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Progressive caucus urges Biden to act on wages, bank regulation and climate
The Congressional Progressive Caucus has urged Joe Biden to reinforce federal oversight of large corporations, increase wages for working people and address the climate crisis.Outlining its 2023 executive action agenda on Thursday, the CPC offered Joe Biden an opportunity to deliver on a range of Democratic policy priorities, and stifle recent criticism from the left wing of his party, using the power of the executive pen.“The list that we have arrived at is not just a messaging exercise,” Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, chair of the caucus, told reporters. “These are actions that we believe the White House and federal agencies have the authority and the ability to take now and should do so.”Biden’s executive power has taken on new significance now that Republicans control the House of Representatives, hindering Democrats’ ability to advance their legislative agenda. Without his party’s full control of Congress, Biden’s best hope of enacting reform in the next two years probably lies in executive orders, and those actions could help Democrats draw a contrast with Republicans in the 2024 elections.“Republicans have made it perfectly clear they do not want to govern,” said Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, deputy CPC chair. “Thankfully, we have a Democratic president in the White House, one who has passed the boldest agenda in a generation to help working people. In the face of Republican obstruction, we do not have to be silent.”The CPC’s announcement comes as Biden has found himself increasingly at odds with progressive activists over some of his recent policy decisions. Biden’s decision to approve the Willow oil project in Alaska has enraged climate activists, and immigrant rights advocates remain frustrated and alarmed about the White House’s efforts to restrict asylum applications. On Monday, Jayapal signed on to a comment expressing “deep concern” over the proposed asylum policy.Asked about the recent clashes, Jayapal praised Biden as a “real champion on many issues”, celebrating the passage of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act and the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. But she acknowledged that “there are issues we don’t see exactly eye to eye on”.“And on those issues, we’ve continued to push hard – sometimes in private, sometimes in public – to make sure that we are not only fulfilling his campaign promises, but most importantly delivering for people and what they need,” Jayapal said.Among other proposals, the CPC is calling on Biden to address the rising cost of living by expanding the pool of workers eligible to receive overtime pay and lowering prescription drug prices. In regards to the climate crisis, the CPC wants the president to implement new federal rules on fossil fuel-fired power plants and accelerate the transition to clean energy.Some of the CPC’s other proposed actions read as a direct response to recent news events, such as the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. The caucus has urged Biden to expand federal oversight of financial institutions by subjecting large banks to the Federal Reserve’s supervision. The CPC has also called for “aggressive action to improve worker and community safety in the rail industry”, amid ongoing concerns about the recent train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio.Biden has shown a willingness in the past to act on the CPC’s suggestions. Last August, months after the CPC released its 2022 executive action agenda calling on Biden to cancel student debt, the president announced his administration would provide up to $20,000 in student debt forgiveness, though his plan is now tangled up in lawsuits.Despite significant legal hurdles, the CPC and its supporters hope that Biden will not only act on their proposed executive orders but that those policies will actually have the chance to be implemented. More
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Defeating the Dictators review: prescriptions for democratic health
Charles Dunst’s “aspirational” book about how democracies can do a better job of competing with autocracies is bursting with statistics and lots of common sense.The statistics are there to convince us that many autocracies spend much more sensibly than the world’s richest democracies do. A few examples:
China has increased spending on education as a percentage of its gross domestic product by 75% since 1975.
In 2018, 15-year-old Chinese students had the highest average scores in the world on tests for math, science and reading, followed by Singapore, Macao and Hong Kong – “none of which is a democracy”.
Citizens of Singapore have an average life expectancy of around 84 and an infant mortality rate of two per 1,000 – “better than almost every democracy”.
Singapore achieves that good health by spending just 4% of its GDP on healthcare – versus 17% of GDP spent in the US, which gets much less impressive results.
