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dontmeantobepoliticalbut · 1 year

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Why is a billionaire-funded super PAC aligned with Republican Rep. Kevin McCarthy playing a role in talks over who will become the next Speaker of the House?

Democratic lawmakers and campaign finance watchdogs raised that question Wednesday after the Congressional Leadership Fund (CLF) and the Club for Growth—another right-wing organization bankrolled by billionaires—announced a deal under which CLF won't spend any money on "open-seat primaries in safe Republican districts," a key demand of McCarthy opponents who felt their preferred candidates have been snubbed by the deep-pocketed super PAC.

As Fortune reported Wednesday, "far-right lawmakers have complained that their preferred candidates for the House were being treated unfairly as the campaign fund put its resources elsewhere."

CLF spent nearly $260 million during the 2022 election cycle, including millions to help reelect Republicans who are trying to tank his speakership bid. The super PAC's top donors in the midterm cycle were banking scion Timothy Mellon, Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman, and Citadel CEO Kenneth Griffin—all billionaires.

The deal between CLF and Club for Growth came as McCarthy continued his frantic efforts to cobble together the necessary 218 votes, offering a number of concessions to Republicans who have rejected the California lawmaker in six consecutive votes—and possibly more on Thursday.

Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) was among those who raised concerns over CLF and Club for Growth's role in the ongoing Speakership debacle.

"It is creepy that dark money super PACs are explicitly part of the negotiation regarding who becomes Speaker of the United States House," the Senator wrote on Twitter.

Federal law prohibits candidates from coordinating with super PACs, though the independence mandate is often flouted in practice. In a press release, CLF and Club for Growth insisted that "no one in Congress or their staff has directed or suggested CLF take any action here."

"Interesting that an independent super PAC that isn't supposed to coordinate with members of Congress comes to an agreement to benefit a specific member of Congress," responded Adam Smith, action fund director of End Citizens United.

Club for Growth, which bills itself as a "leading free-enterprise advocacy group" that promotes tax cuts and deregulation, originally opposed McCarthy's run for Speaker, pushing him to agree to a number of concessions backed by far-right House Republicans.

But the organization, which has received funding from the Koch network and other right-wing forces, suggested Wednesday that it will support McCarthy if he upholds the concessions he has offered thus far.

"This agreement on super PACs fulfills a major concern we have pressed for," Club for Growth president David McIntosh said in a statement.

While the CLF-Club for Growth agreement was seen as a major victory for the anti-McCarthy faction, it's not clear whether it will be enough to end the impasse. The House is set to convene again Thursday at noon.

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, argued in a tweet Wednesday that "these types of shady, backroom deals—which indebt our lawmakers to corporations and special interests—are corrupting our democracy."

"This is why I started the bipartisan Congressional No PAC caucus and have never taken PAC money, and refuse to start," Khanna added.

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factcheckdotorg · 2 years

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#2022 election #NY19 #josh riley #clf #congressional leadership fund

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qqueenofhades · 2 years

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So it looks like Sinema, having gotten her requisite pound of flesh for her billionaire hedge fund buddies (basically, they agreed to keep the carried-interest tax loophole and replace it with an excise tax on stock buybacks), has finally agreed to support the Inflation Reduction Act, otherwise known as the $740 billion "pretty much Build Back Better but we are calling it something different" bill that Manchin and Schumer came out with. If/when it passes, which could be as soon as this weekend, the Democrats will have achieved -- with a 50-50 Senate with two habitual Manchurian candidates, a four-seat House majority, a rampantly fascist opposing party, a Supreme Court openly bent on destroying democracy and personal liberty, and an active criminal investigation into the previous administration -- at least the following:

The American Rescue Plan, aka the first post-inauguration $1.9 trillion Covid relief package, which was the largest investment in the working class since the New Deal;

The bipartisan infrastructure bill, which is the first major structural and transportation modernization and systemic overhaul for the country since the 1970s;

The first significant gun safety legislation in 30 years and since at least the Clinton administration;

Multiple executive orders now signed on protecting abortion rights and access to reproductive care, including travel out of state if necessary;

A bill in the works to officially codify same-sex marriage and thus protect it from SCOTUS;

Reauthorization and improvement of the Violence Against Women Act, including strong new protections for LGBTQ+ and Native American victims of domestic abuse or sexual assault, including the ability for Native courts to prosecute non-Native offenders for sex crimes for the first time in history;

Finally (FINALLY) making lynching a federal hate crime;

The largest climate legislation ever passed in America (this bill), which also establishes a federal minimum 15% corporate tax rate and lowers healthcare costs, including for essential medications like insulin, by, like, a lot;

Passage of the PACT Act, aka expanding healthcare for disabled veterans exposed to burn pits, also the biggest expansion in this field for a generation despite Republicans briefly killing it in an outburst of pettiness;

Consistent big packages of support for Ukraine, rebuilding of foreign alliances, huge bipartisan support for including Sweden and Finland in NATO (hahahaha fuck you Josh Hawley);

The CHIPS act, which creates tech and manufacturing jobs in America and was made even sweeter by how thoroughly they fucked over McTurtle to do it (since oh boy does he deserve a taste of his own medicine);

Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman on SCOTUS, and not an awful white supremacist stand-in like Clarence Thomas, but a genuinely progressive and thoughtful jurist;

Cancellation of almost $6 billion in student loans for the poorest and most defrauded borrowers, such as those who attended scam for-profit "colleges";

And so on and so forth!!!

So like. Please tell me more about how the Democrats are incompetent, their leadership is bad, they are in Disarray TM, you are a terrible person if you support Biden or give them any credit at all, and you're just not excited to vote because they haven't done anything. Like yes! There is a lot more to do! Despite them suddenly deciding to play ball on this particular occasion, Manchin and Sinema still need to be made irrelevant as soon as possible! But as I said, this is happening with the thinnest of imaginable Congressional control, as the other party is literally trying to destroy democracy in real time before our faces. That is not irrelevant.

Also: ruby-red Kansas curb-stomped an attempt to outlaw abortion rights, and approximately 77% of the entire country supports this current bill. The generic Congressional ballots have all shown major movement toward Democrats, and frankly, I have a feeling that we have only just started to see the full impact of post-Roe fallout. So if you get off your asses, quit whining, and put the work in, we could actually win the midterms and then do EVEN MORE!

So yeah. Uh. Food for thought.

#hilary for ts #politics for ts #'but biden didn't give me a pony!!!'#'sTudEnT lOaNs!!!'#oh like the ones you have not paid a single penny on since he took office #the legislative agenda enacted thus far represents progress in every single left wing issue #and in utterly terrible circumstances #so yeah if you are still saying this #please stfu forever

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grits-galraisedinthesouth · 5 months

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Today, January 6th 2024, is the perfect day to make purchases at Overstock.com AND then donate to organizations supporting the unarmed Americans who were waved into the Capitol, unnecessarily pepper sprayed, unnecessarily shot with rubber bullets & smoke bombed to create the illusion of a Capitol Hill riot.

Christmas Miracle: Patrick Byrne, Overstock CEO, offers matching $500,000 donation to January 6 Legal Defense. $250,00 via GIVE SEND GO and $250,000 to Stand In The Gap.

Give Send Go Matching Fund

Stand in the Gap

Stand in the Gap is a non-profit foundation dedicated to advocating for change in re-entry, family services, and justice reform. We believe in second chances, providing support to individuals transitioning back into society, and working towards a more equitable and compassionate world. Through our programs, partnerships, and advocacy efforts, we strive to make a lasting impact on the lives of those in need and promote systemic change.

