Sunday, August 28, 2011
Egypt: NGOs Accuse Army of Smear Campaign
By William Fisher
Thirty-six of Egypt’s most respected civil society organizations are denouncing Egypt’s military rulers for “conducting organized smear campaigns designed to impugn these groups’ patriotism as well as ongoing attempts to intimidate” them, the organizations said in a statement.
The groups accused the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) of ordering investigations conducted by the State Security Prosecution into “complaints accusing unnamed NGOs and political groups of receiving foreign funds and grants in violation of the law.”
The groups also condemned the authorities’ “manipulation of the media to publicize investigations into associations and political groups accused of receiving US funding without identifying the groups in question.” They added that “it is well known that the majority of US funds have been disbursed as grants to US institutions operating in Egypt in a public, official capacity.”
“These Egyptian organizations and groups, which remain unidentified, have even been accused of high treason—charges that the Mubarak regime did not dare to level at its political enemies or at those organizations that bravely confronted crimes and human rights abuses under his rule,” the statement said.
It declared that “those currently administering the country’s affairs after the January 25 revolution are using the same methods as the Mubarak regime to confront their critics.” It said this “reveals the irritation of the SCAF with the criticisms raised against it, whether directed at its management of the political course of the transitional period or at the grave human rights abuses for which it is responsible.”
The groups said, “These abuses include the widespread use of exceptional military trials—before which more people have been tried in the past six months than in the 30 years of Mubarak’s rule—and the use of the military judiciary to harass revolutionary youth who have criticized SCAF policies.”
In addition, the groups said, “torture continues to be carried out in detention facilities run by the military police and has even reached unprecedented levels, as female political activists face sexual assault by being subjected to forcible virginity tests. Excessive force has also been used on several occasions to disperse sit-ins by political groups and the families of martyrs of the January 25 Revolution.”
“The heart of the dispute between human rights organizations and both the Mubarak regime and the SCAF is not foreign funding,” the groups declared. It is “the critical stances taken by these groups when confronting human rights crimes, both before and after the January 25 Revolution.”
The statement said. “Foreign funding is not prohibited for the state and its institutions or for the official state councils on human rights, women, or children. Nor is foreign funding a sensitive issue for thousands of development associations and charitable groups who receive foreign grants, as the activities of these groups and institutions are not based on a critical evaluation of the performance of the state and its institutions in the sphere of human rights. As such, foreign funding has never been a cause for dispute between the state and these institutions, neither during Mubarak’s rule nor after him.”
The groups charged that the issue of foreign funding was being used “as a tool to isolate and stifle human rights groups in an attempt to undermine their moral position within society or to arbitrarily ban certain activities by drying up funds for them, including anti-torture activities and election monitoring, as occurred during Mubarak’s rule.”
This context, they said, “helps explain why the military police, accompanied by State Security Investigations and hired thugs, raided the Hisham Mubarak Legal Center on February 3, 2011, just one day after the so-called ‘Battle of the Camel’, arrested several lawyers, including the founder of the group well-known attorney Ahmed Seif al-Islam, and detained them in a military camp, along with researchers with Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International who were meeting at the Hisham Mubarak Law Center.”
They added, “It is noteworthy that while the military police were arresting lawyers and researchers on the upper floor, thugs stood outside the door of the building, accusing them of being ‘traitors and agents’.” Although this occurred while Mubarak was still president, these same accusations are now being used in a government smear campaign six months after Mubarak was deposed.
The groups concluded, “Using the pretext of national security to restrict human rights groups and funding for their activities is not an invention of Mubarak or his successors; it is the standard operating procedure of all authoritarian regimes.”
The groups demanded the dismissal of the Minister of International Cooperation, Fayza Abu al-Naga, and the Minister of Social Solidarity, Gouda Abd al-Khaleq, in light of their “hostile stance to civil society associations, their active role in restricting the activities of these associations, and their yielding to the dictates of the security apparatus.”
They also called for the SCAF to “immediately end the referral of civilians to military courts or any other exceptional investigative bodies, conduct civilian retrials for all those imprisoned based on sentences issued by these courts, and immediately release all prisoners of conscience and drop all charges against them.”
The SCAF must “end the government smear campaign against civil society associations and rights organizations… despite the arsenal of repressive laws used under Mubarak to enforce all manner of supervision and dominance over civil society and political parties.
The organizations also sent their complaint to various United Nations offices responsible for human rights.
The 36 groups include the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, the Center for Egyptian Women's Legal Assistance, the Center for Trade Union and Workers’ Services, the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights, the Association of Researchers in Egyptian Universities and Institutes, the Hisham Mubarak Law Center, and Egyptians Against Religious Discrimination .
Heels Dug In, Cheney Rewrites History
By William Fisher
Human rights advocates and legal experts are hitting back at statements made by former vice president Dick Cheney in his new book, “In My Time,” that abusive interrogation methods – torture -- yielded information that saved lives and that he had “no regrets” about their use.
Cheney has been unshakable in defense of his decision to use “enhanced interrogation techniques” (read torture) including waterboarding. “I would strongly support using it again if we had a high value detainee and that was the only way we could get him to talk,’’ he said.
But Human Rights First (HRF), one of the advocacy groups weighing in against the book, said, “The former Vice President has long claimed that abusive interrogation methods yielded information that ultimately saved lives, but national security experts and retired military leaders – including Senator John McCain, CIA Director General David Patraeus and former Marine Corps Commandant General Charles Krulak (Ret.) – disagree.”
Numerous official and private investigations and congressional testimony by an FBI interrogator strongly suggest that conventional interrogation techniques yield far more reliable results.
In conjunction with the release of Cheney’s memoir, HRF is launching an online ad campaign featuring prominent voices denouncing torture and highlighting the detrimental effect it has had on the United States’ anti-terrorism efforts. The ad links to an original 30 second video and will be seen on Google and YouTube, as well as in messages sent by the New York Times’ “Today’s Headlines” and Politico’s “The Huddle.”
“Former Vice President Cheney can write and say whatever he wants, but torture is torture and there’s no disputing the harm its use brought the United States,” said Human Rights First’s Elisa Massimino. “Torture eroded the nation’s standing as an international leader in human rights. It undermined our ability to gather reliable intelligence, and it has no place in U.S. national security policy. Two days after he took office, President Obama closed the book on torture and it needs to stay shut.”
Other like organizations expressed similar disapproval of the new memoir, which was released this week.
Amnesty USA said “The failure to hold the architects of policies of torture and disappearance during the ‘global war on terror’ to account remains an enduring stain on the global reputation of the United States. Those most responsible for the shameful abuses at Guantanamo, Bagram, Abu Ghraib and other black sites around the world continue to boast of their ‘accomplishments’ with complete impunity.”
Since leaving office, AI said, “Cheney has been without question the most prominent apologist for the regime of indefinite detention and ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ instituted by the Bush administration.
AI has revisited some of the former Vice President’s previous statements to “demonstrate how they contrast not only with the reality of the situation, but also with the United States’ obligations.” For example:
Speaking on September 16, 2001, on NBC’s Meet the Press Cheney “set the tone for the Bush administration’s response to the 9/11 attacks. He said ‘We also have to work, though, sort of the dark side, if you will. We’ve got to spend time in the shadows in the intelligence world… it’s going to be vital for us to use any means at our disposal, basically, to achieve our objective’.”
AI counters with: “As a party to of a wide range of international human rights and international humanitarian law instruments, including the U.N. Convention against Torture and the Geneva Conventions, the United States is simply not free to use ‘any means’ at its disposal – it is constrained by the applicable international law to operate within lawful parameters.”
In an interview with CNN on June 24, 2005, AI says Cheney “spun a rosy picture of conditions in Guantanamo.” ‘We spent a lot of money to build it. They're very well treated there. They're living in the tropics. They're well fed. They've got everything they could possibly want’."
The reality, says AI, is that “since January 2002, eight inmates have died while in custody at the U.S.-controlled detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Six of these deaths have been declared suicides. Hundreds of detainees at Guantanamo Bay are known to have engaged in hunger strikes at the prison in protest of conditions and their prolonged confinement without trial.”
AI reminds us that Cheney said in 2005 of the 520 detainees then held at Guantánamo: “Hard-core terrorists is the only way to describe them. They’re unlawful combatants. They’re out to kill Americans. And if you put them back on the streets, that’s exactly what they’ll do… [W]e absolutely need to have a facility like that to house some very violent and evil people.”
It also reminds us that, by the end of President Bush’s second term, his administration had released 525 former Guantanamo detainees without charge. A January 2011 study of some 600 former Guantanamo inmates conducted by the New America Foundation put the recidivism figure at six percent.
Former Vice President Cheney has consistently maintained that the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” prevented terrorist attacks and claimed that the release of classified memos would support his claim. In a speech delivered at the American Enterprise Institute in May 2009 Cheney stated: “I was and remain a strong proponent of our enhanced interrogation program. The interrogations were used on hardened terrorists after other efforts failed…The intelligence officers who questioned the terrorists can be proud of their work and proud of the results, because they prevented the violent death of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of innocent people.”
Amnesty contends that “there is no evidence that hundreds of thousands of lives were saved as a result of the use of Enhanced Interrogation Techniques. In August 2009 a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request submitted by Amnesty International and coalition partners resulted in the release of the two CIA memos that the former Vice President had claimed would vindicate his public statements. In fact, the memos confirmed that non-abusive techniques actually helped elicit some of the most important information obtained.”
