Steve's Politics Blog

MoveOn has posted MoveOn to Launch Presidential Endorsement Vote on Thursday.

This is a big decision, and one thing we’ve heard loud and clear from MoveOn members is that it’s important for us to stand together. To win the 2016 presidential endorsement of MoveOn members, a candidate must earn a supermajority—67%, or, technically, 66.67%—of votes cast. If no candidate hits that threshold, we won’t endorse in the Democratic presidential primary.
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If you already regularly receive emails from MoveOn.org, you are a member and eligible to vote.

If you are not sure if you are a member or know you are not yet a member and would like to become one prior to the start of voting, signing any MoveOn Petition or filling out the “your email*” box on the MoveOn.org homepage and then clicking the “Join MoveOn” button will ensure you are added as a member.

Be prepared to vote as soon as you can. This would be an important endorsement and an important organization to have working for Bernie Sanders. It took some tough words from many of MoveOn’s members like me to get them to the point of taking this vote.

This is what a political revolution of voters making their demands known looks like. Especially if we explain the consequences of defying our demands.

YouTube has the video Wall Street Reform and Financial Policy | Bernie Sanders

Streamed live 9 hours ago

Bernie Sanders discusses his vision for economic reform in America, including reigning in Wall Street and financial policies he would implement as president. “If Wall Street does not end its greed, we will end it for them!”

Note the mention of the $16 trillion no cost loans that the FED created to bailout the banks. How many of you knew the magnitude of what the FED created? How many of you knew this could be done? How many of you would have expected massive hyperinflation when this money got created by the FED? How many of you knew how astoundingly wrong Ron and Rand Paul are about economics and monetary policy? (This is not to say that under different conditions, such a vast amount of money creation would create inflation. How many of you know why it didn’t create inflation this time, and under what circumstances it would create inflation?)

If more people understood the facts that Bernie Sanders reveals in this speech, they would have no trouble figuring out that Bernie Sanders is the only viable candidate that will work in the interests of the middle class and the poorer people in this country. They will understand why Hillary Clinton won’t do it, and most assuredly Donald Trump won’t do it.

We must all ‪#‎FeelTheBern‬, and Wall Street must feel the burn of true justice from a Sanders administration. This may be the time to adapt a sports axiom, “If wall Street doesn’t feel the pain, then Main Street won’t see any gain.”

I think that these are words that Elizabeth Warren would also tell you. The oversight and exposure she did of the badly implemented bank bailout would not have happened without Bernie Sanders’ amendment to the legislation that created her oversight committee. You’d think she might come to endorse the guy who rocketed her to fame, and led eventually to her position as Senator.

Bernie Sanders wants people to know that he is raising campaign funds only through small donations. He does not seek money from billionaires. To prove his point he quotes the average donation size.

In what may be a cynical ploy on Hillary Clinton’s part, she is asking people to donate only one dollar to her campaign. This will skew any single statistical number she can quote to compare her donations with Bernie’s. Her comparison number will start to look a lot like Bernie’s number, but the situations could not be more different.

Here is a comparison between two different, simple scenarios. I hope this demonstrates the trap that Bernie has laid for himself by accustoming people to look at the size of the average donation as an indicator of what type of people are funding his campaign.

In the upper example we have 1,000,000 people contributing $1, and no large contributions (in this example – no other contributions). So all one million people have an equal financial influence on the campaign.

In the lower example there are 500,000 people contributing $1, and one person contributing $500,000. Obviously the one large contributor has as much financial influence on the campaign as the other 500,000 contributors combined.

The top example has an average contribution of $1, whereas the bottom example has an average of $2. In both cases, the median is the same. In other words half the people contribute a dollar or less, and half the people contributed a dollar or more. However, in terms of influence of large donors, the situation could hardly be more different.

In the top example, 100% of the money raised came from people donating $1. In the bottom case, only 50% of the money raised comes from people donating $1, and 50% come from 1 person donating $500,000. Could Bernie start using this type of comparison to ward off the his trap that Hillary is about to spring on him?

As a volunteer at the Worcester Rally, I was able to take a few photos.

The Worcester Telegram & Gazette has the article Sanders supporters say his message will resonate in Worcester.

Steven Greenberg of Sturbridge, another volunteer for the North High rally, said he supports Mr. Sanders’ positions against economic inequality and “the rigging of the system in favor of the very rich.”

Finally, The Worcester Telegram & Gazette features people with whom we agree 100%.

Naked Capitalism has the article Job Guarantee Versus Basic Income Guarantee.

