The Democrats have started hearings on HR1, a comprehensive anti-corruption and voting rights bill, and House Oversight and Government Reform Committee member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez gets to participate, which is great news for all of us. Read the rest

Just as the purpose of a tobacco tax is not to pay for cancer treatment, the purpose of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's wildly popular proposal to tax income over $10m at 70% is to correct inequality and reduce the corrosive power of extreme wealth to distort political decisionmaking, not to fund programs. Read the rest

Oh, sure, the Democratic leadership says it takes climate change seriously, but that same leadership has sidelined the Green New Deal and gutted the climate committee, replacing it with a lame-duck committee led and staffed by beneficiaries of big energy sector dollars. Read the rest

At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Michael Dell was asked about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's wildly popular proposal to tax income over $10,000,000 at 70%, but before he could answer ("I’m not supportive...And I do not think it will help the growth of the US economy") the audience erupted into laughter, according to CNN. MIT's Erik Brynjolfsson (previously), a co-panelist, was more bullish: "There’s actually a lot of economics that it's not necessarily going to hurt growth and I think we have to examine it more closely." (Image: AOC) Read the rest

Matt Taibbi (previously) is in characteristically fine form here: the average Congressjerk is mythologized as a "brilliant 4-D chess player" but "would lose at checkers to a zoo gorilla": they are only in office because "someone with money sent them there, often to vote yes on a key appropriation bill or two. On the other 364 days of the year, their job is to shut their yaps and approximate gravitas anytime they’re in range of C-SPAN cameras." Read the rest

It's been three days since C-SPAN posted Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's amazing, stirring freshman speech from the floor of Congress, and it has smashed all Congressional C-SPAN records with 3.1m views (as of the time of writing); at this rate, it may catch up with C-SPAN's most popular Senate video, the Kamala Harris/Brett Kavanaugh video, with 7.14m views. Read the rest

During a 60 Minutes interview Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez casually mentioned that she thought that America's super-rich should pay a marginal tax-rate of 70% on annual earnings over $10,000,000 (which is a better deal than they got under Reagan); since then, the proposal has roiled the political classes and billionaire-backed news outlets, who coincidentally oppose taxing billionaires. Read the rest

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a Twitter ninja, whose Twitter interactions far outstrip any establishment Democrat (including powerhouses like Kamala Harris and Barack Obama) as well as media outlets from CNN to the New York Times. Yeah, she trails Trump, but he tweets three times as much as she does and also gets a baseline of attention thanks to the presidency. Naked Capitalism's Jerri-Lynn Scofield reveals ACO's secret: "She’s preaching popular, common sense, underexpressed messages. But honestly, would a new member of Congress be so dominating the national conversation, if other Democrats were either less clueless or less beholden to their donors?" Read the rest

The Green New Deal -- championed by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other progressive Dems -- is one of the most popular Democratic policies in living memory, supported by 81% of registered voters (including 64% of Republicans and 57% of "conservative Republicans"), so of course the Democratic establishment is trying to kill it. Read the rest

Wanna see how an insurgent, anti-establishment candidate can use snark, personality, and a combative spirit to advance the political dialog? Stop following Cheeto Hitler and start following the youngest Congresswoman in US history, the amazing, delightful, on fire Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (previously). Read the rest

Proud Democratic Socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez ran an insurgent campaign (working nights as a bartender in NYC with her campaigning clothes stashed in a paper bag behind the bar, changing after her shift and working the streets) that conquered New York, went national, and emboldened a "progressive caucus" of new Democratic legislators: now she's going to Congress to serve as the youngest woman ever elected to the lower house. Only one problem: she can't afford to rent a DC apartment for the three months between the election and her swearing-in, when she'll start drawing her Congressional salary. Read the rest

California's Democratic Governor Jerry Brown repeatedly vetoed universal healthcare after the state legislature voted it through; Democratic state majorities in NY, CT and NJ refused to enact legislation to close the "carried interest" tax loophole that makes billions for hedge-fund managers; Rhode Island Democrats went on a slashing spree, taking down pensions for teachers, firefighters and other public servants while the finance-affiliated state treasurer funneled the pension funds into her pals' underperforming hedge funds; Democrats in NJ gutted the tax bill to give millionaires an easy ride; New York Democrat Governor Andrew Cuomo shut down the state anti-corruption commission, only to have his top aide busted for being horrifically corrupt. Read the rest

Austin Kleon, explaining why artists and people who love them should be single-issue voters and why that issue should be Medicare for All: "Bad health care has killed more American artists than I could list here without my fingers falling off." Read the rest

Who likes socialism and mistrust capitalism? Democrats and young people, who are mostly the same people. Read the rest

Pew's latest very detailed survey of voting patterns in 2016 goes the extra mile, by validating whether recipients actually cast a ballot, thus forming a picture of who voted, who didn't, and what policies nonvoters favored. Read the rest

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (previously) stunned the Democratic establishment when she comprehensively kicked the ass of finance-friendly, seemingly untouchable Democrat-in-name-only incumbent Joe Crowley in a New York City primary race that she won on a Democratic Socialist platform of abolishing ICE, Medicare for all, a jobs guarantee, a housing guarantee, gun control, relief for Puerto Rico, and gun control. Read the rest

Kansas is an Ayn Randian dystopia of voter suppression, measles epidemics, Handmaid's Tale fanfic masquerading as law, Isalmophobic terrorist cells, voting machine shenanigans, and economic collapse, all thanks to the far-right ideologues who paid for and control the state's legislature. Read the rest