Dispatches

HARRIS’ NEWLY RELEASED POLICIES STAND IN STARK CONTRAST TO TRUMP’S. Vice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Tim Walz released the details of their policy program on their campaign website (9/8), two days ahead of the scheduled debate between Harris and Donald Trump, Walter Einenkel noted at Daily Kos (9/9).

We have detailed the stark differences between Harris’ campaign website promoting a positive way forward for America and Trump’s website selling aggrievement and fear (and surplus red MAGA hats). These policy pages offer up another example of the differences between the two campaigns.

Titled “A New Way Forward,” Harris promotes her campaign’s designs for building “an opportunity economy and lower costs for families.” It includes 10 points, each with drop downs that detail the policy ideas Harris plans on pushing as president.

Trump’s 20 all-caps bullet points include a lot of exclamation marks and read like a fascist billboard. In order to see the “details” of this platform, you are bounced to another page filled with similar sentiments that reads more like the manifesto of an angry, disgruntled drunk person that includes very little in the way of specifics.

Under “cut taxes for middle class families,” the Harris-Walz website goes through the plans to expand the Earned Income and Child Tax Credits. She also makes a pledge not to raise taxes on families making less than $400,000, making up revenues by rolling back Trump and the GOP’s tax cuts for the rich.

Trump’s promise is to make his tax cuts for the rich “permanent.” The rest of the platform seems to be an expansion on the tone of the bullet-point manifesto. One of the larger sections of policy is titled: “SEAL THE BORDER, AND STOP THE MIGRANT INVASION.” It includes this Joseph McCarthy-era hysteria under “Strict Vetting”:

“Republicans will use existing Federal Law to keep foreign Christian-hating Communists, Marxists, and Socialists out of America. Those who join our Country must love our Country. We will use extreme vetting to ensure that jihadists and jihadist sympathizers are not admitted.”

While Harris’ policy page includes her plans to help grow small businesses and lower drug health care costs, Trump’s page includes a whole section promising to beautify Washington, D.C., and to make sure to “organize a National Celebration to mark the 250th Anniversary of the Founding of the United States of America.”

In the end, the two campaigns’ policy pages reflect the general tenor of what they are running on: Harris-Walz are talking about how to best move forward to afford more people a chance at the American dream, while Trump-Vance are mostly interested in weaving a story of an apocalyptic America that can only be saved by the wealthiest of men.

TRUMP RATCHETS UP ARLINGTON CEMETERY DENIAL AS TRUMP AIDES INVOLVED IN ASSAULT ARE NAMED. NPR has released the names of the two members of Donald Trump’s campaign team who physically and verbally assaulted a woman on the staff at Arlington National Cemetery (8/26). One of those men is deputy campaign manager Justin Caporale, who was also the “project manager” of Trump’s rally at the Ellipse on Jan. 6, 2021, Mark Sumner noted at Daily Kos (9/6).

When NPR originally broke the story about how members of Trump’s staff shoved aside a cemetery worker to film in the highly sensitive area of the cemetery designated as Section 60, the names were withheld. However, the Trump’s team then denied such an altercation took place, saying “We are prepared to release footage if such defamatory claims are made.”

No video has been produced, but members of Trump’s team have repeatedly insulted the female cemetery staffer involved, saying that she was “suffering from a mental health episode,” is “a disgrace,” and a “despicable individual.”

On Sept. 6, Trump declared that the entire event at Arlington was a “made-up story” by Democratic nominee and Vice President Kamala Harris. So now he’s not only denying it but contradicting his own team. And all that seems to have been the breaking point for NPR.

The other member of Trump’s team who was involved in the assault on the cemetery employee was Michel Picard. Picard is a member of Trump’s advance team and should have been one of those responsible for seeing that everything they were doing at the cemetery had been cleared.

Despite Trump’s lies, the incident at Arlington was very real. The Army released a statement rebuking the Trump campaign and making it clear that the campaign was aware of the federal law forbidding the use of any military cemetery for political purposes and specific rules about filming or taking photographs in Section 60.

That Army statement also made it clear that a physical altercation did indeed take place.

“An ANC employee who attempted to ensure adherence to these rules was abruptly pushed aside. This incident was unfortunate, and it is also unfortunate that the ANC employee and her professionalism has been unfairly attacked. ANC is a national shrine to the honored dead of the Armed Forces, and its dedicated staff will continue to ensure public ceremonies are conducted with the dignity and respect the nation’s fallen deserve.”

