[mpen-dayton] FW: "Health Care" & "Consumer rights under attack" & "No candidate should say this" and more

FYI. Best, Munsup

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• FW: Health Care
• FW: Inside the space station
• FW: Consumer rights under attack
• FW: Watch now: My floor speech on Trump and nuclear war
• FW: US Provides Military Assistance to 73 Percent of World's Dictatorships
• FW: No candidate should say this
• FW: How to think like a Trump supporter; Stephen Paddock; How to be a true American patriot in 8 easy steps

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From: Thomas Scott
Subject: Health Care
    

• We Get Sick, They Get Rich - Inequality.org
• Racial Inequality Is Hollowing Out America's Middle Class - Inequality.org
• Undercutting Health Care In America

 

 

From: Chalene Bayless
Subject: FW: Inside the space station

ABSOLUTELY AWESOME!  THIS IS AMAZING
Most people have no idea what the Space Station looks like. Quite impressive!

Departing Space Station Commander Provides Tour of Orbital ...

 

 

From: Andrew J. Tierman
Subject: Fw: [Signature needed] Consumer rights under attack

When a corporation like Equifax or a bank like Wells Fargo mistreats its customers or causes them harm, they should take responsibility for their actions. Consumers should be empowered to hold those corporations accountable in court. Unfortunately, your fundamental consumer right to join a class-action lawsuit is under attack right now.

For years corporations have avoided accountability by hiding small legal clauses in long contracts to block consumers from making things right by taking them to court. These "forced arbitration" clauses say that if you have an issue with the corporation involved, you have to go through a private arbitration service to handle your dispute. All too often, these private services stack the deck in the favor of the corporation, and customers are left with no other recourse.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has gone to bat for us and made that practice illegal. That was a huge step forward in empowering consumers to hold financial companies accountable for mistakes and misconduct that cause widespread harm.

But now, the Senate is planning, any day now, to overturn that protection, if they can line up the votes. They could once again give financial giants a green light to ride roughshod over our consumer rights. Your calls and emails helped keep this anti-consumer vote from happening last week. But Senators need to keep hearing from us, and from more of us.

Add your name to our petition below calling on Senators to oppose repealing the arbitration rule. Tell them to vote NO on S.J. Res. 47. Sign the petition

Consumers like me already face a stacked deck when we try to hold financial giants like Equifax or Wells Fargo accountable for their actions. But now Congress is moving to take away our right to join together to challenge them in court. I support the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's arbitration rule, which restores our legal rights and makes our financial system stronger and safer.

Our Senators should stand with consumers like me, NOT financial giants trying to get away with widespread harm. Please vote NO on S.J. Res. 47.

After you sign the petition, forward this email to your family and friends so we can get more people talking to their Senators about this issue. The more people we have signed on, the better case we have for saving this important protection. And please also call or email your Senators to voice your concerns, if you have not already done so.

Thanks for signing today.

Omar Hakim; Consumers Union, Policy and Action for Consumer Reports

 

 

From: Representative Barbara Lee
Subject: Watch now: My floor speech on Trump and nuclear war

We've been witnessing a dangerous war of words between Donald Trump and North Korean officials.

This does not make our nation any safer and is only serving to bring us closer to an all-out war.

And let me tell you: A military conflict on the Korean Peninsula would be nothing short of catastrophic.

That's why I spoke last week from the House floor, calling for an end to Trump's name-calling and saber rattling and for Congress to pass Representative Ted Lieu's No First Use legislation that would prevent Trump from unilaterally launching a preemptive nuclear strike without a declaration of war by Congress.

Please watch a one-minute video of my floor speech now. And please share this call to action with your family and friends.
    

(Not on Facebook? Click here to watch the video on YouTube.)

A war with North Korea would put tens of millions of lives at risk, and the looming threat of nuclear war only heightens tensions.

And now, there is also a very real threat that Trump could de-certify the hard-won Iran deal, which has successfully prevented an all-out war in the Middle East.

