Editorial: Keep Up the Good Fight

Bernie Sanders will keep his campaign for president going until the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, but he knows how to count. Hillary Clinton has outpolled Sanders by more than three million votes in Democratic primaries; she won a majority of states, including most of those that are expected to be battlegrounds in the general election; and she gained a majority of pledged delegates during the primary process. The pledged delegate count was 2,203 for Clinton and 1,828 for Sanders, with another 45 to be distributed in the final primary in D.C. on June 14. And Clinton has the support of a large majority of superdelegates, the party officials who will carry Clinton her over the threshold of 2,383 needed to win the nomination in Philadelphia in late July.

On Meet the Press June 12, Sanders said he looked forward to meeting with Clinton and discussing “whether she will be vigorous in standing up for working families in the middle class, moving aggressively in climate change, health care for all, making public colleges and universities tuition-free … After we have that kind of discussion, and after we can determine whether or not we are going to have a strong and progressive platform,” he said, “I will be able to make other decisions.”

Sanders had started laying off about half of his campaign staff after the June 7 primaries, in which Clinton won four of six states, including California and New Jersey, and got 391 delegates while Sanders got 303. Sanders wants to keep his progressive movement alive and have an impact at the convention July 25-28, with his delegates seeking to write progressive initiatives into the party platform and changing the rules to make it easier for insurgent candidates to run in the future.

Many Sanders supporters are resisting the calls of Democratic officials to unify behind Clinton, but that resistance should erode as Sanders supporters examine the differences between Clinton and Donald Trump, who has used economic populist rhetoric to appeal to working-class voters but whose business record shows disdain, if not contempt, toward workers, small businesses, minorities and women, as well as his penchant for lying, documented by PolitiFact.

Sanders has been successful in promoting issues dear to the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. He has even helped rehabilitate the name of socialism, as a New York Times/CBS News poll in November 2015 found that 56% of Democratic primary voters said they felt positive about socialism as a governing philosophy while. 29% took a negative view. Even Clinton supporters approved of socialism, 52% to 32%.

Going into the Democratic convention, Hillary Clinton should accommodate Sanders’ progressive positions and make it clear that she is not conceding the working-class voters to Trump and the Republicans. And despite Sanders’ criticism of Clinton’s friendliness to Wall Street contributors, she had a relatively progressive record as a senator from 2001 to 2009. The DW-Nominate analysis of voting records by political scientists Keith Poole and Howard Rosenthal shows Sanders is among the most liberal members of the Senate, but Clinton ranked 11th most liberal in each of the four Congresses in which she served, PHenry noted at DailyKos.com in March 2015. Clinton was slightly to the left of Pat Leahy (D-Vt.), Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.). Barack Obama ranked 23rd most liberal in the 110th Congress (2007-09).

Some white workers may fall for Trump’s line that he wants to make America great again, but they should be aware that Republicans refuse to pay what it costs to maintain that greatness — in funding for public schools and universities to train a new generation of workers, while putting the current jobless back to work rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure that used to be the envy of the world and building clean energy systems that will prevent the planet from being burned to a crisp before our grandchildren qualify for Social Security — assuming Republicans don’t manage to finally dismantle that jewel of the New Deal.

And Republicans certainly don’t want workers to join unions and bargain collectively so that they can share in the productivity gains that have gone almost entirely to corporate executives and shareholders for the past 40 years. That’s why wages have remained stagnant and the middle class is being squeezed out of existence.

The more Bernie continues to push Hillary to adopt progressive positions that will appeal to the working class, the better for Democrats and the left.

Take Down the Haters’ Firepower

Opportunists seeking to make hay from the Orlando, Fla., massacre ranged from the “Islamic State,” which claimed credit for the attack on the nightclub although the jihadists apparently never heard of the shooter before the deed, to Donald Trump, who blames Muslims for failing to turn in the extremists in their midst and called on President Obama to resign if he failed to blame the attack on “radical Islamic terrorism.” (Obama called the assault “an act of terror,” which would be fully investigated, but focused his remarks chiefly on the loss of lives.)

Omar Mateen’s father said his son (who was born in New York) may have been motivated by his anger at seeing gay men kissing each other in public. If he was a radical Islamic terrorist, he apparently had a lot in common with radical Christians who believe the Bible prescribes death for homosexuals.

In November 2015, homophobic pastor Kevin Swanson hosted Republican presidential candidates Bobby Jindal, Mike Huckabee and Ted Cruz at the right-wing National Religious Liberties Conference in Des Moines, Iowa. Before he introduced Cruz, Swanson noted, “Yes, Leviticus 20:13 calls for the death penalty for homosexuals. Yes, the Apostle Paul does say that homosexuals are worthy of death! His words, not mine!”

Swanson’s homophobia was well-known prior to the conference, Right Wing Watch noted, but that didn’t stop the Republican candidates from showing up to seek his approval.

And if the attack on the gay nightclub in Orlando qualified as a terrorist attack, so was the June 17, 2015, massacre in a Charleston, S.C. church where a white supremacist, Dylann Storm Roof, is charged with killing nine blacks, including the pastor, during a prayer meeting at the 200-year-old Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. Roof reportedly was trying to spark a race war, but Republicans are silent on siccing the FBI on predominantly Christian white supremacist groups.

Mateen was investigated at least twice by the FBI for possible terrorist connections, but the feds apparently were unable to make a criminal case against him, so while he may have been placed on the terrorist watch list, he was still eligible to buy a semiautomatic assault rifle, high-capacity magazines and a pistol the week before his attack on the nightclub.

Since December 2012, when a gunman walked into Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., with an assault rifle and and killed 20 children, six adults, and himself, there have been at least 1,000 mass shootings in the US, killing at least 1,140 people and wounding 3,942 more, Vox.com reported. And that’s just a fraction of America’s total firearm deaths, which run more than 32,000 each year. The US has way more gun violence than its peers: According to United Nations data compiled in 2012, the US had 2.97 firearm homicides per 100,000 people, while Switzerland had 0.77, Canada 0.51, France 0.06 and Germany had 0.19.

Last December Republicans rejected, 45-54, an effort to block individuals on the terror watch list from purchasing firearms. Some Republicans complained that it gave too much authority to federal agents who compile those lists. If they don’t want to block gun sales to people who are suspected of criminal or terrorist intentions, but have not been convicted of a felony or violent misdemeanor, or have not been diagnosed as mentally unfit, Congress should at least reinstate the ban on assault weapons and/or large-capacity magazines, to limit the damage that a deranged person can inflict. — JMC

From The Progressive Populist, July 1-15, 2016

---

Populist.com

Blog | Current Issue | Back Issues | Essays | Links
About the Progressive Populist | How to Subscribe | How to Contact Us

---

Copyright © 2016 The Progressive PopulistPO Box 819, Manchaca TX 78652

Selections from the July 1-15, 2016 issue

COVER/Daniel Denvir
White working class gets no respect

EDITORIAL
Keep up the good fight; Take down the haters’ firepower

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

DON ROLLINS
Kasich back to being Kasich

RURAL ROUTES/Margot McMillen
Big ag creates big problems

DISPATCHES
Vast majority of Dems back major Sanders role;
Coal & gas to begin ‘terminal decline’ in less than a decade;
Vulnerable GOP sens endorse Trump, voters not happy;
Trump claims Orlando shooter was foreign born (from same borough as Tump);
AR-15 weapon of choice for mass murder;
Repubs accused of leaking info on fetal tissue researchers;
Clinton and Sanders ads remained positive;
Blue Cross seeks 60% rate hike in Texas;
New GOP health plan would gut health reform;
Trump pee-pees on fair trade promise;
Texas inmate freed after 22 years on Death Row ...

JILL RICHARDSON
Our immigration policies are ridiculous

JOHN YOUNG
Can’t swallow ‘climate action’? Do right anyway

ERIC BLUMBERG
Two for the price of one

ROBERT BOROSAGE
Clinton makes history; Sanders struggle continues

GRASSROOTS/Hank Kalet
Cult of personality

JOSEPH B. ATKINS
French support for Mississippi autoworkers

BOB BURNETT
The Hillary problem

WENONAH HAUTER
I wrote a book the fracking industry doesn’t want you to read

MARK ANDERSON
New money is needed to close income gaps

HEALTH CARE/Joan Retsinas
Phantasmagoria, USA

SAM URETSKY
Robots are good for profits, bad for workers

WAYNE O’LEARY
Be careful what you wish for

JOHN BUELL
Krugman annotated

SETH SANDRONSKY
Book review: Contemporary imperialism

FR. DONNELL KIRCHNER
Presidential candidates and virtue ethics

ROB PATTERSON
‘The Apprentice’ nominee

MOVIES/Ed Rampell
The bad neighbor policy

WILL DURST
It’s come down to Hillary or Trump

and more ...

