Common Dreams: Betraying Progressives, DNC Platform Backs Fracking, TPP, and Israel Occupation

1. There is much I do not buy in this analysis, though I am sure it contains some truth. First: TPP. I thought, and still think, it was a mistake for Sanders, and the labor movement, to make a litmus test out of this issue. Trade inevitably cuts two ways, and in politics, as Brexit shows, it is potentially extremely divisive. Plus, defeating trade agreements, contrary to some popular opinion, does not have much to do with limiting actual real trade. Exporters are winners, imports create losers -- displaced workers with both lower prices AND wages, or higher indebtedness. It's true working families, on average, and on the median, have gotten nothing from trade. But blocking trade agreements, or fighting the objective and irreversible aspects of trade, will not put any money in any workers pockets. The right track on trade is not hard to find: universal collective bargaining, combined with big payoffs and compensation to the "losers" in trade. The #anywonebuthillary folks blame her for this "betrayal" -- but I am pretty sure removing death to TPP was more Obama's influence.

2. The most important issue(s) in the entire election is, as Sanders and Clinton both campaigned on, inequality (on several dimensions) -- and falling incomes and prospects of working families. If that issue is not addressed, if austerity is not reversed, not a single other issue -- not even climate change -- will will get the attention it deserves. If that issue is not addressed, if austerity is not reversed, every struggle will be threatened by fascist distractions -- which will grow stronger and stronger until they ARE addressed.

3. Moratorium on fracking: Science is divided on this.  In West Virginia, it would further exacerbate the already severe economic crisis in the state. Education and the arts would take ANOTHER big hit for a start. Plus, the price of  gas will go up if there is a moratorium. And -- anything that reduces net income for most Americans -- regardless how reasonable --  will be rejected by half. Personally, I think the moratorium is the right call given the earthquake and water contamination reported incidents. But I do not think it is worth going to the mat over -- especially given Clinton and the DNCs pretty strong positions on the wide range of environmental policies. More evidence and study will bring consensus if the strong critics are right.

4.Israel. I agree with the criticism of Clinton on  this. I fear the foreign policy mess -- now raised to a new order of magnitude by the EU crisis --- will result in calls to arms no president will be able to resist. I am not Sanders would be able to resist either.

5. Any article that  quotes Cornel West extensively drives me to the Trust But Verify position. I have read two of his books. Hyper radicalism -- and some powerful insights,  but, to me, a lot of hot air.

Betraying Progressives, DNC Platform Backs Fracking, TPP, and Israel Occupation

Despite its claims to want to unify voters ahead of November's election, the Democratic party appears to be pushing for an agenda that critics say ignores basic progressive policies, "staying true" to their Corporate donors above all else.

During a 9-hour meeting in St. Louis, Missouri on Friday, members of the DNC's platform drafting committee voted down a number of measures proposed by Bernie Sanders surrogates that would have come out against the contentious Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), fracking, and the Israeli occupation of Palestine. At the same time, proposals to support a carbon tax, Single Payer healthcare, and a $15 minimum wage tied to inflation were also disregarded.

In a statement, Sanders said he was "disappointed and dismayed" that representatives of Hillary Clinton and DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schulz rejected the proposal on trade put forth by Sanders appointee Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), despite the fact that the presumed nominee has herself come out against the 12-nation deal.

"Inexplicable" was how Sanders described the move, adding: "It is hard for me to understand why Secretary Clinton's delegates won't stand behind Secretary Clinton's positions in the party's platform."

The panel also rejected amendments suggested by 350.org co-founder Bill McKibben, another Sanders pick, that would have imposed a carbon tax, declared a national moratorium on fracking as well as new fossil fuel drilling leases on federal lands and waters. 

"This is not a political problem of the sort that we are used to dealing with," McKibben stated during the marathon debate. "Most political problems yield well to the formula that we've kept adopting on thing after thing—compromise, we'll go halfway, we'll get part of this done. That's because most political problems are really between different groups of people. They're between industry and environmentalists. That is not the case here."

