Good morning to everyone except all the people who were gaslighting us in 2019 and 2020 by saying Biden's policies weren't substantially different from Bernie's.
Here's a list of policies we would have right now with President Sanders. Which are all still possible, but Biden is choosing not to do these things. 🧵
1. Keep workers on payroll during the pandemic.
Make sure that every worker in America continues to receive their paycheck during this crisis, retroactive to the beginning of the crisis.
2. Monthly direct payments of $2,000 every person in the country.
We must provide direct, recurring, monthly payments to every person in the country, regardless of income, tax filing, or immigration status. #2KChecks
3. Guarantee paid medical and sick leave to all workers.
Anyone who is sick or who needs to stay home should be able to stay home during this emergency and receive their paycheck.
4. Hazard pay for essential and frontline workers.
Workers who are on the front lines of this crisis – including those who work in grocery stores, nurses, warehouse workers, paramedics, et al. must be provided hazard pay, child care, and safe working conditions.
5. Guarantee these programs to everyone in this country, regardless of immigration status.
#COVID19 does not differentiate based on immigration status and our economic and health response must not either.
6. Use Medicare to cover all health care expenses.
Medicare must be empowered to pay all of the deductibles, co-payments and out-of-pocket healthcare expenses for the uninsured and the underinsured. #MedicareForAll
7. Safety standards for health care workers.
OSHA must adopt a strong emergency standard to protect health care workers, patients, and the public during this crisis.
8. Make sure no one goes hungry.
Even before the pandemic, 1 in 7 kids in America was going hungry and nearly 5.5 million seniors struggled with hunger. Increase SNAP benefits and expand SNAP and WIC, the Emergency Food Program, Meals on Wheels. and school meals programs.
9. Suspend monthly expenses like rent, mortgage payments, medical debt, and consumer debt collection.
We must ensure that these payments are not deferred, coming due as soon as the emergency is lifted, but completely suspended. #CancelRent
10. Place an immediate moratorium on evictions, foreclosures, and utility shut-offs.
No one should lose their home during this crisis and everyone must have clean water, electricity, heat. Restore utility services to any customers who have had their utilities shut off.
11. Construct emergency shelter and utilize empty or vacant lodging.
Ensure the homeless, survivors of domestic violence and others are able to receive shelter, health care, and nutrition they need. Use empty hotel beds and other vacant properties to ensure everyone is housed.
12. Bail out working people, not corporate executives.
Any emergency credit extensions or loans to insolvent companies or industries as a result of this crisis must come with strict protections and benefits for workers, unions, and customers, not handouts for executives.
13. Prevent price gouging by pharmaceutical companies.
The pharmaceutical industry must be told in no uncertain terms that the medicines that they manufacture for this crisis will be sold at cost.
Transform our energy system to 100% renewable energy and create 20 million jobs needed to solve the climate crisis. Ensure justice for frontline communities, communities of color, Native Americans, people with disabilities, children and the elderly.
Create a Medicare for All, single-payer, national health insurance program to provide everyone in America with comprehensive health care coverage, free at the point of service. No networks, no premiums, no deductibles, no copays, no surprise bills.
16. Immigration Justice
Institute a moratorium on deportations, break up ICE and CBP, dismantle the cruel and inhumane deportation programs and detention centers and reunite families, welcome refugees and those seeking asylum.
Cancel 100% of student loan debt.
That's it, that's the policy.
All of it.
18. Make College and other Education Free.
Guarantee tuition and debt-free public colleges, universities, HBCUs, Minority Serving Institutions and trade-schools to all. Cover non-tuition costs of attending school by: expanding Pell Grants to cover non-tuition and fee costs.
19. Build and protect workplace democracy.
Deny contracts to companies that pay poverty wages, outsource jobs overseas, engage in union busting. Majority sign up process and “first contract” provisions. Federal protections against firing for any reason other than “just cause.”
20. Expand Social Security
Expand Social Security benefits for all recipients and protect pensions. Guarantee home and community based long-term care services. Expand Medicare program by including dental care, hearing aids, routine vision exams, podiatry, and more.
Build 10 million permanently affordable housing units. National rent control, a “just-cause” requirement for evictions, and ensure the right to counsel in housing disputes. End homelessness and ensure fair housing for all.
