@detroitmechworks

I never heard of "Officer Safety".

What a crock a friendly cop is these days. My recent run ins with police, over routine traffic stops, have been unbelievably hostile. I feel the militarization.

In New Zealand...

I expect any GND emergency declaration to (Much like the Patriot Act) insert lots of little wish list items into the authoritarians arsenal. Anybody who fits the profile...

Which of course just ties in with the Cops now emphasizing "Officer Safety" which basically means if the cop comes home safe, whatever he did was justified. Expect Police to be offered "Incentive Housing" which will essentially recreate the Green Zone, back here at home. Of course, once a green zone is created, everything outside that becomes fair game...

They want the Emergency Declarations, because they "Work". Meaning they give more money to the people who demanded the declarations, therefore, mission accomplished.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fv-sKP17xTw]

@jobu

I will do a little research on Dewey, about whom I know very little.

I am well acquainted with Lippman, the man who invented the phrase "manufacture of consent" and thought it was a positive development, the man who thought democracy was unworkable.

I have never really studied the massive debates that must have gone on as the New Deal was being implemented. Given that the left still had a formidable political presence as the Great Depression wore on, and given that Stalinism had not been exposed for what it was, there must have been a lot of interesting commentary from the left. Of course, the right was off on its normal "its communism" rant.

In The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck said this:

'Fella named Hines-got 'bout thirty thousan' acres, peaches and grapes-got a cannery an' a winery. Well, he's all a time talkin' about 'them goddamn reds.' 'God- damn reds is drivin' the country to ruin,' he says, an' 'We got to drive these here red bastards out.' Well, they were a young fella jus' come out west here, an' he's listenin' one day. He kinda scratched his head an' he says, 'Mr. Hines, I ain't been here long. What is these goddamn reds?' Well, sir, Hines says, 'A red is any son-of-a-bitch that wants thirty cents an hour when we're payin' twenty-five!' Well, this young fella he thinks about her, an' he scratches his head, an' he says, 'Well, Jesus, Mr. Hines. I ain't a son-of-a-bitch, but if that's what a red is-why, I want thirty cents an hour. Ever'body does. Hell, Mr. Hines, we're all reds.''

Thanks for this.

...from the left mainly argued that it was insufficient, that it didn't take certain policy prescriptions far enough or left them off the table completely.

Another critique took that notion and added that Roosevelt's tactics where not in keeping with democratic norms and that he was setting the table for authoritarian capture.

Dewey argued that there was a crisis in American liberal thought and practice in that there was a disconnect between the new material realities and the liberal ideas and values which informed liberal practice in addressing those realities. This was particularly the case with the New Deal state, which Dewey argued lacked the type of political organization that could allow for the creation of a community wherein citizens were empowered in meaningful ways in order to address the problems confronting them.

Roosevelt argued in 1936 that, as a tool, Jeffersonian Laissez-faire was not up to the task which now confronted the nation. He called for Big Government intervention as the only tool then available to maintain the aims of an egalitarian society that laissez-faire was originally espoused to promote. Dewey was wary.

In a democracy, the role of the state was to serve the interests of the public, but contemporary American society was such that the public was not organized in a way that their common interests could be discovered and communicated to their political representatives. What the depression era witnessed on a global scale was the emergence of tension between the demands of a capitalist economy and the tenets of democratic government. Dewey was concerned that democracy was receiving the lesser share of the outcomes. The challenge became one of reconstructing liberal practice so as to establish a new politics that held democracy as a way of life as its vision for American society.

Throughout his life Dewey maintained that democracy is the one and only method of government that would be able to ensure egalitarian ends for society as a whole. His famous decade long debate with authoritarian leftist Walter Lippmann gives us a very clear sense of his mind on this issue.

His 1938 essay entitled Democracy is Radical warns us against the notion of abandoning democratic ideals in favor of a temporary dictatorship:

There is intellectual hypocrisy in and moral contradiction in the creed of those who uphold the need for at least a temporary dictatorship of a class as well as in the position of those who asseert that the present economic system is one of freedom of initiative and opportunity for all.

There is ample evidence that we live in a Neo-liberal Shock Doctrine dystopia. Any policy program (GND or otherwise) set in this environment should be carefully considered with Dewey in mind but also the prescient warning of Adam Smith:

To widen the market and to narrow the competition, is always the interest of the dealers... The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it.

@doh1304

FDR did the New Deal without declaring an official emergency.

OTOH, our politics is so paralyzed that people are starting to resort to emergency declarations out of sheer frustration.

The whole idea of an official emergency is wrong.

Still, there are myriad denunciations of Trump's invocation of emergency powers, many by Republicans, who warn specifically that this sets a precedent for a Green New Deal (GND) declaration of emergency.
Suddenly we're afraid of declaring an emergency because someone else will have to declare an emergency to respond to a real emergency? How far we've fallen.

@wendy davis

“Whereas, climate change constitutes a direct threat to the national security of the United States—

That was one of AOC's staffers? Sorry, but I couldn't follow your rapidly shifting train of thought and links.

can we not call her a 'socialist'? the DSAs are reform capitalists

AFAICT, the DSA and their cheerleaders at Jacobin are just the privileged offspring of the ruling class playing at doing something useful. My favorite "socialist" is Ben Tarnoff, son of a former president of the CFR. Both his father and mother were Assistant Secretaries of State. And little Ben has immense access, getting his "reform capitalist" screeds published at all the right corporate media venues: NYT, WaPo, Guardian.

These people remind me of the third? generation Rockefeller heirs who bankrolled Ramparts Magazine in the 1960s. They're just play acting being "rebellious".

focus of those calling for an Emergency GND bill; as it turn out, there's at least one petition out there to be signed! but ahhhhh, when ilhan omar talks...people listen, like they do with e.f. hutton. i reckon it won't be long until she's on the cover of Time Magazine w/ an enormous spread inside like AOC. ; )

but please, can we not call her a 'socialist'? the DSAs are reform capitalists, which is an important distinction to me, as well as to the tankies on twitter who critique the DSAs regularly.

interesting, timely, and illuminating piece by the outline...until the ending:

"“That’s why a proposal like the Green New Deal, introduced by New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markee, is so powerful. It acknowledges that, as the IPCC’s 2018 report states, addressing climate change will require a “complete transformation” in how we use energy. But it doesn’t pursue that transformation through reactive, short-term, or militarized measures to protect U.S. security interests. Instead, it puts the interests of working people first. It tackles the persistent inequalities of a warmer world — local pollution, gentrification, worsening health, systemic unemployment — and proposes a long-term reorganization of the U.S. economy on the principles of decarbonization and democratic control."

some folks seem not to have read their Deals; both are at the top of my compilation 'Green Capitalism Aglow', and right at the top: it doesn't limit fossil fuel us, it enables it instead (and the mechanisms), but only calls for 'net-zero emissions', etc. the ridiculous buzz words like 'clean energy, 'renewable (not sustainable at all) energy', and tra la la.

i especially thank you for the DOD report, as now i remember why i was so alarmed at the language i'd features about climate change as a 'threat multiplier', etc., as was my favorite tankie cordeliers. i went way back thru his twit account to find these; you need to click the tweet for a stand alone to read the related ones from him and red kahina. ack, the threat multiplier language isn't part of, guess i blew the embed choices, but no matter, i'd pasted in:

From the text of her GND, this wtf?:

“Whereas, climate change constitutes a direct threat to the national security of the United States—

(1) by impacting the economic, environmental, and social stability of countries and communities around the world; and

(2) by acting as a threat multiplier”

What in the world can you be imagining?

This paper by Margaret Klein Salamon, a clinical psychologist who is
founder and director of The Climate Mobilization, outlines a strategy for terrifying the public into "emergency mode." @aoc is acting as point for this literal psyop. https://t.co/p7Zf29XL6r pic.twitter.com/LUd0NZazmb

— Club des Cordeliers (@cordeliers) February 27, 2019

but fancy the craziness (and cost, plus non-feasibility) of this portion, say in jut new your city:

(E) upgrading all existing buildings in the United States and building new buildings to achieve maximum energy efficiency, water efficiency, safety, affordability, comfort, and durability, including through electrification’

holy crow! the green dream! at least bill clinton on letterman had suggested painting all rooftops white to reflect the sunlight. that plan could have spurred some local non-military jobs, eh?

@The Voice In the Wilderness

There is no upside with TPTB for voting that way. It is a one way ticket to being primaried.

Couldn't an (R) who voted "No" change on an override vote to support Congress' final authority over what's an Emergency?
Members who have loyalty to Congress and the Constitution over Party?