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As the United States wraps up the first 100 days of Donald Trumps administration the worst first 100 days of any administration, according to various assessmentsmillions of Americans are expressing horrified surprise not at that abysmal record, (itll get worse in the second 100 days), but rather, at former President Barak Obamas speaking fee: $400,000 for a talk on health care, to a Wall Street firm. And in the wake of this (not so) shocking news item, yet more articles are being published reminding us of the reality of his actions, behind the beautiful faade of the elegant, loving, scandal-free model family.

Before that, and scandal-ridden as he was, Bill Clinton was described by TV political show host Rachel Maddow as the best Republican president this country ever had. Maddows description is a sad variation on the sorry refrain we hear in progressive circles today, that the reason we got into the mess we are currently in, is our leniency with what has come to be considered the left. Indeed, we seem to fall very easy prey to the power of grammatically-correct, eloquent statements, even when they are utterly belied by the speakers actions.

Obama, as well as the Clintons, both Bill and Hillary, are only a few of the many politicians that have completely departed from a stated commitment to progressive causes, into implementing actions that range from neo-liberal to outright hawkish. Seattle Mayor Ed Murray, who will receive an Israel advocacy award from StandWithUs on May 7th, is another such example.

Murrays record is exemplary of that of fake progressives and their subservience to established systems of oppression and disenfranchisement. Most recently, in the wake of Trumps Muslim and Immigrant Ban, he defiantly stated that Seattle will remain a sanctuary city, even as the Seattle Police Department stopped transit service to the Sea-Tac International Airport to stem the flow of protesters heading there. Before that, and also during his administration, members of the Seattle Police Department went on counter-terrorism seminars in Israel sponsored by the Anti-Defamation League, a Zionist organization more concerned with Israel advocacy than with the defense of civil rights. Not surprisingly, considering the fact that the Israeli military and police are invested in defending an illegal occupation and repressing the indigenous impulse towards freedom and dignity, the Seattle Police Department is now under consent decree because of the racism and violence it has characteristically engaged in. Murray has also facilitated the building of a new youth jail in the historically African American part of the city, despite sustained opposition from his constituents. And while he expressed his opposition to that facility, it was his administration that granted the permits, and his lawyers who joined the countys efforts to deny anti-prison organizers the opportunity to be heard, to appeal the permits for the new jail. Today, as Palestinian prisoners in Israels jails are currently engaged in a hunger strike for dignity and human rights, up to 750 prisoners in the Northwest Detention Center, one of the largest immigration detention centers in the country, are currently on hunger strike to protest their appalling conditions. And while Murray is not directly in charge of that prison, immigrant rights organizers say that Washington state politicians claim that they will not follow through with Trumps immigration ban is proving to be a paper tiger. The connections between the two hunger strikes, one just outside of Seattle, the other in Israeli jails, will be foregrounded with a solidarity rally by Palestinian rights activists on May 13th, days after Murray will have been honored by StandWithUs.

Like other fake progressives, Mayor Murray consistently denounces racism, issuing statement upon statement about his city being welcoming, tolerant, a sanctuary, yet rather than side with the victims of racism, he has chosen to align himself with an apartheid country whose very existence as the Jewish state hinges on discrimination. An openly gay man, he has also jumped on the pinkwashing bandwagon, and agreed to keynoting a pinkwashing conference in Israel in 2015, despite appeals from the Seattle queer community to stop promoting that country as a gay haven, when in fact it misrepresents its own intolerance, and exploits regional homophobia, to distract from its egregious overall human rights abuses.

According to StandWithUss event information, Murray is being honored for standing up to anti-Israel pressure, and remaining a good friend of the Seattle-area Jewish community. StandWithUss claim is intentionally misrepresentative, as the Zionist organization knows full well that many members of the Seattle-area Jewish community, from the vibrant Jewish Voice for Peace local leadership and general membership, to the many Jewish members of QuAIA-Seattle (Queers Against Israeli Apartheid), are completely opposed to Zionism. Similarly, members of the Seattle-area Jewish community are spearheading the newly-launched JVP Deadly Exchange campaign, which seeks to end US-Israeli police partnerships.

