Are Rural Districts Swinging Back Towards An FDR Kind Of Democratic-Socialism?

Foolishly, the DCCC is trying to push freshman members from "Trump districts" rightward. These are mostly rural districts and the DCCC-- as usual-- is making a big mistake. Two such districts are in Iowa-- IA-01, whose population is 47.7% rural and IA-03, whose population is 21.1% rural. Both Abby Finkenauer in the former, and Cindy Axne in the latter, would do well to ignore the DCCC and pay attention instead to fellow Iowan Austin Frerick, director of special projects at the Open Markets Institute and author of To Revive Rural America, We Must Fix Our Broken Food System at the American Conservative last month. "America’s agricultural system," he wrote, "has become extractive, and more and more of the profits are flowing to a few." A senior official at the Iowa Farm Bureau, the nation’s largest agricultural organization, recently told him that most rural communities will soon disappear. Frerick wrote that "Even though the organization’s nominal mission is to help 'farm families prosper and improve their quality of life,' the official seemed accepting of this fate, even a bit happy about it. Either way, he told me that nothing could be done."

The thing is, the senior official isn’t wrong-- the outlook for rural communities is grim. There are fewer jobs than there were a generation ago and the ones that remain pay lower and lower wages. America’s agricultural system is predicated on an extractive model, where more and more of the profits flow to a few. If current trends continue, rural America will soon be owned by a handful of families and corporations who will run their empires remotely with driverless tractors and poorly paid staff.

This decline occurred as a result of deliberate policy decisions made by politicians from both parties who favor multinational corporations at the expense of rural communities. But contrary to what the senior official at the Iowa Farm Bureau said, rural America can be revived. It has a future, but only if we challenge who holds power in the current system and create an agricultural system that rewards meaningful work.

Economic power is more concentrated today than at any other point in American history, and nowhere is this power more apparent than in agriculture. The American food supply chain-- from the seeds we plant to the peanut butter in our neighborhood grocery stores-- is concentrated in the hands of a few multinational corporations.

This concentrated power comes at the expense of farmers and workers. Because the supply, processing, distribution, and retail networks are controlled by only a handful of firms, farmers face higher costs for their inputs and lower prices for their goods. In the 1980s, 37 cents out of every dollar went back to the farmer. Today, farmers take home less than 15 cents on every dollar. This new economic reality forces farmers to survive on volume, creating a system where only the largest farms can make a living.

The nation’s meatpacking industry is now more concentrated than when Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle more than a century ago. Four companies, two of which are foreign-owned, now slaughter 52 percent of all meat consumed in the United States, more than twice the market share that the four largest companies held in 2002.



As journalist Christopher Leonard documents in The Meat Racket: The Secret Takeover of America’s Food Business, the current system closely resembles sharecropping. Large corporations like Tyson Foods will only slaughter a farmer’s chickens if he has an exclusive contract with the company. In many rural communities, a farmer raising animals for slaughter has the “choice” of selling to only one slaughterhouse. And because Tyson is often the only buyer in town, it calls the shots, dictating everything from the facilities a farmer builds on her farm, to the feed she uses, to the price the farmer receives for full-grown chickens. The farmer has very little power in this transaction, and this asymmetry is a key factor in why 71 percent of American chicken farmers live below the poverty line.

For slaughterhouse workers, industry concentration has contributed to wage stagnation over the course of the past few decades. Workers at a Hormel slaughterhouse in Austin, Minnesota, made $10.69 per hour in 1985, equal to $25.04 in 2018 when adjusted for inflation. But 33 years later, the average slaughterhouse worker makes less than $3 more. Meanwhile, Wan Long, the chairman and CEO of WH Group-- the holding company of Smithfield Foods-- made $291 million in 2017, the equivalent annual wages of 10,457 slaughterhouse workers.

Because farmers and other rural workers make less money, they also spend less money within their communities, creating a ripple effect that negatively impacts other local businesses. As a result, rural communities are hollowing out. Young people are leaving in droves, and the folks left behind are struggling to make ends meet.

The recovery from the Great Recession was an urban phenomenon. If rural communities had matched urban employment growth trends, they would have added more than 850,000 new jobs. But according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, rural areas still have not even recovered the jobs they lost in the recession-- and many never will.

A handful of trends reflect this loss of opportunity and the decline in living conditions. Medicaid now pays for more than half of the births at rural hospitals. Suicide rates are higher in rural America than in urban America-- and the gap is growing. The overall violent crime rate in Iowa rose by only 3 percent between 2006 and 2016, but grew by 50 percent in communities with fewer than 10,000 residents. The opioid epidemic thrives from the desperation created by these economic circumstances. Thus, it is little surprise that rural communities simmer with a resentment that contributed to the election of Donald Trump.

...These faceless multinational corporations strip workers of their dignity and respect, a fact that is often lost in recent discussions about economic consolidation. This dynamic is not easily quantifiable, but it’s easy to recognize when you ask workers what they think of their employers. Look no further than a candy company in Creston, Iowa, that fired more than 250 workers days before Christmas last year after being bought out. To the company, these workers were merely seen as a number on some faraway excel spreadsheet-- not as parents who had to go home on Christmas without jobs.

Collin Peterson

Every year brings a new bestselling book that documents how broken the American food system is. The current Democratic Party platform mentions “agriculture” and “food” six times each; the Republican Party mentions them only a few times more. But neither party recommends substantive changes to the current system. The recently passed Farm Bill, which received significant support from both parties in December, largely maintains the status quo. The crop subsidy program, for example, will continue to give 80 percent of all farm subsidies to the top 20 percent of American farmers. It is little wonder that monopolies and corporate farms have grown more powerful at the expense of workers and family farmers.

Beyond the Farm Bill, the inability of either party to challenge concentrated power in the American food system is best illustrated with the meat monopolies. The Obama administration tried to stand up to chicken monopolies by proposing new regulations to prevent abusive behavior but cowered when the industry pushed back. And if the Democratic Party ignored the concentration of power of the meat monopolies, the Republican Party, particularly under Trump, has exploited and entrenched it.

The Trump administration recently increased the speed caps for killing lines in slaughterhouses and is considering removing them for hogs, making dangerous work even more dangerous. In November, the administration eliminated the Grain Inspection, Packers, and Stockyards Administration, an agency under the United States Department of Agriculture that oversaw enforcement of antitrust law in the meatpacking business. In doing so, it removed one of the few safeguards for workers and small businesses in an already unbalanced marketplace.

