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What an Elizabeth Warren Presidency Would Look Like

If Elizabeth Warren wins the Democratic presidential nomination, she will have prevailed against daunting odds. She will have overcome a potentially career-ending scandal (the DNA test debacle) and defeated not only the runner-up in the 2016 Democratic presidential contest, but a popular two-term former vice president. If she defeats President Donald Trump, it would mean an economic populist defeated a corrupt plutocrat, that the most leftwing Democratic presidential nominee in history defeated a racist reactionary, that a woman defeated America’s most famous misogynist. It would be an extraordinarily powerful moment.

Her ambitions for the presidency are not small. Warren proposes to rewrite the rules of the economy by reining in capital, empowering labor and significantly expanding the welfare state.

To understand how Warren would create big structural changes as president, it’s helpful to look at how she has made change in the past.

The standard advice to freshmen senators is this: Keep a low profile and suck up to your senior colleagues. As a newly elected senator in 2013, Elizabeth Warren did neither.

Instead, Warren used her perch on the Senate Banking Committee to excoriate ineffectual regulators, duplicitous CEOs, profiteering student lenders and other financial industry ne’er-dowells (interrogations made famous in videos that went viral). She publicly clashed with establishment Democrats such as Sens. Max Baucus (Mont.) and Joe Manchin (W.V.). She even took on President Barack Obama, leading the fight against several administration priorities, including the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal and a pharmaceutical bill she described as “a bunch of special giveaways” to Big Pharma. Warren succeeded in getting under Obama’s skin to such an extent that he took the rare step of criticizing her repeatedly by name.

Progressive strategist and Warren supporter Murshed Zaheed says Warren was able to buck the Democratic establishment because she “came to the Senate with a movement behind her.” As a member of various federal and congressional advisory committees over the previous two decades—on issues like bankruptcy and the 2008 bank bailout—Warren had developed close ties to labor, consumer and netroots activist groups, including the AFL-CIO, Americans for Financial Reform and MoveOn.org. During her 2012 Senate race, her campaign built a massive email list and a grassroots army of small donors. So when Warren broke ranks, outside groups and the grassroots “had her back,” says Zaheed.

The critique from some on the Left paints Warren as a technocrat who doesn’t understand movements as the driving force of social change. But Warren’s signature policy accomplishments—including the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), loan forgiveness for students ripped off by for-profit colleges, and the Federal Reserve decision to punish Wells Fargo for its crooked financial practices—have all paired a skillful strategy from inside the system with strong coordination with outside grassroots groups.

In speeches and comments on the campaign trail, Warren frequently credits movements and the grassroots. At her campaign launch in Lawrence, Mass., Warren paid tribute to the workers there who organized a historic strike in 1912. “The story of Lawrence is a story about how real change happens in America,” she said.

One prominent feature of Warren’s theory of change is the importance of planning and strategy. For some on the Left, the unofficial Warren campaign slogan, “She’s got a plan for that,” grates. It contains a whiff of “let the politician handle it,” rather than the movement on the ground. But Nicole Carty, an activist who supports Warren and has worked with Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter, notes successful movements “have plans. They have strategies.” Carty says movements that force political change often don’t know how to implement transformative policies, which is why Warren’s talent for proposing “ways things can get done and how they will be implemented is a critical and unique skill.”

Warren’s campaign has released more than 50 plans on nearly every public policy under the sun, revealing a specific and highly visible agenda—in marked contrast with vague promises offered by other candidates. Carty says that while other campaigns are focused only on “what’s politically possible and feasible” in this moment, Warren’s plans “are about having a vision and fighting for it.”

Carty cites the wealth tax as one example, which “visionary implementer” Warren was the first in the race to propose and three other candidates picked up. Warren’s wealth tax—a two-cents-on-the-dollar tax on assets over $50 million—is so easy to understand that “two cents!” is chanted at Warren events. If you’re a homeowner, Warren says, you have “been paying a wealth tax for years. They just call it a property tax. I just want their tax to include the diamonds, the yachts and the Rembrandts.” The proposal is straightforward while being, Carty says, a “visionary idea that actually gets to the heart of wealth injustice and righting that in a reparative way.”

While the wealth tax is popular with voters, it’s unclear whether Democrats will command a big enough majority in Congress to pass it, or if centrist Democrats would support it. But legislation won’t be her only tool. The president controls an enormous bureaucracy and has a vast array of administrative, regulatory and enforcement powers at her disposal. An activist president could enact policies to cancel student debt, lower prescription drug prices, put a moratorium on drilling on public lands, require all federal contractors to pay a $15 minimum wage, break up the banks and Big Tech, and much, much more—all with the stroke of a pen.

Warren would be well positioned to kick the enforcement and regulatory powers of the executive branch into high gear. She helped build the CFPB from the ground up and, as a senator, has overseen a broad swath of similar federal regulatory agencies.

