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Around the table: the stupid, it burns!
Good news, everyone! President Biden signs executive order raising the minimum wage to $15/hour for around 70,000 federal workers. This should be an easy sell for President Biden; the workers affected include firefighters and Veterans Administration housekeepers and food service workers. Then again, giving tens of millions more good Americans $15/hour should have been an easy sell for Congressional Democrats; instead, the enduring image we'll have of that effort is that of the Joker's giddy thumbs-down.
The Biden Administration has also put out an unexpectedly strong rule clamping down on surprise medical bills -- but Democrats and Republicans are joining together to try to undermine it. Bipartisanship! It still sucks! They're acting like the Biden Administration overstepped its legal authority in mandating that insurance corporations and health care providers use median in-network rates for procedures to settle billing disputes, but really they're just mad that TEH GUBMINT IZ SETTINGZ TEH PRICEZ!!!!! Some people say the words "price controls" like they're cuss words, but I bet a lot of Americans would be perfectly happy with our government forcing big corporations to lower health care prices.
Students have been walking out of their abjectly unsafe schools all over America the past few weeks, and I applaud these kids' courage, but I wish it weren't necessary. It's one thing to justify President Biden's relative inaction by pointing to "American individualism" or even the tantrums right-wingers have thrown about masks and vaccine mandates, but fact is he hasn't used all the tools the law already grants him -- you'd think he'd at least use the Defense Production Act to make masks and tests, and while I know Joe Manchin killed both expanded unemployment benefits and paid sick leave, Joe Biden could have argued for them as part of a real pandemic response. He'll wind up having done better at this than Donald Trump, but that sure ain't worth writing home about.
When I hear that the big car corporations are trying to delay Massachusetts' new right-to-repair law for a few years -- a law which would, among other things, keep the big automakers from essentially dictating to you where you can get your car fixed -- all I can say is the law already gave the big automakers two years to start complying with it, and I have to assume that the problem isn't that it's so hard to comply with the law (this is America, the can-do country, after all), but that the big corporations sat on their asses for two years and didn't even try to get ready to comply with the law, and that's something no law-and-order adherent should abide.
Senate Republicans filibustered voting rights legislation last week -- with the critical assistance of the Penguin and the Joker, who wouldn't even force Republicans to earn their filibuster by talking through it like they did in the old days -- but you wouldn't know it from all the passive voice our "liberal" media uses in its headlines. But I'll be honest: when I see our "liberal" media deciding to focus on "Democratic infighting" as if literally half of our Senate didn't block the bill, I realize that I need this reminder, too. Yeah, Manchinema is a persistent annoyance, and their careers as Senators will suffer for it, but I'll try to do a better job not simply ignoring the obstruction of Republicans, since, you know, they could just do their constituents' will and vote for the damn bills.
Finally, of course Mitch McConnell knew exactly what he was saying when he said we don't need voting rights reforms because "African-American voters are voting in just as high a percentage as Americans." He meant for Trumpholes to hear him say Black folks aren't "real" Americans, and he also knew a lot of folks would defend him on the basis of what he obviously "meant." At some point, though, you can really only trust what folks actually say. And not for nothing, but his subsequent defenses have been lame -- anyone can say they've got Black friends, too.
Posted at 03:22 AM in "bipartisanship", around the table, education, filibuster reform, health care, law and order, minimum wage, paid sick leave, racism, the "liberal" media, unemployment, voting rights, waaaaah! | Permalink | Comments (0)
Action: concerning solar power, voting rights, protecting democracy, corruption, and internet freedom.
Long story short: tell Florida's legislators to reject an anti-solar power bill, tell your Congressfolk to pass the Freedom to Vote Act, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, and the Protecting Our Democracy Act, tell your Congressfolk to ban stock trading by members of Congress, and tell your Senators to confirm nominees to our MSPB and our FCC. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.
First things first. The Florida state legislature is mulling a bill that would cut rebates by utility corporations to solar power users, which would slow solar development in Florida, almost like that's the whole idea. And apparently it is, in fact, the idea of Florida Power and Light, which stands with state legislators against just about the entire rest of the state in favor of this absurd policy. Seriously, when only one corporation benefits from a bill, isn't that enough reason to oppose it? Let's help put a stake through this bill's heart, by calling House Speaker Chris Sprowls at (850) 717-5065, Senate President Wilton Simpson at (850) 487-5010, and Gov. Ron DeSantis at (850) 717-9337. Yeah, I know, he doesn't care what you think. Tell him anyway.
Hazmat America helps you tell your Senators to end the filibuster and pass the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. Why? Because they'd deal body-blows to gerrymandering, campaign finance bribery, and racist vote suppression, that's why. And yeah, I know the Penguin and the Joker said they wouldn't kill the filibuster in order to pass bills they supposedly both support very fervently, but Common Cause helps you call voters in West Virginia and Arizona and urge them to call Sens. Manchin and Sinema to tell them to kill the filibuster in order to pass these bills. Yeah, I know Sen. Sinema gave this big, long speech on the Senate floor that professed her deep and abiding love for these bills she won't nix the filibuster to pass, but as a famous philosopher once said, everything before the "but" is bullshit. If we can't move them, we have to humiliate them.
Daily Kos helps you tell your Senators to pass H.R. 5314, the Protecting Our Democracy Act. The bill would, as you know, keep future Presidents from profiting from their office, abusing their pardon power, declaring "national emergencies" whenever they feel a sad, and firing Inspectors General for actually stopping corruption, and if this all seems a little like closing the barn door after the horses have run out, it's not, because the guy who did all those things stands a good chance of running again and winning in 2024, and if he does he'll do all of this again, and worse. If Republicans are shouting in your ear that this is a "Democrat bill," read that list of things the bill would do again. Those aren't "Democrat things," they're American things.
Demand Progress helps you tell your Congressfolk to ban stock trading. The bill currently before Congress -- H.R. 1579/S. 564, the Ban Conflicted Trading Act -- would mostly prohibit stock trading by members of Congress, but Sen. Ossoff (D-GA) plans to introduce a bill that would prohibit stock trading by members of Congress and their spouses, since a lot of Congressfolk just so happen to have husbands and wives who make a lot of money trading stock. Think these couples never discuss Congressional oversight? Don't be like Nancy Pelosi and retort that this is a free market, because Congressfolk oversee big corporations as part of their job, and should avoid not just corruption, but the appearance of corruption. And so should their spouses! Hey, no one put a gun to their heads and told them to get married.
The National Whistleblower Center helps you tell your Senators to confirm three qualified nominees to the Merit Systems Protection Board, which helps protect federal employees from retaliation by their bosses. Or it would, if it had any members! That's right, the Trump Administration let the MSPB function without a quorum during its entire tenure, virtually guaranteeing that any federal employee who, say, dimed out corruption by their higher-ups would have virtually no recourse against retaliation by those higher-ups. Like, say, President Trump himself! Remember that when the Steve Bannon-types talk about "dismantling the administrative state," they mean to dismantle that part of the administrative state that fights corruption and protects good Americans from being stomped on by powerful people.
Finally, upon hearing that big telecom corporations are actively trying to sink the Gigi Sohn nomination to our FCC -- couldn't be because she fights for net neutrality, could it? -- Free Press suggests we call Senate Commerce Committee Chair Maria Cantwell (D-WA) at 202.224.3441 and tell her to call a vote on Ms. Sohn's nomination before the end of the month. Free Press also helps you tell your Senators to support the Sohn nomination. Sadly, the reason that vote hasn't happened yet may well be Kyrsten Sinema, who has come out against net neutrality in the past, because bipartisanship maverick independent streak getting to yes. Of course the whole point of democracy isn't getting Republican bullies to yes, but getting Americans to yes, which Ms. Sohn -- through her support of internet freedom for you, not for big corporations -- has already done. Odd how politicians burnish their "bipartisan" bona fides by opposing things Americans actually want -- things that actually prove that real bipartisanship is possible in America. And when I say "odd" I mean "so stupid it's boring."
Posted at 09:13 AM in "bipartisanship", action, campaign finance, corruption, filibuster reform, internet freedom, net neutrality, racism, redistricting, solar power, voting rights, whistleblowing | Permalink | Comments (0)
Action: concerning January 6, voting rights, crypto, wastewater, glyphosate, and conservation.
Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to expel those members who helped plan the January 6 attempted coup, tell your Congressfolk to pass the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, tell our SEC to start regulating crypto, tell Pennsylvania to stop using oil and gas wastewater to tamp down dust on state roads, tell the President of France to keep his promise to fight glyphosate's EU licence, and tell our USDA to reinstate Roadless Rule protections for the Tongass National Forest. Use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs to communicate your will.
GOP Coup helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.Res. 25, which would investigate whether certain members of Congress should be expelled for their role in the January 6 attempted coup. Not just Paul Gosar or Andy Biggs, either -- also Lauren Boebert, who gave that suspicious tour of the Capitol the day before the attempted coup, and Lindsey Graham, who suggested right after the election that Georgia's Secretary of State toss legal ballots (per said Secretary of State's own testimony). If you were trying to nullify the will of the American voters -- and, to review, 81 million of us voted for Joe Biden, while 74 million of us voted for Donald Trump -- then you don't deserve a seat in Congress. I hate it when politicians tell 81 million people they should just fuck off and die, and that's what the above-named politicians have told us. So get 'em out.
Daily Kos helps you tell your Senators to pass the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act -- and kill the filibuster to do it if they have to. Which they do, because Republicans all oppose gerrymandering reform, campaign finance reform, and racist vote suppression, for some reason. (Spoiler alert: the reason is that they can't win without gerrymandering, big corporate donors, and keeping Black and Brown folks away from the polls.) And when they tell you voting reform has to be "bipartisan," remind them (as Rep. Clyburn did the other day) that amending the Constitution to end slavery and give ex-slaves the right to vote were not bipartisan. We don't care about "bipartisanship" -- we care about our government doing right by us.
Americans for Financial Reform helps you tell our Securities and Exchange Commission (or SEC) to start regulating crypto. No, I'm not going to call it "cryptocurrency," because it is not currency -- it is a speculative investment, and our SEC's job is to protect investors from criminals, and boy oh boy does crypto look like an area rife for criminal activity; after all, if they call something money but can't explain how it works in terms regular folks can understand, it's BS. And a "currency" that seeks to bypass banks and governments ain't a good idea -- if you get screwed over in a crypto scheme, you're going to need a gun to get relief, and civilization's whole purpose is to stop you from doing that. I don't want banks and governments off the planet; I want them to be civilized.
MoveOn helps you tell the state of Pennsylvania to stop using oil and gas drilling wastewater to tamp down dust on state roads. Yeah, they still appear to be doing that, even though that stuff is full of toxic and carcinogenic chemicals, and even though our state Department of Environmental Protection (or DEP) put a moratorium on this practice four years ago. Apparently fossil fuel corporations found a loophole in the moratorium allowing wastewater use on unpaved roads, and you'd hate to think the state put out that moratorium knowing they weren't going to effectively enforce it! The best part? A Penn State study found last summer that fracking wastewater does a bad job keeping down the dust; why, doing nothing at all was better than using wastewater in some cases! So, yeah, let's stop doing that.
Sum of Us helps you tell French Presiden Macron to oppose any re-approval for glyphosate in Europe. Mr. Macron had pledged to phase out French use of glyphosate by the end of 2021, but he failed in that; soon France will take over the Presidency of the European Union this month, and glyphosate's license expires this year, so with a lot of popular prodding, perhaps he'll keep his promise then. He can't be thinking he's got a tough re-election campaign coming and he needs to be nice to the big carcinogen producers, can he? He's dumb as a bag of hammers if so: Europe has always had a much less corporate attitude toward agriculture than the U.S., and cancer-causing chemicals aren't actually popular anywhere. So we may need to lend the steel in his spine in this matter.
Finally, Environmental Action helps you tell our Forest Service to restore Roadless Rule protections for the Tongass National Forest. I've told this story a hundred times, not just of thousand year-old trees capturing almost half of all the carbon our national forests capture, but of greedy logging corporations and their Enabler-in-Chief, whose Forest Service took away Roadless Rule protections late in 2020 even though over 95% of us left public comments supporting keeping those protections in place. After all, it's not like we're the boss of government or anything. The Biden Administration is working to restore this rule as we speak, but they've gotten cold feet about doing the right thing before (cough keeping military weapons away from police cough), so we gotta remind them.
Posted at 04:04 AM in "bipartisanship", action, activism, conservation, filibuster reform, gas drilling, oil, regulations serving people, voting rights | Permalink | Comments (0)
Action: concerning January 6, tax cuts for working families, raising taxes on the rich, voting rights, and abortion.
Long story short: tell our Justice Department to investigate and prosecute Donald Trump for the January 6 attempted coup, and tell your Congressfolk to extend the Child Tax Credit expansion, tax billionaire wealth, protect our voting rights, and pass the Women's Health Protection Act. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.
First things first. The first anniversary of Trump supporters attempting a coup against our government was yesterday, and Attorney General Merrick Garland made a point of addressing the nation about the investigation the day before, but if you're thinking the investigation will ensnare a lot of the folks who paraded through our Capitol with their Confederate flags while letting the coup's planners off, well, I wouldn't blame you. Hence Public Citizen helps you remind our Justice Department to investigate and prosecute Donald Trump for his role in the January 6 attempted coup. He's the top dog, after all, no matter how much he avoids taking any responsibility for his many mistakes. And our House's January 6 committee has been uncovering a whole lot of probable cause for that investigation.
Both Daily Kos and Moms Rising help you demand that our Congress pass the Build Back Better Act and thus extend the Child Tax Credit expansion that has kept millions of kids out of poverty. Yeah, the pundits say the Build Back Better Act is dead, but it ain't dead until we say it's dead. Also, fuck the pundits! And seriously, if Joe Manchin wants to be The Man Who Took Your $300 Checks Away because his CEO buddies told him people just use their CTC expansion on drugs, should we allow that argument to win the day? No, we should not, and that's why we need to tell our Congressfolk to act. Yeah, we've told them a hundred times already. And we may have to tell them a hundred more! Might as well get to it, then. Nobody said democracy was easy. Nobody worth listening to, anyway.
Americans for Tax Fairness helps you tell your Senators to include a billionaire wealth tax in the Build Back Better Act. Because billionaires are making money hand over fist during this pandemic while you're just scraping by, that's why! They're not more talented than you, and they don't work harder than you, a matter in which I have received a 30-plus-year education. Now, both Joe "the Penguin" Manchin and Kyrsten "the Joker" Sinema have made positive noises lately about taxing billionaire wealth! But don't believe it -- they have thoroughly enjoyed pulling the football back at the last second (OK, that's a lot of childhood comics metaphors in one paragraph), and they'll do it again and again and again, unless we make our will unmistakable.
Daily Kos helps you tell your Senators to do whatever it takes to protect our voting rights, including ditching the filibuster. Because with these Republicans it'll come to that! And when Joe Manchin says changes to the filibuster should be "bipartisan," remind him that you have communicated your will to him and that his entire job is doing the will of his constituents, none of whom give one rat's hind-quarter about whether rules changes are "bipartisan." And when Kyrsten Sinema talks about "changing behavior" rather than "changing rules," remind her that you have communicated your will to her and that her job is doing the will of her constituents, who won't care about her hair-splitting when they get turned away at the voting booth for no good reason.
Finally, Daily Kos also helps you tell your Senators to pass H.R. 3755/S. 1975, the Women's Health Protection Act. Let's list some of the things states have done in recent years: they've forced women to undergo ultrasounds and state reasons for getting an abortion before getting one, they've allowed entities to disperse lies about abortions to prevent women from getting them, they've held abortion facilities to higher standards than other hospitals for no health-related reason, and they've prevented doctors from giving abortions when the woman's health or life is threatened. The Women's Health Protection Act would sweep all of that (and more) away. Most, if not all, women would appreciate that. Those who get off on telling women what to do won't appreciate, but that's their fault.
Posted at 05:06 AM in "bipartisanship", action, bad arguments, birth control, filibuster reform, health care, law and order, sexism, tax cuts for the rich, taxes, voting rights, working families | Permalink | Comments (0)
Around the table: from climate disasters to media disasters.
Praise the Lord that Bibi van der Zee at The Guardian has compiled a list of all the climate-related disasters we faced in 2021. Surprise: it's not all bad news, and the good news runs the gamut from little victories (dolphins spotted in the East River) to the big (major court decisions in Germany and the Netherlands). The bad news (California drought, Texas power outage, floods in Queensland and Malaysia, et al) can still seem awfully demoralizing, and note well that in several American states you could run over protestors like the Insulate Britain protestors, but then, optimism is really the only sane response to any news, lest you become a Republican, or worse, a cynic.
I'm as hopeful as anyone else that Republicans will pick so many absolutely toxic nominees that they flub their chance to retake Congress, but you have to remember that when they do things like attack Mitch McConnell, all they're doing is creating drama, to distract you from what they really want to do, which is serve their corporate paymasters once they get power. Pretending to hate Mitch McConnell, what a crock. Like we're all stupid! Also remember that the actual number of Republicans who'll withhold their vote from rage-addled assholes is actually very small. The number of independents who might, on the other hand? We'll see.
I'm not sure what to think of Democrats actually taking a (weak 39-37) lead in a USA Today/Suffolk Congressional generic ballot -- Gallup had Republicans up about a dozen in their generic about this time in 2010 (though, weirdly, Rasmussen had the two parties about even at the same time). Anyway, if Dems want to keep this up, they need to do two things: 1) use their power for good, rather than continue to prop up "bipartisan" systems that just hurt us, and 2) remind everyone that the people who threaten the lives of school officials and yell at you for wearing a mask or getting a vaccine are the exact people you will be empowering if you vote Republican. A vote for this is a vote for that! History suggests that Democrats don't have the guts to do these things, but we have the guts to demand that they do.
When I hear that Sen. Ron Johnson (E-WI) wonders "(w)hy...we think that we can create something better than God in terms of combating disease," I feel compelled to respond that, well, God also created viruses that kill people, and also created people who created vaccines to save them. People like Ron Johnson think they can just drop the word "God" into a sentence and end all conversations, but they're as wrong about that as they are about everything else.
When I hear that some Democratic Senators are actually having trouble figuring out how the "talking filibuster" would work, all I can say is gosh, how did they ever do it for the first 130-plus years they did it? And Joe Manchin can't possibly think Republicans would adopt a rule change they've previously favored while Democrats control the Senate. Actually, I'm sure he doesn't -- he's just hoping you do. He's sure going to have a lot of good works to bring to the Pearly Gates.
Finally, those irredeemable assholes at Fox News are telling working Americans to "get tough" and go to work and school amidst a million omicron cases a day all from inside their little remote Zoom boxes. Plus they're still telling you lies about vaccines while they're all vaccinated. "Go to work," "(l)ive with it" -- these clowns will never do one tenth the work I do, but they'll get away with pretending they're the toughest people on Earth as long as we have to pay for Fox News as part of a basic cable package. Hey, maybe we can do something about that.
Oh, I almost forgot: happy Insurrection Day, right-wingers! Don't stay out too late celebrating; some of you have to work tomorrow.
Posted at 04:15 AM in "bipartisanship", around the table, climate change, Democrat weakness, drama, filibuster reform, health care, law and order, stupid stupid stupid!, the "liberal" media, the stupid it burns, violence against protestors, waaaaah! | Permalink | Comments (0)
Around the table: the real source of American rage, and other topics.
As Joe Manchin wields excuse after excuse for killing the Build Better Act, David Dayen reminds us that President Biden can write a lot of Executive Orders that would do a lot of good. (Indeed, The American Prospect has made a list!) I sure hope President Biden isn't afraid that right-wingers will call him a dictator, since a) our laws already give our President the authority to issue these orders, b) right-wingers will say anything, no matter how stupid, and c) uh, have they met their Personal Lord and Savior Donald Trump?
When I read that rural America faces an eviction crisis because American Rescue Plan Act funding for folks facing eviction has, ah, had a hard time getting to the good Americans who need it, I remind myself that this is why rural Americans vote for Republicans so much -- because Democrats don't do anything good for them when they have the power. I'm sure the information gap between what rural folks think they can get and what they can get is real, but again, shouldn't our federal government make damn sure everyone knows what they need to know?
Ho hum, a Gizmodo/Markup investigation finds that "predictive policing algorithms" tend to ignore white neighborhoods while "predicting" more crime in Black/Brown neighborhoods, meaning that "residents in over-policed areas are confronted, detained, or rung up on bullshit charges with alarming frequency" and then "this data gets fed back into the software to generate more of the same abuse." If you're still thinking but that's where more crime is har har har, all you need ask is whether every conceivable criminal gets punished. Difficulty: if you've ever committed a crime, no matter how small, and not served time for it, then the answer is "no." You did your crime out of sight, you say? Why do you suppose law enforcement didn't see you?
Noami S. Baron at The Conversation comes up with an unexpected answer to the age-old question of " Why We Remember More by Reading -- Especially Print -- Than From Audio or Video" -- that people approach audio, video, and social media with more of "an entertainment mindset," and thus don't devote their full attention to it. That's illuminating -- and mind-boggling, to me at least, since I try to devote my full attention to a TV program or an album just as I do to a book, but again, that's probably just me. All the other reasons you do better reading in print than any other thing -- because you touch paper, you remember the "physical geography" of a page, you remember what you read based on how far into the book you were, because you're more likely "multitasking" when you're on social media -- still operate, of course. Plus, I'd argue, you can re-read something in print far more easily and effectively than you can "re-read" a song or video (which occur in time and usually without accompanying written text) or even read a news article online (which could change when you read it again).
When I hear that the January 6 attempted coup has made the House of Representatives "a deeply unpleasant place to work," I'm tempted to call that a no-shit-Sherlock moment. After all, some of them helped plan the January 6 attack, while roughly a third of them enabled it by voting against certifying the 2020 election that same day for no damn good reason. When folks give you the impression they want you to die, it's hard to break bread with them. Or even drink martinis with them at D.C. watering holes. (The Wall Street Journal article referenced at the link sits behind a paywall, so I don't know how much it bought into all that both-sides-are-to-blame rubbish. Then again, maybe I do.)
Finally, as the year draws to a close, Kevin Drum's analysis of "The Real Source of America's Rising Rage" is worth revisiting. Spoiler alert: basically, the "real source" of "our national temper tantrum" is the rise and primacy of Fox News over the last two decades -- yeah, talk radio and social media have done some damage, but not the damage Fox News has done. I feel compelled to mention, again, that what it offers its viewers -- rage -- is a very potent drug; it gives its users the illusion of control over chaos. And it's a damn shame that these very same people would never regard immigration or critical race theory as "chaos" unless some slick snake-oil salesfolk told them so, over and over again.
Posted at 02:33 PM in "bipartisanship", around the table, Democrat weakness, immigration, law and order, racism, social media, the "liberal" media, the future, waaaaah! | Permalink | Comments (0)
Light posting notice plus bonus Manchin slam.
Posting will be light around here through the holidays, though I should note the death of the Build Back Better Act at the hands of West Virginia "moderate" "Democratic" Senator Joe Manchin.
Sen. Manchin said yesterday that he's a "no" vote on the Build Back Better Act, which in a Senate with exactly 50 Democrats means it won't pass. Naturally he adds, as he often does, that "(i)f I can't go home and explain it to the people of West Virginia, I can't vote for it." Good! Now he can explain to the good citizens of West Virginia that he is the reason they can't get paid family medical leave, a cap on insulin prices, a cap on child care costs, higher taxes on the rich and on corporations, or an extension of the Child Tax Credit expansion that just delivered the last of the $250 and $300 monthly checks into working families' bank accounts on December 15. Of course all he'll talk about is inflation and COVID and the national debt, though all of the things I just listed would actually help battle inflation and COVID, and the Build Back Better Act would add less money to the national debt than his pet "bipartisan" "infrastructure" bill from earlier this year.