America’s agricultural system should allow regular folks to make a decent living producing food. Deliberate policy decisions caused the decline in farmers’ share of the food dollar, and many of the same policy decisions explain why wages for slaughterhouse workers have stagnated during the past three decades. Reversing these decisions can help farmers, slaughterhouse workers, and families within the food industry, and would help revive rural communities.

There are a number of simple actions that can help reverse the downward trajectory. For example, a ban on contract farming and tournament-style pricing would help realign the power dynamics between chicken farmers and the large corporations that exploit them. For workers, capping the killing line speeds at slaughterhouses and requiring meat inspectors to be public employees would similarly realign these dynamics. These actions would level the playing field for farmers, workers, and small businesses, and restore dignity and respect to workers at all levels of the American food system.

But the best way to reshape America’s food system to benefit rural communities is to restore competition by replacing the current pro-monopoly antitrust regime. In The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age, Columbia Law School professor Tim Wu records the enforcement history of anti-monopoly laws in the United States. For much of the 20th century, the federal government administered an antitrust framework that sought to avoid concentrated economic power. This framework helped ensure competitive balance, and sparked broad economic growth that benefited workers across the economic spectrum.

But in the early 1980s, the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice-- influenced by the work of Robert Bork-- pared back antitrust enforcement. Bork argued that the government must only focus on the impact of consumer prices when assessing anti-competitive harm. This approach, known as the “consumer welfare standard,” has resulted in less antitrust enforcement. And with the assumption that larger firms can create efficiencies that lead to lower prices for consumers, firms have gotten bigger and industries have become more consolidated.

The problem with the consumer welfare standard is that its basic premise has been disproven. In Mergers, Merger Control, and Remedies: A Retrospective Analysis of U.S. Policy, economist John Kwoka analyzed the effects to prices after mergers. After reviewing almost 200 recent mergers, he found that post-merger prices increased by an average of 4.3 percent. Thus, the consumer welfare standard fails to meet its own modest goal of reducing consumer prices. Yet despite this evidence, this broken enforcement strategy continues to be supported by both major political parties.

Perhaps most importantly, the consumer welfare standard is a misguided enforcement strategy because it does not account for the chicken farmers who are squeezed by Tyson, or the slaughterhouse workers whose wages have stagnated even as profits within their industry have soared. It does not account for the ripple effects that harm small businesses or the communities that have been hollowed out as the industries that support them wither away. And it doesn’t offer relief to people like my parents, who took pride in their work and were trusted by the communities that they served.

It is time to turn the page on this failed theory and put the “anti” back into antitrust.

The decline of rural communities and the consolidation of the American food system was the result of deliberate policy choices. If we acknowledge the consequences of these choices, we can understand why the grim future projected by the official at the Iowa Farm Bureau is possible-- but that our fate is not yet sealed. Rural America can thrive once again, but only if we’re willing to challenge who holds power in the current system.

Trumponomics Is Killing The Economy Everywhere-- But Hitting Rural America Hardest Of All

The thriving economy Trump inherited from Obama was on autopilot. All he had ti do was not mess it up. The post-Bush recession Obama fixed and the economy he put in place kept chugging along for 2 years despite the trickledown ideology Team Trump started installing from day one. Too late to do anything to save it now. The trade war was meant to feel relatively painless 'til after the midterms. Mission accomplished. As David Lynch put it in the Washington Post , "According to the Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank's 'nowcast,' the picture is increasingly gloomy-- and most economists say the U.S. economy will slow in 2019... The adverse signs are enough for economists... to warn of a 'synchronized slowdown'... A global economy that until recently was humming has broken down, a sharp contrast to the picture just a year ago when the world was experiencing its best growth since 2010 and seemed poised to do even better... Although almost all economists expect the economy to continue growing through 2019, there is now a roughly 1-in-6 chance of a recession over the next 12 months, the highest likelihood since the recovery began in mid-2009, according to the New York Fed." How do we know?

Already, builders in the United States are erecting fewer single-family homes. German factories are sputtering, and in China, retail sales are growing at their slowest pace in 15 years.

The sudden slowing has fed into a global financial sell-off that has driven several U.S. stock indexes into or near bear market territory with losses of more than 20 percent.

Political turmoil at the highest level in the U.S. and other advanced economies-- epitomized by the partial shutdown of the U.S. government and street protests in France-- is further feeding investor anxiety.

Additional forces threaten to turn what had been a gradual global slowing into something more serious. Central banks that went to extraordinary lengths to boost growth after the global financial crisis have become less supportive-- with the Fed announcing another increase in its benchmark interest rate last week. And tensions over Trump's “America First” trade offensive are sapping business confidence on multiple continents.

“The theme coming into this year was everything was synchronized, everything was good everywhere,” said Torsten Slok, chief international economist for Deutsche Bank Securities. “Now everything is not good everywhere.”

...In the United States, despite nearly a decade of uninterrupted economic growth, almost 55 percent of Americans say the country is on the wrong track, according to the RealClearPolitics polling average. A sharp economic slowdown could short-circuit belated rewards for workers who are receiving average annual wage increases of 3.1 percent, the highest mark in nine years, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“If that doesn't continue, you'll see continued domestic political polarization,” said Peter Harrell, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security. “Clearly, a slowing economy is a huge concern to the Trump administration.”

An economic slowdown-- coupled with tumbling stock prices-- could also make the president more amenable to a quick deal with China in the months-long tariff war, Harrell said.

“They are getting nervous about the markets and nervous about the slowing in the economy, and there's a similar reaction in Beijing,” he added.

Headlines like World Economy Is Set to Feel the Delayed Trade War Pain in 2019 at Bloomberg News indicate that although Tump's trade wars started in 2018, "2019 will be the year the global economy feels the pain. Bloomberg’s Global Trade Tracker is softening amid a fading rush to front-load export orders ahead of threatened tariffs. And volumes are tipped to slow further even as the U.S. and China seek to resolve their trade spat, with companies warning of ongoing disruption. Already there are casualties. Recent data underscore concerns that trade will be a drag on American growth next year. U.S. consumers are feeling the least optimistic about the future economy in a year, while small business optimism about economic improvement fell to a two-year low and companies expect smaller profit gains in 2019."

Trump's mucking up the economy was his bullying and bullshit-- overlain with failed tax cuts for the rich, paid for by the poor-- gives Democrats an opportunity to expand their 2018 inroads into red rural districts if the party and the candidates present a vision and policy agenda to reverse rural and small-town America’s declining living conditions, something promised by Trump with hollow, cynical words and no action. Savvy Democrats like Audrey Denney and Mike Siegel, expected to run in significantly rural districts like CA-01 and TX-10, appreciate how and why those conditions plummeted in the first place and why there have been few signs of improvement. Rural communities have not recovered the jobs they lost in the Bush recession and a Trump recession is already rearing its head threateningly.

