Chris Hedges's Blog, page 334

Texts Show Police and Far-Right Extremist Collusion: Oregon Official

PORTLAND, Ore.—A member of Portland’s city council said Thursday a newspaper’s report that the commander for the police rapid response team exchanged friendly text messages with a leader of far-right protests that have rocked the city confirms collusion exists between some police and right-wing extremists.

“I am not shocked, and I am not surprised at today’s reporting of Lt. Jeff Niiya’s collaboration with Patriot Prayer leader Joey Gibson over text to provide aid and support for their hate marches,” Councilwoman Jo Ann Hardesty said in a statement.

Willamette Week obtained text messages through a public records request between Niiya and Gibson. The texts purportedly show Niiya had a friendly rapport with Gibson, frequently discussing Gibson’s plans to demonstrate.

In one text reported by the newspaper, Niiya tells Gibson that he doesn’t see a need to arrest his assistant, Tusitala Toese, who often brawls with antifascist protesters, even if he has a warrant, unless Toese commits a new crime.

“Just make sure he doesn’t do anything which may draw our attention,” Niiya texted Gibson on Dec. 9, 2017, Willamette Week reported. “If he still has the warrant in the system (I don’t run you guys so I don’t personally know) the officers could arrest him. I don’t see a need to arrest on the warrant unless there is a reason.”

A police spokeswoman said it is not unusual for officers to suggest people turn themselves in to avoid being arrested on a warrant, Willamette Week reported.

“In crowd management situations, it may not be safe or prudent to arrest a person right at that time, so the arrest may be delayed or followed up on later It is not uncommon for officers to provide guidance for someone to turn themselves in on a warrant if the subject is not present,” Lt. Tina Jones said.

Portland police were accused at a protest last August of being heavy-handed against people, injuring some, who were protesting a rally of extreme-right demonstrators organized by Gibson.

Hardesty said the “broken policing system in Portland” must be addressed.

“This story, like many that have come before it, simply confirms what many in the community have already known—there are members of the Portland police force who work in collusion with right-wing extremists,” she said.

The Green New Deal Is Indeed a Big Deal

The most visionary resolution to emerge from Congress in recent years, encompassing both the climate crisis and economic inequality, has captured the imagination of many Americans. In less than a year we went from having never heard the name Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to watching the impressive, young rookie  congresswoman achieve more in a month than most of our representatives do in a year as she rolled out the Green New Deal (GND) resolution along with Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.). While the resolution is not yet a full-fledged piece of legislation, it does lay out a blueprint for future bills.

First, it is critical to understand that Ocasio-Cortez did not create the GND—rather, the idea was borne out of the same movement that birthed the Democratic lawmaker’s candidacy. An account of the proposal in Politico details how Justice Democrats, the organization that recruited Ocasio-Cortez and ran her campaign, was founded by young organizers who cut their teeth on Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign. Another organization, Sunrise Movement—also created in 2016—crafted the GND proposal together with Justice Democrats. Just days after Ocasio-Cortez won her New York congressional seat last November, she addressed Sunrise Movement activists during their sit-in of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office and effectively endorsed the GND that they were demanding.

Varshini Prakash, the founder of the Sunrise Movement, explained to me in an interview that the GND “would tackle the twin crises of our lifetimes—the climate crisis and also the rampant and nauseating levels of wealth inequality in this country, and would really center racial justice, which was something that the original New Deal failed to do.” She described the resolution as a “blueprint,” which could, if passed, yield new legislation on a variety of climate and economic issues.

Just as there has been strong resistance to the idea of Medicare-for-All from centrist Democrats and Republicans, the GND is garnering similar censure from many sides. Republicans have deemed it “loony,” and at a political rally in El Paso, Texas, President Donald Trump predictably lied about what it would entail, saying, “I really don’t like their policy of taking away your car, of taking away your airplane rights, of ‘let’s hop a train to California,’ of ‘you’re not allowed to own cows anymore!’” He even claimed that “[i]t would shut down a little thing called air travel. How do you take a train to Europe?” (It hasn’t helped that a document about the proposal’s details distributed by Ocasio-Cortez’s staff was initially the wrong one—it was an earlier draft containing some provisions that Republicans have seized on but that were not present in the actual proposal.)

On Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced the Senate would vote on it, saying, “it will give everybody an opportunity to go on record and see how they feel about the Green New Deal.” In truth, McConnell likely is attempting to use the vote to crush Democratic chances in 2020. Markey countered on Twitter, “this isn’t a new Republican trick,” and speculated that, “By rushing a vote on the #GreenNewDeal resolution, Republicans want to avoid a true national debate & kill our efforts to organize.”