Naturally Joe Manchin couldn't stop there: he also said that the Build Back Better Act represents an attempt to "dramatically reshape our society." To which I say: that is to laugh! The Build Back Better Act is already a compromise of a compromise of a compromise of a compromise of a compromise, and I'm sure I left a few compromises out. And the fact is that all the Big Gummint spending programs I mentioned in the previous paragraph, all part of this effort to "dramatically reshape" America, actually promote freedom. Are you more free or less free when you're figuring out which bills you can pay this month and which ones you can get away with "forgetting" to pay? Are you more free or less free when you're paying one working parent's entire year's salary just for child care? Are you more free or less free when you can't afford insulin because big corporations charge whatever for it? Are you more free or less free when you can't take a day off to care for a sick child or a sick parent without losing pay or losing your job? Are you more free or less free when more of your taxpayer money goes right into the pockets of big pharma CEOs? Are you more free or less free when absurdly wealthy billionaires can just buy Congressfolk to change laws so they can make even more money without doing any more work or contributing to civilization in any conceivable way? I trust you know the answer to all of these questions, even if Joe Manchin doesn't.
Or, more likely, pretends not to. He's not stupid, and nor are any of his comrades in Congress, so I must reluctantly conclude that I was right, earlier, when I supposed that the Democrats set up this whole process to fail. So Democrats absolutely deserve to lose both Houses of Congress -- except that we don't deserve what'll happen to us if Republicans take Congress again, and anyway, why let the Democrats off easy? So we should still clog up their phone lines, and then make them pay for their greed and their venality and their folly -- preferably by making them lose their next elections to real liberals, but short of that, by making their names mud for as long as they're in office, the way Joe McCarthy's name was mud during his last term as Senator after he'd doubled down one time too many. I want people like Joe Manchin to be afraid to show their faces in public, and then I want them to lose their primaries and slink away. Because he doesn't have the power. We do. And we need to wield it until they all understand that.
Posted at 03:46 PM in "bipartisanship", allegedly trenchant analysis, big pharma, campaign finance, corporate taxes, health care, light posting notice, paid sick leave, tax cuts for the rich, taxes | Permalink | Comments (0)
Action: concerning, at least one more time, the Build Back Better Act.
Long story short: tell your Senators to get the lead out of our drinking water, raise taxes on the rich and on corporations, invest in the care economy, enact paid family/medical leave, let Medicare negotiate drug prices, and expand Medicare. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.
Food and Water Watch helps you tell your Senators to ensure that the Build Back Better Act protects our clean water by funding lead pipe removal. As you know, the infrastructure bill President Biden signed begins the work of getting the lead out of our water pipes, but will by no means finish that work, which is why the Build Back Better Act needs to finish that work. I'm reminded, in the wake of Donald Trump whining that Republicans shouldn't have passed that infrastructure bill, that Mr. Trump's own infrastructure plan was to use $150 billion in tax cuts to "attract" $1 trillion in investment -- in exactly the kinds of "infrastructure" that makes money for some boss-man but doesn't actually help anyone. Getting the lead out of our drinking water helps everyone, so let's finish the job on that.
Americans for Tax Fairness helps you tell your Senators to raise taxes on the rich and on corporations. Here I'm reminded that Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D?-AZ) made loud noises about the cost of the bill when she originally spoke about it, but drew all her red lines around the parts that would have paid for the bill, like raising tax rates on the wealthy and on corporations! Doing that kind of bait-and-switch does open you up to the charge of being a liar, and in a sane, moral, and decent society, she would be so ashamed of what she's done that she wouldn't run for re-election. Why do I get the sense she's even more immune to shame than many of her colleagues? Anyway, that's why we keep doing what we do.
The National Women's Law Center helps you tell your Senators to ensure that the Build Back Better Act funds the "care economy," i.e., things like child care and home care. Cutting child care costs in half would be, as a famous philosopher once said, a big fucking deal, and I guess it's gratifying that Senators Manchin and Sinema haven't spoken out about any desire they might have to kill it, but I sure hope I haven't summoned a demon by saying that. And again: child care subsidies aren't "communism." Ask anyone who says so what they would do about child care corporations jacking up the cost of child care simply because they can -- that is, because almost all two-parent families have two working parents. Just remember: if they respond by saying "that's a discussion we should have," they're signaling that it's a discussion they're never going to have.
Both Moms Rising and Daily Kos help you tell your Senators to include paid family/medical leave in the Build Back Better Act. Sen. Manchin is the 50th Democratic Senator who opposes this one; he says he'd like to pass something more "bipartisan," and more specifically something that relies more on payroll taxes, but he doesn't really think Mitch McConnell will allow that to happen, does he? And frankly our House's four-week paid family/medical leave plan is better, since it doesn't rely on regressive payroll taxes for funding. (Not incidentally, it also doesn't violate President Biden's requirement that the bill raise zero taxes on folks making less than $400,000 annually.) Now, previous paid family/medical leave bills did rely on payroll taxes, and they weren't onerous, but why do the worse thing if you can do the better thing?
Drug Prices Are Too High, Daily Kos, Penn PIRG, and More Perfect Union all help you demand that your Senators put Medicare drug price negotiation in the Build Back Better Act. This was the other pay-for Kyrsten Sinema drew a red line against: the notion that Medicare could actually save the taxpayer money by negotiating for lower drug prices for American seniors. Seems the only folks who favor higher drug prices for seniors are the big pharma execs and the politicians who take their money. And when big pharma CEOs say that Medicare drug price negotiation will "cripple innovation," just remember that innovation only comes from necessity, not from comfort. Also remember that folks who have all the money don't "innovate" anything except how to get more money.
Finally, Daily Kos helps you tell your Senators to expand Medicare services for seniors in the Build Back Better Act. Joe Manchin doesn't like this, either, and to justify his opposition he mouthed a bunch of word salad about making sure Medicare is solvent first. Maybe he was just trying to avoid saying that he's been collecting a lot of money lately from big Republican donors with whom he previously had no connection. I should say that he and Sen. Sinema have been doing that, of course, and folks who shrug and say money talks really need to ask themselves: should politicians only listen to big donors? Politicians have to listen to their real bosses, their constituents, and most good Americans would have their Senators vote differently on a lot of these matters.
Posted at 04:16 AM in "bipartisanship", action, big pharma, campaign finance, clean water, corporate taxes, lead poisoning, Medicare, paid sick leave, public investment, tax cuts for the rich, taxes | Permalink | Comments (0)
Action: concerning the Build Back Better Act as passed by our House and considered by our Senate.
Food and Water Watch helps you tell your Senators to ensure that the Build Back Better Act protects our clean water by funding lead pipe removal. Without clean water, you don't have health care; it's that damn simple. And the other infrastructure bill President Biden signed begins to do the work of getting the lead out of our water, but it doesn't finish that work, and we need the Build Back Better Act to finish that work. Even if Joe Manchin worries about the supposed "deficit" in the CBO's analysis of the Build Back Better Act, a) that deficit could be entirely made up by the IRS enforcement plank the CBO didn't include in its analysis and b) that deficit makes up a smaller percentage of the BBBA than does the deficit the CBO found in his pet "bipartisan" infrastructure bill. They'll say anything, and that's why we stay on them.
Americans for Tax Fairness helps you tell your Senators to raise taxes on the rich and on corporations. And tell them that if they're really serious about that, they'll not only tell Kyrsten Sinema to eat the damn higher tax rates on the rich and on corporations, but they'll also tell the Northeastern Democratic House Reps that repealing the cap on state and local taxes is too big a handout to the rich! And remember that when some rich right-wing jerk says "they'll tax me today, but they'll come for you tomorrow," just remind them that you're already paying your taxes, thank you very much. Everybody can't hire million-dollar lawyers to help them evade their responsibility to their civilization, after all.
The National Women's Law Center helps you tell your Senators to ensure that the Build Back Better Act funds the "care economy," i.e., things like child care and home care. Regardless of what you may have heard, providing subsidies to help working families cover child care is not communism! They sling that word around the way they'd sling their feces around if folks didn't already frown on that. Child care subsidies help families navigate two unfortunate realities: one, that families can't afford to have only one parent working as easily as they could 50 years ago, and two, child care-providing corporations charge an arm and a leg for the service simply because they know people need it (thanks to reality number one). And when the market fails us, as it clearly has in this instance, our government needs to step in and make it right on our behalf. This ain't that damn deep, except to folks who love stoking rage everywhere they go.
Both Moms Rising and Daily Kos help you tell your Senators to include paid family/medical leave in the Build Back Better Act. The House version, passed late last week, puts four weeks of paid family/medical leave back in the bill, and apparently Sen. Manchin has already wondered out loud why they did that. Possibly because we demanded it? They act like they have no idea how this is supposed to work! Of course, they know how it's supposed to work, but they want to make politics like a sporting event, and they want to make us into spectators. But although nobody died and made Joe Manchin the One True Great and Awesome Real American President, he'll win again, unless we keep speaking out in numbers our leaders can't deny. Don't ever worry about being a pest to your Congressfolk. They're supposed to listen.
Drug Prices Are Too High, Daily Kos, Penn PIRG, and More Perfect Union all help you demand that your Senators put Medicare drug price negotiation in the Build Back Better Act. Our House acceeded to the unfortunate "reality" that Kyrsten Sinema and Bob Menendez won't support real Medicare drug price negotiation, and allowed Medicare to cap insulin prices (beginning in 2023!) and negotiate a limited number of drugs in 2025 and a few more in 2028. That's not nothing, but it's not good politics, either -- when eight out of 10 Americans want Medicare to be able to negotiate drug prices, you don't "look good" by delivering half-measures. Hence we go to our Senators, to tell them to do the right thing, again and again and again if need be.
Finally, Daily Kos helps you tell your Senators to expand Medicare services for seniors in the Build Back Better Act. Again Sen. Manchin previously cited Medicare's "solvency" in opposing Medicare coverage of dental, hearing, and vision care for seniors -- this, even though you need more of this care when you're older, not less! Which is something you would think a fellow like the 74-year-old Mr. Manchin would know! Of course, there are thousands of ways to save money for Medicare -- like drug price negotiation, which Mr. Manchin supports, but you can't discount the possibility that he supports it only because he knows it won't pass, with the opposition of Sens. Sinema and Menendez. None of that matters. All that matters is our will -- but only if we express it.
One more thing: don't let "liberal" media scaremongering about inflation deter you from your support for a vigorous Build Back Better Act. Getting the lead out of our water, fighting climate change, and enacting paid family/medical leave will all lower health care costs; helping working parents pay for child care will lower child care costs and fighting climate change will also lower disaster recovery costs. You can't just choose not to build back houses if a hurricane destroys them, after all! And if you're worried about "runaway government spending causing inflation," consider, again, that the Build Back Better Act will be paid for even if we don't get all the revenue-raisers we want, and consider, also that raising taxes on the rich and on corporations and letting Medicare negotiate drug prices all save the taxpayer money. And I dare say folks will care about all of that more than they'll ever care about a number. But we do actually have to do these things for folks to care about them.
Posted at 08:54 AM in "bipartisanship", action, big pharma, clean water, corporate taxes, health care, Medicare, paid sick leave, tax cuts for the rich, taxes, waaaaah!, working families | Permalink | Comments (0)
Action: concerning, at least once more, the Build Back Better Act.
Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to get the lead out of our drinking water, raise taxes on the rich and on corporations, invest in the care economy, enact paid family/medical leave, let Medicare negotiate drug prices, and expand Medicare. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.
Food and Water Watch helps you tell your Congressfolk to ensure that the Build Back Better Act protects our clean water by funding lead pipe removal. The bill our President signs today provides some funding for that purpose, but not enough, and it's not "cheating" to make this bill provide the rest, it's doing the right thing, a thing we ought to encourage our Congressfolk to do more. Their excuse for cutting lead pipe removal funding, of course, would be "the BIF already does it, so why do we need to do it again?" I just explained why; now we all need to explain why to our Congressfolk. Opposing clean water is politically difficult, but Kyrsten Sinema, for one, thinks she's the greatest political operator ever, so I wouldn't put it past her to do it. That makes what we're doing a, er, pre-emptive strike.
Americans for Tax Fairness helps you tell your Congressfolk to raise taxes on the rich and on corporations. The American people approve of raising these taxes on the rich and on corporations at a near-supermajority level, so the 51 Senators who oppose it aren't "being bipartisan" or "just trying to get things done," they're actively trying to subvert the people's will, which is the precise opposite of their job. It's that damn simple, and all the damn drama ruins everything. I speak, of course, of the drama where politicians try to prove they're "essential" by throwing a wrench in everything that isn't "bipartisan" enough, by which I actually mean "doesn't capitulate to Republicans enough." They should think about capitulating to the people. Because that's their job.
The National Women's Law Center helps you tell your Congressfolk to ensure that the Build Back Better Act funds the "care economy," i.e., things like child care and home care. The fact that this plank of the Build Back Better Act has made it this far tells me this was a big priority for Joe Biden, but now that Joe Manchin is playing Henny Penny about the inflation rate, it's in as much danger of being cut (or cut out) as anything else. But we have to start investing in Americans again. Folks who think infrastructure is only about roads or bridges are shallow; they don't understand how we actually build civilizations. Of course roads and bridges are infrastructure, but without people, people who will fight for and maintain the values we pass on to our children, a civilization can't exist. Some people would like that! But they don't deserve veto power.
Both Moms Rising and Daily Kos help you tell your Congressfolk to include paid family/medical leave in the Build Back Better Act. Again, part of building a civilization is treating its people right, and being literally the only highly-developed country that doesn't guarantee paid family/medical leave to all its citizens is pretty much the opposite of treating people right. Joe Manchin's fretting about "the cost" is especially offensive here -- previously, Kirsten Gillibrand's bills funded it with a tiny payroll tax, one that would have cost the worker making $50,000 annually a mere $8/month. $8! And don't let anyone tell you that because people abuse the Family Medical Leave Act (which provides unpaid leave), we shouldn't pass this. Better to simply fight fraud, than to give up on civilization because fighting fraud is hard.
Drug Prices Are Too High, Daily Kos, Penn PIRG, and More Perfect Union all help you demand that your Congressfolk put Medicare drug price negotiation in the Build Back Better Act. More Perfect Union also helps you tell your Congressfolk to make sure a $35/monthly cap on insulin prices stays in the Build Back Better Act; that's a big deal, since Americans pay way, way, way too much for insulin, which is a life-saving medicine, after all. Our House is apparently reinserting Medicare drug price negotiation into their version of the Build Back Better Act -- and since this would save the taxpayer money, it'd make the impending CBO score look much better -- so let's make sure everyone knows the American people's will is more important than Kyrsten Sinema's will, or Bob Menendez's will.
Finally, Daily Kos helps you tell your Congressfolk to expand Medicare services for seniors in the Build Back Better Act. Democrats have gone with a different approach than I would have done, by improving health care services here and there, rather than, say, passing Medicare-for-All health insurance (and hate to beat a dead horse, but I've offered more than one viable funding mechanism in this space). Anyway, that doesn't mean the improvements they'd make aren't worth making -- but nor does it mean we shouldn't ask for more, like dental and vision care for seniors and reducing the eligibility age from 65 to 60. When we ask for more, people like Joe Manchin have to give you more. Hell, asking for anything has brought him further left than he'd like to go. So we ought to keep doing that.
One more thing: ignore all the pablum about how inflation should give us pause about passing this bill. The causes of inflation right now are a) COVID and b) supply chain monopolies, and neither of these have anything to do with paid family/medical leave, Medicare drug price negotiation, or any of the other things we've described above; these items certainly haven't become "irresponsible" just because inflation's above six percent now. (I'm old enough to remember when inflation was double that, but I digress.) Yes, Joe Manchin probably will use it as an excuse to kill the bill outright now that he's cut it by more than two-thirds, but we're not supposed to game out "what Joe Manchin will do"; we're supposed to express our will until our representatives in House and Senate do our will. We're right, and they're wrong. That ain't changed. Republicans, and people like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, will always find some excuse to do the wrong thing sooner or later; the only antidote to their excuses, and their inaction, and their cowardice, and their malice, is our will, expressed in numbers they can't deny. So let's keep doing that.
Posted at 05:53 AM in "bipartisanship", action, big pharma, clean water, corporate taxes, drama, health care, lead poisoning, Medicare, Medicare-for-All health insurance, monopolies, paid sick leave, tax cuts for the rich, taxes | Permalink | Comments (0)
Action: still in the shadow of the Build Back Better Act.
Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to get the lead out of our drinking water, raise taxes on the rich and on corporations, stop obsessing about SALT caps, enact paid family/medical leave, let Medicare negotiate drug prices, and expand Medicare. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.
Food and Water Watch helps you tell your Congressfolk to ensure that the Build Back Better Act protects our clean water by funding lead pipe removal. Yeah, the "bipartisan" "infrastructure" "deal" the House just passed does do some of that, and that's not nothing, but we need to do more of it. And remember: if you don't have clean water, you don't have health care, period. And no clean water isn't something we "took care of" a long time ago and don't need regulations to take care of now -- we always have to take care of clean water, just as we always have to take care of the things we win. The fight for justice never ends; only right-wingers want you to believe that, and only about the things they hate. You see they're always fighting! And they'll come for your clean water if you let them.
Americans for Tax Fairness helps you tell your Congressfolk to raise taxes on the rich and on corporations. The Build Back Better Act as currently constructed doesn't whiff on these matters -- an effective 42% bracket on income over $10 million and a 45% bracket on income over $25 million, plus a 15% minimum corporate tax and a 1% stock buyback tax -- but my goals are always 91% on millionaire income and 55% on corporate profits over $1 million, and just because certain people don't want those rates to go up at all doesn't mean we should stop fighting for them. Don't worry about getting blamed for the bill's failure, because America already blames liberals for everything. Freeing, isn't it?
You may want to get on the phone with your Congressfolk and tell them not to make or break the Build Back Better Act over SALT caps (or caps on deducting state and local taxes). Tom Suozzi's red line (NO DEALZ WITHOUTZ TEH SALT CAPZ GONEZ!!!!!) ain't any less stupid than all of Kyrsten Sinema's red lines, and restoring state-and-local-taxes deductions to their pre-2017 levels will mainly benefit the very wealthy. Sen. Sanders (I-VT) has proposed eliminating the SALT cap only for Americans making less than $400,000 annually, and I think that's a good compromise, because most folks just don't care about rich folks in blue states getting their state and local tax deductions back, because gosh, they're just trying to eat. And Democrats want to be about that, right? It's hard to tell.
Both Moms Rising and Daily Kos help you tell your Congressfolk to include paid family/medical leave in the Build Back Better Act. Our House Democrats are dutifully putting it back in the bill as we speak, and Joe Manchin must be laughing. "Didn't they hear me the first time I said no?" The more pertinent point is that Joe Manchin doesn't hear all the good Americans who say yes. And that's no less true in West Virginia (where the whole BBB agenda is very popular) than anywhere else! And if he wants to be an asshole, that doesn't mean you walk on eggshells around him -- it means you keep doing the right thing, and see if that keeps prompting him to be an asshole. We have to teach people not to enable assholes, after all.
Drug Prices Are Too High, Daily Kos, and Penn PIRG all help you demand that your Congressfolk put Medicare drug price negotiation in the Build Back Better Act. You'll be happy to hear that Democrats have heard you about that -- putting a very, very small version of Medicare drug price negotiation back in the Build Back Better Act, one that would let Medicare negotiate drug prices for 10 drugs in 2025 and 10 more three years later, which is exactly the kind of reform that sounds like very weak tea now, but which folks will fight for when Republicans take control of either Congress or the Presidency again. There is absolutely no harm, however, in expressing your will for more comprehensive Medicare drug price negotiation. "Making bad Democrats lose elections" does not count as harm.
Finally, Daily Kos helps you tell your Congressfolk to expand Medicare services for seniors in the Build Back Better Act. This is the thing we've made the least progress upon, largely due (and stop me if you've heard this one before) to the bloviation of Joe Manchin, who wouldn't dare expand Medicare services until "we put Medicare on a more solid footing." Medicare, the program that's been around longer than I've been alive, longer, even, than Star Trek has been alive? What is it that keeps Medicare going? Oh, right -- the will of the American people, who have worked for it, paid into it, fought for it, and deserve to have it when they need it. These are all principles that seem to elude Joe Manchin, since he doesn't seem at all conversant in them.
One more thing: just because the "bipartisan" "infrastructure" "deal" is now law -- and yes, though it's a flawed bill, it's not a bad bill, and Democrats will no doubt spend the next ten months forgetting to take the credit they deserve to take for it! -- doesn't mean we still shouldn't act on the Build Back Better Act. Withholding a vote on the infrastructure bill was the Democrat liberal wing's best chance at getting "moderate" Democrats to acquiesce on the larger Build Back Better package, and now that that's gone, what can still hold "moderates" to doing the right thing? Oh, right, us -- the only thing that has ever made politicians do the right thing. So let's hold their feet to the fire, folks.
Posted at 05:21 AM in "bipartisanship", action, clean water, corporate taxes, health care, lead poisoning, Medicare, paid sick leave, regulations serving people, tax cuts for the rich, taxes | Permalink | Comments (0)
Around the table: containing last words on the Tuesday elections.
Natasha Lennard at The Intercept describes how America really has separate justice systems for fascists and anti-fascists -- but points to how that could change. The Wisconsin judge who won't let Kyle Rittenhouse's victims be called "victims" but will happily let them be called "looters" isn't even the worst of it, when BLM protestors almost invariably go before right-wing federal judges instead of local judges like Mr. Rittenhouse managed to get. But antifascists can do (and have done) better in civil cases against fascists, which have a lower burden of proof than criminal cases and which often leave fascist organizations bankrupt. Lesson: when things look dark, keep looking for light, and have faith you'll find it.
Faiza Patel and Mary Pat Dwyer at Just Security describe some of the, ah, inconsistencies Facebook deploys in deciding what to remove from its platform. Long story short: Facebook says it follows government designations (i.e., as a "terrorist organization") in making those decisions, but bans more groups than that, and anyway our government doesn't even compel Facebook to ban them. When we stop treating Facebook like This Completely New and Unprecedented Thing and more like a publishing house, "what to do about Facebook" will become clearer -- namely, that we compel Facebook to moderate public posts with considerably more scrutiny than they've been willing to employ thus far (though not private posts).
Sen. Josh Hawley (E-MO) writes a speech defending "traditional" "manly" virtues. You know, like "courage, and independence, and assertiveness," which I bet you thought were human virtues! Later on he says so, of course, though anyone with any intellectual honesty wouldn't have led you the other way in the first place, but even suggesting that folks who want men to stop raping women are against courage is gaslighting. Also, too, this "war" on "traditional masculinity" has not caused men to watch more porn; I'm pretty sure other factors have much, much more to do with it than that -- like nearly 60 years of Playboy magazine, if you want to take the long view, and the proliferation of porn on the internet since about 1996 if you don't. Used to be difficult to get porn, but not now.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) rightly slams Joe Manchin for his deficit hysteria over the Build Back Better Act, noting that the "bipartisan" "infrastructure" "deal" he helped "negotiate" actually adds to our national deficit. And that's what you get when you cave to Republicans on every funding demand! President Biden wanted corporate taxes and tax hikes on the rich to fund their "deal," and Republicans said no, and Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, ace negotiators that they are, said OK.
When I hear that 31% of Americans think the 2020 election was stolen, I think it's officially time to revise my rule of thumb: it's not 25% of the electorate that's batshit insane, it's 30%. I hasten to point out that if we still lived in the New Deal era, that number would be a lot, lot lower. We'd still have insane people voting; we always have. But we wouldn't have to worry about them throwing bricks through our windows if we have a "love wins" sign on our front lawn, and we wouldn't have to worry about them one day deciding just to shoot up their neighbors' houses if they didn't vote Republican.
Finally, I hate to sound like a broken record, but yes, Democrats lost a lot of races on Tuesday mainly because they don't do enough with the power they have -- and when they don't do enough, then Republicans rush in with their BS about mask mandates and "critical race theory" and win. Appalling as it is that Republicans can win exclusively on such rage-stoking absurdities, we have to remember that this stratagem doesn't work when our government actually works for us. Others have said the pandemic and the economy are foremost in people's minds, and I think they're right; most folks glaze over when they confront all the inside baseball over the Build Back Better Act, but as the pandemic and the economy continue to upset voters' lives, voters will look side-eyed at the party in control, and that's the Democrats. Of course right-wingers will continue to throw sand in the gears of our recovery, but Democrats can confound them simply by doing the job we gave them to do -- end COVID, and rebuild our economy so everyone can get ahead. (And if you are looking for a silver lining from Tuesday: we'll never have to endure a Terry McAuliffe campaign again.)
