They Wrote It Down: Abolish the Senate, Defund the Department of War, Phase Out Fossil Fuels

Wall of Shame — Today: Regions Financial

Today on the Wall of Shame: the Regions Financial Corp. PAC (Birmingham) has put $10,000 into Rep. Shomari Figures' campaign account — Alabama's largest bank, and the biggest single corporate check Figures has taken. The Wall of Shame exists for one reason — so that total stops growing. https://take2back.com/wall-of-shame.html

FIVE DAYS AGO, HIS PARTY'S FASTEST-GROWING FACTION PUBLISHED WHAT IT WANTS

On Tuesday, July 14, the Democratic Socialists of America launched a new national program called Workers Deserve More. It is not a leaked memo and it is not a fringe pamphlet. By the drafters' own account it was written between April and June of this year by a committee of members elected under rules set at the organization's 2025 national convention, submitted to its governing National Political Committee to amend and approve, and published at program.dsausa.org, where it sits this morning for anyone to read.

This is not a small outfit. The organization counts more than 220 local chapters, and outside trackers put its dues-paying membership above 120,000 as of this month. Its candidates have spent this summer beating sitting Democratic congressmen in primaries. When a group that size writes down what it intends, the honest thing to do is read it.

So we are going to do something simple. We are going to tell you what is in it, in its own words, and let you decide what it would mean here.

IT WOULD ABOLISH THE UNITED STATES SENATE

That is a direct demand, printed under the heading "A Democratic Congress": expand the House of Representatives, move to proportional representation, and abolish the Senate.

Understand what that does to this state. Alabama has roughly five million people. California has nearly forty million. In the House, they outnumber us better than seven to one. In the Senate, we are equal - two votes and two votes. That equality is the entire reason a small state has any leverage in Washington at all, and it is the specific thing this document proposes to eliminate.

The same document would abolish the Electoral College, and would replace the President and the Supreme Court with an executive and a judiciary "chosen by and subordinate to Congress." Its own preamble is candid about where that road ends: draft a new constitution, and create a democratic socialist republic.

IT WOULD DEFUND THE DEPARTMENT OF WAR

Under the heading "End The U.S. War Machine," the first demand is to defund the Department of War, end all foreign wars, and close overseas military bases.

Now look at a map of this district. Fort Rucker sits at Daleville, in Dale County, in the Second Congressional District. It is the home of Army Aviation and one of the largest employers in the Wiregrass. Essentially every Army helicopter pilot in the United States learns to fly within an hour of Enterprise.

"Defund the Department of War" is a slogan in Brooklyn. In Dale and Coffee counties it is a payroll.

IT WOULD PHASE OUT FOSSIL FUELS

The environmental plank calls for a federal jobs guarantee, massive investment in publicly owned energy, and phasing out the use of fossil fuels.

Alabama mines coal, produces natural gas, and runs an industrial base on cheap, reliable power. Phasing out fossil fuels is not an abstraction here. It is the end of the wage that pays the mortgage.

AND ON THE ECONOMY, IT SIMPLY REMOVES THE PRICE

Two demands are worth reading together. One is universal rent control. The other is public ownership of the largest corporations and essential industries.

There is no serious dispute left about what rent control does. Cap the price below what it costs to build and maintain housing and you get less housing, worse housing, and the people you meant to help waiting longest for it. That is not a talking point; it is close to the most settled empirical finding in urban economics, and the cities that tried it have spent decades undoing it.

The deeper problem is the same in both demands. A price is information. It tells a builder where housing is short, a driller where fuel is wanted, a farmer what to plant next spring. Take the price away and put a committee in its place and the information does not improve. It disappears, and the committee is left guessing while the shortages pile up at the door. Every attempt at this in the last hundred years has run the same way, and the queue is always for bread.

THE BOTTOM LINE

This is not a document we wrote about them. It is the document they wrote about themselves, published on Tuesday, still on their own website this morning.

Nobody has to guess what this faction wants. The only open question is what the Democrats who need its votes are prepared to say about it - and that includes the congressman who represents Dale County, Coffee County and Fort Rucker. When reporters put the program to House Democrats at the end of last week, most of them changed the subject. We will take up that question tomorrow.

Six Republicans are on the August 11 ballot. Which one carries this district is for the voters of the Second District to decide - not a committee in Washington, and not this newsletter. Our fight is with the incumbent and the money behind him.

August 11. Then November 3.