Let’s start today with an article about the Bernie/Biden relationship
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It’s an interesting article so it’s all here. It appears that Bernie was responsible for Biden’s Amazon union statement. I wonder what effect Bernie’s insisting that the $15 will get a vote will have on the relationship. Supposedly, Bernie did give Biden a heads up. In any case, it’s going to come to a head with the first filibuster fight over the voting rights act. Getting rid of the filibuster there could lead to getting rid of the filibuster for the $15. Obviously, the Biden Administration needs to back this strongly to pressure Manchin and others. If they don’t, the Bernie/Biden relationship will be in trouble.
As Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) fought to include a minimum wage increase inside Democrats’ coronavirus relief package, he made sure to keep the White House in the loop.
And as the administration prepared a video of President Joe Biden backing an effort by Amazon workers to unionize in Alabama, the White House made sure members of Sanders’ team knew about it too.
The collaboration has paid off. In the hours after the video’s release, Bernie World heaped praise on Biden. And as Sanders explored different options for getting a minimum wage hike into the final bill — only for his Plan B to fall apart on Sunday — there was no massive blow up or notable friction between the senator’s office and the White House.
“Those are good productive conversations, quite frankly, between [Sanders] and [White House Chief of Staff] Ron Klain,” said Faiz Shakir, a political adviser to Sanders. From raising the wage floor to Amazon unionization efforts, “the relationship has generally been one of respect,” Shakir added. “We have felt an open door where, if we have something that might be good policy and politics for them, we’re going to raise it and they’re going to entertain it in a serious way.”
The state of the Bernie-Biden relationship remains strong, even under stressful circumstances. With Democrats navigating battles over labor rights and wage policy, the two have back-channeled, applauded each other, and crafted carefully worded statements designed to project peace and the aura of collaboration. It is, in part, a recognition that each side needs the other in order to be successful. It’s also driven by a desire to avoid the problems of the past.
The Vermont independent spent a good portion of the Obama years as a progressive-minded critic of the Democratic Party and its agenda, even as he cast critical votes to pass those policies. The reputation catapulted him onto the national stage, though it came back to bite him in the party’s presidential primary and ultimately wasn’t enough to deliver him the nomination. Colleagues say Sanders, who chairs the Budget Committee, is demonstrating now that he can operate constructively in the Senate and with a Democrat in the White House.
“Bernie has been a movement builder for a long time, and the unfair critique of him is that he didn’t know how to operate within the Congress itself as effectively,” said Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii). “He’s put to rest this idea that he’s only an outside player.”
Biden never aired that criticism himself. But he certainly was aware of Sanders’ history, having had to work the Senate for votes on some of the very Obama-era deals that Sanders chastised. Fearing a redux, he’s worked hard to make sure that Sanders feels and is included — from joining forces during the general election, to crafting the Democratic platform, to placing former Sanders’ staffers throughout the administration.
The relationship between the two has benefited a shared political identity—each man bases his political appeal around emphasizing so-called working-class issues. They also had a closer working partnership than Sanders did with 2016 primary rival Hillary Clinton.
“There’s a partnership there and also Biden recognizes the value in that, the value of being pushed,” said Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA. “I got to see up close and personal really the alignment between president Biden and Bernie Sanders on the unity task force and frankly, the labor platform was aligned almost entirely.”
Biden’s promise to make $15 an hour a reality during the campaign was viewed by progressives as a bridge to their wing of the party and a move that distinguished him from the previous Democratic nominee.
That minimum wage promise, and the subsequent fight for it, is now the first real test of whether all that relationship manicuring worked. When Sanders and his Senate colleagues pushed a proposal to penalize mega-corporations who didn’t pay $15 an hour to its workers, the White House gave them space. On Monday, Sanders said he would offer another amendment to raise the wage to $15 an hour in an attempt — however doomed — to effectively bypass the parliamentarian as the Senate begins moving the relief bill through reconciliation. The White House, once again, was given a heads up.
But the heads up may soon not be enough. Biden’s commitment to pass major Democratic policy priorities with narrow majorities — like the $15 wage hike, voting rights protections and immigration reform — and his resistance to abolishing the legislative filibuster may very well put him on a collision course with Sanders and other liberals in Congress.
Though many lawmakers who spoke to POLITICO said they believe Biden is firmly committed to those ideas, some Democrats admitted they were disappointed the president had cast doubt on the minimum wage’s fate in the weeks before the parliamentarian’s ruling that the hike could not be included in the Covid relief bill. While some Democrats said Biden had zero impact on the decision by the nonpartisan rules referee, two Democratic aides said his comments casting doubt on the wage hike’s survival created a “permission structure” for the parliamentarian to rule against including the $15 an hour increase.
“There’s a role for the Biden administration to go to the mat for a $15 minimum wage and any steps that raise the minimum wage,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) said in an interview. “Because this is going to reflect on the White House and the White House’s ability to deliver on anything if we lose the Senate majority in two years, if we lose the House majority in two years.”
Jayapal said Biden’s statements were “confusing.” With the expectation that a clean $15 wage is unlikely to be in the final package, the congresswoman wants the president to “promise that it’s gonna pass through filibuster reform because I just don’t see any way that there’s going to be 60 votes for this.”
The White House has given no indication it is willing to go that route. The senator told POLITICO on Monday that Democrats should not just “ignore” the parliamentarian’s decision but “move as rapidly as possible to end the filibuster.”
Even with his relentless pushing for a hiking of the minimum wage, Sanders has so far limited his criticism of Biden to his foreign policy, not his domestic actions. For months the senator has lent support to the effort by Amazon warehouse workers to organize in Alabama and recently cut digital ads urging unionization. On Monday, Sanders thanked Biden for speaking out on the issue in a tweet.
But how long that goodwill lasts depends on the battles to come, progressives said. Sanders is working down to the wire to find some way to get a wage increase as close as possible to $15-an-hour into the relief package, a Senate aide said. But if this month’s Covid relief bill doesn’t include a minimum wage hike, it will lead to questions about when that hike may come and could strain Biden’s relationship with the left.
Progressive lawmakers and activists don’t see a wage hike happening without the elimination of the filibuster, which sets a 60-vote threshold to move most legislation through the Senate.
A fight over the filibuster seems practically “inevitable,” said Schatz. Though it appears the $15 wage increase is nowhere near passing anytime soon, he said the battle has helped the public understand the Senate’s inner workings.
“Democracy reforms benefit from people understanding how these arcane rules are hurting them in their lives,” said Schatz. “Not just as some sort of abstract process complaint, but of real harm to regular people who are trying to try to make it economically.”
In other words, if we want a good chance of American democracy continuing to exist at all, HR1 is a necessary precondition.
But that brings me to the Senate, the place where hopes and dreams go to die. Voting rights have nothing to do with the budget, so according to the Kafkaesque Senate rules, HR1 can be filibustered. So far conservative Democratic senators like Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema have said they do not support ending the filibuster. If even one of them holds to that view, HR1 is dead.
From a historical standpoint, this is a maddening position. Manchin and Sinema pose as the defenders of traditional Senate norms and procedures, but as I have previously written, the modern Senate filibuster — where basically every normal bill is blocked, and only must-pass budget items or totally anodyne things get through — is not even 15 years old. Mitch McConnell basically invented this filibuster by himself in 2007, and even since then it has been amended several times.
One can easily despair over all this stupid nonsense. A great nation should pass laws based on who wins elections, not who can come up with most tendentiously expansive readings of some obscure procedural rule.
However, it’s also true that the Senate can change its own rules at any time overrule the parliamentarian, and keep “the filibuster” while getting rid of the one McConnell invented. Fifty senators plus Vice President Harris could vote that voting rights measures can’t be filibustered, or could be included in reconciliation. Or Democrats could make filibusters much harder to do (currently they only require a single email), or add a time limit, or some other fix. The options are endless.
