11/16 News Roundup – Bernie Blasts GOP Tax Plan As A ‘Terrible Proposal’, Kaine Sides With Sanders On Superdelegates & More – The Progressive Wing

JAVASCRIPT IS DISABLED. Please enable JavaScript on your browser to best view this site.

Home→Candidates 2018→Abdul El-Sayed→11/16 News Roundup – Bernie Blasts GOP Tax Plan As A ‘Terrible Proposal’, Kaine Sides With Sanders On Superdelegates & More

Bernie Sanders Rips GOP Tax Plan: ‘Terrible Proposal’

Sen. Bernie Sanders on Wednesday ripped the Republican tax-reform plan as a “terrible proposal” being “paid for by the billionaire class who control the political process.”
“It’s a bad idea,” Sanders, the Vermont Independent and 2016 Democratic presidential candidate, told Anderson Cooper on CNN.
It’s going to throw 13 million Americans off the health insurance they currently have, including about six million people on Medicaid.
“It’s going to raise premiums by about 10 percent for ordinary Americans.”
..
Sanders attributed both plans to GOP’s effort to “give huge tax breaks to corporations and make them permanent.
“What this whole business is about is the power that big money has in American politics, as a result of our corrupt campaign-finance system.
“Billionaires and millionaires have brought hundreds of millions of dollars into the political process, supporting Republican candidates — and today is payback time for them.
“Huge tax breaks for the rich, huge tax breaks for multinational corporations,” Sanders said. “Meanwhile, at the end of 10 years, tens of millions of American families in the middle class are going to be paying for more taxes.”

https://youtu.be/ZIZLM9juK0M

More news/video/tweets/etc. in the comments, including:

*Pruitt’s EPA Abandoning Duty to Protect Kids From Dangerous Pesticides
*Indigenous groups win greater climate recognition at Bonn summit
*The Trump Administration Has Yet to Approve a Single Student Debt Relief Claim
*‘Ready to Resist’: Progressives Rally Ahead of Crucial GOP Tax Scam Vote
*House Dems Introduce ‘Groundbreaking and Much Overdue’ Bill on Palestinian Rights
*Pipeline Updates, Water Protector News & More

newest oldest most voted

Tips, Comments, Complaints, Etc!

Theres currently a bug for some users where it looks like there are no comments until you hover over the area where they should be for a few seconds. This is because of widget update and should be patched soon.

Kaine sides with Sanders, calls for eliminating superdelegates

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), the 2016 Democratic vice presidential nominee, is siding with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in advocating for the Democratic National Committee (DNC) to end the use of superdelegates, saying that they have “undue influence” over the primary process.
Kaine, who was Hillary Clinton’s running mate last year, sent a letter to the DNC Chairman Tom Perez on Wednesday pushing the party to no longer use the powerful, unelected delegates, who overwhelmingly sided with Clinton against primary rival Sanders.
“I have long believed there should be no superdelegates. These positions are given undue influence in the popular nominating contest and make the process less democratic,” Kaine wrote in the letter, obtained first by Politico.
..
Kaine, a former DNC chairman and superdelegate himself, urged the Unity Reform Commission, a group reviewing and recommending changes to the system, to do away with superdelegates altogether and said he would protest the rule by voting strictly in accordance with his home district in the future.

The Democratic Party is stronger when we champion small-d democracy. That’s why I hope the DNC unity commission eliminates superdelegates. I am one, and I’ll happily give it up for a more democratic process. pic.twitter.com/eL31nzgwac
— Tim Kaine (@timkaine) November 16, 2017

Fingers are crossed that they actually do this

From Bernie:

I am glad to see that Senator Kaine understands the importance of reforming and unifying the Democratic Party.

Haha, well worded!

amazing.

7 ways Democrats are misreading the November 7 results

If you’re a Democrat, there’s a name for that unfamiliar emotion you were feeling last Tuesday night. It’s called happiness. But there is a serious risk that the party will draw the wrong lessons from last week’s results.
Here are seven important lessons from the November 7 results that a lot of Democrats seem to have missed.
..
2. Hatred of Trump won’t save the Democrats.
Last week’s victories offer only a temporary distraction from the Democratic Party’s ongoing troubles. Voter approval of the party is at a 25-year low, down to 37 percent from March of this year. Perhaps even more significantly, approval is down markedly among nonwhites and young voters, two groups the party needs for long-term success.
The fact that Republicans are even more unpopular should offer little comfort, since these numbers point to increasingly low turnout. That will benefit the GOP, which has gerrymandered itself into near-perpetual incumbency over much of the country.
The media always need a narrative, and this time around it chose “Trump repudiation.” But it would be a mistake for Democrats to build their 2018 or 2020 campaigns solely around Trump’s manifold flaws. They did that in 2016, and it didn’t work out too well.
If there was an overarching message to last week’s results, it may well have been that nontraditional candidates — including ex-Republican physician Northam, first-time political candidate Murphy and the newly elected Virginia delegates — were more attractive to voters than “career politicians.”

