DHS Proposal to Split Children from Parents at U.S. Border!

We turn now to look at a Department of Homeland Security proposal to radically shift how federal agents treat undocumented families, including asylum seekers, who attempt to enter the country. Reuters is reporting that DHS is considering a proposal to separate mothers from their children if they are caught trying to cross the border together. Under the plan, mothers would be held in custody while the children would initially be placed in the custody of the Department of Health and Human Services.
AMY GOODMAN: Texas Congressman, Democrat Henry Cuellar, criticized the new proposal. He said, "Bottom line: separating mothers and children is wrong. That type of thing is where we depart from border security and get into violating human rights." We go now to Los Angeles where we are joined by Marielena Hincapié. She is executive director of the National Immigration Law Center. So this is a proposal, we understand, that is being floated by the Department of Homeland Security. Separating mothers from their children. Can you tell us what you understand, Marielena?
MARIELENA HINCAPIÉ: Thank you for the invitation, Amy and Juan. Yes, this is a proposal, which means we can still try our best to stop this. This really amountsif it goes forward, this would amount to state-sanctioned violence against children, against families that are coming to the United States to seek safety. Everything is a administration right now isthere's such a lack of transparency. We don't have details, except what the media is reporting. And Reuters as you mentioned is reporting that there is a proposal based on some meetings that ICE has held starting in early February.
There were some notes from that that have been shared with both MSNBC and Reuters. And most recently, the Reuters reporter was able to confirm with attorneys at the Department of Homeland Security that this is very much part of a proposal that they are seriously considering.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And Marielena, what would be the purpose of separating the mothers from the children that accompany them?
MARIELENA HINCAPIÉ: Besides cruelty and inhumanity and inflicting emotional and psychological trauma? I think it is deterrence. Right? We saw this even under the Obama administration, and the Trump administration clearly has begun wanting to show that immigrants aren't welcome here, even immigrants who are seeking refuge. We saw this with the refugee ban, Muslim ban, and now we're seeing with thebaby ban, family ban? Not sure what we will call this next proposal if this comes to be a final policy. But the deterrence approach has been a failed approach. You cannot deter a mother from making the difficult decision of trying to save her children's lives. Any mother, any parent will do that. And no wall, no level of detention is ever going to stop that.
AMY GOODMAN: So can you explain exactly how it would work? They would take the mother, put her in jail, and what would they do with these children?
MARIELENA HINCAPIÉ: Well, again, we don't have the details yet. But what we understand that's being proposed is, yes, the family units would first be detained. Right? They would be detained when they arrive at the border. And again, let's remember these are calledcurrently, we have three family detention centers. There are two in Texas, and one in Pennsylvania. These are jails, right? These are families that are being put in jail. The children then are sent to a Health and Human Services facility, but again, that is still a jail. Neither the children nor the family members, nor the parents, belong in jail. Families belong together. Children belong with their mothers and their fathers. They belong in schools, they belong at home, they belong in parks.
What we believe will happen is that the families will be separated. Children will be ripped apart from their parents' arms, and placed in these separate detention centers, and will then go through the legal process, which includes a credible fear interview. That means it's an opportunity for the immigrants to show whatever evidence they have to explain that they are afraid of returning home to their home country because they fear persecution, and in many cases, murder. The fact that children will be, one, separated from their family and, two, we have no idea what process the children will have to go throughagain, because they will be by themselves. And to do so, the fact that 88 percent of families that came in the last few years had passed their credible fear interviews. The majority of people are coming to seek asylum, which they have a right to do so, under both U.S. and international law.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, some of the Republicans in Congress are claiming that the women are willing to risk the dangers of making the journey with their children because they are assured they will be quickly released from detention and that then the court dates will be set months or even years into the future. What is your response to that?
MARIELENA HINCAPIÉ: My response is that those are completely uninformed comments. And frankly, again, they are comments that talk to how out of touch these Republican and policy makers that would say that. Again, let's understand what is happening in Central America. In the Northern Trianglein Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvadorthe levels of violence have increased dramatically over the last years. Most of the peoplethe numbers of people who are coming over have increased and in fact, the number of women, and particularly teenage girls, are increasing because the levels of femicide, gender-based violence, rape, kidnapping, et cetera, is what is driving people to leave and make the difficult decision.
Now, they're not just coming just to the United States. Asylum rates have actually increased also to Nicaragua, to Belize, Costa Rica, and neighboring countries. So, the fact that a mother or a father would make the difficult decision to come to the United States and make the journey either by foot or on La Bestia, on the trainfive, 10, 20, 25 daysthat is not a decision that a parent makes lightly. And so these policymakers that claim that people are coming here just because they think they're going to be able to get detained briefly and then go into the community, are completely uninformed. Lastly, I will also say they should be released immediately, right? Once they are initially detained and have the opportunity to prove through a credible fear interview that they are seeking asylum, they should be released, not kept in detention.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, last month, President Donald Trump called his deportation plans a "military operation" during a meeting last month with the manufacturing CEOs.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: But while President Trump talks about deporting drug lords and bad dudes, we turn now to a case in Los Angeles where ICE officials tore a child away from her father as he was taking her to school. On Tuesday morning, Romulo Avelica-Gonzalez and his wife were driving their 13-year-old daughter Fatima to her school in the northeast Los Angeles neighborhood of Highland Park just after dropping off their younger daughter, when two black, unmarked vehicles approached the family's car. Fatima captured part of the arrest on her cellphone in which she can be heard sobbing as ICE agents arrest and detain her father. He has lived in the United States for more than two decades and is the father of four. In a statement, ICE defended its actions, saying Avelica-Gonzalez had a DUI in 2009 and an outstanding order of removal from 2014.
AMY GOODMAN: The family says he was less than two blocks away from the school at the time of the arrest.
Immigration attorneys and advocates fear the arrest signals a shift in ICE's long-standing policy against conducting enforcement activities at so-called "sensitive locations" like schools, churches, and hospitals. Avelica-Gonzalez's arrest comes amidst growing fears of mass deportations under President Trump. For more, we're going to Los Angeles where we are joined by two guests. Jocelyn Avelica is the daughter of Romulo Avelica-Gonzalez. He was detained by ICE agents when dropping off Jocelyn's sister, 13-year-old Fatima, at the school. And Emi MacLean is with us, an immigration attorney for National Day Laborer Organizing Network, who is assisting the Avelica-Gonzalez family. We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Jocelyn, can you tell us what happened when your parents were taking your sister to school? Describe the scene, and then we're going to play a clip of the video that was taken from the car.
