Climate Change and the Democrats

Gearing Up for a Green New Deal - Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the plan to change everything

https://portside.org/2018-12-20/gearing-green-new-deal-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-and-plan-change-everything

The Indypendent

A thirty-foot sperm whale comes up for air. Before slipping back into the deep blue its eye gleans sight of something strange in the distance. To the whale, it looks like a flock of seagulls, each with three wings flapping. For some reason, they can’t take off.

She doesn’t pay them any mind. She’s busy with a calf to feed, her third in the past decade. When she was a calf herself, the three-winged seagulls weren’t there. But she is spotting more and more of them as she swims off the coast of Long Island these days.

She’s noticed other changes as well. The water is cleaner, and there are more and more of her kind coming upon one another. And why not? There’s plenty of squid and a lot fewer plastic bags to prey on these days. 

Unbeknownst to her, the two aren’t unrelated, the fertile ocean and the strange birds on shore — what the whale’s distant evolutionary relatives in the human race refer to as wind turbines. If her eye could stray further, take on a loftier gaze, she would see that her distant cousins are busy at work, raising solar panels atop their buildings and homes, retrofitting them too, so that they will be cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter. She’d witness streets virtually devoid of vehicles save for schools of buses, gobbling up passengers like cephalopods and subway cars gliding without a hitch, graceful as eels over bridges.

This is a world where human and animal and environment are approaching harmony. It is nowhere near the “Hallelujah” chorus of Handel’s Messiah, but it has come a long way from the thrash-metal discord days of fracking, tar sands extraction, open-pit coal mining, uranium excavation, deepwater drilling, deforestation and the general masochistic flaming frenzy that characterized 20th and early 21st-century ecology. In other words, it is a far cry from the world we currently inhabit. It’s one that, if built, will be built by dreamers. It will require those in power now — who, for all their talk about the glory of capitalist innovation, can’t see beyond tomorrow’s Dow Jones index to save the planet — to listen to America’s youth, its scientists, its rebels and to the rumblings of Gaia herself and make way for some true innovation.

If this green future comes to pass, those of us fortunate enough to inhabit it may look back on Nov. 13, 2018 as a turning point. That’s the day 200 young climate change activists occupied the soon-to-be Speaker of the House’s office on Capitol Hill, many carrying orange placards that asked, “What is your plan?” Fifty-one youth in total were arrested, charged with obstruction.

Incoming freshman Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez joins the cool kids with the Sunrise Movement in the principal’s office on her first day of class.
Credit: Sunrise Movement.

In addition to a fine, the charge carries with it a certain irony. While they were there to disrupt business as usual in Nancy Pelosi’s lair, the underlying purpose of their visit was to make a deal, a Green New Deal, and spur the kind of investment in combating and adapting to climate change that Pelosi and other leaders of the country’s two main political parties have obstructed over the past two decades. Coming as it did in the wake of a UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report that warns humankind has just 12 years to drastically reduce its output of heat-trapping greenhouse gases or global warming will be irreversible, and given extra media attention thanks to the presence of camera-trailed Congresswoman-elect, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), the sit-in helped push the Green New Deal into the national conversation.

‘What Science And Justice Demand’

So, what is a Green New Deal and why are our nation’s elites so reluctant to move on it?

Green New Deal

WEDNESDAY, DEC 12, 2018, 6:20 PM

12 Reasons Labor Should Demand a Green New Deal

BY JEREMY BRECHER AND JOE UEHLEIN

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Labor shouldn't just back the Green New Deal, it should help lead the way. (Michael Brochstein/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)   

Workers have gotten a raw deal. Employers and their Republican allies are trying to eliminate workers’ rights both in the workplace and at the ballot box. But even when Democrats controlled the presidency and both houses of Congress, they did little to protect, let alone expand, the rights of working people. Workers need a new deal.

Read the entire piece.  http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/21634/labor_green_new_deal_ocasio_cortez_sunrise_movement_unions

Oppose Nafta 2.0

better deal, please sign on here.  Thanks!  — Arthur

Early next year, the U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC) will publish a formal report on expected impacts from the proposed North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) revision.  This report will be used by Congress to make decisions about whether to support NAFTA 2.0 as written or to demand further changes.

TAKE ACTION: Please join us in urging that the official report on NAFTA 2.0 highlight its failure to include critical changes needed to protect jobs, raise wages and promote healthy communities.

Each week, NAFTA continues to destroy livelihoods across the continent.  Unfortunately, the revised NAFTA deal currently on offer would continue to facilitate the outsourcing of jobs, the suppression of wages and the dumping of toxins.  Among other problems, it also takes big steps backwards on access to medicine.

We need Congress to insist on substantive changes to the proposed text before there’s a real NAFTA replacement that working people can be happy about.  An accurate USITC report would help bolster that effort.

The USITC is now accepting official public comments on the NAFTA proposal.  Please sign onto our commentsurging the USITC to explicitly acknowledge that:

• NAFTA 2.0’s lack of strong, easily-enforced labor and environmental standards has a real cost. Without such provisions, the revised NAFTA will continue to help big corporations move good-paying jobs to Mexico to take advantage of sweatshop wages, ongoing worker rights abuses and the ability to pollute with impunity.  

• NAFTA 2.0’s expansion of pharmaceutical monopolies has a real cost. Worse than the original NAFTA, new language in the current proposal would lock-in bad policies that keep healthcare costs high in the United States, and make it harder for affordable, generic medicines to reach those who need them at home and abroad.  

• NAFTA 2.0’s refusal to address climate change and end environmentally-destructive practices has a real cost.  Not only does the current text fail to even mention climate change, but it also contains special loopholes for some of the planet’s worst corporate polluters that would allow destructive practices to continue unchecked and could potentially undermine future attempts to tackle the climate crisis.

Trump Trade Policy- Without a Clue

Paul Krugman

Are we going to have a full-blown trade war with China, and maybe the rest of the world? Nobody knows — because it all depends on the whims of one man. And Tariff Man is ignorant, volatile and delusional.

Why do I say that it’s all about one man? After all, after the 2016 U.S. election and the Brexit vote in Britain, there was a lot of talk about a broad popular backlash against globalization. Over the past two years, however, it has become clear that this backlash was both smaller and shallower than advertised.

Where, after all, is the major constituency supporting Donald Trump’s tariffs and threats to exit international agreements? Big business hates the prospect of a trade war, and stocks plunge whenever that prospect becomes more likely. Labor hasn’t rallied behind Trumpist protectionism either.

Meanwhile, the percentage of Americans believing that foreign trade is good for the economy is near a record high. Even those who criticize trade seem to be motivated by loyalty to Trump, not by deep policy convictions: During the 2016 campaign self-identified Republicans swung wildly from the view that trade agreements are good to the view that they’re bad, then swung back again once Trump seemed to be negotiating agreements of his own. (We have always been in a trade war with Eastasia.)

Full Bernie Sanders Speech on Economic Justice, Healthcare, Opposing Tru...

Dollars and Democracy

Dollars and Democracy

https://calbudgetcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/Chris-Hoene_The-Womens-Foundation-of-California-Womens-Policy-Institute-Retreat_07.30.2018.pdf

Abramsky lecture

Here is the link to Sasha Abramsky's talk:

 to Sasha's talk. This should be it. https://youtu.be/HT5huCGpJ-U

Friends of the Library Presents: Sasha Abramsky youtu.be Friends of the Library Sacramento State Guest Speaker November 8, 2018 Jumping at Shadows: The Triumph of Fear and the End of the American Dream

The Poor People's Campaign

Our seminar will be considering Rev. Barber and the Poor People's Campaign- either this Friday or next, Dec. &. 

Looking back since our official launch last December, it’s clear just how much we’ve accomplished in a year. We pulled off the most expansive wave of civil disobedience in recent history to draw attention to our country’s distorted moral narrative and called international attention to voter suppression, systemic racism, militarism, ecological devastation, and poverty in the USA. 

We are proud of what we’ve done together, but we are not content. 

Voter suppression across the country, from Georgia to North Dakota, carefully targeted gerrymandering, reckless voter purges, and voter ID laws targeting Brown and Black people (one of which, in Texas, was passed within hours of the evisceration of the Voting Rights Act) all swung elections and exposed the racism corroding our democracy. Just yesterday Mississippians were asked to vote for a woman who jokes about hangings while she defends policies that are strangling white, Black and Brown people who are poor. It should never have gotten this far.

