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"I was upset the Democrats nominated a candidate with a decades-long track record of reactionary warmongering corporate cronyism, but I changed my mind when I learned he has a “task force” where vaguely left-wing voices are allowed to speak words into a hole in the ground."

-- Caitlin Johnstone

News and Opinion

A progressive post-mortem, perhaps worth a full read if you can stand the revulsion.

How the House Progressives’ Plan to #PutPeopleFirst Fell Short

[T]he Congressional Progressive Caucus had released, in late March, a list of “bold” legislative priorities for the next coronavirus rescue package. By April 9, they’d narrowed that down to key proposals, including a federal paycheck guarantee program, monthly payments of $2,000 to every household for the duration of the crisis, and a nationwide moratorium on evictions and foreclosures — provisions that would apply to everyone, regardless of immigration status. Outside progressive groups also roused from their slumber. Starting with the CPC letter, activists negotiated with the quartet of the Squad, the leadership of the CPC, and the leaders of an array of progressive groups to find four demands in common to rally around. ...

The coalition launched its push for influence on April 20 under the banner of #PutPeopleFirst, with CPC co-chairs Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., and Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Wis., as well as all four members of the Squad, touting the campaign. The news conference was the first of its kind during the crisis. Within days, it ran into trouble. On Friday evening, the House passed the HEROES Act by a vote of 208 to 199, without many of those priorities and with many of those progressive groups confused about what was going on inside Congress. Fourteen Democrats in the House voted no, with Jayapal the lone member of CPC to vote against the bill.

Despite the public display of unity, according to sources involved with #PutPeopleFirst, there was never agreement on a real strategy between those on the inside and those on the outside. On April 23, Indivisible, with a few other groups, asked Democrats to pledge a no vote on the next coronavirus package if it leaves out their priorities. The ultimatum bothered some lawmakers in the coalition, who believed they shouldn’t be put in the position of voting against desperately needed aid, and that a public pressure campaign should focus on getting a majority of the Democratic caucus on board with the CPC’s demands. ...

On Tuesday afternoon, House Democratic leadership unveiled the new $3 trillion coronavirus relief bill, its opening offer in this next round of stimulus negotiations, and described it in the press as a messaging bill. Divisions among progressives emerged immediately. Jayapal confronted Pelosi about her paycheck guarantee bill being left out of the package in an “intense” call among Democrats on Tuesday, voicing concerns with the top-down approach to policymaking. Politico reported that senior Democrats pointed out that “she had no bill text, no budget score, and no Republicans behind it.” Despite the bill’s failure to include Jayapal’s paycheck guarantee, MoveOn released a statement, signed by a sweeping number of progressive groups, noting that it wasn’t perfect, but praising it and urging its passage, pledging to “mobilize their millions of members” to pass the bill.

Leaders of the outside progressive groups thought that the CPC was planning to roll over — not an unreasonable assumption after years of watching it happen — but it was a miscalculation and miscommunication. On Tuesday evening, CPC leaders sent out an official whip notice advising members to respond as “undecided” to questions about their position on the Democrats’ relief bill, according to an internal email. With the MoveOn statement at hand, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was able to affirm to her caucus that she had won the support of progressive groups, and she quickly dismissed the CPC request to delay the vote. She then rewrote the bill, introducing what’s known as a manager’s amendment, moving it to the right in key areas, including on relief for student debt.

Raytheon Finds Ally in Trump Aide: Selling the Bombs Killing Civilians in Yemen

Year after year, the bombs fell — on wedding tents, funeral halls, fishing boats and a school bus, killing thousands of civilians and helping turn Yemen into the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. Weapons supplied by American companies, approved by American officials, allowed Saudi Arabia to pursue the reckless campaign. But in June 2017, an influential Republican senator decided to cut them off, by withholding approval for new sales. It was a moment that might have stopped the slaughter.

Not under President Trump.

With billions at stake, one of the president’s favored aides, the combative trade adviser Peter Navarro, made it his mission to reverse the senator. Mr. Navarro, after consulting with American arms makers, wrote a memo to Jared Kushner and other top White House officials calling for an intervention, possibly by Mr. Trump himself. He titled it “Trump Mideast arms sales deal in extreme jeopardy, job losses imminent.”

Within weeks, the Saudis were once again free to buy American weapons.

The intervention, which has not been previously reported, underscores a fundamental change in American foreign policy under Mr. Trump that often elevates economic considerations over other ones. Where foreign arms sales in the past were mostly offered and withheld to achieve diplomatic goals, the Trump administration pursues them mainly for the profits they generate and the jobs they create, with little regard for how the weapons are used. ...