Is Trump trying to dump the election? Or is he just one crazy, if lucky, narcissist?

By Marc Jampole 

Lately I’ve been wondering if Donald Trump is trying to lose the election.

Maybe he started running as a way to burnish his brand, similar to what Ben Carson evidently was doing. What he wanted to do was raise his awareness, especially among the uneducated, so he could continue to place his name on dubious ventures and sell them to his public at inflated prices.

But then things got out of hand and he found himself alone in what pundits called the “establishment lane,” with every other candidate tacking to the extreme right on social issues, tax and spending policies, Social Security, healthcare and foreign affairs. While Trump jumped to the right of them when it comes to immigration and articulated with extreme explicitness the racism which GOP regulars have whispered in code for 40 years, on many issues he was much more centrist than any of the candidates to whom the news media affixed the “establishment” label. No one said he was in the establishment lane, but take a look at who has won the last two Republican nominations—the most centrist-looking candidates of their election cycle, although both McCain and Romney, just like Trump, advocated lowering taxes even more on the wealthy. No one called Trump establishment, but the relative centrality of many of his positions appealed to Republican voters as much as his outrageous statements and ultra-nationalist and isolationist trade and immigration proposals.

Trump now finds himself as the presumptive candidate and maybe he doesn’t want the daily stress and hassles of the presidency. Maybe he realizes he bit off more than he could chew. Or maybe, like Rubio, Cruz and many other candidates from both sides of the aisle, Trump likes running a lot more than he likes governing.

Whatever the reason, his recent actions have me thinking that he’s throwing the race to Hillary. (And thank goodness for that, since the choice is between a sociopathic narcissist who has failed at many business ventures and perhaps the most qualified candidate in the history of the country.)

How else do you explain him accusing American soldiers as a group of stealing millions of dollars from the army that they were supposed to distribute in Iraq? In one fell swoop, he has alienated active military and veterans alike, groups that should inherently favor the Republican, no matter who he (or hypothetically “she”) may be. It may be the first time ever in history that a candidate for office on any level in any country has maligned soldiers. Not generals, not war leaders, but dogfaces in the field!

And how else can you explain his terrible two-ish temper tantrum against Judge Gonzalo Curiel that lasted a week? Or his pulling the media credentials from media outlets that piss him off, thereby establishing himself as an opponent of free speech? Or his insults of other Republicans who have not fallen in line behind his candidacy?

How else do you explain Trump intimating that Obama is surreptitiously helping the terrorists? Remember that eight years ago when an audience member made a scurrilous accusation about candidate Obama, John McCain immediately corrected the benighted fellow and said that Obama was a patriotic American with whom the Senator happened to disagree. It’s the kind of irresponsible accusation that upsets a lot of right-looking independents and centrist-looking Republicans.

And how else do you explain his lunatic and racist statement that if we had not let the father of the Orlando killer into the country, the killer would not have been in Florida to shoot up a gay night club? This kind of logic would lead to the deportation not just of a generation of new Americans, but of virtually everyone whose ancestors immigrated here. Can’t be too safe!

These recent comments and the strong responses by Hillary Clinton, Elizabeth Warren and President Obama have sent Trump’s negatives higher than any candidate of any major party has had in U.S. history. The latest polls show Hillary’s lead growing on him. Meanwhile, more Republicans are distancing themselves from the Donald. Some like Kasich have reiterated their lack of support. Others like Senator Mark Kirk and Representative Bob Dold have rescinded prior endorsements. Bernie Sanders has brought a tremendous number of new voters into the Democratic Party and Hillary shows every signs of doing what it takes to make them happy. I’m the only one saying it now, but I think it’s shaping up to be a Democratic sweep—presidency, Senate and the gerrymandered House.

And yet.

The Orlando tragedy has fortuitously provided Trump with an opportunity to make a tremendous grandstand play that could convince the unsophisticated that he can engineer deals to grow the economy and protect us from terrorism.

As you may know, Republicans have repeatedly blocked legislation that would prevent people on the “no-fly” list of those suspected of having terrorist connections from buying or owning guns.  It looks as if a “no fly, no gun” law would have prevented the Orlando killer from buying the weapon he used to assassinate 49 people and injure scores of others. “No fly, no gun” legislation was one of the two bills for which Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy and other Democrats filibustered this week, the other being extending background checks and waiting periods to guns purchased at shows and on the Internet. Not up for consideration is a reinstatement of the ban on assault rifles such as the ones used by the Orlando nightclub and Newtown elementary school massacres.

At this point, it’s anyone’s guess whether these basic, common sense gun safety measures will pass the Senate, let alone the House. It depends upon how many Republicans dare to cross the National Rifle Association (NRA).

Believe it or not, Trump has come out in favor of a “no fly, no gun” law. He is scheduled to meet with the NRA in a few days and he says he is going to talk to them about a “no fly, no gun” proposal. What if, after the meeting, the NRA announces that it has dropped its opposition to “no fly, no gun” and Trump takes credit for negotiating a deal that passes legislation which 90% of all Americans, including most gun owners, want? Wouldn’t Trump say that it proves that his master negotiation skills can solve the country’s problems?

With Republican candidates already weakened by the Trump candidacy, many GOP incumbents, especially in blue and purple states, must be feeling the heat for their recalcitrant positions regarding gun legislation that most of their constituents back. Perhaps the NRA will feel it must evolve its position on maintaining the rights of people suspected of terrorism or risk losing the Republican majorities that will keep every other type of gun safety legislation from passing.

But the public may not consider the internal machinations of the gun lobby and Congress when evaluating the success of a “no fly, no gun” law, if the NRA support comes after a meeting with Trump. They may see Trump as the all-conquering hero who got the NRA to compromise and thereby kept guns out of the hands of terrorists. The Trump script for his presidency will be coming true, or at least many voters could see it that way.

It is possible then that by compromising on the most absurdly extremist position it holds, the NRA could give the presidency to Donald Trump, or at the very least get him back on a positive track.

Of course, even if the NRA does give the Donald an early Christmas present, he will still be the same narcissistic sociopath who never censors his thoughts, tends to authoritarian solutions, lies a lot and is ignorant of the basic mechanics of government and the pressing issues facing the country. There will be lots of time between now and November for Trump to insult, lie, get personal and generally demonstrate his inadequacies as a head of state.

Is the “Can you hear me?” guy more famous than Spencer Tracy or Christopher Marlow?

By Marc Jampole

In what many are calling a brilliant marketing coup, Sprint is using the same actor who used to be in the Verizon “Can you hear me now?” commercials, sporting the same goofy black glasses, to talk about how great the Sprint network is for cellphones—excuse me, hand-held computers that also take photos and makes phone calls—excuse me again—portable devices.

In the original commercial, the short and compact imaginary Verizon employee, whose real name is Paul Marcarelli, goes from place to place asking, "Can you hear me now?” as a means of communicating that Verizon’s wireless network was the most extensive in the country.

Then a funny thing happened. The character transcended the commercial and became a punchline for political speeches, editorial cartoons and late-night humor. Just as it seems as if everyone in the early-1980s was saying “Where’s the beef?” and “I’ll be back” and everyone in 2003 was saying “Shake it like a Polaroid” and every other joke included the expression “twerk” two years ago, so did it seem for many moons as if every conversation included someone cleverly wise-cracking, ”Can you hear me now?” or any of a number of smarmy variations like “Can you see me now?,” “Can you feel me now?” and “Can you smell me now?”

It was some years ago that Verizon retired the “Can you hear me now guy?” and now Sprint is resurrecting him to make the point that nowadays—as opposed to 15 years ago when the “Can you hear me now?” guy was popping up in TV spots, on billboards, in magazines and on the Internet—every wireless company has a wonderful network. He claims that Sprint’s “reliability” is within one percent of Verizon’s, but costs a fraction of the price, and then defiantly asks, “Can you hear that?”

