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Why Progressives Love Ted Kaufman, Joe Bidens Alter Ego – HuffPost

Ted Kaufman, the co-chair of former Vice President Joe Bidens transition team, fits neatly into the Democratic presidential nominees small inner circle.

Like most of its members, hes old for a political operative 81. As a Philadelphia native, Wharton School of Business graduate and former engineer for DuPont, he shares Bidens geographic grounding in Pennsylvania and Delaware. And like most of Bidens closest allies, hes worked with the candidate for decades.

Kaufman is often seen as Bidens alter-ego, and was even selected to take over the Senate seat Biden vacated shortly after winning the vice presidency in 2008. The two men live within walking distance of each other, and allies inside and outside the campaign say the pair are ideologically simpatico.

I think its fair to say that Ted is Bidens closest political adviser and friend outside of his family, said Alex Mackler, who has worked for both men and was Kaufmans deputy chief of staff in the Senate. He has an overriding trust in Teds judgment.

There is one crucial difference between Kaufman and the rest of Bidens closest allies, however. While progressives look askance at the corporate ties of many key Biden advisers, the left-wing of the Democratic Partys ideological spectrum has little but ebullient praise for Kaufman.

He thinks Wall Street has too much influence in our government, he thinks that corporate America is too powerful and he thinks workers dont have a seat at the table, Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio said in an interview, summarizing a consensus view. Hes a strong progressive.

During his roughly two years in the Senate, Kaufman proved his worth to the partys left-wing, helping lead their battle against bank lobbyists and centrist elements of President Barack Obamas administration to limit the influence and power of Wall Street in the aftermath of the financial crisis. In a key moment that has helped shape the Democratic Partys current contours, Kaufman stepped up to challenge the growing power of corporate interests in U.S. society.

Progressives view 2008 to 2010 as a crucible that revealed a critical divide (within the party) on Wall Street, said Jeff Hauser, the executive director of the Revolving Door Project. It was an extremely revealing and important time in our history, and we remember what side people were on. And Kaufman was on the side of populist progressives.

During the presidential primaries, progressives regularly argued Bidens record revealed him to be subservient to power, unwilling to challenge the banks and corporate interests who historically dominated politics in his home state of Delaware. Nominating him, they argued, would guarantee the Democratic Party was insufficiently tough on Wall Street and monopoly power, repeating key mistakes of the Obama era.

But Kaufman, as a senator, fought against Wall Street, leading the charge to break up the largest banks. He has openly and repeatedly lamented the failure of the Obama administration to prosecute bankers and CEOs in the wake of the Great Recession. His leading role in shaping and staffing the next Democratic presidency gives progressives hope a Biden administration can outperform its leaders centrist track record.

Biden, assigned other tasks by the White House, played little role in the fights over the response to the financial crisis. Kaufman, freed from political pressures because he decided against seeking a full term in 2010, joined the left to battle some of Washingtons most powerful forces. Could Kaufmans actions serve as a preview for a more aggressive Biden presidency?

Jonathan Ernst / ReutersKaufman (right) was a frequent critic of the approach taken by Tim Geithner (left), President Barack Obama's treasury secretary, to the financial crisis.

Kaufman was Bidens chief of staff so long ago that his title wasnt even chief of staff. Back in 1975, top senatorial aides were called administrative assistants. He held that job for two decades through Bidens first run for president in 1988, his handling of tumultuous Supreme Court nominations of Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas as head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and the senators two aneurysms in the late 1980s. Kaufman left in 1995 and into a series of roles common to once-powerful government officials.

He served on government boards, as a member of the Democratic National Committee and taught at Duke University. He remained a close friend and adviser to Biden, and a mentor to many of the younger staffers in Bidens office.

He was always a father figure to everyone in the office, said Tony Allen, a former Biden staffer who is now the president of Delaware State University. Before you made a big decision, you knew he was the one to go to.

Throughout all of this, Kaufman remained behind the scenes, quoted in Delaware newspapers and as an expert on the Senate but with little public profile. That changed on Jan. 15, 2009, when Biden resigned his Senate seat days before becoming vice president and Kaufman was sworn in to replace him. At the time, one issue dominated Congress the response to the 2008 financial crisis.

