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AP’s Today in History for February 28th

Scientists discover DNA’s double-helix structure; The Branch Davidian standoff begins in Waco, Texas; Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme is killed; U2 releases its ‘War’ album.

Breakfast Tune Mofo (U2 Cover, Banjo)

Something to think about, Breakfast News & Blogs below

On the Minimum Wage, Joe Biden Chose Failure
BRANKO MARCETIC, JACOBIN MAGAZINE

The following is a tale of two lost causes.

One is the $15 minimum wage. A longtime priority of the labor movement and the broad Left, the measure was one of the few big-ticket items Joe Biden had agreed to adopt from Bernie Sanders’s platform after vanquishing him in the Democratic primary. Though its impact would be seriously eroded by inflation compared to when it was first proposed, getting it passed would have still been transformational and life-changing for many, given that it would raise wages for 32 million workers, narrow the racial pay gap, and boost incomes for single-income parents, disproportionately mothers.

Always a tall order given the corporatist, conservative nature of US politicians, the idea took a big leap closer to reality after Democrats won the runoffs in Georgia, giving them fifty votes in the Senate and therefore total, albeit flimsy, control over the federal government. Pushing it through was clearly going to be a tough slog. But as a core promise of Biden’s winning campaign, and one that has already been shown to be popular in Trump-loving Florida, where it won more votes than either presidential candidate, the measure has both public backing and some pretty big political benefits.

So how did they fight for it?

After promising to be “the most pro-union president you’ve ever seen,” it took just over two weeks into the job for Biden to start giving up on the union-backed measure, telling CBS that he “put it in, but I don’t think it’s going to survive.” The problem was not just opposition from right-wing senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, but a more arcane, technical issue. In order to qualify for budget reconciliation, the filibuster-bypassing method Democrats are using to pass the stimulus bill to which the wage hike was attached, a measure must have an impact on the federal budget that’s not “merely incidental.” And it was looking increasingly likely that the Senate parliamentarian — the official who rules on these kinds of technical points — would strike it down.

Of course, this was far from a fatal setback. Plenty of Congresses and presidents have ignored the Senate parliamentarian, and in early February, the party discussed having Vice President Kamala Harris, who serves as the presiding officer of the Senate, simply overrule her — only for the White House to nix the idea. Even after the Congressional Budget Office released a highly debatable analysis holding that a wage hike would raise the budget deficit — accidentally making a strong case that it would, in fact, impact the federal budget and so could be passed through reconciliation — Biden publicly told a group of mayors and governors that “it just doesn’t look like we can do it because of reconciliation.”

Naturally, activists and workers who have been fighting for the measure, and who were continuing to pressure senators to keep the measure in the package, grumbled that this kind of talk was undermining their efforts. As Washington waited for the parliamentarian’s ruling, Biden’s chief of staff, Ron Klain, denied knowing that she had been overruled in the past and insisted the White House would “honor the rules of the Senate and work within that system.”

Yesterday, once the parliamentarian did finally strike down the wage hike as expected, Senate Democrats admitted they had no backup plan for what to do next. The White House quickly released a statement affirming that the president “respects the parliamentarian’s decision and the Senate process.” In other words, he was accepting defeat.

Now let’s look at another losing battle the Biden administration’s been fighting during this time: the nomination of Center for American Progress CEO Neera Tanden to be director of the Office of Management and Budget.

Unlike the $15 minimum wage, which would immediately have a dramatic, positive impact on the lives of millions of families and frontline workers during this pandemic, Tanden’s appointment has next to no relevance to the lives of almost anyone besides Neera Tanden. In fact, Tanden’s record is one of hostility to the interests of working Americans: she’s a union-buster, has advocated cuts to vital entitlement programs, voted against pro-worker policies in the 2016 Democratic party platform (including the $15 minimum wage), and takes oodles of money from corporate America, funding that we know for a fact shapes her think tank’s work.

Nor does Tanden hold any unique skills or qualifications that make her indispensable for the role. As a former senior administrator with the Federal Reserve board of governors has pointed out, she’s served the lion’s share of her career as a campaign and party operative, dubious experience for the role she’s been nominated for. A former employee has described her as “a very bad organizational leader.” But even if she can competently do the job — and if Ben Carson can run the Department of Housing and Urban Development, it’s a safe bet she can — there’s nothing in particular that makes her more vital for the role than the many other qualified, experienced candidates already waiting in the wings.

