|
Senate Democrats Need to Go Nuclear on Trumpcare Right Now |
 |
|
Wednesday, 14 June 2017 14:24 |
|
Chang writes: "Senate Democrats need to go nuclear on Trumpcare right now. Senate Republicans are working to fast-track a health care bill in utmost secrecy before the July 4 recess."
The top three Democrats in leadership are Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer and Jim Clyburn. (photo: AP)
Senate Democrats Need to Go Nuclear on Trumpcare Right Now
By Clio Chang, New Republic
14 June 17
 enate Democrats need to go nuclear on Trumpcare right now.
Senate Republicans are working to fast-track a health care bill in utmost secrecy before the July 4 recess. It’s clear that the bill—which is shaping up to be as disastrous as the House-passed American Health Care Act—won’t be let out of the dungeon until the very last second to avoid scrutiny. Republicans aren’t planning to hold any hearings and they won’t publicly release a draft of their bill because, as one senior GOP Senate aide told Axios, “We aren’t stupid.”
If Mitch McConnell and the Republican majority want to pass a bill taking away health insurance from some 20 million Americans, there isn’t much that Democrats can do about it in the end. But they can delay the process—and activists are pushing them to do just that. Groups like Indivisible and Move On want Democrats to withhold consent—a parliamentary maneuver that slows down Senate business—to trip up McConnell. According to Jeff Stein at Vox, Senate Democrats don’t have any current plans to do so. They argue that “going nuclear” would only unify Republicans in their resolve and would, at most, stall the inevitable by a few weeks:
But those few weeks can be vital. When the House passed the AHCA in May, speed was of the essence: Activists were caught flat-footed and were unable to put pressure on House members in full force. The political theater of Senate Democrats making a last stand to delay the bill would help garner more publicity for that effort. More importantly, it would shine a light on what Republicans are doing: They are jamming through a massive overhaul of the health care system in secret, one that will likely kick millions of Americans off their health insurance, literally leaving some people to die by 2018.
Trumpcare is extremely unpopular and people don’t want cuts to programs like Medicaid. People also want affordable health care! This is a no-brainer fight for Democrats to pick. Right now, the news cycle is (rightfully) completely bonkers about Trump and Russia, with James Comey’s testimony last week and Jeff Sessions’s scheduled for later this afternoon. It’s easy for the Republican health care bill to get lost in the shuffle. Senate Democrats can’t let that happen.
 |
|
FOCUS: Taking a Break From the News |
|
|
Wednesday, 14 June 2017 12:03 |
|
Keillor writes: "My daughter and wife were alongside me and we were off to Europe for a break from the news. Our mad king had essentially been indicted in sworn testimony, and he claimed vindication and offered to testify under oath, forgetting the one he'd taken in January. Crazy times; it's good to go away."
From historic Grou in the Netherlands, you can view the Restaurant De Vrijheid. (photo: Selina Kok)
Taking a Break From the News
By Garrison Keillor, The Washington Post
14 June 17
 he sign by my seat said, “Fasten seatbelt whilst seated,” so clearly it was a British airline. My daughter and wife were alongside me and we were off to Europe for a break from the news. Our mad king had essentially been indicted in sworn testimony, and he claimed vindication and offered to testify under oath, forgetting the one he’d taken in January. Crazy times; it’s good to go away.
In London, the Brits were voting themselves into a deadlock, and the backrooms were busy with desperate dealmaking, according to the papers, but none of it affected us. We were quite happy whilst we strolled about.
In our hotel, I took a shower and saw that on the shower knob, in between Hot and Cold was the word “Tepid,” and that was enough to make me consider emigration. The engineer who designed that knob loved the language. It is the richest language in widespread use today, and “tepid” is a useful and lovely word. An American engineer would regard this as pointless — logic tells you that in between Hot and Cold is something in-between, lukewarm or moderate or room- temperature, lackadaisical, halfhearted, nondescript, whatever — and the use of “tepid” would be effete and elitist and unmanly and cause other engineers to avoid you in the cafeteria. Best to just use H and C. Or a red dot and a blue dot. A country where engineers are fond of language is a country I could be happy in, never mind politics.