22. Provide Real Care for Veterans.
Stop endless wars. Fully fund and resource the VA, fill the 50,000 vacancies, reform harmful VA regulations that restrict access to care and benefits based on character of discharge.
23. Reform the "Justice" System
End war on drugs. Ban all for-profit prisons/detention, end cash bail, make communications/programs free. Cut prison pop in half, end mass incarceration, 3-strikes laws, mandatory minimums. Ban facial recognition software. #AbolishTheDeathPenalty
24. Free Childcare and Pre-K for All
Guarantee every child free full-day, full-week, high-quality child care from infancy through age three, regardless of income. Guarantee every child a full-day, full-week pre-kindergarten education, regardless of income, starting at age 3.
25. Cancel Medical Debt
Eliminate all $81 billion in past-due medical debt held by 79 million Americans.
26. End the For-Profit Credit Agencies
Replace for-profit credit reporting agencies like Equifax with a public system. Ban use of credit checks for housing, employment, insurance and other non-lending practices. Remove and exclude medical debt from existing credit reports.
27. Save Public Education
Provide equitable funding for all public schools. Execute and enforce desegregation. End the unaccountable profit-motive of charter schools. Set starting salary for teachers at no less than $60,000. Provide year-round, free universal school meals.
28. Fix Banking
Cap consumer loans and credit cards rates at 15% across all financial institutions and allow states to go even further. Allow every post office to offer basic and affordable banking services and end lending discrimination. #PostalBanking
29. Support HBCUs and MSIs
Make all public and private HBCUs, tribal colleges, and many MSIs tuition-free. Invest billions in HBCU medical, dental, and teacher training graduate programs. Invest billions in HBCU infrastructure grants and cancel all institutional HBCU loan debt.
Cut the wealth of billionaires in half to break up the concentration of wealth and power of this small privileged class. Annual tax on the extreme wealth of the top 0.1% of U.S. households.
31. Dismantle Structural Racism
With structural solutions that target the five central types of violence waged against black, brown and indigenous Americans: physical, political, legal, economic and environmental.
Build *publicly* owned and *democratically* controlled broadband networks. Break up ISP and cable monopolies, bar providers from providing content, and unwind anticompetitive mergers. Make infrastructure resilient to the effects of climate change.
33. Free and Fair Elections
Automatic voter registration. Make Election Day a national holiday. Restore the Voting Rights Act and overturn Citizens United. Re-enfranchise the right to vote to the 1 in 13 Black Americans who had their vote taken away by a felony conviction.
34. Protect Farmers
Stop monopolization of markets and break-up existing massive agribusinesses. Ensure farmers have the Right to Repair their own equipment. Reform patent law to protect farmers from predatory patent lawsuits from seed corporations.
35. End Income Inequality
The larger the gap between CEO pay and worker pay, the more corporate taxes a company will pay.
36. End the Forever Wars
Instead focus on democracy, human rights, diplomacy and peace, and economic fairness. Stop presidents from waging unauthorized and unconstitutional interventions overseas. Rejoin the Iran nuclear agreement.
37. Gender and Sexual ID Justice
Equal Pay for Equal Workt. Repeal Hyde and fully fund Planned Parenthood, Title X, etc. Pass Equal Rights Amendment. Pass Equality Act and other bills to prohibit discrimination against LGBTQ+ people. Federal recognition of non-binary identities.
38. Disability Justice
Guarantee health care, including home & community services / supports without waitlists, asset or income restrictions, as a human right to all. Expand SSDI and SSI. End subminimum wage for workers with disabilities & guarantee jobs and living wages to all.
39. Get Money out of Politics
Ban all corporate contributions to the Dem Party Convention and inaugural events, cap individual at $500. Abolish FEC and replace it with Federal Election Administration. Mandatory public financing for all federal elections.
40. Get Corporations out of Politics
Pass a Constitutional Amendment that makes clear money is not speech and corporations are not people.
41. Empower Puerto Rico
Restore self-rule in Puerto Rico by ending the reign of greedy Wall Street vulture funds that have a stranglehold on Puerto Rico’s future, return control of the island to the people of Puerto Rico, and give debt relief.
42. Tax Wall Street
Eliminate offshore tax scams. Tax Wall Street speculators. Close tax loopholes. Pass the 99.8 % Act to establish a progressive estate tax on multi-millionaire and billionaire inheritances.
