Dispatches

CENTRIST DEMS WORK WITH WALL STREET TO BLOCK PELOSI HOUSE SPEAKER BID.

Nancy Pelosi faced opposition from more than 20 centrist Democrats in her bid to become speaker of the House when the Democrats regain control of that chamber in January. Sixteen Democratic colleagues signed a letter opposing Pelosi (D-Calif.) and nine Democratic members of the “House Problem Solvers Caucus,” a bipartisan group, reportedly refused to back her unless she agreed to adopt proposed rule changes that CNN reported would “empower rank-and-file members to push bills in the House, a power now reserved for the leadership.”

The nine Democrats who signed the letter, CNN reported, are: Reps. Thomas Suozzi of New York; Tom O’Halleran of Arizona; Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey; Daniel Lipinski of Illinois; Kurt Schrader of Oregon; Stephanie Murphy of Florida; Jim Costa of California; Darren Soto of Florida; and Vicente Gonzalez of Texas. Schrader is one of the 16 signers of the earlier letter opposing Pelosi, but Rep. Brian Higgins of New York signed the first letter but later said he would back Pelosi after she agreed to prioritize Higgins’ top two issues: a big infrastructure bill and a measure to open Medicare to people over age 50.

The package of rules changes the “Problem Solvers” is demanding would make it easier to remove a Speaker of the House mid-term, would put more members of the minority party on House committees, and would give the minority more power to demand votes on amendments to legislation.

As we go to press, Democrats had flipped 39 seats from Republican to Democratic, with a race in California between Rep. David Valado (R) and businessman T.J. Cox (D) yet to be decided, With that race up in the air Democrats will have at least 234 seats and Republicans 200 or 201. Pelosi was widely expected to win a majority of her caucus’ support when the party votes in leadership elections in late November. The actual vote for speaker will happen after the new House is sworn in in January. Pelosi needs a majority of all House members voting — which would be 218 if all House members vote, but she could win with fewer if Democrats who pledged not to vote for Pelosi voted “present,” which does not count to the overall vote total.

Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) ripped the Problem Solvers’ proposed “GOP-friendly rules that will hamstring healthcare efforts from the get-go.”

The Intercept’s Ryan Grim pointed out the House Problem Solvers Caucus is backed by No Labels, an “aggressively centrist” political action group that has been called “the most useless force in American politics.”

Josh Israel of ThinkProgress (11/26) noted the No Labels super PAC, a group funded heavily by rich Chicago mega donors, including White Sox and Bulls chairman Jerry Reinsdorf, spent more than $2.5 million to buck up vulnerable House Republicans in the mid-terms. The group spent only half as much ($1.25 million) in support of centrist House Dems.

All nine of the Democrats who are reportedly part of the Problem Solvers’ effort have supported President Trump’s agenda more frequently than Pelosi, per FiveThirtyEight’s congressional Trump tracker.

R.J. Eskow also noted in a column for the Independent Media Institute that five leaders of the centrist opponents of Pelosi have strong ties with Wall Street. Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA.), who led the circulation of the letter opposing Pelosi, has received a total of $1,723,870 from the investor class that comprises the so-called “FIRE” sector — financial, insurance and real estate. He has also received more than $160,000 from Pharma. (These figures come from Open Secrets.) Ed Perlmutter (D-CO), Kurt Schrader (D-OR) and Bill Foster (D-IL) have received $4,082,803, $987,050, and $2,747,969 respectively from the FIRE sector. Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH), who mounted a longshot challenge to Pelosi in 2016, is the band’s other leader, and recently insisted that there are “plenty of really competent females that we can replace [Pelosi] with.”

But Eskow noted that if the centrists manage to block Pelosi, with no serious progressive candidate for speaker, the post would probably go to the second-highest member of the Democratic hierarchy, Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD), a centrist who “would be a catastrophe for the left.”

Eskow concluded, “This country needs a mass movement that will demand fundamental political change. But nobody needs the Five Guys’ corporate-backed chaos, or the reactionary regime it seeks to impose on the House of Representatives.

“If some leftists don’t want Pelosi to win, that’s understandable. But they should hope with all their hearts that her opponents lose.”

AFTER TRUMP THREAT, MEXICO ANNOUNCES ASYLUM AGREEMENT MAY BE OFF. A day after news broke that the US and Mexico had reached a new agreement on asylum-seekers, Mexican officials announced the deal was off.

