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Congress Blew It -Again:
National Budget
Should Reflect
National Priorities
Wed, 11 Dec 2013
By Jo Comerford, Truthout|
Americans deserve representatives in
Congress who take seriously their role
as stewards of the people's business.
We deserve a federal budget that
reflects Americans' priorities for how
our tax dollars are spent.
Unfortunately, Congress seems
determined to give us neither.
Earlier this month, lawmakers
missed yet another federal
budget deadline, this one set by
congressional appropriators as
"the very latest" date that the
congressional budget conference
committee could go without
producing topline budget
numbers. If the committee
couldn't reach agreement by
December 2, appropriators
warned, we would face
"extremey damaging
repercussions," including:*
he risk of another government
shutdown in early 2014;
* inability to stop further cuts to
critical federal programs via
sequestration; and the need
to budget by continuing
resolution - an outcome that
would virtually wipe the slate
clean of the budgeting work
done by Congress so far this
year.
Of course, this isn't the first
budget deadline missed by
Congress this fall. In October,
Congress failed to pass
appropriations bills on time,
leading to a government
shutdown lasting more than two
weeks. These are only the most
recent examples in a
decade-long pattern of
budgetary irregularities, where
continuing resolutions, often
created behind closed doors in
secretive negotiations, take the
place of open, accountable
appropriations processes. Sitting
on top of this dysfunction is the
sequester, itself the result of
another missed deadline,
chewing away at public services
and infrastructure through
across-the-board cuts.
To add insult to injury, this
Congress also earned the
distinction of the least productive
Congress in US history. Fewer
than 60 public laws were passed
prior to December. That's even
lower than the number of laws
passed by the Republican
Congress during 1995 under
President Clinton. Instead of
focusing their time on a
spending and revenue plan, our
lawmakers passed a bill
specifying the size of
commemorative coins for the
Baseball Hall of Fame. The
113th Congress hasn't even
agreed on how to fund the
Pentagon, a part of the budget
lawmakers are usually eager to
support. When this Congress
cannot get its act together even
to fund the military industrial
complex in this country,
something is wrong.
What's going on here?
It is as if Congress thinks that
the American people are not
paying attention, and thus they
can do whatever they want with
taxpayers' money. Partisan
political games, backroom deals
and deafness to the preferences
of constituents has led to
unconscionable gridlock and a
federal budget largely out of
balance with the
people's priorities.
Here's some bad news
for Congress:
The American people are
paying attention, and they do
not like what they see. The most
recent poll from The
Economist/YouGov shows a
catastrophic 6 percent approval
rating for Congress. Six percent.
Compared to Congress, people
prefer toe fungus, zombies or
jury duty (no joke), according to
another poll by Public Policy
Polling. It took throwing people
like Charles Manson and
Vladimir Putin into the mix for
Public Policy Polling to find
someone less popular than
Congress.
For their part, Congress better
start paying attention. According
to an October Rasmussen poll,
78 percent of Americans would
vote to get rid of every member
of Congress and start from
scratch.
At National Priorities Project,
we have two major suggestions
for Congress: Start listening to
the American people and
recommit to an appropriations
process that solicits and
honors their input.
Listening to the
American People
Congress members may have
a hard time agreeing on whether
the sky is blue these days, but
Americans tend to agree on a
surprising number of priorities.
Four issues in particular rise to
the top of their list: securing
Social Security, closing
corporate tax loopholes,
reducing military spending and
containing health-care costs.
Securing Social Security.
Despite more than a decade of
repeated "sky is falling" rhetoric
on this critical public program,
voters show little interest in
reducing Social Security
benefits, preferring in large
majorities to raise taxes if
needed over reducing benefits.
It's easy to see why: Social
Security keeps almost half of
elderly Americans out of
poverty. Lawmakers should
listen to the American people
and eliminate the $113,700 limit
on earnings subject to Social
Security taxes to help preserve
the program for future
generations.
Closing Tax Loopholes
for the Wealthy and
Corporations.
Sixty-six percent want tax
loopholes closed for wealthy
Americans so the revenue can
be used to shrink the federal
budget deficit, and 80 percent of
Americans want tax loopholes for
big corporations closed.
Overall, Americans don't think
it's fair that tax breaks for
offshore corporate income cost
the government $42 billion last
year alone. The capital gains tax
break, which primarily benefits
the very wealthy, cost $83
billion. Congress should close or
modify these breaks to provide
more revenue for public services
and infrastructure.
Reducing Military
Spending.
The United States will spend an
astounding $653 billion on the
military in 2014, more than 56
percent of the entire
discretionary budget. In fact,
yearly US military spending
exceeds that of the next 13
nations combined. It's no
wonder that, on average,
Americans want to cut military
spending by 18 percent.
Congress should heed the
advice of the bipartisan task
force that found $1 trillion in fat
over the next 10 years hiding in
the Pentagon budget - and start
cutting.
Contain Health-Care
Costs.
The cost of health care
consistently tops Americans' list
of concerns when asked by
pollsters, and some estimates
show that up to one-third of
health-care spending is wasted.
Congress should explore laying
groundwork for systems such as
"bundled payments," where
health-care providers receive
payments for overall patient care
rather than for each procedure
or test. Doing so can cut costs
by as much as 15 to 20 percent.
These four priorities represent
critical areas of agreement among
Americans, but they are hardly
unique. Take a look at just how
broad the consensus on federal
spending and revenue actually
is in this country:
* 95 percent of Americans
say restoring jobs is a top
priority
* 88 percent of Americans
say preserving the long-term
stability of Medicare is
essential.
* 75 percent of Americans
oppose cuts to SNAP.
* 83 percent of Americans
oppose cuts to K-12
education.
* 56 percent of Americans
want to see a mix of
spending cuts and tax
increases.
In the face of these clearly
stated budget priorities, it is
incredible that Congress is
gripped with such dysfunction
that it cannot even keep the
government open on a
consistent basis, much less
deliver a budget plan for the
American people. One of the
most critical symptoms of this
dysfunction is the broken
appropriations process, which
absolutely must be remedied if
the priorities described above
are to be translated into law.
Get Appropriation
Back on Track
For the past decade, not once
has Congress passed all 12
appropriations bills on time. Most
recently, this failure caused the
government shutdown this past
October. One of the most
corrosive effects of this ongoing
budget breakdown is an
over-reliance on continuing
resolutions, the fallback method
of budgeting where Congress
takes last year's budget, makes
some token adjustments, and
puts a new date on it. You might
be wondering: Why is this a bad
thing? Why should we care if
Congress just updates last
year's work? Well, there are a
number of reasons why this isn't
smart budgeting.
First, budgeting by continuing
resolution prevents needed
adjustments to cut waste and
create efficiencies. If a program
created in 2012 is set up
improperly, using the 2012
budget as the 2013 budget
keeps you from fixing it properly
- you just move forward with the
broken program for another
year. When you combine this
with the lazy, across-the-board
cuts from sequestration, you get
a federal budget optimized for
breakdown.
Second, budgeting by continuing
resolution short-circuits the
accountability of the federal
budget process.
In a predictable budget process,
Congress would pass a budget
authorization bill after
constructing it in the House
Budget Committee and its
various subcommittees. That
authorization would be used as a
framework for 12 different
appropriations bills, which
themselves would be created in
the House Appropriations
Committee and its various
subcommittees. The bills would
be brought to the floor of each
House of Congress for a vote,
and then a conference
committee would convene to
reconcile the two chambers'
work into a single bill. That bill
would be voted on by the House
and Senate and sent to the
president for his signature. At
each step along the way, from
the earliest subcommittee
hearings to the final decision by
the president on whether to sign
the bill or not, citizens would be
able to weigh in and make their
opinions known.
By contrast, consider what has
happened in recent years. Say
you took a few of the
opportunities to weigh in during
the appropriations process
described above. Your
congressperson and senator
took your opinions into account
when working to influence the
content of the budget. But then,
imagine Congress ran out of
time and did not pass that bill,
and in the rush to pass
something just to keep the
government open, they simply
discard this year's budget work,
copy their work from last year
and negotiate changes to it
behind closed doors. Your input
has now been erased, along with
your optimism for the democratic
process. Budgeting by
continuing resolution in this way
replaces what should be an
open, transparent and
accountable process with a
secretive - and frankly,
ineffective - back-room deal.
When Congress works this way,
who can blame the American
people for wanting to send them
all back home and give someone
else a chance?
The Clock Is Ticking
Having missed the Dec. 2 date
for reporting a top-line budget
number for appropriators to work
with, the budget conference
committee is in real trouble.
Under the agreed-to framework
that ended the last government
shutdown, the conference
committee has until Dec. 13 -
just over a week - to finish its
work. If they fail, we could face a
repeat of the budget and
debt-ceiling fiasco of this past
year.
