Mediaboss Marketing

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), a member of the Budget Committee, said in an interview Wednesday that he remains optimistic about the bipartisan talks, but added that, if for some reason the bipartisan version doesnt work out, then we ought to be looking at a reconciliation bill thats at $4.1 trillion.

Any talk of such a backup plan, however, is in the early stages as Democrats await another week of bipartisan talks in the Senate. But the fight over whether to increase the party-line bill's price tag is one of several potential problems that would bedevil Democrats if those bipartisan Senate negotiations fail underscoring the tenuous peace that both Schumer and Speaker Nancy Pelosi will need to hold throughout the falls high-stakes floor action.

Right now were trying to [see a] silver lining moving towards how we can get this done and not assume that we have members that are also going to be problems, said Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), former chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) and Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) hold a news conference in the U.S. Capitol Visitors Center May 17, 2019. | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Still, Democratic impatience is mounting by the day, particularly on the House side. Many progressives there have spent months airing loud skepticism of Bidens talks with the GOP.

The whole thing is really disappointing. I think it does slow down the process, said Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas), adding that he hopes the Senates failed vote leads to a willingness on the part of a couple senators to go ahead and ditch the GOP talks in favor of a Democrats-only bill.

Theyre eating time, added Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), referring to the bipartisan Senate group. And having been burned back in 09 and 10 by the Republicans in the Senate on the Affordable Care Act, we are understandably wary.

Schumer set a Wednesday deadline to get all 50 Democratic senators to get on board with the $3.5 trillion package that's poised to include an expansion of Medicare and child care assistance, among other items. The majority leader has further vowed that the Senate would move forward on a budget before the August recess.

But the Wednesday deadline is likely to slip, in part because the $3.5 trillion proposals future is tied closely to the bipartisan negotiations. That's frustrating to many House Democrats who had hoped to see action before the lengthy recess begins.

House Democrats have, instead, acknowledged that theyll likely need to return to Washington mid-August to vote on the budget blueprint and potentially the Senates bipartisan infrastructure deal, should one be reached.

While Democrats are far from finalizing the specific policies they plan to add to the social spending package, party leaders plan to take the first step in the coming weeks by voting on a budget that will determine how much each relevant committee can spend. If the bipartisan deal fails, then, the party might have to raise its top line number in order to tackle physical infrastructure while leaving its social spending priorities intact.

I cant give you an exact timeline, but I think that we are going to have every Democratic senator on board, said Senate Budget Chair Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). At the end of the day ... the $600 billion in physical infrastructure, you can do it in the bipartisan bill, or you can combine it with one bill. One way or another, its going to happen.

Sanders is not alone in pitching the idea that roads, bridges and broadband could be rolled into the social spending bill. Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) said this week she would push for the physical infrastructure plan to be included in the broader spending package if the Senate talks fail: That has to be incorporated.

But that Plan B is already drawing sharp pushback from moderates, especially in the House, who are anxious about signing on to a $3.5 trillion package amid concerns about the debt and GOP attacks over rising inflation.

Heck, no, said Rep. Kurt Schrader (D-Ore.), when asked about a top line number potentially above $3.5 trillion. We cant afford to keep spending money we dont have.

Another pivotal moderate, Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.), said that "I need to see specifics but that number is aggressive."

Other Democrats argue that placing everything in a $4 trillion package, if it comes to that, shouldnt matter to moderates.

I dont know why theyd change their mind on infrastructure spending depending on the vehicle through which its accomplished, said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.). That wouldnt be a very logical position in my view.

The White House privately warned Democrats this week that if the bipartisan talks fall apart, they could have to make some painful decisions related to the budget blueprint. Given that moderates are wary of going above $3.5 trillion, that could mean important progressive priorities have to be altered or cut to make room for infrastructure funding.

And not all Senate Democrats have even signed onto the $3.5 trillion number. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), who is negotiating the bipartisan package, said Wednesday she hadnt made a decision yet on whether shed support that figure.

Im still focused on infrastructure, Shaheen said. Were going to reach a deal.

Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), another bipartisan negotiator, said that hed support moving forward on the $3.5 trillion package but added: Ill reserve the right to do whatever the hell I want once I see whats in the bill and how its funded and how its distributed.

While Republicans blocked Wednesdays vote to begin debating the bipartisan infrastructure plan, senators are aiming to reach an agreement by early next week. A group of 11 Senate Republicans sent a letter Wednesday to Schumer indicating that theyd be willing to move forward Monday, if they reach an agreement and have a score from Congress' nonpartisan budget scorekeeper.

