Editorial: Play Hard But Nice, Dems

This is the time in the election cycle when partisans in a close race start to lose their minds, and the Democratic presidential race is leaking vitriol all over the place.

Some Bernie Sanders supporters are saying that they would have a hard time reconciling with Hillary Clinton if she wins the nomination, because of her ties with Wall Street, her support of military interventions as a senator and as secretary of state in the Obama administration and her taking contributions from corporate lobbyists.

Some Clinton supporters are saying Sanders doesn’t deserve to be the Democratic nominee because he’s too far left, his biography will be fodder for the right-wing scandal machine and he’s only been a Democrat since last November after a political career as an independent democratic socialist took him from the Burlington, Vt., mayor’s office during the 1980s to the House of Representatives in 1991 and then the Senate in 2007.

Some of Sanders’ more vigorous supporters have characterized Clinton’s orientation as right wing, but her record puts her more in the center-left. Clinton’s record in the Senate was more liberal than 70% of fellow Democrats, according to VoteView.com, and she was rated a “hard-core liberal” and barely more moderate than Sanders by OnTheIssues.com, Harry Enten noted at FiveThirtyEight.com. “There have been a few issues on which Hillary Clinton has taken more centrist positions. She, of course, voted for the Iraq War (she now says that was a mistake). Clinton has been mostly pro free trade” (although in the past year she has expressed opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership). And she has been against marijuana legalization, although she said she would consider the evidence gained from the use of medical marijuana in 23 states and in Washington, D.C., and legalized recreational marijuana in Colorado and Washington.

Patrick Caldwell noted at MotherJones.com that Sanders has been increasingly direct in attacks against Clinton’s past positions. But his own voting record shows he’s often voted for similar measures. At times he’s voted in favor of bills to keep the controversial detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, he voted for the controversial 1994 crime bill that increased penalties for repeat offenders and added funding to build more prisons, and he voted for the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 that established the 3-year and 10-year bans on allowing immigrants who overstayed their visa to return to the country.

Sanders has the strongest record with organized labor, voting 98% of the time with unions during his 25 years in Congress, according to the AFL-CIO legislative scorecard, but Clinton isn’t far behind with a 94% record with the labor federation during her eight years in the Senate.

On the Republican side, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas has a 0% record on labor issues during his four years in the Senate, Ohio Gov. John Kasich had a 13% record with labor during 18 years in the US House. As governor Kasich resisted calls for right-to-work legislation but he signed into law a bill to restrict bargaining by public-employee unions in 2011. It was overturned by voters later that year.

Donald Trump has never served in public office but he has gained significant blue-collar support — including union members — with his denunciation of “free trade” deals such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership and his proposals to slap tariffs on Chinese exports and deport millions of undocumented immigrants. The real-estate developer makes these promises despite his own outsourcing of Trump-branded clothing to factories in China and Mexico and his hotels that have resisted organizing efforts. Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas has refused to negotiate with the union that won a certification election in December. Trump also supports “right to work” laws that weaken labor’s ability to organize and collect dues and he has said that American “wages are too high.”

We are confident that progressive voters will recognize the chasm between the Democratic nominee — be it Clinton or Sanders — and the Republican nominee — whether it’s Trump, Cruz, Kasich or some other right-winger who the Establishment foists upon the Republican convention in July. With at least one seat on the Supreme Court already at stake, and several other sitting justices looking shaky, and the very real opportunity to put Democrats back into the majority in the Senate and a longshot chance to win back the House — this is no time for progressive voters to sit out the election.

In Wisconsin, 11 cities, villages and townships voted by overwhelming margins April 5 for proposals to amend the Constitution to declare that corporations are not people, that money is not speech, and that citizens (and their elected representatives) have a right to organize elections in which their votes matter more than billionaire dollars, John Nichols noted at TheNation.com. George Penn, a volunteer with Wisconsin United to Amend, said the results make it plain that “Wisconsin voters are starting to understand that our political system is broken and it needs to be reformed.”

In Washington, “Democracy Spring” protests sought to bring attention to corporate influence over elections and governance and the assault on voting rights. More than 400 activists were arrested April 11 when they brought their demonstration to the Capitol steps. More than 250 groups—ranging from the AFL-CIO to the NAACP to Common Cause to Public Citizen to the National Family Farming Coalition to the National Organization for Women and the Franciscan Action Network — planned to launch a “Democracy Awakening” mobilization the weekend of April 16-17.

“Almost every American agrees our democracy is seriously out of whack—that our elections and government are dominated by wealthy special interests. And yet Congress is doing nothing. So today we say no more,” said Democracy Spring’s lead organizer Kai Newkirk.

Putting our democracy back in the hands of the people is a worthy cause, and so is a constitutional amendment clarifying that corporations are not people, that money is not speech and that people have a right to organize elections, as well as a right to vote in those elections and to have their vote counted. But the quickest way to get there is to elect a Democratic president who will name progressive justices who will vote to overturn Citizens United, reinstate the Voting Rights Act and restore the right of workers to organize and bargain collectively. And we’ll need a Democratic Senate to confirm those nominees, which needs a net gain of at least four senators and a Democratic vice president to take the gavel away from Mitch McConnell. And while we’re at it, let’s take the gavel away from Paul Ryan before the teabaggers in the “Freedom Caucus” replace him.

If you think Sanders is the better Democratic nominee, and you live in the 16 states or three territories or the District of Columbia whose primaries or caucuses remain on the calendar, get out and support him. He trails Clinton by 219 pledged delegates going into the New York primary on April 16, but he will need to blow out Clinton by 60% or more in the remaining statest. The difficulty of catching up is illustrated in the results of the Wyoming caucuses, which Sanders won 56% to 44% on April 9. It’s the 17th state he’s won, but because of the proportional allocation of delegates he and Clinton still split the state’s 14 delegates evenly.

Sanders could make up that gap with “superdelegates,” 712 elected Democrats and party officials who currently favor Clinton by 469-31, with 212 holding back, according to the New York Times’ count, but those superdelegates could switch their allegiance. However, some rogue Sanders backers reportedly have mounted their own effort to contact superdelegates and persuade them to switch. Among those efforts, the Washington Post reported, is a website (superdelegatehitlist.com, which redirects to superdelegatelist.com) that provides phone numbers and addresses for superdelegates. Site creator Spencer Thayer, a Chicago activist, described the goal this way in an April 3 Twitter message: “So who wants to help start of a new website aimed at harassing Democratic Superdelegates?”

That is not the way to win friends and influence people. Play hard but play nice. Put a stopper on the vitriol. — JMC

From The Progressive Populist, May 1, 2016

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Selections from the May 1, 2016 issue

COVER/Thomas Frank
How Dems created ‘Liberalism of the Rich’

EDITORIAL 
Play hard but nice, Dems

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 

ERIC BLUMBERG 
Trump just bought the country club

RURAL ROUTES/Margot McMillen
Let the sun shine on GMO foods, please

DISPATCHES
Treasury spanks corporate tax dodger;
North Carolina ‘bathroom law’ has broader implications;
‘Democracy Spring’ arises to protest plutocracy;
Senate races heat up;
Former coal baron sentenced;
Sanders did better in Colorado than reported, but no one told him;
Senate lets judge through logjam;
Obamacare reaches new lows;
Michigan governor is target of RICO lawsuit in Flint water crisis;
Drop in stamp prices puts more stress on Postal Service;
New Orleans justice system breaking down;
Wisconsin voter ID laws back in court after election day woes;
Farewell to Al Jazeera America ... 

