Yesterday, Bernie endorsed Hillary. Body language experts across the Web came to the same conclusion: They don’t like each other. They saw Hillary as uncomfortable, even vulnerable. They observed Bernie as resentful, doing something he didn’t want to do. Hillary and the DNC had to cough up a lot of concessions to get Bernie’s endorsement. And it was equally painful for Bernie to agree to it. While endorsing, he recited his campaign proposals and then declared Hillary was now supporting them. A brilliant move on Bernie’s part. What used to be a meaningless piece of paper—the Democratic Party Platform—is now publicly tied to Hillary. It’s hers to betray and everyone will know when she does.

Tonight, Bernie delegate Jen Ranes reported on a conference call he held with his delegates. She said:

• He has NOT suspended his campaign.
• He is taking this to the convention.
• He needs his delegates there.
• He will call for a role call vote.

Even though Bernie endorsed Hillary, this is not yet a done deal. Chances are quite high she will be the nominee, but Bernie will keep his options open all the way to the convention.

This has not gone down as Hillary had planned. What should have been an easy and short glide to the nomination turned into a long, humiliating trek. While she struggled to fill high school gymnasiums, Bernie filled football stadiums. She was forced to take time off to beg billionaires for money, while Bernie took two minutes to ask for donations at campaign events. Ever loyal to power, the corporate media maintained its blackout on Bernie’s campaign. They refused to cover the massive crowds and the extraordinary, historic nature of his run. They ignored that he had turned modern politics on its head.

Bernie exposes the establishment

What the media didn’t see coming was Bernie outing the Party leadership as not giving a rat’s ass about the rest of us. He was relentless in calling out the “Democratic establishment” and the “media establishment,” as servants of the 1%. Distracted by the incestuous, never-ending DC money game, and used to pretending to be progressive for the rubes back home, party elites were blindsided by Bernie’s spectacular success. People didn’t know they were hungry for Bernie’s message until they heard it, and found themselves overwhelmed and moved by his honesty, his integrity, and his humane proposals. Especially for younger people struggling to get an education and find a job, Bernie’s Democratic socialism seemed sane and sensible. The Party freaked out. It had lost control. A rumpled 74-year-old socialist was the Democratic rock star of 2016, not Hillary Clinton, their handpicked heir to the throne. They regrouped and pulled it off with the help of local party hacks, vote rigging, scheduling as few debates as possible, and a loyal corporate media relentlessly ignoring and/or undermining Bernie. And Yay! It worked! A damaged Clinton limped across the finish line and prematurely claimed victory.

Clinton baggage

Because Wall Street and the Deep State trust her to do their bidding, the DNC put Hillary forward as the Democratic Party candidate. Claiming to be neutral they blatantly tipped the scales in her favor. They ignored her high negatives—knowing both Democrats and Republicans view her as dishonest and unlikable. They ignored Bill’s smarmy past, and his/their terrible economic policies that led to the 2008 meltdown. They ignored their racism—the gutting of welfare programs, the buildup of the for-profit prison system, and, in 2008, Hillary’s 3 AM ads against Obama. They ignored the ravages of NAFTA. The Clinton’s personal and political baggage would fill a semi. The Party picked a familiar but terrible candidate.

If she is nominated at the convention, Hillary will go up against Trump in November and the polling doesn’t look good. Bernie has endorsed her and agreed to campaign for her. Thanks to his integrity and tenacity, she has inherited the most progressive Democratic platform in the history of the Party. It’s not everything he or we wanted, but it’s dramatically better than anything she and the Party would have typed up only to forget as soon as the convention ended. By using his considerable leverage, and forcing his progressive platform on the Party, Bernie may have rescued her from defeat. If she is the nominee and genuinely runs on that platform, she may squeak out a win against Trump.

A Democratic Party split?

Bernie could have deliberately blown up the Democratic Party, split it in two. But, even though the Party doesn’t deserve it, he graciously offered to save it from itself. That isn’t to say that the Party won’t split anyway. The installation of Hillary Clinton as the nominee may cause the party to implode—progressives taking off in one direction and corporate shills in the other.

Unlike other “loser” candidates, and it’s not clear that he has officially lost, Bernie will refuse to go quietly into the night. He plans to help elect progressive down ticket candidates, many at odds with the current Democratic establishment. He has announced that, if she is elected, he will organize his supporters to hold her feet to the fire, and to hold all Democrats feet to the fire. She knows that and he knows that. No matter what happens, the future is going to be contentious, because the revolution Bernie started is just beginning. And we should be forever grateful to him for that.

