Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont on Sunday told ABC host Martha Raddatz that there is a sufficient amount of support within the Democratic Party to pass President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package and warned that failing to immediately distribute aid to struggling households throughout the country would represent an unconscionable betrayal of the millions of voters who handed Democrats unified legislative and executive power with a directive to improve people’s lives.
“We made promises to the American people,” said Sanders. “We’re going to keep those promises.”
“Does your party have the votes to pass the relief package through the reconciliation process, if you decide to go that route?” asked Raddatz.
“I believe that we do,” Sanders, an independent member of the Democratic caucus, replied. “It’s hard for me to imagine any Democrat… who doesn’t understand the need to go forward right now, in an aggressive way, to protect the working families of this country.”
While acknowledging that Democratic lawmakers have “differences and concerns” about Biden’s $1.9 trillion opening offer, Sanders stressed that “we’re going to support the president of the United States, and we’re going to… do what the American people overwhelmingly want us to do.”
Although polling shows that the U.S. electorate overwhelmingly supports “an expansive government effort to combat Covid-19,” Raddatz drew attention to tensions within the Democratic Party about moving forward unilaterally, if necessary.
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.)—a right-wing lawmaker who last week reassured Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) that he would never vote to end the filibuster, a “Jim Crow relic” that requires 60 votes to pass major legislation and thus facilitates anti-democratic rule—on Friday emphasized his desire to “find a bipartisan pathway forward.”
Sanders—who is the incoming chairman of the Senate Budget Committee and has signaled his willingness to use the filibuster-proof budget reconciliation process to circumvent GOP obstructionism—wasn’t having it.
“Democrats have a majority [in the Senate] because of the fact that we won two seats with great candidates in Georgia,” said Sanders. “That campaign in many ways was a national campaign.”
Sens. Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock won in Georgia and by extension, Democrats won nationwide, Sanders said, because the party pledged to deliver relief checks, extend unemployment benefits, and “address the needs of working families.”
Police in Rochester released two body-camera videos Sunday of officers restraining a distraught 9-year-old girl who was handcuffed and sprayed with what police called a chemical “irritant.”
The Democrat and Chronicle reported that prior to the release of the videos, Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren expressed her concern for the “child that was harmed during this incident that happened on Friday.”
“I have a 10-year-old child, so she’s a child, she’s a baby. This video, as a mother, is not anything you want to see,“ Warren went on to say.
A total of nine officers and supervisors responded to the report of “family trouble” on Friday. The girl can be heard in the body-camera videos from officers at the scene screaming frantically for her father as the officers try to restrain her.
At a news conference Sunday, Deputy Police Chief Andre Anderson described the girl as suicidal.
“She indicated she wanted to kill herself and she wanted to kill her mom,” he said.
Officers tried to force the girl into a patrol car but she pulled away and kicked at them. In a statement Saturday, the police department said this action “required” an officer to take the girl down to the ground. Then, the department said, “for the minor’s safety and at the request of the custodial parent on scene,” the child was handcuffed and put in the back of a police car as they waited for an ambulance to arrive.
Police said the girl disobeyed commands to put her feet in the car. An officer was then “required” to spray an “irritant” in the handcuffed girl’s face, the department said Saturday.
At Sunday’s news conference, Police Chief Cynthia Herriott-Sullivan described the irritant as pepper spray. She declined to defend the officers’ actions.
“I’m not going to stand here and tell you that for a 9-year-old to have to be pepper-sprayed is OK. It’s not,” Herriott-Sullivan said. “I don’t see that as who we are as a department, and we’re going to do the work we have to do to ensure that these kinds of things don’t happen.”
Police said the girl was eventually taken to Rochester General Hospital, “where she received the services and care that she needed,” and was later released to her family.
The Rochester Police Department has faced scrutiny since the death of Daniel Prude last year after officers from the department put a hood over his head and pressed his face into the pavement.
Evan Rachel Wood has alleged that Marilyn Manson groomed and “horrifically abused” her for years, writing on Instagram and in a statement to Vanity Fair. The actor, who was briefly engaged to Manson in 2010, has previously spoken about surviving domestic abuse but declined to name the alleged perpetrator. Manson has not yet responded to Wood’s statement. When reached by Pitchfork, representatives for Wood offered no further comment. Pitchfork has also emailed representatives for Manson.
“The name of my abuser is Brian Warner, also known to the world as Marilyn Manson,” Wood wrote. “He started grooming me when I was a teenager and horrifically abused me for years. I was brainwashed and manipulated into submission. I am done living in fear of retaliation, slander, or blackmail. I am here to expose this dangerous man and call out the many industries that have enabled him, before he ruins any more lives. I stand with the many victims who will no longer be silent.”
Vanity Fair also published statements from four more women who came forward about experiences with Manson.
Wood, the star of HBO’s Westworld and member of the electropop duo Rebel and a Basketcase, spoke to Rolling Stone in 2016 about her “physical, psychological, [and] sexual” abuse at the hands of a partner. She also said she had been raped by “a significant other while we were together.” In 2018, she testified before a House Judiciary Subcommittee in support of the Sexual Assault Survivors Bill of Rights, as Vanity Fair notes. The following year, she testified for the Phoenix Act before California legislators. The act, drawn up to extend the statute of limitations for crimes involving domestic violence, was passed in 2019.
In 2018, a sexual assault case brought against Manson in 2011 was publicly revealed. His lawyer at the time “categorically” denied the claims. It was also revealed that Manson faced allegations of battery and assault with a deadly weapon, but was not charged because California’s statute of limitations had expired.
