Archive for the ‘Progressives’ Category

A Progressives Case for Bitcoin with Jason Maier – What Bitcoin Did

Jason Maier is a teacher and progressive Bitcoiner. In this interview, we discuss his inspiration for writing a book setting out his case, as a progressive, for Bitcoin. The public narrative and FUD around Bitcoin are antithetical to progressives, yet, its utility is aligned with progressive ideals.

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Bitcoin should be a broad church. The original cypherpunks philosophy was predicated on anarchist ideals, to work outside of government controls. This attitude is analogous to a wide variety of political philosophies, including those on the left who feel disenfranchised by the current global capitalist hegemony. And yet, Bitcoin has historically been viewed as being antithetical to progressives.

The mainstream narrative is that Bitcoiners are predominantly libertarian, with explicit views on the need to reduce the size of the state, the coercive nature of taxation, and the importance of self-reliance. In addition, there is significant criticism about the environmental harm being done by Bitcoin mining through its energy demands. Given our polarised society, its not surprising that progressives are immediately turned off.

And yet, there has been a marked increase in the number of progressive voices entering the community over the past few years. These people have risen to prominence given their impassioned and articulate advocacy for Bitcoin. It is a new wave of orange-pilled adoption that has identified broad utility that is aligned to, rather than being at odds with, progressive ideals.

Whether its that Bitcoin is providing sovereignty and security to marginalized communities, that Bitcoin acts as a constraint to unfettered government economic power, or that Bitcoin is actually enabling market-driven solutions to environmental issues - there are many obvious fact-based reasons why progressives should be enthused by the application of Satoshis innovation.

The reason why the increase in left-leaning adoption hasnt turned into a flood is in part due to education. There are a limited number of resources available to those starting on their Bitcoin journey. This is where people like Jason Maier hope to make a difference. Material written by a progressive will provide an authentic message specifically tailored to this audience.

This should be exciting for all Bitcoiners. If Bitcoin is to become global money we need as wide an audience as possible to see value in it.

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A Progressives Case for Bitcoin with Jason Maier - What Bitcoin Did

A Progressive Case for the Inflation Reduction Act – Data For Progress

By Rep. Pramila Jayapal (WA-07)

After more than a year of negotiations, Senate Democrats finally passed a historic reconciliation bill. The Inflation Reduction Act lowers health care costs, begins to ensure that corporations pay their fair share, and makes the largest-ever federal investment to tackle the existential threat of climate change. While were heartbroken to see the care economy, housing, and immigration left on the cutting room floor, we should be very clear that the Inflation Reduction Act takes real steps forward on key progressive priorities. Progressives in Congress and movements across the country should feel very proud of our part in getting to this point: had progressives not held the line a year ago, insisting on real negotiations and an actual Build Back Better bill passing the House, we would not be where we are. Major pieces of that bill are now in the Inflation Reduction Act about to become law. Its an achievement we can all feel excited about especially when we dig into the details.

The bill will put the United States on track to cut carbon pollution by 40 percent by 2030 through rapidly accelerating the adoption of renewable energy technologies such as electric vehicles, heat pumps, and solar panels, saving the average family $1,025 a year in energy costs and creating 9 million good jobs. It includes roughly $60 billion for environmental justice going to frontline communities. The bill allows nonprofit and public utilities, for the first time, to receive direct payments from the federal government to rapidly adopt renewable energy production, and invests billions so utilities and rural co-ops can retire coal-fired power plants, improving air quality for frontline communities and saving lives.

Progressives have been clear: we dont support the provisions that expand fossil fuel leasing but critically, independent analyses show that their limited impact will be far outweighed by the bills carbon emissions cuts. Under a worst-case scenario, the Inflation Reduction Act will remove 24 tons of pollution for every ton produced by new oil and gas leases.

When we pass the Inflation Reduction Act Friday, 13 million people will immediately see their affordable health insurance coverage extended. The bill will cap seniors yearly drug costs at $2,000 per year, and insulin at $35 per month for those on Medicare. For the first time ever, Medicare can begin negotiating prices for a small group of drugs that expands over time. After years of fighting for legislation to take on Big Pharma, Democrats are standing up to one of the nations richest and most powerful lobbying forces.