Appointments will be key to implementing her vision. Warren, who has often said that “personnel is policy,” led successful fights to quash the appointments of Wall Street-friendly Obama nominees, including Larry Summers’ bid to chair the Federal Reserve. Her office was also involved in a behind-the-scenes effort to identify progressive candidates for posts in a Hillary Clinton administration.

No one inside or outside of the Warren campaign was able or willing to name specific individuals under consideration for high-level White House posts, but Jeff Hauser, executive director of the Revolving Door Project, a nonprofit organization unaffiliated with Warren’s campaign, said the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) Rohit Chopra is the kind of appointee Warren might seek. Chopra, whom Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) recommended for the post, was widely seen as a Warren pick. At the FTC, Chopra has been a strong advocate for consumer rights and pushed for tougher regulation of the Big Tech monopolies. He strenuously objected to the FTC’s recent settlement with Facebook over its privacy breach, arguing that the $5 billion penalty was too weak to be a deterrent. Hauser also expects Warren will search beyond the Beltway for those who have a track record of success, including state and municipal officials who take an aggressive approach toward regulation and enforcement.

Executive orders get more press than other tools at the president’s disposal, but, says Hauser, they tend to move more slowly and are subject to being overturned by the courts. Enforcement priorities, however, are immediately effective. Imagine the difference it would make if the president ordered the Justice Department to stop persecuting immigrants and start aggressively pursuing crooked bankers, polluters and other white-collar criminals instead.

Then there are regulations. In the bowels of every federal agency are countless regulations from the New Deal or the Great Society that sit gathering dust. These regulations protect workers and consumers, enforce civil rights law, promote food safety and clean air and water, enable the feds to bust up monopolies, close tax loopholes, and more. But many such regulations have gone unenforced, beginning with the Reagan revolution and continuing through the neoliberal presidential administrations since.

A Warren administration threatens to resurrect those laws with a vengeance. As a senator, for example, Warren cited an obscure federal law to successfully lobby the Obama administration to provide debt relief for thousands of students ripped off by Corinthian, a for-profit college.

A president’s final tool is the bully pulpit, which Warren can use to educate, persuade and inspire voters to take action. Adam Green, cofounder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC), which has endorsed Warren, says, “[Warren’s] mentality when she entered the race, at only 3% to 5% in the polls, was, ‘I’m gonna go around the country and educate people about issues like systemic corruption and anti-monopoly. If I lose, at least millions more people are primed to want the right solution to these things. And if I win, we can do stuff.’” A gifted communicator, Warren can explain complex policies in clear, simple language and connect them to voters’ everyday concerns and struggles.

At the heart of Warren’s vision for America is a drive to end policies that benefit corporations and the rich at the expense of working families. She has said her first legislative priority as president would be an anti-corruption package that, once adopted, would facilitate passage of the rest of her agenda by removing the financial incentive for legislators to oppose it. Warren told Ezra Klein that the purpose of banning the revolving door between Congress and lobbying jobs is to say to members of Congress, “Hey, this is your job … so don’t be looking over the horizon at your next job and adjusting your behavior accordingly.”

Next on Warren’s agenda is the wealth tax, which would reduce economic inequality while providing a funding mechanism for other high-priority measures. Warren says her wealth tax would generate enough revenue to cancel 95% of all student debt and fund universal childcare, universal pre-K and free public college.

Some critics point to European countries that have tried and failed to implement a wealth tax, but the economists who advised Warren, Gabriel Zucman and Emmanuel Saez, say Warren’s version would be more feasible: It would fall on a smaller share of the population, contain fewer loop holes and come with more aggressive enforcement mechanisms. Economist Max Sawicky suggests Warren could wield the wealth tax as “a political weapon to get other changes,” including more progressive tax enforcement policies, regardless of whether it ends up being enacted.

Warren’s economic agenda includes antitrust policies to break up the banks and Big Tech, stricter executive compensation rules, a crackdown on private equity, higher corporate taxes, and trade policies that meet human rights standards. On the spending side, Warren’s proposals include free two- and four-year public college, the cancellation of 95% of student debt, universal childcare and the expansion of Social Security. The spending items would require legislation, but much of the rest of her economic program could be implemented by the executive branch alone. A president has considerable latitude over trade negotiations and can enforce existing consumer and antitrust laws, thereby cracking down on other corporate abuses. Warren could also use executive orders and existing regulations to ensure more wealthy people are paying their fair share.

Action on climate change is another top priority for Warren. She is a strong supporter of Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (D-N.Y.) Green New Deal proposal, but goes beyond that. Warren has released 11 climate plans on issues ranging from environmental justice to clean air and water to protecting public lands. The most significant initiative may be her green manufacturing plan, a $2 trillion, 10-year research, development and deployment plan to create new, cheaper technology for clean energy. Warren also adopted Gov. Jay Inslee’s (D-Wash.) plan to achieve 100% clean energy by 2035.

