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batboyblog · 2 months

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Things Biden and the Democrats did, this week #9

March 9-15 2024

The IRS launched its direct file pilot program. Tax payers in 12 states, Florida, New Hampshire, Nevada, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, Wyoming, Arizona, Massachusetts, California and New York, can now file their federal income taxes for free on-line directly with the IRS. The IRS plans on taking direct file nation wide for next year's tax season. Tax Day is April 15th so if you're in one of those states you have a month to check it out.

The Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights opened an investigation into the death of Nex Benedict. the OCR is investigating if Benedict's school district violated his civil rights by failing to protect him from bullying. President Biden expressed support for trans and non-binary youth in the aftermath of the ruling that Benedict's death was a suicide and encouraged people to seek help in crisis

Vice President Kamala Harris became the first sitting Vice-President (or President) to visit an abortion provider. Harris' historic visit was to a Planned Parenthood clinic in St. Paul Minnesota. This is the last stop on the Vice-President's Reproductive Rights Tour that has taken her across the country highlighting the need for reproductive health care.

President Biden announced 3.3 billion dollars worth of infrastructure projects across 40 states designed to reconnect communities divided by transportation infrastructure. Communities often split decades ago by highways build in the 1960s and 70s. These splits very often affect communities of color splitting them off from the wider cities and making daily life far more difficult. These reconnection projects will help remedy decades of economic racism.

The Biden-Harris administration is taking steps to eliminate junk fees for college students. These are hidden fees students pay to get loans or special fees banks charged to students with bank accounts. Also the administration plans to eliminate automatic billing for textbooks and ban schools from pocketing leftover money on student's meal plans.

The Department of Interior announced $120 million in investments to help boost Climate Resilience in Tribal Communities. The money will support 146 projects effecting over 100 tribes. This comes on top of $440 million already spent on tribal climate resilience by the administration so far

The Department of Energy announced $750 million dollars in investment in clean hydrogen power. This will go to 52 projects across 24 states. As part of the administration's climate goals the DoE plans to bring low to zero carbon hydrogen production to 10 million metric tons by 2030, and the cost of hydrogen to $1 per kilogram of hydrogen produced by 2031.

The Department of Energy has offered a 2.3 billion dollar loan to build a lithium processing plant in Nevada. Lithium is the key component in rechargeable batteries used it electric vehicles. Currently 95% of the world's lithium comes from just 4 countries, Australia, Chile, China and Argentina. Only about 1% of the US' lithium needs are met by domestic production. When completed the processing plant in Thacker Pass Nevada will produce enough lithium for 800,000 electric vehicle batteries a year.

The Department of Transportation is making available $1.2 billion in funds to reduce decrease pollution in transportation. Available in all 50 states, DC and Puerto Rico the funds will support projects by transportation authorities to lower their carbon emissions.

The Geothermal Energy Optimization Act was introduced in the US Senate. If passed the act will streamline the permitting process and help expand geothermal projects on public lands. This totally green energy currently accounts for just 0.4% of the US' engird usage but the Department of Energy estimates the potential geothermal energy supply is large enough to power the entire U.S. five times over.

The Justice for Breonna Taylor Act was introduced in the Senate banning No Knock Warrants nationwide

A bill was introduced in the House requiring the US Postal Service to cover the costs of any laid fees on bills the USPS failed to deliver on time

The Senate Confirmed 3 more Biden nominees to be life time federal Judges, Jasmine Yoon the first Asian-America federal judge in Virginia, Sunil Harjani in Illinois, and Melissa DuBose the first LGBTQ and first person of color to serve as a federal judge in Rhode Island. This brings the total number of Biden judges to 185

#Thanks Biden #Joe Biden #Democrats #politics #US politics #good news #nex benedict #abortion #taxes #climate change #climate action #tribal communities #lithium #electronic cars #trans rights #trans solidarity #judges

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 2 months

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“We have to be a nation that trusts women.”

March 15, 2024

ROBERT B. HUBBELL

The most significant political development on Thursday was the appearance by Vice President Kamala Harris at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Minnesota. Her appearance at a women’s healthcare clinic was the first by a U.S. vice president (or president) at a facility that provides abortion services. See CNN, Kamala Harris becomes first VP to visit abortion provider with Planned Parenthood visit.

The visit was part of Kamala Harris’s “Fight for Reproductive Freedoms” tour. She is taking the lead on an issue where she can be (and has been) a more effective and outspoken advocate than President Biden. Her leadership on the issue of reproductive liberty is a good development for Harris, Biden, and the American people.

V.P. Harris said, in part,

I’m here at this health care clinic to uplift the work that is happening in Minnesota as an example of what true leadership looks like. . . . The reason I’m here is because this is a health care crisis. Part of this health care crisis is the clinics like this that have had to shut down and what that has meant to leave no options with any reasonable geographic area for so many women who need this essential care.

Harris framed the issue as one that pitted politicians against women’s control over their bodies:

How dare these elected leaders believe they are in a better position to tell women what they need. To tell women what’s in their best interest. We have to be a nation that trusts women.

Harris’s visit was historic. But it also showcased Kamala Harris’s campaign skills, including her ability to connect with women and young people on the campaign trail. For readers who remember Kamala Harris only from the debate stage in 2020, I urge you to watch a few minutes of her appearance in Minnesota.

No soaring rhetoric. No shouting. No anger. No pep rallies. Instead—like Joe Biden—she is a relatable candidate speaking to the American people about their needs, wants, and fears.

I was impressed and by Kamala Harris’s appearance in Minnasota, and I hope you will be, too.

But there is more. In a similar speech last week in Arizona, Kamala Harris touched on a matter of extreme urgency for all women and men: The plan by religious fundamentalist extremists to make contraception illegal.

In Arizona, Harris said,

And right now, other extremists, as you have heard and know, are in court trying to bring back a law from 1864 that would completely ban abortion in Arizona — 1864. Understand: 1864, before women had the right to vote, before women could own property, before Arizona was even admitted as a state.

