Democrats

How Democrat Progressives Got Out-Maneuvered By Their Corporate Wing

November 8, 2021 Jack Rasmus, Z Net. Educate! Congress, Democrats, Infrastructure Bill, oligarchy

This past week, November 1 to 6, this writer wrote a daily running commentary on the developments in Congress, as the corporate wing of the Democrat Party maneuvered US House progressives into a corner over voting on the Infrastructure and Reconciliation (Build Back Better) spending bills. Ever since the two the bills—Infrastructure and Reconciliation— were first raised together last March 2021, progressives in the Democrat Party have been steadily driven into making concession after concession, reducing their proposals in a vain attempt to get the party’s corporate wing (represented in Senate by Manchin & Sinema and in the House by Cuellar and friends) to agree to some reduced cost Reconciliation bill.

Biden And Congress Agree: Build Back Bombs Better

November 8, 2021 John V. Walsh, Popular Resistance. Educate! Democrats, Infrastructure Bill, Joe Biden, Pentagon Budget

Last Friday, Congress passed the Biden “Infrastructure” Bill which will be signed into law post haste says the White House. The bill, designed to upgrade roads, bridges, transport and broadband, is a bricks and mortar affair and will benefit industry and commerce. It is the first of two bills that have been the center of attention for months now. The second bill is the Build Back Better Bill. This bill has provisions for child care and preschool, eldercare, healthcare, prescription drug pricing, immigration and curbing greenhouse gas emissions. This might be described as a bill for people, not for bricks and mortar. It has been the darling of progressives in Congress. The White House has now promised it will come up for a vote by November 15.

Elections And The Illusion Of Black Political Power

November 6, 2021 Margaret Kimberley, Black Agenda Report. Educate! Black Politics, Democrats, Electoral Politics, New York City (NYC)

Sadly, the hard work of politics has been subordinated to elections. Black politics are diminished in a system that creates a white people’s party and a black people’s party. Keeping republicans, the white party, out of power is seen as the end all and be all of political action. When the democrats are represented by Black office holders the deception is magnified. The demonization of even a little bit of progressive talk is a sign that the system lives in fear that someone may come along who will actually fight for change. A mass movement is an existential threat.

The ‘Smoke And Mirrors’ Billionaires Tax

October 29, 2021 Jack Rasmus, ZNet. Educate! Congress, Democrats, Infrastructure Bill, Taxes

With the introduction of these two ‘smoke and mirrors’ tax measures, negotiations enter the ‘end game’ phase of the corporate strategy to beat back the two stimulus bills—the traditional Infrastructure Bill (now $0.55T new spending reduced from $2.3T) and the Human Infrastructure/Reconciliation Bill (now $1.75T reduced from $3.5T). The strategy to slash the level of spending in both bills has been driven behind the scenes by the corporate wing of the Democrat party, with Senators Manchin and Sinema as their negotiating ‘point persons’. The strategy has always been to cut the magnitude of spending on both bills so deeply that it would not require actual tax hikes on corporations and wealthy individuals of any significance. What was left in terms of reduced spending levels could then be funded by means of various ‘smoke & mirrors’ measures—i.e. by moving money around from other current programs or by transferring funds from other government slush funds.

Build Back Better Legislation

October 12, 2021 Ajamu Baraka, Black Agenda Report. Educate! Democrats, Infrastructure Bill, Joe Biden, Neoliberalism

For more than a week the country has been caught up in the ongoing melodrama of the “Build Back Better” (BBB) legislation, the Democrat Party’s “social investment” bill now languishing in the House because of the inability of the Democrats to come to an agreement. The fight is characterized by the corporate media as an intra-party struggle between the emerging “progressive/left” pole of the Party and the “center,” represented by the recalcitrant neoliberal corporate Democrats in the persons of Senators Joe Manchin from West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema from Arizona. But the media’s tendency to reduce this struggle to a battle of personalities distorts, in a fundamental way, the real interests at play in this fight.

Democrats Have Taken Medicare For All Off The Table

October 12, 2021 Russell Mokhiber, Common Dreams. Educate! Democrats, Health Care, Medicare for all, NIMA

Democrats in Congress and their supporters inside the beltway have taken single payer off the table. Instead of pursuing Medicare for All they are pursuing incremental improvements in Medicare—also known as Medicare for Some. They are also pursuing single payer at the state level. Long time national single payer advocates, like Dr. Anne Scheetz of the Illinois Single Payer Coalition, feel betrayed by both efforts. Has any single payer group come out against Medicare for Some? "There is a new group called National Single Payer," Dr. Scheetz told Corporate Crime Reporter in an interview last month. "It's just getting started. But we understand that incremental improvements in Medicare are not going to move us closer to single payer and we also understand that working for state based single payer is not going to get us closer to national single payer."

Reconciling The Reconciliation Bill: A Preview

September 28, 2021 Jack Rasmus, Counterpunch. Educate! Congress, Democrats, Infrastructure, Infrastructure Bill

This past week maneuvers within the Democratic party intensified over the content and magnitude of the two pending fiscal stimulus bills–the Infrastructure Bill (with $550B of net new spending) and the Reconciliation Bill ( with initial $3.5T ‘human infrastructure & climate change’ spending). While the maneuvering appears as a deep difference of views between progressives in the US House and Senate demanding both bills pass simultaneously and Democrat Senators, Manchin and Sinema in that body blocking both bills in current form, the actual conflict is really between the corporate wing of the Democratic party (in both the Senate and House) vs. the wing that sees passage of both bills in current form as necessary to ensure a sustained economic recovery in 2022–and thus the Democrats retaining majorities in the House and Senate in the November 2022 midterm elections.

