Tip jar for NYCVG!

It’s snowy up here in the Hudson Valley. We are due for about 4 inches today. It’s going to be a snowy cold period for the next week or so in Upstate NY.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/02/09/progressives-secure-15-wage-house-covid-bill-jayapal-says-democrats-have-fight-make

After the Congressional Progressive Caucus on Monday secured inclusion of $15 federal minimum wage legislation in the House version of the coronavirus relief package that lawmakers are ironing out in committees, Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington implored her Democratic colleagues to do all they can to ensure the long-overdue pay raise for millions of workers remains in the final bill and becomes law.

“Democrats have to fight. We have to fight with everything we’ve got for these progressive, bold ideas that are gonna bring relief to people,” Jayapal, chair of the nearly 100-member CPC, said in an interview on MSNBC late Monday, referring to both the $15 minimum wage bill and the House measure’s proposed eligibility framework for $1,400 direct payments.

While Senate Democrats are currently discussing lowering the annual income cutoff for the relief checks, the House Democratic leadership unveiled legislation (pdf) Monday that would send full $1,400 payments to individuals earning up to $75,000 per year and married couples earning up to $150,000 per year, with the payments gradually phasing out thereafter—an eligibility structure similar to the one used for the previous two rounds of checks.

“We should not be cutting thresholds to $50,000 and 100,000,” Jayapal said, alluding to the narrower eligibility proposal that top Senate Democrats are considering. “That makes no political sense… but it also makes no policy sense.”

The Washington Democrat argued that weakening the coronavirus relief package in a bid for bipartisan support would be deeply misguided, declaring, “We shouldn’t care whether Republicans are gonna vote for this or not.”

“The vast majority of the American people support this package, Republicans and Democrats,” said Jayapal. “So if we want to talk about unifying proposals, a big bold stimulus package that raises the wage and gets checks out to people, puts money in people’s pockets, deals with all of the issues that small businesses and families are facing—that is the unifying proposal and Republicans, if they don’t want to go along with it, that’s up to them.”

Crediting grassroots organizers across the U.S. for their tireless work to end starvation wages, Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) late Monday applauded the House Democratic caucus for “embracing the base.”

“Now the Senate must too,” said Bush. “But this fight was never about $15. It was about a livable wage. We need to get this done and then get right back to work to fight for more for our communities.”

Varshini Prakash, executive director of the Sunrise Movement, said in a statement late Monday that the “power of working people across the country has shifted the political terrain to make this victory possible, but our movement will not stop until a $15 minimum wage is firmly passed into law.”

“Our movement will be watching closely to hold Democrats accountable to passing this provision in the final stimulus package, as well as stimulus checks for all,” said Prakash. “If they don’t, Democrats will have to answer to a coalition of labor unions, activists, and the young people who organized like hell to get them elected.”

"I'm not sure a lot of people knew that the $15 minimum wage wasn't going to be in the bill until the work that was done by you and other progressives over the weekend to get that there." – @maddow to @USProgressives chair @RepJayapal pic.twitter.com/3FInpCJHgh

— Indivisible Guide (@IndivisibleTeam) February 9, 2021

I think Greenwald has been going on Hannity a little too often.

“Greenwald bemoaned AOC’s treatment of Cruz, citing a missed “opportunity for Right and Left to join together” — as if the problem with the Democratic Party is that it doesn’t collaborate with the Republican Party enough.”

https://jacobinmag.com/2021/02/aoc-capitol-riot-instagram-assault

Anyone who follows Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Instagram account probably expected that she would, at some point, post a video about what it was like to be inside the United States Capitol on January 6. Millions tuned in last week as she recounted what she saw.

The sometimes harrowing, sometimes humorous account had all the hallmarks of an AOC video — the self-deprecating laughter, the intense hand gestures, the clumsy maneuvering of the phone — only this one was undoubtedly more personal. She disclosed that she was a sexual assault survivor and explained that it was especially important for her to tell her story. “We cannot move on without accountability,” she said.