The crisis remains complex to untangle and explain, but heres a grossly oversimplified version: A downturn in housing prices made risky bets placed by major banks turn bad, seizing the entire financial system, which crippled the broader U.S. economy and led to the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.

With bipartisan backing, the George W. Bush administration in its last days bailed out the largest banks, which were considered too big to fail without taking the entire economy down with them. The program they created, the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), would buy up more $400 billion worth of essentially worthless financial instruments. After the Obama administration and a Democrat-controlled Congress took office in January 2009, they passed what was then the largest fiscal stimulus in U.S. history, the nearly $800 billion Recovery Act.

The perceived gap between the two responses $400 billion for the banks, $800 billion for everybody else has driven the populist rage that has shaped the nations politics since then, from the Tea Party to Occupy Wall Street to the rise of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and President Donald Trump. Today, most Democrats freely admit the party shouldve gone bigger with the stimulus law, even if many doubt a more ambitious proposal would have made it through Congress.

A decade ago, however, disputes over the crisis response were the defining rift within the Democratic Party.

On one side was a then-Harvard Law professor named Elizabeth Warren, along with the AFL-CIO, a significant chunk of the House and Senate Democrat caucuses and good government groups. Warren led an obscure panel overseeing the bailout, and regularly going viral in the process, dressing down bankers and regulators alike.

She and others argued the new administrations efforts to muddle through the financial crisis was too focused on the banks financial health, and not focused enough on helping middle-class families and alleviating a massive home foreclosure crisis.

On the other side was Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, National Economic Council Director Larry Summers and much of the rest of the Obama administrations economic team. They viewed Warren as a grandstander, and her allies as asking for the impossible. While they also supported the financial reform legislation that would end up being known as Dodd-Frank, they thought efforts to break up the big banks were unnecessary and counterproductive.

Kaufman joined the first team. In an interview, he told HuffPost his reaction to the financial crisis was simple: Somebody should go to jail for this. Clearly, crimes have been committed at a massive scale. He wondered why the banks were all taken care of, but the foreclosures, the help for regular people, somehow we couldnt figure out how to make that work.

He spent much of his Senate stint consumed with Wall Street malfeasance: He played a major role in crafting a law to increase funding for law enforcement agencies to find fraud committed during the crisis. He pushed for stronger regulation of high-frequency trading. He sharply questioned bankers like Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Bankfein. But the biggest showdown was over an amendment he co-sponsored with Brown to break up the nations largest banks.

Supporters of the amendment, which would have forced JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America to split up, argued breaking up the banks was necessary to ensure none of them would ever again grow too big to fail and require a bailout.

It was the very problem we needed to solve, Warren said in an interview. It was a really aggressive push to rein in the banks, and Ted was right in the mix.

But the Obama administrations Treasury Department fought against it, arguing the amendment would put passage of the larger Dodd-Frank reform legislation at risk and harm the competitiveness of U.S. financial markets. It failed on a 33-61 vote, with everyone pointing to Treasurys opposition as key in swaying moderate Democrats against it. The larger bill became law in July 2010.

Jeff Connaughton, who was Kafumans chief of staff, said his boss efforts put the banks of defense, setting up the whole bill and especially its creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for passage. The CFPB, designed to protect consumers from financial wrongdoing, was Warrens brainchild and the major progressive victory in the legislation.

He was among the first to hammer at the anti-Wall Street fissures that later divided the party, Connaughton said. His instincts were deeply held and ahead of the curve when it came to standing up to powerful financial interests.

A few months later, Warrens vault from obscurity ended with Obama giving her a role in helping to launch the CFPB, a compromise reached with elements of the administration determined to block her from leading the agency she had conceived of. That meant her spot chairing the Congressional Oversight Panel, set up to oversee TARP, was open.

Warrens work on the panel had won her fans across the country, the beginnings of the political base that would power her to a 2012 Senate victory in Massachusetts and her unsuccessful presidential run earlier this year. It had also deeply alienated large sections of the Obama administration, including Geithner and Summers.

