From Obama’s Farewell Address

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President Obama never mentioned Donald Trump’s name, but when he discussed the need for workers to stand together it was clear whose tactics he was talking about.

Obama said, “But we’re not where we need to be. All of us have more work to do. After all, if every economic issue is framed as a struggle between a hardworking white middle class and undeserving minorities, then workers of all shades will be left fighting for scraps while the wealthy withdraw further into their private enclaves. If we decline to invest in the children of immigrants, just because they don’t look like us, we diminish the prospects of our own children – because those brown kids will represent a larger share of America’s workforce. And our economy doesn’t have to be a zero-sum game. Last year, incomes rose for all races, all age groups, for men and for women.”

Workers of all ages, races, genders, and professions can’t allow themselves to be divided by the Trump tactics. Trump won the election by dividing workers. He made white workers in manufacturing, mining, and energy feel like they were fighting for their lives. Trump demonized Hispanics and African-Americans.

The only people that benefit from dividing workers are those who can keep wages down with division.

Instead of fretting over attracting white workers to their party, Democrats need to be talking to all workers. Trump does not have a pro-worker agenda. Trump’s agenda is pro-corporation, millionaire, and billionaire. Workers will only win if they stand together.

Rising Inequality Is Far From Inevitable

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Source: American Prospect via Portside

Author:Robert Kuttner

Emphasis Mine

The latest study of deepening inequality by three of the most careful scholars of the subject, Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saens, and Gabriel Zucman, has prompted another round of shrugs [1] from economists that inequality is just in the nature of the advanced economy.

Supposedly, these inexorable trends reflect technology, globalization, and increasing rewards to more advanced skills. The poor are paid in correct proportion to their contribution to the national product, which alas, isn’t much.

A close look at political history suggests that this widespread inference is convenient nonsense—convenient to economic elites. In fact, the distribution of income and wealth has bounced around a lot in the past century and a half. It was extreme in the first Gilded Age of the late 19th century, a little less so in the Progressive Era, extreme again in the 1920s, and remarkably egalitarian in the period between the New Deal and the early 1970s—and now extreme again.

Does anyone seriously argue that these shifts reflected changes in technology or skills? No, they reflected changes in the political power to set the ground rules of capitalism. And that’s what should command our attention today.

The remarkable income equality of the postwar boom was built on a political transformation, which in turn allowed a suite of equalizing policies. It had little to do with shifts in the technical structure of the economy.

Most fundamentally, the power of finance was “repressed,” in the phrase of Harvard economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, both economically and politically. That in turn weakened both the ability of financial elites to capture such a large share of the total product, and to influence the rules of the game. Commercial banks and investment banks were tightly regulated, hedge funds and private equity were miniscule, and there were no complex synthetic financial products to enrich insiders, frustrate ordinary borrowers, or crash the system.

Trade unions were empowered, both by the Wagner Act of 1935, and more importantly by Roosevelt’s policies during the war, which made unions recognized partners in war production, and by extension partners in a broader social compact. Before corporations took the gloves off again, there was a brief era in which unions had broad legitimacy.

Unions, in turn, influenced wages, not just of their own members, who were about one third of the workforce in labor’s heyday during the ‘40s and ‘50s, but the structure of earnings and the terms of employment generally. Minimum wages were far higher in real terms.

In that era, the terms of globalization, created at the Bretton Woods Conference of 1944, deliberately created rules that allowed trade to expand, but not to destroy national social compacts. Bretton Woods was biased in favor of full employment economies and against the austerity that is newly fashionable and as perverse as ever.

All of this helps explain why the postwar era was a far more equal one than we have today. But what about skills? Well, the typical worker barely had a high school diploma—many did not—but one income was enough to support home ownership and a middle class standard of living. Despite low skills, the social compact of that era insisted on greater equality.

But can we ever get that back? Of course we can—the obstacles are political, not economic.

We could have much higher minimum wages. We could stop the union-bashing. We could restore a brand of globalization that promotes rather than undermines national social standards. We could invest massively in a green transition, modeled on the World War II mobilization that reduced unemployment from 14 percent to 2 percent in two years and produced tens of millions of good jobs.

As technology replaces human work, we could also give everyone a share of that new production, the way the Alaska Permanent Fund gives all Alaskans a share of that state’s oil revenues. Any advances created with the help of government—from subsidy of biomedical research to free-riding on the internet—could be subject to a share-the-wealth levy. Author Peter Barnes is the inspiration for this idea.

Is this broad vision crazy? It is far less crazy than the folly of supply-side economics that is back in fashion, which will only make America more needlessly unequal.

Will Donald Trump pursue any of these policies? Despite is fake populist rhetoric, he is on track to run the most corporate administration ever. Increasing inequality will follow.

Trump won, in part because previous Democratic administrations did not make living standards of ordinary working Americans a sufficiently high priority, either legislatively or on the ideology of what they stood for. Looking beyond Trump, that has to change.

Instead of accepting the counsels of despair, we should be reinventing the levers of the more equal economy and society that America once proudly displayed to the world.

Robert Kuttner is co-founder and co-editor of The American Prospect, and professor at Brandeis University’s Heller School. His latest book is Debtors’ Prison: The Politics of Austerity Versus Possibility. He writes columns for The Huffington Post, The Boston Globe and the New York Times international edition.

 

See:https://portside.org/print/2017-01-06/rising-inequality-far-inevitable

Never Normalize: Why Trump’s Presidency Is Illegitimate and How to Respond

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Source:Portside

Author:Nancy Altman/HuffPost

Emphasis Mine

Now that a majority of electors have cast their ballots in favor of Donald Trump, he will have the lawful powers of the presidency, as prescribed in the Constitution and the laws of the United States. Legal authority is not equivalent, however, to political legitimacy, moral authority, or entitlement to civic respect.

Trump’s legal authority will give him the power to issue executive orders and repeal existing ones. If he signs bills passed by Congress, those enactments ― however stupid or destructive they may be – will be the law of the land, unless the courts find them unconstitutional. Similarly, Trump will be the Commander in Chief of the armed forces, because the Constitution confers that power on the holder of the office. As a result, as long as Trump’s actions are consistent with law, opponents can and should publicize the costs and hazards of those actions, but will lose if they mount legal challenges.

