The Progressive Wing

Fire away…

Sen. Bernie Sanders reacts to Biden's plan to withdraw troops from Afghanistan by Sept. 11:
“These wars cannot continue to go on forever and we've got to learn that in many respects diplomacy… is much more important, much more effective than an occupying force on the ground.” pic.twitter.com/ho5Er9lbmu
— The Situation Room (@CNNSitRoom) April 14, 2021

ICYMI.

IMOP we should have left the day after Bin Landen was shot. to me the mission was over and since then our troops died needlessly

Ex-officer in shooting of Daunte Wright faces manslaughter charge

Kim Potter resigned Tuesday from the Brooklyn Center Police Department amid outrage over Wright’s death during a traffic stop. The incident was captured on a body-worn camera, and it set off days of protests and other unrest in a region already on edge during the murder trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin.
Second-degree manslaughter is one of the counts Chauvin was charged with last year after video emerged showing him pinning George Floyd under his knee for about nine minutes. Under Minnesota law, a person convicted of the charge can face up to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $20,000.
Potter was taken into custody by Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension agents at 11:30 a.m. Wednesday. She was booked into the Hennepin County Jail just after noon. She posted $100,000 bail and was released from custody shortly after 5:30 p.m., according to sheriff’s records.
The action against Potter is relatively unusual; fatal shootings by police rarely result in charges. Officers shoot and kill about 1,000 people a year, according to a Washington Post database. Most of these people are armed.
The vast majority of the shootings are deemed justified, and only a small portion of officers face charges in such cases.
While the shooting took place in Hennepin County, the county attorney there sent the case to Orput’s office in Washington County as part of an agreement to have prosecutors investigate police shootings outside their jurisdictions to avoid the appearance of conflicts of interest.
An attorney thought to be representing Potter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Wright’s family members had stated that they wanted Potter to face murder charges. “Prosecute them, like they would prosecute us,” Nyesha Wright, the victim’s aunt, said at a Tuesday news conference. “We want the highest justice.”

I was surprised to see a pix of her in an orange jumpsuit TBH

Revenge of the nerd: Across the divide, Bernie Sanders breaks through

Bernie Sanders was never the most all-American of presidential candidates. The Brooklyn-born democratic socialist senator from Vermont has a New York accent less thick than overpowering. Lecturing America relentlessly on its serious ills, he presented as a cross between Scrooge and the Grim Reaper, seemingly as likely to appeal to American voters as Leon Trotsky, with whom he appeared to share a hair stylist. He did not slap backs, could not tell jokes and spouted policy prescriptions that sounded right out of “Das Kapital.”
First in 2016 and then again in 2020, he was underestimated, and even dismissed. New York Times reporter Amy Chozick recounts missing the meaning of Sanders’ message in 2016, nearly blowing off the opportunity to interview him early in that campaign in favor of a physical fitness class. “I initially brushed Bernie off with such casual nonchalance, such ill-informed elite media snobbery,” she has written, “that I almost canceled our first one-on-one coffee because I didn’t want to miss abs-and-back day at boot camp.”
Today it’s clear that on issue after issue, Sanders’ thunder on the left has carried the day among a majority of Americans, including substantial numbers of Republicans. Conservative attacks on Sanders-style proposals for universal health care, raising taxes on the wealthy, raising the federal minimum wage and other programs as “European socialism,” once tried and true, are increasingly falling flat. The nation’s near-death experience coping with an anti-democratic president, an upsurge in right-wing extremism and a devastating pandemic seems to have left many Americans convinced that more dramatic change than they had once been willing to contemplate is necessary to hold a weakened country together.
So say the polls, in any event.
In announcing his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2019, for example, Sanders proclaimed “We say to the American people that we will rebuild our crumbling infrastructure: our roads, our bridges, our rail systems and subways … and our airports.” He vowed to create millions of jobs in the process. And he promised to tax the rich to pay for it. “The wealthy and multinational corporations in this country,” Sanders said, “will start paying their fair share of taxes.”
Americans are with him. Asked last month whether they would support President Joe Biden’s massive public infrastructure plan even after passage of a $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief act, 73% of voters overall, including 57% of independents and 61% of Republicans, told Data for Progress pollsters that they would. A Morning Consult poll two weeks ago found that 54% of Americans supported funding those improvements by raising taxes on those earning over $400,000 a year and raising the corporate tax rate. Unsurprisingly, this included 73% of Democrats. More notably, it included 52% of independents and 32% of Republicans. Some 57% of voters told the pollsters they would be more likely to support Biden’s infrastructure plan if it included raising taxes on high earners; only 17% said it would make them less likely to do so, while 47% said they would be more likely to support the bill if it was paid for by raising corporate taxes, while only 21% said it would make them less likely to support it.
Raising taxes to invest in public infrastructure is not the only issue on which America’s political sands are shifting. A poll taken last fall by the Kaiser Family Foundation concluded that 53% of Americans supported a national health plan that would insure everyone. This included 58% of independents and 21% of Republicans. A contemporaneous Pew Research Center poll found that 63% of American adults believe that government bears responsibility for providing health care coverage for all, up from 2019. This included 34% of Republicans. And a recent Morning Consult poll found that a majority of Republicans support raising the federal minimum wage.
It has been a very long time since Bernie Sanders could be ignored.
If once it could be said that he was ahead of his time, it must now be said that Americans are catching up to him.

