We are almost there folks - Jumpin Joe Manchin and a good percentage of the GOP want the USA to completely revert to either third world or emerging industrial nation status ! (er...except we will not be emerging, we will be submerging). I can hardly wait !
Here is Bernie this morning:
~ From CNN:
Joe Manchin Will Have To Explain His Vote To The People Of West Virginia
Better yet guys:
11:49 AM (1 hour ago): |
Marjorie Ann Grisak -
The President of the United States, the U.S. House of Representatives and 49 members of the U.S. Senate are prepared to pass enormously consequential legislation which stands up to powerful special interests and finally deliver for the working families of our country. With almost every Democrat in the House and Senate on board, there is one member of the Democratic Caucus in the Senate who stands in the way.
Senator Joe Manchin.
In America today the very rich are becoming richer while millions of working families are struggling to put food on the table or pay their bills. We now have the absurd situation in which two multi-billionaires own more wealth than the bottom 40% of Americans, the top 1% owns more wealth than the bottom 92% and the gap between rich and poor is wider than at any time in the last 100 years.
The Build Back Better bill, supported by President Biden, the vast majority of Americans and almost every Democrat in Congress is an unprecedented effort to finally address the long-neglected crises facing working families and demand that the wealthiest people and largest corporations in the country start paying their fair share of taxes.
Here are just a few of the things we are trying to do:
We are going to take on the greed of the pharmaceutical industry and lower the cost of prescription drugs in America. Last year, while nearly one out of four Americans could not afford to fill the prescriptions their doctors wrote, six of the largest drug companies made tens of billions in profits.
We are going to expand Medicare to cover hearing aids, dental care and eyeglasses. Today, in the wealthiest nation on earth, millions of seniors cannot chew their food or see and hear their loved ones.
We are going to help seniors and people with disabilities get the home health care they need. Across the United States, and in places like West Virginia and Vermont in particular, seniors should be able to be around their loved ones as they age as opposed to being forced into expensive nursing homes.
We are going to expand the Child Tax Credit that has reduced childhood poverty by 50 percent in the United States.
We are going to end the dysfunction of a childcare system that forces working families to spend up to 1/3 of their limited income on childcare and keeps millions of women out of the workforce.
We are going to make sure pre-K for 3 and 4 year olds is universal and free, giving our young children the best chance at success regardless of where they are from or how much money their parents make.
And oh yes, there is the not-so-small matter of the existential threat of climate change. With the planet getting warmer and warmer, unprecedented drought, fires, flood, and extreme weather, we are going to finally begin the process of cutting carbon emissions and transforming our energy systems to save this planet for future generations.
This morning, Senator Manchin announced he would not support the Build Back Better Act.
And if that is the case, he should be prepared to vote NO before the working families of West Virginia and America and explain why.
We should give Joe Manchin the opportunity to explain to West Virginia and American people why he opposes taking on the greed of the drug companies and lowering the cost of prescription drugs.
We should give Joe Manchin the opportunity to explain to West Virginia seniors why he opposes helping them secure hearing aids, dental care and the eyeglasses they need.
We should give Joe Manchin the opportunity to explain to families why their loved ones should age in expensive nursing homes instead of around those who care about them most.
We should give Joe Manchin the opportunity to explain why only the children of the wealthy from certain zip codes should have the opportunity to attend pre-K.
And we should give Joe Manchin the opportunity to explain why he sides with those who profit from climate change and the destruction of the planet for future generations.
Now I know Joe Manchin continues to talk about his concerns over the national debt, but I find it amusing I didn’t hear his concerns after voting, just this week, for a military budget of $778 billion, four times greater than the Build Back Better Act over ten years and $25 billion more than the president suggested.
Forgive me thinking that maybe, just maybe, something else is at play here.
Joe Manchin should have the chance to explain what it is.
Let’s vote:
Thank you for making your voice heard.
In solidarity,
Bernie Sanders
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Of course, we can always go to Portugal. Rubio wants to go.
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UPDATE/edit: 12/20/21:
~ From Democracy Now ! this morning, a must read or watch the interview on the link:
Ilhan Omar: " West Virginia is 50th in public health, 50th in childcare, 48th in employment. They support Build Back Better by a 43 point margin. This has nothing to do with [the] constituents [of Manchin]. This is about the corruption and self-interest of a coal baron,” Ilhan Omar tweeted."
