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Progressive Caucus Urges Biden to Use Final Days to Commute Sentences of Drug War Victims
There are nearly 360,000 American behind bars due to a drug offense, according to the Drug Policy Alliance.
Dec 23, 2024
With only weeks left of his administration, President Joe Biden has earned praise from rights groups and advocates for exercising his clemency powers, including announcing Monday that he is commuting the death sentences of 37 individuals on federal death row—but the Congressional Progressive Caucus is urging him to go further.
"We thank the president for this significant step and urge him to use his last few days in office to commute the sentences of the thousands of Americans impacted by the War on Drugs and decades of harmful, disparate convictions and sentencing," wrote Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) in a statement on Monday.
Per Drug Policy Alliance, a nonprofit that addresses the harms of drug use and drug criminalization, there are nearly 360,000 American behind bars due to a drug offense. "This includes thousands of people charged with federal marijuana offenses or who are serving long federal mandatory minimum sentences due to the unfair crack-powder cocaine sentencing disparity," according to the group.
On December 12, Biden commuted the sentences of nearly 1,500 Americans and pardoned 39 people convicted of nonviolent crimes, a move the White House called "the largest single-day grant of clemency in modern history."
Reacting to those commutations and pardons, the Drug Policy Alliance wrote that "President Biden's historic actions today acknowledge what Americans have long known: that our country's practice of doling out lengthy prison sentences to people for drug offenses has put lives at risk, broken families apart, and wasted billions of dollars."
However, the group continued, "he must issue additional pardons and commutations to bring all victims of our country's failed drug war home. But we cannot stop there. President Biden can still play a role in mitigating the harms of federal marijuana criminalization through executive action."
The Drug Policy Alliance has drafted a proposed executive order for Biden to issue that would create a council to guide the federal government in repairing harms caused by marijuana criminalization and advance more fair and just policies in future, and mandate that federal agencies be tasked with evaluating how their-marijuana related policies and programs created barriers for underserved communities, among other actions.
Biden did in 2022 grant full and unconditional pardons to all U.S. citizens convicted of simple federal marijuana possession—a move that was cheered by advocates.
In her statement on Monday, Jayapal called Biden's decision to largely clear federal death row an "extraordinary act" that was only possible thanks to "tireless organizing and activism of progressives in Congress and on the ground."
Three people, Dylann Roof, Robert Bowers, and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, will remain on death row. The 37 people whose sentences were commuted will receive life in prison without the possibility of parole.
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'Plutocracy Is Its Own Kind of Dictatorship,' Biden Antitrust Chief Warns in Farewell Address
"When companies larger, wealthier, and more powerful than most world governments threaten individual liberty with coercive private taxation and regulation, it threatens our way of life," said U.S. Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter.
Dec 18, 2024
Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter, the antitrust head at the Department of Justice who helped turbocharge the agency's efforts to rein in monopoly power, bid farewell to his post in a speech Tuesday during which he warned that "plutocracy is its own kind of dictatorship."
Kanter's deputy, Doha Mekki, will take over leading the Antitrust Division starting Friday. President-elect Donald Trump has tapped Gail Slater, a tech and media policy advisor who worked for Vice President-elect JD Vance, to permanently replace Kanter.
In his speech, Kanter described how President Joe Biden's administration had a clear mandate from the public to break with the antitrust approach of previous decades: "When I took office in 2021, questions about monopoly power were no longer just a technocratic concern relegated to the narrow halls of white-shoe law firms and elite academic institutions. Our nation was experiencing a remarkable moment unlike any I had seen in my lifetime. Americans across the country had become acutely aware of the powerful forces that were suppressing their economic freedom."
To get himself ready for the role, he looked for inspiration from the "storied trustbusters of yesteryear"—particularly Assistant Attorney General Robert Jackson, who led antitrust enforcement at the Department of Justice under FDR. "In 2021, the similarities to 1936 were unmistakable. They say that history rhymes. Well, it sure does. And this time it had 'bars,' as the youth say."
Then, as now, antitrust enforcement is an engine for economic prosperity, Kanter said. It can lower prices by limiting the market power of large companies, increase growth and prosperity by curbing corporate-imposed private regulation that "sap entrepreneurs of opportunity," and provide greater mobility and higher wages for workers, he argued.
With that "why" in mind, the division "confronted the Herculean task of operationalizing our mandate to restore, revive, and reimagine antitrust enforcement for our nation."
In many respects, Kanter was successful in that mission. During his time with the Department of Justice, the agency notched a major legal victory over the company Google, which Kanter's team and states had argued held an illegal monopoly in the search engine and advertising market. In August, a federal judge ruled that Google was an illegal monopolist for spending tens of billions on default search deals, a decision that has been called the "biggest antitrust case of the 21st century."
The Antitrust Division has also filed ongoing cases against Visa, the rent-fixing software RealPage, Ticketmaster, and others. Cases brought by the division also successfully blocked a merger between publishing giants Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster, as well as JetBlue's acquisition of Spirit.
In response to the news that Kanter is stepping down, Nidhi Hegde, interim executive director at the American Economic Liberties Project, said Tuesday that under Kanter's leadership "the DOJ Antitrust Division has become an enforcer fit for the modern economy—and a powerful ally of American consumers, workers, and small businesses."
