#Expand Social Security Caucus

[dontmean2bepoliticalbut]

[mostlysignssomeportents]

How Democrats could win more elections

My fellow Americans…if I may call you that? I’ve only been a US citizen for five weeks, but I think I may have identified a key weakness in the Democrats’ electioneering strategy, and I wanted to bring it to your attention because it would be great if the forced birth/martial law/mass incarceration party didn’t win the next election.

If Democrats want to win more elections, they should try:

Enacting popular policies, preferably ones that materially improve the lives of potential voters;

Making sure those policies take effect before the next election; and

Telling people about them.

As a bonus, they could also publicize when Republicans want to enact policies that:

Aren’t popular; and

Materially worsen the lives of potential voters.

I know, I know. Don’t teach granny to suck eggs! High-paid Democratic Party consultants have forgotten more about this stuff that I’ll ever learn, etc etc. But you guys, I think I could really be onto something.

Take Social Security. Created in 1935 by FDR, Social Security is one of the most popular government programs in US history — and it’s especially popular among old people for some reason, and you know, old people vote a lot!

[Image ID: A Data for Progress polling data chart entitled ‘Voters Are Very Concerned About the US Government Cutting Social Security Benefits.]

80% of US voters want Social Security expanded. Not 80% of Democrats — 80% of voters, from a June 2022 survey from Data For Progress:

https://www.filesforprogress.org/datasets/2022/6/dfp_ss_june_tabs.pdf

And yet, a July poll found that 70% of voters hadn’t heard that the GOP wants to “sunset” Social Security — that is, get rid of it, over the next five years. 71% of Republicans didn’t know this — and neither did 76% of independents (who might, you know, vote Democrat if they found out), nor did 64% of Democrats.

https://www.filesforprogress.org/datasets/2022/7/dfp_july_ss_tabs.pdf

This is just me spitballing here, but what if someone like Nancy Pelosi or Joe Biden or Chuck Schumer were to call a press conference and announce that this was the Republicans’ plan? I mean, it’s a long shot, but maybe if they were to tell voters what specific, material, important changes the next election could bring about, voters would find that interesting or even motivating.

I know, I know, I’m not an expert here. But when 81% of all likely voters support indexing Social Security to the cost of living, Democrats could actually do that, and also point out that Republicans won’t?

[Image ID: A Data For Progress chart entitled ‘Voters Strongly Support Imposing Payroll Taxes on the Wealthy to Expand Social Security Benefits.’]

And while pay-fors are bullshit (the US Treasury is a currency issuer, not a currency user, and it is not monetarily constrained), if the Dems wanted to do pay-fors to fund Social Security expansion, they could tax the rich. 76% of Americans want higher taxes on people earning $400k or more/year, including 76% of independents and 65% of Republicans.

As Jessica Corbett writes for Common Dreams, the Congressional Progressive Caucus is onto this, and is spreading the word, primarily via CPC chair Rep. Pramila Jayapal, but the Democratic party leadership is effectively silent on subject:

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/08/15/80-us-voters-across-party-lines-support-expanding-social-security

This despite the fact that there is already proposed legislation to enact this extremely popular policy that would hearten Democrats, please independents, and demonstrate to the majority of Republican voters which party has their interests at heart.

Social Security 2100: A Sacred Trust is a bill introduced by Rep John Larson, intended to end the 50 year neglect of Social Security:

https://larson.house.gov/issues/social-security-2100-sacred-trust

And then there’s the Social Security Expansion Act, introduced by Bernie Sanders and Rep Peter DeFazio, which increases contributions by the wealthy and expands benefits to match increases in the cost of living:

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/06/09/time-scrap-cap-sanders-warren-bill-targets-rich-expand-social-security

But the Dem leadership isn’t pushing for these bills and they’re keeping the GOP’s intention to zero out Social Security very quiet. It’s hard to say why, but maybe it has to do with the corporate wing of the party’s hatred of Social Security, which has found its expression in Biden’s nomination of the anti-Social Security ideologue Andrew Biggs the Social Security Advisory Board:

https://www.levernews.com/biden-taps-anti-social-security-ideologue-to-oversee-program/

Biggs has spent his career advocating for Social Security cuts and privatization — two ideas that are both cruel and wildly unpopular, especially among old people, who, as noted, vote a lot. Biggs is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, an organization whose illustrious career includes a key role in denying climate change and promoting the interests of tobacco companies:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2019/jan/23/free-market-thinktanks-tobacco-control-polices-database#0/?american-enterprise-institute

Biggs says he no longer favors privatizing Social Security — he’s switched to another boondoggle, creating investment accounts for Social Security savers that would let them give their retirement savings to Wall Street to gamble with.

As Matthew Cunningham-Cook writes for The Lever, Biggs’s career includes work on GW Bush’s plan to privatize Social Security and shift its investments from T-bills to “high-fee, high-risk ‘personal accounts.’”

https://www.levernews.com/biden-taps-anti-social-security-ideologue-to-oversee-program/

This wasn’t a temporary lapse: Biggs has spent his career writing editorials and papers calling for Social Security cuts and privatization, claiming, for example, that Social Security privatization would make seniors “not only richer, but also happier, healthier, more familial, smarter, and more active citizens.”

https://www.cato.org/commentary/investings-rich-fringe-benefits

Biggs’s career is a Zelig-like tour of catastrophic privatizations and cuts — for example, in 2016, he became part of the unaccountable board that seized control over Puerto Rico, sidelining its elected leaders with the mission to make sure that Puerto Rico kept paying out to Wall Street bond-holders, irrespective of the human costs:

https://www.aei.org/profile/andrew-g-biggs/

Not only are Biggs’s ideas terrible — they are also wildly, fantastically unpopular among voters. Voters do not want this. Social Security privatization is the pet project of a minuscule minority of fantastically wealthy dilettantes, and if it come to pass, the party responsible for them will be deservedly punished in elections.

Now, the Democrats are, in fact, capable of creating policy that is both popular among voters and the sort of thing that will make material improvements to their lives. For example, the Inflation Reduction Act contains modest, but meaningful, controls on pharmaceutical prices.

Here too, however, the Democrats have managed to absolutely snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. The drug price controls in the IRA don’t take effect until 2026 — that is, long after the next two elections.

Writing in The American Prospect, David Ddayen points out that while negotiating prices takes some time, this is an outrageously, pointlessly, self-defeatingly long timeline. Medicare itself was implemented in a single year:

https://prospect.org/health/prescription-drug-price-reforms-wont-happen-for-years/

And at least some parts of the drug price controls could go into effect tomorrow — but are still not going to be implemented until long after the next two elections. The $2000 cap on seniors’ annual out-of-pocket drug spending doesn’t go into effect until 2025.

Again, I’m just a humble Canadian, newly welcomed into America’s bosom, but it seems to me that if you want to win an election, you should do things to make life better for voters before that election rolls around. Implementing the out-of-pocket cap requires “tallying up patient out-of-pocket costs, which are fully transparent, until they hit $2,000, and then stopping them.”

What’s more, as Dayen points out, delaying the Medicare pharma price negotiations actually makes this bill cost more — every dollar that is negotiated down in pharma pricing is a dollar that can be used to offset the out-of-pocket cap (though again, offsets are bullshit).

The Dems are planning to run on these price caps for the midterms, but, as Dayen says, Dems are going to be claiming to have fixed something that is still broken, as in, “Vote for me — I fixed something for you four years from now!”

Dems gain nothing by this delay. Pharma-backed dark money groups are already blitzing out ads that lie shamelessly about the Medicare improvements in the bill, claiming that Dems have “cut Medicare by $300m” (meaning that Dems have told pharma they’re going to cram $300m in savings down their shareholders’ throats and use that money to help patients):

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/11/rope-a-dope/#cowards-and-lies

I realize that I am not a high-paid Democratic Party consultant here, but I remain convinced that the party could improve its election prospects by doing good things in a timely fashion and then telling voters about them — while also letting voters know about the awful things the Republicans are promising to do.

