Re: [blind-democracy] The Line That May Have Won Hillary Clinton the Nomination

There's lots to think about here. But the banks did not forget to
screw only Blacks and Latinos. Many Working Class families found
themselves out on the curb while the foreclosure signs were being
posted on their once cozy home.
All three of my children were caught up, in one degree or another. My
nephew and his family. Cathy and I were impacted, even if we didn't
lose our home, we lost thousands of dollars of our equity.

Carl Jarvis


On 4/29/16, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
>
> Taibbi writes: "Maybe it's too early for post-mortems. But the results the
> other night seemingly all but settled the Democratic primary race, which
> may
> have turned on a single moment."
>
> Hillary Clinton. (photo: Reuters)
>
>
> The Line That May Have Won Hillary Clinton the Nomination
> By Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone
> 29 April 16
>
> Clinton left a rhetorical door open for Sanders to connect Wall Street and
> race, but he didn't do it
> Maybe it's too early for post-mortems. But the results the other night
> seemingly all but settled the Democratic primary race, which may have
> turned
> on a single moment.
> Earlier this year, at a union rally in Henderson, Nevada, Hillary Clinton
> introduced a new theme in her stump speeches.
> "If we broke up the big banks tomorrow," Clinton asked, "would that end
> racism?"
> Logically, it was an odd thing to say. After all, lots of things worth
> doing, even political things, won't "end racism."
> But from a practical point of view, Clinton's gambit was brilliant
> politics.
> It effectively caricaturized Sanders as a one-note candidate too steeped in
> attacking billionaires to see the problems of people down on Main Street.
> And the line fit in a tweet, making it perfect for rocketing around the
> Internet.
> Clinton probably also understood that most people don't draw a connection
> between Wall Street corruption and race. Although the first victims of the
> financial crisis tended to be poor, nonwhite and elderly, tales of iniquity
> in the billionaire class tend instead to resonate with a different audience
> — specifically, the white liberals and college students who flocked to the
> Sanders campaign.
> There was a political cliché behind this disconnect. When most people hear
> the words "Wall Street," they think of the stock market. And since
> African-American voters have traditionally distrusted and avoided the stock
> market, at least in comparison to white investors, there is a perception
> that "Wall Street" is an issue that doesn't really concern black people.
> In the subprime era, though, banks actually used this cliché to their
> advantage. They profited immensely from a real-estate operation that
> specifically targeted people who stayed away from the financial markets,
> and
> carefully guarded their money by putting it in their homes.
> According to one study, about two-thirds of all subprime loans between 2000
> and 2007 were made to people who already owned their homes. The targets
> were
> often elderly, in particular men and women of color. Visiting loan officers
> convinced these borrowers to use the homes they'd poured their savings into
> their whole lives as ATM machines.
> The pitch was: refinance your home, and get a little extra spending money
> each month! Lots of people went for it. But there was mischief hidden in
> the
> fine print of many of these "refi" deals, which often quickly exploded.
> Before long, the now-departed agent's promises would evaporate into a toxic
> quicksand of debt, unforeseen penalties and foreclosure.
> Like a lot of reporters who covered the crash era, I initially
> misunderstood
> the profound racial element in the subprime drama. This wasn't the S&L
> crisis or the Enron-era accounting scandals or even the Internet bubble, a
> speculative craze that devoured the savings of white Middle America.
> Subprime was different. It was fueled by a particular kind of predatory
> lending that targeted a very specific group of people.
> In the 2000s, armies of smooth-talking real-estate hustlers from companies
> like Countrywide and New Century poured into residential areas across the
> country, but particularly into black neighborhoods. They made wild
> promises,
> in many cases offering huge loans in exchange for little or no money down.
> Once the agents got signatures on these loans, they quickly sold them up
> the
> financial river to Wall Street, where the great banks repackaged them for
> resale at huge profit to pension funds and other investors. The scheme
> depended on getting huge numbers of names on new loans.
> Thanks to a number of settlements, we now know that some companies got many
> of those new signatures via intentional strategies targeting black and
> Hispanic customers. The most infamous example was Wells Fargo, which paid a
> $175 million settlement for systematically overcharging black and Hispanic
> borrowers.
> It came out that a Maryland office of the bank referred to subprime loans
> as
> "ghetto loans," and pushed its loan officers to unload as many as possible
> on the "mud people" of Baltimore and the surrounding suburbs. A crucial
> element involved pushing expensive and dangerous subprime loans on people
> who qualified for the safer, lower-interest prime loans.
> The New York Times did a study of New York-area home lending and found that
> African-Americans who made more than $68,000 were five times as likely as
> white people in the same income category to be marketed risky subprime
> loans. The ratio was even worse at Wells Fargo, where it was more like
> eight
> to one.
> Some of the pitches made by real-estate hustlers during this time bore a
> striking resemblance to crude predatory schemes that had targeted black
> homeowners in generations past.
> The wide-scale falsification of employment data in mortgage applications
> that subprime companies used to get as many borrowers into loans as
> possible? That same scam happened decades ago in cities all over America,
> most memorably in Brooklyn in the Sixties and Seventies.
> In one particular case involving a firm called Eastern Services (a kind of
> crude precursor to Countrywide), FHA officials were bribed en masse in a
> scheme that led to tens of millions of dollars in losses and thousands of
> vacated homes.
> It was the same hot-potato game as subprime. Then as now, the idea was to
> create lots of loans and quickly sell them off to unsuspecting
> institutional
> suckers down the line, like savings banks and pension funds.
> In conjunction with better-known offenses like blockbusting (i.e., clearing
> neighborhoods of white residents through scare tactics), the misdeeds of
> companies like Eastern Services helped destroy black neighborhoods
> practically overnight. They did so in much the same way the modern
> foreclosure crisis has now left deserts of blighted homes in cities all
> over
> the country, from Trenton to Fort Wayne to Fayetteville to Rochester to
> Port
> St. Lucie and beyond.
> Likewise, the "interest-only" or "negative amortization" loan of the
> subprime era, which allowed people to jump into new houses with little or
> no
> money down, was little more than an homage to the "contract mortgage." The
> latter was an infamous type of zero-equity real estate loan-sharking that
> targeted black homeowners throughout the pre-Civil Rights era.
> Wall Street in the crisis era experienced an ideological shift. The ideas
> of
> people like Ayn Rand, once considered extremist, became mainstream. The
> heads of powerful companies became seduced by a vision of an America made
> up
> of "producers and parasites."
> Under this reasoning, it was only natural that the wealth-creating
> "producers" should take all of the financial power, because the parasites
> down below would otherwise just brainlessly consume it.
> We saw this in comments like Mitt Romney's crack about "the 47 percent" or
> his incredible admonition to the NAACP chiding people who want "free
> stuff,"
> or in billionaire Charlie Munger's angry response to people who wanted
> mortgage relief after the crash.
> "There's danger in just shoveling out money to people who say, 'My life is
> a
> little harder than it used to be,'" said Munger, who himself had benefitted
> massively from federal bailouts. "At a certain place you've got to say,
> 'Suck it in and cope, buddy.'"
> These lunatic resentments drove the effort to blame minority homeowners for
> the crisis. That effort peaked in a Tea Party movement triggered by a rant
> by CNBC goof Rick Santelli against the "losers" of the housing crisis. He
> described them as the "people who drink the water" at the expense of those
> who "carry the water." As coded language went, it was remarkably un-subtle.
> Race was always at the very center of the crash story. It was just never
> explained that way in the press.
> When Hillary Clinton used that line about breaking up the banks not ending
> racism, she opened a door for Bernie Sanders to talk about all of this. He
> could have talked about Wall Street not just as a symbol of international
> greed and corruption, but in terms of a more peculiarly American kind of
> ugliness.
> He could have begun with subprime and plausibly traced all the way back to
> 40 acres and a mule, explaining the modern problem of wealth inequality as
> (among other things) a still-extant failure of the Civil Rights movement,
> an
> ancient wrong still not corrected.
> But he didn't. Sanders I believe fundamentally sees the Wall Street
> corruption issue as a matter of class, i.e., rich vs. poor. He never found
> a
> way to talk about the special edge the financial sector brought/brings to
> the exploitation of nonwhite America.
> I don't know and wouldn't presume to know if any of this explains why
> Clinton performed so extremely well with black voters compared with
> Sanders.
> Surely there are hundreds of factors. The idea of a monolithic "black vote"
> is always one of the more insidious clichés of campaign journalism anyway,
> as Collier Meyerson explained so well in The New Yorker last week.
> But this is less about whether or not Sanders failed to reach "the black
> vote" than it is about a greater overall failure of many of us who followed
> these issues, myself included, to eloquently connect Wall Street corruption
> to the pain at the Main Street level. Nobody was ever able to truly
> popularize that reality, make it felt.
> Sanders came the closest. But if he recedes now in favor of a candidate
> with
> ties to the very banks that caused the crisis, it will mean another
> opportunity lost. For a little while longer at least, "Wall Street