Yet even as ample documentation keeps streaming in from various quarters, including the Israeli government itself, that Israel is an apartheid country that consistently, systematically, engages in human rights violations, Murray stands not with his own constituents, and not with the progressive Jewish community in Seattle, but with apologists for Zionism.

Murray is currently the incumbent in a mayoral race with another nine candidates, and is attempting to sound more progressive in his bid to be re-elected in a liberal city. Nevertheless, at the close of his four-year tenure as mayor, (and well over 20 years in political office in King County) Murray is not being honored by immigrants, youth activists, anti-prison organizers, people of color, the homeless, the queer community, but rather, by StandWithUs, an organization devoted to sugarcoating violent racist settler-colonialism.

Obama was our first black president, Hillary Clinton would have been our first female president, Ed Murray is Seattles first openly gay mayor, in an interracial marriage. These are indeed social breakthroughs. But at this critical juncture, we need to look beyond the symbolism of an individual. Throughout history, the greatest progressive leaders and organizers, even when grounded in the issue closest to their circumstances, have understood the global interconnectedness of oppressive systems. Martin Luther King Jr. wanted to end segregation and voter disenfranchisement, but he also opposed war and militarism overseas. Nelson Mandela knew that the freedom of black South Africans was incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians. At the grassroots level, Palestinians understand that the struggle to block the North Dakota Access Pipeline at Standing Rock is a struggle for indigenous sovereignty. Today, the organizers of the International Womens Strike oppose sexism, but also racism and colonialism around the globe.

At this juncture, as the US critically needs to free itself from the grip of corrupt politicians and the devastation they are wreaking on all our social networks, the question we need to ask is how we can avoid more fake progressives in the future.

One answer may well be that we need to look away from politicians, and focus on amplifying and escalating the work grassroots organizers are doing, with no ambition to holding political office. We can put all our energy into uplifting the efforts of our community members, rather than our supposed representatives.

But since political offices must be filled, we need to support our organic leaders as they shoulder that role. And we must always, always, stay away from Zionists and Israel apologists. Because support for Israel, with its well-documented institutionalized racism, hypermilitarism, settler-colonialism, its violation of international law and the human rights of its indigenous community, is a fail-proof indicator of moral corruption and disrespect for disenfranchised communities everywhere.

Link:
Fake progressives - Mondoweiss

Savor the irony: Progressive politicians like Mayor de Blasio and Gov. Cuomo are freaking out over a key way President Trumps tax reform would soak the 1 percent.

Trump wants to end the federal deduction for state and local taxes while doubling the standard deduction and ending the Alternative Minimum Tax, so that the middle class doesnt get slammed.

The loophole is a huge boon for high earners in high-tax states like New York and New Jersey. Nationwide, the Tax Foundation estimates, 88 percent of the benefits go to taxpayers with over $100,000 in income.

And the Empire Centers E.J. McMahon calculates that the overall Trump plan would still leave New York families earning under $500,000 better off. (The AMT, in particular, is a bane on the upper-middle class, though its supposed to only hit the rich.)

The pain only gets serious for those pulling in more than $2 million a year the folks Cuomo just hit by extending New Yorks millionaires tax, and the ones de Blasio is always eager to see pay their fair share.

Of course, these politicians real fear is that, should the wealthy feel the full impact of New York taxes, theyd be more likely to move away.

As the Manhattan Institutes Steve Malanga notes, New Jersey lost an estimated $200 million a year in tax payments when a hedge-fund manager fled to Florida (a no-income-tax state) last year.

No one really knows how many fat cats would flee if Trump gets his way. After all, theyre willing to pay a hefty (if smaller) premium to live here now.

Whether its the citys restaurants and cultural institutions, the regions beauty, having family nearby or the company of their neighbors, they think its worth it. They certainly can afford to pay, as de Blasio will tell you.

Heck, plenty of them support raising taxes on the rich Wall Street was big for Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama before her.

Yes, Trumps reforms would put more of the federal income-tax burden on high-tax states but mainly because theyre also rich states. New York, New Jersey and Connecticut (which is fast becoming high-tax under Gov. Dan Malloy) have lots of gazillionaires and median incomes well above the US average.

If you tax the rich more, youre going to take more from New York and less from Mississippi. That ought to be something that the likes of Bill de Blasio support.

How progressive can it possibly be to protect a tax write-off for the rich?

Read more here:
Why progressives want to protect fat cats against Trump - New York Post

Editors note: This commentary is by Judith Levine, a writer and activist from Hardwick.

NARAL Pro-Choice America President Ilyse Hogue said it eloquently and succinctly last week: Access to safe, legal, affordable, universally accessible abortion is not a single issue or a social issue. It is a proxy for women to have control over our lives, our familys lives, our economic well-being, our dignity, and human rights.

Criticism in advance of the rally did not move Sanders to change his plans to appear with Mello as part of a national unity sweep for the Democratic Party. Instead, he and party leaders doubled down on their unnecessary decision to get behind a flawed local candidate. These apologists noted that in spite of personal opposition to abortion, Mello has pledged to uphold the law protecting womens access to abortion if elected. But when Mello was in elected office and as a legislator had the opportunity to uphold the law, he voted to change it in order to make abortion more onerous to obtain.

A week later, in The Nation, D.D. Guttenplan provided a more nuanced picture of Mellos role in Nebraskan reproductive politics, interviewing some pro-choice activists in the state who argued, essentially, that it was more pro-choice than outside critics had made it look. But before the rally, neither Bernie nor the Democrats had even thought to look into the issue. Having failed to look, they then refused to retract their endorsements once they got wind of Mellos numerous radical anti-abortion bills and votes. And, having relegated womens rights to an afterthought, they exacerbated the oversight by turning it into political principle.

Sanders, both as candidate for the Democratic Partys presidential nominee and now as its de facto progressive torchbearer, has distinguished economic equality from social issues, including abortion rights the former a set of principles from which no party member, particularly no progressive, may diverge, and the later from which they may. While granting wide latitude to Mello, Sanders recently dismissed Jon Ossoff the Democrat who nearly flipped former Republican Rep. Tom Prices Georgia district as not a progressive, in part because he didnt talk about single-payer health care.

The Democrats must cease demanding that women compromise our economic, social, sexual and existential equality in the name of party unity.

The party has largely done the same. In response to the Mello dustup, even House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi reiterated that while the Democrats are officially pro-choice, they welcome members who are anti. Arguably, granting its imprimatur to anti-choice Democrats is as damaging as Republicans straight-out attack on abortion, because it makes opposition to choice look like a widely held, bipartisan position. In fact, a recent Pew study found that a majority of Americans support Roe v Wade, including 84 percent of Democrats. Meanwhile, according to Gallup, only 73 percent of Democrats support a federally funded single-payer health care system, one of Sanders apparent criteria for progressivism.

In fact, for women theres no distinction between reproductive freedom and economic equality; a large and growing body of literature confirms the link between the ability to determine whether and when to have children and educational, social, and economic benefits for women. Access to abortion affects poor women disproportionately. As Sejal Singh wrote in an excellent piece on Feministing:

Nearly 70 percent of women who obtain abortions live below 200 percent of the federal poverty line, often because they cannot afford to care for a (or another) child. . . . The landmark Turnaway Study tracked women across 21 states who sought but were denied abortion care; researchers found that women who carried an unwanted pregnancy to term are three times more likely than women who receive an abortion to be below the poverty level two years later.

Forcing women to have babies against their will was one of the vilest aspects of Americas foundational crime, slavery. And just as mass incarceration is a modern iteration of legal racial subjugation, the slow re-criminalization of abortion is the 21st century form of the sanctioned violation of womens bodily integrity. In 2015, 32-year-old Purvi Patel (not incidentally, a woman of color) was sentenced in Indiana to 20 years in prison for killing her baby in a self-induced late-term abortion. A judge overturned the feticide conviction but upheld a charge of felony neglect of a dependent; she deemed Patels 18 months already served as appropriate punishment.

The Democrats must cease demanding that women compromise our economic, social, sexual and existential equality in the name of party unity. And no one, not even St. Bernie, should be credited with the mantle of progressive if he does not defend womens reproductive freedom as an inviolable pillar of his or her values.

