August 10, 2015

Black Lives Matter to me, too, therefore I continue to support Bernie

Civil rights may be one of Hillary Clinton's better issues, but the advancement of people in color is no longer formally tied to legal barriers, as it was when I was growing up. In spite of that progress, it is counterintuitive to claim that racism is a thing of the past, as some claim. Anybody who makes such a claim (I'm talking to you, Chief Justice Roberts) is simply reaching for a reason to do nothing about race, income inequality or voting rights for real reasons that are vulgar and politically partisan.

It is difficult for me to imagine Mrs. Clinton doing all that needs to be done in the coming years in response to the increasingly severe problems faced by America's poorest citizens or the declining standard of living for the middle class. While she has been a strong supporter of civil rights, she has been weak on matters of economic equality, preferring to placate corporate interests in exchange for campaign donations. Let's be clear and honest. Those corporate benefactors of Mrs. Clinton's political career have no interest in promoting any remedy for income inequality. They wouldn't want to see capital gains taxed as ordinary income and they want the corporate income tax so small one could drown in a bathtub and easy for them to avoid altogether. They also want jobs easy to export, the minimum wage left where it is, if not abolished, and environmental regulations so ineffective that they can poison whole communities by dumping sludge into the water supply and not be held accountable for it.

I believe President Sanders will take on these issues and is ready to fight the rich and powerful who have profited from this all-too-friendly-to-corporate-interests house that Ronald Reagan, the Bush family, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama have constructed.

It is often said that when white American sneezes, black America catches cold. Right now, white American peons have pneumonia. I'm white, 63 years old and live on disability. I go into a panic every time a Republican congressman opens his mouth about Social Security or Medicare or whenever a Democrat heaps praise on the recommendations of the latest catfood commission. And I have a little more to fall back on because of white privilege. I was more likely to get a good job than a black person and more likely to paid better than the lady in the next cubicle.

I'm tired of bailing out corporate criminals when something goes wrong with their latest Ponzi scheme. It hurt me to have my income transferred to the incompetents who cashed the world economy and then have them continue as before; it hurt us the white peons, and it hurt the black peons more.

Economic injustice, social injustice and racial injustice (and also gender injustice, perhaps not getting the attention it deserves in this conversation, but women and families headed by single mothers are still more likely to live in poverty than a crooked bank executive) are all joined at the hip. These are problems that must be resolved and must be resolved together. To tackle one and not any of the others is a plan doomed to failure.

I trust Bernie Sanders more to take on all of these problems at once more than I trust Mrs. Clinton. I trust Bernie Sanders to put the interests of the people first, even if that means Legs Dimon and Pretty Boy Lloyd have to left on hold.

I want a president who won't even convene a catfood commission, let alone one who will accept a report from one. I want a president who knows that austerity is counterproductive and has no part in any economic recovery plan. I want a president who knows you don't make friends and influence people by dropping bombs on them so that their leaders will sell us oil cheaper. In fact, I want a president who knows it counterproductive to go to war for oil instead of subsidizing the development of clean, renewable energy to supplement and eventually supplant the use of fossil fuels, ending our dependency on them forever.

Black lives matter. The quality of black lives matter. For America's future and for the future of black Americans, I will vote for and support Bernie Sanders. He is far and away the best candidate for president in 2016.

August 7, 2015

I am proud to support the candidate who pointed out last night why Republicans are irrelevant

It's over. Not one word about economic inequality, climate change, Citizens United or student debt,” Sanders (I-Vt.) tweeted as the two-hour-long debate wrapped up. "That’s why the Rs are so out of touch.

Go, Bernie.

June 16, 2015

Mild dissent

I don't believe that Al Gore would have prevented the 911 attacks. I do, on the other hand, believe he would have responded in a very different way and not have used the attacks as a lame excuse to start an unrelated resource war in Iraq.

Please bear in mind that we are talking about what Al Gore would have done. Hilary Clinton is not Al Gore. She has taken a much more hawkish posture during her political career than either Gore or President Obama. In fact, it was her hawkish instincts that cost her the Democratic Party's nomination in 2008 as Obama ran as an opponent of going to war in Iraq while Mrs. Clinton stubbornly refused to admit a lapse in judgment for voting to authorize the use of force in Iraq.