Join us in standing for justice and being a voice for the voiceless.

Our Story

On January 6, 2021, a historic day unfolded in our nation's capital that will be etched in history. As the foundation of our nation was put to the test, many individuals heeded the call to stand up for their rights, their future, and their beliefs. However, the aftermath saw the government taking action against them, leading to a series of events that unveiled the deep-seated issues within the American justice system.

Before January 6th, many were unaware of just how broken the justice system in America truly was. The January 6th defendants and their advocates soon realized that this injustice had persisted for far too long.

In September of 2021, The Real J6 was founded with a mission to give a voice to the voiceless. Its primary focus was to shine a light on the treatment of January 6th defendants at the hands of their own government. However, as the organization delved deeper into this mission, it became clear that there were numerous unmet needs for the defendants and their families. This realization led to the creation of Stand in the Gap.

Shane Jenkins, the co-founder of Stand in the Gap, possesses a unique perspective on the challenges within the incarceration system and the broken nature of the justice system. His life story, marked by several run-ins with the law prior to January 6th, is one of transformation and redemption. Raised in a religious environment and attending Episcopalian school, Shane's life took a different path due to personal struggles and feelings of abandonment stemming from his adoption and an abusive stepfather. In 2016, while incarcerated and at a low point in his life, Shane had a transformative encounter with CHARM – Christ's Hope And Reconciliation Ministries. Through CHARM, he found faith and redemption, and his life took a new direction.

Paroled in July 2018, Shane transitioned to a CHARM Prison Ministries transitional house and dedicated himself to a life of faith and service. He became involved in prison ministry, took on leadership roles, and found a supportive community at church. Despite his personal transformation, in 2021, Shane once again found himself facing government action. Since then, he has been incarcerated, ministering to others within the system and working to bring about positive change.

Through the efforts of many individuals including The Real J6, significant improvements have been achieved within the DC Department of Corrections, including changes in visitation policies, COVID restrictions, guard behavior, and even Congressional intervention. Shane's unique perspective and experience are foundational to the mission of Stand in the Gap, as it strives to address the systemic issues within the justice system and provide support to those who have been affected by it.

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#january 6 #political prisoners #political protest #overstock #Stand in the Gap #fbi corruption #Patrick Byrne #j6

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mostlysignssomeportents · 1 year

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1,000,000 stranded Southwest passengers deserved better from Pete Buttigieg

The catastrophic failure of Southwest Air over Christmas 2022 was the worst single-airline aviation failure in American history, stranding over 1,000,000 passengers. But while it was exceptional, it was also foreseeable: 2022 saw Southwest and the other carriers rack up record numbers of cancellations, leaving crews and fliers stranded.

It’s not like the carriers can’t afford to improve things. After pulling in $54 billion in covid relief, the airlines are swimming in cash, showering executives with record bonuses and paying titanic dividends to shareholders. Southwest has announced a $428m dividend.

This isn’t a new problem. Trump’s Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao was a paragon of inaction and neglect, refusing even to meet with consumer advocacy groups. This is bad, because under US law, state attorneys general are not allowed to punish misbehaving airlines — that power vests solely and entirely with the Secretary of Transport.

It’s been two years since Biden appointed Pete Buttigieg to be the human race’s most powerful aviation regulator. Buttigieg started his tenure on a promising note, meeting with the same consumer groups that Chao had snubbed, but after that hopeful beginning, things ground to a halt.

As Corporate Crime Reporter details, William McGee of the American Economic Liberties Project was impressed by the Secretary: “He was intelligent, articulate, he had good questions for us, he was taking notes, he seemed concerned.” But 18 months later, McGee describes Buttigieg’s leadership as “lax.”

https://www.corporatecrimereporter.com/news/200/pete-buttigieg-and-the-southwest-airlines-meltdown/

Buttigieg likes to tout a single enforcement action as his signature achievement: fining six airlines and ordering them to issue refunds to US passengers. But only one of those airlines was a US carrier: Frontier, which only accounts for 2% of all US flights. The US monopoly carriers have gone unscathed.

The US carriers are in sore need of regulatory discipline. In 2020 alone, United racked up 10,000 consumer complaints, twice as many as any other carrier. Under Buttigieg, the DOT investigated these airlines and closed every one of these complaints without taking any against them.

This is part of a wider pattern. In Buttigieg’s 18 month tenure, not a single airline has been ordered to pay any fines as a result of cancellations. In the absence of oversight and accountability, the airlines have made a habit out of scheduling flights they know they don’t have the crew to fly (they used public covid funds to buy out senior crew contracts, retiring much of their workforce).

This gives the airlines the flexibility to offer many flights they know they can’t service, and to allocate crew to whichever runs will generate the most profit, stranding US passengers and holding onto their money for months or years before paying refunds — if they ever do.

Consumer groups weren’t alone in sounding the alarm over the deteriorating conditions in the airline sector. In 2022, dozens of state attorneys general — Democrats and Republicans — sent open letters to Buttigieg begging him to use his broad powers as Secretary of Transport to hold the airlines accountable.

What are those powers? Well, the big one is USC40 Section 41712(a), the “unfair and deceptive” authority modeled on Section 5 of the FTC Act. This authority allows the Secretary to act without further Congressional action, to order airlines to end practices that are “unfair and deceptive,” and to extract massive fines from companies that don’t comply.

As McGee told CCR, “the scheduling and canceling of flights is both unfair and deceptive.” In order to force the airlines to end this practice, Buttigieg would have to initiate an investigation into the practice. The American Economic Liberties Project called on Buttigieg to open an investigation months ago. There has not been such an investigation.

Even on refunds, Buttigieg’s much-touted signature achievement, the Secretary has left Americans in the cold. US law requires airlines to give cash refunds to passengers on cancelled flights. But to this day, passengers are sent unfair and deceptive messages by airlines offering them credit for cancellations, and fliers must fight their way through a bureaucratic quagmire to get cash refunds.

McGee and other advocates met with Buttigieg twelve times sking him to address this. When he finally took action, he ignored the domestic airlines — which racked up 5,700% more complaints in his first year on the job than in the previous year — except for tiny, largely irrelevant Frontier. If you are an American whose journey on an American airline was cancelled, there’s a 98% chance that Buttigieg let them off without a single dollar in fines.

McGee isn’t an armchair quarterback. He is an industry veteran, an FAA-licensed aircraft dispatcher: “I canceled flights. I rescheduled flights. I diverted flights. I delayed flights. I did that every day.”

Apologists for Buttigieg claim that he’s doing all he can: “Pete isn’t in charge of airline IT!” But while USC 40 doesn’t mention computer systems or staffing levels directly, it doesn’t have to: the “unfair and deceptive” standard is deliberately broad, to give regulators the powers they need to protect the American people.

In understanding whether the million fliers that Southwest stranded on the way to their Christmas vacations could have expected more from their DOT, it’s worth looking at how other regulators have used similar authority to protect the American people.

Exhibit A here has to be FTC Chair Lina Khan, whose powers under FTCA5 are nearly identical to Buttigieg’s power under 41712(a) (the DOT language was copied nearly verbatim from the FTCA). Two years ago, Khan began an in-depth investigation into the use of nonompete agreements in the US labor market.

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/events/2020/01/non-competes-workplace-examining-antitrust-consumer-protection-issues

This investigation created an extensive evidentiary record on the ways that workers are harmed by these agreements, and collected empirical observations about whether industries really needed noncompetes to thrive (for example, noncompetes are banned in California, home to the most profitable, most knowledge-intensive businesses in the world, undermining claims that these businesses need noncompetes to survive).

