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FOCUS: Nina Turner's Defeat Shows That Big Money Still Rules in US Politics |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=50468"><span class="small">Luke Savage, Jacobin</span></a>
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Thursday, 05 August 2021 12:14 |
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Savage writes: "If there's a lesson in the Ohio 11th race, it's about the lengths to which the Democratic machine is willing to go to defeat its leading critics - and the lows to which it's ultimately willing to stoop."
Nina Turner. (photo: The Hill)
Nina Turner's Defeat Shows That Big Money Still Rules in US Politics
By Luke Savage, Jacobin
05 August 21
If there’s a lesson in the Ohio 11th race, it’s about the lengths to which the Democratic machine is willing to go to defeat its leading critics — and the lows to which it’s ultimately willing to stoop.
 n parsing a disappointing political outcome, it’s tempting to seek out a redemptive conclusion or a silver lining. If neither is readily available, there may at least be valuable strategic lessons to be extracted for future fights. When it comes to last night’s special election in Ohio’s 11th congressional district, however, it’s difficult to see what might be drawn beyond the boringly bleak insight that organized money continues to dominate American politics — and is often terrifyingly capable of swatting down challenges to the status quo.
Coming from behind in a race that initially seemed like Nina Turner’s to lose, establishment favorite Shontel Brown last night secured a comfortable victory with a margin of more than 6 points — the result following a weekslong barrage of advertising that was less about boosting Brown’s campaign than tarring her opponents’.
Despite the district being among the most solidly blue in the country, it was clear from the outset that establishment Democrats wanted Turner defeated and, with a gracious assist from America’s cartoonishly corrupt campaign finance laws, they are now celebrating exactly that outcome. Though there may be a strategic debate to be had about decisions made by Turner’s campaign (Might it have gone negative against Brown sooner? Could it have developed a better defense against its rival’s attack ads?) — even a cursory survey of spending in the race underscores the extent to which what ultimately beat her was just sheer money, and lots of it.
As the American Prospect’s Alexander Sammon explains in a detailed report on the race, groups opposed to Turner quite literally flooded Ohio’s 11th district with millions in attack ads — the bombardment achieving full-spectrum dominance across TV, radio, YouTube, social media, household mailboxes, and local signage throughout June and July. Right-wing super PAC Democratic Majority For Israel (DMFI) alone spent over $2 million on ads mostly attacking Turner (and making no actual mention of Israel).
Combined with another $500,000 chipped in from corporate astroturf group Third Way, funds that poured in to crush Turner’s campaign closed in on $3 million — a breathtaking sum for a special election held in the doldrums of late summer. Adding to the quotient of pure sleaze at play, mailers were circulated that erroneously branded Turner an opponent of universal health care and a higher minimum wage. Thanks to absurd loopholes in campaign finance law, the Brown campaign didn’t have to own any of it — instead farming out its smears of Turner to super PACs by way of “redboxing” (a technique that essentially allows campaigns to coordinate with outside groups in spite of rules that prohibit it).
If there’s any lesson to be drawn from the Ohio 11th race, it’s about the lengths to which the Democratic machine will ultimately go to defeat its harshest critics — and the lows to which it is willing to stoop. With the aid of big donors (some of whom were quite literally Republicans), centrists and party grandees successfully prevented the election of a left-wing progressive in a safe blue district. While the Turner-Brown contest may be an extreme case, the basic template it represents is almost certain to play out again as long as the Democratic Party retains its indefensible addiction to corporate donors and organized money. Special interests and lobby organizations spend millions of dollars on elections because those dollars usually get them the desired result.
It’s an unsatisfying and bleak conclusion, to be sure. But, if nothing else, it’s at least a clarifying one.
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Why We Need the $3.5 Trillion Reconciliation Package |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=51061"><span class="small">Bernie Sanders, The Wall Street Journal</span></a>
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Thursday, 05 August 2021 08:31 |
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Sanders writes: "The good news is that the American Rescue Plan Act, enacted in March, has been effective. At a time of unprecedented health and economic crisis caused by the pandemic, it did exactly what a democratic government in a civilized society is supposed to do: respond to the needs of people in despair."
Sen. Bernie Sanders. (photo: Joe Raedle/Getty)
Why We Need the $3.5 Trillion Reconciliation Package
By Bernie Sanders, The Wall Street Journal
05 August 21
The American Rescue Plan boosted the economy during the pandemic. But it didn’t go far enough.
 he good news is that the American Rescue Plan Act, enacted in March, has been effective. At a time of unprecedented health and economic crisis caused by the pandemic, it did exactly what a democratic government in a civilized society is supposed to do: respond to the needs of people in despair.
