MORNING MESSAGE
In
South Carolina on Saturday, the Republican candidates for president got together
to discuss what they would do to address poverty in America. If you missed it,
they promised that if elected they would do everything in their power to make
things worse by cutting services, slashing corporate taxes and furthering the
dehumanization of people of color and the poor. What a contrast to what was
happening at the same time in the heartland, where real solutions, ambitious
strategies and fierce hope led the agenda. In Iowa, 1,000 grassroots leaders
from across the Midwest came together at the Putting Families First Presidential
Summit.
State of the Union
Obama
to focus on future in his final State of the Union speech. CNN: “It was
tempting for the President to follow the lead of his predecessors, take a
victory lap and mainly tout his administration’s achievements. But Obama’s
instruction to his team was simple: Don’t do that. ”Don’t take our foot off the
gas,“ the President told a group of West Wing aides and speechwriters preparing
drafts of the speech, according to a senior White House official who attended
meeting. … Obama previewed his plan to talk about his vision for the future in a
video teaser tweeted by White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough. ‘The big
things that will guarantee an even stronger, better, more prosperous America for
our kids. The America we believe in,’ Obama said in the video.”
Guest
list for Obama’s last State of the Union tells story of his presidency.
Washington Post: “Over six months of training at the Army’s famously
difficult Ranger School, Maj. Lisa Jaster grew to realize something, she said:
She was ‘the unicorn.’ … The decision to invite Jaster — as well as others,
including a Syrian refugee, the plaintiff in the lawsuit that legalized same-sex
marriage nationwide and two early supporters of Obama’s first White House bid —
reflects the president’s determination to adopt a defiant pose during his speech
to the nation. While the first lady’s box provides a visual representation of
what he has done in office, it also shows where lawmakers have blocked his
agenda: One seat will be left vacant to symbolize the Americans killed and
injured by guns each year.”
On
the eve of Barack Obama’s last State of the Union address, Paul Krugman touts
‘the Obama Boom’: “So what should we say about the Obama job record?
Private-sector employment — the relevant number, as I’ll explain in a minute —
hit its low point in February 2010. Since then we’ve gained 14 million jobs, a
figure that startled even me, roughly double the number of jobs added during the
supposed Bush boom before it turned into the Great Recession. If that was a
boom, this expansion, capped by last month’s really good report, outbooms it by
a wide margin. … So what do we learn from this impressive failure to fail? That
the conservative economic orthodoxy dominating the Republican Party is very,
very wrong.”
Oregon Standoff
Oregon
standoff tension mounts as so-called ‘3%’ groups refuse to leave. The
Guardian: “The heavily armed rightwing groups who descended on rural Harney
County in eastern Oregon on Saturday – to protect the peace, they said – made
clear they had no intention of leaving, as the occupation of the Malheur
national wildlife refuge entered its second week. Observers, meanwhile, noted
that many such groups were extremist entities with histories of promoting
bigotry, racism and violence.”
Ranchers’
cause, not tactics, gains support in GOP circles. Associated Press:
“Republicans have widely condemned the armed standoff by a group of ranchers to
reclaim federal land in eastern Oregon, but their goal of taking back some of
Washington’s vast holdings in the West has gained traction in the GOP. The
decades-old idea could garner even more momentum should the party recapture the
White House this year.”
The GOP Takes On Poverty
Paul
Ryan dreams of a kinder, more substantive GOP. Politico: “Paul Ryan talked
about the ills of the criminal-justice system. He quizzed GOP presidential
hopefuls at a forum here about what they’ve done to help the impoverished and
vowed that Republicans, if they put their minds to it, could “make
breakthroughs” in the war on poverty. This is what Ryan wants his Republican
Party to look like. …So as Ryan tries to reassert the party’s substantive side
with a series of policy rollouts in the coming months … he’s also looking to
give the House GOP its own identity. The speaker’s effort could also provide his
246 members a layer of insulation from the mess playing out on the national
stage.”
Paul
Ryan Was the Winner of GOP Presidential Poverty Forum. NBC News: “ House
Speaker Paul Ryan was the big winner at a Republican presidential forum on
expanding opportunity on Saturday. He moderated the event in Columbia, South
Carolina, where most of the seven presidential candidates who attended endorsed
central components of his domestic policy agenda. … One of the central
components to addressing poverty were versions of Ryan’s proposal to block grant
safety net programs, including food stamps, officially called SNAP (Supplemental
Nutritional Assistance Program) and welfare, or TANF (Temporary Assistance for
Needy Families.) … It’s a proposal backed at least by Bush, Carson, Rubio and
Kasich. ”
Breakfast Sides
Robbert
Kuttner, writing at HuffPo, maps out where economic distress meets political
disfunction: “ Here’s where the economics meets the politics. As a number of
commentators have pointed out in recent days, the Republican Party is on the
verge of splitting wide open between grass roots right-wing populists and the
GOP establishment, based on ‘class divisions.’ … Dig a little deeper, and you’ll
see the problem. Wage stagnation is indeed partly the result of trade deals, but
those trade deals have been supported by both parties and most recently
championed by the Clintons and by the Obama administration. … In short, there is
little that Donald Trump of Ted Cruz is offering that would change the life
circumstances of voters like Leo Martin. But they channel his frustration that
neither party cares about people like him.”
Ex-Obama
adviser Van Jones rips Trump for emboldening racists: ‘It’s time to look in the
mirror’. The Raw Story: “Appearing on CNN’s State of the Nation, a former
Obama White House adviser took GOP front-runner Donald Trump to task for a
campaign so firmly rooted in bigotry that it has emboldened racists to make
unsolicited robocalls in support of his candidacy. … ‘This is troubling. If I
were [Donald] Trump, this is a time to look in the mirror. Who am I inspiring?
Who am I attracting? Why will horrible racist groups say I’m the only candidate
that speaks for them?’ Jones said. ‘This is what is — my deep concern is that
Donald Trump is beginning to legitimate some of the dark things that have been
in our country for a long time, and now starting to let them elevate, let them
rise.’”
Progressive
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