Tuesday, June 28, 2016

In Case You Missed It . . . [feedly]

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In Case You Missed It . . .
// Center on Budget: Comprehensive News Feed

This week at CBPP, we focused on Social Security and Medicare, health care, the federal budget and taxes, housing, and poverty and opportunity.

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Monday, June 27, 2016

Re: [CCDS Members] Common Dreams: Betraying Progressives, DNC Platform Backs Fracking, TPP, and Israel Occupation

Another bad feature of TPP is it lets corporations sue states and cities for passing environmental measures that may reduce the corporations' imagined future profits. Say goodbye to sovereignty. Say hello to Flint and Benton Harbor.
 
As to austerity, it should start at the top.
 
Per Fagereng
 
From: John Case
Sent: Monday, June 27, 2016 3:50 PM
Subject: [CCDS Members] 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.

People Get Ready - Donate now!

"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
Sign UP HERE to get the Weekly Program Notes.


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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.

People Get Ready - Donate now!

"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
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]

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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.

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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/



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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.


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