Great article–I especially liked this part

https://www.salon.com/2017/11/16/7-ways-democrats-are-misreading-the-november-7-results_partner/

Despite his Wall Street background, there was no way to mistake Murphy for a centrist. His economic plan included a $15-an-hour minimum wage, guaranteed sick leave, closing the gender pay gap, and higher taxes for millionaires and corporations. He proposed a state bank to promote the public good, an excellent idea with strong support from the left. He rejected the idea of cutting pensions for New Jersey employees, saying, “The state has to stand up for its side of the bargain. Period.”
Murphy proposed a state-run retirement plan for employees of small businesses. And he embraced another left idea to reduce gender and other pay inequities by proposing that employers be banned from asking applicants about their salary history.
And yet, we haven’t heard very many mainstream politicians or pundits point to Murphy’s victory as a sign that Democrats need to move further left on economic issues. Maybe they should, although all signs already pointed to a Democratic victory here, as in Virginia.

Democrats Will Need More Than Resistance to Govern (And that means running candidates who do more than oppose Trump.)

Tuesday’s elections give Democrats obvious momentum. Democratic committees can expect a surge of fundraising. Candidate recruitment will get easier. Republican retirements have already accelerated.
With the architects of Democratic failure still in control of the party’s apparatus—the DNC, the party committees, the consultants, and contractors all remain pretty much the same—resistance is a tempting default position. It’s possible, as Ron Brownstein has suggested, that the furious reaction to Trump and the failed Republican Congress will suffice to let Democrats take back the House.
But resistance alone won’t suffice to consolidate a governing majority, much less provide a mandate for the reforms this country desperately needs. That coalition can only be built if Democrats work to enlist working people across lines of race, reflect their anger at an economy rigged against them, challenge business as usual, and build an agenda for real change. A recent in-depth study of the 2016 results found that 45 percent of the electorate were whites without a college degree. Democrats can’t write off that vote and hope to build governing majorities. The challenge, as David Leonhardt aptly phrased it, is that Democrats have to “get the white working class to focus on the working-class part of their identity rather than the white part.” And that won’t happen without a populist economic message and an agenda with real bite.
The fight about the party’s direction that began in the wake of defeat won’t end in the wake of Tuesday’s victories. Insurgent candidates—supported by organizations like Our Revolution, the Working Families Party, People’s Action, Democrats for America, and others—enjoyed remarkable success in down-ballot races on Tuesday. Centrist Democrats—like California Senator Dianne Feinstein and West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin—already face primary challenges from the left. The party pros will decry the internal divisions, but the fact that grassroots activists are putting energy into electoral politics as well as protest movements, and are operating inside the party rather than outside in third parties, may well be the best hope for the Democratic Party’s renewal.

Democrats Can Win in Alabama—and Everywhere

he trick to mastering the constantly shifting American political landscape is to get ahead of the changes that are sure to come. That’s not always easy, as the evolutions have grown more erratic and more rapid. The last three major off-year elections (2006, 2010, and 2014) produced “waves” that resulted in dramatic shifts in Congress and the states. In the first wave, Democrats surged with a strength that foretold their reclamation of the White House two years later. But the second and third waves locked in Republican hegemony in both Congress and state legislatures.
By many indications, 2018 is on track to be the next wave election, one that could produce a Democratic surge sufficient to disempower Donald Trump and disrupt the agendas of the billionaire Koch brothers and their conservative minions. For that to happen, however, Democrats must stop playing on the margins and start playing everywhere. While the party hasn’t won every contest in Trump’s first year—there were serious stumbles in the spring special elections for House seats—it is now clearly on a winning streak in unexpected places.

