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Boudin eliminated cash bail and restricted pretrial detention in San Francisco. He also reaffirmed a flawed quest to predict who should be jailed for what they might do.

Last week, San Franciscos newly elected district attorney, Chesa Boudin, released his offices new bail policy. Following his campaign promise, the new policy forbids prosecutors from requesting money bail under any circumstances. In addition, it allows them to request pretrial jail time only for people who face certain violent charges and who prosecutors believe pose a high risk of violence or flight.

With these provisions, Boudin has adopted what is easily the most progressive prosecutor bail policy in the country. His reforms are more comprehensive and transparent than those adopted by other leading progressive prosecutors, such as Bostons Rachael Rollins and Philadelphias Larry Krasner, let alone those of DAs elsewhere in the country.

But the policy also reveals how tough-on-crime norms limit the contemporary vision of progressive prosecution. Boudins office will continue the practice of assessing risk to justify incarcerating legally innocent people for their future crimes. It has defended this approach with unproven appeals to public safety and predictive accuracy, that in a prior era of bail reform would have been seen as an intrusion on fundamental civil rights.

For decades, activists and some legal scholars have denounced the practice of incarcerating people pretrial as a violation of the presumption of innocence, unlikely to improve public safety, destructive to communities, and racially discriminatory. Awaiting trial from a jail cell, people suffer worse case outcomes and risk losing their jobs, their homes, and custody of their children.

Money bail has been the primary mechanism for pretrial incarceration: A judge conditions the release of a person upon the person posting a money bond, often on the recommendation of the prosecutor. Amounts are often set beyond what the person can afford. On any given day in the United States, hundreds of thousands of people are detained pretrial because they are unable to post bail.

In recent years, some progressives have won DA elections on promises to transform this bail system. Boudin, Krasner, and Rollins have released three of the most emblematic prosecutor policies on the issue so far. Each expands the circumstances under which people not yet convicted of a crime will be released from jail without financial conditions.

Only Boudins reform outright eliminates money bail, though.

According to the policy he set, prosecutors in his office can never request money bail, and they can never defend someones incarceration on money bail. Thats a big shift in policy that should enable many people to avoid jail pretrial.

On the other side of the country, prosecutors in Rollins office can still request money bail in situations where they believe there is a flight risk. In Philadelphia, Krasners prosecutors face looser restrictions. Krasner instructed his prosecutors to not request cash bail for certain low-level offenses (misdemeanors and some felonies classified as nonviolent). Otherwise, prosecutors there are free to request money bail.

So even in jurisdictions with progressive prosecutors, incarceration on unaffordable money bonds continues to be a problem. Through extensive court-watching efforts, the Philadelphia Bail Fund has found that, although the pretrial jail population has declined, Krasners prosecutors continue to request unaffordable bail amounts that result in pretrial incarceration, as The Appeal reported in the summer of 2019.

By contrast, prosecutors in San Francisco will no longer be able to ask judges to detain people by imposing financial conditions on their release, at least if Boudins directive is properly implemented. In San Francisco, peoples freedom will not depend on their ability to post bail.

The second aspect of Boudins policy is that it limits when someone can be detained pretrial. If a jurisdiction only eliminates money bail, theres always the risk that, instead of facilitating peoples release, courts and prosecutors will turn to other methods of pretrial incarceration. This is the trade-off that critics say was made with Californias 2018 bail reform law (Senate Bill 10), which is currently pending a 2020 public referendum.

That is because money bail is not the only mechanism for jailing people pretrial. In many states, including California, a judge often acting on a prosecutors recommendation can determine that a person is dangerous or is a flight risk and order that person to be jailed until the criminal case is over.

Boudins policy restricts when this can happen. It sets a presumption against it, and enables prosecutors to recommend pretrial detention only for people facing charges for certain violent felonies. And they can do that only if the prosecutor is convinced that the person has a substantial likelihood of committing great bodily harm or fleeing the jurisdiction if released. These are narrower circumstances than SB 10 would allow. They are also somewhat narrower than Rollinss policy, which enables prosecutors to request pretrial incarceration for all statutorily eligible offenses in Massachusetts mostly violent felonies and gun charges if there is a clear safety risk to an identifiable victim or witness.