So, the 2024 ballot will not only include access to abortion service, but access to contraception. See The Independent, Republicans are taking aim on contraception — and they’d rather you didn’t know.

In short, Kamala Harris is fast becoming the leading voice for reproductive liberty on the Biden-Harris team.

Readers sometimes send emails suggesting that Joe Biden replace Kamala Harris by appointing her to the Supreme Court or to serve as Attorney General in Biden’s next administration. When I question readers about their desire for a different vice presidential candidate, some say Harris is not “likable.” That (mis-)impression is an unfair hangover from her appearances on a debate stage with sixteen other Democratic candidates in 2020. Watch the video above if you still labor under that misapprehension.

Other readers say (wrongly) that Harris is not “ready” to be president if called upon to replace Biden. As I tell readers who raise that concern, she has more experience than did the following presidents when they began their first term: Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, John F. Kennedy, Donald Trump, George W. Bush, and Ronald Reagan. She has comparable experience to George H.W. Bush when he was elected president.

Biden and Harris are a formidable team. That fact will become increasingly apparent when Trump picks a V.P. candidate from a rogue’s gallery of sycophants willing to debase themselves by serving as running mate to an insurrectionist, coup-plotting, extortionist, document-stealing sexual abuser.

[Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter]

#women's rights #human rights #totalitarianism #Robert B. Hubbell #Robert B. Hubbell Newletter #Kamala Harris #women #reproductive rights

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mariacallous · 3 months

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Foreign Policy Situation Report: Munich Reacts to Navalny’s Death

On Friday, news broke that jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, a prominent critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, had died at the Polar Wolf penal colony in Russia, sending shockwaves through the security conference in Munich where many of Navalny’s friends and supporters, as well as his wife and top Biden administration officials, are convening.

“Upon hearing the horrible news, I didn’t know if I should have immediately flown to my family or speak out,” Yulia Navalnaya, his wife, said in a last-minute address to the MSC, right after U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris exited the stage. “But then I thought, ‘What would Alexei do?’ and I’m sure he would be here,” she added.

Navalnaya’s remarks were greeted with a standing ovation from the somber crowd. “If this is true, I want Putin and everyone around him to know that they will be held accountable for everything they did to our country, to my family,” Navalnaya said.

Confusion and shock. At first, there was confusion at the Hotel Bayerischer Hof where the MSC is taking place, as news alerts about a cryptic post from Russia’s prison service saying that the dissident felt unwell after a walk, lost consciousness, and later died began circulating. In the hotel’s atrium, everyone’s necks craned down to look at their phones. Slowly, the grim realization of Navalny’s death set in.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” said Michael McFaul, the former U.S. ambassador to Russia, when a small gaggle of journalists informed him of the news. McFaul was a longtime friend of Navalny’s and had just come from visiting the family. “Navalny was my friend. Forgive me for not being able to answer journalists’ questions dispassionately right now,” he wrote later in a post on X.

Navalny, a former lawyer who highlighted Kremlin corruption on a popular blog before he entered opposition politics more than two decades ago, survived a previous assassination attempt when he was poisoned by Russian security services with the chemical agent Novichok in August 2020.

For more on the opposition leader’s life and his impact on Russia’s besieged democratic movement, read our colleague Amy Mackinnon’s obituary of Navalny.

“Russia is responsible.” Harris, the keynote speaker in Munich, said the Biden administration was still working to confirm whether Navalny had indeed died. “Whatever story they tell, let us be clear: Russia is responsible,” Harris said.

The question now is what comes next. In 2021, U.S. President Joe Biden warned Putin that Russia would face “devastating” consequences if Navalny died in prison. Already, reporters here have asked U.S. officials about what Washington’s response will be.

Biden gave his initial answer later in the day at the White House, and it’s one that’s not likely to satisfy Navalny’s incensed friends and supporters.

“That was three years ago. In the meantime, they faced a hell of a lot of consequences,” Biden said in response to questions about his 2021 comments. He cited steep Russian casualty figures in Ukraine and “great sanctions across the board.”

When asked if he’d roll out new sanctions on Russia, Biden gave a vague answer: “We’re looking at a whole number of options. That’s all I’ll say right now.”

Lithuanian Defense Minister Arvydas Anusauskas told SitRep that the West should work on tightening existing sanctions on Russia and put more secondary sanctions in place so that countries such as India that are courting the West while still buying Russian oil can no longer buy crude from the Kremlin.

U.K. Foreign Secretary David Cameron, meanwhile, echoed comments from Navalny’s wife, saying, “Putin should be accountable for what has happened. No one should doubt the dreadful nature of his regime.”

Beyond Navalny. After her comments about the Russian opposition leader’s death, Harris used her podium at Munich to make an election-year pitch for the Biden administration’s foreign policy, especially in the wake of former U.S. President Donald Trump’s comments over the weekend that he would let the Russians “do whatever the hell they want” to NATO allies who are slow to boost defense spending.

(NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said this week that 18 of 31 NATO member states will hit the alliance’s target of spending the equivalent of 2 percent of GDP on defense.)

Harris even had a campaign bumper sticker line ready-made for the moment. “Isolation is not insulation,” she said to the critics of the Biden administration’s globally minded foreign policy. “America cannot retreat. America must stand strong for democracy.”

In the eyes of most MSC conferencegoers, however, there’s a big, Congress-sized roadblock standing in the way of that.

The next tranche of $60 billion in U.S. military aid to Ukraine, as well as aid for Israel and Taiwan, is stalled in Congress as the House of Representatives goes on recess until the end of the month. Harris and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken thus face an uphill battle in trying to reassure allies about those U.S. commitments.

Both Harris and Blinken are set to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky tomorrow. “We will work to secure critical weapons and resources that Ukraine badly needs,” Harris said. “The failure to do so would be a gift to Vladimir Putin.”

