Rep Omar: "Stop pretending we can't afford to house our homeless, heal planet, feed our children..."

[kpete]

Link to tweet

?s=20&t=J5_HqgJmPRZILTPZ9DqKOQ

Link to tweet

?s=20&t=Rk37A8jcCnoUvrlvB5zKoA

[ck4829]

1. K&R

[AllaN01Bear]

2. indeed. you can afford $10 million dollar super boats and high tec bang bangs but not us .

[Autumn]

3. We can easily end poverty. The politicians chose not to.

I love this woman. She tells it like it is.

[Alexander Of Assyria]

9. Yes. She does. Like it is. Like the Rich Media won't say or want her to say. My superhero.

[brooklynite]

4. And as an elected official, what will she do about it?

[Alexander Of Assyria]

7. She will voice her opinion, get others to agree and cast her single vote?

Ofc her opinion will not be carried much by Rich Media cause it’s a voice that Must Be Suppressed!

The voice of the people who are not rich…used to be waitresses, truck drivers, construction, etc……so The Rich are not amused by such people talking such trash.

[brooklynite]

10. She needs the "rich media" to convince other House and Senate members?

[Alexander Of Assyria]

15. Yes, many.

[Demsrule86]

42. Does she really think the it is the 'rich' media's job? Personally I think it is the job of

Congress to convince people that our policy has merit which of course it does. However, you have to understand what folks will support and what they won't support. That is called legislating.

[jaxexpat]

78. Most people will not support cold eggs and luke-warm coffee at breakfast.

It's simply unappealing and everyone agrees on that without prompting. The news one peruses while eating breakfast is, however, a consumable product of the "rich" media. Congress cannot change people's attitudes about a cold breakfast. Nor do they have much luck informing their constituency of anything which contradicts the media's chosen flavor of the day. Congress must, unfortunately, convince, cajole and influence the media if any of its ideas, even their own electability, are to see the light of day with some degree of accuracy. Democrats can continue to pretend this is not necessary as they have for decades now. That is how a party whose essential aspirations are perfectly in line with the vast majority of voters often finds itself thwarted by their antithesis in the most critical contests. The media is poised to spoon-feed information to people about the consumability of everything except, perhaps, their morning meal.

[Alexander Of Assyria]

82. Yes. All true. What do anyone know of the real news but what is fed to us by media?

Biden succeeding…and the GZP failing, one mass media spoon is always full, the other is empty.

[comradebillyboy]

8. Tweet tweet tweet. nt

[Autumn]

11. She's one of many elected officials. She's doing what she can do to call attention to poverty,

unlike many other politicians who don't give a fuck about people.

[Celerity]

47. so many tend to conveniently forget that communicating with & influencing the vox populi often leads

to more inspired/motivated voters electing more like-minded people, who then strengthen the chances of getting something positive done.

It also helps to engage with voters and gets them to often contact already elected politicians, thus putting positive pressure on that group.

The average US citizen is far too often woefully unaware of both the vast majority of legislation passed and also the foundational rationales behind it. Communicating with them (no matter what the medium is) is a way to both educate and bridge the apathy gap.

Social media posts that combine (whether directly or indirectly) to reach tens of millions of voters (potential and otherwise) are now a massive piece to the puzzle in both campaigning and legislating in the 2020's, whether some like it or not.

[Autumn]

48. I appreciate that fact that she and a few others are showing people what is possible but isn't being

done. I like your explanation, it's so explicit. But I also think that it's not so much that they forget as it is that they don't want it to happen. It's so much easier to get people to vote against someone or something than it is to have to produce results for the people to get their votes.

[ck4829]

14. How much time do you have?

https://projects.propublica.org/represent/members/O000173/bills-sponsored/117

There's her legislation she sponsored.

[Torchlight]

16. Many elected officials, including her, list policy positions on their websites.

You may be able to slake your curiosity there.

[brooklynite]

17. Not interested in their policy positions; interested in their accomplishments.

Tweeting campaign slogans to people who already support you doesn't seem to change much.

[Torchlight]

19. I found that what seems to be and what is are often miles apart.

Looking up answers to policy we're questioning or curious about appears a most rational course of action.

