View this email in your browser

**APRIL 21, 2021**

Kuttner on TAP

Rising Expectations and Raw Revelations

****

By taking seriously long-deferred national challenges, the Biden
administration has shone a light on just how far we have to go. The
experience is like political whiplash.

Administrations for 50 years have let vital physical infrastructure rot.
Biden's plan seems massive. But once we take a close look, it is just
a down payment.

Same with human infrastructure. Biden's people initially proposed
spending $400 billion over ten years. But that was only for long-term
home and residential care for the elderly and the disabled.

The latest version

would spend around a trillion dollars. This would include a reported
$225 billion for child care, $225 billion for paid family and medical
leave, $200 billion for universal prekindergarten instruction, and
tuition-free community colleges.

This is welcome, but there is even harder stuff. Biden proposes to spend
$213 billion on affordable housing. That's serious money, but 50 years
of bad policy have let this one get away from us.

We simply do not build enough social housing-rental units that are
fully and permanently protected from market pressures. Our support for
owner-occupied housing subsidizes the wrong end of the income scale with
tax breaks. That money should go for starter homes.

We have only begun to tackle the long-deferred racial-justice agenda,
including the chronic racism in too many police departments. Attorney
General Merrick Garland's decision to revive the Justice
Department's receivership program is a start, but there is a
bottomless pit of bad practices that have to be rooted out. But for a
video taken by a 17-year-old, Derek Chauvin might have joined the
hundreds of other killer cops who were never even prosecuted.

And I haven't even mentioned grotesque corporate concentration, or the
reforms of a corrupt financial industry that the Obama administration
gave a pass, or global climate change.

Still, six months ago none of these advances was even thinkable. And
Obama, Clinton, and Carter, with much larger majorities in their first
two years, settled for a lot less even aspirationally.

This is one of those historical inflection points, where national
consciousness has shifted and the politics of the possible have
broadened. It's the politics of the not-yet-possible that keep me up
nights.

~ ROBERT KUTTNER

Follow Robert Kuttner on Twitter

Robert Kuttner's latest book is
The Stakes: 2020 and the Survival of American Democracy
.

[link removed]

How We Got to a Just Verdict

On the indispensability of smart, militant movements BY HAROLD MEYERSON

The Longest 80 Miles: How Nursing Home Evictions Tear Families Apart

In upstate New York, a nursing home eviction due to a debt has
indefinitely separated two women's enduring love by 80 miles. BY
GRETA MORAN

Worker Centers: Where Causes Cohere, and Forge Power

At the crossroads of diverse social movements and worker
representation, many centers have become models of intersectionality. BY
SARAH JAFFE

Andrew Yang's Discomfiting Vision for New York City

It infuses Silicon Valley-style ideas and private philanthropy into
an eroding safety net, and calls for no sacrifice from the wealthy. BY
TOBY JAFFE

First 100: The Stymied Biden Racial Equity Agenda

Also, more worries on residential real estate than commercial. BY DAVID
DAYEN

To receive this newsletter directly in your inbox, click here to
subscribe. 

[link removed]

 

[link removed]

 

[link removed]

 

[link removed]

 

[link removed]

 

[link removed]

 

[link removed]

YOUR TAX DEDUCTIBLE DONATION SUPPORTS INDEPENDENT JOURNALISM

Copyright (c) 2021 The American Prospect. All rights reserved.
_________________

Sent to [email protected]

Unsubscribe:
[link removed]

The American Prospect, Inc., 1225 I Street NW, Suite 600, Washington, DC xxxxxx, United States