But in defining the circumstances where pretrial detention ought not to occur, Boudin, like Rollins and supporters of SB 10, is also endorsing the premise that it sometimes should.

These policies affirm that pretrial incarceration is justified based on predictions of future dangerousness. This conception of pretrial justice reflects the limits not just of particular policies but of the current horizon of progressive prosecution. Rollinss office has made use of such dangerousness holds, The Appeal reported in October, though she has requested these hearings with significantly less frequency than other Massachusetts DAs who use reform rhetoric.

Pretrial incarceration based on dangerousness assessments, a policy first proposed as legislation by the Nixon administration, swept the country in the 1970s and 80s. It permitted courts, for the first time in American history, to legally jail people awaiting trial based on a public safety rationale. These new laws were a turn away from the conclusions of the Johnson administrations seminal 1967 report The Challenge of Crime in a Free Society, which had considered pretrial detention as way to reform bail but had determined that it might well create more of a problem than the imposition of money bail, in the light of the difficulty of predicting dangerousness.

In a 1987 opinion written by Chief Justice William Rehnquist, the Supreme Court found the federal governments new preventive detention scheme to be constitutionally permissible. In dissent, Justice Thurgood Marshall chastised the court for disregard[ing] basic principles of justice. He warned of the coercive power of authority to imprison upon prediction and the dangers which the almost inevitable abuses pose to the cherished liberties of a free society.

Boudins bail policy sides with Nixon and Rehnquist over Johnson and Marshall. The policy assumes that prediction can save us from the harms of pretrial incarceration.

Like recent reforms around the country, the plan is to develop better ways to identify the right people to detain pretrial. The press release accompanying Boudins policy promises that the office will release people who are safe and detain those who pose a serious threat to public safety.

But whether that determination is made through prosecutors judgment or actuarial risk assessment tools, the project cannot succeed. Neither prosecutors nor algorithms can know in advance who will commit violent crime.

It turns out that predicting violence is really hard. The information prosecutors see and the judgments they make are racially skewed. And although risk assessment tools are often touted as a solution to implicit bias, a perspective that the press release endorses by evoking the equitable decisions born of objective data, the data used to build actuarial assessments is itself deeply flawed and biased. Even the best actuarial risk assessments predictions of pretrial violence are frighteningly poor. Data from jurisdictions that use the Public Safety Assessment (PSA), a risk assessment tool that Boudins policy includes as a factor in bail decisions, show that 86 to 99 percent of the people that the algorithm flags for potential pretrial violence will not get arrested for a violent crime if released. Arnold Ventures, the company behind the PSA tool, has cautioned that the tool should not be used as the basis for detaining someone. Largely because pretrial violence is so rare, it is also hard to predict.

Even high-risk people are unlikely to commit a violent crime while awaiting trial, so a preventive detention system involves incarcerating thousands of legally innocent people for what a fraction of people might do. The fallout of these policies disproportionately impacts poor communities and communities of color especially Black communities.

Boudin himself has researched the shortcomings of risk assessment tools. In a paper released last week, he and his co-authors show that, by overcharging cases, prosecutors can inflate a defendants risk score, leading to a recommendation for a harsher pretrial outcome, even if the charges are eventually dropped. Such outputs are a far cry from the objective data promised by his office press release.

Boudins policy prevents prosecutors from recommending pretrial detention without supervisor approval, in an effort to foster the presumption against it. But this only moves the problems with making reliable predictions up the hierarchy. Acknowledging the gravity of pretrial incarceration does not by itself make the decisions sounder.

By eliminating financial conditions for release and restricting when prosecutors can request to jail people pretrial, Boudin took more progressive action on bail policy than his contemporaries.

But Boudins policy also upholds a pretrial incarceration scheme justified by tough-on-crime conventions. Todays bail policies expect prosecutors and algorithms to know in advance who will commit crimes and who wont. But no one can know that. At its core, a preventive detention scheme endorses the view that with good enough math or intuition we can overcome the moral stain of incarcerating people not for what they have done but for what they might do.

Colin Doyle is a staff attorney at the Criminal Justice Policy Program at Harvard Law School. He works on bail and pretrial reform across the country at the local and state levels.

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Chesa Boudin's New Bail Policy is Nation's Most Progressive. It Also Reveals Persistence of Tough-on-Crime Norms. - The Appeal

Sanders and Warren, campaigning on promises to enact some form of Medicare for All, free public college, and a wealth tax, have delighted the leftmost segment of the Democratic base. Warren, with her steady stream of ambitious policy plans, has drawn consistently massive crowds that happily chant wonky slogans. Sanders raised $34.5 million in the last three months of 2019far more money than any other presidential candidate. And more than 26,000 people attended Sanderss October rally with Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, making it the largest event held by any Democratic presidential candidate this cycle.

Bidens rallies are consistently much less well attended. And although crowd size is not necessarily predictive of electoral success, it could indicate whether a candidate has a sizable pool of enthusiastic volunteers to draw from in the general election. A Biden nomination would trigger a huge deflation in enthusiasm, and a shrinking of that volunteer pool, progressives argue. If a candidate that gets selected doesnt have the type of energy and excitement from the troopsthe people who give small dollars, the people who phone bank, who show up to ralliesit will be harder said Rashad Robinson, the president of the racial-justice organization Color of Change.

Read: The kumbaya candidate

For many Democrats, that warning triggers an unpleasant flashback to 2016. Sanders, after losing the primary, was late to endorse Hillary Clinton. At least 20 percent of the people who voted for Sanders in the primary did not vote for Clinton in the general election against Trump, according to one study. But every progressive organizer and leader I talked with for this story told me a variation of the same thing: Theyre not concerned that Americans will choose Trump over Biden. Theyre worried that, absent a Democratic candidate who excites them, many Americans might not vote at all.

Democrats have two theories of how to win the 2020 presidential election: persuasion versus turnout. Advocates of the former, generally moderates, believe that Clinton lost to Trump mostly because she failed to convince enough moderate voters in swing states. But progressives say that an emphasis on turning nonvoters into voters is more important for a Democratic victory in November. They blame Clintons loss on failing to inspire and mobilize Americans: An estimated 4.4 million people who voted for Barack Obama did not vote in 2016.

This kind of mobilization strategy relies heavily on local canvassing, and some of the activists involved with grassroots progressive groups told me that they have serious concerns about being able to mobilize volunteers for Biden. Jackie Dempsey, a 53-year-old member of the Forest Hills, Pennsylvania, chapter of Indivisible, a progressive group, intends to campaign for Biden just as vigorously as she would for any other nominee. But when Dempsey asked other members of the group what theyd do if Biden was the Democratic nominee, she received a range of responses: Some people said, Ill vote for him but I wont work for him, Dempsey told me. Some people said, Ill work around him. [Others said,] Ill make sure Democrats are registered, but I wont even vote for him.

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Progressives Warn of a Great Deflation - The Atlantic

When left-wing Democrats push for universal benefits and expansive new policies, they do so with a theory of politics in mind. It goes like this: The reason to fight for debt-free college or Medicare for all isnt just to improve life for Americans, but to build new ground for progressive political activity. New programs create new constituencies, and new programs with broad benefits can give more Americans a stake in the expansion and preservation of the welfare state. Conservatives know this. Thats why theyve fought so hard to block or undermine even modest new programs.

Take the Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act, which stands as the latest proof of the truth of that progressive theory.

In its original form, the expansion relied on a significant bit of legislative coercion. If states adopted it and expanded Medicaid eligibility to up to 138 percent of the federal poverty line for virtually every adult the federal government would bear 100 percent of the cost for the first three years, phasing down to 90 percent of the cost over time. But if states refused, they wouldnt just lose this new funding they would lose all existing federal Medicaid funds.