"Former U.S. Representative Howard Berman, American Federation of State, County, and Muncipal Employees executive assistant to the president, Paul Booth, former White House Energy and Climate Change Policy director Carol Browner, Ohio State Representative Alicia Reece, former State Department official Wendy Sherman, and Center for American Progress President Neera Tanden all raised their hands to prevent a moratorium from becoming a part of the platform," noted Shadowproof's Kevin Gosztola.

According to Gosztola's reporting on the exchange, Dr. Cornel West lambasted the aforementioned panel members, particularly Browner, for "endorsing reform incrementalism" in the face of an urgent planetary crisis.

"When you're on the edge of the abyss or when you're on that stove, to use the language of Malcolm X, you don't use the language of incrementalism. It hurts, and the species is hurting," West said.

Other progressive policies were adopted piecemeal, such as the $15 minimum wage, which the committee accepted but without the amendment put forth by Ellison that would have indexed the wage to inflation. 

The panel did vote unanimously to back a proposal to abolish the death penalty and adopted language calling for breaking up too-big-to-fail banks and enacting a modern-day Glass-Steagall Act—measures that Sanders said he was "pleased" about.

According to AP, the final discussion "centered on the Israel-Palestinian conflict."

"The committee defeated an amendment by Sanders supporter James Zogby that would have called for providing Palestinians with 'an end to occupation and illegal settlements' and urged an international effort to rebuild Gaza," AP reports, measures which Zogby said Sanders helped craft. 

Instead, AP reports, the adopted draft "advocates working toward a 'two-state solution of the Israel-Palestinian conflict' that guarantees Israel's security with recognized borders 'and provides the Palestinians with independence, sovereignty, and dignity.'"

Citing these "moral failures" of the platform draft, West abstained during the final vote to send the document to review by the full Platform Committee next month in Orlando, Florida.

"If we can't say a word about TPP, if we can't talk about Medicare-for-All explicitly, if the greatest prophetic voice dealing with pending ecologically catastrophe can hardly win a vote, and if we can't even acknowledge occupation... it seems there is no way in good conscience I can say, 'Take it to the next stage,'" West declared before the assembly.

"I wasn't raised like that," he said. "I have to abstain. I have no other moral option, it would be a violation of my own limited sense of moral integrity and spiritual conscience," adding, "That's how I roll."

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

John Case
Harpers Ferry, WV

The Winners and Losers Radio Show

7-9 AM Weekdays, WSHC-Listen Live, Shepherd University

Sign UP HERE to get the Weekly Program Notes.

Edited "Dreaming of Brexit" a bit for publication

Dreaming of Brexit

John Case

Globalization of capitalism and markets is an objective force that has no respect for nations, or any other barrier to commerce. The League of Nations, the United Nations, the bilateral and multilateral governmental and corporate infrastructures established by arms and diplomatic treaties and trade agreements since the Second World War – all trace the history of the world's efforts to peacefully resolve the spiraling contradictions of the past century. They are also a timeline of steps taken to prevent the alternative: wars – whether of an economic, commercial, martial, revolutionary, or terroristic nature.

I love Karl Marx's classic not-out-of-date-yet description of this process:

“The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.”

By “objective” I mean, for example, that nearly every life decision you make is shaped by a good, a service, or a property you want to buy or want the money (the universal commodity) to buy. The hammer shapes the hand. The opportunities that determine life for the majority of the world’s peoples are necessarily shaped by opportunities arising or declining in global markets. No matter who you are, or where you come from, you feel, and must respond the the force of these opportunities, or the lack of them, no less than the wind, fire, earth, air or water, as Aristotle might have added.

It is not possible in this era – socially – to refuse to participate in globalization without paying an ever-increasing tariff, with interest! Over the years, the expansion of trade in goods, capital, labor, and services has generated tremendous wealth. But the gains from that trade, with few exceptions, have not been shared with working families. For giant multinational corporations, the “global” world is a world with few cops and lots of hiding places for ill-gotten treasure. If current trends continue, they will succeed eventually in reducing corporate taxes to zero all over the world by leveraging their control of investment dollars to nations with favorable (meaning always lower) tax rates.

In the U.S., we have seen this in the sustained attacks, initiated under Reagan, by the ruling corporate faction, on the New Deal and Great Society social contracts – contracts which strove towards equity, if not equality. The result is a growing paralysis in the politics of the center, the steady decline in labor’s share of wealth relative to capital, the rise of both fascist and socialist movements, and sharply heightened tensions at many of the class, race, gender, nationality, and religion crossroads of the emerging global society.

Brexit is no way out

Brexit is the stupid way of adapting; or of rejecting the rip-offs most workers end up getting from globalization. It will lead to further poverty and unemployment. But then from another perspective, perhaps it doesn’t seem so stupid, if there really is no other way to loudly say NO. People will join the available shout, no matter who initiated it. The wolf that bites off its own paw to escape a trap: If he had had fingers he might have found a way to release the trap, but only teeth were available. Still, we end up with a weakened and crippled wolf. Do ALL analogies "walk on crutches"?

Here is a political thought experiment. Imagine you are in a conversation, back in 2001, with Donald Rumsfeld (secretary of Defense under Bush II and one of the architects of the Iraq war).

“Don,” you say, “Tell me why we’re going to war in Iraq again.”

Rummy says, “We can't fix the Middle East unless we seize some real estate and wield a much bigger stick in the whole area. It's a great adventure!”

“What would you say, Don, if I predicted the European Union being swallowed whole by the refugee migration and chaos from your ‘adventure’?”

“Baloney,” says Don.

The problem is that Rumsfeld is not the only one who would have said “baloney” to that prediction.

Capital has moved all over the world. Wherever it goes, labor follows. All nations will become multinational. Every global crisis can and will become a national crisis. Brexit was, in a critical way, a result of the tidal migration from the catastrophe of the Middle East which has now very likely swallowed the EU whole. Just as Donald Trump swallowed the Republican Party whole.

More socialism, more internationalism

The current wave of global resistance to this legacy of globalization will continue until an international adjustment, or adjustments, capable of managing the currently unregulated globalization imbalances can emerge. Austerity is the doomed ‘global’ policy response of the most reactionary corporations and billionaires who have been the core backers of the Republican Party since at least Reagan. As institutions and associated economies fail, armies formal and informal will come to the fore.

More socialism, more equality, and more internationalism would be the enlightened policy response. This is a response that calls, primarily, for a change in direction on inequality and austerity.

But, in the end, globalization (hopefully in overall more equitable forms) will, I wager, be stronger, and nations will be weaker, as the wisdom which generations only seem to gain from loss of blood, once again accrues to the victors.

While so far I’ve focused on the objective factors, it’s worth mentioning a near and dear subjective one. I count three great campaigns, and leaders, of the Left in the United States in the post-WWII era: Martin Luther King, Jr, Jesse Jackson, and Bernie Sanders. They merit the designation great because they: a) put millions of folks in the street; or b) got millions of votes – on the elementary programs of higher incomes, greater equality, and peace.

All these campaigns were and are fully consistent with a socialist direction, but also entirely free of sectarian dogma. Had the same been possible to say for organized Left formations in the U.S., a more favorable ground of struggle might have been achieved before this looming collision of global forces, combined with destructive environmental “externalities,” crashes upon us.

Dr. King proved poor people can be mobilized into powerful, disciplined formations for equality. Jesse Jackson proved it was possible for peace, jobs, and equality positions to have wide, multi-racial electoral appeal, especially among labor.  Bernie Sanders proved it was possible to govern in this society along consistent democratic socialist principles in the 1980s in Vermont – and took 12 million votes 35 years later explaining it to the nation.

Globalization is unstoppable. Even war will only cause a pause. But its shape, boundaries, and direction are all subject to initiative.

Internationalism, jobs, equality, peace – it works everywhere. Dump the dogma. Keep it simple. Keep it scientific. Focus on the money on the table. Do a Bernie. Say what you mean, and mean what you say.

Breakdown of Taxes by Country [feedly]

----
Breakdown of Taxes by Country
// The Big Picture

Right after my MCNBC hit, I leave the 3rd floor studios by elevator, and have a an interesting conversation with a Very Famous Person®.

The VFP® is also a Trump supporter. He is amiable enough, and we chat Brexit (Trump's team is excited, they believe it bodes well for them as an anti-establishment candidate).

Then taxes comes up, and the Very Famous Person® says

The United. States is  the HIGHEST TAXES NATION IN THE WORLD

I ask him by what measure, and he responds ALL OF THEM. I start to laugh, and tell him how wrong he is, by just about any way you look at it.

Here is some data backing up my position:


Source: Politifact

 

I think facts matter, and if you are hoping to bullshit your way into office, it is everyone with any sort of expertise to call out the bullshitters when they venture into your territory.

 

 

The post Breakdown of Taxes by Country appeared first on The Big Picture.

----

Shared via my feedly newsfeed

David G. Brown, Los Angeles Sentinel - TRUMP, make America White again [feedly]

David G. Brown, Los Angeles Sentinel - TRUMP, make America White again
http://editorialcartoonists.com/cartoon/display.cfm/152054/

 -- via my feedly newsfeed

Jared Bernstein: From the joint dept. of: capitalism is remarkable, and we are a very sick society [feedly]

From the joint dept. of: capitalism is remarkable, and we are a very sick society
http://jaredbernsteinblog.com/from-the-joint-dept-of-capitalism-is-remarkable-and-we-are-a-very-sick-society/

Today's NYT mag has a piece about how the proliferation of mass shootings made the term "active shooter" part of our lexicon.

The piece begins by featuring a manufacturer of bullet proof office furniture. For five years, Ballistic Furniture Systems has been developing "bullet-­resistant panels that could be fitted inside chairs, cubicles and doors."

There is no other economic/political system I know of that is unable (really, unwilling) to take action against gun violence–and to be clear, mass shootings account for a tiny fraction of US gun deaths–while simultaneously developing all sorts of new ways to make money off of it.

I can just hear the pitch: "We offer competitive salaries, a great benefit package, and complete bullet-proof protection should an active shooter show up!"

BTW, just to close this loop of dark irony, the article notes that "Among the many contractors that now offer active-shooter training is G4S, the global ­security firm that employed one Omar Mateen."

Sorry to get dramatic and maudlin, but I'm increasingly compelled to apologize to my children for the world that "grownups" are leaving to them.

 -- via my feedly newsfeed

Brexit: The Day We Entered the Eye of the Maelstrom [feedly]

----
Brexit: The Day We Entered the Eye of the Maelstrom
// Dollars & Sense Blog

By Thomas Palley

In years to come, the Brexit referendum may come to be seen as the day we entered the eye of the maelstrom that now promises enormous destruction. The immediate consequence looks to be a possible financial crisis, but even if that is avoided the other costs of Brexit will not be.

The European economy was already on the outer circle of the maelstrom. Brexit has swept it into the eye, accelerating the process whereby social alienation and bad economic outcomes produce bad political outcomes, and bad political outcomes produce worsened economic outcomes and further social alienation.

Economic implications

The leading edge of events will be financial markets. Even if an immediate financial bloodbath is contained, the reasonable expectation is for significant downside turbulence over the coming months that will ripple into the real economy. Moreover, a bloodbath now would not be panic. Instead, it can be rationally justified by the economic and political outlook and the fact that asset markets were already richly valued.

British financial markets and the British economy will be the epicenter. The shock to London's stock market will hit wealth and household confidence, negatively impacting consumer spending and the United Kingdom (UK) real economy.

Britain's real estate market (especially London) was already highly priced, and it is now very vulnerable to reduced local and foreign buying. British banks are financed in sterling and a lower sterling exchange rate has unpredictable negative implications for them and their counter-parties.

Business will cut back further on investment in the UK because business dislikes uncertainty. Big ticket investments will be placed on hold until the status of the UK's access to European markets is clarified.

All these impacts will ramify outward, hitting other economies, including the US. The mechanisms are financial contagion, currency turbulence, and uncertainty, all of which generate negative aggregate demand effects that are then multiplied via the contraction process. The first port of call will be European economy, which is already in a fragile condition and is most integrated with the UK.

Political implications

Bad as the economic news is, the political shocks to come may be worse.