In North Korea—and in Iran—diplomacy is the only answer. The U.S. must pursue diplomacy and reach a peaceful solution that does not put U.S. troops and families in danger. Direct talks are our best opportunity for resolving this conflict without the use of force. And yet Trump's warmongering is taking us further and further away from that path forward.

Please help make sure your family and friends are paying attention to what's happening—because there is something we can do, together, to help reduce the threat of nuclear war.

As always, it's good to be with MoveOn members like you, Munsup, in our common work for justice and peace.

Want to support our work? The MoveOn community will work every moment, day by day and year by year, to resist Trump's agenda, contain the damage, defeat hate with love, and begin the process of swinging the nation's pendulum back toward sanity, decency, and the kind of future that we must never give up on. And to do it we need your ongoing support, now more than ever. Will you stand with us?  Donate monthly or make a one-time gift

Contributions to MoveOn.org Civic Action are not tax deductible as charitable contributions for federal income tax purposes.

 

 

From: Daytonians Against War Now (DAWN) On Behalf Of Logan Martinez
Subject: [DAWN] US Provides Military Assistance to 73 Percent of World's Dictatorships

US Provides Military Assistance to 73 Percent of World's Dictatorships

US Provides Military Assistance to 73 Percent of World's Dictatorships
By Rich Whitney, Truthout | News Analysis

For decades, the American people have been repeatedly told by their government and corporate-run media that acts of war ordered by their president have been largely motivated by the need to counter acts of aggression or oppression by "evil dictators." We were told we had to invade Iraq because Saddam Hussein was an evil dictator. We had to bomb Libya because Muammar Gaddafi was an evil dictator, bent on unleashing a "bloodbath" on his own people. Today, of course, we are told that we should support insurgents in Syria because Bashar al-Assad is an evil dictator, and we must repeatedly rattle our sabers at North Korea's Kim Jong-un and Russia's Vladimir Putin because they, too, are evil dictators.

This is part of the larger, usually unquestioned mainstream corporate media narrative that the US leads the "Western democracies" in a global struggle to combat terrorism and totalitarianism and promote democracy.

I set out to answer a simple question: Is it true? Does the US government actually oppose dictatorships and champion democracy around the world, as we are repeatedly told?

The truth is not easy to find, but federal sources do provide an answer: No. According to Freedom House's rating system of political rights around the world, there were 49 nations in the world, as of 2015, that can be fairly categorized as "dictatorships." As of fiscal year 2015, the last year for which we have publicly available data, the federal government of the United States had been providing military assistance to 36 of them, courtesy of your tax dollars. The United States currently supports over 73 percent of the world's dictatorships!

Most politically aware people know of some of the more highly publicized instances of this, such as the tens of billions of dollars' worth of US military assistance provided to the beheading capital of the world, the misogynistic monarchy of Saudi Arabia, and the repressive military dictatorship now in power in Egypt. But apologists for our nation's imperialistic foreign policy may try to rationalize such support, arguing that Saudi Arabia and Egypt are exceptions to the rule. They may argue that our broader national interests in the Middle East require temporarily overlooking the oppressive nature of those particular states, in order to serve a broader, pro-democratic endgame.

Such hogwash could be critiqued on many counts, of course, beginning with its class-biased presumptions about what constitutes US "national interests." But my survey of US support for dictatorships around the world demonstrates that our government's support for Saudi Arabia and Egypt are not exceptions to the rule at all. They are the rule.

Sources and Methods

It was not easy to find out how many of the world's dictatorships are being supported by the United States. No one else seems to be compiling or maintaining a list, so I had to go at it by myself. Here is how I came up with my answer.

Step 1: Determine how many of the world's governments may be fairly characterized as dictatorships. A commonly accepted definition of a "dictatorship" is a system of government in which one person or a small group possesses absolute state power, thereby directing all national policies and major acts -- leaving the people powerless to alter those decisions or replace those in power by any method short of revolution or coup. I examined a number of websites and organizations that claimed to maintain lists of the world's dictatorships, but most of them were either dated, listed only the world's "worst dictators" or had similar limitations, and/or failed to describe their methodology. I ultimately was left with the annual Freedom in the World reports published by Freedom House as the best source for providing a comprehensive list.

