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THE BATTLE FOR THE PROGRESSIVES Sen. Ed Markey is touting an endorsement from Progressive Mass this morning, a statewide group that says 96 percent of its members prefer him to Rep. Joe Kennedy III.

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Beyond being a boost for Markey, the progressive endorsement illustrates a point of tension between Markey and Kennedy in the Senate primary. Their supporters and staffers often go back-and-forth over which of the two Democrats is more progressive.

Markeys supporters insist the incumbent is more progressive, pointing to his work on the Green New Deal in particular, and cast Kennedy as a moderate. Kennedys campaign often pushes back.

Just objectively not true, Kennedy spokesperson Emily Kaufman wrote on Twitter in March, pointing to an analysis of Kennedy's voting record by the database ProgressivePunch. And the campaign has taken it a step further, pointing out Markeys past positions on the Iraq War and the 1994 crime bill. He aint no Bernie, Kaufman wrote of Markey.

For Progressive Massachusetts, the endorsement boiled down to Markey being earlier to progressive issues like Medicare for All, said member Jonathan Cohn. You want to have people you can count on to be with you, rather than people that you spend a lot of time pressuring, Cohn said.

Despite the battle for the progressive title, its not a guarantee that primary voters will even want a progressive candidate when they cast ballots in September. When it comes to Medicare for All, for example, Democratic voters in Massachusetts arent exactly sold. Only 28 percent of likely Democratic presidential primary voters said they preferred that health care option, according to a WBUR poll from the fall.

And Massachusetts voters rejected progressive candidates on Super Tuesday. Former Vice President Joe Biden won the Democratic primary here in an upset, even as polls showed the two progressives Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders tied for the prize days before the election.

Biden won 34 percent of the vote, while Sanders got 27 percent and Warren got 21 percent. A caveat: combining Sanders and Warrens vote totals would have put the two progressives ahead of Biden in terms of vote share. Either way, Cohn is taking Super Tuesday with a grain of salt.

People approach elections at different levels somewhat differently, Cohn said. There was probably a certain sentiment by Super Tuesday among some voters who wanted the primary to be over so they could focus on taking out Trump, which is less of a dynamic when it comes to the September primary.

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TODAY Boston City Councilor Andrea Campbell is a guest on WGBHs Boston Public Radio. Rep. Ayanna Pressley is a guest on WGBHs Basic Black.

Coronavirus in Massachusetts: 70 more COVID-19 deaths as toll passes 500; state now releasing racial and ethnic data, by Tanner Stening, MassLive.com: The death toll associated with coronavirus stands at 503 after health officials announced 70 new fatalities on Thursday. The number of statewide COVID-19 cases increased to 18,941, up 2,151 from Wednesday.

New unemployment claims dip as state's jobless rate rises, by Christian M. Wade, The Salem News: The number of first-time unemployment claims dipped slightly in the past week, even as the state's unemployment rate jumped to its highest level in years. There were 139,582 new jobless claims filed in Massachusetts for the week that ended April 4, according to data released by the U.S. Department of Labor on Thursday. Overall, at least 468,639 new benefits claims have been filed by Massachusetts workers in the past three weeks.

Reports of child abuse and neglect are plummeting across New England. Thats not a good thing, by Matt Stout, Boston Globe: In a normal week in March, Massachusetts officials can be bombarded with thousands of allegations of children being left unsupervised, beaten, or worse. But, almost overnight, those reports have been sliced by more than half. Child welfare workers who spend their nights hustling to emergency calls are seeing far fewer. None of that is good news.

Baker allows foreign-trained doctors to practice here, by Sarah Betancourt, CommonWealth Magazine: The Baker administration on Thursday announced several executive orders to support the health care workforce and expand its capacity, including easing licensing restrictions for foreign-educated doctors. One order allows graduates of international medical schools who have successfully completed at least two years of postgraduate resident medical training to be eligible for licensure in the Commonwealth.

