Disclaimer: This is an unashamedly pro Bernie Sanders diary. It is not intended to bash Hillary Clinton or her supporters, but if you are here to flame or troll, the door is to your right. Thank you for your time.
I have seen many people, on this site and elsewhere, from Chris Matthews to Paul Krugman, repeatedly call Bernie Sanders unrealistic. They say he won’t be able to get anything done. They say that he’s too far to the left. They say he can’t win. Now they are saying that he should drop out of the race because Clinton swept the South and essentially tied in Massachusetts on Super Tuesday.
I have heard and seen these words so many times but every time I do this one question keeps coming up in my mind:
When did “no we can’t” ever get radical change done in this country?
In Hardball with Chris Matthews, who did a good job asking the tough questions, Sanders articulated himself well when he said that he’s trying to get millions of working people to come together and fight for their rights. To fight for their rights the same way black people fought against segregation for over half a century, how populists fought against the railroads, the oil, and the steel barons in the 1880s and 1890s, and how American Revolutionaries fought the British in the 1770s. In short, Sanders was talking about a political revolution.
That answer and Matthew’s subsequent skepticism inspired me to write this diary.
When we look at our country today we have insane levels of income inequality, the justice system is completely broken (just look at how under-budgeted and overstretched Public Defenders are), endless cases of sexual abuse and rape (especially of female inmates) go unreported in the prison system, our infrastructure is crumbling, the plankton in the seas are disappearing at an alarming rate, and student debt keeps growing. What the hell are we going to be able to do about all that by striving for “realistic” change with a radical, far right, Republican congress?
Prominent figures in the current Republican Party deny the existence global warming (the Republican frontrunner thinks it is a Chinese hoax), they are opposed to gay marriage, they have no healthcare plan, they favor abolishing Planned Parenthood, they have pursued policies that have gutted our healthcare system, they have needlessly expanded our already-bloated military budget, they favor private for profit prisons which have arbitrarily lengthened sentences to make more money, and they favor giving more and more tax breaks to the wealthy and powerful. Some Republicans even favor abolishing the IRS! Sanders and Clinton supporters are scared of many of the items in the Republican budget getting enacted. Rightfully so.
Neither Clinton or Sanders will be able to get much done with this kind of Congress. But I do not want a President who will work with those people to get “politically realistic” change done on any major issue. Why? Because most any “politically realistic” change with this far right congress will either be watered down half measures like the ACA or garbage trade deals like NAFTA, CAFTA, and the TPP, which hurts working people and benefits the wealthy and powerful. Don’t get me wrong, the passing of the ACA considering how dominated our congress is by the Pfizer thugs and the insurance companies was very impressive. But the very fact that the public option was bagged from the start, or that we couldn’t get better price controls on drugs or health care in a Democratic congress is unacceptable to me. I have too many years ahead of me to put up with this nonsense.
When I look at the current Congress, and our democratic process in general, it is so corrupt that it practically demands a housecleaning in the form of a political revolution. I looked at a recent vote in the U.S. House, which was to route more domestic suits to federal judges since federal judges tend to be more favorable to businesses than local judges. It passed the House on a wave of Republican support and if it were enacted into law today it would screw over a lot of people in favor of giving unnecessary protections to private businesses. To their credit, almost every House Democrat opposed that bill. However, in a less recent vote, fast track authority for the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) passed the House by a slim margin, with significant help from the Democrats. This is a trade deal that is expected to tighten the already significant stranglehold on U.S. labor and unions, legalize corporate extortion and pillaging of poor or weaker nations (i.e. Uruguay), and further hamper efforts to deal with the growing climate crisis. No one has been a bigger proponent of the TPP than President Obama, a Democrat. Now, does the TPP sound like something that would help working people to you?
Nearly five million American manufacturing jobs – one out of every four – have been lost since implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the World Trade Organization (WTO). Since NAFTA, over 60,000 American manufacturing facilities have closed. The TPP would replicate and expand on the NAFTA model.
A leaked text revealed that TPP is slated to include the extreme foreign investor privileges that help corporations offshore more U.S. jobs to low-wage countries. These NAFTA-style terms provide special benefits to firms that relocate abroad and eliminate many of the usual risks that make firms think twice about moving to low-wage countries.
Under the NAFTA model, U.S. manufacturing imports have soared while growth of U.S. manufacturing exports has slowed.
