BIDEN'S Media Propagandists -- Ruling Class Hides Behind Diversity

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEKImDfDPFc&ab_channel=TheJimmyDoreShow

BREAKING: Pelosi's Stimulus Half The Size Of TRUMP'S

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RM5GInwf108&ab_channel=TheJimmyDoreShow

Neera Tanden Protected by The Establishment While She Deletes Tweets

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRSrooRhmkE&ab_channel=TheJimmyDoreShow

“What Were They Thinking?”: Neera Tanden and Bernie Sanders’ Inevitable Collision Course

By Jordan Chariton
-

December 3, 2020




https://statuscoup.com/what-were-they-thinking-neera-tanden-and-bernie-sanders-inevitable-collision-course/




A lot of the discussion surrounding Center For American Progress CEO Neera Tanden’s appointment to run the Office of Management and Budget has revolved around her years of menacing Twitter activity (for which she’s feverishly deleting over 1,000 tweets fo far), her role as Hillary Clinton’s top political “loyal soldier,” and history of championing cuts to entitlement programs, the virtues of for-profit healthcare, and hoarding money from Wall Street and dubious foreign governments via CAP.

But there’s been little discussion about how Tanden, if confirmed as director of OMB, will effectively serve when one of the top functions of the OMB Director is working with the House Ways and Means Committee, and the Senate Budget committee— the latter of which will have Sanders either as chairman or the ranking member, depending on the results of the Georgia Senate runoff elections.

“What were they thinking?” a progressive insider with ties to Sanders told Status Coup. “How did they possibly pick somebody whose main interface in the Senate will be Bernie Sanders—who’s done all she can to ruin Bernie Sanders politically.”

For progressives inside and outside of Washington D.C., Tanden’s animosity toward Sanders has bordered on obsessive hatred over the last five years, targeting Sanders, his supporters, and progressive journalists during his two presidential campaigns and “political revolution.”

From Red-scare attacks suggesting Sanders was Vladimir Putin’s preference over Hillary Clinton in 2016; to CAP’s editorial arm ThinkProgress pushing the narrative that Sanders was a faux populist and hypocrite once he became a millionaire, to Tanden spearheading the political hit-squad against Sanders following his accepting an endorsement from podcast powerhouse Joe Rogan (whose show Biden himself tried to get on), to playing a critical role at framing Sanders’ political movement as racist and sexist, Tanden was a one-woman social media Super PAC against Sanders from 2015 through the end of the 2020 Democratic primary.

A former staffer for Center for American Progress, who requested anonymity to avoid Tanden’s wrath, put it more bluntly, telling Status Coup: “In 2015/2016, CAP was a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Hillary campaign.” The staffer added that the think-tank operated as an unofficial policy and messaging shop for the Clinton campaign.

A former high-level official for Sanders’ 2020 campaign, who requested anonymity in order to speak freely, reacted to Tanden’s OMB appointment—and potential working relationship with Sanders in the Senate—with outrage.

“This would be the last person; this person went out of her way—this wasn’t just policy disagreements—to attack Sanders,” the campaign official told Status Coup. “This is an intentional slight [by President-elect Biden], not just on Senator Sanders but the entire progressive movement.”

David Sirota, former speechwriter and adviser for Sanders’ 2020 campaign, agreed that Tanden’s appointment as OMB director was an intentional move by Biden to antagonize Sanders, tweeting that Tanden’s looming collision course with Sanders was “not coincidence.”






Journalist Matt Taibbi also opined that Tanden’s appointment was an intentional snub toward Sanders, calling it a “creative fuck you.”

But another source, who’s had dealings with Sanders for years, told Status Coup Tanden’s appointment was less of an in-your-face middle finger to Bernie and more a representation of the out of touch nature of the corporate Democratic machine.

“They were oblivious to it [that Tanden would be working closely with Sanders],” the source said. “It’s insane, like, are they even looking at what the job is? They don’t do executive action there [at OMB]…it just amazes me, of all the jobs they could’ve given her,” the source continued. “Did anyone even consider what that relationship would be like [with Sanders]?”

On Tanden, Larry Cohen, board chairman of Sanders-aligned Our Revolution, told Status Coup: “I think the broader question is what is the economic strategy, or is there one, for the incoming government?” adding that Biden and, if confirmed, Tanden, need a strategy that emphasizes higher-paying jobs, renewable energy, and spending money at volumes domestically like we’ve been showering the Pentagon with for “military adventurism.”

