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Former RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel speaks at 2020 GOP convention
Further

No Place For Bad Actors, Thanks

Well that was blessedly quick. Less than a week after NBC said it would pay fascist bootlicker and election liar Ronna McDaniel to bootlick and lie on air - and a day after its employees loudly protested the move - NBC, citing their "legitimate concerns," said oops never mind and dropped McDaniel. Along with her colleagues, Rachel Maddow had cogently argued against giving a platform to a low-life hack who is "part of an ongoing project to get rid of our system of government."

The righteous revolt by journalists at NBC and MSNBC was swift after the network announced McDaniel's $300,000 hire Friday, two weeks after she was forced out as RNC chair to make room for Trump's even more servile daughter-in-law Lara Trump. At the time, NBC said it wanted to include news contributors representing a "diverse set of viewpoints and experiences," a dumpster-fire of an explanation blasted by enraged reporters who noted that McDaniel aiding and abetting a propaganda campaign intended to overthrow or at least undermine electoral democracy - including telling GOP canvassers in Michigan to not certify 2020 election results - is so far above and beyond a "diverse viewpoint" that Trump and multiple co-conspirators have been criminally indicted for it.

Reporters railed through Monday against McDaniel poisoning what Nicolle Wallace called "our sacred airwaves," from Morning Joe's Mika Brzezinski decrying someone "who used her position of power to be an anti-democracy election denier" to late-night Lawrence O’Donnell advising his network, "Don’t hire anyone close to the crimes." Jen Psaki rejected right-wing comparisons with her own move from politics to reporting. "That kind of experience (only) has value if it's paired with honesty and good faith," she said, especially in this fraught moment. "Our democracy is in danger because of the lies that people like Ronna McDaniel have pushed on this country...This isn’t about Republicans versus Democrats. This isn't about red versus blue. This is about truth versus lies."

Maddow joins colleagues in objecting to McDaniel for legitimizing Trump, attacking democracywww.youtube.com

Rachel Maddow devoted most of her time on air to joining the backlash, expressing solidarity with her colleagues' "loud and principled objections" to giving a voice to the willing accomplice of an aspiring strongman. En route, she highlighted our “long history of forgettable men" intent on convincing the country we need a "new system of government." “We have had a lot of these guys, but our generation’s version of this guy has gotten a lot farther than all the rest of them," she said. "And why is that? (Trump) would have been as forgotten as the rest of them had he not been able to attach himself to an institution like the Republican Party, and had the leader of that party (decide) she would not just abide him, she would help. She would help with the worst of it."

Which was, in essence, "priming your people" not to accept the next election results. "In the news business, yes, we are covering an election," she said. "We’re also covering bad actors trying to use the rights and privileges of a democracy to end democracy. The chief threat among them now is not the rioters and kooks, but the slick political professionals who are turning their considerable talents to laundering violently revolutionary claims (that) America’s election results aren’t real, and they shouldn’t be respected.” The "inexplicable" hire of McDaniel to report on election news, she suggested, was akin to hiring a mobster at a D.A.'s office or a pickpocket as a TSA airport screener. She ended with a civil, simple plea to the network: "I hope they will reverse their decision."

And so they did. Tuesday evening, Puck Newsreported NBC had dropped McDaniel in her second, well-deserved job humiliation - ever classy, even Trump mocked her - in two weeks. NBCsaid chairman Cesar Conde sent staff an email reversing the hire and apologizing to those "who felt we let them down." McDaniel is reportedly, unsurprisingly "exploring her legal options." Still, argues historian Timothy Snyder, a fat check - she may get paid in full, giving her $500 a second for one interview - will be a small price to pay. In what is "not a normal political situation where you can give a little and get a little," he says, appeasement is a lousy option: "If you practise giving things away, if you say, 'Ok, we're gonna practice appeasing a dictator so when the dictator comes we'll be better at it' - is that what you should be doing?"

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Fracking in Wyoming
Climate

Federal Court Rules Major Wyoming Oil and Gas Lease Sale Illegal for Ignoring Climate Impacts

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management will have to reevaluate the wildlife and public health impacts of a major 2022 oil and gas lease sale in Wyoming after a federal judge ruled Friday that the agency had overlooked "what is widely regarded as the most pressing environmental threat facing the world today" when it moved forward with leasing 120,000 of federal land.

U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper ruled in Washington, D.C. that the BLM did not halt the lease sale even after it acknowledged that oil and gas drilling on the federal lands could result in the same negative environmental and social impacts as the addition of hundreds of thousands of cars to U.S. roads each year.