Posted at 03:18 AM in "bipartisanship", around the table, bad arguments, corporate taxes, health care, law and order, social media, stupid stupid stupid!, tax cuts for the rich, taxes, the stupid it burns, waaaaah! | Permalink | Comments (0)
Around the table: containing hopefully our last-ever words about the "governing philosophy" of Kyrsten Sinema.
Want some good news in advance of Election Day? Steven Rosenfeld writes that "In Virginia, Organizers Are Turning Out Overlooked Voters of Color," namely, "in cities and rural areas where voters whom political insiders do not expect to turn out reside." How? By addressing a community's "pain points" (i.e., those issues where folks are really hurting, like hunger and homelessness), by doing a lot more listening than proselytizing, and by concentrating on issues relating to those pain points instead of candidates. Result: early voting among folks of color is presently much, much higher in rural areas than in urban or suburban ones. Of course, if Mr. McAuliffe wins this race, right-wingers will attack this very phenomenon when they claim the race was "stolen." But this is how we should win elections.
Sarah Mimms at BuzzFeed finds at least a dozen January 6 "protestors" are on the ballot tomorrow. If there are any non-partisan voters left, they should all reject these candidates' assertions that they were just at the Capitol but not part of the breach, or just at the rally but not at the Capitol, as if they just had no idea what was about to happen -- or what right-wing social media "influencers" wanted to happen. Certainly statements like "I don't know what constitutes the Capitol grounds" should set off their BS detectors.
When I hear that Amazon has told independent sellers who use the Amazon marketplace (and comprise most of its revenue!) that impending legislation could "force" Amazon to shut it all down, I ask myself how do our bold entrepreneurs ever do anything? Oh, right -- by necessity. If Amazon shuts down its marketplace, there'll still be an internet, and people will still find a way (or ten) to sell their stuff. I'm also reminded, of course, that big corporations always whine and take hostages at the prospect of government telling them to stop hurting people.
Uh oh: Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) called his brother-in-law the very same day he dumped $1.6 million in stock mere days before the COVID-related stock market crash of 2020 -- and his brother-in-law dumped between $97,000 and $280,000 worth of his own shares not even one minute after the call concluded. Mr. Burr also had, per our Securities and Exchange Commission, "material nonpublic information regarding the incoming economic impact of coronavirus," and how did he use this information? By reassuring the public at large, while warning social club attendees that the pandemic would actually be quite dire. Mr. Burr will not seek re-election in 2022, suggesting he might actually be capable of shame.
In case you were wondering, folks are going on strike a lot lately because of bad pay and working conditions, not because of vaccine mandates. That couldn't be because our "liberal" media (not just Fox News!) constantly yammers on about workers wanting to quit or saying they'll quit over vaccine mandates that hadn't even gone into force, could it? Why, yes, it could. It could also be because unions have been trying to negotiate issues caused by mandates, such as sick leave issues; our "liberal" media ain't exactly doing a bang-up job covering those, either. All that does is help Republicans win offices they don't deserve to win.
Finally, Kyrsten Sinema still has a few defenders, including the ones who tell us she's really committed to "bipartisanship" as the best way to ensure "sturdier, long-term legislative solutions for everyday people as opposed to short-term partisan victories that have a tendency to be wiped out in a new majority just a couple of years down the road," in her spokeshack's words. Three objections: one, how does that apply to working on a bill exclusively with your own party? Two, if you dedicate yourself to "bipartisanship," the other side can just say no to everything all the time, and pull you in their direction -- as they just did with the "bipartisan" "infrastructure" "deal" she supposedly "negotiated," where Republicans said no to every proposed corporate tax hike and tax hike on the rich. And three, making "negotiating with the other side" the center of your philosophy is offensive when the only folks you're supposed to "negotiate" with, as a Senator, are your constituents. We have power, after all, and disappearing us from the conversation disrespects us. After all, who saved the Affordable Care Act from being "wiped out"? We did -- not the politicians addicted to "bipartisanship."
Posted at 03:39 AM in "bipartisanship", activism, around the table, big corporate lies about "protecting small businesses", corporate taxes, corruption, health care, homelessness, hostage-taking, labor, tax cuts for the rich, taxes, the "liberal" media, voting rights | Permalink | Comments (0)
Action: sigh.
What an absolute shitshow the Build Back Better Act "negotiations" have become. As of this writing, the Build Back Better Act will not raise the top income tax rate or the corporate tax rate (thanks, Kyrsten Sinema), won't raise taxes on billionaires (thanks, Joe Manchin), won't let Medicare negotiate drug prices (thanks again, Ms. Sinema, and thanks, also, Bob Menendez), won't expand Medicare to include dental, vision, and hearing care (thanks again, Mr. Manchin), and now doesn't include paid family/medical leave (boy, Mr. Manchin, you're really batting a thousand here). You don't need Bernie Sanders to tell you that these are all popular things, and the American people aren't wrong about wanting any of them.
So now's a good time to call your House Reps and demand they vote against the Build Back Better Act as the Senate has currently constructed it, as well as the "bipartisan" "infrastructure" "deal," until such time as the aforementioned items are back in the Build Back Better Act. Try to make your call before 9 am EST, if you can, because apparently the House Democratic caucus will meet at that time. Now would also be a good time to take to the streets in protest of the Democrats' intolerable weakness; if I hear of any such protests (since numbers are better than one guy standing outside with a clapboard), I'll make sure you know about it.
So, heckuva job, Democrats! And thanks to the efforts of folks like the three above-listed Senators, the rest of us have to figure out how we're going to survive in a fascist America. Oh, that's definitely coming, now -- fascism always comes when politicians fail to do the people's will. Be sure to mention that to your House Reps, as well.
That's all for today, I'm afraid. "Disgusted" doesn't begin to cover how I feel right now.
UPDATE. President Biden has released a revised Build Back Better framework, which does include Medicare hearing coverage. The framework is not complete rubbish, but then Sens. Manchin and Sinema haven't had a chance to stamp their feet about it yet. My advice remains the same: kill the whole thing if we can't get all the items listed in the first paragraph. We are, as always, the only thing standing between good and evil.
Posted at 07:48 AM in "bipartisanship", action, big pharma, corporate taxes, health care, Medicare, paid sick leave, taxes | Permalink | Comments (0)
Action: concerning Medicare drug price negotiation, climate change, Medicaid, the filibuster, and federal corruption.
Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to let Medicare negotiate drug prices, fight climate change, plug gaps in Medicaid coverage, end the Senate filibuster, and protect Inspectors General as they expose government corruption. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your legislators' phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.
Both Daily Kos and Drug Prices Are Too High help you tell your Congressfolk to let Medicare negotiate drug prices. The latter action alert starts off saying "Shame on you, Senators Menendez and Sinema!" And that's entirely appropriate -- Sen. Menendez botches the art of argument in trying to avoid saying big pharma corporations control his actions, and Sen. Sinema creates chaos by opposing something 80% of Americans want. Newt Gingrich used to say if 70% of Americans want something, they should get it. I'm sure he has excuses ready for why Americans shouldn't get this thing they want, but doing their constituents' will is a Congressional representative's job. So let's do our job, and communicate our will to those representatives, as often as we need to.
Daily Kos helps you demand that the Build Back Better Act make the historic climate change-fighting investments we need to make. Because as much as we need health care and higher taxes on the rich and on corporations, we also need a planet to live on, and pretty much everyone who doesn't imbibe rage-addled masturbatoria from right-wing news channels wants solar power and wind power to be a big part of our future. And don't fear Joe Manchin suggesting he'll leave the Democratic Party if he doesn't get his way (which is no climate change-fighting legislation). If he leaves the party over this, he becomes the villain -- not to our "liberal" media, which loves drama more than truth, but to anyone who's actually watching. And that's more people than it used to be.
Moms Rising helps you tell your Congressfolk to plug the "Medicaid gap" between states that have expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act and states that haven't. No reason why poor folks in 12 American states should be left out, after all, except that the Affordable Care Act left that loophole open for our Supreme Court to notice, which is a stupid reason to let people get sick and die. Thanks to certain drama- and chaos-addicted Senators, the Build Back Better Act stands poised to do a whole lot less about health care than we have demanded (which is, now that I think of it, the reason Democrats haven't been pushing what's in it -- they'd rather run on what they pass than what they promise!). But plugging the Medicaid gap would help a lot of good Americans in states with reactionary legislatures who don't listen to them.
Demand Progress helps you tell your Senators to get rid of the filibuster in order to pass S. 2747, the Freedom to Vote Act. Republicans filibustered that bill yesterday, because chaos, but we still must do our duty to communicate our will to our Senators, and, if need be, tell them how to do our will. Making the filibuster a talking filibuster -- i.e., one that Senators would have to keep going by actually talking for 12 or 24 or 48 hours straight, rather than just signaling that they don't want to end debate and then going out to the dinner or the theatre, which action ends debate -- remains my preference. But you know what? If Senators don't want to work for their chaos and obstruction, then I say take their toys away from them. Because I think I speak for most of America when I say we're done.
Finally, the Project on Government Oversight helps you tell your Senators to do more to fight federal corruption. You go to swing states and you don't find millions of people committed to "bipartisanship" or "right-sizing regulations" or whatever -- you find people who hate government corruption and hate that politicians don't do enough about it. But if we give our Inspectors General the tools they need to investigate and expose government corruption, then they'll be able to expose a lot more of it. Hey, it's not for nothing Donald Trump tried to replace them all when he became President! If they were bad at exposing corruption, after all, he would have let them hang around. And indeed, in 2020, he did replace a bunch of them with "acting" IGs he hoped would do his will, and not the American people's. So let's put a stop to all of that.
Posted at 10:43 AM in "bipartisanship", action, big pharma, climate change, corruption, drama, filibuster reform, health care, law and order, Medicaid, Medicare, solar power, the "liberal" media, voting rights, wind power | Permalink | Comments (0)
Action: concerning, once more, the Build Back Better Act.
Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to raise taxes on the rich and on corporations (including enacting a Billionaire's Tax and a stock buyback tax) to pay for the Build Back Better Act, and make sure the Build Back Better Act invests in our care economy, funds paid family/medical leave, lets Medicare negotiate drug prices, expands Medicare, expands our fight against climate change, and permanently expands the Child Tax Credit. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.
Americans for Tax Fairness helps you tell your Congressfolk to raise the full $3.5 trillion for the Build Back Better Act by raising taxes on the rich and on corporations. Americans for Tax Fairness also helps you tell your Congressfolk to include the Billionaire's Income Tax in the Build Back Better Act and assess a 2% tax on corporate stock buybacks. Remember when they said the 2017 tax "reform" would put thousands of dollars in everyone's pockets? What it actually did was let big corporate CEOs buy back stock, so that shareholder power is even more concentrated in executive hands. That used to be illegal, by the way! And it should be again. In the meantime, we should discourage it with taxation, and then use that money to do good works, which we will describe below.
Moms Rising helps you tell your Congressfolk to invest in the care economy in the Build Back Better Act. What do we know about child care and elder care? That we'll all need one or the other one day, and they could both be a damn sight cheaper. And none of that is about "creating an entitlement society," but about relieving real burdens on working families that cripple their ability to contribute more to our society -- burdens that only exist to make corporate executives rich. Yes, that's your bootstrap society for you -- this civilization, such as it is, redistributes our income upward to the undeserving rich, and then harangues us to "just work harder." I want this income-redistribution-upward scheme dead before I leave this Earth. Supporting the care economy is just one way to do that.
Moms Rising also helps you tell your Congressfolk to include paid family/medical leave in the Build Back Better Act. Every other wealthy nation on Earth does it, but our leaders would apparently prefer to churn out corporate executives who buy 18 homes and a hundred classic cars, fly to the edge of our atmosphere and call it "space travel," and build atomic clocks in mountains. You can have one or the other, not both, and I know which one I'll take -- I'll take the society that gives everyone a chance to succeed, rather than worship the folks who've already "succeeded" and indulge their lust for mammon even more. And paid family/medical leave would cost so little! And don't tolerate any whining about "workers abusing the program" -- just catch and punish the ones who do. This ain't rocket science.
Daily Kos helps you tell your Congressfolk to make large investments in climate change action. That would include investing in solar and wind power, and it'd also include a methane emissions tax, which would slash carbon emissions from the fossil fuel industry. Yeah, you heard Joe Manchin doesn't want to do this in the Build Back Better Act, either! But he already got his corporate welfare for fossil fuel corporations in that "bipartisan" "infrastructure" "deal" he insisted on having, so where does his greed end? I say "his greed" because of his own large investments in the coal industry, of course. I mean, you'd have to explain his ignorance of his constituents' will somehow! And I think they ought to be heard, for once.
Drug Prices Are Too High, Daily Kos, and Penn PIRG all help you demand that your Congressfolk put Medicare drug price negotiation in the Build Back Better Act, while Daily Kos helps you tell your Congressfolk to expand Medicare services for seniors in the Build Back Better Act. Medicare drug price negotiation (which Bob Menendez still opposes, can't someone in New Jersey primary his sorry ass in 2024?) would save tens of billions of dollars annually, and remember what Bernie Sanders said: dental care for seniors isn't an "entitlement." It's more than Medicare covers now, and that has to change.
Finally, the Friends Committee on National Legislation, Moms Rising, and the Juggernaut Project all help you tell your Congressfolk to make the Child Tax Credit expansion permanent in the Build Back Better Act. Working families in America have been getting $250 or $300 checks every month since mid-July, but those will end at the end of this calendar year -- yes, for 2022, working families will still get the expansion in the form of one lump sum at tax time, but why not keep doing it monthly? Families stimulate the economy better with smaller sums of money than they do with large windfalls. And, yeah, it'll be like a political ad every time the check arrives; why on Earth would Democrats refuse such a gift? Oh, right, because they're geniuses at snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. And that's why we offer our counsel to them at critical moments like these, when they're about to let big donors crash their entire agenda.
Posted at 05:19 AM in "bipartisanship", action, climate change, corporate taxes, corporate welfare, Democrat weakness, executive pay, income redistribution, Medicare, methane emissions, paid sick leave, shareholder power, solar power, taxes, wind power, working families | Permalink | Comments (0)
Around the table: and now for another exciting chapter of "weak Democrats, insane Republicans."
When I hear that a majority of Americans don't know exactly what's in the Build Back Better plan, I'm inclined to say, no shit, Sherlock! The fact that Democrats allow the discussion to be all about "how much money we're going to spend" leads me to think they're all trying to tank it, not just the Manchin/Sinema/Gottheimer/Cuellar axis. I mean, if they told media outlets and their constituents "we want to lower drug prices, get everyone paid family leave, and cut taxes for working families, and we're going to pay for all of that by raising taxes on the rich and on corporations," people like Joe Manchin and Henry Cuellar would be irrelevant, because their own constituents would be raising hell with them in a way they couldn't avoid. It's sad that Democrats have forgotten how this works -- or, perhaps more precisely, "forgotten."
In a related development, four Senate Democrats say they won't back the Build Back Better Act if Joe Manchin guts all the climate change provisions in the bill. That's as it should be! Of course, no good deed goes unpunished in America, so liberals will get all the blame if this all fails, despite the fact that, again, it's been the Manchin/Sinema/Gottheimer/Cuellar axis saying "no" to things most American people want this whole time. (Also, the gas drilling corporations say we shouldn't enact a methane emissions tax because the cost "would be felt by consumers," as if said corporations have literally nothing to do with passing on that cost, and as if we should merely tolerate corporations doing immoral crap.)
Here's some good news: 20 state Attorneys General have sued to stop the DeJoy plan to cripple our Post Office, and oh boy the suit claims that Mr. DeJoy didn't follow the law in making changes to services and prices. Sound familiar? Of course it does -- it's the thing that tripped up every Trump Administration rule that died in court, which was a lot of them. You can't just do whatever you want in the Executive branch, and our Founders would spin in their graves to observe that, even if none of them could have foreseen a phenomenon such as the Administrative Procedure Act.
When I hear that Terry McAuliffe is hopping mad that the House didn't pass the "bipartisan" "infrastructure" "deal," I feel compelled to wonder why he thinks this is the hill to die on. He knows full well why it didn't pass -- because actual liberals knew if it passed, right-wing Democrats in the Senate would kill the larger Build Back Better Act -- so he indulges in hippie-punching like it's 1993. He deserves to lose -- but more to the point, Democrats deserve to lose as long as they act like cowards. (I say "act like," of course, because, as I've suggested, I think they are acting -- they want to keep things the way they are, and losing their Congressional majorities in 2022 to fascists is part of the plan.)
Lawrence Torcello at The Conversation tells us "How Columbus Day Contributes to the Cultural Erasure of Italian-Americans." You may find that counter-intuitive, particularly if you're sensitive to how badly America's treated Italian immigrants over the years (and if you know that Columbus Day observances began as a sop to ill-treated Italian-Americans), but I'm an Italian-American myself and I'd much rather celebrate Chef Boyardee Day. I'm not kidding -- everyone eats spaghetti now, only because Ettore Boiardi made it seem less foreign to large numbers of Americans. Or how about a day for Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Ida Lupino, or Alan Alda?
Finally, Eugene Robinson at the Washington Post wonders "How Dumb Can a Nation Get and Still Survive?" Sympathetic as I am to his frustration over lies about masks and vaccines, I've long said it's not stupidity per se that afflicts us, but rage -- Fox News has been enraging folks en masse since at least 2002, and now they have a lot of imitators, both in media and in politics. Hate to sound like a broken record, but it'd help if Democrats would do good works with their power when they have it, lest we all witness the spectacle of a decisive number of voters actually preferring fascists to weaklings.
Posted at 03:10 AM in "bipartisanship", around the table, big pharma, climate change, corporate taxes, Democrat weakness, gas drilling, health care, law and order, Medicare, methane emissions, paid sick leave, save our Post Office, tax cuts for the rich, taxes, working families | Permalink | Comments (0)
Around the table: with more horrible truths about rioters and insurrectionists.
You've heard that the January 6 coup-plotters weren't really that violent (despite what we all saw on TV!) because they "didn't bring guns"? Oh yes they did bring guns to their little coup attempt! That finding jibes with the testimony of DC police, who say their gun recovery units were "working constantly" during the coup attempt, and it also jibes with the testimony of DC rioters, who say there were a lot more folks bearing arms than police have yet found. And again, we all saw what happened on TV. We have no reason to listen to right-wing politicians who themselves enabled by the coup attempt. If they didn't actually take part in it, that is.
Thank God for good Americans like Steven Rosenfeld, who describes at length how right-wingers plunge forward even though their treasured Arizona fraudit didn't tell them exactly what they wanted to hear -- and also dissects all the weasel words in their arguments! Ballots that might have come from inaccurate addresses, ballots that might have come from moved-away voters, or video purporting to show election employees who might have erased computer election records -- I've tried to highlight this to right-wing voter fraud screechers, and they just ignore me. They probably jerk off over provoking me into pointing it out to them, too. Little do they know I don't aim to convince them, but to convince other, more reasonable people who might be listening in. Anyway, I sure hope they wipe their screens off when they're done.
Our Postal Service has begun to slow down deliveries per Postmaster General DeJoy's "bold" plan, and the Postal Regulatory Commission slams it, saying it won't even achieve its own goals by the end of 2022 and that (of course!) it didn't take into account the effect the plan would have on customers (i.e., the American people), particularly those who rely on the mail to get their medicine. Of course, the plan makes sense when you realize that Postmaster General DeJoy's purpose is to destroy the Postal Service so his cronies can privatize it. And I wouldn't be too keen on the idea that President Biden might be waiting until good Americans can't get their life-saving drugs on time to finally sack Mr. DeJoy -- if you know a problem is coming, you have a duty, as a leader, to solve it before it hurts anyone.
When I hear that Wisconsin Republicans want to ban words like "diversity" and "white supremacist" in public schools, all I can say is waaaaaaaaaaah! Diaper-loaded brats, these Republicans, imagining that teachers and students can't handle complex ideas about race relations, in a nation with a long, long history of white supremacy, no less! And here you thought conservatives trusted people. Maybe conservatives still do -- but these reactionaries who call themselves "conservative" certainly don't. They'd rather a real fascist like Donald Trump told everyone what to do and say and think. That's so much easier than working to maintain a civilization, after all.
Ho hum, right-wing asshole admits to pretending to be a Black Lives Matter supporter as he shot up a Minneapolis police station. I said over a year ago that a lot of these "rioters" were actually right-wing agents provocateurs, and I was right! I wonder if this Ivan Harrison Hunter fellow knows the asshole whose buddy filmed him busting up windows at the AutoZone last year, which kick-started riots in Minneapolis. If he doesn't, I bet Facebook can bring them together. Even in jail!
Finally, Sen. Joe Manchin (D?-WV) says he "never knew about" the strategy to pass two spending bills that Democrats have been pursuing for months. Never mind that documentary evidence shows him talking about the two-track strategy in June -- the two-track strategy only exists in the first place because he insisted that infrastructure legislation be "bipartisan" and because Republicans would block most of the Democrats' agenda without reconciliation. Don't think he's dumb, or old, or tired, or just misheard the question -- he's gaslighting you, just like they all do when they can't win the arguments on the merits.
Posted at 03:26 AM in "bipartisanship", actual conservatism, around the table, guns, racism, save our Post Office, social media, voting rights, waaaaah! | Permalink | Comments (0)
Action: concerning evictions, Democrats, Medicare, taxes, whistleblowers, and prisons.
Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to enact an eviction moratorium, tell "Wall Street Democrats" to stop trying to kill the reconciliation bill, tell your Congressfolk to let Medicare negotiate its own drug prices, make the Child Tax Credit expansion permanent, pass the False Claims Amendments Act, and end slavery in American prisons. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.
Now that our Supreme Court (by the expected 6-3 margin) has ruled the most recent Biden eviction ban unconstitutional, the Center for Popular Democracy helps you tell your Congressfolk to enact an eviction ban at least through December. Right-wingers will continue to shriek about TEH LANDLORDZ!!!!!, but landlords can weather bad times better than renters, and anyway that's beside the point -- the point is that our government enacted renter relief in the American Rescue Plan Act that hasn't gotten to renters yet, so it would be evil of us to let people get thrown out in the streets before we've made sure they got all the help they could get. That won't convince right-wingers, but nothing does anymore, except DIDDLEZ MY RAGEZ GLANDZ!!!!!
Now that our House has passed the $3.5 trillion budget blueprint, the National Campaign for Transit Justice helps you tell the notorious "Wall Street Democrats" to stop trying to sabotage it. Remember: when they say "the price tag's too high," what they really mean is "we don't want rich people and corporations to pay more taxes," even though wanting rich people and corporations to pay more taxes is the majority position in poll after poll after poll and it ain't even close. We could have better Medicare, lower drug prices, paid family/medical leave, better jobs for care workers, and real tax relief for real American working families, except that for some Democrats, big donors are more important than anything. They need us to remind them whom they actually work for.
Speaking of lower drug prices, the aptly-named Drug Prices Are Too High helps you tell your Congressfolk to give Medicare the power to negotiate its own drug prices. It isn't just a good idea, it's a funding mechanism! Seriously, even the right-wing Mercatus Institute told us a few years ago that letting Medicare negotiate its own drug prices would save the taxpayer over $80 billion annually; times that by ten and you've got $800 billion, which all by itself is more than one-fifth of the aforementioned reconciliation bill's $3.5 trillion price tag. Also, it is a really good idea, since Medicare is the biggest buyer of prescription drugs in America and can use its leverage to reduce drug prices for everyone. We deserve good things from our government, but we won't get them unless we speak out.
Demand Progress helps you tell your Congressfolk to make the Child Tax Credit (or CTC) expansion permanent. The American Rescue Plan Act helped deliver $250 or $300 monthly checks to mailboxes and bank accounts all over America, so of course some right-wing Democrats want to end it; I guess they're just more comfortable going hat-in-hand to some big donor who didn't earn his millions or billions than they are running on, you know, actual accomplishments. If they really want to choose the guy who gilds the plumbing in his 19th vacation home over the kid who got lifted out of poverty, they can go right ahead. But we have to speak out so that if they choose unwisely, they'll get hurt at the polls. And anyone who puts big donors over poor children deserves that hurt.