Warren has released healthcare proposals to expand access in rural areas, reduce maternal mortality and end the opioid crisis, but the main item on Warren’s healthcare agenda is Medicare for All—which, of all the items on the progressive agenda, is probably the most difficult to enact.

For one thing, Medicare for All is many times more expensive than any of Warren’s other proposals, with an estimated cost of more than $2 trillion in additional annual spending (her universal childcare and free public college proposals would cost about $70 billion and $60 billion, respectively). It will also require, among other things, liquidating an entire sector of the economy (the health insurance industry); slashing the profits of hospitals and pharmaceutical and medical equipment companies; and reducing the salaries of doctors in highly paid specialties. Taking on all those vested interests will be tough. Indeed, Democratic presidential contender Sen. Bernie Sanders’ Medicare for All bill has only 15 Senate cosponsors, some of whom have already begun to back away from it.

Warren’s Medicare for All proposal is a maximalist plan that would make comprehensive healthcare virtually free for everyone, including prescriptions, long-term care, mental health care, dental care and vision care. She would pay for the plan partly through cost savings (by reducing prescription drug and administrative costs and lowering reimbursement rates to hospitals and specialists) and partly through raising revenue (with a wealth tax and an employer tax roughly equal to the current employer contribution to employee health insurance). The purpose of this financing scheme is to make the plan more politically palatable by avoiding big new taxes on working people.

To transition to Medicare for All, Warren proposes a two-stage process. First, she would sign executive orders lowering prices on prescription drugs and strengthening the Affordable Care Act. Then, within the first 100 days of her administration, Congress would pass a bill enacting a robust public healthcare option and expanding Medicare benefits to minors, low-income households and people age 50 and older. In the second stage, in the third year of a Warren administration, the full Medicare for All bill would be enacted.

Warren supporters argue the Senate map for Democrats is more favorable in 2022, and enacting the initial public healthcare option would weaken the insurance industry, making the full bill easier to enact. On the other hand, it could also be the case that starting with a maximalist demand like Medicare for All would make smaller steps, such as a public option, more likely, whereas starting with a demand for only a public option might result in nothing at all.

Immigration reform is another Warren priority and, yes, she has a plan for that. Warren has proposed executive actions to eliminate abusive immigration enforcement, reduce immigrant detention while increasing due process, and admit more refugees. She also backs legislation to create new paths to citizenship.

On labor, Warren supports back-burnered items on the Democratic legislative agenda, such as a $15 minimum wage, “card check” legislation to make unionizing easier and a ban on the permanent replacement of strikers, as well as her own more far-reaching measure that would let workers control 40% of corporate board seats. Through executive actions, Warren also proposes to strengthen enforcement of anti-discrimination and worker safety laws, expand overtime rules, and strengthen the National Labor Relations Board.

On foreign policy, Warren’s record is disappointing. She voted for Trump’s 2018 defense budget, defended Israel when it bombed Palestinian schools, and supported sanctions against Venezuela, Iran and other countries. Despite these missteps, her foreign policy has been improving. She’s become more critical of Israel, voted to end U.S. participation in the Saudi war in Yemen, introduced a no-first-use nuclear weapons bill, and said she would immediately start withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan. If we as leftists want to make sure she continues to evolve on these issues, it’s critical that we demand accountability and push for progressive foreign policy appointments. She would be well advised to staff her White House with appointees from Bernie Sanders’ excellent foreign policy team.

Warren has a strong record of enlisting bipartisan sponsors for her Senate bills, but it’s likely Republicans would oppose her presidential agenda en masse. Trump is popular with the Republican base, and even out of office he would undoubtedly remain a thorn in her side with a steady stream of insults, smears and conspiracy theories.

Democrats, too, could be a problem. Warren’s support of Medicare for All, her soak-the-rich tax policies, and her plans to break up monopolies and heavily regulate corporations have won her the enmity of neoliberal Democrats in Congress and the billionaires who love them.

Warren’s style has been to fight hard and in a highly visible way and to create public support for her goals and political consequences for those who thwart her. As she said when she was fighting to create the CFPB, “My first choice is a strong consumer agency. My second choice is no agency at all and plenty of blood and teeth left on the floor.”

To enact her agenda, Warren could also do what presidents have always done with carrots (such as favors from a federal agency) and sticks (such as supporting primary challengers). But the sources I spoke to believe she would support primarying recalcitrant Democrats only as a last resort, and only against legislators who consistently opposed her policies. In addition, Warren is already working to create the kind of Congress that would support her priorities. She has endorsed a slew of progressive candidates in Democratic primaries, including challengers to two centrist Democratic incumbents, Rep. Dan Lipinski in Illinois and Rep. Henry Cuellar in Texas. Her campaign has also been pouring money into down-ballot races in an effort to elect more progressive Democrats to statehouses and to Congress.

