California Free Press

Pelosi Delays Infrastructure Vote as Progressives Refuse to Budge Without Build Back Better Act

Congressional Progressive Caucus members Rep. Cori Bush (D-Ga.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) talk to reporters before a vote to keep the federal government open until early December outside the U.S. Capitol on September 30, 2021 in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

 

"House Progressives have once again demonstrated what effective collective power can do if we stay united in our fight for transformative policies for the American people."

 

Jenna McGuire

October 28, 2021

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday abruptly delayed a vote on bipartisan infrastructure legislation after progressives reasserted their commitment to not vote for that measure without also advancing the Build Back Better budget reconciliation package.

Instead, the House voted Thursday night to temporarily reauthorize transportation funding, which came hours after President Joe Biden announced a drastically watered-down version of the social spending plan.

Ahead of the vote, Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) reiterated her and others' opposition to passing the $550 billion bipartisan infrastructure bill without the $1.75 trillion social spending bill.

"Members of our caucus will not vote for the infrastructure bill without the Build Back Better Act. We will work immediately to finalize and pass both pieces of legislation through the House together," Jayapal said.

Jayapal's statement follows Biden's visit to Capitol Hill on Thursday to meet with Democratic leadership and caucus members about the $1.75 trillion spending plan—scaled back significantly from the $3.5 trillion proposal. Key aspects of the legislation include investments in Medicare expansion, climate action, affordable housing, and extending the child tax credit.

"There is too much at stake for working families and our communities to settle for something that can be later misunderstood, amended, or abandoned altogether," said Jayapal. "That is why dozens of our members insist on keeping both bills linked and cannot vote only for one until they can be voted on together."

People's Action called on progressive Democrats to hold the line, with the group's campaigns director Sondra Youdelman saying that "we have a once-in-a-generation moment to pass the boldest vision to build a multi-racial democracy."

"President Biden was elected on the back of a popular Build Back Better agenda, and it’s critical that we protect this agenda from cuts pushed by corporations and their allies," Youdelman said.

Some of the key social programs supported by progressives that were removed following pervasive corporate lobbying include free community college, paid family leave, allowing Medicare to negotiate lower prescription drug prices, parts of Medicare expansion, and the Clean Electricity Performance Program (CEPP) designed to more rapidly transition the nation to renewable energy.

"Our communities need every Democrat in the caucus to do everything in their power to convince their colleagues to make good on their promise, seal the best deal possible, and only vote on the bipartisan infrastructure bill once everyone is on board with a plan to pass the Build Back Better Act," said Youdelman.

Mary Small, national advocacy director for Indivisible, Thursday said in a statement that "House Progressives have once again demonstrated what effective collective power can do if we stay united in our fight for transformative policies for the American people."

While applauding progressives for addressing the multiple crises facing U.S. families, Indivisible called out conservative Democrats like Sens. Joe Manchin (W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.) for obstructing critical pieces of the Build Back Better agenda including lower prescription drug prices, paid family leave, and broad investments to save our planet from climate change.

"The reality is that while talks around the infrastructure bill lasted months in the Senate, there has only been serious discussion around the specifics of the larger Build Back Better Act in recent weeks, thanks to the Progressive Caucus holding the line and putting both parts of the agenda back on the table," said Jayapal. "Now, Congress needs to finish the job and bring both bills to a vote together."

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Off the Top of My Head

Why Manchin and Sinema Don't Trust Progressives in the House and Vice Versa: Earmarks

by John Lawrence

As Ronald Reagan said, "Trust, but verify." An earmark is some piece of legislation that a senator or congressperson slips into a bill in the middle of the night and hopes it goes unnoticed by everyone concerned. The theory is that no one will notice an unagreed upon paragraph in thousands of pages of legislation. The most famous earmark was the "Bridge to Nowhere." The Gravina Island Bridge, popularly known as the "Bridge to Nowhere", has become shorthand for frivolous earmarks. In 2002, it was proposed that a for-profit prison corporation, Cornell Corrections, build a prison on an Alaskan island. To connect the island with Ketchikan, it was originally planned that the federal government spend $175 million on building a bridge to the island, and another $75 million to connect it to the power grid with an electrical intertie. The Ketchikan Borough Assembly turned the proposal down when the administration of Governor Tony Knowles also expressed its disfavor to the idea. Eventually, the corporation's prison plans led to the exposure of the wide-ranging Alaska political corruption probe, which eventually ensnared U.S. Senator Ted Stevens. The bridge idea persisted. The 2005 Highway Bill provided for $223m to build the Gravina Island Bridge between Gravina Island and nearby Ketchikan, on Revillagigedo Island. Despite the demise of the bridge proposal, Governor Sarah Palin spent $26 million in transportation funding for constructing the planned access road on the island that ultimately served little use.

This is why Manchin and Sinema won't come out and say they support the House legislation on the Build Back Better plan until they see the actual legislation and not just a "framework." They want to make sure that progressives in the House don't slip Family Leave back into the framework in the middle of the night. Likewise, House Progressives want the two bills to go to the Senate "in tandem" so that Manchin and Sinema don't tank the Build Back Better bill while passing the conventional infrastructure bill. I don't understand why the pundits haven't figured this out. It makes perfect sense. Neither side wants to be screwed. Capische? I'm sure the bills will both be passed in tandem according to the framework that Joe Biden got both sides to agree on. I don't think either Manchin or Sinema will go back on their word to Joe Biden. However, they don't want to be put in the position of agreeing to a framework publicly, and then having the Progressives slip something into the bill at the last minute that they hadn't agreed to. They want to see the actual legislation first before they agree publicly that they will vote for it. Progressives want Manchin and Sinema to agree publicly to their legislation before they will vote on the bipartisan package.

I don't see why CNN's pundits haven't figured this out. It will get done but it needs to get done according to the process that both sides originally agreed upon and no sooner. That only makes sense. Why are the pundits in such a great hurry to get it done bemnoaning Biden's falling approval ratings? From Biden's viewpoint he knows that this legislation will be transformative, and he will go down in history for having negotiated a settlement between both sides. He could care less about his approval ratings. As he said, "It doesn't matter whether it takes 6 days or 6 weeks just so long as it eventually gets done." It will be quite an accomplishment given the fact that the Democrats have the slimmest of margins in the Senate. Biden probably won't run again anyway. Americans just need to be patient.

Capische?

Off the Top of My Head

The US Debt Ceiling is Totally Artificial and Unnecessary

by John Lawrence

Fact: the US has a sovereign fiat currency and can create and spend as many dollars as it wants. Fiat means that the US dollar has value only because the government says it does. It is not redeemable for gold or any other precious metal. Sovereign means that is not pegged to any other currency. It can't be exchanged at a fixed rate for any other currency or anything else. The exchange rate for other currencies is floating. Fact: the US creates its own money and can spend it as it pleases. Fact: "deficit" spending adds money to the real economy which creates and enhances economic activity and adds to GDP. Fact: most recessions occur when the US tries to balance its budget. Long story short: the debt ceiling allows the US to hoist itself on its own pitard!

The Federal Reserve prints the money. That's why the dollars your are carrying around in your pocket say "Federal Reserve Note" on them. It can print as many dollars as are authorized by the US Congress. The US government budget is not dependent on having tax dollars to spend. When the US "deficit spends" it creates Treasury bonds which it sells to the public. However, the Federal Reserve and other central banks are buying back a lot of these Treasury bonds so, effectively, US debt just becomes a number on the Fed's balance sheet which is of no consequence. The Federal Reserve can create with a few keystrokes on a computer as much money as it wants and deposit it in the US Treasury's account. The moral of the story is that the national debt can not and should not ever be paid off. To do so would ruin the economy since it would extract money from the real economy which would lower GDP. The correct assessment of the national debt is that it is just a number on the Fed's balance sheet!

The conversation.com reports:

"There is no limit to the quantity of money that can be created by a central bank such as the Bank of England. It was different in the days of the gold standard, when central banks were restrained by a promise to redeem their money for gold on demand. But countries moved away from this system in the early part of the 20th century, and central banks nowadays can issue as much money as they like.

"This observation is the root of modern monetary theory (MMT), which has attracted new attention during the pandemic, as governments around the world increase spending and public debts become all the more burdensome.

"MMT proponents argue that governments can spend as necessary on all desirable causes – reducing unemployment, green energy, better healthcare and education – without worrying about paying for it with higher taxes or increased borrowing. Instead, they can pay using new money from their central bank. The only limit, according to this view, is if inflation starts to rise, in which case the solution is to increase taxes."

The addition of too much money by government to the real economy can cause inflation. Taxes extract money from the real economy. Joe Biden's Build Back Better human infrastructure bill is totally paid for so it will not cause inflation. It does this by extracting as much money from the real economy as the government is spending into the real economy, and it does this by taxing the rich which has the added salubrious effect of reducing economic inequality. This is one of the goals of the Biden administration: to reduce economic inequality which is what the human infrastructure reconciliation bill actually does. This is why a higher amount spent on this bill is better. The more spent on human infrastructure, the more money is transferred from the rich to the poor and middle class. Progressives know this. Republicans do their best to obfuscate this. Recognition of this fact will help to move the US and other countries with sovereign currencies into a post-capitalist world, and allow for more resources to be dedicated to fighting climate change.

Right-Wing Dems Begin to Cave as Progressives Hold Their Ground on Reconciliation Vote

Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) listen during an event on June 17, 2021 on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Joshua Roberts/Getty Images)

 

"No bipartisan infrastructure bill without the reconciliation bill. They go together."

 

Jake Johnson

August 23, 2021, from Common Dreams

An effort by nine conservative House Democrats to force a quick vote on a bipartisan infrastructure bill reportedly began to collapse over the weekend as progressive lawmakers—and Speaker Nancy Pelosi—made clear that they would not allow the legislation to advance until the Senate also passes a sweeping reconciliation package, a centerpiece of the majority party's agenda.

Earlier this month, Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) and eight other Democrats sent a letter to Pelosi (D-Calif.) threatening to vote down a $3.5 trillion budget resolution—a measure that sets the stage for the reconciliation package—unless the House first passes a $550 billion bipartisan infrastructure bill that the Senate approved on August 11. Their stance won the support of powerful actors in Washington, most prominently the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the biggest-spending corporate lobbying organization in the country.

"This is the path forward: we're passing the bipartisan infrastructure bill alongside the jobs and families package. Period."
—Rep. Pramila Jayapal

But with the House set to reconvene Monday to take up the multitrillion-dollar budget resolution, "several" members of the conservative group have decided to drop their threat to vote against the measure, the American Prospect reported.

While the Prospect's David Dayen stressed that "the situation is very malleable and fluid," it appears that House progressives' firm support for delaying a vote on the bipartisan bill is beginning to pay off.

On August 10, just days before Gottheimer's group sent its letter, the nearly 100-member Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) announced that a majority of respondents to an internal survey said they would be willing to withhold their votes for the bipartisan legislation until the Senate also passes a reconciliation bill, a move that's not expected until next month.

"This is the path forward: we're passing the bipartisan infrastructure bill alongside the jobs and families package. Period," Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), the chair of the CPC, said last week. "The American people expect us to deliver on child care, paid leave, housing, healthcare, climate action, and more—and we must."

Here Are the 9 Right-Wing Democrats Threatening to Tank Their Party's $3.5 Trillion Agenda

Jake Johnson

Progressives have openly voiced concern that passing the bipartisan measure before the Senate approves a reconciliation package would free conservative Democrats to vote against the latter bill, potentially imperiling trillions of dollars in green energy spending, Medicare expansion, paid family and medical leave, and other priorities.

