"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross."
-- Sinclair Lewis
Wednesday, April 08, 2020
America-- And The Democratic Party-- Needed Bernie To Stay In The Race
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This is a must-watch video, a discussion between Mehdi Hasan and Naomi Klein. They don't get to Bernie staying in the race 'til near the end but the whole half hour is a worthwhile way to spend some time. As for Bernie staying in the race, I very much agree with Naomi Klein and with Alan Minsky, the Executive Director of Progressive Democrats of America who penned this guest post a day before Bernie decided to drop out. I hope you agree as well-- and agree enough to contribute to congressional candidates who are running on Bernie's issues, even if it's just five or two dollars. Thats why I've included a Bernie Congress Blue America thermometer below. Just click on it and vote with a few dollars to let Bernie you agree too. Stay In The Race Bernie Sanders-- America Needs You Now More Than Ever.
-by Alan Minsky Progressive Democrats of America calls upon Senator Bernie Sanders to continue his presidential campaign until the end of the 2020 primary season. We understand that many Democrats are calling for Bernie to drop out. They say that Joe Biden is so far ahead that the time has come for party unity, for focusing on Donald Trump. While we agree about the necessity of defeating Donald Trump, we arrive at the opposite conclusion: The Democratic Party, and all Americans, will benefit from Bernie continuing his campaign in this historic moment. The severity of the COVID-19 national emergency has changed everything in this election year. Coronavirus has revealed, with tragic consequences, the failings of our public health institutions and economic safety net-- in ways that Bernie Sanders has been warning against for decades. Thus, it comes as no surprise that Bernie's platform directly addresses these failings; in marked contrast to his rival's. As many observers have noted, with each passing day the COVID-19 pandemic is proving the wisdom of the Sanders agenda. In particular, Medicare for All needs to be the official policy of the Democratic Party and it's presidential nominee in 2020. The pandemic has exposed America's current healthcare system for the disaster that it is. There can be no denying that having tens of millions of Americans unable to access affordable care greatly increases the public health risk for everyone. America needs universal single-payer health care; and the only way to get there is through the Democratic Party. Yet Joe Biden opposes Medicare for All, while Bernie Sanders is its leading proponent. In the wake of COVID-19, Medicare for All isn't merely a winning political issue; it's a political landslide issue. Even if Bernie doesn't win the nomination, by continuing to campaign and win delegates to the convention, he could leverage Medicare for All into the party platform. For this, America, the Democratic Party, and even Joe Biden, should want Bernie Sanders to stay in the race.
We also need Bernie to stay in the race to insure that his voice is heard as we enter the peak days of the crisis. Over the past few weeks, Bernie has fought tirelessly on behalf of average Americans in the battles over the stimulus bills. As one of only three viable candidates for President, Bernie has a powerful platform. That will change overnight when his campaign ends; and his influence will wane, leaving Americans even more at the mercy of a political class that, on balance, prioritizes big money interests over those of the vast majority.
Of course, Bernie's campaign going forward is not just about building support for policies, however essential, because of one fact: the race isn't over. Joe Biden may have a significant delegate lead, but it's nothing that a string of 70-30 results wouldn't reverse. That might be a longshot, but it's not impossible. Think about it this way: Bernie's policies match this moment just like FDR's did in the early 1930s; and FDR won his share of landslides. Calling for Sanders to step aside is anti-democratic. Let the candidates campaign and let the voters decide. On this final point, consider the parallel with FDR in light of the recent unemployment statistics. Only one period in American history resembles the wholesale devastation that is currently shredding the American economy, the Great Depression. How did we get out of that? After three years of Hoover's impotent response, FDR re-energized America with a revolutionary program that transformed the country forever, the New Deal-- an updated version of which was a central plank of Sanders' platform, the Green New Deal. The President who will be inaugurated in January will have a unique opportunity to define the direction of the country for the foreseeable future. Do we want to re-affirm a society that only works for the few while the rest of us work multiple jobs, live entwined in debt, with underfunded public schools, and a broken health care system with little hope of overcoming America's endemic crises? Or do we choose a new path that brings both our society and the planet back into balance and ensures that America will lead the world in addressing the biggest challenges of the next century? Be honest folks, the Bernie Sanders agenda made a lot of sense before COVID-19, now it makes all the sense in the world. It's the vision that the Democratic Party needs to unify behind. The only way that happens is if the Sanders campaign continues. The world has changed irreparably since early March when most primary votes were cast. The fallout from COVID-19 will define politics in the 2020s. We will all benefit by having the country's leading advocate for strengthening the public sector make his case in our new, transformed, reality. Stay in the race Bernie Sanders. America needs you now more than ever.
Yesterday, the Dow Jones closed down 12.94%. The worst day in 1929-- the harbinger of the Great Depression (which is different from a recession)-- was 12.82%. Yes, anyone who thought Donald Trump would make America great again should lose their right to vote until taking a year of good, solid civics courses. In the video above, Naomi Klein explains how predators and their shameless political enablers-- whether a Bush or a Biden-- try to use emergencies and profound shocks to the system to push their selfish, toxic agendas forward.
