#us/nato

[batboyblog]

Things Biden and the Democrats did, this week #26

July 5-12 2024

The IRS announced it had managed to collect $1 billion in back taxes from high-wealth tax cheats. The program focused on persons with more than $1 million in yearly income who owned more than $250,000 in unpaid taxes. Thanks to money in Biden's 2022 Inflation Reduction Act the IRS is able to undertake more enforcement against rich tax cheats after years of Republicans cutting the agency's budget, which they hope to do again if they win power again.

The Biden administration announced a $244 million dollar investment in the federal government’s registered apprenticeship program. This marks the largest investment in the program's history with grants going out to 52 programs in 32 states. The President is focused on getting well paying blue collar opportunities to people and more people are taking part in the apprenticeship program than ever before. Republican pledge to cut it, even as employers struggle to find qualified workers.

The Department of Transportation announced the largest single project in the department's history, $11 billion dollars in grants for the The Hudson River Tunnel. Part of the $66 billion the Biden Administration has invested in our rail system the tunnel, the most complex Infrastructure project in the nation would link New York and New Jersey by rail under the Hudson. Once finished it's believed it'll impact 20% of the American economy by improving and speeding connection throughout the Northeast.

The Department of Energy announced $1.7 billion to save auto worker's jobs and convert factories to electronic vehicles. The Biden administration will used the money to save or reopen factories in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, and Virginia and retool them to make electric cars. The project will save 15,000 skilled union worker jobs, and created 2,900 new high-quality jobs.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development reached a settlement with The Appraisal Foundation over racial discrimination. TAF is the organization responsible for setting standards and qualifications for real estate appraisers. The Bureau of Labor Statistics last year found that TAF was 94.7% White and 0.6% Black, making it the least racially diverse of the 800 occupations surveyed. Black and Latino home owners are far more likely to have their houses under valued than whites. Under the settlement with HUD TAF will have to take serious steps to increase diversity and remove structural barriers to diversity.

The Department of Justice disrupted an effort by the Russian government to influence public opinion through AI bots. The DoJ shut down nearly 1,000 twitter accounts that were linked to a Russian Bot farm. The bots used AI technology to not only generate tweets but also AI image faces for profile pictures. The effort seemed focused on boosting support for Russia's war against Ukraine and spread negative stories/impressions about Ukraine.

The Department of Transportation announces $1.5 billion to help local authorities buy made in America buses. 80% of the funding will go toward zero or low-emission technology, a part of the President's goal of reaching zero emissions by 2050. This is part of the $5 billion the DOT has spent over the last 3 years replacing aging buses with new cleaner technology.

President Biden with Canadian Prime Minster Justin Trudeau and Finnish President Alexander Stubb signed a new agreement on the arctic. The new trilateral agreement between the 3 NATO partners, known as the ICE Pact, will boost production of ice breaking ships, the 3 plan to build as many as 90 between them in the coming years. The alliance hopes to be a counter weight to China's current dominance in the ice breaker market and help western allies respond to Russia's aggressive push into the arctic waters.

The Department of Transportation announced $1.1 billion for greater rail safety. The program seeks to, where ever possible, eliminate rail crossings, thus removing the dangers and inconvenience to communities divided by rail lines. It will also help update and improve safety measures at rail crossings.

The Department of the Interior announced $120 million to help tribal communities prepare for climate disasters. This funding is part of half a billion dollars the Biden administration has spent to help tribes build climate resilience, which itself is part of a $50 billion dollar effort to build climate resilience across the nation. This funding will help support drought measures, wildland fire mitigation, community-driven relocation, managed retreat, protect-in-place efforts, and ocean and coastal management.

The USDA announced $100 million in additional funds to help feed low income kids over the summer. Known as "SUN Bucks" or "Summer EBT" the new Biden program grants the families of kids who qualify for free meals at school $120 dollars pre-child for groceries. This comes on top of the traditional SUN Meals program which offers school meals to qualifying children over the summer, as well as the new under President Biden SUN Meals To-Go program which is now offering delivery of meals to low-income children in rural areas. This grant is meant to help local governments build up the Infrastructure to support and distribute SUN Bucks. If fully implemented SUN Bucks could help 30 million kids, but many Republican governors have refused the funding.

USAID announced its giving $100 million to the UN World Food Program to deliver urgently needed food assistance in Gaza. This will bring the total humanitarian aid given by the US to the Palestinian people since the war started in October 2023 to $774 million, the single largest donor nation. President Biden at his press conference last night said that Israel and Hamas have agreed in principle to a ceasefire deal that will end the war and release the hostages. US negotiators are working to close the final gaps between the two sides and end the war.