This was not entirely satisfactory, as Freedom House has a decidedly pro-US-ruling-class bias. For example, it categorizes Russia as a dictatorship. In the introduction to its 2017 Freedom In the World report, it opines that "Russia, in stunning displays of hubris and hostility, interfered in the political processes of the United States and other democracies, escalated its military support for the Assad dictatorship in Syria, and solidified its illegal occupation of Ukrainian territory." A more objective view would note that claims of interference in the US election by the Russian government have not been proven (unless one is inclined to take certain US intelligence agencies at their word); that Russia was asked by the UN-recognized Syrian government for assistance, in compliance with international law (unlike US acts of aggression and support for insurrection there); and would at least acknowledge that any Russian intervention in Ukraine occurred in the context of the United States' brazen support for a coup in that nation.

Nonetheless, the Freedom House reports appear to be the best (if not the only) comprehensive gauge of political rights and freedoms covering every nation in the world. It utilizes a team of about 130 in-house and external analysts and expert advisers from the academic, think tank and human rights communities who purportedly use a broad range of sources, including news articles, academic analyses, reports from nongovernmental organizations and individual professional contacts. The analysts' proposed scores are discussed and defended at annual review meetings, organized by region and attended by Freedom House staff and a panel of expert advisers. The final scores represent the consensus of the analysts, advisers and staff, and are intended to be comparable from year to year and across countries and regions. Freedom House concedes that, "although an element of subjectivity is unavoidable in such an enterprise, the ratings process emphasizes methodological consistency, intellectual rigor, and balanced and unbiased judgments."

One can remain skeptical, but a key consideration is that Freedom House's pronounced pro-US bias is actually a plus for purposes of this project. If its team of experts tilts toward a pro-US-government perspective, this means that it would indulge every presumption in favor of not categorizing nations supported by the United States as dictatorships. In other words, if even Freedom House categorizes a government backed by the United States as a dictatorship, one can be fairly confident that its assessment, in that instance, is accurate.

For purposes of the present assessment, I used Freedom House's 2016 Freedom in the World report, even though its 2017 report is now available. I did so because the 2016 report reflects its assessment of political rights and civil liberties as they existed in 2015, which would roughly correspond with the military assistance and arms sales data that I had available for federal fiscal year 2015 (October 1, 2014 - September 30, 2015) and calendar year 2015. (I will work on a new report when such data for fiscal year 2016 becomes available.)

Freedom House uses a scoring system to gauge a nation's "political rights" and "civil liberties," in order to rate each country as "free," "partly free" or "not free," with a range of scores for each category. It describes its scoring system as follows: "A country or territory is assigned two ratings (7 to 1) -- one for political rights and one for civil liberties -- based on its total scores for the political rights and civil liberties questions. Each rating of 1 through 7, with 1 representing the greatest degree of freedom and 7 the smallest degree of freedom, corresponds to a specific range of total scores."

For purposes of deciding whether a nation could be categorized as a "dictatorship," however, I focused only on the "political rights" scores, classifying nations with a political rights score of 6 or 7 as a dictatorship. This does not mean that civil liberties are unimportant, of course, but the objective here is to assess the degree of absolutism of the political leadership, not freedom of expression, press, etc. Of course, in the overwhelming majority of cases, nations with low political rights scores also have low civil liberties scores. However, a political rights score of 6 or 7 corresponds most closely with our definition of dictatorship, based on Freedom House's characterization:

6 -- Countries and territories with a rating of 6 have very restricted political rights. They are ruled by one-party or military dictatorships, religious hierarchies, or autocrats. They may allow a few political rights, such as some representation or autonomy for minority groups, and a few are traditional monarchies that tolerate political discussion and accept public petitions.