It was an offer states couldnt refuse, which for Chief Justice John Roberts made it unconstitutional. In his opinion for the majority in NFIB v. Sebelius, he invalidated the penalty. States could refuse the expansion without losing all Medicaid funding. A program intended to expand health insurance in every state was now voluntary.

By the time President Barack Obama left office in January 2017, 32 states and the District of Columbia had expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. The holdouts were states where Republicans held enough power to either reject the expansion or keep a Democratic governor from implementing the program. Future prospects looked poor. During the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump had promised to repeal Obamacare. With Republican majorities in the House and Senate, the incoming president was poised to do just that.

But his plans unraveled. The legislative effort to torch Obamacare ended in failure, sunk by key Republican defections (John McCain voted no in a critical, late night vote) and an intense, nationwide public outcry centering on the Medicaid expansion. In Kentucky, where in 2014 the states Democratic governor Steve Beshear expanded Medicaid, voters turned out to defend the program, protesting against the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, and other Republican lawmakers. Republican lawmakers faced similar protests in Pennsylvania and West Virginia, as well as at the Capitol itself.

Medicaid also fueled an offensive drive. In 2015, Louisiana Democrats ran on Medicaid and won the governors mansion. In 2017, Virginia Democrats placed the Medicaid expansion at the center of their campaign and swept the ballot, winning every statewide office and fighting Republicans nearly to a tie in the state legislature.

Maine voters approved the Medicaid expansion in a 2017 ballot initiative, but the Republican governor, Paul LePage, refused to implement it. In her 2018 campaign to succeed LePage, the Democratic candidate, Janet Mills, pledged to implement the expansion on her first day in office. She won and immediately followed through. And last year, the fight to protect or expand Medicaid drove Democratic victories in Louisiana (where incumbent governor John Bel Edwards won re-election), Kentucky (where the Democratic candidate Andy Beshear unseated the incumbent Republican governor, Matt Bevin) and Virginia (where Democrats won a majority in the state legislature for the first time since 1993).

Medicaid also helped Kansas Democrats win a 2018 election for governor, and on Thursday the states Democratic governor, Laura Kelly, and its Republican State Senate leader, Jim Denning, announced the details of their compromise to expand the program. The state will implement the expansion, covering up to 150,000 additional Kansans. In return, Republicans will get a pilot program meant to reduce private health insurance premiums and keep people from dropping existing insurance and signing up for Medicaid, paid for an increase in the state cigarette tax by a $1 per pack. The proposal would also allow the state to charge recipients a premium of up to $25 per individual and $100 per family. If and when it becomes law, Kansas will become the 37th state to expand its Medicaid program.

Major new programs are difficult to pass. The struggle to make them happen is almost always divisive. But if you fight that fight and win, then in addition to passing the program, youve also laid groundwork for future political victories. Despite being undermined by the Supreme Court, the Medicaid expansion has found a toehold in American politics, producing a powerful constituency for itself.

The social safety net depends on public support to survive. And one way to generate that support is to make it as strong and expansive as possible, with the most ambitious policies you can bring to fruition. Conservatives understand this in their bones. As Democrats debate their choices and decide on a presidential nominee, they should also keep this lesson uppermost in their minds.

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Progressives Are the Real Pragmatists - The New York Times

In the Colorado tax code, it pays to be rich and its expensive to be poor.

For decades now, thats been the stark takeaway buried inside the 286-page report on Colorados tax system the state Department of Revenue releases every two years: The less you make, the more you spend on taxes, as a percentage of your income.

But despite growing public frustration over income inequality and the states rising cost of living, the tax disparities apparent in Colorados law have drawn little political attention.

That is, until now. After years of defeats at the ballot box, progressive advocates believe theyve landed on a tax plan that can resonate with Colorado voters: making the rich pick up more of the bill.

The Colorado Fiscal Institute in December introduced 35 possible ballot proposals that would advance the idea and ask voters to re-establish a graduated income tax in the state for the first time in more than 30 years. Structured like the federal income tax, graduated or progressive state tax brackets would levy higher tax rates based on how much money residents make.