Democratic strategist and Warren supporter Mike Lux predicts Warren “would be as aggressive as any president has ever been at rallying organizations and rallying the netroots. She would come into the White House with a huge email list that I think she would operationalize aggressively to work on Democrats to support bills.”

Meanwhile, institutions like the filibuster, a Senate that disproportionately represents white and rural voters, and the Electoral College all make progressive, transformative change difficult. Warren is supportive of statehood for Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia, steps that may be doable if the Democrats take control of Congress. She has proposed abolishing the filibuster and the Electoral College, but those reforms would likely be a much heavier lift.

But the most serious procedural threat to a Warren agenda may well be a Supreme Court and federal courts dominated by right-wing appointees who have been consistently hostile to the kind of progressive economic policies Warren champions. Warren has said she is open to such reforms as adding justices to the Supreme Court.

Political backlash poses another major threat. There’s a lively debate among Democrats about whether a midterm backlash is an inevitable, naturally recurring feature of American politics. Bill Clinton and Barack Obama faced a ferocious backlash at the polls in the midterm elections of their first terms, giving an obstructionist GOP control of the House and stalling Democratic agendas for six years.

But Stephanie Taylor, cofounder of the PCCC, says electoral backlash is not a given. “The best way for Democrats to win is to fight for systemic change, not incremental change. And this is what Elizabeth Warren does.” People will vote for Democrats, she says, “if they believe that it will do something about the rigged system, it will do something to put more money in their pockets, do something about their crushing medical debt, foreclosures, student debt.”

A hostile media environment will pose another obstacle for Warren. The mainstream media has repeatedly subjected Warren to sexist slurs (like "schoolmarm"), judged her by sexist double standards (have you heard that she's not likable?), and cast doubts about her candidacy by making sexist electability arguments. Besides sexist bias, Warren also has to contend with the media’s powerful bias against the Left. Her standing in the polls began to suffer when centrist pundits started directing their fire against Warren. In the debates, she has faced harsh “How will you pay for that?” questions about her Medicare for All plan, yet none of the moderators asked her centrist rivals how they plan to deal with the crisis of some 28 million uninsured Americans. Media coverage of her wealth tax has been largely negative, with the media repeatedly elevating the voices of random billionaires who oppose the tax while ignoring the millions of Americans—parents who desperately need child care, students who can't afford to go college, graduates burdened by crushing debt—who would benefit from it.

An aggressive, proactive communications strategy by a Warren administration could blunt the impact of negative media coverage. Hauser says that to the extent Warren’s agenda focuses on executive action rather than legislation, “It will give her an opportunity to potentially control the conversation.” A president whose primary focus is getting legislation passed on Capitol Hill will “necessarily provide Congressional Republicans an enormous microphone.” But, says Hauser, if Warren’s agenda is focused on unleashing the regulatory powers of the executive branch, “the only people who have the microphone will be the various corporate interests getting rolled over by Warren appointees across the government. And I think that those are communications battles the president's much more capable of winning.” 

Our country lacks a well-organized Left, perhaps the biggest obstacle of all to progressive, transformative change. Left-wing parties in Europe have an institutional base in strong labor unions, but in the United States, union density is low and the labor movement is weak and not uniformly progressive. Nevertheless, transformative change is, perhaps, possible. In the wake of the Great Recession, we’ve seen a huge upsurge in progressive activism, including Occupy Wall Street, Fight for 15, Black Lives Matter, the immigration and climate justice movements, the revival of the Democratic Socialists of America, #MeToo and waves of teacher strikes.

Warren laid out her theory of change most clearly at a September 2019 campaign event in New York. In her speech, Warren referenced the tragic 1911 fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory to tell a story of change in America: how the fire led to a dramatic upsurge in activism with some half a million people taking to the streets in a union-organized funeral march for the workers. Warren said that “the women of the trade unions kept pushing from the outside” and Frances Perkins, then a labor activist, “pushed from the inside.” Together, they rewrote New York state labor law from top to bottom to protect workers. When she became FDR’s labor secretary, Perkins followed the same model for change. The result, Warren said, was the “big structural change” of the New Deal: “Social Security, unemployment insurance, abolition of child labor, minimum wage, the right to join a union and even the very existence of the weekend.”

Warren sees a clear distinction between social movements pressing for change from the outside and the elected officials (like herself) working the system from within. Warren’s progressive rival, Bernie Sanders, sees the role of the president differently, saying he would act as “organizer-in-chief” to lead a mass movement for change.

