Is The Democratic Party Gearing Up To Nominate Another Candidate Who Doesn't Embrace Change?

Joe Biden-- Status Quo by Nancy Ohanian

Change Research is the best polling firm for the 2020 cycle, at least so far. You should follow them. They just released a pre-convention poll of California voters. Among Democrats, there are just five serious contenders for the nomination, at least at this point-- pre-debate, remember:

Beyond the top line, though, we learn that Bernie has a strong lead (40%) among 18 to 34 year old voters although the older voters are, the more they gravitate towards Status Quo Joe. Among 35 to 49 year old voters, Biden leads Bernie by one point, 25% to 24%. but past 50, it's all Biden's-- among voters older than 65, Biden has a strong 42% lead. Harris isn't as much of a factor as out-of-state pundits who don't know any better thought she'd be. Until this presidential race, many California Democrats barely recognized her name. She has never been an especially popular elected official in California and it's still historically questionable if she even really won her first race for Attorney General.

In the national poll Change Research released this week, they found Biden and Bernie neck and neck among white Democrats-- 25-24%-- and with Biden ahead among black voters and Bernie ahead among Latinx voters. (Nationally, Kamala sinks down into the single digits below Elizabeth Warren (15%) and McKinsey Pete (9%). But back to California, all those old Biden supporters must be wondering why he avoided the state Democratic Party convention this past weekend. Was it because the party refused too re-endorse his top California surrogate, Dianne Feinstein, when she ran for reelection last year? And, remember, as conservative as Feinstein is, she was always to the left of Biden on every issue under the sun.

Writing for Common Dreams Monday, Norman Solomon endeavored to answer the question for them about why Status Quo Joe avoided the Golden State and only comes here to access the golden ATM card of dullard film people who don't understand the difference between a progressive and a conservative. "Biden’s glaring absence from the California Democratic Party convention," he wrote, "has thrown a national spotlight on his eagerness to detour around the party’s progressive base. While dodging an overt clash for now, Biden is on a collision course with grassroots Democrats across the country who are learning more about his actual record and don’t like it." Imagine if film people read another other than scripts and celebrity gossip! Biden would have no campaign cash except what he gets from Wall Street!

Inside the statewide convention in San Francisco over the weekend, I spoke with hundreds of delegates about Biden while leafletting with information on his record. I was struck by the frequent intensity of distrust and even animosity; within seconds, after glancing at his name and photo at the top of the flyer, many delegates launched into some form of denunciation.

I often heard delegates bring up shameful milestones in Biden’s political history-- especially his opposition to busing for school desegregation, treatment of Anita Hill in the Clarence Thomas hearings, leading role in passage of the 1994 crime bill, career-long services to corporate elites, and powerful support for the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

It may have been a dumb tactical move for Biden to stay away from the convention. Its 3,400 delegates included core Democratic activists and leaders from around the state. Even some of the pro-Biden delegates said they were miffed that he wasn’t showing up-- in contrast to the 14 presidential candidates who accepted invitations to address the convention. (Biden chose to be in Ohio instead, speaking at a Human Rights Campaign gala in support of LGBTQ rights.)

Nationwide, Biden generated headlines like this one in USA Today: “Biden Faces Stiff Criticism from Democrats for Skipping California Convention.” Interviewed for that news story, I said: “He was not going to be very popular at this convention, but his refusal to show up only reinforces the idea that he’s an elitist and he is more interested in collecting big checks in California than being in genuine touch with grassroots activists and people who care about the Democratic Party’s future.”

Yet if Biden had shown up, it’s quite likely he would have been met with a storm of protest on the convention floor. That’s because so many of the state’s Democratic delegates are vocally opposed to the root causes and effects of institutionalized racism, war, systemic assaults on the environment and overall corporate power.

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Looking ahead, Biden will strive to avoid, as much as possible, any uncontrolled situation that could disrupt his pose as an advocate for the middle class and the poor. He least needs wide circulation of accurate information about his political record.

I worked with a few other delegates to blanket the convention with a RootsAction flyer that included some revealing quotes from Biden and facts about his record. We got some pushback from people who didn’t like seeing distribution of such critical material. But many more said that they appreciated it.

Polls show that Biden has little support among young people. Many share the basic outlook of a 19-year-old Sanders supporter at the convention, Yvette Flores, who told Bloomberg News: “Everything he stands for is against the interests of the working class and young Democrats.”

While a dozen of the presidential contenders who spoke were unimpressive or worse, two were far and away the progressive standouts.

Bernie Sanders (whom I actively support) delivered a cogent and fiery speech on Sunday. “There is a debate among presidential candidates who have spoken to you here in this room-- and those who have chosen for whatever reason not to be in this room-- about the best way forward," he said. “In my view, we will not defeat Donald Trump unless we bring excitement and energy into the campaign, and unless we give millions of working people and young people a reason to vote and a reason to believe that politics is relevant to their lives.” And: “We have got to make it clear that when the future of the planet is at stake there is no middle ground.”

The other great speech came from Elizabeth Warren, who also deftly skewered Biden along the way. “Big problems call for big solutions,” she said. “And some Democrats in Washington believe the only changes we can get are tweaks and nudges. If they dream, they dream small. Some say if we all just calm down, the Republicans will come to their senses.” Warren added: “Here’s the thing. When a candidate tells you about all the things that aren't possible, about how political calculations come first . . . they’re telling you something very important—they are telling you that they will not fight for you.”

Her reference to the distant Joe Biden was crystal clear.

Usually if you want to list the most vile and repulsive Clintonistas who have sold out most completely and gone over to Fox, Mark Penn, Dick Morris, Doug Schoen, Pat Caddell, Bob Beckel... come to mind first. Yesterday, one of the worst of them, Schoen did a Biden propaganda piece for Fox. Schoen is excited that Biden opposes impeaching Trump-- and will likely pardon him and his family if he has the opportunity-- are is completely turned on by his anti-progressive approach. "Biden's decision to skip California last weekend,' he wrote, "is indicative of his strategy-- while 14 other Democratic candidates took the stage in a solidly blue state to speak to fellow Democrats, Biden spoke in a swing-state that President Trump won by 8 points in 2016, though was won by Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012. Put simply, this is the best-- and only-- strategy for the Biden campaign. Since Biden entered the race, Bernie has spent more time in Ohio than Biden has spent in every single state he's visited combined. As usual, Schoen's analysis is devoid of any concessions to reality at all. No wonder he's still writing for Fox! And, again, substituting "moderate" for "conservative," Schoen blathered on...

Biden stands out as one of the most moderate candidates in an overwhelmingly progressive Democratic field and has the challenge of appealing to a progressive electorate, many of whom criticize Biden for his middle-of-the-road stances on issues such as health care.

To be sure, as the campaign season progresses, the progressive further left candidates will use Joe Biden's moderate stances and his reluctance to uncritically embrace a radical agenda as a primary attack point against him.

The few moderate Democrats that did go to California, including former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper and former Maryland Rep. John Delaney, were immediately booed for merely warning that the Democratic Party was moving too far left.

Further, several progressive candidates in California took veiled shots at Biden to the joy of the California crowds.

"Some Democrats in Washington believe the only changes we can get are tweaks and nudges … the time for small ideas is over," said Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.

"We cannot go back to the old ways. We have got to go forward with a new and progressive agenda," said Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who trails Biden in second-place by a wide double-digit margin in most polls.

Biden rarely, if at all, responds to attacks from other Democratic contenders, and has focused much of his energy on developing a compelling, empathetic, center-left narrative that stands as a persuasive alternative to President Trump's.