Though Trump has legal legitimacy, he totally lacks political legitimacy. He seized power through a cumulative set of actions that thoroughly undermine the integrity of the election outcome. These illegitimate actions include voter suppression engineered by the Republican Party; highly inappropriate and outrageous interventions in the election by the Director of the FBI; persistent demonizing and intimidation of a free press; and, most egregious, a deliberate attempt (openly encouraged by Trump himself) by a hostile foreign government to influence the election in his favor. Taken together, these actions fatally undercut the political legitimacy of Trump’s presidency.

He also lacks the moral authority normally associated with the Presidency. Trump’s deficiencies of character undercut any notion that he deserves moral or civic respect. His deep flaws have been on full exhibit before, during, and after the election campaign. These character failures are revealed in his blatant and persistent lies; the scapegoating of vulnerable groups; eight years as a birther; a disgusting history as a sexual predator and racist; and conflicts of financial interest so wide and deep that he will be impeachable on day one of his presidency.

How should Americans treat a president who has bare legal legitimacy but lacks both political legitimacy and moral authority? Some say that all Americans should wait and see how he performs in the job, and that other leaders should work with him where common interests can be found. They argue that, for the good of the country, we should put the election behind us and treat Trump with political and moral respect – that is, that we should strive to normalize his presidency.

We respectfully but emphatically disagree. It would be a grave error to ignore his political illegitimacy and lack of moral authority. Other elected officials, the media, and the citizenry at large have no obligation to afford him the slightest political respect. Rather, the next four years should be a time of resistance and outright obstructionism. Opponents of Trump should be at least as aggressive in challenging the political legitimacy and moral authority of his presidency as Republicans were in disrespecting President Obama, whose political legitimacy and moral authority were beyond reproach.

In short, Democrats should learn the lesson Republicans have taught them: Don’t bring boxing gloves to a knife fight.

What concrete presumptions flow from the political and moral illegitimacy of Trump’s presidency? Here are four:

  • Everything Trump speaks, writes, tweets, or otherwise expresses should be presumed false, unless there is reliable (to the listener) evidence that it is true. He has lied so often and so blatantly, and his followers have so persistently rejected the idea of objective truth, that no responsible citizen should believe a word he says unless it can be independently verified. The press will be acting irresponsibly unless it covers him according to this principle.
  • Trump should never be presumed to be acting in the best interests of the United States. His actions with respect to his business interests and his family’s wealth suggest that his highest loyalties are to those personal concerns, and his loyalty to the nation is completely secondary. His encouragement of the Russian cyberattack on the election is just the most extreme example of his loyalty to himself over loyalty to his country. Every move he makes should therefore be presumed to represent a conflict of interest, unless he can demonstrate that no conflict exists.
  • The wealthy donors and others he appoints to office should be presumed incompetent and riddled with interest conflicts until proven otherwise. His emphasis on a cult of personal loyalty, insensitivity to conflicts of interest, alliances with bigots, and willingness to appoint people wholly ignorant of, and indeed hostile to, the tasks associated with a particular office, mean that the burden of proof should always be on Trump to demonstrate the competence and honesty of his appointees. Unlike what routinely occurs in a normal presidency, Senators should give absolutely no deference to his choices. Indeed, nominees requiring confirmation should be questioned at length and scrutinized with care, in order to expose their flaws. Confirmation of nominees should be slowed down and blocked in every procedural way possible.
  • Trump’s substantive judgements should be presumed ignorant, and, at times, dangerous. His unwillingness to educate himself about crucial details of national security and domestic policy, or to surround himself with expert and trustworthy advisors, means that every substantive judgement he makes is highly likely to be flawed.

Democratic leaders should take every opportunity to act in accordance with these presumptions. Common inter-branch traditions and norms of civility should be laid aside for the duration of the Trump regime. For example, Senate Democrats should never provide unanimous consent, including to allow Trump’s incompetent and financially conflicted nominees to be confirmed prior to January 20. Democrats should force votes at every turn and use the filibuster aggressively, as Republicans did during the Obama years. The goal should be to prevent the smooth flow of Senate action in order to stall Trump’s illegitimate agenda as much as possible.

On January 20, Democrats should boycott Trump’s inauguration. As befits a lying president, Democrats should be quick to shout “You lie!” when Trump addresses joint sessions, just as Republicans shouted at President Obama. When Trump praises Vladimir Putin or Russia in formal addresses, Democrats should rise and chant “Puppet! Puppet!” In short, Democrats should learn the lesson Republicans have taught them: Don’t bring boxing gloves to a knife fight.

At noon on January 20, 2017, we will have a new president. The office of the presidency deserves respect, but the new occupant has relied on illegitimate means to seize power, and he deserves moral contempt. Polling reveals that these concerns are widespread among the electorate. Two thirds of Democrats [1] want to see resistance, and well fewer than half – just 38 percent [2] ―of the entire electorate believe Trump to be minimally qualified for the presidency. Democratic leaders should take notice and act accordingly.

Nancy J. Altman is the founding co-director of Social Security Works. Ira C. Lupu, a constitutional law scholar, is the F. Elwood & Eleanor Davis Professor of Law, Emeritus at George Washington University Law School

 

See:

FBI Analysis Fingers Russian Spy Agencies For U.S. Election Hacks

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Source: HuffPost

Emphasis Mine

The FBI squarely blamed Russian intelligence services on Thursday for meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, releasing the most definitive report yet on the issue, including samples of malicious computer code said to have been used in a broad hacking campaign.

Starting in mid-2015, Russia’s foreign intelligence agency, the FSB, emailed a malicious link to more than 1,000 recipients, including U.S. government targets, the Federal Bureau of Investigation said in a 13-page report co-authored with the Department of Homeland Security. (bit.ly/2iuT8cp)

While the Department of Homeland Security and Office of the Director of National Intelligence had said Russia was behind the hacking in October, the report is the first detailed technical analysis provided by the government and the first official FBI statement.

Russia has consistently denied the hacking allegations.