telling that more independents favor m4a (or similar) than dems.

https://files.kff.org/attachment/PublicOpinionSinglePayerKFF.pptx

Actually Dems favor M4A way more than indies. 80% favor it according to the Kaiser poll in the fall

my bad. read too fast and thought the 53% was dems and 58% was independents. should’ve known that didn’t make sense.

Torabs

Nice trick, ignoring that he got cheated in both 2016 and 2020. The author may have just caught up to Sanders, but much of America was there well ahead of him. What a snarky, shitty piece of writing.

T and R, Ms. Benny, and the rest of the usual excellent TPW suspects!! ☮️😊👏

Will Biden’s presidency break the grip of Reaganism on US politics?

Having got his $1.9trn Covid relief package through Congress, President Joe Biden is now trying to get a roughly $2trn infrastructure bill passed, which his administration has named the “American Jobs Plan”. The bill would invest the money over eight years, which, according to White House officials, would be the highest level of investment in infrastructure and research, as a share of the economy, since the 1960s.
Overhauling transportation infrastructure would require investment of $621bn; $300bn would go to improving and upgrading housing and schools; and $400bn to care for the elderly and disabled. It would ensure universal clean drinking water – eliminating lead pipes from the country’s water supplies – and high-speed internet access, raise the corporate tax rate, and electrify “at least 20 per cent” of the yellow school buses that transport the nation’s children to and from school each day.
The bill received some criticism from progressives for not going far enough. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the left-wing House Democrat from New York, for example, noted the similar size of this medium-term investment bill – for spending over eight years – to March’s one-off relief stimulus. Generally, though, the Jobs Plan was hailed as a landmark bill, which, if passed, would go down as a major piece of legislation.
In terms of ambition, it has certainly exceeded the expectations of some of Biden’s detractors during his campaign for president. Biden’s rhetoric is measured, but he is effectively proposing significant redistribution from the wealthy to the middle and lower classes, not only by raising the corporate tax rate, but by using government money to revamp essential infrastructure, from housing and schools to roads and bridges.
There was good reason to think that Biden would shy away from big investment projects. Biden is, after all, the person the Democratic Party establishment rallied around to make sure the more radical candidate, Bernie Sanders, did not win the presidential nomination. He ran as a moderate, the kind of figure who could bring Democrats and Republicans together by being open to compromise and eschewing radicalism.
During the primary debates, he challenged his Democratic rivals to say how they would pay for Medicare for All, supported by Sanders and the Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren. Word from Biden world during the campaign was that they understood they would have to limit spending after coming into office.
But this was not simply astute electoral positioning. Throughout his decades-long political career, Biden has been an establishment Democrat, politicking within the boundaries established as acceptable for his party by, among others, Ronald Reagan, whose presidency changed how politics was done and what was considered possible for both the major parties. As Barack Obama said in 2008: “Ronald Reagan…put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it. I think they felt like with all the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s and government had grown and grown but there wasn’t much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating.”
The success of Reaganism in reining in these “excesses” – the “big government” and spending of previous decades – convinced politicians from both parties that Americans liked the unfettered free market and prized individual freedom over the safety net provided by a more proactive state. (As Reagan famously said, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: ‘I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.’”) If this economic libertarianism could be married to faith, so much the better.