Brilliant to build on the Verizon brand identifier to demonstrate that Sprint is as good as Verizon in the key attribute by which Verizon has always sold its product. This aggressive attack on the Verizon brand is not, however, the first time a television commercial has depended on viewers knowing about another, years-old TV spot. A few years ago, a commercial for a laundry soap parodied the old Mean Joe Greene commercial in which the gruff, mean-looking football player sentimentally trades a jersey for a can of Coke.  Without knowing about a commercial that was 30 years old, you couldn’t understand why it was so funny when Amy Sedaris threw Greene’s stinking jersey back to him saying it needed to go into the wash.

In the case of “Can you hear me now?” the viewer only has to remember back about a decade. Someone insightful on the Sprint marketing team recognized that the “Can you hear me now?” guy was 1) still remembered; 2) still respected; and 3) still linked to the idea of a wireless network that works and is state-of-the-art.

In short, the nameless character that Paul Marcarelli played for years has entered the American cultural vocabulary.

Cultural vocabulary comprises the quotes and images of literature, the visual arts, entertainment, current events and other cultural phenomena that people need to know to understand the cultural references that abound in the mass media, the popular arts and general conversation. Our cultural vocabulary consists of many artifacts:

• Real and fictional people, such as Adam & Eve, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Buddha, Pascal and Don Quixote.
• Events, e.g., Hannibal crossing the Alps, the Battle of Waterloo, the assassination of John F. Kennedy and Neil Armstrong stepping foot on the moon.
• Phrases, e.g., quotes from poems, books, movies and songs, anything from “No can do” and “Let’s get it on” to “To be or not to be,” from “Four score and seven years ago” to “I have a dream.”
• Inanimate objects, e.g., the Bible, the Holy Grail or a Super Bowl ring.

From almost the beginning of human culture, artists in all genres and for all purposes have used pieces of cultural vocabulary in their works. But in all case, the artist shapes the cultural vocabulary to his or her own purposes. For example, Odysseus’ wiliness is heroic for Homer, treacherous for Virgil and bombastic and legalistic for Shakespeare; in James Joyce’s hands, the character of Odysseus is transformed into a self-abnegating Jew in turn-of-the-20th-century Dublin. Botticelli’s Venus is a Christian Neo-Platonist symbol of divine love, whereas Titian’s Venus revels in the sensuality of the real world and Paolo Veronese’s embodies the civilizing effects of love. Select virtually any cultural icon that has been around more than a few hundred years and you will be able to find different versions of it throughout literature, art, pop culture and even history. In a sense, the artist “cannibalizes” the cultural icon by spinning the shared understanding of the icon with his or her own meaning.

Mass culture chews up images and concepts quickly—be it fictional characters like Robin Hood, Mr. Spock or Jason Bourne; historical figures such as Napoleon at Waterloo or Washington crossing the Delaware; sayings like “where’s the beef?” or “I’ll be back”; real incidents like the Spitzer prostitution scandal; fictional ones like movie plots; or new products, especially strange ones. Situation comedies, comedy sketches, TV commercials, spoof movies, newspaper headlines, news programs, comic strips, catalogue captions, advertising slogans, postmodern art and book titles are just some of the communication forms that routinely cannibalize cultural references. One week, we’ll see hundreds of references to twerking and a few weeks later, they’ll be gone, only to be replaced by hundreds of references to 1970s race car drivers, thanks to the movie “Rush.” Like twerking and “Rush,” most of this cultural phenomena is ephemeral—here today and gone tomorrow. But you can still provoke a heart swell with a reference to Moses and Lincoln, or a chuckle with an imitation of Richard Nixon.

Cannibalization of cultural iconography occurs primarily through direct reference or through imitation, parody and, travesty. James Joyce structures Ulysses after Homer’s epic and a secondary character in the “American Pie” movies calls himself the “Sherminator,” referring to another movie in another genre. Over time, we expropriate and distort the content of a cultural icon, sometimes to the point that we cannot recognize the original, as when Robin Hood becomes an anti-tax conservative in the Russell Crowe movie remake instead of someone who takes from the rich to give to the poor; or when Martin Luther King comes to represent general service to the community in place of seeing him as representing civil rights and civil disobedience. We morph cultural icons, as when the Terminator and Joe Isuzu transform into good guys. We take them out of context and thereby change their meaning, as Andy Warhol did with Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe.

The surest sign that an event, person, character or saying has permanently entered the public collective consciousness is that it has undergone a large number of these cultural expropriations over a period of years. It’s one thing for Johnny Carson to joke about the Mean Joe Greene soft drink commercial in 1982. It’s quite another to recycle the concept as a homage-cum-parody 30 years later to sell suds to housewives.

The longer a cultural artifact remains part of the cultural vocabulary, the more it changes from its original form and meaning, until finally it can mean anything to anyone. In a sense, frequent morphing of a cultural artifact hollows it out so it becomes an empty vessel that can be filled with any idea. Take the United States constitution, not the document itself, but its cultural meaning as a holy icon that guides our society and sets our laws. In any given year, dozens of conservative, progressive and centrist writers invoke the constitution, each meaning something completely different. Years of reinterpretation and misinterpretation by the news media, politicians, writers, filmmakers, composers and public relations professionals have slowly hollowed out the concept of the constitution, so that it can come to represent anything—and everything.

It’s likely that the “Can you hear me now?” guy will eventually disappear, much as most cultural artifacts do. I doubt anyone would catch a reference to Spencer Tracy in “Captains Courageous” anymore, although Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca retains a grip on the public consciousness. In a similar way, a reference to Christopher Marlowe would go over most heads; even an allusion to “Dr. Faustus” would probably be mistaken as referring to Goethe’s version of the medieval myth of the man who seeks all knowledge. But again, a television commercial in which a troubled-looking young man looked at a skull and said, “To network or not to network” would resonate with most high school graduates.

We could glibly predict that the “Can you hear me now?” guy and the advertising caricature of Mean Joe Greene will likely disappear in time, as will Joe Isuzu, the “Where’s the beef?” lady, the cannibalistic Mr. & Mrs. Potato Head nibbling potato chips and the prematurely retired Dell Dude. But we can’t really be sure. The line between fiction and truth blurred decades before the partially mendacious “The Imitation Game,” “Selma” and “The King’s Speech.” The right-wing news media long ago blurred the distinction between truth and falsity.  Sponsored content on the Internet and on TV has now blurred the distinction between programming and commercials. The commercialization and commoditization of most entertainment, information gathering and communications makes it more possible than ever for television commercial slogans and characters to remain memes long enough to make the leap to lasting, even permanent cultural relevancy. Perhaps centuries from now, a future Mel Brooks will have a character walk around in Renaissance tights, sword in scabbard, staring into a skull and saying, “Alas, poor Yorick. Can you hear me now?”

If his life had taken a different turn, Muhammad Ali might have been a Hall of Fame right fielder…and alive

By Marc Jampole

The first time Muhammad Ali—then known as Cassius Clay—beat Sonny Liston to win the heavyweight title later unfairly stripped from him, it was a big media event in the days in which there were many more newspapers, but only three television networks. Mass culture tended to be more homogeneous than today: people heard the same music, watched the same shows, read the same papers. People talked about the first Clay-Liston fight for days before, yet all the talk was of the beating Liston was going to inflict on the loud-mouthed punk. Every male I knew—my classmates, friends, the adults who supervised us, my father, uncles and cousins—predicted that Liston was going to win.

Except me. I was for Clay.

It wasn’t that I thought he was a great fighter. I knew nothing about boxing except that Emile Griffith killed someone in the ring and my father thought Rocky Marciano was the greatest heavyweight fighter ever, but that the greatest boxer was Sugar Ray Robinson. No, I didn’t care much for watching fighting, or for engaging in fisticuffs myself, although I had recently, after weeks of provocation, punched out a bully in gym class, earning me the admonishment of the teacher to take off my glasses before my next fight.

Nor did I like Clay all that much. His doggerel poetry was funny and clever, but it wasn’t the way I had been taught athletes were supposed to act. Clay taunted his early opponents. Mickie Mantle and Willie Mays rounded the bases head down and tight-lipped, not wanting to rile up the pitcher. Maybe all that proves is that you can inflict more pain and injury with a thrown baseball than a fist, but to me, quiet dignity during combat and in victory was part of the athletic code of ethics.