Students might not return to classes until fall, by Christian M. Wade, The Salem News: As parents get used to their children learning at home and school districts struggle to expand remote learning, school administrators are becoming increasingly skeptical that students will return for the rest of the school year. Schools across the state remain closed until May 4 under an executive order issued by Gov. Charlie Baker aimed at preventing the spread of COVID-19.

Coronavirus Surge Overwhelms State Unemployment System As Officials Scramble To Keep Up, by Tori Bedford, WGBH News: As the state anxiously waits to see whether a surge of coronavirus patients will swamp the hospital system, waves of newly unemployed workers have already swamped the state's unemployment system, leaving thousands with neither paychecks nor answers. Massachusetts Secretary of Labor and Workforce Development Rosalin Acosta promised listeners on a telephone town hall Monday that help would be coming for tens of thousands of unemployment applicants she just couldnt quite say when.

Massachusetts Attorney Generals office investigating complaints of personal protective equipment price gouging, by Melissa Hanson, MassLive.com: As doctors and nurses at UMass Memorial work to treat COVID-19 patients, the health care systems CEO said the system has fallen victim to price gouging of protective gear. UMass Memorial Health Care, like hospital systems across the country, is struggling to make sure there is enough personal protective gear, or PPE, for doctors, nurses and staff responding to the COVID-19 crisis, CEO Dr. Eric Dickson has said.

Senate bill would cancel MCAS test this year, by Anastasia E. Lennon, The Patriot Ledger: The Senate has approved a proposal that would waive MCAS testing for the rest of the school year because of disruptions and school closures caused by the coronavirus pandemic. The Senates version of the bill includes changes to the House version, which calls for Education Commissioner Jeff Riley to either modify or waive the standardized test requirement this year.

Chelsea city manager sounds urgent alarm, calls for residents to stay home 24 hours a day, by John R. Ellement, Boston Globe: Chelsea is the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak and residents should now shift to a voluntary 24-hour-a-day curfew to slow the spread of the disease in the city, where 387 people have the illness and at least 10 have died, including five at the Chelsea Soldiers Home, the city manager said Thursday. These are desperate times,' said City Manager Thomas Ambrosino in a telephone interview.

MBTA Worker Dies From COVID-19, Union Says, by Zeninjor Enwemeka, WBUR: An MBTA employee has died from COVID-19, according to the Boston Carmen's Union. The T's largest union says Andrew Wong passed away last Tuesday after testing positive for COVID-19. Wong worked for the transit agency for 22 years and was an inspector at the Southampton Garage, according to the union.

Psychological, economic toll piling up, by Steve Koczela, CommonWealth Magazine: A perfect storm of economic, social, and political crises brought on by coronavirus are battering Massachusetts residents. The economic devastation is spreading, with 20 percent reporting losing a job since the crisis began, and a third of those still employed losing a portion of their paycheck. The worst of the damage is among those with the least to lose, with lower income, hourly, and part time workers reporting the greatest setbacks.

Troubling signs at state elder care facilities, by Bruce Mohl, CommonWealth Magazine: The number of coronavirus cases at the states nursing homes continued to mount dramatically on Thursday, amid troubling warnings from industry officials and explosive charges from the former head of the Holyoke Soldiers Home that he notified Baker administration officials about the spread of the deadly virus at his facility and received no assistance to fight it.

Early Boston Data Shows Disturbing Racial Disparities In COVID-19 Infections, by Isaiah Thompson, WGBH News: New data released by Boston officials Thursday suggests that African American and Latino residents have contracted the COVID-19 virus at substantially higher rates than Whites. City officials cautioned that the data does not give a full picture of COVID-19 infections by race in Boston.

God certainly understands': Marty Walsh urges Bostonians to stay home for Passover, Easter Sunday, by Christopher Gavin, Boston.com: Mayor Marty Walsh will not be seeing his mother this Easter Sunday the first time they have spent the holiday apart. But Walsh said hes doing so out of necessity as the region braces for an expected surge in COVID-19 cases, and hes urging other Bostonians keep their distance from relatives and loved ones, too, during the Passover and Easter observances.

Mass. To Launch Spanish Language Unemployment Site, by Simn Rios, WBUR: The Mass. Department of Unemployment Assistance will launch a web platform that will allow the hundreds of thousands of Spanish speakers in Massachusetts apply for benefits in their native language. With a skyrocketing number of people applying for unemployment, the department has come under fire for having a monolingual online application system, including claims that the English-only system could open the state to liability under federal civil rights law.

The coronavirus undercut these candidates efforts to get on the ballot in Massachusetts. Now, theyre suing. by Nik DeCosta-Klipa, Boston.com: The three plaintiffs are different candidates with different hurdles. However, their signature-gathering efforts have followed identical paths; the coronavirus has turned a requirement that in most years would be a formality into a major roadblock to the ballot.

Coronavirus prompts federal judge to order release of at least 33 immigrant detainees in Massachusetts, by Steph Solis, MassLive.com: U.S. District Court Judge William Young on Thursday ordered the release of 16 immigrants from detention centers in Massachusetts to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. The latest decision brings the total of released detainees to 33, according to Lawyers for Civil Rights, one of the plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit calling for their release during the coronavirus pandemic.

Neal: 60 Million Stimulus Checks Expected To Go Out Monday, by Arjun Singh, WGBH News: Americans who earn less than $99,000 a year can expect to receive stimulus checks from the federal government beginning Monday, Rep. Richard Neal said Thursday on Boston Public Radio. As Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Neal had significant influence over the language that was put into the stimulus bill. Neal said 60 million checks are expected to go out Monday.

Mass. marijuana regulators table vote on retail licenses for The Botanist after Acreage Holdings restructures contracts with affiliates, by Melissa Hanson, MassLive.com: State cannabis regulators have again tabled a vote on provisional retail licenses for The Botanist following restructuring by its owner, conglomerate Acreage Holdings, Inc. The Botanists applications for retail stores in Worcester and Shrewsbury were initially up for a vote by the Cannabis Control Commission in February, but the vote was tabled so staff could investigate Acreages ownership and control of other companies and whether a license cap would be violated.

Herald: DATA FLOW: Mass. team will study U.S. sewage to map real Covid spread Globe: Reports of child abuse drop, but DCF wary; Nursing homes struggled with infections

Coronavirus at Holyoke Soldiers Home: State got daily updates after first COVID-19 case identified, suspended superintendent says, by Cynthia G. Simison, Springfield Republican: From the time the first resident of the Soldiers Home in Holyoke tested positive on March 21 for the COVID-19 coronavirus, the homes leadership provided daily reports to multiple state agencies, says Bennett W. Walsh, the suspended superintendent. Walsh, in a statement issued today on his behalf by former Hampden district attorney William M. Bennett, also says he requested National Guard assistance at the home on March 27 and was denied.

New Bedford establishes coronavirus recovery centers in former nursing homes, by Kiernan Dunlop, The Standard-Times: The city is preparing for the possibility of a surge of patients with COVID-19 from throughout the region who need medical care but cant be accommodated by local hospitals. New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell, joined by Fall River Mayor Paul Coogan, announced Thursday that two former nursing homes in the Whaling City will act as Southeastern Massachusetts Regional Care Centers for those recovering from the coronavirus.

Framingham schools impose hiring freeze amid financial uncertainty caused by coronavirus crisis, by Zane Razzaq, MetroWest Daily News: The school district imposed a full and immediate hiring freeze for this school year, as financial uncertainty clouds the upcoming fiscal year. Lincoln Lynch IV, executive director of Finance and Operations, outlined the plan in a April 3 memo to the districts administrative council.

Wilmington officials ask state for assistance as nursing facilities report more COVID-19 cases, by Emma Murphy: Lowell Sun: After seven people died from COVID-19 at skilled nursing facility AdviniaCare, where a total of 84 residents are infected, town officials are requesting assistance from the COVID Command Center, Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency and the Department of Public Health.

Worcester field hospital, pandemic provide lessons and legacy, UMass hospital chief says, by Steven H. Foskett Jr., Telegram & Gazette: The field hospital at the DCU center set up to accept overflow cases of COVID-19 became operational at 7 a.m. Thursday. At 7:01 a.m., it got its first call, and later in the day, staff were in discussions with Boston-area medical centers about transferring patients, said Dr. Eric W. Dickson, president and chief executive officer of UMass Memorial Health Care, which is overseeing the facilitys operation

WELCOME TO THE WORLD: Newton City Councilor and congressional candidate Jake Auchincloss and his wife Michelle welcomed their first child Teddy on Wednesday night.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, Max Clermont, and Elaina Nigro.

HAPPY BIRTHWEEKEND to former Boston City Councilor Tito Jackson, Henry Gass, Matt Tannenbaum, Kevin Gilnack, Ted Dooley, Todd Domke, and most importantly my wonderful mom Darlene Murray, who all celebrate Saturday. And to Sunday birthday-ers Romneycare and Dan Manning.

NEW EPISODE: FLOUR POWER - On this weeks Horse Race podcast, hosts Steve Koczela, Jennifer Smith and Stephanie Murray speak with Northampton Mayor David Narkewicz about the coronavirus pandemic. Subscribe and listen on iTunes and Sound Cloud or watch the Zoom video.

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The battle for the PROGRESSIVE label CHELSEA emerges as 'EPICENTER,' calls for 24 hour curfew How to finish the SCHOOL YEAR - Politico

Last week, while most journalists and intellectuals were focused on responding to the global pandemic and looming economic depression, a significant number of writers on both the right and left were busy absorbing and formulating criticisms of what may well prove to be the most important essay written by a conservative thinker in many years.

The importance of Harvard Law Professor Adrian Vermeule's "Common Good Constitutionalism," published by The Atlantic, is not a function of originality. Plenty of legal theorists have made similar arguments in the past. When I was an editor at the conservative religious magazine First Things back in 2003, we published an essay by an obscure academic that tentatively advanced similar claims but we ran it paired with a stinging rebuttal by none other than Robert Bork, a legend in conservative legal circles. Seventeen years later, the views Bork eviscerated are being advanced in a far more cogent and confident way in the pages of a prominent centrist magazine by an author ensconced in one of the country's foremost elite institutions hoping to influence the dozens of judges recently appointed to the federal courts by a right-wing populist president.

Times have certainly changed. But Vermeule hopes to change them quite a lot more.

His primary target is "originalism" the view, long favored on the right, that jurists ought to defer in their legal interpretations and decisions to the meaning of the Constitution that prevailed at the time of its drafting and ratification, even if doing so cuts against the policy preferences favored by present-day ideological conservatives. In its place, Vermeule proposes a "substantively conservative approach to constitutional law and interpretation" that would not hesitate to empower the legislators and judges to promulgate and enforce a comprehensive notion of the "common good" rooted in "objective natural morality," even if there is little warrant for doing so in the text of the Constitution itself. Instead of flinching from the charge that conservatives aim to use the law to "legislate morality," Vermeule wants conservatives to do precisely that, with conviction and without apology.

But the importance of Vermeule's essay also derives from the author's deft attacks on and selective appropriation of progressive legal assumptions. This is something that many of Vermeule's early critics have missed. Convinced that his ideas are potentially dangerous (they are), these critics rush to denounce and call him names (fascist!) while failing to realize that the most ominous passages of his essay reproduce and deploy for right-wing ends widely shared progressive arguments and assertions about the legitimacy of using law to advance and enforce comprehensive moral views.

In trying to make headway against Vermeule's legal project, one option is to concede these shared progressive/conservative premises and do battle over which of the two comprehensive moral views deserves to triumph. But there is another alternative, which is to take a stand on different ground the ground of liberal pluralism by rejecting those shared illiberal premises.

So many passages in Vermeule's essay seem designed to provoke progressives that it's easy to miss how much they reproduce progressive claims. Take the line of argument found roughly halfway through the essay, where Vermeule asserts that "common good constitutionalism" does not aim at maximizing "individual autonomy" or minimizing "the abuse of power," and neither does it "suffer from a horror of political domination and hierarchy" because it accepts that law is "parental, a wise teacher, and an inculcator of good habits." This leads to one of the most striking passages in the essay one that sounds remarkably like an impatient dismissal of the need for democratic legitimacy and a full-throated endorsement of political authoritarianism.

Just authority in rulers can be exercised for the good of subjects, if necessary even against the subjects' own perceptions of what is best for them perceptions that may change over time anyway, as the law teaches, habituates, and re-forms them. Subjects will come to thank the ruler whose legal strictures, possibly experienced at first as coercive, encourage subjects to form more authentic desires for the individual and common goods, better habits, and beliefs that better track and promote communal well-being. [The Atlantic]

The authoritarianism seems as novel as it is alarming at least until one realizes that a long line of progressive jurisprudence stretching from President Woodrow Wilson down to legal philosopher Ronald Dworkin and beyond makes nearly identical assumptions about the relationship of constitutional law to democratic majoritarianism. Think especially of progressive Supreme Court decisions on abortion and same-sex marriage that overturned democratically enacted law in states across the country. Or anti-discrimination law and efforts to use it to enforce conformity to progressive views on race, sexuality, gender, and related issues, even when doing so forces churches, schools, and businesses run by traditionalist religious believers to adjust what they say and claim to believe in public.

The case in favor of upholding and enforcing such laws is that a higher standard of morality (and maybe its emanations and penumbras within the text of the Constitution) demands it and those who resist or oppose this standard have no right to do so. They are bigots who will eventually come to realize that progressives were right and they were wrong. Which is exactly what Vermeule thinks conservative jurists and lawyers should say to those many Americans who would strenuously object, for instance, to a Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade (1973) and Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), and perhaps also acted to ground fetal personhood from the time of conception in the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Because I'm very much at home in "blue" America, I would be far more comfortable living in a country in which the progressive construal of what morality demands was uniformly upheld and enforced by law than I would be in the uniformly pro-life and sexually traditionalist country that Vermeule and other staunch conservatives prefer.

But far better than either absolute extreme would be an America in which the law recognized, reflected, and took its cues from the truth of pluralism. This doesn't imply the denial of a common good. What it denies is that the common good is obvious or simple. Every side of every dispute in our politics is dominated by people trying to advance their construal of the common good against opponents who have their own different views of it.

This jostling and clashing of competing views of the common good is what politics is like everywhere people are free to try their hands at governing themselves, as anyone who has read Book III of Aristotle's Politics is well aware. The main fissure that Aristotle noted in the city states of his time was the clash between the many who were poor and the few who were wealthy. Each class understood the common good in very different ways, and the best that most cities could hope for was a balancing and moderation of each view against the other to form a relatively peaceful and thriving polity.

Our political communities are far larger and far more diverse. Our disagreements are rooted in demographics, as were the ones of Aristotle's time, but the fissures are much more numerous now: class, but also ethnicity, religion, race, age, and others. A few of us, like Vermeule, are conservative Catholics who view the common good in one way. Other Catholics view it somewhat differently. As do white conservative Protestants, white liberal Protestants, black Protestants, Jews, Mormons, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and secular Americans ranging from "spiritual but not religious" to atheist. Add in hierarchies of wealth and education and regionalisms and ideology and many other differences and you end up with a multitude of disparate views about how to define and achieve the good of all 330 million Americans.

Faced with this tableau of pluralistic diversity, a would-be authoritarian like Vermeule will tend to deny its significance just as a progressive might be unmoved by being told that many millions of Americans don't share his outlook on gay marriage or transgenderism. Sure, people disagree about the good, both camps would say, but if they thought about it as they should, and if the law nudged them along in the right direction, they would eventually come around. Morality is unified and simple, and under the right set of norms and institutions, everyone can be made to acknowledge and affirm it as one.

The great liberal political theorist Isaiah Berlin called this view "monism," and he considered it a recipe for tyranny not simply because all political communities larger than a small village have too much diversity to be brought around to affirming a single view of the common good without employing coercion, but also because morality itself isn't unified and simple.

Berlin was a moral pluralist, which has implications that go far beyond the banal point that public opinion in nation states is diverse. Berlin's pluralism maintains that our experience of the world tells us there are many objectively good ideals or ends freedom (in its multiple senses), equality, communal solidarity, piety, justice, to name just a few and that they inevitably clash with each other. The liberty of a gay couple to marry, for example, will clash with the piety and communal solidarity of the bakery owner who doesn't want to be forced to bake a cake for the wedding ceremony. And of course both sides appeal to conflicting notions of justice as well.

The simple triumph of either side in this conflict represents a real loss. A liberal will be sensitive to the cost and the civically poisonous consequences of one side being forced to pay it and will therefore seek to achieve compromise and accommodation whenever possible, using every available means, including appeals to federalism and the crafting of highly nuanced and narrow court decisions that carve out space for different ways of life to flourish as much as possible.

Berlin's pluralistic liberalism teaches us how to live together in pursuit of the common good while honestly facing up and striving to do justice to the irreducible complexity of moral reality.

Adrian Vermeule's monistic authoritarianism, like that of the progressives he mimics, is something else entirely perhaps its polar opposite. It's an especially vivid example of the troubling tendency of leading writers on all sides of our ideological divides to indulge in the politically pernicious fantasy that they can make Americans who disagree with them disappear.

For those who realize the dangerous futility of such indulgences, a better option awaits us in the liberal tradition. If only we will seek it out.

See the original post:
When conservatives interpret the Constitution like progressives - The Week

For indispensable reporting on the coronavirus crisis and more, subscribe to Mother Jones' newsletters.

The coronavirus pandemic and the catastrophic unemployment it sparked have put economic policy front and center. To many progressive economists and advocate,the CARES Act, the $2 trillion aid packagethat moved through Congress last month, put too much emphasis on bailing out corporations and not enough on helping people, especially those who were already struggling before the viruss spread.

With lawmakers now assembling a second major aid package, the leaders of several progressive economic, research, policy, and advocacy groups released a statement of principles on Thursday urging Congressional leaders to shift priorities to help the most vulnerable, including communities of color. The guidelines laid out are largely targeted at Democrats, whose control of the House of Representatives gives them leverage to shape future bailouts.

The economic crisis sparked by coronavirus has exposed major structural flaws in our economy that made this crisis far worse than it needed to be, the statement begins. It is clearer than ever that we need major government intervention to stabilize the economy and put us on a long-term path to resiliency.

The statement came out of conversations among the leaders of multiple progressive policy shops about how they could persuade Congress to respond not just with BandAids but with structural changes. It also signals a hope Congress will learn from its mistakes in responding to the 2008 financial crisis. During the last recession, corporations received massive bailouts while continuing the risky behavior that caused the economy to collapse, the statement reads, still free to act in ways which made recovery more difficult, particularly in low-income and communities of color.

As the next package comes together, Democrats are likely to have a long list of demands that includes, as the statements authors detail, more aid to people, small businesses, and frontline workers, but also universal mail balloting to preserve Americans right to vote during the November elections.

Read the full statement:

The economic crisis sparked by coronavirus has exposed major structural flaws in our economy that made this crisis far worse than it needed to be, and it is clearer than ever that we need major government intervention to stabilize the economy and put us on a long-term path to resiliency.

We urge Congress to move quickly to pass additional legislation adhering to the following principles to prioritize aiding families and communities, especially Black and brown people who are disproportionately harmed by both the public health and economic crises, and making the structural changes needed to make our economy more resilient in the long term.

Build Economic Resilience for the Long Term. This crisis has laid bare that decades of rampant inequality, attacks on public institutions, and blind faith in markets to solve public problems has left our economy deeply vulnerable. This crisis is acute in part because millions of families lack good jobs and adequate healthcareespecially the Black and brown families and women who are filling what are only now deemed essential roles in our economyand because government agencies tasked with pulling people from the brink are operating on threadbare budgets. Congress must address the underlying structural weaknesses in our economy that helped propel this crisis and ensure that the investments made now are durable enough to prevent future crises.

