Two Weeks From Tomorrow-- Oregon Voters Have A Chance To Send Kurt Schrader Off To Join Lipinski In The Blue Dog Kennel

There aren't any Democrats in the House more ideologically antithetical to the legitimate aspirations of working class Americans than Oregon Blue Dog Kurt Schrader. And 2 weeks from tomorrow the all mail-in primary threatening to replace him with a champion of those same working and middle class Oregonians ends. After that, we'll either be celebrating Mark Gamba's victory in a blue district the way we were celebrating Marie Newman's a few weeks ago, or we'll be kicking ourselves for not having done more.

Last week's Northwest Labor Press endorsed candidates in the Oregon races unions felt we're most important. In several there were split endorsements-- as in Eugene, where the endorsement was split between incumbent Peter DeFazio and progressive challenger Doyle Canning and in Portland where the labor vote is split between incumbent Earl Blumenauer and progressive challenger Albert Lee. But in OR-05 there was no such split. In the Salem, Clackamas, coastal district all the union support-- from AFM, AFT, IBT, ILWU, SEIU, WFP-- and the endorsement all went to one candidate-- and it wasn't the reactionary Republican-lite incumbent.

Mark Gamba, the mayor of Milwaukie, is challenging five-term incumbent Kurt Schrader, who has one of the worst labor records of any Democrat in the House. Not only has Schrader voted for every NAFTA-style trade treaty, but he voted to restrict unionization on Indian reservations, sponsored a bill to stop slowdowns by longshore workers, and has engaged in public carping against the national AFL-CIO. This February he was one of only seven Democrats to vote against a bill to make it easier to unionize and eliminate anti-union “right to work” laws. Half a dozen national unions have given a total of about $20,000 to Schrader in the last two years, but no local union appears to back him, and his campaign declined to list any union endorsers or provide a list of union endorsers to the Labor Press. With a $3 million campaign war chest full of contributions from business groups, Schrader may not feel he needs labor support. Meanwhile, Gamba is a well-liked mayor who helped build affordable housing and pass a $15-an-hour minimum wage for city employees. He’s a big advocate of Medicare for All and a Green New Deal.

The Willametter Weekly is now a more establishment-oriented publication and no one expects them to be politically cutting edge any longer. Oregonians expect them to back incumbents-- and, in every case that's exactly what they did this cycle. Although... in reading the Schrader endorsement, one had to wonder what message the editors were actually sending voters.

The flinty former veterinarian did draw a Democratic primary opponent to his left this time: two-term Milwaukie Mayor Mark Gamba, 61, who has moved aggressively to get his city to adopt ambitious climate goals and a generous minimum wage. Schrader, a budget expert in his earlier career as a state legislator representing Canby, hasn't welcomed Gamba's input, accusing his opponent of trying to foist "elitist" metro-area policies on a working-class congressional district that extends from Portland's western suburbs to the central coast. That's funny, given that Schrader is a pharmaceutical industry heir and Gamba is a freelance photographer whose mayoral pay is $3,600 a year.

We like seeing Schrader annoyed-- it seems to wake him up a bit. As a member of the centrist Blue Dog Democrats and the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus, he's taken public positions that reflect the balanced nature of his district but can also feel like fence-sitting. (GovTrack, which crunches numbers on members of Congress, ranked Schrader the fifth-most conservative of the 200 Democrats who served in the 2018 session). Schrader publicly opposed the reelection of Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) as House speaker when Democrats reclaimed the majority. And he was slow to call for President Trump's impeachment-- in fact, he was the last Democratic member of Oregon's congressional delegation to support it.

But the most important of the endorserments came from the Portland Mercury, which made a powerful and compelling case for Mark Gamba, reminding its readers that "Rep. Kurt Schrader has a curious distinction: He’s largely recognized as one of the most conservative Democrats in Congress. Whether he’s voting on environmental policies, easing regulations for corporations, or opposing a federal minimum wage raise, Schrader is at best a reliably moderate member of Congress, and at worst a Republican disguised as a Democrat."

Schrader represents a very purple district that includes much of the Oregon Coast as well as Clackamas County, so some might argue he’s the best fit for the seat. But for Clackamas County voters who don’t feel Schrader is representing their values, we suggest instead voting for Milwaukie Mayor Mark Gamba in the primary. Gamba hopes to make universal healthcare and a Green New Deal his top priorities if elected, and has a track record of progressive accomplishments in Milwaukie.

And even if he doesn’t win, a strong primary showing for Gamba might send Schrader a message about what Democrats in his district value. If you want to shake up the status quo, vote for Gamba.

Even if you can't vote in the Oregon primary, please consider contributing to Gamba's campaign by clicking on the Blue America Primary A Blue Dog thermometer above. This is one of the best chances left in the 2020 cycle to replace a very bad Democrat with a very good Democrat. Gamba entitled the first guest post he wrote for DWT-- last July-- What We Need Are A Lot More People Like AOC In Congress. At the time, he wrote that "As a country, we have some very serious things to accomplish, some of them have a very short clock. We have 11 years, as of now, to radically shift the way our country does a whole lot of things like how we make energy, grow food, manage forests, build buildings and transport people and goods. It’s going to take a Congress with a can-do attitude and the guts to stand up to corporations, to tackle these issues."

But it was an e-mail he send to his supporters last January that made me redouble my efforts of his behalf:

What can we do to address the fact that the rich are getting richer and the middle class and poor are  struggling to keep up with the costs of living?

Many children in today’s America will be poorer than their parents.

We need to identify the systems allowing this to happen. Then we need to dismantle them.

There is absolutely no reason why income equality should be on the rise when we can see the catastrophic effects of it in recent history.

...I will work to pass legislation that takes on the business behemoths and stops them in their tracks. Together with other representatives like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar, I will hold corporate demagogues’ feet to the fire and demand accountability where inequity has previously reigned.

Income inequality is a systemic failing, not a personal one. To tackle it requires courage, persistence, and a national community standing shoulder to shoulder. I am proud to stand on the front lines with you and for you as we turn the tables and create economic freedom for ALL.

Oregon Democrats Looking For A Primary Challenger For Blue Dog Kurt Schrader

Schrader/Boehner

Because most of the more senior Blue Dogs in Congress have been defeated and their caucus utterly decimated in recent electoral cycles, relatively inexperienced Oregon conservative Kurt Schrader has become the chairman of this motley branch of the Republican Wing of the Democratic Party. This week environmental activist Andy Kerr, writing for BlueOregon, demonstrates the danger for the Democratic Party in electing and supporting garbage candidates like Schrader, who hollow out the party's core values from the inside. "I'm sick of incumbent nominal Democratic Members of Congress who often vote like Republicans on the tough issues," he begins, and then asks, "Is it worth it to continue to back a Democratic incumbent, after having cast their first vote each Congress for a Democratic speaker, who then promptly goes south on some key issues during the rest of the Congress?" He doesn't think it's worth it.

In 1980, a young activist on senior issues decided-- before the word was coined-- to “primary” the Democratic incumbent in Oregon’s third congressional district. Had the coalition been formed at that point, then incumbent Rep. Robert Duncan would have been a very blue dog.

