California Free Press

Chairman Sanders Announces Senate Budget Committee Hearing on Wasteful Pentagon Spending

WASHINGTON - Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) today announced that the Senate Budget Committee will hold a hearing Wednesday, May 12 at 11 a.m., on “Waste, Fraud, Cost Overruns, and Auditing at the Pentagon.”

Over the past 20 years, the military industrial complex has spent over $2.6 billion in lobbying and campaign contributions to influence Congress. Currently, the U.S. spends more on our nation’s military than the next nine countries combined and over half of our discretionary spending goes to the Pentagon. Meanwhile, half of our people are struggling paycheck to paycheck, over 40 million Americans are living in poverty, and over 500,000 Americans are homeless including roughly 40,000 veterans.

Congress has appropriated so much money for the Defense Department that the Pentagon does not know what to do with it. About half of the Pentagon’s budget goes directly into the hands of private contractors, not our troops. According to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), between 2013 and 2018 the Pentagon returned more than $80 billion in funding back to the Treasury.

A major reason why there is so much waste, fraud, and abuse at the Pentagon is the fact that the Defense Department remains the only federal agency in the United States that hasn’t been able to pass an independent audit. And, over the past two decades, virtually every major defense contractor in the United States has paid billions of dollars in fines and settlements for misconduct and fraud—all while making huge profits on those government contracts.  

Sanders, who has for years pressed the Pentagon to get control of waste, fraud, and abuse by military contractors, has invited Dr. Lawrence Korb, Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress; William Hartung, Director of the Arms and Security Program at the Center for International Oversight; and Mandy Smithberger, Director of the Center for Defense Information at the Project on Government Oversight to testify. Also testifying will be Roger Zackheim, Director of the Ronald Reagan Institute and LTG (Ret) Thomas Spoehr, Director of the Center for National Defense at The Heritage Foundation.

Hearing Details
What: Hearing of the Committee on the Budget to consider “Waste, Fraud, Cost Overruns, and Auditing at the Pentagon.”
When: Wednesday, May 12, 2021, 11:00 a.m. ET
Where: Room SD-608. The hearing will also be livestreamed on the Budget Committee’s website and Sanders’ social media pages.
Who: Dr. Lawrence Korb, Mr. William Hartung, Ms. Mandy Smithberger, Mr. Roger Zackheim, and LTG (Ret) Thomas Spoehr.

Off the Top of My Head

If Two Democratic Senators Were Not Elected in Georgia Run-offs, There Would Be No COVID Relief Package Under Biden

by John Lawrence, March13, 2021

It was crucial that the two Georgia Democratic Senators were elected. Not one Republican voted for Biden's $1.9 trillion bill. If there were one less Democrat in the Senate, nothing like it would ever have been passed. Republicans are the Party of No. Not one Republican Senator will ever vote Yes on any legislation put forward by a Democrat so that Georgia election was crucial. That's why Republican legislatures not only in Georgia but around the country are scrambling to put restrictive Jim Crow voting regulations in place on the belief that Republican operative Paul Weyrich was right. He said, "So many of our Christians have what I call the goo-goo syndrome: good government. They want everybody to vote. I don't want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people, they never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down."

So now economist Larry Summers is worried about inflation due to the fact that trillions have been added to the deficit. So far, lawmakers have enacted six major bills, costing about $5.3 trillion, to help manage the pandemic and mitigate the economic burden on families and businesses. Even those economists know that the Federal government doesn't need taxes  in order to spend money. The Federal Reserve can create it with a few keystrokes on a computer just the way they did to bail out Wall Street banks during the Great Financial Recession (GFR) of 2008. Of course the public wasn't suppose to know about this "secret" bailout by the Fed. Authorities wanted you to believe that the $700 billion bill passed by Congress provided the bailout. In reality it was much more. Rolling Stone reported: "Washington Post “Fact-checker” columnist Glenn Kessler disputes the numerous studies showing the real bailout outlay was through the Fed, which the Sanders campaign had said was anywhere from $7.7 trillion (the number Bloomberg used in its coverage of secret Fed lending) to $29 trillion (the number the Levy Institute at Bard College calculated, including guarantees and other forms of aid).

So how is it that  Larry Summers was not so worried about inflation due to the Fed's trillions of dollars created and given to Wall Street? The answer is that that money was given to rich people which has caused no inflation because rich people are not going to spend money in ways that drive up the Consumer Price Index (CPI). They are mainly going to invest their money in ways that aren't included in the CPI. They are going to purchase assets like stocks and real estate. Consequence: no inflation at least as measured by the CPI. Instead the Wall Street bailout during the GFR as well as the $2 trillion tax breaks of the Trump administration produced asset inflation. It's the reason that home prices and rents are becoming increasingly unaffordable. But Summers is worried about inflation as measured by the CPI which is what happens when poor and middle class people get a trillion dollar bailout. They will spend that money at least partly on consumer goods that are included in the CPI and potentially drive up prices. However, much of the bailout money will go to pay off debts like past due rent and mortgage payments. This is not inflationary. So the real moral of the story is that, according to economists like Summers, bailing out rich people is good, bailing out poor people is bad.

So two lessons are to be learned here. 1) The Fed doesn't need taxes to create money and spend it into the economy whether that money is to bail out banks or to bail out the poor and middles class. 2) Democrats need to enact at the Federal level voting laws which encourage as many people to vote as possible and roll back Republican enacted restrictions on voting at the state level. In order to do the latter, Democrats will have to eliminate the filibuster at least for particular types of legislation. The only reason Biden's $1.9 trillion relief bill passed is that it was done by a process known as "budget reconciliation" which only requires a majority vote in the Senate. A national voting rights bill cannot be passed by that process and is subject to the filibuster which requires 60 votes. The Party of No wouldn't hesitate to use the filibuster to doom any voting rights legislation at the Federal level which means essentially that Jim Crow voting rights would again be put in place to discourage black people from voting. And don't worry about your children and grandchildren having to pay off the national debt. The Federal Reserve doesn't need their money.

Urging Senate to 'Ignore the Parliamentarian,' Sanders to Force Vote on $15 Minimum Wage Amendment

Published on Tuesday, March 02, 2021

by Common Dreams

"I regard it as absurd that the parliamentarian, a Senate staffer elected by no one, can prevent a wage increase for 32 million workers."

by Jake Johnson, staff writer

 

141 Comments

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, arrives at a hearing on Capitol Hill on February 25, 2021 in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Stefani Reynolds-Pool/Getty Images)

Calling on the Senate Democratic majority to disregard the advice of the unelected parliamentarian, Sen. Bernie Sanders late Monday announced he will force a vote this week on an amendment to include a $15 minimum wage provision in the pending $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package.

"At a time when millions of workers are earning starvation wages, when the minimum wage has not been raised by Congress since 2007 and stands at a pathetic $7.25 an hour, it is time to raise the minimum wage to a living wage," Sanders, the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, said in a statement.

"The Senate should ignore the parliamentarian's advice, which is wrong in a number of respects."
—Sen. Bernie Sanders

The Vermont senator's announcement came as the White House and Senate Democrats signaled a retreat from the effort to include a minimum wage increase in the coronavirus relief package after the parliamentarian advised last week that the measure would run afoul of the Byrd Rule, which requires provisions of reconciliation bills to have a direct—not "merely incidental"—impact on the federal budget.

Citing two anonymous Democratic aides, the Washington Post reported Monday that "Senate Democrats will move forward with a version of the relief bill that does not attempt to raise the minimum wage." Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said in a floor speech Monday that the chamber will begin voting on the sprawling relief package this week, with an initial procedural vote expected as early as Wednesday.

In his statement Monday night, Sanders said he was "extremely disappointed by the decision of the parliamentarian, who ruled that the minimum wage provision was inconsistent with the Byrd Rule and the reconciliation process."

Echoing the calls of progressive House Democrats and dozens of grassroots advocacy groups representing millions of people across the U.S., Sanders said his "own personal view is that the Senate should ignore the parliamentarian's advice, which is wrong in a number of respects."

"I am not sure, however, that my view at this point is the majority view in the Democratic caucus," the Vermont senator added, alluding to opposition from Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.). "Obviously, as soon as we can, we must end the filibuster that currently exists in the U.S. Senate. Given the enormous crises facing working families today, we cannot allow a minority of the Senate to obstruct what the vast majority of the American people want and need."

Progressives in recent days have pushed Vice President Kamala Harris to overrule the parliamentarian's advice, which she has the constitutional authority to do. Should the vice president opt to use that authority, it would take 60 votes in the Senate to overrule her.

 

But White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was adamant during a Monday briefing that Harris will not attempt to overrule the parliamentarian, the official tasked with interpreting Senate rules.

Asked by NBC News reporter Geoff Bennett why the White House appears to be fighting harder to salvage the collapsing nomination of budget office pick Neera Tanden than to keep the minimum wage increase in the coronavirus relief package, Psaki accused Bennett of "mixing a few things kind of irresponsibly."

Sanders made clear Monday that he will continue pushing to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour if his coronavirus relief amendment fails to pass this week.

Following the parliamentarian's advisory ruling against the proposed pay raise last week, Sanders and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) began crafting a backup plan that would impose tax penalties on large corporations that don't pay their employees $15 an hour. But Sanders and Wyden reportedly dropped the plan after it became clear that the measure would be too difficult to implement and that there wouldn't be sufficient support to include it in the emerging Covid-19 relief package.

Speaking to the press about his new $15 minimum wage amendment, Sanders said Monday that "there will be a roll call vote, and we'll see who votes for it and doesn't."

"I would suggest that those who vote against it from a political point of view, that's a mistake. The American people want to see that minimum wage raised," Sanders continued. "Let me be very clear—if we fail in this legislation, I will be back."

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Off the Top of My Head

Former Energy Secretary Proposes Going to Capital Markets for Money to Upgrade Energy Grid Infrastructure: Is This Wise?

by John Lawrence, February 21, 2021

Clinton's Energy Secretary, Bill Richardson, proposes going to the capital markets since the government has been spending so much money on COVID relief. He suggests a public-private partnership. Evidently, Mr. Richardson, like most politicians and dignitaries, is totally ignorant of Modern Monetary Theory. The Federal Reserve can create interest free money with a few computer keystrokes while the capital markets will charge interest, and not only that. Once you enter the Wall Street casino you're subject to all the vagaries of the financial markets like securitzation, credit default obligations, interest rate swaps, betting against the success of various programs and much more. These are the kind of financial activities that caused the 2008 Great Recession and the bankruptcy of Orange County, Birmingham, Milan Italy and the misery in Greece. What's more going to the capital markets causes the same inflation risks as having the Fed create the money because inflation is caused by the amount of money sloshing around in the economy not who supplies it.

Larry Summers is worried about Biden's big spending bills causing inflation. What he doesn't get is that these bills are targeted. It's not just money pumped into the economy. The money going to states and municipalities, for example, is going to pay off debts. That holds for all the money going to families who are behind on their rents and mortgages. Paying off debts is deflationary not inflationary. Money going to unemployment insurance is just money that allows people to consume as if they had a job. That is not inflationary. Money going to businesses to prevent them from failing and putting employees back to work is not inflationary because having these businesses fail and employees without jobs is deflationary. All those flights and cruises not taken, all the money not spent going to movie theaters, all the money not spent on consumption when consumption is 70% of the economy - is deflationary. In fact there is so much deflation during a recession that that is the main worry - not inflation.

But reorienting priorities should also play a part in controlling inflation. Decreasing the trillion dollar budget of the military and military-industrial complex would help to offset inflation and pay for infrastructure repair. It would also free up the human resources needed for a build out of green infrastructure because wage inflation is caused by not enough human resources being available thus bidding up wages. The integrity of the US dollar could also be increased by eliminating sanctions on other countries. The US is using the fact of sanctioning other countries because the US dollar is the world's reserve currency causing the diminution of the use of the US currency as sanctioned countries find workarounds using other currencies. In America's Other Forever War, Peter Beinart explains that these sanctions do not accomplish anything except to hurt the people that happen to be living in the countries that are sanctioned. The chickens will come home to roost as the US dollar looses value in the international currency markets as the euro, yen and reminbi are used more for international trade. As Beinart writes, "“It is past time,” Joe Biden pledged last year, “to end the forever wars.” He’s right. But his definition of war is too narrow."

A careful analysis of Biden's spending plans  as well as reorienting current spending priorities needs to be carried out so that runaway inflation does not occur. Certainly putting people back to work is not inflationary. Federal money targeted toward paying off debts by states, municipalities and families is not inflationary. Federal money spent on infrastructure is not inflationary providing that the human and material resources are available. Since the Federal Reserve can create US dollars without the need for taxes, Modern Monetary Theory has shown and economists widely agree that the only limit on Federal so-called "deficit" spending is inflation. Stephanie Kelton has explained that Deficits Don't Matter in her book, The Deficit Myth. People like Bill Richardson and most liberal and conservative politicians need to study up on economics. Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are some of the few people that already have.

Off the Top of My Head

Taxing the Rich Will Lessen the Need for Deficit Spending

by John Lawrence, January 29, 2021

Billionaires are upset because their hedge fund ploys in the Wall Street casino went awry when a group of average Joes countered their short sales of GameStop. Oh the tears that were shed. Billionaires losing millions gambling? Outrageous! Bernie Sanders tweeted: "Oh look, another billionaire is mad that he might have to pay more taxes while children in America go hungry and veterans sleep on the street. Cry me a river," Joe Biden's $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill will mean a lot of deficit spending which can be offset, however, by taxing these billionaires. A financial transaction tax would raise $2.4 trillion over the next decade—"enough to make public colleges tuition free and cancel student debt."

Casino Capitalism Lesson 1: Selling short. Here's how billionaire hedge fund managers planned to make a killing. They knew that GameStop was losing money and probably going out of business. GameStop closed 321 stores in 2019 alone and planned on closing even more stores by the end of 2020. So knowing that GameStop's stock was going down (it didn't take a big brain to figure that out), they sold its stock short. What that means is that they "borrowed" the stock from people that already owned it. Then they sold the stock at its value at that time. Some time later when they would have to "return" the stock to those they borrowed it from, they planned to buy it back at a lower price (it having gone down in the meantime) and pocket the difference. One might ask why the original owners of the stock would loan it in the first place since they must have known that the stock would be worth less when it was returned to them.

However, a group of "amateur" investors foiled the plans of the billionaires by buying GameStop stock thereby bidding up the price making it worth more when the short sellers had to return it, not less. That would mean that the short sellers would lose money instead of making money. That's when the billionaires cried, "Ouch!" Then the "amateurs" who bid up the stock could sell it at the higher price and make money. Woo Haa! Leon Cooperman, whose net worth is estimated to be around $3 billion, sniffed that "the reason the market is doing what it's doing is, people are sitting at home, getting their checks from the government, basically trading for no commissions and no interest rates." In other words average people trading stocks are making the money that billionaires like him should have made. Boo Hoo!

Modern Monetary Theory maintains that all the money for the COVID relief bill could be raised from deficit spending because deficits don't matter without any need for increased taxation. Yet it would be prudent to raise taxes on the mega rich in order to decrease economic inequality which represents an enormous chasm between the billionaire class and everyone else. A new report found that the world’s 2,153 billionaires have more wealth than 4.6 billion people, underscoring the degree of global inequality. This would also offset any decrease in the value of the dollar that large deficit spending might bring about. In The Deficit Myth by Stephanie Kelton, she points out that the Federal Reserve which creates US dollars can never run out of money since the US dollar is a sovereign currency, but there is a concern about inflation if too much money is created which doesn't have a productive purpose in the economy. Since so many are unemployed and since there is a huge infrastructure deficit, this is not in danger of happening any time soon. There is no lack of money for government programs since they don't depend on tax flows, and money created by the Federal Reserve that ends up on the Fed's balance sheet never has to be paid back.

While the Fed can create as much money as it likes to bail out the banks without Congressional approval, which it did during the 2008 banking crisis, money created for government spending, such as the $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill, must have Congressional authorization. Fortunately, there is a process known as budget reconciliation which only requires a majority vote and the Democrats have the majority in the Senate. Therefore, the COVID relief bill cannot be filibustered by Republicans which they surely would do if they were in the majority. So it's clear that Republicans only represent the interests of the rich who will contribute to their campaigns and enrich them in return as long as they vote to nullify everything that might help the average person or raise taxes on them.

'Cry Me a River': Sanders Hits Back as Billionaire Investor Whines About Potential Tax Hikes Amid GameStop Fiasco

Published on Friday, January 29, 2021

by Common Dreams

"Oh look, another billionaire is mad that he might have to pay more taxes while children in America go hungry and veterans sleep on the street."

by Jake Johnson, staff writer

 

22 Comments

Billionaire investor Leon Cooperman speaks during an interview on CNBC on January 28, 2021. (Photo: CNBC/YouTube Screengrab)

As the ongoing GameStop saga sparked renewed calls for a financial transactions tax and other commonsense redistributive measures to tackle soaring inequality and Wall Street abuses, billionaire investor Leon Cooperman took to the airwaves Thursday to fume that the idea of compelling the mega-rich to pay their fair share is a "bullshit concept" and merely "a way of attacking wealthy people."

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a longtime proponent of raising taxes on billionaires like Cooperman, was not impressed.

"Yes. We will make Wall Street billionaires pay their fair share of taxes and create an economy that works for all of us."
—Sen. Bernie Sanders

"Oh look, another billionaire is mad that he might have to pay more taxes while children in America go hungry and veterans sleep on the street. Cry me a river," the Vermont senator tweeted late Thursday. "Yes. We will make Wall Street billionaires pay their fair share of taxes and create an economy that works for all of us."

A hedge fund manager who was charged with insider trading by the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2016, Cooperman is one of several industry big-wigs who has appeared on financial networks like CNBC in recent days to complain about the retail investors who banded together to send GameStop shares into the stratosphere, blowing up a ploy by short-selling hedge funds to cash in on the company's seemingly imminent demise.

Cooperman, whose net worth is estimated to be around $3 billion, sniffed that "the reason the market is doing what it's doing is, people are sitting at home, getting their checks from the government, basically trading for no commissions and no interest rates."

"I'm not damning them. I'm just saying from my experience, this will end in tears," Cooperman said as the investing app Robinhood abruptly restricted trading on GameStock and other shares, prompting members of Congress such as Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) to demand hearings and an investigation.

During the 2020 presidential campaign, Sanders proposed a Wall Street transaction tax aimed at both curbing reckless financial speculation and raising revenue that could be used to fund progressive agenda items, including tuition-free public colleges and universities.

Warren Gunnels, Sanders' staff director, noted in a tweet Thursday that Sanders' transaction tax would raise $2.4 trillion over the next decade—"enough to make public colleges tuition free and cancel student debt."

"If the working class could bail out Wall Street," Gunnels said, "Wall Street can bail out working families in America during a damn pandemic."

HuffPost's Zach Carter argued Wednesday that a financial transactions tax would be the "simplest solution" to an untenable status quo in which Wall Street titans are handsomely rewarded for engaging in "what is a mostly economically wasteful activity."

"We have plenty of roads and bridges to repair and a vastly outdated transportation system," Carter wrote. "Redistributing money from hedge funders in the Hamptons to a high-speed rail network or a national public housing program would do more for growth and productivity than all the shorts and put options in New York."

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Off the Top of My Head

Bernie Sanders, Budget Reconciliation and Modern Monetary Theory

by John Lawrence, January 18, 2021

Joe Biden will have no trouble from Congress in passing his $1.9 trillion relief bill. That's because Democrats control all 3 branches, and the filibuster is neutered due to "budget reconciliation." This allows a spending bill to be fast tracked through Congress without the possibility of a filibuster. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities: "The Senate can consider and pass reconciliation bills relatively quickly and with only a simple majority, rather than the three-fifths majority often needed for controversial legislation. That’s because reconciliation legislation isn’t subject to filibuster. Under general Senate rules, legislation can be stalled by virtually unlimited debate and the offering of numerous amendments, with a three-fifths majority vote required to invoke “cloture,” thereby limiting debate and blocking non-germane amendments. For a reconciliation bill, however, the Congressional Budget Act limits Senate debate on the bill to 20 hours and limits debate on the subsequent compromise between the two houses to ten hours."

Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) has shown that deficits don't matter. At least George W Bush didn't think so when he used the budget reconciliation process to give huge tax breaks to the rich which significantly increased the deficit and reduced income to the Federal government from taxes. The use of budget reconciliation did an end run around PAYGO which requires the Federal government to balance its budget and the debt limit which also constrains Federal spending. Both conservatives and liberals will be enthused over the fact that MMT proclaims that either tax reduction or government spending is good for American society (up to a point) even though the debt limit or PAYGO may be violated. This is because government is effectively adding money to the private sector which drives economic activity.

Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are very familiar with not only budget reconciliation but also MMT because one of its chief adherents, Stephanie Kelton who wrote the book, The Deficit Myth, previously was a Senate advisor to Bernie on the Senate Budget Committee. On December 26, 2014, Kelton was designated as Chief Economist for the Democratic Minority Staff of the Senate Budget Committee, a post that she held in 2015 and early 2016, when she left that position to become an economic advisor to the Bernie Sanders campaign. So the American economy is about to get a shot in the arm that will mostly benefit poor and middle class people (whereas the Bush tax cuts primarily benefited the rich) much to the chagrin of conservatives that hold to the idea that government deficit spending should only benefit the rich through tax cuts.

MMT contends that, since the Federal Reserve creates money by keystokes on a computer and the US dollar is a sovereign currency, the US government can never run out of money. Treasury bonds can always be sold to cover deficits, and, if they can't be sold to the general public, they will end up on the Fed's balance sheet where they may remain forever as an accounting entry. Even the interest paid on Treasury bonds, which is now approximately zero, is not a consideration. Interest on Treasuries owned by the Fed is remitted to the Federal government anyway. So now is the time for massive spending by the US Federal government to 1) expedite recovery from COVID; 2) jump start the economy; and 3) expedite a global response to global warming by converting to renewable energy on all levels including:

"replacing fossil-fuel engines with electric in all public and private transport, super-insulating buildings and replacing inefficient HVAC systems, establishing regional photo-voltaic micro-grid electric networks, replacing gas cooking ranges with electric induction units, buying regenerative-produced farm products and 'meatless meats', replacing all small engine appliances and tools with battery electric power"

And this is not to mention that solar, wind and other forms of renewable energy need to replace fossil fuel electric generating plants.

There is no time to lose. The incoming administration has a lot on its plate. In addition to that they have to run an impeachment trial in the Senate. Let's hope it doesn't slow down any of Joe Biden's initiatives. With Bernie as the Chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, armed with a knowledge of MMT, we can look forward to restoring the US' standing in the world community as well as restoring an economy that works for the poor and not just the well heeled, getting the pandemic under control and mitigating climate change. Thank you Bernie and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Off the Top of My Head

Let's Talk About the Communist Bogieman

by John Lawrence, October 8, 2020

After the vice Presidential debate last night Trump called Kamala Harris a communist. Let's be clear: communism is a system in which the government owns all property and makes all economic decisions. Let's also be clear about this: nowhere in the world today does communism exist. Not in Russia. Not in China. Not in Cuba. In Russia private ownership of enterprises and property had essentially remained illegal throughout the Soviet era, with Soviet communism emphasizing national control over all means of production. In the 1990s, during the Presidency of Boris Yeltsin, there was  large-scale privatization of Russia's state-owned assets, particularly in the industrial, energy, and financial sectors. Privatization shifted Russia from the Soviet planned economy towards a market economy, and resulted in a dramatic rise in the level of economic inequality. It facilitated the transfer of significant wealth to a relatively small group of oligarchs.

In China private property and state owned enterprises co-exist. According to the NY Times: "Today, the private sector contributes nearly two-thirds of the country’s growth and nine-tenths of new jobs, according to the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce, an official business group." In fact the reason why China has pulled 800,000 people out of poverty in the last 40 years is that the economy has been partially privatized. There are more billionaires in China than in the US. Many people in China went from being poor to middle class due to the privatization of the housing market. So although China is still ruled by the Chinese Communist Party, its government is communist in name only. They should probably eliminate the word "Communist" from the party's name.

Now consider Cuba. In 2010, Cuban leaders Fidel and Raul Castro made the decision to abandon the old Soviet model of centralized planning. In 2011, new laws were enacted to expand the right to private property. In 2019, a new Constitution was approved which officially recognizes the right to private property, while also reconfirming the central government's authority over the regulation of production and land.

So if the accusation that Kamala is a communist is ridiculous, what about socialism? There is not one definition of socialism. Many of the western democracies like France, Germany, the UK and Sweden, which are US allies, have been governed by democratic socialist parties. These societies have market economies including the encouragement of entrepreneurialism, but also have a government provided social safety net including universal health care, free or inexpensive education from pre-K through college, allowances for child care, elder care etc. Sweden's government even owned a hamburger chain until recently and owns Sweden's state-run alcohol monopoly Systembolaget. The democratic socialism advocated by Bernie Sanders and others is nothing more than a model based on Sweden where there are high taxes on the wealthy which provide a government sponsored safety net for the middle class and the poor. Today there is one more reason why there should be a strong social safety net: global warming. It is clear that private enterprise is not up to the job of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to zero within a reasonable amount of time, reasonable meaning before the earth becomes uninhabitable.

Today in the US we  have a nominal capitalist or free market economy, but even in this economy the government institutes the rules within which the economy operates. The rules are set up and tweaked by those in power, those who have the money to hire lobbyists to convince legislators to write the rules in their favor, namely large corporations and the very wealthy. Don't be fooled by the meme that the powerful don't want government regulations. They do want regulations, but regulations that favor their interests and not the interests, necessarily, of the average person who doesn't have the resources to influence legislation by hiring lobbyists.

Today Kamala Harris and other Democratic progressives are really taking the realistic middle ground when they advocate for government policies which will mitigate and reduce climate change and provide a social safety net for the American people. This goes against the interests of the oil and gas industry to be sure. To advocate for universal health care is to advocate for the health care system that Canada and all our allies already have in pace. To advocate for policies that reduce the out of bounds economic inequality by taxing the rich and spending the money on raising the economic level of the poor and lower middle class only makes sense. None of these policies make Kamala Harris a communist since communism doesn't even exist in the world today. Formerly communist countries have given way to hybrid economies in which private enterprise and state owned enterprises coexist with, in the case of China, private enterprise having been the significant factor in improving the lives of the Chinese middle class.

Today, the US has gone way overboard towards an economy controlled by the rich and powerful in their own interests. Economic inequality has gotten way out of hand. The balance needs to be redressed and only a government which uses its authority to diminish the economic power of the wealthy and augment the power of the poor and middle class can provide the necessary change. Good paying jobs can be created which address infrastructure and climate change needs. So more or less a Green New Deal or whatever else you want to call it is necessary. Too bad that Republicans have gone out of their way to demonize that name as they've gone out of their way to demonize Obamacare or any other initiative progressive Democrats put forth. That is their stock and trade - not discussing the merits but demonizing the name.

Bernie Sanders: Ruinous 2020 Debate Showcased Why Trump Is 'Most Dangerous President' in US History

Published on Wednesday, September 30, 2020

by Common Dreams

"If you believe in democracy, if you believe in the Constitution and in the rule of law, Trump has got to go."

by Jake Johnson, staff writer

 

26 Comments

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) speaks at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. on September 24, 2020. (Photo: Nicholas Kamm/AFP via Getty Images)

Sen. Bernie Sanders said following Tuesday night's 2020 debate that President Donald Trump's performance—including his refusal to condemn armed white supremacists, attack on the legitimacy of the election, and rejection of science—showcased why he is "the most dangerous president in the history of the United States of America" and must be defeated in November.

"This is a guy who continues to say he may not lose office," the Vermont senator said in an appearance on "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" late Tuesday. "You wanna be shocked, Jimmy? What about learning that you got a guy in office now who says, 'Well, maybe I will lose the election. So what? That doesn't mean to say I'm gonna leave office because, as you know, everything is fraudulent. If I lose, by definition the election is rigged.' Think about that."

Sanders was referencing Trump's false claim—which he has made numerous times in recent weeks, including during the Republican National Convention—that the election is "rigged" against him due to the increase in mail-in voting driven by the coronavirus pandemic.

"If you believe in democracy," Sanders continued, "if you believe in the Constitution and in the rule of law, Trump has got to go."

Watch:

 

While Sanders didn't shy away from his disagreements with Democratic nominee Joe Biden on the Green New Deal, Medicare for All, and other progressive policy goals, the Vermont senator said the differences between the former vice president and Trump on climate, healthcare, and other crucial issues are stark and were on full display Tuesday night.

"I happen to think, and I think people saw this tonight, that in Donald Trump, we have the most dangerous president in the history of this country, somebody who not only lies all of the time, Jimmy, but really doesn't believe in science," Sanders said.

"We have a president who continues to reject science. That's true for the coronavirus, that is true for climate change as well," the senator continued. "What we need, and I think Biden will give us, is a government that at least listens to science and develops legislation based on science... He understands that climate change is an existential threat to the planet."

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Off the Top of My Head

How Ya Gonna Pay For It?

by John Lawrence, July 27, 2020

This is the question they often asked Bernie Sanders when he talked about the various programs that he would seek to implement as President. Programs like a Green New Deal, Medicare for All, forgiveness of all student loan debt, free college, free pre-school etc. Bernie never really had a good answer except for taxing the rich. Well, that was a pretty good answer, but it is not even necessary to raise taxes on the rich to implement all of Bernie's programs. Modern Monetary Theory maintains that the US, as a currency issuer, can just issue the money into the economy. The US dollar, actually a Federal Reserve Note, is issued by the Federal Reserve bank. The Fed has created or "printed" trillions of dollars bailing out the banks in 2008, with its quantitative easing programs since then and now to fund the response to the coronavirus pandemic. It's obvious that the Fed can just print money and add it to the economy. It can buy up the national deficit and debt. There is no need to worry that the US, which has a sovereign currency can ever run out of money. While you and I, states and countries which do not have a sovereign currency or which have loans in other currencies do have to pay them off, any nation like the UK, Japan, the European Union and China do not have to worry about running deficits.

Republicans have traditionally run on the mantra that Democrats will raise your taxes. Remember George H W Bush's pledge: "Read my lips. No New Taxes." Then he did go ahead and raise taxes after he got elected. Well now it is becoming obvious that Americans don't have to worry about new taxes. Social programs as well as the military can be funded by the Fed just printing the money. Of course it would not be a good idea simply to flood the economy with money for which there is no good purpose. That would lead to inflation and to a loss of trust in the dollar. Under current conditions, however, the dollar is the world's reserve currency and that is not going to change any time soon. So prudent and responsible spending is still necessary. It's just that the US does not have to worry about deficit spending. Other central banks like Japan's are doing the same. In fact Japan has a greater deficit to GDP ratio than the US does.

Which brings us to social security. The conventional wisdom is that the Social Security Trust Fund is in deficit and will be exhausted by 2035. Modern Monetary Theory says that this is rubbish. The US as a sovereign currency issuer can never run out of money. Al Gore used to talk about putting social security in a lockbox. Not necessary. It is not even necessary to debit everyone's paycheck to provide revenues for social security. This is not a program that people who have worked all their lives have "earned." It is a social welfare safety net program pure and simple. To apply basic accounting to social security as if people's payroll tax contributions were necessary to fund it is not necessary or desirable. To argue over whether or not the payroll tax needs to be increased or whether the cap (the payroll tax is just taken on the first $137,700 of a person's earnings) needs to be lifted is pointless. There was an old saw about you can't have both "guns and butter." Well, you can have both and tax relief too! We just have to determine the prudent balance between guns and butter based on other criteria. It is not true that there is only a finite amount of money based on tax revenues that determines total expenditures.

Look at reality. The US has been running deficits for years. Now we're running trillion dollar deficits. Is any creditor coming after us? I don't think so. And there is no inflation. So we don't have to limit our thinking to the Federal government's just spending what it takes in in taxes. In fact we haven't done this in years since Clinton balanced the budget when he was President.

Joe Biden has some good benefits proposed for older retirees. From his website:

"The Biden Plan will provide the oldest beneficiaries – those who have been receiving retirement benefits for at least 20 years – with a higher monthly check to help protect retirees from the pain of dwindling retirement savings."

and

"Under the Biden Plan, workers who spent 30 years working will get a benefit of at least 125% of the poverty level"

The poverty level for a single individual is $12, 760. 125% of that is $15,950. So a minimum monthly payment would be $1329. This is over twice what I am now receiving so I would be very happy if Joe is able to implement this plank of his platform. There is no way a person can live on $641 a month. Fortunately, I don't have to. Currently, the minimum monthly payout for a single individual is $510 a month. That amount is approximately $2,000 less than the annual poverty threshold for an aged individual. Bringing monthly payments for the elderly up to snuff is something Republicans have resisted for years. Then, they have tried to defund all social and welfare programs. However, funding for the military-industrial complex has been relentlessly increased come hell or high water. For that expenditure, deficits don't matter. They shouldn't for infrastructure development and social safety net programs either.

Off the Top of My Head

If Women Ruled the World, We'd Probably All Be Better Off

by John Lawrence, July 24, 2020

Number 1. There would be much less war. War is a man's game. It's testosterone fueled. Men want the glory heaped on them for having been in a war. Number 2. Since women have historically had the role of caregivers, they would probably have much more empathy for the poor and vulnerable especially poor and vulnerable children. They wouldn't be so obsessed with having a powerful war machine under their control. The President of the United States never wants to look weak, and, as Commander-in-Chief, revels in the power under his command. That's why he always wants to increase the defense budget. Even Trump, who campaigned on getting the US out of futile wars, can't resist the urge to have even more military power at his disposal and is spending more on the military budget. A woman as President would probably not feel the need not to look weak. Her priorities might be more oriented towards curing the ills affecting humankind which are related to poverty, health and education.

There has never been a period in human history in which there has not been a war or the threat of war. World War 1 was started for no good reason whatsoever. It makes no sense that the assassination of a minor Serbian official could have caused the devastation involved in the First World War. It was so bad that the First World War was called the War to End All Wars. President Woodrow Wilson called it "the war to make the world safe for democracy." English soldiers wanted to cover themselves with glory and then be home in time for Christmas. Instead many of them died miserable deaths in muddy trenches breathing mustard gas. The total number of military and civilian casualties in World War I, was around 40 million. There were 20 million deaths and 21 million wounded. The total number of deaths included 9.7 million military personnel and about 10 million civilians. European civilization before WW 1 was very advanced. All that was destroyed essentially by male testosterone and pride.

Despite the best intentions of Wilson and others that there would never be another war especially one that caused the devastation of WW 1, just a few years later we had World War 2. Wilson established the League of Nations, a precursor of the United Nations, a noble effort which, however, did nothing to prevent World War 2. The League of Nations was the first worldwide intergovernmental organization whose mission was to maintain world peace. It didn't. President Woodrow Wilson won the Nobel Peace Prize for his role as the leading architect of the League. Despite Wilson's leadership, the United States never joined the League. So much for diplomacy, negotiation and arbitration. War has been primarily conducted by males whose testosterone directed anger, lack of empathy and quest for glory have led them in the direction of war. Peace after all is boring.

Now even in the midst of a pandemic which affects the whole world, you might think it would be a moment when the whole world comes together. Instead Trump and his chief warmonger, Mike Pompeo, are trying to weaponize the coronavirus and start a cold war with China who the US has decided is its chief rival. Instead of cooperation, Pompeo has decided a better policy is to exacerbate tensions with China as much as possible. CNBC reported:

Top officials of the World Health Organization on Thursday slammed “unacceptable” comments made by U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who alleged that China had co-opted the WHO.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the claims made Tuesday in London by Pompeo that China had “co-opted international institutions like the World Health Organization” were untrue and a distraction from the global coronavirus pandemic response.

“The comments are untrue and unacceptable and without any foundation for that matter,” Tedros said at a news briefing from the United Nations agency’s Gevena headquarters on Thursday. “WHO will not be distracted by these comments and we don’t want the international community also to be distracted.”

Tedros has repeatedly defended the WHO against criticism of its response to the coronavirus. U.S. President Donald Trump and others have alleged the U.N. health agency has a favorable relationship with China, where the virus emerged at the end  of 2019. Tedros reiterated comments on Thursday that the politicization of the pandemic is one of the greatest threats to the global response.

Pompeo wants his cold war with China because this is the only way he knows to do diplomacy as, supposedly, America's top diplomat. He's not a diplomat. A diplomat would not try to deliberately provoke another country. Now the US has turned its attention from Russia to China as America's main bogieman. They do not even try to be peace makers or negotiators. Conciliation and cooperation are not words in their vocabulary. Maybe Pompeo has his eyes on a lucrative job in the military-industrial complex after he is out of his job as Secretary of State. So his interest is in justifying America's immense defense budget by starting a cold war which might even become a hot war. But a hot war is not even necessary to justify outsize defense budgets. A cold war will do very nicely, thank you very much.

Meanwhile many Americans are on the verge of homelessness. They will swell the ranks of the 500,000 who are already homeless. While Congress argues over the next bailout package, people are losing their jobs, their businesses, their health care and their homes. A bailout package could pay people's mortgages, rents and employee salaries for the rest of the year until, hopefully, a vaccine is discovered. That way the most economic damage could be averted. But it will probably be a paltry cash sum that will do little to protect the great majority of Americans.

What Stephanie Kelton points out in her book, Deficits Don't Matter, is that, well, they don't matter so a bailout 100 times the size of the projected bailout would not be a problem and would never have to be repaid since the US dollar is a sovereign currency. US debt can just be disappeared on the Fed's balance sheet. So both conservatives and liberals can rejoice. There's no reason not to have massive tax cuts as well as massive increases to the Health and Human Services budget. Wow, finally a cause for celebration. We can have it both ways. Now if Americans can only realize this and climb aboard the gravy train. There are some restrictions, however, as Ms. Kelton points out.

The biggest question that people asked Bernie Sanders with his ambitious social programs like Medicare for All and a Green New Deal is "How ya going to pay for it?" Stephanie Kelton has the answer and now Alexandria Ocasio-Cortex is getting on board. Ocasio-Cortez also said that Modern Monetary Theory, which holds that the government doesn't need to balance the budget and that budget surpluses actually hurt the economy, "absolutely" needed to be "a larger part of our conversation."

After Attacking Medicare for All as 'Unrealistic' During Primary, Biden Says Healthcare a 'Right for All' Amid Pandemic

Published on Thursday, June 25, 2020

by Common Dreams

"And the natural idea that follows from that is....?"

by Julia Conley, staff writer

 

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden gestures as he delivers remarks about healthcare on June 25, 2020 in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images)

Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden left some progressives perplexed Thursday when he spoke at length about healthcare during a campaign stop in Lancaster, Pennsylvania—making a number of points that would suggest he supports Medicare for All, a proposal he denounced as "unrealistic" throughout the Democratic primary.

Washington Post reporter Jeff Stein noted that Biden mentioned the unemployment crisis that's grown out of the coronavirus pandemic in his speech, suggesting that the loss of employer-based health coverage has made a powerful case for the federal government to guarantee healthcare to all Americans.

Joe Biden notes in speech today that many people are losing their health insurance during the pandemic because it is tied to their employment

— Jeffrey Stein (@JStein_WaPo) June 25, 2020

"Families are reeling right now," the former vice president said, "losing their employers' plans in droves as their employers go out of business, or have to suspend business—they need lifelines now."

Thomas Kennedy, Florida state coordinator for the immigrant rights group United We Dream, suggested expanding the popular Medicare program to cover all Americans would be an effective lifeline for the 43 million people who could lose their employer-based health insurance during the pandemic, according to the Economic Policy Institute.

There is this thing called Medicare For All that would fix this. Biden should support it. https://t.co/kZtSFDKWqA

— Thomas Kennedy (@tomaskenn) June 25, 2020

However, Biden tied the crisis to his push for a public healthcare plan which would exist alongside the for-profit health insurance industry—not Medicare for All.

"We need a public option now more than ever, especially when 20 million people are unemployed," Biden said. "The public option will allow every American, regardless of their employment status, the choice to get a Medicare-like plan."

Biden is reportedly revamping some of the specifics of his healthcare plan in the coming weeks after forming a joint task force with former advisors to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who continues to advocate for Medicare for All following his presidential run. 

In his speech, Biden said Americans would have to pay no more than 8.5% of their income on healthcare costs; under the Affordable Care Act, the current limit is 9.86%, and was lower in previous years. Deductibles and out-of-pocket costs on top of premiums would still exist under Biden's plan, and as written, roughly 10 million Americans would remain uninsured. 

During the primary, Biden derided Sanders' Medicare for All proposal—which a Yale University study in February showed would save over $450 billion in healthcare costs annually—as "unrealistic." In an interview with MSNBC in March, days before the coronavirus pandemic was declared a national public health emergency and millions were left jobless overnight, Biden suggested that even if Medicare for All legislation were to pass in both chambers of Congress during his potential presidency, he would not necessarily sign it into law, citing concerns over cost.  

Objections to Medicare for All over its potential costs have been particularly irksome to proponents of the single-payer solution, with study after study showing overall expenditures would be less while providing comprehensive coverage to everyone in the country.

On social media during his appearance in Pennsylvania—where a 2018 Morning Consult/Politico poll found a majority of voters supported Medicare for All—Biden suggested that Sanders was correct to demand that the federal government ensure every American have healthcare coverage, referring to healthcare as a "right for all."

Health care is a right for all — not a privilege for the few.

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) June 25, 2020

Medicare for All advocates implored Biden to commit to fighting to expand healthcare to all Americans—rather than just borrowing rhetoric from politicians who have pledged to do just that.

Health care is a right for all — not a privilege for the few.

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) June 25, 2020

"So what are you going to do about that?" asked Lauren Ashcraft, a democratic socialist who ran for Congress in New York's 12th district this year.

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Sanders Proposes Slashing Pentagon Budget by 10% to Reinvest Funds in Communities 'Devastated by Poverty and Incarceration'

Published on Friday, June 12, 2020

by Common Dreams

Instead of spending $740 billion on the Department of Defense, said the Vermont senator, the United States should reinvest in "cities and towns that we've neglected and abandoned for far too long."

by Jake Johnson, staff writer

 

70 Comments

This picture taken 26 December 2011 shows the Pentagon building in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Staff/AFP via Getty Images)

Sen. Bernie Sanders is planning to introduce an amendment in the coming days to slash the Pentagon budget by 10% and redirect that money toward healthcare, housing, and education funding for U.S. communities ravaged by poverty and mass incarceration.

"Instead of spending $740 billion on the Dept. of Defense, let's rebuild communities at home devastated by poverty and incarceration," the Vermont senator tweeted Friday. "I'll be filing an amendment to cut the DoD by 10% and reinvest that money in cities and towns that we've neglected and abandoned for far too long."

Instead of spending $740 billion on the Dept. of Defense, let's rebuild communities at home devastated by poverty and incarceration. I'll be filing an amendment to cut the DoD by 10% and reinvest that money in cities and towns that we've neglected and abandoned for far too long.

— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) June 12, 2020

The Sanders amendment, which is still being crafted, will seek to impose a $74 billion cut on the $740.5 billion military budget proposed by the Senate version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for fiscal year 2021. The sprawling annual defense policy bill passed the Senate Armed Services Committee Thursday with an overwhelming bipartisan vote of 25-2.

The NDAA is expected to reach the Senate floor the week of June 22.

Politico reported Thursday that the bill in its current form authorizes "$636.4 billion for the base Pentagon budget, $69 billion for overseas operations, and $25.9 billion for national security programs under the Energy Department"—e.g., nuclear weapons programs.

"The bill includes $9.1 billion to buy 95 F-35 fighters—60 Air Force F-35As, 12 Marine F-35Bs and 23 carrier-based F-35C variants—or 14 more than requested," Politico reported. "It also prohibits the Air Force from retiring the A-10 and from divesting older KC-10 and KC-135 tankers until technical issues with the new KC-46 are fixed."

The United States is projected to spend close to $660 billion on non-defense discretionary programs in fiscal year 2021—around $80 billion less than the defense budget proposed by the Senate NDAA. If Sanders' amendment is added to the bill, the U.S. would instead spend more on non-defense discretionary programs—which encompass education, the environment, housing, healthcare, and other areas—than on defense.

Sanders is not the only member of Congress pushing for substantial cuts to the military budget and more funding for healthcare and other domestic priorities. As Common Dreams reported last month, a group of 29 House Democrats demanded a substantial reduction of the Pentagon budget and reinvestment of those funds into the fight against Covid-19.

