Re: [blind-democracy] Re: Why Doesn't Bernie Sanders Run on a Truly Socialist Platform?

Miriam,
FDR had it right. Jobs create prosperity. When the private sector is
busy tucking its profits in off-shore banks or buying up its own stock
and failing in its role as a partner in the well being of our nation,
then the nation needs to step in. It makes plain and simple sense
that a nation that wants to survive will make certain that its
citizens, all those possible, will be participating in the benefits
that nation claims to offer.
FDR set in motion several Works Projects. My own dad spent time
working for the WPA. It was felt that there was value in putting
money in the pockets of unemployed workers as well as using that labor
to improve the nations infrastructure. The Arboretum in Seattle still
stands as a tribute to those hard times in the 1930's.
It will take leadership by the president if such a transition is made.
Private corporations are not in the business of creating jobs. The
work they so proudly claim to create is always an answer to their
desire to grab off more profits. Profits they do not intend to share.
A large pool of unemployed is the price we working folks pay for the
privilege of living in the Corporate Empire.
And to soothe our Souls, we buy the pipe dream that we just might rise
to become the next Donald Trump. If I had a gun I'd shoot myself
first.
So we are fed smoke and mirrors and succumb to Greed. And most of the
unemployed will end up sleeping in their burned out cars, if they are
so lucky. The corporate capitalists do not care for the nation. If
they did, they would eagerly plow their profits back into creating a
stronger base. Full employment, free education. Free, fully staffed
child care centers. Full participation in local and national
government.
But all of those ideas are alien to the Empire's goal of world dominance.
So, that is a not so short answer to the Plank of Government as
Employer of Last Resort. Government as Employer of Last Resort is a
good beginning, as long as it is followed by the other pieces I've
mentioned.
Could Bernie Sanders pull it off? I think FDR had some advantages
over Bernie Sanders, but Sanders seems as clever as Roosevelt, and he
has the time to build the structure he will need to pressure
corporations to bend enough. If the corporations feel threatened
enough, as they were in the 30's, fearing an attack on their power
position, they will give up just enough to ensure they remain on top.
Back in those troubled times, corporations understood that their well
being depended upon drastic measures. Even though they trashed
Roosevelt, they bent, gave up some ground. FDR literally saved
Capitalism. And in return they bashed Eleanor long past her death.
The Bastards! Of course if Bernie Sanders were elected and if he
could create some wiggle room, and if congress went along with being
the employer of last resort, it would only be a temporary fix. As
soon as jobs were created and money began to
flow back into the nations shops and banks, Self Serving Corporate
Leaders would begin plotting ways of creaming off the "good times".
But as a member of a Working Class that is temporarily short of power,
I would go for such a Plank just because it would get folks back to
work and out of the old cars and into warm houses and apartments and
dressing their children in warm clothes and shoes and safer streets
and new schools and free education. For a while we would bask in the
Sun, happy and busy. But would we understand that the war still
raged?
Go Sea Hawks!

Carl Jarvis


On 7/25/15, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
> Carl,
>
> You're writing in response to the title of the article. However, the
> article
> presents a very specific plank that the writer suggests should be a part of
> Bernie's platform. I'd be interested to know your response to what the
> writer is suggesting.
>
> Miriam
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org
> [mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
> Sent: Saturday, July 25, 2015 12:56 AM
> To: blind-democracy@freelists.org
> Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Why Doesn't Bernie Sanders Run on a Truly
> Socialist Platform?
>
> Remember, Bernie is running for the Democratic Nomination, not the
> Socialist. All his Platform needs to do is to be just Left of Clinton's.
> Why alienate some voters when he doesn't need to? Obama ran just to the
> Left of Center...sort of, and gained votes from people who might not have
> given him the nod if they thought he was too radical. And some of us voted
> for him hoping that he would move Left once in the office. It worked...for
> Obama. And of course what we got was pretty much what we saw.
> But Bernie is not trying to build a strong Workers or Socialists Party at
> this point in time. To seriously have a chance, he must win the nomination
> of the existing Democratic Party. And I believe Bernie Sanders is truly in
> this race to win. He is using solid, tried and true tactics. My hope at
> this time is that if Sanders wins we will at least get a president who
> stands on his Platform. It will not bring us a new dawning. It will
> probably do little to curtail our mad behavior in the Middle East. But it
> will put a focus on the needs of the American People. It will create jobs
> and repair our roads, bridges, schools and boost our sagging cost of living
> wage.
