Bad Emergencies, Good Emergencies, and the Shock Doctrine

Politically aware people (and even a slim majority in Congress) are justifiably against Trump's assault on the Constitution over the Mexican Wall. However, Trump's veto will hold because the vote against the emergency declaration was a bare majority instead of a unanimous rejection of this blatantly dictatorial move. Still, there are myriad denunciations of Trump's invocation of emergency powers, many by Republicans, who warn specifically that this sets a precedent for a Green New Deal (GND) declaration of emergency.

Lawmakers in both parties warned Trump against declaring an emergency. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who cautioned that a future Democratic president could use the same powers to declare an emergency on climate change, said yesterday that Trump's plan is a "bad idea." Other Republicans, including Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, also indicated displeasure at the idea. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky had questioned the need for a national emergency declaration in the past but said yesterday he would support it.

Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) said that declaring a national emergency could undermine the Constitution.

"By circumventing Congress and Article I of the Constitution, President Trump is opening the door for any future president to act alone without Congressional approval," she said in a statement. "If elected president, how would Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders use this precedent for a national disaster declaration to force the Green New Deal on the American people?"

Trump order could foist 'Green New Deal' on U.S., some worry

This is not simply rightwing paranoia. It is a fact that the version of the GND outlined by AOC (It does not have enough detail to be called a proposal.) explicitly calls for a declaration of a climate emergency and the creation of organizations that cannot be controlled by democratic politics. Henceforth, I will call this version the "Emergency GND".

It seems as though our politics is so paralyzed that the emergency solution idea is contagious. To recap, some of the GOP and some of the Dems are in favor of some emergencies, and against others. Clearly the meaning of the word emergency has been degraded over time by various ongoing national "emergencies" that aren't really emergencies.

A better way to say that is: one's man's emergency is another man's Shock Doctrine. That is, an emergency is an opportunity to ram through plans that have long since been prepared and are only waiting for an excuse to be implemented. The USA PATRIOT act is one instance of such a tactic, relying on the 911 shock to implement a surveillance state and indefinite detention without trial.

Here's the thing about the declaration of a climate "emergency": the society has been collectively aware of the climate problem for at least thirty years. The UN issued a report on it in 1987, called the Bruntland Report (Our Common Future).

I would guess that most people reading this report would suspect that virtually nothing will be done about this situation...In fact, if you are reading these words in 1989 or after, the chances are that you will be wondering what the Brundtland Report was. There will be no move to arrest the coming system-break because all of the institutions named by the report...hope to solve these problems by means of a mind-set that is itself the problem.

- Morris Berman, Coming to Our Senses - Body and Spirit in the Hidden History of the West (1989)

Berman has turned out to be a prophet. Because, had I not read his book thirty years ago, I would never have heard of the Brundtland Report. But it was a UN report, and TPTB could hardly have been unaware of it. And yet, TPTB have done nothing. In fact, they have done the opposite. They have attacked the concept as "fake news" for at least a decade. They have passed laws to prevent the words "climate change" from being used in government reports. They have vilified, even sued, scientists like Michael Mann of "hockey stick" fame. They have tried to obtain scientists private emails in order to shut down anyone involved in demonstrating the reality of climate change. They dismantled the Canadian EPA and similarly crippled the Australian EPA.

But, after 30 years of denying the problem, the weather has simply gotten too bizarre and too destructive to ignore. Hurricane Harvey deluged Houston for over four days. Miami floods on a regular basis. We just had a "bomb cyclone" devastate the Great Plains. Pine forests are burning across the West and Canada, including Los Angeles and Marin County. The Pacific Coast alternates between massive drought and massive rainfall, due to the pacific blob and the rain superhighway it creates. The Arctic is largely ice free and generates "polar vortices" that deliver extreme weather to the US. The Antarctic is melting even faster than predicted, with giant ice shelves calving off at increasing rates.

TPTB have known about climate change for at least three decades, but have done nothing, unless you count making a bundle out of business as usual, and incrementally making the crisis worse with each passing year. But suddenly, yet another UN report about climate change (which, if history is any guide, should have been as obscure as the Bruntland Report) is the excuse for a Shock Doctrine like "emergency" - an "emergency" that has been sitting in plain view for at least half of everyone's lives; an emergency which can be very profitable for our corporate masters, even if it fails.

