Thursday, October 22, 2015

Netanyahu reaches a new low in shamelessness in trying to justify the unjustifiable

By Marc Jampole

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sunk to a new low in shamelessness when he said that a Palestinian leader gave Hitler the idea for the final solution which, it is always instructive to recount, involved gassing and incinerating millions of people because they were Jewish.

This egregious rewriting of history, which came in a speech Netanyahu gave to Jewish leaders, was immediately lambasted as false by a wide range of Holocaust scholars and survivors. Many pointed out that believing that a Palestinian developed the idea for the final solution played into the hands of Holocaust deniers, because it absolves Hitler and the Germans of some responsibility.

Netanyahu was trying to demonstrate that Palestinian hostility towards Israel predates the 48-year Israeli occupation. Instead he hurt his own credibility, while insulting the memory of millions of victims and their families.

And what did Netanyahu hope to gain by telling a scurrilous lie? Even if Palestinian hatred of Jews extended back decades, it would not justify the brutal and unfair way in which Israel treats Palestinians in the occupied territories today. A large majority of Palestinians living in West Bank and the Gaza strip have only known Israeli rule. It’s the bloody incursions and retaliations, the illegal settlements and the discrimination that shape contemporary Palestinian attitudes towards the Israeli government and Israelis, not some decades or centuries old antipathy to Jews.

The similarity between Netanyahu’s faux pas and the stupidities routinely uttered by American conservatives is obvious. The question is, will Netanyahu’s reputation and political viability suffer as has so many of the Republicans running for office who have uttered inanities?

Over the past few years, we have seen a wide range of Republican elected officials suffer after saying stupid things, some lies, some distortions and some even the true but embarrassing statements. For example, the campaigns of Michele Bachmann and Todd Akins fizzled immediately after telling absurd lies about medical issues, e.g. vaccinations and rape. Mitt Romney shot himself in the foot when he presented a distorted statistic—the 47% of takers who would never vote for him; those 47% of takers referred to the percent of citizens getting some kind of check from the federal government and included veterans who had put their lives in danger fighting our endless succession of ill-wrought wars, retirees who paid for their cash benefits with payroll taxes and the disabled. The most absurd example of a Republican elected official suffering from stupidly telling the truth is Representative Kevin McCarthy, who lost a chance to be Speaker of the House when he admitted that the purpose of the House Benghazi committee was to embarrass Hillary Clinton.

I keep writing about elected Republicans losing because they said something stupid because it doesn’t matter how many stupid things the never-elected Donald Trump, Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina say. It doesn’t seem to affect their popularity among likely Republican voters. Bachmann was drummed in the Iowa race after lying about vaccinations, but Trump told the same lie in the first debate and saw his popularity increase. Fiorina’s lies about Planned Parenthood didn’t sink her, nor has Carson’s obnoxious statement that the Jews could have fought Hitler if they had guns or his denial of basic science outside his area of expertise.

Our decisions about the economy and society suffer when they are based on lies, distortions and character assassinations. It should go without saying (but I’ll say it anyway!) that when an elected official or candidate tells a lie or says something stupid not related to his or her personal background, it invariably supports a policy that is harmful to the economy or imposes a religious restriction on what is supposed to be a secular society. Romney wanted to fund further tax cuts for the wealthy by curtailing spending on social service programs. Bachmann and Trump used false science and a lie to pander to vaccine deniers. Carson wanted to justify looser gun controls, while Netanyahu wanted to justify an increasingly immoral policy of oppression and de facto apartheid.

It remains to be seen whether Netanyahu will get the free pass so far given to Trump, Carson and Fiorina. Let’s hope that he suffers the fate of Romney, Bachmann, McCarthy and others. Perhaps then Israel will elect a government willing to end the bloodbath and make the compromises needed to establish a Palestinian state.

Monday, October 19, 2015

No Democratic candidate is proposing anything more than quick fixes to a broken system, not even Sanders

By Marc Jampole

Progressives are delighted about the results of the first debate between the declared candidates for the Democratic nomination for president, but they shouldn’t be too happy. Sure, the candidates all expressed concern about income and wealth inequality, all favored paid family leave, all supported women’s reproductive rights and all want to do something about the high cost of college. Their biggest dispute, other than over gun control, was over whose proposals were tougher on errant banks and bankers.

That makes Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley far to the left of Republicans, but not necessarily progressives. All their proposals are quick fixes to a broken system. None of the candidates advocate radical change, not even the self-proclaimed socialist Bernie Sanders. They all avoid proposing real structural change.

Here is a short a list of proposals that should be part of the basic progressive platform that none of the Democrats would dare to support:
1.      Institute a graduated annual tax on net wealth of more than a certain threshold, similar to what exists in France. For example, at the end of each year, the federal government could assess a half of one percent tax on all household wealth of more than $5 million, one percent on all household wealth of more than $20 million, and five percent on all household wealth of more than $50 million.
2.      Remove the cap on income that is assessed the Social Security tax (AKA “payroll taxes”), which currently is a paltry $118,500.
3.      Tax all inheritance income of more than $10 million at 100% and dissolve all trusts of more than $10 million at the death of the trust founders and funders.
4.      Place a steep new tax on gas and use all proceeds to fund mass transit within and between metropolitan areas.
5.      Equalize what is spent on every student by placing a tax on all private school tuition and taxing wealthy school districts and giving proceeds to poorer school districts so that every school district in each state spends the same average amount of money per student.  
6.      Place high tariffs on countries that do not meet our standards of employee, consumer and environmental safety and do not pay substantially the same wages and benefits as are paid in the United States.
7.      Unilaterally dismantle all U.S. nuclear weapons.
8.      End all private prisons and military outsourcing of personnel and services.
9.      End all right-to-work laws and force charter schools to hire teachers in teachers’ unions, if the public school system is unionized. Force all private schools—religious and secular—to unionize if they want to receive public funding, e.g., busing and participation in public school gifted programs.
10.  Limit the salary and benefits to all corporate executives to 30 times the average employee’s compensation package.
11.  Allow the federal government to negotiate with drug companies and establish single-payer healthcare administered by a number of competitive commercial and not-for-profit insurance companies.
12.  Limit all political campaigns to three months of primary campaigning and two months of election campaigning. Note that the Democratic candidates generally favor passing legislation to overturn the Citizen’s United decision.

Many of these proposals fund the nebulous plans that all the Democratic candidates have to make college less expensive, increase the social safety net for children, the poor and the elderly, invest in new energy technologies and rebuild our aging infrastructure of roads, rails, bridges and mass transit systems. To a large degree, the Democrats are telling us how they will spend money while concealing how we’ll pay for it. For years, we paid for what the Democrats want to do with higher taxes. That was before Reagan.

Other proposals on this list of progressive ideas that mainstream centrists looking left consider “untouchable” directly address inequality of wealth and income by preventing accumulation or reset our relationship with the rest of the world such as unilaterally destroying our nuclear weapons.

This list does not exhaust the list of proposals that would have the federal government manage the economy—much as it always has—but for the benefit of the people, not the weapons, automobile, real estate, oil and utility industries. Implement greater environmental regulations with strict caps instead of carbon trading. Develop a federal set of standards for voter registration and voting, including automatic “motor voter” registration.  End all development of fully automated weapons systems. Deny aid to any university that gave an admissions break to “legacies.” Withdraw aid to Israel unless it works towards a two-state solution. We could spin “unacceptable” ideas all day long.

And how do we know whether an idea is unacceptable to mainstream liberalism? If it truly addresses the vast inequalities that exist in today’s United States and the world.

Sunday, October 18, 2015

Editorial: Dems Strong in Debate


Hillary Clinton was poised and demonstrated her command of the issues, Bernie Sanders made his populist points about inequality and Wall Street’s excesses and he appealed for a political revolution. Martin O’Malley reminded voters of his accomplishments as governor of Maryland. And Democrats won the Democratic Debate Oct. 13 in Las Vegas.

The Republican debates have drawn higher ratings as they descended into name-calling, fearmongering and xenophobia, but the Democrats drew 15.3 million viewers who watched five candidates talk about issues such as guns, college debt, living wage, paid sick leave, Syria and Social Security. As Heather “Digby” Parton wrote the day after, “If there’s one thing that was made obvious last night, it’s that the GOP is one big heaping mess of a political party right now. The contrast between it and the Democrats couldn’t be sharper and not just in the presidential race. After all, the backdrop of last night’s event was a drama happening in the Capitol in which House Republicans can’t agree on who should be Speaker. How do they expect, then, to bring the entire country together under one president? It’s laughable. They’re laughable. The candidates on the stage last night in Las Vegas, on the other hand, were serious.”

Sanders needs to work on explaining the difference between his brand of “democratic socialism” and the predatory capitalism that Republicans support. Telling voters he believes in the same political philosophy as the rulers of Denmark and other Scandinavian countries, even if they do provide a much better standard of living for their working class than the United States does, won’t help as much as Sanders explaining that he believes in the same things that Franklin Roosevelt did when he was setting up the New Deal, which regulated Wall Street while taking care of workers, small businesses and family farmers and ranchers. The predatory capitalists want to return us to the Gilded Age, when the government didn’t presume to interfere with the robber barons of industry.

We count at least four Presidents of the United States who expanded socialist programs in the 20th century: FDR, Harry S Truman, who protected New Deal programs after Republicans gained control of Congress in 1947; Dwight Eisenhower, who commanded the Allies in World War II and then, as president, worked with Democrats to expand the New Deal programs, particularly Social Security, and championed the interstate highway system; and Lyndon B. Johnson, who browbeat Congress to expand Social Security to include Medicare for seniors and Medicaid for low-income Americans, as part of his Great Society initiative.

Barack Obama earned the socialist title (as bestowed by Republican critics) by pushing an economic stimulus program in 2009 to put millions of people back to work on infrastructure projects and the Affordable Care Act in 2010, which regulates health insurance, provides subsidies to help small businesses and lower middle class workers gain insurance and expands Medicaid to provide health coverage for the working poor.

So Sanders isn’t such a radical when he calls for strengthening and even expanding Social Security and Medicare, increasing the minimum wage to a living wage and regulating predatory capitalists who nearly ran the economy into ruin during the Bush administration. Republicans who prevent the working poor from getting the health care that Medicaid would pay for, just to spite Obama — they are the radicals.

Sanders got off the two best lines of the debate. First, when asked about Clinton’s emails, he told Hillary, “the American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails. ... Let’s talk about the real issues facing America.” Later, when Clinton suggested that Sanders focused too much on the big banks, he replied, “Congress does not regulate Wall Street. Wall Street regulates Congress.”

In fact, focus groups including CNN’s group of undecided voters in Nevada, Fox News’ group of Florida Democrats and Fusion’s group of millennial voters in Miami all thought Sanders won the debate.

While the consensus of pundits seemed to be that Sanders stumbled in response to questions about gun control, we’re not sure that his mixed feelings about federal gun regulations are a negative for him. Yes, in 1993, as a House member, he opposed the Brady Bill, which mandated that anyone who wanted to buy a handgun had to wait five days while local law enforcement ran criminal background checks. (After 1998, the firearm dealers became responsible for conducting the checks with federal officials, which allowed instant background checks).

Sanders explained that gun control was not popular in his rural state. At the time of the vote, he said he believed the national waiting period was federal overreach and he had promised Vermont voters that he would oppose a federal waiting period. (Liberal Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., also voted against the Brady Bill.) However, in 1994 both Vermonters voted for a ban on semi-automatic assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.

We note that many rural Democrats supported the Brady Bill and the later assault weapons ban, and they were relentlessly pounded by the National Rifle Association and many were retired by their constituents in 1994. (The NRA tried and failed to defeat Sanders because of the assault weapons vote.) Republicans picked up 54 House seats and eight Senate seats as they gained the majority in both chambers and put an end to Bill Clinton’s progressive initiatives.

Sanders has compiled a moderate record on gun control. In 1996, while still in the House, he voted against repealing the assault weapons ban, in 1998 he voted to increase minimum sentences for gun crimes. In 1999 he voted to impose a three-day waiting period for guns purchased at gun shows and in 2013, as senator, he supported bills closing the gun show loophole, restoring the ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines and he opposed a bill to require states to honor concealed handgun permits for private individuals from other states.

In 2003 and 2005 Sanders voted for a bill to prohibit lawsuits against firearm makers for unlawful misuse of a firearm. We think it is reasonable to protect manufacturers from liability for the misuse of their product after it leaves their control — and the bill, which was signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2005, allows lawsuits against a person who transfers a firearm knowing that it will be used to commit a crime of violence or a drug trafficking crime; a seller for negligence; a manufacturer or seller who knowingly violates a state or federal statute applicable to the sale or marketing of the firearm; and for death, physical injuries or property damage resulting from a defect in design or manufacture of the firearm, except during a criminal offense.

Sanders has indicated that he is reconsidering his opposition to holding manufacturers liable for gun deaths in the wake of school shootings. But gun control is not a liberal or conservative issue; it is a libertarian issue and it has been cynically manipulated by Republican fearmongers.

