FEATURING JONATHAN H. MARKS – The idea of public-private partnerships to spur innovation or to promote public health, is not controversial. Local and state governments, and even the federal government often rely on relationships with private corporations to fund initiatives, making an implicit assumption that competitive pricing and efficiency will result in better outcomes.

But a new book exposes the ugly downside of public-private partnerships. In entering into agreements with private companies, government institutions are loathe to hold accountable the entities on which they depend and end up trading away the rights of real people. When the line between the private good and the public good is blurred, the public often pays the price.

For more information visit www.jonathanhmarks.org or follow him on Twitter @EthicsLawPolicy. Watch his TED talk HERE.

Jonathan H. Marks, director of the Bioethics Program at Penn State University, and affiliate faculty in Law and International Affairs. He is also an academic member of Matrix Chambers, London and Geneva, a leading group of human rights lawyers.  His TED talk, In Praise of Conflict, has over a million views and was the basis for his new book, “The Perils of Partnership: Industry Influence, Institutional Integrity, and Public Health.”

Julian Assange the founder of Wikileaks has been arrested after seven years of effective house arrest at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, England. He was taken into custody on Thursday morning by British authorities and after which he is expected to be extradited to the US. The single charge on which US authorities have indicted him is conspiracy to break into a government computer – a charge which carries a maximum penalty of up to 5 years, and which centers around Wikileaks’ role in obtaining classified war documents from Chelsea Manning. Assange and Wikileaks have also come under fire for releasing thousands of hacked emails from Democratic National Committee servers that are seen as having negatively impacted Hillary Clinton’s Presidential campaign in 2016. But Assange does not face charges over those accusations. Assange’s lawyers say they will fight the US extradition in court. His lawyer, Barry J. Pollack accused the US of, “an unprecedented effort by the United States seeking to extradite a foreign journalist to face criminal charges for publishing truthful information.” On Thursday Wikileaks Editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson spoke to reporters. 

Meanwhile President Donald Trump on Thursday responded to reporters’ questions claiming ignorance of Wikileaks: “It’s not my thing. I know there is something having to do with Julian Assange. I’ve been seeing what’s happened with Assange and that will be a determination, I would imagine, mostly by the attorney general, who’s doing an excellent job. So, he’ll be making a determination . I know nothing really about him.” In 2016 Trump spoke in glowing terms about Wikileaks because of the apparent benefit to his campaign from it’s hacking of the DNC servers.

In other news, the deadline for the IRS to turn over President Donald Trump’s tax returns for the past 6 years has come and gone. Democratic Representative Richard Neal had given the IRS until April 10th to comply with a request based on a federal tax provision but Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who oversees the IRS, has refused to comply, likely setting up a major legal battle. Mnuchin has said he wants to consult the Justice Department on the constitutionality of the request and in a letter to the House Ways and Means committee he wrote that the committee request raises, “serious issues concerning the constitutional scope of Congressional investigative authority, the legitimacy of the asserted legislative purpose, and the constitutional rights of American citizens.”

House Democrats on Wednesday released an internal memo from the Education Department making the argument that Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has the authority to use federal funds to purchase guns for public school teachers. According to the memo, dated July 16th of last year, “The Department’s Office of the General Counsel has advised that the Secretary has discretion to interpret the broad language of the statute as to its permissiveness regarding the purchase of firearms and traini...

A giant in Southern California’s activist scene, Blase Bonpane, has died. He passed away on April 8th at the age of 89. Bonpane was the Director of the Office of the Americas. He started his adulthood at the Maryknoll Seminary where he became a priest and was assigned to work in Guatemala in 1966. There he realized the hypocrisy of a Church that wanted to ignore the underlying political causes of poverty and eventually left the seminary.

He went on to teach but was continually removed from his posts at various universities for his political organizing. He was often under surveillance by the CIA and FBI. After his marriage in 1970, to former Maryknoll Sister Theresa Killeen, the Bonpanes’ combined mission led them to found the Office of the Americas and organize and lead the 1985 International March for Peace through Central America.  

Blase Bonpane was a programmer on KPFK for 50 years, hosting World Focus. He wrote a number of books including Guerrillas of Peace, Civilization is Possible, and Imagine No Religion.

He was an inspiration to many of us in the LA area. A few weeks ago Sonali had the chance to send him a note while he was in the hospital. She wrote, “Thank you Blase, for being such a light in our community and our world. Thank you for never giving up, for pushing through in the face of obstacles, for always retaining your humor, and for living by example.”

Today we remember Blase through his own words from an interview Sonali did with him in 2011 about his memoir Imagine No Religion.

FEATURING ELIZABETH ZACH – It’s that time of the year again when millions of Americans scramble to meet the IRS’s deadline to file taxes for the previous year. Tax preparers like H&R Block and TurboTax are part of a multibillion-dollar industry relying on a complicated filing system that makes people dependent on their services.

But this week the House, in a bi-partisan vote on an ironically named billed called Taxpayers First Act, closed the door on the IRS’s ability to put up a free web-based tax filing portal. Plenty of other nations have simpler filing systems that cost nothing. So why do we put up with a complicated and often expensive method of taxpaying?

Read Elizabeth Zach’s article HERE, and for all her writing go to http://www.elizabethzach.com. 

Elizabeth Zach, staff writer at the nonprofit Rural Community Assistance Corporation, where she covers rural poverty and economies, the environment, and tribal issues. Her latest article was published on In These Times magazine called, Why the Government Makes Filing Your Taxes Intentionally Difficult.

Attorney General William Barr is testifying for a second day on front of the House Appropriations Subcommittee and during his testimony claimed without evidence that the government, under President Obama, spied on Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.  A day earlier Bloomberg broke the news that Barr has, “assembled a team to review controversial counterintelligence decisions made by Justice Department and FBI officials, including actions taken during the probe of the Trump campaign in the summer of 2016.” During his Tuesday testimony Barr told lawmakers, “I am reviewing the conduct of the [Special Counsel] investigation and trying to get my arms around all the aspects of the counterintelligence investigation that was conducted during the summer of 2016.” The move is in line with Republican claims for the past two years that the investigation into Trump was driven by partisan politics.

Meanwhile on Tuesday, a House committee hearing on White Nationalism went awry after Republicans invited an extremist right wing media personality named Candace Owens to testify. Owens was cited as the inspiration for the white supremacist mass shooter who targeted mosques and massacred 50 people in New Zealand some weeks ago. The 29-year old attention seeker made waves last December for controversial comments about Hitler. Here is Democratic Representative Ted Lieu slamming Republicans for inviting Owens and playing a tape of her comments.  The Washington Post explained that, “If Republicans were hoping to sabotage the Judiciary Committee’s hearing, they got what they wanted. Owens’s presence turned a serious inquiry — there were representatives from civil rights groups, social media and a Muslim man whose daughters were killed in a hate crime — into farce.”

Another House Committee hearing taking place on Wednesday features the testimonies of 7 CEOs of large banks. This is JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon’s opening statement to the House Financial Services Committee hearing.  On Tuesday Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin testified and had a tense exchange with Committee chair Maxine Waters near the end. 

In other news President Trump is signing two executive orders on Wednesday to “help American energy companies avoid unnecessary red tape” as they build oil and gas pipelines across the US. The move is intended to make it harder for government agencies to regulate the fossil fuel industry. It would also undermine existing laws such as the Clean Water Act. Meanwhile at a House Oversight Committee hearing on Tuesday tackling Climate and National Security former Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and former State Secretary John Kerry spoke. Mr. Kerry said that Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had shown more leadership on the climate than Republicans. Ocasio-Cortez sits on the House Oversight Committee and schooled Republicans for dismissing her Green New Deal legislation. 

FEATURING DOUGLAS RIVLIN – Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen’s resignation on Sunday appeared to come out of the blue. But in fact President Donald Trump last week previewed what was to come in his increasing belligerence over reports of increased immigration and his resulting demand to shut down the border with Mexico.

With his withdrawal of Ron Vitiello’s nomination as head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Nielsen’s resignation, and reports of more cuts at DHS, the President is be indicating that his administration’s anti-immigrant policies were not anti-immigrant enough for him. Although he has denied he wants to resume immigrant family separation, he has also touted it as a deterrent against migrants and asylum seekers.

Douglas Rivlin, Communication Director with America’s Voice.

FEATURING DR. GARY FULLER – Climate change denialists like to question scientific research, perhaps assuming that the general public won’t connect the dots between increased carbon dioxide levels and a warming planet. But on the science of air pollution, there is no argument that can explain away what people see before their own eyes and what they experience with their own health.

Air pollution is a global threat to human and planetary health and yet is a problem that can be stopped with strong legislation. Unfortunately in the current rush to deregulate industries could turn back the clock on the little progress we’ve made.

Dr. Gary Fuller is an air pollution scientist at King’s College London. He is author of The Invisible Killer: The Rising Global Threat of Air Pollution – and How We Can Fight Back. He writes the Pollutionwatch series for The Guardian.

US Attorney General William Barr testified before the House Appropriations Committee on Tuesday, for the first time speaking publicly before Congressional members since becoming head of the DOJ. He confirmed that he would release the Special Counsel’s report to the public within a week.  Democratic Representative Charlie Crist asked Barr to elaborate on one line he wrote in his 4-page summary of the Mueller report.  Committee chair Nita Lowey spoke with reporters after the hearing saying she did not trust Barr’s interpretation of the report. 

In immigration news top ranking Republican Senator Chuck Grassley on Monday warned the White House not to fire more agency heads at the Department of Homeland Security. Grassley’s words came a day after Homeland Security secretary Kirstjen Nielsen announced her resignation, apparently forced out by President Donald Trump for not being “tough” enough against immigrant families. Grassley and other leading Republicans seemed to view Nielsen’s disturbing legacy in overseeing the separation of thousands of children from their parents as perfectly acceptable. In an interview with the Washington Post Grassley said he was, “very, very concerned” about rumors that Lee Francis Cissna, the director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services would be the next to go. He told the paper, “One, those are good public servants…Secondly, besides the personal connection I have with them and the qualifications they have, they are the intellectual basis for what the president wants to accomplish in immigration.”  On Monday Trump fired the head of the US Secret Service– without cause.

Reports emerged after Nielsen’s resignation that Trump wants to reverse his own executive order ending the family separation policy after a massive public outcry last year. CNN quoted one source attending a recent White House meeting that the President was, “ranting and raving, saying border security was his issue.” Additionally, “According to multiple sources, the President wanted families separated even if they came in at a legal port of entry and were legal asylum seekers. The President wanted families separated even if they were apprehended within the US. He thinks the separations work to deter migrants from coming.” But on Tuesday Trump publicly denied that he wanted to restart family separations, saying, “We’re not looking to do that, no.” However he then boasted about the deterrent effect of separating families saying, “Once you don’t have it, that’s why you see many more people coming. They’re coming like it’s a picnic.”

In other immigration news, a federal judge on Monday blocked Trump’s policy of forcing asylum seekers to remain in Mexico while they apply. Judge Jon S.

FEATURING ELON GLICKMAN – A spirited protest on Friday in front of the New York City entrance to Birthright Israel resulted in 15 arrests. The group IfNotNow organized the protests led by young American Jews who are offering a counter-narrative to the rightwing American support of Israeli’s anti-Palestinian policies. Birthright Israel offers yearly all-expenses-paid trips to Israel from the US, which critics of Israel see as fulfilling a purely propaganda role.

Meanwhile on Saturday President Trump addressed the Republican Jewish Coalition in Las Vegas where members of the same group interrupted him with chants of “occupation is a plague.”

The protests come as Israel is readying itself for an election on Tuesday. Hardline rightwing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who enjoys strong support from Trump, has promised to annex the West Bank if he wins reelection.

 

Elon Glickman, active member of If Not Now, a Los Angeles born Jewish American who participated in the free Birthright trip to Israel where he was one of several people who walked off the trip in protest of Israeli oppression of Palestinians last year.

FEATURING KEYANNA CELINA –  A memorial service for Nipsey Hussle will be held this Thursday at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. The Grammy nominated rapper and local entrepreneur and social justice activist was gunned down outside his store on March 31. The day after his killing hundreds of people gathered to mourn him and the memorial there has grown.

Hussle was beloved for remaining in the community he grew up in, buying up property in South Los Angeles in order to reinvest in South Los Angeles.

Meanwhile, the man accused of killing Hussle, Eric Holder, is pleading not guilty to the shooting, which was caught on surveillance camera.

Keyanna Celina, grassroots organizer and recording artist based in Los Angeles.