Nor was I playing the odds, figuring that no one would remember my prediction if Clay lost, and if Clay won, I would make sure they’d remember what a great fight picker I was.

No, I picked Clay for no other reason than to be different, to set myself apart from everyone else. I was thirteen and entering the stage when I felt myself a stranger, an “other,” and predicting Clay’s victory was another of many small acts of defiance. Like a freedom fighter in a ghetto uprising, even if I knew in my heart Clay would lose, I would still support him.

Little did I know at the time that Ali would come to symbolize all the “others,” not just in the United States but to all of humankind, the ultimate outsider in race, religion and political creed who fought peacefully with honor and dignity for a world in which all “others” can be embraced as part of the community of man. Like the mythic John Wayne in “The Quiet Man,” Ali was the man who earned a living with his fists who was a pacifist when it came to politics. Except unlike in the fictional John Ford movie, Ali never flinched, never faltered.

Ali preceded most Americans, including me, in his opposition to the Vietnam War. I had mixed feelings when he was stripped of his title for draft evasion, thinking that Ali had the right to his own views and that the boxing commissions were wrong to take away his crown, but wondering why he picked that unimportant distant war for his political martyrdom. Within months, my views on the Vietnam War changed, and soon after the rest of the nation’s did as well. The longer Ali was denied the right to fight, the more unfair his situation seemed to Americans, and to people around the world. It didn’t take long for the pariah became a hero. And he deserved to be. He deserves every honor he received in his lifetime and all the accolades he is gathering posthumously. That a man who emerged from the most brutal of sports should be a supreme representative of peace is one of the great ironies of the 20th century.

Because Ali was not just a great fighter, but also a great athlete, I can’t help but speculate how his life may have gone if he had gotten into another sport. He was unfortunately a little too short to play power forward, which would have been his natural basketball position. Although I suspect Ali would have been one of the greatest running backs or pulling guards of all time, I wouldn’t want Ali to exchange the dehumanizing brutality of boxing for the equally savage football. As a baseball player, however, Ali intrigues. With his tremendous strength and great hand-eye coordination, he would probably knock the lights, crap and stuffing out of the ball. I’m guessing that he would not be among the speediest of runners, but would likely have a good arm, and so would end up in right field. I imagine him hitting the ball with the authority of a Dick Allen or Manny Ramirez, two troubled and brooding outsiders who sometimes spouted off things better left unsaid. But Ali was a gregarious, social type with highly developed social skills, so it’s more likely he would have been like Reggie Jackson or Willie Stargell, natural leaders. If Ali were lucky enough to play for a good team, he would likely have dominated at least one World Series, if not several. Reggie Jackson put it best when he said that he didn’t get better in October, he merely got less tired than other players. Stamina is one of the central skills of any boxer, and Ali was one of the greatest of all time. With a team like the Yankees or the Orioles of the 1960’s, I’m thinking Ali would walk into the Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility.

Speculation of this sort is always idle, but one thing I know for certain: If Mohammad Ali played baseball, basketball, hockey, golf, tennis, soccer, Lacrosse, archery or just about any other sport, he would still be alive. Boxing apologists claim that the brain damage Ali sustained only occurred in his last few fights, when he was clearly over the hill with a diminished capacity to protect himself, but needed a few more paydays. Even if we accept that self-serving nonsense, it underlines what a few fights can do to someone and thereby serves as perhaps an even greater argument in favor of outlawing the sport.

We honor Mohammad Ali and all he stood for whenever we engage in peaceful protest. We honor him when we confront the police and judicial system about racist practices.  We honor him when we open our doors to war refugees. We honor him when we walk for peace and against nuclear weapons. We honor him when we remove the barriers to same-sex marriage.  In short, whenever we stand up for the poor, minorities, immigrants, religious minorities—for the stranger and the other—we participate and honor Muhammad Ali’s memory.

I would like to honor him in another way: by outlawing the sport of boxing. Let the future Muhammad Alis find their glory in athletic endeavors for which the object is not to hurt the opponent.

  

Do HRC email mistakes make her unfit to be Pres or is it an example of applying a double standard?

By Marc Jampole

After years of manufacturing false scandals around Hillary Clinton, right-wing attack dogs and the mainstream media finally have a bone to gnaw that has some meat on it: Hillary’s handling of emails while she was secretary of state.

Let’s first review all the false scandals: The Whitewater investigation turned up nothing but evidence of an affair between consensual adults, neither of whom was Hillary. Her husband’s affairs are a private matter that have no bearing on her capabilities unless you believe that repairing the damage caused by a spouse’s affair or being married to a philanderer by definition disqualifies a person (note I did not say woman) from holding the presidency. None of the ten separate investigations into the Benghazi incident have found a single reason to blame Hillary Clinton for either her actions or her policies. The accusations that the world respects the United States less because of her actions as Secretary of State are part of the larger fiction that the Obama administration’s actions in the Middle East caused the rise of ISIS; related nonsense is that we gave away the store by entering into a nuclear deal with Iran and that Obama doesn’t support Israel.

All these lies and false accusations for all these years. Finally there arises an accusation against Hillary that has some merit: she did mishandle her emails as Secretary of State.

The important question is how serious were her actions? Do they disqualify her from serving as president? Do they rise to the level of criminality?

After a bit of Internet research, including reading the recent report of the State Department’s Inspector General, I’ve identified three key questions to help determine if Hillary’s actions regarding her email when secretary of state disqualify her from higher office.

1. How different was her handling of email from other government officials?

None whatsoever. Many government officials, including every secretary of state before John Kerry, used private email addresses. A much smaller number also used a private server. No one else has received negative attention for her-his handling of email.

2 Did or did not Clinton’s aides cooperate with the various investigations?

 The State Department’s Inspector General’s office says “no,” Clinton spokespersons say “yes.” We have to go with the State Department on this one. I leave it to the dear reader to determine whether dragging your feet responding to an investigation that reveals no criminality or fault disqualifies you from the presidency.

3. How much did the Clinton handling of email decrease national security?

Only a fool would deny that using a private server probably represented a security risk, but let’s keep in mind that hackers are always trying to attack U.S. government databases and that every year we face more sophisticated attacks. But we also have more sophisticated tools and protocols to fight computer crimes against the government. Keep in mind, too, that a tremendous number of government documents are classified that should not be, much, much too many for the free and open society we are supposed to have. There have been no reports that Clinton’s handling of email led to any leak of information that harmed the country or an ally. To be sure, Clinton was lucky, but given the many holes in our collective firewall and the constantly escalating war between the government and hackers, we are lucky every day of the week.

Yes, Hillary made a mistake, which she has freely admitted. But others made the same mistake.  Time and standards changed, and what seemed acceptable at the time in retrospect seems to be a bad decision.

But the criticism of Hillary regarding her email seems to follow a broader pattern: We blame her and not others who committed the same sins. Detractors have blamed her for voting to enable George W. Bush to send troops to Iraq, forgetting that most Senators voted with her and that the Bush Administration had given her and her Senate peers—and the rest of the country—misleading information about weapons of mass destruction and connections to those responsible for 9/11.

Detractors also blame Hillary for the Draconian prison sentence mandates and the cuts in welfare programs under her husband’s administration, despite the fact that she did not hold a government position at the time and in fact her political influence was at a low point, because of the failure of her attempt to develop a single-payer healthcare system.  Bernie Sanders has received no criticism for his 1990’s votes on stiffer sentences and welfare reform.

The broader pattern is to blame Hillary and not others for past actions that many people took regarding issues about which the entire country has changed its mind. In a real sense, the news media has created a double standard for Hillary Clinton.

If you don’t think a double standard is in operation when it comes to Hillary, consider that one of the ten investigations of Benghazi is ongoing and that we have yet to hear the Federal Bureau of Investigations chime in about the Clinton emails. We continue to waste taxpayer money on witch hunts that come up with nothing or with the realization that Hillary only did what others were doing.  And yet the same Obama Administration that is pursuing the Clinton emails decided not to prosecute any government official for their part in creating an illegal and embarrassing American torture gulag throughout the world. Not Bush II, not Dick Cheney, not John Yoo, not David Addington—no one was prosecuted or investigated. We just swept it under the table and promised not to do it again, a promise that Donald Trump is ready to break if he is elected. Nor are there any active investigations about the obvious lies that Bush, Cheney, Colin Powell and others told to convince us to go to war against Iraq.