Lillian Salerno, was Obama's undersecretary of rural development in the Agriculture Department from 2012-2017 before moving back to Dallas. She didn't win a 2018 primary bid against another Obama alum, but recently explained to us that "For years, rural and small-town America have fought an uphill battle for economic survival. Many in the halls of power viewed the shuttered storefronts and desolate downtowns as the inevitable consequence of globalization and technology, about which little can (or even should) be done. But one major force behind the steep economic decline is something that, until very recently, has received virtually no attention: the unprecedented level of corporate monopoly power that has been concentrated throughout the American economy. The consequences are wide-ranging and dramatic (one new research paper found that the increase in corporate consolidation effectively transfers $14,000 a year from workers’ wages to corporate profits). But nowhere are the effects more visible than in rural and small-town America. In these communities, corporations dominate local economies to such an extent that people are unable to start their own businesses or sell into markets. They are no longer free to take their labor elsewhere for better pay. Small town businesses and the communities they serve no longer have the power to shape their own economic destinies, which were once vigorously protected by federal antimonopoly laws. She continued:

Let’s look at just one indicator-- new business formation. From 2010 to 2014, 60 percent of counties nationwide saw more businesses close than open, compared with just 17 percent during the four years following the 1990s slowdown. During the 1990s recovery, smaller communities-- counties with less than half a million people-- generated 71 percent of all net new businesses, with counties under 100,000 people accounting for a full third. During the 2010 to 2014 recovery, however, the figure for counties with fewer than half a million people was 19 percent. For counties with less than 100,000 people, it was zero.

How did we get here? After the Great Depression, the government used antimonopoly laws to keep markets open and fair for smaller, independent businesses-- in other words, to keep mom-and-pop shops open and Main Street buzzing. These were businesses run by people who cared about and understood their communities, that kept wealth circulating locally, that created the vast majority of new jobs and that were often the source of game-changing innovation.

But in the 1980s, folks in power decided bigger was better, and conventional political wisdom followed suit. For the federal officials charged with protecting competition, that meant that cheap consumer prices trumped all other values, including the preservation of American jobs, open and competitive markets where innovation could flourish, and maintaining level playing fields for start-ups and small businesses. To this day, when government officials evaluate mergers, it’s considered a good thing when they result in job losses-- because that means, in the twisted reasoning we still use, gains in economic efficiency. The hard-working Americans turned out on the street corner to look for new jobs are the human sacrifices to the insatiable beast of corporate concentration.

This slow-rolling wave of corporate mergers has left almost all major markets-- airlines, telecommunications, health care, retail, milk, seeds for growing crops, hardware, even cowboy boots-- dominated by a cluster of mega-corporations, cloaked behind a plethora of brand names. These behemoths now hold unprecedented power over thousands of once-thriving community economies.

Corporate concentration has hit farmers, ranchers and agricultural workers especially hard. Many markets are entirely monopolized by a single company that dictates the terms of business to suppliers. Two decades ago, in the seed industry alone, 600 independent companies existed. Today there are six giants, several of which are pursuing high-profile mergers that will result in even more radical concentration. Similar levels of concentration exist for the beef, pork, chicken and dairy industries. The result is that the farmer’s share of each retail dollar of food has been collapsing, while consumers pay either the same or higher prices. Mega-corporations in the middle exploit their dominant market positions to reap all the profits.

It is a myth that the economic challenges that rural and small-town America face are caused by forces largely outside our control, like globalization or improvements in technology. We have the ability to help restore competition and economic vibrancy in rural America and beyond. The government has the authority to ensure markets are once again open and competitive so that communities have a chance to shape their own economic destinies. The question is whether we will recognize the error of our ways and put taking on monopolies high on the economic agenda-- for rural and small-town America, and for everyone who wants to ensure our country can once again be the land of opportunity.

Denney and Siegel, both of whom made significant inroads in their 2018 campaigns against entrenched Republicans are talking to rural voters about the rigged economy. Siegel has been explaining, for example, how the GreenNewDeal-- already endorsed by Texas' admired and respected Congressman Lloyd Doggett in a nearby district-- "will bring countless quality jobs to build renewable energy infrastructure, support energy efficiency, and promote local agriculture. Here in Texas, we have a tradition of economic populism going back a hundred years, and we can tap into that with a program that seeks both short-term and long-term change."

Former Iowa congressional candidate Austin Frerick has no plans to run again in 2020 but he's been working at the Open Markets Institute on solving uniquely rural problems facing districts like Siegel's and Denney's. Recently, he wrote that "At the root of rural America’s angst is a fairly simple story that many rural voters recognize. Over the course of a generation, major sectors of the rural economy have been rolled up and are now controlled by a handful of predatory, extractive multinational corporations. As a result, manufacturing and farming jobs have left the area, and opportunities-- to change jobs, start your own business, fund good schools, and build communities where your kids can thrive and start their own families-- are the exception, not the rule. It is no surprise that many of those who remain in these communities have lost any sense of respect, dignity, and self-determination."

He insists that to regain trust, Democrats "need to they are willing to take on the faraway monopoly bosses who are carving up rural communities, shutting down competition, and gaming international trade to get even farther ahead, while corrupting the political process with lobbyists and dark money all along the way. He makes the point that if Democrats want to "compete against Republicans in rural America, they can start by standing up for the right of rural Americans to compete against the corporate monopolies that have been left free to loot and plunder our communities." That should be easy for a Democrat like Audrey Denney in the rural northeast corner of California. Her mostly white (78%) district is 48% rural and growing up on a family farm, studying and then teaching agriculture at a local state university has prepared her well to represent her neighbors. She told us the rural communities up there are dying.

"People," she told me, "don’t have access to healthcare services-- in two of our 11 counties women can’t deliver babies in hospitals. Schools are closing. People are struggling to live paycheck to paycheck. We have a housing crisis and devasting fires like the Camp and Carr Fires continue to ravage my district. Our 2018 campaign cast a vision that our economy shouldn’t just work for the rich-- and every single person should be able to earn a living wage. We talked about bold progressive policies like single-payer healthcare in terms that resonated with rural voters. We cast a vision for how restoring our ecosystems to health could help mitigate climate change and protect us from the devastation of wildfires. We made real strides communicating a unifying message to voters in our vast, rural California district. In 2014, Rep. LaMalfa won by 22 points, in 2016 by 18, and we narrowed that gap to 9 points after only 10 months of campaigning. Another indicator that our message resonated with voters that normally vote conservative is that I earned about 15,000 more votes than governor-elect Newsom in the CA-01. We’ve created a strong base of support and have a roadmap for success in a traditionally conservative district."