Unless you're simply wanting to argue points no one is making. In which case, I'll stop wasting your time.

[Arazi]

29. Here you go, easy to locate her record

12+ pages of legislation she’s sponsoring or co-sponsoring. As you know freshman MOC don’t typically have a long record yet, but she’s laying the groundwork

https://www.congress.gov/member/ilhan-omar/O000173

[lapucelle]

39. Yes, but is she an effective lawmaker like Nita Lowey or Carolyn Maloney?

Representative Omar was ranked 214th out of 240 Democrats for effectiveness in 116th Congress.


===============================================



https://thelawmakers.org/find-representatives
https://thelawmakers.org/find-representatives

[Arazi]

56. You're seriously comparing 20+ year MOC with a freshman?

Talk about moving the goalposts



At least she has her eyes, mind and talents trained on the right ideas.

[lapucelle]

60. Let's compare Representative Omar to the other Democratic freshman in her class.

Out of the 59 freshman Democratic members of the 116th Congress, Ilhan Omar ranked 53rd in effectiveness.




------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Let's compare Representative Omar to the top ranking Democratic freshman (ranked 8th out of all 240 House Democrats), Joe Neguse.



-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here's Elaine Lauria (ranked 10th out of 240).



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

And these are Lauran Underwood's stats. (This freshman is ranked 36th out of 240.)




-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Terminology

EXPECTATION: A legislator may either meet, exceed, or score below her expected LES in a given Congress.

LES: A summary measure that captures how successful a member of the House or Senate is at moving her agenda items. The average LES is 1.0.

PARTY RANK: The ranking of a House or Senate member's LES in comparison to all other members of her political party.

BENCHMARK: The expected LES of a member of the House or Senate given her party, tenure, and committee assignments.

https://thelawmakers.org/find-representatives

Methodology

https://thelawmakers.org/methodology

--------------------------------------------------------------

[I_UndergroundPanther]

66. compare ranking dems to ranking republicans I bet it is skewed

because of the wealthy. The greedy create the needy than complain about us.

[lapucelle]

67. What does that even mean? N/T

[Arazi]

85. Thanks. Tbh, I'm not fussed about her ranking atm

Give her 20 years and if she’s still doing badly then I’ll criticize.

I like her public positions and using her celebrity to bring these topics to the forefront of public consciousness.

There’s value there too

[lapucelle]

62. It's remarkable how well some Democratic freshman rank when compared to "20+ year MOCs".

Seriously!

From The Center for Effective Lawmaking:

High-Performing Freshmen
Another positive sign comes from the new freshmen lawmakers who are off to a promising start in their first two years, scoring in our “Exceeds Expectations” category in their first term in office. Relative to the 15 members on this list in the 115th Congress, the list of top performing freshmen in the 116th has expanded to 26 legislators. Research suggests that performance in a legislator’s freshman term is highly correlated with subsequent lawmaking effectiveness, as well as with their overall career trajectory.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Of the 96 freshmen in the 116th U.S. House of Representatives, we found that 25 exceeded expectations as lawmakers. Those freshmen scored in ways that reflected typical party differences, with majority-party Democrats outperforming minority-party Republicans.

Topping the list are Reps. Joe Neguse and Elaine Luria, both of whom were also featured on the top ten list for House Democrats.

Nearly all of the others had at least one of their sponsored bills become law. While some of those bills were commemorative in nature, Representatives Josh Harder and Lucy McBath each sponsored two substantive bills that became law. Among minority-party Republicans, Representatives Anthony Gonzalez and Michael Guest likewise each had two of their bills become law, but one of those was a commemorative law in each case.

https://thelawmakers.org/legislative-effectiveness-scores/highlights-from-the-new-116th-congress-legislative-effectiveness-scores

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Democratic] Freshmen “Exceeding Expectations” (116th Congress)

