World news

Subterms

    More stories

    • 175 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      The Rock for president? I’ll run if the people want it, says Dwayne Johnson

      by

      The professional wrestler turned star actor Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson said on Monday that he would run for US president if he felt he had enough support from Americans.Johnson, 48, one of the highest-paid and most popular actors in the United States, has been flirting with a possible White House bid for several years.“I do have that goal to unite our country and I also feel that if this is what the people want, then I will do that,” Johnson said when asked about his presidential ambitions in an interview broadcast on the Today show on Monday.The ex-wrestler did not say which party he would represent or when he might launch any bid for the White House.His remarks follow an online public opinion poll released last week that found some 46% of Americans would consider voting for Johnson.Johnson, whose work includes the rebooted Jumanji movie franchise and the TV show Young Rock, joins a long list of American celebrities who have run for political office.They include Terminator star Arnold Schwarzenegger who became governor of California, former wrestler Jesse Ventura who became governor of Minnesota and former actor Ronald Reagan who become president as did former “Apprentice” star Donald Trump.More currently actor Matthew McConaughey and former Olympic champion and reality TV star Caitlyn Jenner are reported to be weighing potential runs for governor in Texas and California respectively. More

    • 88 Shares189 Views

      in World Politics

      The US Needs to Uncancel the ICC

      by

      When the loony right gathered at the Conservative Political Action Conference back in February, the theme of the Trump-heavy gathering was “America Uncanceled.” Speaker after speaker railed against “political correctness” in American culture, from “woke mobs” to “censorship” in the mainstream news media. Incredibly, they tried to transform so-called cancel culture into the single greatest problem facing a United States still reeling from COVID-19 and its economic sucker punch. And yet, time and again, it has been the loony right that has been so eager to hit the delete button.

      These supposed defenders of everyone’s right to voice opinions attempted to cancel an entire presidential election because it failed to produce their preferred result. They’ve spent decades trying to cancel voting rights (not to mention a wide variety of other rights). They’ve directed huge amounts of time and money to canceling social benefits for the least fortunate Americans. Throughout history, they’ve mounted campaigns to cancel specific individuals from Colin Kaepernick and Representative Ilhan Omar to the black lists of the McCarthy era. They’re also not above canceling entire groups of people, from the transgender community all the way back to the original sin of this country, namely the mass cancelation of Native Americans.

      Then there’s foreign policy. The Trump administration never met an international agreement or institution — the Paris climate accord, the Iran nuclear deal, the World Health Organization — that it didn’t want to cover with “cancel” stamps.

      One institution that has elicited particular ire from the far right has been the International Criminal Court (ICC). On April 2, the Biden administration took a step toward mending the rift between the United States and the ICC. It didn’t go far enough.

      Blocking the International Criminal Court

      In 2000, the Clinton administration signed the Rome Statute that established the International Criminal Court, which has focused on bringing to international justice the perpetrators of war crimes, genocide, crimes against humanity and (beginning in 2017) crimes of aggression. In 2002, the Bush administration effectively unsigned the agreement and Congress pushed to shield all US military personnel from ICC prosecution. Although the Obama administration cooperated with the court, it was still worried about possible investigations into the US “war on terrorism.”

      Ambivalence turned to outright hostility during the Trump years. National Security Adviser John Bolton made it his special mission to attack the ICC as “ineffective, unaccountable, and indeed, outright dangerous.” Among Bolton’s many spurious arguments about the court, he claimed that the body constitutes an assault on US sovereignty and the Constitution in particular, a favorite hobbyhorse of the loony right. But the “supremacy clause” of the US Constitution (Article VI, clause 2) already establishes the primacy of federal law over treaty obligations. So, can someone please get those supposed legal scholars to actually read the pocket constitutions they carry around so reverently?

      Bolton’s off-base analysis came with a threat. “We will respond against the ICC and its personnel to the extent permitted by U.S. law,” he warned. “We will ban its judges and prosecutors from entering the United States. We will sanction their funds in the U.S. financial system, and, we will prosecute them in the U.S. criminal system. We will do the same for any company or state that assists an ICC investigation of Americans.”

      In 2020, the Trump administration began to implement Bolton’s attack plan by imposing sanctions against ICC officials. Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda and senior prosecution official Phakiso Mochochoko were placed under travel restrictions and an asset freeze because they were investigating possible US war crimes in Afghanistan. This blacklisting of ICC investigators sent a chilling signal that the United States would attempt, much like a rogue authoritarian country, to obstruct justice at an international level.

