Phase 4.3: A long-term strategy for Progs begins to take shape.
We’re going to ‘reconcile’ the Progressive Agenda, mittens off.
In this article, I’m going to outline not just the next few weeks, but what the next few YEARS of actions for the grassroots could look like.
That could leave us with two to four years safely mapped out.
Which can and will shift.
It’s a “fluid” concept.
We can’t be too rigid.
The goal with these articles is not only to try to keep you informed, create a document that shows each step, and present a general strategy, both long and short… I want to show how to turn your action into effective change.
And I cannot express it more clearly when I say it all comes down to attitude.
It’s true.
And attitude is the difference between ordeal and adventure.
Things are undeniably tough right now and folks depend on our attitude.
Our activism becomes the light at the end of this very dark tunnel.
We can sit here and stroke each other’s egos all night and sure it feels great but what’s the point? We are here to build community but the focus of that community has to be a unified goal, with a long-term “map” that allows us to focus action and keep out bad actors.
That is what made us strong in 2016 and in 2016 we took our movement all the way to the convention with every imaginable situation created or manipulated to further block us.
Some say it wasn’t effective.
Now when I look around and survey 2021, I don’t see DWS. I don’t see Hillary Clinton… Sure, they pop-up, but since 2016, I can’t help but notice…
We’re still here and they are not exerting influence.
To the folks who say the Progressive Movement has not been successful…
I think they have forgotten who we are fighting against…
It’s the Corporations, stupid… and the neoliberals that represent them.
We’re wresting control of the levers of power from corrupt politicians.
The same ones who are trying to use Austerity for C19 relief, right now.
I have said in earlier phases that I did NOT expect Biden to be some beacon of clarity and leadership… But I’ll be honest, we started off and are headed in a much better place than I thought we would by this point.
At the same time, we have Republicans dropping like flies as they decide not to run for reelection… Which could possibly show that some are ready for conviction in Trump’s 2nd impeachment trial… Possibly.
There will be an impeachment focused article in a few days.
But more than likely they are being cowards and are avoiding having to deal with their responsibility for Trump as they look to face constituents.
While Manchin, our 50th vote, is getting nailed at home by groups who want to replace him for holding up or various processes.
This is no small task, considering he’s won statewide races for 20 years…
But still, the good news continues to roll in as Bernie takes over his role as the Senate Budget Committee Chair which puts him in charge of the Senate Budget reconciliation process.
This grants him ONE budget-focused bill, sans filibuster each year, and because we didn’t use one last year…
Bernie gets two this year.
Of course, he does.
So, the threat of Primaries has to be real to get the support we need.
Because it's ‘Go Time.’
Now, before I start explaining the Reconciliation process…
I need to bring up a major issue.
Right now, the Neoliberals are not happy.
They simply don’t want Dems in control of all the levers of power.
Some are intentionally bungling the COVID relief to lose your support.
They are trying to trigger a response of… “well, we should just let Dems lose.”
If you follow my earlier writing I explain that when we kept Pelosi in as Speaker, elected Biden, and then won the Senate… we would have the best accountability to force through the Progressive Agenda. Yes, the same one they claim to support when they are running for office.
So far, that has turned out to be mostly true.
If we allowed any impediment then it would negate our real opportunity… Because of course, they aren’t going to give us what we need… Of course, they are going to blow this. Of course, they are going to back out of the $2000 promise and say “you just weren't listening.”
Because that’s what Corporate Dems do…
We're just removing their excuses to hide behind.
I mean, just look at how some of them handled Bernie simply sitting there.
When it comes to gaslighting, they can’t seem to help themselves.
And to be honest, I'm counting on it… because the goal here is…
To get folks to vote differently in the primaries.
- Vote totals are lower
- If they are in Blue districts, they are less expensive
We have to shine a light on what is happening and we will never get a greater opportunity to put their failures on display than during a pandemic.
-Plus, we have a year and a half to organize.
Worst case scenario, they simply do what we want. That’s not so bad.
But that means as this heats up, we are going to see a dump truck of propaganda…
“All hope is lost…”
“We can’t do this…”
“Dems have screwed us again…”
And, yes, Dem leadership will probably screw us again…
If they were doing it all perfectly we wouldn't be trying to replace them.
So, we can’t fall for it… We have to keep up grassroots pressure.
Progressive Dems don’t need to cede power to hold them accountable.
Because that’s what primaries are for.
Do they want to lose their primaries? Then be my guest and use austerity.
And even then, I don’t think going along with what we want simply because they fear primaries in ’22 is enough to stop us from going full throttle.
I have no interest in removing the fear that they might be primaried by simply letting them pass a single reconciliation bill, especially when we have more non-budgetary issues to pass, many more.
I expect more of them… the more they give us now the better chance they have of not having or maybe surviving their primary, and they are coming.