Schumer on Wednesday voted against proceeding with the measure a move that allows the majority leader to bring the vote back up again at a later date. Senate Democrats said in interviews Wednesday that they expected Schumer to maintain his focus on the bipartisan plan before moving to the $3.5 trillion reconciliation package.

I dont know the exact sequencing, but the goal right now is to get that bipartisan bill done, said Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), another member of the Budget Committee.

See the article here:
With bipartisan infrastructure talks in limbo, progressives eye $4.1T silver lining - POLITICO

Skip to contentAt the local level, sidewalk socialists represent a movement whose time has come.July 21, 2021

India Walton.

EDITORS NOTE: Each week we cross-post an excerpt from Katrina vanden Heuvels column at the WashingtonPost.com. Read the full text of Katrinas column here.

Thank you for signing up forThe Nations weekly newsletter.

In 1910, during the United States first Gilded Age, Milwaukee elected Emil Seidel as its first socialist mayor. For much of the next 50 yearseven during the Red Scare led by Wisconsins notorious Senator Joseph McCarthythe city elected and reelected socialist mayors. These mayors, author Dan Kaufman wrote in The New York Times, were known for their integrityuncompromised by the local business community that despised themand for their frugality, their commitment that public money should be spent carefully and not squandered in smarmy deals with private contractors. They installed hundreds of drinking fountains, prosecuted restaurants serving tainted food, and modernized public services. Seidel appointed a new health commissioner whose department oversaw a reduction of more than 40 percent of the cases of six leading contagious diseases.

Their opponents tried to deride them as sewer socialistsa term Seidel, his successors and their supporters soon would proudly adopt. Now, chapters of the ref, the Working Families Party and other progressives propelled by the energy of the Bernie Sanders presidential campaigns are gaining traction at the local level and recalling sewer socialisms proud history.

In Buffalo, India Walton, running as a democratic socialist, defeated a four-term incumbent in the Democratic primary for mayor, propelled by local activists and those of the Working Families Party and the Democratic Socialists of America. In Richmond, Calif., a small working-class community outside San Francisco with a population that is 80 percent people of color and a large immigrant community, the Richmond Progressive Alliance has succeeded in electing a majority slate to the city council while battling Chevron to counter the poisonous effects of its local refinery and force it to pay its fair share of taxes.

Read the full text of Katrinas column here.

Continued here:
Progressives Around the Country Are Recalling Sewer Socialism's Proud History - The Nation

On Aug. 3, both parties will hold primaries for two open Ohio congressional seats. But the outcome of the Democratic clash in the Cleveland-area 11th District may have greater significance than the identity of any of the days other winners.

Thats because the race between former state Sen. Nina Turner and Cuyahoga County Councilwoman Shontel Brown, both African Americans, is the latest in a series of contests stemming from efforts by self-styled progressives to push the Democratic Party to the left and increase liberal pressure on President Joe Biden.

So far this year those efforts have flopped, notably in last months New York City mayoral primary, where centrist Eric Adams was the winner and another moderate, Kathryn Garcia, finished second. Earlier, more moderate Democrats captured Louisiana and New Mexico congressional races, and former Gov. Terry McAuliffe won the Virginia Democratic gubernatorial primary over more liberal challengers.

Progressives have high hopes that Turner, a prominent 2016 and 2020 backer of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders insurgent presidential campaigns, will win the majority minority Ohio seat vacated when Rep. Marcia Fudge became Bidens secretary of housing and urban development.

That has prompted several top Black Democrats, led by House Majority Whip James Clyburn and the chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, Rep. Joyce Beatty of Ohio, to support Brown, who backed Biden in the 2020 nominating race. So have other top Ohio Democrats and Hillary Clinton. They fear a Turner victory would play into Republican efforts to portray their party as dominated by its left wing, led by New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

The New York congresswoman and fellow members of the progressive group known as the Squad have endorsed Turner, as has Sanders, who said the election has everything to do with the future of the Democratic Party. Ocasio-Cortez plans to canvass with her this weekend. In practical terms, a Turner victory would augment the ranks of progressives and make it even harder for Speaker Nancy Pelosi to manage the closely divided House, where the half-dozen Squad members already have substantial leverage.

Clyburn, who also plans a weekend appearance, said he endorsed Brown because of his long relationship with her and not because of antagonism toward either Sanders or Turner. Meanwhile, a pro-Israel Democratic political action committee is backing Brown because of Turners past criticism of Israel, a potential factor in a district with many Jewish voters.

Turner has refused to say if she voted in 2016 for Clinton, after the former secretary of state defeated Sanders for the Democratic nomination. And in an interview with Peter Nicholas of The Atlantic before the 2020 election, she said the choice between Biden and Trump was like saying to somebody, You have a bowl of [expletive] in front of you, and all youve got to do is eat half of it instead of the whole thing. Its still [expletive].