Then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) picked Kaufman to fill the slot. But any worries that a close ally of the vice president would put the kibosh on the panels oversight efforts quickly faded. He kept most of Warrens staff and continued their oversight efforts until the panels work wrapped up in early 2011.

We had been really aggressive, Warren said Kaufman. Ted brought real continuity. He was studious, he was serious. He picked up the work right away and kept exercising real oversight. And thats not something everyone wouldve been willing to do.

Another panel member, AFL-CIO policy director Damon Silvers, agreed Kaufman represented a continuation of Warrens work, saying the senator was able to both continue Elizabeths public spirited approach to oversight and to maintain a general bipartisan unity among the panel.

Even after the panels work ended, Kaufman remained an occasional thorn in the Obama administrations side. In 2013, in a documentary interview, he slammed the administrations failure to prosecute any major crimes connected to the financial crisis.

Theres all kinds of behavior that went on that clearly was fraudulent in my opinion, looking back on it, for which no one paid a penalty. And that has severe consequences for the country, Kaufman told Frontline, pointing to what he saw as clear fraud leading to the collapse of Lehman Brothers.

He also said: The fact that we brought [no major prosecutions] sends a clear message that theres two levels of justice in this country. Clearly, people can steal millions of dollars which I think is what went on and get away with it, and the rest of the folks have to pay for whatever crimes they commit.

Joe Bidens alter-ego was sounding a lot like Elizabeth Warren.

MediaNews Group/Boston Herald via Getty Images via Getty ImagesSen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts campaigned for Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden earlier this month. Warren, who sought the White House this year on a more progressive platform than his, has declined to say if she wanted to join a Biden administration.

Suffice to say, the rest of Bidens inner circle lacks similar credibility with the left. Steve Richetti, who served as Bidens chief of staff during the final years of his vice presidential tenure, is a former lobbyist for the health care and telecommunications industries. Bruce Reed, his predecessor in that chief of staff role, was an early leader of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council and played a key role in the reform of welfare that slashed its benefits during the Bill Clinton administration.

Both men are considered potential chiefs of staff if Biden wins the presidency. The third likely contender, Ron Klain, is progressives pick for the job and is now seen as the frontrunner. Klain, who was chief of staff for both Biden and former Vice President Al Gore, is seen as a more partisan figure, as open to left-leaning ideas and with a background well-suited to battling both the coronavirus pandemic and handling an economic recovery.

But Klains tenure in the Clinton administration, along with his stint as a lobbyist for the mortgage finance giant Freddie Mae and time as a venture capitalist, serves to highlight the lack of truly left-leaning possibilities for one of the top jobs in a Biden administration.

(A brief definitional aside: The left-wing of the Democratic Party in Washington is loosely divided into camps allied with either Warren or Sanders. Left-leaning figures aligned with Warren, who tend to be more focused on Wall Street power and on the financial crisis as a flashpoint, also tend to be more excited about Kaufman.)

As transition chair, Kaufman would theoretically play a key role in who becomes chief of staff and who fills dozens, if not hundreds, of other slots in the administration. In his HuffPost interview, Kaufman declined to answer any questions about his work on a transition. (Its also unclear if Kaufman would take a formal role in the administration, though Democrats who know both men said it would be difficult to stop Biden from regularly calling Kaufman for advice, regardless of the latter mans title.)

Kaufman was the natural choice to lead the transition. He led Bidens vice presidential transition in 2008. And after he left the Senate, he worked with former Utah GOP Gov. Mike Leavitt to co-author an influential report on how to refine the process. Many of the reports recommendations became law in 2015.

No other person who has run a transition has the depth of knowledge on transitions and a greater understanding of the high correlation between a successful transition and a successful launch of a presidency, said Max Stier, the president and CEO of the Washington-based Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit good government group.

Still, it can be easy to overstate Kaufmans influence. His co-chairs on the transition include two mainstream Democrats Louisiana Rep. Cedric Richmond and New Mexico Gov. Michele Lujan Grisham alongside senior campaign adviser Anita Dunn and Jeffrey Zients, the CEO of the private equity firm Cranmere. (The left is particularly wary of the influence of Zients, who had a reputation as a deficit hawk as a top economic aide during the Obama administration.)