As much as many readers advocate the idea of basic income, I suggest you consider the results of the one time it was implemented in historically on a large-scale basis: the Speenhamland system, in early industrial England. As Karl Polanyi describes at length in his classic, The Great Transformation, the long-term results were disastrous for the laboring classes. I strongly suggest you read the long-form discussion here, but the short version is that the guarantee wound up lowering wages and serving as a subsidy to employers.

The introduction on Naked Capitalism indicates that the video discussion will be well worth seeing. I have only had the time to watch the first 7 minutes or so, but it looks like it is going to live up to the promise described by Naked Capitalism. I want everyone here to have the chance to watch the video, long before I get to watch the whole thing myself.

I want to be able to refer back to this post to complete my viewing of the video. Some of the reason why I write this blog is to preserve links to items I want to read or see (and maybe even reread and re-view).

YouTube has the video Ralph Nader & Abby Martin on Rigged Corporate Elections, Clinton Criminals.

On this week’s episode of The Empire Files, Abby Martin interviews American political figure Ralph Nader about the 2016 presidential race—from the “Brown Shirt” Trump movement to “corporate criminal” Hillary Clinton—and the reality of who has power in America.

There are a tremendous number of ideas to think about in this video. As for the Bernie Sanders campaign, if this is a revolution we are joining, do we have anything to say about its goals, its strategies, and its tactics? If Bernie Sanders truly wants a revolution to help him govern, and I think he does, then the people in that revolution are going to make up their own minds as to what they want done, as they should. Ralph Nader presents ideas that the revolution ought to consider.

If you know anything about Ralph Nader, you probably don’t expect him to pull any punches. You won’t be disappointed.

There was an interesting Facebook post by Nadya Maqdisy. It centered around the following image.

Just a little food for thought when you try to answer George W. Bush’s rhetorical question, “Why do they hate us?” Think about this when the Republican candidates and the Republican lite candidates tell you we need to get tougher on those Arabs (Palestinians), How much tougher are we supposed to get before they finally give in?

I always wonder if this getting tougher after all they have done to their kids already, is the “thought” process that abusive parents go through. Is there a similarity between that “thought” process and the one we go through when we decide how to handle the terrorists.

It is hard to have sympathy for our predicament – if we relent, they will be free to exact the revenge on us that we deserve – when we are the ones that chose to put ourselves in this box in the first place.

After making the above observations, I read one of the comments on the original post.

Syedasim Alizaidi – Actually they need another like great Hitler for lesson.

Steve Greenberg – That is kind of a silly response. Perhaps what Hitler did is what got the Zionists into this fix that they are in. They think and you may think that a response that is way out of proportion to the alleged crime committed will finally make people get the point. No, it just leads to further escalation.

So what is the answer, you might ask? Well, I think it is a response that the Republicans laughed at when a Democrat, I can’t remember whom, made a suggestion. Treat terrorist acts like the criminal behavior they are instead of treating it as a war. The punishment needs to be applied to the people who commit the crime, and that punishment should be in proportion to the crime committed. There should be no collective punishment involving people who have committed no crime. The punishment should not be 10 times worse than the crime committed. No criminal “justice” system has ever totally abolished all crime, but it should try to keep criminal activity at a tolerable level that let’s law abiding people go about their business for the most part. If you think you can do better than that, then you are expecting way too much.

Alternet has the article What Really Caused the Implosion of the Occupy Movement—An Insider’s View by Yotam Marom.

The subtitle is:

Taking a hard look at some of the self-sabotaging behaviors of the left.

This article encourages me to have some deep thoughts about how best to help Bernie to win. It also encourages me to think about my own tendency to self-sabotaging behavior. Thinking about it helps to improve performance, I hope.

I post about this article on my blog so that I will have a permanent reminder of this article. I feel that it is something that I will want to remember for a long time. My reasons for posting this are not aimed at anyone else, but myself.

Naked Capitalism has the article Clinton, Sanders, and the “Progressive Give-Up” Formula (with Clinton’s Warning of a “Grand Bargain” to Come) by Lambert Strether. He really lays it on the line.

Clinton is trying to put Sanders in the same pine box that Reagan put Mondale in; that’s her formula for victory, and may explain why she’s become so confident; after, the formula’s worked for thirty years. Sanders should give consideration to the idea of not helping Clinton do that. He might start by ignoring small ball like family leave, and pointing out that FDR won World War II (not to mention an empire, but that’s another story) by ballooning debt to unheard-of levels. FDR — a very popular and successful Democrat, as I recall — used good judgment in doing so, and served the public purpose.

Here is why Clinton is so dangerous. Sanders needs to get the courage to start telling the American public the truth about this. He can’t continue to be afraid to tackle this issue. Fear of letting the middle and poorer classes know what the rich already know is bad for the country and bad for the Sanders campaign.