The organization charges that “Information obtained through coercion led directly to one of the greatest intelligence failures of the past decade – the assessment that Iraq posed an imminent security threat to the United States. Suspected Al Qaeda trainer Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi was rendered by the CIA to Egypt, where he was tortured. To make his interrogators stop, he told them that there was a link between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. This intelligence was used in part to justify the Iraq War. No such link existed.”
In an October 2006 interview, former Vice President Cheney told radio host Scott Hennen that authorizing waterboarding was “a no-brainer” and denied that it amounted to torture. Similarly, in a February 2008 speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference Cheney told his audience: “The United States is a country that takes human rights seriously. We do not torture – it’s against our laws and against our values.”
Amnesty responds: “Torture is indeed against the law, and water boarding – or simulated drowning – has consistently been considered to be torture under both international and U.S. jurisprudence. At the Tokyo War Crimes Trials, Japanese officials were convicted of torturing captured U.S. pilots by subjecting them to waterboarding. In 1983, Texas sheriff James Parker and his deputies water-boarded a number of prisoners in an effort to elicit confessions. Parker was subsequently sentenced to ten years in prison for his actions and the judge presiding over the case repeatedly described waterboarding unambiguously as torture in his judgment.”
Amnesty adds, “In April 2009, the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee issued the conclusions of its ‘Inquiry into the Treatment of Detainees in U.S. Custody’. Among its findings is that “senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees.”
The organization makes similar claims regarding the issue of trials before military commissions v. trials in the civilian justice system. Cheney has repeatedly asserted that military commissions are the most appropriate venue for alleged terrorist trials. But Amnesty points out that Federal courts successfully prosecuted 523 terrorism-related defendants between September 11th, 2001, and December 31st, 2009. Approximately 235 defendants are still on trial. About 70 have been acquitted or had charges dismissed. The present conviction rate is 88 percent.
Military commissions have only convicted six people to date, which represents less than one percent of the inmates who have passed through GTMO.
Tom Parker, AI’s policy director for terrorism, counterterrorism and human rights, said in advance of the release of Cheney’s memoir: "One can only hope that former Vice President Cheney’s memoir will not serve as yet another vehicle through which to peddle the same discredited mix of half-baked assertions and dark threats that marked his time in office. These have been comprehensively debunked by every new piece of information that emerges about the Bush administration’s failed counterterrorism policies.
Amnesty is also reiterating its call to US citizens to urge US Attorney General Eric Holder to “immediately open a criminal investigation into the role former President George W. Bush, Vice President Richard Cheney, and other officials played in the use of torture on detainees held in U.S. government custody.”
A large number of human rights and justice organizations have taken similar positions. These include the Center for Constitutional Rights, the public service law firm that has provided many of the pro bono lawyers who volunteered to defend GTMO inmates. Cheney’s daughter Liz, a former Assistant Secretary of State, has attacked the loyalty of the volunteer lawyers.
Chip Pitts, former president of Amnesty USA, perhaps summed up the deeply held feelings of Cheney's opponents. He told The Public Record, "By debasing the United States and its commitment to the rule of law, encouraging unjustified yet devastatingly expensive and corrupt foreign wars, and even attempting to re-legitimate torture in a way not seen since the Middle Ages, Dick Cheney has likely done more damage than any other Bush administration official – or indeed anyone else in US history -- to our nation’s authentic security and future prospects.
“His continued obliviousness to the catastrophic consequences and severe harm he has caused to so many people evinces, at a minimum, an obstinate and pathological inhumanity. This memoir will no doubt serve to further incriminate him rather than exonerate him."
Human rights advocates and legal experts are hitting back at statements made by former vice president Dick Cheney in his new book, “In My Time,” that abusive interrogation methods – torture -- yielded information that saved lives and that he had “no regrets” about their use.
Cheney has been unshakable in defense of his decision to use “enhanced interrogation techniques” (read torture) including waterboarding. “I would strongly support using it again if we had a high value detainee and that was the only way we could get him to talk,’’ he said.
But Human Rights First (HRF), one of the advocacy groups weighing in against the book, said, “The former Vice President has long claimed that abusive interrogation methods yielded information that ultimately saved lives, but national security experts and retired military leaders – including Senator John McCain, CIA Director General David Patraeus and former Marine Corps Commandant General Charles Krulak (Ret.) – disagree.”
Numerous official and private investigations and congressional testimony by an FBI interrogator strongly suggest that conventional interrogation techniques yield far more reliable results.
In conjunction with the release of Cheney’s memoir, HRF is launching an online ad campaign featuring prominent voices denouncing torture and highlighting the detrimental effect it has had on the United States’ anti-terrorism efforts. The ad links to an original 30 second video and will be seen on Google and YouTube, as well as in messages sent by the New York Times’ “Today’s Headlines” and Politico’s “The Huddle.”
“Former Vice President Cheney can write and say whatever he wants, but torture is torture and there’s no disputing the harm its use brought the United States,” said Human Rights First’s Elisa Massimino. “Torture eroded the nation’s standing as an international leader in human rights. It undermined our ability to gather reliable intelligence, and it has no place in U.S. national security policy. Two days after he took office, President Obama closed the book on torture and it needs to stay shut.”
Other like organizations expressed similar disapproval of the new memoir, which was released this week.
Amnesty USA said “The failure to hold the architects of policies of torture and disappearance during the ‘global war on terror’ to account remains an enduring stain on the global reputation of the United States. Those most responsible for the shameful abuses at Guantanamo, Bagram, Abu Ghraib and other black sites around the world continue to boast of their ‘accomplishments’ with complete impunity.”
Since leaving office, AI said, “Cheney has been without question the most prominent apologist for the regime of indefinite detention and ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ instituted by the Bush administration.
AI has revisited some of the former Vice President’s previous statements to “demonstrate how they contrast not only with the reality of the situation, but also with the United States’ obligations.” For example:
Speaking on September 16, 2001, on NBC’s Meet the Press Cheney “set the tone for the Bush administration’s response to the 9/11 attacks. He said ‘We also have to work, though, sort of the dark side, if you will. We’ve got to spend time in the shadows in the intelligence world… it’s going to be vital for us to use any means at our disposal, basically, to achieve our objective’.”
AI counters with: “As a party to of a wide range of international human rights and international humanitarian law instruments, including the U.N. Convention against Torture and the Geneva Conventions, the United States is simply not free to use ‘any means’ at its disposal – it is constrained by the applicable international law to operate within lawful parameters.”
In an interview with CNN on June 24, 2005, AI says Cheney “spun a rosy picture of conditions in Guantanamo.” ‘We spent a lot of money to build it. They're very well treated there. They're living in the tropics. They're well fed. They've got everything they could possibly want’."
The reality, says AI, is that “since January 2002, eight inmates have died while in custody at the U.S.-controlled detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Six of these deaths have been declared suicides. Hundreds of detainees at Guantanamo Bay are known to have engaged in hunger strikes at the prison in protest of conditions and their prolonged confinement without trial.”
AI reminds us that Cheney said in 2005 of the 520 detainees then held at Guantánamo: “Hard-core terrorists is the only way to describe them. They’re unlawful combatants. They’re out to kill Americans. And if you put them back on the streets, that’s exactly what they’ll do… [W]e absolutely need to have a facility like that to house some very violent and evil people.”
It also reminds us that, by the end of President Bush’s second term, his administration had released 525 former Guantanamo detainees without charge. A January 2011 study of some 600 former Guantanamo inmates conducted by the New America Foundation put the recidivism figure at six percent.
Former Vice President Cheney has consistently maintained that the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” prevented terrorist attacks and claimed that the release of classified memos would support his claim. In a speech delivered at the American Enterprise Institute in May 2009 Cheney stated: “I was and remain a strong proponent of our enhanced interrogation program. The interrogations were used on hardened terrorists after other efforts failed…The intelligence officers who questioned the terrorists can be proud of their work and proud of the results, because they prevented the violent death of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of innocent people.”
Amnesty contends that “there is no evidence that hundreds of thousands of lives were saved as a result of the use of Enhanced Interrogation Techniques. In August 2009 a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request submitted by Amnesty International and coalition partners resulted in the release of the two CIA memos that the former Vice President had claimed would vindicate his public statements. In fact, the memos confirmed that non-abusive techniques actually helped elicit some of the most important information obtained.”
The organization charges that “Information obtained through coercion led directly to one of the greatest intelligence failures of the past decade – the assessment that Iraq posed an imminent security threat to the United States. Suspected Al Qaeda trainer Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi was rendered by the CIA to Egypt, where he was tortured. To make his interrogators stop, he told them that there was a link between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. This intelligence was used in part to justify the Iraq War. No such link existed.”
In an October 2006 interview, former Vice President Cheney told radio host Scott Hennen that authorizing waterboarding was “a no-brainer” and denied that it amounted to torture. Similarly, in a February 2008 speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference Cheney told his audience: “The United States is a country that takes human rights seriously. We do not torture – it’s against our laws and against our values.”
Amnesty responds: “Torture is indeed against the law, and water boarding – or simulated drowning – has consistently been considered to be torture under both international and U.S. jurisprudence. At the Tokyo War Crimes Trials, Japanese officials were convicted of torturing captured U.S. pilots by subjecting them to waterboarding. In 1983, Texas sheriff James Parker and his deputies water-boarded a number of prisoners in an effort to elicit confessions. Parker was subsequently sentenced to ten years in prison for his actions and the judge presiding over the case repeatedly described waterboarding unambiguously as torture in his judgment.”