‘Ready to Resist’: Progressives Rally Ahead of Crucial GOP Tax Scam Vote

With House Republicans gearing up for a “make-or-break” vote on their plan to deliver massive tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans on Thursday, progressive lawmakers and activists rallied outside of the Capitol building Wednesday to denounce the GOP’s legislation as a “class bait-and-switch” that takes money from crucial safety net programs in the service of rewarding mega-donors and massive corporations.
The #NotOnePenny demonstration came just 24 hours after Senate Republicans unveiled a new provision of their own tax bill that would scrap the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate, which the Congressional Budget Office has said would strip healthcare from 13 million Americans.
This new wrinkle, denounced as “disgusting” by critics, added a new sense of urgency to Wednesday’s rally, as speakers emphasized that President Donald Trump and the Republican Party are attempting to use budget space saved by healthcare cuts to pay for a gift to the richest Americans.
“The Republicans are trying to do a little three step dance,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.). “Step one: transfer trillions of dollars of wealth from the middle class and low-income families to the wealthiest one percent and corporations. Guess what step two is? Explode the deficit, and when they do that, use it to trigger both automatic spending cuts and a rationale to cut every program we believe in, from education and transportation to Medicaid and Medicare. We have to say no way, not on our watch, this is not going to happen.”

If we are going to stop Republicans from taking health care from millions and slashing Medicare to give tax cuts to the wealthy and large corporations, NOW is the time to stand up and fight back. https://t.co/7BKO2drjEx
— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) November 16, 2017

VIDEO: CEOs asked if they plan to increase their company’s capital investments if the GOP’s tax bill passes.
A few hands go up.
“Why aren’t the other hands up?” Gary Cohn asks.#WSJCEOCouncil<
#WSJCEOCouncil

Declaring ‘Train of Injuries Must End,’ House Dems Introduce Articles of Impeachment Against Trump

A group of House Democrats on Wednesday introduced five articles of impeachment accusing President Donald Trump of obstructing justice, violating the foreign emoluments clause, undermining the freedom of the press, and other constitutional breaches.
“The time has come to make clear to the American people and to this president that [Trump’s] train of injuries to our Constitution must be brought to an end through impeachment,” said Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.), who introduced the articles alongside Al Green of Texas, Luis Gutierrez of Illinois, Brad Sherman of California, Marcia Fudge of Ohio, and John Yarmuth of Kentucky.
“Given the magnitude of the constitutional crisis, there’s no reason for delay,” Cohen added, calling for hearings to begin immediately.

Trump admin. to reverse ban on elephant trophies from Africa

The Trump administration plans to allow hunters to import trophies of elephants they killed in Zimbabwe and Zambia back to the United States, reversing a ban put in place by the Obama administration in 2014, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service official confirmed to ABC News today.
Even though elephants are listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act, a provision in the act allows the government to give permits to import these trophies if there is evidence that the hunting actually benefits conservation for that species. The official said they have new information from officials in Zimbabwe and Zambia to support reversing the ban to allow trophy hunting permits.

Trophies from elephant hunts in Zimbabwe were banned in the U.S. Trump just reversed that.

The shift in U.S. policy comes just days after Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke established an “International Wildlife Conservation Council” to advise him on how to increase Americans’ public awareness of conservation, wildlife enforcement and the “economic benefits that result from U.S. citizens traveling abroad to hunt.”
“The conservation and long-term health of big game crosses international boundaries,” Zinke said in a statement announcing the group’s creation. “This council will provide important insight into the ways that American sportsmen and women benefit international conservation from boosting economies and creating hundreds of jobs to enhancing wildlife conservation.”
Safari Club International, a hunting advocacy group that has consistently opposed any restrictions on importing trophies from abroad, broke the news of the rule change a day ahead of Fish and Wildlife. Its statement included a detail that the agency omitted: A Fish and Wildlife official made the announcement at a forum the Safari Club co-hosted in Tanzania, from which elephant trophy imports remain banned. An agency spokeswoman declined to confirm that account.
A representative of the group, along with several other hunting activists, joined Zinke in his office on his first day as he signed one secretarial order aimed at expanding hunting and fishing on federal lands and another reversing an Obama-era policy that would have phased out the use of lead ammunition and tackle in national wildlife refuges by 2022.
..
In another potential policy reversal, Fish and Wildlife has posted an online guide for hunters on how to import lion trophies. In 2016, after listing African lion populations as threatened or endangered depending on their location on the continent, the agency established specific requirements for allowing imports of their trophies. The Service also banned imports of trophies from lion populations kept in fenced enclosures to be hunted.

and i’m sure we have tons of regulators ensuring where each lion comes from.