Moderate Democrats in the Senate have a choice to make: They can either defend democracy and the Constitution by passing HR1 or they can save the McConnell filibuster. They can’t do both.
Rewrite it then, without making it harder for third parties. It’s actually making it harder for democracy to flourish by protecting the duopoly.
I don’t have the exact wording, but i know it requires a higher threshold before they can get matching funding and one other thing. it’s ridiculous for a bill that purports to be saving what little democracy we have left.
but no doubt, i will have to swallow this, like so much else.
We know one thing, when the R’s get power again they will vote into law even more draconian voter suppression tactics. Any Neolib that believes otherwise should just get out now and have a true progressive Dem replace them. The R’s have made it quite clear what thier plans are. If R’s get thier way only White votes are the only legal votes, all others have some type of fraud connected to the vote and shouldn’t count
I can see Politico’s RW shading in reading the article. The one fact the dimwitted DNCers need to get through their thick skulls is a lot of activists have Demexited. I sure don’t plan on coming back ‘cept to deal with the closed primary bullsh1t here in FL. Progressives will pick up more House seats next year. Senate? Who knows? 🙄
For a few minutes on Sunday night, President Biden sounded a little like a union leader. “Unions put power in the hands of workers,” he said in a video statement of support for the union drive at an Amazon fulfillment center in Bessemer, Ala. “They level the playing field. They give you a stronger voice for your health, your safety, higher wages, protections from racial discrimination and sexual harassment. Unions lift up workers, both union and nonunion, but especially Black and Brown workers.”
Biden also spoke directly to employers who might try to subvert or sabotage an organizing drive. “There should be no intimidation, no coercion, no threats, no anti-union propaganda. No supervisor should confront employees about their union preferences. Every worker should have a free and fair choice to join a union. The law guarantees that choice. And it’s your right, not that of an employer, it’s your right.”
Biden is not the first president to speak in support of unions, but he may be the first to speak so publicly — and so directly — in their favor (certainly since Harry Truman). The words themselves are ordinary, but the context, an American president speaking in support of the most high profile organizing drive in the country, makes them extraordinary. And that, in turn, raises expectations for what Biden can and should accomplish as president on behalf of the labor movement.
Typically, Democratic presidents aren’t so specific in their support for organized labor. Barack Obama, for example, stuck to platitudes at his 2015 White House summit on “worker voice.” “Labor unions were often the driving force for progress,” he said, “The middle class itself was built on a union label. And that middle class that was built was the engine of our prosperity.”
Before Obama, Jennifer Klein, a professor of history at Yale, wrote by email, “Presidents Carter and Bill Clinton basically didn’t even believe there should be unions. They saw them as relics of a decidedly different era of American capitalism. Unions didn’t really function in a modern economy. Free trade, ‘knowledge’, and new technologies would eliminate that old politics of class conflict and the need for much of the New Deal apparatus.”
Even Franklin Roosevelt was, as the historian William E. Leuchtenburg wrote in 1963, “somewhat perturbed at being cast in the role of midwife of industrial unionism.” When pressured by events to take a side in the “Little Steel” strike of May 1937 — in which steel workers under the C.I.O. and the Steel Workers Organizing Committee clashed with a group of independent steel producers, their strikebreakers and law enforcement — Roosevelt blanched. “The majority of people are saying just one thing,” the president said. “A plague on both your houses.”
Compare this to Biden, who stepped in during an organizing drive and ongoing union election to support workers, rebuke hostile employers and remind the country that the federal government has an obligation to allow or even encourage union organizing. Relative to the rhetoric of most of his predecessors, Biden’s brief address stands as one of the most pro-union statements ever issued from the White House.
Presidential rhetoric is not all powerful, but it does matter. Biden’s statement will almost certainly reverberate through future organizing campaigns, to be used against hostile employers. It also plants a flag for the Democratic Party, not just in favor of unions generally but worker power specifically. And to that end, it raises the urgency for pro-union executive action and pro-worker legislation.
