Chris Hedges's Blog, page 321

DeVos Proposes Tax Credit to Promote School Privatization

The Trump administration renewed its push for school choice on Thursday with a proposal to provide $5 billion a year in federal tax credits for donations made to groups offering scholarships for private schools, apprenticeships and other educational programs.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos unveiled the plan as a “bold proposal” to give students more choices without diverting money from public schools.

“What’s missing in education today is at the core of what makes America truly great: freedom,” DeVos said. “Kids should be free to learn where and how it works for them.”

Legislation for the tax credits is being introduced by Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Rep. Bradley Byrne, R-Ala.

DeVos said she expects to face opposition, and Democrats quickly let her know she’ll get it. Sen. Patty Murray, the top Democrat on the Senate education committee, said the proposal is “dead on arrival.”

“Secretary DeVos keeps pushing her anti-public school agenda despite a clear lack of support from parents, students, teachers, and even within her own party,” Murray said in a statement. “Congress has repeatedly rejected her privatization efforts, and she should expect nothing less here.”

The proposal will also face a difficult time in the House, where Democrats gained a majority in the November midterm elections. Rep. Bobby Scott, chairman of the House education committee, said Democrats “will not waste time on proposals that undermine public education.”

“We’re focused on reversing our chronic underfunding of public schools so that all students — regardless of their background — can learn in schools that are healthy, safe and provide a quality education,” Scott said.

Education officials crafted the plan in an attempt to make school choice more politically appealing, after previous initiatives failed to take hold. Congress rejected DeVos’ efforts to boost funding for charter schools and to create federal vouchers to attend private schools.

Opponents of charter schools and vouchers argue that they steer money away from public schools. But DeVos contends the proposal would spark new funding that could be used for a range of education options including public or private schools.

“The only folks who are threatened are those who have a vested interested in suppressing education freedom,” DeVos said. “The program won’t take a single cent from local public school teachers or public school students.”

But The National Association of Secondary School Principals called the plan “insulting” and said it “reflects this administration’s persistent disdain for public education.” The group contends that it would make it harder for public schools to attract and retain good teachers.

The plan, called the Education Freedom Scholarships and Opportunity Act, would allow states to set their own rules around the credits, including which students are eligible for scholarships and where they could be used. Possible programs include apprenticeships, private schools, home schooling, special education, tutoring or public virtual schools.

The proposal would offer a dollar-for-dollar tax credit for individuals and businesses that donate to scholarship groups approved by the state, meaning that every dollar given takes a dollar off the donor’s tax bill.

Credits would be capped at 10 percent of an individual’s gross income and 5 percent of a business’ taxable income. Education officials said it’s unlikely the $5 billion annual cap would be hit.

States could decide not to participate, but DeVos said she believes that would lead to a backlash from students and their families. “Demand will rise, and pressure will mount on those that have not yet embraced the opportunity,” she said.

Eighteen states already offer their own scholarship tax credits, including Alabama, Arizona, New Hampshire and Virginia. Most programs are aimed at helping students from low-income families or those with disabilities. A federal version was discussed as part of last year’s tax overhaul but wasn’t included in the law.

Lawmakers described the new plan as a response to President Donald Trump’s call for school choice in his State of the Union address. Trump’s speech largely avoided education but included a single line saying that “the time has come to pass school choice for America’s children.”

Speaking alongside DeVos, Cruz said Thursday that he believes in public schools, but he argued that providing options will spur improvement at all schools.

“Competition improves,” he said. “And in this case, injecting new money to give that freedom, to give that competition, to give that power of choice, will enhance the quality of education to kids all across the country.”

The proposal drew applause from some groups that support school choice, including the Center for Education Reform. Jeanne Allen, the group’s CEO, called it “a welcome sign in the battle for more opportunities for students.”

Some conservative groups found fault with DeVos’ proposal. The Heritage Foundation applauded it for pursuing school choice but said federal tax credits would open the door for undue federal regulation.

“It would grow, rather than reduce, federal intervention in education,” the group said. “It would be better for the Education Department to keep highlighting the great advances that states have made in school choice.”

Videos of Mark Meadows Promoting Birtherism Surface After Cohen Hearing

President Trump’s former personal lawyer on Wednesday delivered to Congress, as Michael Shear writes in The New York Times, “a searing portrait … of a lying, cheating, racist president who used money and threats to conceal immoral and illegal behavior.” But the most dramatic moment in Michael Cohen’s testimony before the House Oversight and Reform Committee may have occurred when Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., accused Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., of using Lynne Patton, a black Trump administration official at the Department of Housing and Urban Development—who attended as Meadows’ guest—“as a prop,” and orchestrating a racist stunt.

As Colby Itkowitz writes in The Washington Post’s The Fix blog, Meadows “exploded” at the accusation, and was “almost near tears,” believing that Tlaib had accused him of not only performing a racist act, but of being racist himself. Reverberations from the conflict continued hours after the Cohen hearings, when Steve Morris, from the left-leaning media watchdog organization Media Matters, posted a video on Twitter of Meadows telling voters that “2012 is the time we are going to send Mr. Obama home to Kenya or wherever it is” in front of a Tea Party Express bus.

Here's Mark Meadows, who just sidetracked the entire House Oversight Committee to assure him he's not racist, saying that "2012 is the time we are going to send Mr. Obama home to Kenya or wherever it is" pic.twitter.com/90L1xnWf6v

— Steve Morris (@stevemorris__) February 27, 2019

As Itkowitz points out, Meadows made these remarks in the midst of Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign, when Donald Trump, who was then still a real estate developer and reality television star, dropped his first bid for the presidency, and instead “decided to expend his energy finding Obama’s passport and college records” and advancing the “birther” conspiracy theory that Obama wasn’t born in the United States. That conspiracy, Itkowitz continues, “is what first endeared Trump to a subset of voters who wanted to believe that it was true.”

More videos surfaced hours later, including footage from a 2012 Tea Party forum, when then-candidate Meadows again used the line about Obama possibly being from Kenya. In an interview shortly after, Meadows told Roll Call, “I think it’s a non-issue,” adding, “Obviously bringing it back is probably a poor choice of words on my part more than anything else. I believe he’s an American citizen and I believe, in my district, he is going to lose overwhelmingly.”

Mark Meadows: “We’ll send (Obama) back home to Kenya or wherever it is.” pic.twitter.com/VjDWwmuigf

— Waleed Shahid (@_waleedshahid) February 28, 2019

During the forum, an attendee asked the candidates whether, if elected, they would pursue investigative action to determine Obama’s birthplace. Meadows answered, “yes,” before pausing for laughter and continuing, as Roll Call reported: “You know, I see it as, if we do our job, from a grassroots standpoint, we won’t have to worry about it. … You know what? We’ll send him back home to Kenya or wherever it is. We’ll send him back home.”

The full video of the forum is above, with the question at 1:08:45 and Meadows’ answer at 1:11:25.

America Can’t Wipe Itself Clean of Blackface

On March 14, 1968, The Rev. Martin Luther King gave a speech in South Grosse Pointe, Mich., in which he stated: “We will never solve the problem of racism until there is a recognition of the fact that racism still stands at the center of so much of our nation, and we must see racism for what it is. … It is the notion that one group has all the knowledge, all the insights, all of the purity, all of the work, all of the dignity. And another group is worthless, on a lower level of humanity, inferior.”

Blackface and the racism that gave birth to it refuse to go away, or stay hidden, even in a decades-old medical school yearbook.

Have you looked in your school yearbook or photo album from yesteryear lately? Are you wearing blackface? Have you ever worn blackface before? Do you know of anyone, family or not, who has put on blackface to entertain someone, including you? If so, did you laugh out loud when you saw anyone wearing it? How did it make you feel, besides amused?

I purposely did not write a column for Black History Month this year. That’s because it is, for the most part, for black people to celebrate all of the accomplishments and contributions we have made in this country, even though they were not acknowledged as such by white people. While we must confront, understand and build upon all of the negative treatment that has and is still happening to us as a people, Black History Month is to celebrate the fact that we are still here, despite our tortured past in this country.

We must tell our stories in our own way and hope that they will not be ignored or left out historically any longer. Yet no matter how much we progress and try to believe that the past is in the past, and that it’s a new day in this country, certain white people seem to always remind us that the past is still present in America.

