DEMS 2
918 age of trump
see 116th house
prolly neglected for other nodes
state level midterms
https://www.alternet.org/2022/11/katie-hobbs/
1123
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// nader pro corp?
Working to shut out progressives': Here's how House Democrats blocked AOC from a key committee seat
December 20, 2020
In an early indication of which ideological faction of the Democratic Party will control the policy agenda in the upcoming Congress, a House body tasked with deciding committee assignments overwhelmingly voted Thursday to deny progressive Rep. Alexandria Oca...
an 1020 one might think low density pop rural red states do best, but ND worst?
eight of the 10 states with the highest rates have Republican governors. Kansas and Nevada, which come in eighth and ninth, both have Democratic governors.[[1]](https://www.cepr.net/red-state-governors-still-flunk-testing/#_ftn1) While Democrats also control the legislature in Nevada, the legislature in Kansas is overwhelmingly Republican.
The story is more mixed among the states with the lowest positive rates, with five having Democratic governors and five having Republican governors. However, it is worth noting that all five of the states with Republican governors have legislatures that are controlled by Democrats.
In short, by this measure of efforts at getting the pandemic under control, Democrats seem far more serious than Republicans.
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****
no lnx ya cheap bastard
Los Angeles Times
POLITICS
People live longer in blue states than red; new study points to impact of state policies
States that have pursued more liberal policies in education, environment and civil rights have a longer life expectancy.
States such as California that have pursued more liberal policies in education, environment and civil rights have seen a swifter rise in life expectancy than more conservative states. Above, the California Capitol in Sacramento.(Los Angeles Times)
By NOAM N. LEVEY STAFF WRITER
AUG. 3, 2020
WASHINGTON — Weak environmental protections, safety rules and labor and civil rights protections may be cutting lives short in conservative states and deepening the divide between red and blue states, according to a new study on links between life expectancy and state policy.
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The report, published Tuesday in the health policy journal Milbank Quarterly, finds that states where residents live longest, including California, tend to have much more stringent environmental laws, tougher tobacco and firearms regulations and more protections for workers, minorities and LGBTQ residents.
Since the mid-1980s, the gap among U.S. states in how long their residents live has widened, reversing decades of progress toward greater equality.
One group of states, mostly in the Northeast and the West, have seen average life expectancies rise relatively steadily, placing them on par with the wealthiest nations of Western Europe. Those states tend to have more stringent regulations.
By contrast, the life expectancy in states with more conservative health, labor and social policies — concentrated in the South and Appalachia — have stagnated in recent decades, according to the study, which adds to growing research on health and political disparities between states.
California has among the highest average life expectancies in the country, at 81.3 years. It also had the most liberal policies in the nation in 2014, the most recent year the study analyzed, according to the system the authors developed to rank states.
Although the study’s authors note that they can’t prove that state policies caused the gap in life expectancy, the correlation is a persistent one across multiple states and several decades.
“It’s disheartening to see another example of a missed opportunity by policymakers,” said David Radley, senior scientist at the nonprofit Commonwealth Fund who studies differences in state health policies and the effects on people’s health. Radley was not involved in Milbank report.
[pix Bakersfield, CA., March 4, 2020 - Jenny Morones, 26, of Bakersfield poses for a portrait on Wednesday, March 4, 2020 in Bakersfield, California. Morones is working mother struggling to raise three children on a low income. Morones fled an abusive relationship and though in her twenties, has dealt with health challenges.Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, Morones had health insurance that protected her from financial ruin. (Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)]
Coronavirus widens healthcare divide between red states and blue states
May 25, 2020
The new report may help shape efforts to rethink government policy in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, which has exposed deep structural weaknesses in the U.S. as well as yawning gaps in many state safety nets.
“The overarching conclusion is clear: States that have invested in their populations’ social and economic well-being by enacting more liberal policies over time tend to be the same states that have made considerable gains in life expectancy,” the study’s authors wrote.
Even before the current public health crisis, life expectancy in the U.S. had been declining, setting America apart from most other wealthy nations. That decline has fueled tough questions about domestic policy.
The opioid epidemic, which has had a devastating impact on regions of the country already hit hard by economic stagnation, has been the focus of a lot of the discussion about that shift.
But Syracuse University sociologist Jennifer Karas Montez, the lead author of the new study, said the impact of opioids may be only part of the story.
“When we look at what is happening with life expectancy, the tendency is to focus on individual explanations about what Americans are doing,” she said, noting obesity and smoking behaviors as well as drug use. “But state policies are so important.”
To assess what role these policies may be playing, Montez and other researchers reviewed more than 120 policies enacted by states over the years and assessed whether each policy choice in each state was more liberal or more conservative.
Policies included housing rules such as rent control; health and welfare policies such as Medicaid eligibility and welfare limits; labor protections such as paid sick leave and minimum wages; and civil rights policies such as gender discrimination bans, hate-crime laws and same-sex marriage.
They also looked at state abortion restrictions, tax policy, education spending, immigration rules and gun control laws.
Each state was ranked by how liberal or conservative its policies overall have been, going back to 1970.
