American democracy is failing. The courts are finally starting to notice.

ThinkProgress

American democracy is failing. The courts are finally starting to notice.

Democracy’s lost decade.

Ian Millhiser January 24, 2018

Washington, D.C. – January 20, 2017: Former Democratic Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and former President George W. Bush attend Donald Trump inauguration on the West front of the U.S. Capitol. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

There is something profoundly wrong with the United States of America’s system of government.

For proof, briefly take stock of the last ten years in American democracy, in which a combination of factors — the filibuster, the way we draw legislative districts, Senate malapportionment, and the Electoral College — converged to rob American voters of a meaningful ability to choose their own leaders.

In 2008, President Obama won a resounding victory, defeating Republican Sen. John McCain by nearly 10 million votes. Democrats also won commanding majorities in both houses of Congress, with Democrats holding 60 seats in the Senate at their peak. Nevertheless, the rump Republican minority was able to wield the filibuster to block many Democratic priorities altogether, and to effectively force Democrats to water down major legislation such as the stimulus and the Affordable Care Act, because the most conservative Democrats’ (and, sometimes, even some Republicans’) votes were needed to pass such bills.
In 2010, in part because the watered down stimulus did not juice up the economy enough to keep the incumbent party from being blamed for the ongoing effects of the recession, Democrats took a bath at the polls. Though Democrats recovered their standing with the voters in the very next federal election, their deep losses in 2010 had profound consequences because they gave Republicans control of many crucial state legislatures and governors’ mansions during a redistricting cycle. Republicans drew state legislative and congressional maps that were so aggressively gerrymandered that, in some states, Republicans won over 70 percent of the congressional seats even in election years where Democrats won the popular vote.
In 2012, President Obama won reelection. Democratic U.S. House candidates also won nearly 1.4 million more votes nationwide than their Republican counterparts. Yet, in large part due to gerrymandering, Republicans enjoyed a commanding 233-200 majority in the House at the beginning of the 113th Congress. This undemocratic result not only prevented Democrats from enacting legislation that could have fired up their base, stimulated the economy, and improved their party’s chances of winning the 2014 and 2016 elections, it also gave Republicans the leverage to shut down the government in 2013.
Meanwhile, Republicans enjoyed even bigger windfalls in state-level races. In 2012, for example, Republican candidates for the state assembly received “48.6% of the two-party statewide vote share for Assembly candidates and won 60 of the 99 seats in the Wisconsin Assembly.” Two years later, they “received 52% of the two-party statewide vote share and won 63 assembly seats.” More recently, in the 2017 election that resoundingly elected Democratic Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, Democratic candidates of the House of Delegates outperformed Republican candidates by more than 9 percentage points. Yet Republicans still enjoy a narrow 51-49 majority.
In February of 2016, Justice Antonin Scalia unexpectedly died. Scalia’s body was barely cold before Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) announced that he would not allow anyone nominated by President Obama to be confirmed. Senate Republicans then successfully held the seat open for a year until Donald Trump could fill it. McConnell was able to pull this stunt because Republicans enjoyed a 54-46 majority in the Senate in 2016. They held this majority, moreover, due to the fact that the Senate is so egregiously mal-apportioned that its membership bears no resemblance to the nation’s partisan preferences. The 46 Democrats in the Senate in 2016 represented more than 20 million more people than the 54 Republicans.
More than a year after Scalia’s death, Senate Republicans confirmed Judge Neil Gorsuch to fill the vacant seat on the Supreme Court. The 45 senators who opposed Gorsuch’s confirmation represent more than 25 million more people than the senators who supported him.
And then there is the ultimate insult to the American voter. Donald Trump occupies the White House, despite the fact that he received 2,864,974 fewer votes than his Democratic opponent.

The government of the United States no longer derives its powers from the consent of the governed. And by the time voters head to the polls in November to elect a new Congress, America will have existed in this state of profound undemocracy for nearly a decade.

There is a gleam of hope amid this wreckage. The courts appear to be awakening to the problem of gerrymandering — and are beginning to do something about it.

Just this week, Pennsylvania’s state supreme court struck down that state’s gerrymandered congressional maps and ordered new maps to be drawn by for the 2018 elections. A federal court struck down North Carolina’s similarly gerrymandered congressional maps earlier this month. A majority of the Supreme Court appears poised to strike down Wisconsin’s state assembly maps — potentially marking the first time the Supreme Court declared a partisan gerrymander unconstitutional.

A majority of the Supreme Court appears ready to strike down a partisan gerrymander

And then there was hope.

Meanwhile, eleven states have signed onto the National Popular Vote Compact, an agreement that seeks to functionally eliminate the Electoral College once a bloc of states that control at least 270 electoral votes have signed onto it. Had this agreement been in effect in 2016, President Hillary Clinton would be in the White House and Justice Merrick Garland would likely be the swing vote on the Supreme Court.

Despite these rays of hope, American democracy still faces considerable obstacles, some of which will be difficult to overcome without a constitutional convention.

For one thing, while gerrymandering accounts for some of the GOP’s unfair advantages in legislative races, it does not account for all of it. Because Democrats tend to cluster together in cities, while Republicans tend to be more spread out over suburbs and rural areas, legislative maps made up of compact districts that do not cut across communities will tend to advantage Republicans. Courts could potentially require more competitive districts to be drawn — districts which combine urban, suburban, and rural voters — but there is no guarantee that they will do so. The recent decision out of Pennsylvania does the opposite.

The National Popular Vote Compact, meanwhile, is untested and relies on an innovative solution to overcome the Electoral College. That means that the Supreme Court has not yet weighed in on its validity. Given the Supreme Court’s increasingly partisan cast, it’s possible that the Republican-dominated Court would game a challenge to this compact, upholding it if a Republican wins the national popular vote and striking it down if a Democrat does.