The Brexit electoral outcome map shows all of Scotland voted to remain. That means the UK's constitutional crisis regarding Scottish independence is likely back on.

In Spain, there is the long-standing issue of Catalonia's demand for independence, which Brexit further mainstreams and encourages. Now, Italy's Northern League, which is politically powerful in the rich northern half of the country, is calling for an EU exit referendum.

In effect, Brexit is a green flag for separatisms of all stripe. That has adverse implications for the euro, which is already under the threat of Grexit. Consequently, sterling's weakness stands to be accompanied by a weakening of the euro, providing an additional currency channel for spreading Brexit's shockwaves into the global economy.

With regard to US politics, negative economic fall-out from Brexit will injure the incumbent candidate Hillary Clinton and benefit Donald Trump.

Beyond that, Brexit carries vital political lessons for the Obama administration and Clinton campaign, both of which must not give reason for US voters to further disdain the establishment.

Brexit has structural similarities with Trump's rise. It is the logical outcome of the Conservative Party's political strategy of the past twenty years. Conservatives used the European Union (EU) as a whipping boy to help smuggle in their "Thatcher – Reagan" neoliberal economic policies. The Labor Party spoke out in defense of minorities, but it did not defend the EU and nor did it adequately confront neoliberalism.

In the US, Trump is the analogue "exit" candidate. His rise is the logical outcome of thirty years, during which Republicans used dog-whistle racism and the culture war to smuggle through their neoliberal economic agenda that has wrought the destruction of shared prosperity. Democrats resisted racism and the culture war, but were complicit in the promotion of neoliberalism.

The lesson for the Clinton campaign is it must move beyond rhetoric criticizing neoliberalism and adopt serious remedies that tackle its legacy of inequality, economic insecurity and loss of hope. Neoliberalism is the ultimate cause of the establishment's rejection. Racism, immigration and nationalism may be the match for the anti-establishment fire: wage stagnation and off-shoring of jobs are the fuel.

As regards the Obama administration, the lesson concerns the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). On all sides, the US electorate has rejected the TPP, but the Obama administration keeps pushing it. That further discredits the establishment and benefits Trump who is the outsider candidate. Clinton is the insider who has openly touted her links to President Obama, and she still lacks credibility on her opposition to TPP because of her past endorsement.

In this environment, the Obama administration's pushing of the TPP is recklessly irresponsible politics that send us nose down, into the eye of the maelstrom.

----

Shared via my feedly newsfeed

Jeff Sachs: The Meaning of Brexit [feedly]

The Meaning of Brexit
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/meaning-of-brexit-by-jeffrey-d-sachs-2016-06

NEW YORK – The Brexit vote was a triple protest: against surging immigration, City of London bankers, and European Union institutions, in that order. It will have major consequences. Donald Trump's campaign for the US presidency will receive a huge boost, as will other anti-immigrant populist politicians. Moreover, leaving the EU will wound the British economy, and could well push Scotland to leave the United Kingdom – to say nothing of Brexit's ramifications for the future of European integration.

Brexit is thus a watershed event that signals the need for a new kind of globalization, one that could be far superior to the status quo that was rejected at the British polls.

SupportProject Syndicate'smission

Project Syndicate needs your help to provide readers everywhere equal access to the ideas and debates shaping their lives.

LEARN MORE

At its core, Brexit reflects a pervasive phenomenon in the high-income world: rising support for populist parties campaigning for a clampdown on immigration. Roughly half the population in Europe and the United States, generally working-class voters, believes that immigration is out of control, posing a threat to public order and cultural norms.

In the middle of the Brexit campaign in May, it was reported that the UK had net immigration of 333,000 persons in 2015, more than triple the government's previously announced target of 100,000. That news came on top of the Syrian refugee crisis, terrorist attacks by Syrian migrants and disaffected children of earlier immigrants, and highly publicized reports of assaults on women and girls by migrants in Germany and elsewhere.

In the US, Trump backers similarly rail against the country's estimated 11 million undocumented residents, mainly Hispanic, who overwhelmingly live peaceful and productive lives, but without proper visas or work permits. For many Trump supporters, the crucial fact about the recent attack in Orlando is that the perpetrator was the son of Muslim immigrants from Afghanistan and acted in the name of anti-American sentiment (though committing mass murder with automatic weapons is, alas, all too American).

Warnings that Brexit would lower income levels were either dismissed outright, wrongly, as mere fearmongering, or weighed against the Leavers' greater interest in border control. A major factor, however, was implicit class warfare. Working-class "Leave" voters reasoned that most or all of the income losses would in any event be borne by the rich, and especially the despised bankers of the City of London.

Americans disdain Wall Street and its greedy and often criminal behavior at least as much as the British working class disdains the City of London. This, too, suggests a campaign advantage for Trump over his opponent in November, Hillary Clinton, whose candidacy is heavily financed by Wall Street. Clinton should take note and distance herself from Wall Street.

In the UK, these two powerful political currents – rejection of immigration and class warfare – were joined by the widespread sentiment that EU institutions are dysfunctional. They surely are. One need only cite the last six years of mismanagement of the Greek crisis by self-serving, shortsighted European politicians. The continuing eurozone turmoil was, understandably, enough to put off millions of UK voters.

The short-run consequences of Brexit are already clear: the pound has plummeted to a 31-year low. In the near term, the City of London will face major uncertainties, job losses, and a collapse of bonuses. Property values in London will cool. The possible longer-run knock-on effects in Europe – including likely Scottish independence; possible Catalonian independence; a breakdown of free movement of people in the EU; a surge in anti-immigrant politics (including the possible election of Trump and France's Marine Le Pen) – are enormous. Other countries might hold referendums of their own, and some may choose to leave.

In Europe, the call to punish Britain pour encourager les autres – to warn those contemplating the same – is already rising. This is European politics at its stupidest (also very much on display vis-à-vis Greece). The remaining EU should, instead, reflect on its obvious failings and fix them. Punishing Britain – by, say, denying it access to Europe's single market – would only lead to the continued unraveling of the EU.

So what should be done? I would suggest several measures, both to reduce the risks of catastrophic feedback loops in the short term and to maximize the benefits of reform in the long term.

First, stop the refugee surge by ending the Syrian war immediately. This can be accomplished by ending the CIA-Saudi alliance to overthrow Bashar al-Assad, thereby enabling Assad (with Russian and Iranian backing) to defeat the Islamic State and stabilize Syria (with a similar approach in neighboring Iraq). America's addiction to regime change (in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria) is the deep cause of Europe's refugee crisis. End the addiction, and the recent refugees could return home.

Second, stop NATO's expansion to Ukraine and Georgia. The new Cold War with Russia is another US-contrived blunder with plenty of European naiveté attached. Closing the door on NATO expansion would make it possible to ease tensions and normalize relations with Russia, stabilize Ukraine, and restore focus on the European economy and the European project.

Third, don't punish Britain. Instead, police national and EU borders to stop illegal migrants. This is not xenophobia, racism, or fanaticism. It is common sense that countries with the world's most generous social-welfare provisions (Western Europe) must say no to millions (indeed hundreds of millions) of would-be migrants. The same is true for the US.

Fourth, restore a sense of fairness and opportunity for the disaffected working class and those whose livelihoods have been undermined by financial crises and the outsourcing of jobs. This means following the social-democratic ethos of pursuing ample social spending for health, education, training, apprenticeships, and family support, financed by taxing the rich and closing tax havens, which are gutting public revenues and exacerbating economic injustice. It also means finally giving Greece debt relief, thereby ending the long-running eurozone crisis. 

All of this underscores the need to shift from a strategy of war to one of sustainable development, especially by the US and Europe. Walls and fences won't stop millions of migrants fleeing violence, extreme poverty, hunger, disease, droughts, floods, and other ills. Only global cooperation can do that.Fifth, focus resources, including additional aid, on economic development, rather than war, in low-income countries. Uncontrolled migration from today's poor and conflict-ridden regions will become overwhelming, regardless of migration policies, if climate change, extreme poverty, and lack of skills and education undermine the development potential of Africa, Central America and the Caribbean, the Middle East, and Central Asia.

 -- via my feedly newsfeed