I would not call today’s verdict justice because justice implies restoration. But it is accountability, which is the first step toward justice.
Now, the cause of justice is in your hands.https://t.co/2PW2RTvTHE
— Keith Ellison (@keithellison) April 21, 2021
The sound doesn’t work unfortunately until the 9 1/2 minute mark, but it’s a great speech about the courage of the witnesses. Keith deserves a lot of credit.
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Biden Wants to Spend More Than Trump to Maintain a Bloated Defense Budget
Robert Reich knows a thing or two about federal budgets, and the economist who has served in three presidential administrations says there is something wrong with Joe Biden’s plan to increase Pentagon spending above the levels proposed by former President Trump.
“The Pentagon already spends: $740,000,000,000 every year, $2,000,000,000 every day, $1,000,000 every minute,” says the former secretary of labor. “The last thing we need is a bigger military budget.”
Unfortunately, that’s what the president is seeking. This has led Reich to announce that he is “frankly disappointed that Biden’s proposing $715 billion for the Pentagon—an increase over Trump’s $704 billion defense budget—instead of moving back toward Obama-Biden era levels of defense spending, or less.”
How Antidiscrimination Law Fails Black Mothers
“Or less” is the right direction, especially at a moment when Republican deficit hawks are circling in preparation for attacks on domestic spending that is essential for working families who have been battered by the coronavirus pandemic.Biden’s $1.5 trillion budget plan has much to recommend it. The president is seeking significant increases in funding for education and proposing to invest in criminal justice and police reform, combating gun violence, and other worthy efforts. “However, despite the positive investments in these programs,” says Representative Barbara Lee, “I was incredibly disappointed at the significant increase in Pentagon spending to even higher levels than the Trump administration. With so many people across the country struggling to make ends meet, the last thing we need to do is increase investment in wasteful Pentagon spending.” Noting that “this budget adds twelve billion new dollars for weapons of war,” the longtime critic of endless wars asks us to “just think how that same amount could be used to invest in jobs, health care and fighting inequality—especially as we fight back a once in a century public health and economic crisis.”
Lee was once a lonely voice on behalf of cutting Pentagon spending. But the California Democrat now has allies in powerful places. “I have serious concerns,” says Senate Budget Committee chair Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), “about the proposed $753 billion budget request for the bloated Pentagon—a $12.3 billion increase compared to the last year of the Trump Administration. At a time when the U.S. already spends more on the military than the next 12 nations combined, it is time for us to take a serious look at the massive cost over-runs, the waste and fraud that currently exists at the Pentagon.”
Congressional Progressive Caucus chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) is blunter: “We’re in the midst of a crisis that has left millions of families unable to afford food, rent, and bills. But at the same time, we’re dumping billions of dollars into a bloated Pentagon budget. Don’t increase defense spending. Cut it—and invest that money into our communities.”
That’s not a radical response. When Data for Progress surveyed voters nationwide last year about budget priorities, 56 percent supported cutting the Pentagon budget by 10 percent to pay for fighting the coronavirus pandemic and funding education, health care, and housing. Sixty-nine percent of Democrats expressed enthusiasm for the proposed cut, which was striking. Even more striking was the 51 percent support it got from Republicans.
When the idea was raised in Congress in July of 2020, 93 members of the House of Representatives voted for a 10 percent cut, as did 23 senators. That wasn’t a win, obviously, but it was a groundbreaking show of support for reduced spending on the military-industrial complex.
Can congressional progressives build on that base of support to alter priorities in the Biden budget? It won’t be easy. Centrist Democrats will be cautious about cuts, and Republicans can be expected to demagogue the issue. But progressive caucus members have had success in pushing the new administration to abandon some of the worst Pentagon initiatives of the Trump years. For instance, a new letter signed by 70 House members commends Biden for “[his] first steps toward ending U.S. support for the war in Yemen, including announcing an end to U.S. military participation in offensive Saudi actions; a review of weapons sales to Saudi Arabia for use in its six-year air war in Yemen; and a revocation of President Trump’s terrorism designation against the Houthis, with the express purpose of averting a hunger crisis.” (The letter urges the president to go further and “use all available U.S. leverage with the Saudi regime to demand an immediate and unconditional end to its blockade, which threatens 16 million malnourished Yemenis living on the brink of famine.”)
