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BeckyDem

BeckyDem's Journal
BeckyDem's Journal
January 21, 2020

Noam Chomsky Makes the Case for the Lesser of Two Evils


(Exceptional, that is Chomsky )


Jan 17, 2020

Opinion

Scheer Intelligence

( excerpt ) Chomsky, on the other hand traces the hard-earned progress that has been made by organized movements throughout the history of the U.S., using the examples of Presidents Richard Nixon and Franklin D. Roosevelt as leaders who were forced to amend their policies and actions by political activists.

“So even if there’s core, deep problems with the institutions, there still are choices between alternatives, which matter a lot,” says the MIT professor. “Small differences in a system with enormous power translate into huge effects. Meanwhile, you don’t stop with a lesser evilism; you continue to try to organize and develop the mass popular movements, which will block the worst and change the institutions. All of these things can go on at once. But the simple question of what button do you push on a particular day? That is a decision, and that matters. It’s not the whole story, by any means. It’s a small part of the story, but it matters.”

When Scheer goes on to express his surprise to find in Chomsky a source of optimism, the latter gives him a list of reasons to remain hopeful, including the Green New Deal and the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign.

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/noam-chomsky-makes-the-case-for-the-lesser-of-two-evils/
January 13, 2020

Warren releases first television ad of campaign in NH, focusing on fighting 'corruption'

Massachusetts senator begins Granite State ad push with six-digit buy

MANCHESTER, N.H. —

WMUR Updated: 9:00 AM EST Jan 13, 2020


Elizabeth Warren’s campaign is up Monday with its first television ad of the presidential campaign in New Hampshire – a 30-second spot that focuses on her key themes of fighting corruption and delivering “a democracy that works for everyone.”


"I’m not afraid to stand up to billionaires and corrupt politicians. I’ve been doing it for years,” the Massachusetts senator says in the ad, which can be viewed here and at the end of this report. She cites her leading role in the creation of the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in 2010 and 2011.

“After Wall Street crashed our economy in 2008, I confronted the broken system head on … and created America’s first consumer watchdog to hold the big banks accountable,” Warren says in the ad, which includes a clip of her standing with former President Barack Obama and former Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner outside of the White House.

https://www.wmur.com/article/warren-releases-first-television-ad-of-campaign-in-nh-focusing-on-fighting-corruption/30490959#


Warren 2020!!!

January 12, 2020

Elizabeth Warren: We can clean up corruption in Washington. We just have to fight to do it.

Universal child care, and free college, and Medicare for All — all of it can be all done, improving lives for millions of Americans.

Elizabeth Warren
Opinion contributor

People in Iowa and across America feel it in their bones: Our democracy has been hijacked by the rich and powerful.

You can see it in these past three years of cruelty and criminality under Donald Trump — and in the preceding four decades of stagnant wages, rising costs and diminishing opportunity. The most powerful people in our society have used money and influence to make Washington work for them — and leave everyone else behind.

It’s corruption, pure and simple. I’m running for president to do something about it.

And here’s the good news: Around Iowa and around this country, Democrats, independents and Republicans are united in their desire to clean up corruption in Washington and build an economy with more growth, more opportunity and more freedom.

That’s our path to beat Donald Trump in 2020. We will beat the most corrupt president in American history by campaigning on the most aggressive anti-corruption platform since Watergate. We will beat a president who has enriched himself and his rich buddies by campaigning on big, structural changes that ensure the economy works for everyone.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/01/12/elizabeth-warren-democrat-president-iowa-caucus-corruption-column/4432509002/

Warren 2020!!!

January 9, 2020

Elizabeth Warren Doesn't Think a Billionaire Should Be President

In the latest installment of The Candidates Come to Cosmo, Senator Elizabeth Warren talks Harvey Weinstein, funding Medicare for All, and why Trump isn't making us safer.

By Jessica Pels
Jan 9, 2020


Jessica Pels: Welcome, Senator Warren.

Elizabeth Warren: Thank you. It’s so good to be here.

Jessica Pels: We’re so happy to have you at Cosmo, especially now that we’re officially in election year.

Elizabeth Warren: We are.

Jessica Pels: Dun dun dun.

Elizabeth Warren: *dramatic voice* 2020.

Jessica Pels: Yes.

( more ) https://www.cosmopolitan.com/politics/a30435898/elizabeth-warren-cosmopolitan-interview-iran-healthcare-wealth-tax/

Warren 2020!!!

January 8, 2020

Elizabeth Warren @SenWarren The IRS has no more excuses to create its own Free File program.

https://twitter.com/SenWarren/status/1214310004804792320








( The more she articulates how she sees government should function, the better her chances become of winning the nomination. I remain hopeful. Warren 2020. )
January 8, 2020

What an Elizabeth Warren Presidency Would Look Like ( Warren is a "visionary implementer." )

By Kathleen Geier

January 7 | January 2020 Issue

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


Her ambitions for the presidency are not small. Warren proposes to rewrite the rules of the economy by reining in capital, empowering labor and significantly expanding the welfare state.To understand how Warren would create big structural changes as president, it’s helpful to look at how she has made change in the past.

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

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

https://inthesetimes.com/features/Elizabeth-Warren-presidency.html

January 7, 2020

Elizabeth Warren's new plan to reform bankruptcy law, explained

A return to her political roots.
By Matthew Yglesias

Jan 7, 2020, 9:10am EST

With a new plan out Tuesday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren is returning to her roots — proposing to roll back bankruptcy changes made in 2005 while also pitching a series of new reforms. The plan reflects both her longtime vision of how bankruptcy should work and her more recent focus on the idea that rich people have rigged the system for their benefit.

Warren’s transition from academic expert to politician was driven by her work over years as an opponent of bankruptcy reform legislation — legislation that researchers believe exacerbated the Great Recession by inducing more foreclosures – that eventually passed over her objections in 2005. Her interests have broadened out over the past 15 years to the point where most people following the 2020 presidential campaign might not even realize this was both her original area of scholarly expertise and motivation for taking on a larger role as an advocate and, eventually, a politician.

It’s a plan from a former law professor on the federal bankruptcy code, so there are a lot of details, and not necessarily a catchy slogan. But the big picture is easy enough to understand.

In 2005, federal law was changed to make it harder for middle-class families to discharge debts in bankruptcy. That was good for credit card companies and others that want to collect those debts, and was said by its proponents to have the secondary consequence of making cheap credit easier to obtain (in practice, credit card interest rates went up rather than down so this rationale seems dubious anyway).

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/1/7/21051906/elizabeth-warren-bankruptcy-reform

Warren 2020!!!

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