"Progressives don’t trust Biden. They trust history. History proves Biden isn’t one of them."

The 1117 E. Spring Street Neighborhood Association tallies two Indiana primary votes for Bernie Sanders -- and against the prevailing inanity of the local DemoDisneyDixiecrats.

If Trump Wins Again, Don’t Blame Progressives, by Ted Rall (CounterPunch)

The corporate conservatives who control the Democratic Party are suffering from cheaters’ remorse.

The DNC and their media allies (NPR, CNN, MSNBC, New York Times, Atlantic Monthly, Vox, etc.) subverted the will of primary voters, undermining initial frontrunner Bernie Sanders in order to install the worst candidate of the 20 centrists in the campaign.

Now the power brokers are worried that the befuddled Biden, whom they touted as the Most Electable Against Donald Trump, will lose to him. Rather than take responsibility for their idiocy and force Biden to pull out of a race for which he is obviously physically and mentally unprepared, the corporatist sellouts are preemptively blaming the progressives who warned them about this exact scenario.

Sorry, right wingers. Biden is on you. You made him the presumptive nominee. If Trump wins again, it’s your fault.

Just as it was last time ...

"Here are some leading examples of the dwindling currency of neoliberal thinking."

We can only hope.

The Sunset of Neoliberalism, by Max B. Sawicky (Jacobin)

To anyone who lived through the Clinton years — or merely remembers the Obama era — the discrediting of neoliberal ideas that were once sacrosanct among Democrats is nothing short of astonishing.

Cheer up. The Left is winning the battle of ideas. Ideas are the basis for organization, and organization is prior to change. The signs are in the evolution of statements and platforms presented by Democratic presidential candidates. As the economist John Maynard Keynes wrote, eighty and some years ago:

Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back.

It’s our “madmen” (and women) who are more in evidence these days — not as public personalities, but in the guise of campaign commitments offered by leading Democratic politicians. Their ascendance parallels the decline of neoliberal ideology.

In this essay, I’d like to give credit where it is due for the raising of consciousness. In the process, I would like to foster a keener appreciation for the difference between progressive and neoliberal doctrine. What does it mean to be left these days? Everybody knows the extreme point — wholesale socialization of the commanding heights of the economy. But where is the separation between hackneyed liberalism, “woke” and otherwise, and emerging progressive platforms?

snip

As this article was being written, the Sanders campaign released additional, detailed plans pertaining to labor rights, the Green New Deal, and how law enforcement deals with race. In this respect, his opponents are invariably more fated to play catch-up than to reject his proposals. The few who tried to plant a flag on their opposition to socialism are passing from the scene. It’s as if Democratic voters have been thirsting for progressive proposals for decades, and now they will drink as much as can be offered. No candidate so far has proven willing to rain on this parade.

That’s why I say we are witnessing the sunset of neoliberalism.

Progressives enable the regressive Gahan Big Money Machine by their refusal to hold the local Democratic Party's feet to the fire.

On the topic of yesterday's column ...

ON THE AVENUES: Democrats should judge city council incumbents in districts 2, 3, 4 and 5 by their regressive deeds, not their progressive words.

... a reader has this astute observation.

Fairly accurate analysis. What’s even sadder though, is the progressives you encourage to run against these incumbents will receive absolutely no support from their own party. They’ve already been identified as “threats” and will truly have a hard time campaigning, even if they make it that far in the process.

Good point, and it prompts numerous ruminations, among them a central assumption on the part of reader and columnist that there really are such things as "progressives" in the local sense.

I believe so, though perhaps not as many as imagined. Surely there are progressive-minded residents who tend to project their values by voting Democratic, albeit solely on the basis of hot-button state and national issues, not grassroots concerns here at home.

Our reader's observation begs certain other questions: If progressives receive no support from the local party, why don't progressives organize locally to change the party's stance?

Why don't they leave the party and form a local progressive bloc?

Why don't they contest local races as independent candidates?

A bloc of independent progressives on our city council might stand a good chance of shifting the local Democratic Party's cynical bargain, because the crux of it is that Adam Dickey's smoothly corporate Floyd County Democratic Party offers a Faustian bill of fare to those who consider themselves "progressive" in any substantive way.

They're advised to tolerate the local Democratic patronage fix in favor of Jeff Gahan's special interest donors, nepotism, bullying and all-purpose undemocratic "Democratic" one-person rule, and in return, they'll be given lip service alone as to their progressive values and told that these values can be safely expressed only in the context of state and national races.

Because: Gahan, Dickey and the dozens of machine inhabitants dependent on the local party for their jobs and status aren't progressive at all.

The enduringly fascinating aspect of our bedraggled Democratic council quartet is the beige patina of its blandness. The best historic parallel is those jowly Politburo geriatrics propped atop Lenin’s Mausoleum during Soviet May Day parades of old; colorless and featureless functionaries without the first original thought of their own, committed only to agreeing in lock step with the First Secretary.

If you consider yourself to be "progressives," and yet you remain willing to run back to the regressive local party on the basis of faraway issues while observing plainly regressive local party behavior, there's no incentive for the party to reform, is there?

Gahanism will continue to function first and foremost as a new wave Tammany Hall, a greasy financial conduit for grassroots political patronage as opposed to grassroots solutions -- won't it?

Until local progressives are willing to call Jeff's and Adam's "Mighty Oz behind the curtain" platform of bluster and bluff, there can't be any real progress at all, can there?

Why continue to kid yourselves when reality illustrates the truth? Look at what they've actually done, not said, because when it comes to deeds and words, Gahanism is New Albany's own Grand Canyon of gaping duplicity.

Among Democrats elsewhere, progressive economics are ascendant. Here, it's all about a Baked Sale.

The problem for local Democratic cadres as they approach the rapids (municipal elections in 2019) is that 2018 midterm results gave them nothing (ahem) worth dropping anchor.

Consider for a moment the devotion inspired by epic loser Joe "Slavishly Licking Donald Trump's Loafers" Donnelly among the older Democrats; meanwhile, big losses suffered by somewhat left-of-center female candidates Anna Murray and Liz Watson seemed to suggest the task ahead is hopeless.

After Jeff Gahan and four mediocre council "Democrats," the deluge. How will they compete in 2019?

To the left? They don't know how.

To the right? But as Donnelly proved conclusively, if a pretend-Democrat veers too far Falangist, voters will opt for an unalloyed GOP candidate and not the substitute.

Gahan's assets are a cult of personality and lots of money. Will any of it trickle down to the Democratic council candidates?

The obvious answer: Democratic Bake Sale!

My suggestion is to stockpile Rice Krispies Treats and enjoy the show.

Progressive Economics Are Ascendant—Among Democrats, and at the Ballot Box, by Chris Hughes (The Nation)

It’s good politics and good policy, and should be a winning formula in 2020.

With the results of the November midterm elections, we have officially witnessed the end of Rubinomics. Former Treasury secretary Bob Rubin was the ringleader of an incremental, neoliberal economics ascendant in the Democratic Party in the 1990s and through the Obama years. The Rubin school oversaw the deregulation of banking and finance, free-trade agreements with insufficient worker and environmental protections, and the dismantling of core parts of the safety net with Bill Clinton’s “welfare reform” of 1996. These economists, taking a page from Ronald Reagan, argued that markets self-regulate if we just leave them alone.

History has proven them wrong, and this month’s elections signaled the start of a fresh approach. A decade out from the Great Recession, wages are still stagnant, and the cost of living is spiraling out of control. Even though typical economic indicators, like the low unemployment rate, suggest we live in a strong economy, exit polls show that only a third of voters say their own financial situation has improved in the past two years.

A new cohort of candidates this year chose to run on a clear, unapologetic economic progressivism as good politics and good policy. A new analysis found that two-thirds of the incoming Democratic freshman class in Congress campaigned on some form of Medicare for All or the expansion of Social Security. Nearly 80 percent campaigned on tax credits that benefit working families or on rolling back Trump’s tax cuts for the wealthy ...

Amid Adam's wreckage, the case for optimism: "The advances made by liberals last week render Trump’s talk of all-out victory absurd."

