#Maryland school reform legislation

[justsaying4041]

Changes to Maryland's Blueprint Law- What could those changes be?

Maryland’s Blueprint for Education, enacted in 2021, is a sweeping reform initiative aimed at transforming the state’s public education system over a decade. It focuses on five major pillars: early childhood education, high-quality and diverse teachers, college and career readiness, equitable funding, and robust accountability mechanisms. However, as implementation progresses, changes to this…

[notwiselybuttoowell]

The Trump administration’s Day 1 executive actions governing federal workforce issues could collectively kickstart the new president’s efforts to politicize the nonpartisan civil service, beginning with a potential “mass layoff” of recent agency hires, good government experts said Tuesday.

As part of a tranche of executive actions either setting new policy or revoking Biden-era initiatives issued upon his inauguration Monday, President Trump revived Schedule F, albeit under a slightly different moniker—Schedule Policy/Career. Like the first iteration of the policy, unveiled in October 2020 but never implemented, it aims to reclassify tens of thousands of federal workers in so-called “policy-related” positions out of the competitive service, stripping them of their civil service protections and making them effectively at-will employees.

There are some changes from the original Schedule F executive order: first, it strips much of the language regarding exempting Schedule F positions from the competitive hiring process. And in various places it moves the final decision-making authority for conversion of jobs into the new job classification to the president, rather than the Office of Personnel Management director, likely in an effort to make it easier to ward off legal challenges.

The National Treasury Employees Union has already filed a lawsuit seeking to block the Trump administration from moving forward with implementing Schedule F, arguing that when Congress passed the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act, it defined “policy-related” positions specifically as political appointees, not career workers, and that excepted service job schedules should be “narrowly defined.”

“Congress has enacted comprehensive legislation governing the hiring and employment of federal employees,” the union wrote. “When establishing hiring principles, Congress determined that most federal government jobs be in the merit-based, competitive service. And it established that most federal employees have due process rights if their agency employer wants to remove them from employment. Because the Policy/Career executive order attempts to divest federal employees of these due process rights, it is contrary to congressional intent.”

Replacing the original Schedule F’s hiring process changes is a new executive order entitled Reforming the Federal Hiring Process and Restoring Merit to Government Service. Max Stier, president of the Partnership for Public Service, positively cited the measure, which tasks officials with developing a hiring action plan to reduce the time it takes to hire new federal employees, better communicate with job applicants throughout the process and better incorporate technology into the hiring and selection process.

Don Kettl, professor emeritus at the University of Maryland and former dean of its School of Public Policy, warned that there are worrying passages within that order. In addition to language denigrating concepts like equity and gender identity, it calls for ensuring federal jobseekers “faithfully serve the executive branch,” in addition to the existing oath to defend the Constitution.

“It’s a loyalty test, to both the administration and to its values,” Kettl said. “It’s an opportunity in the screening process to ensure that the people hired are aligned with what they want to advance, an effort to transform government to match Trump’s basic values from the very start.”

Another troubling development came in the form of a Monday night memo from Acting OPM Director Charles Ezell, which calls on agencies to submit a complete list of employees still within their one-year probationary periods by Friday. It also stresses that probationary employees lack appeal rights before the Merit System Protection Board and encourages agencies to use paid administrative leave to send employees home while they consider restructuring offices and components.

Kevin Owen, a partner at the law firm Gilbert Employment Law, said he took OPM’s memo as a signal that the administration may seek to use probationary employees as a way to fulfill Trump and his confidant Elon Musk's promise of “mass layoffs” of federal workers.

“I think that is a precursor to their pledge to reduce the size of the federal government, and an easy target to make those reductions are the people with no rights and who were hired by the last guy,” Owen said. “[And] I think it sets a precedent that will allow future administrations to do the same going forward. That may invite Congress to step in and change that rule in the future—not this Congress, but a future one—because this will start to encroach more and more into a spoils system as time goes on.”

And Ron Sanders, a former chairman of the Federal Salary Council who resigned his post in 2020 after Trump unveiled the first iteration of Schedule F, described the OPM memo as the first in a pair of shoes to drop.

“The second shoe is that once those lists are in place, those probationary workers are at risk,” he said.

[lboogie1906]

Congressman Elijah Eugene Cummings (January 18, 1951 – October 17, 2019) was a politician and a member of the House of Representatives for Maryland’s 7th congressional district. He previously served in the Maryland House of Delegates. He was a member of the Democratic Party and chair of the Committee on Oversight and Reform.

He attended Howard University where he served in the student government as sophomore class president, student government treasurer, and student government president. He became a member of the Phi Beta Kappa Society and graduated with a BA in Political Science.

He graduated from law school at the U of M School of Law, received his JD, and was admitted to the Maryland Bar that year. He practiced law for 19 years before first being elected to the House.

For 14 years, he served in the Maryland House of Delegates. He served as Chairman of the Legislative Black Caucus of Maryland and was the first African American in Maryland history to be named Speaker Pro Tempore.

He served on several boards and commissions. Those include the SEED Schools of Maryland Board of Directors and the University of Maryland Law School Board of Advisors. #africanhistory365 #africanexcellence #phibetakappa #phibetasigma

[azeez-unv]

PHILOSOPHICAL APPROACHES TO READING SKILLS OF STUDENTS: Integrating Literacy Across Classrooms

Many high school students struggle with reading. Is the solution teaching reading in every class?At Health Sciences High and Middle College in San Diego, every teacher, regardless of subject, is tasked with integrating literacy instruction into their curriculum. Angie Hackman, a chemistry teacher at the school, teaches students about atoms and matter but also helps develop their literacy skills. She dissects textbook passages, breaks down prefixes and suffixes, and explores root words to aid comprehension. For example, she explains the word “intermolecular” by examining the prefix “inter” and relating it to similar words.

This approach stems from the need to assist students who arrive at the school with basic reading struggles—some at a first- or second-grade level—according to Douglas Fisher, a school administrator. The aim is for graduates to achieve reading levels suitable for college. Since its founding in 2007, the school has mandated that literacy be integrated across all subjects. To support teachers, the school provides daily professional development and coaching on literacy instruction.

Research suggests that embedding reading instruction into various classes, where students spend most of their day, can have a significant impact on improving literacy, says Jade Wexler, a professor of special education specializing in adolescent literacy at the University of Maryland. Several school districts and states, including Idaho and Ohio, are adopting this approach.

Poor reading skills are a national concern. On the 2022 National Assessment of Education Progress, nearly 70% of eighth-graders scored below “proficient,” including 30% who scored below “basic.” In the Los Angeles Unified School District, 72% of eighth-graders scored below proficient.

This issue may partly stem from longstanding literacy instruction methods that have been misaligned with evolving research on reading, known as “the science of reading.” A substantial body of research underscores the need for explicit instruction in foundational reading skills, such as phonics, to help students recognize words on the page. However, many schools also utilized a competing approach called the “whole language” method, which often de-emphasizes phonics.

The consequences of inadequate reading instruction are apparent at the secondary level, where students struggle with decoding multisyllabic words and comprehending complex texts, according to Wexler.

In recent years, over 200 laws to reform reading instruction were enacted across 45 states and the District of Columbia. California passed nine related bills, yet a proposal to mandate the “science of reading” approach was tabled. Critics expressed concerns about a “one size fits all” method and its impact on English learners.

Experts worry that reading reforms often neglect older students. Kayla Reist, a co-author of the Shanker Institute report, argues for legislative focus on high schoolers' reading needs, emphasizing the necessity of teacher training in reading instruction. Many high school teachers complete their training without guidance on teaching reading, which is traditionally emphasized in early grades.

The Institute of Education Sciences noted in a 2008 guide that many teachers feel unprepared to coach students in reading or don't see it as their responsibility.While some states have implemented measures to enhance literacy training for middle and high school teachers, California is not among them.

The California Department of Education stated that a key priority is the "Reading by Third Grade and Beyond" initiative, aiming for universal reading proficiency by third grade by 2026.

Wexler is exploring models for school wide literacy at the secondary level, similar to Health Sciences High's approach. Kimberly Elliot, an instructional coach at the school, noted that literacy instruction varies by subject. In chemistry, close reading of texts is emphasized, while in math, vocabulary teaching is prioritised .

Faiza Omar, a former student learning English as a second language, found that the integrated literacy instruction ensured all students were on the same page, fostering academic success and development.

[eowyntheavenger]

What have the protests accomplished?

5/26 4 officers fired for murdering George Floyd 5/27 Charges dropped for Kenneth Walker (Breonna Taylor’s boyfriend, who police accused of killing her) 5/28 University of Minnesota cancels contract with police 5/28 3rd precinct police station neutralized by protesters 5/28 Minneapolis transit union refuses to bring police officers to protests or transport arrested protesters 5/29 Activists commandeer Minneapolis hotel to provide shelter to homeless 5/29 Former officer Chauvin arrested and charged with murder 5/29 Louisville Mayor suspends “no-knock” warrants 5/30 US Embassies across Africa condemn police murder of George Floyd 5/30 Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison takes over prosecution of the murdering officer 5/30 Transport Workers Union refuses to help NYPD transport arrests protesters 5/30 Maryland lawmakers forming work group on police reform, accountability 5/31 2 abusive officers fired for pulling a couple out of their car and tasing them - Atlanta, GA 6/1 Minneapolis public schools end contract with police 6/1 Confederate monument removed after being toppled by protesters - Birmingham, AL 6/1 CA prosecutors launch campaign to stop DAs from accepting police union money 6/1 Tulsa Mayor agrees to not renew Live PD contract 6/1 Louisville police chief fired after shooting of David Mcatee 6/1 Congress begins bipartisan push to cut off police access to military gear 6/1 Atlanta announces plans to create a task force and public database to track police brutality in metro Atlanta area 6/2 Minneapolis AFL-CIO calls for resignation of police union president Bob Kroll, a vocal white supremest 6/2 Pittsburgh transit union announces refusal to transport police officers or arrest protesters 6/2 Racist ex-mayor Frank Rizzo statue removed in Philadelphia 6/2 6 abusive officers charged for violence against residents and protesters - Atlanta, GA 6/2 Civil rights investigation of Minneapolis Police Dept launched 6/2 San Francisco resolution to prevent law enforcement from hiring officers with history of misconduct 6/2 Survey indicates that 64% of those polled are sympathetic to protesters, 47% disapprove of police handling of the protests, and 54% think the burning down of the Minneapolis police precinct was fully or partially justified 6/2 Trenton NJ announces policing reforms 6/2 Minneapolis City Council members consider disbanding the police 6/2 Confederate statue removed from Alexandria, VA 6/3 Officer fired for tweets promoting violence against protesters - Denver, CO 6/3 Walker Art Center and the Minneapolis Institute of Art cut ties with the MPD 6/3 Chauvin charges upgraded to second degree murder, remaining 3 officers also charged and taken into custody 6/3 Richmond VA Mayor Stoney announces RPD reform measures: establish "Marcus" alert for folks experiencing mental health crises, establish independent Citizen Review Board, an ordinance to remove Confederate monuments, and implement racial equity study 6/3 County commissioners deny proposal for $23 million expansion of Fulton County jail 6/3 Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board unanimously votes to sever ties with MPD 6/3 Seattle withdraws request to end federal oversight/consent decree of police department 6/3 Breonna Taylor’s case reopened 6/3 Louisville police department (Breonna Taylor’s murderers) will now be under review from an outside agency, which will include review on training, bias-free policing and accountability 6/3 Colorado lawmakers introduce a police reform bill that includes body cam laws, repealing the “fleeing felon” statute, and banning chokeholds 6/3 Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti announces plans to reduce funding to police department by $150M and instead invest in minority communities 6/4 Virginia governor announces plans to remove Robert E. Lee statue from Richmond 6/4 Portland schools superintendent discontinues presence of armed police officers in schools 6/4 MBTA (Metro Boston) board orders that buses wont transport police to protests, or protesters to police 6/4 King County Labor Federation issues ultimatum to police unions: admit to and address racism in Seattle PD, or be removed 6/5 City of Minneapolis bans all chokeholds by police 6/5 Racist ex-mayor Hubbard statue removed - Dearborn, MI 6/5 NFL condemns racism and admits it should have listened to players’ protests 6/5 California Governor Gavin Newsom calls for statewide use-of-force standard made along with community leaders and ban on carotid holds 6/5 2 Buffalo officers suspended within a day of pushing 75 year old protester to the ground, and lying about it 6/5 2 NYPD officers suspended after videos of violence to protesters 6/5 The US Marines bans display of the Confederate flag 6/5 Dallas adopts a "duty to intervene" rule that requires officers to stop other cops who are engaging in excessive use of force 6/5 Dallas City Manager T.C. Broadnax releases an 11-point action plan for immediate police reforms 6/6 Statue of Confederate general Williams Carter Wickham torn down - Richmond, VA 6/6 2 Buffalo officers charged with second-degree assault for shoving elderly man 6/6 San Francisco Mayor London Breed announces effort to defund police and redirect funds to Black community 6/7 Frank Rizzo mural removed, to be replaced with new artwork - Philadelphia, PA 6/7 Minneapolis City Council members announce intent to disband the police department, invest in proven community-led public safety 6/7 Protesters in Bristol topple statue of slave trader Edward Colston, throw it in the river 6/7 NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio vows for the first time to cut funding for NYPD, redirect to social services 6/7 A Virginia police officer faces charges after using a stun gun on a black man 6/8 NY State Assembly passes the Eric Garner Anti-Chokehold Act 6/8 Democrats in Congress unveil a bill to rein in bias and excessive force in policing 6/8 Black lawmakers block a legislative session in Pennsylvania to demand action on police reform 6/8 France bans police use of chokeholds 6/8 Seattle council members join calls to defund police department 6/8 Boston reevaluates how it funds police department 6/8 Honolulu Police Commission nominees voice support for more transparency, reforms 6/8 Rights groups and Floyd’s family call for a UN inquiry into American policing and help with systemic police reform