Unsurprisingly, all manner of right-wing commentators wasted no time in denouncing the Instagram video as a narcissistic, manipulative, self-centered, and — most amusingly — overly political response to the right-wing riot. More unexpected, though, were the denunciations from some corners of the Left.

On the Jimmy Dore Show, Glenn Greenwald took AOC to task for refusing to let bygones be bygones and rebuffing Ted Cruz on Twitter. The Texas senator had made a cynical overture to AOC by retweeting her call to investigate Robinhood’s role in the GameStop scandal, to which she responded: “I am happy to work with Republicans on this issue where there’s common ground, but you almost had me murdered 3 weeks ago so you can sit this one out . . . In the meantime if you want to help, you can resign.”

Greenwald bemoaned AOC’s treatment of Cruz, citing a missed “opportunity for Right and Left to join together” — as if the problem with the Democratic Party is that it doesn’t collaborate with the Republican Party enough.

Luckily, AOC has yet to take the less-than-sage advice regularly hurled at her (for example, that she should force a floor vote on Medicare for All or be exposed as a sellout).

Since being elected in 2018, AOC has proven adept at the difficult balancing act of confronting those in her own party when necessary while parrying the GOP’s incessant attacks on her — and she understands very well just how racist and dangerous a significant section of the Republican base is. In 2018, federal investigators discovered a Facebook page made up of thousands of Border Patrol agents posting openly racist and sexist rants about detainees along with sexually graphic depictions of AOC. The existence of the group came to light as she and other lawmakers were on their way to visit a facility in Texas where members of the Facebook group worked.

Being an unabashedly left-wing politician in this country is not without its risks and requires a thick skin. This goes double for women and, especially, women of color. AOC had good reason to fear for her life on January 6.

Bernie is not going to hold up Tanden’s confirmation. He has more important battles.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-biden-omb-idUSKBN2A91KS?utm_source=reddit.com

Neera Tanden, U.S. President Joe Biden’s nominee to head the Office of Management and Budget, faces what will likely be two contentious confirmation hearings this week, where Senate Republicans are expected to grill her about attacks on members of their party on social media.

Tanden, 50, will appear at confirmation hearings on Tuesday before the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and on Wednesday before the Budget Committee.

When Biden picked Tanden, chief executive of the left-leaning Center for American Progress think tank, in November, Republicans pointed to her past strong comments on Twitter, such as referring to Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell as “Moscow Mitch,” implying that he was working for Russia, or calling Republican Senator Susan Collins “criminally ignorant.”

However, now that Democrats control the Senate, with Vice President Kamala Harris able to break a tie, Tanden can get the 51 votes needed to become OMB director even if she wins no Republican support in the 100-member chamber.

In prepared testimony, Tanden acknowledged that part of her role at the think tank was to be “an impassioned advocate,” but she knew that directing the OMB would be different. “I understand, though, that the role of OMB Director calls for bipartisan action, as well as nonpartisan adherence to fact and evidence,” her statement said.

Sanders has not said publicly whether he will support Tanden’s nomination. But the senator, who is now chairman of the Budget Committee, is unlikely to have scheduled her confirmation hearing if he were strongly opposed to her selection.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/09/politics/neera-tanden-confirmation-office-of-management-and-budget/index.html

Tanden has an additional confirmation hearing before the Senate Budget Committee set for Wednesday, where she’ll be answering to Chairman Bernie Sanders, with whom she’s clashed with for years.

But the pair sat down for a lengthy one-on-one meeting in recent weeks, according to two officials familiar with the meeting. One person briefed on the meeting told CNN it was over an hour and no stone was left unturned, describing it as an opportunity for the two to discuss years of public clashing and private interactions.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/08/business/child-tax-credit-congress.html

The early weeks of the Biden administration have brought a surge of support, in the White House and across party lines in Congress, for what could be the most ambitious effort in a generation to reduce child poverty.