When Wyden first stepped up, we went to lunch at a very unnatural red pagoda palace off NE Sandy and discussed the Oregon’s natural environment. At that point, Wyden’s views on and interest in wilderness, wild and scenic rivers, old-growth forests were neither deeply held nor well-developed, but he was willing to learn. Most importantly, Ron Wyden wasn’t Bob Duncan.

It turned out that a lot of people and interests-- more than myself and public lands conservation-- were dissatisfied voters and interests in the Oregon’s 3rd. The rest is history. Wyden turned out to not just be less bad on the environment than Duncan, but a true champion for nature.

Blue Dog Coalition co-chair Rep. Kurt Schrader joined with my congressperson, Rep. Greg Walden, to pass legislation in the House that would have effectively privatized over a million acres of federal public forestlands in western Oregon to facilitate industrial-strength clearcuts-- just like Oregon’s private timberlands. As a former aide to the last Republican US Senator from Oregon told me, “we would not have even allowed ourselves to even dream such a thing.” Fortunately, in the Senate Wyden wouldn’t aid and abet the Schrader-Walden public land giveaway.

The New York Times recently reported that only two other Democratic Members of Congress voted with the Republicans more than Schrader. Oregon Democrats can do better.

While the Oregon’s 3rd of 1980 and the Oregon 5th of 2016 are different in time, place and registration edge, perhaps there are lessons to apply. Given the increasing inability of Republicans to offer viable candidates for federal office, a left-of-center (hell, make that merely a center) Democrat might well be able to defeat a right-of-center Democrat in the Oregon’s 5th primary-- and most importantly go on to win the general election. It’s certainly worth pondering and polling.

If a credible Democratic challenger steps up to take on Schrader, while I can’t vote for them (oh, only if Ashland could be made a disjunct island of any other Oregon congressional district but the 2nd), I will max out contribution-wise and urge my friends and allies to do the same.

Kerr needs to find someone like Alex Law-- someone just like Alex Law. Law is running against conservative Dem and anti-environment extremist Donald Norcross in New Jersey. Blue America has endorsed him and it is likely Blue America would get behind any credible progressive running against Schrader as well. Schrader, who voted with the GOP to remove President Obama from the Keystone XL decision-making process, gets terrible grades from the very mainstream League of Conservation Voters. All other Oregon Members of Congress have stellar records on the environment. Schrader, as with most things, is doing what he does best: giving Boehner the right to call his extremist agenda "bipartisan."

Recently Schrader met with the Statesman Journal Editorial Board and exposed the underlying politics that help explain why he's more a Republican than a Democrat. "Our state is extremely unfriendly to business, and we're getting worse," he said. "The book on Oregon is still the same: Oregon is a great place to start a business. It's not a great place to keep a business going."

He goes on to assert a right-wing GOP position that "the minimum wage was never designed to provide a minimum income for a family. By making such mistakes as conflating the minimum wage with a desired minimum income, Democrats have perpetuated a discussion about class warfare." He even claims, absurdly, that "that's why we got our butts handed to us at the last election."

It's just a matter of time before Kurt Schrader goes the way of John Barrow, Joe Baca, Tim Holden, Larry Kissell, Ben Chandler, Pete Gallego, Nick Rahall, and Ron Barber. Sooner the better.

Blue Dog Kurt Schrader Deserves To Lose His May 20th Primary

More Democrats who act like Republicans? No way!

I was at a political fundraiser for Alan Grayson on Friday evening. Among the speakers besides Grayson were NYC Congressmembers Charlie Rangel, Carolyn Maloney, Eliot Engel and Yvette Clarke as well as progressive candidates Rob Zerban (D-WI) and Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-NJ). Among other topics, Grayson talked about how Democrats can't win elections by acting like Republicans, something he's expounded on frequently in the past-- like in this classic video-- and something that flies in the face of DCCC conventional wisdom.

Steve Israel, like Rahm before him (two Democrats who do act like Republicans), shoves this conventional wisdom down the throats of confused and clueless freshmen like Ann Kuster (NH), Ami Bera (CA), Scott Peters (CA), Cheri Bustos (IL), Raul Ruiz (CA), Kyrsten Sinema (AZ), and Sean Patrick Maloney (NY), all of whom are in danger of losing their seats in November because they followed that advice and alienated their Democratic voting base. They tend to vote more with Boehner and Cantor on crucial rollcalls than with the Democrats. Sean Patrick Maloney, for example, is a Wall Street shill with a ProgressivePunch crucial vote score of 31.58, indicating he voted against the progressive position two times more than he supported it. Sinema's score is essentially the same, 31.94. They don't deserve support from Democratic voters.

Oregon Blue Dog Kurt Schrader has amassed a 60.55 ProgressivePunch score since he was first elected, pretty dismal for a Democrat, although in their endorsement of his reelection this this, The Oregonian applauded his conservatism and berated his progressive primary opponent. "Schrader’s moderation," they write, "appropriate for his district, has earned a primary challenge from the left. Salem resident Anita Brown, making her first run for public office, says Schrader acts too much like a Republican, particularly on fiscal matters. Her grasp of the relevant issues is incomplete, however. During an interview with The Oregonian’s editorial board, surprisingly, Brown was unfamiliar with Schrader’s O-and-C bill, which has been the focus of intense debate. Democrats in the 5th District should stick with Schrader. Congress could use more Democrats who act, at times, like Republicans, just as it could use more Republicans who act, at times, like Democrats." This is exactly the kind of conventional wisdom that hacks like Steve Israel-- not to mention Kurt Schrader-- thrive on.

A few days ago, another, much smaller, local newspaper, the Woodburn Independent, asked Anita Brown to make the case for herself and against Schrader. What she had to say in their straightforward Q-and-A would have made a lot more sense to the folks who were attending the Grayson fundraiser.

Why are you running?

I read that Rep. Schrader voted “no” to raising the federal minimum wage to $10.10 with the Republicans on March 15, 2013, and was steadfast with this unless he flip-flops now that we have a primary. If you want people off welfare, food stamps, and if you want women to be self-sufficient, we need to pass this bill. Corporations will adjust salaries, benefiting the entire economy.

What do you think are the three biggest issues facing your district?

1. I will protect your clean air, water and the environment. Rep. Schrader’s “logging interest” tried to sneak an attachment to the farm bill, clear-cut logging of 1.5 million federal acres of Oregon forests but he failed. Rep. Schrader voted “yes” to Toxic Coal Ash HR 2218, voting with Republicans again, we saw what happened to the rivers in North Carolina. 2. I support closing the tax loopholes that allow two-thirds of corporations to pay Nnocorporate income tax. Corporations avoided paying $150 billion last year with off-shore accounts and so on. The states lost $42 billion with tax avoidance. This is money that America really needs after the banks and Wall Street almost brought the U.S. to her knees. Subsidies should be for the good of the people not corporate greed. 3. The Trans-Pacific Trade Agreement or TPP is described as NAFTA on steroids. Americans will be competing with Vietnam’s wages. The TPP allows corporations to sue governments if they differ. As another example, the pharmaceutical industry can sue Third World countries because their citizens’ drugs are too cheap. Rep. Schrader’s pharmaceutical contributions: $61,500 per MapLight-Money and Politics. The TPP is also secret; only the Congress and corporate giants that helped write it are allowed to see the TPP.