Kanter offered advice to future enforcers, such as engaging people outside of the Beltway and "dispel[ling] the myth that less competition at home helps the U.S. compete more abroad."
The stakes of lax enforcement are high, he warned: "When companies larger, wealthier, and more powerful than most world governments threaten individual liberty with coercive private taxation and regulation, it threatens our way of life."
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New Funding Bill Shows House Republicans 'Want Monopolists to Win'
"House Democrats must take a firm stand against this problematic proposal and offer an amendment in markup to give the Antitrust Division the resources necessary to enforce the law," said one campaigner.
Jun 25, 2024
Anti-monopoly campaigners on Tuesday blasted House Republicans over a bill that would dramatically reduce funding for the U.S. Department of Justice's Antitrust Division and impose caps on how much the crucial agency gets from merger filing fees.
The House Appropriations Committee
proposal contains sweeping spending cuts, including a $40 million reduction in the DOJ Antitrust Division's budget. The $192.7 million allocated for the division is $95 million less than requested by U.S. President Joe Biden.
"House Republicans are not fully funding the Antitrust Division—this is a pro-Ticketmaster, pro-Google, pro-Apple, and pro-UnitedHealth agenda," Morgan Harper, director of policy and advocacy at the American Economic Liberties Project (AELP), said in a statement.
"This is a pro-Ticketmaster, pro-Google, pro-Apple, and pro-UnitedHealth agenda."
In addition to the budget cut, the bill contains one rider that would cap the amount of fees the Antitrust Division gets from the bipartisan Merger Filing Fee Modernization Act and another that would effectively ban the agency from hiring more staff.
The proposed bill "would openly and deliberately disregard the will of Congress by limiting the DOJ's access to these funds," AELP said, arguing that House Republicans "want monopolists to win."
"With cases against some of the biggest monopolies in the economy already in progress or looming, the additional funds would allow the division to hire more attorneys and staff to effectively enforce the law," the group added.
According to Harper:
Despite having even fewer attorneys than it did in the 1970s, [Assistant Attorney General] Jonathan Kanter's Antitrust Division is securing unprecedented wins to turn the tide on market concentration across the economy. Appropriators should be bolstering the Antitrust Division in this moment, not kneecapping it by limiting hiring and reducing funds Congress authorized through the Merger Filing Fee Modernization Act.
"House Democrats must take a firm stand against this problematic proposal and offer an amendment in markup to give the Antitrust Division the resources necessary to enforce the law," Harper added.
The GOP proposal comes amid a flurry of antitrust action by the Biden administration, whose DOJ has investigated UnitedHealth Group, the world's largest health insurance company, and sued Apple, Google, and Ticketmaster. Meanwhile, the Federal Trade Commission under Chair Lina Khan has taken on Amazon and other corporations.
"The DOJ Antitrust Division has won victories in court against employers that sought to suppress workers' pay and blocked harmful mergers in the airline industry," Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) said while addressing U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland during a hearing earlier this month.
"You're working to lower food prices by targeting anti-competitive practices and mergers in the grocery industry and the meat processing industry, and the Antitrust Division successfully ended a price fixing scheme in DVD and Blu-ray sales and prevented video game companies from suppressing wages in e-sports," she continued.
"These are incredible accomplishments, and you're also working to promote competition in the live music industry," Jayapal added, referring to the lawsuit
filed last month by the DOJ and 30 state attorneys general against Live Nation and its Ticketmaster subsidiary.
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ICC Punctures Myth That Israeli Leaders Are Above International Law
Netanyahu was right to be nervous about the consequences, which are indeed far-reaching. A real Pandora’s box has been opened by the application for arrest warrants by the International Criminal Court's top prosecutor.
May 25, 2024
For 76 years, Israel had a narrative more robust as a protective shield than any Iron Dome.
For the victims of the worst case of industrial killing in modern history, self-determination for post-Holocaust Jewry was not merely a necessity, this narrative went, it was a moral imperative. Any state that emerged was immune from judgement, the story went. Israel was beyond international law.
It was allowed to have indeterminate borders. It was allowed to occupy. It was allowed to settle the areas it occupied. It was allowed to regularly attack its neighbours pre-emptively. It was allowed nuclear weapons, outside the control of any regulatory authority.
It could violently discriminate against its non-Jewish minority and still be accepted into the family of democratic nations. It was not just allowed to lay siege to Gaza and starve the territory’s population for 16 years, it was assisted in this by the international community.
Anyone who rejected the credo that this violent state had a right to exist faced political banishment.
Israel was a “lifeboat” for Jews facing antisemitism throughout the world. It was not the primary cause of waves of antisemitism. It safeguarded Jews. It did not endanger them.
For 76 years, Israel literally had a licence to kill. Until Monday.
The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Karim Khan, did much more than apply for arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant. The ICC prosecutor punctured the myth that any Israeli leader, official or soldier was beyond the reach of international law.
Opening Pandora's box
Netanyahu was right to be nervous about the consequences, which are indeed far-reaching. A real Pandora’s box has been opened by this application.
Yet, for the moment, it’s only an application before the judges of the ICC. There have been occasions in the past when such an application was initially dismissed, as in the case of a Rwandan militia leader sought over crimes committed in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, or for Omar al-Bashir, the former Sudanese president.
But the pretrial chamber of three judges must only convince themselves on two points - that there are reasonable grounds to believe that at least one crime within the court’s jurisdiction has been committed, and that the arrest of those named “appears necessary” to ensure they appear at trial, do not endanger an investigation, and cannot continue to perpetrate the same crime.
Considering the bullying that the court itself has come under, with the US threatening its members with sanctions, a third unwritten imperative will loom large in their minds: the need to uphold the independence of the ICC.
If they bow to this pressure, the ICC’s legitimacy will be finished - and besides, the evidence for the seven charges is overwhelming.
It exposes, as never before, the colonial nature of the stance that international justice applies only to others
The Pandora’s box is large. If arrest warrants are served on Netanyahu and Gallant, every other member of Israel’s war cabinet and military machine, down to the humble reservist uploading videos taken on his iPhone, could be subject to the same charges.
The second point to bear in mind is that the charges only relate to what happened on or after 7 October. Khan based his application on a report by a panel of international law experts, who homed in on Israel’s policy of famine and siege, restricting the means necessary for the population as a whole to survive. The experts did not examine the legal implications of the mass killing of civilians.
If this application succeeds, or even if it is dismissed temporarily, the ICC’s purview goes back to the moment Palestine was admitted as a member in 2015. In 2021, the ICC opened an investigation into allegations of war crimes committed in occupied Palestine since June 2014.
Monday’s application is about the here and now. A growing queue of applications about everything Israel has done in the occupied territories over the last decade awaits.
Long history
The long arm of the ICC’s law has a bitter history. Khan’s application was not the work of one moment, or indeed the work of one man who might have thought that Ukraine would be his main legacy after becoming chief prosecutor in 2021.
The ICC’s jurisdiction over the occupied territories has been bitterly contested, and a series of obstacles had to be overcome before this application could be launched. Palestine was not initially recognised as a state, so it was not allowed to be part of the ICC. Huge pressure, including the threat of US sanctions, was then put on the Palestinian Authority (PA) not to use its membership to pursue Israel.
The ICC then had to debate whether it had jurisdiction over the occupied West Bank and Gaza, and it was only the decision of the previous prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, which allowed the current proceedings to go ahead. But that debate took six years, from 2015 to 2021.
The need for the ICC to step in had been only too obvious. There had been a number of failed legal attempts to get Israeli officials to face justice abroad under the principle of universal jurisdiction.
Former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, former Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz and former Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni all faced possible arrest if they travelled to London. But former Prime Minister Gordon Brown defended Livni, saying he “completely opposed” the warrant issued by a British court for her arrest for war crimes, and former Foreign Secretary David Miliband phoned his Israeli counterpart to apologise.
Miliband said at the time of the 2009 incident that British law permitting judges to issue arrest warrants against foreign dignitaries “without any prior knowledge or advice by a prosecutor” had to be changed.
Indeed it was. All such attempts now need the consent of the director of public prosecutions before a warrant is issued.
US ties itself in knots
The current reaction of the US to the ICC’s recommendation for arrest warrants is another indicator of what is at stake. This has ranged from outright threats to the court members to attempts to defund the PA if it continues to back the ICC’s case.
US President Joe Biden expressed outrage at the fact that the ICC was establishing an equivalence between Israel and Hamas by also seeking arrest warrants for three Hamas leaders. “And let me be clear: whatever this prosecutor might imply, there is no equivalence - none - between Israel and Hamas. We will always stand with Israel against threats to its security,” he said.
US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller went further by saying that Washington’s two preferred outcomes for the leaders of Hamas were assassination or being tried before an Israeli court. “The Israeli government should hold them accountable on the battlefield. And if not a battlefield, then a court of law,” he said.
Biden’s outgoing administration is tying itself in knots. If it follows its own instincts by punishing the PA, withdrawing funds, or undermining the legitimacy of the ICC by slapping sanctions on its judges and prosecutor, the US will be shooting itself in the foot.------------------------------------If Biden agrees with former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that the ICC is a “kangaroo court”, and attempts to undermine it, what happens to the ICC’s prosecution of Russian President Vladimir Putin as a war criminal for invading Ukraine, a prosecution the US supports? What happens to all the other important ICC work?
More importantly, what happens to the US attempts to construct a civilian authority to take over Gaza instead of Hamas, if Washington defunds the only other arm of the Palestinian government?
Biden says he wants to rebuild a Palestinian state after this war is over. Instead, he is fully engaged, with the Israelis, in dismantling it.
Watershed moment
For Hamas, the prospect of charges against its leaders is not nearly as problematic. Having welcomed the ICC’s establishment of jurisdiction over the occupied Palestinian territories, Hamas condemned the court’s decision to seek warrants for its political bureau chief Ismail Haniyeh, Gaza leader Yahya Sinwar, and Qassam Brigades commander Mohammed Deif, arguing that armed resistance against occupation was enshrined in UN resolutions.
But as Hamas is listed as a terrorist organisation in much of the western world, nothing much will change, apart from the fact that Haniyeh might not trust a visit to Egypt in the current climate.
The ICC action is urgently needed to stop the barbarous war that is now being prosecuted
Whichever way you look at it, this is a watershed moment. It punctures Israel’s immunity and deeply embarrasses its backers. It exposes, as never before, the colonial nature of the stance that international justice applies only to others.
Khan himself quoted an unnamed western leader as telling him that the ICC was built for “Africa and for thugs like Putin”. As Khan observed, this was a sad indictment of a court which was created as the legacy of the Nuremberg trials.
In this regard, Aipac is right to warn the US that if the ICC warrants succeed, the same could be applied to American troops. “These actions by the court pose a serious threat: Past and current American and Israeli officials and citizens could face secret arrest warrants or summons issued by the court that ICC member states are obligated to carry out,” Aipac said in a statement.
For all these reasons, the ICC action is urgently needed to stop the barbarous war that is now being prosecuted.
Kicking the habit
It is a war without end. It is a war without an endgame, as no credible plan has been devised for the future of Gaza. It is a war where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza are herded like cattle from one tent to another, while Israel continues to cut off all aid. And this is all happening under the umbrella of impunity.
The ICC move has split the countries that have thus far put their weight behind Israel’s seven-month offensive. The UK is becoming isolated from Europe in its insistence that the court does not have jurisdiction in Palestine. France, Belgium and others have expressed support for the ICC investigation.
So, too, has Josep Borell, the EU foreign policy chief who reminded states that are parties to the ICC’s Rome Statute that they must implement the court’s rulings.
But for those leaders, like Biden, who are finding it hard to kick the habit of a lifetime, support for Israel is now coming at a cost. It means denying apartheid, denying genocide, and denying war crimes such as mass starvation. The charge sheet is growing, and it’s becoming impossible to defend.
The war has shredded not just Israel’s international reputation, but the global standing of all those who continue to support it—and for them, the writing is on the wall. Not before time.
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Gaza, Campus Protest, and the Fierce Urgency of Now
Beyond the horrors in Gaza and the long tragic history of the oppression of Palestinians, student protestors are trying to save their own nation from its death-dealing spiral.
Apr 26, 2024
As more campuses join the protests against Israel’s continuing engagement in war crimes in Gaza, one common thread runs through the student demands. It's this: divest from supplying the Netanyahu government and the IDF with weapons of mass destruction.
What compels many of these youthful demonstrators to occupy the public spaces and offices of their universities is the complicity of college portfolios with investments in U.S. weapon manufacturers. They know that the products of defense contractors, like Lockheed Martin’s F-35 fighterjet and General Dynamics' MK 84—a 2,000-pound bomb—are slaughtering tens of thousands of innocent civilians throughout Gaza.
They also understand that the U.S. government, from President Joe Biden to the Congress, is opposed to legislative efforts to hold Israel accountable to its violation of various on-the-books prohibitions for governments “engaged in gross human rights abuses” (Section 502 B of the U.S. Foreign Assistance Act). Instead, they see the Biden Administration exploiting every loophole in any restrictions to supply Israel with unending transfers of bombs and military equipment. While countries, like Canada and numerous others, have stopped shipping weapons to Israel, the U.S. seems oblivious to the suffering and devastation caused daily by the IDF in Gaza.
They are aware that Israeli state propaganda spreads constant disinformation about its war crimes in Gaza, from rationalizing its attacks on the staff and patients in hospitals to the murder of over 200 aid workers. They know that countless human rights agencies have condemned these kinds of war crimes in Gaza. (These same human rights agencies have also condemned the brutal killing of 1,200 Israeli civilians and the taking of hostages on October 7). In order to justify the murder of so many innocent civilians, the Netanyahu government has insisted that they have actually killed 9,000 Hamas militants. However, if they read one of the recent articles in the Israeli newspaper, Ha’aretz from March 31, they understand this figure is reflective of what the IDF calls “kill zones” (think “free-fire zones” in the U.S. war on Vietnam) where anything in those zones, including women and children, were legitimate targets to then be counted as Hamas militants.
They are surely aware of what Netanyahu cabinet members have said about the Palestinians in Gaza and on the West Bank that they are just “human animals.” The Israeli Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant, has bragged about destroying the “electricity, food, and fuel” in Gaza. One of his advisers, a former IDF General, reflective of the targeting of aid workers, including those murdered seven from World Central Kitchen, acknowledged that “in order to make the siege effective, we have to prevent others from giving assistance to Gaza.” Such mass murder and wanton destruction of property in Gaza is part of a campaign of killing that one UN official has cited as “probably the highest kill ratio of any military killing anybody since the Rwandan genocide of 1994.”
When students see and hear about all of this, they are obviously motivated to express their moral outrage. On one hand, these expressions may not always comport with so-called civility. On the other hand, they are not prepared to remain silent and/or passive in the face of an unfolding genocide. In their adherence to Dr. King’s reference to the “fierce urgency of now,” they are committed, as Dr. King was, to disturbing the peace.
Indeed, we need to be reminded of another quote from Dr. King that was central to his famous Riverside Address (“A Time to Break Silence”) from April 4, 1967. He warned prophetically that “a nation that continues year after year to spend more on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.” Beyond the horrors in Gaza and the long tragic history of the oppression of Palestinians, these student protestors are trying to save their own nation from its death-dealing spiral. What their protest ultimately signifies is their commitment to an authentic advocacy for peace and justice abroad and at home.
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Endorsing Biden, Building Trades Union Slams Trump as Lackey for 'His Billionaire Buddies'
"He does not care about anybody in this world except Donald Trump," said the president of North America's Building Trades Unions. "His dark side is very, very dark."
Apr 24, 2024
The leadership of a union that represents more than 3 million building trades workers in the U.S. and Canada endorsed President Joe Biden's reelection bid on Wednesday, slamming presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump for catering to the needs of billionaires like himself during his first four years in the White House.
"When Trump was elected, we took him at his word that he would have a worker-centered agenda and deliver on long-stalled issues such as infrastructure investment," said Sean McGarvey, president of North America's Building Trades Unions (NABTU), whose governing board voted to endorse Biden on Tuesday.
"Instead of delivering," McGarvey added, Trump "aligned himself with his billionaire buddies to enact tax cuts that raised costs for our members. Simply put, he failed to deliver. Given our experience and knowing his track record, the choice is clear."
Building trades unions and their rank-and-file members are generally seen as more conservative and pro-Trump than other elements of the U.S. labor movement. In 2017, McGarvey celebrated Trump's effort to advance construction work on the Keystone XL pipeline, a massive fossil fuel project that Biden effectively killed in 2021 after years of organizing by environmentalists and Indigenous tribes.
But NABTU's leadership endorsed Clinton over Trump in the 2016 presidential election and Biden over Trump in 2020.
In a five-minute ad released Wednesday, the union highlights Trump's pledge to be a dictator on "day one" and condemns the former president as a dangerous egomaniac.
NABTU called for Trump's resignation after the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
"Donald Trump, he's not a good man. He's not a good person. He does not care about anybody in this world except Donald Trump," McGarvey says in the new ad. "His dark side is very, very dark."
Wow. You may have seen a short version of the North America Building Trade Union ( @NABTU) video endorsement of Biden. The full video is incredible and absolutely devastating for Trump. They did not hold back. A must watch till the end. pic.twitter.com/stL7b7JazP
— MeidasTouch (@MeidasTouch) April 24, 2024
In his statement Wednesday announcing NABTU's endorsement, McGarvey cites the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the Chips and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act as key legislative achievements that "brought life-changing, opportunity-creating, generational change focused on the working men and women of this great country who have for far too long been clamoring for a leader to finally keep their word."
"In the coming months," he added, "we will continue to engage our membership and their families directly, member to member, door to door, and jobsite to jobsite, with an unprecedented field program in key battleground states, to tell them how important President Biden and his policies have been to them, their economic security, and their freedoms."
But McGarvey said in an appearance on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" on Wednesday that the union does not intend to "waste a lot of time talking to every American that supports Donald Trump" or "some of our members that support Donald Trump, because we're not gonna change their minds."
Speaking at NABTU's annual legislative conference on Wednesday, Biden welcomed the union's endorsement and said that "Donald Trump's vision of America is one of revenge and retribution, a defeated former president who sees the world from Mar-a-Lago, who bows down to billionaires and looks down on union workers."
NABTU is the latest major union to back Biden as he prepares for his high-stakes rematch with Trump in November. In January, Biden secured the support of the emboldened United Auto Workers, whose president called Trump a "scab" who "stands against everything we stand for as a union."
"Donald Trump is a billionaire," said UAW president Shawn Fain, "and that's who he represents."
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'Whole Thing Is an Epic Fraud': RFK Jr. Official Admits Goal Is to Elect Trump
"As the saying goes, when people show you who they are, believe them," said a Democratic National Committee spokesperson.
Apr 08, 2024
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s stated platform in the 2024 presidential race centers on promoting an "honest government," a "clean, healthy environment," and the protection of civil liberties—but his New York State director last week boiled down the Independent campaign's true goal at a meeting with Republican voters: ensuring former President Donald Trump wins the election.
Speaking at a meeting last Thursday, Rita Palma first checked to make sure there were "no Biden voters in the house" before telling her audience that her "No. 1 priority" is to ultimately take electoral votes away from President Joe Biden.
"The Kennedy voter and the Trump voter," said Palma, "our mutual enemy is Biden."
States including New York, California, and "most of the Northeast" are likely to vote for the Democratic president, she continued, but if Kennedy, whom Palma referred to as Bobby, is on the ballot in New York, the campaign could help "get rid of Biden."
video shows RFK Jr’s NY director laying out a clear plan:
“The Kennedy voter & the Trump voter—our mutual enemy is Biden. … if nobody gets to 270, Congress picks the president. So who are they going to pick if it’s a R Congress? They’ll pick Trump.”pic.twitter.com/YQKDcEFUlm
— Edward-Isaac Dovere (@IsaacDovere) April 8, 2024
She urged the assembled GOP voters to give their "vote to Bobby and at least get rid of Biden and give those 28 electoral votes to Bobby rather than to Biden, thereby reducing Biden's 270 [electoral votes]."
