The Progressive Wing

Tips, Comments, Complaints, Etc!

@Benny (and others), I’ve switched the post-creator back to the way it was before the auto-update. Hopefully that helps!

JD was born with Dextrocardia and some other heart conditions which can cause fluid build-ups/complications that we’ve been battling at the beginning of this new year. Everything looks good and all looks to be returning to normal so I should be back to posting (but always hate to make promises I cannot keep so wont make any other ‘guarantees’).

Have a great day friends!

magsview

Oh no! Does that mean she has to watch her water intake? So glad to hear that “everything” is looking up. Amazing how good normalcy can be!

All the Best JD!! And to caregiver LD!

Ditto. {{{{{❤️}}}}}

wi62

Add another to the well wishes for JD’s health, Family first LD. Don’t worry about us as we got your back for the TPW as needed.

orlbucfan

Hear, hear!! 🙂 JD is too young to have to deal with this–nature can be harsh. 🙁 T and R to you both, LD!!

ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ SAYS SHE IS A RADICAL: ‘IT ONLY HAS EVER BEEN RADICALS THAT HAVE CHANGED THIS COUNTRY’

Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez—the youngest woman ever elected to Congress—is not ducking her new-found fame as one of the most progressive and controversial lawmakers in the Democratic Party, despite facing relentless attacks from Republicans across the aisle and even opposition from within her own party.
In a wide-ranging 60 Minutes interview with CBS News that aired Sunday, the New York representative told Anderson Cooper she considers herself a radical and suggested that the U.S. can only be changed by so-called radical politics.
Though a political newcomer who only took her seat on January 3, Ocasio-Cortez warned she was not to be underestimated. Asked by Cooper to respond to criticisms that she does not understand how the political game is played, Ocasio-Cortez replied: “I think it’s really great for people to keep thinking that.”
Indeed, the 29-year-old suggested she won her primary in New York’s 14th District largely thanks to being underestimated by her opponents.
But now she is in the House, Ocasio-Cortez is wasting no time in pushing for a more progressive agenda from within the Democratic Party.
Medicare coverage for all Americans, ambitious reforms to address climate change, abolition of college tuition, higher taxes for the country’s wealthiest and campaign finance reform are some of her stand-out policy ambitions, which have drawn vehement opposition from the Republicans and unsettled some Democrats.
Cooper suggested Ocasio-Cortez’s “big picture” political outlook constitutes a “radical agenda, compared to the way politics is done right now.”
In response, the congresswoman argued “that it only has ever been radicals that have changed this country.” She added: “Abraham Lincoln made the radical decision to sign the Emancipation Proclamation. Franklin Delano Roosevelt made the radical decision to embark on establishing programs like Social Security.”
“You know, if that’s what radical means, call me a radical,” she added.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/05/opinion/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-tax-policy-dance.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

This is a member of Congress who danced in college and recently called for a change in tax policy based on the work of leading economists. Washington considers her a flaky nitwit 2/ pic.twitter.com/7wR4SFcyUz
— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) January 6, 2019

la58

I have no idea how well Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will perform as a member of Congress. But her election is already serving a valuable purpose. You see, the mere thought of having a young, articulate, telegenic nonwhite woman serve is driving many on the right mad — and in their madness they’re inadvertently revealing their true selves.

Anyone else see the word President written all over her? (future)

Hopefully I or someone else can dig up the entire, unedited interview:

Benny

Fearless.

‘Let’s Get Our Priorities Right’: Outrage as Bipartisan Group of Senators Pushes Bill to Punish Boycotts of Israel Amid Shutdown

After The Intercept reported over the weekend that a bipartisan group of senators is pushing, as its first legislative priority, a bill that would hand states more power to punish boycotts of Israel—even as the prolonged and deeply harmful government shutdown continues into its third week—Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Sunday condemned the legislation itself and urged Democrats to block any bills that are not related to reopening the government.
“It’s absurd that the first bill during the shutdown is legislation which punishes Americans who exercise their constitutional right to engage in political activity. Democrats must block consideration of any bills that don’t reopen the government,” Sanders wrote on Twitter. “Let’s get our priorities right.”
Sponsored by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), the legislation would give states and localities more legal authority to punish companies that participate in the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement.
Kathleen Ruane, senior legislative counsel with the ACLU, condemned the measure as an attack on Americans’ First Amendment rights that must be voted down.
“In the midst of a partial government shutdown, Democratic and Republican senators have decided that one of their first orders of business… should be to sneak through a bill that would weaken Americans’ First Amendment protections,” Ruane declared.