ELIZABETH SHOGREN
Fracking linked to groundwater contamination

BOB BURNETT
Donald Trump channels Howard Beale

ROBERT BOROSAGE
Jobs report: moving up: with no way out

JOHN YOUNG
Beautiful day in Mr. Cruz’s (gated) neighborhood

ROGER BYBEE
Bernie’s big Wisconsin win adds momentum

MARK ANDERSON
Nominating candidate with integrity crazy

SARAH ANDERSON
Wall Street should pay a sales tax, too

GRASSROOTS/Hank Kalet
Wrong focus

HEALTH CARE/Joan Retsinas
Long-term care insurance: Wall Street’s folly

SAM URETSKY
Ryan admits he was wrong. It’s a start

WAYNE O’LEARY
Attack of the ‘liberal’ economists

JOHN BUELL
Keep Trump’s hands off the nuclear trigger

DON ROLLINS
Donald Trump, the theologian

BOOK REVIEW/Seth Sandronksy
Fear is our forté

GENE NICHOL
Through the looking glass

MOVIES/Ed Rampell
‘Brainwashing’ explores right wing agitprop

DONALD KAUL
Trump’s America: outhouse on a hill

and more ...

Those in favor or torture should read Guantánamo Diary and imagine themselves in place of its author

By Marc Jampole

According to a study by the Pew Research Center a few years back, only about 24% of all Americans think that the authorities should never engage in torture, no matter the circumstances. That means that three out of four people think that torture is sometimes allowable. Every Republican candidate has come out in favor of torture as part of their warmongering, except Ted Cruz who, while pretending to be adamantly against torture, defines these acts of brutality against fellow human beings in such a way as to permit an extraordinary number of procedures that virtually everyone else would consider to be torture.

Most legitimate research demonstrates that torture does not work in extracting information from enemy personnel, but as with climate change and the minimum wage, those who support torture have purchased their own research that purports to show that torture works.

But as Guantánamo Diary graphically and brutally shows, the issue of our essential morality trumps any concerns for national security that sadists and the uninformed might invoke as a cause for torture.  Guantánamo Diary is the memoir of Mohamedou Ould Slahi, a highly educated Mauritanian who ended up being tortured for months on end at GITMO despite our intelligence services having not one iota of evidence that he ever engaged in terrorism or helped terrorist organizations.

At the age of 19, Slahi went to Afghanistan for a few months to help Islamic guerillas fight against the communist government that the United States also opposed at that time. He later lived and worked in Germany and Canada before returning to Mauritania. After the 9/11 attacks, the United States arranged for the Mauritanian government to detain Slahi and then render him to Jordan, where he was tortured, and then sent to GITMO for more torture. At Guantánamo Slahi was subjected to isolation, temperature extremes, beatings, sleep deprivation and sexual humiliation. One time, his American captors—representing you, me and every other citizen of the United States—blindfolded him and took him out to sea for a mock execution. As long as he denied accusations that he recruited suicide bombers for Al Qaida, his captors ratcheted up the pain.  

After torturers used beatings and a forced diet of water to keep him awake for weeks, during which time he was interrogated and suffered other tortures on a daily basis, he finally confessed to crimes he did not commit and for which there was no shred of supporting evidence, circumstantial or otherwise. Prosecutors later refused to prosecute Slahi in 2003 because the government's case depended solely on his false confessions, which were inadmissible under both U.S and international law because they had come under torture.  In 2010, a federal judge ordered Slahi released, but an appeals court overruled and Slahi is still held at GITMO, although no longer being tortured.

Slahi’s descriptions of what his captors did to him are not for the light of heart. His words bring to life the excruciating pain that torture produces in a more evocative, immediate way than any movie or TV depiction of torture I have seen. His descriptions are so grievously harrowing, perhaps because I knew what Slahi suffered was real and that the torture inflicted on Arnold or Bruce Willis in movies is fake. Page after page describes hour after hour of beatings, sexual degradation, marathon interrogations and exposure to extreme cold or heat. Because we experience these physical torments through the eyes of an individual who is both a fine writer and legitimately religious, we also suffer the mental anguish felt by someone who is innocent of all charges.

Before allowing publication, the U.S. government blanked out much of Guantánamo Diary. Eight full pages in a row are blanked out at the height of the GITMO torture regime. Looking at page after page of thick black lines running horizontally from one edge of the paper to the other filled me with panic and fear, as my imagination provided all the punches, kicks, slaps, nakedness, ice cubes, blaring music, Billy clubs and excrement that the redaction concealed.

The basic argument of Guantánamo Diary is that “evil is as evil does.” Slahi’s experience in the U.S. torture gulag has caused him to consider the United States a force for evil, and not a bastion of freedom.  Reading the memoir filled me with the shame of someone who has committed mortal sins that she-he knows are wrong. I didn’t commit the sins, but I felt the guilt, because it was my country. It’s no wonder that our use of torture embarrassed the country in front of the world and sent a lot of young idealistic Muslims into the arms of ISIS.

Slahi’s story exemplifies why torture doesn’t work. People get so confused and so fearful of additional torment that they begin to lie and admit to acts they didn’t really commit. It also shows that it takes a certain brutal and barbaric turn of mind to engage in torture. It makes me wonder if Dick Cheney ever witnessed the infliction of waterboarding or beatings on an individual or if his sadism is only symbolic, consisting of words and images in his mind. Or did he—or his less intellectual president—believe the sanitized versions of torture we see in our violent entertainments? Senator John McCain did not, but then again he went through the real deal in Vietnam.

It is unfortunate that the Obama Administration decided to sweep our torture history under the rug, saying that no one would be prosecuted for planning or implementing the torture regime that took hold of GITMO, Abu Ghraib, Bagram and dozens of other U.S. military facilities across the globe. Of course, prosecution would have meant sending President George W. Bush, Vice President Cheney and a few dozen other government officials to jail for breaking U.S. and international laws.

Word to Ted Cruz: Read Guantánamo Diary.

Word to Donald Trump: Read Guantánamo Diary.

Word to anyone who thinks we should have the right to inflict agonizing pan on others: Read Guantánamo Diary.

If after reading this poignant but depressing memoir, you still believe in torture, then consider yourself outside the human race.

Mass media tries to portray Iraq war contractors as unsung heroes, not as beneficiaries of crony capitalism

By Marc Jampole

We really don’t know what Matt Sherman exactly did as a federal government contractor in Iraq and Afghanistan, despite a long article about him in the Washington Post and a long interview on National Public Radio (NPR).

The Post tells us he advised four Iraqi interior ministers and later was part of a brigade that operated in Afghanistan. But the nitty-gritty is missing, and probably with reason. These media outlets want to focus on the man and his emotional state, both soldiering in a war zone and coming home without the fanfare, parades and social support network that members of the United States military often receive. The NPR interview by Rachel Martin focuses on “the sense of purpose” that Sherman felt in the war zone. But it avoids defining that sense of justice.  While both stories reference violence, because they focus on Sherman and his states of mind, they present a sanitized version of these conflicts.

The human interest angle also crowds out any discussion of why the U.S. Army felt the need to hire Sherman, who had previously worked for a large law firm. Since we get no sense of Sherman’s background or special skills, we are not in a position to evaluate whether one could expect to find his skill set among regular army personnel.

Both these two mainstream stories, appearing in the same week, avoid asking the two biggest questions about these disastrous wars: 1) Why did we fight in Iraq and Afghanistan, and was the fighting worth it? 2) Was the unprecedented use of military contractors the most effective way to wage war?

By focusing on Sherman’s individual sense of mission, without every defining what that mission entailed, both the Post and NPR assume and want the public to assume that the mission was important, critical, noble and appropriate.  By treating Sherman as an individual, and not part of an army of contractors, most working for large corporations, both the Post and NPR take it for granted that our massive dependence on military contractors was good policy. 

That military contractors played a larger role in fighting our recent wars than ever before is indisputable. For example, an estimated 100,000 military contractors worked directly for the U.S. military in Iraq in 2006, which marked a tenfold increase in the use of private contractors for military operations since Bush I fought the first Iraq war 13 years earlier. The last time a combatant nation in an American war outsourced so many military functions to non-soldiers was the Revolutionary War, when the losing side—the British—fortified their troops with foreign mercenaries, primarily from Germany.

We don’t call them mercenaries anymore, because that name evokes thoughts of people who are only in it for the money, and we’d rather believe that our current mercenaries have a sense of “mission” or “purpose.” But make no mistake about it. Virtually all civilians who signed military contracts—either as individual “experts” or as the executives of private corporations—made a lot more than they would have if they were in the army. Like all other private sources of public services, be it for prisons, education or data processing, the companies providing military services are working on a profit basis, whereas the Department of Defense is a non-profit venture that rewards its employees—soldiers—with stable employment and a true sense of mission to protect our country that is indoctrinated into soldiers almost on a daily basis. Moreover, news reports through the years document that private contractors were less likely to follow orders and procedures and more likely to use excessive violence than the regular army, which certainly laid the groundwork for civil war and the emergence of ISIS.

In analyzing the failure of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, it’s pretty obvious that using more contractors than ever before was a failing strategy.

A failing strategy, to be sure, but the use of contractors may have been the very reason the war was fought. We know that the reasons the Bush II Administration gave all turned out to be false: There were no weapons of mass destruction. Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with those responsible for the 9/11 attacks and in fact, had his own gripes against Al Qaida. It is easy to prove that “democracy building” had nothing to do with the Bush Administration’s war rationale. For one thing, no one in the administration gave “democracy building” as a reason for the war until after the world discovered that Bush, Cheney and their factotums were lying about WMD and the Hussein-Al Qaida connection. More importantly, if democracy building was the reason for going to war, then the administration would have planned to build a democracy after the invasion, which the subsequent chaos and the admission of key officials demonstrate was not the case.

Why did we go to war in Iraq then? The only explanation that makes sense—at the time and in retrospect—was that it created an enormous business opportunity for military contractors, most of which had contributed to the Bush II campaign and one of the largest of which had as it chief executive officer Dick Cheney before Cheney resigned to run for vice president.

None of this sorry history appears in either of these feel-good stories. What we get instead is the superficial story of one man’s struggle to return from a war zone. Always uplifting and a bit wistful, but in this case, it’s a whitewash of two wars that destroyed two countries, killed hundreds of thousands and cost the United States trillions of dollars, all to line the pockets of Bush II cronies. But that’s how government is supposed to work under the crony capitalism practiced by the 21st century Republican Party—and plenty in the Democratic Party as well.

Sarandon has been great progressive for years, so it surprises she hesitates to support best hope progressives have

By Marc Jampole

Susan Sarandon bases her well-publicized reluctance to support Hillary Clinton if she is the Democratic nominee on the fact that Hillary has taken so much money from corporate interests. Of course, that didn’t stop her from supporting Barack Obama twice.

Sarandon’s thought process exemplifies one of the many excuses that progressives and liberals have given as their reason they won’t vote for Hillary Clinton. Here’s my complete list:

·         They blame her for things her husband did when he was president or for her husband’s inappropriate behavior.

·         They do not allow her the opportunity to change her mind on issues based on new information or personal growth, e.g., stiff sentencing laws and the war in Iraq.

·         They judge her too hawkish on foreign policy without applying similar standards to Bernie Sanders.

·         They believe the right-wing nonsense about Clinton corruption and Benghazi that has been discredited multiple times.

·         They make her live by a double standard: It’s okay for other cabinet officials to use her-his personal email for government business and it’s alright for others to get obnoxious amounts of money for speeches, but it’s wrong when Hillary does it.

·         They apply a single issue to her, but not to other candidates, such as the acquaintance of mine who said he couldn’t vote for Hillary because of her stand in favor of capital punishment, but voted twice for Barack Obama, who also favors the death penalty. 

·         They call her part of the corrupt establishment, no different at heart than the Republicans when it comes to taking money from large corporations. This argument was used against Al Gore by Nader supporters in 2000 and led to the election of George W. Bush and his numerous disasters.

If these thought processes sound like excuses, there’s a good reason for it. They are. Much of what masquerades as Clinton criticism hides an antipathy for Hillary Clinton that I can’t quite understand.

I have no problem with progressives or liberals who are currently supporting Bernie Sanders. He is an attractive candidate with lots of good ideas. That people would prefer Sanders to Clinton is a perfectly reasonable position that I respect and encourage.

What isn’t reasonable are the one-third of Sanders supporters who proclaim they won’t vote for Hillary. Even less reasonable are the 10% of Sander’s loyalists who say they would rather vote for the unstable, racist misogynist Donald Trump.

It befuddles me why so many Democrats hate Hillary. A Southern Democrat who once ran for Congress recently told me that it’s because she made the unforgivable mistake of marrying “poor white trash.” I’m more inclined to believe that it’s easier for a progressive to find something fundamentally wrong with Hillary than it is to admit that he-she is not quite ready to have a woman serve as president. Whatever the reason, if we held every candidate to the high standards to which many hold Hillary Clinton, we would only be able to elect candidates who are related to a deity or received divine law on a mountaintop. I guess lifelong contemplation under a Bodhi tree might also qualify.

The simple argument for voting for Hillary is that she isn’t any of the Republicans. Remember all the Republican candidates—Trump, Cruz, Kasich and those waiting in the wings—want to build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico. All want to lower taxes drastically on the wealthy. All are against any minimum wage. All have militaristic foreign policies. All want to cut funding to Planned Parenthood. All would like to limit women’s access to abortion and birth control. All will select right-wingers for the Supreme Court. All want to loosen gun safety laws even more than they already have been in recent years. Of the two front-runners, one is mentally ill and has fascist tendencies and the other serves the ultra-religious right.

The subtler and more uplifting reason to vote for Hillary is that she is a true progressive on domestic issues, albeit one who is willing to compromise, and can therefore help progressives cash in on a golden opportunity. At the very least, Republicans are either going to field a very weak candidate—Trump or Cruz—with practically nonexistent coattails with which to drag along the rest of the ticket. An even more dire situation for the Republicans will be if either Trump or another Republican launches a third-party campaign. In either case, the Democrats are poised to take both the House and Senate. Both Sanders and Clinton list leftward of Obama. Both have served more time in government than Obama had before assuming the presidency and won’t make the rookie mistakes that Obama did that led to the sequester, the reluctance to assert executive privilege in regulations and the continuation of certain tax cuts for the wealthy.

The big difference between the two is that Sanders will want to get us mired in the political quicksand that would be the renewed argument in favor of single payer healthcare insurance, whereas Clinton will accept the jerry-rigged system we have and focus on other parts of the progressive agenda.

To prefer Sanders to Hillary Clinton at this point shows idealism and an admirable political purism. But not to get behind Hillary when she becomes the Democratic nominee merely manifests a political death wish. The differences between the two candidates are minor, while the gap between them and the most liberal of the current crop of Republicans—the madman Donald Trump—is as wide as wide can be.

    

No pecking order problem in Xarelto commercial: the aging white male is on top

By Marc Jampole

The Republicans keep sexualizing the fight for pecking order dominance in tasteless yet traditional ways. First came the vulgar insinuations regarding genital size, with its unspoken subtext that you had to have something to measure to qualify for president, or at least for the Republican nomination to America’s highest office.

More recently we have witnessed the dustup about the wives of Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, in which both candidates reveal their deep-seated sexism. Somebody’s campaign suggested that the fact Trump’s wife had posed for nude photos somehow disqualified Trump from the presidency. Donald then compared his wife favorably to Ted’s, based solely on the Laddie Boy-Rat Pack definition of female attractiveness. Ted’s answer was to further commodify women in his counter comparison by defining his wife solely in terms of homemaker virtues. Sex toy or housewife? That’s pretty much the choice Donald and Ted are giving women.

This injection of sexuality into the fight for top dog is unseemly because it is so irrelevant to the tasks and responsibilities related to serving as president. Sexuality is, however, an important component of celebrity. Both the news media and the Republicans seem determined to wage the nomination battle based primarily on the criteria by which we judge celebrities.

The Republican race for top dog reminds me of the imaginary world created by a current television commercial in which there is no doubt who is at the alpha male, and in fact, no doubt as to the precise pecking order.  The civility, mutual admiration and joviality of this commercial contrasts sharply with the crass and tasteless accusations and assertions by the various Republican presidential hopefuls.

The commercial, for the anti-clotting drug Xarelto, depicts the Republican utopia—four prosperous and well-dressed guys playing golf on a beautiful course on a sunny day.  Except that these aren’t business owners or trust fund babies, they are three athletes and a comedian—all among the most celebrated in their highly competitive fields. The golf foursome includes golfing legend Arnold Palmer, basketball all-star Chris Bosh, stock car racer Brian Vickers and comedian Kevin Nealon.

Despite the fact that these are all extremely competitive guys used to fighting for everything they get (except for perhaps Nealon, who comes from wealth and is not in a field in which merit derives from winning something measurable), there is not even a hint of competition in the ad. In fact, the ad enforces a strict pecking order that each of the four men embraces openly and happily. The hierarchy has the comedian as low man on the totem pole, while the aging white male, Arnold Palmer, is the top dog, followed by Bosh the greatest athlete among the bunch and then Vickers.

In a single minute, the commercial packs a large number of visual and verbal cues that tell us that Arnie is the leader and hero and that this small society has a rigid hierarchy:

•  At the end of the commercial, the four sit together in a golf cart in pecking order, Palmer  closest to us, followed by Bosh, Vickers and Nealon.
•  Bosh passes a helmet behind his back to Vickers. Nealon says “Nice pass” in open admiration.
• Two practical jokes are played on Nealon, the non-athlete, one by Vickers, the least athletic of the athletes. It’s a jovial version of what happens on many teams—the weakest starter is frequently the “bad ass” to the non-starters, who represent the greatest threat to his/her status. Note that it is the non-athlete, who probably has the greatest verbal skills, to serve as the buffoon.
• Palmer appears to be giving Bosh advice, and when Bosh hits a good shot, Palmer compliments the basketball player, who beams like a little kid whom the coach has just complimented.
• As they drive in carts from one hole to the next, Palmer and Bosh drive in the head cart, followed by Vickers and Nealon.
• At the narrative denouement of the commercial, all eyes are on Palmer in open, almost cloying admiration, as he makes a putt.

The good will and friendly joking between the four men makes for a light-hearted commercial, but the hierarchy by which this micro-society rules itself manifests itself in every shot. We can describe this pecking order in three ways: 1) By money made; 2) By quality of the athlete; 3) By importance of the sport to American culture.

Yet, by any of these measures, except perhaps importance of the sport, the creators of the ad appear to break ranks by putting Arnold Palmer first.

But it makes perfect sense for everyone to be looking up to Palmer as the leader if we consider the Xarelto commercial as an idealized version of the traditional image of the Republican Party—rich and connected people who in their own minds got to the top by being better than others, with the richest, oldest white guy at the summit. No testosterone explosion. No bullying (except the mild twitting of the comic). No over-the-top statements.  Everyone knows his place, and it’s always a good place to be. It’s the kind of world the Republicans would love to install, although most would like the role of Palmer to go to someone other than “The Donald” or “Lyin’ Ted”.

Just like Republican utopia, the world of the Xarelto commercial is missing a lot of things. For example, we don’t learn about the awful side effects that have led to a large number of lawsuits against the makers of Xarelto. That kind of reminds me of the bad side effects of lowering taxes on the wealthy, making it harder to unionize and reducing environmental, health and safety regulations that Republicans never mention. The Xarelto world also exists without greens keepers, caddies, waiters and other members of the working class.

Finally, the Xarelto world also lacks women. I imagine they’re either getting a bikini wax or baking pies.

Editorial: Time to Reopen Cuba

President Obama went a long way toward dismantling the failed embargo of commerce with Cuba with his trip to the communist-governed island.

“I am here to bury the last remnants of the Cold War in the Americas. I am here to extend a hand of friendship to the Cuban people,” Obama said in an eloquent speech in Havana that was broadcast live to the island nation March 22.

Obama noted that there are still opponents to normalizing relations between the two nations. The key reason why he supports ending the 54-year-old embargo, he said, is because it isn’t working. “A policy of isolation designed for the Cold War made little sense in the 21st century,” Obama said. “The embargo was only hurting the Cuban people instead of helping them. And I’ve always believed in what Martin Luther King, Jr. called ‘the fierce urgency of now’ — we should not fear change, we should embrace it.”

“Creo en el pueblo cubano,” Obama said, Spanish for “I believe in the Cuban people.” But he also has to get Congress to believe.

Predictably, Republicans first criticized Obama’s decision to go to Cuba and then criticized his decision to remain in Cuba in the wake of the terrorist bombings in Brussels, but Obama was right to push back at the reactionaries. He noted that cutting short his trip would have played into the terrorists’ hands.

“It’s always a challenge when you have a terrorist attack anywhere in the world, particularly in this age of 24/7 news coverage,” Obama told ESPN at the top of the third inning in an historic baseball game in Havana between Major League Baseball’s Tampa Bay Rays and the Cuban national team March 22. “You want to be respectful and understand the gravity of the situation, but the whole premise of terrorism is to try to disrupt people’s ordinary lives.”

Acknowledging the calls to go back to the US or Brussels to lead, Obama shared what he called one of his proudest moments as president — when Boston Red Sox designated hitter David Ortiz told fans in a pre-game speech following the Boston marathon bombing: “This is our f***ing city and nobody is going to dictate our freedom. Stay strong.”

“Probably the only time America didn’t have a problem with somebody cursing on live TV was when he talked about Boston and how strong it was and wasn’t gonna be intimidated,” Obama said. “That is the kind of resilience and the kind of strength that we have to continually show in the face of these terrorists. They cannot defeat America.”

Hours after the game, in which Tampa Bay defeated Cuba 4-1, Politico noted that Donald Trump tweeted that Obama “should leave the baseball game in Cuba immediately & get home to Washington- where a #POTUS, under a serious emergency belongs!”

But Obama had departed the game long before the final out, traveling to his next stop in Argentina.

Cruz No Improvement Over Trump

After the attacks in Belgium, Ted Cruz said, “We need to empower law enforcement to patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods before they become radicalized.” He also reiterated his call to “carpet bomb ISIS into oblivion,” which 1) it would be a war crime and 2) could put a strain on our allies since it appears that the Brussels bombers were Belgian or French nationals.

Cruz’s blowhard reaction to the Brussels bombings showed that Republican leaders’ rallying around him in a desperate attempt to stop Donald Trump from getting the GOP nomination amounts to trading one dangerous charlatan for another. It probably is too late, anyway, since Trump picked up another 58 delegates from Arizona on March 22, giving him 738 of the 1,237 delegates he needs for the nomination with 18 states to go. Cruz got 20 from Utah, which left him with 463. John Kasich stands way back at 143.

Republicans should take a long look at Cruz’s radical concept of “religious liberty,” which does not necessarily extend to all Christians, much less non-Christian religions — or atheism.

John Fea of Religion News Service wrote in the Washington Post Feb. 4 that Trump appeals to evangelicals connected with the Christian prosperity movement, a form of evangelicalism that celebrates the accumulation of wealth as a sign of God’s blessing.

Cruz resonates with the evangelical culture warriors. He believes that he is engaged in a fight with the devil for the soul of the nation. It is only a matter of time before Cruz assumes the role of the Old Testament prophet Elijah and tries to cast down fire from heaven to destroy the “prophets of Baal” who oppose his campaign, Fea noted.

“Anyone who has watched Cruz on the stump knows that he often references the important role that his father, traveling evangelist Rafael Cruz, has played in his life,” Fea wrote. “During a 2012 sermon at New Beginnings Church in Bedford, Texas, Rafael Cruz described his son’s political campaign as a direct fulfillment of biblical prophecy.”

Rafael Cruz and Larry Huch, the pastor of New Beginnings, preach a brand of evangelical theology called Seven Mountains Dominionism. They believe Christians must take dominion over seven aspects of culture: family, religion, education, media, entertainment, business and government.

Cruz is not interested in crafting new models of American pluralism to respond to the country’s ever-growing religious diversity. Rather, religious liberty is a code word for defending the right of Christians to continue to hold cultural authority and privilege, Fea wrote.

Cruz does not use the terms “dominionism” or “seven mountains” when he is campaigning, Fea wrote. But he has never publicly rejected these beliefs.

It’s hard to tell whether Trump or Cruz believe their own demagoguery, but it doesn’t speak well for either of them that we hope they’re fooling.

Bern On

Hillary Clinton has a commanding lead in the race for the Democratic nomination, but Bernie Sanders hasn’t given up, nor should he. On March 22, Sanders won two states, Idaho and Utah, while Clinton won Arizona. The corporate news media portrayed it as another good night for Clinton, because she won the biggest prize, Arizona, in a contest that was decided relatively early, but Sanders picked up 73 delegates that day, while Clinton got only 55. So Bernie won the night — though he didn’t get much credit because the Idaho and Utah caucus results came in after the late news and the Brussels bombing that same day was getting more coverage anyway.

A week earlier, Clinton was credited with sweeping the five states at play on March 15 (Politico called it “a five-state rout”). In fact Sanders effectively tied Clinton in Missouri; Clinton narrowly outpolled him 49.6% to 49.4% in the Show Me state but they split the state’s 68 delegates evenly.

In Illinois, Clinton won 50.5% to 48.7% and split the state’s delegates 76-73. Sanders did get drummed in Florida, North Carolina and Ohio, where Clinton won delegates by 136-67, 59-45 and 81-62, respectively, but Sanders was competitive in all three states, particularly among white men and younger voters. Clinton’s strength among white women and black and Latino voters helped her carry the day, according to CNN exit polls, but Sanders has shown he can attract Latino votes, getting 53% of Latinos in Nevada caucuses.

As of March 23, Clinton has won 18 states and two territories (Guam and Northern Mariana islands) and 1,223 pledged delegates, while Sanders has won 11 states plus Democrats Abroad, with 920 pledged delegates, the New York Times reported. The winner needs 2,383 delegates.

Some Democrats reportedly are pressuring Sanders to ease up on Clinton, but Bernie still has a longshot chance of catching up with Hillary. He can keep Clinton addressing progressive populist issues, which also pumps up the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. That could help elect Democrats to Congress and state legislatures in November. — JMC

From The Progressive Populist, April 15, 2016

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Selections from the April 15, 2016 issue

COVER/Hal Crowther
The elephant’s graveyard 

EDITORIAL
Reopen Cuba; Cruz no improvement; Bern on

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

DON ROLLINS
Kasich calls in a few (million) favors

RURAL ROUTES/Margot McMillen
Agribusiness fighting for unrestricted GMOs

DISPATCHES
Cruz turns to dereg godfather Gramm for financial advice;
McConnell: No new Supreme Court justice without NRA OK;
Alabama blocks local control on minimum wage;
Brussels bombing just one in series;
Court strikes down prison gerymandering;
Use a rain barrel, go to jail;
Climate scientist makes dire warning on sea level, superstorm;
Flint probe blames water crisis on state;
Public interest groups urge FCC to block Charter-Time Warner merger;
Trump got $2B in free media;
Obama gives Cuba taste of free press ....

JILL RICHARDSON
Eating in the dark

EMILY SCHWARTZ GRECO
The Humpty Dumpty party

N. GUNASEKARAN
Robots create ‘technological unemployment’

SETH SANDRONSKY
The rotten core

BOB BURNETT
White men! Go the the end of the line!

WENONAH HAUTER
Path being cleared for bird imports from China

HEALTH CARE/Joan Retsinas
Driving women up the ladder

SAM URETSKY5
Prescription drug uses depend on who you ask

JOHN YOUNG 
Ronnie, Nancy and that gay conversion

WAYNE O’LEARY
Same old same old in Clinton land

JOHN BUELL
Neoliberalism and the ‘free markets’

MARK ANDERSON
Highway bill contains free trade superhighways

BILL JOHNSTON
Feeling the bern

ERIC BLUMBERG
Heaven can’t wait

RANDOLPH HOLHUT
Status quo is job 1 for corporate press

MOVIE REVIEW/Ed Rampell
Last Tango in Kabul 

DONALD KAUL
What would Nancy say?

and more ...

One word to describe voters: not liberal, not conservative, not angry, but “apathetic”

By Marc Jampole

The real question about this year’s electorate is how large a part of it truly seeks a confrontational authoritarian as our next president?  How many people practice racism, condone violence and approve of torture? How large is the population with fascist tendencies?

In other words, what part of the American public has voted for Donald Trump?

Judging from the numbers in a recent Economist article titled “How non-voters blew it,” Trump has gathered relatively few supporters. In no state to hold a primary until now has more than 25% of Republican voters actually gone to the polls and cast a ballot. Even though Republican primary turnout is at its highest since Ronald Reagan swept into office in 1980, only about 17% of eligible Republicans have voted in the primaries so far. Trump has averaged about 38% of the vote, which translates into a little less than 6.5% of all registered Republicans. But Republicans represent only about 28% of all voters, probably a little more in the states already holding primaries. If we extrapolate these numbers across the country, we find that a mere 1.8% of all eligible voters support Donald Trump.

The one word to describe American voters in 2016, is the same one word we can use to describe them virtually every year. That word isn’t “angry” or “frustrated,” not “conservative” or “liberal.” The one word to describe American voters is “apathetic.”

Ted Cruz and John Kasich have gotten an even lower percentage of the total votes than the Donald. Hillary Clinton hasn’t gotten many more votes than Trump, as voter participation in Democratic primaries is down.  If we’re using votes to measure whether any candidate is engaging the public, the answer is that none of the candidates are winning in any state or across the country, not even Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders. With such low voter turnouts, we can’t proclaim anyone who has won a primary a real “winner.”

The real winners in this election season so far are not even “none of the above,” since that outcome would require people to enter voting booths and actually write those words down.

No, the real winners are the fascists like Donald Trump and the oligarchs, who represent about one tenth of one percent of the country, like the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson. Just as in the Germany of the late 1920s and early 1930s, the oligarchs and the fascists share many traits in common—power hungry, obsessional about control, well-funded, prone to lies and misrepresentations, ruthless.

I used to tell the kids on the Little League teams I managed that the only way to guarantee never losing is never to play. But in American politics, the people are losing by not playing. Only when the electorate stays home can fascists like Donald Trump win at the polls. Only when the electorate remains uninvolved can oligarchs manage the voting patterns of legislatures. Only when the electorate prefers ignorance can oligarchs and fascists get away with filling airwaves and bandwidth with their lies.

Two roads for Bernie: 1) Fight to convention; 2) Use funds to support statewide progressives

By Marc Jampole

It’s pretty clear that Hillary Clinton is going to be the Democratic nominee for president of the United States. Bernie Sanders has fought a good, clean fight and in the process has moved the entire Democratic Party leftward. He has also made Hillary a better candidate, forcing her to sharpen her ideas. But Sanders is losing most of the primaries, despite outspending Hillary two to one in some states. The losses in Ohio and Illinois were devastating blows to his campaign. He won’t make up the difference by winning the super-delegates, who overwhelmingly prefer Hillary.

                                 

For the past month I’ve been telling friends that I hoped Hillary would win the nomination by one vote, because that would drive the Democratic Party as far left as possible at this point in history. Something resembling that outcome could only come if Bernie stays in the race, as he has stated is his intention to do. Many pundits and politicos believe that Obama was a stronger candidate in the fall of 2008 because Hillary didn’t leave the race until relatively late.

But I’m beginning to doubt the benefit of Bernie fighting to the convention, mainly because I think there is a much better use for the enormous campaign chest he has accumulated: supporting the most progressive Democrats running for Congress, Senate, governor and other statewide offices across the country.  I’m suggesting that Bernie bow out of the race now and earmark his surplus campaign funds to these local campaigns, which is his right under campaign financing laws.

The most likely Republican nominees, Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, will both send major Republican financial backers running to the exits, which in this case means the local races. Some leading Republicans such as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell have already broadly suggested that they would focus on Senate and Congressional races and pretty much ignore the national race if Trump is the Republican candidate. The Republican establishment is painfully aware that a Trump or Cruz disaster would assuredly lead to the loss of the Senate and may even threaten their gerrymandered dominance in the House of Representatives.

Let’s look at two of the various possible outcomes in November: If Hillary is elected with a Democratic majority in both chambers of Congress, she will be able to move the progressive program forward, which means higher taxes on the wealthy, more investment in mass transit, roads, bridges, education and alternative energy and an improved social safety net. If she wins and the Republicans keep both houses, we will have four more years of legislative dysfunction.  Which will be better for the country?

The one enormous mistake the Democratic Party has made since the turn of the century was to underestimate the importance of the 2010 Congressional races.  By releasing his tens of millions of campaign funds to local candidates who pledge to a progressive, left-looking agenda, Bernie will help the Democratic Party avoid making that mistake again.

The other reason Bernie should throw in the towel is so he can have more time to remind his supporters that they should vote for Hillary and contribute to her campaign. There are indications that some portion of Bernie’s supporters will either sit out the election or vote for Trump because they believe the decades of lies about the Clintons spewed out by the right-wing propaganda machine. On a symbolic level, these are the same people who sat out 2010, voted for Ralph Nader in 2000 and sat out 1968. Bernie can help make sure that these people understand that once again a lot is at stake.

Determining whether Trump or Cruz would be worse for the country reminds me of medieval debates about the number of angels fitting on the head of a pin. They are both so awful as to be unimaginable. Most people know how much electing either of these two mendacious autocrats would hurt the United States. That’s why Hillary will win the election.

It’s time then to start thinking about the type of legislative help and allies in the states our first woman president is going to need. For the better part of six months, progressives have been showing Bernie the love. It’s time for him to give that love back in the form of much needed dollars to elect progressive and left-leaning Democrats to Congress, the Senate and statewide offices all over the country.

NRA and elected officials it buys or intimidates work for gun manufacturers, not gun owners

The other day I saw in person what we all know. Our elected representatives, especially Republicans, often only represent large corporate interests, even if those interests hurt most of the voters and their families.

The issue in question was gun control. I was at a family event in Portland, Oregon for a cousin’s son who lives in Republic, Washington, a town of about 1,000. At a brunch, I asked the men and teenage boys about gun control. They were all hunters and they all owned guns. They were all Republicans, as befits the name of their village.

Now most recent studies show that people who own guns have pretty much the same attitude about gun control as the rest of the country. For example, a Quinnipiac University poll a few years back found that 85% of all gun owners supported universal registration of firearms and only 13% opposed it, pretty close to the 88% in favor and 10% opposed to universal gun registration among the general population.  

The seven or eight I spoke with all wanted universal registration. They had no problem with waiting periods. They supported a national registry of gun owners. They wanted all gun owners to have to take a gun safety course, and they didn’t have a problem with gun licenses. One teenaged boy said that anyone who couldn’t wait three days for a gun shouldn’t have one.

They all agreed that there was no need for people to own automatic and semiautomatic weapons. Wasn’t needed to hunt, wasn’t needed for protection.

I forgot to ask them about open carry laws, which is a shame, because those are some of the most extreme attempts to extend the rights of gun owner to the detriment of the community. I don’t want to put words into the mouths of this articulate group of individuals, but whether or not they liked open carry laws I am guessing that they do not object to gun bans on college campuses, hospitals, stadiums and other areas where large numbers of people gather. It’s only a guess. I’m also pretty sure that this group of conservative gun owners would support research into gun safety.

My anecdotal evidence backs up the surveys and reinforces the case that the National Rifle Association (NRA) represents the interests of gun manufacturers and doesn’t care about either public safety or the wishes of gun owners. By following the NRA’s wish list for legislation, both the craven politicians who kowtow to the NRA for fear that it will run someone against them and the brazen ones who take its money and mouth its lies follow the wishes of gun makers.

It’s a frightfully irresponsible way to play politics, but the preferred modus operandi of virtually every Republican and a fair share of Democrats. On tax policy, job creation, environmental protection, health care, Planned Parenthood, a Supreme Court Justice to replace Scalia and global warming, our Republican elected officials at all levels do not listen to what surveys say their constituents want.

I’m not the first to say that this lack of responsiveness has led angry voters to Donald Trump. That they haven’t been repulsed by Trump’s incitements to violence, his crude, unpresidential comments, his many lies and his authoritarian tendencies befuddles. But that a large slice of Republican voters who don’t own businesses would be pissed off with all elected officials shouldn’t surprise anyone.

Editorial: Trade Ire Boosts Sanders

Bernie Sanders scored an historic upset on March 8 as Michigan voters stood up against neoliberal “free trade” policies that have exported jobs and hollowed out the middle class that the automobile industry helped to create.

Sanders, who had been trailing Hillary Clinton by more than 20 points in some polls the week before the primary, invested nearly $2 million in Michigan and worked hard there. He hammered Clinton on her past support for trade deals that workers believe robbed them of well-paying manufacturing jobs, the New York Times reported. One especially effective ad, according to Sanders’ advisers, portrayed Bernie as the only candidate who had consistently opposed the free trade agreements many Michigan voters blame for job losses.

Donald Trump also has criticized US trade policies as a disaster for working-class Americans, though he has been equivocal about what he’d do about it — generally saying he’d negotiate better deals.

According to CNN, 58% of Democratic voters in exit polls said they believe US trade with other countries takes away US jobs, compared with just 30% who said they believe it creates them, Dave Jamieson noted at HuffingtonPost.com. Among trade critics, Sanders won by a 17-point margin: 58% to Democratic rival Hillary Clinton’s 41%. He won the primary overall by less than two points.

Republican voters were almost as bearish on US trade policy as their Democratic counterparts, Jamieson noted. Fifty-five percent said they believe trade kills US jobs, compared to 32% who said they believe it creates them. Among that group, Trump won twice as many votes as any of his competitors, earning 45% to Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s 22%, Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s 20% and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio’s 9%. Overall, Trump won the Michigan primary with about 36% of votes.

Sanders was buoyed by young voters (he got 81% of the 18-29 vote and 53% of those aged 30-44), working-class white Democrats and independents, who are allowed to vote in party primaries in Michigan. He also cut into the overwhelming support Hillary Clinton has enjoyed from black voters in the South, getting 28% of black Michigan voters, compared with 10% of the black vote in Mississippi. That gives Sanders momentum heading to the March 15 primaries in Florida, Illinois, Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio. Polls show Hillary strong in most of those states — just like she was strong in Michigan. Clinton’s supporters can’t take any of those states for granted, nor can Sanders supporters give up yet.

But Hillary still finished the night of March 8 with 18 more delegates for the day as she swept Mississippi. She now has a 760-546 lead in pledged delegates, needing 2,383 to win.

Markos Moulitsas of DailyKos.com noted that running even with Clinton doesn’t get Sanders any closer to the nomination. And since Democratic contests award their delegates proportionately, it’s much harder for Sanders to make big delegate gains, while Republicans are switching to winner-take-all elections on March 15, so delegate counts can switch dramatically overnight. “And with all three wings of the [Republican] party showing viability (tea party/Trump, religious right/Cruz, and establishment/Kasich), Trump has a very real chance of falling short of 50% of delegates,” Moulitsas wrote. “And wouldn’t a brokered GOP convention be fun?

Hillary has moved to the left in response to the challenge from Sanders, and even though she has come out in opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, working-class Democrats remember that she promoted the “free trade” pact as secretary of state. Her profitable relationship with Wall Street financiers has been a drag on her campaign, and although she has expressed support for Social Security, Medicare, a living wage and improving the Affordable Care Act, Democrats may feel Sanders is much less likely to compromise on those issues that working people and retirees depend upon than centrist Democrats — including President Obama — who have been willing to talk about “bipartisan” deals with Republican congressional leaders.

Sanders found a receptive audience for his criticism of job-killing “free trade” policies in Michigan. Voters also clearly didn’t buy Hillary Clinton’s attempt to smear Sanders at the Flint, Mich., debate as an opponent of the bailout of General Motors and Chrysler based on his vote against the Troubled Asset Relief Program, which bailed out the big banks in 2008 and 2009. Sanders had supported the auto bailout before it was added to the bank bailout, which became a bigger bite than he could stomach — particularly when the bailout ended up going ahead anyway.

Keith Hennessy, who was director of the White House National Economic Council staff for President George W. Bush and was heavily involved in the issue, wrote at keithhennessey.com that Sanders voted on two occasions against TARP bills, on Oct. 1, 2008, and Jan. 15, 2009. At the time of the October 2008 vote, Hennessy said, no one anticipated using TARP funds for the auto industry, so that was not an issue in the October 2008 vote. It was later that Bush and Obama chose to use TARP funds for the auto bailout. When Sanders voted for a resolution to stop the second $350 billion of TARP funds, five days before Obama was inaugurated, Hennessy noted the resolution, which failed 42-52, was meaningless since everyone new that President Bush would have vetoed it if it had passed. “This vote was symbolic, not substantive,” Hennessy wrote.

Hennessy noted that Clinton was technically correct when she said, “If everybody had voted the way he did, I believe the auto industry would have collapsed, taking four million jobs with it.” But in practice, Hennessy wrote, “these votes were symbolic rather than substantive, and they were symbolically about TARP, not auto loans. Only now, in hindsight, can she frame them as having been about the auto industry. I am glad she voted symbolically the way she did, in support of and defense of TARP, and I disapprove of Senator Sanders’ no vote. But it is absurd for her to claim both that with this vote Senator Sanders chose not to help the auto industry, and that this January no vote could have had any practical negative effect on Michigan.”

But politics ain’t beanbag; Clinton spoke carefully, if misleadingly: “I voted to save the auto industry. He voted against the money that ended up saving the auto industry. I think that is a pretty big difference.” And Sanders should have anticipated Clinton’s manipulation of his votes on the auto bailout and he should have had a better answer prepared for the Flint debate. It’s a tribute to Michigan voters that they didn’t fall for Clinton’s misdirection.

Whether or not Sanders can catch up with Clinton, the race has been good for the Democrats and has improved both candidates. But it also shows all Congress members that “free trade” is an explosive issue that can make or break a politician.

President Obama ran for president in 2008 promising to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement. Instead, Obama’s trade representative negotiated the Trans-Pacific Partnership with the US and 11 other Pacific Rim countries.

After seven years of closed-door negotiations, again excluding union, environmental and consumer advocates from the talks, but including the multinational corporate lobbyists, the final TPP text was released last November. “In chapter after chapter, the final text is worse than expected, with the demands of 500 official US trade advisers representing corporate interests satisfied to the detriment of the public interest.The text reveals that the pact replicates many of the most controversial terms of past pacts that promote job offshoring and push down US wages,” Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch reports.

The speculation is that Obama will send the TPP to Congress to be voted on in the “lame duck” session after the November election, under “fast track” rules that require an up-or-down vote without amendments or filibuster. Unions and other concerned groups should make it clear that any Democratic member of Congress who votes for the TPP will face a primary challenger at the next available opportunity. If Tea Party supporters really are interested in protecting American sovereignty, they should make a similar threat on the other side of the aisle.

We generally like President Obama, but on this issue Democrats should respectfully say “no.” — JMC

From The Progressive Populist, April 1, 2016

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Selections from the April 1, 2016 issue

COVER/Heather Digby Parton
No denying Trump’s campaign of racism 

EDITORIAL
Trade ire boosts Sanders
.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

DON ROLLINS
Jim Brown’s cloudy skies

RURAL ROUTES/Margot McMillen
Farmers need to make a living

DISPATCHES
Republicans continue Court obstruction;
Iran: GOP tried to stall prisoner exchange;
Dem chair seeks to relax consumer protections on payday loans;
Low-tax states have lowest economic growth;
Jindal’s anti-tax fervor cripples La.;
Brownback's budget plan failing;
Dems keep control of Ky. House

MARK ANDERSON
If ketchup were blood

MATTHEW ROSZA
This Democratic civil war is going to end

JOHN YOUNG
All right Mitch, the people will have their say

LEO GERARD
Lights go out at Lorain Steel Mill

KARL FRISCH
Who would ever agree to be Trump’s VP?

BOB BURNETT
Clinton vs. Trump: First impressions

HEALTH CARE/Joan Retsinas
Poor programs for poor people

SAM URETSKY
Econ wonks spar over Sanders proposals

GRASSROOTS/Hank Kalet
Sanders right on free tuition, but wrong argument

WAYNE O’LEARY
Health care’s line in sand

JOHN BUELL
Scalia and SCOTUS coups, past and present

BOOK REVIEW/Seth Sandronsky
Tri-national inegration
’
ROB PATTERSON
Get smart TV

ED RAMPELL
Progies honor movies with left themes

DONALD KAUL
The elephant in the race

and more ...

Word to GOP candidates: you don’t need a penis to be President

By Marc Jampole

At a certain point in last night’s debate between the remaining four Republican candidates I thought Donald Trump was going to whip out a ruler and then whip out something else and start measuring.

I imagine that Republican demi-god Ronald Reagan, stealing from an old Russian proverb, would respond to Trump’s claim that “I guarantee you there's no problem. I guarantee,” by saying, “Trust but verify.”

Doth the lady protest too much? (This time it’s Shakespeare providing the one-liner.)

Trump, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and John Kasich could have settled the question of male dominance the old Cub Scout way: Line up, unzip, aim and see who can piss farther.

All jokes aside, that the question of the size of anyone’s penis should be a topic of discussion at a presidential debate of a major political party demonstrates how debased the American election process has become. Rubio sank into a slime pit of vulgarity in his speech that brought up the topic and Trump sank further down by responding specifically to Rubio’s crude remark during a nationally televised debate.

Of course, the Fox News troika of inquisitors were more interested in finding out about how the candidates felt about the accusations of other candidates than they were in issues and experience. That played right into the hands of the Donald, who preferred to insult other candidates than to answer questions about his past business dealings, his contracts with foreign manufacturers and his fuzzy math. In a series of charts at the beginning of the debate, Chris Wallace revealed that Trump’s tax plan could never succeed.

Every candidate lied last night, at least once and sometimes multiple times. Kasich lied when he took credit for the balanced budgets of the 1990s, which were a result of the Bush I and Clinton tax increases. Cruz lied when he said he could get rid of the Internal Revenue Service. Rubio lied when he said that stricter gun laws don’t make people safer. Trump—he lied about everything that we can verify and remain within the boundaries of good taste.

Word to the Republicans: Not only does size not matter when it comes to running the country, you don’t even have to have a penis. Yes, Donald, Marco and Ted, even women can serve in the nation’s highest office.

The hidden message in the talk between “Little Boy” Rubio and The Hands of the Donald was the retrograde idea that a president must be a man.  Size serves as a stand-in for a wide range of related leadership qualities often seen as positive in men and negative in women: firm, resolute, action-oriented, aggressive, dominance-seeking. This subtle swipe at Hillary Clinton attempts to disqualify her on the basis of her sex.

That only a man can be a president is an obsolete idea that never had an iota of validity, but it is definitely part of the subtext of the current election. 

Still unanswered is whether or not Rubio, Trump and the other GOP candidates believe the old wives tale that the size of hands predicts the size of the male member. We know that none of them can do math and we know that they have reading comprehension problems, at least as it relates to 18th century documents such as the Constitution. We also know they subscribe to a duffel bag of myths and folklore related to the free market, climate change, evolution, LGTBQ individuals and women’s health.

For those more interested in the real world and real issues, I recommend that you tune into the upcoming debates between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. Or better yet, listen to either perform at a town hall meeting, where they have time to detail their positions. Both Hillary and Bernie demonstrate the presidential qualities sadly lacking in the Republican clown car.

Take time out from presidential politics to urge elected officials to vote for Genocide & Atrocities Prevention Act

By Marc Jampole

Strange as it might seem, we can predict genocides and other atrocities committed against groups of our fellow humans with a certain degree of accuracy. Those who pursue genocides—be it a totalitarian ruler, army, political party, tribe or nation—give off a lot of signs ahead of time. Harbingers include past ethnic tensions, persistent conflict, lawlessness, sporadic outbreaks, threats against groups, mass property confiscation, mass media campaigns and displaced populations.

By intervening early, the nations of the world can prevent atrocities from occurring by using diplomatic, political, financial, and intelligence resources. The biggest impediment to precluding a mass murder or rape rampage before the shooting and herding begin is the difficulty in coordinating the various sources of information and aid needed to identify and then address the situations that could develop into genocides or other atrocities. As the world’s largest economy, second largest democracy (after India) and most powerful military machine, the United States could play a large role in preventing future atrocities.

That’s why we should all take time from wallowing in the presidential election follies to get behind the Genocide and Atrocities Prevention Act of 2016, recently introduced by Senator Ben Cardin (D-Md.) and Senator Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) and co-sponsored by 13 other Democratic Senators.

As Senator’s Cardin’s news release announcing the bill details, if passed the Genocide and Atrocities Prevention Act would:

• Authorize the establishment of a transparent and accountable Atrocity Prevention Board to advance an interagency effort to prevent mass atrocities and ensure a coordinated and effective response to emerging and ongoing atrocities.
• Make permanent the Complex Crises Fund to support emergency efforts to prevent or respond to emerging or unforeseen complex crises overseas, including potential mass atrocities and conflict.
• Mandate training in how to recognize patterns of escalation and early warning signs of potential atrocities or violence for Department of State and USAID Foreign Service officers at high risk posts.
• Encourage the Director of National Intelligence to include a review of countries or regions at risk of mass atrocities or genocide in her-his annual testimony to Congress on threats to US national security

Besides the 15 Senators, more than 60 organizations support the legislation, including groups representing Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Africans, immigrants, refugees, Armenians, peaceniks and students. A petition that these groups have signed makes the case for the new law better than I ever could: “Preventing genocide and mass atrocities is…a core national security interest of the United States. Right now, over 60 million people have been displaced by conflict worldwide - the highest number since World War II. This has required growing expenditures to support life-saving humanitarian assistance and has led to other cost-intensive interventions. These crises have also resulted in increased instability with long-term consequences for countries and regions around the world, feeding into the possibility for repeated and expanded cycles of violence. These threats to U.S. security and interests can be mitigated with robust investments in early prevention.”

The world sat by and watched Armenia, the Holocaust, Darfur, Bosnia, Rwanda and other atrocities occur, to its shame. Early intervention might have stopped at least a few of these outbreaks of savagery. 

What are you waiting for, dear readers! Email or contact your Senators and Congressional Representatives and tell them to actively support the Genocide and Atrocities Prevention Act.

While you’re at it, let Bernie and Hillary know that you want their active support of the bill. I would also ask readers to contact the Republican candidates, but the fact that they all support torture and conflict escalation suggests that none of the GOP candidates will make a bill that could forestall atrocities a very high priority.

Rightwing columnist Douthat blaming Obama for the rise of Trump is like blaming Pres for Iraq War.

By Marc Jampole

A premise is something we take for granted. Premises are usually at the basis of arguments or theories, and sometimes of substantial bodies of knowledge, such as the premise that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, which serves as the foundation of linear geometry.

An inaccurate premise will get a writer or thinker into trouble in a hurry. Hewing to a wrong-headed premise leads to complicated and generally fuzzy arguments, often based on semantics, logical flaws and the distortion of facts. 

Take (please) the premise that everything that goes wrong in the United States is the fault of government, or Democrats or both. This premise has led to some truly bizarre arguments, such as:

• Blaming federal agencies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for the great recession of 2008 because they made too much money available for low-interest mortgages. This explanation ignores the fact that these federal agencies did not approve mortgages with little or no documentation for people with insufficient funds, nor did they sell bundles of these faulty loans knowing the securities were much riskier than advertised, nor did they rate these securities without sufficient due diligence.
• Blaming the Clinton Administration for 9/11, even though we have plenty of proof that our security services were receiving lots of warnings of 9/11 in the summer before it happened, which the Bush II administration chose to ignore.
• Blaming Obama for the rise of ISIS, even though it was the Bush II administration that destabilized the region by invading Iraq, without cause as it turns out.

One of the New York Times resident conservatives, Ross Douthat, joins in the false blame game in his article titled “From Obama to Trump”. His contention is that Obama is largely to blame for the rise of Donald Trump, for two reasons:

1. Obama created the “celebrity presidency”
2. Obama has exercised an imperial presidency, which has accustomed voters to Trump’s strong man declarations

Republicans started comparing Obama to a celebrity during the 2008 election. Somehow the endorsement of Obama by Oprah Winfrey, Sarah Silverman and other actors and celebrities was different from past celebrity endorsements of presidential candidates. Douthat ignores the fact that an actor served as president for eight year or that John F. Kennedy was considered close to a group of celebrities called “The Rat Pack,” famous for their womanizing, boozing, sexism and boorish behavior. He neglects the many histories of the Goldwater campaign, which mark a speech by a celebrity—Ronald Reagan—as its high point. He forgets that Lauren Bacall, Warren Beatty, Goldie Hawn, Burt Lancaster, Shirley MacLaine, Paul Newman, Jack Nicholson, Linda Ronstadt and James Taylor were all active supporters of George McGovern. What is it about Obama’s celebrity supporters that creates such a difference? Why were McGovern, Reagan, Kennedy and others not celebrity candidates or celebrity officer holders and Obama is one? Could it be because he and a few of those celebrity supporters are black? 

Beyond the facts of the various celebrity endorsements that have litter presidential campaigns since World War II, is the change in focus in the coverage of elections that has occurred. Since the 1960 election of John Kennedy with fewer than 50% of the vote, the news media have gradually taken the focus of their election coverage away from issues and placed it on the same concerns that dominate celebrity news: Gotcha’s and mistakes. Personality clashes. What others think. Family life. Hobbies. Speaking style. Charisma. Skeletons in the closet. Long-time grievances and jealousies. Insulting other candidates. The latest popularity contest. The race for money. In every election, ever more time and space is devoted to “celebrity issues” and ever less time to economic, social, international and environmental issues. Moreover, since the turn of century, at the same time the media has been celebritizing our news, reality TV in all of its formats has grown to dominate broadcast and cable television. 

Douthat ignores all of these facts to conclude that the rise of a boorish celebrity who has never run for office could not have occurred without Obama’s so-called celebrity presidency. 

The accusation that Obama has created an imperial presidency is equally ludicrous, but it’s one we are hearing with ever greater frequency by Republicans. The contention is that Obama has made a number of power grabs by using expanded executive authority to launch wars without congressional approval and make domestic policy without congressional support. The right never complained about Republican imperial presidencies, and in fact, spent a lot of energy defending the imperial disasters of Republican presidents, such as Iran-Contra, Bush II’s Iraq War and the global American torture gulag. For their part, Democrats tend to complain about Republican presidential overreach.

The concern that the president has amassed too much power goes back at least to Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Jackson. No president ever received more criticism for acting as if he owned the country than FDR did. In general, the presidency has had too much power since at least the end of World War II. To blame Obama for presidential overreach and then say that’s why we seem willing to accept a narcissistic proto-fascist is absurd. The American people are quite used to a president who acts on his own. 

I have no idea why Trump is so popular, just as I have no idea why people watch reality shows like “Survivor” and “The Apprentice,” why people prefer Las Vegas to New York City, why so many people found Bush II likeable or why everyone said the notecard-reading Ronald Reagan beat the encyclopedically knowledgeable and analytically brilliant Jimmy Carter in their debate. In my mind, Trump was always a garish and womanizing buffoon who defined the term celebrity: someone who is famous for nothing more than being famous. 

We should keep in mind that Trump is the favorite candidate of somewhere between 35-40% of all Republican voters, who represent a mere 26% of the electorate. At most the informal party of Trump comprises about 10 % of all voters. In other words, an ignorant and angry fringe is hijacking a divided Republican Party, but that party has spent eight years fomenting anger at government, society and our president. For years Republicans have fanned the fires of racism, sexism and resentment of the other. The rightwing media has promoted a series of lies about science, health issues, the environment and economic theory to its millions of viewers. If Douthat is really interested in assessing the conditions that have created the probability that a vulgar, name-calling liar like Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee for president, he should look to the Grand Old Party itself.