The FBI issued its report on the same day that President Barack Obama announced a series of retaliatory measures, including the expulsion of 35 Russian intelligence operatives and the sanctioning of the GRU and FSB. The Kremlin denounced the sanctions as unlawful and promised “adequate” retaliation.

According to the FBI report, among the groups compromised by the FSB hacks was the Democratic National Committee, which was again infiltrated in early 2016 by another Russian agency, the military GRU. 

The report largely corroborates earlier findings from private cyber firms, such as CrowdStrike, which probed the hacks at the DNC and elsewhere, and is a preview of a more detailed assessment from the U.S. intelligence community that President Barack Obama ordered completed before he leaves office next month, a source familiar with the matter said.

Much of the information provided in the report is not new, the source said, reflecting the difficulty of publicly attributing cyber attacks without revealing classified sources and methods used by the government.

Some senior Republican leaders in the U.S. Congress have expressed outrage at what they called Russian interference in America’s elections, diverging from their own party’s president-elect. The allegations and sanctions mark a new post-Cold War low in U.S.-Russian ties.

Throughout the raucous campaign, a steady stream of leaked Democratic emails clouded the candidacy of party nominee Hillary Clinton. In the aftermath of her defeat, Democrats have accused Russia. Meantime, Trump, a Republican, has questioned whether Russia was truly at fault and told the Democrats to get over it.

“It’s time for our country to move on to bigger and better things,” Trump said in a statement on Thursday.

Trump has praised Russian President Vladimir Putin, tapped people seen as friendly to Moscow for administration posts and rejected assessments by intelligence agencies on the hacking.

The FBI said hackers gained access to and stole sensitive information, including internal emails “likely leading to the exfiltration of information from multiple senior party members” and public leaks of that information.

The report did not name hacked organizations or address previous conclusions reached by the Central Intelligence Agency and FBI, according to U.S. officials, that Russia sought to intervene in the election to help Trump defeat Clinton.

See:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/russian-spy-agencies-election-hack_us_58666756e4b0de3a08f7fd27?qy2amr2hldyn2q33di

 

Calling Working People of All Colors

Bringing white voters who defected to Donald Trump into the fold would make the Democratic Party a formidable force, but not if it means marginalizing the concerns of people of color.

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Source:PortSide

Author: Ebony Slaughter-Johnson

Emphasis Mine

A little over 80 years ago, NAACP founder W.E.B. Du Bois wrote “Black Reconstruction in America,” a groundbreaking essay that looked at the racial politics of the post-Civil War years.

The major failure of those years, Du Bois insisted, was that poor whites and poor blacks failed to form an alliance around their mutual economic interests and challenges. Instead, white elites doubled down on their efforts to divide poor people of different races.

“So long as the Southern white laborers could be induced to prefer poverty to equality with the Negro,” Dubois lamented, “a labor movement in the South [was] impossible.” Though similarly exploited by white elites, economically disenfranchised whites and blacks “never came to see their common interest.”

More than eight decades later, we’re still waiting.

In the aftermath of the 2016 presidential election, the resounding explanation for Hillary Clinton’s loss to Donald Trump has been that Democrats failed to respond to the economic needs of the white working class. As a result, this story goes, the white working class turned towards Donald Trump and contributed significantly to his victory.

For some, then, the diagnosis for the party’s malaise is simple: Bring the white working class back into the fold.

“If you are going to mention groups in America, you had better mention all of them. If you don’t, those left out will notice and feel excluded,” Columbia University professor Mark Lilla wrote. He sharply criticized Hillary Clinton for “calling out explicitly to” blacks and Latinos while supposedly neglecting the white working class.

Bringing those white voters into the fold would make the Democratic Party a formidable force, but not if it means marginalizing the concerns of people of color. That would be an unmitigated disaster.

The best way for progressives to realign themselves with the white working class isn’t to reverse this progress. It’s to argue forcefully that the economic concerns of the white working class and people of color are more alike than different.

For instance, working white people understandably complain of lower wages and lost jobs. Yet these economic challenges are part and parcel to those confronting communities of color.

The unemployment rate for black Americans is twice that for the white community across education levels. Similarly, the income gap between black and white households grew to $25,000 as of 2014, a statistic due in no small part to the same wage stagnation, deindustrialization, and de-unionization plaguing many Rust Belt whites.

Trends in wealth have mirrored those in income. Where the Great Recession led to a 16 percent loss in wealth for the average white family, it led to a 53 percent loss for the average black family. As of 2014, around  a quarter of black and Latino Americans lived in poverty, compared to 10 percent of whites.

The racism that’s worsened conditions for many Americans of color needs to be addressed head-on. But many of the same populist economic policies that would lift them up would also help struggling whites.

Instead of erasing race from the equation, working people and their progressive advocates should take their cues from Du Bois and get to work building what he called a unified “proletariat” of all colors.

At this rate, we don’t have another 80 years.

Ebony Slaughter-Johnson is a research assistant with the Criminalization of Poverty project at the Institute for Policy Studies. Distributed by OtherWords.org.

 

See: http://portside.org/2016-12-24/calling-working-people-all-colors

Trump Is Going After Health Care. Will Democrats Push Back?

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Source:NY Times

Author: THEDA SKOCPOL

Emphasis Mine

Where should Democrats head after their recent electoral rout? As it happens, coming fights about federally subsidized health insurance offer the party a golden opportunity to engage people far beyond its urban strongholds, in communities that will be hard hit by Republican plans to shrink Medicaid, privatize Medicare and eliminate the taxes that pay for Obamacare subsidies.

Donald J. Trump won the Electoral College, and Republicans maintained congressional majorities, because of overwhelming victories in small cities, outer suburbs and rural counties. Yet the president-elect and the Republicans are poised to deliver blows to the social fabric and economic underpinnings of those very communities. Along with Representative Tom Price, Mr. Trump’s nominee for secretary of health and human services, congressional Republicans say they want to move quickly to revolutionize all types of federal health insurance spending, using special procedures that require only 51 votes in the Senate.