"Two hundred seventy wins the election," added Palma, who was hired by Kennedy's campaign after she canvassed for Trump in 2016 and 2020. "If nobody gets to 270 then Congress picks the president, so who are they gonna pick if it's a Republican Congress? They'll pick Trump, so we're rid of Biden either way."
Political observers have noted in recent months that Kennedy has drawn support from right-wing billionaires, but Palma's blunt description of her plan to "block Biden from winning the presidency" left critics stunned as the video of the event circulated on social media on Monday.
"Whole thing is an epic fraud. Kennedy is spouting Russian propaganda, is now openly betraying the country," said political strategist Simon Rosenberg, referring to the candidate's recent comments about Russia's claim that it aims to "de-Nazify" Ukraine.
"RFK Jr.'s campaign is saying the quiet part out loud," Matt Corridoni, spokesperson for the Democratic National Committee, told CNN. "As the saying goes, when people show you who they are, believe them: RFK Jr.'s campaign isn't building a plan or a strategy to get 270 electoral votes, they're building one to help Trump return to the Oval Office."
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Corporate Greed Is Costing You at the Grocery Store
Consolidation in our food system affects more than just prices. It also damages whole local economies.
Apr 01, 2024
During this year's State of the Union Address, President Joe Biden spoke to what most people in the U.S. are seeing right now — trips to the grocery store are more expensive than ever. The reason? Corporate greed.
“Too many corporations raise their prices to pad their profits, charging you more and more for less and less,” he said.
We couldn’t agree more. In the days before the State of the Union, we found that from 2020 to 2024, the cost to feed a family of four grew 2.5 more than the rate of inflation.
Meanwhile, corporate profits rose five times faster than inflation from 2020 to 2022 — some to record highs. What’s more, a recent report from the Biden administration shows how big companies benefited from worsening the supply chain problems that raised prices during the pandemic.
This trend has been enabled by lax antitrust enforcement that has let corporate giants get bigger. And as they get bigger, their power grows, too. Luckily, we know just how to tackle this — and so does Biden.
How Corporate Consolidation Leads to Higher Prices
First, let’s take a look at how corporate consolidation works in the American economy. We say markets are “consolidated” when a small handful of very big companies dominate an entire sector. They do this by buying (acquisitions) or joining (mergers) with another company.
Consolidation gives these giant corporations the ability to dictate what goes on in the market, from prices to working conditions. As the president himself said, “Grocers in consolidated markets charge you more because you have nowhere else to shop.” That’s market power.
And corporations are amassing it all across our food system. A few huge players have taken over the markets for dairy, packaged foods, seeds, grocery stores, and more.
Previous governments have failed to stop this trend. Decades ago, the U.S. took consolidation seriously, but more recent administrations have sided with corporations over families. They failed to stop mergers and acquisitions or the unfair practices that big corporations use to cement their reign. As a result, food prices are soaring, while CEOs and shareholders pocket unprecedented profits.
Consolidation Means Big Wins for Corporations, Big Losses for Everyone Else
Consolidation in our food system affects more than just prices. It also damages whole local economies. For example, big grocery stores can adopt cost-cutting measures that make it impossible for smaller stores to compete. Small businesses shutter. Then, because the big stores are the only option in town, they can raise prices again — and that’s exactly what they do.
Growing consolidation and market power also gives corporations more leverage to pay lower wages, while those at the top hoard profits for themselves. For instance, Walmart is the biggest grocery chain in the country, and it paid its CEO $25 million in 2023. That’s 933 times the median associate’s wages, which are also below the poverty line for a family of four. At the same time, the grocery juggernaut saw a $163 million increase in profits from 2022 to 2023, for a total of over $13.6 billion.
Moreover, market power enables corporations to get away with harmful, cost-cutting practices, like the poor manure management on factory farms that pollutes communities with waste. Such practices directly harm our climate, environment, and public health.
Market power also helps companies get away with shady tactics, like charging us the same for less product. This “shrinkflation” is inflating how much we spend on household essentials like food, soap, and toilet paper.
The bigger and more powerful a corporation is, the more it can duck accountability for its actions — and the more it can influence policymakers by spending millions on lobbying to sway policy in their favor.
Biden Is Fighting High Grocery Prices at the Root
We have antitrust agencies designed to rein in corporate consolidation. For example, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department (DOJ) are supposed to assess proposed mergers and step in if they pose a threat to markets. We also have antitrust laws like the Packers and Stockyards Act, which is supposed to ensure fair and competitive markets in the meat industry.
Yet, antitrust enforcement has fallen — that is, until Biden came into office. The president has taken the kind of action to tackle market power that we haven’t seen for decades.
His 2021 executive order began tackling monopolies in all corners of the economy, especially in food and agriculture. It included 70 actions to foster more competition, including directing the USDA to create rules to breathe new life into the Packers and Stockyards Act. Two of those rules have been finalized so far.
