As US banks report record profits
CLINTON – OBAMA –
TRUMPERNOICS: STEAL FROM THE AMERICAN MIDDLE-
CLASS and HAND IT TO
THE SUPER RICH ON A SILVER PLATTER!
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2018/05/clinton-obama-trumpernomics-rich-get.html
"The Wealth-X report shows
that the world’s billionaire population has grown by 15 percent, to 2,754
people, since 2016, and that the wealth of these billionaires “surged by
24 percent to a record level of $9.2 trillion,” equivalent to
12 percent of the gross domestic product of the entire planet."
Regulators, Congress move to end all restraints
on Wall Street speculation
By
Barry Grey
23 May 2018
On Tuesday, the US House of Representatives passed a bill to
exempt the vast majority of financial firms from the Dodd-Frank bank
regulations passed after the 2008 Wall Street crash. This coincided with press
reports that the Federal Reserve Board and other bank regulators will announce
as soon as next week proposals to gut the provision of Dodd-Frank most hated by
Wall Street—the so-called “Volcker Rule.”
The accelerating offensive against even the most minimal
restrictions on financial speculation takes place in the context of surging
bank profits and CEO pay. On Tuesday, the Federal Deposit Insurance
Corporation, one of the agencies that is preparing to eviscerate the Volcker
Rule, reported that US banks recorded record profits of $56 billion in the first
quarter of 2018, a 28 percent increase over the same period last year.
As the tenth anniversary of the September 2008 Wall Street crash
approaches, the token restrictions on the banks that were passed during the
Obama administration are being dismantled. These minimal measures, including
increased capital reserve requirements, annual “stress tests” and limited
restrictions on risky derivative trading, were mainly enacted to provide
political cover for the administration’s multi-trillion-dollar bailout of the
financial institutions responsible for the wholesale destruction of jobs,
millions of home foreclosures and the wiping out of retirement savings.
After eight years of the Dodd-Frank bank “reform,” the American
financial oligarchy exercises its dictatorship over society and the government
more firmly than ever. This unaccountable elite will not tolerate even the most
minimal limits on its ability to plunder the economy for its own personal gain.
The Volcker Rule, named after the former chairman of the Federal
Reserve Board Paul Volcker, was included in the 2010 Dodd-Frank act but not
drafted and approved by the regulatory agencies until 2013. It took effect only
in 2015.
The rule ostensibly bars commercial banks, which benefit from
federally guaranteed retail deposits and other government backstops, from
speculating with bank funds, including customers’ deposits, on their own
account—a practice known as proprietary trading. However, the rule incorporates
huge loopholes allowing banks to speculate with their own funds under cover of
hedging their investments and providing liquidity to the financial markets.
At the time of its adoption, the Wall Street Journal cynically but accurately
wrote: “Rest assured banks will find loopholes. And rest assured some of the
Volcker rule-writers will find private job opportunities to help with that
loophole search once they decide to lay down the burdens of government
service.”
No banks have been cited for violating the rule since it took
effect.
Nevertheless, top Wall Street CEOs such as JPMorgan’s Jamie Dimon
and Goldman Sachs’ Lloyd Blankfein have campaigned ferociously against the
measure, denouncing it as an arbitrary restriction on the financial markets and
an impediment to economic growth. Wall Street lobbyists have spent many
millions of dollars bribing politicians of both parties to weaken the rule to
the point of complete irrelevance.
In a speech to international bankers in March, Randal Quarles, the
Fed’s new vice chairman for supervision, said, “We want banks to be able to
engage in market making and provide liquidity to financial markets with less
fasting and prayer about their compliance with the Volcker Rule.”
The plan is to make the rule a dead letter through administrative
changes in the language of the regulation rather than by means of legislation.
At the behest of the major banks, federal regulators are preparing to widen
even further the existing loopholes, allowing the banks to carry out short-term
trades with their own funds and amass more speculative assets in the name of
“market-making.” They will also end requirements that the banks provide
documentation to prove that their activities comply with the rule, relying
instead on assurances from the bankers.
The banking bill passed by the House on Tuesday increases the
Dodd-Frank asset threshold for financial firms to be considered “systemically
important financial institutions,” and thus subject to tighter regulatory
oversight, from $50 billion to $250 billion. This is being presented by
Democratic as well as Republican backers as a matter of fairness to small and
midsize banks. In fact, the exemption covers such giant companies as American
Express, SunTrust Banks and Fifth Third Bank.
