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Election 2020

Frank da Cruz
Bronx NY
Most recent update: 8 November 2020

    Note: I am a US Army veteran born during FDR's third term and child of two World War II veterans.

Biden is President... Now What???

Democrats are back in the White House but the country is as divided as it was on the brink of the Civil War. A New York Times headline today begins "Biden Can't Be F.D.R...", meaning, "don't get your hopes up". Biden wants to "heal the divisions". That can't happen unless the causes of the divisions are addressed.

Step back and look at our two parties: they take turns doing nothing, changing over every 4 or 8 years while the rich get richer and the lives of ordinary people become harder, more stressful, and less secure with every year that goes by. At the end of each administration, the people blame the party currently in power and "vote the bums out" in hope for a change that never comes; we've been alternating between Republicans and Democrats for the last 75 years and it's been downhill the whole time. This is because both parties are in the pockets of Wall Street, big banks and finance, defense contractors, oil companies, the insurance "industry", big pharma and other rich and powerful private interests.

Maybe Biden isn't in the same class as FDR, but he needs to recognize that he won't win back the Senate in 2022 and Republicans will take everything in 2024 unless he makes dramatic improvements in lives of hundreds of millions of ordinary people, something that has not happened in the living memory of most Americans. This means: creating secure jobs with living wages and comprehensive benefits for everybody, health care for everybody, quality public education for everybody, and affordable housing for everybody.

This can not be accomplished by "reaching across the aisle" any more than it could have been in 1861. We know beyond any doubt that the Republican Party won't change, except for the worse. The only way to fix the country is to CHANGE THE VOTERS by arranging for them to have good and secure lives, as was done after World War II, except this time for everybody, not just white people.

How to do this? Just like FDR did: create government programs like the CCC, WPA, and NYA to put everybody to work fixing our crumbling infrastructure, building affordable housing, building or rehabilitating schools and hospitals, manufacturing essential goods, creating a clean-energy network, and reversing the centuries-long assault on the environment. There's enough work for everybody.

When government does not work for the people, the voting population is vulnerable to charlatans like Trump, who tell them to blame Mexicans, Muslims, and Black People for their problems instead of the billionaires and corporations that have been responsible all along. When government DOES work for the people — and allows them all to vote — they'll vote for the party that has improved their lives. This is why FDR was elected four times. Biden is not FDR, but if he does what FDR did, he can turn the country around.

But how to pay for it? How did FDR pay for the New Deal and World War II? Mostly, he simply printed money. The federal government can do that. If the money is used in a productive way, i.e. paying real people to do useful work, it doesn't cause inflation because the money enters the real economy where people buy things they need, further stimulating the economy and creating more jobs.

Some people argue that the New Deal didn't accomplish anything, and only World War II saved the American economy. Even if that were true, it only shows how effective government spending can be. This time instead of spending trillions dollars on a world war, let's spend it on fixing the country. The party that does this will win huge majorities for decades to come.

September 11, 2020

About 3000 people died on 9/11. As of today, about 192,000 people in the USA have died from COVID-19. Estimates as to the amount of the deaths that would have been prevented if we had a responsible government* vary between 20% and 99%. Even at the low end, nearly 40,000 people died due to the deliberate malfeasance of our President and Senate. The true number is likely much, much higher. Whatever it is, it dwarfs all previous attacks on the "Homeland" combined: Pearl Harbor, 9/11, ... (At the moment I can't think of any others, can you?)  So who are the real terrorists?

*

Like that of, say, Germany or New Zealand or Iceland or Vietnam or Cuba. The USA still has about 1000 people dying each day from the virus: another 9/11 every three days for the past six months. "In World War II, a Ford plant was configured to turn out one new B-24 bomber every hour, yet today we display none of that urgency even though Americans are dying from the virus at a faster pace than they fell in World War II." (same NY Times article).

10 July 2020: Dystopia

Bernie and the progressive agenda that he launched have totally vanished from the public consciousness as our own president devotes all his energy to punishing and killing as many of us as he can in the shortest amount of time — friend or foe, he doesn't even distinguish — every day a new atrocity beyond anything that would have been imaginable in 7.5 postwar pre-Trump decades. The USA, its billionaire-centric vampire-capitalist economy and policies, its profoundly corrupt government, its foundation in slavery and genocide, racism and misogyny, arrogance and cruelty, its utter lack of concern for the great masses of ordinary working people, are revealed in all its monumental squalor. Take away their medical care, take their homes, take their jobs, take their food, deport them, let them die, let them fight each other in streets, cheer on the new Civil War. That there exists no mechanism to put a stop to this right now is criminal. It's like selling cars without brakes. Most Americans who are not in Trump's thrall will welcome a self-proclaimed change-nothing Biden administration as if it were the Second Coming rather than the depressing non-event it will be. The lesson is that, in the post-FDR era, every time there is a significant movement to establish economic, racial, and social justice and world peace, "something happens" that is so awful, we long for a return to the miserable status quo ante. There is absolutely nothing right about our system of government and no amount of tinkering will save it (us) in its present form in which the rich and powerful buy the politicians and write the laws. Or, as Bernie put it on July 14th:

Greed is not good. Buying elections is not good. Exploiting workers is not good. War is not good. Making huge profits off of human illness is not good. Monopolization of the economy is not good. Racism and xenophobia are not good. Producing carbon emissions and destroying our planet is not good. Ignoring the needs of millions of children, elderly and disabled people is not good. Making money by putting poor people into prisons is not good.

The purpose of our government should be to ensure the health and wellbeing of the people — all of them — who live in the country, not to make the rich richer at our expense, not to impose its will on other countries, and certainly not to sacrifice everything and everybody to indulge the ego of a deranged sadistic psychopath. Our 250-year-old checks and balances have failed; the question of the new millenium is not just how to put things right, but also and even more important, how to establish tamper-proof failsafes to prevent the rich, the cruel, the bigoted, and/or the just-plain-crazy from ever gaining control again (as they have done in ever-greater measure over these 75 years since FDR died). Just as there was a wall between church and state, there must now be a wall between the state and the private economy.