Amnesty adds, “In April 2009, the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee issued the conclusions of its ‘Inquiry into the Treatment of Detainees in U.S. Custody’. Among its findings is that “senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees.”
The organization makes similar claims regarding the issue of trials before military commissions v. trials in the civilian justice system. Cheney has repeatedly asserted that military commissions are the most appropriate venue for alleged terrorist trials. But Amnesty points out that Federal courts successfully prosecuted 523 terrorism-related defendants between September 11th, 2001, and December 31st, 2009. Approximately 235 defendants are still on trial. About 70 have been acquitted or had charges dismissed. The present conviction rate is 88 percent.
Military commissions have only convicted six people to date, which represents less than one percent of the inmates who have passed through GTMO.
Tom Parker, AI’s policy director for terrorism, counterterrorism and human rights, said in advance of the release of Cheney’s memoir: "One can only hope that former Vice President Cheney’s memoir will not serve as yet another vehicle through which to peddle the same discredited mix of half-baked assertions and dark threats that marked his time in office. These have been comprehensively debunked by every new piece of information that emerges about the Bush administration’s failed counterterrorism policies.
Amnesty is also reiterating its call to US citizens to urge US Attorney General Eric Holder to “immediately open a criminal investigation into the role former President George W. Bush, Vice President Richard Cheney, and other officials played in the use of torture on detainees held in U.S. government custody.”
A large number of human rights and justice organizations have taken similar positions. These include the Center for Constitutional Rights, the public service law firm that has provided many of the pro bono lawyers who volunteered to defend GTMO inmates. Cheney’s daughter Liz, a former Assistant Secretary of State, has attacked the loyalty of the volunteer lawyers.
Chip Pitts, former president of Amnesty USA, perhaps summed up the deeply held feelings of Cheney's opponents. He told The Public Record, "By debasing the United States and its commitment to the rule of law, encouraging unjustified yet devastatingly expensive and corrupt foreign wars, and even attempting to re-legitimate torture in a way not seen since the Middle Ages, Dick Cheney has likely done more damage than any other Bush administration official – or indeed anyone else in US history -- to our nation’s authentic security and future prospects.
“His continued obliviousness to the catastrophic consequences and severe harm he has caused to so many people evinces, at a minimum, an obstinate and pathological inhumanity. This memoir will no doubt serve to further incriminate him rather than exonerate him."
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
American Exceptionalism
By William Fisher
This is apparently the season when the American commentariat trots out its love of America. They express this deep emotion in many ways.
John Perry links the civil rights struggles of the 1950s and 60s to the struggle of the Republic Party to absolve the wealthiest Americans from paying a fair share of their debt to their country. He also thinks it’s legitimate to secede from the USA. To the Perry version of American exceptionalism, add some others: Sarah Palen finds us exceptional because she can have her guns; Michelle Bachmann seems to define American exceptionalism as our ability to achieve just about anything we set our sights on, no matter how unlikely, as long as our oversized, over-regulating government only gets out of the way.
For Mr. Romney, American execptionalism seems to turn on the ability of entrepreneurs to innovate and make a ton of money, even if we’re selling
off bits and pieces of once-healthy companies. For TV Host Chris Matthews, (I’m paraphrasing) it’s exemplified by Obama being born of mixed race and yet making it to the presidency. Chris says this couldn’t happen in any other country in the world. “You can’t go to China or Japan and become Chinese or Japanese. Obama came to the US and became an American and is now in the White House (Chris leaves out the minor truth that Obama didn’t have to become American - he already was, having been born in Hawaii).
Virtually since the beginning of our Republic we have been spinning a variety of narratives to reassure ourselves that we are the greatest nation ever invented and that no other comes even close. That, presumably is one of the reasons we seem to have this irresistible urge to teach the rest of the world how to be exceptional too.
But one of the wisest men I know is injecting a dose of reality into the patriotic mishmash being cooked up by those seeking to get themselves elected to something.
That man is Doug Speth or more formally, James Gustave Speth. A Rhodes Scholar, he graduated from Yale Law School, after which he became a co-founder of the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Then in the White House, as a Member and subsequently for two years as Chairman of the Council on Environmental Quality, he served in the Executive Office of the President. Later, he was Professor of Law at Georgetown, teaching environmental and constitutional law.
In 1982, he founded the World Resources Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based environmental think tank; served as its president until January 1993. He was a senior adviser to President-elect Bill Clinton's transition team, heading the group that examined the U.S.'s role in natural resources, energy and the environment.
Still later, he served as Administrator of the United Nations Development Program; dean of the Yale University School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. He retired from Yale in 2009 to assume a professorship at Vermont Law School.
Now, why I am going to such lengths to introduce you to some of the details of this outstanding career? Because those folks who believe in American exceptionalism – or think they’re simply good for the political aspirations – are wont to blame the messenger who brings actual proof that Americans may once have been exceptional, but today that achievement is crumbling and our favorites narratives with it.
Prof. Speth has produced an index that should embarrass the exceptionalists by shining a bit of light on those areas where we’re not so exceptional.
For example, among the 20 major advanced countries America now has:
the highest poverty rate, both generally and for children;
the greatest inequality of incomes;
the lowest government spending as a percentage of GDP on social programs for the disadvantaged;
the lowest number of paid holiday, annual, and maternity leaves;
the lowest score on the United Nations’ index of “material well-being of
children”;
the worst score on the United Nations’ gender inequality index;
the lowest social mobility;
the highest public and private expenditure on health care as a portion
of GDP, the highest infant mortality rate; prevalence of mental health problems; obesity rate; portion of people going without health care due to cost; low-birth-weight children per capita (except for Japan); consumption of antidepressants per capita;
the shortest life expectancy at birth (except for Denmark and Portugal);
the highest carbon dioxide emissions and water consumption per capita; the lowest score on the World Economic Forum’s environmental performance index (except for Belgium), and the largest ecological footprint per capita (except for Belgium and Denmark);
the highest rate of failing to ratify international agreements;
the lowest spending on international development and humanitarian assistance as a percentage of GDP;
the highest military spending as a portion of GDP;
the largest international arms sales;
the most negative balance of payments (except New Zealand, Spain, and
Portugal);
the lowest scores for student performance in math (except for Portugal
and Italy) (and far from the top in both science and reading);
the highest high school dropout rate (except for Spain);
the highest homicide rate;
and the largest prison population per capita.
Now this is a pretty sorry scoresheet for our country – which used to excel in many of these categories.
The reasons for our fall from positive exceptionalism are far too lengthy to explore here, but some of the major factors, in no particular order, are inadequate education; globalization; the voracious greed and dishonesty of banks, mortgage brokers, government institutions and rating agencies, their
actions creating a bubble which they knew was as unsustainable as were the the insurance guarantees they issued bogus.
Then, there’s the US Tax Code, which encourages foreign investment and demands local, not American, labor; a health care system that provides first-rate health to the very wealthy or the very old – but not to the poor, who have no health insurance; unemployment and under-employment, partly because of the Great Recession, but starting long before that catastrophe as a result of the increase in worker productivity caused by substituting machines for humans in the workplace; and the consequent widening income disparity between the very rich and the very poor.
But the picture is not all hopeless. Gus Speth says, “It took a generation or more for most of these challenges to mature, and it will take a generation or more to climb out of the depths into which we have let things slide. More realistically, given that the U.S. government today is nowhere near ready to launch such efforts, it will take longer.”
He says, “If this analysis is correct, the devastating conclusion is that most of America’s problems will get worse or, at best, will continue to fester more or less as they currently are for the foreseeable future. That is a difficult
conclusion to have to face. But face it we must. Of course, we have to fight to correct these problems with all the strength progressive communities can muster, but we must also prepare and pursue another path forward.”
In short, he says, “America must complement ongoing efforts at reform and working within the system with at least equal efforts aimed at transformative change leading to a new political economy—a new operating system that routinely delivers good results for people and planet at home and around the world. The current system is simply not delivering economically, socially, environmentally, or politically. We need a new one. This type of systemic change will require a great struggle, and it will not come quickly. The truth is we are still in the design stage of building a new operating system.”
He adds: “That system won’t be socialism, by the way, and it won’t be today’s American capitalism either.”
“The possibility of system change suggests there can be a very bright light at
the end of this gloomy tunnel. America is in the midst of a period of decline,
and it hasn’t hit bottom yet. The imperatives its citizens face are therefore
fourfold:
(1) to slow and then halt the descent, minimizing human suffering and planetary damage along the way;
(2) to prevent a collapse, the emergence of a fortress world, or any of the dark scenarios that have been plotted for us in science fiction and increasingly in serious analysis;
(3) to minimize the time at the bottom and to start the climb upward, building a new operating system; and
(4) to complete, inhabit, and flourish in the diversity of alternative social arrangements, each far superior to what we will have left behind.
“There is hope especially in three things. The decline now occurring will
progressively delegitimize the current order. Who wants an operating system that is capable of generating and perpetuating such suffering and destruction? The one good thing about the decline of today’s political economy is that it opens the door to something much better. Second, people will eventually rise up, raise a loud shout, and demand major changes. That is already happening with some people in some places. Eventually, the chorus will grow to become a national and global movement for transformation. And third, Americans are already busy with numerous, mostly local initiatives that point the way to the future.”
“Amid ongoing decline, Americans must now summon the hope and courage to dream up something new and better and to fight for it. It has been said that the genius of America is to turn crisis into opportunity. Let us now dream a new America, the country we want for our grandchildren.”
