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WASHINGTON Several prominent progressive activists are blasting Democratic National CommitteeChair Tom Perez for shunning leaders of the partys populist wing for his transition advisory committee.

The newly elected party leader named a large number of longtime party insiders to the committee, activists complained, and relatively few progressive leaders and supporters of Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison, who was runner-up in the DNC chair race. The activists say the committee appointments show Perezs DNC is not serious about addressing concerns of the partys populist wing.

After looking at that list, it has become abundantly clear that the controlling forces of the Democratic Party want to make the other half of the party suffer, said Nomiki Konst, a convention delegate for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

The DNC is not tone-deaf it is on a mission to crush the working side of our party, added Konst, now an investigative reporter for the Young Turks who did not endorse a candidate in the DNC chair race.

Kait Sweeney,a spokeswoman for the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which backed Ellisons bid, said in a statement that the initial names on the DNC Transition Advisory Committee include zero leaders of progressive grassroots groups that engage in electoral work and very few movement progressives. She said the group would recommend names for the DNC to add to the committee.

The DNCs 29-person transition advisory committee, whichPerez announced Wednesday, will be co-chaired by Leah Daughtry, a veteran Democratic operative who was CEO of the 2016 Democratic National Convention, and Chris Lu, a former deputy labor secretary who ran the 2008 Obama-Biden transition team.

Other members include former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, former Alaska Sen. Mark Begich, racial justice advocate DeRay McKesson and National Domestic Workers Alliances director Ai-Jen Poo. The group also includes defeated DNC chair candidates: South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Jehmu Greene, and Idaho Democratic Party Executive Director Sally Boynton Brown. (See the names of all 29 members here.)

Just two people on the committee endorsed Ellison in the DNC chair race: Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Brian Weeks, the political director of AFSCME. Of the two, only Jayapal supported Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in the 2016 presidential primary.

The real absence of Bernie grassroots leadership is unsurprising to me, Winnie Wong, a founder of the People for Bernie Sanders, said in an email. What the DNC doesnt know is that we are both resourceful and well resourced, so well be doing the work: organizing, RECRUITING, knocking on doors, building up our giant email lists and generally running the internet in a way that the Ds could only dream about.

Perez spokeswoman Xochitl Hinojosa emphasized in a statement that the transition advisory committee is just a start to the broader transition efforts.

Over the weeks to come, Tom Perez and DNC leadership will continue meeting with key stakeholders in our big tent party, including progressive leaders, labor, and experts in various fields to discuss priorities for the DNC, grassroots organizing, reaching key voters who were left behind this last election, and raising the resources needed to succeed, Hinojosa said.

Perez selected committee members with input from other DNC officers, including Ellison,Hinojosa noted.

Mark Wilson/Getty Images

Progressivespublic disagreement with Perez just weeks after the chair election suggests that the party divisions exposed by the contest remain at least partially unresolved.

The normally sleepy contest to run the partys main body became a brawl for control of the Democratic Party after the November election defeat left partisans scrambling for answers. Many progressive activists who blamed the Democratic establishment for falling out of touch with partys populist, working-class roots rallied behind Ellisons candidacy.

Ellison had a virtual lock on prominent liberals and Sanders supporters, but he was also endorsed by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and leading labor unions that backed Hillary Clinton.

Many DNC members who voted for Perez said they liked his experience running large organizations, rather than any policy or ideological considerations. Perez earned stellar marks from progressives for his work in the Obama administration as head of the Department of Justice civil rights division and the Department of Labor.

But some Ellison supporterscould not shake the feeling that elements of the establishment had conspired to stifle the grassroots once again, arguing that the party had been uniting around Ellison until then-President Barack Obama encouraged Perez to run. Senior Obama aides phoned DNC members on the day of the election to lobby them to vote for Perez.

Perez grasped the importance of reconciling with Ellison supporters immediately after he waselected chair by a close margin in late February, using his victory speech to appoint Ellison as his deputy.

The gesture was welcomed by many Ellison supporters.Later, Perez drew further accoladesfrom Ellison supporters for speaking at a White House rally against Trumps travel ban.

But some progressives remain unconvinced.

You cant just brand something unity and not have unity. It is unity in name only, Konst said.

Yasmine Taeb, a Virginia Democratic national committeewoman who invited Perez to the White House rally, took issue with only four elected DNC members on the transition team: Rion Ramirez of Washington; Bel Leong-Hong of Maryland; Luis Heredia of Arizona; and Jenny Wilson of Utah.

That goes to the crux of my frustration with the DNC that traditionally they have ignored the grassroots members, which is half the membership, she said.

Taeb also lamented that a committee so racially diverse did not include a Muslim or person of Middle Eastern heritage, when people from those groupsare under attack by this administration.

Konst singled out the transition committee co-chair Leah Daughtry as an example of the type of entrenched DNC official from whom the party needs to distance itself.As CEO of the Democratic National Convention, Daughtry oversaw the expulsion of restive Sanders supporters from the convention hall, according to Konst.

Even Perezs selection of DeRay McKesson, a former Baltimore school district worker known for criminal justice reform work, has drawn criticism. Activists have derided McKessons ties to controversial causes and corporations, including his participation in a panel discussion sponsored by Wells Fargo.

Some Ellison backers acknowledged Perez has discretion to name the committee picks and said there were more substantive fights for activists.

Its solely a personal list for Toms advice so he obviously named people who he was close to, said Larry Cohen, a DNC member from Washington, D.C., and chairman of Our Revolution, the successor organization to Sanders campaign.

Nebraska Democratic Party chair Jane Kleeb, who serves on the Our Revolution board with Cohen, took a similar view.She added: If I was in Perezs shoes, I probably would have appointed a couple more obvious Bernie people just for the sake of keeping the peace.

Another major test of the partys commitment to reform will be in the power it gives to the forthcoming Unity Reform Commission, according to Kleeb and Cohen. The 21-member panel the product of a last-minute compromise to mollify Sanders supporters prior to the Democratic National Convention is charged with studying ways to increase party accountability and reform the presidential nominating process through measures like abolishing the super-delegates.

Kleeb and Konst are among the seven commissioners appointed by Sanders, who also named Cohen a co-chair. Clinton gets to name nine members of the panel, plus a co-chair. Perez will name the remaining three. Aside from Clintons appointment of the commission chair, Jen OMalley Dillon, neither Clinton nor Perez has announced their nominees.

The unity reform commission is the statutory body of the party to look at structural reform. Having met with Tom about that, Im confident that he fully supports his role, Cohen said.

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Progressives Slam Tom Perez's New DNC Transition Team - Huffington Post

WASHINGTON A Republican senator is trying to pitch progressive Democrats on a package of bills that he says will limit President Donald Trumps powers.

Conservative Sen. James Lankford, who was elected two years ago, wants progressives to give his bills a chance, arguing they arent on the far-right edge but are admittedly not far left either. Instead, he figures, theyre the kind of bills Washington should be working on at a time when Republicans and Democrats couldnt be further apart.

The Oklahoma Republican introduced his four-bill package on reforming the regulatory process last week. The goal, he said in an interview, is not to take anything away from the regulatory process but to find some common ground and improve it.

One of the bills, co-sponsored by moderate Democrat Heidi Heitkamp (N.D.), would require an agency to post an advanced notice of proposed rulemaking for any major regulation at least 90 days before it publishes a notice that it intends to change, repeal or craft a rule (essentially adding a new layer to the process).Another bill the one Lankford is really trying to sell liberals on requires science-based decision-making at agencies. The other two would require an agency to provide a simply worded 100-word summary when giving notice of a proposed rule, and would clamp down on guidance documents, which are meant to interpret regulations.

Regardless of who is president, we should have a good, reasonable process regardless of who is running what agency, Lankford said. My guess is I may have some colleagues that are more left-leaning that will now look at the way that regulation is done and say, I want to make sure President Trump follows the rules.

Even if taken at face value, the package, to many progressives, would appear to be a deregulatory one, but Lankford hopes that after multiple conversations with his colleagues they will come around.