> corruption" will be thought of as a niche issue. But it should be one that
> consumes the attention of all, rich and poor, white and black, and
> sometimes
> especially the latter.
> Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not
> valid.
>
> Hillary Clinton. (photo: Reuters)
> http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-line-that-may-have-won-hillary
> -clinton-the-nomination-20160428 -
> ixzz478UwP2pfhttp://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-line-that-may-hav
> e-won-hillary-clinton-the-nomination-20160428 - ixzz478UwP2pf
> The Line That May Have Won Hillary Clinton the Nomination
> By Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone
> 29 April 16
> Clinton left a rhetorical door open for Sanders to connect Wall Street and
> race, but he didn't do it
> aybe it's too early for post-mortems. But the results the other night
> seemingly all but settled the Democratic primary race, which may have
> turned
> on a single moment.
> Earlier this year, at a union rally in Henderson, Nevada, Hillary Clinton
> introduced a new theme in her stump speeches.
> "If we broke up the big banks tomorrow," Clinton asked, "would that end
> racism?"
> Logically, it was an odd thing to say. After all, lots of things worth
> doing, even political things, won't "end racism."
> But from a practical point of view, Clinton's gambit was brilliant
> politics.
> It effectively caricaturized Sanders as a one-note candidate too steeped in
> attacking billionaires to see the problems of people down on Main Street.
> And the line fit in a tweet, making it perfect for rocketing around the
> Internet.
> Clinton probably also understood that most people don't draw a connection
> between Wall Street corruption and race. Although the first victims of the
> financial crisis tended to be poor, nonwhite and elderly, tales of iniquity
> in the billionaire class tend instead to resonate with a different audience
> — specifically, the white liberals and college students who flocked to the
> Sanders campaign.
> There was a political cliché behind this disconnect. When most people hear
> the words "Wall Street," they think of the stock market. And since
> African-American voters have traditionally distrusted and avoided the stock
> market, at least in comparison to white investors, there is a perception
> that "Wall Street" is an issue that doesn't really concern black people.
> In the subprime era, though, banks actually used this cliché to their
> advantage. They profited immensely from a real-estate operation that
> specifically targeted people who stayed away from the financial markets,
> and
> carefully guarded their money by putting it in their homes.
> According to one study, about two-thirds of all subprime loans between 2000
> and 2007 were made to people who already owned their homes. The targets
> were
> often elderly, in particular men and women of color. Visiting loan officers
> convinced these borrowers to use the homes they'd poured their savings into
> their whole lives as ATM machines.
> The pitch was: refinance your home, and get a little extra spending money
> each month! Lots of people went for it. But there was mischief hidden in
> the
> fine print of many of these "refi" deals, which often quickly exploded.
> Before long, the now-departed agent's promises would evaporate into a toxic
> quicksand of debt, unforeseen penalties and foreclosure.
> Like a lot of reporters who covered the crash era, I initially
> misunderstood
> the profound racial element in the subprime drama. This wasn't the S&L
> crisis or the Enron-era accounting scandals or even the Internet bubble, a
> speculative craze that devoured the savings of white Middle America.
> Subprime was different. It was fueled by a particular kind of predatory
> lending that targeted a very specific group of people.
> In the 2000s, armies of smooth-talking real-estate hustlers from companies
> like Countrywide and New Century poured into residential areas across the
> country, but particularly into black neighborhoods. They made wild
> promises,
> in many cases offering huge loans in exchange for little or no money down.
> Once the agents got signatures on these loans, they quickly sold them up
> the
> financial river to Wall Street, where the great banks repackaged them for
> resale at huge profit to pension funds and other investors. The scheme
> depended on getting huge numbers of names on new loans.
> Thanks to a number of settlements, we now know that some companies got many
> of those new signatures via intentional strategies targeting black and
> Hispanic customers. The most infamous example was Wells Fargo, which paid a
> $175 million settlement for systematically overcharging black and Hispanic
> borrowers.
> It came out that a Maryland office of the bank referred to subprime loans
> as
> "ghetto loans," and pushed its loan officers to unload as many as possible
> on the "mud people" of Baltimore and the surrounding suburbs. A crucial
> element involved pushing expensive and dangerous subprime loans on people
> who qualified for the safer, lower-interest prime loans.
> The New York Times did a study of New York-area home lending and found that
> African-Americans who made more than $68,000 were five times as likely as
> white people in the same income category to be marketed risky subprime
> loans. The ratio was even worse at Wells Fargo, where it was more like
> eight
> to one.
> Some of the pitches made by real-estate hustlers during this time bore a
> striking resemblance to crude predatory schemes that had targeted black
> homeowners in generations past.
> The wide-scale falsification of employment data in mortgage applications
> that subprime companies used to get as many borrowers into loans as
> possible? That same scam happened decades ago in cities all over America,
> most memorably in Brooklyn in the Sixties and Seventies.
> In one particular case involving a firm called Eastern Services (a kind of
> crude precursor to Countrywide), FHA officials were bribed en masse in a
> scheme that led to tens of millions of dollars in losses and thousands of
> vacated homes.
> It was the same hot-potato game as subprime. Then as now, the idea was to
> create lots of loans and quickly sell them off to unsuspecting
> institutional
> suckers down the line, like savings banks and pension funds.
> In conjunction with better-known offenses like blockbusting (i.e., clearing
> neighborhoods of white residents through scare tactics), the misdeeds of
> companies like Eastern Services helped destroy black neighborhoods
> practically overnight. They did so in much the same way the modern
> foreclosure crisis has now left deserts of blighted homes in cities all
> over
> the country, from Trenton to Fort Wayne to Fayetteville to Rochester to
> Port
> St. Lucie and beyond.
> Likewise, the "interest-only" or "negative amortization" loan of the
> subprime era, which allowed people to jump into new houses with little or
> no
> money down, was little more than an homage to the "contract mortgage." The
> latter was an infamous type of zero-equity real estate loan-sharking that
> targeted black homeowners throughout the pre-Civil Rights era.
> Wall Street in the crisis era experienced an ideological shift. The ideas
> of
> people like Ayn Rand, once considered extremist, became mainstream. The
> heads of powerful companies became seduced by a vision of an America made
> up
> of "producers and parasites."
> Under this reasoning, it was only natural that the wealth-creating
> "producers" should take all of the financial power, because the parasites
> down below would otherwise just brainlessly consume it.
> We saw this in comments like Mitt Romney's crack about "the 47 percent" or
> his incredible admonition to the NAACP chiding people who want "free
> stuff,"
> or in billionaire Charlie Munger's angry response to people who wanted
> mortgage relief after the crash.
> "There's danger in just shoveling out money to people who say, 'My life is
> a
> little harder than it used to be,'" said Munger, who himself had benefitted
> massively from federal bailouts. "At a certain place you've got to say,
> 'Suck it in and cope, buddy.'"
> These lunatic resentments drove the effort to blame minority homeowners for
> the crisis. That effort peaked in a Tea Party movement triggered by a rant
> by CNBC goof Rick Santelli against the "losers" of the housing crisis. He
> described them as the "people who drink the water" at the expense of those
> who "carry the water." As coded language went, it was remarkably un-subtle.
> Race was always at the very center of the crash story. It was just never
> explained that way in the press.
> When Hillary Clinton used that line about breaking up the banks not ending
> racism, she opened a door for Bernie Sanders to talk about all of this. He
> could have talked about Wall Street not just as a symbol of international
> greed and corruption, but in terms of a more peculiarly American kind of
> ugliness.
> He could have begun with subprime and plausibly traced all the way back to
> 40 acres and a mule, explaining the modern problem of wealth inequality as
> (among other things) a still-extant failure of the Civil Rights movement,
> an
> ancient wrong still not corrected.
> But he didn't. Sanders I believe fundamentally sees the Wall Street
> corruption issue as a matter of class, i.e., rich vs. poor. He never found
> a
> way to talk about the special edge the financial sector brought/brings to
> the exploitation of nonwhite America.
> I don't know and wouldn't presume to know if any of this explains why
> Clinton performed so extremely well with black voters compared with
> Sanders.
> Surely there are hundreds of factors. The idea of a monolithic "black vote"
> is always one of the more insidious clichés of campaign journalism anyway,
> as Collier Meyerson explained so well in The New Yorker last week.
> But this is less about whether or not Sanders failed to reach "the black
> vote" than it is about a greater overall failure of many of us who followed
> these issues, myself included, to eloquently connect Wall Street corruption
> to the pain at the Main Street level. Nobody was ever able to truly
> popularize that reality, make it felt.
> Sanders came the closest. But if he recedes now in favor of a candidate
> with
> ties to the very banks that caused the crisis, it will mean another
> opportunity lost. For a little while longer at least, "Wall Street
> corruption" will be thought of as a niche issue. But it should be one that
> consumes the attention of all, rich and poor, white and black, and
> sometimes
> especially the latter.
> http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
> http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
>
>
>