> But Bernie Sanders Platform is still grounded in the Laws of the Empire.
> Our slums and ghettos will not go away. Violence and murder will not end.
> Prisons will continue being mostly Black and Brown.
> And even though they will whine and pout like the Ruling Class of FDR's
> day,
> the Billionaires will continue to be the Privileged Ones.
> And they will go about the business of mounting efforts to take back what
> few gains Sanders makes.
> The only true reform is the replacement of the Corporate Capitalist System
> with one that is more broadly based in the Masses. Bernie Sanders does not
> propose to go that far.
>
> Carl Jarvis
>
>
> On 7/24/15, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
>>
>> Myerson writes: "Yet, despite his inescapable affiliation with the
>> s-word - long considered a politically fatal liability - and his
>> reported contempt for the masses' sensibilities, Sanders continues to
>> draw enormous crowds, outpace Hillary Clinton in attracting small
>> donations and generate great enthusiasm, even among groups
>> conventional wisdom doggedly insists will refuse to embrace his
> candidacy."
>>
>> The proposals at the core of Bernie Sanders' platform are standard
>> fare for progressive Democrats. (photo: Derek Davis/Portland Press
>> Herald/Getty)
>>
>>
>> Why Doesn't Bernie Sanders Run on a Truly Socialist Platform?
>> By Jesse A. Myerson, Rolling Stone
>> 24 July 15
>>
>> Sanders calls himself a democratic socialist, but his platform is
>> hardly radical
>>
>> Bernie Sanders is nominally a socialist, or at least he sorta-kinda
>> calls himself one. "Do they think I'm afraid of the word?" he mused in
>> a recent interview with The Nation. "I'm not afraid of the word." When
>> The Washington Post gave him the opportunity to disavow the epithet
>> during his 2006 Senate run, Sanders stood firm: "I wouldn't deny it,"
>> he said. "Not for one second.
>> I'm a democratic socialist."
>> His affiliation has not escaped notice of Hillary Clinton's defenders.
> Sen.
>> Claire McCaskill recently grumbled, "I think that the media is giving
>> Bernie a pass right now. I very rarely read in any coverage of Bernie
>> that he's a socialist."
>> In apparent violation of this supposed cover-up, The Daily Beast's Ana
>> Marie Cox has labeled Sanders an "extremist" "caricature" who amounts
>> to "the Left's Trump." The Week's Damon Linker was also tempted by the
>> Sanders-Trump comparison, calling them "unelectable radicals," and
>> noting that Sanders "shows little interest in tailoring his message to
>> woo the masses."
>> Yet, despite his inescapable affiliation with the s-word – long
>> considered a politically fatal liability – and his reported contempt
>> for the masses'
>> sensibilities, Sanders continues to draw enormous crowds, outpace
>> Hillary Clinton in attracting small donations and generate great
>> enthusiasm, even among groups conventional wisdom doggedly insists
>> will refuse to embrace his candidacy. That these throngs – energized
>> by Sanders' egalitarian economic advocacy, support for worker
>> empowerment and hostility to what he calls "the billionaire class" –
>> are not noticeably put off by the description of these qualities as
>> socialist, as opposed to merely "progressive," raises the
>> question: Why doesn't Sanders avail himself of this political latitude
>> and run on a more socialistic policy program?
>> For now, the proposals at the core of his platform – for the most part
>> very good – are standard fare for progressive Democrats. Of the "12
>> Steps Forward" in his "Agenda for America," none diverge from the
>> policies advocated by Sanders' fellow members of the Congressional
>> Progressive Caucus. In fact, with the exception of "Creating Worker
>> Co-ops," "Trade Policies that Benefit American Workers" and "Health
>> Care as a Right for All," none of the items would seem out of place in
>> a stump speech or State of the Union address by President Obama.
>> For now, this sort of platform constitutes the leftmost bounds of
>> mainstream policy discourse, but there is plenty of room to stretch
>> leftward through advocacy of "non-reformist reforms" – those that, in
>> the words of French philosopher André Gorz, "advance toward a radical
>> transformation of society," producing a "modification of the relations
>> of power" and thus "serv[ing] to weaken capitalism and to shake its
>> joints."
>> On the other hand, an increase in the minimum wage – to use one
>> example from Sanders' platform – yields a host of advantages for
>> working people, and plainly excites the opposition of the capitalist
>> class, but it neither socializes ownership claims on capital, nor
>> fundamentally changes the power relations between workers and owners,
>> nor incites a process that yields equality as reliably as capitalism
>> yields inequality. Raising the minimum wage is a defense against
>> capitalists' perpetual imperative to intensify exploitation of labor
>> by lowering wages, not an offense against the structures by which
>> capitalists are able to do this.
>> Running on a platform with a non-reformist reform at its core would
>> serve Sanders' pro-equality political project, even if he should lose
>> to Clinton and her mountains of corporate cash. Once one of these
>> off-the-agenda items is named, articulated and argued for – once
>> people are familiarized with a program's contours, rationale and
>> merits – it is much easier to mobilize support for an idea. The Nader
>> campaigns left behind them nothing so much as contempt for third party
>> "spoilers," the Kucinich campaigns not even that.
>> People for Bernie (whose open letter encouraging Sanders to run I
>> signed) may hope for an ongoing political organization, such as
>> emerged from the insurgent candidacy of Sanders' fellow Vermonter, former
> Gov. Howard Dean.
>> But it is fair to ask more. The more attention and enthusiasm his
>> candidacy garners, the more favorable the terrain will be for Sanders
>> to pry open the boundaries of policy consideration. This would provide
>> a boost to the effort to agitate for a departure from capitalism,
>> after what he calls his "revolution" concludes.
>> Of the array of non-reformist reforms Sanders could adopt as key
>> planks, the one that probably makes the most sense is a job guarantee,
>> whose historical advocates have ranged from Thomas Paine to Martin
>> Luther King. Under this program, the federal government would act as
>> the "employer of last resort"; it could hire the unemployed for its
>> own national projects, funnel money to states and municipalities or
>> let communities design their own projects and apply for funding.
>> Guaranteeing public sector employment to anyone who wants to sign up
>> would accomplish a lot of the goals Sanders trumpets. It would reduce
>> inequality by eliminating unemployment and its resultant poverty. It
>> would magnify worker power by providing an exit from the job market,
>> thereby setting minimum standards for all sorts for private sector
>> employment. It would eliminate employment discrimination, long a
>> central pillar of structural racism, erasing the chief cause of
>> recidivism. It would allow communities that currently rely on prisons
>> to close them without toppling the local economy, thereby enabling the
>> type of mass decarceration Sanders would do well to advocate
>> forcefully, the better to make up for his recent blunder at Netroots
>> Nation. It would promote ecological sustainability by making full
>> employment independent of the resource extraction sector, by paying
>> for low-emissions employment like elder- and childcare and by
>> providing resources for pollution-reducing infrastructure renovation.
>> It would guarantee dignified pay and conditions for so-called
>> "unskilled" labor typically performed by women: domestic work,
>> childcare and nursing. It would end reliance on increasingly expensive
>> higher education as a prerequisite for employment. It would
>> practically establish a public option for health care, since those
>> availing themselves of the program would receive normal benefits for a
>> federal employee.
>> All these virtues, and the program would be fiscally sound on its own.
>> It would grow the deficit permanently – an outcome Sanders has
>> repeatedly, to his disgrace, maintained is undesirable – but never so
>> far that inflation, the sole danger of too big a deficit, ensues: When
>> the business cycle is down, the program would grow to bring us up to
>> capacity, and when a boom threatens to inflate the economy, the program
> would automatically shrink.
>> As
>> long as the job guarantee wages are not competitive with the private
>> sector, they should serve to anchor the general price level.
>> Nor is this some bizarre, far-fetched idea that would hike Sanders'
>> already uncomfortably high degree of Seeming Kooky: even without
>> inclusion on the agenda of any mainstream political actors, a job
>> guarantee already polls at
>> 47 percent.
>> Ironically, no one touts the merits of guaranteed public employment
>> more vigorously than modern monetary theorists like Stephanie Kelton,
>> the chief economist for the Democratic staff on the Sanders-chaired
>> Senate Budget Committee. I took his hiring Kelton as a signal that
>> Sanders was preparing to run for president on a job guarantee. So far,
>> he has given no such indication, but there remain many excruciating
>> months until the primaries; Sanders has plenty of time to earn more
>> fully the label he says he's not afraid of.
>> Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not
>> valid.
>>
>> The proposals at the core of Bernie Sanders' platform are standard
>> fare for progressive Democrats. (photo: Derek Davis/Portland Press
>> Herald/Getty)
>> http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/why-doesnt-bernie-sanders-ru
>> n-on-a
>> -truly-socialist-platform-20150722 -
>> ixzz3gp85DSF1http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/why-doesnt-bern
>> ie-san
>> ders-run-on-a-truly-socialist-platform-20150722 - ixzz3gp85DSF1 Why
>> Doesn't Bernie Sanders Run on a Truly Socialist Platform?
>> By Jesse A. Myerson, Rolling Stone
>> 24 July 15
>> Sanders calls himself a democratic socialist, but his platform is
>> hardly radical ernie Sanders is nominally a socialist, or at least he
>> sorta-kinda calls himself one. "Do they think I'm afraid of the word?"
>> he mused in a recent interview with The Nation. "I'm not afraid of the
>> word." When The Washington Post gave him the opportunity to disavow
>> the epithet during his 2006 Senate run, Sanders stood firm: "I
>> wouldn't deny it," he said. "Not for one second.
>> I'm a democratic socialist."
>> His affiliation has not escaped notice of Hillary Clinton's defenders.
> Sen.
>> Claire McCaskill recently grumbled, "I think that the media is giving
>> Bernie a pass right now. I very rarely read in any coverage of Bernie
>> that he's a socialist."
>> In apparent violation of this supposed cover-up, The Daily Beast's Ana
>> Marie Cox has labeled Sanders an "extremist" "caricature" who amounts
>> to "the Left's Trump." The Week's Damon Linker was also tempted by the
>> Sanders-Trump comparison, calling them "unelectable radicals," and
>> noting that Sanders "shows little interest in tailoring his message to
>> woo the masses."
>> Yet, despite his inescapable affiliation with the s-word – long
>> considered a politically fatal liability – and his reported contempt
>> for the masses'
>> sensibilities, Sanders continues to draw enormous crowds, outpace
>> Hillary Clinton in attracting small donations and generate great
>> enthusiasm, even among groups conventional wisdom doggedly insists
>> will refuse to embrace his candidacy. That these throngs – energized
>> by Sanders' egalitarian economic advocacy, support for worker
>> empowerment and hostility to what he calls "the billionaire class" –
>> are not noticeably put off by the description of these qualities as
>> socialist, as opposed to merely "progressive," raises the
>> question: Why doesn't Sanders avail himself of this political latitude
>> and run on a more socialistic policy program?
>> For now, the proposals at the core of his platform – for the most part
>> very good – are standard fare for progressive Democrats. Of the "12
>> Steps Forward" in his "Agenda for America," none diverge from the
>> policies advocated by Sanders' fellow members of the Congressional
>> Progressive Caucus. In fact, with the exception of "Creating Worker
>> Co-ops," "Trade Policies that Benefit American Workers" and "Health
>> Care as a Right for All," none of the items would seem out of place in
>> a stump speech or State of the Union address by President Obama.
>> For now, this sort of platform constitutes the leftmost bounds of
>> mainstream policy discourse, but there is plenty of room to stretch
>> leftward through advocacy of "non-reformist reforms" – those that, in
>> the words of French philosopher André Gorz, "advance toward a radical
>> transformation of society," producing a "modification of the relations
>> of power" and thus "serv[ing] to weaken capitalism and to shake its
>> joints."
>> On the other hand, an increase in the minimum wage – to use one
>> example from Sanders' platform – yields a host of advantages for
>> working people, and plainly excites the opposition of the capitalist
>> class, but it neither socializes ownership claims on capital, nor
>> fundamentally changes the power relations between workers and owners,
>> nor incites a process that yields equality as reliably as capitalism
>> yields inequality. Raising the minimum wage is a defense against
>> capitalists' perpetual imperative to intensify exploitation of labor
>> by lowering wages, not an offense against the structures by which
>> capitalists are able to do this.
>> Running on a platform with a non-reformist reform at its core would
>> serve Sanders' pro-equality political project, even if he should lose
>> to Clinton and her mountains of corporate cash. Once one of these
>> off-the-agenda items is named, articulated and argued for – once
>> people are familiarized with a program's contours, rationale and
>> merits – it is much easier to mobilize support for an idea. The Nader
>> campaigns left behind them nothing so much as contempt for third party
>> "spoilers," the Kucinich campaigns not even that.
>> People for Bernie (whose open letter encouraging Sanders to run I
>> signed) may hope for an ongoing political organization, such as
>> emerged from the insurgent candidacy of Sanders' fellow Vermonter, former
> Gov. Howard Dean.
>> But it is fair to ask more. The more attention and enthusiasm his
>> candidacy garners, the more favorable the terrain will be for Sanders
>> to pry open the boundaries of policy consideration. This would provide
>> a boost to the effort to agitate for a departure from capitalism,
>> after what he calls his "revolution" concludes.
>> Of the array of non-reformist reforms Sanders could adopt as key
>> planks, the one that probably makes the most sense is a job guarantee,
>> whose historical advocates have ranged from Thomas Paine to Martin
>> Luther King. Under this program, the federal government would act as
>> the "employer of last resort"; it could hire the unemployed for its
>> own national projects, funnel money to states and municipalities or
>> let communities design their own projects and apply for funding.
>> Guaranteeing public sector employment to anyone who wants to sign up
>> would accomplish a lot of the goals Sanders trumpets. It would reduce
>> inequality by eliminating unemployment and its resultant poverty. It
>> would magnify worker power by providing an exit from the job market,
>> thereby setting minimum standards for all sorts for private sector
>> employment. It would eliminate employment discrimination, long a
>> central pillar of structural racism, erasing the chief cause of
>> recidivism. It would allow communities that currently rely on prisons
>> to close them without toppling the local economy, thereby enabling the
>> type of mass decarceration Sanders would do well to advocate
>> forcefully, the better to make up for his recent blunder at Netroots
>> Nation. It would promote ecological sustainability by making full
>> employment independent of the resource extraction sector, by paying
>> for low-emissions employment like elder- and childcare and by
>> providing resources for pollution-reducing infrastructure renovation.
>> It would guarantee dignified pay and conditions for so-called
>> "unskilled" labor typically performed by women: domestic work,
>> childcare and nursing. It would end reliance on increasingly expensive
>> higher education as a prerequisite for employment. It would
>> practically establish a public option for health care, since those
>> availing themselves of the program would receive normal benefits for a
>> federal employee.
>> All these virtues, and the program would be fiscally sound on its own.
>> It would grow the deficit permanently – an outcome Sanders has
>> repeatedly, to his disgrace, maintained is undesirable – but never so
>> far that inflation, the sole danger of too big a deficit, ensues: When
>> the business cycle is down, the program would grow to bring us up to
>> capacity, and when a boom threatens to inflate the economy, the program
> would automatically shrink.
>> As
>> long as the job guarantee wages are not competitive with the private
>> sector, they should serve to anchor the general price level.
>> Nor is this some bizarre, far-fetched idea that would hike Sanders'
>> already uncomfortably high degree of Seeming Kooky: even without
>> inclusion on the agenda of any mainstream political actors, a job
>> guarantee already polls at
>> 47 percent.
>> Ironically, no one touts the merits of guaranteed public employment
>> more vigorously than modern monetary theorists like Stephanie Kelton,
>> the chief economist for the Democratic staff on the Sanders-chaired
>> Senate Budget Committee. I took his hiring Kelton as a signal that
>> Sanders was preparing to run for president on a job guarantee. So far,
>> he has given no such indication, but there remain many excruciating
>> months until the primaries; Sanders has plenty of time to earn more
>> fully the label he says he's not afraid of.
>> http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
>> http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>