That’s a Herculean order. And the question is: Will our political leaders find the smarts and the courage and the humility to become truly exceptional Americans?
This is apparently the season when the American commentariat trots out its love of America. They express this deep emotion in many ways.
John Perry links the civil rights struggles of the 1950s and 60s to the struggle of the Republic Party to absolve the wealthiest Americans from paying a fair share of their debt to their country. He also thinks it’s legitimate to secede from the USA. To the Perry version of American exceptionalism, add some others: Sarah Palen finds us exceptional because she can have her guns; Michelle Bachmann seems to define American exceptionalism as our ability to achieve just about anything we set our sights on, no matter how unlikely, as long as our oversized, over-regulating government only gets out of the way.
For Mr. Romney, American execptionalism seems to turn on the ability of entrepreneurs to innovate and make a ton of money, even if we’re selling
off bits and pieces of once-healthy companies. For TV Host Chris Matthews, (I’m paraphrasing) it’s exemplified by Obama being born of mixed race and yet making it to the presidency. Chris says this couldn’t happen in any other country in the world. “You can’t go to China or Japan and become Chinese or Japanese. Obama came to the US and became an American and is now in the White House (Chris leaves out the minor truth that Obama didn’t have to become American - he already was, having been born in Hawaii).
Virtually since the beginning of our Republic we have been spinning a variety of narratives to reassure ourselves that we are the greatest nation ever invented and that no other comes even close. That, presumably is one of the reasons we seem to have this irresistible urge to teach the rest of the world how to be exceptional too.
But one of the wisest men I know is injecting a dose of reality into the patriotic mishmash being cooked up by those seeking to get themselves elected to something.
That man is Doug Speth or more formally, James Gustave Speth. A Rhodes Scholar, he graduated from Yale Law School, after which he became a co-founder of the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Then in the White House, as a Member and subsequently for two years as Chairman of the Council on Environmental Quality, he served in the Executive Office of the President. Later, he was Professor of Law at Georgetown, teaching environmental and constitutional law.
In 1982, he founded the World Resources Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based environmental think tank; served as its president until January 1993. He was a senior adviser to President-elect Bill Clinton's transition team, heading the group that examined the U.S.'s role in natural resources, energy and the environment.
Still later, he served as Administrator of the United Nations Development Program; dean of the Yale University School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. He retired from Yale in 2009 to assume a professorship at Vermont Law School.
Now, why I am going to such lengths to introduce you to some of the details of this outstanding career? Because those folks who believe in American exceptionalism – or think they’re simply good for the political aspirations – are wont to blame the messenger who brings actual proof that Americans may once have been exceptional, but today that achievement is crumbling and our favorites narratives with it.
Prof. Speth has produced an index that should embarrass the exceptionalists by shining a bit of light on those areas where we’re not so exceptional.
For example, among the 20 major advanced countries America now has:
the highest poverty rate, both generally and for children;
the greatest inequality of incomes;
the lowest government spending as a percentage of GDP on social programs for the disadvantaged;
the lowest number of paid holiday, annual, and maternity leaves;
the lowest score on the United Nations’ index of “material well-being of
children”;
the worst score on the United Nations’ gender inequality index;
the lowest social mobility;
the highest public and private expenditure on health care as a portion
of GDP, the highest infant mortality rate; prevalence of mental health problems; obesity rate; portion of people going without health care due to cost; low-birth-weight children per capita (except for Japan); consumption of antidepressants per capita;
the shortest life expectancy at birth (except for Denmark and Portugal);
the highest carbon dioxide emissions and water consumption per capita; the lowest score on the World Economic Forum’s environmental performance index (except for Belgium), and the largest ecological footprint per capita (except for Belgium and Denmark);
the highest rate of failing to ratify international agreements;
the lowest spending on international development and humanitarian assistance as a percentage of GDP;
the highest military spending as a portion of GDP;
the largest international arms sales;
the most negative balance of payments (except New Zealand, Spain, and
Portugal);
the lowest scores for student performance in math (except for Portugal
and Italy) (and far from the top in both science and reading);
the highest high school dropout rate (except for Spain);
the highest homicide rate;
and the largest prison population per capita.
Now this is a pretty sorry scoresheet for our country – which used to excel in many of these categories.
The reasons for our fall from positive exceptionalism are far too lengthy to explore here, but some of the major factors, in no particular order, are inadequate education; globalization; the voracious greed and dishonesty of banks, mortgage brokers, government institutions and rating agencies, their
actions creating a bubble which they knew was as unsustainable as were the the insurance guarantees they issued bogus.
Then, there’s the US Tax Code, which encourages foreign investment and demands local, not American, labor; a health care system that provides first-rate health to the very wealthy or the very old – but not to the poor, who have no health insurance; unemployment and under-employment, partly because of the Great Recession, but starting long before that catastrophe as a result of the increase in worker productivity caused by substituting machines for humans in the workplace; and the consequent widening income disparity between the very rich and the very poor.
But the picture is not all hopeless. Gus Speth says, “It took a generation or more for most of these challenges to mature, and it will take a generation or more to climb out of the depths into which we have let things slide. More realistically, given that the U.S. government today is nowhere near ready to launch such efforts, it will take longer.”
He says, “If this analysis is correct, the devastating conclusion is that most of America’s problems will get worse or, at best, will continue to fester more or less as they currently are for the foreseeable future. That is a difficult
conclusion to have to face. But face it we must. Of course, we have to fight to correct these problems with all the strength progressive communities can muster, but we must also prepare and pursue another path forward.”
In short, he says, “America must complement ongoing efforts at reform and working within the system with at least equal efforts aimed at transformative change leading to a new political economy—a new operating system that routinely delivers good results for people and planet at home and around the world. The current system is simply not delivering economically, socially, environmentally, or politically. We need a new one. This type of systemic change will require a great struggle, and it will not come quickly. The truth is we are still in the design stage of building a new operating system.”
He adds: “That system won’t be socialism, by the way, and it won’t be today’s American capitalism either.”
“The possibility of system change suggests there can be a very bright light at
the end of this gloomy tunnel. America is in the midst of a period of decline,
and it hasn’t hit bottom yet. The imperatives its citizens face are therefore
fourfold:
(1) to slow and then halt the descent, minimizing human suffering and planetary damage along the way;
(2) to prevent a collapse, the emergence of a fortress world, or any of the dark scenarios that have been plotted for us in science fiction and increasingly in serious analysis;
(3) to minimize the time at the bottom and to start the climb upward, building a new operating system; and
(4) to complete, inhabit, and flourish in the diversity of alternative social arrangements, each far superior to what we will have left behind.
“There is hope especially in three things. The decline now occurring will
progressively delegitimize the current order. Who wants an operating system that is capable of generating and perpetuating such suffering and destruction? The one good thing about the decline of today’s political economy is that it opens the door to something much better. Second, people will eventually rise up, raise a loud shout, and demand major changes. That is already happening with some people in some places. Eventually, the chorus will grow to become a national and global movement for transformation. And third, Americans are already busy with numerous, mostly local initiatives that point the way to the future.”
“Amid ongoing decline, Americans must now summon the hope and courage to dream up something new and better and to fight for it. It has been said that the genius of America is to turn crisis into opportunity. Let us now dream a new America, the country we want for our grandchildren.”
That’s a Herculean order. And the question is: Will our political leaders find the smarts and the courage and the humility to become truly exceptional Americans?
Secret Somali Prison Exposed
By William Fisher
The CIA is involved in rendering suspected terrorists from Kenya to Somalia and interrogating them in a secret prison just outside Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, according to Jeremy Scahill of The Nation magazine.
The operation is part of a growing CIA campaign in Somalia, which includes a counterterrorism training program for Somali intelligence agents and operatives. Scahill says this program is aimed at “building an indigenous strike force capable of snatch operations and targeted ‘combat’ operations against members of Al Shabab, the Islamic militant group with close ties to Al Qaeda.” This is the group that forced international NGOs to leave Somalia and cease providing food and medical aid to thousands of Somalis suffering the worst drought in more than a half century.
In a lengthy article in the August 1-8 edition of the magazine, Scahill reports that” while the US does not control the prison, the CIA controls access to it, pays the monthly salaries of Somali intelligence agents, and questions prisoners directly.”
The prison, he writes, is “buried in the basement of Somalia’s National
Security Agency (NSA) headquarters, where prisoners suspected of being Shabab members or of having links to the group are held. Some of the prisoners have been snatched off the streets of Kenya and rendered by plane to Mogadishu.
“While the underground prison is officially run by the Somali NSA, US intelligence personnel pay the salaries of intelligence agents and also directly interrogate prisoners,” Scahill writes.
The walled, gated and heavily guarded compound is located near Mogadishu’s airport, on the coast of the Indian Ocean. The compound includes eight large metal hangars; the CIA has its own aircraft at the airport.
Scahill says a US official confirmed the existence of both sites. The official is quoted as telling The Nation, “It makes complete sense to have a
strong counterterrorism partnership” with the Somali government.”
He writes, “The CIA presence in Mogadishu is part of Washington’s intensifying counterterrorism focus on Somalia, which includes targeted strikes by US Special Operations forces, drone attacks and expanded surveillance operations. The US agents “are here full time,” Scahill says he was told by a senior Somali intelligence official.
“At times, the official said, “there are as many as thirty of them in Mogadishu,” but he stressed that those working with the Somali NSA do not conduct operations; rather, they advise and train Somali agents.