The left has already collected some wins in shaping the potential Biden administration. Summers took himself out of contention for top jobs. The transitions advisory board includes Felicia Wong, the CEO of the progressive Roosevelt Institute, and Jared Bernstein, a labor-aligned economist who was Bidens chief economic adviser during his first term as vice president. Transition staffers with left-wing ties include former Warren staffers Julie Margetta Morgan and Julie Siegel, while Gautam Raghavan, a former chief of staff for progressive Rep. Pramila Jayapal D-Wash.), has a leadership role.

But equally worrying signs are evident for the left. The Biden campaign barred fossil fuel or private prison lobbyists from securing transition jobs. But it declined to ban other lobbyists from the effort, instead allowing them to secure waivers from the transitions general counsel, Jessica Hertz. She previously worked on regulatory issues for Facebook, a company the left usually thinks of as a target for antitrust action rather than a source for hires.

The Biden transition has been run as a more progressive transition than Obama 2008 or Hillary Clinton 2016 (had she won the presidency), but those are low bars, Hauser said.

Even Kaufman has worried the left. His Senate farewell speech was an ode to the filibuster, the 60-vote requirement that routinely thwarts major legislation and a rule that progressives are determined to spike but Biden sometimes seems stubbornly attached to. Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.), a friend of Kaufmans, suggested the decade-old speech might not reflect Kaufmans current views: Theres a large number of former and current numbers who have a wholly different perspective on it now after six years of GOP control under of the chamber under Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Casey said. Im more open to [filibuster reform] than I was even a year ago.

Another concern for progressives is that in an August interview with The Wall Street Journal, Kaufman suggested the huge deficits created by the Trump administration would limit a Biden administrations economic plans.When we get in, the pantrys going to be bare, Kaufman said at the time.

The Biden campaign quickly clarified his remarks to reiterate its long-standing position: Biden was willing to use deficit spending to stimulate the economy out of the coronavirus-induced recession, but tax increases on the wealthy would pay for long-term programs.

In interviews, neither Warren nor Brown worried much about Kaufmans comments.

Theres going to be stimulus spending to help repair the historic damage that Donald Trump has done to our economy, and to help us recover from the economic shockwave of the pandemic, Warren said. Biden knows that, and Ted knows that. Its the Republicans right now who dont understand that.

The Biden campaign has successfully limited leaks from the transition, forcing reporters to rely mostly on scuttlebutt and chatter. While both Brown and Warren said they talked regularly with Kaufman, they declined to get into details. And Warren punted on whether she wanted to directly join the administration.

Lets get through the election first, she said.

Tom Williams via Getty ImagesKaufman, then a senator, and then-Vice President Biden are seen here conversing in the halls of Congress. The two men never directly discussed Kaufman's focus during his time in the Senate on dealing with the financial crisis, he said.

Throughout all of the financial crisis fights, Biden was mostly absent. The definitive history of the Dodd-Frank law, the book An Act Of Congress by Robert Kaiser, barely mentions the former vice president.

Connaughton, the Kaufmans chief of staff who also had been a Biden Senate staffer, has publicly lamented Bidens inaction at the time. In journalist George Packers book The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America,Connaughton said he pushed Kaufman to ask Biden to join their fight and apply pressure to the Treasury and Justice Department to crack down on banks.

Kaufman, then and now, has said Biden was busy with other issues,noting that Obama had assigned him a full portfolio of other tasks: leading oversight of the stimulus program, chairing a task force on revitalizing the middle class, managing the drawdown of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. Kaufman said he never directly spoke to Biden about his work on the oversight panel or his work on Dodd-Frank.

Connaughton couldnt get over the strangeness: their former boss held down the second-highest position in the country, a few steps from the Oval Office, and they couldnt do a damn thing about Wall Street, Packer wrote.

(Connaughton has written his own memoir and is open about his disillusionment with both Biden and Washington writ large.)

Progressives have long assumed Biden more or less went along willingly with Geithner and Summers bank-friendly stances, noting his work as a senator on a controversial law passed in 2005 that made it harder for families to declare bankruptcy. The battle over that law put him head-to-head with a not-yet-famous Warren, and its eventual passage benefited MBNA, a massive bank in his home state.