Despite the uproar over this event, Trump’s campaign went on to release a TikTok video clearly promoting his presence at the cemetery and claiming that no American soldiers died “for 18 months” in Afghanistan while he was in the White House. As the Washington Post makes clear, that was also a lie. There was no 18-month period in Trump’s administration in which American soldiers did not die from hostile fire in Afghanistan.

In fact, in the last 18 months that Trump was in charge, 12 American troops died due to hostile action in Afghanistan. That’s just one less than the number who died during the evacuation from Afghanistan. When is Trump going to lay a wreath for those Americans?

The entirety of Trump’s appearance at Arlington was a sick political stunt. His campaign continues to act as if this was some kind of public event that Trump attended but Harris and President Joe Biden chose to skip. It wasn’t.

This was a private event that Trump immorally and illegally used as an opportunity to film a campaign video at a national cemetery. That Trump had the endorsement of a handful of family members from a few of those who died in Afghanistan does not make it okay.

In the process, Caporale and Picard assaulted a woman who was trying to enforce the law and protect the memories of those buried in the nation’s most sacred place.

The cemetery official involved in the altercation has opted not to press charges out of fear of “retaliation from Trump supporters,” The New York Times reported. But Trump campaign staffers have continued to insult both her and military officials who have reported on the incident. It would be nice to see something done about Trump once again sneering at the law.

DON’T SEND AFGHANISTAN WITHDRAWAL DOWN THE MEMORY HOLE. Kevin Drum has long been annoyed by the relentless use of the word “chaotic” to describe the Afghanistan withdrawal. “Of course it was chaotic. It’s like saying the D-Day landings were chaotic. There’s no way anyone conducts an airlift of 100,000 people in a neat and orderly way from a city that’s just been overthrown by the Taliban, ” Drum noted at Jabberwocking.com (9/1). “In any case, since it’s back in the news it’s worth reviewing how the Afghanistan withdrawal played out”:

1. In early 2020 Donald Trump negotiated with the Taliban for a withdrawal date of May 1, 2021, and the release of 5,000 Taliban prisoners held by the Afghan government.

2. Over the next year Trump pushed hard to reduce US troop levels. By the end of his term he had reduced the US presence to 2,500 troops.

3. When Joe Biden took office, he moved the withdrawal date out to Sept. 11. Trump criticized the change. “We can and should get out earlier,” he said.

4. In July Biden changed the withdrawal date to Aug. 31. At this point, the Taliban was fighting but hadn’t yet taken over a single province. The broad assumption was that when the US withdrawal eventually took place the Afghan government would still control the country. The US, naturally, was committed to protecting the government through the withdrawal.

5. That changed suddenly because the Afghan army collapsed faster than anyone expected. On Aug. 15 the Taliban took over Kabul and the president of Afghanistan fled the country. With only two weeks to go, this made a large-scale evacuation imperative.

6. The withdrawal started chaotically, but within a few hours the Army restored order. Meanwhile, despite the Trump administration’s longtime policy of delaying visa requests, which left a huge backlog of unprocessed applications, the State Department worked heroically to process visas for Afghans who wanted to leave the country.

7. In two weeks, the Army evacuated about 90% of Americans in Afghanistan and nearly 100,000 Afghan nationals. By any kind of historical standard, this was a superb performance under the most difficult circumstances imaginable.

“The entire operation had only one serious failure: the death of 13 American service members (and 170 Afghans) to an al-Qaeda suicide bomber at Abbey Gate. Multiple investigations by the Pentagon concluded there wasn’t really anything that could have stopped it.

“Everyone processes grief differently, and I can’t bring myself to reproach the families that blame Biden for the deaths of their children. But the fact remains that Biden wasn’t at fault; the Army wasn’t at fault; and deaths in the line of duty are a natural occurrence in war.

“The withdrawal wasn’t handled perfectly, but there weren’t any huge mistakes. Nor was it really possible not to withdraw given the situation Biden inherited: the Taliban’s takeover was inevitable as soon as Trump signed the withdrawal agreement with them. It might well have been inevitable even without that. After 20 years it was as clear as it could be that there was simply no more the US could do, and Biden showed a lot of political courage in facing up to that.

