U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi
It seems like both mainstream and social news media are obsessed with Donald Trump and his latest Outrage of the Day. But under our Constitution, we have three co-equal branches of the federal government, and half of one of those branches — Congress — is in Democratic hands. The Democrats, led by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, just marked their first 100 days back in control of the House of Representatives, with some fanfare, including the Twitter hashtag #100DaysForThePeople. Pelosi also appeared on CBS‘ 60 Minutes program last Sunday to talk about what the Democrats have accomplished thus far this year, and what further actions they plan to take. Given that the House majority is the Democrats’ only foothold in the federal government at this time, they have done quite a lot:
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Leave a comment! Tags: 2020 Elections, 60 Minutes, border wall, CBS, climate change, Congress, Donald Trump, gun control, gun safety, gun violence, House of Representatives, impeachment, Nancy Pelosi, Net Neutrality, Russia, Senate, Trump Shutdown, Twitter, voting
Tax returns, now a presidential campaign issue
House Democrats yesterday formally requested Donald Trump‘s 2013 through 2018 personal tax returns, as well as the tax returns of eight Trump business entities, from the Internal Revenue Service. At the same time, an increasing number of Democratic presidential candidates have already released multiple prior years of tax returns, but U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders remains the outlier.
The reason for requesting presidential candidates’ tax returns comes down to one word: transparency. According to McClatchy DC, “[t]he returns provide voters a look into the personal finances and charitable contributions of candidates and gives insight into whether he or she has any potential conflicts of interest.” Paraphrasing Joseph Thorndike, author and Director of the Tax History Project at Tax Analysts, McClatchy indicates that, “[w]ithout the full returns, voters can’t see such items as sources of income, which tax breaks they claimed, what they might have deducted as business expenses or how much they gave to charity.” Accordingly, while releasing tax returns is not required by law, it has become a tradition for presidential candidates to do so since Richard Nixon in the early 1970s.
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Leave a comment! Tags: 2016 Elections, 2020 Elections, Bernie Sanders, Democrats, Donald Trump, Elizabeth Warren, Hillary Clinton, IRS, Republicans, Richard Nixon, Russia, tax returns, taxes
Facebook, under fire for right wing extremism
Yesterday, Facebook announced that, beginning next week, it will begin enforcing “a ban on praise, support and representation of white nationalism and separatism on Facebook and Instagram.” Facebook’s statement indicates that, while the company has always sought to target “white supremacy,”
[w]e didn’t originally apply the same rationale to expressions of white nationalism and separatism because we were thinking about broader concepts of nationalism and separatism — things like American pride and Basque separatism, which are an important part of people’s identity.
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U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi
Much hay was made this week from Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi‘s answer to a Washington Post interviewer’s question about impeaching Donald Trump. Here’s the question and Pelosi’s response:
There have been increasing calls, including from some of your members, for impeachment of the president.
I’m not for impeachment. This is news. I’m going to give you some news right now because I haven’t said this to any press person before. But since you asked, and I’ve been thinking about this: Impeachment is so divisive to the country that unless there’s something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan, I don’t think we should go down that path, because it divides the country. And he’s just not worth it.
Many Democrats took to blogs and social media to express their disappointment with Speaker Pelosi’s answer. For example, here’s author and MSNBC contributor Malcolm Nance:
However, what this episode really shows is that the Democratic Party’s base (including a few House members) and its leadership have different considerations that allow them differing degrees of freedom in what they can say publicly at this time.
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Leave a comment! Tags: Bill Clinton, Congress, Democrats, Donald Trump, impeachment, Mitch McConnell, Nancy Pelosi, Richard Nixon, Robert Mueller, Russia, Starr Report, U.S. House, U.S. Senate
Vice-President Joe Biden meets Pope Francis, 2016
If you follow the mainstream media, Fox News or liberal blogs, you might think that all activity on the Democratic side is at the liberal end of the spectrum, with attention placed on new House members like the female minority trio of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib and Ilan Omar. You might think such activity and attention also translates directly to the field of 2020 Democratic presidential candidates. However, the person who currently tops the Democratic presidential polls is Joe Biden, who is considered a moderate and definitely not a fresh face. Although the media would portray this as a Democratic Party “rift,” it’s more like a disconnect. Folks following the latest media shiny objects might have forgotten, for example, that the last time the Democrats nominated an all-out liberal for president was U.S. Senator George McGovern in 1972, and he went down to one of the greatest defeats in presidential election history.