One of the key movers in the fight to end US support for the war in Yemen, Representative Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), thinks the time is right to push the administration and Congress for a broader rethink of spending priorities.
“A proposed increase of $13 billion in defense spending is far too much given [the Pentagon budget’s] already rapid growth at a time of relative peace,” says the Wisconsin Democrat who with Lee cochairs the Defense Spending Reduction Caucus. “We cannot best build back better if the Pentagon’s budget is larger than it was under Donald Trump.”
Pocan has ideas for where to make cuts. For instance, he says “we must stop funding for former President Trump’s excessive $1.5 trillion nuclear modernization plan and complete a new nuclear posture review as each of the last three presidents have done. The United States has far more nuclear weapons than are needed for our security, so let’s stop funding the waste.” In addition to arguing for “no new spending on nuclear weapons,” Pocan points to the need to audit Pentagon waste and accountability measures to eliminate slush funds.
That’s a message that will resonate with the American people, says Representative Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), who maintains that there is a growing awareness that “it is simply inexcusable to continue to shower weapons manufacturers with hundreds of billions of dollars in Pentagon waste.”
Advocacy groups share the view that this is precisely the right time for members of Congress to make the case for tightening the bloated Pentagon budget. “Following a year of deadly proof that throwing money at the Pentagon does not keep us safe from modern day threats, it is unconscionable to not only extend Trump’s spending spree, but to add to it,” says Win Without War’s Erica Fein. “Deadly pandemics, climate crisis, desperate inequality—the greatest threats to global security do not have military solutions. Yet while we’re repeatedly asked how we will afford to address these truly existential threats, the same question is never asked of adding to the Pentagon’s already-overstuffed coffers. Let’s be clear: continuing to funnel near-limitless resources into the pockets of arms manufacturers while underfunding public goods only undermines the safety of people in the United States and around the world.”
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Killer Mike gave a great speech at the union vote rally in Bessemer, AL yesterday. Here’s the video. Lasts about 8 1/2 min. 1.2K people tuned in live, which is pretty good considering it was a Friday afternoon event at 3pm.
Bernie Sanders spoke after Killer Mike and here’s a report of his brief remarks:
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a former presidential candidate, spoke Friday afternoon at a rally in Birmingham to support Alabama workers seeking a union at the Amazon fulfillment center in Bessemer.
“If you succeed here, it will spread all over this country,” Sanders said from a stage set up in a Southside parking lot behind the office of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union in Birmingham.
“They know that it is not only workers here who are sick and tired of outrageous working conditions,” Sanders said. “A union is not going to solve it all, but what it does do is allow you a seat at the table.”
Votes will be counted Tuesday in the election, which will decide whether workers will be represented by the Retail, Wholesale & Department Store Union.
“When you go against one of the largest corporations in the world and you do it alone, you’ll have no power,” Sanders said. “But when you stand together in solidarity with each other, you can negotiate for a better work day.”
Sanders noted that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, worth $180 billion, is the richest man in the world, yet Amazon distribution center employees work in overheated conditions and are punished for taking more than two brief bathroom breaks on a 10-hour shift and barely have enough time to eat lunch.
“Enough really is enough,” Sanders said. “How much money do the richest people in this country require? How much in profits do the largest corporations really need?”
The union vote will send a message, he said.
“So, what this is about today is to say to this large, powerful profitable corporation, ‘Treat your workers with respect and with dignity.’ We’re not dealing with a mom and pop operation here. We’re dealing with a trillion-dollar corporation, that makes huge profits, that can certainly provide the kind of wages and benefits that working people desperately need.”
Two workers at the Amazon center in Bessemer also spoke at the rally.
“It’s just time to fight,” said Darryl Richardson, who initiated the unionization effort. “It’s time for us to stand together and fight.”