JOCELYN AVELICA: OK. Well, my parents, when they were taking my sisters to school, my youngermy sister who took the videoFatimashe noticed that there was a car in the corner of our street. She said the windows were tinted, but she didn't think anything of it. So when they were on their way to drop off my youngest sister, they left her and then they made a right. And once they made that right, my dad figured out that they were being followed and that it was ICE. My dad knew it was ICE. And as soon as he found out, they put little lights andso he can stop. And my dad was really scared. He didn't know what to do.
And so eventually, when he stopped, then that's when my sister started crying and they told him, "What's your name?" and "You have a deportation." And when they
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to play, Jocelyn, the video. Who took this video?
JOCELYN AVELICA: My sister, Fatima.
AMY GOODMAN: Fatima was actually…
JOCELYN AVELICA: My younger sister. She's thirteen years old.
AMY GOODMAN: So she's filming, and let's just listen.
AMY GOODMAN: So Jocelyn, what has happened to your father now? Where is he?
JOCELYN AVELICA: Right now my dad is in Adelanto, California.
AMY GOODMAN: Where?
JOCELYN AVELICA: In the detention center, from Adelanto, California.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And Emi MacLean, can you tell us a little bit about her father and his interactions back-and-forth with immigration over the past few years?
EMI MACLEAN: Yes. Romulo Avelica-Gonzalez has lived in the United States for over 25 years. He has four U.S. citizen daughters in the United States. Jocelyn is the second eldest. As she mentioned, he has a 12- and 13-year-old daughter, who were the ones who were being taken to school that day when ICE agents in two vehicles followed them to school, picking up and arresting Mr. Avelica literally right after he dropped one of the daughters to school, and as he was en route to drop the other daughter to school. ICE agents and ICE intended to deport Mr. Avelica that day, on Tuesday, when they were picked up.
They were planningafter more than 25 years in the United States, they were planning to put him on a bus to Tijuana within hours of picking him up outside of his daughter's school. The community rallied, the school rallied, Jocelyn and her family rallied in a way that was truly extraordinary, and the community's actions prevented his deportation that day. But as Jocelyn shared, Mr. Avelica is currently in a detention centera private for-profit detention center in the desert, about an hour and a half outside Los Angeles. So, it was a really important victory on Tuesday, but there needs to be a lot more action and a lot more engagement from the community to push back on these egregious actions by ICE to prevent his ultimate deportation.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Now, how does this jibe? We've shown the quote of President Trump talking about that the government is deporting drug dealers, gang members, bad dudes. And here you have a situation of a father who apparently his only criminal violation is a DUI several years ago?
EMI MACLEAN: So, Mr. Avelica has two prior criminal convictions. One a DUI from about a decade ago and one a crime that we would consider a status crimea crime essentially that is connected to someone being undocumented, where he usedmisused a registration for a car, because he wasn't able to get a driver's license at the time, about 20 years ago. And that made him a priority, frankly, under the Obama administration, which also had egregious distinctions between so-called good and bad immigrants, and has made him a priority under the Trump administration where essentially everyone is a priority. Any distinction is not a real distinction. And part of why it has been so important to have the community rally around Romulo Avelica-Gonzalez's case is to demonstrate that no one is disposable. That we need to contest every single case. That we need to fight back against these kinds of deportations, and this kind of rhetoric and propaganda that is coming from the mouth of the president.
AMY GOODMAN: I was at the Museum of Natural History yesterday, and I was talking to someone who was telling me about teachers. And I hear this all over now about teachers, whether they are in Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, around the country, is that kids are now afraid to come to school. That undocumented families are holding their kids back, fearful that something like this will happen. That you do one arrest like this, and it sends the message that Trump wants to send around the country. Your thoughts on this, Emi?
EMI MACLEAN: Yeah, I think that's one of the struggles with this case. It has gotten an extraordinary amount of attention, which Jocelyn can share how that has really energized her father and energized her family. The amount of people that are fighting back. In some ways, that can have the kind of deterrent effect that we know that Donald Trump wants. We know that he wants, as we heard in some of the previous stories, to make people afraid of coming to the United States. To make this country unwelcoming of immigrants. And a case like this getting the kind of attention that it's got can have that effect, unless we use this case to fight back. Unless we refuse to be desensitized to the kind of horror and trauma that we see in the video that Fatima shot. Unless we use that as an opportunity to mobilize and to fight back and to say, "Not in our backyards, not in our cities, not in our community, not in our country." We're going to not be complicit in this kind of brutal immigration enforcement actions from this administration or any administration.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And Jocelyn, could you talk about the impact on your family, of your father now being in detention, taken away from you? And also, your reaction to the support you've gotten from the community and from advocates?
JOCELYN AVELICA: It is been amazing, the whole community, how they came together, and that's really important. I think as a community coming together, we will win and we will have a victory in this. And my family, we are truly blessed to have all of this going on. When we feel drained, when we feel like we can't go on, we hear my dad's voice. And once we hear my dad's voice, we want to do so much more. And we want this to help other families also, be able to speak out, to not stay in the shadows. Speak out, and also have a plan. And I think this is making my family so much stronger.
Although, my sistersthis has affected them in so many ways. They are in Students Run L.A., and they had a 22-mile yesterday, on Saturday. And they had to run 22 miles. And they were crying the day before to my mom saying, "I don't want to go. I don't want to go." Because my dad was always the one cheering them on there. My dad was always, "We're going to take the bikes, and we're going toafter that, we can ride bikes." And mythey're going to do the LA Marathon for my dad. So the run is going to be for my dadRelease Romulo.
But I see their face every day and I know they are not the same. My sisters are not the same. But this is why we are fighting. We are fighting for our family back and we are fighting so that other families can also reach out and we're not going to let Trump win in this. We're going to stick together as a community, and we're going to do anything possible to have my father back and so others can also beso they can feel like they have the support.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, we want to thank you for being with us, Jocelyn Avelica. Jocelyn, how old are you?
JOCELYN AVELICA: Nineteen years old.
AMY GOODMAN: And can you see your dad in jail now?
JOCELYN AVELICA: Right now, we haven't gone to visit him. But we can go. But because there is a case of the chickenpox right now, so we haven't been able to go. But as soon as that gets cleared up, we are going to go see my dad.
AMY GOODMAN: Jocelyn Avelica
EMI MACLEAN: There's a quarantine in the facility and they haven't lifted it. So it has been very difficult for the family and they're not allowed to go and visit.
AMY GOODMAN: There is a quarantine in the jail? So all the prisoners like her dad are being exposed to this?
EMI MACLEAN: We haven't had a chanceactually, they haven't let attorneys into the facility, either. Into the portion of the facility where there's this quarantine. But I will say that Jocelyn and her family have been speaking to their father by phone regularly. And he, rather than being totally drained and depressed, has expressed to them how proud he is of them and how energized he is, and the community and others inside are, watching the kind of mobilization that the community has put forward to defend him, and to try to fight back against his deportation.
AMY GOODMAN:: So he's brought into a sick facility and he's quarantined there.
EMI MACLEAN: Yes.

WHO/WHAT/WHY MARCH 6, 2017 | PETER DALE SCOTT

TRUMP VS. DEEP STATE?' THAT'S HOW LIGHT GETS IN

Photo credit: Adapted by WhoWhatWhy from Christopher Woodrich / Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0) and Matt Popovich / Flickr
The resignation of President Donald Trump's National Security Adviser Michael Flynn on February 13 was accompanied by a flood of speculation about a war between the Trump administration and the "Deep State," meaning the intelligence agencies. In the midst of the furor, three remarkably similarly slanted stories about it appeared in The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Post, all under headlines about an American "Deep State," and all with references to perceived similarities to Turkey and Egypt.
According to a front-page story in The New York Times:
A wave of leaks from government officials has hobbled the Trump administration, leading some to draw comparisons to countries like Egypt, Turkey and Pakistan, where shadowy networks within government bureaucracies, often referred to as "deep states," undermine and coerce elected governments.
So is the United States seeing the rise of its own deep state?
Not quite, experts say, but the echoes are real and disturbing.
Though leaks can be a normal and healthy check on a president's power, what's happening now extends much further…[1]
Edward Curtin sounded a more alarming note, accusing the Deep State of a "Reality-TV Coup d'etat in Prime Time":
The day after his surprise election, the interlocking circles of power that run the show in sun and shadows what C. Wright Mills long ago termed the Power Elite met to overthrow him, or at least to render him more controllable. These efforts, run out of interconnected power centers, including the liberal corporate legal boardrooms that were the backers of Obama and Hillary Clinton, had no compunction in planning the overthrow of a legally elected president.[2]
But there is no meeting-place that could ever accommodate the amorphous "circles" of US power (more conflicted than interlocked), and no concerted policy that could ever issue from such an imaginary meeting.
As Greg Grandin wrote in The Nation:
Much of the writing frames the question as Trump versus the Deep State, but even if we take the "deep state" as a valid concept, surely it's not useful to think of the competing interests it represents as monolithic, as David Martin in an e-mail suggests. Big Oil and Wall Street might want deregulation and an opening to Russia. The euphemistically titled "intelligence community" wants a ramped-up war footing. High-tech wants increased trade. Trump, who presents as pure id wrapped in ambition motived by appetite, wants it all which makes him both potentially useful and inherently unstable, simultaneously a product and target of the deep state. In 1956, C. Wright Mills wrote that "the conception of the power elite and of its unity rests upon the corresponding developments and the coincidence of interests among economic, political, and military organizations." If nothing else, the "Trump v. Deep State" framings show that unity is long gone.[3]
Following more customary usage, including studies of the phenomenon in Turkey and Egypt, Grandin does not (like The New York Times) confine the term "Deep State" to perhaps its most structural component, the intelligence agencies. As I tried to show recently, the deep state is not geographically confined to the Beltway agencies, but is everywhere, including inside the new Trump team.[4]
In contrast, the Times, the Post, and the Los Angeles Times articles seek to limit the conflict to its most conspicuous feature: the recent flood of leaks about Trump, Flynn, Paul Manafort, Roger Stone (and now our new Attorney General Jeff Sessions) and Russia. And all three depict the leaks as traditional "pushback" (McManus's term in theLos Angeles Times ) against dangerous new Trump policies, by officials who have been "forced" (according to The New York Times) "to ask how far they will go" in response to a president who "is playing to the edge of his powers."
All three newspapers agreed moreover that the conflict weakens America, "is bad for the intelligence community, bad for the White House, and bad for the nation's security" (The New York Times).
The Washington Post also warned
Such a disposition is simply unhealthy for a democratic system that is supposed to be based on checks and balances, deliberation and debate. It polarizes the political conversation, creating false binaries between "the people" only, of course, those who voted for Trump and the machinery of Washington. And, ironically, it can give would-be authoritarians license to subvert and remold that machinery into a deep state that's more to their tastes.[5]
Undoubtedly, the situation is unusually polarized, to the point that most of the recent discussion has expressed alarm. Some agree with Patrick Buchanan, attacking the forced resignation of Flynn, that "the deep state is after larger game than General Flynn. It is out to bring down President Trump and abort any move to effect the sort of rapprochement with Russia that Ronald Reagan achieved. For the deep state is deeply committed to Cold War II."[6]
On the other hand are those like Bill Kristol, who tweeted, "If it comes to it, prefer the deep state to the Trump state."[7]
Many Americans see wrong on both sides, like Glenn Greenwald, who in a tweet wrote "Trump presidency is dangerous. CIA/Deep State abuse of spy powers to subvert elected Govt is dangerous. One can cogently believe both."[8] What makes them most dangerous, in my eyes, is the risk of great power confrontation, which may have increased with Trump's plans to increase defense spending by $54 billion.
But the so-called conflict between Trump and the deep state, which the Times, L.A. Times, and Post all see as dangerous, I see as the best hope for limiting excessive power. When leaks from the FBI helped bring down Richard Nixon in the 1970s, the ultimate outcome was the post-Watergate reforms that curtailed excesses such as domestic spying by the CIA.[9]
In 2003, as President George W. Bush and his Vice President Dick Cheney launched the Iraq War, neocon author Laurie Mylroie wrote a book whose title, resonant with our current situation, was Bush vs. The Beltway: How the CIA and the State Department Tried to Stop the War on Terror.[10] In it, according to her publishers, Mylroie described "how forces within the CIA and the State Department have conspired to discredit crucial intelligence about Saddam Hussein's regime, from his links to al Qaeda to his development of chemical, biological, and nuclear weaponry [and] potential Iraq involvement in the fall 2001 anthrax attacks." Still wilder were the charges in the book that Saddam was behind both the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and the 1995 bombing in Oklahoma City.
Today we can say with confidence that every one of these charges against Saddam (some of which were apparently fed her by neocons in the Bush administration) was false. On the other hand, she was correct in alleging that the CIA tried to discredit Bush's and Cheney's claims that Saddam was developing nuclear weapons.[11]
We know a little bit more about both the presidency and the CIA, precisely because of this conflict between them in 2002-03. The conflict failed to prevent the Iraq War, but revelations from it eventually contributed to the war's de-escalation when Barack Obama came to power. The lessons should be remembered today, when Flynn and others in the Trump camp have been advocating a re-escalation of the Iraq War. (Like others in Hillary Clinton's camp.)[12]
So when the Post, the Times, and the L.A. Times all in lockstep proclaim that such conflict "is bad," I reach the opposite conclusion: conflict between competing power-hungry forces is the most proven way in Washington for checks and balances to restrain excessive power, and also to make for a more open politics. As Leonard Cohen wrote, "There is a crack, a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in."