“If we stand by while an aggressor invades its neighbor with impunity, they will keep going,” Harris added. “And in the case of Putin, that means all of Europe will be threatened.”

Back at the White House, Biden was less diplomatic about the congressional impasse.

“It’s about time they step up now, don’t you think?” he said of Congress. “Instead of going on a two-week vacation? … Two weeks! What are they thinking? My God, this is bizarre, and it’s just reinforcing all the concern and almost—I won’t say panic—but real concern about the United States being a reliable ally.”

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azspot · 7 months

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Finally, while the Republicans were making history on the House side of the U.S. Capitol, the Democrats were making history on the Senate side. Vice President Kamala Harris swore into office Senator Laphonza Butler to complete the term of Senator Dianne Feinstein, which ends next year. Before her nomination, Butler was the president of EMILYs List, a political action committee dedicated to electing Democratic female candidates who back reproductive rights to office, and has advised a number of high-profile political campaigns, including that of Harris in 2020.

Heather Cox Richardson

#democrats

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meret118 · 7 months

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Longtime Democratic advisor and labor leader Laphonza Butler will be California’s next U.S. Senator, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office confirmed late Sunday. She will become the second openly lesbian person to serve in the U.S. Senate and only the third Black woman.

Butler, currently president of the pro-choice women’s fundraising group EMILY’S List, will fill the seat left empty by Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s death Thursday at the age of 90. She has advised Vice President Kamala Harris and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and has close ties to Newsom’s inner circle.

. . .

It was assumed that Newsom would ask an appointee not to run – but advisers to the governors said that he did not ask Butler to promise not to run.

#News

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kp777 · 8 months

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By Jessica Corbett

Common Dreams

Sept. 1, 2023

"We hope this move locks in real action on ending the era of fossil fuels in California, and spurs other regions, states, and countries to join forces in tackling the root cause of the climate crisis," said one activist.

Climate campaigners in California and beyond celebrated on Friday after the state Legislature affirmed its support for a resolution that urges the U.S. government to join a worldwide effort to develop "a fossil fuel nonproliferation treaty as an international mechanism to manage a global transition away from coal, oil, and gas."

Senate Joint Resolution 2 also endorses what advocates call a "just transition," stating that "California affirms the need for a plan to phase out existing fossil fuel production that prioritizes the most impacted workers and local government services with short- and long-term investments that include enforceable labor standards, such as prevailing wages, apprenticeship opportunities, and project labor agreements, to protect workers and communities."

California Senate Majority Whip Lena Gonzalez (D-33), who spearheaded SJR 2, declared Friday that "it is essential that we commit once and for all to ending our reliance on fossil fuels. People around the world, especially low-income people of color, are suffering the adverse health impacts of fossil fuel pollution, from asthma to cancer. The recent devastating fires and hurricanes emphasize the urgency of taking action, to prevent further extreme weather changes."

"The science has been clear for decades—fossil fuels are responsible for the climate crisis," she added. "We can prevent further harm to our communities, and that is why I am proud that California has now been added to the growing list of governments endorsing the fossil fuel nonproliferation treaty. It is time for our nation to be a part of the solution, to forge strong unity and commitment to phasing out the use of fossil fuels."

According to its text, SJR 2 will be sent to Democratic U.S. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris—who are seeking reelection next year—as well as the top Democrats and Republicans in Congress, California's congressional delegation, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, every mayor in the state, the United Nations secretary-general, and the U.N. high commissioner for human rights.

The resolution was sponsored by the Stand.earth initiative Stand Against Fossil Fuel Expansion (SAFE) Cities and the Indigenous Environmental Network, whose executive director, Tom Goldtooth, said in a statement Friday that "this decision of the state of California is a commitment to take down the single biggest contributor to the climate crisis: the fossil fuel industry."

"California joins the millions of voices across Turtle Island and Mother Earth calling on Biden to follow in the footsteps of our Pacific Island brothers and sisters from the small island states and negotiate a mandate for a fossil fuel nonproliferation treaty," he noted. "As the state with the highest population of Indigenous peoples in the country, it is important to pass legislation that would put a halt to the devastation and destruction of the compounding effects of climate change caused by fossil fuels."

"This decision of the state of California is a commitment to take down the single biggest contributor to the climate crisis: the fossil fuel industry."

Along with other local, regional, and national governments, the demand for such a treaty is backed by the European Parliament, the World Health Organization, faith and civil society groups, and individuals across the globe, including Nobel laureates, scientists, and youth leaders.

If California were a country, it would be the fifth-largest economy in the world in terms of gross domestic product, after the full United States, China, Japan, and Germany. The U.S. state is the largest economy to embrace the treaty call so far, according to Alex Rafalowicz, executive director of the Fossil Fuel Nonproliferation Treaty Initiative.

Rafalowicz said in a statement Friday that by supporting the treaty proposal, "California sets a powerful example to the international community, underscoring the urgency of fast-tracking an equitable transition away from oil, gas, and coal. This move will catalyze a ripple effect that reaches far beyond state borders."

"By aligning its immense economic and cultural influence with the fossil fuel treaty proposal, California can accelerate its own energy transition, inspiring global cooperation to safeguard our planet and communities," the campaigner continued. "We hope this move locks in real action on ending the era of fossil fuels in California, and spurs other regions, states, and countries to join forces in tackling the root cause of the climate crisis: the production of coal, oil, and gas."

Last December, California regulators approved a blueprint to cut planet-heating emissions by 85% and get the state to carbon neutrality by 2045. Newsom said at the time that "California is leading the world's most significant economic transformation since the Industrial Revolution—we're cutting pollution, turning the page on fossil fuels, and creating millions of new jobs." However, activists have called on him and other state leaders to go further.