Re: [blind-democracy] US, Puerto Rican gov’ts squeeze workers for debt

Have you ever wondered what an Empire looks like in its death throes?
Well, if you skipped classes on the days your teacher discussed the
Fall of the Roman Empire, the British Empire, the Ottoman Empire, or
any of a dozen others, then just take a good look at Puerto Rico. As
the wealthy Lords and Ladies thrash about desperately attempting to
squeeze a few last drops of blood from the Puerto Rican people, even
the Working Class is listed as an endangered species.
Working Class Americans need to take notice of the decline of their
brothers and sisters being forced to bear the Cross of Corporate Debt
laid upon their backs. Study it well. This is the inevitable fate
for working class people whose Ruling Class has turned to plundering
its own people. And when those Puerto Rican workers have been robbed
of all they own, the Masters will bring out the military and the Bully
Boys to force them to bend their backs just a little harder.
At least, as an avowed Agnostic, I don't have the embarrassing task of
trying to explain how my Loving God can allow this corrupt Empire to
crush the Spirit of a beautiful People.

Carl Jarvis


On 4/28/16, Roger Loran Bailey <dmarc-noreply@freelists.org> wrote:
> http://themilitant.com/2016/8017/801751.html
> The Militant (logo)
>
> Vol. 80/No. 17 May 2, 2016
>
>
> US, Puerto Rican gov'ts squeeze workers for debt
>
>
> BY SETH GALINSKY
> The colonial government of Puerto Rico declared a "fiscal state of
> emergency" April 5 and authorized Gov. Alejandro García Padilla to
> impose a moratorium on payments on its $72 billion debt. Fortune
> magazine ran an article with a headline proclaiming, "Puerto Rico Has
> Decided It Doesn't Need to Pay Its Debts."
> But the temporary measure is simply a maneuver to win a better deal than
> a so-called rescue plan being debated in the U.S. Congress. Proposed by
> Republicans and backed by some Democrats, that plan would set up a
> U.S.-appointed fiscal control board, which would decide which debts get
> paid first and would have the power to impose "haircuts" on bondholders,
> the equivalent of bankruptcy.
>
> García's main demand is that more Puerto Rican capitalists be
> represented on such a board.
>
> "A lot of the bondholders bought the bonds at half price," retired
> hospital worker Luis Epardo said by phone from Aguadilla, Puerto Rico,
> April 9. "But they want to get paid 100 percent. Then there would be no
> money to pay the police, teachers, pensions. They don't care about the
> people of Puerto Rico."
>
> Some bondholders who oppose bankruptcy because they are worried their
> competitors will get paid first are threatening to sue. But Investor's
> Business Daily argued that Puerto Rico needs "debt relief," saying the
> choice is "between order and chaos."
>
> An editorial in the Wall Street Journal April 7 called on the Congress
> to "impose tough love in exchange for relief" — a rather arrogant
> statement in light of Washington's imperialist record on the island.
>
> Ever since the U.S. military took control of Puerto Rico in 1898, U.S.
> imperialism has plundered billions from the island's resources and labor
> of its workers and farmers.
>
> Washington encouraged the expansion of U.S.-based sugar companies that
> drove many small farmers off the land. Today some 85 percent of the
> fruits and vegetables consumed there are imported from the United States.
>
> In 1920 Congress passed the Jones Act, requiring all maritime cargo to
> Puerto Rico be carried on U.S.-owned ships, which doubles the cost of
> imports. During the late 1940s Washington began giving U.S. companies in
> Puerto Rico big federal and local tax breaks.
>
> After the victory of the Cuban Revolution in 1959, Puerto Rico's fame as
> "the Poorhouse of the Caribbean" was an embarrassment to the U.S.
> capitalist rulers. Washington extended federal minimum wage laws to the
> island and additional tax breaks to U.S. companies there, part of an
> attempt to transform Puerto Rico into its "Showcase of Democracy" to
> combat the attraction of workers and farmers in the region to the Cuban
> Revolution. In 1976 the federal government completely exempted U.S.
> companies there from corporate taxes.
>
> From 1996 to 2005 Washington phased out many tax breaks, accelerating
> the impact of the worldwide economic crisis, and highlighting once again
> that Puerto Rico is a U.S. colony with no say in its own affairs.
>
> While Puerto Rico is still a world center for pharmaceutical
> manufacturing, the drug companies slashed their workforce from about
> 20,000 in 2000 to less than 11,000 in 2014. Employment in manufacturing
> overall dropped more than 24 percent from 2007 to 2012.
>
> Puerto Rico never recovered from a 2006 recession, its economy shrinking
> for nine of the past 10 years. The government laid off thousands of
> public workers, raised the retirement age, raised sales taxes, cut
> pensions and took out more loans to pay the debt.
>
> Gutting pension funds
> To keep paying the bondholders, the government also shorted its payments
> to pension funds. According to Reuters, the main pension funds for
> 330,000 workers and retirees "are virtually penniless … with about $1.8
> billion in assets to pay $45 billion in liabilities."
> More than 1,200 people are leaving the island for the United States
> every week, especially youth and middle class professionals.
>
> "Industry is disappearing and young people can't find work," cattle
> rancher Armando Arcelay told the Militant by phone from Aguadilla,
> Puerto Rico, April 11. "In my neighborhood, out of 70 homes, 10 are
> abandoned. The young people are emigrating to Florida." The official
> unemployment rate in Puerto Rico is 11.8 percent, more than double the
> U.S. average.
>
> There are thousands of small cattle ranchers on the island, many with
> just 20 to 25 cows, Arcelay said, but slaughterhouses have begun
> delaying payment for their cows and credit is harder to get.
>
> "As much as 20 percent of beef used to be produced here," he said. "But
> now we're down to 5 percent."
>
> Despite the mosquito-borne Zika virus epidemic, Arcelay said, the
> municipal government has stopped spraying pesticides. "They say there is
> no money to fumigate."
>
> "The government didn't use the loans they got correctly," Arcelay said.
> "But that's not the fault of future generations."
>
>
>
>
> Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home
>
>
>
>
>