Further, Biden's solidified status as a frontrunner not only enables him to streamline his focus to the general election but also allows him to focus on high-dollar fundraising, which he clearly appears to be doing successfully.

While the Warren and Sanders campaigns have dismissed high-dollar fundraising on the principle that money in politics is intrinsically evil, there is nothing inherently wrong or foolish with courting high dollar donors-- the problem only arises when candidates rely heavily on special interest money, and the two should not be conflated.

Biden's fundraising has allowed him to spend a considerable amount of money on social media campaigns-- so much so that he is outspending President Trump $1.2 million to $900,000.

Although it is early in the campaign season and the first Democratic debate is still weeks away, Biden's candidacy thus far has been encouraging to me as a moderate Democrat. His inclusive, center-left agenda and clear ability to go toe-to-toe with Donald Trump makes him the strongest Democratic candidate to come out of the gate.

However, only time will tell whether the former vice president has the ability to appeal to enough of the Democratic primary electorate in order to emerge the ultimate victor.

It's All About The Money-- It's Not About The Thanksgiving

Last summer we looked at legislation Alan Grayson proposed to end the over-militarization of local police departments, long before "Ferguson" became synonymous with overly militarized local police departments. Grayson's amendment failed-- by a lot-- 62-355, only 19 Republicans and 43 Democrats having the foresight and wisdom to back it. One of the 43 Democrats who did vote correctly was Hank Johnson, who represents the suburbs west of Atlanta all the sway out past Covington. He's using the issue to try to raise money. His e-mail sounds creepy:

Dear justice seeker,

We are gaining some serious momentum, and I’m confident this won’t be our last chance for victory-- as long as we keep spreading the word through DontMilitarizeMainStreet.com and putting pressure on Republicans. The Justice Fund will keep pushing police militarization as a major national priority, but we can’t do it without your support.

Will you become a Justice Fund 2016 monthly sustainer TODAY for $10 a month?

I will never stop pushing this legislation, but we don’t know what the next legislative session-- with Republican majorities in both chambers-- will bring. Likely, two more years of gridlock. We have to take advantage of the next two weeks, and we need to be prepared to fight hard next year.

That’s why we need you to step up by midnight tonight. Give $25 for the most impact.

For one thing, OK, Hank, you voted right. Good. In a gerrymandered majority minority district with a PVI of D+21 that Obama won with 74% that isn't exactly a profile in courage. And there's something unseemly about pushing to the front of the parade and trying to solicit contributions from people based on it. It's also misleading to insinuate that the problem was "Republicans." Are Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, Jim Clyburn, Steve Israel, Ben Ray Luján, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Joe Crowley, Xavier Becerra and Rosa DeLauro Republicans? Every single member of the House Democratic Party leadership team, except Donna Edwards, voted against Grayson's amendment. So it isn't just a Democrat vs Republican problem. It's an out-of-touch political elite problem.

Today Rep. Johnson should step back from his crusade for a moment and think about doing something substantive for Walmart workers who are being treated unfairly over this holiday. It's another issue he can take a cue from Grayson on. This was-- at least in part-- Grayson's Thanksgiving message yesterday:

Thanksgiving was once a holiday reserved for spending time with our loved ones-- families across America gathered around the table to enjoy a meal with their families and give thanks.

But Thanksgiving’s importance has faded in recent years. The holiday is now merely a precursor to Black Friday-- the day in which stores like Walmart slash prices in an attempt to generate larger profits for themselves, at the expense of their employees. For Walmart’s corporate owners, Thanksgiving has become “Black Friday Eve”-- a day to pry families apart and work employees to the bone for next-to-nothing in wages.

Already, Walmart’s workers are severely underpaid and incredibly overworked. They’re often fired for reasons ranging from the inane to the unbelievable. They are unable to earn benefits. They have no stability in their schedules and no guarantee that they will have a job tomorrow. And at no time of the year is Walmart’s abhorrent treatment of its employees better demonstrated than on Thanksgiving.

Walmart is the country’s largest employer, which means that Walmart’s employment practices generally set the standard for businesses all over the U.S. When Walmart refuses to give its workers a few measly hours off to celebrate Thanksgiving with their families, other businesses must do the same. Instead of forcing hardworking Americans to pay the price for Walmart CEO’s corporate gain, Walmart should be setting an example for all retailers: give hardworking families a well-deserved break. Give them a few hours to spend with their families on Thanksgiving. Treat them with the dignity and respect that they deserve.

  I support the planned Black Friday protests because I believe that workers should be treated like human beings.

Rep. Johnson, I know you're seeking justice. Why not contribute some of the bucks that come in by midnight from your Justice Fund to the Walmart workers who wind up getting fired over this holiday?

You Pay Taxes? Guess Who Doesn't

Tuesday we were looking at the nexus of democracy-destroying avarice and the outsourcing of public services to private companies. I saw a report from our friends from Americans for Tax Fairness that reveals how WalMart was able to get around $104 million in taxes by handing out lavish "performance-based bonuses to top executives. How's that for a sound use of tax payer money? That's a government subsidy for the very richest-- combined with social interest loopholes that big corporations pay politicians to insert in appropriations bills. A full $40 million was clipped off their tax bill because of an outrageous bonus to recently retired CEO Michael Duke, who pocketed $116 million in stock options and other performance-based compensation. From Americans for Tax Fairness:

Walmart’s $104 million in tax savings was made possible by a loophole in U.S. tax law that allows companies to deduct unlimited amounts for performance-based compensation. The origin of this loophole was a 1993 reform intended to discourage excessive executive compensation by capping the amount corporations can deduct from their income taxes for executive pay at no more than $1 million per executive. But the law opened a massive loophole by exempting stock options and other so-called “performance pay” from the cap.

“When Walmart gets a $104 million tax break for giving its executives outrageous pay packages, the rest of us pick up the tab,” said Frank Clemente, executive director at Americans for Tax Fairness. “With this tax loophole, the bigger the executive bonuses the less Walmart pays in taxes. This is truly one of the most perverse loopholes of all time.”

“Subsidies for executive bonuses come at a huge social cost,” said Sarah Anderson, Global Economy Project Director at the Institute for Policy Studies. “The $104 million in tax subsidies for Walmart’s executive pay over the past six years would have been enough, for example, to cover the cost of providing free lunches for 33,000 children. What’s even more outrageous is that this is a company that pays its workers so little that many of them must rely on such public assistance programs.”

“When large corporations pay multimillion dollar bonuses to executives subsidized by taxpayers, then small businesses and families must pay more,” said Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-TX), author of a bill in the U.S. House of Representatives that would close the CEO loophole, the Stop Subsidizing Multimillion Dollar Corporate Bonuses Act (H.R. 3970). “Publicly-held companies like Walmart can continue paying their executives multimillion dollar bonuses; just don’t expect the American taxpayer to pick up your tab. It makes no sense for working families to subsidize those making nearly 300 times the average worker.”

“While worker incomes stagnate and CEO pay is reaching new heights, the tax code should not be subsidizing runaway executive compensation,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), who joined Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI) in introducing in the U.S. Senate the Stop Subsidizing Multimillion Dollar Corporate Bonuses Act (S. 1476). “Companies do not deserve needless tax breaks and giveaways for lavish pay to their executives. Instead, the nation must invest in creating jobs and rebuilding a strong middle class. I will continue fighting to end this wasteful loophole.”

Doggett was unable to find even one Republican to co-sponsor his bill, although 20 Democrats signed on including stalwart progressives like Raul Grijalva, Barbara Lee, Jan Schakowsky, Jim McDermott, Carol Shea-Porter, Keith Ellison Jim McGovern. Although the Steny Hoyer/Steve Israel/Joe Crowley Republican wing of the Democratic Party is shunning the legislation with the Republicans, five top Pelosi lieutenants, George Miller, Louise Slaughter, Rosa DeLauro, Nydia Velazquez and Chris Van Hollen, also signed on as co-sponsors. Cantor buried the bill in Dave Camp's House Ways and Means Committee, where it will never be heard from again unless Pelosi fires Steve Israel as DCCC chairman and allows the Democrats to take back the House.

Crack Whips?

Yesterday someone asked me if Blue America is cracking the whip on the candidates we raised money for during the election cycle to make them oppose cuts to Medicare and Social Security. Cracking the whip? On who? Bernie Sanders? Tammy Baldwin? Elizabeth Warren? Alan Grayson? We didn't back candidates who need whips cracked to get them to fight to protect working families. We backed candidates who were running so they could protect working families. Let me start with our old friend, Matt Cartwright, who ran against corrupt corporate shill and Blue Dog Tim Holden and whipped his ass in the primary. Matt is now the Congressman-elect from PA-17. Matt is the quintessential example of why Blue America doesn't have to remind any of the candidates we backed to stand up for working families. This is why we backed him when others hung back and when Steny Hoyer was hysterical about "party loyalty." Please read what he told me this morning very carefully:

With every bit of respect, I will tell you that I don’t need anyone to remind me what my core values are. I’ve spent my entire life standing up for working families in courtrooms all over northeastern Pennsylvania.

I live in a part of the world where we have a culture of standing up to the powerful forces that would make serfs of working men and women if they could. Permit me to quote one of my heroes, a trial lawyer named Clarence Darrow, who spoke these words almost 110 years ago, in February, 1903, to begin his closing argument on behalf of the miners in the Pennsylvania Anthracite Coal Mine Strike case of 1902-3:

I have listened for nearly three days to the arguments of counsel for the operators [mine owners]… I have heard my clients, one hundred and forty-seven thousand working men who toil while other men grow rich, men who go down into the earth and face greater dangers than men who go out upon the sea, or out upon the land in battle, men who have little to hope for, little to think of, excepting work-- I have heard these men characterized as assassins, as brutes, as criminals, as outlaws, as unworthy of the respect of men and fit only for the condemnation of courts.

I know that it is not true. I have too much respect for the State of Pennsylvania, I have too much respect for any body of my fellow men wherever they live, to believe that any great mass of them have turned into criminals and cut-throats, excepting for some cause that drives them to it. These are men, men like any others, men who, in the midst of sorrow, travail, and a severe and cruel crisis, demeaned themselves as nobly, as bravely, as loyally as any body of men who ever lived and suffered and died for the benefit of the generations that are yet to come.

We have had a six months strike. We have had a three months arbitration. We have had a condition in Pennsylvania where man was set against man, family against family, class against class. We have had a body of wealthy and respected gentlemen… who stood against the tide of progress and who boldly said to those in their employ, we will do nothing, we will pay you no higher wages, we will not submit your disputes to any body of men either secular or clerical, we will post our notices upon our doors and that shall be your contract. We give you notice that for one year your wages are so and so and that is all. We have seen, as a consequence of this act, one hundred and forty-seven thousand men lay down their tools of trade and we have seen seven hundred and fifty thousand men, women and children reduced to want and starvation for six long months.

Outside our courthouse in Scranton, the Lackawanna County Courthouse, where Darrow tried that case, and where I tried most of mine, we honor the mine workers with a magnificent statue of John Mitchell, who organized that strike, who helped get the children out of those mines, and who helped bring about the 8-hour day and the 40-hour workweek.

This is the place I’ve worked my whole adult life. Reminding me to stand up for working families is like reminding me to breathe.

Grotesquely corrupt New Dem, Joe Crowley, a new member of the House Democratic Leadership Team (Go Team!) co-authored a letter with committed progressives Raul Grijalva, Keith Ellison, and John Conyers insisting Social Security not be on the bargaining table in the Obama-Boehner Grand Sellout. He's now in a position to better undermine the progressive position. He's not the kind of candidate Blue America would ever recommend for reelection. He's the kind of candidate we'll trying to find a primary opponent for. Yesterday Obama's cat's paw in the Senate, Dick Durbin, was on Meet the Press insisting he's against raising the Medicare eligibility age. He probably is. But when push comes to shove, can there by any doubt-- any at all-- which way Senator Durbin will vote? If Obama needs his vote to raise the eligibility age, he won't have to ask twice. Dick Durbin has never been endorsed by Blue America-- and never will be. We endorse candidates who represent the interests of working families. That's it-- clear and simple. No Republicans and none of the corporate whores among the Democrats. Instead, we endorse candidates like Carol Shea-Porter (D-NH), who wrote in an OpEd in one of her district's newspapers "I will not vote to reduce Medicare and Social Security. You can bet on that." And we endorsed Bernie Sanders, whose entire political career has been predicated on defending working families against the greed-mad predators who run the GOP and have more and more influence over DC Democrats. And we endorsed Alan Grayson, who spent part of his Thanksgiving holiday protesting WalMart with Orlando strikers. CNN's Carol Costello asked him why.

COSTELLO: You attended a walkout at a Walmart in Orlando on Black Friday, and you showed your solidarity the night before by delivering bagged meals to Walmart employees who had to work on Thanksgiving, and that caused Walmart to call the cops. So tell us what happened.

GRAYSON: Well, we went to Walmart to hand out Thanksgiving dinners to them because they had to work on their Thanksgiving. They couldn’t be with their families. So we brought a bag; the bag had three things in it. A turkey sandwich, because it was Thanksgiving. A bag of chips. And a letter explaining to them their rights to organize.

COSTELLO: So the cops were called? What did the cops do when they arrived? Tell us about that.

GRAYSON: Well, it was the security staff. Walmart always has security staff around. Once they saw that we were handing out the bags, they objected to that, asked us to leave, and we left. The security staff simply escorted us, as they often do. But the important thing is we showed the workers, first of all, what their rights are, because Walmart tries to keep them in the dark. And we showed them that they’re not alone, that people actually care. That we want the working poor to have a better life in America.

COSTELLO: You posted a letter on your Facebook page and you wrote this: “Walmart accounts for more than 10% of all the retail sales in the United States. It is the largest private employer in the world, with more than two million employees. And even though those employees comprise barely ten percent of its cost of doing business, Walmart exploits them mercilessly. Now Walmart employees are starting to organize, starting to fight back.” I had a conversation at dinner last night with someone who says, “Hey if you don’t like working at Walmart, get another job.”

GRAYSON: Well listen, all the people who have those kinds of jobs suffer from the fact that we have 8% unemployment. But we all suffer from the fact that Walmart underpays its employees. The average associate at Walmart makes barely $1,200 a month. That’s $1,200 a month. Could you live on $1,200 a month? I couldn’t.

And the fact is that they don’t [live solely on that], because the taxpayers end up subsidizing them. Because Walmart underpays them, the taxpayers end up paying for their Medicaid. Because Walmart underpays them, the taxpayers end up paying for their food stamps. In fact, each Walmart associate costs the taxpayers over $1,000, and it is time to end that. Walmart needs to pay for its own employees, and give them a living wage.