Moving forward with one of the Biden administration's largest lease sales despite its likely environmental harm, said Cooper, was illegal under the National Environmental Policy Act and other laws.

Representing The Wilderness Society and Friends of the Earth (FOE), environmental legal group Earthjustice sued BLM over its leasing plans' potential impact on the greater sage grouse, an endangered bird species, and other wildlife, as well as groundwater impacts.

The judge found BLM did not complete a sufficiently detailed review of drilling impacts on the greater sage grouse, and relied too heavily on outdated and overly broad analyses of oil and gas drilling in Wyoming.

While the agency has been attempting to "stop the bleeding" of the greater sage grouse, whose population has declined nearly 40% since 2002, the BLM still refused to postpone leasing in a critical habitat for the bird.

The Biden administration also did not adequately explain its analysis of potential groundwater harms, said the ruling.

Despite some conservation strides by the Biden administration, The Wilderness Society's Ben Tettlebaum said the court's decision "affirms that much work remains" to be done. The BLM, he added, "must fully account for the serious impacts of its oil and gas program on groundwater, wildlife, and the climate."

Tettlebaum said the ruling also proves the agency is required to "factor into its leasing decisions the enormous costs that greenhouse gas emissions stemming from its oil and gas program impose on public land resources and on the communities that depend on them for clean air and water."

Hallie Templeton, legal director for FOE, added that the federal government "simply cannot ignore climate, wildlife, and water impacts when analyzing the myriad risks of oil and gas leasing, whether in Wyoming or across the country," as the ruling makes clear.

"We are beyond pleased with this outcome," said Templeton.

The ruling "should be another wake up call for the Bureau of Land Management to at long last address the damage caused from federal oil and gas development," said Alexandra Schluntz, senior associate attorney for Earthjustice. "It is time to make fossil fuel leasing on our public lands a thing of the past."

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Sen. Elizabeth Warren
News

To Unrig Economy, Dems Propose Raising Taxes on Wealth Over $50 Million

Weeks after U.S. President Joe Biden won applause from progressives for using his State of the Union address to go on the offense against the Republican Party's tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans, Democrats in Congress introduced legislation aimed at raising revenue by ensuring multimillionaires and billionaires pay their fair share.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) was originally joined by Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.) in 2021 to introduce the Ultra-Millionaire Tax Act, and the three lawmakers on Monday announced measures to strengthen the proposal.

The new legislation includes stronger anti-tax evasion rules regarding trusts, where "ultrawealthy" families frequently stash money to avoid paying taxes—costing the federal government $5 billion to $7 billion per year.

"As President Biden says: No one thinks it's fair that Jeff Bezos gets enough tax loopholes that he pays at a lower rate than a public school teacher," said Warren. "All my bill is asking is that when you make it big, bigger than $50 million dollars, then on that next dollar, you pitch in two cents, so everyone else can have a chance."

The lawmakers said the Ultra-Millionaire Tax Act would bring in at least $3 trillion over 10 years by requiring a 2 cent tax for every dollar of wealth over $50 million—affecting just the top 0.05% of households in the United States.

The bill includes a 3% tax on the wealthiest households overall, with a 1% annual surtax on the net worth of households and trusts over $1 billion.

Susan Harley, managing director of Public Citizen's Congress Watch division, said the three Democrats have zeroed in on "the only way to truly tackle the injustice of income inequality in this country... to address wealth hoarding."

"The Ultra-Millionaire Tax is a critically needed policy that would ensure that the super-rich who have benefited from a rigged system will begin to pay their fair share in taxes," said Harley.

Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, economists at the University of California, Berkeley, have found that the richest 0.1% of Americans saw their share of the country's wealth triple from 7% to 20% from the late 1970s and 2019, while the bottom 90% saw their share "plummet from about 35% to 25%."

"For too long, the ultrawealthy in America have been able to dodge taxes on a large scale," said Saez and Zucman in response to the updated proposal. "As a result they often pay much less, relative to their ability to pay, than the rest of the population. The ultra-millionaire tax would address this fundamental unfairness, and raise critical revenues for much needed investments that would make the country—and us all—richer."

Boyle noted that he witnessed firsthand the loss of economic power among working Americans as the rich got richer in recent decades.

"As the son of a union household, I witnessed every day how incredibly hard my parents worked to build a middle-class life for our family. It is simply wrong that millions of hardworking families pay a higher tax rate than billionaires," said Boyle. "This legislation will fight back against Republicans' decadeslong scheme to rig our tax code against middle-class families and in favor of multimillionaires and billionaires."