Fwd: [blind-democracy] Clinton and Trump Edge Closer to Party Nominations, as Sanders Softens His Confrontational Tone

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Carl Jarvis <carjar82@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2016 07:39:43 -0700
Subject: Re: [blind-democracy] Clinton and Trump Edge Closer to Party
Nominations, as Sanders Softens His Confrontational Tone
To: blind-democracy@freelists.org

I've never gone to a race track or bet on a horse. But I still can
understand the feelings of the fellow who put his paycheck on a long
shot, only to see his horse...and his paycheck, fading in the back
stretch.
If the Democrat Central Committee's horse...Hillary...comes in, as it
now appears she will, then I am out of the race totally.
Of course it was never "My" race to begin with. I chose to root for
Bernie because I can't see any other outsider party making a bit of
difference in the lives of the Working/Lower Classes. As it turns
out, even tame old Bernie is too, too radical for the Democrat Central
Committee. He is the Henry Wallace of the 21st Century.
So when the finish flag goes up, or whatever they do to signal the end
of a horse race, I'll wander off to the back roads and the tumble down
shanties, and look around for Jill Stein. Maybe I can buy her a cup
of coffee or a pot of green tea.

Carl Jarvis

On 4/27/16, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
>
> Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
> Home > Clinton and Trump Edge Closer to Party Nominations, as Sanders
> Softens His Confrontational Tone
> ________________________________________
> Clinton and Trump Edge Closer to Party Nominations, as Sanders Softens His
> Confrontational Tone
> By Steven Rosenfeld [1] / AlterNet [2]
> April 26, 2016
> Donald Trump moved closer to the Republican nomination on Tuesday as he
> swept [3] five mid-Atlantic primaries, while Bernie Sanders slipped further
> behind [3] Hillary Clinton-despite winning the smallest state, Rhode
> Island,
> and promising to keep campaigning to influence the Democratic Party's
> agenda.
> Sanders' top campaign aides said they would meet Wednesday to discuss [4]
> their plans for the rest of the race-where they vowed to compete in all of
> the states including California. But they began to telegraph they'd be
> pleased if the Democratic Party embraced his core proposals such as making
> public universities tuition free and paying for that with a Wall St.
> trading
> tax.
> "We are going to continue to work to be the nominee of the party,"
> strategist Tad Devine told NPR, saying they will still try to convince the
> party that he is a better candidate against Trump-especially if he wins
> California. But that posture was tempered by the reality that they began
> Tuesday 240 pledged delegates behind Clinton and ended the day more than
> [3]
> 300 delegates behind Clinton.
> "Bernie has made it clear that it's very important that the next president
> be a Democrat," Devine said. "Whatever happens in terms of the outcome of
> this process, he's going to support the Democratic nominee for president."
> Clinton, speaking in Philadelphia after winning Pennsylvania, which had
> about half of Tuesday's Democratic delegates in play, as well as winning
> Maryland and Delaware soon after polls closed, praised Sanders and his
> supporters-more than suggesting she saw herself as the nominee. (In
> Connecticut, the fifth state voting Tuesday, Clinton led slightly, meaning
> they would split the delegates.)
> "I applaud Sen. Sanders and his millions of supporters for challenging us
> to
> get unaccountable money out of our politics, and giving greater emphasis to
> closing the gap of inequality-and I know together that we will get that
> done," Clinton said. "Because whether you support Sen. Sanders or you
> support me, there's much more that unites us than divides us."
> "We all agree that wages are too low and inequality is too high, that Wall
> Street can never again be allowed to threaten Main Street, and we should
> expand Social Security-not cut or privatize it," she continued. "We
> Democrats agree that college should be affordable to all, student debt
> shouldn't hold anyone back."
> Tough Night for Progressives
> Down the ballot, a handful of progressives running for Congress also had
> disappointing nights, led [5] by four-term Maryland Congresswoman Donna
> Edwards' loss to Congressman Chris Van Hollen in a bid for that state's
> U.S.
> Senate nomination. Edwards was backed by many progressives who wanted her
> to
> be the nation's second African-American woman senator.
> One silver lining for progressive primary candidates on Tuesday seemed to
> be
> Jamie Raskin, a Maryland state senator and constitutional law professor who
> was leading in the Democratic primary for the House seat that Van Hollen
> gave up to run for the Senate. Raskin was running against high-profile
> candidate Christie Matthews, wife of longtime MSNBC host and Beltway
> establishment figure Chris Matthews. The winners of Maryland's Democratic
> primary are expected to be elected in November.
> In Pennsylvania, Katie McGinty, an environmentalist-turned-regulator who
> worked in Bill Clinton's White House, won [6] the Senate primary, putting a
> strong Clinton ally in the position to challenge one of the most vulnerable
> Republican incumbents, Sen. Pat Toomey. That race is seen as one of a
> handful in 2016 where Democrats might retake a Senate majority.
> Trump Sweep
> But most of all, Tuesday's primaries belonged to Trump. He won handily in
> Pennsylvania, Maryland, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Delaware-getting more
> than 60 percent in several states. The delegate math is more complex on the
> GOP side than the Democratic side, but he ended the day with more than 925
> delegates of the 1,237 needed for the nomination on the first vote at the
> Republican National Convention.
> "I consider myself the presumptive nominee," Trump said, replying to press
> questions after a short speech from New York City. "You know the best way
> to
> beat the system is having things like this, where you get record-setting
> votes, where you get record-setting delegates. I use the analogy of the
> boxer. When the boxer knocks out the other boxer, you don't have to wait
> around for a decision."
> It also appeared after Tuesday that Ted Cruz cannot win enough delegates in
> the remaining 10 states that have not yet voted to win the nomination on
> the
> first vote, according to media experts tracking delegate totals. Cruz's
> team
> said that should he win Indiana's primary next week that Trump will not
> clear the 1,237 delegates needed for first ballot nomination, launching the
> first contested national political convention in decades.
> That strategy is the latest embraced by the GOP's stop-Trump faction. This
> weekend, Cruz and John Kasich announced a deal to stay out of each other's
> way in a few upcoming states-with Kasich staying out of Indiana and Cruz
> staying out of Oregon-to thwart Trump. However, a day later Kasich made
> statements casting doubt on that deal, and Oregon media reported that he
> does not [7] even have a candidate statement in its state primary voter
> guide.
> Steven Rosenfeld covers national political issues for AlterNet, including
> America's retirement crisis, democracy and voting rights, and campaigns and
> elections. He is the author of "Count My Vote: A Citizen's Guide to Voting"
> (AlterNet Books, 2008).
> Share on Facebook Share
> Share on Twitter Tweet
>
> Report typos and corrections to 'corrections@alternet.org'. [8]
> [9]
> ________________________________________
> Source URL:
> http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/clinton-and-trump-edge-closer-party-no
> minations-sanders-softens-his-confrontational
> Links:
> [1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/steven-rosenfeld
> [2] http://alternet.org
> [3] http://www.nytimes.com/elections/results
> [4]
> http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2016/04/26/bernie-sanders-to-rea
> ssess-candidacy-after-tuesdays-vote-but-hell-stay-in-race/?_r=0
> [5]
> http://data.baltimoresun.com/voter-guide-2016/results/maryland-results.html
> [6] http://www.electionreturns.state.pa.us/ENR_NEW
> [7]
> http://www.wweek.com/news/2016/04/25/john-kasich-gifted-oregon-by-ted-cruz-i
> snt-in-the-oregon-voters-pamphlet/
> [8] mailto:corrections@alternet.org?Subject=Typo on Clinton and Trump Edge
> Closer to Party Nominations, as Sanders Softens His Confrontational Tone
> [9] http://www.alternet.org/
> [10] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
>
> Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
> Home > Clinton and Trump Edge Closer to Party Nominations, as Sanders
> Softens His Confrontational Tone
>
> Clinton and Trump Edge Closer to Party Nominations, as Sanders Softens His
> Confrontational Tone
> By Steven Rosenfeld [1] / AlterNet [2]
> April 26, 2016
> Donald Trump moved closer to the Republican nomination on Tuesday as he
> swept [3] five mid-Atlantic primaries, while Bernie Sanders slipped further
> behind [3] Hillary Clinton-despite winning the smallest state, Rhode
> Island,
> and promising to keep campaigning to influence the Democratic Party's
> agenda.
> Sanders' top campaign aides said they would meet Wednesday to discuss [4]
> their plans for the rest of the race-where they vowed to compete in all of
> the states including California. But they began to telegraph they'd be
> pleased if the Democratic Party embraced his core proposals such as making
> public universities tuition free and paying for that with a Wall St.
> trading
> tax.
> "We are going to continue to work to be the nominee of the party,"
> strategist Tad Devine told NPR, saying they will still try to convince the
> party that he is a better candidate against Trump-especially if he wins
> California. But that posture was tempered by the reality that they began
> Tuesday 240 pledged delegates behind Clinton and ended the day more than
> [3]
> 300 delegates behind Clinton.
> "Bernie has made it clear that it's very important that the next president
> be a Democrat," Devine said. "Whatever happens in terms of the outcome of
> this process, he's going to support the Democratic nominee for president."
> Clinton, speaking in Philadelphia after winning Pennsylvania, which had
> about half of Tuesday's Democratic delegates in play, as well as winning
> Maryland and Delaware soon after polls closed, praised Sanders and his
> supporters-more than suggesting she saw herself as the nominee. (In
> Connecticut, the fifth state voting Tuesday, Clinton led slightly, meaning
> they would split the delegates.)
> "I applaud Sen. Sanders and his millions of supporters for challenging us
> to
> get unaccountable money out of our politics, and giving greater emphasis to
> closing the gap of inequality-and I know together that we will get that
> done," Clinton said. "Because whether you support Sen. Sanders or you
> support me, there's much more that unites us than divides us."
> "We all agree that wages are too low and inequality is too high, that Wall
> Street can never again be allowed to threaten Main Street, and we should
> expand Social Security-not cut or privatize it," she continued. "We
> Democrats agree that college should be affordable to all, student debt
> shouldn't hold anyone back."
> Tough Night for Progressives
> Down the ballot, a handful of progressives running for Congress also had
> disappointing nights, led [5] by four-term Maryland Congresswoman Donna
> Edwards' loss to Congressman Chris Van Hollen in a bid for that state's
> U.S.
> Senate nomination. Edwards was backed by many progressives who wanted her
> to
> be the nation's second African-American woman senator.
> One silver lining for progressive primary candidates on Tuesday seemed to
> be
> Jamie Raskin, a Maryland state senator and constitutional law professor who
> was leading in the Democratic primary for the House seat that Van Hollen
> gave up to run for the Senate. Raskin was running against high-profile
> candidate Christie Matthews, wife of longtime MSNBC host and Beltway
> establishment figure Chris Matthews. The winners of Maryland's Democratic
> primary are expected to be elected in November.
> In Pennsylvania, Katie McGinty, an environmentalist-turned-regulator who
> worked in Bill Clinton's White House, won [6] the Senate primary, putting a
> strong Clinton ally in the position to challenge one of the most vulnerable
> Republican incumbents, Sen. Pat Toomey. That race is seen as one of a
> handful in 2016 where Democrats might retake a Senate majority.
> Trump Sweep
> But most of all, Tuesday's primaries belonged to Trump. He won handily in
> Pennsylvania, Maryland, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Delaware-getting more
> than 60 percent in several states. The delegate math is more complex on the
> GOP side than the Democratic side, but he ended the day with more than 925
> delegates of the 1,237 needed for the nomination on the first vote at the
> Republican National Convention.
> "I consider myself the presumptive nominee," Trump said, replying to press
> questions after a short speech from New York City. "You know the best way
> to
> beat the system is having things like this, where you get record-setting
> votes, where you get record-setting delegates. I use the analogy of the
> boxer. When the boxer knocks out the other boxer, you don't have to wait
> around for a decision."
> It also appeared after Tuesday that Ted Cruz cannot win enough delegates in
> the remaining 10 states that have not yet voted to win the nomination on
> the
> first vote, according to media experts tracking delegate totals. Cruz's
> team
> said that should he win Indiana's primary next week that Trump will not
> clear the 1,237 delegates needed for first ballot nomination, launching the
> first contested national political convention in decades.
> That strategy is the latest embraced by the GOP's stop-Trump faction. This
> weekend, Cruz and John Kasich announced a deal to stay out of each other's
> way in a few upcoming states-with Kasich staying out of Indiana and Cruz
> staying out of Oregon-to thwart Trump. However, a day later Kasich made
> statements casting doubt on that deal, and Oregon media reported that he
> does not [7] even have a candidate statement in its state primary voter
> guide.
> Steven Rosenfeld covers national political issues for AlterNet, including
> America's retirement crisis, democracy and voting rights, and campaigns and
> elections. He is the author of "Count My Vote: A Citizen's Guide to Voting"
> (AlterNet Books, 2008).
> Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
> Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
> Report typos and corrections to 'corrections@alternet.org'. [8]
> Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.[9]
>
> Source URL:
> http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/clinton-and-trump-edge-closer-party-no
> minations-sanders-softens-his-confrontational
> Links:
> [1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/steven-rosenfeld
> [2] http://alternet.org
> [3] http://www.nytimes.com/elections/results
> [4]
> http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2016/04/26/bernie-sanders-to-rea
> ssess-candidacy-after-tuesdays-vote-but-hell-stay-in-race/?_r=0
> [5]
> http://data.baltimoresun.com/voter-guide-2016/results/maryland-results.html
> [6] http://www.electionreturns.state.pa.us/ENR_NEW
> [7]
> http://www.wweek.com/news/2016/04/25/john-kasich-gifted-oregon-by-ted-cruz-i
> snt-in-the-oregon-voters-pamphlet/
> [8] mailto:corrections@alternet.org?Subject=Typo on Clinton and Trump Edge
> Closer to Party Nominations, as Sanders Softens His Confrontational Tone
> [9] http://www.alternet.org/
> [10] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
>
>
>