Richardson said that when he was a new employee waiting to be assigned to a station, he was written up for not being at his station. “If you leave your station you have to clock out,” he said. “I got a write-up for waiting for them to assign me to a station. That’s one of the reasons I thought we needed a union.”
He only gets two breaks a day on a 10-hour shift, and it’s nearly impossible to get to the bathroom and back to the station in the time allotted, he said.
Linda Burns said that after taxes are taken out, her weekly pay is $300. “With one hand, I have to pick up 1,000 pieces (shipments) in one hour,” she said. Getting to the lunch room and back on a 30-minute lunch break leaves about 10 minutes to eat, she said.
She had to get a second job and also attends nursing school on the side, she said. If she’s one minute late, she loses an hour of pay, she said. “We cannot fight Bezos by ourselves,” she said.
Sanders noted that in Europe, Amazon workers are represented by unions.
“People are afraid to stand up for their rights,” Sanders said. “They’re afraid they’re going to get fired.”
He noted that Amazon has criticized his efforts to support unionization. “It’s not Bernie Sanders they’re afraid of,” he said. “It’s the power of the workers.”
Workers are being intimidated and called in to meetings where they are told a union is not in their best interests and they are being urged to vote against it, Sanders said.
Even if the unionization effort in Alabama fails, it’s been a success, Sanders said.
“This is historically an anti-union state,” he said. “A major point has already been made.”
Bernie at Bessemer Screenshot 2021-03-26 153400.jpg
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This is the tweet I posted this morning:
The DCCC is still planning to enforce its consultant ban against firms who work with primary challengers, but they've taken it out of their official paperwork. So…the ban is still in place. https://t.co/LFEuwhkreE pic.twitter.com/pH4qq8MC19
— Ryan Grim (@ryangrim) March 9, 2021
Now, see what happened. Some positive news from DCCC. Caught me by surprise.
Ended the @dccc blacklist ✔️ https://t.co/aklz5b3ssv
— Ayanna Pressley (@AyannaPressley) March 9, 2021
House Democrats end controversial consultant ban
House Democrats’ campaign arm is officially ending its controversial ban on political consultants who work with candidates challenging sitting Democratic incumbents in primaries, clinching a major victory for progressives.
Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.), the newly installed chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, officially reversed the policy on Tuesday morning. He initially pledged to nix it during his campaign for the chair role and finalized it this week.
Though it was in place for fewer than two years, it still stymied some liberal primary challengers and incensed the left, which celebrated its end.
“It’s an enormous win,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said in a recent interview, before Maloney’s decision was formally announced, noting the move would open “a door for our party to leverage strength from all parts of it.”
“The escalation and aggression against the progressive wing of the party with an explicit forward-facing ‘blacklist’ created a lot of dissuasion against candidates even considering grassroots organizing firms,” she said.
Enacted in 2019, the new policy forbade the committee from contracting with or recommending to any House campaign a consultant or firm who worked to primary a sitting Democratic incumbent. It spurred an unexpectedly strong backlash — but was popular with members who are more prone to primary challenges and don’t want their party apparatus, to which they pay dues, to enable their opponents.
The ban had long been an informal practice at the DCCC, but codifying it sent progressives into a tailspin. Coming just months after Ocasio-Cortez felled a member of Democratic leadership in 2018, the groups that propelled her to Congress claimed it was an establishment attempt to blunt their movement.
“We have primaries to make sure we have the best and the brightest in every party,” said Rep. Marie Newman (D-Ill.), who successfully ousted a Democratic incumbent last year even after the new policy forced several of her consultants to quit suddenly. “So primaries should be unencumbered by outside forces.”
Maloney reversed a policy created by his predecessor, Rep. Cheri Bustos (D-Ill.), in a somewhat tacit acknowledgment that it had backfired. It created enmity within the conference and a fierce clash with members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, including Reps. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) and Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), the then-co-chairs. Ocasio-Cortez, a powerful force among the party’s liberal wing, was so outraged that she declined to pay any dues to the committee and instead donated directly to candidates.