Nathan Taft, a California resident and senior digital campaigner for SAFE Cities, said Friday that "Los Angeles was one of the first cities in the world to endorse the fossil fuel treaty, and it's great to see California following its lead by becoming one of the first subnational governments joining this movement to address the climate crisis with the scale and urgency required."

"At the same time, California must follow this historic resolution with concrete policies that protect its residents and the climate from fossil fuels," Taft asserted. "At a bare minimum, California should stop issuing new fossil fuel permits, divest its massive pensions from fossil fuels, and implement all-electric building codes."

Central California Environmental Justice Network oil and gas director Cesar Aguirre similarly argued that the state's support for the treaty "only holds weight if we see meaningful protections come from it" and "no new neighborhood drilling should be the first priority."

The vote in California comes as much of the Northern Hemisphere has endured a summer of extreme heat connected to human-caused global warming and as parties to the 2015 Paris agreement prepare for COP28, a U.N. climate summit hosted by the United Arab Emirates in November.

As Common Dreams reported last November, during COP27 in Egypt, Kausea Natano, prime minister of the Pacific nation Tuvalu, proposed a fossil fuel nonproliferation treaty, telling those gathered that "we all know that the leading cause of climate crisis is fossil fuels."

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

#california #fossil fuel nonproliferation treaty #fossil fuels #climate crisis #climate change

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xipiti · 7 months

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“An advocate for women and girls, a second-generation fighter for working people, and a trusted adviser to Vice President Harris, Laphonza Butler represents the best of California, and she’ll represent us proudly in the United States Senate,” Newsom said in a written statement.

“As we mourn the enormous loss of Senator Feinstein, the very freedoms she fought for — reproductive freedom, equal protection, and safety from gun violence — have never been under greater assault. Laphonza will carry the baton left by Senator Feinstein, continue to break glass ceilings, and fight for all Californians in Washington D.C.”

#laphonza butler #dianne feinstein

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90363462 · 1 year

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Georgia Senate Candidates Raphael Warnock and Herschel Walker Will Advance to a December Runoff Election

Denver Sean

Georgia Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and Republican challenger Herschel Walker will face off again in a runoff election next month to determine who wins the race.

via People:

The candidates came in neck-and-neck in Tuesday’s general election, with neither reaching the required 50% vote threshold to win the race outright, as 98% of ballots were counted.

Georgia secretary of state’s chief operating officer Gabriel Sterling had announced via Twitter Wednesday that a two-round system would be likely.

“While county officials are still doing the detailed work on counting the votes, we feel it is safe to say there will be a runoff for the U.S. Senate here in Georgia,” Sterling said, adding that it would be slated for Dec. 6.

Sen. Warnock, 53, has been down the runoff road before, as the same situation occurred in 2020. The reverend then won during round two in Jan. 2021. It was the first time since 2014 that Democrats gained control of the state, as 35-year-old Jonathan Ossoff also won for the Democratic Party that year.

Making history as the state’s first Black senator, Warnock thanked voters during his victory speech last year. “Tonight, we proved that with hope, hard work, and the people by our side, anything is possible,” he said of his historic win.

The 2020 campaigns drew immense funding and attracted the likes of President-elect Joe Biden, former Presidents Donald Trump and Barack Obama, former first lady Michelle Obama, Vice President Mike Pence, and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, who all appeared at campaign events in-person or virtually to rally voters.

This year, President Obama hit the campaign trail once again to urge voters to help keep Democrats in office.

“I am counting on you to stay here through the evening, and I’m counting on you to do what is necessary if we must to fight on [in] December,” Sen. Ossoff recently urged supporters at Warnock’s campaign HQ in Atlanta in the case of a second face-off.

Sen. Warnock’s opponent this time around, republican candidate Walker, 60, a college football hall-of-famer out of University of Georgia, announced his candidacy for the U.S. Senate last summer, and won Georgia’s Republican Senate primary in May.

“I will stand up for conservative values and get our country moving in the right direction,” he said at the time. “I’m a kid from a small town in Georgia who lived the American Dream and I’m ready to fight to keep that dream alive for you too.”

It was a tight race for Sen. Warnock and Walker for most of the midterm election.

The Georgia runoff will see the two go head to head again, this time without a third-party candidate on the ticket to siphon off votes. In the month before the follow-up election, the candidates will battle to woo the approximately 80,000 Georgians who voted Libertarian.

Jesus, Georgia. Get it together. Vote Warnock.

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ridenwithbiden · 1 year

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ANOTHER TWITLER...

LOSER !!!

#KariLake #DonTheCOn #ElectionDeniers #LOSERS

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bllsbailey · 17 hours

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Joe Biden Hands Out Obamacare to Illegal Immigrants

The Biden Administration unveiled plans to give out Obamacare to tens of thousands of illegal immigrants who entered the United States as minors as part of the 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

Under the initiative, more than 100,000 illegal immigrants will be granted free healthcare under the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. The so-called “Dreamers” will be able to enroll in the program’s health care system beginning next year.

Previously, illegal aliens have been barred from taking advantage of Obamacare. However, a new rule published by the Biden Administration will change that, which the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) calls "technical modifications" to the definition of "lawfully present” that will determine who is eligible.

Illegal aliens will be able to receive federal subsidies based on their level of income, which can qualify them for receiving free medical coverage.

On November 1, eligible participants will be able to access tax breaks— just days before the presidential election.

“'I'm proud of the contributions of Dreamers to our country and committed to providing Dreamers the support they need to succeed,” Biden said on Friday. “That’s why I’ve previously directed the Department of Homeland Security to take all appropriate actions to ‘preserve and fortify’ DACA. And that’s why today we are taking this historic step to ensure that DACA recipients have the same access to health care through the Affordable Care Act as their neighbors.”

The Trump campaign criticized the move, calling it harmful to “Black Americans, Hispanic Americans, and union workers” whose “jobs and public resources are stolen by people who illegally entered our country.”