The act provided much-needed direct payments to struggling families, protected the unemployed, fed the hungry, prevented evictions, and allowed small businesses to survive. It helped jump-start the economy, which grew in the second quarter at an annualized rate of 6.5%. Perhaps most important, it provided funding for the government to expand the vaccine program and save thousands of lives.
The bad news is that the American Rescue Plan didn’t address the long-neglected structural crises that many U.S. families face: Three people own more wealth than the bottom 50%, real wages for workers haven’t increased in almost 50 years, and we are facing the existential threat of climate change.
We need structural reforms to improve the lives of U.S. families. If Democrats can’t get Republican support for these reforms, then we have to do it alone through the reconciliation process.
In recent years, Republicans used reconciliation to pass trillions in tax breaks, which primarily benefit the rich and large corporations, and they used it to try to repeal the Affordable Care Act and throw some 32 million people off the healthcare they had. We are going to use it too. But we will use it to support the middle class and struggling families and, in the process, create millions of good-paying jobs.
Here is some of what is in the $3.5 trillion reconciliation package that the Senate Budget Committee agreed to:
We are going to end the days of billionaires not paying their fair share of taxes by closing loopholes, while also raising the individual tax rate on the wealthiest Americans and the corporate tax rate for the most profitable companies in our country.
We will take on the greed of the pharmaceutical industry, which charges U.S. residents the highest prices in the world by far for prescription drugs. Under our proposal, Medicare will finally be allowed to negotiate prescription drug prices with the industry.
We will end the absurdity of the U.S. having the highest levels of childhood poverty of almost any major nation by extending the Child Tax Credit so families continue to receive monthly direct payments of up to $300 a child. We will radically improve our dysfunctional child-care system so that no working family pays more than 7% of its pretax income on child care, and we will provide universal pre-K to every 3- and 4-year-old.
We will expand higher education and job-training opportunities for students by making community college tuition-free for all Americans.
We will end the international disgrace of the U.S. being the only industrialized country not to guarantee paid family and medical leave. Women shouldn’t have to return to work a week after giving birth because they have no paid leave and can’t afford to stop working.
We will expand Medicare for seniors to cover dental needs as well as hearing aids and glasses. We will also make sure that we have enough doctors, nurses and dentists in underserved areas, while expanding Medicaid to provide healthcare to the uninsured.
We will give hundreds of thousands of seniors and people with disabilities the ability to get the care they need in their own homes instead of in expensive nursing facilities.
We will also address homelessness and the national housing crisis by making an unprecedented investment in affordable housing.
Further, we will provide undocumented people living in the U.S. with a pathway to citizenship, including Dreamers and the essential workers who courageously kept our economy running in the middle of a deadly pandemic.
Perhaps most important, we will begin the process of shifting our energy system away from fossil fuels and toward sustainable energy to combat the existential threat of climate change. This effort will include a nationwide clean-energy standard that moves our transportation system, electrical generation, buildings and agriculture toward clean energy. We will also create a Civilian Climate Corps, which will hire hundreds of thousands of young people to protect our natural resources and fight against climate change.
This is a large and unprecedented piece of legislation. But we are living in an unprecedented moment. Now is the time for bold action.
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If the US Really Cared About Freedom in Cuba, It Would End Its Punishing Sanctions |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=60387"><span class="small">Helen Yaffe, Guardian UK</span></a>
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Thursday, 05 August 2021 08:31 |
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Yaffe writes: "The violent protests that erupted in Cuba in early July were the first serious social disturbances since the 'Maleconazo' of 1994, 27 years ago."
Cuban president, Miguel Díaz-Canel. (photo: Alexandre Meneghini/Reuters)
If the US Really Cared About Freedom in Cuba, It Would End Its Punishing Sanctions
By Helen Yaffe, Guardian UK
05 August 21
Critics dismiss Cuba as a failed state, but don’t accept how badly it’s hamstrung by the US blockade
he violent protests that erupted in Cuba in early July were the first serious social disturbances since the “Maleconazo” of 1994, 27 years ago. Both these periods were characterised by deep economic crises. I was living in Havana in the mid-90s and witnessed the conditions that triggered the uprising: empty food markets, shops and pharmacy shelves, regular electricity cuts, production and transport ground to a halt. Such were the consequences of the collapse of the socialist bloc, which accounted for about 90% of the island’s trade.
