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Let’s Recruit Russ Feingold

When Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold was defeated in 2010, the Senate lost a progressive champion.

What’s worse is that he was defeated by Ron Johnson, a leader in the Tea Party movement. Johnson’s brand of extremism led to the irresponsible government shutdown, and he continues to rail against the Affordable Care Act and President Obama’s executive actions on immigration.

We are asking supporters to sign our petition to encourage Feingold to run for the U.S. Senate in 2016. We proudly endorsed him before, and we want to do it again.

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New York Times: ‘Outside the Spotlight, Bill de Blasio Wages a War on Inequality’

In his first year as New York City’s mayor, Bill de Blasio moved to close the economic gap between the rich and poor, including:

• Negotiating a new $140 million deal with the state to subsidize rents for homeless families, which is projected to move some 5,000 families out of shelters in 2015.

• Setting aside 20 percent of new units of affordable housing for families with household incomes of $40,000 a year or less.

• Financing the construction of nearly 3,900 units of affordable housing and the preservation of more than 7,500 others, with a goal of reaching 16,000 units.

• Ensuring homeless families are prioritized for apartments belonging to the city’s Housing Authority.

• Increasing funding for the Housing Authority, with tens of millions of dollars going toward maintenance, repairs and enhanced security.

• Doubling the capital budget of its Department of Housing Preservation and Development.

• Dedicating funds in municipal contracts for career development and education.

Continue to The New York Times to Read More

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Sanders Releases Progressive 12-Point Economic Plan

In a Senate floor speech, Senator Bernie Sanders detailed measures to create millions of new jobs, raise wages, protect the environment and provide health care for all.

Sanders’ progressive economic plan is designed to reverse a 40-year decline of the American middle class and the growing gap between the very rich and everyone else in the United States.

According to Sanders, the most significant question facing the American people is, “Are we prepared to take on the enormous economic and political power of the billionaire class, or do we continue to slide into economic and political oligarchy?”

The collapse of the middle class, accelerated by the Wall Street crash of 2008, has left the United States with more wealth and income inequality than any major country, and the highest rate of childhood poverty.

“Today, millions of Americans are working longer hours for lower wages,” he said.

“We once led the world in terms of the percentage of our people who graduated college, but we are now in 12th place. Our infrastructure, once the envy of the world, is collapsing. Real unemployment today is not 5.8 percent, it is 11.5 percent, if we include those who have given up looking for work or who are working part time when they want to work full time. Youth unemployment is 18.6 percent and African-American youth unemployment is 32.6 percent.”

Sanders 12-point economic program would:

• Invest in our crumbling infrastructure with a major program to create jobs by rebuilding roads, bridges, water systems, waste water plants, airports, railroads and schools.
• Transform energy systems away from fossil fuels to create jobs while beginning to reverse global warming and make the planet habitable for future generations.
• Develop new economic models to support workers in the United States instead of giving tax breaks to corporations which ship jobs to low-wage countries overseas.
• Make it easier for workers to join unions and bargain for higher wages and benefits.
• Raise the federal minimum wage from $7.25 an hour so no one who works 40 hours a week will live in poverty.
• Provide equal pay for women workers who now make 78 percent of what male counterparts make.
• Reform trade policies that have shuttered more than 60,000 factories and cost more than 4.9 million decent-paying manufacturing jobs.
• Make college affordable and provide affordable child care to restore America’s competitive edge compared to other nations.
• Break up big banks. The six largest banks now have assets equivalent to 61 percent of our gross domestic product, over $9.8 trillion. They underwrite more than half the mortgages in the country and issue more than two-thirds of all credit cards.
• Join the rest of the industrialized world with a Medicare-for-all health care system that provides better care at less cost.
• Expand Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and nutrition programs.
• Reform the tax code based on wage earners’ ability to pay and eliminate loopholes that let profitable corporations stash profits overseas and pay no U.S. federal income taxes.

Elizabeth Warren Speaks for Me

   

Al Franken: Re-elected

Al Franken won his first term to the U.S. Senate in 2009 after a drawn-out recount that gave him the win by only 312 votes….
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