Some political analysts have disputed the role of the Brady Bill and the federal assault weapons ban in turning over Congress in 1994. But in East Texas, which was still marginally Democratic at that time, Republicans were said to be telling people that then-Gov. Ann Richards (D), who had vetoed a bill to ease the permitting of concealed handguns, was going to send the gays to seize their guns. Texas voted George W. Bush into the Governor’s Mansion and the state hasn’t elected a Democrat statewide since then.

No less an authority than former President Bill Clinton said that passing the assault weapons ban “devastated” more than a dozen Democratic lawmakers in the 1994 midterms.

Martin O’Malley is justifiably proud of the gun controls he signed into law after the schoolhouse massacre in Newtown Conn., when he was governor of Maryland. But until gun control forces start unseating Republicans, particularly in the suburbs, over their resistance to commonsense gun reforms, Democrats shouldn’t demand orthodoxy over strict federal gun controls. However, Dems should demand more debates. — JMC

From The Progressive Populist, November 1, 2015
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Selections from the November 1, 2015 issue














Thursday, October 15, 2015

Are we finally seeing the limits to gun madness in the United States?


No new gun control laws have been passed recently, but we may finally be seeing the limits of the gun madness that has gripped the country for the past few decades. 

For a while now, every year has seen Republican state legislatures pass laws that loosen gun controls and Republican judges strike down existing gun control laws. Some of these new laws allow people new rights to carry guns in public—on university campuses, in restaurants and in employers’ parking lots. Other new laws give gun-toters new shooting rights, for example, stand-your-ground laws, which give people the right to protect and defend their lives against threats or perceived threats. These laws usually replace laws that require individuals to retreat from danger.  Individuals have used these new laws to ostentatiously display guns and use them at will. 

This week, however, saw what may be the beginning of a move to stem the slow but steady erosion of societal control on gun violence that these new laws have engendered.

In an important case in Milwaukee, a jury is making a gun shop pay more than $5 million in damages to two police officers severely wounded with a pistol purchased in the store by what is called a straw buyer. A straw buyer is someone qualified to buy a gun who purchases it for someone who isn’t qualified, in this case, for an underage male who fired his illegally purchased firearm against police a few weeks later.  

Meanwhile, in Auburn Hills, Michigan, police are charging a woman who shot at a fleeing shoplifter posing no immediate danger to her or anyone else. The shoplifter hadn’t even pilfered anything from the shooter. Police in Elkhart, Indiana said they were considering filing charges against a man who did pretty much the same thing.   In both cases, the shooter had absolutely no skin in the game. What was the motive then? I can only conclude that, like the legendary Bernard Goetz who went hunting muggers on the New York City subway in 1984, these people were wishing and hoping for an opportunity to take their guns out and shoot another human being. 

The good news is that these cases suggest that America is finally drawing a line in the sand as to how much we are willing to endanger our population to accommodate the National Rifle Association’s (NRA) incessant need to expand gun rights.   

The bad news is that we are drawing the line at a very dangerous place. We won’t allow obviously false gun purchases, while still accepting the ease at which people can purchase multiple guns, including military grade firearms, and as much ammo as they want. There are still stand-your-ground laws that allow stone cold killers like George Zimmerman to shoot freely whenever they say they feel threatened. Many states still allow people to carry guns on college campuses and in restaurants and other public places. 

I would thus not yet consider these three cases of constraining gun proliferation as a watershed or turning point. Rather what we’re seeing are gun fanatics testing and finding the limits of their new freedom. Tragically, their freedom, based on a flimsy constitutional framework, endangers all of us and comes at the cost of tens of thousands of gun deaths a year. 

 

Wednesday, October 14, 2015

Like Republicans in their 2 debates, the Democrats mostly agreed with each other in their first debate


There can be no doubt that the best moment of the debate between the five Democratic candidates for president came early when ex-Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley verbally slapped around Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders on the issue of greater gun controls. O’Malley was right that the gun issue in America does not come down to rural versus urban attitudes as Sanders was stating. 

This exchange between the handsome matinee idol and the old curmudgeon produced the best zinger of the campaign so far:

SANDERS: Well, as somebody who has a D-minus voting record...

O'MALLEY: And I have an F from the NRA, Senator.

SANDERS: I don't think I am pandering. But you have not been in the United States Congress.

O'MALLEY: Well, maybe that's a healthy thing.

But it was much ado about nothing, as all the candidates agreed that we need to tighten gun controls. Perhaps O’Malley and former First Lady/Senator/Secretary of State Hillary Clinton want more controls than Sanders and ex-Senator Jim Webb do, but they all want more gun controls and none advocated outlawing private ownership of firearms. O’Malley and Clinton approach the issue from the standpoint of public safety, while Sanders and Webb approach it from the standpoint of ensuring the right to bear arms, but they all have essentially the same plan of action.  

It was that way about virtually all the issues. The candidates differed only in minor quibbles that often turned out to be definitional. And sometimes, they just agreed. In fact on every issue, O’Malley said he agreed with either Sanders or Clinton, and sometimes both. 

They all agree that the Clinton email snafu is a distraction from the real issues of the campaign. 

They all agree they support paid family and medical leave and a woman’s right to control her body. 

They all agree that human-induced climate change is a major problem and all want to address it with regulation on fossil fuels and the development of renewable energy sources. 

They all agree that income inequality is one of the gravest problems facing the nation, despite the snipping over whose plan was harsher on banks and bankers. Again, while they agreed what to do—raise minimum wage, invest in infrastructure, reduce cost of a college education, regulate the banks, they came at the problem from slightly different angles, Clinton and O’Malley as reformers of capitalism and Sanders as a democratic socialist who accepts capitalism.  Kind of like the difference between FDR and Henry Wallace. 

On foreign affairs, they pretended that Sanders was more dovish, Clinton and Webb more hawkish and O’Malley splitting the difference, but they all agreed that President Obama was doing the right thing in the Middle East, and specifically Syria, and that it was wrong to invade Iraq but right to go after Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan.  The one real difference in policy was that Clinton would impose a no-fly zone as part of a coalition and Sanders would not.  

On all these, and every other issue, all of these Democrats are far more progressive than any of the Republicans, who would like to loosen gun control laws, implement policies that will increase wealth and income inequality, outlaw abortion, ignore climate change warnings, make the Clinton emails a central campaign issue and (excepting Rand Paul) employ more troops and planes in various Middle East hotspots. 

Rarely have the differences between the two parties been so stark. 

Another difference between the two Republican and one Democratic debates was that every Republican told a major lie having to do with policy, whereas all the Democrats stuck to the truth when it came to statistics and factual assertions not related to their own pasts. 

Thus, just as in the Republican Party, deciding which Democrat to support may come down to the style of the candidate. Here is what this observer saw last night: 

Webb appeared testy and sweaty-palmed, always at the edge of losing it. He demanded more time several times during the debate, and came off looking like the kid who’s mad he isn’t playing shortstop. 

