How far we've come

Remembering Trump's lost armada.

It was just three years ago that Trump was threatening "fire and fury" against North Korea and boasting to N.K President Kim Jong-Un, "My button is bigger than yours". He had Pentagon on a nuclear war footing and the U.S. "lost armada"  sailing into Korean waters.

 

See how far we've come.

Yesterday, it was V.P. Kamala ("Don't come") Harris, fresh off the Afghan withdrawal debacle, standing on a U.S. combat ship at the Changi naval base in Singapore warning China to end its "incursions" into the South China Sea. 

”Take a look at the map and tell me who's the one making "incursions"?

To borrow a line from Carlos Martinez (@agent_of_change): "Whoever said Americans don't understand irony?"

Advancing our interests...Sounding more and more like an old-line imperialist, Harris proclaimed, “It is also imperative that as we address developments in one region, we continue to advance our interests in other regions, including this region."

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

 

Robert Reich, former US secretary of labor

The most dramatic change in American capitalism over the last half-century has been the emergence of corporate behemoths like Amazon and the shrinkage of labor unions. -- Guardian

 V.P. Kamala Harris in Atlanta

"For the last year, we’ve had people in positions of incredible power scapegoating Asian Americans. People with the biggest pulpits spreading this kind of hate." -- Washington Post

Sen. Raphael Warnock 

It is a contradiction to say we must protect minority rights in the Senate while refusing to protect minority rights in the society. Colleagues, no Senate rule should overrule the integrity of the democracy and we must find a way to pass voting rights whether we get rid of the filibuster or not. -- Democracy Now

Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director General

 "Some countries are racing to vaccinate their entire populations while other countries have nothing. This may buy short-term security, but it’s a false sense of security." -- Media briefing

Harris started hot and then let Pence escape and evade

 

M.Klonsky pic

The much anticipated V.P. debate turned out to be a dud with Pence ducking and dodging every question and Sen. Kamala Harris overly restrained and moderator Susan Page failing to go after him. 

I liked Harris a lot better in that primary debate back in June, when she went aggressively after Joe Biden for his backward role in the school integration battles of the '70s. Remember her devastating line, "that little girl was me."

Last night she started hot. 

Well, the American people have witnessed what is the greatest failure of any presidential administration in the history of our country. And here are the facts. 210,000 dead people in our country in just the last several months. Over 7 million people who have contracted this disease. One in five businesses closed.  We're looking at frontline workers who have been treated like sacrificial workers. We are looking at over 30 million people who in the last several months had to file for unemployment. And here's the thing, on January 28, the vice president and the president were informed about the nature of this pandemic. They were informed that it's lethal in consequence, that it is airborne, that it will affect young people and that it would be contracted because it is airborne. And they knew what was happening, and they didn't tell you. 

But then cooled off. 

Should have been BOOM! DEBATE OVER! But it wasn't. Instead, Trump's loyal V.P. was allowed to repeatedly escape and evade, steal time with long non-sequiturs, violate time limits, mansplain issues of race, criminal justice, China, and the economy, and put Kamala on the defensive on so-called, "court-packing."

Pence's outright lies were received with skeptical smiles but mainly went unchecked with little or no follow-up questioning from Page or anticipated counter-attack from Harris.  

Eg...Pence, defending Trump and himself on their failure to control pandemic-spread, praised D.T. for his supposed suspension of all travel from China. He lied. Thousands were exempted from the partial ban. Plus it was travelers from Europe, not China, who brought the pandemic to NY.

On the environment: Pence's claim that "our water is among the cleanest in the world" went unchallenged, except of course, from what I imagine were thousands of fist-shaking viewers in Flint, MI. 

He went on to deny the existence of systemic racism in the U.S., in effect supporting Trump's ban on teaching about the history of racism in schools or anti-racism training in the workplace.

Pence stonewalled Page's question about whether or not he and D.T. would accept the election results if they lost. Page quickly moved on and Harris didn't pursue. 

Trump's current squashing of a bi-partisan COVID-relief bill in order to fast-track his supreme court nomination never even came up. 

And so it went. 

Interesting side note: The term "the American people" was used 57 times in just two hours, mainly by Pence. I cringed every time he said it, knowing that he was using the term to represent his base of mainly white, male MAGAs.  