Blackface, whether it’s shoe polish, paint, tar or any other substance, has its place in the tortured history of black people. In the beginning of the year, Gov. Ralph Northam of Virginia was exposed for having worn blackface in a photo in his 1980s medical school yearbook. At first, when confronted with the racist photo, he apologized for doing it. The next day. he changed his story and said that it wasn’t him in the photo, though he acknowledged having, at another time, put “a little shoe polish” on his face to look like entertainer Michael Jackson, who, by the way, was lightening his skin because he said he had a skin disease.

The Virginia attorney general came forward and said that he too did a blackface thing when he was in college in the 1980s because he wanted to look like the rapper Kurtis Blow. Former Fox journalist and NBC talk show host Megyn Kelly said on her morning show that it was OK for white people to wear blackface if it was part of a Halloween costume. An uproar followed and she lost her show and was terminated by NBC. Kelly is a Republican; the governor and attorney general of Virginia are Democrats. So this blackface th­­­­­­­ing crosses political party lines. But all of them are white.

I wonder: Who among this country’s so-called progressive figures and politicians will be the next to be found hiding a racist past in his or her yearbook, photo albums or family archives?

This type of racism happens in this country every day, in one form or another. This is not a Black History Month thing, this is an American Every Month thing.

As a poor black man on death row, I have a dictionary, one of the cheapest sold, because it was all I could afford. I call it my “poor man’s dictionary,” because of its price and the fact that I am poor, as is damn near everyone on death row.

When I need to find the definition of a word, I go to my poor man’s dictionary, as I did in writing this piece. I wanted to look up the word “blackface” to get its full meaning. I was disappointed, but not surprised, to see that the word was not listed in my dictionary.

There was “black,” “blackball,” “blackbeard,” “blackbelt,” “blackjack,” “blackbox” and on and on and on, but no “blackface.”

So I looked up the word “black” and then truly understood the omission of blackface. The word black means: 1) of the color black; also very dark; 2) swarthy; 3), of or relating to various groups of dark skinned people; 4) of or relating to the African-American people or their culture; 5) soiled, dirty; 6) lacking light; 7) wicked, evil; 8) dismal, gloomy; 9) sullen; 10) not conforming to a high moral standard; 11) morally unacceptable, bad; 11) opposite of white.

The people who wear blackface, who are saying it’s OK and laugh about it, are all saying with their actions what those definitions say in my dictionary. The real reason for wearing blackface is to put black people down while lifting white people up, to belittle black people while making white people feel bigger.

Blackface is not a fad or a phase; it’s a statement of how the person who wears it feels about black people. It’s not a compliment to a black person to see a white person wear or support blackface. It’s an insult.

Certain white people in this country just don’t get it, and never will. That’s because blackface to them is just another way to call black people the n-word.

Is the Tide Turning in Trump’s War on Science?

Douglas Costle, who helped create the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and then ran it during Jimmy Carter’s administration, died recently at the age of 79. If the Trump administration has its way, the agency as we know it will die along with him.

“Clean air is not an aesthetic luxury,” Costle said when he took the job as EPA administrator. “It is a public health necessity.”

President Trump said pretty much the same thing in an interview just after winning the election. “Clean air is vitally important. Clean water, crystal clean water is vitally important,” he told The New York Times. He stuck to that mantra during a CNN interview last November. “I want clean air,” he said. “I want clean water. Very important.”

The difference is, Costle didn’t just talk the talk. At his very first news conference as EPA administrator, he announced the recall of 135,000 Cadillacs because the cars’ emissions violated the Clean Air Act. Under his watch, the agency banned aerosol spray fluorocarbons to protect the Earth’s ozone layer. In the first two months of his tenure, he hired 600 new scientists and analysts to bolster the agency’s staff.

Trump is Costle’s antithesis. His administration plans to roll back car emissions standards. It killed power plant carbon emission rules. It has also shrunk the EPA workforce to levels not seen in 35 years. That’s just three of too many examples. According to a recent report by my organization, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), the number of Trump administration attacks on science-based public health and environmental safeguards in its first two years in office is unprecedented.

There is a glimmer of hope on the horizon, however. With an engaged public and the House of Representatives’ oversight powers now controlled by Democrats, there may be just enough leverage to turn things around—or at least tie the administration’s hands before it can do any more damage.

A Dismal Record

First the bad news: our 60-page report documents 80 Trump administration attacks on science. A sample list includes:

Hollowing out federal science agencies, filling fewer than half of key science appointee positions, and ensuring that political appointees and career staff ignore scientific advice;
Doctoring and killing scientific studies that contradicted industry-friendly policies;
Disbanding key EPA scientific advisory committees, cutting back on how often the remaining committees can meet, and banning scientists who have EPA grants from serving on them; and
Stacking advisory committees with lobbyists from polluting industries.

In fact, the Trump administration has packed the entire executive branch with lobbyists. When Trump promised to “drain the swamp” during his campaign, he wasn’t talking about ridding the government of cronyism and corruption; he was talking about getting rid of civil servants. As of today, the Interior Department is being run by a , the Defense Department is being run by a former aerospace industry executive, the Department of Health and Human Services is being run by a former pharmaceutical industry lobbyist and the EPA is being run by a former coal industry lobbyist.

The extent of this corporate coup extends well beyond department heads. A March 2018 ProPublica report found that at least 187 political appointees had been lobbyists, and many of them are now overseeing the industries they used to represent. It also found that more than 250 people associated with Trump’s presidential campaign and at least 125 staff members from nonprofit libertarian groups are now deep inside federal agencies, working to repeal decades of consumer, workplace, health and environmental protections.

Thus far, Trump appointees have been all too successful. According to a recent analysis by The New York Times, the administration had weakened or killed 47 environmental rules by the end of last year and was in the process of rolling back another 31. That doesn’t bode well for public health. A May 2018 analysis by a Harvard economist and statistician conservatively estimated that the administration’s environmental rollbacks could lead to 80,000 extra premature deaths per decade and respiratory problems for more than 1 million Americans.

At the same time the administration is weakening and killing environmental safeguards, it has taken the EPA cop off the beat. Civil penalties for polluters have dropped to their lowest average level since 1994, according to an analysis by a former EPA enforcement official. For the 20 years before Trump was elected, EPA civil fines averaged $500 million a year. Last fiscal year’s total was only $72 million—an 85 percent drop.

The Trump administration also has opened up more public land to development at bargain basement rates. The amount of land on the chopping block has jumped 500 percent since 2016, and the Bureau of Land Management has streamlined and shortened the leasing application process.

Then there’s the administration’s scientifically indefensible position on climate change. According to our recent report, the administration “has repeatedly ignored, dismissed, or suppressed the science of climate change, limiting the ability of federal scientists to speak about, report on, or even study it.” Remarkably, the administration refrained from censoring the latest edition of the National Climate Assessment, but it released it on the Friday after Thanksgiving to limit its impact. Trump, meanwhile, rejected the report out of hand. “I’ve seen it. I’ve read some of it. It’s fine,” he told a CNN reporter. But when the reporter then mentioned that the study concluded that “the economic impact [of climate change] will be devastating,” Trump responded, “I don’t believe it.”

No Place Left to Go but Up

So, what is there to be hopeful about?

Our report offers examples in which coalitions of scientists, public interest groups and sometimes even companies have won some hard-fought victories, including blocking Trump nominees with major conflicts of interest and securing federal protection for endangered species.

Likewise, some of Trump’s ethically challenged appointees, notably, disgraced former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, rushed to roll back regulations and produced poorly crafted rulemakings that cannot withstand legal challenges. At least six of Pruitt’s attempts to weaken or delay Obama-era rules, including ones covering pesticides, lead paint and renewable fuels, were struck down by the courts.

But the biggest flicker of hope is due to the results of last November’s election. In the new Congress, a dozen members of the House and Senate have science, technology or medical backgrounds, more than ever before. According to a recent analysis by the Center for American Progress Action Fund, the number of climate science deniers in Congress dropped 17 percent, from 180 to 150, because 47 deniers retired, resigned or lost their 2018 re-election bids. Last but certainly not least, the Democrats took back the House, giving them control over the agenda, the power of the purse and the ability to issue subpoenas.