Given how close he is to Biden, Kaufmans actions during his brief Senate stint challenge that narrative. Brown, for one, was confident Kaufmans experiences would shape how Biden governs.

Teds a good influence on Joe, the Ohio senator said. Hell make sure theres a progressive voice in the administration.

Some Biden allies also argue that the lefts image of Biden as a centrist out-of-touch with the Democratic Party and his stated desire to work with Republicans has overshadowed his broadly center-left record on guns, the environment and other key issues.

Today, Biden and his advisers are openly talking about a Rooseveltian presidency, one with eyes on super-charging an economic recovery and empowering the middle class. Bernstein and other Democratic economists openly discuss the failures and lessons learned from the Obama administration. Was Kaufmans work a decade ago a preview of how Biden will approach things?

Kaufman is pretty sure it is, and pointed to Bidens plans as proof. If you want to know what the transitions policy positions are, just look at what the vice president has said, he said.

If elected, Biden is likely to push for $3 trillion or more in stimulus spending on top of the $2 trillion Congress has already allocated far more ambitious than what Democrats secured in the 2009 stimulus, Kaufman noted to HuffPost.

Biden also supports a $2 trillion plan to boost clean energy; a nearly $800 billion initiative to make pre-K education universal and cut the cost of childcare in half for many families; and larger tax hikes on the wealthy than those Obama supported. He even, notably, supports a reversal of the bankruptcy law he and Warren battled over 15 years ago.

Kaufmans diagnosis matches an emerging consensus among Democrats on both sides of the partys internal divide: Biden is a party man, first and foremost, and hell move left or right alongside the rest of the party. Democratic voters and elected officials have unquestionably moved to the left on economics, guns, immigration and a host of other issues over the past 12 years. Those shifts are likely to matter far more than the positions Biden once advocated.

Income inequality was not a major driving factor for the Democratic Party in 2007, 2008, Kaufman said. Theres been a gigantic change in the Democratic Party since 2008.

Progressives big hope is that Biden has changed with it.

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Why Progressives Love Ted Kaufman, Joe Bidens Alter Ego - HuffPost

How progressives should handle the Black male voter problem – Yahoo! Voices

OPINION: Rather than worrying about Black men who may vote for Trump, progressives need to focus on turning out Black men and women in larger numbers.

At President Donald Trumps recent (and possibly COVID-19 infectious) in-person rally at the White House, Black supporters of Trump attempted to recruit significant numbers of African Americans for the audience.It is just one of other awkward attempts the Trump campaign has made to improve its racial optics.

Given the presidents history of racist rhetoric and conduct, however, polls do not reveal such tepid efforts are likely to convert any significant number of Black voters.

Read More: Why is the Trump campaign courting Black male voters?

Nonetheless, there has been recent anxious debate as to why 14% of Black men reported voting for Trump in 2016 given how narrowly Democratic presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, lost to Trump.

Rather than progressive candidates or campaigns wringing their hands about the likely small percentage of Black men who may vote for Trump in 2020, their focus should be upon turning out African American men and women in larger numbers period. As long-term voter turnout numbers reveal, Black men vote in greater numbers when Black women vote in greater numbers.

Treating the Black male voter problem in isolation is to ignore the fact that Black women are most often key organizers and mobilizers of the Black vote, including the votes of their brothers. Of course, there must be specific appeals targeted at the concerns and votes of Black men.

But scholars and activists of intersectionality warn us about the dangers of privileging the leadership and lives of Black men over those of Black women.

Read More: Megan Thee Stallion pens NY Times op-ed championing Black women: Were all we have

It is true that in 2016 there was a slight gender gap where greater numbers of Black men reported voting for and having more favorable views of Trump as compared to Black women (see the tables.) Still, pro-Trump Black women and men were a fraction of the Black vote; other than Black women, Black men were the least likely of all race-gender combinations to support Trump; and in general Black men and women held views that were small differences of degree and not in kind.