Raytheon, a major supplier of weapons to the Saudis, including some implicated by human rights groups in the deaths of Yemeni civilians, has long viewed the kingdom as one of its most important foreign customers. After the Yemen war began in 2015 and the Obama administration made a hasty decision to back the Saudis, Raytheon booked more than $3 billion in new bomb sales, according to an analysis of available U.S. government records.

Intent on pushing the deals through, Raytheon followed the industry playbook: It took advantage of federal loopholes by sending former State Department officials, who were not required to be registered as lobbyists, to press their former colleagues to approve the sales. And though the company was already embedded in Washington — its chief lobbyist, Mark Esper, would become Army secretary and then defense secretary under Mr. Trump — Raytheon executives sought even closer ties.

They assiduously courted Mr. Navarro, who intervened with White House officials on Raytheon’s behalf and successfully pressured the State Department, diminished under Mr. Trump, to process the most contentious deals.

Corporate Media Setting Stage for New Cold War With China

Corporate media are laying the ideological groundwork for a new cold war with China, presenting the nation as a hostile power that needs to be kept in check.

The Washington Post (4/23/20) ran an article by Republican Sen. Mitt Romney, the second sentence of which said, “The Covid-19 pandemic has revealed that, to a great degree, our very health is in Chinese hands; from medicines to masks, we are at Beijing’s mercy.” America, in this conception, is under Chinese domination, a tyranny that’s evidently imposed not only by the Chinese government, but by Chinese people generally.

Details like the US having more than 21 times as many nuclear warheads as China, or the fact that it’s the US dollar and not the Chinese yuan that underpins the global financial system, do not enter into consideration. Instead, because the US imports a great many goods made in China, Romney urged readers to understand China as Americans’ oppressors, who implicitly must be resisted.

Romney warned his audience that China has a “grand strategy for economic, military and geopolitical domination” and thus “The West” must “respon[d]” with “a unified strategy among free nations to counter China’s trade predation and its corruption of our mutual security.”

He said China is conducting an “alarming military build-up.” Sure, the available evidence indicates that the US spends almost three times what China does on its war apparatus, but “Americans should not take comfort in our disproportionately large military budget,” Romney cautioned, because, supposedly, “China’s annual procurement of military hardware is nearly identical to ours,” though few know about this “outside classified settings.”

Then he revealed China’s supposed threat to America’s “security”: “Because our military has missions around the world, this means that in the Pacific, where China concentrates its firepower, it will have military superiority.” In other words, China is a danger because it “concentrates its firepower” in the ocean nearest to it, while the US’s divine right to empire requires that its military saturate the globe.

The senator argued that “action should be applied in national security sectors” such as phone technology and medicine, and that “the free nations must collectively agree that we will buy these products only from other free nations” as part of a plan to “protect…our security.”

The idea that China is a threat to Americans’ security is baseless: China hasn’t threatened to attack America, while the US has a massive military presence in the Asia/Pacific region. The Pentagon, with bipartisan support, wants to engorge that menace with a $20 billion budget increase, and with offensive weaponry such as land-based Tomahawk cruise missiles that had been banned by the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty until the US abrogated the deal. China, meanwhile, has no military installations anywhere close to the United States.

Romney repeatedly called on “free nations,” a grouping in which he included the US, to take on China. In doing so, he cast the potential conflict as a civilizational battle between freedom and dictatorship—that the US has the highest prison population per capita on Earth does not trouble the senator’s framework.

Romney also referred to China or its economic practices as a “predator,” “predatory,” or “predation” eight times, making the US and its allies the supposed prey. “Today,” Romney wrote, “Beijing’s weapon of choice is economic: The tip of its spear is global industrial predation.” China is “a predator, unbound by the rules followed by its competitors,” so “when the immediate health crisis has passed, the United States should convene like-minded nations to develop a common strategy aimed at dissuading China from pursuing its predatory path.” Romney is propagating a timeworn worldview in which deceitful, barbaric Orientals take advantage of innocent, rule-abiding Americans whose businesses never break laws or do anything that could be viewed as predatory.

[See the full article at the link for more examples of media sabre-rattling at China. -js]

Appeal Demands Sweden Probe Misdeeds in Assange Case

A Scandinavian activist group has opened signatures for an appeal to the Swedish government for “a full and transparent investigation” into a “possible disappearance of documents” and the “illegal destruction of evidence” in the Swedish prosecutors and police probe of sexual allegations against Julian Assange.