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Leave a comment! Tags: 2020 Elections, Barack Obama, Bernie Sanders, Beto O'Rourke, Democratic Party, Democrats, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Michael Bloomberg, Repbublicans, Russia, Sherrod Brown, Supreme Court
House Oversight and Reform Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-MD)
Republicans are having some major difficulties with former Donald Trump personal attorney Michael Cohen‘s testimony before the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Reform yesterday. Cohen sat for over 7 hours, giving testimony about the workings of the Trump Organization that was riveting, and at times stunning. Notably, the committee Republicans rarely if ever attacked Cohen’s specific allegations about Trump wrongdoings and illegal acts. Instead, they, and Republicans in the media and elsewhere, simply painted Cohen as “a liar” based on his guilty plea in two previous cases, one of which involves scheming with Donald Trump to cover up hush money payments to porn star Stephanie Clifford a/k/a Stormy Daniels, as well as lying for Trump about efforts to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. Apparently, these Republicans realize that they face the following problems regarding Michael Cohen:
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Leave a comment! Tags: Allen Weisselberg, Congress, Democrats, Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Michael Cohen, Moscow, Mueller, Republicans, Russia, Stephanie Clifford, Stormy Daniels, Trump Tower
Climate change, one issue that gets less focus in favor of immigration
If you follow major news stories for the past few months or longer, you might think the biggest issue of our time is illegal immigration, and specifically Donald Trump‘s desired border wall. After all, Trump and the Republicans created the phony “caravan” issue before the 2018 midterm elections. Then, in December, Trump shut down the federal government over his inability to convince Congress, and the American people, to approve his wall. The shutdown was so disruptive that it forced the news media and the voters to spend more time focusing on the wall and immigration. After the Trump Shutdown hurt Trump and the Republicans in the polls, and amidst the threat of a second Trump Shutdown, Trump caved to the Democrats regarding funding for border “fencing.” However, Trump then declared a fake “National Emergency” as a ploy to circumvent Congressional approval and steal money from other taxpayer funds, such as disaster relief, to try to fund his wall.
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Leave a comment! Tags: border, border security, border wall, climate change, Donald Trump, government shutdown, healthcare, illegal immigration, immigration, Russia, Stormy Daniels, Trump Shutdown
Twitter, source of trouble for some politicians
Democratic U.S. Congresswoman Ilan Omar of Minnesota got herself into hot water this week after she sent the following tweets regarding Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy‘s call for her and another Democratic Congresswoman to be admonished over their criticism of Israel:
https://twitter.com/IlhanMN/status/1094747501578633216
https://twitter.com/IlhanMN/status/1094761790595088384
Omar’s tersely expressed view that U.S. support of Israel is only a result of money, and her mention of lobbying group AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) in response to the query “who thinks is paying American politicians to be pro-Israel,” angered a number of Americans. Many of those who were upset (including members of Congress) accused Omar of raising age-old anti-Semitic tropes regarding Jewish money as an instrument of global domination. On Monday, Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democratic leaders called on Omar to apologize for her tweets. Within hours, Omar issued an apology which mentioned “colleagues who are educating me on the painful history of anti-Semitic tropes.”
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Leave a comment! Tags: AIPAC, Congress, Democrats, Donald Trump, Ilan Omar, Israel, Jewish, Kevin McCarthy, lobbying, Nancy Pelosi, narrative, Republicans, Twitter
U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi
For the past two months, Democratic U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has figured out the secret of dealing with Donald Trump: treat him like the toddler that he is. The results have been remarkable. First, on December 11 of last year, Pelosi cleaned Trump’s clock in a televised Oval Office meeting that also included Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and a silent Vice President Mike Pence. Pelosi called Trump’s threatened government shutdown the “Trump Shutdown,” and even dared Trump to ask for a vote in Congress on his desired border wall. The Trump Shutdown label stuck, and angry voters punished Trump and the Republicans for their failure to keep the federal government open despite controlling all of its branches.
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Leave a comment! Tags: abortion, border security, border wall, Chuck Schumer, climate change, Democrats, Donald Trump, environment, George Lakoff, Green New Deal, healthcare, illegal immigration, immigration, Medicare for all, Mike Pence, Nancy Pelosi, Politico, Republicans, State of the Union, Trump Shutdown, U.S. House, White House
Previous effort to boycott Starbucks over anti-labor practices
Howard Schultz, former CEO of Starbucks Coffee and still its largest individual shareholder, has been getting lots of free airtime this week as he mulls a presidential campaign. Schultz claims to be a “centrist Independent,” but in his free media appearances, he spends his time bashing the Democratic Party. For example, he criticizes “people [obviously Democrats] espousing free government-paid college, free government-paid health care and a free government job for everyone.” Likewise, in another free media appearance, Schultz criticized freshman Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez‘s proposal for a 70 percent marginal tax rate on income over $10 million. Additionally, Schultz, as CEO of Starbucks, thwarted labor efforts to unionize the company, again while trying to portray his goals as some centrist “third way” alternative. In reality, Schultz with his Drip-Down Economics sounds just like another billionaire Republican to us.
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Leave a comment! Tags: 2020 Elections, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrats, Donald Trump, healthcare, Howard Schultz, labor, Never Trump, Republicans, Starbucks, taxes, unions, William Kristol