“She’s a loyalist, that’s her qualification,” a progressive activist who, like many, has had tense encounters with Tanden over the years, told Status Coup. The source, who asked to remain anonymous to avoid further agita related to Tanden, added that in their dealings with her, Tanden never offered any creative ideas related to policy or budgeting.



“Since when was OMB a brain trust?” the source continued, dismissing the department’s role in passing and executing neoliberal policies of the last three decades. “It’s just functionaries.”

“This is the Democratic [Party] swamp in action,” the former staffer at Tanden’s CAP told Status Coup, adding that nothing in Tanden’s background would qualify her to understand budgets aside from being a generic policy person, which is “a dime a dozen in Washington.”

“She’s built a very powerful empire there that is really a patronage machine for the professional, Democratic establishment,” the former CAP staffer said. “She’s built a constituency within the Beltway among the paid, professional left. It’s no surprise they’re circling the wagons.”

If Tanden, as OMB chairman, and Bernie as either chairman or ranking member of the Senate Budget committee, are ultimately destined to clash, it remains to be seen whether Sanders will play ball and not challenge her confirmation.

Sanders’ silence thus far may represent an overly optimistic—what many progressives would say naive—hope that Biden will heed his public campaign to be appointed Labor Secretary. Thus far, the president-elect has provided no tangible signals that he’ll grant Sanders a White House parking pass, much less name him Labor Secretary. But days after the Tanden announcement, there’s been no public response from Sanders.

Leaving progressives, and perhaps more importantly Biden, waiting to see…

If, and when, will Bernie Sanders get mad as hell and not take it anymore?

Children who experienced compassionate parenting are more generous than peers

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/12/201201103626.htm



Is It Better To Give Than To Receive?



Young children who have experienced compassionate love and empathy from their mothers may be more willing to turn thoughts into action by being generous to others, a University of California, Davis, study suggests.


In lab studies, children tested at ages 4 and 6 showed more willingness to give up the tokens they had earned to fictional children in need when two conditions were present -- if they showed bodily changes when given the opportunity to share and had experienced positive parenting that modeled such kindness. The study initially included 74 preschool-age children and their mothers. They were invited back two years later, resulting in 54 mother-child pairs whose behaviors and reactions were analyzed when the children were 6.

"At both ages, children with better physiological regulation and with mothers who expressed stronger compassionate love were likely to donate more of their earnings," said Paul Hastings, UC Davis professor of psychology and the mentor of the doctoral student who led the study. "Compassionate mothers likely develop emotionally close relationships with their children while also providing an early example of prosocial orientation toward the needs of others," researchers said in the study.

The study was published in November in Frontiers in Psychology: Emotion Science. Co-authors were Jonas G. Miller, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University (who was a UC Davis doctoral student when the study was written); Sarah Kahle of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, UC Davis; and Natalie R. Troxel, now at Facebook.

In each lab exercise, after attaching a monitor to record children's heart-rate activity, the examiner told the children they would be earning tokens for a variety of activities, and that the tokens could be turned in for a prize. The tokens were put into a box, and each child eventually earned 20 prize tokens. Then before the session ended, children were told they could donate all or part of their tokens to other children (in the first instance, they were told these were for sick children who couldn't come and play the game, and in the second instance, they were told the children were experiencing a hardship.)

At the same time, mothers answered questions about their compassionate love for their children and for others in general. The mothers selected phrases in a survey such as:
"I would rather engage in actions that help my child than engage in actions that would help me."
"Those whom I encounter through my work and public life can assume that I will be there if they need me."
"I would rather suffer myself than see someone else (a stranger) suffer."

Taken together, the findings showed that children's generosity is supported by the combination of their socialization experiences -- their mothers' compassionate love -- and their physiological regulation, and that these work like "internal and external supports for the capacity to act prosocially that build on each other."

The results were similar at ages 4 and 6.

In addition to observing the children's propensity to donate their game earnings, the researchers observed that being more generous also seemed to benefit the children. At both ages 4 and 6, the physiological recording showed that children who donated more tokens were calmer after the activity, compared to the children who donated no or few tokens. They wrote that "prosocial behaviors may be intrinsically effective for soothing one's own arousal." Hastings suggested that "being in a calmer state after sharing could reinforce the generous behavior that produced that good feeling."