It's true that we've been holding straight to the fire the tender feet of local progressives who consistently apply their progressive beliefs to state and national issues alone, and ignore the daily violation of precisely these same principles by their conniving party chieftains right here in New Albany and Floyd County. here's a sampling:

Pretty in Pink Slips: "The Indiana Democratic Party is badly broken, and party leaders must let go of what worked in the not too distant past."

Embarrassment as "the Donnelly campaign demonstrates the futility of seeking to surmount these obstacles by trying to out-Republican the Republicans."

No blue wave, but white flags aplenty as the GOP dominates Floyd County in mid-term elections. Time yet for heads to roll?

Anna Murray's amazing post-election statement.

So immutable is the chairman that he need not speak twice, seeing as he said nothing the first time.

By the way, has the local chairman tendered his resignation yet? As a friend so eloquently stated reality:

When will local Democrats hold the county party accountable for the losses encountered in the last three cycles? Let's remember - not just the losses of Eurton & Badger-Byrd this round, but Chuck Freiberger in 2016 and the loss of the City Council control in 2015 when Baird and Gonder lost. We've watched the FCDP leadership execute the same plan of action year after year despite continual losses. Does anyone believe the FCDP exists for anything other than protecting the leadership's self interest and protecting the Mayor and his clique?

In short, if you're giving Jeff Gahan a pass on matters like campaign finance payola, public housing demolitions and the mayor's eternally duplicitous "Bumbling Mister Rogers Meets Pure Megalomania" fix-is-in persona, you may think of yourself as a progressive, but you're missing a great many obvious points about the nature of hypocrisy.

However, as the future of progressive political thinking pertains to other faraway places and not the confines of the gilded executive washroom in our emerging Reisz Mahal, let's examine the case for optimism.

Wouldn't it be interesting for all of us to talk about how these progressive trends apply here, in this place, without submitting yet again to the local Democratic leadership imperative wherein any discussion about progressive ideals must first pass through the tentacles of Gahan's Money Machine -- to be scrubbed of all their fundamental meaning?

The message from the midterms: a new, progressive US is slowly taking shape, by Will Hutton (The Guardian)

The advances made by liberals last week render Trump’s talk of all-out victory absurd

It has been a dark two years in Britain and the US. The future had seemed to be captured by the worst of the Anglo-American right, a populist, anti-foreigner, anti-EU, ultra-libertarian, anti-common decency alliance that extended from Donald Trump via Nigel Farage to Jacob Rees-Mogg. They were the masters now. If you believed in anything progressive, forget it.

Tuesday’s midterm elections in the US did not lift the pall, or so it seemed at first glance. Trump insisting on “a near-complete victory” in the hours after the polls had closed when the Republicans had lost control of the House of Representatives was vainglorious overclaiming, but it was not wholly stupid. The immediate consensus was that the hoped-for Democrat wave had turned out to be little more than a ripple. They had not won as many seats in the House of Representatives as they hoped, while the Republicans seemed to have consolidated their grip on the Senate. Where Trump had campaigned hard, the Republicans had won. The odds of him being re-elected in 2020 had shortened. Progressive politics was dying.

But look again a few days later and the story is very different. More Americans turned out to vote in 2018 than in any midterm election since 1966 – and more than 10 million more of them voted Democrat than Republican. As the late counts come in, the Democrat tally of gains in the House will top the targeted 30, including what seemed like improbable wins in Republican strongholds in well-heeled suburbs. This is the strongest rebound in recent decades and in an election year when the economy is booming.

The picture in the Senate is also much more mixed than it seemed on Wednesday morning. The Democrats held Montana when it seemed lost, they took Nevada and at the time of writing are ahead in Arizona. In Florida, the race is so tight both for the governorship and Senate that there will be a manual recount. Sherrod Brown won Ohio, a state that went for Trump in 2016, by a stunning 10% margin. The three states that handed Trump the presidency – Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan – now all have Democrat governors. Texas, one of the most conservative states, was only narrowly held with Beto O’Rourke falling just short against the Republican incumbent. For Trump to call this a near complete victory is fatuous.

O’Rourke’s campaign was particularly illuminating about what is happening in the US. He’s an across-the-board progressive with openly liberal commitments: universal healthcare; an assault on misogyny; pro-immigration (it makes the US strong); for accountable capitalism and gun control; and in favour of ending the federal prohibition on marijuana. He was even against the militarism of US foreign policy.

His cause seemed hopeless. He spoke in favour of black American NFL football players who had taken the knee when the national anthem was played (“There is nothing more American than to peacefully stand up, or take a knee, for your rights”), courage of a high order in Texas.

But from an unpromising start – a couple of friends and a rented car – his candidacy caught fire. He campaigned in every one of Texas’s 254 counties and through his website portal ActBlue raised a stunning $70m. By the end, he had recruited 25,000 volunteers; 71% of 18- to 29-year-olds voted for him, along with 39% of “Anglo women” – the most conservative in the US. He made liberalism popular in Texas of all places and came within a whisker of winning.

It is a pattern reflected across the US. Symbolically, Richmond, Virginia, the capital of the confederacy and the ultra-conservative city, fell to the Democrats. Almost every city and large town in the US is now controlled by Democrats; 60% of women voted Democrat. The rightwing view is to mock as liberal fads “political correctness”, the #MeToo movement, greens, climate change, the young’s embrace of the view that gender is a continuum, respect for other cultures, the growing trend for vegetarianism. Instead, let’s hang ’em, shoot ’em and fuck ’em – vote for Trump in the US (and Brexit in Britain).

But the message of the midterms is that this is not what the vast majority of Americans believe in or want. The majority culture so far has been denied its full expression by the US electoral system. Rural conservative states such as Wyoming and North Dakota, with fewer than a million voters, return the same number of senators as urbanised California with 40 million people.

Add the gerrymander of creating artificial districts with Republican majorities and suppressing the votes of blacks and ex-prisoners and the pro-conservative bias is near complete.

Yet the nearest the US has to a national election where those preferences can be expressed is in the House of Representatives. It now looks more like the US than ever – emphatically controlled by O’Rourke-style liberals with a record number of women, of whom two are Muslim. California and New York are now fiercely Democrat, as are the young, African Americans and Latinos. They enlist social media, not in centralised hothouses and data farms, but in myriad individual networks. They are the future, rejecting wholesale Trump’s rhetoric and values. They and O’Rourke’s charisma could carry the country, making inroads into the rural and smalltown US that its political system so privileges.

As in the US, so in Britain. This is where our culture is settling too, masked by our overwhelming rightwing media. Brexit, contrary to Jeremy Corbyn’s defeatism, can be stopped. A “people’s vote” would capitalise on the same trends and save Britain. All we need is the Labour party to wake up – and back it.

Anna Murray's amazing post-election statement.

Trying to decide what to do next? Municipal election cycles are underway for 2019. Not all of Anna Murray's issues and principles pertain to mayors and city council persons, but a good number of them do, and these are the grassroots where change must begin if it is to occur.

I find her statement fascinating on multiple levels. Maybe mayor of Jeffersonville?

---

I suppose it's about time for me to make a statement about the election. I've actually been fairly busy taking down signs, getting back to some cases, and so forth, but also needed a little time to process my emotions.

Honestly, it's a bit of a relief that I didn't win because going up to Indianapolis all the time was going to be a huge hassle and take a lot more time away from my family. Now I will have many fewer worries and obligations than I would have if I won. On top of all that, I knew that I wouldn't realistically be able to accomplish much in Indianapolis, especially since we only won one other seat in the Senate. I may have had a slight impact, but there is still an overwhelming Republican super majority, so all of the additional effort for me to be in Indianapolis would ultimately not create much real change. So there is definitely a silver lining to losing. Freedom.

I am very happy with the race that I ran. I am so thankful to everyone who helped me along the way. It has been a great experience meeting so many new friends, and I have definitely learned a lot about myself, about politics, and about people.

On the flip side, I am bitter about Ron's win because I do not believe he ran a better race. He spent a lot of money spreading outrageous lies about alleged plans which I not only did not have, but could not possibly have had, since Medicare is handled federally and I was running for a state position. So I do not respect his approach of lying and fear mongering to try and defeat me. And honestly, I don't think he won this race through his efforts. Republicans, generally, won this race. He won because of the party that he is affiliated with. Ron did not conduct himself as a gentleman, at one point knocking my materials off of a table onto the floor. But his "nice guy" image remained solid in everyone's minds. In reality, he's just a part of the good ol' boy network which has dominated politics forever and needs to be changed. I learned other things about him during this campaign which I will not share. But I'm not going to pretend like there are no hard feelings. I am an honest person and a human being, and that's just how I feel.

I am frustrated because I do not believe Ron will make the effort to bring the change that this state and this district needs, and I highly doubt he will have plans to run for a 4th term as he nears 80, so I do not believe there will be anything to make him feel accountable to his constituents. He will pander to his friends and leave those with food insecurity and who are homeless to fend for themselves.

I do hope that the strength of this progressive campaign sends a message to all Republicans throughout this state. That you cannot continue making it a crime to use medicine that helps you. That more poor-paying jobs are not going to fix poverty, nor are good-paying jobs that are inaccessible to people with limitations of many types. Poverty leads to poor education, child abuse and neglect, homelessness, untreated mental and physical illnesses. Stop maintaining a poverty class and allow everyone to live in dignity with a decent standard of living. That substance use disorder is a medical condition that needs to be treated medically. We don't throw people with medical conditions in jail. If they commit a crime like theft or DUI, sure. Make sure our insurance companies have to cover treatment, and if you need to bill somebody, send it to big pharma. They made a killing- figuratively and literally- on opioids and were a major contributor to our problem. If you need even more money for education or treatment, just fully legalize cannabis. We'll make millions in tax revenue and stop spending so much on jailing people for something that is safer than alcohol. Then we could fix our roads, too.

Beyond Ron, I am frustrated with our country as a whole. As we sit here being divided and fear mongering about poor people or people of color or people who aren't born here, or people with a different religion, we are letting the true risks- of climate change, pollinator endangerment, exposure to hazardous chemicals, and plain old hate; and the true villians- those wealthy beneficiaries of the status quo who continue to perpetuate these problems for profit, which those in power are ignoring or even covering up, and we don't have time to keep twiddling our thumbs and complaining about fake news. We are on the precipice of a planetary disaster. Our economy is on the verge of a rapid and dramatic change as a result of automation. Our healthcare system causes people to go bankrupt and become homeless or go without treatment and die while the insurance companies pay their CEOs tens of millions of dollars a year and spend hundreds of millions of dollars lobbying legislators to keep it that way. And yet so many people think that the reason they are struggling financially is because poor people are lazy. God forbid we tax those billionaires a little more to help our Veterans, seniors, disabled or hungry children. Stop taxing the wealthy and cut the benefits of those slackers instead! The wealthy need more boats and bigger houses so that we can have jobs cleaning them for less than a living wage! Don't regulate those big companies just to protect your drinking water or keep your children from getting asthma- it will tank corporate profits!

I am not giving up because these problems are not going away. These problems affect us all. It is time for us to find our common humanity and stop separating ourselves into different groups which we can then dehumanize, denigrate and ignore. It is time for us to listen to science- you know, that thing that lets you fly through the air and go up an elevator into a skyscraper. Remember science? It's quite reliable and we trust our lives with it all the time. Well it's telling us that it's time for change or the consequences may be quite dramatic for our and every other species. If you only respond to fear, then start paying attention to what the world's climate scientists are telling you. Start looking at the harm that OUR policies are causing our own people. Start looking inside of yourself. Are you making this world better for everyone, or are you full of hate and fear and allowing that to blind you to your humanity? Or are you just so well off that you don't feel inclined to pay attention? Very common, and an understandable position to take, but the epitome of privilege.

People are actively suppressing their ability to feel compassion- making fun of it by calling us snowflakes. Responding to expressions of genuine concern with hateful name-calling. Well what some perceive as our greatest weakness is actually our greatest strength. It's that thing that makes us human and differentiates us from machines. The ability to care and love and spread joy and to be able to acknowledge the suffering of others is what makes life worth living. We are more than consumers and there is more to life than just hoarding your wealth and buying new things. We are people and it's time for us to start living with respect for each other and respect for the planet.

I am still trying to decide what I want to do next. I don't know if I have the patience for any more of this politics business, nor if we have the time. I have to say my current mood is somewhat more on the revolutionary side of things. That's all for now..

If local "progressives" aren't holding City Hall's feet to the fire about Housing Choice vouchers, are they really progressive?

According to the Green Mouse, the last time a News & Tribune reporter was allowed into the inner sanctum for an interview with Mayor Jeff Gahan, there was a precondition that all questions first be submitted for approval by City Hall.

The answers were printed and ready when the reporter entered the mayor's office, and after a few moments of small talk, so ended the "interview."

Welcome to non-transparent governance, Nawbany-style.

Way back on March 16, 2017, the newspaper's then-reporter Elizabeth Beilman provided an overview of Gahan's recently facilitated hostile public housing takeover. While only Beilman herself knows whether her questions required City Hall pre-approval, here's a paragraph of interest.

(Gahan's NAHA seizure) will also signal a paradigm shift that more closely mirrors the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s changing model for public housing — fewer “brick-and-mortar” options and more affordable housing flexibility through a voucher system. Gahan believes this will position New Albany for better success when applying for tax credits and other applications.

Beilman also spoke with David Duggins, appointed by the mayor to serve as Gauleiter of the annexed NAHA territories.

New Albany is instituting measures meant to open up more opportunities for affordable housing that will accept Housing Choice Vouchers, Duggins said.

The city’s recently updated comprehensive plan states any new private housing development that receives incentives from the city, such as tax breaks, would be required to set aside 8 percent of its units for voucher holders, Duggins said. The plan was passed unanimously by the city council.

The council also approved an ordinance requiring landlords to register their rental units with the city. An inspection component of the ordinance was removed by the council, but city officials hope registration of units will increase communication with property owners to prevent deterioration of homes.

“If we start now encouraging affordable development, if we work now and enforce 8 percent [reserved units for vouchers], then there are units that will be available as this goes through,” Duggins said. “It will simultaneously work together, but it is a process.”

And if voucher holders can’t find eligible housing in New Albany when the time comes?

“I think we’re happy that they would go and find any place — if it’s in the city, great, if it’s outside the city that makes them happy and gives them a quality of life that they’re looking for, I think that’s the whole concern,” Duggins said.

It's almost as if both Gahan and Duggins knew their words about the utility of Housing Choice vouchers were meaningless drivel even as they uttered them -- as Chen discusses below.

Someone should ask them.

The newspaper, perhaps?

Better yet, shouldn't the so-called local Democratic Party progressives -- who insist against all prevailing evidence that Gahan and Duggins are somehow "one of them" -- be the ones to ask the occasional hard question?

Or must those queries, too, be approved in advance?

Our Housing-Voucher Program Is Broken, Michelle Chen (The Nation)

Landlords regularly refuse to rent to voucher holders, defeating the point of the program.

For many families in impoverished communities, their best hope for escaping poverty is to just move out of it. But often, the poverty follows them: They struggle to find a better neighborhood they can actually afford in crowded, expensive local housing markets. Today, with poverty and underfunded schools so intensely concentrated in isolated enclaves, the nationwide housing crisis is as much a crisis of segregation as a crisis of affordability.

The federal department of Housing and Urban Development has sought for years to help poor families relocate to lower-poverty areas through the Housing Choice program, which provides rental vouchers as a one-way ticket out to a healthier and stabler environment, resettling families in peaceful, integrated neighborhoods with more job and educational opportunities. Housing Choice vouchers are a major resource for cash-strapped public-housing authorities, currently supporting about 2.2 million households nationwide. Calculated according to income, the subsidies allow tenants generally to pay no more than 30 percent of income for rent. That could mean the difference between a roach-infested studio and a sunny single-family duplex with a $400 higher monthly rent. Those savings have a way of trickling down to the next generation, too: Research has linked a better home environment to healthier child development, less social distress, and greater economic stability. But as Congress weighs a modest expansion of the program, researchers have found that the Housing Choice recipients tend to face stiff barriers of stigma and implicit bias.