“In the end, despite everything, the evacuation and airlift were considerable successes—and it’s remarkable that the only serious casualties came from a single al-Qaeda suicide bomber. The blame for that rests squarely on al-Qaeda and no one else.”

BOEING UNION WINS 25% RAISE IN TENTATIVE CONTRACT, BUT POSSIBLE STRIKE STILL LOOMS. A tentative deal between aerospace giant Boeing and the union that represents more than 33,000 of its workers (9/8) was a testament to the “collective voice” of the employees, said the union’s bargaining committee—but members signaled they may reject the offer and vote to strike, Julia Conley noted at CommonDreams.org (9/8).

The company and the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) District 751 reached an agreement that if approved by members in a scheduled Sept. 12 vote, would narrowly avoid a strike that was widely expected just a day before, when Boeing and the bargaining committee were still far apart in talks over wages, health coverage, and other crucial issues for unionized workers.

Negotiations went on for six months and resulted in an agreement on 25% general wage increases over the tentative contract’s four years, a reduction in healthcare costs for workers, an increase in the amount Boeing would contribute to retirement plans, and a commitment to building the company’s next aircraft in Washington state. The union had come to the table with a demand for a 40% raise over the life of the contract.

“Members will now have only one set of progression steps in a career, and vacation will be available for use as you earn it,” negotiating team leaders Jon Holden and Brandon Bryant told members. “We were able to secure upgrades for certain job codes and improved overtime limits, and we now have a seat at the table regarding the safety and quality of the production system.”

The potential contract comes as Boeing faces federal investigations, including a criminal probe by the Department of Justice, into a blowout of a portion of the fuselage on an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 jetliner that took place when the plane was mid-flight in January.

The Federal Aviation Administration has placed a limit on the number of 737 MAX planes Boeing can produce until it meets certain safety and manufacturing standards.

If approved, the new deal would be the first entirely new contract for Boeing workers since 2008. Boeing negotiated with the IAM over the last contract twice in 2011 and 2013, in talks that resulted in higher healthcare costs for employees and an end to their traditional pension program.

TRUMP GETS HEAD START ON BIG LIE 2.0 WITH FOCUS ON MAIL-IN VOTING. Donald Trump posted a claim (9/8) that 20% of mail-in votes in Pennsylvania are fraudulent. “Here we go again!” Trump wrote as he called for Attorney General Merrick Garland and the FBI to investigate, Mark Sumner noted at Daily Kos (9/8).

It’s going to be a brief investigation. Pennsylvania’s mail-in ballots have not even been sent out yet. In fact, due to several unresolved court cases, it’s unlikely that ballots in some counties in the state will be sent to voters before the first week of October.

So, even if Trump was right, 20% of zero is still zero. Case closed.

But of course, Trump isn’t concerned about these nonexistent votes. He’s just preparing for the next round of protests and insurrection, planting the seeds for Big Lie 2.0. So that if he loses, everyone loses. And if he wins … everyone loses.

Trump’s source for the revelation that votes that haven’t happened yet are already fake comes from disgraced former Fox News pundit Tucker Carlson. The fact that Carlson has been cavorting with Nazis to the extent that even conservatives have been running away from him, doesn’t bother Trump. Neither does Carlson being a sycophant of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

But then, if Trump was to stop quoting right-wing pundits who either defended Nazis or were in the pocket of Russia, who would he have left to quote?

Trump’s claim about Pennsylvania doesn’t represent concern over votes in the state. Just as in 2016 and 2020, Trump is lying about voter fraud or a “rigged election” far in advance of Election Day. He’s preparing to lose and prepping his followers to repeat the kind of actions seen in 2020 to perpetuate the Big Lie.

Even if Trump did recently slip up and admit that he lost in 2020, that doesn’t mean he intends to be more honest, or more accepting of the outcome, in 2024.

One thing has changed since 2020. After years of making claims that mail-in votes were intrinsically unlawful, Trump did a massive flip-flop last spring and began to encourage his supporters to use mail-in ballots as well as other forms of early voting. The Republican Party has continued this push, with a program called “Swamp the Vote.” Swamp is apparently a good thing when it means more votes for Trump.