The appeal also demands Assange’s release from Belmarsh prison in London where he is on remand in an extradition request by the United States on espionage charges for unauthorized possession and dissemination of classified material. It calls on Sweden to provide him asylum.

The investigation the appeal seeks would also look into why Assange’s case appears to have exceeded a statute of limitations as well as into pressure British authorities brought to bear on a Swedish prosecutor against Assange.

Sweden has three times dropped the case against the imprisoned WikiLeaks publisher. The appeal acts on the findings of Nils Melzer, the United Nations special rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, who said Swedish police forged evidence in the case against Assange.

[The petition is available for signatures at: www.setjulianfree.org. - js]

In the US, government may surveill you, but at least it doesn't protect your health

A recent piece in Foreign Policy (5/12/20) is headed with a photograph of a placard that features an image of a nurse demonstrating the importance of wearing a face mask as both personal and interpersonal protection against the coronavirus. But reader beware: It’s not public education, it’s a “propaganda poster”—because it’s not from New Jersey, but was “seen on a wall in Hanoi.”

The message of the piece, headlined “Vietnam’s Coronavirus Success Is Built on Repression,” is exactly that subtle, and apparently you’re not meant to look too carefully at the reasoning. Vietnam, authors Bill Hayton and Tro Ly Ngheo tell readers, is a country where…wait for it…the state “knows your mobile phone number.”

Yes, they’re receiving praise for limiting infections from Covid-19, reporting zero deaths so far, but the praise isn’t warranted, because “the disease control mechanisms that have been effective are the same mechanisms that facilitate and protect the country’s one-party rule.”

OK, so what are the elements of this horror? First, it’s explained, Vietnam has “neighborhood wardens and public security officers who keep constant watch over city blocks.” Sounds scary. Would those be anything like the police officers in Kentucky who shot Breonna Taylor to death while storming her home, on a no-knock warrant for a man who’d already been arrested 10 miles away? Or the ones who beat a man and sat on his head in New York City, while enforcing social-distancing protocols? I guess not.

In Vietnam, “the structures that control epidemics are the same ones that control public expressions of dissent.” Good thing we don’t have any of that dissent-controlling here, right? Although the mayor of New York City did just declare public protest illegal, and cops did just arrest writer Jill Nelson for writing “Trump = Plague” in chalk on an abandoned building.

But in Vietnam, you can “barricade government critics inside their houses to prevent them meeting journalists.” That would be nothing like Steven Donziger, under house arrest in New York since prosecuting an environmental case against Chevron in Ecuador, the company having stated explicitly that its long-term strategy was to “demonize” him.

In Vietnam, though, “The enforcers can be quite sure that their behavior is not going to be challenged by an independent judiciary, because the Communist Party decides what the law is.” That sounds bad; should we get a weigh-in from US Attorney General Bill Barr, who just got through saying that it didn’t matter that the Justice Department dropped charges against former national security advisor Michael Flynn (who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI in 2017), because “history is written by the winners”?

And while other countries have used phone-tracking and surveillance to trace infected people, Foreign Policy explains, Vietnam is different and blameworthy, because they’re able to do so “without the need to submit to legal or parliamentary oversight.” Worlds away, we are to understand, from the US—except that the US Senate just now voted down an amendment to the Patriot Act that would have protected Americans’ internet browsing and search history data from secret and warrantless surveillance by law enforcement.

The piece is clearly trying to say: Don’t envy another country’s pandemic response, because it comes at too high a cost. That might be food for thought, except that Foreign Policy doesn’t seem to want you to bother thinking very much at all.

How America’s Economy Will Resemble Brazil’s After Crisis. w/Dylan Ratigan

No One Fled Harder From Coronavirus Than New York’s Wealthy

The population in some of New York’s wealthiest neighborhoods decreased by more than 40% between March and the beginning of May, a New York Times report found, showing that the ultra-rich who had the means to flee the global epicenter of the epidemic did just that — as the city’s poorer residents were left to fend for themselves.

Roughly 5% of the city’s population, or 420,000 people, left the city between March 1 and May 1, the Times found. Their analysis was based on aggregated smartphone data from three different sources, all of which showed that the total decrease in the city’s population hovered around 5%, while the reduction in Manhattan’s population was well into the double digits. ...

But on average, the neighborhoods where a larger share of the population left were much whiter, much wealthier, and more educated than the zip codes for those who stayed. The median household income in the neighborhoods where more than 25% of residents left, for example, was $119,125 — almost exactly double that of those in the neighborhoods who didn’t leave, $60,521.

Federal Government Buys Riot Gear, Increases Security Funding, Citing Coronavirus Pandemic

The federal government has ramped up security and police-related spending in response to the coronavirus pandemic, including issuing contracts for riot gear, disclosures show.

The purchase orders include requests for disposable cuffs, gas masks, ballistic helmets, and riot gloves, along with law enforcement protective equipment for federal police assigned to protect Veterans Affairs facilities. The orders were expedited under a special authorization “in response to Covid-19 outbreak.” The Veterans Affairs department, which manages nearly 1,500 health care care facilities around the country, has also extended special contracts for coronavirus-related security services. ...

The CARES Act, the $2.2 trillion stimulus legislation passed in late March, also authorized $850 million for the Coronavirus Emergency Supplemental Funding program, a federal grant program to prepare law enforcement, correctional officers, and police for the crisis. The funds have been dispensed to local governments to pay for overtime costs, purchase protective supplies, and defray expenses related to emergency policing. The CESF funding may be used for a range of coronavirus response efforts by law enforcement, including medical personal protective equipment, overtime for police officers, training, and supplies for detention centers. The grants may also be used for the purchase of unmanned aerial aircraft and video security cameras for law enforcement. Motorola Solutions, a major supplier of police technology, has encouraged local governments to use the new money to buy a range of command center software and video analytics systems.

While the pandemic has coincided with a historic drop in violent crime across the country, analysts have expressed concern that the rapid spread of the virus will fuel confrontations.

An excellent article by Matt Taibbi which deserves to be read in full. Here's an interesting excerpt:

Democrats Have Abandoned Civil Liberties

I’ve written a lot about the Democrats’ record on civil liberties issues in the past. Working on I Can’t Breathe, a book about the Eric Garner case, I was stunned to learn the central role Mario Cuomo played in the mass incarceration problem, while Democrats also often embraced hyper-intrusive “stop and frisk” or “broken windows” enforcement strategies, usually by touting terms like “community policing” that sounded nice to white voters. Democrats strongly supported the PATRIOT Act in 2001, and Barack Obama continued or expanded Bush-Cheney programs like drone assassination, rendition, and warrantless surveillance, while also using the Espionage Act to bully reporters and whistleblowers.

Republicans throughout this time were usually as bad or worse on these issues, but Democrats have lately positioned themselves as more aggressive promoters of strong-arm policies, from control of Internet speech to the embrace of domestic spying. In the last four years the blue-friendly press has done a complete 180 on these issues, going from cheering Edward Snowden to lionizing the CIA, NSA, and FBI and making on-air partners out of drone-and-surveillance all-stars like John Brennan, James Clapper, and Michael Hayden. There are now too many ex-spooks on CNN and MSNBC to count, while there isn’t a single regular contributor on any of the networks one could describe as antiwar.

Democrats clearly believe constituents will forgive them for abandoning constitutional principles, so long as the targets of official inquiry are figures like Flynn or Paul Manafort or Trump himself. In the process, they’ve raised a generation of followers whose contempt for civil liberties is now genuine-to-permanent. Blue-staters have gone from dismissing constitutional concerns as Trumpian ruse to sneering at them, in the manner of French aristocrats, as evidence of proletarian mental defect.

Nowhere has this been more evident than in the response to the Covid-19 crisis, where the almost mandatory take of pundits is that any protest of lockdown measures is troglodyte death wish. The aftereffects of years of Russiagate/Trump coverage are seen everywhere: press outlets reflexively associate complaints of government overreach with Trump, treason, and racism, and conversely radiate a creepily gleeful tone when describing aggressive emergency measures and the problems some “dumb” Americans have had accepting them.

On the campaign trail in 2016, I watched Democrats hand Trump the economic populism argument by dismissing all complaints about the failures of neoliberal economics. This mistake was later compounded by years of propaganda arguing that “economic insecurity” was just a Trojan Horse term for racism. These takes, along with the absurd kneecapping of the Bernie Sanders movement, have allowed Trump to position himself as a working-class hero, the sole voice of a squeezed underclass.

The same mistake is now being made with civil liberties. Millions have lost their jobs and businesses by government fiat, there’s a clamor for censorship and contact tracing programs that could have serious long-term consequences, yet voters only hear Trump making occasional remarks about freedom; Democrats treat it like it’s a word that should be banned by Facebook (a recent Washington Post headline put the term in quotation marks, as if one should be gloved to touch it). Has the Trump era really damaged our thinking to this degree?

“Bias Expert” Unwittingly Reveals Own Bias Towards Republicans

'Hubs of infection': how Covid-19 spread through Latin America's markets

Four out of five merchants at a major fruit market in Peru have tested positive for coronavirus, revealing shocking levels of infection – and prompting fears that Latin America’s traditional trading centres may have helped spread Covid-19 across the region.

Seventy-nine per cent of stall-holders in Lima’s wholesale fruit market tested positive for Covid-19, while spot tests at five other large fresh food markets in the city revealed at least half were carrying the virus. The results came as local authorities from Mexico City to Rio de Janeiro struggle to enforce social distancing and sanitary measures at wholesale and retail markets, which are mainstays of local economies.

Latin America is wrestling with a surging death toll from the pandemic: Mexico and Brazil – whose presidents have been accused of downplaying the epidemic – both saw record single-day mortalities last week. But Peru also reported a peak in coronavirus deaths and new infections – even after two months of one the region’s strictest lockdowns.

Peru’s president, Martín Vizcarra, said the infected merchants in Lima would be replaced, but stopped short of shutting down the fruit market, arguing that such a move could create food shortages. Soldiers and police officers were deployed at the market to take the temperature of all traders and clients.

“Markets were probably the biggest vector of infection which is why Peru’s quarantine did not work as it should have,” said Eduardo Zegarra, the principal investigator for Grade, a development thinktank in Lima.

'Llamas are the real unicorns': why they could be our secret weapon against coronavirus

The solution to the coronavirus may have been staring us in the face this whole time, lazily chewing on a carrot. All we need, it seems, is llamas.

A study published last week in the journal Cell found that antibodies in llamas’ blood could offer a defense against the coronavirus. In addition to larger antibodies like ours, llamas have small ones that can sneak into spaces on viral proteins that are too tiny for human antibodies, helping them to fend off the threat. The hope is that the llama antibodies could help protect humans who have not been infected.

International researchers owe their findings to a llama named Winter, a four-year-old resident of Belgium. Her antibodies had already proven themselves able to fight Sars and Mers, leading researchers to speculate that they could work against the virus behind Covid-19 – and indeed, in cell cultures at least, they were effective against it. Researchers are now working towards clinical trials. “If it works, llama Winter deserves a statue,” Dr Xavier Saelens, a Ghent University virologist and study author, told the New York Times.

Antitrust Cases Reportedly Brewing Against Google at State and Federal Level

Anti-monopoly groups are celebrating news that the Justice Department and state attorneys general are investigating online behemoth Google for possible antitrust cases.

"An antitrust case against Google is long overdue, said Sarah Miller, executive director of the Economic Liberties Project. "We hope that state attorneys general and the Department of Justice Antitrust Division address the long-standing monopoly power of Google, which has more than 90% of the mobile search market and, alongside Facebook, dominates digital advertising."

News of the investigation and the likely filing of a case broke Friday in the Wall Street Journal, which quoted Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton as saying his office had issued subpoenas to the company an impacted third parties.

"We hope to have the investigation wrapped up by fall," said Paxton. "If we determine that filing is merited we will go to court soon after that."

According to CNBC:

The states' investigation has been mostly focused on Google's online advertising business, according to the report, though CNBC previously reported that its scope had expanded to include both search and its Android mobile operating system. Even if some states bring a suit against Google related to its ad business, it's possible others could choose to pursue separate cases following different legal theories.

The DOJ's probe has focused on Google's ad business, but also more broadly on allegations that it has used its dominance in the search market to squash competitors, according to the Journal. The publication was not able to learn which legal theories the DOJ would seek to pursue if it brings a case.

As the New York Times reported, Google's dominance of the internet is daunting:

Google captures roughly one-third of every dollar spent in online advertising. Its search engine is the on-ramp to the internet and controls what information users see, while the company owns many of the critical tools and technologies used to advertise online. It also boasts seven businesses with more than one billion users.

"If you thought the antitrust cases of big tech were a memory, you'd be mistaken," tweeted Times reporter Cecilia Kang.

State Department official investigating Pompeo is fired

The Trump administration has fired the state department’s inspector general who is reported to have been investigating the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, for a potential abuse of office. The inspector general, Steve Linick, was given notice of his dismissal late on Friday night and is to be replaced by Stephen Akard, a close ally of the vice-president, Mike Pence, from his home state of Indiana. A state department spokesperson said that Akard, who has been running the office for foreign missions, would take over immediately as acting inspector general.