Democrats Can Win Back Rural Voters-- And They Need To

Thursday, I listed 50 House seats that the Democrats should be working towards flipping in 2020. I listed them in order, based on how badly the Republican winner had done. So, for example, #1 is KS-02 (where Steve Watkins won with 48.1%); #2 is TX-23 (where William Hurd won with 49.2%); #3 is NY-27 (where Chris Collins won with 49.4%). Do you know what those 3 districts have in common, aside from very vulnerable Republican incumbents? They are all primarily rural districts. And Democrats came close to winning all three. Fully half of the 50 targets are predominantly rural in nature... and all are flippable. But how? Iowa progressive Austin Frerick made the case last month that "at the root of rural America’s angst are small towns whose economies have been taken over by a handful of predatory multinationals." To win in rural America again, Democrats need to understand what happened and how to fix it.

Frerick warns that poor performance by Democrats in rural areas will prevent them from retaking the Senate "for years to come," and certainly not in 2020. He pointed to losses by Bill Nelson (D-FL) and Claire McCaskill (D-MO), where he got just 33% of the rural vote and she just 27%, as examples of how the Democratic Party-disconnect with rural communities manifests itself at the polls. But he, and co-author Sarah Miller, wrote, "Rather than writing off rural America, Democrats have an opportunity to present a vision and policy agenda that have a real shot at reversing rural and small-town America’s declining living conditions. But this requires appreciating how and why those conditions plummeted in the first place, with few signs of improvement. Rural communities have not recovered the jobs they lost in the recession. Suicide rates are higher in rural America than in urban America, and the gap is growing. Medicaid now pays for more than half of all births at rural hospitals, and the opioid epidemic continues to thrive off desperation and hopelessness. The troubling statistics go on and on."

At the root of rural America’s angst is a fairly simple story that many rural voters recognize. Over the course of a generation, major sectors of the rural economy have been rolled up and are now controlled by a handful of predatory, extractive multinational corporations. As a result, manufacturing and farming jobs have left the area, and opportunities-- to change jobs, start your own business, fund good schools, and build communities where your kids can thrive and start their own families-- are the exception, not the rule. It is no surprise that many of those who remain in these communities have lost any sense of respect, dignity, and self-determination.

Instead of fighting this concentrated corporate power, many leading Democrats embraced and continue to embrace an economic ideology centered on efficiency that paved the way for the merger mania and manufacturing exodus that have been at the root of rural America’s economic undoing. Former secretary of agriculture Tom Vilsack, for example, recently called out Democrats for lacking a vision for rural America, and although Vilsack put forward a laundry list of ideas, none of them address the root of the problem-- perhaps because Vilsack now lobbies for a dairy export organization whose members admitted to driving down milk prices for thousands of farmers.

To regain trust, Democrats will have to do far more than boost ethanol production, job training, and broadband. They need to show they are willing to take on the faraway monopoly bosses who are carving up rural communities, shutting down competition, and gaming international trade to get even farther ahead, while corrupting the political process with lobbyists and dark money all along the way.

The House could start by investigating America’s poultry industry, which has turned family farmers into something akin to impoverished sharecroppers through powerful, exploitative monopolies. Big poultry slaughterers like Tyson and Brazilian-owned JBS require farmers to use their chicks and feed, dictate the price once the birds are ready to be processed, and engage in anti-competitive and punitive behavior if farmers speak out or step out of line. More than 7 out of 10 poultry farmers live below the poverty line, while the CEO of Tyson brought in nearly $9 million last year.

That’s far from the only example of corporate power directly harming rural communities. Airline consolidation and deregulation have cut off the heartland from affordable air travel; not only do children from rural America move to big cities to pursue better opportunities, but they can’t even afford to fly home anymore for the holidays (we speak from experience). Drug store monopolies like CVS and Walgreens have put community pharmacies out of business and hiked the prices of commonly prescribed drugs to more than nine times higher than their independent counterparts. The pharmaceutical monopolies at the heart of the opioid crisis have quite literally gotten away with mass murder in pursuit of profits.

And overall, big-box stores-- and now Amazon-- have laid waste to Main Street commerce, littering communities with empty storefronts, broken up by the occasional dollar store. A new Open Markets Institute report sheds light on the extent of this problem for the first time in decades. Two companies now account for 47% of all pet-store sales, and three companies account for 75% of all craft-store sales. And Amazon’s e-commerce market share is 42 points higher than its closest competitor, with the gap growing every year.

With the prevalence of diabetes almost 20% higher in rural America than in urban areas, insulin cartels also warrant investigation, and taking them on would be meaningful to many people who suffer from this disease. The three largest firms-- Novo Nordisk, Eli Lilly, and Sanofi-- have raised insulin prices in near lockstep for years by shadowing each other’s prices. Eli Lilly, for one, launched its insulin two decades ago with a sticker price of $21 a vial and now sells it for $255.

Democracy is built on checks and balances of power, as Nancy Pelosi recently reminded us in her victory speech. We used to apply this same line of thinking to corporate power, but that thinking largely went out the window. Democrats need to bring it back. If they want a shot to compete against Republicans in rural America, they can start by standing up for the right of rural Americans to compete against the corporate monopolies that have been left free to loot and plunder our communities.

This past cycle, Democrats picked up some bell-weather rural districts-- CA-21 in the Central Valley, ME-02, the biggest rural district east of the Mississippi, NM-02, NY-19, NY-22, VA-06 and two major agricultural districts in Iowa. J.D. Scholten came close to beating Steve King in the most rural district in Iowa, holding King down to just 50.4% of the votes cast. Now Iowa Democrats are urging J.D. to take on Republican Senator Joni Ernst in 2020. I asked him what he thinks about the Democratic Party approach to rural districts and he wasn't terribly sanguine. "What I have seen from the Democrats the last few years is that we are becoming increasingly the Whole Foods Party, very urban and suburban. I’m fighting to make sure Democrats are more and compete in Dollar General districts like mine." I like that hint of still fighting in there. I'll be meeting with him in a few weeks and hope to have more information about his plans then.