We took a fast train to Brussels — 180?mph — and another to Rotterdam and walked along a canal, five-story brick tenements with bay windows and belfries, arched passageways leading to walled gardens behind, and on one corner a little cafe where we sat down at a table in a patch of sunlight.
The server who approached said, “Hey,” and handed us menus. Holland is a small country with a long history of trade and shipping, so it is multilingual, and she was prepared, I’m sure, for us to speak Dutch, German, French, English or a combination. We, being Americans, chose English, and ordered croissants and coffee, speaking quietly lest people around us hear our accents and ask us about the current administration.
The people around us, however, were deep into their own conversations. Even a table of four teenagers was engrossed in talk, none of them fingering an iPhone, texting, posting or checking voicemail, but looking each other in the face and speaking as young people in America used to do, except these were speaking Dutch.
The next morning we boarded a ship bound for Oslo and stood at the aft rail, inhaling salt air, watching the gulls swooping down low looking for fish vacuumed up in the ship’s wake, and I thought about the great armada of June 1944 that crossed over to Normandy in the predawn hours.
My old phys-ed teacher Stan Nelson was manning a Navy observation boat in that armada and steered it close to the shore to get a read on the state of German resistance. He never mentioned this in the ’50s when I was in his gym class. He simply kept a close watch for shirkers who tried to weasel out of doing the rope climb or the diving somersault over the horse. “Keillor, get back in line,” he yelled. I think of him plying these waters in his little boat. Did the Navy teach him sufficient French that if his boat got blown up and he had to swim to shore, he could ask a farm family to hide him in the barn?
The Europeans have a history of dealing with the madness of rulers; we do not. Lyndon Johnson was vain and dramatic and at times dishonest, but he had some principles and pushed through the Civil Rights Act and Medicare and thereby changed the country for the better.
Now here is a president who communicates in little specks and splats of twitters, leaving his minions to try to say clearly what, if anything, he thinks. The country will weary of this, the dead eyes, the heavy scowl, the jutting chin. The man’s base will discover eventually that he is a carnival hoax, the Cardiff Giant, the Wild Man of Borneo who eats live chickens. You can’t fool 40 percent of the people 90 percent of the time.
Meanwhile, honorable Republicans who have dedicated their lives to public service sit in committee and listen to insanity. If a man with a pistol in hand walks into a 7-Eleven and asks for money and his defense attorney explains that he was only asking for a loan, the gun was not loaded and the handkerchief over his face was for purposes of sanitation, this is a joke, right? Am I right? And if the courtroom takes it seriously, then we must bring in the psychiatrists.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=63"><span class="small">Marc Ash, Reader Supported News</span></a>
|
|
Wednesday, 14 June 2017 08:51 |
|
Ash writes: "The core allegations against Donald Trump, many of his closest associates, and Russian intelligence actors are light years more serious than those at the heart of the 1972 break-in at DNC headquarters in the Watergate Office Building."
Special Council and former FBI director Robert S. Mueller III. (photo: AP)
What’s To Be Done About Trump?
By Marc Ash, Reader Supported News
14 June 17
he core allegations against Donald Trump, many of his closest associates, and Russian intelligence actors are light years more serious than those at the heart of the 1972 break-in at DNC headquarters in the Watergate Office Building.
Although it does bear noting that each case involved an intrusion into DNC files, the most recent incursion involved Russian intelligence allegedly acting on behalf of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in an effort to defeat his opponent, Democrat Hillary Clinton. The foreign actor introduces the national security component, and that makes it a far more serious matter than Watergate.
On the table is an active FBI investigation into, among other things, foreign espionage that absolutely appears to include now President Donald Trump.
The threshold for evidence that would lead to indictment and/or impeachment has long since been exceeded. The remaining hurdles are political, not legal. We’re there, and really have been for months. The irrefutable evidence in the public domain alone is overwhelming.