The researchers then compared these findings to trends in life expectancy in all 50 states.
Montez said the trends they saw were unmistakable. They also correlated with important points in the nation’s political history.
Through the 1960s and 1970s, for example, state life expectancies generally converged. That trend began to reverse in the mid-1980s, around the same time that a conservative movement, led by President Reagan and mirrored in many state capitols, became ascendant.
The gap between states accelerated further after 2010, when sweeping Republican victories in state elections shifted policies further to the right in many places.
By 2017, residents of the state with the highest life expectancy — Hawaii — were living on average seven years longer than residents of the state with the lowest life expectancy — Mississippi.
By contrast, the gap between the best- and worst-performing states in 1984 was less than five years.
The gap is not only about policy: States where people live longer tend to be wealthier and have better educated populations, for example.
But Montez noted that decisions by state leaders have helped shape those factors.
“States like Connecticutare investing in their population, investing in schools, setting an economic floor for their workers, discouraging behaviors like smoking that kill people,” she explained. “You have other states like Mississippi and Oklahoma that aren’t doing any of this.”
In Connecticut, whose policies have become steadily more liberal over the last half century, life expectancy increased 5.8 years between 1980 and 2017 to 80.7 years.
In Oklahoma, which has become markedly more conservative, life expectancy increased only 2.2 years over the same period, reaching 75.8 years in 2017.
Identifying which state policies may have the most impact on how long people live is difficult, the researchers concede. But the study points to a group of policies that appear to correlate most closely with longer lives.
These include some unsurprising candidates such as tougher environmental laws, which the authors note may protect people from toxic substances. The authors also found a correlation between longer life expectancy and labor policies that increase economic security, such as a minimum wage.
Tougher gun laws appear to track with longer life expectancies, the study notes, as do stricter tobacco controls.
The authors also point to civil rights laws, which they suggest may protect residents from ill health related to persistent stress.
And they found a correlation between longer life expectancy and better access to abortion, which the study notes may reflect other research that has linked abortion restrictions to women’s poverty and ill health.
Noam N. Levey writes about national healthcare policy out of Washington, D.C., for the Los Angeles Times. He covered passage of the 2010 Affordable Care Act and has written extensively about the landmark law and reported on its implementation from around the country. A former investigative and political reporter, he is a Boston native and a graduate of Princeton University. He joined the newspaper in 2003 and has reported from Washington since 2006.
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Senate Democrats debut privacy bill that lets users stop their personal information from being sold
https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/how-democratic-women-drove-the-2018-blue-wave/
amanda m
after
Hillary Clinton lost to a talking yam with criminal tendencies in 2016, a number of people got antsy about the idea that the country was really ready yet to embrace women in politics. But a huge number of Democratic women rejected that narrative and instead decided that the solution was for more women to run for office. The result? A record-setting number of women elected to Congress and a Democratic majority in the House of Representatives.
Journalist Caitlin Moscatello was on the front lines of all this, following a diverse group of female candidates throughout the 2018 campaign. The result is her new book, “See Jane Win: The Inspiring Story of the Women Changing America Politics,” in which she argues there’s no time like the present for women to take a bigger role in politics. Moscatello sat down with me recently in Salon’s New York studio to talk about her book and the lessons of 2018. ...This interview has been edited lightly for length and clarity.
Your book is about 2018, but I want to talk about 2016 first because it’s the necessary backbone here. After Hillary Clinton lost that election, I think a lot of people took away the message that women, at least Democratic women, simply can’t win, that there’s too much sexism, that we’re just not there yet. What did your research in writing this book tell you about that?
Well, in terms of the women who ran in 2018, the 2016 election actually did two things. There was this fear that Hillary Clinton, this extremely qualified woman who had faced tons of misogyny and sexism throughout her political career, but extremely heightened during the 2016 cycle — that she lost. Not only did she lose, but she lost to a man with no political qualifications to speak of, who ran a blatantly sexist and racist campaig...
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an 1019
The revolution is here — Democrats ignore it at their peril
Image via Screengrab.
Written by John Atcheson / Common Dreams October 30, 2019
Despite the yammering by the mainstream media and the neoliberals running the Democratic Party—not to mention Republicans and Fox News—the overwhelming majority of voters support progressive issues on a case-by-case basis, and the majority support the candidates who espouse them. Doubt that? See here, or here, or here, or any poll based the issues, not on political labels that—as a result of a four decades-long branding effort funded by the oligarchy—have ceased to represent any real political perspective.
As for the majority supporting the progressive candidates, Sanders’ and Warren’s combined share of the voters exceeds Biden’s by a factor of two, and both poll far better than Trump.
So you would think that Democrats would embrace progressivism and progressive candidates, but you’d be wrong. Instead, they’re mounting a campaign against them with misinformation, distortion, innuendo, and that old time favorite—fear.
Neoliberal centrists and their allies in the mainstream media are using three main arguments in their combined assault on progressives.
First, they say we can’t afford the programs progressives are advocating.
The two programs neoliberals most love to criticize as too costly are The Green New Deal and Medicare for All.
The notion that we can’t afford the Green New Deal is as ludicrous as it is dangerous. If temperatures are allowed to increase by 3.7 C—about what full implementation of the Paris Agreement would accomplish, and about what the centrists are pushing—climate change would still impose some $551 trillion in damages. So-called moderates are essentially saying we can’t afford to prevent $551 trillion in damages. This is madness, pure and simple, and there’s nothing “moderate” about it, with climate change already causing unprecedented flooding, wildfires, droughts, storms and heat waves.
In essence, the moderates are trying to portray policies allowing for the destruction of our planetary life support system as prudent. The one thing science and reality is telling us is that climate change is here, now, and it will get worse far sooner than we’d previously predicted.
With the cost of renewable energy now less than fossil fuels in most cases, and with electric vehicles being as cheap as internal combustion cars, solutions are not only available, they’re cost effective. Combined with aggressive tree-planting and land management, we could dramatically cut carbon in the near term, at relatively little cost.
But somehow, avoiding $551 trillion in damages while working to assure the transition to clean energy creates jobs and prosperity isn’t “prudent” to moderates.
How about Medicare for All? Well, as Stephen Marks showed in a recent article, it’s pretty easy to pay for it without imposing additional costs on low and middle-income Americans. In fact, the cuts Marks outlined came up with a surplus after paying for Medicare for all. Marks’ approach involved expanding the payroll tax above the current cap, and applying it to capital gains. Others have shown how a more rational defense budget could make us safer while freeing up substantial amounts of money for M4A. By the way, if you doubt that we can safely cut our Defense budget, consider this: the US currently has military troops in 138 nations, or about 70 percent of the countries in the world, and it’s spending hundreds of billions on weapons even the military says it doesn’t want. We don’t have a Department of Defense, we’re funding a Department of Offense.
The point is, by cutting costs, taxing the wealthy and corporations at levels they’ve historically been taxed, and adjusting bloated budgets for defense, there are many ways we could fund M4A without impacting the poor and middle class.
At the end of the day, the reason progressive policies such as free tuition, M4A, and the GND are portrayed as unaffordable is because the vast majority of income and wealth in this country now goes to the ultra-rich, who have a lower tax rate than the rest of Americans. And the so-called centrists want to keep it that way, even if it means 30 million Americans go without medical insurance, and the planet withers in a life-threatening permanent heat wave.
Second, they say the way to win is to get some centrists back from Trump. No. Real centrists are a rare breed, and pinning your hopes on getting a few to switch sides will be futile, for two reasons.
First, they’re not about to go from Trump to an elitist neoliberal who calls him or herself a moderate. It was the policies and the hypocrisy of the neoliberals that drove them to Trump in the first place. He’s their protest vote; their Molotov cocktail tossed in the face of Democrats who promised the moon around election time, then represented Wall Street, corporations, the ultra-rich and big banks the rest of the time. The fact is, Sanders and Warren are more likely to win back a few disgruntled centrists precisely because they understand this and back policies that matter to the people.
Second, there’s simply not enough of them. If you add up left-leaning Independents and Democrats they equal about 48 percent of the electorate, while right-leaning Independents and Republicans add up to 39 percent of the electorate. Real centrists comprise only about 7 percent.
The real key to victory in electoral politics is the no shows. And with the majority of people holding progressive views, the way to get no-shows to show is not to back centrist policies, it’s to run on values that favor the people, and that are supported by the majority of Americans.
But this brings us to the next shibboleth raised by neoliberals and centrists.
Third, they say that progressives need to focus—they are all over the place, and that’s not how change happens. Here, Democrats need to take a lesson from Republicans, who managed a sweeping change in our national political dialogue in a few short decades.
They did it by focusing on values and principles (albeit ones that favored only the rich and powerful for the most part), not specific policies.
As Kevin Drum put it:
Every American over the age of ten knows what the GOP and the conservative movement stand for. Sing it with me now: low taxes, small government, strong defense, traditional families. See? You know the tune, and the harmony line, too…Everybody knows what the conservative brand stands for, because the conservative leadership has spent four decades nurturing a consistent brand identity for themselves.
And it delivered results.
If you go back to the early sixties, about half the people identified as Democrat, and only about a quarter Republican. At the same time, about 80 percent trusted government to do the right thing most of the time. Today, only about 17 percent do, and only 3 percent believe government “does what’s right” just about always, and Democrats make up only about 31 percent of the voters.
Today’s neoliberal Democrat is ideologically closer to yesterday’s Republican, and Republicans? Well, they’re the new know-nothing party, immune to facts, impermeable to truth, and consumed by hate, fear, greed, anger, xenophobia and racism.
That’s change. That’s a virtual revolution. And the failure of Democrats to confront the Republican narrative by embracing values that put people first explains a big part of why their party has shrunk by 40 percent over the past five decades.
Wait, did someone say revolution? Isn’t that exactly what Sanders has been calling for? In fact, he’s already started it. Back in 2015 when he was advocating Medicare for All, the press ridiculed him and said America wasn’t ready for “happy dreams.” Today, the majority of Americans favor it, as well as the GND, free tuition, a $15 minimum wage, sane gun laws, a repeal of Trump’s tax cuts for the rich, overturning Citizen’s United and getting money out of politics and a host of other “socialist” priorities.
The Revolution, it seems, is here. Democrats ignore it at their peril.
John Atcheson is author of the novel, A Being Darkly Wise, and a book on our fractured political landscape entitled, WTF, America? How the US Went Off the Rails and How to Get It Back On Track, both available from Amazon. Follow him on Twitter @john_atcheson
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http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/jim-bakker-the-left-is-under-massive-demon-possession/
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https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/democrats-make-a-huge-mistake-by-abandoning-their-farm-labor-roots-and-risk-empowering-fascism/
no lnx
Democrats make a huge mistake by abandoning their farm-labor roots — and risk empowering fascism
Written by Martin Longman / Washington Monthly September 20, 2019
In most circumstances, it’s a sign of health and success if the members of an organization are flourishing financially. It means they’re producing a product or service that people want and they have a solid and profitable process. People are buying their cars. The mutual fund is getting great returns. The movie studio is making hit films. The toy company is making popular games. The doctor’s office is adding many new clients. The law firm is winning big cases.
Yet, we’re all familiar with the story of the wealthy and successful person who gives it all up to live a simpler life. The popular 1980’s sitcom Newhart was an extended dream a Chicago psychologist had about moving to Vermont to be an innkeeper. There have been many movies and books with the same theme. There are now countless detective shows premised on the city cop moving to a small town in the hope of having a safer and lower pressure job. Another popular theme is the Wall Street trader who has a midlife crisis and takes a job serving the people, often as a teacher. People recognize the obvious moral of these stories, which is that life is about more than the rat race and it’s nobler to look after the needy than it is to spend your life working on ways to separate them from their money.
Real life isn’t bifurcated in this way between soulless strivers and capitalists and virtuous social workers and nuns. But there is a tension between these two very real human impulses. In a general sense, right-wing parties emphasize the first and left-wing parties the second. When it comes to the proper role of government, some think it should provide basic safety and the conditions that best allow commerce to thrive. Others believe it should assure that as few people as possible are left behind and that those on the bottom have a decent opportunity to rise to the top. Traditionally, Republicans have been the party for folks at the apex of the capitalist food chain and the Democrats have represented the small farmers and factory workers.
But that is now changing, as we can see in a pair of current articles. Writing for CNBC, John Harwood looks at the results of a new Brookings Institute study:
TheHouse Democratic majority, which represented 39% of the U.S. land area in 2008, now represents just 20%.The House Republican minority 80% of U.S. territory.
That widening red-blue economic divide in turn drives the parties’ starkly different policy agendas. It helps explain why Democrats lavish more attention on education, technology and protecting immigrants, for example, while President Donald Trump and other Republicans place mining, manufacturing and border control on center stage.
That coincides with a sharp increase in incomes and economic output for the constituencies Democrats represent in Congress. Today, the $61,000 median income of blue districts substantially exceeds the $53,000 median income of red ones, reversing the order from 2008.
The average gross domestic product for Democratic districts, near parity with Republican ones in 2008, has grown 50% higher. Output per worker has followed the same pattern…
…The share of professional and digital services jobs in Democratic districts more than doubles the share in Republican districts; a significantly higher proportion in blue areas now holds college degrees. By contrast, Republican districts now boast the lion’s share of work in basic manufacturing, agriculture and mining. They also have a slightly higher proportion of residents age 65 or older – 16.6%, compared to 14.7% in Democratic districts.
The Wall Street Journal tells the same story in infographic form. The Republican Party is morphing into a farmer-worker party, and that’s changing to nature of the Democratic Party too.
One problem here is clear from the fact that I didn’t say that the GOP is becoming a farmer-labor party. They are still hostile to unions and don’t support class-based solidarity at all. Instead, they support race-based solidarity and a cultural unity based on white-dominant traditional small-town values. They seek to hold modest income people together by appealing to their worst instincts rather than their common aspirations. And they have an easier time doing this precisely because they’ve been so successful in undermine organized labor in this country and offshoring manufacturing jobs.
But it’s also easier for them because the Democrats are getting easy pickings from professional and college-educated voters who live mostly in cities and near suburbs. The Democratic Party is changing not only because they are representing more affluent constituents but because they no longer feel the need to represent small farmers or a dwindling manufacturing base.
In 2016, Trump pulled off a miracle election victory by winning this swap. He lost millions of traditional Republican votes in the suburbs but won even more traditional Democratic votes in small towns and rural areas. The trade didn’t benefit him on the whole. He lost the popular vote by a good margin. But it helped him win in enough Rust Belt states to take the Electoral College.
But I am less concerned about election results than the culture of the country. When I talk about fascism, I don’t typically have in mind death camps like Auschwitz. That’s the extreme. Fascism arises when the right wins the support of working people based on a resentment-based solidarity. Typically, scapegoats are found to explain why a war was lost or the economy is in the shitter. Normally this involves racial or religious minorities, as well as intellectuals and cultural elites.
Militarism is often a feature, but opposition to immigration and hostility to education are mainstays of fascism. The encouragement of vigilantism and street violence are recurring themes. The sense that the culture is under threat and that people should use any means to fight back is stoked, and in extreme cases results in the formation of politicized paramilitaries or militias.
These factors are glaringly present in our current environment, and I do not believe they will improve if there is no left-wing alternative seeking to unite famers and workers around economic principles that transcend racial or religious differences.
A successful left-wing party in present-day rural America may look quite different from the Democratic Party, but it doesn’t have to pander to people’s prejudices. It should actually exist primarily as an alternative to the familiar fascist impulses we see when workers are under stress. What it would absolutely have to do, though, is put their constituents’ concerns first on their list of priorities.
This isn’t going to happen in the American system because the rules governing our elections force us into a two-party system. The Democrats are going to put the priorities of urban and suburban people first because that is where they get most of their votes. What results is a party that is left-wing in most respects, but only for some people and only in some communities. It’s a trade-off that actually abets the shift to fascism in large parts of America, and that’s very dangerous. Even on the matter of civil rights it is dangerous, because it’s well and good to show a consistent commitment to protecting the vulnerable but if you’re actually part of a process that is putting people at more risk, your votes and rhetoric are not the only consideration. In the end, you have more hate crimes and more race or religious-based violence. Being more reliable about protecting against a threat isn’t necessarily an improvement if the threat keeps increasing.
Aside from these considerations, there’s also a cost for the poor regardless of where they live. Elizebeth Warren just celebrated winning the Working Families Party endorsement over Bernie Sanders. That’s a nice accomplishment, but the Democratic Party is supposed to be the party for working families. Increasingly, it’s not. And it’s not because they are changing into the party for professionals.
These changes often seem inexorable to me—driven by changes that are outside of the control of party strategists. There’s a yin and a yang to it, so that changes originating mostly in the right are molding the left into something equally unrecognizable. What concerns me is that people don’t focus enough on what this means for our people and their representation.
I don’t believe we explain much by using terms like “polarization” and “division.” Forces are driving us apart and they have a compounding effect. When we’re repelled by the worst behavior from white rural America, we respond in ways that accelerates our mutual alienation. And that makes them even more isolated and reliant on right-wing solutions and points of view.
I don’t think any community of any makeup or size can be healthy without a left-wing party fighting hard to represent them. And I think there’s an unacceptable risk to sitting back and doing nothing while a fascist movement takes hold of one of our two major political parties.
Martin Longman is the web editor for the Washington Monthly. See all his writing at ProgressPond.com.
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opensecrets
democrats’ rejection of fossil fuel money marks shift from previous presidential races
The oil and gas industry has always favored Republican candidates over their Democratic opponents. Now, Democrats are pledging to break away from fossil fuel money for good. As climate change takes center stage at political debates, a Democrat-controlled House is pushing for legislation to combat the crisis and reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. **Read More**
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dem pledge no FF $ then cave 180, now 5/19
https://www.alternet.org/2019/05/beto-orourke-signs-no-fossil-fuel-money-pledge-after-weeks-of-pressure/
https://thinkprogress.org/republicans-house-climate-change-committee-action-green-new-deal-graves-mcconnell-3e29225decee/
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One of these 4 western governors could become America's next Democratic president By Ronald L. Feinman, History News Network Democrats are keeping an eye on John Hickenlooper, Stephen Bullock, Jay Inslee, and Gavin Newsom READ MORE» |
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red state: AN
...Who are these newly activated Democrats? For starters, they are not people who voted for Trump in 2016. None of the Democrats I met during my time in the Sixth District were able to relay anything more than whispers about Trump voters who had regrets. The Republicans who they did introduce me to—the region’s relative moderates—stood by the president.
“I’ve never had an experience where there was a strong Trump supporter who said, ‘I’ve seen the error of my ways,’ ” said Thea Litchfield Campbell, the co-chair of the Rockingham County Democratic Committee. “There was no confessional moment.”
Studies suggest that there may be few confessions anywhere. In March, a FiveThirtyEight-commissioned survey found that even 58 percent of “reluctant” Trump voters, a fifth of his 2016 coalition, have no regrets, and that this group’s impression of the president had gradually improved over the past ten months. An August 2018 study by Pew indicates that Trump voters feel almost exactly the same way about the president as they did in November 2016—that is, generally positive. This is especially true in areas such as Virginia’s Sixth. Unlike the many Rust Belt converts who opted for Trump out of a sense of economic malaise, Shenandoah Valley’s evangelicals appear to have voted for the president in hopes of advancing a socially conservative agenda—particularly with regards to abortion. By appointing conservative judges, Trump has delivered.
Indeed, it was telling that most of the rural Democrats I interviewed seemed just as baffled by Trump supporters as urban progressives are. “I don’t understand them, and I’m mad at them,” said Derek Goebel, a fifty-three-year-old native of Page County, where more than 70 percent of people voted for Trump. “They’re not pro-life, because people are dying every day. We’re destroying people’s lives, ripping children from their parents’ arms, and we’re destroying the environment.”