These companies will no longer be subject to yearly Federal
Reserve “stress tests” or higher capital reserve requirements. The bill also
exempts banks with less than $10 billion in assets from the Volcker Rule and
exempts banks that have granted fewer than 500 mortgages from reporting
requirements.
Thirty-five House Democrats joined all but one of the House
Republicans to pass the measure, which now goes to President Trump, who has
pledged to sign it. The Senate version was passed in March with broad
Democratic support, including 11 Democratic co-sponsors. A total of 17 Senate
Democrats voted for the bill.
Another aspect of the attack on Dodd-Frank is the strangulation of
the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). This agency, lacking any
serious enforcement powers and fully subordinate to the Federal Reserve, was
set up under Obama-era legislation to give the impression of government support
for consumers victimized by illegal or fraudulent banking practices. Despite
its toothless character, it was immediately targeted by Wall Street for
destruction.
Under Trump, this process is now well underway. The White House
pressured the Obama holdover Richard Cordray to resign as director of the CFPB
and installed Mick Mulvaney, Trump’s budget director, as acting head of the
bureau to oversee its dismantling. Mulvaney has halted investigations, imposed
a hiring freeze, stopped the agency from collecting certain data from banks and
proposed cutting off public access to a database of consumer complaints.
Despite for-the-record verbal protests by Democratic politicians
over the gutting of bank regulations, the removal of restrictions on financial
institutions is a bipartisan policy. Trump’s scorched earth approach is an
intensification of the basic line of the Obama administration rather than a
departure from it.
In 2011, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations
produced a 650-page report on the financial crisis documenting in detail the
fraudulent and illegal activities of the major Wall Street banks, aided by
corrupt and compliant federal regulatory agencies and credit rating firms that
had a vested interest in promoting the banks’ subprime mortgage fraud and other
swindles. At the time, the chairman of the subcommittee, Michigan Senator Carl
Levin, gave a press conference at which he said the investigation had found “a
financial snake pit rife with greed, conflicts of interest and wrongdoing.”
Nevertheless, Obama pursued a deliberate policy of shielding the
big banks and their top executives from criminal prosecution. Financial
speculation and fraud continued unabated, subsidized by the government’s policy
of supplying the banks with virtually free credit by means of near-zero
interest rates and the Fed’s money-printing “quantitative easing” program.
Despite a wave of scandals, including the manipulation of the key
Libor interest rate, JPMorgan’s $6.2 billion “London Whale” derivative loss,
money-laundering cases involving some of the world’s biggest banks, and the
forging of documents to facilitate home foreclosures, not a single leading
banker was criminally charged, let alone jailed during the Obama years.
This was not because of difficulties in securing indictments or
convictions. On the contrary, Attorney General Eric Holder told a Senate
committee in March of 2013 that the Obama administration chose not to prosecute
the big banks or their CEOs because to do so might “have a negative impact on
the national economy.”
Meanwhile, government policies favored the further consolidation
of financial institutions, including JPMorgan’s subsidized takeover of Bear
Stearns and Washington Mutual, Bank of America’s acquisition of Merrill Lynch,
and Wells Fargo’s absorption of Wachovia. As a result, the stranglehold of a
handful of megabanks over economic and social life in America is tighter than
ever.
THE U.S. SUPREME COURT IS LOADED WITH THE
BIGGEST WHORES ANY PRESIDENT COULD LOAD
IT WITH!
According to a 2015 study, workers prevail in only 20 percent of all claims brought to arbitration and win an average of just $23,548. By comparison, workers win 57 percent of cases in state court, with an average compensation of $328,008.
US Supreme Court eliminates workers’ right to collectively sue corporations
By Eric London
23 May 2018
The United States Supreme Court’s 5–4 decision in Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis eliminates the right of tens of millions of workers to bring class action lawsuits against their employers. With the bang of a gavel, the Supreme Court has effectively stripped workers of their legal rights and guaranteed the flow of even greater fortunes to the corporate and financial oligarchy, which controls America’s legal and political system.
The majority opinion, written by Trump nominee Neil Gorsuch, upholds the legality of mandatory arbitration clauses that bar workers from filing lawsuits. This locks the courtroom doors for coal miners suffering from black lung, construction workers with mesothelioma, fast food workers cheated of overtime pay, farmworkers denied the minimum wage, waitresses sexually harassed by their bosses, and countless other workers suffering forms of workplace abuse and exploitation. It announces “open season” for intensified corporate exploitation at tens of thousands of workplaces across the country.