And then there is in the single most frightening projection facing both large-D Democrats and small-d democrats in the United States. By 2040, according to Dean David Birdsell of the school of public and international affairs at Baruch College, “about 70% of Americans are expected to live in the 15 largest states.” That means that 70 percent of Americans “will have only 30 senators representing them, while the remaining 30% of Americans will have 70 senators representing them.”

If America continues to polarize on geographic lines, with Americans in densely populated areas favoring Democrats and Americans in sparsely populated states preferring Republicans, that means that Republicans may soon enjoy an all-but-guaranteed majority in the United States Senate large enough to ensure that no legislation is enacted and no judge is confirmed under a Democratic president.

The anti-democratic Senate, in other words, is one of the greatest threats to American democracy that the nation will face in most Americans’ lifetimes. And it is the single most difficult one to fix.

Even if there were a supermajority of states willing to amend the Constitution to eliminate Senate malapportionment — and there won’t be, because small states would effectively be voting away their own over-representation — the Constitution forbids amendments that deny states “equal Suffrage in the Senate.” At best, that means that the Senate can only be fixed with two constitutional amendments: one to amend the amendment process itself, and the other to amend the Constitution again to fairly apportion the Senate.

There is a grave danger that American democracy’s lost decade may become a lost century. There is an equally grave danger of a crisis of legitimacy, as the 70 percent of Americans who no longer have a voice in their own government grow tired of being governed by a rural minority. But the biggest problem facing the nation is also one of the most difficult ones to solve.

While the courts are starting to wake up to the decline of American democracy, they’ve allowed this problem to fester for a very long time. And many of the most significant challenges, such as the mal-apportioned Senate, are beyond the reach of the judiciary.

Why It’s So Exhausting to Defend Trump

Bloomberg View

Why It’s So Exhausting to Defend Trump

Every time the president’s backers respond to one scandal, another one pops up.

By Albert R. Hunt January 24, 2018

Source: Getty Images

President Donald Trump’s apologists in Congress are learning that defending him is like playing whack-a-mole; every time they think they’ve knocked down some embarrassing revelation related to the Justice Department probe of Russian election meddling, something new seems to pop up.

Republican allies of the president are straining to paint the Federal Bureau of Investigation and special counsel Robert Mueller, who is leading the probe, as anti-Trump partisans. It’s feeble stuff.

The latest allegation involves five months of missing text messages between two FBI agents on the Mueller team who were involved in an investigation of Hillary Clinton. Trump and his supporters have dropped dark hints that the missing messages indicate the likelihood of a conspiracy against the president. The more plausible explanation comes from the FBI: a technical glitch resulted in improper storage of these and thousands of other text messages between December 2016 and May 2017. Mueller promptly fired the agent involved when other messages bad-mouthing Trump were discovered.

As Republicans struggled to keep that weak conspiracy theory afloat, a bigger story emerged: The fiancee of a former Trump foreign policy adviser who is now cooperating with Muller predicted that the adviser would emerge as a key figure in the inquiry. She compared him to John Dean, the White House counsel in President Richard Nixon’s White House who pleaded guilty to aiding the Watergate coverup and then became a key witness against other officials.

New scandals keep surfacing. Last week, McClatchy reported that the FBI is investigating whether a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer funneled money through the National Rifle Association to help the 2016 Trump campaign (it’s illegal to use foreign money to finance federal elections). Then came news from the Wall Street Journal that Trump’s lawyer commissioned a secret payoff to a porn star to keep her quiet about a 2006 sexual liaison with Trump.

The latest stab at distraction from the issue at the heart of the investigation — whether the Trump campaign was involved in Russia’s meddling with the presidential election — comes from House Intelligence Committee Chair Devin Nunes, a California Republican. He’s pushing for the release of classified material that he claims will show illicit activities by intelligence agencies to hurt Trump.

For most of a year, Trump and congressional defenders have also tried to undermine the credibility of Christopher Steele, the former British spy and Russia expert who authored an explosive dossier on Trump’s ties with Russia. Republicans charged that the report was full of errors, was paid for by Clinton and was a political hit job that led to Mueller’s investigation. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley and South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham called on the Justice Department to investigate Steele, a British citizen.

So far they’ve done nothing to dent the credibility of Steele, whose expertise has been praised by top U.S. intelligence officials. Steele has acknowledged that his leaked dossier was like a raw intelligence report that included unverified information. The Clinton campaign did secretly pay for much of the work without Steele’s knowledge, but it was initiated by a conservative news website funded by a big Republican donor.

The central Republican charge that the Steele dossier was the catalyst for the entire Russia inquiry also has fallen flat. It actually started in the summer of 2016, when Australian officials informed their American counterparts that George Papadopoulos, the Trump foreign policy adviser who has since pleaded guilty of lying to the FBI, had bragged to an Australian diplomat that Russia “had dirt” on Clinton. Papadopoulos is cooperating with Mueller. His fiancée, Simona Mangiante, told the Washington Post this week that he’s revealing more to the special counsel and that there’s “a lot to come.”

Grassley and others have also attacked the integrity of Glenn Simpson, the former Wall Street Journal reporter turned private investigator who hired Steele. Simpson spent a full day testifying in private session before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Grassley initially refused Simpson’s request to make a transcript public. When the Democrats forced its release later, Grassley’s motives became clear: It was the Trump defenders, not Simpson, who looked bad.

Other Trump backers on Capitol Hill, notably Representative Jim Jordan, a Freedom Caucus leader, have tried to impugn the FBI as politically motivated in the Trump probe. Representative Francis Rooney of Florida went so far as to call for a “purge” of the bureau.

