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| Donald Trump and Jeff Sessions |
In less than two weeks Donald Trump will be inaugurated as the 45th president of the United States, and the fears and concerns of progressives and liberals has come bobbing to the surface, no longer the post-mortem of the election, but instead a new mantra of what will Trump do, and when will he do it?
Across the country many have expressed these fears in political meetings, especially by Democratic lawmakers, both state and federal; and a recent meeting in Chicago gave verbal assent to a determination that the things that matter most, some might call them the marquee objections, immigration, women’s rights, LGBT rights, social security, and healthcare would remain unchanged,and fought for.
At this meeting, more of a pep rally, where a mostly white, standing room only, crowd gathered, on a friigd day, the mood was cheerfully aggresive, determined.to not see an “undercut in democracy” happen with Donald Trump as president.
State Rep. Kelly Cassidy, (D-Chicago), in her address, listed not only the major concerns, but, also assured those concerned, that marriage equality is “OK in Illinois,” and that there would be a continued commitment to human rights as seen in the recent legislative ban on conversion therapy for gays and lesbains, as well as the successful attempt that the specter of “those horrific bathrooms bills,” died a legislative death.
Continuing in the vein of LGBTQ rights, she also noted that access to identity documentation for transgender people was, and would be essential, as she summarily reassured those in the gay community fearing a reversal of their legislative gains by Trump, and his cabinet.
Sen. Heather Steans (D-Chicago) reminded those present that the old maxim “all politics is local” is still true now, more than ever, and that local efforts to both supply and enforce efforts from the Republican playbook are well at hand. She warned of the danger of such seemingly innocuous organizations such as the Illinois Policy Institute that received funding from the notoriously conservative billionaire Koch brothers.
“Republicans will hold 33 governors’ offices, have majorities in 33 legislatures and control both the governor's office and legislatures in 25 states - their most since 1952”, according to the Associated Press. This new GOP dominance is being exhibited in ways that are well financed, and after years of pent up fury, Republicans, finally see daylight, with Trump’s election, to move their agenda to the legislative forefront,especially in the first 100 days of his administration.
With their control of Congress as well as the White House, the GOP is set “to reshape state law affecting workplaces, classrooms, courtrooms and more during 2017.” The key components’ limiting abortions, lawsuits, trade unions, cuts to business taxes and regulations, and expanding government rights and school choice.”
On the near horizon are right-to-work laws, where Missouri is poised to become the 27th state to prohibit mandatory union dues. “The move, of course, is a deliberate and concerted attempt to undercut the financial muscle of the unions, and defund the support that unions have given to the Democrats.
“Really, the sky's kind of the limit,” said Sean Lansing, chief operating officer at Americans for Prosperity, the conservative group bankrolled partly by billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch. “It's really the best opportunity in quite some time to accomplish a lot of big ticket items — not just in one or two states, but in five, 10 or 15,” noted the report.
Despite the demise of the Clinton presidency, Democrats did make some gains, especially with the defeat of Republican North Carolina Gov. Pat. McCrory, plus wins in both Nevada and New Mexico; but in all three states the GOP still controls at least one branch of government. And, while the Democrats in such strongholds as California and New York made a vigorous vow to fight the Trump juggernaut, there is also resignation by some.
“Oh, it's going to happen,” said Senate Minority Leader Gina Walsh, a retired union laborer who is president of the Missouri State Building and Construction Trades Council. “I'm not willing to lay down on it yet, but I'm also a realist.” Walsh is responding to the situation in Missouri, where “term-limited Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon previously vetoed a right-to-work measure passed by the Republican-led Legislature. But he's being replaced Jan. 9 by Republican Gov.-elect Eric Greitens, who promised to sign a right-to-work law.”
One agenda item absent from the Chicago meeting was school choice, especially in a city whose public school system faces a $1 billion shortfall, and is dependent on a recalcitrant Republican governor who won’t work with the Democratically controlled legislature to pass a budget, unless his “turnaround agenda” (consisting of union busting measures), is agreed upon; which has resulted in Illinois not having a budget for 18 months.
While Steans made mention of the financial challenges that state universities face, she missed the growing threat to public schools, and the growing power of school choice advocates. They support the use of public tax dollars to pay for private school tuition, plus the expansion of charter and magnet schools.
Critics like Ken Salman, of the University of Massachusetts, and formerly a professor at Chicago’s DePaul University, feels that this is a lead towards privatization that “results in rich investors skimming resource out of the schools. This takes a number of forms from non-profit charter schools to vouchers, to scholarship tax credits,” he said in an interview with Chicago News. He also claims that ultimately privatization is an “aim to destroy free universal public education.”
Trump pledged during the campaign to spend $20 billion during his first year in office to help states expand school choice programs, and he now wants states to divert an additional $110 billion of their own education budgets toward the cause. His pick for education secretary is Betsy DeVos, chairwoman of the school choice advocacy group American Federation for Children, whose near rabid championship of vouchers made her a sustained, and vocal, critic of Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, when she was in office.
Predictions for the workplace show that change is ripe, including the expansion of E-verify to avoid American firms from hiring those without legal permission to work in the United states. And, while there has been some blowback from employers saying that they are already meeting reporting standards, the pressure to do more will be there.
Another union busting measure is to have the National Labor Relations Board rescind the 2014 rule that shortens the time between when a union files for election, from the time when it is actually held. Currently, the objection is that it “makes it easier for unions to organize because employers have less time to present their arguments against union representation.”
Going even further is the the expansion of the definition of joint employer to insure that these companies be held liable for labor law violations by their subcontractors, and they be brought to the bargaining table, should these subcontractors unionize. The 2015 Browning-Ferris decision said that a company could be a joint employer it it exerts ‘indirect control over workers or “reverses” control even if it does not exercise it. Currently under appeal in the D.C Circuit court, it could be walkbacked by Trump with the stroke of his pen.
Much of these changes are coming as the result of the Clinton defeat, but it’s also necessary to also see how, (Putin’s spying and lack of concerted attention on rust belts states aside) how the Democrats are now in a defensive posture. The political reality is that while they have won the popular vote in six of the past seven presidential elections, since 2010, they have lost thousands of the so called “down-ballot” races; “congressional seats, governor’s mansions, state legislative districts and local offices that from a kind of bench for a political party,” reported USA Today.
At the Chicago meeting Congresswoman, Jan Schakowsky, had the crowd whipped into a partisan frenzy of applause, and amens, as she thundered the liberal gospel, especially when she as a “nasty woman” (Trump’s label of Hillary as she beat him in debate after debate) rhetorically told him, “Don’t make America sick again!”
Trump, like others on the campaign trail, said that dismantling “brick by brick” Obamacare was a day one priority and yet despite the headlines and the legions of Republicans marching in the Capitol to meetings, to do just so, have been met with the challenge that they have nothing to replace it with, now facing the wrath of 20 million people who have benefited from the often misunderstood law that mandated health care for all Americans.
While the exchanges and subsidies have gained insurees, there have been fallbacks from some insurers trimming benefits, in the face of competition. Yet, the numbers of enrollees keep growing.
“More than 2.1 million Americans — including 68,192 Illinoisans — selected health insurance plans through the Obamacare exchange since open enrollment began Nov. 1, the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announced,” last month.
“In Illinois, that's up nearly 1,400 over the same time last year, and nationally, that's about 97,000 more compared with November 2015”, reported the Chicago Tribune.
While Illinois residents get health coverage through their employers or government programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, but in 2015, “more than 300,000 bought insurance through the Obamacare exchange, and about three-fourths of them received federal tax credits to help offset the cost of premiums,” noted the Tribune.
Nationwide most of the recipients are many of the people who voted for Trump, and low-income whites have been the chief beneficiaries. Yet, neither the President-elect nor the Vice President-elect Mike Pence have offered any details about the repeal plan, a campaign promise that might have them falling on their own sword, say their Democratic critics.
Recently, Reince Priebus has said that Trump does not plan to cut Social Security or Medicare: "I don't think President-elect Trump wants to meddle with Medicare or Social Security," Priebus said on CBS's "Face The Nation." And, last year, candidate Trump said, “I’m not going to cut Social Security like every other Republican, and I’m not going to cut Medicare or Medicaid,” Trump told the Daily Signal last year.
What might be at stake is a change in Medicaid structure changing it from the current open plan to one of block grants. Former National Economic Council director Gene B. Sperling wrote Sunday in a New York Times op-ed, "if Democrats focus too much of their attention on Medicare, they may inadvertently assist the quieter war on Medicaid—one that could deny health benefits to millions of children, seniors, working families, and people with disabilities."
"Neither Mr. Trump nor Senate Republicans may have the stomach to fully own the political risks of Medicare privatization," he continued. "But not only have Speaker Paul D. Ryan and Tom Price, Mr. Trump's choice for secretary of health and human services, made proposals to deeply cut Medicaid through arbitrary block grants or 'per capita caps,' during the campaign, Mr. Trump has also proposed block grants."
