Senator Warren: 'We stand up and we fight back' | MSNBC

Senator Warren: 'We stand up and we fight back' | MSNBC:

Senator Warren: 'We stand up and we fight back' 

Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren talks with Rachel Maddow about the election of Donald Trump, what non-Trump voters can do to assuage their despair, and the path forward for Democrats.Duration: 9:35

Warren on Trump: We've got some places where we could overlap

Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren talks with Rachel Maddow about where she sees common ground with President-elect Donald Trump that they could work on together. Duration: 8:24

Today, we woke up feeling like strangers in a foreign land, because yesterday Americans expressed their views that are clearly inconsistent with the values of the people of California.

Joint Statement from California Legislative Leaders on Result of Presidential Election - Speaker Anthony Rendon Representing the 63rd California Assembly District:

Today, we woke up feeling like strangers in a foreign land, because yesterday Americans expressed their views that are clearly inconsistent with the values of the people of California.

SACRAMENTO – California Senate President pro Tempore Kevin de León (D-Los Angeles) and California Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon(D-Paramount) released the following statement on the results of the President election:

Today, we woke up feeling like strangers in a foreign land, because yesterday Americans expressed their views on a pluralistic and democratic society that are clearly inconsistent with the values of the people of California.

We have never been more proud to be Californians.

By a margin in the millions, Californians overwhelmingly rejected politics fueled by resentment, bigotry, and misogyny.

The largest state of the union and the strongest driver of our nation’s economy has shown it has its surest conscience as well.

California is – and must always be – a refuge of justice and opportunity for people of all walks, talks, ages and aspirations – regardless of how you look, where you live, what language you speak, or who you love. 

California has long set an example for other states to follow. And California will defend its people and our progress. We are not going to allow one election to reverse generations of progress at the height of our historic diversity, scientific advancement, economic output, and sense of global responsibility.

We will be reaching out to federal, state and local officials to evaluate how a Trump Presidency will potentially impact federal funding of ongoing state programs, job-creating investments reliant on foreign trade, and federal enforcement of laws affecting the rights of people living in our state. We will maximize the time during the presidential transition to defend our accomplishments using every tool at our disposal.

While Donald Trump may have won the presidency, he hasn’t changed our values. America is greater than any one man or party. We will not be dragged back into the past. We will lead the resistance to any effort that would shred our social fabric or our Constitution.

California was not a part of this nation when its history began, but we are clearly now the keeper of its future.

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Hoy despertamos sintiéndonos extranjeros en tierra extraña, porque ayer los estadounidenses expresaron sus opiniones sobre una sociedad pluralista y democrática que es claramente inconsistente con los valores de la gente de California.

Nunca nos hemos sentido más orgullosos de ser Californianos.

Por un margen de millones de votos, los californianos rechazaron abrumadoramente la política alimentada por el resentimiento, la intolerancia y la misoginia.

El estado más grande de la unión y la locomotora de la economía de nuestra nación ha demostrado que también tiene su conciencia más tranquila.

California es - y debe ser siempre - un refugio de justicia y oportunidades para las personas de todos los orígenes, lenguas, edades, y aspiraciones - independientemente de su apariencia, dónde vivan, qué idioma hablen, o a quiénes amen.

California, por mucho tiempo, ha sido un ejemplo a seguir  para otros estados. Y California defenderá a su gente y nuestro progreso. No vamos a permitir que una elección sea un revés para el progreso de generaciones en la cima de nuestra histórica diversidad, el avance científico, la generación económica y un sentido de responsabilidad global.

Estaremos comunicándonos con los funcionarios federales, estatales y locales para evaluar cómo una Presidencia Trump podría afectar potencialmente los fondos de programas estatales en curso, las inversiones creadoras de empleos que dependen del comercio exterior y la aplicación de las leyes federales que afectan los derechos de las personas que viven en nuestro estado.

Estaremos utilizando al máximo el tiempo durante la transición presidencial para defender nuestros logros, usando cada herramienta a nuestra disposición.

Aunque Donald Trump haya ganado la presidencia, no ha cambiado nuestros valores. Estados Unidos es más grande que cualquier hombre o partido. No seremos arrastrados de vuelta al pasado. Lideraremos la resistencia a cualquier esfuerzo que destruya nuestro tejido social o nuestra Constitución.

California no era una parte de esta nación cuando comenzó su historia, pero ahora somos claramente los encargados de mantener su futuro.Joint Statement from California Legislative Leaders on Result of Presidential Election - Speaker Anthony Rendon Representing the 63rd California Assembly District:

Election Inflections: Why California’s Deep-Pocketed Charter School Backers Went for Broke – Capital & Main

Election Inflections: Why California’s Deep-Pocketed Charter School Backers Went for Broke – Capital & Main:

Election Inflections: Why California’s Deep-Pocketed Charter School Backers Went for Broke

Yesterday the subscriber-only political almanac California Target Book reported that spending by all independent expenditure committees (IECs) on Sacramento legislative races in the general election had topped $41 million. That brought the year’s total of outside money for state Assembly and Senate seats, including primary races, to $70 million.

But the real surprise of this election was just how much of 2016’s independent expenditure spending can be attributed to a handful of committees tied to charter school groups. According to the California Secretary of State’s Cal-Access website, charter IECs pumped close to $24 million into about 35 Assembly and Senate races, along with school board races in Alameda and Sacramento counties in the north, to Riverside and San Diego counties in the south.

Under state law, an independent expenditure is any campaign spending that is “outside” the control the candidates whom it is benefiting or opposing. An IEC can funnel unlimited amounts of money from corporations, nonprofits and wealthy donors, as long as it does not coordinate the spending activity with candidates, who are under strict, albeit voluntary campaign limits.

Consultant: The charter lobby was tired of getting beaten in elections and so doubled down in 2016.

CLICK TO TWEET

California’s “school choice” movement has always benefited from generous subsidies by a narrow spectrum of big-spending entrepreneurs, many of whom are billionaires. Their wealth has helped give the state the highest number of charter schools in the U.S., even as their election largess has left it with the nation’s most expensive school board elections.

Capital & Main’s analysis of the latest campaign-finance records for the five largest charter school IECs reveals that those same personal fortunes are at the center of the charters’ apparent attempt to buy some Sacramento political insurance against a growing resistance among both lawmakers and the public to the industry’s unbridled expansion in the state.

The amount spent by charter IECs represents about $40 for each of California’s 581,100 charter school students, and a 300 percent jump from 2014 charter election spending — about 570 percent over 2012. (See infographic below.)

Click to enlarge

Why did California’s charter industry choose this election to spend its way into the electoral fray? The answer depends on whom one asks.

“They were tired of getting beat,” Democratic political consultant Gale Kaufmann asserted in an email. “They had lost nearly every election in past years and obviously this year, their strategy became, 1: Let’s see how much money our billionaire donors can put in; and then, 2: Let’s see how much can we spend to buy some legislative and school board seats. The charter industry spent $11 million in the primary and had an impact, so they [. . .] doubled down in the general election.”

Twenty-six open legislature seats — 12 in hotly contested swing districts — shared the ballot with 17 statewide propositions. With early-voter turnout already setting records, Democrats stood poised to reclaim the legislative supermajority they lost in 2014.

But the election would also decide the political complexion — and the progressive-stopping power — of the informal group of bill-killing “moderate” assembly members so friendly to big business that it has been informally dubbed the “corporate Democrats caucus.”

Charter schools are privately managed but taxpayer-funded schools that are virtually free from most of the laws — and much of the accountability or transparency — under which traditional public schools operate. Protecting that status quo, public school supporters insist, drove this year’s independent expenditure spending spree.

“Charter schools used to be a boutique thing,” Cal State Sacramento education and policy studies professor Julian Vasquez Heilig said. “Now they have incredible money and power behind them: They have Eli Broad’s very deep pockets; the Gates Foundation has spent $300 million on charter schools in the last couple years; the Walton Family Foundation. … Parents and families and civil rights folks that are asking the charter schools to reform are really the underdog in this conversation, because the money and power is on the side of charter schools.”

Most of the charters’ IE spending (88 percent) was directed by three committees that served as the 501(c)(4) political arms of industry lobbyists California Charter School Association (CCSA) and EdVoice, the charter school advocacy nonprofit founded by Netflix CEO Reed Hastings: CCSA’s California Charter Schools Association Advocates IE Committee, and the Parent Teacher Alliance (sponsored by the CCSA’s IEC); and the EdVoice Independent Expenditure Committee. (Neither EdVoice nor CCSA responded to requests to comment for this article.)

The remainder was distributed by the Govern for California Action Committee, a PAC controlled by anti-public-pension gadfly and neoliberal Democrat David Crane; and by Parents and Teachers for Student Success – StudentsFirst, the IEC of the national pro-charter group founded by Michelle Rhee.

“They’re investing heavily in maintaining a deregulated environment,” said United Teachers Los Angeles Secretary Daniel Barnhart before the election. “This really isn’t about kids. In their own words, they say it’s about market share.”

He may be right. Though the teachers union spent nearly $33 million on the election, the bulk of that (around $20 million) went to Proposition 55, the education-funding measure that aimed to benefit all California classrooms — both charter and public school students. The charter IECs spent solely on pro-charter legislative and school board candidates.

In Sacramento, where charters are represented by CCSA, the 2015-16 legislative session was a mixed bag for the industry. Lobbyists succeeded in killing two big reforms: AB 1084, a Susan Bonilla (D-Concord) bill that would have outlawed for-profit Election Inflections: Why California’s Deep-Pocketed Charter School Backers Went for Broke – Capital & Main:

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Resist!

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Resist!:

Resist!

Shortly after Donald Trump delivered his victory speech, about 2,000 people rallied against the election at UCLA. (Los Angeles Times)

Trump and the Republicans were able to tap into a wave of deep-seeded white anger and frustration the likes of which I haven't seen since the violent reaction to the black freedom movement in the south, 50 years ago. Only this time, it was expressed through the ballot box. Will the reaction stay constrained? Or are we in for another wave of violent, racist, anti-immigrant attacks that Trump is more than capable of unleashing?

Van Jones made an emotional and powerful statement on CNN last night, wondering what he should tell his children about the election of a neo-fascist to the highest political office in the land.

“This was a white-lash,” he said. “This was a white-lash against a changing country. It was a white-lash against a black president in part, and that’s the part where the pain comes.”

 If you don't know Van, in 1996, he founded the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights. He was appointed Obama's Special Advisor for Green Jobs in '08, but soon came under attack from the far right (Mike Pence) was deemed "too radical" and thrown under the bus by the Dems.

As someone who grew up in a left-wing household during the McCarthy period, survived the repression and political assassinations of the '60s, and endured the Nixon, Reagan, and Bush years, Trumpism is no stranger to me. The tears, the eerie quiet, and then anger that befell Clinton's "victory party" in N.Y. around midnight, are things I have experienced too many times.

Trump's election victory was a devastating blow, not only to the Clinton dynasty, but for all of us who value democracy and social-justice. Now comes a brief, hopefully thoughtful and introspective period in which to gather ourselves and prepare for the reactionary winter that's about to be unleashed.

It's too soon to begin assessing blame for the loss or settling accounts. That time will come and we all have our lists.  But first, we need to let the dust settle and see what we're really up against here. There's also a lot we can learn about organizing election campaigns in the modern era -- besides not nominating the most hated, untrustworthy (even by her own supporters) candidate in party history.

We can also anticipate lots of spontaneous anti-Trump protests breaking out, starting today.

Agenda Topics from now until January...Who will be part of Trump's new ruling coalition and how will it rule? What are the inevitable divisions within it? What's left of the Democratic Party and progressive forces and how badly are they in disarray? How swiftly will Trump move on his campaign promises to round-up millions of immigrants in deportation centers? What will happen when he tries to smash the Affordable Care Act, pulling health care from some 20 million citizens? What about the Supreme Court and the future of same-sex marriage and Rowe v. Wade? And what will happen to public space (including what's left of public education) and public decision making?

And then, most importantly how do we resist?Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Resist!:

A Time to Think About The Future, Our Kids, Education and Our Country

A Time to Think About The Future, Our Kids, Education and Our Country

See Ya Soon