One of the most consequential changes happened at the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, whose chairman for the last six years, Texas Rep. Lamar Smith, retired at the end of the last session. During his tenure, Smith—who has made millions of dollars from oil and gas leases on his Texas property—rejected mainstream climate science, harassed federal climate scientists and tried to sabotage the EPA’s ability to carry out its mission.

The incoming chair of the committee, Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, also hails from Texas, but that’s where the similarities between her and Smith end. In a statement she issued after the November election, Johnson promised to “restore the credibility of the Science Committee as a place where science is respected,” “address the challenge of climate change,” and defend “the scientific enterprise from political and ideological attacks.”

Our report recommends a number of steps members of Congress on both sides of the aisle can take to blunt the Trump administration’s assault on science, including strengthening science-based rules and passing legislation that defends federal scientists, and lead author Jacob Carter says Johnson’s agenda is “promising.”

“For the first time in two years, we can see some meaningful checks and balances in Washington,” said Carter, who worked at the EPA during the Obama administration. “That is how it is supposed to work. Congress should press the administration to stop undermining science and do its job of protecting the public. And the science community can play a meaningful role if scientists step up and get engaged as constituents. There’s a lot of damage to undo, but we have a roadmap to get there.”

This article was produced by Earth | Food | Life, a project of the Independent Media Institute, and originally published by Truthout.

Benjamin Netanyahu to Be Indicted on Corruption Charges

JERUSALEM — Israel’s attorney general on Thursday recommended indicting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with bribery and breach of trust in a series of corruption cases, a momentous move that shook up Israel’s election campaign and could spell the end of the prime minister’s illustrious political career.

Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit announced his decision after more than two years of intense investigations and deliberations.

Police had recommended indicting Netanyahu for bribery, fraud and breach of trust in three different cases that ranged from accepting expensive gifts from wealthy allies to allegedly trading influence for more favorable press coverage.

“The attorney general has reached his decision after thoroughly examining the evidence,” his statement said.

The final decision on indictment will only take place after a hearing, where Netanyahu is given the opportunity to defend himself. That process is expected to take many months and be completed long after the April 9 elections.

But the recommendations immediately cast a cloud over the campaign and Netanyahu’s future.

An indictment would mark the first time in Israeli history that a sitting prime minister has been charged with a crime. Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert served time in prison for corruption, but had already resigned by the time he was charged.

Netanyahu doesn’t look to go that quietly. He denies any wrongdoing and calls the various allegations a media-orchestrated witch hunt aimed at removing him from office. He has vowed to carry on and is deadlocked in the polls, 40 days before Israelis go to vote.

Netanyahu scheduled a press conference later Thursday to respond to the attorney general’s decision.

In a last-ditch effort to prevent the public release of an indictment, Netanyahu’s Likud party petitioned the Supreme Court to have it delayed until after the elections. But the court rejected the request Thursday afternoon, potentially clearing the way for an announcement from the attorney general.

Despite opposition calls for Netanyahu to step down, Likud and his other nationalist coalition partners have lined up behind him thus far, all but ruling out sitting in a government led by his primary opponent, retired military chief Benny Gantz.

While Israeli prime ministers are not required by law to resign if charged, the prospect of a prime minister standing trial while simultaneously running the country would be unchartered territory.

Mandelblit’s decision could either galvanize Netanyahu’s hard-line supporters who see him as a victim of an overzealous prosecution or turn more moderate backers against him who have tired of his lengthy rule tainted by long-standing accusations of corruption and hedonism.

Either way, the upcoming elections appear to be morphing into a referendum on Netanyahu as he seeks to become the longest serving premier in Israeli history. Netanyahu have been prime minister since 2009 and served a previous term between 1996 and 1999.

President Donald Trump, with whom Netanyahu has forged a close connection, offered the Israeli leader a boost ahead of the expected announcement.

“I just think he’s been a great prime minister and I don’t know about his difficulty but you tell me something people have been hearing about, but I don’t know about that,” he said in response to a question in Hanoi, where he was holding a summit with the leader of North Korea.

“I can say this: that he’s done a great job as prime minister. He’s tough, he’s smart, he’s strong,” Trump said.

Netanyahu rushed back Wednesday from a diplomatic mission to Moscow, and a meeting with President Vladimir Putin, to prepare for his expected rebuttal to the charges on Thursday.

The most serious allegations against Netanyahu involve his relationship with Shaul Elovitch, the controlling shareholder of Israel’s telecom giant Bezeq.

Mandelblit recommended a bribery charge in the case based on evidence collected that confidants of Netanyahu promoted regulatory changes worth hundreds of millions of dollars to Bezeq.

In exchange, they believe Netanyahu used his connections with Elovitch to receive positive press coverage on Bezeq’s popular subsidiary news site Walla. Police have said their investigation concluded that Netanyahu and Elovitch engaged in a “bribe-based relationship.” A related charge against Netanyahu’s wife, Sara, was dropped.

Mandelblit’s statement said there was a unanimous opinion among investigators that the relationship between Netanyahu and the Elovitches constituted bribery.

“Everyone agreed there was enough evidence to prove that benefits were given to Netanyahu by Elovitch and his wife Iris Elovitch and were taken by Netanyahu in return for actions he took as part of his job,” it said.

Mandelblit also filed breach of trust charges in two other cases. One involves accepting gifts from billionaire friends, and the second revolves around alleged offers of advantageous legislation for a major newspaper in return for favorable coverage.

Mandelblit’s office said the timing of Netanyahu’s hearing would be set in the near future in coordination with the prime minister’s lawyers.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Shows Her Party How It’s Done

In under five minutes of pointed questioning late Wednesday, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) put Congress a significant step closer to getting to the bottom of President Donald Trump’s long history of alleged fraud and financial crimes.

The New York congresswoman elicited some of the most concrete information that was extracted from Michael Cohen during his testimony before the House Oversight Committee Wednesday.

After Republicans on the committee used the seven-hour hearing to defend Trump—with one attempting to prove that Trump is not racist by presenting a black woman who has been employed by him—Ocasio-Cortez zeroed in on how Democrats could subpoena Trump’s tax returns.

Watch:

Ocasio-Cortez focused her questioning on allegations that Trump has undervalued his assets to avoid paying taxes; where Congress would be able to find a “treasure trove” of documents held by the National Enquirer which contain damaging information about the president; and where the committee should look for evidence that Trump has committed tax fraud.

“Do you think we need to review his financial statements and his tax returns to compare them?” Ocasio-Cortez asked.

“Yes, and you’d find it at the Trump [Organization],” Cohen replied.

Cohen said he did not know whether last October’s New York Times report detailing Trump’s alleged “outright fraud” to increase his inheritance from his parents, but told her Allen Weisselberg, former chief financial officer for the Trump Organization, would know the answer.

“And would it help for the committee to obtain federal and state tax returns from the president and his company to address that discrepancy?” she asked. Cohen answered affirmatively.

Unlike many of her colleagues on both sides of the aisle, wrote Daniel Politi at Slate, “Ocasio-Cortez appeared to be giving at least an attempt at what Democrats could say to justify demanding to see Trump’s tax returns.”

“In five minutes, this freshman congresswoman just laid out a whole investigative plan for three more topics into Donald Trump’s potentially criminal activities,” Marcy Wheeler said on Democracy Now! on Thursday.

Others on social media also praised Ocasio-Cortez for her pointed, constructive questioning.

Under questioning from @AOC, Michael Cohen just provided the names of three people who he says can testify that Trump gamed his assets for insurance purposes.

One of them has already been granted immunity.

— Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) February 27, 2019

This is stellar. Notice how @AOC asks who else can verify every statement Cohen makes, and where corroborating evidence can be found. This is how you build a case and make it stick. This is a shining example of a politician actually doing their job, and doing it well. https://t.co/yMlqBfLfJQ

— Morten the Northman (@mor10) February 27, 2019

Are we sure @AOC is a former bartender and not a former prosecutor? That was a pretty amazing line of questions today.

— matt blaze (@mattblaze) February 28, 2019

In response to the praise on Thursday, Ocasio-Cortez credited her years of experience as a bartender with affording her the opportunity to “talk to thousands of people over the years.”