Across the country many have expressed these fears in political meetings, especially by Democratic lawmakers, both state and federal; and a recent meeting in Chicago gave verbal assent to a determination that the things that matter most, some might call them the marquee objections, immigration, women’s rights, LGBT rights, social security, and healthcare would remain unchanged,and fought for.
At this meeting, more of a pep rally, where a mostly white, standing room only, crowd gathered, on a friigd day, the mood was cheerfully aggresive, determined.to not see an “undercut in democracy” happen with Donald Trump as president.
State Rep. Kelly Cassidy, (D-Chicago), in her address, listed not only the major concerns, but, also assured those concerned, that marriage equality is “OK in Illinois,” and that there would be a continued commitment to human rights as seen in the recent legislative ban on conversion therapy for gays and lesbains, as well as the successful attempt that the specter of “those horrific bathrooms bills,” died a legislative death.
Continuing in the vein of LGBTQ rights, she also noted that access to identity documentation for transgender people was, and would be essential, as she summarily reassured those in the gay community fearing a reversal of their legislative gains by Trump, and his cabinet.
Sen. Heather Steans (D-Chicago) reminded those present that the old maxim “all politics is local” is still true now, more than ever, and that local efforts to both supply and enforce efforts from the Republican playbook are well at hand. She warned of the danger of such seemingly innocuous organizations such as the Illinois Policy Institute that received funding from the notoriously conservative billionaire Koch brothers.
“Republicans will hold 33 governors’ offices, have majorities in 33 legislatures and control both the governor's office and legislatures in 25 states - their most since 1952”, according to the Associated Press. This new GOP dominance is being exhibited in ways that are well financed, and after years of pent up fury, Republicans, finally see daylight, with Trump’s election, to move their agenda to the legislative forefront,especially in the first 100 days of his administration.
With their control of Congress as well as the White House, the GOP is set “to reshape state law affecting workplaces, classrooms, courtrooms and more during 2017.” The key components’ limiting abortions, lawsuits, trade unions, cuts to business taxes and regulations, and expanding government rights and school choice.”
On the near horizon are right-to-work laws, where Missouri is poised to become the 27th state to prohibit mandatory union dues. “The move, of course, is a deliberate and concerted attempt to undercut the financial muscle of the unions, and defund the support that unions have given to the Democrats.
“Really, the sky's kind of the limit,” said Sean Lansing, chief operating officer at Americans for Prosperity, the conservative group bankrolled partly by billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch. “It's really the best opportunity in quite some time to accomplish a lot of big ticket items — not just in one or two states, but in five, 10 or 15,” noted the report.
Despite the demise of the Clinton presidency, Democrats did make some gains, especially with the defeat of Republican North Carolina Gov. Pat. McCrory, plus wins in both Nevada and New Mexico; but in all three states the GOP still controls at least one branch of government. And, while the Democrats in such strongholds as California and New York made a vigorous vow to fight the Trump juggernaut, there is also resignation by some.
“Oh, it's going to happen,” said Senate Minority Leader Gina Walsh, a retired union laborer who is president of the Missouri State Building and Construction Trades Council. “I'm not willing to lay down on it yet, but I'm also a realist.” Walsh is responding to the situation in Missouri, where “term-limited Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon previously vetoed a right-to-work measure passed by the Republican-led Legislature. But he's being replaced Jan. 9 by Republican Gov.-elect Eric Greitens, who promised to sign a right-to-work law.”
One agenda item absent from the Chicago meeting was school choice, especially in a city whose public school system faces a $1 billion shortfall, and is dependent on a recalcitrant Republican governor who won’t work with the Democratically controlled legislature to pass a budget, unless his “turnaround agenda” (consisting of union busting measures), is agreed upon; which has resulted in Illinois not having a budget for 18 months.
While Steans made mention of the financial challenges that state universities face, she missed the growing threat to public schools, and the growing power of school choice advocates. They support the use of public tax dollars to pay for private school tuition, plus the expansion of charter and magnet schools.
Critics like Ken Salman, of the University of Massachusetts, and formerly a professor at Chicago’s DePaul University, feels that this is a lead towards privatization that “results in rich investors skimming resource out of the schools. This takes a number of forms from non-profit charter schools to vouchers, to scholarship tax credits,” he said in an interview with Chicago News. He also claims that ultimately privatization is an “aim to destroy free universal public education.”
Trump pledged during the campaign to spend $20 billion during his first year in office to help states expand school choice programs, and he now wants states to divert an additional $110 billion of their own education budgets toward the cause. His pick for education secretary is Betsy DeVos, chairwoman of the school choice advocacy group American Federation for Children, whose near rabid championship of vouchers made her a sustained, and vocal, critic of Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, when she was in office.
Predictions for the workplace show that change is ripe, including the expansion of E-verify to avoid American firms from hiring those without legal permission to work in the United states. And, while there has been some blowback from employers saying that they are already meeting reporting standards, the pressure to do more will be there.
Another union busting measure is to have the National Labor Relations Board rescind the 2014 rule that shortens the time between when a union files for election, from the time when it is actually held. Currently, the objection is that it “makes it easier for unions to organize because employers have less time to present their arguments against union representation.”
Going even further is the the expansion of the definition of joint employer to insure that these companies be held liable for labor law violations by their subcontractors, and they be brought to the bargaining table, should these subcontractors unionize. The 2015 Browning-Ferris decision said that a company could be a joint employer it it exerts ‘indirect control over workers or “reverses” control even if it does not exercise it. Currently under appeal in the D.C Circuit court, it could be walkbacked by Trump with the stroke of his pen.
Much of these changes are coming as the result of the Clinton defeat, but it’s also necessary to also see how, (Putin’s spying and lack of concerted attention on rust belts states aside) how the Democrats are now in a defensive posture. The political reality is that while they have won the popular vote in six of the past seven presidential elections, since 2010, they have lost thousands of the so called “down-ballot” races; “congressional seats, governor’s mansions, state legislative districts and local offices that from a kind of bench for a political party,” reported USA Today.
At the Chicago meeting Congresswoman, Jan Schakowsky, had the crowd whipped into a partisan frenzy of applause, and amens, as she thundered the liberal gospel, especially when she as a “nasty woman” (Trump’s label of Hillary as she beat him in debate after debate) rhetorically told him, “Don’t make America sick again!”
Trump, like others on the campaign trail, said that dismantling “brick by brick” Obamacare was a day one priority and yet despite the headlines and the legions of Republicans marching in the Capitol to meetings, to do just so, have been met with the challenge that they have nothing to replace it with, now facing the wrath of 20 million people who have benefited from the often misunderstood law that mandated health care for all Americans.
While the exchanges and subsidies have gained insurees, there have been fallbacks from some insurers trimming benefits, in the face of competition. Yet, the numbers of enrollees keep growing.
“More than 2.1 million Americans — including 68,192 Illinoisans — selected health insurance plans through the Obamacare exchange since open enrollment began Nov. 1, the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announced,” last month.
“In Illinois, that's up nearly 1,400 over the same time last year, and nationally, that's about 97,000 more compared with November 2015”, reported the Chicago Tribune.
While Illinois residents get health coverage through their employers or government programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, but in 2015, “more than 300,000 bought insurance through the Obamacare exchange, and about three-fourths of them received federal tax credits to help offset the cost of premiums,” noted the Tribune.
Nationwide most of the recipients are many of the people who voted for Trump, and low-income whites have been the chief beneficiaries. Yet, neither the President-elect nor the Vice President-elect Mike Pence have offered any details about the repeal plan, a campaign promise that might have them falling on their own sword, say their Democratic critics.
Recently, Reince Priebus has said that Trump does not plan to cut Social Security or Medicare: "I don't think President-elect Trump wants to meddle with Medicare or Social Security," Priebus said on CBS's "Face The Nation." And, last year, candidate Trump said, “I’m not going to cut Social Security like every other Republican, and I’m not going to cut Medicare or Medicaid,” Trump told the Daily Signal last year.
What might be at stake is a change in Medicaid structure changing it from the current open plan to one of block grants. Former National Economic Council director Gene B. Sperling wrote Sunday in a New York Times op-ed, "if Democrats focus too much of their attention on Medicare, they may inadvertently assist the quieter war on Medicaid—one that could deny health benefits to millions of children, seniors, working families, and people with disabilities."
"Neither Mr. Trump nor Senate Republicans may have the stomach to fully own the political risks of Medicare privatization," he continued. "But not only have Speaker Paul D. Ryan and Tom Price, Mr. Trump's choice for secretary of health and human services, made proposals to deeply cut Medicaid through arbitrary block grants or 'per capita caps,' during the campaign, Mr. Trump has also proposed block grants."
With an uncertain future, progressive liberals and their supporters will have more to fight than they thought.
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