The surest way to bring about major change, however, is through legislation. Last year, the House of Representatives passed the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, which would grant workers new collective bargaining rights as well as penalize employers that retaliate against workers who organize.
The obstacle here isn’t Biden, however, it is the Senate and its supermajority requirement for legislation. And with that in mind, perhaps the best thing Biden’s rhetoric can do beyond the specific situation in Alabama is put a little more pressure on Democrats to bring majority rule to the chamber and let Congress finally govern on behalf of the country and its workers.
A group of Democratic senators is calling for President Joe Biden to support regular direct-payment checks to low-income Americans while the US economy recovers from the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.
In a letter to the president calling for the measure, they wrote: “This crisis is far from over, and families deserve certainty that they can put food on the table and keep a roof over their heads.”
“Families should not be at the mercy of constantly-shifting legislative timelines and ad hoc solutions.”
Previous stimulus-check plans have always dealt in single payments. Under President Donald Trump, payments for $1,200 and $600 were approved.
The letter was signed by two of the Senate’s most prominent left-leaning liberals, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, an independent Senator who caucuses with Democrats.
Sanders is Chairman of the Senate Budget Committee. He was joined by Sen. Ron Wyden, Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, and Sen. Sherrod Brown, Chairman of the Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee.
Here is the full list:
Ron Wyden of Oregon Cory Booker of New Jersey Sherrod Brown of Ohio Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts Bernie Sanders of Vermont Alex Padilla of California Michael Bennet of Colorado Ed Markey of Massachusetts Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin Kirsten Gillibrand of New York
After generations of flat wages, COVID is a grease fire burning up what's left of family finances. Millions are out of work. Over 1k die daily. But we're getting an endless loop of Larry Summers lecturing us on why it's responsible to let Americans suffer. Newsflash: It's not.
The missive will be distributed to the rest of the Democratic caucus and illustrates the contours of what could be the next Democratic fight over how much aid should be sent directly to Americans during a pandemic that’s put the unemployment rate at 6.3 percent, with nearly 20 million Americans receiving weekly unemployment payments. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell recently estimated the true unemployment rate was closer to “10 percent in January.”
The proposal does not specify how big the checks should be nor the eligibility requirements for direct payments that would recur as many times as necessary. But the overall infrastructure package is expected to carry an even bigger price tag than the $1.9 trillion relief bill passed by the House over the weekend.
The proposal has support from Democrats across the ideological spectrum, including Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), and Cory Booker (D-N.J.) Noticeably missing from the list, however, are the names of the two moderate Senate Democrats: Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.)
“I think there’s an expanding interest in our caucus in tying relief to conditions on the ground as much as possible,” the Democratic aide adding, referencing to Manchin’s previous calls for more narrowly targeted relief.
The concept of direct stimulus payments distributed regularly to Americans has been under Democratic discussion by since the start of the pandemic. House progressives petitioned Biden to include recurring payments in the current relief plan. And the New Democrat Coalition, a House group of centrist Democrats, previously endorsed the idea of recurring direct payments.
The letter cites the popularity of recurring direct payments with the public and economic experts. Those involved with the push argue Democrats’ twin victories in the Georgia Senate runoffs prove that direct checks are a political winner for the party.
Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and other conservative members of the Senate Democratic caucus are reportedly pressing for changes to the emerging coronavirus relief legislation that would cut the bill’s proposed weekly unemployment supplement and further restrict eligibility for $1,400 direct payments.
The $1.9 trillion relief measure approved by the House of Representatives late last week proposes extending emergency unemployment insurance (UI) programs through the end of August with a weekly federal supplement of $400, up from the current $300-per-week boost that is set to begin expiring on March 14.
But as Roll Call reported late Monday after conservative Democrats met virtually with President Joe Biden to discuss the relief package, Manchin “said he’d prefer to see a $300 benefit in response to criticism that some laid-off workers could end up making more money on unemployment than they would on the job”—a right-wing talking point that Republicans have deployed in their efforts to slash UI benefits.
“We’re just looking for a targeted bill,” said Manchin, whose support Democrats need to pass the so-called American Rescue Plan (ARP) without any Republican votes.
According to the Washington Post, Manchin and other conservative Democrats also pitched “tightening income eligibility for the $1,400 stimulus payments,” a demand that House Democrats rejected in their legislation.
Given that the minimum wage is already out of the ARP, cutting UI from $400 to $300 or reducing checks will cause a full blown revolt from progressives. So I don't expect either to really happen. https://t.co/S5lMe7sXTA
When a team of outside investigators begins to examine sexual harassment allegations lodged against Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, its scope may be far broader than first anticipated.
The team, which will be hired by Letitia James, the New York State attorney general, will have far-reaching subpoena powers to request troves of documents and compel witnesses, including the governor, to testify under oath.
The independent inquiry may also scrutinize not just the sexual harassment accusations made by two former aides last week, but potential claims from other women as well.
In the end, which is likely to be months from now, the investigators will be required to produce a final report, the results of which could be politically devastating for Mr. Cuomo.
“The end game is that a report that found him culpable would bring pressure to bear on him personally, on his regime, on the Legislature to act,” said Nina Pirrotti, a lawyer who specializes in employment law and sexual harassment cases. “But I don’t exactly know how it will play out.”
In fact, Cuomo’s covid-19 news conferences were television-news-enabled fraud. While the governor played the role of a tough-talking paterfamilias successfully combating a dread disease, the state actually suffered the second-highest per capita death rate from covid-19 in the United States.
People fell for it not only because Americans have a weakness for performative bullies (See: Trump, Donald), and in part because the Trump administration couldn’t even fake a competent response to the pandemic, but also because the Cuomo administration cooked the books, seemingly to hide the state’s incompetent performance.
In late March of last year, Cuomo’s health department ordered nursing homes to take in patients recovering from the disease, something that is now thought to have contributed to the state’s high death toll. New York continued to count nursing home patients who died at a hospital as hospital patients, something most other states did not.
Both New Yorkers and national political junkies are now collectively holding their breath, waiting for what comes next. Here’s a prediction: Whatever it is, it will likely come soon.
The knives are out. Rep. Kathleen Rice (D-N.Y.) called on him to resign Monday evening. Longtime nemesis de Blasio on Monday said he saw Cuomo be verbally “abusive” toward his staff, while calling the harassment charges “disgusting” and “creepy.” Everyone from Nancy Pelosi to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is calling for an investigation into the women’s allegations. So is the Biden administration. As Cuomo is now discovering, bullies have few real friends but many enemies. Once someone successfully challenges them, it can all come apart.
As economies recover, emissions and other pollution is again on the rise
"By December 2020, carbon emissions were 2% higher than in the same month the year before."
Well, well, well… Looks like the so-called "ambitious commitments to include "green" policies in the economic recovery packages" aren't really working out…https://t.co/itLWIibtTJ
An estimated 8 million people in Central America are now food insecure due to the economic devastation brought by the pandemic and back-to-back hurricanes https://t.co/jbbOIYFbRk
"Pfizer accused of “bullying” Latin American governments during negotiations to acquire Covid-19 vaccine. The company asked some countries to put up sovereign assets, (embassy buildings & military bases) as guarantee against cost of any future legal cases"https://t.co/y2zVwPLazh
— Latin American Perspectives (@LAPerspectives) March 1, 2021
"A crisis over the supply of medical oxygen for coronavirus patients has struck nations in Africa and Latin America, where warnings went unheeded at the start of the pandemic and doctors say the shortage has led to unnecessary deaths."#Senegal#COVID19https://t.co/strSCNOx0a
— Latin American Perspectives (@LAPerspectives) March 1, 2021
GOOD NEWS: Biden has withdrawn the Trump decision allowing for #OakFlat, a sacred Apache religious site, to be traded away to Rio Tinto, a multinational mining corporation. This is a huge win for the San Carlos Apache Tribe & Apache Stronghold. https://t.co/Ae2Gbg5PHe
— Native Organizers Alliance (@NativeOrganizer) March 2, 2021
Even before President Biden took office, his top advisers began examining how to make good on his campaign promise to treat Saudi Arabia as a “pariah” for the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi without destroying America’s long-standing relationship with the oil-rich monarchy.