TX-10 is high up on anyone's list of 2020 congressional targets. That's because, completely on his own-- with his own local teams and no one from DC-- progressive Democrat Mike Siegel came came closer to beating entrenched Republican Michael McCaul than anyone had ever done. Siegel won overwhelmingly in the Travis County part of the district and made tremendous inroads in some of the rural areas as well, particularly Bastrop and Waller counties. "As Democrats," he told me this week, "we must show up in our rural communities, express our willingness to fight against the rigged economy, and work to win concrete victories. Universal High Speed Internet is one project that is achievable and would make a tremendous impact on rural economies. And the proposed Green New Deal will bring countless quality jobs to build renewable energy infrastructure, support energy efficiency, and promote local agriculture. Here in Texas, we have a tradition of economic populism going back a hundred years, and we can tap into that with a program that seeks both short-term and long-term change."

Audrey Denney outperformed what anyone at the DCCC expected her to do in her election contest this year with entrenched Republican extremist Doug LaMalfa. Hopefully, now that her name recognition with voters is high, she'll beat him in 2020. Denney, who grew up on a family farm and earned a a master's degree in Agricultural Education at Cal State Chico, is eager to be seen as the poster child for how Democrats cast a vision for rural America and talk to rural voters. "The small rural communities that make up my beautiful part of the world are dying," she told me yesterday. "People don’t have access to healthcare services-- in two of our 11 counties women can’t deliver babies in hospitals. Schools are closing. People are struggling to live paycheck to paycheck.  We have a housing crisis and devasting fires like the Camp and Carr Fires continue to ravage my district. Our 2018 campaign cast a vision that our economy shouldn’t just work for the rich-- and every single person should be able to earn a living wage. We talked about bold progressive policies like single-payer healthcare in terms that resonated with rural voters. We cast a vision for how restoring our ecosystems to health could help mitigate climate change and protect us from the devastation of wildfires. We made real strides communicating a unifying message to voters in our vast, rural California district. In 2014, Rep. LaMalfa won by 22 points, in 2016 by 18, and we narrowed that gap to 9 points after only 10 months of campaigning. Another indicator that our message resonated with voters that normally vote conservative is that I earned about 15,000 more votes than governor-elect Newsom in the CA-01. We’ve created a strong base of support and have a roadmap for success in a traditionally conservative district.



NE-02 is mostly Omaha and its suburbs but it's prosperity is interlocked with Nebraska's agricultural economy. Kara Eastman, who nearly beat Republican incumbent Don Bacon last month, has all but announced that she, like Audrey Denney and Mike Siegel, will be running for Congress again in 2020. Yesterday, she told me that "While the 2nd Congressional district of Nebraska is 98% urban, our agricultural infrastructure has a significant impact on our economy. The current tariffs are directly taking a toll on Nebraska's farming community which ultimately hurts all of us. On the campaign trail, I heard from constituents who had seen their grocery bills rise because of the tariffs. Democrats need to reach out to rural voters to show them that the Republican party has abandoned them and that we have a plan, not to bail out farmers and ranchers, but to create good policies to empower them to succeed."

 

How Many Democratic Senators Joined Wall Street And The GOP To Screw Bank Customers?

Just before Tuesday's vote to further gut Dodd-Frank and open the U.S. up to another bankster greed-driven economic catastrophe, Orange County law professor and congressional candidate Katie Porter wrote to her supporters that "As a consumer protection attorney, I've spent nearly 20 years fighting powerful special interests like Wall Street lobbyists. I've collaborated extensively with Elizabeth Warren on ways to protect the middle class from being scammed by powerful institutions and corporations. Unfortunately, I have to alert you to a new attack on consumers coming later this week. The Senate is days away from voting on a bill called the 'Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act,' though the actual bill will do none of those things. This bill would roll back or eliminate key protections that the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act put in place after Wall Street's recklessness caused a global recession. I'm urging the Senate to Vote NO on this legislation."

Porter is running in CA-45 for a seat held by Wall Street shill Mimi Walters. But before she can take on Mimi, she has to get through another Wall Street shill, New Dem, Dave Min, who ran Chuck Schumer's Wall Street operation when Schumer was working hand-in-glove with the banksters to set them loose on consumers. Schumer has taken more in bribes than any other politician in American history who was not a presidential candidate-- and more than some presidential candidates. As of now Schumer the Finance Sector has given Schumer $26,754,908, compared to $12,338,704 to McConnell and $12,165,694 to Paul Ryan... so more than both of them together! Min has been part of Schumer's "success" in that scheme.

Which candidates are being backed by Wall Street this cycle? It's worth noting which non-incumbents they're making their biggest contributions to so far. Of course their biggest bribes in the House went to half a dozen crooked incumbents who are already serving their every interest:

• Speaker Ryan (R-WI)- $2,649,603
• Majority Leader McCarthy (R-CA)- $1,500,400
• Josh Gottheimer (Blue Dog-NJ)- $871,524
• Patrick McHenry (R-NC)- $867,506
• Kevin Brady (R-TX)- $867,225
• Kyrsten Sinema- $792,137

Of course, these 5 men and one woman should all be in prison but these are the crooked politicians who aspire to be just like them and are already taking large bribes as banksters bet on their chances to be able to kick their own constituents to the curb while carrying Wall Street's water. Austin Frerick, the progressive candidate running for the Iowa congressional seat occupied by GOP money grubber David Young, cut right to the chase: "I cannot believe that Democrats can support this bank deregulation bill after what we went through as a country a decade ago. But this is what happens when Democrats take money from corporations and lobbyists. This is also why I refuse that money."

David Gill's primary is coming up in less than two weeks. He's been fighting for the kind of economic fairness Elizabeth Warren is talking about for decades, not just for his campaign. “As is almost always the case on such issues, I stand with Senator Warren here. It amazes me that our elected representatives have so quickly forgotten the financial crisis which brought so much pain to so many ordinary Americans only 10 years ago. I suspect that those representatives never actually felt the pain, given their place in life. The ordinary men and women that make up the majority of IL-13 certainly did feel the pain of that recession, and they are the ones who will be hit hardest by a recurrence of our economic woes. The regulations within Dodd-Frank should be strengthened, not weakened. I look forward to getting to Washington early next year and working to protect Americans from bankers whose greed knows no bounds.”

The half-dozen worst non-incumbent candidates(so far):

• Josh Harder (D-CA-10)- $229,094
• Perry Gershon (D-NY-01)- $222,866
• Dan Koh (D-MA-03)- $199,818
• Mikie Sherrill (New Dem- NJ-11)- $178,578
• Pat Ryan (D-NY-19)- $171,879
• Matt Haggman (D-FL-27)- $158,790

It's essential to stick with progressives like Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) on this issue and to support candidates like them-- like Katie Porter, Austin Frerick and David Gill. Mimi Walters (R-CA) has already gobbled up $400,108 from the Finance Sector this year. David Young (R-IA) has taken $124,350 and Rod Davis (R-IL) took $174,652-- just this cycle!