We can’t afford to wait for 2020. This, right now, is our time to build the movement we’re going to need to restore and expand voting rights-- the only moral answer to the abuse of power we saw on election day.

As long as our vote is suppressed, nothing will change. The rights of LGBTQ folks will never be fully realized, families will still be separated at the border, and health care will never be universal.We’re delivering our full demands to Congress next Wednesday December 5 in Washington, D.C. so we can finally enact a moral agenda. We will also formally announce the  2019 Poor People’s Congress, which will bring us back to D.C. in June.

Rev. WillIam Barber

General Motors Layoffs

GM LAYOFFS: President Donald Trump said Monday that he was "very tough" with General Motors CEO Mary Barra Monday following the auto manufacturer's announcement that it will shutter five North American plants and lay off 14,700 workers. Trump said he told Barra that GM "better get back in there soon, that's Ohio." (One of the shuttered plants is in Lordstown, Ohio.)

Trump's "really good feeling" in February from GM "coming back" seems to have dissipated now that the company says his tariffs on foreign metals have cost them an estimated $1 billion. Ford, which is estimated to have lost a similar sum from the metals tariffs, announced last month that it, too, will soon downsize.

Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), who is contemplating a presidential bid, said in a written statement that the layoffs represented "corporate greed at its worst," noting that they came after GM received "a massive tax break from last year's GOP tax bill" and that they followed GM's decision to build its new SUV in Mexico. The layoff announcement prompted auto workers in Canada to walk off the job Monday, according to Reuters. More from POLITICO here. 

Related read: "General Motors News From Ohio, Michigan Could Hurt Trump 2020 Bid," from Roll Call

Make P G & E a Public Utility

The potential bankruptcy of the California utility whose negligence likely plays a role in California’s wildfires is an opportunity for the public to gain control of the state’s energy destiny

Cal Fire found that three separate wildfires across the state in 2017 were caused by PG&E, and the utility could be liable for up to $12 billion in damages from more than 800 civil lawsuits., Mario Tama/Getty Images

There is strong evidence that the wildfires raging through California right now—killing at least 80 people, with at least an additional 1,000 missing as of November 18—have been sparked at least in part by the large investor-owned monopoly utility, PG&E. Further, PG&E’s apparent negligence and its consequences aren’t new. Cal Fire found that three separate wildfires across the state in 2017 were caused by PG&E, and the utility could be liable for up to $12 billionin damages from more than 800 civil lawsuits. With that backdrop, PG&E teeters on the brink of bankruptcy, and the California Public Utility Commission is now thinking of breaking up the utility. But the commission shouldn’t stop at breaking up PG&E. The public should take it over. That, in fact, is what should be happening with investor-owned utilities across the country: move them out of the hands of corporate power and into democratic, local control. PG&E is notorious for taking the money it receives from ratepayers and not putting adequate amounts of that money into its energy infrastructure. But it does pay its CEO, Geisha Williams, handsomely: $8.56 million in 2017, as devastating fires hit PG&E’s service area and as the utility was found negligent for a 2010 gas explosion that killed 8 people.

How Fake News is Produced

How fake news is produced.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/12/opinion/russia-meddling-disinformation-fake-news-elections.html

New York Times - Opinion Video. 

I recommend video 2: 7 rules of Propaganda

Keynesian Economics- What Happened to Greece ?

What is happening in the U.S.?

Time for Another Reinvention 

Socialist parties emerged as dynamic, powerful forces at the turn of the twentieth century. After decades of decline, can they revive themselves in the twenty-first?

Fred Block  November 9, 2018 

Former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis speaks at the Brookings Institution. (Steve Purcell / Flickr) 

Leftism Reinvented: Western Parties from Socialism to Neoliberalism
by Stephanie L. Mudge
Harvard University Press, 2018, 524 pp.

 

To understand the obstacles facing the left today, we can start with Yanis Varoufakis’s ill-starred turn as Greece’s Finance Minister. Varoufakis came to office with one overriding ambition: to free Greece from the austerity regime imposed by the European Community and the International Monetary Fund. His argument was straightforward. Greece needed substantial relief from a debt burden that could not possibly be repaid, and austerity made a return to economic growth impossible.

Varoufakis used traditional Keynesian arguments to offer his European interlocutors a win-win solution that would make possible renewed growth in Greece and eventual repayment of Greece’s pared-down foreign debt. Europe’s leaders would have none of it. Even social democratic ministers turned away, praising him for his cleverness, then joining with their more conservative counterparts to force neoliberal solutions on Greece. How did Keynesianism become utopian? How did social democrats learn to speak the language of neoliberalism? How, in short, did we get here?

These are the questions that Stephanie Mudge (a colleague of mine at U.C. Davis) seeks to answer in her challenging new book, Leftism Reinvented: Western Parties from Socialism to Neoliberalism. Mudge transverses more than a century of European socialism to offer a persuasive and powerful explanation for the rise of what she terms “neoliberalized leftism” in both Europe and the United States. Along the way, she lays down a series of markers for other academics. First, she is working to revive serious analyses of political parties, treating them not simply as puppets in the hands of activists and donors but as sites where experts and intellectuals build coalitions that shape policy outcomes. It is imperative to look at who has been recruited by these parties to write the party platforms and formulate their economic programs. Second, she is trying to build a bridge between the social sciences and history by making individual biographies central to her narrative. She is here reacting against the bias towards structural analysis in sociology and political science, where all too often a focus on institutions renders individual people invisible.

The result is the kind of big book that has become increasingly rare in these times of tightly focused academic monographs. Drawing from history, sociology, political science, and political economy, Mudge has produced an account that transforms our understanding of how European and American left parties changed over the twentieth century and raises important questions about how the left must reinvent itself in the twenty-first.

Progressive Caucus Plans to Govern from the Left

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez 

On Monday afternoon, just a block from the White House, a dozen of the country’s most liberal lawmakers gathered in the lobby of the AFL-CIO’s headquarters. The mood was jubilant as Reps. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) and Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.)—the co-chairs of the Congressional Progressive Caucus—introduced 10 new members of the group to the Washington press corps. A throng of reporters had come to see some of the Resistance’s brightest stars, like New York’s Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Massachusetts’s Ayanna Pressley, together in the nation’s capital for the first time.

“The press is paying attention to us!” Jayapal said. “I like this!”

Representatives from the progressive groups MoveOn and Indivisible were there, too, eager to celebrate a group of new lawmakers who they view as closely aligned with the the priorities of liberal activists.

“This an opportunity for Democrats to have conversations within the party about what kind of party we’re going to be.”

The 2018 midterms have transformed the CPC from a caucus Pocan described as once having “weak, skinny arms” into a 90-member behemoth that makes up nearly 40 percent of all House Democratic membership. And there may be more to come—the CPC is floating invitations to a handful of other incoming freshmen who ran on progressive platforms. The House’s largest values-based caucus, which has never really exercised much voting or policy influence, might finally have enough sway to push an ambitious array of legislation that includes immigration reform, Medicare-for-All, and climate action.

Media Sources

One of the topics we have not had time to cover is the role of media.  Sasha Abramsky covers it some. I found an option.  Ken Cross instructor of the course on 10 Key Decisions posted this.
Use if you find it valuable.

Ken Cross

Media sites

• Communications sources: On my way to the CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations -https://ca.cair.com/sacval/) event on Saturday night last Fall 2017, I had an “epiphany” (be advised this is my one and only epiphany for the year. This is as good as it gets!). In the previous Friday Top 10 seminar the class talked about reliable media sources that report the “facts” in an unbiased manner. I was fortunate enough to have a captive audience of media people at our table at the CAIR event – the CEO/Publisher/Owner of N&R Publications, 2 editors, 3 writers (one was John Flynn, classmate Karen Flynn’s son), 3 media salesmen and an experienced nonprofit leader. Collectively they conservatively have over 125 years in print media and almost 500 years of life experience. I asked them to each list their top 5 communications sources on a 3x5 card without comparing notes. At the end I read their lists and we discussed the media sources. Here they are >

·       FiveThirtyEight (538) http://fivethirtyeight.com/

·       BBC (British Broadcasting Service) (Radio) http://www.bbc.com/

·       CALmatters https://calmatters.org/

·       Capitol Public Radio (CPR) (Radio) http://www.capradio.org/

·       Crooked Media Podcasts (Podcast) https://crooked.com/

·       Democracy Now! (Online TV) https://www.democracynow.org/

·       Moyers & Company (TV archives, online stories, newsletter & podcast) http://billmoyers.com/

·       National Public Radio (NPR) (Radio) http://www.npr.org/

·       News apps 

·       PBS (Public Broadcasting Service) (TV) http://www.pbs.org/

·       PBS Frontline (TV) http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/

·       PBS News Hour (TV) https://www.pbs.org/newshour/

·       ProPublica (Online journalism, newsletters & podcasts) https://www.propublica.org/

·       The Atlantic (Magazine & online journalism) https://www.theatlantic.com/

·       The Axe Files with David Axelrod (Podcast) http://rss.cnn.com/services/podcasting/axe/rss

·       The Christian Science Monitor (Newspaper) https://www.csmonitor.com/

·       The Economist (Magazine) https://www.economist.com/

·       The Los Angeles Times (Newspaper) http://www.latimes.com/

·       The Nation (Weekly magazine) https://www.thenation.com/

·       The New York Times (Newspaper) https://www.nytimes.com/

·       The New Yorker (Magazine) https://www.newyorker.com/

·       The Sacramento News & Review (SN&R) (Weekly alternative newspaper) http://www.newsreview.com/sacramento/home

·       The Wall Street Journal (Newspaper) https://www.wsj.com/

·       The Washington Post (Newspaper) https://www.washingtonpost.com/

·       Vice News (Online news) https://news.vice.com/en_us

How To Do Progressive Taxes in California

and fund the schools.

https://edsource.org/2018/california-needs-another-master-plan-to-close-the-education-equity-gap/

Wealthy in the U.S..

The Wealth of America's Three Richest Families Grew by 6,000% Since 1982

These three families own a combined fortune of $348.7 billion, which is 4 million times the median wealth of a US family.

November 2, 2018 Chuck Collins  

China and Trade.

Tomgram: Michael Klare, On the Road to World War III?

Posted by Michael Klareat 7:37am, October 30, 2018.
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter @TomDispatch.

Includes analysis of U.S. trade war with China. 

Undocumented immigrants pay billions of dollars in federal taxes each year

Undocumented immigrants pay billions of dollars in federal taxes each year

Here’s how they do it.  Alexia Fernandez Campbell ( no relation) 

https://www.vox.com/2018/4/13/17229018/undocumented-immigrants-pay-taxes

Working Class and Voters

Working-class people are underrepresented in politics. The problem isn’t voters. Nicholas Carnes October 24, 2018 VOX Our government is run by rich people — and it benefits them the most.

The U.S. Economy is Rigged ! Stiglitz

Joseph E. Stiglitz October 22, 2018 Scientific American We are already paying a high price for inequality, but it is just a down payment on what we will have to pay if we do not do something—and quickly. It is not just our economy that is at stake; we are risking our democracy. , Andrea Ucini Americans are used to thinking that their nation is special. In many ways, it is: the U.S. has by far the most Nobel Prize winners, the largest defense expenditures (almost equal to the next 10 or so countries put together) and the most billionaires (twice as many as China, the closest competitor). But some examples of American Exceptionalism should not make us proud. By most accounts, the U.S. has the highest level of economic inequality among developed countries. It has the world's greatest per capita health expenditures yet the lowest life expectancy among comparable countries. It is also one of a few developed countries jostling for the dubious distinction of having the lowest measures of equality of opportunity.

The China toll deepens: Growth in the bilateral trade deficit between 2001 and 2017 cost 3.4 million U.S. jobs, with losses in every state and congressional district

The China toll deepens: Growth in the bilateral trade deficit between 2001 and 2017 cost 3.4 million U.S. jobs, with losses in every state and congressional district: The growing U.S. trade deficit with China has eliminated 3.4 million U.S. jobs between 2001 and 2017. U.S. jobs lost are spread throughout the country but are concentrated in manufacturing. Not surprisingly, the hardest-hit congressional districts include districts where manufacturing jobs are concentrated.

White House Sees Threat to Economy : Socialists

What Could Kill Booming U.S. Economy? ‘Socialists,’ White House Warns

A report from the Council of Economic Advisers compares Bernie Sanders to Chairman Mao, and warns that pickup trucks cost more in Sweden.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/23/us/politics/socialist-democrats-trump-elections.html

When was the last time anyone talked about the Council of Economic Advisers? We are certainly far from the days when Walter W. Heller, chairman of the CEA under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, appeared on the cover of Time magazine twice in two years. On Tuesday, the CEA made its first newsworthy move of the Trump presidency, releasing a seventy-two-page “report” warning that “socialism is making a comeback in American political discourse.” The reaction has been universal mockery, which the report and its authors richly deserve. Most of the pages are given over to a potted discussion of the failures of state socialist agriculture and the decline of Venezuelan oil production under Chavismo. There is a confusing discussion of the Scandinavian countries, which are presented variously as being nonsocialist, suffering lower standards of living because of socialism, and benefiting from the inborn tendency of Nordic stock to high incomes. These lessons in comparative history are tenuously connected to U.S. politics through constructions like, “The socialist narrative names the oppressors of the vulnerable, such as the bourgeoisie (Marx), kulaks (Lenin), landlords (Mao), and giant corporations (Sanders and Warren).”

The report has drawn comparisons to “a middle school book report assigned by the Heritage Foundation” and “a Red Bull–addled college freshman’s attempt to parse their introductory economics course through a first-response paper.” The resemblances are certainly there, right down to an appeal to “the Oxford English Dictionary, which defines socialism as…” and the caveat that certain socialists are “different in these important ways.” But reading the document and following the citations, you find a range of references that goes beyond casual Google searches and chain-email folk memory, to include serious socialist thinkers like John Roemer and Alec Nove. There are also references to the work of two CEA staffers, Tyler Goodspeed and Casey Mulligan, perhaps a clue to the authorship of the collectively attributed document.

Alternative economics- Co Ops

Alternative economics: Co ops

https://portside.org/2018-10-22/union-co-op-initiative-seeks-create-union-jobs-democratic-workplaces

Trump and Capitalism ( Neoliberalism)

Trump, capitalism, neoliberalism and crime. Details.
https://jacobinmag.com/2018/10/donald-trump-lumpen-capitalist-class-elections

Financing the Anti Proposition 10 Campaign

California NAACP Leader Opposes Rent Control Measure While Taking Real Estate Money Sam Levin October 16, 2018 The Guardian The President of the NAACP’s California chapter has a history of leveraging the NAACP brand to line her own pockets. This year she is slated to reap at least $800,000 to oppose a statewide rent control measure on the November statewide ballot. Like the pharmaceutical and tobacco industries before it, the real estate industry is paying California NAACP President Alice Huffman lots of money to get the NAACP stamp of approval. , Jeff Chiu/AP [Moderators Note: In recent years in California, serious ethical issues have placed the local and statewide leaders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in the national spotlight. In 2014, the National Office of the NAACP forced the resignation of Leon Jenkins, then President of the Los Angeles Chapter, when it was revealed the branch, in exchange for a significant donation, was prepared to give a humanitarian award to Donald Sterling, real estate mogul and owner of the Los Angeles Clippers professional basketball franchise.  Sterling, who had been successfully sued on several occasions for housing discrimination and sexual harassment, had made racist comments so egregious the NBA levied fines of more than $2 million and forced him to sell his franchise.  At that time, Lorraine Miller, Interim President and CEO of the NAACP responded to NAACP members who demanded action, writing, “We will determine the shortcomings that enabled Donald Sterling to receive or be considered for any awards. We will prevent this from happening again.” She added, “We must not allow that need (for resources) to compromise our founding principles.”  But by 2014, the President of the statewide NAACP chapter, Alice Huffman, had already turned selling the NAACP brand to the highest bidder into an art. In 2005, the pharmaceutical industry paid Huffman $375,000 in consulting fees. That year the California NAACP sided with the drug companies against two statewide ballot measures designed to lower prices for prescription drugs.  In 2006, the state NAACP opposed a statewide tobacco tax increase and Huffman was paid $210,000 in campaign fees by the cigarette manufacturer Philip Morris.  And in 2016, the drug companies were back. The “No on 61” committee, funded by the pharmaceutical industry in opposition to that statewide drug pricing measure, paid Huffman $108,500 for consulting work. “Among the political class in Sacramento, it’s very well known that Alice essentially applies the NAACP good housekeeping seal to special interest causes in return for money,” said Garry South, the Democratic consultant leading the campaign to cap drug prices, told the Sacramento Bee’s Taryn Luna at the time. “I don’t know how she gets away with it.” Huffman gets away with it in part because the national leadership of the NAACP has not honored its pledge “to prevent this from happening again.”