The DCCC Is Giving Folks In Orange County A Terrible Idea About Who Democrats Are-- Meet Dave Min

Republican-lite Dave Min and his mentor

Do you know how many candidates are competing for the Democratic nomination to run in Orange County against Trump rubber-stamp Mimi Walters, who doesn't even live in her own district? Even if you think you know, you don't, since there are 2 or 3 more (including Brian Forde and Rachel Payne) than the already 5 declared candidates, getting ready to jump in. So far there are 3 progressives-- Katie Porter, Kia Hamadanchy and perennial candidate Ron Varsteh-- and a couple of standard centrist Dems. CA-45 is an inland Orange County district that goes from Anaheim Hills, Villa Park and Tustin in the north, through Irvine and Lake Forest to Laguna Woods, Mission Viejo and Rancho Santa Margarita in the south. Mimi has refused to move out of her $8 million mansion in Laguna Beach in Dana Rohrabacher's district. The weather is much better there and, apparently, she has little interest in experiencing first hand what her constituents experience in their everyday lives. The DCCC has never contested CA-45 before but because Trump lost to Hillary there last year-- 49.8% to 44.4%-- its a big priority. Imagine if they run another non-resident like Rachel Payne or Eric Rywalski!

Since we've talked a lot about Katie Porter and Kia Hamdanchy, a few people have asked me about the Chuck Schumer guy in the race, Dave Min. He was Schumer's chief banking counsel when Eric Lipton wrote the classic NY Times piece on Schumer and his disgraceful relationship with Wall Street, A Champion of Wall Street Reaps Benefits at the very end of 2008, right when Schumer's bankster buddies were tanking the economy and bringing on the Great Recession. That was when Chuck was frantically working with Senate Republicans to deregulate everything he could for Wall Street. So either Min agreed and worked on everything Chuck was doing at this time, or he didn’t and lost every internal argument, not a good sign for his effectiveness. So he was either an incompetent staffer or he helped push through policy that weakened regulations and helped lead to the financial crisis. Whatever he says about what he might or might not do now in Washington if he wins the race, we already have a pretty clear demonstration of it.

Min is a centrist, perhaps something like Schumer, maybe not as bad... maybe worse. Hard to tell. He's been telling everyone he is the "moderate" in the race, which generally means he looks forward to taking his place in the Republican wing of the Democratic Party. At the climate march he refused to say he was progressive while on camera was on because a tracker was there. He's said that one must be a "moderate" to win CA-45 and that’s his vision for the future of this country and the Democratic Party. You know he's a DCCC boy because he really stays away from talking about issues, just like they tell their candidates to. But it means that OC voters don’t know where he stands on a the specifics of key policy items. Is he for single payer, for example? He won't say.

Worse yet, everyone in and around the campaign tells me he's a real asshole personally who never has anything nice to say about anyone else, especially Katie Porter. Maybe he's identified her as his top opponent or maybe he just hates women but he trashes her every chance he can get-- in the district and in DC. People in the district are starting to notice his little smear campaign-- and they don’t like it. He can't seem to help himself and his attacks are going to eventually backfire against him. Yesterday his well-connected p.r. guy, Achim Bergmann, got him into the NY Times. When he talks to Republicans he calls himself "a fiscally responsible Democrat," usually short-hand for New Dem, Blue Dog and/or Republican-lite.

In some places, like many districts in California, the Republican voter advantage has shrunk in recent years; in the district that includes Anaheim, where Representative Mimi Walters, a Republican, is seeking re-election, that edge has dropped from 43 percent in 2014 to just shy of 40 percent now.

“If Republicans are telling you they are on offense this cycle, they are delusional,” said Meredith Kelly, a spokeswoman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “They had to spend $25 million to hold on to Kansas, Georgia, Montana and South Carolina. If they have to spend even a fraction of that money to defend their incumbents, they won’t be able to go on offense.”

...“There are a lot of people in this district who don’t like Trump but don’t like the national Democratic Party either,” said Mr. Min, who is one of a handful of Democrats hoping to unseat Ms. Walters, who is in her second term here and is closely aligned with Mr. Trump on contentious issues like health care.

...“I am telling people I am not a Hillary person,” said Mr. Min, who has his eyes fixed carefully on nonaffiliated and Republican voters-- Asians and parents in particular-- who voted for Mrs. Clinton last year.

Not a Hillary person... OK, but he's really not a Bernie person. So what is he? From what I'm seeing, he's just an nasty opportunist looking for a career in Congress with no fixed set agenda other than a vague and easily corruptible centrism-- the worst thing we find among House Democrats.

Does The Most Corrupt Man In Congress Really Support Medicare-For-All?

The Republicans in each house of Congress have voted literally dozens and dozens of times over the past 7 years to repeal the Affordable Care Act, a top priority of an avaricious donor class that doesn't like the idea of helping to pay for poor peoples' healthcare. In all those years the Republicans were voting in lockstep to repeal, there was either a Democratic-controlled Senate to stop it or a Democrat in the White House to veto it. Now the Republicans control the Senate, the House and the White House. So where's the repeal? Reality is a bitch! The repeal is the most massively unpopular bill in living memory. Something between 12% and 20% of Americans approve of it. Bush's TARP Wall Street bankster bailout was more popular with American voters than TrumpCare. Republican legislators can't deal with it and are panic-stricken. Ha, ha, ha?

Let's look a little closer to home-- right here in blue, blue California where the Governor is a Democrat and both the state Senate and the state Assembly have massive Democratic majorities. Both houses of the legislature passed single payer legislation-- TWICE-- in the past-- when there was a Republican governor to veto it-- and now...

Tuesday, Lydia O'Neal and David Sirota, reporting for the International Business Times, points to similarities that Republicans in Congress and Democratic in Sacramento face in regard to healthcare. "Democrats,' they wrote, "are facing allegations from progressive leaders that after a decade of promising to create a single-payer health care system, the party is now succumbing to the kind of corporate fealty that national party leaders routinely ascribe to Republicans" and the scumbag and traitor to all things American who has managed to slip into the White House.

As many Democrats enthusiastically promoted single-payer to Golden State voters, the party indeed engineered a complete takeover of the state’s government, giving them unprecedented legislative supermajority power to enact the legislation-- even over a governor’s veto. Yet, as health care industry money flooded into the coffers of the Democratic Party’s candidates for California office, Brown has turned negative about the idea, and late last month, California Democratic Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon halted a single-payer bill in its tracks, preventing it from being voted on by his Democratic supermajority before the legislature’s self-imposed July 14th deadline.

Amid calls for Democratic unity in the Trump era, the party’s move in a deep blue state to block a health care initiative it previously supported has prompted labor movement protests-- and promises of primary campaigns or recall efforts to unseat recalcitrant Democrats. More broadly, eight years after Barack Obama mounted a populist presidential campaign and then did not prosecute any major Wall Street executives, the episode has resurrected progressives’ allegations that while Democrats may talk a good game, they are not nearly as committed to bold action as their rhetoric suggests.

“Talk about fake news-- this is fake politics: stick it to the Republican governor but we’re going to leave dear old Jerry untouched so he doesn’t have to veto this bill,” said Democrat Gloria Romero, a former California Senate Majority Leader who helped pass the single-payer bills in 2006 and 2008. “Probably most of these Assembly members ran for office supporting single payer healthcare. But now that what they ran around promising the people actually has a chance of passage, they don’t dare do what they promised. This kind of thing undermines any integrity from the Democratic Party that is supposed to stand up for the little guy. It creates a disconnect and a distrust.”

In an era that has seen voters enthusiastically respond to populist crusades in both parties, Brown and Rendon have offered technocratic arguments. Both have raised questions about how the most recent single-payer bill, SB 562, would be financed in California, where one previously passed ballot measure constrains the state budget and another requires a set percentage of the budget to be devoted to education.

...[A]n International Business Times review of campaign finance data found that in the intervening years, health insurers and pharmaceutical companies substantially boosted their donations to California Democratic candidates in gubernatorial election years.

In all, donors from the health services sector and major health insurers gave more than $16 million to Democratic candidates and the California Democratic Party in the 2014 election cycle-- almost double what donors from those industries gave in the 2006 election, according to data from the National Institute on Money In State Politics. Donors from those sectors collectively donated more than $3 million to Brown and Rendon since 2010.

In light of that history, longtime single-payer proponents argue that this is a watershed moment for Democrats in advance of the 2018 election. They assert that the California fight will demonstrate whether or not Democrats in the Trump era are willing to use the power they still retain at the state level to defy their major corporate donors and enact the policies they tell voters they support.

“We’ve been talking about this forever,” said Jamie Court, the president of Consumer Watchdog, which has supported the legislation. “When there’s a Republican in charge, Democrats take action,” he said, and with ostensibly pro-single-payer Brown replacing Schwarzenegger, “now it’s time to put up or shut up.”

“It’s a litmus test for whether progressive Democratic politicians can talk the talk and walk the walk,” Court told IBT. “This is about the soul of the Democratic Party as much as it’s about health care.”

Kia Hamadanchy, a former Sherrod Brown staffer, currently running for the House seat Trump's pet congresswoman in Orange County, Mimi Walters, holds told us that "Top to bottom the Democratic Party is in the worst shape its been since right before the Great Depression. Whether its Congress, state legislatures, city councils, or school boards we've continued to lose across the board and across the country time and time again. Donald Trump does not become President of the United States without a massive institutional failure by the Democratic Party. Whatever we've been doing its clear that its not working and we need a complete rebuild from the ground up, with a focus on what we actually stand for and who we actually represent. And as a party how can we possibly win the argument and actually convince people to come along with us if we're constantly running away from ourselves and don't strongly stand behind progressive policy, whether its single payer or whether its anything else."

Dotty Nygard is the progressive nurse running for the blue-trending Central Valley seat held by 100% Trump backer Jeff Denham. She supported Bernie in the primary and is running on similar policies and values now. She told us that "one thing is clear: we need more union members, women, and people of color elected to Congress. These underrepresented groups can better relate to the struggles working families face every day, and as representatives they are more likely to recognize the insanity of winding the income inequality divide amongst Americans, both through messaging and actions. Democrats are supposed to represent the people-- fight for the people-- and lift them up... Leadership cannot idly stand by while only those with money are elected into positions of power within a system that champions money over grassroots support. As Democrats, we must proactively fund, endorse, and otherwise work to elect working-class folks if we want the public to engage in politics again."

So who's the most corrupt man in Congress and what's he got to do with all this? Yes, time to talk about Queens County machine boss, Joe Crowley, a Wall Street scumbag and "former" chairman of the corporately owned and operated New Dems who Pelosi and Hoyer have selected as the next leader of the House Democrats. Crowley has never had a contested election. He was given his seat by a legalistic trick/inside job pulled off by the last Queens machine boss, Tom Manton, as he suddenly resigned from Congress and handed off the prize to his sleaze bag protégée, Crowley.

Progressives have been trying to pass Medicare-For-All since Truman was president. This year, when John Conyers introduced the latest version-- H.R. 676-- in a situation where Trump is president and McConnell and Ryan decide what gets voted on in Congress-- there were 51 original co-sponsors, basically all fervent progressives like Partial Jayapal (D-WA), Barbara Lee (D-CA), Katherine Clark (D-MA), Keith Ellison (D-MN), Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), Ted Lieu (D-CA), Mark Pocan (D-WI), Jose Serrano (D-NY), Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-NJ), Judy Chu (D-CA), Jerry Nadler (D-NY) and Matt Cartwright (D-PA). That was on January 24. As the months rolled on more progressives read the bill and signed on as well-- like Jamie Raskin (D-MD), Ro Khanna (D-CA) and Alan Lowenthal (D-CA) in February, Mike Capuano (D-MA) and Karen Bass (D-CA) and Nanette Barragan (D-CA) in March. By April, even conservative Democrats from the Republican wing of the party started smelling the roses and signing on as co-sponsors, even slimy characters like Gene Green (TX), Lou Correa (Blue Dog-CA), Darren Soto (New Dem-FL), Jim Cooper (Blue Dog-TN), Vicente Gonzalez (Blue Dog-TX), and then on May 5-- soon after a progressive primary opponent, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez jumped into the primary against him, Crowley signed on as a co-sponsor too. What a joke! No one in Congress thinks Crowley supports single payer, Medicare-for-All or anything else remotely progressive beyond what he needs to work on his personal goals wrapped up in naked careerism and grotesque opportunism. But Crowley's signal was quickly picked up up conservative New Dem Adam Schiff who has Dianne Feinstein's Senate seat dictating every decision he makes. Maybe this is the kind of sausage-making it's going to take to finally get this passed. Or maybe opportunists like Crowley and Schiff will betray America as easily as Rendon and Jerry Brown betrayed California.



Let's go back to Lydia O'Neal and David Sirota for a moment. They pointed out that Rendon's Democratic and corporate allies lauded him "for blocking the single payer legislation, even after fellow Democrats had previously passed it."

“I think Speaker Rendon gets a lot of credit for protecting his members from a very stupid idea and making them all politically vulnerable for something that’s not going to happen anyway,” political consultant David Townsend, who works for Democrats and insurance companies, told the Sacramento Bee.

Assembly Democrats have set July 14th as the deadline for policy committees to consider legislation this year, and CNA is continuing to stage protests demanding lawmakers allow the bill to be debated.

Whether or not it advances this year, the legislation faces persistent questions about Proposition 98, which mandates a set percentage of spending on education, and the so-called “Gann limit,” which limits overall state spending. A senate analysis of the bill asserted that those measures “would prevent the legislature from creating the single-payer system envisioned in the bill without voter approval” of exemptions.

Rendon’s move, though, has effectively prevented lawmakers from voting the legislation onto the ballot. Kuehl, meanwhile, rejected suggestions that lawmakers could not find creative ways to work within existing constitutional limits.

“That theory won’t fly,” she told IBT, asserting that there is likely breathing room within the Gann limit. She said after a decade of debate over single-payer, lawmakers should be able to come up with ways to deal with Proposition 98.

“I don’t think it would actually be a problem,” said Kuehl, who is now a Los Angeles County Supervisor. “You would craft it so that it would not be part of the state budget. It would create a separate state health plan.”

As for the political dynamics, Kuehl compared the Democrats’ refusal to pass a long-supported health care policy to Republicans repeatedly voting to repeal Obamacare but now having trouble passing a replacement bill under their own party’s president.

“It’s much more realistic when you’re faced with having something happen or not happen,” she said.

Fabian Nunez, a Democrat who served as Assembly Speaker when Kuehl’s SB 840 first passed both houses, said he believes single-payer simply is not feasible at the state level.

“You could do some things at the state level to improve the quality of care, but you need the cooperation of the federal government,” he said. “The only way to do single-payer well is at the federal level.”

Nunez’s position exemplifies the Democratic Party’s shift on the issue now that it has full legislative power. As Assembly speaker in 2006, he supported the California single-payer bill.

Some single-payer proponents in California say that after multiple attempts to pass a bill, Democrats themselves have become the major obstacle-- and the only way to get the party to restore its credibility and act on its promises is through threats of revenge at the ballot box.

“There have to be electoral consequences for these Democrats,” said Michael Lighty of the California Nurses Association. “The whole basis of their politics is pro-industry, pro-Wall Street. Those folks are driven by their donor agenda and not by popular demand. There just in general has to be a greater grassroots surge to hold these elected officials accountable.”

Primarying Anthony Rendon is an absolute must. Drafting state Senate president Kevin de León to run for Feinstein's seat-- and not Adam Schiff-- is just as important. This is California, not Mississippi and if we let the establishment, primarily Democratic careerists, get away with this kind of crap here, they will be emboldened to rub our faces in shit for eternity. And nationally... Crowley is a DEAD end for Democrats. Contrast his incoherence on healthcare policy with what Ro Khanna, who represents the Silicon Valley and parts of the East Bay, (see tweets above) told me today:

"When Republicans mislead voters into thinking that a single payer health care system costs $32 trillion, Democrats must point out that our current system already costs $49 trillion. A single payer system would actually save Americans $17 trillion. A single-payer system reduces administrative costs and will lower drug prices and hospital costs through bargaining. Ultimately, a single payer system would help reduce our deficit and ease the burden on both businesses and middle class families.

"For decades, the GOP has made economic arguments regarding health care and Democrats have made moral arguments. But we shouldn't be afraid to make the economic case. Expanding health care through single payer isn't just the right thing to do, it's the smart thing to do. Let's not let the GOP get away with fake math, Democrats must point out that a single payer system is fiscally responsible."

Ro Khanna sounds like a credible leader, unlike Joe Crowley, who sounds like what he is: and opportunist and a careerist hack who will sell out the grassroots as easily as he yawns when a staffer tries explaining policy to him.

We've been mentioning that two of our old progressive friends, Mary Ellern Balchunis and Daylen Leach, are both running-- in a crowded field-- for the Democratic nomination to take on Ryan rubber stamp Pat Meehan in PA-07. But there's another excellent progressive in that race too, Paul Perry, a former Obama staffer and a school teacher. I was talking with him yesterday and mentioned that "It's deeply ironic that the DCCC released a series of stickers encouraging voters to 'look at the other guys' when our party would actually be best served by taking a good, hard look in the mirror and changing the cast of characters that we see in it. If we are to learn anything from this last election cycle, it's that Americans are hungry for a new generation of leaders to step up and take tough stances that deliver progress for Americans, like single-payer healthcare and tuition-free college. These are ideas whose time has come and we need the next class of progressive leaders to pave the way for this badly-needed change that most Americans favor by wide margins." Paul Perry knows something about messaging too. Just take a look at this incredible video:



Remind you at all of how Randy Bryce introduced himself? I have no double we're going too be hearing more from Paul as this cycle heats up.

Which Republicans Stand Up To Trump The Most? And Which House Democrats Vote Most Frequently For The Trump Agenda?

Henry Cuellar, Trump's most devoted Democratic supporter in Congress

The team of statistician-types over at FiveThirtyEight have put together an essential page called Tracking Congress In The Age Of Trump and they keep updating it. The track how often each member of Congress votes with and against Trump. You can look at all the scores at the link just above. But I just want to point out two categories of House members-- those Republicans-- and there aren't many-- who have stood up to Trump in any significant way and the so-called Democrats who we find on the same page with Trump again and again. First the Republicans. Almost the entire GOP caucus has served as a rubber stamp for Trump's agenda. Most Republicans have voted with Trump 100% of the time. These 11 are the only ones who voted with Trump less than 90% of the time. About half of them-- though not Walter Jones, Justin Amash, Chris Smith Thomas Massie, Dan Donovan or Johnny Duncan-- are in districts that Hillary won:

• Walter Jones (NC)- 65.6%
• Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (FL)- 72.2%
• Justin Amash (MI)- 73.0%
• Chris Smith (NJ)- 77.8%
• Thomas Massie (KY)- 78.4%
• Brian Fitzpatrick (PA)- 81.1%
• David Reichert (WA)- 86.1%
• Pat Meehan (PA)- 86.5%
• Carlos Curbelo (FL)- 88.6%
• Dan Donavan (NY)- 89.2%
• Johnny Duncan (TN)- 89.2%

Now to the Democrats. Who are the ones giving Trump the most consistent support across the board? The ones who allow Ryan and McCarthy to crow how Trump's agenda is somehow "bipartisan?" Well, it's the same old crew of "ex"-Republicans, Blue Dogs and New Dems-- the Republican wing of the Democratic Party-- who always turn up in these kinds of studies. I would point out that the study singles out 5 Democrats in districts Trump won who have mostly stood up against him in a forthright way most of the time: Carol Shea-Porter (NH), Dave Loebsack (IA), Matt Cartwright (PA), Tim Walz (MN) and Richard Nolan (MN). These are the Trum-Democrats, the ones who have given the most aid and comfort to the enemy of the American people day in and day out. Should every one of them be defeated? You must be joking if you're wondering how we feel about that at DWT. The ActBlue page you reach by tapping on the thermometer on the right is dedicated to defeating as many of them as we can. These are the dozen worst offenders:

• Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog-TX)- 70.3%
• Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN)- 62.9%
• Kyrsten Sinema (Blue Dog-AZ)- 48.6%
• Jim Costa (Blue Dog-CA)- 42.9%
• Tom O'Halleran (Blue Dog-AZ)- 40.5%
• Josh Gottheimer (Blue Dog-NJ)- 37.8%
• Stephanie Murphy (Blue Dog-FL)- 35.1%
• Dan Lipinski (Blue Dog-IL)- 30.6%
• Kurt Schrader (Blue Dog-OR)- 27.8%
• Sanford Bishop (Blue Dog-GA)- 27.8%
• Jim Cooper (Blue Dog-TN)- 27.0%
• Charlie Crist (Blue Dog-FL)- 27.0%

It's worth singling out another level of bad Dems who vote with Trump a LOT and are in very blue, safe districts: Jacky Rosen (NV), Luis Correa (CA), Gene Green (TX), Scott Peters (CA), Dutch Ruppersberger (MD), Vicente Gonzalez (TX), Ami Bera (CA), Tom Suozzi (NY) and Sean Patrick Maloney (NY).

According to their calculations, the most courageous Democrat in the House-- in a heavily Trump district-- is Richard Nolan and the 15 most cowardly Republicans-- in anti-Trump districts-- are Dave Valadao (CA), Carlos Curbelo (FL), Erik Paulsen (MN), Barbara Comstock (VA), Ed Royce (CA), Darrell Issa (CA), Mike Coffman (CO), Steve Knight (CA), Pete Roskam (IL), Mimi Walters (CA), Martha McSally (AZ), Jeff Denham (CA), Will Hurd (TX), Pete Sessions (TX) and John Culberson (TX). These are people who have the political cover to stand up to Trump but who have chosen to back him, some like Californians Darrell Issa, Dave Valadao, Steve Knight, Mimi Walters and Jeff Denham and stunning 100% of the time!

Kia Hamadanchy is one of the progressive champions seeking the Democratic nomination to oppose Orange County Trump rubber-stamp Mimi Walters. He told us that "time and time again Mimi Walters continues to demonstrate that she is an unabashed and enthusiastic supporter of the Trump agenda. She has literally refused to cross him even one time and I would say that she's probably one of his favorite members of Congress. America is where it is today because too many politicians have put party before country. No one symbolizes this more than Mimi Walters and her voting record and if a time ever comes where the Republican party abandons Donald Trump I'm sure she'll be the absolutely last person in America to do so."

Hillary Back On The Campaign Trail?

This morning I mentioned in passing that candidates have been clamoring for visits to their districts from candidates with brands that voters admire-- Bernie, first and foremost, but also Elizabeth Warren in a major way and a small number of House members who have been prominent in Resistance against Trump, Ted Lieu, for example. But no one wants public events in their districts with congressional big shots like Pelosi, Hoyer, Crowley, Lujan or Wasserman Schultz... nor with Hillary Clinton. Right after I finished writing that, The Hill published a piece by Amie Parnes, Hillary Clinton looks for her role in midterms, asserting that some candidates would like to have Hillary doing events in their districts. Most of them are Republicans eager to motivate their own base. As for Democrats? Maybe some Blue Dogs and the Wall Street-owned and operated New Dems, but no real Democrats that I could find.

Of course, as always with Clinton, it's all about her, not anyone else. She wants to play a role but isn't sure what the role will be. She started a PAC-- sucking money out of the system-- that she claims she'll use for campaigns. Rake-offs and "expenses" from those kinds of vanity efforts are just short of being criminal. "She also is looking," wrote Parnes, "at the House districts she won in last year’s presidential contest against Donald Trump as part of an autopsy of her failed campaign, according to two sources who have spoken to the former Secretary of State." These are the districts:

We reached out to candidates-- some who have declared and some who haven't in almost all 23 districts. Very few wanted to talk about it on the record. Kia Hamadanchy, who's running for the CA-45 seat Mimi Walters is holding, was the first. "Orange County," he told me, "is the key to the next house majority for Democrats and unless we win all 4 of these seats we are going to continue to be in the minority. Hillary Clinton helped demonstrate that this is not the same old conservative Orange County that everyone thinks it is and whether its Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden, or another national Democrat leader out here campaigning, the most important thing is that the national party continues to invest the attention and resources we need to win these seats."

Michael Hepburn is the progressive candidate contesting the Miami-Dade seat Ileana Ros-Lehtinen is giving up. It's the deep blue South Florida district Debbie Wasserman Schultz has help keep in Republican hands for over a decade-- and it's the GOP-held district Hillary won most overwhelmingly, clobbering Trump by nearly 20 points! Michael was happy to go on the record with this statement:

I personally do not have an issue with receiving support from Hillary Clinton after we win this Democratic nomination. I actually voted for Senator Sanders in the presidential primary-- since I felt that this country needed something different to push us forward and some of his policy perspectives closely resembled my point of view. However, I’m about people over politics and I wake up every day aspiring to inspire others to believe in their dreams and goals. So as long as she’s comfortable with knowing that I am running to be a champion for public education, healthcare, and economic justice for all-- I have no problems with receiving her support.

Across the board among candidates enthusiasm for Hillary coming into the districts in person was... muted. I didn't bring up Bernie or Elizabeth Warren to anyone but many of the candidates took the initiative of bringing one or both of them up-- and almost everyone said they would want Obama campaigning for them. One candidate in a district Hillary won narrowly said he hopes she "stays away and sends money... She's a lightning rod for negativity and she's yesterday's news... She won this district but an awful lot of people didn't vote for her as much as they voted against Trump. She was the lesser-of-two evils" in a lot of voters' minds. They did pick the lesser evil but no one in [deleted] wants to see her again anytime soon." One of the candidates in John Culberson's district told me, again, off-the-record, that "this is not a district where having Hillary here would help; unlike say Ileana's, where she won by double digits. She barely scraped by in this one!" Another Texas candidate was much harsher: "She'd muddle the message in a bad way. We're out here pushing a very clear message on climate, jobs, and health care. I don't know what she could add, given her slowness in coming our way on those issues. She will fire up a certain section of the base, sure, but no one has suggested in any precinct in any county that I try to bring her in."

Another candidate in a fiercely contested primary isn't interested in seeing her show up in his district and wouldn't invite her. "Totally off the record," he said, "I think it's probably a bad idea. Obama would be a different story as would Bernie. I just am not sure people have a stomach for relitigating 2016."

One of the top Orange County candidates told me, off the record that "she wouldn't be my first choice (I'd rather have Bernie or Obama). Hillary and the Clintons in general represent a different era and a different Democratic party, which I don't really identify with. She's also just generally been too hawkish and overly cautious for my taste. I also just have the sense that she's had her moment and as a party it's time for new faces a new generation of leadership. Now with all the said she did win this district and the 3 other OC ones and the only reason [the DCCC] is actually trying to contest these seats is for that reason. I don't think having her out here to campaign with me would hurt me in the way that having Trump out here campaign for [the GOP incumbent] would hurt them."

And two more off-the-record candidate comments: "I would prefer we move forward as a party and she just focus on fundraising. I am not sure she helps bring in any new voters. Those who like her are going to turn out anyways. My campaign is all about next generation leadership, which runs counter to how people feel about her."

And... "I really think she would do more harm than good but I think that should stay off record. You can quote me anonymously if you want but my take is that so many people voted for her in districts like mine not because they liked her but because it was between her and Trump and most rational people felt like she was the lesser of two evils. Next year it won't be about that and she has so much baggage attached to her that I personally think she should just stay out of it. She won't sway people towards me and there is a good chance she would push others away... especially people on the Bernie side or Republicans we are able to bring over."

Parnes:

Democrats are focused on the Golden State as they seek to win back the House majority.

[Wretchded, crooked Blue Dog] Ellen Tauscher-- a Clinton ally and former California congresswoman-- along with a longtime aide Katie Merrill, have started a super PAC focused on seven of the so-called “split districts” in that state that voted for Clinton but backed a Republican candidate for the House.

Democrats are still mapping out a game plan for 2018 along with a message for their rudderless party. But another Clinton confidant said part of the plan might be to have Clinton campaign for candidates in the places where she won.

“No one can argue that Clinton helping in those areas wouldn't be helpful,” the confidant said. “That is a priority for her.”

If Clinton hits the campaign trail, Republicans are ready to pounce. They say they would welcome Clinton's presence on the stump because it would help GOP candidates.

"For 30 years, Hillary Clinton has essentially been Old Faithful for Republican candidates," said Doug Heye, a Republican strategist. "Her continues prominence only helps GOP candidates with an electorate that historically is more favorable than what they faced in the last presidential election.

"The more Clinton weighs in and tries to tell voters "I'm baaaack," the more Republicans will tell her to keep on trucking," Heye continued.

Still, Chris Lehane, a Democratic strategist, added that Clinton, “could have a real voice in these places, absolutely.”

“She can go into those districts and make a case that there is an opportunity to do a course correction and do it in a fairly compelling way,” Lehane said, particularly if Democrats strengthen their message and give voters a reason to vote for them.

In May, during a question and answer session at the Code Conference, an event focused on tech, media and politics, Clinton indicated her focus is on winning those House seats for her party.

“Everything will change if we win in 2018,” she said at the conference. “We have to flip 24 seats. I won 23 districts that have a Republican Congress member, seven of them are in California.

“If we can flip those, if we can go deeper into where I did well, where we can get good candidates, I think flipping the House is certainly realistic. It’s a goal that we can set for ourselves,” she continued.

Even staunch Clinton supporters say that while there is room for her to play a role, she also needs to leave room for new leaders to emerge.

Garry Mauro, a longtime friend of the Clintons who led Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign effort in Texas, thinks the House can be won with the help of the Longhorn state, where there are three “split” districts.

But he doesn’t want Clinton to be front and center.

“Would she be well received? Of course, she would be. But we’re not going to win these races because Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton or Nancy Pelosi comes to the state and campaigns,” Mauro said. “We’re going to win it because we represent new leadership and new ideas.

“I think Secretary Clinton has got to define her role in American politics and she can play a real role in helping the Democratic Party but…we need new leadership,” Mauro added. “She can play a heck of a role. She just can’t play the dominant role.”

Republicans have signaled they intend to link every Democrat running for the House next year to longtime Democratic leader and former Speaker Pelosi (Calif.), arguing a vote for the local Democrat would put Pelosi in charge.

It’s an argument many Democrats are wary of, as it was used successfully against Jon Ossoff-- the promising Democratic candidate who lost a special election in Georgia last month.

Merrill, who started “Fight Back California” together with Tauscher, said there is a role Clinton can play when it comes to driving turnout among Democrats and the ability to raise money for Democratic candidates.

“Midterm elections are notorious for low turn out and the ability to raise money-- those are the two places Democrats will have trouble in the midterms,” Merrill said, adding that Clinton could contribute by doing digital ads and social media outreach along with tapping into her vast Rolodex of donors.

But Merrill said the California races in particular are going to be “won on local issues” by talking to the voters about the records of the incumbents.

“I think it would be a mistake for any campaign to nationalize these elections,” she added. “It can’t be about Trump or the 2016 election. It’s gotta be about these local issues.”

Merrill said she expects Clinton to remain “an active part” of the Democratic Party.

“I imagine she’ll only continue that level of activity,” she said.

Let's look at the last district on the list, AZ-02, a quintessential swing district that includes most of Tucson, though not the Hispanic west and south sides. Obama narrowly missed winning both times he ran-- by about 1%-- and Trump lost to Hillary by almost 5 points, 49.6% to 44.7%. While Hillary was winning, Republican incumbent Martha McSally was beating Democrat Matt Heinz decisively, 179,806 (57%) to 135,873 (43%). McSally spent a massive $7,826,194 to Heniz's $1,576,119. Ryan's SuperPAC spent $662,677 bolstering McSally while Pelosi and the DCCC refused to spend a dime on Heinz, leaving him twisting in the hot sun. He's running again-- as are half a dozen other Democratic candidates-- Billy Kovacs, Will Foster, Jeff Latas, Mary Sally Matiella, Charlie Verdin and a right-wing corporate shill the DCCC is importing into the district, Ann Kirkpatrick, who has a long history of losing elections by trying to appeal to Republicans while alienating Democrats and progressive independents.

Heinz was willing to talk on the record. He told us that he's hearing from his "patients, my colleagues and many southern Arizona politicos that they are sick of the same cookie cutter career politicians spouting perfectly crafted poll-tested and focus-grouped talking points. That strategy has failed us-- most recently we saw that in GA-06 and SC-05. The money and DCCC went for Ossoff (a very talented man, btw) and totally neglected the genuine progressive Dem in SC-05 who came within 2700 votes of an amazing upset!

"We need candidates who are authentic and who have real connections to their communities. Most importantly we have to listen to the voters. That's the theme of my announcement video which you can see at heinzforarizona.com. When a hugely Republican district almost votes for a soft-spoken progressive tax attorney, that's because he was connecting with people and listening to their hopes and fears.

"I think we can learn a lot from these recent events and I know that in my own campaign I'm looking to my volunteers and precinct committee folks and everyday southern Arizonans for their input, not just a few expensive surveys. I'm also hearing every day from my patients about current events-- something I have never before experienced! People are very engaged and activated even now!

"As for Hillary helping out House candidates, that is very gracious of her to offer. We certainly don't agree on every issue. But I will say that she conceded without tipping the nation into civil unrest-- something that I believe she alone had the capacity to do, sadly. She also sent me a personal letter expressing how she was honored to share the ballot with me in 2016. It was an unexpectedly warm and personal gesture. I wish more people could have seen that side of her in the lead up to the Nov 8 election last year. It reminded me of VP Al Gore on SNL post the Nov 2000 election. He got into a hot tub and was absolutely hilarious! It was a funny and engaging more human side of him that we didn't see almost ever ahead of that fateful election.

"I believe that Hillary could be a very positive force in some of the districts she won substantially (south Florida, maybe Issa's seat in the San Diego area), especially with the buyer's remorse going on presently. That said, she remains a highly polarizing celebrity and some districts like mine are so evenly divided that such an endorsement could ultimately fuel turnout for my opponent who is suffering from very low approval (40%!!) because McSally could then start running ads against Hillary instead of me.

"For my part, I plan to stay focused on southern Arizona families. If elected, I will be tasked with making government work better for them. That is my passion and therefore will continue to be my highest priority and focus."

Right now, polling shows Heinz leading McSally 48-44%, but that will all go up in smoke if the DCCC brings in their losing candidate from across the state, Kirkpatrick, to shit all over the field and guarantee another term for McSally. It would be a classic DCCC/EMILY's List move, the exact kind of move that have turned so many grassroots Democrats against both organizations.

TrumpCare 3.0 vs Medicare-For-All

Last night Bernie spoke about TrumpCare at the Pittsburgh Convention Center and this morning he’ll be doing the same at Express Live in Columbus, Ohio and again this evening at the West Virginia Civic Center in Charleston. You can get to the essence of his message by watching the short clip he released (above). Do you doubt anything that he says in his response to the Republican “healthcare” bill? All those assertions about what Americans want, for example? On Friday, the Pew Research Center released a new poll, senators might want to look at before they vote on TrumpCare 3.0. Top line: "a majority of Americans say it is the federal government’s responsibility to make sure all Americans have health care coverage. And a growing share now supports a 'single payer' approach to health insurance."

Currently, 60% say the federal government is responsible for ensuring health care coverage for all Americans, while 39% say this is not the government’s responsibility. These views are unchanged from January, but the share saying health coverage is a government responsibility remains at its highest level in nearly a decade.

Among those who see a government responsibility to provide health coverage for all, more now say it should be provided through a single health insurance system run by the government, rather than through a mix of private companies and government programs. Overall, 33% of the public now favors such a “single payer” approach to health insurance, up 5 percentage points since January and 12 points since 2014. Democrats-- especially liberal Democrats-- are much more supportive of this approach than they were even at the start of this year.

Even among those who say the federal government is not responsible for ensuring Americans have health care coverage, there is little public appetite for government withdrawing entirely from involvement in health care coverage. Among the public, 33% say that health care coverage is not the government’s responsibility, but that programs like Medicare and Medicaid should be continued; just 5% of Americans say the government should not be involved at all in providing health insurance.

The issue of the government’s responsibility in ensuring health coverage remains deeply divisive politically, according to the new survey, conducted June 8-18 among 2,504 adults. More than eight-in-ten Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents (85%) say that this responsibility falls to the federal government, while about two-thirds of Republicans and Republican leaners (68%) say it does not.

Still, most Republicans (57%) say the government “should continue programs like Medicare and Medicaid for seniors and the very poor.” Just 9% of Republicans say the government should not be involved in providing health insurance at all.

Among Democrats, 52% now say health insurance should be provided through a single national insurance system run by the government, while fewer (31%) say it should be provided through a mix of private companies and government programs. The share of Democrats supporting a single national program to provide health insurance has increased 9 percentage points since January and 19 points since 2014.

Nearly two-thirds of liberal Democrats (64%) now support a single-payer health insurance system, up 13 percentage points since January. Conservative and moderate Democrats remain about evenly divided: 38% prefer that health insurance continue to be provided by a mix of private insurance companies and government programs, while 42% favor a single-payer approach.

Overall, support for a single-payer health insurance system is much greater among younger adults than older people. Two-thirds of adults younger than 30 (67%) say the government has a responsibility to provide health coverage for all, with 45% saying coverage should be provided through a single national program.

Among those 65 and older, 54% say the government has a responsibility to provide coverage for all, with 30% favoring a single payer approach.

Both parties are divided by age in views of the government’s role in health care. Fully 66% of Democrats and Democratic leaners ages 18 to 29 say government health coverage should be provided through a single national system, compared with 48% of Democrats and Democratic leaners ages 30 and older.

Among Republicans, a greater share of those younger than 30 (39%) than those 30 and older (28%) say the government is responsible for providing health coverage for all; more young Republicans than older Republicans favor single payer (22% vs. 10%).

And the Senate bill certainly doesn’t do anything that Trump or the Republicans promised it would do-- like making medical coverage much more affordable or protecting people with bankruptcy-inducing “preexisting conditions.” More affordable, easier and cheaper for consumers? Not this bill!

Reed Abelson in yesterday’s NY Times stripped the bride bare:

[M]illions of Americans will pay more for an insurance policy that comes with a much steeper deductible under the new Senate plan, according to some health economists and insurance experts. It could also make it much harder to find a comprehensive plan covering various conditions ranging from heart disease to depression that would not be prohibitively expensive.

“This is going to be a very unstable market” where only the very sickest people resort to buying coverage on the federal exchanges at much higher prices, said Paul B. Ginsburg, a health economist and the director of the Center for Health Policy at the Brookings Institution.

Those likely to suffer the most under the Senate plan are people who would not be eligible for any remaining subsidies, he said, because they could be priced out of the market. Most worrisome to those opposing the Senate bill is that states could give insurers leeway to offer skimpy plans that cover a lot less and exclude people with certain illnesses.

…If the Senate version becomes law, insurers could increase premiums for individual coverage by at least 20 percent more than the double-digit increases already under consideration. By 2020, other changes are likely to result in plans with much higher deductibles. People now getting tax credits that allow them to purchase a policy with a deductible of $3,500 would get subsidies for a plan where the deductible would nearly double, without any funding to pay their out-of-pocket costs.

Many people will face a Hobson’s choice, said Craig Garthwaite, a health economist at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management. They will have to choose between a plan with a premium they cannot afford or a plan with a deductible they cannot afford.

While lower premiums touted by Republicans could attract healthier people to buy coverage on the exchanges, other changes could still drive up prices, said Mr. Garthwaite, who is a registered Republican. “It could turn out to be higher premiums and higher deductibles,” he said.

One stark difference between the Senate bill and the Affordable Care Act is the decision to drop the mandate requiring insurance. That could inadvertently discourage the youngest and healthiest people from buying insurance, leaving a higher percentage of sicker people with expensive treatments on the exchanges, driving up insurers’ costs.

Thursday, conservative New Dem (former Blue Dog) Adam Schiff became the latest (and 113th) House Democrat to sign on as a co-sponsor of John Conyers’ Medicare-For-All bill (H.R. 676). The Blue Dogs and New Dems-- the Republican wing of the Democratic Party-- have tended to stay away from the bill but as election season approaches and the popularity of the approach, particularly among Democrats and independents-- becomes manifest, even conservative politicians like Schiff are jumping on the train. Schiff is interested in running for the California Senate seat Dianne Feinstein told him she would be giving up next year. No one’s going to win statewide office in California without being committed to single-payer.

Over the past several months, you’ve read how all the Blue America-backed candidates are proponents of single payer health insurance. Some, like Illinois emergency room physician, David Gill, have been working towards it for many years. Our newest endorsee, Randy Bryce, the progressive Democrat running for the swing district Wisconsin seat Paul Ryan has been in, did an interview with the New Republic and explained why he favors single payer health insurance. This morning he built on his statement by telling us that “our very health is literally under attack. I am outraged by what I see going on in our government. When our campaign made our first video, I felt it was important to address the issue of health. It’s an intergenerational issue that affects us from birth until the day we die. Health care is a right. I can’t believe that they’re working behind closed doors to find that best way to strip away our ability to be well just so that their richest donors can become richer. When I begin to work in Washington D.C. one of the first things I look forward to doing is adding my name to the Conyers bill that will make sure every American has access to health care. We need to stop looking for excuses as to why it can’t be done and start figuring out how to do it. I plan on being part of the solution.”

The two North Carolina Berniecrats Blue America has endorsed for 2018, are excellent examples of how grassroots activism-- even in “red” districts-- manifests itself in dangerous times. Matt Coffay is campaigning for the wester-most district in the state, flat up against Tennessee, currently held by TrumpCare godfather and Freedom Caucus chairman, extremist Mark Meadows. You’re not going to ever hear Coffay degenerate into a Republican-lite establishment shill. That’s not who he is and not why he’s running for office in such difficult circumstances. "One of my first acts in Congress,” he told us, “will be to co-sponsor HR 676, the Conyers ‘Medicare for All’ bill. This bill has been on the floor of the House since 2003 with little in the way of support; now, though, there is a real opportunity to pass this bill and create a universal health care system in this country. I intend to use my voice as a Congressman to elevate public awareness of the benefits of universal health care, and work alongside folks like Bernie Sanders to create a health care system that takes care of every single person in this country." Jenny Marshall is running for the central/western North Carolina congressional district anti-healthcare fanatic Virginia Foxx operates out of. Foxx, who started off as a fiery extremist, sold out to the establishment long ago and is now a Ryan rubber stamp. Jenny told us that the bill the Senate Republicans unveiled “puts millions of lives at risk” and threatens households vulnerable to economic hardships. “In the 5th district 1 out of every 7 people will lose their healthcare. It is simply unconscionable. The GOP stands on free market principles claiming everyone has access to healthcare under their plan. I disagree. There is no access when people cannot afford to buy healthcare insurance and cover the out-of-pocket expenses. There is no access when people wait for far too long to seek care because of the rising cost of doctors' visits, prescription costs and medical procedures. People have been priced out of the care they need, but the GOP has turned a blind eye. I on the other hand support moving to a single payer program that covers not only medical, but vision and dental care as well. That is why I would add my name as a co-sponsor of Rep. Conyers' Medicare For All bill (HR 676) when elected to Congress. We must step up and do what is right for the people of this country, standing strong that healthcare is a human right. Millions of lives depend on it.”

At any given moment at this time in the cycle, Blue America is vetting at least a dozen candidates. I’m happy to say that right now every single one of them has expressed an eagerness to co-sponsor Conyers’ Medicare-for-All bill. Marie Newman is a good example. She’s primarying of if the most conservative Democrats in Congress, Chicagoland Blue Dog Dan Lipinski, a committed member of the Republican wing of the Democratic Party. Lipinski, who tends to vote with the Republicans far more than any moderate Democrats, has adamantly refused-- even as other Blue Dogs and New Dems have signed on-- to co-sponsor Conyers’ bill. Last night Marie told us that “as a candidate so focused on fighting to expand health care for all, I would co-sponsor the Conyers bill in order to establish Medicare For All and put action behind the truth that ‘health care is a right'." You can support her tough primary battle against Lipinski here. We need more Democrats in Congress like Marie-- and far, far fewer like Lipinski.

Kia Hamadanchy worked as a Sherrod Brown staffer in DC before moving back to the Orange County district he was born and raised in. His opponent, Trump rubber stamp Mimi Waters, has repeatedly refused to move into the district and almost never goes there except to meet with wealthy GOP donors and for photo-ops. She was a prominent backer of Ryan’s TrumpCare bill, a bill Kia opposes. “At the end of the day,” he told us, “health care is a human right. No one should ever go bankrupt because a lack of health insurance, and every single person in this country deserves to have access to affordable health care coverage that's there when they need it. And while I don't want to see the Affordable Care Act go away and strongly oppose efforts to repeal the law, I also believe that enacting  single payer health insurance is the best way to ensure that we meet the healthcare needs of every single American. That's why when elected I will absolutely cosponsor John Conyers’ Medicare-For-All bill."

Sam Jammal is considering running in another Orange County district, Ed Royce’s CA-39, the Republican-held district in the area that went most heavily against Trump last year. The DCCC has its own crackpot idea about selling the nomination to a rich lottery winner, but Sam is the progressive alternative to Royce and offers a coherent alternative to Royce’s reactionary and bigoted agenda."Ask any senior," he told us last night, "Medicare is great program. It makes sense to expand this for everyone. Imagine if a small business no longer had to budget in health care costs for their employees and could use those savings to hire more workers or a family knew that they wouldn't be at risk of losing their home just for getting sick. Our economy is changing and we need to take health care off the table as a political issue and focus on the economic benefits of getting everyone covered. If I were in Congress, I would be a co-sponsor of the Conyers bill."

 Although the DCCC is on the road to lose CA-10 again and give Jeff Denham an incredible run for a Republican in a blue district, grassroots Berniecrat Dotty Nygard, has different ideas. She’s not waiting around for another DCCC loser to run; she’s taking on Denham herself. She told us that when she makes it to Washington as an elected representative, she’ll "wholeheartedly co-sponsor H.R. 676, the Medicare for all Bill. As an elected I will have a duty and moral obligation to represent in the best interests of the people I serve, not in the interests of corporations or  Big Pharma. The American people deserve quality healthcare; they don't need insurance."

Elizabeth Warren took to the floor of the Senate to eviscerate the Senate bill. Brutal-- absolutely brutal:

L.A. Doesn't Allow Slavery-- Indentured Servants, Though... An Entirely Different Matter

I woke up this morning and my e-mail box was filled with messages about this report, Rigged by Brett Murphy for USA Today. I had missed it when it ran a few days ago but. My correspondents were insistent it is a must-read. And it is. It’s worth reading in full— though probably not on a full stomach. Murphy started off with the story of an immigrant trucker, Samuel Talavera Jr., virtually a modern day American slave. Or does being paid make you not a slave… even if the pay is 67 cents a week? One driver told Murphy that “We are not human. We are machines for making money for these people.” Talavera’s truck, which he was leasing-to-buy from the company he worked for, broke down in October, 2013.

When Talavera could not afford repairs, the company fired him and seized the truck-- along with $78,000 he had paid towards owning it.

Talavera was a modern-day indentured servant. And there are hundreds, likely thousands more, still on the road, hauling containers for trucking companies that move goods for America’s most beloved retailers, from Costco to Target to Home Depot.

These port truckers-- many of them poor immigrants who speak little English-- are responsible for moving almost half of the nation’s container imports out of Los Angeles’ ports. They don't deliver goods to stores. Instead they drive them short distances to warehouses and rail yards, one small step on their journey to a store near you.

A yearlong investigation by the USA Today Network found that port trucking companies in southern California have spent the past decade forcing drivers to finance their own trucks by taking on debt they could not afford. Companies then used that debt as leverage to extract forced labor and trap drivers in jobs that left them destitute.

If a driver quit, the company seized his truck and kept everything he had paid towards owning it.

If drivers missed payments, or if they got sick or became too exhausted to go on, their companies fired them and kept everything. Then they turned around and leased the trucks to someone else.

Drivers who manage to hang on to their jobs sometimes end up owing money to their employers— essentially working for free. Reporters identified seven different companies that have told their employees they owe money at week’s end.

The USA Today Network pieced together accounts from more than 300 drivers, listened to hundreds of hours of sworn labor dispute testimony and reviewed contracts that have never been seen by the public.

Using the contracts, submitted as evidence in labor complaints, and shipping manifests, reporters matched the trucking companies with the most labor violations to dozens of retail brands, including Target, Hewlett-Packard, Home Depot, Hasbro, J.Crew, UPS, Goodyear, Costco, Ralph Lauren and more.

Among the findings:

• Trucking companies force drivers to work against their will-- up to 20 hours a day-- by threatening to take their trucks and keep the money they paid toward buying them. Bosses create a culture of fear by firing drivers, suspending them without pay or reassigning them the lowest-paying routes.
• To keep drivers working, managers at a few companies have physically barred them from going home. More than once, Marvin Figueroa returned from a full day’s work to find the gate to the parking lot locked and a manager ordering drivers back to work. “That was how they forced me to continue working,” he testified in a 2015 labor case. Truckers at two other companies have made similar claims.
• Employers charge not just for truck leases but for a host of other expenses, including hundreds of dollars a month for insurance and diesel fuel. Some charge truckers a parking fee to use the company lot. One company, Fargo Trucking, charged $2 per week for the office toilet paper and other supplies.
• Drivers at many companies say they had no choice but to break federal safety laws that limit truckers to 11 hours on the road each day. Drivers at Pacific 9 Transportation testified that their managers dispatched truckers up to 20 hours a day, then wouldn’t pay them until drivers falsified inspection reports that track hours. Hundreds of California port truckers have gotten into accidents, leading to more than 20 fatalities from 2013 to 2015, according to the USA Today Network's analysis of federal crash and port trade data.
• Many drivers thought they were paying into their truck like a mortgage. Instead, when they lost their job, they discovered they also lost their truck, along with everything they’d paid toward it. Eddy Gonzalez took seven days off to care for his dying mother and then bury her. When he came back, his company fired him and kept the truck. For two years, Ho Lee was charged more than $1,600 a month for a truck lease. When he got ill and missed a week of work, he lost the truck and everything he’d paid.
• Retailers could refuse to allow companies with labor violations to truck their goods. Instead they’ve let shipping and logistics contractors hire the lowest bidder, while lobbying on behalf of trucking companies in Sacramento and Washington D.C. Walmart, Target and dozens of other Fortune 500 companies have paid lobbyists up to $12.6 million to fight bills that would have held companies liable or given drivers a minimum wage and other protections that most U.S. workers already enjoy.

This isn’t a case of a few bad trucking companies accused of mistreating a handful of workers.

Since 2010, at least 1,150 port truck drivers have filed claims in civil court or with the California Department of Industrial Relations’ enforcement arm, known as the labor commission.

Judges have sided with drivers in more than 97% of the cases heard, ruling time after time that port truckers in California can’t legally be classified as independent contractors. Instead, they are employees who, by law, must be paid minimum wage and can’t be charged for the equipment they use at work.

The rulings stop there. They do not address specific allegations of abuse by drivers, including whether trucking companies physically barred them from leaving work or ordered them to work past federal fatigue limits.

But allegations like those have been made in sworn testimony in hundreds of the cases, virtually all of which ended with trucking companies ordered to repay drivers for truck expenses and lost wages. The USA Today Network found that at least 140 trucking companies have been accused by at least one driver of shorting them of fair pay or using threats to squeeze them to work longer hours.

Prominent civil rights leader Julian Bond once called California port truckers the new black tenant farmers of the post-Civil War South. Sharecroppers from that era rented farmland to make their living and regularly fell into debt to their landlords. Widespread predatory practices made it nearly impossible for the farmers to climb out.

Through lease contracts, California’s port truckers face the same kinds of challenges in ways that experts say rarely happen in the U.S. today.

“I don’t know of anything even remotely like this,” said Stanford Law School Professor William Gould, former chairman of the National Labor Relations Board and one of the nation’s top labor experts.

“You’re working to get yourself out of the debt. You just don’t see anything like that.”

…Some company owners said their lease-to-own programs were a favor to truckers who might otherwise have been out of work. And there are drivers who make it through the contract to own their trucks, something that’s grown more common with time and a rebounding economy. Drivers who can't make a living aren't working hard enough, many company executives say.

“Our owner very generously went out and purchased a fleet of clean trucks,” said Marc Koenig, a vice president at Performance Team, which has lost cases to 21 drivers at the California labor commission. “That’s what really frustrated our owner. He really reached out and helped these guys.”

…California’s port truckers make it possible for the Walmarts and Amazons of the world to function. Even so, most of the two dozen retail companies contacted by the USA Today Network declined to comment, some saying they had never heard of the rash of labor violations at their primary ports of entry.

Only Goodyear said it took immediate action. Spokesperson Keith Price said in a statement that the tire giant dropped Pacific 9 in 2015, “within two weeks” of California labor commission decisions in favor of dozens of drivers.

The few others that issued statements said it was not their responsibility to police the shipping industry. Retailers don't directly hire the truckers who move their goods at the pier. They generally hire large shipping or logistics firms that line up trucking companies through a maze of subcontractors.

…For decades, short-haul truckers at the nation’s ports relied on cheap clunkers to move goods to nearby warehouses and rail yards.

With little up-front investment, drivers-- most of them independent contractors who owned their own trucks-- could make a decent living squeezing the last miles from dilapidated big rigs that weren’t suited for the open road.

In October 2008, that changed dramatically in southern California, home of the nation’s busiest ports, Los Angeles and Long Beach. State officials, fed up with deadly diesel fumes from 16,000 outdated trucks, ordered the entire fleet replaced with new, cleaner rigs.

Suddenly, this obscure but critical collection of trucking companies faced a $2.5 billion crossroads unlike anything experienced at other U.S. ports.

Instead of digging into their own pockets to undo the environmental mess they helped create, the companies found a way to push the cost onto individual drivers, who are paid by the number and kinds of containers they move, not by the hour.

There are 800 companies regularly operating at the LA ports. Almost all of them turned to some form of a lease-to-own model, some without thinking through the consequences, said industry consultant and lobbyist Alex Cherin.

“Flying by the seat of their pants and making it up as they went along,” he said of the scramble to find trucks for drivers. “Ultimately what they were trying to do was survive in a business with very thin margins.”

Truckers at dozens of companies describe the same basic scene. They were handed a lease-to-own contract by their employer and given a choice: Sign immediately or be fired. Many drivers who spoke little English said managers gave them no time to seek legal advice or even an interpreter to read the contract.

It was "take it or leave it," according to Fidel Vasquez, a driver for Total Transportation who said he couldn’t read the contract because it was in English.

Jose Juan Rodriguez owned his own truck and drove primarily for Morgan Southern, where two dozen drivers have filed claims for back pay at the California labor commission and civil court. Like many drivers, Rodriguez said he didn’t understand what he was signing, but felt he had no choice.

His wife has stage three breast cancer and his adult son has severe brain damage requiring frequent doctor visits.

“Where do I sign?” Rodriguez recalled asking right away. “The only thing I had to worry about is work, because I have a family.”

The contracts work like sub-leases. Knowing drivers could not qualify for their own loans or leases, trucking companies arranged to finance their fleets. Then they had drivers sign up for individual trucks.

Drivers gave their old trucks-- many of which they owned outright-- to their company as a down payment. And just like that they were up to $100,000 in debt to their own employer. The same guys would have had a tough time qualifying for a Hyundai days earlier.

As far back as August 2008, a trucking finance firm warned Port of Long Beach board members that 40% of drivers were likely to default on truck leases. But no one stopped the deals, which place almost all of the financial risk onto the workers.

Drivers' names were not on the truck titles. And many contracts effectively barred drivers from using their truck to work for other companies.

The companies also retained the power to decide how much work to give their drivers. They decide who gets the easiest and most lucrative routes-- and who gets to work at all.

That leaves drivers in constant fear of upsetting managers, who can fire them for any reason, or simply stop sending them business, a process some call “starving” them out of the truck.

On a five-year lease, drivers could pay in for four years and 11 months. If they got sick, fell behind on the lease or were fired in the last month, they could lose everything--as if they had never paid a dime.

“The truck was never his,” one California labor commission hearing officer noted in a March, 2014 ruling. “And he has nothing to show for all the time and money he spent.”

…Drivers who signed up for leases watched their take-home pay plummet and often had no choice but to work longer hours.

After emigrating from Nicaragua in 1992, Samuel Talavera Jr. drove a truck at the Los Angeles harbor and made an honest living. Since 9/11, all truckers working at ports of entry must be legal residents.

Talavera bought his wife, Reyna, a house and took his daughters to Disneyland.

But everything changed in late 2010, when he went into the QTS warehouse and his boss told him he needed to trade in his truck and sign a lease-purchase contract.

For the next four years, he worked mind-numbing hours to pay the bills.

To save commuting time, he slept in his truck at work. To avoid bathroom breaks, he kept an empty two-liter bottle by his side. He became a ghost to his family.

Still, he had to drain his savings to survive.

A stack of weekly paychecks he keeps in a drawer at home shows his worst weeks. He grossed $1,970 on June 3, 2011, but it all went back to QTS. After the lease and other truck expenses, he took home $33.

On February 10, 2012, he took home $112 after expenses.

The next week, he made 67 cents.

Reyna got two office cleaning jobs and a third taking care of the elderly to try to make ends meet. Even so, when her father died, she couldn’t afford to fly home for the funeral.

Talavera was working so much, she said. “We didn’t understand why there was hardly any money left over.”

Through interviews and court records, reporters catalogued more than 120 drivers who say they regularly worked past exhaustion, 12 to 20 hours straight behind the wheel.

Federal law prohibits commercial truckers from driving more than 11 hours at a time, and they can’t work at all after 14 hours, until they have had 10 hours of rest. Government studies show that for every hour past 11 that someone drives, the chances of crashing increase exponentially.

Many drivers feel they have no choice but to take that risk.

On bad weeks-- when Flores hits traffic or gets assigned a low-paying delivery-- he says he takes home $300 or less for 100 hours of work. That translates into $3 an hour, less than a third of what he could make washing dishes at California’s minimum wage.

Drivers could quit and find new work. But many, like Flores, say they’ve stayed on hoping things would improve. Then they realized if they quit, they would lose thousands paid toward their truck. “They’re captive,” Teamsters’ international vice president Fred Potter said.

Truck payments can cut so deep into wages that drivers actually owe their employer come Friday.

“Working for free,” one driver called it in a court statement.

Paychecks read instead like weekly invoices: Faustino Denova, negative $9.64. Germen Merino, negative $92.50. Jose Covarrubias, negative $280.

For some truckers, the debt stacked up week after week, until they borrowed against their house or from friends, used their savings to pay it off or until their company fired them.

“The company didn't care whether I took a gallon of milk to my home or not,” one driver testified in a civil court case. “The company would take everything.”

Enough weeks like that put truckers into a hole they can’t escape.

Like many drivers, Talavera and his wife fell behind on their mortgage, and then stopped paying it altogether. They filed for bankruptcy to save their home.

In ways that happen in virtually no other workplace in America, port trucking companies in Southern California wield enormous power over their workers.

Through interviews and a review of sworn statements, the USA Today Network identified more than 100 drivers who reported threats and retaliation. Managers punish drivers most often for turning down the lowest-paying routes, missing work or refusing to work past federal hour limits.

At least 24 companies have fired drivers outright under those circumstances, according to interviews and a review of court, NLRB and California labor commission records. In each case, the driver lost his truck and what he’d paid into it.

Arcadio Amaya said he refused to work 15 hours straight one night at Pacgran Inc. and was fired the next day. He lost $26,400 he had paid toward a truck.

Armando Logamo, a former driver at RPM Harbor Services, said he saw other drivers bribing dispatchers for better-paying assignments, so he told his supervisor. The next week, Logamo was fired. He lost the truck, along with all the payments he had put into it.

“They fired me because I was one of the ones that was speaking up,” he said. “It was pretty devastating because I was with them for two plus years.”

Eddy Gonzalez once missed a day when he was called to court to testify as a witness. As punishment, he said his boss at Seacon Logix didn't let him work the next day.

Then, a few months later, he missed a week to bury his dead mother. When Gonzalez came back, he said, his boss cleaned out his truck and fired him on the spot while he pleaded to keep his job.

“He just took the keys and left,” Gonzalez testified in court.

On Monday, Nanette Barragan, a freshman congresswoman whose district isn’t far from L.A.’s port was with the Teamsters to stand with them in solidarity on this issue. This morning she told me that her cousin is a truck driver. “I know first hand how hard our truck drivers work to make ends meet. Some of them don't even make minimum wage; this is unjust. I stand with our working families who deserve a fair and just wage."

Kia Hamadanchy is running for the Orange County congressional seat held by absentee congresswoman and Trump/Ryan rubberstamp Mimi Walters. Moments ago told us that "What's happening to these truckers is absolutely unconscionable and should have no place in any industry in this country. Companies shouldn't be allowed to trap their workers in these kinds of arrangements and situations like these are a big part of why I'm running for Congress and what I'd fight for once I get there." And the other excellent progressive running for the CA-45 seat is Katie Porter, who had the same reaction as Kia. She told us that "This is another example of how crushing, exploitive debt reveberates through people's lives and makes it almost impossible for many families to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. You should be able to work in this country to get yourself out of debt, but our financial and legal system has created an almost permanent class of debtors. Its why in Congress, I'll work to end credit checks for hiring and end employment discrimination based off consumer financial history."