What Has Produced Widening Economic Inequality And Stagnating Wages In America?

The answer to the question in the title is simple: a change in political power dynamics in this country in favor of conservatives, primarily Republicans, but also the Blue Dogs and New Dems from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party. The 2020 presidential candidates who are credibly advocating real systemic changes to that dynamic-- basically Bernie, Elizabeth Warren and Marianne Williamson, with some degree of me-too-ism from more traditional opportunist careerist characters like Kamala Harris, Beto, Cory Booker, Julian Castro and possibly Mayor Pete-- talk about how the system is rigged and how they plan to unrig it. (Candidates who have proven they prefer to keep it rigged-- Biden, Bennet, Delaney, Frackenlooper, McAuliffe and possibly Amy Klobuchar-- have more in common with traditional pre-Trump Republicans than with FDR-Democrat.

I hope you've taken the time to watch Robert Reich explaining this in the video above. I just want to add one thing. If we manage to elect Bernie or Elizabeth Warren or-- better yet-- the two of them as a team, we still have an immense number of Democrats in Congress who oppose their profound fundamental approach to build countervailing power. We haven't had a transformational president in the U.S. since FDR (unless you want to count the reactionary Reagan presidency) and this is the time. But we're going to need members of Congress who are eager to go along with what Bernie is trying to do, with what Elizabeth Warren is trying to do, with what Reich is talking about in the video above. We need more men and women like Ro Khanna, Barbara Lee, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Jamie Raskin, Pramila Jayapal, Rashida Tlaib, Ted Lieu, Ilhan Omar, Jan Schakowsky, Jim McGovern, Judy Chu, Matt Cartwright, Mark DeSaulnier-- leaders, fighters, organizers, not just good voters on issues put before them.

Whomever the next president is, if we're serious about passing Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, a livable minimum wage, free state colleges, etc. we need to be serious about electing more committed progressive leaders in Congress, not more status quo DCCC concoctions. No more Blue Dogs. No more New Dems. They are part of the problem, NOT part of the solution. We're busy vetting candidates all over the country. So far we've talked to dozens but only endorsed 5 for House seats. Please consider getting to know them and contributing what you can to their campaigns. I'm sure you know you can do that by tapping on the Blue America ActBlue thermometer on the right... right? Right!

Mike Siegel is exactly the kind of progressive warrior progressives need in Congress. His "job" as an Austin city attorney was basically to sue the governor, something he was happy to do on behalf of the needs of Texas' working families. He'll be a great voter-- but that's not the main reason we're so excited about getting him into Congress. This morning he told us that "We are at an inflection point as a nation, similar to the 1930s and 1940s, with dramatic wealth inequality and an economy failing to provide working people with a path to middle class stability. The New Deal and Works Progress Administration provide a roadmap for how the government must intervene. We need massive jobs programs that build our national infrastructure for the next 50 or 100 years, and that in the process provide a living wage for American workers and their families. And we need to rebuild our safety net to ensure equal opportunity, with guarantees for universal healthcare, access to higher education, and a retirement with dignity. Texas voters are ready for these programs-- some people forget we have a strong populist tradition here, and 2020 will be a great time to bring it back."

Eva Putzova, the progressive Democrat running for the AZ-01 congressional seat held by "ex"-Republican, now-Blue Dog Tom O'Halleran, was a Bernie delegate to the Democratic National Convention. But more than just being a solid progressive voter, there are reasons to look at her and see a future leader. This morning she told me that "In Flagstaff I led a successful local citizen initiative to raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour and the subminimum tipped wage to the full minimum wage. People around the country organize ballot measures to raise the wage floor because lawmakers have not acted in decades. In 18 states, tipped workers still earn only $2.13 per hour because our Congress cares more about the interests of the 'other' NRA (National Restaurant Association). Because tipped workers are mostly women and many are women of color, the subminimum tipped wage is nothing more than legislated gender and racial inequality. We have a moral responsibility to require from employers to pay at least the full minimum wage to all their employees. When in Congress I will proudly support a living wage for all. Nobody should be forced to live in poverty."

Omaha progressive Kara Eastman has been thinking about this for a while. She asks, rhetorically, "What has produced widening inequality? In addition to historic racial and social injustices, we don't generate enough tax revenue to help level the playing field and provide equal opportunity to hard-working Americans. Even though US companies represent almost half of the top corporations in the world, according to Forbes, we collect less corporate tax revenue than our peer trading partners. That’s been true for years, even though the older top corporate tax rate of 35% was higher than in many other countries. One Pew Research survey showed that 62% of Americans are bothered “a lot” because corporations don’t pay their fair share of taxes. A 2015 Gallup poll said only 11% of Americans said upper-income households pay “too much” and only 9% said corporations pay “too much.” We should reward hard work and incentivize working and middle-class Americans rather than allowing fast-food executives to make as much as 1,200 times what workers do in a year or other top CEOs to make more than 300 times the average worker's salary."

Re-rigging Wall Street Against America

Yesterday, we started the day off looking at how conservative Democrats are joining with the Republicans to gut Dodd-Frank and set Wall Street free to rip off America and Americans again, Elizabeth Warren and progressive House candidates Austin Frerick (IA), Tim Canova (FL), Lillian Salerno (TX), DuWayner Gregory (NY), Ellen Lipton (MI) and Sam Jammal (CA) explained why that's a terrible idea. "Giant regional banks," wrote Canova, "are trying to mischaracterize this bill as an effort to help small banks and rural communities. In reality, this legislation would relax regulatory oversight of dozens of huge banks with more than $50 billion in assets. This may well undermine not just consumer protections, but the safety, soundness, and stability of the financial system. Instead of deregulating big banks, Congress should be creating public banking alternatives, including a national infrastructure bank, to serve the needs of our local communities." And Ellen Lipton added that "If there's any issue to take a stand on, and NOT engage in bipartisan hand-holding, it would be this one. The elimination of this regulation would allow an institution like Countrywide off the hook."

Do you ever read Wall Street on Parade. On Wednesday Pam and Russ Martens wrote that "nothing buttresses Senator Bernie Sanders’ position that fraud on Wall Street is not a bug but a feature better than the news last week that the Citigroup Board was bumping up CEO Michael Corbat’s pay by 48 percent to $23 million for 2017." I'd like to see Elizabeth Warren take on Corbat at a Senate hearing, wouldn't you?

Corbat has sat at the helm of the bank since October 2012 as the bank has paid more than $12 billion in fines and restitution for serial abuses of the public and investors, including its first criminal felony count in more than a century of existence. The felony count came on May 20, 2015 from the U.S. Department of Justice over the bank’s involvement in a bank cartel that was rigging foreign currency markets. Numerous other charges against the bank have focused on money-laundering. Citigroup’s long history of involvement in money-laundering also gives the appearance of being a feature not a bug.