"Year after year, the Pentagon budget has inflated to historic levels while the vital needs of everyday people are left unmet," Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) said in a statement. "The Covid pandemic has laid bare how America has failed to make its budgets reflect the real needs of our everyday families. It's long past time that we address our bloated military budget and retarget resources towards policies and programs that matter the most for keeping us safe, healthy, and secure."

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Off the Top of My Head

Racist Economics

by John Lawrence, June 8, 2020

Is it racism when the schools in predominantly black neighborhoods are worse than schools in predominantly white neighborhoods? Schools in many parts of the country are funded with local property taxes. It stands to reason that property values in poor neighborhoods are less than property values in rich neighborhoods, and, therefore, property tax revenues and hence school funding is less. So the worse schools are found in poor "predominantly black" neighborhoods. A word you hear often these days is "predominantly". Nothing is totally black and white, but, when black people are affected in a way that is greater than their percentage of the population, one could say it is a "predominantly black" situation. When police arrest black people at a greater rate than they do white people, we could say that the police are a racist institution.

It has been said that the only mistake that the looters at the current protests made was that they didn't form a hedge fund first before they started looting. Martin Luther King said, “The black revolution is much more than a struggle for the rights of Negroes. It is forcing America to face all its interrelated flaws—racism, poverty, militarism, and materialism. It is exposing the evils that are rooted deeply in the whole structure of our society. It reveals systemic rather than superficial flaws and suggests that radical reconstruction of society itself is the real issue to be faced.” Republicans have breathed a sigh of relief that so far the Black Lives Matter movement has had little to say about poverty, economic inequality, militarism and materialism. Some though are getting to the heart of the problems in our society that affect us all but affect black people "disproportionately."

Writing in the New Yorker Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor said:

The [1992] uprising in L.A. shared with the rebellions of the nineteen-sixties an igniting spark of police abuse, widespread violence, and the fury of the rebels. But, in the nineteen-sixties, the flush economy and the still-intact notion of the social contract meant that President Lyndon B. Johnson could attempt to drown the civil-rights movement and the Black Power radicalization with enormous social spending and government-program expansion, including the passage of the Housing and Urban Development Act of 1968, which produced the first government-backed, low-income homeownership opportunities directed at African-Americans.

By the late nineteen-eighties and early nineties, the economy was in recession and the social contract had been ripped to shreds. The rebellions of the nineteen-sixties and the enormous social spending intended to bring them under control were wielded by the right to generate a backlash against the expanded welfare state. Political conservatives argued that the market, not government intervention, could create efficiencies and innovation in the delivery of public services. This rhetoric was coupled with virulent racist characterizations of African-Americans, who relied disproportionately on welfare programs. Ronald Reagan mastered the art of color-blind racism in the post-civil-rights era with his invocations of “welfare queens.” Not only did these distortions pave the way for undermining the welfare state, they reinforced racist delusions about the state of black America that legitimized deprivation and marginalization.

The 1990s saw Democrats agreeing with Republicans that problems in the black community were largely caused by overly generous social programs. President Bill Clinton promised to "end welfare as we know it." Senator Joe Biden jumped right on board the push to reduce welfare programs by saying, "“the culture of welfare must be replaced with the culture of work. The culture of dependence must be replaced with the culture of self-sufficiency and personal responsibility. And the culture of permanence must no longer be a way of life.” Biden championed the 1994 “crime bill” that pledged to put a hundred thousand more police on the street, called for mandatory prison sentences for certain crimes, increased funding for policing and prisons, and expanded the use of the death penalty. By the 1980s Ronald Reagan decried "welfare queens."

Taylor continues:

So, though Biden desperately wants us to believe that he is a harbinger of change, his long record of public service says otherwise. He has claimed that Barack Obama’s selection of him as his running mate was a kind of absolution for Biden’s dealings in the Democrats’ race-baiting politics of the nineteen-nineties. But, from the excesses of the criminal-justice system and the absence of a welfare state to the inequality rooted in an unbridled, rapacious market economy, Biden has shaped much of the world that this generation has inherited and is revolting against.

More important, the ideas honed in the nineteen-eighties and nineties continue to beat at the center of Biden’s political agenda. His campaign advisers include Larry Summers, who, as Clinton’s Treasury Secretary, was an enthusiastic supporter of deregulation, and, as Obama’s chief economic adviser during the recession, endorsed the Wall Street bailout while allowing millions of Americans to default on their mortgages.

Biden was chiefly responsible for the 2005 bill that took away bankruptcy protection from student load debtors (presumably disproportionately black). Credit card companies, many of whom are headquartered in Biden's state of Delaware, have been major Biden campaign contributors. Biden was known as the Senator from MBNA. Biden should just turn over the Democratic nomination to Bernie Sanders who has been on the right side of issues which are now coming to the forefront in American life.

Taylor continues:

In 1968, King, in the weeks before he was assassinated, said, “In a sense, I guess you could say, we are engaged in the class struggle.” He was speaking to the costs of the programs that would be necessary to lift black people out of poverty and inequality, which were, in and of themselves, emblems of racist subjugation. Ending segregation in the South, then, was cheap compared with the huge costs necessary to end the kinds of discrimination that kept blacks locked out of the advantages of U.S. society, from well-paying jobs to well-resourced schools, good housing, and a comfortable retirement. The price of the ticket is quite steep, but, if we are to have a real conversation about how we change America, it must begin with an honest assessment of the scope of the deprivation involved. Racist and corrupt policing is the tip of the iceberg.

We have to make space for new politics, new ideas, new formations, and new people. The election of Biden may stop the misery of another Trump term, but it won’t stop the underlying issues that have brought about more than a hundred thousand COVID-19 deaths or continuous protests against police abuse and violence. Will the federal government intervene to stop the looming crisis of evictions that will disproportionately impact black women? Will it use its power and authority to punish police, and to empty prisons and jails, which not only bring about social death but are now also sites of rampant COVID-19 infection? Will it end the war on food stamps and allow African-Americans and other residents of this country to eat in the midst of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression? Will it finance the health-care needs of tens of millions of African-Americans who have become susceptible to the worst effects of the coronavirus, and are dying as a result? Will it provide the resources to depleted public schools, allowing black children the opportunity to learn in peace? Will it redistribute the hundreds of billions of dollars necessary to rebuild devastated working-class communities? Will there be free day care and transportation?

In short we need good paying union jobs (Green New Deal) that will deal with the issue of climate change (Green New Deal), forgiveness of student loan debt (the least Biden can do since he was largely responsible for creating the situation), Medicare for All (since hospitals in black neighborhoods compare unfavorably with those in white neighborhoods), public housing (to end homelessness and guarantee everyone the right to have a roof over their head). If we want to solve the problem of institutional racism in this country, we need to address the fundamental problems of economic inequality. Where do we get the money? Not only by defunding the police which claim the lion's share of local budgets, but by demilitarizing the bloated military-industrial complex and taxing the rich at 1955 levels (91%). The Federal Reserve can always take a few more trillion on its balance sheet; it has taken trillions on its balance sheet already and given the money to the big banks. How about Quantitative Easing for the people? Economic inequality is a problem which affects black people disproportionately (there's that word again), but the solution of which will contribute to the benefit of white people as well.

Off the Top of My Head

Black Lives Matter: Police Reforms Benefit Whites as Well

by John Lawrence, June 7, 2020

No more "carotid restraints" or chokeholds is a police reform caused by the Black Lives Matter movement, but obviously it applies to whites as well. We don't know how many of the 237 times Minnesota police used chokeholds, blacks were targeted, but probably like all police violence it was disproportionate. Police reforms such as ending "no knock warrants" also obviously apply to whites as well as blacks. The point is that what black people are demanding in terms of police reform doesn't just affect black lives. It affect all lives.

So why stop with just police reform? How about prison reform.Though African Americans and Hispanics make up approximately 32% of the US population, they comprised 56% of all incarcerated people in 2015. African Americans are incarcerated at more than 5 times the rate of whites. The imprisonment rate for African American women is twice that of white women. Although only a small percentage are in prison for minor drug offenses, marijuana possession in small quantities should be made legal on a national basis. Many are in jail awaiting trial. Every day, 465,000 people are held in local jails even though they have not been convicted; legally, they are presumed innocent. Many are there because they cannot afford bail.

Let's not stop at prison reform. How about political reform? Mail-in ballots should be legalized and encouraged in every state. How many poor people can afford to take time off from work to go and vote? These people are probably disproportionately black, but it would help poor people who are white as well. Let's make the election of President be based on popular vote and not the electoral college. Let's do away with the filibuster which prevents legislation from being passed democratically. Let's limit the power of the leader of the Senate to even stop legislation from being introduced. Make it mandatory that legislation created in the House be debated and voted upon in the Senate. Let's outlaw lobbying which lets the richest and most powerful individuals and corporations determine the political agenda.

How about economic justice? That was basically Bernie Sanders' agenda. Let's eliminate poverty and homelessness in the US. Blacks are disproportionately poor and homeless, but there are plenty of poor and homeless whites as well. Instead of spending a trillion dollars a year on the military and military-industrial complex, instead of wasting money on fruitless wars, let's have a Green New Deal and rebuild American infrastructure while at the same time creating hundreds of thousands of good paying jobs. Let's cancel student loan debt which disproportionately affects blacks, but whites will benefit too. Let's have Medicare for All instead of an outrageously expensive health care system which is twice as expensive as any other country's while producing only half as good results.

You get the picture? All the reforms which could come from the Black Lives Matter movement will also bring those same reforms for whites, browns and any other colors. Let's protest to change the course of this whole country for all citizens. Then we have to help the rest of the world with a Green New Deal if we want to create a habitable planet for our children and grandchildren. Black people are leading the way for social justice, for political and economic justice, justice which will turn this country around and help turn this planet around. Let's keep on going.

Off the Top of My Head

Does Justice for George Floyd Include Economic Justice?

by John Lawrence, June 6, 2020

There is much that needs to be done with police and prison reform. A national ban against "carotid restraints." California has already banned them state wide. A national legalization of marijuana. Black people are disproportionately in prison due to being caught with small amounts of marijuana. Decriminalizing possession of small amounts of any drug. Let law enforcement go after the big guys - the dealers - instead of throwing every user in jail.

Black people are also disproportionately poor, so let's extend justice from race to class. What is justice for poor people? The end of homelessness? A Federal guarantee of adequate housing? Not all black people are poor, however. That's why economic justice has to consider class and not just race. There are a significant number of black people that are pretty well off. Take billionaires Robert Smith, Oprah Winfrey and Michael Jordan for example. So when we talk about economic justice, we have to talk about economic justice for poor people, many of whom are disproportionately black, but not all black people. Giving Oprah Winfrey an extra $1000. solves nothing.

So Bernie Sanders, where are you?  He was the foremost spokesman for economic justice. Let's start with the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, specifically Articles 23, 24 and 25.

Article 23.

(1) Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.
(2) Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.
(3) Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.
(4) Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.

Article 24.

Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.

Article 25.

(1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
(2) Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.

I would also say everyone should have a right to discharge debts through bankruptcy. However, in today's America student loan debtors don't have this right. Joe Biden voted to take this right away from student loan debtors. He backed a 2005 bill that stripped students of bankruptcy protections and left millions in financial stress. Too bad he's the presumptuous Democratic nominee. The mountain of student loan debt crushing borrowers across the country is having an even harsher impact on African-Americans in places like Brooklyn and Chicago when compared to white borrowers, according to none other than research economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

The Guardian reported:

The Republican-led bill tightened the bankruptcy code, unleashing a huge giveaway to lenders at the expense of indebted student borrowers. At the time it faced vociferous opposition from 25 Democrats in the US Senate.

But it passed anyway, with 18 Democratic senators breaking ranks and casting their vote in favor of the bill. Of those 18, one politician stood out as an especially enthusiastic champion of the credit companies who, as it happens, had given him hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions – Joe Biden.

Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren voted against it. Student loan debt now stands at $1.5 trillion - greater even than mortgage debt in the US. The sum of outstanding educational loans borrowed from private financial entities was only $56 billion in 2005. More than 1 million people default on their student loans every year. By 2023 the proportion of borrowers falling behind with repayments is expected to reach 40%. This is a massive financial boot on the neck of many American citizens, disproportionately black. “This legislation breaks the bond that unites America, it sacrifices Americans to the rampant greed of the credit card industry,” Ted Kennedy said at the time.

Now Biden wants to change his tune if he becomes President. He announced in April that he is proposing to forgive all undergraduate federal student loan debt for borrowers who attended public colleges and universities. Sanders wanted to cancel all student loan debt tax-free with no limitations, including both federal and private student loans. So Biden is qualifying and nuancing his debt forgiveness plan. Only Federal, not private, student loan debt will be forgiven and then only for those who went to public colleges, and only undergraduate debt. This is stupid because much of the debt is to profit making institutions like the University of Phoenix, many of which were scam colleges producing worthless degrees. Of course something is better than nothing, but Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren would have forgiven all student loan debt unconditionally.

Most of the protesters are millennials, the ones most afflicted with student loan debt. I'll vote for Biden if the race for President is Biden vs Trump. Anyone would be better than Trump. However, there's much about Biden's record that leaves a lot to be desired. Bernie would have been a much better candidate, and he's not officially out of the race yet. The times that we're in call for more profound action than the kind Biden is mildly espousing.

Off the Top of My Head

What is Justice for George Floyd?

by John Lawrence, June 4, 2020

I just listened to the Reverend Al Sharpton's rousing eulogy for George Floyd. He said we want justice for George Floyd. All over the world people want justice for George Floyd. Even in bombed out Syria, an artist painted a wall honoring George Floyd. That's significant. It's not justice for George Floyd here in America. It's justice for George Floyd all over the world. That means justice for George in the Middle East, justice for George in Iran, justice for George Floyd in China, in Russia. So what would justice be? Reverend Al quoted Ecclesiastes, "For everything there is a season, a time for every activity under heaven. A time to be born and a time to die. A time to plant and a time to harvest. A time to kill and a time to heal." So what would this justice be?

For sure criminal justice system reform. Let's start with a national ban on carotid restraint, a national ban on the knee-to-neck restraint. Yes, but that's not enough. I feel that all this protest energy might just be dissipated unless there are concrete demands on the system. Where is Bernie Sanders when we need him now? He had concrete demands: a Green New Deal, Medicare for All, forgiveness of student loan debt. Most of the protesters both black and white are millenials, the most screwed generation in American history. But who among them would most benefit from these progressive demands? African Americans. They are the Americans who not only suffer from the criminal justice system and the law enforcement system, they are the ones who most suffer from poverty as it was made clear George Floyd's family did. Reforming the criminal justice system is not enough. Reforming the economic system is necessary to redress the grievances of first slavery, then Jim Crow and now the videotaped deaths of so many black people that generated the Black Lives Matter movement.

Black Lives Matter in terms of equal economic justice and millenial lives, both black and white, weighed down with student loan debt that can't be discharged in bankruptcy, matter as well. A country which supports a bloated military bureaucracy that consumes a trillion dollars a year while there is 20% unemployment represents a knee on all our necks. Justice for George Floyd has to extend to justice for all those innocent lives lost in Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Syria. Justice for George Floyd is justice for the 70 million people, half of them children, in refugee camps. Justice for George is justice for all the poverty stricken in favellas and barrios who can't socially distance. Justice for George Floyd is American acceptance of the United Nations 1948 Declaration of Human Rights which include economic as well as political rights.

Justice for George Floyd is justice for people all over the world: black, white and all shades in between. Justice for George Floyd is justice for people without regard to race, religion or national residence. Justice for George Floyd is electing leaders of our country who will make friends instead of enemies, who will convert swords into plowshares, who will create peace and justice in the world.

Off the Top of My Head

Bernie, Where Are Ya Now, Buddy?

by John Lawrence, April 21, 2020

Can I take back my vote for Joe Biden? Now that I've lost my job and my employer based health insurance, I don't have a job, and I don't have health insurance. Medicare for All has never sounded so good. This is the situation for so many in this age of pandemic. Fortunately, it doesn't apply to me. I already have Medicare. Fortunately, for the rich, the poor who could profit the most from Medicare for All don't vote in anywhere the same numbers as do the rich. That's why voting by mail is something Republicans don't want. It means more poor people would be voting.

Does anybody care that Medicare for All is a "socialist" program advocated by a "socialist." They only have a similar system in every other developed country and most underdeveloped ones as well. Now that unemployed people have more time off, they will have ample time to think about Medicare for All vs the health care system they have (or don't have) now. Maybe they will come to the conclusion that Medicare for All is really in their best interests despite all the propaganda about it being "socialist." Bernie tried to tell us that health care was a human right not just a right for employed people. It would seem like a better deal now that "we are all in it together" except that we're not really despite all the sugary sentiment. If we were all in it together, people would be as concerned about their unemployed neighbor's health care as they are about their own especially if a sick neighbor is likely to spread the sickness to you which certainly is the case with a very contagious coronavirus.

Bernie's website says:

Today, more than 30 million Americans still don’t have health insurance and even more are underinsured. Even for those with insurance, costs are so high that medical bills are the number one cause of bankruptcy in the United States. Incredibly, we spend significantly more of our national GDP on this inadequate health care system—far more per person than any other major country. And despite doing so, Americans have worse health outcomes and a higher infant mortality rate than countries that spend much less on health care. Our people deserve better.

30 million? More like 130 million with a pandemic taking out its vengeance on the American people and in fact the world's people. In an op-ed in the New York Times, Bernie said the coronavirus outbreak has exposed the “absurdity and cruelty of our employer-based, private health insurance system” as “tens of millions of Americans” lose their jobs, incomes and healthcare as a result of the pandemic.Our neighbor to the north takes care of every Canadian citizen. All they have to do is present their health care card to any doctor's office or hospital and they are taken care of, no questions asked and never getting a bill. Some people have questioned the 'waiting times'. They haven't been to an emergency room in the US lately even with health insurance. First you have to wait a couple hours in the waiting room before you're even taken back to a stall in the emergency room. Then, if you need to be admitted to the hospital, you have to wait in the stall for several hours until a room is available. All this time, as much as a day if you're lucky, you're not given anything to eat or drink.

Rich people are afraid that if Medicare for All becomes the law of the land, they will just get the same level of service as the hoi polloi. They needn't worry. Even with Medicare for All they could pay a lot more and get a gold plated policy. This is the arrangement they have in the Netherlands. The rich can always pay more and get treated better, but with Medicare for All everyone is guaranteed adequate medical services at about half the price they are paying now with co-pays, premiums, deductibles and every other way the health care system in America has invented to fleece you. No wonder so many Americans go bankrupt. The health care system is the leading cause of bankruptcy in America.

The American diet consists of junk food, heavily advertised on TV, but guaranteed to give you diabetes and obesity if consumed over a lifetime. All those juicy hamburgers, fries and pizza and a lack of enticing pictures of fruits and vegetables means that you will need insulin and cholesterol medicine at some point. You will end up taking a bunch of pills every day for underlying heart disease and a ton of other diet caused maladies. Then you will pay through the nose to pharmaceutical corporations for the privilege of consuming them. Medicare for All would eliminate the travesty that pharmaceutical companies are perpetrating on the American people.

Wendell Potter was formerly in charge of public relations with Humana until his conscience got the better of him.. His job was to make sure that Americans would not be favorably persuaded by Medicare for All. He wrote: "The industry knows from years of focus group message testing that terms like “socialized medicine” and “government-run health care” scare many Americans and that many of us respond favorably to terms like “choice” and “competition.” Based on this knowledge, there were several big lies I helped craft — and that are still in circulation today."

Today those Democratic candidates that wanted a Medicare for All Who Want It option have been shown to be dead wrong. They said “If you like your employer-based plan, you can keep it." Well today many of those that liked their employer-based plan are not liking it so much especially those who are unemployed and without a plan.

'Biggest Coronavirus Stimulus of All': Richest Man in the World Jeff Bezos Now $24 Billion Richer Amid Pandemic

Published on Wednesday, April 15, 2020

by Common Dreams

 

"Our society cannot sustain itself when so few have so much, while so many have so little," said Sen. Bernie Sanders.

by Jessica Corbett, staff writer

 

22 Comments

CEO and founder of Amazon Jeff Bezos participates in a discussion during a Milestone Celebration dinner September 13, 2018 in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Amplifying fresh critiques of wealthy inequality that have mounted throughout the coronavirus pandemic, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos—the world's richest man—has added nearly $24 billion to his already massive fortune in 2020 as virus-related lockdowns across the globe have forced people to stay inside and fueled increased e-commerce demand.

Explaining the source of a nearly 5% jump in Bezos' net worth Tuesday, Forbes reported that Amazon stock surged 5.3%, "hitting a new record close of $2,283 per share. The stock is now up over 20% so far this year, outpacing the benchmark index (the S&P 500 is down over 12%)."

Turns out Jeff Bezos has got the biggest coronavirus stimulus of all ... https://t.co/10BrXbnIZ6

— Will Tooke (@willtooketv) April 15, 2020

Bezos was worth $138 billion as of Tuesday, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. He is Amazon's CEO and president, and owns an 11.2% stake the e-commerce giant, which has come under fire for how it has treated workers during the outbreak.

While Bezos tops the index, Fortune noted that the 18th spot now belongs to his ex-wife MacKenzie, "who was left with a 4% stake in Amazon as part of the couple's recent divorce settlement. Her net worth has climbed $8.2 billion to $45.3 billion."

The index updates followed a Forbes report from Saturday about how "market gains led to a combined $51.3 billion boost for 10 of the world's billionaires since the market closed a week ago, on April 2." Bezos gained $6.8 billion in that time, an increase second to only that of Amancio Ortega of the Spanish fast-fashion retailer Inditex.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a longtime labor rights advocate and foe of millionaires and billionaires, tweeted the Forbes report Wednesday and highlighted how the wealth increases of Bezos and other billionaires contrast with the millions of Americans who have lost their jobs because of the ongoing public health crisis.

$33.4 billion. That's how much the wealth of Jeff Bezos and six other billionaires increased last week while millions of Americans were filing for unemployment.

Our society cannot sustain itself when so few have so much, while so many have so little. https://t.co/XwlhIXTMzS

— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) April 15, 2020

As Common Dreams reported last week, U.S. unemployment claims during the pandemic have soared to 16.8 million, which one economist noted "is a mind-boggling 2,500% increase over the pre-virus period."