Betting on the collapse of Cuban socialism, the US approved the Torricelli Act of 1992 and the Helms-Burton Act of 1996 to obstruct the island’s trade and financial relations with the rest of the world. Meanwhile, more sophisticated and multifaceted “regime change” programmes were developed, from Clinton’s people-to-people programmes to Bush’s Commission for a Free Cuba. From the mid-1990s to 2015, US congress appropriated some $284 million to promote (capitalist) democracy.
The story of how, against the odds, the Cuban revolution survived the past three decades is the focus of my book. In some fields, like biotechnology and medical internationalism, it thrived. Since 2019, however, conditions reminiscent of the “special period” have been returning to Cuba, a direct result of US sanctions. The Trump administration implemented 243 new coercive measures against Cuba, blocking its access to international trade, finance and investments at a time when foreign capital had been awarded a pivotal role in the island’s development strategy. The inevitable and intended result has been shortages of food, fuel, basic goods and medical supplies. Thus, while Cuba has Covid-19 vaccines, they cannot buy sufficient syringes to administer them, nor medical ventilators for their ICU units.
Strict sanitary restrictions, imposed by Cuban authorities in response to the pandemic, have impeded Cubans’ capacity to “resolver” (resolve problems through alternative channels), and to socialise. Covid cases keep rising, generating anxiety among Cubans, even though infection and death rates remain low relative to the region. In every Cuban household, people take turns to rise at dawn to join queues for basic goods. No one should be surprised that there is frustration and discontent.
Cuba’s critics blame the government for the daily hardships Cubans face, dismissing US sanctions as an excuse. This is like blaming a person for not swimming well when they are chained to the ground. The US blockade of Cuba is real. It is the longest and most extensive system of unilateral sanctions applied against any country in modern history. It affects every aspect of Cuban life.
At the UN general assembly on 23 June, a total of 184 countries supported Cuba’s motion for the end of the US blockade. It was the 29th year that Cuba’s vote had won. The US representative, Rodney Hunter, claimed sanctions were “a legitimate way to achieve foreign policy, national security and other national and international objectives”. He also described them as “one set of tools in our broader effort towards Cuba”.
Another key tool in recent years has been social media. In 2018, Trump set up an internet taskforce to promote “the free and unregulated flow of information” to Cuba, just as the country expanded facilities enabling Cubans to access the internet via their phones. During this summer, the social media campaign, which sees Miami-based influencers and YouTubers encourage Cubans on the island to take to the streets, was ratcheted up. As spontaneous and authentic as this may seem, behind it lies US funding and coordination.
On 11 July, I was in Havana, watching the Euro finals at a Cuban home when the broadcast was interrupted by an announcement from the president, Miguel Díaz-Canel. He had been to San Antonio de los Banos, on the outskirts of the capital, where a protest had turned into a riot, with shops looted, police cars overturned and rocks thrown. Simultaneous protests had taken place in dozens of locations around the island. In Matanzas, where Covid-19 cases have soared, there was extensive destruction. Díaz-Canel ended the broadcast by calling for revolutionaries to take to the streets. Thousands of Cubans answered his call.
Meanwhile, the mayor of Miami asked Biden to consider airstrikes on Cuba, while there were half-baked plans for a naval flotilla from Florida. The international media depicted mass opposition to an incompetent government, peaceful protests violently repressed, and a regime in crisis. This narrative has counted on exaggerations and manipulations. Images have been shared in the press and social media purporting to show anti-government protests that have, in fact, been the opposite. Photos of protests in Egypt and sports celebrations in Argentina have been attributed to the Cuban protests of 11 July.
From the US, where violent protests and police killings happen with tragic regularity, and where a rightwing insurrection tried to overturn the 2020 election result, new president Joe Biden described Cuba as a “failed state”. By 30 July he had already imposed new sanctions, despite campaign promises to roll such sanctions back.
Since the 11 July protests, I have travelled throughout Havana for my work. The only significant protests I have seen in the capital have been those in support of the government, including a rally of 200,000 in Havana on 17 July. The Cubans I speak to reject the violence and US interference. They are confident that Cubans know how to swim, but they need the chains of the US blockade to be cut.
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Democrats Will Never Stop Triangulating Against Justice |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=53341"><span class="small">Hamilton Nolan, In These Times</span></a>
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Wednesday, 04 August 2021 12:54 |
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Nolan writes: "Even as the political center of the Democratic Party has been pulled ever so slowly to the left in recent decades, the Clinton-era thirst for triangulation still burns bright in the souls of the party's tottering old leaders."