1. Rep. Joe Neguse (D-CO) 3.509
2. Rep. Elaine Luria (D-VA) 3.476
3. Rep. Lauren Underwood (D-IL) 2.443
4. Rep. Josh Harder (D-CA) 2.261
5. Rep. Jennifer Wexton (D-VA) 2.115
6. Rep. Mike Levin (D-CA) 2.102
7. Rep. Anthony Brindisi (D-NY) 2.034
8. Rep. Joe Cunningham (D-SC) 1.903
9. Rep. Max Rose (D-NY) 1.892
10. Rep. Lucy McBath (D-GA) 1.850
11. Rep. Andrew Kim (D-NJ) 1.846
12. Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-NJ) 1.759
13. Rep. Antonio Delgado (D-NY) 1.756
14. Rep. Ben McAdams (D-UT) 1.740
15. Rep. Dean Phillips (D-MN) 1.718
16. Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-PA) 1.678
17. Rep. Angie Craig (D-MN) 1.51
18. Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-TX) 1.507

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[mcar]

53. If only she could do something

Write something and present it - what could that be?

[Samrob]

73. She and a few others have tried but they keep getting slapped back from...well, you know who you are

[betsuni]

74. Examples? Like what? What does that mean?

[mcar]

81. They've tried what?

well, you know who you are

Please elaborate. Who am I?

[Alexander Of Assyria]

5. $814 Billion a year year after year on military,America can afford to buy the moon, prefers weapons.

[ck4829]

20. Yep

[LT Barclay]

25. Eisenhower probably said it best in his cross of iron speech.

Towards the end of his life Jacques Cousteau was saying that if we spent one year’s military budget on housing, clean water, etc. it would solve most of the causes of war.

[Alexander Of Assyria]

83. Sad and true, and sadder by the day as the world seems to have learned nothing from history.

[Magoo48]

6. Exfuckin'zactly.

[niyad]

12. Exactly.

[Johnny2X2X]

13. We're not broke!

This is a great point. Never in world history has their been a country as rich as the US is now. But the oligarchy insists we're broke so we can't afford anything that will help people live better lives.

Give me a magic wand and I would:
1. Flat tax after the first $100K of incomes is tax exempt, $200K for families. After that, all income is taxed the same for whatever it takes to fund the services we need.
2. All types of incomes are taxed the same, investment and earned. No delaying of income taxes, you pay that year, you can't defer earnings.
3. Universal health care.
4. Universal minimum wage that provides a life of dignity and security to whoever wants to work.

And those are just starts. The US has enough to raise our standard of living to the highest that's ever been, period.

[InAbLuEsTaTe]

18. Ding! Ding! Ding! We hava winner!!

[NCjack]

21. We need a population control program. Let's begin with no more billionare$ and richer.

[Solly Mack]

22. K&R

Making a country better starts first with making things better for the people of the country.

The people must be the priority.

Seems to me the people of America have been viewed as a problem to manage, an aside, a nuisance even, that gets in the way of whatever actual motive some in government, with power, have - when people are the only true product of any country.

The only true worthwhile investment a government can make.

Health, education, real opportunities, the upholding of rights, etc. - the true reflections of how great a country is and a lack in those areas is a lack in the country.

A failure of government, the result self-serving priorities and policies that deny the importance of the people and instead promotes interests that serve only the few to the detriment of the many.

Many pretend it is simply a matter of different ideas on how to achieve the same aims. That both sides want the same things for people and the country and only disagree on how to go about reaching these so-called shared goals - but that's bullshit.

There is no honest or good faith disagreement. There are those who only wish to benefit the few and all of their actions are geared toward that goal. "The people" mean nothing to them - viewing them as only tools to use in furtherance of their selfish goals.

There are those in government who wish only to protect what they have and what they plan to have, and they treat the people as obstacles that need to be brushed aside, ignored, and dismissed.

[LT Barclay]

27. Wow, great post

[Alexander Of Assyria]

84. +1

[DLevine]

23. K&R

[DanieRains]

24. What Should We Do About People Who Simply Don't Want To Work

I could go on, but homeless is a big word that covers a lot of different people with different types of problems.

Every fast food place in Seattle has a help wanted sign and pays $17 an hour.

I won't say what I truly feel because I don't want to get flagged.

[gratuitous]

28. Give them a guaranteed basic income and a place to live

Anyone you have in mind that simply doesn't want to work that you feel is about to cure cancer or create some other boon to humanity? If every last man, woman, and child on the planet isn't working at or beyond capacity, as a society, we'll still probably get stuff done. Not everyone needs to be on a dead sprint on the Type A treadmill, but for some reason that's the way we've structured things. I didn't vote for that or agree to it, but here we are, demonizing anyone who isn't pulling their own weight and the weight of the idle rich. By the way, are the idle rich included in those who simply don't want to work?

