Welcome once again to $27 Quotes — a weekly place where you can sit back, relax, enjoy some inspiring quotes and good music, and (most importantly) spend time gazing at a picture or two of foresterbob’s cat Noble Fur.
Let’s see what people were saying this week...
What We Can Afford
The Green New Deal is an economic and environmental imperative. Doing nothing is the radical position.
~ Pramila Jayapal
The question is not whether we can afford Medicare for All. We can’t afford to continue without it.
~ Pramila Jayapal
Tax breaks for millionaires and corporations: $2.3 trillion
Funding for new public housing to end homelessness: $0
Let's stop pretending we can't afford to address the issues working people face.
~ Ilhan Omar
Last year South Carolina spent:
- $21,756 per prison inmate
- $11,552 per student
It makes no rational sense to invest more in keeping people in prison than keeping them in school. As president, I will do everything I can to reverse this absurdity.
~ Bernie Sanders
Earlier this year, Congress rushed to approve BILLIONS more dollars for ICE and CBP.
I saw members voting YES without even a summary of the bill. Nobody cared then how we’d pay for it.
Now ICE is setting up fake universities to trap students.
Yet we were called radical for opposing it.
This is honestly one of the big reasons why the argument about “pay-fors” in healthcare, housing, etc., so often are made in bad faith.
I see decisions made every day that cost the American public billions of dollars a year for bogus reasons and nobody asks how we pay for it.
None of the politicians who brand themselves “fiscally responsible” ever raise concern about rushing to shower ICE and CBP with billions of dollars and no guardrails or oversight.
None of them ask about how we pay for corrupt contracts or mass incarceration.
Ask yourself why that is.
Look out for those in politics who like to label themselves “fiscally responsible,” yet only seem to care about the price of justice - not the cost of oppression.
Everything has a price. And an unjust society is far costlier than one that invests in and values all people.
~ Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Public education, libraries, and infrastructure policies ... are not “free stuff.”
They are public goods.
And they are worth investing in, protecting, and advancing for all society and future generations.
~ Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
If we can afford to give the wealthy and corporations over a trillion dollars in tax cuts, we can afford to house the homeless.
~ Ilhan Omar
Hmmm. Maybe the subject of housing the homeless deserves its own section...
Homes For All
On a single night, more than 10,000 people in Minnesota were homeless last year — the highest number ever recorded...
And that’s just Minnesota. Across the nation, families are struggling with homelessness and housing insecurity...
Meanwhile, the federal government has not made a large-scale investment in affordable housing since the New Deal...
This crisis is not going away — and it could get worse if we don’t act. In the wake of the Great Recession, nearly 10 million homeowners lost their homes. A future recession could destabilize the market even further. And with a changing climate, extreme weather events and natural disasters will displace ever more people — making it especially vital that we have an adequate supply of affordable housing.
The private market alone will never be able to provide enough adequate homes for every American. This is why we need a solution that meets the scale of the problem. We need to treat the affordable housing shortage like the crisis that it is.
This week I introduced the Homes for All Act, which would authorize 12 million new public housing and private, permanently affordable rental units — vastly expanding the available affordable housing stock, driving down costs throughout the market and creating a new vision of what public housing looks like in the United States...
~ Ilhan Omar
That’s from an op-ed piece Ilhan Omar wrote for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, It's time to end the affordable housing crisis once and for all. Please click the link and read the entire piece; it’s worth your time.
(And for more information about her Homes For All plan, here’s a link to a good Common Dreams article about it as well.)
College For All
I got a high-quality public education for just $50 a semester—but that opportunity doesn't exist today. States invested less in our public colleges and shifted the burden onto students.
I'm fighting for universal public college so every student has the opportunity to succeed.
~ Elizabeth Warren
Like roads or libraries, public colleges are universal, public goods that belong to all of us. We need tuition-free College For All to ensure all students and graduates have the opportunity to contribute to our economy and thrive—there should be no means test for the American Dream.
~ Pramila Jayapal
A Democratic candidate began airing ads in Iowa recently attacking the idea of universal college education as championed by Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. Here’s Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez with a good explanation of why that candidate was wrong:
This is a GOP talking point used to dismantle public systems, and it’s sad to see a Democratic candidate adopt it.
Let’s talk about why Republicans are wrong on this.
Just like rich kids can attend public school, they should be able to attend tuition-free public college.
Here’s why.
- Universal public systems are designed to benefit EVERYBODY! Everyone contributes and everyone enjoys. We don’t ban the rich from public schools, firefighters, or libraries bc they are public goods.
- Universal systems that benefit everyone are stronger because everyone’s invested!
- When you start carving people out and adding asterisks to who can benefit from goods that should be available to all, cracks in the system develop.
- Many children of the elite want to go to private, Ivyesque schools anyway, which aren’t covered by tuition-free public college!
- Lastly, and I can’t believe we have to remind people of this, but it’s GOOD to have classrooms (from pre-k through college!) to be socioeconomically integrated. Having students from different incomes and backgrounds in the same classroom is good for society and economic mobility.
~ Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Doing Right By Workers
Reminder: 136 days ago, the House voted to raise the minimum wage to $15.
That bill would’ve increased pay for up to 27 million working people. The Senate GOP has yet to bring it to a vote.
The Republican Party keeps going out of its way to keep Americans in poverty.
~ Ilhan Omar
Amazon is one of the largest corporations in the world, but it paid $0 in federal income taxes.
It's owned by Jeff Bezos, the second-richest person on Earth.
It is not too much to demand it guarantees safe and decent working conditions for every worker.
~ Bernie Sanders
Google is too big, too powerful, and its anti-worker actions will end when we are in the White House. We are going to break up Google and stand up for workers against powerful tech monopolies.
~ Bernie Sanders
As each of us sits down for the traditional Thanksgiving dinner, take a minute and be thankful not only for the bounty of fresh food we enjoy on this day and every day of the year but also for the farm workers whose hands provide the labor that brings this food to our tables.
Farm workers have simple hopes and desires -- a safe job, paid holidays, adequate wages, decent housing, and food on the table. Unfortunately, many farm workers do not get to enjoy these basic necessities.
Human hands picked most of the fresh fruits and vegetables we ate today. Most of those hands are documented immigrants, part of the H2-A guest-worker program. They are recruited to work in the U.S. seasonally and then return to their countries of origin.
Many of those hands who picked our food for today, do not have documents. Many have been in the U.S. for 10 years or more. Many have families. Many have children born here. Many of our farms rely on them to provide the produce, dairy and meat our families consumed today.
So, as I enjoy Thanksgiving dinner, I'm thankful for the hands of our farm workers. Those that are domestic, documented and undocumented. Not only am I thankful, I'm for supporting immigration reform that will champion workers rights and end unfair labor practices.
~ Michael Owens
[who is running for congress in GA-13]
[and who occasionally posts diaries on Daily Kos, such as this one]
The right to form a union is a constitutional right. Any corporation that engages in union busting or job outsourcing will not get a dime in federal contracts from a Sanders administration.
~ Bernie Sanders
People went to jail, people were beaten and people died fighting for the right to form a union.
Our job now is not just to stand with the union movement—it is to make it stronger than it has ever been.
In my first term, our goal will be to double union membership in America.
~ Bernie Sanders
Nobody in this country got rich on their own. They relied on infrastructure we all paid for, employees we all paid to educate. So if you're successful, good for you—now pay it forward so everyone has a chance at success.
~ Elizabeth Warren
Green New Deal — Win, Win, Win!
Fighting for the Green New Deal isn't just about fighting climate change. It's a commitment to building a better future for the working people of our country by creating millions of good union jobs. We can’t fight climate change with a low-wage economy.
~ Elizabeth Warren
Coal miners are not the enemy.
Oil rig workers are not the enemy.
Climate change is the enemy.
As we transition to 100% renewable energy, the Green New Deal will ensure a just transition for ALL fossil fuel workers.
~ Bernie Sanders
And here’s a good 2 ½ minute video of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez explaining how public housing and the Green New Deal go hand-in-hand:
Corporate Greed
U.S. corporations see a future in countries that pay workers pennies an hour. But when they need a bailout, they don't ask China or Vietnam for help—they get their welfare check from the taxpayers of America. Maybe U.S. corporations should invest and pay taxes in America, too.
~ Bernie Sanders
Walmart made $9.86 billion last year. Surely, they can afford to pay employees working over the long Thanksgiving weekend extra.
America doesn’t suffer from scarcity -- we suffer from greed.
~ Ilhan Omar
The wealth of the billionaire class is almost incomprehensible.
The Waltons get $70,000 richer every minute.
Jeff Bezos makes $2,489 a second.
That is why it is not radical to say that millions of people in this country should not be paid starvation wages.
~ Bernie Sanders
When a private equity firm acquired a doctors group, patients experienced more aggressive medical debt collection lawsuits. Wall Street shouldn't be profiting off of the poorest patients. We need to rein in Wall Street—and we need Medicare For All.
~ Elizabeth Warren
On just about every issue we care about—from criminal justice to immigration, affordable housing, climate change, health care, and gun violence—money and influence are holding up widely popular policies.
If we want to make any progress, we must root out corruption in Washington.
~ Elizabeth Warren
The top .0025% saw their wealth double in the last decade and their tax rate fall.
We have the money to provide basic necessities to our people.
What we need is the courage to take on the corporate elite.
~ Bernie Sanders
Dialing for Dollars
While many try to belittle a progressive agenda that centers working people and the public good, in truth it’s more powerful than ever.
I haven’t picked up a phone once this year to dial for dollars, and I don’t meet with corp lobbyists.
That is the power of your grassroots support. I intentionally built my campaign to rely on small-dollar grassroots support without any corporate money, because I felt that’s the best way to be accountable to everyday people.
It has impacted how I work in Congress in powerful ways -- ways I couldn’t fully appreciate until I got here.
There is, of course, much more time for me to be fully present at my job.
In Congress, this is a luxury. Since I don’t spend hours each day asking for money, I spend a lot more time legislating, studying, and preparing/sitting in hearings. This has cumulative effects over time.
Instead, your support allows me to spend hours each day studying issues and exposing abuse of power.
So while Fox continues to laugh that I’m “just a bartender,” I’ve spend the whole year studying big pharma, private equity, military contractors, and Mark Zuckerberg’s shady deals.
Our political system’s reliance on huge sums of money has many negative impacts, but one of the largest is that it takes lawmakers’ time away from lawmaking.
That’s a feature, not a flaw — the less time lawmakers have, the more special interests can slip in harmful provisions.
None of this is a critique on lawmakers who dial for dollars — they don’t want to be doing it in the first place.
But to change this system, we must push hard to change the corrupting role of money in politics. And yes, those forces exist among all parties.
~ Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
And here’s a little music to close things out for tonight...