With their constituents so united
in a vision of what our country
should prioritize over the coming
year, it would truly be an
incredible abdication of
responsibility if Congress were
to fail again to keep our
government running with a
budget that reflects our values.
Will Congress slip from being
less popular than toe fungus to
being less popular than serial
killers and dictators? We are
about to find out.
Give Congress a push:
Sign our petition at
http://bit.ly/RyanMurrayPetition.
Author's Update:
On Tuesday, Dec. 10,
the budget conference
committee released The
Bipartisan Budget Act of 2013 --
otherwise known as the top-line
spending numbers for fiscal
years 2014 and 2015. While this
release is an important step in
the work to stabilize a nation
plagued by crisis budgeting,
it must also be seen as a missed
opportunity for Congress to
budget in line with broadly held
national priorities.
National Budget
Should Reflect
National Priorities
Wed, 11 Dec 2013
By Jo Comerford, Truthout|
Americans deserve representatives in
Congress who take seriously their role
as stewards of the people's business.
We deserve a federal budget that
reflects Americans' priorities for how
our tax dollars are spent.
Unfortunately, Congress seems
determined to give us neither.
Earlier this month, lawmakers
missed yet another federal
budget deadline, this one set by
congressional appropriators as
"the very latest" date that the
congressional budget conference
committee could go without
producing topline budget
numbers. If the committee
couldn't reach agreement by
December 2, appropriators
warned, we would face
"extremey damaging
repercussions," including:*
he risk of another government
shutdown in early 2014;
* inability to stop further cuts to
critical federal programs via
sequestration; and the need
to budget by continuing
resolution - an outcome that
would virtually wipe the slate
clean of the budgeting work
done by Congress so far this
year.
Of course, this isn't the first
budget deadline missed by
Congress this fall. In October,
Congress failed to pass
appropriations bills on time,
leading to a government
shutdown lasting more than two
weeks. These are only the most
recent examples in a
decade-long pattern of
budgetary irregularities, where
continuing resolutions, often
created behind closed doors in
secretive negotiations, take the
place of open, accountable
appropriations processes. Sitting
on top of this dysfunction is the
sequester, itself the result of
another missed deadline,
chewing away at public services
and infrastructure through
across-the-board cuts.
To add insult to injury, this
Congress also earned the
distinction of the least productive
Congress in US history. Fewer
than 60 public laws were passed
prior to December. That's even
lower than the number of laws
passed by the Republican
Congress during 1995 under
President Clinton. Instead of
focusing their time on a
spending and revenue plan, our
lawmakers passed a bill
specifying the size of
commemorative coins for the
Baseball Hall of Fame. The
113th Congress hasn't even
agreed on how to fund the
Pentagon, a part of the budget
lawmakers are usually eager to
support. When this Congress
cannot get its act together even
to fund the military industrial
complex in this country,
something is wrong.
What's going on here?
It is as if Congress thinks that
the American people are not
paying attention, and thus they
can do whatever they want with
taxpayers' money. Partisan
political games, backroom deals
and deafness to the preferences
of constituents has led to
unconscionable gridlock and a
federal budget largely out of
balance with the
people's priorities.
Here's some bad news
for Congress:
The American people are
paying attention, and they do
not like what they see. The most
recent poll from The
Economist/YouGov shows a
catastrophic 6 percent approval
rating for Congress. Six percent.
Compared to Congress, people
prefer toe fungus, zombies or
jury duty (no joke), according to
another poll by Public Policy
Polling. It took throwing people
like Charles Manson and
Vladimir Putin into the mix for
Public Policy Polling to find
someone less popular than
Congress.
For their part, Congress better
start paying attention. According
to an October Rasmussen poll,
78 percent of Americans would
vote to get rid of every member
of Congress and start from
scratch.
At National Priorities Project,
we have two major suggestions
for Congress: Start listening to
the American people and
recommit to an appropriations
process that solicits and
honors their input.
Listening to the
American People
Congress members may have
a hard time agreeing on whether
the sky is blue these days, but
Americans tend to agree on a
surprising number of priorities.
Four issues in particular rise to
the top of their list: securing
Social Security, closing
corporate tax loopholes,
reducing military spending and
containing health-care costs.
Securing Social Security.
Despite more than a decade of
repeated "sky is falling" rhetoric
on this critical public program,
voters show little interest in
reducing Social Security
benefits, preferring in large
majorities to raise taxes if
needed over reducing benefits.
It's easy to see why: Social
Security keeps almost half of
elderly Americans out of
poverty. Lawmakers should
listen to the American people
and eliminate the $113,700 limit
on earnings subject to Social
Security taxes to help preserve
the program for future
generations.
Closing Tax Loopholes
for the Wealthy and
Corporations.
Sixty-six percent want tax
loopholes closed for wealthy
Americans so the revenue can
be used to shrink the federal
budget deficit, and 80 percent of
Americans want tax loopholes for
big corporations closed.
Overall, Americans don't think
it's fair that tax breaks for
offshore corporate income cost
the government $42 billion last
year alone. The capital gains tax
break, which primarily benefits
the very wealthy, cost $83
billion. Congress should close or
modify these breaks to provide
more revenue for public services
and infrastructure.
Reducing Military
Spending.
The United States will spend an
astounding $653 billion on the
military in 2014, more than 56
percent of the entire
discretionary budget. In fact,
yearly US military spending
exceeds that of the next 13
nations combined. It's no
wonder that, on average,
Americans want to cut military
spending by 18 percent.
Congress should heed the
advice of the bipartisan task
force that found $1 trillion in fat
over the next 10 years hiding in
the Pentagon budget - and start
cutting.
Contain Health-Care
Costs.
The cost of health care
consistently tops Americans' list
of concerns when asked by
pollsters, and some estimates
show that up to one-third of
health-care spending is wasted.
Congress should explore laying
groundwork for systems such as
"bundled payments," where
health-care providers receive
payments for overall patient care
rather than for each procedure
or test. Doing so can cut costs
by as much as 15 to 20 percent.
These four priorities represent
critical areas of agreement among
Americans, but they are hardly
unique. Take a look at just how
broad the consensus on federal
spending and revenue actually
is in this country:
* 95 percent of Americans
say restoring jobs is a top
priority
* 88 percent of Americans
say preserving the long-term
stability of Medicare is
essential.
* 75 percent of Americans
oppose cuts to SNAP.
* 83 percent of Americans
oppose cuts to K-12
education.
* 56 percent of Americans
want to see a mix of
spending cuts and tax
increases.
In the face of these clearly
stated budget priorities, it is
incredible that Congress is
gripped with such dysfunction
that it cannot even keep the
government open on a
consistent basis, much less
deliver a budget plan for the
American people. One of the
most critical symptoms of this
dysfunction is the broken
appropriations process, which
absolutely must be remedied if
the priorities described above
are to be translated into law.
Get Appropriation
Back on Track
For the past decade, not once
has Congress passed all 12
appropriations bills on time. Most
recently, this failure caused the
government shutdown this past
October. One of the most
corrosive effects of this ongoing
budget breakdown is an
over-reliance on continuing
resolutions, the fallback method
of budgeting where Congress
takes last year's budget, makes
some token adjustments, and
puts a new date on it. You might
be wondering: Why is this a bad
thing? Why should we care if
Congress just updates last
year's work? Well, there are a
number of reasons why this isn't
smart budgeting.
First, budgeting by continuing
resolution prevents needed
adjustments to cut waste and
create efficiencies. If a program
created in 2012 is set up
improperly, using the 2012
budget as the 2013 budget
keeps you from fixing it properly
- you just move forward with the
broken program for another
year. When you combine this
with the lazy, across-the-board
cuts from sequestration, you get
a federal budget optimized for
breakdown.
Second, budgeting by continuing
resolution short-circuits the
accountability of the federal
budget process.
In a predictable budget process,
Congress would pass a budget
authorization bill after
constructing it in the House
Budget Committee and its
various subcommittees. That
authorization would be used as a
framework for 12 different
appropriations bills, which
themselves would be created in
the House Appropriations
Committee and its various
subcommittees. The bills would
be brought to the floor of each
House of Congress for a vote,
and then a conference
committee would convene to
reconcile the two chambers'
work into a single bill. That bill
would be voted on by the House
and Senate and sent to the
president for his signature. At
each step along the way, from
the earliest subcommittee
hearings to the final decision by
the president on whether to sign
the bill or not, citizens would be
able to weigh in and make their
opinions known.
By contrast, consider what has
happened in recent years. Say
you took a few of the
opportunities to weigh in during
the appropriations process
described above. Your
congressperson and senator
took your opinions into account
when working to influence the
content of the budget. But then,
imagine Congress ran out of
time and did not pass that bill,
and in the rush to pass
something just to keep the
government open, they simply
discard this year's budget work,
copy their work from last year
and negotiate changes to it
behind closed doors. Your input
has now been erased, along with
your optimism for the democratic
process. Budgeting by
continuing resolution in this way
replaces what should be an
open, transparent and
accountable process with a
secretive - and frankly,
ineffective - back-room deal.