“Thanks to Bidenomics, inflation continues to increase, job growth is slowing down, unemployment is at the highest level in two years, and more foreign-born workers are joining the labor force than native-born citizens. Yet Joe Biden continues to force hardworking, tax-paying, struggling Americans to pay for the housing, welfare, and now the healthcare of illegal immigrants,” Karoline Leavitt, Trump campaign press secretary.

Vice President Kamala Harris also urged Congress to take action in making the rule a permanent change.

DACA was introduced during the Obama-Biden Administration to protect illegal immigrants who were brought to the U.S. by their parents as minors from deportations and to allow them to work legally in the U.S.

When Obamacare was initially introduced, former President Obama faced heat from Republican lawmakers who accused him of using it as a way to give illegal immigrants free healthcare.

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 3 months

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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

February 1, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

FEB 2, 2024

One of the biggest stories of 2023 is that the U.S. economy grew faster than any other economy in the Group of 7 nations, made up of democratic countries with the world’s largest advanced economies. By a lot. The International Monetary Fund yesterday reported that the U.S. gross domestic product—the way countries estimate their productivity—grew by 2.5%, significantly higher than the GDP of the next country on the list: Japan, at 1.9%.

IMF economists predict U.S. growth next year of 2.1%, again, higher than all the other G7 countries. The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta projects growth of 4.2% in the first quarter of 2024.

Every time I write about the booming economy, people accurately point out that these numbers don’t necessarily reflect the experiences of everyone. But they have enormous political implications.

President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen, and the Democrats embraced the idea that using the government to support ordinary Americans—those on the “demand” side of the economy—would nurture strong economic growth. Republicans have insisted since the 1980s that the way to expand the economy is the opposite: to invest in the “supply side,” investors who use their capital to build businesses.

In the first two years of the Biden-Harris administration, while the Democrats had control of the House and Senate, they passed a range of laws to boost American manufacturing, rebuild infrastructure, protect consumers, and so on. They did so almost entirely with Democratic votes, as Republicans insisted that such investments would destroy growth, in part through inflation.

Now that the laws are beginning to take effect, their results have proved that demand-side economic policies like those in place between 1933 and 1981, when President Ronald Reagan ushered in supply-side economics, work. Even inflation, which ran high, appears to have been driven by supply chain issues, as the administration said, and by “greedflation,” in which corporations raised prices far beyond cost increases, padding payouts for their shareholders.

The demonstration that the Democrats’ policies work has put Republicans in an awkward spot. Projects funded by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, also known as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, are so popular that Republicans are claiming credit for new projects or, as Representative Maria Elvira Salazar (R-FL) did on Sunday, claiming they don’t remember how they voted on the infrastructure measure and other popular bills like the CHIPS and Science Act (she voted no). When the infrastructure measure passed in 2021, just 13 House Republicans supported it.

Today, Medicare sent its initial offers to the drug companies that manufacture the first ten drugs for which the government will negotiate prices under the Inflation Reduction Act, another hugely popular measure that passed without Republican votes. The Republicans have called for repealing this act, but their stance against what they have insisted is “socialized medicine” is showing signs of softening. In Politico yesterday, Megan Messerly noted that in three Republican-dominated states—Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi—House speakers are saying they are now open to the idea of expanding healthcare through Medicaid expansion.

In another sign that some Republicans recognize that the Democrats’ economic policies are popular, the House last night passed bipartisan tax legislation that expanded the Child Tax Credit, which had expired last year after Senate Republicans refused to extend it. Democrats still provided most of the yea votes—188 to 169—and Republicans most of the nays—47 to 23—but, together with a tax cut for businesses in the bill, the measure was a rare bipartisan victory. If it passes the Senate, it is expected to lift at least half a million children out of poverty and help about 5 million more.

But Republicans have a personnel problem as well as a policy problem. Since the 1980s, party leaders have maintained that the federal government needs to be slashed, and their determination to just say no has elevated lawmakers whose skill set features obstruction rather than the negotiation required to pass bills. Their goal is to stay in power to stop legislation from passing.

Yesterday, for example, Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA), who sits on the Senate Finance Committee and used to chair it, told a reporter not to have too much faith that the child tax credit measure would pass the Senate, where Republicans can kill it with the filibuster. “Passing a tax bill that makes the president look good…means he could be reelected, and then we won’t extend the 2017 tax cuts,” Grassley said.

At the same time, the rise of right-wing media, which rewards extremism, has upended the relationship between lawmakers and voters. In CNN yesterday, Oliver Darcy explained that “the incentive structure in conservative politics has gone awry. The irresponsible and dishonest stars of the right-wing media kingdom are motivated by vastly different goals than those who are actually trying to advance conservative causes, get Republicans elected, and then ultimately govern in office.”

Right-wing influencers want views and shares, which translate to more money and power, Darcy wrote. So they spread “increasingly outlandish, attention-grabbing junk,” and more established outlets tag along out of fear they will lose their audience. But those influencers and media hosts don’t have to govern, and the anger they generate in the base makes it hard for anyone else to, either.

This dynamic has shown up dramatically in the House Republicans’ refusal to consider a proposed border measure on which a bipartisan group of senators had worked for four months because Trump and his extremist base turned against the idea—one that Republicans initially demanded.

Since they took control of the House in 2023, House Republicans have been able to conduct almost no business as the extremists are essentially refusing to govern unless all their demands are met. Rather than lawmaking, they are passing extremist bills to signal to their base, holding hearings to push their talking points, and trying to find excuses to impeach the president and Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas.

Yesterday the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal, which is firmly on the right, warned House Republicans that “Impeaching Mayorkas Achieves Nothing” other than “political symbolism,” and urged them to work to get a border bill passed. “Grandstanding is easier than governing, and Republicans have to decide whether to accomplish anything other than impeaching Democrats,” it said.

Today in the Washington Post, Jennifer Rubin called the Republicans’ behavior “nihilism and performative politics.”