A generation of Democrats was formed in an age in which Reagan won all but 13 votes in the electoral college (out of more than 500) on this platform of limited government. His success changed the rulebook. Part of the reason Biden’s Jobs Plan would bring about the highest level of investment in infrastructure and research, as a share of the economy, since the 1960s is that limited government has for so long been the ascendant paradigm, setting limits on the ambitions of the Democrats as much as of the GOP.
That Biden is the person who appears to be snapping the Democrats out of their decades-long acquiescence to the Reaganite consensus is ironic given that he is a Democrat made in that same mould. But the apparent break with the past is not only down to Biden’s change of heart, but the result of a confluence of factors. There is the pandemic, which has revealed – and put pressure on those in power to address – the vast, systemic inequalities that beset American society.
Covid-19 has also created political incentives for doing something to alleviate these social ills as, it turns out, people across the spectrum do not resent but in fact appreciate the government stepping in to help in a time of great need.
There is the memory of 2010 mid-term elections during the Obama presidency, when, in the wake of the financial crisis and the economy’s slow recovery from it, the Tea Party was able to convert public rage into a Republican majority in the House of Representatives, stymying the president’s agenda for the rest of his term. There is the influence of the transformative ambition and rhetoric of Sanders, whose prominence in the Democratic primaries in 2016 and 2020 – and whose position now as chair of the Senate budget committee – challenged the party leadership on what constitutes reasonable Democratic policy. There is the fear of not doing enough to tangibly improve people’s lives, prompting a return to Trump, or worse.
Biden presents his policies in a more conciliatory, anodyne tone than, say, Sanders – “we don’t have anything against wealthy people” – and he is not the first black president, or a Jewish socialist, or a woman, and so is perhaps inherently seen as less radical by voters, who, in turn, are more accepting of progressive policy that comes from his White House.
Democrats appear to be rapidly learning that giving people money and support is popular. Ironically, Trump understood the first half of this better than many, which is why he sent out stimulus cheques with his name on. But the American Jobs Plan does more than send people money. It says that if people were ready to curb governmental “excess” after the 1960s and 1970s, they are now ready for a government that remembers it has a responsibility to provide for people who pay taxes, and to close the socio-economic gaps that have drastically widened in the years since the Reagan Revolution.
It remains to be seen whether, and on what level, this will be understood by others in positions of power in the Democratic Party, and how deep and long-lasting this change to the party will be. The mid-terms, in which Biden’s big spending will be tested as a campaign platform, are still more than a year away. Still, Joe Manchin, the moderate Democratic senator from West Virginia who pushed to limit stimulus payments, has said he wants to see a huge infrastructure bill.
If Democrats can hold on to and embrace this kind of thinking, Biden will not only have been a Democratic president, he will have transformed the Democratic Party.

The good thing right now (and in the past not so good) is that Biden is not that ideological. He positions himself in the center of current Dem thinking and runs with that. Now that Bernie has pushed the Dem center to the left, Biden has also moved in that direction. The emergency of the pandemic has accelerated that.

One caveat again, this applies to only domestic policy. Foreign policy doesn’t appear to have changed too much from the Obama presidency. It will be better than Trump, but that’s a very low bar. Getting out of Afghanistan will be a big achievement. Trump promised that for May, but he had four years and didn’t do it. Why should anybody believe that noted liar that it was going to happen after he was re-elected?

also no expansion of Medicare, as Bernie and the Squad were pushing for.

idk, he seems pretty idealogically ensconced with the corpses, to me. yes, he’s doing some good things, but he knows he basically has to if dems are to have any chance in the future. people dying and all. i’m sure Bloomberg, et al, have signed off on almost everything he does.

Remember, even Clinton was saying she would lower the age.

