Tuesday, December 3, 2019
Message from Bernie's Campaign Manager
The Iowa caucus is two months from today. And it is close. Very close. Take a look at this recent CBS poll:
Iowa Caucus (CBS / YouGov)
Sanders: 22%
Biden: 22%
Buttigieg: 21%
Warren: 18%
That’s quite literally the margin of YOU. And today, one of the most important things you can do, if you can afford it, is to make another contribution. We’ll put it right to work in Iowa. Here’s the link:
https://secure.actblue.com/donate/bernie20
Make a contribution to our campaign today. We’re approaching the FINAL quarterly FEC deadline of the campaign and are looking for as many donations as we possibly can.
If you've saved payment info with ActBlue Express, your donation will go through immediately:
https://secure.actblue.com/donate/bernie20
So please, make your contribution. Get us off to a strong start as we approach this deadline. As you watch the results in Iowa, know that your contribution was a big part of why we did so well.
All my best,
Faiz Shakir
Campaign Manager
Nancy Pelosi Buries Historic Labor Bill to Appease Centrists
DEC 02, 2019
For the first time in decades,
the House of Representatives has a rare chance to rewrite American labor laws,
in ways that would actually help workers. Among other benefits, a new bill
would abolish right-to-work laws that cripple union organizing, create penalties
for employers that punish workers for organizing, and set out rules to
eliminate delays in negotiating union contracts.
The bill, the Protecting the
Right to Organize Act (PRO), was introduced by Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., and has
215 co-sponsors. It passed the House Committee on Education and Labor in late
September. Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., told the Intercept that “it is taking
longer than it should” to pass PRO, “given the number of co-sponsors that we
have. Many other bills have come to the floor with fewer co-sponsors than this
one.”
So why hasn’t Nancy Pelosi
brought it to the floor for a vote? And why is she instead focusing on a trade
bill that’s a high priority for Donald Trump?
The U.S.-Mexico-Canada
Agreement (USMCA) is a replacement for the North American Free Trade Agreement,
which removed tariffs and other restrictions on trade among the three
countries, but also caused significant job losses and led companies to move
their operations overseas.
Pelosi, Cohen suggests, may be
focusing on USMCA instead of PRO because she’s following the demands of
centrist Democrats eager to prove that they can work with the president. Those
moderates believe that passing USMCA would help protect House Democrats who
flipped Republican seats in 2018. It’s an argument also advanced by Cheri
Bustos, D-Ill., chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
Last week, The Washington Post
reported that Jesús
Seade, Mexico’s undersecretary for North America, said the agreement had a
good chance of being finalized this week. That’s also what Pelosi wants,
although Democrats, the Post reports, want “changes that would ensure
enforcement of the agreement in a way that would help American workers and
prevent further outsourcing of U.S. jobs overseas.”
It’s unclear whether any of
those changes would satisfy unions, whose support Democrats still depend on.
Richard Trumka, the head of the AFL-CIO, has pushed the Democrats to hold out
for more labor protections. According to the Post, “his endorsement would be
likely to sway dozens of House Democrats to support the new deal.”
According to an earlier
Intercept article by Ryan Grim, Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., chair of the Ways
and Means Committee, agrees with Bustos, but goes a step further, advocating
what Grim calls “a divide and conquer strategy,” adding pension reform to the
USMCA deal, a decision that could split union support, and, as Grim puts it,
“allow House leaders to say that labor is divided on the question, so the party
might as well vote yes [on USMCA].”
Cohen’s own reporting suggests
that union support for the NAFTA replacement is far from guaranteed. She
writes: “Unions have made clear … that from their perspective, USMCA lacks real
labor enforcement mechanisms, which could undermine the whole deal, further
drag down wages, and eliminate more jobs.”
Dan Mauer, director of
government affairs for the Communications Workers of America, which supports
PRO, told the Intercept that “We get it’s hard, there’s a lot of stuff on
people’s plates, and at the same time, this bill already has a lot of
demonstrated support.” CWA members, Maurer said, would be “very unhappy” if the
House failed to make progress on the bill.
Aside from the ample number of
co-sponsors, the bill has growing public support for unions. Organizations
like nonprofits and digital
media companies are beginning to form unions. According to a Gallup
poll released just before Labor Day, 64% of Americans support
organized labor, a near fifty year high.