Because that’s how it’s going to be from now on, Corporate Democrats are going to see primary challenges until they reform or give up.
We win either way.
Now, in earlier Phases, I explained that we were going to need to find ways to reach 60 votes to pass legislation and that is still true until at least ’22.
Assuming no Dems die in states where Republican controls appointments.
Because that’s what happened in 2009 with the ACA, just a bit of history.
This is because the filibuster allows for a minority of members to hold up legislation and why there is a constant ‘bipartisan’ discussion.
It all comes down to how the Senate is allowed to limit debate.
Normally debate cannot be limited unless the threshold of 60 is hit. So, the filibuster is essentially automatic in our current situation.
This is routinely used to stop civil rights acts, progressive legislation, and generally anything the oligarchy or racists don’t want to happen.
But this works both ways and getting rid of it is a complicated discussion.
Generally speaking, it should go… I still want to wait to see how the next election goes… Because removing it and losing power would be horrible.
It’s not really in my hands either way.
Budget reconciliation essentially exists to bypass that roadblock.
But only once in a calendar year.
Now, I’m not a big fan of using phrases like “4D chess” but this was quite the maneuver on the part of Chairman Sanders, very impressive.
Because of how the Committee did business last year, Bernie gets TWO HIS FIRST YEAR.
That means in Biden’s first term we get four more of these, assuming we hold on to the Senate and House.
That’s five total.
That’s four more chances to implement aspects of the Progressive Agenda as long as they follow a few budgetary rules… and they are arbitrary.
And it’ll be this way for as many years as Bernie can hold out for.
HOWEVER…
If you have 60 votes in the Senate you can bypass that rule that limits it to budgetary matters and put whatever you want in it… If the parliamentarian agrees then it's a green light and you have a lot of freedom. ‘Budget neutral’ is a loose concept.
Folks are going to argue about this but the Republicans used it even more flippantly and Bernie has made very sarcastic comments about it.
Of course, when it comes to what goes in these and the grassroots, Bernie has the final say and we have to accept what it looks like. REAL talk.
But that’s okay.
For the last few years, we have all doubted Bernie's reasons for dropping out, or endorsing, or some other term that gets whipped into a frenzy screaming things like “sell-out”…
But I can say fairly accurately that he was holding out for this…
Now that we have a clearer picture of what that means, I can certainly find it in my heart to forgive and move on to the important work that we now have the opportunity to do.
Now, all of this is fantastic.
But we also have deadlines.
Because of UI benefits…
The bill must be signed by March 14th.
So, keep that in mind as negotiations continue, there is a rush.
We have less than two weeks to get the bill back to the Senate.
Before I get into what the next few years look like…
It’s important to understand how these bills are made.
First the mommy bill and the daddy bill… Actually, it is kinda like that.
I’m going to do my best to explain this but I’m still learning.
First, the House and the Senate each draft a resolution that accepts the process. The Senate has an amendment process that’s informally called a “votearama” where they vote on hundreds of amendments that qualify what can go in the bill or not…
It was DAYS not hours.
The Strategy is that if even one Senator leaves, has a health issue, anything, then the minority can wreck the bill since there’s no proxy voting.
It’s a cheap move.
But once this is done, the Senate votes and it moves to the House.
Now all this really means is this gives the House clearance from the Senate that they can draft legislation based on the rules set out by the Senate.
While the House is writing the bill, Senate can handle Impeachment.
The House also has a Budgetary process like this but apparently, there is no process to limit debate, which is the basis of the Senate process that makes it unique. So, logistically that’s why it starts in the Senate.
As soon as it moves to the House everyone should be slamming the phones and demanding from the Ways and Means or whatever committee is next that you want certain things added to the bill.
Still working out the committee process and our reps should be directing us.
At the same time, we have to make sure that over in the Senate we can keep our Dem Senators who are secretly R’s in line because though we have 51 votes … we really only have 48 automatically, and that can be dicey.
Because whatever goes from the House still has to pass the Senate.
They can pass it back and forth and each makes changes. It's a slow process and we simply will not hit our deadline for mid-March…
But we get two of these bills this year.
I assume, if everyone is smart, we’re going to do the 2nd one when the UI benefits are set to expire after this round of relief right now.
And if we get even smarter we can get better at manipulating the process.
Originally the UI benefits were planned through Sept…
Except the Chairman of the Ways and Means is trying to cut a month off of those benefits so that it would be ending August 31st…
Rep. Richard Neal, @RepRichardNeal. “Serving the 1st District of Massachusetts in the US House of Representatives, with 87 cities & towns in western & central MA. Chairman of @WaysMeansCmte.”
Oh, and btw… You may not know this but last February, they tried to pass Jayapal’s Medicare for All bill and it died in the Ways and Means.
Any of this starting to sound like a call to action?
