“Overall, defining Walz in terms of the party’s ideological camps is surprisingly difficult, which makes him interestingly reminiscent of Joe Biden.
Often during his long career, Biden was a mainstream Democrat. But he’s also long harbored anti-elite inclinations, being skeptical of Wall Street and the economic policy establishment. He also rejected the foreign policy establishment’s consensus on Afghanistan, advocating against a troop surge during the Obama administration and ordering full withdrawal once he was president himself.
And once in office with a narrow Democratic majority, like Walz, Biden wanted to go big with an FDR-sized agenda. (Walz had no pesky Senate filibuster rule or recalcitrant Joe Manchin to spoil things.) In office, Biden has mostly tried to keep his coalition happy, but when the politics looked dire on immigration this year, he did try to pivot to the center with new asylum restrictions.
So while Walz may be a new face, his political style and instincts may represent a good deal of continuity with the current president.”
https://www.vox.com/2024-elections/366201/tim-walz-record-governor-progressive-agenda
“Carr blames the delay on “the addition of a substantive wish list of progressive ideas” to the approval process. In an April 2023 letter to Davidson, 11 Republican U.S. senators warned that “NTIA’s bureaucratic red tape and far-left mandates undermine Congress’ intent and would discourage participation from broadband providers while increasing the overall cost of building out broadband networks.”
Among several examples, the senators noted that NTIA’s BEAD proposal “requires subgrantees to prioritize certain segments of the workforce, such as ‘individuals with past criminal records’ and ‘justice-impacted […] participants.'” The infrastructure law that authorized the program merely required contractors to be “in compliance with Federal labor and employment laws.”
The previous year, in a letter to Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, Republican senators warned that the NTIA’s proposed BEAD rollout “creates a complex, nine-step, ‘iterative’ structure and review process that is likely to mire State broadband offices in excessive bureaucracy and delay connecting unserved and underserved Americans as quickly as possible.”
In practice, this is exactly what’s happening: Multiple representatives from the telecommunications industry told MinnPost this week that they had no interest in applying for a piece of Minnesota’s $652 million in BEAD grants. Brent Christensen, president and CEO of Minnesota Telecom Alliance, which represents 70 Minnesota telecom companies, said, “None of them would bid for the federal grants because of the regulations that would come with it—especially the requirement to provide low-cost services to low-income households in exchange for grants that would allow internet providers to build out their networks.”
MinnPost noted that new state laws also “requir[e] companies who receive state grants to pay workers a ‘prevailing wage,’ a basic hourly rate paid on public works projects to a majority of workers in a particular occupation.” Since the federal government’s prevailing wage list does not include telecom workers, “companies in Minnesota would have to pay more because they would have to use a similar, but higher-paying, classification.”
https://reason.com/2024/06/27/why-has-joe-bidens-42-billion-broadband-program-not-connected-one-single-household/
The Folly of Progressivism with Nellie Bowles
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDH3HKxA2d4
“Progressive Democrats who control California are intent on regulating our lives and raising our taxes, which leads to a sense of vulnerability as hundreds of intrusive bills head to the governor’s desk.
This year, however, Gov. Gavin Newsom pulled a few surprises. He insists that he’s not running for president, but his vetoes of the fringiest measures suggest his promises aren’t ironclad. He rejected nearly 20 percent of bills that reached his desk, which is an “unusually large percentage,” per CalMatters. Many veto messages, it noted, include boilerplate language warning that some bills would add to the state’s deficit. He seems to be channeling his predecessor, deficit-weary Jerry Brown.”
https://reason.com/2023/10/20/are-gavin-newsoms-presidential-aspirations-limiting-his-progressive-instincts/
“Democrats hold power in the House, Senate and White House for the first time in more than a decade, yet the high-profile defense bill got more GOP votes than from Biden’s own party. As progressive lawmakers made their dissatisfaction with the bill’s high price tag clear, centrist Democrats knew they needed Republican support to pass the House and Senate.”
…
“Bipartisan provisions requiring women to register for the draft, cracking down on Saudi Arabia and imposing sanctions on Russia were nixed; legislation repealing outdated Iraq war authorizations fell by the wayside; reforms to the military justice system and efforts to combat extremism in the ranks were pared back; and a proposal to give Washington, D.C., control of its National Guard was dropped.”