The agreement, initially reported (11/24) by the Washington Post, would have seen asylum-seekers remain in Mexico — rather than the US — while their applications were processed.

As ThinkProgress’s Melanie Schmitz wrote, “the deal breaks with long-standing asylum rules and will stymie the progress of the large caravan of migrants from Central America currently making its way to the US southern border, fleeing poverty and gang violence. Those seeking refuge will now be forced to wait in Mexican border states, where cartel violence is rampant.”

On Twitter (11/24), Donald Trump praised the deal, writing that asylum-seekers will “stay in Mexico.” But he also threatened to close the border entirely if it becomes “necessary.”

But the AP reported (11/25) that Mexican officials said the deal was off — and may never have existed in the first place. And Trump threatened to close the border permanently.

In a statement, Mexican Interior Minister Olga Sanchez said there was “no agreement of any sort between the incoming Mexican government and the US government.” The announcement conflicts with her previous statement, which indicated an agreement. 

The deal’s apparent collapse is the latest blow to those pursuing asylum in the US. Thousands of asylum-seekers, mainly from Central America, have clustered in northern Mexico — and have recently become targets of anti-immigrant sentiment not only in the US, but in Mexico as well. Locals have harassed the migrants, and local officials have refused to use taxpayer funds in order to ease the migrants’ struggles.

Now, they’ll have to wait even longer to figure out their next steps — even as Trump threatens to close the border entirely. But US border guards (11/25) fired tear gas at refugees across the border in Tijuana, Mexico after hundreds tried to evade a Mexican police blockade and run toward the San Ysidro border crossing near San Diego.

WHITE HOUSE ADMITS TRUMP CLIMATE POLICIES WILL COST US $500B A YEAR. A 1,656-page report released by the White House quantifies the staggering cost of President Trump’s climate science denial, Joe Romm noted at ThinkProgress (11/224).

The congressionally-mandated National Climate Assessment (NCA) by hundreds of the country’s top scientists warns that a do-nothing climate policy will end up costing Americans more than a half-trillion dollars per year in increased sickness and death, coastal property damages, loss of worker productivity, and other damages.

Building on a 600-page analysis of climate science from 2017, the NCA details just how dangerous Trump administration’s policy of climate inaction is to Americans.

The White House oversaw the report’s review and clearance process — and tried to bury the findings by releasing it at 2 p.m. on the Friday after Thanksgiving.

But the reality of climate change cannot be buried. Indeed the report concludes that “the evidence of human-caused climate change is overwhelming and continues to strengthen, that the impacts of climate change are intensifying across the country, and that climate-related threats to Americans’ physical, social, and economic well-being are rising.”

The NCA projects a devastated America on our current path of unrestricted carbon pollution—widespread Dust-Bowlification and 7°F to 8°F warming over the entire inland portion of the country, even as coastal America is slammed by sea levels rising a foot per decade, resulting in ever-worsening storm surges.

The report concludes that if governments meet their Paris targets, and then go beyond them, overall damage can be limited (the “RCP4.5” scenario, in which temperatures rise some 4°F by century’s end). But the NCA makes clear that with policies that undercut the Paris targets — such as Trump’s pledge to withdraw from Paris and boost domestic carbon pollution from fossil fuels — catastrophic impacts would be inevitable (the “RCP8.5” scenario, where temperatures rise by 7°F or more).

One final point: The report warns ominously, “It is very likely that some physical and ecological impacts will be irreversible for thousands of years, while others will be permanent.”

“The choices we make today won’t just determine the degree of harm we do to our children and grandchildren, but to the next 50 generations and beyond. The immorality of Trump’s climate policies simply cannot be quantified,” Romm concluded.

Meanwhile, right-wing lawmakers and commentators spent Sunday (11/25) downplaying the dire warnings in a much-anticipated climate assessment — released by the Trump administration — going as far to accuse the scientists who worked on the report of perpetuating climate “alarmism” in order to keep their jobs, Mark Hand noted at ThinkProgress (11/26).

The scientists who helped draft the fourth National Climate Assessment, according to former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) on CNN, were attracted to the money that comes with producing a report that highlights the terrible dangers of climate change.

Danielle Pletka, senior vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, on NBC’s Meet the Press noted she is not a scientist, adding: “We need to also recognize that we just had two of the coldest years, biggest drop in global temperatures that we have had since the 1980s, the biggest in the last hundred years.”