So then who are these newly active liberals? Some, including Goebel, are people who typically vote Democratic but were motivated by Trump to become more outwardly involved. Samuel Halpern, 68, of Page County Indivisible, is a good example. Halpern first heard about Indivisible—a national progressive network set up in the immediate aftermath of the 2016 election to “defeat the Trump agenda”—in January 2017 while attending an open-door session held by the staff of Goodlatte, the retiring incumbent. Halpern was expecting a handful of other attendees. Instead, there were thirty-five. Virtually all of them, Halpern said, were “irate and concerned” about the direction of the country. Many of the other attendees were talking about Indivisible, still a relatively new organization. Halpern started helping Page Indivisible, a local group inspired by the national entity, organize. The Page group now has roughly 100 members, a surprisingly large number in a deeply conservative county with 24,000 residents.
...
NEW
11/18
Nearly three-quarters of the American public and a historic number of Democratic lawmakers support Medicare for All, but the House Democratic leadership is considering using its newly won majority to impose a rule that would "recklessly betray" the grassroots forces that put them in power by making single-payer and other progressive priorities impossible to enact.
"Equating support for middle-class families—with opposition to increasing their tax rates—is a conservative project, which Democrats have no business advancing."
—Eric Levitz, New York Magazine
According to a list of Democratic proposals obtained by the Washington Post, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.)—who is currently fighting backagainst efforts to prevent her from becoming House Speaker—is pushing for a rule that would "require a three-fifths supermajority to raise individual income taxes on the lowest-earning 80 percent of taxpayers."
In response, MoveOn.org called the proposal "a staggeringly bad idea."
Though the proposed rule is framed as an effort to protect the financial well-being of middle class Americans, Eric Levitz of New York Magazine pointed out that "while progressives are committed to increasing the discretionary income of the bottom 80 percent, that does not necessarily mean keeping their tax rates frozen at historically low levels."
"A bill that required those households to pay a new, smaller monthly sum to the government—so as to fund a single-payer system that would actually reduce their cost of living by delivering radically cheaper healthcare services—could hardly be called regressive," Levitz notes. "And the same can be said for legislation establishing universal child care, paid family leave, or any other program aimed at easing the middle class's financial burdens."
"Equating support for middle-class families—with opposition to increasing their tax rates—is a conservative project, which Democrats have no business advancing," Levitz added. "If the party wishes to establish structural barriers to policies that would hurt the middle class, why not require a three-fifths majority to cut Medicaid, Medicare, or Social Security?"
Combined with Pelosi's expressed committment to reviving the "economically illiterate" pay-go rule—which would require that all new spending be offset by spending cuts or tax hikes—the proposed tax restriction would completely undercut Medicare for All, free public college, a federal jobs program, and other ambitious left-wing policies by dramatically restricting the party's ability to raise revenue and effectively handing Republicans the power to block progressive legislation.
"It would be a profound mistake for House Democrats to retake Congress with dozens of candidates who ran on Medicare for All and then pass an absurd, right-wing framed rule that would actively prevent us from taking action on it."
—Democracy for America
"This is disastrous policy and messaging," argued Richard Phillips, senior tax policy analyst for the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP).
The proposed rule, Phillips added, would constrain "revenue that can be generated for many of the kind of bold investments we need to be making in terms of healthcare, education, infrastructure, etc."
Progressive advocacy groups and experts registered their outrage at Pelosi's rule proposal on social media on Friday, with economist Stephanie Kelton warning that the Democratic leader's measure would completely "kneecap the progressive agenda."
"This is a very bad idea, House Democrats," CREDO Mobile declared. "It makes no sense whatsoever to give Republicans veto power over progressive legislation."
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11/18 icn
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/08112018/election-2018-governor-states-renewable-clean-energy-solar-wind-winner-legislature-trifecta
Seven Republican-led states voted for Democratic governors this week in an election that could shift the landscape for climate and clean energy policies, especially in the increasing number of states where Democrats will also dominate the legislature.
In 14 states, Democrats will have a "trifecta"of the governor's office and control of both houses of the legislatures, with Colorado, Illinois, New Mexico, Nevada, Maine and New Yorkjoining eight others.Illinois, Kansas, Michigan, New Mexico, Nevada, Maine and Wisconsin are all switching from Republican to Democratic governors.
That broadens the list of states where ambitious clean energy standards, carbon-reduction initiatives and other climate policies are likely more politically viable than before, environmental advocates say. It also is likely to strengthen state-level opposition to the Trump administration's moves to weaken pollution controls.
"We know that governors are the ones who make decisions on how the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act and other environmental safeguards promulgated by the EPA (federal Environmental Protection Agency) are enforced," said Kevin Curtis, executive director of the Natural Resources Defense Council Action Fund, its political arm. "Does a coal plant stay on line, or is it replaced with clean energy? Governors have a tremendous voice in that question. Do we invest in new fossil fuel infrastructure or do we transition to clean energy? Governors have a big voice in that."
The six states that are gaining Democratic trifectas may be the first places where renewable energy agendas advance, said Gene Karpinski, president of the League of Conservation Voters. That happened this year in New Jersey, a trifecta state where Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy has signed several clean energy-related bills and orders since taking office in January.
