The Progressive Wing

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A huge oil pipeline is coming to Minnesota – and with it the risk of Covid

As Covid-19 cases surge in Minnesota, an oil company is bringing in thousands of out-of-state workers to finish building a pipeline from Canada that will stretch hundreds of miles across the state.
Environmental advocates and Native American tribes have fought Enbridge Energy’s Line 3 proposal for years, and now medical professionals are joining in to plead with the governor to halt construction amid the pandemic.
Enbridge secured its final permits from the state this week, and workers are already arriving, although lawsuits are ongoing.
In Aitkin county where construction is starting, a senior nurse at the Riverwood healthcare center said the staff is already struggling.
“Our nurses, we’re very stressed out. It’s taking more staff to take care of Covid patients, and we’re seeing a lot of our families and friends and our relatives that we’re caring for,” said the nurse, who asked to remain anonymous to protect her position. “We know within the next couple of weeks, it’s going to get bad again.”
Riverwood is a ‘critical access’ hospital, a designation for rural hospitals meant to improve healthcare access to small communities. It has 25 beds and 4 intensive care beds. The hospital has been trying to transfer the sickest patients to bigger facilities, but those hospitals are increasingly already at capacity.
Nearly 200 Minnesota health professionals are petitioning the governor’s office for an emergency stay of construction, arguing an influx of workers will increase community spread of Covid-19.

Democratic figures accused of hypocrisy on COVID-19 precautions

Ive been raging about this forever it seems so Im glad others are letting me take a break..

Democratic governors and mayors are being accused of hypocrisy for breaking their own COVID-19 restrictions.
High-profile elected Democratic officials have apologized for embarrassing instances in which they were caught dining indoors, traveling abroad or celebrating political victories in the streets, contrary to their own guidelines for social behavior during the resurgent pandemic.
The transgressions come after Democrats campaigned on being the party of science and personal responsibility in contrast to President Trump, who has downplayed the virus and flaunted the advice of his own medical experts.
Democrats who have abided by the rules are irritated over the rule-breakers, worrying it will reinforce stereotypes about liberal elites playing by a different set of rule
Public health experts, for their part, say that it’s critical for elected officials to practice what they preach, particularly at a time when the death count is rising and the hospital system is straining under the caseload.
“It is very frustrating to see political figures making recommendations that they expect the public to follow but that they themselves do not follow in their personal lives,” said Jeff Flier, the former dean of the Harvard Medical School.
“I can’t imagine anything that would be more likely to undermine the ability of an elected official to gain the public trust…it undermines that trust and makes it less likely that you’ll be able to effectuate the policies you’re trying to put forward,” he said.
Steve Adler, the Democratic mayor of Austin, is the latest to be ensnared in controversy after his hometown paper revealed that he had traveled to Mexico on a private plane in early November with a group of family members to celebrate his daughter’s wedding.
Adler filmed a video urging people to “stay home if you can” without revealing that he was at a timeshare in Cabo San Lucas at the time.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/12/how-iowa-mishandled-coronavirus-pandemic/617252/

And on the other Republican hand

To visit Iowa right now is to travel back in time to the early days of the coronavirus pandemic in places such as New York City and Lombardy and Seattle, when the horror was fresh and the sirens never stopped. Sick people are filling up ICUs across the state. Health-care workers like Klein are being pushed to their physical and emotional limits. On the TV in my parents’ house in Burlington, hospital CEOs are begging Iowans to hunker down and please, for the love of God, wear a mask. This sense of new urgency is strange, though, because the pandemic isn’t in its early days. The virus has been raging for eight months in this country; Iowa just hasn’t been acting like it.
The story of the coronavirus in this state is one of government inaction in the name of freedom and personal responsibility. Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds has followed President Donald Trump’s lead in downplaying the virus’s seriousness. She never imposed a full stay-at-home order for the state and allowed bars and restaurants to open much earlier than in other places. She imposed a mask mandate for the first time this month—one that health-care professionals consider comically ineffectual—and has questioned the science behind wearing masks at all. Through the month of November, Iowa vacillated between 1,700 and 5,500 cases every day. This week, the state’s test-positivity rate reached 50 percent. Iowa is what happens when a government does basically nothing to stop the spread of a deadly virus.

phatkhat

The T-day spike seems to be arriving. Wed evening 739/15 (cases/dead) in my county. Thurs evening 765/18. And the stores and restaurants are still packed. And people going maskless. Churches still meeting in person. What does it take to wake people up?

