Steve's Politics Blog

Counterpunch has the April 1, 2016 article How Hillary Clinton Bought the Loyalty of 33 State Democratic Parties.

Collusion between the Clinton campaign and the DNC allowed Hillary Clinton to buy the loyalty of 33 state Democratic parties last summer. Montana was one of those states. It sold itself for $64,100.
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Democratic State Cmte of Massachusetts D P $64,100

So, if you have any doubts as to whether Massachusetts was a party to any of this, I think here is your answer. I think all Massachusetts Democratic politicians owe us an answer about what they knew about this, and when they knew about it.

Should I have a reasonable suspicion that Elizabeth Warren’s refusal to endorse her political soulmate had anything to do with a backroom deal?

One could reasonably infer that the tacit agreement between the signatories was that the state parties and the Hillary Clinton Campaign would act in unity and mutual support. And that the Super Delegates of these various partner states would either pledge loyalty to Clinton, or, at the least, not endorse Senator Sanders.

PBS has the article and video Sen. Elizabeth Warren says 2016 Democratic primary was rigged.

When asked by PBS NewsHour’s Judy Woodruff whether she thought the election was rigged, Warren said: “I think it was.” This comes as a book excerpt from Donna Brazile, former interim acting chair of the Democratic National Committee, was published by Politico. Brazile points to emails leaked from a Russian hack of a DNC server and made public by Wikileaks, suggesting that top Democratic officials favored Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders and details how Clinton’s campaign was helping to finance the committee.

Elizabeth Warren confesses to being the ultimate bullshit artist. I would be willing to bet that she knew at the time when she refused to endorse Bernie that the Hillary Victory Fund was buying her refusal to endorse Bernie.

Speaking about duplicity, it is pretty unlikely that the theft of DNC emails was a Russian hack.

The Real News Network has the interview Rep. Tulsi Gabbard on Donna Brazile’s DNC Bombshell.

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii), a prominent supporter of Bernie Sanders’ 2016 bid, responds to former interim chair Donna Brazile’s revelation that the Clinton campaign had effective control of the DNC

I still don’t get this. The Hillary Victory Fund was well documented in the news no later than May 2016. How could these people not remember that? Are we suffering an epidemic of memory loss?

Politico has the May 2, 2016 story Clinton fundraising leaves little for state parties.

This is a paragraph about the Hillary Victory Fund.

The victory fund has transferred $3.8 million to the state parties, but almost all of that cash ($3.3 million, or 88 percent) was quickly transferred to the DNC, usually within a day or two, by the Clinton staffer who controls the committee, POLITICO’s analysis of the FEC records found.

Here is the Nov 02, 2017 Truthdig story Donna Brazile Reveals How Hillary Clinton Bought the DNC During the 2016 Primaries.

In a bombshell piece for Politico, excerpted from an upcoming book, Donna Brazile, the former Democratic National Committee chair, outlines her search for evidence that the 2016 Democratic Party nomination process had been rigged in favor of Hillary Clinton—and her shock at finding it.

I don’t know how a story that was in the news in May 2016 can be called a bombshell when reported again in November 2017. Does the news media read their own news? Maybe this collective amnesia is part of what we call fake news.

Films For Action has the Incredible Animation Summarises Noam Chomsky’s 5 Filters of the Mass Media Machine.

For decades, Noam Chomsky has been the agent provocateur when it comes to critiquing the US mainstream media. He co-authored ‘Manufacturing Consent’, a seminal work on mainstream journalism and its role in the mechanics of power.

I recognized the voice of the narrator immediately. Read her name on the “Read More” link at the Films For Action link above.

Watch the video soon before YouTube is intimidated to take it down because of the source of funding.

I found coverage of the Senate hearings in The New York Times article Tech Executives Are Contrite About Election Meddling, but Make Few Promises on Capitol Hill.

WASHINGTON — Executives from Facebook, Google and Twitter appeared on Capitol Hill for the first time on Tuesday to publicly acknowledge their role in Russia’s influence on the presidential campaign, but offered little more than promises to do better. Their reluctance frustrated lawmakers who sought stronger evidence that American elections will be protected from foreign powers.
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Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, the chairman of the crime and terrorism subcommittee that held the hearing, said the risk went beyond Russia to other American adversaries. Talking to reporters afterward, he alluded to potential regulation of political advertising online.