That contrast between U.S. billionaires and the nation's newly unemployed was also pointed out on Twitter Wednesday by Public Citizen, which cited the Forbes report.

Billionaire wealth increases last week:

Jeff Bezos: +$6.8B

Mark Zuckerberg: +$6.2B

Warren Buffett: +$5B

Elon Musk: +$4.2B

Larry Ellison: +$4B

Larry Page: +$3.6B

Bill Gates: +$3.6B

Meanwhile, more than 16 million Americans have filed for unemployment in the past month.

— Public Citizen (@Public_Citizen) April 15, 2020

While millions of people across the United States have lost their incomes due to COVID-19, Amazon has filled 100,000 new jobs since March and plans to add 75,000 more "to help meet customer demand and assist existing employees fulfilling orders for essential products," according to a Sunday blog post on the company's website. The retailer has "increased pay for hourly employees by $2/hour in the U.S., C$2/hour in Canada, and €2/hour in many E.U. countries."

Amazon has "made over 150 process updates to help protect employees—from enhanced cleaning and social distancing measures to piloting new efforts like using disinfectant fog in our New York fulfillment center," the blog post said. The company is also building a lab to test its front-line workers for COVID-19 and has "distributed personal protective gear, such as masks for our employees, and implemented temperature checks across our operations worldwide."

However, workers at Amazon warehouses and Whole Foods Market—the grocery chain acquired by Amazon in 2017—have expressed fear and frustration about working conditions, and accused the company of not doing enough to protect employees. Just this week, Amazon also elicited condemnation for firing three workers who publicly criticized the company's pandemic response and treatment of employees.

"Instead of firing employees who want justice," Sanders tweeted Tuesday, "maybe Jeff Bezos—the richest man in the world—can focus on providing his workers with paid sick leave, a safe workplace, and a livable planet."

The safety of Amazon facilities in the midst of a pandemic has raised particular alarm. According to Business Insider:

More than 74 U.S. warehouses alone have now reported cases of the virus, and concerns from workers about safety and sanitation have ballooned, leading to employee walkouts and protests.

On Tuesday, Business Insider broke the news that Amazon had seen its first warehouse worker death, an operations manager who worked at the company's Hawthorne, California warehouse. The man died on March 31.

Some Amazon employees told Business Insider that they feel they have to choose between paying their bills and risking the health of themselves and vulnerable family members.

"I was grateful at first for the unlimited [unpaid time off] and $2 increase, but as things got worse and the virus was spreading more and more, it didn't matter. I don't want to be there, but I need the income," said one worker who cares for an elderly relative. "The stress of bringing it home to him makes me physically ill."

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Ocasio-Cortez Warns Biden That Just Throwing Progressives a 'Couple of Bones' Will Not Be Enough

Published on Monday, April 13, 2020

by Common Dreams

"At the bare minimum, we should aspire to be better than what we have been before," says New York Democrat in new interview. "People need to feel hope."

by Eoin Higgins, staff writer

 

27 Comments

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, (D-N.Y.), at the Capitol on Friday, March 27, 2020. (Photo: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc/Getty Images)

In an interview with the New York Times published Monday, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez argues that presumptive 2020 Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has much work to do when it comes to motivating those within the progressive movement inspired and led by Sen. Bernie Sanders over the past five years.

"I don't think this conversation about changes that need to be made is one about throwing the progressive wing of the party a couple of bones—I think this is about how we can win," Ocasio-Cortez told the Times.

NEW: I interview @AOC abt Joe Biden and Democratic unity. What concessions she wants (plenty), if they've ever talked (no), whether we'll see a Biden-AOC unity rally (depends), and what she's thought abt his early health care outreach ("almost insulting")https://t.co/PytaBB0nk1

— Steadman™ (@AsteadWesley) April 13, 2020

In the Times interview, Ocasio-Cortez made clear she intends to support Biden if he is the nominee but said that thus far the former vice president's overtures to the Democratic Party's progressive wing leave much to be desired. 

The New York Democrat—who was a prominent and galvanizing surrogate for Sanders on the campaign trail before he dropped out of the race on April 8—said that while expectations for Biden's campaign should be realistic, there is a need for a forward-thinking agenda. 

"I think people understand that there are limits to what Biden will do and that's understandable—he didn't run as a progressive candidate," Ocasio-Cortez said. "But, at the bare minimum, we should aspire to be better than what we have been before."

At the same time, she said elsewhere in the interview, "people need to feel hope" when it comes to looking towards the next Democratic administration.

As Common Dreams reported last Thursday, a new policy proposal from Biden to lower the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 60 was met with disappointment from the left—and Ocasio-Cortez agreed.

"They floated this olive branch to the progressive left of lowering the Medicare age to 60. And it's almost insulting," she said. "I think Hillary was looking at policies that lowered it to 50. So we're talking about a 'progressive concession' that is 10 years worse than what the nominee had in 2016."

AOC seems to be on the same wavelength as me in this interview: a baseline commitment to defeating Trump, but no shilling, no enthusiasm, nothing besides the most nominal support if Biden doesn't offer us anything... and he hasn't offered us anything. https://t.co/3YMIYATTgn https://t.co/5S7TgqT2ZO

— David Klion (@DavidKlion) April 13, 2020

Ocasio-Cortez added that the exit polling from the primaries made clear that the majority of Democratic voters are on board with progressive policies, a sign that Biden's victories are not necessarily an endorsement of all of the former vice president's political positions.

"While Biden is the nominee, we also know that he didn't win because of policy—I don't think he won because of his agenda, he won because of different factors," said Ocasio-Cortez, referring to an unprecedented coalescing from the rest of the field around Biden after the South Carolina primary.

"In state after state after state," she added, "Democratic voters support a progressive agenda."

Asked about her willingness to rally with Biden, Ocasio-Cortez allowed it was a possibility. But ultimately, she said, the former vice president has to do a better job reaching out to supporters of Sanders and fellow former primary candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).

"I've always said that I will support the Democratic nominee," said Ocasio-Cortez. "But unity is a process, and figuring out what that looks like is part of this whole conversation that I think Bernie and Warren and other folks are a part of as well."

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Thank You, Bernie Sanders. Screw You, New York Times.

Published on Friday, April 10, 2020

by Common Dreams

In the Times' world, it’s apparently ok to bemoan a society and an economy that privileges the rich over the poor, but it’s unacceptable to run for the presidency on a promise to reverse those priorities. 

by Laura Flanders

 

38 Comments

Senator Bernie Sanders during an interview with the editorial board of The New York Times in February, 2020. (Photo: Screengrab/NYT/Brittainy Newman)

It is the essence of American liberalism to trash radical dreams and then dance on them. And that’s just what the New York Times did the day after Bernie Sanders bowed out of the Democratic race for the nomination. On that day, in a special editorial, the editors of the very same paper that disparaged his every move opined that America is divided and our democracy corrupt and launched a series promising to report on just the sort of transformative policies Sanders advocated.

“A great divide separates affluent Americans, who fully enjoy the benefits of life in the wealthiest nation on earth, from the growing portion of the population whose lives lack stability or any real prospect of betterment," they write.

In the Times' world, it’s apparently ok to bemoan a society and an economy that privileges the rich over the poor, but it’s unacceptable to run for the presidency on a promise to reverse those priorities. 

"The United States has a chance to emerge from this latest crisis as a stronger nation, more just, more free, and more resilient. We must seize the opportunity,” write the editors.

The words look pretty on the page, snug in among the Tiffany ads. But when a campaign seeks to seize not just opportunity but power—and spread it around—the same paper’s reporters and headline writers called that campaign and the candidate leading it “threatening,” “menacing” and “unelectable.”

“The wealthy are particularly successful in blocking changes they don’t like,” the Times writes now, as if their own paper has played no role in that. On the eve of the decisive March 10th Midwest primaries, the week before which Sanders was leading in the polls, columnist Thomas Friedman redbaited Bernie for the umpteenth time, deliberately distorting democratic socialism as Stalinism and accusing Sanders of “demonizing the engines of capitalism and job creation."

The truth is,  the New York Times, the paper of record of U.S. liberalism, likes the progressive pose. With gravitas, they write that out of the coronavirus crisis “there’s a chance to build a better America.”

But it didn’t take a pandemic to wake 13 million Americans to that chance and to vote for it in 2016, or 2.1 million of them to contribute to that effort in this race. Those millions didn’t need all this new, unnecessary death to hear the death knell sounding for status quo America. What they needed was a fairer chance against the establishment media.

Laura Flanders is the award-winning host and executive producer of The Laura Flanders Show, a nationally-syndicated TV and radio program that looks at real-life models of shifting power in the arts, economics and politics. Flanders founded the women’s desk at media watch group Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) and produced and hosted the radio program CounterSpin for a decade. She is also the author of six books, including The New York Times best-seller BUSHWOMEN: Tales of a Cynical Species. Flanders was named Most Valuable Multi-Media Maker of 2018 in The Nation’s Progressive Honor Roll, and was awarded the Izzy Award in 2019 for outstanding achievement in independent media.

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Sanders and Jayapal Put Forth Bill to Provide No-Cost 'Health Care for All During Pandemic'

Published on Friday, April 10, 2020

by Common Dreams

"We have got to work together to make sure that anyone in America who is sick—regardless of their income or immigration status—can seek the medical treatment they need during this national emergency."

by Jake Johnson, staff writer

 

37 Comments

Medical workers take in patients at a special coronavirus intake area at Maimonides Medical Center on April 6, 2020 in New York City. (Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

As the number of Americans without health insurance continues to rise rapidly due to ongoing mass layoffs across the nation, Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Pramila Jayapal on Friday introduced emergency legislation that would empower Medicare to cover all healthcare costs for the uninsured and all out-of-pocket expenses for those with insurance for the duration of the coronavirus crisis.

"Our broken healthcare system is failing to protect millions of Americans from the coronavirus pandemic," Jayapal, a Washington Democrat and co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said in a statement. "Now more than ever, we need to take bold action to prevent more Americans from getting sick or dying."

"With an estimated 35 million Americans in danger of losing their employer-provided health insurance over the coming weeks and months, this legislation is needed now more than ever."
—Sen. Bernie Sanders

If passed, the Health Care Emergency Guarantee Act (pdf) would take effect immediately and remain in place until the Secretary of Health and Human Services certifies to Congress that a Food and Drug Administration-approved coronavirus vaccine is widely available to the U.S. public.

The legislation to "provide health for all during the pandemic," according to a summary (pdf) released by Sanders' office, would "fully cover the cost of medically necessary healthcare, including prescription drugs," for the tens of millions of Americans currently without health insurance.

An analysis by Health Management Associates earlier this month warned that the total number of uninsured Americans could rise to 40 million within the next several months if U.S. job losses continue at the current rate.

For Americans with either public or private insurance, "Medicare will cover the copays, deductibles, and other cost-sharing for all medically necessary healthcare, including for prescription drugs," the summary of the bill states.

"When individuals go to the hospital or doctor, they will provide their insurance information as usual," the summary explains. "The provider will use this information to bill Medicare—either for the out-of-pocket costs if the individual has another type of insurance, or for all of the care if the individual is uninsured. The patient will not be charged anything."

"An interesting play. Give people a taste of Medicare for All during this emergency while continuing to advocate for the real thing."
—Anand Giridharadas, TIME

Additionally, the legislation would ban surprise billing and prevent private insurance companies from limiting coverage or hiking co-pays and deductibles until a COVID-19 vaccine is available.

"During this unprecedented crisis, no one in America should delay seeking medical care because of the cost," Sanders said in a statement. "If this pandemic has taught us anything, it is that we are only as safe as the least-insured among us."

"We have got to work together to make sure that anyone in America who is sick—regardless of their income or immigration status—can seek the medical treatment they need during this national emergency," Sanders added. "With an estimated 35 million Americans in danger of losing their employer-provided health insurance over the coming weeks and months, this legislation is needed now more than ever."

Sanders and Jayapal are two of the leading advocates of Medicare for All in Congress, and the Health Care Emergency Guarantee Act represents a short-term solution as they work to build support for a national single-payer plan.

"An interesting play," TIME editor-at-large Anand Giridharadas tweeted in response to the new bill. "Give people a taste of Medicare for All during this emergency while continuing to advocate for the real thing."

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'Why the Unnecessary 6?': Medicare for All Advocates Warn Biden That Lowering Age to 60 Solves Nothing

Published on Thursday, April 09, 2020

by Common Dreams

"These policies are what I would expect from Republicans. This is not a 'big overture' by any stretch of the imagination."

by Eoin Higgins, staff writer

 

38 Comments

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders listens as former Vice President Joe Biden speaks during the Democratic Presidential Debate at Texas Southern University's Health and PE Center on September 12, 2019 in Houston, Texas. (Photo:  Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Progressives on Thursday were quick to call foul after it was reported that Joe Biden, now the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, put forth a pair of policy proposals—one lowering the Medicare age to 60 and the other a student debt relief program—purportedly designed to win over supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders who instead saw the plans as woefully insufficient.

"We have to do more to ease the economic burden on working people," Biden said in a tweet announcing the plan. "So today, I'm adopting two new policies to help deliver relief."

We have to do more to ease the economic burden on working people. So today, I'm adopting two new policies to help deliver relief. As president, I will:

- Lower Medicare eligibility to age 60
- Forgive student debt for low-income and middle class families https://t.co/wtMnhJdCaR

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) April 9, 2020

But the proposals—one a lowering of the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 60 and the other a means-tested, complicated student debt forgiveness plan—were seen by progressives as at best insufficient.

"That he's willing to shift on these issues after telling us they were 'pie-in-the-sky' indicates that we can go further," tweeted Briahna Joy Gray, Sanders' campaign press secretary. 

Good.

That he's willing to shift on these issues after telling us they were "pie-in-the-sky" indicates that we can go further.

*Lower the age to 55 year one, 45 year two, 35 year 3, & cover everyone in year 4. That's #MedicareForAll.

*Tax Wall St & cancel ALL student debt. https://t.co/wOMJziQ1nZ

— Briahna Joy Gray (@briebriejoy) April 9, 2020

Gray's optimism, however, was not shared by everyone on the left. In a lengthy Facebook essay reacting to the proposals, CUNY professor Corey Robin questioned how Biden could hope to pass anything approximating his plans through Congress.

"The rule of politics is you never get 100% of what you want," said Robin, adding, "Our sense of political time is not keeping up with actual time, and I find the euphoria of complacency and incrementalism totally mystifying."

Greg Sargent and Paul Waldman of the Washington Post broke the story Thursday, reporting that Biden was announcing the shift in policy as a way to show Sanders supporters that what he now supports is "significantly more liberal than what he supported when he was vice president."

As Sargent and Waldman explained, the policy proposals show that Biden and his campaign are acknowledging the political reality that Sanders and his movement have changed the national conversation around domestic politics:

There will, of course, be many Sanders supporters who will see these proposals as insufficient, and there's a reasonable case to be made for that position. But you could also see them as a validation of Sanders' entire strategy.

Sanders ran for president not just to win, but also to get his ideas in wide circulation and pull the Democratic Party to the left. And that’s precisely what's happening. The party is going to nominate a candidate with establishment roots and centrist instincts, but that candidate is adapting his policy agenda to move in Sanders' direction.

In an email to the Post, Economic Policy Institute director of research Josh Bivens said the overtures were further proof that the Sanders effect on the party was real and making a difference.

"Both of these ideas represent really welcome U-turns from what was damaging conventional wisdom even in big swaths of the Democratic Party for years," wrote Bivens.

But other progressives were skeptical, at best, of the content of Biden's proposals, calling the Medicare age rollback in particular a transparent attempt to placate concerns over the former vice president's commitment to single-payer healthcare that would benefit the private insurance industry more than taxpayers. 

"These policies are what I would expect from Republicans," tweeted anthropolgist and political activist Michael Oman-Reagan. "This is not a 'big overture' by any stretch of the imagination."

In a tweet, healthcare advocacy group Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) wondered sarcastically if Biden had added an unnecessary "6" to the eligibility age—a reference to Medicare for All's immediate eligibility at birth. 

Why the unnecessary "6"?#MedicareForAll https://t.co/0INA83EgCM

— Physicians for a National Health Program (@PNHP) April 9, 2020

PNHP president-elect Dr. Susan Rogers, in exclusive comment to Common Dreams, said that Biden's so-called "big" gesture is simply not sufficient to address  the healthcare crisis in the country, especially now that the coronavirus outbreak has paralyzed the economy and thrown millions out of work—and off of employer-provided insurance.

"One of the main benefits of Medicare for All is that it uncouples health coverage from employment, which is even more urgent now as our system of job-based private insurance is crumbling beneath our feet," said Rogers. "Reducing Medicare eligibility to age 60 does not resolve the underlying problem for the vast majority of working Americans and their families."

Only Medicare for All, added Rogers, packs the cost-saving punch to solve both the healthcare and fiscal crises now facing the country.

"By cutting out the waste of private insurance, Medicare for All could save nearly $600 billion a year while covering everybody for all medically necessary care," said Rogers.

The only explanation for lowering the Medicare eligibility age to 60 and then stopping: protecting the profits of the private health insurance industry.

— chemo and insulin should be free, too! (@AllOnMedicare) April 9, 2020

"The net effect of Biden's Medicare expansion would be to slough the most expensive patients off private insurance rolls and instead put them into government-subsidized, extremely profitable privatized Medicare Advantage plans," said healthcare activist and author Timothy Faust. "Some overture."

Sanders aide David Sirota was among those pointing out that the Biden proposal is less ambitious than one defeated in the Senate by former Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) in 2010. 

"For reference, lowering Medicare to age 60 is actually a retreat from Senate Dems' own push 10 years ago to lower it to age 55," Sirota tweeted.

Meanwhile, as Gray noted, the student debt relief aspect of the plan has very narrow, means-tested prerequisites.

Joe Biden's plan appears to exclude:

🚫Graduates of for-profit colleges, who are among the most indebted;

🚫The 1/3 of college students who attend private schools (other than HBCUs);

🚫Graduates of trade schools;

🚫Graduate student debt;

🚫Those making over 125k. https://t.co/EdSmSe6wA2 pic.twitter.com/1AkI6VMhKW

— Briahna Joy Gray (@briebriejoy) April 9, 2020

The cost of offering all students relief, Gray added, is the equivalent of tax cuts for the rich pushed through Congress by President Donald Trump and his Republican allies in 2018.

"Cancelling ALL student debt only costs $1.6 trillion—that's about the same as Trump's tax cut, which helped no one but the rich," said Gray.

Ultimately, the question is who should be taken care of, Gray tweeted.

"If we can bail out Wall Street," Gray said, "we can bail out students."

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Bernie Sanders Ends 2020 Campaign With Vow to Continue Struggle for 'What We Are Entitled to as Human Beings'

Published on Wednesday, April 08, 2020

by Common Dreams

"Let us go forward together. The struggle continues."

by Jake Johnson, staff writer

 

34 Comments

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and his wife Jane Sanders wave as they exit a campaign rally at Cowboys Dancehall on February 22, 2020 in San Antonio, Texas. (Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Sen. Bernie Sanders departed the race for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination on Wednesday with a forward-looking message to the diverse coalition of voters that made up his enthusiastic base of support across the United States.

"While this campaign is coming to an end," said Sanders, "our movement is not."

"In terms of healthcare, even before the horrific pandemic we are now experiencing, more and more Americans understood that we must move to a Medicare for All, single-payer system."
—Sen. Bernie Sanders

In a livestreamed address announcing the end of his campaign, the Vermont senator said that while he failed to achieve his goal of leading the Democratic ticket against President Donald Trump in November, the grassroots movement that drove his presidential bid "won the ideological struggle."

Much like his longshot 2016 presidential run, Sanders' 2020 campaign propelled universal programs like Medicare for All, tuition-free public college, and a Green New Deal to the center of the national political conversation. Those bold policy ideas, once marginal in the Democratic Party and among the American public, now enjoy widespread support from the Democratic electorate and members of Congress.

"In terms of healthcare, even before the horrific pandemic we are now experiencing, more and more Americans understood that we must move to a Medicare for All, single-payer system," the Vermont senator said, referring to the deadly coronavirus crisis currently gripping the nation, laying bare the systemic flaws in the U.S. healthcare system that Sanders has been warning about for decades.

"If we don't believe that we are entitled to healthcare as a human right, we will never achieve universal healthcare," Sanders said. "If we don't believe that we are entitled to decent wages and working conditions, millions of us will continue to live in poverty. If we don't believe that we are entitled to all of the education we require to fulfill our dreams, many of us will leave school saddled with huge debt, or never get the education we need."

"The greatest obstacle to real social change has everything to do with the power of the corporate and a political establishment to limit our vision as to what is possible and what we are entitled to as human beings... pic.twitter.com/2wMcf1UyiQ

— People for Bernie (@People4Bernie) April 8, 2020

In February, Sanders burst out of the gate with three consecutive victories in Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada, solidifying his status as the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination and sparking panic in the corporate media and Democratic establishment.

"He was right when he seemed to be the only alarmist in a political climate of complacency. He is right now that he's the only politician unsurprised to see drug companies profiteering from a lethal plague with Congress' help."
—Elizabeth Bruenig, New York Times

But the dynamics of the race shifted rapidly following former Vice President Joe Biden's landslide victory in South Carolina on Feb. 29.

On March 2—just two days after South Carolina and on the eve of the hugely consequential Super Tuesday contests—Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Pete Buttigieg dropped out of the presidential race and simultaneously endorsed Biden. Beto O'Rourke, who dropped out of the 2020 race in November, and former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) also endorsed Biden on that same day.

The rapid consolidation of the Democratic establishment behind Biden helped the former vice president win decisively on Super Tuesday and build momentum heading into key states like Florida and Michigan, which Biden also won.

Sanders on Wednesday said that if he "believed we had a feasible path to the nomination," he would continue his presidential campaign.

"But it's not there," said Sanders. "I will stay on the ballot in all remaining states and continue to gather delegates. While Vice President Biden will be the nominee, we should still work to assemble as many delegates as possible at the Democratic convention where we will be able to exert significant influence over the party platform and other functions."

The Vermont senator concluded his remarks by vowing to remain committed to the fight for a country that "lifts up all our people."

"Please stay in this fight with me," said Sanders. "Let us go forward together. The struggle continues."

Let us go forward together. The struggle continues.

— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) April 8, 2020

Following Sanders' announcement, progressive advocacy groups and supporters thanked the senator for his movement-centered campaign and embraced his call to continue the fight against "the greed of the entire corporate elite" and for a more just world.

"Because of Bernie and the grassroots organizing he inspired, issues like Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, and the Fight for $15 are more popular than ever," Larry Cohen, board chair of Our Revolution, said in a statement. "Not only has Bernie won the issues debate, he's also inspired a new generation of  progressive candidates to run on his platform up and down the ballot and mobilized the grassroots."

RoseAnn DeMoro, former executive director of National Nurses United and a vocal Sanders supporter, tweeted that "we changed the narrative, won the ideological struggle, Bernie is right about that."

"But our representatives will still belong to the wealthy," said DeMoro. "Wall Street won again. Thank you Bernie. We will carry on."

In a column Wednesday, Elizabeth Bruenig of the New York Times wrote that Sanders "was right from the very beginning, when he advocated a total overhaul of the American healthcare system in the 1970s."

"He remains right now, as a pandemic stresses the meager resources of millions of citizens to their breaking point, and possibly to their death," wrote Bruenig. "He was right when he seemed to be the only alarmist in a political climate of complacency. He is right now that he's the only politician unsurprised to see drug companies profiteering from a lethal plague with Congress' help. In politics, as in life, being right isn't necessarily rewarded. But at least there's some dignity in it."

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Dear Bernie

by Robert Reich

Wednesday, April 8, 2020

I’m sorry you will not be president, but I understand and appreciate your decision to end your quest at this point.

Four years ago, in the 2016 Democratic primaries, you made it respectable to talk about Medicare for All, free public higher education, and raising taxes on the wealthy. You alerted America to the vast and growing gap in income, wealth, and political power, and its dangers for our economy and democracy.

This time, you’ve not only made it respectable to talk about these and other issues, such as a Green New Deal, but you’ve persuaded a majority of Americans that these problems must be addressed. You’ve given voice to the poor, working class, the undocumented, Native American – all those who have been bullied and abandoned.

You have inspired and galvanized a new generation of young Americans. You have made it possible for America to live up to its ideals. Your courage and determination have made me and countless others proud. Thank you. 

May your voice, your indignation, and your moral clarity ring out for years to come.

Fondly,

Bob

Off the Top of My Head

Bernie Bows Out ... Or Did He?

by John Lawrence, April 8, 2020

Bernie has suspended his campaign. That's not the same as ending his candidacy for the Democratic nomination. He's going to remain on the ballot. It could take a miracle, but it is still possible that Bernie could win the nomination. So far Biden has 1217 pledged delegates; Bernie has 914. 1991 are needed for the nomination. There are a total of 4051 delegates. That means there are still 1920 delegates outstanding. Suspending his campaign is not the same as conceding. Bernie still hopes to collect more delegates as that will give him more leverage at the convention. He could even still win, campaign or no campaign. The coronavirus has changed everything. You can't really campaign in the traditional sense anyway.

In Bernie's speech today he emphasized the point about Medicare for All as a human right independent of employment which is looking pretty good right now. Employer based health care has been exposed by the coronavirus as not too desirable especially if you have lost your job and with it your health insurance. This was the major difference between Joe and Bernie, and now that people have seen with their own eyes how flawed employer based health care is, they might have second thoughts about Medicare for All vs Medicare for All Who Want It as was touted by Pete Buttagieg and Amy Klobuchar.

I think that not too much should be read into Bernie's suspending his campaign. You can't campaign under the conditions represented by a pandemic. In fact I think Bernie's candidacy is looking better to a lot of people who have cast their ballots for Joe Biden. At any rate Bernie will have a lot of influence in setting the agenda of the Democratic party. Joe has already moved considerably to the left. Bernie is still a force to be reckoned with. Biden may be the presumptive nominee, but he's not the actual nominee ... yet.

Bernie asserted today that, while he may have lost the popular vote for the nomination, he has not lost the ideological argument. True, health care as a human right, free college, a Green New Deal, calling out corporate greed and for a living wage. These issues remain on the table. Economic inequality has also been brought home by the shutdown of the economy and the fact that half of American families have less than $400 in the bank. Most are highly in debt as well as a lot of corporations which have bought back their own stock instead of saving their money. They borrowed money for that purpose, and now they're in danger of going bankrupt.

In short the problems and issues that Bernie so ably brought to the fore will continue to demand the attention of the public even if Bernie passes from the scene which he won't any time soon. Remember he's still the Senator from Vermont. God bless him. He's done a lot for this country.

Off the Top of My Head

What About the 150 Million Workers Who Love Their Employer Provided Health Care?

by John Lawrence, April 5, 2020

This is what you heard Pete Buttagieg and Amy Klubuchar say in response to Bernie's Medicare for All proposal. Well, what are they saying now that a lot of those 150 million have lost their jobs AND their health care? You get employer provided health care as long as you're employed. Once you're not, forget it. All of a sudden Medicare for All looks a lot better. The coronavirus pandemic and resulting economic collapse could cause a staggering 35 million people in the US to lose their employer-sponsored health insurance over the next several months, with lower-income Americans bearing the brunt of the damage. Now is the time to get behind Bernie Sanders' Medicare for All initiative. Is it really about more "choice" vs a Medicare for All system. How many of those with employer based health care really love their health insurance now that they can lose it any day when their employer decides to lay them off. And besides they are still paying a ridiculous amount for premiums, co-pays, deductibles and out of network expenses despite the fact that their employer is paying part of the premiums.

With one system that is not employer based everyone is covered pandemic or no pandemic. "Good-quality health care should not be tied to your job," tweeted Sen. Bernie Sanders. "At a minimum, the government must ensure health care for all, without cost, for the duration of this crisis." The pandemic has really brought out the flaws in the employer based system. Joe Biden still doesn't like Medicare for All. “What we should be doing is having the Affordable Care Act, add the public option for those who want it, meaning Medicare if that’s what they want rather than keep their own health insurance policies,” he said. Probably most would opt for the public option now especially those who have lost their employer based health care. However, a new poll shows that support for Medicare for All is surging. The survey, conducted by Morning Consult and Politico from March 27 to 29, showed that 55 percent of voters back the Vermont senator's proposal for a single-payer universal health care system. That's the highest level seen by Morning Consult since June 2019, and nearly equal to the record high of 56 percent support reported back in January 2019. "Our health care system should be about protecting lives, not making huge profits for corporations," Sanders tweeted.

Trump is still trying to get rid of Obamacare. Some experts have said that the best solution for those that have lost their health insurance is to open back up the enrollment period for Obamacare, but Trump will not have any of that. Instead he says that those who require hospital treatment because of COVID-19 will not have to pay. He has restarted a lawsuit against Obamacare arguing in court that it is unconstitutional. “The one lasting effect of the repeal and replace debate is that the ACA is actually more popular than ever. That will make it harder to talk about repealing and replacing it,” said Larry Levitt, senior vice president for health reform at the Kaiser Family Foundation. “The repeal and replace debate in 2017 did the one thing that seemed impossible: which was to make the ACA popular.”

Off the Top of My Head

#President Cuomo

by John Lawrence, April 3, 2020

Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York is one of the competent, masterful people on the scene of mitigation of the coronavirus in contrast to the bumbling incompetence of President Trump. Trump has demonstrated over and over again that he doesn't know what he's doing. He has to be reigned in by people like Dr. Anthony Fauci. He is given to ridiculous pronouncements and prognostications. Why is his approval rating going up? Cuomo on the other hand is on top of the situation, compassionate, thorough and totally dedicated. Trump is a dillettante compared to him, a know nothing. New Yorkers are lucky to have such a knowledgable, proficient and intelligent person for their Governor.

Meanwhile, the Democratic race between Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders has almost been forgotten. They should be getting more media attention than they are getting. As usual Trump is getting all the media attention whether it be good or bad. The truth is that Trump and other Republicans have messed the Federal government up almost beyond recognition. Their mission has been to "drown the government in a bathtub" as Grover Norquist so famously said. Especially everything except the military and the military-industrial complex. So every humanitarian aspect of government from health to welfare has been systematically reduced. In fact they would like to eliminate entirely the Department of Health and Human Services.

Now they're recommending that we wear masks when we go to the grocery store. Where do you get them? Amazon can deliver them somewhere between May 21 and June 21. A lot of help that will do. New York City is running out of ventilators. People will die who might have lived. Of course the poor have been affected more than the rich. This is always the way it is in any crisis. That's why Trump is not overly concerned. When the rich start dying in larger numbers, then Trump will be more concerned especially if his family or donors are affected. It's always the vulnerable who bear the brunt.

Republicans have been successful in cultivating the loyalty of the southern tribe even though a good percentage of southerners are not well served by Republican policies. But gerrymandering and winner take all politics effectively negates any power that minorities might have in this country. White southerners are happy with this situation because they don't want minorities to have any power that would take power away from them. So naturally they are Trump supporters. He is the Great White Hope.

The alternative is to have a government that supports human beings at all economic, ethnic and racial levels. A government that supports people instead of policies which drive economic inequality and creates a few exorbitantly rich people while leaving everyone else in a precarious economic state. If there was ever a time to make a case for Medicare for All, it's now. So why isn't Bernie Sanders all over the TV making that case. It's not his fault, surely. The media is making a ton of money off this crisis. They haven't diminished the number of commercials they're running. In fact they have even more commercials because they know more eyeballs are on the news channels like CNN. So they're making a ton of money off this crisis.

Off the Top of My Head

It's Not Just Zantac: American Pharmaceutical Corporations are Importing Tainted Drug Ingredients from China

by John Lawrence

Tainted blood pressure medications have been traced back to Chinese manufacturers Zhejiang Huahai Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. and Zhejiang Tianyu Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. along with Hetero Labs Limited in India. Those companies then sold ingredients to generic drugmakers. I wrote 3 days ago: " FDA inspectors are unable or unwilling to provide appropriate oversight of Chinese manufacturing. In contrast to the robust testing required for approval for new prescription drugs, the FDA only requires that generic manufacturers prove that patients will absorb drugs at the same rate as the brand-name medications they copy." China and India Now Manufacture About 80% of the Drugs Consumed in the U.S. Funny all the articles on the banning of Zantac don't mention the fact that most US pharmaceuticals are manufactured outside the US where US inspection authorities can't get to them.

Even Fox News was worried. They reported:

"I have no doubt that they would consider weaponizing their dominance of the pharmaceuticals market if they felt that that would give them an advantage over us strategically," retired Brig. Gen. John Adams told Fox News. Adams is also president of Guardian Six, a defense research consulting firm.

In a worst-case scenario, experts warn, China could withhold supply of medicines like important antibiotics, or degrade the quality of our medicines -- even put lethal contaminants in them. Even when it comes to treating anthrax, China is the largest exporter of the building block to make ciprofloxacin, an anthrax antidote.

The more probable threat from China, however, is that it could make America's prescription drugs more expensive.

"In five to 10 years, when China has a complete chokehold over the United States and its supply of medicine, it's gonna be telling us how much to pay for our medicine," Gibson told Fox News. "We will lose control over how much we pay. We will be the price taker, not the price setter. And that's devastating."

We've already lost control over how much we pay thanks to the rapacity of the profit seeking American pharmaceutical corporations. Of course what the Fox News article misses is that its not China that is making huge profits. It's the American pharmaceutical companies which take advantage of cheap Chinese labor, then jack up the price on the imported drugs in order to make huge profits. That's why they don't make them here. Their profits wouldn't be as large if they did, and evidently, the American government doesn't really care about the situation or they would ban the import of drugs from other countries so they would have to make them here.

That's why we need Medicare for All and strict government oversight of pharmaceutical corporations.

'Abolish For-Profit Health Insurance': Analysis Warns Companies Could Hike Premiums by 40% Amid Pandemic

Published on Monday, March 30, 2020

by Common Dreams

"Corporate-run health insurance isn't about saving lives. It's about making as much money as possible. With Medicare for All we can finally put an end to this international disgrace," said Sen. Bernie Sanders.

by Jake Johnson, staff writer

 

26 Comments

Staff and volunteers with Project C.U.R.E hold a drive outside the United Center to collect donations of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) from the community which will be used to supply hospitals and clinics that are experiencing shortages due to the COVID-19 pandemic on March 29, 2020 in Chicago, Illinois. (Photo: Scott Olson/Getty Images)

A new analysis warning that U.S. health insurance companies could hike already exorbitant premiums by 40 percent or more next year amid the coronavirus pandemic was received by Medicare for All advocates as further confirmation that America's healthcare system—driven first and foremost by the profit motive—is ill-equipped to provide necessary care for all, particularly in a time of nationwide crisis.

The research conducted by Covered California, the state insurance marketplace created under the Affordable Care Act, found (pdf) that "if carriers must recoup 2020 costs, price for the same level of costs next year, and protect their solvency, 2021 premium increases to individuals and employers from COVID-19 alone could range from 4 percent to more than 40 percent."

"They're doing healthcare to make money, not to take care of people."
—Dr. Judd Hollander, Thomas Jefferson University

The health and economic impacts of the coronavirus outbreak are "potentially staggering," the analysis states, and could result in even more "consumers and employers no longer being able to afford coverage, leading to employer groups dropping coverage or individuals deciding to go uninsured."

More than 80 million people in the U.S. are currently uninsured or underinsured, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, and millions more are losing their employer-provided insurance as the jobless rate spikes due to the coronavirus crisis.

"The impact of COVID-19 will be significant, and... absent federal action, consumers, employers, and our entire healthcare system may be facing unforeseen costs that could exceed $251 billion," Peter V. Lee, executive director of Covered California said in a statement. "Consumers will feel these costs through higher out-of-pocket expenses and premiums, as well as the potential of employers dropping coverage or shifting more costs to employees."

"These increased costs could mean that many of the 170 million Americans in the commercial market may lose their coverage and go without needed care as we battle a global health crisis," Lee added. "These are not 'insurer' costs—these are costs directly borne by individual Americans."

Abolish for-profit health insurance. https://t.co/c95gYxyc1T

— Public Citizen (@Public_Citizen) March 29, 2020

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), whose Medicare for All proposal would virtually eliminate private insurance in the U.S., tweeted in response to the Covered California study that "America's for-profit insurance industry is not compatible with healthcare as a human right."

"Now is not the time for greed," said Sanders, a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate. "Now is the time for Medicare for All."

Corporate-run health insurance isn't about saving lives. It's about making as much money as possible. With Medicare for All we can finally put an end to this international disgrace. https://t.co/sZrb6FcUPz

— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) March 29, 2020

The new research comes as the coronavirus crisis continues to expose systemic flaws in America's fragmented and dysfunctional healthcare system. The Guardian reported last Thursday that as the virus has spread rapidly across the U.S., "private health insurance companies have lagged behind: making incremental changes to plans even as health providers seek to change course."

"They're doing healthcare to make money, not to take care of people," Dr. Judd Hollander, emergency medicine physician and associate dean at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, told The Guardian.

Last week, a 17-year-old boy in Los Angeles County died from complications believed to have been caused by COVID-19 after he was denied treatment at an urgent care center. The reason: he was uninsured.

"He didn't have insurance, so they did not treat him," said R. Rex Parris, the mayor of Lancaster, California.

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As Sanders Demands End to Iran Sanctions to Save Lives Amid Coronavirus Pandemic, Biden Says He Needs 'More Information'

Published on Monday, March 30, 2020

by Common Dreams

"Iran is facing a catastrophic toll from the coronavirus pandemic," said Sanders. "U.S. sanctions should not be contributing to this humanitarian disaster."

by Jake Johnson, staff writer

 

17 Comments

A view of the fairground of Iran, Tehran's largest shopping mall, after it converted into a hospital for coronavirus (COVID-19) patients, in Tehran, Iran on March 30, 2020. (Photo: Fatemeh Bahrami/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

After Sen. Bernie Sanders and other progressive lawmakers last week called on the Trump administration to end its economic warfare against Iran amid the coronavirus pandemic, 2020 Democratic presidential frontrunner Joe Biden on Sunday refused to commit to even temporarily lifting U.S. sanctions on Iran that are severely restricting the country's access to essential medical supplies.

"There is no logic to these sanctions. They're cruel and unusual punishment, full stop."
—Sina Toossi, National Iranian American Council

"I don't have enough information about the situation in Iran right now," said Biden, the former vice president under the Obama administration, which negotiated the Iran nuclear accord that President Donald Trump scrapped in 2018.

"There's a lot of speculation from my foreign policy team that they're in real trouble and they're lying," said Biden. "But I would need more information to make that judgement. I don't have the national security information available."

Watch:

EXCLUSIVE: Would Joe Biden temporarily lift sanctions on Iran during the coroanvirus pandemic? #MTP #IfItsSunday@JoeBiden: "There's a lot of speculation ... that they're in real trouble and they're lying. But I would need more information to make that judgement." pic.twitter.com/d6KFmcm9FZ

— Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) March 29, 2020

The dire situation in Iran has been international news for weeks and the public outcry over U.S. sanctions has been coming from human rights groups as well as Biden's fellow Democrats.

Biden's remarks on Sunday came a week after more than dozen members of Congress—including Sanders, Biden's remaining 2020 Democratic presidential rival—sent letters to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin demanding that the White House immediately lift sanctions on Iran as the nation attempts to combat one of the largest coronavirus outbreaks in the world.

"Rather than continue to pile on sanctions in the Iranian people's hour of need, we urge you to substantially suspend sanctions on Iran in a humanitarian gesture to the Iranian people to better enable them to fight the virus," reads a letter signed by Sanders, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), and six other members of Congress.

The letter was sent days after Pompeo announced that the Trump administration is imposing more sanctions on Iran in an effort to "deprive the regime of critical income from its petrochemical industry and further Iran's economic and diplomatic isolation."

Iran is facing a catastrophic toll from the coronavirus pandemic. U.S. sanctions should not be contributing to this humanitarian disaster.

As a caring nation, we must lift any sanctions hurting Iran’s ability to address this crisis, including financial sanctions. https://t.co/OBjff1nsxz

— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) March 18, 2020

The U.S. reimposed sweeping sanctions on Iran in 2018 after Trump violated the Iran nuclear deal, effectively killing a signature foreign policy achievement of the Obama administration. On the campaign trail, Biden has condemned Trump's decision to withdraw from the agreement and vowed to return to the negotiating table with Iran if elected president.

The Washington Post reported Sunday that U.S. sanctions against Iran—where the coronavirus has officially infected more than 41,000 people and killed nearly 2,800—"have limited Tehran's ability to finance and purchase essential items from abroad, including drugs as well as the raw materials and equipment needed to manufacture medicines domestically."

"There is no logic to these sanctions," tweeted Sina Toossi, senior research analyst with the National Iranian American Council. "They're cruel and unusual punishment, full stop."

An anonymous employee of a major Iranian pharmaceutical company told the Post that "the sanctions have definitely made the import and production processes longer and more expensive."

"Some suppliers are afraid and not willing to work with us anymore," the person said. "The sanctions have reduced Iran's capacity to control the outbreak."

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Off the Top of My Head

Dumb Move: Trump Closed the Pandemic Office in 2018

by John Lawrence, April 26, 2020

The Idiot-in-Chief has done a lot of dumb things, but closing the National Security Council Directorate for Global Health Security and Biodefense takes the cake. In addition he has attempted to cut the budget of the Center for Disease Control (CDC) each year for the last 3 years only to be prevented from doing that by Democrats in Congress. Perhaps COVID-19 is divine retribution for a man who has been so focused on basing his reelection on the economy that he has abandoned every other principle of government. I'm sure Dante would have an appropriate place in Hell for him. The experts tell us that this pandemic will last well into the campaign season for the 2020 election, but Trump keeps talking about getting back to normal in a few weeks. Ironically, if he hadn't done away with the NSC Global Health Security Office, we might have had a better handle on the virus. But now, thanks to Trump, the US is the epicenter of the pandemic. It makes a travesty out of "America First."

AP News reported:

Trump’s elimination of the office suggested, along with his proposed budget cuts for the CDC, that he did not see the threat of pandemics in the same way that many experts in the field did.

“One year later I was mystified when the White House dissolved the office, leaving the country less prepared for pandemics like COVID-19,” Beth Cameron, the first director of the unit, wrote in an op-ed Friday in The Washington Post.

She said the directorate was set up to be the “smoke alarm” and get ahead of emergencies and sound a warning at the earliest sign of fire — “all with the goal of avoiding a six-alarm fire.”

Now Trump wants to "get back to normal" by Easter. Imagine the churches packed with worshippers! They better stay home and utter a prayer for him. Dr. Fauci says that the deadline of Easter for reopening the economy is "aspirational" which is a euphemism for "this is the dumbest thing we ever heard of." It's clear that during the campaign season the economy will be in the tank and Trump is going down. He totally deserves it for the way he hasn't risen to the occasion of the pandemic. He continues to put his own self-interest above the welfare of the rest of the country. It should be obvious to most people by now. He has behaved abominably his whole Presidency, but this pandemic is bringing out the worst in him.

Trump: "Governor Cuomo and others that say, you know, we want 30,000 of them [ventilators]. 30,000! Think of this. You know, you go to hospitals, they'll have one in a hospital." Yes, and think of this. you can't see anything coming out of a tailpipe of a car. Why we've been driving cars for 100 years, and nothing bad has happened. Greenhouse Gasses? We never had greenhouse gasses in New York City. We have the subway. The people ride in a hole in the ground. Think of that!

If the coronavirus pandemic accomplishes nothing else, it will be the end of Trump, thankfully. The Democrats could run Winnie the Pooh and Trump would lose. The American people may be dumb, but they're not that dumb. His response to the pandemic has shown on a daily basis what a deplorable, small minded nincompoop he is. All the people who voted for him must feel ridiculous. Well enough of that.

Let's move on to a more positive scenario, post-Trump and post COVID-19. The NSC office of Global Health will reopen; the CDC will be fully funded. The billionaire class will be heavily taxed including a wealth tax. So far the only wealth tax has affected the middle class - the property tax. It's time to tax billlionaire's wealth and put the money to good use rebuilding infrastructure and greening America and the world, ending endless wars, putting all the money going to the military-industrial complex to better use providing universal health care as a human right as Bernie says. Banning fracking. Building out renewable energy fueled power plants. Building a national power grid. High speed rail. Either we make this country a leader again or America will become a backwater and China will lead the world. Countries will emulate them instead of the antiquated US political and economic system.