What will Bernie do now?

If all goes the way the Democrat Party's Central Bosses plan, Bernie
Sanders is already back in the stable being wiped down and turned out
to pasture.
So once that happens we will get a look at what the real Bernie
Sanders is made of. Will Bernie knuckle under and lick the Party
Boot, and call for his loyal supporters to, "forgive and forget" and
cast their vote for Hillary?
Or will Bernie stand tall, head held high, and call for that
revolution he promised us.
Anyone care to know my prediction? For what it's worth, I put my
dollar on Bernie wimping out and releasing his followers to Hillary
Clinton.
My reasoning is simple. You cannot serve in the Ruling Classes
government for as long as Bernie has been in both the House and the
Senate, even as an Independent, and not be compromised. And if Bernie
does knuckle under, his cry for a Revolution, as well as his personal
effectiveness, will crumble and be as nothing.

Carl Jarvis

Re: [blind-democracy] Harriet Tubman and the Monetization of Black History

William C. Anderson writes, "...Black people were and still are for
sale; Black history is for sale; and Black culture, too, is always for sale."
How very true. And, since Anderson is focused on Harriet Tubman, I
have no grumble in his relating the transition of American Blacks from
Citizens, to Consumers. I simply want to point out to Mister Anderson
that this is a common condition of all Working Class Americans, Black,
White, Brown or any other Color. It's a crime to think of the years
of struggle by working class Americans to gain inclusion in that
statement, "We, The People", only to be side tracked by the pressures
of the American Corporate Capitalists, to come to a place where we are
merely "Consumers". But Capitalism must grow and expand. To do this
Capitalists must continue developing "New, Improved", and innovative
products. And consumers must do their fair share by wanting and
buying such products.
We American Consumers have been conditioned to believe that our
happiness and our success are measured by how many new and improved
gadgets we own. God forbid that we are wearing last years styles or
driving an old model car, or using an archaic common old cell phone.
But just like everything else, Capitalism has us looking outside
ourselves for Life's Rewards.
The concern should not be on whether Harriet Tubman's image be placed
on the twenty dollar bill, or not. The real concern, so far as I am
concerned, is why we pay so little attention in our history books on
Great American Citizens like Harriet Tubman, and instead drool all
over the likes of Andrew Jackson or Queen Elizabeth, or J. Edgar
Hoover, or General Douglas MacArthur. Our history books teach us the
glories of the Capitalists and the War Heroes...as long as they are
ranking officers.
So it is not just a Color issue. It is a Class issue. Working people
need to open their eyes to the fact that our color does not make us
any more or less subject to the contempt of the American Capitalist.
We need to understand that if we are creating wealth for our
Capitalist Masters, it does not matter the color of our skin, or
whether we wear a blue collar or a white one. Men and women, young
and old, we are all in the same struggle. It's time we all got on the
same side.

