Fire away…

54% of Americans Want Trump to Face Criminal Charges for Inciting Deadly Mob Attack on US Capitol: Poll

Washington Post-ABC News poll released Friday morning shows a majority of Americans want outgoing and twice-impeached President Donald Trump to face criminal charges for inciting the violent assault on the U.S. Capitol last week, an attack that left five people dead.

According to the new survey, 54% of Americans—including one in eight Republicans—feel that Trump “should be charged with the crime of inciting a riot” for delivering an unhinged speech ahead of the attack urging his supporters to march on Capitol Hill and “show strength.”

“You’ll never take back our country with weakness,” Trump said as Congress prepared to certify President-elect Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory. “The radical left knows exactly what they were doing. They are ruthless and it’s time that somebody did something about it.”

While Trump earlier this week denied any responsibility for the mob attack and claimed his remarks were “totally appropriate,” the Post-ABC poll found that 57% of Americans believe the lame-duck president bears a “great deal” or a “good amount” of blame for the deadly invasion of the Capitol Building.

The survey also found that 56% of Americans want the Senate to remove Trump and bar him from holding office again in the future.

The poll results come two days after the Democrat-controlled House on Wednesday made Trump the first-ever U.S. president to be impeached twice, approving by a 232-197 vote a resolution charging him with “inciting violence against the government of the United States.”

With Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) refusing to reconvene the Senate early to begin the trial before President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration next week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has yet to transmit the article of impeachment to the upper chamber, leaving the timeline for the beginning of the conviction proceedings unclear.

“Calling the Senate back into session, convicting Trump, and removing him from office for inciting insurrection can’t wait,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, tweeted Thursday. “Mitch McConnell needs to act now.”

‘$2,000 Means $2,000’: Ocasio-Cortez Says $1,400 Payments in Biden Plan Fall Short of Promised Relief

While there is much for progressives to applaud in President-elect Joe Biden’s newly released $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package—from a $15-an-hour federal minimum wage to billions in funding for vaccine distribution—Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said Thursday that the $1,400 direct payments included in the plan fall short of the promise that helped Democrats win control of the U.S. Senate.

“$2,000 means $2,000,” the New York Democrat told the Washington Post. “$2,000 does not mean $1,400.”

On the eve of the Senate runoffs in Georgia, Biden told the state’s voters that “$2,000 checks” would “go out the door” if they elected Democrats Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, who both embraced the push for $2,000 checks on the campaign trail and ultimately defeated their Republican opponents.

“There’s no one in America with more power to make that happen than you, the citizens of Atlanta, the citizens of Georgia, and that’s not an exaggeration,” the president-elect said of the $2,000 payments. “That’s literally true.”

But the Biden camp and others contend the plan was always to provide $1,400 checks on top of the $600 approved under a relief measure that President Donald Trump signed into law last month, not an additional $2,000 check—even though, in their messaging, Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris continued to call for “$2,000 stimulus checks” after the $600 payments were already distributed to many Americans.

In response to one journalist’s claim that Ocasio-Cortez is engaging in “goalpost-moving” by demanding $2,000 checks instead of the proposed $1,400 payments, progressive organizer Claire Sandberg tweeted that “Biden is the one who moved the goalpost.”

“In a last-ditch effort to win the Senate, he said that ‘$2,000 checks’ would ‘go out the door’ if Warnock and Ossoff won,” said Sandberg, former national organizing director for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). “Warnock posted this realistic image of a $2,000 Treasury check!”

Biden is the one who moved the goalpost. In a last ditch effort to win the Senate, he said that “$2,000 checks” would “go out the door” if Warnock and Ossoff won. Warnock posted this realistic image of a $2,000 Treasury check!!! https://t.co/tYJsCdazTs pic.twitter.com/eFwRgIk6Uu

— Claire Sandberg (@clairesandberg) January 15, 2021

The new Congress needs to pass my legislation with @SenSanders to give people $2,000 every month.

— Ed Markey (@SenMarkey) January 15, 2021

Let’s get it done. Please call 202-225-3121 and tell your representative to sign onto the Congressional Oversight of Unjust Policing Act. https://t.co/bHOJDQUGsT

— Jamaal Bowman (@JamaalBowmanNY) January 15, 2021

Let's unite to raise the minimum wage to at least $15 an hour – which is also a key part of this emergency relief package.😉 https://t.co/alq0fvAjo9

— Warren Gunnels (@GunnelsWarren) January 15, 2021

$15 per hour will have to be phased in for 3-5 years.