The evidence so far is that the public is unconvinced. In last week’s NBC News/Wall Street Journal national poll, respondents gave the bureau positive marks by a margin of almost three to one.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

To contact the author of this story:
Albert R. Hunt at ahunt1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Jonathan Landman at jlandman4@bloomberg.net

Neil Gorsuch must recuse himself from DACA case after political talks with Senate GOP leadership

Daily Kos

Neil Gorsuch must recuse himself from DACA case after political talks with Senate GOP leadership

By Joan McCarter January 23, 2018

Of course Donald Trump’s first SCOTUS nominee is unethical.

So, this happened, and Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) was dim enough to let the whole world know about it:

Sen. Lamar Alexander: I enjoyed having dinner tonight at the home of Senator John Cornyn and his wife Sandy with our newest Supreme Court Justice, Neil Gorsuch, Transportation Secretary Chao and a few of my other Senate colleagues to talk about important issues facing our country. Jan 22, 2018

A Supreme Court Justice was at a dinner party with Elaine Chao, the wife of the Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (was he also there, Sen. Alexander?) and the number two guy in the Senate, John Cornyn to “talk about important issues facing our country.”

Let’s get some advice from long-time court reporter Nina Totenberg of NPR about that:

People often ask NPR’s Totenberg, who has known many of the justices for decades, for advice. “My experience is that people don’t really understand what they can’t talk about,” she says. “I tell them, ‘You can’t talk about a case or an issue that might come before the court. You talk about life—kids, music, movies—the things normal people talk about.'”

The issues of the day are most definitely not what a Supreme Court justice should be discussing with Republican congressional leadership. And that they had this clearly political and social get together the evening before the Supreme Court announced it will expedite considering the Trump administration’s request to overturn a judge’s ruling and allow the Trump administration to dismantle the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. Only the most pressing issue of the day. Which Gorsuch should now have to recuse himself from.

Sign the petition to Neil Gorsuch: Recuse yourself from the DACA case.

This isn’t the first time, of course, that this particularly new justice has landed in deeply, deeply political water. Back in November, writing in Politico Magazine, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren wrote about Gorsuch and his keynote speech at an event at Donald Trump’s D.C. hotel. She points out that the very day Gorsuch was making that speech, the SCOTUS announced it would hear Janus v. AFSCME, “a case that will determine whether public sector unions—which represent teachers, nurses, firefighters and police in states and cities across the country—can collect fees from all employees in the workplaces they represent” and a case in which Gorsuch will almost certainly provide the deciding vote.

Not surprisingly, Gorsuch isn’t even attempting to act like principled justice who will put the rule of law and the country before his partisanship. That he was even willing to accept the nomination for this seat, which was stolen by Republicans, from Donald Trump shows that he’s got little in the way of principles. It should be noted that the Supreme Court is not bound by the Judicial Code of Ethics that guides the rest of the federal judiciary. So while Gorsuch’s activities have been exceedingly unethical, he isn’t subject to any kind of sanction from them under the code.

But he can be impeached. So when we get to the impeachment phase of this administration, the Supreme Court has to be included.

Republican senator meets with Justice Neil Gorsuch to discuss unspecified ‘important issues’

ThinkProgress: Talk about bad optics.

Republican senator meets with Justice Neil Gorsuch to discuss unspecified ‘important issues’

Melanie Schmitz January 23, 2018

Supreme Court Justice Neal Gorsuch speaks during an event hosted by the Fund for American Studies September 28, 2017 at Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. (Credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Hours after he nearly shattered a glass elephant by tossing a “talking stick” at Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) during bipartisan spending talks on Monday (yes, that actually happened), Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) decided to buff up his image further by hastily tweeting that he was having dinner with a Supreme Court justice to discuss “important issues.”

“I enjoyed having dinner tonight at the home of Senator John Cornyn and his wife Sandy with our newest Supreme Court Justice, Neil Gorsuch, Transportation Secretary Chao and a few of my other Senate colleagues to talk about important issues facing our country,” the senior senator wrote.

Alexander’s tweet prompted a flurry of angry responses, with many concerned the event was a breach of ethics, or at best bad optics. “Is this type of dinner normal — legislators and Supreme Court justice[s]?” one Twitter user replied.

CNN analyst and former South Carolina Rep. Bakari Sellers (D) was more blunt with his criticism. “Justice Gorsuch is proving to be a cancer on our Judiciary,” he tweeted.

Objectively speaking, there’s nothing wrong with a member of Congress (or the executive branch) dining or hunting or hobnobbing with a Supreme Court justice. The late Justice Antonin Scalia, for instance, frequently went on hunting trips with his longtime friend, Vice President Dick Cheney, and famously came under fire for a particular duck-hunting trip they took three weeks after the Court agreed to hear an appeal in a case involving Cheney himself. (Scalia defended himself at the time by quacking.)

What’s troubling about Alexander’s dinner with Gorsuch, rather, is the fact that the two met to discuss unspecified “important issues facing our country” — something which Supreme Court justices are rightfully discouraged from doing, as it gives an obvious appearance of partiality and may flout certain ethics rules.

On its own, the dinner meeting might not merit more than a passing glance. The majority of judges and justices slip up occasionally, and even the most dedicated members of the Supreme Court sometimes say or do things that require damage control. (Just ask Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg.) But Gorsuch has a backlog full of questionable behavior that makes his decision to hold partisan discussions with a member of Congress concerning.

The newest justice, appointed by President Trump, has long been scrutinized for his history of siding with religious liberty advocates, famously ruling in favor of Hobby Lobby in the landmark Hobby Lobby v. Sebelius case, while serving on the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals. He has also been criticized for having an anti-LGBTQ bias, one which bled into a recent dissent he wrote in a case involving two same-sex parents who sought to have both their names listed on their child’s birth certificate. However it’s his decision to blur the line between his life on the bench and his private activities that has many ethics groups troubled.