Reinforce essential responders, including workers, small businesses, and state and local governments. This crisis confirms how workers in traditionally low-paid jobs like warehouse workers, grocery clerks, farm workers, and child care workers arelike health care professionalsessential responders. These workers, disproportionately women and people of color, are risking their lives each day, yet lack basic protections to keep them safe and healthy. State and local governments are similarly pushing their resources to the brink to support their residents, and are in desperate need of federal government relief. Half measures to aid those we all rely on most in this crisis will not be sufficient. Congress must provide substantial and sustained relief to state and local governments and directly to all workers on the front lines.

Repair the Economy by Helping People. This crisis will only be solved by investing in people, first and foremost. Saving our economy from total collapse will require major investments in the health and economic well-being of the workers, small businesses, families and communities who drive our economy, and in order to be effective, must be inclusive of workers who are typically excluded, like restaurant workers, immigrants, and people of color. Instead of hoping that jobs and economic health will trickle down from corporations and the rich, Congress must prioritize getting substantial aid to the people who need it the most.

Prevent Further Accumulation of Corporate Power. During the last recession, corporations received massive bailouts while continuing the risky behavior that caused the economy to collapse. Corporations, private equity, and payday lenders also moved quickly to profit off of the suffering of millions of families, which made recovery more difficult, particularly in low-income and communities of color. Left unchecked, they will again extract from the public good and exploit marginalized people, which will leave the economy less stable overall and will likely allow them to concentrate their power as smaller businesses fail. Congress must prioritize shoring up small businesses and institute strong accountability mechanisms and regulations to prevent large corporations from using this moment of crisis to further concentrate economic and political power.

The statement was signed by the following organizational leaders:

Neera Tanden, Center for American ProgressEileen Applebaum, Center for Economic and Policy ResearchBrian Kettenring, Center for Popular DemocracyDorian Warren, Community ChangeSabeel Rahman, DemosThea Lee, Economic Policy InstituteChris Hughes, Economic Security ProjectNatalie Foster, Economic Security ProjectTaylor Jo Isenberg, Economic Security ProjectIndi Dutta-Gupta, Georgetown Center on Poverty and InequalityMichael Linden, Groundwork CollaborativeFatima Goss Graves, National Womens Law CenterFelicia Wong, Roosevelt InstituteHeather Boushey, Washington Center for Equitable Growth

More:
Progressives Push for Rescue Package that Puts People Over Corporations - Mother Jones

The Young Turks founder and host Cenk Uygur said Thursday that the assumption that progressives have to get excited about presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe BidenJoe BidenBiden wins Alaska primary Alaska Democrats see spike in ballots in the 2020 vote-by-mail primary Joe Biden fails to understand the Constitution on military matters MORE is wrong.

Uygur told Hill.TV that the Democratic establishment expects all you progressives to raise enthusiasm for Biden as he will become the nominee after Sen. Bernie SandersBernie SandersBiden wins Alaska primary Alaska Democrats see spike in ballots in the 2020 vote-by-mail primary Biden sees opening over Trump with older voters MORE (I-Vt.) dropped out of the race Wednesday.

No, first of all, thats not my job, that's Joe Bidens job, he said.

The Young Turks founder added that the assumption is the media should produce propaganda to support the last-standing candidate.

So when you go to the general election, forget every critique you had legitimate critique of Joe Biden you had, now lie on his behalf. No, not going to do it.

But Uygur acknowledged that any vote that doesnt go to Biden will help Trump, adding he plans to vote for the credible candidate.

To me, its give me a random dog catcher versus Trump, and Im going to vote for the random dog catcher, he said. ...But if you say, Get excited about a random dog catcher, you dont know about or has a bad record, no Im not legally obligated to get excited.

Sanders dropped out of the Democratic primary Wednesday, leaving Biden as the only candidate standing from a once vast field of candidates.

Originally posted here:
Cenk Uygur: Assumption progressives need to get excited about Biden is wrong | TheHill - The Hill

The COVID-19 crisis has suddenly turned even conservatives into proponents of inclusive, middle-class economics. The historic, $2.2 trillion stimulus bill just passed unanimously by Congress is focused on sending money to people to keep the economy from cratering. It concedes the point to what progressives have said all along that spending by everyday Americans, not corporate profits, is what drives the economy.

The new law will send checks to people, even those with incomes too low for taxes, without worrying about making them government dependents. It extends and increases unemployment insurance, which Republicans have long worked to restrict. It forgives loans to small and medium businesses if they keep people on the payroll. After years of resistance, Republicans approved paid sick days and family and medical leave, another way to keep money in the pockets of working peoples.

Trump is turning people who cant pay the rent, payment,mortgage or student loan from dead-beats into deserving Americans. Republicans even agreed to tie bail-outs for big business to no stock buybacks for a period of a year, although it would have been far more effective if corporations were required to use the funds to keep people working, as several European countries have done. That should be at the core of the next federal COVID bill.

But lost in this turn-around is the fact that decades of trickle-down economics have made the U.S. poorly prepared for the economic catastrophe triggered by COVID-19. Half of the families are living paycheck-to-paycheck. A majority of families have little if any emergency savings and most Americans have little if any retirement income to fall back on. Health care costs weigh heavily on even people with insurance and 28 million people remain uninsured.

Some 45 million Americans have $1.6 trillion in student debt. Wages have been virtually stagnant for forty years, while the wealthy few have gobbled up a huge share of economic growth. One-of-three families pay more than they can afford for housing. Most Americans dont have paid family leave and most lower-paid workers dont have paid sick days. Meanwhile, major corporations have spent trillions buying back stock to enrich their stockholders and executives, leaving them with few cash reserves to weather the crisis.

The COVID-19 crisis is making one thing clear; our collective prosperity depends on the prosperity of each of us. When people are paid enough to care for and support their families, can educate their kids, afford health care and housing, shop in their neighborhoods and retire in security, that drives our economic prosperity.

States have a crucial role in building on federal actions to be sure that people do drive economic recovery from the COVID recession. Moreover, states must reject austerity policies that will only deepen the crisis. Rather than retreat from the recession, states should but charge into it with public investments that create jobs and promote growth

States have a crucial role in being sure that the federal money gets out quickly and to everyone who is eligible. State employees should be shifted to state unemployment offices to handle the increased workload. State agencies responsible for small businesses should be geared up to help employers understand and apply for federal loans.

Governors and state legislatures should use the press, social media and constituent communications to educate people about the new programs. They need to let self-employed people know that they are eligible for the first time. They must put the word out that unemployment is available even if people still have some income when wages or self-employed income take a big hit because of the crisis. They need to get the word out to the small business community. They should lean on every TV and radio outlet to run PSAs.

States should require all health insurers to cover all COVID-19 related care without any out-of-pocket costs. States that run their own ACA marketplaces should open enrollment to anyone who applies, as eleven states have already done. States in the federal marketplaces should pressure the federal government to do the same. All work requirements tied to eligibility for benefits should be ceased. States can also take immediate steps to protect consumers: stop evictions, foreclosures, debt-collection, car repossessions. Vigorously enforce laws against price-gouging.

But states cant stop there. We must use this crisis to transform the guiding logic of our economy from trickle-down to inclusive economics. Raising the minimum wage not just to $15 an hour, but to half of the median wage. A major investment in job-creating clean, renewable energy with policies that move states to 100 percent renewables. Making college and childcare truly affordable, limiting rent increases and building affordable housing. Being sure that every working person has paid sick days and family and medical leave. Boosting retirement income. States around the country have pioneered many of these measures; all should follow.

Just as the Great Depression led to inclusive economic policies like Social Security, unemployment insurance and the minimum wage, laying the ground for decades of prosperity, the unfolding COVID Depression can bury neo-liberal economics once and for all and turn this terrible crisis into a new era of widespread prosperity, based on inclusive economics.

Richard Kirsch is the director ofOur Story: The Hub for American Narrativesand the author of "Fighting for Our Health: The Epic Battle to Make Health Care a Right in the United States." Follow him on Twitter@_RichardKirsch.

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In a crisis, even conservatives turn to progressive economic policies | TheHill - The Hill