Running against 'defund the police' is both cowardly and wrong. Democratic leaders find that irresistible. (photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty)
Democrats Will Never Stop Triangulating Against Justice
By Hamilton Nolan, In These Times
04 August 21
Running against “defund the police” is both cowardly and wrong. Democratic leaders find that irresistible.
 et’s start with this: To “defund the police”?—?which means, more explicitly, “to take some amount of resources we currently give to armed police and reallocate those resources towards social services, drug treatment, or other intelligent programs that target the root problems of crime effectively”?—?is a good idea. No honest and reasonable person should disagree with the underlying premise of defunding the police, no matter how much they might gripe about the slogan itself. If the Democratic Party thinks that “defund the police” is a bad slogan, they should think of another way to describe these good and reasonable policy ideas.
Instead, they are just going to scream about how much they love cops.
Even as the political center of the Democratic Party has been pulled ever so slowly to the left in recent decades, the Clinton-era thirst for triangulation still burns bright in the souls of the party’s tottering old leaders. Although the main proposition of progressives is that the future can be better than the past, the urge of the Democrats to jump up and prove that they can be just as retrograde as Republicans is proving inescapable. Nothing defines the modern Democratic Party more than its consistent refusal to embrace its own beliefs, due to projected fears over what voters might think. The conventional wisdom of Democrats has long been to only whisper their deepest beliefs about racism, injustice, and the stupidity of much of American culture behind closed doors, while making nice with god and guns in public.
Never mind the fact that “defund the police” is a slogan voiced by activists, not politicians. And never mind the fact that it describes a set of policies that we absolutely should be pursuing. And never mind the fact that 20 million people just got done marching for Black Lives Matter, and that shrinking our bloated and militarized police forces would be one of the most meaningful ways to accomplish the long-term goals of that movement. None of that matters more than the belief held by Jim Clyburn and Nancy Pelosi that that particular slogan led to inconvenient Democratic election losses that must be explained away somehow.
The brilliant campaign strategy now being advanced by Pelosi is to declare that Republicans are the ones who actually voted to defund the police, because they voted against Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan, money from which was used in many places to fund police departments. Akela Lacy reports that this message from Democrats is expected to be widespread in the coming midterm elections. One aide told her that when Republicans accused Democrats of wanting to defund police during the last elections “we didn’t have anything to say back. Now, you have something to say back.”
This is such a perfect encapsulation of the moral failure of the Democratic Party that you almost have to admire it. It reflects the same impulse that constantly makes Democratic strategists seek out Tough on Crime Prosecutors or Badass Fighter Pilot Vets to run for office. It is the same impulse that has given us classic Democratic positions of the recent past, like “Actually, we’re against gay marriage,” or “Actually, we do support the war in Iraq,” or “Actually, I do enjoy making my presidential campaign appearance riding in this tank.” It is the pathological fear of being called weak?—?a fear that, ironically, is a sure sign of weakness. The Democrats are acting like all the shame-faced kids at school who laugh along with the bully because they are scared of the bully turning on them. It never seems to occur to the party’s candidates that what they could “say back” to bad faith accusations about defunding the police is: “Let me tell you how this could be a good thing.”
One year ago, Nancy Pelosi and the rest of the Democratic congressional leaders were kneeling while wearing kente cloths. Today, they are working to prove that was even more of a sham than we all might have imagined at the time. Police violence, mass incarceration, and the devastating, racist, and destructive War on Crime are all structural problems. Structural problems demand structural solutions. Defunding the police is a structural solution. Claiming to be against the structural problems without being willing to embrace structural solutions means that you want the credit for being on the right side of the issue without having to engage in the fight to make the issue better. That is what the Democrats are doing. Not only are they not defunding the police?—?they are coopting the Republican position that defunding the police is a bad idea to be ashamed of. They are being as useless as… well, as kneeling wearing kente cloths while bragging about increasing police funding.
Legitimate progressives?—?those who are willing to advocate for positions because they are just, not because they are politically expedient?—?have spent many decades gritting their teeth while Democrats wink and assure them that yes, they agree with the goal, but in order to get there we must have a long masquerade of pretending not to agree with the goal, because voters demand that we Be Tough. Invariably, the passage of time proves that the just position was where everyone should have been all along. History is littered with the disgraced corpses of politicians who took positions that they knew were unjust, but that they considered to be politically necessary. That is how all of the evil things happen?—?with the acquiescence of leaders who consider themselves to be realists.
Instead of not defunding the police, let’s try defunding the police. I bet that it will not provoke more police shootings and 20 million angry people in the streets, like last summer’s protests. Maybe it’s more realistic than the Democrats think.
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own in Tennessee, a Republican stronghold where GOP lawmakers 