The Supreme Court is abandoning legitimacy for partisanship

What happens when the Supreme Court ignores the line between law and politics?

In September, Gorsuch was criticized by watchdog groups for delivering a speech to a conservative group at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. His remarks were far from the center of the controversy; many justices have chosen to speak to similarly partisan audiences before. Instead, because Trump refuses to divest himself from his interests in the property, activists argued Gorsuch was personally enriching the president, who continues to rake in its profits. When faced with those claims, a spokesperson for the Fund for American Studies, which organized the event, denied that the group had chosen the venue with Trump’s bank account in mind.

The venue choice wasn’t the only potential conflict of interest Gorsuch faced: the Fund for American Studies itself is partially funded by the Milwaukee-based Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, which has poured millions of dollars into anti-union causes. The same day Gorsuch delivered his speech, the Supreme Court also agreed to hear arguments challenging mandatory union fees in public sector jobs.

Prior to Gorsuch’s appointment, the Court had been deadlocked, 4-4.

“Setting aside the glaring conflict of interest in Gorsuch helping to enrich a Trump property just as several cases charging that the president is violating the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution are making their way through the judicial system, the group he addressed is funded by the same people funding the effort to dismantle unions that Gorsuch and his fellow justices agreed to take up,” Salon Deputy Politics Editor Sophia Tesfaye wrote that month.

It’s unclear what kinds of “important issues” were discussed during Gorsuch and Sen. Alexander’s meeting on Monday night. It’s entirely possible the “issues” Alexander was referring to were whether the Supreme Court should require justices to don funny wigs, à la British judges and barristers. Whatever the case, it was one more example of bad decision-making that Justice Gorsuch simply didn’t need on his record.

This article has been updated to correct a typo in the description of Gorsuch’s potential conflict of interest. An earlier version stated that the meeting could give the appearance of “impartiality.” It has been amended to read “partiality.”

Public records show how much House Republican will gain from the tax law he repeatedly lied about

ThinkProgress

Public records show how much House Republican will gain from the tax law he repeatedly lied about

Rep. Jeff Denham has been misrepresenting the GOP’s tax law, which could save him more than $100,000 this year.

Addy Baird January 22, 2018

Rep. Jeff Denham, R-Calif., participates in a news conference on bipartisan legislation to address the deferred action for childhood arrivals (DACA) program and border security on Tuesday January 16, 2018. Credit: Photo by Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call

Rep. Jeff Denham (R-CA) has repeatedly lied about the effects of the GOP’s tax plan — a plan from which he stands to handsomely benefit, according to public records.

The tax plan, which was signed into law by President Trump late last year, gives owners of pass-through companies — businesses that don’t pay income taxes at the corporate level but rather allocate income across owners who then pay income taxes — their own new, lower rate. And according to public records, Denham made between $115,503 and $1,053,000 in business and rental income from LLCs (pass-through entities) in 2016.

Additionally, Denham’s salary in 2016 was a little more than $200,000. Ultimately, that means that Denham could fall into one of three new tax brackets created under his party’s new tax plan — 32 percent, 35 percent, or 37 percent — all of which would result in big savings for him personally. The congressman’s business and rental tax savings alone under GOP tax plan would, based on his public filings, range from between $8,547 an astounding $105,300.

But Denham has been lying about the effects of the bill throughout the process of crafting and passing the legislation. Last November, Denham said it was “just not true” that the GOP tax plan ultimately raises taxes on middle-class people. In an interview with KQED, Denham interrupted the host who mentioned analyses that found the tax cut for middle-income earners were merely temporary.

“Yeah, that’s just not true,” Denham cut in. “It’s very obvious.”

Expert analyses show that by 2023, 60 percent of Americans will face a tax hike or see no change in their taxes, and by 2027, a quarter of taxpayers will be paying more in taxes.

In the same interview with KQED, Denham said, “I’ve had constituents that have called in and they’ve actually run the numbers themselves, I’ve got their own testimonies. You know, when you factor in the expansion of the Child Tax Credit, ultimately it’s a very large savings here for the people in my district.”

But according to a report from The Center for American Progress (ThinkProgress is an editorially independent outlet housed in CAP), the tax law will have devastating effects on many people in Denham’s home state of California. According to the report, which analyzed the version of the bill from November that Denham was defending, more than 3.7 million people in the bottom 80 percent of the state’s income distribution would see their taxes increase by 2027.

In November, Denham also rejected the fact that eliminating the state and local income tax (SALT) deduction would hurt those he represents, according to local media.

But Denham was wrong in that front, too. In 2015, more than six million taxpayers in California claimed the SALT deduction, more than any other state. And as the California Budget and Policy Center outlined in November, eliminating the SALT deduction effectively means millions of Californians are being double taxed, a tax increase that forces Denham’s constituents and other Californians to pay for tax breaks for the wealthy and mostly benefits other states.

Some parts of the bill were changed in the final version, including capping rather than eliminating SALT, but Denham continues to misrepresent even the most basic aspects of the law.

The cherry on top is this: Denham claims it’s a lie to say that the GOP tax law is loaded with giveaways for corporations and the wealthy. After the tax bill passed, one of Denham’s Democratic challengers, a woman named Virginia Madueno, said the tax bill was “loaded with giveaways to big corporations and the wealthiest of the wealthy, while leaving table scraps for the rest of us,” Denham responded in a tweet.

Our Military Spending is Out of Control

Ro Khanna‘s post to the group: Veterans against the G.O.P

Ro Khanna

As many Republicans demand another huge increase in military spending, here is a reminder that we already spend more on defense than the next eight countries combined.

The US Has Military Bases in 172 Countries. All of Them Must Close.

The Nation

The US Has Military Bases in 172 Countries. All of Them Must Close.

