Tag: Pres. Johnson

AUMF–The Long Good-bye

AUMF?

For those that spend more time worrying about what Tater Swifty is doing….AUMF stands for….Authorization for the Use of Military Force…..the power for the president to go to war with consulting Congress.

The US Senate has finally shown a little spine (something I never thought they were capable of doing)….

The Senate voted Wednesday to repeal the resolution that gave a green light for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, an effort to end more than 20 years of authorization for US presidents to use force in that country and return those war powers to Congress, reports the AP. The measure would repeal the 1991 authorization that sanctioned the US-led Gulf War as well. What you need to know:

  • Background. The October 2002 votes to give George W. Bush broad authority for the Iraq invasion were a defining moment for many members of Congress as the country debated whether a military strike was warranted. The US was already at war in Afghanistan, and the Bush administration had drummed up support among members of Congress and the American public for invading Iraq by promoting what turned out to be false intelligence alleging Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. Then-Sen. Joe Biden voted in favor.
  • Background II. Some lawmakers fear the Iraq war powers could be used for purposes Congress never intended. President Trump’s administration cited the 2002 Iraq war resolution as part of its legal justification for a 2020 US drone strike that killed Iranian Gen. Qassim Soleimani, but the two war powers resolutions have otherwise rarely been used as the basis for any presidential action. A separate 2001 authorization for the global war on terror would remain in place under the bill, which President Biden has said he will support.
  • Wednesday’s vote. Senators voted 66-30 in favor of repeal. If passed by the House, the repeal would not be expected to affect any current military deployments. But lawmakers in both parties are increasingly seeking to claw back congressional powers over US military strikes and deployments.
  • Supporters. Supporters, including almost 20 Republican senators, say the repeal is crucial to prevent future abuses and to reinforce that Iraq is now a strategic partner of the United States.
  • Critics. Opponents have raised concerns about recent attacks against US troops in Syria, including a recent drone strike and rocket attack that Iranian-backed militants are thought to have been behind. Biden and his administration have argued that the repeal would not affect any response to Iran. American troops are authorized to protect themselves and respond to attacks, including under Article 2 of the Constitution, which gives the president the authority to protect troops.
  • Prospects. The repeal’s future is less certain in the House, where 49 Republicans joined with Democrats in supporting a similar bill two years ago. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has suggested he is open to supporting a repeal even though he previously opposed it, but Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas, the Republican chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, has indicated he would like to instead replace it with something else. It is unclear what that would be.
  • Congressional history. The New York Times reports that of the lawmakers who cast a vote for the 2002 Iraq war authorization, just 69 are still in Congress. Roughly half of them voted in favor of authorization. Today, all but 17 are in favor of repeal.
  • Implications. Should the repeal come to pass, “it would also be a crucial first step toward building momentum to tackle more significant and far more complicated endeavors,” such as “replacing the authorization Congress passed in 2001 to start military operations against terrorist groups in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks,” notes the Times.

The best thing I can say about this issue is….It is about goddamn time!

I guess that makes me a peace-nik….

Peace campaigners cheered Wednesday’s vote by the U.S. Senate to repeal the authorizations for the 1991 and 2003 invasions of Iraq, while calling on the House of Representatives to follow suit.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/aumf-iraq

Enough Said!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

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Civil Rights In The Middle

It is black history month and the perfect time for a little history lesson on the now famous Civil Rights Act….

There was more going on with this act than we are taught in our primary schools.

On August 7, 1957, Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson voted yea on the first civil rights bill passed by Congress in 82 years. He was joined by 71 of his Senate colleagues, including 43 Republicans and 28 Democrats, 4 of them liberals from the South like Johnson himself. One month later, on September 9, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the Civil Rights Act of 1957 into law.

As majority leader, Johnson arguably did more than anyone else to ensure the passage of a civil rights act in 1957. He cajoled skittish progressives, most of them Northerners, into compromising with the Democratic Party’s powerful Southern voting bloc. Then, over bourbon and cigars, he convinced the Old Guard Democratic Southerners that they ought to give a bit on civil rights while one of their own was in charge, as legislative action on race relations could not be postponed indefinitely.

Limited in its scope and effectiveness, particularly when compared with legislation passed in the 1960s, the 1957 bill walked a treacherous tightrope that “was going to disappoint both the opponents of civil rights and the proponents of civil rights,” says Bruce Schulman, a historian at Boston University. The future president’s efforts were “totally based in the calculation of what was achievable” rather than ideal.

When defending his choice to support the bill on the Senate floor, Johnson admitted that it did “not pretend to solve all the problems of human relations.” Still, he said, “I cannot follow the logic of those who say that because we cannot solve all the problems, we should not try to solve any of them.” Instead, the majority leader stalwartly held the middle, resolute in his conviction that a symbolic victory, however weak, was superior to a total ideological defeat.

This political pragmatism defined Johnson’s lengthy career. As a sectional politician with national ambitions, he was a virtuoso of the art of the possible. Johnson considered the preservation of his political future the best opportunity to help the greatest number of people. By doing only what was feasible and, above all else, looking out for himself, he would make a better future for his “fellow Americans.”

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/to-fight-for-civil-rights-lyndon-b-johnson-settled-for-the-middle-ground-180981482/

I am not so sure that the middle was the best place to fight for real civil rights.

Why?

I believe that it made it too easy to lessen the impact over time….and so it has.

Be Smart!

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I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Remember The War On Poverty?

Well I do.

And president-elect Biden is promising so much for the poor…..will he deliver?

Let us look at the LBJ version of the War on Poverty……

It was the program of the Johnson Administration….as the Encyclopedia Britannica remembers it….

Johnson announced an “unconditional war on poverty” in his first State of the Union address, in January 1964. He considered the depth and extent of poverty in the country (nearly 20 percent of Americans at the time were poor) to be a national disgrace that merited a national response. Furthermore, he identified the cause of poverty not as the personal moral failings of the poor but as a societal failure: “The cause may lie deeper in our failure to give our fellow citizens a fair chance to develop their own capacities, in a lack of education and training, in a lack of medical care and housing, in a lack of decent communities in which to live and bring up their children.” The speech was historic in its idealistic call for the creation of a more-just society. Johnson concluded it by saying:

On similar occasions in the past we have often been called upon to wage war against foreign enemies which threatened our freedom. Today we are asked to declare war on a domestic enemy which threatens the strength of our nation and the welfare of our people. If we now move forward against this enemy—if we can bring to the challenges of peace the same determination and strength which has brought us victory in war—then this day and this Congress will have won a secure and honorable place in the history of the nation and the enduring gratitude of generations of Americans yet to come.

The rhetoric of the War on Poverty quickly found its way into law and the creation of new federal programs and agencies. The Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 was passed by Congress and became law in August 1964. The act created the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO), which provided funds for vocational training, created Job Corps to train youths in conservation camps and urban centres, and established VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America), a domestic counterpart to the Peace Corps, and Head Start, an early-education program for children of poor families, among other programs.

The fight never really got into full swing for starting with Nixon each admin started chipping away at the Act and it never reached its full potential.

For those that break out in a rash if they must read….I have a short video to explain this…

There are lots of competing opinions on just how successful this fight had become…..the Urban Institute sees the outcome thusly…..

President’s Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) declared that the War on Poverty launched by President Lyndon Johnson in 1964 is “largely over and a success.” Although it is premature to declare an outright and absolute victory, it’s great that policymakers at the highest level of government recognize that our social safety net programs are working.

But if we are to continue to reduce hardship and promote mobility from poverty through access to good jobs, work and other means, we have to understand the nature of poverty today. It’s important that we draw the right lessons from the past so we don’t underestimate our current challenges and cede our hard-won progress in the War on Poverty. 

https://www.urban.org/urban-wire/have-we-won-war-poverty-not-yet

I want to be fair….so I will offer the analysis from the uber conserv think tank, the Heritage Foundation…….

The U.S. Census Bureau has just released its annual poverty report. The report claims that in 2013, 14.5 percent of Americans were poor. Remarkably, that’s almost the same poverty rate as in 1967, three years after the War on Poverty started. How can that be? How can government spend $9,000 per recipient and have no effect on poverty? The answer is – it can’t.

Census counts a family as poor if its “income” falls below certain thresholds. But in counting “income,” Census ignores almost all of the $943 billion in annual welfare spending. This, of course, makes the Census poverty figures very misleading.

https://www.heritage.org/marriage-and-family/commentary/the-war-poverty-50-years-failure

Of course they do not mention much about their attempts to screw the poor by leading the charge to repeal the Act……but I seldom expect conservs to admit to their lunacies.

What can we surmise about the War on Poverty?

Contrary to myths propagated by many critics, the War on Poverty was not narrowly focused on “expanding welfare.” “No doles,” stipulated President Johnson, and his legislative initiatives included aid to schools and universities, new job training programs, public housing initiatives, new Medicare health coverage for the elderly and Medicaid coverage for the poor, and other programs that have endured, such as Head Start, Job Corps, and Community Health Centers.

The War on Poverty’s pivotal assault on racial discrimination often goes unmentioned. In addition to persuading Congress to pass the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the Johnson administration used the federal purse to desegregate schools, hospitals, community boards, and neighborhood programs. As new grants flowed, threats to withhold funding made

Nor should the War on Poverty be discussed only in the past tense. It is still being fought today. Although the original coordinating agency, the Office of Economic Opportunity, was disbanded in the early 1970s, many programs are still funded under new names in other agencies.

(read on)

https://scholars.org/contribution/accomplishments-and-lessons-war-poverty

Of course…this program will always be viewed through the lens of political ideology….no amount of successes will ever be recognized….and that is the shame of this society.

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“lego ergo scribo”