But don’t expect Trump to stick to any consistent message on either mail-in voting or absentee ballots. They’re a good thing when it’s his people filling out the form. They’re a disaster when he needs an excuse.

HOUSE REPUBLICANS ARE BACK, AND HOLDING THE GOVERNMENT HOSTAGE. The Republican-led House of Representatives is back in session, just in time to push a short-term spending bill that ties six months of government funding to racist legislation that would require proof of citizenship for people registering to vote. Led by Speaker Mike Johnson, the spending proposal is the GOP’s latest attempt to use the specter of a government shutdown to score political points with Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, Walter Einenkel noted at Daily Kos (9/9).

The House Freedom Caucus is pushing the stopgap bill in the hopes that Trump wins in November and Republicans grow their House majority, enabling them to pass steep spending cuts and increasingly extreme legislation with the support of a new administration. For his part, Trump has openly encouraged Republicans to shut the government down if the latest spending bill doesn’t include the proof-of-citizenship provision.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries called the proposal “unserious and unacceptable” in a letter to his Democratic colleagues and made it clear that it is a politically motivated stunt.

“In order to avert a GOP-driven government shutdown that will hurt everyday Americans, Congress must pass a short-term continuing resolution that will permit us to complete the appropriations process during this calendar year and is free of partisan policy changes inspired by Trump’s Project 2025,” Jeffries said, referring to the extremist government blueprint that was engineered by more than 100 of Trump’s minions.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer seconded Jeffries’ sentiment in a “Dear Colleague” letter (9/9).

“Despite Republican bluster, that is how we’ve handled every funding bill in the past, and this time should be no exception,” Schumer wrote. “We will not let poison pills or Republican extremism put funding for critical programs at risk.”

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin sent a letter to the chairs and ranking members of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees warning that further uncertainty around budgets could impair our military and subject service members and their families to unnecessary stress, empower adversaries, misalign billions of dollars and damage readiness.

Johnson doesn’t have room for much political theater. His thin House majority is further weakened by extremists like Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), who voiced his dissent on social media and vowed to vote against the proposed spending bill.

“I’m voting Hell No on the ‘Continuing Appropriations and Other Matter Act’ this week,” Massie wrote. “I don’t care which bright shiny object is attached to it, or which fake fight we start and won’t finish. Congress is spending our country into oblivion, and this bill doesn’t cut spending.”

Much like voter ID laws pushed by conservatives, requiring proof of citizenship for newly registered voters promises to fix problems that don’t exist. These laws are a shameless attempt to disenfranchise voters of color and weaken democracy.

TRUMP’S LATEST RAMBLING MELTDOWN REMINDS US OF HIS PREDATOR PAST. Donald Trump used a news conference following a Manhattan court hearing (9/6) to make a meandering, conspiratorial, and disjointed rant about the various court judgements against him. Trump has faced increased questioning about his mental acuity and this appearance is likely to raise further concerns.

The event was billed as a news conference, but Trump took no questions from the media as he reminded the public of the long list of women who have accused him of sexual misconduct, Oliver Willis noted at Daily Kos (9/6).

Trump appeared in court for oral arguments in his appeal of the 2023 verdict awarding E. Jean Carroll $5 million for battery and defamation after a jury found that he sexually abused Carroll in a department store dressing room in 1996.

For over 45 minutes Trump held court, bouncing from topic to topic. He claimed, without evidence, that the verdict against him—including the separate criminal case where the jury found him guilty on 34 counts—were part of a plot hatched by the Democratic Party.

Trump alleged—without evidence—that officials including President Joe Biden, former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, Vice President Kamala Harris, Sec. Hillary Clinton and other leaders of the Democratic Party had orchestrated legal action against him.

Trump: “This whole thing started, with the political campaign of Harris—who’s having a bad time because she can’t talk—of Harris and Joe Biden. This was election interference, it all is. It’s all fabricated, but fabricated in front of very friendly judges for them and in very friendly areas for them, if you get a jury it’s very hard to win in a jury where you have three or four or five percent Republican votes. Very, very tough, actually.”

Trump, who has a long history of promoting and repeating debunked conspiracy theories, complained that the justice system was being used as a weapon against him to disrupt his presidential campaign.

When not promoting a conspiracy about the legal system, Trump was casting aspersions on Carroll and other women who have accused him of sexual assault.

Speaking about one unnamed woman, Trump said, “Frankly, I know you’re going to say it’s a terrible thing to say, but it couldn’t have happened, it didn’t happen, and she would not have been the chosen one, she would not have been the chosen one.”

Trump also complained about the courtroom performance of his lawyers as they stood behind him at the event.

“I’m disappointed in my legal talent,” Trump said.

At least two dozen women have accused Trump of assaulting them or making unwanted sexual advances. The allegations against Trump run the gamut of groping, leering at underaged pageant contestants, forcibly kissing women without permission, and other instances of assault.

Trump has denied the claims against him but infamously bragged to television host Billy Bush of “Access Hollywood” that “when you’re a star” it is easy to assault women, and that you can “grab ’em by the pussy.”

STUDY SHOWS INFANT DEATHS RISE IN US WHEN BAT POPULATIONS FALL. Bat die-offs in the U.S. led to increased use of insecticides, which in turn led to greater infant mortality, according to a “seminal” study that shows the effects of biodiversity loss on human beings, Edward Carver noted at CommonDreams (9/6).

Eyal Frank, an environmental economist at the University of Chicago, authored the study, which was published by *Science*, a leading peer-reviewed journal (9/5).

Bats can eat thousands of insects per night and act as a natural pest control for farmers, so when a fungal disease began killing off bat populations in the U.S. after being introduced in 2006, farmers in affected counties used more insecticides, Frank found. Those same counties saw more infant deaths, which Frank linked to increased use of insecticide that is harmful to human health, especially for babies and fetuses.

The study was greeted by an outpouring of praise from unaffiliated scientists for its methodology and the important takeaways it offers.

“[Frank] uses simple statistical methods to the most cutting-edge techniques, and the takeaway is the same,” Eli Fenichel, an environmental economist at Yale University, toldThe New York Times. “Fungal disease killed bats, bats stopped eating enough insects, farmers applied more pesticide to maximize profit and keep food plentiful and cheap, the extra pesticide use led to more babies dying. It is a sobering result.”

Carmen Messerlian, an environmental epidemiologist at Harvard University, told the Times the study “seminal” and “groundbreaking.”

The study shows the need for a broader understanding of human health that includes consideration of entire ecosystems, said Roel Vermeulen, an environmental epidemiologist at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. “It emphasizes the need to move from a human-centric health impact analysis, which only considers the direct effects of pollution on human health, to a planetary health impact assessment,” he toldNew Scientist.

Reporter Benji Jones echoed that sentiment in Vox, calling Frank’s findings “astonishing” and writing that such studies could help us fight chemical pollution by corporations.

“When the link between human and environmental health is overlooked, industries enabled by short-sighted policies can destroy wildlife habitats without a full understanding of what we lose in the process,” Jones said. “This is precisely why studies like this are so critical: They reveal, in terms most people can relate to, how the ongoing destruction of biodiversity affects us all.”

Frank, who said he started the work after stumbling on an article about bat population loss while procrastinating, happened upon an excellent natural experiment. The spread of white-nose syndrome, the fungal disease, was well tracked on a county-by-county level, leaving him with high-quality data that is hard to find for researchers who study the intersection of human and animal life.

The benefits of biodiversity on humans, and the drawbacks to its loss, are normally very difficult to quantify.

“That’s just quite rare—to get good, empirical, grounded estimates of how much value the species is providing,” Charles Taylor, an environmental economist at Harvard Kennedy School, toldThe Guardian. “Putting actual numbers to it in a credible way is tough.”

Taylor himself is the author of a somewhat similar study that showed that pesticide use and infant mortality rose during years in which cicadas appeared; the insects do so at 13-17 year intervals.

David Rosner, a historian based at Columbia University, said the new bat study joins a large body of evidence dating back to the 1960s that links pesticide use with negative human health outcomes. “We’re dumping these synthetic materials into our environment, not knowing anything about what their impacts are going to be,” he said. “It’s not surprising—it’s just kind of shocking that we discover it every year.”

Frank’s claim about the cause of increased infant mortality should be taken with some caution, said Vermeulen, the Dutch researcher. He said the loss of agricultural income caused by bat die-offs could be connected to the increased deaths in complex ways.

From The Progressive Populist, October 1, 2024

Populist.com