US bases are wreaking havoc to the health and well-being of communities across the world.

By Alice Slater January 24, 2018

People protest the planned relocation of a US military base in Japan to Okinawa’s Henoko coast on April 17, 2015.(Reuters / Issei Kato)

On the weekend of Martin Luther King Day, Baltimore University fittingly hosted more than 200 activists in the peace, environment, and social-justice movements to launch a timely new initiative, the Coalition Against US Foreign Military Bases. Ajamu Baraka, Green Party vice-presidential candidate and co-founder of the Black Alliance for Peace, opened the meeting reminding us that Reverend King, in his historic anti-war speech more than 50 years ago at Riverside Church in New York, called the government of the United States “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today” adding that “the war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit,” while warning that “a nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.” Taking on the very nature of capitalism, King further insisted that

We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

In a series of panels over two days, conference speakers from every corner of the globe proceeded to describe the extraordinary cruelty and toxic lethality of US foreign policy despite King’s warning more than 50 years ago. We learned that the United States has approximately 800 formal military bases in 172 countries, a number that could exceed 1,000 if you count troops stationed at embassies and missions and so-called “lily-pond” bases, with some 138,000 soldiers stationed around the globe. David Vine, author of Base Nation: How U.S. Military Bases Overseas Harm America and the World, reported that only 11 other countries have bases in foreign countries, some 70 altogether. Russia has an estimated 26 to 40 in nine countries, mostly former Soviet Republics, as well as in Syria and Vietnam; the UK, France, and Turkey have four to 10 bases each; and an estimated one to three foreign bases are occupied by India, China, Japan, South Korea, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands.

And, apart from the bases, there are other harmful US military impacts in many countries around the globe, which uproot many communities. John Lannon, of Ireland’s Shannonwatch works to end US military use of the civilian airport at Shannon, Ireland. The United States has flown more than 3 million troops and weapons through Shannon, en route to military actions despite Ireland’s decision not to join NATO and its official policy of military neutrality. James Patrick Jordan, with the Alliance for Global Justice, reported that after 9/11 the Northern Command of the US Pentagon added the training of many troops in Latin American countries in order to send them abroad to fight in US wars in other countries.

Peace and environmental activists from every region around the globe shared their experiences protesting the devastating environmental and health impacts caused by US military bases, which are wreaking havoc to health and well-being in so many communities. From Agent Orange in Vietnam, depleted uranium in Iraq, and munitions dumps and firing ranges in Vieques, Puerto Rico, to a toxic brew of poisons along the Potomac River, communities and soldiers as well as children born subsequent to exposure to these toxins are suffering a broad range of illnesses and inherited genetic damage, while the US government ducks any accountability for the harm caused by its mindless dumping and reckless burial of untreated toxic military wastes. Indeed, while some of the United States’ so-called “peer” nations, like Germany, have successfully sued for funds for clean-up of military bases after the US left them in dreadful condition, countries in Latin America, Asia, or Africa have been unable to hold the US to account, which is more evidence of the white patriarchy exercising its privilege, as we learned from Patricia Hynes, a former professor of environmental health at Boston University who won the US EPA Lifetime Achievement award and has created the Vietnam Peace Village Project to support third- and fourth-generation Agent Orange victims.

David Swanson, introducing the panel on US militarism in South America, observed:

Modern imperialism is unique to the US. US exceptionalism justifies imperial bullying and is a prominent sentiment we may have to cure. US nationalism has a religious character. Its destructive mission is imagined as sacred. Fort McHenry is not a historic site—it’s a “National Monument and Historic Shrine.” We may have to learn to value other things including the other 96 percent of humanity before the empire shuts down.

The global breadth of the participants was striking as we heard from activists in Asia, Europe, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East, all ready and willing to expand this new network and work, not just to close down US bases, but as many expressed so eloquently, to dismantle the US empire and its patriarchal, racist, colonial policies that are causing such harm around the world. At the end of the meeting we decided to reach out and expand our coalition and took the following actions:

Resolution on Global Day of Actions Against Guantanamo (February 23, 2018)
Resolution on a National Day of Anti-War Action in Spring 2018

Most importantly, we agreed to hold a larger international conference abroad, within one year of the date of this beginning to hasten the end of the empire that subjugates people and destroys the ecosphere in order to maintain its cruel economic system. To add your voice and participate, see www.noforeignbases.org.

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Alice Slater is the New York Director of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, and serves on the Coordinating Committee of World Beyond War.

Air Pollution Is Killing Millions Around The Globe Each Year

HuffPost

Air Pollution Is Killing Millions Around The Globe Each Year

Erin Schumaker, HuffPost January 23, 2018

A thick smog settled over New Delhi as winter began in India last year, forcing medical professionals to declare a public health emergency.

Residents swarmed local hospitals complaining of respiratory problems. Cricket players were forced to put on anti-pollution masks during a national match between India and Sri Lanka. And United Airlines canceled flights into the city, citing the air-quality concerns.

Air pollution isn’t among the causes of death that medical examiners list on death certificates, but the health conditions linked to air pollution exposure, such as lung cancer and emphysema, are often fatal. Air pollution was responsible for 6.1 million deaths and accounted for nearly 12 percent of the global death toll in 2016, the last year for which data was available, according the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.

Heavy smog engulfed Gurgaon, India, a city southwest of New Delhi in North India. The air quality index was at 320, which agencies consider unfit for inhalation even by healthy people and which made commuting difficult. December 2017. (Sanjeev Verma/Hindustan Times via Getty Images) “Air pollution is one of the great killers of our age,” Philip Landrigan of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai wrote in an article published in the medical journal The Lancet.