Sherrod Brown Thinks Progressives Will Be ‘Pretty Happy’ With Biden

Interview with Brown below. I’m posting a piece of it that has significance within the spin that is taking place about Biden’s economic plan.

Talmon Joseph Smith: I wanted to ask if you support reopening any Federal Reserve emergency lending facilities similar to the Municipal Lending Facility and the Main Street Lending Facility that the Trump Treasury Department and Republican senators shut down during the last set of negotiations? Mayors have said the interest rate and the three-year payback window that was offered to cities by the Fed was far too onerous.

Sherrod Brown: Yeah, I opposed Secretary Mnuchin’s doing that at the time. And I leave it up to the administration on where they want to go. But the reason I opposed Mnuchin then was that there was no avenue for state and local governments. This new Biden economic proposal will surely include, I would think, hundreds of billions of dollars for state and local governments. So I am really looking to what the administration wants to do, where they want to go on whether to resurrect them.

I would combine that with something we want to do in this committee, but that will not be part of this package: Set up “Fed accounts” so that anybody that wants a bank account in this country — a no-fee bank account, where they don’t get nickeled and dimed and payday lenders don’t swoop down on them — can have basic banking access.

TJS: Looking at so many of your priorities: A lot of it seems impossible unless you all pass things through simple majorities rather than through the bipartisan wrangling needed to get to the 60-vote filibuster-proof threshold required under normal circumstances.

The incoming Senate Budget Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders plans to push for using the “reconciliation” process to pass, via simple majorities, a much larger follow-up relief bill than what could be possible with a typical 60-vote threshold. But he also wants to push other major reforms through reconciliation — which will push the process’s legal limits. How far do you think you all can responsibly go?

SB: As far as we can go! I would start with what has unanimous or close to unanimous support in the Democratic Caucus. And, you know, there are many of Bernie’s plans that don’t. So I start with that. But I take it from a different direction, I would say, “What can we get done?”

I’ll illustrate it this way. If we were to bring to the floor the $2,000 direct payment, I think that we could very well get 10 Republicans to vote for that. I would like to do as many of these things as we can through regular order. But we can’t allow this health crisis to turn into even more of a housing crisis and then turn in to a financial-slash-banking crisis, which it will if we don’t address it in a much bigger way than [Senator Mitch] McConnell was willing to.

TJS: Finance experts I spoke to said that, as a consequence of the regulatory rollbacks in the latest relief bill — which allow major banks to hide from the markets the scale of their troubled pandemic-related loan restructuring — even civil servants at the Fed have no clear idea about what’s actually going on with banks’ balance sheets right now.

As far as we can go! I would start with what has unanimous or close to unanimous support in the Democratic Caucus. And, you know, there are many of Bernie’s plans that don’t. So I start with that. But I take it from a different direction, I would say, “What can we get done?”

I’ll illustrate it this way. If we were to bring to the floor the $2,000 direct payment, I think that we could very well get 10 Republicans to vote for that. I would like to do as many of these things as we can through regular order. But we can’t allow this health crisis to turn into even more of a housing crisis and then turn in to a financial-slash-banking crisis, which it will if we don’t address it in a much bigger way than [Senator Mitch] McConnell was willing to.

TJS: Finance experts I spoke to said that, as a consequence of the regulatory rollbacks in the latest relief bill — which allow major banks to hide from the markets the scale of their troubled pandemic-related loan restructuring — even civil servants at the Fed have no clear idea about what’s actually going on with banks’ balance sheets right now.

Is there action that you all on the committee can take — if not through legislation, then through hearings — to get some more insight into what’s going on here?

SB: I’d answer it this way: The days of Wall Street running the banking committee are past, and with Democrats in control of the Banking/Housing Committee, things are going to be different. It will mean hearings to unearth special deals that Wall Street has extricated. When Wall Street runs things, the stock market goes up and C.E.O. pay explodes, but wages barely budge, the middle class shrinks — those days need to be over.

TJS: One of Joe Biden’s plans that didn’t get as much coverage was his proposal to greatly expand the Section Eight Housing Choice Voucher Program, by essentially taking that federal rental assistance program and making it available to every family who qualifies.

As you know, around 11 million people who qualify are left out right now. Housing advocates say you all could actually pass this expansion with a simple majority. So is that on the docket?

SB: I don’t really know from a parliamentary aspect whether that can go through with a simple majority or if it can’t. But you’ve heard some of these numbers that, before the pandemic, 25 percent of renters in this country paid more than half their income in rent and utilities — one thing goes wrong, their car breaks down, their child gets sick, they miss a week of work because of a minor injury, and they’re evicted and their lives are turned upside down.