Then, right as Southwest was stranding a million Americans, Khan unveiled a rulemaking to ban noncompetes for every American worker, using her Section 5 powers. Khan’s rule is retroactive, undoing every existing noncompete as well as banning them into the future.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/10/the-courage-to-govern/#whos-in-charge

This is what a fully operational battle-station looks like! Khan and Buttigieg are among the most powerful people who have ever lived, with more and farther-reaching regulatory authority, more power to alter the lives of millions of people, than almost anyone who every drew breath.

And yet, when Secretary Buttigieg jawbones about the airlines, it’s all pleading, not threats. As McGee says, “If you have a Secretary of Transportation who does not punish the airlines when they act terribly, then we should not be surprised when they continue to behave terribly.”

State AGs from both parties are desperate for Buttigieg to back legislation that would return their right to punish airlines. So far, he has not voiced his support for this regulation. When the Secretary of Transport won’t act, and when he won’t support the right of other officials to act, the American traveler is truly stranded.

Image: Tomás Del Coro (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/tomasdelcoro/24575277589

Japanexperterna.se (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/japanexperterna/15251188384/

CC BY-SA 2.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

—

Tarcil (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:La_Brea_Tar_Pits_Elephant_Statues_1990_right.jpg

CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

[Image ID: The La Brea tar-pits. A Southwest jet is nose-down in the tar, next to a stranded mastodon. In the foreground are the three wise monkeys, their faces replaced with that of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.]

#pluralistic #inaction #regulation #swa #southwest air #corporate crime reporter #pete buttigieg #Section 41712(a)

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justinspoliticalcorner · 1 month

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Sophie Lawton at MMFA:

Project 2025 and the right-wing think tank the Heritage Foundation have a plan for a future Republican administration to defund “woke” public media institutions, including PBS and NPR. Last year, Project 2025, a comprehensive transition plan organized by the Heritage Foundation, released a nearly 900-page policy book titled Mandate for Leadership: A Conservative Promise. The book outlines a radical set of policy proposals that would dismantle the civil service, outlaw abortion, and roll back civil rights. (The effort is backed by over 100 conservative partner organizations and has tied itself to former President Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.) One chapter, written by Heritage Foundation senior fellow Mike Gonzalez, lays out a plan for how a Republican administration might defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which uses taxpayer dollars to help fund public media institutions like PBS and NPR. In his chapter on public broadcasting, Gonzalez claimed “all Republican presidents have recognized that public funding of domestic broadcasts is a mistake” and “the next conservative President must” defund public media “and do it despite opposition from congressional members of his own party if necessary.”

Public broadcasting outlets like NPR and PBS are on the radical right-wing Project 2025's list to defund and eliminate.

#Project 2025 #Public Broadcasting #Broadcast News Media #NPR #PBS #Mike Gonzalez #Corporation For Public Broadcasting #The Heritage Foundation

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anexperimentallife · 6 months

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A few things you should know about shitty US electoral politics (long post)

Neither party gives a fuck about you, and the leadership of BOTH parties support the genocide in Gaza, but you already knew that.

HOWEVER, various prominent GOP figures ALSO supported a right-wing domestic coup attempt, want to ban abortion nationwide (overturning Roe v Wade was a step along the way to that), want draconian restrictions on birth control, to ban same-sex marriage, ban sex education, ban any and all queer-positive literature, want to "phase out" social security and medicare, to completely rewrite US history textbooks nationwide with a nationalist agenda that erases US crimes against non-white peoples (already done in some states), allow US law enforcement to stop anyone darker than mayonnaise and demand to see their papers, start a nuclear war, abolish the minimum wage, outlaw their political rivals, weaponize the justice department, FBI, and other federal agencies against their political rivals, outlaw dissent of any kind, and remove restrictions against using US troops against US citizens (see Tuberville's blocking of top military appointees so that a future GOP president can appoint GOP/Trump loyalists to those positions, the way they blocked judicial/SCOTUS nominees in order to get Roe v Wade overturned).

The GOP openly states that they know the only way they win elections is by keeping non-right-wing voters away from the polls, and they invest heavily in, among other things, online psyops to convince people not to vote. And it works, because right wing voters ALWAYS show up to the polls.

Every time a right wing candidate wins, Dem leadership goes, "Huh, I guess we need to field more conservative candidates if we want to win elections." The idea being that if they can somehow "meet in the middle," they'll get the conservative vote. (Hint: They won't.)

So what convinces the Dems to run more progressive candidates? Overwhelming support at the ballot box for leftist candidates on the local and primary levels--school board elections, senators and representatives at the state and federal level, sheriffs, judges, mayoral and city council races, and various other local and regional elected positions. That's it. The only two things they understand are money and winning.

Whomever wins the presidency and gets enough congressional support gets to appoint federal and supreme court judges, top military officials, and various other decision-makers. THIS IS HOW THE GOP WAS ABLE TO OVERTURN ROE V WADE.

The US can't be fixed in a single election cycle. Every cycle in which the GOP wins, however, pushes the Dems further to the right AND allows the GOP more power to enact their vision.

Yes, we need viable third parties. Unfortunately, barring a miracle, third parties and independents are right now viable only in some local, and possibly a few congressional races.

In order for third parties to be viable for things like presidential elections, we're most likely going to need ranked choice voting--which, again, we may eventually get by pushing progressive candidates at the state and local level--publicly-funded elections, the abolition of the electoral college (both Bush and Trump lost the popular vote, and were only awarded victory because of the electoral college), and the repeal of Citizens United (which essentially legalized large-scale corporate bribery of candidates).

Look, we all hate Biden, and refusing to vote for him (or whatever other shitbag candidate the Dems run) might feel good, but it is also likely to result in a GOP win--which means MORE support for genocide the world over, and the GOP gaining more power to enact their wish list, which I partially enumerated above.

How many people do you think will die under a nationwide abortion ban? How do you think it's going to work out if a far-right president has the authority to unleash US troops on protesters? How many seniors and disabled folks do you think will suffer and die if Social Security and Medicare are abolished? How many will suffer and die if Trump gets his wet dream of a nuclear war?

I mean, the US has already bombed its own people for not toeing the capitalist/white supremacist line, sponsored coups against foreign leaders and replaced them with dictators, and invaded or threatened to invade foreign countries for not bowing to US corporate interests (look up the origins of the term "banana republic," "overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom," and "1953 Iran coup," for just a few examples), experimented on US citizens without their knowledge (look up "tuskegee syphilus study," among many other things) and so on, and so on.

And if the GOP gains control of all three branches of government, it's going to get even worse.

Today's GOP is more rabidly extremist than at any other time in my life. And as I said, I'm OLD, dude. I was born the year Kennedy was assassinated. Among my early memories are watching the first lunar landing, watching Nixon's "I am not a crook" speech, and seeing news footage of the US withdrawal from Vietnam. And I'm telling you, today's GOP makes the GOP of my youth look practically benign in comparison.

I used to roll my eyes at the refrain of, "this is the most important election of your life," and the "blue no matter who" folks, but man... The 2016 election really WAS the most important, but only SO FAR.

Because the GOP--due to the facts that GOP/Trump supporters voted, and many others didn't--will most likely control the Supreme Court for DECADES to come, and currently control the Senate. If they gain the presidency, retain control of the Senate, and take control of the House, all may be lost.