When Congress works this way,
who can blame the American
people for wanting to send them
all back home and give someone
else a chance?
The Clock Is Ticking
Having missed the Dec. 2 date
for reporting a top-line budget
number for appropriators to work
with, the budget conference
committee is in real trouble.
Under the agreed-to framework
that ended the last government
shutdown, the conference
committee has until Dec. 13 -
just over a week - to finish its
work. If they fail, we could face a
repeat of the budget and
debt-ceiling fiasco of this past
year.
With their constituents so united
in a vision of what our country
should prioritize over the coming
year, it would truly be an
incredible abdication of
responsibility if Congress were
to fail again to keep our
government running with a
budget that reflects our values.
Will Congress slip from being
less popular than toe fungus to
being less popular than serial
killers and dictators? We are
about to find out.
Give Congress a push:
Sign our petition at
http://bit.ly/RyanMurrayPetition.
Author's Update:
On Tuesday, Dec. 10,
the budget conference
committee released The
Bipartisan Budget Act of 2013 --
otherwise known as the top-line
spending numbers for fiscal
years 2014 and 2015. While this
release is an important step in
the work to stabilize a nation
plagued by crisis budgeting,
it must also be seen as a missed
opportunity for Congress to
budget in line with broadly held
national priorities.
Brought to You by a Fracking- induced Earthquake The Lotto of a Fukushima-style Nuclear Disaster by MICHAEL McGEHEE December 12, 2013 Counterpunch.org It is a scary world and getting scarier every day. I live in the small town of Kennedale, Texas. Population: 7,068. We are just south of Fort Worth (whose city motto is: “Where the West Begins”), but just north of Mansfield, a fast-growing suburb. My family lives within the danger zone of two nuclear power plants, and two more whose construction have been postponed. Were Comanche Peak (1&2) to experience some kind of disaster like that in Fukushima, Japan— whose reactor was severely damaged in a 2011 earthquake— we would be up radiologically- contaminated Shit Creek without a paddle. Across the street from my home is a hydraulic fracturing well. What do these wells and nuclear power plants have in common? More than most North Texans may realize. Hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” is a process where wastewater is used to fracture hard rock, like shale, in order to get to the oil and gas below by injecting it down into the ground at high pressures. A huge amount of natural gas has been discovered underneath the Barnett Shale here in the Fort Worth Basin. Over the last several years more than 50,000 of these drilling wells have sprouted up all across the state. The dangers with these wells are there are some 600 chemicals used in the waste water, some of the carcinogenic and toxic. But there is a growing body of data showing the process is linked to earthquakes (also, see here and here and here). Cliff Frohlich, a research scientist at the Institute for Geophysics at the University of Texas at Austin, has explained it as “the air hockey table model”: “You have an air hockey table, suppose you tilt it, if there’s no air on, the puck will just sit there. Gravity wants it to move but it doesn’t because there friction [with the table surface] . . . Faults are the same.” The injection of the water allows the faults to slip more easily, producing the obvious results we have witnessed: earthquakes. In the last six years, since the fracking boom began, 60% of the earthquakes in Texas (93 of 153) have been here in North Texas. While Earthquake Track goes back only 38 years, between 7-38 years ago there were no earthquakes here. None. Nada. Zilch. Zero. In fact, from 7-38 years ago there were only 70 earthquakes in all of Texas. In a six year span there were 25% more earthquakes here in North Texas than that 28 year period for the entire state! For the state as a whole, seismic activity has increased more than 100% in six years, as compared to a 32-year period. In the aftermath of the earthquake that damaged the nuclear reactor in Fukushima, Japan, we can turn to a 2010 U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission study that calculated the odds of an earthquake strong enough to damage the reactor core of the two Comanche Peak plants in nearby Glen Rose, Texas. According to NBC, which covered the study, there is a “1 in 250,000 chance each year” of such a catastrophe. To get an idea of how things have worsened for us here, the old estimate, based on earthquake data as of 1989, was 1 in 833,333. The change in risk: 233%. The NRC’s data is as of 2008. Earthquakes have escalated over the last five years, especially in Cleburne, Texas, which is only twenty miles east of Comanche Peak on US-67 (in fact, there have been 16 earthquakes in Cleburne over the last five years). The probability of an earthquake producing a nuclear disaster is certainly greater. According to Luminant, the Texas- based utility company that operates Comanche Peak, “Nuclear power is a safe, dependable, clean-air energy.” Of course they make a lot of money off of the nuclear power plant. But considering the recent spate of earthquakes in Azle and Mineral Wells, I am not sure I feel as safe and comfortable as they do. Here in the Lone Star State the odds of winning the Lotto Texas are 1 in 25 million. How safe are we when we are more than 100x more likely to experience a nuclear disaster brought on by an earthquake than we are to win the lottery? By the way, this is not just limited to Texas. Our neighbors are having the same problems. In the last ten years there have been 691 earthquakes in Oklahoma, with 669 in the last six years, since they too began fracking for gas. And, to their east, and my Northeast, the same pattern holds for Arkansas: over the last decade there have been 424 earthquakes in Arkansas, with 407 occurring in the last six years. And remember, up until these wells were dug and drilling began, we in North Texas did not have earthquakes. This is the price we pay to have carbon-spewing semi- trucks—adding a climate- changing insult to the still-thawing injury we have dubbed “Icemageddon”—carrying millions of gallons of carcinogenic and toxic wastewater to tens of thousands of wells all across the state in order to fracture hard rock two miles underground so that private multi-billion dollar companies like Chesapeake Energy can make a buck or two: profits over people. Michael McGehee is an independent writer from North Texas. He can be reached at michael.mcgehee7@gmail.com |
| Way Worse Than a Dumb War: Iraq Ten Years Later Phyllis Bennis- The Nation Editor’s Note: This statement on the tenth anniversary of the launch of the Iraq War was signed by Phyllis Bennis, John Cavanagh and Steve Cobble (Institute for Policy Studies); Judith LeBlanc and Kevin Martin (Peace Action); Laura Flanders (GritTV); Bill Fletcher (The Black Commentator); Andy Shallal (Iraqis for Peace); Medea Benjamin (Code Pink); Michael T. McPhearson and Leslie Cagan (United for Peace and Justice); Michael Eisenscher (US Labor Against the War) and David Wildman. All organizations for identification only. It didn’t take long for the world to recognize that the US invasion and occupation of Iraq constituted a dumb war, as then Senator Barack Obama put it. But “dumb” wasn’t the half of it. The US war against Iraq was illegal and illegitimate. It violated the UN Charter, the Geneva Conventions and a whole host of international laws and treaties. It violated US laws and our Constitution with impunity. And it was all based on lies: about nonexistent links between Iraq and Al Qaeda, about never-were ties between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, about Iraq’s invisible weapons of mass destruction and about Baghdad’s supposed nuclear program, with derivative lies about uranium yellowcake from Niger and aluminum rods from China. There were lies about US troops being welcomed in the streets with sweets and flowers, and lies about thousands of jubilant Iraqis spontaneously tearing down the statue of a hated dictator. And then there was the lie that the US could send hundreds of thousands of soldiers and billions of dollars worth of weapons across the world to wage war on the cheap. We didn’t have to raise taxes to pay the almost one trillion dollars the Iraq war has cost so far, we could go shopping instead. But behind these myths the costs were huge—human, economic and more. More than a million US troops were deployed to Iraq; 4,483 were killed; 33,183 were wounded and more than 200,000 came home with PTSD. The number of Iraqi civilians killed is still unknown; at least 121,754 are known to have been killed directly during the US war, but hundreds of thousands more died from crippling sanctions, diseases caused by dirty water when the US destroyed the water treatment system and the inability to get medical help because of exploding violence. And what are we leaving behind? After almost a decade the US finally pulled out most of its troops and Pentagon-paid contractors. About 16,000 State Department-paid contractors and civilian employees are still stationed at the giant US embassy compound and two huge consulates, along with unacknowledged CIA and FBI agents, Special Forces and a host of other undercover operatives. The US just sold the Iraqi government 140 M-l tanks, and American-made fighter jets are in the pipeline too. But there is little question that the all-encompassing US military occupation of Iraq is over. After more than eight years of war, the Iraqi government finally said no more. Their refusal to grant US troops immunity from prosecution for potential war crimes was the deal-breaker that forced President Obama’s hand and made him pull out the last 30,000 troops he and his generals were hoping to keep in Iraq. But as we knew would be the case, the pull out by itself did not end the violence. The years of war and occupation have left behind a devastated country, split along sectarian lines, a shredded social fabric and a dispossessed and impoverished population. Iraq remains one of the most violent countries in the world; that’s the true legacy of the US war. We owe a great debt to the people of Iraq—and we have not even begun to make good on that commitment. The US lost the Iraq War. Iraq hasn’t been “liberated.” Violence is rampant; the sectarian violence resulting from early US policies after the 2003 invasion continues to escalate. Of course we didn’t bring democracy and freedom to Iraq—that was never on the US agenda. The failure to “liberate” Iraq cannot be the basis for assessing the war. The real assessment must be based on whether the war achieved the goals that the Bush administration and its neo-conservative, military CEO and Pentagon profiteering partners established for this war: Consolidating permanent US control over Iraq’s oil. Nope, US oil companies are just some of the myriad of foreign oil interests in Iraq’s oil fields. Leaving behind a pro-US, anti-Iranian government in Baghdad. Hardly, Prime Minister al-Maliki is barely on speaking terms with anyone in Washington. Guaranteeing permanent access to US bases in Iraq. Not even close, all but two of the 500 plus US bases and outposts were either closed down or turned over to the Iraqi military. Ensuring that a post-war Iraqi government would allow the US to use Iraq as a jumping off point to attack Iran. No way, despite continuing billions of dollars of our tax money, the Iraqi government today is allied more closely to Iran than the US. In the buildup to the war, too many media, government officials, academics and others allowed fear to curb their tongue or their eagerness to curry favor with those in power to stifle their speech. This remains a crucial lesson as we stand up to the escalation of Obama’s drone war and continue to challenge those who call for war against Iran. The war in Iraq began with significant support, with many people accepting the false claims that this new war would bring security to a still-frightened US public. But that support did not last long. Within the first years, pro-war assumptions had been reversed, and by the end, the anti-war movement and escalating casualties had turned around public opinion so thoroughly that overwhelming majorities admitted the war in Iraq was wrong and should never have been fought in the first place. And this war showed us our power. It proved the possibility of globalizing opposition even before the war began. The mobilization of February 15, 2003, when the broad United for Peace and Justice coalition joined with allies around the world on the day the world said “No to War!” February 15 created what The New York Times called “the second super-power,” ready to challenge the US drive towards empire. Our movement changed history. While we were not able to prevent the invasion of Iraq a month later, that mobilization proved the illegality of the war. It demonstrated the isolation of the Bush administration, pulled governments and the United Nations into a trajectory of resistance, helped prevent war in Iran and inspired a generation of activists, including some of those who, eight years later, would create the Arab Spring in Cairo’s Tahrir Square. The US troops left behind a devastated, tortured Iraq. What they didn’t leave behind is one dollar for reparations or compensation. That battle still lies ahead. The US war in Iraq may be over, but we owe an apology to all those who suffered from the war. And that apology must be grounded in recognition of our enormous debt to the people of Iraq, a debt for which compensation and reparations are only a start. Our real obligation, to the people of Iraq and the region and the rest of the world, is to transform our government and our country so that these resource-driven wars, shaped by lies and fought for power and for empire, whether in Iran or somewhere else, can never be waged again Read more: http://www.thenation.com/blog/173396/way-worse- dumb-war-iraq-ten-years-later#ixzz2UK5b0Fvc |
| Slip Sliding Away The Incredible, Shrinking Presidency of Barack Obama by MIKE WHITNEY According to a new Washington Post-ABC poll, Barack Obama now ranks among the least popular presidents in the last century. In fact, his approval rating is lower than Bush’s was in his fifth year in office. Obama’s overall approval rating stands at a dismal 43 percent, with a full 55 percent of the public “disapproving of the way he is handling the economy”. The same percentage of people “disapprove of the way he is handling his job as president”. Thus, on the two main issues, leadership and the economy, Obama gets failing grades. An even higher percentage of people are upset at the way the president is implementing his signature health care system dubbed “Obamacare”. When asked “Do you approve or disapprove of the way Obama is handling “implementation of the new health care law?” A full 62% said they disapprove, although I suspect that the anger has less to do with the plan’s “implementation” than it does with the fact that Obamacare is widely seen as a profit-delivery system for the voracious insurance industry. Notwithstanding the administration’s impressive public relations campaign, a clear majority of people have seen through Obama’s health care ruse and given the program a big thumb’s down. Of course, Obamacare is just the straw that broke the camel’s back. The list of policy disasters that preceded this latest fiasco is nearly endless, including everything from blanket pardons for the Wall Street big-wigs who took down the global financial system, to re-upping the Bush tax cuts, to appointing a commission of deficit hawks to slash Social Security and Medicare (Bowles-Simpson), to breaking his word on Gitmo, to reneging on his promise to pass Card Check, to expanding to wars in Africa, Asia and the Middle East, to droning 4-times as many civilians as the homicidal maniac he replaced as president in 2008. Obama’s treatment of undocumented immigrants has been particularly shocking although the details have been kept out of the media, presumably because the news giants don’t want to expose the Dear Leader as a heartless scoundrel who has no problem separating mothers from their children, locking them up in privately-owned concentration camps and booting them out of the country with nothing more than the shirt on their back. Check out this blurb which sums up Obama’s “progressive” immigration policy in one paragraph: “Obama is on track to deport 3 million immigrants without papers by the end of his second term, more than any other president. George W. Bush deported about 2 million over two terms. Obama will likely hit that mark this month….. The average daily count of immigrants in detention now is about 33,000. In 2001, it was 19,000. In 1994, it was 5,000, according to the Detention Watch Network. Almost all of the detainees and deportees are Latino. True, the population of illegal immigrants has also doubled in that time to more than 11 million. But the detainee and deportee counts have escalated more than twice as fast. “He could go down as the worst president in history toward immigrants,” said Arturo Carmona, executive director of the liberal activist group Presente.org. Hooray for the Deporter in Chief! You’re Numero Uno, buddy. You even beat Bush! Is it any wonder why the man’s ratings are in freefall? All told, Obama has been bad for the economy, bad for civil liberties, bad for minorities, bad for foreign wars, and bad for health care. He has, however, been a very effective lackey-sock puppet for Wall Street, Big Pharma, the oil magnates, and the other 1% -vermin Kleptocrats who run the country and who will undoubtedly attend his $100,000-per-plate speaking engagements when he finally retires in comfort to some gated community where he’ll work on his memoirs and cash in on his 8 years of faithful service to the racketeer class. But, let’s face it; no one really gives a rip about “drone attacks in Waziristan” or “hunger strikes in Gitmo”. What they care about is keeping their jobs, paying off their student loans, putting the food on the table or avoiding the fate of next-door-neighbor, Andy, who got his pink slip two months ago and now finds himself living in a cardboard box by the river. That’s what the average working stiff worries about; just scraping by enough to stay out of the homeless shelter. But it’s getting harder all the time, mainly because everything’s gotten worse under Obama. It’s crazy. It’s like the whole middle class is being dismantled in a 10-year period. Wages are flat, jobs are scarce, incomes are dropping like a stone, and everyone’s broke. (Everyone I know, at least.) Did you know that 76% of Americans are living paycheck-to- paycheck. Check it out: “Roughly three-quarters of Americans are living paycheck-to-paycheck, with little to no emergency savings, according to a survey released by Bankrate.com Monday. Fewer than one in four Americans have enough money in their savings account to cover at least six months of expenses, enough to help cushion the blow of a job loss, medical emergency or some other unexpected event, according to the survey of 1,000 adults. Meanwhile, 50% of those surveyed have less than a three-month cushion and 27% had no savings at all…. Last week, online lender CashNetUSA said 22% of the 1,000 people it recently surveyed had less than $100 in savings to cover an emergency, while 46% had less than $800. After paying debts and taking care of housing, car and child care-related expenses, the respondents said there just isn’t enough money left over for saving more.” Savings?!? Are you kidding me? What’s that? Who do you know that’s able to save money in this economy? Maybe rich uncle Johnny whose lived on canned sardines and Akmak for the last 50 years, but nobody else can live like that. Subtract the rent, the groceries, the doctor bills etc, and there’s barely enough leftover to fill the tank to get to work on Monday. Saving just isn’t an option, not in the Obamaworld, that is. Now check this out from Business Insider: “Thousands of Americans aged 55 and older are going back to school and reinventing themselves to get an edge in a difficult labor market, hoping to rebuild retirement nest eggs that were almost destroyed by the recession…. According to the Federal Reserve, household financial assets, which exclude homes, dropped from a peak of $57 trillion in the third quarter of 2007 to just over $49 trillion in the fourth quarter of last year, the latest period for which data is available. A survey to be released this summer by the Public Policy Institute of AARP, an advocacy group for older Americans, found a quarter of Americans 50 years and older used up all their savings during the 2007-09 recession. About 43 percent of the 5,000 respondents who took part in the survey said their savings had not recovered.” (“Unemployed Baby Boomers Are Getting Hired By Going Back To School”, Business Insider) Sure they’re