According to a Democratic congressional aide, just before his abrupt dismissal Linick had opened an investigation into allegations that Pompeo had been using a political appointee at the state department to run personal errands for him and his wife, Susan.

Under US law the president is required to give 30 days’ notice before firing an inspector general, to allow Congress to investigate the reasons for dismissal. In recent months Congress has not used that month-long notice period to prevent the termination of other watchdog officials fired by the president. ...

Linick is the latest in a string of officials in watchdog roles fired by the president in recent months, turning on its head the tradition that such jobs are filled with non-partisan figures.

Hackers Say They Have Trump's 'Dirty Laundry' and Want $42 Million to Keep It Secret

President Donald Trump may have another adversary to beat to win November’s election besides Joe Biden: a group of hackers.

The anonymous hackers this week crippled the computer systems of high-profile celebrity law firm Grubman Shire Meiselas & Sacks claiming to have stolen 756GB of highly-confidential documents including contracts and personal emails from the firm’s client list, which includes Madonna, Drake, Lady Gaga, Elton John, Robert De Niro, U2 and Bruce Springsteen. The hackers initially demanded $21 million from the law firm to stop the documents becoming public, posting a screenshot of a contract for Madonna's World Tour 2019-20 complete with signatures from an employee and concert company Live Nation.

But on Thursday, they doubled their ransom demand claiming that they also had information on the U.S. president.

“The ransom is now $42,000,000,” the hackers said on their dark web site, seen by VICE News “The next person we’ll be publishing is Donald Trump. There’s an election going on, and we found a ton of dirty laundry on time.” The hackers made a direct plea to Trump, urging him to get the attorneys to pay up.

“Mr. Trump if you want to stay president, poke a sharp stick at the guys, otherwise, you may forget this ambition forever. And to you voters, we can let you know that after such a publication, you certainly don’t want to see him as president”

Marianne Williamson endorses Pelosi challenger

Sanders says his supporters will vote for Biden but he needs to court them

Former Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has said he thinks his supporters will vote for Joe Biden in November’s US election, despite a former aide’s warning that Biden was not consolidating Sanders supporters.

In a memo released last week, former Sanders adviser Jeff Weaver said Sanders supporters were “currently unsupportive and unenthusiastic” about Biden and “there is a real and urgent need to help Biden consolidate Sanders supporters”.

Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, said on ABC News’ This Week program on Sunday that Biden was “beginning” to make overtures to his supporters “And I think at the end of the day they will be voting for Joe Biden.” ...

Sanders said Biden’s message should focus on student debt relief, health insurance coverage, a living wage, climate change policy and racism in the criminal justice and immigration systems.

Media tries to spin 'Biden is the new FDR,' ignores all signs of reality

Centrists getting the religion? But ... who will provide them with graft and cushy revolving-door corner-office sinecures?

'Reality is Radicalizing': As Pandemic Pushes Biden to Embrace Progressive Ideas He Once Spurned, Left Says We Told You So

The Democratic Party's presumptive presidential nominee Joe Biden's campaign is beginning to adopt more progressive, big-government positions than the candidate ran on in the primary election, generating frustration from progressives who pointed out that the left wing of the party has been calling for such policies for years.

"It's almost as if...the left was right all along," tweeted journalist Alex Kotch.

The Biden campaign's pivot leftward was reported by the New York Times Saturday in a piece describing how the candidate's policy shift was forced upon him by the coronavirus pandemic, which has generated an economic crisis with at least 36 million Americans out of work.

"Incrementalism won't suffice for a real recovery," Sawyer Hackett, communications director for former Housing and Urban Development secretary Julián Castro, said on Twitter. "We need big structural change that puts people first."

As the Times reported, the pandemic has sparked an ideological shift across the party:

Democratic leaders say that if they hold power next January, they must be prepared to move to pump trillions more into the economy; enact infrastructure and climate legislation far larger than they previously envisioned; pass a raft of aggressive worker-protection laws; expand government-backed health insurance and create enormous new investments in public-health jobs, health care facilities and child care programs.

The shift is being adopted by even more right-wing and centrist Democrats, like Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), who told the Times the party realized the need to act to address the systemic failures that provoked the crisis.

"There is a recognition that this event is more transformative than 2008, more transformative than 9/11, more transformative than the fall of the Berlin Wall," said Warner.