The news media aided and abetted the government in sweeping the terrible deeds and rampant illegality of the Bush Administration under a rug. It would be a shame if applying a double standard on activities that were not illegal should serve as the reason not to elect one of the most qualified individuals ever to run for president.

Editorial: The Usual Bedlam

Supporters of Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton keep claiming there are irreconcilable differences between the two rivals, but you know in the third act they’re going to end up back together in Philly.

A flareup at the Nevada State Democratic Convention in Las Vegas on May 14 spotlighted the rough side of the political process. Background: Clinton had won the Nevada presidential caucuses by a 5% margin out of 80,000 voters who participated at the local level in February, but only 23 of the state’s 43 national delegates were allocated at that time. Clinton got 13 and Sanders 10. Eight others were superdelegates, party officials who decide on their own who to support. That left 12 delegates up for grabs at the state convention, and the Sanders campaign saw an opportunity to steal a few of Clinton’s national delegates there when many of Clinton’s supporters failed to show up at county conventions in April. But Clinton supporters showed up in force at the state convention, determined to protect what they saw as Hillary’s rightful winnings.

Unfortunately, the Clintonites were a little hamfisted in doing so. State Democratic Chairwoman Roberta Lange laid out the rules for the convention that required that all votes at the convention would be decided by voice, with the ruling of the chairperson being final — and Sanders partisans claimed that Lange seemed to hear the Clinton delegates’ voices better than Sanders delegates’ voices.

PolitiFact’s Riley Snyder, in an examination of the Sanders campaign’s allegations of fraud and misconduct at the convention, noted that the rules have been largely the same since 2008.

The first major fight happened Saturday the morning, with the convention gaveled in nearly 40 minutes after the scheduled 9 a.m. start time (but while some delegates were still checking in).

In a voice vote, Lange approved adoption of a preliminary credentials report showing more Clinton than Sanders delegates. Immediate howls of protests from the Sanders contingent emerged, many of whom rushed the dais and started screaming insults and obscenities directly at Lange.

Although several videos from the event appear to have louder “nays” than “yeas,” both preliminary and final delegate counts showed that Clinton supporters outnumbered Sanders supporters in the room, PolitiFact noted.

In the review, PolitiFact noted that Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver said Nevada Democratic Party leaders “hijacked the process on the floor” of the state convention “ignoring the regular procedure and ramming through what they wanted to do.”

Caucuses and delegate math can be incredibly confusing, and the arcane party structures don’t reflect how most people assume presidential selection works, PolitiFact’s Snyder wrote.

But the Sanders campaign’s howls of unfairness and corruption during Nevada’s state Democratic Convention can’t change the simple fact that Clinton’s supporters turned out in larger numbers and helped her solidify her delegate lead in Nevada, Snyder noted for PolitiFact, as he ruled that Jeff Weaver’s claim was “false.”

“There’s no clear evidence the state party ‘hijacked’ the process or ignored ‘regular procedure,’” Snyder wrote. You might have trouble convincing a Sanders partisan of that. But they’ll need to get over their hurt feelings.

This year, Sanders has repeatedly said he does not want to help Republicans win the White House, and he has no interest in undermining Democrats in the general election. As the ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, Sanders is in line to take over as chairman of that important committee if Democrats regain the Senate majority. They need five seats now held by Republicans — or four seats and the White House, which would make the Democratic vice president the tie-breaker.

Sanders may have signaled that the campaign was nearing acceptance of the inevitability of a second-place finish on May 23 when he agreed to the appointment of five of his supporters to the committee that will draft the platform for the Democratic National Convention. Hillary Clinton will get six members of the committee and Democratic Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz will appoint four members.

If we were running the convention, we’d let Sanders write most of his pet projects into the platform, including his call for a $15 minimum wage, expansion of Medicare and Social Security and a tax on Wall Street securities transactions that would pay for an increase in financial assistance for students to attend college without racking up massive debts. All those points are popular among voters — and it’s not as if party platforms are binding on the president or members of Congress in either the Democratic or Republican parties.

Remember that, in the summer of 2008, as Barack Obama consolidated his lead in the race for the Democratic nomination, multitudes of Hillary Clinton supporters complained that the delegate selection process was rigged. They warned that they would not vote for Obama in the general election. The disgruntled Clinton supporters originally styled themselves as “Party Unity My A**,” or PUMAs, but registered with the Federal Election Commission in June 2008 as a non-affiliated political action committee named “People United Means Action.”

In the days before the 2008 Democratic convention, Gallup found only 47% of former Clinton supporters said they were certain to vote for Obama. After the convention, 65% said they were certain to vote for Obama. The 2008 election exit poll found that Clinton supporters ended up splitting 83-16 for Obama and John McCain. And, of course, Clinton ended up serving as Obama’s secretary of state and now she is running on continuing Obama’s initiatives.

Donald Trump has released the names of 11 far-right jurists who he said represent the kind of people — if not literally the exact people — he’d consider for Supreme Court vacancies. Trump told the National Rifle Association he expects the next president to appoint between three and five justices to the high court.

Five would be an awful lot, Steve Benen noted at Maddowblog.com. In the past century, only Franklin Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower appointed that many justices. But three is a distinct possibility. Even if the Senate confirms President Obama’s choice of Judge Merrick Garland to the Court during the lame duck session after the election, by Inauguration Day 2017, two sitting justices, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Anthony Kennedy, will be over the age of 80. And Justice Stephen Breyer will be 78 years old when the next president is inaugurated. Clarence Thomas will be 68 and Samuel Alito will be 66.

The Supreme Court now is near ideological deadlock at 4-4. We still think President Obama should tell the Senate that if they don’t confirm Garland, a centrist on the D.C. Court of Appeals, before the election, he’ll withdraw the nomination in deference to the next president. Hillary could then name a solid liberal who could tip the court’s balance toward the left and allow the court to revisit some of the excesses of the Antonio Scalia era, such as Citizens United and the Shelby County decision that declawed the Voting Rights Act, allowing Republican legislatures to proceed with voter suppression laws.

Or Trump could name a right-winger in the Scalia mold who could once again provide the right-wing majority to eliminate labor unions, cripple affordable health care — never mind universal health coverage — and clear the way for the final takeover of the federal and state governments by corporate oligarchy.

Bernie Sanders should take his campaign through the June 7 primaries, where California’s 546 delegates are the biggest prize, but unless he gets the 70% victory margin that he needs in those remaining states to catch up with Clinton in pledged delegates, he should conclude the campaign with the final primary in the District of Columbia on June 14 and approach the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia with the goal of he and Clinton putting their differences behind them.

Any of Sanders’ supporters who remain in the “Bernie or Bust” camp, who rule out voting for Hillary Clinton if she wins the Democratic nomination, might well spend the next 20 years denying that they are responsible for the very bad things President Trump would mislead this country into. — JMC

From The Progressive Populist, June 15, 2016

---

Populist.com

Blog | Current Issue | Back Issues | Essays | Links
About the Progressive Populist | How to Subscribe | How to Contact Us

---

Copyright © 2016 The Progressive PopulistPO Box 819, Manchaca TX 78652

Selections from the June 15, 2016 issue

COVER/David Cay Johnson
The art of the inside deal

EDITORIAL
The usual bedlam

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

DON ROLLINS
Farewell to Clark, Songwriter’s Songwriter

RURAL ROUTES/Margot McMillen
Struggle past the nomination process

DISPATCHES
Outsourcing widens pay inequity;
Trump just kidding about $6M for vets;
TPP would worsen trade balances;
Va. Republicans sue to stop ex-felons from voting;
Journos: Time to press Trump on ex-wife’s rape allegation;
Supreme Court strikes down gerrymander;
Americans insured agains their will;
Fast food workers move on to union rights;
House R's can't resist gay bashing;
Obama's surprising poll support good for Dems ...

JILL RICHARDSON
‘Bathroom bills’ don’t help women at all

JOHN YOUNG
Ted, Mitch and Marco helped T-Rex emerge 

ERIC BLUMBERG
Political theatre of the absurd

NANCY ALTMAN
Trump and Ryan agree: let’s dismantle Social Security

RICHARD ESKOW
What’s killing the American middle class?