I was one of those who, even before the start of 2008, recommended to my fellow DUers Mr. Obama for having more of what it takes to be President than Mrs. Clinton. While I have often been disappointed in Obama, even to the point of feeling betrayed, I will give him credit for the faith he places in diplomacy before a use of force. In that respect, I still feel my decision to support Obama over Mrs. Clinton in 2008 was a good one.

I still don't trust Mrs. Clinton. She's still a war hawk in the Middle East while I feel more than ever that US military involvement in that region is rooted in an imperialist lust for oil, not in a desire to democratize the Arabs or preserve a Jewish state with its own imperialist desire for land. This is at a time when our national priorities would appear wiser if we moved to first supplement with an aim to completely supplant fossil fuels as a source of energy with renewable energy sources. All we are accomplishing by fighting resource wars in the Middle East is keeping fossil fuels industries on life support. No amount of oil is worth one more drop of a young American fighter's blood.

Moreover, Mrs. Clinton background is that of a corporate lawyer. As her husband's political career took him from Arkansas to Washington, D. C., she became cozy with large corporate interests which are too ofter at odds with public interests. Again, I do not trust Mrs. Clinton not to side with Wall Street and other corporate power centers against the rest of us. Income inequality will tear America apart, and I see Hilary Clinton as one who will exacerbate rather than remedy this problem.

Yes, Hilary Clinton is better than any Republican on the horizon. That's not saying much, is it? I think she's on the right side of many issues, but still wrong on war and trade. She's not going to compromise away any of the hard won victories made in recent years by gay and lesbian Americans not make lame excuses for bad cops who use the color law to murder or manhandle young blacks. But I don't trust her not to put Social Security on the table to get Republican votes. I don't trust her not to further fray the social safety net in a deal with congressional Republicans. I don't trust her to do whatever it takes regrow the American middle class if that is too much of an inconvenience to corporate interests. And I don't trust he to do any more than the Obama administration did to bring order back to our lawless banking industry.

If Hilary is the nominee, I'll hold my nose and vote for her. When she's president, I will work to undermine her pro-corporate agenda.
[center]

[/center]

June 16, 2015

Some people seem to have defective Bullshit meters

The BSMs in their PCs are behaving like they were infected by a well-known virus that entered some PCs as early as 1993, known as the Rubin Virus, named for the scam artist who developed it. The Rubin Virus attacks your PC's BSM by skewing the data filtered through it by a critical 1%. When combined with the infamous Florida microchip, introduced in 2000 by a scamster named Katherine Harris, it can have very bizarre results.

Symptoms of the Florida microchip is data which shows that Bush the Frat Boy actually won the election of 2000. Of course, what the Florida microchip does is cause your PC's calculator to stop counting.

When the Rubin Virus is combined with the Florida microchip, your PC will yield results to the effect that free trade deals like NAFTA were beneficial to the US economy and even that it actually created well-paying jobs in the US, in spite of declining union membership and rising income inequality. This sounds counter-intuitive, but don't be fooled. It's actually just complete and utter bullshit.

June 13, 2015

Stand up for American workers: Defeat the trade package and overthrow the oligarchs

If there is no trade deal that will displace more American jobs, then there should be no need for trade adjustment assistance.

So what is trade adjustment assistance supposed to do for displaced American workers? Retrain rocket scientists to flip burgers or greet customers at WalMart?

Of course, I'm oversimplifying. There's a bigger problem here than bad trade deals. One DUer is hitting the meme that jobs are being shipped to India and China, with which the US has no trade treaty. I think that poster may be on to something in identifying the problem, but his solution is more bad trade deals and that doesn't impress me as a good solution.

The neoliberal social paradigm is unsustainable. Large corporations cannot direct a race to the bottom without destroying the middle class, leaving them without consumers to purchase the products they manufacture. When that happens, they go broke, too. At some point we come after the bastards with torches and pitchforks, but after that, then what?

That is a conversation we need to start having. The then may be fast approaching, so we'll need the what sooner than we think.

In this case, we'll have to meet behind the proverbial closed doors, as much as it is possible for 99% to meet behind closed doors, to discuss the matter, because the captains of industry and their pet politicians are not invited. They'll only try to sell us on their neoliberal paradigm (you know, the one that is unsustainable), and we don't have any more time to waste listening to their pitch. We can listen to more enlightened 1%ers like George Soros, Warren Buffet or Nick Hanauer. They might have something to contribute to the discussion, but Legs Dimon, Pretty Boy Lloyd and the Koch kingpins are going to be left behind as we forge our own path the other world that is possible.