Fox’s Laura Ingraham rips Trump for ending ban on importing elephant trophies from Africa

someone must have offered or given a lot of money.

His sons are trophy hunters, this is a gift to them.

I’m so pissed off right now!!! I just saw that!

And the claims that killing elephants are good for conservation are pure bunk! I don’t care what that pro-hunting piece of work over at TOP used to claim all the time. I’ve done my own research. For one thing, the hunters target the finest, most robust, creatures to put on their walls of death. Take removes strong genes from the gene pool.

Elephants, leopards, giraffes, lions, all the endangered ‘big game’ need room to roam in. They need land. And they’re losing their land at an alarming rate. 🙁

Curses on your ugly heads Mugabe, Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, and all who make $$ from trophy hunting.

That removes, not take removes.

I’m so pissed off I can’t type straight.

How come the Rs and their corporate master remind me of this quote from Independence Day

” President Thomas Whitmore: I saw… its thoughts. I saw what they’re planning to do. They’re like locusts. They’re moving from planet to planet… their whole civilization. After they’ve consumed every natural resource they move on…. ” If theirs intelligent life out their please keep us limited to earth orbit, we need to grow up first. We don’t need to take this mindset out to other planets and destroy them like we are this one.

Wow, great quote, I’d love to ask the writer if he was actually referring to us in some way?

Don’t often watch the boob tube, but when I do it tends to be either comedy or sci-fi. I grew up on Asimov books and Star Trek, then went from there (big fan of Philip K. Dick, Stanislaw Lem, Samuel Delaney (Dhalgren!), read every John Wyndham, so many others) and I also decided that we’re not yet advanced, enlightenment-wise, enough to leave our solar system.

I must admit that I would actually prefer if we don’t even leave “earth orbit” either quite yet. The plans in place now to plunder the moon of resources scare the heck out of me. Our ecology is directly tied to the moon. We need to understand the implications of massive mining operations, for example, before we do it! We need wise leaders who somehow figure out a way to rein in corporate control.

The next space race– Helium 3 is very abundant on the moon, 25 tons of helium-3 — or a fully-loaded Space Shuttle cargo bay’s worth — could power the United States for a year. Nuclear fusion reactors using helium-3 could therefore provide a highly efficient form of nuclear power with virtually no waste and no radiation. This would put fossil fuels out of business, Probably the real reason we quit the going to the moon due to oil gas and coal lobbyists back in the 70s. Or the aliens did want to share this power source (Snark)
Read more at
http://www.explainingthefuture.com/helium3.html

Richard Cordray, Who ‘Held Big Banks Accountable,’ Announces Resignation From CFPB

Richard Cordray, the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), announced his resignation on Wednesday.
The Obama-appointed consumer advocate announced the decision in an email to CFPB employees, saying he will step down “before the end of the month.”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who helped create the agency, said on Twitter of Cordray: “He’s a dedicated public servant and a tireless watchdog for U.S. consumers—& he will be missed.”
In his statement to CFPB staff, Cordray applauds the work the successful and broadly-supported watchdog has done since it began operations in 2011.
“Together we have made a real and lasting difference that has improved people’s lives, notably: $12 billion in relief recovered for nearly 30 million consumers; stronger safeguards against irresponsible mortgage practices that caused the financial crisis and hurt millions of Americans; giving people a voice by handling over 1.3 million complaints that led to problems getting fixed for vast numbers of individuals, and creating new ways to bring financial education to the public so that people can take more control over their economic lives,” he wrote.
The statement does not mention Cordray’s next steps; however, there’s been speculation that he would run for governor of Ohio.

The Trump Administration Had 1 Real Wall-Street Cop—and He Just Quit

Richard Cordray’s departure is a loss for consumers, but may be Ohio’s gain.

House Dems Introduce ‘Groundbreaking and Much Overdue’ Bill on Palestinian Rights