The sell? When Democrats say they are concerned one of Trumps agency heads is going to undo Obama-era regulations, or completely reshape or dismantle an agency, Lankford points to his bills as an answer, by adding transparency and more opportunities for people (especially opponents) to weigh in on the process.

Concerns surrounding new Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt have already come up among Democrats. Last week Pruitt said he didnt believe the science was sound on whether carbon dioxide contributes to global warming. (The overwhelming majority of scientists agree that it does.)

Lankford knows Democrats arent happy with Pruitt, and so he wants them to look at his Better Evaluation of Science and Technology Act, which would tell agencies to use the best available science and peer-reviewed science as a way to keep Pruitt in check.

If youre concerned about science, lets talk about the BEST bill that I have that deals with science and how do you define it, making sure every agency has to follow it, Lankford said, recalling one exchange he had with a Democratic senator recently. If theres concern, to say, EPA is going to ignore science now, then we should be able to work together to figure how were going to do good science regardless of who is there.

But Lankford doesnt share his Democratic colleagues concerns about Pruitt, a fellow Oklahoman and friend. Thats something that isnt lost on the very progressives hes trying to woo.

Amit Narang of the Public Citizen watchdog group, said, Its not very plausible to me that the intent of this bill is to hold the EPA head accountable, and I worry some of the details will allow for the same type of strategic questioning of consensus science that was very effective for the tobacco industry for a long time. Wed be very happy for Sen. Lankford to make clear to EPA head Pruitt that his most recent statements of CO not playing a role in climate change are overwhelmingly disputed by scientists.

Narang, who has testified before Lankford in the Senate, admitted that, though he isnt a fan of Lankfords science bill, the one adding a layer to the regulatory process by requiring advanced notice might be something Public Citizen and progressives in general could get behind.

To his credit, he does have some legislation in here that could make rule repeals go a little bit slower, Narang said. There is a possibility in the short-term a couple of these could make it slightly harder for agencies to get rid of rules under Obama. I will concede that.

But Narang added that when the next administration comes in, it would also make it more difficult to accomplish an agenda a new presidents team would support.

Yogin Kothari, Washington representative of the Union of Concerned Scientists, said Lankfords bills in theory sound nice but in reality are misleading.

The goal seems to be to really shut down how science-based decisions are made at agencies, Kothari said. The way I read the language is theres a lot of attachment points where I could see well-funded litigants arguing something is amiss.

Kothari added that he doesnt think any progressives would back the package.

Just because it might slow down something for the next two to four years doesnt mean its good policy, Kothari said. Were not looking at just the next two to four years. Good policy doesnt go by a political calendar.

Still, Lankford didnt seem deterred from testing the waters with liberals.

Some of my Republican colleagues want to go a lot farther with regulatory reform. I get that, he said. Some of my Democratic colleagues will say I dont want to limit any agency from doing any action it already takes too long to do.

But he thinks Congress has taken too much of a backseat, telling agencies to make the decision and Congress is off the hook.

Where there are things that need to be done, weve got to have Congress re-engaged, he said.

Lankford also attempted to make the case that Democrats should be relieved Republicans are undoing certain regulations, such as an Education Department requirement that federally funded teacher preparation programs be evaluated on how well students performed.

For your readers... if youre going to have Betsy DeVos make all the decisions about education, about how teachers are evaluated, about how students are evaluated and how schools are evaluated, then leave that regulation in place, Lankford argued, referring to Trumps controversial education secretary.

A lot of Lankfords motivation also comes from the widening divide between Republicans and Democrats.

If you bring polarizing ideas out, it enforces more polarization. If you bring ideas out and say this is a common-ground issue and that regardless of whos in the White House this is an issue that needs to be dealt with, i think it starts kind of pushing us back together.

Whether thats possible under Trump whose actions and policies make Narang and Kothari skeptical remains to be seen.

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This Conservative Senator Is Trying To Woo Progressives With Bills He Says Restrict Trump - Huffington Post

Senate

AZ-Sen: George W. Bush, whom sources tell us is an uncle of Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush, will headline a fundraising dinner for GOP Sen. Jeff Flake next month. Flake had an unimpressive $580,000 in the bank at the end of 2016, and he may face a tough primary after spending the last cycle criticizing Trump. Democrats are also hoping to target this seat.