What Clinton said and what she actually would have done may have been quite different. Right now we do know that Biden and the Dems did pass a huge 1.9 trillion bill that mostly helped regular people, and which was enthusiastically supported by Bernie. He is aiming to pass a huge infrastructure bill, which includes lots of stuff for regular people and financed at least partly by taxes on corporations. Obviously, we can debate what should get in and what comes out, but none of this would be happening with Republican control of the Senate (or the House or the presidency). No way Clinton would be doing this in 2016

yes, we are in the middle of a pandemic and i said he did some good things. whether clinton would’ve passed lowering the age to 60 or not, at least she said she would. biden has always opposed anything in this direction. that seems idealogical to me. agree to disagree.

God only hopes. 🙂

https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/548356-bernie-sanders-says-he-disagrees-with-tlaibs-call-for-no-more-police

Actually, Clyburn had a good statement on this about understanding Tlaib’s frustrations. Obviously, there has to be some policing and some incarceration though she’s definitely right about militarization. Again Twitter is not always a politician’s best friend.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said on Wednesday that he did not agree with Rep. Rashida Tlaib’s (D-Mich.) call for “no more policing, incarceration, and militarization” following the fatal police shooting of Daunte Wright, a Black man, in Minnesota.
Appearing on CNN’s “The Situation Room,” Sanders said, “No I don’t,” when asked by host Wolf Blitzer if he agreed with Tlaib’s statement.
“I think that what we need to do is to understand that there needs to be major, major police reform all across this country,” Sanders said. “We are tired of seeing the same thing, week after week and year after year. We do not want to see innocent African Americans shot in cold blood.”
A day after Wright was fatally shot, Tlaib wrote on Twitter, “I am done with those who condone government funded murder. No more policing, incarceration, and militarization. It can’t be reformed.”
Other Democratic lawmakers have taken similar stances to Sanders. House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) said on Tuesday that the U.S. has “got to have police officers.”
“I think she’s expressing her frustrations and what she hears from her constituents,” Clyburn said when asked about Tlaib’s statement. “And I can understand that.”

Bernie is 79 y.o. Where is his successor in the Senate?

Maybe Fetterman if he wins?

I had thought Peter Welch would follow Bernie, but he’s 73 yo. The question is who will follow any of the three from VT?

Warren is probably the closest we have at present, but we know she’s only partially progressive. Padilla and Warnock have potential though. Fetterman favors fracking, which is why I think he’s not quite the successor to Bernie.

I wish Katie Porter would run for senate in 2024 but I think she takes corporate PAC money. I don’t think Feinstein will run again, despite having filed to run.

If Booker could win over Paul in KY, he would also be a natural successor.

magsview

I also thought Clyburn’s statement was good. Kind even.

I think she’s expressing her frustrations and what she hears from her constituents

"Just 3% of the world’s land remains ecologically intact with healthy populations of all its original animals and undisturbed habitat."https://t.co/s0HSUm0dDw
— Greta Thunberg (@GretaThunberg) April 15, 2021

Climate Change is the major threat we face. WWIII, you bet.

https://apnews.com/article/pandemics-ap-top-news-jobless-claims-unemployment-coronavirus-pandemic-847d7a5ef85bea2cbbfcce0866595084

Good news

The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits tumbled last week to 576,000, a post-COVID low and a hopeful sign that layoffs are easing as the economy recovers from the pandemic recession.
The Labor Department said Thursday that applications plummeted by 193,000 from a revised 769,000 a week earlier. Jobless claims are now down sharply from a peak of 900,000 in early January and well below the 700,000-plus level they had been stuck at for months.
The decline in unemployment claims coincides with other evidence that the economy is strengthening as vaccinations accelerate, pandemic business restrictions are lifted in many states and Americans appear increasingly willing to travel, shop, eat out and otherwise spend again. In March, employers added a healthy 916,000 jobs, the most since August, and the unemployment rate fell to 6%, less than half the pandemic peak of 14.8%.
Other healthy economic data was reported Thursday, underscoring that a potential boom, much-anticipated by economists, may be getting under way. Trillions of dollars of government stimulus, including $1,400 checks largely distributed last month, have maintained overall household income despite widespread job losses in the pandemic.
Those checks, supplemented by higher savings that many households have managed to build, drove retail sales sharply higher in March. Sales at stores, car dealers, restaurants and bars jumped 9.8%. It was the biggest gain since retail sales soared 18% in May of last year in a partial bounce-back from the virus’ initial blow.