The decision revives the legal doctrine of the Gilded Age elaborated by the Supreme Court’s 1905 decision Lochner v. New York, which overturned a state law limiting the workday to 10 hours on the absurd grounds that the regulations violated workers’ “right” to work as long as they want. In reality, that ruling safeguarded the power of corporations to exploit workers without recourse.
Today’s Supreme Court followed a similar logic, justifying its decision to eliminate workers’ right to sue with the lie that workers are always free to negotiate better contracts with their corporate bosses.
According to the Economic Policy Institute, roughly 60 million workers—56 percent of all private-sector nonunion workers—now no longer have access to the courts.
Arbitration is a sham process set up by the corporations to deprive workers of even the minimal protections afforded by the courts and to spare businesses the cost of litigation.
Arbitration is a sham process set up by the corporations to deprive workers of even the minimal protections afforded by the courts and to spare businesses the cost of litigation.
Arbitration forces workers to take their grievances to a private tribunal. Sixty percent of all arbitrators are lawyers who formerly represented corporations. Arbitrators develop corrupt relationships with corporate lawyers who regularly appear before their tribunals and almost always rule against workers. Due process is severely limited as the rules of the arbitration are written by the corporations themselves.
According to a 2015 study, workers prevail in only 20 percent of all claims brought to arbitration and win an average of just $23,548. By comparison, workers win 57 percent of cases in state court, with an average compensation of $328,008.
The majority opinion ruled that forcing workers to raise claims in this setting does not violate the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, even though Section 7 of the act guarantees, alongside collective bargaining and the right to strike, the right “to engage in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection.”
In her dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg noted with concern that the ruling would bring the US back to the Lochner era. “The end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th was a tumultuous era in the history of our nation’s labor relations,” she wrote.
The National Labor Relations Act, also known as the “Wagner Act” for its architect, New York Senator Robert Wagner, was passed in 1935 in an effort by the Democratic Party and the Roosevelt administration to control the Depression-era strike wave and direct it away from the prospect of socialist revolution and into a legal framework that the government and corporations could regulate and control. Section 7, the hallmark of the bill, prevented employers from forcing workers—ostensibly under the “freedom of contract”—to sign “yellow dog contracts,” which were pledges that they would not join a union.
The trade unions are terrified that the Supreme Court decision so nakedly exposes the courts as instruments of capitalist rule that workers will be encouraged to fight in defense of their interests outside of the legal system. A “friend of the court” supplemental brief was filed before the ruling by the AFL-CIO, the American Federation of Teachers, the National Education Association, the United Auto Workers and other unions.
In it, the unions jointly begged the Supreme Court:
“[I]f employers are allowed to impose contract terms that prohibit workers from challenging unlawful employer conduct except on an individual, one-on-one basis, Congress’s statutory goals of minimizing industrial strife and maintaining labor peace will be set back more than a century.”
The union brief continues by arguing that the New Deal-era labor laws like the Wagner Act were passed “not to further union organizing or collective bargaining for their own sake, but as instruments to further the broader statutory goal of reducing industrial strife and achieving economic stability.”
Furthermore, the trade unions state, “When an employer engages in wrongful discrimination or violates other workplace statutory obligations, it is far less disruptive to allow the injured workers to pursue concerted legal action before a neutral decisionmaker than to force the workers to challenge that unlawful conduct through less effective and potentially more contentious form of group protest, such as strikes, that pit workers and employers directly against each other without the intermediary of a neutral pledged to apply the law fairly and impartially.”
Such statements expose the chief role of unions as police arms of the corporations that work to prevent the working class from advancing their interests and threatening the profits of the corporations through “group protests, such as strikes.” Contrary to what the unions’ lawyers write, the methods of the class struggle are the only effective way to challenge the dictatorship of the union-corporate alliance.
This term, the Supreme Court will also rule on another case, Janus v. AFSCME, related to whether unions can require workers to pay an “agency” or “union security” fee to fund the union even if they opt out of joining. During oral arguments before the Supreme Court in February, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) lawyer David Frederick argued, “The key thing that has been bargained for in this contract for agency fees is a limitation on striking. And that is true in many collective bargaining agreements.”