A major backdrop for the Dem conversation is a widely held view that they did not fully meet the moment in the last recession.

This time, it is not just the left urging a bigger agenda: moderates like @MichaelBennet want an ambitious attack on inequality.https://t.co/QcqeAlBcOP pic.twitter.com/pLxHqCr5ln

— Alex Burns (@alexburnsNYT) May 17, 2020

HuffPost reporter Zach Carter noted on Twitter that bolder, progressive policy priorities are in line with the majority of American opinion and that the pandemic may finally change the party's thinking on the kind of legislation to pursue.

"There has been a weird disconnect for some time between mainstream views of American politics and 'centrist' views within the Democratic caucus," said Carter. "Would be good for the party to embrace reality."

While the article contained domestic policy proposals and plans, it did not address one major progressive priority: ending the U.S.'s forever wars around the world. As In These Times editor Sarah Lazare pointed out, that omission is telling—and one that the left should not allow to go unchallenged.

Not a single word in this whole article about stopping US wars, even amid signs that the Yemen war the Obama-Biden administration backed has unleashed horrific conditions & decimated the country's medical system, enabling an apparent Covid-19 outbreak. https://t.co/xfixNvtQzS

— Sarah Lazare (@sarahlazare) May 17, 2020

"We mustn't let unjust U.S. wars fade into the background during this pandemic, we must not treat them as secondary to our domestic crisis," said Lazare. "U.S. wars are making the world far more vulnerable to this virus—the scale of the injustice and violence is staggering."

Media can't understand why Left won't fall in line as Bernie advocates for Biden

Coal industry will never recover after coronavirus pandemic, say experts

The global coal industry will “never recover” from the Covid-19 pandemic, industry observers predict, because the crisis has proved renewable energy is cheaper for consumers and a safer bet for investors. A long-term shift away from dirty fossil fuels has accelerated during the lockdown, bringing forward power plant closures in several countries and providing new evidence that humanity’s coal use may finally have peaked after more than 200 years. ...

Even before the pandemic, the industry was under pressure due to heightened climate activism, divestment campaigns and cheap alternatives. The lockdown has exposed its frailties even further, wiping billions from the market valuations of the world’s biggest coal miners.

As demand for electricity has fallen, many utilities have cut back on coal first, because it is more expensive than gas, wind and solar. In the EU imports of coal for thermal power plants plunged by almost two-thirds in recent months to reach lows not seen in 30 years. The consequences have been felt around the world as well.

This week, a new report by the US Energy Information Administration projected the US would produce more electricity this year from renewables than from coal for the first time. Industry analysts predict coal’s share of US electricity generation could fall to just 10% in five years, down from 50% a decade ago. Despite Donald Trump’s campaign pledge to “dig coal”, there are now more job losses and closures in the industry than at any time since Eisenhower’s presidency 60 years ago. Among the latest has been Great River Energy’s plan to shut down a 1.1-gigawatt thermal plant in North Dakota and replace it with wind and gas.

Rob Jackson, the chair of Global Carbon Project, said the pandemic was likely to confirm that coal will never again reach the global peak seen in 2013: “Covid-19 will slash coal emissions so much this year that the industry will never recover, even with a continued build-out in India and elsewhere. The crash in natural gas prices, record-cheap solar and wind power, and climate and health concerns have undercut the industry permanently.”

Is the Covid-19 crisis the catalyst for greening the world's airlines?

“The political moment is now” to address the climate risks posed by the aviation industry, analysts, insiders and campaigners say, as governments across the world weigh up bailouts for airlines grounded by the coronavirus pandemic. Rescue packages need to come with green strings, such as reduced carbon footprints and frequent flyer levies, they warn, or the sector will return to the path that has made it the fastest rising source of climate-wrecking carbon emissions over the past decade

Old passenger jets also need to be rapidly retired or cheap oil prices will encourage budget airlines to run services almost empty, which could push up emissions even if passenger numbers stay low, they say.

As did banks after the 2008-9 financial crisis, many aviation companies are appealing for government support to escape from a problem they partly caused. The expansion of flight networks, packed seating and a reluctance to accept quarantine measures have contributed to the rapid transmission of the Covid-19 virus across the globe.

Until the pandemic, governments were so focused on keeping airlines globally competitive that they largely gave the sector a free ride in terms of emissions cuts and contributions to public revenues. Aviation fuel is completely untaxed in most countries. But the crisis has weakened airline claims that they should be treated as profit-seeking independent companies rather than public entities with social responsibilities. ... If public funds are used to save companies, there is a growing argument that society should get something in return in terms of environmental improvements.