"To my moderate colleagues: A vote against the Biden agenda this week is not only a slap in the face to the president, it will obstruct any shot at adopting the policies that define us as Democrats," Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), a CPC member, tweeted Sunday.

Pelosi, for her part, has said for weeks that the bipartisan measure and the reconciliation package—which Democrats plan to pass without any Republican support—must move at the same time in order to ensure the passage of both, a position that progressive lawmakers and outside advocacy groups have endorsed.

"We cannot afford any political maneuvers that undermine a guaranteed path towards at least $3.5 trillion of investments to combat climate change, uplift American families, expand healthcare, and secure our economic future," the youth-led Sunrise Movement and other progressive organizations wrote to Pelosi last week, urging the Speaker to stick to her position.

On Monday, progressive groups launched a six-figure ad buy targeting the nine right-wing Democrats.

During a private call with her leadership team last week, Pelosi—who has just three votes to spare—derided the group of nine conservative Democrats, saying, "This is no time for amateur hour."

At least two of the letter's nine signatories—Reps. Carolyn Bourdeaux (D-Ga.) and Vicente Gonzalez (D-Texas)—attended Pelosi's annual fundraiser in Napa, California over the weekend, but it's unclear whether they were among the conservative Democrats who have reportedly dropped their threat to tank the budget resolution. It's also not clear what may have compelled the conservative Democrats to flip; the Washington Post reported Sunday that some of the nine lawmakers "sought to negotiate a potential end to the standoff" with Democratic leaders, but no deal has been publicized as of yet.

On Sunday night, the nine conservative Democrats penned an op-ed in the Post "urging House leadership and the president to move [the bipartisan infrastructure legislation] through the House quickly, sign the bill, and get shovels in the ground and people to work." They also raised "concerns about the level of spending" in the budget resolution and warned against holding the bipartisan bill "hostage to reconciliation," an indication that House Democrats could still have trouble passing the resolution this week.

In a letter to the House Democratic caucus on Saturday, Pelosi reiterated her commitment to passing "both the Build Back Better Plan and the bipartisan infrastructure bill before October 1st."

"Any delay to passing the budget resolution threatens the timetable for delivering the historic progress and the transformative vision that Democrats share," Pelosi wrote. "In support of President [Joe] Biden's vision to Build Back Better, we must move quickly to pass the budget resolution this week. It is essential that our caucus proceeds unified in our determination to deliver once-in-a-century progress for the children."

The House is expected to begin the process of approving the budget resolution on Monday. Passage of the measure would set in motion the process of converting top-line spending figures into legislative text, a likely contentious effort that progressive lawmakers hope will yield historic investments in climate action, healthcare, affordable housing, and more.

"Rebuilding our crumbling physical infrastructure is very important," Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the chief architect of the $3.5 trillion budget resolution, said on Sunday. "Rebuilding our human infrastructure, the needs of working families, the children, the elderly, and the sick, is more important. No bipartisan infrastructure bill without the reconciliation bill. They go together."

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'Great News for Progressives Around the World': International Applause After US Voters Fire Donald Trump

Published on Sunday, November 08, 2020

by Common Dreams

"It's time to get back to building bridges, not walls." Leaders from around the world congratulate the Democrats, but say much damage done by Trump requires repair.

by Jon Queally, staff writer

 

30 Comments

A young girl walks past Kenyan daily newspaper with headline "Donald Trump Fired" in the capital Nairobi on November 8, 2020. (Photo: Simon Maina/AFP via Getty Images)

Celebrations took place across the globe and congratulations from world leaders for U.S. President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-election Kamala Harris poured in Saturday and into Sunday after the Democratic ticket was declared the decisive winner in the 2020 election and results showed that President Donald J. Trump had been soundly "fired" by the American people.

"Great news for progressives around the world that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have defeated Trump," tweeted former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn from the United Kingdom, one of America's longest and closest allies. "Let's work together internationally to build a better, fairer, greener, peaceful and more equal world."

From London, the city's progressive Mayor Sadiq Khan—who often clashed with Trump and denounced the U.S. president's racism—congratulated both Biden and Harris on their victory. "London looks forward to working with you," Khan tweeted. "It's time to get back to building bridges, not walls."

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Arden, who recently won a landslide reelection victory in her country, sent well-wishes to the incoming U.S. leaders.

"Congratulations President-elect Joe Biden and Kamala Harris on your victory in the U.S. presidential election," Arden declared in an Instagram post. "With so many issues facing the international community, your message of unity is one we share. New Zealand looks forward to working with you both!"

While Trump, as of this writing, has still refused to acknowledge his defeat or issue a concession, Slate's Ben Mathis-Lilley on Saturday explained that Biden's victory is quite decisive in historical terms:

Defeating a sitting United States president is an extraordinarily hard thing to do, but with the vote count mounting in his favor, Biden turns out to have done it with relative ease. Per current estimates, he will receive something like 51.3 percent of the national popular vote, 3 percentage points more than Hillary Clinton and a higher total than any candidate challenging an incumbent president since FDR got 57 percent against Herbert Hoover in 1932. That’s more than Ronald Reagan got (50.7 percent) in his 1980 win over Jimmy Carter, which is still (accurately!) heralded as a paradigm shift in American politics.

Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Palestinian Authority, also congratulated the pair in a Sunday statement and urged the new U.S. administration to "strengthen the Palestinian-American relationship" as a way to foster "peace, stability, and security" throughout the Middle East region. Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, meanwhile, tweeted: "Joe, we've had a long & warm personal relationship for nearly 40 years, and I know you as a great friend of Israel."

From Iran, Foreign Minister Javad Zarif—who criticized Trump relentlessly for imposing brutal sanctions on the Iranian people and pulling out of the international nuclear agreement that was implemented under the Obama-Biden administration—suggested it was a new day for future relations between the two nations. "The American people have spoken," said Zarif.

Separately, Iran's Vice-President Eshagh Jahangiri said his government hopes for "a change in the destructive policies of the United States, a return to the rule of law and international obligations, and respect for nations" now that Trump will soon be leaving the White House.

And President Hassan Rouhani said Sunday that Biden must work to repair the damage done by Trump and the betrayal committed against previous international commitments made by the United States.  

"An opportunity has arisen now for the next U.S. administration to make up for the past mistakes and return to the course of commitment to international obligations by respecting international principles," Rouhani said. "The Islamic Republic," he added, "considers constructive interaction with the world to be its strategy."

Mexico President Andrés Manuel López Obrador took a more hesitant approach to the U.S. election results, indicating in a Saturday statement that he would withhold his congratulations until any legal challenges related to vote count were resolved or when the results are officially certified.

"With regard to the U.S. election, we are going to wait until all the legal matters have been resolved," López Obrador said at a news conference.  "I can't congratulate one candidate or the other. I want to wait until the electoral process is over."

Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta said the "emphatic win" by Biden and Harris in the U.S. was "a demonstration of Americans' confidence in the leadership credentials of the former vice-president." And in Nigeria, President Muhammadu Buhari said Trump's ouster arrived at "time of uncertainty and fear in world affairs" as he congratulated Biden. "His election," Buhari added, "is a reminder that democracy is the best form of government because it offers the people the opportunity to change their government by peaceful means."

But most people of the world—like most within the United States—have been able to see that Biden's win was decisive, and despite Trump's refusal to concede and his continued unhinged proclamations that he won when all the evidence shows he clearly lost, led to street celebrations both in the U.S. and abroad.

As Slate reports, fireworks erupted across Europe and people across the continent were queuing up for champagne at local shops and dancing in the streets.

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Off the Top of My Head

Let's Talk About the Communist Bogieman

by John Lawrence, October 8, 2020

After the vice Presidential debate last night Trump called Kamala Harris a communist. Let's be clear: communism is a system in which the government owns all property and makes all economic decisions. Let's also be clear about this: nowhere in the world today does communism exist. Not in Russia. Not in China. Not in Cuba. In Russia private ownership of enterprises and property had essentially remained illegal throughout the Soviet era, with Soviet communism emphasizing national control over all means of production. In the 1990s, during the Presidency of Boris Yeltsin, there was  large-scale privatization of Russia's state-owned assets, particularly in the industrial, energy, and financial sectors. Privatization shifted Russia from the Soviet planned economy towards a market economy, and resulted in a dramatic rise in the level of economic inequality. It facilitated the transfer of significant wealth to a relatively small group of oligarchs.

In China private property and state owned enterprises co-exist. According to the NY Times: "Today, the private sector contributes nearly two-thirds of the country’s growth and nine-tenths of new jobs, according to the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce, an official business group." In fact the reason why China has pulled 800,000 people out of poverty in the last 40 years is that the economy has been partially privatized. There are more billionaires in China than in the US. Many people in China went from being poor to middle class due to the privatization of the housing market. So although China is still ruled by the Chinese Communist Party, its government is communist in name only. They should probably eliminate the word "Communist" from the party's name.

Now consider Cuba. In 2010, Cuban leaders Fidel and Raul Castro made the decision to abandon the old Soviet model of centralized planning. In 2011, new laws were enacted to expand the right to private property. In 2019, a new Constitution was approved which officially recognizes the right to private property, while also reconfirming the central government's authority over the regulation of production and land.

So if the accusation that Kamala is a communist is ridiculous, what about socialism? There is not one definition of socialism. Many of the western democracies like France, Germany, the UK and Sweden, which are US allies, have been governed by democratic socialist parties. These societies have market economies including the encouragement of entrepreneurialism, but also have a government provided social safety net including universal health care, free or inexpensive education from pre-K through college, allowances for child care, elder care etc. Sweden's government even owned a hamburger chain until recently and owns Sweden's state-run alcohol monopoly Systembolaget. The democratic socialism advocated by Bernie Sanders and others is nothing more than a model based on Sweden where there are high taxes on the wealthy which provide a government sponsored safety net for the middle class and the poor. Today there is one more reason why there should be a strong social safety net: global warming. It is clear that private enterprise is not up to the job of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to zero within a reasonable amount of time, reasonable meaning before the earth becomes uninhabitable.

Today in the US we  have a nominal capitalist or free market economy, but even in this economy the government institutes the rules within which the economy operates. The rules are set up and tweaked by those in power, those who have the money to hire lobbyists to convince legislators to write the rules in their favor, namely large corporations and the very wealthy. Don't be fooled by the meme that the powerful don't want government regulations. They do want regulations, but regulations that favor their interests and not the interests, necessarily, of the average person who doesn't have the resources to influence legislation by hiring lobbyists.

Today Kamala Harris and other Democratic progressives are really taking the realistic middle ground when they advocate for government policies which will mitigate and reduce climate change and provide a social safety net for the American people. This goes against the interests of the oil and gas industry to be sure. To advocate for universal health care is to advocate for the health care system that Canada and all our allies already have in pace. To advocate for policies that reduce the out of bounds economic inequality by taxing the rich and spending the money on raising the economic level of the poor and lower middle class only makes sense. None of these policies make Kamala Harris a communist since communism doesn't even exist in the world today. Formerly communist countries have given way to hybrid economies in which private enterprise and state owned enterprises coexist with, in the case of China, private enterprise having been the significant factor in improving the lives of the Chinese middle class.

Today, the US has gone way overboard towards an economy controlled by the rich and powerful in their own interests. Economic inequality has gotten way out of hand. The balance needs to be redressed and only a government which uses its authority to diminish the economic power of the wealthy and augment the power of the poor and middle class can provide the necessary change. Good paying jobs can be created which address infrastructure and climate change needs. So more or less a Green New Deal or whatever else you want to call it is necessary. Too bad that Republicans have gone out of their way to demonize that name as they've gone out of their way to demonize Obamacare or any other initiative progressive Democrats put forth. That is their stock and trade - not discussing the merits but demonizing the name.