The lawmakers introduced the proposal as economic justice advocates have recently cataloged price gouging and "shrinkflation" that's aimed at boosting shareholders' and CEOs' pay while working people struggle to afford necessities like diapers and groceries.

"The system is not working when the richest 1% of Americans own more than 30% of our nation's wealth but pay just 3.2% of their wealth in taxes while others pay twice as much," said Jayapal. "Our country's tax system needs urgent reform, and the Ultra-Millionaire Tax Act is a major step toward making sure the wealthy finally pay their fair share. With this legislation, we can narrow the racial wealth gap and invest trillions of dollars in schools, clean energy, housing, healthcare, and more to improve lives in communities across America."

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Congressman Don Beyer
News

House Democrat Calls GOP Budget a 'Blueprint for a Dystopian Hellscape'

As Republicans on Wednesday set their sights on a key seat opening up in the U.S. House of Representatives, the chamber's senior Democrat on the congressional Joint Economic Committee put out a blistering takedown of a top GOP budget proposal for the next fiscal year.

Congressman Don Beyer (D-Va.) took aim at the 180-page "Fiscal Sanity to Save America" plan released last week by the Republican Study Committee (RSC)—which includes about 80% of GOP House members—following proposals from Democratic President Joe Biden and House Budget Committee Chair Jodey Arrington (R-Texas).

"The Republican Study Committee budget is a blueprint for a dystopian hellscape," he warned. "The vision offered by this group, which counts 4 in 5 House Republicans as members, would see unbridled benefits flowing to a wealthy and well-connected few while tens of millions of Americans lose healthcare, housing, retirement security, and food security."

RSC proposals to "dramatically weaken healthcare," Beyer noted, include turning Medicare into a voucher plan and rolling back Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) provisions that cut costs for seniors; repealing tax subsidies for the Affordable Care Act and the law's protections for people with preexisting conditions; and transforming Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program into block grants to states.

As Common Dreams has reported, in addition to seeking cuts to Medicare and Social Security—while claiming to do nothing of the sort—the RSC has also launched a full-fledged assault on reproductive healthcare and rights, promoting 42 bills that would ban abortions after 15 weeks or even earlier, require unnecessary ultrasounds and 24-hour waiting periods, prohibit the use of fetal stem cells for research, and threaten access to in vitro fertilization, among other restrictions.

In addition to attacking reproductive freedom and key programs for seniors and low-income families, Beyer highlighted, the RSC wants to "weaken public health, public safety, and environmental protections," while "cutting taxes for the wealthy, by a lot."

The RSC advocates ending green tax credits from the IRA and Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act as well as slashing money for Community Oriented Policing Services and the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act. The committee also calls for permanently lowering taxes for the ultrarich, indexing capital gains taxes to inflation, repealing the estate tax, rolling back the IRA's corporate alternative minimum tax, and eliminating funding intended to help the Internal Revenue Service catch wealthy tax cheats.

"Democrats believe there is a better way to get our fiscal house in order without betraying our values," said Beyer. "That starts with making smart investments in our people and our future while demanding that the rich and large corporations pay their fair share in taxes. The contrast between the Democratic approach and this Republican budget could not possibly be clearer."

Biden's budget blueprint—released as he prepares for an electoral rematch against former Republican President Donald Trump, who infamously cut taxes for rich people and corporations—proposes a 25% minimum tax for individuals with wealth of more than $100 million, along with ending capital income tax breaks and closing other loopholes.

Polling results released Tuesday by Morning Consult show that a majority of voters across party lines in key swing states support raising taxes on people who make more than $400,000 per year.

Biden and the divided Congress this past weekend narrowly avoided a government shutdown by passing a long-delayed spending package. Fiscal year 2025 is set to begin in October, setting up another election-year fight over funding.

In what's been dubbed the "Great Resignation," a growing number of House Republicans have announced that they are not seeking reelection or even exited their seats early—shrinking the party's already slim majority in the lower chamber.

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An employee uses a robotic arm to help lift internal parts
News

Alabama Mercedes-Benz Workers Accuse Company of Union-Busting in NLRB Complaint

A month after the United Auto Workers announced that a majority of workers at the Mercedes-Benz plant in Vance, Alabama had signed union cards, employees struck a defiant tone Tuesday as they filed official complaints of union-busting by the company with the National Labor Relations Board.

Workers detailed the illegal disciplinary measures management has taken against them for taking leave and objecting to anti-union materials that have been shown in captive-audience meetings since most of the plant's 6,000 workers indicated they want to join the UAW.