Fredrick continued, “Union security is the tradeoff for no strikes.” If the court makes the decision to overturn prior precedent that allows states to mandate agency fees, he warned, “You can raise an untold specter of labor unrest throughout the country.”
These are the statements of a labor police force. The union lawyers have good reason to fear the revolutionary implications of dismantling the long-established structure to suppress the class struggle and, with its most recent ruling, the exposure of the Supreme Court as a brazen instrument of class war.
Unions Give $1.3 Billion in Member Dues to Left-Wing Groups
A new study reveals that from 2010 to 2017, labor unions sent some $1.3 billion in member dues to progressive groups aligned with the Democratic Party without obtaining the approval of their members.
According to the Center for Union Facts (CUF) groups that received union member dues include the Clinton Foundation, Planned Parenthood, Center for American Progress, Democracy Alliance, and the Democratic Governors Association.
The data indicate that America Votes received $15.1 million from union member dues, while the Democratic Governors Association was the recipient of $14.5 million. Abortion vendor Planned Parenthood received nearly $1.2 million from union members through their union dues.
As the Washington Post reported following the 2016 presidential election, some 40 percent of union household members vote Republican, and likely would not approve of their union dues being donated by union leadership to left-wing groups.
CUF observes that, under current federal law, union officials are permitted to spend their members’ dues money on political advocacy without their “opt-in” consent.
In addition:
The Employee Rights Act (ERA), which is now co-sponsored by more than 180 senators and House members, would protect employees’ paychecks by requiring union leadership to obtain prior approval before spending member dues on political advocacy. Roughly 80 percent of Americans—including those in union households—support paycheck protection and other ERA reforms.
“For years, labor unions have hijacked member dues to fund Planned Parenthood, Emily’s List, and other pro-abortion groups,” said Luka Ladan, communications director for the Center for Union Facts, as reported by the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Yet many union members oppose the abortion lobby. The Employee Rights Act would require union officials to obtain permission before spending dues dollars on left-wing political advocacy.”
The entire list of groups that receive donations of union members’ dues can be viewed here.
TWITTER TRUMPER’S PROMISE TO DEMS & MEXICO: NO (real) WALL, NO
E-VERIFY and NO ENFORCEMENT of DACA
WHILE THE SWAMP KEEPER TWITTER TRUMPER SERVES THE SUPER RICH…. The
wall remains a joke on Legals and HUNDREDS OF STORES across America’s OPEN
BORDERS are being shuttered by the hundreds!
*
WALL STREET TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE: DIE YOUNG…
your company pension dies with you!
OPIOID AND ALCOHOL ADDICTION KILLS OF MIDDLE
AMERICA
SOARING
POVERTY AND DRUG ADDICTION UNDER OBAMA
"These
figures present a scathing indictment of the social order that prevails in
America, the world’s wealthiest country, whose government proclaims itself to
be the globe’s leading democracy. They are just one manifestation of the human
toll taken by the vast and all-pervasive inequality and mass poverty.
AMERICA UNRAVELS:
Millions of children go hungry as the super- rich gorge themselves
and ILLEGALS SUCK IN BILLIONS IN WELFARE!
*
"The top 10 percent of Americans now own roughly
three-quarters of all household wealth."
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2017/08/america-unravels-millions-of-children.html
*
"While
telling workers there is “not enough money” for wage increases, or to fund
social programs, both parties hailed the recent construction of the U.S.S.
Gerald Ford, a massive aircraft carrier that cost $13 billion to build,
stuffing the pockets of numerous contractors and war profiteers."
SOCIALISM AS THEY ENJOY IN SWEDEN, NORWAY and DENMARK WILL SAVE AMERICA FROM WALL STREET'S CRONY CAPITALISM!
"ALARMING?" HOW MUCH MORE CAN WALL STREET AND THE SUPER RICH PLUNDER FROM US????
PRINCETON REPORT:
American middle-class is addicted, poor, jobless and suicidal…. Thank the corrupt government for surrendering our borders to 40 million looting Mexicans and then handing the bills to middle America?
"The most alarming result, according to [George] Barna, was that four out of every ten adults say they prefer socialism to capitalism," the ACFI noted in its commentary on the poll. "That is a large minority," Barna said, "and it includes a majority of the liberals – who will be pushing for a completely different economic model to dominate our nation. That is the stuff of civil wars. It ought to set off alarm bells among more traditionally-oriented leaders across the nation.'" That 40 percent of Americans now prefer socialism to capitalism could spell major change to the policies advanced by legislators and political leaders and to the interpretations of judges ruling on the application of new and pre-existing laws.”
OBAMA’S CRONY BANKSTERISM destroyed a 11 TRILLION DOLLARS in home equity… and they’re still plundering us!
Barack Obama created more debt for the middle class than any president in US history, and also had the only huge QE programs: $4.2 Trillion.
OXFAM reported that during Obama’s terms, 95% of the wealth created went to the top 1% of the world’s wealthy.
HAS AMERICA DESTROYED ITSELF MERELY TO MAKE THE RICH SUPER RICH?
Viking Economics by George Lakey
by Melville House
This week, we’re excited to be publishing Viking Economics, George Lakey’s look at how the Nordic countries, in a very short span of time, managed to move past many of the problems faced by nations like the US and UK today — problems with inequality, infrastructural weakness, the cost of education, and personal freedom. Today, the people of Denmark, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden enjoy widely-shared prosperity, low crime rates, reliable infrastructure, affordable education, great personal freedoms — some of the highest standards of living in the world.
Particularly as both the US and the UK face some of our biggest challenges in a generation — and, in both cases, under new leadership — Viking Economicsoffers some crucial examples of how we might get some things right.
Here’s a brief excerpt to read on the longship ride over to your local bookstore to buy a copy; please try not to get herring on it.
Like most Americans today, Norwegians a century ago didn’t like the results of a wealth gap: the hunger and poverty, the crime, elderly friends warehoused or left in isolation, young people without hope of a good job. Norwegians also didn’t like the attitudes that went with inequality: an inclination toward arrogance among higher-income people and the feeling among lower-income people that they were losers, defeated by the system.
Early in the twentieth century, Norway had the formal institutions of parliamentary democracy, but ordinary people were not empowered: they did not set the direction of their society. The direction was set, instead, by the economic elite, through the political parties they dominated and the businesses they ran. Career options were limited, and there was little social mobility.
The differences between then and now are striking: If you’re a Norwegian teenager today and the job you’re interested in pursuing doesn’t require higher education, you can choose among good public vocational courses. If you learn better in a hands-on apprenticeship mode, publicly supported programs help you do that. If, instead, you prefer to develop a talent in art or music, or follow a career at sea or in engineering, you can attend a free post-secondary school.
Paid maternity and paternity leave (including for adoptive parents) is built into the system, and your job is held until you return. After the leave is over, child support is increased if you choose to be a full-time parent. If your choice is to go back to work, affordable childcare is available.
Extensive, subsidized public transport means that you probably won’t need a car to get to work. High educational standards prevail in big-city schools, as well as in the suburbs. Small towns receive subsidies to make them attractive for people who might otherwise feel forced to live in a city for cultural amenities, again increasing your options. The economy subsidizes family farming both for its own sake and for food security, so farmers can earn a reasonable income, another freedom denied in many industrialized countries.
The government offers free vocational counseling, education, and job-training resources for people seeking a career change, and entrepreneurialism is encouraged through free health care and a public pension for all: In Norway, you have the freedom to fail without becoming a failure.
Money doesn’t dominate the political system, so citizens are freer to participate meaningfully in political life—and they’re more likely to be exposed to newspapers with a variety of points of view, because journalism is subsidized to avoid a narrowing of perspective. According to Freedom House, in 2013, Norway was tied with Sweden at number one in the world for freedom of the press. Denmark was sixth, and Iceland was tenth. (The United States was twenty-sixth.) Indeed, this approach to public life has a long lineage in the region: Sweden was the first country in the world to establish freedom of the press—in 1766.
The Nordics are among the longest-living people in the world, and older citizens continue to benefit from an economy designed for personal freedom. The Global Watch Index studied ninety-six countries and rated Norway as the best place to grow old, followed closely by Sweden. The pension system enables you to live at home with health aides or in a senior living facility. You don’t need to fear hunger or lack of medicines or of health care. Every small town has a music and culture center where you can enjoy the arts and pursue your hobbies.
The crime rate is very low, partly because societies with high equality tend to experience less crime. Even in their largest city, Norwegians enjoy a remarkable degree of freedom from fear about personal safety.
Designing an economy that supports freedom and equality pays off in happiness, judging from the Vikings’ descendants making the top ten in the UN’s International Happiness Index. In 2015, the ratings showed Denmark, Iceland, and Norway sharing first place with Switzerland, while Sweden was close to its cousins.