According to an extensive field study by the Urban Institute, many voucher holders are thwarted by landlords who simply won’t rent to them, regardless of the subsidy. Although some cities have laws that explicitly ban landlords from denying someone solely on the basis of being a voucher holder, researchers say subsurface biases still color first impressions and shape housing opportunity. It seems that people with vouchers are, ironically, perceived the same way landlords would view a bad credit check or a criminal record—a sign of a potentially troublesome tenant ...

"If we continue to absolve our urban design of any wrongdoing with these deaths, how are we ever going to make positive changes?"

No matter your station in in life, here's a reminder that if you fancy yourself "progressive," but believe city streets are meant for the convenience of high-speed, pass-through traffic, and not to serve the needs of a healthy neighborhood occupied by humans, then I've got jarring news.

Turns out you're not very progressive at all. That's because street grid design is a social justice issue, too.

Another Metro Atlanta pedestrian blamed for his own death, when urban design looks like the guilty party, by Darin Givens (Medium)

It’s important to improve the way our news outlets report pedestrian deaths and collisions. It’s about respect for the dead, who can’t speak for themselves, but it’s also about the need for change. If we continue to absolve our urban design of any wrongdoing with these deaths, how are we ever going to make positive changes?

Here and there, "dislodging those corporate Democrats ... is a critical front in the effort to actually make America great again."

Writing at The Nation, John Nichols, finds reasons to celebrate New York's 2018 state primary results.

Big Wins by Down-Ballot Progressives Are Going to Transform New York Politics

... The change in Albany will be dramatic as a new generation of insurgents and reformers arrives. (Governor Andrew) Cuomo is likely to return with a more progressive bent—having been pushed left by the (Cynthia) Nixon challenge. The Democratic nominee for attorney general, Tish James, has served for many years in New York City posts as a labor-aligned progressive. And the legislature will be populated by a state senators like Alessandra Biaggi, who claimed her victory as a signal that New Yorkers would no longer “tolerate Democrats who would be empowering Republicans.”

If the local Democratic Party is to be purged in like fashion, candidates who aren't afraid to describe unclothed passers-by need to step forward and take "down-ballot" into places like the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th council districts.

First, the bigger picture.

Yes, let's wipe out Trump. But take neoliberal Democrats with him, too, by David Sirota (The Guardian)

After a scorching summer of discontent, Donald Trump’s endless tweets and scandals have given Democrats their best chance to retake Congress since George W Bush’s second term. And yet, insurgent progressives are not limiting themselves to dethroning Republicans: they are taking aim at corporate-friendly Democrats within their own party, too.

Amid an upsurge of populist energy that has alarmed the Democratic establishment, a new wave of left-leaning insurgents have been using Democratic primaries to wage a fierce war on the party’s corporate wing. And, as in past presidential primary battles, many Democratic consultants, politicians and pundits have insisted that the party must prioritize unity and resist grassroots pressure to support a more forceful progressive agenda.

Not surprisingly, much of that analysis comes from those with career stakes in the status quo. Their crude attempts to stamp out any dissent or intraparty discord negates a stark truth: liberal America’s pattern of electing corporate Democrats – rather than progressives – has been a big part of the problem that led to Trump and that continues to make America’s economic and political system a neo-feudal dystopia.

Dislodging those corporate Democrats, then, is not some counterproductive distraction – it is a critical front in the effort to actually make America great again.

Sirota surveys a long train of abuses and usurpations.

Recounting this sordid record is not to dispute Democrats’ occasional successes. Some blue locales continue to periodically pass progressive initiatives, most recently on climate change, net neutrality and minimum wages. These are undoubtedly important, but they have for the most part been incremental at a time when the economic and ecological crises we face demand far more radical action.

The current iteration of the Democratic party has proven time and again that it is not merely uninterested in that kind of radicalism, but actively opposed to it. Party powerbrokers and multimillion-dollar MSNBC pundits would prefer an election focused exclusively on the palace dramas surrounding Trump’s boorish outbursts and outrageous personal behavior. They don’t want an election focused on the bipartisan neoliberalism that has wrought the desperation and mayhem unfolding outside the palace walls.

Out here, though, economic reality has proven the scripted red-versus-blue theater to be a bread-and-circuses distraction from the fact that both parties are culpable for this moment of crisis. America is now in backlash mode, producing candidates in Democratic states who are boldly challenging the party’s decrepit establishment.

After briefly reviewing a list of these candidates, Sirota brings it home.

These progressive challengers and others like them have each run unique campaigns, but all have embodied the core belief that anti-Trump rhetoric alone is not an adequate response to the emergencies at hand. Democrats’ record in liberal states and liberal cities over the last decade makes a strong case that they are correct – and so now the revolution is on.

That may bewilder the Democrats’ permanent political class that has gotten used to steamrolling the public, losing elections and still remaining in charge of the party – but, really, the only confusing thing about this uprising is that it took this long to finally ignite.

As noted previously, local prospects for Democratic Party reform are slim, although much will depend on the next 52 days.

Analysis: Election results this November will offer clues as to the progress (or regress) of the 2019 municipal election cycle in New Albany.

If the "blue wave" doesn't materialize in Floyd County, it's likely the party's current municipal power brokers will go to any length to remain ensconced. They're entrenched and waiting better times outside the city limits, but still capable of wetting beaks in the city.

Do we even have enough progressive voters to support candidates who might seek office? I'll leave that one for another time, along with a analysis of local issues which define "progressive."

Hint: the street grid is a perfectly applicable social justice issue. 

Take note, progressives: "We’ve built an unsustainable transportation network that makes all of us feel isolated, vulnerable and embattled, no matter how we’re getting around."

It is my aim to continue repeating this simple fact: one needn't be a progressive to grasp messages like the following, but if you consider yourself a progressive in political and social matters, it's contradictory to dismiss messages like this.

I've educated myself. So can you. This writer lives in Washington D.C., and you might be tempted to reject his point insofar as it applies to a smaller setting like New Albany.

You'd be mistaken. It's a difference in degree, not basic facts. I learned them, and you can, too.

Our streets make us unhappy. They don’t have to, by Colin Browne (Washington Post)

... The crazy thing about the automobile is that despite claiming a wildly disproportionate amount of public space, it’s still a slow and frustrating way to get across town. This is not because of all the buses, pedestrians and bicyclists. It’s not because the speed limit is too low or the traffic lights aren’t timed properly. It’s a feature of the machine itself. Cars take an enormous amount of space to safely move the one person inside and another enormous amount of space to store when they’re not being used, which is 95 percent of the time. If you live in Nebraska, you can maybe make that work. In a major world city such as ours, the acreage simply isn’t there.

We’ve built an unsustainable transportation network that makes all of us feel isolated, vulnerable and embattled, no matter how we’re getting around.

It doesn’t have to be this way. We can do better. We can think bigger. We don’t have to sacrifice the safety and livability of our neighborhoods to prop up a wasteful and dangerous transportation system.

What does a low-stress street network look like? We need wider sidewalks. Everywhere. Walking to the store with a grocery cart or pushing a stroller to day care or getting to the bus stop in a wheelchair should be smooth and easy for everyone, no matter where you live.

We need protected space on every single street for a variety of active transportation modes. Every child in the District should be able to ride a skateboard or a bike or a scooter to school safely. Not just once a year for a photo op — every child, every day.

We need dedicated space for affordable transit in every neighborhood. According to AAA, the average cost of owning a car in the District is about $8,000 per year. No one should have to pay that kind of money just because he or she can’t afford to live near a Metro station or a reliable bus line ...

The education debate: "Sitting at the heart of it is an ever-present attack (stated or not) on the liberal arts and humanities."

At LEO Weekly, Dr. Ricky L. Jones' hammer finds the center of the nail with, "What Kentucky's education debates are really about."