[Jetheels]

32. True, out of millions of people, not every person is going to fit into the 9 to 5 J-O-B thing that

has somehow been constructed.

[Demsrule86]

43. That sounds lovely and it will never happen. This country is too far to the right to enact

policies that would give basic income. I would suggest that Omar and others go out into red and purple states and sell their vision to the masses.

[gratuitous]

49. Well then, that's it

Guess we're just consigned in perpetuity to a society that leans on and punishes the most vulnerable for not adhering to some unwritten standard that suits the powerful.

Now, let's all watch in horror as the conservative pipe dreams of yore are brought into being in legislatures across the country, allowing ignorant government interference into the personal health decisions of our citizens. Because we can't (or more properly won't) do anything about that, either.

[Demsrule86]

58. No that is not it...we need to work towards getting the country moved left...and in the

meantime get what good stuff we can...this can not be all or nothing or we are likely to get nothing which is foolish IMHO.

[gratuitous]

59. No, no, no, you convinced me

"It will never happen." Take the W.

[Demsrule86]

61. I will never happen in the short term...which is what I said...not with the numbers we have now.

The country has to be dragged back to the left and not the right...it is going to be hard work and take time. But it has to happen before we can implement our policy and the only route is to elect more Democrats...so I suggest we all see how we can help change hearts and minds...in red and purple states and work our asses off this year and every year to get Democrats elected. I think we can in the next few years get a permanent child credit and paid family leave and Medicaid reforms that will help with homelessness, and mental health reforms...but not guaranteed income. But in order to do this, we must elect Democrats.

[brooklynite]

64. Bearing in mind that those lovely left-wing social democracies in Europe won't either...

[OldBaldy1701E]

46. Hear Hear! (n/t)

[NickB79]

35. Rampant mental illness makes it hard to hold down jobs

And untreated mental illnesses are common in those who are homeless. A significant number of homeless are military vets with PTSD.

Beyond that, even a fast food business won't give a job to a homeless guy who walks in off the street. You need an address, ID, clean clothes, etc.

So what we should do about the homeless to get them involved in the work force:

-Provide housing for them, beyond the homeless shelters that are in many areas simply holding pens for humans. Stable housing is critical to getting people into the workforce.
-Provide mental health services for those with mental health issues.

[DLevine]

44. Thank you. Excellent points. nt

[sheshe2]

71. You can't just walk into a McD's and get a job.

You need a home address, references and a record of employment.

[wnylib]

30. Billionaires and oligarchs are today's royalty and nobility.

They control taxes, laws, government, war decisions, food availability, housing, and national and international commerce, the same as Medieval European royal and noble houses. Their loyalties are to their families and international connections just as in feudal times.

International trade is good. I am not knocking it in and of itself. But trade is poorly regulated at home and abroad. That lack of regulation allows a select group to recreate a feudal type system in modern times.

[ck4829]

31. Indeed, we should call them our very own oligarchs

[twodogsbarking]

33. She has a habit of poking the big cage.

A brave lady.

[hunter]

34. Why are things that have already been accomplished elsewhere somehow impossible in the U.S.A.?

We could have universal health care. I'd nationalize the whole damned mess, but other systems such as single-payer work as well.

We could build homes for everyone who is homeless, including mildly supervised housing for people who will never be employable. ( We currently house and treat unemployable people in prison, or force them to live on the streets as frequent flyers to the Emergency Rooms and jails, both very expensive ways to handle this problem. )

I think we should pay people to experiment with lifestyles having very small environmental footprints. We'd judge the success of those experiments in terms of happiness. Maybe the rest of us could learn something from these experiments and reduce our own environmental footprints.

School cafeterias could be open seven days a week serving healthy breakfasts and lunches to children 17 and under. These could also serve as refuge for children living in insecure or abusive situations and serve as contact points for social services.

We could quit fossil fuels.

Etc..