The plans vary in duration, design and the amount they would add to the federal debt, but they share a new and central premise in the policy debate over how to help the poor: that sending monthly payments through tax credits to parents, even if they do not earn income from work, is the best way to help feed, clothe and house children from low-income families.

One such plan is a cornerstone of the legislative text that House Democrats introduced on Monday as part of what will become a sweeping bill to implement President Biden’s proposed $1.9 trillion economic aid package. That text included a monthly benefit of $300 per child for those age 5 and younger — and $250 per child ages 6 to 17 — as a means of making good on Mr. Biden’s pledge to increase the value of the so-called child tax credit and help more families, even those with little or no income, reap its benefits.

While that payout would expire after a year, several Democrats and one influential Republican are pushing to permanently increase child benefits, which researchers say could lift the United States into the ranks of wealthy nations like Canada and the United Kingdom, both of which enjoy significantly lower child poverty rates.

While longtime champions of a permanent expansion have endorsed Mr. Biden’s plans for a one-year expansion of the credit, they are continuing to make the change permanent. Ms. DeLauro, who has fought for the expansion for nearly two decades, personally lobbied the White House to ensure Mr. Biden included the expansion of the tax credit and is continuing to push for its permanence, while Mr. Romney is continuing to champion his proposal among moderate Republicans.

Such efforts could play out in the debate later this year over Mr. Biden’s next big economic proposal, which is expected to spend trillions on infrastructure, clean energy, education, health care and other liberal priorities, offset by tax increases on high earners and corporations.

Senator Cory Booker, Democrat of New Jersey, has been mounting his own push for a permanent expansion, including making a case with Ms. Yellen when she joined a recent Democratic caucus call and discussing the issue privately with a number of his colleagues, including Senator Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent in charge of the Senate Budget Committee, according to two people familiar with the conversations.

The only problem with this is: Does Manchin (or his corporate overlords) actually want to do things? That also goes for some of those other centrist Dems.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/02/08/why-democrats-are-divided-who-gets-stimulus-checks/

So if I were Biden, this is the argument I’d make to Manchin:

People like it when you give them money. A lot.

The more people we give money to, the more people will be pleased with us.

That will improve our chances of keeping control of Congress in 2022 and the presidency in 2024.

If we keep control we’ll be able to do more of the things you want to do. If we lose control, we won’t be able to do anything. And we’ll be helping the economy in the process. What’s not to like?

There’s something else to note, which is that the $75,000/$150,000 threshold was used in the previous rounds of relief/stimulus, in the original Cares Act last spring and the smaller bill passed in December. If you didn’t get a check then, you probably aren’t expecting one now. But if you did get a check then and you don’t get one now after seeing a whole bunch of news coverage about this new round of checks, you’ll probably be pretty disappointed.

And there are millions of people who would fall into the gap that Manchin and Republicans want to open. If the political will is there to give them a gift they’ll be thankful for, and it’ll help the economy to boot, why wouldn’t you do it?

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/02/08/dejoy-readies-new-assault-postal-service-pressure-grows-biden-clean-house

With Postmaster General Louis DeJoy reportedly preparing to unveil plans for another round of service cuts and operational changes as soon as this week, President Joe Biden is facing growing calls from lawmakers, mail carriers, and others to take urgent steps to protect the U.S. Postal Service from further damage, pave the way for DeJoy’s removal, and shore up the agency’s finances for the near and distant future.

The Washington Post reported over the weekend that DeJoy—a Republican megadonor to former President Donald Trump—soon intends to “outline a new vision for the agency, one that includes more service cuts, higher and region-specific pricing, and lower delivery expectations.”

Meanwhile, the Post noted, “congressional Democrats are pressing President Biden to install new board members, creating a majority bloc that could oust DeJoy, a Trump loyalist whose aggressive cost-cutting over the summer has been singled out for much of the performance decline.”

