It Ain't Untold Its Retold

English Union Songs from the 1700's

"The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common
But leaves the greater villain loose
Who steals the common from off the goose"

What is that about the more things change the more they stay the same? If it is not nailed down someone who has more hunger than power is likely to take it. If it is nailed down or otherwise fixed in place, such as real property, someone who has more power than compassion is likely to take it. In spite of what the Republican's would have you believe, crime is not an equal opportunity employer -- at least not as it is applied to the most profitable white collar crimes. Pay a nickel, pay a dime, if you pay enough you can buy a crime! How many of the principals engaged in the Wall Street frauds and bank frauds that caused the great recession are in jail? The answer is none, and the acts they committed were not just unethical they were criminal. Yet those miscreants were let off the hook. Instead of holding those powerful men accountable for the foul deeds they committed the responsibility was shifted to the institutions they control, and those institutions were subjected to civil penalties only, meaning they paid fines or awards. So what does this mean for you and me?

In regard to the fraudulent activities of Wall Street and the mega-banks it means that little has changed since Bush's great recession. As Richard Eskow said in “Bernie's Right. Wall Street's Business Model Really Is A Fraud” published this month by ourfuture.org:

“After Congress moved to restrain some of the banks’ cheating and overcharging, a JPMorgan Chase executive said that customers with less than $100,000 in investments and assets would no longer be “profitable” for the megabank.

That’s tantamount to confessing that they need to bilk ordinary customers – by doing things like hiding overdraft charges, making checks bounce by manipulating the order in which they’re cashed, and charging excessive ATM fees – in order to make money as a consumer bank.

But that’s not the only line of business where banks commit fraud. The major offenses committed by our largest banks include “price fixing, bid rigging, market manipulation, money laundering, document forgery, lying to investors, sanctions-evading, and tax dodging.”

The economists and spokespeople hired by Wall Street and mega-banks tell us it is not that simple. You can't just start throwing people in jail, they say. This is really complicated stuff, far too complicated for you to understand!

All right so lets have a look at that contention. While some of the fraudulent activities of Wall Street and the mega banks seem too abstract for the average voter to grasp, the people who are being cheated and overcharged by mega banks have no problem telling you they are getting screwed, and the people who lost their homes because of bank frauds have no trouble telling you they are still suffering from getting screwed. These things are personal, as are jobs lost to bad trade agreements and contaminated drinking water caused by neglect and far too often by fracking. Believe me, most of the victims are in no mood to be patient. People are angry and the anger will get even uglier as it increases. No longer content with merely railing at the great gods of free enterprise and social darwinism the victims of this rigged economy are now lighting torches. And you do not want to see where they intend to put those torches if their circumstances and opportunities do not change! Let me just say it is not where you want to feel the burn.

This brings me Susan Sarandon and the interview that has caused such a flap. Although she obviously thought she should clarify the statements so many people misinterpreted to mean that she would not vote for Hillary Clinton, Ms. Sarandon's comments about Bernie Sanders need no explanation because they already accurately state the hopes and desires of many very disgruntled people. As Ms Sarandon told MSNBC's Chris Hayes, she supports Bernie Sanders because:

“I really want to be on the right side of history and this is a shot we're not going to have in my lifetime to have a candidate that's so morally consistent, makes decisions, whose judgment proves to be true but does it at a time when it's not popular, when it’s not comfortable. A candidate who’s not taking any money from fracking or Monsanto or, you know Super PACs or Wall Street or big farm which all the other candidates have.”

The excitement and hope embodied in this statement of support for Bernie Sanders are not to be taken lightly. The expectations of the people demanding reform are high. Hillary beware, these are the people you must win over if you are nominated!

The Gawd Awful GOP

It is not easy being a member of the party of the Greedy Old Plutocrats, particularly now that the stupid attack dogs have embraced a new leader and are out of control! Just ask Lindsey Graham. Lindsey Graham has been known to tell the truth when he is not hauling the tainted water of the reactionaries (often mistakenly called conservatives). Needless to say that the militant “conservatives” of his party usually react to any disfavored truth telling with a demand to “Take That Back!” And the grave threat those fact deniers pose to any Republican politician's career is great enough to make Mr. Graham comply with the demand.

Going on talk shows can be dangerous for a man who is prone to stating unpalatable facts, and Mr. Graham has done just that. As the Huffington Post reported Mr. Graham told Trevor Noah of the Daily show that Ted Cruz should be the nominee because he is not Trump.

“If Donald Trump carries the banner of my party,” Graham said, “I think it taints conservatism for generations to come. I think his campaign is opportunistic, race-baiting, religious bigotry, xenophobia...”

Senator Graham is correct about Trump, but Ted Cruz? News flash: Conservatism has already been tainted by Joseph McCarthy, the John Birch Society, and Ted Cruz, the heir apparent to what Richard Hofstadter dubbed “The Paranoid Style In American Politics.” It is not exactly a well kept secret that Ted Cruse was disliked by most of his Harvard classmates and is considered odious by most of his colleagues in the Senate. As Lindsey Graham said: “[i]f you killed Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the Senate, nobody would convict you.”

The bottom line is that Ted Cruz is an unprincipled demagogue who plays to the prejudices and fears of the extreme right wing, and he has no loyalty to anyone or anything other than himself and maybe his wife. Party loyalty? Forget it! Cruz is the egotistical idiot who called the Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, a liar. I do not think any objective observer would dispute that characterization of Senator McConnell, but it is not the sort of thing competent Republican politicians say in public. Cruz is also the unpatriotic demagogue who pandered to the nihilistic (no compromise) reactionaries by fighting to shut down the government and make it default on its debts even after the donors to the Republican Party told the party leaders that doing so was not a good idea!

As a Republican Mr. Graham obviously thinks he has to choose between Trump and Cruz. Trevor Noah demonstrated the folly of that by pointing out that Lindsey Graham had once likened the choice between Trump and Cruz to having to choose between being shot in the head or poisoned. “I’m saying my party is completely screwed up …,” Mr. Graham finally admitted.

Fortunately, the voters do not have to haul any of the tainted water Mr. Graham feels compelled to haul. There are two parties. There will be a general election, and the real choice will be between the destructive lunacy of the Republicans and the sound policies proposed by the eventual nominee of the Democratic Party!

The Race And Race

Today I recommend “Fear And Loathing” by Purposely Polemic, which is a diary entry on Daily Kos. It was written by an African American lady who describes the increasing instances of racial animus she has encountered as Donald Trump's campaign has progressed and become more violent in language and tone. What this lady is experiencing is truly frightening and should stir the conscience of everyone who has a conscience. But it is not just Trump we should fear or oppose; our concern should go much deeper because he is the product of a strategy the GOP has been employing for the last twenty years. As I pointed out in a comment I left for the author:

The GOP’s southern strategy included racism, but it was not confined to the south. The bottom wrunger syndrome is a very handy tool the Republican demagogues have been using everywhere to scapegoat others for the failure of the Republican Party's deregulation and trickle down policies. This scapegoating became more blatant with the onset of Bush's recession and the election of President Obama, and Trump has now taken it to a level that is even scaring many Republicans. The problem is that the atmosphere the GOP created leaves the Republicans with no way out. Trump is scary, but – the most viable alternative to him -- Ted, the Canadian Texas turd, Cruz is a retrograde McCarthyite-Bircher and every bit as frightening as Trump is.

I voted for President Obama in 2008 and 2012 because I thought he was the best person for the job. I am voting for Bernie Sanders for the same reason. It will take a revolution to defeat the forces of exploitation and oppression and restore the middle class. Let us start by rejecting the scapegoating and by reaffirming our commitment to the four freedoms Franklin Roosevelt articulated so many years ago:

1. Freedom of speech
   
2. Freedom of worship
   
3. Freedom from want
   
4. Freedom from fear
   

That we should have to start by reaffirming our belief in something as basic and American as the four freedoms is a very sad commentary on our society but that is where we are at right now! If Hillary Clinton really believes her incremental steps will do the job she is functioning under a false assumption. The Republicans will not compromise with her or any Democratic President. There will be no give and take only take, and every concession made to them will be a capitulation yielding nothing of value for the people of this country! Still, I would have voted for Hillary if she had been nominated in 2008, and I will vote for her if she is nominated now! The stakes in this election are too high to do anything else! We must overcome the racism (institutional and otherwise), and we must rebuild a system that will once more reward the hard work of the many rather than trying to satisfy the insatiable greed of the powerful few. If we have to vote for Hillary we damn well better hedge you bets by voting for Congressmen and Senators who will hold her accountable and block her from going back on her word!

Aghast!

The volatile mix of Donald Trump supporters and demonstrators against Trump at the rally in Chicago threatened to erupt into physical clashes. Violence and the threat of violence are becoming too much a part of Donald Trump rallies. This, at least to some extent, is the result of Donald Trump inciting the crowd to react to demonstrators, reporters and others. Last night Rachel Maddow accused Trump of purposely inciting violence as a political tactic. Ms. Maddow is not just whistling in the dark. Trump chose the University of Illinois at Chicago as the site for his rally knowing that the student-body there is diverse in regard to ethnicity, race, and religion, and that many of those students were likely to protest a rally held by a man who has made so many bigoted statements. This gave Trump what he wanted. He got a demonstration and a reaction to it that allowed him to dawn the victim's mantle by claiming that the police advised him to cancel the rally for the safety of the attendees.

The Police deny giving him that advice.  But Trump's claim that his supporters were threatened serves his purpose. Trump wants you to believe that it will take a great, strong man (Donald Trump), who is not afraid to use violence, to keep you safe from those “other” violent people threatening his supporters and America! Indeed, Trump blames that Communist, Bernie Sanders, for inciting the demonstrators. Reichstag fire anyone? This use of violence and the threat of violence is the tactic of a would be despot! Oh, I'm sorry! I must have forgotten that this is AMERICA. I am sure Trump would prefer another Haymarket Riot to a Reichstag fire. What I am afraid of is another Kent State massacre if Trump is elected, although I would not rule out violence against labor. Labor violence is not out of the question either. People are getting that desperate, and the reactionary forces are that ruthless.

As I wrote on Daily Kos in January of this year:

“It seems somewhat ironic to me that the major players on the political stage today (Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, and Donald Trump) all remember the 1960's. But who among them looks beyond Camelot? Who thinks about the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr.? Who recalls with horror the sights and sounds of fire hoses, dogs, tear-gas and clubs being used against civil rights demonstrators and peace demonstrators? Who among them is still outraged over the massacre of the young peace demonstrators at Kent State or the Police Riot in Chicago during the 1968 Democratic Convention?

I ask those questions because it is obvious that the pressure for meaningful change is finally reaching the point where we are likely to see the same type of turmoil.”

A fascist style demagogue will only exacerbate the problem and require more drastic measures to fix what so many years of plutocratic rule has wrought! We do not need or want a strong man. What we want is a man of principle and character leading a political revolution others can continue as needed. Bernie Sanders is the beginning of such a revolution!

An Underdog's Revenge

Surprise! More people in Michigan were paying attention than one would suppose, certainly more than anyone was predicting. Hillary's deceptive assertion that Bernie Sanders opposed bailing out the Auto industry failed to drive enough voters away from him and he won! In doing so he defied the polls.  He also proved that he could win in a large state with a diverse economy and a diverse population. Hillary was badly hurt by her past support of destructive trade agreements that have driven down wages and cost so many people their jobs. A warning alarm should be sounding loud and clear about that and about whether Hillary can win the rust belt states in a contest with Trump.

On the Republican side, it appears as though Marco Rubio's hopes are caught up in Donald Trump's zipper. Establishment candidates stoop to the vulgarian's level at their peril. With Rubio taking such a drubbing traditional Republicans are beside themselves. It seems far too likely that the choice, if there is a choice, will be between the interloping huckster, Trump and the loathsome Canadian Texas Turd, Cruz! Not a good time to be a Republican!

Nuance And A Dirty Bomb

Part of Bernie Sanders answer to the question of what blind spots he has in regard to race was that as a white person he could not know what it is like “to live in a ghetto.” In order to understand Bernie's answer and the reaction to it I think we need to look at the origin and definition of the word: after a brief discussion about the possibility of “Ghetto” having a Hebrew origin, NPR said that “... whatever the root language, the word's original meaning was clear: "the quarter in a city, chiefly in Italy, to which the Jews were restricted," as the OED puts it. In the 16th and 17th centuries, cities like Venice, Frankfurt, Prague and Rome forcibly segregated their Jewish populations, often walling them off and submitting them to onerous restrictions.”


During the Civil Rights era there was both du jure and de facto segregation which restricted where African Americans could live. The word ghetto was frequently used to describe where African Americans were allowed to live at that time. Indeed, Bernie Sanders participated in demonstrations against such restrictions. I am sure his outrage over that segregation is very much a part of his consciousness to this day, and I am sure it influenced his reply. Now I am about to wonder into a bit of a mine field but bear with me. Many African Americans seemed to take umbrage to Bernie's answer (See Joy Reid ).  It is not for me to criticize African Americans for their objections or to try to speak for them, so consider the following simply my attempt to grasp why they object to what Bernie Sanders said. It is certainly understandable that middle class African Americans take pride in how far they have come and what they have accomplished. I can see why they object to a stereotype of black people living in impoverished areas amidst the squaller that is too often a reality for so many people, black and white. But I do not think Bernie used the term Ghetto because he is out of touch; it think it is more a matter of him being caught off guard by the question and framing an in-artful reply. While I realize that nuance matters, I do not think we would call a singer tone deaf for being off key on a few rare occasions.


What makes housing segregation more difficult to address today is that it is determined as much by class and wealth as it is by race. Having said that, however, I should also point out that race is still a factor for the following reasons: as Bernie Sanders has frequently pointed out the distribution of wealth is not just a class issue but a racial issue as well because there is a wide racial wealth gap. African Americans, through no fault of their own, have a much more difficult time rising to middle class status, and they were hit particularly hard by Bush's great recession! Many more African Americans lost their homes in that recession than white people did, and there is a discrimination in lending that makes it very difficult for those dispossessed African Americans to climb back up on their feet again. We may not call them Ghettos anymore but there are still predominately black neighborhoods, and far too many of them are impoverished. I think if Bernie could have a do-over he would say he does not know what it is like to face the economic and physical hardships that are too often a result of racism.

Now we come to another part of the debate that did not redound to Bernie Sander's advantage. It is Hillary Clinton's use of the auto bailout controversy, which I describe as Hillary's dirty bomb and Huffington Post describes as 'Gotcha' Politics:

Politico summarized: "Sanders was supportive of the bill that would have bailed out the auto companies. So while Sanders might not have voted for the bill that ultimately provided funds to the auto industry, he did support bailing out the automakers."

But two days before the Michigan primary Clinton turned Sanders' opposition to the Wall Street bailout into a Sanders vote "against the auto bailout."

Gotcha!

Some in the media mistakenly reported that Sanders replied talking about Wall Street instead of responding about the auto bailout, thinking these were separate bills. For example, Richard Wolffe at The Guardian, "Sanders, standing in Flint, had no answer for the vote - other than to retreat into his corner opposing Wall Street's bailout."

But overall the media has tried to correct the record. Media reactions to Clinton's gambit range from calling it a "gamble" to "somewhat disingenuous" to "twisted" to "quite a stretch."

Michigan's Michael Moore, known for the 1989 "Roger and Me" documentary about General Motors and Flint, even tweeted that "Hillary lied."

Unfortunately, as Joy Reid said most of the press coverage in Michigan does not include any fact checking of Hillary's deceptive assertion, and explanations from Bernie and others about his voting record on the Auto Makers Bailout are not resonating with most of the voters. Lets face it, people who were impacted by the bailout are not policy wonks who are going to listen to complex explanations. What they remember is Hillary's assertion! This was pure demagoguery on Hillary's part! She dropped a dirty bomb, and she interrupted Bernie's reply to hinder his thought process and make his answer less adroit! This is a piss poor way to unify a party, particularly when trust is one of the issues that already hurts her!

The Smell Of Panic

Old Beau the beagle sat with his head tilted up at the sky. His nose was twitching as I turned on my television to catch the latest updates of the Super Tuesday election results. My dog's keen hunting instincts were fully aroused. What he was detecting was not your normal morning hangover after a victory celebration or your normal morning pain after trying to drown the sorrow of a bitter defeat. Oh no, it was something else, something that excites all scent hunters. It was the smell of panic in the morning! A large, lumbering beast was finally reacting to the realization that it was in serious trouble. The pachyderm was staggering, stumbling, then kneeling - not in penance over what its foolishness had wrought - but in a vein attempt to crush the movement it had unwittingly unleashed. Too late! The movement is propelled by the “news” media, which waits for no one in its pursuit of the all mighty dollar. On February 29 of this year mediate.com reported that:

“At a Morgan Stanley investors’ conference in San Francisco today, the chief executive officer of CBS, Les Moonves, found the silver lining of this year’s tumultuous election season as only a businessperson can. The latest chairman of the company said, “It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS,” and called Donald Trump‘s presence in the race a “good thing.”

The Trumpster successfully sucked the air out of the news cycles leading up to the March primary elections. He knows how to feed the media beast or the beastly media if you prefer. Sensation draws the marks to the pitchmen hawking the products. It does not matter how outrageous Trump has to be to create the sensation the media craves because his followers are not that bright. He appeals to the media darlings who participated in the bizarre tea party rallies, who disrupted town hall meetings, and who threatened anyone with a conscience and the intellectual capacity to distinguish facts from suppositions and assumptions.  He appeals to the crowd that has bought into the elephant's contention that all government is evil and all politicians are corrupt. He has tapped into the naivete of people who believe that a “businessman” who has amassed a huge fortune at their expense must be someone of superior intellect and virtue, and therefore the great man who will fix the mess in Washington! Of course they have no idea what that mess is, let alone how to fix it. But that is what great men are for!

The problem with the great man theory is that it undermines the importance of ideology and policy; you either have faith in the great man or you don't. It is this aspect, this denigration of Republican orthodoxy and the provocative things Trump does to provide the sensation that now has so much of the GOP in such a panic! Good Gawd! This great man stuff could even cause people to ignore the trickle down theory, not because they are bright enough to realize that trickle down is the longest running fraud in our nations history, but because some other great man (perhaps a Bernie Sanders type) might be able convince them that he has a better solution! Furthermore, Trump is all about Trump. He does not care about the party or whether he actually has any sort of plan or program to govern. There is no predicting what kind of damage he will cause, but he has certainly given us reasons to fear the worst. His braggadocio and his WWE kick 'em in the crutch rhetoric would be a diplomatic and governmental nightmare.

Traditional Republicans are forecasting a general election disaster if Trump wins the nomination, and there is no good way to stop him. How upset are traditional Republicans over the prospect of Donald Trump becoming their Presidential Candidate? Well, Senator “Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) on Tuesday vowed to give up on the GOP if Donald Trump wins the party’s presidential nomination. Furthermore, Chris Christie is being roundly criticized for endorsing Trump. As NPR reported:

“Meg Whitman, a former California gubernatorial candidate and the national finance co-chair for his failed presidential campaign, called Christie's endorsement "an astonishing display of political opportunism."

Joining the chorus were former New Jersey Gov. Christie Todd Whitman ("I am ashamed that Christie would endorse anyone who has employed the kind of hate mongering and racism that Trump has"), Jennifer Rubin, a conservative blogger who has been a stalwart Christie booster ("Chris Christie, you're nothing to me now") and one of his top fundraisers, Bobbie Kilberg ("I don't get it").”

If you are inclined to look at the bright side, you will hope that Trump, the GOP Presidential nominee, will lead the Republican Party into a political disaster that is worse than the Goldwater debacle of 1964, that the Democrats will retake the Senate, and that the mid-terms will be even worse for the Republicans. Better yet, you will work like hell to accomplish those results. It will take a “reform or die” scenario to make the Party of the Greedy Old Plutocrats offer anything other than fear and loathing! Remember it took five consecutive presidential election losses and President Eisenhower to make the Republicans accept what the Great Depression should have taught them. And they have been ignoring the lessons of the Great Depression ever since the Reagan Administration!