Dunst’s commonsense observations include ideas like these: weak safety nets damage citizens’ confidence in their governments (and therefore should be strengthened); bad healthcare systems cost more money in the long run than good ones; and investments in infrastructure repay themselves many times over.Dunst is deputy director of research and analytics at The Asia Group and an adjunct fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Looking at his own country, he is heartened that Joe Biden managed to push through a $1tn infrastructure bill, but then points out that’s only 1.25% of GDP, compared with the 8.5% of GDP China spent on infrastructure every year from 1992 to 2011.“China today spends more on infrastructure than the United States and Europe do combined,” Dunst writes.By spending more on things that actually matter, countries that oppress their citizens in other ways can engender remarkable levels of confidence in government.“In 2019,” Dunst writes, “nearly 90% of Chinese reported trust in their government … as did almost 70% of Singaporeans.”Practically the only good news for democracies in this story is the fact that almost every major economy faces similar declining birth rates. Most dramatically, China has gone from 2.25 children per woman in 1990 to just 1.3 today. No major economy is producing enough children to maintain its current population.At the same time, since 2017, China’s net migration rate – the number of immigrants minus the number of emigrants – “has worsened every year”.China lost about 335,000 people in 2022 alone.Democracies like the US, Germany and the UK all posted positive net migration rates of at least 2.7%. These numbers support one of Dunst’s more optimistic notions. While “China and others may promise economic stability”, democracies remain attractive because they offer “more freedom, equality and opportunities to pursue happiness”.Dunst argues that one of the biggest challenges for democracies is to convince their populations of the benefits of immigration, instead of listening to politicians like Donald Trump in the US and Marine Le Pen in France, who have been so successful in reviving ancient xenophobia.Dunst also thinks education systems in places like the US and Britain need to become much more democratic. At Harvard, the acceptance rate for the children of alumni is 30%, versus 6% for the general population. In 2021, “nearly a third of legacy freshmen hailed from households making more than half a million dollars”.When non-connected parents “see the underperforming children of top financiers and politicians vaunted into top schools and jobs because of connections, these parents will rebel against the system that allowed this to happen … They will vote for the would-be dictator.”Dunst thinks we must offer more scholarships “for people studying science and technology … more funding for vocational schools” and “constant skill training” for the workforce.He wisely suggests that a “key reform would be to make non-regular [American] workers eligible for high-quality health insurance that travels with them from job to job”. But he is also bizarrely opposed to universal healthcare – the kind that is the norm all over Europe. Suddenly, he sounds like a flack for a greedy pharmaceutical company, writing that such a system “could undermine the competitive attitude that makes the United States one of the world’s leaders in medical innovation”.America’s continuing failure to provide decent health insurance to its most needy citizens is hardly a spur to innovation. And the fact we are the only major democracy with a healthcare system dominated by the profit motive isn’t mentioned here at all.Dunst is almost entirely silent about the explosion of fake facts on the internet, which makes it so much more difficult to sell the commonsense ideas he pushes for. Another problem is his failure to acknowledge that America now has only one major political party that is genuinely interested in solving any of these fundamental problems, while the other prefers to cater to its base with attacks on wokeness or any prosecutor who thinks it makes sense to prosecute a former president for any of his dozens of alleged crimes.This is the fundamental problem facing American democracy now. As long as the Republicans control the House of Representatives or any other part of the government, the chances of enacting any of the proposals Dunst thinks necessary to help defeat the dictators – serious educational reform, immigration reform and additional infrastructure projects – are exactly zero. More - in US Politics
It’s OK to be Angry about Capitalism review: Bernie Sanders, by the book