All we have to do is make sure that those of us who receive the most benefits the from our society, especially the very wealthy, pay their fair share to maintain it.

[ck4829]

37. Honestly, we should call it reverse-subsidies

Why do we not have those things? My working theory is that way people will take jobs with health insurance or to pay for medicine and be OK with living conditions that would otherwise be too appalling to accept.

We indirectly subsidize horrible jobs and poor housing by not having a robust safety net.

[thesquanderer]

36. Nice sloganeering, but not quite the reality, as I understand it.

Last edited Thu Mar 31, 2022, 12:41 PM - Edit history (1)

The wealthy got 5 trillion richer largely based on the value of their stock. That's not "real money" that could otherwise be made available to solve poverty, it is (to pick up from another recent conversation here), "unrealized gains." It only exists on paper.

For example, Jeff Bezos owns a ton of Amazon stock, which has gone through the roof, and raised his net worth astronomically. But the only way he'd "have" that money would be to sell all the stock... and unloading that much stock at once would basically drop the value of that stock to pennies on the dollar.

So you can't raise the money to do the things Omar is talking about by, say, taxing Bezos's wealth-over-100-million at 95%, in order to get 185 billion or whatever in revenue to combat poverty, because there is no way to for Bezos to turn that much of his wealth into cash.

[Autumn]

40. Try reading. This OP is not about AOC. The "monthly child tax credit payments had in effect,

by the end of their six months, reduced child poverty in the U.S. by about 30%. A few more tax credits instead of tax breaks for assholes that don't need it can indeed afford to house our homeless, heal the only planet we can live on, feed our children, and care for our sick. Politician just don't want to do it, there's nothing in it for them.

https://www.npr.org/2022/01/27/1075299510/the-expanded-child-tax-credit-briefly-slashed-child-poverty-heres-what-else-it-d

[Demsrule86]

45. The child credits were nothing more than a credit folks get at the end of the year given out

monthly. And the amount was temporarily increased for a year. And the income thresholds were raised somewhat. But there were not enough elected Democrats to extend it...so if you want liberal policy, elect Democrats. I suggest that we all vote like our lives are at stake because they are. If we want nice things we have to show party loyalty by voting in every election for Democrats. It is the only way. We also need to attempt to win hearts and minds in red and purple states with grassroots efforts.

Updated, I forgot to add that parents should check at the end of the year...they will still receive a child credit...just not as big.

[questionseverything]

65. Income thresholds were not raised, they were lowered

The previous limit was $400,000 , that was changed to $75,000 per or $150,000 per couple ( which I still think hurt us in the suburbs of Virginia)

The income changed at the lower end as people with no income qualified for it where the previous bill a person needed a few thousand in income to receive the credit….that’s where the biggest impact was , taking people living on nothing all of the sudden had
$250 per child

[thesquanderer]

54. Sorry, I mis-wrote AOC instead of Omar. Point remains.

And I'm not saying there aren't all kinds of ways the tax system could be improved to provide more benefits to more people. But the implication that the issue is that we left rich people with an extra $5 trillion that should have been taxed to pay for other things is misleading, if most of that $5 trillion exists only theoretically but cannot actually be turned into "real" money. Please see my post #51.

[hunter]

41. That's a highly contrived way of looking at the problem.

If taxes were fair then there wouldn't be politically powerful multi-billionaires like Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk.

The actual innovators of society will still innovate even if they are mere billionaires who can't afford giant yachts.

[thesquanderer]

51. But founders of a company always own a lot of the stock. Which means...

...unless you do away with the stock market contrivance from the start, there's no way someone who starts a business that becomes hugely successful (like Bezos) can NOT become ridiculously wealthy... on paper. But the money does not "exist" in the real world... any attempt to turn it all into actual money would fail. This has nothing to do with whether or not taxes are fair. There is no tax system by which Bezos' wealth could be reduced from nearly 200 billion to, say, a mere 1 billion... because that other 199 billion is, essentially, theoretical.

I'm not saying taxes are fair as they are. I'm saying that a better tax system isn't going to be able to capture a great percentage of the 5 trillion mentioned in the OP, because that money isn't really there to begin with.

[hunter]

55. Money itself is "theoretical."

The rules of money can be adjusted to make it a fair game.

[c-rational]

38. K&R. This post and the comments made me think of a quote I heard several days ago

by Victor hugo.

:Adversity makes the man, and prosperity makes the monster."

I had not heard this quote before and immediately thought of Putie the monster, as well as the billionaire tax President Biden has mentioned. There is something to that quote.

[Evolve Dammit]

50. But, but, my Freedom. Communist demorat.. &#@%!

[Uncle Joe]

52. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread kpete.

[PatrickforB]

57. Not to sound like a broken record here, but in our particular capitalist utopia,

profits are king. They are held, by corporate governance policy, to be more important than the interests of workers, the interests of consumers, and the welfare of the communities and the natural environment.

This is called Sharehold Primacy and has governed corporate behavior here in the US since 1919.

If we want to solve some of the problems Omar points out, we can force changes to the charters of corporations doing business in the United States away from shareholder primacy and toward a stakeholder approach. That would help.

And, of course, right now individual taxpayers like all of us are paying in 86% of the federal government's tax revenue and corporations only 6.8% In 1970, that ratio was 35:45 corporations to individuals. What we have now is the fruit of supply-side theory, which holds that if we cut taxes for corporations they will create so many jobs the new payroll taxes will make up for the corporate shortfall.

But what supply-side ACTUALLY does is systematically transfer money from the public treasury - money that could be used to materially benefit Americans and their families - away from that and into the pockets of a few billionaire parasites. Reforming the tax code is a really good idea, and the idea of a wealth tax based on net worth is a good one as well. Honestly, if we actually wanted an approach that actually makes the economy work for everyone, we would impose a confiscatory tax rate on the billionaires capping their wealth in the millions not the billions, and (gasp!!!) redistribute that wealth to have a greater positive effect for everyone instead of a few.

Last, another needed tax reform is to cap CEO pay at a specified ratio comparative to worker earnings, and eliminate the deductions for other non-wage compensation, like stock options.

These are policies. Policies affect us. We need to impose better ones. Omar's rhetoric is wonderful, but again, we need POLICY.

[ymetca]

63. "The Squad"

is perhaps the most vilified group of representatives ever to cross the Capital doorstep. The powers that be want them all gone, gone, gone, and the lid put back on that "populist" bottle as quickly as possible.

So they will come at them a hundred different ways until they are utterly destroyed.

They've spent a lifetime securing their "ownership" of this turf and they'll be damned if they'll give it up now.

They'd rather see us all dead than give up one iota of their largesse. They don't give a shit about us. They never did.

They've already ginned up the hoi polloi on the Right, busily erecting the scaffolding for "street justice".

So you can complain all you want about the so-called "effectiveness" of simply shouting "something's wrong here".

But some of us are still listening, and hoping that all is not yet lost.

[questionseverything]

68. If the squad does nothing but make the owners uncomfortable from time to time

It’s a start

[McKim]

69. Great Comment!!!

Great comment, people need to hear over and over that yes, we can afford this!

[Martin68]

70. Abso-fucking-lutely.

[Mike Nelson]

75. Well...

... I remember my grandparents talking about the "Poorhouse" as a place where old people went if they didn't have money for their old age. This was before Social Security. I see two homeless people in my neighborhood. One is a younger man; he sits on benches and talks to himself. The other is an older man - looks older than 65 - and he has a shopping cart parked at a public building. These are tow people that have not been taken care of by Social Security. We need public housing for these people. Relatively speaking, it won't cost much - they don't need to live at the Ritz. Also, it would create jobs and promote a healthy economy and society!

[Kaleva]

76. We also have to stop pretending that it's politically possible to do so

Otherwise, Rep. Omar would have already gotten it done.

[betsuni]

77. Democrats don't have large majorities in Congress, that's why.

Pretending this isn't the case is a problem.

[IronLionZion]

79. Normalize calling them oligarchs

Because it was fun watching fabulously wealthy Mitt Romney call for cutting social security and medicare for future generations. Rich people have such brilliant ideas

[The Jungle 1]

80. Repukes refuse to feed and house these people.

The even more shocking part is that the voter who call themselves Christians, continue to support these heartless scum.
We can afford it many of us just don't want to.