V.A., Fossil Fuel Investments Increase, U.S. Census

Veterans Rally to Oppose Trump Privatization of Veterans Administration
Interview with Mark Foreman, board member of Veterans for Peace, conducted by Scott Harris

Secretary of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs David Shulkin, fired by President Trump via Twitter on March 28, says that he was terminated over his opposition to an administration and Republican Party drive to privatize the Veterans Administration’s vast medical system that treats some 9 million U.S. veterans annually. Shulkin, the only remaining cabinet member from the Obama administration, maintains that his work at the VA was undermined by Trump political appointees in his office and that ethical questions raised about his use of government funds on a trip to Europe were overhyped and intended to weaken him before his termination. Among those advocating the privatization of the VA are the billionaire Koch Brothers and a group they fund called Concerned Veterans of America.
.Trump has nominated his personal physician, Rear Adm. Ronny L. Jackson, to replace Shulkin, but there’s widespread skepticism that Dr. Jackson, who has no administrative experience, has the skills necessary to manage the second largest department of the U.S. government, which employs more than 370,000 people.

Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Mark Foreman, a board member of Veterans For Peace, who has been disabled since receiving a serious hip wound in combat while serving as a corpsman with Marines during the Vietnam War. Foreman says he’s witnessed vast improvements in the treatment he’s received at the VA over five decades. Here, he discusses President Trump’s firing of Shulkin and explains why he opposes the privatization of the veterans administration.
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MARK FOREMAN: He was fired because he wasn’t cooperating with those in Congress and the Koch brothers and Steven Cohen (controversial hedge fund manager who founded Cohen Veterans Network), who see that they can make quite a profit for themselves if they can privatize the VA. I think Shulkin, in the time he was there, I felt he was truly wanting to help veterans, but he just wasn’t willing to get on the band wagon of privatizing the VA. And so I do believe that that’s behind why Trump decided that he needed to get rid of him and they used the excuse of the travel (on taxpayer funds when) he and his wife went to England, I think it was. So they used that as an excuse to get rid of him. Now he wants to appoint Dr. (Ronny) Jackson as secretary of the VA, and as I understand it, Dr. Jackson has no administrative experience. He’s never worked in a big bureaucracy. He’s just a doctor, starting with George Bush and Obama and now, Trump. So he doesn’t have the experience a secretary would need because the VA is the second largest bureaucracy in the U.S. government. They have a budget of about $200 billion a year. And, for someone who’s never had any administrative experience, it’s just absurd that Trump would want someone like Dr. Jackson to take over.

BETWEEN THE LINES: Mark, who would profit and who would suffer if the veteran’s administration and their medical system for veterans were to be privatized?

MARK FOREMAN: Well, right away, who would suffer would be the veterans. I’m totally convinced of that. Here’s what I’ve learned over the last five decades. When we came back from Vietnam, they (the VA) didn’t know anything about post-traumatic stress disorder and it didn’t really start to gain acceptance that post-traumatic stress disorder was real until the 1980s. And the care that we got back in the ’70s and ’80s was just really horrible. All the doctors knew what to do, how to deal with us was to give us drugs, not only for our physical pain but for our moral and emotional pain. So I went through that whole period with drugs. Thank goodness I was able to find something other than drugs, which is meditation. But I was lucky. I was really lucky to find meditation and I was good at it and it allowed me to accept the pain.

Now, those who are going to gain, that’s obvious. We have 9 million veterans who are registered at the VA for health care and out of 22 million veterans here in the United States, there’s a little over 22 million of us. So I’m sure the Koch brothers are looking at the numbers of potential new patients and patients that have horrific injuries. You know, if we were to privatize, which I sure hope we don’t, sending veterans to try the hospitals is going to cost the taxpayers 30 percent more than at the VA. The VA is a single-payer system where the government signs big contracts with pharmaceuticals and doctors work for less money at the VA than they do in the private sector. It’s going to cost all of the citizens of this nation more money if he gets away with this privatization.

BETWEEN THE LINES: How are Veterans for Peace, your organization and other groups around the country organizing to oppose the Trump and Republican party agenda to privatize the veterans administration?

MARK FOREMAN: When we started hearing about this privatization effort that the Koch brothers were orchestrating, we’ve formed what we call a VA privatization working group – anti-privatization working group. And right now there’s about 20 of us on committee and the main thing that we emphasize is that all veterans need to call their Congress representatives, both the House and the Senate, and let them know that you are opposed to this privatization effort. This is the most important thing. We as veterans and any citizens who care about veterans need to be calling and contacting their House and Senate representatives, letting them know that you, we’re opposed to this.

If this goes through, if Congress passes a bill that is going to privatize the VA, you are going to see a lot of extremely angry veterans.

For more information, visit Veterans for Peace at veteransforpeace.org/, visit their Facebook page Veterans for Peace or you can take action to stop privatization of the Veterans Affairs department. Also, visit Fighting For Veterans HealthCare at ffvhc.org

Despite Climate Change Crisis, Banks Increase Investments in Fossil Fuel Extraction

Interview with Lorne Stockman, Oil Change International senior research analyst, conducted by Melinda Tuhus

The ninth annual report from a consortium of environmental and indigenous organizations researching which banks are funding extreme fossil fuel extraction projects found that investments increased by $115 billion in 2017. “Banking On Climate Change: Fossil Fuel Finance Report Card 2018,” grades global bank investments in tar sands extraction, as well as drilling in ultra-deep water and in the Arctic.

The report card looked at 36 banks based in North America, Europe, Asia and Australia and found that funding for tar sands extraction in particular increased by 111 percent between 2016 and 2017. Among U.S. banks, JP Morgan Chase was way out ahead as the largest funder of extreme fossil fuels.

Between The Lines’ Melinda Tuhus spoke with Lorne Stockman, senior research analyst with the group Oil Change International, which collaborated with Rainforest Action Network and other groups in producing the Banking On Climate Change report, which provides data analysis on the oil and gas industry. Here, Stockman explains what led to increased investment in fossil fuels and describes the impact of the grassroots fight against climate change and community-destroying extreme energy extraction.
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LORNE STOCKMAN: I think the main point of the report with regard to banks is that most banks are still not implementing any screens aligned with the Paris climate agreement. While some banks are paying lip service to climate change and aligning their investment policies with the Paris agreement, most banks, particularly in North America – in the U.S. and Canada – have not taken that seriously yet. There are a handful of banks that have begun to take these issues more seriously; most of these are based in Europe, that have started to implement policies where they are excluding finance to coal in particular – in some cases, to tar sands. But at the moment, we don’t see any of these banks actually starting to exclude financing of the expansion of fossil fuels, whether it’s coal, oil or gas.

The Canadian and American banks have continued financing new oil and gas projects in the zones this report focuses on – the Arctic, the tar sands and the ultra-deep water. In terms of the companies – so, we have seen companies like Shell and Conoco pull out of tar sands in the last year. And what they did was they sold their assets in the Canadian tar sands to other companies already operating there, primarily Canadian companies like Cenovus and CNRL, Canadian Natural Resources. The reason financing from banks for the tar sands went up last year is that the banks helped Cenovus and CNRL finance those asset purchases. The Canadian companies have kind of doubled down and bought those assets from the international companies that have pulled out and the banks have helped them finance that.

BETWEEN THE LINES: What connection, if any, do you see between the intense grassroots organizing – especially that led by indigenous people – and any of the pullouts of fossil fuel companies?

LORNE STOCKMAN: Absolutely. I mean I think we see all over the world that indigenous communities are often on the front lines of extractive industry activities, whether it’s mining or oil and gas extraction. So in Canada, First Nation territories have been threatened in particular by pipelines traveling through, or threatened to travel through, British Columbia, and First Nations have been at the forefront of opposition to those proposed pipelines. The Northern Gateway pipeline proposed by Enbridge has been stopped; is no longer being proposed by that company. More immediately, the Kinder Morgan Trans-Mountain pipeline is being fiercely opposed as we speak. It’s got a permit from the Canadian federal government, but it’s being opposed in British Columbia and First Nations are at the forefront of that fight. Native communities in the U.S. have also been at the forefront of fights against tar sands pipelines: Keystone XL and Enbridge Line 3 in Minnesota. The federal government has approved Line 3 in Canada, but it’s got to get through Minnesota right now, which is the roadblock for that particular project at the moment; it’s still going through the regulatory process in Minnesota and has come under intense scrutiny.

On the whole, the federal government in Canada, whether it was under the more right-wing Stephen Harper in the past; the current prime minister Justin Trudeau – they have been supportive of these pipeline projects, but what we’re seeing increasingly is at the provincial level there’s more opposition, whether it’s in British Columbia or Quebec or Ontario.

BETWEEN THE LINES: I’ve read opposite things – that activity in the tar sands has dropped and also that it’s increased. Can you clarify that?

LORNE STOCKMAN: The thing about the tar sands is that the projects have an extremely long lead time; there’s a lot of construction and processing facilities that have to be built before a project can start. So there’s a bunch of projects that are just coming on-stream this year that construction was started three, four, five years ago, so they were started when the oil price was very high; when the success of the anti-pipeline movement was not as clear, so they were anticipating much more pipeline capacity to get that production to market. What happened is they went ahead with those investment decisions – committed billions and billions of dollars to constructing those projects, and when the oil price crashed they kept going because they’d already sunk capital in, and they figured, given some time, oil prices would come back up again, and we’ll get some pipelines through.

So, production is growing in Alberta and the tar sands, but nobody’s actually mandated a new project for the last two or three years. It’s still a very marginal enterprise to be expanding the tar sands. It’s something that shouldn’t be happening when we factor in climate change and where we need to be going to reduce our dependence on oil and gas and other fossil fuels. So, you know, the future of the tar sands is very much in the balance, very much at risk right now.

For more information on Oil Change International, visit priceofoil.org For information on more climate action groups, visit Rainforest Action at RAN.org, GreenPeace USA at GreenpeaceUSA.org and 350.org.

Inclusion of Citizenship Question in 2020 Census Threatens Costly Undercount
Interview with Diana Pliego, National Immigration Law Center policy associate, conducted by Scott Harris

Trump Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross recently announced that for the first time since 1950, the nationwide census that will be conducted in 2020, will include a question asking all persons living in the U.S. whether or not they are an American citizen. Ross says that the question is being included at the request of the Justice Department to seek data on eligible voters to help enforce protections under the federal Voting Rights Act. However, many critics question the rationale and believe that the true motivation of including the citizenship question is to intimidate undocumented immigrants into not participating in the census process.

The U.S. Constitution requires the federal government to conduct a census every 10 years to tally all American residents, whether they are citizens or not. The census data collected is used to apportion congressional seats to each state and calculate the distribution of federal funds supporting a wide range of programs to state and local governments. California, along with a group of 17 states, seven cities and the U.S. Conference of Mayors has filed a lawsuit against the Census Bureau and Commerce Department in an attempt to remove the citizenship question from the 2020 Census questionnaire.

Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Diana Pliego, policy associate with the National Immigration Law Center. Here, she examines the potential effect of the citizenship question on reducing participation among immigrants, undercounting specific populations and inadequate funding levels for federal programs.
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DIANA PLIEGO: The last time that any question about citizenship was asked was in 1950, which of course was a very different time politically and it wasn’t a time where, you know, where we’re in right now where immigrants have been the target of a lot of anti-immigrant policies that have produced a lot of fear in communities and are causing immigrant communities to not wanting to participate in daily life because they’re being targeted in such a heavy way right now. And so it’s important to remember the context that we’re in and why. And that’s why where there’s great concern among advocate groups that this is going to cause a lot of fear and then people will not want to participate in, you know, the goal of the census is to provide an accurate count of all people living in the United States. That’s supposed to be an objective measure and if we have a question that is being thrown in there, you know, untested and we know is politically charged, right? And can produce a lot of fear and as a result hurt participation, that’s just, that’s really hurting the accuracy and the integrity of the census data.

BETWEEN THE LINES: Diana, is there any way to gauge the effect of the question on citizenship when it comes to participation? What are the concerns that your group has about how much participation might drop off if this question is indeed part of the census form in 2020?

DIANA PLIEGO: Yeah. It’s difficult to gauge, you know, how much participation will be affected. What we do know is that there are constant reports of community members who, amidst rumors of policy changes that would affect the immigrant community or, as a result of certain enforcement measures being taken in certain communities – we know that that has affected communities already. You know, parents are afraid to take their children to school. After there’s raids that happened in certain locations, there are parents who choose to not send their kids to school and the next day teachers are reporting empty classrooms missing the majority of their students with these rumored policy changes around access to healthcare and things like that. There’s already a fear in communities that they may not be able to access other things that they need to provide their basic needs that they are entitled to just simply because of a rumor of a policy change.

And so, if we have this very set question going into the census for us, it indicates that immigrant communities will react with fear. And I think for us the concern is, you know, not only would it produce fear in undocumented communities, but this also produces fear – you know, say I’m a daughter who’s still living with their parents and maybe, she was born here and has citizenship, but because they don’t want to indicate that an immigrant family living in this area, they might not want to participate as well. And so it’s not just those who are foreign born who will be impacted by this. It’s the community at large.

BETWEEN THE LINES: What about the lawsuits we’ve been reading about? There are various states across the country that are quite upset about this intention to insert the citizenship question in the census forms and a number of these states are going to or have already initiated lawsuits against the Trump administration. What is the net effect of that? You think that’s a viable way to challenge this move by the Trump administration?

DIANA PLIEGO: Well, it’s definitely showing how there’s a large group of people who are against this, right? Because, you know, the census is something that is rooted in our Constitution and the value that’s placed on the census is something that, you know, even our founders noted. And so I think what that shows is that there are people who have very legitimate concerns about how this is gonna affect – like we were just talking about – all Americans. It’s not just one party or another, it’s gonna affect communities all over the country and they’re standing by the Constitution, right? That this is something that we should not be doing. It was like, you know, like we mentioned before, it’s untested and so, we don’t know the effects that it’s going to do and it’s the fact that it’s being thrown in so last minute really undermines the whole process, right?

A lot of money, a lot of time was spent into ensuring that we had questions that would be able to reflect, be able to include everyone, right? Everyone in the United States, because that is a constitutional duty of the bureau. And so having California and New York and all of these other states come out against this, I think, shows that this is a violation of our Constitution and what we should be doing is making sure that the census actually fulfills its mission to count all people in the United States.

For more information, visit the National Immigration Law Center at nilc.org.

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