The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), composed of thirty-four of the most-developed nations, compared life satisfaction experienced by the people in each country in 2013. The OECD found Norway second, Iceland third, Sweden fourth, and Denmark fifth.
And yet in spite of all this security and support, the Nordic yen for adventure has not disappeared. Americans, too, have a strong yearning for both freedom and equality, so the Nordic desire for both isn’t surprising. What is surprising, though, is that they went ahead and built an economy to serve those values. That’s the story in this book.
Like their Viking ancestors, the moderns made mistakes in their explorations. Iceland’s financial collapse of 2008 was a spectacular error, and, as I’ll describe, back in the 1980s, the Norwegians and Swedes made a series of serious economic mistakes. The Nordics haven’t built a utopia: Norwegians see themselves as “a nation of complainers,” and this book doesn’t shy away from the challenges that face them and their Nordic cousins.
Still, it’s useful for us as outsiders to observe the Nordics’ expeditions and to use them to reflect on our own situations. There are many important lessons to be learned.
Socialist-Backed Candidates Sweep Pennsylvania State House Primaries
Nationwide, the Democratic Socialists of America has grown exponentially since Donald Trump’s election.
Four Pennsylvania state House candidates backed by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) won their Democratic primaries, marking another milestone in the radical left’s march into electoral politics.
The wins by the four candidates ― all women unseating men ― were the product of a variety of political forces and groups. But in a country where “socialist” remains an epithet in certain quarters, the growing electoral success of a once-marginal socialist organization is an especially notable political development.
According to Arielle Cohen, co-chair of Pittsburgh DSA, it reflects a revival of the socialist-leaning economic left in the wake of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt.) 2016 presidential bid.
“It feels like a monumental shift,” Cohen said. “We won on popular demands that were deemed impossible. We won on health care for all; we won on free education.”
“We’re turning the state the right shade of red tonight,” she added.
Pittsburgh DSA campaigned heavily for two Democrats: Summer Lee, an African-American attorney and labor organizer running in Pennsylvania House District 34, and Sara Innamorato, a founder of the women’s advocacy group She Runs Southwestern PA running in Pennsylvania House District 21.
Lee and Innamorato, who are dues-paying members of DSA, defeated veteran Pittsburgh-area state representatives ― and cousins ― Paul Costa and Dom Costa, respectively. Both women lack a Republican opponent in the general election (though Innamorato’s opponent, Dom Costa, solicited Republican write-in votes as a last-ditch attempt at survival in the primary).
On the other side of the state, Philly DSA worked hard to elect Democrats Elizabeth Fiedler, running in the 184th House District, and Kristin Seale, running in the 168th District. Fiedler, a former public radio reporter, defeated Jonathan Rowan and lacks a Republican opponent in the general election. Seale, an executive at an energy conservation nonprofit, is due to challenge incumbent Rep. Christopher Quinn.
Pittsburgh DSA, which swelled from about 50 members before the 2016 election to some 500 now, already has a record of success at the ballot box. In November, the group helped elect Mik Pappas as a Pittsburgh district judge and Anita Prizio to the Allegheny County Council. Pappas defeated Ron Costa, a two-decade veteran and member of the same vaunted Pittsburgh political family as defeated state representatives Paul and Dom.
Nationwide, DSA has grown since the 2016 election and now has upwards of 35,000 dues-paying members in chapters all across the country.
Although Sanders identifies as a Democratic Socialist and shares DSA’s staunch support for Medicare-for-all and other benefits, the typical DSA member favors a more dramatic restructuring of the economy. For example, Virginia Delegate Lee Carter, a Democrat and member of Metro D.C. DSA, envisions transforming corporations into worker-owned cooperatives.
The group is nonetheless committed to enacting a progressive agenda, one local office at a time, and its success has already had serious policy implications. For example, Pappas has virtually abolished the use of cash bail, which earned him criticism in some circles and praise from criminal justice reform advocates. And Innamorato, a staunch reproductive rights proponent, replaced a state legislator in Dom Costa, who once voted for a 20-week abortion ban.
“As someone who’s had an abortion, it really means a lot to me that Sara is standing up and making clear that she will fight for full comprehensive reproductive justice,” Cohen said.
Clarification: Language in this story has been amended to describe Dom Costa’s opponent consistently.
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