The results of those deliberations came Friday with the release of a report concluding that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman approved the 2018 assassination and a clarification that the United States would sanction lower-level Saudi officials but not Mohammed himself.
The reaction in Washington was swift and condemnatory.
Republicans and Democrats in Congress called the response insufficient and urged the Biden administration to directly punish the crown prince. Human rights groups pushed for a broader freeze on weapons to Saudi Arabia until the crown prince faces justice. A torrent of criticisms came in from prominent columnists and editorial boards, including The Washington Post, for which Khashoggi wrote columns, which said Biden granted “what amounts to a pass to a ruler who has sown instability around the Middle East.”
Progressive Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) and liberal Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) introduced legislation on Monday that aims to eliminate the controversial doctrine of qualified immunity for law enforcement and other government agents.
“We must fully end the doctrine of qualified immunity which for too long has shielded law enforcement from accountability and denied recourse for the countless families robbed of their loved ones,” Pressley said in a statement. “There can be no justice without healing and accountability, and there can be no true accountability with qualified immunity. We must act with urgency. We must be bold and unapologetic in our pursuit of policy that increases police accountability and addresses the crisis of police brutality plaguing Black and brown communities.”
Pressley and former representative Justin Amash, the Republican-cum-independent-cum-Libertarian from Michigan who briefly flirted with the idea of running for president in 2020, introduced a bipartisan bill to revoke qualified immunity last summer in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death and the largest protest movement in U.S. history. The Democratic Party-controlled U.S. House of Representatives voted down that effort, an amendment to the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, in favor of a reform that allows victims to sue law enforcement and potentially recover damages but doesn’t dispense with the doctrine in its entirety. Pressley is now reintroducing the legislation as a standalone bill.
Qualified immunity is the product of the courts and has long been considered an example of extreme judicial activism and a major roadblock to criminal and racial justice reform.
The bill has dozens of cosponsors in the House and is also cosponsored by Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in the U.S. Senate.
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) reintroduced legislation to expand federal background checks on all gun sales on Tuesday.
The Background Check Expansion Act is co-sponsored by 43 Senate Democrats, including Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), and would require unlicensed or private sellers to conduct a background check prior to transferring a firearm.
Rep. Mike Thompson (D-Calif.) reintroduced the companion legislation in the House on Tuesday.
The Democratic-led House last Congress passed the Bipartisan Background Checks Act, aimed at strengthening background checks for gun purchases, in Feb. 2019. The bill never received votes in the GOP-controlled Senate.
While Democrats control the House, the party would need all 50 members in the Senate to rally around gun legislation and be joined by at least 10 Republican senators to overcome the legislative filibuster.
“For years, this bipartisan House-passed background checks bill languished in the Senate under Republican Leader Mitch McConnell. Now, with Senate Democrats in the Majority, we have the opportunity to act on this overwhelmingly popular, lifesaving legislation to protect American communities,” Schumer said in a press release
wpDiscuz
It’s an interesting article so it’s all here. It appears that Bernie was responsible for Biden’s Amazon union statement. I wonder what effect Bernie’s insisting that the $15 will get a vote will have on the relationship. Supposedly, Bernie did give Biden a heads up. In any case, it’s going to come to a head with the first filibuster fight over the voting rights act. Getting rid of the filibuster there could lead to getting rid of the filibuster for the $15. Obviously, the Biden Administration needs to back this strongly to pressure Manchin and others. If they don’t, the Bernie/Biden relationship will be in trouble.