The same ghoul who killed M4A and stopped the process for the floor vote all the FTV activists were pushing for but last July is trying to cut a month off our UI benefits right now…
He is a problem, possibly “the” problem.
I mean, jokes on him… that just means we have a 2nd reconciliation bill sooner and give the Corporate Lobbyists, who cannot lobby right now, less time to come up with a response to what’s happening.
But if we can get the 60 votes to end debate then we can get M4A now.
Because we have the same M4A bill hitting the floor later this month.
So, it breaks down like this.
1 reconciliation bill a year…
2 this year.
1st one now, 2nd one to re-up UI benefits… I assume.
That’s when we could get retroactive and recurring payments, plus Emergency Medicare Expansion, assuming we can’t get 60 votes.
THAT MEANS WE GET TWO CHANCES FOR MEDICARE EXPANSION.
Pretty much any of the larger line items that will take time to build support for can be planned somewhere along with this timeline, always to re-up UI. In the meantime, we can rally Republicans for Conviction on the Impeachment and roll that right over into 60 votes as fast as possible.
If we can’t get the 10 Republican votes, we have one card left to play.
I’ll explain it in great detail in a future Phase when it is relevant.
Right now though… once you are done calling Representative Neal to give him a piece of your mind… we should still be doing local races.
Local races now prepare candidates for Congressional races in ’24 & ‘26.
We need to continue winning Congressional seats & primarying Neoliberals.
But the Senate is the game.
In ’22, win five seats to replace votes we can’t count on…
In ’24, win five more Senate seats to have 60.
20 R seats are up in ‘22
But only 10 R’s up in ‘24
We’re going to make sacrifices on these seats because we need bodies, we simply do not have the progressive talent ready for the Senate. We can make them but not enough exist right now… They just simply don’t.
But if we take local races seriously now, and develop our talent then we don’t have to make those sacrifices later… and I’m going to point to this paragraph in 2022 when folks don’t like a particular candidate.
Because if we get seven more senate seats we have 67 and can do anything, but 60 will do.
And then we don’t have to make sacrifices at all.
But right now, if we are going to reconcile the Progressive Agenda it means we are still going to have to make certain sacrifices. But that doesn’t mean we sacrifice on policy and many if not all of the sacrifices will have to do with the concept of time…
For example…
EPIC is a proposal for a temporary Medicare Expansion… and we have to push to make them permanent, I assume the name will be different.
It is a backup plan.
By choosing what we sacrifice now we can control any fallout from whatever we fall short on … it is always better to get a program with a broader stroke at the start but for a temporary amount of time, then we have to prove it works.
How hard could that be?
Still very hard.
But if we control our negotiated sacrifice by choosing it an advance then we don’t risk having a water-downed policy that gets nitpicked to death and it makes the process much quicker at the same time.
The longer we drag out the actual bill crafting the more opportunity consultants and lobbyists have to come in and break down the process, but at the same time, we can also drag out a fight to apply our own pressure.
That is what we sacrifice… not the policy itself but a time limit for how long the program is going to last… We then have to replace enough members of Congress to ensure we can pass legislation to make it permanent.
Because like it or not that’s going to be the game now.
All of our efforts are going to have to extend in this manner…
Build a temporary expansion by altering an existing program via budget reconciliation then target and replace anyone how stands in the way.
Anyone.
As long as we can convince Biden…
Then we can do it with 50 votes, but 60 would free it up more.
We will have to make sacrifices but by doing this way we can ensure that the sacrifice is logistics not policy, that’s the trick to making it work.
And it only works if you have a mass movement of folks ready to party.
Because there is no party like a Bernie party and it's going down in the Senate Budget Committee.
The Chairman has spoken, this is the way.
Bernie is in the driver’s seat.
And we are the gas that makes the engine GO.
Let me explain...
Some politicians get their power from big donors and such…
But now there is a new breed of politicians that operates like Bernie Sanders has for many years… and they get their power from the people.
And I don’t mean “Corporations are people too” people.
His materials literally say “People-powered” on them…
What did you think it meant?
Our power comes in creating a mass movement and then using it in creative ways. As long as it is non-violent there is no limit to what can be done.
But it needs a lot of people, not half, not some… all.
And when I say creatively… I mean it.
Successful activism is an art form.
There is a story Obama told during his election about how FDR told civil rights activists that “he liked their plan, now go out and make me do it.”
This paints a rosy picture of politicians working with activists in a pleasant manner as if folks want to do the right thing but “the public.”
Of course, this story turned out to be total horseshit.
Shock.
There’s no actual record of FDR saying that though they did meet with him and he seemed supportive, it was only the fear of a race riot… this doesn’t mean they were afraid Black people were going to riot, it means that white people would start murdering protesters to push them back, which ultimately caused FDR to step in to protect them and move things forward.
They forced his hand but while the methods they used were peaceful, they worked for slightly different reasons than history teaches us.