That Jeffress a-hole in TX ranting about not wearing a mask and trusting God. I went to Methodist and Southern Baptist churches when I was a kid, and I never heard the Baptist minister tell people to ignore science. Why has religion gotten so weird?

ikr? if people really did what jesus said, they’d demand that our government truly serve us. feed, clothe, help with mental and physical problems. it really takes very little and people are desperate to fit in, to contribute, to love and be loved.

Aholes deluxe. Figures.🤮🤮🤬

The rules dont apply to the neolibcons now rules for the little people is a different matter

Biden defends Cabinet choices after criticism: ‘Most diverse Cabinet’ in history

Biden defends Cabinet choices after criticism: ‘Most diverse Cabinet’ in history
© Getty Images
President-elect Joe Biden in an interview on Thursday defended his Cabinet picks as he faces pressure from critics who say his nominees are not diverse enough.
“I’m going to keep my commitment that the administration, both in the White House and outside in the Cabinet, is going to look like the country,” Biden told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Thursday.
The president-elect went on to tout his current slate of nominees as “the most diverse Cabinet anyone in American history has ever announced.”
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Biden has nominated Linda Thomas-Greenfield, a Black woman, to serve as ambassador to the United Nations and Alejandro Mayorkas to serve as the Homeland Security security. Mayorkas would be the first Latin person hold the role if confirmed. He has also nominated Avril Haines to be the director of national intelligence and Janet Yellen to serve as Treasury secretary. Both would be the first women to serve in the positions.
Additionally, Biden has appointed a diverse pool of administration officials, including an all-female communications team.
Biden is expected to announce more Cabinet picks in the coming weeks, but Black leaders have expressed concern about what many are saying is a lack of representation in the incoming administration.
“You see many very capable competent individuals who are providing insight and bringing to bear some of their knowledge in [their] subject matter areas, but there [is] no one on the transition team from the civil rights community,” said NAACP President Derrick Johnson.
Biden said on Thursday that he is scheduled to meet with the civil rights group next week.
“Their job is to push me,” Biden said, referring to advocacy organizations.
..
“What I think people are saying is, a lot of people are saying, am I going to pick some very, very prominent progressive who sits in the House or the Senate right now,” Biden said. “As close as everything is in terms of the House and the Senate, they are tough decisions to make,” he added, referring to the narrow margins in the chambers.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna1249964?__twitter_impression=true

More diversity but more of the same.

Rep. Gregory Meeks won the approval of his Democratic colleagues Thursday to become the first Black American to chair the House Foreign Affairs Committee, one of the most powerful panels on Capitol Hill.
In a competition that centered on race, seniority and the future of the Democratic Party, Meeks beat out Texas Rep. Joaquin Castro, head of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and has served four terms to Meek’s eleven.

https://www.axios.com/house-foreign-affairs-gregory-meeks-pelosi-2f7da740-03c9-4a97-b061-0142b62304fe.html

Labor groups are urging House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to oppose a bid by Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.) to lead the House Foreign Affairs Committee, arguing that his “pro-corporate trade” stances should preclude him from being elected to the powerful position.
What they’re saying: “How America’s trade is structured, and by whom, is fundamental in determining whether we advance workers’ rights,” the Communications Workers of America, Teamsters, United Brotherhood of Carpenters, and International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers write in a letter obtained by Axios.
The committee’s jurisdiction is much broader in scope than just trade, touching on everything from foreign assistance to national security, cyber issues and public diplomacy.
Nearly three dozen progressive groups last month endorsed Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) for the job instead.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/12/02/progressive-centrist-biden-split-foreign-policy-meeks-castro-showdown-in-house-foreign-affairs-chair-race-reflects-rifts-in-democratic-party/

The race between centrist Meeks and Castro is a microcosm of the ongoing battle within the Democratic Party over what its foreign-policy platform should be, as progressive lawmakers push the party and President-elect Joe Biden to adopt more left-leaning policies that pare back decades of bipartisan consensus on issues like military spending, U.S. troop deployments abroad, and free-trade deals.
Those same intra-party tensions are playing out as Biden faces pressure from the center and left flanks of his party over key administration appointments. This includes the CIA director position as well as the secretary of defense, where the seeming favorite, Michèle Flournoy, has faced criticism from progressive groups over her ties to the defense industry and her role in U.S. interventions in Libya and the Middle East during prior posts at the Department of Defense.