Again, the far right openly states that keeping non-conservatives from voting is how they win, and they invest a lot in gerrymandering, voter roll purges, and online psyops to make that happen. Doing exactly what the fash want "but for leftist/progressive reasons" isn't the own you think it is. Funny--I hear the same folks who mock far right voters for voting against their own best interests say they're "protesting" by refusing to vote--when that's exactly how the far right wins.

Look, I'm old. I was planning to live my final years outside the US, eventually immigrating to the Republic of Ireland or Uruguay or somewhere like that, but now that I have a child, I'm being forced to return to the US for at least a few years so I can use my medical benefits to live long enough to see her grow up. If she ever needs an abortion, or birth control, or to fight a discrimination or sexual harassment case, or simply to speak her mind without fear of being arrested or killed for it, or needs social security or Medicare because of a disability, I want her to have those things.

Another argument I've heard is that, "Voting doesn't change anything." Well, when I was a kid, mixed-race marriages were FINALLY legalized across the US, and schools became multiracial. More recently, same-sex marriage was made the law of the land. Conservatives fought all of those things, but voting made them happen.

On the flip side, thanks to the far right takeover of SCOTUS, Roe v Wade was overturned as an end result of the far right winning elections. (And again, this is just part one of their plan for a nationwide abortion ban.)

So don't look at it as voting FOR whatever shitbag the Dems run; look at it as voting AGAINST a full-on right-wing takeover of the US and buying time to make some fundamental changes. Voting doesn't mean you can't ALSO march, etc.

Or I mean, if you want a nationwide abortion ban, a nuclear war, MORE genocide, and all the other stuff of right-wing wet dreams, and want a far right takeover of the US while you tell yourself, "Yeah, but I maintained my moral purity," then by all means withhold your vote. Just don't delude yourself about the outcome.

#rob gets political

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odinsblog · 2 months

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A super PAC funded by conservative megadonor Jeff Yass has spent more than half a million dollars in recent weeks urging Pennsylvania Democrats to support a primary challenger running against progressive House Democrat Summer Lee.

The Moderate PAC, which was formed in 2021, is airing ads in Pennsylvania’s 12th District that attack Lee for what it calls her “extreme socialist agenda,” and calling on Democratic primary voters to choose Lee’s challenger Bhavini Patel. The ads go after Lee for criticizing President Biden and the Democratic Party, and for voting against the debt ceiling bill negotiated between Biden and former House Speaker Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.). Lee is a member of the so-called “Squad” of progressive House Democrats that has stood apart from Democratic Party leaders on numerous policy issues, including most recently on U.S. support for Israel’s ongoing military campaign in Gaza.

The super PAC has spent at least $586,000 on running the ads since the middle of March, according to Federal Election Commission records.

The only donation that The Moderate PAC has ever reported receiving is $1 million from Yass that was given to the group in July 2022.

Yass is a billionaire investor who former President Trump recently said was “fantastic” after the pair connected at a donor retreat in Florida.

Yass has donated more than $62 million to conservative super PAC Club for Growth Action, and $18 million to School Freedom Fund, a Club for Growth PAC that supports candidates who believe parents should receive taxpayer dollars to spend with private education companies of their choosing. Yass lives in Pennsylvania and has a net worth of about $27 billion, according to Forbes.

Yass has also donated heavily to congressional Republicans. Last year he gave $10 million to the Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC affiliated with House GOP leadership, and in 2018 he gave $200,000 to its upper chamber equivalent the Senate Leadership Fund.

(continue reading)

#politics #summer lee #moderate pac #jeff yass #republicans #aipac #centrism #neoliberalism #pennsylvania #republican dirty tricks #conservative democrats #conservadems

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dragoneyes618 · 5 months

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In a pivotal Congressional hearing last week that examined rampant anti-Semitism in some of the nation’s Ivy League universities, the presidents of Harvard, MIT and University of Pennsylvania shocked the world when they refused to affirm that calls for genocide of Jews in their respective institutions violate their schools’ code of conduct.

It was a profound moment of reckoning not only for the leaders of these elite institutions but for a society that looks to them as beacons of leadership. The hearing tore aside the veil masking spiraling anti-Semitic bigotry within these universities and the complicity of its leaders in allowing it to fester.

At the House Committee on Education hearing, Republicans showed footage of fierce anti-Israel protests at their schools, many of which included virulent hate speech toward Jews and calls for genocide.

Yet the Ivy League presidents being questioned appeared to inhabit their own bubble, disconnected from the alarming footage. They seemed to expect their defense of obscene Jew-hatred as protected “free speech” would win approval, if not in the halls of Congress then with grass-roots Americans.

Instead, “support for the presidents of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and M.I.T. eroded quickly,” wrote the New York Times, “after they seemed to evade what seemed like a rather simple question: Would they discipline students calling for the genocide of Jews?”

Their responses “drew incredulous responses,” the Times article said, as a chorus of influential voices condemned the presidents’ failure to unequivocally denounce calls for the murder of Jews and to outlaw such conduct.

‘One Down, Two to Go’

As calls mounted for the resignation of the school presidents, including from alumni, members of Congress and billionaire donors who announced they were withdrawing their gifts, president Liz Magill of UPenn walked back her congressional testimony saying she hadn’t been “properly focusing.” The next day she announced that she was stepping down.

“One down, two to go,” commented Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-NY, who has led demands for accountability on the part of the three university administrators for their lack of “moral clarity and leadership.”

“This is only the very beginning of addressing the pervasive rot of antisemitism that has destroyed the most ‘prestigious’ higher education institutions in America,” said Stefanik. “This forced resignation of the president of UPenn is the bare minimum of what is required. These universities can anticipate a comprehensive Congressional investigation of all facets of their institutions’ perpetration of antisemitism. This includes administrative, faculty, funding, and overall leadership and governance.”

“Harvard and MIT, do the right thing. The world is watching,” she added.

Following the hearing, Rep. Stefanik announced that the House Education and Workforce Committee is “launching an official congressional investigation with the full force of subpoena power” into the three universities, among others.”

In addition, Stefanik led 73 members of Congress, from both the Republican and Democratic parties, in drafting a scathing letter to the boards of the three universities under investigation.

“I am proud to lead a bipartisan letter with Rep. Jared Moskowitz, D-FL, and 72 of our colleagues to the members of the Governing Boards of Harvard, MIT, and Penn demanding that their presidents be removed after this week’s Education and Workforce Committee hearing,” Stefanik wrote.

“Testimony provided by presidents of your institutions showed a complete absence of moral clarity, and illuminated the double standards and dehumanization of the Jewish communities that your university presidents enabled,” the letter to the governing boards said.

“The leadership of top universities plays a pivotal role in shaping the moral compass of our future leaders,” the letter went on. “It is critically important that such leadership reflects a clear commitment to combating antisemitism, along with all forms of hate speech and bigotry.”

“Given this moment of crisis,” the letter said, “we demand that your boards immediately remove each of these presidents from their positions and that you provide an actionable plan to ensure that Jewish and Israeli students, teachers and faculty are safe on your campuses.”

Talk But No Action

The hearing, “Holding Campus Leaders Accountable and Confronting Antisemitism,” began as both Republican and Democratic members of the House grilled the three female presidents, demanding to know how each has addressed the spike in antisemitism since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack.

“Today, each of you will have a chance to answer, to atone for the many specific instances of vitriolic, hate-filled antisemitism on your respective campuses that have denied students the safe learning environment,” Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.), chairwoman for the House Education Committee, told them in her opening statement.