US Militarism’s Toxic Impact On Climate Policy

September 23, 2021 Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies, Popular Resistance. Educate! climate crisis, Democrats, NATO, US military

President Biden addressed the UN General on September 21 with a warning that the climate crisis is fast approaching a “point of no return,” and a promise that the United States would rally the world to action. “We will lead not just with the example of our power but, God willing, with the power of our example,” he said. But the U.S. is not a leader when it comes to saving our planet. Yahoo News recently published a report titled “Why the U.S. Lags Behind Europe on Climate Goals by 10 or 15 years.” The article was a rare acknowledgment in the U.S. corporate media that the United States has not only failed to lead the world on the climate crisis, but has actually been the main culprit blocking timely collective action to head off a global existential crisis.

Democrats Propose Medicare For A Few More Instead Of Medicare For All

August 8, 2021 Ana Malinow, Truthout. Create! Democrats, Health Care, Joe Biden, Medicare for all

Health care activists were uniformly disappointed, albeit not surprised, when President Joe Biden, in initially proposing the American Families Plan, failed to include in the legislation his major campaign promise to prioritize expanding Medicare. The response from Democrats was as swift as it was tepid. Instead of fighting for real health care reform, the House and Senate wrote letters respectfully requesting the administration to tweak the plan around the edges: lower the eligibility age for Medicare from 65 to 60; decrease prescription drug costs; place an out-of-pocket cap on health care costs; and expand coverage to include dental, vision and hearing. The letter failed to acknowledge the administration’s own desire to make increases to the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance exchange subsidies permanent, not to mention expanding Medicare to cover everyone, and include all medically necessary services, prescription drug coverage and long-term care.

Workers Are Being Crushed By Unemployment Benefit Shutoffs

July 25, 2021 Julia Rock and Andrew Perez, Jacobin. Educate! Democrats, Finance and the Economy, Unemployment, Worker Rights and Jobs

The war on jobless aid began on May 4, when Montana governor Greg Gianforte (R) announced that the state would cut off federal unemployment benefits at the end of June. “Montana is open for business again, but I hear from too many employers throughout our state who can’t find workers,” Gianforte said in a statement announcing the end to the benefits. “Nearly every sector in our economy faces a labor shortage.” The governor’s announcement catalyzed a movement among GOP governors across the country, who similarly declared their authority to prevent their residents from receiving benefits under the various federal COVID-related unemployment programs established by Congress last year. “This labor shortage is being created in large part by the supplemental unemployment payments that the federal government provides claimants on top of their state unemployment benefits,” South Carolina governor Henry McMaster (R) wrote to the state’s labor department.

Democrats And Banks Won’t Steal Juneteenth Or Pride

June 27, 2021 Carmin Maffea, Left Voice. Strategize! Cooptation, Democrats, Juneteenth, Pride

Every year, Pride Month ushers in the summer. For some, this is a celebration of the Stonewall uprising. For corporations and the Democratic Party, it’s a time to co-opt what was once a radical quer movement. Pride month marks a riot led by a Black trans woman, who threw bricks at the cops and alongside other people of color, queer folks and leftists fought the police in the streets for days. But today, it has become not only a profit scheme for corporations, but a means to portray themselves as allies while covering up their complicity in LGBTQ+ oppression. Bank of America, for example, has presented itself as an ally of the queer community, all the while profiting from privatizing and seizing houses from people.

Community Control Of Public Safety: A Transitional Program For Power

June 22, 2021 Netfa Freeman, Black Agenda Report. Create! Community control of police, Democrats, Law, Police

That Community Control Over Police campaigns (CCOP) are essentially neocolonialism is a rather wild claim that avowed abolitionist activists, like Dubian Ade applies to the articulation of CCOP by advocate Max Rameau, an organizer in Pan-African Community Action (PACA) to which this author also belongs. Understandably Ade avoids the rabbit hole of condemning the Black Panther Party as neocolonialist, the progenitors of CCOP. While the Democratic Party claims championship over congressional approval of police reform in the name of George Floyd, now awaiting a Senate vote, some Black circles are still debating the virtues or lack thereof in CCOP. Corporate media theater aids and abets the lopsided focus by blitzing the public with coverage of a partisan struggle over the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2021 .

Democrats Give ‘A’ Grade To Joe Biden’s Brand Of Corporate Rule

May 17, 2021 Danny Haiphong, Black Agenda Report. Educate! Biden administration, COVID_19, Democrats, United States

Democrats have treated the Biden presidency’s first 100 days as the calm after the Trumpian storm. Yet the real storm of U.S. corporate rule continues, this time without the partisan opposition that existed under Donald J. Trump. So-called progressive Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez asserted that Biden has exceeded her expectations while Pramila Jayapal gave Biden an “A” grade for his performance thus far. Long before these overtures, The Washington Post declared Biden’s bid to "tame” the left a smashing success.

The Russian Bounty Story Is A Deadly Example Of Fake News

May 14, 2021 Robert Scheer, ScheerPost.com. Educate! Democrats, Fake News, Media, Russia

A New York Times report about Russia paying Taliban militants to kill American soldiers in Afghanistan turned many heads in the summer of 2020 when it was first published. It solidified many Democrats’ views that Russia is a dangerous enemy that is consistently acting to not only undermine the U.S., but actually murder its citizens. As NBC News points out, Joe Biden treated the story as factual as a presidential candidate and has continued to repeat the allegations as president. Yet, as many on the left pointed out countless times since the story was published by major news outlets, the reports have never been adequately substantiated. Maj. Danny Sjursen, a historian and Afghanistan War veteran, has been a notable critic of the story from the get-go.

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