We are living in disgusting times.
Carol Burnett had a skit on her TV show called, "As the Stomach
Turns". This title is the most appropriate one I've seen, covering
our present political tangle.
Carl Jarvis
On 1/12/19, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
What is important in this story, and was not reported anywhere else, is that
the House, with its new Democratic majority, described as progressive, had
precisely the same bill as the Republic Senate as its first order of
business. This is a bi-partisan bill to prevent people from boycotting
Israeli products from the Occupied Territories, and was blocked by the
Democrats only, to show disapproval of Trump's government shutdown.
Miriam
U.S. Senate’s First Bill, in the Midst of the Shutdown, Is a Bipartisan
Defense of the Israeli Government From Boycotts
Ryan Grim, Glenn Greenwald
January 5 2019, 4:09 p.m.
Chuck Schumer speaking at the AIPAC Policy Conference in Washington, D.C.,
on March 5, 2018. Photo: Sipa USA via AP
When each new Congress is gaveled into session, the chambers attach symbolic
importance to the first piece of legislation to be considered. For that
reason, it bears the lofty designation of H.R.1 in the House and S.1 in the
Senate.
In the newly controlled Democratic House, H.R.1 — meant to signal the new
majority’s priorities — is an anti-corruption bill that combines election
and campaign finance reform, strengthening of voting rights, and matching
public funds for small-dollar candidates. In the 2017 Senate, the
GOP-controlled S.1 was a bill, called the “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act,” that,
among other provisions, cut various forms of corporate taxes.
But in the 2019 GOP-controlled Senate, the first bill to be considered — S.1
— is not designed to protect American workers, bolster U.S. companies, or
address the various debates over border security and immigration. It’s not a
bill to open the government. Instead, according to multiple sources involved
in the legislative process, S.1 will be a compendium containing a handful of
foreign policy-related measures, the main one of which is a provision — with
Florida’s GOP Sen. Marco Rubio as a lead sponsor — to defend the Israeli
government. The bill is a top legislative priority for the American Israel
Public Affairs Committee.
In the previous Congress, that measure was known as S.170, and it gives
state and local governments explicit legal authority to boycott any U.S.
companies which themselves are participating in a boycott against Israel. As
The Intercept reported last month, 26 states now have enacted some version
of a law to punish or otherwise sanction entities that participate in or
support the boycott of Israel, while similar laws are pending in at least 13
additional states. Rubio’s bill is designed to strengthen the legal basis to
defend those Israel-protecting laws from constitutional challenge.
Punishment aimed at companies that choose to boycott Israel can also sweep
up individual American citizens in its punitive net because individual
contractors often work for state or local governments under the auspices of
a sole proprietorship or some other business entity. That was the case with
Texas elementary school speech pathologist Bahia Amawi, who lost her job
working with autistic and speech-impaired children in Austin because she
refused to promise not to boycott goods produced in Israel and/or illegal
Israeli settlements.
Thus far, the two federal courts that have ruled on such bills have declared
them to be unconstitutional violations of the First Amendment speech rights
of American citizens. “A restriction of one’s ability to participate in
collective calls to oppose Israel unquestionably burdens the protected
expression of companies wishing to engage in such a boycott,” U.S. District
Court Judge Diane Humetewa of Arizona wrote in her decision issuing a
preliminary injunction against the law in a case brought last September by
the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of “an attorney who has
contracted with the state for the last 12 years to provide legal services on
behalf of incarcerated individuals,” but lost his contract to do so after he
refused to sign an oath pledging not to boycott Israel.
A similar ruling was issued in January of last year by a Kansas federal
judge, who ruled that state’s Israel oath law unconstitutional on the ground
that “the Supreme Court has held that the First Amendment protects the right
to participate in a boycott like the one punished by the Kansas law.” In
that case, a Mennonite who was a longtime public school teacher lost her
independent contract as a school curriculum developer after she followed her
church’s decision to boycott goods from Israeli companies in the occupied
West Bank and thus, refused to sign the oath required by Kansas law.
These are the Israel-defending, free speech-punishing laws that Rubio’s bill
is designed to strengthen. Although Rubio is the chief sponsor, his bill
attracted broad bipartisan support, as is true of most bills designed to
protect Israel and supported by AIPAC. Rubio’s bill last Congress was
co-sponsored by several Democrats who are still in the Senate: Bob Menendez
of New Jersey, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Ben Cardin of Maryland, Ron
Wyden of Oregon, and Gary Peters and Debbie Stabenow of Michigan.
The support among Democrats for bills that would punish supporters of the
Boycott Israel movement is now particularly awkward given that two of the
most prominent newly elected Democratic members — Ilhan Omar of Minnesota
and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, the first two Muslim women in Congress — are
both supporters of that Israel boycott.
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Last year, Cardin introduced a bill that would have criminalized
participation in international boycotts of Israel, and it was on the verge
of passing with significant bipartisan support until the ACLU sounded the
alarm on how gravely unconstitutional that bill was. Once The Intercept
reported on the mechanics of the bill and the covert effort to enact it with
little attention, numerous Democratic senators announced that they were
reconsidering their support, stalling the bill’s enactment. Though Cardin
attempted to pass a watered-down version in the lame-duck session, it is now
Rubio’s Israel-defending bill that has taken center stage even as the U.S.
government is in the midst of a shutdown for American citizens.
That the newly elected U.S. Congress would choose to prioritize protection
of this foreign nation — at the expense of the constitutional rights of
American citizens and over countless bills that would help Americans — was
only one of the stinging criticisms voiced to The Intercept by ACLU Senior
Legislative Counsel Kathleen Ruane:
In the midst of a partial government shutdown, Democratic and Republican
senators have decided that one of their first orders of business next week
should be to sneak through a bill that would weaken Americans’ First
Amendment protections. The bill, Combatting BDS Act, encourages states to
adopt the very same anti-boycott laws that two federal courts blocked on
First Amendment grounds. The legislation, like the unconstitutional state
anti-boycott laws it condones, sends a message to Americans that they will
be penalized if they dare to disagree with their government. We therefore
urge senators to vote no on the Combatting BDS Act next week.
With the seven Democratic co-sponsors, the bill would have the 60 votes it
needs to overcome a filibuster. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.
— who supported Cardin’s far more draconian bill of last year and is one of
the Senate’s most reliable AIPAC loyalists — also plans to support the Rubio
bill, rather than whip votes against it, sources working on the bill said.
Schumer’s spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
If the bill does pass the Senate, the major question will be whether the
Democratic House — now led by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a longtime Israel
advocate but also as a supporter of the First Amendment — takes it up and
passes it into law.