Far from acknowledging that anti-Semitism had surged out of control under their watch, each president staunchly defended her record, proudly pointing to various measures she had taken to increase campus security and open investigations into anti-Semitic episodes.

Noticeably absent from these self-congratulatory remarks was any mention of actual penalties or disciplinary procedures meted out to students or faculty proven to have engaged in egregious anti-Semitic harassment. When questioned about what disciplinary measures are being employed, the presidents refused to answer.

Representative Elise Stefanik, R.-NY, zoned in on this glaring disconnect by repeatedly asking the presidents if calling for the genocide of Jews violated the code of conduct at their schools, and would they discipline a student engaged in this conduct?

Moral Imperatives Vanish When It’s About Anti-Semitism

All three danced around the question, throwing out legalistic catchphrases to avoid a direct answer. When finally cornered, the presidents insisted that everything depends on “context.” In other words, calls for violence against Jews are not inherently wrong or against school policy.

The following segment of the dialogue captures this shocking stance that sparked an intense backlash.

Rep Stefanik: President Magill, at Penn, does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Penn’s rules or code of conduct? Yes or no?”

UPenn President Liz Magill: If the speech turns into conduct, it can be harassment, yes.

Rep. Stefanik: I am asking whether specifically calling for the genocide of Jews, does that constitute bullying or harassment?”

Magill: If the speech becomes conduct, it can be harassment, yes.”

Stefanik: “Conduct” meaning committing the act of genocide?

Magill: It is a context-dependent question, congresswoman.”

Stefanik responded with shock.

“That’s your testimony today? Calling for the genocide of Jews is dependent on the context? It’s not bullying or harassment? This is the easiest question to answer yes for,” Stefanik said. She then threw the question at Harvard president Claudine Gay.

Stefanik: And Dr. Gay, at Harvard, does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard’s rules of bullying and harassment? Yes or no?”

Gay: “It can be, depending on the context.”

Stefanik: Genocide that is targeted at Jewish students, Jewish individuals? I will ask you one more time. Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard’s rules of bullying and harassment? Yes or no?”

Gay: “Again, it depends on the context.”

“It does not depend on the context,” Stefanik shot back. “The answer is yes, and this is why you should resign. These are unacceptable answers across the board.”

Intense Backlash Against College Presidents

Stefanik, the fourth-ranking House Republican, was not the only one outraged by the moral obtuseness on display in the presidents’ responses. Their refusal to condemn calls for the murder of Jews drew fire from alumni, university donors, elected officials and influential commentators from across the political spectrum.

On a deeper level, the presidents’ response threw light on a corrosive atmosphere prevalent in leading universities today where time-honored moral and ethical principles have been eviscerated by woke and left-wing ideology.

Those immersed in this sea of indoctrination appear out of sync with the rest of the world. This might explain the bizarre disconnect in the exchanges between the Ivy League presidents and the members of congress at the hearing.

“It’s unbelievable that this needs to be said: Calls for genocide are monstrous and antithetical to everything we represent as a country,” White House spokesman Andrew Bates said. “Any statements that advocate for the systematic murder of Jews are dangerous and revolting — and we should all stand firmly against them, on the side of human dignity and the most basic values that unite us as Americans.”

“After this week’s pathetic and morally bankrupt testimony by university presidents when answering my questions, the Education and Workforce Committee is launching an official congressional investigation with the full force of subpoena power into Penn, MIT, Harvard, and others,” Rep. Elise Stefanik said in a statement.

“We will use our full congressional authority to hold these schools accountable for their failure on the global stage.”

Republican presidential candidate and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley posted the video of the interactions at the hearing online, saying such remarks by the college presidents “will end or we’ll pull their tax-exempt status.”

“Calling for genocide of Jews is no different than calling for genocide of any other ethnic, racial, or religious group. The equivocation from these college presidents is disgusting,” Haley said.

Private equity billionaire Marc Rowan wrote a message to UPenn trustees saying he heard from hundreds of alumni, parents and leaders who were shocked by the hearing. “The University is suffering tremendous reputational damage,” Rowan wrote in the message, obtained by CNN. “How much damage to our reputation are we willing to accept?”

‘The Three Behaved Like Hostile Witnesses’

Hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman called for the presidents of Harvard, MIT and the University of Pennsylvania to “resign in disgrace,” citing disgust with their testimony.

“Throughout the hearing, the three behaved like hostile witnesses,” Ackman wrote in an online post, “exhibiting a profound disdain for the Congress with their smiles and smirks, and their outright refusal to answer basic questions with a yes or no answer.”

Ackman, a Harvard graduate who has been a vocal critic of how universities have addressed antisemitism, posted a clip from the exchange at the hearing where the university leaders were asked about calls for the genocide of Jews.

“They must all resign in disgrace. If a CEO of one of our companies gave a similar answer, he or she would be toast within the hour,” Ackman said. “The answers they gave reflect the profound moral bankruptcy of Presidents Gay, Magill and Kornbluth.”

“Why has anti-Semitism exploded on campus and around the world? Because of leaders like Presidents Gay, Magill and Kornbluth who believe genocide depends on the context,” Ackman said.

The criticism of the university leaders was so strong that president Gay of Harvard and Magill of UPenn felt compelled to issue new statements attempting to “clarify” the testimony. These revamped assertions contradicted their earlier statements that threats of anti-Semitic violence did not automatically qualify as harassment.

In a brazen about face, Magill now termed calls for genocide “vile,” and vowed to hold perpetrators to account.

Gay made similar contrite retractions, saying she was “sad” that her words “had caused pain,” and affecting distress that critics were confusing her support for “the right to free expression with the idea that Harvard would condone calls for violence against Jewish students.”

Bomb Threats; Hillel and Chabad Houses Vandalized

Despite the illusions the Ivy League presidents tried to project of their administrations managing the anti-Semitic outbreaks on their campus, many Jewish students say they feel threatened daily, not just by fellow students but by faculty and staff as well, the Free Beacon reported.

“As a student, despite what my university says, I do not feel safe,” said University of Pennsylvania senior Eyal Yakoby. “Let me be clear: I do not feel safe.”

Yakoby described several incidents on campus since Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks. They included “a bomb threat against Hillel; a swastika spray-painted on the Hillel building; the Chabad house vandalized; a professor posting an armed wing of Hamas’s logo on Facebook, a Jewish student accosted with hostility; and ‘Jews are Nazis’ etched adjacent to Penn’s Jewish fraternity house.”

He also referenced a Dec. 3 protest that saw participants vandalize school property with graffiti calling for an “intifada,” and chant in Arabic, “From water to water, Palestine will be Arab.”

Harvard Law School student Jonathan Frieden described the fear gripping many Jewish students. “I talk to my Jewish friends on campus every day,” he said. “They tell me how afraid they are to go to class. They share hate messages they are receiving from other students on social media, including comparing Jews to Nazis. And they ask each other for safety advice because of the lack of effective communication from the university.”

Frieden described an incident where pro-Palestinian protesters swarmed a law school building he was inside while they chanted slogans including “from the river to the sea” and “globalize the intifada.” He witnessed Jewish students take off their yarmulkes and one student hide underneath a desk, he said.

All four students also castigated their administrations, alleging that they failed to do anything meaningful to tackle the anti-Semitic climate on campus.

New Trend: Jewish High School Grads Abandon Ivy League Plans

An article in National Review, a conservative magazine, discusses a new trend among Jewish high school graduates in the wake of the anti-Semitism crisis on college campuses: a growing disenchantment with the Ivy League image.