7 -- Countries and territories with a rating of 7 have few or no political rights because of severe government oppression, sometimes in combination with civil war. They may also lack an authoritative and functioning central government and suffer from extreme violence or rule by regional warlords.

While it may be debatable whether it is appropriate to consider a country with no "functioning central government" as a dictatorship, I would submit that the label is appropriate if that nation is ruled de facto by warlords or rival armies or militias. In effect, that simply means that it is ruled by two or more dictators instead of one.

By Freedom House's measure, then, there were 49 nation-states that could be fairly characterized as dictatorships in 2015, as follows:

Afghanistan, Algeria, Angola, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Belarus, Brunei, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, China, Democratic Republic of the Congo (Congo-Kinshasa), Republic of the Congo (Congo-Brazzaville), Cuba, Djibouti, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Iran, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Laos, Libya, Mauritania, Myanmar, North Korea, Oman, Qatar, Russia, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Swaziland, Syria, Tajikistan, Thailand, Turkmenistan, Uganda, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, Vietnam and Yemen.

It should be noted that Freedom House included in its ratings several other entities with a political rights score of 6 or 7 whose status as an independent state was itself disputed: Crimea, the Gaza Strip, Pakistani Kashmir, South Ossetia, Tibet, Transnistria, the West Bank and Western Sahara. My count of 49 dictatorships in the world in 2015 excludes these subordinated or disputed state territories.

Step 2: Determine which of the world's dictatorships received US-funded military or weapons training, military arms financing or authorized sales of military weapons from the United States in 2015.

For this step, I relied on four sources, the first two of which took considerable digging to locate:

A. "Foreign Military Training in Fiscal Years 2015 and 2016 Volume I and Volume II (Country Training Activities)," US Department of Defense and US Department of State Joint Report to Congress.

This is the most recent annual report, required by section 656 of the Foreign Assistance Act (FAA) of 1961, as amended (22 U.S.C. § 2416), and section 652 of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2008 (P.L. 110-161), which requires "a report on all military training provided to foreign military personnel by the Department of Defense and the Department of State during the previous fiscal year and all such training proposed for the current fiscal year," excluding NATO countries, Australia, New Zealand and Japan.

This report provides data on US expenditures for military training programs under the Foreign Military Sales (FMS) program, Foreign Military Financing (FMF) grants, the International Military Education and Training (IMET) program, the Section 2282 Global Train and Equip (GT&E) program, the Aviation Leadership Program to provide pilot training (ALP), and the Foreign Assistance Act (FAA) drawdown program, which authorizes the president to direct the drawdown of defense articles, services and training if an "unforeseen emergency exists that requires immediate military assistance to a foreign country" that cannot be met by other means. Such expenditures are listed by recipient country, in some detail. For purposes of this study, I include expenditures under these programs as US-funded military training.

The report also provides data on US expenditures for narcotics and law enforcement, global peace operations, centers for security studies, drug interdiction and counter-drug activities, mine removal assistance, disaster response, non-lethal anti-terrorism training and other programs that I did not count as military assistance or training for purposes of this survey. It is certainly more than possible that US assistance under these programs could play a role in providing de facto military assistance to recipient countries, but I err on the side of caution.

The report describes the IMET program as including civilian participants, and including training on "elements of U.S. democracy such as the judicial system, legislative oversight, free speech, equality issues, and commitment to human rights." One could conceivably criticize my inclusion of IMET training, therefore, on the ground that it actually trains foreign civilians and soldiers in democratic, anti-dictatorial values. However, the IMET program is presumably called "military" training and education for a reason. It trains students in "increased understanding of security issues and the means to address them," and provides "training that augments the capabilities of participant nations' military forces to support combined operations and interoperability with U.S. forces." Accordingly, I think it is fair to count IMET as a form of military assistance, while acknowledging that it arguably might, at times, play a pro-democracy role.

B. US Department of State, "Congressional Budget Justification FOREIGN ASSISTANCE SUMMARY TABLES, Fiscal Year 2017."

Table 3a of this publication provides the actual fiscal year allocations for foreign assistance programs, by country and by account, including the two programs that interest us here, Foreign Military Financing and IMET. In that regard, it is somewhat duplicative of the previous source, but I reviewed it as a check.