“Forces you to get great at reading people and hones a razor-sharp BS detector,” the congresswoman wrote.

Thanks!

Bartending + waitressing (especially in NYC) means you talk to 1000s of people over the years. Forces you to get great at reading people + hones a razor-sharp BS detector.

Just goes to show that what some consider to be “unskilled labor” can actually be anything but

Pakistan Pledges to Release Captive Indian Fighter Pilot

ISLAMABAD — Pakistan’s prime minister pledged on Thursday his country would release a captured Indian fighter pilot, a move that could help defuse the most serious confrontation in two decades between the nuclear-armed neighbors over the disputed region of Kashmir.

Prime Minister Imran Khan made the announcement in an address to both houses of Parliament, saying he tried to reach his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi on Wednesday with a message that he wants to de-escalate tensions.

“We are releasing the Indian pilot as a goodwill gesture tomorrow,” Khan told lawmakers. He did not say whether the release was conditional.

An Indian government official, speaking on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to speak publicly, warned that even if the pilot is returned home, New Delhi would not hesitate to strike its neighbor first if it feared a similar militant attack was looming. Modi earlier in the day warned that “India’s enemies are conspiring to create instability in the country through terror attacks.”

Khan also said that he had feared Wednesday night that India might launch a missile attack, but the situation was later defused. He did not elaborate.

“Pakistan wants peace, but it should not be treated as our weakness,” Khan said “The region will prosper if there is peace and stability. It is good for both sides.”

Meanwhile, fresh skirmishes erupted Thursday between Indian and Pakistani soldiers along the so-called Line of Control that divides disputed Kashmir between the two nuclear-armed rivals.

India’s army said Pakistani soldiers were targeting nearly two dozen Indian forward points with mortar and gunfire. Lt. Col. Devender Anand, an Indian army spokesman, called it an “unprovoked” violation of the 2003 cease-fire accord between the two countries. He said Indian soldiers were responding to ongoing Pakistani attacks along the highly militarized de facto frontier.

A young woman was killed and two others, including an off-duty soldier, were wounded in the shelling in Indian-controlled Kashmir, police said.

World powers have called on the nations to de-escalate the tensions gripping the contested region since a Feb. 14 suicide bombing killed over 40 Indian paramilitary troops in Indian-controlled Kashmir. India responded with a pre-dawn airstrike on Tuesday inside Pakistan, the first such raid since the two nations’ 1971 war over territory that later became Bangladesh.

The situation then escalated further with Wednesday’s aerial skirmish, which saw Pakistan say it shot down two Indian aircraft, one of which crashed in Pakistan-held part of Kashmir and the other in India-controlled Kashmir. Pakistan later aired a video of a man it identified as the Indian pilot.

India acknowledged one of its MiG-21s, a Soviet-era fighter jet, was “lost” in skirmishes with Pakistan. India’s Ministry of External Affairs said late Wednesday that it “strongly objected to Pakistan’s vulgar display of an injured personnel of the Indian Air Force,” and that it expects his immediate and safe return.

India also said it shot down a Pakistani warplane, something Islamabad denied.

Kashmir has been divided but claimed in its entirety by both India and Pakistan since almost immediately after the two countries’ creation in 1947. They have fought three wars against each other, two directly dealing with the disputed region.

Both Indian and Pakistani officials reported small-arms fire and shelling along the Kashmir region into Thursday morning. There were no reported casualties.

Authorities in Pakistani-controlled Kashmir closed all schools and educational institutions in the region and are urged parents to keep their children at home amid mounting tension with neighboring India. Pakistan’s airspace remained closed for a second day Thursday, snarling air traffic.

Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Faisal acknowledged his country received a “dossier” from India about the Feb. 14 attack. He refused to provide details about the information that New Delhi has shared.

World leaders weighing in on the tension included President Donald Trump, who began remarks at a news conference Thursday in Vietnam after meeting North Korean leader Kim Jong Un by focusing on India and Pakistan.

“I think hopefully that’s going to be coming to an end,” Trump said, without elaborating. “It’s been going on for a long time — decades and decades. There’s a lot of dislike, unfortunately, so we’ve been in the middle trying to help them both out, see if we can get some organization and some peace, and I think probably that’s going to be happening.”

Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi also said Adel al-Jubeir, Saudi Arabia’s minister of state for foreign affairs, planned to come to Islamabad with an urgent message from the kingdom’s powerful Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Modi, in his first remarks since the pilot’s capture, gave a rallying speech ahead of elections in the coming months.

“Our defense forces are serving gallantly at the border,” he told tens of thousands gathered across the country to listen to him in a videoconference from New Delhi. “The country is facing challenging times and it will fight, live, work and win unitedly.”

Just weeks before general elections are due in India, the head of Modi’s party in India’s Karnataka state, B.S. Yeddyurappa, said India’s pre-dawn airstrikes in Pakistan on Tuesday would help the party at the polls.

The violence Wednesday marked the most serious escalation of the long-simmering conflict since 1999, when Pakistan’s military sent a ground force into Indian-controlled Kashmir at Kargil. That year also saw an Indian fighter jet shoot down a Pakistani naval aircraft, killing all 16 on board.

This latest wave of tension between the two rivals first began after the militant group Jaish-e-Mohammad claimed responsibility for a Feb. 14 suicide bombing on Indian paramilitary forces on the Indian side of Kashmir that killed more than 40 troops.

India long has accused Pakistan of cultivating such militant groups to attack it. Pakistan has said it was not involved in that attack and was ready to help New Delhi in the investigation.

Italy Has All but Fallen to the Far Right

February has been an important month in Italian politics. Elections took place in Abruzzo and Sardinia – two regions located in the south of the country. Both are “swing” constituencies, so the way they vote in regional elections provides important clues about changing national trends.

The elections were also seen as the first electoral test for the new governing coalition, which brings together Matteo Salvini’s League and the Five Star Movement (M5S) but is led by prime minister Giuseppe Conte.

But while the League performed strongly in both Abruzzo and Sardinia, the M5S suffered bruising defeats.

In both regions, the League led centre-right coalitions to victory, unseating the incumbent centre-left governments to install their own regional presidents.

In Abruzzo, the League doubled its support – from 13.8% in last year’s general election to 27.5% – becoming the largest political force. In Sardinia it won 11% of the vote. Even this latter result, though less dazzling, is historic because Salvini’s party has traditionally found very little traction in the south of Italy. It didn’t even run candidates in these two regions five years ago.

In fact the League used to be a regionalist party called the Northern League. Its main aim was to secure more autonomy for northern Italian regions. For a while, in the late 1990s, the party even campaigned for the independence of the north. Its transformation into a nativist nationalist party, similar to the French National Front, started after 2013 under Salvini’s leadership. Today the party campaigns across the whole Italian territory with increasing success. It is probably the only case in Europe (and perhaps globally) of a regionalist party being able to radically change its territorial focus and become one of the main statewide parties.

Five Star Movement in Crisis

Meanwhile, the M5S is in crisis. Only a year ago, in the general election, it had won stunning victories in both regions, obtaining around 40% of the vote. This time round it has halved its share of the vote in Abruzzo and experienced an even more dramatic collapse in Sardinia (from 42.5% in 2018 to around 11% of the vote). The M5S came behind both centre-right and centre-left coalitions, which dominated the electoral competition.

It has been clear since late last year that the M5S has been haemorrhaging support. Yet recent developments have further damaged the party. Fresh tensions emerged just ahead of the Sardinia vote when M5S senators blocked a move to force Salvini to face a kidnapping trial. Their decision came at the direction of a controversial online vote of party members.

Nor is Italy’s current economic situation helping. Last year, the M5S won an impressive mandate from constituencies (mainly from the south) that had suffered particularly from the economic crisis. Now, it must answer for its record in government. Rather than the growth, Italy is experiencing its first recession since 2013.

While the “nativist” League can downplay economic issues, focusing its campaigning on law-and-order policies and immigration, the M5S is not in the same position. Its success depends on its ability to address the negative effects of the financial crisis and promote institutional transparency and renewal. The increasing difficulties experienced by the Italian economy might undermine its credibility.

Consolidating Power

If M5S continues to struggle, it could have a destabilising impact on the national government. Yet at the moment both Salvini and the M5S’s leader, Luigi Di Maio, are stressing that the coalition will continue. It is unlikely that either of them will pull the plug before the European election.

And in that contest, Salvini’s party is predicted to win big. It is on course to become the largest political force across Italy. The transformation of the party into a nationwide political force seems complete.

That said, the unprecedented success of the League in southern Italy could also pose new challenges. The party might struggle to reconcile demands coming from its traditional strongholds in northern Italy and the needs of its new constituencies. Interestingly, the two largest northern Italian regions, Veneto and Lombardy, are engaged in a negotiation process with the central government to obtain more fiscal and policy-making autonomy. The process followed two referendums organised in October 2017. They were promoted by regional governments led by the League, which in Veneto and Lombardy is still strongly supportive of more federalism. Both referendums returned an overwhelming support for increased autonomy.

Granting new powers to Veneto and Lombardy could unleash new dynamics of regional competition. Southern Italian regions, particularly Campania, have complained that the new regime of differentiated autonomy could undermine national unity. Some even fear that in the long term this could lead to a new Catalan scenario.

A re-emergence of regional tensions does not play in Salvini’s favour. Over the past five years he has tried to downplay the importance of regionalism and federalism to promote the League’s new sovereignist and nativist project. So far he has been able to avoid taking a clear position. Salvini’s successes have also helped him contain opposition and pressures within his own party, but he might soon have to face a dilemma between northern autonomy and Italian nationalism. Whichever he decides, the decision could be electorally very costly.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The Most Harrowing Revelation of the Cohen Hearing

What follows is a conversation among Jacqueline Luqman, Henry Giroux, Carmen Russell-Sluchansky and Paul Jay of The Real News Network. Read a transcript of their conversation below or watch the video at the bottom of the post.

PAUL JAY: Welcome to The Real News Network. I’m Paul Jay.

Well, Michael Cohen finally made his long-awaited appearance before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. And while there’s a ton to dig into in terms of his accusations against Donald Trump, who–I guess everyone has heard by now–he said he is a racist, a conman, and a cheat. But perhaps the most explosive thing that Cohen said came at the very end, when he said about a man, Trump, that he’s worked with for over 10 years, in a statement that was vetted by his lawyers, he said–at some point he was asked about that. He says that if Donald Trump loses the election in 2020–Well, here’s what he said.

MICHAEL COHEN: Given my experience working for Mr. Trump, I fear that if he loses the election in 2020 that there will not be a peaceful transition of power.

PAUL JAY: That’s essentially saying that if he loses the election there will be a coup. There will be another declaration of national emergency. I’ve been saying on The Real News for quite some time that I’m very concerned with the agenda of this administration to go after Iran, especially in the midst of all this domestic chaos; of the possibilities of some kind of staged attack on the United States in some way or another to help justify some kind of aggression against Iran. He’s surrounded by John Bolton and Pompeo and people like that who don’t seem to believe that, certainly, international law matters. And one wonders whether they think American law matters.

So we’re going to start with that statement that Trump may not give up power if he loses the election. And then we’re going to dig into more of what was said during the hearings. So now joining us to discuss Cohen’s testimony and such, first of all, is Dr. Henry Giroux. Henry teaches at the McMaster University, where he’s the Chair of Scholarship and Public Interest in the Department of English and Cultural Studies. Also joining us is Jacqueline Luqman. She’s the editor-in-chief of Luqman Nation, and often hosts on The Real News Network. And Carmen Russell-Sluchansky. He’s a journalist based in Washington, D.C., who’s appeared–his work has appeared on NBC, PBS, ABC, BBC, and such. Thanks for joining us.

HENRY GIROUX: It’s a pleasure.

CARMEN RUSSELL-SLUCHANSKY: Thanks for having me.

PAUL JAY: So, Jacqueline, let me start with you. When you heard those words, what goes through your mind?

JACQUELINE LUQMAN: Actually, that’s not the first time I’ve heard that, in regard to this administration. I can’t remember who else said something like that. I can’t remember if it was Trump tweeted something like that, or a member of his cabinet, probably his son-in-law, who said something like that, that Trump supporters would not go away peacefully if Trump did not win the next election. And when you look at the kind of people who are aligned with Trump, who he’s aligned himself with, like you said, Paul, John Bolton and Mike Pompeo; Elliott Abrams and Steve Bannon. People think Steve Bannon went away, and he’s not involved in the administration anymore just because he’s not in the White House. That’s–that couldn’t be farther from the truth. It’s not a surprise and it’s not shocking that this is a possibility. And I actually think it’s a reality. And these are not peaceful people. They didn’t rise to the White House using peaceful and fair tactics. And I don’t put it past them that they would resort to actual violence to keep it.

PAUL JAY: So, Henry, what do you think? What has Cohen got in mind? As I say, this is a guy who knows Trump for years, and his lawyers vetted the statements.

HENRY GIROUX: I think that what we’re hearing here and what we need to be concerned with is the fact that Trump is, in a sense, working right out of the playbook of a kind of updated fascist politics. I mean, his language is about the language of brutality, it’s the language of violence, language of fear. And he’s been doing this for a long time. Even before the election, I mean, there was some talk on the part of Trump and others about how he wasn’t sure what exactly was going to happen if she actually won the election. So I think that if you understand that comment as a way of both baiting his base, and at the same time making it clear that this is a guy who really trades in the notion of lawlessness and the notion of violence. And it’s very serious, and I think you need to take it seriously.

PAUL JAY: Carmen?

CARMEN RUSSELL-SLUCHANSKY: Yeah, I’ll follow up on what both of them said. I mean, we’ve been hearing these concerns since the election in 2016. I mean, maybe you remember, like, a lot of people were very concerned about what would happen if Hillary Clinton had, you know, if he had won the popular vote and Hillary Clinton had won the Electoral College. It ended up being different. But you know, people were really concerned. But then we found out that, first of all, Donald Trump didn’t expect to win the election, probably, or maybe, and that he was planning on starting this thing called Trump TV. Would he himself be out there starting a revolution? Probably not. I think he’s too lazy for that. But he would certainly be riling up supporters to think that 2020 was stolen, just as he did in 2016. And that’s–I mean, I think all the evidence points to that, for sure.

PAUL JAY: I mean, one of the things that Cohen said today is that Trump never expected to win. This was all a marketing ploy to build up the Trump brand. As he started get moving–once he wins the nomination, takes on Pence, which gives him a deal with the Koch brothers, who in the beginning wanted nothing to do with him. But Pence is a Koch brother guy, and now he’s got Pompeo, which is a completely Koch brother creation. But once he becomes president, he becomes a vehicle for so many different political forces. Evangelicals see him as a vessel. The neocons now see him as a vessel. And everything feeds into his megalomania. And so it is a convergence of this guy’s personal, as I say, megalomania, and some much more sophisticated political interests, in the context of a very degenerating, overall, political system, so that–you know, this corruption of Trump is just a tip of the iceberg of pervasive systemic corruption throughout the whole system. Henry.

HENRY GIROUX: Oh, absolutely. I mean, I think that comment is right on target. I mean, I think that–you know, some of the stuff that we’re hearing today is not uninteresting, but as a number of people have pointed out, as I think Carmen pointed out, I mean, this is well known. So I think the real question here is how do you understand this corruption as something that’s so endemic to the politics that we find in the United States, that Trump is simply symbolic of it? And while Trump’s corruption is unadulterated and unapologetic, at the same time you really have to look at the larger systemic issues at work here. The convergence of money and politics, a neocapitalist system that absolutely, in a way, commodifies everything the only value that matters are exchange values, the notion that social responsibility is a burden rather than something that actually is endemic to a democracy.

The fact that this guy endlessly–if you really want to talk about corruption, I mean, this guy is basically endangering the planet. He’s changing the lives of young people with the rollbacks that he’s done with respect to environmental rules, with worker protection rules. That’s where the corruption really lies. I mean, let’s talk about the toll that’s taking place in terms of both democracy and the toll it’s taking place in terms of the planet; the toll that’s taking place in terms of human life. That’s real corruption, because it’s death-dealing.

PAUL JAY: Jacqueline?

JACQUELINE LUQMAN: I cannot disagree with anything that was said. I remember during the campaign, at one of Trump’s rallies where he’s speaking in front of a group of people, and there’s some protesters there, most of whom were black people. And he said to the crowd “You know, back in the day we would have them taken out on a stretcher.” People were shocked that the crowd actually cheered. But a lot of us were not, because we understood that Trump is really good at tapping into the most base instincts of the worst kind of people. He knows how to read it all, and he knows how to say what they want to hear to get him riled up. And he is the kind of person who wasn’t politically savvy, like you all said, wasn’t expected to win. Didn’t even expect to win himself. But he was the perfect front man to provide the popular frenzy, to whip up this popular frenzy among the group of people that this very sophisticated cabal needed to produce the outcome we’re seeing right now.

So this is a much bigger issue than Trump being corrupt, or mean, or racist. Those are bad things, but this is about a larger system that he’s just the front man of that’s been brewing for a long time.

PAUL JAY: And I think it’s something specific about the overtness of the Republican Party and Trump, and the GOP has really degenerated. Any voices–certainly in the Republican primary there were many who were very critical of Trump, but the elected, both in the House and the Senate, Republican Party has actually realized that this overt, naked, reactionary, fascistic message works for enough people to get elected. And without reservation, now. And we saw this in the Kavanaugh hearings. When Kavanaugh was was being grilled I came away saying “Wow, this guy’s toast.” And then I look at the polling the next day, and the Republicans actually did very well in the polling. People thought they were being insulting to Kavanaugh. And now they’re doing the same thing. They’ve learnt that the character assassination of Cohen, regardless of anything else that’s said, will play with enough people here. Here’s a sample of that character assassination of Cohen.

JIM JORDAN: Here’s the point. The Chairman just gave you a 30 minute opening statement, and you have a history of lying over, and over, and over again. And frankly, don’t take my word for it. Take what the court said. Take what the Southern District of New York said. Cohen did crimes that were marked by a pattern of deception and that permeated his professional life. These crimes were distinct in their harms, but bear a common set of circumstances. They involved deception and were each–each–motivated by personal greed and ambition. A pattern of deception for personal greed and ambition. And you just got 30 minutes of an opening statement where you trash the President of the United States of America. Mr. Cohen, how long did–how long did you work for Donald Trump?

MICHAEL COHEN: Approximately a decade.

JIM JORDAN: Ten years?

MICHAEL COHEN: That’s correct.

JIM JORDAN: And you said all these bad things about the President there in that last 30 minutes. And yet you worked for him for 10 years.

So, Carmen, it’s an interesting thing. On the one hand, if the guy is so horrible, Cohen, why wouldn’t he have worked for the guy for 10 years? I mean, you can’t be horrible–and the other. But but the main implication throughout this testimony is that Cohen wants a book deal, he wants a movie deal, and he wants a lighter sentence, so he’ll say anything. What did you think of that? Is there truth to that?

CARMEN RUSSELL-SLUCHANSKY: Reasoning coming from Republicans, many of whom who, you know, disavowed Trump early on, but then figured out, like you were talking about, it’s like he’s their guy because they’re getting what they wanted. They can, you know, grab–you know, it’s a smash and grab job while he’s there. So they’re enjoying it while it lasts. I mean, to think that’s like–well, why are you working with Trump when he’s such a bad guy, when they’re doing the same thing. I mean, the names that they’ve called him. So I mean, that’s hypocritical to begin with.

But secondly, I mean, this is a guy, like–they talked about how, they’re asking him, it was like, “Well, you lied to Congress before. Why can we trust you now?” It’s because he lied to Congress, was caught, was indicted, and now has investigators watching everything he says. We can actually feel pretty confident that he’s not lying now. You know, he doesn’t want–I mean, there could be a new indictment for lying to Congress again. It would definitely lose any possibility of reducing his sentence, and that kind of thing. So I mean, I think we can take it–we can take a lot of what he said today at face value, for sure.

PAUL JAY: Yeah, I thought there was an interesting point, this is Clip 5, where he says to the Republicans, you know, you’re accusing me of having protected him, and now I’m not. And and here’s, here’s what Cohen says to them.

MICHAEL COHEN: It’s that sort of behavior that I’m responsible for. I’m responsible for your silliness, because I did the same thing that you’re doing now for 10 years. I protected Mr. Trump for 10 years.

PAUL JAY: I thought that was a rather poignant moment, because that is what almost the entire, or at least elected representatives of the Republican Party are doing. They know very well that Cohen’s accusations on the whole are true. The fraud with the Deutsche Bank where he falsifies his bank records. They know that they probably have–I was watching Fox, and the judge whose last name I always screw up–Napolitano. To the chagrin of the Fox host, Napolitano says they may have Trump on two critical issues: the campaign finance violations where the payment to Stormy Daniels is made under clearly Trump’s direction, because even Giuliani has acknowledged that this was done; and two, the bank fraud, lying about his financial statements to Deutsche Bank. And these are both being investigated by the prosecutor’s office in the Southern District of New York, which cannot be stopped even if the Mueller investigation is closed down or doesn’t go public. And there are some rumors today that they may not even release the Muller investigation.

So the Republicans know that this stuff is there. And I was a little surprised, I guess, that only one Republican of the whole place, I think a guy from Michigan, tried to distance himself a little bit from all of this scandal. The others are just all in that you have to defend Trump at all costs, or you’ll lose–or Trump’s machine will primary you. And you’ll lose your position. Henry.

HENRY GIROUX: The other side of this is that the kind of criticisms that are being made of Cohen, about his character and whether he’s lying, I mean, if you look at this within the larger context, this is the same argument that Trump uses. And that is that loyalty becomes code for absolutely covering up the most corrupt political economic and social practices that exist. It’s sort of like being in the mafia. You know, I mean, what’s the crime here? The crime here, that he’s worked for somebody, and actually now has begun to tell the truth about what happened, and they’re claiming that somehow because he worked for him he should have been loyal and he couldn’t possibly tell the truth.

I mean I think the other side of this, again, is this is something that needs to be addressed, and that is the degree to which there is a certain element of which the political collapses into the personal. You know, we don’t talk about larger systemic issues, we talk about character. I mean, we don’t talk about whether or not Trump is actually corrupt. We talk about whether or not Cohen’s character is somehow at risk because he worked for this guy for so long. I mean, it’s a politics of deflection, and it’s a politics that, in a sense, so narrows the purview of what’s being said that it becomes impossible to separate the personal from the political; that being that there are larger issues at work of which Cohen, in some way, is being quite truthful, because I think, as Carmen just said, he has nothing to lose.

PAUL JAY: Yeah. I mean, I thought the Republican grilling of Cohen was so contradictory because part of what emerges is yes, Cohen’s a very corrupt character. And his use, “I made mistakes.” Mistakes. These aren’t mistakes. This is sinking into the depths of corruption. But that’s why Trump hired him, because he had a guy who was so willing to sink in the depths of corruption.

HENRY GIROUX: But unlike the Republicans–I mean, this is a party which is so extremist–I mean, it’s been turned over to extremists. I mean, when you talk about the Republicans, you know, you couldn’t believe that they’re putting up with this. These are Vichy Republicans. I mean, this is the most extremist Republican Party we have seen since the Civil War.

PAUL JAY: And for younger people, what you mean by Vichy Republicans, you’re talking about the sections of the French elites that went along and became, essentially, collaborators with the Nazis.

HENRY GIROUX: Absolutely.

PAUL JAY: You’re saying these are people–essentially they realize this is a fascisization, and they’re signing on.

I thought there was an interesting moment, a few moments, where some of these new progressive members of the House–and one of them isn’t that new, but he’s relatively new–I thought did a much better job than most of the other Democrats did, being quite specific. Here’s Ro Khanna, which is probably the strongest framing of the one of the criminal acts that Trump can be charged with. So here’s that.

RO KHANNA: I just want the American public to understand the explosive nature of your testimony in this document. Are you telling us, Mr. Cohen, that the President directed transactions in conspiracy with Allen Weisselberg, and his son Donald Trump Jr, as part of a criminal–part of a criminal conspiracy of financial fraud. Is that your testimony today?

MICHAEL COHEN: Yes.

PAUL JAY: So I mean, on the face of it this stuff is kind of obvious. And the degeneration of American politics is such that you’re going to have a he said-she said balancing act in most of the corporate media. And you know, it’s kind of not going to matter, in many ways. We’ll see as this process develops how much deeper. But, Jacqueline, do facts still matter in this discourse?

JACQUELINE LUQMAN: Yes, facts do matter. But I think I need to to make it clear that there is an issue with–maybe I don’t want to call it his character, Cohen’s character, because almost everyone in that chamber, with the exception of the newer members–who I guess haven’t had time to be corrupt yet, and we hope they never get there–most of the people in that chamber are corrupt. So it is hypocritical for especially these Republicans who are giving cover to this to this particular president calling out the character of Cohen, who is a liar. OK, he is.

But my issue with Cohen is that he is part of the reason we even have Trump as president. Because all of this that he knew, he didn’t say anything about it before the election. He was only compelled to talk about it when the investigation started. So I mean, there is some validity to asking him, well, gee, you’re coming out saying this stuff now. Why should we trust you? But because we already knew a lot of what Cohen said actually happened–we already knew about Stormy Daniels. We already knew, we actually knew that WikiLeaks was releasing the cache of emails every week or so because WikiLeaks actually announced on Twitter that they were doing it. Nobody called Assange, and he didn’t tell anybody “Hey, I’m releasing some emails.” They actually tweeted “We’re releasing a cache of emails next week. Wait for it.”

PAUL JAY: But it might establish a direct connection between Stone and Assange if the story is true.

JACQUELINE LUQMAN: And see, that’s the thing. I don’t believe the story is true. Because if you’re in the Ecuadorian Embassy, and you’re under all of this scrutiny, how are all of the intelligence agencies not recording your phone calls? I just–my jury is still way out [crosstalk].

PAUL JAY: One assumes they are.

JACQUELINE LUQMAN: And I’m sorry, I need proof of that. And you can’t just come into a congressional hearing and say “So-and-so picked up a phone and called so-and-so, and that’s my proof.”

PAUL JAY: Right. Well, let me get back to Henry’s point-

JACQUELINE LUQMAN: I don’t think that’s good enough for court. That’s not good enough for me.

PAUL JAY: OK. Let me–just to pick up on something you just said, Jacqueline and Henry. It can’t be underestimated that this is all in the context of a generalized legal corruption which is called the way campaign financing takes place. I mean, you can have gobs of money thrown at candidates. They can write legislation that’s directly in your favor, and you’ll get more campaign contributions. And it’s not called corruption, because it’s called legal. Because the same people that make the laws are getting the money. Carmen, go ahead.

CARMEN RUSSELL-SLUCHANSKY: Yeah, because I want to respond to that. I mean–because you’re absolutely right. You know, campaign finance is often very corrupt. But even then, it can be legal and still corrupt on the face of it when most people would look at it. So it’s amazing to me that we’re still in this hearing and we’re still seeing that it’s possible that they did something illegal. Which is almost hard to do, I think. Because like you said, you know, you can legally give lots of money; you know, super PACs, PACs. There’s so many ways of getting around this fury of campaign finance law that it almost doesn’t matter anymore. And yet, still, still it seems like he’s, you know, Michael Cohen is providing evidence of illegality, of an illegal action, which was, of course, the checks to Stephanie Clifford; you know, aka Stormy Daniels.

If I could also just throw one more thing out there, I want to push back on Jacqueline just a little bit, because I did work on the hill. There are a lot of great–you know, there are a lot of great legislators there. You do have to wonder how so many of them become rich while they’re in office. You know, I did know a number of good progressives who had been there for a long time. And I do–I mean, I’m really heartened, like you said, by these new progresives. Because, you know, it would have been–usually the OGR, the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform that this hearing was held in, is, you know, for a lot of grandstanding. But you know, you watch, like, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez’s, you know, I mean, real interrogation, she was going for facts.

PAUL JAY: Let’s take a look at that.

ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ: According to an August 24–August 21, 2016 report by the Washington Post, while the President claimed in financial disclosure forms that Trump National Golf Club in Jupiter, Florida was worth more than $50 million, he had reported otherwise to local tax authorities that the course was worth “No more than $5 million.” Mr. Cohen, do you know whether this specific report is accurate?

MICHAEL COHEN: It’s identical to what he did at Trump National Golf Club at Briarcliff Manor.

ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ: To your knowledge, was the President interested in reducing his local real estate bills? Tax bills?

MICHAEL COHEN: Yes.

ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ: And how did he do that?

MICHAEL COHEN: What you do is you deflate the value of the asset, and then you put in a request to the tax department for a deduction.

ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ: Thank you.

PAUL JAY: A couple of points, here. One thing was missing today, which was anything that proved, one, any kind of collaboration between Trump and Russia in terms of the interference in the elections. There was absolutely nothing added to that picture whatsoever. In fact, he, you know, it suggests that there wasn’t anything. There was no evidence of who actually hacked WikiLeaks here. It continues just to be assumed it was Russia because American intelligence agencies says it was. But I don’t think, at least in terms of what we know in the public domain information that we actually know that yet. But set that aside. Wasserman-Schultz, who desperately tried to get Cohen to implicate Trump in a collaboration with the Russians, because she’s the one that was exposed as undermining the Bernie Sanders campaign when the WikiLeaks–when the DNC hacking takes place, or whistleblowing, whichever, then gets released. So I thought that was important.

And we’re kind of running out of time here, so just to end with a big picture question, or I’m going to make a comment and ask you guys to respond. You know, it’s not enough just to look at campaign financing. It’s not enough to look at corruption at the level of politicians. The big picture is the state of the militarization of the U.S. economy, and the state of the financialization of the U.S. economy. And between Wall Street and the military industrial–and many people add congressional–complex, the level and depth of systemic corruption. I mean, how many big bankers go to jail after outright fraud in the ’07-’08 crash? Is it any surprise that it’s, first of all, somebody from New York who ends up being–you know, Trump ends up being president, given the corruption surrounding finance in New York? But it’s the whole economic basis of that corruption that we need to talk more about. And you’ll sure never hear that on corporate media.

So one by one, you guys can add to your kind of final statements here. Henry, you go first.

HENRY GIROUX: Let me say something. Look, you have an economic crisis in the United States marked by massive inequality, the corruption of politics with big money, and so forth and so on. But I’m going to disagree with you on one thing, and that is the economic crisis has not been matched by a crisis of ideas. And one of the reasons is we never talk about the formative cultures that are necessary in a democracy to create, form citizens who can address these issues. Because you not only have an economic crisis, you have a crisis of civic culture. You have a crisis of civic literacy.You have a crisis of civic justice.

So it seems to me we have to ask ourselves, you know, what happens when all of a sudden the culture collapses because all the public spheres that matter are under siege? Where they’re being privatized, where they’re being contracted out, or whether they’re simply being destroyed? What happens when you have a press that’s called the enemy of the American people? What happens when the journalists get killed, and all of a sudden you have a president of the United States supporting a dictator who actually is responsible for the crime?

So we have to really include something about a larger cultural issue here that speaks, it seems to me, very importantly to the fact that politics follows culture. If people don’t have a collective understanding of what’s going on, then they can’t really address the problem to change it. That needs to be addressed. This is not just simply an economic issue. It’s also an educational one.

PAUL JAY: I’m not sure we disagree on that, because part of this is the destruction of the public school system. And you can’t get such a large section of the American people falling for such obvious BS if you have–without such a terrible level of education and understanding. I mean, it’s no accident that Trump is strongest in rural America, where honestly, education is at its worst. Carmen, final comment from you.

CARMEN RUSSELL-SLUCHANSKY: Yeah, I mean, I like what you said, actually, about the financialization, particularly. Because I mean, honestly, I think if people saw bankers go to jail under Obama for the ’07-’08 crash, we don’t have Trump, because they don’t feel so desperate. But when you see who he brought in, and the fact that–like Lawrence Summers, and even Eric Holder–I mean, Eric Holder’s great in so many ways. But you know, he came from New York, and he went back to a Wall Street firm, and is making I think $2.5 million, or something like that. And you know, nobody went to jail. I mean, you have to, have to wonder, like, how–well, you don’t have to wonder. People see this. And so they throw a Hail Mary. And that’s partially how we end up where we’re at.

PAUL JAY: And if you don’t see Bush and Cheney go to jail for launching an illegal war that kills a million people–like, if you can do that and not be accountable, what can’t you get away for? Get away with, sorry. Jacqueline, final word.

JACQUELINE LUQMAN: Yeah. And I have to add Elliott Abrams. If he doesn’t go to–if he not only doesn’t go to prison, but he also gets another job in another administration, what else are people supposed to think, like Dr. Giroux said, in a country where politics follows culture, and our culture is so bereft of actual real, clear understanding of justice and equality?

But I think one of the things that was most important that was done at the second part of the hearing that the new progressives did was to point out, especially Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s questions, was to point out how the wealthy elite get away with [hoarding] their finances. How they do it. The devaluation of their vast real estate stores. How they lie on their taxes. And then how they also weaponize different aspects of culture, which is I think something that Rashida Tlaib did when she pointed out the issue with the HUD executive being–honestly, she was used as a prop. But they exposed the tactics that the elites use to continue to perpetuate the system of corruption and gross inequality in this country. And I think they won the day in this hearing more than anybody else.

PAUL JAY: Yeah, I think it’s a very good, important note to end on. This movement to elect new progressives, and to have people like these four progressives that spoke on the committee to actually be on that committee, it’s a reflection of the strength of a growing movement that can’t be ignored. And so this isn’t all just a dark and horrible picture. There is, perhaps, especially in the leadup to 2020 election, there is a movement here that may make a kind of breakthrough that this system wasn’t built to deal with.

Anyway, thank you very much. And well I’m sure we’ll pick this conversation up again. Thanks for joining us. And thank you for joining us on The Real News Network.

Trump-Kim Summit Collapses Over Sanctions Impasse

HANOI, Vietnam — Talks between President Donald Trump and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un collapsed Thursday after the two sides failed to bridge a standoff over U.S. sanctions, a dispiriting end to high-stakes meetings meant to disarm a global nuclear threat.

Trump blamed the breakdown on North Korea’s insistence that all the punishing sanctions the U.S. has imposed on Pyongyang be lifted without the North committing to eliminate its nuclear arsenal.

“Sometimes you have to walk,” Trump explained at a closing news conference after the summit was abruptly cut short. He said there had been a proposed agreement that was “ready to be signed.”

“I’d much rather do it right than do it fast,” Trump said. “We’re in position to do something very special.”

Mere hours after both nations had seemed hopeful of a deal, the two leaders’ motorcades roared away from the downtown Hanoi summit site within minutes of each other, their lunch canceled and a signing ceremony scuttled. The president’s closing news conference was hurriedly moved up, and he departed for Washington more than two hours ahead of schedule.

The disintegration of talks came after Trump and Kim had appeared to be ready to inch toward normalizing relations between their still technically warring nations and as the American leader dampened expectations that their negotiations would yield an agreement by North Korea to take concrete steps toward ending a nuclear program that Pyongyang likely sees as its strongest security guarantee.

In something of a role reversal, Trump had deliberately ratcheted down some of the pressure on North Korea, abandoning his fiery rhetoric and declaring that he wanted the “right deal” over a rushed agreement. For his part, Kim, when asked whether he was ready to denuclearize, had said, “If I’m not willing to do that I won’t be here right now.”

The breakdown denied Trump a much-needed triumph amid growing domestic turmoil back home, including congressional testimony this week by his former personal lawyer Michael Cohen, who called Trump a “racist” and “conman” and claimed prior knowledge of foreign powers’ efforts to help Trump win in 2016.

North Korea’s state media made no immediate comment on the diplomatic impasse, and Kim remained in his locked-down hotel after leaving the summit venue. The North Korean leader was scheduled to meet with top Vietnamese leaders on Friday and leave Saturday on his armored train for the long return trip, through China, to North Korea.

Trump insisted his relations with Kim remained warm, but he did not commit to having a third summit with the North Korean leader, saying a possible next meeting “may not be for a long time.” Though both he and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said significant progress had been made in Hanoi, the two sides appeared to be galaxies apart on an agreement that would live up to U.S. stated goals.

“Basically, they wanted the sanctions lifted in their entirety, and we couldn’t do that,” Trump told reporters.

Kim, he explained, appeared willing to close his country’s main nuclear facility, the Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center, if the sanctions were lifted. But that would leave him with missiles, warheads and weapon systems, Pompeo said. There are also suspected hidden nuclear fuel production sites around the country.

“We couldn’t quite get there today,” Pompeo said, minimizing what seemed to be a chasm between the two sides.

Longstanding U.S. policy has insisted that U.S. sanctions on North Korea would not be lifted until that country committed to, if not concluded, complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization. Trump declined to restate that goal Thursday, insisting he wanted flexibility in talks with Kim.

“I don’t want to put myself in that position from the standpoint of negotiation,” he said.

White House aides stressed that Trump stood strong, and some observers evoked the 1987 Reykjavík summit between Ronald Reagan and the Soviet Union’s Mikhail Gorbachev, a meeting over nuclear weapons that ended without a deal but laid the groundwork for a future agreement.

The failure in Hanoi laid bare a risk in Trump’s unpredictable negotiating style: Preferring one-on-one meetings with his foreign counterparts, his administration often eschews the staff-level work done in advance to assure a deal and envisions summits more as messaging opportunities than venues for hardline negotiation.

There was disappointment and alarm in South Korea, whose liberal leader has been a leading orchestrator of the nuclear diplomacy and who needs a breakthrough to restart lucrative engagement projects with the impoverished North. Yonhap news agency said that the clock on the Korean Peninsula’s security situation has “turned back to zero” and diplomacy is now “at a crossroads.”

The collapse was a dramatic turnaround from the optimism that surrounded the talks after the leaders’ dinner Wednesday and that had prompted the White House to list a signing ceremony on Trump’s official schedule for Thursday.

The two leaders had seemed to find a point of agreement when Kim, who fielded questions from American journalists for the first time, was asked if the U.S. may open a liaison office in North Korea. Trump declared it “not a bad idea,” and Kim called it “welcomable.” Such an office would mark the first U.S. presence in North Korea and a significant grant to a country that has long been deliberately starved of international recognition.

But questions persisted throughout the summit, including whether Kim was willing to make valuable concessions, what Trump would demand in the face of rising domestic turmoil and whether the meeting could yield far more concrete results than the leaders’ first summit, a meeting in Singapore less than a year ago that was long on dramatic imagery but short on tangible results.

There had long been skepticism that Kim would be willing to give away the weapons his nation had spent decades developing and Pyongyang felt ensured its survival. But even after the summit ended, Trump praised Kim’s commitment to continue a moratorium on missile testing.

Trump also said he believed the autocrat’s claim that he had nothing to do with the 2017 death of Otto Warmbier, a American college student who died after being held in a North Korean prison.

“I don’t believe that he would have allowed that to happen,” Trump said. “He felt badly about it.”

The declaration immediately called to mind other moments when Trump chose to believe autocrats over his own intelligence agencies, including siding with the Saudi royal family regarding the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and supporting Russia’s Vladimir Putin’s denials that he interfered with the 2016 election.

If the first Trump-Kim summit gave the reclusive nation’s leader entree onto the international stage, the second appeared to grant him the legitimacy his family has long desired.

Kim, for the first time, affably parried with the international press without having to account for his government’s long history of oppression. He secured Trump’s support for the opening of a liaison office in Pyongyang, without offering any concessions of his own. Even without an agreement, Trump’s backing for the step toward normalization provided the sort of recognition the international community has long denied Kim’s government.

Experts worried that the darker side of Kim’s leadership was being brushed aside in the rush to address the North’s nuclear weapons program: the charges of massive human rights abuses; the prison camps filled with dissidents; a near complete absence of media, religious and speech freedoms; the famine in the 1990s that killed hundreds of thousands; and the executions of a slew of government and military officials, including his uncle and the alleged assassination order of his half-brother in a Malaysian airport.

Trump also has a history of cutting short foreign trips and walking out of meetings when he feels no progress is being made. That includes a notable episode this year when he walked out of a White House meeting with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer over a government shutdown, calling the negotiation “a total waste of time.”