PENCE: I think the American people know that this is a president who has put the health of America first...But when you say what the American people have done over these last eight months hasn't worked, that's a great disservice to the sacrifices the American people have made... and I'm going to speak up on behalf of what the American people have done...President Trump and I have great confidence in the American people and their ability to take that information and put it into practice...We told the American people what needed to be done and the American people made the sacrifices. 

We sure as hell did sacrifice...212K dead. 

Another: 

Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley castigated Pence after he invoked the nickname AOC for Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez during the debate. 

“Pence you are obsessed,” the Massachusetts congresswoman wrote. “She’s a prolific legislator, a historymaker, a movement leader, I get it. But stop being so familiar. Titles matter & she’s earned hers. It’s CONGRESSWOMAN Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, AUTHOR of the Green New Deal.”

But the most likely takeaway, the thing people will long remember about this debate, was the fly that landed on Pence's head and offered us viewers a few moments of hilarity, diversion from the two-hour nothing-burger on the stage.

I doubt if anything else that occurred on that stage will move the needle by even a point.

With COVID-stricken, steroid-addled Trump's announcement yesterday that he won't participate in the next presidential debate, last night's event will likely be the last of this campaign's televised debates. 

Fine with me. 

Education on the brink, but missing from Biden/Harris speeches

The topic of education was, unfortunately, MIA from the main convention speeches. It barely came up in either the Kamala Harris or Joe Biden speech. This at a time when public ed has been pushed to the brink, not only by the pandemic but by the current administration's response to it and should be a central issue in the campaign.

I'm not sure where party platforms go after elections, but the draft Party Platform does have some good stuff in it. There doesn't seem to be any big changes in it from the 2016 Platform, but it's still a hell of a lot better than the Republicans'. Plus the idea of sending Betsy DeVos packing has my heart aflutter.

From the Platform...

As Democrats, we believe that education is a critical public good—not a commodity—and that it is the government’s responsibility to ensure that every child, everywhere, is able to receive a world-class education that enables them to lead meaningful lives, no matter their race, ZIP code, disability status, sexual orientation, gender identity, or household income.

On the pandemic...

The emergency conditions created by the COVID-19 pandemic have vividly demonstrated to parents, students, and educators across the country that there is no sustainable, long-term substitute for high-quality, in-classroom learning. Significant gaps in access to technology, including lack of access to high-speed broadband, have deepened inequities in our educational system for students of color, students with disabilities, and students in rural areas and under-resourced neighborhoods during this pandemic. We will need increased investments in public education to help students get back on track when public health experts determine it is safe to return to schools. 

On charter schools and vouchers...

Democrats believe that education is a public good and should not be saddled with a private profit motive, which is why we will ban for-profit private charter businesses from receiving federal funding...And Democrats oppose private school vouchers and other policies that divert taxpayer-funded resources away from the public school system.

On testing...

The evidence from nearly two decades of education reforms that hinge on standardized test scores shows clearly that high-stakes testing has not led to enough improvement in outcomes for students or for schools, and can lead to discrimination against students, particularly students with disabilities, students of color, low-income students, and English language learners. Democrats will work to end the use of such high-stakes tests and encourage states to develop reliable, continuous, evidence-based approaches to student assessment that rely on multiple and holistic measures that better represent student achievement. Those measures will be supported by data collection and analysis disaggregated by race, gender, disability status, and other important variables, to identify disparities in educational equity, access, and outcomes.

It will be up to us to demand adherence and accountability from a hopefully new regime.

United front against Trump doesn't mean struggle ends.

"Ella Baker, a giant of the civil rights movement, left us with this wisdom: Give people light and they will find a way." -- Joe Biden 

"You and I cannot be free in America or anywhere else where there is capitalism and imperialism." --  Ella Baker, Puerto Rico Solidarity Rally 1974

Yes, I was captivated as usual by the Obama speeches and deeply moved by Kamala Harris' personal story and will definitely try to beat my brother Fred to the polls this time around to vote the anti-Trump ticket from top to bottom.

Although you might not have gotten this from the convention's singular focus on Biden/Harris, we also need to get out the vote for congressional candidates and take back the Senate if we are to begin undoing the damage Trump's regime has caused. My hunch is, congressional candidates weren't getting much play at the DNC so as not to offend or scare away the anti-Trump Republicans.