going back to work. What do you expect them to do? They’re broke! They got wiped out in Wall Street’s mortgage laundering scam and they’re still behind the eightball five years later. And what’s left of the money they set aside for retirement is yielding a big zilch thanks to the Fed’s zero rate policy which is forcing people back into another decade of penal servitude at minimum wage. That’s why you see so many hunched over graybeards in red vests with “Happy to Serve You” splattered on their chests lugging shopping bags out to the cars for old ladies. Because they’re broke and out of options. Everyone knows someone like this unless, of course, they’re one of the fortunate few who make up the Nobel 1%; aka–The Job Cremators. Then they don’t have to fret about that sort of thing. Here’s another gem you might not have seen in USA Today a few months back: “Four out of 5 U.S. adults struggle with joblessness, near-poverty or reliance on welfare for at least parts of their lives, a sign of deteriorating economic security and an elusive American dream. Survey data exclusive to The Associated Press points to an increasingly globalized U.S. economy, the widening gap between rich and poor, and the loss of good-paying manufacturing jobs as reasons for the trend…. Hardship is particularly growing among whites, based on several measures. Pessimism among that racial group about their families’ economic futures has climbed to the highest point since at least 1987. In the most recent AP- GfK poll, 63% of whites called the economy “poor.” “I think it’s going to get worse,” said Irene Salyers, 52, of Buchanan County, Va., a declining coal region in Appalachia. Married and divorced three times, Salyers now helps run a fruit and vegetable stand with her boyfriend, but it doesn’t generate much income…. Nationwide, the count of America’s poor remains stuck at a record number: 46.2 million, or 15% of the population, due in part to lingering high unemployment following the recession. While poverty rates for blacks and Hispanics are nearly three times higher, by absolute numbers the predominant face of the poor is white… “Poverty is no longer an issue of ‘them’, it’s an issue of ‘us’,” says Mark Rank, a professor at Washington University in St. Louis who calculated the numbers. “Only when poverty is thought of as a mainstream event, rather than a fringe experience that just affects blacks and Hispanics, can we really begin to build broader support for programs that lift people in need.” (“4 in 5 in USA face near-poverty, no work”, USA Today) Does Obama have any idea of the damage he’s doing with his Rich-First policies? The country is in a terrible state and yet Obama continues to approve bills that throw millions of people off unemployment benefits, sharply cut government spending, or undermine vital safetynet programs that keep the sick and the elderly from dying on the streets. It’s like he’s trying to reduce 300 million Americans to grinding third world poverty in his short eight-year term. Is that the goal? Did you know that–according to Gallup–20.0% of all Americans did not have enough money to buy food that they or their families needed at some point over the past year? Or that –according to a Feeding America hunger study– more than 37 million people are now using food pantries and soup kitchens? Or that one out of six Americans is now living in poverty which is the highest level since the 1960s? Or that the gap between the rich and poor is greater than any in history? Everything has gotten worse under Obama. Everything. And, not once, in his five years as president, has this gifted and charismatic leader ever lifted a finger to help the millions of people who supported him, who believed in him, and who voted him into office. These latest poll results indicate that many of those same people are beginning to wake up and see what Obama is really all about. MIKE WHITNEY lives in Washington state. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press). Hopeless is also available in a Kindle edition. He can be reached at fergiewhitney@msn.com. |
Noam Chomsky
Marijuana and a New
York State of Mind
Friday, 10 January 2014 10:27
By Aaron Cantu, Truthout
When it comes to marijuana legalization,
politicians in New York are feeling the
pressure. Colorado is currently unveiling
the world's first nonmedical,
state-regulated cannabis industry, other
states legislatures are displaying signs of
following in its footsteps, and public
opinion has shifted to heavily favor
changing laws around pot. At long last,
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo
performed a complete 180 on the issue of
medical cannabis last week, announcing
plans to allow 20 hospitals statewide to
prescribe the plant. A year earlier, he'd
vowed to veto any such legislation. (This
previous position is not out of sync with
New York's overall practices regarding
marijuana: City police arrest more people
for pot possession than any other crime.)
The governor's change of heart comes on
the heels of a more progressive bill
introduced in December by Senator Liz
Krueger, which calls for the complete
legalization of cannabis in New York and
the formation of an industry similar to the
nascent one in Colorado. According to two
different polls, majorities of New Yorkers
favor both measures.
Yet as many New York legislators push for
a reorientation, a cadre of conservative
drug warriors in the senate have
positioned themselves firmly against any
adjustment of antiquated marijuana laws -
even when these changes would save the
state money on costs of incarceration and
allot police attention to more pressing
matters.
New York's marijuana prohibition history is
rife with contradictions. In 1977, the state
legislature ostensibly reduced the penalty
for carrying 25 grams or less of marijuana
to a noncriminal violation. However, this
longstanding policy hasn't resulted in
fewer arrests: Nearly 40,000 people in
New York City alone were arrested for
possession in 2012, the vast majority
black and Latino. That same year, in a
bizarre case of déjà-vu, the New York
legislature considered a bill to
decriminalize the possession of cannabis -
implicitly admitting the impotence of the
former measure - only for the legislation to
be killed.
Why, despite an evolving national
temperament on cannabis, have New York
legislators remained so stubborn on the
issue? And why have most states lagged
so far behind public opinion in their efforts
to roll back marijuana bans? To answer
this question, it is necessary to examine a
federal law passed by the US Congress in
the 1980s that gave law enforcement
agencies everywhere a moneyed interest
in perpetuating all aspects of the war on
drugs, including marijuana prohibition.
Policing for Profit
In the waning days of President Ronald
Reagan's tenure, Congress bolstered its
quixotic mission to eradicate drug usage
by doubling down on its financial
commitment to local law enforcement. This
measure, called the Byrne Memorial State
and Local Law Enforcement Assistance
Program, encouraged agencies across the
country to put more resources toward drug
policy enforcement, in return for more
cash and equipment from the federal
government. As Michelle Alexander
explains in her book, The New Jim Crow,
"This money . . . resulted in the
proliferation of narcotics task forces,
including those responsible for highway
drug interdiction."
Under the program, states and
municipalities compete for the funds by
submitting yearly applications to the
federal government. Although the funds
can be put toward several different
functions, including drug treatment, nearly
three-quarters of all awarded funds go
generally toward "law enforcement" for
drug enforcement purposes. From Eric
Blumenson and Eva Nilsen, authors of
Policing for Profit: The Drug War's Hidden
Economic Agenda: Byrne grant recipients
are required to use these funds to fight
the war on drugs. The Byrne Program is
now the primary federal program that
funds the state and local war on drugs . . .
Byrne grants have altered the law
enforcement landscape . . . most notably
in the proliferation of multijurisdictional
drug task forces, now collectively the
largest funding category in the federal aid
program.
The money isn't apportioned to strict
categories. "[With Byrne grant money,
the police] can buy all kinds of stuff -
police cars, bullet proof vests, computers,
bullets, overtime - buy whatever they
want," said Harry Levine, a sociology
professor at Queens College, CUNY and
coauthor of Marijuana Arrest Crusade, in a
conversation with Truthout. However,
Levine explained, every police department
that receives Byrne grants must file a
report to the federal government at the
end of each year "showing what it is they
have done with the Byrne grant money to
reduce the drug problem." Although none
of these reports are available for public
review, from the ones that Levine has
seen, police departments across the
country report their drug busts not by type
or even charge, but crudely, "by the
pound." That means what matters most for
a local police department to secure
precious federal dollars is the raw volume
of narcotics seized, a figure fattened by
marijuana arrests, which account for 52
percent of all drug arrests nationwide.
The basic financing scheme for drug law
enforcement has not changed significantly
since Blumenson and Nilsen published
their report in 1998 - in fact, it is more
intimately woven into the budgetary
considerations of local precincts than ever
before, especially after President Obama
infused the Byrne grant program with $2
billion dollars as part of his signature
recovery act in 2009. After eight years of
dwindling funds for the program under
President Bush, the current president
reinvigorated it, and by extension,
renewed the commitment of New York law
enforcement agencies to the drug war -
most recently with a $25 million reward in
2012.
Byrned in New York
Of the millions in grant money doled out to
New York law enforcement two years ago,
nearly $10 million went to the New York
State Division of Criminal Justice Services.
The division's application for the funds
notes that the state legislature has the
responsibility of handing out two-thirds of
the money to local law enforcement. The
Byrne grant application implies an
expectation of consistent funding within
the state's law enforcement agencies:
It is expected that both houses will
continue to be responsive to constituent
demands and needs and will fund a broad
array of programs consistent with their
longstanding patterns.