In addition the FBI, and now the special counsel appointed to investigate Trump and his associates, are sitting on troves of evidence not yet in the public domain. That is why Trump fired FBI director James Comey and is now considering firing Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Their investigations threaten him, and he is doing everything he can to impede them.
The most clarifying thing about Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee is that there is no chance whatsoever that Congress will do anything to sanction in any way President Donald Trump or any of his subordinates.
The Congressional committees investigating the Trump-Russia affair are categorically, politically polarized. All relevant committees are controlled by Republicans who will not under any circumstances allow any Congressional proceeding to threaten Republican control of every branch of government, which they now enjoy, and are absolutely willing to obstruct any path that leads to the undermining of a Republican president. Regardless of the volume or veracity of evidence.
The colorful pronouncements of “bipartisan cooperation in the best interest of the nation’s security” are purely for public relations and political benefit. The reality is that, in the end, Congress will do nothing. Which leads to the unavoidable question, what is to be done? Who will act?
The only legal entity that has the capacity to bring President Donald Trump to account is Special Counsel and former FBI director Robert S. Mueller III. The FBI under acting director Andrew McCabe could potentially challenge the president’s administration legally, or potentially criminally, but could not prosecute without the sanction of the Justice Department.
This leads to the question of Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ on again/off again recusal from the entire Trump-Russia matter, or was it? Ostensibly a recusal is a recusal, unless it’s a fake recusal, or unless the director of the FBI is getting too close to your boss. In which case you ignore your recusal, fire him for investigating the Trump-Russia matter, and call it a routine supervisory function.
So depending upon whether Sessions feels recused or un-recused on the day that someone at the DoJ needs to make a decision on prosecuting any member of the executive branch, we’ll find out if anything whatsoever can be done to rein in Donald Trump, regardless of what he has done.
In theory, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein would make such decisions in light of his boss’s recusal, but the way that played out in the firing of James Comey is a sure indicator that Sessions’ recusal was a nothing more than a fig leaf that can be removed at any time.
In reality the Fourth Estate, as flawed as it is, represents the greatest, most effective challenge to Donald Trump’s insanity, period. The vaunted American system of governmental checks and balances now appears to have been a myth all along.
Bad time to find out.
Marc Ash is the founder and former Executive Director of Truthout, and is now founder and Editor of Reader Supported News.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
|
|
"No Is Not Enough": Naomi Klein on Challenging Trump's Shock Doctrine Politics |
|
|
Tuesday, 13 June 2017 14:36 |
|
Excerpt: "As President Trump is sued by the attorneys general of Maryland and Washington, D.C., for 'unprecedented constitutional violations' and as another federal appeals court rejects Trump's Muslim ban, we spend the hour with best-selling writer Naomi Klein."
Naomi Klein. (photo: Maclean's)
"No Is Not Enough": Naomi Klein on Challenging Trump's Shock Doctrine Politics
By Juan Gonzalez, Amy Goodman and Naomi Klein, Democracy Now!
13 June 17
 s President Trump is sued by the attorneys general of Maryland and Washington, D.C., for "unprecedented constitutional violations" and as another federal appeals court rejects Trump’s Muslim ban, we spend the hour with best-selling writer Naomi Klein, author of the new book, "No Is Not Enough: Resisting Trump’s Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need."
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: The attorneys general of Maryland and Washington, D.C., have filed an anticorruption lawsuit against President Trump, accusing him of, quote, "unprecedented constitutional violations." The lawsuit alleges Trump has flagrantly violated the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution by accepting payments from foreign governments since he became president.
AMY GOODMAN: The lawsuit cites reports that the embassies of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia and other countries have booked expensive rooms and held events at the Trump International Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., possibly seeking to win favor with the president. D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine announced the lawsuit on Monday.
