles and the heavy sorting machinery. Boxes of steaks, fruit and other perishables rotted. Rats dashed across the floor. At one point, Scantlebury said, the “whole building was filled with gnats.”
The delays were particularly tragic for live animals, including baby chickens and crickets, that are transported through the U.S. Postal Service. Usually, mail handlers say, they can hear the birds peeping and rustling around in their boxes.
This month, one worker said, she found a box with air holes in a pile of packages. Instead of hearing the gentle sounds of baby chicks, she heard nothing.
Workers sometimes see shipments of crickets jumping around inside their packaging, said Eddie Cowan, a mail handler and the president of a local chapter of the National Postal Mail Handlers Union. Now, he said, “you can see in the packages those crickets are dead.”
Sumi Ali, the co-owner of the Yes Plz coffee subscription company, arrived July 25 to mail a batch of freshly roasted beans to customers. A frequent visitor to the complex, he was shocked at what he saw.
The parking lot was crammed with semi trailers piled high with unsorted mail; the warehouse-like facility was packed “wall to wall” with mail; and there were very few employees in sight.
“It was like Armageddon,” Ali said. “It was a total maze. You could not walk through the facility without having to move things out of your way. I don’t know how they got forklifts through there. There were only inches of space between containers.”
Since then, Ali said, the backlog of packages seems to have improved a little. But, he said, the chaos continues to be as bad, if not worse, than the usual holiday season.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) said Wednesday that DeJoy informed her he did not intend to restore the sorting machines or blue mailboxes that have been removed in several cities, nor did he have plans to allow for adequate overtime for workers.
As for the November election — the spark that ignited a national firestorm over USPS cutbacks — postal service and California elections officials say there’s less concern here than in other states.
USPS spokesman David Partenheimer did not comment on the reductions, but referred to a statement from DeJoy that said the postal service is equipped to fully handle election mail this fall.
The postal service also said DeJoy was expanding a task force to strengthen coordination with election officials to handle mail-in ballots. The postal service had earlier warned 46 states, including California, that some ballots might not be delivered in time to be counted.
In June, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law requiring that all ballots postmarked by election day and delivered by Nov. 20 be counted — five times longer than California’s normal grace period. Still, Secretary of State Alex Padilla said the concerns raised in other states merit close scrutiny.
“Given this administration’s track record with the truth, seeing is believing,” Padilla said in a written statement. “My office will continue constant communication with the U.S. Postal Service, and will continue to monitor for any signs of disruption to service.”
At the Santa Clarita processing and distribution center, two delivery bar code sorters were padlocked and gutted of their cameras and computers in July so that workers couldn’t plug them in and start using them again.
For an unknown reason, the devices came back online Wednesday, but a third delivery bar code sorter was missing from the facility, according to a worker who did not want to be named because they were not authorized to speak on behalf of the agency.
Merchant Stephen Tu of Pasadena said in the past two months he has noticed his first-class packages have been getting stuck for as many as 10 days in the Santa Clarita facility, whereas normally they would pass through in one day. Tu, who tracks shipments of baby clothing and accessories he sells on EBay and Facebook Marketplace, said he’s never endured delays this long — up to 20 days for packages sent outside Southern California — in the 15 years he has been selling items online.
Tu said his customers sometimes ask him whether he has even shipped their goods at all. In order to guarantee on-time deliveries, he said, he’s considering switching to private services like FedEx and UPS.
About six weeks ago on a Wednesday morning, postal clerk Kenny Diaz, 35, showed up to work at the Tehachapi post office and saw something new in his nine years on the job: a plastic tub full of mail that should have gone out for delivery the night before.
Every afternoon, Diaz said, a truck driver picked up the post office’s outgoing mail and took it to a processing facility in Bakersfield. If the post office was running behind, the last driver of the day would wait to pick up every bill, package and letter, he said.
“They always waited — they always waited,” Diaz said. “Our No. 1 priority is getting the mail where it has to go. We’d rather delay the truck by two hours than delay the mail by a whole day.”
Now, Diaz said, the truck drivers have been instructed to leave on time, regardless of whether all the outgoing mail is on the truck. That means some mail is arriving a day later at the processing facility, where it could be delayed again, he said.
“Just think of our little town, times a million across the nation,” Diaz said. “You can see the domino effect that it’s going to have.”