This is really about the overarching philosophies of a few powerful and elected people in Kentucky and their views on how society should be constructed. Education is not the real core issue. The more cogent interrogation is how particular ideas on education bleed out of those paradigms and fit into a retrograde ideological machine. Let me try to explain by stepping away from one issue and collectively looking at them all from a higher altitude.

Even cursory historical knowledge proves Mr. Bevin has a view of education that is not new. It is a philosophy centering on trade and industrial skills popularized in 19th century America. Sitting at the heart of it is an ever-present attack (stated or not) on the liberal arts and humanities. Such thinkers see them as superfluous. Even though research proves the opposite, Mr. Bevin even argues that college is overrated. If higher education degrees are attained, they should only be in particular areas to elevate chances for life success. For example, he has argued the state really needs “more plumbers and electricians.” By extension, not more historians, philosophers, artists, political scientists or intellectuals. It is a strange approach, indeed, for a man whose college major was East Asian Studies… and became a governor.

Next, as a reminder:

ped·a·go·gy
ˈpedəˌɡäjē
noun
the method and practice of teaching, especially as an academic subject or theoretical concept.

Public intellectuals (not to mention progressives) are about as rare hereabouts as engineering companies without direct deposit into the mayor's campaign finance account. But this is a fine, albeit long, article from a writer unafraid to question public intellectuals and progressives as to what they've been missing in the fight against neoliberalism.

Educated Hope in Dark Times: The Challenge of the Educator-Artist as a Public Intellectual, by Henry A. Giroux (Truth Out)

 ... Reclaiming pedagogy as a form of educated and militant hope begins with the crucial recognition that education is not solely about job training and the production of ethically challenged entrepreneurial subjects and that artistic production does not only have to serve market interests, but are also about matters of civic engagement and literacy, critical thinking, and the capacity for democratic agency, action, and change. It is also inextricably connected to the related issues of power, inclusion, and social responsibility. If young people, artists, and other cultural workers are to develop a deep respect for others, a keen sense of the common good, as well as an informed notion of community engagement, pedagogy must be viewed as a cultural, political, and moral force that provides the knowledge, values, and social relations to make such democratic practices possible. In this instance, pedagogy needs to be rigorous, self-reflective, and committed not to the dead zone of instrumental rationality but to the practice of freedom and liberation for the most vulnerable and oppressed, to a critical sensibility capable of advancing the parameters of knowledge, addressing crucial social issues, and connecting private troubles into public issues. Any viable notion of critical pedagogy must overcome the image of education as purely instrumental, as dead zones of the imagination, and sites of oppressive discipline and imposed conformity.

snip

The crisis of economics and politics in the Trump era has not been matched by a crisis of consciousness and agency. The failure to develop a crisis of consciousness is deeply rooted in a society in that suffers from a plague of atomization, loneliness, and despair. Neoliberalism has undermined any democratic understanding of freedom, limiting its meaning to the dictates of consumerism, hatred of government, and a politics in which the personal is the only emotional referent that matters. Freedom has collapsed into the dark abyss of a vapid and unchecked individualism and in doing so has cancelled out that capacious notion of freedom rooted in bonds of solidarity, compassion, social responsibility, and the bonds of social obligations. The toxic neoliberal combination of unchecked economic growth and its discourse of plundering the earth's resources, coupled with a rabid individualism marked largely by its pathological disdain for community and public values, has weakened democratic pressures, values, and social relations and opened the door for the election of Donald Trump to the American Presidency. This collapse of democratic politics points to an absence in progressive movements and among various types of public intellectuals about how to address the importance of emotional connections among the masses, take seriously how to connect with others through pedagogical tools that demand respect, empathy, a willingness to listen to other stories, and to think seriously about how to change consciousness as an educative task. The latter is particularly important because it speaks to the necessity politically address the challenge of awakening modes of identification coupled with the use of language not merely to demystify but to persuade people that the issues that matter have something to do with their lived realities and daily lives. Pressing the claim for economic and political justice means working hard to develop alternative modes of consciousness, promote the proliferation of democratic public spheres, create the conditions for modes of mass resistance, and make the development of sustainable social movements central to any viable struggle for economic, political, and social justice. No viable democracy can exist without citizens who value and are willing to work towards the common good. That is as much a pedagogical question as it is a political challenge.

Meanwhile in California: "Will Buffy the Bernie Slayer Win in Pro-Sanders District?"

While not directly applicable in our antebellum neck of the woods, this essay remains instructive. There are swamps, there are jungles, and there's the AdamBot.

Flush With Cash: Will Buffy the Bernie Slayer Win in Pro-Sanders District?, by Steve Early (CounterPunch)

In a political culture shaped by big money, entrepreneurial candidacies, single-issue campaigning, and union dis-unity, you can run but not hide from crowded fields of Democrats. In many current primary races, they are all claiming to be “progressive,” even as they raise and spend millions of dollars competing against each other—money that might have been better spent on actual movement building?

snip

Our East Bay constituency has one of highest levels of Democratic Party voter registration in the state. Two years ago, residents of Berkeley, a slice of Oakland, Richmond, and several adjoining communities chose Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton in AD 15, while Clinton won the statewide presidential primary.

These local results may not herald a permanent Sanders-inspired “revolution,” however. When the first stage of an election to replace our current Assembly member is completed next month, one of the top finishers could be someone who was nicknamed “Buffy the Bernie Slayer,” when she directed Clinton’s 2016 California primary campaign.

In our state’s “jungle primary” system, legislative candidates are lumped together—regardless of party affiliation– in the first round of voting. Buffy Wicks’ first-time run for office benefits from a crowded field of twelve (which includes a single token Republican) and, most importantly, national Democratic Party donor networks. Wicks is a newcomer to AD 15. She had little local name recognition and no track record of service on any city board, council, or commission before announcing her candidacy.

But she did direct the pro-Hillary Super-PAC, Priorities USA Action, serve in the Obama Administration, and work on both Obama presidential campaigns. Her past experience as a high-powered political operative makes her a magnet for the wrong kind of money in politics today.

snip

In Hillary Clinton fashion, Buffy markets herself as the candidate of “Progressive Values, Real Results.” (Hillary, not surprisingly, hasn’t appeared in any Buffy material so far.) In a just released video, Wicks instead boasts of her “100 organizing meetings in living rooms across the district” and legion of volunteers. She explains how she is “trying to run [her campaign] like a real grassroots movement” because that’s the only way to bring about “sustained change in the community.” If you go out and build such a movement, she says, “that lives far beyond any election cycle and far beyond election day,” citing as examples, the 2004 presidential primary campaign of Howard Dean and Obama’s more successful effort four years later.

Of course, with regards to two of the most important grassroots movements in California at the moment—for single payer healthcare and expanded tenant protection—Wicks is MIA or worse.

snip

 ... I’ve put my time and/or money into the “corporate free” AD 15 campaign by Jovanka Beckles. This two-term Richmond city councilor is a black Latino Lesbian Teamster county worker, with a real track record of movement building and little inclination to become part of “business as usual” in Sacramento.

As I reported in Refinery Town: Big Oil, Big Money, and the Remaking of An American City, Beckles and her Richmond Progressive Alliance (RPA) allies overcame heavy corporate spending against them in 2014 and 2016, because they championed refinery safety, rent control, campaign finance reform, and independent politics in Richmond.

snip

Draining the political swamp in Sacramento is no easy task, under any circumstances. The costly left-liberal free-for-all in the East Bay may end up adding to that challenge, instead of helping networks like Our Revolution overcome it. But the AD 15 race does demonstrate what too much candidate-driven campaigning and independent spending—combined with not enough real organization building—can produce, even in Sanders country, when municipal reformers all try to move up at the same time.

Canon, actually: "Dem Candidate in Deep Red District Comes Out in Favor of Reparations."

Last summer, we were in Chicago for British embassy matters when Dan Canon declared his candidacy at NABC's downtown location, now again dubbed Bank Street Brewhouse, where he made his announcement against a backdrop of hop vines, urban brick remnants, the cloud-hugging Elsby Building, and Rosa L(uxembourg) Stumblebus, the longtime company logo prominently displayed on her side next to his banner.