Scahill quotes “Somali sources” as saying, “The CIA is reluctant to deal directly with Somali political leaders, who are regarded by US officials as corrupt and untrustworthy. Instead, the United States has Somali intelligence agents on its payroll. Somali sources with knowledge of the program described the agents as lining up to receive $200 monthly cash payments from Americans.”
“They support us in a big way financially,” the senior Somali intelligence official is quoted as telling Scahill. “They are the largest [funder] by far.”
Scahill writes: “According to former detainees, the underground prison, which is staffed by Somali guards, consists of a long corridor lined with filthy small cells infested with bedbugs and mosquitoes…The former prisoners described the cells as windowless and the air thick, moist and disgusting. Prisoners, they said, are not allowed outside. Many have developed rashes and scratch themselves incessantly. Some have been detained for a year or more.”
Some of the prisoners, he reports, told him “they were picked up in Nairobi and rendered on small aircraft to Mogadishu, where they were handed over to Somali intelligence agents. Once in custody, according to the senior Somali intelligence official and former prisoners, some detainees are
freely interrogated by US and French agents.”
“Our goal is to please our partners, so we get more [out] of them, like any relationship,” said the Somali intelligence official in describing the policy of allowing foreign agents, including from the CIA, to interrogate prisoners.
The Americans, according to the Somali official, operate unilaterally in the country, while the French agents are embedded within the African Union force known as AMISOM, Scahill reports.
According to Scahill, Human Rights Watch and Reprieve have documented that “Kenyan security and intelligence forces have facilitated scores of renditions for the US and other governments, including eighty-five people rendered to Somalia in 2007 alone.
But according to the senior Somali intelligence official, who works directly
with the US agents, “the CIA-led program in Mogadishu has brought few tangible gains, Scahill writes.
“So far what we have not seen is the results in terms of the capacity of the [Somali] agency,” says the official. Scahill reports that the official conceded that “neither US nor Somali forces have been able to conduct a single successful targeted mission in the Shabab’s areas in the capital.
Now, if Scahill’s information is accurate, we should all be puzzled. Here’s why:
In his first week in office, President Barack Obama banned “coercive interrogations” and ordered the C.I.A. secret prisons closed. The existence of the secret prisons was never revealed by the government; it was exposed in an article in The Washington Post by Dana Priest in 2005.
And, at his confirmation hearing in 2009, then CIA Director nominee Leon Panetta said that the Obama administration would end the practice of “extraordinary rendition” -- sending prisoners to countries for torture or other treatment that violates U.S. values. He contended that such renditions had occurred during the Bush presidency.
More recently, Panetta (who is now Defense Secretary) said the CIA had not detained any terrorism suspects since he took office in February 2009 and added that any suspects captured in the future would be quickly turned over to the American military or to a suspect’s home country.
Well, the prison in Somalia is not run or staffed by the CIA. So, technically, it is in keeping with the letter, if not the spirit, of President Obama’s executive order. Nor is the interrogation of prisoners there by CIA agents, assuming they are not using the “enhanced interrogation techniques” of the George W. Bush administration.
And, as for rendition, the CIA – in the unlikely event it has anything at all to say -- would likely maintain that renditions to Somalia were conducted by Kenya.
What we are left with is the US financing a secret prison where prisoners are snatched from other countries, held incommunicado with no due process and no access to their own government, lawyers or family members.
We have to wonder whether this is what President Obama had in mind when he signed his executive orders. What ever happened to transparency?
The CIA is involved in rendering suspected terrorists from Kenya to Somalia and interrogating them in a secret prison just outside Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, according to Jeremy Scahill of The Nation magazine.
The operation is part of a growing CIA campaign in Somalia, which includes a counterterrorism training program for Somali intelligence agents and operatives. Scahill says this program is aimed at “building an indigenous strike force capable of snatch operations and targeted ‘combat’ operations against members of Al Shabab, the Islamic militant group with close ties to Al Qaeda.” This is the group that forced international NGOs to leave Somalia and cease providing food and medical aid to thousands of Somalis suffering the worst drought in more than a half century.
In a lengthy article in the August 1-8 edition of the magazine, Scahill reports that” while the US does not control the prison, the CIA controls access to it, pays the monthly salaries of Somali intelligence agents, and questions prisoners directly.”
The prison, he writes, is “buried in the basement of Somalia’s National
Security Agency (NSA) headquarters, where prisoners suspected of being Shabab members or of having links to the group are held. Some of the prisoners have been snatched off the streets of Kenya and rendered by plane to Mogadishu.
“While the underground prison is officially run by the Somali NSA, US intelligence personnel pay the salaries of intelligence agents and also directly interrogate prisoners,” Scahill writes.
The walled, gated and heavily guarded compound is located near Mogadishu’s airport, on the coast of the Indian Ocean. The compound includes eight large metal hangars; the CIA has its own aircraft at the airport.
Scahill says a US official confirmed the existence of both sites. The official is quoted as telling The Nation, “It makes complete sense to have a
strong counterterrorism partnership” with the Somali government.”
He writes, “The CIA presence in Mogadishu is part of Washington’s intensifying counterterrorism focus on Somalia, which includes targeted strikes by US Special Operations forces, drone attacks and expanded surveillance operations. The US agents “are here full time,” Scahill says he was told by a senior Somali intelligence official.
“At times, the official said, “there are as many as thirty of them in Mogadishu,” but he stressed that those working with the Somali NSA do not conduct operations; rather, they advise and train Somali agents.
Scahill quotes “Somali sources” as saying, “The CIA is reluctant to deal directly with Somali political leaders, who are regarded by US officials as corrupt and untrustworthy. Instead, the United States has Somali intelligence agents on its payroll. Somali sources with knowledge of the program described the agents as lining up to receive $200 monthly cash payments from Americans.”
“They support us in a big way financially,” the senior Somali intelligence official is quoted as telling Scahill. “They are the largest [funder] by far.”
Scahill writes: “According to former detainees, the underground prison, which is staffed by Somali guards, consists of a long corridor lined with filthy small cells infested with bedbugs and mosquitoes…The former prisoners described the cells as windowless and the air thick, moist and disgusting. Prisoners, they said, are not allowed outside. Many have developed rashes and scratch themselves incessantly. Some have been detained for a year or more.”
Some of the prisoners, he reports, told him “they were picked up in Nairobi and rendered on small aircraft to Mogadishu, where they were handed over to Somali intelligence agents. Once in custody, according to the senior Somali intelligence official and former prisoners, some detainees are
freely interrogated by US and French agents.”
“Our goal is to please our partners, so we get more [out] of them, like any relationship,” said the Somali intelligence official in describing the policy of allowing foreign agents, including from the CIA, to interrogate prisoners.
The Americans, according to the Somali official, operate unilaterally in the country, while the French agents are embedded within the African Union force known as AMISOM, Scahill reports.
According to Scahill, Human Rights Watch and Reprieve have documented that “Kenyan security and intelligence forces have facilitated scores of renditions for the US and other governments, including eighty-five people rendered to Somalia in 2007 alone.
But according to the senior Somali intelligence official, who works directly
with the US agents, “the CIA-led program in Mogadishu has brought few tangible gains, Scahill writes.
“So far what we have not seen is the results in terms of the capacity of the [Somali] agency,” says the official. Scahill reports that the official conceded that “neither US nor Somali forces have been able to conduct a single successful targeted mission in the Shabab’s areas in the capital.
Now, if Scahill’s information is accurate, we should all be puzzled. Here’s why:
In his first week in office, President Barack Obama banned “coercive interrogations” and ordered the C.I.A. secret prisons closed. The existence of the secret prisons was never revealed by the government; it was exposed in an article in The Washington Post by Dana Priest in 2005.
And, at his confirmation hearing in 2009, then CIA Director nominee Leon Panetta said that the Obama administration would end the practice of “extraordinary rendition” -- sending prisoners to countries for torture or other treatment that violates U.S. values. He contended that such renditions had occurred during the Bush presidency.
More recently, Panetta (who is now Defense Secretary) said the CIA had not detained any terrorism suspects since he took office in February 2009 and added that any suspects captured in the future would be quickly turned over to the American military or to a suspect’s home country.
Well, the prison in Somalia is not run or staffed by the CIA. So, technically, it is in keeping with the letter, if not the spirit, of President Obama’s executive order. Nor is the interrogation of prisoners there by CIA agents, assuming they are not using the “enhanced interrogation techniques” of the George W. Bush administration.
And, as for rendition, the CIA – in the unlikely event it has anything at all to say -- would likely maintain that renditions to Somalia were conducted by Kenya.
What we are left with is the US financing a secret prison where prisoners are snatched from other countries, held incommunicado with no due process and no access to their own government, lawyers or family members.
We have to wonder whether this is what President Obama had in mind when he signed his executive orders. What ever happened to transparency?
Jordan and the Arab Spring
By William Fisher
Did the Arab Spring ever come to Jordan?
Yes, but it would be hard to know that from America’s mainstream media.
With just a few notable exceptions, Jordan has been sacrificed to coverage of much sexier stories in Egypt, Tunisia, Syria, Yemen, even tiny Bahrain.
Yet the Arab Spring, now morphed into summer, is alive and well in Jordan.
It’s just not as noisy.
To be sure, there have been demonstrations and people have been killed by the security forces. But Jordan’s demonstrations haven’t been nearly as widespread or vocal as those in, for example, Tahrir Square. The Tahrir-type demonstrations have been kept to a minimum, a situation facilitated by a combination of police action and the efforts of King Abdullah II to stay ahead of the curve.