Each of the 10 Republican senators who threw their support behind a widely criticized $600 billion coronavirus relief proposal on Sunday recently approved a whopping $740 billion military budget, a vote progressive lawmakers are highlighting as further evidence of the GOP’s warped priorities amid a devastating pandemic and economic crisis.
“Every single one of these Senate Republicans voted to give the Pentagon billions more than what they’re willing to give to the American people,” Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), chair emeritus of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC), tweeted Sunday in response to the GOP’s proposed “compromise” package.
“$1.9 trillion is the floor—not the ceiling,” Pocan added, referring to President Joe Biden’s opening coronavirus relief offer.
While the details have not yet been fully hammered out, the GOP’s watered-down relief proposal currently calls for reducing Biden’s proposed direct payments from $1,400 to $1,000 per individual—and dramatically restricting eligibility for the checks—as well as scaling back the unemployment relief provisions outlined in the president’s plan.
“The Biden plan would increase those benefits to $400 weekly and extend them through September,” the Washington Post explained. “The GOP plan would keep the payments at $300 per week and extend them through June.”
The Republican proposal, as it stands, was summarized in a letter sent to Biden Sunday by Sens. Susan Collins (Maine), Mitt Romney (Utah), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Bill Cassidy (La.), Rob Portman (Ohio), Shelley Moore Capito (W.Va.), Todd Young (Ind.), Jerry Moran (Kan.), Mike Rounds (S.D.), and Thom Tillis (N.C.).
All ten Republicans voted in July to approve the Senate’s version of the $740 billion National Defense Authorization Act, and then voted last month to override former President Donald Trump’s veto of the measure.
With Biden expected to meet with the group of Republicans at the White House on Monday, progressives reiterated their position that anything less than the president’s opening offer would be unacceptable and argued Democrats should use their unified control of the federal government to pass a robust aid package without GOP input.
“Covid relief can’t wait any longer,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), chair of the CPC. “If the Republican Party doesn’t feel the urgency of Americans who are struggling to keep food on the table, then it’s time for us to act without them.”
The same cabal of compulsive neoliberals and centrist grifters who derailed meaningful progress in previous Democratic administrations are at it again. This time, they want President Biden and the Democrats to lower expectations for Covid-19 relief by reducing the amount of direct payments to Americans and imposing harsh restrictions on who might be eligible for them.
On Sunday, a group of 10 Republican senators sent the president a letter outlining a plan to reduced his $1.9 trillion stimulus package to approximately $600 billion. To cut costs, the Republicans propose to limit direct payments to just $1,000 and to prevent them from going to anyone earning more than $50,000 a year. They also want to jettison Biden’s plan to increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour. The Republicans say they hope Biden will work with them to achieve “unity and bipartisanship.” In fact, they’re proposing austerity under the guise of “targeted relief”—a dangerously bad idea that some Senate Democrats have also begun to peddle.
If Biden buckles to the deficit hawks who favor a narrow response to the economic turbulence spawned by the coronavirus pandemic—a compromise some of the president’s recent statements suggest is possible—he will do his agenda and his party deep damage.
A “go-small” approach to the crisis would surely gain applause from the usual suspects—austerity-inclined members of Congress and the elite editorial pages that cheer them on. But a surrender of ambition at this point would reinforce a sense that, even when Democrats control the presidency and the Congress, they cannot get government to work for the great mass of Americans. That is precisely the vulnerability congressional Republicans hope to exploit in order to regain power in 2022.
Don’t think it will happen? Think back to the midterm elections of 1994 and 2010, when Democratic administrations that had been elected with high hopes were punished for prioritizing reduced spending and deficit reduction over bold responses to economic downturns. There are never any political rewards for conceding to the budgetary vigilantes who demand that Democrats give up on the dream of once again forging a New Deal or a Great Society. And there never will be.
That’s why savvy members of the party, led by Representative Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) are cautioning against restricting payments in a way that denies them to middle-class families.
“This is not just bad economics, but terrible politics,” Khanna explained after proposals surfaced to restrict direct payments to smaller amounts and fewer Americans. The Californian has long been one of the House’s most outspoken advocates for addressing poverty. But he also recognizes that there are many Americans who earn over $50,000 a year and yet are struggling to make student loan payments, get out from under credit card debt, and cover housing costs in communities where rents and home prices are skyrocketing. “Why would we want to further the perception that the government cares for the needy and the elite but not for the middle class?” he asks. “Have we learned nothing?”
the whole “fiction doesn’t affect reality” argument is actually kinda racist…
people talk about like how finding nemo and jaws are great examples but nobody ever talks about how fiction has shaped our perceptions of different racial and ethnic groups
like do you think the media has no hand in why alot of ignorant white people think africa is a desertland and not a continent of different countries, full of rich and diverse cultures, beautiful buildings and riches? or why they think asia is only japan, korea and china? when asia is also india, bhutan, the Philippines, nepal, etc?
do you think that media and fiction hasnt allowed whites to view black people as ignorant and lazy thru cartoons and minstrel shows?
like if you really think what youre seeing on tv doesnt affect reality and how people think then like. you must be fuckin stupid.
i know i know water is wet, all these studies to tell you what common sense could. but like … there is very real research out there that shows fiction has a very real harmful impact on minority communities. and that positive representation has a positive effect on these communities.
so no. fiction is never just fiction. and frankly people who think fiction is just fiction can fuck off.
Detail of a painted relief depicts the powerful goddess Sekhmet, here “Sekhmet-Min” accompanied by her consort god Ptah, detail of a carving in the Temple of Khonsu at Karnak.