It’s absurd that the first bill during the shutdown is legislation which punishes Americans who exercise their constitutional right to engage in political activity. Democrats must block consideration of any bills that don’t reopen the government. Let's get our priorities right. https://t.co/rHvpBHtHI5
— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) January 6, 2019

Bernie Sanders slams ‘absurd’ introduction of anti-BDS bill in Congress

magsview

No surprise, but it didn’t take long at all for her to get this group’s attention:

1) It’s outrageous to imply dual loyalty because you disagree with a policy initiative.
2) A new member of Congress has no place saying that four U.S. Senators don’t know which country they represent. https://t.co/PAfUKYIA5z
— American Jewish Committee (@AJCGlobal) January 7, 2019

Did you hear that Rashida? It’s not your place to speak your mind. So sit down and shut right up.

magsview

“Policy initiative” is a weird way to spell “an attempt by congress to restrict political speech”

Former Park Service Chief Says Keeping National Parks Open During the Shutdown Is a Tragic Mistake

Tourists left to run amok, putting people, animals, and natural features at risk.

Yes. But if we close them people will just ignore it anyway.

And it will at least be a deterrent.

But at least it would be a deterrent.

As Washington Fights Over a Wall, a Humanitarian Crisis Is Unfolding on America’s Doorstep

In April, after Nicaragua’s increasingly authoritarian government began killing protesters, Isaac Molina tried to help. Molina saw the carnage at a university in Managua and rushed home to fill a backpack with medicine and other supplies. The government quickly closed hospitals and told doctors not to treat injured protesters. Molina, a 26-year-old doctor, kept treating them.
He was threatened for the first time in May, after being identified as a member of a volunteer medical brigade. One month later, he said the police pulled him over and shot him twice, in the abdomen and the back. He fled with his wife and two young children in August and arrived at the US border in Tijuana in November. Shortly after arriving, he turned around and traveled to the other side of Mexico to wait.
Asylum-seekers used to be able to simply walk across the border and make their claim for protection—a right enshrined in US and international law. That is no longer the case. Under a policy that began in 2016 and grew far stricter last year, asylum-seekers in Tijuana and all along the border must now wait for weeks to be allowed into the United States to request protection.
The US government is approaching the third week of a shutdown over President Donald Trump’s insistence on $5 billion to build part of a border wall. But the problems on the ground in places like Tijuana have nothing to do with physical security and everything to do with a Trump administration policy aimed at deterring people from seeking asylum. The result is a huge backlog and a humanitarian crisis for people fleeing persecution who are now forced to wait for weeks or longer in dangerous places along the border.

Rashida Tlaib and Working Class Authenticity v. Trump’s Plutocrat Pretense

Corporate media pundits and political elites expect the wealthy to do bad imitations of working class profanity, but despise the real thing

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/01/14/the-new-jersey-a-g-taking-on-trump

On the eighth day of the government shutdown, the Trump Administration was dogged by reports of yet another investigation. New Jersey’s attorney general, Gurbir Grewal, was looking into whether Donald Trump’s golf club in Bedminster had hired undocumented housekeepers—including a Guatemalan woman who told the Times that she had illegally entered the United States from Mexico and often made the President’s bed.
Trump’s troubles with New York’s legal authorities are well publicized. Less well known are the dozens of legal actions against the Administration in which its neighbor across the Hudson has participated, “everything from the travel bans to daca to family separations,” Grewal said not long ago. New Jersey has one of the largest populations of undocumented immigrants in the U.S., an estimated five hundred thousand.
Grewal, who took office a year ago, is the nation’s first Sikh attorney general. On a recent Thursday, he was in his Newark office, wearing a trim suit, a navy turban, and an Apple Watch. He tugged his tie loose. “Since this is not on camera, I can relax for a second,” he said. One of Grewal’s advisers, Andrew Bruck, put a box of Italian cookies on a table and sat down to study his phone.
A few hours earlier, Grewal had held a press conference to announce new rules for the state police, which would limit their coöperation with federal immigration authorities. Under the rules, New Jersey police can no longer detain people based solely on their immigration status or participate in raids by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Grewal, who is forty-five, lives in Glen Rock with his wife and three daughters, and attends a Sikh temple. Born in Jersey City to Indian immigrants, he learned early on that his fellow-citizens, unfamiliar with Sikhism, might associate him with America’s foreign adversaries. “I remember when the hostage crisis happened, we were all Iranian,” he recalled. After September 11th, he’d experience “just general nastiness,” he said. “Driving on the highway, people would sort of look at you, give you the finger.” Then came Trump’s 2016 Presidential campaign. “What we’re seeing—and I think it’s very much a result of the tenor at the top—is a normalization of hate speech,” he said. This past summer, two local radio hosts were suspended for calling Grewal “turban man” on the air. Then the sheriff of the county where he lives—“I thought, a friend,” Grewal said—resigned after he was caught on tape opining that Grewal was appointed because of “the turban.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/06/us/politics/tlaib-aoc-new-congress.html

But the newcomers’ mix of bold policy proposals and lighthearted personas has caught the nation’s attention — on Friday, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, 29, the youngest lawmaker in the chamber, surpassed Ms. Pelosi in Twitter followers. Their savvy, almost Trumpian use of social media may not pass a national health plan or a 70 percent income tax bracket, but it has helped muscle the policy conversation into the national discourse, and has nudged the party to the left.
Representative Jackie Speier of California, one of the more senior women in the House, praised the new women for “invigorating the Congress” and “having the guts to say these rules don’t make any sense.” Nodding toward their tools of communication, she added, “I think what we’ve learned from President Trump is that people like authenticity.”
The comparison to Mr. Trump may rankle, but their policy proposals bring to mind the Tea Party class of 2011, whose hard-right positions moved the Republican Party by making traditionally conservative proposals seem more moderate.
“In many ways, the positions that very progressive caucus members take help provide space for us to get to yes on some hard issues for folks,” said Representative Dan Kildee, Democrat of Michigan.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/green-new-deal-tour_us_5c326a4fe4b0d75a9831d845?jtv&utm_source=reddit.com