BANKS HAVE MADE $18 BILLION FROM ‘PAYCHECK PROTECTION PROGRAM’ PROCESSING FEES
By Colleen Boyle, In These Times.
August 22, 2020
https://popularresistance.org/banks-have-made-18-billion-from-paycheck-protection-program/
Fees Paid To Banks Eclipse Funding Allocated To Develop Vaccines, Provide Medical Supplies And Feed Children.
Whether or not a single job or company is saved through the CARES Act’s Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), lenders will be paid hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer money. As of mid-July, PPP lenders, including JPMorgan Chase Bank, Bank of America and Wells Fargo, had racked up $18 billion in fees—more than was allocated to other programs to develop vaccines, provide medical supplies and health services, and feed children. Nearly $130 billion in PPP funds have gone untapped, yet both the HEROES Act passed by the House of Representatives in May and the HEALS Act introduced by the Senate in late July call for the program’s extension while removing requirements that most of its funding be spent on payroll.
The Paycheck Protection Program was designed to “provide a direct incentive for small businesses to keep their workers on the payroll,” according to the Small Business Administration (SBA). Issued by lending institutions and guaranteed by the SBA, PPP loans cover up to eight weeks of average monthly payroll costs between $1,000 and $10 million, and may be used for payroll, mortgage, rent and utility payments, along with owner compensation. The program calls for the SBA to forgive a loan if all employee retention criteria are met and at least 60% of the funds are used for payroll costs. Should the borrower default, the administration will refund the lender.
Normally, borrowers pay a guarantee fee to the SBA and any required processing fees to the lender that provided the loan. Under the Paycheck Protection Program, however, all fees for borrowers have been waived, and the SBA is paying lenders a processing fee of between 1 and 5% when each loan is fully disbursed. The SBA does not pay lenders under any other program.
This component of the Paycheck Protection Program has resulted in major financial institutions pocketing hundreds of millions simply for acting as a conduit for taxpayer dollars. Below are the 10 financial institutions that had profited the most from PPP processing fees as of July 7, 2020, according to data released by the SBA. These 10 firms will earn more than $3.6 billion combined; JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America together accounted for nearly $1.6 billion.
Lender Total Fees Earned
JPMorgan Chase Bank, National Association $823,297,941
Bank of America, National Association $770,493,577
Wells Fargo Bank, National Association $362,959,963
Truist Bank d/b/a Branch Banking & Trust Co $317,538,597
PNC Bank, National Association $303,210,598
TD Bank, National Association $238,436,086
U.S. Bank, National Association $236,130,803
Cross River Bank $215,875,654
KeyBank National Association $182,159,042
Zions Bank, a Division of Zions Bancorporation, N.A. $168,530,745
While $18 billion in fees may seem trivial compared to the $2 trillion in total spending authorized by the CARES Act, it is more than the $1.3 billion in funding allocated for community health centers currently servicing 28 million people; the $3 and $4 billion earmarked for airline contractors and cargo air carriers respectively; the $4.3 billion allotted to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; the $8.8 billion for schools to provide meals to students; the $450 million for food banks and community food distribution programs; the $10 billion in Economic Injury Disaster loans for small businesses to cover immediate operating costs; the $11 billion for Covid-19 drug diagnostics, treatments and vaccines; the $15.3 billion that the state of California received under the Coronavirus Relief Fund; the more than $15.5 billion to cover expected increases in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) applicants; and the $16 billion for the Strategic National Stockpile to increase the availability of essential supplies like masks and ventilators.
What’s more, we may never know how many jobs the program has actually saved. The SBA announced that it will only automatically review loans larger than $2 million and only after the borrower submits the loan forgiveness application. Less than one percent of PPP loans meet that qualification.
On July 17, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin testified to the House Committee on Small Business that the five million PPP loans that have been issued will keep over 50 million people employed. But an initial analysis of the program’s impact on the U.S. jobs market led by the MIT Department of Economics puts that number between 1.4 million to 3.2 million. During the week of July 13, more than 31 million people
received some form of unemployment benefits.
The PPP may have kept some businesses afloat in April and May, but as the pandemic enters its sixth month with no clear end in sight, it’s fair to question whether the program has outlived its usefulness. What Americans need now more than anything is a direct infusion of cash — to preserve their payrolls, yes, but also to pay rent and mortgages, buy food and toilet paper, and keep their families safe from Covid-19. During the Great Recession of 2008, the banks used government bailouts to enrich themselves to the tune of billions. Tragically, history appears to be repeating itself.