Fueled by the specter of pervasive anti-Semitism and hostility in these schools, bright Jewish students are rethinking their Ivy League aspirations and turning to smaller, less prestigious colleges.

To take a few examples from one Ivy League school, since October 7, “Columbia has become a byword in American Jewish circles for rampant antisemitism,” the article noted. “In the past two months, an Israeli student was assaulted on campus, and people have screamed profanities at religious Jewish students.”

In another example, reports in an online paper noted that an Israeli student at Columbia, introducing himself on the first day of class, was targeted with an anti-Israel slur by a professor who asked him, “So you must know a lot about settler colonialism. How do you feel about that?”

Another academic reportedly observed to a Jewish student, “It’s such a shame that your people survived just in order to perpetuate genocide.”

Columbia’s apathy in the face of corrosive anti-Semitism has driven donors away, prompting the administration to do serious damage control to prove their concern for Jewish students’ safety, the National Review article noted. In early November, the school suspended Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), a rabid pro-Palestinian group, for “threatening rhetoric and intimidation.”

Columbia graduate Anna Feldman told NR that even before October 7, she always felt she was walking around on “eggshells whenever the topic was Jewish people or Israel. I always felt like I couldn’t say what I had to say about Israel or the Middle East in general.”

She noted that the much publicized episodes of anti-Semitism at Columbia after Oct. 7 were nothing new to her. They were part of the university’s everyday landscape, driven by left-wing philosophies that target Israel—and Jews by association—as a source of evil.

Feldman said she refrained from writing essays touching on the Middle East out of fear of being branded a pro-Israel bigot or “pro-colonialism.” Conversations she’s had with Jewish students stuck in classes with professors justifying the Hamas massacres, are deeply unnerving.

“Thank G-d I’m no longer on campus,” Feldman reflected to the interviewer. “I don’t think I’d be able to sit in the same room with someone who wants me dead.”

American Colleges Unmasked

Columbia, Harvard University, and the University of Pennsylvania are all under investigation by the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights over complaints that their administrations have not adequately responded to rising antisemitism.

“The furor over antisemitism on campus is a rare and welcome example of accountability at American universities. But it won’t amount to much if the only result is the resignation of a couple of university presidents,” asserted a WSJ op-ed.

“The great benefit of last week’s performance by three elite-school presidents before Congress is that it tore the mask off the intellectual and political corruption of much of the American academy,” the article said.

“The world was appalled by the equivocation of the academic leaders when asked if advocating genocide against Jews violated their codes of conduct. But the episode merely revealed the value system that has become endemic at too many prestigious schools.”

*****

‘Deafening Silence’ Evokes Silent Complicity in Nazi Era

Last week’s explosive congressional hearing occurred just after an equally electrifying press conference, where House Republicans hosted Jewish students from many of the universities that have seen an alarming rise in antisemitism, The Hill reported.

“In 2023 at NYU, I hear calls to ‘gas the Jews,’ and I am told that ‘Hitler was right,’” Bella Ingber, a junior at NYU, told those in attendance.

“Since Oct. 7,” Ingber said, “the anti-Semitism I’ve experienced on campus is reminiscent of the Jew-hatred I’ve heard about from my grandparents, Holocaust survivors who experienced first-hand the deafening silence of their neighbors in Poland and Germany when the Nazis first rose to power.”

“70 percent of MIT Jewish students polled, feel forced to hide their identities and perspectives,” MIT graduate student Talia Kahn told the lawmakers. “This is not just harassment. This is our lives on the line,” added Kahn, who is also president of the MIT Israel Alliance.

She said she felt “immersed in an extremely toxic anti-Semitic atmosphere,” at MIT. “I was forced to leave my study group for my doctoral exams halfway through the semester because my group members told me that the people at the Nova music festival deserved to die because they were partying on stolen land.”

In an interview with Free Beacon, Talia Kahn shared that the school’s interfaith chaplain publicly threatened Jewish students; that DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) staff claimed Israel has no right to exist; and that faculty told students that if they are scared, they should “just go back to Israel.”

#antisemitism #jews #jumblr #antisemitism on campus #harvard #mit #columbia #university of pennsylvania

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dontmeantobepoliticalbut · 1 year

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Leadership of the House of Representatives remains in limbo as California GOP Rep. Kevin McCarthy faces internal opposition to his bid for Speaker.

On the first day of the new Congress, McCarthy failed to secure the 218 votes necessary to become Speaker of the House in three rounds of voting. The House cannot conduct any business, including swearing in new members, until a Speaker is chosen.

Tuesday's vote was the first time in a century that the election of a House Speaker took multiple ballots to complete. The longest vote in U.S. history took place in 1855, lasting 133 rounds over two months, from December 1855 to February 1856.

McCarthy faces a Republican bloc of critics who want changes to the way the House operates. Although he's given in to many of their demands, he remains short of the votes needed.

Instead of celebrating their return to the majority on the first day, McCarthy and other GOP leaders were sorting out how to respond to an open rebellion that showcased division and cast doubt on their ability to govern.

McCarthy maintains he will not step down and balloting will continue until he can secure the necessary support.

"They can go through whoever they want to go through, and they'll come to the conclusion that they don't, they can't get there," McCarthy told reporters outside of the House floor.

House members voted Tuesday to adjourn until noon ET on Wednesday, when a fourth vote is expected to take place.

HOW THE VOTES SHOOK OUT

Republicans hold the majority in the House now, but it's customary for the minority party to nominate their leader for speaker, and Democrat Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York had more votes than McCarthy in all three voting rounds.

Round 1 saw: Jeffries, 212; McCarthy, 203; and 19 votes for other Republicans. In Round 2, the counts for Jeffries and McCarthy stayed the same, however, 19 votes went to Ohio Republican Rep. Jim Jordan.

In Round 3, the vote breakdown was similar, but McCarthy lost one Republican — Rep. Byron Donalds of Florida — who voted for Jordan.

Jordan spoke in support of McCarthy on the House floor just before the second round began, encouraging his colleagues to vote for him.

"The differences we may have ... pale in comparison to us and the left, which now unfortunately controls the other party," Jordan said. "So, we had better come together. ... That's what the people want us to do, and I think Kevin McCarthy is the right guy to lead us, I really do, or else I wouldn't be up here giving this speech."

Speaking to reporters Tuesday — before he was nominated — Jordan said that he wouldn't want that job. "I'm for Kevin McCarthy and I've told you guys I don't know how many times, I want to chair the Judiciary Committee," he said.

Florida's Rep. Matt Gaetz nominated Jordan after the first round of voting, saying that perhaps the person best suited for the job is the person who doesn't want it.

"Maybe the right person for the job of Speaker of the House isn't someone who wants it so bad," Gaetz said. "Maybe the right person for the job of Speaker of the House isn't someone who has sold shares of himself for more than a decade to get it. Maybe Jim Jordan is the right person for Speaker of the House because he is not beholden to the lobbyists and special interests who have corrupted this place and corrupted this nation under the leadership under both Republicans and Democrats."

Democrats stuck together with overwhelming support of Jeffries, noting his historical nomination as first Black legislator to lead a congressional chamber. Many who voted for Jeffries did so enthusiastically and often intoning the names of civil rights leaders and other notable Black members of Congress as they did so. There is no expectation at this point that any Democratic lawmaker will cross party lines to assist McCarthy's path to the Speakership.

WHAT DEFECTORS WANT

Of those who voted against McCarthy on Tuesday, many holdouts sought and got support for new rules on how legislation is considered in the House, and how oversight investigations of the Biden administration will be structured.