Carl Jarvis

On 4/23/16, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
> Harriet Tubman and the Monetization of Black History
> Thursday, 21 April 2016 00:00 By William C. Anderson, Truthout | Op-Ed
> Harriet Tubman. (Photo: HB Lindsley / Library of Congress)Don't trust the
> corporate media? Neither do we. Make a tax-deductible donation to Truthout
> and support accurate, independent journalism.
> There's a strange irony in printing the image of someone who spent her life
> on the run because she was worth money onto money itself, as a supposed
> honor. This hasn't stopped the US Treasury Department from announcing a
> change replacing Andrew Jackson with Harriet Tubman on the face of the $20
> bill. While many people see the change as progressive and indicative of
> respect, others have taken issue with the contradictions therein.
> Capitalism, bolstered by slave labor and steadily craving more chattel,
> showed the US Bill of Rights and the Constitution to be fictional
> documents.
> Now, as Tubman is chosen to grace US currency, we see the latest chapter of
> a never-ending saga of consumption. Black people were and still are for
> sale; Black history is for sale; and Black culture, too, is always for
> sale.
> Andrew Jackson -- whose image will remain on the back of the $20 bill --
> was
> a horrible president, to say the least. He was a man dedicated to murder,
> despair, oppression and genocide. His face, like the faces of many other US
> presidents, haunts onlookers who know what commemorating such a person
> means. Those who gladly welcomed the murder, enslavement and degradation of
> my ancestors as well as others' ancestors stare at us regularly from money,
> statues, state buildings, street names and more. This is a regular fact of
> everyday existence in the United States.
> The canon of capitalism tells us we should respect money more than anything
> and cherish our right to use it freely. Therefore, putting someone's face
> on
> a bill would be seen by many as a great honor. However, money is exactly
> what drives much of the worldwide trauma that capitalism creates.
> Consequently, since Andrew Jackson was a slaver, purveyor of Indigenous
> genocide and ruthless military man, having his face on the $20 bill seemed
> quite appropriate.
> If the general consensus were that money is something filthy and that
> capitalism is a crisis, there would be no question about the problems with
> putting Harriet Tubman's face on a piece of money. This is not the case.
> Money is something we need to function societally, something we aspire to
> attain and something we often cherish when we have it. It's money's
> necessity in our everyday lives that will make many view Tubman's presence
> as a respectful representation. Yet, it's the continuous creeping of
> corruption, environmental decimation and ruthless accumulation that argues
> otherwise. The overwhelming wealth inequality, racialized poverty and
> gender
> pay gap that pervade this country expose the "honor" bestowed upon Tubman
> as
> a blatant mistruth.
> In recent years, false notions of progress tend to dominate public
> conversations around "diversity" and "inclusion." From the election of
> sitting President Barack Obama (who will likely be blamed by bigots as if
> he
> single-handedly chose Tubman) to this change of face in currency, these
> symbolic acts become scraps to appease populations hungry for justice.
> Moreover, monuments, commemorations and efforts to represent Black people
> and our history often become engines to build capital. Civil rights tourism
> allows travelers from around the world to visit the places where Black
> people have been killed, enslaved and brutalized while merely trying to
> secure some stability in an economy and social hierarchy that excluded and
> marginalized them. Today, visitors to places like Selma's annual Bloody
> Sunday commemoration can buy civil rights products and attend often
> expensive events to their heart's content, while reflecting on a tragic
> "past." The Martin Luther and Coretta Scott King Unity Breakfast this year
> in Selma was $50 general admission and $500 per table. In a recent report
> titled "Still a City of Slaves -- Selma, in the Words of Those Who Live
> There," the Guardian reported:
> In the US, joblessness for African Americans is roughly twice that of
> whites. In Selma, which is 80% African American, joblessness runs even
> higher. In 2010, unemployment in Selma reached 20%; it has since been cut
> in
> half to 10%, but [is] still around twice the national average. Wages in
> Selma (as for African Americans nationally) also badly lag the country,
> with
> the median family income at roughly $25,000 -- half that of the US average.
> There are countless theories offered by academics and politicians about why
> African Americans disproportionately suffer higher joblessness and lower
> wages -- a lack of education, dependence on manual labor, technological
> shifts -- but to many Selma residents those theories are just excuses for
> racism.
> In Memphis, Tennessee, you can go to the very spot where Martin Luther King
> Jr. was murdered and see a monument to him -- as well as to the bank
> sponsors who didn't hesitate to advertise on the property. Memphis, which
> has the highest energy cost burden in the country, has struggled with a
> devastating poverty rate for years, with 30 percent living below the
> poverty
> line. Just over 13 percent of lower-income households' income in Memphis is
> spent on energy.
> The same is true in many other Black historical landmark cities across the
> country. In terms of poverty, the cities that closely follow Memphis for
> most household income spent on energy are Birmingham, Atlanta and New
> Orleans, according to the Pittsburgh Business Times. These are three cities
> that make a lot of money on civil rights tourism, and their rich Black
> histories in general. It's quite distressing that in cities that market
> their history of brutality against Black people to visitors, the
> descendants
> of those very people are disproportionately impoverished and struggling to
> pay their bills. Plus, these Southern states (especially Alabama and
> Louisiana) are filled with wretched prison systems where Black people are
> killed, tortured and brutalized, just as Black people have been here for
> centuries.
> There's no realm of existence where Black people can escape so that our
> bodies aren't taken advantage of on earth. Both sides of the political
> "spectrum" are intent on criminalizing Black communities and subjecting
> them
> to state-sponsored violence, and they often agree on making money off of
> the
> history of anti-Black violence as well. It shouldn't come as a surprise
> that
> a Black liberator is being used for money when many have already been
> making
> money off of our histories of struggle at every turn.
> Now, in the case of Harriet Tubman, she is being made into money. Her face
> will be placed among men who would have sold her, killed her and committed
> other egregious acts of violence against her if they would have had the
> chance. She was a Black woman whose strength seemed endless. She is not
> being honored by being placed on a weakening dollar.
> Black people have been through incredibly distressing times, and if we know
> anything, it's that we cannot always depend on money. When times have
> gotten
> rough for Black people, we've always depended on our self-determination for
> our freedom. It's this realization that leads me to ask: Why put a value on
> a people, a history and a culture that's absolutely priceless?
> Copyright, Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.
> WILLIAM C. ANDERSON
> William C. Anderson is a freelance writer. Follow him on Twitter:
> @Williamcson.
> RELATED STORIES
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> Everyday People
> By Max Eternity, Truthout | Interview
> Any National "Conversation About Race" Must Include Black Radical Tradition
> By Adam Hudson, Truthout | News Analysis
> Flag Controversies and Race Politics in a Civil War Town
> By Graham Stinnett, Truthout | News Analysis
> ________________________________________
> Show Comments
> Hide Comments
> <a href="http://truthout.disqus.com/?url=ref">View the discussion
> thread.</a>
> Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
> Harriet Tubman and the Monetization of Black History
> Thursday, 21 April 2016 00:00 By William C. Anderson, Truthout | Op-Ed
> . font size Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink
> reference not valid.Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink
> reference not valid.
> . Harriet Tubman. (Photo: HB Lindsley / Library of Congress)Don't
> trust the corporate media? Neither do we. Make a tax-deductible donation to
> Truthout and support accurate, independent journalism.
> . There's a strange irony in printing the image of someone who spent
> her life on the run because she was worth money onto money itself, as a
> supposed honor. This hasn't stopped the US Treasury Department from
> announcing a change replacing Andrew Jackson with Harriet Tubman on the
> face
> of the $20 bill. While many people see the change as progressive and
> indicative of respect, others have taken issue with the contradictions
> therein. Capitalism, bolstered by slave labor and steadily craving more
> chattel, showed the US Bill of Rights and the Constitution to be fictional
> documents.
> Now, as Tubman is chosen to grace US currency, we see the latest chapter of
> a never-ending saga of consumption. Black people were and still are for
> sale; Black history is for sale; and Black culture, too, is always for
> sale.
> Andrew Jackson -- whose image will remain on the back of the $20 bill --
> was
> a horrible president, to say the least. He was a man dedicated to murder,
> despair, oppression and genocide. His face, like the faces of many other US
> presidents, haunts onlookers who know what commemorating such a person
> means. Those who gladly welcomed the murder, enslavement and degradation of
> my ancestors as well as others' ancestors stare at us regularly from money,
> statues, state buildings, street names and more. This is a regular fact of
> everyday existence in the United States.
> The canon of capitalism tells us we should respect money more than anything
> and cherish our right to use it freely. Therefore, putting someone's face
> on
> a bill would be seen by many as a great honor. However, money is exactly
> what drives much of the worldwide trauma that capitalism creates.
> Consequently, since Andrew Jackson was a slaver, purveyor of Indigenous
> genocide and ruthless military man, having his face on the $20 bill seemed
> quite appropriate.
> If the general consensus were that money is something filthy and that
> capitalism is a crisis, there would be no question about the problems with
> putting Harriet Tubman's face on a piece of money. This is not the case.
> Money is something we need to function societally, something we aspire to
> attain and something we often cherish when we have it. It's money's
> necessity in our everyday lives that will make many view Tubman's presence
> as a respectful representation. Yet, it's the continuous creeping of
> corruption, environmental decimation and ruthless accumulation that argues
> otherwise. The overwhelming wealth inequality, racialized poverty and
> gender
> pay gap that pervade this country expose the "honor" bestowed upon Tubman
> as
> a blatant mistruth.
> In recent years, false notions of progress tend to dominate public
> conversations around "diversity" and "inclusion." From the election of
> sitting President Barack Obama (who will likely be blamed by bigots as if
> he
> single-handedly chose Tubman) to this change of face in currency, these
> symbolic acts become scraps to appease populations hungry for justice.
> Moreover, monuments, commemorations and efforts to represent Black people
> and our history often become engines to build capital. Civil rights tourism
> allows travelers from around the world to visit the places where Black
> people have been killed, enslaved and brutalized while merely trying to
> secure some stability in an economy and social hierarchy that excluded and
> marginalized them. Today, visitors to places like Selma's annual Bloody
> Sunday commemoration can buy civil rights products and attend often
> expensive events to their heart's content, while reflecting on a tragic
> "past." The Martin Luther and Coretta Scott King Unity Breakfast this year
> in Selma was $50 general admission and $500 per table. In a recent report
> titled "Still a City of Slaves -- Selma, in the Words of Those Who Live
> There," the Guardian reported:
> In the US, joblessness for African Americans is roughly twice that of
> whites. In Selma, which is 80% African American, joblessness runs even
> higher. In 2010, unemployment in Selma reached 20%; it has since been cut
> in
> half to 10%, but [is] still around twice the national average. Wages in
> Selma (as for African Americans nationally) also badly lag the country,
> with
> the median family income at roughly $25,000 -- half that of the US average.
> There are countless theories offered by academics and politicians about why
> African Americans disproportionately suffer higher joblessness and lower
> wages -- a lack of education, dependence on manual labor, technological
> shifts -- but to many Selma residents those theories are just excuses for
> racism.
> In Memphis, Tennessee, you can go to the very spot where Martin Luther King
> Jr. was murdered and see a monument to him -- as well as to the bank
> sponsors who didn't hesitate to advertise on the property. Memphis, which
> has the highest energy cost burden in the country, has struggled with a
> devastating poverty rate for years, with 30 percent living below the
> poverty
> line. Just over 13 percent of lower-income households' income in Memphis is
> spent on energy.
> The same is true in many other Black historical landmark cities across the
> country. In terms of poverty, the cities that closely follow Memphis for
> most household income spent on energy are Birmingham, Atlanta and New
> Orleans, according to the Pittsburgh Business Times. These are three cities
> that make a lot of money on civil rights tourism, and their rich Black
> histories in general. It's quite distressing that in cities that market
> their history of brutality against Black people to visitors, the
> descendants
> of those very people are disproportionately impoverished and struggling to
> pay their bills. Plus, these Southern states (especially Alabama and
> Louisiana) are filled with wretched prison systems where Black people are
> killed, tortured and brutalized, just as Black people have been here for
> centuries.
> There's no realm of existence where Black people can escape so that our
> bodies aren't taken advantage of on earth. Both sides of the political
> "spectrum" are intent on criminalizing Black communities and subjecting
> them
> to state-sponsored violence, and they often agree on making money off of
> the
> history of anti-Black violence as well. It shouldn't come as a surprise
> that
> a Black liberator is being used for money when many have already been
> making
> money off of our histories of struggle at every turn.
> Now, in the case of Harriet Tubman, she is being made into money. Her face
> will be placed among men who would have sold her, killed her and committed
> other egregious acts of violence against her if they would have had the
> chance. She was a Black woman whose strength seemed endless. She is not
> being honored by being placed on a weakening dollar.
> Black people have been through incredibly distressing times, and if we know
> anything, it's that we cannot always depend on money. When times have
> gotten
> rough for Black people, we've always depended on our self-determination for
> our freedom. It's this realization that leads me to ask: Why put a value on
> a people, a history and a culture that's absolutely priceless?
> Copyright, Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.
> William C. Anderson
> William C. Anderson is a freelance writer. Follow him on Twitter:
> @Williamcson.
> Related Stories
> Archaeologist, Black Feminist Unearths Contributions of African Diaspora,
> Everyday People
> By Max Eternity, Truthout | InterviewAny National "Conversation About Race"
> Must Include Black Radical Tradition
> By Adam Hudson, Truthout | News AnalysisFlag Controversies and Race
> Politics
> in a Civil War Town
> By Graham Stinnett, Truthout | News Analysis
>
> Show Comments
>
>
>

Re: [blind-democracy] Jane Sanders: Bernie and I Will Vote Hillary if We Have To

Jane Sanders is speaking as a supporter of the very System that her
husband is criticizing. Although, Bernie Sanders is in no way calling
for a true revolution. But in saying they will vote for Clinton, if
Sanders is not selected, Jane Sanders has made her position clear.
She will support Clinton even though she is supporting the very System
that seems to have confused her, and which she knows is not
democratic. She doesn't seem to understand that the Democratic
Party's use of Super Delegates and their rule that a voter must have
been a registered Democrat by last November, as designed by the Party
to Protect the Party. When an organization is more concerned with
protecting itself than in serving its members, its usefulness is at an
end.