'More Work to Do' But 'Major Step Forward': Progressives Welcome Biden's $2 Trillion Green Energy Plan

Published on Tuesday, July 14, 2020

by Common Dreams

"Biden gets a lot right... but he's still got a lot of room for improvement in increasing the scale, scope, and speed in which he addresses the climate emergency."

by Jessica Corbett, staff writer

 

44 Comments

Former Vice President Joe Biden, a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, speaks during a CNN climate crisis town hall on Wednesday, September 4, 2019. (Photo: CNN/Screengrab)

U.S. environmental and climate activists on Tuesday welcomed presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden's "Plan to Build a Modern, Sustainable Infrastructure and an Equitable Clean Energy Future"—a proposal that is notably bolder than what he called for earlier in the primary.

"It's no secret that we've been critical of Vice President Biden's plans and commitments in the past. Today, he's responded to many of those criticisms."
—Varshini Prakash, Sunrise Movement

 

"Biden will make a $2 trillion accelerated investment, with a plan to deploy those resources over his first term, setting us on an irreversible course to meet the ambitious climate progress that science demands," his campaign website says, detailing related polices on agriculture, the automobile industry, buildings, electricity, environmental justice, housing, infrastructure, public transportation.

The plan calls for creating a million new jobs in the American auto industry, shifting to a power sector free from carbon pollution by 2035, and upgrading four million buildings and weatherizing two million homes over four years. Those building upgrades would create more jobs, as would the construction of 1.5 million sustainable homes and initiatives in "climate-smart agriculture, resilience, and conservation."

The New York Times reported that "in a call with reporters on Tuesday morning, senior Biden campaign officials said the proposal was the product of discussions with scientists, climate and environmental justice leaders, union members and leaders, mayors and governors, and representatives from the small-business and manufacturing communities."

In response to reporting on the proposal ahead of its official unveiling Tuesday, meteorologist and climate correspondent Eric Holthaus tweeted: "Wow. And wow in a good way." Julian Brave NoiseCat, vice president of policy and strategy at Data for Progress, acknowledged the plan's overlap with the Green New Deal.

👀 https://t.co/Z4gg2h3sbg pic.twitter.com/2nhrhN5Jsg

— Julian Brave NoiseCat (@jnoisecat) July 14, 2020

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, a former challenger in the Democratic presidential primary race who ran with the climate crisis as his top priority and endorsed Biden in April, praised the proposal in a series of tweets Tuesday, saying that it "shows that he's serious about defeating climate change, and has a roadmap to become the climate president that America needs."

Evergreen Action, which is led by some former Inslee staffers, also welcomed the plan. In a Tuesday Medium post, Sam Ricketts, the group's co-founder, highlighted that Biden's proposal calls for major investments in a clean power-led economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic; includes enforceable, sector-specific benchmarks for a rapid transition to 100% renewable energy; and aims to hold polluters accountable for environmental injustice.

In a speech about his proposal Tuesday, Biden drew clear contrasts between himself and President Donald Trump. Climate reporter Emily Atkin, who tweeted some of his remarks, observed that "Biden's strategy here is to frame Trump's climate denial as costing America tons of money and jobs. And, to frame his climate plan as an economically exciting, job-heavy solution."

Biden's strategy here is to frame Trump's climate denial as costing America tons of money and jobs.

And, to frame his climate plan as an economically exciting, job-heavy solution

— Emily Atkin (@emorwee) July 14, 2020

Biden: When Trump looks at renewable energy, he sees “windmills somehow causing cancers.”

Biden sees “American manufacturing” and “dominating the global market”

— Emily Atkin (@emorwee) July 14, 2020

 

Evan Weber, co-founder and political director of the youth-led Sunrise Movement, also noted the contrast that Biden drew between himself and the current president and pointed out the popularity of job-creating climate policies. As Common Dreams reported Tuesday, new Data for Progress polling shows majorities of U.S. voters support transitioning to a clean energy economy by 2035 and incorporating green infrastructure into the nation's recovery from the ongoing pandemic.

This was always the major narrative intervention at the heart of @sunrisemvmt's strategy: when people think climate change, they need to think "jobs," & if we achieve that we win.

If @JoeBiden runs aggressively on this through Nov 3, we can defeat Trump & maybe save society, too https://t.co/1DWfi9miiA

— Evan Weber 🌅🔥 (@evanlweber) July 14, 2020

Varshini Prakash is executive director of the Sunrise Movement—which endorsed Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in the presidential primary race—and served on the Sanders-Biden Unity Task Force, which released its policy recommendations on climate and other key issues last week. She addressed Biden's new proposal in a statement Tuesday that noted her group's efforts to pressure every single candidate in this cycle to put out climate plans that matched the severity of the crisis.

"It's no secret that we've been critical of Vice President Biden's plans and commitments in the past," Prakash said. "Today, he's responded to many of those criticisms: dramatically increasing the scale and urgency of investments, filling in details on how he'd achieve environmental justice and create good union jobs, and promising immediate action—on day 1, in his first 100 days, in his first term, in the next decade—not just some far off goals."

"Our movement made this possible, but there's more work to do, and the urgency of this crisis demands that we keep pushing," she continued. "Vice President Biden must build on these commitments and make these actions an immediate and urgent priority on day 1. Our movement, alongside environmental justice communities and frontline workers, has taught Joe Biden to talk the talk. Now let's defeat Trump and mobilize in mass after the election to get Biden to walk the walk."

We previously gave Biden a 15% on Environmental Justice on our #GreenNewDeal scorecard b/c he lacked details.

Now he's filled in gaps, commiting to 40% of all investments going to frontline communities, establishing a new division in the DOJ, & more: https://t.co/iqsn4GcVPe

— Sunrise Movement 🌅 (@sunrisemvmt) July 14, 2020

Members of The Climate Mobilization also praised elements of Biden's new plan in a statement Tuesday while urging him to deliver concrete action addressing the planetary emergency and to consider even more ambitious policies in the future.

"Biden gets a lot right, especially around in the areas of racial and climate justice and equity for historically marginalized groups and working people; but he's still got a lot of room for improvement in increasing the scale, scope, and speed in which he addresses the climate emergency," said Matt Renner, the group's executive director. "Support for a Biden presidency from the climate movement should be contingent on his commitment to actually achieving climate safety in a just and equitable way, not simply going beyond what is considered politically possible."

Laura Berry, director of research and policy for The Climate Mobilization, argued that the proposed decarbonization targets don't go far enough.

"The last twelve months were the hottest we've ever experienced—an average of 1.3ºC above pre-industrial temperatures. Vice President Biden's plan, while a clear departure from the market-based solutions of the past two decades, ultimately fails to reckon with the massive climate risks we face within the next decade," Berry said. "Eliminating greenhouse gas emissions from the power sector would only cut domestic emissions by 27%—but we need to be eliminating emissions across the economy as quickly as possible."

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Off the Top of My Head

Progressive Taxation and Remuneration: A Progressive Universal Basic Income

by John Lawrence, April 2, 2020

It's obvious that the Federal government has the power to get $1200 or any amount to every citizen. It's actually doing that as a result of COVD-19. So it could provide a Universal Basic Income if it wanted to. It also has the power to tax the rich and untax the poor. The idea is to progressively tax the rich and progressively remunerate the poor. If progressives controlled the Federal government, this is what would happen. Right now conservative Republicans control the Federal government so the opposite happens: money is transferred from poor to rich. The only reason the Federal government is providing everyone with $1200. is that they don't want the 70% consumer economy to totally collapse. Progressive taxation and progressive remuneration are possible. In fact they could balance each other out. As incomes and/or wealth increased, taxes would increase; as incomes and/or wealth decreased, remuneration would increase. This would not totally equalize incomes; it would just bring poor people up above the poverty line to a point at which each family had an income which would adequately provide the basic necessities of life. People would still have an incentive to do better.

It's well known that the Federal Reserve is willing to provide unlimited amounts of free money to the banking system and hedge funds. It provided trillions in the form of Quantitative Easing (QE) during the Great Recession of 2008. Even though this was supposed to be a one time shot in the arm, it didn't turn out tom be that. Even today the Fed is doing QE. It is still providing trillions to the banking system free of charge. It could also be doing that for the average person - QE for the people. This is effectively what the Federal government is doing now during the COVID-19 pandemic. The only difference is that the government is doing it from the "fiscal side," which means it comes out of the budget and is added to the deficit. Which means that the taxpayers are ultimately responsible. The national deficit was about one trillion dollars before the pandemic. The bill Congress passed that gave $1200 to every US citizen was a two trillion dollar bill. This bill alone added two trillion dollars to the deficit for a total of $3 trillion for fiscal year 2020. This means that the national debt will increase by at least 3 trillion in FY 2020 from 23 to 26 trillion dollars, and that's if there's not another phase to the bailout.

But why worry about the national debt? The government issues Treasury bills, and Wall Street buys them if there are no other buyers. Then the Fed bails out Wall Street by taking them onto its balance sheet in return for cash. Problem solved. The Fed just deep sixes the debt in a black hole never to be seen again. Meanwhile the consumer economy just keeps humming along. This is the lesson learned from the Great Recession. The Fed can just print money although most of the money printed in 2008 went to rich people and a lot of middle class people lost their homes. Since the Fed has the capacity to print money, the US will never run out of money. Now they are printing money and distributing it to average people, and this will keep the economy running indefinitely, albeit at a lower level, even during  the coronavirus pandemic.

Warren Urged to Help Form 'Progressive Front' With Sanders as Big-Money Establishment Fuels Biden Surge

Published on Wednesday, March 04, 2020

by Common Dreams

"If she can make the case for Sanders, she'll help build a progressive front against a moneyed and well-organized moderate force."

by Jake Johnson, staff writer

 

125 Comments

Democratic presidential hopefuls Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders arrive for the ninth Democratic primary debate of the 2020 presidential campaign season in Las Vegas, Nevada on February 19, 2020. (Photo: Bridgett Bennett/AFP via Getty Images)

After Super Tuesday's results made clear that the 2020 Democratic primary is now a two-candidate race between former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders, progressives called for an end to divisive infighting and some urged Sen. Elizabeth Warren to join Sanders in a united front against the party's deep-pocketed and organized establishment wing.

"I'm a Bernie supporter who builds with Warren supporters," tweeted Varshini Prakash, executive director of the youth-led Sunrise Movement, which endorsed Sanders in January. "This isn't the time for infighting and vitriol. Let's leverage our shared power to break through the wall of corporate media, win this primary, and defeat Trump. Let's #BuildTogether."

"The obstacle in the way of a more progressive future for Americans isn't Sanders, but the coalition forming around Biden. If Warren wants a righteous fight, this is it."
—Sarah Jones, New York Magazine

It was a call for progressive unity that others echoed both before and after Super Tuesday, which saw Biden win 10 of 14 states—including delegate-rich Texas—and take a narrow lead in pledged delegates. Sanders won four states, including California, the largest delegate prize of the night.

With the #BuildTogether hashtag making the rounds among both Sanders and Warren supporters, journalist Sam Adler-Bell said the "posts are quite obviously an effort to build goodwill between two support bases that absolutely must combine to defeat the corporate/billionaire wing of the party. I have no patience for anyone upset about it."

Roger Lau, Warren's campaign manager, sent an email to staffers Wednesday morning announcing that Warren is meeting with her team to "assess the path forward" after she failed to place higher than third in any of the Super Tuesday states, including her home state of Massachusetts.

"This decision is in her hands," wrote Lau, "and it's important that she has the time and space to consider what comes next."

Sanders campaign manager Faiz Shakir echoed that sentiment in an interview with CNN ahead of Super Tuesday. "She has been campaigning very hard, has raised a lot of money, and has earned a lot of votes," Shakir said. "She should be given the time and space to decide for herself about the future of her campaign."

Lau's announcement came shortly after billionaire businessman Michael Bloomberg dropped out of the presidential race Wednesday and immediately threw his support behind Biden, handing the former vice president an effectively bottomless source of financial support.

Tim O'Brien, who served as a senior adviser to the Bloomberg campaign, said the former New York City mayor plans to put his resources "in the broadest way possible behind Joe Biden's candidacy."

Investigative reporter Alex Kotch argued in a series of tweets that Bloomberg's decision to support Biden only increases the importance of Warren's next steps:

Bloomberg is out and endorses Biden.

I imagine we'll hear from Warren later today or tomorrow. If she drops out & endorses Bernie, the race is on. Otherwise, hard to think it's not a very rough road for Bernie.

— Alex Kotch (@alexkotch) March 4, 2020

As I've tweeted a lot and gotten some shade about, this is the defining moment for Warren. Is her first and foremost commitment to progressive change or not?

— Alex Kotch (@alexkotch) March 4, 2020

New York Magazine's Sarah Jones wrote Monday that because the Democratic establishment and big-money donors are rapidly coalescing behind Biden, it is time for Warren to leave the presidential race and support Sanders for the Democratic nomination.

"For Warren's supporters, this will be difficult to accept, and for good reason," wrote Jones. "The senator has spoken movingly of her working-class background, and introduced a slate of generous policies that represent long overdue corrections to corporate power. In debates, she can be fearsome. She is probably the first person to publicly humiliate Michael Bloomberg in years."

But without a realistic path to the nomination, Jones added, "it would be a catastrophic error in judgement for Warren to remain in the race till the convention."

According to a national Quinnipiac poll released last month, 33% of Warren supporters say Sanders is their second choice for president—a number Jones argued could rise if Warren backs Sanders with a full-throated endorsement.

"If she can make the case for Sanders, she'll help build a progressive front against a moneyed and well-organized moderate force," Jones wrote. "The time to do so is now. The obstacle in the way of a more progressive future for Americans isn't Sanders, but the coalition forming around Biden. If Warren wants a righteous fight, this is it."

Working people have few allies in the Senate; Elizabeth Warren is one of them. But she doesn't have a realistic path to the nomination, and staying in the race could harm the progressive cause she espouses. https://t.co/OfVqDa9Y3V

— Sarah Jones (@onesarahjones) March 2, 2020

Author and activist Naomi Klein, who actively supports Sanders in the campaign, expanded the call for a united progressive front by saying not only Warren, but anyone with reach and power who remains willing to fight for bold and transformative change, should join hands at this critical moment:

Biden benefited from a big show of unity. We need a supergroup of ppl who understand Biden is not up to it on a platform endorsing Sanders, #NotMeUs + pledging to help make it work. Our moment in history demands it.@ewarren @TomSteyer @JayInslee @AyannaPressley... add who else!

— Naomi Klein (@NaomiAKlein) March 4, 2020

After President Donald Trump on Wednesday morning fired off a tweet seemingly intended to sow further division among Sanders and Warren supporters, comedian and Medicare for All activist Rob Delaney responded that "as with most ideas this suppurating wound of a person extrudes, it would be a good idea to do the exact opposite."

"I hope Sanders and Warren understand this and unite," Delaney wrote.

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Off the Top of My Head

It's Not About Radical VS Moderate. It's About Neoliberalism VS Social Democracy.

by John Lawrence

Joe Biden is not a moderate. He's about the continuation of neoliberal policies that got us to where we are today: the biggest economic inequality of all time. Neoliberalism is laissez-faire capitalism. The wealthiest 3 American families now own as much wealth as the bottom 50% of all Americans. Bernie Sanders is right about that. Social democracy is about evening out the distribution of wealth in this country. Joe Biden will continue the same policies that we have now: unending wars, nibbling around the edges of the income and wealth distribution, acceding to Mitch McConnell who will say "no" to every progressive policy. Going along with tax breaks for the rich and letting corporate lobbyists determine US environmental policies.

Since the 1980s the US has charged ahead with neoliberal policies which give tax breaks to the rich and subsidize profitable corporations because their lobbyists demand it. With Biden as President students will still be smothered with student loan debt. In 2005 Republicans led the way to taking away bankruptcy protection from student loan debtors. 18 Democratic senators broke ranks and cast their votes in favor of the bill. Of those 18, one politician stood out as an especially enthusiastic champion of the credit companies who, as it happens, had given him hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions – Joe Biden.

Joe Biden never met a credit card company he didn't like. He was known as the Senator from MBNA. All the credit card companies are headquartered in Delaware, Biden's home state. They will be enthusiastically cheering for him to win the Democratic nomination. In the 2003-2008 senatorial election cycle, Biden received more than $500,000 in help from credit card companies, financial services and banks. So this is the guy who is going to rein in Wall Street? Wall Street will get everything it wants under him including the continuation of student loan debtors without bankruptcy protection or relief.

It will be business as usual under a Joe Biden Presidency. Moderation means business as usual with neoliberal self serving policies enthusiastically supported. People that want radical change in this country including a Green New Deal, Medicare for All, student loan debt forgiveness and free child care paid for by taxes on the wealthy should get behind Bernie Sanders and/or Elizabeth Warren. Warren said, “At a time when the biggest financial institutions in this country were trying to put the squeeze on millions of hard-working families, Joe Biden was on the side of the credit card companies.”

Social democracy does nothing to inhibit entrepreneurialism. The socially democratic Scandinavian countries have created their share of entrepreneurs and businesses. The Washington Post reported:

Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin is a big believer in the “American Dream,” and she thinks it’s a lot easier to achieve now in her country than in the United States.

“I feel that the American Dream can be achieved best in the Nordic countries, where every child, no matter their background or the background of their families, can become anything,” Marin told The Washington Post in an interview on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Switzerland last month.

“We feel that the Nordic model is a success story,” said Marin, who became prime minister in December at age 34, making her briefly the youngest world leader (she lost that title in January when 33-year-old Sebastian Kurz returned to power as Austrian chancellor).

Bernie Sanders is a fan of the ‘Nordic model.’ Finland’s leader says it’s the American Dream.

Marin is hardly the first to claim that it’s easier to live the “American Dream” in Nordic countries. British politician and former Labour Party leader Edward Miliband said it in 2012. A New York Times opinion piece last year dubbed Finland a “capitalist paradise.” And presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a self-declared “democratic socialist,” has often said that the United States should be more like Scandinavia.

Not only are Scandinavian social democratic economic systems more conducive to business creation but also their political systems bear looking at. Proportional representation in a monocameral Parliament may be far more democratic than the dysfunctional US system where the Republican Senate routinely vetoes anything the Democratic House passes. The winner take all US system discourages third party representation and boils down to all out war between two bitterly divided rivals. Is this any way to run a country?

The single-member district voting system has been on the wane worldwide because it has a number of serious drawbacks. It routinely denies representation to large numbers of voters, produces legislatures that fail to accurately reflect the views of the public, discriminates against third parties, and discourages voter turnout. All of these problems can be traced to a fundamental flaw in our system: only those who vote for the winning candidate get any representation. Everyone else -- who may make up 49% of the electorate in a district -- gets no representation. This new reform is also beginning to get some attention: replacing our present single-member district, winner-take-all election system with proportional representation elections. Political commentators writing in The Washington Post, The New Republic, The New Yorker, The Christian Science Monitor and USA Today have endorsed it. Grassroots groups in several states are now organizing to bring proportional representation to local elections.

With the US Congress at loggerheads with itself, a new political system as well as economic reform needs to be undertaken. The Scandinavian social democrats may be way ahead of the US both in economic, political and certainly in social terms.

Off the Top of My Head

Les Nouveaux Pauvres

by John Lawrence, January 9, 2020

The new poor are basically millennials who have gone to college and acquired a huge amount of student loan debt. They were promised that graduating college would catapult them into the middle class. Instead, whatever job they were fortunate enough to get (and many of them landed at Starbucks or equivalent) does not pay enough to make debt payments and also provide the normal amenities of life. Most of their budget consists of paying interest on their debts. Student loan debt has soared from $260 billion in 2004 to $1.4 trillion in 2017; average debt jumped from $18,650 to $38,000 over that same period; and the number of people over 60 with student loan debt has quadrupled in the last decade from 700,000 to 2.8 million.

It used to be that the majority of the working class were either farmers or unionized manufacturing workers who were protected by unions. Then the propaganda machine got busy and told all those farm children that they would be much better off, instead of going to work on their father's farm, going to college instead. Many proudly became "the first in their family to graduate college." What did it matter that, in order to do so, they had to take out massive student loans. Workers, who had lost their unionized jobs, were told the same thing. Go to college and become part of the new (nonunionized) economy because everyone knows that college graduates don't need unions. While farmland may stretch far and wide, farmers and ranchers themselves make up just 1.3% of the employed US population, totaling around 2.6 million people. Today, there are about 2 million farms in operation in the US, a steep decline from 1935, when the number of farms peaked at nearly 7 million. Why milk cows and shovel manure when you can have a professional desk job!

Manufacturing historically created good paying jobs for workers without a college education, particularly for men. The jobs paid well enough so that women did not have to work when they had young children. Unions were strong and owners did not want to risk strikes in their factories due to large capital investments and significant on the job training. Such jobs are much less available in the post-2001 era in the U.S. though they remain available in Germany, Switzerland and Japan. So the solution we are told is for those workers and especially their childrenn since there is no future in being a worker in the manufacturing sphere, to go to college. It's the American way. Each generation has to move a step up the ladder, and the step up for children of manufacturing workers without college educations is to be "the first in their families" to get one. Of course this necessitates their taking on a huge amount of student loan debt, but no worries, this step up will make them better off even if their spouse has to work to afford a house and pay off student loan debt.

However, much student loan debt goes into default because the debt burden is just too big a load to carry. More than 1 million student loan borrowers each year go into default. For many, the payments are proving unmanageable. By 2023, nearly 40 percent of borrowers are expected to default on their student loans. That’s when a person has not made a payment toward their education debt in roughly a year, triggering it being sent to a third-party collection agency. They are les nouveaux pauvres, the New Poor. That's in contrast to les nouveaux riches, the likes of Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg who have made billions off the high tech industry. But for many whose parents were farmers or manufacturing workers, they were sold a bill of goods that getting a college degree would not only resolve the stigma of being "uneducated," it would also land them a good paying job. Today most plumbers and electricians are doing better precisely because they don't have student loan debt.

Instead, many young people, and millennials especially, have not only a gargantuan load of student loan debt but credit card debt, and car loan debt as well. It's no surprise that the New Poor are mainly young people who can't afford either to buy a house or pay skyrocketing rents. Their parents and grandparents, however, are sitting pretty with assets consisting of a house which is skyrocketing in value and either a defined benefit pension (nonexistent today) or a 401k consisting of stocks which have also skyrocketed in value.They will naturally vote for Trump because of a booming economy (for them).

Meanwhile, the Democratic party, whose base used to consist of farmers and unionized workers, has lost them due to a change in demographics. Their new base naturally should be the New Poor, young people, millennials, student loan debtors and those who are concerned about the planet they're inheriting after climate change ravages it. They are turning to the progressive Democrats like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. They are smart enough to figure out that every other advanced industrialized country has a government sponsored public health care plane. They know that the rich are not paying their fair share of taxes which would alleviate them from some of the horrendous economic burdens they are now experiencing, that is if those increased taxes on the rich were used by government to pay for college and health care for all. They want government expanded to provide more benefits not contracted to the point where you could drown it in the bathtub which arch conservative Grover Norquist so famously said.

Les nouveaux pauvres want a Green New Deal, relief from student loan debt, a New Economy. They aren't committed to the capitalism which has made three billionaires more wealthy than 150 million lower income Americans. They want the elimination of the fossil fuel economy replacing it with renewable energy. They want the end of a military-industrial complex which has spent a trillion dollars on disastrous wars in the Middle East. There is a better way these New Poor millennials are finally figuring out, a way out of the mess created by short term profits and rugged individualism, a way that might just win back America's high moral position and leadership in the world.

Democrats Not Headed Too Far Left, Says Ocasio-Cortez, 'We Are Bringing the Party Home'

Published on Sunday, November 17, 2019

by Common Dreams

"I want to be the party of the New Deal again," says the progressive congresswoman from New York. "The party of the Civil Rights Act, the one that electrified this nation and fights for all people."

by Jon Queally, staff writer

 

52 Comments

U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) speaks during the Climate Crisis Summit before introducing Democratic Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders (I-VT) at Drake University on November 9, 2019 in Des Moines, Iowa. Ocasio-Cortez has been campaigning in support of Sanders after endorsing him last month in New York City. (Photo: Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)

As part of a wave of reaction to comments made by former President Barack Obama who reportedly suggested to "liberal wealthy" party donors late last week that some Democrats were going "too far left," Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez responded by saying progressives are not pushing in some new, radical direction but rather trying to bring it back to where it came from.

"I want to be the party of the New Deal again," tweeted the freshman Democrat from New York on Saturday, referencing the era of progressive change under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt last century.

"The party of the Civil Rights Act, the one that electrified this nation and fights for all people. For that, many would call us radical," she said.

"We aren't 'pushing the party left,'" Ocasio-Cortez concluded, "we are bringing the party home."

The tweet also included a new campaign ad for Sen. Bernie Sanders, who Ocasio-Cortez has endorsed in the Democratic presidential primary. The two recently campaigned together in Iowa where they championed the need for a Green New Deal and spent time with local residents in the early voting states.

I want to be the party of the New Deal again.

The party of the Civil Rights Act,
the one that electrified this nation and fights for all people.

For that, many would call us radical.
But we aren’t “pushing the party left,”
we are bringing the party home.pic.twitter.com/wLeDaxCHkZ

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) November 17, 2019

"This is about a people's movement in the United States," Ocasio-Cortez tells Iowans during a living-room meeting featured in the ad, "and this campaign is a part of that and electing Bernie Sanders is the beginning of a transformational movement in the direction of working people in America."

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Off the Top of My Head

Does China Have a New Model of Capitalism That Works Better?

by John Lawrence, July 12, 2019

Who would have thunk it? China has a model of capitalism which outcompetes the American model. This is laid out in the companion article by Ellen Brown: How to Pay for It All: An Option the Candidates Missed. Progressive Democrats have all kinds of plans for the economy as Ellen states. The Republican response is how you gonna pay for it? Ellen has the answer. Or rather China and Japan have the answers. Their economies are booming. Their economic growth is phenomenal. Their people are fully employed. China, with its Belt and Road initiative, is building infrastructure not only in China but all over the world. All the US power structure can do is whimper, "Yeah, but they are going into debt and their system will collapse. It's a Ponzi scheme." Yet it seems to be working very well while the US falters, not even being able to maintain its infrastructure, much less modernize it.

The US central banking model is antiquated compared to the Chinese and Japanese models. Simply stated, the US Federal Reserve can only bail out the big banks because it is owned by the big banks, as it did in 2008. The Chinese and Japanese models are continuously bailing out the whole "real" economy, something the US cannot do. The US model makes the rich richer and the poor poorer. The Asian models are such that the central government, not the big banks, can direct where investment flows to. It is really quite simple.

Now Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and AOC are catching on to the fact that there is something to Ellen Brown's work, that all the things they want to bring about in American society are possible if we just change the model of a privately owned Central Bank (the Fed) and make it responsive to public rather than private needs.

See her book: Banking on the People, Democratizing Money in the Digital Age.

Moving to the Left, Smartly, in 2019

by Doug Porter, Words and Deeds

DEMOCRATS,  MEDIA

March 8, 2019

It’s a fact of life. We’re moving left politically as a nation. Not all at once, and with lots of nuance. But there can be no doubt that the times are changing.

In Washington DC, there is effectively no political “center” under Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and the party of NO. Eight years–going back to most of the Obama administration–of obstructionist behavior have all-but-eliminated the concept of compromise. 

The theocratic/plutocratic/nationalist axis in the Republican Party is going in for the kill. Making America Great Again means undoing a century of progress (albeit hit-or-miss) so the needs of the few will triumph over the needs of the many.

The silver lining in all this has been a shift in the window of what is considered possible, and a growing understanding of the futility of expecting “marketplace” solutions to actually do anything more than drive inequality.

A good explainer on what I’m asserting here can be found in a Vox interview with Brad DeLong, now an economist at the University of California-Berkeley, and a self-described market-friendly, “neoliberal” Democrat, a la Clinton administration.. 

The long and the short of it is his admission that the time for the socio-economic policies dominating the Democratic party for the last 20 years has passed.

The core reason, DeLong argues, is political. The policies he supports depend on a responsible center-right partner to succeed. They’re premised on the understanding that at least a faction of the Republican Party would be willing to support market-friendly ideas like Obamacare or a cap-and-trade system for climate change. This is no longer the case, if it ever were. 

“Barack Obama rolls into office with Mitt Romney’s health care policy, with John McCain’s climate policy, with Bill Clinton’s tax policy, and George H.W. Bush’s foreign policy,” DeLong notes. “And did George H.W. Bush, did Mitt Romney, did John McCain say a single good word about anything Barack Obama ever did over the course of eight solid years? No, they fucking did not.”

The result, he argues, is the nature of the Democratic Party needs to shift. Rather than being a center-left coalition dominated by market-friendly ideas designed to attract conservative support, the energy of the coalition should come from the left and its broad, sweeping ideas. 

 

Paul Krugman

 

✔@paulkrugman

 · Mar 6, 2019

 

Replying to @paulkrugman

Pro-union policies, and more than we used to think. "Let the market do its thing, but spend more on education/training and a bigger EITC" no longer sounds like wisdom 11/

 

Paul Krugman

 

✔@paulkrugman

 

The point is that the DeLong concession, if that's what we want to call it, doesn't mean that policies preferred by AOC or whatever are always right, economically or politically; it means that they need to be taken seriously, and never mind what the center-right thinks 12/

 

771

12:01 PM - Mar 6, 2019

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While most, if not all, of the Democrats’ top priorities will not make it into law during this session of Congress, it’s all about setting the stage for the 2020 presidential elections.

As Senator Bernie Sanders now points out in his stump speech, many of his “radical” proposals from 2016 are now seriously in play as Democratic presidential candidates debate about the future.

Senator Elizabeth Warren has added to the mix today, proposing to breakup the big three companies in tech. It’s wonky, but boils down to two main points:

• Passing legislation requiring large tech platforms to be designated as “Platform Utilities” and broken apart from any participant on that platform.
• Appointing regulators committed to reversing illegal and anti-competitive tech mergers.

***

Congressional Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s priorities (most of which have yet to be introduced in bill form) for 2019 reflect the ongoing shift in what’s gets called the Overton Window:

• HR 1- A fundamental update of voting rights, campaign finance and ethics laws  
• HR 2- A comprehensive approach to infrastructure issues
• HR 3 – Lowering prescription prices
• HR 4 – The Voting Rights Advancement Act (Restores civil rights oversights)
• HR 5 – The Equality Act, a comprehensive civil rights bill prohibiting discrimination against the LBGTQ community
• HR 6 – The Dream Act, providing a path to citizenship for young undocumented immigrants
• HR 7 – Paycheck Fairness, meaning equal pay for men and women who do the same jobs
• HR 8 – The Bipartisan Background Checks Act of 2019 (already passed, will die in the Senate)
• HR 9 – A slot for a comprehensive bill on climate change, TBA.

What I’ve outlined above is a sampling of aspirations coming from the left side of the aisle. Make the GOP answer for their inability to address these issue and ignore the noise.

Republicans are already hair-on-fire outraged about Medicare for All and the Green New Deal, and a pejorative use of the word SOCIALISM is about the best they can do to defend doing nothing more than giving tax breaks to the rich and screwing the rest of us.

We can’t let reactionaries and their friends in the media frame the conversation. 

• Politico and CNN are desperate to sell the public on the fracturing of the Democratic Party.
• Nationally, Fox News and locally KUSI start their coverage with a false premise of normalcy.
• The Union-Tribune ran a column about when the four Democrats running for mayor became “woke.” (Proving that at least two of them aren’t.)

All of these are bullshit.

Don’t respond to these sorts of fairy tales by repeating their premise. Respond by talking about the policies and programs that matter to everyday people.

Here’s a couple of good quotes to wrap up the column for today.

From Jim Miller’s The System Is Rigged Because We Allow the Rich to Rig the Discourse at the OB Rag:

Therefore when we let the Bloombergs, Gates, Waltons, and other plutocrats who so frequently influence our discussions of education, racial injustice, climate change, and other pressing issues either directly or through their foundations, think tanks, or other means define the solutions to our problems, we are, in effect looking to the foxes to guard the henhouse.

A snip from George Lakeoff’s 2011 blog entitled Words That Don’t Work

Progressives have a basic morality, which is largely unspoken. It has to be spoken, over and over, in every corner of our country. Progressives need to be both thinking and talking about their view of a moral democracy, about how a robust public is necessary for private success, about all that the public gives us, about the benefits of health, about a Market for All not a Greed Market, about regulation as protection, about revenue and investment, about corporations that keep wages low when profits are high, about how most of the rich earn a lot of their money without making anything or serving anyone, about how corporations govern your life for their profit not yours, about real food, about corporate and military waste, about the moral and social role of unions, about how global warming causes the increasingly monstrous effects of weather disasters, about how to save and preserve nature.

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Email me at [email protected]

Lead image credit: Michael Coglin / Flickr

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: Why Do We 'Write Blank Checks for War' But 'Our Pockets Are Empty' When It Comes to Medicare for All?

Published on Thursday, August 09, 2018 by Common Dreams

"We only have empty pockets when it comes to the morally right things to do," declares the New York congressional candidate

by Jessica Corbett, staff writer

 

7 Comments

New York congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez discussed "unlimited war" and Medicare for All on CNN Wednesday. (Photo: CNN/screenshot)

In an interview with CNN's Chris Cuomo Wednesday evening, New York congressional candidate and democratic socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez questioned how Congress can "write unlimited blank checks for war" and pass the GOP's $2 trillion tax cut for the wealthy, but when it comes to proposals that would help every American—such as Medicare for All—"our pockets are empty."

"Why is it that our pockets are only empty when it comes to education and healthcare for our kids?" she posed. "Why are pockets only empty when we talk about 100 percent renewable energy that is going to save this planet and allow our children to thrive?"

"We only have empty pockets when it comes to the morally right things to do," she continued, "but when it comes to tax cuts for billionaires and when it comes to unlimited war, we seem to be able to invent that money very easily."

"We only have empty pockets when it comes to the morally right things to do, but when it comes to tax cuts for billionaires and when it comes to unlimited war we seem to be able to invent that money very easily," Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says. https://t.co/cgpyxY7z1g pic.twitter.com/dgVgv8EMRb

— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) August 9, 2018

The 28-year-old, who is expected to win New York's deep blue 14th District in November, has championed a boldly progressive platform, demanding Medicare for All, a federal jobs guarantee, a Green New Deal, and tuition-free public college.

Predictably asked by Cuomo about the "sticker shock" of implementing a system that would guarantee healthcare for all Americans, Ocasio-Cortez said, "People talk about the sticker shock of Medicare for All—they do not talk about the sticker shock of the cost of our existing system."

She pointed to a recent Koch Brothers-funded study that spectacularly backfired for the right-wing oil barons by demonstrating that such a system would not only cover everyone but also save $2 trillion over a decade.

"At the end of the day, we see that this is not a pipe dream. Every other developed nation in the world does this. Why can't America?" she said. "That is the question we need to ask."

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Terrified by Progressive Enthusiasm Sweeping the Nation, Corporate Democrats Have Begun Planning a 'Counterrevolution'

Published on Sunday, July 22, 2018 by Common Dreams

"A reminder that these are the same people who tried to cut Social Security under Obama. Anyone who associates with Third Way is part of a plan to do it under the next president."

by Jake Johnson, staff writer

 

129 Comments

Democratic leaders "need to wake up and pay attention to what people actually want. There are so many progressive policies that have widespread support that mainstream Democrats are not picking up on, or putting that stuff down and saying, 'That wouldn't really work,'" said social worker Rachel Conner. (Photo: Jaime Green/The Wichita Eagle via AP)

Corporate Democrats are extremely worried about the wave of progressive enthusiasm that is sweeping the country in red and blue states alike, and—according to a report by NBC News on Sunday—they are beginning to organize a "counterrevolution" to beat it back.

Ignoring survey after survey showing that progressive priorities like Medicare for All, a living wage, and tuition-free public college are overwhelmingly popular among the American public, Democratic politicians and operatives with the notorious think-tank Third Way used an invite-only event in Columbus, Ohio on Friday to tout an alternative agenda that centers on "opportunity" and access rather than equality—a platform that explicitly avoids alienating the ultra-wealthy.

"You're not going to make me hate somebody just because they're rich. I want to be rich!" Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) said during last week's closed-door event, which was titled "Opportunity 2020."

"Once again," added Third Way president Jon Cowan, "the time has come to mend, but not end, capitalism for a new era."

Real headline should be: "Democratic leaders: How can we keep preventing the things Democratic voters actually want?" https://t.co/TkYEeENEE0

— Will Bunch (@Will_Bunch) July 22, 2018

Polls show stuff like Medicare for All, $15 minimum wage & debt-free college are mainstream. One of the most Orwellian tactics is to nonetheless label the corporate Dems who oppose these things as “mainstream.” They arent — polls show they are the fringe. https://t.co/uwYA7kZ8Wc pic.twitter.com/7kmbSrPkbm

— David Sirota (@davidsirota) July 22, 2018

Heartening tale of a closed-door “safe space” strategy session for Third Way Dems determined to save humanity by putting a stop to unhelpful billionaire-bashing (“I want to be rich!” sez Tim Ryan). https://t.co/YdlJw9XSwv

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) July 22, 2018

As NBC's Alex Seitz-Wald notes, the "anxiety" centrist Democrats have felt about the rousing campaigns of democratic socialists and bold progressives like New York's Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Michigan's Abdul El-Sayed "has largely been kept to a whisper among the party's moderates and big donors."

But now, with organized events and more frequent interviews with the press, corporate Democrats and strategists are beginning to openly state their plans to undercut surging progressive momentum, "with some of the major fundraisers pressing operatives on what can be done to stop" Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) if he decides to launch another bid for the presidency, Seitz-Wald reports.

"Sanders' wing of the party terrifies moderate Dems," Seitz-Wald writes.

"They need to wake up and pay attention to what people actually want. There are so many progressive policies that have widespread support that mainstream Democrats are not picking up on, or putting that stuff down."
—Rachel Conner, social worker

"They need to wake up and pay attention to what people actually want. There are so many progressive policies that have widespread support that mainstream Democrats are not picking up on, or putting that stuff down."
—Rachel Conner, social worker

In terms of electoral strategy, Democratic insiders are advocating an approach that reaches out to so-called moderate Republicans who have supposedly broken with Trump, instead of placing the bulk of their focus on inspiring both non-voters and Democrats disgruntled by the party's corporate turn.

"Where progressives see a rare opportunity to capitalize on an energized Democratic base, moderates see a better chance to win over Republicans turned off by Trump," as Seitz-Wald explains.

The problem with this approach, as many commentators have noted, is that it was tried in 2016—and it failed miserably.

As a counter to progressive ideas like a federal jobs guarantee, Medicare for All, and expanded Social Security benefits, NBC reports that Third Way has put forth an "apprenticeship program to train workers, a privatized employer-funded universal pension that would supplement Social Security, and an overhaul of unemployment insurance to include skills training."

Progressives were quick to denounce such proposals as a thinly-veiled push to privatize Social Security and undermine more ambitious—and far more popular—left-wing proposals that have been winning big in Democratic primaries across the nation.

SHAMEFUL.

Funded by a random billionaire, 250 Democrats gathered together to discuss how they could make sure the party stands against progressives like Bernie & instead reminds people more of the Republican Party. https://t.co/31voFpORRO

— Shaun King (@ShaunKing) July 22, 2018

A reminder that these are the same people who tried to cut Social Security under Obama. Anyone who associates with Third Way is part of a plan to do it under the next President. https://t.co/tQzqhiQnPu

— People For Bernie (@People4Bernie) July 22, 2018

Warning: Third Way's "opportunity" agenda would give Wall Street a ton of taxpayer cash managing private retirement accounts instead of expanding Social Security. In 2011, their big idea was to cut Social Security. That's not "mainstream." That's radical. https://t.co/T6KieytFOD

— Warren Gunnels (@GunnelsWarren) July 22, 2018

Responding to the Democratic establishment's attempts to dismiss the successes of bold progressives and uphold a toxic status quo, 27-year-old social worker Rachel Conner told the New York Times on Saturday: "They need to wake up and pay attention to what people actually want. There are so many progressive policies that have widespread support that mainstream Democrats are not picking up on, or putting that stuff down and saying, 'That wouldn't really work.'"

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The Big Tent Is Really No Tent: Why the Democrats' Old Guard Has to Get Out of the Way

Published on Saturday, July 21, 2018 by Common Dreams

It's time for the party to follow the people and back a set of progressive policies and candidates that put people first.

by John Atcheson

 

4 Comments

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer speak at a press conference in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Mahatma Ghandi once said, “There go my people. I must follow them, for I am their leader.”

"The nearly complete defeat of the centrist, corporate Democrats over the last four decades should have made it obvious that the age of the DLC centrists has been coming to an end for some time.

"The Democratic Party’s leadership would phrase it differently. Something like, “Their go our people. We must stop them, or they will make us give up our triangualting centrism,” or more likely, “…they will make us give up our corporate campaign contributions.”

If there was ever a question that there’s a revolution going on in this country, the stunning rebuke of Dianne Feinstein by the California Democratic Party on July 14th should have put it to rest.

And no, this isn’t just a left-coast phenomenon. One of the most obvious lessons in politics is that Trump won because people were angry at the status quo, corporate-funded candidates from both parties, and they stayed home in droves. The nearly complete defeat of the centrist, corporate Democrats over the last four decades should have made it obvious that the age of the DLC centrists has been coming to an end for some time, now, and that the future belongs to progressive candidates who are not beholden to the ultra-rich and corporations.

If you unpack the polls going into 2018, what you find is that people favor:

• Affordable health care with a majority now backing a single-payer system;
• An end to the rigged economy—jobs paying a living wage, a higher minimum wage, more equitable tax policies, and controls on big banks and Wall Street;
• Candidates who will protect Social Security;
• Stricter gun control laws;
• Fairer immigration laws;
• Stronger climate policies and programs; and
• Getting the money out of politics.

People want progressive populists as candidates; they want a government that works and that represents them; they want elected officials who are serious about economic justice, environmental protection, and support for the working man and woman. And this isn’t a red state/blue state split; it’s not a Republican/Democrat split. These are values that transcend party and partisan lines.

But there’s been a lot of confusion about what the 2016 election was all about. Pundits have spent endless hours and pages mulling over why Trump won, without understanding that the real winner was “none-of-the-above,” which trounced both Clinton and Trump.  Democrats, in particular, have been loath to abandon the centrist strategy that has enabled them to fill their campaign coffers with corporate money, and the party has shrunk in size and influence as a result.

Beyond money, another reason Democrats have run from the notion of government as a force for good rather than on it is that they’ve been driven by polls, while Republicans have driven and shaped the polls. Indeed, the modern political landscape is a caricature created by a de facto coup, funded with billions of dollars from far-right individuals and self-interested corporations. In this caricature, government is at best incompetent, at worst the enemy, and free markets and corporations are our savior. To keep folks from examining this parody of reality, Republicans in particular have implemented a divide and conquer strategy in which a whole host of “thems” are robbing “us” (a minority composed of angry and frightened white voters) of our wealth and our freedoms.

But the old guard Democrats have steadfastly refused to take on this mythical political world of uses and thems. In fact, their reliance on identity politics has inadvertently reinforced it.

The real lesson from 2016 is that the people won’t vote for mediocre candidates who won’t represent their interests. They don’t want political spinmeisters, tacticians, and corporatist posers – they want men and women of values.

And the reality is, progressive policies based on values benefit all Americans. As the polls show, people have figured this out. And for all the decidedly horrible aspects of a Trump presidency, there is one silver lining. He has showed people the danger of sitting out the political process. As a result, there is a nascent but, rapidly emerging, revolution of the people, by the people, and for the people forming, and candidates outside the tired old guard of the Democratic party are emerging across the country.

We are in a race with time, however. Trump and his cronies are inflicting great injury on our country and our planet, some of which will be irreversible. Climate change, for example, is approaching – or in some cases – exceeding our capacity to reverse the damage of inaction. And we will live with the consequences of a conservative court system at all levels for decades to come. Similarly, if Republicans retain control of the majority of state governments, they will control the redistricting following the 2020 census.  It was the targeted efforts of a few conservative PACs that allowed them to gerrymander the hell out of the districts in key states, allowing a minority to control Congress and state legislatures. If they retain control of state governments in 2020, the progressive majority will have an uphill battle in elections until 2030.

The Democrats’ commitment to a big tent is really an endorsement of no tent. It’s time for the party to follow the people and back a set of progressive policies and candidates that put people first, and that champions a government that is strong enough to confront the tyranny of corporate and moneyed interests.

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Off the Top of My Head

Democrats Should Adopt Bernie Sanders' Program, Lock, Stock and Barrel

by John Lawrence, May 30, 2018

The Democrats should adopt the party's progressive wing program and completely dismiss the conservative wing started by the Clintons. They should stand for an economic program which benefits the middle class which is what Trump did more or less. People voted for Trump because they said 'what the hell let's give this guy a try and see what happens'. The old working class wanted their jobs back. Trump was all about giving them to them. Instead of old jobs back, Bernie's wing stands for demilitarizing the Federal budget and spending money on economic programs like free college, universal health care, creating jobs by rebuilding infrastructure - bread basket issues. Affordable housing should top the list and resolving the homeless issue. America is ready for a dose of socialism.

As opposed to the Clintons, the party should be anti-Wall Street. In the Bible it says, "Man cannot serve two masters." Hillary tried to have it both ways. Take money from Wall Street and be a populist at the same time. She was serving two masters. The reason why Bernie was so popular is that he said it like it is. Trump just basically talked about his pet peeves which resonated with the disenfranchised middle class workers. Demilitarizing and putting the money to use and the workers to work building infrastructure would appeal to the same workers and downtrodden middle class. Millennials are attracted by Bernie's desire to get rid of student loan debt and establish free tuition and training programs.

The nation has to be demilitarized and the rich need to pay their fair share of taxes. The US is spending trillions on war and is on the wrong side in its military alliances as long as it's against Iran and Russia and for Saudi Arabia. The US is creating a crisis in Yemen with its support of the Saudi's brutal campaign there. Saudi Arabia is the major support system for ISIS so why are we in bed with the Saudis? Trump said he was against wasting money on military adventures abroad. Putting America first was supposed to mean repatriating the money spent on military adventures abroad and building infrastructure at home. That would be putting America first. Trump is not doing it. Perhaps the Democratic Party should co-opt that slogan and really put America first by using the money spent on the War Department to fund American jobs here at home.

Big Primary Wins for Socialists and Progressives Who Ran on 'Popular Demands That Were Deemed Impossible'

Published on Wednesday, May 16, 2018 by Common Dreams

"Welcome to the political revolution."

by Jake Johnson, staff writer

 

8 Comments

Running on a platform including Medicare for All and free public education, democratic socialist Summer Lee defeated her Democratic establishment-backed opponent Paul Costa in Pennsylvania's 34th State House District. (Photo: Nathan Shaulis/Summer for PA)

"This is what happens when you run grassroots campaigns."

"We're just getting started."

"Welcome to the political revolution."

Defying national and state-level Democratic establishment forces that have worked to crowd out left-wing candidates and demonstrating that there is a deep hunger among the American electorate for a bold progressive agenda, candidates running on platforms of Medicare for All, free college, and a living wage emerged victorious in several state primaries on Tuesday and tore through the boundaries of what is conventionally considered politically feasible.

"They said it wasn't possible without institutional support. That we couldn't talk about Medicare for All, a living wage, about ending corruption in Harrisburg. And you know what we did instead? We built something."
—Sara Innamorato, Pennsylvania State House candidate

 

"It feels like a monumental shift," Arielle Cohen, co-chair of Pittsburgh Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), told the Huffington Post after four DSA-backed candidates defeated establishment Democrats in Pennsylvania. "We won on popular demands that were deemed impossible. We won on healthcare for all; we won on free education."

Running in Pennsylvania's State House Districts 34 and 21 respectively, Summer Lee and Sara Innamorato—both running on platforms consisting of Medicare for All, strong environmental protection, and campaign finance reform—toppled what local news outlets described as a "political dynasty" by trouncing Democratic cousins Paul Costa and Dom Costa by a wide margin.

"They said it wasn't possible without institutional support. That we couldn't talk about Medicare for All, a living wage, about ending corruption in Harrisburg," Innamorato said during her victory party Tuesday night. "And you know what we did instead? We built something."

"The story is that the Costa cousins lost, but who they lost to, just as signifigant.

both of the challengers they faced were endorsed by @DemSocialists" #socialistscanwin pic.twitter.com/SHFV8Rsqrs

— People For Bernie (@People4Bernie) May 16, 2018

"The establishment's scared," Pittsburgh DSA wrote on Twitter in response to the upset victories, which also included wins by Elizabeth Fiedler and Kristin Seale over their establishment counterparts. "When we fight, we win."

Signs of the grassroots progressive wave that some predicted will ultimately sweep across the country could also be seen in Idaho on Tuesday, where progressive Paulette Jordan handily defeated her establishment-backed Democratic opponent A.J. Balukoff in a bid to become the nation's first Native American governor.

If she wins in November, Jordan—who ran on protecting public land from corporate plunder and criminal justice reform—would be Idaho's first Democratic governor in over 20 years.

"Today's elections prove movement politics candidates, who rely on people power, can win, and win powerfully," Ryan Greenwood, director of Movement Politics for People's Action, said in a statement on Wednesday. "Candidates for public office who commit to a racial and gender justice agenda that puts people and our planet before profits are winning."

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Off the Top of My Head

Establishing What Progressives Stand For

by John Lawrence

What are the bread and butter issues that Progressives stand for? It's important to make these issues clear rather than just being against everything Trump stands for. Trump and the Republicans will do everything they can to destroy the middle class. Unless the Left can sound off loud and clear about what they stand for and not just what they're against, Trumpism will play the Populist card in the next election. Trump will come off sounding like a Man of the People while the Republican establishment uses him as a smokescreen so they can pass legislation to benefit the upper 1% and screw the 99%.

Progressives cannot just be for every offended minority; they have to take a strong stand and bid for the majority. That doesn't mean that they have to take the tack Trump has taken to get a majority, the appeal to white supremicists of various stripes and degrees. They need to take a stand on economic issues because these issues affect everyone especially the poor and dispossessed. Here are the three things the Left should stand for which are basically the main issues of Bernie Sanders.

1) Medicare for All

2) Free College Up Through the Public Community College Level

3) $15.00 per hour minimum wage

Use the KISS principle: Keep It Simple Stupid.

Progressives and the Left can't simply react to every miscarriage of justice and rationality that Trump and the Republicans perpetrate. Identity politics will never win the majority. Economic issues will. I doubt whether Hillary can salvage the tarnished Democratic Party brand. It may take a new party or a new brand that works in conjunction with the Democratic Party. Hey, isn't that exactly what Trump did?

Are Mitt and Newt Channeling their Inner Progressives?

by Robert Reich

Monday, December 12, 2011

Two important reforms are stopping the revolving door between Washington and the nation’s financial giants, and preventing financiers from flipping companies(making short-term profits by borrowing big sums to buy them, then squeezing payrolls and firing employees, and reselling the stripped-down companies at a profit — unless the debt-laden firms fall into bankruptcy first).

Remarkably, the frontrunners for the Republican nomination for president seem to agree. At least, that’s the clear implication from what they’ve said today.

During a morning appearance on Fox News, Mitt Romney said Newt Gingrich should return the $1.6 million in payments he received from mortgage financial giant Freddy Mac.

Gingrich has tried to defend himself by saying Freddy paid him as a “historian,” but anyone with half a brain knows Freddy wasn’t interested in history. It coughed up the money because they wanted Newt to influence his former House colleagues, so they wouldn’t take steps to reduce Freddy’s financial risk or reach.

In effect, Romney is taking a swipe not only at Gingrich but at the well-oiled revolving door linking financial giants to former congressional leaders, Treasury officials, and their staffs. That revolving door is one of the reasons the Street and its auxiliaries (like Fannie and Freddie) took the risks that caused the financial crisis, and have still never paid the price.

What’s Gingrich’s response? He said this morning ”if Governor Romney would like to give back all the money he’s earned from bankrupting companies and laying off employees over his years at Bain than I would be glad to then listen to him.”

Newt is criticizing not only Romney but also the pump and dump practices of Wall Street that have caused hundreds of thousands of Americans to lose their jobs, put countless companies in jeopardy, and earned a fortune for private-equity managers and others.

If this goes on much longer, the Mitt and Newt Show will get a slot on MSNBC.

The San Diego Union-Tribune is on the Rocks

from Counterpunch, October 21-23, 2011

by FRANK GREEN

Print media’s decline in the United States can be tracked in microcosm in San Diego, longtime home to one of the country’s most conservative, reactionary dailies.

Local progressives have been watching in bemusement for several years as The San Diego Union-Tribune – once Richard Nixon’s favorite news source – radically chops staff, loses circulation and, more importantly, sees its once-dominant and domineering position as a right-wing political and cultural force in the area fade.

The fall of the U-T, which some newsroom insiders believe is heading for its last press run, would mirror the predicament of other major U.S. dailies long confronted by the ubiquitous Internet and similar burgeoning alternative media, as well as by a dwindling passion for reading among the young.

“My guess is, (the U-T) is barely breaking even, if that,” said a veteran staffer. “Everybody here is looking over their shoulder.”

The turbulence at the U-T commenced in 2006 when the paper announced the first of what would be seven rounds of layoffs and buyouts of newsroom, circulation and other staff (even the cafeteria closed).

Three years later, publisher David Copley, whose rabidly conservative family had monopolized the local newspaper industry and dominated the city’s civic affairs for decades, sold the business to Platinum Equity, a Beverly Hills-based private equity group.

However, Platinum’s involvement has hardly cut the flow of red ink. Daily circulation has dipped in the past three years from 242,705 to 218,614, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulation.

Efforts by Platinum to attract subscribers with a hyper-local emphasis in its news columns have failed to draw readers’ interest, as have circulation promotions which essentially give the paper away. (A U-T booth at a recent home improvement show at the local convention center, for instance, offered new subscribers $10 worth of free Starbucks gift cards for a $10-a-month sub.)

Some observers nevertheless think that Platinum’s plans for the U-T have little to do with keeping it in the black, or even in print.

Indeed, Platinum announced in July that it had hired the investment banking advisory firm Evercare Partners to examine “strategic alternatives” for the U-T – code words to some for finding a buyer.

It would all seem to be business as usual for Platinum, which owns more than 100 companies in such sectors as infotech, telecommunications and real estate. Platinum’s annual aggregate revenue from these firms is $27 billion or so.

The company has a reputation for acquiring distressed properties like the U-T at bargain rates, then quickly turning them around for sale at a tidy profit.

Potential U-T suitors, according to the newsroom rumor mill, include Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., Tribune Co. and local hotel magnate Doug Manchester.

Murdoch’s interest in the U-T seems unlikely, however, since he would face a recalcitrant News Corp. board still fuming over this summer’s newspaper hacking scandal in the United Kingdom. The board would also seemingly balk at extending the company’s already substantial involvement in the shrinking newspaper industry, however enthusiastic Murdoch might be for supplementing his print portfolio.

Still other speculation has the paper eventually merging with various large regional newspaper properties (the Orange County Register, even the Los Angeles Times) to form one pervasive Southern California daily.

Such a consolidation could be operated with a fraction of current newsroom staffs and costs.

But at least one U-T editor thinks Platinum will instead soon simply stop printing the paper altogether – “it’s essentially worthless now,” the editor said – and sell the real estate on which the paper’s editorial offices and printing press are situated in the lush commercial hub of San Diego’s Mission Valley.

The editor noted that Platinum paid between $40 million and $50 million for virtually all of the U-T’s assets in the 2009 deal, even though the U-T’s headquarters alone reportedly sits on land assessed at about $90 million.

Progressives seemingly would hail the demise of the once-pervasive U-T, which for years has maintained a stridently right-wing sensibility in its opinion pages and news columns alike.

Among the lowlights:

- Well into the 1970s, U-T publisher James Copley routinely lent his political writers gratis to the successful mayoral, gubernatorial and senate campaigns of Pete Wilson, as well as numerous other Republican politicos. The late Herbert Klein, for example, worked alternately for years as an editor at the newspaper and a mouthpiece for GOP candidates, all the while collecting a Copley paycheck. Klein ultimately served as communications director for Nixon, who often referred to the Union as his favorite newspaper.

- In the late-1960s, a memo issued from the publisher’s office advised editors to avoid running photos of black people on section fronts. The policy remained in force, if unofficially, into the mid-1970s.

- During the same period, The San Diego Union (which later merged with its sister publication the Evening Tribune to form the Union-Tribune) targeted the late Marxist philosophy professor Herbert Marcuse in conjunction with threats and harassment by the Secret Army Organization, a militant right-wing vigilante group made up of San Diego Police officers and military veterans. Marcuse, who was teaching at UC San Diego at the time, often was wrongly characterized in Union news columns and editorial cartoons as a dangerous Soviet agent promoting violent revolution in the U.S. Union executives routinely bragged that the Marcuse campaign was designed to run him out of town, if not kill him.

- The vending machines of alternative newspapers like the O.B. Rag, the San Diego Door and the San Diego Free Press were routinely plucked off the streets by Union circulation drivers in the late-1960s at the behest of Victor Krulak, an executive in the U-T publishing office. (Krulak had earlier served as President John Kennedy’s counterinsurgency expert in Vietnam.)

Through it all, the newspaper used its news columns to pimp for conservative candidates and issues near to the heart of the Copley family, while downplaying or completely ignoring alternative progressive voices.

This stifling pro-business, pro-military stance has hardly diminished in the new century.

For instance, the U-T unwaveringly backed the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, including giving ad nauseum support for George W. Bush’s premise that Iraq was a repository for so-called weapons of mass destruction.

The intimate nature of the long Copley-GOP relationship could until recently be seen in the U-T executive offices, where a large photograph of David Copley, former editor Karin Winner and Bush – all three of them in the throes of laughter – had been prominently displayed for years.

A cursory read of Thursday’s U-T indicates that little has changed under Platinum’s stewardship.

The op-ed page features a Q&A with Mayor Jerry Sanders and other business leaders griping about how difficult it has been to find money to build a new football stadium for the Chargers, while the lead piece in the local section trumpets the police union’s endorsement of Republican newcomer Nathan Fletcher against liberal Democrat Bob Filner in the local mayoral race.

Of course, all of this debate about the U-T’s pernicious influence through the years may soon be relegated to the stacks.

A Web site dedicated to U-T retirees carried still a fresh newsroom rumor Thursday that the paper is being sold and that the transaction with a private buyer is in escrow.

Herbert Marcuse is smiling somewhere.

FRANK GREEN is a veteran journalist and lives in the San Diego area. He can be reached at [email protected]

The Meagerness of the Republican Debates, the Smallness of the President’s Solutions, and the Need for a Progressive Alternative

by Robert Reich

Monday, October 17, 2011

Republicans are debating again tomorrow night. And once again, Americans will hear the standard regressive litany: government is bad, Medicare and Medicaid should be cut, “Obamacare” is killing the economy, undocumented immigrants are taking our jobs, the military should get more money, taxes should be lowered on corporations and the rich, and regulations should be gutted.

Four years ago the most widely-watched TV debate among Republican aspirants attracted 3.2 million viewers. This year it’s almost twice that number. And for every viewer assume a multiplier effect as he or she shares what’s heard with friends and family.

Americans are listening more intently this time around because they’re hurting and they want answers. But the answers they’re getting from Republican candidates – tripping over themselves trying to appeal to hard-core regressives – are the wrong ones.

The correct ones aren’t being aired.

That’s partly because there’s no primary contest in the Democratic party. So Republicans automatically get loads of free broadcast time to air their regressive nonsense while the Democrats get none.

But even if the President had equal time, the debate about what to do about the crisis would still be frighteningly narrow.

That’s because the President’s answers don’t nearly match up to the magnitude of the crisis.

Without bold alternatives, Americans desperate for big solutions are attracted to bold crackpot ideas like Herman Cain’s “9-9-9” proposal, which would raise taxes on the poor and cut them for the rich.

This is where the inchoate Occupy Wall Street movement could come in. What’s needed isn’t just big ideas. It’s people fulminating for them – making enough of a ruckus that the ideas can’t be ignored. They become part of the debate because the public demands it.

The biggest thing the President has proposed is a plan to create 2 million jobs. But that’s not nearly big enough. Today, 14 million Americans are out of work, and 11 million more are working part-time who’d rather be working full time.

The nation needs a real jobs plan, one of sufficient size and scope to do the job – including a WPA and a Civilian Conservation Corps, to put the millions of long-term unemployed and young unemployed to work rebuilding America.

I’m not criticizing the President. Without energized, mobilized, and organized progressives, even the best people in Washington can’t overcome the monied interests. 

For example, America’s long-term debt needs to be addressed, but not the way the President is doing it. He wants to lop $4 trillion off the budget over the next ten years. This almost certainly means sacrificing education, job training, food stamps, and everything else now listed in the so-called “non-defense discretionary” budget, as well as cuts in Medicare and Medicaid.

What about halving the military budget instead? It doubled after 9/11, and military contractors are intent on keeping it in the stratosphere. So is Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta. Result: Defense cuts this size won’t be on the table unless progressives vociferously demand it.

And what about really raising taxes on the rich to finance what the nation should be doing to create a world-class workforce with world-class wages?

Here again, the President’s proposal is paltry compared to what should be done. He wants to raise taxes on the rich by ending the Bush tax cut for incomes over $250,000 and limiting certain deductions.

Yet income and wealth are now more concentrated than they’ve been in 70 years. The top 1 percent gets over 20 percent of total income and holds over 35 percent of national wealth; the richest 400 Americans have more wealth than the bottom 150 million Americans put together.

Meanwhile, effective tax rates on the rich are lower than they’ve been in three decades.

We need to push for higher marginal taxes on the top, and more brackets. Incomes of more than $5 million should be subject to a 70 percent rate. (The top marginal rate was never below 70 percent between 1940 and 1980.) And these rates should apply to all income regardless of source, including capital gains.

This would allow for a bigger Earned Income Tax Credit (that is, a wage subsidy) for lower-income workers. And lower taxes on middle-income workers.

There should be a 2 percent annual surtax on all fortunes over $7 million. This would only hit the richest half a percent of Americans at the very top of the heap. And would yield $70 billion a year – enough to improve our schools and make college affordable to everyone.

And a tax on financial transactions. Even a tiny one of one-half of one percent would generate $200 billion a year. That’s enough to make a major contribution toward early childhood education for every American toddler.

The President’s healthcare law is a good start but it’s not the solution, either. We need Medicare for all. Medicare has lower administrative costs than private insurers. And it has the bargaining heft to reduce drug and hospital costs as well as shift the system from fee-for-services to payments for healthy outcomes.

The President’s financial reforms are also a beginning but they’re way too weak to stop Wall Street depredations. (At this moment, for example, no one even knows the exposure of Wall Street banks to European banks and, through them, Europe’s debt crisis.)

We need to resurrect the Glass-Steagall Act and break up the biggest banks.

The President has talked about fixing Social Security by raising the retirement age. But the best way to ensure the program’s long-term solvency is to lift the ceiling on income subject to Social Security payroll taxes (now $106,800.) Yet this, too, is off the table.

Workers also need more bargaining power. The ratio of corporate profits to wages is now higher than it’s been since before the Great Depression. Workers should be able to form unions through a simple up-or-down vote, without delay.

None of this is possible without strong and consistent pressure from the progressive side. Regressives are setting the agenda.

The President isn’t even talking about the environment any more. Yet climate change is a reality, and our survival depends on reducing carbon emissions.

We should tax carbon-based fuels, and divide the revenues equally among all Americans. It’s the best way to get us to switch to non-carbon fuels, and stimulate research and development of them. And by dividing the revenues, the typical American would come out ahead even though some prices would increase.

Finally, we need public financing of elections and strict limits on so-called “independent” expenditures. Corporations should have to get the approval of every shareholder before spending corporate funds – the shareholders’ money – on politics.

I have no idea whether the Occupiers will morph into the kind of progressive force necessary to put these ideas into play. But if Americans stand together and demand real reform, we can have a real national debate in 2012.

Tomorrow’s Republican debate may attract lots of viewers. It need not capture their minds.

The Rise of the Regressive Right and the Reawakening of America

 by Robert Reich

 Sunday, October 16, 2011

A fundamental war has been waged in this nation since its founding, between progressive forces pushing us forward and regressive forces pulling us backward. 

We are going to battle once again. 

Progressives believe in openness, equal opportunity, and tolerance. Progressives assume we’re all in it together: We all benefit from public investments in schools and health care and infrastructure. And we all do better with strong safety nets, reasonable constraints on Wall Street and big business, and a truly progressive tax system. Progressives worry when the rich and privileged become powerful enough to undermine democracy. 

Regressives take the opposite positions.

Eric Cantor, Paul Ryan, Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann and the other tribunes of today’s Republican right aren’t really conservatives. Their goal isn’t to conserve what we have. It’s to take us backwards. 

They’d like to return to the 1920s — before Social Security, unemployment insurance, labor laws, the minimum wage, Medicare and Medicaid, worker safety laws, the Environmental Protection Act, the Glass-Steagall Act, the Securities and Exchange Act, and the Voting Rights Act. 

In the 1920s Wall Street was unfettered, the rich grew far richer and everyone else went deep into debt, and the nation closed its doors to immigrants.

Rather than conserve the economy, these regressives want to resurrect the classical economics of the 1920s — the view that economic downturns are best addressed by doing nothing until the “rot” is purged out of the system (as Andrew Mellon, Herbert Hoover’s Treasury Secretary, so decorously put it). 

In truth, if they had their way we’d be back in the late nineteenth century — before the federal income tax, antitrust laws, the pure food and drug act, and the Federal Reserve. A time when robber barons — railroad, financial, and oil titans — ran the country. A time of wrenching squalor for the many and mind-numbing wealth for the few. 

Listen carefully to today’s Republican right and you hear the same Social Darwinism Americans were fed more than a century ago to justify the brazen inequality of the Gilded Age:  Survival of the fittest. Don’t help the poor or unemployed or anyone who’s fallen on bad times, they say, because this only encourages laziness. America will be strong only if we reward the rich and punish the needy. 

The regressive right has slowly consolidated power over the last three decades as income and wealth have concentrated at the top. In the late 1970s the richest 1 percent of Americans received 9 percent of total income and held 18 percent of the nation’s wealth; by 2007, they had more than 23 percent of total income and 35 percent of America’s wealth. CEOs of the 1970s were paid 40 times the average worker’s wage; now CEOs receive 300 times the typical workers’ wage.

This concentration of income and wealth has generated the political heft to deregulate Wall Street and halve top tax rates. It has bankrolled the so-called Tea Party movement, and captured the House of Representatives and many state governments. Through a sequence of presidential appointments it has also overtaken the Supreme Court. 

Scalia, Alito, Thomas, and Roberts (and, all too often, Kennedy) claim they’re conservative jurists. But they’re judicial activists bent on overturning seventy-five years of jurisprudence by resurrecting states’ rights, treating the 2nd Amendment as if America still relied on  local militias, narrowing the Commerce Clause, and calling money speech and corporations people. 

Yet the great arc of American history reveals an unmistakable pattern. Whenever privilege and power conspire to pull us backward, the nation eventually rallies and moves forward. Sometimes it takes an economic shock like the bursting of a giant speculative bubble; sometimes we just reach a tipping point where the frustrations of average Americans turn into action. 

Look at the Progressive reforms between 1900 and 1916; the New Deal of the 1930s; the Civil Rights struggle of the 1950s and 1960s; the widening opportunities for women, minorities, people with disabilities, and gays; and the environmental reforms of the 1970s.  

In each of these eras, regressive forces reignited the progressive ideals on which America is built. The result was fundamental reform. 

Perhaps this is what’s beginning to happen again across America.