Not true, Hand noted. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Earth’s globally averaged temperature for 2017 made it the third warmest year in NOAA’s 138-year climate record, behind 2016, the warmest, and 2015, the second warmest.

Scientists also regularly remind the public that global warming isn’t a straight line. There will be record warm moments and not-so-warm moments, but overall the trend is upward.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), made it onto CBS News’ Face the Nation, emphasizing that the “debate is over about the reality of climate change and the incredible and costly harm it’s going to do this country.”

The economic harm caused by climate change could be alleviated by a move to energy efficiency and sustainable energy, the Vermont senator said. A transition toward a green economy, he asserted, will create millions of decent-paying jobs and lessen the cost of the damage that climate change will cause to the United States and around the world.

GM PLANT CLOSINGS CONTRADICT TRUMP RHETORIC. During a Thanksgiving Day teleconference from Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump told military service members the American auto industry was coming back. “I have many, many companies moving back into the United States,” Trump claimed. “They’re opening up car plants. They’re opening up factories all over the country.”

As is often the case with Trump’s rhetoric, there was no proof to bolster his boasts, Steve Benen noted at MaddowBlog.com (11/26). Four days later, there was fresh evidence pointing in the opposite direction, as GM announced plans to cut 14,000 jobs at five plants planned for closure, though the fate of the plants might become a bargaining point when a new contract is negotiated with the United Auto Workers union next year.

GM’s move came a month after Ford announced plans to lay off thousands of its workers. Although a variety of factors contribute to the decisions, including a decline in sedan sales as a drop in gasoline prices made trucks and SUVs more attractive, both companies noted that Trump’s auto tariffs adversely affected them. Ford CEO Jim Hackett has said the tariffs cost Ford $1 billion in profit and could do “more damage” if the disputes aren’t resolved quickly.

Kevin Drum of MotherJones.com noted (11/26) domestic auto sales were doing OK up through mid-2014. Then, over the next 18 months, as gasoline prices plunged from $3.70 to $2.20, Americans did what they always do: abandoned gas-friendly autos and went on an SUV binge. Today, trucks and SUVs outsell cars by more than 2 to 1, which is why auto plants are being closed.

GM plans to shut down three car factories: one in Lordstown, Ohio, that makes the Chevrolet Cruze compact; the Detroit-Hamtramck plant, where the Chevrolet Volt, Buick LaCrosse and Cadillac CT6 are produced; and its plant in Oshawa, Ontario, which makes the Chevrolet Impala. In addition, transmission plants in the Baltimore area and in Warren, Mich., are to halt operations.

In July 2017, Trump told Ohioans, in reference to manufacturing jobs, “They’re all coming back. They’re all coming back. Don’t move, don’t sell your house.” The president’s remarks were delivered about 20 minutes from the GM plant in Lordstown, where 1,600 jobs are now being slashed.

Around the same time, Trump delivered remarks in Michigan, where he said, to applause, “GM announced they are adding or keeping 900 jobs right here in Michigan and that’s gonna be over the next 12 months, and that’s just the beginning, folks. In fact, I told them, that’s peanuts! That’s peanuts. We’re gonna have a lot more.”

A year earlier, the then-Republican candidate declared at a rally in Warren, Mich., “If I’m elected, you won’t lose one plant, you’ll have plants coming into this country, you’re going to have jobs again, you won’t lose one plant. I promise you. I promise you.”

Warren isn’t far from GM’s Detroit-Hamtramck facility that’s poised to lose 1,500 jobs.

As recently as April 2018, the president assured Michigan residents that auto companies are expanding at a “record pace.”

The move comes less than a year after the Republican Party pushed through its tax plan, which gave GM a $514 million tax break, Julia Conley noted at CommonDreams.org. According to the advocacy group Not One Penny, $100 million of those savings went to enriching GM’s shareholders, contrary to the GOP’s claims that corporate benefits of the tax cuts would trickle down to workers in the form of raises and bonuses.

Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) called GM’s decision “corporate greed at its worst.”

“The workers at Lordstown are the best at what they do, and it’s clear once again that GM doesn’t respect them,” Brown wrote on Twitter, referring to the plant that would be closing in his home state. “Ohio taxpayers rescued GM, and it’s shameful that the company is now abandoning the Mahoning Valley and laying off workers right before the holidays.”