The Senate confirmed Nancy Maldonado to serve as a Judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Judge Maldonado is the 202nd federal Judge appointed by President Biden to be confirmed. She will the first Latino judge to ever serve on the 7th Circuit which covers Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin.

Bonus: At the NATO summit in Washington DC President Biden joined 32 allies in the Ukraine compact. Allies from Japan to Iceland confirmed their support for Ukraine and deepening their commitments to building Ukraine's forces and keeping a free and Democratic Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression. World leaders such as British Prime Minster Keir Starmer, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, French President Emmanuel Macron, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, praised President Biden's experience and leadership during the NATO summit

[tinakp]

US/NATO Maniacs Killed The Post-Cold War Peace On Purpose | Alexander Mercouris from The Duran

This is the second segment of the interview with Alexander Mercouris ( @AlexMercouris  ) from  @TheDuran . We talk about how and why NATO elites decided to kill the Post-Cold War peace in Europe that had set in after 1989. The poisonous idea that the US had "won" the Cold War completely distorted all decision-making, leading to some of the worst and most provocative geostrategic blunders in history. Peace was killed by those who thought they could rain with impunity and Ukraine is now paying the price of the zero-sum thinking.

[stelliumh3arts]

REBLOG AND SPREAD THE WORD!

CD: CAREFREEBROWNGIRL @tiktok/rednote/YT

Spread Awareness! Start the global movement now via any social media!✊

[kazhanko-art]

for the record, every dead Ukrainian, every act of genocide by Russia, every home destroyed, every inch of soil lost, will be a stain on the US, and I hope no one forgets how the US repeatedly failed to back up the Budapest memorandum, and whatever happens under Trump

[welcometoqueer]

U.S. programs and services in danger of being diminished or fully cut:

Social Security

Department of Education

Department of Labor

Department of Transportation

Medicaid

Medicare

Obamacare

FDA

CDC

USDA

FAFSA

FEMA

ACA

SNAP

EPA

FTC

FEC

HUD

HHS

NOAA

SCHIP

FAA

National Weather Service

Hurricane and other disaster warnings

Unemployment services

Student loans

Pell grants

Libraries

Fluoride treatment in our water

Meat and food inspections

National Parks

Other concerns:

(International relations)

Loss of U.S. membership in NATO

Potential UN ramifications

Tariffs

Support of Israel winning the war

Putin and Russian relations

(Loss of Rights)

Voting rights

Miranda rights

LGBTQ+, POC, and other minority rights

Reproductive rights

Protection against pre-existing conditions

Protection against assault and harassment

Child labor protections

(Daily living)

Prescription prices skyrocketing

No rent control

Little to no reproductive or health care access

Legalized police brutality

Diminished or cut protections and rights for minority groups

Restrictions on gender affirming care or legal services

Increased taxes and cost of living for the non-wealthy

No more $35 insulin

No labor laws - 40+ hour work weeks, no mandatory breaks, no paid sick or vacation leave

[unsuitablepet]

i've noticed you're Canadian, and as an incredibly terrified american, are you guys getting news that war is actually likely? our news and search engines are being heavily censored, i actually cannot find anything past 2024 about possible war. i'm reeling that it's possible, but i wouldn't put it past the orange fuck. i am so sincerely sorry for that cockalorum.

Hey! First of all, thanks for reaching out, and I'm sorry to hear you're terrified. We are also terrified to hear that your news is being censored. As I'm sure you can imagine, now more than ever, we want Americans to be aware of our situation and what's going on up north.

In terms of whether our news is saying war is likely... that's hard to answer. Truthfully, our news sources take a bit of a different tone than yours, for the most part. We're very avoidant of absolutes until things are certain, and our journalists (the respectable ones) tend to avoid alarmist rhetoric - at least compared to the kind of reporting and headlines we often see from many (still very respectable!) publications in the States.

So, what I'll say is this: in short, no. I have not seen any explicit reporting that war is imminent. However, there have been a lot of signals that a Big Bad is coming, and that's what a lot of us have been deducing from that. Here are some examples:

PM Justin Trudeau called a summit with most of our major industry leaders, informing them that Trump's annexation threats were very real and that we needed to start preparing.

Following that meeting, he flew to Europe to meet with several EU leaders to strengthen alliances and met with the Secretary-General of NATO for apparently similar discussions.