Progressives seeking a greater voice in the Democratic Party have taken encouragement from the elections in 2018 of Ocasio-Cortez and Reps. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, and in 2020 of Reps. Cori Bush of Missouri and Mondaire Jones and Jamaal Bowman of New York.

They have been able to command considerable attention, especially on Twitter and cable television. But most represent very liberal areas with substantial minority populations and are well to the left of the overall party, making them outliers in the House Democratic caucus. Still, Democratic leaders like Pelosi and Clyburn are concerned their outsized media presence is allowing Republicans to use the progressives advocacy of issues like defunding the police, the Green New Deal and Medicare-for-All to paint Biden and the entire party establishment as tools of left-wingers and socialists.

Meanwhile, in a related move, House Democratic Caucus Chair Hakeem Jeffries, the New York congressman seen as a potential Pelosi successor, is joining with two prominent moderate Democrats to form a political action committee called Team Blue PAC to bolster incumbents against potential left-wing primary challenges.

First on their list are two veteran urban Democrats, Rep. Carolyn Maloney of New York City and Danny Davis of Chicago, who are facing 2022 primary challenges from their left.

These and the other recent clashes between progressive and moderate Democrats mirror the partys 2020 nominating fight between moderates like Biden, Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Amy Klobuchar and progressives like Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren. So have the results.

Despite pre-2020 speculation that progressives were taking control of the party, Sanders never polled more than about one-third of the primary vote and wound up being defeated even more decisively than four years earlier. And progressives have lost every significant primary fight so far this year, though they won some local New York contests.

The winner of the Turner-Brown primary contest 11 other Democrats are running will almost certainly be elected in the November general election as the 11th District voted nearly 80% for Biden last year.

Similarly, the GOP primary winner in the suburban Columbus 15th District will likely win the general election in that Republican majority district.

But it wont likely have the lingering impact of the latest showdown between the progressive and moderate forces within the Democratic Party, a battle destined to continue next year and into the 2024 presidential race.

Carl P. Leubsdorf is the former Washington bureau chief of The Dallas Morning News and a frequent contributor. Email: carl.p.leubsdorf@gmail.com

Got an opinion about this issue? Send a letter to the editor and you just might get published.

Read the original here:
Are progressives taking over the Democratic Party? - The Dallas Morning News

Like biting into a madeleine was reading a federal court injunction against the Biden administrations pandemic bailout program for restaurants, which favored some ethnicities over others. Memories came flooding back of South Africas apartheid in its waning days, with its absurd designation of certain Asians as honorary whites.

Slight difference: Under the Biden plan some became honorary whites for the purpose of being disadvantaged, i.e., sent to the end of the line for government aid. According to no rhyme or reason, said the court, spared the prejudicial status were Pakistanis but not Afghans; Japanese but not Iraqis; Hispanics but not Middle Easterners.

Youve noticed a herd of meme-performing pundits insisting that critical race theory is hardly even a thing. Radicals ritually downplay their radicalism as they sense their nearness to power, though perhaps prematurely in this case. Also likely to be voided by the courts is a Biden program favoring black farmers over white farmers.

Meanwhile, still intact is the administrations larger agenda of extending more entitlements to the middle class, inevitably making the entitled population whiter (and more Asian). Indeed, the more Joe Biden mouths the words Jim Crow, the more it seems hes trying to satiate a part of his base (mostly consisting of white progressive racial extremists) with rhetoric alone. Perhaps you believe todays voting rights kabuki is so Democrats can do even more to help blacks. Political realism suggests otherwise.

One premise of critical race theory is certainly correct: Today is built on a foundation of yesterdays. On the foundation of slavery, Jim Crow and housing segregation nowadays is built the exploitation of black communities by multicultural elites playing their defund the police games at the expense of blacks who suffer the lions share of violent crime.

See the original post here:
Progressives Punish Honorary Whites but Arent Helping Blacks - The Wall Street Journal

Introduction

Progressive started its ignition in the auto insurance business in 1937 when Joseph Lewis and Jack Green had the idea of offering basic insurance that anyone could afford. Today, Progressive is the third-largest auto insurance company in the United States and a leading seller of commercial auto insurance and motorcycle insurance.

When it comes to good drivers, Progressives rates are in the middle of the pack among other top auto insurers.

Progressive car insurance rates go up an average of $250 a year after a speeding ticket, based on our analysis of national averages. Progressive is again the middle of the pack for rates when compared to top competitors.

Expect a potentially large rate increase at renewal time if you cause an accident with an injury to someone else. With Progressive, we found an increase of over $1,200 a year.