Very quickly, Tanden’s nomination became a political liability for the White House. Over years of tweeting, Tanden had racked up a prolific list of both Republican senators and progressives she had insulted, alienating an impressively broad spectrum of people whose support she needed to be confirmed. Her nomination not only undermined Biden’s appeals to “unity” and bipartisanship, but the image he has tried to project of an FDR-style presidency for the common man. Long before her confirmation hearing, Republicans vowed they would block her, and her nomination seemed to be put into fatal jeopardy over the past week, when she not only lost the support of the same Joe Manchin who helped sink the $15 minimum wage but several key Republicans.

Looking at the White House’s treatment of the wage hike, one would expect the administration to start publicly tamping down expectations about Tanden’s confirmation and backing away, or even cutting the cord and quickly moving on — particularly given the sizable political downsides attached.

Instead, they’ve decided to fight for her. As soon as Manchin came out against her, both Biden and press secretary Jennifer Psaki quickly gave her their public support. “I think we’re going to find the votes to get her confirmed,” the president told the press last Friday. On Monday, Psaki revealed the White House had spent the weekend “working the phones” on her behalf, calling Republican and Democrat senators to change their minds.

Since then, the White House has repeatedly spoken publicly in defense of Tanden, even as more Republicans have come out against her or are on the brink of doing so. The issue has become more of a public headache, as Bernie Sanders postponed the budget committee vote on her confirmation because “it didn’t look like she had the votes.” In the very same interview where Klain made clear Biden would accept defeat for the $15 minimum wage, he told viewers that the White House was “fighting our guts out” for Tanden, talked up her qualifications and expertise, and disclosed that they were still talking to Republicans to turn them around.

“We know that getting someone confirmed in a 50-50 Senate is hard,” Klain acknowledged, insisting they’d find a place for her in the administration no matter what, in a position that didn’t need Senate confirmation, if necessary. “But let me be clear: We’re gonna get Neera Tanden confirmed.”

“We’re continuing to fight for her confirmation,” Psaki said similarly yesterday.

As part of this, the White House has been encouraging Asian American advocacy groups who are waging social media campaigns, calling and sending letters to Senate offices, and generally using their considerable resources to pressure the White House itself to stick with her. In a clearly coordinated messaging campaign, elected Democrats and party establishment loyalists have been attacking Manchin for his opposition to Tanden, publicly accusing him of being driven by racism and sexism, and dialing up the pressure on him.

Whether or not Tanden gets confirmed probably isn’t going to change a whole lot. But the episode is instructive, particularly for those who are already tempted to shrug their shoulders at the news of the $15 minimum wage’s defeat, assert that the president’s hands are tied, and defend his administration’s obvious apathy toward the measure.

Tanden’s confirmation is what it looks like when the president, his party, and the people around him actually care about doing something: they maintain public confidence in it, make an affirmative case to voters, put public and behind-the-scenes pressure on congressional holdouts, and coordinate with outside groups to build momentum for it. And they do it despite the perceived political liabilities, and even when it seems like the odds are squarely against victory.

To find that kind of leadership on the wage issue, you’d have to look to Bernie Sanders. While the White House was casting doubt about the measure passing and Senate Democrats were at a loss for what to do afterward, Sanders has incessantly made the case for its importance, maintained confidence that it qualifies for reconciliation, worked to gather legal arguments to persuade the parliamentarian, and immediately pivoted to passing an amendment to take away tax deductions from corporations that don’t pay workers $15 an hour when the parliamentarian ruled against it.

Just as with Barack Obama and his Senate supermajority, the Democratic Party and its institutional backers will do everything they can in the coming weeks to convince people that the president and his party were powerless to make a $15 minimum wage happen — that it was simply impossible. Don’t let them. As the fight over Neera Tanden shows, failure was a choice.

• Parliamentarian Cuts Minimum Wage From Stimulus Due To Obscure Rule Requiring Poor Citizens To Needlessly Suffer
  T.O.