What do you think are the three biggest issues facing the Woodburn area?

1. Traffic. Roads need to keep up with population. 2. Small business and family farms are the engines of growth, and I will help them get more affordable rates in financing like the corporations get. Corporate farms seemed to do fine in the farm bill, but the family farms, including organic farms, seem to get last-minute, what I consider, breadcrumbs. 3. Top notch education for all children. Affordable college or vocational schools, and as our students are over their heads in college debt, I would support payback with scheduled payments at 1 percent of their income.

What three things would you like to see accomplished if elected?

1. Social Security is solvent until 2038 per the Congressional Budget Office in 2011. Republicans are not reporting facts. I would support S500 which would keep the Social Security Trust Fund solvent for at least 75 years, asking the wealthiest Americans to contribute their fair share by removing the cap on Social Security contributions. 2. To close corporate tax loopholes that cost America $150 billion and states $42 billion in tax dollars. 3. Get jobs back in America.

Name three reasons why you are the best candidate for the job:

1. I support the Affordable Care Act; all Americans deserve health care. Rep. Schrader’s “Blue Dog” Coalition is supported by the Healthcare and Insurance Lobby, (the most powerful in the U.S.) who do not want “change” as they would do anything to protect their assets. Schrader’s Healthcare Professionals = $96,000, Insurance = $60,161 campaign contributions. In 2009, the “Blue Dogs” (same year Schrader joined) blocked the house from voting for a single payer option in our health care reform exactly as the Tea Party is doing today. 2. Trust. Do you trust Schrader? 3. Brown will vote for you, not corporate interests.

The self-satisfied and self-referential editors of The Oregonian may be chortling that Brown was "unfamiliar with Schrader’s O-and-C bill," but she displays a thousand times more depth of understanding of what ails American voters than they did when they endorsed their Democrat who acts like a Republican.

Primaries-- More Important Than Ever

Politicians can label themselves any way they'd like and feel sure few people will challenge them. One of the most conservative Democrats to have served in the U.S. Senate in any of our lifetimes, Joe Biden, announced that he has "the most progressive record of anybody running" for the Democratic nomination. If the word "progressive" meant "conservative" that would be true. But the word progressive doesn't mean conservative and you can just chalk that up as another in the long, long-- and getting longer everyday-- list of Biden lies.

If Biden gets the nomination-- God forbid!-- he will immediately pivot in an even more conservative direction-- one he feels comfortable in-- and the only ones claiming he's on the left will the the GOP, which already, absurdly, calls him a socialist.

It isn't much different among conservative Democrats in Congress facing reelection or among conservative DCCC candidates attempting to win seats. I spend an awful lot of time talking with candidates trying to figure out which ones actually are progressives and which ones are faking it. Candidates at the two thermometers below are all real deal progressives, not lesser-of-two evils candidates, but genuine vetted progressives.

Yesterday Norman Solomon wrote a piece for TruthDig about why progressive activists are getting increasingly pissed off with the establishment Democratic Party and their handpicked status quo candidates. The activists, he wrote, are seeing a "frustrating pattern. Many Democrats in office are good at liberal platitudes but don’t really fight for what we need. Even when constituents organize to lobby or protest, they have little leverage compared to big campaign donors, party leaders and corporate media spin. Activist efforts routinely fall short because-- while propelled by facts and passion-- they lack power. Right now, in dozens of Democratic congressional districts, the most effective way for progressives to 'lobby' their inadequate representatives would be to 'primary' them. Activists may flatter themselves into believing that they have the most influence by seeking warm personal relationships with a Democratic lawmaker. But a credible primary campaign is likely to change an elected official’s behavior far more quickly and extensively."

Blue America Illinois congressional candidate, Rachel Ventura, a member of the Will County Board, had no intention of running for Congress. She simply set up a meeting with her corrupt conservative New Dem congressman, Bill Foster, to ask him to co-sponsor Pramila Jayapal's Medicare-For-All bill. After months of bullshit and run-around, she decided to run for his seat. She isn't the only example either.

With rare exceptions, it doesn’t do much good to concentrate on appealing to the hearts of people who run a heartless system. It may be tempting to tout some sort of politics of love as the antidote to the horrors of the status quo. But, as Martin Luther King Jr. wrote shortly before he was murdered, “love without power is sentimental and anemic.” Beyond speaking truth to power, it’s crucial to take power away from those abusing or squandering it.

In the long run, constituents’ deference to officeholders is a barrier to effectiveness-- much to the satisfaction of people who reap massive profits from the status quo of corporate power, rampant social injustice, systemic racism, vast economic inequities, environmental destruction, and the war machinery.

If activists in New York’s 14th Congressional District had been content to rely on lobbying instead of primarying, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez would still be tending bar-- and power broker Joe Crowley would still be serving his corporate clients as a Democratic leader in Congress.

The Bad Blues report issued in early summer (written by Jeff Cohen, Pia Gallegos, Sam McCann and myself for RootsAction.org) zeroed in on 15 House Democrats who deserve to be primaried in 2020. The report acknowledges that it is “by no means exhaustive-- only illustrative,” adding: “There may well be a Democratic member of Congress near you not included here who serves corporate interests more than majority interests, or has simply grown tired or complacent in the never-ending struggles for social, racial and economic justice as well as environmental sanity and peace.”

A few words of caution: Running a primary campaign should be well-planned, far in advance. It should not be an impulse item. And it’s best to field only one progressive challenger; otherwise, the chances of ousting or jolting the incumbent are apt to be greatly diminished.

“It isn’t easy to defeat a Democratic incumbent in a primary,” the Bad Blues report noted. “Typically, the worse the Congress member, the more (corporate) funding they get. While most insurgent primary campaigns will not win, they’re often very worthwhile-- helping progressive constituencies to get better organized and to win elections later. And a grassroots primary campaign can put a scare into the Democratic incumbent to pay more attention to voters and less to big donors.”

An example of a promising campaign to defeat a powerful corporate Democrat is emerging in Oregon’s 5th Congressional District, where six-term incumbent Kurt Schrader is facing a challenge in a slightly blue district that includes much of the Willamette Valley and the coast. The challenger is the mayor of the 20,000-population city of Milwaukee, Mark Gamba, who told us that Schrader “likes to pretend that he’s reaching across the aisle to get things done, but it almost always goes back to the corporations that back him financially.”

Schrader-- a longtime member of the Blue Dog Coalition-- gets a lot of money from corporate interests, including from the Koch Industries PAC. Last year, only one House Democrat was ranked higher on “key issues” by the anti-union, anti-environment U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Gamba intends to make climate a central issue of the campaign to unseat Schrader-- who, he says, “has been notably absent on any substantive climate policy.” (Only four House Democrats have a lower lifetime environmental score than Schrader.)

Gamba also supports Medicare for All, while he says his opponent “is quietly but actively opposing Medicare for All or any law that actually cuts into the profits of the pharmaceutical and insurance industries.” A coalition of groups-- including National Nurses United, Health Care for All Oregon-Action and Democratic Socialists of America-- has scheduled a rally in front of Schrader’s Oregon City office on September 6. The organizers say: “We should convince him how affordable and equitable Medicare for All will be.”