The minimum wage needs to be higher. Walmart and other employers need to pick up the tab on health insurance and health coverage for their own employees, and stop handing that tab off to the taxpayers.

COSTELLO: When many of those protests happened on Black Friday, we noticed that not a lot of workers comprised the big crowds. It was mostly union people, community leaders, and a few Walmart workers. Some might say that really the unions are behind this, the employees aren’t behind this so much.

GRAYSON: Well, in fact, at one Walmart not too long ago, 200 Walmart employees walked out, and shut down the store. But the Walmart employees in general are afraid. They’re being intimidated. They’re being told in many cases, “If you even talk about a union, you’ll be fired.” Here in Orlando, one of the employees who talked about a union was fired. He came back a few days later just to talk to his former employees, his former staff, his former colleagues, and they led him off the premises in handcuffs, in a way that everyone else could see. So these employees are being intimidated. They want to help. They want to join. They want to make their lives better, but Walmart is doing everything it can to prevent that.

COSTELLO: Well, frankly it seems like Walmart is winning. It had one of its biggest Black Fridays ever. It didn’t stop people from shopping, these protests.

GRAYSON: The protests are not meant to stop people from shopping. The protests are meant to inform workers of their rights to organize under the law and under the Constitution. And to make sure that they understand that they’re not alone, and they will be protected if they exercise their rights. It’s not meant to raise prices. It’s not meant to interfere with shopping. It’s meant to organize people who desperately need to be organized, to make a better life for themselves.

2014 is a long way off, right? Not really-- and not far enough away for Blue America to start figuring out who we'll be supporting and who we'll be opposing. You want to guess who the first Member of Congress we endorsed for reelection is? We can see for yourself, right here.

Today's All-American WalMart Strike

Early this morning Senator Bernie Sanders tweeted that "WalMart has established over 4,400 factories in China where workers have been paid as little as 16 cents per hour." If you're ready to shrug your shoulders and say that that isn't your problem, stop and think for a moment. You've heard of outsourcing and off-shoring, right? This is what it is and this why the American plutocrats who control 100% of the Republican Party and perhaps half the Democratic Party say American workers have it too good and need to compete. They'd like to see U.S. unions destroyed and U.S. workers compete with workers making 16 cents an hour. Think of the profits!

Sanders also mentioned, again, that the 6 WalMart heirs, the Waltons, own more of the country's wealth (around $100 billion worth) than that of 40% of Americans combined. That's a big deal too-- for democracy itself. Democracy itself can't thrive in an environment of that kind of extreme income disparity. Today WalMart workers-- who have no union-- went on strike across the country, even though WalMart is expected to retaliate against striking workers. (Here's the memo they sent to their management team.)

Workers at Walmart stores across the country are walking off their jobs to protest the national retailer’s low wages and poor working conditions in an effort to raise public awareness about how the company treats its employees on the busiest shopping day of the year. The strikes, which began earlier this month, are the first in the 50 year history of the company and come just as Walmart reported a 9 percent increase in third-quarter net income, earning $3.63 billion.

Workers are also opposing Walmart’s poor benefits, alleged systematic discrimination against women, and its decision this year to kick off Black Friday on Thursday night.

Here's where I would say, I'm boycotting WalMart and you should too. But I never shop in a WalMart and the only one I've ever been to was in Mérida, the capital of Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula which was the only grocery carrying organic produce I could find. Friday, though, Robert Reich explained why it's so very important for progressives to not shop in WalMart, not now and not ever.

A half-century ago, America's largest private-sector employer was General Motors, whose full-time workers earned an average hourly wage of around $50, in today's dollars, including health and pension benefits. Today, America's largest employer is Walmart, whose average employee earns $8.81 an hour. A third of Walmart's employees work fewer than 28 hours per week and do not qualify for benefits.

There are many reasons for the difference-- including globalization and technological changes that have shrunk employment in American manufacturing, while enlarging it in sectors involving personal services, such as retail. But one reason, closely related to this seismic shift, is the decline of labor unions in the United States.

In the 1950s, over a third of private-sector workers belonged to a union. Today, fewer than 7% do. As a result, the typical American worker no longer has the bargaining clout to get a sizeable share of corporate profits.

At the peak of its power and influence in the 1950s, the United Auto Workers could claim a significant portion of GM's earnings for its members. Walmart's employees, by contrast, have no union to represent them. So, they've had no means of getting much of the corporation's earnings.

Walmart earned $16bn last year (it just reported a 9% increase in earnings in the third quarter of 2012, to $3.6bn), much of which went to Walmart's shareholders-- including the family of its founder, Sam Walton. The wealth of the Walton family now exceeds the wealth of the bottom 40% of American families combined, according to an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute.

Is this about to change? Despite decades of failed unionization attempts, Walmart workers are planning to strike or conduct some other form of protest outside at least 1,000 locations across the United States this Friday-- so-called "Black Friday," the biggest shopping day in America when the Christmas holiday buying season begins.

The labor action is unlikely to dim the enthusiasm of buyers looking for Walmart bargains, but it's at least garnering media attention. Walmart employees have a chance to air their grievances in public-- not only lousy wages (as low at $8 an hour), but also unsafe and unsanitary working conditions, excessive hours and sexual harassment-- generating bad publicity for the company exactly when it wants the public to think of it as Santa Claus. And the threatened strike, the first in 50 years, is gaining steam.

The company is fighting back. It has filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board to preemptively ban the Black Friday strikes. The complaint alleges that the pickets are illegal "representational" picketing designed to win recognition for the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) union.

Walmart's workers say they're protesting unfair labor practices, rather than acting on behalf of the UFCW. If a court sides with Walmart, it could possibly issue an injunction blocking Black Friday's pickets.

What happens at Walmart will have consequences extending far beyond the company. Other big-box retailers are watching carefully. Walmart is their major competitor. Its pay scale and working conditions set the standard.

More broadly, the widening inequality reflected in the gap between the pay of Walmart workers and the returns to Walmart investors, including the Walton family, haunts the American economy. Consumer spending is 70% of economic activity, but consumers are also workers. And as income and wealth continue to concentrate at the top, and the median wage continues to drop-- it's now 8% lower than it was in 2000-- a growing portion of the American workforce lacks the purchasing power to get the economy back to speed. Without a vibrant and growing middle class, Walmart itself won't have the customers it needs.

Most new jobs in America are in personal services like retail, with low pay and bad hours. According to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics, the average full-time retail worker earns between $18,000 and $21,000 per year. But if retail workers got a raise, would consumers have to pay higher prices to make up for it? A new study by the thinktank Demos reports that raising the salary of all full-time workers at large retailers to $25,000 per year would lift more than 700,000 people out of poverty, at a cost of only a 1% price increase for customers.

And, in the end, retailers would benefit. According to the study, the cost of the wage increases to major retailers would be $20.8bn-- about 1% of the sector's $2.17tn in total annual sales. But the study also estimates the increased purchasing power of lower-wage workers, as a result of the pay raises, would generate $4-5bn in additional retail sales.

That seems like a good deal.

So far today there have been fullblown strikes in Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, Miami, Milwaukee, Orlando and Washington, D.C., as well as walkouts in Oklahoma, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Minnesota, and other states, as many as a thousand stores. Please keep in mind that in 2012 alone, WalMart spent $4,650,000 in lobbying and $2,723,330 bribing federal legislators with "contributions." I spoke with one Florida congressman-elect WalMart doesn't even try bribing. Alan Grayson told me a few minutes ago, just after he'd gotten back from supporting the protesters at the local WalMart that "It's a shame that people who work so hard have to fight to be paid the money that they need just to stay alive."

Does Walmart Have A Future?

Here in Los Angeles, Walmart is still trying to bust into town. Their latest foray involves taking over a warehouse on the edge of Chinatown. The community is split whether or not they want to commit suicide. Most L.A. politicians are still trying to determine which parade to rush to the front of.

In the past, LA City Council has been unfriendly to Walmart. In 2004, the council passed an ordinance to hamper Walmart's attempt to move into Inglewood. The ordinance allows the city to review job quality and threat to other businesses before approving stores larger than 100,000 square feet. In Chinatown, Walmart is getting around the ordinance by planning a "Neighborhood Mart," which is one fifth the size of its superstores.

On Thursday, the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy announced that it, along with the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance and Chinatown business owners and residents, filed an appeal with the city's building and safety department. The appeal requests scrutiny into how Walmart, after months of waiting for permits, obtained them the night before the council vote.

And this isn't the only problem Walmart is having in southern California. After more than five years-- and nearly three years in the courts-- a small community group in Quartz Hill, an unincorporated area of Lancaster will officially announce it has brought retail giant Walmart to its knees after the 2nd Court of Appeals ruled the City erred in its Environmental Impact Report.

It's considered a major loss to Walmart, which is trying to build its store next to a school while selling
sell alcohol, ammunition and weapons.
 
Residents learned in late 2006 that Wal-Mart had plans to build in the location. The Lancaster Planning Commission reportedly opposed it, but in 2008, Lancaster mayor R. Rex Parris fired the commission. The new commission approved the plan in early 2009.

Quartz Hill Cares sued the city, arguing that the city had violated Planning and Zoning laws and the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). On June 29, 2010, the Los Angeles County Superior Court determined that allegations made by Quartz Hill Cares against the City of Lancaster were unfounded
 
However, the Second District State Court of Appeal issued a 32 page decision overturning the 2010 decision of the Superior Court of Los Angeles County, noting the EIR was "insufficient as an information document because its findings that the Reduced Commercial Density Alternative was not economically viable lacks the required evidentiary support. Because its conclusion is unsupported by substantial evidence, therefore, the City prejudicially abused its discretion by failing to proceed in a manner required by the California Environmental Quality Act."

"This is a great day for the citizens of Quartz Hill and the entire Antelope Valley. To fight something for nearly six years and to come out on top is huge. We fought Walmart, we fought City Hall... we won. We realize that this might not be the end of this. The city (Lancaster) could re-do the EIR and submit it again. If they do... we (Quartz Hill Cares) will be here," said Loretta Berry, of Quartz Hill Cares.

But Walmart might have even bigger woes than not being able to open community-destroying stores in the Antelope Valley and Chinatown. Last week the Motley Fool reported on the consumer trends that are slowly killing Walmart. Walmart's retail empire is crumbling, "Fool" writes, because they've "failed to keep up with the innovation, and now other companies are successfully changing consumers' behaviors in a way that is slowly killing the world's most famous retailer." Walmart's quarterly earnings have continued declining.

Shopping behavior has changed. And even though the recession forced many Americans to "trade down" to cheaper items like the ones Walmart is famous for, consumers sought out new ways to do so. In many cases they traded even further down and headed right for the Dollar Generals (DG) of the world.

More frightening for the company is that even Walmart's core customer base of low-income households is now a significant part of this epic shift in shopping behavior.

The change, of course, is that traffic has shifted from physical stores to online stores. In fact, a startling 50% of Walmart's customers now shop on Amazon.com, versus just 25% five years ago.

Amazon's low prices (thanks to its low overhead expenses and no sales tax in most states) and unbeatable selection (thanks to the acquisition of companies like Diapers.com and Zappos), combined with the convenience of online shopping, have attracted a growing fan base of customers-- stealing more and more customers away from Walmart.

Even Jeremy King, the chief technology officer of Walmart, admits Walmart.com is "playing a catch-up game" with Amazon. And yet it's pretty clear that any attempts to compete with Amazon online will be futile.

That's because Amazon's reach will only continue to expand as it builds out its Kindle platform. The ease of purchasing with just one click from virtually whatever device you choose (your computer, phone, Kindle, or even Apple's iPad) will continue to attract a growing number of consumers-- again, spelling bad news for Walmart.

On the physical front, the most revolutionary Walmart killer is Costco.

Costco, a members-only warehouse chain, targets a more affluent demographic than Walmart but similarly prides itself in offering heavily discounted items. Even though Walmart has a similar arm of its business, Costco is light years ahead of Walmart's Sam's Club.

Costco's charm permeates many levels.

• Markups on products are heavily controlled. Items can never be sold for more than 15% of cost (whereas supermarkets will mark up items by 25%, and department stores mark items up by as much as 50%). This means consumers always know they'll find unbeatable bargains. And that keeps them coming back for the majority of their shopping needs.

• Stores require little upkeep. They are bare bones in design, meaning they require less maintenance capital than its more posh (by comparison) competitors. Plus, Costco only stocks around 4,000 items. Walmart's stores, by contrast, often carry more than 100,000 different items, which constantly need shelf attention.

• Shopping is easier. The smaller scope of products makes the purchase decision easier for customers. But it also generates higher sales volumes, which enables Costco to sell items quicker than they have to pay their suppliers for them-- and allows them to negotiate even lower deals with these suppliers.

• Costco has a secret ingredient. The stores have an additional element that Walmart will likely never be able to replicate: the "treasure hunt." Costco constantly stocks shelves with new items available for just a short time. Customers return excited to see new offerings, and they often leave with items they hadn't intended to purchase.

• Returns are never a problem. Even if shoppers later decide their impulse buys were unwise, Costco has the most consumer-friendly return policy out there, accepting returns on most products without a receipt and with an infinite timeframe.

Given all this, it's little surprise that Costco's retention rate for members hovers around 90%. This means that once a customer gets a taste for the savings-- and experience-- Costco offers, he or she will likely be a customer for life. Again, bad news for Walmart.

It is unlikely Walmart will completely disappear anytime soon. But as more of its customers switch to Amazon for online purchasing and Costco for physically purchasing cheap items in bulk, it will become increasingly difficult for Walmart to grow-- and survive.

Viva La Gloria

For the past few days I haven't really been able to listen to much music other than 21st Century Breakdown, the new Green Day album. In some ways it's the band's best ever, their most mature, the fulfillment of all the promise they've always had. It's the best record of the year so far, and possibly the best of the new decade. There are no weak cuts. And, according in yesterday's NY Times the release couldn't have come at a better time for Warner Bros, their label. Reporting on the cascading economics of the music industry, the Times points to CD sales that have been cut in half in the last 10 years. Warner Bros doesn't really stay in business by selling music; they sell bonds to investors who get sold a bill of goods.

Last week the group led by Edgar Bronfman Jr. decided to try to sell $500 million of new bonds to replace some of its existing debt and extend the overall maturity of its liabilities.

Like tickets for a 1970s concert for The Who, investors practically stampeded to get their hands on the paper. Investors were so enthusiastic that the company expanded the deal and sold $1.1 billion of senior secured notes. As a result, Warner paid off all its existing debt and extended the date by which it needed to pay it back until 2016.

U.S. Treasury bonds, for the same time span, are offering a modest 3.4% return while the Warner Music bonds are offering a juicy 9.5% annually. Some people never learn but unless Green Day puts out an album like 21st Century Breakdown every year between now and 2016, my guess is that the suckers who bought the bonds-- or, more likely, the poor saps they get unloaded on-- will wish they had stuck with the Treasuries... or invested their retirement funds in autographed Green Day memorabilia.

WalMart, which the record companies helped turn into their biggest sales outlet (perhaps more detrimental to their own health than downloading and piracy) refuses to carry Green Day because of dirty words. And iTunes, after non-stop badgering and threats from the label, has boosted the price of songs from 99 cents to $1.29, which Wall Street likes but is likely to lead to even more people choosing the free option. I called a friend to tell him how the new Green Day record was the best thing I had heard in years and before the phone call was completed he was downloading it-- from some kind of illegal site.

Warner is bragging because its quarterly earnings were only down 14% (much less than the industry's as a whole). And Goldman Sachs estimates their income could remain flat for the next three years. Break out the champagne? Probably not-- and the cost of the champagne could go towards buying another company, EMI, which is even worse shape than Warner Bros. If they do it fast enough, maybe both companies could get behind "Last Night On Earth," a song incredibly reminiscent of the Beatles' Revolver era.

I remember once going for a ride with one of my label's classic platinum artists who had invited me to his home to hear his just completed new album. He bragged to me that he wrote the whole thing in a day and recorded it in less than a week. I never knew for sure if he was joking but the record sounded-- and sold-- like he was describing it accurately. I don't know how long Green Day, along with producer Butch Vig, has been working on 21st Century Breakdown but if they told me it was for the whole 5 years since the release of American Idiot I wouldn't doubt them. It sounds like there was a great deal of thought, energy, sweat and tears put into this opus dealing-- in a very personal way-- with the horrific mess Bush left behind.

I might as well admit that the whole post was just an excuse for me to kick back and work on a clip for a Green Day song. It's a daunting task because the songs are so amazing that even before I start looking for photos, I know there's no chance I can do the music justice. It's kept me at bay all week. But... There are two songs called "Viva La Gloria!" (well one is "Viva La Gloria?") that are woven into the only artistically successful rock opera I've ever heard. I'm opting for "Viva La Gloria?" more because there are homages that remind me of the Doors and Queen than because I like it any more than the other--!-- rendition.



My friend Harry typed out this quote from Billie Joe Armstrong that's in the new issue of Rolling Stone which came to his house... in the mail. Looks like what the band accomplished with this record wasn't like a coincidence or whimsy.

"Maybe that's the reason most people don't go for it," he says. "You can scare yourself with ambition-- having the audacity to want to be as good as John Lennon or Paul McCartney or Joe Strummer. There has been so much great shit before me I feel like a student: Who the fuck do I think I am."

"But you have to battle past that," he insists in his rapid fire punk chirp. "It's the people who are overconfident who are the ones putting out the biggest piles of shit. If you're at that place where you're working hard but don't feel like you know what you're doing anymore,then you're on to something."

And it looks like the young man accomplished what he set out to do.

UPDATE: Billie Joe Has A Message For WalMart

The American record industry allowed itself to be bamboozled into giving WalMart and similar operations a near monopoly over their music. It was a catastrophe for them and their artists, especially emerging artists who now have no place to sell their CDs. But it should be no problem for a superstar act like Green Day, right? Well, no. Green Day won't self-censor their songs, which WalMart demands of artists, even platinum-selling ones. So they're not carrying 21st Century Breakdown. Billie Joe isn't budging. "They want artists to censor their records in order to be carried in there. We just said no. We've never done it before. You feel like you're in 1953 or something."

How Do A Few Hundred Families Control American Financial Policies? Look No Further Than Corrupt Hacks Like Blanche Lincoln And Rob Portman

Big Business investments that have paid off well: Lincoln & Nelson

This month Blanche Lincoln, conservative Democrat of Arkansas is probably the most reviled senator among grassroots Democrats-- and the most beloved by plutocrats and the politicians-- of both parties-- they own. But it isn't only for the most obvious reason, her breaking with the other 57 (or 58, if you count Al Franken) Democrats in the Senate in regard to Employee Free Choice. Not only did Lincoln, at the insistence of her financial backers at the Chamber of Commerce and WalMart, declare that she would join the Republican party filibuster of Employee Free Choice, she joined with the extreme right of the GOP on another crucial matter: fair taxation or, as she and the right would like to see it, unfair taxation. Carl Hulse in today's NY Times explains how a gaggle of reactionary Democrats, in thrall to their wealthy campaign contributors, is endangering President Obama's agenda for change by demanding making the estate tax even less fair than it already is-- less fair the Republican way: more billions for the billionaires and multimillionaires.

Studies show that the tax hits merely a sliver of wealthy American families. A proposal by President Obama would leave it at current levels, affecting only estates valued at more than $3.5 million for individuals and $7 million for couples.

But now some Democrats have joined Republicans to call for setting the threshold even higher, in a rebellion that could have important consequences not just for the future of the death tax but also for Mr. Obama’s efforts to pay for his ambitious policy agenda.

If that Republican-backed plan is approved, it could deprive Mr. Obama of about $100 billion for his initiatives on health care, energy and education when alternative sources of revenue are already dwindling. That prospect is plain outrageous to top Democrats, who see efforts to spare the wealthy as particularly ill-timed given the economic pain being experienced by many of lesser means.

“This isn’t for the wealthy, this is for the super-wealthy,” the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, said as the Senate took up the estate tax issue during its budget deliberations. “Even in the best of times, there is no question that we could find a better use for an extra $100 billion.”

Lincoln enlisted 9 other Democrats in her pay-back to the Walton family, the WalMart heirs that have helped finance a political career that has been a catastrophe for Arkansas working families. Lincoln is using deceptive Republican Party talking points, pushed by right-wing Big Business interests-- the ones that have lavished millions of dollars on her career-- to describe the estate tax. She claims it is "devastating to family businesses that are a prime source of jobs in her state. 'In a time when our government has handed out billions upon billions to failed Wall Street banks,' she said, 'it is time we provide a little relief to our businesses on Main Street.'”

As she always does when supporting her wealthy campaign contributors, Lincoln is just plain lying-- and advocating another giveaway to the people who need it least and will do the least with it to get the economy going again, an economy suffering because of the greed-and-selfishness economic policies supported by the Republican Party-- and by a small handful of fake Democrats like Blanche Lincoln.

More Big Business investments that have paid off: Bush & Portman

The GOP is organizing around promising the super-rich that they will repeal the estate tax. One of their least attractive Senate candidates, the Bush Regime's favorite Ohioan, Rob Portman, has raised $1.7 million for his campaign in the first quarter and is being supported by Big Business interests from outside Ohio because he has a clear record of always supporting special interests against working families. Since first getting into politics Portman has taken in $910,349 from the FIRE (finance/insurance/real estate) sector-- and has repaid that investment many times over while he served in Congress's Ways and Means Committee and then in the Bush Regime as the U.S. Trade Representative, facilitating the off-shoring of American jobs and finally as the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, where he played an active and decisive role in wrecking the U.S. economy. Observers expect that the current campaign for the Senate will double the total amount the FIRE sector funnels into his career and bring it more in line with other crooked politicians they can count on-- like the aforementioned Lincoln, who has benefited to the tune of $1,671,292 so far, a number that is also expected to rise dramatically this year as Big Business works hard to ensure her re-election.

Keep in mind that the House has already passed, as part of the Budget, President Obama's proposal to keep the estate tax at a 45% on estates worth over $3.5 million-- keeping in mind that there is no tax-- not one dime-- on what you leave to your spouse up to $7 million. Lincoln and the other reactionary Democrats have joined with the GOP to demand a 35% rate and an exclusion for $10 million. This morning Toledo, Ohio's Blade, a newspaper unlikely to support Portman's bid for the Ohio Senate seat, made it clear what they think of treacherous Democrats like Lincoln who have gone over to the Dark Side and work on behalf of the three or four hundred wealthiest families this anti-Obama bill would benefit. The 9 other Democrats who signed on to Lincoln's special amendment for very rich campaign contributors are-- along with every single Republican, of course-- Max Baucus (MT), Evan Bayh (IN), Maria Cantwell (WA), Mary Landrieu (LA), Patty Murray (WA), Bill Nelson (FL), Ben Nelson (NE), Mark Pryor (AR) and Jon Tester (MT).

Unemployment is up, the stock market is way down, the federal government is spending trillions to jump-start the economy, and deficits are being tallied in numbers too big to comprehend. But the United States Senate didn't let that stop it from offering a tax break to the wealthiest Americans.

The amendment was the brainchild of Democratic Sen. Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas (home to the Wal-Mart owning, estate-tax-hating Walton family) and Sen. Jon Kyl, a Republican from Arizona, home to a lot of retirees who mistakenly think reducing the tax will protect their families when they die. In fact, the change would help only about one-quarter of 1 percent of the nation's people, the superwealthiest, because nobody else is rich enough to owe the tax in the first place.

Entrenched interests blather about reducing or, better yet, repealing what they like to call the "death tax," allegedly to protect vast numbers of regular folks from having to sell family farms and small businesses to pay the tax.

But the Tax Policy Center says that only five of every 100,000 people who die this year-- that's .005 percent-- will be small business owners or farmers rich enough to owe the tax. And virtually none of them would have to sell their business to pay.

Tax opponents conveniently avoid mentioning that, or that right now no taxes at all are owed on the first $7 million couples are worth. The Tax Policy Center estimates that 15,400 people will have to file estate tax returns this year, and only 6,200 of them will actually owe any tax at all.

The don't-tax-the-rich crowd also ignores other deductions which typically lower the effective rate on estates to less than 20 percent. So, the tax burden on the nation's elite is much smaller than they'd have people believe. And lest we forget, philanthropy by the ultrarich often is driven by tax advantages that accrue from charitable giving. Reduce the estate tax and that incentive will decline as well, with devastating effect.

With the government bleeding red ink, the last thing senators ought to be doing is adding to the deficit by cutting taxes on those best able to pay their fair share.

Lincoln has nothing to worry about from the mostly brainwashed Arkansas electorate. The state doesn't have a functioning democracy and last year not one Republican challenged a Democratic incumbent and not one Democrat challenged a Republican incumbent for any federal office. Nor were there any primary challenges. In terms of democracy, Arkansas is in the worst shape of any state in the union-- and that's the way its feudal lords and ladies want it.

This is a good moment to point out an entirely different editorial than the one from today's Blade. You've read us talking about how the root of all political evil in this country-- including especially places like Arkansas-- is the system of legalized bribery that allows political whores like Rob Portman and Blanche Lincoln to sell out their constituents for career financing for the super-rich, who are then given license to systematically plunder the rest of us through the special interest legislation passed by the same legislators they have invested in. This week Katrina Vanden Heuvel, editor of The Nation explains the Fair Elections Now Act (and the grassroots Donor Strike) that is bubbling up from the progressive grassroots (while the Know Nothing grassroots buys into Fox's teabag parties). Katrina, as usual, "gets it":

At this perilous moment, as we face key battles on the economic crisis, climate change, healthcare, and a slew of other issues, it's important to recognize that these fights will not be settled in one fell swoop this year or next, but will play out over the coming decade or more. Working against bold, progressive solutions on all of these issues is a constant problem: big money donors hold sway, shifting the policy debate and shafting the common good. Only through real campaign reform will we level the playing field so that the voices of ordinary people are heard loud and clear inside the Beltway.

That's why it's so important that the Fair Elections Now Act has been introduced in both the House and Senate with bipartisan support, and that a savvy coalition is rallying public support for it, including: Change Congress, Public Campaign, Common Cause, Public Citizen, US PIRG, Brennan Center for Justice, Americans for Campaign Reform, MoveOn, and others.

Change Congress-- an organization launched by Lawrence Lessig and Joe Trippi to reduce the influence of money in politics-- has taken the lead on organizing an online strategy. Lessig said, "My view is it's finally time for us to do what Teddy Roosevelt suggested we do about 102 years ago, which is to bring about an election system where what's driving the results is fear about how voters in the district will respond, rather than fear about how the funders will respond."

The bill provides qualified candidates the opportunity to run with a mixture of small-dollar contributions and public money. Candidates who raise a large number of small contributions ($100 or less) from their home state qualify for a set amount of public money that will make them competitive. If the candidate chooses, he or she can continue to raise small donations and receive a 4:1 match-- up to a specified cap-- in order to compete on a level playing field with wealthy, self-financed candidates and those raising money in the traditional way. There are also resources in the bill for media time when candidates get to the general election. In determining the caps and amounts of money required to make candidates competitive, advocates did some good research on how states with these kinds of laws have worked and also examined the fundraising stats of past Congressional races.

This brand of public financing is different from campaign finance reforms that simply attempt to regulate the flow of money in the political process. Candidates participating in this system must rely exclusively on small donors. By matching small donations with public funds, it's a way of putting political clout in the hands of ordinary people.

This path creates a new world of possibility for up-from-the-grassroots political organizing and fresh-faced candidates. It plays to the strengths of community organizers and membership based organizations and could be a critical building block for progressive power across the country. David Donnelly, the national campaigns director for Public Campaign who has worked on this issue for decades, said that the bill "provides enough money for [participating] candidates to be competitive in just about every single race in the country."

The coalition is using the current two-week recess to get additional cosponsors for the House and Senate bills. One key strategy to push for cosponsorship is through demonstrating the electoral cost of a member's failure to support the bill. That's largely accomplished through Change Congress' Donor Strike.

The Donor Strike allows individuals to pledge to withhold money from any politician who doesn't cosponsor the Fair Elections bill. Based on the previous election cycle, the withholdings by donors taking the pledge has now crossed the $1.1 million mark, with Sen. Dianne Feinstein the biggest loser at $288,000.

If the Fair Election bill passes, people like Blanche Lincoln and Rob Portman will be replaced in Congress by political leaders interested in working for the betterment of the country, rather than the betterment of their wealthy donors. Take a look at the clip-- and then think about contacting your own members of Congress; everyone has three, a representative and two senators:

Blanche Lincoln Announces She Will Join GOP Filibuster Against Employee Free Choice

Last week, when Arkansas' reactionary Senator Blanche Lincoln (D) teamed up with Jon Kyl (R-AZ) to push another tax reduction for multimillionaires on behalf of her WalMart patrons, we looked at her abysmally corrupt record as a pawn of the wealthy and a bane to ordinary American working families. Today Lincoln made it clear to her financial supporters that they could count on her to oppose Employee Free Choice, the only Senate Democrat vowing to stab working families in the back on this.

"While I may not have been clear about my position in the past, I am stating today that I cannot support Employee Free Choice Act in its current form and I can’t support efforts to bring it to Senate consideration in its current form," Lincoln said in a statement late Monday afternoon.