TPP includes Vietnam, a new favorite for corporations’ job offshoring, because
wages there are even lower than China.
Already, the growth of the U.S. trade deficit with China, since China entered the WTO in 2001, has had a devastating effect on U.S. workers and the U.S. economy. Between 2001 and 2011, 2.7 million U.S. jobs were lost or displaced.
Devastation of U.S. manufacturing drives down wages, erodes the tax base and heightens inequality. Despite major gains in American worker productivity, real median wages hover at 1979 levels. Government data shows that two out of every five displaced manufacturing workers who were rehired in 2012 experienced wage reductions of more than 20 percent. With the loss of manufacturing, tax revenue that could have funded social services or local infrastructure projects has declined, while displaced workers have turned to ever-shrinking welfare programs. This has resulted in the virtual collapse of some local governments in areas hardest hit.
And in an excerpt from an article in the Atlantic...
NAFTA led to some auto job losses and accelerated the shift of low-skilled factory jobs to Mexico, said Hopp. Companies either automated operations or moved them to somewhere that labor was cheaper when tariffs went away. Foreign direct investment in Mexico tripled as a share of that country’s GDP since NAFTA, according to Scott. Companies such asWhirlpool and virtually every U.S. automaker have moved some operations there. Even now, companies are moving auto production to Mexico.
“It’s just that, given the low tariffs, the low transportation costs, and the low labor costs in Mexico, it’s hard to make an argument for auto to locate in a place like Tennessee, let alone a place like Michigan,” Hopp said.
Scott, of EPI, worries that the biggest damage from TPP could be to U.S. wages. The trade pact will increase the importation of competing goods, which will drive down the cost of U.S.-made goods, putting downward pressure on wages. It will open up countries such as Malaysia and Vietnam to foreign direct investment. It may be good for certain businesses and holders of intellectual property patents, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to be good for everyone.
“Make no mistake, it’s certainly going to increase income inequality, and it will, in all likelihood, lead to offshoring a job loss,” Scott said.
Perhaps what is most worrying, though, is the potential that TPP, or any trade agreement, could slow the reshoring of American jobs, especially in some fields such as auto-parts manufacturing, which states in the South such as Tennessee and South Carolina are competing to attract.
“We had this period in time where there was this rush to China and Asia, well that’s kind of ended,” Hopp said. “The pendulum is just sitting in the middle now. Small effects can knock individual firms one way or another.”
It may not be a “giant sucking sound” but the TPP could lead to another sound entirely — that of silence in the manufacturing plants of the U.S.
Not to me.
The Democrats’ 30 year strategy of trying to beat the Republicans by taking away their issues and becoming more like them has only hurt working people in this country because we no longer have a party that stands up for them. We have a corporate dominated political monster with two heads, the Democratic and the Republican Party, one of which is a bit less nasty than the other but both are still awful. Neither party is committed to radical change because they are dominated by entities who resist it. Neither party is ready to start representing the 99%, instead of the ultra powerful, the hedge fund managers, the profitable corporations, and the private industries.
Some Democrats for instance, are siding with the notoriously evil payday loan companies. Take Hillary Clinton’s cheerleader on the DNC, Debbie Wasserman Schultz as an example of just how much the Democratic Party has sold its soul,
WASHINGTON -- Payday lenders have been gunning for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau since the day President Barack Obama tapped Elizabeth Warren to set up the new agency. They've had plenty of help from congressional Republicans -- longtime recipients of campaign contributions from the payday loan industry. As the CFPB has moved closer to adopting new rules to shield families from predatory lending, the GOP has assailed the agency from every conceivable angle -- going after its budget, attempting to tie its hands with new layers of red tape, fomenting conspiracy theories about rogue regulators illegally shutting down businesses and launching direct attacks on payday loan rules themselves.
To date, the GOP blitz has resulted in a few close shaves for the young agency, but no actual defeats. But the industry has cultivated a powerful new ally in recent weeks: Democratic National Committee Chair Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.).
Wasserman Schultz is co-sponsoring a new bill that would gut the CFPB's forthcoming payday loan regulations. She's also attempting to gin up Democratic support for the legislation on Capitol Hill, according to a memo obtained by The Huffington Post.
Interesting isn’t it?
The DNC chair isn't the first Democrat to defend payday lenders. A handful of House Financial Services Committee members consistently join the GOP's payday loan boosterism. But support from such backbenchers has been politically impotent. Wasserman Schultz, by contrast, is the nominal head of the Democratic Party. Her support undercuts efforts by liberals in Congress to draw contrasts with Republicans on economic issues.
The misleadingly titled Consumer Protection and Choice Act would delay the CFPB's payday lending rules by two years, and nullify its rules in any state with a payday lending law like the one adopted in Florida. The memo being passed around by Wasserman Schultz staffers describes the Florida state law as a "model" for consumer laws on payday loans, and says the CFPB should "adjust their payday lending rules to take into account actions Florida has already taken."
Consumer groups are appalled by the bill. The Consumer Federation of America, the NAACP, The National Consumer Law Center, The National Council of La Raza, The Southern Poverty Law Center and hundreds of others wrote a letter to every member of Congress in December urging them to oppose the legislation.
"The problem here is that Florida's law is a sham," says Gynnie Robnett, director of the Campaign to Stop the Debt Trap at Americans for Financial Reform. "It was backed by the industry."
But of course, that’s not all,
Going after the CFPB is becoming something of a habit for Wasserman Schultz. In November, she voted to undercut the agency's standards on auto lending, helping car dealers charge higher prices to customers of color. She recently signed onto a letter to CFPB Director Richard Cordray asking him to exempt credit unions and banks with up to $10 billion in assets from consumer protection rules.
What did Democratic Presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton have to say about her DNC favorite’s support for gutting consumer protection laws? Nothing.
What does it mean for America when the most powerful Democrat in the House supports this sort of thing and the Democratic Presidential frontrunner stands idly by? This is not a criticism of Hillary Clinton or Debbie Wasserman Schultz in particular, but this is to further illustrate how corrupt, how absurdly bought off prominent figures in both parties have become. The Democratic Party isn’t even the Democratic party anymore when it stands on the side of the robber barons along with the Republicans. As the old saying goes, and as I have said before, when faced with a choice of bad and slightly less bad, why would you support either one when you still end up with something you don’t want?
Why the heck should we accept that, as a society? Plenty of spin artists on both sides of the aisle have been tirelessly working to convince people to vote and work against their own interests for years.
So when people tell you that we cannot afford single payer healthcare, when they tell you that we need these free trade deals, when they tell you that we should continue giving outrageous subsidies to the coal, oil, and natural gas industries, when they tell you we should INCREASE our defense budget or continue our decades of U.S. sponsored terrorism and globetrotting, when they tell you its O.K. to take millions of dollars from Wall Street while claiming to represent the American people, and when they tell you that it is an act of betrayal not to vote for the Democratic nominee tell them this:
- We figured out how to make a multibillion dollar industry off of human suffering.
- We figured out how to ship millions of U.S. jobs overseas and depress wages while giving unprecedented profits to multinationals.
- The scientists and the engineers have figured out how to decrease our dependency on dirty energy.
- We can put our great resources to do good rather than evil.
- The American people know that when their representatives and powerful figures taking millions of dollars from the wealthy and powerful it is a quid pro quo in every sense of the word.
- People are pledged to personal beliefs and values, not parties.
This election is about a lot more than electing a president. This election is about turning the tide. This election is about saying ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. This election is about saying that if we can have exceptionally high concentrations of wealth then we can damn well have a 15 dollar an hour minimum wage. This election is about saying that everyone, white, black, latino, asian, male, female, straight, transgender, whoever you are you should have an equal shot at life. This election is about whether or not Wall Street’s forty year economic honeymoon will continue at the never ending expense of the taxpayer’s pockets.
That is why I support and urge others to support Bernie Sanders for President. He is backed by the people, for the people, and the people alone. One of his supporters put it well when he said,
Hillary Clinton is the most qualified candidate for the political system we currently have but Bernie Sanders is the most qualified candidate to build the system that we should have.
People say and still do, that Bernie’s supporters won’t go out and support him on election night. But you know what?
I think they will.
COREY HUTCHINS: Yeah, it was. One woman described it to me last night in a swing county where I watched the caucus, and she called it—she looked around—and this is a retired veteran—and said, "My gosh, this is creative chaos." More people showed up to these caucuses this year than was expected. I think the estimate we’re hearing is about 120,000, which is about how many came out in 2008 during the Obama-Clinton showdown here in Colorado.
Vote, Caucus, and #FeelTheBern