With COVID on the rise again, I think this will continue to fluctuate.

I think it will be a rollercoaster for a bit as well

NYCVG

Best news in a long time. Very exciting

Racist Republicans at it again

"Ms. Clarke, I want to read a non-exhaustive list of elements of American society, elements that you have at one point or another described as 'racist'" — Mike Lee pic.twitter.com/aQazBtjnXE
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 14, 2021

Cotton explodes at Dick Durbin after Durbin asks him to allow Clarke to finish her responses pic.twitter.com/Da0PduNtN9
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 14, 2021

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/anti-asian-hate-bill-republicans-b1831757.html?utm_source=reddit.com

No big surprise about who shows up here

Ted Cruz was among six Republicans who voted against a bill on Wednesday that would strengthen federal efforts to end rampant anti-Asian hate crimes in America.
An overwhelming majority of senators voted to advance the legislation directing the Justice Department to “facilitate the expedited review” of hate crimes against Asian communities.
But six Republicans — Texas senator Mr Cruz, Tom Cotton of Arkansas, Josh Hawley from Missouri, Rand Paul from Kentucky, Tommy Tuberville from Alabama, and Roger Marshall from Kansas — voted against it.

I expected more R’s to vote against

magsview

Me too.

Also, Tom Cotton is awful!

Remember Arkansas Birdie phatkhat’s comments about Cotton? I sure hope she is well. humphrey, too, tho I know he’s been hanging out at c99.😊

That GND “debate” would be 🤣🤣🤣

I think you should debate her on the benefits of tantric sex!https://t.co/LtOuHz789W
— Rudy’s Melting Head (@ChickenCosmo) April 14, 2021

Just another reborn Christian GQP nut job

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/04/15/reparations-bill-committee-historic-vote-481811

Even a bill to form a study committee on this subject is controversial.

Reparations legislation could soon be headed to the House floor for the first time in more than three decades. Now comes the hard part.
Wednesday night, the House Judiciary Committee voted to bring H.R. 40 out of committee — a historic feat not accomplished since the late Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) first introduced a reparations bill in 1989. The legislation has been introduced in every Congress since then but never made it past a committee vote until last night, where it was approved with the support of 25 Democrats over 17 Republicans.
If passed in both chambers, the bill would establish a commission to study reparations and demonstrate to Congress the U.S. government’s role in the enslavement and systematic disenfranchisement of African Americans.
The bill does not lay out provisions for the shape the reparations would take, whether in the form of direct cash payments or safety net programs. Despite its open-ended design, getting buy-in from enough lawmakers to tee up a floor vote in even one half of Congress is a tall order.
On a Wednesday press call, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer dodged questions about whether he would bring the bill to the floor and tried to put the onus on Biden, suggesting the president create his own reparations commission.
While both parties have been reticent to embrace reparations legislation in the past, the majority of Republicans oppose it. A February POLITICO/Morning Consult poll found that 60 percent of Democrats support the formation of a committee to study reparations while 74 percent of Republicans oppose it. Many on the right argue that today’s lawmakers should not be held responsible for mistakes of the past, like enslavement.
Yet given the ongoing national reckoning on race and systemic racism — now reignited by the trial of Derek Chauvin and a second high-profile police killing in Brooklyn Center, Minn. — reparations advocates say now is a prime opportunity to move reparations legislation forward. It currently has 180 co-sponsors in the House, the most ever. And even with Democrats’ slimmed-down House majority, which includes multiple hesitant moderates, it is in its best position yet to pass that chamber. Doing so would mark a major victory for reparations proponents and racial justice advocates alike.

https://morningconsult.com/2021/04/14/biden-ghost-guns-stabilizing-braces-polling/

President Joe Biden’s recently announced executive actions aimed at curbing U.S. gun violence are receiving solid reviews from the general electorate, according to a new Morning Consult/Politico poll.
63% of voters support Biden’s unilateral move aiming to limit the spread of so-called “ghost guns,” untraceable weapons that can be assembled from a kit without requiring a background check, while 21% are opposed.
By an 18-point margin (46-28), voters back increasing regulation of stabilizing braces, which are designed to enhance the accuracy of pistols.

