Op-Ed
"When you are hungry, cold is a killer, and the people here are starving and helpless." Not many of us can relate to such a statement, but millions of ‘starving and helpless' people throughout the Horn of Africa know fully the pain of elderly Somali mother, Batula Moalim.
Moalim, quoted by the British Telegraph, was not posing as spokesperson to the estimated 11 million people (per United Nations figures) who are currently in dire need of food. About 440,000 of those affected by the world's "worst humanitarian disaster" dwell in a state of complete despair in Dadaab, a complex of three camps in Kenya. Imagine the fate of those not lucky enough to reach these camps, people who remain chronically lacking in resources, and, in the case of Somalia, trapped in a civil war.
All that Batula Moalim was pleading for was "plastic sheeting for shelter, as well as for food and medicine."
It is disheartening, to say the least, when such disasters don't represent an opportunity for political, military or other strategic gains, subsequently, enthusiasm to ‘intervene' peters out so quickly.
Moalim, quoted by the British Telegraph, was not posing as spokesperson to the estimated 11 million people (per United Nations figures) who are currently in dire need of food. About 440,000 of those affected by the world's "worst humanitarian disaster" dwell in a state of complete despair in Dadaab, a complex of three camps in Kenya. Imagine the fate of those not lucky enough to reach these camps, people who remain chronically lacking in resources, and, in the case of Somalia, trapped in a civil war.
All that Batula Moalim was pleading for was "plastic sheeting for shelter, as well as for food and medicine."
It is disheartening, to say the least, when such disasters don't represent an opportunity for political, military or other strategic gains, subsequently, enthusiasm to ‘intervene' peters out so quickly.
The wealthiest nation on earth is not actually obliged to starve our senior citizens. We don't need a military 670% more expensive than the next largest one on earth. We don't need to fund health insurance corporations instead of healthcare. And we don't need tax breaks for billionaires. In fact, we don't need billionaires. That's the message RootsAction is taking to Congress.
Forbes magazine has been listing the 400 wealthiest Americans every year since 1982. Thirteen billionaires appeared on the original Forbes list. Now all 400 rate billionaire status. These 400, collectively, possess more wealth than the poorer half of America's population put together. Sam Pizzigati explains how we got here.
The United States now has a level of inequality that shocks much of the world. If Washington wants to balance its budget, it should do so on the backs of these 400 people, not the hundreds of millions of us who can't afford it. Tax these billionaires into non-billionaires, and Washington's financial worries -- and our economic worries -- will be gone for generations to come. The vast majority of us favor this approach.
Forbes magazine has been listing the 400 wealthiest Americans every year since 1982. Thirteen billionaires appeared on the original Forbes list. Now all 400 rate billionaire status. These 400, collectively, possess more wealth than the poorer half of America's population put together. Sam Pizzigati explains how we got here.
The United States now has a level of inequality that shocks much of the world. If Washington wants to balance its budget, it should do so on the backs of these 400 people, not the hundreds of millions of us who can't afford it. Tax these billionaires into non-billionaires, and Washington's financial worries -- and our economic worries -- will be gone for generations to come. The vast majority of us favor this approach.
Imagine how radically different the current debate over the Giant Debt Ceiling Monster would look if we moved it to one of those nations we're bombing into a democracy. Imagine us all still U.S. residents with the same views we have now, but imagine that our representatives in Washington, D.C., were obliged to give a damn what we thought.
Back on January 3rd, Americans expressed their first choice of action. While 3% chose to cut Social Security and 4% to cut Medicare, 20% said cut the military, and 61% said tax the rich. On January 14th, 52% said they would approve of cutting the military. Another poll, conducted January 15th to 19th, found 55% choosing to cut the military as their first choice (taxing the rich was not offered), while 21% said cut Medicare and 13% said cut Social Security.
In April, the Washington Post - ABC News found that 72% of Americans want to raise taxes on people with incomes over $250,000, while 42% say cut the military, 30% are willing to cut Medicaid, and 21% Medicare. Even Gallup says that 42% want to cut Homeland Security and 42% want to cut the military, while cutting Medicare and Social Security are at 38% and 34%.
Back on January 3rd, Americans expressed their first choice of action. While 3% chose to cut Social Security and 4% to cut Medicare, 20% said cut the military, and 61% said tax the rich. On January 14th, 52% said they would approve of cutting the military. Another poll, conducted January 15th to 19th, found 55% choosing to cut the military as their first choice (taxing the rich was not offered), while 21% said cut Medicare and 13% said cut Social Security.
In April, the Washington Post - ABC News found that 72% of Americans want to raise taxes on people with incomes over $250,000, while 42% say cut the military, 30% are willing to cut Medicaid, and 21% Medicare. Even Gallup says that 42% want to cut Homeland Security and 42% want to cut the military, while cutting Medicare and Social Security are at 38% and 34%.
Leon Panetta, on his first visit to Iraq as secretary of defense last weekend, reached for a Bush moment ten years too late.
“The reason you guys are here is because on 9/11 the United States got attacked,” he said to the assembled troops at Camp Victory in Baghdad, according to the Washington Post. “And 3,000 Americans — 3,000 not just Americans, 3,000 human beings, innocent human beings — got killed because of al-Qaida. And we’ve been fighting as a result of that.”
Yeah, oops, gaffe, Mr. Secretary, right? That Iraq-al-Qaida connection thingy isn’t in the spin anymore, and Panetta’s assistant had to mop up afterwards, making sure no one misinterpreted the boss’s remarks as reopening an old “debate” by reiterating a long-abandoned lie.
“The reason you guys are here is because on 9/11 the United States got attacked,” he said to the assembled troops at Camp Victory in Baghdad, according to the Washington Post. “And 3,000 Americans — 3,000 not just Americans, 3,000 human beings, innocent human beings — got killed because of al-Qaida. And we’ve been fighting as a result of that.”
Yeah, oops, gaffe, Mr. Secretary, right? That Iraq-al-Qaida connection thingy isn’t in the spin anymore, and Panetta’s assistant had to mop up afterwards, making sure no one misinterpreted the boss’s remarks as reopening an old “debate” by reiterating a long-abandoned lie.
Rupert Murdoch and other News Corporation executives are at the center of a shocking British media scandal that involves spying, bribery, corruption, a corporate cover-up and even murder.
We need to know if this media giant’s potential criminal behavior has crossed the Atlantic.1
Murdoch has amassed a worldwide media empire, which in America includes Fox News Channel, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Post, and hundreds of local broadcast stations and cable channels.
For too long, Murdoch has used his enormous media power to get what he wants from Washington and insulate himself and his company from official scrutiny. If he has broken the law along the way, he needs to be held accountable.
Tell Congress: Investigate News Corp. and Rupert Murdoch now
These allegations are serious. Reporters at the Murdoch-owned paper News of the World allegedly hacked the phone messages of more than 4,000 people, including the voicemail of a 13-year-old girl who went missing and was later found murdered.
Company executives are also accused of paying $160,000 in bribes to British police to bury an investigation into the matter.
We need to know if this media giant’s potential criminal behavior has crossed the Atlantic.1
Murdoch has amassed a worldwide media empire, which in America includes Fox News Channel, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Post, and hundreds of local broadcast stations and cable channels.
For too long, Murdoch has used his enormous media power to get what he wants from Washington and insulate himself and his company from official scrutiny. If he has broken the law along the way, he needs to be held accountable.
Tell Congress: Investigate News Corp. and Rupert Murdoch now
These allegations are serious. Reporters at the Murdoch-owned paper News of the World allegedly hacked the phone messages of more than 4,000 people, including the voicemail of a 13-year-old girl who went missing and was later found murdered.
Company executives are also accused of paying $160,000 in bribes to British police to bury an investigation into the matter.
Statutes of limitations for torture not resulting in death have passed. The DOJ has refused to prosecute 99 of 101 cases of torture-to-death that it looked at. Obama has long since publicly told the DOJ not to prosecute the CIA for torture. Obama's torture of Bradley Manning has been widely ignored. Rendition has been established as normal. Torturers have published confessional/bragging memoirs. Habeas corpus has been formally ended. The Bagram-Gitmo archipelago is here to stay. Torture continues in Iraq, Afghanistan, elsewhere. Assassinations have been established as the truly big new fashion. Harold Koh has replaced John Yoo as the Guy Who Will "Legalize" Anything. We've got more illegal wars going at once than ever before. Congress has practically dropped the pretense of a rule of law. The President can't clear his throat without opposing "relitigating the past," as if on the planet he comes from it is common to litigate the future. And Human Rights Watch has chosen this moment to announce that Bush and Cheney might just have been responsible for torture?
112th CONGRESS
1st Session
To highly resolve that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the United States of America.
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
July 12, 2011
A BILL
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This Act may be cited as the Start Doing Our Damn Jobs Act of 2012.
SEC. 2. STOP KILLING PEOPLE
(a) The combined appropriations of the Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and all military appropriations made through the Department of State, the Department of Energy, and all other military appropriations shall never be more than twice the funding, in absolute dollars, spent on its military in the previous year by the highest military-spending nation on earth other than the United States of America.
(b) The Department of Defense will be audited annually by the United States Congress.
(c) The Central Intelligence Agency will cease to exist. Its buildings will be sold at public auction.
1st Session
To highly resolve that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the United States of America.
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
July 12, 2011
A BILL
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This Act may be cited as the Start Doing Our Damn Jobs Act of 2012.
SEC. 2. STOP KILLING PEOPLE
(a) The combined appropriations of the Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and all military appropriations made through the Department of State, the Department of Energy, and all other military appropriations shall never be more than twice the funding, in absolute dollars, spent on its military in the previous year by the highest military-spending nation on earth other than the United States of America.
(b) The Department of Defense will be audited annually by the United States Congress.
(c) The Central Intelligence Agency will cease to exist. Its buildings will be sold at public auction.
"What's the point?" "We never win!" "Why bother trying?"
This time we won.
This is the point. Congressman Buck McKeon and Senator John McCain proposed to give Obama and all future presidents dramatically expanded powers to launch wars. They wanted to do so as part of the same "Defense Authorization Act" in which the House was restricting Obama's warmaking in Libya.
Activist groups like RootsAction pushed back. A great deal of support was generated for an amendment to strip the offending language out in the House, but the amendment failed. RootsAction, and other organizations, demanded that the Senate remove it:
At the same time, the House rejected amendments that would have limited or ended U.S. warfare in Afghanistan, and rejected an amendment that would have stripped Section 1034 from the bill. That section is perhaps the most fundamental change to the structure of our federal government that has ever appeared likely to pass through Congress, as it would effectively give the power to make war to all future presidents. We must demand that the Senate remove Section 1034.
This time we won.
This is the point. Congressman Buck McKeon and Senator John McCain proposed to give Obama and all future presidents dramatically expanded powers to launch wars. They wanted to do so as part of the same "Defense Authorization Act" in which the House was restricting Obama's warmaking in Libya.
Activist groups like RootsAction pushed back. A great deal of support was generated for an amendment to strip the offending language out in the House, but the amendment failed. RootsAction, and other organizations, demanded that the Senate remove it:
At the same time, the House rejected amendments that would have limited or ended U.S. warfare in Afghanistan, and rejected an amendment that would have stripped Section 1034 from the bill. That section is perhaps the most fundamental change to the structure of our federal government that has ever appeared likely to pass through Congress, as it would effectively give the power to make war to all future presidents. We must demand that the Senate remove Section 1034.
Yes, that was I standing before the U.S. Embassy in Athens on the eve of the July Fourth weekend holding the American flag in the distress mode — upside down.
Indignities experienced by me and my co-guests on “The Audacity of Hope,” the American boat to Gaza, over the past ten days in Athens leave no doubt in my mind that Barack Obama’s administration has forfeited the right to claim any lineage to the brave Americans who declared independence from the king of England 235 years ago.
In the Declaration of Independence, they pledged their lives, fortunes and sacred honor to a new enterprise of freedom, democracy and the human spirit. The outcome was far from assured; likely as not, the hangman’s noose awaited them. They knew that all too well.
But they had a genuine audacity to hope that the majority of their countrymen and women, persuaded by Thomas Paine’s Common Sense and the elegant words of Thomas Jefferson, would conclude that the goal of liberty and freedom was worth the risk, that it was worth whatever the cost.
Indignities experienced by me and my co-guests on “The Audacity of Hope,” the American boat to Gaza, over the past ten days in Athens leave no doubt in my mind that Barack Obama’s administration has forfeited the right to claim any lineage to the brave Americans who declared independence from the king of England 235 years ago.
In the Declaration of Independence, they pledged their lives, fortunes and sacred honor to a new enterprise of freedom, democracy and the human spirit. The outcome was far from assured; likely as not, the hangman’s noose awaited them. They knew that all too well.
But they had a genuine audacity to hope that the majority of their countrymen and women, persuaded by Thomas Paine’s Common Sense and the elegant words of Thomas Jefferson, would conclude that the goal of liberty and freedom was worth the risk, that it was worth whatever the cost.
The Declaration of Independence is best remembered as a declaration of war, a war declared on the grounds that we wanted our own flag. The sheer stupidity and anachronism of the idea serves to discourage any thoughts about why Canada didn't need a bloody war, whether the U.S. war benefitted people outside the new aristocracy to whom power was transferred, what bothered Frederick Douglas so much about a day celebrating "independence," or what the Declaration of Independence actually said.
When you read the Declaration of Independence, it turns out to be an indictment of King George III for various abuses of power. And those abuses of power look fairly similar to abuses of power we happily permit U.S. presidents to engage in today, either as regards the people of this nation or the people of territories and nations that our military occupies today in a manner uncomfortably resembling Britain's rule over the 13 colonies.
Or perhaps I should say, a large portion of us take turns being happy or outraged depending on the political party with which the current president is identified.
When you read the Declaration of Independence, it turns out to be an indictment of King George III for various abuses of power. And those abuses of power look fairly similar to abuses of power we happily permit U.S. presidents to engage in today, either as regards the people of this nation or the people of territories and nations that our military occupies today in a manner uncomfortably resembling Britain's rule over the 13 colonies.
Or perhaps I should say, a large portion of us take turns being happy or outraged depending on the political party with which the current president is identified.