I just finished participating in a conference call for Draft Bernie for a People’s Party.

On the conference call that just ended I promised I would get 5 people to sign this petition. Can you help me? I think this is the most hopeful I have felt since the nomination was stolen from Bernie.

Sign Our Petition – Draft Bernie for a People’s Party

Truth Dig has the article Chris Hedges: The Enemy Is Not Donald Trump or Steve Bannon—It Is Corporate Power (Video).

In a recent speech titled “After Trump and Pussy Hats” delivered in Vancouver, British Columbia, Truthdig columnist Chris Hedges tells the audience that “resistance must also be accompanied by an alternative vision of a socialist, anti-capitalist society.”

After a fierce indictment of what he calls the kleptocracy that rules the United States, Hedges urges organizing “with lightning speed” because this is our “last chance” to do so.

Bill S.619. An Act establishing Medicare for all in Massachusetts, can truly be said is an act whose time has not come.

This bill establishes a Massachusetts Health Care Trust, which will be the single-payer body responsible for the collection and disbursement of funds required to provide health care services for every resident of the Commonwealth.

Many times on this blog, I have argued that the issue of the Federal Government paying for a new program is a non-issue because the Federal Government creates U.S. Money. I hope you realize that everything I said about the government not having to worry about money to fund things applies only to the Federal Government, not to a state government. State governments do not create US money. Only the federal government creates US money. Any government that is narrower than the federal government has to worry about how it will pay for government programs.

So how does Jamie Eldridge propose that Massachusetts pays for Medicare For All? You can read the text of the bill to decide for yourself if it seems feasible. Perhaps with the state responsible for the collection of funds to replace the insurance companies’ collection of funds, this might all be possible.

There are things the Federal Government could do with relative ease, that state governments do not have the resources to do. We have to be very careful to make sure that the state has the financial resources to make this possible.

The preferable way to do single payer health care is at the federal level. Wishing won’t make it affordable at the state level. Many a local government has gone bankrupt trying to do the impossible. When that happens, it gives the right-wing “evidence” that they use to “prove” that government cannot work. This is already being done with Vermont that tried this and failed. See the article Bernie Sanders’s Single-Payer Health Care Plan Failed in Vermont.

Despite the ominous budget projections at the time, single-payer advocates now say they believe Shumlin’s decision was purely political.

It is not clear whether or not Vermont was going to collect in insurance payments, the money that had been going to private insurers.

Let’s not have progressives competing with the right-wing for the honor of proposing the silliest government actions. Cutting Medicare at the federal level is silly, but proposing it at the state level to compensate may also be silly.

I didn’t think I would have to teach this course, but now I am thinking I might have to. Take a look at the web page Draft Bernie for a People’s Party.

Bernie doesn’t seem to be bright enough to even pretend that he might take this opportunity being handed to him on a silver platter. Is there a chance that we can wise him up before he fritters away this golden opportunity? He is now in the process of telling the Democratic Party leaders that no matter how much they ignore progressive ideas, Bernie won’t abandon them. Is this a foolish negotiating strategy, or what?

If you are afraid to even threaten the Democratic Party “leaders” with this, what other bargaining power do you think you can bring to bear to get the party to listen to you? This threat applies to the “leaders” in Massachusetts – Elizabeth Warren, Ed Markey, Jim McGovern, and Richard Neal come to mind.

Talk Of Net has the article Adidas Rejects Student’s Commercial Made For Them. Now It’s Going So Viral They Probably Regret It.

I can see Adidas not feeling able to use this as a commercial, but it is still a powerful video.

Every time I visit my sister in the Northwood Rehabilitation & Health Care Center, I have to wonder about the people who live there. This is not a knock on Northwood. I think they are one of the best that can be.

YouTube has the video Campaign Calls on Bernie Sanders to Lead a New Party.

Nick Brana, former Sanders staffer, says it’s time to give up expecting progressive change from the Democratic Party and that Sanders should lead his base in creating a new party.

Bernie’s statements on this campaign to form a new party shows why he was a much worse bargainer than Donald Trump was. His failure to know how to bargain is why he lost the Democratic nomination, and why he will fail to reform the Democratic Party.

When he made a solemn promise to vote for the Democratic nominee no matter who it turned out to be, he lost all his bargaining power with the Democratic Party. Compare this to Trump’s commitment to back the Republican nominee only if he felt that he had been treated fairly by the party. The Republican Party establishment hated Donald Trump, but there were some limits on what they could do because of his threat to leave the party and take his voters with him.

Bernie told the Democratic Party establishment that they could treat him like dirt, and he would remain loyal to the party. They took him at his word, and treated him like dirt. Being a man of his word, he did remain loyal, much to the dismay of his suppoprters.

He is now making exactly the same mistake. If he does not use the threat to leave the party and take his supporters with him, he has no bargaining power with the Democratic Party establishment. The more he sticks to this loser strategy, the more we have to realize that he is not going to be our candidate.

The Intercept has the story Leading Putin Critic Warns of Xenophobic Conspiracy Theories Drowning U.S. Discourse and Helping Trump.

She now has a new article in the New York Review of Books – entitled “Russia: the Conspiracy Trap” – that I cannot recommend highly enough. Its primary purpose is to describe, and warn about, the insane and toxic conspiracy-mongering about Russia that has taken over not the fringe, dark corners of the internet that normally traffic in such delusional tripe, but rather mainstream U.S. media outlets and the Democratic Party. Few articles have illustrated the serious, multi-faceted dangers of what has become this collective mania in the U.S. as well as Gessen’s does.

So, I went to look at The New York Review of Books article Russia: The Conspiracy Trap.

The most solid part of the story to date is the hack of the Democratic National Committee, apparently carried out by people connected to Russian intelligence.

I find this ironic because I find the hack of the Democratic National Committee to be the flimsiest part of the story. I refer to a previous post of mine, Election Hack Report FAQ: What You Need to Know. Even the skeptics about the Russia story aren’t skeptical enough.

Even Glenn Greenwald, the author of the first article came to mention this at the end:

Indeed, even the most plausible plank of the story – that the Russians were behind the hacking of Podesta and the DNC – has been widely accepted as Truth despite no evidence from the U.S. Government.

However, there is not only a lack of evidence from the government, there even seems to be anti–evidence from the government. If anything, there “proof” offers more evidence that it is unlikely the work of Russian intelligence.

To make sure you don’t think I am saying that Trump is innocent, here is the conclusion of Greenwald’s and Gessen’s two articles.

As Gessen concludes: “What is indisputable is that the protracted national game of connecting the Trump-Putin dots is an exercise in conspiracy thinking. That does not mean there was no conspiracy. And yet, a possible conspiracy is a poor excuse for conspiracy thinking.”

Hedge Clippers has the article Why Won’t Hedge Funders Confess Their Role in Multi-Million-Dollar Lobbying Campaign?

According to Moody’s, charter growth can cripple the credit ratings of urban school districts, leading to increased borrowing costs and declining public school enrollments.

This stress, largely due to district’s inability to reduce operation costs in response to declining enrollment, can touch off a “death spiral” where district costs increase, leading to an increase in charter enrollments.

Some of the anti-liberal Democrats I know who are so horrified about 45 being the President are also backers of the charter school movement. Makes me wonder what they are thinking.

Naked Capitalism has the article Why a 400-Year Program of Modernist Thinking is Exploding.

To illustrate one of its signature follies, Kanth refers to that great Hollywood ode to the Western spirit, “The Sound of Music.” Early in the film, the Mother Superior bursts into song, calling on the nun Maria to “climb every mountain, ford every stream.”

Sounds exhilarating, but to what end? Why exactly do we need to ford every stream? From the Eurocentric modernist viewpoint, Kanth says, the answer is not so innocent: we secretly do it so that we can say to ourselves, “Look, I achieved something that’s beyond the reach of somebody else.” Hooray for me!

I think “The Sound of Music” example was grossly misunderstood. One of the reasons to climb every mountain is to achieve a personal or team goal. For the really big mountains, climbers go out in teams. They tie themselves together to get the team to the top of the mountain. It is humans vying against inanimate obstacles to see what they can achieve. It is a group of self-actualized people working in cooperation to achieve a goal they set for themselves.

The article does provide some food for thought, but like any idea of this type, reducing nature and humans to a single overriding principle is too simplified. It is just a model of reality. Models of reality leave things out so that the model can be understood. Modelers always have to remember the process that got them to the model so that they can always be on the look out for situations in which what they have left out becomes essential.

The Hill has the story Dem seeks to block US troops going to Syria after Marines deployed.

“The bill I am introducing today prohibits the Department of Defense from funding any attempt by the administration to expand our presence in Syria by putting U.S. combat boots on the ground,” Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) said in a statement to The Hill.

“It is our constitutional duty as members of Congress to place a check on the executive branch in matters of war and peace,” she said.

One thing you can say for 45 is that he has caused a few people to stiffen their spines, and stand up to what he is doing. To be fair to Rep. Barbara Lee, this is not something new for her.

Lee was the lone lawmaker to vote against the authorization for the use of military force in the days after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, which has been used as the legal justification for the war against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.