ATTORNEY GENERAL KARL RACINE: President Trump’s businesses and his dealings violate the Constitution’s anticorruption provisions, known as the Emoluments Clauses. My office window is just a few floors above where we’re sitting today, and I can tell you that as I look out the window and see the tower of the Trump International Hotel, we know exactly what’s going on every single day. We know that foreign governments are spending money there in order to curry favor with the president of the United States. Just one example, the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, whose government has important business and policy before the president of the United States, has already spent hundreds of thousands of dollars at the Trump International Hotel.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Resistance against Trump’s profiteering while in the Oval Office has taken other shapes, as well. Last month, artists projected the words "Pay Trump Bribes Here" on the front of Trump International Hotel.
Meanwhile, in another setback to the Trump agenda, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit unanimously ruled Monday that President Trump had overstepped his legal authority in signing an executive order seeking to ban all refugees and citizens from six majority-Muslim nations from entering the United States.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, today, we spend the rest of the hour with someone who has been closely following the various forms of resistance against the Trump presidency: the best-selling author, journalist, activist Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine and also This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate. She’s out today with a new book; it’s called No Is Not Enough: Resisting Trump’s Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need. In the book, Klein writes, quote, "This is one attempt to uncover how we got to this surreal political moment. It is also an attempt to predict how, under cover of shocks and crises, it could get a lot worse. And it’s a plan for how, if we keep our heads, we might just be able to flip the script and arrive at a radically better future."
Naomi Klein, welcome to Democracy Now!
NAOMI KLEIN: Thank you, Amy. I’m very pleased to be with you. And hi, Juan.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Hi.
AMY GOODMAN: It’s great to have you with us. You’re beginning your tour across the United States. The book is called No Is Not Enough. What do you mean?
NAOMI KLEIN: Well, as you know, Amy, I have been covering crises and major shocks to countries for a long time. And to be honest with you, when I wrote The Shock Doctrine and it came out 10 years ago, I actually kind of thought no was enough, in the sense that I thought that if we understood this particular tactic—and what I mean by "the shock doctrine" is the ways in which large-scale shocks to societies, large-scale crises, economic crises, wars, coups, natural disasters, has systematically been used by right-wing governments, using the disorientation and the panic in society, to push through a very radical, pro-corporate agenda. You know, and I have been on the show many times talking about examples of this, like Hurricane Katrina and how that tragedy and the dislocation of the residents of that city was used to privatize the school system, attack public housing, introduce a tax-free free enterprise zone under George Bush’s administration. But after that book came out—it came out in 2007—we had the 2008 financial crisis. And all around the world, people did say no. You know, people knew that they were being forced to pay for the crisis of the bankers. They took to the streets. They occupied plazas. They stayed there for months. They said, "No. No more." But they didn’t, in so many cases, have a plan for what to do instead, beyond just, you know, we don’t want the austerity, we don’t want the attacks. There wasn’t a credible plan put forward, in many cases, for how we could have a different and better economy, that responded to the underlying reasons why we are seeing these shocks.
And so, I think in this moment where Trump is this sort of rolling shock—you know, every day there’s some shocking news. We just heard a few examples of it in the headlines. Behind the scenes, we’re seeing that same agenda advance very quickly. I’m concerned about what’s going to happen if they have even larger shocks to exploit, not the shock of just Trump himself and what he’s doing and the various investigations, the various gaffes, the various palace dramas, the rest of it, but I think it’s really crucial that in preparing for that, we understand that there has to be a yes, what we want instead of the shock doctrine. So that’s why I called it No Is Not Enough and put a great big "No" on the cover, because I just want to make sure no one misses that message, because it’s a hard-won insight after many years.
|
|
n 2016, the Democratic Party lost the presidency to possibly the least popular candidate in American history. In recent years, Democrats have also lost the Senate and House to right-wing Republicans whose extremist agenda is far removed from where most Americans are politically. Republicans now control almost two-thirds of governor’s offices and have gained about 1,000 seats in state legislatures in the past nine years. In 24 states, Democrats have almost no political influence at all.