As written, the proposals could raise billions of dollars for things like higher education, transportation and teacher pay a familiar wish list at the state Capitol. But they would also do something else that some progressives are starting to view as just as important as generating money for public services: chip away at the growing gap between the wealthy and everyone else.

Lets not forget why were trying to raise revenue in the first place, said Scott Wasserman, president of the Bell Policy Center, a progressive think tank. Were trying to raise more revenue so we can ease the cost pressures on an ever-shrinking middle class.

If our challenge is inequality and our challenge is a shrinking middle class thats wrestling with costs that used to be lower because of greater public investment, why not have a policy thats related to that? he asked.

Advocates havent ironed out the details of what would appear on the 2020 ballot, but eliminating the state constitutions prohibition on graduated tax rates is expected to be a top priority.

Complicating matters for the left is Democratic Gov. Jared Polis ongoing support for across-the-board income tax cuts, which many progressives view as a non-starter. Polis and state lawmakers are working separately on legislative tax changes that could be accomplished without voter approval. But it remains to be seen whether they will find common ground in the upcoming session.

If they dont, and Polis doesnt endorse a ballot measure in November, it could be difficult to overcome Colorados longstanding resistance to taxes.

I think the more that theyve lost, the more its like, What dont they understand about fixing the roads or increasing dollars to classrooms without raising taxes? said Michael Fields, the executive director of Colorado Rising State Action, a conservative political group. Theyre getting hurt more each time that theyre trying it.

The push comes at a time of skyrocketing income inequality nationwide, drawing scrutiny not just from the political left that supports Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, but also from economists across the political spectrum and the Federal Reserve.

By one analysis, the wealthiest 1% of Americans captured a staggering 42% of all the income growth in the country between 2009 and 2015, and 59% of the income growth between 1973 and 2007. For context, from 1945 to 1973, the richest 1% accounted for just 5% of the nations income growth, according to the analysis by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.

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Against this backdrop, taxing the rich has become a popular idea that crosses party lines. In Gallup polls, upwards of 60% of Americans consistently say higher-income people pay too little in taxes, and a 2019 Fox News poll found that 65% support raising taxes on millionaires. Democratic presidential candidates have seized on the issue, floating sweeping rewrites of federal tax policy that include plans to tax wealth, Wall Street transactions and large corporations.

In Colorado, the wealthiest 1% claimed 22% of the states income growth from 2009 to 2015, according to the EPI report. But the newfound focus on income inequality marks a shift for the Colorado political left, which has spent much of the past decade focused on raising revenue for public services even when the costs would fall disproportionately on the poor and middle class.

Over the years, Colorado Democrats have backed plans to raise sales taxes, fees and sin taxes, all of which have a tendency to squeeze middle- and lower-income wallets more so than the wealthy. Even with voters rejecting most statewide tax hikes, Colorados tax code has become more regressive in recent years, meaning people who earn less pay higher shares of their income to the government.

This can at least partly be attributed to the Taxpayers Bill of Rights, the constitutional amendment that limits state spending and requires voter consent for new taxes. The status quo during the TABOR era has effectively pitted two Democratic goals against one another. To fund additional public services, state government needs more revenue. But one of the few ways lawmakers can raise revenue in Colorado without voter approval is through fees, which tend to be regressive.

Since the measure was adopted in 1992, fees have exploded, while state income taxes have fallen. And as state funding was squeezed, many local governments turned to sales taxes of their own to pay for neglected public services like transportation.

In 2015, the last year state income tax data was available, the poorest Coloradans spent 19% of their income on state and local taxes and fees, while the wealthiest paid 7%. That same year, those making under $15,000 paid 2.7 times the effective tax rate of those making more than $100,000, up from 2.5 times in 2014.

The biggest gap between the rich and the poor is at the local level, largely due to the impact of sales taxes. But the inequality in state taxes reveals something more troubling the extent to which tax breaks for the wealthy play a role.