The Democratic leadership has also balked at it, with Pelosi initially agreeing only to create a select committee to further study climate change when the idea was raised last year. Angered by her response, Sunrise Movement’s national political director Evan Weber said, “Basically all she wants it to do, from what we can tell, is convene people to talk about the science.” He added, “We’ve been talking about the science for the past few decades.” Then, just ahead of Ocasio-Cortez and Markey’s early February press conference on the GND, Pelosi derisively told Politico, “It will be one of several, or maybe many, suggestions that we receive. The green dream or whatever they call it, nobody knows what it is, but they’re for it, right?” Ocasio-Cortez, in a testament to her effective communication skills, dismissed Pelosi’s words, saying, “I think itisa Green Dream. All great American programs—everything from the Great Society to the New Deal—started with a vision for our future.”

Just as in the case of “Medicare for all,” the public actually loves the idea. A poll conducted in December found that a whopping 92 percent of Democrats and even 64 percent of Republicans supported the idea of a GND, which is perhaps why so many Democratic presidential contenders say they support it.

There are some concerns from the left about the proposal, mostly along the lines of worries the legislation emerging from the resolution might not go far enough to tackle the climate and the jobs crises. The Climate Justice Alliance worried there had not been enough consultation with impacted communities before the resolution was drafted, saying in a press release, “The proposal for the GND was made public at the grasstops level. When we consulted with many of our own communities, they were neither aware of, nor had they been consulted about the launch of the GND.” The Alliance pointed to shortsighted legislation on the “cap and trade” approach to climate change that has not worked. An analysis in Mint Press News pointed out it was deeply problematic for the emergent legislation to be crafted by a committee appointed by the House speaker and minority leader. In an interview with In These Times Magazine, activist Kali Akuno of Cooperation Jackson said, “We need to critically analyze some of the shortfalls of the capitalist logic embedded in this plan. We have to push back and improve upon the Green New Deal.” He wisely added, “Dismissing it and not having a dialogue and talking just about how it’s imperfect is not good enough.”

Members of Congress have been handwringing over economic inequality for years and have yet to move beyond a tax-cutting approach to stimulating the economy. They have been worse on climate change, either refusing to acknowledge it is a reality, even while federal agencies plan for it, or accepting it is real but doing very little about it. As a result, American youth face a financially precarious present and an existentially uncertain future. It is no surprise then that among those pushing hardest for the GND are young people—and especially young people of color—who have poured great grassroots energy into it. Prakash explained that her organization plans to “build an army of young people big enough that we can stop the climate crisis and create millions of new jobs for our generation.”

The beauty of the GND resolution is that it is still an idea, but it is a bold and beautiful one. Relative to the grim political climate, it may be just the antidote to our collective despair.

Maduro Reveals Aide’s Secret Meetings With U.S. Envoy Abrams

CARACAS, Venezuela—President Nicolas Maduro has invited a U.S. special envoy to Venezuela after revealing in an AP interview that his foreign minister recently held secret meetings with the U.S. official in New York.

A senior Venezuelan official said the second of two meetings took place Feb. 11 — four days after the envoy, Elliott Abrams, said the “time for dialogue with Maduro had long passed,” and as the Trump administration publicly backed an effort to unseat the embattled Venezuelan president.

Even while harshly criticizing Donald Trump’s confrontational stance toward his socialist government, Maduro said he holds out hope of meeting the U.S. president soon to resolve a crisis over the U.S.’ recognition of opponent Juan Guaido as Venezuela’s rightful leader.

Maduro said that while in New York, his foreign minister invited Abrams to come to Venezuela “privately, publicly or secretly.”

“If he wants to meet, just tell me when, where and how and I’ll be there,” Maduro said without providing more details. He said both New York meetings lasted several hours.

There was no immediate U.S. comment.

Venezuela is plunging deeper into a political chaos triggered by the U.S. demand that Maduro step down a month into a second term that the U.S. and its allies in Latin America consider illegitimate. The heated crisis is taking place against a backdrop of economic and social turmoil that has led to severe shortages of food and medicine that have force millions to flee the once-prosperous OPEC nation.

At turns conciliatory and combative, Maduro said all Venezuela needs to rebound is for Trump to remove his “infected hand” from the country that sits atop the world’s largest petroleum reserves. He said U.S. sanctions on the oil industry are to blame for mounting hardships even though shortages and hyperinflation that economists say topped 1 million percent long predates Trump’s recent action.

“The infected hand of Donald Trump is hurting Venezuela,” Maduro said.

Amid the mounting pressure at home and abroad, Maduro said he won’t give up power as a way to defuse the standoff.

He called boxes of U.S.-supplied humanitarian aid sitting in a warehouse on the border in Colombia mere “crumbs” after the U.S. administration froze billions of dollars in the nation’s oil revenue and overseas assets.

“They hang us, steal our money and then say ‘here, grab these crumbs’ and make a global show out of it,” said Maduro. “With dignity we say ‘No to the global show.’ Whoever wants to help Venezuela is welcome, but we have enough capacity to pay for everything that we need.”

Congress OKs Border Deal; Trump Will Sign but Declare Emergency

WASHINGTON—Congress lopsidedly approved a border security compromise Thursday that would avert a second painful government shutdown, but a new confrontation was ignited—this time over President Donald Trump’s plan to bypass lawmakers and declare a national emergency to siphon billions from other federal coffers for his wall on the Mexican boundary.