This all bottles down into what this means for you.
It doesn’t take a smart person to realize that the media is not your friend.
There are a ton of poor renditions of stories that mislead you in a direction that will make you take action which will ultimately be ineffective.
Independent media does it too, so that’s not a silver bullet.
You have to learn to know the difference between what ‘feels true’ and what ‘is true’ because politics is all about manipulating you away from your power with your own feelings.
It feels true… but is it?
A good example recently is the folks tricking the movement into removing the power we grant to AOC and Bernie when we support them in their actions. They can’t do it without our support.
If they can get us to not support them then they can remove their committee seats and silence them without fear, basically remove their power.
There is no fear of reprisal without your support.
They are only safe in Congress when we keep them safe.
So, let’s try to cut through some BS and lay it out how it actually is.
That means you can start creating real change with US.
And it starts with the first of five reconciliation bills.
And contacting your representatives… Get creative and feel free to look back to suggestions made in earlier phases… Picket lines make good media.
Take up one or more of these issues and push on it until it’s done.
And recruit, recruit, recruit… The solution is always “organize.”
Let’s start with the two thousand dollar question…
When it comes to the problem with the $2000, oh wait sorry *checks notes*, the $1400 checks are that everyone said…
“$2000 check out the door.”
Not a $1400 check.
They were pretty clear.
Now, I always knew what they meant, but everyone else didn’t.
And considering it already falls dramatically short of the retro payments that we need, it is absolutely wild that Dems would throw a fuss over $600.
If 100% of America were eligible, that’s still only $210 Billion.
And still, less than we lost when everyone was distracted by FTV.
That price tag was $252 Billion… Being distracted is expensive.
Dems in the Ways and Means Committee, where the bill has been the last few days, are trying to reduce the folks who can get it based on ‘19 taxes.
Hey, so a few things…
#1) If they change the eligibility then their argument that the $600 is the first part of the $2k is no longer valid…
(Which btw is a wildly stupid argument for an incoming president to make when you switch party control.)
#2) This is NOT actual PANDEMIC RELIEF…
Because they are using 2019 tax data…
The aid proposed by Biden, IS SIMPLY NOT PANDEMIC AID.
This is relief for being poor BEFORE the Pandemic.
It does zero for folks who lost their job during the Pandemic.
As a matter of fact, none of this has been actual Pandemic aid with the exception of the UI benefits… and they are incredibly challenging to get.
Technically, if the $1400 is finishing off Trump, giggity, and the UI benefits are only going to $400 then Biden is only offering $100 in unique support.
And that’s before we bring up AGAIN, that if this check has different eligibility rules then they are different things. That’s not debatable.
The laziness in this austerity is probably what makes me the angriest.
See, what the Neoliberals are doing is a very annoying maneuver. In addition to distracting us with wild arguments so that we don’t talk about putting things in the bill that will actually help America recover, the lower they knock us down on relief, the smaller relief we will eventually accept.
For example…
First, they cut the payment down from $2000 to $1400.
And act like it’s normal now.
Then when they have to do more assistance, whether it be retroactive or for future payments, the new number will be $1400 instead of $2000.
They just made precisely the same move with the Enhanced UI benefits.
It was $600 but they took it away and now everyone is thrilled to get $400 when we should be talking about going up to $750 per week.
It is a bait and switch.
Susan is right.
When the simple truth is we have recent empirical evidence that if we don’t spend more money now then we will stall our recovery just like we did in 2009 and frankly, the Republicans will do it without blinking.
Republican’s only chance of getting reelected is to use whatever power they have to tank our response and recovery and make it look like Biden’s fault.
And, the Neoliberal’s aren’t doing themselves any favors either.
We basically have both sides trying to tank the recovery while families die.
This is a bait and switch but slightly different context, more of a co-opt.
They only initiated this $3k a year program so that they could say they are doing “monthly cash payments” without doing the ones we actually need.
IT’S JUST ANOTHER SMOKESCREEN.
I’ll be talking a lot about these in future phases.
The article reads like a love letter to austerity, I am not a fan.
They are co-opting the language from what we want to stop the promotion of what we need.
It’sa classic Neoliberal move and why Dems lose.
It's almost like they are trying to.
Historically, before US, every single Democrat in Congress was a total scumbag.
Which by the way, if that one looks familiar…
IT’S BECAUSE IT’S THE SAME CHAIR of Ways and Means…
It’s the same damn guy… again, and again, and again.
Priamarying him should be at the top of our list for 2022.
Looking at you, Massachusettes.
The system needed to distribute aid is not complicated.
We should be providing checks to 100% of Americans with an opt-out feature and since the Relief has been in the form of a tax rebate, we already have the system in place to collect it back from the highest earners when they file 2021 taxes in 2022.
Means-testing means folks who need aid won’t get it.
