Daily Archives: June 26, 2017

As the various congressional factions gather to fight over spending and the debt ceiling this summer, the House Freedom Caucus is ready to dig in as it senses a moment of opportunity and a chance to score concessions from House leadership on a host of issues as days tick down to the August recess.

The group of three-dozen conservatives, who have a history of picking fights with House leadership, have taken a variety of stances in the run-up to the fight as top House Republicans decide how to move forward on both the debt ceiling and a budget. In late May, the group laid down an initial marker by announcing its opposition to a clean debt ceiling bill, which pits the group against the Trump administration and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin. They also called for spending cuts to go along with any raising of the debt ceiling and for the issue to be resolved by the month-long August recess.

The GOP bill is aimed at taking away Democratic arguments that the U.S. would "default" on the debt by making it clear that if the U.S. was suddenly unable to borrow, it would use the existing flow of tax receipts to keep up debt service payments, including the regular process of paying and taking out new debt, and making interest payments.

The U.S. would not be at risk of a "default" if those rules were in place, although the U.S. would be in a position of taking in less money than it usually spends. But some conservatives are fine with that, since it would force the government to make choices about where to spend the limited money it has.

That step would eliminate the threat of a default on the U.S. Treasury securities that make up the backbone of the global financial system, calling the bluff of a doomsday scenario of a worldwide financial crisis. Treasury secretaries of both parties, however, have said that such "prioritization" of the debt isn't feasible, and that market panic would be likely in any case.

That's the Freedom Caucus' plan. But one major blow to the group was President Trump's decision to side with Mnuchin over Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney, a key ally of the group, on the debt ceiling fight. Mnuchin has made clear his desire for a "clean" debt ceiling bill, which the Senate is expected to vote on in July. Mulvaney wants reforms to be brought into the mix.

On the spending battle, one unusual stance the group has embraced is support for an increase in spending levels in a potential budget deal, but with a catch. To go along with higher spending levels, the Freedom Caucus wants reforms to welfare, including cuts that could bring in about $400 billion in savings, according to said Rep. Mark Meadows. Despite potential opposition, the North Carolina Republican is optimistic their proposal could make a final bill.

"Very realistic," Meadows said when asked about the proposal's prospects. "We've had work requirements up until actually some would argue that they're still in statute right now. We've had work requirements in the past. I believe that most Americans believe an able-bodied, single adult should be doing some type of work, whether it's vocational training, volunteering for a government or a job in order to get those benefits. Now, we're not talking about moms with children or grandparents with kids. We're talking about able-bodied single adults that should be required to do some kind of work."

Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, chairman emeritus of the group, admitted in an interview that while it seems counterintuitive for the Freedom Caucus to support this type of an increase in spending, it sees an opportunity.

"You hope we get a [budget] deal now, because if you don't, we know how it plays out. We've seen it six years in a row," Jordan said. "The smarter thing to do now is get an agreement on the budget. ... The budget's the gate. Nothing else can happen until you open the gate, right? You can't do any spending until you open the gate and get a number. You can't have tax reform until you get reconciliation; you can't get reconciliation until you have a budget 'til you open the gate.

"To open the gate, we conservatives, I think, are willing to entertain spending numbers we normally wouldn't be comfortable with," Jordan said.

Top members of the group have come out in support of the House Budget Committee's proposed $400 billion in cuts, although that could be pared to $150 billion, much to their chagrin.

"We're saying, You're the Budget Committee. You're the experts. If you think it's $400 [billion], let's go with $400,'" Jordan said, pointing to their desired welfare cuts.

The fight is expected to be the latest for the group of conservative hard-liners, who had a highly-publicized back-and-forth with GOP leadership and the White House over the American Health Care Act before ultimately coming on board thanks to an amendment allowing states to opt out of some essential health benefits. However, this new battle could be an opportunity for the caucus as it pushes for Republican leadership to take its proposals seriously in spending battles rather than forcing leaders to rely on Democratic votes to pass legislation.

Rep. Linda Sanchez, D-Calif., the vice chairwoman of the House Democratic caucus, floated the possibility that Democrats could withhold their votes on a "clean" debt ceiling bill to see if Republicans can govern on their own, although House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Md., poured cold water on that possibility if such a bill reaches the floor. However, Meadows said he doesn't believe any losses incurred by the caucus on this fight could affect their leverage or input in future fights.