The rule was seen as an overture by Bustos to two key constituencies in the Democratic party: moderates who helped win the majority and feared challenges from the left; and the congressional Black and Hispanic caucuses, which have both seen an influx in primary challengers in recent cycles.
The CBC, in particular, made a show of banding together to block the left from ousting one of their own: Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio), who faced a challenger backed by a coalition of progressive groups, including the Justice Democrats. Beatty won, but now-former Rep. Lacy Clay (D-Mo.), a CBC member whose family has held his St. Louis district for decades, lost to now-Rep. Cori Bush, a Black Lives Matter activist also backed by those groups.
Not everyone lauded Maloney’s decision.
“I think that’s inappropriate,” said Democratic Rep. Jim Costa, a member of the fiscally conservative Blue Dog Coalition from Central California, in an interview before the decision was finalized. Costa easily beat a progressive challenger in 2020.
“We’re supposed to be a team,” he said in an interview last week, adding that members shouldn’t help primary other members. “It’s the same principle as far as I’m concerned. We’re either a team, or we’re not.”
Still, DCCC remains a powerful gatekeeper and retains a significant amount of leverage. Even without an explicit rule in place, it can still choose to which vendors it doles out millions of dollars of TV and polling contracts for its independent expenditure arm. And it will have a large role in steering top challenger campaigns toward certain consultants and firms.
“No one should be looking for work around here if they want to go after one of our members at the same time,” Maloney told POLITICO last month. “But I don’t think the blanket ban ever made sense. And we’re gonna replace it with a new approach.”
During her tenure, Bustos included a question on a form for firms that wish to be on a DCCC-approved vendor list. Consultants had to attest that they understand the “DCCC will not conduct business with, nor recommend to any of its targeted campaigns, any consultant that works with an opponent of a sitting Member of the House Democratic Caucus.”
The 2022 version of that form, which goes live Tuesday morning, will not include such a requirement.
Yet contentious primaries might be unavoidable in the 2022 cycle. Redistricting will almost certainly place members in new territory and make them more vulnerable.
Primary challenges — and the amount of support they receive or don’t receive from top firms and strategists — have been a thorny issue inside the caucus for years. Some successful challengers have won with the help of prominent Democratic pollsters or media consultants, including Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.), who ousted incumbent John Tierney in 2014 and Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), who beat Mike Capuano in 2018.
Part of progressives’ argument against the ban was that it led to less competition and deprived other candidates of more diversity and talent in the ecosystem of groups that work with campaigns.
“It ultimately, I think, works against especially newer vendors, vendors of color, people who might have just come up more in the last decade in the business and who might have been taking more diverse types of clients,” Pocan said in a recent interview. “It’s good for the process to not have some arbitrary rule out there.”
The committee has been able to increase the amount it spent with diverse vendors, jumping from $4 million in 2016 to $28.6 million in 2020, according to DCCC data. A new policy for 2022 also requires approved vendors to attend a diversity, equity and inclusion training offered by the committee.
Despite the ban, liberals still notched important victories. Three Democratic incumbents lost in primaries; two were longtime members who succeeded their fathers in Congress. Clay lost in Missouri, and Newman felled Rep. Dan Lipinski, a Blue Dog Democrat who opposed abortion rights and voted against Obamacare. A third, Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), the House Foreign Affairs Committee chair, lost to now Rep. Jamaal Bowman, a middle-school principal backed by progressives.
And Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas),one of the most conservative Democrats in Congress and a vocal supporter of the blacklist, came within 3,000 votes of losing to Jessica Cisneros, a 26-year-old attorney backed by Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
Some consultants embraced the so-called “blacklist,” even forming a website, dcccblacklist.com, to connect candidates with firms who were not afraid to flout the DCCC rules.
“There just aren’t a lot of people who want to do Democratic consulting that hold the views of Bill Clinton and Bruce Reed anymore,” said Sean McElwee, co-founder of the Data for Progress, a liberal polling outfit. (Reed is a former chair of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council and currently serves as a White House aide to President Joe Biden.)