The King’s efforts began with a dismissal of his government and its replacement with officials he hoped the demonstrators would find more acceptable.
Another of the loudest demands from the demonstrators was for an amended constitution. Now the committee appointed by the King to amend the Constitution has unveiled its work, and it is being greeted by some as a huge leap toward democracy and by others as a useless piece of cosmetics that will not facilitate any major changes in the country’s political life.
Marwan Muasher is vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment, served as Jordan’s foreign minister (2002–2004), and deputy prime minister (2004–2005), and played a central role in developing the Arab Peace Initiative and the Middle East Road Map. He says about the new draft Constitutional amendments:
“To be sure, many of the amendments address demands long put forth by reform groups and the general public.”
He outlines a half dozen of the major amendments proposed:
· The establishment of a constitutional court to monitor the constitutionality of laws and regulations. The court replaces a high tribunal for the interpretation of such laws that was headed by the speaker of the Senate and widely considered less than totally independent.
· The establishment of an independent commission to oversee elections instead of the Ministry of Interior that has previously been in charge of the electoral process. All electoral contestations will be referred to the judiciary instead of parliament.
· The enhancement of civil liberties, including the criminalization of any infringement on rights and public freedoms or on the sanctity of Jordanians’ private life; prohibition of torture in any form; and a declaration that all forms of communication between citizens shall be treated as secret and not subject to censorship, suspension, or confiscation except by judicial order.
· The limitation of the government’s ability to issue temporary laws during the absence of parliament, a practice that governments exercised at will in the past.
· The limitation of the State Security Court’s jurisdiction to cases of high treason, espionage, and terrorism, with citizens being otherwise tried in civilian courts; this includes ministers, who were previously tried by a parliamentary high tribunal.
· The limitation of the government’s ability to dissolve parliament without having to resign itself.
Muasher writes, “The proper way to read the amendments and decipher their significance is to understand the wider context. Do they constitute a first step in a much larger roadmap toward total separation of the legislative, judicial, and executive powers? Will they redistribute these powers (strengthening the first two and diluting the third)? Or do they represent the end of the road for Jordan’s political reform process? A clear answer to the questions helps pass judgment on the measures in a more objective and less ideological manner.”
Muasher points out, however, that the amendments “stopped short of several other measures. Other than limiting the king’s ability to indefinitely postpone elections, his powers have been left intact.”
For example, he says, “even though it would be difficult to change the practice immediately without party-based parliaments, the king still appoints and dismisses the prime minister and the upper house of parliament.”
He adds: “The constitutional committee also debated adding gender to the list of categories of laws that are forbidden to discriminate against, but it opted to keep gender off of the list for religious and political reasons. Finally, the role of the security services in the political affairs of the country was limited through some amendments, but hardly curbed completely.”
He concludes that ”the amendments are an important first step and the fact that they will go through the constitutional process in only a few weeks is positive. This indicates that the constitution will witness its first major en masse overhaul since it was adopted in 1952.”
Another Middle East expert agrees that the amendments are an important first step. But Samer Shehata, professor of Arab Politics at Georgetown University, points out that “there is no serious fundamental change to the electoral system. And the upper house is still thoroughly non-elected, appointed by the king. I don't know the specifics of the security sector reform (Muasher says it's minimal) but many will tell you the security forces are the ones really running the country.”
He concludes: “I'm still extremely skeptical. These reforms are not the major, structural, transformative reforms necessary to move Jordan from a authoritarian state (with a facade democratic process) to a constitutional monarchy.”
Whether the King intends to follow through to build on this encouraging first step is unclear. But he will have little choice if he seeks a Jordan that becomes a peaceful democracy-Middle-East-style, prepared to improve the lives of ordinary Jordanians and play a larger and more constructive role in the Israel-Palestine dispute.
Did the Arab Spring ever come to Jordan?
Yes, but it would be hard to know that from America’s mainstream media.
With just a few notable exceptions, Jordan has been sacrificed to coverage of much sexier stories in Egypt, Tunisia, Syria, Yemen, even tiny Bahrain.
Yet the Arab Spring, now morphed into summer, is alive and well in Jordan.
It’s just not as noisy.
To be sure, there have been demonstrations and people have been killed by the security forces. But Jordan’s demonstrations haven’t been nearly as widespread or vocal as those in, for example, Tahrir Square. The Tahrir-type demonstrations have been kept to a minimum, a situation facilitated by a combination of police action and the efforts of King Abdullah II to stay ahead of the curve.
The King’s efforts began with a dismissal of his government and its replacement with officials he hoped the demonstrators would find more acceptable.
Another of the loudest demands from the demonstrators was for an amended constitution. Now the committee appointed by the King to amend the Constitution has unveiled its work, and it is being greeted by some as a huge leap toward democracy and by others as a useless piece of cosmetics that will not facilitate any major changes in the country’s political life.
Marwan Muasher is vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment, served as Jordan’s foreign minister (2002–2004), and deputy prime minister (2004–2005), and played a central role in developing the Arab Peace Initiative and the Middle East Road Map. He says about the new draft Constitutional amendments:
“To be sure, many of the amendments address demands long put forth by reform groups and the general public.”
He outlines a half dozen of the major amendments proposed:
· The establishment of a constitutional court to monitor the constitutionality of laws and regulations. The court replaces a high tribunal for the interpretation of such laws that was headed by the speaker of the Senate and widely considered less than totally independent.
· The establishment of an independent commission to oversee elections instead of the Ministry of Interior that has previously been in charge of the electoral process. All electoral contestations will be referred to the judiciary instead of parliament.
· The enhancement of civil liberties, including the criminalization of any infringement on rights and public freedoms or on the sanctity of Jordanians’ private life; prohibition of torture in any form; and a declaration that all forms of communication between citizens shall be treated as secret and not subject to censorship, suspension, or confiscation except by judicial order.
· The limitation of the government’s ability to issue temporary laws during the absence of parliament, a practice that governments exercised at will in the past.
· The limitation of the State Security Court’s jurisdiction to cases of high treason, espionage, and terrorism, with citizens being otherwise tried in civilian courts; this includes ministers, who were previously tried by a parliamentary high tribunal.
· The limitation of the government’s ability to dissolve parliament without having to resign itself.
Muasher writes, “The proper way to read the amendments and decipher their significance is to understand the wider context. Do they constitute a first step in a much larger roadmap toward total separation of the legislative, judicial, and executive powers? Will they redistribute these powers (strengthening the first two and diluting the third)? Or do they represent the end of the road for Jordan’s political reform process? A clear answer to the questions helps pass judgment on the measures in a more objective and less ideological manner.”
Muasher points out, however, that the amendments “stopped short of several other measures. Other than limiting the king’s ability to indefinitely postpone elections, his powers have been left intact.”
For example, he says, “even though it would be difficult to change the practice immediately without party-based parliaments, the king still appoints and dismisses the prime minister and the upper house of parliament.”
He adds: “The constitutional committee also debated adding gender to the list of categories of laws that are forbidden to discriminate against, but it opted to keep gender off of the list for religious and political reasons. Finally, the role of the security services in the political affairs of the country was limited through some amendments, but hardly curbed completely.”
He concludes that ”the amendments are an important first step and the fact that they will go through the constitutional process in only a few weeks is positive. This indicates that the constitution will witness its first major en masse overhaul since it was adopted in 1952.”
Another Middle East expert agrees that the amendments are an important first step. But Samer Shehata, professor of Arab Politics at Georgetown University, points out that “there is no serious fundamental change to the electoral system. And the upper house is still thoroughly non-elected, appointed by the king. I don't know the specifics of the security sector reform (Muasher says it's minimal) but many will tell you the security forces are the ones really running the country.”
He concludes: “I'm still extremely skeptical. These reforms are not the major, structural, transformative reforms necessary to move Jordan from a authoritarian state (with a facade democratic process) to a constitutional monarchy.”
Whether the King intends to follow through to build on this encouraging first step is unclear. But he will have little choice if he seeks a Jordan that becomes a peaceful democracy-Middle-East-style, prepared to improve the lives of ordinary Jordanians and play a larger and more constructive role in the Israel-Palestine dispute.
Is Mubarak Really Gone? Slum-Dwellers Forcibly Evicted
By William Fisher
In post-Mubarak Egypt, an estimated 850,000 people are facing forced eviction from housing deemed “unsafe” by the transition military government, according to a new report from Amnesty International (AI).
The report condemns the treatment of the country's 12 million people who live in Egypt’s vast slums. It documents “how the Egyptian authorities have persistently failed to consult communities living in ‘unsafe areas’ on plans to address their inadequate housing conditions.”
The 123-page report -- ‘We are not dirt’: Forced evictions in Egypt’s informal settlements -- was prepared by Amnesty Egypt researcher Mohamed Lotfy and Amnesty UK Director Kate Allen.
The report describes cases of forced evictions affecting hundreds of families in the country’s so-called “unsafe areas” where residents' lives or health are said to be at risk.
Amnesty cites Abdel Nasser al-Sherif's story as an example of injustices currently being committed.
The lawyer and his extended family used to live in a four-storey building his father built in 1949 in Old Cairo's Establ Antar informal settlement. In 2009, the authorities announced that a cliff beside the settlement was “unsafe” and life-threatening.