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/03/02/bernie-biden-relationship-472128
Ryan Cooper
https://theweek.com/articles/969581/democrats-need-choose-filibuster-democracy
Rewrite it then, without making it harder for third parties. It’s actually making it harder for democracy to flourish by protecting the duopoly.
I don’t have the exact wording, but i know it requires a higher threshold before they can get matching funding and one other thing. it’s ridiculous for a bill that purports to be saving what little democracy we have left.
but no doubt, i will have to swallow this, like so much else.
Bozos like Manchin and Sinema are NOT moderates; they are RWingers! Writers like Grim need to face up to this simple fact!
I wish they could be removed and replaced by a true progressive, these two dont qualify as a DINO even, thier more R lite if not worse
We know one thing, when the R’s get power again they will vote into law even more draconian voter suppression tactics. Any Neolib that believes otherwise should just get out now and have a true progressive Dem replace them. The R’s have made it quite clear what thier plans are. If R’s get thier way only White votes are the only legal votes, all others have some type of fraud connected to the vote and shouldn’t count
I can see Politico’s RW shading in reading the article. The one fact the dimwitted DNCers need to get through their thick skulls is a lot of activists have Demexited. I sure don’t plan on coming back ‘cept to deal with the closed primary bullsh1t here in FL. Progressives will pick up more House seats next year. Senate? Who knows? 🙄
Why Biden’s union statement was a pretty big deal.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/02/opinion/biden-amazon-bessemer.html
Byedone can do a lot more if he wants to, but “Status Quo Joe” is entrenched
Surprising that Bennet is on the list and surprising that Merkley is not.
https://www.businessinsider.com/10-senate-dems-tell-biden-implement-recurring-stimulus-checks-2021-3
Even the New Dems are behind this
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/03/02/some-senate-democrats-rally-behind-recurring-direct-payments-jockeying-next-relief-bill-begins/?utm_source=reddit.com
i will be contacting Merkley. ty
Blumenthal added to the list
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/03/02/bad-policy-and-bad-politics-manchin-trying-cut-unemployment-benefits-limit-survival
Well, at least Common Dreams has its media head on straight! Call yahoos like Manchin exactly what they are: RWingers!!
This is what I was skeptical about. One you give a corporate dem/GOP an inch, then they take 10 miles. Asshats.
Rice is a very moderate NY Rep so it’s a big deal
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/02/nyregion/cuomo-sexual-harassment-testify.html
Cuomo needs to be nailed and forced out over more than just the sex scandals.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/03/02/andrew-cuomo-longtime-political-bully-is-receiving-his-comeuppance/?utm_source=reddit.com
Does ole SOB Borg Bezos have a bone to pick with Cuomo?
could it be that the media also ran with it to the heavens?
Eliot Spitzer pulled a lot less crap than Cuomo, and he was forced out.
pre-Trump
Now, anything goes.
Cuomo will do as Trump did. Not resign. Not be removed.
Election loss is the obvious path.
All the Cuomo noise is a distraction from the Minimum Wage and the Covid Relief fights.
The Democrats must be thrilled.
As economies recover, emissions and other pollution is again on the rise
No surprise.😡💩
i wonder how much the increased shipping to those of us in our caves is contributing.
Some Latin American not so good news
Great juxtaposition. Cruz is the best
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/khashoggi-killing-intelligence-report-mbs-saudi-arabia/2021/03/01/5bdebe68-7ae1-11eb-b0fc-83144c02d676_story.html?utm_source=reddit.com
Why does the United States keep kissing Saudi azz especially after Bin Laden and 9/11?
Craprate OIL profits for one and two- MIC sales = more profits
and Israel.
https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/left-liberal-alliance-introduces-house-and-senate-bills-to-end-qualified-immunity-for-police-officers/
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/541177-democrats-reintroduce-background-check-legislation
.
got me movin!
me2
Niiice.
T and R, jcb!! ☮️😊👍