In the few months since Gamba announced his primary challenge to Schrader, voices of opposition to the incumbent have become more significant. “I have called out Congressman Kurt Schrader for his continuing record of voting against the needs of workers,” the retiring Oregon AFL-CIO president, Tom Chamberlain, recently wrote. “On July 15, 2019, Schrader once again showed his corporate colors and voted against raising the federal minimum wage. I am always hopeful that a strong pro-worker candidate will emerge from Oregon’s 5th Congressional District so we can show Schrader the door to retirement.”

Among the top targets of the pathbreaking group Justice Democrats is corporate-tied Texas Congressman Henry Cuellar-- a Democrat in name only. No Democrat voted more frequently with Trump in 2017-18, and none had a higher ranking in 2018 from the Chamber of Commerce. One of the rare Democrats backed by the Koch Industries PAC, Cuellar is loved by the NRA and disliked by pro-choice groups and environmentalists. Although representing a predominantly Latino district with many immigrants and children of immigrants, he won praise from Fox News for his “hardline talk” on deporting immigrant youths.

The good news is that Justice Democrats-- which was instrumental in Ocasio-Cortez’s stunning 2018 victory-- is backing a primary challenge to Cuellar in the person of Jessica Cisneros, a young human rights lawyer with a history of defending immigrants. The daughter of Mexican immigrants, she was born and raised in Laredo, the main population center in the strongly Democratic South Texas district. If Cisneros defeats the well-funded Cuellar in the primary, “the Squad” of House progressives would gain an exciting new member.

Insurgent progressives need a lot more allies elected to Congress as well as colleagues who feel rising heat from the left in their districts. That will require social movements strong enough to sway mainstream entrenched Democrats-- with the capacity to “primary” them when necessary.

Does The Democratic Party Still Stand For Working Families? That Depends How You Define "Democratic Party"

Many of us are watching the clock tick down to November 8, election day. But millions of American workers have their eyes set a few weeks further down the calendar to December 1 when a Department of Labor rule kicks in that will double the salary threshold-- from from $23,660 to $47,476-- at which workers get overtime pay for overtime work. Republicans, of course, are up in arms. But so is the Democratic wing of the Republicans Party. Four of the worst Blue Dogs, ringleader Kurt Schrader (OR) and fellow conservatives, Henry Cuellar (TX), Collin Peterson (MN) and Jim Cooper (TN), all of whom are reliable supporters of Paul Ryan's reactionary austerity agenda, introduced a bill, H.R. 5813, to postpone the rule, stretching out the help the bill offers workers until December, 2019. 5 conservative co-sponsors signed on last week, Blue Dog Gwen Graham (FL) and 4 Republicans, Jeff Fortenberry (NE), Tom Emmer (MN), Jeff Miller (FL) and David Jolly (FL).

The bill is now with John Kline's Committee on Education and the Workforce, where we can count on progressive committee members Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), Mark Pocan (D-WI), Mark Takano (D-CA) and Mark DeSaulnier (D-CA) to put up a massive fight. But they are outnumbered by 22 extremely anti-worker Republicans who very smoothly align with the Blue Dogs and New Dems. Schrader announced that his opposition to the new rule stems from having "heard from business owners and their employees who are worried about implementing this increase overnight. Without sufficient time to plan for the increase, cuts and demotions will become inevitable, and workers will actually end up making less than they made before. It’s long past time we strengthen overtime pay protections for American workers in a meaningful and effective way." Typical textbook Republican scare tactics that are always puked up any time there's a proposal made to lessen the economic burdens on working families.

According to the Economic Policy Institute, what Big Business and the corporate world like so much about Schrader's approach is that it would eliminate the rule’s indexation of the threshold, which would raise it automatically every three years, as wages for salaried workers rise, reproducing "the very disaster for working people the Department of Labor is seeking to prevent: an inevitable and significant loss of guaranteed overtime coverage due to inflation and wage growth."

Failure to adequately update the salary threshold over 1975–2015 caused the share of the salaried workforce that was guaranteed overtime pay to fall from 49.6 percent to just 9.5 percent in 2015. Had 49.6 percent coverage been maintained, some 26.6 million workers would have been covered, rather than the scant 5.1 million who actually were covered in 2015. Raising the salary threshold to $913 per week in 2015 would have allowed 17.6 million employees to enjoy overtime protection (12.5 million of whom would have newly obtained protection), but it would not restore the level of protection provided in 1975.

...[I]ndexing the salary threshold, as provided by DOL’s new rule, allows the share of salaried workers enjoying overtime protection to remain at or near 32.7 percent. The number of workers protected increases as the salaried workforce grows, rising to 20.5 million by 2035. Without indexation, however, the share of the salaried workforce guaranteed overtime pay would decline each year, falling to 23.1 percent in 2025 and just 16.1 percent by 2035. If Rep. Schrader’s bill were enacted, by 2035 there would be 10.4 million fewer salaried workers covered by overtime protection because of the failure to index the salary threshold. Lack of indexation would cut in half the share of the salaried workforce provided overtime protection, which would fall from 32.7 percent to just 16.1 percent (20.4 million versus 10.1 million).

So who's this Kurt Schrader fellow? The head of the Blue Dogs and a member of the New Dems, we talked about Schrader quite a bit last spring when he was being primaried by Berniecrat Dave McTeague back in Oregon. As we pointed out at the time, Schrader went even further than many Republicans care to go in his zeal to wreck Social Security and Medicare. Back in early 2013, Schrader offered an amendment to accept the Simpson Bowles proposals that do just cut Social Security and Medicare benefits and raise the retirement age. 54 disgraceful excuses for Democrats-- mostly New Dems and Blue Dogs from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party-- went along. Schrader's amendment failed 75-348.

Schrader represents a solidly blue district which Obama won 53-44% in 2008 and 50-47% in 2012. There are 7 counties in the district and in the Oregon primary in May, Bernie won all 7. These were Bernie's wins by county:

• Benton- 61.2%
• Clackamas- 51.5%
• Lincoln- 53.7%
• Marion- 53.0%
• Multnomah- 57.0%
• Polk- 54.5%
• Tillamook- 53.8%

On the same day, Berniecrat Dave McTeague, a former state legislator, went up against Schrader. The huge Bernie support just didn't bother to vote or didn't bother to vote for McTeague. Schrader win 67,124 (72.6%) to 25,289 (27.4%). There's no excuse for that. For a Bernie voter, Kurt Schrader has no saving graces on any level.

By the way, among the supporters of Schrader's amendment to gut Social Security and Medicare were many of the usual scum always looking for chances to lick the asses of the corporate campaign donors, including several Blue Dogs and New Dems up on the ballot in November, like Loretta Sanchez, who's running for California's open Senate seat, Chris Van Hollen, the Democratic candidate for Maryland senator, as well as recently defeated conservaDems trying to weasel their ways back into Congress-- Colleen Hanabusa (HI), Joe Garcia (FL) and Pete Gallego (TX). Electing more of these garbage-Democrats is the last thing we should be doing, but the DCCC and the California Democratic Party are delighted to be backing Lou Correa, a former state legislator who was widely considered the most right-wing Democrat in Sacramento (and one of the most corrupt). The progressive mayor of Garden Grove, Bao Nguyen, also made it through the primary and will be duking it out with Correa in a Dem vs Dem election November 8-- one real progressive Democrat against one from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party. A few minutes ago he told us that "These corporate Blue Dog Democrats are eagerly pumping money into my opponent Lou Correa's campaign. We certainly have every reason to expect that my opponent will do the bidding of corporations in Congress if elected, as he has done in the past as a state legislator. What we really need is someone in Congress who will protect the pro-worker agenda that so many of us in the labor and progressive movement have fought so hard to achieve. I've been that champion for working families as Mayor of Garden Grove and as a labor organizer. If the people of the 46th Congressional District elect me in November, one of the first laws I would vote against is anything that would compromise or threaten Obama's overtime rule for salaried workers."