Story continues

Overwhelming majorities of African American women (80.1%) and Black men (71.1%) voted for Clinton for president or had favorable views of Clinton (78.2 % and 71.5%, respectively).

2016 CMPS: In the election of President, did you vote for

Black women

Black men

Difference

Hillary Clinton

80.1

71.1

9.0

Donald Trump

4.9

9.6

-4.7

2016 CMPS: Had favorable or somewhat favorable views of

Black women

Black men

Difference

Hillary Clinton

78.2

71.5

6.7

Donald Trump

10.2

17.3

-7.1

And it is unlikely that these slight differences can be explained by differences in ideology, given that roughly equal percentages of Black women and men ideologically identified as liberal (35.8% vs 36.26), moderate (37.1% vs. 39,6%), or conservative (15.3% vs 14.4%).No matter the labels, Black women are somewhat more likely than Black men to support left-leaning policy proposals such as universal healthcare or same-sex marriage.

While there is a presidential turnout gap between all race-gender combinations of women and men, the gap is most pronounced between Black women and men.In 1980, about 56% of Black women turned out to vote as compared to 51% of Black men.In 2016, while overall Black turnout declined to 59% (from 66% in 2012), the gap between Black women and men was 10% or 64% for the former as compared to 54% for the latter.

Read More: 6 states where low Black voter turnout helped Trump win in 2016

Simulations conducted by the Center for American Progress indicate that if Black turnout in 2016 matched that of 2012, African Americans could have been the critical margin of victory for Clinton in the critical Blue wall states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. Thus, the reason why in 2020 a bevy of groups from the Black Male Voter Project to Amplify Action are attempting to increase Black turnout especially among Black men.

Of course, there are structural barriers that may very specifically and directly impact Black mens rates of voter participation from felony disenfranchisement to GOP-led purges of inconsistent voters.While Black women for various reasons may be enthused by the Democratic vice-presidential candidacy of Sen. Kamala Harris(D-CA), we do not know if her candidacy will have an Obama effect with Black men even though Harris has made pitches directed at Black men in battleground states like Michigan.

There is an array of issues that speak to Black mens interests including questions of economic and occupational inequalities. But we do not know if Black men will be drawn to the economic and health policy platforms of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.

In the end, a multi-pronged approach that targets both Black women and men may be the most successful and progressive strategy.

Todd Shaw is an associate professor at the University of South Carolina, where he teaches political science and the African American studies.

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A progressive federal budget and how to pay for it – Maclean’s

Ed Broadbent and Brittany Andrew-Amofah: To 'build back better' Canada will need childcare, pharmacare, a green recoveryand new measures to sustain them

Ed Broadbent is the Chair of the Broadbent Institute. Brittany Andrew-Amofah is the Institutes Senior Policy & Research Analyst.

The recent Speech from the Throne made some significant federal commitments that could result in historic and positive changes in the lives of Canadians. Unless the upcoming budget includes concrete line items to make good on promises related to childcare, pharmacare, and other priorities, the optimism of progressives will be short-lived. As usual, its the details that will matter.

Given COVIDs grim impact on the economy and our lives, Canadians want to see ambition from their governments commensurate with the scale of the challenge at hand. Recent polling by the Broadbent Institute found that a majority of Canadians want a pandemic recovery that improves people lives and deals with climate change. Fifty-four per cent of Canadians want the government to implement bold new ideas, with nearly half of those respondents indicating an unwillingness to vote Liberal in the next election if the government fails to deliver. A lot is at stake.

Here are a few things that Canadians will be watching for in the upcoming budget:

The Throne Speech commitment to implementing a Canada-wide early learning and childcare system should be informed by Child Care Nows Affordable Child Care for ALL Plan. Phase 1 of the plan requires an initial investment of $2.5 billion in federal transfers to the provinces/territories and Indigenous communities to support the existing childcare sector. The governments promise to provide significant, long-term, sustained investment into an early learning and childcare system modelled after Quebecs system should bear in mind the importance of that provinces Educational Child Care Act, which enshrines the right for every child to have access to child care services.

As we approach the federal budget, a key indication that this policy will come to fruition nationally shouldnt just be funding investments or federal transfers, but also includes legislation that outlines the right to childcare.

