Punting the Pundits

This week, Washington descends into its annual budget brawl. House Republicans unveiled their plan (pdf) on Tuesday, with Senate Republicans to follow Wednesday. Their hope is to pass a common budget resolution through both bodies by mid-April. Their incentive is that if-and that is a big if-Republicans in the House and Senate can agree, they can use the process known as “reconciliation” to pass various right-wing passions by majority vote, no filibuster allowed. The House budget plan, for example, calls for repealing Obamacare, partial privatization of Medicare, turning Medicaid and food stamps into block grants for the states, and tax reforms that lower rates and eliminate any taxation on profits reported abroad, turning the rest of the world into a tax haven for multinationals. The president can veto the appropriations bill containing these items, setting up another government shutdown melodrama. This is not the way to run a railroad, much less a government. [..]

Too often neglected in this Beltway brawl is the budget alternative offered by the Congressional Progressive Caucus. The fifth annual CPC alternative – “The People’s Budget: A Raise for America” – is about as close to common sense as Congress gets. And it is honest: Its numbers are carefully laid out and add up. It actually says what it would invest in and how it would pay for it.

Amy Goodman: Flush the TPP

President Barack Obama and the Republicans in Congress are united. Yes, that’s right. No, not on Obamacare, or on the budget, or on negotiations with Iran, or on equal pay for women. But on so-called free-trade agreements, which increase corporate power and reduce the power of people to govern themselves democratically, Obama and the Republicans stand shoulder to shoulder. This has put the president at loggerheads with his strongest congressional allies, the progressive Democrats, who oppose the TPP, or the Trans-Pacific Partnership, one of the most far-reaching trade agreements in history. TPP will set rules governing more than 40 percent of the world’s economy. Obama has been negotiating in secret, and the Democrats are not happy.

The battle lines are being drawn over the TPP and TPA. If you are confused, well, that is exactly what many of the most powerful corporations in the U.S., and around the world, are counting on. Trade policy is arcane, complex and long the domain of economists and technocrats. But the real-world implications of these dry texts are profound. President Obama wants to pass the TPP, which is a broad trade agreement between the U.S. and 11 other countries in the Pacific Rim: Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam. In order to expedite the process, President Obama is seeking the second acronym, TPA, or Trade Promotion Authority, also called “fast-track.” Fast-track gives the president authority to negotiate a trade deal, and to then present it to Congress for a yes-or-no vote, with no amendments allowed. A growing coalition is organizing to oppose TPP and the president’s request for fast-track. The outcome of this conflict will reverberate globally for generations to come.

Joe Conason: Measuring the Moral Posture of Rand Paul

Expecting morally serious debate from any would-be Republican presidential contender is like waiting for a check from a deadbeat. It could arrive someday, but don’t count on it.

Yet listening to someone like Senator Rand Paul, R-Ky., feign outrage over a real moral question can still be amusing, if you know enough about him to laugh. The Kentucky Republican has seized on stories about millions of dollars donated by Saudi Arabian agencies and interests to the Clinton Foundation, demanding that the Clintons return those funds because of gender inequality under the Saudi version of Islam. [..]

Certainly it is true that the Saudi monarchy inflicts special oppressions on its female subjects. But before examining how that should influence the policies of a charitable foundation-and a former president or secretary of state-it is worth considering the feminist credentials of Rand Paul and his fellow Republicans.

Zoë Carpenter : 12 Years After Invading, the US Still Has Its Back Turned on Iraqi Refugees

Dr. Bravo, as he’s dubbed in a recent legal document, is an Iraqi doctor living Baghdad. In 2009 he began working with a US government contractor to provide medical care to American soldiers and other staff at Camp Dublin, a military base near the Iraqi capital. Later that year, he found a note on his door. Its anonymous author called him a “traitor” and threatened to kill his wife.

The menacing notes and phone calls stacked up over the years, eventually pushing the doctor to apply for a Special Immigrant Visa through a program that Congress created in 2008 to help Iraqis employed by the US escape retaliation. In June 2011 the embassy in Baghdad approved his application, ruling that he indeed faced a “serious threat” as a consequence of his work with the Americans. Today, Dr. Bravo is still stuck in Baghdad, his application pending in bureaucratic purgatory. [..]

he situation for Iraqis with ties to the US (and for those without) has only grown more dire in the past year as the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham swept through Iraqi cities and cut off refugee routes to Kurdistan and neighboring countries, as George Packer has described. “Evidence of any US affiliation is so dangerous that destroying it in the event of an Islamic State occupation is key to survival,” the lawsuit contends. It goes on to note that ISIS is not the only threat to Iraqi allies, citing increased activity by anti-American militias.

“These folks have been effectively robbed of years of their lives,” Reisner said. “This is their best shot for a safe and new life, and they haven’t gotten an answer yet.”