June 6, 2015

I'd like not to agree that we are documenting the last gasp of democracy, but . . .

. . . a couple of weeks ago, I posted the opinion that passage of the TPP would be the death of democracy and caused quite a stir mainly form HRC supporters.

Yes, the passage of the TPP will be the death of democracy. The reason I say that is because the TPP provides for a a platform to sue elected governments that is not available to actual citizens, who are made of flesh and blood and only of flesh and blood. The United States of America is formally a representative democracy. If the voters elect representatives who go to the capital to pass laws abating air and water pollution, who then pass such legislation only to be sued by ExxonMoble or the local coal company because such legislation will prevent them from realizing "expected profits," then democracy is indeed dead. The TPP creates corporations not as people, which is a silly enough idea, to creating corporations as a legal entity with more rights to citizens. It makes the realization of expected profits a right and with it the right to befoul the planet in pursuit of those profits.

We can elect whoever we please and pass whatever laws are appropriate, but ExxonMoble need not obey them and may even punish the citizens (who are also taxpayers, last time I checked, which is more than can be said for General Electric) by making us pay them for unrealized expected profits, awarded them by an unelected panel of corporate shysters in secret proceedings.

If that isn't the destruction of democracy, then what is?

I not only say that the TPP would be the end of American democracy, but that the only proper way for the public to respond to the passage of such a vile outrage is a mass campaign of civil disobedience aimed at making the TPP and similar "free" trade deal unenforceable. Our goal is victory. Our terms is unconditional surrender of the enemy. And when I say the enemy, Dave and Charlie Koch, I mean you, among other oligarchs.

May 28, 2015

We're all getting a wee bit carried away about the anti-Bernie blog today

Everybody assume the lotus position, take a deep breath, hold it for a few seconds, then let it out sloooowwwwwly.

I think we can agree that if Bernie Sanders is a racist then Hillary Clinton is a retired kamikaze pilot.

Some Coyote-worshiping joker questioned Senator Sanders' commitment to civil rights on her blog because most of the crowd gathered in Burlington, Vermont, to listen to him formally announce his candidacy was white. In Burlington, Vermont. I'm shocked, shocked to learn that there are very few people in Burlington who aren't white. I think I've known this before I first heard of anybody named Bernie Sanders who was the town's new socialist mayor.

If the blogger's intent was to sow the seeds of strife at DU, she succeeded. We fell for it, big time.

This acrimony is not worth it. Save it for Jeb Bush or Ted Cruz.

Now, take another deep breath, hold it and let it out slowly. Now, concentrate on what your face looked like before your parents were born.

April 29, 2015

Perhaps Bernie's candidacy will allow us to breathe again

We are going to hear an awful lot about Senator Sanders being an avowed socialist and out establishmentarian media is going to do everything it can to make him sound like the reincarnation of Joseph Stalin. Let me assure everyone, the two are easily distinguishable, but don't expect that to deter the Koch Kings from slipping media moguls some extra free $peech to pay no attention to the real Bernie Sanders and smear him as a Bolshevik. Of course, the Bernie Sanders you'll hear about on FoxNews will resemble the real Bernie Sanders about as much climate change denialism resembles science.

I am not a socialist. I would be very happy to return to the economic models that worked so well for America until the election of Ronald Reagan. At the same time, I am not at all anti-socialist. There is no such thing as a "moral" economic system, as claimed by the followers of Ayn Rand. An economic system is something that works well for everyone or is in need of repair, at least some tweaking, otherwise.

Evil does not come into the world from economics, the art of producing goods and services and resolving scarcity with people's needs, but from politics, the art of gaining and maintaining power, too often only for an elite class who spend too much time creating myths about how they're better than the rest of us in order to justify their privileged positions, which is almost always undeserved.

Capitalism or socialism is neither moral nor immoral. Government by coercion of the few for the benefit of the few over the many is at the expense of the many is immoral; democracy, government by free citizens where citizenship is equal, universal and unalienable, is the only moral system of government.

Socialism is not the greatest threat to mankind at this moment. Neither is Islamic terrorism, which can be easily contained with just governments and good police work. That's right, I'm talking about the Frat Boy the Big Dick, who told us it took a war to contain Islamic terrorism. No, it didn't. It took a war to steal Iraq's natural resources.