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11/18 whoohoo subpoena power zinke
Climate Change Committee Likely to Be Revived by Democratic House
Back in 2010, jeggings were the hot new fashion trend, the world learned to loathe vuvuzelas and the U.S. House of Representatives had a climate change committee.
Now that the Democrats have retaken the House, one of those things is coming back. In an interview with The New York Times Wednesday, House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi laid out the party's plans for the next two years, including resurrecting the committee:
Ms. Pelosi said that she would urge her caucus to revive a select committee focused on climate change, similar to the one that Democrats financed from 2007 to early 2011, to "prepare the way with evidence" for energy conservation and other climate change mitigation legislation. Republicans defunded the panel when they took the majority, but Ms. Pelosi said it was clearly still needed to educate the public about the impact of more frequent extreme weather events.
Senior Democratic aides confirmed the plan to Bloomberg News Thursday, but asked not to be named before an official announcement is made.
The former Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming could not propose legislation, but it could call hearings to raise awareness about the impacts of climate change and the development of renewable energy. That information helped the House develop a cap-and-trade bill that it passed in 2009, though the bill ultimately failed in the Senate.
A resurrected climate change committee could focus attention on the results of the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report warning policy makers that they have 12 years to rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions in order to halt warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius above industrial levels.
It would also be a way for Democrats to highlight President Donald Trump's refusal to seriously address climate change as they prepare for the 2020 elections. As Quartz explained, climate change is a growing priority for voters:
Not only are more Americans worried about climate change than ever before, for the first time, a significant portion of the electorate rates climate change as a top issue. In 2016, climate change was the sixth most important issue for liberal Democrats, according to Yale and George Mason University, while today it's their fourth most important issue. It may be higher still. A recent Marist poll found that, among all Democrats, climate change is the second most important issue, trailing only health care. And it's not just Democrats. In particularly vulnerable parts of the country, like Florida, Republicans are worried too.
But Trump has not acted like the issue matters, promising to withdraw from the Paris agreement, rolling back Obama-era regulations of greenhouse gas emissions and dismissing the most recent IPCC report by asking, "Who drew it?"
With Florida, a key swing state, beset by both nuisance flooding and increasingly intense hurricanes, this attitude may come back to bite him in two years if Democrats keep bringing it up.
"[T]he select committee can have as many messaging hearings as their little hearts desire," to "address wildfires, hurricanes and sea level rise," Anna Burhop, an environmental policy expert with Bracewell LLP, told Bloomberg News.
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https://www.alternet.org/what-we-know-about-donald-trumps-2020-opponent-top-democrats-evaluate-their-bench
Any woman who throws her hat into the ring will certainly have an advantage, as opinion poll analysis site FiveThirtyEight pointed out in August, "all else being equal, being a woman has been worth an additional 10 percentage points over being a man in the open Democratic primaries we looked at."
Non-politicians who throw their hats into the ring may also have an edge, since Donald Trump's election in 2016 marked the first time that an American was elevated to the presidency without any political or military experience.
In terms of certainties about who the Democrats will field against Trump (or Pence) in 2020, this is pretty much the sum of what we know for sure. Sure, we also know that Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and former Vice President Joe Biden are the frontrunners in the latest polls, but that doesn't mean very much considering that they're also the two candidates with the most name recognition. They also have an age problem: If elected, both men would be in their late 70s when starting office and in their 80s through most of their terms.
Yet does the Democratic Party has an unrecognized star waiting on its bench, someone with the personal charm of a Biden and the inspiring vision of a Sanders? When you take those names and those of the third candidate to consistently do well in national polls, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts (who will also be in her 70s by 2020), off of the list, you are left with a parade of obscurities: Sens. Kamala Harris of California, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Cory Booker of New Jersey and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota; Gov. Steve Bullock of Montana and former Gov. Deval Patrick of Massachusetts; and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, to name just a few.
Is there something wrong with the current Democratic field? Considering that polls at this stage usually reflect the eventual choices of the electorate, is it ominous that the only viable options are septuagenarians and that the rest are enigmas to the general public?
I think the real question needs to be this: What should Democratic primary voters be looking for in 2020?
"I think there'll be a premium on people that have some real proven chops when it comes to governance, solving problems, being creative, and tough-minded," Will Marshall, president and founder of the center-left think tank the Progressive Policy Institute, told Salon. "So that's one qualification that I think will be… voters who have it in the back of their minds. But the most important is for an inspiring theory of change, and big change. People are not looking for incrementalism, as Washington plays the game. For the split, the different solutions as the choices are framed in Washington. I think they're looking for outside of the box thinking cliché, but they're looking for something fresh and original and big, big change."
Former Gov. Martin O'Malley of Maryland, a Democrat who remained a third option along with Sanders and Hillary Clinton in the 2016 primaries (and a rumored contender for 2020), expressed a similar thought, at least when it came to focusing on a vision for the future.
"The next successful candidate for president from our party in 2020 needs to be able to articulate and put forward a credible story as to how America wins this third industrial revolution," O'Malley told Salon. "In other words, how we take advantage of the tremendous assets we have in this time of fast change to make sure that our children are winners in this big economic change and not losers. The great fear still gripping our country, even with low unemployment, is that everybody's working harder but we're not getting ahead, and most people are worried that we won't be able to give our kids a better life than we had. And that's we need to address, straight up and head on."
O'Malley also drew from his own experience during the 2016 cycle — particularly being shortchanged during the presidential debates between himself, Clinton and Sanders — to remind the Democratic Party leadership about the importance of giving all of the candidate a voice, so that the voters can have the most thorough possible range of options.
"I think there's a lot of people in our party who are excited by the promise of being able to actually have an open and fair debate and actually being able to evaluate and hear from new voices. So I think at the end of the day, that will be a very good thing for our party," O'Malley explained. "This is an aberrational presidency and it's a very strange time in the evolution of our democracy. What people have beaten over the heads with 24/7 for the last few years is Donald Trump morning, noon and night. So it's understandable that in that atmosphere that these newer voices are not being heard. But I believe in due course that they will be and I hope the party will learn from its mistakes in the past and have more debates and have them frequently so people can see and decide."
Gov. John Hickenlooper, the center-left governor of Colorado and another possible contender for 2020, emphasized that the next Democratic candidate needs to strike a balance between appealing to the left and speaking to Americans whose careers depend on policies that won't alienate the business community.
"They have to understand business," Hickenlooper explained. "They don’t necessarily have to be an entrepreneur or worked in restaurants or any of that stuff. They have to understand business. I think they have to be able to demonstrate that their concern includes everyone. That they’re really invested and have been invested in creating opportunities for everyone."
Hickenlooper also emphasized that the government needs to own up to its past negligence — namely, in not looking out for Americans who have been economically left behind.
"I think that the economy is going to be a big issue for the people, obviously in the midterms but I think also in 2020," Hickenlooper said. "I think we left a lot of people behind. In the 1990s when globalization took place, we outsourced so many of our businesses. Our corporations outsourced so many jobs that whole profession disappeared. People who got laid off, we gave them a little kit on how to write a resume. We told them to make five phone calls a week and they could get their own employment for six months. That was pretty much all we did. That was government malpractice."
One of the biggest flaws of Clinton's 2016 campaign is that, regardless of whether you believe she was treated unfairly, millions of Americans wound up believing that she didn't speak to their concerns. If Democrats are going to pick a successful nominee in 2020, they'll need to focus not just on who that candidate will be, but on how that candidate will communicate a positive vision that can energize their party's base while converting independent voters. That candidate could be a frontrunner like Sanders, Biden and Warren, or it could be a dark horse like O'Malley and Hickenlooper.
Regardless of who is selected, however, the acid test will be presenting the American people with a positive alternative rather than simply being the anti-Trump candidate.
ith the nation's attention rightly transfixed by the Senate GOP's monstrous efforts to ram through a Supreme Court nominee who has been credibly accused by multiple women of sexual assault, House Republicans on Friday voted overwhelmingly to approve another $3 trillion in tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans just weeks before the November midterms.
"In less than a year, House Republicans have handed out trillions of tax cuts for the wealthy and big corporations. Now, middle class families are on the hook for higher healthcare costs, and Medicare and Social Security on the chopping block."
—Rep. Richard Neal
"Today the GOP doubled down on last year's giveaway to the donor class known as the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act," Morris Pearl, chair of the Patriotic Millionaires, said in a statement following the 220-191 vote. "Tax Cuts 2.0 gives nearly $3 trillion to the wealthiest Americans, and will become yet another excuse for Republicans to slash Medicare and Social Security."
"In less than a year, House Republicans have handed out trillions of tax cuts for the wealthy and big corporations," added Rep. Richard Neal (D-Mass.), ranking member of the House Ways and Means Committee. "Now, middle class families are on the hook for higher healthcare costs, and Medicare and Social Security on the chopping block."
Three Democrats—Reps. Conor Lamb (Penn.), Jacky Rosen (Nev.), and Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.)—voted for the GOP-crafted measure, which would permanently extend the individual tax cuts under the current Republican tax law.
According to the an analysis by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center (TPC), the House GOP's measure—which progressive critics have denounced as "Tax Scam 2.0"—would send the vast majority of benefits to the very top.
"The richest one percent of filers would see an average tax cut of $40,000, while those in the middle 20 percent of earners would see an average cut of $980," the Washington Post noted in a summary of TPC's findings.
"The American people are already paying too high a price for the GOP's blatant disregard for our families and our economy," Ryan Thomas of the Not One Penny coalition said in a statement on Friday. "This is yet another shameful tax law that would swindle working families and siphon even more funding from the programs that help our communities thrive—all in order to give more tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires and wealthy corporations."
"Today's vote is yet another call for us to end the culture of corruption endemic in the Republican Party," Thomas concluded. "The GOP believes they can continue to put the wants of the wealthiest people and corporations above the needs of the American people—but the American people are watching and we will hold them accountable."
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