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/527516-meet-the-three-democrats-who-could-lead-foreign-affairs-in-the-house

Progressive groups also praise Castro’s highlighting of the need to include Palestinian voices when discussing issues in the Middle East.
Castro’s positions on Israel are in line with the majority of the Democratic caucus. He supports a two-state solution and a secure, Democratic homeland for the Jewish people, and opposes unilateral annexation.
But the Texas lawmakers says he wants to do more to elevate Palestinian voices as witnesses in committee hearings as an effort to compliment the Biden administration’s push to reengage with the Palestinian Authority that was severed under the Trump administration.
“I believe that there are things we can do to be helpful to regain the trust of both sides,” Castro said of the Israeli and Palestinian conflict.
Castro signed onto Rep. Ilhan Omar’s (D-Mich.) resolution affirming the right of Americans to boycott — the resolution seen as a counter to efforts by centrist and moderate Democrats to condemn the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement that targets Israel for an economic boycott over its settlement policy in the West Bank.

Nina was on CNN a few minutes ago about this very topic. I wasn’t able to record or capture it, but perhaps People for Bernie caught it and will post a tweet with a video clip. The theme: diversity of thought and how to lift up the most with the greatest need (meaning not rich people).

phatkhat

Maybe they are diverse in race/gender/ethnicity, but they are NOT diverse in politics. They’re pretty much standard neo-liberal Obama/Bush/Clinton recycles.

Dont worry progressives, Byedone will do a “token” progressive in a low level position just to say he did.

I hope this fat orange maggot’s junk food junkie diet kills him, and soon!

He wont risk losing again not a chance, 4 years is a long time politically and the SDNY will have a chat with him about his taxes and a pardon cant stop that

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/12/04/november-2020-jobs-report-unemployment/?utm_source=reddit.com

The U.S. economy added 245,000 jobs in November— the slowest month of growth by far since the recovery began in the spring and a warning in the months ahead as infections surge to new heights across the country.
The report comes during what economists and policymakers say is a perilous moment for the economy. The generous aid programs that helped prop up businesses and households during the worst of the pandemic have long expired, and the House, Senate and the White House have spent months in disagreement in negotiations over further action.
Unemployment benefits for an estimated 12 million people will expire at the end of the year, due to deadlines set by legislators in March. And the virus’ surge has begun touching off a new round of closures and restrictions, as the caseload surges to new heights across a broader swath of the country than before.
“There’s increasing evidence it [the recovery] is a K,” David Berson, the chief economist at Nationwide Insurance. “We had the big drop and for much of the country who are on the up part of the K, things are pretty good. Good job growth, good income growth, low interest rates. But the down part of the K, a substantial portion of the population is hurting significantly.”

The thing that these conservative Senators don’t seem to understand is that I’ve actually had a physically difficult working-class job without good healthcare most of my adult life.
I bring that work ethic to Congress & to my community. They sit around on leather chairs all day.
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) December 3, 2020

Torabs

Name names, Alexandria!

On sites like the Nest, she doesn’t have to as we already know who they are.

With mass layoffs persisting at an unprecedented clip, coronavirus deaths surging, and hunger on the rise nationwide, a group of House Republicans on Thursday attempted to pass a motion to adjourn the chamber in what Democratic lawmakers denounced as an “outrageous” stunt by members of a party that continues to stand in the way of desperately needed economic relief.
Though the motion, introduced by House Freedom Caucus Chair Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), was ultimately defeated by the Democrat-controlled House, the attempt to adjourn was viewed as another telling example of the GOP’s refusal to take seriously the coronavirus pandemic and resulting economic crisis.