IL-Gov: There's no shortage of Democrats thinking about challenging vulnerable Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner, and venture capitalist J.B. Pritzker is the latest to take steps to do so. Pritzker, a billionaire who says he would self-fund any campaign, recently formed an exploratory committee. Rauner himself is incredibly rich and has already seeded his re-election campaign with $50 million of his own money, so a 2018 gubernatorial matchup with Pritzker could see a flood of spending.

Pritzker is the younger brother of former U.S. Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker, who has previously been mentioned as a potential candidate, but never said anything about the race publicly herself. However, J.B. Pritzker's interest probably makes his sister's candidacy even less likely. Several other Democrats are already running, including Chicago Alderman Ameya Pawar, Madison County Regional Superintendent of Schools Bob Daiber, and wealthy businessman Chris Kennedy, whose father was the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy.

NJ-Gov: Quinnipiac's newest poll of the Garden State's 2017 governor's race gives Republicans some dire news. The pollster finds Democrat Phil Murphy wiping the floor with Republican Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno by a 47-25 margin, with term-limited GOP Gov. Chris Christie's abysmal 17 percent approval rating almost certainly doing his lieutenant governor no favors. The situation appears little different from their January poll, where Murphy led 45-29.

The survey also contained matchups for the upcoming June 6 primary, but revealed that most candidates are still largely unknown. On the Democratic side, Murphy leads with 23 percent, followed by Assemblyman John Wisniewski at 6, and state Sen. Ray Lesniak and Clinton-era U.S. Treasury Undersecretary Jim Johnson at 4 each. Murphy, a wealthy former Goldman Sachs executive and ex-ambassador to Germany, has sown up much of the party establishment's support and has far more money available than his rivals, but he could be vulnerable if one (but probably only one) of his opponents catches fire. Among Republicans, Guadagno leads former 1980s Saturday Night Live cast member Joe Piscopo 28-18, while no other primary candidate earns more than 3 percent. Piscopo has been flirting with a bid for months but isn't running yet; the filing deadline is April 3.

Staten Island, NY Borough President: If you're anything like us, when you saw this header you immediately thought, "Which disgraced ex-Staten Island Republican House member is this about?" The answer is Mike Grimm, who was released from prison last April after serving most of his eight-month sentence for tax evasion. In response to a mysterious poll testing Grimm in a hypothetical GOP primary with Borough President James Oddo, Grimm only told the Staten Island Advance that he has "no comment other than, look a lot of people have asked me to run" this year.

An unnamed source reports that Grimm has met with Guy Molinari, who is a former congressman, borough president, and a Grimm mentor. Grimm reportedly is considering but not ready to run and "needs to be convinced." Molinari himself didn't deny meeting with Grimm, but insists he has no idea what he'll do.

Grimm had a short but eventful career in Congress. When reporter Michael Scotto asked the congressman about his alleged campaign finance violations in early 2014 just after the State of the Union, Grimm told Scotto that, "you ever do that to me again I'll throw you off this fucking balcony," and further told him, "I'll break you in half. Like a boy." Grimm probably didn't know the camera was still recording the entire confrontation, but that incident didn't stop him from decisively winning a third term that fall 55-42 while under indictment, even though national Republicans had abandoned him.

Grimm benefited from the GOP wave and from a Democratic opponent who came from outside of Staten Island and also made some embarrassing mistakes. But Grimm also argued that the federal government was persecuting him, a line that resonated in a place that's full of voters who, rightly or wrongly, view themselves as neglected by their city, local, and national governments.

P.S.: As for Staten Island's other disgraced ex-GOP House member, Vito Fossella currently hosts a pro-Trump TV show for the conservative site Newsmax. Fossella retired from the House in 2008 after his arrest for drunk driving led to revelations that he had a second family.

The Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir and Jeff Singer, with additional contributions from David Jarman, Steve Singiser, Daniel Donner, James Lambert, and Stephen Wolf.

Continued here:
Morning Digest: Progressives hope to give conservative House Democrat Dan Lipinski a tough primary - Daily Kos

Progressives are not lazy, irrational murderers

In his columns about liberals and progressives, Dennis Kemp describes us as lazy, irrational murderers.

It is unfortunate that Mr. Kemp is poorly informed. I will address just a couple of his misunderstandings, those on government and on welfare.

Mr. Kemp says that progressives believe that government should control almost every aspect of our lives. As a progressive, I can assure you that I do not want government to dictate most aspects of my life. I dont know any progressive who would say they want government control.

When we think of government, we do not think of dictatorship. We want democracy, where everyone gets to participate in deciding what laws we must live by. Read socialist party websites for yourself.

Many, if not most, socialists are non-conformists. We dont want to dress like everyone else, do the same work as everyone else, or have all of the same possessions as everyone else. We like our individuality. That is a typical socialist view.

As to welfare, specifically, Mr. Kemp claims that progressives think that people should be able to demand public support, without ever having to work. That is untrue. While some people have handicaps that make it difficult for them to hold regular jobs, that is not true of the vast majority of us.

Rather than have healthy people sit around doing nothing, socialists want all people to have jobs. If you dont believe it, go to a socialist party website and see for yourself. Socialists want to work. We dont want handouts for nothing. In fact, socialists promote full-employment policies, which conservatives oppose.

It would be nice if people would educate themselves about the variety of political views that exist in this country. I know that seeking an accurate understanding of the diversity of views is time-consuming. However, it is important that we understand one another. Then, we could have conversations based on what we actually think, rather than based on false distortions of one anothers ideas.

Dr. Jesse Chanley

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Progressives are not lazy, irrational murderers - White Mountain Independent

PHASE I: INFILTRATION

Phase I was the genesis of the modern progressive movement in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It was launched by the cast of characters we covered at the beginning of this book, people such as Teddy Roosevelt, William Jennings Bryan, Margaret Sanger, Wayne Wheeler, John Dewey, and others. It got especially heated during the 1912 presidential election, when Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson tried to out-progressive each other. Wilson won out, and his administration was the first wave of the progressive movement. It would be followed by three more waves, each of which shared the following goals of the infiltration phase:

Goal 1: Organize groups for control. The collectivization of society began. Instead of focusing on individual rights and freedoms, progressives focused on organizing people into groups that set them apart. Sanger organized around birth control (i.e., eugenics), Wheeler organized around temperance, labor groups organized workers, and so on. This was the genesis of community organizing, and it has changed little from then to the days of Obamaherding people into groups, motivating them with fear.

Goal 2: Infiltrate. Slowly but deliberately, progressives inserted themselves into key American institutions, including the government, the labor movement, academia, the media, the military, and the courts. Progressives not only ran for high office, but they also made a point of inserting their operatives into a permanent government bureaucracy. They took control of the labor movement and of academia, which became a hotbed for progressivism at all levels. The leading race-theory eugenicists came from Americas top universities such as Princeton and Johns Hopkins, the latter of which was designed specifically to bring the German university model to the United States. Progressives such as Dewey influenced the education of the youngest Americans.

Goal 3: Weaken the social fabric. For the collectivization of society to succeed, the natural, organic fibers of our social fabricfaith, tradition, family, heritageneeded to be ripped apart. Progressives systematically drew wedges between different segments of society by collectivizing and organizing them against one another. And all with an unceasing agenda of political correctness to revise history and remove all traces of faith from public life.

Goal 4: Confuse the concept of right and wrong. Sometimes it feels as if were living in a moral house of mirrorsup means down, down means up, and everything is distorted. That is exactly how progressives want it. By preaching moral relativism and shaming us into thinking our traditions are wrong and outdated, by convincing us that our moral compass needs to progress, they can lead us ever closer to the final step of phase I . . .

Goal 5: Bring society to a state of near crisis. At some point, the confusion becomes too great, and those who could stand up to bring some sanity to the public sphere are successfully shamed into silence. The nation is brought to the edge of collapse so that progressives can step in and take power, all in a false-prophet effort to relieve peoples fears and anxieties.

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Glenn Beck Liars - LIARS: How Progressives Exploit Our ...