No, it’s not enough, but this is only the beginning. Keep fighting!!!

(This list comes from Mara Ahmed’s blog post and was compiled by Fahd Ahmed; I added sources and new entries. Please reblog with further additions.)

[mariacallous]

Supporters of gun safety legislation held rallies across the state of Michigan this week, including one in Oxford, a northern Detroit suburb that was the site of a high school massacre in November 2021.

Among the speakers there was Madeline Johnson, a survivor of the shooting who saw her best friend die. She talked about the fear of public speaking she once had ― and how that fear was “ripped away from me, along with my childhood, the second I heard the first round of bullets ringing in my ears.”

“There are much scarier things in this world than giving speeches,” she said, according to an account in The Detroit News. “I no longer have room in my life to be a kid, but I will gladly sacrifice that, and I will gladly talk until you listen, so that no one else has to grow up overnight.” The frustration from Johnson and other gun legislation advocates was palpable, and a reflection of what’s transpired ever since the Oxford shooting ― when, despite the familiar outpouring of “thoughts and prayers,” the Republicans who controlled the state legislature refused to act.

But that may be about to change, because Republicans don’t control the legislature anymore. Democrats do. In the midterm elections, they won majorities in both Michigan’s House and its Senate, something they haven’t had since the 1980s.

Democratic leaders have made it clear they want to pass a trio of gun laws: universal background checks, new gun storage requirements, and so-called “red flag” laws meant to keep firearms out of the hands of people who pose an immediate threat to others or themselves. Newly reelected Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has said these are high priorities for her too.

These reforms are part of a broader agenda that Whitmer and the newly empowered Democrats hope to pass, now that they can finally act. It includes everything from a boost in tax credits for working families to codifying protections for reproductive rights. And it’s not just Michigan where this kind of activity is likely to take place. You’ll hear similar plans from Democratic officials in other states where they have the power to pass laws ― especially the three others (Maryland, Massachusetts and Minnesota) where, as in Michigan, Democrats are getting that power for the first time in years.

Of course, passing laws is never as easy as promising them. The exercise of moving from slogans to specifics ― of translating abstract concepts into statutory details ― is inevitably difficult, especially on issues where the opposition is well-financed and well-organized.

But in today’s political environment, Democrats have a big advantage: On many of the key issues they are tackling at the state level, they appear more in step with mainstream popular opinion than the Republicans.

Gun safety is one of those issues.

[oscopelabs]

‘America’s Not a Country, It’s Just a Business’: On Andrew Dominik’s ‘Killing Them Softly’ By Roxana Hadadi

“Shitsville.” That’s the name Killing Them Softly director Andrew Dominik gave to the film’s nameless town, in which low-level criminals, ambitious mid-tier gangsters, nihilistic assassins, and the mob’s professional managerial class engage in warfare of the most savage kind. Onscreen, other states are mentioned (New York, Maryland, Florida), and the film itself was filmed in post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans, though some of the characters speak with Boston accents that are pulled from the source material, George V. Higgins’s novel Cogan’s Trade. But Dominik, by shifting Higgins’s narrative 30 or so years into the future and situating it specifically during the 2008 Presidential election, refuses to limit this story to one place. His frustrations with America as an institution that works for some and not all are broad and borderless, and so Shitsville serves as a stand-in for all the places not pretty enough for gentrifying developers to turn into income-generating properties, for all the cities whose industrial booms are decades in the past, and for all the communities forgotten by the idea of progress._ Killing Them Softly_ is a movie about the American dream as an unbeatable addiction, the kind of thing that invigorates and poisons you both, and that story isn’t just about one place. That’s everywhere in America, and nearly a decade after the release of Dominik’s film, that bitter bleakness still has grim resonance.

In November 2012, though, when Killing Them Softly was originally released, Dominik’s gangster picture-cum-pointed criticism of then-President Barack Obama’s vision of an America united in the same neoliberal goals received reviews that were decidedly mixed, tipping toward negative. (Audiences, meanwhile, stayed away, with Killing Them Softly opening at No. 7 with $7 million, one of the worst box office weekends of Brad Pitt’s entire career at that time.) Obama’s first term had been won on a tide of hope, optimism, and “better angels of our nature” solidarity, and he had just defeated Mitt Romney for another four years in the White House when Killing Them Softly hit theaters on Nov. 30. Cogan’s Trade had no political components, and no connections between the thieving and killing promulgated by these criminals and the country at large. Killing Them Softly, meanwhile, took every opportunity it could to chip away at the idea that a better life awaits us all if we just buy into the idea of American exceptionalism and pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps ingenuity. A fair amount of reviews didn’t hold back their loathing toward this approach. A.O. Scott with the New York Times dismissed Dominik’s frame as “a clumsy device, a feint toward significance that nothing else in the movie earns … the movie is more concerned with conjuring an aura of meaningfulness than with actually meaning anything.” Many critics lambasted Dominik’s nihilism: For Deadspin, Will Leitch called it a “crutch, and an awfully flimsy one,” while Richard Roeper thought the film collapsed under the “crushing weight” of Dominik’s philosophy. It was the beginning of Obama’s second term, and people still thought things might get better.

But Dominik’s film—like another that came out a few years earlier, Adam McKay’s 2010 political comedy The Other Guys—has maintained a crystalline kind of ideological purity, and perhaps gained a certain prescience. Its idea that America is less a bastion of betterment than a collection of corporate interests, and the simmering anger Brad Pitt’s Jackie Cogan captures in the film’s final moments, are increasingly difficult to brush off given the past decade or so in American life. This is not to say that Obama’s second term was a failure, but that it was defined over and over again by the limitations of top-down reform. Ceaseless Republican obstruction, widespread economic instability, and unapologetic police brutality marred the encouraging tenor of Obama’s presidency. Donald Trump’s subsequent four years in office were spent stacking the federal judiciary with young, conservative judges sympathetic toward his pro-big-business, fuck-the-little-guy approach, and his primary legislative triumph was a tax bill that will steadily hurt working-class people year after year.

The election of Obama’s vice president Joe Biden, and the Democratic Party securing control of the U.S. Senate, were enough for a brief sigh of relief in November 2020. The $1.9 trillion stimulus bill passed in March 2021 does a lot of good in extending (albeit lessened) unemployment benefits, providing a child credit to qualifying families, and funneling further COVID-19 support to school districts after a year of the coronavirus pandemic. But Republicans? They all voted no to helping the Americans they represent. Stimulus checks to the middle-class voters who voted Biden into office? Decreased for some, totally cut off for others, because of Biden’s appeasement to the centrists in his party. $15 minimum wage? Struck down, by both Republicans and Democrats. In how many more ways can those politicians who are meant to serve us indicate that they have little interest in doing anything of the kind?

Modern American politics, then, can be seen as quite a performative endeavor, and an exercise in passing blame. Who caused the economic collapse of 2008? Some bad actors, who the government bailed out. Who suffered the most as a result? Everyday Americans, many of whom have never recovered. Killing Them Softly mimics this dynamic, and emphasizes the gulf between the oppressors and the oppressed. The nameless elites of the mob, sending a middle manager to oversee their dirty work. The poker-game organizer, who must be brutally punished for a mistake made years before. The felons let down by the criminal justice system, who turn again to crime for a lack of other options. The hitman who brushes off all questions of morality, and whose primary concern is getting adequately paid for his work. Money, money, money. “This country is fucked, I’m telling ya. There’s a plague coming,” Jackie Cogan says to the Driver who delivers the mob’s by-committee rulings as to who Jackie should intimidate, threaten, and kill so their coffers can start getting filled again. Perhaps the plague is already here.

“Total fucking economic collapse.”

In terms of pure gumption, you have to applaud Dominik for taking aim at some of the biggest myths America likes to tell about itself. After analyzing the dueling natures of fame and infamy through the lens of American outlaw mystique in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Dominik thought bigger, taking on the entire American dream itself in Killing Them Softly. From the film’s very first second, Dominik doesn’t hold back, equating an easy path of forward progress with literal trash. Discordant tones and the film’s stark, white-on-black title cards interrupt Presidential hopeful Barack Obama’s speech about “the American promise,” slicing apart Obama’s words and his crowd’s responding cheers as felon Frankie (Scoot McNairy), in the all-American outfit of a denim jacket and jeans, cuts through what looks like a shut-down factory, debris and garbage blowing around him. Obama’s assurances sound very encouraging indeed: “Each of us has the freedom to make of our own lives what we will.” But when Frankie—surrounded by trash, cigarette dangling from his mouth, and eyes squinting shut against the wind—walks under dueling billboards of Obama, with the word “CHANGE” in all-caps, and Republican opponent John McCain, paired with the phrase “KEEPING AMERICA STRONG,” a better future doesn’t exactly seem possible. Frankie looks too downtrodden, too weary of all the emptiness around him, for that.

