Month: November 2019

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Why We Have to Fight, Part 2

  By 2020, Elections, Politics

It appears my post on the importance of not backing down from a strong progressive program has been controversial. Good—it was meant to be. There were a lot of good arguments made in response and I want to draw on some of them as I deepen the case for a bold progressive Democratic campaign in 2020. We live in a moment in our politics that is radically different than what many of us have experienced. So it’s no accident that it’s by and large younger people who can see what many of their elders cannot see.  Still the period in which we live is not without historical precedent. Indeed if you look back at the history of our country there have been periods like our own in-between a number of periods, like the one we boomers grew up in. For most of my life, as for most of the life… Continue reading

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Why We Have to Fight, Part 1

  By 2020, Elections, Politics

I’m seeing lots of posts from folks on the center-left about how people in rural PA or Michigan or Tennessee or Texas don’t like some part of the Sanders or Warren agenda.  It’s one thing to worry about the electoral consequences of these proposals. I will address that question another time. But I’m concerned that people who should be on our side are overstating the electoral problems in part because they think it’s somehow illegitimate for us to put forward ideas that aren’t embraced by almost everyone.  This is a long-standing problem among liberals. There is a strand of liberalism that is afraid of political power and will do everything it can to avoid exercising it. This same strand of thought makes it hard for liberals to bear disagreement.  That strand is connected to another that vastly overestimates the power of argument-—as opposed to numbers and organizing—in politics.  Robert Frost… Continue reading

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Some Questions About the Warren Plan for M4A

  By 2020, Elections, Health Care, Public Policy

This is the second of two post on the Warren plan to finance Medicare for All. The first dealt with why I think the time is ripe for M4A and especially for Warren’s version of it. This second post is about some questions that have been raised about Warren’s plan from the left. The Warren plan calls on businesses that have 50 or more employees and provide health insurance to them to pay a the federal government roughly 98% of what they pay for that insurance. A critique of the plan in Jacobin said that businesses would be able to escape from this requirement by reclassifying employees as independent contractors or by breaking themselves down into units with 49 or fewer employees. The whole question of reclassifying employees as independent contractor is not a new issue. There already are many incentives to do that. There are also business incentives to not… Continue reading

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The Warren Plan and the Prospects for Medicare for All

  By 2020, Elections, Health Care, Public Policy

I’ve been ambivalentabout the politics and policy of single-payer for a long time. That’s for three reasons First, while I by and large don’t think that a more left-wing program will hurt Democrats in the general election—just the opposite is true—there are certain ways it can hurt. The first is if we put forward plans that require tax increases on the working and middle classes. I do think that ultimately some of those tax increases will be necessary and that the benefits received in return for them will be greater than the costs of the tax increases. But it is a fundamental rule of politics that people are more agitated by what they are losing than what they are gaining. And talking about tax increases for future benefits is hard to explain and hard to defend especially because most Americans are not terribly well-informed about politics and public policy and… Continue reading

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Election Reform Enacted!

  By Elections and Voting, PA Budget and Policy Center, PBPC Blog posts

Originally published at KRC-PBPC here. Yesterday, Governor Wolf signed Act 77, historic legislation that expands the opportunity to vote in Pennsylvania. The legislation includes the following provisions: No excuse mail-in voting: The law creates a new option to vote by mail without providing an excuse, which is currently required for voters using absentee ballots. Pennsylvania joins 31 other states and the District of Columbia in instituting mail-in voting. 50-day mail-in voting period: All voters can request and submit their mail-in or absentee ballot up to 50 days before the election, which is the longest vote-by-mail period in the country. The law also allows county election officials to establish an unlimited number of satellite offices where citizens can register, pick up a mail-in ballot, and deposit their ballot. Establishing satellite offices in communities that have historically low voting rates will do much to encourage more Pennsylvanians to vote. Permanent mail-in and absentee ballot… Continue reading