Labor Puts Candidates On Notice: ‘Let’s Be Honest About The Democratic Party’s Record’

https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5d43215de4b0ca604e2ed07f

In a closed meeting, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka told the campaigns that Democrats shouldn’t expect union support if they don’t change their ways.

By Dave Jamieson
08/01/2019

The president of the AFL-CIO labor federation spoke at a closed meeting with representatives from the entire field of 2020 Democratic presidential candidates ahead of Wednesday’s debate in Detroit. His message was straightforward: “It’s time to do better.”

Richard Trumka told attendees that while President Donald Trump is enacting bad policies for workers, Democratic leaders need to reckon with their own role in creating an unfair economy. He said “both parties” are to blame for a system that caters to the rich.

“We are caught in a web of century-old labor laws that prioritize unchecked corporate greed over all else,” Trumka said. “We can blame this White House all we want. But this isn’t new.”

Trumka went on, “More often than not, the Republican Party is bad for workers. This president is bad for workers. But let’s be honest about the Democratic Party’s record.”

He singled out the North American Free Trade Agreement and the Trans-Pacific Partnership as Democrat-backed trade deals that were tilted against the working class.

THE TRUMP LIST:

1. Gave tax cuts to his wealthy "friends", ballooned the deficit, and is destroying our economy through a trade war. Positioned us for a major recession.

2. Insulted our allies and praised enemy dictators. Consistently embarrasses us in front of the global community with his complete ignorance of history, geography, and science.

3. He has lied repeatedly to the citizenry, incited violence at his rallies, made blatantly racist statements and explicitly encouraged fascist behavior by the police. He has pitted one half of America against the other half and lowered the quality of life for all.

4. Lifted environmental protections so that corporations can increase their profits. Trashed the planet-saving Kyoto protocols, a deadly distinction shared only with Afghanistan and Sudan.

5. He has put inept cronies in positions of power, and his closest advisors are a handbag designer and a dumbass who inherited his father’s real estate business. Many of his much-touted “best people” are awaiting trial, are already in prison, or have been forced to resign in disgrace due to criminal and/or unethical conduct.

6. He promised a Wall that still hasn’t been built – and which Mexico certainly isn’t paying for. Most Americans do not even want the wall – only his shrinking base.

7. He promised to replace Obamacare with something cheaper and more efficient that would cover “everyone” – and what he eventually delivered was shot down because it was more expensive than Obamacare, and would have meant a loss of coverage for millions.

8. His “university” was shut-down because it was a fraud, and his “charitable foundation” was shuttered because a judge declared it “rife with corruption”.

9. He illegally paid off women to keep them silent about his affairs during his presidential campaign, and stifled many of his rape accusers in the same manner. 8 women have accused Trump of rape. Some are underage (children). Trump has indicated his predatory tendencies in a recorded statement boasting that he grabs women "by the pussy."

10. Refuses to release his tax returns and records of his financial affairs. It is very probable he is covering up major crimes.

11. Trump claims he built his real estate business with a $1 million loan from his father, but legally obtained tax returns have shown that he was given over $400 million, most of which he squandered. US banks caught onto him and stopped giving him loans. He then became embroiled with Russian crime bosses ("oligarchs" ) to feed his greed.

12. The Special Prosector, Robert Mueller cited over ten efforts to cover up his treasonous collusion with Russia.

13. Indulged in money laundering and illegal use of his office as president to make money for himself.

14. He has been torturing children and their parents in Texas as they escape real threats. Called immigrants "rapists" even though they commit fewer crimes that the average US citizen.

15. Promoting the nuclearization of Iran by breaking Obama's multilateral agreement with that country.

THE TRUMP LIST:

1. Gave tax cuts to his wealthy "friends", ballooned the deficit, and is destroying our economy through a trade war. Positioned us for a major recession.

2. Insulted our allies and praised enemy dictators. Consistently embarrasses us in front of the global community with his complete ignorance of history, geography, and science.