ReviewIt’s OK to be Angry about Capitalism review: Bernie Sanders, by the bookThe Vermont senator and former presidential candidate offers a clarion call against the American oligarchsThe Vermont senator Bernie Sanders has a predictably unsparing view of the effects of “unfettered capitalism”: it “destroys anything that gets in its way in the pursuit of profits. It destroys the environment. It destroys our democracy. It discards human beings without a second thought. It will never provide workers with the fulfillment that Americans have a right to expect from their careers. [And it is] propelled by uncontrollable greed and contempt for human decency.”Has Bernie Sanders really helped Joe Biden move further left?Read moreThe two-time presidential candidate makes his case with the usual horrifying numbers about the acceleration of inequality in America: 90% of our wealth is owned by one-tenth of 1% of the population; the wealth of 725 US billionaires increased 70% during the pandemic to more than $5tn; BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street now control assets of $20tn and are major shareholders in 96% of S&P 500 companies.Sanders recites these statistics with religious fervor, and poses fundamental questions for our time: “Do we believe in the Golden Rule? [or] do we accept … that gold rules – and that lying, cheating, and stealing are OK if you’re powerful enough to get away with it?”Bernie believes (and I strongly agree) that it’s long past the time when we should be paying at least as much attention to American oligarchs as we do to those surrounding Vladimir Putin. Our homegrown plutocrats “own” our democracy.“They spend tens of billions … on campaign contributions … to buy politicians who will do their bidding. They spend billions more on lobbying firms to influence governmental decisions” at every level. And “to a significant degree”, the oligarchs “own” the media. That is why our prominent pundits “rarely raise issues that will undermine the privileged positions of their employers” and “there is little public discussion about the power of corporate America and how oligarchs wield that power to benefit their interests at the expense of working families”.We were reminded this week of how this system works. Joe Biden released a budget with perfectly modest proposals for tax increases, like a 25% minimum tax on the wealthiest Americans and a seven-percentage-point raise in the corporate tax rate to 28%, which would still leave it seven points lower than it was before Donald Trump gutted it with his gigantic tax giveaways.Instantly, experts owned and operated by the billionaires started spewing their familiar bilge, like these moving words from the Cato Institute: “Higher tax rates on the wages of a narrow segment of the United States’ most productive executives and business leaders will have strong disincentives against their continued work and other negative behavioral effects that translate into a less dynamic, slower growing economy.“Higher taxes on investment income target the financial rewards to successful entrepreneurs who undertake risks and persevere through failure to build high return businesses that provide welfare enhancing goods and services to people around the world.”Sanders quotes one of the most prescient Americans of the mid-20th century, from 1944: “As our industrial economy expanded [our] political rights proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness. We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence.”The name of that dangerous revolutionary: Franklin Delano Roosevelt.Several decades before that, Theodore Roosevelt similarly bemoaned the “absence of effective state, and, especially, national, restraint upon unfair money-getting” which “has tended to create a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power”.There is something extremely refreshing about an author who assumes it should be obvious that billionaires should not be allowed to exist – and has perfectly reasonable proposals about how they should be eliminated. At the height of the pandemic, Sanders proposed the Make Billionaires Pay Act, which would have imposed a 60% tax on all the wealth gained by 467 billionaires between 18 March 2020 and January 2021.“But why stop at one year?” he now asks. After all, the 1950s were economic boom times in America – and under a Republican president, Dwight Eisenhower, “the top tax rate for the wealthiest Americans was around 92%. America thrived. Unions were strong. Working-class Americans could afford to support themselves and buy homes on a single income.” And the richest 20% controlled a measly (by current standards) 42.8% of the wealth.Bernie Sanders: ‘Oligarchs run Russia. But guess what? They run the US as well’Read moreSanders’ 99.5 Percent Act would only touch the top 0.5% of Americans. “But the families of billionaires in America, who have a combined net worth of over $5tn, would owe up to $3tn in estate taxes.” He would accomplish this with a 45% tax rate on estates worth $3.5m and a 65% rate on those worth more than $1bn.There is much more here, including a convincing case for Medicare for All and an excoriation of a for-profit healthcare system which spends twice as much per citizen as France or Germany and still manages to leaves tens of millions of Americans un- or underinsured, all while nourishing an obscene pharmaceuticals business in which profits jumped by 90% in 2021.I first toured the castles of the Loire Valley as a teenager in the company of the family of my uncle, Jerry Kaiser, a 60s radical and a very early opponent of the war in Vietnam. As we absorbed the opulence of one chateau after another, Jerry had only one question: “What took them so long to have a revolution?”The noble purpose of Bernie Sander’s powerful new book is to get millions of Americans to ask that question of themselves – right now.