      An equally vexing issue involves a war crimes investigation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Although the ICC investigators looked at atrocities committed by Israelis and Palestinians, both Israel and the US condemned the investigation, arguing that Israel isn’t an ICC member and so the international body lacks jurisdiction. The United States has made the same argument about the investigation into the conduct of American soldiers in Afghanistan, since the US is not a party to the ICC.

      But the ICC’s jurisdiction is quite clear: it extends to crimes “committed by a State Party national, or in the territory of a State Party, or in a State that has accepted the jurisdiction of the Court.” Palestine, an ICC member since 2015, requested the investigation. And Afghanistan is also an ICC member.

      Biden’s Response

      Earlier this month, US President Joe Biden lifted the Trump administration’s sanctions. European allies, in particular, were enthusiastic about this additional sign that the United States is rejoining the international community. “This important step underlines the US’s commitment to the international rules-based system,” said EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell.

      But the Biden administration’s move comes with an important caveat. In his statement on the lifting of the sanctions, Secretary of State Antony Blinken noted that “we continue to disagree strongly with the ICC’s actions relating to the Afghan and Palestinian situations. We maintain our longstanding objection to the Court’s efforts to assert jurisdiction over personnel of non-States Parties such as the United States and Israel.”

      When it comes to the ICC, then, a disturbing bipartisan consensus has emerged on its supposed encroachment upon US sovereignty. It’s OK for the ICC to prosecute the actions of countries in the Global South, but hand’s off the big boys, a status the United States generously extends to Israel. In the Senate, Ben Cardin and Rob Portman put out a letter last month criticizing the ICC’s investigation in Palestine, which attracted the support of 55 of their colleagues (down from 67 for a similar letter last year).

      Together with Israel, the US continues to abide by an exceptionalism when it comes to international law that it shares with several dozen states, including quite a few that the United States generally doesn’t like to be associated with, such as North Korea, Myanmar, Russia, China, Egypt, Belarus and Nicaragua.

      Of course, it hasn’t just been Bolton and a few outlaw states that have criticized the ICC. African countries in particular have accused the institution of bias. The Court has indeed opened investigations in a disproportionate number of African states: the Democratic Republic of Congo, Cote d’Ivoire, the Central African Republic, Sudan, Kenya, Libya and Uganda. Preliminary investigations also took place in Gabon, Guinea and Nigeria and were slated to start in Burundi. All of the 46 individuals facing charges before the court are African.

      In response to this perceived bias, the African Union, in 2017, called for a mass withdrawal of its members from the ICC. Burundi left the court that year, the first country in the world to do so (other countries, like the US and Russia, “withdrew” but hadn’t actually ratified the treaty in the first place). Two other countries that seemed on the verge of withdrawal, South Africa and Gambia, ultimately changed their minds.

      Bias or Backbone?

      The ICC was supposed to put an end to the era of imperial justice by which the winners determine who is guilty of war crimes, a bias that pervaded the Nuremberg trials. It has appointed judges and investigators from the Global South: Fatou Bensouda is Gambian, for instance, while Phakiso Mochochoko is from Lesotho. Still, the preponderance of investigations in Africa should give pause. The ICC has obviously had some difficulty making a transition to this new era. But let’s point out some obvious counter-arguments.

      First, the ICC doesn’t have an anti-African bias. It discriminates against African dictators and warlords. If anything, the court has a pro-African bias by standing up for the victims of violence in Africa. Other continents should be so lucky to have the ICC looking out for them. Second, the ICC has more recently begun to challenge major powers, including Russia for its actions in Georgia and Ukraine. It has also investigated the actions of Israel and the United States. These moves come with considerable risks, as the Trump sanctions painfully revealed. Third, the ICC has considerable jurisdictional restrictions. It can’t investigate crimes against humanity in North Korea since the latter isn’t a member. The same applies to China and its actions in Xinjiang.

      Instead of complaining about the ICC’s blind spots and shortcomings, the United States should get on board and put pressure on other countries to do likewise. Americans can’t pretend to support the rule of law, to loudly promote it around the world, and then turn around and say: Oh, well, it doesn’t apply to us. If the American justice system can prosecute perpetrators in blue like Derek Chauvin, the US can permit an international justice system to prosecute perpetrators in khaki who have killed civilians on a larger scale.

