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Greta Thunberg, TIME’s Person of the Year, has a message for Gov. Baker & Speaker DeLeo

December 12, 2019 By Charley on the MTA 4 Comments

Greta Thunberg is TIME’s Person if the Year. It’s a lovingly written profile, which portrays climate as an immediate, human crisis — indeed, a crisis of the human heart, and one that falls disproportionately on the young — who are speaking up in their own physical self-defense. It is compelling reading.

There’s an old lefty saw, reductionist but useful: “Think Globally/Act Locally”. So I want to bring this back to Massachusetts. Our legislature and Governor are sitting on a pile of bills which at this rate will never see the light of day, much less pass — most especially H.2836, to move us to 100% renewable energy.

Ms. Thunberg’s remarks to the UN are extremely apt for our so-called leaders, right here in our own State House. Speaker DeLeo, Governor Baker — all members of our legislature: This is you. She’s talking to you.

Her speeches often go straight to the gut. “You say you love your children above all else,” she said in her first big address at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Poland last December. “And yet you are stealing their future in front of their very eyes.”

… In September, speaking to heads of state during the U.N. General Assembly, Thunberg pulled no punches: “We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth,” she said. “How dare you.”

In Massachusetts, our leaders tell us fairy tales of “combo platter” energy policy; of the necessity for gas infrastructure buildout — and our helplessness to resist it; that the automobile is king, and we can’t discourage driving via congestion pricing (thereby improving the alternatives); that modest, tinkering investments in transit are adequate; that the T is “where we need it to be”; that spending a fraction of 1% of the state’s budget on climate resiliency is all our legislature can manage this term.

I gladly concede that we have contracted for wind power, though as yet we have no results. It is good that our Governor is pursuing a multi-state initiative to drive down transportation emissions. But he gives with one hand (TCI) and takes with the other (Weymouth gas compressor). Our Speaker uses his welcome GreenWorks program as an excuse to do nothing else this term, when action on all fronts is both necessary and available, in the form of bills already written and ready to go.

Our leaders are not doing enough, fast enough. They still offer fairy tales, self-deception, and a betrayal of our children. Right here in Massachusetts.

Prove me wrong.

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The Squirrely Arguments Against Impeachment

December 11, 2019 By terrymcginty 1 Comment

My favorite arguments against impeachment:

1. The Dems can’t defeat Trump in 2020 so they have to resort to impeachment. REALITY: All of the leading Democrats currently lead Trump by nearly TEN POINTS.

2. There is no direct evidence against Trump; it’s all hearsay. REALITY: There are multiple testimonies of direct evidence witnesses from Sondland to Vindman and many others. In addition, there are multiple corroborating and contemporaneous documents that also are direct evidence. Finally, this argument is absurd, since Trump confessed publicly (legally, an ‘admission’), and also released the call notes, which show an obvious act of extortion.

3. Trump was just concerned about corruption in Ukraine. REALITY: Trump showed no interest in corruption in Ukraine in 2017-18, but of all countries and people on earth, it’s a coincidence that he happened to focus on his domestic political opponent. ABSURD. Finally, Trump and Giuliani are aligned with the forces in Ukraine that are aligned with Russia and are corrupt. Anyone with any knowledge of the region knows this. Read More…

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No One is a Progressive Angel, So Let’s Stop Pretending

December 11, 2019 By BKay 48 Comments

In an ideal world, people evolve and grow. Our actions are based on the historical period and political climate in which we live, and I don’t think we should punish politicians who take in new data, and change their minds. But hypocrisy is among the characteristics I find most loathsome, and when we hold ourselves out to a be a paragon of virtue (or, progressive ideals), while failing to mention our own limitations, it irks me no end. That is why I’m left shaking my head at the fundraising duo of Schumer and Markey.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is scheduled to be in Boston on Thursday to help Senator Ed Markey at a fundraising event. On the surface I don’t like it – just as many progressives were up in arms about the Democratic Party allegedly favoring Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders in the 2016 Presidential Primary, I don’t like to see party leadership put their thumb on the scale like that. But when I paused to consider their histories, it made me even more unhappy.

In 1994, then-Representative Ed Markey voted for the now-infamous Crime Bill. Worse yet, then-Representative Chuck Schumer championed it. He fought for it. As Chairman of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Criminal Justice, Chuck Schumer wrangled Republicans and liberal Democrats alike to get the 1994 Crime Bill passed. Democrats at the time were accused of “rushing to the right” on crime. Then-called “liberal Democrats” (aka “progressives”) felt that the heavy emphasis on punishment was a problem. The ACLU was appropriately outraged at the implications for communities of color and social justice. This was the law that created the 3-strike rule (mandating life imprisonment for federal crimes), expanded the number of crimes punishable by death from 2 to more than 60, elevated drug-related crimes to warrant more severe punishments, increased funding to build more prisons by billions of dollars, and eliminated higher education for incarcerated individuals, among other things. It fueled mass incarceration in this country, an issue most affecting communities of color (and black men, in particular). At the time, Chuck Schumer said, “Those on the left are wringing their hands, but they’re going to wind up voting for the bill.” (In fairness, he also noted that Republicans were unhappy, for the opposite reason.)

Then-Representative Schumer was right – the progressive (then-“liberal”) wing of the party voted for it, including the full MA delegation. This is not an issue specific to only Senator Schumer or Markey. But it is an issue that warrants more careful shading of Senator Markey’s progressive record.  It is a reason for him to speak out about it now. And it is a reason to stop pretending that Senator Markey is a progressive angel, who is alone in his ability to deliver on progressive ideals. I’d like to hear a lot more (anything?) from Senator Markey on this issue, the sooner the better.

 

Worth reading on the topic:

https://www.aclu.org/blog/smart-justice/mass-incarceration/how-1994-crime-bill-fed-mass-incarceration-crisis

https://www.nytimes.com/1998/09/25/nyregion/schumer-and-d-amato-try-to-out-tough-each-other-on-crime.html

Full disclosure: I am a volunteer for Joe Kennedy and have voted for Ed Markey.

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Biden’s Foreign Policy Experience: An Unexpected Trump Card For 2020

December 10, 2019 By terrymcginty 43 Comments

With sycophantic senators like Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, and Senator Richard Burr (disgracefully) of North Carolina, running around parroting Russian propaganda about Ukraine interfering in the American election of 2016 – an absurd theory that has been debunked repeatedly by our own intelligence agencies – it is more apparent than ever that the Democrats are going to be far more electable if they nominate Joe Biden.

I put my own keister on the line spending over a year in Central Asia working for the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs on elections, civil society, media, and women’s programs, as well as conducting later trainings in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Colombia.

Among other challenges in Central Asia, an Al-Qaeda allied group was leafleting my street in Dushanbe regularly. Much more importantly, President Putin was already putting pressure on the various Central Asian presidents to crack down on any foreign organizations that had been invited in by the small Central Asian governments if they were running any kind of trainings explaining how government worked in the West. The only candidate who would be fully prepared to understand such an experience and run US foreign policy on his first day is Joe Biden.

Unlike virtually all of the other Democrats running, Joe Biden has deep first-hand experience and knowledge about not only the modern foreign policy of the United States, but also of the historical antecedents that led to it.

For many years, Joe Biden was an innovative thinker in foreign policy matters, not at all the rubber stamp for US foreign intervention that some on the left caricature him as.

For example, while others were just advocating withdrawal from Iraq – which ultimately resulted in the emergence of ISIS/Daesh – by contrast Joe Biden was trying to find ways to strengthen local governments in Iraq such as increasing federalism so that local Sunni chieftains in Anbar province would have more of a say in what happened to the oil underneath their tribal lands, thereby giving them a natural incentive to oppose ISIS.

Most of the other candidates who would stand on a debate stage with Donald Trump just don’t have that depth of experience in many parts of the world beyond the Middle East, and it will show.

So beyond the importance of uniting the Democratic Party and bringing together the African-American community with white liberals and progressives, as well as working class Democrats and independents of all races, the unexpected emerging primacy of foreign policy is just one more reason why we need Joe Biden, a perennially underestimated candidate, to defeat Donald Trump in 2020.

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Once again, Democrats pull their punches

December 10, 2019 By SomervilleTom 12 Comments

I am disgusted by my party this morning.

After years of investigation and mountains of compelling evidence, the Democrats offer just two articles of impeachment, one about Ukraine and the other about obstruction. Does anybody anywhere believe that ANY GOP senators will care even a little bit about the latter?

No mention of emoluments. No mention of ANYTHING from the Mueller report or investigation.

Most significantly to me, no mention of the enormous stinking carcass of a dead and rotting elephant in the room — the pervasive pattern of doing Vladimir Putin’s bidding on virtually EVERY decision made by this administration and enthusiastically supported by its GOP collaborators. We betrayed South Korea. We betrayed the Kurds. We are dismantling NATO. This week, we learn that this administration is dismantling the WTO, so that it can continue to destroy the economy of the west with self-destructive trade wars. Who benefits? Vladimir Putin. Who loses? Each and every one of us.

What happened to elected officials who actually care about national security? What happened to an electorate who valued law and order? How much more obvious does betrayal have to be?

We are watching in slow motion as the great American experiment crashes and burns. Our government, judicial and political systems are proving themselves utterly powerless to stop or slow this Russian takeover of our government.

The silence of the Democrats on the multitude of presidential abuses means that the constraints that kept the power of the presidency in check have been removed. The treason, bribery, high crimes and misdemeanors of Donald Trump, his administration, and the GOP will be viewed as normal and acceptable behavior from here on. How can ANY Democrat object to any future abuses those abuses aren’t even mentioned in the impeachment articles?

This is a tragic day for America.

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Warren and Buttigieg made money as corporate consultants. So what.

December 9, 2019 By Andrei Radulescu-Banu 3 Comments

The two front runners in the Dem primary asked each other to be forthcoming about work they did as corporate consultants many years ago.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/memo-in-1990s-pollution-case-shows-elizabeth-warren-in-action-as-corporate-consultant/2019/12/09/6a6fade0-1a9b-11ea-b4c1-fd0d91b60d9e_story.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/buttigieg-releases-summary-of-his-work-for-consulting-firm-mckinsey/2019/12/06/d1f10bd6-1897-11ea-a659-7d69641c6ff7_story.html

“…On this occasion, Warren was not arguing on behalf of vulnerable families, nor was she offering the sort of stinging rebuke of corporate greed that would later define her political career. Rather, Warren was representing a large development company that was trying to avoid having to clean up a toxic waste site.

“The memo, which Warren wrote in 1996, used legalistic and often dense language to argue that businesses faced the “risk of the unknown” from a growing threat of lawsuits, and that defended the company’s right to “maximize its returns to its unpaid creditors and to survive as an employer.”

And from Pete Buttigieg:

“I was assigned to months-long stints on ‘teams’ of typically three or four people working on a study for a client. The bulk of my work on these teams consisted of doing mathematical analysis, conducting research, and preparing presentations […] I never worked on a project inconsistent with my values, and if asked to do so, I would have left the firm rather than participate.”

This was a purity test Buttigieg and Warren could have done without. Obviously, with these revelations, nothing changes – not even the disdain felt, in some far corners of the party, for the evils of corporatism.

Democrats are at their best when they protect, preserve and promote the social safety net. Many struggling people, forced to work multiple part time jobs to barely make ends meet, however, need a strong economy and seek opportunities for good jobs.

Where are these jobs? Sometimes at small businesses, and, yes, sometimes, at corporations.

This spat between Warren and Buttigieg has achieved nothing. It hurt both candidates, and projected an anti-business image that hands Republicans ammunition for the general election.

Donald Trump is the most corrupt president in modern history, but he will not run boasting how corrupt he is. Trump will instead run on the strength of the economy, and will promise jobs.

The task of Warren and Buttigieg, in this election, whoever wins, is not just to show who is more immaculate. It is to demonstrate voters will be better off, economically, with a Democrat in the White House.

“It’s the economy, stupid” was Bill Clinton’s mantra. That, of course, was expressed at a time when the economy was hurting in George H. W. Bush’s first term.

We often think of elections as being high minded affairs, where philosophical arguments have primacy. What if, instead, politics is but a thin veneer on top of the real driver -which are the economic interests.

 

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More Posts from this Category

#BigTimeBaker doesn’t have time for you

December 8, 2019 By Charley on the MTA Leave a Comment

Friday marked another chapter of the Climate Strike: Hundreds of young folks went to the State House and camped outside the Governor's office to call for 100% renewable energy and stepped-up efforts to slash greenhouse emissions. The … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Editor

Health experts blast gas in NEJM

December 8, 2019 By Charley on the MTA Leave a Comment

I saw this "Perspective" piece in the New England Journal of Medicine ... and I thought I recognized one of the authors' names. Dr. Philip Landrigan is the Director of the Global Health program at Harvard's School of Public Health; but he's … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Editor

Joe Biden Doesn’t Have Enough Ethics to Sell Stamps

December 7, 2019 By bob-gardner 19 Comments

When I worked at the post office they sometimes showed us training films. I remember one they showed about ethics. The film showed a little skit with a window clerk and a customer, who clearly knew each other and were friendly. The … [Read more...]

Filed Under: User

Warren takes on Buttigieg (video)

December 7, 2019 By pogo 13 Comments

Today in Rochester, NH https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dy_WgwYJy64 … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Editor, User

Shift away from caucuses gives advantage to Biden, Bloomberg

December 7, 2019 By Andrei Radulescu-Banu Leave a Comment

The big money, big name recognition candidates do better in primary elections than in caucuses. When Obama ran against Clinton 12 years ago, Clinton tended to beat him in primary election states, and Obama did better in caucuses. But back … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Editor, User

More Media Mediocrity

December 5, 2019 By terrymcginty 15 Comments

… [Read more...]

Filed Under: User

“Don’t mess with me” Pelosi leads by example

December 5, 2019 By fredrichlariccia 39 Comments

Today, Speaker Nancy Pelosi gave a 5-minute crash course in how to defeat fascist Trumpism. Watch her take down a Foxy who asked her if she hated Trump? She said :  "I don't hate anyone.  I pray for Trump." Hey, world.  Follow the … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Editor, User

Protest at Weymouth Compressor site — another one today

December 5, 2019 By Charley on the MTA 2 Comments

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." - Margaret Mead Your lips to God's ears, Ms. Mead. This was from two days ago. Listen to the wise words … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Editor

Kerry endorses Biden

December 5, 2019 By fredrichlariccia 32 Comments

Today, former Secretary of State and Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, endorsed Joe Biden for president :  "There's never been a time more urgent for leadership at home that can work for the middle class and tackle existential issues … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Editor, User

Of traffic, the MBTA, and Baker’s helplessness

December 4, 2019 By Charley on the MTA 3 Comments

There's a pattern with the Baker administration: They refuse to solve problems. They claim their hands are tied; proposed solutions just won't work; and we'll just have to muddle along at their own approved pace. They do just enough to look … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Editor

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  • Biden's Foreign Policy Experience: An Unexpected Trump Card For 2020 (3)
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Attend a DNC Caucus Training Near You!

December 13, 2019 By Christopher Leave a Comment

The Squirrely Arguments Against Impeachment

December 11, 2019 By terrymcginty 1 Comment

My “I know Joe” new button idea

December 11, 2019 By fredrichlariccia Leave a Comment

No One is a Progressive Angel, So Let’s Stop Pretending

December 11, 2019 By BKay 48 Comments

Biden’s Foreign Policy Experience: An Unexpected Trump Card For 2020

December 10, 2019 By terrymcginty 43 Comments

Once again, Democrats pull their punches

December 10, 2019 By SomervilleTom 12 Comments

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Reality-based commentary. Necessary but not sufficient. Doing the other things. Massachusetts and beyond.

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bluemassgroupBlue Mass Group@bluemassgroup·
12h

Did you sign it? Sign it!

Maura Healey@MassAGO

New England’s energy system is more expensive and more polluting than it should be.

My office represents electricity users like you. We need to tell ISO New England to prioritize clean energy. Sign the petition: http://bit.ly/isopetition

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JoeCurtatoneJoseph A. Curtatone@JoeCurtatone·
20h

Clean energy is here right now & it's affordable. I know because our city is buying it. We’re not asking for new fossil fuels anymore than we’re asking for new whale oil. #mapoli @GreentownLabs @FRRACS_MA @EnvironmentMA

https://commonwealthmagazine.org/opinion/save-the-planet-and-money-at-the-same-time/

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MassAGOMaura Healey@MassAGO·
12 Dec

New England’s energy system is more expensive and more polluting than it should be.

My office represents electricity users like you. We need to tell ISO New England to prioritize clean energy. Sign the petition: http://bit.ly/isopetition

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johntehanJohn Tehan@johntehan·
20h

I’m calling on @HouseDemocrats and @SenateGOP to make a deal on #cleanenergy tax policy this year. We need to #DefendTheITC to reduce emissions, create American jobs, and support local communities. Learn more: http://seia.org/DefendTheITC

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FRRACS_MAFRRACS@FRRACS_MA·
20h

If you smell strong odors at or near the site, see workers with no protective gear, or witness trucks leaving w/ muddy tires, call and alert the following numbers:

Weymouth Mayor's Office: (781) 340-5012
MassDEP Emergency Hotline: (888) 304-1133
Enbridge Hotline: (888) 331-6553

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