3. He has lied repeatedly to the citizenry, incited violence at his rallies, made blatantly racist statements and explicitly encouraged fascist behavior by the police. He has pitted one half of America against the other half and lowered the quality of life for all.

4. Lifted environmental protections so that corporations can increase their profits. Trashed the planet-saving Kyoto protocols, a deadly distinction shared only with Afghanistan and Sudan.

5. He has put inept cronies in positions of power, and his closest advisors are a handbag designer and a dumbass who inherited his father’s real estate business. Many of his much-touted “best people” are awaiting trial, are already in prison, or have been forced to resign in disgrace due to criminal and/or unethical conduct.

6. He promised a Wall that still hasn’t been built – and which Mexico certainly isn’t paying for. Most Americans do not even want the wall – only his shrinking base.

7. He promised to replace Obamacare with something cheaper and more efficient that would cover “everyone” – and what he eventually delivered was shot down because it was more expensive than Obamacare, and would have meant a loss of coverage for millions.

8. His “university” was shut-down because it was a fraud, and his “charitable foundation” was shuttered because a judge declared it “rife with corruption”.

9. He illegally paid off women to keep them silent about his affairs during his presidential campaign, and stifled many of his rape accusers in the same manner. 8 women have accused Trump of rape. Some are underage (children). Trump has indicated his predatory tendencies in a recorded statement boasting that he grabs women "by the pussy."

10. Refuses to release his tax returns and records of his financial affairs. It is very probable he is covering up major crimes.

11. Trump claims he built his real estate business with a $1 million loan from his father, but legally obtained tax returns have shown that he was given over $400 million, most of which he squandered. US banks caught onto him and stopped giving him loans. He then became embroiled with Russian crime bosses ("oligarchs" ) to feed his greed.

12. The Special Prosector, Robert Mueller cited over ten efforts to cover up his treasonous collusion with Russia.

13. Indulged in money laundering and illegal use of his office as president to make money for himself.

14. He has been torturing children and their parents in Texas as they escape real threats. Called immigrants "rapists" even though they commit fewer crimes that the average US citizen.

15. Promoting the nuclearization of Iran by breaking Obama's multilateral agreement with that country.

A Fascist Trump Rally In Greenville

Scholars say the rally — where Trump supporters chanted “Send her back!” about Muslim Rep. Ilhan Omar — is an escalation in America’s slide toward fascism.

By Christopher Mathias
07/18/2019

Huffpost: https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5d30529fe4b0419fd328b270

...The Dawsons’ vision of mass deportation didn’t feel like much of a fringe position at Wednesday’s “Keep America Great” rally in Greenville. When the president took the stage, he reupped his call for four Democratic congresswomen of color, all four of whom are American, to “go back” to the countries they came from.

When the president attacked Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) — who came to this country as a Somali refugee before becoming a citizen — thousands of people inside the arena broke into a chant of “Send her back!” It was an arresting scene: a predominantly white crowd of thousands, many in red “Make America Great Again” hats, encouraging a receptive president to illegally deport one of his political opponents, who is a black, Muslim American woman.

To scholars of fascism — who have been ringing the alarm bells since Trump began his climb to power in 2015 — the rally in Greenville felt like an escalation. Like the U.S. just made another leap toward outright fascism.

“I am not easily shocked. But we are facing an emergency,” tweeted Jason Stanley, a Yale University philosophy professor and author of the book “How Fascism Works.”

“Journalists must not get away with sugar coating this,” Stanley wrote. “This is the face of evil.”

What The Hell Is Nancy Pelosi Doing?
House Democrats have lost their moral compass.
By Zach Carter
06/30/2019

Huffpost: https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5d155cece4b07f6ca57ac4cb

To sum up the week for House Democrats: no oversight of the rape allegation against the president, no protections for abused immigrant children, a hearing on tax cuts for millionaires and a request that Trump officials deregulate big banks.

Democrats did pass a bill trying to guard voting systems from foreign intrusion. But at the moment, it appears the most serious threat to the party’s electoral future is coming from inside the House.

Huffington Post:
https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5d02d4e4e4b0dc17ef06d77a

Joe Biden Says He’s Ready To Handle The World. He Got Iraq Wrong Three Times.

After voting for the Iraq War, Biden tried to drastically reorganize the country along ethnic and sectarian lines and helped lay the groundwork for ISIS to thrive.

By Akbar Shahid Ahmed
06/17/2019

The war in Iraq has roiled presidential politics in each election since President George W. Bush launched the invasion of the country in 2003. It was central to the 2004 election, arguably the reason that Barack Obama defeated Hillary Clinton for the 2008 Democratic nomination, and no small factor in Donald Trump’s victory in 2016, when he pitched himself as an alternative to elites in both parties ― particularly his rivals in the GOP ― who had backed the invasion.

As Joe Biden leads the Democratic field for 2020, the U.S.’s bloody history with Iraq is set to again become a defining issue in the race, and not simply because Trump has talked about an indefinite U.S. military presence there. Biden wants to convince voters his resume on foreign policy is an asset. But they’ve got ground to think otherwise. “He’s been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades,” former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who served with Biden in the Obama administration, wrote in his 2014 book.

Just this month, Biden’s primary opponents have zeroed in on his support for Bush’s invasion. “You’ve got to ask yourself where Joe Biden is on the issues that are most important to you. Did he support the war in Iraq that forever destabilized the Middle East?” former Rep. Beto O’Rourke asked on MSNBC this week. Days earlier, Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) had called for Biden to apologize. Almost 30 percent of Democrats are unhappy about Biden’s vote and more than 40 percent of party supporters younger than 30 say it makes them less likely to back him, a Politico/Morning Consult poll recently found.

And Biden’s campaign isn’t offering a counternarrative — either about what he has learned from the past or what wisdom he will bring to bear on the current challenge. With more than 5,000 U.S. troops now in Iraq and analysts warning that reconciliation and stability after the defeat of the Islamic State will require painstaking work, what does he want to do next?

Elizabeth Warren’s Big Break From 30 Years Of Pro-Corporate Trade Policy:
It’s time to get over the 1990s.

by Zach Carter

Huffpost: https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5cf5fc3fe4b0e346ce83b31a

“America chose to pursue a trade policy that prioritized the interests of capital over the interests of American workers,” Warren told a crowd in Detroit Tuesday. “We have encouraged companies to invest abroad, ship jobs overseas, and keep wages low. All in the interest of serving multinational companies and international capital with no particular loyalty to the United States.”

What matters in Warren’s vision is not the specifics of any particular trade tool or enforcement tactic. Warren isn’t pro-tariff or anti-tariff, for instance. It depends on the tariff. She’s in favor of international rules that are designed to achieve actual policy goals other than corporate profit. What we call “free trade,” she emphasizes, isn’t really a system where governments get out of the way. The rules of international commerce determine its outcomes ― and there is no such thing as a trade regime without rules. When governments agreed to grant 20-year monopolies on life-saving medicines under WTO treaties, for instance, they were not simply allowing nature to take its course — they were setting up a system.

In Warren’s telling, this was not an accident or a tactical failure. It was a deliberate ideological agenda. By the 1990s, a bipartisan consensus had emerged in Washington which maintained that global peace and prosperity were best supported by an international trade regime in which governments got out of the way and let markets work their magic. Trade would expand, wealth would accumulate, and international comity would ensue. Trade did expand and wealth did in fact accumulate ― increasingly, in the hands of a narrow community of corporate shareholders, at the expense of public health, environmental conservation and worker wages. This was an act of geopolitics, not the verdict of natural science or the intractable demand of human progress.

“Globalization isn’t some mysterious force whose effects are inevitable and beyond our control,” Warren said. “The truth is that Washington policies ― not unstoppable market forces ― are a key driver of the problems American workers face.”