      So, Biden deserves praise for reversing the Trump administration’s brazen and embarrassing attack on the ICC. But that doesn’t constitute actual support for international law. It’s time for the United States to uncancel the International Criminal Court.

      *[This article was originally published by FPIF.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

    • 138 Shares149 Views

      in US Politics

      Tommy Robinson asked wealthy US backers to help him claim asylum

      by

      The anti-immigration activist Tommy Robinson asked wealthy American backers to help him claim asylum in the US, the Guardian has learned, while his team approached the Republican senator Ted Cruz’s office about securing a visa.Court documents released in the US show the English Defence League founder discussed moving his family to Texas in 2019, where he would earn money by speaking at venues “including evangelical churches”.Such was the influence of Robinson’s supporters that they asked advisers to Cruz, the Republican former presidential candidate, for legal advice on securing an extended visa for “someone who needs protection”.Terry Giles, a prominent American businessman and friend of Cruz, told the Guardian he asked the senator’s office for assistance but did not disclose that the visa was for Robinson.Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, remains one of the UK’s highest-profile rightwing campaigners despite being banned from mainstream social media and beset by legal problems. The Luton-born activist has described people who fled the Syrian war as “fake refugees” who should be “sent back”.Documents released by a US district court in Pennsylvania shed light on how Robinson’s influence extends to high levels in the US, where conservative groups have previously funded his activities in Britain.The 38-year-old has received hundreds of thousands of pounds in donations from wealthy international backers as well as ordinary supporters. He recently claimed to be bankrupt at the high court in London, where he is due to defend himself in a libel trial later this month.A record of a meeting between Robinson and his most influential supporters at the Four Seasons hotel in London in early 2019 describes Giles, 72, as “actively working with Senator Cruz to advance Tommy’s visa”.The Houston-based businessman, who previously ran the presidential campaign for Republican Ben Carson in 2015, was “mainly concerned with bringing Tommy and his family to Houston, by getting a visa; getting them into a new house/school/life; and getting him on to the speaking circuit, including evangelical churches,” according to the memo.Giles confirmed the account of the meeting, which was also attended by Robinson, his solicitors, a Ukip adviser, the rightwing Canadian pundit Ezra Levant and Lisa Barbounis, an executive for the Middle East Forum, a conservative US thinktank that donated tens of thousands of pounds towards Robinson’s legal fees and rallies.He said Robinson asked him to explore the potential to move his family to the US due to “serious threats to his family”. He added: “This was the way [Robinson] described it: if things get worse and my family is in danger, what can I do to help them? Is there anything in the United States that could assist in that regard?“We were just looking into the possibilities so that I could advise them of all of the different things that they could be looking at, including applying for asylum.”Robinson, who publicly appealed to Donald Trump to grant him political asylum, lost interest in moving to the US “once he realised that he couldn’t go back to the UK if he declared asylum”, according to the files.Barbounis said in her memo that Robinson’s contempt of court case “impedes the visa process” and added: “We all agreed that to get the outstanding charges from hanging over Tommy’s head and to advance our collective plans for him in the US he should try to settle [the case]. Tommy seemed reluctant but said he would think it over.”The documents show the Middle East Forum was central to Robinson’s efforts to obtain a visa. Barbounis told her boss, Daniel Pipes, in January 2019 that “Cruz’s guy called Tommy yesterday and said they were discussing it next week”. Cruz’s office said it had no records of helping Robinson secure a visa.Pipes replied that “we need a patron in the USG [US government]” and suggested enlisting Paul Gosar, a Republican congressman. Barbounis replied that Gosar was “willing but didn’t have enough recognition with the embassy” and that she had contacted Sebastian Gorka, previously an adviser to the then president, Donald Trump, who had “said he would pass it along. Nothing materialised.”Gorka did not dispute being approached about a visa for Robinson. He said it was “an amusing story” for a “gutter rag like the Commie Guardian”.Giles and Barbounis appear to have been the main advocates for moving Robinson to the US, according to the documents.Pipes, the director of the Middle East Forum, told the Guardian he opposed Robinson moving to the US and did not want to facilitate it but that he had previously wanted the activist to visit to discuss free speech issues. He added: “In retrospect, MEF regrets funding the events supporting Mr Robinson. Accordingly, we have cut all relations with him.”The files were released by the court as part of a dispute between the Middle East Forum and several former employees regarding sexual harassment allegations, which it denies. More