C. Department of Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA), Financial Policy And Analysis Business Operations, "Foreign Military Sales, Foreign Military Construction Sales And Other Security Cooperation Historical Facts As of September 30, 2015."

This source provides the total dollar value of military articles and services sold to foreign governments for FY 2015, including the value of agreements for future deliveries and the value of actual deliveries, which I have provided in the table below. It also includes other data on foreign military financing (credit or grants) extended to foreign governments and provides yet another source on IMET training.

D. Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), "Transfer of major conventional weapons: sorted by recipient. Deals with deliveries or orders made for year range 2015 to 2016."

SIPRI provides an interactive tool by which the user can generate a list of major weapons transfers by supplier, all or some recipients, and the year. Although it only counts "major" conventional weapons transfers, I reviewed it as an additional check on the accuracy of the chart. It essentially affirmed the accuracy of the DSCA report but there were some possible anomalies. For example, the DSCA reports only $8,000 worth of military sales to Uganda in FY 2015 but SIPRI reports the transfer of 10 RG-33 armored vehicles, two Cessna-208 Caravan light transport planes, and 15 Cougar armored vehicles in 2015. The discrepancy may be due to the three-month difference between fiscal year 2015 and calendar year 2105, different methods of dating the transfer, differences in valuation or some unknown factor.

Step 3: Generate the Chart

The first column in the chart below lists the 49 countries classified by Freedom House as dictatorial in nature. The second column shows those nations that received some US military training in FY 2015, relying primarily on source B, but also checking source C. The third column shows those nations that received an agreement for future military sales or transfers from the United States in FY 2015, with the dollar value of the military articles listed, based on source C, but also checking source D. The fourth column shows those nations that received an actual delivery of military articles from the United States in FY 2015, with the dollar value of the military articles listed, based on source C, but also checking source D.

US Support for the World's Dictatorships, Fiscal Year 2015. (Chart: Rich Whitney)

I plan on providing similar reports on US support for dictatorships around the world on an annual basis. I will begin work on a report covering Fiscal Year 2016 as soon as the relevant data becomes available.

RICH WHITNEY: Rich Whitney is an attorney, actor, radio commentator and disk jockey, Illinois Green Party activist and former Green Party candidate for governor.

 

 

From: Donna De La Cruz, Reform Immigration FOR America
Subject: No candidate should say this

We need a real solution for young immigrants, one that provides a pathway to citizenship without harsh and unnecessary enforcement measures that would put entire communities at risk. In the next month, we're fighting for just that in Virginia, where gubernatorial candidate Ed Gillespie, an anti-immigrant, conservative career lobbyist, is trying to steer the Commonwealth toward Trump's vision of America.

Gillespie is running a campaign ad that's deeply offensive. In it, he claims that sanctuary cities promote gang violence, and implies that immigrants are dangerous criminals. Such racist statements have no place in the Virginia governor's race, and anyone with that viewpoint shouldn't be governor of a state where one in nine residents are immigrants.

Sign this petition demanding that Gillespie take back his racist statements about immigrants.

Today is the deadline for those young people who rely on DACA to stay in the U.S. without fear of deportation to renew their status. Trump left them scrambling to reapply when he announced the end of DACA a few weeks ago, and Gillespie shows every sign of following Trump's lead. There are over 12,000 DACA recipients in Virginia, and this campaign ad shows that immigrants can't count on him for fair treatment.

Stand with Virginians and tell Gillespie to take back his offensive words. 

Thanks for taking action,

P.S. Want to help keep Gillespie out of office? Chip in to mobilize voters in Virginia.

 

 

From: Thomas Scott
Subject: How to think like a Trump supporter; Stephen Paddock; How to be a true American patriot in 8 easy steps
   

• How to think like a Trump supporter
• Stephen Paddock
• How to be a true American patriot in 8 easy steps

 

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