This executive order also urged the FTC and DOJ to revise merger guidelines. These detail how these agencies evaluate the risks of mergers and decide whether they’ll challenge them. (Food & Water Watch submitted comments with recommendations to strengthen the guidelines against harmful mergers.)
And, in December of last year, the Biden administration set a record for merger challenges. The FTC and DOJ issued the highest number of challenges since the U.S. began requiring antitrust reviews before mergers almost five decades ago.
Now, in March, the president announced a new strike force to tackle “unfair and illegal corporate pricing.” These are exactly the kinds of actions we need to stand up to corporations and put American families first.
The Next Big Fight: A Grocery Mega-Merger from Hell
Yet more grocery consolidation looms on the horizon. In 2022, grocery giant Kroger announced it planned to buy its competitor, Albertsons — these two are the second and fourth-largest grocery stores in the country, respectively.
This $24.6 billion deal would be a gold mine for the companies’ CEOs and owners, and it would cement Kroger’s place near the peak of the grocery store food chain.
However, thanks to the work of organizations including Food & Water Watch, Biden’s FTC has recognized how harmful this merger will be. In February, it announced a suit to block the acquisition, which is scheduled for trial in August. This is a welcome step in preventing this disastrous megamerger — and we need more action like it to curb growing market power.
Biden can and must finalize the third rule strengthening the Packers and Stockyards Act. He also must continue opposing mergers in the ag and food sectors, like Kroger-Albertsons.
At the same time, Food & Water Watch will keep working to expose the truth behind rising prices and all the other failures of our food system. We’re debunking corporations’ lies and excuses, and we’re shining light on their tactics for profiting at everyone else’s expense. We’re fighting for the fair food system we need to ensure healthy, safe, and affordable food for everyone.
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Outrage over Bigotry, Islamophobia in Wall Street Journal & New York Times
'These outlets should apologize publicly & diversify their staff & perspectives to meet their ethical and moral obligations as journalists.'
Feb 04, 2024
The nation's leading newspapers were under fire this weekend after publishing opinion pieces seen as "Bigoted," "Islamophobic," "Racist," and "Reckless."
A Wall Street Journal opinion piece published on Friday afternoon read 'Welcome to Dearborn, America's Jihad Capital.'
And on Saturday, The New York Times published a piece by long-time columnist Thomas Friedman titled "Understanding the Middle East Through the Animal Kingdom."
Dearborn, Michigan, a city with the largest Muslim population in the US, has increased its police presence, fearing hate attacks after the Wall Street Journal branded it America's 'jihad capital.'
The Islamaphobic article was written by Steven Stalinsky, who is a commentator on' terrorism' and has served as executive director of the pro-Israel Middle East Media Research Institute based in Washington, DC.
The mayor of Dearborn, Abdullah H. Hammoud, said Saturday that the city's police officers were ramping up their presence across places of worship and major infrastructure points following the publication of Stalinsky's piece that he called "bigoted" and "Islamophobic." The Council on American-Islamic Relations and the Arab American Anti-Discrimination Committee condemned the piece as anti-Arab and racist for suggesting the city's residents, including religious leaders and politicians, supported Palestinian Islamist group Hamas and extremism.
In response to the Wall Street Journal piece, President Joe Biden tweeted Sunday afternoon:
"Americans know that blaming a group of people based on the words of a small few is wrong. That’s exactly what can lead to Islamophobia and anti-Arab hate, and it shouldn’t happen to the residents of Dearborn – or any American town. We must continue to condemn hate in all forms."
Shortly after Biden's tweet went out, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer tweeted:
"Dearborn is a vibrant community full of Michiganders who contribute day in and day out to our state. Islamophobia and all forms of hate have no place in Michigan, or anywhere. Period."
Friedman's piece in the New York Times entitled, "Understanding the Middle East Through the Animal Kingdom," posited Iran as a metaphorical "parasitoid wasp" with proxies in Yemen, Lebanon, Iraq, and Syria as caterpillars. Friedman claimed, "We have no counterstrategy that safely and efficiently kills the wasp without setting fire to the whole jungle," suggesting that the US militarily destroys the entire Middle East to annihilate Iran and its allies. He concluded that he could "contemplate" the Middle East by watching Animal Planet.
Abed A. Ayoub, Executive Director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, tweeted:
"Go ahead and say this about any other people and see the reaction - @tomfriedman would be fired before the ink dries. This election season kickoff is a reminder that anti-Arab racism and Islamophobia are mainstream. That’s why this trash is acceptable to so many, and there will be no accountability."
Erin Overby, former Archive Editor at The New Yorker, tweeted:
"This @nytimes column by Thomas Friedman comparing countries in the Middle East to animals, pests & insects is so virulently racist it could have run in Der Sturmer or on Radio Rwanda pre-‘94 genocide. It’s appallingly offensive & Friedman should be fired."
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Student Debt Is the Tip of the Iceberg
Under pressure from voters, Biden seems to be addressing a portion of the problem, but college debt is just a bit of fungal decay growing on a vast expanse of infected matter.