    • 163 Shares109 Views

      in US Politics

      Whitmer won’t go ‘punch for punch’ with Republican who called her a witch

      by

      Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan, will not “go punch for punch” with Republican leaders in the state who have attacked her in misogynistic terms, one going so far as to call Whitmer and two other leading Democrats “three witches” set to be “burned at the stake”.Speaking to CBS’s Face the Nation, Whitmer said “there is a layer of misogyny here that every woman in leadership has been confronting and dealing with to some extent.“I don’t have time, though, to focus on that or to go punch for punch. I’m not going to do that. I’ve got a job to do.”The remark about “witches” was made by Ron Weiser, chairman of the Michigan Republican party.“Our job now,” he said last month, “is to soften up those three witches and make sure that we have good candidates to run against them, that they are ready for the burning at the stake.”In February, the Republican leader in the state Senate, Mike Shirkey, claimed to have “spanked” Whitmer on the budget and over appointments.Both men apologised. But on Sunday Whitmer said: “I don’t know to whom they’ve apologised because I haven’t heard from them. “I can tell you this, though, that sadly in this moment there have been a lot of death threats. We know that there was a plot to kidnap and kill me. Death threats against me and my family. It’s different in what I’m confronting than what some of my male counterparts are.”Six men face federal charges over the plot to kidnap and possibly kill Whitmer. It was uncovered after armed men stormed the state capitol last year, in protest of coronavirus-related economic and social restrictions. Other defendants face state charges over the kidnapping plot.Whitmer told CBS she was focused on “helping get my state through this, helping get our economy back on track, supporting [the Biden administration’s] American Jobs Plan so that helps us do both of those things. And that’s what I’m going to stay focused on.” More

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Clyburn offers Manchin history lesson to clear Senate path for Biden reforms

      by

      Jim Clyburn, the House majority whip, said on Sunday he intends to give Joe Manchin a lesson in US history as he attempts to clear a path for Joe Biden on voting rights and infrastructure.Manchin, a moderate Democratic senator from West Virginia, has emerged as a significant obstacle to the president’s ambitious proposals by insisting he will not vote to reform or end the Senate filibuster, which demands a super-majority for legislation to pass, to allow key measures passage through the 50-50 chamber on a simple majority basis.His stance has drawn praise from Republicans: Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, hailed Manchin as the politician “almost singlehandedly preserving the Senate”.But Democrats appear to be losing patience – and none more vociferously than Clyburn.“I’m going to remind the senator exactly why the Senate came into being,” Clyburn, from South Carolina, told CNN’s State of the Union, refreshing criticism of Manchin that has included saying he feels “insulted” by his refusal to fully embrace voting rights reform.“The Senate was not always an elective office. The moment we changed and made it an elective office [was because] the people thought a change needed to be made.“The same thing goes for the filibuster. The filibuster was put in place to extend debate and give time to bring people around to a point of view. The filibuster was never put in place to suppress voters … It was there to make sure that minorities in this country have constitutional rights and not be denied.”Clyburn has assailed Manchin for promoting a bipartisan approach to voting rights and refusing to endorse the For the People Act, a measure passed by the US House and intended to counter restrictive voting laws targeting minorities proposed by Republicans in 47 states and passed in Georgia last month.“You’re going to say it’s more important for you to protect 50 Republicans in the Senate than for you to protect your fellow Democrat’s seat in Georgia? That’s a bunch of crap,” Clyburn told Huffpost this month, referring to Senator Raphael Warnock’s 2022 re-election battle that supporters feel has become much harder due to the new voting laws.On Sunday Clyburn also reached into history to repeat his contention that the Georgia law is “the new Jim Crow”, a claim repeated by Biden but which Republicans say is unfair.“When we first started determining who was eligible to vote and who was not,” Clyburn said, “they were property owners. They knew that people of colour, people coming out of slavery did not own property.“…And then they went from that to having disqualifiers. And they picked those offences that were more apt to be committed by people of colour to disqualify voters.“The whole history in the south of putting together those who are eligible to vote is based upon the practices and the experiences of people based upon their race. So, I would say to anybody, ‘Come on, just look at the history … and you will know that what is taking place today is a new Jim Crow. It’s just that simple.”Despite the urging of Clyburn and others, Manchin remains steadfast in his belief bipartisanship is Biden’s best path to implementing his agenda. In a CNN interview last week, the senator said the 6 January insurrection at the US Capitol “changed me”, and said he wanted to use his power as a swing vote in the 50-50 Senate “to make a difference” by working with Republicans and Democrats.“Something told me, ‘Wait a minute. Pause. Hit the pause button.’ Something’s wrong. You can’t have this many people split to where they want to go to war with each other,” he said, of watching a riot mounted by supporters of Donald Trump seeking to overturn his election defeat on the grounds it was caused by voter fraud – a lie without legal standing.Manchin said he had a good relationship with the White House and wanted to meet Warnock and Georgia’s other Democratic senator, Jon Ossoff, to discuss voting rights.On Sunday, Clyburn said the riot also had “a tremendous effect” on him.“When I saw that Capitol policeman complain about how many times he was called the N-word by those people, who were insurrectionists out there, when I see [the civil rights leader] John Lewis’s photo torn to pieces and scattered on the floor, that told me everything I need to know about those insurrectionists, and I will remind anybody who reflects on 6 January to think about these issues as well,” he said.Clyburn was among the first major figures to endorse Biden last year, helping nurse him through bleak times after rejections in early primaries.The congressman has Biden’s ear and in an interview with the Guardian in December promised to keep pressure on his friend to fulfill a promise in his victory speech directed to African Americans: “They always have my back, and I’ll have yours.”“I think he will,” Clyburn said. “I’m certainly going to work hard to make sure that he remembers that he said it.” More

