Mediaboss Marketing

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

Millennials have long been cast as the great progressive hope, or "New Progressive America: The Millennial Generation," as one study would have it. 25- to 40-year-old Americans, already the largest portion of the current adult population, have been cast by progressives as "a hero generation" that will escape the material trappings of their Boomer parents' suburban lives and pull American politics far to the Left.

To be sure, millennials are the most Democratic-leaning of generations, as the Pew Research Center found; they have close to a 60 percent fealty to Democrats, and their votes clearly helped get rid of Donald Trump. So it's fitting that their avatar is the congressional "Squad" led by the ubiquitous 30-year-old Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, one of their own.

It's also undeniable that the ideological cast of millennials, who will be the largest voting block by 2024, will shape our political future. But a closer look at millennial attitudes suggests that the difference between their lives and the lives of their parents is not always by design, and that given the choice, many millennials would prefer to be parents and enjoy family life in the suburbs (and the attendant centrist politics) than be the "heroes" of a left-wing movement.

You can see this in the fact that millennials have been increasingly leaving big cities like New York, Los Angeles and Chicago for more conventional locales, as an analysis of the past decade found. Millennials have spent the past 10 years moving en masse to less expensive, redder metros in the Sunbelt and to the suburbs and exurbs of select Midwestern cities like Columbus, Des Moines and Indianapolis.

Millennials just aren't the overwhelmingly enthusiastic urbanites that people say they are; big skies and small towns are in high demand for a significant number of younger Americans. Some 26 percent told researchers they would like to end up in small-town or rural America, while another 39 percent are headed for the suburbs. This even applies to better educated workers, nearly 70 percent of whom prefer suburban or small-town living. This pattern is strongest among whites and Latinos, but even among African Americans, roughly half opt for suburban living.

And this desire to leave cities is correlated strongly with marital status. Almost a third of married millennials want to move out to the countrycompared to 21 percent of singles. It reflects a political divide between primarily childless, left-leaning urbanites and more conservative or centrist families on the periphery.

Reflecting their geographic diversity, millennials are also proving less uniformly Left than imagined, as Ruy Teixeira, author of The Optimistic Leftist, found; as they age and start families, millennials tend to focus more on economic improvement than abstract notions of cultural or social justice.

A poll of over 1,400 people sponsored by the Los Angeles Times and Reality Check Insights after the November 2020 elections revealed that a plurality of millennials consider themselves centrists. 50 percent are politically independent or lean only a bit in one direction, while another 16 percent are conservative. Just a third identify as liberal.

And newer data collected well into the Biden administration reveals no real ideological shift: About a third (27 percent) identify as liberal, 16 percent as conservative, and the majority are independents and those who only lean slightly one way or another (58 percent).

And again, despite what you may have heard, most are a far cry from the stereotypical "woke" social justice warrior. Research from the American Enterprise Institute found that most millennials do not fit easily into the liberal "monoculture" and they do not approve of the politically correct culture pervading so many facets of society. Only about a third of millennials and Gen Zers feel the nation is not politically correct enough, a level practically identical to the third of those who are 65 years old or older.

One stereotype about millennials that is true is that they are financially screwed. Millennials face enormous obstacles in gaining assets; according to projections by the Deloitte Center for Financial Services, they will own barely 15 percent of the nation's assets by 2030, when most will be well in their late thirties or forties. They are also far less likely to own homes than previous generations by the time they turn 30.

And millennials know they are screwed. Many younger people are putting off college while others are demanding refunds or choosing less expensive options.

And the pandemic has made things much worse. Seniors may have suffered a much higher risk from the virus, but from an economic point of view, millennials suffered the most.

In a new report, Data for Progress found that a staggering 52 percent of people under the age of 45 lost a job, were put on leave, or had their hours reduced due to the pandemic, compared with 26 percent of people over the age of 45. It led one conservative writer to predict that millennials will curdle into a "resentful generation" that could threaten the establishments of both parties.

Particularly vulnerable are the two-thirds between 25 and 32 who lack a four-year college degree, who would have been employed in factories a generation ago, or owned small businessesanother facet of American life the pandemic decimated. And this huge divide between college-educated millennials and the rest is reflected everywhere, including in Silicon Valley. The top 10 percent of millennials who grew up in relatively wealthy families and went to selective colleges are "doing just fine" according to one analysis. Not so everyone else; according to a 2018 UC-Santa Cruz study, nine out of 10 jobs in Silicon Valley now pay less than twenty years ago, adjusted for inflation.

With good reason many young people feel abandoned by the system and are increasingly alienated. And yet, it would be a mistake to predict that this economic precariousness will lead millennials to embrace the far Left. While some may adopt the Left's agenda as a pablum, others will join the lunatic far right, particularly less educated white millennials who backed Trump in 2016 and have made up a vocal part of his base.

The big question then may not be where millennials want to livethe trend is clearbut whether they will be able to attain their aspirations like their parents. This could drive our politics further toward the extremes on both sides, unless Boomers and others in older generations come up with economic answers that restore the American dream for their successors.

Joel Kotkin is the Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and executive director of the Urban Reform Institute. Samuel J. Abrams is professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College and a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

The views expressed in this article are the authors' own.

Read the original here:
Millennials Are a Lot Less Progressive Than You Think | Opinion - Newsweek