It's pretty clear that a united-front strategy -- all hands on deck -- is the right one to take down Trump in November even though it leaves some ("they're all the same") ultra-lefties grumpy and feeling betrayed by their base. But it's also important to remember that even within a united front, struggle goes on. Without that struggle -- and there is room for struggle -- the tone of the Democratic Convention would have been far different and minus progressive voices that made it through Nancy Pelosi's loyalty screen.

It seemed almost pro forma for convention speakers to tip their hat to SNCC '60s freedom fighters at the start of every speech. It shows how much the national BLM protests have forced the party leftward in order to maintain its credibility with labor, immigrants, and younger Black and Latinx voters and how much today's Democratic Party leaders like Harris (admittedly) have to stand on the shoulders of their Black Freedom Movement forerunners.

And these women inspired us to pick up the torch, and fight on. Women like Mary Church Terrell and Mary McCleod Bethune. Fannie Lou Hamer and Diane Nash. Constance Baker Motley and the great Shirley Chisholm. -- Kamala Harris speech

Despite all the civil-rights chatter, it became pretty clear that Pelosi's right-center conception of the anti-Trump united front is far different from ours. Hers is essentially a Kasich/Clinton/Obama coalition that even welcomes with open arms, union-busters, Pentagon and NRA faves, global-warming deniers, right-to-lifers, and neocon Republicans while keeping progressive and left-leaning Democrats at arm's length or out the door completely.

I know, AOC got her minute in the sun (and a powerful minute it was) and Bernie Sanders is too legit to quit. But I'm amazed, though not really surprised to see even loyal progressive Texas Democrats like Julian Castro and Beto O'Rourke, let alone Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib getting short shrift at the DNC. Remember Omar and Tlaib are big-time vote-getters and election winners in crucial swing states MI and MN.

Yet, Pelosi, Biden, and other Dem leaders feel compelled to attack them and other Squad members publicly and are, hopefully unsuccessfully, backing machine pols against them in local primaries. Case in point is Pelosi's recent endorsement of Rep. Joe Kennedy III in a primary challenge against progressive Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey.

The struggle continues

Y'all keep coming for @lsarsour so we will keep showing up for her and let you know that we stand w our sister in solidarity. Hi @lsarsour - we got your back! pic.twitter.com/LhMiFAMPb1

— Harish I. Patel (@iamharishipatel) August 21, 2020

More Biden debate blunders

Yes, I'm keeping track...

Biden last night: I think we should decriminalize marijuana, period. And I think everyone -- anyone who has a record should be let out of jail, their records expunged, be completely zeroed out.

Me: Biden is the sole Democrat in the 2020 field who opposes legalizing marijuana at the federal level. Just five days earlier, speaking at a town hall meeting in Las Vegas, Biden said he opposed the legalization of marijuana claiming, there is not “enough evidence” as to “whether or not it is a gateway drug.”

Biden: I come out of a black community...

Me: Really? Who knew?

Biden: I have more people supporting me in the black community that have announced for me because they know me, they know who I am. Three former chairs of the black caucus, the only African-American woman that's ever been elected to the United States Senate, a whole range of people...

Kamala Harris: No, that's not true. The other one is here.

Me: And she sure hasn't endorsed Biden.

Biden: No, I said the first. I said the first African-American woman. The first African-American woman.

Me: No, you didn't. You said, "the only." Maybe you meant to say, "the first."

Biden: The fact is that right now the vast majority of Democrats do not support Medicare for all.

Bernie Sanders: Not true.

Me: 77% of Democrats support Medicare for all (KFF Tracking Poll).

Lots of candidates but no real debate on school deseg

Even though I have a lot is issues with Kamala Harris, I thought she was bold in confronting frontrunner Joe Biden and calling him out during the televised debate, for his opposition to "forced" school integration back in the '70s. Actually, as he pointed out, his position hasn't changed. He is still against a federal role in enforcing the Brown Decision.

His opposition to busing and his partnership with avowed "states-rights" segregationists like Eastland and Talmadge, seemed like fair game during the debate. Thanks to Harris, Biden himself was finally forced to apologize for touting his work with the racist senators.

In fact, I was surprised that not one of the other candidates, particularly white progressives like Sanders and Warren, had Harris' back at the time. None would even dare mention Biden's name during either of the two debates. This even though the road to the nomination obviously runs through him and the DNC leadership. If you're not willing to take on Biden, what's the point of running? Unless of course, you're just a stalking horse for Biden, trying to dissipate the opposition or an unprincipled kiss-ass, hoping for a V.P. slot or cabinet appointment if Biden wins.