Dominik and cinematographer Greig Fraser spoke to American Cinematographer magazine in October 2012 about shooting in post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans: “We were aiming for something generic, a little town between New Orleans, Boston and D.C. that we called Shitsville. We wanted the place to look like it’s on the down-and-down, on the way out. We wanted viewers to feel just how smelly and grimy and horrible it was, but at the same time, we didn’t want to alienate them visually.” They were successful: Every location has a rundown quality, from the empty lot in which Frankie waits for friend and partner-in-crime Russell (Ben Mendelsohn)—a concrete expanse decorated with a couple of wooden chairs, as if people with nowhere else to go use this as a gathering spot—to the dingy laundromat backroom where Frankie and Russell meet with criminal mastermind Johnny “Squirrel” Amato (Vincent Curatola), who enlists them to rob a mafia game night run by Markie Trattman (Ray Liotta), to the restaurant kitchen where the game is run, all sickly fluorescent lights, cracked tile, and makeshift tables. Holding up a game like this, from which the cash left on the tables flows upward into the mob’s pockets, is dangerous indeed. But years before, Markie himself engineered a robbery of the game, and although that transgression was forgiven because of how well-liked Markie is in this institution, it would be easy to lay the blame on him again. And that’s exactly what Squirrel, Frankie, and Russell plan to do.

The “Why?” for such a risk isn’t that hard to figure out. Squirrel sees an opportunity to make off with other people’s money, he knows that any accusatory fingers will point elsewhere first, and he wants to act on it before some other aspiring baddie does. (Ahem, sound like the 2008 mortgage crisis to you?) Frankie, tired of the crappy jobs his probation officer keeps suggesting—jobs that require both long hours and a long commute, when Frankie can’t even afford a car (“Why the fuck do they think I need a job in the first place? Fucking assholes”)—is drawn in by desperation borne from a lack of options. If he doesn’t come into some kind of money soon, “I’m gonna have to go back and knock on the gate and say, ‘Let me back in, I can’t think of nothing and it’s starting to get cold,’” Frankie admits. And Australian immigrant and heroin addict Russell is nursing his own version of the American dream: He’s going to steal a bunch of purebred dogs, drive them down to Florida to sell for thousands of dollars, buy an ounce of heroin once he has $7,000 in hand, and then step on the heroin enough to become a dealer. It’s only a few moves from where he is to where he wants to be, he figures, and this card-game heist can help him get there.

In softly lit rooms, where the men in the frame are in focus and their surroundings and backgrounds are slightly blown out, slightly blurred, or slightly fuzzy (“Creaminess is something you feel you can enter into, like a bath; you want to be absorbed and encompassed by it” Fraser told American Cinematographer of his approach), garish deals are made, and then somehow pulled off with a sobering combination of ineptitude and ugliness. Russell buys yellow dishwashing gloves for himself and Frankie to wear during the holdup, and they look absurd—but the pistol-whipping Russell doles out to Markie still hurts like hell, no matter what accessories he’s wearing. Dominik gives this holdup the paranoia and claustrophobia it requires, revolving his camera around the barely-holding-it-together Frankie and cutting every so often to the enraged players, their eyes glancing up to look at Frankie’s face, their hands twitching toward their guns. But in the end, nobody moves. When Frankie and Russell add insult to injury by picking the players’ pockets (“It’s only money,” they say, as if this entire ordeal isn’t exclusively about wanting other people’s money), nobody fights back. Nobody dies. Frankie and Russell make off with thousands of dollars in two suitcases, while Markie is left bamboozled—and afraid—by what just happened. And the players? They’ll get their revenge eventually. You can count on that.

So it goes that Dominik smash cuts us from the elated and triumphant Russell and Frankie driving away from the heist in their stolen 1971 Buick Riviera, its headlights interrupting the inky-black night, to the inside of Jackie Cogan’s 1967 Oldsmobile Toronado, with Johnny Cash’s “The Man Comes Around” providing an evocative accompaniment. “There’s a man going around taking names/And he decides who to free, and who to blame/Everybody won’t be treated all the same,” Cash sings in that unmistakably gravelly voice, and that’s exactly what Jackie does. Called in by the mob to capture who robbed the game so that gambling can begin again, Jackie meets with an unnamed character, referred to only as the Driver (Richard Jenkins), who serves as the mob’s representative in these sorts of matters. Unlike the other criminals in this film—Frankie, with his tousled hair and sheepish face; Russell, with his constant sweatiness and dog-funk smell; Jackie, in his tailored three-piece suits and slicked-back hair; Markie, with those uncannily blue eyes and his matching slate sportscoat—the Driver looks like a square.

He is, like the men who replace Mike Milligan in the second season of Fargo, a kind of accountant, a man with an office and a secretary. “The past can no more become the future than the future can become the past,” Milligan had said, and for all the backward-looking details of Killing Them Softly—American cars from the 1960s and 1970s, that whole masculine code-of-honor thing that Frankie and Russell break by ripping off Markie’s game, the post-industrial economic slump that brings to mind the American recession of 1973 to 1975—the Driver is very much an arm of a new kind of organized crime. He keeps his hands clean, and he delivers what the ruling-by-committee organized criminals decide, and he’s fussy about Jackie smoking cigarettes in his car, and he’s so bland as to be utterly forgettable. And he has the power, as authorized by his higher-ups, to approve Jackie putting pressure on Markie for more information about the robbery. It doesn’t matter that neither Jackie nor the mob thinks Markie actually did it. What matters more is that “People are losing money. They don’t like to lose money,” and so Jackie can do whatever he needs. Dominik gives him this primacy through a beautiful shot of Jackie’s reflection in the car window, his aviators a glinting interruption to the gray concrete overpass under which the Driver’s car is parked, to the smoke billowing out from faraway stacks, and to the overall gloominess of the day.

“We regret having to take these actions. Today’s actions are not what we ever wanted to do, but today’s actions are what we must do to restore confidence to our financial system,” we hear Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson say on the radio in the Driver’s car, and his October 14, 2008, remarks are about the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008—the government bailout of banks and other financial institutions that cost taxpayers $700 billion. (Remember Will Ferrell’s deadpan delivery in The Other Guys of “From everything I’ve heard, you guys [at the Securities and Exchange Commission] are the best at these types of investigations. Outside of Enron and AIG, and Bernie Madoff, WorldCom, Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers ...”) Yet the appeasing sentiment of Paulson’s words applies to Jackie, too, and to the beating he orders for Markie—a man he suspects did nothing wrong, at least not this time. But debts must be settled. Heads must roll. “Whoever is unjust, let him be unjust still/Whoever is righteous, let him be righteous still/Whoever is filthy, let him be filthy still,” Cash sang, and Jackie is all those men, and he’ll collect the stolen golden crowns as best he can. For a price, of course. Always for a price.

“I like to kill them softly, from a distance, not close enough for feelings. Don’t like feelings. Don’t want to think about them.”

In “Bad Dreams,” the penultimate episode of the second season of The Wire, International Brotherhood of Stevedores union representative Frank Sobotka (Chris Bauer), having seen his brothers in arms made immaterial by the lack of work at the Baltimore ports and the collapse of their industry, learns that his years of bribing politicians to vote for expanded funding for the longshoremen isn’t going to pay off. He is furious, and he is exhausted. “We used to make shit in this country, build shit. Now we just put our hand in the next guy’s pocket,” he says with the fatigue of a man who knows his time has run out, and you can draw a direct line from Bauer’s beleaguered delivery of those lines to Liotta’s aghast reaction to the horrendous beating he receives from Jackie’s henchmen. Sobotka in The Wire had no idea how he got to that helpless place, and neither does Markie in Killing Them Softly—he made a mistake, but that was years ago. Everyone forgave him. Didn’t they?

The vicious assault leveled upon Markie is a harrowing, horrifying sequence that is also unnervingly beautiful, and made all the more awful as a result of that visual splendor. In the pouring rain, Markie is held captive by the two men, who deliver bruising body shots, break his noise, batter his body against the car, and kick in his ribs. “You see fight scenes a lot in movies, but you don’t see people systematically beating somebody else. The idea was just to make it really, really, really ugly,” Dominik told the New York Times in November 2012, and sound mixer Leslie Shatz and cinematographer Fraser also contributed to this unforgettable scene. Shatz used the sound of a squeegee across a windshield to accentuate Markie’s increasingly destroyed body slumping against the car, and also incorporated flash bulbs going off as punches were thrown, adding a kind of lingering effect to the scene’s soundscape. And although the scene looks like it’s shot in slow motion, Fraser explained to American Cinematographer that the combination of an overhead softbox and dozens of background lights helped build that layered effect in which Liotta is fully illuminated while the dark night around him remains impenetrable. Every drop of rain and every splatter of blood stands out on Markie’s face as he confesses ignorance regarding the robbery and begs for mercy from Jackie’s men, but Markie has already been marked for death. When the time comes, Jackie will shoot him in the head in another exquisitely detailed, shot-in-ultrahigh-speed scene that bounces back and forth between the initial act of violence and its ensuing destruction. The cartridges flying out of Jackie’s gun, and the bullets destroying Markie’s window, and then his brain. Markie’s car, now no longer in his control, rolling forward into an intersection where it’s hit not just once, but twice, by oncoming cars. The crunching sound of Markie’s head against his windshield, and the vision of that glass splintering from the impact of his flung body, are impossible to shake.

“Cause and effect,” Dominik seems to be telling us, and Killing Them Softly follows Jackie as he cleans up the mess Squirrel, Frankie, and Russell have made. After he enlists another hitman, Mickey (a fantastically whoozy James Gandolfini, who carries his bulk like the armor of a samurai searching for a new master), whose constant boozing, whoring, and laziness shock Jackie after years of successful work together, and who refuses to do the killing for which Jackie secured him a $15,000 payday, Jackie realizes he’ll need to do this all himself. He’ll need to gather the intel that fingers Frankie, Russell, and Squirrel. He’ll need to set up a police sting to entrap Russell on his purchased ounce of heroin, violating the terms of his probation, and he’ll need to set up another police sting to entrap Mickey for getting in a fight with a prostitute, violating the terms of his probation. For Jackie, a career criminal for whom ethical questions have long since evaporated, Russell’s and Frankie’s sloppiness in terms of bragging about their score is a source of disgust. “I guess these guys, they just want to go to jail. They probably feel at home there,” he muses, and he’s then exasperated by the Driver’s trepidation regarding the brutality of his methods. Did the Driver’s bosses want the job done or not? “We aim to please,” Jackie smirks, and that shark smile is the sign of a predator getting ready to feast.