Carl Jarvis


On 4/14/16, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
>
> Excerpt: "In a candid interview with Tim Teeman, a straight-shooting Jane
> Sanders talks superdelegates, her husband's temperament, the need for party
> unity, and missing her family."
>
> Bernie Sanders with his wife Jane Sanders. (photo: Brian Snyder/Reuters)
>
>
> Jane Sanders: Bernie and I Will Vote Hillary if We Have To
> By Tim Teeman, The Daily Beast
> 14 April 16
>
> In a candid interview with Tim Teeman, a straight-shooting Jane Sanders
> talks superdelegates, her husband's temperament, the need for party unity,
> and missing her family.
>
> Jane Sanders and her husband Bernie will support Hillary Clinton if the
> latter beats Bernie Sanders in the Democratic presidential nomination race.
>
> Mrs. Sanders, in an interview with The Daily Beast on Wednesday, said they
> would hope Bernie's supporters would follow their lead.
> Conversely, if Bernie Sanders secured the nomination, Mrs. Sanders said she
> hoped Clinton and her supporters would support him.
> In a wide-ranging, candid interview, Mrs. Sanders also said the
> superdelegate system-currently weighted significantly in Clinton's
> favor-was
> unfair, yet predicted that she is hopeful that a number of those
> superdelegates, and their thousands of votes, could be convinced to switch
> their support from Clinton to her husband.
> The Daily Beast spoke to Mrs. Sanders with just hours to go before Bernie
> Sanders's rally in New York's Washington Square, and just a week until New
> York Democrats pick a primary winner.
> "I know Donald Trump has complained about the system," Mrs. Sanders said.
> "We're not going to complain about it. We knew the rules going in. We don't
> like the rules. We don't think it's good for democracy. I think it's crazy
> that in New York anybody who wanted to vote for Bernie had to make a change
> last October to say they were in the Democratic Party. Anybody who is
> independent cannot vote."
> Mrs. Sanders said her husband's campaign was "trying to reinvigorate the
> party and we are. We are bringing many, many more people in across the
> country and yet in New York they're slamming the door on those people. They
> can't have a voice. That seems counterproductive to what the Democratic
> Party wants to accomplish in terms of winning not just the presidency, but
> to win governors' seats and seats in the House and Senate."
> She dismissed Clinton campaign claims that Bernie's camp was attempting to
> "rig" the election by "flipping" the votes of superdelegates. "How could we
> be rigging it? We're not in charge of anything," she said, laughing.
> "Superdelegates, first off, I think, are silly. They're 30 percent of the
> vote that a candidate needs to become the nominee. How fair is that? I am a
> voter. I have one vote, yet you're a superdelegate and count for thousands
> and thousands of votes. That doesn't make any sense at all. 'One person,
> one
> vote' is what democracy is supposed to be about."
> The "rigging" claims did not "make sense," Mrs. Sanders said.
> "In 2008, many superdelegates had signed up for Hillary Clinton, very
> early,
> before Barack Obama."
> The same was true this year, though this time the opponent was Bernie
> Sanders, she said.
> "In the end in 2008, the superdelegates moved to Barack Obama. This year,
> the superdelegates have not been counted yet, their votes have not been
> cast. Some are saying now they support Hillary Clinton. About half.
> "If the superdelegates are using their judgment, my hope is that they are
> looking at what is happening in this race-that he [Bernie Sanders] has won
> eight of the nine most recent races, that he has far better polling numbers
> against all the Republicans, that he can get not just Democrats but
> Independents.
> "Even in his last Senate race, 25 percent of Republicans in our state voted
> for him-and we can do that nationally as well. He's in a much better
> position to be the Democratic Party candidate. Superdelegates will make up
> their minds. It has nothing to do with rigging, but it could happen just
> like it happened in 2008."
> On the more rancorous exchanges between the Sanders and Clinton campaigns,
> Mrs. Sanders said, "I think if you compare it to the Republicans it's
> nothing. I think it's been difficult for us to have distortions of the
> record, when really what we want to focus on is a clear choice between the
> two candidates."
> For Mrs. Sanders, "there is a stark difference" between her husband and
> Hillary Clinton, "in a number of areas. That's what we should be talking
> about, that's good for democracy, that's what people need to hear."
> When asked if she ever advised her husband to moderate his tone, Mrs.
> Sanders said he was being criticized over a statement he made in response
> to
> the Clinton strategy to "disqualify and defeat" him, "and worry about
> uniting the party later."
> Mrs. Sanders was referring to an unnamed top Clinton advisor's battle plan,
> as conveyed to CNN last week.
> "Then we watched surrogate after surrogate and Secretary Clinton herself on
> the air attempting to disqualify him, which means to make [him seem]
> unqualified," Mrs. Sanders said.
> She said that her husband, in response, "had said 'Let's talk about the
> issues' about what makes somebody unqualified.
> "His attempt may not have been as articulate as we might have preferred,
> but
> his attempt was to turn the page to say, 'Let's look at trade: Secretary
> Clinton is pro-free trade, pro-NAFTA, pro permanent trade relations with
> China, and pro-TPP [the Trans-Pacific Partnership], until the very end,
> after it was too late.'"
> Her husband, she added, had noted that Clinton had voted in favor of the
> Iraq War, having seen the same information that had led Bernie Sanders to
> vote against it.
> Mrs. Sanders said, "Secretary Clinton has a regime change policy that was
> borne out of Libya. Bernie does not believe in regime change policy. He was
> trying to say, 'OK, if you're looking at who's qualified, let's look at the
> qualifications you're looking for as a voter.' I think the media has made
> more of it than either candidate."
> This reporter asked Mrs. Sanders if she was concerned that voters in both
> the Clinton and Sanders camps were so partisan they would not vote for the
> other Democratic candidate in a general election. She replied that "they
> [Democrat voters] were feeling annoyed at both sides. If Bernie wins,
> hopefully Secretary Clinton's supporters will support him, and if she wins
> we hope our supporters will support her. It's nowhere near as rancorous as
> it was between Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton back then."
> Would her husband support Clinton if she became the candidate?
> "I think both of them will support the other," said Mrs. Sanders.
> Her husband's temperament has also come under scrutiny. When asked if she
> had ever advised him to "take it down a notch," Mrs. Sanders said, "No, no,
> no.
> "I think everybody has seemed annoyed at times," she added. "I remember
> Secretary Clinton looking quite angry. I think we're talking about
> important
> issues that affect people's lives. 25 percent of our children in America
> live in poverty. Yeah, that's something to be angry about. Climate change
> is
> real, and the fossil fuel industry is pouring tons and tons of money into
> campaign contributions. That's something to be angry about.
> "You look: 18,500 people in the South Bronx last week. Nobody was worried
> about his temperament. They were wild about his ideas he was bringing forth
> and saying, 'We are with you, we are going to work for the same ideas.'"
> When asked if her husband's success had surprised them both-given that
> early
> consensus seemed to favor a smooth coronation for Clinton-Mrs. Sanders
> replied: "We knew that his ideas were mainstream American ideas. If he had
> a
> fair hearing we knew they would resonate. We were surprised at how
> fervently
> they have been embraced by young voters, and how many people who are
> disenfranchised voters: people who had given up on the system are coming
> back.
> "It has been humbling and quite an honor to have that kind of support and
> encouragement and commitment to the future. So I think we were surprised to
> that. We were more intellectually thinking they would resonate. We didn't
> realize emotionally how much they would resonate both for people and for
> us."
> For Mrs. Sanders personally, the campaign has proven "exhilarating and
> wonderful in terms of meeting so many people around the country, and
> learning about specific issues"-she cited "Latinos," "immigration," and
> "Native Americans"-but also in terms of understanding and hearing that the
> general issues that Bernie Sanders raises are, she said, issues of concern
> for all Americans.
> "They want a government of the people, by the people and for the people.
> They want a government that recognizes that at the center of policy should
> be a concern for Americans' quality of life, and their ability to live life
> in security and dignity by just working hard and getting a fair shake."
> Had the campaign bought her more or less turmoil than she had expected?
> "I wouldn't say turmoil," Mrs. Sanders replied. "I would say it's hard to
> be
> away from the kids and the grandkids as much, but it's an honor to be able
> to be part of this. And it's been very invigorating for me to see the
> support, interest, and commitment to transform this country to what we all
> want it to be ideally, and people are willing to do the work and support
> Bernie in that endeavor. It's wonderful."
> I asked Mrs. Sanders if she had thought about the possibility of living in
> the White House.
> "I haven't, you know," she said. "I mean, I'm more focused on what we could
> do if he gets into the White House."
> Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not
> valid.
>
> Bernie Sanders with his wife Jane Sanders. (photo: Brian Snyder/Reuters)
> http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/04/13/jane-sanders-we-would-vote-
> hillary-but-the-superdelegate-system-sucks.htmlhttp://www.thedailybeast.com/
> articles/2016/04/13/jane-sanders-we-would-vote-hillary-but-the-superdelegate
> -system-sucks.html
> Jane Sanders: Bernie and I Will Vote Hillary if We Have To
> By Tim Teeman, The Daily Beast
> 14 April 16
> In a candid interview with Tim Teeman, a straight-shooting Jane Sanders
> talks superdelegates, her husband's temperament, the need for party unity,
> and missing her family.
> ane Sanders and her husband Bernie will support Hillary Clinton if the
> latter beats Bernie Sanders in the Democratic presidential nomination race.
>
> Mrs. Sanders, in an interview with The Daily Beast on Wednesday, said they
> would hope Bernie's supporters would follow their lead.
> Conversely, if Bernie Sanders secured the nomination, Mrs. Sanders said she
> hoped Clinton and her supporters would support him.
> In a wide-ranging, candid interview, Mrs. Sanders also said the
> superdelegate system-currently weighted significantly in Clinton's
> favor-was
> unfair, yet predicted that she is hopeful that a number of those
> superdelegates, and their thousands of votes, could be convinced to switch
> their support from Clinton to her husband.
> The Daily Beast spoke to Mrs. Sanders with just hours to go before Bernie
> Sanders's rally in New York's Washington Square, and just a week until New
> York Democrats pick a primary winner.
> "I know Donald Trump has complained about the system," Mrs. Sanders said.
> "We're not going to complain about it. We knew the rules going in. We don't
> like the rules. We don't think it's good for democracy. I think it's crazy
> that in New York anybody who wanted to vote for Bernie had to make a change
> last October to say they were in the Democratic Party. Anybody who is
> independent cannot vote."
> Mrs. Sanders said her husband's campaign was "trying to reinvigorate the
> party and we are. We are bringing many, many more people in across the
> country and yet in New York they're slamming the door on those people. They
> can't have a voice. That seems counterproductive to what the Democratic
> Party wants to accomplish in terms of winning not just the presidency, but
> to win governors' seats and seats in the House and Senate."
> She dismissed Clinton campaign claims that Bernie's camp was attempting to
> "rig" the election by "flipping" the votes of superdelegates. "How could we
> be rigging it? We're not in charge of anything," she said, laughing.
> "Superdelegates, first off, I think, are silly. They're 30 percent of the
> vote that a candidate needs to become the nominee. How fair is that? I am a
> voter. I have one vote, yet you're a superdelegate and count for thousands
> and thousands of votes. That doesn't make any sense at all. 'One person,
> one
> vote' is what democracy is supposed to be about."
> The "rigging" claims did not "make sense," Mrs. Sanders said.
> "In 2008, many superdelegates had signed up for Hillary Clinton, very
> early,
> before Barack Obama."
> The same was true this year, though this time the opponent was Bernie
> Sanders, she said.
> "In the end in 2008, the superdelegates moved to Barack Obama. This year,
> the superdelegates have not been counted yet, their votes have not been
> cast. Some are saying now they support Hillary Clinton. About half.
> "If the superdelegates are using their judgment, my hope is that they are
> looking at what is happening in this race-that he [Bernie Sanders] has won
> eight of the nine most recent races, that he has far better polling numbers
> against all the Republicans, that he can get not just Democrats but
> Independents.
> "Even in his last Senate race, 25 percent of Republicans in our state voted
> for him-and we can do that nationally as well. He's in a much better
> position to be the Democratic Party candidate. Superdelegates will make up
> their minds. It has nothing to do with rigging, but it could happen just
> like it happened in 2008."
> On the more rancorous exchanges between the Sanders and Clinton campaigns,
> Mrs. Sanders said, "I think if you compare it to the Republicans it's
> nothing. I think it's been difficult for us to have distortions of the
> record, when really what we want to focus on is a clear choice between the
> two candidates."
> For Mrs. Sanders, "there is a stark difference" between her husband and
> Hillary Clinton, "in a number of areas. That's what we should be talking
> about, that's good for democracy, that's what people need to hear."
> When asked if she ever advised her husband to moderate his tone, Mrs.
> Sanders said he was being criticized over a statement he made in response
> to
> the Clinton strategy to "disqualify and defeat" him, "and worry about
> uniting the party later."
> Mrs. Sanders was referring to an unnamed top Clinton advisor's battle plan,
> as conveyed to CNN last week.
> "Then we watched surrogate after surrogate and Secretary Clinton herself on
> the air attempting to disqualify him, which means to make [him seem]
> unqualified," Mrs. Sanders said.
> She said that her husband, in response, "had said 'Let's talk about the
> issues' about what makes somebody unqualified.
> "His attempt may not have been as articulate as we might have preferred,
> but
> his attempt was to turn the page to say, 'Let's look at trade: Secretary
> Clinton is pro-free trade, pro-NAFTA, pro permanent trade relations with
> China, and pro-TPP [the Trans-Pacific Partnership], until the very end,
> after it was too late.'"
> Her husband, she added, had noted that Clinton had voted in favor of the
> Iraq War, having seen the same information that had led Bernie Sanders to
> vote against it.
> Mrs. Sanders said, "Secretary Clinton has a regime change policy that was
> borne out of Libya. Bernie does not believe in regime change policy. He was
> trying to say, 'OK, if you're looking at who's qualified, let's look at the
> qualifications you're looking for as a voter.' I think the media has made
> more of it than either candidate."
> This reporter asked Mrs. Sanders if she was concerned that voters in both
> the Clinton and Sanders camps were so partisan they would not vote for the
> other Democratic candidate in a general election. She replied that "they
> [Democrat voters] were feeling annoyed at both sides. If Bernie wins,
> hopefully Secretary Clinton's supporters will support him, and if she wins
> we hope our supporters will support her. It's nowhere near as rancorous as
> it was between Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton back then."
> Would her husband support Clinton if she became the candidate?
> "I think both of them will support the other," said Mrs. Sanders.
> Her husband's temperament has also come under scrutiny. When asked if she
> had ever advised him to "take it down a notch," Mrs. Sanders said, "No, no,
> no.
> "I think everybody has seemed annoyed at times," she added. "I remember
> Secretary Clinton looking quite angry. I think we're talking about
> important
> issues that affect people's lives. 25 percent of our children in America
> live in poverty. Yeah, that's something to be angry about. Climate change
> is
> real, and the fossil fuel industry is pouring tons and tons of money into
> campaign contributions. That's something to be angry about.
> "You look: 18,500 people in the South Bronx last week. Nobody was worried
> about his temperament. They were wild about his ideas he was bringing forth
> and saying, 'We are with you, we are going to work for the same ideas.'"
> When asked if her husband's success had surprised them both-given that
> early
> consensus seemed to favor a smooth coronation for Clinton-Mrs. Sanders
> replied: "We knew that his ideas were mainstream American ideas. If he had
> a
> fair hearing we knew they would resonate. We were surprised at how
> fervently
> they have been embraced by young voters, and how many people who are
> disenfranchised voters: people who had given up on the system are coming
> back.
> "It has been humbling and quite an honor to have that kind of support and
> encouragement and commitment to the future. So I think we were surprised to
> that. We were more intellectually thinking they would resonate. We didn't
> realize emotionally how much they would resonate both for people and for
> us."
> For Mrs. Sanders personally, the campaign has proven "exhilarating and
> wonderful in terms of meeting so many people around the country, and
> learning about specific issues"-she cited "Latinos," "immigration," and
> "Native Americans"-but also in terms of understanding and hearing that the
> general issues that Bernie Sanders raises are, she said, issues of concern
> for all Americans.
> "They want a government of the people, by the people and for the people.
> They want a government that recognizes that at the center of policy should
> be a concern for Americans' quality of life, and their ability to live life
> in security and dignity by just working hard and getting a fair shake."
> Had the campaign bought her more or less turmoil than she had expected?
> "I wouldn't say turmoil," Mrs. Sanders replied. "I would say it's hard to
> be
> away from the kids and the grandkids as much, but it's an honor to be able
> to be part of this. And it's been very invigorating for me to see the
> support, interest, and commitment to transform this country to what we all
> want it to be ideally, and people are willing to do the work and support
> Bernie in that endeavor. It's wonderful."
> I asked Mrs. Sanders if she had thought about the possibility of living in
> the White House.
> "I haven't, you know," she said. "I mean, I'm more focused on what we could
> do if he gets into the White House."
> http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
> http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
>
>
>