Without issuing any warning or an eviction notice, the authorities decided to demolish al-Sherif's property. After he protested and refused to leave his house, riot police entered and dragged him away. Al-Sherif's possessions were dumped by a lorry in a resettlement area across the city. He has not been compensated for the destruction of his family's home of 60 years.
An acute shortage of affordable housing has driven Egypt's poor to live in slums and informal settlements. Around 40% of Egyptians live on or near the US$2 a day poverty line, while the vast majority of the victims killed or injured during the “25 January Revolution” were from underprivileged backgrounds. Some 18,300 housing units in Egypt are at risk of imminent collapse, Amnesty says..
Amnesty International UK Director Kate Allen said, “People living in Egypt's slums must be given a say in finding solutions to their dire housing conditions, but the authorities are failing to respect their human rights. And when slum residents dare to object, they face unlawful forced eviction and arbitrary arrest under repressive laws.”
She added, “Government plans for 'unsafe areas' are essentially demolition plans that don't explore alternatives to evictions where possible. Not one person out of the hundreds we interviewed had ever been adequately notified before their eviction or consulted on alternative housing.”
“With elections approaching, Egyptian authorities have an opportunity to right that wrong,” she said.
Amnesty says it has found that many slum residents have been left homeless after the authorities demolished their homes against their wishes and failed to provide new housing. Research shows that authorities discriminate against women - especially if they are divorced, widowed or separated - in the allocation of alternative housing.
Amnesty also found evidence of communities that had apparently been abandoned under the threat of rock falls despite asking the authorities to resettle them, while other communities facing lesser risks have been demolished, such as the Al-Sahaby area in Aswan. This inconsistent approach has spread suspicion among slum-dwellers that some of them are being cleared out of their homes not to protect them, but so that the land can be developed for commercial gain.
Following a deadly rockslide in Cairo's Manshiyet Nasser slum in 2008, the Egyptian authorities identified 404 “unsafe areas” across the country. In Manshiyet Nasser, thousands of families living at risk of future rock falls were relocated into alternative housing, but most have been moved far from their sources of income and generally lack the necessary documentation for their new homes.
The authorities have routinely failed to give residents proper warning before security forces - including military police in recent months - arrive to force people out of their homes in breach of Egypt’s international obligations and its own laws, Amnesty charges.
In post-Mubarak Egypt, an estimated 850,000 people are facing forced eviction from housing deemed “unsafe” by the transition military government, according to a new report from Amnesty International (AI).
The report condemns the treatment of the country's 12 million people who live in Egypt’s vast slums. It documents “how the Egyptian authorities have persistently failed to consult communities living in ‘unsafe areas’ on plans to address their inadequate housing conditions.”
The 123-page report -- ‘We are not dirt’: Forced evictions in Egypt’s informal settlements -- was prepared by Amnesty Egypt researcher Mohamed Lotfy and Amnesty UK Director Kate Allen.
The report describes cases of forced evictions affecting hundreds of families in the country’s so-called “unsafe areas” where residents' lives or health are said to be at risk.
Amnesty cites Abdel Nasser al-Sherif's story as an example of injustices currently being committed.
The lawyer and his extended family used to live in a four-storey building his father built in 1949 in Old Cairo's Establ Antar informal settlement. In 2009, the authorities announced that a cliff beside the settlement was “unsafe” and life-threatening.
Without issuing any warning or an eviction notice, the authorities decided to demolish al-Sherif's property. After he protested and refused to leave his house, riot police entered and dragged him away. Al-Sherif's possessions were dumped by a lorry in a resettlement area across the city. He has not been compensated for the destruction of his family's home of 60 years.
An acute shortage of affordable housing has driven Egypt's poor to live in slums and informal settlements. Around 40% of Egyptians live on or near the US$2 a day poverty line, while the vast majority of the victims killed or injured during the “25 January Revolution” were from underprivileged backgrounds. Some 18,300 housing units in Egypt are at risk of imminent collapse, Amnesty says..
Amnesty International UK Director Kate Allen said, “People living in Egypt's slums must be given a say in finding solutions to their dire housing conditions, but the authorities are failing to respect their human rights. And when slum residents dare to object, they face unlawful forced eviction and arbitrary arrest under repressive laws.”
She added, “Government plans for 'unsafe areas' are essentially demolition plans that don't explore alternatives to evictions where possible. Not one person out of the hundreds we interviewed had ever been adequately notified before their eviction or consulted on alternative housing.”
“With elections approaching, Egyptian authorities have an opportunity to right that wrong,” she said.
Amnesty says it has found that many slum residents have been left homeless after the authorities demolished their homes against their wishes and failed to provide new housing. Research shows that authorities discriminate against women - especially if they are divorced, widowed or separated - in the allocation of alternative housing.
Amnesty also found evidence of communities that had apparently been abandoned under the threat of rock falls despite asking the authorities to resettle them, while other communities facing lesser risks have been demolished, such as the Al-Sahaby area in Aswan. This inconsistent approach has spread suspicion among slum-dwellers that some of them are being cleared out of their homes not to protect them, but so that the land can be developed for commercial gain.
Following a deadly rockslide in Cairo's Manshiyet Nasser slum in 2008, the Egyptian authorities identified 404 “unsafe areas” across the country. In Manshiyet Nasser, thousands of families living at risk of future rock falls were relocated into alternative housing, but most have been moved far from their sources of income and generally lack the necessary documentation for their new homes.
The authorities have routinely failed to give residents proper warning before security forces - including military police in recent months - arrive to force people out of their homes in breach of Egypt’s international obligations and its own laws, Amnesty charges.
Friday, August 19, 2011
The Kids Count
By William Fisher
“If the top earners are OK, then the rest of us will be OK.”
That piece of economic sleight-of-hand has been a central tenet in the Republican catechism since even before Ronald Reagan and long before the Tea Party.
The Grand Old Party clings to this totally discredited and never-proven economic article-of-faith despite a mountain of evidence that grows higher with each passing week in recession.
The figures that tell most of this sorry story are these, reported in the Huffington Post:
The income gap between the richest and poorest Americans grew last year to its largest margin ever, a stark divide as Democrats and Republicans spar over whether to extend Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy.
The top-earning 20 percent of Americans – those making more than $100,000 each year –received 49.4 percent of all income generated in the U.S., compared with the 3.4 percent made by the bottom 20 percent of earners, those who fell below the poverty line, according to the new figures. That ratio of 14.5-to-1 was an increase from 13.6in 2008 and nearly double a low of 7.69 in 1968.
At the top, the wealthiest 5 percent of Americans, who earn more than $180,000, added slightly to their annual incomes last year, the data show. Families at the $50,000 median level slipped lower.
But there’s another part of the story that’s not usually told. It’s how American children are being affected by the Great Recession.
One of the few looks into this largely hidden part of the issue was taken by Sixty Minutes on CBS television a few weeks ago. The show revealed a large cohort of school kids who have been forced to live in motels because their parents lost their jobs and then their homes through foreclosure.
These kids run over to their school to brush their teeth and wash up in the morning. They run out to the nearest fast-food joints, with their parents, at mealtimes. In the mornings, a special school bus picks them up near their motels. The bus is dedicated to that task. And many families who aren’t living in motels, or camping out with friends or relatives, are living in municipal shelters. One father, out of work for more than a year, has taken to sitting on the curb of a busy thoroughfare with an upside-down cap and displaying a sign that reads,” Will Work for Food – Family of Three.”
Now the Annie E. Casey Foundation gives us a set of hard and very grim data to support Sixty Minutes’ anecdotal view. That data is very scary, very angry-making and very heart-breaking. The new numbers on 2009 poverty among U.S. children finds 31 million children living in families that are at or below 200 percent of the federal poverty level. Now, in 2010, they are higher still.
On the PBS Newshour, Judy Woodruff discussed the new statistics with Patrick McCarthy, CEO of the Casey Foundation, which has spent years compiling this kind of data about kids.
The Foundation’s new report – The Kids’ Count -- tells us that poverty rates among children rose substantially, not just during the recession, but throughout the last decade. The official child poverty rate rose by nearly 20 percent from 2000 to 2009. And, in 2010, 11 percent of children lived with at least one unemployed parent.
That means that 20 percent of all American children are living in poverty. Twenty percent is 31 million kids. Think about it!
The Foundation says that it’s even more troubling in some ways is that the children who are on the edge of living in poverty, those children who live with families that are at 200 percent of the federal poverty level, we now have 42 percent of all children, 31 million children in the U.S., living at that level.
Patrick McCarthy describes these 31 million children living below -- at or below $43,500 a year – as surviving “two or three paychecks away from economic catastrophe.”
McCarthy understates the figures as “stunning” -- “especially when you consider what the research tells us what happens when children grow up in poverty or when they slip into poverty as a result of recession.”
He says: “We know that kids who grow up poor are much more likely to end up being poor themselves. They're more likely to have children too early with teen pregnancy. They're more likely to become involved with the criminal justice system as they grow up. They're less likely to be employed. And they're less likely to fully use the talents that they're given.”
McCarthy’s foundation looked at all the past recent recessions. It compared children who slipped into poverty as a result of one of those recessions, with a child who was at the same level of income before the recession. Those kids who fell into poverty in fact were less likely to graduate from school, more likely to have school problems, more likely to have educational difficulty.
And even health was affected over the long term as those kids were followed into adulthood.
McCarthy called attention to the effects of the housing crisis, of so many foreclosures, on children. Well, this is also a story that is not often told.