References

.

1. Amanda Taub and Max Fisher, "As Leaks Multiply, Fears of a Deep State' in America Increase," New York Times, February 16, 2017,https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/16/world...trump.html. Cf. Doyle McManus, "Is the deep state' out to get Trump? We're not there yet," Los Angeles Times, February 19, 2017, http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-...story.html; Ishaan Tharoor, "Is Trump fighting the deep state' or creating his own?" Washington Post, February 1, 2017,https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worl...698a2c4ba3.

2. Edward Curtin, "The Deep State Goes Shallow: A Reality-TV Coup d'etat in Prime Time," OpEdNews 2/24/2017 at 14:03:50

3. Greg Grandin, What Is the Deep State?" Nation, February 17, 2017,https://www.thenation.com/article/what-i...eep-state/.

4. Peter Dale Scott, "Donald J. Trump And The Deep State," WhoWhatWhy, February 6-7, 2017, http://whowhatwhy.org/2017/02/06/donald-j-trump-deep-state-part-1/,http://whowhatwhy.org/2017/02/07/donald-...te-part-2/.

5. Ishaan Tharoor, "Is Trump fighting the deep state' or creating his own?" Washington Post,
February 1, 2017,https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worl...698a2c4ba3.

6. Patrick Buchanan, "The Deep State Targets Trump," RealClearPolitics, February 17, 2017,http://www.realclearpolitics.com/article...33119.html.

7. https://twitter.com/BillKristol/status/8...4661747712

8. https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/83...0940005377

9. See Kathryn S. Olmsted, Challenging the Secret Government: The Post-Watergate Investigations of the CIA and FBI (Durham, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1996).

10. Laurie Mylroie, Bush vs. The Beltway: How the CIA and the State Department Tried to Stop the War on Terror (QQ: Regan Books, 2003).

11. Jason Leopold, "The CIA Just Declassified the Document That Supposedly Justified the Iraq Invasion," Vice News, March 19, 2015, https://news.vice.com/article/the-cia-ju...q-invasion:
"Thirteen years ago, the intelligence community concluded in a 93-page classified document used to justify the invasion of Iraq that it lacked specific information' on many key aspects' of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs.
But that's not what top Bush administration officials said during their campaign to sell the war to the American public. Those officials, citing the same classified document, asserted with no uncertainty that Iraq was actively pursuing nuclear weapons, concealing a vast chemical and biological weapons arsenal, and posing an immediate and grave threat to US national security.
Congress eventually concluded that the Bush administration had overstated' its dire warnings about the Iraqi threat, and that the administration's claims about Iraq's WMD program were not supported by the underlying intelligence reporting.' But that underlying intelligence reporting contained in the so-called National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that was used to justify the invasion has remained shrouded in mystery until now."

12. Whether Flynn in the White House was an advocate of military aggressiveness or of restraint is a complex issue still being debated. See Dana Priest, "The Disruptive Career of Michael Flynn, Trump's National-Security Adviser, New Yorker, November 23, 2016,http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/...ty-adviser.

President Trump and fellow Republicans have repeatedly promised to repeal and replace Obamacare, but their efforts have faced internal divisions as well as sustained outcry from constituents at town hall meetings across the country.

