10 August 21
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10 August 21
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Reader Supported News
For too many decades, Congress has ignored the needs of the working class
or too many years the people on top have been doing phenomenally well, while working families continue to struggle. The time is long overdue for Congress to address the long-neglected needs of ordinary Americans, and not just the 1% and wealthy campaign contributors. And that is precisely what we’re trying to do right now in Congress through an historic $3.5 trillion "reconciliation" bill.
It is unacceptable that the United States has more income and wealth inequality now than at any time in the last hundred years. Today, the two wealthiest people in this country own more wealth than the bottom 40% and the top 1% own more wealth than the bottom 92%.
Since 2009, 45% of all new income has gone into the hands of the 1%.
Meanwhile, because of tax policy written by corporate lobbyists, some of the very richest people in this country and largest corporations pay nothing in federal income taxes in a given year — not a penny. And, as Warren Buffett often reminds us, the effective tax rate for billionaires is actually lower than that of the average worker.
Meanwhile, while the rich become much richer, real inflation-accounted-for weekly wages for the average worker have not risen in 50 years, over half of our people live paycheck to paycheck and millions work for starvation wages.
Because of disastrous trade policies pushed by large corporations that have cost us millions of manufacturing jobs and anti-worker decisions made by the National Labor Relations Board, fewer workers today are able to negotiate decent wages as union membership is now lower than at any time in recent history.
Given that reality, here’s some of what we’re trying to do to address the long-neglected problems facing working families and, in the process, create millions of good-paying jobs.
Importantly, given the unfairness of our current tax system, the reconciliation bill will be paid for by increased taxes on the very wealthiest people and largest corporations in this country. Despite what critics are saying, no one earning less than $400,000 a year will pay a penny more in taxes.
We’re going to make life a lot easier for struggling parents and do what many other countries have done for years as we end the absurdity of the United States having the highest rate of childhood poverty of almost any major country on earth. There will be a multi-year extension of the up to $300 a month Child Tax Credit for working families. If you have two kids under 18, that means up to $7,200 a year to help raise your kids.
There will also be a major investment in child care so that no low- or middle-income family will have to pay more than 7% of their income to have their young children well-taken care of.
Further, we will move toward making pre-K education for 3-4-year-olds universal and free.
For high school graduates and working people of all ages we will make community colleges tuition-free, raise Pell grants and provide increased support for historically Black colleges and universities. This will be a step forward in allowing working people to get the skills they need to acquire good-paying jobs.
In terms of health care, we will take on the greed of the pharmaceutical industry, lower drug prices and demand that Medicare negotiate prices with the industry. The savings brought about will be used to expand Medicare to cover dental care, hearing aids and eye glasses and lower the age of eligibility.
We will also expand health care coverage to millions of uninsured Americans and work to increase the number of doctors, nurses and dentists who practice in underserved areas.
In an aging society, we will significantly increase the number of home health care workers to ensure that the elderly and disabled can receive the care they need at home rather than be forced into nursing homes.
We will end the international disgrace of the United States being the only major country on earth not to provide paid family and medical leave. Workers should not be forced to go to work when they are sick, and parents should be able to stay home with kids who are ill.
We will end the disgrace of widespread homelessness and lack of affordable housing through an unprecedented investment in low- and middle-income housing.
We will fight to bring undocumented people out of the shadows and provide them with a pathway to citizenship, including those who courageously kept our economy running in the middle of a deadly pandemic.
We will finally address the existential threat of climate change by transforming our energy system away from fossil fuels and into energy efficiency and sustainable energy. Among other provisions, a Civilian Climate Corps will give hundreds of thousands of young people good-paying jobs and educational benefits as they help us combat climate change.
For too many decades, Congress has ignored the needs of the working class, the elderly, the children, the sick and the poor.
Now is the time for bold action. Let’s go forward together.
Please make a $2.70 contribution to stand with Bernie in passing the most significant legislation in the modern history of this country. This is important.
Andrew Cuomo. (photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
The fallout over months of sexual-harassment allegations and nursing home deaths finally felled the once-fearsome governor.
n one of the most dramatic political downfalls in recent memory, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Tuesday that he is resigning his office amid a welter of allegations of sexual harassment and misconduct.
The decision came a little more than a year after Cuomo emerged as the face of supposedly rational Democratic decision-making amid ex-President Donald Trump’s bungling response to the COVID-19 pandemic—and just one week after State Attorney General Letitia James released a devastating report that found the governor had subjected 11 women to unwanted comments and touching.
“I think that, given the circumstances, the best way I can help now is if I step aside and let government get back to governing, and therefore, that’s what I’ll do,” Cuomo said Tuesday, adding that his resignation will be effective in 14 days.
Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul, whom Cuomo described as “smart and competent,” will take over his position, becoming the first female governor in New York state history.
“New York tough means New York loving. And I love New York. And I love you. And everything I have ever done has been motivated by that love,” Cuomo said.
In defending himself on Tuesday, Cuomo insisted he never thought he’d “crossed the line with anyone”—and didn’t “realize the extent to which the line has been redrawn,” despite most of the allegations taking place in the wake of the #MeToo movement. The governor also blamed his woes on Twitter, lamenting that it’s “become the public square for policy debate.”
The AG report came months after an initial cascade of allegations and images from women about the powerful three-term Democrat’s abusive, demeaning, and sexist behavior, including—most seriously—a then-anonymous accusation that he groped an executive assistant in the governor’s mansion in Albany. Many of the state’s most powerful elected officials urged him to resign, including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand.
Yet Cuomo surprised many national observers, though few in New York, by attempting to ride out the crisis, claiming to be a victim of “cancel culture” and urging lawmakers to await the outcome of the attorney general’s investigation.
For a short time, the scandal receded. But then James’ report dropped. It not only substantiated the women’s accounts, but revealed fresh information, including that the governor had suggestively touched and taunted a state trooper he had moved to his personal security detail. The attorney general concluded that the governor had harassed a total of 11 women and had violated workplace conduct statutes he had personally signed into law. State legislators scrambled into impeachment proceedings, even as Cuomo simultaneously denied and defended his behavior.
But the governor’s defenses showed plain signs of collapsing. President Joe Biden and House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi called on him to resign, while his attorneys offered flailing claims his due-process rights were being violated. Multiple district attorneys, along with the Albany sheriff’s office, began prying into the attorney general’s report for evidence of criminal activity by the state’s highest executive. His top aide and confidante Melissa DeRosa resigned. And Brittany Commisso, the assistant who had asserted the governor molested her in his mansion, dropped her anonymity and came forward with further allegations and a demand Cuomo be held accountable.
Finally, the pressure overwhelmed even the entrenched Cuomo.
The unceremonious exit marked an incredible reversal of reputation and fortune for the governor, once viewed as a potential presidential contender and candidate for the Biden Cabinet.
During the worst of the global health crisis, Cuomo took his longtime posture as a tough, take-charge leader to a national audience with daily presentations on the novel coronavirus’ progress in the worst-hit state in the worst-hit nation. Thousands of frightened Americans from far-flung states tuned in to the broadcasts, and viewers and pundits alike declared themselves “Cuomosexuals.”
But the fawning affection the third-term Democrat received glossed over his earlier downplaying of the pandemic’s severity, his intervention to prevent an early lockdown in disease-wracked New York City, and his March 2020 order that nursing homes accept COVID-19 patients from hospitals. Experts agree these actions probably cost lives.
It also overlooked how Cuomo had spent years building his reputation and power by terrorizing staff, reporters, and other politicians. Cuomo’s behavior haunted him when reports surfaced that his administration had undercounted COVID-19 deaths in senior residences after issuing his order last year. In the face of federal probes and continuing leaks about his team’s efforts to conceal the extent of devastation in nursing homes, a state lawmaker claimed the governor had called and threatened to “destroy” him.
The claim by Queens Democrat Ron Kim uncorked a torrent of negative national publicity for the governor, as report after report surfaced about his bullying habits and toxic work culture.
But arguably what felled the powerful governor was a series of sexual harassment allegations from former female aides. On Feb. 24, Lindsey Boylan, who had referred more vaguely to impropriety from Cuomo in the past, asserted that the governor had made numerous inappropriate comments to and about her and had kissed her on the lips while she served as an assistant on economic development matters.
Cuomo denied the accusations, but more soon followed. Charlotte Bennett, a 25-year-old staffer for pandemic issues, came forward alleging the governor had propositioned her for sex and made comments and inquiries about her sexual history.
On March 1, a photo surfaced of Cuomo grasping a young woman’s face at a wedding. The victim claimed it was one of several instances of unwanted contact from the governor at the event. Cuomo attempted to play off his behavior as a sign of his old-fashioned glad-handing style. But even more women—including Commisso—went to the press or to human resources with stories of the governor’s creepy comments and touches.
The scandal proved how few friends Cuomo had in the New York State capital, the product of a brutal political style he had honed in New York for decades.
Cuomo entered politics at a young age, working on his father Mario’s campaigns for New York mayor and governor in the late 1970s and early 1980s. He earned an early reputation for ruthlessness: Ed Koch, who defeated his dad for the former office in 1977, accused his opponent’s son of disseminating posters reading “Vote Cuomo Not the Homo”—a reference to rumors about Koch’s sexuality. These claims would haunt Andrew in later years, as he styled himself as a champion for LGBTQ rights.
Mario Cuomo triumphed in his run for governor in 1982, a campaign the 24-year-old Andrew managed. His father’s success catapulted Andrew into jobs at a prestigious law firm, at an anti-homelessness nonprofit, and finally into President Bill Clinton’s Department of Housing and Urban Development, where he eventually became secretary.
In 2002, Cuomo sought to challenge New York Gov. George Pataki, the Republican who had dislodged his father from the governor’s mansion eight years prior. But Cuomo dropped out of the race after a disastrous gaffe in which he seemed to politicize the then-fresh 9/11 attacks.
Four years later, he defeated future Fox News host Judge Jeanine Pirro to become New York attorney general. He used the position to undermine first Gov. Eliot Spitzer, who resigned amid a prostitution scandal, and then Gov. David Paterson. Having effectively pushed Paterson aside with the help of then-President Barack Obama, Cuomo won his first of three landslide victories for the governor’s office in 2010.
Cuomo proved to be an ideological shapeshifter, styling himself first as a tax-slashing fiscal conservative, then as a pro-labor populist, then as a reasoned champion of good government and good sense in the face of Trumpian mismanagement. What did not change was Cuomo’s approach to politics: aggressive and intolerant of dissent, and prone to rewarding political allies.
He came under federal scrutiny repeatedly between 2014 and 2016, first over his disbanding of a corruption commission he himself had established (when it begin to look into his own office) and then for his economic development programs, culminating in several of his top donors and aides—including his best friend and former campaign manager—being sentenced to prison.
But Cuomo managed not only to survive but thrive. He won a third term in 2018, saw his powers and profile grow amid the COVID-19 pandemic, and was even rumored as a potential replacement for President Joe Biden atop the Democratic ticket last year.
Now in disgrace, he awaits the result of criminal probes into his conduct.
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