Hopes were raised when the French finance minister, Bruno Le Maire, said Air France would have to become “the greenest airline in the world” in return for a €7bn bailout. This meant reducing the carbon intensity of their overall operations by 50% by 2030, cutting absolute emissions within France by half by 2030, using 2% renewable jet fuel by 2024 and drastically reducing the number of flights of less than 2hr 30mins duration that compete with rail services. Although these conditions are currently non-binding, campaigners said they were hopeful they will be supported by new laws in the coming years.

Big Oil Taking $1.9 Billion in CARES Act Tax Breaks Aimed at Helping Small Businesses in 'Stealth Bailout': Report

Sen. Bernie Sanders was among critics outraged that the fossil fuel industry is using tax breaks in the CARES Act meant to help businesses keep workers employed to avoid paying millions of dollars in taxes—and then delivering that money to executives.

"Good thing President Trump is looking out for the real victims of the coronavirus: fossil fuel executives," Sanders tweeted sarcastically Friday.

Reporting Friday from Bloomberg News showed that "$1.9 billion in CARES Act tax benefits are being claimed by at least 37 oil companies, service firms, and contractors"—what watchdog group Documented senior researcher  Jesse Coleman described as a "stealth bailout" of the climate-killing industry.

"In the name of 'small business,' we're shoveling out billions of dollars to big corporations and rich guys," Steve Rosenthal, a senior fellow with the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, told Bloomberg.

Bloomberg used the example of how Diamond Offshore Drilling Inc. manipulated the bailout to explain the tax scheme:

As it headed toward bankruptcy, Diamond Offshore Drilling Inc. took advantage of a little-noticed provision in the stimulus bill Congress passed in March to get a $9.7 million tax refund. Then, it asked a bankruptcy judge to authorize the same amount as bonuses to nine executives.

According to Bloomberg's reporting, Diamond's refund pales in comparison to some of its larger competitors, "including $55 million for Denver-based Antero Midstream Corp., $41.2 million for supplier Oil States International Inc. and $96 million for Oklahoma-based producer Devon Energy Corp."

The fossil fuel industry was already in financial trouble before the outbreak, which has effectively crippled Big Oil's ability to make money—even with the generous subsidies given by the federal government. Access to bailout tax break funding is helping fossil fuel companies prosper, along with other climate-destroying industries like mining companies, which have also reaped millions from coronavirus relief legislation.

Also of Interest

Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.

Contact Tracing Via Old Shoe-Leather Epidemiology While Spurning the Techno-Fix Fairy: How Hong Kong Quells COVID-19 Without Killing Civil Liberties

Racism, Rather Than Facts, Drove U.S. Coronavirus Travel Bans

US and UK 'lead push against global patent pool for Covid-19 drugs'

Wall Street Banks Paid $11.7 Billion in Dividends to Investors this Year while Taxpayers Must Absorb $454 Billion of Bank Losses

‘The American friends’: New court files expose Sheldon Adelson’s security team in US spy operation against Julian Assange

Revolutionary Boiling Point, And Other Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

Sanders adviser warns of 'alarming trends' that could lead to Biden's defeat

How Can Trump Still Win The Election?

'Normal' life failed us. The coronavirus crisis gives us the chance to rethink a new economy

Washington Post Reporter: Will the, 'Make China Pay,' movement get hijacked by corporatists?

Zaid Jilani absolutely annihilates media celeb culture obsession with Stacey Abrams

Krystal and Saagar: CNN anchor hits media for shaming lockdown protestors

Jimmy Dore: VICE Host Gaslights About Media Bias & Gets Busted

Krystal Ball: Biden, media's dirty class shaming tactics of Tara Reade

Rare long-necked dinosaur that roamed the polar world unearthed in Australia

A Little Night Music

Lula Reed & Sonny Thompson - I'll Upset You Baby

Lula Reed - Every Second

Lula Reed - I'm A Woman (But I Don't Talk Too Much)

Lula Reed & Sonny Thompson - Living in Misery

Freddy King / Lula Reed / Sonny Thompson - It's Easy Child

Lula Reed - Puddentane

Lula Reed & Sonny Thompson - Watch Dog

Lula Reed - Walk On By Me

Lula Reed - Sick And Tired

Lulu Reed - Ain't No Cotton Pickin' Chicken