BOB BURNETT
Trump’s top 10 tax tricks

SETH SANDRONSKY
Producing poverty

ROGER BYBEE
GOP bias behind Wisconsin voter suppression

HEALTH CARE/Joan Retsinas
Recycling ourselves

SAM URETSKY
There’s no such thing as a safe gun

WAYNE O’LEARY
The triumph of identity politics

JOHN BUELL
Exxon: A villain with plenty of company

DAVE JOHNSON
Why this new overtime rule is a big, big deal

MARK ANDERSON
Congress eyes trade deal warily

FR. DONNELL KIRCHNER
Sanders right when he went to the Vatican

ROSIE SORENSON
It’s all over but the Googling

MOVIES/Ed Rampell
Drink, drugs, sex, rock ’n’ roll and baseball

CHUCK COLLINS
A commencement address for the most indebted class ever
and more ...

Obama continues mainstream post-WW II foreign policy by allowing arms sales to Viet Nam

By Marc Jampole

President Obama has issued a number of executive orders over the past two years that have overridden the obstructionist Congress to give Americans what they voted for: a left-looking centrist administration. Among other things, he has negotiated an historic treaty with Iran that stops nuclear proliferation, tried to end the stalemate over creating a path to citizenship for illegal aliens, issued new regulations that help address climate change, and extended overtime pay to millions of Americans.

But in foreign policy and national defense, it’s the same old same old that we’ve had since World War II. President Obama, someone who claims he’s seeking peace, is lifting sanctions on the sale of lethal arms to Vietnam. How could selling arms to yet another country help the cause of world peace?

The standard answer to that question for the past 70+ years has been that arming a nation serves as a deterrence to other nations. As applied to Vietnam, the argument goes something like so: China will be less willing to push its weight around the South China Sea and will draw Vietnam closer to the United States, both militarily and economically. The big issue in the mainstream media is not whether we should be selling arms, but if we extracted enough in return in terms of prodding Vietnam to increase press freedom and political expression.

On closer inspection, this argument makes no sense. How can arming a totalitarian government that allows no press freedom and little dissent make the region or the world more secure? And how does Vietnam fit into a strategy of military containment of the Chinese? What would such a strategy look like? Or are we building up the fire power for the next regional conflagration, between Vietnam and China or a Chinese ally serving as proxy?

The United States is the leading supplier of arms to the rest of the world and has been for many decades. We account for almost 53% of the $40.4 billion in total world trade in arms. In second place, with a mere 19.3% of world arms trade, is Russia. Our guns help keep the flames of conflict alive in many regional war zones. If Obama were interested in a real turn in American foreign policy, he would stop all sales of American arms to other countries. The objection that other countries would step into the vacuum and develop arms businesses of their own doesn’t hold water, because if their governments could afford to subsidize weapons industries the way the U.S. government does, they would have done so long ago.

Making and selling military grade weapons are a big business for a handful of American manufacturers who have had their claws into Congress and both political parties since World War I. Often the organization making military grade equipment is affiliated with a company that sells guns to U.S. consumers. By ending the arms embargo to Vietnam, President Obama is making the world safe—safe for American military businesses that is!

One could cynically interpret the Iran nuclear agreement as about opening Iranian markets to a wide range of U.S. goods and services. It could serve as the foundation for the two countries to move closer together, which always results in America supplying the former enemy turned friend with arms.

Even as the Obama Administration makes deals to benefit American arms manufacturers, it has also proposed spending a trillion dollars to create a new generation of smaller, more tactical nuclear weapons. The administration’s costly plan would rebuild the entire U.S. nuclear arsenal, including the warheads, and the missiles, planes and submarines that carry them. The Congressional Budget Office estimates these plans will cost $348 billion over the next 10 years, but the National Defense Panel, appointed by Congress, found that the price tag could reach $1 trillion.

I thought Obama wanted to end the use of all nuclear weapons. What easier, or less expensive way, to do so than to let our aging nuclear arsenal grow obsolete and not replace it? The sad and simple truth is that only a madman would use a nuclear weapon, because of the damage that it inflicts not just on the site that is bombed but on the rest of the world through raised levels of radiation leading to more cancers and other diseases. Some predict that the next generation of nuclear weapons will release less radiation, but the operative word here is “less,” which is not “none” or “less than five years’ worth of dental x-rays.” Remember, too, our military will be less reluctant to use weapons they think are “safer.”

What the President doesn’t seem to understand is that you end nuclear weapons by getting rid of them, not by developing new ones. And you end war not by supplying arms to other countries, but by stopping arms sales and encouraging negotiations.

The scary thing is that Obama and Hillary Clinton are relative doves when it comes to U.S. foreign policy. Led by presumptive nominee Donald Trump, all the Republicans are talking about increasing military budgets. All say they would be faster to send soldiers into foreign lands and slower to remove them once in. Obama merely wants to sell arms and develop new nuclear weapons to subsidize our military industries. The Republicans, under the leadership of George W. Bush and Richard Cheney, were willing to start a war to help a broad range of military contractors, including suppliers of mercenary forces. Now Trump even said he would keep the option of a first-strike use of nuclear weapons on the table.

I understand the focus that progressives have placed on economic issues this election cycle, especially in support of the candidacy of Bernie Sanders. But even as we continue to move Hillary Clinton and mainstream Democrats further left on economic and social issues, we can’t forget that under both Democrats and Republicans, we have long had an anti-democratic, immoral and ineffective foreign policy that helps no one but large international corporations and military contractors.

Trump reveals American contradiction: Democracy needs informed citizens; consumerism demands self-centered dolts

By Marc Jampole

That a failed developer turned reality TV star and brand marketer could win enough votes in Republican primaries to become the presumptive GOP nominee confirms the essential contradiction of a consumerist capitalist society organized as a representative democracy.  Democracy requires well-informed, well-read, well-adjusted and well-educated citizens, whereas consumer capitalism demands consumers who are dumb and uninquisitive, with a short attention span, a high degree of gullibility and a constant undefined dissatisfaction, assuaged only by purchasing some thing or service.

The pinnacle of consumer capitalism is celebrity culture. Consumer capitalism glorifies the celebrity, because the celebrity has been detached from accomplishment or merit and merely represents what one does with the riches, which in America is to spend large sums of money on garish luxury items and experiences. Celebrity culture created Donald Trump, the language he uses and the cultural ideals he embodies.

We remember Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays for playing ball, and not for spending the money they made—although Mantle did get some bad publicity for witnessing a few night club fights. But Kim Kardashian is famous only for being famous. When we think of her, we think of what she does as a consumer, not as a productive member of society. What we see her do always involves spending large sums of money. The celebrity sets the standard for consumption in a consumeristic society.  It doesn’t matter whether the society has done nothing like Kardashian or has failed, like the failed real estate developer Donald Trump.

Instead of judging Trump by his many failed businesses and multiple bankruptcies, the average American—trained by the mass media to accept anecdote overs statistics—evaluates what they see on a show that they only vaguely understand is scripted. Trump’s qualifications twist an old joke, “I’m not a successful businessman, but I play one on TV.”  For many Americans, especially those without the benefit of a college education, Trump really is a successful businessman, as qualified to run for president as Wendell Willkie was.

Celebrity culture not only produced Donald Trump, it also warped mass media coverage of elections to the point that the rhetoric of a reality star resonated with major parts of the electorate. It wasn’t his odious comments that many followers have found most appealing, but the means with which he delivered his poisonous messages: Direct, without caveats or conditions. Conversational. In blunt language. Vulgar insults of others. Trump centers every issue and statement on himself, which TV viewers learn from reality TV is the central trait of all great people.  He uses the rhetoric of celebrity culture, something that prior performers such as Ronald Reagan, Sonny Bono and Al Franken never did. Quite the contrary, former performers and celebrities turned politicians assiduously used the rhetoric of politics to convince us they belonged. But that was before the mass media infused election coverage completely with celebrity concerns such as who made a verbal error, who insulted whom, who is ahead in the polls, who is raising more money, who is more likeable and other issues of celebrity, not government.