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This list of Bernie Sanders’ accomplishments is for those who think Bernie Sanders has achieved “nothing” in his time in office, or think he’s an uncompromising leftist ideologue who doesn’t know how to “get things done,” or who think he couldn’t possibly achieve anything as president. These ideas are floating around Facebook, so I think it’s time to have a look at Bernie’s actual record.

Over the past 50 years, Bernie has had a distinguished career as a social justice activist and an elected official. He’s been a mayor, a congressman and a senator. But I want to add a few accomplishments that don’t appear on his website. I want to acknowledge that he has had the courage to:

• run for president without taking Wall Street or corporate money,
• run for president against the formidable Clinton machine
• run as a Democrat without backing or support from the Democratic Party,
• run in the context of blatant corporate media bias for Hillary and against him

That’s a lot of courage, and I think he needs to be commended for it. Indeed, Bernie is a rare bird. His life has been honed by decades of hard work as a  public servant on behalf of poor and middle class Americans. He has had the integrity to live his life according to his progressive values. Is Bernie perfect? No. But he has never shilled for banks and corporations, and that’s a big accomplishment in Washington DC.

You will never hear Bernie spouting focus-group talking points, or shifting his message daily to see what sticks to the wall, or reading prepared speeches off a teleprompter. Bernie doesn’t have to use a teleprompter. He’s been talking about income inequality and social justice for fifty years, and his message hasn’t wavered. He understands, on a deep level, the struggles of the poor and the middle class and the origins of injustice and inequality. His wisdom and authenticity is resonating among voters who have lost confidence in the political process.

Some of Bernie’s accomplishments listed below are his votes against war. Why are votes an accomplishment? He was correct in his predictions that they would lead to disaster. These votes underscore his wisdom and judgment, qualities I want in a president. Through deal making and compromise with Democrats and Republicans, Bernie has amassed a solid record on behalf of the Black, Latino, women, LGBT and elderly communities, on behalf of veterans, and on behalf of lower and middle income individuals and families. He has consistently given voice to those with less power. He will continue to do that as president.

Bernie’s North Star has always been the poor and middle classes. No surprise, he has the highest approval rating of any U.S. senator—an astonishing 83% of Vermonters trust Bernie to represent their interests. Instead of lowering expectations of what’s possible, Bernie continues to offer a bold and humane vision of what this country can be.