McElwee’s firm polled in Bush’s race in Missouri and for Bowman in New York, but said Data for Progress lost a client in Texas, Julie Oliver, who was running against GOP Rep. Roger Williams thanks to the committee’s new policy. The group polled for Oliver in June before being replaced by a DCCC-approved vendor.
“Treating progressives like they’re something that must be crushed,” he said, “rather than partners who want to build a better party that is more durable is not a healthy tactic.”
Progressive Takeover of Nevada Democratic Party Sparks ‘Mass Exodus’ of Staff, Consultants
Shortly after a slate of insurgent progressives endorsed by the Las Vegas Democratic Socialists of America pulled off a clean sweep in Nevada State Democratic Party elections over the weekend, the party’s executive director notified newly elected chair Judith Whitmer that the entire staff, as well as every consultant, was quitting.
The “mass exodus” of party staffers following the progressive takeover of the Nevada Democratic Party leadership, as well as the establishment’s funneling of hundreds of thousands of dollars out of party coffers in anticipation of the results, is detailed in new reporting by The Intercept, which described the election outcome as the culmination of a years-long “battle between the insurgent progressive wing of the party and what’s known in Nevada as the Reid machine—a tightly run operation still guided by former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.”
That fight, The Intercept’s Akela Lacy and Ryan Grim explain, “began five years ago, when Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders organized support for his 2016 presidential primary run, while Reid was working behind the scenes to help his opponent, Hillary Clinton.”
“Over the next four years, outside organizations like DSA exploded in size and strength,” Lacy and Grim write. “The Sanders campaign focused on organizing tens of thousands of young Latino voters in the state, with the goal of activating people whom the party hadn’t bothered with before. And it worked: In the 2020 cycle, after investing heavily in Nevada, Sanders won a commanding victory in the Nevada caucuses. When the Sanders campaign ended, the organizers behind it were ready to take their project to the next level.”
The years of tireless grassroots organizing has paid off, as evidenced by former Sanders delegate Judith Whitmer’s win in the Nevada Democratic Party’s leadership elections on Saturday. Also emerging victorious were Jacob Allen for first vice chair, Dr. Zaffar Iqbal for second vice chair, Ahmad Adé for party secretary, and Howard Beckerman for treasurer, spurring what one local newspaper described as “a dramatic shakeup of the state party’s power structure.”
In a statement on Saturday, Sanders applauded Whitmer’s election at the hands of the state party’s governing members, saying the new party chair “knows that we must invest in year-round grassroots organizing focused on the principles of economic, social, racial, and environmental justice.”
“If we build a political movement that speaks to working people,” the Vermont senator added, “we will continue to build on our political success in Nevada.”
As the Las Vegas Review-Journal noted, “Whitmer has spent years organizing and encouraging young progressives to serve on the very state central committee that elected her. She was endorsed by the state party’s Left Caucus, which she founded, and the local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America.”
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I’m pasting his thread here for everyone to see.
The White House wouldn’t support the @VP overruling the advice of the parliamentarian.@SenSchumer took $15 minimum wage out of COVID relief bill before it was brought to the floor.
8 white Dem senators led by Manchin joined extremist Republicans to block Sanders' amendment.
— Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II (@RevDrBarber) March 6, 2021
62 million poor & low-income people — who were poor & low-income before the pandemic — got abandoned.
45% of Black poor & low-wage workers are being blocked from earning a $15 minimum wage.
— Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II (@RevDrBarber) March 6, 2021
We can see clearly now how the problems of the nation are not just Trump's actions.
Systemic racism is any policy passed by any party that has a disparate impact on Black, brown & indigenous ppl. Classism is policy that has a disparate impact on poor & low-income communities.
— Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II (@RevDrBarber) March 6, 2021
I give thanks for the relief that will come through this bill. But we cannot pretend that the people who are suffering the most from inequality are being represented when the policies most essential to their survival are so easily negotiated away. #PoorPeoplesCampaign
— Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II (@RevDrBarber) March 6, 2021
Rev Barber, thank you for stating the obvious. But will ConservaDems ever connect the dots as you did?