But Sanders’ position fails to understand the structural reality of how politics works and what presidents do. Presidents are inside actors; movements are outside actors. Movements exist independently from parties and candidates and draw their power from their ability to extend or withdraw their support at will. The American presidents who have brought about fundamental change (take FDR and the labor movement, or LBJ and the civil rights movement) worked closely with movements, listened to movements, set a tone that encouraged movements, coordinated politically with movements—but did not lead or organize movements.

Sanders, like Warren, clearly appreciates that movements are the motor that drives change, and a Sanders administration, like a Warren administration, would partner with movements to achieve change. Both candidates offer a compelling vision that can inspire people, and both share the goal of orienting America closer to social democracy. While Sanders is to the left of Warren on most issues, that difference is unlikely to matter much in practice (with the important exception of foreign policy) because both would be seriously constrained by a political environment significantly to the right of their proposed agendas.

Warren holds two important advantages over Sanders. The first is her gender. By itself, gender should not be a determining factor. But in two candidates that are as closely matched as Sanders and Warren, gender does come into play. Electing our first female president may be symbolic, but symbols matter. Research suggests that when women run for office, they inspire more women to do the same. Our government is currently ranked 76th in the world on the share of women elected to our national legislature. Studies show that women who are elected to higher office are more likely than men to champion women’s issues such as childcare, reproductive justice, family-friendly labor policies, women’s health and the minimum wage.

Warren’s chief advantage over Sanders, however, is that she is more likely to deliver on the implementation of her proposals. According to the most recent report cards compiled by the independent organization GovTrack, Warren has been more successful than Sanders in introducing legislation, getting cosponsors, getting her bills out of committee and writing bills that became law. Warren also dreamed up, designed and implemented a government agency: the CFPB, which, to date, has provided more than $13 billion in relief to distressed consumers. Sanders has a record he can be deeply proud of, but no comparable legislative achievements. Warren combines a strong strategic sense with an unparalleled understanding of the possibilities of the executive branch. Her skill set is a better match for the job.

Ultimately, of course, one person—even with all the powers of the presidency at her command—can only do so much. Warren would need movements that pressure her to do the right thing and hold her accountable when she falls short. But movements on the Left have been gaining strength. In many ways, Trump’s presidency has been about suppressing an America that is trying to be born. Warren would very much like to midwife the birth of that new America. But only if Americans create social disruption on a mass scale will she have the opportunity to do so.

This was one of two cover stories of In These Times' dual-sided January issue. For a complementary perspective, read the alternate cover feature, "What a Bernie Sanders Presidency Would Look Like," by Daniel Denvir. [<--CHRIS INSERT LINK]

The views expressed in this piece are the author's own. As a 501(c)3 nonprofit, In These Times does not oppose or endorse candidates for political office.

Imagine Elizabeth Warren as President. Now Imagine Bernie Sanders.

When we first conceived this dual-cover issue of In These Times, early in fall 2019, die-hard supporters of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren already seemed caught in an endless loop.

Frustrated Sanders fans criticized Warren for jumping in after she sat out 2016, standing a little to Sanders’ right and pulling progressive support. Defensive Warren fans, worried Sanders had plateaued, had high hopes for a female candidate who seemed fresh and full of momentum. Attacks and parries followed: She’s a capitalist; no, they’re both social democrats. He’s a class reductionist; no, he’s building a multi-racial coalition. Wall Street secretly likes her; no, Wall Street definitely hates her. He’s bad on reparations and makes nativist comments; she’s terrible on foreign policy. She’s cynically copying Sanders; no, she’s been like this for a decade. Nobody seemed to convince anyone, and a lot of people remained quietly torn as the primaries approached. How to break the loop? In These Times decided to approach the debate in a new way. Policies had been compared ad nauseam, but what did Sanders and Warren supporters imagine these presidencies would actually look like? How would each overcome all the forces arrayed against them—Republicans, establishment Democrats, the Supreme Court, corporations? We asked two prominent progressive journalists and thinkers, Daniel Denvir and Kathleen Geier—Sanders and Warren supporters, respectively—to lay out the likely course of each presidency. Then we invited two activists and scholars, Brian Tokar and Rachel Gilmer, to rebut their cases. The arguments in all four pieces surprised, engaged and challenged me. Whether or not anything here changes your thinking, I hope it feels new. Just as this political moment does.