The greatest threat is to humanity today is neoliberalism. This is the doctrine that insists that unregulated capitalism, and nothing else, will meet all of humanity's need forever. Its adherents proclaim freedom, but its only freedom for the elite. The rest of us will toil for low wages, breathe carbon fumes, drink flammable water and be wary of getting sick. Politicians will be so bought and sold that they will be listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

No, I am not a socialist, but I will vote for a social democrat like Bernie Sanders before I vote for another neoliberal, especially one who tries to mask his (or her) neoliberalism in unconvincing populist rhetoric. Any politician supporting the Trans-Pacific Partnership is doing a lousy job of hiding his (or her) neoliberalism.

For this reason, the candidacy of Bernie Sanders is a most welcome phenomenon.

April 24, 2015

Let me say this loudly and clearly

Regardless of President Obama's accomplishments, the Trans-Pacific Partnership will destroy American democracy, and, as far as I am concerned, that means it will destroy America. It will destroy many of these same accomplishments that the writer of the piece justifiably lauds.

That is how easily one dares to say it. It isn't very hard for those us us who believe in telling the truth to the best of one's ability. By the way, I am a Democrat and not at all ashamed to say that I oppose this agreement because it will destroy America.

The verbiage that accompanies the OP was not written by sheshe2. She simply copied the page off The Obama Diary website. It's simply cheer leading and sophistry, which wouldn't bother me if it hadn't attacked those who oppose the TPP, including Senator Warren and shamed them opposing the President's proposal. The sophist says that the TPP will not destroy America, but doesn't tell his readers what it will do to help America or why those who say it will are wrong.

So let me at least say how it will destroy America. The TPP establishes an Investeor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) system that will be used by corporations concerned about costly regulations. A three member tribunal of corporate shysters will decide if the investors' case warrants sanctions against the state. The proceedings are secret, but the tribunal will have the authority to order the offending state to reimburse to corporation for unrealized profits due to the regulations passed by democratic governments. That can run into a pretty piece of change that the state's taxpayers will be providing.

If that hasn't sunk into you yet, let me summarize it this way: an unelected panel of corporate attorneys will meet in secret, hear evidence in secret and will be expected to give an unbiased (remember, when they're not on leave to do work on an ISDS tribunal, they're defending corporations in court) decision that could cost taxpayers billions. It is an end run around a democratically elected government.

All that stuff that the President has done that the sophist who wrote the the piece in The Obama Diary that finds it way to the OP claims is so great for the environment and his efforts to fight climate change is at risk under this arrangement. Likewise minimum wage increases. Likewise protections for labor unions. Likewise public health. Anything that any of out greedy, slimy corporations think costs them too much money can be challenged to the TPP's ISDS and stopped without any elected representative being able to do anything about it.

Trade Promotion Authority (TPA), also called Fast Track, will put an end to any discussion in Congress about the TPP. There will limited debate with members of the House and Senate unable to offer any amendment to the agreement. It all culminates in a straight up or down vote. Our founding fathers put more thought into writing the Constitution. If we're going to yield sovereign power to make our laws to an unelected tribunal of corporate shysters, then we should at least have good, hearty debate on the matter.

There is another troubling point about the TPP: the secrecy that shrouds the agreement. Our representatives in Congress are forbidden from discussing it in public. The secrecy is being directed at you and me, We, the People. This is wrong. The discussion that shouldn't be happening is discussion in Congress about scheduling a vote. There should be no vote at all on the TPP unless and until the agreement is made public. I can't imagine what is in a trade agreement that would require this level of secrecy. This, too, should ring the alarms.

It isn't our duty to support the President when he's pushing a bad, undemocratic trade deal whose provisions dismantle democracy and sell out our national sovereignty. We didn't support the last President when he prosecuted a ginned up war for oil and we're not going to support the TPP. Our duty is to oppose the trade agreement now, and to rip it to shreds with a campaign of mass civil disobedience if it passes.

Shame on anyone who says our duty to the leader and not to our nation.

March 15, 2015

Essay Inspired by the Cotton Letter

[center]

[/center]

This essay is not addressed to Senator Cotton or his seditious friends on Capitol Hill, or even to their paymasters in America’s corporate suites, the one percent, those whom George Carlin calls the owners of America, the oligarchs who are in the last stages of overthrowing the vestiges of American democracy.