Re: [blind-democracy] The politics of deception

Last evening(Thursday), on CNN, I watched a little over an hour of
double deception. Billed as a debate between Bernie Sanders and
Hillary Clinton, it was actually a Smoke and Mirror performance
between two candidates attempting to, "Out Liberal" one another. Even
as Bernie's outspoken attack on Wall Street has caused Hillary to come
close to speaking out on the greed of the corporate banks, neither one
is prepared to focus on the base cause of the flagging economic
system. The problem? Corporate Capitalism. Making Capitalism work
for the working class is like trying to hold a river back with a dam
made of mush. Any gains made by the more liberal wing of the
Two-Headed Monster, will be pushed aside and taken back, along with
even more of the working class production.
We need to wake up to the fact that it is our labor that is allowing
the 1% to live the dream life that we will never live.
Once again, I could not sit through the entire "debate". It was
simply pointless.

Carl Jarvis

On 4/15/16, Roger Loran Bailey <dmarc-noreply@freelists.org> wrote:
> http://socialistaction.org/the-politics-of-deception/
>
>
> The politics of deception
>
> Published April 14, 2016.
> April 2016 Trump, Cruz
>
> BY JEFF MACKLER
>
> I am tempted to compare the stated political views of the leading
> Republican and Democratic Party presidential contenders—even though they
> are largely irrelevant. But ranking Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, and
> Bernie Sanders according to their purported degree of "socialist,
> progressive, liberal, conservative" or even incipient-fascist views is
> of little value in comparison to their central defense of capitalism—the
> system of the rule of an elite minority that owns and controls the vast
> productive capacities and wealth of society. It is the system whose
> inherent evils include war, repression, racism, poverty, sexism,
> homophobia, mass incarceration, environmental destruction, and
> ever-deepening incursions on civil liberties and democratic rights.
>
> In general, elections in the United States, as in virtually all
> capitalist countries, are carefully orchestrated contests between
> sometimes competing wings of the ruling class. This competition has
> nothing to do with the interests of the working masses, the 99 percent,
> and everything to do with what portion of the wealth created by workers
> goes to which sections of the billionaire elites.
>
> Donald Trump, the consummate "outsider," appears as a reactionary
> populist racist, Islamophobic, super-patriotic, "America First,"
> "isolationist," nationalist, homophobic, billionaire bigot. His claim to
> fame is his anti-establishment posture and his absurd assurance that as
> a clever and successful businessman, he can and will make "deals" (his
> favorite term) that meet the needs of everyone—workers and bosses alike.
>
> During Trump's recent 100-minute foreign policy interviews in two
> sessions with The New York Times, he openly accepted the "America First"
> characterization of his views. It is doubtful that Trump was not aware
> that the central figure of the infamous America First Committee of the
> early 1940s was the famous trans-Atlantic aviator Charles Lindbergh, a
> pro-Nazi/fascist, with anti-Semitic, racist, anti-immigrant politics and
> a eugenics-based race "purity" ideology. Lindbergh, along with key
> American anti-Semitic industrialists like Henry Ford, opposed U.S. entry
> into World War II based on a pro-Hitler and German superiority ideology.
> The Times, perhaps embarrassed, limited its description of the America
> First Committee to "an isolationist political party in the U.S. in the
> 1940s."
>
> Trump's frequent advocacy of violence—"like in the good old days
> "—against protesting opponents, his staff members' sometimes violent
> exclusion of Blacks and Muslims from his rallies, as well as his overt
> racism and hate-mongering aimed at Latinos and Blacks similarly reflect
> an incipient-fascist orientation. His belated disassociation from former
> Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke's endorsement is sufficient to indicate
> his vile character and politics.
>
> The recipient of more free media coverage than any other candidate,
> Trump railed in mid-March against the anti-racist protesters who
> mobilized 8000 strong outside his planned University of Illinois rally
> and the several thousand who managed to get inside to exercise their
> free speech rights. Trump's lies that university officials and Chicago
> police cancelled his meeting out of security concerns, and that the
> Bernie Sanders campaign sponsored the protests, were soon refuted by
> these same officials and by Sanders himself.
>
> Trump's now infamous line, "You're fired," taken from his previously
> hosted "reality TV" show, is now his watchword or signal to threaten or
> physically remove discordant attendees from his rallies. His campaign
> chief, Cory Lewandowski, was recently arrested on charges of battery
> against a Florida newswoman. Trump denied the charges, but the incident
> was captured on video, and the bruised reporter's accusations were
> subsequently affirmed by police officials.
>
> Republican tops try to block Trump candidacy
>
> Trump's reactionary posturing is increasingly an anathema to the
> Republican Party hierarchy, several of whose top traditional leaders
> have stepped forward in an effort to block his drive to obtain the 1237
> delegates to ensure his nomination at the July 18-21 Republican Party
> national convention set for Cleveland. Former Minnesota Republican
> strategist and major fundraiser Norman Coleman warned that a Trump
> candidacy could imperil today's Republican control of the House of
> Representatives and Senate.
>
> In the meantime, ranked on an abstract scale of right-wing ideas, few
> doubt that Texas Senator Ted Cruz takes first place, exceeding all
> others in his insider background, yet expressing racist, sexist,
> homophobic, anti-immigrant and other reactionary views.
>
> It appears that what began as an orchestrated effort to broaden its base
> has become a Republican Party nightmare. When the 18 original Republican
> candidates were paraded before the corporate media to display their
> wares, what emerged was not any significant differentiation aimed at
> bringing new forces into the Republican fold but rather a gang of
> like-minded, almost comical idiots denouncing each other. This
> ever-escalating descent into crazed rants and hatemongering aptly
> describes the moral and political bankruptcy of this prominent wing of
> the U.S. ruling class.
>
> At the same time, at least some clever ruling-class elements who stand
> above the fray no doubt see these "hardball" right-wing contestants,
> regardless of who wins the elections, as facilitating the "liberal"
> Democrats' moving ever further to the right in order to achieve common
> objectives. "Hard cop–soft cop," so to speak.
>
> On the Democratic Party side we see a different story, with the
> traditional Democratic Party hierarchy realizing early on that Hillary
> Clinton's bashing, not to mention red-baiting, "democratic socialist"
> Bernie Sanders would do her no good, if not redound against her.
>
> The populist Sanders campaign has its analogies with Trump's in that it
> calls into question the Washington elites and their bipartisan
> "free-trade" deals that yearly, on average, ship some million relatively
> high-wage U.S. jobs to low-wage peripheral nations like China, Vietnam,
> Thailand, Indonesia, and Mexico. The result has been a U.S. working
> class whose previous manufacturing and associated trade-union base has
> been largely eroded—with private-sector unionism today reduced to some
> 5.6 percent.
>
> Increasing numbers of U.S. workers, if they have jobs at all, (the
> official U.S. job participation rate, 62 percent, stands at the lowest
> point in decades) are employed in low-wage, part-time, or
> precarious/uncertain usually service-sector jobs at the mercy of the
> boss class. Needless to say, anti-immigrant and racist prejudice is
> encouraged by corporate elites and serves to reduce all wages.
>
> Sanders approaches this aspect of the employer offensive with proposals
> for massive public works programs, higher taxes on the rich, as well as
> single-payer health care and free education through the public college
> level. In this he has sharply distinguished himself from Trump, who
> employs openly racist demagoguery and seeks to scapegoat the most
> oppressed, especially immigrants, as well as Washington's "free traders"
> for the country's deepening crises.
>
> Bipartisan agreement on trade issues
>
> With regard to the issue of "free trade," and I put this term in
> quotation marks for a reason, we should note that U.S. trade policy has
> in recent decades been largely a bipartisan affair. All sections of the
> capitalist class seek to employ trade policies that best suit their
> technologies and competitive status in the world economy. Those
> corporations with the most advanced technologies, regardless of party
> affiliation, advocate free trade in the sense of opposing any
> protectionist barriers imposed against their better quality and cheaper
> products.
>
> Free traders want no obstacles to their penetration of world markets.
> Indeed, many of the "cheap" products that enter the U.S. from China and
> other low-wage nations are manufactured abroad by multi-national
> corporations controlled by U.S. corporations. These same U.S.
> commodities, produced both with cheap labor abroad and high-tech
> machinery, if not robots, tend to undermine the economies of poorer or
> less competitive nations.
>
> Quietly, but also with the operative principles in play, those U.S.
> corporations whose technologies cannot effectively compete on world
> markets make sure that government negotiators press to include
> provisions in trade pacts, like NAFTA and the more recent Trans Pacific
> Partnership (TPP) agreement, that protect their weaker corporations'
> lack of competitiveness. When it comes to profits, capitalists, whether
> Democrat or Republican, defend their own interests first, whether it be
> via free trade or protectionist policies.
>
> The anti-immigrant racist Trump, for example, regularly employs
> low-wage, non-citizen Mexican immigrants in his Florida hotels and
> elsewhere, justifying this policy with the lie that in Florida white
> workers simply don't want part-time (he neglects to add low-wage) jobs!
>
> Sanders' left populism is of the "democratic socialist" reformist
> variety, as with Syriza in Greece and Podemos in Spain and the various
> Scandinavian nations that, in the past, maintained some comprehensive
> social welfare programs, many of which have today been sharply curtained
> by these same "democratic socialist" capitalist governments.
>
> Trump's right-wing populist rhetoric is more akin to the neo-fascist or
> extreme-right populism in Europe, as in France with Marine LePen's
> National Front or the recent rise of neo-fascist parties in Poland and
> Germany. All of these forces rail against immigrants' taking local jobs
> and otherwise upsetting the "national culture and traditions"—racist
> code words indeed.
>
> Sanders, like Trump, has chosen to be a player in the now almost
> year-round electoral shenanigans that constitute today's manufactured
> reality-TV America. Both understand in their different ways that U.S.
> presidents do not make any of the fundamental decisions in capitalist
> society. These are most always in the exclusive purview of
> behind-the-scenes negotiations between the real rulers, or more
> accurately, the direct professional unelected representatives of the
> tiny perhaps .001 percent who own and control the vast wealth of the
> nation and all associated institutions that help them amass their wealth.
>
> In this Machiavellian schema, everything—from the details of the tax
> codes, trade policies, war policies, the national budget, Federal
> Reserve monetary decisions, U.S. debt levels, and more—is honed to a
> level of precision that exceeds the human imagination.
>
> Despite this ruling class "expertise," however, the capitalist system's
> inherent contradictions, long ago revealed by Karl Marx and as relevant
> today as ever, continually bring it to the point of crisis and near
> collapse, invariably impelling it to "solutions" contrary to the
> interest of the vast majority, as we see everywhere in today's world of
> never-ending wars and the brutal imposition of austerity measures.
>
> Driven relentlessly by its profit-first imperative, for example, the
> introduction of modern labor-saving technology into the productive
> process inevitably results in massive layoffs for the working class as
> opposed to a massive increase in leisure time—time that in an
> egalitarian socialist society would be devoted to the advancement of
> education, broad cultural pursuits, and furthering humanity's well-being.
>
> Contradictions of capitalism
>
> The capitalism system in all its fundamentals is based on the
> exploitation of human labor, that is, the stealing of a major portion of
> the value that labor produces. But the very substitution of machines to
> replace human labor eventually leads to a fall in the rate of profit for
> the broad capitalist class.
>
> It is this "law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall," as Marx
> explained, that compels capitalists to introduce a myriad of
> counter-measures, including extension of the length of the work day,
> speed up at the workplace, attacks on wages, pensions and social
> benefits—and today, the outsourcing of basic production to low-wage and
> increasingly near slave-labor countries.
>
> These, and other elements of capitalism's inherent contradictions, lie
> at the center of any rational explanation of the imposition of massive
> austerity measures against workers in every nation. They have raised the
> consciousness of millions, if not billions of people, that there is
> something fundamentally flawed in the system itself.
>
> In the U.S. this awareness is expressed in contradictory ways, with the
> Trumps of the world blaming capitalism's victims and appealing to base
> prejudice while the Sanders camp poses more palliative responses that
> point to remedies that in essence keep the system intact along with its
> leading party, the Democrats, who have proven to be the most malleable,
> reliable, and skilled in channeling rising discontent back into the
> establishment's political framework.
>
> Rhetoric aside, Sanders' record of voting with the Democrats 98 percent
> of the time—including his support to nearly all U.S. imperialist wars
> and the annual trillion-dollar military budget—as well as his pledge to
> support Hillary Clinton should he lose the present primary contests is
> more than sufficient to justify his treatment in the corporate media as
> a "legitimate" candidate.
>
> Indeed, to the extent that Sanders travels the country to convince
> ever-increasing numbers of young activists that the Democratic Party can
> be effectively reformed, he is well suited to shepherding the
> disillusioned back into the camp of the capitalist exploiters.
>
> Sadly, those in the socialist movement who should know better, such as
> Socialist Alternative and its elected Seattle city-council member,
> Kshama Sawant, have opted to support Sanders and to organize rallies for
> his campaign—with Sawant serving as a keynote speaker at a late March
> Sanders rally in Seattle.
>
> While Sanders has certainly brought new legitimacy and interest to
> socialist ideas, a development that began to be reflected in the polls a
> few years before his announced candidacy, he has also sought to obscure
> socialism's revolutionary content. As always, this task falls to those
> who clearly understand the class divide in capitalist societies.
>
> The revolutionary socialist future will be a product of the conscious
> organization and mobilization of the broad working-class majority to end
> capitalist rule once and for all. The construction of a revolutionary
> socialist party to help in the leadership of this struggle stands at the
> center of Socialist Action's reason for being. Join us!
>
>
>
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> Posted in Elections. | Tagged Bernie Sanders, Clinton, Cruz, Democrats,
> Republicans, Trump.
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> JAN. 2014 p.1 jpegJAN. 2014 p. 12
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