Instead of making America great again, Trump has made America a basket case like it never was before. That's what happens when you elect an idiot as President.

WATCH: In Fiery Floor Speech, Sanders Rips GOP for Relentless Efforts to 'Punish' Poor People

Published on Thursday, March 26, 2020

by Common Dreams

"Meanwhile, these very same folks had no problem a couple years ago voting for a trillion dollars in tax breaks for billionaires and large profitable corporations. Not a problem."

by Jake Johnson, staff writer

 

14 Comments

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) speaks during a Federal Spending Oversight And Emergency Management Subcommittee hearing June 6, 2018 on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Aaron P. Bernstein/Getty Images)

In a fiery speech on the Senate floor Wednesday ahead of the chamber's passage of a massive coronavirus stimulus bill, Sen. Bernie Sanders ripped his Republican colleagues for doing everything in their power to ensure that poor and vulnerable people receive less financial assistance than they desperately need in this moment of nationwide crisis.

"Now I find that some of my Republican colleagues are very distressed. They're very upset that somebody who's making 10, 12 bucks an hour might end up with a paycheck for four months, more than they received last week," Sanders said, referring to the group of Republican senators who threatened to delay passage of the stimulus bill over its temporary expansion of unemployment benefits, which they described as overly generous.

"Some of my Republican friends still have not given up on the need to punish the poor and working people."
—Sen. Bernie Sanders

 

In response, as Common Dreams reported, Sanders vowed to hold up the stimulus legislation with a demand for stronger conditions on the bill's "corporate welfare fund" if the Republican senators refused to drop their objections to the unemployment provisions.

The Senate ultimately defeated an amendment by Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) that would have limited unemployment benefits and the stimulus bill passed Wednesday night by a vote of 96-0.

"Oh my god, the universe is collapsing. Imagine that?" said Sanders, waving his arms in mock distress. "Somebody who's making 12 bucks an hour now, like the rest of us, faces an unprecedented economic crisis with the $600 bucks on top of their normal, their regular unemployment check, might be making a few bucks more for four months. Oh my word! Will the universe survive?"

Watch:

There is no politician in America who fights harder for the working class than Bernie Sanders.

So proud to work for this man. pic.twitter.com/OECUH2aFZ6

— Joe Calvello (@the_vello) March 26, 2020

"How absurd and wrong is that? What kind of value system is that?" asked Sanders, a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate. "Meanwhile, these very same folks had no problem a couple years ago voting for a trillion dollars in tax breaks for billionaires and large profitable corporations. Not a problem."

"But when it comes to low-income workers, in the midst of a terrible crisis, maybe some of them earning or having more money than they previously made—oh my word, we gotta strip that out," Sanders continued. "You see because poor people are down here, they don't deserve, they don't eat, they don't pay rent, they don't go to the doctor, they're somehow inferior because they're poor, gonna give them less. Some of my Republican friends still have not given up on the need to punish the poor and working people."

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Sanders Threatens to Demand Stronger Conditions on $500 Billion 'Corporate Welfare Fund' If GOP Moves to Reduce Benefits for Laid Off Workers

Published on

Wednesday, March 25, 2020

by

Common Dreams

"It would be an outrage to prevent working-class Americans to receive the emergency unemployment assistance included in this legislation."

by

 Jon Queally, staff writer

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 32 Comments

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., arrives at the Capitol for a vote on a coronavirus bill amendment on Wednesday, March 18, 2020. (Photo: Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

In direct response to three Republicans threatening to delay the massive $2 trillion stimulus bill agreed to by Senate leaders because they deemed unemployment benefits for American workers in the package too generous, Sen. Bernie Sanders said Wednesday afternoon that he would retaliate in kind if the demand to reduce the financial support for those who have lost their jobs due to the coronavirus is not dropped.

"Unless Republican Senators drop their objections to the coronavirus legislation, I am prepared to put a hold on this bill until stronger conditions are imposed on the $500 billion corporate welfare fund," Sanders declared, shortly after Sens.  Lindsey Graham (SC), Tim Scott (SC), and Ben Sasse (NE) threatened to delay the Senate bill.

As Common Dreams reported, the three GOP senators claimed in a joint statement that there exists "a massive drafting error in the current version of the coronavirus relief legislation"—but what they really seem to be arguing is simply that the benefits provided to workers in the bill should be reduced.

"In my view," said Sanders in a statement, "it would be an outrage to prevent working-class Americans to receive the emergency unemployment assistance included in this legislation."

Sanders said that unless Graham, Scott, and Sasse—who said at a press conference they will withold their support unless they receive a vote on an amendment to scrape back the benefits—"drop their objections," he is prepared to demand that "any corporation receiving financial assistance under this legislation does not lay off workers, cut wages or benefits, ship jobs overseas, or pay workers poverty wages."

The Vermont senator's objection to the corporate bailout portion of the massive bill has been shared by other progressive critics who worry that even with so-called "oversight" protections, the massive fund will be used by corporations to pad their bottom lines while disregarding the needs of workers.

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New Senate Stimulus Bill Would Ban Companies Owned by Trump or His Children From Receiving Any Bailout Money

Published on Wednesday, March 25, 2020

by Common Dreams

A provision in the massive bill prohibits "businesses controlled by the president, vice president, members of Congress, and heads of executive departments from receiving loans or investments from Treasury programs."

by Jake Johnson, staff writer

 

41 Comments

President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence look over some notes as they participate in a Fox News Virtual Town Hall with Anchor Bill Hemmer in the Rose Garden of the White House on March 24, 2020 in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Doug Mills-Pool/Getty Images)

A massive coronavirus stimulus plan that the Senate and White House agreed to in the early hours of Wednesday morning would bar any companies owned or controlled by President Donald Trump, the president's children, Vice President Mike Pence, or members of Congress from receiving any taxpayer bailout money, according to a summary of the legislation circulated by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

The sprawling $2 trillion bill, which has not yet been released in full, would "prohibit businesses controlled by the president, vice president, members of Congress, and heads of executive departments from receiving loans or investments from Treasury programs," Schumer's summary states.

 "The children, spouses, and in-laws of the aforementioned principals are also included in this prohibition," the document adds.

Trump in recent days has voiced his desire for the hotel industry to be among the corporate beneficiaries of any congressional stimulus legislation and—after being pressed repeatedly by reporters—has refused to vow that his own companies would not receive money from any taxpayer bailout programs.

The president also asserted that he will personally oversee the corporate bailout funds. "We're going to make good deals," Trump said during a press briefing on Monday.

"Several Trump-branded properties have been affected by the virus-induced demand crash, as well as state and local restrictions on going out in public," Bloomberg reported Wednesday morning.

After doing some whataboutism about Obama and H1N1, Trump claims "I think we're doing an incredible job. All you have to do is look at the approval numbers." pic.twitter.com/zfTaQHLiDS

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 22, 2020

Senate Democrats earlier this week stopped the GOP's efforts to advance an earlier version of the stimulus bill in an effort to extract concessions from the White House and Senate Republicans, who Democrats accused of attempting to force through a corporate "slush fund" with little regard for workers.

In negotiations with Senate Republicans and Trump administration officials, Democrats reportedly won inclusion of a significant boost in unemployment benefits (which would also be extended to gig workers), more money for hospitals, and independent oversight of a $500 billion corporate loan fund that the legislation would establish.

As the heated talks over the stimulus bill progressed Tuesday, progressive lawmakers expressed concerns about the enormous legislative package, which could hit the Senate floor for a vote as soon as Wednesday afternoon.

"The developments of this Senate relief bill are concerning," Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) tweeted Tuesday afternoon, before the Senate agreement was finalized. "We are hearing lots of vague statements, but not a single member of Congress has seen actual bill text. It seems to give a *HALF TRILLION DOLLARS* away to big corporations, with few worker protections. Half a trillion."

With the House out of session and lawmakers wary of returning to Capitol Hill amid the coronavirus outbreak, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is expected to attempt to pass the Senate bill by unanimous consent, which requires the agreement of every member.

"If unanimous consent is not possible," the Washington Post reported, "aides of both parties said the most likely scenario would be a day-long vote where members would be encouraged to spread out their trips to the floor and not congregate as the vote is taken."

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Off the Top of My Head

Bernie Slammed for Saying Something Positive About Cuba. Now Cuban Doctors Are Going to Italy to Help With Coronavirus.

by John Lawrence

Something the main stream media won't report: Cuban doctors are being sent to Italy. Previously, they helped with the Ebola crisis in Africa. Regardless of their form of government, give credit where credit is due. Joe Biden and the media jumped all over Bernie for saying one good thing about Cuba.  Biden sought to contrast Sanders’ comments with former President Barack Obama, noting that Obama “did not in any way suggest that there was anything positive about the Cuban government.” No, nothing positive? Not increased literacy? Not better health care outcomes than the US? The conventional wisdom about Cuba is bullshit, and you can't acknowledge that they have done one good thing without being slammed? Give me a break. Italy has no such compunctions about Cuba. They requested that the Cuban doctors come to Lombardy. That tells you something about what the rest of the world thinks about Cuba's proficiency in medical care. The rest of the world isn't as ignorant as US politicians and media stalwarts like Anderson Cooper. The US needs to wake up and realize that the meme that Cuba is all bad is outdated and factually incorrect. It is the meme of an ignorant electorate - Democrats included!

Reuters reported:

The Caribbean island has sent its “armies of white robes” to disaster sites around the world largely in poor countries since its 1959 revolution. Its doctors were in the front lines in the fight against cholera in Haiti and against ebola in West Africa in the 2010s.

Yet with the 52-strong brigade, this is the first time Cuba has sent an emergency contingent to Italy, one of the world’s richest countries, demonstrating the reach of its medical diplomacy.

This is the sixth medical brigade Cuba has sent in recent days to combat the spread of the new disease abroad. It has sent contingents to socialist allies Venezuela and Nicaragua as well as Jamaica, Suriname and Grenada.

“We are all afraid but we have a revolutionary duty to fulfill, so we take our fear and put it to one side,” Leonardo Fernandez, 68, an intensive care specialist, told Reuters late on Saturday shortly before his brigade’s departure.

Even staunch US ally, Britain, thanked Cuba for allowing a British cruise ship that had been turned away by several Caribbean ports to dock on the island and for enabling the evacuation of the more than 600 passengers onboard. Yet the US continues to sanction Cuba forcing it to forego much needed pharmaceuticals and medical supplies. Despite more than half a century of a US economic embargo, Cuba’s average life expectancy is greater than that in the US. As of 2015 Cuban life expectancies of 79.5 years and infant mortality rates of 4.3 per 1000 live births were better than rich nations like the US (78.7 years and 5.7 per 1, 000 live births) yet its per capita income of $7602. makes it one of the poorest economies in the hemisphere (World Development Indicators DataBank, 2017).

As for literacy, the rate was 77% in 1959 before the revolution. Two years after the revolution it was 100%.

Cuba has better health care outcomes than the US despite every attempt by the US from embargoes to sanctions to destroy their economy. Perhaps the American people should wake up and listen to Bernie Sanders for a change. He knows a helluva lot more about Cuba than the ignorant Joe Biden and the other Democrats who have attacked him about his remarks about Cuba and Latin America in general. At least admit the undeniable truth no matter how much you dislike their form of government.

'Two $1 Trillion Coins': Rashida Tlaib Proposal Calls on US Treasury to Fund Coronavirus Recovery From US Mint

Published on Saturday, March 21, 2020

by Common Dreams

Tlaib's "Automatic BOOST Act" calls for a universal payout of $2,000 to everyone in the U.S. and $1,000 a month after that. 

by Eoin Higgins, staff writer

 

72 Comments

Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) arrives at a House Democratic Caucus meeting at the U.S. Capitol September 25, 2019. (Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Progressives on Saturday welcomed news that Rep. Rashida Tlaib is calling on the U.S. Treasury to exercise its power to issue platinum coins to fund the coronavirus recovery, calling the move an example of thinking outside the box and celebrating the universality of her proposal to give everyone in America cash payments. 

"I fully support the House Financial Services Committee Democrats #COVID19 economic response proposal," the Michigan Democrat tweeted Saturday. "I also want to encourage leadership to consider my truly universal relief proposal on behalf of #13thDistrictStrong."

I fully support the @FSCDems #COVID19 economic response proposal. I also want to encourage leadership to consider my truly universal relief proposal on behalf of #13thDistrictStrong.

— Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (@RepRashida) March 21, 2020

"This is a really ambitious and creative plan from Rep. Tlaib taking advantage of ideas that financial experts began exploring during the debt crisis showdowns of the Obama years," tweeted HuffPost reporter Zach Carter.

We're 100% serious when we say: PUT @RASHIDATLAIB ON THE TRILLION DOLLAR COIN!!! https://t.co/3SpWXjXWef

— People for Bernie (@People4Bernie) March 21, 2020

The "Automatic BOOST to Communities Act" (pdf) would deliver a $2,000 pre-paid debit card to every American, with $1,000 being paid monthly after that until a year after the coronavirus crisis ends. Tlaib proposes to pay for the cost of the program by calling on the Treasury to use its authority under federal law to issue two trillion dollar platinum coins. The move would not add to the debt.  

"Tlaib wants to take advantage of an obscure Treasury authority to issue new currency through minting platinum coins, and then give that currency to people," said Carter. "No new debt, no weird Federal Reserve programs, just cash straight to folks."

The bill also uses a broad definition of "every person," including non-citizens, children and other dependents, those in territories and protectorates, and those without bank accounts. 

Under the bill, "an emergency corps will conduct a targeted outreach program to at-risk populations (homeless, elderly, etc) to ensure they receive cards, and at the same time perform a wellness check to assess whether they need additional assistance," said Modern Money Network president Rohan Grey, who helped write the bill.

"It's been a thrill to work on this proposal, but it is important to note that while emergency cash relief is critical, it is not sufficient on its own," Grey added. "We need far-reaching debt and expense relief, additional income and benefit protection and expansion, including direct payroll support, repurposing and public ownership of key industry, and direct worker support through a job guarantee that supports emergency and solidarity work, remote work, and begins planning for what the post-crisis recovery looks like."

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'Not Done Yet': Bernie Sanders Campaign Mobilizes Donors for Coronavirus Relief and Raises $2 Million

Published on Saturday, March 21, 2020

by Common Dreams

"The Bernie Sanders campaign puts its fundraising prowess to another purpose."

by Eoin Higgins, staff writer

 

31 Comments

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) takes the stage during a primary night event on February 11, 2020 in Manchester, New Hampshire. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Sen. Bernie Sanders' for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination campaign's prodigious fundraising operation raised $2 million for charities helping those most affected by the coronavirus outbreak crisis in the last 48 hours in a move that supporters said exemplified the message of solidarity the Vermont lawmaker has run on.

"Bernie Sanders supporters have contributed more than $2 million in 2 days to charities helping people whose lives have been impacted by the coronavirus," tweeted political strategist Tim Tagaris. "Not done yet."

Bernie Sanders’ campaign says it raised $2 million in two days for Meals on Wheels, Restaurant Workers’ Community Foundation’s relied fund and other charities amid the coronavirus pandemic.

— Holly Otterbein (@hollyotterbein) March 21, 2020

The campaign mobilized staff and volunteers to text and call to raise money for five charities: Meals on Wheels, No Kid Hungry, Restaurant Workers’ Community Foundation COVID-19 Emergency Relief Fund, One Fair Wage Emergency Fund, and the National Domestic Workers Alliance. 

Robin Curran, the campaign's digital fundraising director, said in a statement that the money raised showed the importance of Sanders' "Not me, us" slogan.

"What we've seen in the last two days is the definition of 'fighting for someone you don't know,'" said Curran. "The people supporting this campaign have made more than 50,000 donations to help those most impacted by coronavirus because they understand that now more than ever it is important that we are in this together."

According to the campaign, there will be more efforts to raise money for the least fortunate affected by the crisis in the coming days.

The @BernieSanders' campaign puts its fundraising prowess to another purpose: It raised $2 million in 48 hours for five charities involved in coping with the coronavirus outbreak, the campaign announced Saturday.

— Janet Hook (@hookjan) March 21, 2020

Sanders has taken a leadership role on handling the crisis both in Washington and nationally. The senator has led online forums on the crisis and addressed the nation via virtual "fireside chats."

As Common Dreams reported Friday, Sanders' remaining rival for the Democratic nomination, former Vice President Joe Biden, has not been seen in days. 

On Friday night, during a roundtable on the outbreak, Sanders said that the crisis can only be solved by innovative thinking and extreme measures.

"In this extraordinary moment in American and world history, we have got to think outside the box in a way that we have never done," said Sanders. "This is an unprecedented moment and we have got to think in an unprecedented way."

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Off the Top of My Head

Joe Biden's Commitment to Student Debt Bankruptcy Will Attract Bernie's Supporters

by John Lawrence, March 20, 2020

Joe Biden is being smart now. In 2005 "middle class Joe" voted for the most anti-middle class legislation of the 20th century. Biden voted against borrowers drowning in medical debt, student loan debt, seniors, service members, union members and victims of deadbeat dads. He helped make it impossible to discharge student loan debt in bankruptcy court. Now, thanks to Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, he's on board for a reversal of that bill if he's elected President. The record makes clear that as a senator, Biden used his clout to push for the law’s passage and to defeat amendments to shield service members, women, and children from its harsh treatment. Particularly, after the 2008 Great Recession the lack of bankruptcy protection at a time when trillions of dollars were being pumped into the banking system was draconian by its very nature.

The American Prospect reported:

Biden also consistently voted against efforts to soften BAPCPA’s blow on vulnerable populations. He voted against three amendments to ease bankruptcy requirements for consumers whose financial troubles stem from medical expenses. He voted against an amendment that would have helped seniors keep their homes. He voted against exempting service members and widows of service members killed in action from the law’s eligibility restrictions. He voted against an amendment to exempt women whose financial troubles stemmed from deadbeat husbands’ failure to pay child support or alimony. And Biden even voted against an amendment that would have ensured that children of debtors could still be given birthday and Christmas presents. Biden also voted against allowing debtors to pay their union dues during bankruptcy, potentially imperiling their employment and ability to achieve financial rehabilitation.

It’s not as if Joe Biden was opposed to all amendments to the legislation: He voted to enshrine a “millionaire’s loophole” that allows wealthy, well-counseled debtors to shield their assets from creditors by placing them in asset-protection trusts. Nor did he act to cut off the loophole that shields assets placed by wealthy families in “dynasty trusts,” such as are offered by Delaware.

Good ol' middle class Joe. Well, finally, he's had a come-to-Jesus revelation that just maybe he was wrong about all those things he had previously voted for. Will he hang his head and ask for forgiveness? I doubt it. However, if he has seen the error of his ways and is willing to reverse his support of all the credit card companies headquartered in his home state of Delaware, then just maybe I will support him over Donald Trump for President. Sometimes you just have to hold your nose and vote. Bernie and Elizabeth have been consistent in their stands for the middle class. Biden is a Johnie-come-lately. He likes to reference himself to Barack Obama, and he certainly has a lot of African-American support, but he's just as phony as most politicians and served well all the financial interests in the state of Delaware at the expense of the middle class. Don't you think Trump will point this out?

Now it's all about Biden's running mate. Bernie is effectively out of the race although he and Elizabeth Warren have had a major effect  in pushing Biden to the Left. His agenda is not all that bad. See joebiden.com. His infrastructure plans are great. His proposals to increase income for seniors is great. I think Amy Klobuchar would be an ideal running mate. She has flyover state cred. She's a woman. Biden is committed to choosing a woman as a running mate. She's proficient and experienced.

Biden is a major asshole, but he's the lesser of two evils when compared to Trump. In short he's our asshole. When it counted, Joe Biden looked out for millionaires and the banks, not the middle class. Let's hope he has seen the error of his ways and will come out from hiding behind the cloak of Barack Obama.

Biden endorses Warren's bankruptcy plan, calling it 'one of the things that I think Bernie and I will agree on'

By Eric Bradner and Arlette Saenz, CNN

March 14, 2020

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Biden-Warren feud re-emerges on campaign trail

Former Vice President Joe Biden says he now backs Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren's bankruptcy plan, endorsing his former Democratic rival's proposal to repeal portions of a law they had clashed over 15 years earlier.

Biden touted his support for Warren's plan as an olive branch to supporters of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders in a virtual town hall for Illinois voters Friday night, calling it "one of the things that I think Bernie and I will agree on."

He highlighted a portion of Warren's plan that would allow student loan debt to be eliminated in bankruptcy just like other debts.

"I'm going to endorse -- I've endorsed -- Elizabeth Warren's bankruptcy proposal, which in fact goes further, allows for student debt to be relieved in bankruptcy, provides for a whole range of other issues that allows us to in fact impact on how people are dealing with their circumstances," Biden said. "So there's a whole range of things we agree on."

Biden's move to back Warren's plan shows that, as he moves toward clinching the Democratic presidential nomination and seeks to soothe over tensions from a year-long intra-party battle, the former vice president is taking steps to embrace his former rivals and adopt planks of their platforms -- and is willing to move left to do so.

Warren's team got a heads-up from the Biden camp that he would be endorsing the senator's bankruptcy plan ahead of his public announcement on Friday, a Warren aide told CNN's MJ Lee. The two teams were in touch leading up to the announcement, the aide said.

A Biden campaign aide said he would likely say more about his support for Warren's bankruptcy plan in his debate against Sanders on Sunday night.

Biden and Warren's high-profile battle over a 2005 bill that made it more difficult to declare bankruptcy, when he was a Delaware senator and leading advocate of the measure and she was a Harvard professor and vocal opponent, played a key role in inspiring Warren's move into politics.

As a presidential candidate, she used it to highlight her differences with Biden. On the day in April 2019 that Biden entered the race, she said at a rally that Biden had been "on the side of the credit companies."

The law, which was heavily backed by the banking and credit card industries, made it harder for Americans to get out of debt by filing for bankruptcy. Supporters of the measure said it would prevent financially irresponsible people from abusing the system, while opponents denounced it, saying it would hurt struggling people by increasing the regulation, documentation and costs of seeking bankruptcy protection. Bankruptcies plummeted after the law took effect, but not for the right reasons, consumer advocates argued.

Biden was seen as a leading proponent of the bill at the time, though it was largely backed by Republicans and passed by a GOP-controlled Congress. Biden's campaign has argued he successfully fought for changes to the bill that prioritized child support and alimony in front of lenders and required credit card companies to warn borrowers about their interest rates.