Overall, Colorados state taxes lean regressive, but the disproportionate burden on the poor is neutralized somewhat by the state income tax. Colorado has a flat income tax of 4.63%, meaning everyone should theoretically pay the same rate regardless of their income. But low-to-moderate income people qualify for certain tax breaks like the Earned Income Tax Credit that higher income people dont, reducing their effective tax rate.

(The income tax rate for 2019 is temporarily lowered to 4.5% because of tax revenue that exceeded the TABOR caps.)

However, its notable what happens at the highest income levels: Those making more than $200,000 actually pay lower effective income tax rates, on average, than households that make between $100,000 and $200,000. The reason: higher-income people qualify for more tax breaks than much of the middle class, such as the deduction for pass-through business income and a number of credits for qualifying investments..

Wasserman believes theres an obvious solution to address tax fairness and income inequality and boost funding to public services in one fell swoop: Tax the wealthy at higher rates, as most other states and the federal government do. And, he believes this tactic could have more success than last years failed attempt to eliminate taxpayer refunds owed under TABOR.

Were not trying to raise taxes for the folks for whom a $60 TABOR rebate is a significant amount of money, Wasserman said. Were talking about the upper 10% of Coloradans and asking for a modest increase in the share they pay.

Colorado had a graduated income tax from 1937 until 1987, with a top rate as high as 10% at one point. But the legislature switched to a flat tax in the 1980s, and then in 1992, the adoption of TABOR prohibited lawmakers from switching back.

The Colorado Fiscal Institute has proposed three new tax brackets that would raise taxes incrementally on joint filers making more than $250,000 or individuals making more than $187,500. It includes a top tax rate of 9.85% on taxable income above $1 million.

Wasserman said hes also open to cutting taxes on lower incomes as part of the new brackets, but none of the 35 initial proposals would do so.

In public polling, how you define wealthy matters a lot when determining whether such an idea would win public support. While 65% of respondents in the Fox News poll support raising taxes on millionaires, support drops to 44% for those making more than $250,000.

Critics believe installing graduated income tax brackets in Colorado would lead to tax hikes for working families, in addition to the very rich. What most people consider middle class families are going to see their taxes go up, said Fields, the conservative advocate.

In its proposals, the Colorado Fiscal Institute states that a fair and just tax code would have all taxpayers paying similar percentages of their income in total taxes.

But whats fair depends greatly on your point of view. While the rich pay lower effective tax rates that is, the total percentage of their income that is paid to the government they still pay significantly more taxes on average if you just look at raw dollars spent.

In 2015, only 6.8% of households made more than $200,000, but contributed 33% of total state and local taxes, according to the state tax report.

I dont think that the current system is unfair at all, Fields says. Instead, he credits the states flat tax with attracting wealthy residents and good-paying jobs that have helped Colorados economy thrive.

If you think that tax rates do impact behavior, then you have to think if you raise taxes youre going to impact that (economic) activity, Fields said. We want to keep the people who are well off in our state.

A look around the region shows a wide range of approaches when it comes to taxes. Six of 11 nearby states have graduated income taxes, with the highest rates ranging from 4.54% in Arizona to 12.3% in California, according to the Federation of Tax Administrators. Only Utah has a flat tax, at 4.95%, which is slightly higher than Colorado. Nevada, Washington and Wyoming have no state income tax.

But comparing tax rates alone can be misleading. Colorado, for instance, is tied with New Mexico for the most generous standard deductions, meaning people here pay taxes on a smaller share of their income than most surrounding states. And income taxes are just one piece of the puzzle. Colorado has among the lowest property taxes in the country, according to the conservative Tax Foundation, and anyone weighing a move for tax reasons would likely take factors like that into account.

More progressive taxes arent a panacea for income inequality, either. With a top rate of 12.3%, plus a 1% millionaire tax, California has the most progressive tax code in the country, according to the left-leaning Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. It is also the seventh most unequal, with the wealthiest 1% making 30 times the average income of the other 99%, according to EPI. (Colorado ranks 16th in progressiveness and 20th in inequality, by the same metrics, with the wealthiest 1% earning around $1.3 million on average. Thats 21 times more income than the bottom 99% make on average.)