Congress will be asked not only to cut the taxes levied on businesses and the rich to finance Obamacare benefits for 20 to 30 million low and middle-income Americans; Republican leaders also plan to slash federal commitments to Medicaid, giving states the authority to shrink this health care program for the poor and elderly. And Republican House members, led by Speaker Paul D. Ryan, seem determined to abolish traditional Medicare insurance for retirees and replace it with “premium vouchers” that would throw older Americans on the mercies of private insurance markets and require them to pay more for their care.

Trump voters will be especially hard hit if just part of this sweeping agenda comes to fruition.

Conservatives often point to poor blacks and Latinos as the primary beneficiaries of federal health insurance programs. But such rhetoric obscures the enormous importance of Medicaid, Medicare and Obamacare subsidies to economically struggling white Americans living in small cities and rural areas. In Pennsylvania, where Mr. Trump narrowly beat Hillary Clinton with overwhelming support outside big cities, about 17 percent of residents are 65 or older, above the national average. Meanwhile, some 16 percent of Pennsylvanians benefit from Medicare, and 18 percent from Medicaid. With the bulk of Medicaid going to elderly and disabled residents, that program is the single largest federal subsidy flowing into the Keystone State.

Repealing the Affordable Care Act would also hit Pennsylvania hard. Under the act, some 468,000 low-income Pennsylvanians had gained Medicaid coverage by August 2016, and another 439,000 bought private coverage on the Obamacare marketplace, with more than three-fourths of those people getting tax credits averaging $251 per month. Health care is often sparse in nonurban areas, and the providers that do exist depend on federal insurance programs that help many patients pay for care. If radical Republican cutbacks in federal contributions to health insurance are enacted, Pennsylvania hospitals and health care businesses will lose vital revenues, leaving many lower-income and sick Pennsylvanians at risk of losing access to care.

This is the case in other states as well, meaning many rural and small-town Trump supporters may soon see that Make America Great Again means accelerating economic decline and social devastation. Mr. Trump shows little understanding of the intricate interplay of subsidies and rules in the health care system, and probably has no inkling that federal taxes collected from liberal states like California, Massachusetts and New York heavily subsidize vital health services, businesses and family benefits in the very places that voted heavily for him. In delegating plans for huge health care cutbacks to hard-right congressional Republicans, he will be hurting his own base. But will Mr. Trump suffer repercussions if the Republican Congress plows ahead? Its proposed changes are unpopular — including repealing the Affordable Care Act, which only one in four Americans support — and eliminating benefits usually arouses anger in the affected groups. But political punishment will not be automatic, because Democrats currently have little organized presence outside urban areas. Small cities and rural areas are overwhelmingly represented in Congress and state capitols by Republicans, who will do all they can to displace blame.

For the Democratic Party, the coming Republican assault on public health insurance represents a huge political opportunity. But to seize it, the party will have to beef up state committees and place a priority on activating volunteer supporters everywhere — getting people to write messages to local newspapers and social media sites, and reach out to hospitals, health care providers and nonprofits to beat the drums about losses the Republicans are inflicting. Even if Democrats cannot soon win outright majorities beyond their urban base, they must be actively involved in communities damaged by Mr. Trump’s false campaign promises.

Democrats cannot just defend Medicare; they must loudly point out that repealing Obamacare means eliminating the taxes that subsidize health care for low- and middle-income people. That huge and immediate tax cut for the rich would lead to the demise of subsidized health insurance for millions of less privileged Americans in rural, suburban and urban communities. Proclaiming this truth could help Democrats gain a new hearing from many Trump voters. But it remains to be seen whether the party can rise to the challenge of showing up everywhere.

 

See:http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/21/opinion/trump-is-going-after-health-care-will-democrats-push-back.html?em_pos=large&emc=edit_ty_20161221&nl=opinion-today&nlid=67843644&ref=headline&te=1&_r=0

How do we stop Trump & the GOP? An insider’s guide by Congressional staffers

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Source: DailyKos

Author:VTGenie

Emphasis Mine

During the past month it’s been easy to got locked into a demoralizing cycle of anger, frustration, and profound sadness about the future of our country. Breaking the cycle is difficult, given the daily deluge of Trump’s obscene cabinet picks and Congressional Republicans’ plans to reverse so many gains we’ve made during the past eight years. So it is enormously uplifting to read about some practical and concrete advice for how we can fight back.

The guidance is provided in a remarkable document, Indivisible: A Practical Guide for Resisting the Trump Agenda, written by a group of former staffers to progressive Congress members. From small steps that any of us can do, like contacting members of your Congressional delegation, to larger actions that require more planning and organization, this guide provides “insider” information to effectively push-back against the trump/GOP agenda.

Here’s how Mother Jones describes the document:

In clear, confident prose, it lays out a well-reasoned, step-by-step strategy for building a grassroots movement to challenge Trump and his Republican allies in Congress.

Ezra Levin, former deputy policy director for Congressman Lloyd Doggett, who represents a district in central Texas, is the “unofficial spokesman” for the project. Here’s how he describes the group’s thinking.

We thought our value-add to this conversation is to demystify Congress for everybody else. The tea party had a lot of nasty tactics that were needlessly aggressive and petty and scary. But they proved it is indeed possible for a committed, relatively small number of folks across the country to make Congress listen to them and to slow and stop an agenda.

The way we see it, there is a much larger group of people around the country now that feel that way than there was in 2009 and 2010. Progressives are the majority; we won the popular vote by a long shot and Donald Trump and the congressional Republicans representing mainly rich old white men are a minority. If we stand up together and use the effective strategies and tactics the tea party used, we believe we can stop them.

That’s right: they have taken many of the successful strategies of the tea party— minus the disgusting parts— and analyzed what made them successful. For clarity, they include this handy table:

not-tea-party.png

To fully appreciate the amazing work they’ve done, you really need to peruse the guide itself. But to give you some idea, here is their one-page summary (which, as stated in the guide, they explicitly want to be shared):

Here’s the quick and dirty summary of this document. While this page summarizes top-level takeaways, the full document describes how to actually carry out these activities.

Ch. 1:  How grassroots advocacy worked to stop Obama. We examine lessons from the Tea Party’s rise and recommend two key strategic components:

1. A local strategy targeting individual Members of Congress (MoCs).

2. A defensive approach purely focused on stopping Trump from implementing an agenda built on racism, authoritarianism, and corruption.