Aside from the feeling that overseeing a business model of fraud on Wall Street is a road to riches for Wall Street’s mega bank CEOs, there is the disquieting question as to whether this strangely uniform obscene pay of the top dogs on Wall Street is being orchestrated by another invisible cartel.

On October 14, 2016 Bloomberg News’ reporters Greg Farrell and Keri Geiger landed the bombshell report that the top lawyers of the biggest Wall Street banks had been meeting secretly for two decades with their counterparts at international banks. At the 2016 secret meeting, held in May at a posh hotel in Versailles, the following were among the big bank lawyers: Gregory Palm, part of the Management Committee at Goldman Sachs; Stephen Cutler of JPMorgan (a former Director of Enforcement at the SEC); Gary Lynch of Bank of America (also a former Director of Enforcement at the SEC); Morgan Stanley’s Eric Grossman; Citigroup’s Rohan Weerasinghe; Markus Diethelm of UBS Group AG; Richard Walker of Deutsche Bank (again, a former Director of Enforcement at the SEC); Robert Hoyt of Barclays; Romeo Cerutti of Credit Suisse Group AG; David Fein of Standard Chartered; Stuart Levey of HSBC Holdings; and Georges Dirani of BNP Paribas SA.

Reuters reported last Friday how Corbat’s $23 million pay compared to his peers on Wall Street. It noted that Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase is now making $29.5 million. (Dimon has presided over three criminal felony counts at the bank within the past four years while keeping his job and watching his pay skyrocket.) Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman is making $27 million. Lloyd Blankfein, whose bank is tiny compared to JPMorgan Chase, is making $22 million. And Bank of America’s CEO Brian Moynihan is being paid the same as Corbat, $23 million after recently getting a 15 percent pay boost.

Every one of the top lawyers of these banks were at that secret confab in 2016.

The most recent proxy filed by JPMorgan Chase goes to inordinate lengths to justify what it is paying its CEO Jamie Dimon. It includes a graph comparing his pay to peer bank CEOs and another graph that shows what percent of profits he and the CEOs of peer banks are receiving. (How that became a relevant metric is anyone’s guess. These are not, after all, family-owned businesses but banks that are subsidized by a taxpayer backstop for their trillions in insured deposits which typically earn less than one percent interest as the banks simultaneously charge 10 to 20 percent interest on their credit cards issued to the struggling middle class of America.)

A better metric would be how much shareholders have lost from fines and settlements under the reigning CEO. In Jamie Dimon’s case, it’s north of $36 billion since the financial crisis in 2008. Additionally, there’s those three criminal felony counts, the first in the bank’s more than century-old existence. Two felony counts were leveled by the U.S. Justice Department in 2014 for the bank’s role in Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme. Another felony count came the very next year for the bank’s role in the foreign exchange rigging.

The era of obscene pay on Wall Street has occurred side-by-side with the era of serial charges of crimes. There is only one way to interpret this: the Boards of Directors of these banks have lost their moral compass.

Katie Porter, a professor at UC, Irvine, has worked closely with Elizabeth Warren on bankster problems-- in fact they co-authored a book about Wall Street abuses. Today she told us, regarding the bill to gut Dodd Frank, "This is unacceptable. This bill is a disaster for consumers and shows just how much power Wall Street banks, powerful special interests, and their high priced lobbyists have in Washington. Congressional action to weaken and erode banking rules protecting consumers is what fueled our financial crisis, and, once again, we are seeing history repeat itself. I’ve spent my career fighting for middle-class families, and now I want to take that fight to Washington." Katie is running for the Orange County seat currently held by Wall Street shill Mimi Walters. Please consider helping Katie's campaign here. And... how about Bernie/Elizabeth 2020?

Kind Of Shocking The Kind Of Sewage They're Forcing Us To Wade Through To Elect The First Woman President

Trump didn't enjoy the skit. The thin-skinned authoritarian wasn't amused. Early Sunday morning he tweeted what amounted to a classic SNL advertisement that belongs on the sides of buses and that they would be crazy to not use:

Virginia has produced more presidents than any other state-- George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, William Henry Harrison, John Tyler, Zachary Taylor and Woodrow Wilson. They know a president when they see one and they don't see one on Trump. George W. Bush won there narrowly, with 52.5% in 2000 and 53.8% in 2004. Barack Obama won narrowly , with 52.6% in 2008 and with 51.2% in 2012. This year doesn't look like it's going to be narrow. A poll of likely Virginia voters released yesterday shows Trump at 29%-- Clinton beating him by 15 points. She's even leading him among men!

One of the more reliable national polls-- by NBC News and the Wall Street Journal had even worse news for Trump Tower Sunday morning: "In a four-way race, Democrat Clinton holds an 11-point lead over Republican Trump among likely voters, 48% to 37%. In a two way match-up, she leads him 51-41% And in one of the Utah polls just out, Trump comes in 4th, behind McMullin, Clinton and Johnson, among young voters 30 and under. The last time the Omaha World-Herald endorsed a Democrat for president, it wasn't LBJ over Goldwater. They punted that year. It was back in 1932, when they endorsed Franklin Roosevelt over Herbert Hoover. It was the last time they backed FDR and by 1936 they were pushing Alf Landon, who lost Nebraska's 7 electoral votes 347,445 (57.14%) to 247,731 (40.74%). And then yesterday this most staid, Republican of newspapers, endorsed Clinton as the prudent pick. No doubt part of the giant conspiracy against Trump. "The risk of a Donald Trump presidency," the editors opined, "is simply too great."

His alienation of so many groups-- women, the disabled, Muslim-Americans, former prisoners of war, the family of a Muslim soldier killed in action, Mexican nationals and Mexican-Americans-- is too divisive.

Trump shows a lack of statesmanship that is fundamental to serving in the Oval Office.

Trump has repeatedly shown a disdain for our nation’s allies and alliances and an affection for its enemies.

He has revealed a lack of command over key issues, such as the nation’s nuclear triad, Russian aggression and the significance of NATO alliances, paired with a propensity for unrealistic hyperbole, such as his promise to end all crime and violence in the country, or to build a wall on the U.S. border with Mexico and have the Mexican government pay for it, with no pragmatic path to achieve such aims.

His claim that he would have Iranian gunboats “shot out of the water” for taunting a U.S. Navy ship shows a reckless response that could trigger yet another Middle East war.

A man who lashes out impulsively when attacked should not be entrusted to command the world’s most powerful military.

These issues, coupled with his statements regarding women, including the taped comments about grabbing women’s genitals and forcing kisses on them, simply make it too difficult to inspire confidence in him as president and commander-in-chief.

This is as good a time as any to ask you to read yesterday's Times column by Nick Kristof, If Hillary Clinton Groped Men. Kristof asks his readers to consider the double standard for women in American politics, by posing situations like:

Imagine that the Clintons had given an interview to People magazine and, while Bill stepped away to change clothes, Hillary told the male interviewer that she had a room to show him-- and then stuck her tongue down his throat.

Imagine if Clinton had boasted on Howard Stern’s radio show that “in the history of the world, nobody has got more hot men than I have”-- and referred to those men she had seduced as her “victims.” What if she were called a sex predator on the show, and she nodded proudly?

...Imagine if it were Hillary Clinton who had had five children by three husbands, who had said it was fine to refer to her daughter as a “piece of ass,” who participated in a radio conversation about oral sex in a hot tub, who rated men based on their body parts, who showed up in Playboy soft porn videos.

Imagine if 15 men had accused Clinton of assaulting or violating them, with more stepping forward each day.

Imagine if Clinton had held a Mr. Teen USA pageant and then marched unannounced into the changing area to ogle the young bodies as some were naked and, after doing the same thing at a Mr. USA pageant, marveled on a radio show at what she was allowed to get away with.

Imagine if in a primary election debate Clinton had boasted that there’s “no problem” with the size of her vagina.

Imagine if Clinton had less experience in government or the military than any person who has ever become president?

Imagine if she had said about a man running against her in the primaries, “Look at that face! Would anyone vote for that?”

Dozens of them. Does Trump really believe everything is rigged against him? Are Republican office-holders from John McCain (AZ), Rob Portman (OH), Mike Crapo (ID) and Kelly Ayotte (NH) in the Senate to House Members Ann Wagner (MO), Martha Roby (AL), Jason Chaffetz (UT), Mia Love (UT), and Joe Heck (NV) part of the conspiracy orchestrated by Hillary Clinton against him? Is he that unaware of himself? He might be. Or maybe he's a shrewd businessman with a plan to start selling something to his new fan-base starting November 9th.

See this little chart from CBS? It could mean electoral victories November 8th for Catherine Cortez Masto, Ruben Kihuen, Jacky Rosen and Chip Evans and a Nevada congressional delegation that was made up of 2 Democrats and 4 Republicans going into Washington in 2017 with 5 Democrats and 1 Republican (Senator Dean Heller, who is lucky enough not be be up for reelection until 2018.) The two billboards below are on the Blue America truck driving all over the 4th district, letting voters know about their choice there. If you'd like to help us keep it on the road through November 8, please chip in what you can here.

Just Because It's A Congenital Liar Like Trump Who Says The System Is Rigged, That Doesn't Mean It Isn't. It Is

Yes, Trump is a disgusting monster, unfit for public office. And, yes, almost every self-promoting utterance out of his mouth is a lie. But there are kernels of truth in much of his bullshit. This weekend the establishment media outlets (and Democratic Party) are OD-ing on smelling salts because Trump is undermining American democracy by calling the system rigged. He says the system wanted to see Hillary Clinton in the White House. He doesn't say, the media started the process by making sure the GOP would nominate the most flawed candidate imaginable. (Friday, CNN president-- and Trump associate-- Jeff Zucker admitted he made a mistake by airing so many Trump rallies during the primary season.) How did that help Hillary? In a contest that was bound to be a lesser-of-two-evils election, could she have beaten a more standard, garden variety Republican like Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, even Kasich or Walker?

Saturday the Washington Post and the Boston Globe both featured the idea that Trump is undermining democracy with all his talk about rigged elections.

Anger and hostility were the most overwhelming sentiments at a Trump rally in Cincinnati last week, a deep sense of frustration, an us-versus-them mentality, and a belief that they are part of an unstoppable and underestimated movement. Unlike many in the country, however, these hard-core Trump followers do not believe the real estate mogul’s misfortunes are of his own making.

They believe what Trump has told them over and over, that this election is rigged, and if he loses, it will be because of a massive conspiracy to take him down.

At a time when trust in government is at a low point, Trump is actively stoking fears that a core tenet of American democracy is also in peril: that you can trust what happens at the ballot box.

His supporters here said they plan to go to their local precincts to look for illegal immigrants who may attempt to vote. They are worried that Democrats will load up buses of minorities and take them to vote several times in different areas of the city. They’ve heard rumors that boxes of Clinton votes are already waiting somewhere.

And if Trump doesn’t win, some are even openly talking about violent rebellion and assassination, as fantastical and unhinged as that may seem.

“If she’s in office, I hope we can start a coup. She should be in prison or shot. That’s how I feel about it,” Dan Bowman, a 50-year-old contractor, said of Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee. “We’re going to have a revolution and take them out of office if that’s what it takes. There’s going to be a lot of bloodshed. But that’s what it’s going to take... I would do whatever I can for my country.”

He then placed a Trump mask on his face and posed for pictures.

Trump’s campaign has taken a sharp turn toward such dark warnings in recent days. He says he is a victim of conspiracies, portrays himself as a martyr to the cause of the right wing, and is stoking anger in advance of what may be a defeat on Nov. 8.

His campaign has been stamped with improbability ever since he announced his candidacy in June 2015. He captured the nomination with rhetoric appealing to the angriest voters in the conservative base.

...Mainstream Republicans are watching these developments at the top of the ticket with a growing sense of alarm, calling Trump’s latest conspiracy theories of a rigged election irresponsible and dangerous. They also say the impact of voter fraud or errors on the outcome of elections is vastly overblown.

"Debbie.Wasserman.Schultz." She did work to rig the primaries against Bernie and for Hillary and they had no choice but to fire her as head of the DNC. But then what happened? Obama, Biden, Hillary and dozens of other career political hacks from the dominant Democratic Political Hack Wing of the party campaigned for her reelection and, with corporate money gushing into her south Florida primary-- she and her allies spent $1,504,256 in the primary-- managed to narrowly beat progressive anti-corruption reformer Tim Canova.

When Wasserman Schultz was fired as the chair of the DCCC's Red to Blue program, she quickly wormed her way back into power-- greased by corporate cash to powerful, money-hungry Democratic leaders-- and wound up as head of the DNC. Now she's aiming to get back on the Speaker-track. Members of Congress have told me the only thing standing in her way is the ambitions of a member possibly even more corrupt and slimy than she is, Queens County machine boss, Joe Crowley, former New Dem head and today one of Wall Street's most devoted congressional servants.

It was like Rahm being serially discredited for years and years, then getting booted out of Washington and immediately washing up in Chicago... as mayor. I know the term "both parties" is completely unfashionable, but both parties are riven with corruption, top to bottom. And I know Michelle Obama made a wonderful speech the other day in New Hampshire, but her husband is a corrupt hack politician barely better than Mitch McConnell-- and we're all the poorer for it.

This is a tweet from early yesterday morning by the utterly deplorable and mentally unbalanced elected sheriff of Milwaukee County, an extremely dangerous sociopath who is likely to be in the history books one day-- for all the wrong reasons. And yes, of course, this very, very sick and deranged man is a Trumpist fanatic.

Yesterday Cory Doctorow-- writing at BoingBoing!-- explained how the pathogens of Wells Fargo's corruption fester in every large corporation. Don't think for a moment that that doesn't define our rigged political system, even in a way far more complex than anything a Trump fan could ever grasp, even if they do grasp and feel righteously angered by the kernel.

Despite the denials of its new CEO, Wells Fargo had a serious, widespread cultural problem that led it to commit at least 2,000,000 financial crimes. But the crimes and the culture are widespread across America's banks, and they spread further than that, because the system is rigged to reward financial crime.

To understand the systemic enticements to fraud in corporate America, you have to understand how execs can make unimaginable-- and largely secret-- rewards, in the hundreds of millions of dollars, by rigging the market, without any real risk of punishment, even when they get caught.

The Institute for New Economic Thinking's Lynn Parramore identifies three sources of moral hazard that virtually guarantee fraud across the system: first, stock buy-backs, illegal until Reagan's 1982 reforms, make execs and shareholders rich while starving their companies, by manipulating the stock prices. That's why 449 companies out of the S&P 500 spend more than half of their earnings on stock buy-backs.

Second, the pressure to boost quarterly earnings is immense. Major shareholders-- especially hedge funds-- don't care about the business's long-term survival, just the quarterly numbers, and they structure executive compensation to reward self-destructive behavior. For example, execs get rich by selling all their business's premises, declaring a dividend, and then renting those properties back from their new owners, virtually guaranteeing financial pain in the future.

Finally, executive pay is bizarre, opaque and nearly impossible to calculate. The standard for estimating how much an exec takes home is "estimated fair value" for stock options and awards. But there's another metric: "actual realized gains," which reflects "how much stock-based pay is worth at the time executives actually cash in." When you calculate disgraced former Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf's take-home pay using the second metric, it jumps by 145%.

We have a Congress defining bribery in such a way as to leave out their own behavior of taking corporate money-- "contributions" or "donations"-- from the very companies and industries they are supposed to be overseeing and preventing from ripping off consumers. (And, is there anyone who has bribed more openly about that than Trump himself, who paid off Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi to throw out the Trump University case?) Rigged? Fixed? Corrupt? You bet your life-- from top to bottom. Do what you have to do to save the country from the existential threat of Trump and Trumpism-- including putting on one of these if you live in a swing state like Ohio, Florida, Arizona, Iowa, Georgia, or Utah-- but don't kid yourself boy who the is the avatar of the status quo you're backing.

Our Enemies Are The Elites, Not Each Other

Republican elites and Democratic elites have more in common with each other than they have with the kinds of people who support Trump (or, for that matter, who supported Bernie). Bernie has the non-racist, non-misogynistic, non-xenophobic version of the Trump supporters... and a lot smarter and considerably younger. But just as fed up and angry at a rigged system that works to keep the rich and powerful rich and powerful and keep thiose without agency or wealth without agency or wealth. So, while we have Hillary's highly professional campaign team cutting Señor Trumpanzee up into little bite sized cubes and feeding him to the sharks by the hour, Republicans, like 1987-89 Reagan White House Political Director Frank Lavin, are joining the long and growing list of conservatives endorsing the more conservative of the two presidential candidates: Hillary Clinton. "Trump," wrote Lavin in an OpEd, "falls short in terms of the character and behavior needed to perform as president. This defect is crippling and ensures he would fail in office. Trump is a bigot, a bully, and devoid of grace or magnanimity. His thin-skinned belligerence toward every challenge, rebuke, or criticism would promise the nation a series of a high-voltage quarrels. His casual dishonesty, his policy laziness, and his lack of self-awareness would mean four years of a careening pin-ball journey that would ricochet from missteps to crisis to misunderstandings to clarifications to retractions... There are many issues on which Hillary Clinton and I are not in agreement. However on the core foreign policy issues our country faces-- alliance relationships, security commitments, and international engagement-- she comes closer to Republican views than does Trump. And Donald Trump makes me cringe. I am voting for Hillary. And I vote in Ohio."

Team Trumpanzee sent Mike Pence to Arizona to talk to his old comrade in arms, Jeff Flake, hopeful that Pence could persuade him to support the ticket. Flake told a Face the Nation audience yesterday that Pence failed. Even the penultimate senatorial woos, Susan Collins (R-ME), is starting to prepare to abandon the SS Trumpanzee if it looks like it's going to go down in a big way. After Trumps' ugly, race-baiting foray into Portland Thursday-- designed solely to stir up paranoia and ethnic hatreds between Somalis and white Mainers-- Collins finally spoke up about the candidate she refuses to cut loose. "Mr Trump[anzee]’s statements disparaging immigrants who have come to this country legally are particularly unhelpful. Maine has benefited from people from Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and, increasingly, Africa-- including our friends from Somalia."

Writing in yesterday's NY Times, Nick Confessore delved into how tough it is for Team Trumpanzee to persuade reliable Republican Party contributors and supporters to get behind Trump (and the rabble that backs him, a problem Confessore didn't address). "The goal," he wrote, "is to persuade thousands of the party’s most reliable patrons to overcome their lingering objections to the candidate most of them never wanted, and to help defeat a Democrat most of them want even less." Today Trumpy-the-Clown flew Trump Force One to Detroit "to unveil a set of detailed economic policy prescriptions... [to] remind wavering Republican donors of the stark contrast that he offers to Hillary Clinton on issues like taxes and regulation."

It is a dizzying turnaround for everyone involved, several donors said in interviews. Aides and fund-raisers for Mr. Trump, a self-described billionaire who has spent months proclaiming his independence from the party’s traditional financial interests, now concede that they need mainline Republican donors to swing behind Mr. Trump so that he will have enough financial firepower to compete with Mrs. Clinton in the air and on the ground.

...Some Trump backers argue that despite his criticisms of Washington, Mr. Trump is likely to lean heavily on conservative think tanks and Republican-leaning trade associations to stock his administration. Others are urging their fellow donors to face the hard truth that Mr. Trump thumped the donor class’s preferred candidates and earned the favor of Republican voters. Now, they say, it is time for the donors to respect the voters’ wishes.

...There are plenty of vocal and visible holdouts. Paul E. Singer, the prominent New York investor who raised more than $3 million for Mitt Romney during the 2012 campaign, told Republican officials he would not donate a dollar more to the Republican National Committee as long as Mr. Trump was the party’s nominee.

Other prominent donors spoke out last week after Mr. Trump’s belittling of the parents of Capt. Humayun Khan, who died in a car bombing in Iraq in 2004 while serving in the Army.

Seth Klarman, a Boston financier who has given more than $4 million to Republican candidates and groups over the years, has decided to back Mrs. Clinton. So has Meg Whitman, the Hewlett-Packard executive who was a leading fund-raiser for Mr. Romney’s campaign, and who said last week that Mr. Trump was a “dishonest demagogue.”

In a statement on Wednesday, Mr. Klarman said that Mr. Trump’s “words and actions over the last several days are so shockingly unacceptable in our diverse and democratic society that it is simply unthinkable that Donald Trump could become our president.”

Mr. Trump has also been abandoned by Charles and David Koch, the billionaire brothers who oversee a vast network of conservative political and philanthropic groups. Many of their allied donors traveled to a luxury lakeside resort in Colorado Springs last weekend for the summer edition of the network’s biannual “seminars.”

OK, so what about the Bernie supporters? Do they still have a beef. Yes, but the overwhelming majority are following the clothespin strategy and going along, however reluctantly, for Clinton. (Not me, though.) But just over a month ago Ben Spielberg warned that Bernie supporters had reason to loathe the way the Democratic establishment stole the primary process for Clinton and denied the nomination to Bernie. That's not supposed to be part of history.

Journalists have been cautioning Bernie Sanders against “suggesting the entire political process is unfair,” insisting that doing so could have “negative and destabilizing consequences.” They contend that he must “argue to his supporters that the outcome of the [Democratic primary] process was legitimate” so that he can convince them to vote for Hillary Clinton.  According to several recent articles, this argument should be easy to make because “The Democratic Primary Wasn’t Rigged” and “Bernie Sanders lost this thing fair and square.”

The problem, however, is that the Democratic primary was anything but “fair and square.”  It may not have been “rigged” in the narrow sense in which some of these writers have interpreted that word (to mean that there were illegal efforts to mess with vote counts), but it certainly wasn’t democratic. That’s why only 31 percent of Democrats express “a great deal of confidence” that the Democratic primary process is fair and is likely why the election conspiracy theories these journalists decry have gained traction.

Defenders of the Democratic primary results make several legitimate points. Clinton secured more votes and more pledged delegates than Sanders. When voting rules were less restrictive, she still won a greater number of open primaries than he did. Caucuses, which are very undemocratic, likely benefited Sanders. There isn’t evidence that the Clinton campaign coordinated efforts to purge voters from the rolls, inaccurately tabulate votes, or mislead Sanders’ California supporters into registering for the American Independent Party. While “the American election system is a disaster” and “should be reformed,” it’s not clear that the numerous and alarming voting rights issues that surfaced during the primary (from Arizona to New York to Puerto Rico) systematically disadvantaged Sanders. And discrepancies between exit polls and final voting results can happen for a number of reasons; they aren’t necessarily indicative of foul play.

Yet at the same time, these points skirt the very real ways in which the primary process was “rigged;” as Matt Yglesias and Jeff Stein have acknowledged, “the media, the party, and other elected officials [were] virtually uniformly… loaded against” Sanders from the get-go. The thumbs on the scale from these groups mattered a lot, more even than Yglesias and Stein surmise.

To quickly recap what those thumbs looked like, the Democratic party threw so much institutional support behind Clinton so long before she even declared her candidacy that political scientist David Karol asserted, in December of 2014, that “Hillary has basically almost been nominated.” The Democratic National Committee’s debate schedule was “obviously intended” to insulate Clinton from challengers and scrutiny. The DNC, in response to inappropriate behavior from a Sanders staffer who DNC staff had recommended and the campaign had already fired, suspended Sanders’ access to important voter data in violation of its contract with his campaign. While Clinton was dinging Sanders on his ostensible disregard for party fundraising, the “so-called joint fundraising committee comprised of Clinton’s presidential campaign, the Democratic National Committee and 32 state party committees” was exploiting loopholes in campaign finance laws to funnel the bulk of its resources to Clinton and Clinton alone. Even into late May, DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz was leaning heavily into biased, anti-Sanders messaging, and leaked emails confirm that she and other DNC leaders actively sought to undermine the Sanders campaign. In addition, leaders of numerous groups traditionally affiliated with the Democratic party-- unions and organizations generally more aligned with Sanders than Clinton on campaign issues-- endorsed Clinton without polling their members (the groups that did open the endorsement process up to members typically endorsed Sanders).

Mainstream pundits and analysts were hardly any better than the Democratic party. From the moment Sanders entered the race, the media insisted-- when they covered him at all, which was not very often-- that he had “no chance of winning.” They continued to write off the possibility of a Sanders victory even as his popularity skyrocketed and he took an early lead in the popular vote, inappropriately including superdelegates in their reporting to make it look like Clinton was winning big. They asserted that the hundreds of policy wonks in support of Sanders’ ideas didn’t exist, subjecting Sanders’ proposals to far more scrutiny than Clinton’s, getting their analysis of some of Sanders’ plans flat-out wrong, and attempting to “boot anyone not preaching from the incrementalist gospel out of the serious club.” They began to pressure Sanders to drop out well before even half of all primaries and caucuses had been completed. They helped advance the false narrative that angry, sexist, illiberal White men fueled Sanders’ rise when his supporters were typically more power-balancing than Clinton’s and he was actually most popular among young women, young people of color, and poor Americans. They also helped the Clinton campaign propagate numerous misleading and/or untrue attacks on Sanders.

In general, as often happens when political and media establishments are threatened, they progressed from “polite condescension” towards the Sanders campaign to “innuendos” to “right-wing attacks” to “grave and hysterical warnings” to something close to a “[f]ull-scale and unrestrained meltdown.” It’s not clear exactly how much of that progression was coordinated, but it takes minimal effort to dismantle the claim that the Democratic party and mainstream media outlets were mostly neutral. Whether Clinton surrogates were praising her on TV without disclosing their ties to her campaign or technically unaffiliated newspaper outlets were blasting Sanders in headlines and post-publication edits to their articles, media sources consistently parroted misleading Clinton campaign talking points. Evidence indicates that the DNC was along for the ride.

Democratic Party goats and sheep can bleat all they want about Naderism, but, truth be told, anyone who votes for Clinton is voting for an untenable and corrupt system that needs to be smashed to bits, not coddled or preserved. It's why, no matter how much I detest a dangerous clown like Señor Trumpanzee, I will never, under any circumstance, vote for Hillary. I may even buy a Ralph Nader tee-shirt, since I did cast a ballot-- albeit with a clothespin on my nose-- for Gore/Lieberman in 2000. Yes, I was bamboozled into voting for Joe Lieberman. That's never going to happen again.

Is The Goal To Fight Trump Or Is It To Fight Evil?

There were always people who made the argument that the Hillary wing wasn't stealing every single primary battle, that there were some decisions that were legitimate. I didn't discount that and there may well have been a few primaries she actually won fair and square-- like in the South. But it was the whole process that was corrupted from start to finish and that makes her-- in my mind at least-- and illegitimate nominee. The latest manifestation, of course, was her crony at the head of the DNC, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, rigging the primary elections from the top even before they got going. The existence of Wasserman Schultz alone, still at the head of the DNC, is enough to guarantee that no one connected with her even tangentially well ever get a benefit of the doubt from me. Tainted by the rancid stench of Debbie Wasserman Schultz? Prove you're not as vile and corrupt and unworthy of public office.

I guess now we all know why even a politically right-of-center Democrat like Tulsi Gabbard had no choice but the quit the nest of vipers the DNC had become under Wasserman Schultz. Now it's clear that everyone on the DNC e-mail chain where they discuss weaponizing religion to take down a Democratic primary candidate needs to be fired and banished from Democratic politics.

In the YouGov poll of Bernie voters I referred to earlier, you saw that as of now, 23% of the people who voted for Bernie in the primaries say they will vote for Jill Stein. It's likely that Hillary's announcement last night that TPP- backing, Wall Street shill Tim Kaine will be her running mate, coupled with the latest scandal involving Wasserman Schultz's rigging of the primaries, will increase that percentage. Stein certainly thinks so. A Green Party press release emphasized that "Democratic Party elites have been caught red-handed sabotaging a grassroots campaign that tried to bring huge numbers of young people, independents, and non-voters into their party. Instead, they have shown exactly why America needs a new major party, a truly democratic party for the people... After such betrayal, if Senator Sanders repudiates the Democratic Party, I would welcome him into the Green Party to continue this political revolution. We now see that this movement is more urgently needed than ever. The leaked emails underscore why a revolutionary campaign can not survive within a counter-revolutionary party, and the urgent need to build the Green Party as a political vehicle to build the revolution."

Even Trump realized the Wasserman Schultz scandal is a good wedge for his points about endemic Democratic Party establishment corruption. It may not win him any votes but he wins by driving Bernie voters to Stein or to sit out the election. Is it still tenable for Hillary and those around her to keep Wasserman Schultz on as DNC chair? Again, from the Green Party press release:

The damning DNC emails released by Wikileaks include one from DNC press secretary Mark Paustenbach to communications director Luis Miranda discussing how to create a narrative in the media that Sanders’ campaign was “a mess”; an email from DNC Chief Financial Officer Brad Marshall to CEO Amy Dacey proposing having someone ask Sanders about his religious beliefs in Kentucky and West Virginia, saying that Southern Baptists “would draw a big difference between a Jew and an atheist”; and an email in which DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz discusses how Hillary For America proposed using Israel as “an ideal issue to marginalize Sanders on,” exposing that the DNC was collaborating with the Clinton campaign on anti-Sanders strategy.

We can't count on the establishment-- Obama, Biden, the Clinton Machine-- to remedy the Wasserman Schultz contagion. Silly petitions won't do it either. Only one thing will: electing Tim Canova to replace her in the Broward/Miami-Dade 23rd congressional district in Florida. Please consider contributing to his grassroots, anti-corruption campaign here.

This morning, in his essay, Explaining the Problem with Lesser Evilism, David Swanson took on one of the two reasons-- the other being gender identity-- for progressive to consider voting for Clinton:

According to supporters of Hillary Clinton, anything other than a vote for her is "a vote for Trump," and according to supporters of Donald Trump, anything other than a vote for Trump is "a vote for Hillary." Whether you declare that you will vote for Jill Stein, vote for Gary Johnson, write in LeBron James, swear off elections, move to Canada, commit suicide, or take a job for a corporate media outlet that frowns on participation in democracy, no matter what it is you do, it's "a vote" for the undesired candidate. (Sorry to go morbid with that corporate media option!)

What is the appropriate reply to this?

First, I think it is usually going to be critical to get your lesser evilist friend to believe you understand what they are saying. Of course what they are saying is quintessential common wisdom pounded into everybody's head year after year. There's no way you could possibly not understand what they are saying. Nonetheless, it's important that you let them tell it to you in painful detail, and that you then repeat it to them with some variations. Go over the "reality" of the two-party system. Rehearse the existence of discernable differences between the two candidates. Take deep breaths during the demonization of Ralph Nader. Just listen and agree.

It's not as if their logic is wrong. Try very hard to get them to understand that you understand that, that you see their points, that you acknowledge that they make perfect sense, that you grasp their way of thinking. And, perhaps more importantly, thank them for giving a damn. Explain to them that you would much rather have a world of lesser evilists who care passionately about making the world evil at as slow a pace as possible, than a world of people who just don't care at what speed the world becomes more evil.

At this point, in about 50% of cases, you may be able to tease out, before having made any argument at all, that your lesser evilist does not actually believe in lesser evilism, that in fact he or she has more or less convinced himself or herself that either Clinton or Trump is actually good. If that happens, you'll have to turn to page 163 in this choose-your-own-adventure story. You're not on this page anymore. What someone who believes in the goodness of Clinton or Trump needs is a supply of critical information selected to fit their needs. Do they believe war is good or that one of these candidates opposes war? Do they support corruption or racism or corporatism or authoritarianism or plutocracy or environmental destruction or do they imagine that one of these candidates opposes some of those things? Or do they believe that their candidate is pretending to hold awful positions while secretly harboring good intentions? Depending on the particular case, each such person can be provided facts and historical background to bring them into touch with reality.

In the other 50% of cases your lesser evilist really does think of their candidate, at least when pressed, as evil. Even if they believe that a candidate who was any less evil could not compete in the U.S. election system, they are still a lesser evilist choosing one evil over another one. Now, your lesser evilist may not see their preferred candidate as being quite as evil as you see them, and may see the other candidate as being even more evil than you believe. There is a time and place for debating these details. It will be important for you to bring your friend to see the full measure of their candidate's evil. But it is important that first you get them to understand that you are able to see differences, that you don't believe their candidate is identical to the other one-- which would be ridiculous but is nonetheless what your friend will tend to think you think.

Only after you've convinced your lesser evilist friend that you are aware of differences between the two candidates, then you should begin to suggest the possibility that a less evil candidate might still be too evil. Ask your friend to try a few thought experiments. Let's say they are a Hillary Clinton supporter. Ask them if they can imagine a candidate worse than Donald Trump. If they claim to be unable to do it, ask them to consider whether they are really being rational about this. Suppose you had a candidate identical to Trump except that he insisted on the need to sacrifice infants on the steps of libraries to appease the god of children's books. Which of the two would be the more evil and which the less evil candidate? Now ask your friend, in a situation in which Trump was the less evil candidate, would your friend campaign for and vote for Trump? If not, why not? Isn't the logic of lesser evilism as solid no matter the details and no matter how evil the less evil candidate may be?

If your friend sticks to his or her lesser evilism, try this. Consider an election between a candidate who proposes immediate nuclear war and a candidate who proposes immediate nuclear war and encourages everyone to commit vicious crimes before the world ends. One is more evil and the other less evil. But both will quickly destroy all human life. Would you campaign and vote for the less evil one?

How about an election between a candidate who promises to make herself empress for life and a candidate who promises to make herself empress for life and to eat live mice. One is more evil and the other less evil, but both quickly create a situation in which, if your friend wants to continue to be civically engaged, he or she will have to try something other than voting.

Through these types of arguments it ought to become possible to bring your friend to see that there might be such a thing as too evil even while being less evil, and that there might be a situation in which something other than voting was required. From there it's not such a huge leap to the possibility that even in a situation in which voting is possible, something else might be needed in addition to or instead of voting. Now it still might not be time yet to argue the details of exactly how evil your friend's candidate is. Just getting them to accept that some candidate might be too evil is the critical first step. And you still may not have succeeded in that. Or you may have succeeded only in the case of a candidate that your friend thinks of as millions of times more evil than theirs.

We've arrived at the heart of the matter. You must now try to explain to your friend the real damage that lesser evilism does. This may be very difficult, because the main damage it does happens outside of voting, distant in time and space from the voting booth. There is a reason that many lesser evilists turn out to actually think their candidate is good, and that many others resist acknowledging the full extent of their candidate's evil. When you become a supporter of a candidate, even for lesser evil reasons, you enter into a particular universe. If you volunteer for that candidate, you encounter nothing but praise for them and denunciations of their opponent. Even if you never leave your house, your web searches gradually begin finding only news sources that slant everything in favor of your candidate. Millions of people put up yard signs and bumper stickers promoting their candidate, and virtually nobody puts a second sign beside the first one protesting some of that candidate's evil agenda. You can claim that lesser evilism leaves you independent and uncompromised, but you can't actually protest your evil candidate's evil in their local office-- you'll be off the team instantly.

Many lesser evilists claim to flip a switch within themselves after a particular period of time. For two weeks or six months or two years they choose to utter not one word against their evil candidate, while swearing that the rest of the time they will bring outside independent pressure to bear on the government without distorting anything in favor of one office holder or party over another. This is at best self-delusional in most if not every case. Right now we have the two parties in Washington, D.C., directing their "grass roots" groups in what to ask for and what to say about it-- the complete inversion of representative government. And this is because election season never ends and lesser evilism never ends right along with it. In January of 2007, the Democrats had just taken over Congress with a clear mandate to end the war on Iraq, and Rahm Emanuel told the Washington Post that the Democrats would keep the war going for two more years in order to run "against" it again in 2008. And so they did. And people who preferred having Democrats keep the war going to having Republicans keep the war going stuck tape over their own mouths and lay back and took it.

This is the problem. It's not that lesser evilism isn't logical in a voting booth. It's that it never ever stays within a voting booth. It poisons political activity every day of every year.

To grasp that point, one has to be brought to share the perspective in which voting is not the only important political activity. Now, I'm not against elections. I think we should have one some day! That would require some of these changes that cannot be voted in under the broken system that lacks them: public funding of elections, no bribery, free air time for candidates, automatic voter registration, open debates and ballots, no gerrymandering, hand-counted paper ballots, international monitors, no electoral college, no delegates, no superdelegates, and a three-month election season with a bit of actual governing before the next one.

You cannot vote those things in any more than women voted themselves the right to vote or children voted an end to child labor or any major change has come about through voting. Voting is a critical component in applying public pressure in a system lacking direct democracy, but it is only one small piece-- and it's even smaller when it's as broken as the current U.S. presidential election system. Why does someone like Hillary Clinton switch from opposing LGBT rights to supporting them? Not because she or someone else was elected to anything, but because a movement that has used dozens of different nonviolent tools has changed society.

Look for a minute at the Democratic Party primary system. On Friday WikiLeaks released emails from the DNC that made clear, as we all knew, that the DNC slanted the playing field for Clinton over Bernie Sanders. Not only might Sanders very well have won without that cheating, but polls for many months have shown him to be the stronger candidate against Trump. When Democratic Super Delegates throw their votes to Clinton they are, by lesser evilist logic, casting votes for Trump. Of course that doesn't change your options, doesn't give you the choice of Sanders on your ballot (unless you write him in). But if Clinton really wanted to defeat Trump she would drop out, and if you really want to defeat Trump you're expected to vote for her.

Maybe that's just the way it is. But try now to get your friend on the same page with you in terms of the extent of Hillary Clinton's evil. Provide some missing material in whatever area it's lacking. Seriously discuss some points like these:

• She says President Obama was wrong not to launch missile strikes on Syria in 2013.
• She pushed hard for the overthrow of Qadaffi in 2011.
• She supported the coup government in Honduras in 2009.
• She has backed escalation and prolongation of war in Afghanistan.
• She voted for the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
• She skillfully promoted the White House justification for the war on Iraq.
• She does not hesitate to back the use of drones for targeted killing.
• She has consistently backed the military initiatives of Israel.
• She was not ashamed to laugh at the killing of Qadaffi.
• She has not hesitated to warn that she could obliterate Iran.
• She is not afraid to antagonize Russia.
• She helped facilitate a military coup in Ukraine.
• She has the financial support of the arms makers and many of their foreign customers.
• She waived restrictions at the State Department on selling weapons to Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Oman, and Qatar, all states wise enough to donate to the Clinton Foundation.
• She supported President Bill Clinton's wars and the power of the president to make war without Congress.
• She has advocated for arming fighters in Syria.
• She supported a surge in Iraq even before President Bush did.

Go into similar points on trade or environment or healthcare or wherever it's needed. Then trace back through a bit of U.S. history. Compare the positions and actions-- not the public images-- of past presidents. I'd take Bush Sr., Reagan, Carter, Ford, or Nixon over Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton any day. I'd take the presidents who came before them over them too. And it's not as though people haven't been doing lesser evil voting and lesser evil living all these years. But when you elect a less evil candidate and do little else to improve your politics, the result is another election with a worse pair of candidates, both of them more evil than was the less evil candidate before. This course is unsustainable and leads inevitably to candidates that more and more of us will recognize as just too evil.

Too evil because we need independent uncompromised activism and can expect it to have an impact on whoever is in office. And too evil because we actually can swing this or some future election to an actually good candidate if we put our minds to it. We don't have a lot of time to play around with. While neither Clinton nor Trump has promised immediate nuclear war, both are eager to risk it and to exacerbate the crisis in the earth's climate. If we elect one of them, followed by someone else worse, we're pretty well doomed. If we elect someone actually good either now or next time, who knows?

The chance of electing a good candidate within the Democratic Party is very low. This election saw a perfect storm: a hugely unpopular candidate standing unopposed, and a single exceptional candidate jumping into the election with a stellar record and an independent streak. And it wasn't enough. For it to be enough would require the same perfect storm plus major systemic reforms within the party.

But 60% of the public cannot stand either Clinton or Trump. If a significant portion of those people back Jill Stein, she could mount a serious challenge and even win. Just saying you support her now while planning to turn against her in November would put her into televised debates with Clinton and Trump, thereby requiring both of them to speak to all kinds of critical issues they'd rather avoid.

So we arrive at two basic questions for your friend the former lesser evilist. First, do you see that non-electoral activism can be more important than elections? If so, are you willing to put your energies there? Second, if you stay focused on this election, would you support Jill Stein if you cast the only vote and effectively selected the winner by yourself? What about if she only needed a few more votes to win? What about if she had a slim chance? What about if a decent showing might help elect a good candidate next time around?

Trump: "The Bosses Are Picking The People"

When are people going to just be so over the ignorant hogwash that comes spewing out of Trump that they just turn him off completely? "I'm no longer a Cubs fan, by the way, because I think they'll terrible," he told Fox & Friends Saturday morning as an aside to the fact that the team's owners, the Ricketts, oppose him. Pure silly childishness. BUT, Trump has managed to stumble onto and mine a real vein of anger and discontent that-- despite the racism, fascism and his bizarre ego-centric campaign-- really does need to be heard and grasped by voters. It's the corruption, stupid-- the rigged system. Hillary is as much a part of it as Cruz, Kasich and the Republican Party are. Fortunately, Bernie is presenting much the same case, although without the racism, fascism and bizarre ego-centric gibberish. And with the increasingly menacing tone of Trump's threats

"It's a rigged system. I see it; I'm a smart guy. Nodoby really understood the system until I brought it out." I can't imagine that Trump could this be that ignorant to think "nobody" ever saw that before him. Except I can imagine it. Certainly no one in his circles ever figured it out-- unless they were celebrating it-- and that includes this corrupt hack. It's more likely, though, that some of Trump's supporters-- though not these handsome fellas-- have been so turned off by the system for what the politically unaware Trump has finally figured out, and being the ultimate ego-ist, imagines no one ever understood it before he started shouting it. You know, just like no Republican ever heard of demagoguing xenophobia until he discovered it.

The excitement Trump and Bernie are generating has a lot to do with the legitimate anger ordinary Americans feel about the rigged system, both politically and economically. The Morning Joe crew pointed out that the same way the Republican political elites are fixing the election against Trump, the Democrats are rigging the system for Hillary. (Of course Mark Halperin defends the status quo in the video below:)



What's important to remember is that the rigged political system Trump is whining about, is just half of a rigged system that has rigged the economy for crooks like Trump himself. That's an important difference between Trump and Bernie. Trump might learn something if he watched the Bernie TV ad:



Bernie knows the Republicans, by and large, are worse than the Democrats-- with a few exceptions like Debbie Wasserman Schultz-- but he knows the Republican and the Democratic elites are into the rigging of the system together, or in conjunction. It isn't just the Republicans who are owned by Big Money. These are the dozen biggest crooks taking money from the lobbyists (since 1990):

These are the dozen biggest crooks taking money from the Finance Sector (since 1990):

These are the dozen biggest crooks taking money from the drug manufacturers (since 1990):

These are the dozen biggest crooks taking money from hedge funds (since 1990):

We could go on forever. Bernie basically says that the party elites are all owned by big money special interests. He's right and that's what "the system is rigged" means. Congress-- the congressional leaders of both parties-- do not care about the American people. They acre about the business of getting election, reelected and building power. That's why the lowest and most disreputable characters among the Members of Congress-- Mitch McConnell (R), Eric Cantor (R), Chuck Schumer (D), Steny Hoyer (D), Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D), Paul Ryan (R), John Boehner (R), Steve Israel (D), Joe Crowley (D), Chris Van Hollen (D), John Cornyn (R), climb the highest in the system and fiercely defend the status quo (Democrats) or the status quo ante (Republicans). You can understand why Bernie was never really tempted to join the sewer of corruption euphemistically called the Democratic Party. A political revolution is what's needed to change the system. A Debbie Wasserman Schultz or a Hillary Clinton isn't going to change it any more than a Paul Ryan or a Mitch McConnell.

I think from one end of this country to the other people are ripe for political revolution. Fifty percent of the people do not bother voting in the presidential and statewide elections. The vast majority of those not voting are low-income people who have given up on America. The whole quality of life in America is based on greed. I believe in the redistribution of wealth in this nation.

We are demonstrating in Burlington the peoples’ contempt for conventional old-fashioned Democratic and Republican politics. The good news here is that the two-party system and corporate establishment are not invincible.

That may have sounded like Bernie speaking to a massive crowd in Washington Square Park in Manhattan or at Cony Island in Brooklyn last week, but it was Bernie in Vermont... in 1985. Help elect this man of the people-- the only man of the people running-- to the presidency and don't let another lesser-of-two-evils candidate ascend to the presidency. Lesser of two evils, of course, is still evil. Bernie isn't. In fact, Bob Scheer talks about the evil of two lessers below (my apologies in advance for subjecting you to a pathetic excuse for a moron like Torie Osborn, one of the dumbest, self-righteous and cringe-worthy political hacks in L.A. politics):