Jared Bernstein was the Chief Economist and Economic Adviser to Vice President Joe Biden, Executive Director of the White House Task Force on the Middle Class, and a member of President Obama’s economic team. He is now a Senior Fellow at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, a center-left think-tank. At Common Dreams, via The Washington Post, he writes—Progressives Need to Ignore the Noise and Stay Ambitious:
The New Green Deal is a 14-page document that exists about 40,000 feet up in terms of abstraction. It will not be passed by this Congress. That’s not just because of the political divide but also because it is not legislation: It’s a set of broad ideas — good ones, from my perspective — to reduce carbon emissions while creating good jobs through investment in green industry.
The Green New Deal isn’t the only such proposal. Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s wealth tax, Sen. Bernie Sanders’s estate tax, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s 70 percent income tax over $10 million, Rep. John B. Larson’s Social Security expansion, jobs programs from Sen. Cory Booker and Sen. Ron Wyden, universal health coverage plans from every Democratic senator running for president (which is itself a sizable subset of the party’s caucus). None of these ideas will become law through this Congress because that’s just the political reality of divided government.
So what’s the point of offering them?
All these proposals elevate vital alternatives to the status quo, on everything from the economy to the environment to racial justice to the basic functions of our democracy. Those of us who agree with the need for changes can, and should, debate the best alternatives. But we must be careful not to let those debates diminish or shut down their urgency.
One challenge we face is that it’s harder than it should be to recognize the urgency of the moment. Unemployment is 4 percent and, at the national level, job and wage growth appear solid.
But it doesn’t take much to see the cracks in the veneer.
As Kathleen Bryant and I have described, during the 35-day government shutdown, workers with middle-class jobs were seen to be living paycheck-to-paycheck. A 2017 survey by the Federal Reserve found that 4 in 10 adults would be unable to meet an unexpected expense of $400 without “selling something or borrowing money.” The scientific community is in wide agreement that the impact of global warming is already being felt in the increased volatility of temperatures and intensity of storms. Wealth concentration is close to levels last seen in the late 1920s, and need I remind you: That didn’t end well. [...]
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“I think it's terrible the way people don't share things in this country. I think it's a heartless government that will let one baby be born owning a big piece of the country, the way I was born, and let another baby be born without owning anything. The least a government could do, it seems to me, is to divide things up fairly among the babies.” ~~Kurt Vonnegut, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater
xMaybe the husband of a White House staffer shouldn’t be live tweeting plans to obstruct justice https://t.co/O0t3X41uZn
— Dante Atkins (@DanteAtkins) February 15, 2019On this date at Daily Kos in 2012—Orrin Hatch claims abortion is '95 percent' of what Planned Parenthood does:
Sen. Orrin Hatch is a hardcore old-school conservative. For much of recent history he was considered a conservative stalwart in the senate. That's not good enough for modern conservatism, however, which is predicated on being so absolutely batshit regressive that Ronald Reagan looks like a communist by comparison, and so Hatch has had his work cut out for him lately trying to placate a base that considers him a traitor to the cause.
Which might explain statements like this, from Hatch:
Look, we all know that Planned Parenthood does 400,000 abortions a year or more, and yet that's supported by the federal government. They claim that money isn't, uh, they don't use federal funds, well, about 95 percent of all they do, from what I understand, is abortion.Oh! In the senate playbook we call that "Pulling a Kyl." Last year, on the floor of the Senate, Sen. Jon Kyl famously declared abortion was "well over 90 percent of what Planned Parenthood does." It was an assertion so obviously and profoundly false that his office could do nothing but issue a now-famous press statement that his claim was "not intended to be a factual statement." Then, after becoming a national laughingstock (well, more so, anyway) Kyl "revised his remarks" in the congressional record to erase the claim, which you can do if you are a senator, and which I think senators believe alters the fabric of spacetime in such a way as to make the thing not have ever happened.
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show: Border deal votes today. TV loons still mad, but MAGA fans insist the wall’s underway. Elliott Abrams haz a sad. Trump pollutes prayer breakfast. Should Coons understand he’s not welcome? Election protection gutted. Trump pushes TVA to buy a donor's coal.
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