Bernie’s accomplishments

• Elected by the state of Vermont 8 times to serve in the House of Representatives.
• The longest-serving independent in U.S. congressional history.
• He was dubbed the “amendment king” in the House of Representatives for passing more amendments than any other member of Congress.
• Ranking member on the Senate Budget Committee.
• Former student organizer for the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).
• Led the first ever civil rights sit-in in Chicago history to protest segregated housing.
• In 1963, Bernie Sanders participated in MLK’s Civil Rights March. One of only 2 sitting US Senators to have heard MLK’s “I have a Dream Speech” in person in the march on Washington, DC.
• Former professor of political science at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and at Hamilton College.
• Former mayor of Burlington, VT. In a stunning upset in 1981, Sanders won the mayoral race in Burlington, Vermont’s largest city. He shocked the city’s political establishment by defeating a six-term, local machine mayor. Burlington is now reported to be one of the most livable cities in the nation.
• Co-founded the Congressional Progressive Caucus and chaired the group for its first 8 years.
• Both the NAACP and the NHLA (National Hispanic Leadership Agenda) have given Sanders 100% voting scores during his tenure in the Senate. Earns a D- from the NRA.
• 1984: Mayor Sanders established the Burlington Community Land Trust, the first municipal housing land-trust in the country for affordable housing. The project becomes a model emulated throughout the world. It later wins an award from Jack Kemp-led HUD.
• 1991: one of a handful in Congress to vote against authorizing US military force in Iraq. “I have a real fear that the region is not going to be more peaceful or more stable after the war,” he said at the time.
• 1992: Congress passes Sanders’ first signed piece of legislation to create the National Program of Cancer Registries. A Reader’s Digest article calls the law “the cancer weapon America needs most.” All 50 states now run registries to help cancer researchers gain important insights.
• November 1993: Sanders votes against the Clinton-era North American Free Trade Agreement. Returning from a tour of factories in Mexico, Sanders says: “If NAFTA passes, corporate profits will soar because it will be even easier than now for American companies to flee to Mexico and hire workers there for starvation wages.”
• July 1996: Sanders is one of only 67 (out of 435, 15%) votes against the discriminatory Defense of Marriage Act, which denied federal benefits to same-sex couples legally married. Sanders urged the Supreme Court to throw out the law, which it did in a landmark 2013 ruling – some 17 years later.
• July 1999: Standing up against the major pharmaceutical companies, Sanders becomes the first member of Congress to personally take seniors across the border to Canada to buy lower-cost prescription drugs. The congressman continues his bus trips to Canada with a group of breast cancer patients the following April. These brave women are able to purchase their medications in Canada for almost one-tenth the price charged in the States.
• August 1999: An overflow crowd of Vermonters packs a St. Michael’s College town hall meeting hosted by Sanders to protest an IBM plan to cut older workers’ pensions by as much as 50 percent. CBS Evening News with Dan Rather and The New York Times cover the event. After IBM enacts the plan, Sanders works to reverse the cuts, passing a pair of amendments to prohibit the federal government from acting to overturn a federal district court decision that ruled that IBM’s plan violated pension age discrimination laws. Thanks to Sanders’ efforts, IBM agreed to a $320 million legal settlement with some 130,000 IBM workers and retirees.
• November 1999: About 10 years before the 2008 Wall Street crash spins the world economy into a massive recession, Sanders votes “no” on a bill to undo decades of financial regulations enacted after the Great Depression. “This legislation,” he predicts at the time, “will lead to fewer banks and financial service providers, increased charges and fees for individual consumers and small businesses, diminished credit for rural America and taxpayer exposure to potential losses should a financial conglomerate fail. It will lead to more mega-mergers, a small number of corporations dominating the financial service industry and further concentration of power in our country.” The House passed the bill 362-57 over Sanders’ objection.
• October 2001: Sanders votes against the USA Patriot Act. “All of us want to protect the American people from terrorist attacks, but in a way that does not undermine basic freedoms,” Sanders says at the time. He subsequently votes against reauthorizing the law in 2006 and 2011.
• October 2002: Sanders votes against the Bush-Cheney war in Iraq. He warns at the time that an invasion could “result in anti-Americanism, instability and more terrorism.” Hillary Clinton votes in favor of it.
• November 2006: Sanders defeats Vermont’s richest man, Rich Tarrant, to be elected to the U.S. Senate. Sanders, running as an Independent, is endorsed by the Vermont Democratic Party and supported by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
• December 2007: Sanders’ authored energy efficiency and conservation grant program passes into law. He later secures $3.2 billion in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 for the grant program.
• September 2008: Thanks to Sanders’ efforts, funding for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program funding doubles, helping millions of low-income Americans heat their homes in winter.
• February 2009: Sanders works with Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley to pass an amendment to an economic recovery bill preventing Wall Street banks that take taxpayer bailouts from replacing laid-off U.S. workers with exploited and poorly-paid foreign workers.
• December 2009: Sanders passes language in the Affordable Care Act to allow states to apply for waivers to implement pilot health care systems by 2017. The legislation allows states to adopt more comprehensive systems to cover more people at lower costs.
• March 2010: President Barack Obama signs into law the Affordable Care Act with a major Sanders provision to expand federally qualified community health centers. Sanders secures $12.5 billion in funding for the program which now serves more than 25 million Americans. Another $1.5 billion from a Sanders provision went to the National Health Service Corps for scholarships and loan repayment for doctors and nurses who practice in under-served communities.
• July 2010: Sanders works with Republican Congressman Ron Paul in the House to pass a measure as part of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform bill to audit the Federal Reserve, revealing how the independent agency gave $16 trillion in near zero-interest loans to big banks and businesses after the 2008 economic collapse.
• March 2013: Sanders, now chairman of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee, and backed by seniors, women, veterans, labor unions and disabled Americans, leads a successful effort to stop a “chained-CPI” proposal supported by Congressional Republicans and the Administration to cut Social Security and disabled veterans’ benefits.
• April 2013: Sanders introduces legislation to break up major Wall Street banks so large that the collapse of one could send the overall economy into a downward spiral.
• August 2014: A bipartisan $16.5 billion veterans bill written by Sen. Sanders, Sen. John McCain and Rep. Jeff Miller is signed into law by President Barack Obama. The measure includes $5 billion for the VA to hire more doctors and health professionals to meet growing demand for care.
• January 2015: Sanders takes over as ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, using the platform to fight for his economic agenda for the American middle class.
• January 2015: Sanders votes against the Keystone XL pipeline, which would allow multinational corporation TransCanada to transport dirty tar sands oil from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico.
• March 2015: Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) introduced legislation to expand benefits and strengthen the retirement program for generations to come. The Social Security Expansion Act was filed on the same day Sanders and other senators received the petitions signed by 2 million Americans, gathered by the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare.
• September 2015: Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.), Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) and Rep. Bobby L. Rush (D-Ill.) today introduced bills to ban private prisons, reinstate the federal parole system and eliminate quotas for the number of immigrants held in detention.
• January 2016: Sanders Places Hold on FDA Nominee Dr. Robert Califf because of his close ties to the pharmaceutical industry and lack of commitment to lowering drug prices. There is no reason to believe that he would make the FDA work for ordinary Americans, rather than just the CEOs of pharmaceutical companies.