Eight months down the campaign trail, this photo is iconic. It keeps popping up in media coverage both near and far, and whenever I see it, my eyes are immediately drawn to the symmetry of beer man lofting keg positioned just behind Canon's clenched fist.

Whatever else I might say or not say about my history with NABC, it's probably already obvious that when I see the company logo -- one always intended to be a sign of progressive thought -- appearing next to a candidate of Canon's caliber, it makes me quite happy.

So do his platform positions. 

Dem Candidate in Deep Red District Comes Out in Favor of Reparations, by Colin Kalmbacher (Law and Crime)

A Democratic congressional candidate in a red state is bucking conventional wisdom and party politics by endorsing a raft of explicitly left-wing and populist policy proposals–including reparations for African-Americans.

Dan Canon is running for Indiana’s ninth congressional district. This district includes the city of Bloomington and most of the Indiana side of the Louisville metro area. Canon himself is locally known as a prominent civil rights attorney who helped secure same-sex marriage rights in nearby Kentucky.

The “Priorities” section of Canon’s campaign website positions the candidate firmly in the progressive mold–but goes even a bit further than that. One of the specific policies Canon aims to see enacted is, as mentioned above, reparations for African-Americans.

Canon’s website offers a fairly lengthy breakdown of the candidate’s support–reproduced in full below [emphasis in original]:

Work to close the racial wealth gap in ways including, but not limited to: encouraging support for minority-owned enterprises; protecting the integrity of the federal judiciary and executive cabinet by encouraging diverse appointments; support for measures to demilitarize local law enforcement units, particularly in communities of color; support for the Commission to Study and Develop Reparations Proposals for African-Americans Act (H.R. 40); introduce and support legislation authorizing private unjust enrichment actions to be brought against corporations and other entities that reaped enormous benefits from the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

The Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act was introduced in Congress by Representative John Conyers and currently has 32 cosponsors. Canon’s support for the bill puts him solidly on his party’s left-most flank, as do some of his other campaign positions ...

"Dianne Feinstein Isn’t Too Old—but She Is Too Out of Touch."

We know all too well.

Dianne Feinstein Isn’t Too Old—but She Is Too Out of Touch, by Miles Howard (The Nation)

It’s not her age that should disqualify her from reelection. It’s her political distance from the rising Democratic base.

Dianne Feinstein is the oldest sitting senator in America. She entered Congress in 1992 (when I was 4 years old). Today, at age 84, she is running for a fifth term in office, and a lot of people in the Golden State are unhappy about it—enough to deny Feinstein the state Democratic Party endorsement at this past Saturday’s convention.

Feinstein spent a great deal of that convention serving scrambled eggs to the delegates and giving speeches about her decades of legislative experience—which suggests that she still doesn’t get why her reelection bid hasn’t been embraced by all. Her primary opponent, State Senate President Kevin de León, put it bluntly during the convention when he proclaimed that “it’s time for a new generation to lead.”

He’s right.

 ... As with all aging politicians, it’s not Feinstein’s numerical age per se that is the problem. Rather, it’s her political distance from a Democratic base that is becoming younger and more progressive. Millennials and Gen Xers—who outvoted Baby Boomers in 2016 and will likely do so again this November—are a demographic that Democrats must turn out in high numbers. And the inconvenient reality for Feinstein is that her politics are not shared by this rising electorate. Her record of service, while impressively storied, contains highlights such as voting for the 1994 crime bill, voting for the Iraq War, giving the NSA carte blanche to spy on citizens, and recently writing a bill that would have required local authorities to comply with ICE.

Feinstein has made the case that her experience should be considered a powerful asset. But, with good reason, younger voters are skeptical of that argument. In American politics, decades of service in public office is often confused for a kind of civic meritocracy. Henry Kissinger, who should be considered a war criminal, still gets invited to black-tie dinners and Ivy League campuses. Hillary Clinton, a politician with dodgy judgment, was hailed as “the most qualified presidential candidate ever.” By this logic, someone like Feinstein should have been a shoo-in for the party’s endorsement.

But today’s young voters are looking for more than just experience for the sake of itself. These voters hold progressives views in high regard, but also consistency and integrity when it comes to those views—leaders whose politics, party affiliation, and actions are closely interlinked and non-contradictory ...

If Dan Canon is railing against the Republican mayor in Charlestown over housing issues for the working poor, but not the Democratic mayor in New Albany, there's a big problem.

I thought it was clear where matters stood, and then it wasn't. Something changed for me in September, 2017.

That's when my preferred 9th district congressional aspirant Dan Canon came down fast, forcefully (and correctly) on Mayor Bob Hall of Charlestown, who happens to be a Republican. Canon's rhetoric was blazing as he considered the implications of Hall's Pleasant Ridge cleansing fiasco.

Unbelievable. This guy has no shame about driving the working class out of the city by destroying entire neighborhoods. I am trying to avoid the internet this weekend but this is so appalling I can't stand it.

Mayor Hall: consider that if the torches and pitchforks come (and let me be clear that progressives are trying to stop that from happening), they are coming first for elected officials who wipe out the working poor to accommodate the wealthy. You can only take so much from your own people. Taking their homes is going too damn far.

At the time I was inspired, because everything Canon wrote about the situation at Pleasant Ridge applied just as accurately to Mayor Jeff Gahan's forcible seizure of the New Albany Housing Authority -- and still does, even more so in the wake of David Duggins' recent termination-worthy intimidation tactics.

As I thought in September, surely candidate Canon was ready to apply the same logic to Gahan's putsch, and to lead. As we all know by now, this hasn't happened.

Yes, Canon attended the We Are New Albany candlelight vigil, so there's that. However, in the main, it appears that when Bob Hall attacks the working poor, that's bad, but when Jeff Gahan attacks the working poor ... it's largely unmentionable.

First, a look at Canon's response to the issue during his recent town hall meeting in New Albany, as reported by the newspaper. Then, a few thoughts.

Canon candidate conducts town hall, by Erin Walden(News and Tribune)

Addresses public housing, school shootings

NEW ALBANY — Congressional candidate Dan Canon met with voters Saturday at a town hall at Clean Socks Hope and two key issues arose: public housing in New Albany and school shootings in America.

... The public housing situation in New Albany drew at least two Southern Indiana residents to the town hall. Aaron Fairbanks, a volunteer who has canvassed for Canon, attended because he says he believes in Canon but needs to know where he stands on housing.

“There’s definitely an issue with [public housing] in New Albany … With government cooperation, [the government] has the ability to reduce homelessness so that’s an issue I’m incredibly interested in — fair and affordable housing. I want to get a more concrete idea of where he sits on that,” Fairbanks said.

The issue, Fairbanks said, is the plan to demolish some of the public housing units with no concrete plan to replace those units.

“Having lived in public housing before, it is a bit personal,” he said. He knows that all the blame can't be placed on the local government, but coming up with solutions, and dollars, at the federal level to put into public housing would be a good place to start.

“Basically without knowing exactly where Dan [Canon] sits, I don’t know know if he would be for a remedy that would bolster public housing stock, and that’s what I’m interested in,” Fairbanks said.

Candace Brewer, chairperson for "We Are New Albany," a group formed to oppose the plan to demolish the housing units, also attended the town hall to check out Canon’s stance on housing.

“... It’s an absolute fact people will be made homeless [from this plan]. It’s my number one issue right now,” Brewer said. According to Brewer, she doesn’t care which party a candidate belongs to as long as they fight for the working class.

Even though what’s happening at the New Albany Housing Authority is localized, Canon says solving community problems at the federal level is possible with a representative in the House who is in touch with their constituents.

“We get into talking so much about what is happening at a national level and at Washington D.C., what the national topic du jour is. Congressional candidates on both sides of the aisle run a sincere risk of losing focus on local issues. More often than not the federal government has a big role in alleviating some of the problems going on on the ground in their district,” he said.

Most of what he said he hears in the town halls, such as a comprehensive solution to the opioid crisis or a handle on healthcare, the “issues people talk about at their kitchen table every day” as Canon put it, are solvable through legislative action.