Things progress rapidly then: Jackie tracks Frankie down to the bar where he hangs out, and sneers at Frankie’s reticence to turn on Squirrel. “They’re real nice guys,” he says mockingly to Frankie of the criminal underworld of which they’re a part, brushing off Frankie’s defense that Squirrel “didn’t mean it.” “That’s got nothing to do with it. Nothing at all,” Jackie replies, and that’s the kind of distance that keeps Jackie in this job. Sure, the vast majority of us aren’t murderers. But as a question of scale, aren’t all of us as workers compromised in some way? Employees of companies, institutions, or billionaires that, say, pollute the environment, or underpay their staff, or shirk labor laws, or rake in unheard-of profits during an international pandemic? Or a government that spreads imperialism through allegedly righteous military action (referenced in Killing Them Softly, as news coverage of the economic crisis mentions the reckless rapidity with which President George W. Bush invaded Afghanistan and Iraq after Sept. 11, 2001), or that can’t quite figure out how to house the nation’s homeless into the millions of vacant homes sitting empty around the country, or that refuses, over and over again, to raise the minimum wage workers are paid so that they have enough financial security to live decent lives?

Perhaps you bristle at this comparison to Jackie Cogan, a man who has no qualms blowing apart Squirrel with a shotgun at close range, or unloading a revolver into Frankie after spending an evening driving around with him. But the guiding American principle when it comes to work is that you do a job and you get paid: It’s a very simple contract, and both sides need to operate in good faith to fulfill it. Salaried employees, hourly workers, freelancers, contractors, day laborers, the underemployed—all operate under the assumption that they’ll be compensated, and all live with the fear that they won’t. Jackie knows this, as evidenced by his loathing toward compatriot Kenny (Slaine) when the man tries to pocket the tip Jackie left for his diner waitress. “For fuck’s sake,” Jackie says in response to Kenny’s attempted theft, and you can sense that if Jackie could kill him in that moment, he would. In this way, Jackie is rigidly conservative, and strictly old-school. Someone else’s money isn’t yours to take; it’s your responsibility to earn, and your employer’s responsibility to pay. Jackie cleaned up the mob’s mess, and the gambling tables opened again because of his work, and his labor resulted in their continued profits. And Jackie wants what he’s owed.

“Don’t make me laugh. ‘We’re one people.’”

We hear two main voices of authority urging calm throughout Killing Them Softly. Then-President Bush: “I understand your worries and your frustration. … We’re in the midst of a serious financial crisis, and the federal government is responding with decisive action.” Presidential hopeful Obama: “There’s only the road we’re traveling on as Americans.” Paulson speaks on the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act, and various news commentators chime in, too: “There needs to be consequences, and there needs to be major change.” Radio commentary and C-SPAN coverage combine into a sort of secondary accompaniment to Marc Streitenfeld’s score, which incorporates lyrically germane Big Band standards like “Life Is Just a Bowl of Cherries” (“You work, you save, you worry so/But you can’t take your dough”) and “It’s Only a Paper Moon” (“It's a Barnum and Bailey world/Just as phony as it can be”). All of these are Dominik’s additions to Cogan’s Trade, which is a slim, 19-chapter book without any political angle, and this frame is what met so much resistance from contemporaneous reviews.

But what Dominik accomplishes with this approach is twofold. First, a reminder of the ceaseless tension and all-encompassing anxiety of that time, which would spill into the Occupy Wall Street movement, coalesce support around politicians like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, and fuel growing national interest in policies like universal health care and universal basic income. For anyone who struggled during that time—as I did, a college graduate entering the 2009 job market after the journalism industry was already beginning its still-continuing freefall—Killing Them Softly captures the free-floating anger so many of us felt at politicians bailing out corporations rather than people. Perhaps in 2012, only weeks after the re-election of Obama and with the potential that his second term could deliver on some of his campaign promises (closing Guantanamo Bay, maybe, or passing significant gun control reform, maybe), this cinematic scolding felt like medicine. But nearly a decade later, with neither of these legislative successes in hand, and with the wins for America’s workers so few and far between—still a $7.25 federal minimum wage, still no federal paid maternity and family leave act, still the refusal by many states to let their government employees unionize—if you don’t feel demoralized by how often the successes of the Democratic Party are stifled by the party’s own moderates or thoroughly curtailed by saboteur Republicans, maybe you’re not paying attention.

More acutely, then, the mutinous spirit of Killing Them Softly accomplishes something similar to what 1990’s Pump Up the Volume did: It allows one to say, with no irony whatsoever, “Do you ever get the feeling everything in America is completely fucked up?” The disparities of the financial system, and the yawning gap between the rich and the poor. The utter lack of accountability toward those who were supposed to protect us, and didn’t. And the sense that we’re always being a little bit cheated by a ruling class who, like Sobotka observed on The Wire, is always putting their hand in our pocket. Consider Killing Them Softly’s quietest moment, in which Frankie realizes that he’s a hunted man, and that the people from whom he stole would never let him live. Dominik frames McNairy tight, his expression a flickering mixture of plaintive yearning and melancholic regret, as he quietly says, “It’s just shit, you know? The world is just shit. We’re all just on our own.” A day or so later, McNairy’s Frankie will be lying on a medical examiner’s table, his head partially collapsed from a bullet to the brain, an identification tag looped around his pinky toe. And the men who ordered his death want to underpay the man who carried it out for them. Isn’t that the shit?

That leads us, then, to the film’s angriest moment, and to a scene that stands alongside the climaxes of so many other post-recession films: Chris Pine’s Toby Howard paying off the predatory bank that swindled his mother with its own stolen money in Hell or High Water, Lakeith Stanfield’s Cash Green and his fellow Equisapiens storming billionaire Steve Lift’s (Armie Hammer’s) mansion in Sorry to Bother You, Viola Davis’s Veronica Rawlings shooting her cheating husband and keeping the heist take for herself and her female comrades in Widows. So far in Killing Them Softly, Pitt has played Jackie with a certain level of remove. A man’s got to have a code, and his is fairly simple: Don’t get involved emotionally with the assignment. Pitt’s Jackie is susceptible to flashes of irritation, though, that manifest as a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes, and as an octave-lower growl that belies his impatience: with the Driver, for not understanding how Markie’s reputation has doomed him; with Mickey, for his procrastination and his slovenliness; with Kenny, for stealing a hardworking woman’s tip; with Frankie, when he tries to distract Jackie from killing Squirrel. Jackie is a professional, and he is intolerant of people failing to work at his level, and Pitt plays the man as tiptoeing along a knife’s edge. Remember Daniel Craig’s “’Cause it’s all so fucking hysterical” line delivery in Road to Perdition? Pitt’s whole performance is that: a hybrid offering of bemusement, smugness, and ferocity that suggests a man who’s seen it all, and hasn’t been impressed by much.

In the final minutes of Killing Them Softly, Obama has won his historic first term in the White House, and Pitt’s Jackie strides through a red haze of celebratory fireworks as he walks to meet the Driver at a bar to retrieve payment. An American flag hangs in this dive, and the TV broadcasts Obama’s victory speech, delivered in Chicago to a crowd of more than 240,000. “Crime stories, to some extent, always felt like the capitalist ideal in motion,” Dominik told the New York Times. “Because it’s the one genre where it’s perfectly acceptable for the characters to be motivated solely by money.” And so it goes that Jackie feels no guilt for the men he’s killed, or the men he’s sent away. Nor does he feel any empathy or kinship with the newly elected Obama, whose messages of unity and community he finds amusingly irrelevant. The life Jackie lives is one defined by how little people value each other, and how quick they are to attack one another if that means more opportunity—and more money—for them. Thomas Hobbes said that a life without social structure and political representation would be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short,” and perhaps that’s exactly what Jackie’s is. Unlike the character in Cogan’s Trade, Dominik’s Jackie has no wife and no personal life. But he’s surviving this way with his eyes wide open, and he will not be undervalued.

The contrast between Obama’s speech about “the enduring power of our ideas—democracy, liberty, opportunity, and unyielding hope”—and Jackie’s realization that the mob is trying to underpay him for the three men he assassinated at their behest makes for a kind of nauseating, thrilling coda. He’s owed $45,000, and the envelope the Driver paid him only has $30,000 in it. Obama’s audience chanting “Yes, we can,” the English translation of the United Farm Workers of America’s slogan and the activist César Chávez’s iconic “Sí, se puede” catchphrase, adds an ironic edge to the argument between the Driver and Jackie about the value of his labor. Whatever the Driver can use to try and shrug off Jackie’s advocacy for himself, he will. Jackie’s killings were too messy. Jackie is asking for more than the mob’s usual enforcer, Dillon (Sam Shepard), who would have done a better job. Jackie is ignoring that the mob is limited to “Recession prices”—they’re suffering, so that suffering has to trickle down to someone. Jackie made the deal with Mickey for $15,000 per head, and the mob isn’t beholden to pay Jackie what they agreed to pay Mickey.

On and on, excuse after excuse, until one finally pushes Jackie over the edge: “This business is a business of relationships,” the Driver says, which is one step away from the “We’re all family here” line that so many abusive companies use to manipulate their cowed employees. And so when Jackie goes coolly feral in his response, dropping knowledge not only about the artifice of the racist Thomas Jefferson as a Founding Father but underscoring the idea that America has always been, and will always be, a capitalist enterprise first, the moment slaps all the harder for all the ways we know we’ve been let down by feckless bureaucrats like the Driver, who do only as they’re told; by faceless corporate overlords like the mob, issuing orders to Jackie from on high; and by a broader country that seems like it couldn’t care less about us. “I’m living in America, and in America, you’re on your own … Now fucking pay me” serves as a kind of clarion call, an expression of vehemence and resentment, and a direct line into the kind of anger that still festers among those continuously left behind—still living in Shitstown, still trying to make a better life for themselves, and still asking for a little more respect from their fellow Americans. For all of Killing Them Softly’s ugliness, for all its nihilism, and for all its commentary on how our country’s ruthless individualism has turned chasing the American dream into a crippling addiction we all share, that demand for dignity remains distressingly relevant. Maybe it’s time to listen.

[philosophyblogpost]

Both Alcohol and Weed are Legal, Now What?

In 2016, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration began to increase awareness of alcohol-related deaths in the United States. For over a decade before 2016, the number of alcohol-related deaths remained under 10,000 people on average, however, between 2016 and 2017 the number of alcohol-related deaths increased by a whopping 9% in Maryland. This was a larger increase over a year than the state had experienced in the past ten years. 

Alcohol-related legislation has been adapted in response to these numbers. Some states began to adopt stricter alcohol-related legislation while federal agencies began scrambling to pinpoint the cause of the spike. As of January 2020, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism continues to report, “alcohol-related deaths involving injuries, overdoses, and chronic diseases are increasing across a wide swath of the population.” What does the future of alcohol-related legislation look like as the country inches towards a public health crisis? 

Marijuana is oftentimes combined with alcohol but research suggests there is no telling whether the recent legalization of marijuana across 14 states will cause more Americans to abuse or become dependent on these substances. A study conducted in 2015 published by the Journal of Adolescent Health surveyed 599,109 high school students 18 years or older between 1978 and 2013. Toward the end of the study, researchers reported an, “increasing association in recent years between marijuana use and Heavy Episodic Drinking among Black adolescents”. If trends like this continue to develop, it can have positive effects on alcohol sales and the new marijuana market, but negative implications for alcohol-related deaths as marijuana becomes a gateway drug for more black adolescents in the United States. 

There is also concern about the use of alcohol in conjunction with marijuana in terms of driving performance. A study conducted by the National Institute on Drug Abuse set out to determine the effects of combining marijuana and alcohol on driving ability and found that while, “low concentrations of THC do not increase the rate of accidents, and may even decrease them, serum concentrations of THC higher than 5 ng/mL are associated with an increased risk of accidents”. More research is needed in this area to support the claims that marijuana further impairs drivers when they are drinking alcohol and therefore can lead to more fatal unintentional accidents. Unintentional accidents are known to be the third leading cause of death for Americans and the number one cause of death in teenagers. It will be a test of time as studies take years to develop and legislators weigh the options.

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From the time these studies were conducted to now there have been increasingly strict laws passed to limit alcohol consumption beginning with “tax increases and enforcement of minimum age laws”, but most recent legislation has taken a huge toll on businesses. (EUR) 

Take for example the nationwide spike in alcohol-related deaths that occurred between 2016 and 2017. This led to the lowering of Utah’s legal blood alcohol level for alcohol-impaired driving from .08 to .05. The recommendation made by the National Academies of Sciences, Medicine, and Engineering originally intended to lower the number of preventable deaths had an adverse indirect effect on businesses in Utah that sold alcohol. 

In Pennsylvania, the CEO of Utah’s Restaurant and Lodging Association, John Longstreet, told the Pittsburg Post-Gazette that he feared the unintended consequences would be, “such a chilling effect that [patrons just] don’t go out.” Just last year, Congress almost passed the Craft Beverage Modernization and Tax Reform Act (CBMTRA). This law would have imposed a 400% tax increase for small independent breweries. While the public outrage surrounding the tax caused the House and Senate to roll back on this law, this may be a foreshadowing of future laws that will develop. Other legislation imposing alcohol taxes may stick if the science is there to back it up. 

The recent legalization of marijuana may give a reason for concern as more and more drivers may feel comfortable operating a vehicle while smoking and drinking now that marijuana is decriminalized. Research, however, is not there to say if this will add significantly to the number of yearly alcohol-related deaths or not. Recent studies suggest the coupling of the two substances was an emerging trend among adolescents. It will be interesting to see if these trends stuck, spread to other demographics, or fell off. Also as the adolescents surveyed in the study grew up whether they have become abusers or dependents on the substances. 

The results of the trends can either trigger new alcohol-related legislation or take a backseat as legislators become heavily focused on marijuana regulation, distribution, and sale. Will the wave of marijuana legalization across the United States trigger stricter alcohol legislation to discourage the combined use of the two drugs? Will these be in the form of excessive taxation as we saw in last year’s Craft Beverage Modernization and Tax Reform Act? One thing is for sure, if new laws come to lower the legal blood alcohol level nationwide, people will need to drink less than one standard drink per hour to stay under the legal limit. 

What’s even more alarming than alcohol-related unintentional accidents are unintentional deaths involving opioids. According to the Maryland Department of Health, “Eighty-eight percent of all intoxication deaths that occurred in Maryland in 2017 were

Opioid-related.” It seems like legislators may have a bigger problem on their hands than alcohol. This can also draw attention away from alcohol-related legislation. Whether or not we will see them lapse or buckle down on alcohol remains up in the air.   

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Lisa Wray is a Undergraduate student at Frostburg State University. 

[jbauer21ahsgov]

Political Interest Groups and PACs Assessment

Interest Group

Name: Center for Reproductive Rights

Mission: The Center of Reproductive Rights mission is to use law to make reproductive rights equal to fundamental human rights across the world.

 Advocacies: 

Their goal is to expand access to reproductive healthcare resources such as birth control, prenatal and obstetric care, safe abortion, and unbiased information and education about their reproductive rights and resources.

The center documents abuses, work with policymakers in order to promote reproductive freedom, and foster legal scholarships to teach people about reproductive health and human rights.

The center initiated “El Golpe” in Ecuador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua at the United Nations Human Rights Committee. The goals of this launch in 2019 were to reform abortion laws in the area, especially young teenagers experiencing young and unplanned pregnancies being denied abortion.

The center supports Kansas Governor Laura Kelly in her ruling for the right to personal autonomy, including the right to abortion, being strengthened apart from what is mentioned in the Constitution.

The center has assisted the High Court in Kenya’s decision making surrounding abortion laws, making availability to education and processes more accessible, unbiased, and supportive of women seeking safe abortion.

Endorsed Legislation: In August 2020, the Center worked with the Inter-American Court of Human Rights on the Paola Guzmán Albarracín v. Ecuador case. This case was the Court’s first sexual abuse in a school setting case. The Center of Reproductive Rights partnered and brought this case to the Court and clarified her right to equality, non-discrimination, education, and right to live without gender violence. The Center was successful in this case and additionally raised awareness about how often cases such as these occur, but are left unaddressed. 

Location/Opportunities: The Center for Reproductive Rights headquarter is in New York City, but is available in media across the US and world. I was not able to find any local opportunities or dates for future meetings to join.

Volunteer Opportunities: The website is somewhat unclear of where or when they meet together locally, although they have frequent marches globally, made up of smaller gatherings off the larger interest group. These marches and protests are often in San Francisco and bordering cities.

Additional Development: The Center helped to expand access to in-vitro fertilization (IVF) in Maryland around June 2020. This allows unmarried individuals and couples to have insurance coverage for IVF, which helps them carry out a safe transfer between the sperm sample and transferred embryos.

Super PAC

Name: Women Vote!

Goal: This PAC’s goal is to persuade and enable women to vote more women into power, specifically those who are pro-choice and Democratic. 

Money Raised: They have raised $36,262,453 total and $31,985,958 in independent expenditures.

Money Raised For/Against Democrats/Republicans: $10,649,774 have been spent for Democrats. $2,436,841 have been spent against Democrats. $0 have been spent for Republicans. $18,889,343 have been spent against Republicans. This is generally what I expected to see, although I am a bit confused as to why there are so many Republicans who support and donate to this program despite zero dollars from this PAC being for them. From what I have read so far, Democrats are much more progressive when it comes to women’s rights and their place in office and power, so seeing how much money is in support of Democrats makes sense.

Donors: Thomas Secunda (Bloomberg), Laura Ricketts (business woman), Laurie Michaels (psychologist), Michelle Mercer (leadership consultant), Jeffrey Walker (philanthropist). Most of the people listed are not well known, but are very generous to the cause of letting more women into power. Ricketts, for example, is a business woman herself, which makes sense why she would want more women in the corporate world. Mercer is a leadership consultant, likely making her trustworthy to know what kind of people should be in power (women in this case). This shows that this PAC has a lot of generous donors who actually work in this area and are dedicated to the women’s movement and advancement of diversity in government, which is really cool! The majority of the donors’ jobs are focused around other’s well-beings and business, which shows a lot about the values of the Women Vote! PAC.

[emblem-333]

Who’ll Be Bernie Sanders’ Running Mate?

If nominated Bernie Sanders would act as a pallet cleanser for the big tent Democratic Party currently made up of poor, middle, working, upper, and professional class. While their Republican counterparts since the 1960’s have relied on disaffected white voters in the south, obvious vitriol for POCs. Regardless of how vile the Southern Strategy is, you can not deny it’s been a winner for the GOP. Sanders, a Democratic Socialist senator from the state of Vermont, doesn’t appeal to the wealthier brackets of voters. His call for raising taxes to facilitate his tentpole policies, like Medicare-For-All, Free College, and the Green New Deal, make the professional class uneasy. For those wishing for moderate reform and not a revolution, they flock to Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren after all of the Joe Biden alternatives faded off into obscurity.

We are beyond the stage of the race where we can say “It’s early.” It is no longer early. Though not a single state has voted you can assume the three names that’ll cling to relevancy until the Democrats convene in Milwaukee in July of 2020 is Biden, Sanders, and Warren. Thought to be hopefuls like California senator Kamala Harris saw her campaign disintegrated after Hawaii’s representative Tulsi Gabbard shined a bright light on Harris’ dark history as attorney general.

"I'm concerned about this record of senator Harris. She put over 1,500 people in jail for marijuana violations and laughed about it when she was asked if she ever smoked marijuana," Gabbard said at the debate.

She continues, "She blocked evidence that would have freed an innocent man from death row. She kept people in prison beyond their sentences to use them as cheap labor for the state of California, and she fought to keep cash bail system in place that impacts poor people in the worst kind of way."

The attack came out of nowhere. Neither candidate appeared to have any crossover with one another. Gabbard supporters are few, mostly online. Harris’ base is made up of rich, white liberals left over from the previous election when they unilaterally supported Hillary Clinton. In the previous debate Harris appeared to have launched herself into the top tier of candidates after boldly going after Vice President Biden for his opposition to school integration via bussing. Now most of Harris supporters are in the pocket of Warren. Meanwhile, Gabbard’s campaign failed to qualify for the third debate and looks ready to saunter off and exit stage left. Gabbard is an interesting character, one with many flaws and also great convictions. It is unclear whether the future for her is bright, dark or merely dim like most failed presidential candidates.

Sanders recently enjoyed a quiet post debate bump in the polls currently he is tied for first with Biden in the crucial primary state of California (voting March 3rd) at 26 percent apiece — senator Harris sitting pathetically fourth with 6 percent. While Biden stumbles and speaks incoherently just about everything, Warren dithers on the core tenants of the progressive movement, Sanders stands strong as the flag bearer of the elixirs that might cure this decaying body of an empire we call the United States.

Of course, we’d be naive to believe Sanders merely winning the plurality of the pledged delegates warrants his nomination. If neither candidate crosses the 1,885 delegates voting goes to a second round where a plethora of unpledged delegates, dubbed “Superdelegets” get to play a key, if not the biggest role in naming a nominee. If Sanders manages to wrangle the nomination from the cold, near-dead hands of Neolibalism virtually nobody would want to be anywhere near his campaign either out of not agreeing on political ideology or the common consensus of the party insiders that his campaign his doomed for historic failure. The ghost of George McGovern still looms large inside the psyche of many Democrats while the losers who posed themselves as moderates (Carter, Dukakis, Mondale, Gore, Kerry, H. Clinton) rarely get mentioned.

Usually, a running mate is chosen as a political strategy. Sometimes the candidate is from a swing state. Tim Kaine was from Virginia and didn’t bring much to the table other than he could potentially deliver the state to Clinton. But seeing as political realignment is a certainty in a Sanders vs Trump general election, it’s safe to assume Bernie, given his advanced age, will pick someone who is ready to succeed his movement if tragedy were to befall him.

The question is who? Most Democrats are conservatives on many issues, and shamefully act as Warhawks when they believe it to be politically expedite. Youngsters like Beto O’Rourke and Pete Buttigieg are diametrically opposed to Sanders’ in ideology. So is Harris.

Many believe Sanders’ running mate is likely to be Warren. The 2nd most progressive member of the United States Senate. The problem using this label as a benchmark is it’s pretty low. Warren is a fine, upstanding senator of a state susceptible to turning red when a seat is open. Scott Brown upset Martha Coakley for the vacant Ted Kennedy senate seat in 2010. Governor Charlie Baker trounced challenger Jay Gonzalez in his re-election bid. Right now right-wing Democrat Joe Kennedy owns up to $1.75 million worth of stock in oil and gas companies like ExxonMobil and Chevron is challenging one of the Green New Deal’s strongest advocates in junior senator Ed Markey. Massachusetts is a relatively liberal state, but unknowingly flirts with neoliberalism daily. Warren needs to remain in the Senate not just to preserve the seat, but as a vote for Sanders’ agenda.

Warren is also problematic for her poor political instincts, her DNA fiasco and pledge to take corporate donor money once the primary is over.

Going down the list though you are hard pressed to find better alternatives.

Jim McGovern, 59 (MA-02, Worcester)

Rashida Tlaib,43 (MI-13, Detroit)

Tulsi Gabbard, 38 (HI-02, Honolulu)

Elizabeth Warren, 70 (MA senator)

Mike Capuano, 67 (MA-7, former)

Ed Markey, 73 (MA - State Senator)

Russ Feingold, 66 (WI - Senate)

Ben Jealous, 46 (Gub. Candidate Maryland)

Jamie Raskin, 56 (MD -8 rep.)

None of these names fuel the lust young people have for the complete upheaval of America’s capitalistic society. But the Democrats of the New Deal generation are either in their seventies or too young to run for President. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York is the only self-identifying socialist politician and she legally cannot run until 2028. If elected to serve two terms Sanders would only preside the Oval Office until 2025 leaving a gigantic window of opportunity for neoliberalism to shuffle back into the Democratic Party and retake it.

It is truly a fascinating quandary what the second era of “BernieCrats” would look like, if the first one is legitimized in Sanders ascension to the presidency. Perhaps Gabbard will have molded herself into the complete progressive package people want to see in a potential successor. As of now, Gabbard stands as one of the most dovish voices in a political system overwrought with bloodthirsty ghouls. That’s not to see she is always against military intervention. Gabbard’s language specifically states she is against “regime change war” not total American conquest to facilitate the empire. Her ties to the right-wing leader of India Narendra Modi, while a member of the Gujarat Legislative Assembly he is thought to be complicit in the killing of nearly 2,000 people (790 Muslims) in the 2002 Gujarat riots. Gabbard’s remained silent on the issue and appears to have tied herself to Modi.

Other issues is her unwillingness to come out in favor of abolishing private insurance. In her defense, every candidate (including Warren) quiver at the idea of cutting the Goliath that is the healthcare industry down to size.

Massachusetts Representative Jim McGovern is a lot like Gabbard without the baggage. McGovern is also better on the issue of immigration. Gabbard says we need to have stricter border laws. McGovern voted against various legislative efforts to restrict immigration. A vocal critic of the Iraq War, McGovern was one of the few dissenting votes, and pushed then-president Obama to provide a draw-down plan in Afghanistan.

The issue with Gabbard is it is potentially too soon to anoint her the successor to Sanders’ movement. If fortunate to serve eight-years The reign of Sanders could reshape the image of how conservative Democrats present themselves to survive in the new political climate. Harry S. Truman was a conservative southern Democrats known for union-busting before the reign of Franklin Roosevelt forced him to pivot to a moderate New Dealer to secure re-election. Perhaps after some time has passed Gabbard will join AOC as a fellow crusader for the Green New Deal, legislation Gabbard hasn’t said she supports. On the other hand, Gabbard did propose the “Off Fossil Fuels Act” and stood with Water Protectors at Standing Rock. There’s an activist inside her at war with her inner conservatism.

Noticeable omissions are Massachusetts representative Ayanna Presley, and president of Our Revolution Nina Turner. Pressley, once a Clintonite who dismissed Sanders’ ambitious plans as unrealistic found herself in a primary with entrenched progressive incumbent Mike Capuano winning solely on the fact she was a fresh face in a time when people believed leadership was getting too stagnant. But Pressley is no friend to fellow Justice Democrat Ilhan Omar. Pressley cast her vote in favor of Resolution 246, which condemns the Palestinian call for global solidarity in the form of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS).

Turner is a fire breathing progressive, a wonderful surrogate for Sanders and spokeswoman for his movement. Truly a fantastic organizer I don’t know if Sanders is smart to “promote” Turner to V.P when having her remain leader of Our Revolution or appointing her as his Chief of Staff would more than suffice.

Representative Rashida Tlaib is an under the radar candidate sure to galvanize an already energized base. Talib is an advocate for Medicare-For-All, the minimum wage to be raised to $18 to $20 an hour, and is for the complete abolishment of the Immigration Customs Enforcement agency. She is relatively young and inexperienced. I don’t know how’d she fare on the national stage.

Former president of the NAACP and previous Maryland Gubernatorial candidate Ben Jealous is widely known amongst progressive circles online and is highly regarded. As an organizer Jealous helped register over 370,000 voters to the polls for the 2012 presidential election.

In his bid for the governorship many labor and progressive groups issued early endorsements of Jealous, including the American Postal Workers Union (APWU-Maryland), Communications Workers of America (CWA), National Nurses United, the Maryland State Education Association, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), UNITE-HERE, Democracy for America, Friends of the Earth Action, the Maryland Working Families Party, Our Revolution and Progressive Maryland.

Jealous won his party’s nomination running on a platform that included free college tuition, legalized marijuana, universal health care, and a $15 minimum wage. A small caveat is Jealous shrunk when an analyst for Circa News described him as a democratic socialist, referring to himself as a “venture capitalist.” Many progressives are hung up on Warren describing herself as a “capitalist to her bones” is the initial source for many Berners reluctance to switch their support.

The drawback to picking Jealous is he potentially can win the governorship in 2022. Jealous came in a respectable second to popular incumbent Larry Hogan 55 to 43 percent. Hogan is ineligible to run for a third term leaving Jealous in prime position to win the next time. Progressives will need to infect the legislative body with as many antibodies possible to pass a progressive agenda. If the political landscape looks different in 2024 or 2028 then progressives can afford to pluck repression liable to Republicans or Neoliberals.

If Markey is defeated by Kennedy in his primary then Sanders might as well call the 73-year-old and see if he isn’t ready to retire. Markey is more progressive than Warren. Markey is the biggest cheerleader besides Sanders for AOC’s Green New Deal. He is possibly the best candidate to assume the role of president of Sanders is unable to complete his term for whatever reason.

Plus, you wouldn’t have to worry about losing a progressive vote with Markey as it is sadly likely Kennedy will unseat him. Kennedy is outspending him under the table and leads already by double-digits. Massachusetts Neoliberals are very good at their jobs: stopping progressives.

[feelingbluepolitics]

Highly recommended.

"For all the talk of America’s obsession with guns and propensity for violence, only 30 percent of Americans actually own them, according to Pew Research. A solid majority—57 percent of Americans—support stricter gun laws, with 80 percent of Democrats and Democrat-leaning independents versus 28 percent of Republicans. Blue states, like California, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Connecticut, Maryland, Hawaii, and New York, have passed stricter gun-control laws—and even though it’s relatively easy to purchase firearms and bring them across state lines, those states have lower rates of gun violence than those with lax standards, according to the Giffords Law Center. On the federal level, the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives passed two bipartisan gun-control bills earlier this year: H.R. 8 (a bill prohibiting person-to-person firearms transfer unless a background check can be performed) and H.R. 1112 (a bill extending the time firearms dealers have to wait for a response on background checks to 10 days).

"That legislation has been held up in the Republican-controlled Senate, where Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky has not brought them to the floor for a vote. It is not merely a problem of obstructionism at the federal level either. Nine of the ten states with the highest gun-death rates—Montana, Wyoming, Alaska, Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and West Virginia—have both Republican-controlled state legislatures and weak gun laws.

..."In the wake of the latest mass shootings, Republicans rallied around anything-but-gun-control talking points...None of these theories are backed by evidence or even some kind of good-faith reasoning. Every other industrialized country has mental illness, video games, and 'soft target' schools, as well as minimal school prayers and flag saluting, without our mass-shooting epidemic. 

..."Former U.S. attorney general Eric Holder tweeted: 'Enough-time for real action. Pass a domestic terrorism bill. Ban assault weapons, high capacity magazines, body armor, silencers. Pass universal background checks, end loopholes: gunshow and Charleston. Pass red flag laws. We can reduce the carnage if pols have the guts to act.'

"Many pols have those guts, but they are outweighed by a Senate makeup tilted toward less populous states, gerrymandering and voter suppression rampant on the state level, and a judiciary reshaped with far-right appointments, thanks to McConnell’s obstructionism.

In 2018, Democratic Senate candidates collectively won 18 million more votes than their Republican counterparts, yet still lost seats, with the Senate balance maintained by the Republicans 53-47.

To the extent that mass shootings are a uniquely American epidemic, it is because the American electoral system is uniquely rigged for the modern GOP."

***Note that, as demonstrated during the 2018 elections, huge Blue turnout can, in many areas, overwhelm the currently structured Republicon gerrymandering. A massive, unprecedented Blue Tsunami is not a phenomenon these maps were engineered to withstand.

Republicons would have designed districts completely impervious to the will of the voters, had the technology been available. Now it is.

A massive Blue turnout will no longer be of any significance after 2020. States under Republicon control at that time will redraw districts with data mining input and computer-assisted gerrymandering, capable of segregating districts with voter by voter precision, for seats guaranteed to Republicons.

This practice will then no longer be subject to reform by a possible Democratic majority, because a future Democratic majority will never again be possible. The only point in having any future elections after 2020 would be to determine which Republicon gets the team prize.

In effect, Republicon gerrymandered states will achieve their conservative coups of state governments, and therefore the Congress of our federal government if it still exists after trump. With the Senate, as we have seen, they will complete conservative control of the federal judiciary. A future Democratic presidency, if ever again possible, would be a lame duck presidency from the beginning.

All of the above, much discussed, is perhaps already clear. Now it is time to add this point:

Every Republicon policy and agenda-assisted mass murder means that these Republicon manueverings are bloody coups, achieved in part through terrorism.

[jayjalisi-blog]

Dr. Jay Jalisi – A Determined Delegate With Social Uplift On His Mind

Dr. Jay Jalisi is well-known as an active reformist within political circles, thanks to his efforts to fight for juvenile justice and combat homelessness.

Delegate Jay Jalisi is among the few determined minds in active politics today, pushing for changes in legislation that impacts the lives of homeless people and juveniles. Known as a caring person and a family man, father of Alizay Jalisi, Dr. Jay believes in creating more understanding and empathy for those who are weaker in society. Hence, he pushes for flexibility when dealing with juvenile criminal justice. He also played a role in shaping legislation for providing student loan support within the foster care system.

Jay Jalisi's Efforts for Reforms in Handling Underage Teenage Offenders

Dr. Jay has been heading a specialized task unit for tackling studying and determining detention, shackling, and strip-searching teenagers. Jay Jalisi has also received much praise for his work and empathy towards teenagers. The minimum age allowed for detaining teenagers is above twelve compared to when he began his work, when the age permitted was seven. Law enforcement authorities are not allowed to shackle or strip-search offenders who are under thirteen.

Dr. Jay's Efforts for Mitigating Homelessness

Delegate Jay Jalisi has earned a solid reputation for sponsoring bills improving the conditions of homeless people. He managed to sway influential people through his efforts and even got authorization for funding for this purpose under the annual 2020 budget. Moreover, Dr. Jay Jalisi has successfully pushed legislation that provides a tax credit on the property for the elderly. He also pushed hard to lower property deposit amounts for pensioners when they want to get electric or gas supplies.

Like Dr. Jay Jalisi, some likeminded people agree with him. With more politicians who are aware and conscious of social uplift, there is a lot more that can they can achieve. Besides juveniles and homeless people, there are many more fronts where social reform can improve lives. For the time being, Dr. Jay Jalisi is doing what is in his power, and the people have appreciated his excellent work.

In the media circles, his daughter, Alizy Jalisi, who is a student at Johns Hopkins Medical School. Jay Jalisi Maryland, who is also known as Delegate Jay Jalisi, is widely popular for his efforts for social uplift. He has faced stiff opposition for his struggles as well as other obstacles, but his efforts have not wavered. He continues to stand by the oppressed and partner with those who are willing to work with him.

[jayjalisimaryland-blog]

Jay Jalisi Maryland - Delegate Jay Jalisi Works Tirelessly For The Homeless And Justice Reforms

Delegate Jay Jalisi of District 10 in Baltimore continues is his role as an independent advocate for the homeless. A medical doctor and landlord of some of the largest complexes in Baltimore, Dr. Jay Jalisi isn't afraid of tackling the tough issues that stymie legislative progress.

Dr. Jalisi Supports Multiple Maryland Legislative Issues for Disenfranchised Citizens

 Delegate Jay Jalisi focuses on key issues like a bulldog and has earned a reputation of being a tough advocate for the homeless, poor and disenfranchised. He passed legislation in the Maryland House of Delegates for laws against electronic harassment and bullying and helped to establish the Family and Medical Leave Insurance Program. He also focuses on judicial reform because of its inherent unfairness to the disenfranchised. However, he does support tougher sentencing for certain crimes. For example, Jalisi passed legislation to upgrade assaulting first responders and firefighters a felony.

 Other initiatives supported or introduced by Delegate Jay Jalisi include overriding the governor's veto of the Healthy Working Families Act, which requires employers to provide earned paid sick leave to their employees. Jalisi has also fought for reforms in juvenile justice and helped to provide tax relief to seniors, increase funds for schools and expedite DNA testing of Rape Kits.

 Jay Jalisis Background Information

Delegate Jay Jalisis has been a member of the Maryland House of Delegates since January 14, 2015. He quickly won important positions on the Environment and Transportation and local government subcommittees and the influential Judiciary Committee. Jalisi has been a member of the Legislative Black Caucus of Maryland, Jay Jalisi Maryland Legislative Asian-American and Pacific-Islander Caucus and the Military Legislative Caucus.

Dr. Jay Jalisi graduated John Hopkins college, where he earned an MA in public health degree. He earned his Doctorate of Medicine from Dow Medical college, which he attended until from 1983-1989. He later attended Harvard University from 1992-1996. He has authored two textbooks and co-authored many peer-reviewed medical studies. Jalisis has also been a member of the Baltimore County Democratic Central Committee since 2014.

Jalisi admires Dr. Martin Luther King, and his favorite Dr. King quote is the one that explains that Dr. King only wanted power on behalf of his constituents. Jalisi takes an aggressive approach on behalf of his constituents, and he doesn't accept the status quo of bureaucratic red tape, political inertia and unequal justice. If that makes Delegate Jalisi unpopular with some people, he's willing to take the heat on behalf of his constituents.

[lboogie1906]

Elijah Eugene Cummings (January 18, 1951 – October 17, 2019) was a politician and a member of the House of Representatives for Maryland's 7th congressional district. He previously served in the Maryland House of Delegates. He was a member of the Democratic Party and chair of the Committee on Oversight and Reform. He attended Howard University where he served in the student government as sophomore class president, student government treasurer, and later student government president. He became a member of the Phi Beta Kappa Society and graduated with a BA in Political Science. He graduated from law school at the U of M School of Law, received his JD, and was admitted to the Maryland Bar that year. He practiced law for 19 years before first being elected to the House. For 14 years, he served in the Maryland House of Delegates. He served as Chairman of the Legislative Black Caucus of Maryland and was the first African American in Maryland history to be named Speaker Pro Tempore. He served on several boards and commissions. Those include the SEED Schools of Maryland Board of Directors and the University of Maryland Law School Board of Advisors. #africanhistory365 #africanexcellence #phibetasigma https://www.instagram.com/p/Cnjl3IxrD1p/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Welcome to a weekly collaboration between FiveThirtyEight and ABC News. With 5,000 people seemingly thinking about challenging President Trump in 2020 — Democrats and even some Republicans — we’re keeping tabs on the field as it develops. Each week, we’ll run through what the potential candidates are up to — who’s getting closer to officially jumping in the ring and who’s getting further away.

While all eyes were fixated on the the release of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report Thursday, the Democratic presidential field continued to plug away, despite roundly criticizing Attorney General William Barr’s press conference and expressing a desire to learn more about redacted portions of the report. As was the case in 2018, Democrats appear to be aware that their strongest pitch to voters is one focused on issues like health care, the economy and immigration — so despite the developments in the investigation, the report continues to play only a peripheral role.

Here’s the weekly candidate roundup:

April 12-18, 2019

Stacey Abrams (D)

The former Georgia gubernatorial candidate said she would make a decision on a potential 2020 Senate run in the next few weeks, but that a decision on a presidential campaign could take longer.

“I do not believe that there is the type of urgency that some seem to believe there is,” Abrams said in an interview with The Root.

She was also critical of the media’s coverage of her 2018 race, refraining from ascribing the issues she saw to “racism,” but saying there was “a very narrow and immature ability to navigate the story of my campaign.”

Joe Biden (D)

Biden eulogized the late South Carolina Democratic Sen. Fritz Hollings on Tuesday, discussing, apparently in reference to Hollings’ one-time pro-segregation views, the ways that “people can change.”

“We can learn from the past and build a better future,” the former vice president added.

President Trump predicted that Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders would be a “finalist” to run against him in next year’s election. “I look forward to facing whoever it may be. May God Rest Their Soul!” Trump tweeted Tuesday.

On Thursday, Biden traveled to Massachusetts where he took part in a rally in support of striking Stop & Shop supermarket workers.

Cory Booker (D)

An analysis by the Associated Press found that Booker and Sen. Kamala Harris have each missed the most Senate votes this year among their colleagues running for president. The pair has missed 16 of the chamber’s 77 votes this session.

The New Jersey senator announced a plan to expand the earned income tax credit during an event in Iowa on Monday, saying that it would boost the economy and benefit more than 150 million people. Booker’s plan pays for the credit by increasing taxes on capital gains.

Booker additionally called for voting rights reforms during a visit to Georgia on Wednesday, including automatic voter registration, making Election Day a national holiday and restoring the Voting Rights Act protections that were overturned by the Supreme Court in 2013.

Pete Buttigieg (D)

Buttigieg officially launched his presidential campaign last weekend with a rally in his native South Bend, Indiana, where he acknowledged — even as his popularity grows — “the audacity of [running for president] as a Midwestern millennial mayor.”

It is “more than a little bold — at age 37 — to seek the highest office in the land,” he said.

The South Bend mayor also encountered some of his campaign’s first hecklers this week, as he was confronted in Iowa by anti-gay protesters, and announced that he and his husband are interested in having a child at some point in the near future.

Julian Castro (D)

The former Housing and Urban Development secretary raised a relatively meager $1.1 million during the year’s first quarter, placing him behind nearly every major candidate in the Democratic field.

The New York Times reported on Castro’s struggle to catch on with voters at this point in the campaign, noting that the candidate himself doesn’t seem bothered by his position in the field.

“People are going to have their moments,” he said. “I would rather have my moment closer to the actual election than right now.”

John Delaney (D)

Delaney and Booker’s campaign were involved in a minor dust-up after a Booker fundraising email earlier this week made reference to “one of the other Democrats in this race… giv[ing] over $11 million of his own money to his campaign,” a fact that can only be attributed to Delaney.

A spokesperson for the former Maryland congressman jabbed back, saying, “If I had Booker’s numbers, I’d go negative too.”

On Tuesday, Delaney announced a plan to create a cabinet level Department of Cybersecurity, noting in a press release, “Currently our cybersecurity efforts are spread across multiple agencies, but by creating a new department we can centralize our mission, focus our goals and efforts, and create accountability.”

Tulsi Gabbard (D)

In visit to Iowa this week, Gabbard touted her experience in the National Guard and said she was disappointed in Trump’s decision to veto a bipartisan congressional resolution calling for an end to U.S. military involvement in Yemen.

The Hawaii congresswoman also criticized Trump in a Fox News appearance, saying that his administration’s efforts to force “regime change” in Venezuela were “directly undermining” its effort to denuclearize North Korea. In the same interview, Gabbard said that it is “impossible for Kim Jong Un to believe [the Trump administration] when they tell him, ‘Don’t worry. Get rid of your nuclear weapons. We’re not going to come after you.'”

Kirsten Gillibrand (D)

Gillibrand’s $3 million raised from donors for 2020 during the year’s first quarter placed her last among the group of six U.S. senators running for the presidential nomination; but she also transferred nearly $10 million from her 2018 Senate committee into her 2020 campaign, placing her among the top tier of candidates in cash-on-hand entering the second quarter.

BuzzFeed News reported Monday that the New York senator is endorsing proposals included in a new report that analyzes the racial wealth divide. The proposals include postal banking, government run trust accounts and the formation of a commission to study slavery reparations.

Kamala Harris (D)

Harris admitted that she regrets the support she lent an anti-truancy law while serving as California’s attorney general — specifically the law’s threat to prosecute parents for their children’s absences. The senator noted, however, that her office never jailed a parent for a violation of the law.

Harris released 15 years of tax returns earlier in the week. Harris and her husband, attorney Douglas Emhoff, reported nearly $1.9 million in income in 2018, paying an effective tax rate of 37 percent.

John Hickenlooper (D)

Ahead of the 20th anniversary of the Columbine High School shooting in Colorado, Hickenlooper, the state’s former governor, met with survivors as he campaigns on his gun control record, including a ban on high-capacity magazines and private sale background check requirement.

Hickenlooper additionally discussed mental health measures with the group, citing recent suicides by survivors of last year’s shooting at Parkland High School in Florida.

Larry Hogan (R)

Amid speculation that he might run against Trump in the 2020 Republican primary, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan is scheduled to be in the New Hampshire next week. Hogan will headline the New Hampshire Institute of Politics’ “Politics and Eggs” on April 23.

Jay Inslee (D)

In a New York Magazine interview, the Washington governor, who is running a campaign prioritizing climate change, said that any attempt by Trump to run on his environmental record “would not be successful.”

Inslee was also critical of one of his constituents, former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, who is considering an independent presidential run. Inslee pointed to Schultz’s scant voting history.

“The son of a gun doesn’t even vote,” Inslee said. “You want to be president and you don’t even vote? You know, that’s just for the little people. In Howard’s life, voting is just for the little people. I don’t think his candidacy is going to soar.”

John Kasich (R)

On the heels of former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld’s announcement to officially enter the GOP race, former Ohio Gov. John Kasich said on CNN that he still hasn’t ruled out his own primary challenge to Trump.

“All of my options remain on the table,” said Kasich, who previously ran for president in 2016. “I don’t wake up every day looking at polls or thinking about me and my political future. I just want to be a good voice.”

Amy Klobuchar (D)

The Minnesota senator made her second trip to Florida as a presidential candidate this week, speaking about health care in Miami and meeting with Democratic leaders from the state House in Tallahassee.

Fox News also announced that Klobuchar will appear on the network for a forum on May 8. The Klobuchar appearance follows a Sanders town hall on Fox News on Monday.

Terry McAuliffe (D)

McAuliffe, the former governor of Virginia, announced on Wednesday evening that he would not run for president, choosing instead to assist Democrats in his home state trying to win back the state’s legislative chambers.

Despite his decision, McAuliffe said he feels he would have been able to beat Trump “like a rented mule,” but that he was concerned about the problems he sees plaguing Virginia — an apparent reference to the blackface scandal and sexual harassment allegation that rocked Democratic leadership earlier this year.

Seth Moulton (D)

Moulton, who was spotted in his Massachusetts hometown this week filming a presidential announcement video, is hiring staff for a potential campaign, Politico reported; he is expected to make a public announcement next week.

Beto O’Rourke (D)

The former congressman continued his breakneck-paced campaign this week, making stops in South Carolina and the Super Tuesday battleground of Virginia.

Like other 2020 Democrats, O’Rourke spent most of the week defending the contents of years of tax returns. One headline emerging from the 10 years of filings that O’Rourke dropped on Monday: He appears to have given the smallest percentage of his family’s income to charity out of the 2020 field ( 0.3 percent in 2017), according to ABC News.

A voter confronted O’Rourke about his stingy charitable donations on the trail Wednesday, and the 2020 hopeful responded by saying:

“I’ve served in public office since 2005. I do my best to contribute to the success of my community, of my state, and now, of my country. There are ways that I do this that are measurable and there are ways that I do this that are immeasurable. There are charities that we donate to that we’ve recorded and itemized, others that we have donated to that we have not.”

Tim Ryan (D)

Ryan took a page out of Elizabeth Warren’s book this week and introduced legislation which would require the Justice Department to create training in a variety of areas for law enforcement officers.

He also took a veiled shot at some of the more progressive Democrats in the 2020 field, telling CNN that he’s “concerned” about a growing socialist wing of the party.

“I’m concerned about it. Because if we are going to de-carbonize the American economy, it’s not going to be some centralized bureaucracy in Washington, DC, that’s going to make it happen,” Ryan said. “It’s going to be part targeted government investments that do need to be robust. But it’s going to be the free market that’s going — at the end of the day — is going to make that happen.”

Bernie Sanders (D)

Bernie Sanders had a big week. Not only did he release years of tax returns, but Sanders also seems to have kick-started another Democratic trend: appearing on Fox News.

According to tax filings released by the campaign, Sanders, who has made a career out of railing against the ultra wealthy, is officially now a millionaire himself.

The runner up for the 2016 Democratic nomination reported an adjusted gross income of nearly $561,293 in 2018, and paid $145,840 in taxes for a 26 percent effective tax rate. And in 2016 and 2017, Sanders reported raking in $1.06 million and $1.13 million in adjusted gross income, respectively, paying a 35 percent and 30 percent effective rate, according to ABC News.

Tax filings aside, Sanders’ Fox News town hall on Monday broke ratings records for the 2020 cycle so far. And it looks like more Democrats are set to follow his lead, with Sen. Amy Klobuchar quickly announcing her own Fox town hall.

Eric Swalwell (D)

Rep. Eric Swalwell held another kick off rally in his hometown of Dublin, California, on Sunday, days after he officially kicked off his campaign a few miles away from last year’s school shooting in Parkland.

Elizabeth Warren (D)

Warren continued her string of major policy proposal announcements, which have defined her campaign and aspects of the entire 2020 Democratic race as of late. She introduced the “Accountable Capitalism Act” this week, a bill that “aims to reverse the harmful trends over the last 30 years,” according to the senator’s website.

Bill Weld (R)

It’s official — Trump won’t run unopposed for reelection in 2020. Former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld jumped into the race on Monday, becoming the first Republican to challenge a sitting president for the party nomination since Pat Buchanan ran against President George H. W. Bush in 1992.

Weld, who ran for vice president in 2016 on the Libertarian ticket under Gary Johnson, told ABC News that he would’ve been “ashamed of myself if hadn’t raised my hand and said count me in.”

The former two-term governor also said he’ll focus on Republican primaries where independents can vote, while hoping his pitch that the president is ignoring key issues like climate change and the debt will resonate with moderate Republicans.

“The president is just not dealing with serious issues such as global warming and climate change. That’s a real threat to us as a country,” Weld said. “And for the president to just say it’s a hoax, that’s not responsible government.”

Weld spent his first week on the trail campaigning across New Hampshire.

Marianne Williamson (D)

Democratic presidential hopeful and spiritual book author Marianne Williamson participated in her first CNN town hall on Sunday.

On health care, Williamson saidd that her approach as president would be broader than just Medicare for All, according to CNN.

“That will save a lot of money. There’s so much about our diet, our lifestyle and so much about the economic stress that actually causes the very conditions that produce illness. That’s why if we’re going to talk about health in America, we have to talk about the foods, toxins. We have to talk about our environmental policies. We need to go a lot deeper.”

Andrew Yang (D)

Andrew Yang held a rally at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., on Monday, drawing a “large and diverse crowd,” according to Business Insider.

“The opposite of Donald Trump is an Asian man who likes math,” Yang told the raucous crowd.

The D.C. rally came on the heels of perhaps Yang’s biggest media appearance yet with his CNN town hall on Sunday.

On combating the opioid epidemic, Yang said he supports decriminalizing heroin and other opiates. “We need to decriminalize opiates for personal use,” Yang said. “I’m also for the legalization of cannabis,” he said during Sunday’s town hall.

[berniesrevolution]

IN THESE TIMES

When the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) convened its 45th annual meeting of legislators and corporate lobbyists at the swank Hilton New Orleans Riverside hotel on August 8, it served up a veritable banquet of union-busting, gerrymandering, pro-fossil fuel, and school privatization proposals for lawmakers to take back home.

Welcoming the ALEC crowd was Jason Saine, a North Carolina Representative and ALEC’s National Chairman. Earlier this year, CMD reported that Saine used $19,000 from his campaign kitty to order custom-tailored suits.

Other keynote speakers included Secretary of Transportation Elaine L. Chao, Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar, Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards, and White House Special Assistant in the Office of American Innovation Brooke Rollins. Rollins was an aide to former governor Rick Perry, who is now Secretary of Energy.

ALEC’s menu of policy proposals at the New Orleans conference included:

Right to Gerrymander Resolution

With citizens turning to the courts and ballot box in a growing number of states to clamp down on hyper-partisan “gerrymandering” schemes, ALEC members will instead be voting on a resolution to defend the right of politicians to keep hand-picking their voters.

Gerrymandering is the practice of manipulating electoral district boundaries to favor the party in power and minimize the ability of opposing parties or disfavored racial and ethnic constituencies to elect candidates of their choice.

The resolution, entitled “Draft Resolution Reaffirming the Right of State Legislatures to Determine Electoral Districts,” asserts the legislative branch’s “sovereignty” over redistricting and states that the “intervention of state supreme courts to redistrict congressional district maps violates the fundamental right of the residents of a state to republican self-government.”

What has ALEC’s knickers in a twist? In Pennsylvania, Republicans drew such a gerrymandered map in 2011 that it resulted in an astonishing 13-5 congressional district advantage in a state where Democrats won five straight presidential elections. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court intervened to ensure that new maps follow the traditional redistricting criteria of compactness, contiguity, and equality of population. In a blow to the Pennsylvania GOP, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to strike down the more balanced maps created by the court.

Other cases on similar grounds have made their way to the nation’s highest court this year from Wisconsin, Maryland, and North Carolina. But the Supreme Court has so far declined to set clear rules limiting this type of voter manipulation.

With the Court failing to act, voting rights advocates are pushing hard for reforms. A quarter of U.S. states have already given non-partisan commissions full or partial authority to draw legislative districts, and with initiatives on the ballot this fall in Colorado, Michigan, Missouri, and Utah, more states may join them soon.

Janus v. AFSCME Victory Lap

ALEC has invited Mark Janus, plaintiff in the Janus v. AFSCME case recently decided by the U.S. Supreme Court, to be a keynote speaker. ALEC, along with the State Policy Network (SPN) and the Kochs’ Americans for Prosperity, are key institutions in a multi-pronged strategy to dismantle public sector unions through the courts and state legislatures across the country. CMD’s reporting on this topic in February received national recognition.

Mark Janus was a public worker in Illinois whom groups put forward as a plaintiff in the case after the actual plaintiff, billionaire Republican Governor Bruce Rauner–who had vowed to dismantle unions for partisan political advantage–was found to not have standing. Rauner’s case was originally filed and promoted by two SPN groups in the state, the Illinois Policy Institute and its offshoot, the Liberty Justice Center.

In May 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court used the ginned-up case to strike down agency fees and make it harder for public sector unions to operate. Shortly thereafter, Janus left public employment to take a job at the Illinois Policy Institute.

“As we celebrate 45 years of ALEC, we meet to create solutions for the future,” ALEC CEO Lisa B. Nelson said in a press release about the meeting. But one of the first bills on the ALEC agenda has been on the corporate wish list for a very long time. ALEC’s latest union-busting bill, which would force unions to hold recertification elections every other year, has long been pushed by anti-union PR man Richard Berman and others.

Under the proposed measure, unions would have to get the votes of a majority of all members–not just those showing up to vote–in order to retain their right to represent workers in a bargaining unit. That punitive standard is far more restrictive than anything used in corporate governance or U.S. elections. (Imagine a bill forcing the unseating of corporate directors if the majority of all shareholders, not just those casting ballots, did not vote for management–or a similar standard for politicians.)

Richard Berman’s PR firm, Berman & Company, operates a network of industry front groups and attack-dog web sites that work to counteract minimum wage campaigns, keep wages low for restaurant workers, block paid sick leave laws, and maintain barriers to workplace organizing. Berman, along with U.S. Senator Orin Hatch (R-UT), has pushed a similar decertification bill in Congress, called the “Employee Rights Act.”

In an audio recording obtained by CMD, Berman boasted about his obsession with unions and his attack on their efforts to raise the minimum wage for American workers: “I get up every morning and I try and figure out how to screw with the labor unions,” Berman said.

Keeping Down Pay and Benefits in the Gig Economy

ALEC will also be considering a “Uniform Worker Classification Act” that promotes short-term contracts and freelance work over permanent jobs. The resolution focuses on “uniform standards for determining who is an employee and who is an independent contractor,” but is designed to establish a very broad definition of independent contractor that lets employers off the hook for the rights and benefits enjoyed by traditional employees and prevents union organizing. Misclassifying workers is a classic corporate strategy for short-shrifting employees and has been the subject of much litigation.

While companies such as Uber, Lyft, and TaskRabbit are changing the job market, they typically generate low-paying jobs with few or no benefits. The tenuous relationship between employers and employees in many of these jobs raises a passel of legal issues. Are these contract employees subject to the same wage and hour laws? Are these contract employees eligible for unemployment benefits, job training, workman’s compensation, and other worker protections?

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