"What a Bernie Sanders Presidency Would Look Like" by Daniel Denvir

A rebuttal by Brian Tokar: "Why Bernie Can't Be Organizer-In-Chief": (coming soon)

"What an Elizabeth Warren Presidency Would Look Like," by Kathleen Geier

A rebuttal by Rachel Gilmer: "Warren's an Ally. We Need a Leader." (coming soon)

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#Environment #RenewableEnergy

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Iran Is Not What You Think

            War, many people believe, often results from cultural differences and misunderstandings. President Trump’s assassination of General Qassem Suleimeni has Americans considering the possibility that we may soon add Iran to our list of unwinnable wars in the Middle East. As that calculus unfolds, no one questions the assumption that there are irreconcilable differences between […]

Progressive v. Progressive Come Lately

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“Fear sells.” That's what Ring said in 2016, according to this staggering history of how Amazon's surveillance doorbell company built over 600 police partnerships and put cameras on front doors across America. https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/zmjp53/how-ring-went-from-shark-tank-reject-to-americas-scariest-surveillance-company

#Tory #NHS shake-up blamed for fall in #child #vaccination rates | #Society | The Guardian

I think I missed this story but found the link on #RMS's page today.

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#Medicine #Politics

Windows Subsystem for Linux is a horrible, pointless initiative... unless you're Microsoft.

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Ring claims its primary business is the security of its customers. Yet the company has failed to follow even basic data security best practices, opting instead to put the burden on its customers. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/12/ring-throws-customers-under-bus-after-data-breach

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#Facebook #Elections #Manipulation #US

Microbes from humics lakes surprise – bacteria and algae produced omega-3 fatty acids from microplastics

The environmental fate of microplastics has been difficult to trace. A research group used carbon isotope labeling to follow the fate of polyethylene in the food chain. To the researchers surprise, plastic carbon was transformed into beneficial fatty acids, omega-3 and omega-6, by the microbes originating from humic lakes.

https://www.codepink.org/01042020
Anti-war protests in 60 cities today

Why I'll never install cloud-based security cams...

Google Home Hub shows stills of other people's Xiaomi security cameras:

https://www.reddit.com/r/googlehome/comments/eine1m/when_i_load_the_xiaomi_camera_in_my_google_home/

Mutt running natively on my #Librem5 #Chestnut phone--just needed to install the deb and scp my mutt settings from a different computer. #livingthedream

To Stop Trump’s War with Iran, We Must Also Confront the Democrats Who Laid the Groundwork

Since President Trump took office in 2017, the leadership of the Democratic Party has overwhelmingly supported the precursors  to today’s dangerous U.S. escalation towards Iran: sanctions, proxy battles and a bloated military budget. Yet, now that we stand on the brink of a possible U.S. war of aggression, Democratic leaders are feigning concern that Trump is leading a march to  war without congressional approval, and using a faulty strategy to do so. These objections, however, are grounded in process critiques, rather than moral opposition—and belie Democrats’ role in helping lay the groundwork for the growing confrontation.

The U.S. drone assassination of Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, the commander of Iran’s Quds Force and a ranking official of the Iranian government, takes confrontation with Iran to new heights, inching the U.S. closer to the war the Trump administration has been pushing for. While Trump deserves blame for driving this dangerous escalation, he did not do it on his own.

As recently as December 2019, the House overwhelmingly passed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2020 with a vote of 377-48. Two amendments were stripped from that bill before it went to a vote: Rep. Ro Khanna’s (D-Calif.) amendment to block funding for a war with Iran barring congressional approval and Rep. Barbara Lee’s (D-Calif.) amendment to repeal 2001’s “Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists” (AUMF). That AUMF effectively allows the government to use "necessary and appropriate force" against anyone suspected of being connected to the 9/11 attacks, and has been interpreted broadly to justify U.S. aggression around the world. Officials from the Trump administration have suggested that the 2001 AUMF may give them authority to go to war with Iran.

Of the 377 Representatives who voted for the $738 billion defense bill, 188 were Democrats. Just 41 Democrats opposed the legislation. The bill cleared the Senate with a tally of 86-8, with just four Democrats voting against it. None of the Senators running for the 2020 Democratic nomination were present for the vote. Before the vote, Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) took to the Senate floor to brag about the fact that “partisan demands” had effectively been removed from the bill and declared that “sanity and progress” had won out. “Reassuringly, the past few days have finally brought an end to bipartisan talks and produced a compromise NDAA,” said McConnell.

At the time of the bill’s passage, 31 organizations, including Yemeni Alliance Committee and the National Iranian American Council Action, put out a joint statement condemning the NDAA as a looming disaster destined to be abused by the Trump administration. “The NDAA is a massive blank check,” reads the statement. “The authorization of $738 billion is obscene. Further inflating the Pentagon’s overstuffed coffers does not make us safer—it perpetuates a system that treats military intervention as the solution to all world problems.” Despite these concerns, Democrats did not put up much of a fight, and the Congressional Progressive Caucus declined to whip the vote against the NDAA.

Democrats’ complicity doesn’t stop with bloated war budgets. In July 2017, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) was the only lawmaker in both the House and the Senate who caucuses with the Democrats to vote against a bill that bundled together sanctions on Iran, Russia and North Korea. Democrats didn’t just vote for the bill—their leadership in the House helped make the decision to tie the sanctions together, and proponents of the bill used anti-Russia rhetoric to ram it through Congress. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) told the Intercept at the time, “I just looked at the sanctions, and it’s very hard, in view of what we know just happened in this last election, not to move ahead with [sanctions].”

Sanders was clear that he opposed the bill because of his opposition to sanctions on Iran, but supported sanctions against Russia and North Korea, which are also aggressive and harmful to the people of those countries. Still, he was demonized by some in the Democratic establishment. As we previously reported, Adam Parkhomenko, former Hillary Clinton aide and founder of the Ready for Hillary PAC, said on Twitter at the time, “Feel the Bern? Bernie Sanders voted against Russian sanctions today. 98 Senators voted for Russian sanctions today. Sanders voted the same way anyone with the last name Trump would vote if they were in the Senate. No excuses―stop making them for him.”

When Trump—surrounded by hawkish advisors—pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal in May of 2018, the Democratic establishment roundly criticized him, often citing the supposed threat posed by Iran, even though the country has no nuclear weapons program, according to U.S. intelligence agencies’ own assessments. “The president's willingness to shatter the international consensus, forged over years of arduous negotiations, on how to constrain Iran's nuclear program only makes sense as part of a campaign to erase his predecessor's legacy, regardless of the consequences to our national security,” Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said at the time.

Yet, Democrats’ previous support for sanctions already violated the Iran deal, whose benefits for the Iranian people were almost entirely premised on relief from devastating sanctions. In December of 2018, high-profile Democrats, including Elizabeth Warren, called for the United States to return to the Iran nuclear deal. While such a move would certainly constitute a de-escalation, these calls were bereft of accountability for the role that Democrats played in emboldening Trump to impose even more sanctions—and ultimately walk away from the agreement.

These failures are consistent with a troubling pattern: Democrats tee up the ball for Trump’s aggressive maneuvers, and then express outrage when his administration takes a swing. The Trump administration has been on a course towards towards confrontation with Iran for three years. He’s hired notorious Iran-war fanatics Gen. James Mattis, John Bolton and Elliot Abrams. His biggest donor is anti-Iran radical billionaire Sheldon Adleson. His State Department appears to have staffed out some of its Iran policy to the pro-Israel, rightwing think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He’s signaled from day one his goal was to march the United States towards war. Yet, Democrats still padded his war budgets, often voted for his appointments, baited him to have a tougher stance against Iran’s most important ally, Russia, and did nothing to curb his support for anti-Iran forces in the Middle East. Democrats have, for the most part, been not only unwilling to spend their political capital trying to change this course, but have actively encouraged it through their support for proxy battles against Iran in Syria and Iraq. And we must not forget that it was President Obama who, in 2014, sent troops back to Iraq as part of the war against ISIS.

Although many Democrats were quick to criticize Trump’s deadly drone strike, most of the statements were qualified with assertions about the murderous nature of Suleimani. “No American will mourn Qassem Suleimani’s passing,” begins Joe Biden’s statement. “He deserved to be brought to justice for his crimes against American troops and thousands of innocents throughout the region. He supported terror and sowed chaos.” Initial statements from Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar began with similar declarations. The first statement that has even referred to the killing as an “assassination” has been from Bernie Sanders. Warren later followed up her initial statement with remarks that also used the language of assassination.

Some Democrats who voted for the NDAA and handed the Trump administration a blank check suddenly expressed concern about the President’s powers. “Soleimani was an enemy of the United States. That’s not a question,” tweeted Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Ct.)—who voted or the bill. “The question is this - as reports suggest, did America just assassinate, without any congressional authorization, the second most powerful person in Iran, knowingly setting off a potential massive regional war?”

Other Democrats are also expressing concern that Trump is deploying the wrong strategy against a dangerous enemy, while accepting the premise that intervention could be justified. This approach is reflected in presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg’s statement, released today: “Before engaging in military action that could destabilize an entire region, we must take a strategic, deliberate approach that includes consultation with Congress, our allies, and stakeholders in the Middle East.” This statement presumes that a destabilizing war of aggression could be justified, conceding Trump’s moral justifications, even as Buttigieg handwrings about the method.

We can’t stop a war with Iran unless we recognize U.S. aggression is not the product of failed strategy, or the Republican Party alone. It’s the product of a system where it’s normal bipartisan politics to lay the building blocks of war with no public account of the profound harm that is being done. And then, on the eve of said war, those Democrats who have been setting its course feign outrage and shock—if a Republican is in the White House, that is. We saw this script play out with the Iraq War, and we’re seeing it again now. In a U.S. political establishment where killing people abroad comes with little political cost, the politicians who contributed to the U.S. climate of belligerence are never forced to face the consequences. It costs nothing to to jockey for war, but everything to stand against it––including war’s precursors, such as sanctions, bloated military budgets and CIA meddling. Our only hope is to change this.