    • 150 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      ‘Dumb son of a bitch’: Trump attacks McConnell in Republican donors speech

      by

      Donald Trump devoted part of a speech to Republican donors on Saturday night to insulting the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell. According to multiple reports of the $400,000-a-ticket, closed-press event, the former president called the Kentucky senator “a dumb son of a bitch”.Trump also said Mike Pence, his vice-president, should have had the “courage” to object to the certification of electoral college results at the US Capitol on 6 January. Trump claims his defeat by Joe Biden, by 306-232 in the electoral college and more than 7m votes, was the result of electoral fraud. It was not and the lie was repeatedly thrown out of court.Earlier, the Associated Press reported that it obtained a Pentagon timeline of events on 6 January, which showed Pence demanding military leadership “clear the Capitol” of rioters sent by Trump.Trump did nothing and around six hours passed between Pence’s order and the Capitol being cleared. Five people including a police officer died and some in the mob were recorded chanting “hang Mike Pence”. More than 400 face charges.In his remarks at his Mar-a-Lago resort on Saturday, amid a weekend of Republican events in Florida, some at Trump properties, the former president also mocked Dr Anthony Fauci.“Have you ever seen somebody who is so full of crap?“ Trump reportedly said about the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Joe Biden’s top medical adviser who was a key member of Trump’s coronavirus taskforce.Trump also said Covid-19 vaccines should be renamed “Trumpcines” in his honour.According to Politico, the attack on McConnell concerned the senator’s perceived failure to defend Trump with sufficient zeal in the impeachment trial which followed the Capitol riot.Trump, who told supporters to march on the Capitol and “fight like hell”, was charged with inciting an insurrection. He was acquitted when only seven Republican senators voted to convict, not enough to reach the super-majority needed. McConnell voted to acquit, then excoriated Trump on the Senate floor.Of the certification of the election result on 6 January, according to the Washington Post, Trump said: “If that were [Chuck] Schumer [the Democratic Senate leader] instead of this dumb son of a bitch Mitch McConnell, they would never allow it to happen. They would have fought it.”Trump also attacked McConnell’s wife, Elaine Chao, who was transportation secretary until she resigned over the Capitol riot, just before the end of Trump’s term.“I hired his wife,” Trump said, according to the Post. “Did he ever say thank you?”He also ridiculed her decision to resign – “She suffered so greatly,” the Post reported him saying, his “voice dripping with sarcasm” – and said he had won her husband’s Senate seat for him.Trump has attacked McConnell before, in February calling him a “dour, sullen and unsmiling political hack”. On Saturday night he also reportedly called him a “stone cold loser”. McConnell did not immediately comment.The former president remains barred from social media over the Capitol riot but he retains influence and has begun to issue endorsements for the 2022 midterms. Most have been in line with the party hierarchy, including backing Marco Rubio, a Florida senator and former presidential rival many expected would attract a challenge from Trump’s daughter Ivanka.Trump’s acquittal in his second impeachment left him free to run for the White House. He regularly tops polls of Republican voters regarding possible candidates for 2024. On Saturday night, he reportedly left that possibility undiscussed.On Sunday morning, the Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson was asked if Trump’s remarks – and their reported enthusiastic reception by party donors and leaders – helped or hindered the Republican cause.“Anything that’s divisive is a concern,” Hutchinson told CNN’s State of the Union, “and is not helpful for us fighting the battles in Washington and at the state level.“In some ways it’s not a big deal what he said. But at the same time whenever it draws attention, we don’t need that. We need unity, we need to be focused together, we have … slim numbers in Washington and we got battles to fight, so we need to get beyond that.”At Mar-a-Lago, the Post said, the former president told Republicans to stick together.“We can’t have these guys that like publicity,” he said. More