Keep the previous limits in place but for taxes that we file next year…
And pick up the check later.
We should also extend the relief to the undocumented as well.
It’s not like COVID just skips over these folks.
They are the hardest-hit communities.
This is a humanitarian crisis of never-before-seen proportions.
At this rate, we might as well start fighting for $50k per person
That’s $2k for two years… One year behind, and one year to go…
We did not just get a majority in both houses and the presidency for them to throw us scraps like this. We have to threaten primaries to move them.
Let’s be totally clear… THEY CAN DO JUST ABOUT ANYTHING but we could lose that ability if one senator dies. This has 2009 written all over it.
It feels like American Politicians have confused Emergency Relief with making up for being shitty before the Pandemic
All of the solutions being offered, do NOTHING for the actual pandemic.
It’s all based on pre-pandemic data or only pays out AFTER the pandemic.
This issue has been brought up but never in the context that this would technically mean it is not Pandemic Relief.
This is the worst, it's like watching them try to resolve their guilt.
But it’s still the wrong one.
After dealing with this, I find it amazing that anyone would turn their backs on Bernie… He has said again and again that he is with US…
So we have to stand with him and have his back! Even when we disagree.
And that means a sudden and dramatic fight for Minimum Wage.
But this also has some familiar problems.
I did not anticipate pushing for a minimum wage increase right now.
And believe it or not, I have some issues with how it is being proposed… albeit I have not read the actual language in the bill other than this meme.
There is no question that it needs to be raised…
But because this is an emergency, I think we need to reimagine how we raise it…
We have never done anything but raise it in the future, but raising it next year, or the year after does nothing for now.
Now, it looks like the wage increase has made it on the bill so I am going to use this space to propose a shift in how we imagine the change itself.
This will be a hypothetical experiment in policy.
So, there is still doubt as to whether Manchin will let it pass at all…
But what did he agree to?
He said he would accept $11 an hour… so let’s do that right now.
As in implement it immediately, two years ahead of the current plan.
It was poorly negotiated on his end and his complaint was that it would be hard for businesses to compensate, Bernie can work with the House and alter the PPP loan program to cover the extra pay.
The system is basically already set up to pay for workers' wages, so what’s the difference between paying for all or just paying for a part?
Plus the CBO has already said that increasing the wage has a net gain because of payroll tax increases…
It basically would be the start of the stimulus aspect of the recovery process that Bernie discussed for the second bill.
We already subsidize these workers via government assistance… Which we are also talking about providing in a more cost-effective manner…
Also, if the cost of living in, say, West Virginia is lower but the wage is the same then it will attract better workers to their state and enhance the state by creating a net gain from payroll taxes with the Fed picking up the tab.
We could still add a progressive wage increase on top of that but if we are going to talk about the future, we should be setting up a $25 minimum wage for eight years from now… not, $15 in five years…
That’s behind the existing plan in some states.
But either way, if we raised it immediately with PPP loans we could allow for a steeper increase in a shorter amount of time.
If we can get the Wage increase now, great… fine.
I want to be clear, that I support it and will back Bernie all the way.
I know that proposing these kinds of commitments and big thinking is ‘a bridge too far’ as they say, especially on such short notice and that’s assuming I’m even right and it’s possible.
You simply can’t get hung up on these ideas.
But, we need to dream big and still speak up.
And we’d all probably like to see Congress spend their time negotiating emergency aid instead of negotiating future aid.
That’s actually my grief with this entire process.
I’m pleased to see they got it successfully inserted into the bill and I hope it does pass but we need greater assistance right now.
With the exception of the Enhanced UI, none of this is direct Pandemic aid.
And there is still the Tax burden on UI benefits… which is going to cripple millions of families when taxes are due.
Having the government tax emergency aid is the equivalent of charging your child part of their allowance, that you give them, so they can live in your house…
In any other case, that would be illegal.
If an employer did it, it would be punishable.
So, why do we accept it when our government does it?
On top of that, the debate in the house is missing a few things.
- Making UI a form of non-taxable assistance, even if only for a few years.
- Making sure checks are the full $2000 TO EVERYONE with an opt-out system and a since payment is a tax rebate, the system is already in place to collect that money in next year's tax season. It’s only $700 Billion.
- Making sure enhanced UI is the full $600 and expand who can get them. Stop shrinking the number, folks should be getting more money not less.
- Emergency Medicare Expansion, start that conversation and let it fail so that it can make it into the second one this year more easily.
- Penalizing states who aren’t handing out UI benefits.
California is claiming that they can’t get PUA UI reaccepted by the system for at least another month, so they have that money sitting in an account …
Collecting interest.
And that is why folks cannot get access to UI money.
We need to penalize states in some way for not distributing aid and if in June, the pandemic is still raging which I expect, then we are going to have to ‘bridge too far’ a serious talk with Congress about creating a new federal system for distributing aid, that would be in the form of a UBI.