For more on the future of healthcare, we go to Boston, where we're joined by John McDonough, professor at the Harvard School of Public Health. He is the former executive director of Health Care for All in Massachusetts, which played a key role in the passage of the 2006 Massachusetts health reform bill, which was known as Romneycare. He later became a top aide to the late Senator Ted Kennedy and worked on the development and passage of the Affordable Care Act. He's also author of the book Inside National Health Reform.
Professor John McDonough, welcome to Democracy Now! Your assessment of what has been released so far?
JOHN McDONOUGH: What we see so far is not a surprise, and it's been revealed in bits and pieces along the way. The Republican plan represents a massive tax cut to benefit wealthy households and powerful corporations in America. And in exchange, a significant number of millions of Americans, lower-income and lower-middle-income, are going to lose their health insurance coverage to make up for the lost revenue from these tax cuts.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, in what way do you say it's a tax cut for the wealthy?
JOHN McDONOUGH: So, the Affordable Care Act is significantly financedand most people don't know thisby a major tax increase on wealthy households, both on earned income and on unearned income. And it has been a major target, although they don't talk about it a lot, of Republicans to repeal these tax cuts. And just to give you some perspective on this, the bill that the Republicans put out would repeal these taxes. The 400 wealthiest households in America, because of this tax cut, will see annual tax cuts of $7 million per household. The 160 million households with incomes below $200,000 will get zero from this, except some 10 [million] to 20 million will lose health insurance coverage because of this law.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, another feature of the proposal appears to be dealing, clearly, with Medicaid and turning the expansion of Medicaid under Obamacare for a greater number of low-income individuals into block grants that then would be capped. So, in essence, the states would, at one point or another, then face a cap on federal aid under Medicaid.
JOHN McDONOUGH: Yes, absolutely. And the Republican agenda is to try and shrink the federal obligation to low-income coverage through Medicaid as much as they can. This has been a tough balancing act for them, because 31 states expanded Medicaid to about 10 million low-income Americans, 10 [million] to 11 million. And there's been a real struggle, because about half of those states are now represented by Republican governors, who do not want to see the dramatic losses in coverage that the Republicans would like to achieve if they were able to do what their instincts were leading them to do. So, there's tension in the party. The conservatives want to see a much more drastic cut to Medicaid. The more moderate or less conservative Republicans from states that expanded are unwilling to see a wholesale throwing off of hundreds of thousands or millions of people from coverage. And so, the speaker, Ryan, and his team are really trying to walk a tightrope between those two sides. But either way, we're looking, over years, in the significant reduction in the number of Americans covered through Medicaid.
By the way, we don't have precise numbers on this, because the Republicans are pushing this forward before the Congressional Budget Office has put out a score, both in terms of cost and coverage losses. So, we are a little bitwe'll probably learn within the next week to two weeks of what these numbers are, but right now we're just doing our best estimating. But the trend is clear: fewer vulnerable Americans with health insurance and bigger tax cuts for wealthy Americans and for powerful companies.
AMY GOODMAN: Professor McDonough, can you explain age rating and what this means?
JOHN McDONOUGH: So, the Affordable Care Act created tax creditsthey're often referred to as subsidiesto enable people, sort of lower-middle-income people above Medicaid eligibility, to be able to get health insurance coverage. Republicans are also proposing tax credits for Americans who can't get coverage elsewhere. The big difference is, the ACA has incomehas tax credits that are income-adjusted, so the lower your income, the more generous the tax credit. And as you go up the income ladder, it scales out, and at four times the poverty level, you get no more support from those tax credits. Republicans are saying, "Let's just create a flat tax credit, and it varies only by your age, whether you're in your twenties, in which you get a $2,000 credit, up to your sixties, where you would get a $4,000 credit." In all of those cases, the support that you would get would be significantly less than what you would obtain under the ACA income tax credits for the people who need it the most, which is the people with less income. So, the new tax credits are a little bit like giving a six-foot ladder for someone to get out of a 20-foot hole. Most of the people who are getting coverage right now through the ACA will not be able to afford to buy coverage with the Republican-envisioned tax credits that no longer take account of your income, only your age.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I wanted to ask you about another section of the proposal called the continuous coverage provision.
JOHN McDONOUGH: Yes.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Apparently, this is a replacement forto some degree, for the mandate. But under the old mandate, people would have to pay a fine, if they didn't have insurance, to the government. What happens now under this continuous coverage provision?
JOHN McDONOUGH: You're right. So, the so-called individual mandate in the ACA is by and far the least popular part, although it is essential for guaranteed issue and eliminating pre-existing conditions. But the current ACA mandate basically is ait's not a mandate. You don't have to buy coverage; however, if you don't buy coverage and you're able to afford it, then you face a tax penalty, when you pay your taxes, of up to $695 for a full year without coverage or a percent of your income.
The Republican plan gets rid of that. It reduces all those penalties to zero. And it puts in place a different kind of a penalty. And the penalty says that if in the prior year, in the prior 12 months, you had a gap in health insurance coverage of more than 63 days, then when you go back to buy health insurance, you will pay a premium on top of your premium that will represent 30 percent more. So let's say that I want toI had a gap in coverage, and I want to buy health insurance in the following year, and I want to buy an individual policy that costs me, let's say, $7,500 in a premium. So I would pay on top of that a penalty of an additional $2,200.
So the maximum penalty under the ACA is $695. But you're looking at a penalty here right now, to replace the individual mandate, that is significantly more punitive and more difficult and will in fact keep many Americans from being able to get back and buy health insurance once they've had coverage. And there's no hardship exemption. There is nothing. This is on everybody, if you had a gap in coverage of more than 63 days. So it will be a real impediment from people who say, "OK, I'm ready now. I'm able to afford it, and I want to buy health insurance coverage." It's not making it easier for people to get coverage; it's making it harder.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And there's also a difference, isn't there, in that the penalty under the Affordable Care Act went to the government to supposedly
JOHN McDONOUGH: That's right.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: help defray the costs of the overall plan? But this additional premium would go to the insurance companies, not to the government
JOHN McDONOUGH: Absolutely.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: to basically help their bottom line, right?
JOHN McDONOUGH: Enough said.
AMY GOODMAN: And what aboutwhat about reproductive rights, Professor McDonough?
JOHN McDONOUGH: Yeah, so, in addition, the bill that's being promoted by the Republican leadership will eliminate funding for Planned Parenthood very quickly, all funding for all services. There is no federal funding that goes to Planned Parenthood for abortion, but this would eliminate all funding for any service to this one organization called Planned Parenthood, which is a significant political risk for them, because already there are at least two Republican senators, Susan Collins from Maine and Lisa Murkowski from Alaska, who have said they will not vote for a bill that eliminates funding for Planned Parenthood. And Republicans can only lose three votes in the Senate. They got a letter the other day from four senators saying that the House treatment of Medicaid is unacceptable, and they could not support that bill. So, it's uncertain in the House politically, and it's highly uncertain what's going to happen to this plan over in the Senate.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I wanted to ask you about some of the more bizarre provisions of this bill. I understand it's a 66-page bill, which the Republicans are actually touting, compared to the hundreds of pages of the original Affordable Care Act. But seven pages, or more than 10 percent, of the bill are dedicated to excluding lottery winners from the healthfrom the insurance? Can you explain that?
JOHN McDONOUGH: So, Ithat's one of those little curious tales that journalists will ferret out in the next couple of days. I am honestly not sure where that came from, except that, clearly, they had some advocacy from some lottery winners around this, and so there is an exclusion of lottery winners in terms of when they can get Medicaid and when they can't. And it is bizarre to focus that much on it. But I'm sure there's a tale behind that in terms of how that got in there.
AMY GOODMAN: In seeing people fan out to talk about this, the watchword, the buzzword, is "accessibility": People will have access to healthcare. But that's not the same as people will be able to afford healthcare. So, overall, what is the takeaway you have right now? I mean, it was just released yesterday. As you saidand this is not a minor pointit hasn't even been scored. What did it taketwo years?for you guys to figure out how much this was going to cost? Could it cost actually more, overall, for the country?
JOHN McDONOUGH: Well, it could. But I think that there are other parts of the ACA that remain untouched that have significant economic consequences. So, a big piece of the financing of the ACA represented substantial reductions in the Medicare program to healthcare providersto hospitals, to home health agencies, to insurance companies in the Medicare Advantage program. And so, a significantit's about half the cost of the law was through reductions in Medicare payments. And for the most part, particularly from the hospitalshospitals are giving up about $350 billion in revenue that they would otherwise collect, because they wanted to make a serious, real contribution to getting most of America to have health insurance. The hospital industry is now deeply alarmed and is ringing a lot of alarms, saying, "Hey, we gave up an enormous amount of money, $350 billion over 10 years, in order to get America covered with health insurance." And they are saying, "Listen, if you want to take away that coverage, then we want our money back." But Republicans are not planning on giving that money back, so they are going to be taking away the coverage, and they're going to be leaving the cuts in place for hospitals, who are going to be on the front line of dealing with the millions of Americans who will be newly uninsured because of this law.
So, because they leave that money in place, it will not be challenging for this bill to in fact bewill be fiscally neutral and will not add to the deficit. I don't anticipate that, because they're leaving that whole other part of the law. So, they're repealing each and every tax increase in the ACA, including things that you just wonder what was on their mind. There's a tax on indoor tanning salons, which is a significant cause of skin cancer and melanoma and other serious skin cancers. But they leave in place all of the reductions to the medical providers who are on the sharp end of care. So, I wouldn't expect this to be a deficit increaser. But, of course, we'll see when the Congressional Budget Office score comes out in the next couple of weeks.