Such is the intimidating power of the Pelosi party leaders who are really running Biden against young insurgents like Reps Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Ayanna Pressley, rather than any of the announced primary candidates who were on stage those nights.

Pelosi, it seems, would rather lose the election to Trump than risk losing the leadership of the party to the leftists.

Then yesterday, out comes Tulsi Gabbard (who I liked before this) with a blistering attack on Harris, calling her confrontation with Biden, "a political ploy' to get attention".

Here's my tweet to Sen. Gabbard...

Questions for @TulsiGabbard (who I like)... A"political ploy"? Aren't you running for political office?

To get attention? Isn't that why you take part in televised political debates with the top dog?

What's your gain in attacking Harris, defending Biden on school deseg??? https://t.co/bLBvnIly0i

— Mike Klonsky (@mikeklonsky) July 10, 2019

Gabbard also claimed Harris has been "levying this accusation that Joe Biden is a racist — when he's clearly not — as a way to try to smear him."

But Harris never called Biden a racist. In fact, she pointedly prefaced her critical remarks by stating, "I do not believe you are a racist and I agree with you when you commit yourself to the importance of finding common ground."

In fact, a week later Harris revealed that she has essentially the same position as Biden on deseg being a local issue.

Common ground, indeed.

After silence at the debate, Bernie puts out his ed plan and Warren defends Harris.

Senator Bernie Sanders unveiled his education plan during a visit to South Carolina on Saturday. (Travis Dove, New York Times)

Did Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren read my post from yesterday? You know, the post that chastised them and the rest of the candidates for their silence on education issues during the debates? Also the one that was critical of them all for not having Kamala Harris' back when she took on Joe Biden over the issue of school deseg?

Probably not. But by yesterday afternoon, as if on cue, Team Bernie released his full-blown education plan during a visit to South Carolina. His so-called, Thurgood Marshall Plan for Public Education includes opposition to for-profit charter schools and calls for an end to public funding for charter school expansion on the grounds that charters promote school segregation.

This, about the same time as Sen. Warren was tweeting her defense of Sen. Harris against the racist backlash she's facing for her confrontation with Biden.

Well, actually, Bernie's plan had been published in the Times well over a month ago so yesterday's story obviously had nothing to do with my blog. But it's nice to feel validated anyway.

However, the question still remains -- why nothing from him during the debate? And why did he, Warren and the others remain silent while Harris was confronting Biden? Still waiting for an answer.

Something in the comments section would be adequate, senators.

The attacks against @KamalaHarris are racist and ugly. We all have an obligation to speak out and say so. And it’s within the power and obligation of tech companies to stop these vile lies dead in their tracks.

— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) June 29, 2019

Education not an issue for Dem debaters until the Harris/Biden clash over deseg

Demand for School Integration Leads to Massive 1964 New York City School Boycott

"Forcing integration upon us is not a nimble concept."  -- Alabama Police Chief Eugene "Bull" Connor, 1956

For most of the 20 Democratic Party candidates onstage Wednesday and Thursday nights, or for the debate moderators, education wasn't an important enough campaign issue to deserve a mention. Not a word was spoken about the hottest ed issues like charter schools, vouchers, pensions or testing. Common Core Standards, ESSA, it seems, were yesterday's news. There was not even a poke at Trump's ed secretary, Betsy DeVos or at Trump himself.

That's nothing new for party presidential campaigns. I remember the 2015 debates when education issues never came up. At the time, Prof. Julian Vasquez Heilig wrote in the Progressive,

Perhaps the silence is due to the fact that the Democrats have basically adopted the Republican approach to education from the 1990s.

If anything has changed in the past four years, that hasn't. This week, hardly an ed word was spoken. Not a word, that is, until Sen. Kamala Harris stole night two with her devastating "That little girl was me," confrontation with Joe Biden. After prefacing her obviously well-planned punch to Biden's mid-section with "I do not believe you are a racist," Harris laid bare his role in the busing battles of the '70s.

Biden seemed totally unprepared or ill-prepped. He sputtered and lashed out at Harris personally.