This work was supported by the Fetzer Institute, Mindfulness Connections, and the National Institute of Mental Health.






Story Source:

Materials provided by University of California - Davis. Original written by Karen Nikos-Rose. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.


Journal Reference:
Jonas G. Miller, Sarah Kahle, Natalie R. Troxel, Paul D. Hastings. The Development of Generosity From 4 to 6 Years: Examining Stability and the Biopsychosocial Contributions of Children’s Vagal Flexibility and Mothers’ Compassion. Frontiers in Psychology, 2020; 11 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.590384

What’s Between 30 Million Americans and an Eviction Tsunami?

Only government intervention can keep millions of Americans housed.




December 2, 2020 Francesca Mari THE NEW YORK TIMES




https://portside.org/2020-12-02/whats-between-30-million-americans-and-eviction-tsunami




We’ve all been so concerned about the transition on Jan. 20 that many of us have forgotten another critical date for American democracy: Dec. 31. That’s when the federal eviction moratorium — which has held the pandemic-related eviction tsunami at bay — expires. After that date, more than 30 million Americans are at risk of losing their homes. Congress must act to stabilize the country’s rental market, prevent widespread displacement and curtail the growing domination of housing by big corporations.

More than half of renters pay 30 percent or more of their income on rent, according to the 2019 American Housing Survey, and more than half of lowest-income renter households reported some loss of employment income between mid-March and mid-September. Although CARES money has been flowing to states, which have established various rental assistance programs, all of them are oversubscribed.

“I can’t point to a city that says we’ve got this figured out,” Mary Cunningham, vice president for metropolitan housing and communities policy at the Urban Institute, told me. “It’s really the role of the federal government to provide. They’re the ones with the ability to match the need.”

“Cancel rent,” the movement calling for rent strikes, is a useful tactic against the most notorious, fee-gouging corporate landlords. But close to half of the country’s 47.5 million rental units aren’t corporate-owned, as of 2015. These units, typically single-family homes or apartments in smaller multifamily buildings, are owned by individuals with their own mortgages and bills. And the units they rent in their smaller complexes generally cost less. Representative Ilhan Omar, Democrat of Minnesota, introduced a Rent and Mortgage Cancellation bill. But that bill, which proposed government reimbursement for landlords and lenders who agree to adhere to fair practices, has been all but ignored. Congress isn’t going to pick up the bag and pay the difference, so widespread canceling of rent is a sure path to displacement: either the landlord will evict, or the landlord will be forced to sell.

Cue the vulture investors who have been circling from the start. Private equity entered the pandemic with more “dry powder” than ever before. That’s the industry term for money earmarked for a certain type of investment, like real estate, but not yet invested. It’s money waiting for a great opportunity, one that the Trump administration’s catastrophic management of the pandemic will surely provide. During the last financial crisis, U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin made millions buying a failed bank that proceeded to foreclose on homeowners using methods that regulators accused of being “unsafe or unsound.” Other private equity funds amassed foreclosed homes and created single-family rental home empires. As the home values recovered, private equity cashed out of the companies, reaping maximum profits. Now those rental companies, like Invitation Homes, which has 80,000 houses concentrated in 17 markets, told investors that it hopes to ramp up acquisitions.

As of September, 9 percent of the nation’s 48 million homeowners with mortgages were behind on their housing payments, according to the Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey. By late October, close to 6 percent of those with mortgages were in forbearance. Many are house rich and cash poor. Distressed sales are expected, leaving housing stock up for grabs at a time when most Americans cannot afford to take on new mortgages. Black and Latino people, who disproportionately work in service industries most impacted by the pandemic and who were deprived of generational wealth by racist housing policies, are most at risk.

The easiest way to prevent distressed sales and corporate acquisitions is to empower individuals. One efficient solution would be a short-term universal basic income for everyone who falls below a certain threshold. The $1,200 stimulus check was that. And the $600 weekly supplement to unemployment insurance was essentially that, too. Both were extremely effective. The majority of recipients used some of that money toward rent or mortgage payments. Because the supplement wasn’t earmarked for housing, it didn’t create openings for landlords or other entities to exploit, and the housing market wasn’t adversely affected. In July, the share of apartment households who didn’t pay rent increased by only roughly one percentage point compared to last year, from 3.4 to 4.3 percent, according to a survey of 11.5 million units. The problem with the supplement was that it was tied to being unemployed, leading some to turn down low-paying or part-time work that paid less.