"After a shocking event-- a war, coup, terrorist attack, market crash, or natural disaster-- they exploit the public's disorientation. Suspend democracy. Push through radical 'free market' policies that enrich the 1 percent at the expense of the poor and middle class." "But," she continued, "here is what my research has taught me: Shocks and crises don't always go the shock doctrine path. In fact, it's possible for crisis to catalyze a kind of evolutionary leap. Think of the 1930s, when the Great Depression led to the New Deal." That's because the Democratic Party nominated Franklin Roosevelt-- it took 4 convention ballots to do so-- instead of the Joe Biden of the day, Al Smith, an ardent conservative. Roosevelt went on to defeat Republican incumbent Herbert Hoover 22,821,277 (57.4%) to 15,761,254 (39.7%), winning 472 to 59 electoral college votes. Hoover won only 6 states. I should mention that two years earlier-- just after the market crash-- the Democrats managed to wrest control of the House, winning 52 Republican seats and a tenuous majority-- 218 to 216. Although the Republicans lost 6 Senate seats, they still managed to retain control of that body (50-45) but Roosevelt's coattails changed all that. In 1932, as the Great Depression raged, the GOP lost another 11 Senate seats-- including that of nutcase conservative Majority Leader James Watson (R-IN)-- and winning a 58-37 majority. In the House, as the Republicans continued to screech "Socialism!!!," the Democrats grew their majority by 97 seats as the Republicans were punished by the voters with a loss of 101 seats, leaving the Democrats with a 313-117 majority. Two years later, the Republicans, still screaming "socialism" as the Democrats implemented the New Deal, lost another 14 seats-- and then 2 years after that another 15 seats! By 1936, the GOP minority-- still babbling incoherently about "socialism"-- was the shitty end of a 334-88 split in the House. In the Senate, the Republicans lost another 5 seats, leaving them with just 17 to the Democrats' 74. That's how we got a social safety net in this country. Can we do it again? Will this shock be enough to elect Bernie and not hapless status quo establishment conservative Joe Biden? And will it see progressives like Marie Newman, McKayla Wilkes and Eva Putzova replace conservatives like Dan Lipinski (D-IL), Steny Hoyer (D-MD) and Tom O'Halleran (D-AZ) and progressives like Mike Siegel, Kara Eastman, J.D. Scholten, Jon Hoadley and Liam O'Mara replace conservatives like Michael McCaul (R-TX), Donald Bacon (R-NE), Steve King (R-IA), Fred Upton (R-MI) and Ken Calvert (R-CA)? You can help-- we all need to if we are going to win this thing. That's why I've included the Blue America 2020 congressional thermometer on the right. Please contribute what you can. As Naomi concluded, "With Washington suddenly in the giant stimulus business, this is precisely the time for the stimulus that many of us have been talking about for years. It's called the Green New Deal. Instead of rescuing the dirty industries of the last century, we should be boosting the clean ones that will lead us into safety in the coming century. If there is one thing history teaches us, it's that moments of shock are profoundly volatile. We either lose a whole lot of ground, get fleeced by elites and pay the price for decades, or we win progressive victories that seemed impossible just a few weeks earlier. This is no time to lose our nerve. The future will be determined by whoever is willing to fight harder for the ideas they have lying around.
For me, I'd rather solve the crisis and the society's structural faults by handing leadership over to someone like progressive Milwaukie mayor Mark Gamba than reactionary Blue Dog Kurt Schrader. A few minutes ago, Mark, a fan of Naomi Klein's book, told me that "Times of great upheaval do indeed create an opening for dramatic change. That can cut either way. If we give into fear, that change could lead to the end of democracy as we know It (Trump cancelling elections and staying in office), or at least a strong steepening of the curve towards the plutocracy that the neo-liberals have been striving towards for decades (Biden winning and putting a pretty face on the continued destruction of the middle class). If, however, we choose hope; if we choose to believe that the world can indeed be a better place, then the opportunity to quickly transform our economy and way of life into one that serves the common man and heals our planet is ours for the taking." He continued:
A hard swing to the left with the election of Sanders to the presidency, a senate flip and the election of a raft of congress people unbeholden to the corporatocracy, could not only save our democracy and our economy-- it could literally save the future of life on this planet. With the passing of the Green New Deal, millions would be put to work in family wage jobs: building out the infrastructure to transition to 100% renewable energy, electrified transportations systems, transformed agricultural systems, restoration of our great forest and much more.
Nearly half of America would have new found access to world class health care with the passing of Jayapal’s Medicare for All bill. Hospitals and clinics would return to rural areas, long term care wouldn’t bankrupt families, and pandemics like the one we are currently just beginning to experience would be far less lethal. Millions would be employed providing health care rather than being employed denying health care so that insurance companies can maximize their profits. We would also be prioritizing education and making sure that the full potential of every American can be realized, so that the brightest minds have the opportunity to solve future disasters. Right now, many of them don’t choose to continue to higher education, many don’t even finish our radically underfunded k-12 system. Because our federal government has chosen profits for a few over optimizing the potential of every child, we are becoming less competitive in the world market and destroying the middle class. We could end the cradle to prison pipeline and the prison for profit system. We could reduce our massive spending on the military industrial complex and finally stop the endless wars that kill and maim our young people and wreak havoc on civilians all over the world. Imagine an America where everyone makes a good living, where no one dies of curable diseases, where homelessness is dark memory of our recent past, where the natural world is restored and food is not poisoned in the fields. All of that is possible. The only thing we have to give up to get it is our fear and the unlimited enrichment of the billionaires.
Is It Too Much To Expect A Presidential Candidate To Be Not Just Better Than The Other Monstrosity But Also To Be Someone With The Makings Of Greatness?
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Yesterday, under intense pressure, Señor Trumpanzee did a 180-- going from insisting the pandemic was a "hoax" perpetrated against him so he would lose his reelection bid, to declaring a national emergency because of it. As Susan Glasser asserted in the New Yorker this week, Trump is unequal-- clearly and undeniably-- to the moment. Part of that is the crew of sycophants and incompetents he has brought in to surround himself. But only partly. It's really all about Trump himself-- and the historic error voters in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Ohio, Florida and Iowa made in 2016. "Crises," wrote Glasser, "clarify. The bigger the crisis, the more the clarity, which is why the incompetence, dishonesty, and sheer callousness of the Trump Presidency have been clearer in recent days than ever before. As the coronavirus, as of Wednesday an official pandemic, spreads, the lives of Americans depend on the decisions made-- or not made, as the case may be-- by a President uniquely ill-suited to command in this type of public-health catastrophe. In that sense, the last few weeks may well have been the most clarifying of Donald Trump’s Presidency.
It’s almost unbelievable from the vantage point of the present moment, when we are in the midst of an officially designated global pandemic and a consequent economic crisis that threatens to plunge the United States and the rest of the planet into a recession, but consider how the President of the United States has spent his time since the coronavirus infection reached America in mid-January. He has:
• Publicly attacked the judge, prosecutors, and jury forewoman in the case of Roger Stone, Trump’s longtime political associate who was convicted of lying to Congress and other offenses. • Fired his Ambassador to the European Union and a National Security Council adviser on Ukraine, and purged others who figured in the impeachment investigation as he fulminated to aides about “snakes” in his Administration. • Fired the acting director of National Intelligence, after an intelligence briefing to Congress about Russia’s ongoing efforts to interfere in the 2020 election. • Nominated as his new director of National Intelligence a highly partisan Republican congressman who was forced to withdraw from the exact same job last summer for inflating his résumé. • Sued, through his campaign, The Times, CNN, and the Washington Post for publishing opinion articles that he did not like. • Installed a new, twenty-nine-year-old personnel chief in the White House who had been previously fired and marched off the premises, and gave him a mandate to revamp the vetting process for Administration officials, with a new emphasis on loyalty.
As the novel coronavirus spread from China across Asia and Europe and to the United States, Trump used his Presidential Twitter feed, his four campaign rallies, his trip to India, and various public appearances in February to attack by name dozens of targets, including the Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor; “Crazy Nancy Pelosi” and her “impeachment hoax”; the “failed” and “sanctimonious” Senator Mitt Romney; the “puppet” Senator Joe Manchin; the “lightweight” Senator Doug Jones, a “Do Nothing Stiff”; Jay Powell, his appointee as chairman of the Federal Reserve; John Kelly, his former White House chief of staff, who was in “way over his head”; and Jeff Sessions, his former Attorney General. ...All of this he did while the epidemic spread. At the same time, Trump was claiming that the illness was being contained; that it dies in warmer weather; that it was not coming to the United States; that it was about to disappear; and that it was not very serious. Indeed, had you read only communications from the President about the spreading coronavirus, you would have been subjected to a barrage of lies and misinformation and self-serving bombast, information that even at the time it was being said was clearly and unequivocally untrue. ... We don’t know whether this is Trump’s long-delayed reckoning, the overdue moment of accountability for a man who has escaped such reckonings his entire life. The election is not for many months. The dizzying events of just the last few weeks-- the remarkable upending of the Democratic Presidential race, the hubris and foolishness of the Administration’s initial response to the virus-- may be long forgotten by then. That does not make this any less of a significant milestone in this most unbelievable of American Presidencies. On Wednesday, the respected government medical expert Anthony Fauci told Congress that the worst is yet to come. “Yes, yes it is,” he said. Trump cannot tweet this virus away or lie it into oblivion. The virus does not care if he gives tax cuts to friendly oil barons or bails out his own hotels with federal dollars, possibilities that have been floated in recent days. Trump may believe that only Republicans matter to his political fortunes, but he has yet to find a doctor who can insulate his base, and his base only, from the ravages of this disease. Nor will he. Trump has spent years devaluing and diminishing facts, experts, institutions, and science-- the very things upon which we must rely in a crisis-- and his default setting during the coronavirus outbreak has been to deny, delay, deflect, and diminish. His speech on Wednesday night was a disappointment but not a surprise. He told us what we already knew: America is in big trouble.
A new poll Ipsos did for USA Today indicates that just 15% of Americans believe the pandemic "poses a high threat to them personally... While a majority report that they plan to wash their hands more frequently (59%), just a quarter say that they plan to stop attending social events, and less than one in five plan to cancel a personal trip (17%). Three in ten Americans report no plans to take preventative measures against the outbreak (30%). Half say they would not travel on a plane right now, compared to 44% who would. That number is even higher among Americans over age 55 (58% would not travel by plane). Americans are evenly split on whether they would take public transportation (45% agree they would, 47% would not). Only one in five are willing to go on a cruise right now (22%). In terms of a government response, a large majority of Americans want to see the COVID-19 test made widely available (87%), and three-quarters want the government to impose mandatory quarantines for people returning from high risk countries (77%) and temporarily stop immigration from high risk countries (76%). There is an even divide on whether all large-scale events, such as sporting events and music festivals, should be canceled (39% yes, 39% no). While a plurality support temporary financial help for airlines and other affected industries (42%), just 22% want all domestic flights grounded. More (39%) are in favor of grounding all international flights." Republicans don't see COVID-19 as a threat to themselves personally as much as Democrats do:
Nor will Republicans wash their hands or take other precautions as much as Democrats say they will:
63% of Democrats-- but just 48% of Republicans-- say they have already started washing their hands more frequently. Writing for GQ, Julia Ioffe noted that those Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Ohio, Florida and Iowa Republicans I referred to above are getting what they wanted:a president who would blow up the system. Referring to Trump's colossal mishandling of the response to the pandemic, Ioffe reminded her readers that "If you expected anything else, if you expected that on this, 1,146th day of his presidency, Trump would be different-- that he would finally become presidential-- you have been willfully fooling yourself. If, four years ago, you thought, 'oh, what’s the difference between a Hillary Clinton and a Donald Trump;' if you thought that they’re all the same, and that none of it matters anyway because American institutions would just get everyone through on autopilot, this is what you get. You get a president who shuts down the global health security team in the National Security Council so that there’s no one but his son-in-law to advise him when a global pandemic reaches our country’s shores. You get a president who doesn’t care about whether people live or die, he just wants the numbers to look good for him, wants the number of cases down and the numbers on the stock indices up, and the best way to do that is to keep Covid-19 testing and public information at a minimum. You get a president who doesn’t believe in science when it doesn’t suit him and who, as recently as three days ago, declares a virus that had already claimed thousands of lives around the world a 'hoax' and 'fake news'-- or a president that simply focuses, falsely, on how well his administration is responding to the crisis-- because the pandemic might hurt the economy and jeopardize his reelection. You get a president who thinks he can do anything, who off-the-cuff announces a rally in Florida, where the governor has suspended all official travel as medical experts advise people practice “social distancing” by avoiding crowds. You get a president whose response to an invisible virus is to blame foreigners."
Some 63 million Americans voted for a man who wanted to smash the system to smithereens, either because they felt it wasn’t doing enough for them or because breaking glass just feels so primitively satisfying. Or maybe it's because the Republican Party has been peddling a dystopian anarchistic anti-government pipe dream to them for the last four decades. Now, it turns out, a functioning government is a good thing to have when a global pandemic arrives on your shores. It turns out that maybe reforming an imperfect system is wiser than just taking a sledgehammer to it, better to trust people who have dedicated their lives to being public servants than trashing them in favor of a one-man, megalomaniacal savior, better to have a functioning system than dancing on its rubble while crowing about the death of the "deep state"-- or "the political establishment." To those 63 million Americans, I say this: you wanted to smash the system and you got what you wanted-- in spades. Now we will all have to pay the price.
Trump's state by state approval numbers indicate he is unlikely to win as second term in November-- if he's alive by then, which I think is just as unlikely. Voters in just 21 states approve of the job he's doing. And, with the exception of Texas and Ohio (where he sits at a shaky 50% approval, most of those states have few electoral votes. Here are all 50 states (with their electoral votes), with his approval and disapproval numbers as of last week, but before the disastrous speech:
All that said, I am proud to say that I was in a "Never Biden" movement since the 1970s when I noticed he is a racist, homophobic, cowardly conservative. I had never heard of Bernie at the time. He hadn't even been elected mayor of Burlington when my hatred for Biden to hold. In Politico yesterday, David Siders and Holly Otterbein wondered if Biden will be able to overcome the #NeverBiden movement. My guess is yes and easily, primarily because the #NeverTrump movement is a much more powerful force. A Democratic pollster told them that Biden will have time, Trump and Bernie working to help him if he's the nominee and that "polls show Biden is also viewed more favorably now than Hillary Clinton was in 2016." I know I'm an outlier, but nothing would make me vote for Joe Biden-- easy to say here in blue California, but I wouldn't vote for Biden if I lived in Florida, Michigan or Iowa either. Or let's put it like this, I'd vote for Biden as soon as I'd vote for all of the folks on George Conway's list:
On top of my antipathy for Status Quo Joe as a conservative, I'm going to be in this with Bernie 'til he wins or doesn't. Jake Johnson's TruthDig! post helps explain why Biden is too risky a choice for Democrats to put up against Trump.
“You know, I keep hearing this thing about Joe Biden being ‘a safe candidate.’ Safe for who?” asked environmentalist and author Naomi Klein, who endorsed Sanders for president, said in a video released Monday. “I know he goes to corporate fundraisers and tells people that nothing’s going to change. So he’s clearly telling them that he’s a safe candidate for them. What’s safe for the ultra-rich is incredibly dangerous for everybody else.”
Klein added that Sanders’ support for Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, and other transformational policies make the Vermont senator the most electable 2020 Democrat. “Policies that don’t challenge the status quo right now are incredibly dangerous,” said Klein. “Bernie Sanders is the only candidate whose policies are bold enough to actually keep us safe… Bernie Sanders is not a risky candidate against Donald Trump. He is, in fact, the safest candidate.” “Joe Biden is not safe. Not safe for the planet. Not safe for our health. Not safe to run against Trump,” Klein tweeted. Current Affairs editor Nathan Robinson, an outspoken Sanders supporter, wrote Saturday that a Biden nomination could represent a repeat of 2016, which saw the supposedly safe establishment candidate Hillary Clinton lose to reality television star Donald Trump. Robinson accurately predicted in a February 2016 article that Clinton would lose to Trump in a head-to-head matchup and made the case for Sanders as the more electable candidate. On Saturday, Robinson echoed that case, pointing to Biden’s past support for Social Security cuts, votes in favor of the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and 2003 invasion of, and other elements of his record. “It is Biden, not Sanders, who would be the risky bet,” Robinson wrote. “A Sanders presidency is nothing to fear, but a Biden nomination certainly is.” ...Jeet Heer, national affairs correspondent for The Nation, argued in a column Monday that nominating Biden is a risk not only because of his potential vulnerabilities in a general election matchup with Trump, but also because of how the former vice president has promised to govern should he win the presidency. “Given already low interest rates, a stalling global economy, and the need for new infrastructure (both for its own sake and also to prepare for climate change), this is the ideal time for a president who isn’t afraid to argue for big structural changes and to go full Keynesian,” Heer wrote. “But that’s exactly the president that Joe Biden would not be. He’s running to be a business-as-usual president. Given the real problems facing the world, that’s a dangerous risk.”
At Some Point-- Very Soon-- It Will Be Too Late To Save Venice From The Climate Crisis, But The Right-Wing Parties There Don't Give More Than Trump Does
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I used to live in Innsbruck, Austria. I was stuck there because of a medical condition. It was the most boring place I ever lived. I used to escape when I could to Munich (a 2 hour drive) and when I was up for a longer drive, to Venice (4 hours). Munich had a great art scene. Venice is a great art scene. I grew to love the city even if I wasn't the biggest fans of an 8 to 8 and a half hour round trip drive. I was horrified on Thursday when I hear that the flooding in St Marks Square was thigh deep. I can remember when planks had to be laid across it, the flooding being ankle high. Thigh deep... that's like a swim! And the following day, CNN reported that the province's regional council flooded for the first time in its history.
And the council chamber in Ferro Fini Palace started to take in water around 10 p.m. local time, as councilors were debating the 2020 regional budget, Democratic Party councilor Andrea Zanoni said in a long Facebook post. "Ironically, the chamber was flooded two minutes after the majority League, Brothers of Italy, and Forza Italia parties [neo-fascist parties which are climate change deniers on a Trumpian scale] rejected our amendments to tackle climate change," Zanoni, who is deputy chairman of the environment committee, said in the post, which also has photographs of the room under water.
Among the rejected amendments were measures to fund renewable sources, to replace diesel buses with "more efficient and less polluting ones," to scrap polluting stoves and reduce the impact of plastics, he said. Zanoni went on to accuse Veneto regional president Luca Zaia, who is a member of Matteo Salvini's far-right League Party, of presenting a budget "with no concrete actions to combat climate change." The regional council's spokesman Alessandro Ovizach confirmed to CNN that the council was flooded after discussing amendments to the 2020 budget-- without specifying which ones.
The council's Thursday and Friday meetings were moved to Treviso, which is inland. Venice's mayor Luigi Brugnaro blamed climate change for the high tides and said the flooding was "a wound that will leave a permanent mark." Friday, the BBC reported a 6 foot inundation in Venice with 80% of the city impacted. The right-wing climate denial parties are freaking out and now denying their denialism!
I'm going to let you guess why I'm including this short clip by Naomi Klein, which she shot yesterday, in this post. No mention of Venice or Italy per se but... Just watch and spend a minute thinking about it. Want to help a movement candidate reach office? Here, bothers and sisters. We're not going to get many chances at getting this right.
Republicans Laugh At Climate Change. What About House Democrats?
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Yesterday, historian David Attenborough (age 92) addressed the the U.N. climate conference in Katowice, Poland and told delegates that "right now we are facing a man-made disaster of global scale, our greatest threat in thousands of years: Climate change. If we don’t take action the collapse of our civilizations and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon." That's a change in perspective for Attenborough who used to address the urgency of climate change the same way Republicans do in this country: "I'm not a scientist." By 2006 he had changed and would tell audiences that he no longer had any doubt at all. "One of the things I don't want to do is to look at my grandchildren and hear them say: 'Grandfather, you knew it was happening-- and you did nothing.'"
Scientists say time is running short to avoid the most catastrophic effects of global warming. Climate change is already affecting communities around the world, and a slew of scientific and policy warnings have come out in the months leading up to this meeting. In the U.S., extreme weather is damaging infrastructure, ecosystems, health and the economy. In November, the most comprehensive federal climate assessment to date called climate change "an immediate threat, not a far-off possibility," and detailed how every part of the country will be increasingly harmed as the Earth gets warmer.
A U.N. report released in October concluded that the Earth will get dangerously hot unless people develop new technologies to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. The report also said that the pledges made under the Paris Agreement are not enough to keep global temperatures from rising 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial temperatures. Just last week the U.N. announced that there is an increasingly large gap between current efforts and what's needed to protect the climate. Global emissions slowed down between 2014 and 2016, but they rose again in 2017, despite the decline in coal in growth in renewable energy in the U.S. and Europe. "You have all of this stuff telling people 'It's even worse than we thought,'" says Todd Stern, who led the U.S. climate negotiation team as the U.S. special envoy for Climate Change during the Obama administration. "I think the stakes are quite high." He says the effects of climate change are increasingly clear to citizens around the world. "If you end up having a failure in this meeting, an inability to get a rule book done, I think you'd have that much more sense among people that 'Jeez, this is really going in a very, very bad direction.'"
Our problem here is that Americans have failed to obliterate the Republican Party, a group hell-bent on the destruction of humanity and Planet Earth. I know it sounds crazy... but they are. And what they're doing is following their mentally deranged party leader down rat hole to hell. While the UN forum was in full swing, the Associated Press noted that craven Republican politicians have decided to follow Trump's lead down the road to extinction-- hopefully for their party rather than for mankind. As Trump's "rejection of climate science isolates the United States on the world stage, illustrated by the small U.S. delegation dispatched to this week’s United Nations climate summit in Poland, he has also presided over a transformation in the Republican Party-- placing climate change skepticism squarely in the GOP’s ideological mainstream. Where the last Republican president, George W. Bush, acknowledged that the Earth was warming and that 'an increase in greenhouse gases caused by humans is contributing to the problem,' the prevailing GOP view expressed on the campaign trail this year and espoused by many members of Congress is built on the false premise that climate science is an open question. The small number of voices supporting the science have been largely drowned out." Matt Viser pointed to right-wing crackpot Trumpists as part of the problem:
Sen.-elect Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee said falsely in the lead-up to her campaign that the Earth has started to cool, and argued inaccurately that scientists have not reached a consensus on climate change. In Florida, which has been pummeled by hurricanes, Sen.-elect Rick Scott has acknowledged rising and warmer seas could be harmful to his state but won’t attribute it to human activity. And Sen. John Neely Kennedy, who is expected to announce Monday whether he will run for Louisiana governor, told reporters last week that while the Earth may be getting hotter, “I’ve seen many persuasive arguments that it’s just a continuation of the warming up from the Little Ice Age.”
Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) has been been one of the strongest leaders in climate change policy throughout her time in Congress and she was one of the first members to sign onto the #GreenNewDeal. Her own OFF Fossil Fuels Act, H.R. 3671, is the most aggressive climate change legislation ever introduced in Congress. It’s supported by over 400 clean energy, climate change, and environmental justice organizations and 45 current Members of Congress. This morning, she told me that "If we continue to ignore the overwhelming scientific consensus about the direction our planet is headed, we will continue to see further stress on our already crumbling infrastructure, the health and well-being of our people threatened, and the livability of our planet further degraded. We need to make protecting our planet, fighting climate change, and ensuring clean air and clean water for all people a top priority. Last year, I introduced the Off Fossil Fuels Act to end corporate handouts to the fossil fuel industry and lay out a sustainable pathway to transition our country off of our dependence on fossil fuels by investing in a 100% clean energy economy. We can’t wait. Our children can’t wait. Our planet can’t wait. We must take action now."
But even among some Democrats, the bribes from affected industries are often too big a temptation to resist. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's #GreenNewDeal initiative has only been embraced by 18 House Democrats so far. Count on New Dems and Blue Dogs from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party to work hand and glove with Gas and Oil lobbyists and with the GOP to put obstacles in the path of reform while the mass media calls for bipartisan "compromise." Physics doesn't compromise, amigos. Here's a list of House Democratic scumbags every bit as bad as House Republican scumbags:
• Steny Hoyer (MD)- $2,165,760 • Gene Green (TX)- $1,390,038 • James Clyburn (SC)- $1,131,843 • Mike Doyle (PA)- $996,414 • Pete Viscosky (IN)- $991,114 • Henry Cuellar (TX)- $939,677 • Jim Costa (CA)- $887,229 • Frank Pallone (NJ)- $862,516
My favorite Berniepalooza panel: Stephanie Kelton, Abdul el-Sayed, Naomi Klein and Bill McKibben
Let's Make Sure We Know Who The Real Donald Trump Is Before We Go Into Battle
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"How the fuck did she lose to this clown?
-David Keith, Democratic operative
Before we dive into this, I want to remind everyone that 25.6% of eligible voters cast their ballots for Clinton and 25.5% voted for Trump. But a massive plurality of eligible voters-- 46.9%-- didn't, for one reason or another, vote at all. A few days before the election we looked at a massive poll of school children and Clinton led Trump 57-32%, even beating him in deep red strongholds like Louisiana, Alaska and Idaho, where Hillary wound up losing, respectively, with just 38.4%, 37.7% and 27.6%. Now look at this map of the U.S. tweeted by Eliza Byard after the election, showing how 18-25 year old voters went. Yeah-- the South is solid again... for Hillary. I see just 5 red states: Idaho, Wyoming, North Dakota, Kentucky and West Virginia, which happened to be among the worst-performing Clinton states this Tuesday across all ages. As we mentioned, she lost Idaho with just 27.6%. It was even worse in Wyoming (22.5%) and West Virginia (26.5%). Just 27.8% of North Dakota voters went for her and Kentucky gave her a relatively robust 32.7%.
Thursday morning Rep. Donna Edwards (D-MD) tweeted "no job, no hope, anger driving rural voters to the polls is the same keeping urban voter home. Dems need to get this." They could start by reading Glenn Greenwald's Intercept piece, Democrats, Trump, and the Ongoing, Dangerous Refusal to Learn the Lesson of Brexit. It excoriates the elites on both sides of the Atlantic who branded the Brexit supporters and Trump backers as "primitive, stupid, racist, xenophobic, and irrational... The indisputable fact," he wrote, "is that prevailing institutions of authority in the West, for decades, have relentlessly and with complete indifference stomped on the economic welfare and social security of hundreds of millions of people. While elite circles gorged themselves on globalism, free trade, Wall Street casino gambling, and endless wars (wars that enriched the perpetrators and sent the poorest and most marginalized to bear all their burdens), they completely ignored the victims of their gluttony, except when those victims piped up a bit too much-- when they caused a ruckus-- and were then scornfully condemned as troglodytes who were the deserved losers in the glorious, global game of meritocracy."
That message was heard loud and clear. The institutions and elite factions that have spent years mocking, maligning, and pillaging large portions of the population-- all while compiling their own long record of failure and corruption and destruction-- are now shocked that their dictates and decrees go unheeded. But human beings are not going to follow and obey the exact people they most blame for their suffering. They’re going to do exactly the opposite: purposely defy them and try to impose punishment in retaliation. Their instruments for retaliation are Brexit and Trump. Those are their agents, dispatched on a mission of destruction: aimed at a system and culture they regard-- not without reason-- as rife with corruption and, above all else, contempt for them and their welfare. ...Democrats knowingly chose to nominate a deeply unpopular, extremely vulnerable, scandal-plagued candidate, who-- for very good reason-- was widely perceived to be a protector and beneficiary of all the worst components of status quo elite corruption. It’s astonishing that those of us who tried frantically to warn Democrats that nominating Hillary Clinton was a huge and scary gamble-- that all empirical evidence showed that she could lose to anyone and Bernie Sanders would be a much stronger candidate, especially in this climate-- are now the ones being blamed: by the very same people who insisted on ignoring all that data and nominating her anyway. But that’s just basic blame shifting and self-preservation. Far more significant is what this shows about the mentality of the Democratic Party. Just think about who they nominated: someone who-- when she wasn’t dining with Saudi monarchs and being feted in Davos by tyrants who gave million-dollar checks-- spent the last several years piggishly running around to Wall Street banks and major corporations cashing in with $250,000 fees for 45-minute secret speeches even though she had already become unimaginably rich with book advances while her husband already made tens of millions playing these same games. She did all that without the slightest apparent concern for how that would feed into all the perceptions and resentments of her and the Democratic Party as corrupt, status quo-protecting, aristocratic tools of the rich and powerful: exactly the worst possible behavior for this post-2008-economic-crisis era of globalism and destroyed industries. It goes without saying that Trump is a sociopathic con artist obsessed with personal enrichment: the opposite of a genuine warrior for the downtrodden. That’s too obvious to debate. But, just as Obama did so powerfully in 2008, he could credibly run as an enemy of the D.C. and Wall Street system that has steamrolled over so many people, while Hillary Clinton is its loyal guardian, its consummate beneficiary. Trump vowed to destroy the system that elites love (for good reason) and the masses hate (for equally good reason), while Clinton vowed to manage it more efficiently. That, as Matt Stoller’s indispensable article in The Atlantic three weeks ago documented, is the conniving choice the Democratic Party made decades ago: to abandon populism and become the party of technocratically proficient, mildly benevolent managers of elite power. Those are the cynical, self-interested seeds they planted, and now the crop has sprouted.
Not clear enough? Naomi Klein, writing for The Guardian, stated flatly that it was the Democrats' embrace of neoliberalism that won it for Trump, something we asked DWT readers to consider back in September. Klein smirks that today the Democratic Party, Inc "will blame James Comey and the FBI. They will blame voter suppression and racism. They will blame Bernie or bust and misogyny. They will blame third parties and independent candidates. They will blame the corporate media for giving him the platform, social media for being a bullhorn, and WikiLeaks for airing the laundry. But this leaves out the force most responsible for creating the nightmare in which we now find ourselves wide awake: neoliberalism. That worldview-- fully embodied by Hillary Clinton and her machine-- is no match for Trump-style extremism. The decision to run one against the other is what sealed our fate. If we learn nothing else, can we please learn from that mistake? Here is what we need to understand: a hell of a lot of people are in pain. Under neoliberal policies of deregulation, privatisation, austerity and corporate trade, their living standards have declined precipitously. They have lost jobs. They have lost pensions. They have lost much of the safety net that used to make these losses less frightening. They see a future for their kids even worse than their precarious present... Trump speaks directly to that pain."
Trump’s message was: “All is hell.” Clinton answered: “All is well.” But it’s not well-- far from it. Neo-fascist responses to rampant insecurity and inequality are not going to go away. But what we know from the 1930s is that what it takes to do battle with fascism is a real left. A good chunk of Trump’s support could be peeled away if there were a genuine redistributive agenda on the table. An agenda to take on the billionaire class with more than rhetoric, and use the money for a green new deal. Such a plan could create a tidal wave of well-paying unionised jobs, bring badly needed resources and opportunities to communities of colour, and insist that polluters should pay for workers to be retrained and fully included in this future. It could fashion policies that fight institutionalised racism, economic inequality and climate change at the same time. It could take on bad trade deals and police violence, and honour indigenous people as the original protectors of the land, water and air. People have a right to be angry, and a powerful, intersectional left agenda can direct that anger where it belongs, while fighting for holistic solutions that will bring a frayed society together. Such a coalition is possible. In Canada, we have begun to cobble it together under the banner of a people’s agenda called The Leap Manifesto, endorsed by more than 220 organisations from Greenpeace Canada to Black Lives Matter Toronto, and some of our largest trade unions. Bernie Sanders’ amazing campaign went a long way towards building this sort of coalition, and demonstrated that the appetite for democratic socialism is out there. But early on, there was a failure in the campaign to connect with older black and Latino voters who are the demographic most abused by our current economic model. That failure prevented the campaign from reaching its full potential. Those mistakes can be corrected and a bold, transformative coalition is there to be built on. That is the task ahead. The Democratic party needs to be either decisively wrested from pro-corporate neoliberals, or it needs to be abandoned.
Don't forget, Obama won union households in Wisconsin by 33 points in 2012. Tuesday Clinton scraped by with a bare 10 point margin, the reason she lost the state. One of the brightest spots Tuesday came in Seattle, where Pramila Jayapal was elected on an unabashedly progressive/activist platform, with 56.7% of the vote. "We have to be clear as a party," she warned, "about where we stand on trade deals." In a state where every other Democratic member of Congress is a pro-TPP New Dem, she wasn't afraid to speak up loudly and clearly that unfair trade deals should be a line in the sand in Democratic Party politics.
Aside from reminding him that "the people" willed Hillary be the president and that it was the system-- the corrupt, rigged system-- that gave it to Trump, let's remember that we don't really know where Trump stands on anything from minute to minute. David Sanger, Maggie Haberman and Binyamin Appelbaum got into it in the NY Times yesterday, terming the one shining principle that shines through the mishmash of Trump pronouncements is that "the world is a zero-sum place, and nations, like real estate developers, are either on the winning side of a deal or the losing side" and that he's "the ultimate pragmatist, perfectly willing to dispense with seemingly core beliefs in return for negotiating advantage. That is why many of his closest supporters have long cautioned that the most headline-grabbing proposals of his run for the presidency should not be taken literally-- they are guideposts, the supporters suggest, not plans... [T]he world is about to find out what Donald Trump really believes. Or at least what he is going to try to do."
[H]is instincts often mix elements of what he has heard or read from the left and the right. His economic policy might best be described as “Big Government Conservatism,” a mix of major tax cuts, mostly for businesses, and a massive infrastructure program to rebuild the dank airports and collapsing bridges that he used in the campaign as a symbol of America’s declining status. It is a subject he comes to easily as a developer who wanted to get customers to his properties. So far, those proposals do not add up to a coherent strategy. The tax cuts come right out of the Republican playbook; the spending right out of the Democrats’ agenda of spurring the economy with government-led job creation. His commitment to preserve social programs is far more Obama than Reagan. His vow to rip apart the Affordable Care Act, the symbolic domestic achievement of the Obama presidency, adopts the favorite cause of the Republican leadership with whom he has often clashed. Experts who have looked at his proposals-- many so vague they cannot be “priced”-- have concluded that federal deficits will soar. And that gets to Mr. Trump’s willingness to entertain two completely contradictory thoughts at once, because rarely did he finish an interview or a debate without reminding listeners that a federal debt heading toward $20 trillion was a “disaster” that only he could fix. In his first year, he will have to square those two promises-- or not.
Let me circle back to young people and how to reform a decrepit Democratic Party and its sclerotic leadership which is no longer a vehicle for the legitimate aspirations for America's working families as much as it is a vehicle for career advancement for mortal enemies of America's working families, from the Clintons down the food-chain to bottom-feeders like Rahm Emanuel, Wasserman Schultz and Joe Crowley. Simon Sanders was Bernie's Press Secretary. She wrote an OpEd for the NY Times Wednesday about the role for millennials inside the party.
Millions of young people rose up during this election season and declared they cared about the issues - criminal justice reform, climate change, education, the economy and social justice. Those young people, were resoundingly independent in their thoughts and their politics, but engaged with the Democratic Party in an effort to move the needle. These activated millennials demanded they be heard and their issues discussed. Instead, they were met with tales of who fought and died for their right to vote, fear of a Donald Trump presidency and chastised for not readily supporting the Democratic nominee. For the Democratic Party to move forward and win, young people-- some of the party's most vocal critics-- cannot be shut out of what will be a rebuilding process. Party leadership must bring millennials into the fold with a focus on the issues. Millennials must be brought to the table as equals, their ideas and sentiments valued and their input turned to action. More than just television and radio ads, the Democratic Party must actively show up in communities from Seattle to Oakland, Denver to Atlanta, Minneapolis to Philadelphia, Miami to Baltimore and everywhere in between to extend an offer of partnership to young voters. With or without the Democratic Party, young people are going to get organized and they are going to act. It was young people who stood up boldly and challenged the presidential candidates to assert that “black lives matter,” have a social and criminal justice plan and to think radically. They did not come to the work empty handed or without direction. The process of partnership will not be easy. Today, many millennials are more skeptical of the system than ever, but young people are vital to the vibrancy of the Democratic Party. Young activists, protesters and noise makers ... it's time to let them in and let them lead.
Were The Climate Change Talks In Paris A Complete Failure?
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This week, L.A. area Congressman Ted Lieu organized 45 other Members of Congress to sign identical letters to the CEOs of ExxonMobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, British Petroleum, Shell and Peabody Energy, which they sent off yesterday. (At the link above you can see who signed the letter-- and who didn't.) Lieu's letter comes right to the point:
As members of Congress concerned about climate change and the devastating effects it is having and will continue to have on our planet, we are alarmed by reports stating that Exxon (becoming ExxonMobil in 1999) hid the truth about the role of fossil fuels in influencing climate change and intentionally spread disinformation about climate science.
Given the information that has come to light from multiple investigations, we request that you answer the following questions: When did your company first become aware that using fossil fuels could result in climate change and warming of the planet? What did your company do with this information? Did your company fund organizations that denied climate change or sought to spread uncertainty about climate change?
Bernie Sanders isn't waiting... he's already introduced legislation to cut carbon emissions by a globe-saving 80%. "What the scientists tell us," he explained to his Senate colleagues on the floor Tuesday, "is that we have a relatively short window of opportunity to bring about the fundamental changes that we need in our global energy system to transform our energy system. It is absolutely vital that we do what many economists tell us we must and that is put a price on carbon. It is the simplest and most direct way to make the kind of cuts in carbon pollution that we have got to make if we are going to successfully transition away from fossil fuel to energy efficiency and sustainable energy." And this is besides the bills he introduced a day or two earlier, the American Clean Energy Investment Act of 2015 and The Clean Energy Worker Just Transition Act to create millions of jobs and drive over $500 billion in clean energy investments between now and 2030." Sticking with the status quo is a doomsday scenario. I suggest you get involved with making sure that doesn't happen.
Marie Clarke is the Executive Director of ActionAid USA, a global movement of people working together to further human rights for all and defeat poverty. We asked her to access the UN Climate negotiations that just wrapped up in Paris today.
Find a Lifeboat! -by Marie Clarke If the Paris agreement stands, we are all going to need one... Today the climate negotiations in Paris came to a close. Government leaders and their delegations will head home with an agreement that will result in global temperature rises of more than 2 degrees. For those of us heading into the winter months, that might not sound like a lot. But it will have huge impacts. Wildfires in the U.S. will increase by 400-800%. Hurricanes could become as much as 8% stronger and crop yields could drop by 10-30%. And if that’s not enough, we could have 30% less fresh water!
If we let this failure of global leadership stand, we should each book a spot on a lifeboat and brace for the storm.
But there is another way. We can organize, and build a global movement of solidarity to demand innovative strategies that reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, and help our communities adapt to the impacts of climate change. Above all, we need to build resilience, while addressing economic and social inequality. In the midst of a disaster every person makes a choice-- to help or to hurt. In every hurricane, typhoon, earthquake, conflict or refugee crisis there are stories of solidarity. Our hearts are warmed by the heroes and heroines that save lives, share all they have, organize with one another to survive together. And yet, in every disaster, we are confronted with abuses of power that foster fear and remove or violate the rights of the victims. Take the stadium during Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans as an example, where thousands of innocent victims of this natural disaster had their basic human rights violated. But this is exactly what is happening in our society today. Those that have chosen the "politics of the armed lifeboat" are fostering fear by blaming the Syrian refugee crisis, which has its roots in the climate crisis, and acts of terror and violence linked to ISIS. And they’re calling for our borders to be closed and walls to be built. Internment camps, the stripping of rights of innocent victims of conflict and the climate, military enforced curfews and the complete closure of civil society space are all on the table. In Paris, to rally for the planet has become a criminal act, as non-violent advocates are dragged away from speaking in public about the need for a global climate deal that will protect the world’s most vulnerable people. If the Paris climate agreement stands, and the world heats to disastrous levels, these same leaders are likely to pour much more money than what’s needed to fix the climate crisis into what the Pentagon calls "militarized adaptation."
But it’s not all bad news When the French shut down civil society space in Paris, hundreds of thousands of people marched in cities all over the world to call for climate justice. Speakers at these marches told how climate change is already at play in the poorest countries in the world-- the countries that did the least to create the climate crisis are the hardest hit and have the least capacity to respond. But countries like the United States that are the biggest climate culprits are still failing to do their fair share to stop disaster. Those raising their voices in the street for climate justice are demanding that we address not only the environmental challenge but do it in a way that is equitable, that transforms power and deepens democracy. They are envisioning a better, safer, healthier world. But the Paris agreement reflects the global systems of inequality that continue to bolster the wealthy at the expense of the poor. Systems of social inequality also divide the "haves" from the "have nots" based on race, gender and place. If Donald Trump gets his way, we will add religious inequality to this list. It is this perfect storm that has been brewing through the centuries of colonialism, and the emergence of neo-liberal economics, that has fueled the conflict and forced the crises upon us. In light of this reality, climate justice advocates rightly demand action to address the root causes of these crises. Given the failure of ambition on the part of global leaders, the front lines of the climate struggle will shift from the global stage to the local and national level. In national struggles bolstered by global solidarity, we can raise the bar and get policies in place that will go far beyond what was agreed in Paris-- but it will take creative and popular organizing, strong and committed social movements to make this happen. Make no mistake, there’s a storm on the horizon. Now is the time to choose if you are going to get into the armed lifeboat and live under an illusion of self-protection, or choose to help everyone survive. At ActionAid we choose international solidarity-- we will welcome the refugees, and work together as people and nations to address inequality, as a way to wage peace and transform power.
We understand that many Democrats are calling for Bernie to drop out. They say that Joe Biden is so far ahead that the time has come for party unity, for focusing on Donald Trump. While we agree about the necessity of defeating Donald Trump, we arrive at the opposite conclusion: The Democratic Party, and all Americans, will benefit from Bernie continuing his campaign in this historic moment.