The National Whistleblower Center helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass S. 2428, the False Claims Amendments Act. The original False Claims Act helps our government go after federal contractors (among others) who defraud the taxpayer; and the qui tam provision (literally hundreds of years old, don't let anyone tell you any differently!) has helped numerous whistleblowers get a part of what our government is able to recover; S. 2428 would strengthen anti-retaliation provisions and prevent judges from setting an arbitrarily higher standard for proof in fraud cases. Despite this bill's bipartisan sponsor list, the "bipartisan" "infrastructure" "deal" didn't include it, even though it would raise revenue. But that suggests that we need to be more vocal about it.
Finally, Roots Action helps you tell your Congressfolk to end slavery in American prisons. Specifically, you'd ask Congress to amend the 13th Amendment -- which allows slavery "as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted" -- and then apply our minimum wage laws to prisoners. We'll see how lucrative private prisons are after that! If you're thinking if they didn't want to be slaves they shouldn't have committed crimes, you're making a number of errors in your thinking: one, that any slavery is tolerable, anywhere, at any time; two, that anyone who commits a crime thinks like that; and three (and perhaps most important), that we're only supposed to punish prisoners, not rehabilitate them. So let's not hold ourselves hostage to cruelty.
Posted at 04:51 AM in "bipartisanship", action, actually rehabilitating prisoners, campaign finance, corporate taxes, Democrat weakness, hostage-taking, Medicare, paid sick leave, poverty, slavery, tax cuts for the rich, taxes, treating prisoners like human beings, whistleblowing, working families | Permalink | Comments (0)
Around the table: the drama, it burns!
FDA formally approves the Pfizer COVID vaccine, which likely means more vaccine mandates from businesses and local governments. It might also mean that a few folks who've hit upon "it's not fully-approved" as a reason not to get the vaccine will get it now. But the right-wing punditoids who've been yelling about full FDA approval will just give the Lazy Susan of Bad Arguments a spin and start mouthing off about something else -- at which point it should be clear, if it's not already, that right-wingers are stirring things up (and enabling the death of tens of thousands) solely so they can get power back in 2022. What, they're going to win with their policy proposals? (In the unlikely event you're on the fence about FDA approval processes, Nicole Karlis at Salon should assuage your fears with her detailed description of how FDA approvals work. It's certainly better than watching Fox News pull its "some critics say" crap.)
Clinical psychologist Doreen Dodgen-Magee writes extensively about the problems we face fighting social media misinformation, including social media algorithms that reward drama over sobriety, the "commitment bias" that leads folks to believe noxious crap for years just because (as Bruce Bartlett might say) it's hard to turn around a cruise ship, and the illusion of "stardom" social media too often affords. I agree that "more private messages and fewer elevated comments in social media spaces, quieter conversations, and, possibly offers of voice-to-voice conversations" would work better for friends and neighbors than public shaming, but I still think we ought to shame professional jerks and their most devoted followers -- not so much for their benefit, but for the benefit of others who may not be thinking clearly enough.
Because sometimes you need to confront Teh Stupid head-on, Marissa Higgins at Daily Kos does us all a public service in discussing the Virginia elementary school teacher who quit, in a public meeting, over being told to refer to trans students by their correct pronouns. Naturally she cites her "Christian" "values," and not, say, whether kids can really know whether they're trans or not -- I don't think boys just up and say they're really girls (and vice versa) in a world where peer pressure is even worse than it used to be, but even if I'm wrong, what the fuck harm does it do to call people what they want to be called? Too often the adults create all the drama when they're supposed to be modeling a better way.
Ho hum, the Trump Administration suppressed an EPA report stating that formaldehyde causes leukemia. You'd think all the hospital environmental workers in America would want to know that! How big a deal is this? A 30-year-old EPA assessment blamed formaldehyde for more than half of all cancers caused by industrial pollutants; the suppressed 2018 report says formaldehyde is three times more carcinogenic than that. Nonetheless, the unpublished findings somehow made their way to big chemical corporate lobbies, and then got suppressed, ostensibly because it was in the "wrong format." But people hate politicians who use arcane reasons to do nothing almost as much as they hate the nakedly corrupt.
Lo and behold, the right-wing New York Post institutes a mask mandate for its employees, after spending months slamming mask mandates in general, and while you wish the Post's readers would have a V8 moment over this -- they've been telling me to do one thing, and now they're doing another! They must never have meant anything they told me! -- you know as well as I do that the Lazy Susan of Bad Arguments sure is hypnotic when it spins. Maybe a "caravan" is coming to the border! Maybe Afghan refugees are moving in next door! Maybe there are transgender folks in my bathroom! There's always something when rage is all you care about.
Finally, Democrats struck a deal on the reconciliation bill, passing the budget framework immediately while promising to schedule a vote on the "bipartisan" "infrastructure" "deal" by September 27. "Moderate" Democrats should know by now the value of promises, and I guess it's nice to see Nancy Pelosi school them in it, rather than Mitch McConnell. But they'll have to finish both bills up by September 30 thanks to budget reconciliation rules, and how hilarious it will be to see Joe Manchin or Kyrsten Sinema or Josh Gottheimer or Henry Cuellar come up with stupid reasons to scuttle everything. At which point Democrats would doom themselves to the minority in Congress in 2022, which is dangerous, since they'd be losing the majority to avowed fascists.
Posted at 04:49 AM in "bipartisanship", around the table, corruption, Democrat weakness, drama, health care, social media, stupid stupid stupid!, the stupid it burns, transgender | Permalink | Comments (0)
Action: concerning jobs, war, refugees, voting rights, police violence, and saving our Post Office.
Long story short: tell your House Reps to pass the reconciliation budget blueprint, tell your Congressfolk to repeal the "war on terror"-era AUMFs, tell President Biden to raise the refugee cap on Afghan refugees, and tell your Congressfolk to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, eliminate qualified immunity for police officers, and pass the Postal Service Reform Act. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.
First things first: call your House Reps and tell them to vote in favor of the $3.5 trillion budget blueprint the Senate passed a few weeks ago, the budget blueprint that will enable all sorts of good things to happen in America -- higher taxes on the rich and on corporations, a stronger care-based economy, and paid family/medical leave for all workers, just to name a few. A few "moderate" Democrats are trying to take the bill hostage, but theirs is the calculus of cowardice -- the result of their actions, which may also be the aim of their actions, will be to scuttle both the reconciliation bill and the "bipartisan" "infrastructure" "deal" at whose altar they kneel. If they do that, they will lose not only their own seats, but the House and Senate -- and this time, they'll lose them to Republicans who openly identify as fascists. So brook no silliness from your House Reps about "the difficulty of raising taxes in an election." You know what's harder than raising taxes in an election? Winning elections in a fascist state when you're not a fascist.
Progress America helps you tell your Congressfolk to repeal the Authorizations to Use Military Force (or AUMFs) that started the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, and thus end our "forever war." Some people, and by some people I mainly mean people on the right side of the political spectrum, just aren't happy unless we're at war. Put six beers in them and they'll say war is the way to remake the world! Helluva job they did in Afghanistan, if so. War isn't the way to "remake the world," it's the way to redistribute income from taxpayers into defense contracting CEOs' pockets. You may note that Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) has sponsored these AUMF repeals, as she has done in the past, and you may remember that Rep. Lee was literally the only "nay" vote against the Afghanistan AUMF. If I were her, I'd wear an "I WAS RIGHT" baseball cap from now until the day they put me in the ground. But first, let's have her being right about that count for something.
In a related note, Win Without War helps you tell President Biden to raise the refugee cap for Afghans fleeing from the Taliban, so that more of the 300,000-plus Afghans who helped our military during the war effort can get out. You've already heard famous right-wing blowhards warn us about the coming "invasion" of Afghans, but this should be pretty simple to figure out from a moral perspective -- we did this to them, by invading their country, toppling their government, and promising them we would make their lives better. Now the government we toppled is back in power like the last 20 years didn't happen, and right-wingers expect we'll put racism above letting the Taliban murder the folks who helped us? So much for being the "guardians of morality." Let's not let them make all the damn decisions around here.
Public Citizen helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 4, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. Remember when our Supreme Court knocked the teeth out of the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County v. Holder? H.R. 4 would put those teeth back. In the aforementioned Shelby County v. Holder, our Court held that the Voting Rights Act discriminated against Southern states by forcing them to pre-clear their voting law changes with our Justice Department -- but our Court also held that a pre-clearance formula that didn't discriminate against the South would pass Constitutional muster. God only knows if that's true anymore, what with Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh and Barrett on the Court now, but H.R. 4 would subject any state or locality with a record of voting rights violations to Justice Department pre-clearance. And with so many states trying to suppress the vote as we speak, we need H.R. 4. So brook no silliness about "how the South has changed," because this is about America.
Black Lives Matter helps you tell your Congressfolk and the Biden Administration to prioritize ending "qualified immunity" for police officers when they execute Black folks without even charging them with a crime. I put that last phrase in there because it gives some people pause -- folks will "support the police" without thinking very hard about what it means, but they generally will not support "killing people without charge." A few will, believe it or not, but then every generation has had to deal with crazy people. Without getting too inside-baseball (I've done that in other posts about this matter!), "qualified immunity" restricts your ability to sue a police officer for a wrongful death, and restricts that ability way, way beyond the bounds of common sense -- to the point where parents of teenage kids shot by police can't get the justice they deserve. So let's get our government to do the right thing here.
Finally, Progress America helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 3076/S. 1720, the Postal Service Reform Act. Postmaster General DeJoy's response to USPS funding shortfalls? Raise prices and lower services. The Postal Service Reform Act's response? Stop forcing our USPS to pre-fund retiree benefits for employees who ain't even born, get postal retirees into Medicare, and allow our USPS to offer additional services like postal banking -- though the bill doesn't specify postal banking, so you may want to say that you want that in the bill when you talk to (or write) your Congressperson. Virtually all of our USPS's problems can be traced to the pre-funding of retiree benefits, and in my experience, our Post Office continues to deliver exemplary service even with all the crap they have to put up with, and services that work you want to keep working. So let's keep our Postal Service, and let's help it thrive.
Posted at 04:21 AM in "bipartisanship", "war on terror", action, Afghanistan, corporate taxes, Democrat weakness, Iraq, law and order, paid sick leave, racism, refugees, save our Post Office, tax cuts for the rich, taxes, voting rights | Permalink | Comments (0)
Action: concerning voting rights, taxes, working families, the right to repair, and worker rights.
Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, raise taxes on the rich, expand the Child Tax Credit permanently, and pass the Fair Repair Act and the PRO Act. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers, and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.
People for the American Way helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 4, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. As Senate Democrats whittle down the For the People Act into uselessness -- apparently because Joe Manchin doesn't have anyone on his staff who actually reads bills -- the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act becomes the gold standard of voting rights legislation, as it would put the teeth back into the Voting Rights Act after our Supreme Court knocked them out in Shelby County v. Holder. This would be a big deal, as so many American state legislators, still wondering how a nice guy like Donald Trump could lose, are trying to restrict voting rights so that next time he (or some similarly nice person!) doesn't lose. So let's get this done.
Both Americans for Tax Fairness and Daily Kos help you tell your Congressfolk to raise taxes on the rich already. Sometimes we need to send the message simply and plainly, and this is one of those times, as our House comes back early next week to vote on the $3.5 trillion budget blueprint the Senate passed earlier this month, and as several "moderate" Democrats have threatened to vote against that blueprint if they don't get to vote on the "bipartisan" "infrastructure" "deal" first, which, like, waaaaaaaaaaah. Could they be trying to scuttle both? They sure could! Should it matter? No, it should not! The popular will should matter, and polling has told us for years that large majorities of Americans want to tax the rich harder.
More Perfect Union helps you tell your Congressfolk to make the Child Tax Credit (or CTC) expansion permanent. The second monthly $250 or $300 check has just arrived in the mailboxes or bank accounts of millions of good American families, and there'll be at least four more of those, reminding everyone that maybe your government can actually do some good on your behalf! But why shouldn't there be approximately infinity more of those monthly checks? Because TEH FISKULZ RESPONSIBILITIEZ!!!!!? Rubbish -- no deficit peacock ever cared about blowing over $2 trillion in Afghanistan just to return extremists to power after 20 years. So, yeah, how about we spend money helping kids stay out of poverty?
Penn PIRG helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 4006, the Fair Repair Act. You remember watching your dad or granddad fix his car in the driveway? That's largely a thing of the past now, thanks to a society that believes we should never corporations what to do. So now corporations throw up endless roadblocks in front of the good Americans who want to fix their phones and computers, or hire someone who can. The Fair Repair Act would help change that, by forcing corporations to provide manuals, parts, and tools to anyone who wants to fix their products, and not just yowl TEH TRADEZ SECRETZ!!!!! anymore. Don't we value our independence as Americans? Then we ought to pass the Fair Repair Act.
Finally, Daily Kos helps you tell your Senators to pass H.R. 842/S. 420, the Protecting the Right to Organize (or PRO) Act. The bill would override state-level "right to work" (for less!) laws, and would also prevent big corporations from forcing their employees to sit through anti-union propaganda while they're on the clock; the bill would even allow workers to use card-check to organize rather than a secret ballot election (which employers tend to manipulate, right, Amazon?). I'm old enough to remember when Senate Democrats took turns joining a Republican filibuster against the Employee Free Choice Act, but now we've got it embedded in a larger bill. And if we get in our Senators' grills, we can make it law.
Posted at 04:08 AM in "bipartisanship", action, Afghanistan, labor, tax cuts for the rich, taxes, voting rights, waaaaah!, working families | Permalink | Comments (0)
Action: concerning jobs, taxes, drug prices, government spying, gerrymandering, and saving our Post Office.
Long story short: tell "moderate" Democrats to abandon their plan to scuttle the reconciliation bill, tell your House Reps to raise taxes on the rich and on corporations in said bill, let Medicare negotiate its own drug prices, and pass the Facial Recognition and Biometric Technology Moratorium Act, tell state mapmakers not to gerrymander legislative districts, and tell our USPS Board of Governors to fire Postmaster General DeJoy already. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.
First things first. Nine "moderate" House Democrats have threatened to vote down the reconciliation budget bill if our House doesn't pass the "bipartisan" "infrastructure" "deal" first. Know why? Their letter contains the five emptiest paragraphs you will ever read, and if they really believe the "bipartisan" "infrastructure" "deal" is a "once-in-a-century" thing, that is to laugh. And doing it their way, of course, puts the much better reconciliation budget bill at risk, almost like that's the whole idea. If any of these nine House Reps "represent" you, you can call them and tell them this ain't the hill they want to die on. And no, we shouldn't be "cautious" because we'll need most of those nine Reps to pass the reconciliation bill, or for Democrats to keep the majority in 2022. Democrats don't lose elections in spite of such "caution"; they lose elections because of it.
Peripherally-related to the above goal, you can call your own House Reps and tell them to jack up taxes on the rich and on corporations to pay for the budget reconciliation bill. Such taxes could include: a 55% corporate tax rate on profits over $1 million just like we had in the 1950s, a 91% tax bracket on income over $1 million just like we also had in the 1950s, treating capital gains and dividends as regular income like we did until George W. Bush, a financial transaction tax of 1% like we had until the late 1960s -- beginning to see a pattern? These taxes didn't "cripple economies," but helped build the greatest middle class in world history, so they're not "impossible" so much as they're proven. Too many of these "moderate" Democrats claim tax hikes like these are too "radical" -- how something we used to do all the time could be "radical" is anyone's guess -- and they won't abandon their cowardice until enough of their constituents (i.e., us) get in their grills.
Drug Prices Are Too High helps you tell your Congressfolk to lower drug prices by letting Medicare negotiate its own drug prices. Medicare is the biggest buyer of drugs in America by far, after all, so if we let Medicare negotiate drug prices, we'll all have better drug prices. And even the right-wing Mercatus Center instructs us that Medicare drug price negotiation can save the taxpayer over $80 billion annually, which makes that a pay-for. We really can make this world a place where we don't reflexively cast morality and pragmatism as enemies! And no, Medicare drug price negotiation isn't BIG GUMMINT CONTROLZ TEH DRUGZ YOUZ GETZ!!!!!! Big pharma corporations control what drugs you can get by charging $900 a month for insulin, or $350 for a single dose of EpiPen. Fight the real enemy!
The Project on Government Oversight helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 3907/S. 2052, the Facial Recognition and Biometric Technology Moratorium Act. As its name suggest, the bill would prevent our federal and state governments from using facial recognition technology on their citizens, unless future Congressional legislation specifically authorizes it; facial recognition technology sucks, as any number of Black folks wrongly accused of crimes could tell you, so governments certainly shouldn't be using it. If the bill becomes law, then anyone wronged by a government entity breaking the law could sue that government entity; accountability is important, after all. The bill doesn't prevent local governments from using the technology, but would prevent them from getting government grants unless and until they do so. You don't want to be put in jail because you barely look like someone else, right? Then you want to get this bill passed.
Common Cause helps you tell state mapmakers not to gerrymander districts for the benefit of incumbents and/or political parties. As you know, the census data mapmakers will use to redraw districts came out last week, so that process will begin soon, and historically that process has benefited politicians, not regular Americans. Take Wisconsin, where Republican state legislative candidates typically get fewer votes than their Democratic counterparts, but somehow win almost two-thirds of the state's lower house! How does that happen? It happens when mapmakers draw Rorschach-blot-shaped districts that exclude sides of streets and even individual houses. It's the biggest reason our representatives give us nothing but the back of their hand, and we have to stop it. We begin to stop it by putting them on notice, and by making gerrymandering toxic to them, for once.
Finally, Daily Kos helps you tell our USPS Board of Governors to fire Postmaster General Louis DeJoy already. It ain't just his naked attempt to deliver the 2020 election to his Personal Lord and Savior Donald Trump, nor is it his determination to make our Postal Service run badly -- it's also the corruption! A week and a half ago we learned that our USPS awarded a $120 million contract to the corporation he used to run, XPO Logistics, which still pays the DeJoy family over $2 million annually by renting office space. But wait, there's more! Last week we learned that Mr. DeJoy spent a few hundred Gs on bonds from Brookfield Asset Management, and guess who's a managing partner at Brookfield? Why, USPS Governor Ron Bloom, of course! I'm old enough to remember when even the appearance of evil could cause people to resign; how about we bring those days back?
Posted at 05:10 AM in "bipartisanship", big pharma, corporate taxes, corruption, government spying, jobs, Medicare, racism, redistricting, save our Post Office, tax cuts for the rich, taxes | Permalink | Comments (0)
Around the table: from PR hackery to dumb wars.
PR hacks look for "normal, everyday" Arizona residents to write letters-to-the-editor supporting binding arbitration -- and when they can't find any, even in Arizona, they offer $2,000 a pop! Nice work if you have no soul! It's like even Arizona right-wingers know that binding arbitration is the way corporations keep customers and workers out of our courts, and ensure that customers and workers lose more of the cases against them than they would in our courts. Next time you hear about "crisis actors" and "paid protestors" on the left, remember that PR hacks paying people to write pro-corporate screeds is the evil that actually happens. I'm not sure why they're targeting Arizona, though -- maybe Mark Kelly's not the easiest get, but they'd probably have Kyrsten Sinema at hello.
When I read that Donald Trump has "politicized the most basic of pandemic safety measures," and that it's "as if he named Band-Aids un-American, and demanded that we bleed to show our heedless fealty," I'm tempted to respond let's not give the man any more ideas! I can all too easily imagine him saying why do we drink water anyway? Only losers drink water! Own the libs by refusing to drink any more water! And then his votaries would not only stop drinking water but demand that we gut the clean water standards that are the main reason we have any decent health care in America at all. I wish this were harder to imagine.
Ari Paul reminds us that "Right-Wing Cop-Bashing Didn't Start With Trump." You'll be reminded of the white supremacist stand-off at Ruby Ridge and the FBI raid on the Branch Davidian compound at Waco -- both of which prompted right-wingers to yell about federal cops -- and G. Gordon Liddy's repeated admonitions to his listeners to shoot federal agents in the head. All that's just from the '90s. But, yeah, everyone who proudly brandishes their I SUPPORTZ TEH POLICEZ!!!! sign has a line that can't be crossed, one that will turn them into the kind of folks who try to impale Capitol police with flagpoles. And they'll yell at you when you point out their hypocrisy, which is a hell of a thing to take to the Pearly Gates.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), who has spouted more unscientific nonsense about COVID than most Republicans and that's saying something, didn't bother reporting his wife's investment in a corporation producing a drug to fight COVID until 16 months after our laws required. Right at the beginning of the pandemic, too, which sure makes one suspect he had, you know, insider information. I wouldn't want to go into a re-election fight with this baggage; indeed, Richard Burr decided it wasn't worth it, and Kelly Loeffler lost in 2020. Then again, if the Democratic establishment forces another Amy McGrath-type candidate on the good citizens of Kentucky, then Rand Paul will get away with it.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (S-GA) responds to news that hospitals are filling up with COVID patients by saying "(e)veryone needs to get back down to common sense and needs to remember, we're human, we can't live forever." I'm old enough to remember when politicians ended careers by saying such things, but we live a sick, immoral, and decadent era in which a quarter of our electorate can only feel one emotion: rage. Also, her district is so gerrymandered she probably couldn't even lose to Jesus H. Christ himself. If only our House had passed a bill that could address this intractable problem! Oh, right, it did, and Joe Manchin won't let it come to a vote because bipartisanship with people like Marjorie Taylor Greene is somehow far more important.
Finally, as we confront the humiliating end to our 20-year presence in Afghanistan, I guess it's good to hear at least one "liberal" media outlet suggest that our whole adventure there was a stupid idea to begin with. $88 billion we threw away on training Afghan soldiers to fight the Taliban, and now we learn about "years of overly optimistic assessments from U.S. officials that obscured -- and in some cases, purposely hid -- evidence of deep-rooted corruption, low morale, and even 'ghost soldiers and police' who existed merely on the payrolls of the Afghan Defense and Interior Ministries." Sadly, none of this is particularly surprising, and if you thought maybe the whole point of the Afghanistan war was to bleed the taxpayers, I wouldn't blame you. And that sure wouldn't bode well for sticking around another two or 20 years to "fix things."
Posted at 03:03 AM in "bipartisanship", Afghanistan, arbitration fairness, around the table, clean water, corruption, health care, law and order, redistricting | Permalink | Comments (0)
Action: concerning taxes, Medicare, familiy care, and climate change.
Long story short: tell our Senate to raise taxes on rich folks, expand Medicare, make the Child Tax Credit expansion permanent, enact the centerpieces of the American Families Plan, and ensure climate change action makes it into the upcoming reconciliation bill. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.
You can let Sign for Good help you tell your Congressfolk to raise taxes on the super-rich already -- they need to hear the general message just as much as they need to hear the specific ones! -- or you can make a phone call to your Congressfolk and tell them to raise corporate taxes, tax capital gains and dividend income at regular income rates, tax financial transactions, pass a Wealth Tax, and bring back the 91% tax bracket on millionaire income (or pass a Millionaire's Surtax, which would only bring it up to 47%, but that'd be the highest it's been in, like, 36 years). Or you can do both! All of these actions would do this nation a great deal of good -- we'd not only have money to build an America that gives its people the services we deserve, but we'd restrain the rich from running roughshod over the rest of us, as they've been doing since approximately 1980. It's not often you can do unqualified good in this world, so seize the opportunity.
Drug Prices Are Too High helps you tell your Congressfolk to let Medicare negotiate its own drug prices already, and Public Citizen helps you tell your Congressfolk to expand Medicare. Our Senators are mulling both expanding Medicare (both eligibility and services) and letting it negotiate its own drug prices in the upcoming reconciliation bill -- no, not the "bipartisan" "infrastructure" "deal" they're still working on now, but the next bill, the one that might actually do some good and which they probably don't really want to pass anyway. You just know some idiot in the Democratic caucus will object to the "cost" of letting Medicare negotiate its own drug prices when doing so would actually save the taxpayer some $80 billion annually! But we have a lot to say about whether they pass that bill or not. If we say it, that is.
Both Moms Rising and Daily Kos help you tell your Congressfolk to make the Child Tax Credit (or CTC) expansion permanent. Hey, there's another thing that could fit into that reconciliation bill -- along with all those tax-hikes-on-the-rich we discussed in the first paragraph. The Child Tax Credit expansion, which delivers $250 or $300 checks into people's bank accounts every month, is such great policy and great politics I can't quite believe Democrats did it, but they did, in the American Rescue Plan Act, the first reconciliation bill of 2021. They're about to blow it with all their talk about "bipartisanship" and "how do we pay for stuff," of course, but, again, we have a lot to say about all of that -- if we say it.
Moms Rising helps you tell your Congressfolk to ensure that the reconciliation bill includes funding for home- and community-based care and paid family/medical leave. These items were the nominal centerpieces of the American Families Plan; now all we have to do is remind how-do-we-pay-for-it Democrats that a) they know damn well how to pay for it and they just have to have the guts to do it and b) if they fail at this, they're all toast in the 2022 midterms anyway. Seriously, you have Congressional Democrats who are all I can't raise taxes before an election. Because cutting taxes sure worked for the Democrats in the 2010 midterms and the Republicans in the 2018 midterms! No use saying we'd be better off without that kind of Democrat in Congress -- I mean of course we would, but we're stuck with them now, so better to communicate our will in numbers they can't ignore or deny.
Finally, both the League of Conservation Voters and the Union of Concerned Scientists help you tell your Congressfolk to ensure the reconciliation bill includes climate change action. I know, climate change, paid family leave, home care, the Child Tax Credit, taxing the rich -- it's all so much! And we've dispensed with it all in five paragraphs, and you can dispense with it all in three phone calls and/or a few minutes with the above links. We're not in maintenance mode with America; we're in pull-the-baby-out-the-damn-fire-now mode, particularly as concerns pollution. All the Millionaire's Surtaxes in the world won't amount to much if we don't have a planet to live on, and we're not getting out of climate change hell without investing in renewable energy technologies, so let's remind our Congressfolks of that, as many times as we need to.
Posted at 04:30 AM in "bipartisanship", action, big pharma, climate change, corporate taxes, corporate welfare, Democrat weakness, financial speculation tax, health care, Medicare, pollution, renewable energy, tax cuts for the rich, taxes | Permalink | Comments (0)
Around the table: fight the real enemy, part 985.
Ho hum, three big banks that "partner" with WalMart made literally all of their 2019 and 2020 profits from overdraft fees extracted from working families. Nice work if you can get it! Seriously, that's not work, and every time a right-winger defends the "free" market, that's what they defend. As an aside, while I don't expect the acting Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to tip his hand in an investigation, his vow to use "the full range" of "our supervisory toolkit" doesn't exactly inspire confidence, either.
When I hear that "the biggest labor rally in Alabama history" last week was also the most racially diverse, I'm reminded that racial diversity hasn't always been a given in the labor movement -- all too often, labor has sided against non-white folks, particularly immigrants. The rally was also politically diverse, with "Trump guy(s)" peacefully coexisting with BLM supporters, reminding us of what we can accomplish together -- as long as the other side doesn't stage coups, try to overturn elections, or keep the pandemic going with their refusal to vaccinate.
The Senate's "debate" on the "bipartisan" "infrastructure" "deal" grinds on, briefly interrupted by a desperate right-wing attempt to root out "politically correct virtue-signaling" in the bill, in the words of Sen. Toomey (E-PA). Sen. Toomey's lame joke about "racist escalators" reminds us that he's no "moderate" merely because he doesn't scream at everyone like Donald Trump does. Right-wingers should also know that we hardly use the term "woke" anymore -- basically, we only use it to describe people who make a show of being "woke" without actually doing anything useful about racism, sexism, and fascism.
Did Nancy Pelosi's yammering about how nobody can just cancel student loan debt seem to come out of the blue to you? Well, Ken Klippenstein and Ryan Grim at The Intercept suggest it may have had something to do with a couple of billionaire constituents bending her ear. Just because people think the Bay Area is full of rich tech bros doesn't mean middle-class working people don't live there, and a lot of those folks have massive student loan debt, but their will means little or nothing to Ms. Pelosi, apparently. And thus we are reminded, yet again, that House Democratic leadership really needs to get out of the young bucks' way.
They're calling the results in the Ohio 11th House district Democratic primary a lesson in how Democrat voters want "stability," but Natalie Shure at In These Times sees other lessons to learn. One of them you already know from the last paragraph -- the Democratic House leadership might hate Republicans, but they definitely hate fierce liberals who might actually do some good with the power they have. Another lesson you already know is the power of dark money. But a third lesson? AOC and Cori Bush won by emphasizing the need to make Democrats "live up to their full potential." People would rather be inspired than angered, after all.
Finally, color me unimpressed that Dick Cheney has apparently professed to be "deeply troubled" about the state of the Republican Party, because he played a big role in bringing all of this about! Stupid wars, lawless government spying, collapsed economies, attacking the patriotism of folks who disagree with you, not to mention the accelerated decimation of our manufacturing base -- what part of this does he not recognize? What part of this has he not enabled? And if Bernie Sanders had won the 2020 election, would he have leaped to defend the "peaceful transition of power"?
Posted at 03:47 AM in "bipartisanship", around the table, banksters, campaign finance, Democrat weakness, government spying, labor, racism, sexism, student loan debt, working families | Permalink | Comments (0)
Action: concerning vaccines, jobs legislation, and the filibuster.
Long story short: tell employers to give their workers time off so they can get vaccinated, tell your Congressfolk to raise taxes on the rich to pay for the reconciliation bill, ensure that climate change, care economy funding, and paid family/medical leave all get attention in said reconciliation bill, expand Medicare, and get rid of the Senate filibuster already. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.
First things first. Drug Prices Are Too High helps you tell employers to give paid time off to their workers so they can get vaccinated. Some folks won't get the vaccine because they think it Owns the Libs, but others won't get it because they can't get time off from work, so telling employers to give paid time off to workers to get the vaccine should help with that. And if a boss says I can't afford it, ask him if he can afford to train a new worker when the old one dies of COVID because he wouldn't let him go get a damn vaccine. And ask him if he'd like to have a mini-epidemic at the workplace and lose a ton of money because of that. There's a reason we all hate bosses -- they never think of anything but the short term anymore. But they shouldn't get all the say about everything.
As Congress prepares for its wholly unearned vacation this month, you'll want to give them a call and list all the tax hikes on the rich that'd pay for reconciliation bill -- a corporate tax hike, raising the capital gains tax, treating dividends as income, a financial transaction tax, the Millionaire's Surtax, the wealth tax, the Tax Excessive CEO Pay Act, a 91% tax bracket on millionaire income, did I miss any? Feel free to add to your list! After all, Joe Manchin is already making his "how are we going to pay for this?" noises. Good folks of West Virginia, tell him this is how we pay for it! He can only pretend he doesn't hear, and that act will get old fast, if it isn't old already. I think it's old.
The League of Conservation Voters helps you tell your Congressfolk to center climate change in the reconciliation bill. You can bet the big polluters will be yelling in your Congressfolk's ears about how stupid solar and wind power are and how we shouldn't be touching big oil's corporate welfare, so we've got to be louder. This has always seemed like a no-brainer to me -- spurring renewable energy production not only creates jobs (and jobs with similar skill sets to those that displaced coal and oil workers would have!), but reduces pollution and slows the ill effects of climate change. The problem, of course, is that our Congressfolk too easily act like they have no brains. Well, you know how it is with people who act stupid -- you just have to tell them again and again and again.
Moms Rising helps you tell your Congressfolk to ensure that the reconciliation bill includes funding for home- and community-based care and paid family/medical leave. These were, after all, stated priorities of Joe Biden's, and we always knew a reconciliation bill would follow the infrastructure bill that Joe Manchin insisted had to be "bipartisan," and we always knew that reconciliation bill would have more so-called Democratic priorities in it. And I say "so-called" because these things are actually popular with the American people broadly, so we should communicate our will to our Congressfolk about them. After all, do we really suppose that the good citizens of Wyoming reflexively oppose paid family/medical leave just because their "representatives" in Congress do? I sure hope not.
The Hero Action Fund helps you tell your Congressfolk to expand Medicare, by lowering the eligibility age, giving Medicare the ability to negotiate its own drug prices (which will save the taxpayer money!), and offer hearing, dental, and vision care. You'll hear from right-wingers that "Medicare Advantage already offers hearing, dental, and vision! Ha ha ha another libtard owned!" But Medicare Advantage is a private health insurance plan funded with taxpayer money, and why should hearing, dental, and vision be an "advantage"? It should be a standard. And again, do the citizens of Idaho reflexively oppose letting Medicare negotiate its own drug prices just because their "representatives" in Congress will move mountains to prevent it from happening? I sure hope not.
Finally, Daily Kos helps you tell your Senators to get rid of the filibuster that Republicans have used to block every good thing Democrats have tried to do over the last dozen years. The "success" of the "bipartisan" "infrastructure" "deal" doesn't "prove" that we should hold on to the filibuster. Republicans got just about everything they wanted out of that "deal"; its existence only proves that "bipartisanship" means "Democrats and Republicans coming together to do whatever Republicans want." Politicians should do what the people want, and the people want their politicians to do the right thing and stop making excuses about why they can't. And "because the filibuster" sounds exactly like an excuse.
Posted at 05:17 AM in "bipartisanship", action, climate change, coal, corporate taxes, executive pay, financial speculation tax, health care, jobs, Medicare, oil, paid sick leave, pollution, renewable energy, solar power, tax cuts for the rich, taxes, wind power | Permalink | Comments (0)
Around the table: once more into the breach.
Hamilton Nolan at In These Times proposes a national strike fund, like the various GoFundMes that pop up for groups of striking workers. As Gomez Addams would say, capital idea! That fund would have a big target on its back from Day One -- from state and corporate hackers and from frivolous lawsuits -- but anything worth doing is hard. And, as Mr. Nolan says, "If the Frito-Lay workers in Kansas had had a little more money to carry them through, perhaps they could have won something better than, basically, the working conditions of a factory worker a century ago."
Amanda Marcotte says the "bipartisan" "infrastructure" "deal" "is likely the last nail in the coffin of any hope that Manchin or Sinema would seriously consider filibuster reform," which would prevent Congress from passing the For the People Act and thus likely doom America to rule by Republicans for the foreseeable future. But I don't imagine Sens. Manchin and Sinema are really "thinking" about whether or not to reform the filibuster; I think they've made up their minds, and the only thing that'll change their minds is relentless public pressure, since even a U.S. Senator will go to great lengths to avoid becoming the most unpopular person in America.
Establishment Democrats start using the Republicans' vote against the American Rescue Plan -- which increased funding to local police departments -- against them in midterms, essentially saying Republicans are the party that actually "defunded the police." Good to see Democrats have some smarts after all! And good, also, to see them tying Republicans to the January 6 attempted coup in this manner! I guess I'd still prefer they use that vote against the American Rescue Plan to run Republicans want to take your Child Tax Credit checks away ads, but hey, if Democrats actually look fierce about something for once, I'll take it.
In case you were actually wondering, Republicans who blame Nancy Pelosi for January 6 are legitimately full of crap. Basically, Republicans have alleged that Ms. Pelosi, as House Speaker, has all kinds of powers she doesn't actually have, or did things they have no evidence she actually did. Even the one person Ms. Pelosi did appoint to his job, the House Sergeant at Arms, was first appointed by John Boehner, then by Paul Ryan. Also, too, you first blame the people who attacked the Capitol for attacking the Capitol! This whole accountability thing seems to trip up nominal conservatives an awful lot.
Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) praises Medicare and Medicaid on Medicare's birthday, then promptly calls for Americans to "reject Socialist health care schemes." Elise Stefanik would kill Medicaid and Medicare with her bare hands if she could, but in the meantime wants you to think that programs everyone pays into so that seniors and poor folks can go to the doctor are not at all socialist. ("But I said Socialist, not socialist! See? Big difference! Another libtard owned!") But remember, if you drive roads, call police, visit the local library, or draw a Social Security check, congratulations! You are a socialist.
Finally, Donald Trump has reportedly called the police officers who testified before Congress "pussies" in numerous private conversations over the last few months. Thus continues his upside-down world, not just one in which actual courage is "weakness" and snake oil salesmen are "the best people," but one in which folks who have actually been through hell are "weak" just for admitting it. He must be chomping at the bit to slam Simone Biles -- or complain about how it's not "politically correct" anymore to do so. May a million people poop in his funeral casket.
Posted at 03:22 AM in "bipartisanship", "socialism", actual conservatism, actual frivolous lawsuits, around the table, filibuster reform, health care, labor, law and order, Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, taxes, voting rights | Permalink | Comments (0)
Around the table: stupid *is* evil, part 342.
I'd been wondering how jobs legislation would end badly, and now I know: Joe Manchin says he'll basically kill the reconciliation bill by himself if the "bipartisan" "infrastructure" "deal" "falls apart." "When one falls apart, how do you move the other one?" he asks, perhaps hoping we won't answer take everything Republicans said "no" to in one and put it in the other one. Surprise, our leaders have been playing us again; Democrats will do nothing with the power they have -- they'll even squander that massive political victory, the monthly CTC expansion check -- and in a year and a half Republicans will take back Congress, this time with candidates who come right out and say they're fascists. All because Democrats are more afraid of losing big corporate campaign donations than losing elections. (I guess you can call Joe Manchin, especially if you're a constituent. And say I know your secret, perhaps.)
Hoo boy, Ohio Republican Senate candidate/bankster/"flip-flop-flipper" J.D. Vance says maybe parents should get more votes than childless adults. And, of course, they would actually get to vote on their children's behalf! I'm actually not convinced that right-wingers are popping out more children than liberals -- everyone ain't the Duggars, after all, and naming several famous Democrats who don't have children doesn't exactly make a strong argument -- but this is the kind of thing desperate people come up with when they know they can't win arguments on the merits, or, perhaps more precisely, when they can't win vote tallies on the merits. I'm old enough to remember hearing "maybe we should only let property owners vote just like in the old days," so I don't want to hear about this bullshit again. One person, one vote, period, end of, done talking.
Wondering how Israeli corporation NSO managed to create such a nefarious slab of spyware like Pegasus? Look first to Israel's occupation of Palestine, as Yousef Munayyer at Jewish Currents does: "(w)ith an occupied and stateless population of Palestinians under its rule, to which it has granted no citizenship rights or civil liberties, Israel is free to develop, test, and perfect its surveillance technology on millions of unwilling subjects." American corporations would have different constraints, obviously -- though, ironically enough, one probable reason NSO's done so well is not only the nearly $4 billion in American taxpayer money Israel gets from our military, but the fact that Israel gets to spend more of that money on its own manufacturers than any other nation receiving American taxpayer assistance.
As Daniel Hale is about to be sentenced to up to 11 years in prison for blowing the whistle on the drone assassination program, I find myself shaking my head at our government's case against him -- he did it out of "vanity"? Seriously? Knowing his government would hunt him down and that more Americans would hate him than admire him? And hilariously, our government claims the leaks "helped ISIS" even though a former CIA official who reviewed the leaked documents said that, actually, they didn't. Mr. Hale's own words chronicle his shame at having participated in drone strikes, and all I can say is thank the Lord someone in America can still feel shame, and would repent of his sins and attempt to repair the harm they caused and continue to cause.
When I heard that Sen. Tommy Tuberville (S-AL) totally broke the law by failing to report over $1 million in stock trades, some involving corporations with business before the committees he serves on, within 45 days, I actually thought for a moment that the answer to the "stupid or evil?" question might actually have been stupid here, since this is Tommy Tuberville, after all. But then I remembered that stupid is how evil people cover themselves. Besides, even if it was stupid, it's also evil -- evil deeds don't require evil intent. Also, too, stupid is evil.
Finally, Tucker Carlson got an earful from a local resident in a Montana fishing shop, but I was most intrigued by Fox News's reaction: "Ambushing Tucker Carlson while he is in a store with his family is totally inexcusable — no public figure should be accosted regardless of their political persuasion or beliefs simply due to the intolerance of another point of view." We'll set aside the idea that we should "tolerate" lies and drama and hatred, let alone consider them just "another point of view" -- Fox News used to send Jesse Watters out to accost public figures repeatedly back in the day, and it never bothered them then. They don't like being held accountable now? What a surprise! Hey, kids: don't be like Fox News.
Posted at 07:53 AM in "bipartisanship", "war on terror", around the table, bad arguments, campaign finance, corruption, defense spending, Democrat weakness, drama, drones, government spying, stupid stupid stupid!, the "liberal" media, the stupid it burns, voting rights, waaaaah!, whistleblowing | Permalink | Comments (0)
Around the table: what they need's a damn good whacking!
Our Centers for Disease Control (or CDC) has produced a very interesting chart mapping the relationship between infection rates and vaccination rates, by county! Spoiler alert: the Republican areas of America have the most correlation between infections and (lack of) vaccines. Ohio is a conspicuous exception, but Republicans there will likely primary Gov. DeWine out of office as a reward for his relative competence. But do you think right-wingers will be pumping the results in Teton County, Wyoming -- where both vaccination and infection rates are high -- as if they're indicative of the entire nation? You betcha!
Democratic politicos fear that Republican voting laws across the country will doom them in 2022. In the meantime, here's what Democrats can do about that: a) do good works with the power they have wherever they have it and b) organize like our lives depend on it, which they kinda do. Seriously, no Republicans should hold office, anywhere -- they just hurt people. I don't know if Democratic candidates will do well or not in 2022, but I do know this: if they don't do well, they might blame the voting laws, but they'll definitely blame the liberals!
Idaho Lieutenant Governor, who's challenging the sitting Governor in the upcoming Republican primary, has paid over $25,000 to an "analyst" who has advocated shooting police officers. Not because they shoot Black folks, but because they arrest people, since, in his book, arrest equals kidnapping. I guess I won't be asking him how he feels about taxation. Attention, Chris Wallace! Maybe Republicans are really the ones who want to shoot the cops!
Donald Trump advises Congressional Republicans to ditch the "bipartisan" "infrastructure" "deal" until they take back Congress and thus have more "leverage," and for once I can't tell if he's giving them marching orders or not. After all, the man had two years with Republican majorities to pass an infrastructure bill, and he never came close to producing one, which suggests to me it's not really that important to him. His votaries will protest, but on what evidence? The "evidence" of their own rage, of course.
Matt Lewis at the Daily Beast examines "How Trumpists Prey on Loneliness, and Loneliness Preys on Trumpists," and when you confront the notion that "(p)eople who find purpose and meaning in their religious faith, connection with family, hobbies, and their vocation are less susceptible to finding meaning and community in a cult of personality," you may be reminded that scientists have said the same thing about drug addiction -- and have prescribed more profound interpersonal connections as the solution. I feel compelled to add that this isn't a new problem -- a lot of Trumpholes were Bushholes after 9.11.
Finally, Los Angeles man who gained some notoriety by mocking the COVID vaccine has, guess what, died of COVID. And he said he still wouldn't get vaccinated as he was being intubated -- admittedly, that ship had long sailed -- because his "faith" would "protect" him. And at the Pearly Gates, St. Peter will say to him let me guess: you didn't take the vaccine we sent you. Should we be sad at his death? Yes. But we should be sadder about the deaths his attitude will cause, because that sure didn't die with him.
Posted at 03:17 AM in "bipartisanship", around the table, Democrat weakness, drugs, health care, jobs, law and order, voting rights, waaaaah! | Permalink | Comments (0)
Action: concerning spyware, war on Yemen, cellphone radiation, antibiotics, bankster fees, and qualified immunity.
Long story short: tell world governments to ban NSO-style spyware, tell President Biden to end our involvement in Yemen for-real for-real, tell our FCC to update communications device radiation rules, and tell Congress to pass the PASTEUR Act and the Overdraft Protection Act and end qualified immunity for police officers. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers, and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.
Fight for the Future helps you tell world governments to ban commercial malware like the NSO Group's Pegasus, exposed by The Guardian late last week as the spyware that can infect your apps, capture your emails and texts, and listen in on your calls. NSO says it's only for "terrorists and criminals," but you and I know better, and not just because governments frequently decide today's irritant is tomorrow's terrorist, but because, you know, they're lying -- of course they mean to spy on innocent folks! In order to scare them into being more compliant with our corporatist-run world! But our lives mean nothing if all we get out of them is a few more years of cold comfort -- and if we don't fight evil wherever it rears its noxious head.
Peace Action helps you tell President Biden to end all American support for the Saudi/UAE-led coalition war on Yemen. President Biden did say he would end "offensive military support" for the war, and that sure is better than Donald Trump's I'm-an-independent-but-I-still-do-whatever-the-Saudis-want act, but his Administration hasn't been particularly candid about what "end offensive military support" means, and we have reason to believe that it means "still selling some arms to the Saudis and helping them maintain their aircraft." Good Yemeni are dying from easily-preventable causes like disease and malnutrition, and that's coming from all that hammering that we're enabling. Wouldn't it be nice if we stopped enabling that kind of thing?
The Environmental Working Group helps you tell our Federal Communications Commission to update its regulations concerning wireless radiation. Our FCC hasn't updated those rules for over 25 years; gosh, can you think of anything that might have happened in the meantime? The mass proliferation of wireless internet is one thing, and the mass proliferation of cellphones and tablets is another. Just about everyone has all three of these things now, and so we get a much higher dose of wireless radiation than we used to. Don't brook any nonsense about how "strict rules about radiation will make the whole economy collapse" -- and I guarantee you some corporate hack is writing that comment as we speak! More hacks should say things like "strict rules about radiation will save a lot of money in health care costs." Though if they did, I guess they wouldn't be hacks.
The Pew Environmental Trusts help you tell your Congressfolk to pass S. 2076, the Pioneering Antimicrobial Subscriptions to End Up Surging Resistance (or PASTEUR) Act. Look past the tortured acronym and see that the PASTEUR Act would spur the development of life-saving antibiotics, a matter of considerable urgency since viruses constantly adapt to the antibiotics we've got, such that some of them become superbugs that antibiotics can't kill. The PASTEUR Act would fund research and development of antibiotics, but it would also vastly improve current drug policy by letting Medicare and our Veterans Administration get the new drugs at cost. And it's a bipartisan bill that would actually represent progress, versus what "bipartisanship" typically represents, which is no progress. So let's encourage better works from Congress wherever we can.
US PIRG helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 4254, the Overdraft Protection Act. The Overdraft Protection Act would require more transparency about overdraft fees and set a limit of overdraft fees your bank could charge you, to one per month and six per year. That may not sound like a big deal, until you make half a dozen transactions without realizing you're overdrawn, at which point your bank would allow all the transactions and hit you with six overdraft fees, which could amount to over $200. If you're tempted to strut around about "fiscal responsibility" when you hear this, ask yourself whether a bank allowing you to overdraw your account just so it can slam you with fees promotes fiscal responsibility. Then ask yourself if a bank deliberately re-ordering transactions just so it can collect fees promotes fiscal responsibility. I think you will sheathe your sword after that. Or, at least, you should.
Finally, Black Lives Matter helps you tell your Congressfolk to end qualified immunity for police officers. Too many police officers escape accountability for serious crimes because they enjoy "qualified immunity," which keeps them from being punished unless they committed a crime that's exactly the same as a crime a previous police officer committed, and how likely is that? A judge who doesn't want to convict can usually find something different between the two cases, and a literalist judge certainly can. There's innocent-until-proven-guilty, and then there's innocent-only-because-of-a-technicality; everybody knows the latter isn't justice, and Black folks, sadly, feel the pain of that knowledge more acutely than most.
Posted at 05:01 AM in "bipartisanship", action, banksters, defense spending, government spying, health care, law and order, racism, regulations serving people | Permalink | Comments (0)
Action: concerning the Amazon indigenous, taxes, jobs spending, privatization, chemical safety, and discrimination.