On a potentially related note, CSIS (our version of the CIA) released a foreign interference intelligence report to Parliament on Jan 28, most of which has not been made available to the public. However, I’ve seen some reporting that the United States was one of the countries mentioned as trying to interfere in our elections, and that the government’s response could be read as a silent invocation of NATO Article 4.

Perhaps most telling of something bad to come: our leaders are reaching across the aisle more than I've ever seen. Trudeau has been meeting with our premiers often, and outside of the numbnut in Alberta, they’ve unanimously come together to work on plans that prioritize Canada. We're hearing some of our most despicable, power-hungry conservatives advocate for Country Over Party and Country Over Province, willingly working with Trudeau—whom not even a month ago they treated like the most egregiously offensive man who ever lived—in supporting his plans to push back on Trump.

Our most conservative, openly pro-Trump candidate for the next election (Pierre Poilievre) is adding the establishment of a new military base and an Arctic defense strategy to his platform.

All candidates have been talking about increasing military spending.

Finally, all of our economic conversations have been focused on trade diversification and expanding internal manufacturing capabilities. We just signed a massive trade deal with China—something we had been refusing to do primarily because of our allegiance to the United States as our ally, which has now clearly been broken.

So yeah. Nothing overt, but it's not looking good.

On the ground, regular people (at least where I live) have been talking about war as if it's a real possibility and discussing what they'd do. Overwhelmingly, people are willing to stand up to this if it comes to it.

War aside, I've never seen anti-American sentiment run so high in this country. It's truly terrifying. People—on the right and left—are buying Canadian and boycotting American products. People are selling their American vacation homes, canceling travel to the U.S. (and those still taking their American vacations are being called traitors in some circles). Companies are ripping up American contracts. Stores are pulling American products off the shelves. And then, of course, there's the booing.

I know this seems grim, but I want to be honest with you. Our nations' relationship has been irrevocably harmed. There is no world where we go back to how it was before—whether or not Trump is gone—because we simply can't trust we won’t be put in this position again. And honestly—no offense to you, your ask was very polite, and I truly sympathize with every American who is as appalled by this as we are—I don’t think Canadians would feel this strongly about “never going back” if it weren’t for the response we’re seeing from American people online and American media.

Initial reactions to these threats were outright dismissal... of a threat to our sovereignty. Then, it was met with jokes and condescension, with late-night hosts chalking it up to picking a fight with your lapdog ally (literally, Jon Stewart called us golden retrievers), and people online treating it like just another crazy Trump-ism. Which is, again, a) not an appropriate reaction to a threat to a country’s sovereignty, and b) a complete dismissal of the real-time effects we're already feeling from this. The Canadian dollar dropped CONSIDERABLY in value the day the tariffs were announced. Just look at the USD:CAD forex charts and see how fucking stupid it looks since Trump took office.

And then, finally, we keep being met with either MAGA idiots who double down on the threat and tell us about how they can't wait to annex us/invade us and how we don't stand a chance against your military, or we're met by well-meaning but ultimately self-centered Americans who didn't vote for Trump and seem to be looking for us to absolve them and confirm we know they, in particular, didn’t do this. Which, like, okay, but how does that help anything? And really, should you be turning to us for comfort in this moment? This might sound dramatic, but literally go to the comment section of any Canadian creator, and you'll see this playing out there. It's aggressive and overwhelming, and you can’t blame Canadians for feeling like we can't count on you (again, en masse—not you specifically) to have our backs.

That said, the Canadian people and the Canadian government still truly sympathize with Americans—and immigrants in America (documented or not)—who did not choose this and are being impacted. We really, truly, and deeply appreciate Americans like you who are seeking out our voices, seeing through the noise, and trying to stay informed.

So, with that in mind, to help with the root of your question regarding news sources... first, I would recommend getting a VPN. I think your online experience would greatly improve. Second, there are a few Canadian sources you can go directly to, like our national broadcaster, the CBC.

Personally, I also enjoy following some left-leaning creators on TikTok, most of whom are journalists. I just try to be careful to keep their biases in mind and do my own follow-up research/think critically about what I hear. Here are a few of my favourites: Kat Arnett - she's a photographer but she used to be a political journalist. She's been pretty great at talking about how Canadians have experienced all of this.

KnittyKnits - she's a progressive (I'd say left but not far left) creator based in Alberta and she covers a lot of Canadian news.