The ballot isnt the only option for tax reform.

In an op-ed published in The Colorado Sun, Polis called on lawmakers in both parties to work with him on making permanent a temporary income tax cut triggered this year by TABOR.

It is my hope that we can reduce the special interest tax subsidies that force all Coloradans to pay an artificially high income tax rate, and provide additional income tax relief to all individuals and businesses in Colorado, he wrote.

To pay for it, Polis wants to target certain special interest tax breaks, including the 20% federal deduction for pass-through income that was enacted in President Donald Trumps 2017 tax bill. The beneficiaries include sole proprietorships, partnerships and S corporations that are taxed through their owners individual income tax returns. Examples include legal, accounting and consulting firms as well as many hedge funds and private equity firms. It also benefits many self-employed Americans that make much less.

Getting rid of it would make the tax code more progressive, because the benefits are skewed to higher incomes. But to many in Polis own party, using it to pay for an across-the-board tax cut is the wrong approach.

State Rep. Emily Sirota, a Denver Democrat, is working with Sen. Julie Gonzales on a bill to eliminate the Trump tax break for pass-through income, but wants to use the money to expand two tax breaks that are targeted to the poor and middle class: the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Care Tax Credit.

What Sen. Gonzales and I are aiming to do is to make our tax code fairer in Colorado, so that we are delivering the economic relief to those who actually need it, Sirota said. The way we see this philosophically is why should we be treating wage earners income different than (business) owners income? This is not a tax policy that Colorado asked for or passed.

Because they wouldnt raise taxes overall, both Polis and Sirotas efforts could likely be done without voter approval, sidestepping the single biggest hurdle to graduated tax brackets.

To the political right, the lefts newest tax push is likely to fail at the ballot for one of the same reasons past ones have: Voters simply dont trust the state to spend the money wisely. Election after election, Coloradans have approved local tax hikes and rejected statewide ones, even when theyre earmarked for the same sorts of services, like schools or roads.

Wasserman, though, believes a tax measure will fare better with the 2020 electorate than the low-turnout 2019 contest that elected to keep TABOR refunds by defeating Proposition CC. For one thing, taxes would go up on less than 10% of earners, as opposed to Prop. CC, which sought to eliminate refunds for everyone. And, it sidesteps an even bigger challenge that Prop. CC and other efforts have faced: the question for voters is a lot simpler.

I think one of the benefits of talking about a graduated income tax is were not in TABOR-land, Wasserman said. When we get stuck in TABOR-land it becomes this very technical, political, charged, obscure conversation that most Coloradans feel very lost in.

The new conversation may be easier to digest. But it should also sound familiar: Whether Colorado voters think the state needs more money to spend.

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Colorado progressives have a new target in their pursuit of a tax overhaul: the rich. Here's why. - The Colorado Sun

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Congressman Ben McAdams (left) stands with U.S. Labor Secretary Tom Perez (Courtesy Wikimedia Commons)

Congressman Ben McAdams (left) stands with U.S. Labor Secretary Tom Perez (Courtesy Wikimedia Commons)

Congressman Ben McAdams (left) stands with U.S. Labor Secretary Tom Perez (Courtesy Wikimedia Commons)

Many centrist Democrats are facing progressive challengers in 2020, inspired by the wins of progressives such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rep. Rashida Tlaib and Rep. Ilhan Omar. Rep. Ben McAdams has attracted a challenge from progressive Daniel Beckstrand, a first-time political candidate. I applaud the guts it takes to run for any office, but Beckstrands campaign has highlighted the need for progressives to focus on local positions rather than solely looking to coveted high-profile races, especially when it may undermine national progress.