Go here to read the rest:
Judith Levine: Progressives don't compromise on women's rights - vtdigger.org

There are actual chauvinists, who think women are inferior as a matter of principle, and then there are feminists, who assume the way for women to realize themselves is to emulate the masculinity of men. That leaves no one defending actual femininity. No one, that is, except for romantics such as myself.

Every view of gender is essentially religious, in that it isnt possible to talk about gender without getting to fundamental beliefs about what it means to be human. Progressives have already made their decision, with their ideology of gender fluidity and social construction. On the other hand, the general conservative perspective seems to be that man and woman are metaphysical realities before they are social constructs, and that man and woman complement each other in a deep and primordial way.

In the beginning, there was Adam; and because it was not good for man to be alone, the Lord created Eve out of Adams own rib. But maybe this was just the repetition of a more ancient trick? Before the beginning, there was the Lord. But it was not good for the Lord to be alone, so he made the woman called Nature out of his own rib. This fits the premise that humans are made in the Lords image. This is also a foundational and unabashedly religious understanding of the essence of gender.

Following Sren Kierkegaard, Ill suggest the human being is a fusion of two components: the spirit and the body. The spirit is inherently masculine, and the body is inherently feminine. (In that sense, it could be suggested that all humans are vaguely androgynous, given that both men and women are both body and spirit.) Although perhaps offensive to modern ears, a wide range of mythical thought strongly reinforces this vision. The Sun is a man, and the Moon is a woman; the Sky is a man, and the Earth is a woman; et cetera. Reality seems to be naturally poetic like that.

Man is tilted toward the spirit, while woman is tilted toward the body. Awareness of this is probably what led Albert Camus to write that in contrast to the nurturing ethos of women, men go whoring after ideas; a man runs away from his mother, forsakes his love and starts rushing upon adventure. And heres G. K. Chesterton on the matter: Women are the only realists; their whole object in life is to pit their realism against the extravagant, excessive, and occasionally drunken idealism of men. Realism and idealismbody and spirit. Meeting in the middle, generating the living human soul: well, that could be called the project of romance.

Given that people who identify as transgender make up only a small fraction of 1 percent of the national population, why have they received such an absurdly outsized share of media attention? This is a good tip-off that theres something else going on. The transgender issue isnt primarily about transgender persons. Rather, it has become terrain that progressives want to claim, believing the existence of transgender persons vindicates their view of gender as arbitrary and fluid.

Never mind that transgenderism actually does quite the opposite. It is self-evidently obvious, for anyone who cares to think the matter through, that transgender could be nothing other than a form of severe psychosis. It is fundamentally a matter of a very serious misrelation between the mind and the body. I could hold the sincere and deeply felt belief that I am in fact a kangaroo. But no matter what I do, I will never be a kangaroo; it is not within the scope of possibilities of my nature to become one.

For that matter, I would love to have a self-concept that includes me having wings. But alas, the physical world will not cooperate. I must resign myself to the parameters of this human condition.

Transgender is thus not actually a thingfrom which it logically follows that progressives cannot use transgender persons as ammo for their own arguments about the nature of gender. I strongly suspect that for progressives actual transgenderpersonsmay have never been as important as the use of those persons as symbols.

This would explain why such progressives so blithely think it compassion to encourage a crazy person to jump off his own cliff. The conservative understanding would instead suggest that compassion consists of trying to talk him down from it. Thats because conservatives tend to believe that there is an objective thing called sanity, and that the attempt to break all limits inherent to the human condition will ultimately result in madness.

In a way, transgenderism can be understood as an apotheosis of progressive ideology. Progressivism is fundamentally about: one, the rejection of any concept of unchanging human nature; and two, loving ideas more than really existing persons. These twin impulses come to a frightening head when it comes to the progressives supposed advocacy for such deeply troubled human beings.

Its odd that such basic insights now meet howling demands for political correctness. This suggests men having forgotten what it means to be men, and that women have likewise forgotten what it means to be women. What else could be expected to happen, once people have accepted the idea that the concepts of man and woman are not founded on solid ground, and can be deconstructed at will? Progressives have reversed the categories: theyve chosen to identify psychosis as ultimate reality, and to consign to the realm of delusion the most basic facts of being a person.

Feminism has ruined everything. The point here is not, of course, to argue against womens liberty. In regions of the world governed by sharia law, actual feminismas in, a movement for the freedom of women to express themselves, pursue their dreamswould be a wonderful thing.

This isnt a question of whether women should be able to become doctors or pilots. Of course they should. But thats not the meaning of modern feminism. This is an ideology whose endgame is the abolition of gender altogetherand romance along with it. One symptom of this consists of D.C. McAllisters well-put observation that modern feminism, according to its own logic, automatically classifies all chivalry as chauvinism.

The effect is that of a poisoned well. There is never a strict one-to-one correlation between ideology and reality. Rather, the dominant ideology becomes the general air that everyone within a culture breathes, permeating and twisting everything through its lens in diffused and myriad ways.

What would many women actually dream of, if feminism hadnt told them what to want? Likewise, what would men think it means to be chivalrous toward women? The sad truth is that now we cant know, because people have been drinking this water for just far too long. The only way to go is forward.

The vision of gender Ive been describing is not prescriptive, which means it isnt a matter of telling any individual man or woman what to do with his or her life. This is a religious vision of genderand the whole meaning of religious liberty is that you can hold what ideas you want, express them without fear of revenge, and engage in free association with other like-minded folk. It would be both absurd and wrong to attempt to coerce or force anyone to adhere to this understanding of gender. The point, rather, consists of persuasion, seduction: create and express a thing of beauty, and hope people will come around to seeing it, out of their own free wills.

You cant negotiate with fanatics; for all their pretty talk, they have no real concept of living and letting live.

Unfortunately, this is not how the progressives tend to see the matter. They want to impose their own religious vision of gender on everyone else. If you dont agree with them, then you become a bigot by default. They want to punish people who hold heretical views through whatever means are available, including the levers of governmental power. You cant negotiate with fanatics; for all their pretty talk, they have no real concept of living and letting live.

The idea isnt to tell living men and women what to do. The idea is freedom, and to oppose a culture that is increasingly hostile toward the old-fashioned beliefs and methods for living in comfort within your own gendered skin. No one must accept this vision. But anyone who attempts to foreclose on it, give it no space to exist, surely must be resisted.

Here is the original post:
Why Transgenderism Is Progressive Totem - The Federalist - The Federalist

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Posted: Apr 29, 2017 12:01 AM

THE GOOD (ACTUALLY GREAT)

A fifteen percent top tax rate for business and the repatriation of trillions of dollars of untaxed funds stuffed overseas is beyond good. And if there is a single President Trump tax proposal that should be embraced by progressives, this is the proposal they should embrace.

If corporate income is going to be taxed at 15% instead of 35%, corporate profits will explode. If corporate profits explode, the stock market should explode. Who are the largest holders of U.S. stocks?

Today, virtually every government pension plan is dramatically underfunded. These pensions have begun to squeeze state and municipal budgets and ultimately the required funding of these pensions will strangle the ability to provide public services in virtually every governmental organization in the United States. All services will be reduced including every public service, including police and fire. The thought of the tax dollars necessary to fund these pensions is absolutely mind boggling. The staggering amount of taxes needed would have to be paid through regressive taxes, sales taxes. There is no other source of funds that could make a dent in the state/municipal pension fund deficits.

Perhaps a reduction in the Federal corporate tax rate is the only way to right the governmental pension ship; those public companies are about fifty percent owned by the pension plans. A lower tax rate will increase the value of those stock portfolios and provide a onetime increase in the value for every pension plan in the United States.

The most monstrous and unforgivable legacy of progressive state and municipal governments is the unfunded government pensions that they have created. A fifteen percent corporate tax rate and return of trillions of dollars currently overseas may be the only possible solution to the progressive created problem of underfunded pensions.

And if there is anything wrong with the rest of America catching a break from higher stock prices, this author has no idea what it is.

And yes, a 15% corporate tax rate will keep more jobs and more business in the United States.

Winner, Winner, Winner.

"Climate Change" PageRemoved From EPA Website

Original post:
Progressives Should Love and, in fact, Embrace the 15% Corporate Rate - Townhall