[Image ID: A kicking mule in the colors of the Democratic Party logo; it is wearing a Zorro-style mask. It is standing on a background of radiating, multihued stripes.]

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Matt Davies

* * * *

Biden delivers 2025 budget; House GOP hasn’t passed 2024 budget.

March 12, 2024

ROBERT B. HUBBELL

On Monday, President Biden delivered his 2025 budget proposal to Congress. The 2025 budget highlights important priorities in an election year and deserves attention from every American and news outlet. As expected, news outlets and headline writers began tussling over the “takeaways” from the budget proposal in an effort to “spin” the priorities in the budget. Don’t fall for the disinformation.

Instead, read the budget for yourself (or at least parts of it): Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 2025 (whitehouse.gov).

President Biden included a summary letter (pages 1-3) and an “executive summary” (pages 5-14). If you merely scroll through those two resources, you will inform and educate yourself about the actual proposals by President Biden. Importantly, the introductory pages to the 2025 budget outline the Biden administration’s accomplishments to date. Keep it handy for future discussions with persuadable friends and neighbors.

The proposed budget, if adopted, would:

Reduce the deficit by $3 trillion over the next ten years

Increase taxes on corporations, millionaires, and billionaires

Protect Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid

Protect and expand the Affordable Healthcare Act

Invest in women’s health research

Defend and protect reproductive rights and healthcare

Ensure access to mental healthcare

Provide funding to fight the overdose epidemic

Support K-12 education

Support veterans, their families,

And much more . . .

The Republican response was bizarre and delusional. Trump chose Monday to promise (again) that Republicans would “cut” Social Security and Medicare. (“[T]here’s a lot you can do in terms of entitlements, in terms of cutting and in terms of the theft and the bad management of entitlements.”)

Although Trump tried to “walk back” that statement, Trump has repeatedly advocated cutting Social Security and Medicare. See this montage of video clips of Trump calling for cutting Social Security and Medicare. See also Philip Bump in WaPo, Donald Trump stumbles onto the third rail: Social Security reform

The Republican congressional caucus released a “fantasy budget” as an alternative to Biden’s budget. The NYTimes described the GOP fantasy budget as follows:

House Republicans released a budget last week that seeks to reduce deficits much faster — balancing the budget by the end of the decade. Their savings relied on economic growth forecasts that are well above mainstream forecasters’ expectations, along with steep and often unspecified spending cuts.

Got that? The Republican “fantasy budget” is based on unrealistic growth projections and unspecified spending cuts. It’s easy to come up with a balanced budget if you rely on unspecified cuts and imaginary revenue from unrealistic economic assumptions. President Biden has delivered a real budget protecting the heard-earned benefits due to the American people while cutting deficits.

Do not allow anyone to tell you that Republicans have proposed an alternative budget that delivers tax cuts and a balanced budget. They have not! They are engaged in a con game—and you are their mark!

Indeed, the GOP-controlled house has not yet passed the 2024 budget, so it is hypocritical for them to be proposing a 2025 fantasy budget when they have forced the nation to lurch from crisis to crisis. The GOP’s inability to perform the most fundamental task assigned to Congress by the Constitution is inexcusable.

For additional background and detail, see The Guardian, Biden denounces Trump for $2tn tax cuts as he unveils budget plan. 

[Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter]

[mariacallous]

Representative Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.)’s rocky road to the House Speakership came at a steep price. After 15 ballots, the most since the Civil War, McCarthy narrowly sewed up support only after agreeing to most of the procedural and policy demands of 20-some-odd members of the far-right bloc of House Republicans, the Freedom Caucus.

Disputes over the rules often reflect a party’s ideological rifts. But intense fighting over the rules this time was actually a fight over the House Republicans’ agenda and who will control it in the new Congress. On that score, members of the far-right, anti-establishment Freedom Caucus won big.

Here’s what you need to know about the road ahead.

Brawls over House rules are old hat

Unlike the Senate, whose rules carry over one Congress to the next, each House adopts its rules anew at the start of each two-year Congress on the heels of electing its Speaker. When the chamber adopts its new rules, members of the majority party are often on the same page and just tinker with the previous session’s rules. But not always.

Previous contested speakership elections often hinged on fights over the rules. A century ago, the last time it took more than a single ballot to choose the speaker, Progressive Republicans broke from the party’s conservative wing to block election of the party nominee. They wanted to adopt new rules that strengthen the procedural rights of rank-and-file lawmakers and weaken leaders’ control. They won some concessions, but to Progressives’ dismay, Republicans expanded their ranks after the next election and clawed back those rules.

Since then, procedural battles when electing a Speaker have taken place off the House floor. When a faction of swing district Democrats opposed returning Representative Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to the Speakership in 2019, she bought off dissenters with minor procedural concessions before balloting began.

Demands from a far-right faction

Unlike past factions that often occupied the political center, making common cause with minority party lawmakers, far-right Freedom Caucus members generally hail from safe red seats and often vote against large bipartisan deals. Some of them spearheaded efforts to keep former President Trump in office after he lost the 2020 election, and almost all of the returning members voted in the wake of the January 6 attack on the Capitol to overturn the results of the presidential election.

Many Freedom Caucus members demanded that Republican leaders loosen the procedural reins. That’s because in recent decades, House majorities have centralized authority over the agenda in leaders’ hands. So long as majority party leaders maintain the support of their rank and file, leaders call the shots on which bills advance to the floor and block votes on politically charged amendments.

Some say McCarthy’s opponents wanted to “democratize” the rules, for example demanding that GOP leaders restore amendment free-for-alls on the House floor. Both parties’ leaders have steered clear of so-called “open rules” in recent years to avoid controversial votes. (In fact, Republicans’ last dust up over amendments occurred in 2015 when conservatives wanted to allow the Confederate flag to fly over federal cemeteries.) More likely, Freedom Caucus members want open rules to advance their own policy and political agendas and force lawmakers to take votes on Caucus priorities.

Costly rules changes  

McCarthy’s opponents secured numerous procedural concessions that could advance their agenda of significantly paring back federal spending, especially on the social safety net. The new rules require a two-thirds majority to raise taxes, mandate new spending (but not tax cuts) to be paid for, and permits amendments to fire or reduce the pay of federal officials.

The House also created an investigatory panel to probe what Republicans term the Biden administration’s “weaponization of government.” A late concession to the holdouts explicitly empowers the committee to review “ongoing criminal investigations.” Those would presumably include the Justice Department’s criminal investigations into 2020 election interference and likely even the involvement of some Freedom Caucus members.

Sharing reins of power

Beyond rules changes, McCarthy promised to put Freedom Caucus members in coveted seats on the party panel that doles out committee assignments and gavels. Caucus members also nabbed three seats on the House Rules Committee, the arm of the leadership that sets the floor agenda. Leaders typically stack the committee with nine of their most loyal members, leaving the minority party four seats. Freedom Caucus reps can now threaten to join forces with Democrats if Republicans won’t accommodate their demands.

McCarthy also apparently promised a vote on a ten-year balanced budget plan that would reduce federal spending and would require trillions in cuts to achieve. Defense hawks are unlikely to support cuts in military spending, and swing district GOP members could join Democrats to oppose excessive cuts to domestic programs. McCarthy also committed to pair a vote to increase the government debt limit with steep spending cuts. President Biden and the Senate are unlikely to accept that deal, raising the chances of an unthinkable government default later this year.

If McCarthy reneges, any of his opponents could exploit a newly restored “motion to vacate” that allows a single member to call a snap vote to remove him as Speaker.

Rocky road ahead

Any Republican speaker would face the daunting task of building winning coalitions when the margin for error is so small and the conference divided. McCarthy’s challenge is steeper.

Concessions to the GOP’s extreme tail weaken McCarthy as Speaker. Needing their votes to become Speaker, McCarthy does not appear to have demanded anything from the Freedom Caucus in return for sharing the procedural reins. Freedom Caucus members have typically lobbed bombs from the sidelines and voted against Republicans when their amendments failed. Will they stick with the party this time when they don’t get their way? That’s a core expectation for lawmakers who benefit from leaders’ largesse. Emerging fractures within the Freedom Caucus won’t make things any easier.