Brave New World

Now that Bernie is safely out of the race, a New York Times staff editorial parrots Bernie's critique of the USA political economy without even mentioning his name:

• The America We Need, Editorial Board, New York Times, April 9, 2020. As one commenter put it: "In this editorial, we register the impact and the legacy of Bernie Sanders, a guy who said, and keeps saying, that drastic inequality is bad for society, and that things should not be that way." A commenter on a later article said: "It took only one virus to expose everything wrong with U.S political, economic, and healthcare systems that Mr. Sanders had been warning us about since the start of his political career."
• Letter to Joe Biden from the younger generations (April 2020). As of mid-May it looks like the Biden campaign is "reaching out" to progressives for ideas about what he needs to do to win their votes, but winning votes is one thing and addressing the country's fundamental problems is quite another.

8 April 2020

Read Bernie's letter
Video (1:22)

Bernie closes his campaign but he remains on the ballot in the states that have yet to hold their primaries. EVERYBODY should vote for him now so it is clear that Americans really do want universal health care, economic justice, and a new New Deal encompassing not only infrastructure and climate change but also our health-care system so thousands or millions more won't die needlessly when the next pandemic rolls around. How to pay for it: Tax the rich and big corporations at Eisenhower-era rates and redirect the grotesque Pentagon budget to our urgent needs at home; get money out of politics and lobbyists out of congress. Biden and the mainstream Democrats will never do any of this without being forced to. So VOTE FOR BERNIE AND SAVE LIVES! Your vote won't be wasted, even if Biden wins the nomination. And remember:

    If you deny health care to some, you raise the risk to all.

March 28

Reality Has Endorsed Bernie Sanders, The New Yorker, 30 March 2020.
Bernie's Coronavirus relief package, 4 April 2020.

As the exponential* nature of the spread of the coronavirus becomes apparent, all I can ask is: have we finally had enough of business-friendly healthcare and government? How many will fall on the altar of unchecked profit-and-shareholder-first capitalism before before rationality begins to take hold? As it did in the 1930s and 40s. Meanwhile, how is it that when we have a government deliberately — whether through indifference, incompetence, or malevolence — standing in the way of saving lives, that there is no mechanism to change it beyond waiting until the next election? We urgently need a government that is committed to the health and welfare of everybody in this country and to reversing the now obviously fatal neoliberal/conservative agenda of the past 40 years.

Do you know anybody who's hospitalized with COVID-19 now? Whether s/he survives or not, according to Business Insider, the bill will come to $73,300. Those lucky enough to have insurance can expect a copay of $38,221. There are already reports of infected people without insurance being turned away and dying.

*

How many Americans know what "exponential" means? Let's say 100 died today, and the number of deaths doubles every 2 days. Then tomorrow, 150. The next day, 200. Four days later, 800. On the 15th day, 12800. On the 21st day, 102400. On the 31st day, 1638400 (1.6 million). That's why every day that is wasted getting the needed people, facilities, and equipment in place matters so much.

March 18

March 17 primary results: Biden 230 delegates, Bernie 80. Looks like Bernie has no chance to win the nomination for whatever reason (are the results genuine? who knows). Will he gracefully bow out? I don't know his mind, but I feel like I do. This election is not a beauty contest, it's a matter of life and death for potentially millions of people, and for the planet itself. Bernie has to do all he can to get Biden, the voters, and all the candidates for other offices to finally realize this. Bowing out quietly would enable the country and the world to continue on its merry way down the path to oblivion without facing the the vital questions. There is already a lot of sniping in the press about grumpy old Bernie who won't face reality, when in fact it's the Democratic party, the Republican party, and most voters who aren't facing reality. We need free universal health care right now, and to build hospitals, not shut them down. We need to nationalize the production of lifesaving vaccines and drugs and medical devices and protective gear. We need to shut down fossil fuel extraction right now and fund a massive conversion to clean energy. We need to "bring the boys home" (and girls) and redirect our massive "defense" expenditures to fixing our broken country. How other countries organize themselves is not our business. If we really believe that democracy is the best way, then let's wipe away all the barriers to it that we have erected -- voter suppression, gerrymandering, DNC shenanigans, insecure voting machines with no paper trail, superdelegates, electoral college, a Senate that puts all the power in the hands of small "conservative" states and ultimately in the hands of one man (Mitch McConnel), a dishonest Supreme Court, dishonest mass media, and all the rest -- and then the world can judge by our example. But right now the USA is not inspiring anyone.

March 2020

On the 22nd of last month, Bernie was way ahead in the Democratic primaries and caucuses. He was still the front runner on March 2 and Biden was still near the bottom. There was every indication Bernie would win the nomination. Then, in the four days leading up to Super Tuesday, all the other candidates except for Tulsi (who already had effectively been made a nonperson) and Warren bowed out, and against all odds and predictions, Biden won big. This just doesn't smell right, such a massive turnaround in just four days. To me, the most suspicious part is that Warren won only 2.5% of the delegates. In 2016, 54% of women voted for Hillary, and I'd wager that that many of these votes were cast just because she was a woman. So, given that women make up half the electorate, how come hardly anybody voted for Warren???

Anyway, what difference does it make. There was never any way that Bernie would be allowed to get the Democratic nomination, much less become president. Despite the fact that significant majorities of Democrats, and in some cases even all voters, favor Bernie's positions on the issues. In the end, the DNC and their puppetmasters anointed Joe Biden, knowing full well it is far more likely that Trump will beat him in the election than Trump would beat Bernie. So why did they do it? Because Biden -- like Hillary in 2016 -- won't change anything. That's why so many people voted for Trump in the last election, because the status quo is not working for most people. So if Biden is the nominee, I expect millions of voters will simply stay away because what's the point? The wealth gap, the wars, the insecurity, the stress, the decay, the corruption will all go back to normal, as in every administration since 1980.

The Corona virus makes it glaringly obvious that our system of corporate rule with government a wholly-owned subsidiary is completely useless in promoting the health and well-being of the population. The situation today with the virus closely parallels the crisis of the 1929: the stock market crash, the drought and dust bowl, and the ensuing massive unemployment. The business-friendly Hoover administration had three years to put the country back on its feet, obviously without success. Along came FDR and within a matter of months the entire country was mobilized to right itself. Wall Street and big business no longer called the shots. Roosevelt "welcomed their hatred". Through the New Deal (and admittedly, also through the mass mobilization and industrialization brought on by the War) FDR created a nearly fully functional country whose prosperity and stability was shared by almost everybody. New Deal policies remained in force for several decades and were strenghened by Lyndon Johnson (himself an old New Dealer), achieving long-overdue advances in civil rights and health care.

The counterrevolution broke out in 1980, rapidly took and consolidated power, and has never let up. To the point where nearly all the achievements of the New Deal have either been rolled back or are under attack. Democrats used to be the "peoples party", pro-union, pro-safety-net, pro-health, etc. Postwar Republicans like Eisenhower were the fiscal conservatives who preserved many of FDR's policies but favored a balanced budget. Today's Democrats are further right than Republicans were just a few years ago, and today's Republicans meet the very definition of Fascism (authoritarian militarized ultranationalism, race-based scapegoating and persecution, massive incarceration, belligerant foreign policy, tight coupling of government and large corporations, and Big Lie public relations).

The pandemic won't be defeated by market forces; unregulated business sees it only as another opportunity to cash in. Another New Deal is required. Bernie would do everything in his power to usher in a new New Deal, which was already desperately needed even before the Coronavirus, but now the need is inescapable. Apparently most people can't be concerned with mass extinctions, climate disasters, raging fires, crumbling infrastructure, etc, but they can't ignore an epidemic that might kill them.

We need Universal free health care right now. Universal free education. Affordable housing as a right for all persons. Full employment at a living wage. Non-usurious interest rates on loans and credit cards. A free press and mass media not dominated by a handful of mega-coroprations. A country that can develop and produce its own essential products, especially medications. Security, peace of mind. All paid for by bringing back taxes on the rich and big corporations and by canceling our project of world domination, which, by the way, has absolutely nothing to do with spreading democracy. It's about money and power, nothing else, and since WWII never has been.

It's an increasingly long shot but it is still possible for Bernie to win the nomination, and if he does he'll stand up to Trump much better than Biden would: he's a better fighter and he's less vulnerable. All that's required is for the young people who favor Bernie to tear themselves away from their cell phones and social media long enough to get out and vote in the upcoming primaries, and then again on Election Day. Really, you are the ones who are going to suffer if the fundamental changes I've mentioned don't come soon; you will literally inherit a wasteland.... If you live through the epidemic! (Remember, even if Democrats sweep the 2020 elections, Trump is still in charge for ten more months.)

February 2020

Apparently I'm not the only one who thinks it's time for a fundamental change. At this writing (February 23) Bernie is leading the Democratic pack, by far. People are, apparently, coming to realize that, thanks to his completely consistent record over many decades, he is the most authentic and trustworthy candidate. He's no shrinking violet; he's a fighter; he can stand up to Trump. If elected, he won't be a another gigantic disappointment like Obama ("How's all that hope and change working' out for ya?") or Clinton. The corporate media are beginning to give him some coverage, albeit still mostly negative, as their job is to promote corporate interests. Their criticisms are mainly that he's a "divider" like Trump (he isn't) and that his plans can't possibly work and that they cost too much. Well, they can work, because they did before. Look back at the FDR era and the great prosperity it ushered in. And also look at all the social democracies in western Europe, where everybody has education, health care, secure retirement, and all the rest. What else?... He's too old, he gesticulates wildly, he could have another heart attack, and on and on. They didn't complain about a senile Ronald Reagan, did they? And about Bernie's plans costing too much, see this article in the Guardian.

But (many people say) social democracies don't work, just look at Germany, France, England, even Scandinavia to some extent.... they're all falling apart and turning to the right. Yes, it's true, but not because social democracy doesn't work; it's because the USA has been working for the past 40-50 years to engineer its downfall, even though many of these countries are our closest allies. Did you ever wonder why the United States has been invading and/or otherwise destroying so many countries in the Mideast and North Africa that never did anything to us? And why we keep fighting endless wars we never win? Here's why: to unleash vast waves of nonwhite and/or Muslim refugees on western Europe and Britain. These migrations inevitably cause social unrest in the host countries and the rise of xenophobic right-wing governments that also happen to be "business friendly". Thus producing greater profits for the multinational corporations due to a falling away of regulations and a convenient new supply of cheap labor. The proliferation of authoritarian right-wing regimes also has the side benefit of hastening climate change, thus producing even more refugees and hence, more cheap labor and even higher profits.

This is the world created by our "moderate" "middle-of-the-road" politicians over the past 4-5 decades, millions dead, displaced, and impoverished for the benefit of a tiny elite. Trump's "booming economy" is booming only for those at the very top. But despite the best efforts of our corporate mass media to distract us, people are waking up, thinking for themselves, and voting for Bernie, i.e. for themselves. Because the truth is, plutocracy is what doesn't work; we've been living in one for decades already and it's been downhill all the way.

If Bernie wins and he has a friendly Congress, we'll see another New Deal in this country. There will be fierce opposition at every turn just as there was in the first New Deal and the media will be unremittingly hostile. But masses of ordinary people will come together to finally begin to fix this disaster of a county that we have inherited over the past 40-50 years, just as our parents and grandparents did in the 1930s.

January 2020

Everything I said in 2016 still goes. Meanwhile here's a comment by BReed on a 25 January 2020 New York Times article that sums things up pretty well:

I'm a 25 year old who was a Clinton supporter in 2016 while in college. Since then, I have come all the way around to Bernie. I want this country to look like the social democracies in Canada, Scandinavia, and Europe in 20-30 years. Not only do I want the policies they take for granted: universal healthcare, free/cheap education, and climate-first policies, but I want a society that prioritizes humanity and each other over money and individualism. We do not get there by repeating the same status quo policies. We do not get there by going for the safe, "moderate" policies that have left millions of people in this country in poverty, without healthcare, and riddled with student debt. For these reasons, the Bernie campaign is about far more than one man or one policy: it's about reorienting our values as a society with a mass movement.

I have never felt so passionate about a movement and campaign. This movement is uniting young people, minorities, and the working-class. We [are] the Green New Deal generation, carrying on the legacy of FDR's economic policies with tolerance, equality, and justice for all. I hope you all see the excitement that young people are feeling for Bernie. We feel this is our moment to change the future of this country. We think America has great potential, but it has not yet matched that potential. We want to truly make America great - for all people - and I believe we get there with Bernie Sanders and his movement. Please stand with us.

The Trump administration has been a particularly surreal nightmare except that (so far, at least) he's kept his body count low compared to other presidents, but that could change at any moment (and came very close in the "Iran Missile Crisis" and the Qasem Soleimani drone assassination). A widely aired watchword for 2020 is "Anybody but Trump!" but it's too late for that now. The last thing we need is another "middle-of-the-road" corporate president. The entire planet is at a tipping point and nothing short of a new New Deal can do anything about it in time. So first of all, rule out any candidates who have not committed to an all-out assault on carbon-based energy. The mass media wants us to think that most people believe a new New Deal is crazy, it's socialism, it's radical, it's too expensive, and on and on, and that a good old "sensible", "moderate", "incremental", "bipartisan" approach is needed. For the climate, for health care, for everything. This is just another way of saying, "don't change anything", which means let the world be destroyed, let people keep dying for lack of health care, etc etc. But think about it. How did the United States become so prosperous after WWII? It was because of the policies, laws, and regulations put in place by FDR during the New Deal. The very same policies, laws, and regulations that our "sensible", "moderate", "bipartisan" politicians have ripped away, little by little at first and then no-holds-barred since 1980. How to fix the economy? Put back all the same policies, laws, and regulations from the FDR administration and enforce them; tax the rich and the big corporations; put people to work in real jobs with living wages, regular hours, benefits, and security. Bring back unions. Stop the wars and interfering in other countries. And at long last, enact universal health care. Government should look out for all the people. The rich and powerful don't need our help; they can take care of themselves. Just keep 'em away from the politicians!

Who should be president in 2020? I still like Bernie. Elizabeth Warren is pretty good too, but appeals to a more suburban, genteel, mainstream demographic. I think the two of them together on the same ticket would win big, no matter how much voter suppression, tampering, hacking, and other shenanigans stand in the way. It doesn't matter who's on top, they should run as "co-presidents". Some of the others should have seats in the Cabinet, for example Jay Inslee for EPA, Energy, or Interior. Tulsi Gabbard for Secretary of Defense or National Security Advisor.

About the 2016 Election

December 2016

Who could have predicted that Donald Trump would win the presidential election? I'm sorry, I don't have anything original to add to the topic. A local neighborhood paper here in the Bronx sums it up pretty well in the Inquiring Photographer section in which readers were asked for "their thoughts on the outcome of the 2016 presidential race"; Johnny Gibbs of Parkchester says:

"How the heck did they allow him and the Russians [to] steal the [explitive] presidency? It was stolen... And Hillary stole it from Bernie Sanders, and Donald Trump stole it from her. So Hillary shouldn't have even been in the race and Bernie could have been president."

To that I would only add that if Russia somehow overturned our electoral process to install its favored candidate, ask yourself: How many times has the USA done the same thing in Latin America, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Eastern Europe? Or, when that failed, simply invaded countries outright, or instigated a military coup?

Anyway, yes, Bernie was very popular here in the Bronx, where people see the effect of extreme capitalism up close every day. 20,000 people stood in long lines for hours to see Bernie in Saint Mary's Park in Mott Haven, South Bronx. But there was no way he going to be allowed to win the nomination, much less the election. I've lived through 12 presidential changeovers, starting when Franklin Roosevelt died, and I can tell you that in terms of the economy and miltarism each new president has been worse the last. You might think that a few of them weren't so bad; maybe you'll change your mind if you watch all 10 episodes of Oliver Stone's The Untold History of the United States¹. Every president since FDR funneled obscene amounts of our tax money into weapons and unnecesary wars and toppling foreign governments, and every president facilitated the ongoing rollback of the New Deal, thus accelerating the massive transfer of wealth from working people to the ultra-rich. The latter process went into overdrive with Reagan, who single-handedly destroyed organized labor and drove the Democratic party to Wall street for support, thus leaving the voters with — quite literally — no choice. For the large majority of Americans, life keeps getting harder and stress higher while the upper crust wallows in unheard-of riches.

Every president since FDR has put foxes in charge of the chicken coops (cabinet departments and major federal agencies)... except for the Pentagon and Security State. The only difference this time is that Trump is more open about it, which might be a good thing — it'll be a liitle harder for the compliant corporate media to smooth over the wreckage with happy talk. But they'll do their best: "Employment is at an all time high!" "Dow breaks 30,000!" "iPhone 17 coming soon!!!"

(Notes: • Employment ain't what it used to be, is it? • The Dow Jones Industrial Average basically measures the upwards migration of wealth generated by working people into the pockets of investors who don't work. • "Smartphones" are a way to transfer hundreds of billions more dollars from poor and working people to the megacorparations and their investors... think about it: families that once paid $15 a month for phone service are now paying hundreds.)

Our precious "freedoms" have mostly evaporated. Democracy, if we ever really had it, died before most of us were born. Did we vote for all these wars? Did we vote to have our jobs outsourced? Did we vote to be spied on by our own government? Did we vote to deregulate banks so they can raise interest rates into the stratosphere? Did we vote to repeal antitrust laws so a few huge monopolies can control almost everything? Did we vote to have taxes slashed on the rich and the big corporations, to be paid for by cuts to our infrastructure? Did we vote to have funding cut to public schools to the point they barely even function? Did we vote to cut funding to public universities so now they have to charge astronomical tuition? Did we vote to have science and reality repealed? Did we vote to have our old-age benefits, funded by our own payroll deductions, turned over to Wall Street? Did we vote to have an electoral system where our own votes don't count? When did we ever have anybody to vote for (besides in a primary) who would work for the common good rather than for billionares and lobbyists?².  Elections have been nothing more than a cruel joke since FDR died. And anyway, who can even vote any more? Voter suppression has reached levels not seen since the Jim Crow days and it will only get worse.

So maybe it's time to stop patting ourselves on the back about how great we are. For example, did you ever wonder where all this "terrorism" came from? Could it have something to do with our own country going into other countries all over the world and killing people? Should we expect the survivors and refugees from our attacks to thank us for blowing up their houses and killing their families? Is this what makes America great? It is very rare that the words of one of these "terrorists" slip past media censorship, but Somali-born 18-year-old Ohio State student Abdul Razak Ali Artan, who attacked people on campus in November 2016, made his feelings pretty clear³:

"I am sick and tired of seeing my fellow Muslim brothers and sisters being killed and tortured EVERYWHERE, I can't take it anymore. America! Stop interfering with other countries, especially Muslim [communities]... [if] you want us Muslims to stop carrying [out] lone wolf attacks, then make ... a pact or a treaty ... where you promise to leave them alone ... By Allah, we will not let you sleep unless you give peace to the Muslims."

Listen to him. He was just kid, not a member or leader of any "terrorist group", watching the USA rain death and destruction on almost every country where people share his religion, blowing people up with impunity by pushing buttons in air-conditioned comfort. You don't need to be enmeshed in some sinister conspiracy to become "radicalized" if your entire people is being terrorized by American military and economic power for no reason at all.

Americans should try to have a little empathy. How would you feel if some other country was blowing up your family and friends and neighbors? The USA has been doing this year after year, decade after decade, and nobody seems to be able to stop it. What we call "terrorism", they call "fighting back". They don't have armies and navies and drones and missiles so they make weapons out of kitchen utensils or vehicles.

2016 can be seen as a delayed reaction to American atrocities over the postwar years, a turning of the tables. After all the atrocious leaders we have foisted on the helpless people of other countries, one has been foisted on us! Perhaps by Russia, perhaps by our own dysfunctional political parties and electoral system, or even by our own FBI director. And as we see increasing acts of "terror" in the "Homeland" we have to consider that they don't come out of nowhere; rather, they are a direct response to our own acts of terror in other lands. Didn't our politicians learn the Golden Rule in Sunday School? Perhaps, but there's a New Rule in town. Not so new, really; it's been in effect since 1945: The USA Must Always Have an Enemy. The USA must always be on a war footing or fighting a war because our economy is based on it. When the Soviet Union collapsed (largely due to the Afghanistan war that we engineered and the nuclear arms race that we forced them into, which bankrupted them) we needed a new enemy so we created one: "Radical Islam". It wasn't difficult. Push people hard enough and they'll push back, and poof: New Enemy.  It's instructive to read the list of countries where the USA has interfered since WWII, and then ask yourself: What gives us the right?

Donald Trump said, "Hillary Clinton never met a war she didn't want other Americans to fight." And "Sometimes it seemed like there wasn't a country in the Middle East that Hillary Clinton didn't want to invade, intervene in, or topple." If he was trying to say that he would not be like that, and he means it, this might be the only significant difference between him and all of his predecessors since 1945. As for the rest? Don't get your hopes up. Trump or no Trump, good jobs are not coming back, everything that's not been privatized yet will be, and nothing will be done unless it's for profit.

Hard and scary times for almost everyone who is not a well-off white male. But due to our rapidly changing demographics and the resistence that the new administration had better engender, and to the new clarity that now exists about the total moral bankruptcy of both major parties, there is a chance that this will be the last hurrah for the racist, misogynist, xenophobic, warmongering, plutocratic elite that has ruled this country and tortured the entire planet since 1945.

Notes

1. Oliver Stone has made a series of films that fills in the blanks in our 20th Century history up through 2012, the parts they leave out in school and history books and the mass media. The facts he reports are all verifiable; read the reviews or, better still, buy the accompanying book to see the sources that back up Stone's presentation of the missing pieces in our history. Oliver Stone, like me, is a veteran but unlike me he saw combat in Viet Nam and has a Bronze Star and two Purple Hearts earned the old-fashioned way. He has been in the very heart of the horror the USA inflicts on an endless series of countries that only want to be left alone.

2. George McGovern is the exception that proves the rule.

3. Ali Artan's statement was a bit confused and yes, he makes a reference to ISIS, but he was only a teenager who was upset (in my interpretation) that the USA could shower death and destruction over the lands of his people, killing millions and leaving even more millions of refugees wandering the earth with nothing but the clothes on their backs, while the Americans around him at OSU were completely oblivious, leading lives of comfort and self-indulgence unimaginable in those countries which we are reducing to smoldering piles of rubble. To an ever-growing number of Muslims, ISIS is the last hope to get the United States out of their countries and out of their lives. Of course this is a false hope because ISIS mainly kills Muslims, but that only shows how desperate the US has made people in the Islamic world; they are like Russians hoping that Hitler would defeat the USSR in WWII because maybe he would kill less Russians than Stalin.