Ch. 2: How your MoC thinks, and how to use that to save democracy. Reelection, reelection, reelection. MoCs want their constituents to think well of them and they want good, local press. They hate surprises, wasted time, and most of all, bad press that makes them look weak, unlikable, and vulnerable. You will use these interests to make them listen and act.

Ch. 3: Identify or organize your local group. Is there an existing local group or network you can join? Or do you need to start your own? We suggest steps to help mobilize your fellow constituents locally and start organizing for action.

Ch. 4: Four local advocacy tactics that actually work. Most of you have 3 MoCs–two Senators and one Representative. Whether you like it or not, they are your voice in Washington. Your job is to make sure they are, in fact, speaking for you. We’ve identified four key opportunity areas to pressure MoCs that just a handful of local constituents can use to great effect. For each of these always record encounters on video, prepare questions ahead of time, coordinate with your group, and report back to local media:

1. Townhalls: MoCs regularly hold public in-district events to show that they are listening to constituents. Make them listen to you, and report out when they don’t.

2. Non-townhall events. MoCs love cutting ribbons and kissing babies back home. Don’t let them get photo-ops without questions about racism, authoritarianism, and corruption.

3. District office sit-ins/meetings. Every MoC has one or several district offices. Go there. Demand a meeting with the MoC. Report to the world if they refuse to listen.

4. Coordinated calls. Calls are a light lift but can have impact. Organize your local group to barrage your MoCs at an opportune moment and on a specific issue.

Furthermore, this is not just an itemized list of “dos and “don’ts”. Beyond being a guide for action, it is a fascinating window into to how things work, and why. For example, here’s a bit more discussion about the importance of a unified, defensive strategy…

This focus on defense rather than policy development allowed the movement to avoid fracturing. Tea Party members may have not agreed on the policy reforms, but they could agree that Obama, Democrats, and moderate Republicans had to be stopped.

[…]

Tea Partiers primarily applied this defensive strategy by pressuring their own local Members of Congress (MoCs). This meant demanding that that their own personal Representatives and Senators be their voice of opposition on Capitol Hill.

… and how it can be used to achieve our objectives:

Using these lessons to fight the Trump agenda

For the next two years, Donald Trump and congressional Republicans will control the federal government. But they will depend on just about every member of Congress to actually get laws passed. And those members of Congress care much more about getting reelected than they care about any specific issue. By adopting a defensive strategy that pressures MoCs, we can achieve the following goals:

Stall the Trump agenda by forcing them to redirect energy away from their priorities. Congressional offices have limited time and limited people. A day that they spend worrying about you is a day that they’re not spending on ending Medicare, privatizing public schools, or preparing a Muslim registry.

Sap Representatives’ will to support or drive reactionary change. If you do this right, you will have an outsized impact. Every time your member of Congress signs on to a bill, takes a position, or makes a statement, a little part of his or her mind will be thinking, “How am I going to explain this to the angry constituents who keep showing up at my events and demanding answers?”

Reaffirm the illegitimacy of the Trump agenda. The hard truth is that Trump, McConnell, and Ryan will have the votes to cause some damage. But by objecting as loudly and powerfully as possible, and by centering the voices of those who are most affected by their agenda, you can ensure that people understand exactly how bad these laws are from the very start – priming the ground for the 2018 midterms and their repeal when Democrats retake power.

Yes, they acknowledge that we need to maintain our positive progressive vision, and to promote what we are for, not just what we are against. But right now, defending against Trump and the GOP must be the primary focus:

You may not like the idea of being purely defensive; we certainly don’t. As progressives, our natural inclination is to talk about the things we’re for – a clean climate, economic justice, health care for all, racial equality, gender and sexual equality, and peace and human rights. These are the things that move us. But the hard truth of the next four years is that we’re not going to set the agenda; Trump and congressional Republican will, and we’ll have to respond.  The best way to stand up for the progressive values and policies we cherish is to stand together, indivisible — to treat an attack on one as an attack on all.

There’s so much more in the guide that I haven’t touched on here. It contains detailed, practical strategies for anyone who wants to do more than just sign online petitions— whether you live in a “safe” Democratic district or a Republican stronghold.

I’ll close with this statement from the document itself (also excerpted in a New Yorker article about the document):

“Our goal is to provide practical understanding of how your MoCs think, and how you can demonstrate to them the depth and power of the opposition to Donald Trump and Republican congressional overreach. This is not a panacea, nor is it intended to stand alone. We strongly urge you to marry the strategy in this guide with a broader commitment to creating a more just society, building local power, and addressing systemic injustice and racism.”

To the authors of this incredible resource: Thank you .

Tuesday, Dec 20, 2016 · 11:38:03 AM EST · VTGenie

There is a new site for the Guide, along with this statement by the authors:

NOTE FROM THE INDIVISIBLE TEAM Since this guide went live as a Google Doc, we’ve received an overwhelming flood of messages from people all over the country working to resist the Trump agenda. We’re thrilled and humbled by the energy and passion of this growing movement.

We’ll be updating the guide based on your feedback and making it interactive ASAP. You can sign up for updates at http://www.IndivisibleGuide.com.

Every single person who worked on this guide and website is a volunteer. We’re doing this in our free time without coordination or support from our employers. Our only goal is help the real leaders on the ground who are resisting Trump’s agenda on their home turf.

We hope you will take this document and use it however you see fit. We want to hear your stories, questions, comments, edits, etc., so please feel free to ping some of us on Twitter: @IndivisibleTeam, @ezralevin, @angelrafpadilla, @texpat, @Leahgreenb. Or email IndivisibleAgainstTrump@gmail.com.

And please please please spread the word! Only folks who know this exists will use it. Good luck — we will win.

Many thanks to commenters who have brought this to my attention.