While I am all for challenging incumbents who arent the right fit for their districts, I am wary of challenging a moderate Democrat like Ben McAdams in such a conservative district. McAdams is the closest thing to representation that liberal-leaning Utahns have had since 2015. Primary opponents should challenge incumbents who are not representing their constituents well, like in the case of Ocasio-Cortezs challenge against former Rep. Joe Crowley. McAdams represents a district that leans Republican by 13% Ocasio-Cortezs district leans Democratic by 29%, Omars district leans Democratic by 26% and Tlaibs district leans Democratic by 39%. For a district as conservative as Utahs fourth, a moderate Democrat like McAdams is the best ideological fit for his constituents.

In Ocasio-Cortez, Talib and Omars districts, the primary rather than the general election is going to effectively decide the districts next member of Congress. Their elections are unlike McAdams 2018 election, when he barely defeated incumbent Mia Love in the general election. Considering the partisan leanings of the 4th District, it is too risky to primary McAdams. It was hard enough to get a moderate Democrat elected in Utah. Just imagine the difficulty of electing a less-experienced, more progressive Democrat to such a conservative seat

I dont agree with McAdams on everything, but I do agree with him on some of the things most important to me. McAdams is the only member of Utahs current Congressional delegation who truly advocates for the rights of LGBT+ Utahns. As a gay man who grew up in Utah, it matters to me that McAdams cosponsored and voted in favor of the Equality Act and that the Human Rights Campaign supported his election. He is the only member of Utahs congressional delegation who has ever advocated for my rights as a gay Utahn. It is important that Utahs voices in Congress advocate on behalf of all of their constituents. I am not willing to give up on a representative who passes some things I want when the alternative is another Republican representative who will never fight for the issues important to me.

Some of the best ways to bring change are local, where many laws can have the greatest effect on peoples daily lives such as the tax reform bill that has become so unpopular in recent weeks. While some might argue that if progressives cant win large races they would not be able to win locally, that is entirely untrue.

Salt Lake County has progressive local representation with Salt Lake County Councilmember Shireen Ghorbani. She sought two different positions before successfully winning her current office. First, she ran to unseat Rep. Chris Stewart. She was more than qualified to represent Utahs 2nd Congressional District, but Ghorbani was unable to win as a progressive in a deeply conservative district. As a county council member, she has been able to fight for progressive goals and continues to be a great advocate for her constituents. For example, Ghorbani was able to work with her fellow council members to commit Salt Lake County to the goal of using net-100% renewable energy by 2030. This would not have been had been possible she tried to pass a similar bill in Congress. Ghorbanis track record shows that progressives can win locally, and their actions can make a great difference in their community.

Utahns are governed by a state legislature with a Republican supermajority. In the long-term, this supermajority can and should be broken. In 2018 Utah Democrats held on to their seats and flipped a fair amount in the process. Utah Republicans did not flip a single seat. On top of these losses for conservatives, Utahns voted in support of three progressive ballot initiatives. Conservative ideas do not always have a death grip on Utah politics like it sometimes seems. Progressive legislation can pass in Utah. But first, we need to elect more progressives to the offices that can propose laws.

Progressives in red states, like Beckstrand, should focus on offices in city, county and state government. One of the points in Beckstrands policy platform is raising educators wages, something most often addressed at the state and municipal levels rather than the national level. Beckstrand could most effectively pursue his policy solutions by running for state or local office in Utah instead of aiming for a seat in DC.

There has been a lack of change coming out of DC for a while now. Progressives who have been clamoring for change should not solely focus on trying to overcome Republican and moderate Democrat congressional majorities. First, they should focus on creating grassroots community coalitions that work to make a tangible change for the constituents they wish to represent.

Progressives have always used grassroots methods to bring power to the people. If progressives build support locally, they can move the political needle to the left and eventually surpass city, county and state offices to reach the national government. Making changes in your own community will have a far greater impact on Utah than running to join a hyper-partisan, gridlocked Congress. Change has never come overnight. It has always been slow at coming, but that doesnt mean there is no hope for a progressive future. All progressives, including me, need to start building the community we wish to see.

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See the article here:
Reese: Progressives Need to Think Local Before Taking On Moderates Like McAdams - Daily Utah Chronicle