Long story short: tell Brazil's government to protect the rights of indigenous folks from corporate land-rapers, tell your Congressfolk to fund our IRS, fund home and community care, reject the privatization of public assets, and protect us from PFAS chemicals, and tell your Senators to pass the Equality Act. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers, or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.
First things first: Sum of Us helps you tell Brazil's Congress to reject a bill that would allow the Brazilian government to force indigenous peoples from their lands in the Amazon rain forest so that big corporations can develop it. It's not just that the Amazon rain forest is the greatest carbon capture machine the world has ever seen, it's that people live there, and people are more important than profits, more important than development, and more important than some politician's "legacy." Besides, the indigenous people of the Amazon have been a thorn in Jair Bolsonaro's side since day one of his ignominous reign, and any enemy of Jair Bolsonaro is a friend of mine. And yours.
Progress America helps you tell your Congressfolk to fully fund our IRS so it can catch more tax cheats. People who avoid their taxes cheat all of us, after all -- they cheat all of us out of roads, bridges, schools, police officers, firefighters, and libraries. Naturally Republicans have balked at more funding for the IRS as a way of helping to pay for the "bipartisan" "infrastructure" "deal" they're continuing to hash out, plus the ProPublica reporting about rich folks' tax evasion has made Republicans more defensive of rich folks than of the rest of us, whom they have cheated. I guess they're objectively pro-crime, then! Why do Democrats not paint them this way every day? Because it would be "uncivil"?
The National Domestic Workers Alliance helps you tell Democratic Senate Majority Leader Schumer to ensure the $400 billion proposal for care infrastructure makes it into the big reconciliation bill Democrats are planning later on this year. Presumably Democrats will pass that without Republican help, so all we need to do now is ensure that Democrats don't eject it from the bill because, oh, gosh, I don't know? Because they like shooting themselves in the foot? Because "bipartisanship"? Because debt and spending and I'M SCARRRREEEEDDDDD!!!!!! OK, maybe I'm being a bit harsh, this time -- our government has never invested this much in home and community care before, prospect of creating a million jobs or not. But if you want to make progress, you have to take big steps. Bigger than Democrats are accustomed to taking, to be sure, but we need to be the spine in their back. At least then they'll have a spine.
Daily Kos helps you tell your Congressfolk not to let the "bipartisan" "infrastructure" "deal" privatize public assets in order to pay for other public assets. President Biden wanted to fund it with higher corporate taxes, but Republicans, being the party of "fiscal responsibility," prefer smoke and mirrors, like "user fees" and selling off some bridges and roads and suchlike in order to pay for others. But we need only look to Chicago's privatized parking meters and Bayonne's privatized water system to see what that bodes for America -- higher prices and worse service. You know, like they're trying to do with our Postal Service. Who voted for that? I don't think even Trump voters voted for that.
Penn PIRG helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 3990/S. 2047, the No PFAS in Cosmetics Act. PFAS chemicals, as you may know, are the "forever chemicals" you find in carpeting, cookware, food packaging -- and, eventually, in our drinking water and our bodies, where it might well help give you and/or your loved ones cancer, a weakened immune system, or a learning disability. You also find it in cosmetics, and though you may not wear makeup, someone else does, and they wash it off their face at night, and then guess where it goes? Into your drinking water, and into your body. (Consumer Reports also helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 2467, the PFAS Action Act, which would do more about PFAS chemicals generally; the former bill has a better chance of passing, but there's no reason you can't say you support both.)
Finally, the Daily Kos Liberation League, People for the American Way, and Ultraviolet all help you tell your Senators to pass H.R. 5, the Equality Act. The other side has their people calling their Senators going WAAAAAAAAAAH WHATZ ABOUTZ MY RELIGUZ BELIEFZ!!!!!! and WAAAAAAAAAAAH TEH BOYZ WILLZ BEATZ TEH GURLZ ATZ TEH FIELD HOCKEYZ!!!!!!, so we need to be on the horn with our Senators talking about stopping banks and bosses and landlords from discriminating against gay and transgender folks, which is what the Equality Act is actually about. Republican Senators, in particular, pretend the hysterical opinions count more than yours. But we civilized people must make our will unmistakable.
Posted at 04:44 AM in "bipartisanship", action, chemical safety, clean water, climate change, Democrat weakness, discrimination, gay rights, jobs, privatization, public investment, religious folly, tax cuts for the rich, taxes, transgender | Permalink | Comments (0)
Action: concerning jobs legislation.
Senate Majority Leader Schumer (D-NY) plans to move jobs legislation this week, so now's a good time to tell (or remind) your Senators what you want from jobs legislation. There'll be a lot of links today, so I'll keep this post relatively short, and of course you can simply use this post to make a list to your Senators in a phone call. First, we want to remind our Senators that we want to do the right thing with jobs legislation, so Daily Kos helps you tell Democrats to go big on jobs legislation, while Food and Water Action helps you tell your Senators to reject any privatization of public services in that legislation.
Next, we move to paying for the legislation, since right-wingers pretend to wring their hands over it and moderates pretend that you can pay for everything with "user fees." Americans for Tax Fairness helps you tell your Congressfolk to make rich folks and corporations pay at least $4 trillion more in taxes over the next 10 years, Demand Progress helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass a Wealth Tax on millionaire and billionaire estates, Americans for Tax Fairness helps you tell your Congressfolk to enact a "millionaire's surtax," and the Sierra Club helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass the End Polluter Welfare Act, which would free up some more money to pay for the projects we're going to describe in the next paragraph.
Finally, we move to the things we want jobs legislation to do -- things that will actually create jobs for people, even if they don't meet the Republican definition of "real infrastructure." Both Social Security Works and Public Citizen help you tell your Congressfolk to expand Medicare so that it covers vision, hearing, and dental care and also so that it covers folks from the age of 60, not 65. Daily Kos helps you tell your Congressfolk to let Medicare negotiate its own drug prices -- which, since it would free up an extra $85 billion annually, would also count as a "pay-for." The Environmental Defense Fund helps you tell your Congressfolk to ensure renewable energy funding is a big part of jobs legislation. And both the League of Conservation Voters and Penn PIRG help you tell your Congressfolk to invest in getting the lead out of our water pipes. Moms Rising helps you tell your Congressfolk to ensure that jobs legislation includes funding for home- and community-based care and paid family/medical leave. And Free Press helps you tell your Congressfolk to include expanded broadband funding.
We should ignore the machinations our politicians have foisted on us -- how much of the legislation should be "bipartisan" and how much not, for example -- and simply communicate our will, in numbers they can't deny. Then we'll start to get what we want. People tell me I'm naive for believing this, but I've seen it happen many times. And when you see it happen even once, you want to see it happen all the time. Certainly as Americans we deserve to have it happen all the time. It's a lot better than politicians selling us out to their big donors like they usually do. But we won't get a thing if we don't speak out, and this is the week we absolutely must speak out, because if we do, we might get the best legislation we've seen in decades.
Good luck, and God bless.
Posted at 04:26 AM in "bipartisanship", action, clean water, corporate taxes, corporate welfare, drugs, jobs, lead poisoning, Medicare, paid sick leave, pollution, privatization, renewable energy, taxes | Permalink | Comments (0)
Around the table: awww, no one wants to cuddle with a Trumphole! And other cautionary tales.
Surprise, surprise, about half the Republican Senators who signed on to the "bipartisan" "infrastructure" "deal" announced by President Biden a few weeks back now have, ah, reservations. Now imagine them having "reservations" -- maybe each week a new Senator comes up with a new one! -- long enough that the deal falls apart, and then Sens. Manchin and Sinema refuse to sign onto the reconciliation bill that would work around Republican intransigence because of the failure of the "bipartisan" bill. Hey, if I thought of it, you know they have. I don't say this to depress you -- I say it to prepare you for the fight.
Dean Baker helps you "com(e) to grips" with the fear-mongering about runaway inflation coming from right-wingers. Long story short: the price hikes we're seeing mostly look like temporary price hikes, versus ones that reveal deeper structural issues (though if oil prices were to surge, that could change), and the bond market, where a lot of rich folks have a lot of money, is presently acting nothing like it would if runaway inflation were coming. Of course, if you were already inclined to see the pandemic as a temporary thing (even though it has gone on for almost a year and a half now), you were probably already immune to the fear-mongering.
Ho hum, our "liberal" media would really, really prefer it if we kept fighting the 20-years-and-counting Afghanistan War we're pulling back from now and really never should have fought in the first place. And they keep thinking war-mongers (whose number has included President Biden for a long time!) are "smarter" than everyone else, or "bolder" than everyone else, when fact is they're actually stupider and more cowardly. Jesus Mary and Joseph it doesn't take "courage" or "brains" to send a bunch of other people's children to die for the benefit of your corporate cronies.
"Protestors" cause violence at a town hall hosted by Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA), with Ms. Porter at one point putting her arms around an elderly constituent to keep her from getting hurt. The only person police arrested was a Porter supporter, which is not at all suspicious. And note well that Trumpholes seem to be protesting the Democrats who actually fight the corruption they always say they hate, and not, say, the Democrats who actually worship big tech and consort with banksters. It's like Trumpholes aren't really honest actors or something.
Virginia Republican gubernatorial nominee Glenn Youngkin has already pulled out of a debate, because the moderator once gave $250 to the Clinton Foundation for earthquake relief in Haiti! And here you thought "helping people survive an earthquake" was a relatively apolitical cause! Of course Mr. Youngkin, merely by creating a big drama using the word "Clinton," has dog-whistled the hell out of the Trumpholes, but it also looks like he can't actually win an argument. If Virginia Democrats don't run a million ads depicting Mr. Youngkin whining in crap-loaded diapers, they deserve to lose this race.
Finally, in a peripherally-related matter, Andi Zeisler writes about "(t)he question keeping Trump-loving men up at night: Why won't women date us?" Of course, this is how civilized society is supposed to work! If you earn shame and shunning, you get shamed and shunned! And yet some right-wing "thinkers" actually argue that the state might best be put to service getting these men partners, which sure is a hifalutin way of saying you don't give a fuck what women want. Seriously, this is an extraordinary article, one that uses the tenets of conservatism itself against the men who whine that no one wants to cuddle with them.
Posted at 03:09 AM in "bipartisanship", "war on terror", actual conservatism, Afghanistan, around the table, banksters, Democrat weakness, drama, law and order, sexism, the "liberal" media, waaaaah! | Permalink | Comments (0)
Action: concerning drug policy, worker abuse, law and order, voting rights, and discrimination.
Long story short: tell Mississippi's Governor to free Tameka Drummer, tell your Congressfolk to stop Amazon from abusing its workers, and tell them to pass the MORE Act, the People's Response Act, the For the People Act, and the Equality Act. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers, or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.
First things first: Change.org helps you tell Mississippi Gov. Reeves to free Tameka Drummer, who is serving a life sentence for being caught with two ounces of pot. Mississippi lately passed the Earned Parole Eligibility Act, which will get people like Ms. Drummer out of jail for nonviolent offenses, but not Ms. Drummer, because of her two previous convictions for voluntary manslaughter and aggravated assault. But she served her time for those two crimes, and is only getting life-without-parole because of a state three-strikes law. I think it's safe to say she got caught in the cracks here, and mercy demands we let her out. Common sense demands we get rid of these three-strikes laws that virtually ensure that folks who commit crimes can never raise themselves up, and if freeing Ms. Drummer publicizes that, all the better.
Daily Kos helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass legislation that would protect workers from Amazon's spying practices. Of course bosses need to know what their workers are doing, but Amazon's workplace spying practices go well beyond that, and into ensuring that more workers get hurt by dictating how long tasks are supposed to take down to fractions of a second. This is why Amazon's warehouse workers try to avoid going to the bathroom! And it's also why Amazon had over 65 serious workplace injuries daily in 2020, or about twice the industry average. If getting your Doctor Who DVDs out the next day is that urgent, they should hire more people to do the work! Surely Jeff Bezos can break a little off his personal space-walking fund to pay for it.
Daily Kos helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 3617, the Marijuana Opportunity, Reinvestment and Expungement (or MORE) Act. If the MORE Act were law, people like Tameka Drummer wouldn't find themselves serving life-without-parole for possession in the first place! Also, people like Sha'Carri Richardson wouldn't be disqualified from Olympic competition for pot use, and anyone who thinks pot gives you some kind of "competitive advantage" is mistaken. If anything, it makes you less competitive! The MORE Act would also invest in communities most harmed by the "war on drugs" and expunge pot convictions from a lot of folks' criminal records, and these would also be good works. So let's tell our Congressfolk to do them.
Color of Change helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 4194, the People's Response Act. The People's Response Act would move the federal response to mental health crises from our Department of Justice to our Department of Health and Human Services, which would give grants and coordinate research on getting health care professionals, rather than police officers, to be the first responders to folks with mental health crises. Some folks would reflexively call that "defunding the police," but I would call it taking a burden from police and putting it on folks who can better handle it. I've long said we ask too much of our police, but the People's Response Act can guide us to a system that works better than the one where police are the first responders to everything. And, not for nothing, but sending cops out on these calls too often ends in death.
Daily Kos, the Sierra Club, and People for the American Way all help you tell your Senators to pass H.R. 1, the For the People Act. Plus Daily Kos helps you sign up to call West Virginians and urge them to urge their Senator, Joe Manchin, to vote for the For the People Act. Again: Mr. Manchin's stated refusal to support the For the People Act not only defies logic, it defies the will of his constituents, who actually approve of all the things in the bill, not just the ones he pretended weren't in the bill but would have been in his "less partisan" "compromise" bill. Our leaders might be willing to indulge in all kinds of fantasies about "bipartisanship" and "compromise," but we can't, not when state legislators all across America are trying to prevent people from voting as we speak.
Finally, the Daily Kos Liberation League, People for the American Way, and Ultraviolet all help you tell your Senators to pass H.R. 5, the Equality Act. Tired of right-wing legislators whining and wailing about the possibility you might be in the same public bathroom as a transgender person? Tired of banks refusing to loan to gays because they're gay, or bosses firing employees because they're gay, or landlords refusing to rent to gay couples? The Equality Act would fix all that, merely by amending the Civil Rights Act so that it includes gay and transgender folk among its protected classes. And if folks complain about the "unprecedented assault on religious freedom" the Equality Act supposedly represents, you have two choices: 1) tell them the Civil Rights Act already grants religious freedom exceptions and the Equality Act doesn't amend that part of it, or 2) ask them why their "religious" "freedom" depends so much on hurting gay folks. Maybe 3) get them to slap themselves, if you can.
Posted at 05:15 AM in "bipartisanship", action, discrimination, drugs, gay rights, law and order, religious folly, transgender, voting rights, worker safety, working families | Permalink | Comments (0)
Action: all jobs, all day.
Long story short: tell your Congressfolk you want renewable energy, lead-free water pipes, paid family/medical leave, and Medicare drug price negotiation in the American Jobs Plan -- and no military spending! And then tell your Congressfolk to raise taxes on the wealthy and on corporations to pay for it. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.
Today would be a good day to call your Congressfolk and tell them you want renewable energy in the American Jobs Plan that President Biden is inexplicably trying to pass in a "bipartisan" manner. Again, it doesn't matter that he wants the two sides to work together; it only matters that your Congressfolk do your will, and the more we keep our eye on the latter item, the better. You may mention that the OFF Fossil Fuels Act, introduced in previous Congresses but not this one, remains a good blueprint for what the American Jobs Plan needs. It would have mandated 80% renewable electricity and 80% zero-emission cars by 2035, and it would also have funded retraining for fossil fuel workers. And not as computer programmers, either! Jesus Mary and Joseph why insist that everyone learn to code when you can retrain the folks who work in coal mines to install solar panels and wind turbines? Of course, Republicans don't think any of that is "real infrastructure" either. But they're a party full of seditionists and whiners, so why do we listen to them?
The League of Conservation Voters helps you tell your Congressfolk to invest in getting the lead out of our drinking water. That is literally an investment in our future, since lead from lead pipes causes brain damage in children, and it would be entirely appropriate to put such investment in the American Jobs Plan that President Biden is inexplicably trying to pass in a "bipartisan" manner. If you want to support specific legislation that would reduce lead in our drinking water, Penn PIRG helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 1376, the GET THE LEAD OUT Act (the acronym isn't as bad as it looks), which would fund lead-free pipes all over America by hiking the number of estates subject to the Estate Tax and closing the "carried interest" loophole that allows hedge fund managers to pay a lower tax rate than bus drivers. Hard to imagine people being against those things. Then again, it's hard to imagine people being against clean water!
Moms Rising helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass a paid family/medical leave bill. It would be entirely appropriate, etc. to put this in the American Jobs Plan, etc., and though our law does grant 12 weeks of unpaid family/medical leave annually, we're just about the only "wealthy" nation on Earth that doesn't grant paid leave, and as I always say, that's not a thing you want to chant WE'RE NUMBER ONE! about. And, you know, our Congressfolk act like they know everything, when all they do is say "that won't work" whenever we tell them what they should do. But that's a damn un-American attitude, if you ask me. Isn't this the can-do nation that always finds a way? And hasn't every bit of progress we've made met with "that won't work" at the beginning? It works just about everywhere on the planet, so it can work here -- if our politicians would just grow a spine.
Daily Kos helps you tell your Congressfolk to include H.R. 3, the Elijah Cummings Lower Drug Costs Now Act, in the American Jobs Plan. Not just because letting Medicare negotiate its own drug prices would, well, lower drug prices across the board, but because it would save the taxpayer money, which means it could well help fund all the other good works we've been talking about, like renewable energy, clean water, paid family/medical leave, and the like. What will Republicans say in response? It's not "real" infrastructure? What a weak response -- they're like the kid you knew in junior high who was always correcting the tiniest grammatical errors you'd make. So, yeah, it would help now to think of that kid growing up to be a Republican Senator, just trying to find a reason, any reason, to piss on whatever the American people want.
Roots Action helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject any new military spending in the American Jobs Plan. Because they love to hide defense spending wherever they can! And because we already spend more on "defense" than the next 12 nations on that list combined. Why, you'd never know we had an ocean on either side of us! But spending on defense deprives us of spending on clean water, renewable energy, etc., and not because federal spending is a zero-sum game (just ask the folks who passed the 2017 tax "reform"!), but because politicians always use "defense" as an excuse not to spend on the things we actually need. Seriously, we can already destroy the planet 300 times over; what, we won't be safe until it's 400?
Finally, in case you thought I forgot about funding the American Jobs Plan: Demand Progress helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass a wealth tax, Americans for Tax Fairness helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass a "millionaire's surtax" that would raise the top tax bracket from 37% to 47%, Inequality.org helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass the Tax Excessive CEO Pay Act, and Daily Kos helps you tell your Congressfolk to raise the corporate tax rate. Does that all sound too tax-the-rich for you? Well, they've spent the last 40 years demonstrating that they deserve to pay higher taxes! And the smoke-and-mirrors pay-fors Republicans prefer -- user fees which always fall on working people, and "asset recycling" that's just a fancy-schmancy name for "selling off public works to build other public works" -- won't get the job done. Why do we listen to Republicans again? I mean, just six months ago they were trying to literally nullify the 2020 election. When will Democrats learn? When we speak in numbers they can't deny.
Posted at 04:46 AM in "bipartisanship", action, clean water, corporate taxes, defense spending, drugs, estate tax, lead poisoning, Medicare, paid sick leave, privatization, renewable energy, solar power, tax cuts for the rich, taxes, waaaaah!, wind power | Permalink | Comments (0)
Action: concerning voting rights, the filibuster, communications policy, and chemical plant safety.
Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to pass the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and get rid of the filibuster, tell President Biden to nominate a fifth FCC Commissioner already, and tell our EPA to enact vigorous chemical plant safety regulations. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.
Daily Kos, the Sierra Club, and People for the American Way all help you tell your Senators to pass H.R. 1, the For the People Act. Plus Daily Kos helps you sign up to call West Virginians and urge them to urge their Senator, the notorious Joe Manchin, to vote for the For the People Act. Nearly four out of five West Virginians support the For the People Act, so we really ought to help them communicate their will to the man who should be doing their will, rather than sacrificing their will to the Golden Idol of Bipartisanship. Particularly "bipartisanship" with a party that only wants to obstruct the people's will, but which tried to overturn the 2020 election results! Why do we keep having to say this? Why do politicians keep "working with" people who do not work? (I know the answers, of course, but that doesn't make it any less absurd.)
Meanwhile, Common Cause, People for the American Way, and the Daily Kos Liberation League all help you tell your Congressfolk to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. This bill does one thing the For the People Act does not do: it restores our government's ability to reject voting rights changes at the state level by rewriting the Voting Rights Act's pre-clearance formula so that any state or locality with a record of vote suppression (not just certain Southern ones, per the Voting Rights Act) must submit its voting law changes for federal Justice Department pre-clearance. I would have put that with the For the People Act and thus made it even harder for its opponents to lie about it -- really, from Joe Manchin to Lindsey Graham, they're doing a bad job of it! -- but while they're two bills, we should tell our Congressfolk to support both.
Pursuant to these goals, both Public Citizen and NETWORK help you tell your Senators to get rid of the filibuster. I've said it before and I'll say it again: I've been telling people for 12 years or so that we need to make the filibuster a talking filibuster, so that you at least have to earn your obstruction -- like Strom Thurmond did, not even drinking water for 72 hours so he could filibuster civil rights legislation -- but these Senators don't seem to understand what earning is like, so we have to treat them like the three-year-olds they seem to be too much of the time, and take away the toy they're using to lay waste to the country we love. Seriously, I've tried to be nurturing, but I don't have infinite patience, either.
Demand Progress helps you tell President Biden to nominate a fifth FCC Commissioner. I know he's had a lot to do, but it's been almost six months, and we need a fifth FCC Commissioner to get anything done. Currently our FCC has a 2-2 split between Democrat and Republican appointees; Joe Biden won the Presidency, so he gets to appoint the fifth. And yet he hasn't done it. We don't just need our FCC to reinstate net neutrality; chances are Congress will also approve a massive broadband buildout, and our FCC will need to oversee that -- and you can just imagine the two Republican Commissioners just saying no to everything, in the style of their Personal Lord and Savior, Mitch McConnell? Yes, you can. Get on President Biden's case and we can avert this catastrophe, too.
The Union of Concerned Scientists helps you tell our Environmental Protection Agency (or EPA) to enact the most vigorous chemical plant safety regulations possible. America suffers an accident at a chemical plant more than once every four days, and these accidents can not only kill and injure good Americans, but poison the air and water where good Americans live. And not for nothing, but chemical plants seem to cluster in poor and Black areas of the country and I wonder why? Because folks with means can get all NIMBY and get results, perhaps? Frankly, it's cruel to do that to poor and Black folks. We're all Americans, after all. You wouldn't want a poor Black kid to get asthma he never would have gotten if he'd lived in your neighborhood.
Posted at 05:01 AM in "bipartisanship", action, chemical safety, filibuster reform, internet freedom, net neutrality, public investment, racism, voting rights, waaaaah! | Permalink | Comments (0)
Around the table: enough of the damn drama, part 988.
Our Supreme Court just loves to save the best for last: they strike down California's big donor disclosure law, claiming that it exposes said big donors to harassment and intimidation, and they uphold a pair of Arizona voter restrictions, claiming that they don't oppress minority voters the way plaintiffs (and the Ninth Circuit) said they do. Remember when our Court said campaign finance disclosure ought to compensate for the problem of letting people donate whatever they like? That might have been BS, just like it was when Mitch McConnell said it over 20 years ago. And they're apparently prepared to wait until legislators are stupid enough to write down WE HATEZ TEH BLACKZ!!!!! directly into their laws before acting on vote suppression. Or maybe not even then! I guess those unorthodox 6-3 decisions were just to put us off our guard.
Jennifer Rubin, one of the Washington Post's many never-Trumpers, suggests that Republicans want the infrastructure fight to be "all about process" because the actual infrastructure projects are popular with Republican rank-and-file voters. But of course, this could all be drama: Republicans pitch a fit over the "bad faith" of Democrats, and then Joe Biden, to "reassure" them, gives up the reconciliation bill Democrats will pass afterward. Or maybe Kyrsten Sinema steps up to say she just can't in good conscience support whatever reconciliation bill Democrats come up with. No one snatches defeat from the jaws of victory like the Democrats, and there are still a million ways to lose this thing -- unless, of course, we make that impossible for them.