Canon says there are several ways to bring real change to the housing issue. The first would be to “simply provide more resources to U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and other agencies that are dealing with the problem of homelessness and housing in general. Beyond that, education and outreach to end chronic homeless and poverty" would counteract homelessness, something he says is lacking in the current leadership.

On social media, Jeff Gillenwater dissects this.

Canon goes to Washington, advocates for more federal housing funding along with the rest of a platform that has little to no traction with Democratic leadership locally or nationally. Jeff Gahan and local Democrats maintain their positions. Canon takes credit for advocacy, Gahan takes credit for “revitalizing” public housing areas, and half the previous public housing residents still end up on the street. If criticized, Canon says there’s nothing he could’ve said or done as it’s a local issue, Gahan blames the feds, and Democratic leaders and attendant sycophants will determine if that’s good governance by whether or not they get re-elected. So it goes, here and elsewhere.

Paraphrasing another thought of Gillenwater's, we all understand that Canon speaking out about public housing in New Albany right now could help make a positive difference for those residents. Many of us are suggesting he should. If Canon is railing against the Republican mayor in Charlestown over housing issues for the working poor, but not the Democratic mayor in New Albany, there's a big problem.

In fact, it's an even larger problem than Adam Dickey's behind-the-scenes string-pulling.

If I'm to vote for a genuine progressive on the left, then shouldn't the progressivism be equally applied, across the board, come what may?

Or is it more important that local DemoDixieDisneycrats retain their sinecures, even if it means cynically abandoning whatever shards of progressive thinking that somehow seep through Dickey's cordon of self-interested censorship?

New Albany's traditional older white male small-pond power brokers, a slight majority of whom remain nominally Democratic (albeit rarely democratic), have no interest whatever in Canon's enunciation of progressive political thinking. They're laughing at him behind his back, because everyone knows that politics in Floyd County is about beak-wetting and not ideology.

Except they're perfectly willing to to piggyback on Canon's anti-Trumpista platform, because it distracts the younger Democrats who might otherwise see through the public housing putsch, thus providing the Elders with breathing space to fulfill their mythology-fueled dream of slaying the resource-sucking vampire of public housing -- arguably the single biggest straw man in this city's ignoble history of intellectual underachievement. 

Fact is, they'll turn against Canon in a Eastridge Drive Minute. They're using him, not the other way around. What actually needs slaying is the local Democratic Party; then it can be rebuilt into something that matters -- and if Canon might be elected to Congress with the local party staying exactly as it is, what good would that do us? 

I'm completely assured that if elected, Canon intends to stand in opposition to Trumpism, and will be a progressive advocate. Suits me, but I can't vote for him on these stances alone.

To avoid hypocrisy, Canon also needs to oppose local Gahanism, which has been proven by the mayor's public housing putsch and personnel choices to be indistinguishable in its degradation from the moral rot oozing from across the aisle.

I don't know if Canon will, or if he won't; ironically, just like my vote.

Dan Canon's good ink underscores the ideological problem for Adam's local DemoDisneyDixiecrats.

The author wouldn't identify the brewery, so I have.

It's an excellent profile of Dan Canon, man and candidate -- and I promise not to mention the local DemoDisneyDixiecratic Party's right-wing assault on public housing ... not even once.

Oops.

Is This Indiana Civil Rights Lawyer the Great Progressive Hope of 2018?, by Michael Powell (Vice)

Dan Canon is suing Trump, calling out white supremacy, and running for Congress. But can he win?

Less than a day after announcing his campaign for Congress in the parking lot of a brewery near his New Albany, Indiana, home, Dan Canon stood on a bench on a well-trafficked pedestrian bridge over the Ohio River telling anyone who would listen why they deserved healthcare. Some kept walking, some stopped to join in the growing circle around him.

"Healthcare is your right, and you have to assert that right. You get a small group of people that believe that and it spreads. If we tell our elected representatives we [have that right], well, they're not doing their jobs,” he told them in his role as a political busker. “So what do you do? You fire them!”

That’s the sort of personalized campaign Canon is running to flip Indiana’s Ninth District from red to blue. The progressive civil rights attorney is one of the most fascinating midterm House candidates in the country, a longtime advocate for causes ranging from gay marriage to immigration to cannabis who spends his free time acting in community theater, playing in bands, and marching in protests. If he can get into Congress, it'll be proof for a lot of leftists that yes, their preferred candidates really can win.

He has his work cut out for him: In 2016 Donald Trump won the district by 27 points and Republican Congressman Trey Hollingsworth beat his Democratic opponent by 14 after moving from Tennessee in 2015 ...

This important point remains:

The incumbent Hollingsworth has one advantage over any eventual Democratic opponent—he’s one of the wealthiest members of Congress, with almost $60 million in assets. Canon says his advantage will come through optics and lived experience. “You have people like Trey Hollingsworth who come to a district as an outsider millionaire with multi-generation wealth and doesn’t understand living paycheck to paycheck, doesn’t understand making the choice between paying for health insurance and paying the rent, or scrounging for change in the couch to buy a Big Mac,” Canon told me. “These are things that I’ve actually experienced, and I think gives me a point of identification with lots of other people. Very few if any candidates at an office this size understand those very real problems because of the prevalence of money in politics… It’s difficult for working-class folks to run for office.”

Hollingsworth is a plutocratic carpetbagger, and I'd say the same thing if the situation occurred in reverse, and it was a Democrat from Massachusetts.

Just one more quote.

“[Dan’s] message focuses a lot on fighting for individuals. It manifests itself in different issues, but he’s articulating a vision that goes deeper than what previous candidates have had to offer.”

The speaker is none other than multi-chairman spider web spinner Adam "Boy Wonder" Dickey, and after one wades painfully past the robotic code language, there's a grain of unintended truth.

Not only is Canon running against Republicans outside the Democratic Party, but also the ones within it -- and not only Washington County's implanted Falangist.

Another of Adam Dickey's hilarious DemoDisneyDixiecratic shit shows provides timely comic relief.

Those progressive themes Canon repeats aloud?

Try imagining Jeff Gahan uttering any of them, privately or publicly. More bluntly, the only future hope for Dickey's local DemoDisneyDixiecrats is that Canon wins, and the party is reshaped by younger, more progressive activists -- and this phenomenon, should it occur, would transform Jeff Gahan into Doug Leatherbury.

Or is it the other way around?

ON THE AVENUES: David Duggins’ violent “jokes” will continue until the New Albany Housing Authority’s morale improves – or Duggins is fired. We advocate the latter.

SHANE'S EXCELLENT NEW WORDS: "Individual bullying is usually characterized by a person behaving in a certain way to gain power over another person."

Local Democrats gear up for the talent show, except "you can’t fight Herrenvolk populism with weak-tea liberalism."

Earlier this week, Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi asked that Steve Bannon be fired, and a day later Bannon was gone. I was struck by this single passage in Taibbi's article.

... Prospect writer Robert Kuttner noted with surprise in his piece that Bannon seemed upbeat. He essentially told Kuttner he believed the Charlottesville mess and stories like it were a long-term political windfall for people like himself.

"The longer they talk about identity politics, I got 'em," he said. "I want them to talk about racism every day. If the left is focused on race and identity, and we go with economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats."

Speaking for myself, perhaps this lifelong atheist's revulsion at public displays of piety, when otherwise unaccompanied by private acts aimed at gaining the stated objective, explains why the past week's gestures have left me not so much cold as completely disinterested.

It isn't that I disagree with many of them, having been proudly "anti-fascist" since around 1978, so much as lament the left's ongoing inability to place the focus on the genuine economic evil perpetuating our divisions: capital accumulation, big money, robber barons, the One Percent-- call it what you wish.

Inequality results from more than one contributing factor, but really, don't we need to follow the wealth?

To me, Bannon's phrase "economic nationalism" reads as code for those who'll perpetuate divisions to keep the money where it rightfully belongs, and in this usage, Bannon might be detestable but at least he's honest. He knows his bosses' names, and makes sure their birthday cards always arrive on time.