Pelosi’s office did not return
The Intercept’s request for comment.
Robert Reich: McConnell May Be Worse Than Trump
DEC 02, 2019
Robert Reich
He’s maybe the most dangerous
politician of my lifetime. He’s helped transform the Republican Party into a
cult, worshiping at the altar of authoritarianism. He’s damaged our country in
ways that may take a generation to undo. The politician I’m talking about, of
course, is Mitch McConnell.
Two goals for November 3, 2020:
The first and most obvious is to get the worst president in history out of the
White House. That’s necessary but not sufficient. We also have to flip the
Senate and remove the worst Senate Majority Leader in history.
Like Trump, Mitch McConnell is
no garden-variety bad public official. McConnell puts party above America, and
Trump above party. Even if Trump is gone, if the Senate remains in Republican
hands and McConnell is reelected, America loses because McConnell will still
have a chokehold on our democracy.
This is the man who refused
for almost a year to allow the Senate to consider President Obama’s moderate
Supreme Court pick, Merrick Garland.
And then, when Trump became
president, this is the man who got rid of the age-old Senate rule requiring 60
Senators to agree on a Supreme Court nomination so he could ram through not one
but two Supreme Court justices, including one with a likely history of sexual
assault.
This is the man who rushed
through the Senate, without a single hearing, a $2 trillion tax cut for big
corporations and wealthy Americans – a tax cut that raised the government debt
by almost the same amount, generated no new investment, failed to raise wages,
but gave the stock market a temporary sugar high because most corporations used
the tax savings to buy back their own shares of stock.
McConnell refuses to support
what’s needed for comprehensive election security – although both the U.S.
intelligence community and Special Prosecutor Mueller say Moscow is continuing
to hack into our voting machines and to weaponize disinformation through social
media.
McConnell has earned the
nickname “Moscow Mitch” because he’s doing exactly what Vladimir Putin and
Donald Trump want him to do – leave America vulnerable to another
Putin-supported victory for Trump.
McConnell is also blocking
bipartisan background-check legislation for gun sales, even after the mass
shootings in Dayton, Ohio, El Paso and Odessa, Texas.
So even if Trump is out of the
White House, if McConnell remains Senate Majority Leader he will not allow a
Democratic president to govern.
He won’t allow debate or votes
on Medicare for All, universal pre-K, a wealth tax, student loan forgiveness,
or the Green New Deal. He won’t allow confirmation votes on judges nominated by
a Democratic president.
The good news is McConnell is
the least popular senator in the country with his own constituents. He’s
repeatedly sacrificed Kentucky to Trump’s agenda – for example, agreeing to
Trump’s so-called emergency funding for a border wall, which would take $63
million away from projects like a new middle school on the border between
Kentucky and Tennessee.
McConnell is even cut funding
for black lung disease suffered by Kentucky coal miners. I know from my years
as labor secretary that coal mining is one of the most dangerous jobs in the
country, and the number of cases of incurable black lung disease has been on
the rise. But when a group of miners took a 10-hour bus ride to Washington this
past summer to ask McConnell to restore the funding, McConnell met with them
for one minute and then refused to help them. No wonder Democrats are lining up
in Kentucky to run against Moscow Mitch in 2020.
The not-so-good news is that
McConnell is up for re-election the same day as Donald Trump, and Trump did
well in Kentucky in 2016. Which means we have to help organize Kentucky, just
as we have to organize other states that may not be swing states in the
presidential election but could take back the Senate.
Consider Georgia: Republican
Senator Johnny Isakson is retiring, meaning both of Georgia’s Senate seats are
now up for grabs. And this one extra seat—in a state that is trending
blue—could be the tipping point that allows Democrats to win enough seats to
end GOP control of the Senate.
Trump has to go, but so does
McConnell.
Here’s what you can do:
Wherever you are in the country, you can donate to McConnell’s challengers. If
you live in or near Kentucky, you can get out and knock doors or make calls. Or
if you have friends or family in the state, encourage them to get involved.
As to the question of who is
worse, Trump or McConnell — the answer is that it’s too close to call. The two
of them have degraded and corrupted American democracy. We need them both out.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)