Do you know why the Emergency GND had to be proposed by a socialist? Because corporations can't propose a government program to save the environment. It runs counter to their "free market", "government is the problem" ideology. But they can let some useful anti-capitalist idiots on the left declare that said program must be run as an "emergency". They are happy to let the left concede, before the debate has begun, that we need to suspend the law in order to solve this problem. They are happy with the implicit admission that democratically arrived at tax penalties, pollution regulations, tax incentives, and public works programs are simply insufficient to the task.

Pardon me, but I've seen this movie before. First you stonewall an issue for years. Then you declare that its time to move on. In our case, TPTB have stonewalled democratically legislated climate change regulations and international treaties for decades. (The weak tea Paris Accords were the only significant event, and Trump withdrew from them.) Now the chattering classes declare that its too late for democratic remedies, and that we need to move to authoritarian measures.

I'm not saying that all GNDs would be Shock Doctrines. I'm saying that the Emergency GND is a Shock Doctrine proposal. I'm saying that it opens the door for a corporate hijacking of the GND. We constantly complain that our current government is a corporate-controlled monster, but we now want to give it dictatorial powers? What is wrong with "the left"?

“If there’s an emergency, you create a set of security rules that are supposed to suppress politics,” Eric Schewe, an expert on authoritarian regimes, told The Outline. The history of such emergencies shows that they result in the expansion of repressive state power, short-circuiting political debate in favor of urgent, often militarized action to protect narrowly national interests, permitting governments to selfishly marginalize affected people even further.

“It presents climate change as external threat or enemy to be conquered,” when in fact “there’s no identifiable external enemy here; it’s not something that can be conquered or defeated through that kind of marshalling of national resources.”

Why declaring a climate-change “state of emergency” would be a disaster

Basically, the Emergency GND is a stalking horse. Its designed to fail. What else could the outcome be with a troglodyte GOP president and a GOP Senate, with a Democratic Party dominated by corporatists ("centrists") who have spent three years smearing the left with the bogus Russiagate nonsense? The real purpose of the Emergency GND is to justify a corporate counter-proposal that preserves and extends the poison pills of the Emergency GND.

What are those poison pills? Public private partnerships, with no effective government supervision, for one. Second, the emergency GND makes zero mention of the military, the largest consumer of fossil fuel on the planet and the largest polluter. I'm sure the MIC will be happy not to disturb that glaring omission.

On the "designed to fail" side, the Emergency GND inserts the politically polarizing language of IdPol, which is guaranteed to destroy any bipartisanship. That will be the pivot around which a GOP/corporate modification of the proposal will turn.

I'm not saying that any Emergency GND legislation will be passed and signed into law in the next six years - through the end of Trump's second term. (Like Joe Biden, Que Mala Harris, Beto and Switch, or any of the other "acceptable" candidates can beat him?) I'm saying that the Emergency GND proposal is laying down a marker for dictatorship. its the second bet on the table, with Trump's Wall being the first bet.

When the only solutions that people come up with are emergency declarations, you can be sure democracy has left the building.

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themselves where we are now: "governed" by competing factions so devoted to their intractable partisanship that they could no longer get anything done.

This is what the GOP's fanatical tribalism, dating back to 1994, has wrought -- a polity so fed the fuck up with biz-as-uzhe that they'll take anything that offers some sort of respite from the inane ineffectuality of TPTB.

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The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

arendt's picture

@UntimelyRippd

Rome, Imperial Spain (powerful due to American Gold, as we are due to oil), or Nazi Germany (a vicious, lying, looting bunch of racists with a gigantic military).

All of the above have nothing to do with being "the world's greatest democracy".

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detroitmechworks's picture

@arendt And the British Empire was our Hellenic Empire.

Arrogance, obsession, backstabbing senators and a populace barely kept in check with bread and circuses and heavy use of Urban Cohorts, slowly being replaced by mercenaries. Although not quite so good as they were at the height... in fact so bad, we may have to hire some from other countries. Course, we don't need to worry as long as they're well paid and treated as Roman Citizens...

But that's just my interpretation.

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I do not pretend I know what I do not know.

@arendt who had a connection with building extravagant self-aggrandizing things, esp after the great fire in Rome (which some historians claim he started), was thought to have diminished the office with his quirky public conduct in the entertainment sphere. Died of suicide when he thought TPTB were coming for him for his execution as an enemy of the state. Political chaos ensued, mixed public feelings about his death.

Trump, former reality teevee star and embarrassing tweet artist, associated with building self-aggrandizing structures, considered to be engaging in conduct that debases the office he holds. Serious discussion now over whether he will actually leave office peacefully if he loses the 2020 election, and whether the military, the police, and the bikers will stick with him when the going gets tough.

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arendt's picture

@wokkamile

We have yet to have them kill one emperor and annoint the next one, but that time is approaching.

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@arendt eom

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Ya got to be a Spirit, cain't be no Ghost. . .

Explain Bldg #7. . . still waiting. . .

If you’ve ever wondered whether you would have complied in 1930’s Germany,
Now you know. . .
sign at protest march

@Tall Bald and Ugly but didn't want to sidetrack things onto a subject that can be an enormous time-suck.

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arendt's picture

@wokkamile

about all the lines Americans have been fed over the last 70 years.

Let's just stay focused on the latest lie, the one we haven't fallen for - YET!

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arendt's picture

@Tall Bald and Ugly

Toss in RFK, too - because he would have been Pres.

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@arendt

...stated that infamous neoliberal mating call: "You never let a serious crisis go to waste!"

(Neoliberal Axiom: If it's an emergency there's always an opportunity for profit, politically and/or financially.)

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"Freedom is something that dies unless it's used." --Hunter S. Thompson

jobu's picture

@UntimelyRippd

themselves where we are now: "governed" by competing factions so devoted to their intractable partisanship that they could no longer get anything done.

This is what the GOP's fanatical tribalism, dating back to 1994, has wrought

Yes. But they've been aided and abetted by the very tractable Democrats, made so by their desire to compete for Wall Street and other Corporate Cash. The Republican's fanatical tribalism only works with the corresponding Washington Generalship of the Democratic Party's (not)counter-narrative.

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detroitmechworks's picture

In New Zealand...

I expect any GND emergency declaration to (Much like the Patriot Act) insert lots of little wish list items into the authoritarians arsenal. Anybody who fits the profile...

Which of course just ties in with the Cops now emphasizing "Officer Safety" which basically means if the cop comes home safe, whatever he did was justified. Expect Police to be offered "Incentive Housing" which will essentially recreate the Green Zone, back here at home. Of course, once a green zone is created, everything outside that becomes fair game...

They want the Emergency Declarations, because they "Work". Meaning they give more money to the people who demanded the declarations, therefore, mission accomplished.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fv-sKP17xTw]

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I do not pretend I know what I do not know.

arendt's picture

@detroitmechworks

I never heard of "Officer Safety".

What a crock a friendly cop is these days. My recent run ins with police, over routine traffic stops, have been unbelievably hostile. I feel the militarization.

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snoopydawg's picture

@detroitmechworks

At first it was 10 years in prison for anyone sharing the video of the event and now people can't have the dossier that guy wrote. I think RT has the article on this.

Cops here have gotten license to kill. All they need to say is that they were afraid for their lives and whola they get a pass.

This article goes into detail on it. I had to stop reading it because I got so upset about what cops are doing to dawgs. They have licenses to kill any dawgs that they "think" are going to hurt them.

As a2nite says, "fuck the cops!!!"

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

detroitmechworks's picture

@snoopydawg And the pigs don't want the people to "resist".

Suddenly feeling like I'm stuck in Terminator.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5X_nnGuOdKA]

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I do not pretend I know what I do not know.

Lookout's picture

The emergency would be declared unconstitutional.

The American Civil Liberties Union and the state of California are among those saying they’ll challenge the president’s emergency declaration in court.

http://www.bu.edu/today/2019/is-trumps-declaration-of-a-national-emergen...

More from the article...

To my knowledge, no president has ever tried to use national emergency funding to appropriate funds Congress refused to appropriate. Politically, it would mean the president would be seeking, as President Trump would indeed be doing here if he vetoes a proposed Congressional resolution disapproving the emergency declaration, to override a bipartisan judgment of Congress. If Congress has the votes to override, his authority terminates—as it would have, and had been intended to, with only a simple majority of each house. But a Supreme Court decision in 1983 invalidated such so-called legislative vetoes.