It’s OK to Be Angry About Capitalism is published in the US by Crown
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Biden unveils ‘blue-collar’ budget plan with tax hikes for America’s wealthiest
Biden unveils ‘blue-collar’ budget plan with tax hikes for America’s wealthiestBlueprint – unlikely to pass given Republicans’ control of House of Representatives – frames president’s aspirations for re-electionJoe Biden on Thursday unveiled his budget, a sprawling plan that the White House says reflects the president’s commitment to creating a fairer economy while challenging Republicans who are demanding steep cuts to federal spending programs.The $6.8tn budget request, the third such request of Biden’s presidency and the first to a divided Congress, is effectively dead on arrival with Republicans in control of the House, and sets the stage for a high-stakes showdown over the nation’s finances. Even so, it frames the president’s policy aspirations ahead of his expected campaign for re-election in 2024.Biden’s budget blueprint would cut the federal deficit by nearly $3tn over the next decade, largely by raising taxes on corporations and high earners. It also includes proposals aimed at lowering the cost of healthcare, prescription drugs, childcare, housing and education while making new investments in domestic manufacturing, cancer research and a paid family leave program.It calls for restoring the child tax credit that helped reduce child poverty by half when Congress temporarily expanded the benefit during the pandemic. Under Biden’s plan, families could claim as much as $3,600 a child, compared with the current level of $2,000.Amid Republican claims that the Democrats are weak on crime and border security, Biden’s plan includes funding for more police officers and border patrol agents. Additional funding would support new technology at points of entry along the border and for cracking down on fentanyl trafficking, according to a factsheet provided by the White House.As tensions rise with Russia and China, Biden proposed a more than 3% increase to defense spending, an $886bn request that includes support for Ukraine and increased funding to allies in the Indo-Pacific region.Biden will formally introduce his spending plan, which he has described as a “blue-collar blueprint”, on Thursday afternoon in Pennsylvania, a battleground state that helped lift him to the White House in 2020. It is an unusually high-profile rollout for a budget proposal that is often greeted with a resounding thud on Capitol Hill.But Biden and the White House believe the suite of popular tax-and-spend proposals will be difficult for Republicans to attack. Emphasizing the point, White House officials released polling alongside the budget plan that they say shows overwhelming public support for their policies.“When you look at this president’s view of the world and what this budget puts forward, it shows you what he values,” Shalanda Young, director of the Office of Management and Budget, told reporters on Thursday. “And that’s what this is going to be about that. And we’re happy to have that debate with anybody: who are you for?”Republicans swiftly dismissed the plan as inadequate to address the nation’s debt, which the government projects will rise by $19tn over the next decade.In a joint statement, top House Republicans accused Biden of “shrugging and ignoring” the national debt, which they called one of the “greatest threats to America”.”President Joe Biden’s budget is a reckless proposal doubling down on the same far left spending policies that have led to record inflation and our current debt crisis,” the statement said.Underwriting his plans, the president calls for new tax hikes on the wealthy, including a repeal of the tax cuts that Donald Trump signed into law in 2017 – cuts that disproportionately benefited wealthy Americans. Biden also proposes quadrupling a tax on stock buybacks and raising the corporate income tax rate to 28%.At the heart of his budget is a plan that the White House says would help avert a Medicare funding crisis and extend the program’s solvency for at least 25 years. The plan would raise Medicare taxes from 3.8% to 5% for those who earn more than $400,000 per year to protect the government health insurance program for adults over 65, which is at the heart of a brewing policy debate poised to play a central role in the 2024 presidential election.Republicans have so far refused to put forward a counter-proposal, despite promises to put the US on a path to a balanced budget. Yet by rejecting tax increases and denying charges that they would cut social security or Medicare programs, it is unclear how Republicans would achieve that goal.“Republicans keep saying they want to reduce the deficit, but they haven’t put out a comprehensive plan showing what they’ll cut,” Young said. “We’re looking forward to seeing their budget so the American people can compare it to what we’re putting out today, this president’s vision.”TopicsJoe BidenUS taxationUS politicsUS domestic policyRepublicansDemocratsnewsReuse this content More
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Ron DeSantis sees ‘freedom’ in Florida – thanks to Republican supermajority