India’s late environment minister, Anil Madhav Dave, made headlines last year for denying there was proof that air pollution was singularly responsible for death in India. Dave conceded that air pollution “could be one of the triggering factors for respiratory associated ailments and diseases,” but he blamed the negative health effects on other issues: poor diet, occupational hazards, socioeconomic status and genetics.

Dave died in May 2017 from cardiac arrest. The new environment minister, Harsh Vardhan, has also said that “to attribute any death to a cause like pollution, that may be too much.”

But there are numerous studies linking air pollution to morbidity around world.

“There is a huge amount of data linking outdoor and indoor air pollution with adverse health effects, including acute and chronic disease, exacerbations of chronic disease and death,” said Dr. Barry Levy, adjunct professor of public health at Tufts University School of Medicine.

The right to breathe is, you would think, the most fundamental right ― more than food, more than water. And that right is being seriously compromised right now. Mayur Sharma, TV personality

Of the 6.1 million air pollution death in 2016, 4.1 million are attributable to outdoor, or ambient, air pollution, according to IHME. Such pollution comes from sources like vehicles, coal-fired power plants and steel mills. Household, or indoor, air pollution is a more pressing problem in low-income countries due to the use of indoor fires for cooking and heat, and it’s linked to an estimated 2.6 million deaths per year. (In India at least, the total air pollution death rate has declined since 1990 even as the outdoor death rate went up in recent years ― due largely to a decrease in the number of deaths attributable to indoor air pollution. Scientists don’t completely understand how ambient and household air pollution deaths interact, and there’s some overlap between them, which is why the sum of ambient and household air pollution deaths exceeds total air pollution deaths.)

Developing countries bear the brunt of the world’s pollution problem

Air pollution is undoubtedly a global public health problem, but not all countries are equally affected.

As many as 1.6 million deaths were attributable to air pollution in India in 2016, according to IHME. That same year, all air pollution was linked to almost 123 out of every 100,000 deaths in the country ― among the highest in the world.

“When it comes to the number of deaths from air pollution, India is No. 1,” Landrigan told HuffPost.

Afghanistan and several African countries have higher ambient air pollution death rates than India, likely because of the extremely dusty conditions in those countries, combined with other pollution sources, like vehicle emissions and crop burning.

“With globalization, mining and manufacturing shifted to poorer countries, where environmental regulations and enforcement can be lax,” Karti Sandilya, one of the authors on the Lancet Commission on Pollution and Health, told Reuters. “People in poorer countries ― like construction workers in New Delhi ― are more exposed to air pollution and less able to protect themselves from exposure, as they walk, bike or ride the bus to workplaces that may also be polluted.”

North India’s topography makes its pollution problem worse, Vox noted in November. The region acts as a basin, trapping pollution from crop burning outside the city and mixing it with industrial pollution from within city limits. And that mix of pollution sources is most intense during the coldest months of the year.

In fact, the problem is getting so bad that some people are moving out of New Delhi altogether. Television personality Mayur Sharma is perhaps the most notable example: He left his job and moved his family out of the capital to escape the pollution.

“The right to breathe is, you would think, the most fundamental right ― more than food, more than water. And that right is being seriously compromised right now,” Sharma told NPR.

As India’s economy has expanded, the country has struggled to keep up with the environmental costs of that growth. Premature deaths from air pollution have stabilized in China, which rivals India in terms of pollution problems and population. That stabilization occurred partly because China has used fines and criminal charges to crack down on pollution. India’s government, however, seems more focused on economic growth than on protecting air quality and the environment.

King's Way in New Delhi is seen shrouded in smog on Dec. 4, 2017. (Anindito Mukherjee via Getty Images)

Air pollution ― and climate change ― link the global community in deadly ways

Because air pollution and related health problems can travel, no country can solve its air pollution problem alone.

Air pollution from Chinese consumption was linked to an estimated 3,100 premature deaths in the U.S and Western Europe in 2007, according to an article published last year in the journal Nature. At the same time, nearly 110,000 premature deaths in China were linked to pollution prompted by consumption in the U.S. and Western European.

“Air pollution can travel long distances and cause health impacts in downwind regions,” Qiang Zhang, co-author of the article and a researcher at Tsinghua University in Beijing, explained to Popular Science.

“Air pollution doesn’t care about political boundaries.” Kirk Smith, professor of global environmental health at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Public Health.

Climate change will likely exacerbate those global concerns, according to public health experts.

They anticipate that climate change will trigger a host of public health problems, including heat- and cold-related deaths, increased disease risk and mental health problems from climate displacement and extreme weather conditions.

Climate change also contributes to air pollution trends ― hotter temperatures increase wildfire risk, and wildfires create ambient air pollution. It also increases ground-level ozone, which is a main ingredient in urban smog, and can trigger health problems like chest pain, throat irritation and lung inflammation, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

“Higher temperatures are expected to increase the rate of ozone formation,” Levy said.

This makes it even more crucial for local, national and intergovernmental organizations to join forces to address air pollution.

As Kirk Smith, a professor of global environmental health at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Public Health, put it, “Air pollution doesn’t care about political boundaries.”

The American Republiban

John Hanno January 20, 2018

The American Republiban

The self imposed burden Republi-cons are saddled with, their mis-educated and anti-fact base of supporters they fawn over and rely on to remain relevant, is shrinking and becoming ever more extreme. Almost 60,000 of these elderly voters die every month. They proclaim to represent an alternative to the Grand Old Party – the Eisenhower / Rockefeller Republicans, an alternative “Alt Right” doctrine. What they really expound, is an ultimate “Ult Right” ideology. This new, poorly educated Republiban, immune to critical thinking, is much older and almost exclusively white and Christian. They profess racial purity, nativism, intolerance to humanism or secularism or other religions, exhibit a reckless aversion to history and science and exalt a single minded worship of wealth and exclusivity. Their moral compass has flipped true North.