McCarthy also agreed to to change a rule that would allow a group of five members to offer a resolution to remove the Speaker. He insisted for weeks he wouldn't agree to lower the threshold on how many sponsors are needed on a "motion to vacate the chair" because it effectively weakens the power of the Speaker. But McCarthy gave into pressure from those on the right since he has such a small margin and can't afford more than a few defections.

Pennsylvania GOP Rep. Scott Perry, a leading McCarthy critic who signed onto a letter with nine other Republicans circulated on New Year's day, tweeted: "nothing changes when nothing changes." He cited the letter, which states "the times call for a radical departure of the status quo — not a continuation of the past, and ongoing Republican failures."

Speaking to reporters on Tuesday morning, Perry said he and other members planning to vote against McCarthy took a plan to him Monday night, outlining what he needed to do to win their support, and thus 218 votes to win. While McCarthy agreed to some of their requests, McCarthy still rejected other demands, like bringing a bill to the floor to impose term limits for representatives.

"We took an offer to him last night with things that are completely and wholly within his purview. He rejected it summarily," Perry said Tuesday morning.

CHAOS IS ON DISPLAY

A first-ballot failure is embarrassing to the top Republican who led his party's efforts to win back the majority.

McCarthy ran for speaker in 2015 when then House Speaker John Boehner stepped down, but withdrew abruptly from the race after conceding he didn't have the votes to win.

In the last couple of election cycles, McCarthy led the political effort for House Republicans — raising, along with affiliated super PAC, the Congressional Leadership Fund, roughly a half a trillion dollars and campaigning for GOP candidates across the country. He and his allies predicted a "red wave" in the fall, but ended up eking out just a four-seat majority.

The public vote on the House floor showcased the GOP divisions and chaos. Ahead of the vote, McCarthy's allies insisted they won't vote for any alternative candidate, and even if it's messy, they will stick with him.

But nothing else can happen in the House of Representatives until a Speaker is elected. It's the only leadership position mentioned in the Constitution.

There have been some discussions about trying to rally around a consensus candidate, but McCarthy's allies have been pushing what they say is an "O.K." strategy — "Only Kevin." There is potential for the process to drag out for hours or even days if McCarthy is unable to convince some of the holdouts to back him.

McCarthy's No. 2, Louisiana Rep. Steve Scalise, has publicly backed McCarthy and predicted he will be elected Speaker. But if McCarthy fails to convince enough members to back him GOP members could turn to Scalise as a potential alternative — or some other conservative candidate.

Scalise, who is in line to serve as House Majority Leader, released an agenda for the first two weeks of January. He pledged the House would vote on measures to cancel the boost in funding to hire more IRS agents, and bills dealing with border security and abortion. But until the Speaker is elected, the House Committees can't form, members cannot be sworn in to start the new session, and the rest of the business is stalled out.

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follow-up-news · 5 months

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The IRS says it has collected an additional $360 million in overdue taxes from delinquent millionaires as the agency’s leadership tries to promote the latest work it has done to modernize the agency with Inflation Reduction Act funding that Republicans are threatening to chip away. Leadership from the federal tax collector held a call with reporters Thursday to give updates on how the agency has used a portion of the tens of billions of dollars allocated to the agency through Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act, signed into law in August 2022. Along with the $122 million collected from delinquent millionaires last October, now nearly half a billion dollars in back taxes from rich tax cheats has been recouped, IRS leaders say. The announcement comes as the IRS braces for a more severe round of funding cuts. The agency cuts previously agreed upon by the White House and congressional Republicans in the debt ceiling and budget cuts package passed by Congress last year — which included $20 billion rescinded from the IRS over two years — would be frontloaded as part of the overall spending package for the current fiscal year that could help avoid a partial government shutdown later this month. IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel said that “the impact of the rescission that’s being discussed as part of the current budget will not impact our efforts until the later years.” He said the agency would still spend its now-$60 billion allocation over the next 10 years and spread the need for more funding into later years. “Our intent is to spend the money to have maximum impact in helping taxpayers,” he said, “to have maximum impact now and in the immediate future.” “My hope is that as we demonstrate the positive impact that IRA funding is having for all taxpayers, that there will be a need and a desire amongst policymakers at that time to restore IRS funding so that we can continue the momentum that’s having a very positive impact,” Werfel said. As of December, the IRS says it opened 76 examinations into the largest partnerships in the U.S. that include hedge funds, real estate investment partnerships and large law firms. “It’s clear the Inflation Reduction Act funding is making a difference for taxpayers,” Werfel said. “For progress to continue we must maintain a reliable, consistent annual appropriations for our agency.”

#irs

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 3 months

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Michael De Adder

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

February 27, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

FEB 28, 2024

The House of Representatives will be back in session tomorrow after the February 19 Presidents Day holiday. It is facing a number of crucial issues, but the ongoing problem of the radicalism of the MAGA Republicans has ground—and, apparently, continues to grind—legislation to a halt.

The farm bill, which establishes the main agricultural and food policies of the government—agricultural subsidies and food benefits, among other things—and which needs to be reauthorized every five years, expired in September 2023. While Congress extended the 2018 bill as a stopgap until September 2024, the new bill should be passed.

The farm bill has more breathing room than the appropriations bills to fund the government in fiscal year 2024 (which started on October 1, 2023). Four of the continuing resolutions Congress passed to keep the government running will expire on March 1; the other eight will expire on March 8. Operating on a continuing resolution that maintains 2023 levels of spending means the government cannot shift to the new priorities Congress agreed to in the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act, and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, along with leaders from the Pentagon and the Senate, warns that the lack of appropriations measures is compromising national defense.

On an even tighter timeline is the national security supplemental bill to aid Ukraine, Israel, the Indo-Pacific, and to provide humanitarian aid to Gaza. Ukraine is running out of ammunition, and its war effort is faltering. Every day that passes without the matériel only the U.S. can provide hurts the Ukrainians’ cause.

All of these measures are stalled because extremist MAGA Republicans in the House are insisting their demands be included in them. Negotiators have been trying to hash out the farm bill for months, and today Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee, said she would rather continue to extend the 2018 law than bow to the House Republicans’ demands for cuts to food assistance programs and funding for climate change.

Appropriations bills are generally passed “clean,” that is, without the inclusion of unrelated controversial elements. But House Republicans are insisting the appropriations bills include their own demands for much deeper cuts than House leadership agreed to, as well as riders about abortion; gun policy; diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives; LGBTQ+ rights; and so on. Those are nonstarters for Democrats.

As for the national security supplemental measure, lawmakers agree on a bipartisan basis that Ukraine’s successful defense against Russia’s invasion is crucial to U.S. national security. The Senate passed the bill on a strong bipartisan vote of 70 to 29, and if brought to the floor of the House, it would be expected to pass there, too.

But House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) refuses to bring it to the floor. When President Joe Biden first asked for the aid in October, Republicans insisted they could not see their way to protecting our national security overseas without addressing it on the southern border. A bipartisan group of senators spent four months hashing out a border provision for the bill—House Republicans declined to participate—only to have House Republicans scuttle the measure when former president Trump told them to. The Senate promptly passed a bill that didn’t have the border component. Rather than take it up, the House recessed.

Today, President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris met with congressional leaders and urged them to pass the appropriations bills and the national security supplemental. But Biden, Harris, Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), and House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) all agree on the need to pass these measures immediately. The holdout is House speaker Johnson.