But none of this removes the immediate need for an eviction freeze.
Sheriffs are pushing through evictions because they make hundreds of thousands of dollars in overtime every year when they are serving them.
And that’s primarily what is driving the evictions during the Pandemic.
It’s easy to blame the landlord but they were never interested in the greater good, look no further than rental prices to confirm my point.
The truth is that landlords can’t do anything without enforcement.
And as long as the Sheriffs can make giant overtime checks the issue will continue driving…folks right out of their homes. The Sheriff that led my eviction made an absolutely absurd amount in overtime in 2018…
Of course, he wants to kick folks out of their homes.
Because that’s their capitalism.
This is precisely what the Repubs tried to use as a gotcha in the relief bill.
Because Bernie and Dems voted for police funding in the Relief bill.
The Republicans put up an amendment for extra funding for the police.
It was passed with unanimous consent.
I watched it and it was a ‘gotcha amendment’ from Republicans that really didn’t do that much. The Dems used it to claim the bill is now bipartisan.
It was one of a small handful of things to go through from the Republicans.
It’s important to say defund the police is about redistributing local funds.
If we want to talk about Abolishing the Police, that’s different.
So, though this does technically create money for Police during COVID it is not money that is being over prioritized on a fixed budget so that the community services suffer. I would have liked to see an amendment for community spending on that note… and it's possible that areas that have redistributed funds to social workers may be able to use it there.
While this is slightly different, I admit it’s super nuanced. But that’s why it’s a Republican ‘gotcha’. This is as close as I will come to making excuses.
We do need to address police funding though in EVERY AREA.
In most situations, police are soaking up more resources than they should… and Police Unions are granting unlimited enforcement power.
We’ve created a system where it’s in their best interests to murder folks that represent the failure of that type of spending.
If this person with mental health issues represents the failure in them getting extra pay via overtime… then why wouldn’t they take out the problem & get a vacation?
Horrifying as what I just said may seem…
That’s how we’ve set up the system and it’s wrong.
Who needs their budget to go to mental health experts when they want all that money? That person represents the failure in local spending. And police unions give them the power to handle the issue.
Clearly, we can see why. More overtime pay.
We must continue to demand the end to ‘qualified immunity’ and force Police Enforcement to take on liability insurance, as well as ending the overtime practices that tax our communities to the brink.
Actually, maybe that’s our trade-off, we keep the insurance companies in business when they move from medical insurance to insuring police.
I’d take that trade. I don't like insurance companies…
But I want them involved with our Healthcare less.
Now we’ve made a lot of demands during these phases and the Biden administration has already delivered on some big ones.
If you are complaining about the made-up things Biden is doing then you are in the way of the actual things that we are trying to gain traction on.
Ending US support of the war in Yemen…
This is a huge first step.
We still need to deliver aid to starving folks not just there but in other countries where they are dying of man-made starvation.
We asked for an enforceable mask mandate … and they delivered.
Biden’s C19 plan still needs a ton of work but this is such a huge step as well.
Puerto Rico aid is such a distant problem that I didn’t even think about it.
I’m disappointed with myself I missed it, but we should all be disappointed with our country for not providing aid to another part of our country.
We asked Schumer to show some dominance… and it finally happened.
We asked for coordination with the Whitehouse.
Though, no one asked for that haircut description.
Not to say Biden’s Whitehouse is without issue.
I wouldn’t need to write these if they had it under control.
Some would argue I don’t need to write them at all but if you agree with that then what the heck are you doing sinking time into reading this?
I can’t tell what type of desperation Biden’s rush to reopen schools represents. I used to think it was simply protecting capitalism but then I noticed that us not teaching folks how to be parents for fifty years has really backfired.
SPOILERS: IT’S NOT GOING TO WORK.
Then there is the matter of the rush for more oil drilling, I heard through the grapevine that Bill McKibben, the famous environmentalist, made a statement about it not being that bad, but I did not read it directly.
That is not a qualified quote.
*UPDATE*
I’d still like to see more, if not all, of our public lands protected from drilling.
The new hold on drilling on public lands comes with a lot of caveats.
Too many.
Speaking of “too many” this brings us to the issue known as...
The “kids in cages” & let’s start by making them not in cages.
The public needs to know that children are being cared for in better facilities than the cages we saw a few years ago. Some are still in there and the conditions have been horrifying. As of last week, “there were approximately 4,730 children in Office of Refugee Resettlement care.”
Children who break laws they don’t understand shouldn’t be treated like criminals… It’s really as simple as that. They are children.
The public needs to know that the barbaric practices are being stopped and everything is being done to reunite these children with their families.
And make them as comfortable as possible in the process.
Even if Trump did it, this is America’s fault.
Okay… that’s a start… now we won’t turn every family into a horror movie.
But we still have the last horror show to deal with.
This problem just keeps going and going… we don’t know where their parents are at all…
I cannot express in words what a complete and total failure this is.
We should convict Trump on this alone.
But, wait there’s more.
You got that right… we stopped deportations but ICE found a loophole.
I wrote in an earlier Phase about the traction with ICE would allow us to defund and replant resources in other agencies and then this happened.
No, I’ve changed my mind.
ICE and its leaders are beyond reform, the only solution is to abolish it and develop a new border control agency.
Despite what some among us will say, we still need border control. I’m not against open borders, but I do not believe that is where we are now.
Instead of simplifying our government and putting many arms of enforcement under one umbrella, we should probably spread this power over multiple agencies.
It’s too much power for one group to be able to detain, hold, and deport one person.
That is a system without checks and balances and that power corrupts.
ABOLISH ICE is really the only thing worth saying about it.
I’ve gone full circle on this strategy but that’s just double-checking your work.
You can’t talk about strategy on Earth right now without discussing the damage COVID is doing to every facet of life on the planet.
And yet so many folks are moving along with their lives in total denial of the reality of what is happening.
Worst of all, many of them are our elected representatives.
Vaccine distribution has been a mess and I don’t need to link articles to make that point but it has been effective at lowering our numbers right now and that’s good. But it should be said that our numbers are going down for the same reason Trump’s improved last year, they stopped testing.
You read that right.
They switched all of our big testing facilities to vaccinations facilities.
So, no more testings…
This sample shows what I’m saying…
The confirmed cases are going way down but the deaths are not matching the scale.
If we are going to use vaccinations then we have to continue testing at the same rate that we were before we vaccinate.
How else do we know if it is even working? When they die?
It really goes to show that some complaints about Trump were just politics because the Dems were ready to use the same tricky moves as soon as possible to essentially falsify that things were improving.
This is such an incredible mistake.
We think that hospital workers are getting a break but nothing has changed.
Maybe this represents a drop in new cases and the deaths are from old cases as they can be on a ventilator for a very long time?
But then we got this coming up.
And what’s even harder to cope with is…
We’ve known this was coming the whole time.
They are playing politics with a virus that is ravaging our planet.
We already had a patient who had the virus for 150 days, he had an immune-compromised system but he had universal healthcare, so they did their best to keep him alive but they were ultimately unsuccessful.
And that single virus mutated into all the versions we are seeing now.
Because that’s how fast the virus mutates.
This is really scary stuff.
Now we're seeing these outbreaks go unmanaged in other countries because folks think the Vaccine is the end of the virus, it's a pause button.
And it should be buying our Health workers some time…
But, it’s not.
What to do for this is not a mystery. We have to enforce very difficult lockdowns.
I’ll say it again…
THE SOLUTION IS NOT A MYSTERY.
It is heartbreaking watching folks die who simply did not need to.
We should have a Pandemic plan in place for exactly this.
And we don’t… we have actually no significant plan.
If Obama left a plan and Trump just didn't use it, why hasn’t Biden used that?
It’s all smoke and mirrors.
Nothing to do with the bodies, no one way to keep folks safe.
It’s pretty much a clusterfuck of epic proportions…
With only ONE SOLUTION.
And it is very popular.
We have to pay folks to stay home and do it through the summer.
We already know what's going to happen if we don’t.
The vaccines do not kill the virus, so you can still carry it.
Then comes along an immunocompromised person or two.
Then the virus will mutate until it kills them.
This will include mutating to beat whatever we put in front of it.
Then we won’t be ready & it will spread.
It only takes one person to make this start up again.
We have to follow New Zealand or India’s lead.
But that’s just not going to happen, because Congress has been elected to protect investments instead of their constituents.
New Zealand has already shown us that no matter what they do, as soon as they open their borders there’s a peeing section in the swimming pool.
And even a member of Congress dying may not change their minds.
Sure, he was an anti-masker and borderline Q anon but they all got the vaccine, though I am not 100% positive that he did.
But even with all the safeguards possible, it is still killing folks and the vast majority of Congress only seems to be interested in is protecting money.
And looking at those numbers we can see why they would feel that way.
I don’t agree with it, but I get it. They are simply wrong.
We really need to prepare ourselves for what is coming.
The variants that make short work of the vaccines are already becoming dominant, the AstraZeneca shot has already been banned in a few places for no longer being effective.
It could be corporate politics but it didn’t seem like it with it happening in multiples countries at once.
This is going to get really bad really fast.
I’ve been saying that since late December of 2019 and I've been right so far.
The worst part of all of this is that big business is so desperate not to put society on hold that they paint anyone with a basic understanding of the science as some kind of conspiracy theorist.
Experts are trying to break it down more simply every day.
As a number of experts and the makers of the vaccine have said, the problem with the Vaccine is you can still carry the virus and we don’t know for how long… eventually if the virus can replicate at all, it will mutate into the version that can beat the vaccine or possibly something worst.