On CNN this morning, Representative Dan Goldman (D-NY) identified the increasing isolation of the MAGA Republicans from a democratic government. “Here we are both on immigration and now on this tax bill where President Biden and a bipartisan group of Congress are trying to actually solve problems for the American people,” Goldman said, “and Chuck Grassley, Donald Trump, Mike Johnson—they are trying to kill solutions just for political gain."

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#economic news #economic policy #Letters From An American #Heather Cox Richardson #history #WAPO #Wall Street Journal #supply side economics #the demand side #greedflation #extremist Republicans

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mariacallous · 1 year

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Meduza's The Beet: Dispatch from Dnipro

Hello, and welcome back to The Beet!

I’m Eilish Hart, the editor of this weekly dispatch from Meduza that brings original reporting from across Eurasia directly to your inbox. Last week’s story about Latvia’s shifting political winds is now available on our website. But you’ve probably already read it, because you’re a subscriber, right? If not, it’s never too late to sign up.

It’s been a bumper week for important appearances and remarks. At the Munich Security Conference last weekend, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris formally accused Russia of crimes against humanity, and the once-dithering German Chancellor Olaf Scholz urged Ukraine’s allies to supply more tanks and “prepare for a long war.” On Monday, Joe Biden unexpectedlyturned up in Kyiv, marking the first visit of a U.S. president to Ukraine in 15 years. The next day, Vladimir Putin gave a predictably bellicose state-of-the-nation speech, which contained nothing really new, aside from an announcement that Russia is “suspending” its role in the New START nuclear arms control treaty. Just hours later, Biden took to the stage outside Warsaw’s Royal Castle to reiterate NATO’s unity and America’s unwavering support for Ukraine.

With all of these international heavy weights grabbing headlines and airtime, it’s important not to lose sight of the situation on ground in Ukraine. Russia’s full-scale invasion, which Moscow reportedly expected to last just three days but is now a year old, continues to take a massive human toll. Wagner Group mercenaries are closing in on the embattled city of Bakhmut, as the Ukrainian authorities try to persuade the city’s 5,000 remaining residents to evacuate. While Putin delivered his address on Tuesday, Russian forces shelled central Kherson, killing five people and injuring 16 more in a city Moscow claims for itself but does not control.

The total confirmed number of civilians killed since February 2022 — 8,000 per the latest U.N. Human Rights Office data — is undoubtedly a fraction of the souls lost in Russia’s invasion. A December 2022 Associated Press investigation identified more than 10,000 new graves in Mariupol alone, but again this is an incomplete picture: the city’s exiled municipal government estimated months ago that at least 25,000 residents were killed during the Russian siege, and AP journalists learned that the real death toll might be three times higher. More than eight million Ukrainians have fled abroad as refugees, and another 5.3 million people are internally displaced. At least 153,000 have sought refuge in Dnipro, a city that just yesterday marked 40 days since a Russian airstrike on a residential building killed 46 people and left hundreds without a roof over their heads. In a dispatch for The Beet, journalist Aliide Naylor reports on how “Ukraine’s outpost” and its people are faring after one year of all-out war.

Dispatch from Dnipro

By Aliide Naylor

The Dnipro Metallurgical Plant was once a behemoth of Soviet production. Founded in the late 19th century, it was nationalized after the Bolsheviks took over the city and imposed the new regime. In an old medical building on the factory grounds, food supplies from the 1980s and red-and-orange Soviet posters still clutter the dusty basement. But upstairs its walls are covered in the tiny yellow-and-blue handprints of children from Mariupol, Donetsk, Melitopol, and other war-torn Ukrainian cities, who frolic in a foam-carpeted play area while their parents try not to disintegrate from the sheer scale of their losses.

“We are left without a past,” says 62-year-old Rimma Dorosheva from northern Donetsk, as she knits woolen socks for soldiers fighting on the frontline. Her own children live abroad, in Israel. She fled her home last March, leaving behind treasured memories. “Photographs of our children, our photographs, photographs of our parents, the graves of our parents on the other side. Now everything is unknown.”

“Tanya’s house was completely burned down,” Dorosheva continues, gesturing to a nearby woman. “A direct hit, right in front of her eyes. She stood and watched her house, which she had been building all her life with her husband, burn.” Dorosheva tries to wave Tanya over, but the woman hurries away. “She cries all the time,” Dorosheva says.

Dnipro has become a hub for evacuees from frontline cities, with Mariupol, Kherson, Kharkiv, and Donetsk all within a 320-kilometer (200-mile) radius. The Dnipro Metallurgical Plant is one of several factory buildings, schools, and other spaces converted into refugee housing across the city, which had a pre-war population of around one million. Its more than 150 residents are overwhelmingly women, according to Anna Datsenko and Lena Lagoda, the events organizer and project manager at the shelter, respectively. “Seventy percent are women and children,” says Lagoda. “Twenty to thirty percent are men.”

While soldiers also return to the city for medical treatment, the men here are mostly those who couldn’t fight in the first place — for example, due to medical conditions. The center is well equipped with washing machines, proper windows, and refrigerators, making it one of the better residences available to the displaced. “We receive very good support from many charitable foundations,” Lagoda explains. “Windows, beds, pillows — everything in order to make people more comfortable.” They’ve even managed to procure a large boiler. “We have been striving for a long time to be this warm,” she says.

Today, the center is hosting something of a party: a recently displaced woman from Bakhmut knits a scarf meant for a soldier at the front, while other women have made delicious varenyky, creamy fruit tarts, and layered honey cake. But keeping spirits high remains tough. “You’re a hostage of the situation you’re in,” a woman named Larysa says tearfully. “When you strove for what you had all your life and are left with nothing, […] you can’t sugarcoat it.”