After the meeting, Schumer said the meeting on Ukraine was “one of the most intense” scenes he had ever seen in the Oval Office. "We said to the speaker, 'Get it done.' I told him this is one of the moments—I said I've been around here a long time. It's maybe four or five times that history is looking over your shoulder, and if you don't do the right thing, whatever the immediate politics are, you will regret it. I told him two years from now and every year after that, because really, it's in his hands."

For his part, Johnson said that “the House is actively pursuing and investigating all the various options” on the supplemental bill, “but again, the first priority of the country is our border and making sure it’s secure.”

Johnson appears to be working for Trump, who is strongly opposed to aid for Ukraine and likely intends to use immigration as a campaign issue.

But Trump is a poor choice to give control over United States security. Yesterday, Special Counsel Jack Smith responded to Trump’s motion to dismiss the charges against him associated with his stealing and hiding classified documents on the grounds that he was being treated differently than President Biden, who had also had classified documents in his possession but was not criminally charged.

Smith noted that while there have been many government officials who have accidentally or willfully kept classified documents, and even some who briefly resisted attempts to recover them, Trump’s behavior was unique. “He intentionally took possession of a vast trove of some of the nation’s most sensitive documents…and stored them in unsecured locations at his heavily trafficked social club.” Then, when the government tried to recover the documents, Trump “delayed, obfuscated, and dissembled,” finally handing over only “a fraction” of those in his possession. No one, Smith wrote, “has engaged in a remotely similar suite of willful and deceitful criminal conduct and not been prosecuted.”

Perhaps to distract from Smith’s filing, House Committee on Oversight and Accountability chair James Comer (R-KY) and House Committee on the Judiciary chair Jim Jordan (R-OH) today subpoenaed information from Special Counsel Robert Hur’s investigation into Biden’s handling of documents. Hur’s report exonerated the president and showed such contrast between Trump's behavior and Biden's full cooperation with officials that Smith used material from it in his filing.

Comer and Jordan are likely also eager to find new material against Biden after the man who provided the key evidence in their impeachment attempt turned out to be working with Russian intelligence agents and was recently indicted for lying and creating a false record.

Since this year is a leap year, Congress has three days to pass the first four of the appropriations measures or to find another workaround before March 1, when parts of the government shut down. As Schumer said, those measures, along with the national security supplemental bill, are now in Speaker Johnson’s hands.

—

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#Michael deAdder #political cartoons #KKK #Letters From An American #Heather Cox Richardson #obstructionist congress #do nothing congress #Putin wing of the GOP #war in Ukraine #government funding

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theculturedmarxist · 1 year

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In the first days of 2023, the reactionary and repulsive dynamic of American capitalist politics has been on full display.

For decades, the following process has played out time and time again: No matter how small its numerical presence, the far-right wing of the Republican Party dominates, the Democratic Party adapts in the name of “bipartisanship,” and its “left” flank capitulates without a fight in the name of “unity against the right.” As a result, the political axis of bourgeois politics moves to the right, and the process repeats itself. Each episode is more degrading than the last.

To socialists, this spectacle demonstrates that imperialism is reaction all down the line and that a movement of the working class is necessary to sweep both parties out of power and enact the revolutionary transformation of society.

To the Democratic Socialists of America, it is another opportunity to promote the tired fiction that the Democratic Party can be pushed to the left.

On January 7, Jacobin published an article by DSA member Neal Meyer entitled “The right played hardball in Congress. The left should take notes.”

As the title suggests, the article argues that socialists should pressure “progressive” congresspersons to “use the bully pulpit” and “fight” the Democratic Party leadership “just as hard as the right does against their leadership.” Meyer writes, “We should be prepared to go to war against Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries and others…”

Meyer asserts that this is the strategy of the DSA: “Democratic socialists use electoral politics and our position in legislatures to build our popular base,” “spread democratic socialist ideas” and “rally millions to a program of transformational change.”

As a preliminary matter, the DSA’s record in Congress is not rallying anyone for transformational change, except in the negative sense. The DSA’s representatives have used their electoral positions to illegalize railroad strikes, fund the Israeli military and provide the American military industrial complex with tens of billions of dollars to wage the US-NATO war against Russia, risking nuclear catastrophe.

Meyer papers over these votes, writing, “As Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has said in the past, in any other country she would not be in the same party as Joe Biden. That has never been more clear than in the aftermath of Joe Biden’s decision to crush railroad workers’ right to strike to win paid leave.”

This is an unfortunate example, given the fact that Ocasio-Cortez and the rest of the DSA slate (save Rashida Tlaib) voted “to crush railroad workers’ right to strike to win paid leave.” There is a reason why Ocasio-Cortez and Biden are in the same party: The DSA plays a critical role in this sordid right-wing process, by trapping social opposition within the Democratic Party where it can be suffocated and eliminated.

Jacobin’s article is yet another example of this role. Meyer writes in a manner which makes clear the DSA is sensitive to the growing realization of the true role played by Ocasio-Cortez and her DSA cohorts. He presents the relationship between the DSA and the Democratic Party leadership as follows: “We ought to sit very uncomfortably inside the Democratic fold. It is, at best, a temporary and fraught marriage of necessity, one that we should want to exit as soon as possible.”

This is a falsification of the relationship between the DSA’s own congressional members and the Democratic leadership, as evidenced by the recent speakership fight. The DSA’s representatives unanimously voted for Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries on every round in last week’s leadership contest, despite Jeffries’ 2021 statement that “there will never be a moment where I bend the knee to hard-left democratic socialism.” In fact, Jeffries started a Political Action Committee (Team Blue) specifically to oppose left-wing challengers to Democratic incumbents. Even so, he won the votes of all those he is trying to unseat.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, confronting growing left-wing opposition to her subservience to the Democratic Party, gave an explanation which was as revealing as it was pathetic. “I see some people say Dems should negotiate to get concessions,” she said in a social media post this week. “We do, but what we don’t do is bring them publicly in order to empower not just Republicans but the fascist flank of the Republican Party.”

This statement tracks with her record in Congress: The class struggle must be suppressed for the sake of the institutional security of the imperialist Democratic Party and the Biden administration. For this same reason Ocasio-Cortez and the DSA’s congressional representatives illegalized the rail strike and denounced left-wing criticism of Biden as “privileged” and racist.

In comments to MSNBC responding to the Republican speakership fight, Ocasio-Cortez confirmed the DSA’s role, saying, “What was important today was to send the message that we were united behind Hakeem Jeffries as the new minority leader, that there would be no defections, that Democrats are here, we’re not going anywhere.”

Undermining her own claim about the efficacy of secret negotiations, she pledged the Democratic Party would “stay 100 percent united” no matter what, adding, “We absolutely have differences,” but she is “willing to put that aside.”

Here, Ocasio-Cortez has accidentally told the truth. For the sake of the stability of the Democratic Party, the Democratic Socialists of America is willing to put aside its differences with the establishment, however minor they may be, by backing a party leader who has pledged to ignore them until he can remove them from Congress.

There is nothing unexpected or unusual in this behavior. Ocasio-Cortez and the rest of the DSA’s slate are not socialists, they are conformist politicians, and they are acting in conformity with the DSA’s political essence as a pro-imperialist faction of the Democratic Party.

The DSA exists not to extract reforms from the Democratic establishment, but to trap social opposition and channel it behind the Democratic Party. Only an organization with such a long practice in pseudo-socialist gymnastics could try to present Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s concessions to the far right as a rallying cry for reforming the two-party system from within.

#alexandria ocasio cortez #AOC #democrats #democratic socialists of america #class traitors #us politics #us political corruption

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