The UAW union slammed GM for moving production of some of its top-selling vehicles to China and Mexico while putting Americans out of work.

“We must step away from the anti-worker thinking of seeking simply the lowest labor cost on the planet,” UAW President Gary Jones said. “The practice of circumventing American labor in favor of moving production to nations that tolerate wages less than half of what our American brothers and sisters make, must stop. More importantly, we must understand that these companies, including GM, are no longer in trouble. They are recording annual profits in the tens of billions.”

The company earned $6 billion in the first three quarters of 2018, according to Not One Penny, while CEO Mary Barra received $22 million in compensation last year—nearly 300 times the average salary of GM’s employees.

HEALTH CARE DRIVES NEW VOTERS. This was the health-care midterm, Joan McCarter noted at DailyKos, as a plurality of 41% said it was their most important issue in exit polls. Even in states that remained in Republican hands, voters approved expansion of Medicaid to cover the working poor in Idaho, Nebraska and Utah. In Idaho, Medicaid expansion got 60% of the vote, and 9,470 more votes were cast in that race than in the governor’s race, which the Republican won. But Medicaid expansion also may have created new voters, McCarter noted, as studies of the past four years of the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion suggests that people who get Medicaid turn into voters.

An author of one of the studies, Jake Haselswerdt, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Missouri, says, “We can confidently say: When you expand Medicaid eligibility, participation goes up.” The theories include the fact that Medicaid has been shown to increase financial stability as well as mental health treatment, and has meant particular improvement for people suffering from depression. Maybe they have more capacity, both in time and in their personal well-being, to participate. It’s also possible that enrolling hooked them into the mechanisms of getting registered to vote and then voting.

Maybe it’s the greater investment they have in their government by having it work for them. “These are programs that have a major effect on people’s lives,” said Andrea Campbell, a professor of political science at M.I.T. who is an expert on the politics of Social Security. Seeing government work and having it work for you can raise the stakes and spur greater involvement.

Whatever the reason, a handful of studies have used the example of Medicaid expansion, comparing adjacent counties in states that accepted the expansion with counties in states that did not. Expansion counties have a 3-4 percentage point increase in registrations AND voting. What isn’t clear at this point is how durable that increase is, since we only have four years’ worth of data to work with.

But with health care front and center in the political debate this cycle, and almost certainly in the next as well, chances are pretty good the trend is going to stick around a little longer.

DIRTY FARM WATER MAKES US SICK, BUT TRUMP’S FDA DELAYS TESTING RULE. For more than a decade, it’s been clear that there’s a gaping hole in American food safety: Growers aren’t required to test their irrigation water for pathogens such as E. coli. As a result, contaminated water can end up on fruits and vegetables.

After several high-profile disease outbreaks linked to food, Congress in 2011 ordered a fix, and produce growers this year would have begun testing their water under rules crafted by the Obama administration’s Food and Drug Administration.

But Donald Trump’s FDA – responding to pressure from the farm industry and Trump’s order to eliminate regulations – shelved the water-testing rules for at least four years, Elizabeth Shogren and Susie Nelson reported at RevealNews.org.

Despite dangerous outbreaks, such as E coli infections that caused the FDA (11/20) to declare all romaine lettuce in the US unsafe to eat, the FDA has shown no sign of reconsidering its plan to postpone the rules. (Six days later, after 43 people were sickened in 12 states, plus 22 people in Canada, the FDA traced the outbreak to the Central Coast of California.) The agency also is considering major changes, such as allowing some produce growers to test less frequently or find alternatives to water testing to ensure the safety of their crops.

In March, E. coli that had contaminated romaine lettuce grown in Yuma, Ariz., and distributed nationwide sickened at least 219 people in 36 states. Five died and 27 suffered kidney failure. The same strain of E. coli that sickened them was detected in a Yuma canal used to irrigate some crops.

The FDA’s lack of urgency dumbfounds food safety scientists.

“Mystifying, isn’t it?” said Trevor Suslow, a food safety expert at the University of California, Davis. “If the risk factor associated with agricultural water use is that closely tied to contamination and outbreaks, there needs to be something now. … I can’t think of a reason to justify waiting four to six to eight years to get started.”