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In a recent interview in Jacobin, linguist, philosopher, and political activist Noam Chomsky gave an interesting answer to a question about the American capitalist system. He basically said we don’t have one. We have something else, more akin to “state capitalism.”

And by not being engaged and involved in the political process, we’ve allowed corporations and banks to “run things,” to take over government. We’ve felt powerless to effect change, and we’ve allowed them to suck up resources that should be going to fund projects and policies that directly help us and the communities where we live.

Chomsky’s comment on our so called “capitalist system:”

What’s called “the capitalist system” is very far from any model of capitalism or market. Take the fossil fuels industries: there was a recent study by the IMF, which tried to estimate the subsidy that energy corporations get from governments. The total was colossal. I think it was around $5 trillion annually. That’s got nothing to do with markets and capitalism.

I think Chomsky is saying that our form of capitalism is not one Adam Smith would recognize. In our version, fossil fuel companies fund politicians, who then vote for industry subsidies. Even though the industry is a big contributor to climate change, the government continues to promote fossil fuels. Bought senators and congressmen continue to give away money to a highly profitable industry that doesn’t need it. Money in politics has a life of its own, and it’s not benign. If a senator or congressperson stops voting for subsidies, there’s hell to pay when he or she is up for reelection. Not only will they no longer get campaign donations, they will have money being spent against them. We live under the illusion that  we have a “free-market” economy, when its more akin to a mafia-run protection racket.

Chomsky turns the conversation to banks:

And the same is true of other components of the so-called capitalist system. By now, in the US and other Western countries, there’s been, during the neoliberal period, a sharp increase in the financialization of the economy. Financial institutions in the US had about 40 percent of corporate profits on the eve of the 2008 collapse, for which they had a large share of responsibility.

There’s another IMF study that investigated the profits of American banks, and it found that they were almost entirely dependent on implicit public subsidies. There’s a kind of a guarantee—it’s not on paper, but it’s an implicit guarantee—that if they get into trouble they will be bailed out. That’s called too-big-to-fail.

And the credit rating agencies of course know that, they take that into account, and with high credit ratings, financial institutions get privileged access to cheaper credit, they get subsidies if things go wrong and many other incentives, which effectively amounts to perhaps their total profit. The business press tried to make an estimate of this number and guessed about $80 billion a year. That’s got nothing to do with capitalism.

It’s clear that without massive subsidies and bailouts, the banks would be insolvent. In a real capitalist system they would have been failed businesses. Chomsky is not the first to point this out. For nearly imploding the world economy, banks were rewarded with access to free money, which they use, not for repairing the damage they did to main street, but for speculation. Thanks to Bill Clinton removing the wall between traditional and investment banking, big banks continue to operate like gambling casinos.

Corporations, too, have been borrowing money at very low, or no interest for stock buy-backs, which raises stock prices and CEO pay. Profits are off-shored and tax-sheltered. Nothing big banks and big corporations are doing right now is helping middle class and working people. Chomsky continues:

It’s the same in many other sectors of the economy. So the real question is, will this system of state capitalism, which is what it is, survive the continued use of fossil fuels? And the answer to that is, of course, no.

By now, there’s a pretty strong consensus among scientists who say that a large majority of the remaining fossil fuels, maybe 80 percent, have to be left in the ground if we hope to avoid a temperature rise which would be pretty lethal. And, unfortunately, that’s not happening. Humans may be destroying their chances for a decent survival. It won’t kill everybody, but it would change the world dramatically.

This is Chomsky’s conclusion if the current situation were to continue. But there’s a rebellion brewing against the status quo. Bernie Sanders in the US, Jeremy Corbyn in the UK, Alex Tsipris in Greece, and Pablo Iglesias in Spain are openly challenging the corporate/bank/billionaire grip on their respective governments. And in Canada, the Liberal Party just won back control of Parliament after nine years of the conservative Harper government. So, there’s reason for hope.

Getting a person or party elected is not enough

We can’t pin all our hopes on another Wall Street-funded candidate. Chomsky thinks it will take pressure from a large popular movement to effectively challenge the grip of money and power on government. The job of activists and organizers, he says, is to help people understand they have power, and even though they feel powerless, they’re not powerless. “People feel impotent, but that has to be overcome.”