If Congress lacks the numbers to override—and it’s doubtful that enough Republicans would defect to enable a two-thirds majority in the House and Senate—the president would be proceeding in the face of congressional opposition, which, in turn, effectively weakens his position before the courts.

The idea of climate chaos as a national (global) emergency is one I can get behind. No doubt the corpora-dims and rethugs will try to manipulate and water down the somewhat weak initial resolution (nothing in the GND prevents the continued extraction and sale of fossil fuels from the US).

Once again it is obvious that the oligarchs pull the strings and own the legislators. They won't even stand up for the power of their own institution - Congress - with this emergency nor with the war powers act. Perhaps that is the real emergency?

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

Congress did this to themselves when they passed the National Emergencies Act. They can repeal it.

And a wall is just a wall. There really is no reason for such hysteria - or at least no more than any other expenditure that one might disagree with.

I can't believe people are foaming at the mouth over this as compared to say, all of the money wasted on wars.

And the accusations of dictatorship need to stop - Trump hasn't done anything out of the ordinary compared to other presidents.

If people want to stop presidents (and not just Trump) from taking more power, then the people need to change the Constitution or have Congress pass laws against, for example, signing statements.

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dfarrah

detroitmechworks's picture

@dfarrah I'll think about it. Done.

NO.

I will continue to call him a dictator, just like I call Obama a dictator. If Congress had any power whatsoever they would have acted. Since they didn't we know they have no interest whatsoever in representing the people.

So fuck em. They need me to keep voting for them to maintain their illusion. My ballot is returned every time with "None of these Candidates are Acceptable" written in on every line. I know that my vote does not count and I'm surprisingly happy with that.

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I do not pretend I know what I do not know.

@detroitmechworks consistent.

I don't believe yet that T or Obama are/were dictators.

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dfarrah

arendt's picture

@dfarrah

Congress did this to themselves when they passed the National Emergencies Act. They can repeal it.

In what alternative universe will Congress grow a spine? We are rolling towards an emergency decree state, which the corporations and billionaires who own Congress would be happy to have since they would control it.

1976 was the beginning of the rot (Buckley vs. Valleo). Congress has devolved to a sinecure handed to those most compliant with corporate wishes. They couldn't undo their zipper to take a leak.

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arendt's picture

Remember Michigan's infamous emergency manager law - the one that appointed a jerk who decided Flint, MI could drink toxic goo instead of water?

Its very hard to claw back control once you have handed it over.

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@arendt
it reinforces my sense that what we are seeing is a disturbing pattern. thus far, that pattern has been dominated by (but not exclusive to) the GOP. there are two motifs:
A. Wherever they can get power by capturing the legislature and the executive, they undertake to rule ("govern" is too polite a word) without regard for the opinions, interests or concerns of any citizen who is not of their faction. They modify any and all rules/laws that might limit them or impinge on their future electoral success. They corrupt the judiciary and do everything possible to concentrate power in the executive on the one hand, and in the highest levels of government possible on the other (for example, passing laws that forbid local school boards to negotiate with teachers on various specifics). This is a straightforward renunciation of two pillars of the philosophy that supposedly underpinned their movement: Limit judicial activism, and devolve authority down into the communities.
Their argument for why this is "okay" is rooted in the classic conservative conflation of ethics and law, and the classic american political confusion about the difference between what is written on paper and what is real. This can be summarized as follows: "Anything that is legal is not wrong; anything that is not forbidden in written law is permitted; any general power granted in written law may be exercised always and under all circumstances."
B. Wherever they cannot get power, they will do everything and anything to prevent the party with power from governing. Their justification is the same as stated above. Thus, in the Senate they abrogate their constitutional duty to "advise and consent" on a Supreme Court nominee, choosing instead to bottle the nomination up and run out the electoral clock. Because the constitution does not explicitly order them to put up or shut up, they argue that they are entitled to do nothing at all. They invent, as an excuse, the rationalization that the President won't be president for all that much longer, but no sane person believes this is a matter of principle -- that the same senators would feel (nevermind argue) the same way if the shoe were on the other foot. This is pure partisan hackery, the substitution of partisan tribalism for the duty to carry out the public's business, in that service to the public to which these evil frauds hypocritically commit themselves in one self-congratulatory blatherism after another.

To declare an "emergency" to override democratic governance in order to address problems that have developed (and been debated) over decades is simply a repudiation of democracy itself. World War II was an emergency -- fighting it to win meant abandoning many of our most precious myths about the prerogatives of capital, on a scale and a timeframe that did not admit of judicial processes that would normally play out over years. AGC has become urgent only because our paralyzed factional system of government, in which both factions have been effectively captured by the forces of Fuck-the-Planet-and-Everyone-on-it-Gimme-My-Profits has become an horrifically urgent problem. Creating emergency powers that do an end-run against the paralyzed democratic processes without addressing the problem of who is actually running the show is exactly the recipe for a descent into dictatorial horror.

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The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

arendt's picture

I especially liked

both factions have been effectively captured by the forces of Fuck-the-Planet-and-Everyone-on-it-Gimme-My-Profits

The paralysis has been engineered, and now they will profit from it by taking it to the next and final level: rule by decree.

It all happened because of money. Campaign finance and media ownership concentration were the only issues that mattered. We have arrived at the waiting room of dictatorship because we failed to limit the power of money over people.

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jobu's picture

...from the left mainly argued that it was insufficient, that it didn't take certain policy prescriptions far enough or left them off the table completely.

Another critique took that notion and added that Roosevelt's tactics where not in keeping with democratic norms and that he was setting the table for authoritarian capture.

Dewey argued that there was a crisis in American liberal thought and practice in that there was a disconnect between the new material realities and the liberal ideas and values which informed liberal practice in addressing those realities. This was particularly the case with the New Deal state, which Dewey argued lacked the type of political organization that could allow for the creation of a community wherein citizens were empowered in meaningful ways in order to address the problems confronting them.

Roosevelt argued in 1936 that, as a tool, Jeffersonian Laissez-faire was not up to the task which now confronted the nation. He called for Big Government intervention as the only tool then available to maintain the aims of an egalitarian society that laissez-faire was originally espoused to promote. Dewey was wary.

In a democracy, the role of the state was to serve the interests of the public, but contemporary American society was such that the public was not organized in a way that their common interests could be discovered and communicated to their political representatives. What the depression era witnessed on a global scale was the emergence of tension between the demands of a capitalist economy and the tenets of democratic government. Dewey was concerned that democracy was receiving the lesser share of the outcomes. The challenge became one of reconstructing liberal practice so as to establish a new politics that held democracy as a way of life as its vision for American society.

Throughout his life Dewey maintained that democracy is the one and only method of government that would be able to ensure egalitarian ends for society as a whole. His famous decade long debate with authoritarian leftist Walter Lippmann gives us a very clear sense of his mind on this issue.

His 1938 essay entitled Democracy is Radical warns us against the notion of abandoning democratic ideals in favor of a temporary dictatorship:

There is intellectual hypocrisy in and moral contradiction in the creed of those who uphold the need for at least a temporary dictatorship of a class as well as in the position of those who asseert that the present economic system is one of freedom of initiative and opportunity for all.

There is ample evidence that we live in a Neo-liberal Shock Doctrine dystopia. Any policy program (GND or otherwise) set in this environment should be carefully considered with Dewey in mind but also the prescient warning of Adam Smith:

To widen the market and to narrow the competition, is always the interest of the dealers... The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it.

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arendt's picture

@jobu

I will do a little research on Dewey, about whom I know very little.

I am well acquainted with Lippman, the man who invented the phrase "manufacture of consent" and thought it was a positive development, the man who thought democracy was unworkable.

I have never really studied the massive debates that must have gone on as the New Deal was being implemented. Given that the left still had a formidable political presence as the Great Depression wore on, and given that Stalinism had not been exposed for what it was, there must have been a lot of interesting commentary from the left. Of course, the right was off on its normal "its communism" rant.

In The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck said this:

'Fella named Hines-got 'bout thirty thousan' acres, peaches and grapes-got a cannery an' a winery. Well, he's all a time talkin' about 'them goddamn reds.' 'God- damn reds is drivin' the country to ruin,' he says, an' 'We got to drive these here red bastards out.' Well, they were a young fella jus' come out west here, an' he's listenin' one day. He kinda scratched his head an' he says, 'Mr. Hines, I ain't been here long. What is these goddamn reds?' Well, sir, Hines says, 'A red is any son-of-a-bitch that wants thirty cents an hour when we're payin' twenty-five!' Well, this young fella he thinks about her, an' he scratches his head, an' he says, 'Well, Jesus, Mr. Hines. I ain't a son-of-a-bitch, but if that's what a red is-why, I want thirty cents an hour. Ever'body does. Hell, Mr. Hines, we're all reds.''

Thanks for this.

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Still, there are myriad denunciations of Trump's invocation of emergency powers, many by Republicans, who warn specifically that this sets a precedent for a Green New Deal (GND) declaration of emergency.
Suddenly we're afraid of declaring an emergency because someone else will have to declare an emergency to respond to a real emergency? How far we've fallen.

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On to Biden since 1973

arendt's picture

@doh1304

FDR did the New Deal without declaring an official emergency.

OTOH, our politics is so paralyzed that people are starting to resort to emergency declarations out of sheer frustration.

The whole idea of an official emergency is wrong.

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snoopydawg's picture

@arendt

Of course it had nothing to do with any emergency that would affect us citizens. Oh no. The emergency was what was happening there affected our national interests. Meaning that some oil companies couldn't have access to its oil.

Millions of people not having access to health insurance would be mine and I'd throw in the hundreds of thousands of people who are homeless, but that's just me and I would probably be given some hidden drug that would kill or incapacitate me and some other person would take my place.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

jobu's picture

I will do a little research on Dewey, about whom I know very little.

He has been scrubbed from history by the NeoLibs.

In the minds of most people born after the Second World War, John Dewey is an exceedingly dim presence, a figure apparently left stranded on the far side of the Sixties. He has seemed the spokesman for a world view whose day has passed. His ideas have not been thought worth knowing better, and his books, by and large, have not been read.

Cornell West, who was heavily influenced by Dewey along with Noam Chomsky has often used this quote by Henry Steele Commanger when describing his devotion to Dewey:

It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that no political question in America was settled until Dewey had spoken on it

He is seemingly lost to history, especially to those of the left where he was so influential.

He is considered the intellectual god-father of the New Deal yet he was extremely disappointed in its scope.

He was a founding member of the NAACP.

Lyndon Johnson took the phrase "The Great Society" from Dewey's book, the Public and its Problems.

Here is Chomsky:

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjInIoUzYe0]

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wendy davis's picture

focus of those calling for an Emergency GND bill; as it turn out, there's at least one petition out there to be signed! but ahhhhh, when ilhan omar talks...people listen, like they do with e.f. hutton. i reckon it won't be long until she's on the cover of Time Magazine w/ an enormous spread inside like AOC. ; )

but please, can we not call her a 'socialist'? the DSAs are reform capitalists, which is an important distinction to me, as well as to the tankies on twitter who critique the DSAs regularly.

interesting, timely, and illuminating piece by the outline...until the ending:

"“That’s why a proposal like the Green New Deal, introduced by New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markee, is so powerful. It acknowledges that, as the IPCC’s 2018 report states, addressing climate change will require a “complete transformation” in how we use energy. But it doesn’t pursue that transformation through reactive, short-term, or militarized measures to protect U.S. security interests. Instead, it puts the interests of working people first. It tackles the persistent inequalities of a warmer world — local pollution, gentrification, worsening health, systemic unemployment — and proposes a long-term reorganization of the U.S. economy on the principles of decarbonization and democratic control."

some folks seem not to have read their Deals; both are at the top of my compilation 'Green Capitalism Aglow', and right at the top: it doesn't limit fossil fuel us, it enables it instead (and the mechanisms), but only calls for 'net-zero emissions', etc. the ridiculous buzz words like 'clean energy, 'renewable (not sustainable at all) energy', and tra la la.

i especially thank you for the DOD report, as now i remember why i was so alarmed at the language i'd features about climate change as a 'threat multiplier', etc., as was my favorite tankie cordeliers. i went way back thru his twit account to find these; you need to click the tweet for a stand alone to read the related ones from him and red kahina. ack, the threat multiplier language isn't part of, guess i blew the embed choices, but no matter, i'd pasted in:

From the text of her GND, this wtf?:

“Whereas, climate change constitutes a direct threat to the national security of the United States—

(1) by impacting the economic, environmental, and social stability of countries and communities around the world; and

(2) by acting as a threat multiplier”

What in the world can you be imagining?

but fancy the craziness (and cost, plus non-feasibility) of this portion, say in jut new your city:

(E) upgrading all existing buildings in the United States and building new buildings to achieve maximum energy efficiency, water efficiency, safety, affordability, comfort, and durability, including through electrification’

holy crow! the green dream! at least bill clinton on letterman had suggested painting all rooftops white to reflect the sunlight. that plan could have spurred some local non-military jobs, eh?

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arendt's picture

@wendy davis

“Whereas, climate change constitutes a direct threat to the national security of the United States—

That was one of AOC's staffers? Sorry, but I couldn't follow your rapidly shifting train of thought and links.

can we not call her a 'socialist'? the DSAs are reform capitalists

AFAICT, the DSA and their cheerleaders at Jacobin are just the privileged offspring of the ruling class playing at doing something useful. My favorite "socialist" is Ben Tarnoff, son of a former president of the CFR. Both his father and mother were Assistant Secretaries of State. And little Ben has immense access, getting his "reform capitalist" screeds published at all the right corporate media venues: NYT, WaPo, Guardian.

These people remind me of the third? generation Rockefeller heirs who bankrolled Ramparts Magazine in the 1960s. They're just play acting being "rebellious".

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lotlizard's picture

@arendt  
but it turned out to be just some fancy socio-political cultural footwork by the Ford Foundation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Educational_Television

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wendy davis's picture

@arendt

too rapid fire. but no, as i'd noted in my comment, in my coverage of her GND:

"From the text of her GND, this wtf?:

“Whereas, climate change constitutes a direct threat to the national security of the United States—

(1) by impacting the economic, environmental, and social stability of countries and communities around the world; and

(2) by acting as a threat multiplier”

What in the world can you be imagining?

as for omar, she's become almost as ubiquitous an online presence as ocasio, so her all for an emergency climate declaration may grow legs. here's one bill on offer by an oregon rep named blumenauer.

i'd hoped you'd click cordelier's tweet to stand alone and read all the other very worth tweets associated with the subject, both cynical but entirely in order (for the likes of me, anyway.) national guard jobs, 'securing the homeland', etc.

not henry kissinger had a great link on the authors who'd written the Deal over one weekend, but i hadn't grabbed it. maybe he'll bring it again.

and ben tarnoff = the ocasio kids; nice analogy.

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Couldn't an (R) who voted "No" change on an override vote to support Congress' final authority over what's an Emergency?
Members who have loyalty to Congress and the Constitution over Party?

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I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.

arendt's picture

@The Voice In the Wilderness

There is no upside with TPTB for voting that way. It is a one way ticket to being primaried.

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@arendt
Just hoping I had grown too old and cynical.

I say force the vote anyway. Let someone run on their upholding of the veto "X voted to let Trump defy Congress and the Constitution". A lawyer might claim that's not true, but true enough for campaign speech.

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I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.

k9disc's picture

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“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu

...for a few reasons:

1.) "Que Mala Harris"...the most perfect misnomer I've read since I don't know when!

2.) John Dewey...I had studied his work only briefly in college. This post made me spend two hours reading up on the man. I will be making a point of reading more about his life, his works and his philosophies on a myriad of subjects, going forward. Count on it! Thank you!

3.) One "fun fact" on Dewey, from what I've read over the past couple of hours (from his Wiki page): "...In 1950, Dewey, Bertrand Russell, Benedetto Croce, Karl Jaspers, and Jacques Maritain agreed to act as honorary chairmen of the Congress for Cultural Freedom,[64] a false-front anti-communist advocacy group founded that year and funded by the CIA..." (And, yeah, back in 1950, it was a different time. The CIA of 1950 was NOT the CIA of 2019. But, still...)

4.) Dewey, not just "food for thought," a veritable mental smorgasbord. Again, THANK YOU! (And, JOBU, too!!!)

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"Freedom is something that dies unless it's used." --Hunter S. Thompson