See: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/12/19/1612645/-How-do-we-stop-Trump-the-GOP-An-insider-s-guide-by-Congressional-staffers?detail=email&link_id=16&can_id=d57025b8908d671dcc8edc84e5855f8f&source=email-breitbart-supremacists-boycott-of-rogue-one-didnt-go-so-well&email_referrer=breitbart-supremacists-boycott-of-rogue-one-didnt-go-so-well&email_subject=breitbart-supremacists-boycott-of-rogue-one-didnt-go-so-well

Donald Trump is serious about smashing GOP orthodoxy

chasdarwinLeave a comment

Source: WashPo

Author: Eugene Robinson

Emphasis Mine

President-elect Donald Trump’s victory tour was more than just an opportunity to strut and preen around the country like a peacock with a comb-over. It was a warning to Republican leaders in Congress that Trump intends to be in charge — and that there will be consequences if the party establishment does not fall in line.

The post-election rallies also served as venues for Trump to make grandiose promises, including some that will stick in his party’s craw.

Trump billed the series of campaign-style events as a way to thank the voters who elected him. It seems obvious that he is addicted to adulation, basks in the grandeur of his own celebrity and chafes at the prosaic labor of assembling an administration. This is a man who cannot be bothered to hear a daily intelligence briefing about threats to the nation, yet finds time to meet with Kanye West.

[The GOP is at its peak, but conservatism has hit rock bottom]

At the victory rallies, Trump continued his withering onslaught against the truth; he claimed, for example, to have won in a historic landslide, though Hillary Clinton received 2.8 million more votes. He renewed his attack against the news media, pointing at reporters and calling them “very dishonest people.” He offered a “thank you to the African American community” who “didn’t come out to vote” for Clinton.

Amid all the bombast and nonsense, however, there was a clear message for House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.): The next president expects them to follow, not lead.

Trump held the rallies in two solidly Republican states (Louisiana and Alabama), four traditional swing states (Ohio, North Carolina, Iowa and Florida) and three states he unexpectedly took from the Democrats (Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan). He reveled in illustrating that his electoral coalition was unique — and that his supporters were more loyal to him personally than to the party he conquered in a hostile takeover.

In Ryan’s home state, the crowd booed when Trump mentioned the speaker’s name. Trump protested, saying he has come to “appreciate” Ryan and comparing him to “a fine wine” that improves with time. But then, with a smile, he added: “Now, if he ever goes against me, I’m not going to say that, okay?”

During the campaign, Ryan was sharply critical of Trump before reluctantly falling in line. He attended the Dec. 8 rally — and got something of a dressing-down for having suggested, in a “60 Minutes” interview a few days earlier, that the border wall Trump promises to build might actually be a mere fence in some places.

“We’re going to work on the wall, Paul,” Trump said, turning to Ryan. “We’re going to build the wall, okay? Believe me.”

There are Republicans in Congress who believe Trump is so naive in the ways of Washington that he can be led around by the nose — that he will basically sign whatever the GOP majorities in the House and Senate choose to pass. Many of those who share this view also were confident that Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio would be the party’s nominee. Do they really expect Trump to suddenly be transformed into an orthodox Republican? I don’t.

Trump promised the ridiculous border wall, and I believe he will expect Congress to let him build it. He also promised punishment, such as targeted tariffs, for companies that move jobs overseas. He promised a trillion-dollar program to improve the nation’s infrastructure. He promised massive, budget-busting tax cuts for corporations, the wealthy and the middle class. He promised not only to repeal the Affordable Care Act but also to simultaneously replace it, vowing that those with pre-existing conditions will still be able to get health insurance.

In foreign policy, Trump pledges even more radical departures from the Republican establishment. He has been vocal in his desire for a closer, more cooperative relationship with Russia — one reason, perhaps, why Russian President Vladimir Putin had his intelligence agents work so hard to get Trump elected, according to the CIA and the FBI. For secretary of state, Trump has chosen ExxonMobil chief executive Rex Tillerson, a man on whom Putin has bestowed the Russian Order of Friendship.

Trump promised during his victory tour to establish safe zones for civilians in Syria, which presumably would require working with Putin, who supports the continued rule of barbarous dictator Bashar al-Assad. Are you ready for that, Republicans? Have you seen the pictures from Aleppo?

The GOP establishment is soon going to have to choose between principle and political well-being. The latter almost always wins.

Read more from Eugene Robinson’s archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook. You can also join him Tuesdays at 1 p.m. for a live Q&A.

See:https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/donald-trump-is-serious-about-smashing-gop-orthodoxy/2016/12/19/a5ea18ac-c624-11e6-8bee-54e800ef2a63_story.html?utm_term=.9115dbf1dee8&wpisrc=nl_opinions&wpmm=1

To Defeat Trump, We Need a Vision, a Message and Tactics to Match

chasdarwinLeave a comment

Source: Portside/ the Guardian

Author: Stephen Crowley

Emphasis Mine

The US is now more politically divided than at anytime since the civil war. And yet, as of next month, America will be much like a one-party state. With a new US supreme court justice, the party will effectively control all three branches of government. Say goodbye to the famous checks and balances of the US political system. Now the balance, and those checks, will have to come from the streets.

The American political system is broken. Trump lost the popular vote by close to 3m ballots. Yet he has shown a readiness to bully political dissenters, and an inability or unwillingness to disentangle his personal financial interests from the business of running the country.

He has nominated Wall Street tycoons, generals and political extremists to top positions. True, his nominees may get tough questioning, even from some Republicans. But make no mistake: personal flamboyance aside, the Trump agenda is essentially the Republican agenda.

Trump will enter office as perhaps the most unpopular newly elected president in history. And yet the famous institutions established by the US constitution, meant to prevent the usurpation of power by any one individual or faction, no long appear up to the task. That civic responsibility – of organizing to prevent tyranny – must now fall to everyday Americans. But that social movement will need to have a strategic vision, one that connects with the justifiable anger that drove many voters to Trump.

Such powerful social movements are not unprecedented in US history: the organized resistance to British colonial rule; the underground railroad and the abolition movement; the strikes and labor organizing of the 1930s spurring the New Deal; the civil rights movement and the various movements it inspired. Our country, and our world, would look entirely different today without the hard work and struggle of these activists, organizers and resisters.