The Green New Dealers are taking their movement on the road.
It’s been a whirlwind two months since the youth activists of the Sunrise Movement staged protests in Democratic leaders’ offices, bringing into the mainstream calls for a Green New Deal ― a sweeping federal policy that would mandate 100 percent renewable energy and provide good-paying sustainable jobs to millions of Americans.
Now the Sunrise Movement, likely the nation’s fastest-growing climate advocacy group, is planning a 14-stop tour meant to drum up grassroots support for a Green New Deal across multiple states, HuffPost has learned. It’s the first leg of the group’s effort to make the policy the defining issue of the 2020 election.
“We’re launching the Road to a Green New Deal Tour to activate the millions of Americans who are ready to fight for a Green New Deal but haven’t heard of it yet,” Varshini Prakash, co-founder of Sunrise Movement, said by email. “When you come out to a tour stop, we’ll give you all the tools you need to spread the word within your own community, build support, and pressure your elected officials to take a stand.”

https://truthout.org/video/winona-laduke-calls-for-indigenous-led-green-new-deal/

While world leaders converge in Poland for the UN climate change summit, we look at the Indigenous-led fight against destructive oil pipelines and the revolutionary potential of the Green New Deal with Winona LaDuke, Ojibwe environmental leader and executive director of the group Honor the Earth. She lives and works on the White Earth Reservation in northern Minnesota.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/sherrod-browns-wife-he-wont-run-in-2020-if-im-not-all-in

Connie Schultz, the Pulitzer Prize-winning syndicated columnist married to Ohio Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown, said her husband won’t launch a 2020 presidential campaign without her consent.
“Think of any big decision you’ve made in life, you know? Unless you’re forced to make it instantly, it’s something you have to get used to thinking about. I am lucky and burdened to be married to a man who will not do this if I don’t wholeheartedly want to be a part of it all. He just won’t,” Schultz, 61, told CNN’s “Reliable Sources” on Sunday of the couple’s thought process. “So, there it is. I’m blaming him and thanking him at the same time.”
Schultz — who wed Brown in 2005 in what was both of their second marriages — said her husband would announce his 2020 plans “within the next two months.”
“There’s a lot of moving parts there,” she said. “There are a lot of lives that are going to be affected and changed. Considering running for the presidency is an earthquake in a marriage, in the best of marriages, and we have a great one. It’s an earthquake for the entire family.”
One of their considerations were “the horrible dirty tactics, particularly of the Trump campaign” that Schultz anticipates should Brown seek the White House, she said.

Benny

Trump's empire in NYC was founded on racism and has always been aided by a capitalist system that benefits from his racism. We shouldn't wonder why @AOC dares call this out. We should wonder why so many failed to do the same as he rose to power. https://t.co/WuNDILmEeB
— NYC-DSA 🌹 #JoinDSA (@nycDSA) January 7, 2019

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/the-finance-202/2019/01/07/the-finance-202-ocasio-cortez-wants-to-tax-the-super-rich-other-2020-democrats-may-follow/5c326d901b326b66fc5a1bc0/?utm_source=reddit.com

Where AOC goes, others follow. Bernie and now AOC are dragging that Overton window to the left.

But left-leaning economists note the proposal is hardly radical, given rates that high — and higher — were on the books for for the top income bracket amid the prosperous middle decades of the last century. And some recent research (including from Nobel-winning economist Peter Diamond) argues a top rate slightly north of 70 percent is optimal for the ultra-rich. (The idea also drew praise from at least one figure on the right, with Ann Coulter tweeting she agrees.) Julián Castro, the former Obama administration housing chief moving toward a presidential bid, pointed to history in endorsing Ocasio-Cortez’s idea during a Sunday appearance on ABC’s “This Week.”
As my colleague Dave Weigel noted, Castro’s breezy co-signing signals just how quickly the tax policy discussion within the party can leap to the left.
Expect other Democratic 2020 hopefuls to go there soon, too. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), for example, has said she wants to roll back Republican tax cuts passed in 2017. Though she has eschewed naming a number she would favor for a top marginal rate, she has pointed out it was “well above 50 percent” in the post-World War II era. And in her kickoff tour through Iowa this weekend, she said Washington needs to embrace “big structural change” to restore economic fairness.

Not getting a ton of attention today, but IMO Julian Castro's answer to a question about @AOC's tax talk was striking.
"George, there was a time in this country where the top marginal tax rate was over 90 percent."
and *woosh* goes the Overton Window. pic.twitter.com/OsTd1T3RAq
— Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) January 6, 2019