Who is Donald Drumpf? and is Drumpf a kill shot?

One of the reasons I no longer consider myself a member of the Democratic Party is that the party’s leadership seems hell bent to make Donald Trump the next president of the United States. Yes, I know, Bernie is running on the Democratic ticket, but that is because he wants to not split the vote come November.

Every poll show that Bernie is the candidate who can beat Trump in a commanding way, but the Democratic National Committee is blind to the numbers. So, screw them. One officer of that crippled organization understands.

Alan Yuhas writes:

Representative Tulsi Gabbard resigned from her post as vice-chair of the Democratic National Committee on Sunday, in order to support Bernie Sanders in his run for the party’s presidential nomination.

Gabbard made the announcement on Sunday, appearing as a panel member on the NBC show Meet the Press.

“I think it’s most important for us, as we look at our choices as to who our next commander-in-chief will be, is to recognize the necessity to have a commander in chief who has foresight, who exercises good judgment,” she said.

Sanders suffered a serious loss to Hillary Clinton in Saturday’s South Carolina primary, with only 26% to Clinton’s 74% of the vote. Afterwards, speaking from Minnesota, where he flew from Texas to concentrate on states staging Super Tuesday primaries this week, he vowed to continue to carry the battle to Clinton.

“In politics on a given night sometimes you win, sometimes you lose,” he said. “Tonight we lost. I congratulate Secretary Clinton on her very strong victory. On Tuesday over 800 delegates are at stake and we intend to win many, many of them.”

He was more downbeat during his own appearances on the Sunday talk shows, telling the same NBC show: “Well, we got decimated. It was pathetic, from our perspective. But by the way, the glimmer of positive news for our group was we won the 29 and younger.”

Gabbard, 34, an Iraq war veteran and now representative for Hawaii, became the fourth member of Congress to endorse Sanders. She elaborated on her decision, by saying it stemmed from Sanders’ cautious foreign policy.

“As a veteran and as a soldier I’ve seen first-hand the true cost of war,” she said.

This last resonates with me. I know that other veterans disagree with Gabbard’s view and while I honor their unique position to make that disagreement, I would disagree with them. Our first president strongly encouraged a cautious foreign policy and I think that Bernie is following his lead.

Tomorrow will be a very interesting day.

By the way, I’ve already cast my Ohio primary vote for Bernie.

I ordered my copy from Mac’s Backs this morning.

Unfortunately, a new study identifying stressed cities by zip codes has Cleveland top the list of the largest 100 cities cited by the Economic Innovation Group, a new non-profit research and advocacy group.

The report (download the PDF) belies all the happy talk you get from the Cleveland news media. The kind of media that concentrates only on happy results.

Further troubling, among the top 10 “most distressed large cities” [see page 26 of the study. JH] are Toledo (4th) and Cincinnati (10th). Ohio is the only state with three cities in the top 10 stressed cities. Even as Gov. John Kasich, who has relieved (stolen) Ohio cities of revenues they formerly received, traipses around the nation in a quixotic quest for the Presidency with claims of great advances in Ohio.

Cleveland’s rating in the study is a distress score of 99.9 with a percentage of 76.8 percent of the population living in “distressed zips (codes).”

The criteria used by the study include the following categories:

The New York Times report on the study said, “The gap between the richest and poorest American communities has widened since the Great Recession ended, and distressed areas are faring worse just as the recovery is gaining traction across the country.”

We all knew that, didn’t we?

It wrote that the study provides “… one of the most detailed looks at the nation’s growing inequality.”

Hasn’t that become a major issue at least among Democratic candidates? Republicans, like Cleveland leaders and media, may not have noticed. Or don’t want too.

The study can be found at this web site:

It should be no surprise to anyone living here that the goodies of government itself have lent to the distress of certain communities. I have outlined ad nauseam Continue Reading »

I love that so many in the audience were singing along.

Here’s a odd tidbit. I came to Beethoven, actually to classical music in general, via the movie A Clockwork Orange.

Robert Reich, former secretary of labor under President Clinton, has been talking up the economic positions of Senator Bernie Sanders for some months now. Yesterday he formally endorsed Bernie for the presidency of the United States.

I endorse Bernie Sanders for President of the United States. He’s leading a movement to reclaim America for the many, not the few. And such a political mobilization – a “political revolution,” as he puts it — is the only means by which we can get the nation back from the moneyed interests that now control so much of our economy and democracy.

This extraordinary concentration of income, wealth, and political power at the very top imperils all else – our economy, our democracy, the revival of the American middle class, the prospects for the poor and for people of color, the necessity of slowing and reversing climate change, and a sensible foreign policy not influenced by the “military-industrial complex,” as President Dwight Eisenhower once called it. It is the fundamental prerequisite: We have little hope of achieving positive change on any front unless the American people are once again in control.

I have the deepest respect and admiration for Hillary Clinton, and if she wins the Democratic primary I’ll work my heart out to help her become president. But I believe Bernie Sanders is the agent of change this nation so desperately needs.

On his website, Sanders had this to say:

Campaigning in South Carolina, Sanders welcomed the endorsement. “Bob Reich was one of the most effective secretaries of labor in modern American history. He is one of the foremost economic thinkers in this country focusing on income inequality and the needs of working people. In 2002, he ran a great campaign for governor of Massachusetts. I am proud and delighted to have the support of Robert Reich.”

So, I’ve been saying this since back in May of last year. Not only is Bernie Sanders the right candidate right now, he is the candidate that can beat any of the Republican candidates by a greater margin than Hillary Clinton, the candidate anointed by the tired white men pretending to make a difference running the shambles of the Democratic Party.

Glenn Greenwald, writing in With Donald Trump Looming, Should Dems Take a Huge Electability Gamble by Nominating Hillary Clinton? reinforces the message:

Many Democrats will tell you that there has rarely, if ever, been a more menacing or evil presidential candidate than Donald Trump. “Trump is the most dangerous major candidate for president in memory,” pronounced Vox’s Ezra Klein two weeks ago. With a consensus now emerging that the real estate mogul is the likely GOP nominee, it would stand to reason that the most important factor for many Democrats in choosing their own nominee is electability: meaning, who has the best chance of defeating the GOP Satan in the general election? In light of that, can Democrats really afford to take such a risky gamble by nominating Hillary Clinton?

In virtually every poll, her rival, Bernie Sanders, does better, often much better, in head-to-head match-ups against every possible GOP candidate.

Donald Trump may be the best weapon in Bernie’s arsenal. Greenwald continues:

Despite this mountain of data, the pundit consensus—which has been wrong about essentially everything—is that Hillary Clinton is electable and Bernie Sanders is not. There’s virtually no data to support this assertion. All of the relevant data compels the opposite conclusion. Rather than data, the assertion relies on highly speculative, evidence-free claims: Sanders will also become unpopular once he’s the target of GOP attacks; nobody who self-identifies as a “socialist” can win a national election; he’s too old or too ethnic to win, etc. The very same supporters of Hillary Clinton were saying very similar things just eight years ago about an unknown African-American first-term senator with the name Barack Hussein Obama.

Perhaps those claims are true this time. But given the stakes we’re being told are at play if Trump is nominated, wouldn’t one want to base one’s assessment in empirical evidence rather than pundit assertions, no matter how authoritative the tone used to express them?

I certainly would. And do!

The headline on Steven Thrasher’s latest column in The Guardian, Black thinkers like Bernie Sanders. They’ve studied the Clintons’ true cost, is unfortunate. In defense of Thrasher, headlines typically come from the copy desk and not from the writer, but he used the phrase within his column, so he has to own the implications. Here’s what he wrote:

The case against Clintonian neoliberalism is compelling. I am glad to see black thinkers making a case for Sanders’ democratic socialism and its potential to address structural racism as an alternative. If anyone is smart enough to effectively make Sanders’ case to black America, it would be the intellectual leaders who have endorsed him thus far.

Part of the problem in the United States is that we have a long history of not liking intellectuals as evidenced by examples from bullied nerds in high school to the anti-intellectualism of seen in the two campaigns of Adlai Stevenson. I get what Thrasher was saying, and he is absolutely right to categorize Spike Lee, Ta-Nehisi Coates and Cornell West as thinkers. My wince came in anticipation of the push back by those supporting Hillary Clinton enraged by the suggestion that they are not thinkers. I ought not to have winced, but the moment was involuntary.

Thrasher’s analysis of the Clinton (Hillary and Bill) legacy is spot on.

Bill Clinton governed through playing to white fears by hurting, locking up or even executing black Americans. He left the campaign trail in 1992 to oversee the execution of Ricky Ray Rector, a black man so mentally incapacitated, he reportedly did not eat the dessert from his final meal because he was “saving it for later”. When in office, Bill Clinton ended welfare for poor children and destroyed countless black families through a crime bill even he now admits made mass incarceration worse, while Hillary Clinton would go out and whip up support for this accelerated disenfranchisement and marginalization of black America, even when it meant referring to children as “superpredators”.

I loved the moment the other night on The Nightly Show when host Larry Wilmore jokingly referred to Bill Clinton as the first Black president and guest Rev. Al Sharpton quickly corrected him by saying that Barack Obama was the first Black president (timemark 00:48). Opening an office in Harlem is insufficient on any level, especially when you abandon that office a few years later for the financial district in lower Manhattan. That alone should tell voters where the Clintons place their loyalties.

Thrasher doubles down a few paragraphs later by taking down the Congressional Black Caucus which has not endorsed Hillary, but whose Political Action Committee has.

No one speaks for “the black community” or the mythical “black voter”. But the Black Lives Matter movement has upped the level of discourse and critique in racial politics. So, it’s fantastic to see such serious black minds from American film, letters and academia making their cases in public with insight and heft. And, given their decades of deep intellectual work on race (along with Sanders’ commitment to universal public college tuition and healthcare and his aversion to Wall Street and private prisons), their cases for Sanders are sound.

Much less intellectually sound are the arguments of Clinton’s black surrogates. When she was endorsed by the corporate-funded Super Pac of the Congressional Black Caucus (not by the CBC itself or by its members), the only reason seemed to be political expediency. The black members of congress seemed intent on maintaining their relationship within the Clinton power structure, no matter how deeply invested it may be in white supremacy. Like Clinton, much of the CBC is beholden to Wall Street. So Sanders—with no connection to Wall Street or to a global foundation ripe for harvesting political chits—offers CBC members little possibility of power except by way of his gamble for the White House.

Less intellectually sound? Maybe what Thrasher is saying is that we need to own the words Thinker and Intellectual, but part of me wants to think that if we need to use the words, we’re not so secure in our selves as we want to believe. Humility can go along way. I think that simply, as I have done elsewhere, pointing to Lee and Coates and all the others who have come out in support of Bernie without branding them as thinkers or intellectuals—characteristics I find self-evident in their cases—is sufficient.

Inequality is more than a paycheck matter.

The financially troubled in Cleveland are cheated in more ways than meager pay and higher regressive taxes. Hard to count how many.

The major force in this defrauding of the citizens is the Greater Cleveland Partnership. GCP is the leading corporate and legal interests in the city. They set Cleveland’s agenda. What to do. But also what not to do. It will be explained as we go along.

I have tried for some time to spotlight how the established forces take – really steal – from the economically deficient. They’re takers.

The one that’s bothering me now is the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority’s intention to raise fares and cut services.

This damages transit-dependent people, especially working people who MUST use public transportation. Hurting the least of us.

It’s not totally RTA’s fault. In fact, little of it is since the area’s major transportation facility receives small public investment. Primarily, RTA receives one percent of the 8 percent in sales tax you pay in Cuyahoga County.

Here is where the public interest’s attention should be directed.

Have you seen Joe Roman of GPC talking about the necessity to relieve RTA of burdening its riders with an added 25 cents atop $2.25 ride or more than a 10 percent increase? Say you’re a worker who rides RTA to and from work. That’s 50 cents a day Continue Reading »

My ship, USS Bainbridge CGN 25 (DLGN 25 in the painting), made a second appearance on NCIS last night in Season 13, Episode 16. This is exactly two years since she first popped up in the hallway of NCIS headquarters in Season 11, Episode 16.

Eerie.

[Update at 1420 on 22 October: 5th appearance in Season 7, Episode 9 at timemark 23:07—Child’s Play.]

[Update at 0905 on 19 October: 4th appearance in Season 7, Episode 1 at timemark 13:35—Truth or Consequences.]

[Update at 0706 on 17 October 2019: I just spotted a third appearance of the Billy B at timemark 22:22 in Season 6, Episode 18—Knockout. This is just outside the conference room which is a different location from my first sighting, but the same as the second sighting above.]

Big energy, in the guise of the American Petroleum Institute, is reeling from the revelations of Exxon’s Global Warming cover-up and the shutting down of the disastrous Keystone Pipeline, has gone back to the duplicitous Vote4Energy commercials in the desperate move to convince American voters that we can drill our way to cheaper energy and a happy future.

The line I find most heinous comes at the 30-second timemark when the evil bastards appeal to the future of our children and grandchildren. Thanks to the Exxon revelations, we now know that the energy companies have been lying for years about the threats of global warming for the sole purpose of making as much cash as they can before they get shut down and put out of business.

Slick commercials will reinforce the delusions of the 27 percent, but too much has been yanked from behind the curtains for trying to fool all of the people all of the time.

Keep Carbon In The Ground…

From Bernie 2016:

Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign on Tuesday released a new radio ad featuring director, producer and activist Spike Lee.

“Ninety-nine percent of Americans were hurt by the Great Recession of 2008,” Lee says in the spot. “And many are still recovering. And that’s why I’m officially endorsing my brother Bernie Sanders. Bernie takes no money from corporations. Nada. Which means he’s not on the take! And when Bernie gets into the White House, he will do the right thing!.”

“And the months leading up to the election in November will determine which way this country is going to go; forward or backward,” Lee told a crowd in February 2008 when he endorsed then-Sen. Barack Obama. “It’s up to you to do the right thing.”

“How can we be sure?” the director and producer says in the spot supporting Sanders. “Bernie was at the March on Washington with Dr. King. He was arrested in Chicago for protesting segregation in public schools. He fought for wealth and education equality throughout his whole career. No flipping, no flopping.”

At every step in the process, the domesticated pundits and billionaire-bought shills masquerading as journalists repeat the message that Bernie Sanders is an aberration, a distraction from the anointed candidate. Don’t believe them.

I am an advocate for spending my money as close to home as possible because I think that is where the money does the most good. Buying from a locally owned business means that more of the money you spend—the profits—stays in your community.

There are however, I’ve learned this morning, deeper philosophical processes at work. Bertrand Russell’s 1932 essay, In Praise Of Idleness considers:

As long as a man spends his income, he puts just as much bread into people’s mouths in spending as he takes out of other people’s mouths in earning. The real villain, from this point of view, is the man who saves. If he merely puts his savings in a stocking, like the proverbial French peasant, it is obvious that they do not give employment. If he invests his savings, the matter is less obvious, and different cases arise.

One of the commonest things to do with savings is to lend them to some Government. In view of the fact that the bulk of the public expenditure of most civilized Governments consists in payment for past wars or preparation for future wars, the man who lends his money to a Government is in the same position as the bad men in Shakespeare who hire murderers. The net result of the man’s economical habits is to increase the armed forces of the State to which he lends his savings. Obviously it would be better if he spent the money, even if he spent it in drink or gambling.

But, I shall be told, the case is quite different when savings are invested in industrial enterprises. When such enterprises succeed, and produce something useful, this may be conceded. In these days, however, no one will deny that most enterprises fail. That means that a large amount of human labor, which might have been devoted to producing something that could be enjoyed, was expended on producing machines which, when produced, lay idle and did no good to anyone. The man who invests his savings in a concern that goes bankrupt is therefore injuring others as well as himself. If he spent his money, say, in giving parties for his friends, they (we may hope) would get pleasure, and so would all those upon whom he spent money, such as the butcher, the baker, and the bootlegger. But if he spends it (let us say) upon laying down rails for surface carS in some place where surface cars turn out not to be wanted, he has diverted a mass of labor into channels where it gives pleasure to no one. Nevertheless, when he becomes poor through failure of his investment he will be regarded as a victim of undeserved misfortune, whereas the gay spendthrift, who has spent his money philanthropically, will be despised as a fool and a frivolous person.

Reading Russell’s argument for the four-hour workday reminded me of The End of Work Jeremy Rifkin’s 1995 book in which he repeats and extends much of Russell’s thesis: increases in productivity should result in the reduction of time worked for the same money, not in the reduction of workers.

More than a century has passed since the idea of a 40-hour work week replaced the 80-hour week common before the 20th century. Russell, and Rifkin, would like to see the 20-hour work week, become a reality in the 21st century.

The machine gets what the machine wants, regardless of which wing of the billionaire party—Republican or Democrat—you support because the machine runs on money. When 30 percent of the vote is not in the control of We The People then the vote is rigged.

Reacting to a petition from MoveOn, the editorial board (at least the Supreme Court demands Justices sign their names to decisions) writes in Superdelegates, Clarify Your Role:

Even after Bernie Sanders’s overwhelming popular victory in New Hampshire on Feb. 9, some of his supporters began fretting about a new menace to his candidacy: “superdelegates” who—at least in theory—could deliver the nomination to Hillary Clinton in July’s convention.

Superdelegates are party bigwigs—712 Democratic leaders, legislators, governors and the like. They can vote for any candidate at the nominating convention, regardless of whether that candidate won the popular vote. These unpledged delegates make up 30 percent of the 2,382 delegates whose votes are needed to win the nomination, and could thus make all the difference.

In the old Soviet paradigm there was a Leninist principle that the role of the party was to lead the people from the vanguard. Lenin understood that the party should not get too far ahead, nor fall too far behind, the people. While the apparatchiks of the Republican Party are chasing around with butterfly nets in hopes of regaining control of their message, loyalist in the Democratic Party are following the wrong drum major down a blind alley.

There’s a saying that the leopard doesn’t change its spots.

Essentially it refers to someone’s character. It usually means that despite what seems a change for the better it’s a pretense and one should be wary.

I think the March 15th Democratic primary for county prosecutor is one of the most important elections in a long time. It could have a nasty consequence for local politics.

I’ll explain.

A look to the past can sometimes foretell the future.

The election for county prosecutor pits Prosecutor Tim McGinty against challenger Michael O’Malley, a former chief assistant to Bill Mason, the former county prosecutor.

These are political professionals. Self-serving patronage builders.

The O’Malley/Mason connection is worrisome. Politically, the combo has tried in the past to consolidate Democratic political power throughout Cuyahoga County. They are known for heavy-handed and dirty tactics.

Mason left office early amid the County corruption scandal. He joined a Columbus law firm, Bricker & Eckler. His ambition to be Senator or Governor seemed over. But hope springs eternal.

A Plain Dealer investigation in 2010 “determined that nearly one in five people he (Mason) had hired since becoming prosecutor either held public office or was related to or friends with other politicians.”

The PD also noted that at least 13 family members had received public employment since Mason started his career in Parma city council.

It was a hallmark of the O’Malley-Mason political ambitions. Building a political machine.

Mason had enjoyed close relations with Pat O’Malley, former Cleveland councilman and County Recorder. Pat was convicted and jailed on charges after Continue Reading »

Previously…

Thirty-six years, three Republican presidents spanning 20 of those years and economic devastation that might make John Davison Rockefeller Sr. green with envy are the hallmarks of most of my adult life.

I turned 25 the year we elected Ronald Reagan President of the United States of America. Now at 60 I can look back on my country divided in ways I did not conceive in 1980. How did we get here?

Thomas Piketty, writing for Le Monde and reprinted by The Guardian explores the history.

In the 1930s, long before European countries followed through, the US also set up a federal minimum wage. In the late 1960s it was worth $10 an hour (in 2016 dollars), by far the highest of its time.

All this was carried through almost without unemployment, since both the level of productivity and the education system allowed it. This is also the time when the US finally put an end to the undemocratic legal racial discrimination still in place in the south, and launched new social policies.

All this change sparked a muscular opposition, particularly among the financial elites and the reactionary fringe of the white electorate. Humiliated in Vietnam, 1970s America was further concerned that the losers of the second world war (Germany and Japan in the lead) were catching up at top speed. The US also suffered from the oil crisis, inflation and under-indexation of tax schedules. Surfing the waves of all these frustrations, Reagan was elected in 1980 on a program aiming to restore a mythical capitalism said to have existed in the past.

That muscular opposition gave us a dwindling middle class, the attacks on 11 September 2001, multiple undeclared wars in the Middle East and elsewhere, a generation of women and men who do not expect to do better than their parents, an economy driven to the brink of a second Great Depression by Republican greed and, finally, the Occupy Wall Street movement which, I believe, is a direct cause of the extraordinary presidential campaign of Bernie Sanders.

The numbers, both in terms of people and dollars, rising from the Sanders’ campaign scare the crap out of Republicans and the billionaire class epitomized by the likes of the Walton family the Koch brothers and Lloyd Blankfein in ways that the Occupy movement only suggested was possible.

The pendulum is swinging back. I’m happy that I’ve lived to see the day when I could once again support, with my heart, mind and means, a candidate for president of the United States that I believe in.

(For another angle on the rise of the Reagan revolution, consider Sam Tanenhaus’ review of Daniel Oppenheimer’s Exit Right: The People Who Left The Left And Reshaped The American Century.)