This essay, in its own way just as seditious as Senator Cotton’s letter, is addressed to you Americans who aren’t in the club that George Carlin identified.

I see the passage in the near future of the Trans Pacific Partnership as the death knell of American democracy. We can pass whatever laws we like and the oligarchs will just take it a kangaroo court composed of corporate lawyers who will overrule it. The sovereignty of nations, and of the people who are the citizens of those nations, will be at an end.
If we want to return to democratic government, we will have to fight the oligarchs for it.

The fight must be best fought with a commitment to nonviolent strategy and tactics. We must not recognize oligarchs’ regime. We must not cooperate with the oligarchs’ regime. Our goal must be to overthrow the oligarchs’ regime and restore democracy.
Key to these tactics will be things that are just plain illegal. General strikes are against federal law, but that is not something that we should concern ourselves with once American sovereignty is usurped by a corporate oligarchy featuring its own judicial system under the TPP. The corporation for whom you work will be paying you as little as possible and bringing cases to the TPP tribunal to strike down regulations concerning workplace safety and public health. The Koch brothers won’t even have to go through the charade of denying climate science to escape culpability for the effects of global warming. They just bring the case to the TPP’s kangaroo courts. Should we be expected to honor laws or government given to protect those who starve us with low wages and choke us with environmental pollution? Of course not. We should refuse to work for them.

Another important weapon at our disposal is the tax strike. The law is not for our benefit, but for the benefit of corporate tyrants. With national sovereignty destroyed and government of the people, for the people and by the people a thing of the past, why should we pay taxes? Representation of the people has no effect, and taxation without representation is still tyranny.

Of course, the forces of tyranny should not be expected to take kindly to an open campaign of civil disobedience and non-cooperation. They will strike back and strike back hard. Be prepared to go to jail, even to be tortured and even to die. We may be committed to nonviolence, but, as seen in the Iraq War and Ferguson, Missouri, our adversaries are committed to building and protecting their power at any costs and by any means.

Finally, we must commit ourselves to not fight in their dirty little corporate imperialist wars. We don’t benefit from them. There’s nothing in it for any of us except a burial plot in Arlington.

There are very few "just" wars, and no war is really just in the last analysis. World War II is often cited as a just war, but in that case it was only just for the allies. Otherwise, it was a war started by a mad man who had no excuse, just his hate-filled delusions. The Japanese were more conventional villains than the Nazis. The Japanese went to war to expand into an empire, to subjugate nations and seize their natural resources.

Wars are not fought for noble reasons. The Trojan War was not fought to rescue a “kidnapped” Queen from captivity, even if there is any truth to that story. The Agamemnon led his command across the Aegean Sea to Troy in order to control shipping through the Hellespont, the most important trade route in the region in the late Bronze Age.

US wars since 1945 have been of that Japanese model. The war against Iraq most certainly was. It was a war for oil. All other rationales were just window dressing to make a war rooted in corporate greed more palatable to the American public as making it appear to be an altruistic effort to destroy a bloody tyrant and enhance national security. The only truth in that was that Saddam really was a bloody tyrant. That he was a threat to American security, or even to his weakest neighbor, were bald faced lies. That the world is a better and safer place without Saddam in power is a mantra that the architects of the war have continued to use to justify their actions as all the other reasons have fallen apart under even the slightest scrutiny. Yet even this justification is brought into question by the rise of the terrorist regime of the Islamic State, which makes Saddam look like an enlightened despot by comparison.

The fossil fuel industry is on life support. Coal and oil are dirty, polluting and unhealthy sources of energy, and this is true even before we start talking about anthropogenic climate change, something that most certainly not a hoax. Yet the private enterprises that extract these resources from the earth are given tax breaks and government subsides to do so. Renewable energy is ready to come online and supplant fossil fuels in a matter of years. There is no excuse not to begin the process to begin the process of supplementing and finally supplanting fossil fuels with solar and wind power immediately.

Therefore, there is no need to fight wars in the Middle East. There is no need to spill the blood of America's future to secure more supplies of oil for ExxonMobil or Chevron.

We must not give our lives or the lives of our children or grandchildren to be sacrificed on the altar of the fossil fuel industries. We Americans must avoid military service until a rational energy policy is adopted by the government that supposedly derives its power and authority from We, the people, not They, the corporatists.