Sep 24, 2022
President Joe Biden recently instituted a program to forgive some of the student debt that plagues approximately 45 million Americans. That is all well and good, but why are so many people in debt up to their eyeballs for a vaporous commodity that, in so many cases, delivers nothing?
This isn't bitter hyperbole, but tangible fact when you add up all the dropouts and the hybrid degrees in, say, comparative Latin poetry and transpersonal themes of 19th century German philosophy (the esoteric, combo degree is the product of university gaslighting. Schools aspire to fleece the quirkiest students despite an increasingly limited job market focused on technical skills). There is room, in the open-minded, expansive world of intellectual curiosity, for all seekers of wisdom who pony up.
Only 35% of freshman students will both manage to graduate and use their degrees to launch a career, and many of these careers involve sketchy middle management positions that the late anthropologist, David Graeber, deemed, "bullshit jobs." Graeber subdivided this ghostly faction of the workforce into five categories--flunkies, goons, box tickers, duct tapers, and task masters--each a talisman of administrative bloat. Graeber argued that those who perform bullshit jobs understand that their positions are merely ceremonial--pretending to scrutinize industry regulations and accountability, or planning projects that have no value, or formulating red tape and concocting excuses for inaction. Graeber uncovered an entire industry engaged in the theatrical act of looking busy. One gains access to the world of corporate fluff with but one key--a college diploma.
Giving money away to flimflam artists is as old as money itself. Paying hundreds of thousands in tuition and buying $400 textbooks (that ultimately get dumped at the campus bookstore for $2.50), suggests a medieval prototype--the church indulgence (the practice of paying religious authorities lofty sums to act as mediators in the quest for salvation). Dividing all of humanity into those enjoying an eternity of bliss, and those suffering a timeless universe of torment is the conceptual ancestor of our gathering two tiered class system, but the analogy may not be perfect--so called institutions of higher learning engage in a grift that competes with the US military budget for stacking green bills to dizzying heights, while the church books have crumbled to dust. Nor can we prove that indulgences failed to deliver on the promise of reduced purgatory time.
No one wants to suffer the agonies inflicted by trash talking demons armed with white hot iron rods. If an indulgence purchased an elevator ride up from the bowels of the underworld, that is an investment well spent. I do not intend to argue that a college degree has as much value as a medieval church indulgence--it doesn't--I am simply reflecting that both the church and the Ivy League know how to rake it in while maintaining tax exempt status.
Medieval church officials, to their credit, made relatively modest claims regarding their product. They neither promised to enhance your future earnings nor make you into a more desirable marriage partner. A church indulgence, like toothpaste or medicated foot powder, did only one thing--it shortened your torments in hellfire, period.
A college education, on the other hand, is lauded for so many different things that few of us know exactly what it does. If someone asked: does attending college A) Enhance wisdom and depth? B) Improve Darwinian capabilities in the struggle of one against all? C) Determine the manner in which the raw materials of the human race are organized into stratified layers within a class system? D) Decipher how far the ligament connecting $65,000 tuitions with administration pontifications about equity can stretch before it snaps? I would be utterly confused as to which of the answers is correct. A church indulgence has no such confusing ambiguity. Either your flesh is seared and scorched for a long time or a short time.
A piece written by Caitlin Flanagan for The Atlantic last year--"Private Schools Have Become Completely Obscene"--reveals that even the most privileged beneficiaries of the college system are unhappy. Students at elite private high schools, who will claim a huge chunk of Ivy League real estate, may never be crushed by student debt, but the restrictive mechanisms of social privilege jettison a significant number of aristocratic children. Prep school grads are being booted on masse from a once guaranteed niche, as Harvard and Yale acceptance letters have come more and more to resemble winning Powerball tickets.
As the elite class shrinks, and the suffering class expands, the threshing machine of American colleges rakes it in, imbued with the critical responsibility of separating the wheat from the chaff. A capitalist oligarchy cannot be lax about the details of branding each member of the ruling class. That is why we hear about college admissions cheating scandals and why Flanagan writes about angry hedge-fund parents bullying prep school teachers to change A- grades to A's. Our system of higher learning is fueled by a gusher of petty.
Biden, under pressure from voters, seems to be addressing a portion of the problem, but college debt is just a bit of fungal decay growing on a vast expanse of infected matter. A huge chorus calls for the elimination of college debt but who calls for the elimination of college? Okay, that may be too extreme--maybe college merely needs to be regulated, like toxic waste, carbon emissions, and controlled substances. At bare minimum, colleges should be investigated. Shouldn't we see the receipts for the gazillion dollars that colleges and universities have in endowments? What secret wormholes connect college administrations to the bullshit jobs sector? Which Harvard courses taught Jeffrey Skillings (the primary architect of the Enron scandal) how to hide money?
If nothing else, colleges should be forced to more closely resemble the ancient institutions that have inspired them. It may be difficult to drum up nostalgia for the medieval papacy, but consider that Pope Leo X raised enough money through the sale of indulgences to rebuild Saint Peter's Basilica--a magnificent edifice that awes millions of visitors to this day. The institution powerful enough to put a fifth of US residents painfully in debt ought to be able to at least create wonders for the ages?
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