Ron DeSantis sees ‘freedom’ in Florida – thanks to Republican supermajorityThe governor – believed by many to mount a 2024 presidential campaign – is ramping up an ‘anti-woke’ crusade with a veto-proof supermajority in state legislature If there’s one word Floridians have heard plenty of since their Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, was sworn in for a second term last month, it is “freedom”. The rightwing politician, expected by many to seek his party’s 2024 presidential nomination, sprinkles the word freely as he ramps up the “anti-woke” crusade he believes can propel him to the White House.Nikki Haley says Florida’s ‘don’t say gay’ law does not go ‘far enough’Read moreIt turns out, following a special legislative session last week that handed DeSantis victory after victory in his culture wars against big corporations, the transgender community, students, migrants and racial minorities, the person with the greatest freedom in Florida to do exactly as he pleases is the governor himself.In November, voters granted DeSantis’s wish of a veto-proof Republican supermajority in the state legislature. In a five-day session, those politicians validated every one of his demands.They granted DeSantis total control of the board governing Disney, the theme park giant with whom he feuded over his anti-LGBTQ+ “don’t say gay” law.They gave him permission to fly migrants from anywhere in the US to destinations of his choosing, for political purposes, then send the bill to Florida’s taxpayers.And they handed unprecedented prosecutorial powers to his newly created, hand-picked office of election “integrity”, pursuing supposed cases of voter fraud.The special session is over but DeSantis’s devotion to seeking retribution against those who disagree with him is not.Last week, after a backlash, the Florida High School Athletic Association backed away from forcing female students to chronicle their menstrual histories on medical forms, a requirement seen by many as a thinly-veiled attempt to keep transgender athletes out of girls’ sports.Exactly one week later, a Republican House committee proposed allowing DeSantis to turf out those who made the decision and replace them with his own appointments.It’s a familiar playbook: the Disney legislation allows the governor to supplant sitting officials on its governing tax authority with his own picks; his “hostile takeover” of the liberal New College of Florida last month was accomplished by swamping its board of trustees with hand-picked allies and conservative Christians.In what critics say was a particularly petty act earlier this month, DeSantis moved to strip the liquor license from the non-profit Orlando Philharmonic Plaza Foundation because it hosted a drag show, which some children attended with parents.The threats keep coming. The notoriously thin-skinned DeSantis wants to cut state ties with the College Board, which criticised him for a “PR stunt and posturing” when he demanded it revise an advanced placement college course on African American studies he said “lacked educational value”.“No politician should silence the stories of Black and brown people who helped create our country. Our democracy and constitutional values must transcend such hateful and callous political agendas,” said Tiffani Lemon, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida.Others accuse DeSantis of fascism, among them the progressive Democratic congressman Maxwell Frost, whose vocal criticism of the governor long predated his election in November.“If you disagree with Ron DeSantis he’ll abuse his power to close down your business, take over your school, remove your classes and unconstitutionally fire you,” Frost said in a tweet. “I encourage folks to look up the definition of fascism then read these headlines.”Other Florida Democrats see the DeSantis-ordered special legislative session as his “get out jail free card”, sweeping away legal obstacles and other hurdles that threatened to stall his policy objectives.His original plan to abolish the Disney authority would have saddled residents with $1bn in bond debt, so instead he asked the legislature to rename and restructure it.Judges threw out charges against several ex-felons the governor said voted illegally because his state office lacked prosecutorial authority, so a new law was drafted to give it.DeSantis’s administration was sued for flying migrants from Texas to Massachusetts in a “vile political stunt” stunt last year, because the existing law restricted migrant removals to those physically in Florida. So he changed the law.“It’s just a clear example of DeSantis changing the law because he broke the law,” said Anna Eskamani, a Democratic state congresswoman who voted against the new measure to allow the governor to fly migrants anywhere.“Republicans like Ron DeSantis don’t care about the rules. If they don’t like the rules, they change them. And if they can’t change them they try to destroy them, as we saw with the [January 6] insurrection.”Gregory Koger, chair of political science at the University of Miami, said the issues the legislature addressed suggested “speed over thought” when the DeSantis administration was planning its strategies.