"I will consider alternatives that have the support of both business and labor but my pledge today is to focus my full attention on the priorities I have mentioned that affect every working family in Arkansas."

"In its current form? Its current form was what she voted for on June 26, 2007. There are no changes to the bill. The only changes were Obama, a supporter who will sign the bill, replaced Bush, an opponent who had promised to veto it. That makes each vote all that much more crucial to Big Business' anti-union efforts. And the other thing that has changed since June 2007-- the immense amount of legalized bribes Big Business has poured into Lincoln's coffers.

WalMart may be one of her top 5 contributors but that doesn't even scratch the surface of this execrable person's boldfaced corruption. Every special interest with business before the Senate has lavished her with hundreds of thousands of dollars. In a saner society, Blanche Lincoln wouldn't be disgracing the U.S. Senate; she would be rotting in prison for taking bribes and selling her votes. HMOs, Big Pharma, Oil companies, lobbyists, Insurance, bankers, real estate... every special interest looking to feed at the public trough finds its way to Blanche Lincoln's office with a checkbook in hand. So far the current cycle has seen her gobble up $6,922,733, very little of it from Arkansas voters. (So far in her entire disgraceful political career she's taken in a hefty $12,305,217. And the sector which has doled out the most? FIRE-- finance/insurance/real estate-- $2 million.

Today's Hill confirms what Democrats in Arkansas have feared-- Lincoln has sold out completely. She will join McConnell and DeMint in filibustering the bill when it comes up to prevent it from being voted on.

The decision represents a bit of a turnaround for Lincoln, who voted to proceed to a debate on card check in 2007. The statement on Monday indicated she would not support efforts to bring it up for consideration.

“I consider both the labor and the business communities to be my friends.  However, now that we need all hands on deck, including business and labor, to get our economy moving again, this issue is dividing us,” Lincoln said in a statement. “While I may not have been clear about my position in the past, I am stating today that I cannot support Employee Free Choice Act in its current form and I can’t support efforts to bring it to Senate consideration in its current form.”

What a waste for labor unions to have donated $544,395 to her campaign. I wonder when they'll ever learn. Speaking for the SEIU, Jon Youngdahl expressed disappointment: “Senator Lincoln’s decision to stand with Big Business over working families at a time when CEOs make 344 times that of their average employee, and as jobs disappear by the minute, is disappointing at best. Yet we share Majority Leader Reid’s belief that our efforts to improve the working conditions and lives of millions of Americans through the Employee Free Choice Act will not be derailed." The anti-union Chamber of Commerce was breaking out the champagne bottles and, no doubt, the checkbooks. Steve Law, union busting attorney: “This makes opposition to cloture bipartisan. We hope this will encourage others to take a public stand against this increasingly radioactive bill."
The Arkansas Blog has some mighty pissed off reactions from local Democrats. But if Arkansas Democrats don't have a Democrat to run, there might as well be a Republican in that seat. She doesn't deserve a penny or a vote from anyone who gives a hoot about Democratic values or, for that matter, clean government.

Do The Super Rich Have Enough Representation In The Senate? Let's Ask Jon Kyl And Blanche Lincoln

Blanche Lincoln, the disgraceful senator from WalMart

This morning Christiane Amanpour managed to slip a few unscripted words in between the mindless babble on CNN about iPods and the great debate about who initiated the "touch" between Michelle Obama and the Queen of England. She reminded viewers that the economic crisis the leaders of the G-20 are in London to discuss doesn't only impact the wealthy but also impacts-- usually more essentially and critically-- the poor. But the poor are rarely on the minds of callow and craven U.S. senators existing primarily to service the wishes of the wealthy contributors who finance their lifelong, quite lucrative, political careers. And today's NY Times ran a chilling editorial-- very bipartisan-- about how that devotion to the very wealthy corrupts our entire system, economically and politically.

The editorial focuses on one Democrat and one Republican, both well known in Washington as patsies for big bucks donors and their special interests. By any objective standard, they are two of the absolute worst members of Congress: Jon Kyl (R-AZ) and Blanche Lincoln (D-AR). And while the budget debate is raging and the nation is focussing on "recession, rising unemployment and surging foreclosures, runaway health care costs and diminishing insurance coverage," Kyl and Lincoln, as usual, have a very different idea of what needs to be addressed most urgently. "[T]he most pressing issue is clear: America’s wealthiest families need help. Now."

The two senators plan to propose an amendment to deeply cut estate taxes for the fraction of the top 1 percent of the population still subject to those levies.

The proverbial millionaires next door-- the plumbers, contractors and accountants who amass substantial wealth through hard work and modest living-- are not the intended beneficiaries of the proposed cut. The Obama budget already takes care of them, because it retains today’s law, which imposes the estate tax only on couples with property worth more than $7 million, or individuals with property worth more than $3.5 million. That means 99.8 percent of estates will never-- ever-- pay a penny of estate tax.

The heirs of the remaining 0.2 percent of estates are who Ms. Lincoln and Mr. Kyl are so worried about. Their amendment would increase to $10 million the level at which the estate tax kicks in. It would also lower the top estate-tax rate to 35 percent from 45 percent.

With all the serious work before Congress, it is a colossal waste of time to have to rebut the false claims and warped premises of ardent estate-tax cutters. Ms. Lincoln’s and Mr. Kyl’s colleagues in the Senate should make short work of it and move on to urgent matters.

In addition to creating the false impression that the estate tax eventually hits everyone-- by mislabeling it a “death tax”-- opponents routinely denounce the 45 percent top tax rate as confiscatory. In fact, the rate applies only to the portion of the estate that exceeds the exemption. As a result, even estates worth more than $20 million end up paying only about 20 percent in taxes.

Another misleading argument is that the estate tax represents double taxation. In truth, much of the wealth that is taxed at death has never been taxed before. That’s because such wealth is often accrued in the form of capital gains on stocks, real estate and other investments. Capital gains are not taxed until an asset is sold. Obviously, if someone dies owning an asset, he or she never sold it and thus never paid tax on the gain.

Kyl, of course, is just an ideologically consistent whore for all the monied interests. He is, after all, a far right Republican. The nearly $25 million in campaign contributions he's managed to scoop up includes "donations" from all the worst special interests he slavishly serves, from Big Oil, Big Pharma, Big Insurance, rip-off artists disguised as bankers, the investment industry, lobbyists, to HMOs and the real estate industry. The infamous finance/insurance/real estate sector alone has poured over $4 million into his disgraceful career.

Blanche Lincoln, though nominally a Democrat, serves many of the same special interests, accounting for the bizarre worn out carpet from her perch in the Senate across the aisle to the Republican side of the chamber, where she votes with the GOP more than almost any other Democrat. It's a joke in Washington that Blanche Lincoln doesn't represent Arkansas' working families in any way; instead she is the Walton family's personal senator. And, in fact, her hysteria over this estate tax legislation is 100% about the WalMart heirs who the sleazy and corrupt Lincoln caters to. Arkansas is one of the worst off states in the country-- and they have, after Louisiana, the dysfunctional democracy anywhere. Last year not a single member of Arkansas' substandard congressional delegation had a challenger-- neither a primary challenger nor a general election challenger. Friends of mine in Arkansas tell me that it;s just hopeless and everyone knows it. Regardless of party, WalMart owns the whole state and all its politicians. Lincoln is just the worst of a really bad lot. Looks like the Washington Post editorial board is as enthusiastic about the Lincoln-Kyle axis of evil as everyone else is outside the Walton family.