Good News for Democrats Courting Millennial Voters

If Democrats can turn out millennial voters for the presidential race in 2016, their downballot candidates may just get the boost they’re looking for from the 18- to 29-year-old crowd.

A Harvard Institute of Politics poll released Wednesday found a significant majority of millennial voters most likely to vote — 55 percent — wanted Democrats to hold onto the White House in 2016. Forty percent would prefer a Republican commander in chief. The poll, which was conducted online from March 18 to April 1, surveyed more than 3,000 adults nationwide ages 18 to 29.

While this poll did not ask about control of Congress, the 15-point margin for a Democratic White House was a shift from the partisan narrative told by Harvard’s October 2014 millennial poll, which gave Republicans a slight edge going into the midterm elections.

President Barack Obama’s approval rating among millennials increased to 50 percent — up 7 points since the fall of 2014, perhaps in part because a higher percentage now approves of the way the president is handling the economy.

Millennials continued to have the lowest levels of trust — 17 percent — in Congress, compared to other parts of government, although their confidence in the institution has increased 3 points since last year. Congressional Republicans, though, still suffered from a 23 percent approval rating among this crowd, while congressional Democrats have enjoyed a 5-point boost since October and were at 40 percent.

In a hypothetical primary matchup, former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton lead the Democratic field with 47 percent support, followed in far-off second place by Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

Democrats are already banking on Clinton boosting their House and Senate candidates, women specifically. In an appeal to youth voters, the House Democratic Caucus sent some of its youngest members on the road earlier this month in its so-called “Future Forum.”

Ben Carson lead the Republicans in a hypothetical matchup, but given the 2- to 3-point margin of error, the GOP field was really a statistical dead heat, Polling Director John Della Volpe said on a conference call with reporters Wednesday.

The survey also tested millennials’ stance on a number of public opinion issues that could influence their downballot voting.

The Affordable Care Act was a political football in the past two elections and undoubtedly will be again in 2016. Among millennials, 45 percent agreed “basic health insurance is a right for all people,” an increase of 3 points from 2014.

On fiscal issues, more millennials continued to disagree when asked if government spending is “an effective way to increase economic growth.”

When it comes to foreign policy, 57 percent of millennials believed the U.S. should use ground troops to confront the Islamic State group, and there had been a 7-point increase in support for the so-called Bush Doctrine, which the poll defined as the need to sometimes “attack potentially hostile countries, rather than waiting until we are attacked to respond.”

Millennials’ opinions of the justice system were evenly split, with half saying it was unable to judge people without racial or ethnic bias. Confidence was lowest among African Americans and people with less than $50,000 in household wealth. An overwhelming 80 percent of millennials said they thought requiring police to wear body cameras would reduce “racial inequalities in the criminal justice system.”

Of interest to candidates in all races should be the survey’s findings about millennials’ digital engagement. Overall, millennials are much more likely to sign an online petition or “like” a candidate on Facebook than advocate by email or Twitter. Democrats are more likely than Republicans to be on Twitter, and twice as likely to be on Tumblr. Republicans are more likely to be on Pinterest.

 

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Screwing with the Democratic Party : Fear and loathing on champagne trail as a Bernie Sanders admirer travels to Elizabeth Warren utopia

Hillary Clinton, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders (Credit: AP/Demis Maryannakis/Charles Dharapak/Reuters/Jonathan Ernst/Photo montage by Salon)

With around 250 in attendance, the event room at Civic Hall is packed. I’m actually part of the overflow, watching Harvard Law professor Lawrence Lessig’s presentation on massive closed-circuit TVs in the foyer, in merciful proximity to the hors d’oeuvres and wine (an unostentatious but delicious spread, including good cheese and reasonably priced champagne).

The breathless cadence of a TED Talk is unmistakable, and Lessig’s impassioned case for Elizabeth Warren is fraught with urgency. There is no mention of electoral strategy or political details, but the presentation is highly visual, with a powerpoint on the monitors behind him that opens with a clear blue sky and rolling clouds. It looks a desktop wallpaper for Windows 98. Words and phrases flash on the monitors behind him for emphasis–”standup,” “most powerful” and “brand,” to name a few, while Lessig expounds on inequality, money in politics and the forgettable neologism, “Tweedism,” a reference to Boss Tweed’s manipulation of politics. To his credit, his jokes get laughs.

Lessig’s emphatic-but-never-antagonistic oratory stylings were in fact forged in the fires of TED, an origin betrayed by an overly-earnest tone, an unchallenging vocabulary and an anti-elitist denunciation of “wonks.” “It is a moral challenge, not a nerd’s challenge,” he proclaims–a strange sentiment at an event in celebration of Elizabeth Warren, a brilliantly wonky nerd herself. As a legal activist Lessig first made his name fighting onerous copyright law and co-founding Creative Commons, a groundbreaking open-source initiative that allows users to license and share media. In 2007 he switched gears, refocusing on “money in politics”–campaign finance and corporate lobbying.

Before Lessig spoke, it was Van Jones at the lectern, emphasizing how Warren would ameliorate the primaries by sharpening her opponents. “She would improve the country just by being in the debates! You don’t debate Elizabeth Warren without eating your Wheaties!” he proclaims, and I can’t help but reminisce on his political journey. It’s an age-old story. One minute you’re a simple Maoist Third-Worldist, dutifully recording every minute of your 18-person organization (for revolutionary posterity), the next you’re a disgraced environmental czar. Eventually, though, you find your home, carrying water for truant politicians and posing for photos at the White House Correspondents Dinner with a jowly, starched golem of bad ideas and his strange bird-wife.

 

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Michigan Democrats push for LGBT rights protections in state’s civil rights act

LANSING, Mich. — Democrat lawmakers are asking the Legislature to add protections for LGBT people to Michigan’s civil rights act.

House and Senate legislators announced bills on Wednesday that would add protections for sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression into the Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act.

The effort comes a day after a Senate committee held a hearing on a bill that backers say protects people’s religious freedoms. Opponents say it permitsdiscrimination against gays and others.

Republican Gov. Rick Snyder has threatened to veto the legislation unless lawmakers also extend anti-discrimination protections to gays.

Gideon D’Assandro is House Speaker Kevin Cotter’s spokesman. He says the Republican majority is not interested in revisiting the issue after it failed to pass last session.

On Tuesday, members of the Michigan Senate Judiciary Committee heard testimony on whether Michigan needs a law that backers say protects people’s religious freedoms and opponents say permits discrimination against gays and others.

The bill appears to have little chance of passing and may not go any further in the Legislature. Republican Gov. Rick Snyder has threatened to veto the legislation unless lawmakers also extend anti-discrimination protections to gays, and Republican Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Rick Jones of Grand Ledge said Tuesday that no further hearings were planned on the measure.

Amber McCann, spokeswoman for Senate Majority Leader Arlan Meekhof, said Meekhof has requested that there only be a hearing at this time, and no decision has been made yet about further action.

The bill would let people who say their exercise of religion has been substantially burdened by government cite the law in a claim or defense in a judicial or administrative proceeding.

Bill sponsor Sen. Mike Shirkey, a Republican from Clarklake, said the language is “substantially different” from Indiana’s religious objections law that recently prompted a backlash.

The bill “is not a license to discriminate,” Shirkey said.

 

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Michigan Democrats seek ‘citizen co-sponsors’ on new LGBT non-discrimination bill

LANSING, MI – Michigan Democrats are seeking “citizen co-sponsors” on new legislation that would extend statewide non-discrimination protections to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender residents.

“This is common sense legislation that’s long overdue,” said Rep. Jon Hoadley, R-Kalamazoo, sponsor of a House bill to update the state’s Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act of 1976.

Similar legislation stalled out last year despite a push by business groups that was supported by Republican Gov. Rick Snyder, who has againasked the Legislature to discuss a possible update to the anti-discrimination law.

Amber McCann, a spokesperson for Senate Republicans, said the majority caucus does not currently have any plans to take on the Elliott-Larsen debate this year.

“It’s fair to say it’s not on our agenda,” she said.

Democrats, in announcing new bills at a press conference in the Michigan Capitol, launched an online petition asking residents to support their efforts and request for a legislative hearing “as soon as possible.”

Elliott-Larsen currently prohibits discrimination in the workplace, housing and places of public accommodation based on race, age, religion and a variety of other factors. The Democratic bills would add sexual orientation and gender identity protections.

The later classification, which would cover transgender residents, proved a sticking point in the debate last year, but supporters say the language would protect a class of people that faces more discrimination than most.

Bree Campbell of Detroit, who said she was assigned a male gender at birth but now identifies as a female, said an apartment building would not rent to her becuse of her gender identity. When she discussed her transition at work, she said, she was told she would be fired if she used the women’s rest room.

“I didn’t know what to do,” Campbell said. “It was my only source of employment, and I was afraid to lose my job. So instead of making a big ruckus about it, I just kind of let it happen.”

A business coalition including some of the state’s top employers have called on the Legislature to expand Elliott-Larsen, saying it would aide their efforts to attract a talented workforce.

“We don’t succeed when we have a sign up that says ‘Welcome to Michigan, most of you,'” said Andy LaBarre, vice president of the Ann Arbor Ypsilanti Regional Chamber. “What we need is a sign up that says ‘Welcome to Michigan, all of you.’ Our employers get this.”

The timing of the new bills is “very important,” according to Sen. Rebekah Warren, who is sponsoring an Elliott-Larsen bill in the upper chamber.

She noted that a challenge to the state’s gay marriage ban went before the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday, the same day a Republican-led Senate panel took testimony on a controversial Religious Freedom Restoration Act bill.

The proposed RFRA “does the opposite of what we’re trying to do,” Warren said. “It tries to institutionalize discrimination as opposed to sending the message that Michigan’s arms, our businesses, our schools and our places of accommodation are open to all people.”

Tuesday’s debate over the proposed religious freedom bill spilled over onto the Senate floor on Wednesday morning, with supporters defending the measure.

Senate Judiciary Chairman Rick Jones, who hosted the RFRA hearing, noted that the Michigan bill is based on a 1993 law signed by President Bill Clinton and is similar to a 1998 Illinois law that Barack Obama voted for as a state Senator.

“Let’s be clear – yesterday we were debating a Democrat law,” said Jones. “Yet all the groups that have been criticizing Republicans, I haven’t heard any of them say let’s repeal these laws. I haven’t heard them call Bill Clinton a bigot.”

Sen. Steve Bieda, D-Warren, said courts have interpreted the federal RFRA differently than states. The Chicago Sun Times reported last month that Illinois has a separate lawprohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.

Jonathan Oosting is a Capitol reporter for MLive Media Group. 

 

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DEMOCRATS SEEK TO BLOCK GEERT WILDERS FROM TEXAS MUHAMMAD ART AND CARTOON EXHIBIT

Two Democrat U.S. Representatives are seeking to block Geert Wilders from entering the United States, where he is scheduled to speak at the First Annual Muhammad Art Exhibit and Contest. The event will be held May 3^rdat the Curtis Caldwell Center, which is owned and operated by the Garland Independent School District, and hosted by the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI). The Curtis Caldwell Center was the site of a “Honor the Prophet” rally in January. About two thousand Texans came out to protest that event.

Geert Wilders, a member of The Netherlands Parliament, has led the fight for de-Islamization in his country, which has faced many of the same problems with assimilation as other European countries. These problems include large-scale communities where the government declares no-go zones for police and other emergency services.

“The Netherlands are facing the biggest threat since World War II.” Wilders said in his address to the Parliament earlier this year, “and the government policies are still being characterized by amateurism and an incredibly dangerous political correctness.”

Two Democrat U.S. Representatives are seeking to block Wilders from entering the United States, according to ForeignPolicy.com. Representatives Keith Ellison (D-MN) and André Carson (D-IN) wrote a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry and Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, asking them to block Wilders’ entry under the authority of the International Religious Freedom Act. The Act allow the State Department to ban the entry of foreign leaders “responsible for severe violations of religious freedom.”

“We respectfully request that the U.S. government deny Mr. Wilders entry due to his participation in inciting anti-Muslim aggression and violence,” the Representatives wrote in the April 23 letter. “Mr. Wilders’ policy agenda is centered on the principle that Christian culture is superior to other cultures.”

“It is revealing that these Muslim congressmen would show themselves to be enemies of free speech and free discourse,” said AFDI founder Pamela Geller in an email to Breitbart Texas. “They cannot refute Wilders, and don’t dare debate him. All these little authoritarians can do is try to prevent people from hearing his message. That is thesharia.”  The latter is a reference to the Islamic code of law.

“If the Western media ran the Danish cartoons back when this Islamic supremacist movement first started gaining steam, the editorial staff of Charlie Hebdo would be alive today,” Geller said in response to an inquiry from Breitbart Texas, during a free-speech rally held outside the Muslim “Honor the Prophet” event in January.

“Enough is enough,” she explained. “They’re just cartoons. We’re holding this exhibit and cartoon contest to show how insane the world has become — with people in the free world tiptoeing in terror around supremacist thugs who actually commit murder over cartoons. If we can’t stand up for the freedom of speech, we will lose it — and with it, free society.”

The contest will take submissions online, with the winner to be announced at the event in Garland. The winning cartoonist will receive a $10,000 prize. The exhibit will feature images of Islam’s prophet in both historical and contemporary settings. There will also be a series of speeches by internationally renowned free-speech advocates.

Geller explained that the art exhibit is the next logical step following AFDI’s Free Speech Rally in Garland. “This event will stand for free speech and show that Americans will not be cowed by violent Islamic intimidation,” she stated. “That is a crucial stand to take as Islamic assaults on the freedom of speech, our most fundamental freedom, are growing more insistent.”

An author and activist with passionate fans and detractors, Geller has been sounding the alarm about Muslim encroachment into Europe and America, and its possible impact on American culture in the future. The Free Speech Rally Geller organized is one of many activities she has created to shine the light on radical Islam, as taught in mosques in the United States.

In June, 2010, Geller organized and led a group of approximately 5,000 protesters (according to her estimate) in a march on the site of the proposed “Ground Zero Mosque.” Eventually, plans for that mosque were cancelled.

 

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Rise of far left policies signals Democrats’ embrace of Bernie Sanders progressivism

Nothing highlights Washington’s sceptical view of the political left like the arrival of Bernie Sanders into the presidential race.

The independent senator from Vermont is typically dismissed as a “ self-described socialist ” by those who doubt America’s appetite for policies seen as mainstream in much of the world but long-regarded as almost unmentionable in the land of the free.

But while even his biggest fans don’t necessarily expect to see the 73-year-old maverick waltzing into the oval office anytime soon, his decision to challenge Hillary Clinton for the 2016 Democratic nomination coincides with rising optimism that their focus on income inequality and campaign finance reform is catching the national mood.

“There is a reason why it’s called economic populism: it’s because it’s popular,” says Charles Chamberlain of Democracy of America, whose 1 million activists support both Sanders and the more reluctant Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren, whom they are also encouraging to run.

“It’s a real stretch to say [Sanders] is out of the mainstream; he is very much ahead of the curve when it comes to a lot of politicians in Washington,” argues Chamberlain. “It is Washington DC that is out of touch with where the average American is really at.”

For this reason, many progressive activists rankle at the description of their members and favoured candidates as leftwing.

“I don’t call ourselves ‘left’ and part of the reason is the centre of the country agrees with us,” claims Adam Green, co-founder of Progressive Change Campaign Committee.

He argues that the surprise decision of Clinton to champion many of the same themes as Warren and Sanders shows such views are now mainstream among Democrats, and the only question is how forcefully Clinton will follow through with policy.

“The shift in direction of the Democratic party is now coming to a close with the victory of the Warren wing,” claims Green. “It is now about a scale – do we go big or settle for smaller changes?”

It is certainly true that Clinton’s apparent conversion from avowed centrist to critic of the economic elites has caught many by surprise.

“Back in December people on her campaign staff were saying she was going to run against gridlock, for bipartisan solutions – and that’s certainly not what’s happened. Since she has launched, it’s all about the middle-class and making the economy work for everyone and a system that’s rigged,” says Chamberlain. “We believe that the issue of income equality is going to be the dominant fight of the 2016 election … and we are seeing that.”

It also coincided with a shift among leading Senate Democrats, such as Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer, who many had long regarded as irredeemably part of the Washington establishment.

A few weeks ago only seven senators were openly fighting for enhancing the Social Security safety net, and many favoured instead the conservative entitlement reforms sought by Republicans and briefly endorsed last year by the White House too. Now 42 out of the 44 Senate Democrats are preparing to vote to expand Social Security .

Similarly, Senator Chuck Schumer, of New York, is supporting legislation seeking to eliminate student debt at public universities – a key aim of progressive activists that may yet be adopted by Clinton .

But more radical activists on the left caution that there is a limit to how far mainstream Democrats will join Sanders in espousing truly transformational policies, such as a constitutional amendment to strip corporations of political power sought by groups such as Move to Amend .

“The politicians who are taking their money and therefore their marching orders from the Super Pacs and the billionaire class and Wall Street are not going to champion the kind of change that Move to Amend is demanding,” says its spokesperson, the former Green party presidential candidate David Cobb.

“We are moving the needle in that we are forcing some of the most dominant political players to say the things that they have not been saying, but I have no illusions that they are going to champion the systemic transformational change that a real democracy movement would require.”

Optimism on the left is also tempered by memories of even greater exuberance before Barack Obama was elected.

“That’s what you saw in 2008,” acknowledges Chamberlain. “People wanted bold change, and in some ways we got it and in other ways people were disappointed.”

For groups hoping to mobilise the much-vaunted but often elusive “grassroots”, lasting change requires more than just one person or a party hierarchy to change its rhetoric.

“This mistake that is often made is the idea of the great person theory … or to look at party apparatus, instead the question is: is there a mass movement in this country that is cohering?” says Cobb.

“Take the growing resistance to the schools-to-prison pipeline, take the justifiable anger at rising inequality … and you begin to see the recipe for that movement,” he adds. “What we are beginning to see between [the anti-police violence movement] Black Lives Matter, between the [immigration] Dream defenders, Move to Amend … you see all these early stages of a movement that is beginning to speak the same basic language.”

The bigger hope for activists like Cobb is that such a movement may also transcend left-right boundaries and appeal to disillusioned Republicans too. But for now, many would settle for a world where Bernie Sanders was not the only Washington politician prepared to self-identify as leftwing.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media 2015

 

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Democrats Defeat GOP Plan To Block Predatory Lending Protections For Soldiers

WASHINGTON — House Democrats successfully knocked down a GOP plan early Thursday morning that would have blocked predatory lending protections for American soldiers.

Republicans had slipped the deregulation measure into the National Defense Authorization Act — a major bill that sets the military’s funding levels. The bill would have imposed a one-year delay on new Department of Defense rules designed to shield military families from abusive terms on payday loans and other forms of expensive short-term credit. Politicians frequently seek to delay measures in order to buy time to marshall the votes needed to fully repeal them.

Soldiers make particularly good targets for payday lenders, in part because of the reliability of their military paychecks. The military has been combating the debt burdens that payday loans can create for soldiers since at least 2006, but lenders including some of the nation’s largest big banks have tailored new items to exploit loopholes in the regulations. In response, the Pentagon finalized a new set of regulations in late 2014 to restore protections for military families. The American Bankers Association has lobbied against those rules, which are strongly supported by consumer groups like the Consumer Federation of America, Public Citizen, the National Consumer Law Center and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group.

But around 4 a.m. Thursday, the House Armed Services Committee approved an amendment authored by Rep. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) to strip out the GOP language to delay the new rules. Democrats voted unanimously in favor of the amendment, which passed 32 – 30 with support from five Republicans: Reps. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), Chris Gibson (R-N.Y.), Frank LoBiondo (R-N.J.), Richard Nugent (R-Fla.) and Steve Russell (R-Okla.).

Consumer groups championed the vote, saying public pressure had prevented lawmakers from siding with banks over troops.

“Faced with a choice between the banks and the troops, members of Congress rushed to side with the banks,” Public Citizen President Robert Weissman said in a statement. “But then something happened: The spotlight focused on their unconscionable effort to pay back campaign donors at the expense of the nation’s servicemen and women …. Even with a rigged system, the public interest can prevail over powerful industry interests, at least sometimes.”

According to a 2014 study by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, interest rates on products targeting soldiers frequently soar to 300 percent or higher, far above the 36 percent interest rate cap imposed on payday lending to soldiers in 2006, thanks to loopholes in that cap. The study notes that these loans often cost soldiers thousands of dollars for very small advances. One family that took out a $2,600 loan ended up paying back $3,966.84 over the course of a year, according to the CFPB, while another borrower spent $1,428.28 to pay off a $485 loan in just six months.

“Unmanageable debt is difficult for any family struggling to balance their finances,” Duckworth, an Iraq war veteran, said Wednesday. “In the military, the burden can affect security clearances and advancement. Unscrupulous debt collectors go after service members deployed overseas and who are unable to answer claims. Credit is destroyed and lives are disrupted.”

The 30 Republicans who voted to delay the protections for soldiers were Reps. Mac Thornberry (R-Texas), Rob Bishop (R-Utah), Jim Bridenstine (R-Okla.), Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), Bradley Byrne (R-Ala.), Mike Coffman (R-Colo.), K. Michael Conaway (R-Texas), Paul Cook (R-Calif.), John Fleming (R-La.), J. Randy Forbes (R-Va.), Trent Franks (R-Ariz.), Sam Graves (R-Mo.), Vicky Hartzler (R-Mo.), Joe Heck (R-Nev.), Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), John Kline (R-Minn.), Steve Knight (R-Calif.), Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.), Tom MacArthur (R-N.J.), Martha McSally (R-Ariz.), Jeff Miller (R-Fla.), Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), Austin Scott (R-Ga.), Bill Shuster (R-Pa.), Michael Turner (R-Ohio), Jackie Walorski (R-Indiana), Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), Joe Wilson (R-S.C.), Robert Wittman (R-Va.) and Ryan Zinke (R-Mont.).

 

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Senate Democrats prod Gov. Jerry Brown for more drought spending

Senate Democrats want Gov. Jerry Brown to take swifter action to battle California’s drought, such as spending relief funds faster and prodding farmers to use water more efficiently.

The recommendations, sent to the governor in a letter this week, come as lawmakers prepare to work with Brown on a new budget proposal next month and the state braces itself for a dry, hot summer.

The letter shows Democrats are concerned that the Brown administration isn’t doing enough to spend funds, including water bond money approved by voters last year, that could be used on drought-related efforts.

“These funds should be spent much more quickly,” the letter says. “They could be appropriated and out on the street within the next few months – as opposed to years – to provide immediate drought relief.”

Since early last year, the Legislature has approved two pieces of emergency legislation to combat the drought, for a total of $1.7 billion in spending. While the bills include money to send drinking water to parched communities and other relief efforts, most of the funds are for long-term projects that won’t be finished for years.

The letter – which was signed by all 25 Democrats in the state Senate, including Senate leader Kevin de León of Los Angeles – also expresses concerns about the amount of water used by farmers, a political fault line in conversations about the drought.

Legislators OK $1-billion relief measure for future droughts
Legislators OK $1-billion relief measure for future droughts
“Agriculture uses much of the water in the state,” the letter says. “It can – and should – do more during the drought.”

Rather than “regulatory or punitive” measures, the Democrats propose providing incentives for farmers to plant crops that need less water or forgo flood irrigation for more efficient methods.

In addition, the letter urges the state water board to take stronger action to curb wasteful use, and it suggests that Brown appoint a “water czar” to oversee drought-related efforts.

Jim Evans, a spokesman for Brown, said the administration appreciates the input but did not respond to any specific proposals from the lawmakers.
“The drought poses a serious challenge to California and there’s much work to do – so the administration values ideas and proposals from the Legislature, as well as from water districts, farmers, local officials, businesses and environmentalists,” he said in a statement.

 

 

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Democrats make minimum wage pitch: $12 by ’20

Top Democrats laid down their minimum-wage marker on Capitol Hill on Thursday, setting up their party’s middle-class-focused economic message heading into the 2016 elections campaigns.

Their pitch: “$12 by ’20” — a $12 per hour federal minimum wage by 2020, which they say will give a pay raise to nearly 38 million Americans.

“This is a key piece of our effort to grow the economy from the middle out not from the top down,” said Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), a lead sponsor of new legislation to reset the minimum wage. “It would help the economy grow in a sustainable way, and it’s an important step toward expanding economic security and making sure more families can make ends meet.”

The federal minimum wage was last raised in 2007, when Congress agreed to bring it from $5.15 to $7.25 over three years. The $12 an hour wage, supporters say, will restore the purchasing power that the federal minimum wage had in the late 1960s, when the American manufacturing economy was at its height, and provide enough income to keep a family of three out of poverty. As of Jan. 1, 29 states already had minimum wages higher than the federal minimum.

But Republicans, with a few exceptions, have grown consistently move opposed to minimum wage increases in recent years, arguing that any hike would tamp down economic growth. Last year, for instance, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said he considered any minimum wage hike to be “bad policy” that would hurt minorities and others holding low-wage jobs by eliminating some of those jobs.

“When you raise the cost of something you get less of it,” he said after President Obama announced an executive order raising the minimum wage for federal contractors, adding, “The very people the president purports to help are the ones who are going to be hurt by this.”

Labor Secretary Thomas Perez, appearing with top congressional Democrats, said the wage bill introduced by Murray and Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.) in their respective houses carries “the full and enthusiastic support” of Obama, who has repeatedly called for a higher minimum wage. “This federal floor is an indispensable part of who we are as a nation,” Perez said.

“We need to honor work,” Scott said. “This means that people who do work shouldn’t have to live in poverty.”

With the GOP in control of both houses of Congress, there is little expectation that the Raise the Wage Act will be taken up in the next 20 months. But the bill will be a rallying point for Democrats on the campaign trail — not only congressional candidates, but probably for the party’s presidential hopefuls as well.

Under the new legislation, the increase from $7.25 to $12 would take place over five years, starting with an $8 wage and increasing by $1 per year through 2020. After that, the wage would be indexed to the growth in the national median wage. The bill would also gradually eliminate the lower “subminimum” wage for tipped workers.

The $12 figure falls short of the $15 minimum wage that was recently mandated in Seattle and which labor unions and activists have called for nationwide in recent months.

But Democratic leaders said Thursday that the $12 by ’20 goal was a realistic and achievable goal that they feel Democratic candidates will have no trouble embracing going into 2016 — highlighting, in Perez’s words, “remarkable differences” between the parties.

“I want to hear what the Republican presidential candidates have to say on this,” Murray said. “I’m confident that a Democratic woman running for president and anyone else who chooses to knows the importance of this issue and helping lift American workers to a better place. I am not at all confident there is one Republican presidential candidate who will state the same.”

 

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Democrats Press FCC to Unmask Koch-Backed Groups

Frustrated with the Koch Brothers and other conservative donors pouring money into attack ads, Democrats are asking a federal agency to enact tougher political disclosure rules.

But that agency isn’t the Federal Election Commission, which typically handles campaign finance issues. Instead, top Democrats in the House and Senate are pressing the Federal Communications Commission to use its power over the nation’s airwaves to make super PAC spending more transparent.

The Keeping Our Campaigns Honest Act (yes, that’s the “KOCH Act”) would direct the FCC to require that super PACs and other outside political groups disclose their major donors in TV and radio ads.

“The American people are owed a level honesty when it comes to identifying who is trying to influence their vote,” said Democratic Rep. John Yarmuth of Kentucky, one of the sponsors of the bill. “So long as these individuals are allowed to continue to spend hundreds of millions of dollars attempting to impact our elections and our democracy, they should also be required to step out into the light and let voters know just who they are.”

Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Reps. Frank Pallone, Anna Eshoo, G.K. Butterfield, and Doris Matsui are among the 16 leading Democrats backing the bill. Sen. Bill Nelson, the top Democrat on the Senate Commerce Committee, plans to introduce counterpart legislation in the upper chamber in the coming days.

The legislation is dead on arrival in the GOP-controlled Congress, but the Democrats argue that the FCC doesn’t actually need any new legal power. The bill is an attempt to pressure the agency to act on its own to expand its existing rules requiring that all TV and radio ads (commercial and political) reveal the “true identity” of their sponsors. That requirement should mean more than just a vague name, like “Americans for a Better America,” the Democrats argue—it should mean the group’s major donors.

If the FCC followed the Democrats’ wishes, it would face fierce resistance from Republicans, who argue that greater political disclosure can lead to harassment and stifle free speech.

And FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler may be reluctant to wade into the contentious debate over political disclosure—especially because the issue has already burned him in the past.

After Democrats first floated the idea of using the FCC to unmask super PAC donors in 2013, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz demanded that Wheeler, then just a nominee, swear never to try the strategy. Cruz blocked Wheeler’s nomination for two weeks until Wheeler assured him that the issue was “not a priority.”

The FCC and Cruz’s office did not respond to requests to comment on the new legislation.

The legislation is dead on arrival in the GOP-controlled Congress, but the Democrats argue that the FCC doesn’t actually need any new legal power. The bill is an attempt to pressure the agency to act on its own to expand its existing rules requiring that all TV and radio ads (commercial and political) reveal the “true identity” of their sponsors. That requirement should mean more than just a vague name, like “Americans for a Better America,” the Democrats argue—it should mean the group’s major donors.

If the FCC followed the Democrats’ wishes, it would face fierce resistance from Republicans, who argue that greater political disclosure can lead to harassment and stifle free speech.

And FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler may be reluctant to wade into the contentious debate over political disclosure—especially because the issue has already burned him in the past.

After Democrats first floated the idea of using the FCC to unmask super PAC donors in 2013, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz demanded that Wheeler, then just a nominee, swear never to try the strategy. Cruz blocked Wheeler’s nomination for two weeks until Wheeler assured him that the issue was “not a priority.”

The FCC and Cruz’s office did not respond to requests to comment on the new legislation.

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Democratic Lawmakers Push For Gay Rights Protections In State

House and Senate legislators announced bills on Wednesday that would add protections for sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression into the Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act.

The effort comes a day after a Senate committee held a hearing on a bill that backers say protects people’s religious freedoms.  Opponents say it permits discrimination against gays and others.

Republican Gov. Rick Snyder has threatened to veto the legislation unless lawmakers also extend anti-discrimination protections to gays.

Gideon D’Assandro is House Speaker Kevin Cotter’s spokesman. He says the Republican majority is not interested in revisiting the issue after it failed to pass last session.

 

 

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Sen. Patty Murray of Washington and Rep. Bobby Scott : minimum wage $12 an hour

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Congressional Democrats will begin a push on Thursday to raise the U.S. minimum wage to $12 an hour, an increase of $4.75 over where it is now.

Sen. Patty Murray of Washington and Rep. Bobby Scott of Virginia will introduce the legislation Thursday.

The U.S. minimum wage is now $7.25 an hour, an amount that hasn’t changed since 2009.

President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats have backed raising the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour. That effort, however, has sputtered in the face of resistance from Republicans.

Obama has acted by executive order to set a $10.10 minimum wage for federal contract workers.

The proposal from Murray and Scott would raise the minimum wage to $12 an hour by 2020. They estimate the legislation would raise the pay of nearly 38 million American workers. Republicans are unlikely to support the effort, especially with elections looming in 2016.

Murray is the top Democrat on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. Scott has the same role on the House Education and the Workforce panel.

In last year’s midterm elections, voters in five states — Alaska, Arkansas, Illinois, Nebraska and South Dakota — backed measures calling for raising those states’ minimum wages. And companies including Target Corp., TGT, -3.24%   Wal-Mart Stores Inc. WMT, -1.54%  and TJX Cos. TJX, -1.06%  have announced wage increases.

 

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Preparations For Papal Visit And 2016’s Democratic Convention In Full Swing in Philadelphia

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Barack Obama will be in Portland May 7 for Democratic Party fundraiser

President Barack Obama will stop in Portland on Thursday, May 7, for an evening fundraiser downtown hosted by the Democratic National Committee.

The event will be held at the Sentinel Hotel, with tickets priced from $500 to $10,000, according to Andrew Gorry, a spokesman for the Oregon Democratic Party. Proceeds will go to a campaign committee — called the 2016 White House Victory Fund — that has been set up by the DNC.

UPDATE: An invitation to the event says $500 buys a ticket to the president’s remarks.  For $5,000, the donor can have a photo taken with Obama.  For $10,000, a donor also gets to attend a small “meet and greet” with the president before the reception.  Donors can also pay $33,400 and get their name on the invitation as a co-chair.

The White House did not respond immediately to a request for comment.  There was no announcement about what other events the president might do on his Portland visit.

Obama was last in the state for a July 24, 2012, fundraiser at the Oregon Convention Center in Portland during his re-election campaign. He also stopped at a Northeast Portland diner to talk to veterans.

— Jeff Mapes

jmapes@oregonian.com

503-221-8209

@Jeffmapes

 

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Maine Democrats tout tax plan as ‘middle class economics’

SCARBOROUGH — Leading Democratic lawmakers hit the second stop on their tax plan tour Tuesday during an event designed to increase exposure to their counterproposal to Republican Gov. Paul LePage’s aggressive and controversial effort to reduce the state income tax.

The 90-minute event, attended by roughly 150 people, was held at Camp Ketcha, a nonprofit organization that would lose its property tax exemption under the governor’s tax plan. House Speaker Mark Eves, D-North Berwick, and Sen. Justin Alfond, D-Portland, did not dwell on the location of the event and instead focused on what they’re calling “A Better Deal for Maine,” a tax plan that also reduces the state’s income tax but distributes the cut away from high earners and toward Maine’s middle class.

Eves called the plan “middle class economics.” Alfond said the governor’s plan embodied his belief in supply-side economics. He said LePage believes that “giving more to the rich will make the economy better,” while Democrats believe investing in the middle class.

“This trickle-down economics philosophy is insanity, it really is,” said Eves, noting that steep income tax cuts and budget deficits in Kansas will lead to early school closings this year. “It really doesn’t work.”

The friendly crowd was largely receptive to the Democratic plan and critical of the governor’s.

Democrats, who released their plan three weeks ago, believe that a smaller income tax cut that hits middle income earners will gain more public favor than LePage’s plan, which provides a deeper tax cut but tilts most of the benefits toward higher earners. A successful pitch by the Democrats could benefit their efforts during ongoing negotiations over the governor’s tax plan and the two-year budget.

LePage, who has held more than a half-dozen town hall-style meetings since releasing his plan Jan. 9, hosted a forum Tuesday evening in Belfast. The governor has ramped up the rhetoric since Democrats released their plan and criticized Eves and Alfond for offering gimmicks instead of real relief. Last week, he transformed the routine process of gathering co-sponsors for his bill to amend the Maine Constitution and eliminate the state income tax by 2020 as a way to challenge Democrats. No Democrats co-sponsored his bill.

Democrats have also countered that LePage’s goal of eliminating the state income tax will come at a high cost to state services, including local education funding and social services programs.

The state income tax currently brings in $3 billion in annual revenue, which is nearly equal to the budget for the Department of Health and Human Services. The governor, who will complete his second term in 2019, has offered vague explanations about how state government will deal with the loss of income tax revenues. However, he has indicated that less revenue will force state government to find efficiencies that lawmakers wouldn’t otherwise contemplate.

Democrats, meanwhile, have offered a doomsday scenario if the governor has his way: Public education will be gutted, the social safety net shredded. Alfond noted that the governor’s plan will create a $300 million hole once his tax plan is fully implemented.

“We don’t believe that’s fiscally responsible,” he said.

Several of the attendees Tuesday said they were worried about potential cuts to local education funding, including Jackie Perry, a member of the Scarborough Board of Education. Other attendees said they were concerned about new taxes

The Democrats’ proposal would lower income tax rates for Mainers earning between $20,900 and $150,000 a year while doubling the Homestead Exemption property tax benefit to $20,000 for all homeowners. The plan also would maintain the state sales tax at 5.5 percent, compared with a 1 percentage point increase sought by LePage.

Democrats also want to increase municipal revenue sharing – compared with LePage’s plan to phase out the program – and rejected the governor’s proposal to collect property taxes on large nonprofit organizations.

Overall, the Democratic plan would provide $120 million in income tax relief to Mainers by fiscal year 2017, compared with the nearly $450 million envisioned in LePage’s plan. The reason for that large discrepancy is Democrats do not offer any tax relief to residents earning more than $150,000 a year, and propose smaller tax reductions than the governor for most other tax brackets.

Democrats have also touted an analysis by the Maine Center for Economic Policy, a left-leaning policy group, and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit, that compares their tax plan with the governor’s.

It showed that, on average, the Democratic plan would reduce taxes for the bottom 95 percent of Maine taxpayers. It would also reduce taxes more than the governor’s plan, on average, for the bottom 80 percent of Maine families.

For example, according to the groups’ analysis, the tax for those earning $36,000 to $57,000 a year would decrease an average of $24 under LePage’s plan and $191 under the Democrats’ plan; the tax for those earning $57,001 to $89,000 would decrease by $93 under LePage’s plan and $169 under the Democrats’ plan; and the tax for those earning $167,000 to $371,000 would decrease by $1,275 under LePage’s plan and $1,065 under the Democrats’ plan.

There is some common ground despite those differences. Both sides want to reduce the income tax and believe paying for an immediate cut can be achieved by broadening the sales tax to include additional goods and services.

Lawmakers on the budget-writing committee are working to negotiate a deal as LePage and Democrats hone their pitch to the public. Republicans control the state Senate while Democrats control the House of Representatives. Lawmakers on the budget committee are hopeful that a deal can be reached in mid-May, which would provide a small window to pass the budget before the June 17 statutory adjournment.

 

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Poll Finds Democrats’ Edge Among Young Slipping

A young man took a selfie with Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Feb. 27.Credit Jabin Botsford/The New York Times

Despite a hipster Republican millennial ad campaign, the popularity of theConservative Political Action Conference and the prevalence of Taylor Swift-animated gif press releases from prominent Republicans, young voters still predominantly back Democrats when it comes to presidential elections, according to a new poll by Harvard University. But their edge is starting to shrink.

Indeed, 55 percent of those polled, which included likely voters from ages 18 to 29, preferred a Democrat to maintain control of the White House in 2016, compared to 40 percent who wanted a Republican. But that is a far cry from the 67 percent of millennials who voted for President Obama in 2012. The I.O.P. nationwide poll was conducted online by GfK March 18 to April 1 with a random sample of 3,034 adults aged 18 to 29. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3 percentage points.

“The margin at the moment looks much more like the 2004 race than the Obama campaigns,” said John Della Volpe, the director of polling at the Institute of Politics at Harvard. “If Republicans can hold the Democrat nominee to less than 60 percent of the young vote nationally, their chances are dramatically improved for a Republican electoral college win, in my opinion.”

Perhaps most encouraging for Republicans is that the younger half of the millennial generation, those from 18 to 24, offers an opportunity to make inroads.

But when it comes to picking a favorite candidate, the young Republicans embody the millennial stereotype of anxious indecisiveness: many simply cannot choose. Thirty-six percent said they “don’t know” who would be their top choice, and no candidate or potential candidate was able to get more than 10 percent of the millennials surveyed to name them as their top choice.

Hillary Rodham Clinton is a favorite among young Democrats, with 47 percent calling her their top choice, although 28 percent also remain undecided.

Turning these voters out will be a crucial to Mrs. Clinton as she seeks to build upon the coalition that propelled Mr. Obama to two victories. A study after the 2012 electionby Tufts University found that the youth vote helped drive Mr. Obama to victory particularly in four critical swing states: Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia. Had Mr. Romney split the youth vote in those states, he could have won each of them.

The Harvard poll also asked questions regarding various issues in the news, and found sentiments that cut across party lines. Seventy-five percent of millennials surveyed believe that global warming is a fact, and 55 percent believe it is caused by “emissions from cars and industrial facilities such as power plants and factories.”

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House Democrats chart path back to majority

Congressional Democrats’ new minimum wage proposal: $12 per hour

Because $10.10 per hour is so 2013.

Congressional Democrats’ federal minimum wage proposal is getting a makeover.

On Thursday, members of the party will introduce a bill to raise the federal minimum wage to $12 per hour, a $4.75 increase over the current rate, which has gone untouched since 2009.

The so-called Raise the Wage Act, which will be introduced in the House of Representatives and Senate, will slowly boost the current $7.25 rate over the next five years, with the first hike to $8 coming in 2016 and $1 annual increases occurring through 2020. The bill’s sponsors—Senator Patty Murray, a Democrat from Washington, and Congressman Bobby Scott, a Democrat from Virginia—estimate that raising the federal minimum wage to $12 would result in increased pay for 38 million Americans.

The $12 headlining the legislation is an increase over Democrats’ 2013 proposal for a $10.10 minimum wage, which has languished in Congress. That amount appeared progressive at the time, but it’s since lost its luster as cities and states have set minimum wages that reach further into the double digits—Seattle’s $15 per hour, Massachusetts’s $11 rate—and as low-wage workers have taken up a $15 per hour rallying cry.

The new bill is unlikely to become law anytime soon, but it will refresh the minimum wage debate in Washington, D.C., as lawmakers narrow their focus on the 2016 election cycle. The issue is a winning one for Democrats; a 2014 poll showed that nearly three in four Americans—including 53% of Republicans—approved of raising the $7.25 per hour minimum wage to the $10.10 rate that Democrats had proposed.

Despite broad public support for a higher minimum wage, the $12 per hour bill is not expected to gain support among Republicans who now control Congress. House Speaker John Boehner has previously opposed a federal minimum wage hike because he considers it a job killer. He once saidthat he’d “commit suicide before [voting] on a clean minimum wage bill.” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has also said that he considers a minimum wage hike harmful to employment.

That rationale is a common refrain among Republicans, and a 2014 report from the Congressional Budget Officegave it more fire power, finding that boosting the minimum wage to $10.10 would increase the income of 16.5 million low-wage workers but cost some 500,000 jobs. At the same time, other research suggests that raising the federal minimum wage modestly would have little to no negative effects on employment. The $12 figure, which would restore the minimum wage’s purchasing power from the 1960s, is thought to land in that “modest” sweet spot.

Since 2013, when Democrats proposed their $10.10 minimum wage and President Barack Obama lent them his support, raising the federal minimum wage has taken a back seat to campaigns to raise wages in the private sector and at the city and state levels. This past November, voters approved ballot measures that increased the minimum wage in four Republican-led states. On January 1, 20 states raised their minimum wages due to recently passed legislation or annual increases. Several large corporations—Ikea ($10.76), Gap ($10), Wal-Mart ($9), Target ($9),McDonald’s ($1 more than prevailing minimum wage), T.J. Maxx and Marshalls ($9)—have implemented their own minimum wage hikes.

Excluding Seattle’s wage boost, none of the aforementioned hikes raised minimum hourly pay as high as Thursday’s proposal would. Washington, D.C.’s plan for a $11.50 minimum wage in July 2016 and Massachusetts’s $11 per hour rate, effective in 2017 have come closest to that mark.

In addition to proposing a $12 hourly rate, the new bill will also eliminate a carveout in the minimum wage law that allows restaurants and other employers to pay tipped workers far less than the federal minimum wage. The federal minimum for a tipped employee—first enacted in 1966 to address the erratic nature of working for gratuity—is $2.13 and has remained stagnant for 24 years—even longer than the “regular” federal rate.

Since the tipped minimum wage has stayed put in the last two decades and the regular federal minimum wage has increased, the former now constitutes just 29% of the latter (down from 50% over the past 20 years). In theory, the gratuity that tipped workers receive is supposed to bring their take-home pay up to at least the regular minimum wage, but under that arrangement—as it stands now—customers make up more than 70% of tipped workers’ pay while employers contribute less than a third.

 

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Southern Democrats: Can You See Revival Down The Road?

by Isaac Wright

I was honored this April to address the organizing convention of the Tennessee Democratic Party about the 2016 election cycle – the state I grew up in and the state party I worked at roughly a dozen years ago. It felt like a homecoming of sorts with 200 of the Volunteer State’s most committed Democrats. But it made me take stock of the political evolution in the South I’ve witnessed. On this trip to Spring Hill, Tennessee, just outside of Nashville, I realized that for Southern Democrats, 2016 is the time for revival. Hillary Clinton’s newly announced campaign is our opportunity.

Over the last 15 years, I have lived and worked in Tennessee, Louisiana, Washington D.C., South Carolina, Missouri, and spent the better part of a decade in Arkansas before returning to the nation’s capital.

When I left Tennessee, Democrats held majorities in both chambers of the legislature, we were one of only two Southern states with a Democratic majority in its U.S. House delegation, and we held the Governor’s office. None of that is true today.

In my time in Arkansas, my second home state, Democrats won back the Governor’s office, held all seven constitutional offices, super majorities in both legislative chambers, held both U.S. Senate seats, and a majority of the House delegation. But things have changed dramatically in the Natural State since then.

These choices made in elections have consequences.

What is the difference between Republican leadership and Democratic leadership and what they provide in the South? Under the leadership of then Arkansas Governor Mike Beebe, a Democrat, Arkansas’s public school education rose to 5th in the nation and more than 30,000 new jobs were announced with Beebe’s signature program the Quick Action Closing Fund. But today, Arkansas has fallen to 36th in the same education rankings and Tennessee and Louisiana follow at 37th and 44th in the same report. In February 2015, Tennessee ranked 45th for unemployment and Louisiana ranked 47th according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Our hope for revival — economic and educational — begins with our values.

The South I grew up in is permeated by a sense of community and responsibility to take care of our own, matched with a unique strain of populism: if given a fair playing field and the opportunity, we’ll succeed on our own merits and hard work, and then we’ll do our part to help our neighbors reach their potential, too.

That was never more real for me than in a Canon U.S. House building hearing room with then Governor Mike Beebe as he testified to a Congressional Committee on FEMA’s failed response following devastating tornadoes in Arkansas. In the face of the Bush administration’s failure, he said plainly that the administration could “lead, follow or get out of the way, but we’re going to take care of Arkansas.”

Hillary Clinton summed up this Southern spirit in her first week as a candidate. She said, “We need to build the economy of tomorrow, not yesterday. We need to strengthen families and communities because that’s where it all starts.”

She noted that, “the deck is still stacked in favor of those already at the top. There’s something wrong with that. There’s something wrong when CEOs make 300 times more than the typical worker. There’s something wrong when American workers keep getting more productive, as they have … but that productivity is not matched in their paychecks.”

Sometimes, as Southern Democrats, we need a little more of that forward-looking perspective. We’re here to help because we know the way forward.

Democrats have done it before and with Hillary Clinton we can do it again. We are the party that provided a safety net for sick people and old people. We’re the party that brought you the 40-hour work week and fights for equal pay for equal work. We’re the party that can drive our communities, our states, our region, and our country forward. Hillary Clinton sees the way forward. She has the vision, the resilience and the leadership that people — Southerners, Democrats and all Americans — are hungry for today. In fact, the efforts of the “Ready for Hillary” group signed up more than 400,000 supporters in the South.

We Southern Democrats know resilience and we have never stopped believing that we can once again move our region forward with a revival of renewed opportunity and optimism. And that revival is coming.

We can see the glimmer of our Camelot in the distance, approaching like the caravan carrying an old-fashioned tent revival. Candidates across the South and Hillary Clinton can lead this caravan with their pragmatic, hard-working values and focus on policies that give all Americans a fighting chance.

Isaac Wright is the Executive Director of Correct The Record, a strategic research and rapid response team designed to defend Hillary Clinton from right-wing attacks.

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Why Bernie Sanders Running for President Is Great News for Democrats

A one-horse race no more.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) will formally enter the Democratic presidential primary contest Thursday, as firstreported by Vermont Public Radio. He plans to make a brief statement Thursday with a campaign kickoff event to follow in the coming weeks. Sanders, an independent who caucuses with Democrats on Capitol Hill, has been publicly flirting with a decision since the end of last year.

Sanders’ arrival on the trail represents the first meaningful challenge to Hillary Clinton and her rich, barnstorming campaign. It also means the former secretary of state will be buffeted on the left by a formidable and popular liberal opponent. Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley is pursuing a similar route, but has failed to crack 1% support in the early polls and seems disinclined to criticize or question Clinton head-on.

For Democrats, Sanders’ decision to join the fight guarantees at least one fiery progressive foil will be sharing the debate stage with the frontrunner, as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), another grassroots favorite, seems content to have her say from the peanut gallery.

Why he’s running: Speaking with Bill Moyers in October, Sanders, though still undecided at the time, laid out his argument in stark terms.

“Things are getting worse,” he said. “When you look at this campaign, and you realize the enormously serious issues this country faces, right — we got a collapsing middle class. We have more wealth and income inequality today than we’ve had since the 1920s. We have all of these enormous issues. And what big money can do is put an unbelievable amount of TV and radio ads out there to deflect attention from the real issues facing the American people.”

Those “real issues” include, to wit: moving past Obamacare to single-payer health insurance funded by tax hikes on millionaires and billionaires; free college for anyone who wants to attend; a radical redrafting of trade policies he believes devalue American workers; and a new push for a constitutional amendment that would reverse the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, which Sanders blames for shifting the balance of electoral power to “billionaire families now able to spend hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars to purchase the candidates of their choice.”

Sanders is betting his popularity with liberal activists — and their willingness to take him on as the closest thing to Warren, who is not running — could goose a campaign that will come out of the gates with only about 6% support in the most recent polls. The self-described independent socialist has a strong following online and will fundraise aggressively across the grassroots progressive community.

“He knows how to do the organizing that’s required,”  Tad Devine, a Democratic strategist and likely bet to lead Sanders’ campaign, told the Washington Post last fall. “As a mass media person, I also think he would be a great television candidate. He can connect on that level.”

Against the odds: “I realize I’m not a household name,” Sanders told the Charlotte Observer in August 2014, but “I think the average American is a lot more frustrated with the establishment than a lot of people perceive. I think there’s receptivity for voices that are going to speak for a working class that is being battered.”

Sanders is going to give those voters all the liberal red meat they can eat. But more importantly for Democrats, his arrival means Clinton will have no choice but to sink her teeth in too.

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Possible Democratic presidential hopeful O’Malley saddened by Baltimore violence

(Reuters) – Former Maryland Governor and possible Democratic presidential contender Martin O’Malley said on Monday he was saddened by the situation in Baltimore, where violence erupted after the funeral of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black man who died after he was injured in police custody.

“I’m saddened that the City I love is in such pain this night,” tweeted O’Malley, who was mayor of Baltimore from 1999 to 2007 before becoming governor.

Saying that “all of us share a profound feeling of grief for Freddie Gray & his family,” O’Malley added: “We must come together as one City to transform this moment of loss & pain into a safer & more just future for all of Baltimore’s people.”

Gray’s death on April 19 reignited a public outcry over police treatment of African-Americans after the killings of unarmed black men in Missouri, New York City and elsewhere.

Rioters hurled bricks, looted businesses and set fires in Baltimore on Monday in violence that injured at least 15 police officers.

O’Malley’s successor as Maryland governor, Larry Hogan, declared a state of emergency and activated the National Guard at the request of the city of Baltimore to deal with the violence.

 

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Laura Booth joins Liberal Democrats and supports General Election candidate Lisa Smart

Stockport councillor Laura Booth reveals she’s joined the Lib Dems after she was due to stand as Labour’s parliamentary candidate for Hazel Grove but quit the party over ‘bullying’ claims

An independent councillor at the centre of a General Election campaign row has joined the Lib Dems.

Stockport councillor Laura Booth was due to stand as Labour’s parliamentary candidate for Hazel Grove but quit the party over ‘bullying’ claims last year.

Local members vehemently deny the accusations and say Coun Booth has failed to produce any evidence to back up the claims.

Coun Booth, who has sat as an independent in Stockport since leaving Labour, is now supporting Lib Dem general election candidate Lisa Smart.

As the M.E.N. revealed last week, Labour has accused the Lib Dems of ‘dirty tactics’ after an email from Coun Booth was circulated by the party to voters.

Members, including election candidate Michael Taylor, blasted her for ‘misleading’ residents, claiming her email deliberately ‘confuses’ voters into thinking a Labour councillor was backing a Lib Dem – and that the party has given up in Hazel Grove.

Mr Taylor said Coun Booth was a ‘Lib Dem in all but name’.

The Lib Dems have now revealed she has joined their party.

Coun Booth said: “Having worked closely with many local Lib Dem councillors, I have found them to be honest, hard-working people, who strive to get the best for local residents.

“I think Stockport is best placed in Lib Dem hands and therefore I feel happy to be joining them and also continuing to support Lisa Smart to become the MP for Hazel Grove.”

Ms Smart said: “I’m delighted to welcome Laura Booth to the Lib Dems.

“She is a very hardworking local councillor and is a great addition to the team.

“Everyone knows that in the Hazel Grove constituency, it is a clear fight between the Lib Dems and the Conservatives.

“More and more former Labour voters are telling me that they are voting Lib Dem this time as they know it’s the only way to stop the Conservatives in our area.”

Mr Taylor insists Labour has a chance of snatching the seat and denied former Labour supporters were being wooed by Ms Smart.

He said: “Around 40pc of the Lid Dem’s support is coming over to Labour, according to a recent YouGov poll.

“Coun Booth needs to be careful of traffic coming in the other direction.

“The Lib Dems are hemorrhaging support. This is the last desperate measure of a campaign in meltdown.”

 

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CHRISTIE SAYS HE STILL HOLDS OUT HOPE FOR BUDGET DEAL WITH DEMOCRATS

But governor hints during monthly radio show that he would once again veto ‘millionaire’s tax’ to help deal with pension shortfall

Gov. Chris Christie says that this year he’s looking to negotiate a budget deal with lawmakers – possibly managing to avoid a repeat of last year’s messy budget season.

“The fact is that we have until June 30 to pass a budget and I’m confident we’ll do that,” Christie said last night during his monthly radio show on NJ 101.5 FM.

Despite that confidence, the Republican governor and Democratic legislative leaders have a lot of work to do, given that they’re far apart right now on the size of a planned contribution into the public-employee pension system and how to pay for it.

Senate President Stephen Sweeney (D-Gloucester) and Assembly Speaker Vince Prieto (D-Hudson) have both talked openly this year about increasing the income tax rate on earnings over $1 million to bring in more revenue for a pension payment, something Christie has rejected on four different occasions since taking office in early 2010 and which he hinted he might do again.

“Listen, I’m not going to get into specifics of what they may or may not do,” Christie said last night. “If they choose to push a budget on their own, that’s their responsibility if they choose to do it that way.”

Last year, the Republican governor went against the wishes of the Democratic legislative leaders and significantly reduced a promised payment into the pension system when he used line-item veto powers to cut the $34 billion spending plan Democrats sent him at the end of June.

But in doing so, Christie spurred a lawsuit from public-worker unions, which accused him of breaking a state law calling for the bigger contribution — $2.25 billion compared to $681 million – and drew the attention of Wall Street credit-rating agencies, which later downgraded New Jersey’s credit ratings, primarily citing concerns about pension funding.

Those events all ran counter to statements Christie’s made as he explores running for president in 2016, including his claims that he works well with Democrats and that his handling of the pension system has been a marked improvement over predecessors who chronically underfunded the state’s numerous pension funds.

This year, then, it’s not surprising that Christie is indicating that he would prefer to negotiate a budget deal with legislative leaders and reach an agreement well before the new fiscal year begins on July 1.

Pension-reform laws Christie signed in 2010 and 2011 guaranteed a payment of $3.1 billion, an amount the legislative leaders want to see the governor come close to funding. But Christie has said that amount is now unaffordable, and his $33.8 billion spending plan] for the 2016 fiscal year calls for a $1.3 billion contribution.

Last night, radio-show host Eric Scott tried to press Christie on what he would do if Democrats, as they did last year send him a proposal to increase taxes on earnings over $1 million – what’s often referred to as a millionaire’s tax – if the additional revenue were used only to boost the pension contribution.

That’s the course New Jersey voters want their leaders to take this year, according to a poll released last week by Quinnipiac University.

Asked specifically whether they approve of increasing taxes on those earning over $1 million to help cover the pension contribution, 64 percent of the voters surveyed said they would support doing so, compared to 33 percent who said they wouldn’t.

Christie seemed to indicate last night that he’s readying another veto, but didn’t come right out and say so.

“I’ve vetoed a millionaire’s tax four times, so sometimes past is prologue, but we’ll see what happens,” Christie said. “I’m not going to negotiate in public on the budget.”

Neither Sweeney nor Prieto could be reached for comment last night.

If the three men do reach an agreement on a spending plan this year it would mark the third time that Democrats have been able to work with the governor on a consensus budget since he took office in early 2010. It’s something they accomplished during Christie’s first year in office and again in 2013, when Christie was up for re-election and all 120 legislative seats were also on the November ballot.

But there was no budget deal in 2011, 2012 or last year. That resulted in the budget being signed into law only after Christie exercised gubernatorial line-item veto authority, which enables him to delete language and spending from the budget, but not make any additions.

Christie’s decision to veto a millionaire’s tax hike and an associated surcharge on corporate revenue that Democrats proposed last year to help fund the larger, $2.25 billion pension contribution resulted in enactment of the current $32.8 billion budget.

Depending on how the pension litigation plays out, the governor and lawmakers may ultimately be forced to make the larger payment before the current fiscal year ends on June 30. The unions won the first round of the case in state Superior Court in February, but Christie’s administration has appealed to the state Supreme Court. Oral arguments are scheduled for May 6.

The court has also agreed to allow Sweeney and Prieto – who have sided with the unions – to join the case as a “friend of the court,” accepting a brief yesterday that they filed last week against the governor’s wishes.

Christie has also proposed a new round of public-employee benefits changes, including freezing the current pension system in favor of a new retirement plan with features of a 401(k). But last week officials from the New Jersey Education Association pulled out of talks with a panel of experts Christie appointed last year to review the affordability of employee benefits, striking a blow to his hopes for new reforms.

He acknowledged during the radio show last night that there’s been “no progress” when it comes to his broader reform plan, which also includes a proposal to offer employees less-generous healthcare coverage.

“The fact is that they never got anywhere near coming to any final negotiations on this,” Christie said.

 

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Fallout From Corinthian Collapse

WASHINGTON — The implosion of Corinthian Colleges over the past 10 months was an unprecedented challenge for the U.S. Department of Education. But navigating the politics left in the wake of the company’s collapse may prove even trickier.

As Corinthian shut down its remaining campuses on Monday, the Education Department was again defending its role in dismantling the for-profit college chain and facing renewed pressure from congressional Democrats to relieve the federal loans of students who attended Corinthian.

The sudden closure of those campuses, which displaced approximately 16,000 students, could cost taxpayers as much as $214 million, according to a department official, who declined to be named. That figure represents the maximum possible hit to federal coffers if every student at the campuses shuttered Monday were to request a discharge of their federal loans based on Corinthian’s closure.

The actual amount of debt canceled is likely to be less, however, as students who continue their studies elsewhere would not be eligible for the closed-school discharge.

The department official said that the potential cost to the federal government of Corinthian’s closure could have been higher if it weren’t for the department’s “rapid and strong action to ensure an orderly wind-down of Corinthian’s business.”

Had Corinthian collapsed last fall before the department brokered the sale of most of the company’s U.S. campuses to the ECMC Group, the official said, taxpayers would have faced a liability of $639 million in possible loan discharges.

Corinthian had more than 72,000 students last summer when the department-imposed restrictions on its access to federal aid caused a liquidity crisis at the company. Approximately 16,000 students had been enrolled this week, according to Corinthian.

“This is a consequence of the orderly wind-down,” the department official said Monday.

Intensifying Calls for Debt Relief

Some Democrats on Capitol Hill on Monday, meanwhile, sought to step up pressure on the Education Department to forgive the federal loans of students who attended Corinthian Colleges and some other for-profit institutions.

Six Democrats sent a letter to the Education Department and the four companies it hires to collect loans, calling on the government and the servicers to immediately identify and notify students who may qualify for federal loan discharges or cancellations.

The lawmakers, along with student activists and some state attorneys general, have been pushing the Education Department to set up a clear process for loan borrowers to file claims to have their loans canceled because of their college’s misconduct.

Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who has been leading that charge, slammed the Education Department Monday for not setting up a process for handling those claims, known as “defense to repayment” claims.

“These borrowers — people who were cheated and people who have been buried in debt — just keep on paying and the government keeps on collecting,” she said at forum on student loan debt at Howard University. “This is wrong.”

The department “has all the information it needs to simply discharge the loans” of Corinthian students, Warren said. “But the department isn’t doing that.”

“We’re pushing them hard,” she told reporters after the event. She said that she had “more than once” discussed the issue directly with Education Secretary Arne Duncan.

Duncan said last week that the department was still deciding how to handle the defense to repayment claims, adding that “everything’s on the table.”

The department plans to provide new information on such during the first week of May, a department official said in an email on Monday.

 

 

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The Democrats are making a stand on currency manipulation — and it’s a really good idea

It’s down to the wire, but Democrats appear to finally be getting serious about making sure the Trans-Pacific Partnership deal — a massive trade pact between the U.S. and 11 other Pacific Rim nations — is worker-friendly. And if it isn’t, it may not happen at all.

At issue is what’s called trade promotion authority — or “fast track” authority — which would give the president the ability to negotiate trade deals with other countries with some minimal criteria from Congress. Then the deal would be approved or rejected by the legislature in a simple up-or-down vote.

On Wednesday, Nancy Pelosi, the leader of the Democrats in the House,threw her weight behind an alternative version of fast track authority that comes with more serious strings: It would create an advisory board to ensure the White House has met certain criteria in the TPP deal, including labor and environmental protections.

But most importantly, the Democrats’ alternative would require the TPP to include rules against currency manipulation by the member countries.

Currency manipulation is when governments engage in policies that drive down the value of their currency relative to other currencies. And lately, “other currencies” has usually meant the U.S. dollar. This makes our exports more expensive, and their imports cheaper, which drives up the U.S. trade deficit.

In practical terms, this means that demand, which could be staying in the U.S. economy and creating jobs, is instead leaving to create jobs in other countries’ economies. At the moment, the trade deficit is somewhere in the vicinity of $500 billion, which amounts to about 3 percent of the economy just getting sucked up into the ether every year. That costs American jobs. But because the jobs lost are disproportionately in exporting industries like manufacturing — and because a high-value dollar helps low-wage employers, like Walmart, that have invested in low-cost foreign supply chains — the trade deficit also drives down wages, speeding up the “hourglass” effect, in which our economy produces lots of high-paying and low-paying jobs, but fewer and fewer middle-income jobs.

The latest work on the U.S. trade deficit, by Fred Bergsten and Joseph Gagnon, suggests currency manipulation could account for anywhere between $200 billion to $500 billion of the trade deficit — a little less than half, to nearly all of it.

With those numbers, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) projected that eliminating currency manipulation could create anywhere from 2.3 million to 5.8 million American jobs. In February of 2014, EPI estimated that job creation would close one-third to three-fourths of the hole blown in the American economy by the 2008 collapse. (It might close it even further now, given the strong job growth we saw in the past year.) Furthermore, those job gains would be spread across every state and they would reduce the federal budget deficit, since the government would need to borrow less to make up the lost demand. In fact, in terms of impact on the economy, the importance of the trade deficit swamps the federal government’s budget deficit.

Economists who support putting currency manipulation rules in the TPP also think there’s a pretty simple definition that teases out the manipulation from other legitimate policies that also happen to affect currency values. “That is the use of domestic government or government-controlled resources to buy assets denominated in foreign currencies,” said Robert Scott, an economist with EPI. “If you look at the foreign currency holdings of the Federal Reserve, they’re trivial — a few tens of billions of dollars. Officially, in the Japanese central bank, they’re about $1.4 trillion. So that’s a bright line.”

For example, when the U.S. Federal Reserve engaged in quantitative easing to try to boost the economy, it mainly did it by buying up assets denominated in our own currency. That would pass muster under this definition, even though the policy did put downward pressure on the U.S. dollar. Had the Fed done it by buying up assets in foreign currencies, that would’ve been another matter.

Jared Bernstein, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, has also endorsed this approach, and pointed to Bergsten’s suggestion that the line be drawn at holding enough assets in a foreign currency to cover one year’s worth of external liabilities, and no more. The idea is that foreign governments would need to divest holdings to get below that threshold, and if they got above it again, certain penalties would hit: taxes, fines, cancelation of certain trade privileges, or even allowing reciprocal currency intervention by other countries.

For the moment, about 20 countries, including China, have been buying up assets in foreign currencies at a rate of about $1 trillion per year, using their central banks and other institutions like government-controlled wealth and pension funds.

Administration officials and other observers seem pretty sure that demanding rules on currency manipulation would kill the TPP. But the deal is probably among the last opportunities to set the rules of the road for international trade; China isn’t part of the TPP discussions, but the deal will definitely set the terrain for future negotiations. So risking the whole deal to force a reckoning on currency manipulation, as well as otherprotections for workers, makes sense — especially given that powerful corporations will make out like bandits under the TPP’s likely expansionof intellectual property law.

Along with Pelosi, other top Democrats in the House and Senate — including Sens. Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer — are on record opposing the current approach to the TPP and fast track authority. That not only puts them at odds with mainstream Republicans, but with a massivelobbying blitz by the Obama administration as well.

The White House’s preferred version of fast track authority has made it through several committees, but it still needs its final vote in both the House and the Senate. With a fair number of Tea Party Republicans also in revolt, the White House and its GOP allies will need all the votes they can muster.

If Pelosi and the other Democrats hold firm, they could yet force a set of reformed fast track and TPP agreements on their terms.

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Democrats offer Connecticut budget that replenishes many Malloy cuts, changes spending cap

HARTFORD, Conn. –  Leaders of the Democratic-controlled budget-writing committee have crafted a two-year, $40.5 billion spending plan for Connecticut that would restore many of the social service and health care cuts proposed by Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and decried by advocates as draconian.

Rep. Toni Walker, D-New Haven, co-chairman of the Appropriations Committee, said state funding is “probably about 90 percent back to normal” for many of those programs.

“The main thing is to maintain the services,” she said. “They’re not going to be at the vibrance that they were last year, but they’re still there and what we have to do is figure out how we maintain them without costing people services.”

Members of the Appropriations Committee were scheduled to vote Monday afternoon on the plan, which spends $605 million more than Malloy’s budget over two years in the General Fund, the state’s main spending account. The Finance Revenue and Bonding Committee has until May 1 to vote on a corresponding revenue package. Ultimately, both plans will become the basis for negotiations between the legislature and the Democratic governor on a final budget agreement.

The legislative Democrats’ proposed spending plan would come in well below the state’s constitutional spending cap. But that’s mostly because of a proposed change in the spending cap’s rules. Under their proposal, unfunded pension liabilities for state employees, teachers and judges would no longer be counted toward the overall spending figure.

If approved, it would mark the second change in recent years in how the cap is interpreted.

In 2013, Malloy and the Democratic-controlled General Assembly agreed to shift about $6 billion in mostly health care spending out from under the spending cap, which was imposed in 1991 to place limits on state spending following passage of a personal state income tax. Two years ago, the legislature’s minority Republicans criticized moving the Medicaid spending off-budget, a debate that could be repeated this year even though the GOP also wants to replenish many of Malloy’s cuts.

The Democrats’ spending plan replenishes funding for health care coverage for certain poor adults, including pregnant women. It also restores the state’s Medicaid reimbursement rate to hospitals and $18 million of Malloy’s proposed $25 million in cuts in grants to mental health providers. But Sen. Beth Bye, D-West Hartford, the other Appropriations Committee co-chair, said there was not enough money to provide a cost-of-living increase to nonprofit social service agencies — an issue she said could be revisited later this session.

The budget proposal also restores funding for libraries, state parks, youth service bureaus, regional tourism districts and other initiatives. However, it does not expand seats in charter schools, as Malloy had propsed. Lawmakers also trimmed funding for Malloy’s proposed Second Chance Society initiative, which includes programs to help offenders transition back into society.

Many of the cuts restored fully or partially in the Democrats’ budget were also restored in the budget proposal offered Friday by the legislature’s Republicans. The GOP has called for givebacks from state employees to help cover the cost, including a one-year hiring freeze.

“The core function of government is to protect the most vulnerable. The costs of fundamental programs should not be shouldered on the backs of those who can least afford it and those who already face many challenges,” said Senate Minority Leader Len Fasano, R-North Haven. “We need to work collaboratively to prioritize people over politics.”

 

 

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Michigan Democrats introduce bill package to mandate equal pay among genders

Michigan Democrats introduced a bill package that, if approved, would mandate equal pay among genders in the state.

State Sen. Rebekah Warren, D-Ann Arbor, recently re-introduced two bills that would remedy the pay inequity gap between women and men and would prohibit wage discrimination based on gender.

“Study after study has proven that women have known for decades — that we are paid less than men for the same work,”Warren said in a statement. “What is most troubling though is that we have seen very little movement to close the gap in the last 10 years.”

If the bill is approved, the employee could request the employer to disclose wage information on similarly situated employees covering a period of three years prior to the request.

The employer would not only have to disclose the wage information to the employee within 30 days of requested but will also have to include the sex and seniority of the employees who are within the same job classification as the employee requesting the information.

The second bill introduced by Warren, Senate Bill 273, if approved, will prohibit an employer to “refuse or fail to provide equal compensation for work of comparable value in terms of the composite skill, responsibility, effort, education or training, and working conditions” based on race, color, national origin, age, sex, height, weight or marital status.

Both bills were referred to the committee on government operations.

“(Women) are buying our groceries, paying our mortgages and supporting our families, all on paychecks that are almost a quarter smaller than our male counterparts,” Warren said in a statement. “We simply cannot afford to wait that long — literally or figuratively.”

According to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, women in Michigan earn 77.1 cents for every dollar a man earns — at the current rate, women will not receive equal pay until 2086.

In order to ensure equal pay, state Sen. Curtis Hertel, D-East Lansing, introduced a bill that would create the Commission on Pay Equity — the commission would be created in the Department of Civil Rights.

Hertel’s bill was referred to the committee on commerce.

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North Dakota Democrats hire Robert Haider as new director

BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) – North Dakota’s Democratic Party has hired Burlington native Robert Haider as its new executive director.

The party says it approved Haider’s hiring at a meeting in Bismarck on Saturday.

Haider will succeed Chad Oban, who has served as executive director since December 2012. Haider will start work on May 1.

Haider is a graduate of the University of North Dakota’s law school.

He managed Ryan Taylor’s unsuccessful campaign for agriculture commissioner last year. He also managed Corey Mock’s failed bid for secretary of state in 2010.

Haider has run successful legislative campaigns for Rep. Mock, Rep. Kylie Oversen and Sen. Mac Schneider.

 

 

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