The Warren plan targets a series of provisions that she has criticized for years, arguing that they benefit credit card companies and big lenders at the expense of Americans struggling with consumer, household and student debt.

Warren's proposal would make the bankruptcy system "simple, cheap, fast, and flexible," she wrote in a Medium post when she unveiled it in January. It would merge the two types of consumer bankruptcy filings -- Chapter 7 and Chapter 13 -- into one, offering filers a "menu of options" for dealing with their unpaid debt. It would eliminate what she termed "burdensome paperwork" that makes bankruptcy more expensive, deterring some from filing. It would reverse the 2005 law's requirement that filers seek pre-filing credit counseling, as well as the additional rules it placed on consumer bankruptcy attorneys.

She would also reduce the cost of filing and make it easier for people to keep their homes and cars during bankruptcy. The proposal would make it harder for the wealthy to shield assets in trusts and would crack down on companies that violate consumer financial protection laws while trying to collect on debts. And her proposal would end the ban on shedding student loan debt in bankruptcy.

CNN's Gregory Krieg and Tami Luhby contributed to this report.

Off the Top of My Head

The Fed Keeps On Bailing Out Failing Businesses

by John Lawrence, March 17, 2020

The Fed announced recently that it would cut interest rates to zero. It has also promised to insert $1.5 trillion of "liquidity" into the markets. It's clear that the US is a society that runs on debt, and the biggest non profit producing industry that has gorged itself on humungus amounts of debt is fracking. But investors are getting weary. S&P Global Ratings this month cut credit ratings of six shale gas producers citing the outlook for natural gas prices. "We are particularly concerned about some of the issuers' ability to access the capital markets given investor aversion to the space," S&P said. But no worries. A Fed bailout is on the way. Zero percent interest. Free money. Whoopee. Frack away.

Just a few days ago, CNBC host Jim Cramer exclaimed, "I'm done with fossil fuel," after disappointing earnings reports from Dow Jones energy giants Chevron and Exxon Mobil. "We're in the death knell phase," he warned. The fracking industry is deathly afraid that, if Bernie Sanders is elected, the gravy train will be over. Fracking has provided a lot of jobs for a lot of people, but it is not profitable if the world oil price is less than $40 a barrel. Right now, thanks to Russia and Saudi Arabia, the price of oil is $30 a barrel. A Green New Deal would have to provide jobs for all those workers in the fracking industry who have been making pretty good money even though the industry as a whole is unprofitable.

The Fed is doing its job to create another tower of debt in the US. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has pointed out that the $1.5 trillion the Fed has injected into the system for "liquidity" could wipe out all the student loan debt in the US which now stands at $1.5 trillion. But the Fed insists that any stimulus to the economy which would actually help working people as opposed to investors has to come from the fiscal side meaning that Congress would have to appropriate the money. The Fed's job is to make sure that no major business player in the US economy goes bankrupt including the US government itself which is wallowing in debt to the tune of $1 trillion a year thanks to Trump's tax cuts for the rich similar to Ronald Reagan's tax cuts for the rich which quintupled the national debt. It took a Democrat, poor old Clinton, to reduce the deficit to zero.

The question naturally arises of why can't the Fed bail out American workers to the tune of $1000 a month as Andrew Yang has suggested especially now that the coronavirus has put a huge damper on consumption which is 70% of the economy. The Fed says, "Not my job. That's Congress' job." The Fed as it turns out is a wholly owned subsidiary of Wall Street. It is not a publicly owned entity. Congress will do nothing to bail out the American people because of the Republican controlled Senate led by Mitch McConnell. Even if Democrats were to attain a majority in the Senate, the filibuster would prevent them from doing anything. So Joe Biden, even if elected, will get nothing substantial done including building on Obamacare. The only reason Obamacare was even passed in the first place was that Democrats had a majority in both Houses and a filibusterproof majority in the Senate (60 votes) for a very short period of time (4 months) during which Obamacare was passed. Good luck Joe.

If the Fed, instead of being privately controlled by Wall Street, were to become a truly public institution controlled by Congress, then maybe it could bail out the general American public instead of failing businesses. According to the rules of capitalism, failing businesses at some point should go bankrupt. The Fed is essentially preventing that from happening thus fueling the stock market. However, the stock market senses that at this point the Fed has used up all its tools and can do nothing further. There is probably too much liquidity in the markets already. Providing more wouldn't do any good. Interest rates are already at zero. The Fed could go to negative interest rates, but that would screw the economy up even more. Perhaps we'll all have to settle for a good old recession after all. But one thing is for certain. About six months from now, Trump will pull out all the stops to get the economy moving again just before the election since he is basing his reelection on a robust economy. However, it all depends on whether or not the coronavirus is under control at that point. If it is, Trump will take credit.

Debating Bernie on Medicare for All and Coronavirus, Biden Declares: 'I Don't Want to Get This Into a Back and Forth in Terms of Our Politics'

Published on Sunday, March 15, 2020

by Common Dreams

"This coronavirus pandemic exposes the incredible weakness and dysfunctionality of our current health care system," said Sanders. "We need Medicare for All."

by Jon Queally, staff writer

 

10 Comments

Democratic presidential hopefuls former US vice president Joe Biden (L) and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders (R) take part in the 11th Democratic Party 2020 presidential debate in a CNN Washington Bureau studio in Washington, DC on March 15, 2020. (Photo: Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)

As Democratic presidential candidates Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders debated Sunday night over the failures of the U.S. healthcare system that have been dramatically exposed by the current coronavirus pandemic rattling the nation, Biden argued against the need for Medicare for All, defended the private insurance industry, and said now was not the time to debate key ideological differences.

"This coronavirus pandemic exposes the incredible weakness and dysfunctionality of our current health care system," Sanders said during an exchange early in the debate as he advocated for his Medicare for All plan in the context of the current crisis.

Watch:

This coronavirus pandemic exposes the incredible weakness and dysfunctionality of our current health care system.

We are the only major country not to guarantee health care to all our people.

We need Medicare for All. #DemDebate pic.twitter.com/ifuI79NoDu

— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) March 16, 2020

Biden argued coronavirus testing and treatment should be free to all Americans to combat the current outbreak, but continued to espouse his belief that such a policy should not be extended for other diseases or illnesses.

"Look, this is a national crisis," said Biden. "I don't want to get this into a back and forth in terms of our politics."

During a presidential debate, Democrat Joe Biden says: "I don't want to get this into a back and forth in terms of our politics."

IT'S A DEBATEpic.twitter.com/uKmAj8h1QQ

— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) March 16, 2020

"This is like we are being attacked from abroad," Biden said. "This is a war. And in a war, you do whatever it takes to take care of your people."

Strikingly, as Sanders and others noted, the war analogy deployed by Biden does not—in the current for-profit system—extend to people at risk of economic bankruptcy or death from health threats other than COVID-19.

Biden: "We're at war with a virus. It has nothing to do with co-pays or anything."

Bernie says that's not true. There are enormous loopholes, and citizens are going to be stuck with a bill. #DemDebate

— Kevin Gosztola (@kgosztola) March 16, 2020

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Off the Top of My Head

They are Speaking of a War Time Effort to Defeat the Coronavirus. A War Time Effort is Necessary to Defeat Climate Change, and It is Even More Important.

by John Lawrence, March 15, 2020

Are we all in this together? Is every nation on earth suffering the effects of the coronavirus? Is it a war? The changes that will come about from global warming, if we don't act now, will kill a billion times more people than the coronavirus ever will. The coronavirus is a clear and present danger to the world's population right now, but mainly to old people with underlying conditions. Global warming is a present danger even if that's not as clear to Americans especially those who have been swayed by Trump's wishy washy response to it.

As Americans we must stop investing trillions of dollars in no win, go nowhere wars, and use that and even more money to help the world divest from the usage of fossil fuels. It goes way beyond just converting the US energy system to renewable energy. We must have a leading role in converting the entire world to renewable energy. That means, instead of creating enemies in the world, we need to develop friendships with all the nations of the world in order to facilitate a threat that will affect every nation of the world just as the coronavirus does right now. We must join China on their Belt and Road initiative but insist that it be a Green Belt and Road initiative. That means building green infrastructure not only in America but in some of the highest polluting countries of the world, namely India. This must be our foreign policy, not sanctions or the threat of war.

That means we must partner with Russia which stands to lose a lot of money if they keep all their extensive supplies of oil in the ground. We are already allies, supposedly, with Saudi Arabia, but we must insist that they and OPEC keep their prodigious oil reserves in the ground. All of this means a humongous change in the world's economic system, which is based on oil, but, if we are unsuccessful as a species in doing this, the earth will surely burn, habitats will be destroyed and future generations will not have a habitable planet to live on. We might as well take off for another habitable planet right now. I understand from Cosmos on TV that there might be one only 20 light years away.

Bernie Sanders is clearly the candidate who will take a Green New Deal the most seriously. Joe Biden will try to tinker around the edges of the current oil based system which will not be enough to deter future disaster, and we don't have too many years to get this right. Clearly, we must do everything we possibly can at the utmost possible speed starting on Day 1 of the next Democratic administration in January 2021.

'In a Dark Time, the Eye Begins to See': The 2020 Bernie Campaign Represents a Fight That Must Continue

Published on Wednesday, March 11, 2020

by Common Dreams

Corporate media and corporate Democrats want the Bernie 2020 campaign—and the grassroots energy behind it—to melt away. That's not going to happen.

by Norman Solomon

 

47 Comments

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., Democratic Presidential Candidate, speaks to thousands of supporters during a rally at the Boston Common on Saturday, February 29, 2020 in Boston, MA. (Photo: Salwan Georges/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

“In a dark time,” poet Theodore Roethke wrote, “the eye begins to see.”

No matter who wins the Democratic presidential nomination, many millions of people will refuse to unsee what has become all too clear. On the verge of spring 2020, we can see what we’re up against:

•A crowing media establishment, eager to relegate the Bernie Sanders campaign to the political margins.

•A gloating Democratic Party establishment, glad to rally around Potemkin candidate Joe Biden and extol his carefully crafted façade.

•Overall, interlocking systems based on greed and corporate power instead of shared resources and genuine democracy.

On Tuesday night, there was no mistaking the smug joy of studio pundits and Democratic Party operatives on networks like AT&T-owned CNN and Comcast-owned MSNBC. Meanwhile, the New York Times rushed into print yet another all-out attack piece masquerading as a “news” article about Sanders.

Dominant media have routinely slanted coverage to make Sanders look bad, often bypassing context and skewing facts. It was just another day at the office last week when the Times front-paged a flagrant smear of Sanders as a supposed propaganda tool of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s. A former U.S. ambassador to Moscow quickly denounced the story as a “distortion of history.”

Such regular deceptions from a range of corporate media shouldn’t surprise us, but they should never cease to outrage us. The same is true of the rampant corporate sleaziness in the upper reaches of the Democratic National Committee.

Corporate media and corporate Democrats want the Bernie 2020 campaign—and the grassroots energy behind it—to melt away. That’s not going to happen.

Movements that have been propelling the Sanders campaign are here for the long haul—as determined to keep fighting for social justice as top corporate executives are determined to keep collecting huge paychecks. (And that’s saying something.)

The chances of Bernie winning the nomination have sharply diminished, but it’s still possible. And no matter what: movements for basic social change and democracy will vitally persist with long-term struggles to wrest power out of the hands of oligarchs and their functionaries.

Candidates who rushed to endorse Biden after his big victory in South Carolina—Michael Bloomberg, Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg, Beto O’Rourke, Kamala Harris, and Cory Booker—each personify, in their own way, what’s so corrosive about standard-issue Democratic Party leaders. Their backgrounds and personalities vary widely, but they share a political space of opportunism and ultra-coziness with corporate power. (Meanwhile, during the crucial aftermath of her withdrawal from the race after Super Tuesday, Elizabeth Warren shed new light on her political character when she decided not to endorse Sanders.)

The antidote to anti-democratic poisons has nothing to do with cynicism, passivity or defeatism. The solutions will come from realism, activism and ongoing insistence that a better world is possible—if we’re willing to keep fighting for it.

Norman Solomon is co-founder and national coordinator of RootsAction.org. His books include "War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death" and "Made Love, Got War: Close Encounters with America's Warfare State." He is the founder and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy.

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Media Malfunction as Sanders Notes Positive Aspects of Latin American Socialism

Published on Sunday, March 08, 2020

by Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR)

A far more urgent task for reporters covering the U.S. election cycle would be asking candidates how they plan to combat U.S. authoritarianism at home and abroad, and questioning why the accomplishments of Latin American socialism aren't possible in the United States.

by Gregory Shupak

 

8 Comments

Slate published a photo illustration for the article "Sanders Has a Soft Spot for Latin American Strongmen" on Feb. 20, 2019. (Image: Slate/Photos: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images, Alex Wong/Getty Images, Federico Parra/AFP/Getty Images, and Sven Creutzmann/Mambo Photography/Getty Images)

When 60 Minutes (2/24/20) asked Sen. Bernie Sanders about his past support for aspects of Cuba's socialist revolution, as well as for Nicaragua's 1979–90 leftist Sandinista government, Sanders responded by saying he opposes what he described as the "authoritarian" features of the Cuban government, while noting that after the 1959 revolution, Cuba launched "a massive literacy program. Is that a bad thing?"

News organizations seemed unable to process that a major national political figure could say something positive about a socialist country, leaving these outlets flailing around in absurd ways.

NBC (2/21/20) worried that Bernie Sanders' "affinity for revolutionary movements" might mean that the "number of targeted killings of terror suspects would fall if he were president."

During a town hall, CNN's Chris Cuomo (2/24/20) asked Sanders to respond to "the Democrats who say you don't say good things about Fidel Castro, he destroyed freedoms in that country." The revolution did not "destroy freedoms" in Cuba: The ruler it overthrew, Fulgencio Batista, ran what the U.S. Library of Congress (4/01) called a "corrupt and brutal dictatorship," under whose rule there were 20,000 political killings.

In the New York Times (2/27/20), David Brooks criticized Sanders because he "excused the Nicaraguan communists when they took away the civil liberties of their citizens." Yet there were few "civil liberties" for the Sandinistas—the "Nicaraguan communists" to whom Brooks refers—to take away. The Somoza dictatorship, which the Sandinistas overthrew in a popular revolution, was one of "chronic repression" (New York Times, 2/26/78). According to the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) (11/19/84), Somoza left the country with "no democratic tradition," instead bequeathing a legacy of "militarized politics with rampant human rights violations," so that the 1984 election that the Sandinistas held—and won fairly, according to the British observer—was the "first experience with participatory democracy" for most Nicaraguans.

Even before the current Cuba kerfuffle, NBC (2/21/20) criticized Sanders because "he denounced what he called a 'coup' against Bolivia's leftist president, Evo Morales, despite findings by independent groups that Morales tried to steal an election." Less than a week later, the Washington Post (2/27/20) published a report from researchers at the MIT Election Data and Science Lab, saying, "As specialists in election integrity, we find that the statistical evidence does not support the claim of fraud in Bolivia's October election." The report bolsters critiques that were made immediately after the (yes) coup (FAIR.org, 11/18/19) that there was no compelling evidence that Morales tried to steal the election. The "independent group" cited in the article the Post linked to, notably, gets 60% of its funding from the U.S.government.

Forced to broadcast qualified praise for some elements of Latin American socialism, several outlets took refuge in the most over-the-top rhetoric imaginable. MSNBC's Joe Scarborough (2/25/20), for example, listed the Sandinistas and Cuba's revolutionary government as being "some of the most murderous regimes in the history of our planet."

The "murderous" Sandinistas conducted "sanitation campaigns, health education, occupational health and safety, and nutrition programs" that LASA found to "have significantly reduced the incidence of communicable diseases, malnutrition and infant mortality." LASA went on to say that

even though real money wages have not risen appreciably, access to government-subsidized foodstuffs and other products through the basic-commodity rationing system has helped to raise living standards for the bulk of the population.

In Cuba, before 1959,"the greater part of the population had access only to... underfunded, low-quality, public healthcare services," reported the International Journal of Health Services (2/05); "in rural areas, many people had never seen a doctor." By 1975, there were "56 rural hospitals and numerous rural medical posts" (Library of Congress, 4/01). It went on to create a health system that, according to the World Health Organization (5/08), is "by many standards one of the world's most effective." According to the CIA World Fact Book, Cuba has a lower rate of infant mortality than the United States.

The Nicaraguan and Cuban socialists evidently decided that the best way to murder people was to make them healthier.

The Times' Brooks said that "every day we find more old quotes from Sanders apologizing for" a "slave regime" such as "Cuba or Nicaragua." What Brooks called a "slave regime" in Nicaragua was characterized by, as LASA documented, agrarian reform that involved nationalizing the extensive landholdings of the Somoza family and some of its associates, giving nearly two-thirds of these to individual peasants and some 15% to cooperatives, moves that help explain why these campesinos were "staunch supporters of the government"; the remainder of the nationalized land went to government-owned firms, where workers "enjoy[ed] mechanisms for participation in the management of such enterprises." Brooks did not explain how redistributing land to the poor is akin to owning humans as chattel.

The Sandinistas also carried out a mass literacy campaign that won Nicaragua two awards from UNESCO, which said of the educational initiative:

The illiteracy rate was brought down in five months from 50% to 12%. The National Literacy Crusade is the greatest educational and cultural achievement in the history of Nicaragua. It was a major experience for the young from the cities who taught people to read and, at the same time, discovered the other half of the country with its conditions of neglect and poverty bequeathed by 50 years of dictatorship.

With its massive, participatory and united character, the Crusade became a unique national and international experiment that won the recognition of UNESCO.

As for the "slave regime" in revolutionary Cuba, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) places the country in the "high human development" category. This refers to the Human Development Index, which aggregates key benchmarks for health, longevity, knowledge and standard of living. The UNDP says Cuba is above average for the countries in the high human development group, and above average for countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.

A 2016 University of Chicago study of public opinion inside Cuba asked respondents "about how things are going in their life in general"; 57% said they were very or somewhat happy, while 11% said they were somewhat or very unhappy. Cubans were also asked, "Generally speaking, would you say that things in [Cuba] are headed in the right direction or the wrong direction?"; 53% said right and 36% said wrong.

Bernie Sanders "rankles so many Latinos" (Washington Post, 2/25/20) that he got more than half their votes in California and almost half in Texas (Washington Post, 3/4/20).

Not to be outdone by Brooks' slavery analogy, Francisco Toro of the Washington Post (2/25/20) said of Sanders' identification as a democratic socialist:

The bottom line is that when you associate yourself with an ideology whose past contains some of history's worst crimes, you take on a special duty to denounce. When those denunciations come hedged with qualifiers that rest on propaganda lines, they ring entirely hollow.

Germans get this. Angela Merkel's party, the conservative Christian Democratic Union, always understood that if you're going to stand even half an inch to the right of center in the country that Hitler once ran, you must go to very great lengths to put distance between yourself and anything even vaguely reminiscent of Nazism. Which is one reason the center-right in Germany is one of the most doggedly pro-democracy forces in Europe.

Sanders needs to understand he's in a similar position.

To suggest that the Cuban government is as bad as the Nazis is, of course, to say the Nazis were no worse than Cuba—a creepy position in any case, but particularly offensive in a critique of a politician whose family was largely wiped out in the Holocaust.

There are no documented cases of Cuba carrying out the death penalty since 2003, and nobody in the country is known to be facing a death sentence. Forget Hitler: The United States has executed 328 people since 2010—22 last year and four in just the first two months of this year—while 2,654 people are currently on death row in the United States.

Toro's piece focuses on his concern that Sanders is apparently "parrot[ing] Fidel's propaganda." That's an interesting choice of word, because Toro is a professional propagandist: He is the "chief content officer of the Group of 50," an outfit with a vested interest in promoting capitalism and discrediting socialism in any form; the organization describes itself as "composed of a select group of business leaders" and

a top forum for Latin America's most influential business leaders to explore the latest trends in world affairs as well as an opportunity for them to hear from their peers in other countries and industries.

The Group of 50 has partnerships with the plutocratic World Economic Forum and with the Inter-American Development Bank, which the U.S.dominates, and which the Intercept(4/18/19) found to be circulating a plan to infuse Cuba's crucial Venezuelan ally with $48 billion in capital, but only following the hoped-for U.S.-backed overthrow of Venezuela's government.

Being part of such networks goes a long way to explaining how one ends up claiming there are parallels between Cuba and Nazi Germany.

James Freeman (Wall Street Journal, 2/24/20) devotes an entire column to asserting that Bernie Sanders has "a long history of support for the most undemocratic of socialists"—without bothering to dig up any quotes to document that claim.

Not that Toro's assertions are unique. Bret Stephens of the New York Times (2/28/20) suggested that Cuba and the Sandinistas are among "the vilest regimes in history." The Wall Street Journal's James Freeman (2/24/20) denounced Sanders' praise for "tyrants" and "brutal regimes," or, as Casey Michel said of Cuba in the New Republic (2/25/20), "enduring despotism." Incarceration rates are a standard measure of tyranny, brutality and despotism, and it happens that the U.S. has more people in jail per capita than any other country: 655 per 100,000 for the U.S., 510 for Cuba, and 332 for the present incarnation of the Sandinistas, just over half of the figure for the U.S.

The New Republic's Michel also lent ideological cover to 60 years of often violent U.S. attacks on Cuba, alleging—in part on the basis of an unproven, extremely dubious claim that $900 million of Cuba's national wealth was Fidel Castro's personal ATM—that Cuban government policies "have immiserated an entire island," supposedly turning the country into "an economic basket case." Jaw-droppingly, he did so without mentioning the U.S.'s economic blockade that, according to the U.N., has cost Cuba $130 billion.

U.S. violence against Cuba, economic and otherwise, brings us to another important consideration for assessing who are "some of the most murderous regimes in the history of our planet" or "some of the vilest regimes in history," or who exhibits the "blood-soaked brutalism" that Michel ascribed to Cuba: how states conduct themselves outside of their borders. To cite only a few grotesque examples, the United States visited the horrors of the Earth upon Indochina; was behind the deaths of hundreds of thousands as it prosecuted a vicious war against the Sandinistas and other liberation movements in Central America; caused the deaths of up to a million in Iraq (FAIR.org, 2/21/20); and is currently helping starve Yemen while levying sanctions against Iran that are enabling the spread of coronavirus in the country. Cuba, by contrast, played a crucial role in liberating multiple African countries, while sending doctors and teachers around the world to help many of the planet's least well-off.

Rather than denouncing Bernie Sanders for noting the accomplishments of Latin American socialists whom the American media deems too authoritarian, a far more urgent task for reporters covering the U.S. election cycle would be asking candidates how they plan to combat U.S. authoritarianism at home and abroad, and questioning why the accomplishments of Latin American socialism aren't possible in the United States.

Gregory Shupak teaches media studies at the University of Guelph-Humber in Toronto. His book, The Wrong Story: Palestine, Israel and the Media, is published by OR Books.

© 2020 Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR)

Off the Top of My Head

If Biden Wins, Amy Klobuchar Will Be His Running Mate

by John Lawrence

Amy is already campaigning for Joe in Michigan which will be the pivotal state that will determine whether it will be Biden or Sanders. After Tuesday we should know who is going to be the Democratic nominee. Biden won some states on super Tuesday without even having campaigned there or bought one TV ad. His impressive showing on super Tuesday seems to indicate that Democrats want the safe middle of the road candidate to represent them against Donald Trump. Bernie's young voters didn't turn out in big enough numbers. Well, if Joe is the candidate, they won't get their student loan debt forgiven. That's for sure. And we seniors won't get any big increases in our social securitychecks. Joe will mean business as usual even if he beats Trump which he probably won't. I think Trump will beat him like a drum rather than the opposite which Joe proclaims all the time.

For Bernie this will be his last hurrah. One thing is for sure: he has gotten his message out there. The Dems went for the establishment candidate in 2016, and Trump beat her like a drum. The same will probably be true this time around especially if the economy is good. Joe Biden has an absolutely uninspiring message: more of the same from the Obama era. It wasn't that great in the first place. Obamacare was a mishmash thanks to Obama's determination to compromise with Republicans and Republicans turning Obamacare into a bete noir. Obama also is notable for bailing out the banks while not bailing out the many homeowners that went into foreclosure.

Joe Biden will try to coast along for 4 years. That's not what America or the world needs. Trump, for all his mendacity is slightly more mentally alert than Biden and more likely to land punishing blows if there is a Biden Trump debate. Then again Trump may decide not to debate, but to rely on his acolytes like Fox News and numerous devotees to carry his water. With all the ad money at his disposal that would probably win the day. Too bad Bernie's supporters just didn't show up to vote. Maybe they will in Michigan. The country and the world really need Bernie at this critical juncture.

So what will we get with 4 more years of Trump. Four more years of climate change denying which is really what the American people want from their President because they value the American lifestyle more than they value a habitable earth for future generations. Wall Street emphasizes short term profits, and most Americans are imbued with the short term profit mantra. They don't really care what happens to the earth in the future if they have to make sacrifices in their lifestyles now.. It's the American way. Just maximize your profits.

Off the Top of My Head

Mike Bloomberg Might Have Better Spent $500 Million on Housing the Homeless

by John Lawrence, March 7, 2020

Mike Bloomberg spent $500 million on TV ads to advance his candidacy for President of the United States. His campaign lasted about 3 months from November 24, 2019 to March 4, 2020. That means he spent an astonishing $500 million in 101 days or almost $5 million per day. This is enough to gag a maggot that so much money was pissed down the drain. But it will hardly affect Bloomberg's net worth at all. He started 2020 with $58.4 billion so now he still has around $58 billion remaining and growing daily. He should be able to recover the $500 million he spent on his campaign in short order. So the $500 million amounted to basically just a rounding error. Each year his company, Bloomberg LP, which is privately owned by him,  makes $8 billion. So $500 million means nothing to him.

However, it would mean a lot to those 500,000 people who sleep on the street each night. Micro apartments are typically 200 square feet and are the equivalent of a single room occupancy unit (SRO) meant to be occupied by one person. The national average to build apartment construction is $125 a square foot. So a 200 square foot unit could be built for $25,000. Michael Bloomberg, instead of wasting $500 million on a foolhardy pursuit, could have built micro units which would have housed 20,000 homeless people. Scale that up by 10 and he could house 200,000 homeless for $5 billion, a mere 8.6% of his personal fortune. If he got one other billionaire involved, say Jeff Bezos, they could solve the homeless problem between the two of them, and they would hardly feel a blip in their accumulation of money which is continuing at the rate of $22 million a day for Bloomberg and $215 million a day for Bezos.

On the other hand, if there were a wealth tax which taxed away most of the billions that these billionaires own, say, leaving them with a net worth of only $1 billion, the same thing could be accomplished by the Federal government as well as all the other things Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have been talking about. I give Bezos, Bloomberg and the other billionaires credit for their entrepreneurial activities which have contributed greatly to the nation and to the world, but I think that anyone should be able to get by on one billion dollars. Invested at 10%, this gives them an income of $100 million a year. Isn't that enough?

I am a member of Amazon Prime, and I enjoy shopping from home so I certainly take advantage of Bezos' creation. Yet there is no way he can spend all the money he's making, and this holds true for Bloomberg as well although I am not a user of his product. In addition to contributing mightily to economic inequality, billionaires are completely distorting the political process with the result that the average middle class person in America, if there are any of them left, has virtually no power in the political process which is controlled by rich campaign contributors and lobbyists who have unlimited money to spend.

Trump vs. Sanders: A Concise Comparison for Voters (and Why Bernie Wins Hands Down)

Published on Friday, March 06, 2020

by Common Dreams

When there is a conflict between big business and the public good, on labor rights, consumer rights, small taxpayer respect, and environmental protections, Bernie has stood with the people.

by Ralph Nader

 

8 Comments

Bernie Sanders, unlike other potential 2020 Democratic presidential candidates, has a message that resonates with a wide variety of people. (Photo: Paul Weaver / Flickr)

It isn’t un-American for voters to do some homework before voting. Here’s a “concise guide” for the voter with limited time who might want more information.

The corporate Democratic Partiers keep questioning the electability of candidates they do not like, namely Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Really? These leading progressives are absurdly presumed to be “unelectable” compared to Trump?

Consider an election where Bernie is up against Trump. The differences are night and day. Start with the all-important issue of character. Trump lies every day, tweeting misinformation and falsifying what is and what is not going on in our country. Just as bad, Trump’s tactics rely entirely on lying about or misrepresenting what he is doing to handle large and small problems. Trump has made over 16,000 false or misleading claims since January 2017. Bernie bluntly tells the truth.

Trump is a bigot/racist who uses dog whistles to promote, implement, and enforce racist policies. Bernie is a civil rights fighter going back to the nineteen sixties.

Bernie respects women and champions their causes. Donald is a savage sexual predator, has boasted about his sexual conquests, and was a serial adulterer.

Bernie talks of peace and rule of law. Donald incites violence and believes in the rule of raw power by a president who is lawless and daily violates our Constitution. Recall his ominous declaration that “I have an Article 2 where I have the right to do whatever I want as president.”

Compare what Trump and Sanders do in public office. When there is a conflict between big business and the public good, on labor rights, consumer rights, small taxpayer respect, and environmental protections, Bernie has stood with the people. Bernie has the best Congressional record of fighting corporate abuses. Meanwhile, Trump, really a corporation masquerading as a human being, works to line the pockets of corporate fat cats. Bernie fights for unions, living wages, and workplace safety; Donald hates unions, and has no problem freezing the $7.25 per hour minimum wage and dismantling serious worker health and safety protections.

Bernie is a consumer champion who wants to cancel crushing student loan debt and reverse the dangerous outsourcing of production of medicine to China, leaving us defenseless. Trump is close to shutting down the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and other consumer safety agencies such as National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. For three years he crazily pushed cuts for health and pandemic research. It took a spreading coronavirus for him to face reality and his response has been too little, too late.

Trump was a corporate welfare king with a failed gambling business who used, in his brazen words, “bankruptcy as a competitive advantage.” He’s busy shoveling all kinds of subsidies, giveaways, bailouts, and giant tax escapes to profitable big companies, at the expense of smaller taxpayers. Bernie is strongly against most of this corporate “socialism for the rich.”

On the environment, Bernie has a good, though not perfect, record. Trump has no problem with deadly corporate pollution—such as coal ash, mercury, methane, diesel particulates degrading your health. Trump is preventing federal efforts from combating climate disruptions, talks about “clean, beautiful coal,” and even forbids the use of the term “climate change” (which he believes is a hoax). Bernie campaigns all over the country talking about public investments in climate preparedness—paid for by restoration of corporate taxes that Trump would like to further cut. Only by using all available resources can the U.S. contain immensely costly runaway fires, floods, tornadoes, droughts, and already rising sea levels caused by climate disruption.

Bernie releases his tax returns while Trump hides them and gets a major tax cut for his family through Congress.

Donald says he’s never done anything wrong and never needs to apologize. Bernie recognizes his mistakes when he is wrong. Donald breaks promises—on lower drug prices, on cleaner air and water, on more manufacturing jobs, and on expanded health care insurance.  Trump has, in fact, actively damaged the environment and hurt these workers and consumers.

Bernie and Trump have superficial similarities. Both rarely smile. Both can be gruff and have trouble taking advice. But Bernie reads, thinks, and empathizes with people who desperately need universal healthcare and endure daily poverty. Frantically tweeting Donald doesn’t read or think, and is devoid of empathy, preferring to use his office to enrich Trump family businesses. Instead of spending his time working to understand the problems of working people, thin-skinned Donald spends his time blaming others and viciously nick-naming political opponents.

Bernie is a “democratic socialist,” advocating for improvements that western European counties have had for decades as well as ones we had decades ago—like nearly tuition free higher education after World War II at state universities from California to New York and even an early sales tax on Wall Street trading.

Donald is a corporate socialist and a champion of the dictatorial, corporate state (Wall Street owning Washington) that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt called “fascism” in a message to Congress in 1938.

Bernie is a good, crisp debater. Donald is a shouter, stage liar, and evader-in-chief. Bernie refuses corporate PAC money and has millions of people funding the campaign with small donations. Trump goes for the zillionaires. I could go on. For more usable information, read the new book, Fake President, by Mark Green and me.

According to the number one Democrat, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Trump is “a crook, a thief, a liar. He should be in prison.” Can anybody think honest Bernie is not electable against corrupt Donald?

Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer, and author. His latest books include: To the Ramparts: How Bush and Obama Paved the Way for the Trump Presidency, and Why It Isn’t Too Late to Reverse Course, How the Rats Re-Formed the Congress, Breaking Through Power: It's easier than we think, and Animal Envy: A Fable

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'We Have to Get a Climate President in Office': Jane Fonda Says Bernie Sanders Is the Only Climate Candidate

Published on Saturday, March 07, 2020

by Common Dreams

The actor and activist's comments came ahead of a Fire Drill Friday rally focused on environmental racism in the Los Angeles Harbor area.

by Jessica Corbett, staff writer

 

24 Comments

Fire Drill Friday demonstrators, including actor and activist Jane Fonda, marched in front of an oil refinery in Wilmington, California on March 6, 2020. (Photo: Sandy Huffaker/Greenpeace)

Octogenarian actor and activist Jane Fonda declared ahead of a climate action protest in California Friday that the United States needs a "climate president" and she is now backing Sen. Bernie Sanders, who is leading a grassroots movement challenging the Democratic Party establishment coalescing around former Vice President Joe Biden.

"We have to get a climate president in office, and there's only one right now, and that's Bernie Sanders."
—Jane Fonda, actor and activist

 

"We have to get a climate president in office, and there's only one right now, and that's Bernie Sanders," Fonda told USA TODAY prior to the Los Angeles rally. "So, I'm indirectly saying I believe you have to support the climate candidate."

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) is technically still in the Democratic presidential primary race, but Super Tuesday effectively made it a two-person contest between Biden and Sanders (I-Vt.). USA Today noted that Fonda previously donated to Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who have since ended their campaigns.

Sanders' Green New Deal proposal to tackle the global climate crisis and ensure a just transition to renewable energy has been hailed by climate advocates as a "game-changer." The plan, unveiled in August 2019, calls for "100% renewable energy for electricity and transportation by no later than 2030 and complete decarbonization by at least 2050."

Author and activist Naomi Klein, who has written extensively about the climate crisis and endorsed Sanders, welcomed Fonda's support for the presidential hopeful in a pair of tweets Saturday:

Last Oct, @Janefonda announced she would protest, and often get arrested, every Friday, as part of a push to get a candidate who clearly backs a #GreenNewDeal in the White House.

There is now only one candidate who represents that planet-protecting possibility: #BernieSanders https://t.co/3BzZxNWg2t

— Naomi Klein (@NaomiAKlein) March 7, 2020

Fonda's comments about supporting Sanders came ahead of the second Fire Drill Friday event in California. In October 2019, Fonda launched Fire Drill Fridays as a weekly civil disobedience campaign in Washington, D.C. that aimed to pressure U.S. policymakers to ambitiously address the human-caused climate crisis.

After a few months and five arrests, Fonda returned to California to resume filming her Netflix show Grace and Frankie. She also partnered with Greenpeace USA to bring Fire Drill Fridays to the West Coast. The first monthly rally was held on Feb. 7 at City Hall in Los Angeles. The second event was Friday, in the Los Angeles Harbor area, and focused on environmental racism.

Oil sites in communities like Wilmington are not a coincidence. There's a reason we don't see them in wealthier, predominately white communities — it's environmental racism. @Janefonda #FireDrillFriday pic.twitter.com/MmT6c3xLnP

— Greenpeace USA (@greenpeaceusa) March 7, 2020

With the Fire Drill Friday demonstrations, "we're protesting an existential threat that could determine the future of human life on the planet, basically," Fonda explained to USA Today.

Fonda's attorneys struck a deal with a D.C. judge that the 82-year-old won't face penalties or court dates for her arrests as long as she isn't arrested in Los Angeles for three months. Although she won't be risking arrest for a while, Fonda continues to demand climate action—specifically, cutting emissions by 50% over the next decade and phasing out fossil fuels by 2050.

"This is going to be very, very, very hard, and it requires millions and millions of people to do more than just be concerned, but to actually become activists and become willing to put their bodies on the line," Fonda said. "That's why we're doing Fire Drill Fridays."

Fonda was joined Friday by her Grace and Frankie co-stars Lily Tomlin and Sam Waterston as well as other celebrities and national and community organizers. After rallying at offices of Los Angeles City Councilmember Joe Buscaino, a group of actors and activists visited fossil fuel impact zones in the area before blockading the entrance of a Warren E&P oil extraction site. There were no arrests.

"While we're in the midst of a massive communicable health crisis across the globe, a much quieter health crisis is worsening in communities like Wilmington, California where hundreds of residents, activists, and celebrities joined me today," Fonda said in a statement Friday. "We heard powerful stories from community members who have become seriously ill simply by living in their own homes where drilling is occurring in their backyards, without their permission."

"We will be watching California leadership, specifically Councilmember Joe Busciano, who has allowed his district to become a sacrifice zone for the fossil fuel industry, and demanding they do better," Fonda promised. "We will not quiet down until our leadership decides to protect the people and our climate."

An amazing display of action and solidarity today at #FireDrillFriday — and we're not stopping! Thank you to all the activists, community members, @Janefonda, @STAND_LA, @CBECal, @Youth4EJ, #LastChanceAlliance and everyone else who came out to demand climate action! pic.twitter.com/pWJL3IKXcb

— Greenpeace USA (@greenpeaceusa) March 7, 2020

Fonda's vow to hold California leadership accountable was echoed by other climate activists. Annie Leonard of Greenpeace USA called Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom to "do something for the health and and safety of communities like Wilmington, and begin a just transition away from fossil fuels for the industry's workers."

Newsom, Leonard said, "must stop issuing new permits for oil and gas projects, drop existing fossil fuel production, and roll out setback limits by creating a 2,500-foot public health and safety buffer zone between fossil fuel infrastructure like the Warren E&P sites and homes, schools, and other sensitive sites in neighborhoods like Wilmington."

As Wilmington community organizer Alicia Riveria explained:

Oil operations happen right next to our homes and schools and parks in Wilmington. People are suffering while politicians are sitting on their hands. Just last week a fire broke out at one of the refineries in our community and we had to advise residents to stay indoors and close their windows to try to mitigate toxic fumes from coming into their homes. There is environmental racism at play for frontline communities across California, and it's unacceptable.

Dr. Saba Malik of Physicians for Social Responsibility-Los Angeles and the STAND-LA Coalition said, "It's public health common sense—based on a mountain of scientific evidence—that oil production does not belong anywhere near homes, schools, or other sensitive land uses."

"So why do they remain in communities like Wilmington and South Los Angeles?" Malik added. "Because these communities are comprised overwhelmingly of people of color, lower income people with less access to adequate healthcare, resulting in an even greater risk of chronic disease and increased vulnerability to the effects of these environmental insults."

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This post has been updated with comment from author and activist Naomi Klein.

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Joe Biden Would Be Donald Trump's Dream Opponent

by Conor Lynch, from truthdig, March 4, 2020

Democratic presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden gives a speech in Iowa in 2019. (Gage Skidmore / Flickr)(CC BY-SA 2.0)

Donald Trump had the perfect opponent in the 2016 election. Running as a populist billionaire taking on the Washington elite, he couldn’t have asked for a better rival in Hillary Clinton, who carried heavy political baggage and who, for many, personified the so-called establishment. While Trump’s populist shtick was easy to pick apart, Clinton was the wrong person to promote the message she was trying to get across to voters.

By nominating a candidate whose place in the Democratic Party establishment was undeniable and who lacked credibility on issues like money in politics, the Democrats simply let Trump run as the anti-establishment candidate. Not only that, but the Clinton camp even tried courting establishment Republicans who couldn’t bring themselves to vote for their own party’s candidate.

Here was a man who had openly bragged about bribing politicians, yet Democrats couldn’t go after Trump on the issue because their own candidate was one of the politicians to whom he’d donated in the past. The Clinton camp raised (and spent) far more money than Trump, but whether this actually helped or hurt her is unclear, as it also gave credence to the perception that she was the candidate favored by big donors Meanwhile, Trump positioned himself as the self-financing candidate who couldn’t be bought.

As the Trump campaign’s onetime CEO, Steve Bannon, put it shortly after the election, “Hillary Clinton was the perfect foil for Trump’s message. From her email server, to her lavishly paid speeches to Wall Street bankers, to her FBI problems, she represented everything that middle-class Americans had had enough of.”

This time around, Trump should have zero credibility running as a “populist.” The president has presided over the most corrupt administration in modern history, plagued by investigations and numerous indictments that have led to convictions of some of his closest associates. Trump has nominated Supreme Court justices who defend money in politics, and his major legislative achievement has been to give billionaires and corporate elites major tax cuts.

Under Trump, corporate America has thrived while real-income growth has declined for most working- and middle-class people. Inequality has continued to reach historic levels, and billionaires like Jeff Bezos and Mike Bloomberg have seen their wealth surge. In 2020, Trump is no longer even pretending to self-finance his campaign. With his recent predatory budget proposal he has made it clear that he is getting ready to gut programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, during his second term.

It should be easy for Democrats to expose Trump as the corrupt charlatan that he is. In an age when a majority of voters rate political corruption as America’s biggest crisis and nearly 8 in 10 Americans agree that there should be “limits on the amount of money individuals and organizations” can spend on political campaigns, how hard can it be to defeat a hugely unpopular president who makes Richard Nixon look half decent? The surest way for Democrats to lose to Trump again would be to follow the same strategy as 2016 and nominate a candidate who embodies the establishment, carries a ton of political baggage and lacks credibility on issues like corruption.

By the looks of it, Democrats might just pull it off. After Super Tuesday, it appears that Trump will have another perfect foil for his message in 2020. Former Vice President Joe Biden has regained his place as the Democratic frontrunner after a successful showing on Tuesday, thanks in large part to party elites, and some of his former rivals, quickly consolidating around his campaign the day before. Though the race is far from over, Biden is now well-positioned to win the nomination. By selecting Biden, Democrats will effectively let Trump and his deeply corrupt administration off the hook yet again.

Biden is a lot like Clinton, but worse in almost every measurable way. On issue after issue, Biden has consistently been to the right of Clinton throughout his fifty-year political career. He has a record of advocating cuts to Social Security and Medicare; he helped write the 1994 Crime Bill that led to an explosion in mass incarceration; he played a critical role in passing the 2005 bankruptcy bill that stripped bankruptcy protection from some of the most vulnerable people. Biden also supported and championed the Iraq War.

This list goes on and on. Beyond his extremely problematic record, which will make it hard for Democrats to go after Trump about, say, cutting Social Security (which Biden himself supported not too long ago), Biden has his own personal scandals that will make it very difficult for him to cast Trump as corrupt.

While his son Hunter’s business dealings in Ukraine may not qualify as corruption, it was doubtless unethical and sleazy for Biden’s son to take a high-paying consultant gig with a foreign firm while his father was vice president (and Biden’s refusal to acknowledge this conflict only makes it worse). The behavior of Biden’s family will haunt him in the general election. As Ryan Grim wrote in The Intercept last October, Biden’s son and brother have been “trading on their family name for decades, cashing in on the implication — and sometimes the explicit argument — that giving money to a member of Joe Biden’s family wins the favor of Joe Biden.” Predictably, a majority of voters believe it was inappropriate for Biden’s son to take a job with the Ukrainian firm, and Trump will exploit this and use it to defend his own family’s nepotism and corruption.

In the lead-up to the general election, Biden, who has recently struggled to string coherent sentences together, would provide the slick demagogue Donald Trump with all the ammunition he needs. We were given a little preview of what to expect in President Trump’s Super Tuesday commentary: “The Democrat establishment came together and crushed Bernie Sanders, AGAIN!” he gloated on Twitter, once again positioning himself as the anti-establishment populist.

On Monday, the Democratic establishment proved that it still has far more control over the party than the Republican establishment did over their own party in 2016. No one stands to benefit more from an establishment triumph than Donald Trump. Sen. Bernie Sanders, who has the credibility to call out Trump on his corruption and neoliberal economic policies, is still in the race, but his chances are looking much slimmer than they were just a week ago.

Democrats have a choice: They can follow the same strategy that ended up costing them all three branches of government in recent years, or they can go another way. The stakes couldn’t be higher.

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Conor Lynch is a freelance writer and journalist living in New York. His work has appeared in The Week, Salon, The New Republic, and other publications. You can follow him on Twitter.