‘Historic’: House Approves War Powers Resolution to End US Complicity in Yemen

The U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday overwhelmingly approved a War Powers Resolution that would require President Trump to end U.S. military support for the ongoing Saudi-led war in Yemen.

The bill, H.J. Res. 37 introduced by Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), passed in a 248-177 vote—mostly along party lines in the Democratic-controlled House—and will now head to the Senate where a version of the resolution last year, despite Republican control, passed in historic fashion. Read the full roll call here.

“Today is historic,” declared Khanna in statement. “This is the culmination of several years of legislative efforts to end our involvement in the Saudi war in Yemen. I’m encouraged by the direction people are pushing our party to take on foreign policy, promoting restraint and human rights and with the sense they want Congress to play a much larger role.”

Paul Kawika Martin, senior director for policy and political affairs at Peace Action, also celebrated the vote and characterized it, like the Senate vote last year, as historic.

“Building on last year’s Senate vote, the newly empowered House of Representatives just made history by voting to end U.S. support for the war in Yemen, marking the first time the House has successfully invoked the War Powers Act to direct the withdrawal of U.S. forces from an unauthorized war,” Martin said.

“Not only does this vote bolster hopes for a quicker end to the war and the resulting humanitarian crisis,” he added, “it also signals a timely resurgence in congressional oversight on war. The Senate will have to vote again to send this particular bill to the president’s desk, which it should do without delay, but Congress has now made its opposition to U.S. military involvement in Yemen crystal clear.”

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Diane Randall, executive secretary of the Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL), also hailed the vote and gave credit to the tireless work of campaigners.

“Today’s vote affirms the power of grassroots, pro-peace advocacy to turn the tide against war in Congress,” said Randall. “Ending the war that has led to the world’s worst humanitarian crisis is something we can achieve. Today’s vote demonstrates a bipartisan desire to do so.”

Thank you to all of the Win Without War activists who called, petitioned, and wrote to end U.S. involvement in the brutal and unconscionable war in #Yemen. We are honored to stand with you and ready for the next steps. https://t.co/IfCCzLYKot

— Win Without War (@WinWithoutWar) February 13, 2019

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Bernie Sanders Is About as Radical on Tax Policy as Teddy Roosevelt

he really big fortune, the swollen fortune, by the mere fact of its size, acquires qualities which differentiate it in kind as well as in degree from what is possessed by men of relatively small means. Therefore, I believe in a graduated income tax on big fortunes.”

That’s what Teddy Roosevelt proposed in his agenda-setting “New Nationalism” speech from 1910, when he prodded the United States toward a fuller embrace of progressive reform. As a former president who was preparing to again bid for the position, Roosevelt opened a conversation about tax policy in order to frame a broader debate about at least some of the values that should guide American progress.

At the heart of Roosevelt’s agenda was a specific form of taxation. While progressive taxation in a general sense was desirable and necessary, Roosevelt was particularly enthusiastic about “another tax which is far more easily collected and far more effective—a graduated inheritance tax on big fortunes, properly safeguarded against evasion, and increasing rapidly in amount with the size of the estate.”

Teddy Roosevelt, it should be noted, was a Republican who possessed considerable wealth of his own. He was a flawed figure who let down the progressive cause at many turns and never matched the courageous domestic and foreign policy vision advanced by his rival for leadership of the progressive movement, Wisconsin Senator Robert M. La Follette. But Roosevelt recognized that taxing inherited wealth not merely to collect revenues but to preserve and extend democracy.

“The absence of effective state, and, especially, national, restraint upon unfair money-getting has tended to create a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power,” he explained. “The prime need to is to change the conditions which enable these men to accumulate power which it is not for the general welfare that they should hold or exercise.”

Roosevelt’s critics may have characterized him as a radical, but he was never as radical (or as right) as La Follette. Roosevelt was, however, conscious of the threats posed to the American experiment by the rapid consolidation wealth and power. And he knew that progressive taxation could be used to address those threats.

Bernie Sanders knows this, as well. That’s why Sanders is proposing a progressive estate tax on the fortunes of the top 0.2 percent of Americans. The senator from Vermont’s newly introduced “For the 99.8% Act” would collect $2.2 trillion from 588 billionaires.

“At a time of massive wealth and income inequality, when the three richest Americans own more wealth than 160 million Americans, it is literally beyond belief that the Republican leadership wants to provide hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks to the top 0.2 percent,” argues Sanders. “Our bill does what the American people want by substantially increasing the estate tax on the wealthiest families in this country and dramatically reducing wealth inequality. From a moral, economic, and political perspective our nation will not thrive when so few have so much and so many have so little.”

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2020 presidential hopeful Tulsi Gabbard demands an end to ‘regime-change’ wars’

The temperature was 77°F in Honolulu, Hawaii Monday afternoon. While a smattering of clouds was forecasted to beget showers, Hawaii’s highest profile resident, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard rode through 5 inches of snow to reach an icy Iowa City.

Taking the stage Monday, she said she expected the worst: she was surprised to find the event room at Big Grove Brewery on S. Gilbert Street full.

“I thought for sure we would sit around a table with five people,” Gabbard said.

During her speech, Gabbard paced through her platform items railing against the excesses of the pharmaceutical industry, calling for a justice system that does not favor the rich and demanding action on climate change.

But Gabbard — a veteran of the Iraq War — built up to what she called the cost of “regime-change” wars. This is a term of art Gabbard used to separate wars in Iraq and Syria from a war where the United States is attacked by a foreign government.

While she agreed examples of the latter are rare in recent memory, Gabbard emphasized that the former are an undue burden on the country spending, “adding trillions” to the deficit.

“Those are dollars out of our pocket that will not be spent on our community,” Gabbard said.

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Bernie Sanders Is Ready to Rumble

Bernie Sanders has seen himself on a mission since he started running for office in the 1970s, and he sees no reason to stop now. He’s thinks he’s dramatically changed the conversation over the past three years, and he feels he’s close to achieving his ultimate goal.

Plus, there’s Donald Trump.

When the president used his State of the Union speech on Tuesday to preview his own re-election campaign and warned against creeping socialism—Sanders was only encouraged. He’d love to take on Trump directly, and people around him think he’ll be able to use Trump’s threat to coalesce support in the primaries.

“Nothing unifies Democrats like being made a villain by Trump,” said one Sanders ally.

The Vermont senator has been huddling with staff in meetings and phone calls over the last few weeks, chewing over plans. Barring a surprise last minute change of heart, he will jump in for the 2020 race, convinced he can win, according to people familiar with his plans. His spokeswoman, Arianna Jones, did not return a request for comment on Sanders’s plans.

Last time, he didn’t get in until the end of April 2015. This time, the launch will be in February. He sees advantage in a much more crowded 2020 field. The left-leaning politics he campaigned on in 2016 have been broadly embraced in a progressive surge among Democrats, and Sanders has succeeded in diminishing the nominating power of so-called super delegates, the elected officials and party elders who help consolidate establishment power within the Democratic National Committee.

Sanders will likely announce an exploratory committee in the coming weeks, followed by a rally. One major early focus will be finding a campaign manager and other top-level staffers who are not white, and preferably not male, in light of his problems appealing to minority voters in 2016, and recent revelations of sexual harassment by lower level staffers in the 2016 campaign. Staff interviews have been quietly underway.

But a core team of advisers will return from 2016, spearheaded by his wife and closest adviser, Jane O’Meara Sanders.

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Sanders has heard the argument that his stature would be diminished by running again if it doesn’t end with his winning the nomination. He’s heard the argument that he might split the progressive vote and allow a more moderate candidate to win, but that hasn’t moved him either. That’s not how Sanders thinks, people who know him point out.

“He understands what happens in the streets is what prompts actions in Washington,” said Vincent Fort, a former Georgia state senator who supported the last campaign and has been in touch with Sanders’ team about this campaign.

Schumer, Sanders to introduce bill limiting stock buybacks, pushing for $15 minimum wage

Sens. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) are planning to introduce a bill that would prevent corporations from buying back its own stock and push for employees to be paid at least $15 an hour.

In an op-ed written by the two senators published in The New York Times Sunday, the pair argues that “corporate boardrooms have become obsessed with maximizing only shareholder earnings to the detriment of workers.”

In an attempt to combat the issue, the two senators will introduce legislation that imposes “preconditions,” including the $15 minimum wage, on a company’s ability to buy its own shares.

“Our legislation would set minimum requirements for corporate investment in workers and the long-term strength of the company as a precondition for a corporation entering into a share buyback plan. The goal is to curtail the overreliance on buybacks while also incentivizing the productive investment of corporate capital,” they wrote.

The requirements include paying all workers at least $15 per hour, giving all employees at least seven days of paid sick leave, and providing workers with “decent pensions” and solid health benefits.

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They point to specific examples, such as Walmart, which spent $20 billion on a share repurchase program but subsequently laid off thousands of workers and shuttered several Sam’s Club stores.

Sanders and Schumer argue the company could have used the money to raise hourly wages for workers instead of buying back corporate shares.

“At a time of huge income and wealth inequality, Americans should be outraged that these profitable corporations are laying off workers while spending billions of dollars to boost their stock’s value to further enrich the wealthy few,” the senators write.

Ocasio-Cortez campaign documentary wins Sundance film festival audience award

Audience members at the annual Sundance Film Festival voted Saturday to recognize the documentary “Knock Down the House” with the festival’s coveted annual audience award in the documentary category.

The film, described on Twitter as a “powerful and painful” look at the freshman Democrat’s stunning 2018 defeat of former Rep. Joe Crowley (D-N.Y.) in the state’s primary election by one attendee of the festival, reportedly received a five-minute standing ovation from the audience after its viewing.

Ocasio-Cortez herself appeared at the festival through a video call following the film’s showing, admitting that she herself was still “recovering” from the shock of her own victory.

“I’m still recovering from the tears myself,” she said on the video call, according to remezcla.com. “I’m just so glad that this moment for all four of us was captured and documented not just for the personal meaning of it but for everyday people to see that yes, this is incredibly challenging, yes, the odds are long but also that yes, this is worth it.”

The film’s positive reception comes days after Variety reported that streaming service Netflix was nearing a deal for rights to the documentary, with a rumored sale price as high as $6 million.

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