The events of the past week have reassured me that the Biden team learned from the experience of the Obama Administration. They realize that they have 18 months to deliver or be shellacked in the 2022 midterms.
They share an updated Davos version of the neo-liberal governing agenda, which has recognized the need to stabilize the volatility of the markets and reduce the economic precarity of the working class and the downwardly mobile segments of the Professional Managerial Class.
The new 2020 version of the Clinton era DLC (Democratic Leadership Council) has abandoned the post-Reagan/Thatcher class austerity agenda in favor of neo-Keynesian economic shock absorbers to reduce the unsustainable level of economic and social instability for the wage-level producers of capital. This is definitely a move in the right direction and if they succeed quickly, they can lock in maintenance of power in 2022.
The first sign that the Biden Administration came to play is the flurry of Executive Orders that reversed years of reactionary policies that will take years to clean up fully. Thank God, we have rejoined the Paris Climate Accords and WHO.
The Biden team clearly recognizes that we are in a major public health crisis and a concomitant depression-level collapse of entire sectors of gig workers and retail small businesses that, if unchecked, will lead to years of economic scarring. They get the need to act quickly rather than play the Trump joker card of telling you that you just have to power through the fake-news Wuhan flu and keep your nose to the low-wage grindstone at work, with no extra pay. Because, you know, freedom.
What really got me pumped was how Biden opened the week with a big, grand bi-partisan invitation to negotiate with the handful of Republican Senators even willing to meet at the White House on Monday, and by Friday close of business had set up the committee work to do a 50+1 budget reconciliation vote starting next week. This time they saw Lucy set the ball on the tee and said: “No thanks!”
I am reminded of how blessed we are to live in Sonoma, California. It has been a source of relief over the last four years to report on local politics, which are, on the whole, pretty wholesome compared with the Caligulan spectacle of the traumatic carnival of cruelty of the Trump era in national politics. Folks, we need NorCal political values coast-to-coast.
On the local front
On Saturday, February 6 the Sonoma Valley Car Caravan for Single Payer Healthcare, hosted by the California Nurses Association and organized by Dr. Mary McDevitt, met Mayor Logan Harvey and Councilmember Jack Ding to receive the proposed resolution of support in front of City Hall. A caravan of cars circling the Plaza accompanied the presentation in front of the City Hall.
After the past month reviewing harrowing footage of the infamous Capitol Insurrection, and listening to lunatics like Rudy Giuliani and Sydney Powell lie, bluster, and sweat through 52 consecutive failed legal challenges to the certified election or cringe-watching the Dukes of Hazard political car crash of newly elected Q-Queen Marjorie Taylor Greene, this type of earnest local civic politics seems almost quaint.
I love it! Keep working at it, activists and citizens. We will prevail.
Mr. Boyce needs to get fact-checked. Again.
I am no fan of Trump, but I do appreciate truth.
The Trump team has had 22 court decisions rendered regarding their claims of voter fraud in various jurisdictions.
Trump has won 15 of 22 cases tried.
Try again Boyce, but please stay within the boundaries of good journalism if you can despite your blind loyalty to a failed political party.
Oh, now we’re going to quibble about how many court cases Rudy Giuliani and Sydney Powell lied, blustered, and sweated through?
Dude, the Republican Party has bigger problems than how many bogus law suits they failed at. The failed ‘dumb coup’ at the Capitol Insurrection has revoked the Republican Party’s credentials for legitimacy, They must go. Anyway, I don’t give a damn. I’m not a journalist, I’m a columnist. My facts are good enough for that job. You’re just a pedant nerd, trying to change the topic. Get off.