Another viable (and more moderate) plan calls for the government to finance 10-year-long low-interest-rate loans to tenants so that they can pay their accrued back rent. The program, proposed by Gary Painter, director of the U.S.C. Price Center for Social Innovation and the Homelessness Policy Research Institute, ideally would be progressively subsidized and negotiated with landlords. That would mean those with lower incomes who rent modest, lower-cost places would pay a smaller percentage of their accrued rental liability than those with higher incomes who rent fancier places. The key would be to make the application as accessible and easy as possible. “Everyone would be giving up something,” Mr. Painter told me. “The tenants would have to pay something. Landlords aren’t going to be happy because they’d only get a percentage of the rent. But in the long run, if you had a plan, everyone could negotiate accordingly.”

Most critically: For those properties that do hit the market, especially hotel and apartment buildings, we need a government-sponsored affordable housing acquisition fund and legislation that gives it first priority to scoop up properties. The cost of not acting is too high. In 2018, there were only 10 million affordable rentals on the private market and almost 18 million households with very low incomes that needed them. Without government intervention, affordable units are prone to be converted into condos, further vexing the rental situation in cities like Los Angeles, which already have low vacancy rates.

Critics and conservatives will cry “moral hazard!” at the prospect of a universal basic income or financing loans to struggling renters. This is the same complaint that was lodged against bailing out homeowners during the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis. The government provided a swift and generous bailout to the banks that caused the crisis. But programs to support underwater homeowners, the Home Affordable Modification Program and the Home Affordable Refinance Program, under-delivered: HAMP permanently reduced mortgages for less than half of the recipients the program was intended to help, and HARP initially only helped about a million borrowers. Because there was so much concern that homeowners would cheat the system, loan reduction and modification applications were prohibitively cumbersome. When homes went to foreclosure auction, vulture investors snagged them up at steep discounts. Those who went through foreclosure not only had their lives upended but they have lost trust in the government and, some studies have shown, have been less likely to vote.

The housing crisis we face now is fundamentally different from the one in 2008, not the result of spurious new financial instruments, but a sort of natural disaster (and home prices have only gone up, not down). In that sense, it’s easier, if even more costly, to fix. Renters need an outlay of “federal pandemic insurance,” as Mr. Painter likes to call it. While the eviction moratoriums are still in place, Congress has a choice: prepare a rental recovery program that builds trust or allow mass eviction, displacement, foreclosure, corporate consolidation and increased inequality. It is a choice with repercussions not just for individual citizens, but for the survival of a real democracy.

A Union’s Strength Comes from the Power to Strike

Here is a book on union organizing that seems about to become a classic for our times.




December 2, 2020 Derek Ludovici THE INDYPENDENT



https://portside.org/2020-12-02/unions-strength-comes-power-strike




No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age
Jane McAlevey
Oxford University Press, 2016
ISBN: 9780190624712

The COVID-19 fiscal crisis is wreaking havoc on the public sector. Mayor de Blasio has threatened to terminate as many as 22,000 city employees. At the City University of New York around 3,000 of my fellow adjuncts have been laid off and CUNY is running on a month-to-month budget as the prospect of more state budget cuts looms over us. While the cause of this crisis is novel, the continued assault on labor and the public good is not. What is our way out?

Halting production by withdrawing labor collectively is the strongest weapon that workers have. Bringing back strike-ready and practicing unions is the only way to bring about structural changes that challenge decades of neoliberal logic. This is Jane McAlevey’s assertion in her 2016 book No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age. As the title suggests, the book is about the organizing needed to strike.