[your-krazy-uncle-bob]

By Victor Davis Hanson

October 26, 2022

Our two parties have both changed, and that explains why one will win, and one lose in the midterm elections.

The old Democrats have faded away after being overwhelmed by radicals and socialists.

Moderates who once embraced Bill Clinton’s opportunistic “third way” are now either irrelevant or nonexistent.

Once considered too wacky and socialist to be taken seriously, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the performance-art “squad,” the radicals of the Congressional Black Caucus, and Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and her hard progressive wing are today’s Democratic Party kingpins.

The alienating radicals of Antifa and Black Lives Matter often serve as the new party’s shock troops on the streets. They opportunistically appear to push the party to embrace no-bail laws, defunding the police, and the destruction of the fossil fuel industry.

Since none of those positions poll even close to 50 percent with the public, the Democrats routinely either slur their opponents as racists, nativists, and climate denialists or obsess on another Trump psychodrama distraction from the Russia collusion hoax to the Mar-a-Lago raid.

What “blue dog” centrists are left in the Democratic Party either keep mum or, like Tulsi Gabbard, flee in disgust.

Donald Trump also recalibrated the Republican Party and helped to turn it into a nationalist-populist movement that would rather win rudely than lose politely. The MAGA agenda pushed Jacksonian deterrence rather than unpopular nation-building abroad. It finally focused on fair rather than just free trade.  Republicans now unite in demanding only legal immigration and promoting domestic investment rather than globalist outsourcing and offshoring.

In response, many of the old Bush-Romney country-club wing left in disgust. Others licked their wounds as fanatical NeverTrump something or others.

Both parties have also been radically changed by additional issues of class, race, and wealth.

Compare the income profiles of voters, whether by ZIP codes or congressional districts. A once lunch-bucket carrying, union member Democratic Party has become the enclave of three key constituencies.

First, there is the subsidized and often inner-city poor.

Second, the meat of the party, is the upscale, bicoastal professional and suburban credentialed classes.

Third, the real rulers of the party are the hyper-rich of Big Tech, Wall Street, Hollywood, the corporate boardroom, the administrative state, the media, and the legal world. Almost all these institutions have lost public confidence and poll miserably. Their cocooned leaders are never subject to the ramifications of their own often unworkable policies.

In contrast, Republicans this election cycle concerned themselves mostly with material issues of the battered middle classes—inflation, the price of fuel and energy, a secure border, crime, parental control of schools, and realist foreign policy.

Reforming social security, reducing capital gains taxes, and pruning back regulations are still doctrinaire Republican agendas. But they are not iconic of the middle-class dominated party as they once were in the age of Ronald Reagan.

Democrats, as the champions of the well-off, remain redistributionist and seek to tax the middle class to fund ever more government programs.

Joe Biden canceled some student loans. He printed lots of money. And he expanded entitlements. But even these calcified Great Society issues are drowned out by the real concerns of the professional leftist elites who run the Democratic Party.

After all, they do not worry much about the price of diesel fuel, or whether border communities are swarmed by illegal immigration. They are indifferent to whether it is unsafe to take a late-night subway ride. And they are not too worried about being mugged or whether they can splurge for a weekend steak.

Instead, condescending Democratic movers and shakers are obsessed with climate change and sermonize about ending fossil fuels. Diversity, equity, and inclusion—all mandated equality-of-result agendas—are their cultural religion, along with transgender advocacy, and abortion on demand in all 50 states.

The net result of these radical shifts is that Republicans began bonding with the neglected working classes and those without college degrees. That way they drowned out left-wing racial obsessions with ecumenical class concerns.

In the process, the new Republican Party in 2022 is poised to win 45-50 percent of Hispanic voters and a near record number of African-American men.

In our changed political landscape, poorer Republican candidates are routinely outspent in most of their races. Conservatives are more likely to be canceled by left-wing anti-free-expression institutions like Facebook and Twitter. Their access to online knowledge and communication is often warped by monopolies and cartels like Google and Apple.

The Democrats claim Republicans are racists. But they cannot explain why record numbers of minorities are now deserting the Democrats, and the blue-state urban areas they run, to join the new Republicans.

As Republicans diminished the role of race, the Democrats grew ever more obsessed about it—and ignored class. The Oprahs, Meghan Markles, and MSNBC anchors of the world fixate over skin color in direct proportion to their own affluence, status, and privilege—as their hypocrisy turns off the middle classes of all races.

In sum, the party of old left-wing progressives has become one of rich regressives. And once country-club Republicans are becoming a party of middle-class populists. And the election will reflect both those changes.

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., introduced a new bill on Thursday that aims to extend Social Security's solvency for 75 years by raising taxes on the wealthy, while making benefits more generous.

The proposal, called the Social Security Expansion Act, would expand benefits for current and new beneficiaries by $200 per month, or $2,400 per year, and would make the monthly checks more generous in other ways.

To do that, and improve the program's solvency at the same time, the plan also calls for raising taxes on high-earning households.

Sanders and Warren, who are co-chairs of the Expand Social Security Caucus, were joined by Democrats including Sens. Cory Booker of New Jersey, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Jeff Merkley of Oregon, Alex Padilla of California, Chris Van Hollen of Maryland and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, along with Rep. Peter DeFazio, an Oregon Democrat who introduced companion legislation in the House.

In 2022, payroll taxes are applied to income up to $147,000. The bill calls for lifting that cap and applying the Social Security payroll tax to all income of more than $250,000.

Social Security payroll taxes are applied at a rate of 6.2% for both the employer and employee, for a total of 12.4%, which is deducted from paychecks.

The bill calls for having the wealthy pay more through a 12.4% tax on investment and business income. It would also apply levies to certain business income that is not currently subject to payroll taxes.

"Today, absurdly and unfairly, there is a cap on income subject to Social Security taxes," Sanders said in prepared remarks during a Thursday Senate hearing.

Currently, a worker earning $147,000 pays 6.2% of their income to Social Security payroll taxes. But if instead they earn $1.47 million, they pay just 0.6% of their income to Social Security, Sanders said.

"That may make sense to somebody," Sanders said. "It doesn't make sense to me."

Under the terms of the bill, more than 93% of households would not see their taxes go up.

At the same time, it would extend the program's solvency past 2096.

New projections from the Social Security trustees show the program's combined funds will only be able to pay full benefits until 2035, at which point 80% of benefits will be payable.

Raising taxes on the wealthy in order to shore up the program is popular among voters, according to a survey released this week by the University of Maryland's Program for Public Consultation.

HOW THE BILL WOULD INCREASE BENEFITS

The proposal also calls for boosting benefits in several ways.

It would, for example, increase minimum benefits to 125% of the poverty line and index them. That would amount to about $17,000 for a single worker who has worked for their entire career, according to the proposal.

It also aims to make annual cost-of-living adjustments more generous by changing the measurement by which they are calculated to the consumer price index for the elderly, or CPI-E, which some advocates argue better reflects retiree spending.

The legislation would also restore benefits for students up to age 22 if they are attending college or vocational schools and are the children of disabled or deceased workers. That would reverse a 1983 policy that eliminated benefits for those people.

The effects of the plan has been analyzed by the Office of the Chief Actuary at the Social Security Administration.

"We estimate that enactment of these provisions would extend the ability of the OASDI (Old Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance) program to pay scheduled benefits in full and on time throughout the 75-year projection period," said Stephen Goss, chief actuary at the Social Security Administration, in a statement.

The new proposal has the backing of advocacy groups focused on expanding Social Security, including Social Security Works and the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare.

However, Republican leaders were quick to take issue with the plan, particularly the proposed tax increases, at the Senate hearing on Thursday.

"This bill has no chance whatsoever of receiving a single Republican vote in either House," said Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah. "So it will not be passed."

Romney has proposed a bill called the TRUST Act, which would create bipartisan committees that would work to identify potential ways to shore up ailing federal programs including the Social Security, Medicare and the highway trust funds.

[allthecanadianpolitics]

Canada has failed to adequately support poor, vulnerable and working-class populations during the COVID-19 crisis. Yet there is a fight in parliament to aid these groups, and Jagmeet Singh and the New Democratic Party (NDP) caucus have been at the forefront. While the Conservative Party bloviates about carbon taxes, the NDP have been offering concrete opposition to the Liberal Party.

In general, Canadians have demonstrated broad support for social distancing measures, and many are getting aid via: Employment Insurance (EI); the newly-forged Canadian Emergency Response Benefit (CERB); a wage subsidy being offered to impacted businesses; and the Canadian Emergency Student Benefit (CESB) for students excluded from the CERB. Through the CERB alone, more than 7 million Canadians have applied for aid from the federal government.

But one ignored fact is the NDP’s instrumental role in securing any benefits these programs have achieved.

At the onset of the COVID-19 crisis, it became clear that the existing EI model would be ill-equipped for the economic fallout. So, Singh called for the creation of a $2,000 monthly aid program for all Canadians in need. A few days later, the minority parliament negotiated an initial aid package that was substantially larger than what the Liberals had previously announced, in part because of the NDP’s efforts.

Unfortunately, the CERB initially left out more than a million Canadians who needed help. The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives also estimated that a third of unemployed Canadians would be left without any support. Those who lost much, but not all, of their income were also excluded. In response, the NDP continued fighting to remove all barriers to the CERB. Although the Liberals haven’t adopted this universal approach, CERB access has since been expanded to include more Canadians, such as those earning less than $1,000 per month.

The NDP has also fought alongside student groups to have students included within the CERB. The Liberals have since created the CESB. While student groups have rightfully organized to protest the CESB’s limitations and their continued exclusion from the CERB, it’s still nonetheless an improvement. The NDP have also since spearheaded efforts to bring higher aid amounts for students with disabilities and dependents, bringing them in line with CERB amounts.

Continue Reading.

Tagging: @politicsofcanada @abpoli @torontopoli

[96thdayofrage]

Maryland grants stimulus aid to undocumented immigrants, other noncitizens

Maryland lawmakers on Friday approved giving lump-sum payments to low-income noncitizens, including undocumented immigrants, becoming one of the few states in the nation to extend stimulus benefits to people without Social Security numbers.

The legislation — which Gov. Larry Hogan (R) will let become law, his spokesman said — qualifies all taxpaying residents, regardless of immigration status, to receive the state’s earned income tax credit for the next three years.

Advocates who pushed for the bill say it will give a crucial cash boost to taxpaying immigrants who are often essential workers and have largely been shut out of unemployment, federal stimulus and other government-run ­safety-net programs, including during the coronavirus pandemic.

“This is saying to hard-working immigrants who pay taxes, who contribute to the fabric of our community — and certainly to the fabric of our economy — that they matter,” said Cathryn Paul, research and policy analyst with the immigrant advocacy group CASA.

Hogan previously balked at extending benefits to noncitizens as part of the state’s recently passed $1.1 billion coronavirus stimulus package, warning lawmakers that including it in that legislation would jeopardize the entire bill.

But his spokesman, Michael Ricci, said Friday that Hogan will not veto the stand-alone measure that will accomplish the same goal. It passed both chambers with veto-proof majorities on a largely party-line vote. The governor will allow the bill to become law without his signature, Ricci said. He declined to comment further.

Push for police reform creates rift in Maryland’s Democratic caucus

In the recently passed stimulus bill, Maryland expanded its earned income tax credit to become the most generous in the country. The measure, which is modeled after the federal credit by the same name, gives cash payments to the working poor on a sliding scale. Larger benefits go to families with multiple children and lower incomes.

To qualify, families must earn less than $56,800 a year, and individuals must earn no more than $15,820. The maximum benefit amounts to several thousand dollars each year.

It is widely viewed as one of government’s most effective anti-poverty tools and is popular among both Democrats and Republicans. On average, beneficiaries in Maryland increase their earnings enough after three years that they no longer qualify for the credit, according to a legislative review of its impact.

But Republicans in the legislature were reluctant to extend the tax credit to noncitizens, saying they were opposed to offering a benefit to undocumented residents and concerned that doing so would encourage more undocumented people to move to the state.

House Minority Whip Kathy Szeliga (R-Baltimore County) encouraged lawmakers to donate to charities that benefit immigrants and other people in poverty, rather than use taxpayer money to offer refunds.

“The question is: Do you give the aid from your own pocket book? Or from taxpayers’?” she said. “You take it from your own pocket. . . . We have to respect other people’s money.”

The stimulus relieved short-term pain, but eviction’s impact is a long haul

Other Republicans said the state’s retirees should get additional tax benefits before they are extended to a group of people that includes undocumented immigrants. An amendment to do that failed.

Maryland’s median income is among the highest in the country, but the state also has a large low-income population. In 2019, nearly 1 in 7 Maryland tax-filers — 440,000 households — qualified for the credit.

The expansion given final approval Friday by the House of Delegates would make an estimated 60,000 more people eligible, entitling them to roughly $65 million worth of credits. It allows those who file taxes with an individual taxpayer identification number, or ITIN, to qualify.

People who owe taxes but do not have a Social Security number, including people on work visas and student visas and undocumented immigrants, use taxpayer identification numbers.

Federal rules bar them from many federal benefits, including the earned income credit. Mixed-status families who have an ITIN-filer on their tax returns are also barred from the tax credit, effectively blocking citizens from receiving the benefit.

California and Colorado have allowed ITIN filers access to earned income benefits since before the coronavirus pandemic.

Maryland passed the nation’s largest tax credit for the poor. Democrats want it for noncitizens, too.

Maryland weighs reform for long-term care facilities, where covid-19 has killed nearly 3,500.

[disillusioned41]

Not waiting before such thinking takes firmer hold or begins to be put into action, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is speaking out forcefully against radical centrist pundits, so-called "Never-Trump Republicans," and corporate-friendly Democratic operatives trying to advance a post-election narrative that the Democratic Party's growing progressive base is a faction to be sidelined as opposed to one that should be embraced.

"I need my colleagues to understand that we are not the enemy. And that their base is not the enemy. That the Movement for Black Lives is not the enemy, that Medicare for All is not the enemy."—Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

As much of the nation—and the world—celebrated Joe Biden's historic defeat of President Donald Trump on Saturday, Ocasio-Cortez gave an interview to the New York Times in which she repudiated those in recent days who have tried to cast a new wave of progressive lawmakers—backed by an army of like-minded supporters and organizers—as somehow dangerous to the party.

Epitomized by a comment that made the rounds on social media Saturday by former Ohio governor John Kasich, a lifelong Republican, the thinking goes that progressives policy solutions (which, in fact, turn out to be highly popular with voters across the political spectrum)—such as Medicare for All, forgiving student loan debt, expanding Social Security, a massive federal increase to the minimum wage, a green energy transition and jobs program, demanding racial justice, and working to end mass incarceration—are toxic politically to Democrats.

"The Democrats have to make it clear to the far-left that they almost cost him this election," said Kasich, who endorsed Biden earlier this year and was given a speaking role at the party's convention this summer, during a CNN interview Saturday. The comments quickly drew ire among progressives, who have condemned the very idea that figures like Kasich should have any say whatsoever in the party's future projection.

"Yesterday," tweeted People for Bernie on Sunday morning in response to the comments, "we officially entered a new era of not listening to anything John Kasich says. The era will continue until further notice."

And Ocasio-Cortez was among those who rebuked the remarks online as she defended her fellow Squad member, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), from the insinuation that progressive House victories in key districts didn't play a large role—as observers have pointed out—in helping deliver the White House for Biden.

"John Kasich, who did not deliver Ohio to Dems, is saying folks like Omar, who did deliver Minnesota, are the problem," Ocasio-Cortez tweeted in direct response to his comments. "Please don't take these people seriously and go back to celebrating and building power."

Common Dreams reported Thursday how Omar in Minnesota—just like Rep. Rashida Tlaib in her Detroit, Michigan district—were "major factors" in helping Biden pull away from Trump in those key battleground states.

In her interview with the Times, published late Saturday night, the New York Democrat—who won her reelection with nearly 70% of the vote in her district—elaborated on that dynamic.

"If the party believes after 94 percent of Detroit went to Biden, after Black organizers just doubled and tripled turnout down in Georgia, after so many people organized Philadelphia, the signal from the Democratic Party is the John Kasichs won us this election?" said AOC. "I mean, I can't even describe how dangerous that is."

On Sunday, Ocasio-Cortez joined CNN's Jake Tapper to discuss the issues she raised in the Times interview and also emphasized the need for Democrats, as a party, to come together in unity:

Progressives like Mike Casca, former communications director for Bernie Sanders' 2020 campaign, applauded Ocasio-Cortez for both her critique and outspokenness.

"What I love most about this interview, and AOC," commented journalist Alice Speri on Saturday morning, "is that she says what she thinks, pulls no punches, and puts her name to it. Just imagine if journalists stopped allowing politicians to stay anonymous for no reason other than their lack of courage."

Tana Ganeva, a criminal justice reporter, said: "AOC is so fucking smart. I can't believe there was actually an effort to deem her 'not smart.' This is the smartest analysis I've read in months."

In the interview—in which she acknowledged that internally within the party "it's been extremely hostile to anything that even smells progressive" since she arrived in 2018—Ocasio-Cortez expressed frustration that the more left-leaning members of the caucus are now under attack for losses suffered by its more centrist members.

What the election results have shown thus far, she said, is "that progressive policies do not hurt candidates. Every single candidate that co-sponsored Medicare for All in a swing district kept their seat. We also know that co-sponsoring the Green New Deal was not a sinker."

Instead of blaming for progressives—something that ousted Florida Democrat, Rep. Donna Shalala, did on a caucus conference call after her defeat last week—Ocasio-Cortez said the party needs to have a much more serious look at what led to those failures.

As she told the Times: "If I lost my election, and I went out and I said: "This is moderates' fault. This is because you didn't let us have a floor vote on Medicare for all. And they opened the hood on my campaign, and they found that I only spent $5,000 on TV ads the week before the election? They would laugh. And that's what they look like right now trying to blame the Movement for Black Lives for their loss."

Ocasio-Cortez said the party must begin to examine some of its entrenched belief systems—as well as internal power structures—so it can have a more honest assessment of where shortcomings exist and how to better prepare for the future:

There's a lot of magical thinking in Washington, that this is just about special people that kind of come down from on high. Year after year, we decline the idea that they did work and ran sophisticated operations in favor of the idea that they are magical, special people. I need people to take these goggles off and realize how we can do things better.  If you are the D.C.C.C., and you're hemorrhaging incumbent candidates to progressive insurgents, you would think that you may want to use some of those firms. But instead, we banned them.

So the D.C.C.C. banned every single firm that is the best in the country at digital organizing.

The leadership and elements of the party—frankly, people in some of the most important decision-making positions in the party—are becoming so blinded to this anti-activist sentiment that they are blinding themselves to the very assets that they offer.

Ocasio-Cortez further explained that while she and others have tried to get other members to modernize their campaign operations, those offers have persistently been rebuffed.

"I've been begging the party to let me help them for two years," she said. "That's also the damn thing of it. I've been trying to help. Before the election, I offered to help every single swing district Democrat with their operation. And every single one of them, but five, refused my help. And all five of the vulnerable or swing district people that I helped secured victory or are on a path to secure victory. And every single one that rejected my help is losing. And now they’re blaming us for their loss."

"So I need my colleagues to understand that we are not the enemy," she continued. "And that their base is not the enemy. That the Movement for Black Lives is not the enemy, that Medicare for All is not the enemy. This isn't even just about winning an argument. It's that if they keep going after the wrong thing, I mean, they're just setting up their own obsolescence."

And what if the Biden administration takes the lead of people like Kasich—of whom there is much chatter that he could serve in the next cabinet—and proves itself hostile to its progressive base?

"Well, I'd be bummed, because we’re going to lose. And that's just what it is," responded Ocasio-Cortez, who elsewhere said it is her simple belief that "people really want the Democratic Party to fight for them" and that it's the party's responsibility to show that not in words, but in deed.

"It's really hard for us to turn out nonvoters when they feel like nothing changes for them," she warned. "When they feel like people don't see them, or even acknowledge their turnout."

[robertreich]

The Democratic Establishment is Freaking Out About Bernie. It should Calm Down.

The day after Bernie Sanders’s big win in Nevada, Joe Lockhart, Bill Clinton’s former press secretary, expressed the fear gripping the Democratic establishment: “I don't believe the country is prepared to support a Democratic socialist, and I agree with the theory that Sanders would lose in a matchup against Trump.”

Lockart, like the rest of the Democratic establishment, is viewing American politics through obsolete lenses of left versus right, with Bernie on the extreme left and Trump on the far right. “Moderates” like Bloomberg and Buttigieg supposedly occupy the center, appealing to a broader swath of the electorate.

This may have been the correct frame for politics decades ago when America still had a growing middle class, but it’s obsolete today. As wealth and power have moved to the top and the middle class has shrunk, more Americans feel politically dis-empowered and economically insecure. Today's main divide isn’t right versus left. It’s establishment versus anti-establishment.

Some background. In the fall of 2015 I visited Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Missouri, and North Carolina, researching the changing nature of work. I spoke with many of the same people I had met twenty years before when I was secretary of labor, as well as some of their grown children. I asked them about their jobs and their views about the economy. I was most interested in their sense of the system as a whole and how they were faring in it.

What I heard surprised me. Twenty years before, most said they’d been working hard and were frustrated they weren’t doing better. Now they were angry – at their employers, the government, and Wall Street; angry that they hadn’t been able to save for their retirement, and that their children weren’t doing any better than they did. Several had lost jobs, savings, or homes in the Great Recession. By the time I spoke with them, most were employed but the jobs paid no more than they had two decades before.

I heard the term “rigged system” so often I began asking people what they meant by it. They spoke about the bailout of Wall Street, political payoffs, insider deals, CEO pay, and “crony capitalism.” These came from self-identified Republicans, Democrats, and Independents; white, black, and Latino; union households and non-union. Their only common characteristic was they were middle class and below.

With the 2016 primaries looming, I asked which candidates they found most attractive. At the time, party leaders favored Hillary Clinton or Jeb Bush. But the people I spoke with repeatedly mentioned Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. They said Sanders or Trump would “shake things up,” “make the system work again,” “stop the corruption,” or “end the rigging.”

In the following year, Sanders -- a 74-year-old Jew from Vermont who described himself as a democratic socialist and wasn’t even a Democrat until the 2016 presidential primary -- came within a whisker of beating Hillary Clinton in the Iowa caucus, routed her in the New Hampshire primary, garnered over 47 percent of the caucus-goers in Nevada, and ended up with 46 percent of the pledged delegates from Democratic primaries and caucuses.

Trump, a 69-year-old ego-maniacal billionaire reality TV star who had never held elective office or had anything to do with the Republican Party, and lied compulsively about almost everything -- won the Republican primaries and then went on to beat Clinton, one of the most experienced and well-connected politicians in modern America (granted, he didn’t win the popular vote, and had some help from the Kremlin).

Something very big happened, and it wasn’t because of Sanders’s magnetism or Trump’s likeability. It was a rebellion against the establishment. Clinton and Bush had all the advantages –funders, political advisors, name recognition -- but neither could credibly convince voters they weren’t part of the system.

A direct line connected four decades of stagnant wages, the financial crisis of 2008, the bailout of Wall Street, the rise of the Tea Party and the “Occupy” movement, and the emergence of Sanders and Trump in 2016. The people I spoke with no longer felt they had a fair chance to make it. National polls told much the same story. According to the Pew Research Center, the percentage of Americans who felt most people could get ahead through hard work dropped by 13 points between 2000 and 2015. In 2006, 59 percent of Americans thought government corruption was widespread; by 2013, 79 percent did.

Trump galvanized millions of blue-collar voters living in places that never recovered from the tidal wave of factory closings. He promised to bring back jobs, revive manufacturing, and get tough on trade and immigration. “We can’t continue to allow China to rape our country, and that’s what they’re doing,” he roared. “In five, ten years from now, you’re going to have a workers’ party. A party of people that haven’t had a real wage increase in eighteen years, that are angry.” He blasted politicians and financiers who had betrayed Americans by “taking away from the people their means of making a living and supporting their families.”

Trump’s pose as an anti-establishment populist was one of the biggest cons in American political history. Since elected he’s given the denizens of C-suites and the Street everything they’ve wanted and hasn’t markedly improved the lives of his working-class supporters, even if his politically-incorrect, damn-the-torpedo’s politics continues to make them feel as if he’s taking on the system.

The frustrations today are larger than they were four years ago. Even though corporate profits and executive pay have soared, the typical worker’s pay has barely risen, jobs are less secure, and health care less affordable.  

The best way for Democrats to defeat Trump’s fake anti-establishment populism is with the real thing, coupled with an agenda of systemic reform. This is what Bernie Sanders offers. For the same reason, he has the best chance of generating energy and enthusiasm to flip at least three senate seats to the Democratic Party (the minimum needed to recapture the Senate, using the vice president as tie-breaker).

He’ll need a coalition of young voters, people of color, and the working class. He seems on his way. So far in the primaries he leads among white voters, has a massive edge among Latinos, dominates with both women and men, and has done best among both college and non-college graduates. And he’s narrowing Biden’s edge with older voters and African Americans. [Add line about South Carolina from today's primary.]

The “socialism” moniker doesn't seem to have bruised him, although it hasn't been tested outside a Democratic primary or caucus. Perhaps voters won't care, just as they many don’t care about Trump’s chronic lies. 

Worries about a McGovern-like blowout in 2020 appear far-fetched. In 1972 the American middle class was expanding, not contracting. Besides, every national and swing state poll now shows Sanders tied with or beating Trump. A Quinnipiac Poll last week shows Sanders beating Trump in Michigan and Pennsylvania. A CBS News/YouGov poll has Sanders beating Trump nationally. A Texas Lyceum poll has Sanders doing better against Trump in Texas than any Democrat, losing by just three points.

Instead of the Democratic establishment worrying that Sanders is unelectable, maybe it should worry that a so-called "moderate” Democrat might be nominated instead.  

[creepingsharia]

A Month of Islam in America: February 2020

In February, the counter-jihad lost an invaluable resource. Philip Haney, the DHS whistleblower who exposed the purge of Muslim terrorist data during the Obama era, was found dead.

Phil was very likely murdered by those he was routinely exposing and closing in on. In fact, he was found dead just weeks after giving an interview detailing how terror-linked Muslims have continued to infiltrate all levels of U.S. government.

Watch Phil’s last video interview: Jihad Influence in America Reaches into VP Pence’s Office

A more detailed timeline of his whistleblower complaint in the video below.

Video: Phil Haney presents a timeline of infiltration at DHS and the FBI

RIP Phil Haney and may many more Phil Haney’s be called to action.

Click any link below for more details and a link to the original source.

Jihad in America:

Washington: Iraqi Immigrant Arrested in Murder of ex-Wife;  Friends Fear She Was 'Honor Killed' for Western Lifestyle

Police arrested Yasir Darraji on first-degree murder charges on Friday night.

Virginia: Somali Muslim FBI translator caught when own voice intercepted on terror surveillance calls gets ...probation!

Abdirizak Wehelie falsified transcripts in a terror case and lied to the FBI about it. His son was convicted of illegally transporting high-powered weapons in an ISIS case. Yet all he got was probation and a $1,000 fine.

Arizona: al-Qaeda Leader Wanted by Iraq for Murder of Iraqi Police Officers Arrested...in Phoenix!

Ali Yousif Ahmed Al-Nouri is wanted to stand trial in Iraq for two charges of premeditated murder committed in 2006 in Al-Fallujah.

‘Palestinian’ Woman Who Threatened to ‘Stab Everyone on Plane’ is Teacher at North Carolina Montessori School

Dana Ghazi Mustafa stated, “I’m going to stab everyone…I’m Palestinian! That’s how we get down.”

New York: Muslim immigrant who killed 8 in Halloween jihad attack threatens to decapitate corrections officer

Sayfullo Saipov threatened to decapitate a federal corrections officer for repeatedly waking him while he’s locked up at the Metropolitan Correctional Center

Arkansas: Muslim who killed U.S. soldier, injured another in 2009 Little Rock terror attack, loses appeal

The Arkansas Supreme Court on Thursday tossed out the appeal of Abdulhakim Muhammad who shot two soldiers, killing one, at a Little Rock recruiting station in 2009.

Illinois: U.S. Revokes Citizenship of Pakistani Who Entered U.S. Illegally, Plotted with al-Qaeda to Destroy Brooklyn Bridge

Iyman Faris, a Pakistani Muslim convicted of supporting al Qaeda, is no longer a U.S. citizen.

More Jihad in America:

Michigan: Muslim who nearly beat dog to death gets... probation

Abdulrazzaq Salah Mustafa is only going to get probation for nearly beating a dog named Champ to death.

Florida: Muslim convert stabs teen to death in jihad attack, Grocery store faces lawsuit

Florida: Man arrested after video shows him striking, throwing puppy against wall (for six minutes)

Legal Jihad in America:

DC: Muslim sues State Department, Pompeo for refusing to let her work from home during Ramadan

Previous monthly reports here.

Immigration Jihad also known as Hijra:

Arizona: Two men arrested with  370 pounds of cocaine and 220 pounds of meth valued at $12.7M

Alabama: Iraqi Refugee Who Lied to Get into U.S. Gets Probation and Loses Citizenship

DC: How the 'Interpreter' Scam Brought 75,000 Iraqis and Afghans to America

Minnesota: Dem Candidate Klobuchar Vows to Increase Number of Refugees Resettled in U.S. by More Than 500 Percent if Elected

Minnesota: Somali community leader says Ilhan Omar did marry her brother and said she would 'do what she had to do to get him "papers" to keep him in U.S.'

DC: Trump expands travel restrictions to six more countries that fail to "comply with basic national security"; H1B’s and refugees EXEMPT

New Jersey: Muslim-proposed ordinance will let Paterson mosques blast Muslim call to prayer across city

New Jersey: Paterson swears in new police chief...on Koran (video)

Rape Jihad in America - courtesy of Mass Immigration:

Illinois: Muslim Uber driver sentenced to 5 years in prison for sexually abusing rider Utah: Man arrested for raping wheelchair-bound woman in Salt Lake County

Mosques - the incubators of sharia and jihad in America:

For first time in Iowa history, mosques, five of them, used as caucus sites

Minnesota: St. Cloud City Council Approves Mosque in Basement of old O'Hara Brothers Building

Washington: Despite not having funds, new $3.3M mosque breaks ground in Bellevue

Fraud for Jihad:

Pennsylvania’s first Muslim female state rep gets just 3 months jail for stealing more than $500K from nonprofit founded to serve mentally ill and poor

Michigan: Detroit-Area Physicians Guilty in $150M Scheme Ohio: Somali market owners redeemed more than $10M in food stamp, WIC benefits charged in fraud conspiracy New York: Burqa-wearing thief steals nearly $1 million in jewelry from Piaget in Hudson Yards

Sharia and Dhimmitude in Government & Corporate America:

Bernie Sanders names daughter of Muslim Brotherhood leader as Virginia campaign co-chair

Philadelphia whitewashes investigation regarding who is responsible for video of Muslim children that performed in jihad skits

Florida: Cop Suspended for Liking Wife’s Social Media Posts Criticizing Tlaib and Omar Minnesota: Catholic priest apologizes for homily describing Islam as biggest threat to U.S. and Christianity

The all too infrequent victory against sharia and jihad in America:

California: Terror-Tied CAIR Candidate Event Shut Down When Patriots Demand Respect for Trump and USA (VIDEO)

Author to Speak at U.S. Army War College After Being Canceled by Terror-linked CAIR

Please share this and other posts on your social media sites.

Previous monthly reports here.

[berniesrevolution]

IN THESE TIMES

Budgets aren’t sexy and don’t get much airtime on the campaign trail, but the allocation of America’s financial resources is arguably the most important act in politics.  As the newly Democratic-controlled House of Representatives enters office in January, the People’s Budget presents an immediate opportunity for Democrats to support a bold, concrete plan for creating living-wage jobs and rebuilding America’s corroded and unsustainable infrastructure.

Crafted annually by the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC)—the largest Democratic caucus in the House—the People’s Budget proposes to invest $2 trillion over 10 years (employing 2.5 million people in the first year) to “eliminate our lead-contaminated water system, address our overburdened mass transit system, and rebuild our schools, crumbling roads, and bridges.” That’s double what the Democratic Party leadership asks for in its “Better Deal” package of reforms. The CPC budget also provides money for worker re-training and apprenticeship programs to help workers transition to new green jobs.

But, will Democratic Party leaders embrace this brick-and-mortar economic justice package, which could boost employment and wages for millions while bolstering the nation’s healthcare, education and infrastructure and expanding green jobs to mitigate climate crisis? And, crucially, how will Democrats hash out overlapping agendas in the People’s Budget and the newly ascendant Green New Deal?

If past is prologue, the CPC budget’s chances of passage are slim even with a Democratic plurality—but the plan can help set the agenda for both the incoming Congress and the 2020 presidential campaign. The CPC budget stepped closer to reality in 2017, gaining 108 Democratic votes but still losing to a “no” coalition of 235 Republicans and 79 Democrats. (Democratic minority leader Nancy Pelosi abstained rather than supporting the measure.)

Meanwhile, a resurgent Green New Deal is picking up steam in the House, with 19 members of Congress now backing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s proposal for a select committee to craft a full Green New Deal plan by 2020. The committee would, according to Ocasio-Cortez’s website, “have authority to develop a detailed national, industrial, economic mobilization plan…for the transition of the United States economy to become carbon neutral and to significantly draw down and capture greenhouse gases from the atmosphere and oceans.”  

Both of these measures offer a proactive alternative often lacking on the Left—a brass-tacks vision for generating clean, green living-wage jobs, especially in areas reliant on fossil fuel production to maintain local and regional economies. As these parallel efforts move forward, they offer a unique opportunity for coalition-building around a concrete and urgent agenda. It remains to be seen whether the emerging legislation will be fused together in some fashion, or proposed separately.

Economic Equity

While Trump and the Republicans press on with head-burying climate denialism, the People’s Budget provides a forthright reckoning with reality with its mix of green jobs, infrastructure improvements, race and gender employment equity,  and economic redistribution.          

When it comes to transformative policy changes, the 2018 People’s Budget would:

Close tax loopholes and end subsidies to oil, gas and coal companies

Place a price on “corporate carbon pollution”

Invest $12.8 billion to “end family homelessness”

Invest $1 trillion in early learning and a “child care for all program”

Make debt-free college “a reality for all students”

Enable states to “transition to single-payer health care systems”

As the proposal acknowledges, “Plentiful, dignified jobs are not enough. They must be paired with an agenda that empowers women and communities of color while protecting the planet.” To boost race and gender justice in employment, “job training and local hiring will reflect the racial and gender diversity of the community’s workforce and those seeking employment. Federal procurement will prioritize minority- and women-owned businesses, cooperatives and employee-owned firms, and community-owned and municipal enterprises.”

A Stimulus for the Rest of Us

Some might ask, why push a New Deal-style stimulus when America is sporting an official unemployment rate hovering around 4 percent? For anyone who must work for a living, the answer is clear: Beneath the veneer of official employment numbers lies deep and widespread underemployment and chronically stagnant wages for poor, working- and middle-class people.

While costs for healthcare, education and housing continually skyrocket, wages for most workers are going nowhere. Adjusted for inflation, “today’s average hourly wage has just about the same purchasing power it did in 1978, following a long slide in the 1980s and early 1990s and bumpy, inconsistent growth since then,” according to an analysis by the Pew Research Center.

As CPC executive director Michael Darner explained in an interview, “This political moment is characterized by working families feeling frustrated by stagnant wages and squeezed by costs of education, health care and housing … Because of the structure of the economy, there’s been this break between wages and productivity. The disconnect in the economy between full employment and good jobs, people are working 2 to 3 jobs, and the minimum wage has not kept up.”

Save for the super rich, “to some extent everybody is being impacted” by widening income gaps and stagnant wages that can’t possibly keep pace with out-of-control costs of living. “The sense of economic insecurity, people not being able to save, seems to cover a broad swath of the voting population.”

It’s precisely this breadth of struggle that makes the People’s Budget both necessary and, at least to some degree, viable. In a March 2018 poll of swing districts across the country, significant majorities of likely voters expressed strong support for policies that are part of CPC’s platform. More than two-thirds of these swing voters, 67 percent, support a $2 trillion infrastructure investment; 61 percent support expanding Medicare and social security, with 54 percent endorsing Medicare for All; and 58 percent want to see “wealthy corporations pay their fair share.”

(Continue Reading)