Yet any protest movement against the extremes of the Trump administration must be strategic and not merely reactive. That means that the tactics must align with the movement’s strategic vision. Simply taking to the streets, blocking traffic or marching on Washington will not be enough. Nor will it suffice to simply revive the Clinton coalition.

The bigotry, sexism and racism of Trump and the extremists he has dredged up must be stopped at all costs. But a successful movement must drive a sharp wedge between Trump and many of the disaffected Americans he drew to his campaign. Single-issue protests must be tied to broader concerns, or they will succumb to Trump’s uncanny ability to divide and conquer.

The soft underbelly of the emerging Trump government is the outrageous claim that he and his fellow billionaire appointees have the interests of America’s working class at heart. The campaign of Bernie Sanders demonstrated the potential for a politics that, while celebrating diversity, calls for a solidarity of the many against the powerful few who continue to benefit from capitalism run amok. And under Trump run amok it certainly will. While Sanders did not “win” in the formal political sense, he inspired millions, including many young people who have historically been the foot soldiers of social movements.

Social movements don’t need a majority to be effective. Research shows [1] that governments around the world have been shaken to their foundations, and often toppled, when a mere 3.5% of their populations [2] are organized in opposition. This is because any government, no matter how much it controls the formal levers of power, must also in the end retain legitimacy.

Questioning the legitimacy of those in power is central because it can lead people to question the nature of power itself: does it lie with the formal power-holders, or with the people themselves? Ultimately, whether a major corporation or a global superpower, any hierarchical organization – much like a human pyramid – relies entirely on the many at the bottom to carry out the orders of those on top.

A couple of recent examples, while seemingly small in themselves, point to the potential for a broader movement of social power. The Fight for 15 campaign has been enormously successful in fighting for a livable minimum wage. And now that Trump has nominated a fast-food mogul for his labor secretary, such campaigns can shine a spotlight on the hypocrisy of the president-elect’s promise to provide “good jobs” for Americans.

The decision to halt the Dakota Access pipeline was a huge victory for Native Americans and environmentalists. But a decisive factor in the Department of Army’s decision might have been the thousands of veterans [3] who mobilized to block the pipeline. If an anti-Trump movement could draw in veterans, police officers, rank-and-file union members, in whatever number, it could prove unstoppable.

Such a movement also needs a strategic vision, with a message of solidarity and tactics to match. It has been done before. The future of our country, and indeed our planet, is at stake. We must do it again.

An appeal from The Guardian: “The Guardian’s independent, investigative journalism takes a lot of time, money and hard work to produce. But we do it because we believe our perspective matters – because it might well be your perspective, too. If everyone who reads our reporting, who likes it, helps to pay for it our future would be much more secure. Become a supporter. [4] Make a contribution. [5]“

Stephen Crowley is Professor of Politics at Oberlin College, and a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. For many years he has taught a course on nonviolent protest movements and revolutions. 

See: https://portside.org/print/2016-12-16/defeat-trump-we-need-vision-message-and-tactics-match

Donald Trump’s War on Science

chasdarwinLeave a comment

Source: NewYorker

Author: Prof. Lawrence M. Krauss

Emphasis Mine

Last week, the Space, Science, and Technology subcommittee of the House of Representatives tweeted a misleading story from Breitbart News: “Global Temperatures Plunge. Icy Silence from Climate Alarmists.” (There is always some drop in temperature when El Niño transitions into La Niña—but there has been no anomalous plunge.) Under normal circumstances, this tweet wouldn’t be so surprising: Lamar Smith, the chair of the committee since 2013, is a well-known climate-change denier. But these are not normal times. The tweet is best interpreted as something new: a warning shot. It’s a sign of things to come—a declaration of the Trump Administration’s intent to sideline science.

In a 1946 essay, George Orwell wrote that “to see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.” It’s not just that we’re easily misled. It’s that, by “impudently twisting the facts,” we can convince ourselves of “things which we know to be untrue.” A whole society, he wrote, can deceive itself “for an indefinite time,” and the only check on that mass delusion is that “sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality.” Science is one source of that solid reality. The Trump Administration seems determined to keep it at bay, and the consequences for society and the environment will be profound.

The first sign of Trump’s intention to spread lies about empirical reality, “1984”-style, was, of course, the appointment of Steve Bannon, the former executive chairman of the Breitbart News Network, as Trump’s “senior counselor and strategist.” This year, Breitbart hosted stories with titles such as “1001 Reasons Why Global Warming Is So Totally Over in 2016,” despite the fact that 2016 is now overwhelmingly on track to be the hottest year on record, beating 2015, which beat 2014, which beat 2013. Such stories do more than spread disinformation. Their purpose is the creation of an alternative reality—one in which scientific evidence is a sham—so that hyperbole and fearmongering can divide and conquer the public.

Bannon isn’t the only propagandist in the new Administration: Myron Ebell, who heads the transition team at the Environmental Protection Agency, is another. In the aughts, as a director at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, he worked to kill a cap-and-trade bill proposed by Senators John McCain and Joe Lieberman; in 2012, when the conservative American Enterprise Institute held a meeting about the economics of a possible carbon tax, he asked donors to defund it. It’s possible, of course, to oppose cap-and-trade or carbon taxes in good faith—and yet, in recent years, Ebell’s work has come to center on lies about science and scientists. Today, as the leader of the Cooler Heads Coalition, an anti-climate-science group, Ebell denies the veracity and methodology of science itself. He dismisses complex computer models that have been developed by hundreds of researchers by saying that they “don’t even pass the laugh test.” If Ebell’s methods seem similar to those used by the tobacco industry to deny the adverse health effects of smoking in the nineteen-nineties, that’s because he worked as a lobbyist for the tobacco industry.