One of the most pervasive "patterns" in
the way New York polices its communities
is how large a portion of overall arrests is
comprised of marijuana arrests year after
year. In 2010, the last year for which data
is available, over 100,000 arrests were
made throughout the state for mere
possession of marijuana - a charge that
accounts for, incredibly, about a quarter of
all misdemeanor arrests in the state that
year. Marijuana possession arrests are far
and away the most frequent charge meted
out by New York police, and the rate has
steadily increased since 2001, indicating
that law enforcement agencies have
integrated a program for marijuana
persecution as part of their overall
strategy to sustain Byrne grant funds.
There is a dearth of available public
information to confirm whether or not high
numbers of marijuana arrests are used by
local law enforcement to solicit bigger
grants from the federal government, but a
strong inference can be made with what
information is available. Particularly
suggestive are the ties of anti-marijuana
legislators in the New York Senate to
policing lobbies.
Marijuana Crusaders
When Democrats in the New York State
Assembly passed a bill in early 2012 to
decriminalize possession of up to 25
grams of marijuana - the same amount
that had already been "decriminalized" 35
years earlier - Senator Greg Ball was
aghast.
"In a community where we have children
dying from drugs and alcohol it is simply
unconscionable that any legislator would
even consider decriminalizing marijuana,"
he stated in a press statement at the time.
Aside from his concern for the children,
Senator Ball has another stake in the drug
war: He receives thousands of dollars in
financial backing from the Police
Association of Yonkers, the union
representing the local agency awarded
$155,521 in Byrne grant money in 2012.
It is difficult to confirm whether the number
of marijuana arrests resolutely determines
the federal rewards accrued by the city of
Yonkers, but considering that
misdemeanor drug charges were the city's
highest registered charge that year, it's
not far-fetched to assume that marijuana
arrests are part of the department's
"longstanding pattern" for which it collects
Byrne money.
Senator Ball is not alone in his backing
from policing lobbies with a financial
interest in sustaining marijuana
prohibition. Senator Dean Skelos, the
majority leader in the Senate, also
opposed the measure, citing an absurd
fear of New Yorkers "walk[ing] around with
10 joints in their ear." Skelos received
$10,000 in campaign finances from the
New York Police Investigators Association,
a collective of investigators spread out
across the state who also gave a
significant sum of money to drug warrior
and former sheriff Senator Patrick
Gullivan.
Public records reveal that nearly all of the
Republicans who opposed the 2012 bill to
decriminalize small amounts of cannabis
receive backing from state law
enforcement unions. Senator John
Flanagan receives thousands of dollars
from multiple police unions, as does
Senator Kemp Hannon, Senator Thomas
Libous, Senator Joseph Robach, Senator
Thomas O'Mara, Senator Andrew Lanza,
Senator Martin Gold, and Senator George
Maziarz.
As for senate Democrats, many
representing poorer urban communities
most affected by marijuana sentencing
laws, the majority supported the
decriminalization bill. None have the sort of
deep ties to policing unions that senate
Republicans have, although not all on the
right are beholden to these groups -
Republican Mark Grisanti was one of the
lead champions of the measure, remarking
that the bill would alleviate the "racial
disparities" surrounding possession
charges in New York. Grisanti is distinct
from his fellow conservatives in that he
receives no campaign financing funding
from unions representing law enforcement
agencies.
With the Senate GOP so firmly opposed to
a decriminalization bill that did nothing but
parrot the terms of an already-existing law,
it goes without saying that they reacted to
Senator Liz Krueger's December bill, the
Marijuana Regulation and Taxation Act,
with outright patronization. "We're focused
on cutting taxes to create new jobs . . .
Senate Democrats, it would appear, have
other priorities," said Senate GOP
spokesman Scott Reiff. (The bill would, in
fact, correct a policy that has "led to
hundreds of millions of [tax] dollars in
policing and court costs and incalculable
damage to the lives of hundreds of
thousands of New Yorkers," in the words
of civil rights organizer Alfredo
Carrasquillo.)
Yet no matter how well articulated the
benefits of marijuana legalization - or even
modest decriminalization - are,
conservative senators in New York will
have their judgment clouded by monetary
incentives that can be traced back to the
federal government's complex drug war
financing scheme. For a look at how
deeply this dynamic can affect state drug
policy, one needs to look at the handful of
Western states that have attempted to
rescind cannabis prohibition in recent
years.
In 2010, California considered a measure
to legalize, tax and regulate marijuana
through an industry model similar to the
one now active in Colorado. The measure
failed to pass, and much of the opposition
can be traced to a well-financed
opposition campaign headed by a police
association lobbyist named John Lovell.
According to Republic Report, "Lovell's
[lobbying] firm was paid over $386,350
from a wide array of police associations,"
and the measure ultimately failed to
garner enough votes in the state. The
California Police Chief Association spent
more than any other group to finance the
defeat of Proposition 19.
Similarly, in Colorado, 13 law enforcement
groups allied themselves with Smart
Colorado, a group that spearheaded
opposition to Amendment 64, the bill that
legalized cannabis. In Washington, where
Initiative 502 passed the same day as its
twin measure in Colorado, the Council of
Metropolitan Police and Sheriffs
(COMPAS) a major police lobby in the
state, had publicly endorsed unsuccessful
gubernatorial candidate (and major
marijuana opponent) Rob McKenna for
governor in 2012. However, police unions
in Washington were noticeably less
zealous in their fight against reform, owing
to the sense of doom that permeated
through precincts on the eve of the
legislation's passage.
"My opinion is everybody's running for
political cover on this because they think
it's going to pass," said Spokane County
Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich to The
Spokesman-Review at the time. Most of
the Sheriff's colleagues were silent on the
issue, and the opposition campaign
received significantly less financing than
the one to propose it - which may be
indicative of how popular pressure can
trump money-driven political motives.
As Albany moves quickly on two new pot
initiatives this year, it is likely that New
Yorkers will continue to relax their
disposition toward cannabis, especially if
the experiments in other states continue to
unfold without a hitch. Unlike many
lawmakers in the state senate, voters do
not have a moneyed incentive to oppose
drug reform - in fact, reforming marijuana
laws is likely to save them about $430
million annually in New York City alone,
according to a report by the city's
Comptroller's Office. While federal grant
money compels state police agencies to
string along senators like drug-warrior
marionettes, the free-moving zeitgeist will
go where it wishes, and if that happens to
be away from the draconian pot laws of
the past, then lawmakers will have no
alternative but to catch up.
York State of Mind
Friday, 10 January 2014 10:27
By Aaron Cantu, Truthout
When it comes to marijuana legalization,
politicians in New York are feeling the
pressure. Colorado is currently unveiling
the world's first nonmedical,
state-regulated cannabis industry, other
states legislatures are displaying signs of
following in its footsteps, and public
opinion has shifted to heavily favor
changing laws around pot. At long last,
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo
performed a complete 180 on the issue of
medical cannabis last week, announcing
plans to allow 20 hospitals statewide to
prescribe the plant. A year earlier, he'd
vowed to veto any such legislation. (This
previous position is not out of sync with
New York's overall practices regarding
marijuana: City police arrest more people
for pot possession than any other crime.)
The governor's change of heart comes on
the heels of a more progressive bill
introduced in December by Senator Liz
Krueger, which calls for the complete
legalization of cannabis in New York and
the formation of an industry similar to the
nascent one in Colorado. According to two
different polls, majorities of New Yorkers
favor both measures.
Yet as many New York legislators push for
a reorientation, a cadre of conservative
drug warriors in the senate have
positioned themselves firmly against any
adjustment of antiquated marijuana laws -
even when these changes would save the
state money on costs of incarceration and
allot police attention to more pressing
matters.
New York's marijuana prohibition history is
rife with contradictions. In 1977, the state
legislature ostensibly reduced the penalty
for carrying 25 grams or less of marijuana
to a noncriminal violation. However, this
longstanding policy hasn't resulted in
fewer arrests: Nearly 40,000 people in
New York City alone were arrested for
possession in 2012, the vast majority
black and Latino. That same year, in a
bizarre case of déjà-vu, the New York
legislature considered a bill to
decriminalize the possession of cannabis -
implicitly admitting the impotence of the
former measure - only for the legislation to
be killed.
Why, despite an evolving national
temperament on cannabis, have New York
legislators remained so stubborn on the
issue? And why have most states lagged
so far behind public opinion in their efforts
to roll back marijuana bans? To answer
this question, it is necessary to examine a
federal law passed by the US Congress in
the 1980s that gave law enforcement
agencies everywhere a moneyed interest
in perpetuating all aspects of the war on
drugs, including marijuana prohibition.
Policing for Profit
In the waning days of President Ronald
Reagan's tenure, Congress bolstered its
quixotic mission to eradicate drug usage
by doubling down on its financial
commitment to local law enforcement. This
measure, called the Byrne Memorial State
and Local Law Enforcement Assistance
Program, encouraged agencies across the
country to put more resources toward drug
policy enforcement, in return for more
cash and equipment from the federal
government. As Michelle Alexander
explains in her book, The New Jim Crow,
"This money . . . resulted in the
proliferation of narcotics task forces,
including those responsible for highway
drug interdiction."
Under the program, states and
municipalities compete for the funds by
submitting yearly applications to the
federal government. Although the funds
can be put toward several different
functions, including drug treatment, nearly
three-quarters of all awarded funds go
generally toward "law enforcement" for
drug enforcement purposes. From Eric
Blumenson and Eva Nilsen, authors of
Policing for Profit: The Drug War's Hidden
Economic Agenda: Byrne grant recipients
are required to use these funds to fight
the war on drugs. The Byrne Program is
now the primary federal program that
funds the state and local war on drugs . . .
Byrne grants have altered the law
enforcement landscape . . . most notably
in the proliferation of multijurisdictional
drug task forces, now collectively the
largest funding category in the federal aid
program.
The money isn't apportioned to strict
categories. "[With Byrne grant money,
the police] can buy all kinds of stuff -
police cars, bullet proof vests, computers,
bullets, overtime - buy whatever they
want," said Harry Levine, a sociology
professor at Queens College, CUNY and
coauthor of Marijuana Arrest Crusade, in a
conversation with Truthout. However,
Levine explained, every police department
that receives Byrne grants must file a
report to the federal government at the
end of each year "showing what it is they
have done with the Byrne grant money to
reduce the drug problem." Although none
of these reports are available for public
review, from the ones that Levine has
seen, police departments across the
country report their drug busts not by type
or even charge, but crudely, "by the
pound." That means what matters most for
a local police department to secure
precious federal dollars is the raw volume
of narcotics seized, a figure fattened by
marijuana arrests, which account for 52
percent of all drug arrests nationwide.
The basic financing scheme for drug law
enforcement has not changed significantly
since Blumenson and Nilsen published
their report in 1998 - in fact, it is more
intimately woven into the budgetary
considerations of local precincts than ever
before, especially after President Obama
infused the Byrne grant program with $2
billion dollars as part of his signature
recovery act in 2009. After eight years of
dwindling funds for the program under
President Bush, the current president
reinvigorated it, and by extension,
renewed the commitment of New York law
enforcement agencies to the drug war -
most recently with a $25 million reward in
2012.
Byrned in New York
Of the millions in grant money doled out to
New York law enforcement two years ago,
nearly $10 million went to the New York
State Division of Criminal Justice Services.
The division's application for the funds
notes that the state legislature has the
responsibility of handing out two-thirds of
the money to local law enforcement. The
Byrne grant application implies an
expectation of consistent funding within
the state's law enforcement agencies:
It is expected that both houses will
continue to be responsive to constituent
demands and needs and will fund a broad
array of programs consistent with their
longstanding patterns.
One of the most pervasive "patterns" in
the way New York polices its communities
is how large a portion of overall arrests is
comprised of marijuana arrests year after
year. In 2010, the last year for which data
is available, over 100,000 arrests were
made throughout the state for mere
possession of marijuana - a charge that
accounts for, incredibly, about a quarter of
all misdemeanor arrests in the state that
year. Marijuana possession arrests are far
and away the most frequent charge meted
out by New York police, and the rate has
steadily increased since 2001, indicating
that law enforcement agencies have
integrated a program for marijuana
persecution as part of their overall
strategy to sustain Byrne grant funds.
There is a dearth of available public
information to confirm whether or not high
numbers of marijuana arrests are used by
local law enforcement to solicit bigger
grants from the federal government, but a
strong inference can be made with what
information is available. Particularly
suggestive are the ties of anti-marijuana
legislators in the New York Senate to
policing lobbies.
Marijuana Crusaders
When Democrats in the New York State
Assembly passed a bill in early 2012 to
decriminalize possession of up to 25
grams of marijuana - the same amount
that had already been "decriminalized" 35
years earlier - Senator Greg Ball was
aghast.
"In a community where we have children
dying from drugs and alcohol it is simply
unconscionable that any legislator would
even consider decriminalizing marijuana,"
he stated in a press statement at the time.
Aside from his concern for the children,
Senator Ball has another stake in the drug
war: He receives thousands of dollars in
financial backing from the Police
Association of Yonkers, the union
representing the local agency awarded
$155,521 in Byrne grant money in 2012.
It is difficult to confirm whether the number
of marijuana arrests resolutely determines
the federal rewards accrued by the city of
Yonkers, but considering that
misdemeanor drug charges were the city's
highest registered charge that year, it's
not far-fetched to assume that marijuana
arrests are part of the department's
"longstanding pattern" for which it collects
Byrne money.
Senator Ball is not alone in his backing
from policing lobbies with a financial
interest in sustaining marijuana
prohibition. Senator Dean Skelos, the
majority leader in the Senate, also
opposed the measure, citing an absurd
fear of New Yorkers "walk[ing] around with
10 joints in their ear." Skelos received
$10,000 in campaign finances from the
New York Police Investigators Association,
a collective of investigators spread out
across the state who also gave a
significant sum of money to drug warrior
and former sheriff Senator Patrick
Gullivan.
Public records reveal that nearly all of the
Republicans who opposed the 2012 bill to
decriminalize small amounts of cannabis
receive backing from state law
enforcement unions. Senator John
Flanagan receives thousands of dollars
from multiple police unions, as does
Senator Kemp Hannon, Senator Thomas
Libous, Senator Joseph Robach, Senator
Thomas O'Mara, Senator Andrew Lanza,
Senator Martin Gold, and Senator George
Maziarz.
As for senate Democrats, many
representing poorer urban communities
most affected by marijuana sentencing
laws, the majority supported the
decriminalization bill. None have the sort of
deep ties to policing unions that senate
Republicans have, although not all on the
right are beholden to these groups -
Republican Mark Grisanti was one of the
lead champions of the measure, remarking
that the bill would alleviate the "racial
disparities" surrounding possession
charges in New York. Grisanti is distinct
from his fellow conservatives in that he
receives no campaign financing funding
from unions representing law enforcement
agencies.
With the Senate GOP so firmly opposed to
a decriminalization bill that did nothing but
parrot the terms of an already-existing law,
it goes without saying that they reacted to
Senator Liz Krueger's December bill, the
Marijuana Regulation and Taxation Act,
with outright patronization. "We're focused
on cutting taxes to create new jobs . . .
Senate Democrats, it would appear, have
other priorities," said Senate GOP
spokesman Scott Reiff. (The bill would, in
fact, correct a policy that has "led to
hundreds of millions of [tax] dollars in
policing and court costs and incalculable
damage to the lives of hundreds of
thousands of New Yorkers," in the words
of civil rights organizer Alfredo
Carrasquillo.)
Yet no matter how well articulated the
benefits of marijuana legalization - or even
modest decriminalization - are,
conservative senators in New York will
have their judgment clouded by monetary
incentives that can be traced back to the
federal government's complex drug war
financing scheme. For a look at how
deeply this dynamic can affect state drug
policy, one needs to look at the handful of
Western states that have attempted to
rescind cannabis prohibition in recent
years.
In 2010, California considered a measure
to legalize, tax and regulate marijuana
through an industry model similar to the
one now active in Colorado. The measure
failed to pass, and much of the opposition
can be traced to a well-financed
opposition campaign headed by a police
association lobbyist named John Lovell.
According to Republic Report, "Lovell's
[lobbying] firm was paid over $386,350
from a wide array of police associations,"
and the measure ultimately failed to
garner enough votes in the state. The
California Police Chief Association spent
more than any other group to finance the
defeat of Proposition 19.
Similarly, in Colorado, 13 law enforcement
groups allied themselves with Smart
Colorado, a group that spearheaded
opposition to Amendment 64, the bill that
legalized cannabis. In Washington, where
Initiative 502 passed the same day as its
twin measure in Colorado, the Council of
Metropolitan Police and Sheriffs
(COMPAS) a major police lobby in the
state, had publicly endorsed unsuccessful
gubernatorial candidate (and major
marijuana opponent) Rob McKenna for
governor in 2012. However, police unions
in Washington were noticeably less
zealous in their fight against reform, owing
to the sense of doom that permeated
through precincts on the eve of the
legislation's passage.
"My opinion is everybody's running for
political cover on this because they think
it's going to pass," said Spokane County
Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich to The
Spokesman-Review at the time. Most of
the Sheriff's colleagues were silent on the
issue, and the opposition campaign
received significantly less financing than
the one to propose it - which may be
indicative of how popular pressure can
trump money-driven political motives.
As Albany moves quickly on two new pot
initiatives this year, it is likely that New
Yorkers will continue to relax their
disposition toward cannabis, especially if
the experiments in other states continue to
unfold without a hitch. Unlike many
lawmakers in the state senate, voters do
not have a moneyed incentive to oppose
drug reform - in fact, reforming marijuana
laws is likely to save them about $430
million annually in New York City alone,
according to a report by the city's
Comptroller's Office. While federal grant
money compels state police agencies to
string along senators like drug-warrior
marionettes, the free-moving zeitgeist will
go where it wishes, and if that happens to
be away from the draconian pot laws of
the past, then lawmakers will have no
alternative but to catch up.
| Life in the Electronic Concentration Camp: The Many Ways That You're Being Tracked and Controlled Fri, 10 Jan 2014 By John W Whitehead, Rutherford Institute | News Analysis A security camera] doesn’t respond to complaint, threats, or insults. Instead, it just watches you in a forbidding manner. Today, the surveillance state is so deeply enmeshed in our data devices that we don’t even scream back because technology companies have convinced us that we need to be connected to them to be happy.”—Pratap Chatterjee, journalist What is most striking about the American police state is not the mega- corporations running amok in the halls of Congress, the militarized police crashing through doors and shooting unarmed citizens, or the invasive surveillance regime which has come to dominate every aspect of our lives. No, what has been most disconcerting about the emergence of the American police state is the extent to which the citizenry appears content to passively wait for someone else to solve our nation’s many problems. Unless Americans are prepared to engage in militant nonviolent resistance in the spirit of Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi, true reform, if any, will be a long time coming. Yet as I detail in my book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, if we don’t act soon, all that is in need of fixing will soon be unfixable, especially as it relates to the police state that becomes more entrenched with each passing day. By “police state,” I am referring to more than a society overrun by the long arm of the police. I am referring to a society in which all aspects of a person’s life are policed by government agents, one in which all citizens are suspects, their activities monitored and regulated, their movements tracked, their communications spied upon, and their lives, liberties and pursuit of happiness dependent on the government’s say-so. That said, how can anyone be expected to “fix” what is broken unless they first understand the lengths to which the government with its arsenal of technology is going in order to accustom the American people to life in a police state and why being spied on by government agents, both state and federal, as well as their partners in the corporate world, is a problem, even if you’ve done nothing wrong. Indeed, as the trend towards overcriminalization makes clear, it won’t be long before the average law-abiding American is breaking laws she didn’t even know existed during the course of a routine day. The point, of course, is that while you may be oblivious to your so-called law-breaking—whether it was collecting rainwater to water your lawn, lighting a cigarette in the privacy of your home, or gathering with friends in your backyard for a Sunday evening Bible study—the government will know each and every transgression and use them against you. As noted by the Brookings Institution, “For the first time ever, it will become technologically and financially feasible for authoritarian governments to record nearly everything that is said or done within their borders — every phone conversation, electronic message, social media interaction, the movements of nearly every person and vehicle, and video from every street corner.” As the following will show, the electronic concentration camp, as I have dubbed the surveillance state, is perhaps the most insidious of the police state’s many tentacles, impacting almost every aspect of our lives and making it that much easier for the government to encroach on our most vital freedoms, ranging from free speech, assembly and the press to due process, privacy, and property, by eavesdropping on our communications, tracking our movements and spying on our activities. Tracking you based on your consumer activities: Fusion centers, federal-state law enforcement partnerships which attempt to aggregate a variety of data on so- called “suspicious persons,” have actually collected reports on people buying pallets of bottled water, photographing government buildings, and applying for a pilot’s license as “suspicious activity.” Retailers are getting in on the surveillance game as well. Large corporations such as Target have been tracking and assessing the behavior of their customers, particularly their purchasing patterns, for years. In 2015, mega-food corporations will be rolling out high-tech shelving outfitted with cameras in order to track the shopping behavior of customers, as well as information like the age and sex of shoppers. Tracking you based on your public activities: Sensing a booming industry, private corporations are jumping on the surveillance state bandwagon, negotiating lucrative contracts with police agencies throughout the country in order to create a web of surveillance that encompasses all major urban centers. Companies such as NICE and Bright Planet are selling equipment and services to police departments with the promise of monitoring large groups of people seamlessly, as in the case of protests and rallies. They are also engaging in extensive online surveillance, looking for any hints of “large public events, social unrest, gang communications, and criminally predicated individuals.” Defense contractors are attempting to take a bite out of this lucrative market as well. Raytheon has recently developed a software package known as Riot, which promises to predict the future behavior of an individual based upon his social media posts. Tracking you based on your phone activities: The CIA has been paying AT&T over $10 million per year in order to gain access to data on Americans’ phone calls abroad. This is in addition to telecommunications employees being embedded in government facilities to assist with quick analysis of call records and respond to government requests for customer location data. They receive hundreds of thousands of such requests per year. Tracking you based on your computer activities: Federal agents now employ a number of hacking methods in order to gain access to your computer activities and “see” whatever you’re seeing on your monitor. Malicious hacking software can be installed via a number of inconspicuous methods, including USB, or via an email attachment or software update. It can then be used to search through files stored on a hard drive, log keystrokes, or take real time screenshots of whatever a person is looking at on their computer, whether personal files, web pages, or email messages. It can also be used to remotely activate cameras and microphones, offering another means of glimpsing into the personal business of a target. Tracking you based on your behavior: Thanks to a torrent of federal grants, police departments across the country are able to fund outrageous new surveillance systems that turn the most basic human behaviors into suspicious situations to be studied and analyzed. Police in California, Massachusetts, and New York have all received federal funds to create systems like that operated by the New York Police Department, which “links 3,000 surveillance cameras with license plate readers, radiation sensors, criminal databases and terror suspect lists.” Police all across the country are also now engaging in big data mining operations, often with the help of private companies, in order to develop city-wide nets of surveillance. For example, police in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, now work with IBM in order to “integrate new data and analytics tools into everyday crime fighting.” Tracking you based on your face: Facial recognition software promises to create a society in which every individual who steps out into public is tracked and recorded as they go about their daily business. The goal is for government agents to be able to scan a crowd of people and instantaneously identify all of the individuals present. Facial recognition programs are being rolled out in states all across the country (only twelve states do not use facial recognition software). For example, in Ohio, 30,000 police officers and court employees are able to access the driver’s license images of people in the state, without any form of oversight to track their views or why they’re accessing them. The FBI is developing a $1 billion program, Next Generation Identification, which involves creating a massive database of mugshots for police all across the country. Tracking you based on your car: License plate readers, which can identify the owner of any car that comes within its sights, are growing in popularity among police agencies. Affixed to overpasses or cop cars, these devices give police a clear idea of where your car was at a specific date and time, whether the doctor’s office, the bar, the mosque, or at a political rally. State police in Virginia used license plate readers to record every single vehicle that arrived to President Barack Obama’s inauguration in 2009 from Virginia. They also recorded the license plates of attendees at rallies prior to the election, including for then- candidate Obama and Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. This data collection came at the request of the U.S. Secret Service. Incredibly, Virginia police stored data on some 8 million license plates, some for up to three years. Tracking you based on your social media activities: The obsession with social media as a form of surveillance will have some frightening consequences in coming years. As Helen A.S. Popkin, writing for NBC News, has astutely observed, “We may very well face a future where algorithms bust people en masse for referencing illegal ‘Game of Thrones’ downloads, or run sweeps for insurance companies seeking non-smokers confessing to lapsing back into the habit. Instead of that one guy getting busted for a lame joke misinterpreted as a real threat, the new software has the potential to roll, Terminator-style, targeting every social media user with a shameful confession or questionable sense of humor.” Tracking you based on your metadata: Metadata is an incredibly invasive set of data to have on a person. Indeed, with access to one’s metadata, one can “identify people’s friends and associates, detect where they were at a certain time, acquire clues to religious or political affiliations, and pick up sensitive information like regular calls to a psychiatrist’s office, late-night messages to an extramarital partner or exchanges with a fellow plotter.” The National Security Agency (NSA) has been particularly interested in metadata, compiling information on Americans’ social connections “that can identify their associates, their locations at certain times, their traveling companions and other personal information.” Mainway, the main NSA tool used to connect the dots on American social connections, collected 700 million phone records per day in 2011. That number increased by 1.1 billion in August 2011. The NSA is now working on creating “a metadata repository capable of taking in 20 billion ‘record events’ daily and making them available to N.S.A. analysts within 60 minutes.” Tracking you from the skies: Nothing, and I mean nothing, will escape government eyes, especially when drones take to the skies in 2015. These gadgets, ranging from the colossal to the miniature, will have the capability of seeing through the walls of your home and tracking your every movement. To put it bluntly, we are living in an electronic concentration camp. Through a series of imperceptible steps, we have willingly allowed ourselves to become enmeshed in a system that knows the most intimate details of our lives, analyzes them, and treats us accordingly. Whether via fear of terrorism, narcissistic pleasure, or lazy materialism, we have slowly handed over our information to all sorts of entities, corporate and governmental, public and private, who are now using that information to cow and control us for their profit. As George Orwell warned, “You had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.” Thus, we have arrived in Orwell’s world. The question now is: will we take a stand and fight to remain free or will we go gently into the concentration camp? |