THE ONGOING US DOMINANCE OF THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
By Narciso Isa Conde, Noticias sin.
The Adventures Of Pompeo In The Transfer Of Leadership In The Dominican Republic.
The U.S. gave particular importance to the inauguration of the new president of the Dominican Republic, LuÃs Abindar by sending Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, accompanied by the Assistant Secretary for Hemispheric Affairs Michael Kosak.
That’s enough to show the geopolitical importance that the super-power has given to this country and to this island that it shares with Haiti, after the liberation of Cuba – a historic feat in our Caribbean region, – defined as the border of the empire and the hinge between the Pacific and Atlantic. Also because of its closeness with two other countries emancipated from U.S. colonialism, Venezuela and Nicaragua.
This is an island with two nations that have suffered from foreign intervention and repeated imperialist invasions, and, in our case, a country that has been absolutley captured by the Pentagon after our most recent attempt to change ourselves into a sovereign nation in 1965 (following Cuba’s path in our own manner) precisely due to the popular-democratic revolution of 1965 which was blocked by the landing of 42,000 invading US Marines.
Since then we’ve been unable to break these powerful chains. Every time there are attempts in our country at changes out of the control of the US, the shackles are tightened.
The empire doesn’t hesitate to impose its orders, often gift-wrapped and adorned with pretty phrases. When they wear out one formula, they construct the replacement and fix it in place. This has occurred and it is occurring now. To give continuity to this imperial task, the Super-CIA arrived, sometimes also in the role of US Ambassador.
The next shift of caretakers are fresh and well oxygenated as they rise on the wave of anti-corruption and anti-impunity that damaged the rule of the Partido de la Liberación Dominicana-PLD and their forced efforts at continuity, after having exercised governmental and state control for 16 straight years, with the support of the brutal neighbor of the North.
It was no longer possible to maintain this however without great risks for the stability of the system of domination, and so months ago Washington and the opposition forces under their control prepared a replacement. Pompeo’s role was to direct the orchestra with some supporting cast, among these the unspeakable Organization of American States – OAS.
Pompeo came to the culmination of this first phase of the re-adaptation and smooth continuity of our colonial status and did so especially to secure some fundamental aspects of his stated policy on U.S. hemispheric affairs. Two interviews and two invitations symbolize the progress of the re-colonization work, duly renewed.
First, his farewell encounter with defeated ex-president Danilo Medina, entirely disgraced to the point of being subject to legal charges, together with his main collaborators. This was a meeting full of hypocrisy and pretense, in which Pompeo finished up by praising him as an ally in the fight for democracy.
And to follow-up, he had a meeting with the incoming president, LuÃs Abinader, meant to seal the new alliance “to promote democracy, transparency, and security’ on the continent, according to of course to the limits and conditions set down by The Pentagon, the CIA, the State Department, and its OAS.
Above all: “hemispheric security” against any twitch of independence and any plans for or exercise of sovereignty and anti-neoliberalism. This included orders to limit relations with China and to distance ourselves still further from Cuba.
But it would not be complete without the key point being made that the new government, the ambassador and the president came out from this meeting held in the National Palace ( built in the style of the U.S. Capitol Building) tied down and formally committed to applying to the agreement drawn up between the Lima Group, the International Liaison Committee, the European Union and the U.S.
This agreement formalizes the decision to fight together for a “transition to democracy in Venezuela” along with siding with the colonialist gangster faction headed by the self-proclaimed president Juan Guaidó and with an appeal to the Rio Pact (The Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance – TIAR) as a useful instrument to revitalize the efforts to reverse the main achievement of the Bolivarian process – the self-determination of the Venezuelan people.
All this, in the context of a national ceremony at which there were very few invitees but which did include two versions of the lowest scum of Latin-Caribbean politics: President Juvenal Moises of Haiti and the representative of President Juan Orlando Hernández of Honduras.
At the end of Pompeo’s visit, which ironically occurred on the 157th anniversary of the Dominican Restoration War, which freed the Republic from Spanish annexation, the so-called new Government of Change added to our condition of a country that has suffered U.S. intervention, the adding itself to the practice of intervening in the affairs of other countries, on the tail of decadent western imperialism. Shame! An unpardonable decision.
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