In a win for progressive economic policy, the investments in this bill are paid for by finally beginning to make the wealthy pay their fair share. The bill imposes a 15 percent minimum tax on corporations, taxes corporations that inflate their share values through stock buybacks, and invests in the IRS to go after large corporations and wealthy individuals (those who make over $400,000 per year) who evade taxes. As President Biden promised, the bill wont raise taxes on any family making less than $400,000 per year.

This isnt just good policy the Inflation Reduction Act has overwhelming public support. Polling from Data for Progress finds that 73% of Americans support the bill, including majorities of Democrats, Independents, and Republicans. The majority of Democrats and Independents support the climate provisions of this bill and for many of the clean energy components, so do the majority of Republicans. The majority of all Americans are more likely to support the bill when they hear about its carbon-pollution-cutting power.

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A Progressive Case for the Inflation Reduction Act - Data For Progress

Where’s the progressive plan to fix government? – The Hill

More than 100 election deniers have won Republican primaries across the country this year. Its a woeful reminder that former President Trumps seditious assault on U.S. democracy didnt end with his followers failed coup attempt on Jan. 6, 2021.

This ominous trend makes the midterm elections much more than a referendum on President Bidens job performance. But Republican extremism isnt the only threat to our democracy.

A more subtle but corrosive danger is nosediving public confidence in the federal governments ability to function effectively. According to the Pew Research Center, only 19 percent of Americans say they trust Washington to do the right thing most of the time. Thats near the historic low point in public confidence since Pew started measuring it in 1958.

At the same time, solid majorities of Americans believe government should play a major role in tackling national problems. Their qualms about government are practical, not ideological; centering more on its performance than its size.

Paul Light of the Brookings Institution, a leading expert on public attitudes toward government, reports that demand for very major reform of government is at a 20-year high, rising from just 37 percent in 1997 to 60 percent today.

Light sorts voters into four groups with distinct perspectives on government. The largest (44 percent) is dismantlers, who favor smaller government and big changes in how it operates. Rebuilders (24 percent) want bigger government but share the dismantlers desire for major government reform.

Expanders (24 percent) are most enthusiastic about bigger government and less interested in reform. Streamliners (10 percent), want smaller government and only some reform.

These numbers indicate that a modest majority of U.S. voters now lean toward smaller government, while a more substantial majority favors big reforms of government.

They help to explain why the progressive lefts dreams of bold, transformative government action keep smashing on the political rocks. Progressives are full of ideas for expanding government but have no plan for fixing government.

That leaves them unable to allay public doubts that Washington has the capacity to efficiently manage federal agencies, much less run a health care sector that absorbs 20 percent of GDP; rebuild the U.S. economy to the specifications of the Green New Deal; bring back traditional manufacturing jobs; and massively redistribute wealth to abolish inequality and poverty.

Even last years Build Back Better debacle has done little to dent the lefts unbounded faith in the federal governments redemptive powers. Recently there have been calls to nationalize oil companies, even as gas prices come down, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is pushing a bill to empower the IRS which cant even answer citizens calls to do everyones taxes for them.

Trust in the federal government is unlikely to rebound without significant reform, says Light. Republicans are making the problem worse by stoking deep state paranoia. Because Democrats of all stripes believe in in active government, it falls to them to offer leery voters credible ideas for making it work better.

That begins with honest acknowledgement of underperforming public sector systems and bureaucratic dysfunction.

Public schools are a good example. Many parents are deeply frustrated with central school district bureaucracies and teachers unions, which kept schools closed for too long during the pandemic, failed to communicate clearly with families and have yet to figure out how to offset students steep learning losses.

The moment is ripe to press for a sweeping reinvention of our legacy K-12 system aimed at making schools more nimble, autonomous and accountable to parents. But Democrats mostly line up with districts and unions in defending the status quo.

What Light calls the steady thickening of government has made the federal government less agile and responsive to citizens. A striking example is the growth of presidential appointees, from 2385 in President Clintons second term to 5,000 in the Biden administration. Adding layers of leaders with portentous titles (like associate principle deputy assistant secretary) further paralyzes government by fragmenting decisionmaking authority.

The Progressive Policy Institute has documented the related problem of regulatory accumulation the constant layering of new rules upon old. Since Washington lacks politically viable ways to get rid of obsolete, duplicative or conflicting regulations, citizens and businesses are left to hack through an ever-growing thicket of rules.

President Bidens greatest domestic accomplishment to date is passing the landmark $1.3 trillion infrastructure bill. Yet it takes way too long to build things in the United States. As Philip Howard of Common Good has documented, endless regulatory reviews, public hearings and court appeals mean long and costly delays in building new roads, ports, railways and wastewater systems.

Environmental reviews of new projects can grind on for more than a decade. Germany and Canada put time limits (usually two years) on such reviews to force bureaucratic action. Both do at least as good a job protecting the environment as we do. Why cant our federal and state governments impose similar deadlines?

The Biden administration seems to be edging in this direction, but the last Democratic president to take government reform seriously was Bill Clinton. The Clinton-Gore reinventing government initiative (Rego) actually shrunk the federal bureaucracy, trimmed layers of managers and obsolete rules, and used financial incentives to challenge big federal agencies to boost their productivity.

More fundamentally, Clinton proposed radical changes aimed at making big public sector systems work. He balanced the federal budget, replaced a dependency-fostering welfare system with one that rewarded work and championed public-school choice to give low-income and minority families alternatives to failing urban schools.

Public confidence in government stopped falling and actually rose sharply toward the end of Clintons term.

What Democrats need today is a Rego redux a comprehensive blueprint for arresting the erosion in state capacity. It should harness the power of IT to modernize major public sector systems, making them nimbler, less rulebound and more performance-based.

Its also time for a serious push to decentralize decisions and resources to local government leaders, who enjoy the highest levels of public trust. Above all, we need to free public servants from the process-oriented constraints that keep them from exercising their authority and making common-sense decisions.

So, Democrats need a two-pronged strategy to defend U.S. democracy. First, stop Trump and his minions from sabotaging U.S. elections; second, start reviving Americans confidence in their governments ability to help them solve their problems.

Will Marshallis president and founder of the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI).

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Where's the progressive plan to fix government? - The Hill

Opinion: Pierre Poilievre does not need Stephen Harper’s help to mobilize progressives against him – The Globe and Mail

The paradox of the current Conservative Party of Canada leadership race is that the front-runner in the contest to replace Erin OToole is seeking to move the party in the opposite direction of where most available voters seem to be heading.

As Prime Minister Justin Trudeau scales new heights of unpopularity, with more than half of Canadians now holding a negative opinion of the Liberal leader, Conservatives have a rare opening before them to capture the centre. With the ranks of disaffected Liberals swelling by the day, countless Canadians are scanning the horizon for a credible alternative to the Grits.

As it happens, it would be hard to find a Conservative leadership candidate better equipped to seize on that opportunity than Jean Charest. A recent Angus Reid Institute poll showed that the former federal Progressive-Conservative leader and ex-Liberal premier of Quebec could attract a sizable share of voters who cast a ballot for the federal Liberals in the 2021 election. He could even sway some New Democrats to switch their vote to the CPC. That is some feat.

Mr. Charests rival for the Tory leadership, Pierre Poilievre, could scoop up some Peoples Party of Canada supporters, but would make little or no headway among centrist voters.

Unfortunately for Mr. Charest, the Conservative base appears to consider his crossover appeal a strike against him. The base is more interested in applying purity tests than debating complex solutions to 21st-century problems. It is little wonder that Mr. Poilievre has struck a chord.

After skipping last weeks Tory leadership debate, Mr. Poilievre quipped that he had better things to do than find himself cooped up in a little hotel room around a small table listening to a defeated Liberal premier drone on about his latest carbon tax idea. His comment undoubtedly regaled his own supporters. But to almost anyone else, it smacked of contempt.

It was also reminiscent in tone of the kinds of things former Conservative leader Stephen Harper once said before he became prime minister. Remember when he signed a letter that talked about the imperative of building firewalls around Alberta? Or when he accused Atlantic Canada of harbouring a culture of defeatism because of the regions dependence on federal transfer payments?

Mr. Poilievre is also very good at stoking resentment among voters who feel estranged from the political process. So it is no surprise that Mr. Harper considers Mr. Poilievre his most worthy imitator. His July 25 endorsement of the Alberta-bred, Ottawa-area MP was surprising only to the extent that he felt a need to express publicly what most Conservative insiders already knew.

It is hard to believe, as some have suggested, that Mr. Harper broke his silence because he feared Mr. Poilievre was in any danger of losing the leadership race. A more plausible explanation for his endorsement lies in his antipathy toward Mr. Charest, with whom he clashed on plenty of occasions when he was prime minister and Mr. Charest Quebecs premier.

The two men are very different kinds of politicians. Mr. Charest is a consummate networker, much like his political mentor, Brian Mulroney. His circle is wide and inclusive. Mr. Harper always eschewed that Mulroney-style chumminess, refusing to go along to get along. While he has had legitimate differences of opinion with Mr. Charest notably over the latters (mis)use of a sudden federal equalization windfall to cut provincial income taxes in 2007 the long-standing grudge match between them ultimately comes down to their bad chemistry.

If Charest ever ran to be dogcatcher in Rivire-au-Tonnerre, Harper would drive all the way there in the dead of a pandemic winter on a Ski-Doo, if he had to to poleaxe his chances, Mr. Harpers former director of communications, Andrew MacDougall, wrote after his former bosss endorsement of Mr. Poilievre.

The question now facing the Tory leadership front-runner is whether winning Mr. Harpers seal of approval does him more harm than good in the longer run. According to a Nanos research poll, more than a third of Canadians said they had a more negative impression of Mr. Poilievre after Mr. Harpers endorsement. Only 14 per cent said they had a more positive impression.

Liberals could portray Mr. Poilievre as Mr. Harpers candidate to rally progressive voters behind them. By the time of the next election, however, Mr. Harper will have been out of power for a decade. It is doubtful such a strategy would be very effective.

Besides, Mr. Poilievre appears quite capable of mobilizing progressive voters against him all by himself. The student surpasses the master, once again.

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Opinion: Pierre Poilievre does not need Stephen Harper's help to mobilize progressives against him - The Globe and Mail

Q&A: Ro Khanna is the progressive who wants to transport Democrats to the future – The Hill

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) was feeling good.

The progressive congressman saw President Bidens signing of the CHIPS and Science Act Tuesday as just one of several legislative victories in the Democrats arsenal heading into the midterm elections.

Some of those accomplishments, he believes, can help bring about a new vision for the party, where innovation and patriotism merge to remake a stronger, more economically inclusive America.

Khanna chatted with The Hill while catching a JetBlue flight to New Hampshire his second trip to the critical early primary state this summer to discuss recent achievements on climate, his friend Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and electoral strategy beyond November 2022.

This interview has been condensed for length.

The Hill: Big day for you.

Khanna:Yeah, it was! Ive been working on this legislation [the CHIPS and Science Act]for almost three-and-a-half years. Its been a long journey, but its great to see the president sign it.

My whole mantra has been a new economic patriotism. That we have to focus on bringing the new factories, the new industry to places that have been totally deindustrialized. That deindustrialization and job loss in factory towns like New Castle, Ind., and Janesville, Wis., is part of the cause of the polarization in our nation.

The Hill: What would you say is the most critical message that voters can glean from this?

Khanna:We need to make things in America again. For 40 years, we had wrong policies that shipped our production offshore, factory towns suffered with divorce, with suicides, with the destruction of community because of corporate greed that basically let factories go offshore. Our politicians did nothing about it. And now its time to make things in America.

The Hill: Talk about the bipartisan nature of that.

Khanna: The initial versions of this we introduced were [with]Todd Young, a Republican senator from Indiana, and [Rep.] Mike Gallagher [R], whos a Marine from Wisconsin. It was all about building things and making things in this country.

The Hill: How much credit do progressives get for this particular achievement?

Khanna:On the CHIPS bill, the progressive caucus really helped to make sure the money isnt going to stock buybacks and theres strong guardrails on this. The reality is that making things in America and having the government work with the private sector in business is an FDR policy. Thats how we had a victory of production. I think progressives often dont appreciate how much FDRs victory of production and mobilization of production was working with business leaders.

Progressives should embrace the broader vision of working with business to reindustrialize America. To have new factories, to build new things. It should be not just a check on corporate greed, but what is the affirmative vision?

The CHIPS and the [separate] climate bill is just a down payment on having a vision for a new economic patriotism. Imagine if we could open up a new plant, a new factory in every congressional district in this country? Or at least two per state. And have President Biden out there, opening these new factories, standing with business leaders and union leaders in these towns. It would change the psychology of America. Communities that feel down and out will feel that they and their kids can participate in the next generation of economic vitality again. Its not just about the job and the economy, its about patriotism and aspiration.

The Hill: [On working with Manchin on climate issues]: Would you say thats an area where you can see room for additional progress? Progressives having more of a give and take?

Khanna:Progressives can be very proud of the climate provisions because its groups like Sunrise and [Sen.] Bernies [Sanders (I-Vt.)] campaign and NRDC [Natural Resources Defense Council]and Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace that made climate the priority, that had it be such a big part of Build Back Better. That had me say to Sen. Manchin, this is the one thing you cant compromise on. If it wasnt for their activism and it was ordinary times, we might be 10-fold lower.

The Hill: How much of a boost do you see Biden gaining from this? Can that be sustained through November?

Khanna:He should get a boost. Lets see how it plays out. I think the important thing is we need to be in the communities across the country talking about the benefits people will get.

One of the challenges of a policy of tax credit versus the policy of CHIPS, [is] the policy of CHIPS is a little more visible. You have the government stand with the CEO of Intel in Columbus, Ohio, and open up this new factory and talk about 7,000 jobs. And so the government gets credit and is part of that message. Thats why the New Deal was so successful FDR took credit for everything that happened.

The challenge with the tax credit is its over 10 years, and how do we make that visible? How do we say that a company thats succeeding, that it was because of the governments support? Its a bigger challenge for us as legislators to be in those communities and explain what the government is doing and how its going to help their lives.

The Hill: [On the FBI raid of former President Trumps Mar-a-Lago estate]. Could [it] end up hurting Democrats in November?

Khanna:I think it depends on what comes out of it. What is the follow-up action that emerges?

The Hill: The very fact that there was a raid, you dont think is necessarily enough to handicap Democrats?

Khanna:It depends on what they find and what actions the Justice Department takes. Theres no way to gauge this.

The Hill: Are you saying on the record that you want Biden to run in 2024?

Khanna:I will support him.

The Hill: In terms of your preference for him running?

Khanna:Thats his decision. Hes the incumbent president. If he runs, hell have my support. Hes got the wisdom to make the decision. I dont think hed run if he didnt think he could win.

The Hill: Are you still going to New Hampshire tonight?

Khanna:I am. The Young Democrats invited me. Im just boarding JetBlue as we speak.

The Hill: Obviously, your trip will get some attention among the local press and national for its first-in-the-nation stuff. Im curious what you would say to the oncoming speculation youre probably about to get in the next 24 hours.

Khanna:[New Hampshire Democratic Party Chairman] Ray Buckley invited me and I said sure. I went up there on a book talk and this came out of it. I would just say that Im going up because the Young Democrats invited me.

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Q&A: Ro Khanna is the progressive who wants to transport Democrats to the future - The Hill