Again vaccinating is still a necessary precaution because we have chosen this method and folks should get vaccinated if they can, it is safe.
But, I thought I was being paranoid when I thought we were opening Pandora’s box with this treatment that essentially turns your body into a Petri dish for the Virus.
Not to say it won’t save your life… We just don’t know what comes after that.
We have now seen the same evolution separate from each other in so many places that it is simply an undeniable factor.
That also means the active Virus can mutate into one of these new variants at any point.
I had said that the fatality rate would be about 5% of those infected… and that number starts to stack when we have new variations that require different immunity.
We are there now… right now.
It’s so much like the normal seasonal flu but much, much deadlier.
Now the new variants replicate faster and infect you more easily, which means its opportunity to mutate is compounding at an exponential rate.
And that’s not just a thing the scientist says in a movie, it is very bad.
Please wear a mask even when you think you don’t need one.
Now it’s the law.
If there ever were a true test of our resolves as progressives to do the right thing it is now during the 100-year pandemic and doing our best to stop it.
Paying people to stay home is still the only viable solution.
I know it’s hard to have a good attitude about any of this but we have to because Trump left quite a mess with COVID, it’s a lot to clean up.
But cleaning up after Trump is A LOT more than just COVID.
A lot more.
A lot, a lot more.
No commentary necessary on these issues.
This was on my list for items to be standardized waaaayyyy down the line… Standardization and regulation here would radically change folks lives.
When they introduced the ‘social credit’ in China and folks were shocked, all I could think about was how we already use a system similar to that.
And for years it has been used against folks to keep them part of the ‘struggling class’ that we’ve mislabeled as the ‘working class.’
Debt forgiveness is the equivalent of a ‘reverse stimulus.’
Now, I don’t have any college debt but I support its removal.
Here’s where the deal stands.
Seems like Elizabeth Warren is trying to get back in folks' good graces.
I say, let her try… and keep trying … until it’s done.
I suspect that if we stay on top of this one then we might actually get it.
Then we have these things on the horizon.
Marcia Fudge will be confirmed soon, then we will have an election date.
We have to maintain Climate Change as our PRIMARY ISSUE.
This is why we do all of this, it all leads to the levers that control our planet.
Just found this article as I was wrapping up my final edit…
New to me but three days old.
And enjoying our planet is a lot more fun with legal weed.
It’s not enough to make weed legal, we need to free folks from jail, and expunge their records… return their voting rights…
Get them back into society.
They will never get their lives back but we should figure out a reparations type system for those who have been unfairly imprisoned for Marijuana.
Speaking of inhumane imprisonment.
It's time to start having a serious talk about dropping charges in America against Julian Assange.
Holding him at this point is simply barbaric.
No one even likes Hillary Clinton… we won, she lost… stop this BS.
Free Assange and I’m sure we won’t have any more issues with him.
As a matter of fact, we should be putting into place whistleblower protections for all of the whistleblowers who are barbarically imprisoned.
If they were right then they should be protected.
I really don’t want to have to make a list, but I will make one.
Just do it.
This goes for everything, we live in a society where folks only do the right thing when they are forced to… and the public must have that available.
Or there can be no justice.
What happened to ‘Justice for all’?
WTF are we even pledging to at that point?
I know this is going to come out too late to influence her hearing…
Buuuuutttt….. Do not confirm Neera Tanden.
This has been an agenda item since phase 1.
There is no reason to put Neera Tanden in charge of anything related to the WH. If the negative reinforcement I use momentarily can be considered bullying, even momentarily… We don’t need another Twitter Captain.
Her behavior should be without question… unacceptable.
“If you can’t manage your temper, you shouldn’t be managing budgets.”
Last couple of items…
We need to start talking about packing the courts, Dem’s refused an amendment to limit that on procedural grounds but I saw the twinkle in their eye… the number I see is 15 to restore balance to the court.
And stop the march to war with Iran. Find a peaceful solution.
If Biden really cares about the theory of bipartisanship, find it with Iran.
Maybe we don’t blow things up for a little bit?
Now, that’s the attitude.
Trump’s Impeachment will be in its own piece as Phase 5.
The history of DemExit is coming up in later phase 4.
I will be creating a simpler format of bullet points for action.
I’m sure other issues have fallen between the cracks.
Let me know what I missed in the comments.
You can follow Don on Twitter at https://twitter.com/TheWordofDon
Phase 1 & 2 → https://bit.ly/35z5Dh9
Phase 3 → https://bit.ly/38BWwhD
Phase 3.5 → https://bit.ly/3nBX0bR
Phase 4 → https://bit.ly/38NStz1
Phase 4.1 → https://bit.ly/38TxYAO
Phase 4.2 → https://bit.ly/2NJicR9