Election 2016

1 March 2016 (Super Tuesday)

Imagine having a president who speaks the truth.

Bernie Sanders for president!  I have never endorsed a presidential candidate before, but I'm doing it now. Here's why:

Franklin D. Roosevelt, believe or not, was the president when I was born. I grew up in the afterglow of the New Deal and – for a few brief years, before the Korean War – in a time when the USA was perceived as the Good Guy of the world and America was also a pretty good place for almost everybody to live, at least from an economic standpoint. Jobs were secure with good benefits, education was good. Health care was affordable. Stress was low. Returning veterans had GI loans to buy houses and the GI Bill to pay for college.

It has been downhill ever since. And the decline has accelerated since 1980 and especially since 2007. Do I need to spell it out? The covertly sponsored coups; the wars of aggression, almost countless by now, millions upon millions dead, maimed, displaced, poisoned, and impoverished. The erasure of the once-prosperous American working class, and increasingly the middle class too. The disappearance of almost all manufacturing except of weapons. The crushing of organized labor. The voter suppression. The highly politicized and deeply dysfunctional Supreme Court and the disastrous effects of their decisions. The privatization and monetization of everything. The escalating cost of the essentials of life, as wages decline and benefits disappear. The ongoing destruction of the environment and therefore the future prospects of every living species on the planet. The ever-accelerating concentration of wealth at the very, very, very top, and the impoverishment of everybody else. The utter charade of the electoral and legislative process, with outcomes totally dictated and controlled by Wall Street and the big corporations. The destruction of public education and of any pretense of real journalism in the mass media. The vicious "free trade" "agreements". The relentless cuts and austerity in all areas of public health, infrastructure, housing, education, and safety. The neverending mergers and acquisitions of huge megacorporations, further increasing their power if that is even possible. And on and on and on without end.

Why is this happening?  Only Bernie will tell you. Listen to him. Every politician except Bernie and a handful of others is bought and paid for by corporate money, or contributions from extremely rich persons, all of whom have "wants and needs". In return for financial campaign support and promises of future lucrative employment, politicians arrange tax breaks and other favors for their benefactors. Sometimes very big favors, like wars to secure foreign oil reserves, or to topple foreign governments that interfere with their profits. All the bad things that are happening, the wars, the pollution, the offshoring of jobs, the confiscation of pensions, the union busting, the high credit-card interest rates, and all the rest... These things are not happening because we, the voters, want them to happen. We didn't vote for any of them. The politicians do what their sponsors want, not what we want. In what way can the USA be called a democracy any more?

It's depressing. I have so much nostalgia for the 1930s and 40s, the Roosevelt administration when the USA was a hopeful place, building a better future for everybody. And when a war had to be fought, it was against fascism and genocide, not to rule the world. People who are younger than 60 or 70 can't even imagine how much the USA has changed since the FDR administration and the postwar years. People under 40 can't even imagine what it would be like to have a decent, secure job, 40 hours a week, with full benefits and retirement. Or to have some money in the bank, or not be drowning in debt, or not be still living at their parents' house.

That's why the election of 2016 is the most important one since World War II. This is the first chance we have had to reverse the theft of our republic and the destruction of our environment, and to end the nightmarish cycle of perpetual war. Bernie Sanders is the first presidential candidate since FDR who will put things right, or die trying. He is one of the very few politicians since WWII who is not in anybody's pocket. He is completely correct in his analysis of what has gone wrong, and he is the only one speaking the truth.

Everybody should vote for Bernie and for legislators and governors who are like Bernie. Anybody who knows history knows how to fix a rigged, dysfunctional economy because it has been done before. For example, they know the way to put people back to work is not to give trillions of dollars to big companies; it's to create decent jobs with fair pay... Directly, if necessary, as FDR did. And Bernie, like me, is old enough to remember the afterglow of the New Deal and the postwar prosperity and optimism. Even the rich and powerful should vote for Bernie, because capitalism is on course to destroy itself and our planet with it if left totally unregulated as it is now. Like 2-year-olds, corporations can't control their destructive behavior; they need grownups to set limits.

If we don't elect Bernie, nothing will change, just as nothing changed when we elected Obama. I'm sorry, but Obama has been in no way progressive on the fundamental issues. The massive upwards transfer of wealth accelerated on his watch and it will only get worse with his pet project, the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The wars, the drones, the coup in Honduras, the locking up of refugees in unaccountable for-profit hell-holes, the destruction of Libya and Syria and Yemen and who knows how many other countries that don't even get in the news. And the rise of ISIS because the US and its NATO allies will just simply not leave other countries alone. Hence the expansion of American military bases to every conceivable country on earth, to stir up more anger and resentment and more reasons for retaliation, thus keeping the war machine busy and our tax money flowing into the usual pockets. But you can't kill your way to world peace. We have to relearn the Golden Rule that we were taught as children.

Obama and Clinton are good at progressive rhetoric but look at their records, then look at Bernie's. Who paid for whose campaigns? Who do you believe? Who can you trust? Obama took office in 2008 with a huge mandate as the "Anti-Bush" and with a friendly congress; he could have been the next FDR but instead, from Day One, he chose to be Bush III: the exact opposite of what we voted for. He put Wall Street sharks in charge of the economy, he prosecuted whistleblowers and let war and financial criminals off the hook, he created a health care plan that is a massive giveaway to for-profit insurance corporations and big pharmacy; he was ready to cut Social Security, he promoted fossil fuel development and fracking and nuclear energy, his regulatory agencies (FDA, SEC, FCC, OSHA, EPA, DOL, etc) do everything but regulate; his spy agencies are listening in on everybody's cell phones and monitoring their Internet activity; he proposed a trillion dollars in new nuclear warheads; he's doing his best to rekindle the Cold War by sponsoring a coup in Ukraine and pushing NATO right up to Russia's border, and he set out to topple regimes all over the Mideast that were perceived as "unfriendly to American interests" while propping up others that may be friendly, but are not exactly models of good behavior.

Seven years later, Syria and Libya are in ruins, Iraq and Afghanistan are the same horrible nightmare they have been since the Bush days, Europe is drowning in refugees, glaciers are melting at an ever accelerating pace, sea levels are rising, the weather is more and more destructive, economic inequality is at an all-time high, mass incarceration continues with for-profit prison factories demanding more and more slave labor. Racial conflicts are breaking out all over the country in response to police violence and urban decay; Central American children fleeing from countries where we facilitated coups or trained death squads are held in concentration camps; huge corporations are richer and more powerful than ever, and the entire planet is boiling over with people crazed with hatred for a United States that invades their countries and kills their families. Meanwhile most Americans don't understand what is happening or why but they are angry, stressed, depressed, losing their hair, and are escaping into drugs or fantasy because there is no joy in real life and nothing to look forward to. No surprise, then, the sharp rise in obesity, opioid addiction, mass shootings, suicides among veterans, and other symptoms of a seriously ill society.

Establishment politicians no longer inspire hope or optimism. Clinton (if elected) will be as much like Obama as Obama was like Bush. The power of Wall Street and the big banks will not be diminished. The wars will not stop. The highly profitable prison-industrial complex will continue to expand. Good jobs will not come back. There is no credible reason to believe that Clinton will make any fundamental changes. Look at her record, she's been all over the place on every issue, whereas Bernie has been consistent and sincere his whole long life. Anyway, she has said as much herself: she will continue Obama's policies, it's her whole platform.

What really do we have to lose by electing Bernie?  Despite all the corporate media talk about being unelectable, inexperienced, an impractical dreamer, a one-issue candidate, on the ropes after South Carolina, doomed among Black voters, etc etc etc... If you agree that what Bernie says is true, then vote for him! Then he will be electable, and once elected, he will be the long-awaited next FDR, and the first president since FDR to stand up to big capital and to build up the country for everybody. Bernie will be better for working people, for people who wish they were working, for the former middle class; for women, old people, people of color, active duty military, veterans, children, poor people, sick people, immigrants, small business, just about everybody. Even people who would never even consider voting for him. Seriously, because we all need a stable, secure economy that works for all of us. The current fraudulent and lopsided one is simply not sustainable, and nobody but Bernie is willing to even try to fix it. Maybe he'll have trouble enacting his programs if he doesn't have a friendly congress but (a) that's why we should all vote for congressional candidates who stand for the same principles, and (b) Hillary would do no better with a hostile congress than Bernie, so why not think big? A chance like this comes along only about once in a century, don't blow it!

Or if you do, don't say I didn't warn you.

Videos:

• Tulsi Gabbard's Bernie endorsement (video)
• Rosario Dawson (video, 12 minutes, and worth every second)
• Nina Turner (video)
• Erica Garner (video)
• Lucy Flores (video)
• View from Prison, Chris Rosen (video)
• National Nurses United endorsement (video)
• Communication Workers of America endorsement (video)
• Bernie on the Verizon Picket Line (video)

Links:

• The Living New Deal (UC Berkeley): Learn about the New Deal
• Living New Deal on Bernie Sanders
• The New Deal in New York City
• Bernie visits FDR's grave
• Bernie Sanders and Historical Memory, Living New Deal, April 12, 2016.
• Bernie's Vatican Speech, April 15, 2016
• New York Primary autopsy, April 20, 2016 (Bernie would have won if it was an open primary)
• Bernie Sanders / Danny Glover interview on The Real News Network
• Bernie Sanders and the Unsung Struggle for Civil Rights in the North
• Money in Politics
• Clinton donors
• Clinton Mideast policies
• Clinton and Honduras (more)
• How to Explain the Sanders Campaign to an Idiot, Paul Krugman or a Clintonite in 8 Sentences, Seth Abramson, Huffington Post, May 30, 2016
• Why Bernie Sanders Is the Best Candidate for Senior Citizens, Hollywood Reporter, 1 June 2016.
• Transcript of Bernie Sanders Speech, Burlington VT, June 16, 2016

April 2016 - The Establishment Strikes Back

After the primaries of April 19th and 26th, it seems the USA's greatest hope for sanity in generations was dashed. Why? The combined forces of the entire mainstream media, the entire Democratic political establishment, and the profoundly undemocratic primary procedure, in which 42% of the registered electorate was barred from taking part in 60% of the states, and another significant percentage was turned away at the polls for various reasons in states like NY and AZ. And on top of that, as Bernie was the only one with the courage to point out, poor people don't vote, the very people who would stand the most to gain from a Sanders presidency. Why don't they vote? In general, they are underserved by the election and voting mechanisms — not enough polling stations, long lines, lack of certain types of ID, etc, plus poor people are more likely to have prison records, which disqualifies them from voting in many states, due to the embedded institutional racism of our criminal justice system — but also the fact that they have to work all the time time and can't take a whole day off to stand in lines and fight with the bureaucracy, plus after 350 years at the short end of the stick many of them are so cynical about politicians, they don't see how it's worth the trouble, let alone the risk of being fired or arrested. Also, since Bernie was never covered fairly and honestly in the mainstream media, his enthusiasts mainly came from the Internet, which many poor people have no access to or no time to access.

The more affluent tend to favor Hillary; the young and the less affluent and those long disaffected by our corrupt political process tend to favor Bernie but they are the ones who are disproportionately frozen out from the primaries. The system is engineered precisely to perpetuate itself.

Now the hope is that Bernie will be able to win additional policy concessions from Hillary and have some influence on the Democratic Party platform. But we all know how that goes. The hallmark of Democratic establishment politicians is that they campaign on populist issues and then upon winning the nomination, "pivot to the center", and then upon taking office, turn their backs on poor and working people and embrace horrible trade agreements, Wall Street, the big banks, the fossil fuel industry, big pharma, the big insurance companies, the arms dealers, and the war machine. It happens every time. It happens even when we know it's going to happen.

