Clarity is preferable to ambiguity even when the clear picture is grim. So I have found in many circumstances, and so I find it now that President Trump declares his…
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Clarity is preferable to ambiguity even when the clear picture is grim. So I have found in many circumstances, and so I find it now that President Trump declares his intention to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and, in all likelihood, move the United States embassy there from Tel Aviv. It is a monumentally miscalculated move from numerous perspectives, but so is nearly everything else the U.S. does in the Middle East. If this is multiple failures in the making, as I judge it, at least now Washington’s intentions are plain for all to see.
Let us consider these intentions, then. If there is any surprise in them, it is how long Washington has managed to dupe so many as to its goals in the Middle East. There are many ways to date the essential pose, but we can trace it conservatively to 1957, when President Dwight Eisenhower asserted America’s right to intervene militarily in the Middle East in the name of national security. There is a straight line between Eisenhower’s declaration 60 years ago and Trump’s last week. As is his wont, Trump has merely stated the case as it is.
The first of Trump’s intentions, as I rate them, reflects Washington’s obsession with Iran’s emergence as a Middle Eastern power — which, I ought to note straightaway, I consider inevitable and net-positive, by a long way, given Tehran’s demonstrable desire for regional stability and security. Iran presents one of two new challenges to Washington’s longstanding influence in the Middle East. Russia presents the other, and both have gone critical with the Islamic State’s demise in Iraq and Syria. By recognizing Jerusalem, the administration cements its place in a swiftly consolidating alliance wherein Sunni-nationalist monarchies led by Saudi Arabia make common cause with Israel to contain Iran. The Saudis are clear they are willing to go to war to achieve this end.
As Americans reflect on the first Martin Luther King Jr. Day of the Trump administration and prepare for the fiftieth anniversary of his assassination, it’s as good a time as any to measure our world against the one Dr. King dared us to imagine.
In the months leading up to the April day in Memphis when he was shot dead by a white supremacist after standing with striking sanitation workers, King had grown increasingly outspoken on issues of class, income inequality, and economic justice. Along with other leading lights of the civil rights movement, he had just launched the Poor People’s Campaign against what he termed the “giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism.” It is in the statements and writings of his final months where we find the fullest expression of King’s political and economic vision, and a guidepost for our current assessments.
Millionaires and billionaires will enjoy their private flights much more this winter season following the GOP’s tax reform plan. The recently passed tax bill will provide the biggest wins for America’s richest citizens, according to expert analysis. Some of these benefits will happen gradually or in subtle ways. Others, however, are much more obvious.
One of these examples is the way the bill solidifies existing exemptions for owners and leasers of private jets. Not surprisingly, it is commercial passengers who will continue to foot the bill for the one percent’s expensive habits.
It could be a big year—or a tumultuous one—for the marijuana movement.
Right on the heels of California’s historic legalization in early January, Attorney General Jeff Sessions gave federal prosecutors leeway to go after marijuana in states where it’s legal. His reversal of the Cole Memo emerged, despite support for legalization that has maintained historic highs.
Polarity in the marijuana debate is “dropping rapidly,” according to Sanho Tree, a fellow at the progressive think tank Institute for Policy Studies, especially as young generations emerge in support of legalization. “Baby boomers are fading into the rear mirror of demographics,” he told Newsweek. And indeed, younger age groups are much more likely to support legalization—79 percent of Americans in the age group from 18 to 34 support recreational legalization.
Since 2012, Denea Joseph has been protected by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which, since being initiated by an executive order from President Barack Obama in 2012, has shielded almost 800,000 undocumented young people brought to the U.S. by their parents from deportation.
But despite his declarations of support for the “Dreamers,” President Donald Trump announced on Sept. 5 last year that he was ending the program. Since then, Joseph said, the lives of people like her has been thrown into disarray.
“People are scared,” said Joseph, communications director for UndocuBlack, an organization of current and former undocumented people of African descent who are creating safe spaces while publicizing, advocating and lobbying for this often overlooked group. “There is mass hysteria to organize and mobilize for resources and aid.”
On the other hand, the Republican-dominated Congress has affirmed that climate change is a prominent national security threat and mandated that the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) look closely at how climate change is going to affect key installations, while also addressing the need to boost the military’s finances considerably to deal with global warming threats. When Trump’s National Security Strategy – announced in January – erased climate change as a threat to U.S. security, that decision drew the ire of a bipartisan group of congressional legislators.
At $14.92 per hour, the median black worker currently earns just 75 percent of the $19.79 that their white counterpart earns. On the income front, the median black household is bringing down just 61 percent of the total median white household, about $39,500 versus $65,000 annually. That’s slightly improved from the gap in 1967, when the median black household earned just 55 percent of white household income. But in absolute terms, the racial income gap has grown by more than $5,000 since the year King called for “a radical redistribution of economic and political power.”
Moreover, the wealth gap between black and white families is more like a yawning chasm. The most widely cited data on this comes from the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances, which shows that the median white family is worth 10 times more than the median black one, ($171,000 and $17,600, respectively). On the surface, that’s actually an improvement since 1963, the year King led the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, when the median white family was worth 19 times the median nonwhite one.
Yet under a less generous model employed by the Institute for Policy Studies (but perhaps more accurate since it excludes the falling value of the family car), the median white family ($151,800) is worth over 35 times the median black one ($4,300). More damningly, a recent report from the institute finds that 30 percent of black households have “zero or negative wealth,” with median black household wealth on a collision course to hit $0 by 2053.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce sided against 83% of the American public by heavily pushing to repeal the rules that ensured net neutrality. Likewise, polling on the Republican tax bill in the final days before passage showed it 22 points underwater with the public, meanwhile a Public Citizen report found that the Chamber had 100 lobbyists working in support of the bill.
The Trump Administration, however, overlooked the largest online protest in historyand daily tax protester arrests and gave the Chamber both items on its wish list. The theory was that these massive handouts to big corporations would super-charge growth for the middle class. So let’s take a look at what’s happening with two likely Chamber members that benefited from both of these decisions.
Estuar Quinonez’s bullet-riddled body and 25 bullet casings were found in Missouri City’s Buffalo Run Park on June 16, 2016.
The 16-year-old, a member of the MS-13 street gang, had been cooperating with Houston police after witnessing six homicides by the gang, police say. Five alleged MS-13 members were charged with capital murder in Quinonez’s slaying.
I am 35 years old—the oldest millennial, the first millennial—and for a decade now, I’ve been waiting for adulthood to kick in. My rent consumes nearly half my income, I haven’t had a steady job since Pluto was a planet and my savings are dwindling faster than the ice caps the baby boomers melted.
We’ve all heard the statistics. More millennials live with their parents than with roommates. We are delaying partner-marrying and house-buying and kid-having for longer than any previous generation. And, according to The Olds, our problems are all our fault: We got the wrong degree. We spend money we don’t have on things we don’t need. We still haven’t learned to code. We killed cereal and department stores and golf and napkins and lunch. Mention “millennial” to anyone over 40 and the word “entitlement” will come back at you within seconds, our own intergenerational game of Marco Polo.