Money in the bill for border barriers, about $1.4 billion, is far below the $5.7 billion Trump insisted he needed and would finance just a quarter of the 200-plus miles he wanted. The White House said he’d sign the legislation but act unilaterally to get more, prompting condemnations from Democrats and threats of lawsuits from states and others who might lose federal money or said Trump was abusing his authority.

The uproar over Trump’s next move cast an uncertain shadow over what had been a rare display of bipartisanship to address the grinding battle between the White House and lawmakers over border security.

The Senate passed the legislation 83-16, with both parties solidly aboard. The House followed with a 300-128 tally, with Trump’s signature planned Friday. Trump will speak Friday morning in the Rose Garden about border security, the White House said.

House Democrats overwhelmingly backed the legislation, with only 19 — most of whom were Hispanic — opposed. Just over half of Republicans voted “no.”

Should Trump change his mind, both chambers’ margins were above the two-thirds majorities needed to override presidential vetoes. Lawmakers, however, sometimes rally behind presidents of the same party in such battles.

Lawmakers exuded relief that the agreement had averted a fresh closure of federal agencies just three weeks after a record-setting 35-day partial shutdown that drew an unambiguous thumbs-down from the public. But in announcing that Trump would sign the accord, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders also said he’d take “other executive action, including a national emergency,”

In an unusual joint statement, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said such a declaration would be “a lawless act, a gross abuse of the power of the presidency and a desperate attempt to distract” from Trump’s failure to force Mexico to pay for the wall, as he’s promised for years.

“Congress will defend our constitutional authorities,” they said. They declined to say whether that meant lawsuits or votes on resolutions to prevent Trump from unilaterally shifting money to wall-building, with aides saying they’d wait to see what he does.

Democratic state attorneys general said they’d consider legal action to block Trump. Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rossello told the president on Twitter “we’ll see you in court” if he makes the declaration.

Despite widespread opposition in Congress to proclaiming an emergency, including by some Republicans, Trump is under pressure to act unilaterally to soothe his conservative base and avoid looking like he’s lost his wall battle.

The abrupt announcement of Trump’s plans came late in an afternoon of rumblings that the volatile president — who’d strongly hinted he’d sign the agreement but wasn’t definitive — was shifting toward rejecting it. That would have infused fresh chaos into a fight both parties are desperate to leave behind, a thought that drove some lawmakers to ask heavenly help.

“Let’s all pray that the president will have wisdom to sign the bill so the government doesn’t shut down,” Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, said Thursday’s Senate session opened.

Moments before Sanders spoke at the White House, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., took to the Senate floor to announce Trump’s decisions to sign the bill and declare an emergency.

Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, told reporters there were two hours of phone calls between McConnell and the White House before there were assurances that Trump would sign.

McConnell argued that the bill delivered victories for Trump over Pelosi. These included overcoming her pledge to not fund the wall at all and rejecting a Democratic proposal for numerical limits on detaining some immigrants, said a Republican speaking on condition of anonymity to describe private conversations.

In a surprising development, McConnell said he would support Trump’s emergency declaration, a turnabout for the Kentucky Republican, who like many lawmakers had opposed such action.

Democrats say there is no border crisis and Trump would be using a declaration simply to sidestep Congress. Some Republicans warn that future Democratic presidents could use his precedent to force spending on their own priorities, like gun control. GOP critics included Maine Sen. Susan Collins, who said emergency declarations are for “major natural disasters or catastrophic events” and said its use would be of “dubious constitutionality.”

White House staff and congressional Republicans have said that besides an emergency, Trump might assert other authorities that could conceivably put him within reach of billions of dollars. The money could come from funds targeted for military construction, disaster relief and counterdrug efforts.

Congressional aides say there is $21 billion for military construction that Trump could used if he declares a national emergency. By law, the money must be used to support U.S. armed forces, they say.The Defense Department declined to provide details on available money.

With many of the Democrats’ liberal base voters adamantly against Trump’s aggressive attempts to curb immigration, four declared presidential hopefuls opposed the bill in the Senate: Cory Booker of New Jersey, New York’s Kirsten Gillibrand, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Kamala Harris of California. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota voted for it, as did Vermont independent Bernie Sanders, who is expected to join the field soon.

Notably, the word “wall,” the heart of many a chant at Trump campaign events and his rallies as president, is absent from the compromise’s 1,768-page legislative and descriptive language. “Barriers” and “fencing” are the nouns of choice, a victory for Democrats eager to deny Trump even a rhetorical victory.

The agreement, which took bargainers three weeks to strike, would also squeeze funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, in an attempt to pressure the agency to detain fewer immigrants. To the dismay of Democrats, however, it would still leave an agency many of them consider abusive holding thousands more immigrants than last year.

The measure contains money for improved surveillance equipment, more customs agents and humanitarian aid for detained immigrants. The overall bill also provides $330 billion to finance dozens of federal programs for the rest of the year, one-fourth of federal agency budgets.