McAlevey has been a labor organizer and negotiator for more than 20 years. She played a key role in turning Nevada into a strong union state (in spite of so-called right-to-work laws) in the mid-2000s while much of the rest of the union movement continued its long decline. In her book, she draws on her experiences to make her

foundational argument — unions declined because their strategies shifted from doing deep organizing of the rank-and-file membership and fostering workers’ agency, to that of mobilizing activists to carry out campaigns, relying much less on workers themselves. In doing so, unions ignored workers and their organic community ties, something from which unions once drew strength. She argues the difference between these approaches matter because they determine what possible victories a union can achieve.
Back in the day

She compares the organizing of the Congress of Industrial Organizations in the 1930s compared to the AFL-CIO today. Unlike the American Federation of Labor, which at the time focused only on skilled workers, the CIO actively attempted to bring all workers in a company, no matter their skill level, into one union. To accomplish this, leftwing union organizers, often hired from the Communist Party, would actively attempt to identify “organic leaders” among rank-and-file workers. These were often the workers that peers would come to for advice. Organizers would then have a one-on-one conversation with the organic leader, letting the leader do most of the talking, only asking critical questions meant to let the worker convince themselves of their own exploitation and move them towards union sympathy.

The author is clear to note that these leaders were rarely activists who approached the union, but rather folks who had the clout to help lead the workshop floor through a successful membership drive. McAlevey stresses organic leaders were co-organizers with the union’s staff.

McAlevey argues that when the New Voices slate, a slate of mainly service sector unions, won the first ever contested AFL-CIO election in 1995 this changed. Neoliberalism and its assault on labor had hollowed out the membership, leading the federation’s unions to focus on winning new members, yet they did so through mobilizing campaigns meant to decrease opposition to unionization. By placing mobilization front and center unions had in fact shifted the focus of union staff to the employer rather than the worker.

While the book is full of different approaches that have been taken to win, McAlevey stresses that organizing to win means organizing with workers and their communities, or the “whole worker” as CIO organizers would say. She supports this argument through four case studies including one focusing on homecare workers and another on the efforts of Make the Road New York. However, the two that stand out the most are a unionizing campaign of a slaughterhouse in the right-to-work Deep South and the Chicago teachers strike of 2012.
From the slaughterhouse to the schoolhouse

In the former McAlevey shows the hard fight of unionizing the Smithfield Meat Packing plant in Tar Hills, North Carolina — the largest pig processing plant in the world and a workplace with high turnover, where the management would intentionally stoke racial divides and use ICE as publicly funded Pinkertons. Interference by Smithfield was so brazen during unionization efforts that the National Labor Relations Board nullified two elections.

After Hispanic workers walked off the job due to management asking for immigration papers, forcing management to negotiate their return, organizers were able to start helping these organic leaders to organize the rest of the plant. The chapter is the most exciting in the book, detailing the various ways organizers mapped not just the physical plant but also the social relations of the workers. Ultimately, through public campaigns and work stoppages, the employees were able to unionize and have their pay raised to $15 per hour. McAlevey uses this case to show that 1930s CIO organizing model of organizing the “whole worker” is not only possible, but necessary.

The case of the Chicago Teachers Union focuses on how CTU went from being strike allergic to taking on one of the nation’s most powerful mayors, Rahm Emanual, President Obama’s former chief of staff. Key to CTU’s success was that a group of teachers formed to make the labor leadership “act like a union” and when that failed they ran for and were elected to lead the union themselves.

The Caucus of Rank and File Educators (CORE) rise came during a moment of disarray, but through their victory they were able to change the union’s approach from managed capitulation to active organizing. CTU organizers began organizing teachers. Teachers in turn used their organic ties to their school communities to talk with parents about how a strike that included demands for more school funding was for the good of their children. In September 2012 the union went on strike and won a decisive victory. So successful was the approach that not only did the teachers win their demands, CTU President Karen Lewis polled as the most popular Chicagoan.

In the book’s conclusion McAlevey stresses that labor needs to focus on “strategic sectors,” workplaces that can’t easily be moved or offshored. Health and education are the two she underscores. As an adjunct lecturer at the City University of New York I find these chapters especially inspiring. Many rank-and-file organizers at CUNY have participated in reading groups or McAlevey’s online strike school in recent months. There is a growing conviction that union power and strike preparedness is built from below, through members organizing each other. At my university this has meant having earnest conversations across job titles to understand grievances, as well as vulnerabilities of others. It also means building solidarity with our students that extends outside the classroom.

At best mobilizing will slow the rate of non-reappointments and layoffs. To truly fund education and other public goods, to abolish anti-labor legislation will not take a miracle but active, rank-and-file organizing.