Jeremy Funk, spokesperson for government watchdog group Accountable.US, slammed McConnell for “shilling for special interests” instead of offering real relief to the tens of millions of Americans struggling to afford basic necessities and possibly facing eviction in the near future.
“The McConnell Senate enabled the Trump administration’s mismanagement of the health crisis and still insists on doing as little as possible to contain the economic fallout,” said Funk. “McConnell’s big idea of giving corporations permission to mistreat workers with impunity during a pandemic and giving more handouts to coal CEOs means absolutely nothing to the millions of families who face hunger and homelessness in the Trump recession.”

We’re trying to get COVID relief and stimulus checks out to people and right now Republicans are trying to prematurely adjourn Congress.
People are going hungry and they’re treating this like a game. Leaders don’t abandon people in their time of greatest need. https://t.co/IGRyu6s5qc
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) December 3, 2020

Nearly 18 million adults are behind on rent & mortgage payments.@SenateGOP refuses to act on numerous relief bills the House has passed & @HouseGOP just issued a motion to adjourn.
The Republican party’s contempt for working people is on full display.https://t.co/NC31S3HUJy
— Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley (@RepPressley) December 3, 2020

Right now a Republican member has put up a Motion to Adjourn, I am voting against it. I seriously don’t know why any member wants to adjourn while we have work to do on behalf of so many Americans who are suffering right now.
— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) December 3, 2020

Until these FRightwingnut yahoos face SERIOUS accountability (getting their worthless greedball azzes kicked out of office would be a nice start), nothing will change. The worst to come is staring us in the face. 😡

you are right, orl, it’s very weird how they have so little regard for their own base, even. and like it or not, a lot of the truest believers have health issues.

God will heal them. They’ll tell ya so

Black-owned small businesses were widely shut out from accessing PPP loans, yet right-wing disinfo org PV took half a million in public money while decrying direct federal assistance as “radical socialism.”
Republicanism in a nutshell.
(Also they’re based in Mamaroneck?! 👀) https://t.co/JARqvhgBmD
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) December 3, 2020

Working together R’s & D’s helped save the jobs of 55 million Americans through PPP
Work more, tweet less & one day you too can make a difference https://t.co/WprW5OR9LP
— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) December 3, 2020

Yesterday I recruited 5,000 volunteers to train and tutor kids in my community who are struggling with remote learning, and that was after investigating the Treasury Secretary’s rationale for stopping CARES Act funding and voting on House legislation.
What did you do? https://t.co/Ytkq6qZKiI
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) December 3, 2020

Marco white collar robber Rubio. End of comment.🤮🤮🤬

No, it is a different in approach. Rubio does the donors pay for. AOC doesn’t dial for dollars, so she organizes instead.

i don’t know, but i think orl was only talking about rubio, not comparing to aoc?

I was making the contrast.

Torabs

Sad to see the open disrespect Ocasio-Cortez has to deal with from these swine. Are there no women in their lives with the sense to slap them after reading this garbage?

Rubio cant stand up to a tweeting president so has to attempt to bully the younger, more successful, female to make himself feel important

Nesters know my earlier comment was directed right at Rubio, not AOC. I have enormous respect for her.😊👍✊

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-georgia-ads/u-s-bank-lobby-spends-1-million-on-ad-blitz-for-republican-perdue-in-georgia-u-s-senate-runoff-idUSKBN28E1DD?utm_source=reddit.com

The largest U.S. bank lobby group is spending $1 million on television ads to boost Republican Senator David Perdue, in a bid to ensure the Senate remains in Republican hands after Georgia runoffs in January, according to federal filings.
Perdue, who sits on the Senate Banking Committee and has long been an industry ally, is seeking re-election against Democratic challenger Jon Ossoff.
The large expenditure underscores industry worries that Democratic control of the Senate could lead to tougher banking policies, as well as clear the way for Democratic President-elect Joe Biden to nominate hard-charging regulators.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/12/4/1999534/-Government-s-monthly-jobs-report-shows-economic-recovery-slowing-sharply

From Meteor Blades. The official unemployment rate is especially worthless in these times.

In yet another indication that the recovery from the Pandemic Recession has dramatically slowed, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday that nonfarm employment rose by a mere 245,000 jobs in November. There were 344,000 gained in the private sector, but in all levels of the public sector 99,000 jobs were lost. The headline unemployment rate fell to 6.7%, but that was mostly a product of 400,000 people leaving the labor force. An alternative measure that gauges both unemployment and underemployment fell 0.1 to 12.0%.
In the pre-pandemic Before Times, those results would fit well within the range of monthly job gains during the past five or so years. In November 2019, for example, the economy created 256,000 new jobs. But now, with 9.8 million more Americans out of work than was the case in February before the coronavirus started its killing spree, the November gain in jobs shows the recovery’s weakness. At the current rate of growth, it would take years to get back where we were just 10 months ago. And while some companies are obviously adding workers, company after company after company is laying off thousands of workers or contemplating doing so.

One impact of the Pandemic Recession has been a drop in the labor force, which now has some 4.1 million fewer people than it did in February. Prominent among the drop-outs out are women and older workers pushed reluctantly into early retirement. But at least some of those who are counted as having left the labor force really haven’t. The bureau puts any jobless person who has not looked for work in the past four weeks as being out of the labor force. Under our current circumstances, where looking for a job is more difficult than usual, that definition distorts reality.
The bureau also reported:
In November, the number of persons not in the labor force who currently want a job increased by 448,000 to 7.1 million; this measure is 2.2 million higher than in February. These individuals were not counted as unemployed because they were not actively looking for work during the last 4 weeks or were unavailable to take a job. […]
About 3.9 million persons not in the labor force in November were prevented from looking for work due to the pandemic. This measure is up from 3.6 million in October.

for a long time. all these rates, including poverty, have been way too low as long as i’ve been involved in jobs that involved helping people who need government help–starting, off and on, in the mid-seventies.

https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/trump-coup-dictatorship-fascism/

What horrifies me isn’t simply that the cranks and sycophants surrounding Trump have dived into this moral cesspit. Rather, it’s that much of the broader GOP, especially at the federal level, has remained silent in the face of this escalating assault on the democracy. It is the reductio ad absurdum, the inane and insane end point of four years of the GOP’s collusion with Trump’s full-frontal assault on the institutions and culture of democracy.
Trump’s fascist yammering, and the GOP Senate’s collaborationist behavior, isn’t just a footnote to the 2020 election campaign. Rather, it’s a prologue to what could come next. Even while Republican state officials have pushed to protect the integrity of their election systems, at a federal level their fellow party members have happily left them to the tender mercies of Trump and his army of trolls.
The GOP as an institution has entirely abandoned its commitment to the democratic process. In tolerating Trump’s dangerous nonsense and his increasingly frantic efforts to overturn the election, it has embraced the dangerous notion that any outcome that doesn’t result in its holding power in perpetuity is illegitimate. That’s a hell of a Signal—a Thousand Year Reich–kind of signal—to send the country and the world. And it’s a hell of a warning shot as to how the Grand Old Party intends to conduct itself in the months and years ahead.

silver lining–they will shrink and shrink. worst case, they will have some kind of fail uprising and shrink further.

T and R, LD and JD!! 🎄☮️😊👍

Pelosi: "That was not a mistake; that was a decision that has taken us to a place where we can do the right things without should we say 'other considerations' in the legislation that we don't want … I'm very proud of where we are." Says she's proud of the work of her chairs
— Jeff Stein (@JStein_WaPo) December 4, 2020

It’s shameful to call this proposal a “compromise” when the poor people who are dying the most & working the hardest to keep the country running will get the least. Why not compromise on what the wealthy get?
— Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II (@RevDrBarber) December 4, 2020

Pelosi was showing off her defensive asshattery today.

What bull. She’s on board with it because McConnell is intransigent, gives not one crap about people!s suffering, and now holds most of the cards after the election results. If the Dems win in GA, they can increase once Biden is president.

Congress has the chance to decriminalize cannabis today.
They absolutely should.
— Charles Booker (@Booker4KY) December 4, 2020