Having drifted so far from traditional conservative principles, they’ve clearly forfeited any traditional fiscal argument, and with it, the cudgel routinely used to browbeat Democrats trying to help the poor or bolster America’s crumbling middle-class social and monetary infrastructures.

To embellish millionaires and billionaires and thriving multi-national corporations and their investors, who’ve all prospered like never before, with generous tax cuts that balloon the national debt, is not fiscally conservative. To prescribe their tax cut scam as a stimulus to an already thriving economy is not fiscally conservative and might achieve just the opposite. To work day and night for years, to cripple the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which finally slowed escalating insurance premiums and our national healthcare burden, is not fiscally conservative.

To wontonly repeal bipartisan regulations, implemented after decades of debate and evaluation, to guard against the monumental and costly remedies required to correct catastrophic environmental and fiscal disasters, is not fiscally conservative. These Republibaners disregard sound climate science and years of bipartisan environmental legislation culminating in Republican president Nixon signing the bill establishing the Environmental Protection Agency on December 2, 1970.

They disregard milestones of American environmental calamity and redemption, including Rachel Carson’s 1962 book Silent Spring, exposing widespread pesticide poisoning of man and nature; and Congress passing the 1969 National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), charging the government to “become the protector of earth, air, land and water.” The law declared Congress’s intentions to “create and maintain conditions under which man and nature can exist in productive harmony, and “assure for all Americans safe, healthful, productive, aesthetically and culturally pleasing surroundings.

New York City before EPA

New York Harbor 1970

The law also compelled all federal agencies to submit reports (Environmental Impact Statements, EIS’s) for all projects bearing on the environment, and also directed the President to prepare annual Environmental Quality Reports for Congress. When President Nixon signed the bill on New Years Day 1970, he said: “he had become further convinced that the 1970’s absolutely must be the years when America pays its debt to the past by reclaiming the purity of it’s air, it’s waters and our living environment.” “It is literally now or never.”

In short, America’s environment had become a giant shit-hole.

Highlighting this new focus in his State of the Union a few weeks later, Nixon “proclaimed the new decade a period of environmental transformation.” Nixon’s first Environmental Quality Report to Congress on February 10th, contained 37-points. Included in this report, he requested $4 billion for improvements to water treatment facilities. He asked for national air quality standards, a program to lower motor vehicle emissions and federally funded research on reducing automobile pollution. He also ordered a clean-up of federal facilities that contributed to the pollution of the air and water. He sought legislation to end the dumping of wastes into the Great Lakes. He proposed a tax on lead in gasoline. He sent congress a plan on strengthening safeguards on the transportation of oil over the seas. He instituted a National Contingency Plan for remediation of oil spills.

First Earth Day 1970

Public protest and demonstrations on Earth Day 1970 and the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1970 were the turning points in America’s environmental consciousness – the realization that air and water pollution must be a national priority; and also the impetus for the creation of the EPA and Nixon’s confirming signature on December 2, 1970. And the scores of toxic super-fund sites discovered throughout the 1980’s, supercharged efforts to begin healing our environment.

The Cuyahoga River Ignites. Cleavland, Ohio – 1969.

But every one of these environmental programs and more, are under siege, face elimination or reductions by our current, non-conservative and toxic, fossil fuel pandering Republi-con president, the Republi-con controlled congress and Environmental Protection Agency destroyer in charge, Scott Pruitt.

Los Angeles Air Pollution

They’ve quickly rolled back the latest automobile CAFE standards implemented by the Obama administration. This administrations relentless attacks on environmental regulations, began during their first few days in power, with trump reversing President Obama’s rejection of the Dakota Access Pipeline completion, without waiting for the Congressionally mandated Environmental Impact Statement. trump also quickly reversed President Obama by approving the Keystone XL pipeline without a full and comprehensive environmental impact study.

Scott Pruitt, who’s vigorously tried to dismantle environmental regulations and downsize the agency, has also attempted to undermine environmental enforcement actions by the Justice Department. He removed critical climate change and global warming information on the agencies website and ordered employees to not use those words or speak on those issues. Coupled with the attacks on President Obama’s Clean Water Act, the opening of America’s oceans and wilderness areas to oil exploration, and the trump administrations plans to hand over America’s public lands and National Monuments and Parks to fossil fuel and mining interests, these anti-conservatives will single-handedly attempt to reverse much of the progress made since the early days of the environmental movement.

No National Park or Monument or section of public land, set aside over the centuries by past presidents, is safe from these evildoers. Many of the regulations and protections proposed and passed for our environment and public lands were both Republican and conservative bipartisan initiatives. But this administration is not interested in protecting Americans, their environment or their National treasures, only in paying back their omnipotent campaign donors like the Koch brothers.

How far has this Ult Right, alternative reality, alternative fact collection of anti-conservatives, drifted from the Grand Old Party? The 1956 Republican Party Platform is but a distant memory.

Americans overwhelmingly believe in entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, believe health care is a right, not a privilege, believe in the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) and Medicaid for those who need it, believe in protecting our environment – our air and water, believe in sensible regulations, want work place protections for workers, believe Dreamers should be protected and offered a path to citizenship, want our National Parks and Monuments preserved, not exploited for private corporate gain and believe in a fair tax system, not one heavily favoring the rich and politically connected.

These Ult Right, flag waving Republi-con pseudo Constitutional purists don’t believe in responsible governance or, for that matter, in government at all, don’t believe in entitlement programs or welfare, don’t believe in fair play or a level playing field, couldn’t care less about America’s ballooning income inequality, don’t really believe in Democratic principles and honestly believe political compromise in any form is just total capitulation.

This Ult Right only lauds our founding fathers, their Democratic blueprints – our Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, if it suits their political agenda. They tout States Rights when the Federal Government finds it necessary to step into the fray to protect American’s rights, as they did during the Civil Rights movement in the South. But then extol Federal supremacy, when Progressive States find it necessary to protect their citizens from Federal malfeasance like the trump administrations attacks on environmental and workplace regulations and policies; or when cities or States attempt any sensible gun regulations.

Their latest vitriol is directed at the First Amendment. Republican Senator Jeff Flake took to the floor of the U.S. Senate this week to call out trump for constantly referring to the media as “enemies of the people,” and to defend the U.S. Constitution.

Sen. Flake opened with the Declaration of Independence, by saying Thomas Jefferson wrote, “We Hold These Truths to Be Self Evident”. He said trump infamously uses words spoken by Josef Stalin to describe his enemies. He said: “it bears noting that so fraught with malice, the phrase “enemy of the people,” that even Nikita Khrushchev forbade its use, telling the Soviet Communist Party, that the phrase was introduced by Stalin for the purpose of “annihilating such individuals who disagreed with the supreme leader.”

He also quoted a John F. Kennedy speech for the 20th anniversary of The Voice Of America. “We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let it’s people judge the truth and falsehoods in an open market, is a nation afraid of its people. He said a free press is not the enemy of the people. Despotism is the enemy of the people and a free press is the despots enemy. He referred to George Orwell’s book 1984 and said Orwell warned: “The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those who speak it.”

Based on the number of lies trump has told (over 2,000 since entering the White House) and the fairy tales that his cabinet, the Republican controlled congress and his supporters have applauded, excused and disregarded, the GOP is in for a whole bunch of hate, especially from the trump voters who were hoodwinked and who may come to their senses before the 2018 mid-term elections.

The Republi-con “family values platform”, arguably always a false identity, has been blown apart. To support a president who’s so far removed from Christian doctrine and the virtues and teachings of Jesus Christ, is not family values. And wayward Evangelicals have cast their lot with a devilish messiah who may deliver them unto oblivion. The latest blasphemy exhibited by prominent Evangelical leaders was exposed by the Wall Street Journal this week. To excuse and justify the $130,000 payment to a porn star to cover up a year long affair while trump was married to Melania and just after she gave birth to their son is the height of hypocrisy. These same religious popinjays spent years preachifying about Bill Clinton’s indiscretions.

trump’s attempts at reimaging, this pandering political party of the rich and powerful and multi-national, connected corporations, with a phony populist agenda, is laughable, if it weren’t so destructive. Supporting the Koch Brothers anti-labor ALEC legislative agenda breaks every promise he made to desperate rust belt workers during the election. And for con-man-in-chief trump to offer false hope to out of work steel workers and coal miners shackled to a dying industry is beyond cruel.

trump has no core set of beliefs, no modicum of integrity; he cares for no one but himself. His egocentric self obsession is boundless. He only admires people who’ve amassed fortunes, no matter how they attained that wealth, and dismisses and devalues anyone who labors for a paycheck.

Nothing is normal, or traditional or conservative about this president, his Ult Right administration or the Republi-con controlled congress. Those who’ve attempted to normalize trump’s un-presidential antics, his immoral character flaws, his obsession with undermining everything President Obama accomplished, his unfailing allegiance to Vladimir Putin and the Russians, his infatuation with autocratic despots and anti-democratic fiat, and his self dealing and conflicted and criminal business ethics – will regret, like the dozens of folks already expelled from his administration, any association with this trump travesty.

America will survive trump but the GOP and the Christian Right may not.

Paul Ryan Collected $500,000 In Koch Contributions Days After House Passed Tax Law

HuffPost

Paul Ryan Collected $500,000 In Koch Contributions Days After House Passed Tax Law

Mary Papenfuss, HuffPost January 20, 2018

Just days after the House passed its version of the federal tax law slashing corporate tax rates, House Speaker Paul Ryan collected nearly $500,000 in campaign contributions from billionaire energy mogul Charles Koch and his wife, according to a recent campaign donor report.

Koch and his brother David spent millions of dollars to get the tax law passed and are spending millions more in a public relations campaign in an attempt to boost support for the law, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Koch Industries, one of the largest private corporations in the nation, operates refineries and manufactures a variety of products. The new tax law — which slices corporate tax rates from 35 percent to 21 percent, slashes estate taxes and includes a special deduction for oil and gas investors — is expected to save the Koch brothers and their businesses billions of dollars in taxes.

Just 13 days after the tax law was passed, Charles Koch and his wife, Elizabeth, donated nearly $500,000 to Ryan’s joint fundraising committee, according to a campaign finance report filed Thursday.

Five other donors, including billionaire businessmen Jeffery Hildebrand and William Parfet and William Parfet, each contributed $100,000 in the last quarter of 2017, according to the records.

“It looks like House Speaker Ryan is quickly being rewarded for passing this legislation that overwhelmingly benefits the Kochs and billionaires like them,” Adam Smith, spokesman for campaign finance reform nonprofit Every Voice, told the International Business Times, which first reported the Koch contributions.

The Koch donations were paid into Team Ryan, which raises money for the speaker, the National Republican Congressional Committee and a PAC run by Ryan. On the same day, Charles and Elizabeth Koch also each donated $237,000 to the NRCC.

The Koch brothers, worth an estimated $100 billion together, have become the gorillas of dark money contributions distorting American democracy since the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. FEC, which opened the door to unlimited campaign contributions from corporations, unions and wealthy individuals to outside groups. The brothers are using their massive wealth to push a political agenda that’s the “most hard-line libertarian philosophy” in America, according to Jane Mayer, author of Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right.

Ryan has indicated that he won’t run again when his term is up this year, Politico reported, though he hasn’t made an official announcement. If he doesn’t run, his contributions would be redirected.

Clarification: Language in this story has been updated to better describe the Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. FEC.