Category: US

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Obedience is Never the Right Response in America

  By Resisting Trump, US

I am seeing one comment after another from right wing men who say that Renee Good and Alex Pretti would be alive if they only “obeyed.” This is not only the wrong response it is an un-American response. In America, we don’t and shouldn’t blindly obey. We vindicate our rights only by exercising them, which means: We speak out, we ask questions, we reject orders from people with no authority to issue them and especially when those orders are contrary and confused. And even when we are wrong, government has to respect our rights and humanity by only acting with violence when absolutely necessary to protect someones life. And that was not the case when Good and Pretti were killed. And, in contemporary America, women don’t and shouldn’t blindly obey men. Women can only vindicate their equality by rejecting the demand to obey. And decent men respect women who do… Continue reading

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By Trump’s logic

  By Politics, Tump, US

After the shooting of the two national guardsmen, Trump has called for a review of every immigrant who received a green card. By Trump’s logic, every single right-wing American should be investigated to determine if their citizenship should be revoked. They are, after all, the sources of far more violent crime than any other group. Continue reading

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It is Trump’s Fault that Two National Guard Members Were Shot in DC.

  By Tump

Trump is responsible for the shooting of two members of the national guard in multiple ways. —The national guard should not have been deployed to DC and —The Afghans should not have lost their special immigration status promised them at the end of the long war we fought on their country and —The shooter has legal status granted by the Trump administration. Continue reading

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The best, uncertain case for Harris

  By 2024, Elections and Voting, US

I hope this is my last long post on the Democratic candidate for president. I’m going to do something here that may surprise some of you. I’m going to make the best argument I can for why I think Biden should step down. And in doing so, I’m going to respond to some of the claims I made the other day against him doing so. I’m doing this for a few reasons. One is that this is how I think. I always look at issues from a number of sides. Another related one is that I’m still remain unsure about what the right path forward is and the only way I’m going to be sure is by making the best case on both sides. And frankly, none of you who have been arguing with me the post has done a very good job of making that case or responding to… Continue reading

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Eight reasons to stop Trump

  By 2024, Elections, Resisting Trump, Uncategorized

Is it really going to be hard to convince people leaning to our side to vote? Here are eight  lines of argument. 1. Tump’s threat to democracy. 2. Trump’s threat to abortion and other basic rights including to contraception. 3. Trump’s embrace of deep tax cuts for the rich. 4. Trump’s promise to repeal the ACA. 5. Trump’s threat to social security if he keeps deepening deficits through tax cuts. 6. Trump’s threat to student debt relief and Republican efforts to block of the student debt relief Biden promised. 7. Trump demanded that Republicans blocked their own immigration reform bill because Trump demanded it. 8. Trump’s threat to our climate and the earth as a whole. I know how deeply entrenched the Trump movement is and how insane the Republicans are. But it’s still  hard for me to believe that these 8 lines of argument aren’t enough to give Democrats… Continue reading

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A Point of Extreme Political Danger

  By Resisting Trump, Tump, US

I wrote this in 2019. “Trump is like a Bond villain. Totally over the top. Bent on world domination and the accumulation of riches without end because of a terrible psychic injury in childhood. Determined to dominate all the men and sleep with all the women around him because of the same injury. Utterly self-involved and untrustworthy. In other words, almost totally unbelievable. Except that it is real we are stuck with him for the foreseeable future.” I have seen no reason to change my mind except to say that, even though I understood Trump’s appeal in teh summer of 2016, I did not expect that his hold over the this country would be so impossible to shake. Trump is not by any means a political genius. His hold over half the country is a a product of the gruesome fit between his psychic flaws and the deep, long-standing flaws… Continue reading

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Statement on Child Tax Credit Expansion

  By Child Tax Credit, Penn Policy Center, Statement, US

STATEMENT on Child Tax Credit Expansion- Marc Stier. Executive Director, Pennsylvania Policy Center The House Ways and Means Committee today voted in favor of bi-partisan tax legislation that includes an expansion of the child tax credit along with the restoration of some expired business tax credits. The legislation is the product of negotiations between the Chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, Jason Smith (R-MO) and the Chair of the Senate Finance Committee, Ron Wyden (D-OR). This legislation would benefit 16 million children in low-income families, or 1 in 5 of children under 17, including 506,000 children in Pennsylvania. It would especially help Black, Latino, and Asian children, whose parents are overrepresented in low-paid jobs due to structural barriers to opportunity. In the first year, the expansion of the child tax credit would lift 400,000 children nationwide- and roughly 16,000 kids in Pennsylvania- out of poverty. Additionally, another 3… Continue reading

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Sitting on a Powder Keg

  By Democracy, Politics, Tump, US

There seems to me to be a total disconnect between political reporting and commentary in our country and the reality of our politics on the ground. Political reporters and pundits are dying for the world to return to the pre-Trump era (forgetting that in many ways, the Republicans were, in their abuse of gerrymandering and the filibuster and embrace of ideas like the independent judiciary theory, well along the way to rejecting the basic norms of representative democracy long before Trump). Harrisburg reporters focus on the calls for bipartisanship from both sides. So, we are seeing reporting on, for example, the Republican presidential nomination race that normalizes it, as it focuses on who is up and who is down, what the strategies of the candidates are, etc. And yet, on the ground, what do we see? –Trump continues to make wild claims about 2020 and masks racist attacks on Alvin… Continue reading

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STATEMENT: House Dems Pass Inflation Reduction Act To Lower Drug Prices, Make Health Care & Energy Costs More Affordable

  By Climate Change, Economic Development, Energy, Health Care, PA Budget and Policy Center, Statements, US

For Immediate Release Date: August 12, 2022 Contact: Kirstin Snow, snow@pennbpc.org   House Democrats Pass Inflation Reduction Act To Lower Drug Prices, Make Health Care and Energy Costs More Affordable   Historic Bill to Curb Big Pharma and Make Corporations Pay What They Owe Moves Towards Passage Harrisburg, PA — Following U.S. House passage of the Inflation Reduction Act—a bill that will enact historic drug pricing reform, reduce health insurance costs, lower energy costs, and reduce the national deficit—Marc Stier, director of the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center and Stephen Herzenberg, executive director of the Keystone Research Center, released the following statement:    The U.S. House’s vote to pass the Inflation Reduction Act makes historic progress on many fronts. It takes a huge step forward in addressing the threat of climate change by investing $370 billion in a series of incentives to encourage the replacement of fossil fuels with clean,… Continue reading