When Ebell’s appointment was announced, Jeremy Symons, of the Environmental Defense Fund, said, “I got a sick feeling in my gut. . . . I can’t believe we got to the point when someone who is as unqualified and intellectually dishonest as Myron Ebell has been put in a position of trust for the future of the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the climate we are going to leave our kids.” Symons was right to be apprehensive: on Wednesday, word came that Scott Pruitt, Oklahoma’s attorney general, will be named the head of the E.P.A. As Jane Mayer has written, it would be hard to find a public official in the United States who is more closely tied to the oil-and-gas industry and who has been more actively opposed to the efforts of the E.P.A. to regulate the environment. In a recent piece for National Review, Pruitt denied the veracity of climate science; he has led the effort among Republican attorneys general to work directly with the fossil-fuel industry in resisting the Clean Air Act. In 2014, a Times investigation found that letters from Pruitt’s office to the E.P.A. and other government agencies had been drafted by energy lobbyists; right now, he is involved in a twenty-eight-state lawsuit against the very agency that he has been chosen to head.

It gets worse. As this piece was going to press, word came that Trump’s likely choice for Secretary of the Interior is another climate denier, Cathy McMorris Rodgers, a congresswoman from Washington State. McMorris Rodgers has made false statements about the scientific consensus on human-induced climate change; if confirmed, she would be able to further distort public perceptions on this issue by controlling how the U.S. Geological Survey and the National Park Service communicate to the public about climate change. McMorris Rodgers is a long-standing opponent of regulations on emission of greenhouse gases and an ardent advocate for the exploitation of public lands for fossil-fuel production. She would now be in a position to oversee use of federal lands for coal, oil, and gas production, potentially reversing the current moratorium on federal coal leasing, as well as making decisions on offshore oil drilling. McMorris Rodgers has even voted against tax credits for production of renewable electricity. She is about as friendly to the production of fossil fuels as a legislator can be.

The unfolding disaster at the E.P.A. represents only one front in the Trump Administration’s wider war on science. If one way to undermine science is to mindlessly dispute its methods and findings, another is to deprive it of funding, which is what Bob Walker, a senior adviser to the Trump campaign on space policy, is advocating. Walker wants to defund NASA’s earth-science efforts, which he has characterized as “politically correct environmental monitoring.” As the astrophysicist Adam Frank explained recently, in the Times, NASA’s earth-monitoring programs, which incorporate at least fifteen earth-science satellites, do more than investigate climate change; they provide data relevant to agriculture, shipping, medicine, and more. In fact, they are essential for understanding and forecasting weather—which is not to be confused with climate—including extreme weather events that threaten people’s lives. Shutting NASA out of that research prevents it from anticipating and predicting events with wide-ranging consequences.

And the Trump Administration is on course to undermine science in another way: through education. Educators have various concerns about Betsy DeVos, Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Education—they object to her efforts to shield charter schools from government regulation, for example—but one issue stands above the rest: DeVos is a fundamentalist Christian with a long history of opposition to science. If her faith shapes her policies—and there is evidence that it will—she could shape science education decisively for the worse, by systematically depriving young people, in an era where biotechnology will play a key economic and health role worldwide, of a proper understanding of the very basis of modern biology: evolution.

DeVos comes from a religious family with a long history of supporting fundamentalist religious groups, including the notoriously anti-science group Focus on the Family. Her family has a net worth exceeding four billion dollars, and they have used that money to establish a foundation which has donated hundreds of thousands to pro-life pregnancy centers that lie to women about the risks of abortion. In 2006, DeVos’s husband, Dick, ran unsuccessfully for governor in Michigan, and, as Jane Mayer wrote last month, “the DeVos family doubled down on political contributions and support for conservative Christian causes” after he lost.

Along with her husband, DeVos is an active member of the Christian Reformed Church in North America, a small Protestant denomination with the stated belief that “all scientific theories be subject to Scripture.” According to the church’s official statement on science, “Humanity is created in the image of God; all theorizing that minimizes this fact and all theories of evolution that deny the creative activity of God are rejected.” DeVos attended Calvin College, which is owned and operated by the Christian Reformed Church. She majored in business administration and political science. (She does not have a degree in education.) And although she has not spoken out directly on issues such as evolution and the Big Bang, her husband advocated teaching intelligent design alongside evolution in science classes during his 2006 gubernatorial campaign. “I would like to see the ideas of intelligent design—that many scientists are now suggesting is a very viable alternative theory—that that theory and others that would be considered credible would expose our students to more ideas, not less,” he said. Given her strong support of his campaign, and their joint investment in both conservative and religious causes, as well as her own religious background, it is reasonable to expect that her views do not significantly diverge from his. (DeVos did not respond to requests for comment.)

There is nothing respectable about the idea of “teaching the controversy,” as intelligent-design advocates describe it. We don’t teach modern astronomy by suggesting to students that they feel free to decide for themselves whether the sun orbits Earth or vice versa; instead, we teach them how scientists discovered the realities of our solar system, despite considerable pressure to renounce their own discoveries. Similarly, students should be encouraged to understand that evolution is not some principle laid down on high by a conclave of scientists; they should explore the various empirical tests to which it has been subjected for more than a hundred and fifty years. The purpose of education is not to validate ignorance but to overcome it. It should be easy, therefore, for Congress to make sure that DeVos isn’t planning to drive our educational system off a scientific cliff. During her confirmation hearings, DeVos should be asked whether she thinks it’s appropriate to teach intelligent design alongside evolution in biology classes, or whether young-Earth creationism should be presented alongside the reality of a 4.5-billion-year-old solar system in physics class. An answer in the affirmative to either question should disqualify her as the highest federal government official overseeing public education in this country. If Congress doesn’t exercise its obligation to insure the competence of Presidential appointees like DeVos, then voters need to hold them accountable in the next election.

Taken singly, Trump’s appointments are alarming. But taken as a whole they can be seen as part of a larger effort to undermine the institution of science, and to deprive it of its role in the public-policy debate. Just as Steve Bannon undermines the institution of a fact-based news media, so appointments like Ebell, Pruitt, McMorris Rodgers, Walker, and DeVos advance the false perception that science is just a politicized tool of “the élites.” (Lamar Smith, one presumes, will continue in his role on the House Science Committee.) Science is the one domain in human life where bias and prejudice are systematically eliminated; now those very forces are set to undermine the practice of science in America. It is not only scientists who should actively fight against this dangerous trend. It is everyone who is concerned about our freedom, health, welfare, and security as a nation—and everyone who is concerned about the planetary legacy we leave for our children.

 

See:http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/donald-trumps-war-on-science?intcid=mod-latest