    • 138 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      Ramsey Clark, attorney general who represented Saddam Hussein, dies at 93

      by

      Ramsey Clark, who was attorney general in the Johnson administration before becoming an outspoken activist for unpopular causes and a harsh critic of US policy, has died. He was 93.Clark, whose father, Tom Clark, was attorney general and a supreme court justice, died on Friday at his Manhattan home, a family member announced.After serving in President Lyndon B Johnson’s cabinet in 1967 and 1968, Clark set up a private law practice in New York in which he championed civil rights, fought racism and the death penalty and represented declared foes of the US including former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic and Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman. He also defended former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.The New York civil rights attorney Ron Kuby, who worked with Clark on numerous cases, said his death was “very, very sad in a season of losses”.“The progressive legal community has lost its elder dean and statesman,” Kuby said. “Over many generations, Ramsey Clark was a principled voice, conscience and a fighter for civil and human rights.”Clark defended antiwar activists. In the court of public opinion, he charged the US with militarism and arrogance, starting with the Vietnam war and continuing with Grenada, Libya, Panama and the Gulf war. When Clark visited Iraq after Operation Desert Storm and returned to accuse the US of war crimes, Newsweek dubbed him the Jane Fonda of the Gulf war.Clark said he only wanted the US to live up to its ideals. “If you don’t insist on your government obeying the law, then what right do you have to demand it of others?” he said.The lanky, soft-spoken Texan went to Washington in 1961 to work in John F Kennedy’s justice department. He was 39 when Johnson made him attorney general in 1967, the second-youngest ever – Robert Kennedy had been 36.Supreme court justice Tom Clark, Harry Truman’s attorney general before he joined the high court in 1949, swore in his son, then retired to avoid the appearance of conflict of interest.Ramsey Clark said his work drew him into the civil rights revolution, which he called “the noblest quest of the American people in our time”. He also maintained opposition to the death penalty and wiretapping, defended the right of dissent and criticized FBI director J Edgar Hoover when no one else dared take him on.As Johnson’s attorney general, Clark had the job of prosecuting Dr Benjamin Spock for counseling Vietnam-era youths to resist the draft, a position with which he sympathized.“We won the case, that was the worst part,” he said years later.The Dallas-born Clark, who was in the US Marine corps in 1945 and 1946, moved his family to New York in 1970 and set up a pro bono-oriented practice. He said he and his partners were limiting their annual personal incomes to $50,000, a figure he did not always achieve.“Money’s not an interest of mine,” he said, but at the same time he was meeting steep medical bills for his daughter, Ronda, who was born with severe disabilities. He and his wife, Georgia, who were married in 1949, also had a son, Thomas, a lawyer.Clark took one shot at elective office, losing a 1976 Democratic Senate primary to Daniel P Moynihan.Clark’s client list included such peace and disarmament activists as the Harrisburg seven and the Plowshares eight. Abroad, he represented dissidents in Iran, Chile, the Philippines and Taiwan, and skyjackers in the Soviet Union.He was an advocate for Soviet and Syrian Jews but outraged many Jews over other clients. He defended a Nazi prison camp guard fighting extradition and the Palestine Liberation Organization in a lawsuit over the killing of a cruise ship passenger by hijackers.There were usually two to three dozen active cases on Clark’s legal calendar, and about 100 more in the background. Capital punishment cases were a staple.“We talk about civil liberties,” he said. “We have the largest prison population per capita on Earth. The world’s greatest jailer is the freest country on Earth?” More