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

May 31, 2023

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

JUN 1, 2023

Tonight the House passed a bill to suspend the debt ceiling for two years, enabling the Treasury to borrow money to prevent a default. More Democrats than Republicans rallied to the measure, with 165 Democrats and 149 Republicans voting in favor, for a final vote of 314 to 117. Seventy-one Republicans and 46 Democrats opposed the bill. Now the measure heads to the Senate. The votes revealed a bitter divide in the Republican Party, as the far-right House Freedom Caucus fervently opposed the measure; Representative Chip Roy (R-TX) for example, called it a “turd sandwich.” Florida governor Ron DeSantis also came out against it, saying it leaves the country “careening toward bankruptcy.” The far right insists the measure does not provide the cuts they demand. Last night’s nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office scoring of the bill offered them ammunition when it said that the additional work requirement imposed on able-bodied people aged 18–54 without dependents to receive food benefits is outweighed by the expansion of those benefits to veterans, unhoused people, and children aging out of foster care. The CBO estimates that the measure will add 78,000 people a month to food assistance programs, adding $2.1 billion in spending over the next ten years. Despite their fury, though, the far right in the House appears to be backing down from challenging Representative Kevin McCarthy’s (R-CA) speakership. Their angry news conferences seem mostly to be performances for their base, and to answer them, McCarthy today said on the Fox News Channel that he was creating a “commission” to “look at” cutting the budget that the president “walled off” from cuts, including the mandatory spending on Medicare and Social Security. But, as Josh Marshall pointed out in Talking Points Memo today, the Republican base no longer seems to care much about fiscal issues. Instead, they are pushing the cultural issues at the heart of illiberal democracy: anti-LGBTQ laws, antiabortion laws, anti-immigration laws. Former president Trump is making those themes central to his reelection campaign. Yesterday he released a video promising that on “Day One” of a new presidential term, he would issue an executive order that would end birthright citizenship. Our current policy that anyone born in the United States is a citizen, he claims, is “based on a historical myth, and a willful misinterpretation of the law by the open borders advocates.” He promises to make “clear to federal agencies that under the correct interpretation of the law, going forward, the future children of illegal aliens will not receive automatic US citizenship.” Trump is picking up an idea from his presidential term that immigrants are flocking to the U.S. as “birth tourists” so their children will have dual citizenship, but the estimate from the immigration-restrictionist Center for Immigration Studies that birth tourism accounts for 26,000 of the approximately 3.7 million births in the U.S. each year has been shown to be wildly high. Trump’s attack on birthright citizenship is an attack on immigration itself, echoing people like Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, who insists that immigration weakens a nation by diluting its native-born people with outsiders. Trump’s attack on the idea of birthright citizenship as a “historical myth” is a perversion of our history. It matters. In the nineteenth century, the United States enshrined in its fundamental law the idea that there would not be different levels of citizenship in this country. Although not honored in practice, that idea, and its place in the law, gave those excluded from it the language and the tools to fight for equality. Over time, they have increasingly expanded those included in it. The Republican Party organized in the 1850s to fight the idea that there should be different classes of Americans based on race—not only Black Americans, but also Irish, Chinese, Mexican, and Indigenous Americans faced discriminatory state laws. Republicans stated explicitly in their 1860 platform that they were “opposed to any change in our naturalization laws or any state legislation by which the rights of citizens hitherto accorded to immigrants from foreign lands shall be abridged or impaired; and in favor of giving a full and efficient protection to the rights of all classes of citizens, whether native or naturalized, both at home and abroad.” In 1868, after the Civil War had ended the legal system of human enslavement, the American people added to the Constitution the Fourteenth Amendment, whose very first sentence reads: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” Congress wrote that sentence to overturn the 1857 Dred Scott v. Sandford decision, in which the Supreme Court ruled that people of African descent “are not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word ‘citizens’ in the Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States.” The Fourteenth Amendment legally made Black men citizens equal to white men. But did it include the children of immigrants? In 1882, during a period of racist hysteria, the Chinese Exclusion Act declared that Chinese immigrants could not become citizens. But what about their children who were born in the United States? Wong Kim Ark was born around 1873, the child of Chinese parents who were merchants in San Francisco. In 1889 he traveled with his parents when they repatriated to China, where he married. He then returned to the U.S., leaving his wife behind, and was readmitted. After another trip to China in 1894, though, customs officials denied him reentry to the U.S. in 1895, claiming he was a Chinese subject because his parents were Chinese. Wong sued, and his lawsuit was the first to climb all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, thanks to the government’s recognition that with the U.S. in the middle of an immigration boom, the question of birthright citizenship must be addressed. In the 1898 U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark decision, the court held by a vote of 6–2 that Wong was a citizen because he was born in the United States. That decision has stood ever since, as a majority of Americans have recognized the principle behind the citizenship clause of the Fourteenth Amendment as the one central to the United States: “that all men are created equal” and that a nation based on that idea draws strength from all of its people. Over time, we have expanded our definition of who is included in that equality. Now the right wing is trying to contract equality again, excluding many of us from its rights and duties. The Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health decision makes women a separate and lesser class of citizen; anti-LGBTQ legislation denigrates sexual minorities. Trump’s attack on birthright citizenship makes that attack on equality explicit, calling equality a “myth” and attempting to enshrine inequality as the only real theme of our history. The concept of equality means we all have equal rights. It also means we all owe an equal allegiance to the country and that we all should be equal before the law, principles the former president has reason to dislike. Today, Katelyn Polantz, Paula Reid, and Kaitlan Collins of CNN broke the story that federal prosecutors have an audio recording of the former president admitting he kept a classified Pentagon document about a potential attack on Iran. The material on the tape, which was recorded at his Bedminster, New Jersey, property and appears to indicate that the document was in his hands, shows that Trump understood he had taken a classified document and that he understood that there were limits to his ability to declassify records. The recording also appears to suggest that at least one of the documents Trump took when he left office had enormous monetary value. As former Senior Foreign Service member Luis Moreno tweeted: “You can bet that if the TS/SCI dox involved military action against Iran, there would be a couple of countries willing to pay a king’s ransom for it.”

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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[digitalsomnath]

The brief connection of the Black History Month and Social Security

For Black ladies, Social Security is a basic life saver out of neediness. Given their more extended life expectancy and guardian obligations across numerous ages, large numbers of them have an expanded dependence on Social Security during retirement.

By all accounts, Social Security Card may not appear to be a pertinent theme for Black History Month. Yet, it is. Federal retirement aide has furnished Americans with fundamental monetary security for ages of retired people, the handicapped and their families. It has been particularly useful to Black Americans - whose normal income and retirement investment funds are lower than their white partners'.

33% of older Black couples and almost 66% of unmarried Black seniors depend on Social Security for practically the entirety of their month to month pay. It is a bedrock of monetary steadiness. Without Social Security, half of Black Americans would be living in neediness.

Ethnic minorities depend all the more vigorously on Social Security in view of an absence of other pay in retirement. Not many old Black Americans get pay from benefits and resources. White families have multiple times more in normal retirement investment funds than dark families. This is on the grounds that laborers with lower income make some harder memories saving. The normal white man procures $2.7 million over a long period, while the normal Black man acquires $1.8 million. Be that as it may, Social Security is much more vital for Black ladies, who commonly live longer than men and need to extend their monetary assets over a more drawn-out range of years.

Whenever President George.W.Bush attempted to privatize Social Security in 2005, the NAACP, the Congressional Black Caucus, and seniors' promotion gatherings (counting the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare) effectively battled against it. President Bush looked to excuse privatization (partially) by dishonestly asserting that Social Security Card was not a fair arrangement for Black Americans, who don't commonly live as long as other segment gatherings and gather benefits for a more limited timeframe.

"Perceiving the more limited future of minorities is estimable, however setting them further in danger is no arrangement," said Julian Bond, who was Chairman of the NAACP at that point. Bond encouraged President Bush to zero in rather on "the drawn-out issues the framework faces now."

With Social Security's trust reserve projected to become exhausted in 2034, safeguarding the program's monetary respectability is foremost - for Black Americans as well as for all current and future recipients. Rep. John Larson, seat of the House Ways and Means Social Security Subcommittee, has advanced regulation to expand the dissolvability of the program and lift benefits for the weakest retired folks - including widows/single men and those residing near the neediness line.

Maybe the smoothest synopsis of the association between Black History Month and Social Security was written by Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA). "Dark History Month is a bookkeeping and a portrayal of an age's work and pride separating itself in our incredible country," she wrote in 2011. "Government backed retirement, as well, is a bookkeeping and portrayal of our lives spent working, paying into a framework and being compensated for it in our advanced age."

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More than 150 Democratic lawmakers on Thursday launched a group aimed at protecting and expanding social security benefits.. via AutoBlogger.co

[newsfact]

House looks to pass spending and infrastructure bills on Tuesday

House Democrats are aiming to vote on both the infrastructure and social spending bill Tuesday after a week of heated negotiations between warring factions of the party.

“We’re going to pass those two bills you’ve been hearing about. We’re going to pass them. The vote’s been called for Tuesday. We’re gonna take this vote, and we’re going to pass them,” House Majority Whip James Clyburn, D-S.C., said over the weekend.

The renewed push to pass the bills comes after a visit by President Biden to Capitol Hill last week did not result in a vote Thursday, with progressive Democrats withholding support for the Senate-passed infrastructure bill until they can negotiate details of Biden’s social spending plan.

House Majority Whip James Clyburn, Stefani Reynolds/Bloomberg via Getty Images

BIDEN SPENDING BILL LEAVES DEMS AND GOP FRUSTRATED

But some Democrats have expressed optimism that the two sides could be nearing a deal on the roughly $1.75 trillion package.

“That bill is still being worked on literally today. It will be worked on tomorrow. I believe we’re making some progress in making it even stronger than it is,” Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., said during a Sunday appearance on CNN.

But Democrats could run into more obstacles in their own party in the Senate, with Sen. Joe Manchin, D-WVa., taking aim at the party’s progressive wing for attempting to secure his vote on the spending plan before they pass the infrastructure deal.

President Joe Biden (AP Photo/Evan Vucci) (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

“In all my years of public service, I’ve never seen anything like this,” Manchin said in a statement Monday. “The President of the United States has addressed the House Democratic caucus twice to urge action on the bipartisan infrastructure bill. Last week, the Speaker urged the importance of voting and passing the bill before the President took the world stage overseas. And still no action.”

“The political games must stop,” he continued. “Twice now, the House has balked at the opportunity to send the bipartisan infrastructure legislation to the President. As you’ve heard, there are some House Democrats who say they can’t support this infrastructure package until they get my commitment on the reconciliation legislation. It is time to vote the bipartisan infrastructure bill up or down, and go home to explain your decision.”

Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite) (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

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Manchin has lodged various objections to the social spending bill, most notably that it could “irresponsibly” expand social programs and add to “nearly $29 trillion in national debt.” The West Virginia Democrat has also expressed hesitation at the possibility that the bill could hurt “American families suffering from historic inflation.”

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