Trump sparked the last shutdown before Christmas after Democrats snubbed his $5.7 billion demand for the wall. The closure denied paychecks to 800,000 federal workers, hurt contractors and people reliant on government services and was loathed by the public.

With polls showing the public blamed him and GOP lawmakers, Trump folded on Jan. 25 without getting any of the wall funds. His capitulation was a political fiasco for Republicans and handed Pelosi a victory less than a month after Democrats took over the House and confronted Trump with a formidable rival for power.

Trump’s descriptions of the wall have fluctuated, at times saying it would cover 1,000 miles of the 2,000-mile boundary. Previous administrations constructed over 650 miles of barriers.

___

Associated Press Congressional Correspondent Lisa Mascaro and reporters Padmananda Rama, Lolita Baldor and Matthew Daly contributed.

William Barr Sworn in for Second Stint as U.S. Attorney General

WASHINGTON—William Barr was sworn in Thursday for his second stint as the nation’s attorney general, taking the helm of the Justice Department as special counsel Robert Mueller investigates Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Earlier Thursday, the Senate voted 54-45 to confirm the veteran government official, mostly along party lines. Barr, who also served as attorney general from 1991 to 1993 during President George H.W. Bush’s administration, succeeds Jeff Sessions. President Donald Trump pushed Sessions out of office last year after railing against his decision to recuse himself from the Russia investigation.

As the country’s chief law enforcement officer, Barr will oversee the remaining work in Mueller’s investigation into potential coordination between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign and decide how much Congress and the public know about its conclusion. He’ll also take over a department that Trump has publicly assailed, often questioning the integrity and loyalty of those who work there.

Democrats, who largely voted against Barr, said they were concerned about his noncommittal stance on making Mueller’s report public. Barr promised to be as transparent as possible but said he takes seriously the Justice Department regulations that dictate Mueller’s report should be treated as confidential.

Barr’s opponents also pointed to a memo he wrote to Justice officials before his nomination that criticized Mueller’s investigation for the way it was presumably looking into whether Trump had obstructed justice. Barr wrote that Trump could not have obstructed justice by firing former FBI Director James Comey since it was an action the president was constitutionally entitled to take.

That view has alarmed Democrats, especially since the obstruction inquiry has been central to Mueller’s investigation.

“Mr. Barr’s views about the power of the president are especially troubling in light of his refusal to commit to making the special counsel’s findings and the report publicly available,” said California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Judiciary panel. Feinstein said the attorney general should be “objective” and “clearly committed to protecting the interest of the people, the country and the Constitution.”

Barr will be tasked with restoring some stability after almost two years of open tension between Trump and Justice officials. Trump lashed out at Sessions repeatedly before he finally pushed him out in November, and he has also publicly criticized Mueller and his staff, calling the probe a “witch hunt” and suggesting they are out to get him for political reasons. The criticism extended to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who appointed Mueller as special counsel. Rosenstein is expected to leave the department shortly after Barr takes office.

Trump has directed some of his strongest vitriol at department officials who were part of the decisions to start investigating his campaign’s Russia ties in 2016 and to clear Democrat Hillary Clinton in an unrelated email probe that same year. Trump has repeatedly suggested that the agents and officials, many of whom have since left, were conspiring against him. In an interview aired Thursday, fired former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe told CBS’ “60 Minutes” that Justice Department officials discussed bringing the Cabinet together to consider using the Constitution’s 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office after Comey’s firing.

Trump responded to the McCabe interview with a tweet: “Disgraced FBI Acting Director Andrew McCabe pretends to be a ‘poor little Angel’ when in fact he was a big part of the Crooked Hillary Scandal & the Russia Hoax – a puppet for Leakin’ James Comey. I.G. report on McCabe was devastating.”

In his hearing last month, Barr vowed that he would not “be bullied,” said Mueller’s investigation is not a witch hunt and agreed that Sessions was right to recuse himself from the probe. Barr said he was a friend of Mueller’s and repeatedly sought to assuage concerns that he might disturb or upend the investigation as it reaches its final stages.

When Trump nominated Barr, he called him “a terrific man” and “one of the most respected jurists in the country.”

“I think he will serve with great distinction,” Trump said.

Since Sessions departed last year, the position has been temporarily filled by Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker, who has come under fire from Democrats for his past criticism of the Mueller probe. Whitaker said last month that he believed Mueller’s investigation was nearly complete — a departure for the Justice Department, which rarely comments on the state of the investigation.

Three Democrats — Sens. Doug Jones of Alabama, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona — joined Republicans in voting to confirm Barr. GOP Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky was the only Republican who voted no. He cited concerns about Barr’s views on surveillance, among other issues.

Not Welcome: ‘Petulant Child’ Amazon Cancels New York HQ Plans

More than 200 cities across the U.S. fought for the prize of being Amazon’s second headquarters. As Erin Durkin wrote in The Guardian, the courting process included promises of “lavishing tax breaks and other goodies for the chance to host the tech giant’s HQ2.”

In the end, the company split its affections between two winners, New York City and Arlington, Virginia.

On Thursday, however, amid fierce opposition from local advocacy groups and politicians, one of whom called the promised $3 billion in tax breaks “obscene,” Amazon announced it canceled plans to build a 4-million-square-foot corporate campus on the Queens, New York, waterfront, The New York Times reported.

Amazon said the deal would have created 25,000 new jobs, with an average salary of y $150,000 per year. “It’s by far the biggest number of new jobs this city has ever seen,” New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, who supported the deal, told MSNBC when it was announced in November 2018.

While De Blasio and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo tried to reassure skeptical Queens residents that New York “will come out on top, getting $9 back in revenue for every dollar spent,” as Durkin reported in The Guardian, local advocacy groups and elected officials didn’t buy it.

Critics, The New York Times explained, “object to the lack of a public review of the deal, the potential impact on immigrant and low-income areas of Queens that are already facing gentrification and, most of all, the incentives from the state and city that could total $3 billion — all for one of the world’s richest and ubiquitous companies.”

“Today is a great day to be a real-estate broker in Long Island City,” Jonathan Westin, Executive Director of New York Communities for Change, an organization opposing the deal, said in a statement in November, adding, “Today is a horrible day to be a tenant struggling to make rent.”

New York City Councilman James Van Bramer, a Democrat who represents the area Amazon was planning to build in, told The New York Times, “They want to crush unions. They want to work with ICE. They want to bypass community review. They want to take giant subsidies. I don’t see them changing one bit and so, yeah, they’re not welcome here.”

The opposition was unusually broad. “We were surprised,” Deborah Axt, the co-executive director of the immigrant advocacy organization Make the Road NY, told The Times. “This is so far above and beyond a traditional coalition effort — it’s broader, it’s crazier.”

The opposition included longtime residents and newcomers alike, some of whom, as the Times pointed out, are fresh off of helping to elect Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., to represent the area. She was one of the first politicians to oppose the deal.

Aside from the more well-known Ocasio-Cortez, state and local elected officials quickly responded to activist uproar. State Sen. Michael Gianaris, also a Democrat, not only spoke at rallies against the campus, but canvassed with organizers seeking petition signatures against the deal.

In response to news of Amazon’s decision, Gianaris told the Times, “Like a petulant child, Amazon insists on getting its way or takes its ball and leaves,” adding, “The only thing that happened here is that a community that was going to be profoundly affected by their presence started asking questions.”

In its statement announcing the decision, Amazon wrote that “While polls show that 70% of New Yorkers support our plans and investment, a number of state and local politicians have made it clear that they oppose our presence.”

The company, which already has 5,000 employees in New York City, also says it plans to continue growing its presence in the city, despite not building the new campus.

Corporate Democrats Aren’t Winning Any Swing Voters

According to conventional wisdom, the Democrats must appeal to middle-of-the-road swing voters in order to defeat Trump in 2020. Supposedly these voters want a moderate who “crosses the partisan divide,” “finds common ground with all classes and income groups,” “removes barriers to advancement,” “builds public/private partnerships,”  “works for the common good against all special interests,” “avoids the extremes of the right and the left,” and “shuns costly pie-in-the-sky programs.”

Wrong.

Mounting evidence suggests that the swing voter is one who faces the stark daily realities of rising inequality and all its related issues — expensive or non-existent health care, astronomical student debt, unaffordable housing, and a generation’s worth of wage stagnation. As the New York Times recently reports (“For Democrats Aiming Taxes at the Superrich, ‘the Moment Belongs to the Bold’”)

The soak-the-rich plans — ones that were only recently considered ridiculously far-fetched or political poison — have received serious and sober treatment, even by critics, and remarkably broad encouragement from the electorate. Roughly three out of four registered voters surveyed in recent polls supported higher taxes on the wealthy. Even a majority of Republicans back higher rates on those earning more than $10 million, according to a Fox News poll conducted in mid-January.

This observation is further confirmed by a fascinating chart prepared by Lee Drutman, (“Political Divisions in 2016 and Beyond“) based on survey data from 8,000 Clinton and Trump voters compiled by the Voter Survey Group. A significant split emerged around two main clusters of opinion — economic populism and identity politics. (Unlike exit polls this survey is more than 10 times larger a sample and contains many more questions, and therefore should not be dismissed as just another poll.)

The horizontal axis shows the strength of the responses based on economic populism. The further left you are on that axis, the more you worry about inequality and favor redistributive policies.

The vertical axis measures beliefs on what could be called cultural issues like gun rights, abortion, women’s equality, immigration, LGBTQ rights and attitudes towards African-Americans. The higher you are on that axis the more uncomfortable you are with these kinds of cultural issues.

Let’s call the bottom left quadrant, “Progressive Populists” who want both liberal social and economic policies. The top left are the “Culturally Conservative Populists,” who lean right on social issues and left on economic issues.  The top right contains all “Arch Conservatives” who are both socially and economically conservative. And the bottom right are the media darlings — “Culturally Liberal/Fiscally Conservatives.” (For more about this quadrant see “Beware of the Moderate Democrat.”)

Here are the 2016 voter percentage breakdowns:

Progressive Populists account for 44.6 percent of the electorate according to this study.
28.9 percent are Culturally Conservative Populists.
Arch Conservatives account for another 22.7 percent.
And a miniscule 3.8 percent for the Culturally Liberal/Fiscal Conservatives.

Dig in or Reach Out?

Jamelle Bouie, New York Times opinion writer, argues that Democrats should not be “fighting on the president’s terrain, trying to cast themselves as the authentic representatives of white working-class America.”

But if the Voter Survey chart is correct, that’s where the swing voters (of all colors) are, and that’s precisely where the battle will be waged again.

Every Democratic candidate will claim to fight both for social and economic justice. But this could become problematic for Biden, Booker, Gillibrand and Harris, who want to maintain their close fundraising ties with corporate Democrats.  As the New York Times puts it:

The left-leaning Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, Ms. Warren and Mr. Sanders are all viewed as less business-friendly than Ms. Gillibrand, Mr. Booker and Ms. Harris, who have not made taxes on the rich a centerpiece of their public pitches. In that sense the latter trio is following the example set by Hillary Clinton in the 2016 campaign and President Barack Obama before her, with comparatively establishment-minded thinking on progressive taxation.

It’s painfully obvious what Trump will and must do. There are not enough Arch Conservatives to elect him dog catcher. So he needs win over again the culturally conservative economic populists (top left quadrant). And the only way to do so is by fanning the flames of division, stomping all over social issues, and provoking the Democrats to debate Confederate monuments and bathrooms.  And then red-bait to hell any Democrat who dares propose big economic reforms.

Which way do we go?

The Democratic Party can never, and should never, abandon its deep commitment to the full range of social justice issues. Despite the Trump-led rise of racism, homophobia, and nativism, the rights of women, minorities and the LGBTQ communities have increased enormously over the past half century.  The Democrats should be given significant credit for the promotion and enhancement of these human rights. But the Democratic Party also must become, once again, the party of working people, and this requires taking on Wall Street and the billionaire class with bold economic programs – from Medicare for All to a Green New Deal.

Those who worry about going too far on economic issues should remember the fire that FDR brought to the Democratic Party when in 1936 he took on the oligarchs:

We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace–business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering.

They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.

Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me–and I welcome their hatred.

I should like to have it said of my first Administration that in it the forces of selfishness and of lust for power met their match. I should like to have it said of my second Administration that in it these forces met their master.

Today,  a similar common denominator unites every identity group with every economic populist: All have much to gain from policies that address rising inequality, the stagnation of wages, the lack of true universal health care, the obscene levels of student debt and the ways in which both the economy and government are rigged by bankers and billionaires.

Forty years of runaway inequality have taken their toll. We voters are not a happy bunch. We long for candidates with FDR’s passion for fairness and justice, and we are hungry for the big ideas to get us there.

MSNBC’s ‘Resistance’ to Trump on Venezuela Is Nonexistent

After much behind the scenes angling and plotting, the Trump administration is now waging an overt campaign to overthrow the government of Venezuela—coordinating directly with the Venezuelan military, lobbying other countries to support the opposition government-in-waiting, threatening a military invasion and engaging in aggressive PR stunts under the guise of “aid.”

Given MSNBC is the largest, most influential liberal platform in the US—one that has long marketed itself as a progressive counter to the lies and ruthless right-wing onslaught of the Trump government, one would think they’d be leading the charge against Trump’s old school, Cold War–style coup-mongering in South America.

But a FAIR survey of MSNBC since Trump threw the US’s support behind self-proclaimed Venezuelan president Juan Guaidó (the effective start of the attempted coup) finds coverage has ranged from outright support to virtual silence—with only one five-minute segment on All In With Chris Hayes (1/29/19) broaching objections to Trump’s Venezuela policy. The only segment that comes close to criticizing Trump’s attempted coup, Hayes’ “Is Trump Moving Toward War in Venezuela?” largely framed his opposition as “just asking questions,” and had on Texas Rep. Joaquin Castro to insist the “timing” for sanctions and regime change wasn’t right.

Based on a search of MSNBC’s website, these were the only five of the cable channel’s 30,240 on-air minutes since Trump’s coup was launched three weeks ago that were dedicated to criticizing it, and these did so only mildly.

Aside from Hayes’ brief chiding, primetime coverage of Trump’s coup on MSNBC has been entirely nonexistent: Searching turned up nothing about Venezuela in recent weeks on Hardball With Chris Matthews, the Rachel Maddow Show, Last Word With Lawrence O’Donnell or 11th Hour With Brian Williams. The vast bulk of the coverage, such that it is, has been during the daytime, and has been largely fluffy, pro-regime change propaganda:

Venezuela’s Maduro Cuts Relations With US as Trump Recognizes Opposition Leader Juan Guaidó as Interim President (Velshi & Ruhle, 1/23/19)

A fairly dry news report where Andrew Mitchell, reporting on behalf of NBC News, repeatedly refers to Maduro’s “regime” and passes along Trump’s line uncritically.

Sen. Rubio: If Any Harm Comes to US Diplomats in Venezuela, the Consequences Will Be ‘Swift and Decisive’ (Andrea Mitchell Reports, 1/24/19)

Softball interview with Sen. Marco Rubio, the leading congressional coup proponent. propping up all the primary arguments for the coup. The segment leads with “hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans are taking to the streets…demanding freedom,” and refers repeatedly to “authoritarian leftist, authoritarian socialist president” Maduro.

Maduro and Guaidó Fight for Power in Venezuela, US Gets Involved (Ayman Mohyeldin, 1/27/19)

A five-minute phone call with opposition leader Lilian Tintori.

Brief discussion by Joy Ann Reid (AMJoy, 1/27/19)

Not a full segment, but MSNBC go-to Venezuela expert Mariana Atencio promotes all of Trump’s core arguments for the coup.

Velshi & Ruhle breaking news segment (Velshi & Ruhle, 1/28/19)

MSNBC just plays the press conference of National Security Adviser John Bolton, the administration’s chief coup architect.

Venezuela Power Play: Breaking Down Maduro and Guaidó’s Options (Hallie Jackson, 1/30/19)

Jackson leads with Mariana Atencio—using her personal background to lend gravitas to her one-sided pro-Guaido analysis: “This is a battle right now between legitimacy and power. Guaidó has the legitimacy, but Maduro has the guns, meaning the power.”

“Mariana, we are so thrilled to have you on,” Jackson began; “You’re a native of Venezuela.”

But if Atencio’s background is brought up to present her as the voice of the Venezuelan people, why not mention her deeply atypical class status? A 2012 ABC profile of Atencio suggests she is far from representative of the average Venezuelan:

Besides the typical Disney trip that many Latin American families venture to, [Atencio] had not spent much time in the States before attending tennis summer camp at age seven. That’s when her father sent Mariana and her siblings to Camp Lincoln and Camp Hubert Tennis Camp in Brainerd, Minnesota, for four consecutive years. “It seemed like the end of the world,” she says, with a laugh.

The rest of the article was a gallery of Atencio’s favorite shoes.

Thousands of Anti-Maduro Protesters Gather in Florida (Weekends With Alex Witt, 2/2/19)

Pro-coup agitprop as Atencio reports from a pro-Guaidó rally in Doral, Florida. MSNBC is apparently still unable to find a Venezuelan to report or provide analysis who isn’t an Ivy League–educated tennis camp alum married to a real estate entrepreneur.

Venezuela’s Opposition Leader Speaks as Pressure Grows on Maduro (Velshi & Ruhle, 2/4/19)

Softball interview with Juan Guaidó by NBC’s Kerry Sanders.

This has been the extent of MSNBC’s coverage of Trump’s attempted coup, carried out in broad daylight by a murderers’ row of hardcore right-wing Cold Warriors: five minutes of hand-wringing from Chris Hayes, total silence from all the other primetime personalities, and daytime reporting that echos Trump and Rubio’s uniform praise for the coup attempt and its primary actors.

Just as the New York Times has long stood behind the US’s history of coups, MSNBC is following the tradition of Democratic Party–aligned media who are happy to oppose Trump when it comes to mean words and Russiagate, but fall in lockstep with his White House the second he begins to carry out Washington’s bipartisan regime-change agenda.

Seven Women Accuse Singer Ryan Adams of Inappropriate Behavior

NEW YORK — A New York Times report says seven women have claimed singer-songwriter Ryan Adams offered to help them with their music careers but then turned things sexual, and he sometimes became emotional and verbally abusive.

In the story published Wednesday, a 20-year-old female musician said Adams, 44, had inappropriate conversations with her while she was 15 and 16. Identified by her middle name Ava, she said that Adams exposed himself during a video call.

Adams’ ex-wife, actress and singer Mandy Moore, said Adams was psychologically abusive toward her throughout their marriage. Their divorce was official in 2016.

The Times said the accounts have been corroborated by family members or friends who were present at the time. Adams’ lawyer denied the claims to the Times.

After the article was published, Adams tweeted Wednesday that “I am not a perfect man and I have made many mistakes.”

“To anyone I have ever hurt, however unintentionally, I apologize deeply and unreservedly,” he wrote. “But the picture that this article paints is upsettingly inaccurate. Some of its details are misrepresented; some are exaggerated; some are outright false. I would never have inappropriate interactions with someone I thought was underage. Period.”

Adams released his debut album in 2000 and has earned seven Grammy nominations. He famously covered Taylor Swift’s Grammy-winning “1989” album in 2015, a year after its release. He has also worked as a producer behind the scenes for acts like Willie Nelson and Jenny Lewis.

Last month Adams performed at a tribute concert for the late rock singer Chris Cornell.

Ava said Adams constantly questioned her about her age throughout the nine months they exchanged text messages. The report said she never showed him any identification, and he had pet names for her body parts.

“If people knew they would say I was like R Kelley lol,” he wrote to her via text in November 2014, when he was 40 and she was 16. R. Kelly has been accused of sexual misconduct with women and girls but has denied the allegations.

“Mr. Adams unequivocally denies that he ever engaged in inappropriate online sexual communications with someone he knew was underage,” Andrew B. Brettler, Adam’s layer, told the Times.

The singers Phoebe Bridgers and Courtney Jaye said Adams behaved inappropriately during their relationships.

Moore, one of the stars of NBC’s award-winning “This Is Us,” burst on the scene as a teen singer and had musical success in the late ’90s and early 2000s. She claimed Adams stalled her music career and told her, ”‘You’re not a real musician, because you don’t play an instrument.’”

“His controlling behavior essentially did block my ability to make new connections in the industry during a very pivotal and potentially lucrative time — my entire mid-to-late 20s,” 34-year-old Moore said to the Times.

One Way Ralph Northam Can Redeem Himself

Nearly four decades after smearing his face with shoe polish and doing a blackface impersonation of Michael Jackson, Virginia governor Ralph Northam says he wants to be a beacon of racial reconciliation. To that end, advisers tell BuzzFeed News, Northam has embarked on a survey course in wokeness: boning up on the horrors of U.S. slavery via Alex Haley’s Roots; studying the legacy of American racism through Ta-Nehisi Coates’ “The Case for Reparations”; watching the heroic cinematic portraiture of the Ku Klux Klan in Birth of a Nation. (A film, it should be noted, that features an astounding amount of blackface.) Northam’s apology-slash-rebranding campaign is also slated to feature a policy agenda focused on racial equity, putting desperately needed resources into public transportation, affordable housing and Virginia’s historically black colleges.

Also supposedly on Northam’s to-do list? Finally calling for the removal of Virginia’s many racist statues and monuments glorifying the Confederacy, a nation founded specifically to ensure the preservation of black chattel slavery. According to BuzzFeed, “a source close to the governor said Northam is telling people privately that if the commonwealth’s legislature puts a bill on his desk that provides the authority to bring down Confederate statues that he would sign it.”

Like the rest of his all-racial-equality-all-the-time platform, this sits somewhere between a shift and a pivot for Northam. The article notes that while stumping for the governorship, Northam was vocal about the need for Virginia’s Confederate markers to come down, but “later softened his position, saying what should be done with the statues should be left up to localities.” The Richmond Times-Dispatch makes particular note of the fact that in “August 2017, following the deadly white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Northam—then the Democratic nominee for governor—said in a statement that Confederate statues ‘should be taken down and moved into museums.’ He has not pursued that policy as governor.”

In the days since the story broke about that racist photo on Northam’s medical school yearbook page, the governor has since re-backtracked to his original position. In a Washington Post interview published Saturday, Northam told the paper he will be more firm in his opposition to racist Confederate markers. “If there are statues, if there are monuments out there that provoke this type of hatred and bigotry,” Northam said, “they need to be in museums.”

Virginia, once the cradle of the Confederacy, has more Confederate monuments than any other state. As historians have noted, those markers went up not in the years immediately following the South’s Civil War defeat but decades later, during the same period that Virginia’s white politicians were taking away black voting rights, instituting Jim Crow segregation, and reestablishing slavery in all but name. The state’s memorials to the Confederacy made visible a legal, social and political campaign of white terror. That historical truth on its own should make it easy to remove Confederate monuments and place them in settings where they can be properly contextualized. But policy is almost never enacted because of morality.

Northam was well aware of the history of his state’s Confederate statuary a few weeks ago in January, when state Democrats proposed—but did little to propel—a bill that would overturn a Virginia law that forbids Confederate monuments from being removed. That bill quickly died in subcommittee, voted down 2-6 by neo-Confederate GOP lawmakers (and a lone Democrat). At that time, Northam neither promoted the bill publicly, spoke on its behalf nor threw his support behind the legislation.

That craven silence is more proof that cynical self-preservation is the motivating factor behind Northam’s sudden commitment to righting racial wrongs that have long needed urgent attention. Black Virginians know this, just like they know the ugly political realities—the threat of a Republican takeover, of centuries of racist policymaking in the state, the near nonexistence of good-faith politicking—that make Northam’s remaining in office potentially far better than his resignation. The possibility of having a lawmaker finally address even a portion of the black community’s needs supersedes the question of whether Northam is in it for himself or not.

Only time will tell if Northam will follow through on so many promises borne out of political desperation. In the coming weeks and months, one of the easiest anti-racist moves Northam could make is to keep loudly calling for Virginia’s Confederate monuments to be removed. While he’s at it, he should challenge Virginia Republicans calling for his removal—and also using feigned anti-racist conviction for political ends—to bring that sentiment to the fight against Confederate monuments. With so much sudden and convenient anti-racist conviction among Virginia’s political class, taking down overt symbols of white supremacy is low-hanging legislative fruit.

This article was produced by Make It Right, a project of the Independent Media Institute.