While some of us might be ready to resign ourselves to “stupid American voters get what they deserve”, the rest of the world's people might not agree; they don't get to vote in our elections and yet they've had our bombs and drones and coups and sanctions and proxy wars and outright invasions raining down on them at an accelerating rate ever since World War II ended more than 70 years ago:

• US Has Killed More Than 20 Million People in 37 Victim Nations Since World War II  (See more articles like this)
• About "Free Trade"
• A recent free trade example
• NY Times Editorial, 3 May 2016 (grudgingly giving Bernie some credit for being right now that Hillary's victory is safely in the bag)

Midterms 2010

For comparison, here's what I wrote in 2010. Just to emphasize the huge difference between then and now, because unlike in 2010 (or 2008, or 2012, or almost any other time since 1944) in 2016 we have (we had) a real choice.

1. There's nothing wrong with socialism; I wish we had some actual Socialist candidates to vote for, and I'll bet I'm not the only one. Obama could hardly be farther away from socialism, he's the best friend Wall Street ever had since, well, every other President since FDR. Americans aren't freaking out about him because he's a “socialist”, it's because he's black. But most of them know better than to say it this way, so they say “socialist”.

2. Some prominent Republican, I forget who but I saw it on the news yesterday, said he realized that people were not voting for Republicans but against the current economic situation. The people currently in office apparently can't fix it, so people vote for anybody who is not in office now. The sad truth, however, is nobody is going to make it better because any measure that would actually do any good is off the table.

In NY we have something called the Working Families party that endorses progressive candidates. NY law lets a single candidate run on more than one line. So typically a Democrat will also appear on the WF line. When a candidate gets a lot of votes on the WF line instead of on the Democratic line, they get a message that people want them to stand up for working people and against Wall Street. This way, progressive voters can express their feelings without having to vote for a third party candidate who hasn't a prayer of winning, thus splitting the vote and handing a victory to the Republicans. It's not much, but it's something. Of course the new media never report the Democrat/WF split because they want us to buy into the fiction that the US is composed only of center-right Democrats and far-right Republicans.

So today I held my nose and voted for all Democrats on the WF line, except for Charles Schumer, a very good friend to Wall Street. Our other Senator, Kirstin Gillibrand, is very nice, she is the only candidate who never said a bad word about anybody in the whole campaign. (Showing my age, I remember when there actually used to be Socialists and Communists on the ballot...)

Anyway, the depressing part is that nobody ever learns and nothing ever changes, except for the worse. Party A runs on some platform promising A Lot Of Things, gets elected, does the opposite, the people get disgusted and vote for Party B next time, which promises Lots Of Things, gets elected, and then does the opposite. The “opposite“ in both cases is whatever it takes to further enrich Wall Street and the big corporations at the expense of ordinary people, to the extent they are willing to sacrifice lives and livelihoods and the future of the country and the world to please their already obscenely rich patrons. To divert the attention of the voters from this, they busy themselves with setting up false enemies (Communists, welfare cheats, Muslims, Mexicans) to keep us frightened and preoccupied.

So I'm sure my little trip to the voting station this morning was a complete exercise in futility, no matter who wins, because it is a choice between the really bad Democrats and truly awful and scary Republicans, neither of which question the causes for our national disgrace – our ignorance, wars of agression and conquest, racism, and the unbridled, voracious, and utterly unscrupulous greed of our capitalist class and its blatant ownership and control of our government.

If we ever had a government of, by, and for the people we certainly do not have one now. The “American way” is a sick joke, nobody wants to copy it any more, they run the other way screaming. Think of it: a country that has exported all its good jobs, attacked its own working people and destroyed their unions, with a government that can function only on behalf of the oligarchy and never for the benefit of ordinary people; a country therefore entangled in endless senseless wars because our foreign policy is controlled by oil companies and the “defense” industry, and which has created its own caste of “soldier ants” who fight and kill and die and fight and kill and die again and go crazy without end while the rest of us become obese zoning out on Dancing with the Stars; a country full of angry people because they are losing their homes and their jobs and drowning in debt because every family is working two, three, or four jobs to support not only themselves but the unseen hordes of investors who do no useful work and serve no social function; a country building walls on its borders like the one that President Reagan told Premiere Gorbachev to tear down, with some 12 million undocumented immigrant workers that we can't live with and can't live without, and with the biggest prison population on earth; a country with rampant racism and poverty, a failing public school system and the cost of higher education in the stratosphere; a country where medical care is a privilege of the wealthy; a country hostage to big oil and coal companies wrecking the environment beyond repair, with a mass media that is practically devoid of actual news and one major network that is nothing more than a vicious hate and fear machine, and where most people will believe any silly lie they are told because they don't know how to think for themselves. This is a system designed by and for the super-rich; it has taken them sixty years to recover from the New Deal, but the result is a thing of beauty to behold, it works perfectly for its intended purpose; Americans who are suffering as they haven't suffered since the 1930s buy completely into the most outrageous propositions and vote consistently against their own interest, truly believing that Social Security and affordable housing and secure employment with benefits are evils that must be struck down, that public employees with unions and decent salaries and benefits and pensions (like most American working people had only 2-3 decades ago) are un-American, and that ideas such as universal health care, a living wage, and a secure old age are threats that must be fiercely resisted. It's surreal, but I have to admit it's a stunning achievement.

Suppose, one day, the people wake up and wonder if perhaps the government should be oriented more towards promoting the general welfare of the population and the economic self-sufficiency of the country. What would the people do to bring this about? That is the Question of the Twenty-First Century. Because in 2008 they thought they were doing exactly that by voting for progressives and what happened? They got pretty much the opposite.

Links:

• Who Rules America
• Income Inequality in the United States
• The L Curve
• Watch the Election Results (Electoral-vote.com)