Bloody Sunday at Selma, March 7, 1965: pic.twitter.com/IpS9QLJmxl
— Michael Beschloss (@BeschlossDC) March 7, 2021
Immortal. https://t.co/gujLDYn8UX
— Charles P. Pierce (@CharlesPPierce) March 7, 2021
“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”—Frederick Douglass
Rest in power John Lewis, CT Vivian, Joseph Lowery. You crossed that bridge for all of us as visionaries, freedom fighters, and organizers.
We owe it to you to keep the struggle alive. pic.twitter.com/3vqu2WKxmR
— Nina Turner (@ninaturner) March 7, 2021
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News, tweets, videos, etc in the comments section. See you there!
Congresswoman Ilhan Omar of Minnesota warned Sunday that conservative Democrats’ ongoing effort to impose additional restrictions on eligibility for the new round of $1,400 direct payments risks shedding progressive support for a final coronavirus relief package—votes that the party, clinging to narrow majorities in the House and Senate, can’t afford to lose.
“Cutting the income cap will poison this bill,” tweeted Omar (D-Minn.), the whip for the nearly 100-member Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC). “It already lacks Republicans support and will lose progressive support. Democrats with a slim majority in the Congress can’t pass this bill without progressives and must resist suggestions that will ultimately tank this relief bill.”
“Cutting the income cap will poison this bill. It already lacks Republicans support and will lose progressive support.”
—Rep. Ilhan OmarOmar was referring to ongoing talks among Senate Democrats over whether to lower the annual income cutoff for the new round of relief checks with the stated goal of ensuring the payments are more closely “targeted” to those in need. According to the Washington Post, top Democrats are currently weighing a plan under which only individuals earning $50,000 a year or less, heads of household earning $75,000 or less, and married couples earning a combined $100,000 or less would be eligible for full $1,400 payments.A growing chorus of progressive lawmakers is strongly pushing back against that proposed eligibility framework, which could leave millions of struggling middle-class people with smaller checks or no payments at all.
“There are some Dems who want to lower the income eligibility for direct payments from $75,000 to $50,000 for individuals, and $150,000 to $100,000 for couples. In other words, working-class people who got checks from Trump would not get them from Biden. Brilliant!” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)—who along with Omar and others has been pushing for recurring relief payments for nearly a year—tweeted sardonically on Saturday night.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), a CPC member, echoed the Vermont senator. “It would be outrageous if we ran on giving more relief and ended up doing the opposite,” said Ocasio-Cortez. “It’s sad that this is even an argument in the Dem party. Covid relief is disaster relief, and it’s urgent.”
To pass a coronavirus relief package through the reconciliation process without Republican support, the Senate Democratic caucus cannot afford a single defection. House Democrats, meanwhile, hold just a 10-seat majority, meaning that even a relatively small exodus of CPC members could imperil the coronavirus relief package—a state of affairs that potentially gives the chamber’s progressive contingent significant leverage over the ongoing negotiations.
NBC News reported late last week that the eligibility framework remains a “live ball,” with conservative and progressive members of the Democratic caucus publicly and privately battling over who should receive the new round of payments. President Joe Biden has said he is open to lowering the income cutoff for the checks, and discussed the possibility of narrowing eligibility with Sens. Chris Coons (D-Del.) and Tom Carper (D-Del.) at the White House last week.
Progressive activists and commentators have argued that in addition to being morally unjustifiable amid such a far-reaching economic collapse, limiting eligibility for the $1,400 payments would be politically “suicidal” and represent yet another retreat from the original campaign-trail promise of $2,000 relief checks that helped Democrats take control of the Senate.
“Let’s be really, really clear. Doing this will cost Democrats control of the Congress in 2022 and the White House in 2024,” Robert Cruickshank, campaign director at advocacy group Demand Progress, said last week. “There is nobody out there in America aside from a few wonks who want to limit these checks. It is a colossally bad idea.”
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