    • 125 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      National debt: critics cry hypocrisy as Republicans oppose Biden spending

      by

      The response was as uniform as it was predictable.When Joe Biden unveiled an audacious $1.9tn coronavirus relief package, Senator Rick Scott of Florida warned: “I think one thing the Biden administration really has to focus on is the risk of what all this debt is going to do to us.”When the president followed up with $2tn for infrastructure, Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, made clear his opposition: “If it’s going to have massive tax increases and trillions more added to the national debt, it’s not likely.”Republicans are beating the drum of small government and fiscal responsibility. Critics say they are only doing so because Democrats control the purse strings. They argue that past Republican administrations have shown little regard for the spiralling national debt.The charge of hypocrisy could hamper efforts to stall or pare down Biden’s ambitions. After Donald Trump’s cavalier spending, and tax cuts for the rich, the GOP faces a battle for credibility.“Republicans spent the better part of the Obama presidency talking about ‘tax and spend liberals’ and ‘living within our means’ and balancing budgets and debt and deficits and then, as soon as they got the reins of power, all of that went out the window and they spent money like drunken sailors,” said Kurt Bardella, a former Republican aide, now a Democrat.“…They spent it on the rich, on the wealthy, on corporate interests. The hypocrisy of the Republican party when it comes to spending and deficits is just another example of how almost every facet of traditional conservatism has been abandoned during this Trump era … if Donald Trump released the same plan Joe Biden did, they would be all for it.”Republicans talk a good game on debt but their record tells a different story. Ronald Reagan, worshipped by many as the patron saint of “responsible” spending, left office having almost tripled the national debt and having cut taxes for the rich. George W Bush doubled the debt with military spending after 9/11 – and more tax cuts.In 2016, Trump promised to eliminate the debt within eight years. It was then about $20tn. By October 2020 it had reached $27tn – up almost 36% – thanks in large part to more tax cuts for the rich.This reality, combined with Biden’s plans, has stirred debate over whether the national debt actually matters. Experts disagree over how much debt is too much. Last year the debt exceeded GDP, but interest rates remain low.Janet Yellen, the treasury secretary, is most concerned about the need to stimulate recovery. She told Congress: “Right now, short-term, I feel we can afford what it takes to get the economy back on its feet, to get us through the pandemic, and to relieve the burdens that it is placing on households and small businesses.”Gus Faucher, chief economist at PNC Bank, agrees.“We have been through an unprecedented crisis, it makes sense that we would spend heavily to get out of it and the interest costs are so low right now it makes sense to spend heavily now so that we can return to normal,” he said.The debt does need to be addressed, he said, and hopefully better economic activity will bring it down: “We still need to figure out how to pay for the retirement of the baby boomers over the longer run but that’s a longer issue.”If rates move up quickly or if financial markets grow concerned about ability to pay back the debt “that would be a big concern”, Faucher added. “But I don’t see that on the horizon. I don’t think it’s a crisis right now.”For Maya MacGuineas, president of the non-partisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, the national debt is a crisis waiting to happen.“Our debt is the highest it has been relative to the economy since the second world war and it is about to be the highest it has been ever,” she said. “It’s growing faster than the economy, that’s the definition of unsustainable.”That leaves the US “dangerously vulnerable” to economic and geopolitical challenges, she added, arguing that spending is not the problem so much as how borrowing is paid for. Washington has increasingly attempted to enact an agenda that is not paid for. Biden’s infrastructure plan is an exception, said MacGuineas, with a plan to pay in part by increasing corporate taxes.But too often the politics of borrowing are “dangerously shortsighted and there is always a political justification not to deal with it because paying for your priorities is much harder than pretending they pay for themselves”.The situation has been exacerbated by polarization that has left Washington “unable to do anything hard … the hypocrisy during the Trump era, where we massively grew the debt, massively grew spending and refused to deal with social security and Medicare challenges, was truly problematic.“Both sides see it so differently and they need to talk to each other. Republicans keep putting in irresponsible tax cuts pretending that they will pay for themselves, which they won’t. On the Democrat side there is a denial that we have a number of programs that are growing faster than the overall economy … for seniors, retirement and healthcare. There is an unwillingness to even acknowledge that those programs have to be fixed.”It is a situation that is unlikely to change in an era when “bipartisan” is a dirty word. “They have completely different stories they tell themselves,” she said.Biden has insisted he is open to talks on infrastructure and will meet Democrats and Republicans. But if Republicans attempt to play the national debt card, they are likely to be given short shrift.Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, said: “Nobody even takes it seriously. When I see it, and I think there are millions of people like me, I just laugh. Do they really think our memories are that short?” More