43. Gun Safety
Ban sale and distribution of assault weapons. Assault weapons are designed and sold as tools of war. There is absolutely no reason why these firearms should be sold. Buyback to get assault weapons off the streets. End the gun show loophole.
Legalize marijuana in the first 100 days with executive action. Vacate and expunge all past marijuana-related convictions. Ensure that revenue from legal marijuana is reinvested in communities hit hardest by the War on Drugs.
45. Support Tribal Sovereignty
Honor treaty rights and sovereignty, moving away from a relationship of paternalism and control to one of deference and support.
46. Actually Occupy Wall Street
End the too-big-to-jail doctrine. Break up too-big-to-fail banks. Reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act. Cap interest rates and ATM fees. Audit the Federal Reserve and make it a more democratic institution. Restrict rapid-fire financial speculation.
47. Fair Trade
Rewrite all of our trade deals to deals to prevent the outsourcing of American jobs and raise wages. Write strong and binding labor, environmental, and human rights standards into the core text of all trade agreements. Stop corporations shipping jobs overseas.
48. Jobs for All
Enact a federal jobs guarantee, to ensure that everyone is guaranteed a stable job that pays a living wage.
49. Worker Power & Corporate Accountability
Shift the wealth of the economy back into the hands of the workers who create it. Give workers an ownership stake in the companies they work for. Break up corrupt corporate mergers and monopolies. Make corporations pay taxes.
These were *already* a compromise from what we actually need. They weren't pie-in-the-sky, they weren't radical, they weren't ideals. They were the bare minimum.
NYT today: “No other country has counted so many deaths in the pandemic. More Americans have perished from Covid-19 than on the battlefields of World War I, World War II and the Vietnam War combined.”
“Finally, any discussion about the two countries would not be complete if the Vietnam War did not come up eventually. A peculiar phenomenon has taken place...”
“Western journalists and observers have compared American Covid-19 fatalities with the tens of thousands of Americans killed in that war, as if to shame the US’s catastrophic response to the crisis as opposed to the tremendous success of a developing country it once fought.”
This estimate of October/November is a best-case scenario - hopefully people will pay attention to understand how much we can do to stop infections and suffering over the next year.
"If we end restrictions in April, we could reach the herd immunity threshold by June. But in that time, 170,000 more people could die from the virus.
Precautions remain especially important as new variants of the virus emerge."
As all the experts have been saying, we can not relax now. If anything we need much stronger precautions:
"If social distancing measures aren’t followed, a stronger virus could rapidly infect and kill hundreds of thousands of people before they can be vaccinated."
"More than 65% of the people in county or city jails on any given day in 2016 had not been convicted of a crime, often because they lack the money to pay bail.
"Settler colonialism seeks to eliminate Indigenous populations in order to monopolize resources for the sake of capital. It operates through laws and racist ideologies, but also through conceptualizations of the natural world as white men’s for the human taking." —@NatalieMAvalos
"Settler colonialism operates from its own metaphysic, producing what I call a settler ecology, which dispossesses peoples but also lands."
"If settlers want to understand how to effectively address environmental crises, then they have to interrogate the logics of settler colonialism—racialization, white supremacy, and myths of development—as structural dimensions of modern life."
One of the biggest strategic mistakes the US left is making right now is not talking about why Biden continues to use the same pandemic strategy that Trump started in 2020.
It's connected to monthly survival checks, medicare for all, and every other issue we talk about.
Right now the US left has an opportunity to point out Biden's own science advisors have been saying for a year that we need to change pandemic strategies. But he's not doing it.
The strategic opportunity the US left is missing is simple, but huge:
Biden said he would listen to science. His science advisors say we should change pandemic strategy. Changing pandemic strategy requires sending everyone monthly checks, expanding healthcare, and more.
"Summoning the public to understand and accept such measures requires a grown-up discussion among our politicians and citizenry.
But the status quo doesn’t want to change or even entertain a national conversation." thetyee.ca/Analysis/2021/…
"Even as one variant disrupts a Newfoundland election and other variants silently gather force across the country, most provinces are merrily reopening businesses and schools.
This strategy has been tried twice. And it has failed Canadians twice."
Even McKinsey and Company said:
“Countries on the near-zero-virus path radically reduced viral spread, minimizing the chances of transmission and making it easier to control flare-ups as they occur. Leaders of those countries have built public confidence..."