The fundamental divide in America is not between left and right

I'm coming to believe that the fundamental divide in this country is not between left and right. It's between those who accept the need for credible public institutions and those who don't. 

"Accepting the need for" does not mean "automatically and mindlessly trust." Those who accept this need try to repair failing (or sabotaged) institutions. Those who don't accept this need add to the breakdown in social cohesion.

It has nothing to do with education or intelligence. I see many smart, educated people parroting the nihilistic rage. They know what public institutions are saying very well. They just knee-jerk disbelieve the institutions unthinkingly. My recent essay on the difference between skepticism vs cynicism is instructive here. Because many of them are smart, they are good at making their disbelief sound just pseudo-intellectual enough.

It's not just the fascists and Trump cultists. Many on the harder left are no different and it's causing a real breach between those who want to re-fortify sabotaged institutions and those who want to burn everything down and replace it with who knows what and who knows how..

I'm not sure how to resolve this breach. Once you reject the notion of anything public or common, even a set of facts (upon which opinions and strategies can be based), I'm not sure where you can go from there. 

The risks of not voting your conscience

Remember the countless Democrats who said they were going to vote for Joe Biden in the primary without much enthusiasm, even though they liked another Democratic contender better, because Biden "clearly" had the best chance of beating Trump and "no one" with a clue could dispute that self-evident fact.

Although it's not surprising that the fascist party would nominate an admitted sexual predator, it would've a lot easier if the party that patted itself on the back for supporting #MeToo and who went after both Brett Kavanagh and Al Franken had chosen to avoid nominating someone credibly accused of sexual assault. Cue predictable double standard rationalizations.

People often talk about the risk of voting your conscience. Well, not doing so can have consequences too.  This one's not on the DNC. It's on rank and file Democrats. They made this bed.

How bad governance botched needed bail reform in New York

The shambolic implementation of needed bail reform in New York is a great example of the state government's dysfunction and how its abysmal processes lead to embarrassments like the governor admitting a law needs revamping only a few days after it takes effect.

Far from being a new development with the Democrats taking control of the state senate, this has been the depressing status quo for decades.

Some of the good things are being misrepresented by political hacks or flat out misunderstood by well intentioned folks, no doubt. Some of the reforms were needed. Some were bad ideas. Some were good ideas badly implemented. 

But why was this reform implemented so chaotically that the governor is conceding the need for changes only a week into the law's existence?

The process.

The reforms weren't passed via the normal legislative process that first world governments use to pass important legislation. Which is by holding hearings seeking feedback from all of the stakeholders, using that feedback to make tweaks to the initial bill and get rid of previously unforeseen consequences and then holding a public debate and vote on the stand alone bill.

Instead, the reforms were shoved into the unrelated budget with no separate debate while constituents were focused on the countless other things that might or might not end up into the budget.

No democracy. Whatever the legislative "leaders" and governor agreed on. The other 221 legislators are useless. This is nothing remotely close to the good governance that candidate Andrew Cuomo promised us in 2010.

The tactic of shoving policy into the budget, used on many issues, is designed to shield the other legislators from constituents opposing or questioning whatever is being passed. It's designed to protect rank and file legislators from having to do their job.

 

Process matters. And the state's processes have always been horrible. It takes good ideas in principle and ruins them in implementation. Even the good laws that come out of Albany seem to arrive despite the process not because of it.

Are Democrats really stupid enough to delay the impeachment trial?

Let's be clear. Impeachment is a political act. The impeachment of Donald Trump is a political act. The Republican impeachments of Democrats Bill Clinton and Andrew Johnson were political acts. In those two cases, all votes to remove the president from office came from Republican senators.

That impeachment is a political process is what the authors of the Constitution intended. That's why impeachment and its resulting trial are conducted by politicians, not judges.

But it's hard to imagine the Democrats would be so incredibly stupid to follow this advice (I almost am hestitant to say it because they tend to take such things as a dare). The guaranteed

Republican response is fairly simple: "Democrats claim that Trump's presidency is a mortal threat to our republic but are indefinitely delaying the trial that might remove this supposedly mortal threat from office. This proves that impeachment was just a sham designed to embarrass him" (as though he doesn't do that to himself on an hourly basis). Trumpists couldn't hope for a better script, one that, for once, is actually truthful.

We all know the Senate is going to acquit him no matter what. Mitch McConnell and Lindsay Graham have already promised publicly that the Senate jury will not conduct a fair trial. And they're not going to vote on any of the countless bills the House has sent them.

But Democrats still have to go through the motions of trying to remove Trump, otherwise what was the point? It wouldn't be any different than the pointless "censure" that they gave to Bill Clinton.

This cockamemie idea is neither good for the country nor good politics.

Not implementing Medicare for All is absurd

"When I give food to the poor, I'm called a saint. When I ask why they are poor, I'm called a communist." -Archbishop Dom Helder Camara.   

Recently, Senator Bernie Sanders proposed implementing a single-payer style Medicare for All system to replace our completely dysfunctional sick care system. This was denounced by Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan as "absurd."

In 2018, all health care spending is expected to total $3.5 trillion.

By 2026, such spending is expected to skyrocket to $5.7 trillion.

Sanders' plan is projected to cost $32.6 trillion over 10 years, or an average of $3.26 trillion a year.

So Medicare for All would insure far more people than the current system (everyone) for far less money. To not implement such a program is what would be absurd.

Unless you own stock in the private health insurance industry.

Why the 'spoiler' and 'wasted vote' smears are so resented

"The reality of Washington, D.C., today is that we have one party, the Republican Party, completely dominated by big money and right wing folks. And you have another party, the Democratic Party, too much controlled by corporate money...” –Sen. Bernie Sanders. This is presumably why he himself is not a registered Democrat. This is definitely why I am not one.

A lot of mainstream Democrats and Republicans do not understand why phrases like 'spoiler' and 'wasted vote' are so resented by smaller party and independent voters. The reason is simple: it profoundly offends our notions of fair play and of what democracy is supposed to be about.

I think voting is supposed to be an expression of your values and priorities. If you vote this way, you, by definition, cannot spoil democracy because this IS democracy. If you honestly believe that a Democrat or Republican better corresponds with your values and priorities than a smaller party opponent, then by all means vote for him or her.

Somebody saying, "[Democrat/Republican] is the best choice because of positions on x, y and z and is superior to [smaller party candidate] because of a, b and c" is not only fair game but exactly how democracy is supposed to work.

Whereas, somebody saying, "Vote for [smaller party candidate] is a wasted vote" or "... is only running to feed his ego" is offensive. It's saying that ideas are irrelevant to how one should vote.

(Incidentally, you don't subject yourself to the grind and expense of an electoral campaign as a smaller party candidate with no money because of the glory. It's a fairly absurd implication)

In the last Congressional race in my area, nearly 20,000 citizens voted for the Green Party candidate Matt Funiciello. Everyone did so because they thought he reflected their values and beliefs better than his Democratic and Republican opponents. If you want to those citizens and told them to their face that they only cast their votes that way to 'spoil' the race, I suspect you'd get some unpleasant reactions.

Smaller party members are going against so-called conventional wisdom simply by joining a smaller party. Most do so because they still think elections should be governed by ideas, not polls, analysis, speculation and punditry. Telling them otherwise is usually going to be counterproductive. Make the case based on ideas or don't bother.

Hillary Clinton's Al Gore problem

Even aside from propping up the oligarchy, purely as a campaigner, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton seems to have two of the same problems as then Vice-President Al Gore did in 2000.

The first is that she, and her supporters, give the impression that she thinks she is owed victory, simply because it's her turn. When the fate of people who work for a living is center stage, coming across as entitled is bad politics.

Outrageously offensive comments by feminist icon Gloria Steinem and another former Secretary of State, Madeline Albright, both supporters of Mrs. Clinton, illustrate that. Both are upset that young women overwhelmingly support Clinton's primary opponent Sen. Bernie Sanders. Steinem said that young women only supported Sanders to get boys. Albright said that a "special place in hell" was reserved for females who supported Clinton's opponent (some argue that there's a special place in hell reserved for Albright herself).

Their "feminist" message is that young women should shut up, turn their brains off and do what their (feminist) elders command them to. Does their idea of feminism want to replace patriarchy with matriarchy or with meritocracy? Seems like they are hijacking feminism to push their partisan agendas.

The second, and it's really related to the first, is that Clinton and Gore both suffer from what the French call syndrome de premier de classe, the smartest kid in the room syndrome. They are both extremely intelligent people. They think that alone is enough.

Being intelligent and well-versed on key issues is very important to being president. We've seen the disaster of presidents who aren't and end up being manipulated by their inner circle.

At the same time, we've also seen extremely intelligent presidents get themselves into trouble because either they were borderline sociopaths (Nixon) or they grew up thinking their intelligence gave them impunity (Bill Clinton).

Politics and governing are not school exams where the smartest person always come out on top. But politics does have one similarity with school: no one likes the person who thinks they're entitled.

Bernie Sanders' supporters should listen to Bernie Sanders

A few days ago, I published a piece called The Liberal Savior Fantasy, which criticized the lack of political awareness of Bernie Sanders' supporters. It stated that the problem of corporate control of government could not be solved by any president alone, not even Sanders and that a Sanders' candidacy MUST be complemented by a broader movement beyond a cult of personality.


You know who would agree with this sentiment?

Bernie Sanders.






"The reality of Washington, D.C., today is that we have one party, the Republican Party, completely dominated by big money and right wing folks. And you have another party, the Democratic Party, too much controlled by corporate money ... We have no president  that can deal with that. Unless we mobilize the American people and create a strong grass-roots movement that says enough is enough, the billionaire class cannot have it all."

The liberal savior fantasy

Liberals have been getting the rear ends kicked by conservatives (certainly on economics) for the last 35 years. They naively and desperately seek 'our only hope' every few years, rather than trying to build a real movement that doesn't rely on the coming of the Messiah of the Moment.

First, it was Bill, then Barack, now Bernie. They keep making the same mistake and then wonder why things keep moving in the wrong direction. 

I like much of what Bernie Sanders espouses. I really do... unless/until he endorses Hillary, when he becomes persona non grata.

But what happens if Bernie does manage to get elected? He'll facing a Congress controlled by GOP and corporate Democrats that will stymie any real changes he wants to make.

 

Bernie by himself isn't going to do squat. Elect a bunch of Greens to Congress that share much of his agenda and will push it and then you might have something. 

People who use the (quite amateurish, if you ask me) #FeelTheBern hashtag act as though this is some incidental sidebar. They adhere to the imperial presidency model.

Electing progressive Greens to Congress not is not incidental. It's integral to any chance the progressive economic agenda has of actually being implemented. If the Democrats were interested in this, they would've done it when they controlled the presidency and 59% of both houses of Congress... the most power any party had in 50 years.

But liberals have long proven too lazy to do the hard work. They smugly prefer being right far more than trying to ensure that right actually be done. I'll be thrilled to be proven wrong. I don't for one second believe it will happen.

The 'two-party system' is a Stockholm Syndrome

The so-called two party system is so corrupt that even the body charged with regulating the minimal campaign finance rules has given up hope of forcing the two parties and their candidates of respecting the law. 


It still mystifies me why this system, which is a myth perpetuated by the corporate media and academics, has such a hold on the voters it works so hard to stick it to.

 

Low wages costs everyone money

A recent study by the University of California-Berkeley has two interesting revelations.

-3/4 of all people receiving public assistance belong to a working family

-And that public assistance to these working families costs taxpayers $153 billion a year

That means when employers pay terrible wages to their workers that they cannot live on, we the taxpayers make up the difference.

And this did not merely happen out of nowhere.

Democrats have spent the last 25 years selling out to corporate interests. Republicans, for their part, represented those interests long before that.

With both  major parties owned by the One Percent, it's inevitable that people who worked for a living would get screwed.

Now you know why I'm a Green. Big Money has two parties representing it. Don't working people deserve at least one?

For Congress: junk food or a healthy option?

The Republican Congressional primary for New York's 21st district was described by a local media pooh-bah as a choice between Coke (a DC political hack) and Pepsi (a Wall Street insider). They were virtually identical on most issues of substance, with main "issue" separating the two seemed to be who was a "real" Northern New Yorker. 

Meanwhile RC Cola (the Democratic candidate, a film maker from Manhattan), who's been virtually invisible since his candidacy launch, made a rare intervention. Though of course it was by press release, as per usual and featured some fairly insignificant ideas, also as per usual.

I realize that bashing Congress is a useful populist strategy for a candidate, especially one as empty as RC Cola. But his proposals, while not objectionable in the least, will have an impact that's virtually nil. Depriving Congressmen of a few luxuries does not actually help the American people in any remotely meaningful way. If this is the best he can offer, he should be ignored.

Anyone interested in a substantive candidate with a serious progressive agenda, should check out Matt Funiciello. 

Funiciello's candidacy is so significant that even the National Republican Campaign Committee has taken notice. The NRCC claimed that RC Cola's main concern was people not confusing him with Funiciello. 

Funciello's big ideas are single payer health insurance for all Americans and ending corporate control of govenrment. RC Cola's big ideas are getting rid of the Congressional barber shop and gym. The idea that anyone might confuse the two is laughable.

If the major parties don't represent us, does that mean we're stupid?

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” –Albert Einstein

 The Independent Voters Network had this op-ed piece which opined that the two major parties 'clearly and strikingly' do not represent most voters. It offers scant little evidence for this thesis, other than there are an increasing number of independent voters.

The sort of lazy excuse for analysis in this article bothers me. Giving the voters a free pass for their choices may be nice populism but does not serve the national interest.

100% of Americans are represented by either Democratic or Republican Congressmen (obviously except for two vacant seats). 

99.3% of Americans are represented exclusively by major party US senators.

100% of Americans are represented by Democrat or Republican state governors. 

All of them are the result of (sort of) free and fair elections. 

If Americans don’t feel these two parties represent them, why do they elect exclusively them virtually all the time from among the 3-6 choices available in the majority of elections?

One can reasonably infer from this situation one of two possibilities: either a) Democratic and GOP elected officials *do* generally represent the views of most Americans or b) that voters are so stupid or gutless as to overwhelmingly elect people who don't represent them even though, in the majority of cases, there are non-major party alternatives. 

Which is it?

You can bitch and moan about your cable company or your cell phone provider but as long as you keep buying their product, they don’t care. They will have no incentive to improve. 

Politics is the same way. The corporate parties don’t give a toss about your whining, so long as you keep buying what they sell. 

If you keep voting for them, they’ll never have an incentive to change in any meaningful way. Sometimes people whine when politicians break promises but more often, the moaning comes about when a polician acts exactly as he or she suggested in the campaign! 

As PJ O’Rourke concluded in his excellent book Parliament of Whores: [I]n a democracy such as ours, the whores are us.

Majority oppose Obamacare... but not in the way you probably think

A CNN poll reports that 54% of Americans oppose Obamacare. But the dynamic is not as simplistic as the “tea party” or Obama partisans would have you believe. 

It reports only 35% of Americans think Obamacare is ‘too liberal.'

Nearly 1/3 of all opposition to Obamacare is by those who, like myself, think it is ‘not liberal enough.’

This reality probably isn't something you've ever heard in the mainstream media's narrative.

Clinton-worship sad indictment of modern Democrats

It’s sad, yet telling statement about the modern Democratic Party that the most popular politician among its faithful remains Bill Clinton, the guy who jettisoned what remained of the party’s progressive roots and sold it out to the highest corporate bidders.

He babbled on about ‘patience’ but it’s a lot easier to make argument when you make hundreds of thousands of dollars a pop for a single speaking gig.

And while partisans may have selective memories, it’s worth remembering that the reckless deregulation that facilitated the 2008 economic crash was signed not by an evil Republican but by a Democratic president... one William Jefferson Clinton.

Democrats brag about how little they’ve moved the bar

The Health and Human Services secretary just bragged to the Democratic convention that under ObamneyCare, private health insurance companies are now required to spend at least half of every dollar you pay in premiums on actual health care or else they send you a refund check. “This is what change looks like,” she intoned.

So an insurance company can still spend as much as 50 cents of every dollar you are now compelled by law to give them on themselves and their stockholders and we’re supposed to believe that this is some sort of revolutionary advancement?

That the Democrats feel the need to brag about setting the bar so ridiculously low really only highlights the need of a real progressive political option.

Moderate Republicans still exist

I keep hearing people say moderate Republican politicians are bordering on extinct. That's not true. It remains quite numerous. They are just now called Democrats.

Maybe we need a little *more* incivility

Civility and consensus are my default preferences, but boy, they make it hard sometime. In mainstream political analysis, the description 'bipartisan' is designed to make us turn our brains off, clap our hands like robots, squeal in joy like school girls and sing Kumbayah about 'cooperation,' 'civility' and the like. So imagine my reaction I read about this Congressional effort to invalidate the 5th Amendment by allowing the head of state to detain his nation's citizens indefinitely and without charge. Initially, I was outraged. This isn't possible. After all, wasn't such an abomination one of the main grievances in America's Declaration of Independence? But then, I just numbed my mind and intoned warm-over nothings about this joyous effort at bipartisanship and that made it all better.

Thoughts on yesterday’s elections

Green gubernatorial candidate Howie Hawkins got more than the 50,000 votes required to secure ballot status for the Greens for the next four years. This will allow Greens all across the state to run for all public offices much more easily and offer an alternative to the corporate Democrats and Republicans. It also established the Greens as the third party in New York state and the top non-corporate party. Thanks to all who voted for him and a progressive agenda and, by extension, for multipartyism in NYS.

Before 2009, the last time Democrats controlled all three of the governorship, Assembly and Senate was 1935. So it was entertaining to hear state Senate Republican leader Dean Skellos act like his party has had nothing to do with the mess that is NYS. The two corporate parties have run the state into the ground in that most sainted of manners: bipartisan. It's time for some multipartyism, courtesy of the Greens.

It was also amusing to hear Sen. Skellos say that we needed a GOP senate to act as a check on the corruption in Albany. A check on Joe Bruno-style corruption?

It was maddening to hear all these liberals rave about Andrew Cuomo. Do they even have a clue what he ran on? I mean, besides the empty “Change Albany” rhetoric. Guys who will act as a check on Wall St. excesses do not get oodles of campaign cash from Wall St. Guys who run on progressive agendas do not get endorsed by the far right New York Post. Remember that, more often than most people want to believe, you really do get what you vote for.

I went to vote and I saw a bunch of cameramen and photographers outside my polling place. So I was prepping myself for the red carpet walk which they obviously wanted me to do. But then this tall red-headed guy with his family comes walking out and all the paparazzi follow him instead. Some Congressman Murphy guy, apparently. I suppose that’s the modern media for you: all substance, no style.

I remember that when Tea Party candidates won primary elections, many liberals were gloating, sure that they would get slaughtered in the general election. As that famous Bard, Lord Dark Helmet of the movie Spaceballs, said, “Evil will always prevail because Good is dumb.”

I don’t think much of most Democrats but am still very disappointed at Russ Feingold losing. When the Profiles in Courage of the last 50 years is written (a slim volume to be certain), Feingold's lone vote against the Patriot Act in the face of post-9/11 hysteria will be one of the chapters.

I love how all the media outlets declared Andrew Cuomo, Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand the winners only a few minutes after the polls closed despite reported vote totals of 0 for all of them. Only in the punditocracy is 0 > 0.

If the only way you can get elected is to buy office with your own fortune or to buy it with corporate America’s fortune after they buy you off, is it democracy or oligarchy?

How come no one is demanding to see Marco Rubio’s birth certificate? Or for that matter, John Boehner’s?

Those running on the purported agenda of ‘smaller government’ and ‘less spending’ won big last night. I wonder what amount of the military budget, which by itself accounts for 52% of all discretionary federal spending, these principled spending cutters will slash.

Connecting the dots on Democratic corruption

Some are rightly complaining about the avalanche of secret money in political campaigns since the odious Citizens United decision. Still the best broadcast news outlet in America, NPR has a great series about it that will probably disgust you. I believe that if elected officials are going to be bought and paid for, the public has a right to know who owns them. Lack of transparency is the foundation of corruption, something the United States doesn't do nearly as well at as it should.

But while the conventional wisdom is that the secret money is helping the corporate Republicans, the corporate Democrats are doing just fine, outspending the GOP by nearly 50 percent in key races.

The New York Times reports that Democratic candidates have outraised their opponents over all by more than 30 percent in the 109 House races The New York Times has identified as in play. And Democratic candidates have significantly outspent their Republican counterparts over the last few months in those contests, $119 million to $79 million.

And where's the money coming from?

The excellent non-profit, non-partisan journalism organization Pro Publica did an excellent story entitled 'The New Democrats: The Coalition Pharma and Wall Street Love.'

It portrayed a Democratic Party completely under the influence of, among others, banks, big pharmaceutical interests and insurance companies.

(And that's the national Democratic Party. The New York state Democrats have their own myriad of corruption scandals, of which the Aqueduct racino mess is only the latest of many)

The influence of the banks was illustrated by the Wall St. bailout that was approved by a Democratic Congress. The influence of insurance companies was illustrated by the great giveaway misnamed as health care 'reform.'

Now, I read that the UK congolomerate GlaxoSmithKline is in trouble for having sold contaminated baby ointment and an ineffective antidepressant, according to the NYT, despite warnings from employees.

Last year, Glaxo gave 63 percent of its political 'contributions' (legal bribes) to Democrats.

Note: the Green Party, both nationally and in New York State, does not accept contributions from (as per the GPUS website): corporations, labor organizations, national banks, government contractors or foreign nationals. Green candidate for NY governor Howie Hawkins does not accept corporate contributions either.