Contra Tenore - He's a left-wing creator who I personally feel has a fairly pragmatic approach to analysis. He's VERY supportive of our left wing party (The New Democratic Party or 'NDP') and he's been talking a lot about this situation with the U.S. He doesn't mince words, though, and sometimes his videos are a little hard to take.

Cole.NotCole - He's probably my favourite starting point for a lot of my research right now. He gives short summaries of the day's news. He's sort of our Aaron Parnas but less problematic and less priviledged. He has a Liberal (center-left) leaning lens, but I don't personally feel he editorializes too much.

JB|Canadian Politics - Overtly progressive, but great political updates in my opinion - bias or no bias. He's been engaging Americans a lot during this whole thing in really interesting ways.

Unlearn16 - They're an extremely progressive high school history teacher (or maybe social studies?). I've really enjoyed their content covering all of this. They do a great job of breaking down the impact of political maneuvering and spelling out historical contexts.

Anyway... I hope this helps! And thank you again for asking. It really does mean a lot to see people seeking out Canadian perspectives at this time.

[beauty-funny-trippy]

Trump mistakenly thinks the money he's referring to is supposed to go to NATO. It's not. It's the amount each country is voluntarily asked to spend on its own armed forces. Which means, there are no "delinquent" payments.

Obviously Trump is unable to understand even the basics of NATO or foreign policy. The whole purpose of NATO is to prevent wars, not "encourage" them. Trump's insane foreign policy of betraying our allies and befriending our enemies is unbelievably irresponsible and dangerous for America. Do we really want to elect a president whose foreign policy goal is to "Make Russia Great Again!"

Few people despise America more than Putin; and few people admire that brutal dictator more than Trump. Apparently Trump believes that throwing our friends at Putin's feet is a surefire way to impress his alpha-male idol, and perhaps get some help from Putin in the 2024 election.

And did you notice how Trump talks about betraying our allies? Not with somber reluctance. But rather, he literally encourages Putin to murder our friends with a disturbingly perverse tone of enthusiasm! Is he a candidate for president, or auditioning to be Marvel's next supervillain?

There is something seriously wrong with an American presidential candidate who has a greater loyalty to our enemies than to our friends, or even to our own country.

[jangillman]

[baerverteidiger]

The events below ARE REAL!!!

------------

If I was abused, would you listen?

If I went blind, would you care?

[basedhighsenberg]

The head of NATO is threatening to kick out the US because of what Trump might do in regards to Ukraine & Russia.

Don't get me excited

[tributary]

least obvious kremlin op

anyways tag yourself

[originalleftist]

[eliounora]

to say people withholding their vote in America aren't 'pragmatic' enough is so dismissive. as a fellow European like idk what I would've done either if I was an American.

Otherwise I would be sorry to be dismissive but in this situation I think it is completely acceptable, if not necessary, to vote for the lesser evil. Voting is not about your inner true values, it is about society, and especially in the American setting where you essentially have only two options, you need to be able to make hard decisions. If you're seriously indicating that on the whole Harris is bad as Trump, you need to take a cold hard look at the reality of the matters at hand. Harris is not ideal, and it hurts to vote for her especially when you think about Gaza, but Trump is a fascist and his supporters in the Republican party are dangerous to democracy and human rights. This is not a situation where you get to opt out. Not voting is a vote for Trump.

[phoenixyfriend]

One of the insane things I've learned due to bingeing political and news media is why the US has such a high military budget.

Like, don't get me wrong, I still disagree with it, I hate the military industrial complex, I do not THINK we should be doing this...

But finding out that a number of countries have more or less officially contracted their emergency military responses to the US does make more sense. We aren't just the US's army, we're functionally the reserves for all of NATO. Europe gives us good trade deals in exchange for being able to borrow our gun guys.

Again, I don't AGREE with this. I'm just much less confused about the WHY now.

Unless I'm wrong about how the budget works, in which case, please explain using pie charts. I like pie charts.

EDIT: Also it's more than just Europe, some noteworthy others being Taiwan, Israel, South Korea, and Japan.

[hyper-coasters]

Manufactured by Republic Aviation, the F-105D Thunderchief was a supersonic fighter & bomber jet that could carry nuclear weapons and heavy bomb loads. This one at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center's Boeing Aviation Hangar has been restored to its Vietnam-era camouflage and was given to the Smithsonian Institution in 1981.

[usafphantom2]

You probably knew this anyway….

@CcibChris🇬🇧🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿via X