“Buttigieg’s Medicare buy-in would merely permit those who lack insurance but have plenty of money to buy into Medicare by paying a high premium. Buttigieg’s plan is Medicare for those who can afford it. It leaves out people who need insurance but don’t have the thousands of dollars to pay the premium. It leaves out the millions of people who have skimpy insurance but that’s all their employer is offering. Under Buttigieig’s plan, private insurers would continue to push high cost patients onto Medicare. Medicare would become an expensive high risk pool that absorbs all the losses while private insurers…

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“Austerity is a lie. America is the wealthiest country in the history of the world. We can fully afford expanded Social Security, Medicare for All, universal childcare, and many other progressive priorities — so long as millionaires and billionaires pay their fair share. … By saying that Democrats should focus on cutting the deficit, Pete Buttigieg is promoting right-wing talking points and serving the interests of his billionaire donors. These billionaires want to pit working class Americans against each other by creating a false sense of scarcity, while continuing to hoard their ill-gotten wealth.”

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IPA just launched @Accuracy2020. The project is organizing “voters, students, and local activists who care about fair debates and clean elections to gather in front of ABC headquarters in downtown Washington at noon on Saturday, Feb. 8, to challenge ABC and other major media corporations on their handling of the Democratic presidential candidates’ debates.”

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“The first member of the Forbes 400 ever to sit in the White House survives impeachment after his lawyers and followers argue that what he did in the Ukraine wasn’t a high enough crime or misdemeanor. Meantime, rival oligarchs are laying siege to the official opposition party and denouncing proposals for modest rises in their taxes and Medicare for All as ‘socialism.’ Amid a frenzy of political money without precedent, they are pushing to change the Democratic Party’s rules to make sure one of them or somebody just as safe is the only alternative offered to voters in November. And the first…

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“The Iowa State Democratic Party kept the public in the dark when it came to the company that was involved in developing the app that was added to the process of reporting results. No explanation has been given for why the company’s name was treated as a state secret. As it turns out, individuals who were software and tool developers for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign founded Shadow Inc. It was acquired by a dark money group called ACRONYM in 2019, which was founded by Tara McGowan, a former campaign official for Barack Obama. Her husband works for South Bend…

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“Faced with a backlash, the Democratic National Committee defended the secretive manner in which dozens of lobbyists, corporate consultants, party insiders, think tank board members, and pro-Israel Democrats were nominated by DNC Chair Tom Perez to committees for the 2020 national convention. … Nearly all of the appointees endorsed Hillary Clinton during her 2016 campaign. Many endorsed Clinton early in 2015, but the DNC said it does not consider ‘past endorsements’ when filling committees. … The DNC claimed ‘high-profile’ supporters of Senator Bernie Sanders were appointed to the committees, but that is false. Only one ‘high-profile’ supporter was appointed to…

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“Iowa at least gives supporters of weaker candidates a backup vote. … But it still doesn’t change the real potential that the ‘winner’ might have lost badly in a head-to-head matchup against the second-place finisher. … With ranked-choice voting, voters rank candidates in order of choice: first, second and so on. If voters’ first choice has enough support to win delegates, their ballots will count for that candidate. Otherwise, those ballots will end up counting for the candidate ranked next who is viable.”

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“The ‘Deal of the Century’ is not a ‘peace plan,’ nor was it ever intended to be, despite what its chief architect and White House adviser Jared Kushner has been claiming. It is yet another propagandist U.S. government political undertaking justified by the false notion that it is in the best interest of the American people that Israel remains the regional hegemon and is enabled to swallow the rest of the occupied Palestinian territories. It’s a green light for further suffocation of Palestinian freedom. While this charade is taking place in Washington, the prospect of a real just peace is…

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“While the Democratic impeachment managers have accused Trump repeatedly of dishonesty — often with good reason — they themselves have twisted the truth to serve their own political agenda. Impeachment manager Adam Schiff, for example, claimed that ‘more than 15,000 Ukrainians have died fighting Russian forces and their proxies’ and that the military aid [which Trump subverted] was for ‘such essentials as sniper rifles, rocket propelled grenade launchers, radar… and other support for the war effort.’ While the military aid may have assisted the war effort, Schiff’s comments are misleading because the majority of those killed have been Eastern Ukrainians…

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“Given the Trump family’s penchant for mixing personal and official business, it’s tempting to dismiss the Biden clan’s affairs as no crime, no foul. But Biden’s friends and backers have won victories that cost the middle-class Americans he claims to champion dearly. … In 1996, Biden’s cozy relationship with the banks was used against him. A Republican challenger for his Senate seat complained that MBNA’s No. 3 executive, John R. Cochran, had bought Biden’s Greenville house for the full $1.2 million list price, despite a weak housing market. MBNA stuck with Biden; even after Wilmington’s News Journal published an internal…

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