The only other California candidate besides Josh Harder to have taken over a hundred grand from the finance sector is the sleaze bag in CA-49, Mike Levin, who has managed to vacuum up $124,232. Wall Street knows who they can count on. And it isn't Elizabeth Warren. In fact, when Mark Takano was strong-arming California convention delegates to vote for Dave Min, one of his arguments was that no one endorsed by Elizabeth Warren could win in Orange County. Strange thing for a progressive to say. Here's Elizabeth Warren talking about the bill Katie Porter was campaigning against this week:

[H]ere we are-- on the verge of making the same mistake Congress has made so many times before.

The banks don't want you to know what's in this bill-- because if you did, they know you'd fight back. It was written by Senators in back rooms and jammed through the Banking Committee, where its authors voted down every single amendment, every single idea, to make the bill even one smidge better or protect consumers just one tiny bit more. They voted against every amendment, even if they agreed with it, because Republicans and Democrats had locked arms to do the bidding of the big banks.

There's a lot of dangerous stuff in this bill. Today I want to focus on the harm it will do to America's consumers.

But I'll start with what's not in the bill because what's not in this bill should make Congress ashamed. Strong consumer protections. Banks get their wish list, but consumers get next to nothing. This bill is called the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act, but in all 148 pages, there's only a few watered down provisions that help consumers.

Equifax loses data for nearly half of all adults in America, lies about it, and this Congress-these Senators-still can't manage to pass a bill with some teeth to hold the company accountable. That says it all-this is a bill written by big banks to help big banks, not a bill to help American families who are still getting cheated by the companies that make huge profits off them.

So what's actually in this bill? Start with the first part of the bill-- Section 101, "Improving Consumer Access to Mortgage Credit."

When you get a mortgage, your lender usually spends some time combing through your financial records to make sure you can repay the loan. That's good-- American families don't want to take out loans they can't afford and banks don't want to make loans that won't get repaid.

Bailout Caucus

Before the financial crisis, that whole process went haywire. Lenders were making crazy loans with ballooning payments and exotic features that consumers didn't understand. Lenders didn't care if customers could repay-they got their fees up front, then sold the loans to distant investors and the original lender was long gone before the homeowners got in trouble. But the families were stuck. Eventually, the payments skyrocketed, and homeowners who couldn't keep up defaulted, losing those homes.  After the crisis, Congress changed the rules. They told lenders that they had to start underwriting their loans again to protect consumers and the economy. But since this takes time and money, Congress told the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to write a rule that says that there's no need for the lender to investigate if this is a super-safe, boring, plain-vanilla loan.

That's reasonable.

But Section 101 of this bill is not reasonable. It takes the CFPB rule and stretches it in all directions, tearing open big, dangerous loopholes. This bill says banks, have some fun. Bring back the greatest hits of financial crisis housing scams. Scoop up the profits on the front end, and leave families holding the bag on the back end.

I understand breaks for banks that make straightforward loans, but these loans are too risky. And they come at a bad time. Rising interest rates mean that exotic products like adjustable rate mortgages are making a comeback. Bank lobbyists are dragging us back to the bad old days when banks had free reign to scam consumers.

Here's another section: Section 104 makes it harder to enforce anti-discrimination laws by telling loads of institutions that they don't have to comply with a law called the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, or "HMDA." HMDA requires most financial institutions to tell the public and the CFPB who they're lending to and at what rates and terms. Regulators and law enforcement use the data to make sure that American families don't have a harder time getting a loan because of who they are or where they come from.

This bill takes a sledgehammer to HMDA by exempting 85 percent of institutions from reporting HMDA data. If this bill passes, there will be entire communities where there will be no data whatsoever-- which means there will be no ability to monitor whether people are getting cheated because of their race or their gender.

Again, this couldn't come at worse time. Lending discrimination is real. A new comprehensive report that looked at housing markets all over the country just came out from the Center for Investigative Reporting and Reveal, and its findings should make us all sick to our stomachs.

In 2015 and 2016, nearly two-thirds of mortgage lenders denied loans to people of color at higher rates than for white people. According to Reveal, in the Washington metro area. "In 2016, Native American applicants were 2.3 times as likely to be denied a conventional home mortgage as white applicants. For black applicants, it was 2.2 times as likely. For Latino applicants, it was 1.9 times as likely. For Asian applicants, it was 1.6 times as likely." The Reveal report showed that this problem happens in giant banks, but also in small banks.

Here's the thing. None of that analysis would have been possible without HMDA data from big institutions and small ones. Without the data, we'd all be sitting here in the dark, maybe wondering if some mortgage lenders discriminated against African Americans or women or Native Americans, but we wouldn't have any way to know-and no way to change it if they were. Gutting HMDA allows us-- actually forces us-- to look the other way when discrimination happens. And that's disgraceful.

...Only a bunch of bank lobbyists-- and their friends in Washington-- would call this a consumer protection bill.

American families weren't in the back room when this bill was written. They don't have millions of dollars in campaign cash to get senators' attention. They don't keep an army of lobbyists on their payroll. No, American families are busy going to work, helping the kids with homework and trying to catch up on a thousands things. They are trying to pay off student loans or maybe to save a little for their kids to go to college. Some are trying to put aside a few bucks for a mortgage.

They trust us to stand up for them and make sure they have a fair shot at homeownership-- at the American dream. And they trust us to make sure that we're not turning over the keys to our economy to the same people who crashed it ten years ago and ran over a bunch of American families on the way.

I know we're outnumbered, but this fight isn't over. Make no mistake, I'm going to do whatever I can to convince enough other senators that this is a bad deal for American families, and a dangerous one. I'll push and tug and talk to anyone who will listen about how this bill will hurt the people we were sent here to represent. And maybe, just maybe, maybe for once the Senate will start listening to voters instead of donors.

Hot Rumor: The Federal Trade Commission May Be Coming Back To Life

This week, the Open Markets Institute reported some good news, namely that the Federal Trade Commission may be about to "waken from it's anti-trust slumber." Hard to imagine.

For the last few years, the Federal Trade Commission all but vanished as a major player in anti-monopoly enforcement. In part, this was due to a lack of staff. For much of the last year, the FTC had only two sitting commissioners. Mainly, however, it was due to ideology.

Two of the most influential recent commissioners-- Maureen Ohlhausen and Josh Wright-- were strong proponents of libertarian competition philosophy, with its strong pro-monopoly bent. Further, even many recent Democratic appointments tended to take a highly permissive approach to economic power.

But a Senate Commerce Committee hearing on February 14 provided strong signals that the FTC may soon be back in the business of promoting competition in the United States. All five FTC commissioners are being replaced more or less at the same time, which means the character of the agency has the potential to change dramatically. And among both senators and nominees, the libertarian thinking that has long held sway in the Commission appeared to be decidedly out of fashion.

• Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), a former director of policy planning at the FTC, has in the past largely opposed government regulations, including net neutrality. But at the hearing last week, Sen. Cruz expressed deep concern about the immense power wielded by Google and Facebook, citing a cover story in Esquire that calls for the break-up of big tech. Sen. Cruz appeared especially concerned about the anti-competitive implications of Facebook and Google's dominance, saying that their "market power, size, and control of public discourse is unprecedented."

• Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) urged the nominees to use the "new populism…sweeping the country" as a mandate to invigorate enforcement and advocacy. "Going beyond the FTC being a resource, I'd also like you to be a champion," he said. "You have the bully pulpit. You can bring zeal and passion to consumer issues that no one else will do at the federal level." Sen. Blumenthal also submitted a statement from the Congressional Antitrust Committee into the hearing record.

• Joe Simons, nominated by President Trump to chair the agency, said he wants to scrutinize dominant firms that wield market power and review the Commission's enforcement record. “At a high level, I don’t believe that big is necessarily bad,” he said. But he added, “Companies that are already big and influential can sometimes use inappropriate means, anti-competitive means, to get big or to stay big.” In particular, Simons said he was "very concerned" about drug pricing and would explore convening a drug pricing monitoring task force to track anti-competitive price spikes and enable prompt investigations and enforcement actions.

• In discussing extreme consolidation in agriculture with Sen. John Tester (D-MT), Simons further explained that even when bad mergers cannot be easily unscrambled, the agency can investigate dominant industry players for anti-competitive conduct and target their power through injunctions. Coupled with his written comments, Simons’ remarks suggest he intends to target abusive actions by dominant companies.

• The only Democratic nominee at the hearing, Rohit Chopra, expressed interest in reviewing barriers to entry in monopolized markets. In particular, he noted that consolidated control over data creates hazards both for consumers and independent businesses. He said, "Data breaches impose great deals of costs on small enterprises. The Equifax data breach led to significant losses for community banks, credit unions, and other financial institutions."

• A fifth slot on the Commission, reserved for a Democrat, still lacks an official nominee. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has recommended to the White House that it nominate his chief counsel, Rebecca Slaughter, for the position.

The founding members of the House AntiTrust Caucus are some of the House's most progressive members: Ro Khanna (CA), Mark Pocan (WI), Rick Nolan (MN), David Cicciline (RI), Keith Ellison (MN) and Pramila Jayapal (WA).

Austin Frerick has made fighting monopolies a key part of his platform, so it was no surprise when he told us that the Antitrust Caucus will be the "first caucus I will join. Also as an Iowa congressman, I plan to make antitrust a central requirement for my endorsement in the 2020 caucuses."

Derrick Crowe, the progressive running for the open seat in the Austin/San Antonio corridor told us he "would absolutely join the Congressional Anti-Trust Caucus. The rise of monopoly power threatens our bank accounts, worsens inequality, and undermines our political liberties. Busting trusts is defending democracy."

Lisa Brown, the economist who served as Chancellor of Washington State University, Spokane and is currently busy campaigning to replace Paul Ryan lieutenant Cathy McMorris Rodgers that us "it’s a basic tenet of Econ-101 that concentrated economic power in a market, in which only a few producers  dominate, has adverse outcomes for consumers. Higher prices and less consumer satisfaction generally result from oligopoly and monopoly power. Effective federal regulation can counter these results. It’s encouraging that some members of Congress are getting  more active in this arena and I would welcome the opportunity to join them."

And we'll leave the last word for Lillian Salerno, former Obama deputy secretary of Agriculture, who is running a vigorous campaign in north Dallas that takes on monopolization head on: "Concentrated corporate power is out of control," she often says, "and it's time for Congress to step up with a renewed focus on anti-monopoly rules and investigations. That's what I'll do when I get there."

Has Gun Control's Moment Come Again-- Despite Cowardly Politicians?

Cameron Kasky, one of the students who survived the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School brought down the house at the CNN forum Wednesday night when he asked his senator, Marco Rubio, if he would stop taking NRA money. Rubio-- like every single blood-soaked member of Congress from either party who takes NRA bribes and votes for their sick, murderous agenda, said that the NRA buys into his agenda, not that he buys into theirs. Maybe Rubio even believes that. But the kids didn't. They boo-ed him loudly and repeatedly. Rubio's not up for reelection again until 2022. It was gracious and somewhat courageous of him to jump into the lion's den.

Trump immediately went for the most simple-minded and idiotic right-wing suggestion-- arm the teachers. Even Rubio said he wouldn't support that idea. I asked my friend who works at a public school in Compton. He said that it's a crazy idea that not only wouldn't work but that would result in more than half the teachers he knows retiring. "You think there's a teacher shortage now," he said, if Trump manages to push this through, the whole school system will collapse. Maybe that's just what DeVos wants to see happen." He also told me he's buying bulletproof clothing for school.

Rubio told the audience he's going to try-- an impossible task?-- to get unanimous consent to bring the background check bill-- FIX NICS-- to the floor. I can't see that happening... and even if it does, Ryan will stop it in the House by keeping it attached to the concealed carry reciprocity bill, an NRA strategy which will prevent Democrats from voting for it. Rubio said he favors raising the age for legal assault rifle purchases from 18 to 21-- a total non-started for the gun manufacturers lobbyists-- and says he will back mental health background checks gun violence restraining orders and limiting the size of magazine clips. When confronted by a student on his refusal to back limits on large capacity magazines in the past, he said he's "reconsidering that position... While it may not prevent an attack, it may save lives in an attack." That would be enough for the NRA to go to try to make an example of him for other Republicans.

This morning, Marc Caputo termed that "a striking turnabout for Rubio, who never met a gun-rights bill he didn’t vote for in the Florida legislature and in Congress."

Rubio said he would leave it to law enforcement to suggest what the right magazine size would be.

That wasn’t enough for the audience, even as Rubio chided them that politicians should be allowed to change their minds. And it wasn’t enough for the other people on stage.