The Throne Speech also indicated the governments plans to move forward on national, universal pharmacare. A recent Broadbent report noted that Canada is the only country with a single-payer health-care system that does not cover the costs of drugs in that system. The road-map to pharmacare has been clearly laid out by the Hoskins report, which called for an initial investment of $4.1 billion. The speech signaled the federal governments willingness to work with provinces and territories that are ready to move forward without delay on pharmacare. Given that the B.C. NDP has promised, in its platform, to lead the charge on the creation of national pharmacare, should the NDP win the current election the federal government should seek their cooperation in launching a national pharmacare program.

To build back better post-COVID, our efforts must be focused on transitioning towards a green economy and infrastructure program. The Task force for a Resilient Recovery, a project of the Ivey Foundation, outlined 5 bold moves for a green recovery, one that would reduce emissions, bolster electric power, protect our natural environment and see the creation of clean, competitive jobs. With a total investment of $55.4 billion over 5 years, this plan could provide the substance for the building back better slogan.

The creation of an early learning and childcare system, universal pharmacare and a green economic recovery, will require new progressive tax measures to implement and sustain them over time. A recent Broadbent Institute report laid out a pandemic fiscal plan to pay for an equal and just recovery. Included are key items such as a wealth tax, the closure of tax loopholes and cracking down on offshore tax havens. In light of COVID-19, an excess profits tax is also necessary to ensure that above-average company profits acquired throughout the pandemic should be used to benefit the public, rather than line the pockets of CEOs and shareholders.

The Throne Speech had some promising language. But the details of the upcoming budget are what really matter. As it constructs its fiscal plan, the Trudeau government should look to the policy suggestions noted above to provide a detailed and progressive approach to Canadas COVID recovery.

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A progressive federal budget and how to pay for it - Maclean's

Today’s protests are a preview of our progressive future | TheHill – The Hill

If you want to know what the United States would look like if progressives someday take over the federal government, just turn on your television set and watch the nightly chaos play out before your eyes in cities run by progressives.

Ted Wheeler, the mayor of Portland, is an interesting example of left-wing delusion. Every night for about two months, demonstrators have taken to the streets and run roughshod in the city while the police stand by and pretty much do nothing.

When President TrumpDonald John TrumpTrump says he will ban TikTok from operating in the US Trump's 2019 financial disclosure reveals revenue at Mar-a-Lago, other major clubs Treasury to conduct policy review of tax-exempt status for universities after Trump tweets MORE sent in federal law enforcement officers to protect federal buildings, the mayor was incensed. Why? Because, he says, the federal presence is actually leading to more violence and more vandalism.

Lets see if we have this right: Federal law enforcement officers not the vandals are the problem. Federal agents are the ones figuratively pouring gasoline on fires that the rioters literally started with their own gasoline.

Nuts doesnt do justice to what passes for the mayors reasoning.

In New York City, police on the Brooklyn Bridge came under attack and were beaten bloody with sticks and clubs. In Chicago, protesters who wanted to topple a Christopher Columbus statue threw rocks, frozen water bottles, fireworks and other projectiles at police, leaving nearly 50 officers injured, including one with a broken eye socket. In Seattle, where a mob had taken over a downtown section of the city, protesters recently went on a rampage and smashed storefront windows and damaged the municipal courthouse.

In San Francisco, the progressive district attorney has said he wont prosecute cases involving so-called quality-of-life crimes. Crimes such as public camping, offering or soliciting sex, public urination, blocking a sidewalk, etc., should not and will not be prosecuted, the D.A. said after his election.

The coronavirus pandemic is bad enough. Throw in the daily destruction at the hands of the mobs, and one of the things that made America great lively, vital, dynamic U.S. cities is suffering a serious blow. Lets hope its not a fatal blow.

Progressives, as I say, are running these cities. Theyre the ones who arent doing much to end the violence and destruction. Theyre the ones reciting the mantra that most of the demonstrations are peaceful.