Chafee: He looked like he took one too many happy pills before the debate and they made him disconnected in a goofy sort of way. 

O’Malley: He was a little stiff, like Bill Clinton when he first hit the national scene, and definitely not as smooth as his Republican equivalent, Mario Rubio. But then again, he has the burden of remembering facts, something that no Republican candidate seems to need this election cycle. On the whole, however, I think O’Malley did well and would make a fine vice presidential candidate for whichever Democrat wins the nomination or as a future presidential candidate.  

Sanders: I love Bernie, but people are eventually going to get tired of being lectured by a cranky old man. Remember how Americans reacted to Jimmy Carter’s constant chiding about frugality and lowered expectations. The sunny-faced liar Ronald Reagan defeated him by selling a false vision based of the future. 

Clinton: As always, Hillary Clinton showed herself to be controlled smart, quick on her feet and competent, if not as warm and friendly as her husband, Reagan or Bush II. She answered the concerns about switching positions on certain issues by focusing on her flexibility—she learned more information and changed her mind. Some may accuse her of ideological impurity, but her experience and skill set position her to bring into reality a much larger part of the Democratic agenda than any other current candidate. If Clinton has a lead in the polls and delegate count at the time, I may consider voting for Sanders in my state’s primary, just to keep the pressure on all Democrats to look left. But unless O’Malley suddenly catches fire with the public, Hillary Clinton remains the best candidate for the Democrats.   

 

 

Thursday, October 8, 2015

Imagine global politics as a competition of hegemons & Putin’s actions in Syria and Ukraine will seem defensive

By Marc Jampole

Let me start off by saying that Putin’s use of force in the Ukraine and Syria is wrong on several levels. He’s wrong in principle to pursue a military solution, and even if we condoned his use of force, he would still not be acting in the best interests of his country. 

If Putin wanted to keep the Ukraine in his sphere of influence, he should have offered it a better economic deal than the West did and spent more money influencing Ukrainian elections and politicians. That’s the way the game is played in kleptocracies, as Putin obviously knows.  

The problem with his actions in Syria is that it’s as much of a quagmire as Iraq or Afghanistan. Syria has four competing forces: Kurds, Assad’s, ISIS (or are we calling it IS or ISIL this week?) and the alliance of rebels against Assad. Putin’s actions, if met by the West ratcheting up aid to the rebels, will likely lead to the country splitting into three parts, two of which may unite with two of the three parts that seem to be Iraq’s probable future. At the end of the day, it’s likely that instead of Syria and Iraq, we will end up with four states, ISIS, Greater Kurdistan, the rump of Iraq and the rump of Syria controlled by either Assad or some rebel group. It seems as if Putin has learned as little from the Soviet misadventure in Afghanistan in the 1980’s as Bush II, Cheney and Rumsfeld learned from Viet Nam. 

While I believe Putin to be—literally—a bloody fool, I also think that the American government and news media are being deceptive when they paint Putin as an aggressor. In both the Ukraine and Syria, Russia is reacting defensively to Western and American aggression. 

Many Americans like to imagine the United States as the world’s cop. working selflessly to promote freedom and democracy. In fact, at any given time the political globe comprises several spheres of influence, or hegemonies, each of which projects its influence over part of the world, or over a client state in contested regions.  Roughly speaking, today’s hegemons include the United States, Western Europe (often acting in conjunction with the United States), Russia and China. When we’re talking about the Middle East, I believe we should add Iran to the list.  

As Stephen F. Cohen pointed out to much criticism after Russia took the Crimea by force, since the fall of the Soviet empire, Western Europe and the United States have been courting former Soviet client states, which effectively means that the West has gradually infringed on the former Russian hegemony, shrinking it slowly but surely.  From the standpoint of Hungary and Poland, the economic benefits of joining the EU are many, but Russia does not look at things from the point of view of the Hungarians or the Poles. Nor does the United States or China, for that matter, which is why another word for hegemonic politics is imperialism. As Cohen suggests, the last straw for Putin and Russia was losing the Ukraine, and especially Crimea, which is more Russian than Ukrainian and only belongs to the Ukraine because of series of short-sighted administrative decisions.   

The Syrian situation is no different. Years ago, the Soviet Union was tight with lots of Middle Eastern countries, but at this point in time, the Assad government is Russia’s only real client state in Islamic lands. By openly supporting the Syrian rebels and insisting that the Assad government be replaced, the West is attacking a Russian ally. There can be no doubt that messing with the Russians had as much to do with the West’s decision to support the rebels as does its outrage at the brutal way that Assad has treated his people.  There is no disputing that Assad is a butcher, but so were Suharto, the Shah of Iran, Samosa and many other dictators—excuse me, authoritarians, as former rightwing U.S. UN ambassador Jeanne Kirkpatrick once put it—whom the United States supported or still support, often against incipient democratic movements. Once upon a time we also supported Saddam Hussein and we still give millions in military aid to countries ruled by kings. Before we condemn Russia for backing Assad, we should take a gander at our own goose.  

Putin’s moves will backfire, just as the U.S. invasion of Iraq was doomed to fail. A current Republican myth is that if the United States had kept our troops in Iraq, ISIS would never have been able to grab so much territory so quickly. Rightwing militarists thus attempt to shift blame for the current situation from the Bush II Administration to President Obama. This line of reasoning ignores that under Bush II we destroyed the country and its political infrastructure and shattered a nation that was really three nations held together by a strong dictator. It would have only made sense to remain in Iraq if the United States would have added more troops and been prepared to stay there for 40 or 45 years, at least as long as the Soviet Union was in Hungary, the Czech Republic and other East Bloc nations. 

I don’t see any of the activity of the world’s hegemons in Syria or the rest of the Middle East to be in the best interests of the people of the region. By selling arms, bombing, putting troops on the ground and supporting one side over others (for future considerations), all we do is muck things up and prevent the people in each state from deciding for themselves how to live. Cutting off heads seems particularly savage, but launching an air strike is just as savage, and a quicker, more efficient way to kill.  I also imagine that bleeding out after a bomb drops on your neighborhood is more painful than a quick and clean severation. 
So by all means, let’s condemn Russia for bombing targets in Iraq and invading the eastern part of the Ukraine. But let’s also clean the blood off our own hands and elect American officials who will stop contributing to the bloodbaths in the Middle East and elsewhere.

Monday, October 5, 2015

Corporations don’t have to break laws as Volkswagen did to manipulate & cheat the public


Volkswagen’s use of manipulative software to conceal that its diesel engines couldn’t pass emissions inspections is far from the first time that a large corporation has broken the law to cheat the public, not even the first time this year. Cheating can show up in any industry, as demonstrated by the Peanut Corporation of America executives who knowingly sold the public peanut butter tainted with salmonella. 

These companies knowingly broke laws that regulate the marketplace. Weakened as government oversight has been by the general starvation of all non-military government functions over the past 35 years, the American public is indeed fortunate we caught both Volkswagen and the peanut-mongers.  

Most Americans, regardless of their political views, are appalled by Volkswagen’s treachery, although I have yet to see or hear anyone come up with a proposal to prevent these acts of corporate manipulation from repeating. The answer, of course, is obvious:  spend more money inspecting products and facilities and more aggressively prosecute companies that break the law and their executives and directors. But common sense will often ruffle the feathers of large industries and their elected factotums. 

Extremist supporters of the unfettered free market always assume that corporations will uphold the highest standards of ethical behavior and those that don’t will soon be unmasked and ultimately fail. This overarching theory gives no thought to what happens to the innocent people killed and hurt during the period in which the “marketplace” “naturally” removes these bad apples. 

The more reasonable among free market advocates admit the need for regulations, but insist that the regulated industry must develop the regulations.  It’s this approach that leads to phone tariffs and securities regulations that limit damages and emissions requirements that always go into effect years after the laws are passed.  

In fact, industry has so many ways to manipulate individuals and communities that it’s surprising that a company ever feels it has to break the law to make a profit. 

Industry has a great say on the overall policy and economic strategies that the federal government and the states formulate and implement. Reading Street Smart: The Rise of Cities and the Fall of Cars by leading transportation engineer Samuel I. Schwartz, reminded me of how much sway corporations and industries have over government. Take our spending on infrastructure improvement: Almost 80% of it goes to highways and only 20% of it goes to mass transit. Highway spending has established and now reinforces a way of life that is leading to resource shortages and human-induced global warming. Not good for the public, but a car-centric lifestyle helps the automobile industry, the oil industry and suburban developers.  

By the way, Schwartz demonstrates that this enormous decades-long financial support of car-and-mall culture has not been enough to make living in car-centric areas less expensive. While people complain that cities with mass transit are the most expensive in which to live, as of 2010 the average person in New York, Washington, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Chicago and Boston all spent less of their household budget on housing and transportation combined than the average person did in Riverside, Miami, Jacksonville, San Diego, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Houston, Atlanta or Columbus, all of which have lower housing costs but much higher costs to travel from home to work, school and recreation. (Of course, San Francisco and New York have seen real estate booms over the past five years that may change the numbers somewhat). See p. 111 of Schwartz’s book for a chart with details. 

Schwartz’s main interest in Street Smart is to advocate for a series of innovations that will help move people from place to place more quickly and create more mixed-use neighborhoods in which people can walk to retail stores, restaurants and other amenities. But along the way, Schwartz reminds us of other ways that large corporations manipulate the public for their own ends.  

Let’s start with suppressing the competition. Schwartz is far from the first to write about the two companies formed by General Motors, Firestone Tires, Standard Oil of California and other large companies in 1936 that bought electric train and trolley systems in at least 45 cities, including Los Angeles, St. Louis, Baltimore and Newark, and then shut them down in favor of oil-burning buses. The federal government finally realized that the series of ostensibly legal actions like forming a company, buying other companies and reallocating assets constituted a conspiracy to restrain trade and indicted one of the shell companies in 1947. The corporations were convicted of some crimes, but not others, and had to pay fines of $5,000 per company and $1 per chief executive officer.   

Schwartz also alludes to companies putting out false propaganda and supporting phony research. His examples, all financed by the Koch brothers, are climate change (a term I have come to despise, because it is so squeamishly euphemistic), healthcare reform and the United Nation’s nonbinding blueprint for sustainable development called Agenda 21. Without consulting sources, we can quickly add Coca Cola, the tobacco companies, pharmaceutical companies and automobile companies to the list of companies supporting false research, on such topics as the benefits of exercise versus calorie-counting in losing weight; the health hazards of smoking; the efficacy of a number of prescription drugs; and the real cost to install safety measures in vehicles or meet emission standards. 

Perhaps the most disturbing way that corporations manipulate the public, individuals and the government to make more profit is to write legislation and spend money to defeat or pass laws. We know generally that the American Legislative Exchange Council routinely produces model bills which are introduced in state legislatures by the elected officials they control. This legislation generally hurts the public, and includes new laws to reduce corporate regulation and taxation, loosen environmental regulations, make it harder to vote, weaken labor unions and promote gun rights. In Street Smart, Schwartz gives some disgusting examples of what Americans for Prosperity and the Reason Foundation—two Koch Brothers-financed organizations—and their millions did in one year alone, 2014: undermined a Nashville plan for dedicated transit lines; forbade Indianapolis from studying a light rail system; killed Florida’s plans for a high-speed rail system which voters had overwhelmingly approved; and unsuccessfully opposed the expansion of the Washington DC Metro and the LA Exposition Line rail system.   

We haven’t even mentioned how corporations control the political process with political contributions and influence over the news media through advertising and ownership. 

With all these legal ways to fix the game in their favor, it strikes me that only the most venal and stupid of corporate executives ever explicitly break the law the way Volkswagen and Peanut Corporation honchos did.

Friday, October 2, 2015

10 more innocent victims sacrificed to a misreading of the 2nd amendment

By Marc Jampole

As of this writing, the unanswered question is how Chris Harper Mercer obtained the gun he used to kill 10 people at Umpqua Community College.

The police easily reconstructed a profile of Mercer, and it’s a chillingly familiar one: Young male, antisocial, withdrawn, without real relationships, mental problems that his family and others recognized.

So how did he get his guns? Did he buy them legally? Did his mother get them for him?  The New York Times reports that when a reporter asked a neighbor whether he ever saw Mercer with a gun, the reply was “I’d rather not say,” which sounds like he was thinking “Yes, I saw him with a gun and I knew he was crazy and now I feel like dog meat.”

“I've been waiting to do this for years,” Mercer told a professor before gunning him down, according to a CNN report.  Combine this statement with the ease at which he operated his firearms and the fact that he had three with him: two handguns and a long gun, which is a gun with an extra-long barrel. Consider all these facts and we can only conclude that someone who knew he was unbalanced also knew he liked to pack. It defies reason to believe that none of the people who suspected this kid was mentally ill knew he liked guns and had a few.

We cannot, however, blame mental illness for what Mercer did. Nor can we blame his parents, do-nothing neighbors or guidance counselors at whatever schools he attended. We shouldn’t even blame the gun dealers who sold the weapons, assuming that they followed all existing laws at the time.