“The time for talking in Washington about to do about guns is over. It’s over. We know what to do,” said Rep. Ted Deutch, who represents the district where the school is located, in the city of Parkland.

But Rubio steadfastly refused to consider banning semiautomatic rifles outright. And he said he would not refuse money from the National Rifle Association, which has steered $3.3 million in contributions to him over the course of his career and given him an A+ rating-- support he might not be able to count on after Wednesday night.

In June 2016, Rubio cited the mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando as a major reason he leapt back into his Senate race, which he’d been weighing doing for months after failing in the presidential primaries. Rubio said that massacre had “impacted” him and made him feel he had to return to the Senate. He won, with NRA support. But in the nearly two years since, he has not championed any new gun legislation in Congress.

...The evening didn’t start particularly well for Rubio, either, when he was questioned by Fred Guttenberg, whose 14 year-old daughter, Jaime, was killed last week in school.

“Were guns the factor in the hunting of our kids?” Guttenberg asked.

“Of course they were,” Rubio replied. “Number one, Fred, I absolutely believe that in this country if you are 18 years of age you should not be able to buy a rifle and I will support a law that takes that right away.”

Rubio was met with applause and went on to say he supports banning “bump stocks,” which can make a semiautomatic fire like a machine gun. He also voiced his support for better background checks and mental health funding.

But when Rubio said an “assault weapons ban” would not have prevented last week’s murders, the boos rained down.

“It is too easy to get,” Guttenburg said. “It is a weapon of war. The fact that you can’t stand with everybody in this building and say that, I’m sorry.”

Yesterday we looked at Ron Brownstein's ideas about what kinds of districts the Democrats could win to build a House majority. This morning, writing for The Atlantic, he reiterated his analysis in the light of the reinvigorated national gun debate. Trump-hatred in the suburbs is going to help the Democrats and the gun issue is going to amplify that.

Despite the widespread Democratic defection from outside the major urban centers, the Brady and assault-ban bills passed because Clinton drew support from dozens of suburban Republicans inside those metropolitan areas. Fifty-four House Republicans backed the Brady bill in 1993, and 38 supported the assault ban the next year; the latter number grew to 46 when the ban was included in the final version of Clinton’s crime bill. Of those 46 Republicans backing the overall bill, most were from heavily suburban, Democratic-leaning states, including eight from New York; five from New Jersey; and three each from California, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania.

In the years since, the GOP’s geographic base has shifted away from major metropolitan areas and its demographic base has tilted further toward older, blue-collar, evangelical, and rural voters. Reflecting those changes, GOP congressional leaders have tightened their alliance with the NRA and hardened their opposition to gun control. The remaining Republicans from suburban districts, even in the bluest states, have bent compliantly to that current. Compared with their counterparts in the 1990s, suburban House Republicans now vote much more in lockstep with the NRA.

In December, all but 10 suburban House Republicans voted for legislation to override individual state gun laws and require every state to honor a concealed-carry handgun permit issued in any state. In February 2017, all but two House Republicans (New York’s Peter King and Dan Donovan) voted to overturn a regulation from former President Barack Obama that required the Social Security Administration to share information with the national background-check system about anyone deemed incapable of managing their benefits because of mental illness.

Many of the Republicans who voted with the NRA on both measures represent white-collar suburban seats atop the Democrats’ 2018 target list. That includes GOP legislators near Denver (Mike Coffman); Los Angeles (Dana Rohrabacher, Mimi Walters, and Steve Knight); Minneapolis (Erik Paulsen and Jason Lewis); New York (Lee Zeldin); Northern Virginia (Barbara Comstock); Omaha (Don Bacon); Des Moines (David Young); Houston (John Culberson); and Dallas (Pete Sessions). Except for King and Donovan, every other top-target metro Republican-- from Carlos Curbelo in Miami to Leonard Lance in New Jersey-- who voted against the concealed-carry reciprocity bill voted for the repeal of Obama’s Social Security regulation.

Among those Republican politicians Brownstein wrote are now vulnerable because of their unswerving support for the NRA is David Young, the pius hypocrite who Austin Frerick is taking on in Des Moines and southwest Iowa. Austin ripped into him this morning: "I’ve personally become even more driven to defeat Congressman Young knowing that’s he’s taken the 3rd most money from the NRA and continues to do their bidding tragedy after tragedy. He's just a do-nothing hollow man who does the bidding of his largest donors. After the Law Vegas massacres, Congressman Young said that he couldn't think of a good reason why bump stocks exist. His solution was to write a letter to the ATF, but the ATF doesn't think it can act. Did he do something after that ATF decision? No, but he did have time to visit a gun store whose owner was very concerned about his comments on bump stocks, and wanted to show him why they were fine."

Katie Porter is running for the Orange County seat NRA ally Mimi Walters claims to be representing-- although she doesn't live there. Katie told us she's "tired of seeing our elected officials like my opponent Mimi Walters offer her thoughts and prayers after every mass shooting, and then voting however the NRA wants-- regardless of our families’ safety.The gun lobby has spent decades perpetuating this idea that there’s nothing we can do to stop gun violence in this country. That is just ridiculous. To reduce deaths from lethal weapons, our leaders in Congress just need to find the courage to stand up to the NRA and its special interest money. Not only has my opponent received thousands of dollars of contributions from the NRA, but she is voting against the will of her constituents. 60% of CA-45 voters voted for Proposition 63, a common sense gun initiative, in 2016-- more proof that Mimi Walters votes with special interests, not her constituents."

Lillian Salerno, the progressive in the race to replace Pete Sessions in Dallas, has a similar perspective. "Pete Sessions," she told us today, "has been in the pocket of the NRA since his initial run for Congress twenty years ago, and there is no sign he will change course now. Even after hundreds of children have lost their lives to gun violence, the NRA knows they have an unwavering ally in Sessions. And what did it take to secure his allegiance? $150,000 in contributions and outside spending from the NRA. $150,000 is the price Sessions puts on the lives of children and families. And as a member of Congress, I will never, under any circumstance, take money from the NRA."

Another GOP incumbent Brownstein singled out: extremist Steve Knight (CA-25). And his progressive opponent, Katie Hill, has been reminding voters in Santa Clarita, the Antelope Valley and Simi Valley what a danger he is. "Steve Knight has prioritized special interests like the NRA over constituents since he joined Congress," she told us. "We need an elected official willing to stand up and do the right thing. I support the immediate ban of bump stocks, silencers, and assault weapons. There is no compelling reason for a civilian to own weapons of war and it is time that the law reflected it."

Now watch Derrick Crowe: