Chas Walker – RI Future

July 28, 2016July 28, 2016

Our choice for POTUS: backwards or forwards

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For those of us who believe in the need for a fundamental transformation of our society, voting in our broken system is frustrating. And yet we can’t avoid the fact that our elections have real consequences for many people, and the results shape the terrain for movement-building in the coming period. Frankly, I’d rather we be fighting to hold Hillary accountable to some of her campaign promises than fighting to stop Trump from implementing his.

The Democratic Party is a coalition, and its leaders feel accountable to different elements of the coalition based on the power they have within the coalition itself and within the country. When Clinton (or Obama) does not feel beholden to the left, it’s not just about who they are as individual candidates or President(s, hopefully) — it’s also because our movements aren’t yet powerful enough to ensure that they listen and act. My point here is not to make excuses for elected officials who let us down, but instead to take ownership of these disappointments, as these are assessments of the relative strength of our movements and evidence that we haven’t yet done enough.

Throughout the primary, Bernie’s campaign helped to change this dynamic a little — demonstrating that not only is there broader support for a much more progressive agenda in 2016 than there was in 1992 (“the end of history”) but for the first time in my life there was a mainstream discussion of socialism in the USA. Clinton then chose to campaign mostly as a progressive (with some speed bumps) and she became a stronger candidate because of it. It doesn’t mean she is perfect or the people around her are – what is means is that it is possible to move her on the issues that our movements care about.

During the primaries, the Fight for $15, Black Lives Matter, immigrants’ rights groups, and others found smart and confrontational ways to push these issues into the center of the campaign by doing accountability sessions, protests, pickets, and other creative actions. Those movements must continue (and they will, regardless of who is elected), but each movement has to figure out what to do over the next 15 weeks to ensure the greatest chance of success after the election is over.

Should Clinton be challenged now on the issues where she is wrong? Sure — especially if there is a chance of persuading her in ways that actually build power for and accountability to the group(s) making the demands, rather than marginalizing them. Movements will have to determine whether it makes sense for them to be outside of the Democratic tent pissing in, inside the tent pissing out, inside the tent pissing both in and out, or outside the tent pissing both in and out, or some combination thereof. That’s a whole lot of urine everywhere, but hey, politics ain’t a catheter-bag.

Another major factor to consider from a strategic standpoint is what issues could Hillary get stronger on that would expand her electoral coalition and improve her chances of winning? In one recent example, she adopted some of Bernie’s ideas on college tuition. Yet ultimately it’s not just about what platform Hillary campaigns on (or even what she truly believes in her heart of hearts), but rather it’s what she will be able/willing do for us after the election. And the only definitive answer to that is: we know she can do nothing for us if she loses. Therefore, despite any misgivings we may have, we need to help her win. Getting her to agree with us and then she loses? If we want that candidate her name is Jill Stein.

Do leading Democrats need to learn that if their economic agenda ignores (or is hostile to) workers in order to serve the elite, it creates the opening for the rise of Trumpism? Yes. Despite the primary results, we’re clearly not there yet (and hence the choice of Kaine over Brown, Warren, or Perez, though I suspect other factors including my home state of Virginia were part of the calculus too). But can we teach them that lesson by allowing (or even helping!) Trump to win? That was what Jill Stein seemed to argue in her RI Future interview, and I think that is wrong so I will say it again.

First of all, if Trump wins I don’t think the centrist-conservative elements of the Democratic Party would even draw the correct conclusion. But secondly and more importantly, I don’t think that popular movements can win by losing. Victories and the confidence that people get from them expand the possibilities of future victories, and they are what help to build movements. Defeats have the opposite effect.

The ascendancy of Trump to the Presidency would be a devastating setback for millions and millions of real people, in all of our intersectional beauty — people of color, women, immigrants, LGBTIQ folks, workers. Hell, it would be a setback for lots of white folks, too, even if some of us are too poisoned by racism to see it. And it would set our movements up for renewed attacks and repression, and very likely lead to many defeats on our issues. As a candidate Trump has talked openly about limiting press freedom, and condoned violence and vigilantism by his supporters against protesters and people of color in general.

Do we think he would be less brazen once he had the power and the machinery of the federal government at his fingertips? I am not exaggerating when I say that I think that our organizations and tactics could literally be outlawed in the name of “Make America Safe Again: The Emergency Presidential Powers Act of 2017” (or whatever they call the law they pass to give Trump dictatorial authority in reaction to the first terrorist attack after he becomes President, if they even wait that long).

The election is a compression point for a whole bunch of complicated issues that people in our country have been grappling with, and yet really there are only two choices: backwards or forwards.

I’m not arguing for silence of criticism and certainly not for an abandonment of all other organizing. But I am saying that we need to roll up our sleeves and fight to elect Clinton, rather than wash our hands of it using the fact that she’s not perfect to justify it. The choice in this election is a stark one, and I am most definitely with her.

And in conclusion: Fuck Trump.

November 20, 2012November 20, 2012

Study: Young People of Color Have Political Power

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In the days since the election, there has been a renewed attention on our country’s changing demographics, given the overwhelming Obama/Democratic successes among voters of color. The increased margin of support for Democrats among Latino voters was significant enough to cause some GOP leaders to choke on their pretzels, and now it appears that a bi-partisan discussion of immigration reform is once again (thankfully) underway.

A report (pdf) issued last week by the Black Youth Project digs into several findings on the changing racial composition of our country’s electorate, and brings a particular focus to the key role of young people of color in Obama’s re-election.

As anyone who volunteered for the Obama campaign during this election could tell you, youth of color were an important element (along with women & union members) of the Democrats’ highly-energetic ground game. The study, however, focuses on their growing significance as a voting bloc — noting that the share of young voters of color in the overall electorate has continuing to grow over the last three Presidential elections. For the Democrats, it helped to make up for a fact that I found surprising: among white voters under 30, Obama actually lost to Romney.

That’s right — while 54% of young white voters supported Obama in 2008, according to exit polls only 44% voted for Obama in 2012. Of course, some of us graduated from the U-30 bracket in the intervening years, but that’s more of a discussion between me and my retreating hairline — and it doesn’t explain the turn towards Romney among those who “replaced” us in this demographic group. (This shift merits further analysis, to be sure.)

Here are a few other highlights from the report (the emphasis is mine):

Blacks and Latinos comprised an increasingly larger share of the voting electorate in each of the last three presidential elections. In 2012, young people under 30 years of age accounted for nearly 20 percent of the voting electorate, and Blacks and Latinos made up almost half of young voters. […]

People of color—and Blacks and Latinos specifically—comprise increasingly large portions of the voting electorate. Not only are people of color gaining numbers in the population (especially Latinos), but voter turnout among these groups is also increasing relative to whites…Since 2004, the proportion of white voters has decreased from 78 percent to 72 percent, while the proportion of Black and Latino voters has increased from 18 percent to 23 percent. […]

Overall, 60 percent of youth supported President Obama in the 2012 election, down slightly from 66 percent in 2008—but considerably greater than the 54 percent of the vote that youth provided John Kerry in the 2004 election. However, contrary to the idea of a monolithic youth vote, there is considerable variation by racial group among young people in whom they support for president [and] these differences have increased in recent presidential elections. […Because] of the increased percentages of young people of color that are voting, these populations have played an increasingly important role in selecting the nation’s president, and will continue to do so.

The Center for American Progress has a longer (pre-election) discussion of what I think is the bottom line here: any party or candidate that wishes to remain relevant to American politics must have a platform and program that speaks (and listens) to the concerns of young people as a whole, and young people of color in particular — or else be relegated to that proverbial dustbin of history.

November 8, 2012November 10, 2012

Reports of Cicilline Death Were Greatly Exaggerated

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For nearly his entire first term in Congress, pollsters and pundits have questioned David Cicilline’s chances at re-election. Obscenely low approval ratings (below 20%) in February 2012 had many across Rhode Island and the country sounding the Democrat’s death knell. Along with my union, I supported his re-election — but I have to admit that secretly I held more than a few doubts about whether or not he could pull it off.

But in what was perhaps the best comeback since Lazarus (or at least Altered Beast, for Sega Genesis fans), Cicilline won. In nearly every city & town across the district, he increased his margin of victory compared with 2010 and ran up the score on Republican Brendan Doherty, 53% to 41%.

I’d like to offer a few quick reflections on how he won, and on why many of us were so surprised at the outcome (in my case, pleasantly so):

Cicilline and his team deserve a lot of credit for their relentless campaigning. Judging from his Twitter feed, he must have attended hundreds of community events, senior centers meet & greets, cultural festivals, house parties, and more. (And OMG I know I’m not the only one who loved this tweet.) The importance of their ground game and strong GOTV operation cannot also be understated.

He endured some ugly and baseless attacks from his opponents – and it might have helped him. Gemma’s ridiculous “voter fraud” theatrics were basically the political equivalent of a teenage prank: fill a paper bag with dog crap, place it on Cicilline’s stoop, light it on fire, ring the doorbell and run away. Only problem for Gemma is that the bag was empty, and he was still holding a turd. His rants generated sympathy for Cicilline, whose primary triumph actually gave him a head of steam heading into the general election.

Doherty’s attacks were not as stupid, but they were far uglier. I’m not sure if they went as far as to hurt Doherty, but they obviously didn’t help him that much, either — and the Cicilline camp had a quick & nimble response that pivoted right back to his central campaign message. Kudos to whoever did the campaign’s video work.

Despite the target on his back, Cicilline scored a higher percentage than he did in 2010 – and got 20,000 more votes than he did 2 years ago. Remarkably, Doherty only got 6,000 more votes than Loughlin did in 2010 – despite raising and spending significantly more than Loughlin, in addition to the help & resources he got from the NRCC. Not good. It would be cool to see a breakdown of the total money each campaign spent in relation to the total votes it received – an electoral ROI, if you will. Everyone knows that money matters in elections, but (as I have previously written) the Beatles were right that it can’t buy you love. (11/9 Update: here is a cool breakdown that gauges independent expenditure totals in relation to electoral wins/losses. Can you guess how much money Karl Rove pissed away?)

Doherty really had trouble telling people who he was — perhaps he assumed that everyone already knew? If his campaign had looked at the numbers, they would have found that in WPRI’s September 2012 poll, 31% of voters did not have an opinion of him, and 20% had a negative opinion. In their late October poll – conducted less than 2 weeks before the election – 24% of voters still did not have an opinion of him and 25% had a negative opinion. Don’t look now, but that means you are getting defined by your opponent! Also not good. (Cicilline’s job approval ratings between September and October, meanwhile, are trending upwards).

It’s no state secret that Cicilline benefited from Presidential turnout, and in all likelihood from RI’s “straight party” voting option (those breakdowns should become available eventually). I am interested to see how strong the two candidates fared with mail/absentee ballots, as there are obvious benefits to starting election day with a huge lead — so hopefully the Board of Elections will finish counting those ballots at some point soon.

Common wisdom is that redistricting made CD-1 a more Democratic-leaning district by swapping parts of Northern RI out in exchange for parts of South Side of Providence, where many Latinos (who formed a large part of Cicilline’s original Providence mayoral coalition in 2002) live. However, Dan McGowan correctly pointed out that Cicilline would have won even if no CD-1 voter in Providence had cast a ballot at all.

The other element worth discussing is that by no means do Democrats have an absolute, permanent lock over these South Providence precincts or over Latino voters per se. In the 2010 RI Governor’s race, for example, voters in heavily-Latino precincts in Providence that had previously been traditional Democratic strongholds overwhelmingly chose Chafee over Caprio (a right-leaning, and now former, Democrat). Part of that was Shove-It-Gate, but a more important factor in the Latino community was Chafee’s early commitment to rescind Governor Carcieri’s Executive Order targeting undocumented immigrants (which Caprio intended to keep in place). Which leads me to…

When Chafee did in fact rescind the anti-immigrant executive order on his first day in office, as head of the state police Doherty had a public flare-up with him — and Doherty soon thereafter resigned. Latinos took notice and remembered. Add to this the overwhelming anti-Republican sentiment among Latinos nationally (guess the feeling is mutual, eh, GOP?), and Doherty was left with a long Calle Broad to hoe. And if Tuesday’s numbers don’t speak loudly enough, check out this report from Phil Marcelo with Doherty doing his best to win over Latinos (hint: it didn’t go very well).

Two final thoughts, in relation to the polling numbers being “wrong” and why many of us chewed our nails off on this one. As far as I know WPRI-12 was the only local channel to conduct public polls in the race – and they did six of them, beginning in May 2011. I’m sure it is difficult and expensive to do polls, as well as trying to ensure that they accurately reflect who lives and will be voting in the district. I’m not a pollster, but my hunch tells me that they struggle with ensuring Latino/Spanish-speaking voters are included in the sample, not to mention young people/cell-phone-only-users (whose support surely also boosted Cicilline’s totals).

It must be especially challenging if you are the only news outlet who is doing any polling. While I appreciate all of our state’s political reporters & analysts, let’s be honest and admit that Channel 12’s polling work is a great public service that all local media draw upon. (I was gonna say it’s the closest thing we have locally to Nate the Great, but that might cause certain egos to inflate beyond the recommended PSI.) Despite the competitive nature of the news business, perhaps there is room for some collaboration/innovation to go deeper & broader with polls in our state’s races. Given shrinking investments in news and layoffs at other outlets, perhaps not.

Anyway, all sides of this battle will have lots of lessons to draw from the outcome here in Rhode Island, as well as nationally. It remains to be seen, of course, if any of us will.

September 15, 2012September 15, 2012

I Learned It By Watching You, Jon!

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State Rep. Jon Brien blames his recent defeat on “outside influences” – my union among them – who were “spending a lot of money” against him. Here’s why he is partly right, partly wrong, and partly to blame.

Last week, I filed several independent expenditure reports with the RI Board of Elections on behalf of my organization, SEIU District 1199NE — the union representing nearly 4,000 private-sector health care workers throughout Rhode Island. The reports detailed our spending in support of four candidates in this past Tuesday’s primary elections.

Among them was an expenditure of $834.57 for a mailing sent to frequent primary voters in Woonsocket’s House District 50, critical of State Rep. Jon Brien’s sponsorship of legislation paving the way for the disastrous 38 Studios deal. This expense was so small that it wasn’t even required to be reported under the state’s new disclosure law. According to some reports, however, it may have had a big impact on the race — where Brien lost by 50 votes to first-time candidate and city firefighter Stephen Casey.

In my opinion, there were many reasons to vote against Rep. Brien. I don’t know the man personally, but most of his views are the exact opposite of mine (except perhaps for our mutual admiration for the roast beef sandwiches at the Beef Barn). He often seemed more focused on building his profile with business interests, ALEC and the right-leaning Washington think-tank crowd than with actually helping the people of Woonsocket.

For example, Brien did little to help during my union’s recent fight to restore $24 million in funding that had been cut from programs serving the developmentally disabled — despite the importance of agencies like Seven Hills of Rhode Island to many families in Northern RI. Meanwhile, he adamantly supported costly tax breaks that only benefit the wealthy – embracing the failed & disproven “trickle-down” theory of economic growth, depriving our state of revenue that could have more than restored the cuts to these vital services, and condemning direct care support staff to a life of poverty.

But the 38 Studios debacle (and the mindset that brought it into being) stood out as an event that deeply angered everyone across the state, regardless of their political leanings. Rep. Brien was one of three sponsors whose names appeared on the law that enabled the EDC to loan $75 million to Curt Schilling’s risky video game company, but left Rhode Islanders on the hook when it failed.¹

Brien claimed that the wool had been pulled over his eyes, that he was sold a bill of goods, and that he didn’t know that all of the funds would be poured into one company – but it appears these excuses simply weren’t good enough for most voters, who decided it was time for a little Reckoning of their own.

There were other factors, of course – and you won’t find me claiming that one postcard could magically beat a 3-term State Representative from a political family with deep roots in the city. From what I’ve read, it appears that Stephen Casey related well to many voters. On election night, he told the Valley Breeze that he had knocked on over 900 doors. That’s the kind of hard work that wins elections – but it didn’t stop Rep. Brien from crying foul:

“I worked really hard and I think I represented the district well,” said Brien. “I think that the outside influences from out-of-town, spending a lot of money on these races, worked really hard to target certain people. That’s the nature of the beast. I was targeted by many of the labor unions from around the state.”

What Brien fails to mention (because his venom sac runneth over when it comes to workers’ organizations) is that my union was vastly outspent by a corporate-backed alliance that dropped just over $11,225 in a failed attempt to protect him. That’s more money than even Rep. Brien’s own campaign could raise and spend.

As Ted Nesi noted, this group — the 50CAN Action Fund² — received $160,500 from Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire Mayor of New York City, and $50,000 from Jonathan Sackler, an heir & executive at Purdue Pharma (the maker of OxyContin) in addition to $2,500 from one Rhode Islander, Angus Davis. So we have a situation where three wealthy individuals (but let’s be honest, it was mostly the non-Rhode Islanders³) spent more money on the outcome of one Woonsocket general assembly primary election than the nurses, CNAs, and other health care workers who belong to our union.

Unlike these donors, our members live and work in the Ocean State, and have a real stake in Rhode Island’s future. In House District 50, this group outspent us by nearly a 14-to-1 margin⁴ — so it seems to me that Rep. Brien’s real complaint should be that his rich independent benefactors weren’t particularly smart at directing their investments — an ultimate irony, of course, for these illustrious captains of finance.

But if it’s any solace to those who truly object to the interventions that my organization and others made in the recent election, let me say this: so do I.

Unfortunately for us all, the Supreme Court’s “Citizens United” decision has opened the floodgates for unlimited spending by corporations, wealthy individuals, and unions – though most observers acknowledge that workers’ organizations don’t have pockets nearly as deep as the CEOs. Independent expenditures didn’t begin with “Citizens’ United,” but the decision has paved the way for untold sums of money to be dumped into our local, state, and federal elections.

If we abandon one of our most important founding principles as a country — a government of, by, and for the people — the very future of our democracy is at stake. For our part, SEIU believes that the Supreme Court decision should be immediately overturned, and that laws must be passed to ensure that the voices of ordinary Americans are not drowned out by the wealthy and corporations in our political process.

In the meantime, however, our members will not unilaterally disarm. We’ll be in the trenches, working to stop politicians who believe that corporations are people, and who are eager to do the bidding of the wealthiest 1% — those who are growing ever-richer while the standard of living for the vast majority of Americans continues to decline, and who seek to further dominate the political process, distort our democratic institutions, and turn our government into an auction house.

Our union believes that we need to build a movement of all Americans across political and party lines to make sure that the voices of ordinary people will be heard in our democracy, today and always. With that, I’ll offer two parting thoughts for Rep. Brien, if he is genuinely concerned about the influence of money in politics, and not just at the times when it doesn’t work out for him personally:

First, if ALEC still keeps you on their board after voters have shown you the door, maybe you can parlay your current misfortune into convincing the Koch Brothers, ExxonMobil, and the other CEOs and corporations to change ALEC’s position on unlimited corporate spending on elections.⁵ As John Nichols described it last year in the Nation:

[ALEC] has no problem with policies that increase the likelihood that the candidate with the most money and corporate support will prevail. Its 2009 Resolution Supporting Citizen Involvement in Elections bluntly “opposes all efforst to limit [citizen] involvement by limiting campaign contributions.” A resolution approved [in 2010] expresses support for the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling.

Second, if that doesn’t work out (my prediction: it won’t), I’m willing to bet that Common Cause would let you join as a member and stand with them to work for fair elections and stronger rules governing the influence of money in politics.

Heck, if you are able to kiss and make up with their director, I’ll even pay the $40 for your membership! The only issue would be that Rhode Island’s ethics code prohibits gifts of more than $25 to a member of the general assembly.

So can you remind me: when is your last official day in office?

Footnotes:

(1) Now-retired State Rep. Bob Watson was the lone ‘NO’ vote on the deal – which you can either credit to his powers of legislative discerment, or to the fact that he was a constant contrarian on just about everything at the General Assembly, so eventually he was bound to really get one right!

(2) The group, which purports to stand for educational opportunities for poor children in urban schools, boggled many minds when it gave Brien an “A+” grade, given his intense opposition to our state’s DREAMers who simply wanted to be able to afford to go to college after they graduate high school, and whose only “offense” was being undocumented because they were brought here at a young age.

(3) Given their out-of-state base, it’s no wonder 50CAN got geographically confused with a couple of their mailers. If they had heard about Casey’s beer and dynamite fundraiser, we may have even seen an attack mailer accusing him of mixing alcohol with explosives.

(4) There were other unions that reported conducting Independent Expenditures in HD-50 – their reports showed $18,000 and $5,000 spread over 25 races (an averge of $920 per race). Even if twice the average had been spent going after Rep. Brien (I highly doubt it – voting history shows that this is a fairly low-turnout district), all of the union money combined against Rep. Brien still would have been four times less than the corporate money supporting him.

(5) You can read ALEC’s resolutions from both before and after the Citizens United decision, though you’ll have to filter through the cluttered layout of the critique (apologies, but those were the only versions I could find on-line – strangely enough, ALEC appears to have removed the originals from its own website).

February 26, 2012February 26, 2012

Dr. Supply-Side, or: How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Stimulus

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Some people — including a Presidential front-runner and many leading Democrats in the RI General Assembly — love to insist that government spending does not create jobs, and that therefore we should continue cutting taxes for the wealthy in order to generate economic growth. The problem with the trickle-down argument, other than the fact that there is little evidence to support it, is that the opposite is actually true – especially when it comes to getting out of a recession. In fact, history shows us that:

when economic times are bleak, there are doable steps that a government can take that make a difference to get the economy back on a path of growth and job creation.

For a really good example of exactly how this works, we don’t even have to go back to the Great Depression, nor do we have to travel to Detroit (even though I really love cars and trees that are the right height). Here’s a personal story from right here in Rhode Island — my own.

In the fall of 2009, we bought our first home — a small bungalow that was built in the 1920s. We got an FHA-insured mortgage, and we knew that when we filed our taxes for that year, we would be eligible for a first-time home-buyers’ tax credit of $8,000. With a baby on the way, we were motivated to buy a home — but if the tax credit hadn’t been offered, I doubt we would have been able to do it as quickly. It took some Keynes to help get our keys on closing day.

During the run-up to closing, we hired a home inspector and a lead inspector. When it came time to move, we needed movers to carry most of the big stuff (and I won’t lie, they carried plenty of the small and medium stuff, too). We called the cable company and got our new house wired up. We installed a new stove, and a washer & dryer — and had the broken-down old ones removed.

We had to buy furniture to prepare a room for our daughter, as well as one for visiting grandparents. Got a good price on a truckload of wood for the fireplace which we planned — and still plan someday — on converting to wood-stove insert. Not to mention countless trips to the hardware store for tools and materials for DIY projects (and as big as my tool set has grown, it still feels like the tool I use the most is my wallet). Suffice to say, the $8,000 credit meant a lot that first year.

Our house still had some of its original windows, with layers of lead paint and and potentially dangerous friction zones. So we just kept those windows shut until the spring of 2011, when we looked into finding a lead-safe contractor to replace them. We learned about an energy efficiency tax credit that reimbursed some of the cost of new windows – and so we got the work done.

Then in the late summer, we saw some news about a Home Energy Audit that we could get — for free — to determine what areas of our home need more insulation and where we could stop air from leaking out/in. If we decided to contract with someone to do the work, not only would we save on future energy bills, but about 75% of the total cost of insulation work and air leakage sealing would be paid for. (The program also replaced — at no cost to us — our old incandescent bulbs with CFL bulbs, saving us more money.)

During the energy audit, the inspector also discovered some old knob and tube wiring that would become a fire hazard, were we to cover it with insulation. Before we could proceed with the insulation work, we had to replace that wiring. Now we have hired a licensed electrician to do this work — because while I like to keep up with current events, I don’t want to become one.

And with every check we wrote, and with every swipe of the debit (and occasionally the credit) card, knowing that tax credits were coming or that we were only paying a fraction of the cost made it easier to make the purchase. Each time we did — SURPRISE! — there were actual workers with actual jobs getting actual paychecks who did the work. And though I can’t tell you exactly where each of them spent their money, I’m fairly certain it was a lot closer to Broad St. than it was to Wall St. – creating ripple effect throughout our state’s economy.

(As a side note: in addition to the broader economic benefits that our spending generated, from a purely selfish standpoint, these home upgrades have helped protect my family’s health and safety, and they will save us money in the long run, too. So thanks, Uncle Sam!)

Ours is just one example, but there are many other families and individuals in Rhode Island that have been making made similar decisions. And I’m willing to bet that our actions — spurred by government policies and investments — have actually created more jobs and economic growth in our state than all of the recent tax cuts that the richest Rhode Islanders received from the General Assembly or the ones that they got from Bush.

You won’t create jobs or growth by cutting spending. The best way to create jobs is, quite simply, to create jobs — like our grandparents did with the Works Progress Administration. So instead of continuing to ride Dr. Supply-Side’s bomb, our elected leaders ought to learn from history, and choose policies and investments that help bring us out of our own Great Depression.

I’ll bet you $10,000 it will work.