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Well when our high government position are picked solely by Washington and Multnomah counties and bypasses the rest of the voters, you get the likes of Gov. Brown. Proclaiming Oregon to be a sanctuary state!

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Statesman Journal 10:55 a.m. PT Feb. 10, 2017

Letter to the editor.(Photo: Stock art)

Well when our high government position are picked solely by Washington and Multnomah counties and bypasses the rest of the voters, you get the likes of Gov. Brown. Proclaiming Oregon to be a sanctuary state!

Has it ever crossed her mind that her real job is to care more about the actual citizens of this state? Citizenswho pay the taxes, citizenswho have been reduced to third-class waifs,who have been told money is short and wait in line for any leftovers not needed by benefactors of her social engineering?

The answer is no, because it is more sexy to progressives to care about people from other countries.

This is a mystery to me as, like most of you, I was raised to believe charity begins at home.

Progressives dont care that most of these folks hate us, our culture, our country and especially our Constitution. They ask us to change our way of life for the invaders and give up everything we hold dear, least we offend the very people we have to care for lock, stock and barrel.

Keep it up, progressives; you are becoming irrelevant. This is the reason you lost the election.

Stephen A. Moser

Salem

Read or Share this story: http://stjr.nl/2kXL8os

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Progressives put undocumented immigrants before citizens - Statesman Journal

U.S. Rep. Jim Himes, D-4th District

Baltimore U.S. Rep. Jim Himes, the co-chair of a group of centrist Democrats, on Thursday criticized efforts by progressives to try to sideline centrist messages at the annual gathering of House Democrats.

All human institutions my marriage, the Ford Motor Company, the Democratic Caucus, the Roman Empire they win and survive when they adapt, listen to lots of different points of view, challenge orthodoxies, invite people who think differently than they do into the conversation, and have a really robust conversation, said Himes. Thats a winning organization.

He said a losing organization, in contrast is one in which you are convinced that the orthodoxy is exactly right, and you shut down other points of view. Himes is a co-chairman of a group of business-friendly House Democrats called the New Democrat Coalition.

Progressives protested the scheduled appearance of Jim Kessler, the senior vice president for policy of Third Way, a prominent centrist think tank, at the Democratic retreat on Wednesday.

Kessler says the Democratic Party needs to grow geographically, demographically and ideologically not move decisively to the left to regain power

For House Democrats to seek advice from a Wall Street-funded think tank that preaches timidity, that shows them learning the exactly wrong lesson in the Trump era, said Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. I think Democrats need to fight more strongly, with backbone, and not let Trump steal the mantle of economic populism.

Himes said the policy of exclusion is counterproductive.

So, we bristle a little bit at the idea, that my gosh, that this person should not even be allowed in the room, Himes said.

The retreat aimed at party unity and at agreeing to a strategy that would allow the battered Democratic Party to move forward after their electoral loses in the fall.

Some Democrats argued party members should work with President Donald Trump on infrastructure and other areas of common interests. But others vowed their only job is to resist the White House.

The Democrats began their retreat in Baltimore on Wednesday and will wrap up their meeting Friday afternoon.

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Himes knocks progressives for rejecting centrist speaker at Dem retreat - The CT Mirror

We read that the local progressives, which we define as including all Democrats, are disappointed that their anti-President Trump events have accomplished very little, if anything, and are now considering whether they should spend their time and money to obtain offices, at the city, county and even state levels.

Assuming you decide to run for local offices, we have some questions for you: If you lose, will you seek to delegitimize the winner or support and work with him or her in order to help serve the public?

Will you join with others to protest a decision of action made by the winner, even though its the subject matter of the winners platform? Or will you tell others to cool it and give the winner a chance?

Youre going to face a lot of people, who, like us, will not support you, perhaps ever, if youve got a D next to your name. Your brand is damaged, perhaps beyond repair. Youre shown yourselves to be sore losers, antagonistic and really mean people.

Such obstructionist tactics dont do anything for this country.

Dan and Myrna Coleman, Portville

Go here to see the original:
Letter: Questions to ask of local 'progressives' - Olean Times Herald

By Jeff Bryant / Education Opportunity Network

Betsy DeVos may have won her contest in the Senate to become the new U.S. Secretary of Education, but her opposition wasnt the only thing that went down to defeat that day.

For decades, federal education policies have been governed by a Washington Consensus that public schools are effectively broken, especially in low-income communities of color, and the only way to fix them is to apply a dose of tough love and a business philosophy of competition from charter schools and performance measurements based on standardized tests.

Since the 1990s, this consensus among Democrats and Republicans has enforced all kinds of unproven reform mandates on schools, and by 2012, as veteran education reporter Jay Mathews of The Washington Post noted that year, the two parties were happily copying each other on education.

Democrats have in recent years sounded and acted a lot like Republicans in advancing corporate education reform, which seeks to operate public schools as if they were businesses, not civic institutions, writes Valerie Strauss, the veteran education journalist who blogs for the Washington Post. By embracing many of the tenets of corporate reform including the notion of school choice and the targeting of teachers and their unions as being blind to the needs of children they helped make DeVoss education views, once seen as extreme, seem less so.

But with the election of President Donald Trump and the ascension of DeVos to secretary, that consensus appears dead.

She would start her job with no credibility, Education Week quotes Democratic Senator Patty Murray of Washington. A vote for Betsy DeVos is a vote for a secretary of education who is likely to succeed only in further dividing us on education issues.

The DeVos vote reflected the tribal, dysfunctional, polarized nature of our politics, writes Woodrow Wilson Center senior scholar Linda Killian in USA Today. It is a harbinger of things to come.

But what looks like the death of a political consensus on education could be the beginning of something else: an opportunity for progressives to press a new education agenda. Heres what should they do.

Build On The Perfect Storm

Public education advocates have long been exasperated with progressives.

When will progressives defend public education? fumed education activist Anthony Cody nearly two years ago. Cody who helped organize the largest public protest event in support of public education to date and co-founded the Network for Public Education whose membership recently passed the 300,000 mark lamented that while big money, astroturf groups such as Democrats for Education Reform continue to present the left as a partner of charter schools and corporate reform, progressive organizations generally remain silent on the issues.

These organizations need to wake up, Cody argued.

Well, consider them awake.

The DeVos nomination motivated an array of progressive groups to engage in the unprecedented outpouring of opposition to her. Similarly, civil rights organizations, that often differ with public education activists on charter schools and school vouchers, led a strong effort to oppose DeVos.

DeVos nomination was simply the perfect storm for progressives and members of the resistance to seize upon, observes Lucia Graves at The Guardian. The voter outrage was the triumph of grassroots organizing. And that is worth celebrating despite the outcome.

Now that progressive organizations are engaged in the fight against DeVos, public school advocates must continue to reach out to them and engage them in the ongoing fight against privatization DeVos will lead. In turn, public school advocates must also be ready to step outside the education silo and take up other causes progressives care about, such as Black Lives Matter and LGBTQ rights, that have impacts both inside and outside of schools.

Turn Education Into A Wedge Issue

For years, big money donors have been successful at keeping many Democratic party candidates in the charter school camp. Opposition to DeVos may disrupt that loyalty.

For instance, New Jersey Senator Cory Booker has been an ardent supporter of charters and vouchers and has deep ties to the charter school industry, yet he voted against DeVos.

Booker, who many consider a possible presidential contender in 2020, joined DeVos on the board of Alliance for School Choice, when he was mayor of Newark. In 2012, he gave a speech at a meeting held by the American Federation for Children, the advocacy group DeVos founded and once chaired. Both organizations advocate using taxpayer dollars for charter, private, and religious schools, which DeVos will surely champion. Yet Booker sided with his fellow Democrats against her.

Westcoast billionaire Eli Broad is another prominent Democrat who advocates for school choice but strongly opposed DeVos. This is more than just one billionaire school activist going against another billionaire school activist, Strauss writes in another of her blog posts. His opposition underscores what has been obvious for some time: that the opposition to DeVos goes far beyond the teachers unions.

Of course, not all Democrats whove been supportive of the corporate reform movement made strong public statements in opposition to DeVos.

As reporters for Education Week note, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who once received praise from DeVos for his support for charter schools, was reluctant to publically criticize her during her nomination.

Cuomo recently announced his intention to abolish the cap that limits the number of charter schools in New York City, despite Mayor Bill De Blasios strong opposition a proposal Secretary DeVos will certainly praise. Given the Democratic partys total antipathy for DeVos, public school advocates can now easily pivot from opposing DeVos to opposing Cuomo and smear him with her negative brand.

Sensing an opportunity to do just that, the Alliance for Quality Education, a public school advocacy group that frequently battles the governor, issued a statement opposing Cuomos recent education proposals, including lifting the charter cap, immediately after DeVos was confirmed. It stated, Betsy DeVos is a disastrous choice that spurred massive public resistance to her nomination. In New York State it is time for resistance to focus on Governor Cuomo Just as New Yorkers have been leaders in the fight to resist Trump and dump DeVos, we will now fight back against Cuomo and his attacks on public education.

Press For Positive Change

Resistance is all well and good. But my colleague Richard Eskow is correct when he writes, In todays political climate, opposing or worse, merely withstanding isnt enough. It will take a countervailing force for change to stop Trump and the Republicans.

Whats the countervailing force public school advocates need? Progressive Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives recently answered that.

As Politico reports, on the same day of the final vote on DeVos in the Senate, Democrats in the House issued a new Progressive Education Agenda. The agenda was drafted by California Democratic Representative Mark Takano and endorsed by the House Public Education Caucus.

The Agenda begins as it should, proclaiming education as a fundamental civil right in the United States of America and calling for education approaches that address equity in the public school system and considering both the instruction our children receive and the conditions they need in and out of the classroom to succeed.

In a complete departure from the corporate reform ideas Democrats have embraced, the Agenda completely abandons the language of competition and performance measurement and instead calls for defending and investing in our public schools as universally accessible and inherently democratic institutions.

Among the 6 policy goals in the agenda are proposals to expand access to early childhood education, ensure equitable access and resources at all grade levels, and support educators and their training programs.

Certainly, those are positive reforms all progressives can get behind.

Not A Time For Compromise

The torrent of protests that have greeted the advent of the Trump regime is evidence of a popular unwillingness to compromise with the nations new leadership.

Is there any reason to believe this unwillingness to compromise doesnt extend to education?

The Progressive Education Agenda Takano and his colleagues are pushing reveals the wide gap between progressive Democrats and Betsy DeVos in terms of both education policy priorities and expertise, states a press release from Takanos office. Good. The gap needs to be wide.

Via Big Education Ape blog

Jeff Bryant is an Associate Fellow at Campaign for Americas Future and the editor of the Education Opportunity Network website. Prior to joining OurFuture.org he was one of the principal writers for Open Left. He owns a marketing and communications consultancy in Chapel Hill, N.C. He has written extensively about public education

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Progressives Lost The Vote On DeVos But Won Something Else - San Diego Free Press

BALTIMORE The House Democrats gathered here fortheir annual policy retreat are scheduled to attend a session Wednesday on Rumors, Truths and Reality. Later, theyll discuss Fighting for Our Principles with leaders of major activist groups. And then theyll hearPerspectives from the vice president of Third Way, a prominent centrist think tank.

That last session, showcasing a wing of the party that dominated Democratic politics for much of the past two decades, would not typically gain much notice. But those days are over: Progressive groups are incensed that lawmakers will be hearing perspectives that they argue have been thoroughly discredited in the wake oflast years election.

For House Democrats to seek advice from a Wall Street-funded think tank that preaches timidity, that shows them learning the exactly wrong lesson in the Trump era, said Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. I think Democrats need to fight more strongly, with backbone, and not let Trump steal the mantle of economic populism.

[Some Democrats push for an economic message that goes beyond trashing Trump]

Jim Kessler, Third Ways senior vice president for policy,is set to address the retreat Wednesday evening during a half-hour session where, according a senior Democrat familiar with his planned remarks,he will make the case that the Democratic Party needs to grow geographically, demographically and ideologically not move decisively to the left to regain power. That is a strain of thought that represented Democratic orthodoxy in the 1990s, when the business-friendly Democratic Leadership Council held sway.

But it has since fallen out of favor, especially among progressives who believe Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) would have better captured voter anger toward the political establishment as the 2016 Democratic president nominee. And now, they say, Third Ways politics are notwhat Democrats need to hear.

In their view, 2016 was a thorough rebuke of establishment-mindedcentrism and giving Third Way a platform to advocate for it is not a recipe for winning.And their angry response to centrism being given a platform at a party event reflects the hardball tactics they are using to shape the future of the Democratic Party.

Basically youre deciding were going to figure out our path forward with a bunch of losers, said Charles Chamberlain of Democracy for America, another activist group.

Erica Payne, founder of the Agenda Project, called it illogical to the point of absurdity to believe that Third Way could lead Democrats out of their electoral abyss and compared it to Republicans calling on former Florida governor and failed presidential candidate Jeb Bush for advice.

Third Way spokeswoman Ladan Ahmadi said in a statement that the group was honored to be invited to address House Democrats at their retreat. The House Democratic Leadership has always valued hearing from a diversity of voices that make up the progressive movement and this year isnt any different, she said.

Democratic aidesinvolved with the planning of the retreat noted that there are numerous other panels that featureprogressive-minded speakers, including Center for American Progress chief executive Neera Tanden, political strategist Cornell Belcher, analyst Mark Huelsman from the liberal think tank Demos and numerous leaders from labor unions and leftist activist groups. Its our belief you have to hear from everyone to chart the best path going forward, one of the staffers said.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) offered a message of party unity at a news conference Wednesday: Atthis conference, Democrats at the end will show our values are in harmony.

Third Way, it should be noted, has hardly acted like Wall Street lobbyists or Trump accommodationists. During the presidential campaign, the group was strongly anti-Trump, and it has advocated for tougher financial regulations and higher taxes on the wealthy. In recent days, their social media accounts expressed opposition to Trumps efforts to roll back the Dodd-Frank financial reform law and Trumps nomination of Betsy DeVos as Education Secretary.

What appears to be particularly vexing to the activists is that Kessler is getting a session to himself rather than sitting on a panel where his views might find a counterpoint. But more than that, progressives are taking the view thatThird Way-style centrists have no place inthe Democrats tent, period.

Its not a wing of the party anywhere outside of Washington, D.C., Green said. There are not people in West Virginiaand Ohio and Michigan rooting for Wall Street to get away with murder again.

Chamberlain argued that it wasthe Elizabeth Warren wing fighters who won congressional races in 2016, citing the Senate campaigns of Catherine Cortez Masto (Nev.), Kamala D. Harris (Calif.) and Tammy Duckworth (Ill.). More centrist candidates like Patrick Murphy (Fla.) and Evan Bayh (Ind.) lost.

Everywhere we won, we won from the Warren wing, he said. And whenwe lost, we lost from the corporatewing. It is disgusting, it is a disappointment that the Democratic establishment is still wanting to hear from these Wall Street losers at their retreat.

But there are significant counterpoints to that view: Russ Feingold, a beloved progressive former senator, lost his bid to reclaim his seat in Wisconsin to incumbent GOP Sen. Ron Johnson, as did unabashedly liberal Senate candidates such as Deborah Ross in North Carolina and Ted Strickland in Ohio. And in a closely watched House battle between an outspoken progressive and a moderate Republican, New York University law professor Zephyr Teachout lost her race for an Upstate New York House seat.

Green questioned why no progressive organizing groups were invited to address Democrats. He said his group asked for a role in the retreat after it learned Third Way would be represented but was told by organizers that it was too late.

Their role is to paper over the lessons of the last election and urge Democrats not to be more robust in their critique of Wall Street and establishment power, he said of Third Way. That is not the lesson Democrats need to learn right now.

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A centrist is addressing House Democrats, and progressives are furious - Washington Post