In a related note, Republicans are now fixating on the IRS funding provision as a reason to oppose the "bipartisan" "infrastructure" "deal." After all, no one cares when Republicans go back on their word, but the mere appearance of going back on your word is of course fatal to Democrats! Hilariously, Sen. Graham wonders aloud how much good $40 billion more would do, when the first sentence of the article reminds us that everyone involved in the "deal" (including Sen. Graham) agreed that $40 billion would harvest about $100 billion in otherwise-undetected tax evasion. That's not the kind of stupidity that can stand very much sunlight. Right?
But if you're looking for a sign that Democrats actually do know how to do politics, the House plans to vote on removing Confederate statues from our nation's Capitol early next week. Republicans could be impaled on the horns of a trilemma here: if you want to be the objectively pro-Confederate statue Congressperson, you go right ahead, and if you want to alienate Trumphole voters by voting to remove them, you go right ahead, and if you don't want to take a stand either way but just want to complain about Democrats playing politics, you go right ahead. I'll admit that Kevin McCarthy's response -- "all the statues were Democrats" -- made me laugh.
You may have heard that a certain former President's corporation now faces charges of fraud (and its CFO faces charges of grand larceny) in New York state, and Donald Trump responds in, apparently, the only way he can, by saying that the charges are part of a "political Witch Hunt by the Radical Left Democrats" that is "dividing our Country like never before!" "Never before"? It's like we never fought a Civil War! Could this incessant whining be the reason 54% of the electorate in 2016 and 53% in 2020 voted for someone, anyone, other than him? (Ransom note-style caps, by the way, come from the original text, as always.)
Finally, Bush the Lesser Defense Secretary/Iraq war hawk Donald Rumsfeld has died at the age of 88. You know, I used to be sad when my enemies died -- sad when Ronald Reagan died, sad when William F. Buckley, Jr., died, sad when Antonin Scalia died, even -- but not now. Could it be that my enemies used to be formidable but have gotten so, so much more stupid and venal over the years? Could it be that I became a man and put away childish things like "respecting your enemy"? I suppose it could be both, but I'm pretty sure it's at least the former.
Posted at 03:32 AM in "bipartisanship", around the table, campaign spending disclosure, drama, Iraq, law and order, public investment, racism, taxes, voting rights, waaaaah! | Permalink | Comments (0)
Action: concerning jobs, education, discrimination, corporate spying, and Medicare for All.
Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to reject the "bipartisan" "infrastructure" "deal," and pass the Counseling Not Criminalization in Schools Act, the Equality Act, the Fourth Amendment is Not for Sale Act, and the Medicare for All Act. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers, or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.
Today's another good day to tell your Congressfolk you oppose the "bipartisan" "infrastructure" "deal" struck between Joe Biden and a cadre of 20 Senators from both parties; Food and Water Action helps you do that because the "deal" would privatize a lot of public infrastructure, although, frankly, there's a lot of good reasons to oppose it. And don't brook any whining about "bipartisanship" from your friends and neighbors: it's far less important that "the two parties work together" than that our government govern well, and if that means the Party of Sedition can't get its way, well, maybe they could try going down the no-sedition path next election! If you're feeling especially ornery, ask your "bipartisan" friends and neighbors how Republicans have improved Joe Biden's American Jobs Plan. Because it sure seems to me the Republican plan is to build a lot less of what we need, privatize things we need to keep public, and pay for it with smoke and mirrors. Really, it's not "just another opinion" if that opinion happens to suck.
Daily Kos helps you tell your Congressfolk to support H.R. 4011/S. 2125, the Counseling Not Criminalization in Schools Act. Putting cops in schools hasn't made kids safer -- it certainly hasn't made them safer from cops! -- and this bill would redirect federal funding away from putting cops in schools and toward putting nurses, counselors, and other health professionals in schools so kids can get the help they need, rather than the back of some police officer's hand. Spare the rod, spoil the child, they say, but that doesn't mean only use the rod, either. I sure hope the folks who call this "defunding the police" don't take credit for it we actually make schools get safer because we're actually helping kids do better.
The Daily Kos Liberation League, People for the American Way, and Ultraviolet all help you tell your Senators to pass H.R. 5, the Equality Act. Let's review: the Equality Act would prevent landlords, banks, and employers from discriminating against gay and transgender folk merely on the basis of being gay or transgender. It would do so by adding gay and transgender folks to the list of protected classes in the Civil Rights Act. Note well, whenever someone calls the Equality Act "an assault on religious freedom," that the Civil Rights Act already has a broad exemption for religious organizations, which the Equality Act does not amend. I would hate to think that right-wingers just see religion as mainly a matter of hating gays, transgender folks, and women. If so, they're really missing out.
The Center for Rights and Dissent, Free Press, Restore the Fourth, and the Project on Government Oversight all help you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 2738/S. 1265, the Fourth Amendment is Not for Sale Act. Your internet service providing corporation can't sell your private data to law enforcement, but it can sell it to a third-party data-hoovering corporation, which can then sell it to law enforcement. Nice work if you can get it! The Fourth Amendment is Not for Sale Act would close that loophole, and Congress may be anxious to listen to us on this matter, since no one in America is :"objectively pro-handing over your private data to law enforcement without a warrant." No one except the folks who make money from it, that is. But this is America! They don't get all the say about everything!
Finally, Demand Progress, MedicareforAllNow.org, Black Lives Matter, and Roots Action all help you tell your House Reps to pass H.R. 1976, the Medicare for All Act. Even good liberals frequently tell me that paying for all that health insurance is going to be very hard. After all, the Mercatus Center says Medicare for All would cost $32 trillion over the next decade! That's a lot of money! What they don't tell you, of course, is that our Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services has predicted that America will spend $49 trillion on health insurance over the same time period -- which means you just have to capture the money that's going to gild the plumbing on some health care CEO's 19th vacation home and redirect it toward Medicare. We can do that with an employer-side payroll tax, in the amount corporations already pay private health insurers, that wouldn't cost workers a penny more. So what are we waiting for again?
Posted at 04:25 AM in "bipartisanship", action, discrimination, education, gay rights, health care, jobs, law and order, Medicare-for-All health insurance, privacy, private data collection, privatization, public investment, religious folly, transgender | Permalink | Comments (0)
Action: concerning jobs, drug prices, endless war, broadband access, payday loans, and the filibuster.
Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to reject the Biden/Republican infrastructure "deal," tell our President to put the brakes on a rule preventing our government from forcibly lowering drug prices, and tell your Congressfolk to repeal the 2002 Iraq war authorization, expand broadband, clamp down on payday lenders, and end the filibuster. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers, or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs; for the Biden-related alert, see the second paragraph below.
First things first: tell your Congressfolk to reject the "bipartisan" "infrastructure"/"jobs" "deal" negotiated between 20 Senators and President Biden last week -- either call them or let Food and Water Watch help you email them. No one in America should care if this is something our President wants, or moderates want, or Republicans want; all we should care about is if it's what we want, and I would assert that it's not. And that's not just because Republicans are pretending that the separate reconciliation bill even Joe Manchin wants to do is some kind of "betrayal." It's also because the "deal" would privatize public assets to build other public assets -- that's called "asset recycling," which is just a 10-dollar way of saying "privatization." And if Democrats agree not to do a separate reconciliation bill in order to "keep their word" or appease Republicans, then they deserve to lose their majorities in 2022. Of course, we don't deserve the fascist storm that'll follow, so let's try to head all that off by communicating our will to our Congressfolk in an unmistakable manner.
President Biden plans to move forward with a rule that would prevent our government, for the first time in over 40 years, from seizing drug patents when big pharma corporations charge usurious prices. If you remember Mylan charging hundreds of dollars for EpiPens and numerous corporations charging so much for insulin that diabetics now risk death in rationing the drug, you will scratch your head at the idea that our government should not step in and stop that shit cold, but, sadly, when Joe Biden was a Senator, he worked very, very hard to keep our government from "interfering" in absurdly-high drug prices. Maybe he needs a phone call about this matter! 1.202.456.1111 is the number, and here's the White House contact page. (If I get a separate action alert about this matter -- which seems likely, now! -- I'll share it.)
Win Without War helps you tell your Senators to pass H.R. 256, which would repeal the nefarious authorization to use military force (or AUMF) in Iraq. Our House passed this bill, and not only that, 49 Republicans voted in its favor! Maybe I shouldn't make too much of that -- a lot of our Best and Brightest didn't do the right thing in 2002 when it really, really mattered, and a lot of the folks who just voted yea on H.R. 256 (Boebert, Gaetz, Gohmert, Gosar, Greene, Issa, Jordan, McClintock, Schweikert) are still clowns, but at least now people like Mob Boss Mitch will have much less room to say well, this isn't bipartisan enough for me to permit to get to a vote. Oh, and if you're upset because "they're doing this to a Democratic President," please step away from this blog, because it ain't for you. And your values ain't shit if they don't inconvenience you once in a while.
Consumer Reports helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 1783/S. 745, the Accessible, Affordable Internet for All Act. And don't brook any nonsense from your Congressfolk about it, either! Broadband internet is an essential service, or does Congress forget how many votes it took or hearings it held over the internet this past year? Certainly you don't forget how much work you did, or how much school your kids did, over the internet this past year! Note well, also, that H.R. 1783/S. 745 would prevent states from pre-empting localities within states from offering their own public broadband! After all, preventing localities from such matters of self-determination has always seemed not particularly conservative to me.
Americans for Financial Reform helps you tell your Congressfolk to repeal the so-called "Fake Lender" rule promulgated by the Trump Administration. The Senate has already passed a resolution repealing the rule; now the House must follow suit. So what does the "Fake Lender" rule do? It lets payday lenders avoid state caps on interest by letting them essentially launder their loans through out-of-state banks! Woe unto the young buck who came up with that idea! That dude will find himself (do I need to gender-equivocate here? I suspect not!) at the Pearly Gates describing how he helped payday lenders trap even more good Americans in 300% revolving debt, and I think St. Peter's going to give him quite the side-eye. You know what you can take to the Pearly Gates? That you told your Congressfolk to stamp out this idea like the cockroach it is!
Finally, NETWORK, the national Catholic social justice lobby and boy how I have missed saying that! helps you tell your Senators to dump the filibuster into the trash heap of history already. Yes, I supported keeping the filibuster around and making Senators talk through it all the way to the beginning of this year, but I'm done -- our Senators will never do the necessary work of a civilized society until we make them. And they just filibustered the beginning of debate on the For the People Act last week! The beginning of debate! No, I don't want to hear about lessening procedural "choke points" as a "compromise," because the Senate will not do it. If I may borrow a metaphor from Better Call Saul: if a chimp has a machine gun, you don't just hope he'll learn how to use it -- you take it from him.
Posted at 05:01 AM in "bipartisanship", "war on terror", action, big pharma, community broadband, Democrat weakness, drugs, education, filibuster reform, health care, internet freedom, Iraq, jobs, payday loans, privatization, public investment, voting rights | Permalink | Comments (0)
Around the table: our leaders are irredeemably evil, part 737.
Here's something else you may not have known about the "bipartisan" "infrastructure" "deal" President Biden reached with Republicans late last week: it could reduce unemployment benefits in the name of "fighting fraud." I mean, God forbid we pay for an infrastructure bill by taxing some of the unearned hundreds of billions the richest Americans have squeezed out of us during this pandemic. Frankly I don't know how a state can fine people who have merely been accused, not convicted of unemployment fraud, but the ramblings of Sen. Shaheen (D-NH) on the matter don't exactly inspire confidence.
Josmar Trujillo at FAIR reminds us that our "liberal" media love creating fear about crime by hyping individual horrible stories and arguing about shadows. Crime is down since the 1970s, bail hasn't been reformed very much, and police haven't been defunded, but our "liberal" media don't care about the facts -- what are facts, after all, in the face of fear? Just remember: if someone says anything like "crime wave" in a totally unironic way, they're full of soup. (As an aside, I wouldn't use a phrase like "the corrupt poisonous fruits of BLM's work," as Laura Ingraham does; the plural of "fruit," in this context, is "fruit, but worse, "fruit" really only requires one modifier -- "poisonous" would be the better one, I guess, but using two modifiers there just makes you dramatic.)
ProPublica keeps bringing it with their recent report that billionaire Peter Thiel has somehow stashed some $5 billion in his Roth IRA. Though Roth IRAs have historically limited the income of their holders as well as the contributions they could make, at least a dozen gazillionaires hold at least $20 million each in their Roths, mainly by taking advantage of tricks working families have no access to, like buying startup stock for pennies on the dollar and watching the value of that stock shoot up inside the Roth. Nice work if you can get it! You'll be pleased to know that Bush the Lesser made all of this worse during his second term in office.
Big telecoms have two more days to implement phone number-verification technology that aims to vastly reduce the number of scam calls you get on your phone. But many big telecoms have already implemented the STIR/SHAKEN caller ID technology, so if you haven't seen relief already, you might not. Plus, our FCC gave smaller telecoms (those with under 100,000 subscribers) an additional two years to implement the STIR/SHAKEN technology, and even if our FCC moves that deadline to next year, guess where scammers will be concentrating more of their efforts. You know what might make all this meaningless eventually? All the folks of my generation and younger who now won't answer the phone every time it rings because we're tired of all the scam calls!
Ho hum, Tucker Carlson wants you to think the January 6 coup attempt was an FBI-led "false flag" operation, and he's not only confused federal agents with "unindicted co-conspirators" in right-wing reporting (if you're a federal agent running a sting, you're by definition not conspiring, obviously!) but also cited, as evidence, the FBI stings that entrapped plenty of Muslims during the "war on terror" era. We all worry about law enforcement "creating" terrorists, but I suspect Mr. Carlson's concern about that subject is a relatively recent phenomenon, and though I generally don't blame people for coming to the truth only when it affects them personally, I do blame them for coming to the truth merely to broadcast another self-serving untruth.
Finally, Florida Gov. DeSantis signs a bill that would actually require the state to survey college students and faculty on their political beliefs. I firmly expect this law will die a horrible, humiliating death in court one day, though we may see a lot of fine educational talent abandon the state of Florida over the next few years in the meantime. But I myself have considered possibly going back to college in Florida just so I can be documented saying that Ron DeSantis is an irredeemable asshole.
Posted at 03:16 AM in "bipartisanship", "war on terror", around the table, bad arguments, drama, education, jobs, law and order, public investment, tax cuts for the rich, taxes, the "liberal" media, the future, unemployment | Permalink | Comments (0)
Around the table: Republicans filibuster the For the People Act! And other total non-surprises.
Senate Republicans refuse to even begin debate on the For the People Act, as all 50 of them filibuster a procedural motion to do so. Let the record show, then, that Republicans refused to debate on ending gerrymandering, instituting early voting, automatic voter registration, and same-day voting registration nationwide, mandating disclosure for big campaign donors, and ending the use of racist caging practices by the states. We can go ahead and assume they refused to even begin debate on these matters because they can't win debate on these matters.
Felipe da la Hoz at The Intercept describes how our Bureau of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (or ICE) exacerbated the pandemic in detention centers. COVID cases went up sixfold in these camps from March to May of this year, and no it wasn't because Joe Biden "let too many refugees in," but because ICE insisted on transferring a boatload of refugees to the very Mississippi detention center where cases were exploding. You thought we'd just vaccinate them? We should, if only because they're just going to keep the pandemic going if we don't, but, yeah, ICE ain't feeling that. (To be fair, a lot of refugees aren't feeling it, either, but that's because they don't trust ICE. I wonder how that could have happened?)
Jesus Mary and Joseph another fool wants to do an "audit" of the 2020 election in a state that has already done two audits, and this time it'll be in Pennsylvania. Sen. David Argall (R-29), who chairs the State Governing Committee, now says he wants to do a fraudit because too many people have "concerns" about the election, though he doesn't know why. Here's why: their "concerns" are completely manufactured by Donald Trump and his enablers! Yikes, if I had no soul and a cadre of dunces willing to parrot my lies ad nauseam, I could cause a lot of trouble, too. Does Mr. Argall listen to those constituents of his who worry more about right-wingers killing them, I wonder? Or has gerrymandering insured he doesn't have any?
A Harvard study asks why folks are so much worse at guessing prices on The Price is Right than they were in the 1970s -- and concludes that a) inflation was much worse back then (both higher and less stable), so people paid more attention to prices, b) online commerce has desensitized us to price over the last few decades, and c) there are so, so many more products now and products can only compete so much on price. Weren't we just contemplating how Republican messaging about inflation could work? This study makes me wonder; we complain about prices going up like we've always done, but now that I think about it, we complain more when we hit unexpected expenses, which are always unwelcome, but not the slow, relentless torture of '70s inflation. I know inflation has gone up since 2011, by my sense of food prices really hasn't since then. About bedroom sets and ski trips and A NEW CAR!!!!! I have no idea.
I was impressed with Michael Gerson's piece, "I'm a Conservative Who Believes Systemic Racism is Real." "We live in an imperfect world we did not create and have duties that flow from our story" is both true and a reminder that he used to write speeches for George W. Bush, and though we don't learn much about how Mr. Gerson came to his epiphany, that's kinda the point: folks don't very often see the structures of privilege that lift them up and hold others down, and he surely went through a good chunk of his life not seeing it. I also appreciate the note that "shame culture" can be "cruel and misdirected," because I suspect too many of Mr. Gerson's ideological brethren would say shaming is always cruel, though "shame culture" is an important tool in the civilized person's toolkit. We use it so we don't use our fists or our guns.
Finally, give filibuster supporter Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) a small amount of credit for writing a fairly thorough op-ed echoing some arguments I made years ago, but she's still wrong. Are we that worried about "the minority" being heard in Congress? 50 Republican Senators currently represent less than 20% of Americans, so, frankly, "the minority" already have enough representation, and that's built into the Senate no matter which party holds the majority. And rather than tell campfire tales about Republicans simply nullifying Democrat bills whenever they get Congress back, Sen. Sinema should remember how hard it is to undo legislation once it's passed, otherwise George W. Bush could have claimed the head of Social Security in 2005 and the Trump Train would have rolled over the Affordable Care Act 12 years later. (Who stopped that from happening, by the way? Not the filibuster, but the people.) And I might more likely agree that bipartisanship is the best way to create "lasting" results, except that, ah, the other party tried to overturn the election, with violence, and it's been decades since they cared about policy anyway.
Posted at 11:46 AM in "bipartisanship", around the table, filibuster reform, health care, immigration, racism, science, voting rights, waaaaah! | Permalink | Comments (0)
Around the table: featuring the usual assortment of whiners and sore losers.
Richard Wolff at Counterpunch says "The Neoliberal Drive to Privatize Everything is Running Out of Gas," but what if Republicans are just waiting until they regain the keys to Congress, be that this election or next? Not that we should ever allow them behind the wheel again, but I always fear that Americans have short memories, even when one party tries to nullify the people's will in an election, and I hate to beat a dead horse, but if Democrats actually accomplish something worth accomplishing with the power they have, they can head off Republicans getting control again, at least in the short term. And yet, as Mr. Wolff says, Mr. Biden ain't taking advantage of this situation the way he could, even if he seems to be doing more with the opportunity than Mr. Obama did. There's a solution in there, somewhere.
Jesus Mary and Joseph another sore loser cries "fraud" after losing an election, this time in Peru. And where a coup attempt failed in this country because a) our institutions have somehow survived 40 years of right-wing assaults and b) the coup ringleaders were awful leaders, I don't see Peru doing as well, not just because it's a closer race than Biden-Trump was, but also because right-wing racism is even more out in the open than it is here. (By the way, the leftist candidate who won enjoys the support of the rural poor. See, Democrats? That could be you, too.)
Ada Rajkovic at FAIR notices something missing from TV coverage of border issues: the words and stories of actual refugees! You'd think their voices would count for something, after all! And even when they do talk to a refugee, it seems like it's only for a few seconds. Maybe they don't know any refugees! I mean, it is possible, since media personalities tend only to talk to powerful people and each other these days. (And remember: when they call it a "crisis," they lie. And when they call it an "invasion," they insult the memory of everyone who ever had to endure an actual invasion. Words do mean things, after all.)
Sen. Sanders (I-VT) makes a list of things he won't support in an infrastructure bill, like gas taxes and electric vehicle fees. I wouldn't support any of these things, either, but this will be an interesting test -- does the right think it can make the nation's most popular Senator into an "enemy of bipartisanship"? If they think that, they have their work cut out for them -- after all, Bernie Sanders is the fellow who got applause for supporting Medicare-for-All at a Fox News town hall. (Seriously, though, electric vehicle fees? It's like Republicans just hate any kind of progress.)
Finally, when I hear that anti-vaxxers kept out of a Foo Fighters concert say their plight is like "segregation,"all I can say is waaaaaaaah. What was segregation like again? Being forced to walk and talk and eat and drink and live and work and play and get jobs and health care separately from your fellow human beings because of something you couldn't control, i.e., the color of your skin; you have considerably more control over whether you get a COVID vaccine. Segregation also involved getting the crap kicked out of you by police on a fairly routine basis. I keep having to explain this to people, and I think they're not listening because they know I'm right but don't have the guts to admit it.
Posted at 03:14 AM in "bipartisanship", around the table, Democrat weakness, health care, immigration, jobs, law and order, racism, refugees, taxes, waaaaah! | Permalink | Comments (0)
Around the table: welcome to part 877 of "insane Republicans, weak Democrats."
File under "Well, This Sure Didn't Go Well!": when pressed by columnist Kyle Whitmire, Alabama state lawmaker can't describe exactly what it is that bothers him about critical race theory. Oh, they teach white CEOs something about themselves that isn't good, and there are "training sessions" and "reeducation camps" in some indeterminate part of the country, plus he wanted to "start a conversation" (though not participate in one, apparently!) and "(t)his is still the greatest country that's ever, ever been in the history of the world" and also he lost the link he was trying to retrieve that would have explained everything he was thinking and feeling like he's some damn teenage boy or something. Seriously, though, Mr. Whitmire's Columbo act is awe-inspiring; more journalists should imitate him.
In a bit of an anticlimax, our Supreme Court rules (by a 7-2 margin) that plaintiffs in an anti-Obamacare lawsuit don't have standing to bring the suit, since they can't prove injury. This suit aimed to topple the Affordable Care Act by saying that since Congress repealed the penalty for violating the insurance mandate, the whole thing had to go, but the majority ruling didn't get that far. Sadly, Justice Alito's dissent (joined by Justice Gorsuch) suggests that reducing the mandate penalty to $0 apparently wishes it into non-existence and thus should topple the whole law, even though the mandate is still on the books and Congress can, at least in theory, increase the penalty for defying it at any moment.
When I hear that just enough Republican Senators now approve of the "bipartisan" infrastructure plan that does about a tenth of President Biden's original proposal, I'm tempted to say sure-they-do -- once they pressure Messrs. Sanders, Markey, and Merkley to get aboard with it, suddenly one of the 10 Republican "supporters" will have a "problem" with it, and once he's appeased, another Senator will pop up with a "problem," ad nauseam. But it could be even worse than that! If this "bipartisan" bill somehow passes, whittled down to an even smaller nub than it is now, what's to prevent Joe Manchin from suddenly demanding the American Families Plan also be passed with "bipartisan" support? After all, it worked so well the first time! It'd be one thing if Democrats had asked for the sun and the moon and the stars to begin with, but of course they didn't. They deserve to lose their majorities in 2022 -- though we certainly don't deserve all the trouble that'll cause.
Now Sen. Manchin has found a bunch of voting rights initiatives he can support -- like 15 days of early voting nationwide, making Election Day a federal holiday, and automatic voter registration. Hmm, can you think of a bill the House passed that already has all of that? Why, yes, you can -- it's the For the People Act, the very same bill he said he couldn't support because it was too "partisan," and I guess that's why he didn't try to prove his point by describing which parts of the bill he found particularly "partisan"! Passing off a big chunk of the For the People Act as "ideas I could support" is pretty damn dishonest, but it looks like it'll amount to nothing now that Mob Boss Mitch has said he won't support that, either. It's what Joe Manchin deserves, even though we certainly deserve better.
Rep. Steven Palazzo (R-MS) apparently spent campaign funds to defend himself from charges of misusing campaign funds, so I guess he must be feeling confident about beating that rap! Turns out using campaign funds for your legal bills is not in and of itself against the law, but it also looks like the kind of thing that's so dirty it can topple an incumbent. In some district, anyway -- though a Democrat represented this district as recently as 2010, Republican voters now have a 21-point advantage in Mississippi's 4th, and that district doesn't even look that gerrymandered.
Finally, a bill making Juneteenth a national holiday has passed Congress almost unanimously, but that didn't prevent a dozen or so Republicans from acting like assholes about it. Rep. Massie (R-KY) suggested that good Americans might not be able to tell the difference between "Juneteenth National Independence Day," and "Independence Day," which sure isn't very libertarian of him -- libertarians think people are smart enough to run their own lives, but Mr. Massie thinks they're not smart enough to know the difference between July 4th and the holiday everyone calls "Juneteenth." Of course, he's a piker compared to Sen. Ron Johnson, who said it seemed "strange that having taxpayers provide federal employees paid time off is now required to celebrate the end of slavery." Try replacing "the end of slavery" with "Columbus Day" in that sentence and you might think what really gets Ron Johnson's goat is he won't have very many people to boss around today.
Posted at 03:29 AM in "bipartisanship", around the table, campaign finance, Democrat weakness, health care, jobs, law and order, racism, stupid stupid stupid!, taxes, the stupid it burns, voting rights | Permalink | Comments (0)
Action: concerning endless warmaking, drug prices, Israel and Palestine, immigration, discrimination, and voting rights.
Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to repeal the Iraq AUMF, and pass the Lower Drug Prices Now Act, the Defending the Human Rights of Palestinian Children and Families Living Under Israeli Military Occupation Act, the American Dream and Promise Act, the Equality Act, the For the People Act, and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers, or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.
The Friends Committee on National Legislation helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 256, which would repeal the Authorization to Use Military Force (or AUMF) Congress passed to permit George W. Bush to go to war with Iraq in 2003. Finally! 2003 was 18 years ago, which means the Iraq War AUMF is now old enough to vote and to believe at least one doomed relationship from high school was gonna last forever, and like that doomed relationship, the 2003 AUMF ain't doing anyone any good now. Of course, Presidents still use it to launch unilateral wars in defiance of our Constitution and the popular will, so it not only doesn't do anyone any good, it does only evil. So we should wipe it out of our legal code.
Drug Prices Are Too High helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 3, the Lower Drug Prices Now Act. If you thought letting Medicare negotiate more of its drug prices was a good idea before -- and chances are you did, since you're a person with a brain who doesn't let their ego completely dominate them -- you'll think it's an even better idea now that our FDA has approved Biogen's Alzheimer's drug that'll cost $56,000 a year. Some analysts say it'll double Medicare drug spending, and though I doubt it's that dire, Biogen's drug is basically the big thing in Alzheimer's treatment right now, so there'll be a lot of it out there, and that will drive up Medicare's drug prices. So let's give Medicare the power to lower drug prices, which means Medicare will spend less of our taxpayer money.
The Daily Kos Liberation League helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 2590, the Defending the Human Rights of Palestinian Children and Families Living Under Israeli Military Occupation Act. OK, it's a long title and doesn't make a cute acronym (cue Benny Hill trying to pronounce "DHRPCFLUIMO"), but it would prevent Israel from using our taxpayer dollars to oppress the Palestinians. And "oppress" is the right word! Never mind who did what first: Israel clearly has superior power to Palestine, and Palestine's alleged allies aren't exactly stepping up to help them. And at the risk of saying something radical, everyone in this region is a human being, and deserves basic human rights.
The Daily Kos Liberation League helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 6, the American Dream and Promise Act. Remember when President Obama essentially created the DACA program, to protect some immigrants who came here with their parents (and thus had no choice in their emigration) from deportation to a nation they wouldn't recognize and likely couldn't even speak the language of? Remember how Republicans all said this is Congress's job? Now guess how many of the bill's 175 co-sponsors in the House are Republicans. That's right, none. And this bill shouldn't offend them: it doesn't offer blanket "amnesty" to all immigrants who came here as children, and sets standards for whom our government can help. And here you thought these Republicans were all about boundaries! But no, civilized people are all about boundaries, and there ain't no intersection with "Republican politicians" on that Venn diagram.
The Daily Kos Liberation League, People for the American Way, and Ultraviolet all help you tell your Senators to pass H.R. 5, the Equality Act. Because it's not even close to what right-wingers say it is! It won't "assault your religious liberties" unless you think "religious liberty" is all about discriminating against gay and transgender folk, which isn't how I've experienced religion at all. And it won't let boys dominate girls in basketball or softball or field hockey, either, nor will it allow boys to gang up on girls in girls' locker rooms. Seriously, right-wingers fixate on the most absurd end results of a bill these days, and why? Because they can't argue with the things the Equality Act would actually do, like prevent landlords from discriminating against gays. The only way they win is if they make you think their "reality" is actually reality. And it's not.
Daily Kos, the Sierra Club, and People for the American Way all help you tell your Senators to pass H.R. 1, the For the People Act. Meanwhile, Common Cause, People for the American Way, and the Daily Kos Liberation League all help you tell your Congressfolk to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. And Public Citizen helps you tell them to do both. We have been reminded, over the past few weeks, that actual bipartisan majorities of Americans support these bills, be they conservative, moderate, or liberal, so don't brook any silliness about these bills not being "bipartisan" enough. You know what the politicians mean by "bipartisanship"? Democrats and Republicans coming together to do whatever Republicans want. And we deserve better than such rubbish.
Posted at 04:36 AM in "bipartisanship", action, big pharma, discrimination, drugs, gay rights, immigration, Iraq, Israel, law and order, Medicare, Palestine, transgender, voting rights | Permalink | Comments (0)
Around the table: Trumpholes run for office, and other sad tales.
David L. Wilson at TruthOut reminds us (and Vice President Harris!) that one can, actually, stem immigration to America: we can end the "war on drugs," stop letting arms flow to bad actors, and cut back on climate change-causing pollution, because all of these things also make lives miserable in Central America. Fun fact: the Obama Administration fiddled as a coup toppled Honduran President Zelaya in 2009, as right-wingers said they were concerned he was trying to make himself a Forever President -- and now Honduras has an actual Forever President who does nothing but oppress his own people. Heckuva job, America! One day we'll be talking about that in the same breath as the CIA-backed 1954 coup in Guatemala and the Nixon-backed 1973 coup in Argentina.
Jef Rouner at the Houston Press lists "5 Signs You're a Soft White Supremacist," but I bet you don't have to worry about whether you're exhibiting these signs. Do you limit your definition of white supremacy to only the most obvious suspects? Do you reflexively look for "middle grounds" because you're afraid of the truth? Do you habitually use isolated incidents to make broad conclusions? Do you think "diversity" has "gone too far" because it makes some folks ashamed boo-hoo? Do you habitually apologize for your Trumphole uncle more often than you fight his stupidity? No, I didn't think that was you, either. So let someone else sweat it, OK?
Ho hum, three Republican House Reps introduce a resolution to censure Reps. Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Tlaib (D-MI), and Omar (D-NY) for "defending terrorist organizations and inciting anti-Semitic attacks across the United States." The first charge is gob-smackingly stupid and the second charge is a bit rich, considering how many anti-Semitic attacks followed in the wake of Donald Trump's 2016 election and how few Republicans are willing to say Donald Trump incited a riot on January 6, though the case for his conviction is considerably stronger. (Also, Rep. Omar didn't say anything wrong, and she shouldn't have walked it back even to the degree she did. And I bet sexism operates here even more than racism does -- if a man had said what she said, he could've doubled down and shouted louder and folks would have said he "shoots from the hip," but too many Americans brandish the b-word when a woman does something even remotely similar.)
Uh oh: at least two dozen corporations waving the Pride flag this month have, guess what, donated to virulently anti-gay politicians in just the last two years. You know, in case you thought corporate hypocrisy had boundaries. Even more telling in the linked article above are all the sentences reading "(such-and-such corporation) did not respond to a request for comment," which means they all know they can't point to a pile of dung and tell everyone it's really meatloaf. I imagine I'll get action alerts about this shortly. And when I get them, you'll get them.
When I hear that Republican candidates are falling all over themselves pretending (and, in some cases, outright lying) that they've received Donald Trump's endorsement, I'm tempted to hope that this really does all play out like a Kids in the Hall skit. "I've got a picture with the big man!" "Oh yeah? Well I've got an endorsement on completely authentic letterhead!" And there's also the ratfucking, as apparently happened to Hirsh Singh in New Jersey. Trouble is, none of this will be funny on Election Day, when Trump votaries all vote in jackboot lockstep for whomever has an "R" after their name. Hate to beat a dead horse, but Democrats could make all this drama beside the point if they would just do something with the power they have over the next two years. That would include not giving up those monthly CTC checks in some "bipartisan" infrastructure bill, an "option" I'm sure they've discussed.
Finally, a New Hampshire man facing criminal charges for his role in the January 6 attempted coup wants to run for Congress, and thinks his role in that shameful act can help him win, because "if you're running for office, any attention is good attention." Granted, he's threatened to run for office before only to utterly fail to do the work that would take, and he only chose to run for Congress after he realized the woman he wanted to run against is a Congressperson and not a state legislator, but Jesus Mary and Joseph I want this dude to lose in the most humiliating fashion possible, because I don't want to live in an America where "any attention is good attention" -- I want to live in an America where we shame and shun people for seeking bad attention. It's not so damn much to ask, really.
Posted at 03:25 AM in "bipartisanship", around the table, campaign finance, climate change, defense spending, Democrat weakness, drama, drugs, gay rights, immigration, law and order, pollution, racism, sexism, taxes | Permalink | Comments (0)
Action: concerning the American Jobs Plan and how to pay for it.
Long story short: tell your Congressfolk, once again, to listen to us as they consider jobs legislation, and fund it with higher taxes on the wealthy. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers, or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs. And good hunting!
You've heard that a group of 10 Senators (only five of whom are Republicans, when you'd need 10 to overcome a filibuster) have come to an "agreement" about a $1.2 trillion (really only $569 billion in new spending) infrastructure bill? One that doesn't raise taxes on corporations or the wealthy, doesn't promise to fund renewable energy infrastructure, and doesn't fund the care economy we're all going to be a part of as we get older? Well, we've got action alerts for you today, then! Daily Kos still helps you demand a "big, bold, and green" jobs plan. Hey, why should we care what 10 Senators agreed to? None of them seem to think it's all that important to agree with us. Which is why we keep telling them, as often as we need to.
Both the National Domestic Workers Alliance and Moms Rising help you demand that your Congressfolk help build a care economy infrastructure. Think about it: child care costs an arm and a leg, elder care costs an arm and a leg, and workers in these fields get paid in dung pellets; keep leaving it up to the "free" market and we'll have a nation of debt slaves with a few CEOs at the top who gild the plumbing in their 19th vacation homes. Spend our taxpayer money insuring that care workers get good pay for good work and we'll start to build something we can be proud of. And it'd be nice if Republicans would stop pretending that it's not "infrastructure" if you can't drive on it. A civilization needs an infrastructure of hard-working, dedicated citizens more than it needs roads.
Americans for Tax Fairness helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 3805/S. 2028 and thus enact a "millionaire's surtax." I think millionaire income should be taxed at 91% just like the good old days and the bill's "millionaire's surtax" would raise the 37% rate on millionaire income only to 47%, but I try not to let the perfect murder the good, and we should take every opportunity we can to send our Congressfolk the message that the rich don't pay enough in taxes, a matter about which we got a painful reminder this week from ProPublica. Afraid it's not "biparatisan" enough? Over half of Republicans support it, per a Hart Research poll, so enough of that.
Inequality.org helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 1979/S. 794, the Tax Excessive CEO Pay Act. This bill would actually raise corporate taxes if a corporation's highest-paid employee makes more than 50 times as much as its median-salaried employee; that tax rate would go up a half-percentage point in that case, and the rate would scale upward, such that a corporation with a 500-to-1 pay ratio would wind up paying five percentage points more. Again, I'd raise it all the way up to 55% for corporate profits over $1 million (and I would expect to lower the ratio that way, too), but let's communicate to our Congressfolk the fact that we think some people make too much money while the rest of us are scraping along, and that they should do something about it.
Finally, Daily Kos helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 1459/S. 510, the Ultra-Millionaire Tax Act. This bill would enact a "wealth tax" that would finally start to get at the trillions of dollars the ultra-rich sit on -- you know, that money right-wingers always say will "trickle down" to the rest of us? Well, it doesn't, but the wealth tax would impose an annual tax of 2% of assets between $50 million and $1 billion and 3% on assets above $1 billion. It'd raise a lot of money, and the super-rich would still be super-rich -- sure sounds pretty harmless, doesn't it? Then all the whining right-wingers will do about might leave you scratching your head.
Posted at 09:08 AM in "bipartisanship", action, corporate taxes, executive pay, jobs, public investment, renewable energy, tax cuts for the rich, taxes, waaaaah!, wealth tax | Permalink | Comments (0)
Around the table: machinations of evil, part 293.
I won't go into every disagreement I have with Sen. Manchin's explanation of why he'll vote against the For the People Act when it comes up, since my disagreements number approximately one per point made, but let's just focus on his statement that the For the People Act is a "partisan" bill. How do we know it's a "partisan" bill? Not from him describing any parts of it, that's for sure, because he doesn't! No, we "know" it's "partisan" because no Republicans support it, and for no other reason. Hasn't he figured out after 11 years that Republicans don't support anything that might actually help people? Here's the punchline, though: an actual bipartisan majority of voters support the For the People Act in poll after poll! (Also, the bill earns 79% support in Mr. Manchin's state, West Virginia. You'd think that'd matter to him.) Yes, it turns out that ending gerrymandering and disclosing big campaign contributors and prohibiting racist de-registrations (to name three more things in the For the People Act than Mr. Manchin did!) are all actual bipartisan concerns!. Lesson: the actual bipartisanship of the American people should matter more than the drama-infused "bipartisanship" of politicians.
Janine Jackson at FAIR notices the Washington Post putting up a "native" ad (i.e., an ad that sure looks like news!) about Amazon's support for a higher minimum wage, though Jeff Bezos owns both Amazon and the Post. This was just a few short hours after the Washington, D.C. Attorney General announced an antitrust suit against Amazon. Anyway, Jeff Bezos's support for the federal minimum wage doesn't emanate from the goodness of his heart -- it emanates from the activism of good folks wielding the Big Stick of Bad PR, and their number may have included you. There's another name for ads that look like news, as Ms. Jackson suggests: fake news. I know, a certain former President has abused that term, but it does refer to actual phenomena.
Ho hum, the Proud Boys are trying to take over the Multnomah (OR) Republican Party, and they sure do some dick-swinging in their emails. I remember my heart being this full of hate once, but you know what happened? Several decades passed, and I became a man and put away childish things. Then again, what grown man calls himself a "boy," let alone a "proud" one? (Also, how amazing is it that the Oregon Republican Party of Mark Hatfield, Tom McCall, and Vic Atiyeh has come to this?)
I should have realized that Arizona state Senate President Karen Fann, one of the biggest supporters of that ridiculous "audit" of Maricopa County votes, belongs to the notorious American Legislative Exchange Council (or ALEC), notorious pusher of right-wing legislative initiatives for over three decades -- but I didn't know she was actually their second highest-ranking board member! This is another good time to remind everyone that ALEC said it was getting out of the vote-suppression game after taking all that flack for all those Voter ID laws -- but clearly they didn't mean that.
Finally, Donald Trump has apparently warmed to the idea of running for a U.S. House seat in the hopes that Republicans will take back the House and he can then be Speaker, and thus third-in-line for the Presidency, but I find it extremely unlikely that he's only now thought of this -- I thought of it months ago, and I'm not a thug like he is. The district in which Mr. Trump currently lives is quite Democratic -- Rep. Frankel won by 18 points in 2020 -- but maybe Florida Republicans, who control all the branches of government, can "fix" that via redistricting. I kid, of course -- I'd be shocked if they didn't.
Posted at 03:13 AM in "bipartisanship", around the table, campaign spending disclosure, racism, redistricting, voting rights | Permalink | Comments (0)
Around the table: how *not* to treat Republicans, part 438.
Big pharma corporations have started running ads blasting efforts to let Medicare negotiate its own drug prices, and boy oh boy are they stinking pieces of dung. Letting Medicare negotiate its own drug prices would "stifle innovation," "keep you from getting the COVID vaccine," "kill jobs," and "institute government price controls." The first three are just stupid, but the fourth is old stupid -- think anyone under 30 seriously gets wigged out by "price controls"? Actually, when people hear "government price controls" today, particularly in the context of absurdly expensive drugs, they're more likely to say at last!
From the "So Much for the Tolerant Left" file: the New York Times scolds gay pride activists for refusing to let police officers march with them this year, by and large ignoring the fact that police have a long history of beating up gay folks. They don't seem to understand that the abused have had enough of being told to reach out to their abusers. And gay folks aren't the only ones who feel that way these days. January 6 broke a lot of us.
Study finds strong correlation between stimulus payments over the last year and a sharp rise in business start-ups -- particularly in the Black community. And the fact is you could cover most business startup costs with any one of these three stimulus checks and still have a lot of cash left over. Enhanced unemployment benefits no doubt also played a role. But at least one economist cautions against thinking the sharp rise in Black start-ups is a good thing, finding that businesses started up out of necessity (i.e., strictly because of lost employment) rose sharply in the Black community in 2020.
This has been a slow-motion train wreck for a while now: Kansas state Rep. Mark Samsel got caught on video preaching to students about (among other topics) God, masturbation, and suicide while substitute teaching, on the same day police say he physically abused at least one student. We've all had bad days at work, I suppose, but maybe not so bad we shoved one kid against the wall and kicked another one in the crotch, all while threatening "the wrath of God." Your Republican party, ladies and gentlemen! The party of patience, prudence, civility, and order!
When I hear that Sens. Manchin (D?-WV) and Sinema (D?-AZ) actually "pleaded" with Republicans to drop their opposition to the January 6 commission bill in which they got almost every silly thing they asked for in negotiations with Democrats, I can't help but hope they've decided to do this so visibly in order to give them cover for getting rid of the filibuster later. See? We tried to work with these guys, but you just can't!. But then Mr. Manchin said later he wouldn't get rid of the filibuster over the January 6 commission, and anyway, "pleading" with the Party of Sedition is always a bad look.
Finally, speaking of January 6, Gladys Sicknick -- mother of Capitol police officer Brian Sicknick, who died in the line of duty during the January 6 attempted coup -- wants to meet with all 50 Republican Senators to convince them to support the aforementioned commission bill, though so far only 14 have expressed interest in meeting with her (or have met with her). I doubt even she will convince them to do the right thing -- and I also think that in the coming months she will be the target of right-wing hatred she never dreamed of before -- but she might shame them in the eyes of even more Americans, and we should all be shaming Republicans as much as possible.
Posted at 03:11 AM in "bipartisanship", actual conservatism, around the table, big pharma, filibuster reform, gay rights, health care, jobs, small businesses | Permalink | Comments (0)
Action: concerning jobs, law and order, pregnant workers, privacy, and Medicare for All.
Long story short: tell your Congressfolk about your "red line" for the American Jobs Plan, tell your Congressfolk to oppose military weapons and "qualified immunity" for police officers, and tell your Congressfolk to pass the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, the Fourth Amendment is Not for Sale Act, and the Medicare for All Act. You can use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolks' phone numbers, or use the links in the following paragraphs.
Tired of hearing how "bleak" the prospects are for a "bipartisan" American Jobs Plan? It's bleak enough that we're even negotiating with the supporters of the January 6 insurrection! The Republicans' "red line" is, of course, NO NEW TAXUZ!!!! -- although "use fees" somehow don't count as taxes to them, at least at this moment -- and President Biden's "red line," unfortunately, does not appear to include "the bill must raise taxes on corporations." Want a better red line? The American Jobs Plan must include a 55% tax rate for corporate profits over $1 million, must invest substantially in clean water, renewable energy, and the care economy, and must not include "use fees," which always hit working people harder than they hit rich people. Our red line matter more than their red lines -- if we speak out. (Daily Kos helps you communicate your will in re corporate taxes and renewable energy and the care economy.)
Drug Policy Alliance helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 3227, the Demilitarizing Local Law Enforcement Act, which would end the notorious 1033 program which funnels surplus military weapons to local police departments. Seriously, if you heard "police get military weapons" in nations like Iran or Russia, you'd find that alarming, wouldn't you? Don't let "but police have it hard" get in the way of you finding that alarming here in America, too, because these weapons don't help police deal with criminals -- they help police put down peaceful protests against their brutality! And don't put the phrase "defund the police" in your counterarguments, either. This is literally not "defunding the police," and attaching any concept that makes you mad to any other concept that makes you mad is not argument worthy of civilized people.
Further along these lines, Daily Kos helps you tell your Congressfolk to end "qualified immunity" for police officers in America. "Qualified immunity" is the legal doctrine, promulgated by our Supreme Court in Pierson v. Ray, that protects government officials (including police officers) from civil suits over their discretionary actions (i.e., actions not mandated by law), unless the plaintiff can prove those actions violated "clearly-established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known." But in practice, folks trying to get relief from police brutality have to prove something almost exactly the same happened to someone else, and that they got relief, in order to get relief themselves. And judges have used the narrowest excuses to throw cases out -- "your example was about police siccing a dog on a suspect lying down with their hands to the side, but you were sitting down with your hands up, so it's not the same! Too bad!" No, I didn't make that up. We should make it hard to convict people of crimes in America, but we shouldn't make it damn near impossible. "Qualified immunity" does that, and Congress should end it.
The Daily Kos Liberation League helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 1065, the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act. Too many women in America have to choose between having a baby and having a job, and why should it be like that? If men could get pregnant, you'd best believe bosses would make every conceivable accommodation at the workplace, like assignments with less lifting and more tolerance of bathroom breaks. But too often we assume women have "ulterior motives" for getting pregnant, when, hey, who would get pregnant just to get light duty? Don't believe the hype that the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act would "make it impossible for bosses to do their jobs." The bill pointedly does not force bosses to make unreasonable accommodations. When you read bills, you learn things.
The Center for Rights and Dissent, Free Press, Restore the Fourth, and the Project on Government Oversight all help you tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 2738/S. 1265, the Fourth Amendment is Not for Sale Act. Our laws already prevent most corporations (including the big telecoms and social media corporations) from selling your information to law enforcement -- but our laws don't prevent the third-party data collecting corporations that buy that data from selling it to law enforcement! Which they do, so if you're a Muslim looking up which direction Mecca's in on your phone, now our government can find out about it, and harass you if they want. There's a reason we demand that law enforcement get warrants to investigate you -- it's for your protection! And we deserve that protection even when big corporations figure out how to work around it. And that's why we have lawmakers.
Demand Progress, MedicareforAllNow.org, Black Lives Matter, and Roots Action all help you tell your House Reps to pass H.R. 1976, the Medicare for All Act. The Medicare for All Act would ensure that all Americans have health insurance, including the 30 million or so who can't get health insurance now, and we could deliver better care more cheaply. How? Well, for one thing, Medicare-for-All won't have a slew of million-dollar executives who need to be paid first. Also, Medicare-for-All will bargain with doctors and hospitals and big pharma corporations with the strength of a 330-million-person-plus pool, and in insurance bargaining, there's always strength in numbers. Don't worry that doctors won't be able to "make money"; doctors still make plenty of money everywhere that governments guarantee that everyone gets health care. So, really, there are no counter-arguments. (Cost isn't one, either; I've shot that zombie in the head many times, most recently last week.)
Posted at 04:36 AM in "bipartisanship", action, clean water, corporate taxes, executive pay, law and order, Medicare-for-All health insurance, pregnant workers, privacy, private data collection, renewable energy, taxes, violence against protestors, working families | Permalink | Comments (0)