“It’s not unusual at all to see legislators and executives fixing problems in the laws that they have passed,” he said.DeSantis wins new power over Disney World in ‘don’t say gay’ culture warRead more“You could have had a slow, bipartisan, well-thought-out approach to changing the relationship between Florida and Disney, but that isn’t what we observed. We saw a law being drafted and passed as an act of retribution, and now they have to come back and say, ‘Well, when we passed our act of retribution, here’s what we actually meant.’“Same with changing the guidelines for Florida to fly migrants. That seems like an effort to back out of a legal challenge to their behavior by retroactively saying the legislature is actually OK tricking people into getting on a plane in Texas and flying them from there, rather than finding actual undocumented people in Florida.”In an email to the Guardian, DeSantis’s press secretary, Bryan Griffin, defended the governor, saying he was bringing “a new era of accountability and transparency” to Disney, Florida’s biggest employer.“Businesses in Florida should operate on a level playing field,” Griffin said. “In 1967, the Florida legislature created the Reedy Creek Improvement District, which gifted extraordinary special privileges to a single corporation.“Until Governor DeSantis acted, the Walt Disney Company maintained sole control over the district. This power amounted to an unaccountable corporate kingdom.”TopicsRon DeSantisRepublicansFloridaUS politicsUS elections 2024US domestic policyfeaturesReuse this content More
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Biden says he’s Republicans’ ‘nightmare’ over social spending cuts – as it happened
“I know that a lot of Republicans, their dream is to cut Social Security and Medicare,” Biden says.“If that’s your dream, I’m your nightmare,” he adds, to laughter and applause.Biden talks about Rick Scott, the Republican senator from Florida, who released a plan last year to ‘sunset’ all federal programs. It would mean programs including social security and medicare are federal programs – would expire every five years, and need to be reauthorized to continue.“I guarantee you it will not happen. I will veto it I’ll defend social security and medicare,” Biden says.Biden then turns his focus to Sen Ron Johnson from Wisconsin, a Republican who has also threatened measures which would likely cut the programs.“From the time you’re a teenager you had money taken out for these programs,” Biden says.Social Security is more than a government program, it’s “a promise we made”, he adds.“And now these guys want to cut it. I don’t get it, I really don’t. I don’t know who they think they are.”That’s all for today… here are the key events that happened across the country.Joe Biden described himself as Republicans’ “nightmare” over their proposed cuts to social programs. “I know that a lot of Republicans, their dream is to cut Social Security and Medicare,” Biden said. “If that’s your dream, I’m your nightmare.” Speaking at the University of Tampa, Biden attacked Rick Scott, the Republican senator from Florida who has said programs including social security and medicare should expire every five years, and need to be reauthorized to continue. “I guarantee you it will not happen. I will veto it I’ll defend social security and medicare,” Biden said.Biden also took a dig at Ron De Santis, the Republican governor of Florida who may yet be his opponent in the 2024 presidential election. De Santis has effectively denied Floridians healthcare, Biden noted, by failing to sign on to the Affordable health care act’s Medicaid expansion provision. “Over 1.1m people in Florida would be eligible for Medicaid if Governor De Santis would just agree to expand it,” Biden said. “This isn’t calculus.”China’s balloon that crossed the United States was equipped to collect intelligence signals, the Biden administration said. The White House said the balloon, which was gunned down by the US last weekend, was part of a huge, military-linked aerial spy program that targeted more than 40 countries. A fleet of balloons is used specifically for spying, outfitted with high-tech equipment designed to collect sensitive information from targets across the globe, the US said.Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor, moved closer to taking over Walt Disney World’s self-governing district on Thursday, after House Republicans approved legislation meant to punish the company over its opposition to Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law.The legislation would leave Disney’s Reedy Creek Improvement District, in which Disney has the power to decide what it builds including, in theory, its own nuclear plant, intact, but would change its name and require DeSantis to appoint a five-member governing board, Associated Press reported:Board members are currently named through entities controlled by Disney and are tasked with overseeing the government services the district provides in the company’s properties in Florida.For DeSantis, the legislation is a victory on the nation’s cultural battlegrounds, where he has harnessed political tensions on gender, race and education to bolster his position as a conservative firebrand while on a path toward an expected 2024 White House run.Last week, the Republican leaders of the Florida House and Senate, in coordination with the governor, ordered lawmakers to return for a special session to complete the state takeover of the Reedy Creek district, taking up a bill that would preserve its operating functions and financial responsibilities.The legislation is all but certain to pass in the statehouse, where a Republican supermajority is eager to carry out the governor’s agenda. Democrats have widely criticized the legislation as a retaliatory power grab by the governor but are powerless to do much else other than delay its passage.“This bill sends a message from the governor to businesses in our state that if they dissent, they will be punished,” said Rep. Rita Harris, a Democrat. “And this is chilling. It’s not just chilling to me, it’s chilling to freedom of speech.”Our columnist Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, takes a look at troubling figures for Democrats – Joe Biden’s stubbornly low approval numbers:In his first State of the Union address since Democrats lost control of the House, Joe Biden celebrated recent economic gains – especially declining inflation and soaring job growth – while taking a bow for legislative victories that will curb prescription drug prices, expand health benefits for veterans, slow climate change and rebuild the nation’s infrastructure.Biden’s speech reminded me of how good a president he has been, especially given what he inherited from the former guy, who made a fetish out of dividing and angering Americans while accomplishing nothing except giving a giant tax cut to big corporations and the rich.Biden has steadied the nation. He has brought competent people into government. He has enacted important legislation. He has fortified America’s alliances against despots like Putin. He has strengthened American democracy.All of which raises a troubling paradox. Only 42% of Americans approve of Biden’s presidency – barely above the 41% at his last State of the Union address, and a lower percent at this point than any president in 75 years of polling except for Trump and Reagan (who at this point was hobbled by a deep recession).And despite Biden’s significant achievements, fully 62% think he has accomplished “not very much” or “little or nothing”.Read on…Joe Biden has steadied the nation – why don’t his polling numbers reflect this? | Robert ReichRead moreMeta has restored Donald Trump’s access to Facebook and Instagram, a spokesperson confirmed on Thursday, following a two-year suspension after the deadly Capitol Hill riot on January 6 2021.Meta said in January it would lift Trump’s suspension “in the coming weeks”, but “with new guardrails in place to deter repeat offenses”. Those guardrails include potential suspensions ranging from one month to two years should Trump violate its content policies again.Trump’s Facebook page was visible on Thursday. His most recent posts were all from January 6 2021, including one which read:“Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!”Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol that day chanted for Pence to be hanged.Trump now regains access to key platforms for voter outreach and political fundraising ahead of another run for the White House in 2024. He had 23 million followers on Instagram and 34 million on Facebook when the pages were shut down.Joe Biden told Republicans he is “their nightmare” during a speech in Florida on Thursday, as he offered a stark contrast between his administration and the GOP.Speaking at the University of Tampa, Biden told the crowd that the GOP is seeking to hobble social programs that he has pledged to protect.“I know that a lot of Republicans, their dream is to cut Social Security and Medicare,” Biden said.“Well let me say this: if that’s your dream, I’m your nightmare.”Biden was in Tampa touting his administration’s accomplishments in its first two years.The president sought to remind those watching that he had signed into law legislation on infrastructure, prescription drug costs, and social reform.He attacked Rick Scott, the Republican senator from Florida who released a plan which would mean programs including social security and medicare would expire every five years, and need to be reauthorized to continue.“I guarantee you it will not happen. I will veto it I’ll defend social security and medicare,” Biden said.Biden also took a dig at Ron De Santis, the Republican governor of Florida who may yet be his opponent in the 2024 presidential election.De Santis has effectively denied Floridians healthcare, Biden noted, by failing to sign on to the Affordable health care act’s Medicaid expansion provision.“Over 1.1m people in Florida would be eligible for Medicaid if Governor De Santis would just agree to expand it,” Biden said.“This isn’t calculus.”Wrapping up his speech, Biden touts his achievements in office.“12m jobs created,” he says.“800,000 manufacturing jobs.”Biden says the US has lowest unemployment rate in 50 years.Less bombastically, he adds: “Inflation is coming down.”A record 10m Americans have applied to start a small business, Biden continues.“Let’s build on the promise we made. Keep prescription drug costs down, defend Social Security and Medicare,” Biden says.“I’ve never been more optimistic about America’s future.“Just remember who we are for god’s sake. We’re the United States of America.”On that triumphant note some marching band music starts blasting, and Biden heads off into the crowd to shake some hands.“I know that a lot of Republicans, their dream is to cut Social Security and Medicare,” Biden says.“If that’s your dream, I’m your nightmare,” he adds, to laughter and applause.Biden talks about Rick Scott, the Republican senator from Florida, who released a plan last year to ‘sunset’ all federal programs. It would mean programs including social security and medicare are federal programs – would expire every five years, and need to be reauthorized to continue.“I guarantee you it will not happen. I will veto it I’ll defend social security and medicare,” Biden says.Biden then turns his focus to Sen Ron Johnson from Wisconsin, a Republican who has also threatened measures which would likely cut the programs.“From the time you’re a teenager you had money taken out for these programs,” Biden says.Social Security is more than a government program, it’s “a promise we made”, he adds.“And now these guys want to cut it. I don’t get it, I really don’t. I don’t know who they think they are.”Referencing legislation passed on infrastructure, protecting gay marriage, and social programs, Biden says:“We did that in a bipartisan way: Democrats and Republicans did it. I don’t know why they won’t acknowledge that any part of what’s making the country great again.”Biden moves on to the Inflation Reduction act, which introduced a 15% tax on some of the wealthiest companies in the US.“I thought it was time people began to pay their fair share a little bit,” Biden says.Joe Biden is championing his administration’s achievements and insisting that he will further protect Social Security and Medicare at a speech in Tampa, Florida.Biden touts bipartisan accomplishments of his first two years, including legislation on infrastructure, climate and healthcare, before repeating a theme from his State of the Union speech on Tuesday, saying the American people are “strong”. He adds: “It’s never been a good bet to count us out.”Biden is aiming to pass legislation to give “families and seniors just a little more breathing room”, he says. Florida has the highest percentage of seniors of any state in the nation, Biden notes, to scattered applause.The president is speaking in front of a banner that says: “Protect and strengthen Medicare” and “Lowering costs for American families”, as he seeks to draw contrast his vision for Social Security and Medicare with the plans of some Republicans to gut both plans.The former Trump lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen said today he is booked in for no less than his 16th meeting with Manhattan prosecutors looking into the hush money payment he made to Stormy Daniels, aka Stephanie Clifford, the adult film actor and director who claims an affair that Donald Trump denies.Cohen told Meidas Touch he will meet with prosecutors working for the Manhattan DA, Alvin Bragg, next week, having been in to see them for a 15th time this week.Cohen paid Daniels $130,000 in 2016, as Trump campaigned for president. The payment (which Trump reimbursed) and its violation of campaign finance law played a part in Cohen being sent to jail. Trump has not been charged.The payment has come back to the fore in Bragg’s investigation of Trump, with a grand jury reportedly hearing evidence. It has also been part of a rumbling confrontation between Bragg and Mark Pomerantz, a prosecutor who resigned from the Manhattan Trump investigation last year, in protest at what he saw as Bragg’s reluctance to indict Trump, and who has now published a book.In People vs Donald Trump, Pomerantz says the Daniels payment became a “zombie case”, forever coming back from the dead as a way to indict the former president. He also says that he thinks Trump should be indicted in relation to more serious tax and fraud allegations.Cohen turned on Trump and has co-operated extensively with authorities investigating the former president.Yesterday, Cohen told MSNBC he found Bragg’s team to be “really well-versed in all aspects of this case. I’m actually impressed with how quickly they all came up to speed … they’re very knowledgeable about all the facts, all the testimony so far that’s been provided”.Further reading:Trump porn star payment a ‘zombie case’ that wouldn’t die, ex-prosecutor says in bookRead moreAngie Craig, a Democratic congresswoman from Minnesota, was assaulted in her DC apartment building this morning, her chief of staff said.“Rep Craig defended herself from the attacker and suffered bruising, but is otherwise physically okay,” Nick Coe said in a statement.Coe said Craig called 911 and the attacker fled the scene. He said there was “no evidence” that the incident was politically motivated.Craig was elected to the House of Representatives in 2018. She became the first openly gay person elected to Congress from Minnesota.Congresswoman Craig assaulted today in her DC apartment, per statement from her office pic.twitter.com/A1LXvR21pL— Manu Raju (@mkraju) February 9, 2023 More