March 8, 2017 | Celia Wexler Who.What.Why.

Daggers Drawn: Conservatives Plot Ways to Throttle Agency Power

Critics of Administrative State' Aim to Slash Rules Now and Forever

Photo credit: Adapted by WhoWhatWhy from Puck / Library of Congress
Last Thursday, towards the end of The Time for Regulatory Reform in Congress, a four-hour conference on Capitol Hill, Chuck Gordon, a retired federal lawyer, raised his hand to ask a question.
"Agencies have made the air cleaner,'" and ensured that "workers are protected from asbestos," he said. "Why do people here hate agencies?"
Gordon's query was understandable. Most panelists expressed a distaste for agencies that was palpable. The conference was co-sponsored by the administrative law section of the American Bar Association, but the driving force behind the event appeared to be its partner, the Center for the Study of the Administrative State, a program of the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University. "It is fitting that an institution bearing the name of Antonin Scalia would sponsor this event," keynote speaker Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) told conferees.
Lee railed against "executive branch bureaucrats who work in Soviet-style structures," who go unnoticed by the public. But agencies' "reputation for irrelevance" has never been deserved, he added, charging that the "administrative state is revolting" against the Trump White House.
Lee accused national intelligence leakers of using their power to "go after" Michael Flynn, who resigned as national security adviser after media accounts of his meetings with the Russian ambassador before Trump took office. While not commenting on the merits of Flynn's actions, Lee said he found the leakers' actions reprehensible "behavior for a banana republic."
Another sign of agency resistance, he said, was the effort of Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) staffers and their union to "pressure" the Senate to reject Scott Pruitt as EPA head.
Agencies, Lee insisted, "are operating almost as a fourth branch" of government, ignoring the US Constitution's delegation of "all legislative powers" to Congress.
Lee's speech confirmed the event's main message: Congress had given away far too much power to federal agencies, and it was time to roll that power back. Panelists suggested a number of legislative and policy options to do just that.
Utah Senator Mike Lee thinks agencies have too much power.
Photo credit: Gage Skidmore / Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Todd Gaziano, the executive director of the conservative Pacific Legal Foundation, proposed that the Trump White House work with Congress to nullify regulations and policy positions that go far back in time. He said that the current law, the Congressional Review Act (CRA), which he helped draft as a congressional staffer, could be a far more powerful cudgel.
The CRA, passed in 1996, permits Congress to overrule economically significant regulations during a brief time period 60 legislative days after they have been finalized. To block a regulation, the president must also consent, meaning that the CRA is only effective when the political stars align, as they did in 2016: A Democratic president was replaced by a Republican president, and Republicans retained control of the House and the Senate.
The regulations targeted by the CRA are often termed "midnight regulations" implying they were issued in the waning hours of a presidential administration although many of them were actually years in the making. The law allows Congress to block these rules through a process that requires only 51 votes to pass in the Senate. Not only does the CRA kill rules, it states that a rule that is "substantially the same" as the rule that was killed can never be proposed again, unless Congress passes another law allowing it.
Until President Donald Trump was elected, Congress had overturned just one regulation under the CRA, a rule to address workplace injuries like carpal tunnel finalized by the Clinton White House shortly before George W. Bush was elected. The Department of Labor never tried to propose a similar rule again.
To date, Trump has axed two Obama rules, with several more on Congress's plate. Matthew Owen, a senior aide to Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH), predicted that Congress may use the CRA to kill "10-15" rules.. If that prediction comes to pass "we will have increased the use of CRA by a thousand or fifteen hundred percent," Owens said with enthusiasm. (Owen also noted that he was speaking for himself and not Portman, but Portman has a long history of wanting to curb agencies.)
Owen described one of the recently killed rules as dealing with "gun rights and veterans." The rule would have added 75,000 people receiving Social Security disability benefits because of mental illness or other incapacity to the Federal Bureau of Investigation's background check database for firearms. The other rule that Congress blocked would have barred coal companies from dumping toxic waste in streams.
But why kill just midnight rules? Gaziano contended that the CRA could be used to go after much older rules that fell through the cracks. The CRA requires agencies to send a report on their rules, and the rule's costs and benefits, to both houses of Congress and to the Government Accountability Office (GAO) before the 60-day clock for congressional review starts ticking.
"Twenty-one years later, since the CRA was passed, studies show that hundreds of rules were never delivered to Congress and the GAO," Gaziano claimed. There is a backlog of scores of rules that agencies could send to Congress and lawmakers could eliminate, he contended.
The beauty of "CRA 2.0," Gaziano said, is that once Congress kills a rule, it cannot be resurrected in the future. Conservative media and groups have hailed the concept as a "regulatory game changer."
The panelists also discussed many other legislative proposals that had kicked around for years, but now have new life with Republicans firmly in control. "The administrative state is in the crosshairs," exulted Naomi Rao, the director of the Center for Study of the Administrative State, suggesting that the time for massive deregulation "has really come."
Many panelists endorsed Portman's Regulatory Accountability Act, which would add many more requirements for agencies to make rules, giving corporations more opportunities to block them. Christopher Walker, a law professor at Ohio State University, declared himself a "big fan" of the bill. He predicted it would allow "regulated entities to have a bigger role" in conceptualizing a rule before an "agency dives in."
Photo credit: Adapted by WhoWhatWhy from Pixabay / Wikimedia and Drew Geraets / Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0)