Then there is the issue of aspirations. Trump is not a true conservative, but he appeals to groups tutored by conservatives for the past thirty years to distrust liberals and blame their problems on the “other”—minorities and immigrants—and big government. The angry, disenfranchised-feeling white males relate not just to Trump’s vile, racist opinions, but also identify with his Laddie Boy Rat Pack lifestyle, which reality TV and three generations of beer and car commercials have held up as the traditional right of the white male, a right being lost along with good paying jobs to the multi-cultural and feminist agendas.   

The increasing dominance of the mass media by celebrity news and programming glorifying celebrity culture created most of the conditions for the emergence of a failed businessman with fascist leanings and a possibly pathological narcissism as a major party candidate. But it was an important decision of the Reagan Administration 30 years ago that created a key element of the Trump phenomenon: the train of Big Lies, one after another, often generated on the spot and kept alive long after being disproven.  In Reagan’s second term his Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ended the Fairness Doctrine, which required the holders of television or radio broadcast licenses to present controversial issues of public importance in a manner the FCC deemed honest, equitable, and balanced. By ending the Fairness Doctrine, Reagan enabled radio and television stations to broadcast partisan ideologues such as Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity without having to air opposing views. Right-wing billionaires bought up stations, created networks and created the many voices who made and still make the same false statements about unions being bad, taxes being too high, crime being up and the nation being overrun by immoral and unreligious outsiders (recently to include the President himself!).  The Republicans supported, and benefitted from, the many lies of the right-wing news media. They deserve what they have in Donald Trump.

Those who look at American popular culture and its emphasis on turning all human interactions into opportunities for commercial transaction and conspicuous consumption may conclude that America, too, deserves Donald Trump. 

New overtime reg is another small step the Obama Administration is taking towards greater wealth equity

By Marc Jampole

It was to be expected that conservative politicians and business organizations would complain about the U.S. Labor Department’s new overtime regulation, which mandates that anyone making under $47,476 a year automatically qualifies for time-and-a-half pay for any hours worked over 40 per week.  For example, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan criticized the new rule that enables 4.2 million more Americans to receive overtime pay, saying the regulation “hurts the very people it alleges to help.” Business organizations such as the American Bankers Association, the National Retail Federation, the Society of Human Resource Management and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have all bemoaned the new regulation, focusing exclusively on the problems it will cause for small business and the employees receiving the overtime wage boost. The mainstream news media, of course, has quoted many small business owners complaining about the new reg.

One main argument against paying people extra money when they work more than the normal week sounds just like what business interests say about raising the minimum wage: that it will lead to employers hiring fewer people. This old saw is complete BS, as I have demonstrated before. Virtually all businesses only hire the minimum number of people needed to do the job, as they always seek to maximize profit. The result of increasing the number of people to whom companies must pay time-and-a-half will certainly be to raise the cost of labor, unless employers try to avoid the additional expense by hiring additional people at the regular rate to work the hours that they will no longer give to existing employees. The choice then is that current employees make more money or the company hires more employees. That sounds like a win-win for labor.

Here is some more nonsense the news media has published about the impact of making employers pay time-and-half to lower-paid employees who work more than 40 hours a week:

·         Employees won’t want to keep track of exact hours: Many, if not an overwhelming majority, of employees already keep precise track of their hours with time cards and time sheets.

·         People work harder for a salary: Whether or not this gratuitous insult of the working stiff is true matters not in discussing the validity of applying this blanket statement to the issue of overtime pay. Any good employer develops quantifiable measurements of job performance. If someone starts to fall below the performance standards of the job, a supervisor will talk to the employee, no matter what the reason. It’s easy and legal to fire an employee who continues to perform below standard when the only reason is because he or she is trying to work the system to get time-and-a-half.

·         It will make it harder to give employees flexibility in hours: A ridiculous claim! As long as an employee is keeping accurate track of hours, who cares if they came in at 5:00 am so they could leave for their daughter’s chess tournament at 3:00 pm or if they worked the hours at home or at the office or took off Thursday and worked Saturday of the same week.

·         Employers will turn full-time employees into part-timers. Employers who want to save money by only hiring part-timers don’t need the incentive of time-and-a-half to do so. As discussed above, while employers may hire more people to work straight time, cutting hours back below 40 (as opposed to exactly 40) won’t reduce the cost of the new regulation.

The rationales for paying people extra money for overtime are simple:

1.      The extra time puts a burden on meeting other, i.e., family, responsibilities and enjoying an outside life.

2.      It’s harder on the mind and body to work long hours, and employees should therefore get additional compensation.

I have asked employees to work very few overtime hours over the 27 years I have owned an advertising and public relations agency, because I believe that work performance degrades after eight hours a day and 40 hours a week and I also believe that people are better employees when they have a full and active personal life than when they dedicate themselves solely to the job. There have been times when the temporary demands of the job have forced people to work extra hours. We have often given comp time to those working overtime, something that the new regulation does not allow for employees making less than $47,476. Thus, my costs will go up a little bit, which means my profit margin will decline slightly. I’m not too worried about it, and I’m happy to pay time-and-a-half instead of straight time (which you pay whether directly or through comp time) for the occasional overtime hour of lower-paid employees. I know I’m still making additional profit from the overtime, since the same office, administrative and healthcare costs are being spread over more hours. Those (immoral) companies that have built extra profitability into the system by making employees regularly work overtime for nothing or straight time may have a greater challenge.

I’m disturbed by the number of legal scams that the Wall Street Journal and other media are reporting that employers have already devised to avoid paying time-and-a-half or any overtime pay. Some companies say they will reduce the base rate of employees who routinely work overtime, meaning that for the employees to maintain their current income they will always have to work the extra hours. Other employers or industry representatives say they will raise the salaries of employees to over the threshold above which they don’t have to pay overtime and reduce bonuses to compensate. Let’s hope the Department of Labor adjusts their regulations accordingly and go after these scofflaws.

Let’s face it. One of the two major reasons that the wealthy—meaning business owners, executives and highly-paid specialists—have taken virtually all of the additional wealth and income over the past 36 years is that salaries for all but the very top wage-earners have stagnated until quite recently. The other reason, BTW, is that the government has taxed the wealthy less and provided fewer services to the poor and middle class. Like increasing the minimum wage, mandating overtime pay for more employees and setting it at one-and-a-half times base hourly wages goes a little way to restoring wealth equity.

New overtime reg is another small step the Obama Administration is taking towards greater wealth equity

By Marc Jampole

It was to be expected that conservative politicians and business organizations would complain about the U.S. Labor Department’s new overtime regulation, which mandates that anyone making under $47,476 a year automatically qualifies for time-and-a-half pay for any hours worked over 40 per week.  For example, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan criticized the new rule that enables 4.2 million more Americans to receive overtime pay, saying the regulation “hurts the very people it alleges to help.” Business organizations such as the American Bankers Association, the National Retail Federation, the Society of Human Resource Management and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have all bemoaned the new regulation, focusing exclusively on the problems it will cause for small business and the employees receiving the overtime wage boost. The mainstream news media, of course, has quoted many small business owners complaining about the new reg.

One main argument against paying people extra money when they work more than the normal week sounds just like what business interests say about raising the minimum wage: that it will lead to employers hiring fewer people. This old saw is complete BS, as I have demonstrated before. Virtually all businesses only hire the minimum number of people needed to do the job, as they always seek to maximize profit. The result of increasing the number of people to whom companies must pay time-and-a-half will certainly be to raise the cost of labor, unless employers try to avoid the additional expense by hiring additional people at the regular rate to work the hours that they will no longer give to existing employees. The choice then is that current employees make more money or the company hires more employees. That sounds like a win-win for labor.

Here is some more nonsense the news media has published about the impact of making employers pay time-and-half to lower-paid employees who work more than 40 hours a week:

·         Employees won’t want to keep track of exact hours: Many, if not an overwhelming majority, of employees already keep precise track of their hours with time cards and time sheets.

·         People work harder for a salary: Whether or not this gratuitous insult of the working stiff is true matters not in discussing the validity of applying this blanket statement to the issue of overtime pay. Any good employer develops quantifiable measurements of job performance. If someone starts to fall below the performance standards of the job, a supervisor will talk to the employee, no matter what the reason. It’s easy and legal to fire an employee who continues to perform below standard when the only reason is because he or she is trying to work the system to get time-and-a-half.

·         It will make it harder to give employees flexibility in hours: A ridiculous claim! As long as an employee is keeping accurate track of hours, who cares if they came in at 5:00 am so they could leave for their daughter’s chess tournament at 3:00 pm or if they worked the hours at home or at the office or took off Thursday and worked Saturday of the same week.

·         Employers will turn full-time employees into part-timers. Employers who want to save money by only hiring part-timers don’t need the incentive of time-and-a-half to do so. As discussed above, while employers may hire more people to work straight time, cutting hours back below 40 (as opposed to exactly 40) won’t reduce the cost of the new regulation.

The rationales for paying people extra money for overtime are simple:

1.      The extra time puts a burden on meeting other, i.e., family, responsibilities and enjoying an outside life.

2.      It’s harder on the mind and body to work long hours, and employees should therefore get additional compensation.

I have asked employees to work very few overtime hours over the 27 years I have owned an advertising and public relations agency, because I believe that work performance degrades after eight hours a day and 40 hours a week and I also believe that people are better employees when they have a full and active personal life than when they dedicate themselves solely to the job. There have been times when the temporary demands of the job have forced people to work extra hours. We have often given comp time to those working overtime, something that the new regulation does not allow for employees making less than $47,476. Thus, my costs will go up a little bit, which means my profit margin will decline slightly. I’m not too worried about it, and I’m happy to pay time-and-a-half instead of straight time (which you pay whether directly or through comp time) for the occasional overtime hour of lower-paid employees. I know I’m still making additional profit from the overtime, since the same office, administrative and healthcare costs are being spread over more hours. Those (immoral) companies that have built extra profitability into the system by making employees regularly work overtime for nothing or straight time may have a greater challenge.

I’m disturbed by the number of legal scams that the Wall Street Journal and other media are reporting that employers have already devised to avoid paying time-and-a-half or any overtime pay. Some companies say they will reduce the base rate of employees who routinely work overtime, meaning that for the employees to maintain their current income they will always have to work the extra hours. Other employers or industry representatives say they will raise the salaries of employees to over the threshold above which they don’t have to pay overtime and reduce bonuses to compensate. Let’s hope the Department of Labor adjusts their regulations accordingly and go after these scofflaws.

Let’s face it. One of the two major reasons that the wealthy—meaning business owners, executives and highly-paid specialists—have taken virtually all of the additional wealth and income over the past 36 years is that salaries for all but the very top wage-earners have stagnated until quite recently. The other reason, BTW, is that the government has taxed the wealthy less and provided fewer services to the poor and middle class. Like increasing the minimum wage, mandating overtime pay for more employees and setting it at one-and-a-half times base hourly wages goes a little way to restoring wealth equity.

Clinton’s foreign policy will be to form and deepen alliances to seek resolution of world problems

The mainstream and left-wing media has slapped the label “hawk” on Hillary Clinton, but if we are to believe the words of her senior policy advisor, Jake Sullivan, a more accurate description would be call her a “coalition-builder.” It’s clear from the comments Sullivan made in front of an audience of about 250 people at the Asia Society on Park Avenue in New York this week that, whether engaged in peaceful or war-like activities in other parts of the world, Clinton will only act after deliberations with other nations and within the context of an organized coalition.

A Google News search yielded seven media stories about Sullivan’s remarks at the Asia Society, including the Society’s own blog, all of which focused exclusively on Sullivan’s short comments on Donald Trump’s lack of qualifications and dangerous statements. This comment took about one minute of the more than an hour Sullivan devoted to presenting how Clinton will approach foreign affairs.

The more important message—and story—is the Clinton approach to dealing with a wide range of problems, from Syria to global warming, which is to build a coalition of all parties, look for common ground and act collectively. Implied but not stated by Sullivan, who is Vice President Biden’s national security advisor and a senior advisor to the Iran nuclear negotiations, is that collective action assumes collective responsibility and financing.

Her approach to the knot of problems in the Middle East demonstrates how Clinton hopes to implement this vision of cooperation. Sullivan says that Clinton sees three main challenges in the Middle East:

1.      The destabilization of regimes, often brought about by terrorists and violent extremists.

2.      The rise of militant right-wing Islamists.

3.      The long-term hostilities between Iran and Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf States.

Clinton will be willing to ensure that Iran will not destabilize Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf States, but in return the United States will expect the Saudis and other Gulf rulers to:

·         Contribute to the fight against ISIS

·         Stop funding terrorism

·         Begin internal political and social reforms in their countries.

Sullivan calls Clinton “clear-eyed” about Iran, by which he means that she still considers the regime hostile to U.S. interests, but she sees the benefit of working with the Iranians, especially in Syria. Clinton does not believe the Syrian problem can be solved without a new government and that any solution to the Syrian problem must have the agreement of both Russia and the United States to succeed.  My understanding of a “hawk” is someone who knee-jerks to calling in the military like John McCain. Clinton’s first step to solving the Syrian crisis is decidedly unhawkish: to negotiate “safe areas” within the country for refugees.

Sullivan kept stressing that the United States cannot be a unilateral player, but must always act in concert with other countries, whatever the region or issue. She will put a particular reemphasis on working more closely with China, seeing no reason why China and the United States can’t be friendly competitors. Clinton sees five important areas where the interests of China and the United States coincide:

1.      Climate change

2.      Terrorism

3.      The stability of Afghanistan, which borders China (and five other countries!)

4.      What Sullivan labeled “G-20” issues of trade and international economics.

5.      North Korea

Clinton wants the United States and China to cooperate to force North Korea to renounce development of its nuclear capability. Sullivan pointed out at the Asia Society that every major economy was engaged in sanctions against Iran, which produced the nuclear deal. He cautioned that the relationship between China and the United States has not reached the point at which the two nations would act in concert on North Korea.

On issue after issue, Sullivan described Clinton as taking a studied, cautious approach that focused on alliance-building and not saber-rattling. The sense I got from Sullivan is that Clinton is not afraid to use force, but will depend first on peaceful resolution of international issues that protects the United States’ interests but recognizes the interests of other countries.

Whether left-wingers like the Clinton foreign policy depends on whether we look at the glass as half empty of half full. Thus, I would prefer it if the first thing Sullivan said was that Clinton would unilaterally shut down the United States’ nuclear capability and stop selling and facilitating the sale of military-grade weapons to all foreign countries. She did not and will not. That’s the empty part of the glass.

But in the context of 70 years of America imperialistically pushing its weight around, undermining democratic regimes such as in Chile and Iran and pursuing useless wars like Viet Nam and Iraq, Clinton’s approach, which echoes that of President Obama and her husband, looks promising and dovish. I don’t believe the nonsense that Obama’s mishandling of foreign affairs led to the rise of ISIS and the splintering of Syria. George W. Bush’s ill-conceived Iraq War definitely caused ISIS; it also contributed to the destabilization of Syria and to the growth or terrorism by giving proof to the Islamic extremists who consider the United States the real rogue, devil state. Nothing Bernie Sanders has said has convinced me that he will be any more left-wing in his foreign policy than Clinton.

All the Republicans—including Donald Trump—proclaim that they will be quick to use force to address international disputes.  Trump talks about being a better negotiator than the representatives of other countries, a kind of naïve American exceptionalism masquerading as global bullying. It remains to be seen whether Trump keeps spouting isolationist rhetoric when it comes to trade and immigration, or retreats to Republican orthodoxy. On the most significant long-term global issue—climate change—Clinton is light-years ahead of the GOP, which still has its official policy the denial of global warming.  Compared to the unstable Trump and the war-mongering Republic foreign policy establishment, Clinton’s foreign policy is definitely superior, with more positives than negatives.  She remains within the mainstream of the last 70 years, but will move that mainstream further left, as Barack Obama has done. Yes, the idealist in me is disappointed, but the realist understands that electing Clinton (or Sanders) is critical to making the United States safer while implementing a more moral and less bellicose foreign policy.

The moderator at the Asia Society presentation was the very witty and knowledgeable Kevin Rudd, former prime minister of Australia and current president of the Asia Society Policy Institute.  He pointed out that Asia Society had offered a forum to discuss foreign issues to every announced candidate for president and only Hillary Clinton had agreed.  Let’s hope that Donald Trump presents before the Asia Society membership (and Sanders, too, if he does it before the convention). More significantly, let’s hope that more of the news media cover the presentation and that coverage focuses on the strategies the candidates propose and not the name-calling to which the news media seems to want to reduce all campaign stories.