If progressive figures such as Sen. Bernie SandersBernie SandersVermont has a chance to show how bipartisanship can tackle systemic racism The Hill's Morning Report - Presented by Facebook - At loggerheads, Congress, White House to let jobless payout lapse Sanders calls for the end of the filibuster following Obama's remarks MORE (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-CortezAlexandria Ocasio-CortezTrump holds mini-rally at Florida airport Overnight Defense: House passes 5B Pentagon spending bill as part of broader package | One dead, eight missing after Marine Corps training accident | White House says Trump stands by controversial nominee House approves amendments to rein in federal forces in cities MORE (D-N.Y.) have condemned the violence and destruction, if theyre as mad as hell about whats going on, I guess I missed it.

As for former Vice President Joe BidenJoe BidenHillicon Valley: Three arrested in Twitter hack | Trump pushes to break up TikTok | House approves 0M for election security Wisconsin Republicans raise questions about death of Black Trump supporter Trump holds mini-rally at Florida airport MORE, the Democratic Partys expected presidential candidate, heres what he has to say about the urban chaos: Our freedom to speak is the cherished knowledge that lives inside every American. We will not allow any president to quiet our voice.

And what about all those cities where people are not protesting peacefully and respectfully? Is it okay to send federal troops into those places to stop the destruction? Maybe Joe Biden will have to answer that at one of the debates assuming (and this is a big assumption) one of the journalists acting as debate panelists will ask him about it.

How this will play out in the November election is still unknown. At the moment, voters seem to be more concerned about the coronavirus than the protesters. But that can change over the next three months.

By November there might be enough Americans, frustrated and unhappy with the chaos in the streets, to get Trump off the mat, which is where the polls now have him. Well know soon enough.

But at some future point, if not in November, progressives likely will elect a president and a Congress and effectively take over the federal government. Its bound to happen sooner or later.

Progressives already have taken over a large chunk of American culture our major news outlets, Hollywood movie studios, TV sitcoms, some of our top colleges. Theyre the ones cheering on the cancel culture where you can lose your job for having an unacceptable opinion. And when theyre in charge of the federal government, the future will look a lot like the present the one were watching on TV every day.

But dont worry. As the progressive mayors of our once-great cities and the likely Democratic candidate for president are all telling us, its just a case of people demanding change peacefully and respectfully.

Just one question: Where?

Bernard Goldberg, an Emmy and an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University award-winning writer and journalist, is a correspondent with HBOs Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel. He previously worked as a reporter for CBS News and as an analyst for Fox News. He is the author of five books and publishes exclusive weekly columns, audio commentaries and Q&As on his Patreon page. Follow him on Twitter @BernardGoldberg.

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Today's protests are a preview of our progressive future | TheHill - The Hill

Progressive Groups To Congress: Election Funds Non-Negotiable in Next Relief Bill – Common Dreams

WASHINGTON - On Monday, August 3, Stand Up Americas Sean Eldridge will host a press call with Fair Fight Action Founder Stacey Abrams and Indivisible Co-Founder and Co-Executive Director Leah Greenberg to demand that election funding be a non-negotiable part of the final coronavirus relief package.

This week, Senate Republicans drew massive backlash for failing to include any election assistance in their plan even after House Democrats passed the HEROES Act with $3.6 billion in funding for the states ten weeks ago. As Congress continues negotiating into next week, the speakers will demand that Republicans work with Democrats in both chambers to allocate more federal funds for states to implement safe, fair, and accessible elections this fall.

Earlier this month, Stand Up America, Indivisible, and Fair Fight Action led a coalition of voting rights groups and progressive organizations in calling on the Senate to end congressional recess early and come back to approve $3.6 billion in election assistance funds.

WHAT:Progressives Call Out Senate GOP On Election Funding

WHEN:Monday, August 3, at 11:00 AM EDT

WHO:Stacey Abrams, Founder, Fair Fight ActionSean Eldridge, Founder and President, Stand Up AmericaLeah Greenberg, Co-Founder and Co-Executive Director, Indivisible

RSVP:Members of the media interested in joining the call should RSVP to Ryan Thomas at ryan@standupamerica.com.

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Progressive Groups To Congress: Election Funds Non-Negotiable in Next Relief Bill - Common Dreams