Progressive car insurance rates are second-best for drivers who have a DUI, based on national averages. Still, State Farm handily wins out with the lowest rates in this category among top competitors.

Car insurance companies dont like to see lapses in insurance. If you were caught driving without auto insurance, expect to pay about $450 a year from Progressive. Geico and State Farm offer better national average rates for people in this situation, based on our analysis.

The level of auto insurance complaints against Progressive is lower than the national average, but higher than Allstate, State Farm and Geico.

In a survey of collision repair professionals by CRASH Network, Progressive earned a C grade.

The opinions of collision repair professionals are valuable because they see how insurers compare in the claims process. They have an insiders view of the use of lower-quality repair parts, whether insurance companies encourage the use of repair procedures recommended by car makers, and whether insurers have fast and satisfactory claims processes for customers.

Progressive sells insurance for cars, RVs, ATVs, classic cars and boats. For drivers who prefer more unique forms of transportation, Progressive also offers Segway, Sea-Doo, golf cart and snowmobile insurance.

Optional auto insurance coverage types include roadside assistance, custom parts, rideshare insurance and rental reimbursement. Progressive also offers a deductible savings bank which helps pay your deductible. For every claim-free policy period, Progressive will subtract $50 from your deductible.

Additionally, Progressive sells loan/lease payoff coverage (also known as gap insurance). This helps cover the difference between what you owe on the car and the cars actual worth if its totaled in an accident covered by your policy.

Progressive offers a usage-based program, known as Snapshot, which determines your insurance rate in part based on your actual driving.

Youll get an automatic discount simply for participating in the program (depending on your state). Your personalized insurance rates will be calculated based on when you renew your policy, based on your driving habits.

At Progressive, customers who are Uber or Lyft drivers are required to add rideshare insurance to their personal auto policies. With this rideshare insurance, drivers are protected if an accident occurs when they are waiting for a passenger while out driving for Uber or Lyft. During this time, rideshare coverage from Progressive will provide collision and comprehensive coverage, uninsured motorist coverage, and other coverage you may have such as rental car reimbursement.

Progressive offers many discounts, especially for drivers who practice safe driving habits. If you have a teen driver, look for Progressives discounts for teen drivers, good students and distant students.

If youre a loyal Progressive customer, you can benefit from the multi-policy and multi-car discounts. Here are a few other insurance discounts you may qualify for:

Progressive sells homeowners, condo and renters insurance in most states, often from other companies through its Progressive insurance agency. Progressive also sells insurance for mobile/manufactured homes. Optional coverage types include water back-up and personal injury coverage.

If you live in an area prone to natural disasters, Progressive sells policies to help cover problems like earthquakes, floods, landslides, mudslides and sinkholes.

For those who need to protect a small business from financial loss, Progressive provides a variety of coverage types including a business owners policy, professional liability, workers compensation, commercial auto insurance and general liability insurance.

With identity theft and cybercrime continuing to pose challenges, many people are searching for a way to protect their assets from fraud and theft. Progressive sells identity theft protection and a credit monitoring service sponsored by Experian.

Progressive also sells life, dental, phone and electric device, health, travel, umbrella, vision and pet insurance. You also can find financial services such as personal loans and car shopping services.

The Progressive app lets users easily manage their insurance policies from their smartphones. Some mobile app features include:

In 1937, Joseph Lewis and Jack Green launched the Progressive Mutual Insurance Co. with the idea to provide security and protection to vehicle owners. Progressive Insurance first specialized in nonstandard insurance, which led them to launch the Safe Driver Plan in Ohio. This plan offered lower rates to drivers who went without accidents.

Today, Progressive is headquartered in Mayfield Village, Ohio, and has 20.4 million insurance policies in force.

Established in 2001, The Progressive Insurance Foundation gives back to communities by supporting causes and organizations that Progressive employees care about. When employees donate any amount from $20 to $3,000 to a qualified nonprofit, they can request a matching gift. The Foundation will match those donation dollars up to 100%. Matching gift donations depends on the number of requests and Progressives profitability for the year.

Additionally, Progressive encourages and supports its employees to give back through volunteerism and other charitable efforts.

Other causes that Progressive supports include:

To find average car insurance rates nationwide, we used rates from Quadrant Information Services, a provider of insurance data and analytics. Rates are based on a female driver with a clean record insuring a Toyota RAV4 with $100,000 in bodily injury liability coverage per person, $300,000 per accident and $100,000 in property damage liability, uninsured motorist coverage and any other coverage required in the state. The rate also includes collision and comprehensive with a $500 deductible.

Read the rest here:
Progressive Car Insurance Review Forbes Advisor - Forbes