A group of 10 Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday introduced “groundbreaking and much overdue legislation” that would attempt to prevent U.S. tax dollars from supporting Israel’s abuse of Palestinian children.
The Promoting Human Rights by Ending Israeli Military Detention of Palestinian Children Act, or H.R. 4391 (pdf), is reportedly the first bill on Palestinian human rights ever to be introduced in Congress, and would “require the Secretary of State to certify that United States funds do not support military detention, interrogation, abuse, or ill-treatment of Palestinian children, and for other purposes.”
In September of 2016, the United States signed a new 10-year deal (pdf) with Israel agreeing to provide $38 billion in military aid. The deal, which encountered significant pushback from pro-Palestinian groups, “constitutes the single largest pledge of bilateral military assistance in U.S. history,” the State Department said at the time.
Noting that Israel has signed and ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, the bill points to findings from Human Rights Watch and the United Nations Children’s Fund, or UNICEF (pdf), that Palestinian children have been subjected to “chokeholds, beatings, and coercive interrogation” by Israeli authorities, and that the “ill-treatment of children who come in contact with the military detention system appears to be widespread, systematic, and institutionalized throughout the process.”
“Israel has the dubious distinction of being the only country in the world that systematically prosecutes between 500 and 700 children in military courts each year,” according to a report by Defense for Children International – Palestine, which has endorsed the bill. Several other religious groups and human rights organizations have expressed support for the proposed law, including Amnesty International, Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), and the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR).

Rep. Betty McCollum (D-Minn.), the bill’s lead sponsor. “Peace can only be achieved by respecting human rights, especially the rights of children. Congress must not turn a blind eye [to] the unjust and ongoing mistreatment of Palestinian children living under Israeli occupation.”
Nine other Democrats—Reps. Earl Blumenauer (Ore.), André Carson (Ind.), John Conyers, Jr. (Mich.), Danny K. Davis (Ill.), Peter A. DeFazio (Ore.), Raul Grijalva (Ariz.), Luis V. Gutiérrez (Ill.), Chellie Pingree (Maine), and Mark Pocan (Wis.)—have signed on as co-sponsors.

Kudos to these reps.

Torabs

This is progress. Still, I would’ve expected at least a few more dems to support this bill. Ro Khanna, where you at?

Watch @docdanielle debunk one of Fox News' most pathetic single payer myths: pic.twitter.com/ayYA4k46x7
— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) November 15, 2017

Today we celebrate #GeographyAwarenessWeek & #GISDay2017! Wonder what I do as a #geoscientist? Well, I’m a new age #geographer! We do fieldwork, work odd hours, but we get to #travel & work outdoors while studying the physical aspects of the Earth! https://t.co/aWVX0bp34q pic.twitter.com/WghZnLKAms
— Roza Calderón (@rozacalderon) November 16, 2017

Democratic candidates for California 4th Congressional District speaking in South Lake Tahoe Thursday

Three Democratic candidates for California’s 4th Congressional District will be in South Lake Tahoe Thursday, Nov. 16, for a candidate forum.
The event, which is being sponsored by the South Lake Tahoe Democratic Club, South Lake Tahoe Solidarity Network and the Tahoe Climate Change Action Network, will be held in the Lake Tahoe Community College Board Room from 6 – 8 p.m.
The public is invited to come meet the candidates and hear where each stands on a variety of issues, including those affecting Lake Tahoe and the Sierra region, according to a press release. Approximately 45 minutes of the forum will be reserved for audience questions.
The candidates participating in the forum are Regina Bateson, Roza Calderon and Jessica Morse. A fourth candidate, Rochelle Wilcox, announced earlier this month that she was suspending her campaign.
The three candidates are vying for the Democratic nomination in an effort to unseat incumbent Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Elk Grove).

Capitalism Is Not the Only Choice

We have opportunities every day to build economies that lift each other up and spread joy.

Pruitt’s EPA Abandoning Duty to Protect Kids From Dangerous Pesticides

In one study of more than 600 American children 8 to 15 years old, those with detectable pyrethroid residues in their urine were twice as likely to be diagnosed with ADHD as other children. Biomonitoring by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that children 6 to 11 years old have greater exposures than teens and adults. Exposures to one key pyrethroid metabolite – a chemical formed by the breakdown of the pesticide in the human body – increased by 50 percent in children between 2000 and 2010.
This week EWG submitted formal comments urging Pruitt to halt the pyrethroid safety assessment until the EPA has fully considered risks to childhood brain and behavioral development. We implored the EPA to assess the results of the six recent studies linking children’s pyrethroid exposures to brain and behavioral changes.
Ultimate responsibility for protecting children from brain-damaging pesticides rests with one person: Scott Pruitt. So far, he has used his immense power not to protect kids, but to protect the interests of chemical agribusiness. If the EPA continues on this path, it would effectively derail the agency’s pesticide program.
We hope we’re wrong. Pruitt could change course and begin taking seriously his job as chief advocate for environmental health and the safety of American children, before more kids are harmed for life by pesticides on their food. With nearly 4 million children born every year in the U.S., the stakes couldn’t be higher.

..