Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez got denied a seat on the highly-influential Ways and Means committee in favor of Tom Suozzi and I am furious about it. Suozzi, a sophomore congressman, is a member of the New Democrat Coalition whose "business friendly" ideology makes them difficult to distinguish from un-bigoted Republicans. Suozzi is also part of the “Problem Solvers Caucus” that conspired with Republicans to oppose Nancy Pelosi being Speaker of the House, but I’ve already written about that in an earlier diary. What I have only just learned about is Suozzi’s record of corruption scandals. The older one rests largely on the testimony of a single government employee named Georgina Morganstern who claimed Suozzi broke the law on a daily basis and was fired for speaking up about it instead of “being a team player”.
Federal funds earmarked to help the poor were used to finance campaign appearances; county workers raised campaign funds on the taxpayers’ dime. State and federal environmental laws were routinely disregarded to save time. The administration failed to follow proper procedures and get competitive bids for county work.
Morganstern sued for $35 Million and was eventually awarded a little over 10% of that while Suozzi was dismissed as a defendant. Take it with a grain of salt: the LIPress article I’ve linked above certainly makes her seem like a credible witness rather than a political operative but I’ve had a hard time finding any additional information about the scandal.
Suozzi’s current corruption scandal has him prioritizing the financial interests of an energy company at the risk of bankrupting public schools in his district; did I mention Suozzi’s cousin is the chairman of the board at that same energy company? Even if you set aside the obvious conflict of interest or the tax payer-funded bail-out described in the HuffPo article, the fundamental problem with New Democrats like Suozzi remains apparent: they would rather bankrupt public services like schools than raise taxes on a corporation because their allegiance is not to the working class but to the business-owning class.
Defenders of these New Democrats use terms like “pro-economic growth” or “fiscally responsible” that sound a lot like Republican talking points and suggest a shared ideology with the Party of Trump. Now I’m not saying that these corporatists are equivalent to Republicans; they certainly don’t have the same track record of bigotry and that’s more than enough reason to vote for them in a general election (assuming you live somewhere that hasn’t implemented Ranked Choice Voting yet). But I am saying that they are too closely aligned with the Republicans to trust and that you can count on them to block or hamstring economically progressive policy initiatives at every opportunity. I also want to make clear that I am not advocating for Tom Suozzi to face a primary challenge at this point; he’s in a D+1 district that contains some of New York’s wealthiest zip codes so we’re probably better off tolerating him for the time being. Besides there are other Democrats far more deserving of a primary like Texas’ Henry Cuellar who raised money for a Republican that won by a narrow margin. But I do think Democratic leadership’s decision to put Suozzi on the Ways and Means committee instead of Ocasio-Cortez is a clear indication that we’re still a Center-Right party and progressives have a LOT of work to do.
Tuesday, Jan 15, 2019 · 2:31:23 AM +00:00
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Angry Scientist
I forgot to mention that this particular committee assignment is part of a larger trend of centrists being given preferential seats rather than progressives. This article by TheIntercept lays out a lot of specific examples and explains why this feels like a betrayal to progressives. There’s a lot that made me mad (Ro Khanna, for example, was not put on ANY committee) but I chose to focus in on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez because she’s popular and I figured that would help draw attention to the diary and inform more people of this infuriating development.