Congress

H.R. 1 Has Poison Pill To Kill Minor Party Competition

March 11, 2021 Mike Feinstein, Maryland Matters. Educate! Congress, Democracy, Elections, Third Party Politics

With much fanfare among voting rights, electoral reform and good government advocates, H.R. 1 — the For the People Act — has passed the House and is now on the way to the Senate. Authored by Maryland’s own John Sarbanes (D-3rd), H.R. 1 is an omnibus electoral reform bill allegedly intended to strengthen voting rights, enhance campaign finance reform, and address government ethics and corruption in politics. Together with H.R. 4 — the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act — H.R. 1 is a pillar of the Democrats’ response to our country’s democracy crisis. But democracy for whom? H.R. 1 contains a poison pill designed to reduce political competition and voter choice by weakening minor parties, at exactly a time where, according to a recent Gallup poll, support for a third party is at an all-time high.

Tell Congress To Support Pro-Democracy Movement In Haiti

March 11, 2021 Woy Magazine. Resist! Congress, Haiti, Joe Biden, US Regime Change

On Friday, March 12, 2021, the Committee on Foreign Affairs will host a hearing on policy recommendations for the Biden Administration regarding the constitutional crisis in Haiti. This crisis, exacerbated by Jovenel Moise’s refusal to step down from power after his presidential mandate ended, is threatening to submerge Haiti into yet another dictatorship. Inspired by Haitian activists on the ground and online, Woy Magazine has put together a comprehensive guide to help Haitian-Americans call their Congressional Representatives and demand that President Joe Biden to respect the clear limits set in place by the Haitian constitution and cease all support for the Moise regime. Calling your Congressional representative can be daunting, but as a constituent it is your right to have your voice heard regarding the pressing issues you care about — Haiti, certainly included.

Doing Too Little In This Crisis Will Come Back To Haunt The US Economy

March 6, 2021 Thea M. Lee, Economic Policy Institute. Educate! American Rescue Plan, Congress, Minimum Wage, Recession

The $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan (ARP) is essential to a robust and equitable recovery. The risk of doing too little is far greater than the risk of doing too much, and the American Rescue Plan meets the scale of the crisis. The overall size and components of the ARP have been carefully studied and considered. Given the balance of risks facing the economy and the danger of delay, passing the plan at its current scale and composition is the most prudent thing policymakers can do to ensure a rapid and fair recovery. Clearly, this is necessary. As the Senate debates what belongs in the final relief bill this week, policymakers must not shortchange aid to state and local governments, which is essential to a robust recovery.

The George Floyd Act Wouldn’t Have Saved George Floyd’s Life

March 5, 2021 Derecka Purnell, The Guardian. Educate! Congress, George Floyd, Police violence

On Wednesday night, the House of Representatives voted to pass the George Floyd Act, named after the Black man killed by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin last summer. Among many reforms, the act seeks to ban racial profiling, overhaul qualified immunity for police, and ban the use of chokeholds. While these seem like good measures, they are woefully insufficient to stop police violence. These reforms could not have even saved George Floyd’s life. To be clear, Floyd did not die from a chokehold. A police officer put his knee to Floyd’s neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds. A medical examiner’s autopsy reported “cardiopulmonary arrest complicating law enforcement subdual, restraint and neck compression”. Floyd also had blunt force trauma to his head, face and shoulders. Banning chokeholds is important, as we should reduce the number of tactics that the police can employ to be dangerous.

We Should Be Taxing The Rich, Not The Unemployed

March 4, 2021 Jake Johnson, Commondreams. Create! Congress, Democrats, Taxes, Unemployment benefits

With tax season well underway, many Americans who lost their jobs due to the coronavirus pandemic and found some relief in supercharged unemployment benefits last year are discovering that they now owe the federal government hundreds—even thousands—of dollars in surprise payments, an economic nightmare for low-income people and a looming political catastrophe for the party currently in power. Because unemployment benefits in the United States are classified as taxable income, a potentially significant portion of the estimated 40 million Americans who received unemployment insurance (UI) in 2020 "will be in for a rude awakening" when they find out "they are on the hook for thousands of dollars in owed income taxes at the federal and, in some cases, the state level," Brian Galle and Elizabeth Pancotti warned in a report for The Century Foundation last month.

HR 1’s Campaign Finance Program: A Reform That Doesn’t Reform

March 1, 2021 Howie Hawkins, Counterpunch. Educate! Campaign Finance, Congress, Elections, HR 1

HR 1, the For the People Act, is an omnibus voting reform bill that has many progressive measures concerning voter registration, voter roll purges, voter-verified paper ballots, early voting, no-excuse absentee ballots, presidential candidate tax returns, gerrymandering, and more. According to reports, the Democratic leadership will whip their members hard to pass the bill through the House and Senate in March. But progressives should say not so fast. Buried in the middle of the bill is a public campaign finance program that is merely a public funding palliative that fails to stop the overwhelming domination of big private money in federal elections. Progressives should be demanding full public funding based on equal grants for all qualified candidates and a constitutional amendment to end the US Supreme Court imposed doctrines that limit public regulation of campaign funding in public elections.

Democrats Torpedo $15 Minimum Wage Hike

March 1, 2021 Marcus Day, WSWS. Educate! Congress, Democrats, Joe Biden, Minimum Wage

On Thursday, US President Joe Biden and the Democratic Party effectively ended efforts to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour as part of the COVID-19 stimulus package making its way through Congress. The federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour has not been increased since 2009, and the dropping of the raise will leave millions of workers in utter destitution. The White House and congressional Democrats have falsely sought to present themselves as having their hands tied, holding up the advisory ruling of the Senate parliamentarian, Elizabeth McDonough, as an excuse. McDonough, an unelected official appointed to her role by the Democrats in 2012, ruled that the wage hike is not allowable in a bill using the budget reconciliation process.

Medicare-For-All Is Good For Our Towns

February 27, 2021 Jane Katz Field, Brattleboro Reformer. Create! Congress, Health Care, Medicare for all, Vermont

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, 30 million people in the U.S. had no health insurance, and about 50 million were underinsured. The pandemic has caused millions more to lose coverage because of losing their jobs. Indeed the pandemic has given us perspective on an array of injustices in our health care delivery system — including the lack of an adequate public health infrastructure, the racial disparities in access to care, the rationing of care based on ability to pay, and hospitals’ concentration on lucrative cardiac and orthopedic services rather than mental health and primary care. The U.S. spends twice as much per capita on health care as other high-income countries that provide universal coverage, and yet our health outcomes are worse.

Congress Escalates Pressure On Tech Giants To Censor More

February 22, 2021 Glenn Greenwald, Substack. Educate! Big Tech, Censorship, Congress, Demorcats

For the third time in less than five months, the U.S. Congress has summoned the CEOs of social media companies to appear before them, with the explicit intent to pressure and coerce them to censor more content from their platforms. On March 25, the House Energy and Commerce Committee will interrogate Twitter’s Jack Dorsey, Facebooks’s Mark Zuckerberg and Google’s Sundar Pichai at a hearing which the Committee announced will focus “on misinformation and disinformation plaguing online platforms.” The Committee’s Chair, Rep. Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ), and the two Chairs of the Subcommittees holding the hearings, Mike Doyle (D-PA) and Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), said in a joint statement that the impetus was “falsehoods about the COVID-19 vaccine” and “debunked claims of election fraud.” They argued that “these online platforms have allowed misinformation to spread, intensifying national crises with real-life, grim consequences for...

Over 200 Small Business Restaurant Owners And Employers Endorse Raise The Wage Act

February 19, 2021 Brett Wilkins, Commondreams. Create! Congress, Low Wage Workers, Minimum Wage, Restaurants

As the small restaurant sector reels from the devastating economic effects of the coronavirus pandemic, a report published Thursday by advocates for tipped workers and a $15 minimum wage revealed that phasing out subminimum wages for such workers—which can be as low as a little over $2 an hour—does not cause businesses to close. In fact, the report—published by the Food Labor Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley and One Fair Wage—found that the five states with the greatest rate of decline in open hospitality businesses during the pandemic are all states with a subminimum wage. That wage was set at $2.13 under a 1996 federal law resulting largely from lobbying by then-National Restaurant Association president Herman Cain.

GAO Report Shows Biden Should Scrap Trump’s Economic Sanctions On Venezuela

February 10, 2021 Center for Economic and Policy Research. Educate! Congress, economic sanctions, Joe Biden, Venezuela

Washington, DC ― A new report from the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) finds that US economic sanctions on Venezuela are harming the Venezuelan economy, especially by depressing oil production and exports, and that they are also hindering US-backed humanitarian assistance to the country. The report, which looks at the impact of US sanctions on Venezuela’s economic crisis, was requested by former chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee Eliot Engel (D-NY) and committee member Congressman Andy Levin (D-MI). “This report from the GAO offers more evidence that these unilateral, illegal US sanctions are a form of collective punishment against the Venezuelan population and should be ended immediately,” Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) Co-Director Mark Weisbrot said.

Democrats Try To Fix ‘Taxation Without Representation’ In DC

January 29, 2021 Sharon Zhang, Truthout. Create! Congress, DC Statehood, Washington DC

Democrats from the Senate and House introduced legislation on Wednesday that would make Washington, D.C., the 51st state. The bill was reintroduced in the House by Eleanor Holmes Norton, a nonvoting delegate in the House who represents D.C. In the Senate, Tom Carper (D-Delaware) reintroduced the bill with the support of over three dozen of his fellow Democrats. Norton said on Tuesday that the bill now has over 200 co-sponsors in the House. Making D.C. a state, which the Constitution grants Congress the right to do, would allow the region to have voting representation in Congress. Currently, they have one delegate in the House, Norton, who can serve on committees but cannot vote.

Why Samantha Power Should Not Hold Public Office

January 29, 2021 David Swanson, Let's Try Democracy. Educate! Biden Cabinet, Congress, Samantha Power, USAID

It took a variety of approaches to market the 2003 war on Iraq. For some it was to be a defense against an imagined threat. For others it was false revenge. But for Samantha Power it was philanthropy. She said at the time, “An American intervention likely will improve the lives of the Iraqis. Their lives could not get worse, I think it’s quite safe to say.” Needless to say, it wasn’t safe to say that. Did Power learn a lesson? No, she went on to promote a war on Libya, which proved disastrous. Then did she learn? No, she took an explicit position against learning, publicly arguing for the duty not to dwell on the results in Libya as that might impede willingness to wage war on Syria.

Letter: Groups Oppose Repeal Of Overbroad Changes To Section230

January 28, 2021 Fight for the Future. Resist! Big Tech, Congress, Free Speech, Internet Freedom

In the wake of this latest act of white supremacist violence directed at the U.S. Capitol, it’s more urgent than ever that lawmakers take steps to address systemic racism and injustice, and to hold Big Tech companies accountable for their role in undermining democracy and amplifying harmful content. However, repeal of or injudicious changes to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act would only make the situation worse. Gutting Section 230 would make it more difficult for web platforms to combat the type of dangerous rhetoric that led to the attack on the Capitol. And certain carve outs to the law could threaten human rights and silence movements for social and racial justice that are needed now more than ever.

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