"You win some, you lose some," Meadows said. "I'm in it for the long term. We find that we have a lot of allies when it comes to welfare reform and mandatory spending reform. A lot of guys are with us both publicly and privately, which I think would surprise some here on Capitol Hill.

"I don't know that we're looking at wins and losses as much as we are real savings moving forward," Meadows said.

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House Freedom Caucus sees an opportunity as the debt ceiling approaches - Washington Examiner

Freedom, Compassion, and Coexistence in the Human Age

There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe nor politic nor popular, but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right. Martin Luther King Jr.

News headlines these days often center on animals. Stories seem increasingly to be of two types. The first involves reporting on what might be characterized as the inner lives of animals. Scientists regularly publish new findings on animal cognition or emotion, and these quickly make their way into the popular press. Here is a sampling of some recent headlines:

The other type of news story focuses on individual animals or a particular group of animals who have been wronged by humans in some significant way. These stories often create a social media frenzy, generating both moral outrage and soul-searching. In particular, these stories highlight instances in which the freedom of an animal has been profoundly violated by humans. Some of these recent hot-button stories include the killing of an African lion named Cecil by an American dentist wanting a trophy head; the killing of a mother grizzly bear named Blaze, who attacked a hiker in Yellowstone National Park; the case of a male polar bear named Andy who was suffocating and starving because of an overly tight radio collar placed around his neck by a researcher; the euthanizing and public dissection of a giraffe named Marius at the Copenhagen Zoo because he was not good breeding stock; the ongoing legal battle to assign legal personhood to two research chimpanzees, Leo and Hercules; the exposure of SeaWorld for cruel treatment of orcas, inspired by the tragic story of Tilikum and the documentary Blackfish; and the killing of a gorilla named Harambe at the Cincinnati Zoo, after a small boy fell into the animals enclosure. The fact that these events have created such a stir suggests that we are at a tipping point. People who have never really been active in defense of animals are outraged by the senseless violation of these animals lives and freedom. The growing awareness of animal cognition and emotion has enabled a shift in perspective. People are sick and tired of all the abuse. Animals are sick and tired of it, too.

Yet although we prize our freedom above all else, we routinely deny freedom to nonhuman animals (hereafter, animals) with whom we share our planet. We imprison and enslave animals, we exploit them for their labor and their skin and bodies, we restrict what they can do and with whom they can interact. We dont let them choose their family or friends, we decide for them when and if and with whom they mate and bear offspring, and often take their children away at birth. We control their movements, their behaviors, their social interactions, while bending them to our will or to our self-serving economic agenda. The justification, if any is given, is that they are lesser creatures, they are not like us, and by implication they are neither as valuable nor as good as we are. We insist that as creatures vastly different from us, they experience the world differently than we do and value different things.

But, in fact, they are like us in many ways; indeed, our basic physical and psychological needs are pretty much the same. Like us, they want and need food, water, air, sleep. They need shelter and safety from physical and psychological threats, and an environment they can control. And like us, they have what might be called higher-order needs, such as the need to exercise control over their lives, make choices, do meaningful work, form meaningful relationships with others, and engage in forms of play and creativity. Some measure of freedom is fundamental to satisfying these higher-order needs, and provides a necessary substrate for individuals to thrive and to look forward to a new day.

Freedom is the key to many aspects of animal well-being. And lack of freedom is at the root of many of the miseries we intentionally and unintentionally inflict on animals under our carewhether they suffer from physical or social isolation, or from being unable to move freely about their world and engage the various senses and capacities for which they are so exquisitely evolved. To do better in our responsibilities toward animals, we must do what we can to make their freedoms the fundamental needs we promote and protect, even when it means giving those needs priority over some of our own wants.

The Five Freedoms

Many people who have taken an interest in issues of animal protection are familiar with the Five Freedoms. The Five Freedoms originated in the early 1960s in an eighty-five-page British government study, Report of the Technical Committee to Enquire into the Welfare of Animals Kept Under Intensive Livestock Husbandry Systems. This document, informally known as the Brambell Report, was a response to public outcry over the abusive treatment of animals within agricultural settings. Ruth Harrisons 1964 book Animal Machines brought readers inside the walls of the newly developing industrialized farming systems in the United Kingdom, what we have come to know as factory farms. Harrison, a Quaker and conscientious objector during World War II, described appalling practices like battery-cage systems for egg-laying hens and gestation crates for sows, and consumers were shocked by what was hidden behind closed doors.

To mollify the public, the UK government commissioned an investigation into livestock husbandry, led by Bangor University zoology professor Roger Brambell. The commission concluded that there were, indeed, grave ethical concerns with the treatment of animals in the food industry and that something must be done. In its initial report, the commission specified that animals should have the freedom to stand up, lie down, turn around, groom themselves and stretch their limbs. These incredibly minimal requirements became known as the freedoms, and represented the conditions the Brambell Commission felt were essential to animal welfare.

The commission also requested the formation of the Farm Animal Welfare Advisory Committee to monitor the UK farming industry. In 1979 the name of this organization was changed to the Farm Animal Welfare Council, and the freedoms were subsequently expanded into their current form. The Five Freedoms state that all animals under human care should have:

The Five Freedoms have become a popular cornerstone of animal welfare in a number of countries. The Five Freedoms are now invoked in relationship not only to farmed animals but also to animals in research laboratories, zoos and aquariums, animal shelters, veterinary practice, and many other contexts of human use. The freedoms appear in nearly every book about animal welfare, can be found on nearly every website dedicated to food-animal or lab-animal welfare, form the basis of many animal welfare auditing programs, and are taught to many of those working in fields of animal husbandry.

The Five Freedoms have almost become shorthand for what animals want and need. They provide, according to a current statement by the Farm Animal Welfare Council, a logical and comprehensive framework for analysis of animal welfare. Pay attention to these, it seems, and youve done your due diligence as far as animal care is concerned. You can rest assured that the animals are doing just fine.

Its worth stopping for a moment to acknowledge just how forward thinking the Brambell Report really was. This was the 1960s and came on the heels of behaviorism, a school of thought that offered a mechanistic understanding of animals, and at a time when the notion that animals might experience pain was still just a superstition for many researchers and others working with animals. The Brambell Report not only acknowledged that animals experience pain, but also that they experience mental states and have rich emotional lives, and that making animals happy involves more than simply reducing sources of pain and suffering, but actually providing for positive, pleasurable experiences. These claims sound obvious to us now, but in the mid-1960s they were both novel and controversial.

It is hard to imagine that the crafters of the Five Freedoms failed to recognize the fundamental paradox: How can an animal in an abattoir or battery cage be free? Being fed and housed by your captor is not freedom; it is simply what your caregiver does to keep you alive. Indeed, the Five Freedoms are not really concerned with freedom per se, but rather with keeping animals under conditions of such profound deprivation that no honest person could possibly describe them as free. And this is entirely consistent with the development of the concept of animal welfare.

Welfare concerns generally focus on preventing or relieving suffering, and making sure animals are being well-fed and cared for, without questioning the underlying conditions of captivity or constraint that shape the very nature of their lives. We offer lip service to freedom, in talking about cage-free chickens and naturalistic zoo enclosures. But real freedom for animals is the one value we dont want to acknowledge, because it would require a deep examination of our own behavior. It might mean we should change the way we treat and relate to animals, not just to make cages bigger or provide new enrichment activities to blunt the sharp edges of boredom and frustration, but to allow animals much more freedom in a wide array of venues.

The bottom line is that in the vast majority of our interactions with other animals, we are seriously and systematically constraining their freedom to mingle socially, roam about, eat, drink, sleep, pee, poop, have sex, make choices, play, relax, and get away from us. The use of the phrase in the vast majority might seem too extreme.

However, when you think about it, we are a force to be reckoned with not only in venues in which animals are used for food production, research, education, entertainment, and fashion, but globally; on land and in the air and water, human trespass into the lives of other animals is not subsiding. Indeed, its increasing by leaps and bounds. This epoch, which is being called the Anthropocene, or Age of Humanity, is anything but humane. It rightfully could be called the Rage of Humanity.

We want to show how important it is to reflect on the concept of freedom in our discussions of animals. Throughout this book, we are going to examine the myriad ways in which animals under our care experience constraints on their freedom, and what these constraints mean in terms of actual physical and psychological health. Reams of scientific evidence, both behavioral observations and physiological markers, establish that animals have strongly negative reactions to losses of freedom.

One of the most important efforts we can make on behalf of animals is to explore the ways in which we undermine their freedom and then look to how we can provide them with more, not less, of what they really want and need.

Excerpted from The Animals Agenda: Freedom, Compassion, and Coexistence in the Human Age by Marc Bekoff and Jessica Pierce (Beacon Press, 2017). Reprinted with Permission from Beacon Press.

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Do Animals Need More Freedom? - Colorado Public Radio

There is an urgent need to go back to Kliptown and, like collecting the soul of the dead, collect the lost spirit of the Freedom Charter.

A few years ago, Cope adopted its name based on the historic meeting where this document was adopted, much to the irritation of the ANC, which even went to court to try and stop this move.

Next was the EFF, whose members believe they alone are custodians, especially when it comes to the crucial issue of land. In the process, the true meaning and spirit are lost in all the noise.

The sad reality is that, since its adoption, while it has served as a mantra of liberation forces marching to freedom, we have fallen very short of its intentions, and those that have so far claimed it as custodians have failed its bold pronouncements.

It requires a full paper to expatiate this point, and so I will focus on two cardinal clauses only: The people shall govern; and The doors of learning and culture shall be open to all. Have sufficient strength and courage gone into realising these high ideals?

In an interview on Power Perspective with the spokesperson of the youth league a few weeks ago, I inquired what the young lions have done about opening the doors of learning and culture through the implementation of the ANCs Polokwane resolution on free education.

This is because, a full decade later, all we see is protestation from young people who await the implementation of this resolution amid hollow promises and policy obfuscation.

The shocking answer was that the ANC took almost 100 years from establishment to freedom. This is the nub of the matter: a lack of urgency and a refusal to snap out of the underground and Marxist Leninist theories into the modern world, where policy shifts dont have to take a hundred years to materialise.

And so the clause of the Freedom Charter that the doors of learning and culture should be open to all doesnt even serve to excite the youth league to help open those doors.

And so a nation that is not educated, and therefore whose minds are still in bondage, is unlikely to realise fully the cardinal clause of the charter that the people shall govern.

While the people have been enfranchised and this must be celebrated as a step in the right direction, how can we safely say that the people are governing without land and without the means of production being in their hands?

Failure to resolve the land question with the necessary sense of urgency is robbing the people of meaningful governance. At this rate, someone else has captured the state and the markets are governing the country instead of the people.

There are far more protests by disillusioned people now than took place in the days of uprisings against an illegitimate regime. The numbers and frequency of such protests are simply staggering, painting a picture of hopelessness and a loss of confidence in the governing alliance whose mantra should be that the people shall govern.

The people, who clearly do not believe that governance is in their hands, even burn down libraries and other state-owned properties in the belief that these dont really belong to them.

Many assumed that when democracy dawned the new leaders would govern with the interest of the people in mind to give effect to this notion of government for the people, by the people. As soon as civil society was demobilised so much went wrong. The few developments over the last few years, be it the public protectors reports on various things or even the auditor-generals latest report painting a picture of chaotic management of municipal finances, shows that that notion simply doesnt exist.

There is an urgent need to go back to Kliptown and, like collecting the soul of the dead, collect the spirit of the Freedom Charter. Quite frankly, it is gone. The ANC gathers at the end of this week to assess the implementation of its policies.

The last time it so gathered it spoke of the second phase of the transition; this week we are not likely to hear anything other than the rather hollow slogan of radical economic transformation. It is actually sad to see our movement failing to take stock and instead moving the goalposts.

The concocting of what seems like a new policy a few moments before the next election is a tactic that the people have seen right through if the last elections were anything to go by; the ANC emerged with clear losses. It is clear from the utterances of the leadership that election results are seen as one big mistake and not really the will of the people. If you claim to listen to the people you cant keep finding excuses for why you lost elections.

The policy conference remains a golden opportunity for the ANC to re-look at its record of being the true and only custodians of the Freedom Charter and to answer truthfully what has caused its failure to keep the torch of the Kliptown founding fathers.

The forthcoming gathering will discover a dead alliance, a moribund youth league, a rogue MK veterans league and a shameful womens league.

Every part of the movement is coming apart. And despite repeated protestations, the centre is simply not holding.

And until this diagnosis is accepted, rebuilding the once glorious movement will remain a dream deferred. Its time to read the charter again and to remember what our forebears wanted to achieve. And therefore we, the People of South Africa, black and white together - equals, countrymen and brothers - adopt this Freedom Charter. And we pledge ourselves to strive together sparing neither strength nor courage, until the democratic changes here set out have been won.

Tabane is author of Power Perspective and host of Power Perspective on Power 98.7 9pm to midnight. Follow him on Twitter @JJTabane

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Freedom Charter is a dream deferred - Independent Online

Washington Times

Pentagon welcomes greater freedom under Trump but is wary of blame Washington Times Defense Secretary James Mattis' authority to set U.S. troop levels for Afghanistan and the fight against Islamic State could ease the bitter bureaucratic battles that divided the Obama White House and the Pentagon over war strategy. (Associated Press ... and more »

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Pentagon welcomes greater freedom under Trump but is wary of blame - Washington Times

Two years ago, the Supreme Court issued its landmark ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, declaring that states must recognize same-sex marriages. That decision capped decades of activism and litigation by lesbian and gay interest organizations which had argued that discrimination against same-sex couples who wished to wed was unconstitutional.

For some conservative Americans, the court ruling represented something more sinister an abdication of the governments duty to promote heterosexuality as a sexual norm fundamental to American society. Indeed, critics on both the left and the right viewed the ruling as the latest step forward in an unstoppable march towards sexual freedom that began with the sexual revolution of the 1960s.

Some observers saw the timing of the Courts gay marriage decision as evidence of the Courts growing permissiveness towards sex it was decided exactly 12 years after another controversial Supreme Court ruling, Lawrence v. Texas. That decision struck down state sodomy laws that criminalized private, consensual sex.

But while this narrative of progress towards sexual freedom is appealing, it is extremely misleading. At precisely the same time that LGBT rights organizations were successfully securing legal recognition for same-sex couples, tough on crime lawmakers across the country were busy enacting new criminal legislation targeting sex.

As a result, 861,837 Americans are currently registered, some of them for life, as sex offenders, while new criminal laws passed in the name of cracking down on human trafficking have also brought harsher sanctions against garden-variety prostitution. As it turns out, the 2003 Supreme Court ruling that was widely viewed as invalidating state anti-sodomy laws did nothing of the kind; those laws remain on the books more than a decade after Lawrence and are still used to punish the same social outcasts as before the ruling: gay men caught having sex in public and commercial sex workers.

A bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives last month represents the latest salvo in this war on sex. H.R.1761, also known as the "Protecting Against Child Exploitation Act of 2017, would create a 15-year mandatory minimum prison sentence for teenagers caught sexting. As the bills title would suggest, lawmakers apparently believe this law is necessary to help protect our children a siren song often trumpeted by conservative sexual reformers. However, given that upwards of 50 percent of teenagers engage in the criminalized behavior, the new legislation seems designed to turn the majority of them into felons and sex offenders. Who will protect our children from such protection?

Of course, there is nothing wrong with using the law to combat sexual assault, forced prostitution, and child pornography; those all inflict grievous personal harm, which must be prevented, if possible, and punished, if not.

But the tentacles of the war on sex reach far beyond these few offenses to include sex that does little or no harm but that is objectionable on moral, political, aesthetic, or religious grounds. The result is a society in which sexual offenses that do no direct harm are frequently punished more harshly than violent crime: you may well get a longer sentence for possessing child pornography than for killing a child.

In short, reports of the demise of old-fashioned sexual morality have been greatly exaggerated. While they may offer a salve to liberals smarting in the Trump era, they distract us from the real menace of the new war on sex.

Trevor Hoppe and David Halperin are the co-editors of the new collection, The War on Sex (Duke University Press. Halperin is the W.H. Auden Distinguished University Professor in the History and Theory of Sexuality at the University of Michigan; he is the author and editor of over a dozen books, including How to Be Gay and Saint Foucault. Hoppe is assistant professor of sociology at the University at Albany and the author of Punishing Disease. You can reach Hoppe on Twitter @trevorhoppe.

The views expressed by contributors are their own and are not the views of The Hill.

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Two years after SCOTUS gay marriage ruling, the road to sexual freedom remains long - The Hill (blog)