Put the ban back on assault heat while you’re at it, joe.

https://www.thenation.com/article/society/daunte-wright-death/

There is, of course, a way to stop this needless slaughter of Black people for the apparently capital crime of “driving while Black.” We need not live in a world where the police can “accidentally” kill Black people who committed moving violations. The solution is simple and obvious: Abolish armed traffic stops. Use unarmed officers and ubiquitous technology to enforce the traffic laws instead. More Black people will live.
This isn’t as radical as it might sound—or as dystopian. Yes, cameras, drones, facial recognition technology, and the other apparatus of the surveillance state are just as racist as the people who program them. But I can argue a ticket much more effectively than I can dodge a bullet.
In most localities, we already have unarmed law enforcement officers issuing citations for minor vehicular offenses. Parking cops issue tickets all the time, but most of them are armed only with that unforgiving ticket-writing thingy, instead of a gun. And despite the fact that I’ve seen people pull out a thesaurus to come up with the worst possible invectives to shout at these officers, when was the last time you heard about somebody killed by a parking inspector?
There’s no actual reason we should have armed police officers enforcing traffic laws. Government officials don’t need to carry a gun to write a ticket or issue a summons. The state need not send armed paramilitary units to rove the streets looking for people who miss a turn signal. The option of shooting somebody over an air freshener should never be on the table.
I’m not calling for traffic anarchy. Driving is a dangerous privilege. Road traffic accidents are the leading cause of death for people under 54 in the United States. They’re the leading cause of work-related death in almost every industry. I’m constantly aware that getting behind the wheel of a car is the most dangerous thing I do, and sitting in my car is the most dangerous thing my children do. I know I’m much more likely to be killed by a fellow civilian speeding through an intersection than by a cop violating my constitutional and human rights. Cars are so dangerous the Federalist Society probably wants to invent a constitutional right for aggrieved white boys to drive them without a permit.
But we have no evidence that siccing armed police officers on people suspected of moving violations makes our roads safer. Indeed, technology has advanced to the point where many traditional traffic enforcement duties are being handled by the surveillance state instead of the police state. The last time I got a ticket for anything, I was busted by the robots: A red-light camera caught me making an illegal U-turn. Since it would be patently ridiculous to outfit the red-light camera with a ray gun and program it to zap me unconscious until the police arrived with my physical ticket, I received my ticket in the mail about a week later, and my illegal turning spree came to an end.
Between the cameras, which are everywhere anyway, and some unarmed traffic wardens empowered to pull over Lamborghinis and protect us from drunks, we could have all of the same safety benefits from road regulation that we do now. The only thing we’d lose from traffic cop disarmament is the likelihood that allegedly clairvoyant police officers would use minor traffic violations to pull over Black drivers in the search for other crimes.

I’ve been there. I was pulled over in Indiana, back when I was about the same age as Wright. When my tormentor approached my car, he said it “smelled funny.” I had just gotten it washed. I responded with something flippant, channeling my inner Sharon Stone with something like, “What are you going to do, arrest me for having my car washed?” The next thing I knew I was being pulled out of my car, and my head was then slammed onto its hood.
I was so scared. And watching the video of Wright’s murder, I could feel his fear rising. Even though I already knew what would happen to him by the time I watched it, I wanted to scream, “Stay calm, brother! Stay calm and we will live and grow and have a family and children. We can survive this! Don’t let them take us now.”

Daunte Wright was no threat. Even if he had driven away, so what? The officers still had his plate, the information from his driver’s license, and the make and model of his car. The police could have driven to his mother’s house and handed her the summons for the freshener violation. An unarmed cop might have put the ticket in the mail.
But that didn’t happen, because the officer playing at traffic cop still had her gun. An otherwise ordinary example of court-approved racism escalated to state-sponsored homicide, because we allow the cops to turn traffic infractions into capital crimes.
Armed cops should not be allowed to pull us over for traffic violations. They can’t be trusted with that power.