• Minimum wage won’t be in stimulus — unless Kamala Harris overrules the Senate parliamentarian
  Matthew Chapman

• Progressives to VP Kamala Harris: ‘This Is Not a Difficult Decision. Use Your Power. Keep $15 In.’
  Jake Johnson

• Calling Walton Family ‘Poster Child for Greed,’ Sanders Says Taxpayers Should No Longer Subsidize Walmart’s Starvation Wages
  Jon Queally

• On a $15 Minimum Wage, Democrats Are Shooting Themselves in the Foot — Again
  LIZA FEATHERSTONE

• Smithfield Pork’s Sustainability Scam
  TYLER LOBDELL

• Charity Won’t End Vaccine Apartheid—Only Challenging Big Pharma’s Patents and Profits Will
  Nick Dearden

• It Didn’t Take Long for Joe Biden to Betray the Labor Movement
  BRANKO MARCETIC

• Corporations Are Making Billions in Profits — Yet American Workers Have No Paid Sick Leave
  JULIA ROCK

• Hedge Funds to Newspapers: Drop Dead
  ROSS BARKAN

• How Black cartographers put racism on the map of America
  Derek H. Alderman, Joshua F.J. Inwood

• With Biden’s Jen Psaki at the Podium, Corporate Outlets No Longer Think Briefings Newsworthy
  Janine Jackson

• And Behold, the MAGA-ites Sinned Bigly, and They Were Cast Out, and the Lord Your God Saith Unto Them, Jesus, Really?
  Abby Zimet

• The Betrayal At The Heart of Sanders, AOC and Corbyn’s Refusal To Use Power
  Ian Welsh

• Biden Comforts Families Of Syrian Airstrike Victims With Eloquent Speech On Living With Heartbreaking Loss
  T.O.

• Doctors Reassure Tiger Woods That You Don’t Have To Be In Good Physical Condition To Play Golf
  T.O.

• New Gym Member Already Seeing Positive Coronavirus Test Results
  T.O.

Something to think about over coffee prozac

America: Where It’s Much Easier to Kill People Than Help Them
The system is working perfectly.
Jack Mirkinson

On Thursday night, America got a perfect lesson in how the system works.

Just before 7:30 p.m., news broke that the Biden administration had conducted an airstrike in Syria—part of what one analyst later described to the Washington Post as an attempt to “set the tone” with Iran ahead of any potential negotiations. According to reports, one person was killed and several others were wounded.

This was, by all accounts, not a particularly difficult process to put into place. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin recommended the strikes to Joe Biden, and Biden agreed, and then the strikes happened. No fuss, no muss. Liberals loved it. America is back!

At almost exactly the same time, Elizabeth MacDonough, the Senate parliamentarian, announced that, in her judgment, a provision to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour must be removed from the Senate’s COVID relief bill because it violated the rules of the budget reconciliation process Democrats are using to push the bill through. MacDonough’s rulings are not binding, and Kamala Harris, in her role as president of the Senate, can ignore them if she wants. Democrats could say, “thanks, but we’ll take it from here,” and dare people to vote down a hugely popular measure.

But Harris doesn’t want to, and neither does Chuck Schumer, and neither does Biden, whose repeated declarations that he thought the minimum wage was doomed can’t really be read as anything other than a message that he’d be perfectly fine if it disappeared from the COVID bill. So the Democrats immediately declared defeat. An unelected official made an advisory judgment that Democrats are under no obligation to follow, so the tens of millions of people who would benefit from a $15 minimum wage will just have to wait.

That is America. Killing people is easy. Helping them is almost impossible. Thursday night’s events were the system working exactly as it is intended to work.

The legal justification for Biden’s bombing wasn’t immediately clear, but presumably, he will cite the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force, which has become the legal fig leaf that has allowed every president since George W. Bush to carry out any military adventure he likes with no permission needed or questions asked. Congress could repeal the AUMF and grant itself some more oversight over the way the president makes lethal and consequential military decisions, but Congress prefers instead to funnel hundreds of billions of dollars into the black box of the Pentagon and then walk away. Even if Congress did wind up repealing the AUMF, it feels foolish to assume that it would then move to meaningfully hold the executive in check. Washington has gotten quite used to presidents doing whatever they want overseas. So has America.

No, members of Congress—Democrats and Republicans alike—prefer to save their bureaucratic and restrictive systems for things that would actually help American citizens lead better, healthier, happier lives. When it comes to raising peoples’ wages, the laughable edifice of rules that the Senate has constructed for itself is insurmountable.

People making starvation wages in this country will surely have sympathy for the explanation that their pay isn’t going up because Democrats wanted to follow rules they didn’t need to follow. Democrats have a chance to say that helping people is more important than preserving the arcane structures of a system designed to thwart democratic and humane progress, but they are going to take a pass. Making that kind of change is really, really hard, OK? It’s not something simple, like an act of war.