Between 2007 and 2009, 5.3 million children were directly affected by the
foreclosure crisis, having to leave their homes. We're talking about four percent of the children in this country being affected by a foreclosure crisis.
McCarthy says “there's another hidden fact here, though, and that is that the children who live in a rental housing, when the owner of that property goes through foreclosure, too often, that rental -- that family renting in that property is forced to move.”
And we know a lot of about what happens to children when they have to move frequently. Again, their schoolwork suffers. They often have to change schools, which puts them behind. They're less likely to graduate from school. They're more likely to have behavioral problems. There's a whole list of problems that come about as a result of a foreclosure crisis.
McCarthy proposes a two-generation strategy for dealing with these monumental problems.
Short-term, unemployment insurance is a key protector of kids and families
when unemployment is as high as it is. The earned income tax credit, the child tax credit, these kinds of things help to supplement wages and keep kids out of poverty.
“The two-generation strategy means focusing on the parents, but also then
investing early in children. We know from research that high-quality prenatal care, high-quality child care and pre-K, and especially education in the early years is critical to put children on a path towards opportunity.”
“We believe that what you need to focus on is what's most important, so every dollar is used in the best way, what's most cost-effective, and what can you do now, in 2011, that's going to shape what this country looks like in 2031, in 2041, and in 2051,” he says.
Acknowledging that these strategies cost money to implement, Judy Woodruff asked McCarthy how he intends to overcome the current strictures on government spending.
McCarthy’s response: “You know, the answer to me is that this country is great in part because we have certain core shared values. And I think the most important shared value that we all have, regardless of our perspective on economics or politics, is that this is a country where we care about opportunity. We care that parents can tell their kids that, if they work hard and they use their talents, they're going to get ahead.
“And if we don't invest in ensuring that that opportunity is really available for all of our children, we start to come apart as a country, and we lose one of our greatest strengths. So, I think this is actually a shared value. I should also point out that investing in children is not what's driving the deficit or the
debt. In fact, children represent a small portion of our overall budget.
“So, we ought to be investing smart, as well as recognizing we ought to deal with the problem today, but not in a way that's going to harm us in the future.”
One has to admire his optimism in the face of the permanent tone-deafness of Tea Party Republicans; and, in fact, the Democrats aren’t doing much heavy lifting on this urgent issue either. Talking is not the same as Doing.
So, it saddens me to tell you I believe Mr. McCarthy is headed for a crash into the indestructible wall of reactionary public policy planning.
Maybe the solution is to turn children’s poverty disaster over to Rep. Paul Ryan, who will fix it by turning it into a voucher program!
It’s time we asked ourselves: What will our country look like a generation from now if we all bleep out the callousness, the cruelty, the uncaring, the herd instinct, the incomprehensible hubris exhibited by lawmakers who continue to disgrace themselves and their country by ignoring, not their own children, but everyone else’s.
“If the top earners are OK, then the rest of us will be OK.”
That piece of economic sleight-of-hand has been a central tenet in the Republican catechism since even before Ronald Reagan and long before the Tea Party.
The Grand Old Party clings to this totally discredited and never-proven economic article-of-faith despite a mountain of evidence that grows higher with each passing week in recession.
The figures that tell most of this sorry story are these, reported in the Huffington Post:
The income gap between the richest and poorest Americans grew last year to its largest margin ever, a stark divide as Democrats and Republicans spar over whether to extend Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy.
The top-earning 20 percent of Americans – those making more than $100,000 each year –received 49.4 percent of all income generated in the U.S., compared with the 3.4 percent made by the bottom 20 percent of earners, those who fell below the poverty line, according to the new figures. That ratio of 14.5-to-1 was an increase from 13.6in 2008 and nearly double a low of 7.69 in 1968.
At the top, the wealthiest 5 percent of Americans, who earn more than $180,000, added slightly to their annual incomes last year, the data show. Families at the $50,000 median level slipped lower.
But there’s another part of the story that’s not usually told. It’s how American children are being affected by the Great Recession.
One of the few looks into this largely hidden part of the issue was taken by Sixty Minutes on CBS television a few weeks ago. The show revealed a large cohort of school kids who have been forced to live in motels because their parents lost their jobs and then their homes through foreclosure.
These kids run over to their school to brush their teeth and wash up in the morning. They run out to the nearest fast-food joints, with their parents, at mealtimes. In the mornings, a special school bus picks them up near their motels. The bus is dedicated to that task. And many families who aren’t living in motels, or camping out with friends or relatives, are living in municipal shelters. One father, out of work for more than a year, has taken to sitting on the curb of a busy thoroughfare with an upside-down cap and displaying a sign that reads,” Will Work for Food – Family of Three.”
Now the Annie E. Casey Foundation gives us a set of hard and very grim data to support Sixty Minutes’ anecdotal view. That data is very scary, very angry-making and very heart-breaking. The new numbers on 2009 poverty among U.S. children finds 31 million children living in families that are at or below 200 percent of the federal poverty level. Now, in 2010, they are higher still.
On the PBS Newshour, Judy Woodruff discussed the new statistics with Patrick McCarthy, CEO of the Casey Foundation, which has spent years compiling this kind of data about kids.
The Foundation’s new report – The Kids’ Count -- tells us that poverty rates among children rose substantially, not just during the recession, but throughout the last decade. The official child poverty rate rose by nearly 20 percent from 2000 to 2009. And, in 2010, 11 percent of children lived with at least one unemployed parent.
That means that 20 percent of all American children are living in poverty. Twenty percent is 31 million kids. Think about it!
The Foundation says that it’s even more troubling in some ways is that the children who are on the edge of living in poverty, those children who live with families that are at 200 percent of the federal poverty level, we now have 42 percent of all children, 31 million children in the U.S., living at that level.
Patrick McCarthy describes these 31 million children living below -- at or below $43,500 a year – as surviving “two or three paychecks away from economic catastrophe.”
McCarthy understates the figures as “stunning” -- “especially when you consider what the research tells us what happens when children grow up in poverty or when they slip into poverty as a result of recession.”
He says: “We know that kids who grow up poor are much more likely to end up being poor themselves. They're more likely to have children too early with teen pregnancy. They're more likely to become involved with the criminal justice system as they grow up. They're less likely to be employed. And they're less likely to fully use the talents that they're given.”
McCarthy’s foundation looked at all the past recent recessions. It compared children who slipped into poverty as a result of one of those recessions, with a child who was at the same level of income before the recession. Those kids who fell into poverty in fact were less likely to graduate from school, more likely to have school problems, more likely to have educational difficulty.
And even health was affected over the long term as those kids were followed into adulthood.
McCarthy called attention to the effects of the housing crisis, of so many foreclosures, on children. Well, this is also a story that is not often told.
Between 2007 and 2009, 5.3 million children were directly affected by the
foreclosure crisis, having to leave their homes. We're talking about four percent of the children in this country being affected by a foreclosure crisis.
McCarthy says “there's another hidden fact here, though, and that is that the children who live in a rental housing, when the owner of that property goes through foreclosure, too often, that rental -- that family renting in that property is forced to move.”
And we know a lot of about what happens to children when they have to move frequently. Again, their schoolwork suffers. They often have to change schools, which puts them behind. They're less likely to graduate from school. They're more likely to have behavioral problems. There's a whole list of problems that come about as a result of a foreclosure crisis.
McCarthy proposes a two-generation strategy for dealing with these monumental problems.
Short-term, unemployment insurance is a key protector of kids and families
when unemployment is as high as it is. The earned income tax credit, the child tax credit, these kinds of things help to supplement wages and keep kids out of poverty.
“The two-generation strategy means focusing on the parents, but also then
investing early in children. We know from research that high-quality prenatal care, high-quality child care and pre-K, and especially education in the early years is critical to put children on a path towards opportunity.”
“We believe that what you need to focus on is what's most important, so every dollar is used in the best way, what's most cost-effective, and what can you do now, in 2011, that's going to shape what this country looks like in 2031, in 2041, and in 2051,” he says.
Acknowledging that these strategies cost money to implement, Judy Woodruff asked McCarthy how he intends to overcome the current strictures on government spending.
McCarthy’s response: “You know, the answer to me is that this country is great in part because we have certain core shared values. And I think the most important shared value that we all have, regardless of our perspective on economics or politics, is that this is a country where we care about opportunity. We care that parents can tell their kids that, if they work hard and they use their talents, they're going to get ahead.
“And if we don't invest in ensuring that that opportunity is really available for all of our children, we start to come apart as a country, and we lose one of our greatest strengths. So, I think this is actually a shared value. I should also point out that investing in children is not what's driving the deficit or the
debt. In fact, children represent a small portion of our overall budget.
“So, we ought to be investing smart, as well as recognizing we ought to deal with the problem today, but not in a way that's going to harm us in the future.”
One has to admire his optimism in the face of the permanent tone-deafness of Tea Party Republicans; and, in fact, the Democrats aren’t doing much heavy lifting on this urgent issue either. Talking is not the same as Doing.
So, it saddens me to tell you I believe Mr. McCarthy is headed for a crash into the indestructible wall of reactionary public policy planning.
Maybe the solution is to turn children’s poverty disaster over to Rep. Paul Ryan, who will fix it by turning it into a voucher program!
It’s time we asked ourselves: What will our country look like a generation from now if we all bleep out the callousness, the cruelty, the uncaring, the herd instinct, the incomprehensible hubris exhibited by lawmakers who continue to disgrace themselves and their country by ignoring, not their own children, but everyone else’s.
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