Because Biden is prohibited by statute from firing DeJoy directly, congressional Democrats are urging the president to terminate every sitting postal governor—including those who publicly cheered on the postmaster general’s changes as they produced major package backlogs nationwide and slowed delivery of prescription medicines and mail-in ballots—and replace them with officials willing to remove the postmaster general and protect the agency.

“My solution starts at the top: firing the whole board who presided over Trump and DeJoy’s wrecking of USPS. Clean house,” Rep. Bill Pascrell, Jr. (D-N.J.) tweeted Sunday.

https://grist.org/politics/bidens-civilian-climate-corps-comes-straight-out-of-the-new-deal/?utm_campaign=Hot%20News&utm_medium=email&_hsmi=110241938&_hsenc=p2ANqtz–KTXTChYXQsPr1IM34mrY7bOxaHKNpW0oCudAyA9zKvOhtrthRAIP_duTxf4rcRkOFni3mPRwyv80lLwyeId_TCG8wnQ&utm_content=110241938&utm_source=hs_email

One of the most popular programs from the New Deal is making a comeback, nearly 90 years later.

President Joe Biden recently signed an executive order to create a Civilian Climate Corps. The initiative, he wrote, will provide “good jobs” for young people and train them for environmentally friendly careers, putting them to work restoring public lands and waters, planting trees, improving access to parks, and of course, tackling climate change.

It’s inspired by the original Civilian Conservation Corps, one of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s signature New Deal programs launched to take on the Great Depression.

Climate advocates celebrated Biden’s move. Naomi Klein, the activist and author of This Changes Everything, said Biden’s announcement was a “hard won victory.” Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York had reportedly sold Secretary of State John Kerry on the idea of a climate corps. The resemblance to the New Deal program — it even has the same acronym, CCC — may explain why the proposal sounds like part of a Green New Deal.

“The Green New Deal is all about a jobs and justice approach to climate policies, so I think that the new climate corps proposal really encapsulates that,” said Danielle Deiseroth, a climate analyst at Data for Progress, a progressive think tank. Not that you’ll hear Biden saying much about a Green New Deal, since commentators on Fox News have turned the slogan into a synonym for “socialist plot that’ll take away your hamburgers.”

The CCC employed 3 million men from 1933, in the depth of the Great Depression, to 1942, after the country had joined World War II. Lasting reminders of the CCC are all around us. Go into a state park or national park anywhere in the country, and you’ll likely see buildings, trails, and hiking shelters built by the program’s volunteers.

Reviving the CCC resonates right now, Deiseroth said, because the pandemic has sent the country into crisis mode with some 18 million Americans receiving unemployment benefits. The Congressional Budget Office recently said that it doesn’t expect the workforce to recover from the blow until 2024.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/09/politics/judges-biden-democrats-trump/index.html

Now it’s Biden’s turn, and so far his administration is signaling that judicial nominations will be a major priority and that Democrats may even tear pages from Trump’s playbook on the issue.

There are 60 current eligible vacancies and 20 vacancies that will occur down the road as judges have formally announced their intentions to retire, take senior status or resign, according to the Administrative Office of the US Courts.

One other factor could be a game changer for Biden: the lingering possibility that 82-year-old Justice Stephen Breyer might choose to step aside this term or next and give Biden his first chance to name a Supreme Court justice.

Biden has vowed to appoint the first Black woman to the Supreme Court, and even before his inauguration his transition team sent a letter to Democratic senators seeking recommendations for district court vacancies that might arise.

Some progressives, however, have legitimate concerns regarding whether the White House and the Senate will maintain the discipline and stamina necessary over the coming weeks and months to keep judges a priority as attention shifts to other areas.

They still remember that President Barack Obama came up short when faced with a similar opportunity early in his presidency, and they believe he squandered an opportunity to focus on the courts.

Chris Kang, chief counsel for the progressive group Demand Justice, believes things will be different now.

“President Biden’s approach to judicial nominations is going to put the nail in the coffin of the conventional wisdom that Democrats don’t care enough about the court,” he said in an interview.