Democrats imagining themselves as leftists or progressives in a Clintonesque mold are in thrall to an illusion. You can serve the interests of capital accumulation, or not. There isn't much of a middle ground, if any, and yet local "Democrats" avoid this introspection as though you were asking them to ban same sex marriage or reinstitute Jim Crow.

I cannot recall a local Democratic Party candidate speaking about anything of a genuine balls-out economic nature apart from Dan Canon, who hasn't yet even contested an election. But we're treated to a never-ending series of resolutions and gestures -- and faux Democrat Jeff Gahan's dog-whistling putsch against public housing, which by now should have been publicly condemned by every Democrat in the city.

But instead, everyone merrily plans events, concerts, talent shows and diversions, and while they're engaged in these wild goose chases, functionaries like 1Si's Wendy Dant Chesser ensure the worsening of the fundamental economic imbalance by serving our regional oligarchs first -- and maybe some of it will trickle down, eventually.

Presumed left-wingers, note that your omelette remains uncooked because almost no one among you is willing to break a few eggs. A member of Jacobin's editorial board explains why, and if you fancy yourself a progressive ...

Steve Bannon’s Autobahn, by Connor Kilpatrick (Jacobin)

You can’t fight Herrenvolk populism with weak-tea liberalism.

 ... So “far-right racist” doesn’t make Bannon particularly unique or worrying. It’s how devastatingly well he understands liberalism’s failures and how willing he is to craft a fraudulent and reactionary program for those who’ve only experienced decline during the Clinton and Obama years.

Like a mutant weed growing out of a shit-covered pile of compost, Bannon has cultivated his particular brand of reaction entirely within the decomposing corpse of American liberalism. In no other soil could it ever have blossomed.

And:

Bannon’s ambitions make gruesomely clear that liberalism and the Democratic Party in no way represents the left-wing obverse of conservatism and the GOP. And liberals, deep down in their hearts, understand this. They have no true ideological counterpoint — no real program and certainly no vision for changing society for the better. Michael Wolff correctly diagnosed Bannon as “embodying more than anyone the liberals’ awful existential pain and fury.” This doesn’t just refer to his disgusting comments — it includes his fiery ambition, something the Democratic Party has altogether lost. And even at its absolute best, liberalism’s aspirations were only a watered-down, cheap knockoff of the utopian dreams of communist and socialist activists.

Then:

But you can’t fight Herrenvolk populism with weak-tea liberalism. A paltry means-tested welfare state just flips white-supremacist programs and policies “for the deserving us not the undeserving them.” Both fit comfortably in the ruling-class politics of divide and conquer as opposed to the broad solidarity they fear. How can we expect the public to rally around something like Medicaid when huge portions of the working and lower-middle classes don’t qualify for it? Universal social democracy — a more transformative program than the one Sanders campaigned on — is called for. We’re in the midst of a reckoning with the neoliberal consensus. The Right has made their play, and now we have to make ours.

In closing, a suggestion to my councilman: if Team Gahan won't show you the results of its rental housing registration program, perhaps a new council resolution would do the trick. Just make sure to craft it in a manner emphasizing human rights rather than economic imperatives, or Adam will overrule you.

Dan Canon to release detailed policy statements; local Democrats announce Game of Thrones night at the Roadhouse.

If we were to submit Dan Canon's platform to 10 prominent local Democrats at random, how many would NOT reel in horror?

POLICIES

In the coming weeks, I will be releasing detailed policy statements that will appear on CanonForIndiana.com. Please click here and sign up to be notified when new policies go live. If you have a specific question or an issue you do not see addressed here, please email info@CanonForIndiana.com.

• Universal healthcare as a right for all people, beginning with basic transparency and cost controls along with a public option that is basically a Medicare expansion; ultimately phasing in a true single-payer system over time.
• Nationwide paid parental, family, and sick leave through an expansion of the federal Family Medical Leave Act, similar to the programs currently in place in Washington state, New York state, and elsewhere.
• An immediate and substantial increase in the minimum wage, and the creation of an independent commission to determine and recommend an appropriate minimum living wage by region.
• Comprehensive campaign finance reform, including a constitutional amendment to overturn the Citizens Uniteddecision; ultimately strengthening democracy by moving to low-cost, publicly financed campaigns.
• Legislation that ends the practice of partisan gerrymandering (should the Supreme Court uphold the practice), and the establishment of independent committees to redraw congressional and other districts.
• Legislation that bans discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity or expression in employment, housing, and places of public accommodation.
• Nationwide automatic voter registration, similar to the system recently instituted in Illinois and eight other states.
• Removal of marijuana as a Schedule I substance under the Controlled Substances Act, and ultimately the cessation of all federal criminal regulation of cannabis.
• Legislative support and strengthening of public schools (PK-12), including protecting the federal Department of Education, increased Title I funding, and the formation of partnerships with teachers to ensure that resources are properly allocated in order to abrogate and reverse the de facto segregation of schools by race and income.
• An immediate and varied strategy to address the opioid crisis, including a nationwide prescription drug monitoring program, increased availability of mental health/telehealth services (especially in rural areas), and increased access to safe, natural, non-addictive opioid alternatives.
• Abolition of private prisons and a prohibition on involvement by private, for-profit corporations in any way within the carceral system, particularly with regard to inmate healthcare.
• Defend a woman's right to make her own health decisions and support policies proven to lower demand for abortion while being resolute in the commitment to reproductive freedom for all; safe, legal, and accessible abortion; repeal of the Hyde Amendment; fully subsidized coverage of contraception as well as quality pre-/post-natal care.
• Comprehensive immigration reform, including transparency within the detention system, a prohibition on moving accused immigrants to detention facilities more than 100 miles from their place of apprehension, a path to citizenship for certain qualified undocumented immigrants and their families, and a prohibition on involvement by private, for-profit corporations in any way within the immigration detention system.
• Abolition of the federal death penalty. It doesn't do any good, it's too expensive, there's too much potential for error, and citizens should never be willing to give the state the power to kill its own people.
• Fully subsidized public higher education nationwide, under a system similar to those in Tennessee and New York State, through a baccalaureate degree or substantial equivalent; this would begin in community and technical schools and gradually expand to all public universities.
• Abolition of the electoral college.
• Legislative strengthening and increased enforcement of antitrust/anti-monopoly laws, particularly including laws specifically designed to restore stability to small local businesses by breaking up financial, agricultural, pharmaceutical, media, and other monopolies.
• A legislative reversal of the case of McKleskey v. Kemp, which keeps civil rights lawyers from bringing actions to correct systemic race discrimination within the criminal justice system.
• A guaranteed public-jobs program that provides meaningful work to those who are willing and able to take it, primarily in rebuilding and improving American roads, bridges, public transportation, energy grids, rural broadband access, and in environmental cleanup/preservation; ultimately the program would aim to result in 100% (voluntary) employment over time.
• Establishment of a universal basic income (see, for example, the beginnings of UBI recently enacted in Hawaii), to work in tandem with the guaranteed jobs program within a projected time frame.
• Legislative strengthening of the EPA, including increased enforcement powers to deal with Flint-type crises, to ensure breathable air, drinkable water, and clean soil.
• Establishment of a separate, politically independent agency tasked with immediately addressing the urgency of global climate change via geoengineering and other innovations, and given broad enforcement powers to address the root causes (e.g., deforestation and irresponsible energy consumption).
• Simplification of agricultural tax policy and incentivization for farmers to help eliminate food deserts in Indiana.
• Protection and strengthening of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and expanding its reach to cover important individual consumer purchases such as automobiles.
• Protection and strengthening of labor unions, including vigorous enforcement of the National Labor Relations Act both privately and through the National Labor Relations Board, and enacting stronger measures to prevent retaliation against workers who wish to organize.

I fully understand and recognize that these goals will not be achieved overnight. But I believe they are achievable. We have to start with a vision of what we want for America 25 years or more in the future and have a clear plan for how we intend to get there. Real change starts with the belief that a better country is possible, and the will to start working on it together. We can never make these ideas mainstream, we can never convince anyone that these ideas are right, if we keep treating them like pipe dreams ourselves. We can be incremental in our methods, but we must be revolutionary in our aspirations.