May 26, 2021: Congress Prepping Bezos Bailout; Biden OK's Israel Arms Deal; Centrists Cash in Conservative Clout

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TODAY'S HEADLINES:


The Intercept reports that the Senate is preparing a $10 billion
bailout fund for Jeff Bezos’s vanity spaceflight company Blue
Origin.


Meanwhile, the State Department approves a $735 million arms deal
to Israel, while sending only a paltry 5 million to Palestinian
reconstruction efforts.


And lastly, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema try to leverage their
conservative clout to beg Republicans to support a commission to
investigate the January 6 insurrection.


THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW:


The hottest luxury for billionaires right now is a private space
company. Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are both in on the trend, but
the former’s big rocket adventure isn’t going so well. But don’t
worry! Our government is preparing to save him.


The Intercept reported that Bezos’s company Blue Origin recently
lost out on a massive, multi-billion dollar government contract
to Elon Musk’s SpaceX. But now, Congress is trying to slip in an
amendment to a bill that would make sure Blue Origin still gets a
big chunk of taxpayer money.


According to the Intercept, the slush money was added in as an
amendment to the Endless Frontier Act by Washington Senator Maria
Cantwell. It would go to NASA first, which would then use it for
a Blue Origin contract. And quick: you’ve got one guess as to
where Blue Origin’s headquarters are. That’s right, Washington.


The amendment might face some opposition, however. Bernie Sanders
quickly slid in an amendment of his own to cut out the $10
billion, telling the Intercept quote:


“It does not make a lot of sense to me that we would provide
billions of dollars to a company owned by the wealthiest guy in
America.”


That’s a great point, Bernie!


It’s worth placing some of this information in the wider context,
which is that spaceflight in general is becoming more and more
privatized. Instead of NASA building the ships that carry our
astronauts and satellites to the ISS and beyond, those contracts
are now going to people like Musk and Bezos. The specific
contract Blue Origin lost was to put astronauts on the moon,
something we haven’t done since 1972.


The difference is back then, we could truly say we the people put
someone on the moon. Now, we can only say we paid for a private
company to do it.


White House OK's Israel Arms Deal


On Tuesday, the Biden Administration officially committed to
sending $5 million in relief funds to rebuild Palestine’s
bombed-out Gaza strip. But days before that, it also agreed to
send an order of magnitude more in deadly weapons to Israel.


Jewish Currents magazine reports that on May 21, the Biden State
department granted the U.S. based company Boeing an export
license to sell $735 million worth of laser guided munitions to
Israel.


If you remember, this is the arms deal that progressives in the
House and Senate were trying to stop.


Jewish Currents reports that Bernie Sanders office learned that
the sale had been greenlit on Friday, and immediately used his
leverage to place a hold on all new State Department nominations,
stopping them from being approved by the Senate. Sanders only
lifted that hold when the Biden administration committed to some
humanitarian relief for Gaza.


But the dollar amounts at play tell the whole story. The
government is letting Israel buy $735 million in U.S. bombs,
which makes its 5 million in relief to Gazans seem like pennies.


As Jewish Currents notes, that’s a pretty good indication that
the Biden Administration’s policy toward Israel’s violence in
Palestine is going to look like much more of the same.


Manchin and Sinema Cash in Conservative Clout


Democrats Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema have spent the first
months of the Biden Presidency building clout with their
colleagues across the aisle, largely by stopping their own party
from getting anything done.


Now, they’re finally cashing that in, in a last-ditch attempt to
get several GOP Senators to support the creation of a January 6
commission.


The proposed commission would be modeled after the one that
investigated the 9/11 attacks, and represents basically the only
shot at getting a formal government breakdown of who did what
during the Capitol Insurrection.


The GOP, of course, largely does not want this to happen,
probably because several of their colleagues were directly
involved or implicated. The proposal was somewhat bipartisan, and
won 35 votes in the House. But in the Senate, it’s in trouble,
because Mitch McConnell unsurprisingly does not want to play
ball, calling the commission a quote “purely political exercise”
endquote.


Instead Manchin and Synema are reportedly working the same little
cadre of moderate Republicans like Mitt Romney and Susan Collins,
some of whom want tweaks to the commission to give the GOP more
power over how it works.


We’ll see if all that boot-licking and bill-sabotaging pays off
for them!


AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES:


The New York Times reports that the Navy has finally dropped its
opposition to parts of the California coast being used for wind
farms, clearing the way for the Biden Administration to push
forward on a long-sought clean energy goal.


One more note about the Democratic spoiler crew mentioned in our
third story tonight: the Washington Post reports that the
bipartisan centrist lobby is now privately designing a new and
not-improved version of Biden’s ambitious infrastructure bill in
case the first one falls apart. That’s progress, baby! Moving
steadily backwards.


Daniella Frazier, the 17-year-old girl who filmed Derek Chauvin’s
murdering George Floyd last year, spoke publicly for the first
time in a Facebook post. Here’s a quote:


“It changed me. It changed how I viewed life. It made me realize
how dangerous it is to be Black in America. We shouldn’t have to
walk on eggshells around police officers, the same people that
are supposed to protect and serve.”


And finally, the CDC says it will stop investigating mild COVID
infections in vaccinated adults, indicating that they’re
confident that the vast majority of these breakthrough cases will
not be life-threatening. The vaccines, it seems, are doing their
jobs, though the Washington Post reports that some scientists are
lamenting the loss of potential data.


AM QUICKIE - MAY 26, 2021


HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner


WRITER - Jack Crosbie


PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw


EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn