text:
REALITY IS THE STATE OF THINGS AS THEY ACTUALLY EXIST
Corporate Criminals
Slavery 21st Century
Gestapo USA
GOP Politics
Demo Politics
Race Matters
Amerikkkans
Worthless Media
Weird Things
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First Americans
TO COMMENT CLICK HERE
The great tragedy of the moment is not rooted in the Republican Party's self-cannibalization. It's with a Democratic Party that "successfully" suffocated responsible answers to the crises consuming our world. Indeed, as Hillary Clinton's selection of the milque toast Tim Kaine as her vice president shows, the Dems have put forward a candidate who embodies an establishment widely recognized as having betrayed the majority of the American public.
alan minsky ~ Common Dreams
The Democratic Party has let people down in every way.
It is a liberalism of the rich, it has failed the middle class, and now it has failed on its own terms of electability. Enough with these comfortable Democrats and their cozy Washington system. Enough with Clintonism and its prideful air of professional-class virtue. Enough!
thomas frank
How Bipartisan Economic Policy Fuels White Working Class Support for Trump
Historian Gerald Horne
 I think it's been a bipartisan policy. As we've already discussed, if you look at corporations fleeing abroad, particularly manufacturing plants, that's been a bipartisan policy, assisted not only by Bill Clinton but by the GOP majorities in Congress. If you look at the so-called Trans-Pacific Partnership, which President Obama is pushing right now and may actually pass [incompr.] lame-duck session in December, that will receive a significant percentage of Republican Party votes. It will receive a goodly number of Democratic Party votes as well.
I think that your steelworker needs to realize that what he needs to do is begin, along with thousands, hopefully millions of others, in building an alternative to the Democrats and the Republicans that will be based and grounded upon propelling working-class interests, be it black or white or brown or whatever. And until we take up that very difficult task, I daresay we'll always be grumbling and we'll always be in trouble.
link to congressional progressive CAUCUS
the only ones in the party who have not soldout
 https://cpc-grijalva.house.gov/
progressive news
*Ocasio-Cortez's revolt against DCCC 'exactly what we need' say progressive Democrats(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Buttigieg's Progressive Early Backers Demand a Refund
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Progressives Rebel as House Hands Trump War Spending Package
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Ocasio-Cortez takes victory lap after Amazon goes to NYC — even after she helped block $3 billion in subsidies(ARTICLE BELOW)
*In These Three Races, the Establishment Fought Hard — and Still Lost
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*A GROUP OF PROGRESSIVE WOMEN JUST LAUNCHED A WORKING-CLASS VERSION OF EMILY'S LIST
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*ILHAN OMAR EXPLAINS WHY SHE ENDORSED BERNIE SANDERS — AND WHY SHE BLAMES MARK ZUCKERBERG FOR ENABLING THREATS AGAINST HER(ARTICLE BELOW)
*SENATE DEMOCRATS' CAMPAIGN ARM IS PRESSURING CONSULTANTS NOT TO WORK WITH LEADING PROGRESSIVE CANDIDATE IN COLORADO(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Progressive group launches $10 million online voter registration drive
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*'Absolutely disastrous': Progressives furious as fellow Democrats push funding cut for health clinics that serve 30 million Americans(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Rep. Ilhan Omar: 'We were sent to Washington to lead with our values'
*Two Groups That Helped Dems Win Back the House Are Joining Forces for 2020
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Ocasio-Cortez joins billionaire Warren Buffet to wage war on overpaid CEO's of failing banks
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Progressives Dismiss DCCC Threats on Primary Challengers
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*OCASIO-CORTEZ TELLS SMALL DONORS TO CUT OFF DCCC DONATIONS, GIVE DIRECTLY TO CANDIDATES INSTEAD
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*PROGRESSIVE CAUCUS SLAMS DCCC HEAD CHERI BUSTOS FOR HER ASSAULT ON PRIMARY CHALLENGERS
*Make sure that vote gets counted': Elizabeth Warren calls for a constitutional amendment to 'get rid of the electoral college'(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Sherrod Brown: End Taxpayer Subsidies for Drug Ads
*Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez raises more than $100,000 after talk of possible primary challenge surfaces
(EXCERPT BELOW)
*ELIZABETH WARREN PROPOSES ANNUAL WEALTH TAX ON ULTRA-MILLIONAIRES
cartoons(at the end)
True Dough - Demo Underground
the fight against corporate democrats!!!
Ocasio-Cortez's revolt against DCCC 'exactly what we need' say progressive Democrats
By Common Dreams - raw story
Congresswoman from New York withholds dues from the party machine and launches a new PAC to help insurgent left-wing candidates.
For bucking a key arm of the Democratic Party establishment that has stood in the way of attracting and supporting progressive candidates, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) received applause over the weekend after she announced the launch of a new political action committee designed to directly challenge the power of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee by helping insurgent, left-leaning challengers like herself take on both Republican incumbents and centrist Democrats.
"The rumors are true," Ocasio-Cortez tweeted Saturday. "Today we're announcing the Courage to Change PAC—and we need your help. We are pushing the envelope in D.C. by rewarding those who reject lobbyist money, fight for working families, and welcome newcomers."
"What we're looking to do is to make sure that progressive candidates and incumbents have the support that they need to back policies that are going to improve the lives of everyday Americans."
—Corbin Trent, Courage to Change PACAccording to the PACs first fundraising push:
When community leaders, activists, and working-class candidates try to run for office, organizations like the DCCC discourage them. These potential progressive leaders are asked: "Can you raise $300,000 from your friends and family? If not, don't bother trying."
We're stuck in this situation because there has been a structural effort to keep people like Alexandria, and people like you, out of power. But today, that changes.
HuffPost's Daniel Marans, the first to report on the new PAC, noted:
Ocasio-Cortez is taking steps to mount an independent political operation capable of rivaling the establishment party organs with which she has jousted. The mere creation of a PAC to support other candidates ― an entity commonly known as a "leadership PAC" ― is typically the type of endeavor limited to members of party leadership or other seasoned members of Congress.
The PAC expands her reach in more tangible ways as well. A PAC allows her to contribute a larger figure to candidates than she otherwise would be able to give. Candidates can give only up to $2,000 a year from their own campaign to another candidate per election cycle, but PACs can contribute up to $5,000 per election cycle. Since the primary and the general elections are considered separate cycles, she can transfer $10,000 to a candidate from the start of a primary to the close of a general election.
The move by the first-term congresswoman, a project rumored to be underway for months, is a bold challenge to the DCCC which angered many progressive lawmakers and activists when it announced last year a blacklist effort against campaign consulting firms and others who worked against its preferred candidates. In addition to launching the new PAC, Ocasio-Cortez is also withholding her annual $250,000 dues to the DCCC and explained why in a Friday afternoon tweet:
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez✔
@AOC
I give quite a bit to fellow Dems - we've fundraised over $300,000 for others (more than my "dues"), w/ over 50% going to swing seats.
DCCC made clear that they will blacklist any org that helps progressive candidates like me. I can choose not to fund that kind of exclusion. https://twitter.com/marisa_schultz/status/1215652173683531776 …
Marisa Schultz
@marisa_schultz
SCOOP: @AOC withholding $250,000 in "dues" from the Democratic party in protest and building her own grassroots fundraising for progressives instead
AOC riles Dems by refusing to pay party dues, bankrolling colleagues' opponents https://fxn.ws/39Q2bzg #FoxNews
12:22 PM - Jan 10, 2020
In an interview with Fox News, Ocasio-Cortez further defended her decision by saying, "I don't see the sense in giving a quarter-million dollars to an organization that has clearly told people like me that we're not welcome."
AOC's efforts to stand up the DCCC was championed by many of her fellow progressives:
Brand New Congress✔
@BrandNew535
🔥🔥The DCCC requires outrageous "dues" while actively undermining primaries and working against grassroots progressive candidates. We've seen it firsthand. @AOC's candor and honesty is exactly what we need to see more of in Congress! #BlueNoMatterWhoWontDo #BrandNewCongress https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1215730737900638208 …
The Washington Post reported Sunday afternoon that Courage to Change had raised more than $150,000 after approximately 24 hours of fundraising, money that would go directly to help progressive House candidates in the 2020 primaries and general election.
"There is a robust infrastructure set up to maintain and defend the Democratic majority, and to support moderate Democrats, and often that infrastructure is running against progressive in blue districts," Corbin Trent, a former staffer for Ocasio-Cortez and now a spokesperson for the new PAC, told the Post. "So what we're looking to do is to make sure that progressive candidates and incumbents have the support that they need to back policies that are going to improve the lives of everyday Americans."
In a tweet on Sunday, Ocasio-Cortez said, "Thank you to everyone contributing to this effort so far—this is a big deal. Help us build a war chest to support progressive red-to-blue seats, bold incumbents, and newcomers to Congress alike."
Buttigieg's Progressive Early Backers Demand a Refund
Julia Conley / Common Dreams - truthdig
DEC 12, 2019
Though they initially viewed South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg as an intriguing and progressive newcomer when he began his presidential campaign early this year, the #RefundPete hashtag began trending Thursday morning on social media as a growing number of former donors started requesting their donations back in the wake of recent revelations about the 2020 Democratic candidate.
Kristen Hill, a volunteer community leader for the presidential primary campaign of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) in North Carolina, was one of the first voters to kick off the viral hashtag #RefundPete.
"If Pete Buttigieg fooled you into thinking he was a progressive at the beginning of his campaign and you donated what he thinks is pocket change, you can ask for a refund by emailing your receipt to info@peteforamerica.com," Hill tweeted.
Kristen Hill
@KristenAbigail
Pro-tip: If @petebuttigieg fooled you into thinking he was a progressive at the beginning of his campaign and you donated what he thinks is pocket change, you can ask for a refund by emailing your receipt to info@peteforamerica.com. #RefundPete
In October, Buttigieg criticized his progressive opponents, Warren and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) for running their campaigns on "pocket change" by accepting mostly small donations of under $200.
Buttigieg has raised 52% of his $50 million campaign dollars through large contributions, and has so far been outraised by both Sanders and Warren.
"Just got my refund from Pete's campaign," wrote one social media user as the #RefundPete hashtag took off. "It was just pocket change so he won't miss it."
Another shared the email they sent to the campaign as the hashtag took off.
"On March 19th of 2019 I made a ten-dollar donation to your campaign," wrote Quinn Rattan. "I was thrilled to donate to him alongside a few other candidates I determined were progressive and trying to restructure our broken political system."
"In the passing months, Mayer Buttigieg has repeatedly run disinformation campaigns about his opponents' plans for improving healthcare and public college…I also found his answer on big money in politics to be borderline disqualifying," Rattan added.
According to testimonials by other former donors, the campaign has agreed to refund requests.
Progressives have denounced the mayor in recent weeks over what many have viewed as his disingenuous attacks on Medicare for All and universal tuition-free public college. Under pressure from progressive critics concerned about his lack of transparency regarding high-dollar fundraisers, Buttigieg finally announced Monday that he'd open the events to reporters.
Buttigieg's increasing attacks on Medicare for All presented a sharp contrast to his early campaign, when he urged the Democratic field to push for bold, far-reaching changes to the U.S. political and economic system. During the Democratic debate in July, he said, "It's time to stop worrying about what the Republicans will say…Let's stand up for the right policy, go up there and defend it."
Buttigieg also said early in the campaign that he was open to packing the Supreme Court and lower courts and abolishing the Electoral College.
But since then, a number of critics have in recent months pointed to Buttigieg's alignment with corporate interests as evidence that he will do little to further progressive goals.
The Progressive Change Campaign Committee highlighted the viral #RefundPete trend on Thursday.
BoldProgressives.org✔
@BoldProgressive
The honeymoon is over. As Mayor Pete comes under increased scrutiny, some don't like what they see and are asking his campaign to refund their contributions. #RefundPete has been trending.
"The honeymoon is over," wrote the committee.
Progressives Rebel as House Hands Trump War Spending Package
BY Mike Ludwig, Truthout
The House voted 377-48 to advance a $738 billion military spending authorization package on Wednesday despite a rebellion among progressive Democrats angered by the loss of provisions that would have curtailed endless wars and put President Trump's most violent foreign policy ambitions in check.
The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) is often described by the dominant media as a "must-pass" piece of legislation glowing with bipartisanship, but this year negotiations were different. Democrats clashed with Republicans over runaway Pentagon spending and provisions meant to prevent President Trump from leading the country into war, raising concerns that the legislation would not pass for the first time in nearly 60 years.
"Given the waste fraud and abuse of the Pentagon, the failure of the Pentagon to pass even a basic audit, and the unnecessary spending, I simply cannot support this bill," said Rep. Barbara Lee, a California Democrat, on the House floor Wednesday.
Lee and 40 other Democrats broke rank and voted against the package, including leading progressives, such as Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Pramila Jayapal, Ilhan Omar, Mark Pocan and Ro Khanna. The 2020 NDAA is larger than the authorization approved by Congress last year, boosting Pentagon spending by an additional $22 billion.
A number of Democrats and advocacy groups are furious over what's not included in this year's NDAA. Provisions to prevent Pentagon money from funding President Trump's border wall, ending U.S. support for Saudi Arabia's bloody campaign in Yemen, and requiring Trump to seek congressional permission before attacking Iran were dropped, along with a longstanding effort to rein in endless wars by repealing a 2002 authorization that greenlighted the war in Iraq. Democrats pledged to reintroduce these measures in separate legislation next year.
While the package funds environmental research and restricts the military's use of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), a class of cancer-causing chemicals that has contaminated military bases and water supplies across the country, strong provisions requiring cleanup and efforts to keep the dangerous chemicals out of drinking water were also left out.
Some Democrats were also enraged about what's in the authorization package. On Tuesday, as Democratic leadership moved toward a vote, two of the party's presidential front-runners came out against the 2020 NDAA. Sen. Bernie Sanders, a longtime critic of foreign wars and heavy military spending, has voted against the NDAA in the past and came out against the latest package. Sen. Elizabeth Warren joined Sanders on Tuesday via tweet, calling the bill "a Christmas present to giant defense contractors" that "undermines our values and security."
"In 2018, a groundswell of Americans came out to the ballot box to elect a Congress that would stand up to the brutal agenda of President Trump and the Republicans," Sanders and Rep. Khanna said in a joint statement Tuesday. "The American people could not have imagined that this Congress would go on to craft legislation that adds tens of billions in new Pentagon spending — more than enough to fund tuition-free public college across America — while placing hardly any limits on this lawless administration."
While vocally critical of military overspending, Warren, who sits on the committee that crafts the package, voted for the NDAA in past years and has used the legislation to direct funding toward military bases in her home state of Massachusetts. This year, Warren is running for president and was under pressure from journalists to take a stand on the NDAA. She slipped 10 points behind Sanders in a major Iowa poll released on Tuesday and is likely eager to peel antiwar voters away from her major opponent on the left.
Meanwhile, President Trump reveled in concessions won from Democrats in the package, including funding for the so-called Space Force, the president's push to expand the Air Force into outer space. The Trump administration is pushing more than 700,000 low-income people off food stamps, but a bipartisan provision that would have increased support for low-income military families that regularly depend on food stamps and food pantries never materialized in the final legislation.
Antiwar critics said Democrats got "completely rolled" in negotiations with Republicans after the Senate stripped the legislation of its progressive measures with the exception of a provision providing parental leave to federal employees, which has little to do with war. Facing constant attacks from Republicans for holding a series of hearings to impeach Trump over the Ukraine scandal, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic leadership are under pressure to avoid logjams of major legislation before holiday recess and year-end deadlines.
"[Democrats] just weren't willing to go to the mat to kill the bill," said Hassan El-Tayyab, a legislative representative for the antiwar Friends Committee on National Legislation, in an interview. "Republicans were ready to kill the bill in the beginning to get whatever they wanted through, so I think they started out on an uneven playing field."
The military spending package faces a final vote in Senate, where the Afghanistan Papers recently released by The Washington Post loom large. Based on confidential interviews with more than 400 experts and insiders of the 18-year-long U.S. war in Afghanistan, the papers detail a secret history that reveals what so many of us suspected all along: The war is a failing, $1 trillion quagmire, and the Pentagon officials consistently worked to deliberately mislead the public about it. The U.S. entered the war to defeat al-Qaeda but has spent years fighting the Taliban, a completely different group.
"What were we actually doing in that country? We went in after 9/11 to defeat Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, but the mission became blurred," one unidentified U.S. official who served as a liaison to NATO is quoted as saying in a government interview uncovered by The Post. "What are our objectives? Nation-building? Women's rights?… It was never fully clear in our own minds what the established goals and timelines were."
From commanders in the field to top White House officials working under both President Bush and President Obama, serious doubts were raised about achieving any level of success in Afghanistan, where the U.S. spent billions of dollars every year fighting vague enemies and attempting to build a stable democracy in a war-torn country. Bush and Obama adopted divergent strategies as another war raged in Iraq, and both failed. Corruption siphoned off huge sums of aid from U.S. taxpayers. The lives of thousands of soldiers and tens of thousands of civilians have been lost.
Yet the war continues, with some 13,000 troops still stationed in Afghanistan. Only Congress has the constitutional power to declare war, and lawmakers are supposed to hold the president and Pentagon to account. They also hold the power of the purse, but year after year, Congress has approved massive military spending in Afghanistan and across the globe in the form of the NDAA and other legislation.
Rep. Adam Smith, the Democratic chair of the House Armed Services Committee, defended bipartisan compromises on the 2020 military spending authorization ahead of the vote on Wednesday. The initial House package passed without a single Republican vote and was promptly then gutted by the GOP-controlled Senate. Smith said Democrats were able to preserve some of their priorities and produce "the most progressive defense bill" in years.
"Throughout the negotiations I failed in one way: I was unable to turn President Trump, Leader McConnell, and Chairman Inhofe into Democrats and convince them to suddenly accept all of the provisions they despise," Smith said in a statement. "Nonetheless, we have accomplished more with this bill than anyone ever thought possible given the realities of a Trump White House and a Republican-controlled Senate, and we should be proud of that."
After years of sitting on the sidelines, Congress began asserting its war authorities as Trump made a series of foreign policy blunders while cozying up to dictators. Earlier this year, Congress passed historic legislation rebuking Trump for selling weapons to the Saudis even as the Saudi coalition stood accused of war crimes for killing thousands of civilians in Yemen. Most recently, the House passed a bipartisan resolution condemning Trump's decision to pull a small number of troops from northern Syria, allowing Turkey to invade a pro-democracy stronghold held by longtime U.S. allies.
Even Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, one of Trump's steadfast defenders, bluntly criticized the president for the move. Deadly violence and a humanitarian crisis erupted in northern Syria despite a "ceasefire" agreement brokered by the U.S. in October. A few weeks later, Trump held a bilateral meeting with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey's authoritarian leader, and emphasized their "friendship."
Leaders in both parties know that voters are fed up with endless war, but agree to spend billions on the military year after year, encouraging the Pentagon's adventurism and worldwide presence. However, with Democrats debating bold proposals such as Medicare for All and free public college tuition, progressives in Congress are making it clear that the money would be better spent at home. Their rebellion in the House makes a point, but there were not nearly enough Democratic votes to challenge the status quo.
Ocasio-Cortez takes victory lap after Amazon goes to NYC — even after she helped block $3 billion in subsidies
Bob Brigham / Raw Story - alternet
 December 7, 2019
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) was one of the progressive leaders in New York City credited with blocking $3 billion in public subsidies for Amazon to open an additional headquarters.
But Amazon is moving into NYC despite the lack of subsidies.
"The giant online retailer said it has signed a new lease for 335,000 square feet on the city's west side in the new Hudson Yards neighborhood, where it will have more than 1,500 employees," The Wall Street Journal reported. "Amazon is taking the space without any of the special tax credits and other inducements the company had been offered to build a new headquarters in the Queens neighborhood of Long Island City, the company said."
"The new lease represents Amazon's largest expansion in New York since it stunned the city by abandoning those earlier plans. Amazon pulled back after facing a backlash from some politicians and activists over the roughly $3 billion in financial incentives the city and state had extended to woo the company and the 25,000 new jobs it had pledged to create," The Journal explained.
Ocasio-Cortez, also known as AOC, took a victory lap after her argument that the subsidies were unnecessary was vindicated.
"Won't you look at that: Amazon is coming to NYC anyway – *without* requiring the public to finance shady deals, helipad handouts for Jeff Bezos, and corporate giveaways," she tweeted.
Won't you look at that: Amazon is coming to NYC anyway - *without* requiring the public to finance shady deals, helipad handouts for Jeff Bezos, & corporate giveaways.
Maybe the Trump admin should focus more on cutting public assistance to billionaires instead of poor families. https://twitter.com/mariateresa1/status/1203080601521336320 …
MARIA TERESA KUMAR✔
@MariaTeresa1
BREAKING: @amazon agrees to open in Hudson Yards in a deal without any financial incentives from New York City or state.
🤔@AOC @votolatino https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-leases-new-manhattan-office-space-less-than-a-year-after-hq2-pullout-11575671243 …
2:47 PM - Dec 6, 2019
In These Three Races, the Establishment Fought Hard — and Still Lost
BY Alexis Goldstein, Truthout
While the November election saw many wins for progressives, a few races remained uncertain: Kshama Sawant, who has fought to tax Amazon in Seattle, Washington; and in San Francisco, California, Chesa Boudin running as a reformist district attorney, and tenants' rights activist Dean Preston running for board supervisor. All three faced fierce opposition from entrenched power. And all three have secured almost-certain victory as of Monday, November 11.
Sawant Wins in Washington
In 2013, Kshama Sawant became the first socialist elected citywide in Seattle in almost a century, since Anna Louise Strong in 1916. Sawant has made her name fighting for and winning $15/hour wages in the city, and pushing for a tax on Amazon to fund affordable housing.
On election night, Sawant trailed by over 8 percent — the same deficit she faced in her 2013 election; both times, she came from behind to win. Washington State's vote by mail process means ballot counting can take many days: as long as a ballot is postmarked on Election Day deadline, it will eventually be tallied. This was especially true where Sawant was running: District 3 saw 57.6 percent turnout, which was almost three points higher than the city-wide turnout. When Sawant's opponent Egan Orion had the lead on election night, he cautioned his supporters, "Kshama has a distinct advantage with those late voters." Orion's warning proved prescient. As of Friday night, Sawant had climbed 12 points to lead Orion by over 3 percent, standing at 51.6 percent to Orin's nearly 48 percent.
Sawant is widely expected to emerge victorious, as her lead stands at 1,515 votes with only an estimated 1,000 uncounted ballots. Sawant declared victory on Friday, November 9, in front of a giant red banner reading "Tax Amazon." When she is inaugurated next year, she'll be the senior-most elected official in Seattle's city hall.
Sawant was re-elected despite Amazon's best efforts to unseat her. Amazon poured $1.45 million into the race, giving to a PAC run by the Seattle Chamber of Commerce called the Civic Alliance for a Sound Economy (CASE). This was a giant increase for Amazon, who four years prior donated just $25,000 to the PAC. The company's increased spending came after a May 2018 "head tax," which would have taxed businesses with at least $20 million in annual revenue up to $275 per employee, per year. The tax was projected to raise $45 million for affordable housing and it unanimously passed the council. Amazon, together with Starbucks, launched an all-out assault on the tax, funding a campaign to call a referendum to repeal the tax. Just a month later, the council voted 7-2 to repeal the tax. Only Sawant and at-large councilmember Teresa Mosqueda (who was not up for re-election this cycle) voted against the repeal. More than $443,000 of the $1.45 million Amazon gave to the CASE PAC was spent to help elect Orion.
But just as billionaires complaining about Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders leads to grassroots donations for both, Amazon opposing Sawant and other progressive candidates may have actually helped secure their victories. Sawant initially was not endorsed by two of the other progressives on the council, Lorena González and Teresa Mosqueda, who supported a challenger to Sawant in the six-person primary. But once Amazon began to throw its weight around, both councilmembers and the union UFCW 21 endorsed Sawant. Amazon's involvement drew national attention, with Warren condemning it as Amazon "trying to tilt the Seattle City Council elections in their favor," and Sanders tweeting, "Jeff Bezos and Amazon think they can buy elections." In the end, Sawant's opponent Orion blamed Amazon's large contribution for his loss, calling it his "October surprise" and "a great gift to the Sawant team who previous to that clearly saw this race slipping away from them." Amazon's aggressive intervention in the Seattle City Council race appears to have backfired spectacularly, as it wasn't just Sawant who beat Amazon's preferred challenger. The Amazon-supported CASE PAC made endorsements for seven city council seats; all but two of their endorsed candidates lost.
Progressive Victories in San Francisco
Further south, in the Bay Area, Chesa Boudin, the deputy public defender for San Francisco, cinched victory in the race for district attorney on Saturday. Boudin defeated Interim District Attorney Suzy Loftus, who's spent her career in law enforcement roles. Both candidates pledged to end cash bail, but Boudin pledged to increase diversion programs, which offer alternatives to incarceration, while Loftus ended a diversion program for those with first-time driving under the influence charges. Loftus racked up a slew of establishment endorsers, including the California Democratic Party, Gov. Gavin Newsom, and Senators Dianne Feinstein and Kamala Harris. Boudin was endorsed by Philadelphia's reformist District Attorney Larry Krasner, by Bernie Sanders, and by Black Lives Matter co-founders Patrisse Cullors and Alicia Garza. Opposing Boudin was the San Francisco Police Officers Association, which spent over $600,000 on attack ads days before the election, calling Boudin "the #1 choice of criminals and gang members." In the end, though, neither the establishment endorsements nor the scare-mongering by the Police Officers Association was enough to defeat Boudin.
The race was close however, and took four days to declare a winner. That's in part because San Francisco has used ranked-choice voting since 2002, which allows second-choice (and subsequent choice) votes to count. In San Francisco's process, if no candidate receives a majority, the last-place candidate is eliminated, and the second-choice votes for the eliminated candidate are counted; the process is repeated until a majority winner is declared. By Saturday afternoon, Boudin was the winner: 85,950 votes to Loftus's 83,511.
Also in San Francisco, tenants' rights activist and democratic socialist Dean Preston defeated the incumbent District 5 Supervisor Vallie Brown. Preston campaigned on making San Francisco's Muni public transportation system free and building 10,000 new units of public housing over the next 10 years. And Preston pulled no punches in his campaign; when speaking in a June debate, he said, "If you're a rogue landlord we should run you out of town."
Big money went to attacking Preston through independent expenditure committees, including $100,000 from the California Association of Realtors, and $45,000 from a group called Friends and Neighbors in Support of Vallie Brown, which included money sourced from the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and the San Francisco Firefighters Union, as reported by The San Francisco Examiner.
Preston initially trailed by 67 votes, but collected enough second-choice votes to ultimately defeat Brown. Preston is the first Democratic Socialist to be elected to the Board of Supervisors since 1979. Both Boudin and Preston defeated allies of San Francisco Mayor London Breed, and their victories are seen as a shift left that will be an impediment to the mayor's agenda, which includes mixing market-rate with affordable housing.
Whether it's Sawant spoiling Amazon's nearly $1.5 million city council takeover attempt, Boudin overcoming more than half a million in attack ads from a police union, or Preston defying the incumbent San Francisco mayor's preferred candidate, these latest progressive wins are just the latest sign that even with establishment endorsements and buckets of money, progressive messages are powerful enough to pull off unlikely victories.
A GROUP OF PROGRESSIVE WOMEN JUST LAUNCHED A WORKING-CLASS VERSION OF EMILY'S LIST
Aída Chávez - the intercept
November 3 2019, 4:00 a.m.
THIS WEEK, a coalition of more than three dozen progressive women joined forces to launch an organization dedicated to electing women from working-class and low-income backgrounds to Congress. Matriarch, a political action committee, intends to boost grassroots candidates by providing early financial and institutional support to women who aren't independently wealthy or able to raise large amounts of money in short periods of time. The initiative, which is a couple of years in the making, is the latest effort in the progressive movement's work to build an ecosystem in which lesser-known candidates are given the tools to succeed.
Justice Democrats, the group that recruited and helped elect New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, for example, was created to boost insurgents who wanted to challenge corporate Democrats in Congress. And its sister organization launched Movement School earlier this year to train working-class organizers how to work as campaign managers, communications directors, and field directors.
From former elected officials and congressional candidates to labor leaders and political activists, the women behind Matriarch are drawing from their own experiences navigating the political system to help create an infrastructure that supports working women, who often also deal with household and child care responsibilities at the same time as campaigning.
Amy Vilela, who ran an insurgent congressional campaign in Nevada last year and was featured in the Netflix documentary "Knock Down the House," said Matriarch is "going to fill a void" by supporting women who come from disadvantaged backgrounds early in their races, when it matters most. "It's organizations like this that will lift our voices and help us get a seat at the table," said Vilela, who's on the group's advisory board.
Many establishment-aligned organizations, like EMILY's List, which was founded in 1985 to support pro-choice women running for office, consider a candidate's early fundraising or Rolodex of wealthy friends in order to measure their viability. (The "EMILY" in EMILY's List stands for "Early Money Is Like Yeast.")
In addition to discouraging aspiring candidates from running at all, using money as the primary measure of viability also means that the working-class Democrats who jump into a race are beaten back by their wealthier, well-connected opponents. And this process only worsens the vast underrepresentation of working-class people, particularly women, in Congress. A historic number of women ran for office last year, yet women hold roughly 24 percent of all the seats in the 116th Congress. According to estimates by the political news outlet Roll Call, the 115th Congress had a total net worth of at least $2.43 billion; nearly 40 percent of representatives were millionaires.
An EMILY's List endorsement, or lack thereof, can make or break a candidate, as they pump millions of dollars into races each cycle altogether with their super PAC. Matriarch, however, wants to build power differently, endorsing candidates who focus on economic justice and may not have high name recognition but have deep community support.
Nomiki Konst, Matriarch board director and former candidate for New York City public advocate, told The Intercept that they're going to focus on campaigns that are putting in the work but may not have as much momentum yet. As of yesterday, Matriarch had already received at least 1,500 nominations for the 2020 congressional elections, which was "a bit surprising" for it having only been a few days, Konst added. The PAC, which won't be taking any corporate cash, plans on making its first endorsement by January at the latest.
In addition to Konst and Vilela, Matriarch's advisory board members also include Lucy Flores, a former Nevada assemblywoman; Jovanka Beckles, a candidate for California state Assembly last year who was endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America and Sen. Bernie Sanders; Laura Moser, a former congressional candidate from Texas and founder of Daily Action; Christine Pellegrino, a former New York assemblywoman; Sara Nelson, international president of the Association of Flight Attendants; Jane Kleeb, chair of the Nebraska Democratic Party; and economist Stephanie Kelton.
"Our current electoral system works against working people and is biased towards those who are independently wealthy," Beckles said in a statement. "In order to win, candidates must be able to run for office full time."
"Working people most often cannot quit their jobs and are at a disadvantage trying to work and campaign," she continued. "We need systemic change that recognizes that — as designed — the status quo automatically significantly eliminates those that are most affected by these policies."
ILHAN OMAR EXPLAINS WHY SHE ENDORSED BERNIE SANDERS — AND WHY SHE BLAMES MARK ZUCKERBERG FOR ENABLING THREATS AGAINST HER
Akela Lacy - the intercept
October 24 2019, 3:51 a.m.
A LITTLE OVER a year ago, the last time then-congressional candidate Ilhan Omar appeared as a guest on The Intercept's Deconstructed podcast with Mehdi Hasan, she was skeptical that Sen. Bernie Sanders should make a second run for president, instead identifying more closely with Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
Asked last year if she thought Sanders should run for president, Omar said, "I actually believe that ship might have sailed." She would, however, have been excited about a Warren candidacy, she said, explaining that she'd "always thought of [herself] as part of the Warren wing of the party."
But Omar's views have evolved over the past 12 months. She endorsed the independent senator from Vermont last week, and she explained her decision Wednesday night during a live taping of Deconstructed at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.
"Sometimes you have to be reminded about the vision you truly believe in, and where your core values lie," Omar said. "And for me, I know that there are people that have to switch some things around, and there are people that are just easy to believe in. And I was reminded that Bernie is one of the people."
Asked whether she meant that Warren had switched things around, Omar said, "For me."
Most Democrats, she said, belong to the "Warren wing" of the party. "I mean it's the one thing that everybody accuses us of. We think we're the smartest in the room. We are very policy-oriented. We care about the details. And there is that aspect of Warren that is exciting. She has a plan for everything," Omar said. "But there is I think an expansion of what universal values are, and how we should be thinking about what kind of revolutionary ideas this country needs in order for these structural changes that Warren talks about to be implemented. And that person who will carry that out is Bernie."
Later, in response to an audience question, Omar said that some of her Republican colleagues in the House of Representatives should have faced disciplinary action, or possibly arrest, for their disruption of a hearing related to the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump. "It is obnoxious to me that none of them were arrested or are going to find themselves in trouble for the security breach that they had," she said, referring to a Wednesday afternoon incident when more than 20 House Republicans stormed a secure, restricted room in the House basement where Democrats were set to hear testimony from Deputy Assistant Defense Secretary Laura Taylor, a Pentagon official overseeing Ukraine. The congressmen, led by Florida Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz, bombarded the Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, or SCIF. They claimed they were protesting the fact that Republicans are being pushed out of the impeachment process, but in reality, 12 of them sit on committees involved in the ongoing inquiry, meaning they were allowed to attend the depositions held in the SCIF this week.
Omar also blasted Trump, who had dinner with several of the members on Tuesday night, for his involvement in disrupting the impeachment inquiry. "He had dinner with them last night and chastised them about how they'd didn't have his back. And you've had these grown men who are sworn to uphold the Constitution barge in, obstructing a process that is mandated by our Constitution," she said.
Since she was elected to Congress last November, Omar has been singled out for attacks by conservatives ranging from TV pundits to the president of the United States. She has received credible death threats and faces continuous online harassment. On Wednesday night, she said both the president and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, whose platform has been scrutinized for enabling hate speech and threats of violence to proliferate, were partially responsible.
"At the end of the day, it's also a very serious issue, in the sense that people have been arrested who are trying to kill you. Just this week, North Dakota state's Republican senator put out a fake image of you at [an] al-Qaeda training camp," Hasan said. "And you pointed out in a tweet in response, you said that this is stirring up hate and violence. You said Facebook are not doing anything about this."
Did Omar think that Trump and Zuckerberg had helped people put a target on Omar's back, Hasan asked. "Yes and yes," she said.
"We have done everything that we can to engage them in a conversation about how they're putting my life in danger and the lives of people who share my identities," Omar said. "Right, when they describe me as a terrorist, every single Somali girl or Muslim girl that's walking down the street that resembles me, her life is also in danger."
SENATE DEMOCRATS' CAMPAIGN ARM IS PRESSURING CONSULTANTS NOT TO WORK WITH LEADING PROGRESSIVE CANDIDATE IN COLORADO
Aída Chávez, Akela Lacy - The Intercept
August 29 2019, 9:27 a.m.
BEFORE THE Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee endorsed former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper in a 2020 Senate race, it pressured consultants from at least five firms not to work with a leading progressive in the race, the candidate told The Intercept.
Andrew Romanoff, who is one of more than a dozen candidates vying for Republican Sen. Cory Gardner's seat, told The Intercept that multiple consultants turned down jobs with his campaign citing pressure from the DSCC.
"They've made it clear to a number of the firms and individuals we tried to hire that they wouldn't get any business in Washington or with the DSCC if they worked with me," Romanoff said. "It's been a well-orchestrated operation to blackball ragtag grassroots teams."
At least five firms and 25 prospective staff turned down working with his campaign, said Romanoff, who has raised more than $1 million in individual contributions so far. "I spoke to the firms, my campaign manager spoke to the staff prospects," he said. "Pretty much everyone who checked in with the DSCC got the same warning: Helping us would cost them."
A consultant who spoke to The Intercept on the condition of anonymity said that their firm had been far along in talks to work for Romanoff when they got word that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and the DSCC weren't happy. The firm was told by a top DSCC staffer that they "absolutely under no circumstances could work for Andrew Romanoff, so we withdrew our offer to be his consulting firm."
The DSCC is using an "unquestionably far more heavy-handed approach this year than they have in previous cycles," the consultant said.
Earlier this year, the DSCC's companion organization in the House, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, made it official policy to cut off funding and vendors to Democrats who challenged incumbent Democrats. Putting the policy in writing ratcheted up what had been more of an informal understanding in prior cycles. But if the DSCC's intervention in Colorado is any indication, the Democrats' Senate campaign arm is taking the blacklist one step further, by discouraging consultants from working not only for challengers to incumbent Democrats, but also for progressives running against the establishment's preferred candidate in a seat currently held by the GOP. In Romanoff's case, the DSCC did so before it had been clear whether Washington's choice, Hickenlooper, even planned to run.
It's still early in the cycle, and while some candidates are getting their Senate campaigns off the ground, others are still deciding whether to jump in. Individuals connected to a handful of campaigns across the country said they've heard about interventions by national Democrats, either in the form of the DSCC pressuring consultants not to work with progressive candidates, or Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer telling people not to run for office in the first place.
"First they came for the House candidates; now they're gonna come for the Senate candidates," said Heather Brewer, who is managing the Senate campaign of New Mexico Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver, a progressive who was snubbed by the DSCC, which made an early endorsement of Ben Ray Luján, a member of House Democratic leadership. "It's not rocket science to see where this is heading."
"They're threatening people's livelihoods, if people dare break with what the insiders in Washington want," Brewer added. "It's extortion."
Schumer's office directed questions to the DSCC, which is officially run by Nevada Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, but known to be controlled by Schumer, whose piloting of the committee in 2006 and 2008 reclaimed the Senate for Democrats and then gave them a brief filibuster-proof majority. "We do not have a policy of preventing firms from working with candidates," a DSCC spokesperson told The Intercept in an email. "In our role as a campaign committee focused on winning Senate seats, we have ongoing conversations with strategists and advisers about battleground races."
ON AUGUST 23, months before the Democratic primary, the DSCC endorsed Hickenlooper, who dropped out of the presidential race on August 15 and announced a Senate bid a week later. Notably, Hickenlooper is one of the more conservative candidates in the race. The former governor championed fracking during his tenure and as a presidential candidate came out against Medicare for All and the Green New Deal. Romanoff, meanwhile, is backing both of those policies and has sworn off corporate political action committee money. The DSCC backed Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet, another Democratic presidential candidate, over Romanoff in the state's 2010 Democratic primary.
The DSCC's early endorsement in a race with no Democratic incumbent didn't go over well with Colorado party officials, who, in internal emails published by the Denver Post on Tuesday, described the DSCC's immediate decision to back Hickenlooper over 11 other candidates as a "slap in the face."
Six of the seven women candidates running in the Colorado primary sent a letter to DSCC leadership on Monday, Women's Equality Day, urging it to reconsider its endorsement of Hickenlooper. "All of us, like many women in Colorado and across the country, have seen well-qualified women passed over for male candidates in the workplace time and again," they wrote.
In a Hill TV interview with Krystal Ball, presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders echoed progressives' frustration. "I think you let it play out," he said of the DSCC's endorsement of Hickenlooper. "This is obviously a major debate within the Democratic Party. Those who think that so-called centrist candidates backed by folks who have a lot of money may be able to win over some moderate Republicans — that is the future. I disagree. The future of the Democratic Party is to greatly expand the base, increase voter turnout, especially with young people, speak to the needs of working people. I believe there are some people who voted for Trump who, in fact, if given the option of a progressive agenda, will vote with us."
CANDIDATES' EXPERIENCES WITH the DSCC have been mixed. One consultant who spoke to The Intercept on the condition of anonymity said they'd recently worked with a contractor who had consulted with the committee about working with a particular candidate. The DSCC told the contractor that it didn't care who they were working for, because it had already settled on a different candidate, whom Schumer was encouraging to enter the race.
Still, there have been other instances of Senate Democratic leadership trying to tip the scales. In Iowa, where the DSCC is backing Theresa Greenfield, Time Magazine reported earlier in June that Schumer had advised J.D. Scholten, who challenged Rep. Steve King in a House race last year, not to run for Senate.
"We don't need a primary," Schumer told Scholten in a phone call, Time reported. Scholten, who lost to King by less than 3 percentage points, confirmed Schumer's comments to The Intercept, but clarified that it wasn't "forceful at all" because Scholten was already more inclined to run for King's seat in Congress. "It was when Schumer called me to mention that they were gonna be backing Theresa [Greenfield]. I said, well, that doesn't necessarily deter me, and then he made the comment," Scholten said.
North Carolina state Sen. Erica Smith, who's leading the latest polls in her bid against Republican Sen. Thom Tillis, said she has reason to believe that the DSCC is doing similar things in her race. The committee told her that it isn't yet endorsing in that race, and that it's not helping any candidates fundraise — but there are whispers that the DSCC might support her potential primary opponent Cal Cunningham, whom it has backed in the past.
"It seems clear to me that there is a question of integrity or lack thereof," Smith said. "This brings to question who's telling the truth. And there's an appearance to me that Senator Schumer is trying to purchase — trying to buy a U.S. Senate seat in North Carolina. That is not going to go well for the constituents that I serve. And I am very much opposed to that. New York and North Carolina are extremely different."
Smith's campaign manager Jonathan Lucas said he had been directly pressured by people he described as veteran, well-connected establishment Democratic operatives in North Carolina not to work with Smith, and that he's faced similar pressure in years past while working on other races in the state. Given the makeup of Cunningham's donor-base, Lucas believes that pressure originated from the DSCC and Schumer, because a significant portion of Cunningham's donors have links to the Senate minority leader.
"I had a number of influential 'establishment' Democrats tell me it was a mistake to work for her, she will never be the nominee, etc.," Lucas said in a statement, referring to Smith. "Well, I have never been an establishment consultant. I met her and I am not only convinced she will win, but that she is exactly the type of candidate that we need right now. One that Schumer and the establishment fear because her vote is not for sale."
Progressive group launches $10 million online voter registration drive
By MAGGIE SEVERNS - Politico
08/14/2019 05:27 AM EDT
Citing an urgent need for young people and minorities to vote at higher rates in southern states where Democrats are coveting wins in 2020, the progressive group ACRONYM is launching a $10 million online drive to register voters in the South.
ACRONYM's new program — which is currently being tested in Virginia's down-ballot elections — will target Arizona, Texas, Georgia, and Florida. The group is aiming to register and mobilize more than 100,000 young and minority voters online, reaching them via Snapchat, Instagram and other digital platforms.
"When you look at young people, when you look at people of color, they are spending a disproportionate amount of time online," said Tatenda Musapatike, senior director of campaigns at ACRONYM, who is leading the effort. "It's key that we are reaching people where they are. Young people spend more time on Instagram."
In addition to registering voters, ACRONYM will try to use peer pressure to encourage people to vote by launching a tool called "Formation" that allows people to easily look up friends' voter registration data, which is publicly available information.
ACRONYM is not the only organization placing a focus on voting in southern states. Former Florida gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum is working to register and mobilize voters in his home state this election cycle, and former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams said Tuesday she will focus on a voting rights during the 2020 cycle via a new organization as well. Both Gillum and Abrams narrowly lost election bids in 2018.
wimpy demos selling out the poor!!!
'Absolutely disastrous': Progressives furious as fellow Democrats push funding cut for health clinics that serve 30 million Americans
 By Jake Johnson, Common Dreams - Raw Story
"If Democrats were serious about protecting every American's right to healthcare, this plan wouldn't even be on the table."
Progressive members of Congress are raising alarm and publicly calling out Democratic colleagues who are pushing legislation that would significantly cut funding to community health centers, which currently provide essential care to around 30 million primarily poor and rural Americans.
As the Washington Post's Jeff Stein reported Wednesday, Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.) is advancing a bipartisan measure that "would provide flat levels of federal funding for hundreds of community health centers nationwide, at about $4 billion for the next four years."
"We should be substantially increasing funding. I was very, very disappointed by Democratic leadership. We will do everything we can to rectify this."
—Sen. Bernie Sanders
Pallone denied that his bill calls for cuts, but progressives warned that because "flat" funding would not keep up with inflation, Pallone's bill would lead to lower budgets for health clinics across the nation.
"The plan backed by Pallone, while better than letting the funding expire altogether, would amount to a nearly 20 percent funding reduction over four years for the clinics, almost certainly cutting the amount of medical, vision, dental, and mental healthcare they can provide primarily low-income Americans," Stein reported, citing Sara Rosenbaum, a health expert at George Washington University.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who has played a major role in securing and expanding funding for community health centers over the past decade, expressed outrage that Democrats would pursue legislation that could jeopardize healthcare for millions of low-income Americans.
"I was, quite honestly, stunned. It's just absolutely disastrous, and moving in the wrong direction," Sanders, a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, said of Pallone's bill in an interview with the Post. "We should be substantially increasing funding. I was very, very disappointed by Democratic leadership… We will do everything we can to rectify this."
Warren Gunnels, Sanders's staff director, echoed the senator's concerns in a series of tweets late Wednesday, saying Pallone's legislation could deny healthcare to more than three million people annually.
"The idea that the House would consider denying primary healthcare to over three million Americans through a 20 percent real cut to community health centers after 'finding' $733 billion in defense funding for the most dangerous president in our history should sicken and disgust every American," Gunnels wrote, referring to the House's passage of the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act last week.
Just eight Democrats voted no.
Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) echoed the Sanders team's criticism of Pallone's legislation, which is similar to a bill Sens. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) are pushing in the Senate.
The funding dispute, Stein reported, "could have significant consequences for the nearly 30 million people nationwide who rely on the community health clinics, which serve poor people and those without sufficient access to medical care, including in rural areas."
Khanna warned in a statement to the Post that Pallone's bill—which easily passed out of the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Wednesday—could kick "three million low-income Americans off their care" entirely.
"If Democrats were serious about protecting every American's right to healthcare," Khanna tweeted, "this plan wouldn't even be on the table."
Ocasio-Cortez told the Post that House Democrats should be using their majority to negotiate a compromise bill with the Republican-controlled Senate from a position of strength, not calling for reduced funding from the jump.
"I want us to use our majority to fight for these families—not allow a 20 percent cut," said the New York Democrat.
As Stein reported, "Lawmakers face a September deadline for the community health centers, after which their funding would begin to expire, likely leading to steep cuts."
Instead of Pallone's legislation, Gunnels said House Democrats should line up behind a bill introduced in March by Sanders and House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.), which would expand funding for community health centers and provide care to over five million more Americans.
"The good news," tweeted Gunnels, "is that there's still time for the House to pass a bill by Sen. Sanders and Rep. Clyburn to expand, not cut, community health centers and provide primary healthcare to 5.4 million more Americans."
"This isn't a hard call," Gunnels added, "but we'll need to fight like hell to get it done."
Rep. Ilhan Omar: 'We were sent to Washington to lead with our values'
Omar, along with Reps. Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Pressley, and Deb Haaland, stand strong after a week of intra-party controversy.
LUKE BARNES - Thinkprogress
UPDATED: JUL 13, 2019, 3:03 PM
PHILADELPHIA — Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), along with a handful of her freshman Democratic colleagues, reaffirmed her commitment to her progressive values Saturday, after a week roiled by party infighting.
"One thing I tell women of color is that we never needed to ask for permission or an invitation to lead," Omar said in a keynote panel at the Netroots Nation conference, which included Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) and Deb Haaland (D-NM). "We were sent to Washington to lead with our values and have an agenda that really pushes that forward."
She continued: "There is a constant struggle with people who have power about sharing power and we're not in the business of asking to share that power, we're in the interest of grabbing that power," Omar said. "We are not carrying the water for this cruel administration. We are doing the job that people in this country put us forward to do."
Omar's comments come after tensions arose between House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and a group of newly elected Democratic lawmakers, including those speaking at Netroots, as well as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY).
Pelosi previously chided the insurgent members about their complaints after Democrats passed a $4.59 billion supplemental border funding bill in June, and has urged them not to tweet disparagingly about fellow Democrats.
The party's more liberal wing has been critical of Pelosi's reluctance to initiate impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump. Some Democrats also have chafed over her reticence to pursue an investigation against Labor Secretary Alex Acosta, who tendered his resignation this week amid an outcry over his role in a sweetheart plea deal several years ago for convicted serial child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
While the House speaker was not mentioned by name at the Netroots panel, it was clear that the tension was on everyone's minds as the lawmakers were introduced by moderator Aimee Allison.
"For millions of us, the women of color who entered Congress are more than four votes. For millions of us they represent blood, sweat, and tears and struggle for us to have representation," Allison said.
"They represent the best of American democracy and yet they've faced attacks all year from the right wing as well as the Democratic Party leadership."
The disagreement among House Democrats, which has been simmering for a while, bubbled to the surface after Pelosi's New York Times interview published last week, which was interpreted as being dismissive of the young, liberal, diverse voices among the newest class of lawmakers.
The group, nicknamed "The Squad," are all women of color with an enormous online megaphone via their massive followings on Twitter.
Pelosi, in an interview with columnist Maureen Dowd, said she was unconcerned that within her caucus "the left doesn't think I'm left enough."
She added: "I understand what they're saying. But we have a responsibility to get something done, which is different from advocacy. We have to have a solution, not just a Twitter fight."
The veteran politician from San Francisco tried to put the feud to rest, telling the Washington Post this week: "We respect the value of every member of our caucus. The diversity of it all is a wonderful thing. Diversity is our strength. Unity is our power. And we have a big fight, and we're in the arena, and that's all I'm going to say on the subject."
The Squad's unabashed support for progressive values was seen Saturday during a discussion about impeachment. Tlaib echoed comments she made in January, which caused much hand-wringing about civility on the Hill.
"We're gonna impeach that motherfucker, don't worry. It's up to you, it's not up to us. We went from 'let's not talk about it' to close to 80 members of Congress coming out and supporting it," Tlaib told the Netroots audience.
"[Trump] dismisses the equal branch of the Constitution and he does it arrogantly. This is a country not a business. You need to act like a government is for the people."
Both Omar and Tlaib were backed up by Pressley.
"I believe the people closest to the pain should be closest to the power and I don't believe anyone is truly voiceless," the Massachusetts lawmaker said.
"I do believe there are many people who are unheard and it's our job to create space for them, not palace intrigue."
Two Groups That Helped Dems Win Back the House Are Joining Forces for 2020
Swing Left and Flippable say their merger will give volunteers and donors a one-stop shop for all the upcoming races in 2020, not just the presidential.
Gideon Resnick - daily beast
Two grassroots progressive organizations formed after President Trump's inauguration are joining forces in advance of the 2020 election.
Swing Left, which had been primarily committed in the last cycle to helping Democrats take back a majority in the House of Representatives, will bring Flippable, an outfit devoted to turning state legislatures blue, under its umbrella. The merged entity will continue to go by Swing Left.
The goal of the merger is to create a unified strategy and better equip volunteers and donors to help in the upcoming presidential race as well as down-ballot contests. Combined, the organizations raised some $13 million in 2018 in addition to having a community of more than a million of those volunteers and donors.
The groups' founders think the combination of Flippable's expertise in the states and Swing Left's huge network will complement each other and ensure progressive voters do not get overwhelmed with too many outlets for activism and contributions.
The first thing that the new merged group will do will be to launch Swing Left's Flippable States Fund, which seeks to raise money for the eventual Democratic nominees running in the most competitive state-level districts throughout 2019 and 2020. Additionally, Flippable's CEO and co-founder Catherine Vaughan will join Swing Left's executive team as chief strategy officer.
Vaughan said she had heard from people who loved both of their organizations that it had become tricky for them to "know where to turn" when they want to volunteer or donate.
"Without organizations like ours, the real risk is that people just kind of defer their action," Vaughan said.
The new merged website will also prioritize a set of already-identified "Super States," which include Texas, Colorado, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Maine, and North Carolina. Voters in those states will play critical roles in determining the presidential outcome and control of the Senate.
"The work that [volunteers are] doing, mostly at this point registering voters, is done in states where that work is not just going to be for the presidential election but for the Senate election, and also for the key state legislatures necessary for Democrats to have a voice in the redistricting process in 2021," Swing Left Executive Director Ethan Todras-Whitehill told The Daily Beast.
Ocasio-Cortez joins billionaire Warren Buffet to wage war on overpaid CEO's of failing banks
Tom Boggioni - raw story
18 MAY 2019 AT 15:10 ET
Progressive Democrat Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes (NY) joined with Berkshire-Hathaway founder Warren Buffett to say bankers who drive their institution into the ground — necessitating a government bailout — should lose their fortunes.
The outspoken Democrat retweeted a CNBC article about Buffett telling shareholders that execs and their wives should forfeit their net worth over mismanagement fueled by greed.
According to the lawmaker's tweet: "It still blows my mind that the CEOs who crashed our economy + caused millions of people to lose their homes not only escaped handcuffs; but got bonuses, too. Many still have influential roles shaping the economy today. But we're the crazy ones for wanting to tax 'em, right?"
Progressives Dismiss DCCC Threats on Primary Challengers
BY Eoin Higgins, Common Dreams - truthout
As tensions escalate in an internal battle between the centrist and left wings of the Democratic Party, a group of progressives is making a move to begin a new left wing party apparatus.
A decision by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee late last month to blacklist vendors that support primary challengers over party incumbents drew a line in the sand against the potential progressive overthrow of the party's established order.
In response to the new policy, 14 progressive groups Thursday announced the launch of the DCCC Blacklist — a collective of left wing vendors that are bucking the Democratic campaign arm's directive.
"If we want to fight for a Green New Deal, Medicare for All, free college, getting corporate money out of politics, and an end to mass incarceration and deportation then we need to help build a network of alternative campaign infrastructure to support progressive primary challengers from this DCCC sabotage," said Waleed Shahid, communications director for the progressive group Justice Democrats, one of the groups behind the new vendor list.
As Common Dreams reported Thursday, reconciliation attempts over the vendor policy stalled out this week. Rep. Cheri Bustos (D-Ill.), the chair of the DCCC, told Politico Wednesday that she had no intention of backing down in her decision.
"We've got a policy that the caucus supports, the leadership supports, and it plays the long game," said Bustos.
That prompted a response from Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), the co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
"It is not playing games for the Democratic Party to be inclusive of all its members perspectives," said Jayapal.
The divisions over the policy appear to have deepened to the point that there's not likely a way out for both sides. In a statement about the creation of the new vendor list, Indivisible's María Urbina said that intentional or not, the policy on vendors would serve to keep the party less diverse.
"We reject the DCCC's attempt to hoard power, which will only serve to keep that talent pool — and Congress itself — disproportionately white and male," said Urbina.
Thursday's announcement of a shadow vendor group would seem to imply that the split in the party is reaching beyond rhetoric and into the realm of material reality — a secondary, progressive party apparatus, if created, will pose a credible threat to the party establishment as it is currently constituted.
"As a loyal Democrat and proud progressive, I believe that we don't just need more Democrats in Congress — we also need better Democrats in Congress," said Rebecca Katz, founder of New Deal Strategies. "I won't hesitate to work with progressive candidates challenging incumbent Democrats who are out of touch with their constituents." "
"If that means getting blacklisted by the DCCC," Katz added, "then so be it."
Sean McElwee, a Democratic activist whose company Data for Progress is a founding member of the project, said in a statement that he relished the opportunity to fight against the entrenched interests of the party in the 2019-2020 cycle.
"This cycle, progressives made our intentions clear: we would work to unseat anti-choice, anti-LGBT bigots like Dan Lipinski and Henry Cuellar," said McElwee. "The DCCC made a choice: to stand with bigots instead of the progressive future of the party. They will fail."
Marisa Franco, the founder of Latinx advocacy group Mijente, said in a statement that the new list was part of a movement to reshape the party and, hopefully, the country.
"The Democratic Party is at a crossroads and establishment party politics are not going to successfully lead us into the future," said Franco. "We need new voices and bold ideas from people who represent the diversity of the country and are willing to lead the new American majority that is built by movements for social justice."
Ocasio-Cortez Tells Small Donors to Cut Off DCCC Donations, Give Directly to Candidates Instead
BY Jake Johnson, Common Dreams - thinkprogress
Denouncing the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee's new policy of cutting off firms that work with primary challengers as "divisive" and "harmful," Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Saturday advised small-dollar donors to stop giving money to the DCCC and instead donate to progressive candidates directly.
"The DCCC's new rule to blacklist + boycott anyone who does business with primary challengers is extremely divisive and harmful to the party," tweeted the congresswoman from New York. "My recommendation, if you're a small-dollar donor: pause your donations to DCCC and give directly to swing candidates instead."
The @DCCC's new rule to blacklist+boycott anyone who does business w/ primary challengers is extremely divisive & harmful to the party.
My recommendation, if you're a small-dollar donor: pause your donations to DCCC & give directly to swing candidates instead.
Some great ones:
Ocasio-Cortez went on to list three swing-seat House Democrats up for reelection in 2020: Reps. Katie Porter (Calif.), Mike Levin (Calif.), and Lauren Underwood (Ill.).
The New York congresswoman's call for small-dollar donors to "pause" donations to the DCCC comes amid a growing progressive revolt against the campaign arm's new policy, which states that the organization "will not conduct business with, nor recommend to any of its targeted campaigns, any consultant that works with an opponent of a sitting member of the House Democratic Caucus."
Progressives vowed to fight back against the rule, arguing it will disproportionately harm left-wing organizations looking to transform the party by ousting conservative Democrats.
As Common Dreams reported last week, leaders of the Congressional Progressive Caucus met with DCCC chair Cheri Bustos (D-Ill.) to slam the policy and call for a change.
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) called the DCCC's rule "a slap in the face of Democratic voters across the nation."
In a series of tweets on Saturday, Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), who reached the House after a primary victory, warned that the DCCC's rule risks "undermining an entire universe of potential candidates and vendors—especially women and people of color—whose ideas, energy, and innovation need a place in our party."
"I believe fiercely in the potential of our party, but we cannot credibly lay claim to prioritizing diversity and inclusion when institutions like the DCCC implement policies that threaten to silence new voices and historically marginalized communities," Pressley added. "The lesson of 2018 is that our party is made stronger by the inclusion of diverse, disruptive candidates and vendors who bring different perspectives and experiences."
PROGRESSIVE CAUCUS SLAMS DCCC HEAD CHERI BUSTOS FOR HER ASSAULT ON PRIMARY CHALLENGERS
Ryan Grim - the intercept
March 27 2019, 2:35 p.m.
THE LEADERSHIP OF the Congressional Progressive Caucus has met with the top brass at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and pushed back hard against a new party policy to blacklist consultants who work with primary challengers.
Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., vice chair of the caucus, was also in the meeting with Rep. Cheri Bustos, D-Ill., and said that the turn the DCCC has taken in the 2020 cycle under her reign is worse on a small-d democratic level than previous cycles, when the party was not exactly kind to challengers.
"Pramila Jayapal, Mark Pocan, and I met with Cheri Bustos to make it clear that we strongly oppose her new policy that stifles competition and blackballs any consultant who works for a challenger. We made the point to Cheri that Nancy Pelosi, and Ben Ray Luján never adopted such a heavy-handed policy," Khanna told The Intercept in a statement. "Ben Ray Luján in particular had a much kinder and more inclusive approach."
Khanna said that it is such an egregious assault against the progressive wing of the party that even Rahm Emanuel, the hard-knuckled, hippie-punching DCCC chair from 2006, wouldn't have countenanced it. "This unprecedented grab of power is a slap in the face of Democratic voters across the nation. It's something even Rahm Emanuel would not have done and is totally tone-deaf to the grassroots activists across our nation. Voters are sick of the status quo holding on to power and stifling new voices. They are sick of D.C. politicians who care more about holding on to power than a true competition of ideas," said Khanna.
The pressure on Bustos is a rare defense of freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., by her Democratic colleagues. Ocasio-Cortez is most closely associated with the effort to primary incumbent Democrats in safe seats who are not representing their communities. She previously served on the board of Justice Democrats, which is actively recruiting challengers, and remains close with the group. Ocasio-Cortez and Justice Democrats have both made clear that they are only targeting safe Democratic seats, so as not to put the Democratic majority at risk, but paranoia within the Democratic caucus has left that promise to fall on deaf ears.
"Let's be clear. If this policy remains in place, it will mean that we will not allow new Ayanna Pressleys or AOCs to emerge. It's simply wrong," Khanna said. "It's also hypocritical for a party that champions strong antitrust. The DCCC is acting as a monopoly by saying that anyone who does business with them can't do business with any competition. It's the classic antitrust violation and an unfair restraint on trade. Many progressives in Congress will fight until this rule is changed. We stand for reform in Congress and reform of the Democratic Party machinery to make sure they prioritize our voters and the grassroots."
'Make sure that vote gets counted': Elizabeth Warren calls for a constitutional amendment to 'get rid of the electoral college'
by Jake Johnson / Common Dreams - alternet
March 19, 2019
During a CNN town hall Monday night in Mississippi—where GOP laws and suppression tactics have disproportionately harmed black voters—Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said the best way to strengthen voting rights nationwide is to amend the U.S. Constitution and abolish the Electoral College.
"I believe we need a constitutional amendment that protects the right to vote for every American citizen and to make sure that vote gets counted," the Massachusetts senator and 2020 presidential contender said to applause. "We need to put some federal muscle behind that, and we need to repeal every one of the voter suppression laws that [are] out there right now."
"We need to make sure that every vote counts….Come a general election, presidential candidates don't come to places like Mississippi," Warren continued. "My view is that every vote matters, and the way we can make that happen is that we can have national voting and that means get rid of the Electoral College, and every vote counts."
Warren's support for abolishing the Electoral College comes as the National Popular Vote movement is gaining steam, with a number of states passing legislation to award their delegates to the presidential candidate who wins the popular vote.
"Every Democrat running for president in 2020 should be standing alongside Elizabeth Warren in calling to eliminate the Electoral College so the popular vote determines the next president—and pass a constitutional amendment to guarantee the right of every American to vote," the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC), which is backing Warren in the Democratic presidential primary, said in an email to supporters.
Warren's call for bold voting rights reforms is part of her broad and substantive policy agenda, which is aimed at transforming the federal government to ensure its power is used on behalf of ordinary people, not massive corporations and the wealthy.
"Washington is working great, it's working fabulously, for giant drug companies," Warren said during the town hall. "It's just not working for people who are trying to get a prescription filled. It's working great for big oil companies that want to drill everywhere. It's just not working for people who see climate change bearing down upon us. It's working great for giant financial institutions and for payday lenders. It's just not working great for people who are living paycheck to paycheck."
To ensure that Washington works for all Americans and not just the donor class and powerful companies, Warren—who has vowed to reject campaign donations from lobbyists and PACs—said "we need big structural change in this country."
"When you've got a government that works for the rich and it's not working nearly as well for anyone else, that's corruption, and we need to call it out plain and simple," the Massachusetts senator said, pointing to her sweeping anti-corruption legislation that would—among other major reforms—bar members of Congress from receiving donations from lobbyists and completely ban foreign lobbying.
Warren went on to highlight America's soaring wealth and income inequality and call for a total rewrite of the nation's economic rules.
"Part of that is putting more power back in the hands of workers," Warren said.
The senator said imposing higher taxes on the richest Americans is another essential and way to curb inequality and fund major items on the progressive agenda.
"We get a two percent tax on the 75,000 richest families in this country," Warren said, pointing to her "Ultra-Millionaire Tax" proposal, "we would have enough money to provide universal child care, universal pre-K, universal pre-pre-K for every child in America and still have two trillion dollars left over."
U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown recently introduced the End Taxpayer Subsidies for Drug Ads Act
By Loveland Magazine - Feb 22, 2019
Washington, DC — U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) recently introduced the End Taxpayer Subsidies for Drug Ads Act, legislation that would prohibit pharmaceutical drug manufacturers from claiming tax deductions for consumer advertising expenses. According to a press release from Brown, advertising expenses by pharmaceutical drug manufacturers have more than quadrupled over the past two decades, rising from $1.3 billion in 1997 to $6 billion in 2016. In that same time period, advertising from drug companies has increased from 79,000 ads to 4.6 million ads, including 663,000 TV commercials. Economists have estimated that nearly one third of the growth in drug companies' spending can be attributed to the increase in advertising for prescription drugs.
Brown says that under current law, drug manufacturers are allowed to deduct the cost of advertising expenses from federal taxes and the End Taxpayer Subsidies for Drug Ads Act would eliminate this tax deduction for drug advertising costs, ensuring that taxpayer dollars are not used to subsidize drug advertisements.
"The purpose of medicine is to help people, not to line the pockets of Big Pharma executives. It's time to stop using taxpayer dollars to give tax breaks to Big Pharma, especially at a time when too many hardworking Americans are struggling to afford the medicine they need and the culprit is often price gouging by pharmaceutical corporations," said Brown.
This legislation was introduced by Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH). The bill original cosponsors include Senators Brown, Maggie Hassan (D-NH), Angus King (I-ME), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Jack Reed (D-RI), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Mazie Hirono (D-HI), Brian Schatz (D-HI) and Dick Durbin (D-IL).
Full text of the bill is available here.
a cowardly democrat trying to sabotage her!!!
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez raises more than $100,000 after talk of possible primary challenge surfaces
"They're plotting a primary challenge, because they don't like that we're shaking things up in DC"
SHIRA TARLO - salon
FEBRUARY 1, 2019 7:34PM (UTC)
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) raised more than $100,000 toward her re-election efforts following a call to primary her issued by an anonymous House Democrat.
It appears the New York Democrat's re-election campaign began to call for donations in an email blast and Facebook advertisements after The Hill reported on Tuesday that the unnamed Democrat had begun to urge the New York congressional delegation to recruit a local politician from the same district to challenge Ocasio-Cortez.
"What I have recommended to the New York delegation is that: You find her a primary opponent, and make her a one-term congressperson," the Democratic lawmaker, who requested anonymity, told The Hill. "You've got numerous council people and state legislators who've been waiting 20 years for that seat. I'm sure they can find numerous people who want that seat in that district."
The move comes after Ocasio-Cortez promoted a group that recruits primary challengers to Democratic incumbents whom she believes are too moderate. Ocasio-Cortez's involvement with the grassroots group has emerged as a source of tension on Capitol Hill, as it is rare for a sitting member of Congress to back primary challengers against his or her colleagues. The congresswoman's team appeared to dismiss the threat as an effort by the Washington establishment to take a jab at her progressive agenda.
"They're plotting a primary challenge, because they don't like that we're shaking things up in DC," the campaign wrote in a Facebook ad. "We need to show how strong our campaign will be when they come after us in 2020."[...]
ELIZABETH WARREN PROPOSES ANNUAL WEALTH TAX ON ULTRA-MILLIONAIRES
David Dayen - the intercept
January 24 2019, 11:37 a.m.
ELIZABETH WARREN'S PRESIDENTIAL campaign has rolled out a proposal for an annual tax on wealth, becoming the first major Democratic candidate to follow a recommendation outlined in Thomas Piketty's blockbuster book Capital in the Twenty-First Century.
The proposal, according to two Cal-Berkeley economists who are leading experts on wealth and inequality, would shrink the wealth of the super rich by $2.75 trillion over a ten-year period, while only affecting around 75,000 U.S. households.
A paper distributed by Warren's campaign announcing the proposal notes that the United States contains "an extreme concentration of wealth not seen in any other leading economy." As Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman of Cal-Berkeley have demonstrated, the top 0.1 percent has had their wealth share nearly triple between the late 1970s and 2016.
Warren actually endorsed the concept of a wealth tax five years ago, in an interview with The Intercept's Ryan Grim and economist Piketty. Asked how a bill to tax wealth would sound after Piketty described it, Warren said, "Oh, I'm in, I'm in, I'm in –in on the notion that we have to rewrite our tax code." She added that the tax code "has to reflect the importance of work and people who achieve and people who accomplish, over being born into wealth."
Piketty endorsed the Warren plan on Thursday. "In many ways, the US led the world toward the development of progressive taxation and the reduction of inequality at the global level during the first half of the 20th century," he wrote in a statement. "I am confident that Senator Warren's proposed progressive wealth tax will not only help curb inequality and ultimately promote growth in the US, but also have a major impact all around the world."
Targeting wealth instead of income attacks a much larger source of inequality and economic distortion. Concentrated wealth has skyrocketed over the past several decades; an Oxfam study out this week estimates that the world's billionaires grew their fortunes by $2.5 billion per day in 2018.
A large percentage of these daily gains are derived through capital ownership. Matt Bruenig of the People's Policy Project has estimated that around 30 percent of annual national income comes from holding income-generating assets like real estate, stocks, and bonds. This is wealth created by owning wealth, and naturally, nearly all of it is earned by the wealthiest Americans. Increases to income tax rates, while important to curb income inequality, are mostly irrelevant at capturing capital income, or breaking up concentrated wealth.
America already taxes wealth in a minor way through property taxes, but that only covers one type of asset, and does not really correspond to wealth, because homeowners owe tax on the property regardless of what they own in home equity. Some would say that taxes on inheritance are taxes on wealth, but they only come into play after death.
This wealth tax proposal, then, seeks to confront an untapped pool of wealth. While how and whether these revenues would be redistributed is not defined, taxing wealth in an of itself would make society more egalitarian. Indeed, modern monetary theorists regularly point out that the purpose of taxation is not to produce revenue for the government to spend, because the U.S. government controls its spending regardless of taxation. Still, there are numerous potential applications of the revenues that could compress wealth even further.
THE ULTRA-MILLIONAIRE Tax, as Warren's campaign describes it, would impose a 2 percent annual tax on household net worth on all dollars above $50 million. An additional 1 percent surtax would kick in above $1 billion in income. Wealth is defined in the plan as "all household assets… including residences, closely held businesses, assets held in trust, retirement assets, assets held by minor children, and personal property with a value of $50,000 or more."
These are marginal tax rates, which conservatives have busily tried to misconstrue during the debate over Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez' proposed 70 percent income tax rate above $10 million. Households with exactly $50 million in wealth would pay $0.00 in wealth taxes; the first dollar above that would trigger a tax of 2 cents.
That the Warren tax would raise far more than AOC's plan is a function of the extreme concentration of wealth in the United States. "While we must make income taxes more progressive, that alone won't straighten out our slanted tax code or our lopsided economy," the Warren proposal paper explains.
The Washington Post credibly estimates that AOC's 70 percent income tax bracket would bring in $720 billion over a ten-year period. The wealth tax above $50 million, according to Saez and Zucman's estimate, would raise $2.75 trillion, a number that is around 1 percent of national gross domestic product. The economists use the Federal Reserve's Survey of Consumer Finances and other sources like the Forbes 400 list of the richest Americans to make the estimates.
Bruenig, of the People's Policy Project, ran the same calculations as Saez and Zucman using similar data, and got a yield of $1.9 trillion over ten years. He added that this was a lowball estimate, and that Saez and Zucman's figures were plausible, "because I think their methods are plausible." While Bruenig said that he would add a tax bracket between $10 and $50 million to avoid "leaving a lot of money on the table by starting so high," in general he endorsed the concept.
Saez and Zucman build into their figures an expectation of capital mobility, where the rich hide their money in tax havens in response to attempted taxation. Based on studies of other wealth taxes around the world, and the details of Warren's plan, they conservatively presume a 15 percent reduction in reported net worth.
Warren's plan attempts to limit such evasion and avoidance. She would increase the IRS budget to enforce the new tax, and apply a minimum audit rate for those 75,000 households subject to it, potentially reversing the long campaign to gut the IRS and let high-net-worth individuals skirt taxation. If the wealthy attempted to renounce U.S. citizenship in response, the plan proposes a 40 percent "exit tax" on all wealth above $50 million.
In addition, the plan would encourage the IRS to close loopholes in valuing assets that already are used in inheritance tax calculations. Plus, she would leverage the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act to adopt third-party reporting and information exchanges with potential sites to park money, like Switzerland.
Those with high net worth but liquidity constraints – such as folks whose money is tied up in financial instruments or business ventures with long-term timelines – could defer payment for up to five years, but they would have to pay interest on what they owe.
The wealthy would still be able to enjoy the vast majority of their wealth. Saez and Zucman estimate that the top 0.1 percent will pay 3.2 percent of their wealth in taxes in 2019, and the wealth tax proposal would only increase that to 4.3 percent. Incidentally, the bottom 99 percent pays about 7.2 percent of their wealth in taxes, because they lack savings and rely heavily on labor income.
An annual tax on wealth exists in several countries around the world, including Spain and Norway. But it is a virtually unprecedented proposal in recent political memory. Bernie Sanders, in the wake of Piketty's book, proposed a more progressive inheritance tax, but that would only trigger upon death. Sanders floated a wealth tax in a 1997 book, but never offered a formal proposal. None of the other Democratic candidates have suggested anything like an annual wealth tax.
In fact, the last presidential candidate with a legitimate wealth tax proposal was named Donald Trump. In 1999, when he was considering running on the Reform Party ticket, Trump endorsed a one-time 14.25 percent "net worth tax" for individuals and trusts worth over $10 million. According to Trump's numbers, this would have generated $5.7 trillion, twice that of Warren's proposal (though those numbers were disputed at the time) and enough to eliminate the national debt. Trump suggested using the savings from annual debt service payments to extend the solvency of the Social Security system (which doesn't make a lot of sense, but this is Donald Trump we're talking about here.)
Conservatives have suggested in the past that a wealth tax would decrease investment and economic growth, as the rich sell off assets to pay the tax. Of course, somebody else would have to buy those assets.
By itself, a wealth tax would begin to curb concentration of assets in U.S. society. The redistributive possibilities are also numerous. Cory Booker's baby bonds proposal, to give every newborn a $1,000 low-risk savings account, with periodic additional payments, that they can tap as adults, would cost an estimated $82 billion per year, less than one-third of the Warren plan. Sherrod Brown's child allowance bill, a universal cash payout that would cut the child poverty rate in half, would cost about $108 billion a year, not even half of Warren's proposal. Kamala Harris' LIFT Act, a massive series of tax cuts for middle-class families, has a $2 trillion price tag over a decade, again less than the Warren wealth tax.
Another option suggested by Bruenig would be to place the revenues into a social wealth fund, an investment portfolio of stocks, bonds, and other assets for which every American would have a non-transferable share. This would reduce the concern that asset sell-offs from wealthy taxpayers would depress share prices, since the social wealth fund would effectively buy them back up.
A universal dividend from the growth of the assets in the social wealth fund portfolio would be distributed to Americans, not unlike the dividend given to Alaskans from revenues generated by oil wealth (known as the Alaska Permanent Fund). "This way we snag the wealth and hold onto it permanently for the public," said Bruenig.
The Bankruptcy of the Democratic Party
By William J. Astore
From LA Progressive: Why did Donald Trump win the presidency? A big reason is that he was willing to take unpopular stances. He criticized the Afghan and Iraq wars in the strongest terms. He attacked Wall Street. He called for closer relations with Russia. Of course, to cite one example, when he became president, Trump willingly embraced Wall Street — no surprise here. Trump is not about consistency. The larger point is that he appeared authentic, or at the very least not tied to traditional politics of the mealymouthed, which involves focus groups and think tanks and polls and triangulation before any policy position is taken.
The Democratic Party has learned nothing from Trump's success, nor for that matter from Bernie Sanders's rise. It's rejecting the energy and popularity of Sanders's progressive platform for the tired bromides of economic competitiveness, moderate tax increases on the rich, and infrastructure improvements (which Trump has also called for). It's refusing to critique America's enervating and endless overseas wars. It's even refusing to focus on serious social issues (too divisive!), as reported here at Mic Network:
The new [Democratic] agenda will be released under the title, "A Better Deal: Better Skills, Better Jobs, Better Wages."
According to the Washington Post's Dana Milbank, the plan "jettisoned social and foreign policy issues for this exercise, eschewing the identity politics and box-checking that has plagued Democratic campaigns in the past."
Leaving social justice issues out of the platform is sure to anger many progressives in the party who have been pushing for issues like police brutality, systemic racism and transgender rights to be front-and-center on the Democratic agenda.
Likewise, the absence of any foreign policy agenda is likely to irk the left's many critics of America's never-ending wars.
What's the point of voting for a Democratic Party that refuses to address such vitally important issues? And don't you just love the unimaginative title of the plan?
A Better Deal: Better Skills, Better Jobs, Better Wages.
If you have to repeat the word "better" four times, I'm less than convinced that the deal is actually "better." It sounds like a used car salesman trying to sell a lemon. I'll give you a better deal on this beat-up Yugo! At a better price, with a better warranty, with better loan payments! Sure … right.
I think I can come up with five "better" titles for the Democrats just off the top of my head. I'll give it a whirl:
No Guts, No Glory: A Bold New Plan for Our Country
Soaring Together: Remaking Our Country, Reigniting Our Dreams
America the Bountiful: Tapping Our Greatness — and Goodness
Better Angels: Reviving America's Nobility
Comrade! March with Me to the Towers and Pitchfork the Rich!
OK. Maybe not number 5. I'm not saying my titles are great — just that they hold some promise of raising ourselves to a higher level. We should be thinking about making a better America, not for skills or jobs or the economy, but for our children. For our and their collective futures. A little idealism, please! The fierce urgency of now!
Where's the emotional appeal in "better" skills or a "better" job? It's funny: I don't recall the Founders talking about skills and jobs. They talked about personal liberty, about freedom, about coming together and raising new hopes. And they didn't just talk — they acted. Give me liberty or give me death. Now that took guts!
I see no inspiration — and no guts — in the current Democratic Party establishment. And until the party finds some, they will continue to lose.
How Liberals Are 'Destroying America'
Soph0571 - demo underground
Bad, Bad Liberals