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Margot Paez is a Fellow at the Bitcoin Policy Institute specialising in Renewable Energy and Environmental Studies. In this interview, we discuss the Occupy movement, a broken capitalist system, and a pragmatic approach to our energy future.

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Bitcoin is often labelled as being a currency for libertarians. But, it is increasingly clear that Bitcoin appeals to a wide range of people with a myriad of political leanings. This includes a growing number of progressives who see in the protocol a means of enabling a fairer and less economically stratified society.

That Bitcoin appeals to such disparate communities speaks to both the strength of Bitcoin, but also the weakness of the current system. If those on both the right and left are disenchanted with the status quo, that is obviously a strong signal that a major societal change is warranted. Further, it means we have to assess why were so polarised if we fundamentally agree with each other.

There is a debate to be had regarding language, labels, unconscious bias, and manipulation of opinions. The issue is that these false divisions are affecting reasoned consideration of all the major issues affecting modern civilisation, particularly in relation to climate change.

The practical implication is that both sides of the climate change debate are resistant to effective and pragmatic measures. Is it possible to view these issues without a political lens?

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A Progressive View of Bitcoin with Margot Paez - What Bitcoin Did

Democrats and by extension progressives and left-wing editorial writers love to shed crocodile tears over the death of the Massachusetts Republican Party now that Gov. Charlie Baker is not seeking reelection.

But what theyre really sad about is the rise of the conservative wing of the party that is now in charge after routing Baker, the liberals and moderates of the GOP that have run things for years.

Under Baker and his GOP mentors, the Republican Party in Massachusetts functioned like a sub-committee of the Democratic Party.

Republicans like Paul Cellucci, Bill Weld and Charlie Baker could get elected governor in a Democratic state because they were essentially RINOs (Republicans in Name Only). Those days are over.

Baker and the RINOs are on the run.

Donald Trump has more influence over Republicans in Massachusetts today than Baker does, a development that played a role in his decision not to seek a third term as governor.

He might have lost the bid.

While still popular among Democrats and Independents, it is questionable whether he would have won the GOP convention endorsement or survived a primary challenge from conservative Geoff Diehl.

Diehl has been endorsed by Trump.

Baker had lost control of the Republican State committee, now headed by former state Rep. Jim Lyons, a strong Trump supporter.

Baker has been a leading critic of fellow Republican Trump and seemed more comfortable in the left lane of American politics. Now its payback time, and Baker could read the writing on the wall.

Eight years as governor is a long time, longer than many marriages.

There is little doubt that Trump will run for president in 2024, if he is not unofficially running already. And he and his supporters will receive a tremendous boost following the expected Democrat wipeout in the 2022 Congressional elections.

The worse Joe Biden looks and he looks pretty bad the stronger Trump will be, as will the candidates he endorses and campaigns for. Diehl is one of them.

And to those who say that national politicians will not have much to do with state issues, just look at gas prices, let alone the supermarket.

Pocketbook issues make all politics local.

Baker in a recent interview said he believed in a strong two-party system. So, he plans to help moderate candidates, especially Republicans, get elected.

However, he said he had no plans to get involved in the race to succeed him and currently has no intention of supporting moderate Republican businessman Chris Doughty, let alone conservative Diehl.

One thing Baker could have done to shake things up and help elect moderates but did not was resign and turn the office over to moderate Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito, his loyal sidekick. There is Republican precedent for such a move.

Like a backup singer to a star vocalist, Polito has been standing 20 feet behind Baker at press conferences for almost eight years, never gaining center stage, let alone stardom.

Had she become acting governor, Polito would have continued Bakers policies while carving out her own role. This is what the late Paul Cellucci did when Gov. Bill Weld resigned in 1997, making Lt. Gov. Cellucci acting governor.

Cellucci was elected governor in 1998, a position he held until 2001 when he too resigned to become U.S. ambassador to Canada.

Then Lt. Gov. Jane Swift became acting governor. But before she could run for governor in 2002, moneybags Mitt Romney blew her candidacy out of the water before it was even launched.

This is not to say that Polito could have been elected, even running as acting governor. Running as a Charlie Baker RINO, she most likely, like Baker, might not have survived the GOP primary.

Democrats and progressives bemoaning the death of the Republican Party in Massachusetts are talking about the Democrat-Lite Weld/Baker version of the Party. That party is indeed dead.

But the new conservative Trump/Diehl version is alive and kicking. And that, for progressives, is a nightmare.

Peter Lucas is a veteran Massachusetts political reporter and columnist.

Originally posted here:
Lucas: Progressives prefer a charging RINO in the governors office tough luck - Boston Herald

In the two years since the progressive lefts call to defund the police went mainstream, the word defund has been weaponized against them by Republicans and Democrats alike. Now in the run-up to New York City Mayor Eric Adams first budget, the citys progressive movement is trying to reclaim defund in some cases, turning it against the mayor saying that he is the one trying to defund public safety.

The tactics have been on full display as activism around the citys fiscal year 2023 budget heats up while the City Council holds hearings on Adams preliminary budget. The final budget is due before July 1. On Wednesday, hundreds of members of the citys progressive movement heard from City Council Member Tiffany Cabn at a rally organized by The Peoples Plan NYC criticizing Adams austerity budget.

Weve heard a lot of scare-mongering the past few years, Cabn said, and people like her and those at the rally who use scary words like defund have been blamed, castigated and denounced for any manner of problems.

But the one that will really cause problems, Cabn said, is Adams. Mayor Adams has proposed a budget that would defund many of our most vital public safety and public health agencies and institutions. It would defund schools. It would defund sanitation. It would defund homeless services. It would defund our public hospital systems. It would defund the departments for youth and community development. It would defund the department of small business services.

By one interpretation, thats all true. Adams proudly touted the fact that he asked for 3% budget reductions for most agencies, and he got it. The Department of Educations budget is projected to be down $1.3 billion, according to city budget documents (though the city is actually expecting to increase its share in respect to federal and state funds by nearly $600 million). Sanitation would be down $136 million (though, again, the city itself would spend $314 million more). Homeless services would be defunded by $615 million compared to the current years budget. Health + Hospitals spending would be down $1.3 billion. DYCD, $184 million less. And SBS, $379 million less.

The New York City Police Department, by the way, would see $204 million less in its expense budget though the NYPD budget is expected to grow when more state and city funding are factored in.

That goes to show that budgets, especially preliminary budgets are a blunt instrument, a messy shorthand that might not actually reflect the impact of the money and the services rendered. New York City spends almost double per pupil on schooling than Los Angeles, but that doesnt mean the education is twice as good.

But the art of Cabns statement was that it turned this loaded word, defund, against the mayor. And her office is itching for a fight. Throwing down the gauntlet here, Cabns spokesperson Jesse Myerson texted reporters Thursday, sharing a clip of Cabn on NY1 saying that Adams budget defunds homeless services, schools, parks and sanitation.

The word defund and the idea behind it of reducing police departments budget to weaken their influence has been used as a political cudgel in the two years since a police officer killed George Floyd in Minneapolis, sparking Black Lives Matter protests nationwide. In the summer of 2020, the call by progressives to defund the NYPD by at least $1 billion and reinvest the money to support low income communities got so much attention that then-Mayor Bill de Blasio felt he had to stretch the truth to its limits in order to claim that he hit that $1 billion goal. In reality, the budget was reduced by far less, and planned cost shifts such as moving school safety agents to the education budget have been reversed.

Still, almost immediately, opponents variously derided the call to defund the police as wrongheaded, disrespectful to brave officers or an academic theory only pushed by primarily white people living in safe neighborhoods. Republicans used it to criticize all Democrats, and moderate Democrats are still denouncing it to this day. The answer is not to defund the police, its to give you the tools, the training, the funding to be partners, to be protectors, President Joe Biden said at NYPD headquarters during a February visit. A month later, it was an applause line at his State of the Union. We should all agree, Biden said. The answer is not to defund the police. Its to fund the police.

You wouldnt know it by reading some coverage, but Adams himself has largely avoided the red meat of criticizing the defund movement, even as he ran for office on a platform centered on public safety. He gave into the obvious temptation sometimes telling New York magazine that the defund conversation was being led by a lot of young white affluent people but he never leaned in as much as others. Maybe because he agreed that the NYPDs budget could be reduced, noting in his campaign plans that the city could save $500 million by reducing overtime and moving some uniformed officers out of clerical positions.

Adams office responded to Cabns charge that he was defunding essential agencies. The budget that the mayor proposed last month is fiscally responsible while making upstream investments to promote an equitable recovery, a statement from the City Hall press office emailed to City & State read. The truth is that for too long, New Yorkers have not gotten their moneys worth from our government, and we need to make it better and more efficient. Were also increasing investment for New Yorkers in the greatest need adding 30,000 summer youth jobs, expanding the citys Earned Income Tax Credit, baselining funding for the Fair Fares program, and promoting affordable childcare.

Ironically, Adams argument that he was spreading money to other areas got a boost at the very rally where Cabn spoke Wednesday. There on the steps of the Department of Educations headquarters in Lower Manhattan, organizers from the progressive advocacy group Vocal-NY held up a massive Black and white sign reading defund means invest.

Two days later, organizers held the same sign again at a peoples public safety rally in City Hall Park, where VOCAL-NY organizing director Jawanza James Williams explained that it was just another way of reclaiming the term defund.

I dont think weve ever had to not reclaim it. I think that its been intentionally misconstrued, he said. Its been intentionally politicized in a way to erase its actual meaning.

Cabns new rhetoric doesnt mean she rejects the sign of the message behind it, her spokesperson Myerson explained. Theyre just two sides of the same coin. Both approaches are attempts to re-contextualize that word, which has become such a hideously whipped scapegoat, here and around the country, Myerson wrote. The core message of each is the same: we need to shift our budgetary priorities away from policing, prosecution, and punishment, and toward community, care, and compassion.

Across the rallies, some speakers seemed to show discomfort with the word defund. Jails reform advocate Darren Mack said we need to strategically deflate the Department of Corrections budget. But defund is still on progressive activists lips, even two years later. After Macks moment at the mic, dozens gathered in a chant. Defund the police, invest in our communities!

The rest is here:
NYC progressives are reclaiming defund, after it was used against them - City & State

Local campaigners in Londonderry. (Paul Skudlarek)

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It wasnt supposed to turn out this way. For months now, Republican Party leaders have trumpeted their intention to run hard on parent grievances en route to routing the Democrats in the midterms. According to this narrativepartially based on the 2021 elections in Virginia, then endlessly echoed by Democratic punditsparents frustrated over school shutdowns, Covid restrictions, and the focus on race and social justice in schools are the new swing voters, poised to flee the Democratic Party.

But in New Hampshire, where bitter debates over school masks and critical race theory (CRT) have dominated local politics for more than a year, the season of parent rage ended in a stunning sweep of school board elections last week by progressive public school advocates. It was a complete repudiation of the GOPs attempt to drive a wedge between parents and schools, says Zandra Rice Hawkins, executive director of Granite State Progress. Of 30 candidates designated by the group as propublic education, 29 won their racesmany in traditionally red regions of New Hampshire. Across the state, culture warriors and advocates of school privatization lost to candidates who pledged to protect and support public education.

Instead of resonating with voters, the rights efforts to weaponize cultural grievances appears to have alienated them. With the GOP poised to make the education culture wars a central focus of its midterm appeal, New Hampshire offers some clear lessons for Democrats.

Michael Boucher chalks up his decision to run for the school board in the southern New Hampshire town of Atkinson to a single word: extremism. Last year, he watched as the debate over local schools grew steadily more rancorous, first over CRT, then masks. Boucher became a regular presence at board meetings, where he noticed that many of the loudest voices werent actually from the district. Suddenly there were all of these groups coming inthe Government Integrity Project, Moms for Liberty, Americans for Prosperity. I realized that if I didnt step up, one of their people would, says Boucher.

Boucher, who works as a data analyst for a government contractor, says that he set a goal of talking to as many people in Atkinson as possible about the rising climate of extremism. He found a receptive audience. While the community has long leaned Republican, many voters remain what Boucher calls classic GOP. They want to see tight budgetsbut they also want to see opportunities for all kids and a welcoming culture in the schools. There are actually a lot of people who feel that way, says Boucher. MORE FROM Jennifer C. Berkshire

He campaigned on the need to teach history honestly against a candidate who ran on opposition to CRT. Boucher won resoundingly, claiming nearly three-quarters of the vote.

And Boucher wasnt alone. Thirty miles north, in Bow, first-time candidate Angela Brennan, the subject of a Republican mailer calling her anti-parent and a Biden-like progressive, was the top vote getter in a five-person contest for two seats on the school board.

All of these attacks on public education really backfired at the local level, says Molly Cowen, a member of the select board in Exeter, which has also seen acrimonious debates over mask and vaccine mandates and school district diversity policies. In the lead-up to the election, a conservative parents PAC spent an estimated $20,000 on mailers making the case that the districts focus on racial equity had led to a precipitous decline in academic achievement.

Voters in the district, which covers five towns, responded by booting two conservative members off the board and electing a number of pro-public-education candidates.

Cowen, who has two kids in local schools, recounts talking to her neighbor, a Republican, whose own kids are long grown. He told her that he was glad that all these outside groups were sending mailers telling him whom to vote for. He held onto one just so that hed know who to vote against.

In Bedford, long a GOP stronghold, teacher and first-time candidate Andrea Campbell ousted a conservative school board member by a wide margin in an election that saw record turnout. Campbell, an elementary school teacher whose two children attend local schools, told a local newspaper that her decision to run was spurred in part by concerns over calls to ban books.

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Bedford, like many communities, has seen the hot-button topics morph from Covid mitigation policies to how matters of race and racism are handled in schools, and then to the reconsideration of books on race, gender, and LGBTQ issues.

Lawmakers, meanwhile, have enacted sweeping restrictions on what teachers can and cant talk about in the classroom. Over public outcry and objections from the business community, New Hampshire banned discussion of so-called divisive concepts. Last fall, the states education chief set up a website that allows parents to report violations of the states new anti-discrimination law. A proposed teacher loyalty law, meanwhile, threatened teachers who presented negative accounts of the nations founding with official sanctions. While that bill was voted down amid intense public backlash, proponents say they plan to bring it back in a future session.

For Bill Politt, concerns over a rising climate of censorship were enough to spur him to run for office for the first time, at age 75. Politt declared his candidacy for school board in Weare just days before the filing deadline.Related Articles

I saw a story about book banning in Tennessee and I knew I couldnt just sit on the sidelines. I know there are people who want to ban books in this community and I just couldnt stand to see that happen here, says Pollit, who works as a substitute teacher in a local school.

Polls show that measures to censor speech and ban books remain deeply unpopular with voters. One recent survey found that large majorities of Americans, of both political parties, overwhelmingly reject the idea of banning books about history or race. While concepts like curriculum transparencymaking school materials publicly available to parentsare broadly popular in the abstract, support craters when voters associate such policies with book banning and censorship.

Politt made his concerns over book banning and censorship a central part of his campaign, speaking out at a candidates forum about what he described as a narrowing of viewpoints and a growing unwillingness to accommodate students curiosity. When minds are closed, schools become exceptionally bad, he warned.

Weare voters apparently agreed, electing Politt and another pro-public-education candidate, Alyssa Smalls, to the school board. Like many communities, Weare saw record voter turnout last weekincluding a record number of first-time voters. I take personal pride in that, says Politt. A lot of the new voters were my former students.

The fliers just kept coming. Glossy, professionally printed, expensive, the mailers made what might seem an unlikely pitch for a candidate for school board. With fewer kids enrolling in the local schools, and a growing number of school choice alternatives, did Sunapee actually need its schools any more?

People didnt buy it, says school board member Jesse Tyler. Communities that have K-12 schools are going to be the only communities anywhere that regenerate, with families, youth, workforce. Once these schools go, thats it. That sense of home and place is broken. Where is the sense of community and comradery?

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The candidates pitch for a school-free Sunapee fell flathe lost, along with another conservative contender. But the argument that New Hampshire no longer needs public schools increasingly counts as mainstream GOP thinking here. Leaders of the Free State Project, a libertarian movement that wields growing power within the Republican Party, openly acknowledge that their goal is to end state-provided public education.

Last year, New Hampshire lawmakers enacted a controversial education freedom program that redirects education spending to parents who can use the funds for private religious schooling, homeschooling, or other education expenses. The state has also embraced what are known as micro schools, in which unlicensed guides operate schools in their homes for just five to 10 students. Lawmakers are now considering a measure that would limit what state schools are required to teach, removing art, music, and computer science from the list of core academic subjects.

The perception that lawmakers and state officials are actively working to undermine local public schools added an urgency to local school board races, says Norm Goupil, who won reelection to the school board in the central New Hampshire town of Hopkinton by a substantial margin.

Theres a threat to public education thats coming from the state. I made that clear throughout my campaign and I think people here understand that, says Goupil. On election day, Goupil stood outside the polls for 13 hours. All day, he says, people came up to thank him. They saw the vote as being about saving public education.

Robin Skudlarek was keeping an anxious eye on the election returns. A Democratic Party activist who got her start organizing during the Obama campaign, Skudlarek had been advising two first-time candidates for the school board in the southern New Hampshire town of Londonderry. Amanda Butcher, a behavior specialist in the local schools, and Kevin Gray, a software engineer, had decided to run out of concern over increasingly toxic school politics. In school board meetings that were growing ever more raucous, parents rights activists, joined by Republican legislators, demanded an end to mask orders and denounced what they described as indoctrination in the local schools. The message coming from them was basically that we dont care about anybody else but our own kids, says Skudlarek.

Skudlarek saw the candidacies of Butcher and Gray as part of a grassroots movement to defend not just the local public schools but a vision of education itself as a public good. But would voters in this Republican town agree?

When the results started coming in, I was over the moon, says Skudlarek. Butcher and Gray defeated candidates who campaigned on parent rights and tighter spending. Voters also rejected a measure that would have prohibited the school district from ever imposing mask orders in the future. And in communities across the state, a similar story was unfolding.

My first thought was that this could really help the Democrats in the midterms.

Here is the original post:
How Progressives Won the School Culture Warin New Hampshire! - The Nation

Progressive political observers onFriday scoffed at comments from corporate Democratic Rep. Stephanie Murphy of Florida, who tried to blame progressives in the party for her retirement from Congress, despite the fact that right-leaning members have gotten much of what they wantedincluding blockage of President Joe Biden's agendaover the past year.

The congresswoman, who has represented Florida's 7th Congressional District since 2017 and announced her plan to retire in December, told Politico that the Democratic Party does not give conservative members of the party "leeway" to cast right-leaning votesdespite the fact that many lawmakers have spent their careers doing just that and have successfully damaged Biden's chances of passing his domestic agenda.

Murphy was one of several Democrats who in early November delayed a vote on the Build Back Better ActBiden's 10-year spending plan to invest in climate action and anti-poverty programs which is now stalled in the Senate due to conservative Democrats' objectionsclaiming they wanted to wait for a cost estimate from the Congressional Budget Office.

The congresswoman objected to tying the passage of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act to the Build Back Better Act, a strategy pushed by progressives including Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), who reasoned that passing the infrastructure bill by itself would put at risk the president's broader plan to provide paid family leave, free community college, and climate actiona prediction that has proven true four months later.

Murphy complained that the labor movement backed progressives' strategy.

"The infrastructure bill was one of the most historic job-creating bills for labor. And instead of [being] focused on the bill that would create jobs today for their members, they were focused on carrying out the Democratic leadership's approach to the two bills," she said of labor groups.

As Mike Casca, communications director for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt), noted, progressives' efforts to ensure Biden's full domestic agenda was passed have not been successful so far, allowing Murphy to get "everything she wanted"likely to the detriment of Democrats' chances of maintaining power in November.

The bill Murphy and other right-wing Democrats refused to pass last year contained broadly popular policy proposals, even after being significantly cut down to appease the party's conservative faction.

As Frederick Vlez III Burgos of the Hispanic Federation tweeted, Murphy's claim that the party's tolerance for its corporate-aligned members "has eroded" is evidence that she and her allies plan to engage in "revisionist history" to explain the party's probable losses this November.

In addition to helping to kill the Build Back Better Act, journalist David Sirota noted, the Big Pharma-backed congresswoman helped to weaken a proposal to allow Medicare to negotiate drug pricesa longtime Democratic priorityby voting against it in the House Ways and Means Committee in September. A narrower version of the proposal was later included in the Build Back Better Act.

Despite successfully obstructing her own party's agenda, Murphy claimed in the interview that Democratic leaders have "beat moderates into submission" in recent years, dismissing the president's proposals as "rainbows and unicorns."

As progressives including the Sunrise Movement and Ocasio-Cortez have warned repeatedly, not delivering on Biden's campaign promisesparticularly amid a worsening planetary crisis, an ongoing pandemic, and rising costs of essential goods and servicesis what is likely to doom Democrats in November.

Ironically, as Steve Morris of The Recount pointed out Friday, Murphy's ideological allies in the Senate, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) and Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), joined every Republican in January in rejecting changes to the filibuster, effectively killing voting rights legislation that would have protected Murphy's own district from gerrymandering.

Offering a critical summary of the congresswoman's position,The Intercept's Austin Ahlman put it this way: "Stephanie Murphy won a redrawn Obama district that's trending left, helped sabotage Bidens agenda (which she and other moderates ran on), and is now throwing a fit and retiring to go sit on some corporate board."

See more here:
Critics Blast Murphy for Helping Drive Dems 'Into a Ditch' and Then Blaming Progressives - Common Dreams