Chris Hedges's Blog, page 218

Erdogan Finally Loses His Grip on Turkey (Video)

President Erdogan had forced new elections after his party lost in March and now the governing party lost control of all Turkey’s major cities. Watch Baris Karaagac discuss Ekrem Imamoglu’s victory in Istanbul’s mayoral election in the following clip. You can also read the transcript below the video player.

MARC STEINER Welcome to The Real News Network. I’m Marc Steiner. It’s great to have you all with us. As many of us know, last March, Turkey’s President Erdogan nullified the election results for the Istanbul mayoral election after his party, the AKP, lost to the opposition. Now, Erdogan said there was election fraud in a razor-thin majority held by the opposition. Well a few days ago, a second election was held. The opposition led by Ekrem Imamoglu— I hope I said that right— won by a landslide. The opposition was formed by an amalgam of parties that span the spectrum— from his party, which was the founding party of Turkey, to the very nationalist Good Party and the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party. And—Which was a difficult coalition to put together, but they did. And many of Erdogan’s AKP members also voted for Imamoglu according to some of the polls that were taken, despite the president’s panicked accusations that the other candidate was associated with terrorists. The horse race is one thing, but this election has clearly weakened the growing authoritarian government of the AKP and Erdogan, or has it?

The people of Turkey, especially in the urban areas, are fighting for their democracy. The Turkish economy— weakened by debt and spending and all the contradictions that capitalism has to offer. So what might the future of Erdogan be? Is it shaken as many of the headlines are saying, but he’s still fully in power? We are joined today by Baris Karaagac, who is a lecturer in International Development Studies at Trent University in Toronto. Baris, welcome. Great to have you with us.

BARIS KARAAGAC Thanks for having me.

MARC STEINER So let’s talk a bit about what just happened here, just politically. The cities seem, despite the national action that was held before where Erdogan won 54% of the vote or 52% the vote—In this last election in Istanbul, the opposition came together and won. They won in Ankara. So talk about what that political dynamic is. Is it similar or different from the dynamic we have in the United States with urban rules? Talk a bit about what that means.

BARIS KARAAGAC Well, first of all, let me give you some information about the significance of this election.

MARC STEINER Please.

BARIS KARAAGAC So the local elections that are held every five years in Turkey took place on March 31st and these elections in themselves are quite important because the opposition’s national alliance won five of the six major cities in Turkey. That was already an important defeat for the AKP and Erdogan and his alliance with the ultra-nationalist MHP, the People’s Alliance. Then in Istanbul, due to the rejection coming from the AKP, the Supreme Electoral Council annulled the election of the mayor in Istanbul. Ekrem Imamoglu who won the election of two days ago, actually won on March 31st, but only with 13,000 votes. And the difference between him and Binali Yildirim who was AKP’s candidate in both elections, was only 0.17% of the vote. Then, as I said, the Supreme Electoral Council decided to annul the election, the mayoral election. In my opinion and in the formal opinion of many actually impartial people, they were quite baseless allegations, claims directed at the opposition. Upon this annulment, another election only for the mayor of Istanbul was held on June 23rd. This time, Ekrem Imamoglu who had beaten his opponents only two and a half months ago with 13,000 votes, this time beat him with more than 800,000 votes.

MARC STEINER It was amazing. Yes, yes.

BARIS KARAAGAC There was a significant difference and I think the reaction of the voters played very important in this unfortunate result for the AKP and a victorious result for the opposition.

MARC STEINER So I mean, but why do you think Imamoglu and his coalition won with such a huge margin? What were the factors? I mean, A— I’m curious for our viewers, A— what the politics of this was and why they won so significantly given how that last national election turned out where AKP took a majority of the seats in parliament? So what’s the dynamic here? What has happened?

BARIS KARAAGAC I think a number of factors played a role there. First of all, many voters did not believe the allegations directed at the opposition. The AKP claimed after the March local elections in Istanbul, that there were a number of irregularities and later voter theft that led to their defeat, but they were able to present no credible, no legitimate evidence to back up their claims and the voters found it difficult to believe that there was actually irregularity or fraud or voter theft that might have affected the outcome of the election. That’s one thing. Secondly, during the campaign, we see discourse coming from the AKP and the MHP, which constituted the People’s Alliance, that further polarized the voters. Here we’re dealing with a country, we’re talking about a country that has been suffering from such discourse for such a long time, but particularly in the last five or six years. Everyday people wake up, they turn on their TV, and there’s a president, a prime minister earlier who constantly yells, chastises fools and others, the people who disagree with him. That has been an ongoing process and I think people are really tired of this. Thirdly, before the March elections especially, the AKP used a very nationalistic discourse, which they tried to modify after the March local elections. But especially, many Kurdish voters did not buy this and as a reaction, even conservative Kurds who have historically voted for the AKP seemed to have voted for the opposition this time, and there you see the difference of more than 800,000 votes.

MARC STEINER There’s a newspaper in Turkey called Karar, which was started by people who used to be in the AKP and allied with Erdogan, and their headline was “Earthquake at the Ballot Box.” And then, you see these photos of what looks like tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of people in the streets celebrating this victory in Istanbul, celebrating this in other cities as well when this happened. So I mean, what do you think is the political fallout here? Before we talk about some of the broader international issues this could affect, with a meeting coming up with Trump and Erdogan himself in next few days, what—I’m just curious what you see of this dynamic because Turkey seems to me, from what I’ve been reading, even though it has some universal opinions they may agree upon, which we can talk about if we have time, is really split. I mean, they’re really divided as a nation. So talk about, what does this mean for the political future?

BARIS KARAAGAC First of all it’s, I think, important to underline the fact that this is Erdogan’s greatest electoral defeat. You know, here is a politician who’s been winning elections since 1994— first as mayor of Istanbul. He became Mayor of Istanbul in 1994. Then in 2003, he became prime minister. After that, he became president, and he has been winning elections. It will not be an exaggeration to say that he is the most popular and powerful leader of our republican history in terms of the support he has gathered during his political career. And this is a significant defeat for him. There’s no question about it and the celebrations were actually a reflection of that. For many years, especially in the last five or six years when Turkey entered the very authoritarian difficult path, many people have lost, almost lost hope. Many people came to the conclusion that it would be difficult to defeat this person through the ballots. Even if he lost an election, he would not give up, so there was to some extent despair.

But this election, again, gave those people a lot of hope. You saw all these spontaneous celebrations in the streets, celebrations which were joined by different segments of the population. You saw secular social democrats, you see some nationalists who were tired of the support given by the MHP to Erdogan, you see Kurds, you see people and groups from different parts of Turkey and different parts of the political spectrum. However, as opposed to some overly optimistic analysis, I do not think that this is the beginning of the end for Tayyip Erdogan. There’s still a party, and a party that is centered around a political leader— i.e. Erdogan— who has more than 40% of the popular vote, so this is something important to keep in mind. And secondly, we do not know how Erdogan will actually respond to this electoral defeat. Right after the election on Twitter, he congratulated Ekrem Imamoglu on his win, but since then, he’s been rather quiet. Now his focus is on the G20 Summit that will be held in Osaka on the 28th and 29th of June, and Erdogan will be facing some challenges there.

MARC STEINER So let’s talk a bit about that. I’m curious how you think this is going to play out politically. There is a Center for American Progress poll that showed that the vast majority of Turkish people don’t like the United States, maybe like Russia a little bit better but aren’t that fond of Russia either, and were really evenly split on what the response to the coup was by Erdogan. But now, how may this play out when Erdogan is going to meet with Trump in Osaka over the F-35 sales of jets, as well as the missiles that Turkey’s buying from Russia, which is causing a huge issue between the United States and Turkey. So how do these things mesh up? I mean, this to me seems to make, kind of, a very complex political moment.

BARIS KARAAGAC For our international viewers, maybe I should give some background as to the most recent occurrences of US and Turkish relations. Those relations are quite strained actually. That started in 2013 but right now, there is significant tension between the United States and the Turkish state over the S-400 missiles, or an anti-aircraft missile system that Turkey has decided to buy from Russia. And in response to this, the US is threatening with kicking Turkey out of the F-35 program, and this is a ridiculously expensive aircraft program which Turkey has been a part of. Turkey has been producing some parts of these jet fighters. So. So far, in the past decade or more than a decade, after each electoral victory, Erdogan would see foreign leaders and with that strengthened hand in his negotiations. But this time, his summit meeting with Trump and Osaka would be a much more difficult one because the electoral defeat a couple of days ago has actually weakened Erdogan’s leverage, Erdogan’s hand, so he doesn’t have a very strong bargaining chip there. On the other hand, yesterday the Minister of Foreign Affairs said that Turkey is determined to buy the S-400 anti-aircraft missile system from Russia. However, I think the final decision will be made after Erdogan meets with Trump in a couple of days.

MARC STEINER So, before we close, if you were a betting man, where do you think this is going to go? [both laugh]

BARIS KARAAGAC You know, it is difficult to predict now because the two people, these two leaders are quite pragmatic leaders. Although, this issue has become part of a nationalist discourse in Turkey with the AKP officials arguing that Turkey is not dependent on any superpower, that it will preserve its independent foreign policy regardless of the pressure and the threats coming from the US, and so on and so forth. We still don’t know. Now, Erdogan is a little bit weaker vis-a-vis Trump because of the mayoral election in Istanbul.

MARC STEINER Though they are both very much alike. [laughs]

BARIS KARAAGAC [laughs] You know, there are many similarities between those two. Yes.

MARC STEINER Baris Karaagac, it’s been wonderful talk to you. Thank you so much for joining us today. We look forward to hopefully getting back to you once we see what these two men talk about in Osaka. Thanks for joining us today.

BARIS KARAAGAC Thank you so much for having me.

MARC STEINER It’s been my pleasure. And I’m Marc Steiner here for The Real News Network. Thank you all for joining us. Take care.

Mueller to Testify Publicly Before Two House Committees

WASHINGTON—Former special counsel Robert Mueller has agreed to testify publicly before Congress on July 17 after Democrats issued subpoenas to compel him to appear, the chairmen of two House committees announced.

Mueller’s unusual back-to-back testimony in front of the House Judiciary and Intelligence committees is likely to be the most highly anticipated congressional hearing in years, particularly given Mueller’s resolute silence throughout his two-year investigation into Russian contacts with President Donald Trump’s campaign . Mueller never responded to angry, public attacks from Trump, nor did he ever personally join his prosecutors in court or make announcements of criminal charges from the team.

His sole public statement came from the Justice Department podium last month as he announced his departure, when he sought to explain his decision to not indict Trump or to accuse him of criminal conduct. He also put lawmakers on notice that he did not ever intend to say more than what he put in the 448-page report.

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Five Critical Takeaways From the Mueller Report



by Bill Blum

“We chose those words carefully, and the work speaks for itself,” Mueller said May 29. “I would not provide information beyond what is already public in any appearance before Congress.”

Those remarks did little to settle the demands for his testimony. The two committees continued negotiations that had already been going on for weeks, saying they still wanted to hear from Mueller no matter how reluctant he was.

“When you accept the role of special counsel in one of the most significant investigations in modern history you’re going to have to expect that you’re going to be asked to come and testify before Congress,” House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., told reporters shortly after the announcement.

Trump himself simply tweeted, “Presidential Harassment!” He followed up on Wednesday morning in an interview with Fox Business Network, saying, “It never ends,” then adding his usual list of grievances against the way the probe was conducted.

In the report issued in April, Mueller concluded there was not enough evidence to establish a conspiracy between Trump’s presidential campaign and Russia, which was the original question that started the investigation. But he also said he could not exonerate Trump on obstruction of justice. The report examined several episodes in which Trump attempted to influence the investigation.

Democrats say it is now the job of Congress to assess the report’s findings. Lawmakers are likely to confront Mueller on why he did not come to a firm conclusion on obstruction of justice. They are also likely to seek his reaction to a drumbeat of incessant criticism from the president and ask for his personal opinion about whether Trump would have been charged were he not the commander-in-chief.

Schiff and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler said they issued the subpoenas Tuesday, and Mueller agreed to testify pursuant to those subpoenas. In a letter to Mueller accompanying the subpoenas, the committee chairmen said “the American public deserves to hear directly from you about your investigation and conclusions.”

Schiff said there will be two hearings “back to back,” one for each committee, and they will also meet with Mueller’s staff in closed session afterward.

The Justice Department declined to comment.

Republicans have criticized Democrats for their continuing investigations of the president. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., questioned why they would still want to hear from Mueller after the lengthy report was issued. “He said he didn’t want to talk to us anymore, didn’t he?”

But Georgia Rep. Doug Collins, the top Republican on the Judiciary panel, has said he has no objections to Mueller’s testimony.

“May this testimony bring to House Democrats the closure that the rest of America has enjoyed for months, and may it enable them to return to the business of legislating,” Collins said.

___

Associated Press writer Michael Balsamo contributed to this report.

Facebook May Pose a Greater Danger Than Wall Street

Payments can happen cheaply and easily without banks or credit card companies, as has already been demonstrated—not in the United States but in China. Unlike in the U.S., where numerous firms feast on fees from handling and processing payments, in China most money flows through mobile phones nearly for free. In 2018 these cashless payments totaled a whopping $41.5 trillion; and 90% were through Alipay and WeChat Pay, a pair of digital ecosystems that blend social media, commerce and banking. According to a 2018 article in Bloomberg titled “Why China’s Payment Apps Give U.S. Bankers Nightmares”:

The nightmare for the U.S. financial industry is that a technology company—whether from China or a homegrown juggernaut such as Amazon.com Inc. or Facebook Inc.—replicates the success of Alipay and WeChat in America. The stakes are enormous, potentially carving away billions of dollars in annual revenue from major banks and other firms.

That threat may now be materializing. On June 18, Facebook unveiled a white paper outlining ambitious plans to create a new global cryptocurrency called Libra, to be launched in 2020. Facebook reportedly has high hopes that Libra will become the foundation for a new financial system free of control by Wall Street power brokers and central banks.

But apparently Libra will not be competing with Visa or Mastercard. In fact, the Libra Association lists those two giants among its 28 soon-to-be founding members. Others include Paypal, Stripe, Uber, Lyft and eBay. Facebook has reportedly courted dozens of financial institutions and other tech companies to join the Libra Association, an independent foundation that will contribute capital and help govern the digital currency. Entry barriers are high, with each founding member paying a minimum of $10 million to join. This gives them one vote  (or 1% of the total vote, whichever is larger)  in the Libra Association council. Members are also entitled to a share proportionate to their investment of the dividends earned from interest on the Libra reserve—the money that users will pay to acquire the Libra currency.

Needless to say, all of this has raised some eyebrows, among both financial analysts and crypto-activists. A Zero Hedge commentator calls Libra “Facebook’s Crypto Trojan Rabbit.” An article in The Financial Times’ Alphaville calls it “Blockchain, but Without the Blocks or Chain.” Economist Nouriel Roubini concurs, tweeting:

It will start as a private, permissioned, not-trustless, centralized oligopolistic members-only club. So much for calling it "blockchain". Like all "enterprise DLT" it is blockchain in name only and an monopoly to extract massive seignorage from billions of users. A monopoly scam https://t.co/NritKaQODS

— Nouriel Roubini (@Nouriel) June 17, 2019

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Facebook Plans Its Own Digital Currency for 2 Billion-Plus Users



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Another Zero Hedge writer calls Libra “The Dollar’s Killer App,” which threatens “not only the power of central banks but also the government’s money monopoly itself.”

From Frying Pan to Fire?

To the crypto-anarchist community, usurping the power of central banks and governments may sound like a good thing. But handing global power to the corporate-controlled Libra Association could be a greater nightmare. So argues Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes, who writes in The Financial Times:

This currency would insert a powerful new corporate layer of monetary control between central banks and individuals. Inevitably, these companies will put their private interests — profits and influence — ahead of public ones. …

The Libra Association’s goals specifically say that [they] will encourage “decentralised forms of governance.” In other words, Libra will disrupt and weaken nation states by enabling people to move out of unstable local currencies and into a currency denominated in dollars and euros and managed by corporations. …

What Libra backers are calling ‘decentralisation’ is in truth a shift of power from developing world central banks toward multinational corporations and the US Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank.

Power will shift to the Fed and ECB because the dollar and the euro will squeeze out weaker currencies in developing countries. As seen recently in Greece, the result will be to cause their governments to lose control of their currencies and their economies.

Pros and Cons

Caitlin Long, co-founder of the Wyoming Blockchain Coalition, recently agreed that Libra was a Trojan horse but predicted it would have some beneficial effects. For one, she thought it would impose discipline on the U.S. banking system by leading to populist calls to repeal its corporate subsidies. The Fed is now paying its member banks 2.35% in risk-free interest on their excess reserves, which this year is projected to total $36 billion of corporate welfare to U.S. banks—about half the sum spent on the U.S. food stamp program. If Facebook parks its entire U.S. dollar balance at the Federal Reserve through one of its bank partners, it could earn the same rate. But Long predicted that Facebook would have to pay interest to Libra users to avoid a chorus of critics, who would loudly publicize how much money Facebook and its partners were pocketing from the interest on the money users traded for their Libra currency.

But that was before the Libra white paper came out. It reveals the profits will indeed be divvied among Facebook’s Libra partners rather than shared with users. At one time, we earned interest on our deposits in government-insured banks. With Libra, we will get no interest on our money, which will be entrusted to uninsured crypto exchanges, which are coming under increasing regulatory pressure due to lack of transparency and operational irregularities.

United Kingdom economics professor Alistair Milne points to another problem with the Libra cryptocurrency: Unlike Bitcoin, it will be a “stablecoin,” whose value will be tied to a basket of fiat currencies and short-term government securities. That means it will need the backing of real money to maintain its fixed price. If reserves do not cover withdrawals, who will be responsible for compensating Libra holders? Ideally, Milne writes, reserves would be held with the central bank; but central banks will be reluctant to support a private currency.

Long also predicts that Facebook’s cryptocurrency will be a huge honeypot of data for government officials, since every transaction will be traceable. But other reviewers see this as Libra’s most fatal flaw. Facebook has been called Big Brother, the ultimate government surveillance tool. Conspiracy theorists link it to the CIA and the U.S. Department of Defense. Facebook has already demonstrated that it is an untrustworthy manager of personal data. How then can we trust it with our money?

Why Use a Cryptocurrency at All?

Why has Facebook chosen to use a cryptocurrency rather than following WeChat and AliPay in doing a global payments network in the traditional way? Yan Meng, vice president of the Chinese Software Developer Network, says Facebook’s fragmented user base across the world leaves it with no better choice than to borrow ideas from blockchain and cryptocurrency.

“Facebook just can’t do a global payments network via traditional methods, which require applying for a license and preparing foreign exchange reserves with local banking, one market after another,” Meng said. “The advantage of WeChat and AliPay is they have already gained a significant number of users from just one giant economy that accounts for 20 percent of the world’s population.” They have no need to establish their own digital currencies, which they still regard as too risky.

Meng suspects that Facebook’s long-term ambition is to become a stateless central bank that uses Libra as a base currency. He writes, “With sufficient incentives, nodes of Facebook’s Libra network would represent Facebook to push for utility in various countries for its 2.7 billion users in business, investment, trade and financial services,” which “would help complete a full digital economy empire.”

The question is whether regulators will allow that sort of competition with the central banking system. Immediately after Facebook released its Libra cryptocurrency plan, financial regulators in Europe voiced concerns over the potential danger of Facebook running a “shadow bank.” Maxine Waters, who heads the Financial Services Committee for the U.S. House of Representatives, asked Facebook to halt its development of Libra until hearings could be held. She said:

This is like starting a bank without having to go through any steps to do it. …  We can’t allow Facebook to go to Switzerland and begin to compete with the dollar without having any regulatory regime that’s dealing with them.

A Stateless Private Central Bank or a Publicly Accountable One?

Facebook may be competing with more than the dollar. Jennifer Grygiel, assistant professor of communications at Syracuse University, writes:

[It] seems that the company is not seeking to compete with Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies. Rather, Facebook is looking to replace the existing global financial system with an all-new setup, with Libra at its center.

At least at the moment, the Libra is being designed as a form of electronic money linked to many national currencies. That has raised fears that Libra might someday be recognized as a sovereign currency, with Facebook acting as a “shadow bank” that could compete with the central banks of countries around the world.

Long thinks Bitcoin, rather than Libra, will come out the winner in all this; but Bitcoin’s blockchain model is too slow, expensive and energy intensive to replace fiat currency as a medium of exchange on a national scale. As Josh Constine writes on TechCrunch:

[E]xisting cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum weren’t properly engineered to scale to be a medium of exchange. Their unanchored price was susceptible to huge and unpredictable swings, making it tough for merchants to accept as payment. And cryptocurrencies miss out on much of their potential beyond speculation unless there are enough places that will take them instead of dollars. … But with Facebook’s relationship with 7 million advertisers and 90 million small businesses plus its user experience prowess, it was well-poised to tackle this juggernaut of a problem.

For Libra to scale as a national medium of exchange, its governance had to be centralized rather than “distributed.” But Libra’s governing body is not the sort of global controller we want. Jennifer Grygiel writes:

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg . . . is declaring that he wants Facebook to become a virtual nation, populated by users, powered by a self-contained economy, and headed by a CEO–Zuckerberg himself– who is not even accountable to his shareholders. . . .

In many ways the company that Mark Zuckerberg is building is beginning to look more like a Roman Empire, now with its own central bank and currency, than a corporation. The only problem is that this new nation-like platform is a controlled company and is run more like a dictatorship than a sovereign country with democratically elected leaders.

A currency intended for trade on a national—let alone international—scale needs to be not only centralized but democratized, responding to the will of the people and their elected leaders. Rather than bypassing the existing central banking structure as Facebook plans to do, several groups of economists are proposing a more egalitarian solution: nationalizing and democratizing the central bank by opening its deposit window to everyone. As explored in my latest book, “Banking on the People: Democratizing Money in the Digital Age,” these proposals could allow us all to get 2.35% on our deposits, while eliminating bank runs and banking crises, since the central bank cannot run out of funds. Profits from the public medium of exchange need to return to the public rather than enriching an unaccountable, corporate-controlled Facebook Trojan horse.

Federal Judges Send 2020 Census Lawsuit Back to Lower Court

BALTIMORE — A lawsuit that alleges a 2020 census question pushed by the Trump administration violates minorities’ rights will be sent back to a federal court in Maryland so new evidence can be considered, U.S. appeals judges ruled Tuesday.

The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision comes a day after U.S. District Judge George Hazel of Maryland suggested in an opinion that racial discrimination and partisan power plays could be the underlying motives in asking everyone in the country about citizenship status. The 4th Circuit’s order sending the case back to Hazel could be pivotal.

“The decision today opens up a potentially new legal front in the fight against the citizenship question,” said Thomas Wolf, counsel for the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice and an expert on census matters.

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Accuracy at Heart of Census Question Before Supreme Court



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The Supreme Court is expected to decide this week whether the Trump administration can add its citizenship question to the 2020 population survey. However, the justices are not considering legal questions about whether the citizenship addition might be discriminatory.

Now that the 4th Circuit has sent this lawsuit back to the federal court in Maryland, Hazel could issue an injunction blocking the citizenship question. If that were to happen, the order issued by the lower court would have to hold until the Supreme Court can take up the matter, according to Wolf.

And because the Supreme Court does not generally hear arguments again until October after this week’s decisions, there would be more time for the 4th Circuit to hear an appeal, said Jennifer Nou, a University of Chicago law professor.

“Who will be the ‘final word’ depends on the true deadline for when the census forms must be printed. If the true deadline for the census forms occurs before the Supreme Court reconvenes, for example, there is a chance that the 4th Circuit could be the final word,” Nou said in an email.

The Trump administration insists that printing of census questionnaires is supposed to begin July 1. It wants justices to resolve the citizenship question swiftly in its favor, essentially cutting off additional proceedings in court in Maryland and New York and allowing the census forms to be printed with the new question.

Even before the 4th Circuit issued its order, the U.S. Justice Department was urging the Supreme Court to ignore the evidence Hazel says merits further review.

“It is based on a speculative conspiracy theory that is unsupported by the evidence and legally irrelevant to demonstrating that (Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross) acted with a discriminatory intent,” Solicitor General Noel Francisco, Trump’s top Supreme Court lawyer, wrote in a Tuesday letter to the court.

But in his court filing Monday, Hazel reasoned that the trove of new evidence “potentially connects the dots between a discriminatory purpose — diluting Hispanics’ political power — and Secretary Ross’s decision” to include the citizenship question.

The new evidence consists of computer documents from Republican operative Tom Hofeller, who died last year. They include detailed calculations projecting gains Republicans would see in Texas by basing legislative districts on the number of voting-age citizens rather than the total population. The late North Carolina redistricting expert said in the documents that GOP gains would be possible only if the census asked every household about its members’ immigration status for the first time since 1950.

Ross, who oversees the Census Bureau, said in a memo last year that the Justice Department wants to ask the question to gather data to help identify majority-minority congressional districts, which the Voting Rights Act calls for when possible.

In his opinion issued a day before the 4th Circuit’s order, Hazel said he would reopen discovery for 45 days, order an evidentiary hearing and issue a “speedy ruling.”

So Much for Middle-Class Joe: Biden Raked in Millions After Leaving the White House

As a senator, former Vice President Joe Biden earned the nickname Amtrak Joe, for the frequent train trips he took between Washington, D.C., and his home state of Delaware. According to CNN, by 2008 he had logged 8,200 miles, and the ritual added to the everyman aura of the man who called himself Middle-Class Joe. Today, however, that nickname may more of a memory than an accurate reflection of Biden’s current wealth.

He now commands up to $200,000 for a single speech and pays an estimated $20,000 per month in rent on his Washington, D.C., home. There’s also a primary residence in Wilmington, Del., and a $2.7 million vacation home in Rehoboth Beach, Del., according to The Washington Post.

Biden, as Post reporter Matt Viser explains, may recall being “the poorest member of the U.S. Senate” on the campaign trail, “But since leaving office he has enjoyed an explosion of wealth, making millions of dollars largely from book deals and speaking fees that ranged to as much as $200,000 per speech, public documents show.”

The Post also found, via additional public documents requests, that “As Biden traveled the country before announcing his presidential campaign this spring, his sponsors provided VIP hotel suites, town cars and professional drivers, chartered flights and travel expense reimbursements that for some of his appearances reached at least $10,000 per event.”

There were also at least 10 events for which Biden was not paid (although in some situations he was reimbursed for expenses). His campaign told the Post that he’s given fewer than 50 paid speeches—but did not provide more specifics and declined to speak on the record for the Post story.

The fees Biden did receive however, were in sharp contrast to what he earned during a 44-year career in public service, at least according to the tax returns the Post reviewed. The combined gross income for Biden and his wife Jill was $215,432 in 1998, the first year returns were available, and remained around that amount until 2009, when another $55,000 was added in Social Security and pension income. Biden has yet to release a candidate financial disclosure form, which would provide a more complete picture of his current income.

While $215,000 is out of reach for the average American family, Biden can now make almost that much for just one speech. According to Publisher’s Weekly, his two-book deal is worth $8 million.

Viser suggests that Biden’s post-vice presidency wealth puts him in “a much more rarefied world that the one he formerly occupied, and “[runs] the risk of cutting against a core message of his campaign: that unique among the presidential candidates, he can connect with and represent the middle class.”

Since officially announcing his run for president, Biden has stopped giving paid speeches. It’s unclear whether revelations of his newfound wealth with impact his standing with voters. Ahead of the first Democratic debates, multiple polls show him as the front-runner among Democratic voters.

U.S. Border Chief Abruptly Resigns Amid Public Outrage

HOUSTON — The acting head of U.S. Customs and Border Protection resigned Tuesday amid an uproar over the discovery of migrant children being held in filthy conditions at one of the agency’s stations in Texas.

Commissioner John Sanders’ departure deepened the sense of crisis and added to the rapid turnover inside the agencies responsible for enforcing President Donald Trump’s hardline immigration priorities.

The Trump administration is dealing with unprecedented numbers of migrant families coming across the border, a surge that has left detention centers severely overcrowded and taxed the government’s ability to provide medical care and other attention.

The administration has faced a barrage of criticism in recent days over conditions inside the Border Patrol facility in Clint, Texas, first reported by The Associated Press: inadequate food, lack of medical care, and older children trying to care for toddlers.

In a message to employees, Sanders said he would step down on July 5. He did not give a reason for leaving.

“Although I will leave it to you to determine whether I was successful, I can unequivocally say that helping support the amazing men and women of CBP has been the most fulfilling and satisfying opportunity of my career,” he said.

In an interview with AP last week, Sanders blamed the problems in detention on a lack of funding. He called on Congress to pass a $4.5 billion emergency funding bill to address the crisis — legislation the House was planning to take up Tuesday.

Previously CBP’s chief operating officer, Sanders was named acting commissioner in April after the agency’s previous leader, Kevin McAleenan, became acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.

Other key DHS agencies also have interim or acting directors, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

ICE on Saturday delayed a long-planned operation to sweep U.S. cities and arrest hundreds of people accused of flouting orders to leave the country, days after Trump’s tweets about the operation alarmed immigrant families and advocates. Former ICE acting director Thomas Homan, a Trump administration ally, then went on television to accuse McAleenan of leaking information about the operation because he opposed it.

CBP is the agency that apprehends and first detains migrant parents and children crossing the Mexican border.

In one case reported in Clint, attorneys said a 2-year-old boy without a diaper was being watched by older children. Several youngsters had the flu. Many were separated from extended family members like aunts and uncles who brought them to the border; others were teenage mothers with babies.

Many children were moved out of the facility in recent days. But around the same time that Sanders announced his resignation, his agency said officials had moved more than 100 children back to the station.

An official from Customs and Border Protection said Tuesday that the majority of the roughly 300 children detained at Clint last week had been moved to facilities operated by the Office of Refugee Resettlement. The official, who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity, wouldn’t say exactly how many.

Clara Long, a senior researcher with Human Rights Watch, and other lawyers inspected the facilities because they are involved in the Flores settlement, a Clinton-era legal agreement that governs detention conditions for migrant children and families.

The lawyers spoke to children who contradicted CBP’s claims that the agency provides regular meals, safe places to sleep and access to medical care.

CBP’s facilities at the Mexican border were almost all built when most people crossing the border illegally were single adults. Now, the agency is apprehending tens of thousands of parents and children weekly. It recorded 84,500 apprehensions of adults and children traveling together in May.

Six children have died since last year after being detained by border agents. At least two are believed to have died of complications of the flu, including a 16-year-old who was left to sleep on a concrete bench inside a Border Patrol station.

“The death of a child is always a terrible thing, but here is a situation where, because there is not enough funding … they can’t move the people out of our custody,” Sanders said.

House Looks Set to Pass Emergency Funding Bill for Migrants

WASHINGTON — Democratic leaders in the House proposed tighter requirements for the care of unaccompanied refugee children as they sought to pass a $4.5 billion emergency funding bill to address the humanitarian crisis involving the thousands of migrant families detained after crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.

Lawmakers and aides said they expected the changes, which were concessions to Hispanic and liberal Democrats, to produce a winning tally when the measure comes to a vote later Tuesday. A full court press by leaders, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., was also helping nail down support, though some Democrats had lingering reservations.

The Senate plans to vote on a different, and bipartisan, companion measure in coming days as the chambers race to wrap up the must-do legislation by the end of the week. The White House is threatening to veto the House bill, saying it would hamstring the administration’s border security efforts, and the Senate’s top Republican suggested Tuesday that the House should simply accept the Senate measure — which received only a single “nay” vote during a committee vote last week.

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“The idea here is to get a (presidential) signature, so I think once we can get that out of the Senate, hopefully on a vote similar to the one in the Appropriations Committee, I’m hoping that the House will conclude that’s the best way to get the problem solved, which can only happen with a signature,” said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

House Democrats seeking the changes met late Monday with Pelosi, and lawmakers emerging from a morning caucus meeting were supportive of the legislation. Hispanic lawmakers were still seeking additional changes, however.

In the closed-door meeting Tuesday morning, Pelosi urged them to rally strongly behind the legislation in hopes of increasing their leverage when they negotiate a compromise package with the Republican-run Senate. There was silence in the room when she asked if any lawmakers had problems with the legislation, according to a senior Democratic aide who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the private session.

Pelosi also warned that President Donald Trump’s hand would be strengthened if the legislation failed, the aide said.

“The president would love for this bill to go down today,” she said, according to the aide. “A vote against this bill is a vote for Donald Trump and his inhumane, outside-the-circle-of-civilized attitude toward the children.”

Changes unveiled Tuesday would require the Department of Homeland Security to establish new standards for care of unaccompanied immigrant children and a plan for ensuring adequate translators to assist migrants in their dealings with law enforcement.

Many children detained entering the U.S. from Mexico have been held under harsh conditions, and Customs and Border Protection Chief Operating Officer John Sanders told The Associated Press last week that children have died after being in the agency’s care. He said Border Patrol stations are holding 15,000 people — more than triple their maximum capacity of 4,000.

Sanders announced Tuesday that he’s stepping down next month amid outrage over his agency’s treatment of detained migrant children.

Congress plans to leave Washington in a few days for a weeklong July 4 recess. Democratic leaders said they wanted the House and Senate to send Trump a final, compromise bill this week, rather than going home and facing constituents’ accusations of not responding to the migrants’ needs.

In a letter Monday threatening the veto, White House officials told lawmakers they objected that the House package lacked money for beds the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency needs to let it detain more migrants. Officials also complained in the letter that the bill had no money to toughen border security, including funds for building Trump’s proposed border wall.

“We’ve got lives at stake,” said Rep. Tony Cardenas, D-Calif. He said the U.S. has been “the gold standard” for treating refugees fleeing dangerous countries, “and I don’t think we should compromise that at all.”

Much of the legislation’s money would help care for migrants at a time when federal officials say their agencies have been overwhelmed by the influx of migrants and are running out of funds.

“This is strictly a supplemental that’s in response to a humanitarian crisis that is taking place right now,” said Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard, D-Calif., one of the authors of the bill. She said language in the measure limits the use of the funding to “food, clothing, better shelter facilities and so on.”

___

AP Congressional Correspondent Lisa Mascaro and Associated Press writers Andrew Taylor and Colleen Long contributed to this report.

Medicare for All Dies in the Dark at the Washington Post

Healthcare consistently ranks as one of the top issues for Democratic voters, so helping those voters understand Democratic presidential candidates’ positions on healthcare ought to be a key job for journalists. Right? A recent survey of those voters shows that they are woefully confused and misinformed, and a recent Washington Post story on the issue perfectly illustrated why that’s the case.

The Kaiser Family Foundation, a health policy think tank, polled people on their knowledge and opinions about Medicare for All and other healthcare reform ideas, and found all sorts of mistaken beliefs—most notably, that under Medicare for All, people would still pay deductibles, co-pays and premiums, and that they would be able to keep private insurance plans they currently have.

On the other hand, Democratic voters are clear in the Kaiser survey that they want to hear from the candidates about decreasing healthcare costs, increasing access, protecting the ACA and implementing Medicare for All.

Reporting on the Kaiser survey among others, the Washington Post (6/21/19) framed the story as a “disconnect” between Democratic candidates with “bold ideas to achieve the party’s long-held dream of ushering in health coverage for every American” and “many voters [who] are not focused on such lofty goals. They want something simpler — to pay less for their own healthcare.”

The Post’s Amy Goldstein quoted a Democratic voter named Ron Jungling (whose wife happens to work as an insurance broker) who thinks Medicare for All won’t “keep costs down,” to illustrate the article’s contention that there is a “misalignment in candidates’ focus and, in some cases, their level of attention.”

There’s definitely a misalignment here, but it’s not the one the Post describes—it’s the one between the reality of Medicare for All and the distorted caricature of it that healthcare industry-friendly and right-wing groups are actively trying to promote. As Medicare for All supporters routinely point out, universal access means affordable access; the cost of care and the availability of care are intertwined. And even candidates who aren’t pushing for full Medicare for All are talking about both access and costs. But the Post tried to spin the story into a false competition between the two.

According to the Post’s expert sources:

The debate is not going to be 2008 or ’16 over again. It’s going to be about the price of insulin, hospital charges and insurance premiums, with, “What are you going to do about them for me?”

Another source argued that “prescription drug prices” are a “hot issue” with voters that’s not being talked about enough, because candidates are “playing to the values of Democratic primary voters, who tend to lean further left than others in the party.”

They’re arguments that could only seem logical if you manage to overlook Bernie Sanders’ campaign—and those of the seven candidates who have signed on to his Medicare for All Act in the Senate or the companion bill in the House. Sanders, who has put Medicare for All front and center since the last election, has spoken out repeatedly on insulin prices. As previously noted (and as Sanders’ campaign frequently points out), hospital charges and insurance premiums would be eliminated under Medicare for All. The first link on his website’s “Issues” page is “Healthcare for All”; on that page, the second sentence is about unaffordable healthcare costs for those with insurance, and the four-paragraph page devotes an entire paragraph to prescription drug prices. If voters don’t hear candidates talking about these things—and if they’re completely confused about what Medicare for All even means—it’s because journalists aren’t doing their job in covering them.

In the Post article, for example, when Goldstein finally gets around to talking about Sanders, it’s only about overall costs:

When Sanders talks of Medicare for All, still near the core of his campaign’s rationale, he contends that a single-payer system would be more efficient and would lower the nation’s health-care spending. But reducing overall costs is not a priority with the public, recent polls show.

Medicare for All would almost certainly reduce most people’s healthcare costs, but it’s a complicated plan with lots of possible pathways to funding and implementation that make it irreducible to simple soundbites. That’s where journalism comes in; helping voters understand the options would be the way to ensure a healthy debate on the subject. Instead, reports like the Post’s only perpetuate the misinformation, boosting the industry-friendly line that Democrats’ ideas are too “lofty” and “bold” for voters.

Bernie Sanders’ Student Debt Plan Trumps Warren’s

Sen. Bernie Sanders, together with Representatives Ilhan Omar and Pramila Jayapal, has introduced a dramatic reform package on college affordability. It goes far beyond anything proposed so far, both in its scope and in its potential to reshape the way Americans think about their society and government.

One bill in the package, Rep. Omar’s Student Debt Cancellation Act, would cancel all outstanding student debt. That’s a $1.6 trillion burden affecting more than 45 million people. This bill will benefit people in all demographic groups, communities, and walks of life. That fact is illustrated by the fact that, as Sen. Sanders introduces the bill in the Senate, eight representatives of color (including Rep. Omar) will simultaneously introduce it in the House.

The reform package also includes Sen. Sanders’ College for All Act, which provides tuition-free higher education to every qualified American without any additional work requirements, restrictions, or tests for family financial eligibility.

An Unfair Deal

Both ideas are transformative. But, of the two proposals, it is student debt cancellation that’s likely to trigger the most vigorous debate. That’s a good thing, because it can lead to both a teaching moment and an opportunity for reflection.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s proposal for partial student debt cancellation began a productive national conversation. But the Omar/Sanders proposal, with its full and universal cancellation for tens of millions of people trapped by student debt, gives us an opportunity: to re-examine our social contract, our awareness of the public good, and our fundamental ideas about equity and fairness.

Some people’s first response to the idea of canceling all student debt is to think that it’s a step too far. Why not just cancel part of the debt, for some of the debt holders, as Sen. Warren’s proposal does? Freedom to Prosper, an activist group that was instrumental in laying the groundwork for full debt cancellation*, offers useful data and analysis on the benefits of full cancellation on its website.

But the most important argument for full cancellation is a moral one. Low-cost or tuition-free higher education was available for many years in the United States, in many parts of the country. A series of public policy choices shifted this cost onto individual students, who were promised that their “investment” would pay off in higher earnings.

Neither the policy change nor the promise was fair to students or their families. It was wrong to shift society’s shared responsibility of educating its citizens onto individuals. And it was wrong to make them a promise that, as we now know, never came true. As Julie Margetta Morgan and Marshall Steinbaum wrote for the Roosevelt Institute, “More education has not led to higher earnings over time.”

A Plan for Everyone

President Obama put it well in his final State of the Union address when he said, “No hardworking student should be stuck in the red.” Partial cancellation would leave millions trapped in the red for the foreseeable future.

Some people have expressed concern that full cancellation could reward wealthier—and whiter—people, who are less in need than others. But full cancellation will reduce the racial wealth gap. Economist Marshall Steinbaum concluded that the elimination of all student debt would reduce that gap in younger households from a 12:1 advantage for whites to 5:1—a ratio that is still unconscionably and immorally high, and must be addressed by other policies. But this figure shows that full cancellation lessens the harm. When taken as a whole, this college affordability reform package is likely to significantly improve racial injustice in our economy.

In that case, why not target the program to lower-income people, as Warren’s plan would? First, because truly wealthy people don’t generally have student debt. They write checks for college tuition. If they become wealthy after graduation, their financial advisers will almost certainly tell them to pay off student debt in full. After all, student debt terms are far less favorable than those available to “high net worth individuals.”

Why cancel debt for everyone? First, because many of us have long believed those things we hold most precious—our parks, our security, and our access to knowledge—should be freely available to all. These borrowers were denied that access. That’s an historical injustice we should make right.

Secondly, everyone who holds student debt has been wronged by our country’s shift away from tuition-free public education, and by the false promises that accompanied that shift.

Making it right will benefit more than the 45 million borrowers and their families. A report from the Levy Institute showed that full student debt cancellation will create more than a million jobs, and significant economic growth, over a period of several years.

That number becomes considerably smaller, by hundreds of thousands of jobs, under a limited plan like Sen. Warren’s. In effect, the limited program deprives thousands of blue-collar Americans of jobs they would otherwise have under full cancellation. That’s a price they shouldn’t have to pay, especially if it’s motivated by an exaggerated fear that somehow, somewhere, a well-to-do orthodontist is getting a break she doesn’t deserve.

The Policy and the Politics

The politics of this issue are compelling. Polling on full cancellation is surprisingly strong, as seen in a recent survey conducted by Data for Progress (DFP) and published by Freedom to Prosper. And full cancellation, of the kind proposed by Rep. Omar and Sen. Sanders, helps more people. In general, the broader the population affected by policies—in this case, by full cancellation and tuition-free higher education—the larger the “army” willing to fight for them.

These proposals also benefit from their simplicity. Democrats, as is well known, tend to over-engineer their policies. They make you, in the words of an old Godfather joke, an offer you can’t understand.

In the case of student debt cancellation, they also force people to make painful choices: Does a young couple put off getting married to get their student debt reduced? Do they wait another year before taking good jobs, so that they qualify? Must a struggling young person stay away from his parents’ home and couch-surf for a year to obtain the benefit?

Conclusion

The clear and simple structure of this plan will make it easier to explain to the public. It will help more people, and it will help them more thoroughly. And it will give progressives the opportunity to remind Americans of a time when the country understood the value of the public good—when it was understood that the government looked to unite society through common investment in, and benefit from, publicly provided goods and services.

There may be pushback among Democrats. If so, I hope the ones doing the pushing will reconsider. We have treated our younger generations, and many older people, unjustly. The act of recognizing an injustice we hadn’t seen before makes us more human and refines us as moral beings.

This moral context, along with the inexorable mathematics of social and economic justice, makes the Omar/Sanders bill an important and profound proposal that deserves broad support.

*Disclosure: I am an adviser to Freedom to Prosper.

This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

Robert Reich: Big Tech Must Be Broken Up

The combined wealth of Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, and Google’s Sergey Brin, and Larry Page is larger than the combined wealth of the bottom half of the American population.

They are the leaders of a second Gilded Age – ushered in by semiconductors, software and the internet – which has spawned a handful of hi-tech behemoths and crushed competition.

Facebook, Amazon, Google, Apple, and Microsoft now have the highest market values for all public corporations in America.

As of today, only three countries in the world have a GDP higher than these companies’ combined market value of approximately 4 trillion dollars.

America’s first Gilded Age began in the late nineteenth century with a raft of innovations – railroads, steel production, oil extraction – that culminated in mammoth trusts run by “robber barons” like J.P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, and William Vanderbilt.

The answer then was to break up the railroad, oil, and steel monopolies.

The answer today is the same: Break Up Big Tech.

First: They have a stranglehold on the economy.

Nearly 90 percent of all internet searches now go through Google. Facebook and Google together will account for nearly 60 percent of all digital ad spending in 2019 (where most ad money goes these days).

They’re also the first stops for many Americans seeking news (93 percent of Americans say they receive at least some news online). Amazon is now the first stop for almost half of all American consumers seeking to buy anything online.

With such size comes the power to stifle innovation.

Google uses its search engine to promote its own products and content over those of its competitors, like Yelp. Facebook’s purchases of WhatsApp and Instagram killed off two potential rivals. Apple stifles competition in its App Store.

Partly because of this economic concentration, the rate that new job-creating businesses have formed in the United States has almost halved since 2004, according to the Census Bureau.

Second: Such size also gives these giant corporations political power to get whatever they want, undermining our democracy.

In 2018, Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft spent 70.9 million dollars on lobbying and supporting candidates.

As a result, Amazon – the richest corporation in America– paid nothing in federal taxes last year. Meanwhile, it held a bidding war to extort billions from states and cities eager to have its second headquarters.

Not to mention, these companies have tremendous influence over how Americans receive information. And as we’ve seen, Facebook and Google have enabled the manipulation of our elections.

Third: Giant tech companies also hurt the environment. 

Many are failing to reduce greenhouse emissions, as they promised, and are unwilling to commit fully to renewable energy.

Finally:  Their huge wealth isn’t being shared with most of their workers. 

Nine in 10 workers in Silicon Valley make less now than they did in 1997, adjusted for inflation. And many are part of the “working homeless.” That is, people who work full time and yet are still homeless.

The answer is to break them up. That way, information would be distributed through a large number of independent channels instead of a centralized platform. And more startups could flourish.

Even one of Facebook’s founders has called for the social media behemoth to be broken up.

Senator Elizabeth Warren has introduced a proposal to do just that. It would force tech giants to open up their platforms to more competition or break up into smaller companies.

Other countries are already taking on Big Tech. The European Union fined Google nearly $3 billion for antitrust violations in 2017.

Let’s be clear: Monopolies aren’t good for anyone except for the monopolists, especially when they can influence our elections and control how Americans receive information.

In this new Gilded Age, we need to respond to them as forcefully as we did to the monopolies of the first Gilded Age and break them up.