"Unacceptable", Rep. Jamaal Bowman Slams Manchin After Senator Says No To Build Back Better Plan
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~ From Informed Comment:
(enclosed video & donation appeal on the link)
"Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Senator Joe Manchin has attempted completely to shoot down the Build Back Better bill, underlining the thin legislative margin with which President Biden has to work. With a 50/50 Senate, Biden’s legislative agenda going forward will need to be bipartisan. The successes this approach can garner are apparent in the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Act passed in November. I argued that the Act has lots of good news for green energy and the environment even if it also has some provisions favoring fossil fuels. Politics is about compromise.
The need for bipartisanship is bad news for some parts of the Democratic agenda, which is deeply regrettable. But pragmatically speaking, what Democrats need to do now is separate out some of the goals toward which the now-defunct Build Back Better bill strove and to go forward with a set of smaller bills that target those goals and which could attract some Republican support. Remember, 19 Republican senators supported the Infrastructure Act.
It is entertaining to curse Joe Manchin, but if Democrats want revenge on him, the best way is to enlist some Green-tilting Republicans in an end run around him and by support for green energy subsidies to hasten the demise of his beloved dirty coal industry.
Promoting green energy is the number one priority that outweighs every other consideration. The poor will be made poorer by runaway global heating. Women will be hurt by it. Workers will suffer. Cities, the Democratic strongholds, are in dire danger from it. There is a sense in which much of the good that Democrats hope to do will be undone if they don’t radically reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Reducing them at home will give the United States more credibility in pressing other industrial societies to do so. Even more importantly, government investment in renewables and batteries will accelerate their already steep cost decrease and competitiveness with fossil fuels.
While punitive measures against fossil fuels could get the GOP legislators’ back up, subsidies, tax breaks and research and development for wind and solar power are increasingly uncontroversial and are attracting bipartisan support at the state level in places like North Carolina.
Michael J. Coren at Quartz argues that subsidies for renewables in some places are ending, and way too soon. Fossil fuels receive billions in subsidies. One way forward for President Biden is to out-subsidize the hydrocarbons by plowing many more billions into wind, solar and battery.
Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley could probably be recruited for a big stand-along Wind Energy for America Act. He is a well known champion of the industry, which provides 40% of Iowa’s power and accounts for 9,000 jobs in the state and $63 million in lease payments to its farmers.
Moreover, if Biden gives the Senate a Wind Energy for America bill with massive subsidies for the industry and Grassley opposes it, that would be an advantage for his Democratic opponent in the 2022 midterms.
Grassley’s own web site trumpets that “As chairman of the Senate Finance Committee in 2003, Grassley spearheaded the effort to include an environmentally responsible energy package including nearly $15.5 billion in federal tax incentives to grow America’s renewable energy sector.”
Well, it is going to be 2022 and the Build Back Better bill had $555 billion in climate-related programs. Most of these could be extracted and passed on a stand-alone basis with the support of Republican senators like Grassley.
Build Back Better, for instance, “includes tax credits that can cut the cost of installing rooftop solar panels by about 30 percent” according to NDRC. Likewise, “The bill includes, for instance, incentives to help strengthen the domestic supply chain for wind and solar power in disadvantaged communities.”
Renewable Energy World adds that the version passed by the House included “the production tax credit (PTC) and investment tax credit (ITC) to their full values, and taxpayers are eligible for direct pay instead of tax equity offsets. The bill will further incentive production that takes place in the U.S.” They note that there was also ” a new ITC for standalone energy storage.” In other words, we could put solar panels on every house and enable owners to afford a Tesla Powerwall or other storage capablity.
Some forms of solar power, especially community solar, have picked up substantial Republican support in states like Michigan and Wisconsin. Great, let’s do it nationally.
Some of the same Republican senators who supported the Infrastructure Bill could be gotten on board with many of these pro-wind and pro-solar measures. Maybe you’d even have to do a solar bill for states with a lot of solar energy and a wind bill for Iowa, Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, etc.
If 2022, leading up to the midterms, is a year in which President Biden can only get some big things done by trading horses with Republicans the way he did in the Infrastructure Act, then we are fortunate in having him at the helm, since he is an old hand at senatorial bill-passing. Progressives won’t get everything we want. But on green energy, the big wins could be there for the asking."
Wow...sorry for the cursing; I mean Dr. Cole is like the Wizard of Infrared Homing which to my understanding is over 90% effective. I'll change the dumb ass song.
end edit.
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I know I keep saying this, but I promise to update our region ...soon. I'm off to soak the damn knee in really strong Dead Sea Minerals.
Meanwhile, go here...and get yer boosters !
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