Only 21 Republicans voted for the Blue Dog anti-Social Security amendment, including Pat Meehan from the suburbs outside of Philadelphia. Funny, he doesn't tell the voters in PA-07 that he voted to raise the retirement age and cut their benefits. Mary Ellen Balchunis, the progressive Democrat running against him this year, expected nothing more from Meehan. "I wasn't surprised when Pat Meehan voted to support cuts to Social Security and Medicare because he told us he would do that when he ran as a Tea Party candidate in 2010. Pat Meehan thinks that if he says he is a moderate enough times, the voters will believe it, but votes like this tell the truth. The real Pat Meehan has also voted to cut taxes for the wealthiest of Americans, to cut healthcare and cancer screenings for women, and end Medicare as we know it. If Pat Meehan was a true moderate he would stop prioritizing tax breaks for the rich and start looking out for seniors."

Please help replace Meehan with Mary Ellen and help keep Correa out of Congress-- he did enough damage to working families when he was in Sacramento-- by electing Bao Nguyen instead of him. You'll find them both by tapping the thermometer below:

UPDATE: Certain States...

Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Utah and Wisconsin are suing the government to stop the overtime rule. What do all these states have in common? No, they weren't all former slave-holding states that started the Civil War-- though most of the former slave-holding states that started the Civil War signed on to the suit. This list is a list of states that have Republican governors. Don't people in these states want to get overtime pay for overtime work?

Oregon Voters Have A Progressive Alternative To Blue Dog Kurt Schrader-- Meet Dave McTeague

Kurt Schrader leads the Republican wing of the Democratic Party in the House, the much-depleted and defanged Blue Dogs. His constituents have long wanted to replace him with a real Democrat and Dave McTeague's late February decision to run has been widely hailed. The 5th district is considered a "swing district," although Obama won it against McCain 53-44% and against Romney 50-47%. It's centered on Salem, the state capital, and extends north as far as Milwaukie and Happy Valley south of Portland, including most of Clackamas County's population centers. The district also extends south and west, through Marion and Polk counties, over to the Oregon coast covering Tillamook and Lincoln counties. Before Schrader brought his brand of Republican-lite politics to OR-05, the district had been represented in Washington by genuine moderates, Darlene Hooley and Mike Kopetski, who tended to stick with Democratic Party progressives values, unlike Schrader, who has one of the worst voting records of any Democrat in Congress-- plus an "F" grade from ProgressivePunch-- and is always counted on by the GOP leadership to help them make their extremist legislation look "bipartisan." This session he has the 9th most anti-progressive voting record of any Democrat in the House, the same numerical score (52.48) as conservative North Carolina Republican, Walter Jones.

Recently Schrader's relations with organized labor have been severely strained over his support for the TPP and alignments around the dock issues between the ILWU and management. His League of Conservation Voters record plummeted to 57%, confirming him as the most environmentally unfriendly of Oregon’s Democratic delegation.

Former state Rep. Dave McTeague, an actual Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Democrat-- and a Bernie supporter-- jumped into the race a week ago, February 27. When he made his announcement, he told Oregonians that he had joined Bernie's "political revolution to address growing income inequality and the decline of the middle class." He is a long-time environmental activist and was a champion of working families for his five terms in the state legislature (1985-1994). He was a McGovern delegate to the national convention in 1972 and a Ted Kennedy delegate in 1980, same year he was elected as a Democratic National Committeeman at the state convention. He was Executive Director of the Oregon Board of Chiropractic Examiners from 1996 to 2014. He also served three terms on the Clackamas Fire District Board of Directors. While Dave lives in the part of the district that is south of Portland in the metro area; he has roots in the Salem-Keizer community where his family moved to in 1969. I asked him to write a guest post about why he decided to jump back into politics and run for the seat Schrader holds.

Why Would I Do This?
-by Dave McTeague, candidate for Congress, OR-05

After attending Congressman Kurt Schrader’s Oregon City Town hall meeting (2-16-2016), and hearing his support for the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal; I decided to engage in this debate. While Schrader said it was "good on the labor side," that is flatly contradicted by an AFL-CIO report just issued.

After I cited Public Citizen’s Trade Watch report concerning weak environmental provisions, Mr. Schrader discounted the opposition, saying they were predisposed to oppose the TPP.  Schrader’s vote for the Fast Track approval process prevents Congress from demanding any changes in the TPP, which was negotiated in secret. The more I read about the TPP, the more concerned I get that it will fundamentally undermine our middle class more than NAFTA did.

Schrader’s vote with the Republicans against the Syrian refugees was the other issue key in my decision to file. This vote was a cave-in to the worst Trump-like sentiments.  I believe we need to do much more to address this enormous human catastrophe, especially since it was brought on in large part by the destabilization of the region by the disastrous 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. The rest of the Oregon Democratic congressional delegation opposed this proposed law, which died in the U.S. Senate.

Three environmental issues really concern me:

• Schrader voted for the Keystone Pipeline; which would be an environmental disaster. We need to fight climate change, not deny it.

• I helped stop nuclear power in Oregon with 1978’s Ballot Measure # 9. Schrader supports nuclear power development and the Oregon corporation that wants to build so-called 'new generation' nukes with federal subsidies.

• Schrader’s bill to drastically increase clear cut logging on public O & C lands managed by the BLM weakens environmental protections.

These days a lot of voters, Democratic voters too, don’t feel represented by the Washington Establishment and want real change. This is evident in the success of Sen. Sanders’s insurgent presidential campaign, which I strongly support. The incumbent is the Co-Chair of the conservative Blue Dog Caucus. I would be a member of the Progressive Caucus.

I don’t have any illusions about this effort. Running against an entrenched incumbent is like taking on the Death Star in Star Wars especially one with access to a million or more dollars of PAC money.

So why would I do this? Because a lot of Democratic and independent voters want real fundamental change, a political revolution, and they’re not willing to settle for politics as usual. Those Democrats and independents deserve to have a choice just as they have a choice for real change in the Presidential Primary.

My candidacy’s purpose is to provide Democratic primary voters a progressive alternative to the establishment incumbent. I will not accept any funding from any corporate Political Action Committees. I agree with Senator Bernie Sanders we have to overturn our current corrupt campaign finance system to make real fundamental changes.

You can find out more about Dave, his policies and his campaign at mcteagueforcongress.com and on his Facebook page.


UPDATE

You can help Dave take his campaign to the voters in Oregon's 5th district by tapping the thermometer and contributing what you can. Let's help replace the head of the Blue Dogs with a real progressive Democrat.

Who's Driving Freshmen To Vote Against The Democratic Agenda And Into The Blue Dog Caucus?

She hated doing that & was on the verge of tears

Blue Dogs-- most of whom have voted more frequently with the GOP than with the Democrats this past year (at least on substantive issues) are heading for the hills. One of the worst, Alabama multimillionaire and reactionary, Parker Griffith, first voted with the GOP approximately 85% of the time, then announced he would vote against Nancy Pelosi for Speaker next year and finally made the jump into the Republican cesspool. Other are just retiring, Arkansas' Marion Berry being the latest. When you hear talk about Democrats losing seats in November, the most likely losers are actually not real Democrats at all; they're Blue Dogs who vote with the GOP. But conventional wisdom is so skewered rightward Inside the Beltway that contrary to all good sense, the Blue Dogs have actually picked up four recent converts: Betsy Markey (CO), Mike Arcuri (NY), Scott Murphy (NY) and Kurt Schrader (OR).

Unlike her batshitcrazy predecessor, the universally loathed Marilyn Musgrave, everybody likes freshman Democrat Betsy Markey of Fort Collins. Just the other day one of her admiring colleagues described her to me as having been "on the verge of tears" when Hoyer and Van Hollen told her they had the votes they need to pass healthcare reform and that she should vote against it. And she did, poor thing. Since getting into Congress one year ago, Markey has voted-- on substantive matters (so not on naming post offices or voting to honor girl scout cookies)-- about 41% with the Democrats and 59% with the Republicans. This is how Hoyer and Van Hollen think a Representative from a Republican-leaning district (PVI is R+9) should vote. She beat Musgrove 187,347 (56%) to 146,028 (44%) but Insiders don't seem think that means voters in CO-04 were looking for change so they have positioned Markey as a Republican-lite agent of non-change. And it isn't working.

U.S. Rep. Betsy Markey, a Democrat from Fort Collins, was one of 39 Democrats who voted against the House health reform bill. She has also positioned herself as a conservative Democrat by joining the Blue Dog coalition.

But the freshman lawmaker, who won a traditionally Republican seat from Marilyn Musgrave in 2008, is vulnerable, independent pollster Floyd Ciruli said.

"Betsy is obviously in trouble," Ciruli said. "Just on the ground there is a Republican majority; now you add to it that there are independents going against incumbent Democrats, and Republicans are extremely invigorated."

Markey has earned a reputation for voting against her party when she feels it is the right thing to do, said her campaign spokesman, Ben Marter. "She is going to continue to represent her district, not rethink the entire campaign because of what people in Massachusetts said yesterday."

I called Marter this morning to ask him what made his boss decide to join the Blue Dog caucus and in the hopes that he could explain to me how it is she felt voting against healthcare-- regardless of the verge of tears stuff-- was "the right thing to do." He didn't call back. Progressives always call back. Republicans never call back. Blue Dogs... sometimes.

I also called Josh Schwerin, the communications director for freshman Scott Murphy, another newly minted Blue Dog. I noticed that he googled my name, checked out DWT and then did call back. Murphy won the special election for the 20th congressional district-- the one Gillibrand represented-- that went for Obama and that is safer for Democrats than Markey's. Yet only half a dozen Democrats voted more frequently with the GOP on substantive issues than Murphy-- characters like Travis Childers (Blue Dog-MS), Gene Taylor (Blue Dog-MS), Bobby Bright (Blue Dog-AL), Dan Boren (Blue Dog-OK) and Charlie Melancon (Blue Dog-LA). Murphy couldn't join the Old Confederacy so instead he joined the Blue Dogs. He's voted with Boehner more than 75% of the time-- although he does vote with the Democrats on naming post offices. He has the worst voting record in the House for any Democrat not in a "Strong" or "Leaning" Republican district. (Oh, and I don't want to get Josh in any trouble for calling me back; no need to worry: he didn't answer any questions.)

Neither Mike Arcuri's comm director nor and Kurt Schrader's bothered calling back. I guess Arcuri feels that the help he got from Blue America when he first ran has been amply paid back through the constant barrage of automated, canned, saccharine e-mails soliciting donations. Schrader's office, apparently is just too busy fighting off the GOP charges that he's "changed" and become too much of a Democrat. On substantive issues, Schrader has voted with his own party 53% of the time, 47% with the obstructionist Republicans but two the two crazy wingnuts running against him, that's just short of communism.

“I read the interview and what I see in my friend Kurt Schrader is a desperate attempt at self-rationalization,” said Rep. Scott Bruun, who has served in the Oregon House of Representatives since 2004. “Kurt is a good man, I admired him when he was in the Oregon Legislature. I would still call him a friend, although I’m not sure he would think the same of me.
The Kurt I knew in the Oregon Legislature was independent and since he has gone to Washington has been in lock step with Nancy Pelosi and the DNC.”

Bruun announced in October he will be running for Schrader’s seat, that is if he can make it past the May Republican primary, where he faces Fred Thompson of Salem.

Thompson agreed with Bruun’s characterization of Schrader.

“Kurt Schrader has voted more than 98-percent of the time with Nancy Pelosi,” Thompson said. “That’s wrong, because she is not right 98 percent of the time. We don’t need San Francisco politics here in Oregon. This is Oregon.

It's also untrue. Where does Thompson come up with the 98% figure? Did he just pull it out of his ass? Well, possibly, but more likely he got it from the NRCC, which is telling all their candidates to say that about their opponents. So 53% of substantive matters becomes 98%-- even though if you count everthing Schrader voted on since he was elected, post office naming, girl scout cookies and all, he voted with the Democrats 91% of the time. But now that he's joined the Blue Dogs, we can probably expect his scores to veer drastically right anyway. I doubt he has the capacity to effectively defend himself in the reralm of ideas from this Republican calumny. Oh, and the deadline for filing for the Oregon primary is March 9. If you follow Blue America, you probably know that we've already found some solid progressives who we're trying to help in races against Blue Dogs and other reactionaries.

Replacing Blue Dog Kurt Schrader With A Proven Progressive Champion, Dave McTeague

Tim Canova, the intrepid Democrat challenging entrenched incumbent Debbie Wasserman Schultz in a deep blue district in South Florida, wrote that "primary challenges like mine are often the only effective way to force accountability on entrenched incumbents. Here at home, for instance, Florida’s 23rd Congressional District is seen as a safe Democratic seat. My opponent has been reelected over and over, and has never faced a primary challenger, ever! And with no primary challenger in a safely Democratic seat, there is no genuine discussion, much less debate, within our district as to the serious issues facing all of us, and the overall direction of our country."

Progressive activist and labor scholar Amy Dean sees Tim's campaign as a potential game changer: “If his insurgent campaign catches on, it could represent a serious problem for the Democratic Party establishment. It could signal an increasing willingness by grass-roots activists to use primary challenges to place champions for working people in office rather than accept lesser-evil candidates simply because they are incumbents.”

And Tim's campaign isn't the only race where Blue America is backing a proven progressive against an arrogant and out-of-touch incumbent. Alex Law is challenging the entire corrupt South Jersey political machine that has bolstered Chris Christie's administration by taking on boss George Norcross' conservative little brother Donald Norcross, whose first vote in Congress was to back the Keystone XL Pipeline. Missouri state Senator Maria Chappelle-Nadal, one of the heroes of Ferguson, is taking on William Lacy Clay, the kind of typical old school Democrat who has lost touch with his constituents while living the high life with his lobbyist buddies in DC.

And this week, we welcomed a new challenger on board, Oregon former state legislator Dave McTeague, who is going after a character every bit as destructive and reactionary as Debbie Wasserman Schultz or Lacy Clay-- head Blue Dog, Kurt Schrader, a Republican in every way but the "D" next to his name.

Inspired by Bernie Sander's principled campaign and his issues and incensed by Schrader's anti-environmental votes and his backing for the TPP and other job-killing corporate trade policies, McTeague decided it jump back into electoral politics, fully aware of the onerousness of the task of taking on an entrenched incumbent in a primary. But Oregon is one of the highest turn-out states in America-- 63% compared to 52.8% in New York, 51.7% in Arizona, 54.8% in California, 48.45 in Texas and 49.5% in Arkansas-- and the 5th district's voters are well-educated, environmentally-conscious and generally much more progressive than their Blue Dog congressman, who has an "F" rating from ProgressivePunch and a tense relationship with organized labor and with the environmental community. The League of Conservative Voters rates him as the most environmentally-unfriendly Democrat in Oregon's congressional delegation and he has been a big backer of clear-cut logging. The NRA, on the other hand, loves him and supports him-- because Schrader loves them and supports them.

When McTeague jumped into the race at the end of last month-- after attending a Schrader townhall where concerns about the TPP were cavalierly dismissed-- he told residents of the northern Willamette Valley, Salem, and coastal counties from Tillamook to Lincoln that he had joined Bernie's "political revolution to address growing income inequality and the decline of the middle class." He explained his reasons for running in a guest post here at DWT a few days ago:

These days a lot of voters, Democratic voters too, don’t feel represented by the Washington Establishment and want real change. This is evident in the success of Sen. Sanders’s insurgent presidential campaign, which I strongly support. The incumbent is the Co-Chair of the conservative Blue Dog Caucus. I would be a member of the Progressive Caucus.


I don’t have any illusions about this effort. Running against an entrenched incumbent is like taking on the Death Star in Star Wars especially one with access to a million or more dollars of PAC money. 
So why would I do this? Because a lot of Democratic and independent voters want real fundamental change, a political revolution, and they’re not willing to settle for politics as usual. Those Democrats and independents deserve to have a choice just as they have a choice for real change in the Presidential Primary.


My candidacy’s purpose is to provide Democratic primary voters a progressive alternative to the establishment incumbent. I will not accept any funding from any corporate Political Action Committees. I agree with Senator Bernie Sanders we have to overturn our current corrupt campaign finance system to make real fundamental changes.

This community has been fundamental in helping Tim Canova get his campaign off the ground. Let's do the same for Dave McTeague by contributing here at the Blue America ActBlue page.

Trade Policies That Send American Jobs Overseas Are Republican Policies That New Dems And Blue Dogs Support

It became clear during the 2008 Democratic primary that Obama knew what was wrong with NAFTA and knew he could use it effectively as a weapon against his neoliberal, free-trade-supporting opponent, Hillary Clinton. Once Obama got into office he seems to have forgot his NAFTA-related trade promises-- and worse. We'll get to the TPP in a moment. Recall that on November 17, 1993-- quite late at night-- the House voted on NAFTA, the George H.W. Bush "free trade" bill that he tried to pass but couldn't. Bill Clinton assured Wall Street he would get done. And it got done. Clinton hired Rahm Emanuel, then a little known White House aide already fashioning himself an image as a bully and an asshole, to ride roughshod over reticent Democrats opposing job killing "free" trade policies. With Tom DeLay working one side of the aisle and Emanuel working the other side, they bribed, blackmailed and beat up enough Members of the House to get NAFTA passed 234-200. 132 Republicans and 102 Democrats voted for it. 156 Democrats (+ Independent Bernie Sanders) voted no, as did 43 Republicans.

These Wall Street-backed trade deals are part of the Republican agenda and one of the problems with the bribed, conservative Democrats-- like Hillary Clinton-- is that they sell themselves to these policies over and over for cash. Yes, I know she always loves to say that the $42,160,423 she's taken in campaign contributions from the Finance Sector-- which doesn't even touch the millions she and her husband have been paid personally in lightly-disguised personal bribes in the form of "speaker's fees," for the speeches she refuses to let the public see now-- never influenced her on policy. Ever hear of a politician say that the bribes they took influenced a decision they made. You don't believe it when Paul Ryan or Mitch McConnell says it; why would you believe it when Hillary Clinton, who takes far more in bribes from Wall Street than both of them combined and supports the same ugly trade policy agenda they do, says it?

When the House voted on fast track authority for TPP last June it passed 219-211, 191 Republicans and just 28 Democrats-- virtually all from the corrupt Blue Dog/New Dem/Clinton wing of the party-- voted for it. This was pure Republican/Wall Street legislation that was backed with the slime of the Democratic Party-- your Debbie Wasserman Schultzes, your Kurt Schraders, Gregory Meeks, Ami Beras, Jim Himes, Ron Kinds, John Delaneys, Jim Coopers (the Nashville Blue Dog who is one of the new Dems left in Congress who voted for NAFTA)-- Team Hillary!

Pressure from Bernie forced her to finally back away from the TPP treaty she's ardently supported and even helped negotiate. Few people believe her opposition will last longer than the campaign. If she gets into the White House, all those millions she's gotten from the banksters will dictate that she pushes it through, perhaps with some much-ballyhooed but superficial adjustments. The dishonesty of the Democratic political establishment when it comes to trade policy-- part of the pathology exposed by Thomas Frank in his new book, Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened To The Party Of The People-- speaks loudly to the abandonment of working families and their interests by the Establishment/Hillary-wing of the party. Earlier in the week, Lee Fang, writing for The Intercept exposed how Japanese government lobbyists in America are gaming the system in favor of the TPP here in America at the same time that the Boston Globe exposed how the Obama administration has been using the old unethical Rahm techniques to push the TPP forward.

New Balance is renewing its opposition to the far-reaching Pacific Rim trade deal, saying the Obama administration reneged on a promise to give the sneaker maker a fair shot at military business if it stopped bad-mouthing the agreement.

After several years of resistance to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a pact aimed at making it easier to conduct trade among the United States and 11 other countries, the Boston company had gone quiet last year. New Balance officials say one big reason is that they were told the Department of Defense would give them serious consideration for a contract to outfit recruits with athletic shoes.

But no order has been placed, and New Balance officials say the Pentagon is intentionally delaying any purchase.

New Balance is reviving its fight against the trade deal, which would, in part, gradually phase out tariffs on shoes made in Vietnam. A loss of those tariffs, the company says, would make imports cheaper and jeopardize its factory jobs in New England.

The administration has made the pact a priority. It could be voted on by Congress later this year, though possibly not until after the November elections.

...The company employs about 1,400 people at its five New England factories-- one in Brighton, one in Lawrence, and three in Maine. Company officials say they are looking to add workers to those plants, and they see a major military contract, with potentially as many as 200,000 shoe orders a year, as a way to help reach that goal.