The Decade That Put Capitalism On Trial

I can’t say I’m convinced this decade has really just ended, especially since it didn’t start Jan. 1, 2010. As far as I can tell, it actually began in 2007, with Wall Street’s historic financial crisis.

That calamity has defined the last 13 odd years—call them the long teens—and transformed American politics by showing the center, indeed, could not hold. In the immediate aftermath of the mortgage debacle, the Tea Party rose to prominence, foreshadowing the racist, rightwing populism that continues to gain ground at home with Trump and around the world. But over time, the U.S. Left learned its own lessons: that capitalism can fail and that the government can spend huge sums of money to intervene in the economy. These revelations, in turn, have shaped the emerging generation’s sense of what is possible, spurring a democratic socialist revival and opening space for teenage environmentalist Greta Thunberg to credibly insist in 2019, “If we can save the banks we can save the world.” United behind the proposal for an economically and ecologically transformative Green New Deal, young people understand it isn’t some pie-in-the-sky fantasy but a pragmatic and urgent necessity.

Greta’s comments echo the now famous refrain, which I first heard on Sep. 17, 2011 when a few hundred of us gathered at Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan for Occupy Wall Street: “The banks got bailed out; We got sold out.” As a result of the financial crash, around 7.8 million U.S. homes were foreclosed. Black households lost half their collective wealth. Back then I didn’t have a home or savings to lose, yet my personal finances were in meltdown nonetheless. Around the same time Lehman Brothers collapsed, I got a call telling me my student loans were in default. I remember trying to grasp the logic: “I don’t have money, so you are increasingly my principal by 19%?” My balance ballooned, as did my monthly payments, which meant I was even more broke than before.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, as I became more deeply involved in Occupy, I found myself gravitating to work focused on the problem of debt. It made sense, since most people drawn to the encampments were in the red as a result of being forced to debt-finance basic goods such as housing, healthcare and education, often with disastrous results.

Soon enough, I was collaborating with people I met through the movement and devising new creative ways to organize to transform indebtedness into a source of power and leverage. We co-founded the Debt Collective, a union for debtors, and in 2015 we launched the country’s first student debt strike, eventually winning over $1 billion in loan relief and crucial changes to federal law. Early on our position was mocked by mainstream media, but through organizing and public education we have shifted public opinion, helping lay the groundwork for the decommodification of higher education. We never would have predicted that in 2020 two leading presidential candidates would make our twin demands of mass student debt cancellation and free public college central planks of their campaigns.

Occupy marked a decisive break with the aughts, a difficult decade for social movements. In the wake of 9/11, New York City protests were often massively overpoliced, making demonstrating a grim and dispiriting affair, with the protesters who did show up to an action typically quarantined in “free speech pens” or arrested after being trapped by the awful orange netting cops would use to catch demonstrators like fish. Fortunately, most of the young people who had answered the call to “Occupy Wall Street” were new to activism—their sense of possibility hadn’t been constrained by the previous decade’s crackdown on dissent. Emboldened by recent uprisings including the Arab Spring, the Spanish and Greek indignados, and the occupation of Wisconsin’s state capitol, the people gathered in Zuccotti Park were determined to hold their ground for the night, and they succeeded.

This has been one of the astonishing motifs of this decade: wave after wave of new people engaging in social movements for the first time, be it Occupy, Dream Defenders, Black Lives Matter, #NoDAPL, the Women’s Marches, #MeToo, Indivisible, Democratic Socialists of America, Sunrise Movement, the Schools Strikes for Climate, and more. Since 2016, there has also been a remarkable insurgency of bold, unabashedly leftwing candidates for public office, many inspired by Sen. Bernie Sanders’ progressivism. If you had told me in 2010 that socialists would be winning office from Houston, Texas, to Fulton, Georgia, and serving as judges, city councilors and Congresswomen, I never would have believed you.

If this decade has been anything, it has been a decade of crisis: the financial crisis, the post-Trump political crisis and the climate crisis. I spent much of this period writing a book and making a film about democracy and one thing I learned is that the word for crisis, like the word democracy, comes from the ancient Greek, krisis. It means the turning point in an illness—death or recovery, two stark alternatives. It’s fitting, then, that two divergent possibilities lay ahead: on one side, the path to a more egalitarian society, underpinned by a wholesale transformation of our economic and energy systems; on the other, a nostalgic, ethno-nationalist rightwing backlash combining plutocracy with other forms of minority rule. No one knows what the next decade will bring, but given the high stakes we have no choice but to pick a side and try to be part of the cure.