One skeptic was George Washington University law professor Richard Pierce, who has written more than 20 books on administrative law and related issues. He found all the proposals discussed "ill advised" and based "on a misunderstanding of agency rulemaking." The way agencies currently develop regulations is "not loosey-goosey," Pierce said, and agencies now struggle to comply with burdensome rulemaking requirements. He cited a recent study that showed that the average EPA rule takes more than six years to implement.
Pierce also contended that agencies have issued rules whose public benefits far outweigh the costs of compliance. Pierce referred to a recent report by the White House Office of Management and Budget that reviewed 10 years of major agency rules and found that the benefits were seven to eight times greater than their costs.
But Pierce's critique was largely ignored as panelists extolled yet another proposal: the Regulations from the Executive In Need of Scrutiny (REINS) Act. Members of Congress routinely expect agencies to write the rules to implement their broad legislative mandates. But REINS would put Congress in the driver's seat. Any rule that cost at least $100 million annually or had other big impacts could not take effect until both the House and Senate approved, and the president gave his consent. REINS imposes a tight timeline on Congress 70 legislative days. If Congress fails to act, the rule dies and stays dead for the duration of that Congress.
In the past, many lawmakers had believed that REINS was not workable, largely because Congress lacks both the expertise and the time for floor action. Even Senate staffer Owen predicted it would tie up the Senate.
But other panelists feeling a conservative wind at their backs were more enthused. Jonathan Adler, director of the Center for Business Law and Regulation at Case Western Reserve University, argued that REINS would ensure that agencies paid attention to the current Congress, not to the laws that an earlier Congress had actually passed.
The last time Congress modified the Clean Air Act was 1990, he said. But Adler questioned whether current lawmakers "agree with the view of that Congress 27 years ago." Adler contended that the current Congress has no reason to honor the wishes of past elected officials when they strengthened the Clean Air Act. A current Congress, he argued, should treat agency regulations based on the Clean Air Act as "proposals" and nothing more.
For example, Adler said, Congress can tell an agency that "we'd like a proposal" about how to address air pollution in 2017, and then Congress will vote that proposal up or down.
Lee concluded the conference by insisting that lawmakers "like to pass platitudes," about things like clean air and water, but then can blame federal agencies when their constituents complain about the rules. The administrative state, Lee said, fails "to put people in charge of their government," leading to "a deep and bipartisan distrust." With the cooperation of a Trump White House, Lee said, Congress "can regain that trust."
But lawyer Amit Narang, a regulatory policy advocate for the progressive public interest group, Public Citizen, found that message "deeply ironic."
Congress already is actively rolling back regulations through the CRA, Narang observed. "Congress can pass a law to repeal any regulation," he added. "Congress can also go after popular laws like the Clean Air Act." The reason Congress doesn't weaken the Clean Air Act or Clean Water Act or the Occupational Safety and Health Act is because lawmakers know "they would face public opposition," Narang charged.
All these proposals under discussion, Narang contended, "would be damaging and harmful. Their practical impact would be extreme: blocking public protections wholesale."

There are just under 1000 US troops in Syria now and another 1000 staging in the UAE nearby. It looks like soon we'll have massive troop involvement there [as soon as a real or false-flag event causes a lot of US troop deaths]. No real objective has been stated, it is illegal by US and international law, and even who's side(s) they are aligned with and who against are not clear. Another insanity is building and many [mostly civilians] will die. I see no difference in foreign policy and general belligerency between Trump and others prior apart from fine nuances not worthy of mention.

I took note of the idea that Flynn was 'removed' because of this open threat to Iran [which others in the Military and intelligence communities felt - rightly - was suicidal and unnecessary]. So, some of the targets of warfare are different, but most seem the same and I think some new ones are just on the horizon [Korea, China, others].