‘We’d need to live in a bomb shelter’

Despite the relative safety, Dnipro’s residents still have to endure air-raid sirens several times a day. “If we constantly responded to the alarms, we’d need to live in a bomb shelter,” says Dorosheva, whose daughter gave her a whistle to blow in case she ever gets trapped under rubble. Over the course of a single day reporting this story, the city had six different air-raid alerts responding to threats from operational-tactical aviation and rocket launches from the Black Sea.

Dnipro has suffered scores of missile attacks over the course of Russia’s full-scale invasion. Just last month, the city’s relative sense of security was upended when a missile slammed into a nine-story apartment block, tearing a massive crater through its core. Birds now fly in the empty space where people once lived. At least 46 died, and more than 460 emergency workers participated in the subsequent search-and-rescue operations. Cleanup is still ongoing.

“A rocket can hit here, there, anywhere,” says 57-year-old Dnipro resident Sergey as he surveys the ruins of the famous Yellow Kitchen. “No one is immune from this.” The missile passed just 100 meters (109 yards) from his friend’s home, Sergey says.“[The] glass flew out of the balcony [from the] force of the impact.” At least one refugee from eastern Ukraine was among the wounded: psychologist Olha Botvinova, who fled Donetsk in 2014 and then Kherson last spring, before ending up in Dnipro. “We’re starting again for the third time,” she told Deutsche Welle after surviving the blast.

The city plans to turn the area into a memorial square officially – something it’s already become organically as scattered stacks of bright, damp toys and flowers salute the space. Every day, people like Sergey come to stand and just look at the shattered building. Rebuilding the two destroyed sections and returning residents to their homes would only force them to relive the pain of the tragedy, Dnipro Mayor Borys Filatov said in an interview. “How can you live near the place where your loved ones, relatives, friends, acquaintances died, and where there will always be a place of mourning? It will be hard for us to go back there,” resident Vladyslav Solovyov told ZN.UA.

The city pulled together in the midst of the crisis. “[It] became a kind of act of unification of all Dnipro residents and residents of other cities,” says Natalya Kozhina, the program director of the Dnipro-based Human Rights Group Sich. Ordinary citizens and volunteers helped with “debris removal, hot drinks, food, warm clothes, the collection of funds for the victims, [and providing] accommodation for the night,” Kozhina explains. “It’s impossible to list everything that was done.”

Dnipro residents have become experts at self-organizing, completely eschewing any fears they might have (few who opted to stay in Dnipro say they are scared) and helping refugees and frontline soldiers in whatever ways they can.

In another factory in the city’s southeast, a group of 15 or so friends pour makeshift candles, chipping away at giant slabs of paraffin wax (their main expense) and then melting it down to submerge cardboard spiraled inside old food cans. They started this project around a month ago, just in their kitchens, before expanding the operation. They make around 350 candles every four hours, and volunteers take them to the frontlines by car.

Grassroots initiatives like these are Ukraine’s backbone today. “In Kyiv, in every big building, there’s a place on the first floor where everyone can bring their [cans] to make candles,” says 31-year-old Yefim who helps his mother, Viktoria, and her friends with the project. “We have to help, everybody helps if they can,” he continues. “We volunteer only because we want [to] — it’s not like some government organization.” Dnipro, he adds, is “like a small country” — a special type of “character” lives here.

Ukraine’s outpost

The flow of people in and out of Dnipro is almost normal. It’s a city constantly in flux. According to historian Andrii Portnov, who grew up here and authored Dnipro: An Entangled History of a European City, Dnipro has been a city of migrants “for centuries.”

The Dnipro River, which cleaves Ukraine in half, was a key 16th-century trade route, and the city has attracted people from all over Europe since the late 18th century. “Then we have the First World War, when the city hosted a lot of refugees from the Western, let’s say, regions of the Russian Empire, and then the Second World War — so people were evacuated, and then went back,” Portnov explains. During the Nazi occupation, more than 20,000 of the city’s Jews were shot, but today Dnipro is home to one of the largest Jewish populations in Ukraine.

Even the city’s name isn’t fixed. Previously known as Yekaterinoslav and then Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine’s parliament renamed it Dnipro only in 2016, in a concerted effort to break from the old Soviet identity imposed in the 1920s. Dnipropetrovsk — a rocket and missile manufacturing center — was off-limits to foreigners and even people from other parts of the USSR. The KGB maintained the highest possible level of secrecy over the “rocket city,” and its special status brought both an aura of mystery and very Soviet uniformity. Little information left the city, and foreign influence was kept to a minimum. Today, the local aerospace companies Pivdenmash and Pivdenne (among others) are Ukrainian state-owned and still in operation. Russian cruise missiles hit one plant last July, killing three people.

Twelve months into Russia’s full-scale invasion, some of the fiercest battles are raging east of the Dnipro River. Its historic rapids, where granite bedrock splits the deep water into fast flowing branches, gush around some 60 different islets and flow directly into the Zaporizhzhia region, where the Kakhovka Reservoir — which Russian forces are now reportedly draining — cools Europe’s largest nuclear power plant and provides locals with a vital source of drinking water. Further downstream still, it passes through Nikopol — the site of heavy artillery strikes this past week. While refugees have flocked to Dnipro from Ukraine’s eastern regions, local soldiers and volunteers trickle back in knowing that their city is very much on the frontlines; the Dnipro-Holovnyi railway station swarms with people in camo, including one man on flimsy crutches carefully picking his way through the ice, one foot wrapped in a thick, knitted sock.

The city’s wealth, plentiful hospitals, and proximity to Russia-occupied territories have granted it the moniker of “Ukraine’s outpost.”

“People from Dnipro went first — [they were] the first line of soldiers [in 2014] because they were very aware of this dangerous situation,” says journalist Olena Andriushchenko, the author of a forthcoming book about wartime Dnipro. She recalls Russia’s more covert invasion after the Euromaidan Revolution in 2014, and the subsequent influx of internally displaced persons. “We started to receive a lot of refugees, and we understood that it’s very serious and we need to protect our nationality, our identity,” Andriushchenko says. Pro-Russia political movements actually lost support in parts of Ukraine, and the weaker central government back then meant that local politicians could take the reins.