ARKANSAS MEDICAID WORK REQUIREMENT FIASCO ACTUALLY CAUSES MAN TO LOSE JOB. One of the 12,000 people in Arkansas who have been summarily kicked off of Medicaid and who are suing the state over it is Adrian McGonigal. Ironically, this formerly full-time worker ultimately lost his job over the state’s work requirement. Catherine Rampell featured McGonigal in a Washington Post column (11/19) about how badly the new requirement is harming the people it purports to help.

McGonigal worked full time at a chicken plant, despite having the chronic lung disease COPD. The disease was managed by prescription medication that was funded by Medicaid, which he qualified for under the state’s expansion plan. He says he didn’t get clear information on how to report his work. “Like many I spoke with, McGonigal says he got confusing and sometimes conflicting information from the state’s Department of Human Services (DHS), which told him to report online,” Rampell writes. “He doesn’t have a cellphone or computer, so he borrowed his sister-in-law’s smartphone.”

“I thought that everything was good,” he told me in an interview for the Post and “PBS NewsHour.” “I thought it was just a one-time deal that you reported it, and then that was it.”

The state requires enrollees to report every month, but didn’t communicate that to McGonigal. He didn’t find out that he had been dropped until he tried to fill his COPD prescription and was told he no longer had coverage. Without the medication, he ended up in the emergency room and missed work. “I tried to stick it out, and still go to work, but I just couldn’t do it,” he said. He was laid off. Losing Medicaid coverage made him lose his job.

Here’s one of the real kickers to what Arkansas is doing, Joan McCarter noted at DailyKos: Enrollees are required to report their hours online, a cost-saving measure by the state to avoid hiring more staff to take the reports by phone, in person, or through the mail. But the website shuts down every night between 9 p.m. and 7 a.m. for ‘scheduled maintenance.’”

Rampell asked Cindy Gillespie, director of the state’s DHS, how confident she was that all — or even most — of the thousands of people kicked off Medicaid were not working and were insufficiently motivated to work. “She said she’s confident anyone improperly removed from the rolls could easily get their situation reversed.

“McGonigal’s experience suggests otherwise.”

In October, Rampell noted, McGonigal’s legal-aid lawyers persuaded DHS to grant him a “good cause” exemption and a chance to re-enroll in Medicaid. But because of additional red tape, he still hasn’t gotten any of his medication, after six weeks. 

Meanwhile, the chicken plant says he’s welcome back. But only, McGonigal says, when — and if — he’s healthy enough to work.

GROWING LATINO VOTE COULD MAKE TEXAS ‘FULLY COMPETITIVE’ IN 2020. Latino voter turnout surged nearly 175% nationwide in the 2018 midterm election compared to 2014, top Democrats said, voting “for Democrats by a margin of nearly three to one. Those Latino voters fueled historic victories in battleground districts and the victories of Latino candidates themselves, trusted polling firm Latino Decisions continued. “An NBC News exit poll found one in four Latino voters said they cast a midterm ballot for the first time this year.”

In Texas, Gabe Ortiz noted at DailyKos (11/14), Veronica Escobar and Sylvia Garcia made history as the first Latinas to, finally, represent the state in the US Congress. While Latino Decisions noted that final numbers are still pending, the group said that “overall turnout surged in Texas from 2014 to 2018 in heavily Latino counties, especially those along the border,” including a nearly 170% increase in Beto O’Rourke’s home area of El Paso County.

While O’Rourke ultimately lost to Ted Cruz … voters cut his win from a 12 point victory in 2012 to less than three points in 2018. “Julian Castro is right,” tweeted Latino Victory Fund. “We’re going to flip Texas.” It’s not far-fetched, Indiana University’s Bernard Fraga told the Dallas Morning News. “I don’t think it’s guaranteed, but a continued, all-hands-on-deck effort to reach young, Latino voters could make Texas fully competitive.”

As Latino Victory Fund head Cristobal Alex also noted shortly before the election, Democrats have to keep making critical investments. “A recent Latino Decisions poll found more than 84% of Latinos say they are certain to or probably will vote in the 2018 midterm elections,” he wrote. “Unfortunately, the same poll also found that fewer than half of Latinos surveyed reported being contacted by a candidate.” But when Latino voters are engaged by candidates and the party, the results can be earth-shattering, as groups and activists working hard on the ground to reach Latino voters, in particular young voters, showed this time around.

From The Progressive Populist, December 15, 2018

Populist.com