One of the worst of the congressional Dems-- if you want to call him that-- on the Wall Street neoliberal trade agenda is Oregon Blue Dog Kurt Schrader, one of the 28 Democrats to cross the aisle and vote with the GOP on Fast Track authority. His opponent in the Oregon primary is Dave McTeague, a Bernie-backing former state legislator. Former Oregon Congressman Les AuCoin endorsed McTeague pointing out that "Oregon doesn't need a self-proclaimed Blue Dog Democrat," adding that it's "time for a real Democrat in Oregon's 5th District" and asserting what anyone who watches Congress carefully already knows, namely that Schrader is nothing but a "Democratic impostor who now holds the seat for the special interests."

Democrat Dave McTeague and Blue Dog Kurt Schrader debate the TPP

McTeague, who has said Shrader's supporting for the job-killing trade bills was a big part of the motivation for running, attacked Schrader for his vote on the Panama Free Trade that led directly to the Mossack Fonseca financial scandals. McTeague: "Congressman Kurt Schrader’s vote for the Panama U.S. Trade Deal aids and abets Panama’s status as a tax haven for the rich and corporations to hide their assets from U.S. taxation... Once again, Congressman Schrader ignored the testimony of organized labor and citizen groups like Public Citizen. They objected to the Panama deal chiefly because of that country’s role as a haven for money laundering and tax avoidance by U.S. corporations. The AFL-CIO warned Schrader and others, that 'Panama is known as a tax haven with a history of attracting money launderers and tax dodgers.' Schrader should know that Panama is one of the world’s major tax havens where 400,000 foreign firms and numerous wealthy individuals use its dual tax system, banking secrecy and shady incorporation laws to dodge taxes. Panama is also used by Mexican and Colombian cartels’ for money laundering operations according to the U.S. State Department. This trade deal did nothing to curb Panama’s status as a tax haven where many U.S. firms are incorporated, avoiding their obligations at home. Instead Congressman Schrader rewarded Panama with a trade deal worth billions."

Last week when McTeague and Schrader faced off in front of the Willamette Week editorial board, they sparred over trade deals like the TPP, with McTeague emphasizing how it undermines labor rights, environmental protections and consumer rights, while Schrader just spewing all the same old lies that Clinton was using to defend it before she finally raised the white flag and agreed it sucks and that she'd oppose it. If you'd like to help Dave McTeague and the other congressional candidates running, along with Bernie, against the TPP and the neoliberal "free" trade agenda, the thermometer will take you to the place:

Democratic Primary Voters Don't Like Flip-Flopping On Social Security-- And In Oregon, It's Not Just Trump Who Is-- Tuesday Is D-Day For Kurt Schrader

At least Trump doesn't support "saving" Social Security and Medicare by cutting the benefits, the way Paul Ryan, most Republicans and the Wall Street-owned New Dems do. Right? As with all policy matters involving Trump, who knows? At one time he said he opposed cuts to Social Security nut now that he's trying to corral support from the Republican Establishment-- not just approval from Paul Ryan by $100 million from anti-Social Security fanatic, half man/half pig Sheldon Adelson-- Trump now says he's open to cuts to Social Security and Medicare. Speaking Wednesday at the world capital of Let's Get Rid Of Social Security, the Pete Peterson Foundation, a top Trump advisor, Sam Clovis, said Trump would be open to a bipartisan look at entitlement spending and would consider changes to Social Security and Medicare if he is elected. "After the administration has been in place, then we will start to take a look at all of the programs, including entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare... We'll take a hard look at those to start seeing what we can do in a bipartisan way," said Clovis. But "a bipartisan way" doesn't mean dealing with mainstream Democrats like Pelosi. It means dealing with the treacherous Republican wing of the Democratic Party, the New Dems and Blue Dogs. We'll come back to that in a moment.

On the campaign trail in Wisconsin last month, [Trump] attacked Republicans who he said would cut Social Security benefits.

"It's my absolute intention to leave Social Security the way it is," Trump said during a Republican debate in March. "I want to make our country rich again so we can afford it."

Trump has been using Social Security and Medicare as a bludgeon to beat up on Paul Ryan and has connected the dots for his followers over the months: "[Ryan is] so anti-Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security," Trump told them. Last week he responded to Ryan by tweeting "I am not ready to support Speaker Ryan's agenda."

As Morning Consult reported Thursday, this is getting more serious as Republicans huddled with Energy and Commerce Committee chairman Fred Upton behind closed doors last week, plotting how to eliminate the Affordable Care Act and cut Medicare benefits.

Medicare changes discussed at the meeting included enhancing Medicare Advantage, the private alternative to traditional fee-for-service Medicare, and raising the Medicare eligibility age... [L]eaders also talked about using per-capita caps to fund Medicaid.

..."A lot of it is just trying to understand what they’re trying to do. But it’s turning out to be more encompassing than what we expected. Previously, we only talked about the private marketplace and Medicaid expansion. Now, we’re actually adding in Medicare and the premium support-- the things Paul Ryan has been talking about for years," said Rep. John Fleming (R-La.), a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus.

So what about the Democrats who are the Ryan side of the argument, the ones who want to cut Social Security and Medicare benefits and raise the retirement age? Almost no Democrats will publicly admit they're in that camp but when the head of the Blue Dogs, Oregon Congressman Kurt Schrader, offered an amendment on February 6, 2013 to accept the Simpson Bowles proposals that do just that, 54 right-of-center Democrats went along. Schrader's House Amendment 19 to HR 444 failed 75-348. Thankfully, many of the Democratic traitors were defeated at the polls and are no longer in Congress, but these are some of the Democrats who voted for a death sentence for Social Security that day:

• Ami Bera (New Dem-CA)
• Cheri Bustos (Blue Dog-IL)
• Gerry Connolly (New Dem-VA)
• Jim Cooper (Blue Dog-TN)
• Jim Costa (Blue Dog-CA)
• Joe Crowley (New Dem-NY)
• Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog-TX)
• Susan Davis (New Dem-CA)
• John Delaney (New Dem-MD)
• Denny Heck (New Dem-WA)
• Jim Himes (New Dem-CT)
• Steny Hoyer (MD)
• Derek Kilmer (New Dem-WA)
• Ron Kind (New Dem-WI)
• Rick Larsen (New Dem-WA)
• Dan Lipinski (Blue Dog-IL)
• Gregory Meeks (New Dem-NY)
• Scott Peters (New Dem-CA)
• Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN)
• Loretta Sanchez (Blue Dog-CA)
• Kurt Schrader (Blue Dog-OR)
• Terri Sewell (New Dem-AL)
• Adam Smith (New Dem-WA)
• Chris Van Hollen (MD)
• Filemon Vela (New Dem-TX)

New Dems Joe Garcia (FL) and Pete Gallego (TX) both voted for it as well and were subsequently defeated for reelection. I mention these two scumbags because both are trying to worm their way back into Congress this year. This would be an especially good year week to defeat Kurt Schrader, who has a strong progressive opponent, Dave McTeague. The two face off Tuesday. Bernie is expected to win in Oregon. If all his voters back McTeague, who is actively campaigning for Bernie-- while Schrader is a pledged Hillary SuperDelegate-- Schrader will be defeated and a major message about accountability will go out to every corrupt Democrat in Congress. McTeague and all the progressives on this list want to expand, not cut, Social Security: