April, 08 2014, 08:41am EDT
Bill Defunding Universities With Ties To Israel Boycotters Dies In Committee
As the Maryland General Assembly completed its work on the state budget bill, legislators inserted language that weakly condemns the American Studies Association (ASA) decision to boycott Israeli academic institutions complicit in Israel's long record of human rights violations. This language serves to placate proponents of HB998/SB647, which stalled in committee after civil rights and community groups resoundingly condemned the legislation as an unconstitutional assault on academic freedom.
Annapolis, MD
As the Maryland General Assembly completed its work on the state budget bill, legislators inserted language that weakly condemns the American Studies Association (ASA) decision to boycott Israeli academic institutions complicit in Israel's long record of human rights violations. This language serves to placate proponents of HB998/SB647, which stalled in committee after civil rights and community groups resoundingly condemned the legislation as an unconstitutional assault on academic freedom. Delegate Ben Kramer of Montgomery County then introduced the bills' language as an amendment to the state budget bill.
Earlier in the legislative session, Delegate Kramer introduced HB998/SB647. This legislation, had it passed, would have withdrawn some funding from Maryland universities and academic departments with ties to ASA and other groups supportive of boycott. Diverse voices called the bill an attempt to silence debate, including the UMD President's Office, the ACLU, the Center for Constitutional Rights, Jewish Voice for Peace, the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, the Defending Dissent Foundation and others. Most recently, Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, a Nobel Prize winner who played a central role in ending apartheid in South Africa criticized the legislation. Even staunchly pro Israel organizations, such as the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee and the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington opposed the bill.
On the house floor, Kramer described the ASA as a "racist organization" and compared supporters of Palestinian human rights to "Nazis." Legislators of the GA's conference committee revised Kramer's language significantly. While they condemn the ASA boycott and academic boycotts generally, they also state: "official state control of intellectual inquiry and activity is a mark of authoritarian societies and is strongly disfavored in a pluralistic democratic culture."
"While we are grateful that the most egregious libels were removed from the budget bill amendment, we believe that boycott is a time-honored tactic that effectively and non-violently brings about social change. That legislators would condemn the use of the same tactic that brought an end to Jim Crow, apartheid in South Africa, and supported farm workers rights is deeply saddening," said Dr. Asim Ali, member of ASA and professor at the University of MD at College Park.
"It is hard to understand why legislators chose the budget bill to do this as it seems pretty inappropriate. Why are they using our state budget bill to voice their personal opinions about Israel while simultaneously seeking to shut down those voices critical of Israeli policy?" said Shelley Cohen Fudge of Jewish Voice for Peace.
After the ASA endorsed a boycott of Israeli academic institutions in December of 2013, bills to punish pro-Palestinian boycotters have been introduced in several state legislatures around the country. In addition to the bills introduced in Maryland, similar bills have been introduced in New York, Illinois, Kansas, South Carolina, Florida and the U.S. House of Representatives. The bill in Illinois recently foundered in committee, and bills or resolutions are still pending in the other states.
Melinda Thompson, from coalition member group Sabeel DC Metro, said, "Working to defeat this legislation has actually made us stronger and reminded us of the importance of speaking out when our rights are under attack. We are committed to doing the educational work needed to make sure people know what the BDS movement is about. Efforts to curtail or suppress our right to speak out against the Israeli occupation of Palestine will be opposed whether such efforts take place in the State House, on college campuses, or in community institutions."
Jewish Voice for Peace is a national, grassroots organization inspired by Jewish tradition to work for a just and lasting peace according to principles of human rights, equality, and international law for all the people of Israel and Palestine. JVP has over 200,000 online supporters, over 70 chapters, a youth wing, a Rabbinic Council, an Artist Council, an Academic Advisory Council, and an Advisory Board made up of leading U.S. intellectuals and artists.
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Pharma-Funded Republican Comes Out Swinging Against Medical Debt Cancellation
Sen. Bernie Sanders, by contrast, argued that "we must cancel all medical debt" and "move to Medicare for All."
Jul 12, 2024
A Republican senator heavily bankrolled by the pharmaceutical industry spoke out Thursday against calls to cancel medical debt, arguing that wiping out a financial burden saddling 100 million Americans "is not a solution."
"One-time cancellation of medical debt... is a Band-Aid approach to a one-time problem that's gonna come back," Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) said during a Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee hearing on the nation's medical debt crisis.
After dismissing medical debt cancellation on the grounds that it would not address the "root causes" of the crisis, Cassidy—the ranking member of the Senate panel—proceeded to make clear that he opposes the kinds of transformational healthcare reforms that advocates say are necessary to eliminate the problem of medical debt for good.
"We may hear today about Medicare for All," Cassidy accurately predicted. "But I also say that a healthcare system in which you think it's free because the taxpayer is footing the bill—you've never seen how expensive something can be until you perceive that it is free."
Watch Cassidy's remarks:
Cassidy is a major recipient of campaign cash from the pharmaceutical industry, whose stranglehold on prescription drug prices has been a significant driver of medical debt in the U.S.
Over the course of his career, the Louisiana Republican has raked in over $1 million in donations from the pharmaceutical and health product industries, according to OpenSecrets.
STAT Newsreported last year that Cassidy reaped "a slew of campaign donations" from Big Pharma executives shortly after he officially became the top Republican on the Senate HELP Committee, which is chaired by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)—a leading supporter of canceling medical debt and enacting Medicare for All.
In May, Sanders and several Democratic allies introduced legislation that would eliminate all of the roughly $220 billion in outstanding U.S. medical debt.
Contrary to Cassidy's suggestion that the bill would do nothing to prevent the future accrual of medical debt, Sanders' legislation would "amend the Public Health Service Act, updating billing and debt collection requirements to limit the potential for future debt to be incurred," the senator's office noted in a summary.
Neale Mahoney, a medical debt expert at Stanford University, said in a statement after the bill was unveiled that the measure "cuts off medical debt at the source by requiring hospitals to uphold their obligation to provide charity care to eligible patients who cannot afford to pay and supports hospitals so they can forgive debt before it gets sold to debt collectors."
During his opening remarks at Thursday's hearing, Sanders called medical debt "one of the most outrageous and cruelest" aspects of the nation's "dysfunctional" healthcare system.
"Pharmaceutical companies and insurance companies charge the American people for the 'crime' of getting sick," said Sanders. "Let's be clear: The medical debt crisis our nation is experiencing is a uniquely American phenomenon—does not exist in other countries around the world."
"We are the only major country on Earth," the senator added, "where an emergency visit to a hospital can cause patients to lose their homes and their life savings."
1 out of 4 cancer patients in America either declared bankruptcy or lost their homes to eviction or foreclosure as a result of medical debt in 2022.
That is insane.
We must cancel all medical debt.
We must move to Medicare for All. pic.twitter.com/LSQoFyrCKm
— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) July 11, 2024
Recent polling found that a majority of Americans believe it is "extremely or very important" that the federal government act to provide relief for those with medical debt. The health policy organization KFF estimates that around 3 million U.S. adults have more than $10,000 in medical debt and 14 million owe more than $1,000.
Abdul El-Sayed, director of Wayne County, Michigan's Department of Health, Human, and Veteran Services and an outspoken Medicare for All supporter, said in his testimony at Thursday's hearing that a single-payer healthcare system would "address the porous nature of health insurance" and help prevent the accumulation of medical debt "by guaranteeing universal health insurance coverage from birth."
"One of the main drivers of costs in our current system is administrative overhead, higher in our country than in any other country in the world," said El-Sayed. "Much of that overhead is imposed by the complexity of billing multiple health insurers. With only one insurer that bears no profit motive, we could eliminate some of that cost burden—ultimately reducing the costs born on Americans that show up as medical debt."
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US Peace Advocates 'Utterly Condemn' Biden Decision to Send Israel 1,700 500lb Bombs
"The Biden administration is fully culpable for the slaughter of civilians in Gaza, and should be held accountable for its role in aiding and abetting Israel's shocking war crimes."
Jul 12, 2024
The Biden administration's decision this week to lift a pause on the transfer of 500-pound bombs to the Israeli military drew outrage from U.S. peace advocates who warned the weapons would be used to commit additional war crimes in the Gaza Strip, which has been pulverized by nine months of relentless Israeli attacks.
Sara Haghdoosti, executive director of Win Without War, said in a statement Thursday that "we utterly condemn" the administration's decision to release a shipment of 1,700 500-pound bombs to Israel's military, which has killed more than 38,000 people in Gaza since the Hamas-led October 7 attack. The shipment was paused in May as Israel prepared to launch its deadly assault on Rafah.
"We are dismayed because these bombs will almost certainly be used to kill more innocents in Gaza, where indiscriminate bombing continues and where a starvation crisis only worsens," said Haghdoosti. "And if they are not used there, they risk being used to terrible effect in Lebanon, where civilians would again bear the brunt of a disastrous possible war between Hezbollah and the Israeli government."
"We are perplexed because the White House is, yet again, using arms transfers to directly undermine its stated policy aims—both to secure a cease-fire and protect civilians in Gaza, and to avoid a full-scale war between Israel and Hezbollah that would devastate the region," Haghdoosti continued. "Releasing this transfer signals to the Israeli government that, if cease-fire talks again stall, the war in Gaza can continue and that a massive conflict with Hezbollah can begin, with no real U.S. pushback."
President Joe Biden "must reverse this decision, which makes no sense as politics or policy," she added.
Biden, who is facing mounting calls to drop his reelection campaign, was not asked about the reversal during his closely watched press conference at the conclusion of NATO's 2024 summit in Washington, D.C. late Thursday.
My big issue with this press conference is not actually Biden’s mental fitness but the failure of any reporters to ask a single question about Biden re-sending 500-pound bombs to Israel to use against Palestinian civilians. Israel just bombed and killed kids in a playground.
— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) July 12, 2024
The administration's decision to lift the pause came following what The Washington Postdescribed as "a pressure campaign by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and pro-Israel lobbyists in the United States, including the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, demanding the resumption of all weapons shipments regardless of their lethality."
Last month, Netanyahu—who is facing a possible arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court (ICC)—released a video complaining that the administration was "withholding weapons and ammunitions to Israel."
The U.S. is Israel's top arms supplier and has sent Israel billions of dollars worth of weapons and other military equipment since October 7—weaponry that Israel has repeatedly used to commit atrocities in Gaza.
An unnamed administration official told the Post that the U.S. was mostly concerned about the 2,000-pound bombs that were part of the initially planned shipment, rather than the 500-pound bombs. The 2,000-pound bombs will remain on hold, the official said.
Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) joined Win Without War in demanding that the Biden administration walk back its decision to lift the pause on the 500-pound bombs, warning that "providing such massive, explosive weapons with wide-area effects despite Israel's systematic and deliberate deployment of such bombs in built-up civilian areas throughout Gaza further exposes U.S. officials to liability for war crimes prosecution."
"This week alone, Israel used U.S. weapons to strike a school during a soccer game killing scores of children, and ordered the forced evacuation of hundreds of thousands of desperate civilians from Gaza City," said DAWN senior adviser Josh Paul, who resigned from the U.S. State Department last year over the Biden administration's continued arming of Israel.
"Lifting a suspension on the delivery of 500lb bombs meant to prevent the invasion of Rafah, only to then send Israel those bombs to enable the further destruction of Gaza City, is not only an act of perversity but a lawless one as well," Paul said.
Raed Jarrar, DAWN's advocacy director, called on the ICC to "investigate U.S. officials for their complicity in the genocidal atrocities in Gaza, insisting on providing Israel with some of the most lethal weapons in the world despite full knowledge that Israel is using them unlawfully against Palestinian civilians."
"The Biden administration is fully culpable for the slaughter of civilians in Gaza, and should be held accountable for its role in aiding and abetting Israel's shocking war crimes and crimes against humanity," Jarrar added.
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As Biden Urged to Drop Out, Democrats Plan 'Mega-Poll' on Nominating Process
The survey of 27,000 voters is "designed to let the voters vote on the method for selecting the Democratic nominee for the presidency."
Jul 11, 2024
Amid mounting debate over whether U.S. President Joe Biden should bow out of the 2024 contest, longtime supporters of the 81-year-old on Thursday announced what they're calling a "supersized poll designed to let the voters vote on the method for selecting the Democratic nominee for the presidency."
The new "mega-poll"—which is being conducted by Emerson College and sponsored by Democrats for the Next Generation (DemNextGen)—will survey 27,000 voters across the country, focusing on seven swing states.
The survey will be conducted in three waves of 1,000 respondents each in Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina, Michigan, Arizona, Wisconsin, and Nevada. Another 2,000 voters across the country will also be surveyed.
"Voters will have the opportunity to vote on how old the next president should be and whether they want former President [Donald] Trump or President Biden to withdraw from the race," the organizers said. "If President Biden decides to step aside, do they want him to declare an open primary or endorse a specific candidate? The poll will also ask which process they believe would result in the strongest candidate and alternative to the current Republican nominee."
"If the president decides to step aside and the [Democratic National Committee] organizes one or more town halls prior to the Democratic convention, DemNextGen will sponsor another mega-poll immediately following each town hall to allow the voters to inform the convention delegates of their preferences," they added.
The announcement of the mega-poll comes as more and more Democratic officials—including 14 members of Congress—are calling on Biden to step aside. ABC News reported Thursday that numerous congressional lawmakers have already drafted letters urging Biden to stand down and will release them in the coming days.
A Pew Research Center poll published Thursday found that 63% of U.S. voters are "embarrassed" by both Biden and Trump, who was recently convicted of 34 felony counts in New York state and faces scores more federal and state criminal charges.
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