The blame falls fully on the laws themselves—correction, the lack of laws regulating the sale, ownership and use of guns in the United States. 

Even though the federal government banned the use of tax dollars to study gun safety years ago, enough research exists to state unequivocally that the more guns there are in a society, the more people will die and be wounded by guns. Nations in which there are few guns have lower rates of gun deaths. The United States with the highest number of guns in the hands of its citizens has the highest number of gun deaths per capita a year. 

It’s true that criminals will get guns no matter how few guns there are afloat in society. It’s also true that no one can stop the psychopath or spurned lover who wants to take out a dozen or more people with a spray of bullets.

But if we had fewer guns, we would have fewer deaths, fewer mass murders and fewer crimes committed with firearms. That’s tragically clear from the available research.

We need to act on virtually every front on the local, state and federal levels to control the distribution and use of firearms. Here is what I would propose:
·         Increase the wait time for firearms purchases to a month and make the application process more rigorous.
·         Require gun owners to get a license with testing requirements at least as rigorous as those required to drive a car; include a psychological test as one the requirements.
·         Ban the sale and use of all automatic weapons and ammunition.
·         Make all states participate in a national gun registry and implement an active campaign to improve the information in that registry.
·         Ban private citizens carrying firearms on all college campuses and in all public buildings, modes of public transportation, arenas, movie theatres, other entertainment venues, restaurants, malls and retail outlets.
·         Ban carrying firearms by employees in their places of employment or their employer’s parking lots, unless as a requirement of the job.
·         Repeal all “stand your ground” laws.

Evoking the Second Amendment has always been a canard. The National Rifle Association and others opposed to gun control laws make two mistakes: 1) They wrongly infer that infringe means “can’t regulate”; 2) They misunderstand that the stipulated purpose of private ownership of firearms in the Constitution was to allow participation in a militia (volunteer army).  

Despite what the gun lobby says, the gun control issue is not a matter of personal freedom, unless you propose that people should have absolute freedom to do whatever they like with no constraints regardless of the impact on others. No, gun control is a matter of safety and the social contract by which we all agree to follow certain rules for the good of all of us.

As it turns out, only about one third of American households own guns, down from more than 50% in 1978. Almost 90% of all Americans and three-quarters of NRA member support stiffer gun control laws. Thus, less than one third of the country is bullying the rest of us to accept guns and the death and destruction they bring.

It’s time for the voters in the two-thirds of all households without guns to let their elected officials and the candidates know that if they want the vote, they better support implementing tough gun control laws.

Tuesday, September 29, 2015

Pope is right to hate cap-and-trade, which is akin to the Church selling indulgences

Yale economist William Nordhaus writes as if he wants to address human-induced global warming—euphemistically called “climate change” even by the most ardent environmentalists—but I think he loves what he calls “the market” more than he does the environment.

You can see him grasping for straws to balance his love or humankind and other living things and his greater love for the “market” in his recent New York Review of Books critique of Laudato Si’, Pope Francis’s encyclical on the environment and capitalism. While he applauds the Pope’s concern for the environment, he essentially condemns the Pope for specifically rejecting the use of carbon credits. To do so, he has to take a leap of faith similar to the one taken by Pascal and Kierkegaard. But instead of leaping towards a silent, hidden god, Nordhaus leaps towards the infallibility of “markets.”

Nordhaus does a good job of describing how the carbon credit system, also called cap-and-trade, operates, so I’ll repeat his brief explanation: “Cap-and-trade begins with actions by which a country, through its government, caps or limits its carbon dioxide emissions. The country then auctions or issues a limited number of ‘emissions permits.’ These convey the right to emit a given quantity of emissions. Firms that own the permits can use them or sell them on carbon markets, while firms who need them can purchase permits. The advantage of establishing a market in permits is that it ensures that emissions are used in the most productive manner.” 

The Pope rightly asserts that the trading of carbon credits can lead to speculation and enables countries and industrial sectors to buy the right to pump excessive pollution
into the environment. The Pope doesn’t mention another problem with trading carbon credits: it give these dirty industrial companies and utilities absolutely no incentive to clean up their acts.

It makes sense that the Pope condemns markets. Markets by their nature are brutal, because they reduce everything to money, and not to the well-being of a community and its members. The market assumes that all market players are individuals, responsible for their own selves. Market theory further assumes that the mostly unguided action of all these individual players will lead to the greatest good for all. This basic premise strikes me to be as much based on faith as is the idea that a half god-half man born of a virgin died for our sins and came back to life three days later. I have a feeling that Pope Francis would rate the absurdity of the invisible hand much lower.   

I’m uncertain why Nordhaus has so much faith in markets, when it is the market economy that has helped to create the environmental mess in which we find ourselves in several ways: 1) The market hides the social cost of pollution by reducing the value and cost of producing goods and services to dollars and cents; 2) The market mentality has contributed to the rampant consumerism that has infected all western-style economies, thereby driving the rapid rise of greenhouse gases, resource shortages and other environmental challenges.

Like all those who believe in the religion of free markets, Nordhaus has to construct an overly complicated argument for why the current market does not work to benefit the environment. Basically, he (and others) say that environmental degradation results from “distorted market signals” that put too low a price on environmental effects. The good professor uses as his examples the water shortage in California and people dying before their time because of small sulfur particles in the air. In both cases, he blames underpricing—if people paid more for water or air pollution, they would use less. That argument ignores the fact that the wealthy won’t care what they pay, which will engender an inequality in resource access similar to the gapping inequality in wealth that currently exists throughout the planet. It also ignores the fact that water and some of the products made in processes that emit sulfur particles are necessities for human life.

Nordhaus is talking in convoluted euphemisms. What he means to say is that the market isn’t working because it’s leading to the carbon-loading of the atmosphere and oceans.

And his solution for something that isn’t working? Create another thing just like it. A market for the right to pollute.

Wouldn’t it be much simpler just to set limits for each industry and make companies pay huge fines and shut facilities if they can’t meet the standards? Sure prices will go up, but I assert that instead of raising prices, corporations could absorb some of the costs to pay for pollution controls, more fuel-efficient processes and alternative energy. All they have to do is shrink the profit before paying executive salaries, bonuses and benefits. In other words, executives could choose to pay themselves and shareholders less.  That certainly won’t happen with cap-and-trade.

The essence of cap-and-trade is a dirty company paying a clean company so that it can keep polluting. The immorality of this market solution will leap into focus when you think about rich folk paying people to serve in the military in their place during the Civil War. What about someone who paid the Catholic Church money to receive absolution for sins or a church office for a ne’er-do-well nephew in the 15th and 16th centuries?  These situations rightly offend us. Cap-and-trade is the very same thing. Nordhaus’ argument that cap-and-trade enables society to use its carbon emissions most productively would apply to the wealthy draft dodger or church manipulator. Why get the wealthy banker’s son shot up when he could be making lots of money that he will use to build an art collection to donate to a museum for a tax write-off?

In both the analogies I gave, an informal market was created: Buying and selling humans for slaughter. Buying and selling church favors. Buying and selling the pollutants that are rapidly degrading our planet. Do you see a difference?  I don’t, nor does Pope Francis. Only a true believer in markets blinded by the invisible hand would.

Monday, September 28, 2015

Resignation of Boehner gives Obama opportunity to spread mainstream Big Lie that he & other Democrats are leftwing

In commenting about John Boehner’s resignation from Speaker of the House and Congress, President Obama told the Big Lie in American politics. It’s a lie that virtually all mainstream politicians tell and that’s presented positively by most Democrats and negatively by all Republicans.

The lie is that Boehner and Obama are on opposite ends of the political spectrum. Now the President didn’t spell it out in detail, but what he communicated to everyone when he said he and Boehner are on opposite ends of the political spectrum is that Obama is on the left and Boehner is on the right. To be sure, Boehner is to the right of Obama, although there are many such as Ted Cruz and Kevin McCarthy who are much farther right than the retiring Boehner.

But Barack Obama, like so many in the Democratic Party, are centrists looking left. Certainly Hillary Clinton, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders are left of Obama, but that doesn’t even begin to cover the possible ground to the left of our president. Think of Lyndon Johnson, Hubert Humphrey, George McGovern, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, or FDR’s best VP, Henry Wallace.  If we expand to all the legitimate stable democracies of the world, the right-centrists in countries such as Germany and the Scandinavian countries are to the left of Barack Obama. And then we come to Willie Brandt and Helmut Schmidt and the golden age of democratic socialism.

If we were to analyze the positions advocated in the work of legitimate sociologists, political scientists and historians in the English speaking world—those who don’t depend on think tanks for funding, we would find that Obama would at best be a centrist.

And let’s not forget that Obama typically follows the hawkish right-looking American foreign policy of the last 70 years. He is not as hawkish as the Republicans who want to bomb everything that moves in the Middle East outside of Israel, but Obama is in favor of using drones, developing automated weapons, wholesale NSA spying on citizens, using foreign policy to help large U.S. multinational corporations grow their businesses and projecting a strong U.S. military presence throughout the world. Of course, no person can be elected president who does not accept the basic premises of the military-industrial complex.

It is only in the bizarre world of 21st American mainstream politics, truncated by big money and a rightwing news media, that Barack Obama can imply that he is a the left end of the spectrum with a straight face and not have a dozen journalists call him on it.

The news media has always kept the American public firmly focused on maintaining the myth that a narrow part of the political spectrum represents all possibilities. And since 1980, that narrow part of the spectrum has moved considerably rightward, to the point that on all but the very basic social issues such as gay marriage, Barack Obama and the Clintons are about where Dwight Eisenhower was in the 1950s.

The news media defines the terms of the debate in many ways, including:
·         Defining the issues in terms of rightwing language and predilections, e.g., assuming we have to cut the deficit and discussing spending cuts but not tax increases to eliminate the deficit.
·         Allowing the ultra-right to have their views aired in the public forum, while ignoring anyone left of mainstream Democrats.
·         Selection of Op/Ed experts and academic studies they publish. My favorite example in recent years was the extensive coverage that the media gave to a study that showed that an enormous number of TV weather personalities—half of whom are talking heads and none of whom are experts in climatology—have doubts about global warming, while completely ignoring a study that demonstrated how the world could produce twice the electricity it needs using clean wind energy.
·         Using the so-called fairness doctrine to let rightwing lies gain or maintain credence, for example quoting both sides in debates that have already been settled such as human-created global warming and the safety of vaccines. In both instances, a story will quote the one expert who doubts global warming or thinks that vaccines cause autism and one of the 99+% of all the experts who rightfully think that humans are causing global warming or that vaccines are safe.
·         Letting rightwing lies stand. The media is willing to go after politicians who lie about their own accomplishments like Carly Fiorina or behave hypocritically (e.g., gay politicians who condemn other gays, such as ex-Senator Larry Craig). But they are much more reluctant to highlight policy lies, such as the lie that raising the minimum wage destroys jobs or that we are undergoing a crime wave.
·         Selective coverage, for example, covering right-wing politicians but not progressives; focusing on Republican primaries in which to right-wingers are battling it out, but not Democratic primaries. To see what I mean, try looking up the instances when the “liberal” New York Times calls a Democratic politician “brave” in a feature story over the past five years. In virtually all instance, that politician is fighting unions.

When compared to the corporate factotums who are most of the current crop of American politicians, Obama looks very good to progressives. But compared to the possibilities that exist out there, he is a centrist. A true progressive would favor a wealth tax—a tax that people pay annually on all assets over a certain amount, say $5 million. A true progressive would never favor any movement such as charter schools that hurts unions. A true progressive would clamor for single-payer nationalized health insurance. A true progressive would advocate the unilateral dismantling of all nuclear weapons.

Thus, while we could label Barack Obama a 21st century mainstream progressive, that far from puts him on the opposite end of the spectrum from John Boehner. There is much more to the left of Barack Obama than the mainstream news media and the two major parties would like us to know about.

Saturday, September 26, 2015

Editorial: Some Dems Fear Bern

Bernie Sanders has multitudes of progressives, particularly younger voters, “feeling the Bern,” as polls show Sanders not only closing the gap on frontrunner Hillary Clinton but also, in some surveys, leading Clinton in Iowa and New Hampshire. That makes establishment Democrats nervous.

Clinton’s campaign has said it has no plans to attack Sanders, who has pointedly refused to be drawn into attacks on Clinton. But that didn’t stop a super PAC, called Correct the Record, led by Clinton ally David Brock. In an email sent Sept. 14 to HuffingtonPost.com, the PAC tried to tie Sanders with Britain’s controversial new Labour Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, as well as the late Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan leader who was an ally of Cuba’s Fidel Castro.

The Correct the Record email was meant to flag Corbyn’s “most extreme comments” and tie them with Sanders, an avowed “democratic socialist.” Corbyn suggested that the assassination of Osama bin Laden was “a tragedy,” since there was no attempt to arrest the former al Qaeda leader and put him on trial. The email also cites Corbyn’s comment that he’d invite his “friends” from Hezbollah to come to the UK to discuss peace in the Middle East and an editorial in which Corbyn said that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s “attempt to encircle Russia is one of the big threats of our time.”

Corbyn has said he is following Sanders’ campaign “with great interest,” and Sanders said he was “delighted” that the Labour Party elected Corbyn as its leader.

The “similarities” between the two, according to the email, include Sanders’ introduction of legislation to terminate the US nuclear weapons program, comments that NATO’s expansion into former Soviet states is dangerous because it could provoke Russia, opposition to more US funds for NATO, and saying he “was concerned” that proposed new NATO members had shipped arms to Iran and North Korea.

Those all sound like reasonable positions to us.

The email also criticized Sanders’ role in negotiating a deal with Citgo, which was controlled by Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez, in 2006 that provided discounted heating oil to low-income Vermonters. Sanders said it was “not a partisan issue” and he was merely trying to provide a way for his constituents to heat their homes at a time when George W. Bush’s administration was cutting the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP).

Joseph P. Kennedy II originally negotiated the deal with Citgo, an arm of Venezuela’s national oil company, in 2005 on behalf of his nonprofit Citizens Energy Corp. to help low-income residents of Massachusetts who were struggling with high fuel costs. Maine and New York City also signed up for the discounted heating oil before Vermont made the connection, but Republicans, such as then-Sen. John Sununu of New Hampshire criticized the deal, saying Chavez was “strongly aligned against American interests“ and was showing off.

Sanders, who was then a congressman, said geopolitics was not his concern, nor did he consider heating oil a political issue. ”This is a means by which we can keep people warm, senior citizens, low-income people in the State of Vermont who need that help,” he said.

The program has has survived Chavez, who died in 2013. It’s even touted on Citgo’s website as a sign of corporate responsibility. Citgo operates refineries in Texas, Louisiana and Illinois and retail gas stations across the US and provides the discounted heating oil to a half-million low-income American customers annually.

Sanders can’t expect support from the party establishment or the corporate media. He has caucused with the Democrats since he arrived in Congress in 1991 and he was got bipartisan support when he replaced former Republican Sen. Jim Jeffords in 2001. But even some of his friends in Washington don’t think a self-professed socialist can be elected nationally. ”No matter how well you think of Bernie — and all of us do — … when the politics of it all hits the road, I don’t feel — and I feel most members don’t feel — that he can be elected,” Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-Fla.) told The Hill (Sept. 19).

Mark Lillis of The Hill noted that the doubts have nothing to do with policy. Indeed, Sanders’ career-long advocacy for economic and social justice — a vision of wider safety nets, higher wages, universal healthcare and corporate policing — overlaps almost directly with the policy priorities of Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and the Democratic Caucus on Capitol Hill.

“I’m proud of what Bernie is saying out there, and it’s a reflection of what we fight for here,” Pelosi said.

Yet there remains a lingering sense among many Democrats that a Sanders’ nomination would spell doom for the party in 2016, Lillis wrote. That sentiment is highlighted by the fact that not a single Democrat in either chamber has endorsed Sanders.

“Bernie Sanders is raising some issues that are important,” Rep. Steny Hoyer (Md.), the Democratic whip and a Clinton supporter, told reporters. “But I don’t think there’s an expectation that’s he’s going to be president of the United States.”

But Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) warned that Democrats, by doubting Sanders’ viability as a candidate, risk undermining the party’s agenda.

“The expectation that he will fade, I think, is not true because the agenda he’s putting forward, instead of tamping down momentum, it’s increasing momentum,” Grijalva, the head of the Progressive Caucus who has not yet endorsed in the primary, told The Hill. “He’s ignited the base in a way that we haven’t been able to do for six years … So I would be very careful to [not] marginalize the man. Because in a sense then you’re marginalizing the message.”

Reasonable Democrats don’t want to risk losing the White House at a time when Supreme Court justices on both sides are at advanced ages, and even if Democrats regain control of the Senate they are unlikely to retake the House and a new Republican president could undo much of the good that Obama has done through executive actions.

Sanders supporters might note that not many on Capitol Hill thought Barack Obama was electable in the summer of 2007. Clinton supporters should note that if their standard bearer can’t beat a socialist in a Democratic Party primary, that indicates that she is not the strongest candidate the party could put forth against whomever survives the GOP clown contest — and maybe there is something in that socialist message that appeals to Democrats.

We think either Sanders or Clinton — and Martin O’Malley, for that matter — are head-and-shoulders better than any of the Republicans who are vying for the nomination. And Republican hysteria over President Obama’s moderate economic policies, which they have characterized as socialist, may have diluted the toxins of that label.

Anyway, solid majorities of the electorate support Sanders’ “socialist” positions, which include debt-free public college education; limits on industrial pollution to protect the environment; government action to reduce income inequality; reducing the influence of money in politics; increasing taxes on people who make more than $1 million a year; expanding Medicare and Social Security; supporting a living wage for workers and the right to organize and bargain for better wages and benefits; supporting fair trade standards that protect workers, the environment and jobs; and breaking up banks that are “too big to fail.”

As we’ve said before, we think Sanders should drop the socialist label and instead run as a progressive populist Democrat who wants to restore the New Deal coalition that put millions of unemployed people back to work building roads, bridges, dams and other infrastructure during the Great Depression of the 1930s, won World War II and set the stage for the greatest economic boom in our nation’s history in the 1950s and ’60s. It won’t stop Republicans from calling Sanders a socialist — or a communist. But it might remind some Boomers and their surviving parents why they used to vote Democratic. — JMC
From The Progressive Populist, October 15, 2015
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Selections from the October 15, 2015 issue

COVER/Conor Lynch
The age of apocalyptic government

EDITORIAL
Some Democrats fear the Bern

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

DON ROLLINS
Portland may lead way on gentrification

RURAL ROUTES/Margot McMillen
Southern coops work for food sovereignty

DISPATCHES
GOP playing defense in 2016 Senate races;
Hillary expands polling leads, opposes Keystone pipeline;
Pharmas backtrack on drug price increases;
Path to renewable energy;
Republican senators opposed to Clean Water rule;
Some unions endorse, others hold off ...

JIM GOODMAN
Our right to know what's in our food

GRASSROOTS/Hank Kalet
The right to a level playing field

ROGER BYBEE
Tax cuts Now or growth in the future

GENE NICHOL
Our greatest constitutional shortcoming

RANDOLPH HOLHUT
Living in the era of peak planet

JOHN YOUNG
Climate action represents 'system threat’

JOSEPH ATKINS
Howard Industries’ secret life

HEALTH CARE/Joan Retsinas
Personal responsibility in the age of ACA

SAM URETSKY
Ohio demands down syndrome births

WAYNE O’LEARY
The new stupid party

JOHN BUELL
To tighten or not to tighten: Not the question 

SETH SANDRONSKY
Labor in the on-demand economy

DONALD KAUL
The GOP agenda (or lack thereof)

and more ...
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