More important hearing is going on: Neera Tanden’s confirmation hearing.

https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/nomination-of-neera-tanden-to-be-director-office-of-management-and-budget

She’s terrible. She has little grasp of the issues. At this point, she’s just going through the motions and smiling.

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/02/09/senate-schumer-minimum-wage-increase-467896

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said he’s working with the Senate’s parliamentarian to see if a minimum wage increase can survive the Senate’s rules, though he declined to say whether he was confident it would pass muster under the chamber’s arcane procedures.

Led by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), many in the Democratic caucus are hopeful that their pursuit of a coronavirus relief bill without GOP votes can include a $15 minimum wage increase. But President Joe Biden, himself a longtime former senator, has raised doubts about the pay increase surviving a challenge to it.

At a press conference flanked by 10 committee chairs on Tuesday morning, Schumer (D-N.Y.) said the Democrats “are trying to work as well as we can with the parliamentarian to get the minimum wage. That’s all I’m going to say.” He would not respond to Biden’s prediction that the minimum wage would get tossed out under Senate rules.

“No more questions,” Schumer said after the press conference as he walked to his office. “I said all I’m going to say.”

And while Democrats still say they’d prefer a bipartisan package, they’ve shown little interesting in negotiating downward with the GOP. That means Republican leaders are preparing to contest certain provisions of the bill with the Senate parliamentarian, who will ultimately rule whether things like the minimum wage can be included in a party-line package, according to GOP aides.

Democrats could also seek to overrule the parliamentarian and load up their bill with whatever they want. But many senators liken that to killing the legislative filibuster by another means.

https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/537983-sanders-says-biden-sees-progressives-as-strong-part-of-his-coalition

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said that President Biden “sees the progressive movement as a strong part of his coalition,” even as recent debates over the federal minimum wage and coronavirus relief have revealed some divisions between liberal and more centrist Democrats.

In an interview with The New York Times published Tuesday, Sanders, a leading voice on the left, said congressional Democrats are largely united with the Biden administration in efforts to respond to the health care and economic crises fueled by the coronavirus pandemic.

The new Senate Budget Committee chairman, citing the the large portrait of Franklin D. Roosevelt opposite the Resolute Desk that he saw when he walked into his first Oval Office meeting with Biden last week, told the Times, “President Biden understands that, like Roosevelt, he has entered office at a time of extraordinary crises and that he is prepared to think big and not small in order to address the many, many problems facing working families.”

“There is an understanding that if we’re going to address the crises facing this country, we’re all in it together,” Sanders added.

Biden’s former 2020 Democratic presidential primary opponent added that already in the president’s first three weeks in office, he has spoken frequently with him, as well as White House chief of staff Ron Klain, with Sanders saying that his calls to the White House have been returned “very shortly.”

Biden, Sanders said, “sees the progressive movement as a strong part of his coalition” and “is reaching out to us and is adopting some of the ideas that we have put forth that make sense in terms of today’s crises.”

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/02/08/green-coalition-threatens-sue-biden-administration-over-trump-era-permits-jeopardize

A coalition of environmental advocacy groups on Monday threatened to sue the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for failing to ensure that Trump-era development permits “will not jeopardize endangered species and critical habitat across the country.”

The Center for Biological Diversity, Center for Food Safety, Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club, Waterkeeper Alliance, and other groups filed their formal notice (pdf) to the Biden administration regarding Nationwide Permits reissued during the final days of Donald Trump’s presidency.

At issue are 16 permits that, according to the Center for Biological Diversity, “will allow hundreds of thousands of discharges of dredged or fill material into the nation’s waters and wetlands from oil and gas development, pipeline and transmission-line construction, and coal mining.”

“The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service have previously found that these activities—which are approved with little or no environmental review—threaten iconic species including whooping cranes, Florida manatees, and the hundreds of migratory birds that need wetlands to survive,” the center said.