“It’s Russia today; it could be Iran and North Korea tomorrow,” Mr. Graham said. “What we need to do is sit down and find ways to bring some of the controls we have on over-the-air broadcast to social media to protect the consumer.”

We are being set up for having our First Amendment rights being restricted by the government. What Lindsay Graham left out is his desire to put limits on what Americans can say about American politics and society.

Just to remind you about what the First Amendment says.

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Restricting these rights is more dangerous than restricting our Second Amendment rights.

The New Yorker has the article The Democratic Civil War Is Getting Nasty, Even if No One Is Paying Attention.

It has interesting information about the dissenters against the way Hillary Clinton ran her 2016 campaign. However, I will focus my comments on two excerpts from the article.

Should they give up on the white voters who went for Trump in 2016 even though many had been reliably Democratic in the past?

I think it would be more important to go after the Obama voters who didn’t even vote in 2016. There are probably far more of those than Democrats who voted for Trump. People are so hung up on the two-party paradigm, that they can’t come to grips with the idea that there are huge numbers of people who just do not want to vote for the candidates put up by the two major parties. Voters didn’t go for the Green Party either. They went to the “Why Bother” party.

Senator Elizabeth Warren, of Massachusetts, could appeal to this fervent new activist base, and conceivably win the nomination in 2020.

They still don’t get it, do they? Warren is my Senator, but after what she did in the 2016 election, I am ready to dump her. She lost all credibility by trying to sell us Hillary Clinton as the ideal candidate when she knew that Clinton favored Wall Street which Warren got elected to oppose.

Bread and Roses 1912-2012 posted The Coal Creek War on Facebook.

On Oct. 31, 1891, in response to an ongoing attempt by coal mine owners to replace miners with convicts leased by the state, a group of miners burned the Tennessee Coal Mining Company stockade in Briceville and seize the Knoxville Iron Company stockade at Coal Creek, freeing over 300 convicts and supplying them with food and civilian clothes.

I am publishing a copy of this here before Facebook is forced by Congress to call this Russian propaganda. You know this is the type of thing that the oligarchs owning Congress do not want people in the USA to see. Think about this before you jump on the Russia hysteria bandwagon.

November 1, 2017

Just to maker sure I wasn’t falling victim to “fake news”, I did a Google search. I came up with many entries. I’ll just post the link to the Wikipedia entry Coal Creek War.

The Hill has the article Trade panel recommends Trump impose tariffs on solar power technology.

Senator Edward J. Markey posted remarks on Facebook about this.

Today’s action provides President Trump and the fossil fuel industry the means to kill the solar energy industry in the United States and the hundreds of thousands of blue-collar American workers it employs. Here’s my full statement on today’s International Trade Commission action:

Link to full statement

Congratulations to Senator Markey for recognizing how destructive these recommendations are. I believe that free trade is good for the world. NAFTA and TPP were not free trade. NAFTA and TPP were oligarch protection agreements. NAFTA and TPP gave free trade a bad name.

Not only will a tariff kill jobs in the USA, but it will price solar out of the market in the USA. That will just put our country further behind the rest of the world in adopting the latest technology to improve our efficiency, our environment, and our energy independence. We have plenty of domestic semiconductor companies that are competing successfully in the world market without the use of tariffs. Support from our government for our domestic companies is much better than road-blocks to non-domestic producers. One such support would be taking the burden of health insurance off the backs of domestic companies with the introduction of Medicare For All.

Here is a question inspired by a Facebook friend.

If you hear a candidate say that they are going to move your city or town forward, what do you want that to mean? What must they say to make you think they will move your locality forward in a way that you would prefer?

Consider this a brain-stormiing exercise. No critiques of any suggestions allowed. Only questions of clarification allowed.

Multiple entries encouraged. You don’t have to think of everything before you make your first reply.

I want to use Facebook to collect the answers. Please use my Facebook post to make your replies. Click on the preceding link to make your reply. You don’t have to be a Facebook friend to read the replies or to make one.