I was a public defender. I didn’t become a prosecutor. I came out and I left a good law firm to become a public defender, when, in fact — when, in fact, my city was in flames because of the assassination of Dr. King, number one.

What the hell all that has to do with anything is beyond me. Was this whiter-than-white, male, former vice-president of the United States really throwing shade at an African-American woman for becoming a successful lawyer and prosecutor? Yup.

Then after invoking Dr. King's name and recounting his long history of civil-rights advocacy and his relationship with Pres. Obama, Biden actually doubled down on his opposition to the Dept. of Education's role in enforcing the Supreme Court's Brown decision. The argument went like this:

HARRIS: But, Vice President Biden, do you agree today — do you agree today that you were wrong to oppose busing in America then? Do you agree?

BIDEN: I did not oppose busing in America. What I opposed is busing ordered by the Department of Education. That’s what I opposed. 

HARRIS: Well, there was a failure of states to integrate public schools in America. I was part of the second class to integrate Berkeley, California, public schools almost two decades after Brown v. Board of Education.

BIDEN: Because your city council made that decision. It was a local decision.

HARRIS: So that’s where the federal government must step in.

BIDEN: The federal government ——

HARRIS: That’s why we have the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act. That’s why we need to pass the Equality Act. That’s why we need to pass the E.R.A., because there are moments in history where states fail to preserve the civil rights of all people.

This exchange brought back nightmarish memories of  Obama's former Ed. Sec. Arne Duncan claiming that he was for school integration but not "forced integration." Then there was his assistant, Peter Cunningham's apologia for school segregation in U.S. News & World Report, which claimed that "integration is expensive and takes money away from other necessary improvements."

In other words. Biden, while ill prepared, wasn't speaking out of school. He was simply repeating, in his own stumbling, bumbling way, the party line going back decades. It's just that his timing was off.

And it's not like any of the other candidates had Harris's back when push came to shove. The silence on their part (including on Bernie Sanders's part) was deafening.

How can they all be running against Biden, yet be so afraid to take him on?

Kamala Harris announces on King Day. And why not?

Kamala Harris announced her candidacy in the 2020 presidential race on King Day. And why not? An electable black woman (running against Trump at least), a California senator, who will run a little to the left of a Joe Biden or Hillary Clinton and potentially become the first African-American woman U.S. president? (Obviously, no dick problems here.) I'm not jumping on board yet. It's way too early, at least for me to pick a favorite. But I'm glad Harris is in the race, in what's obviously going to be a crowded field. 

Some lefties are already throwing up #NeverKamala signs. This according to Branco Marcetic whose attempted slam piece, "The Two Faces of Kamala Harris" in the latest issue of Jacobin, actually makes her look pretty good, at least when compared to the other Dem Party regulars.

I have big issues with Harris over her record as a state prosecutor. For one, she opposed an early release program for non-violent offenders claiming it would diminish the prison labor pool. For another, her apparent support for the death penalty.

Here's an interesting connection. Harris began her political career as the DA in San Francisco, a job that later led to her becoming the state's attorney general and then senator. You don't see many progressive big-city prosecutors and I'm not prepared to say Harris is one of them.. Chicago's Kim Foxx is one and Philly's Larry Krasner is another breaking from the mass-incarceration, racist law-and-order mode.

But look who's following in Harris' path and running for DA in San Francisco this time around?

It's none other than brilliant, young movement activist lawyer, and friend of mine, Chesa Boudin.

DeChesa Boudin files papers for district attorney, flanked by Supervisors Hillary Ronen and Aaron Peskin. (Image: Nuala Sawyer)

According to the San Francisco Chronicle:

When he was just over a year old, his parents — left-wing radicals in the Weather Underground — took part in a Brinks armored car robbery outside New York City that ended in the murder of two police officers and a security guard.
Before he could walk, he was making monthly trips through prison metal detectors and steel bars to visit his mom and dad. Like many other children of incarcerated parents, he was set up for a life of hardship and heartbreak. 
But nearly four decades later, Boudin, 38, is a deputy public defender in San Francisco. His impressive ascent to the office includes becoming a Rhodes scholar, earning a law degree from Yale and clerking for two federal judges. He recently helped upend California’s cash bail system, which was widely seen as inequitable to people of color and the poor.

I obviously can't vote for Chesa, but my check's in the mail. Yours too, I hope.