"Since we started organizing, I put in my [Family and Medical Leave Act] leave with management multiple times and every time they said they lost the paperwork," Lakeisha Carter, who works in the company's battery plant, told the UAW. "It's just plain retaliation from Mercedes, but I'm not going to be intimidated."

The U.S. Department of Labor last month recovered $438,625 in back pay, unpaid bonuses, and damages for two people who had formerly worked at the plant in Vance, finding that management had illegally fired the workers when they requested FMLA-protected leave to care for a family member and recover from a serious health condition.

After winning new contracts for workers at the Big 3 automakers last fall following an historic "stand-up strike," the UAW has launched campaigns at non-unionized plants owned by Mercedes, Volkswagen, Hyundai, and Toyota, convincing more than 10,000 autoworkers so far to sign union cards.

Another battery plant worker, Taylor Snipes, told the UAW that managers at the company were forcing him and his coworkers "to attend meetings and watch anti-union videos that are full of lies."

After he objected, Snipes was called into a meeting and "immediately fired for having his phone on the factory floor," even though he had been given permission to have his phone with him so he could be in touch with his child's daycare center.

"I told management that it was suspicious that I was being called into the office on the same day that I spoke up in anti-union meeting," said Snipes. "My manager said the two had nothing to do with one another, but then proceeded to aggressively interrogate me about why I support having a union."

UAW President Shawn Fain met with Mercedes workers in Alabama on Sunday.

"Unlike previous drives, the workers are in command," said Luis Feliz Leon of Labor Notes. "They are the collective force that will either press on to a union victory or a defeat."

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U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken (L) and U.S. President Joe Biden
News

Another State Department Official Resigns Over Biden Gaza Policy

Saying her job at a State Department office that advocates for human rights in the Middle East has become "impossible" as the Biden administration continues to back Israel's assault on civilians in Gaza, foreign affairs officer Annelle Sheline resigned from her position on Wednesday in protest of President Joe Biden's policy in the region.

Sheline noted in an interview with The Washington Post that quitting her job in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor was not something she took lightly, with "a daughter and a mortgage"—but said her day-to-day work on human rights had become ineffectual "as long as the U.S. continues to send a steady stream of weapons to Israel."

Despite the fact that U.S. law prohibits the government from arming countries that violate human rights—as Israel has long been accused by the United Nations of doing in its policy toward the occupied Palestinian territories—the Biden administration has approved the transfer of bombs and other weapons to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) since the military began its relentless bombardment of Gaza and blockade on nearly all humanitarian aid.

Sheline told the Post that as the news out of Gaza has grown more dire since October—with at least 32,490 Palestinians killed, at least 74,889 wounded, and parts of northern Gaza now facing famine conditions due to Israel's blocking of aid—some of her bureau's partners in the Middle East have stopped engaging with the State Department.

"If they are willing to engage, they mostly want to talk about Gaza rather than the fact that they are also dealing with extreme repression or threats of imprisonment," Sheline told the Post of the activists and civil society groups her office routinely worked with to further human rights in the region before Israel's assault began. "The first point they bring up is: How is this happening?"

"I wasn't able to really do my job anymore," Sheline added. "Trying to advocate for human rights just became impossible."

Sheline is just the latest official to resign in protest of Biden's approach to Israel and Gaza.

In October Josh Paul resigned from his position as director of congressional and public affairs for the State Department's Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, where he oversaw weapons transfers to U.S. allies.

Paul told the Post that Sheline's decision "speaks volumes about the Biden administration's disregard for the laws, policies and basic humanity of American foreign policy that the bureau exists to advance."

A policy adviser in the Education Department, Tariq Habash, also stepped down from his role in January, saying he could no longer be "quietly complicit" in the killing of tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians.

The State Department's internal dissent channel has also been used by numerous officials to voice outrage over the Biden administration's continued defense of Israel's actions.

Stephen Walt, professor of international affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School, called Sheline's resignation "courageous."

Feds United for Peace, a group of government workers across nearly two dozen federal agencies which organized a daylong fast in January to protest the U.S.-backed slaughter of Palestinians, expressed solidarity with Sheline.

"That decision comes at a personal and real cost to her, and is a loss of a patriotic and deeply qualified employee for the Department of State," said the group in a statement. "Every arms shipment to Israel by the Biden administration and every one of the three vetoes of U.N. cease-fire resolutions has enabled Israeli impunity in its rampage across Gaza... Thousands of innocent lives are in President Biden's hands; the time has come to translate gentle requests for the protection of civilians into concrete action to stop the killing."

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