The political and business elites carved out a new path for the city (Dnipro produced top Ukrainian oligarchs such as Victor Pinchuk and former Governor Ihor Kolomoisky). They “clearly understood that their own economic future could be more or less safe only in Ukraine,” says Portnov. Kolomoisky and Filatov enjoyed a notoriously close relationship as former business partners, and both personally bankrolled volunteer battalions, Politico Europe reported last year. Researcher Olena Ishchenko even claims that “Kolomoisky was the guarantor of the city’s stability.” (The U.S. sanctioned Kolomoiskiy in 2021, and he was recently targeted in nationwide anti-corruption raids.)

While the elite’s political alignment was clear, grassroots support cemented it further still. Local soccer fans were broadly pro-Euromaidan, and Dnipro residents began expressing their Ukrainian identity more openly and proudly. “[They] started to wear Ukraine’s symbols. [...] I saw a lot of Ukrainian flags on balconies,” Andriushchenko recalls. Today, even those who grew up speaking Russian are making deliberate efforts to speak Ukrainian. “A lot of people, especially old people, spoke Russian, and it was hard for them to change [languages]. But still, they started to speak Ukrainian, and it was impressive,” says Andriushchenko.

The shift is most prominently embodied in the city’s giant Hotel Parus — an unfinished Brezhnev-era structure that has a massive blue-and-yellow trident (Ukraine’s coat of arms) splashed across its façade. Dnipro is also home to Ukraine’s first museum dedicated to the war in the Donbas and has an avenue commemorating the Heavenly Hundred who died on Kyiv’s Independence Square in February 2014. This February 20, city officials came to lay flowers of varying shades of blue and yellow at the Heavenly Hundred memorial.

“Until recently, those new places somehow coexisted with [primarily] Soviet memorials,” says Portnov. Most of Dnipro’s monuments and museums were constructed after World War II, he explains, and there is almost nothing left from the pre-Soviet period. Now, however, many of the city’s Soviet-era monuments have been removed. Statues of writer Maxim Gorky and pilot Valery Chkalov were carefully dismantled last December, in stark contrast to the toppling of the massive Vladimir Lenin monument in the city’s center in 2014.

Nine years later, there’s simply a wide-open space where the Russian revolutionary once stood. But perhaps a tabula rasa suits this city best. With such a diverse and collectively motivated population, this is one of its strengths — shades of grey in a country upon which the Kremlin has attempted to impose black-and-white identities. “It’s not [a] city that wants to tell you or me its history,” Portnov concludes.

Rather, it’s emblematic of the “people’s war” that the entire country is fighting, no matter their roots. For refugees from Ukraine’s east, “one problem that unites us is that we’re here,” says Rimma Dorosheva from Donetsk. “And therefore we sort of understand each other.”

Thanks for reading!

If you enjoyed The Beet’s recent story about the Hungarian government’s cozy wartime relationship with Moscow, check out the latest episode of The Naked Pravda, Meduza in English’s podcast, for more on Russian influence in Hungary. Until next time,

Eilish

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thxnews · 2 months

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U.S.-Led AI Resolution Wins UN Approval

In an era where artificial intelligence (AI) stands on the precipice of defining the next generation of global technological evolution, the United Nations General Assembly's recent adoption of a resolution on AI, led by the United States and Vice President Kamala Harris, marks a watershed moment. This historic consensus reflects the commitment of the global community to harness AI's potential while safeguarding humanity against its risks.

The Drive for Global Consensus

At the heart of this groundbreaking resolution lies the principle that technology with a global impact necessitates global action. Vice President Harris, echoing the sentiments of the Biden administration, underscored the resolution's significance in establishing clear international norms for AI's deployment and use. The initiative, co-sponsored by over 100 nations, signifies a collective endeavor to foster safe, secure, and trustworthy AI systems that benefit all of humanity equitably. The Path Forward: Equitable Benefits, Mitigated Risks AI's potential to propel sustainable development and achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is immense. However, the resolution also acknowledges the spectrum of risks associated with AI, from existential threats to biases that undermine individual and community rights. Vice President Harris's advocacy for AI to be in the public interest - protecting against harm while ensuring universal benefit - is a clarion call for a balanced approach to AI governance.

Harmonizing Technology with Human Rights

Central to the resolution's framework is the assertion that the development and use of AI systems must prioritize the protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms. This aligns with the Biden administration's vision of technology as a force for good, capable of advancing sustainable development while respecting individual dignity and rights. The Role of Global Collaboration The resolution emerged from extensive consultations with nations worldwide, embodying a collective vision for AI's role in sustainable development. It emphasizes the importance of international collaboration in ensuring that all nations, regardless of their development status, can access AI resources and expertise. This collaborative ethos extends to the need for ongoing engagement with various stakeholders, including the private sector, civil society, and academia, to realize AI's full potential responsibly.

U.S. Leadership and Future Directions

The United States, under the stewardship of President Biden and Vice President Harris, pledges to continue leading the charge in shaping the global discourse on emerging technologies like AI. The U.N. resolution lays a foundational stone for multilateral efforts in AI governance, aiming to leverage AI's transformative power for the common good while mitigating its risks. A Historic Leap Towards a Safer AI Future The UN General Assembly's adoption of the U.S.-led resolution on AI marks a pivotal moment in the international community's approach to managing this powerful emerging technology. It represents a global consensus on the need for a framework that balances AI's vast potential for positive impact with the imperative to protect human rights and ensure equitable benefits. As AI continues to evolve, the principles set forth in this resolution will guide nations in harnessing this technology for sustainable development and the betterment of all humanity. Sources: THX News, US Department of State & The White House. Read the full article

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