Meanwhile the Trumpf administration doesn't even speak about genocide in S. Sudan, starvation in Yemen and many other crises - they don't give a shit about human suffering - domestic and even less foreign. At least in the past lip service and eventually some aide was offered by the US...now I think there will be zero. The part of the World not wanted for US Corporate conquest is on its own now.

Peter Lemkin Wrote:There are just under 1000 US troops in Syria now and another 1000 staging in the UAE nearby. It looks like soon we'll have massive troop involvement there [as soon as a real or false-flag event causes a lot of US troop deaths]. No real objective has been stated, it is illegal by US and international law, and even who's side(s) they are aligned with and who against are not clear. Another insanity is building and many [mostly civilians] will die. I see no difference in foreign policy and general belligerency between Trump and others prior apart from fine nuances not worthy of mention.

I took note of the idea that Flynn was 'removed' because of this open threat to Iran [which others in the Military and intelligence communities felt - rightly - was suicidal and unnecessary]. So, some of the targets of warfare are different, but most seem the same and I think some new ones are just on the horizon [Korea, China, others].

Meanwhile the Trumpf administration doesn't even speak about genocide in S. Sudan, starvation in Yemen and many other crises - they don't give a shit about human suffering - domestic and even less foreign. At least in the past lip service and eventually some aide was offered by the US...now I think there will be zero. The part of the World not wanted for US Corporate conquest is on its own now.

I think this has been in the works through the Obama admin. I think the Russians who basically own Syria have cut some kind of deal with the US. It will end up in partition of Syria. ISIS is over and done with, until they are reborn closer or in Russia and China. imo.

Peter Lemkin Wrote:There are just under 1000 US troops in Syria now and another 1000 staging in the UAE nearby. It looks like soon we'll have massive troop involvement there [as soon as a real or false-flag event causes a lot of US troop deaths]. No real objective has been stated, it is illegal by US and international law, and even who's side(s) they are aligned with and who against are not clear. Another insanity is building and many [mostly civilians] will die. I see no difference in foreign policy and general belligerency between Trump and others prior apart from fine nuances not worthy of mention.

I took note of the idea that Flynn was 'removed' because of this open threat to Iran [which others in the Military and intelligence communities felt - rightly - was suicidal and unnecessary]. So, some of the targets of warfare are different, but most seem the same and I think some new ones are just on the horizon [Korea, China, others].

Meanwhile the Trumpf administration doesn't even speak about genocide in S. Sudan, starvation in Yemen and many other crises - they don't give a shit about human suffering - domestic and even less foreign. At least in the past lip service and eventually some aide was offered by the US...now I think there will be zero. The part of the World not wanted for US Corporate conquest is on its own now.

Il Douchebag Trump does care about human suffering -- he gets great satisfaction inflicting it.

"You're fired!" was his reality TV catch-phrase.

He especially enjoys sticking it to his own voters. He wasn't in the White House more than a few minutes before he rescinded a $500 a year tax cut for lower income home-buyers, hundreds of thousands of whom were his voters.

He rescinded regulations requiring professional financial advisers to put the interests of the client first, thus allowing predatory hucksters to prey on the elderly, another key Trump voting bloc.

The Trumpcare proposals will royally screw lower income, older Americans.

Trump loves to cause human suffering -- hence the proposal to separate children from their parents who get caught entering the USA illegally.

His Injustice Department wants to line up private prisons for the anticipated influx of prisoners from a new war on drugs.

We're in for a wave of unprecedented scum-baggery.

Resolution in Support of Congressional Investigation regarding
Impeachment of President Donald J. Trump


WHEREAS, the Foreign Emoluments Clause of the United States Constitution
provides that "no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under [the United
States], shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present,
Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign
State," thereby prohibiting conflicts of interest that could influence the conduct of
the foreign affairs of the United States,


WHEREAS, the Domestic Emoluments Clause of the United States Constitution
provides that, besides the fixed salary for his four-year term, the President "shall
not receive within that Period any other Emolument from the United States, or any
of them," thereby prohibiting conflicts of interest that could influence the conduct of
the domestic affairs of the United States,


WHEREAS, the term "emoluments" includes a broad range of financial benefits,
including but not limited to monetary payments, purchase of goods and services
even for fair market value, subsidies, tax breaks, extensions of credit, and favorable
regulatory treatment,


WHEREAS, Donald J. Trump, the President of the United States, owns various
business interests and receives various streams of income from all over the world,
WHEREAS, many of these businesses receive, and streams of income include,
emoluments from foreign governments, states of the United States, or the United
States itself,


WHEREAS, leading constitutional scholars and government ethics experts warned
Donald J. Trump shortly after the November 2016 election that, unless he fully
divested his businesses and invested the money in conflict-free assets or a blind
trust, he would violate the Constitution from the moment he took office,


WHEREAS, on January 11, 2017, nine days before his inauguration, Donald J.
Trump announced a plan that would, if carried out, remove him from day-to-day
operations of his businesses, but not eliminate any of the ongoing flow of
emoluments from foreign governments, state governments, or the United States
government,


WHEREAS, on January 20, 2017, Donald J. Trump took the oath of office and
became President of the United States,


WHEREAS, from the moment he took office, President Trump was in violation of
the Foreign Emoluments Clause and the Domestic Emoluments Clause of the
United States Constitution,


WHEREAS, these violations undermine the integrity of the Presidency, corruptly
advance the personal wealth of the President, and violate the public trust,


WHEREAS, our democracy is premised on the bedrock principle that no one is
above the law, not even the President of the United States,


NOW, THEREFORE, THE [CITY/TOWN] RESOLVES to call upon the United
States House of Representatives to support a resolution authorizing and directing
the House Committee on the Judiciary to investigate whether sufficient grounds
exist for the impeachment of Donald J. Trump, President of the United States,
including but not limited to the violations listed herein; and,


BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that copies of this resolution be transmitted
officially to the Member[s] of the United States House of Representatives that
represent[s] the city, namely, the Honorable _____________________; and,


BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that copies of this resolution be transmitted
officially to certain other cities and communities in this state, namely, ___________.
Approved and enacted this day: _________