About Bernie Sanders, Chomsky feels it’s pretty unlikely in a system of bought elections that he could win. And even if he won, he would be abandoned by both corporate parties, In other words, he couldn’t get much done. But, even if he loses he will have made a positive contribution. Chiomsky says:

In fact, the Sanders campaign I think is valuable—it’s opening up issues, it’s maybe pressing the mainstream Democrats a little bit in a progressive direction, and it is mobilizing a lot of popular forces, and the most positive outcome would be if they remain after the election.

It’s a serious mistake to just to be geared to the quadrennial electoral extravaganza and then go home. That’s not the way changes take place. The mobilization could lead to a continuing popular organization, which could maybe have an effect in the long run.

A little history

In 2009, newly elected President Barack Obama could have nurtured and expanded his extremely effective Obama for America organization to be exactly the kind of popular organization Chomsky calls for—one standing behind him and supporting him in demanding real change—but he funneled everyone into the newly formed “Organizing for America.” Organizing for America served to neutralize and eventually shut down the enthusiasm and populist energy stirred up by his campaign, thwarting any threat to the big money interests that bankrolled his election. As Gloria Bilchik wrote in 2010, OFA became a propaganda machine for the President and a subsidiary of the Democratic National Committee.

The best outcome of the coming election will be if Bernie’s followers form a truly progressive organization independent of the Democratic Party. It’s purpose would be to keep pressure on politicians to do the right thing for the American people.

The post Noam Chomsky: On capitalism and why electing Bernie isn’t enough appeared first on Occasional Planet.

From Truth and Satire:

Every single mainstream media has the following narrative for the economic crisis in Greece: the government spent too much money and went broke; the generous banks gave them money, but Greece still can’t pay the bills because it mismanaged the money that was given. It sounds quite reasonable, right?

Except that it is a big fat lie … not only about Greece, but about other European countries such as Spain, Portugal, Italy and Ireland who are all experiencing various degrees of austerity. It was also the same big, fat lie that was used by banks and corporations to exploit many Latin American, Asian and African countries for many decades.

Greece did not fail on its own. It was made to fail.

Consider a recent article in the New York Times by Neil Irwin. The title says it all: “Now Europe Must Decide Whether to Make an Example of Greece.” Those lazy Greeks,” Irwin’s title suggests, “need to be taught a lesson. “

Here’s an excerpt, my emphasis:

The choice for leaders of Germany, France and the rest of Europe will look something like this:

If they tolerate the Greek government’s demands, they will be setting a bad example for every other country that might wish to challenge the strictures of the European Union, telling voters in Portugal and Spain and Italy that if they make enough fuss, and elect extremist parties they too will get a much sweeter deal. It would send the signal that a country can borrow all it likes, walk away from those debts and make the rest of Europe pay the bill, as long as it is intransigent enough. 

Notice Irwin’s use of the word, “tolerate,” as if the Greek government is a bratty, demanding child. He says a challenge to power cannot be allowed—have to nip that in the bud before it spreads to other “lazy” countries. Irwin calls anti-establishment, left political parties, like Greece’s Syriza, extremist. Syriza is “extreme, ” I guess, because it chooses the needs of ordinary people over making banks and hedge funds whole. Finally, he characterizes the Greek people as insufferable deadbeats.

Irwin’s “good vs. bad, white hat/black hat” narrative satisfies the embarrassingly uninformed and gullible American public, and protects the people, banks and institutions that caused the biggest global wealth heist in history.

“Bad Greeks!” Irwin is saying, “They’re getting what they deserve for spending way beyond their means.“ Being an unrepentant bank groupie, I’m sure he believes that. In 2013, Irwin wrote The Alchemists: Three Central Bankers and a World on Fire, a book on how three central bankers dealt with the 2008 financial meltdown. One Amazon reviewer described it as “Pathetic drooling over something that is essentially an anti-democratic institution. The book is littered with fawning details of how some central banker was travelling in a limousine when he received a call about markets being on fire. Or how Draghi was eating smoked goat cheese (or whatever is it that elites eat) when the Greece crisis erupted and then he had to do something on his mahogany table.”

The book earned the endorsement of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, an organization whose sole mission is to cut Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare, and lower taxes on the wealthy. If you didn’t get it from reading Irwin’s article, his book tells you where he stands psychologically and politically. He is typical of the sycophants who populate mainstream media.

My point in critiquing Irwin’s article is to encourage readers, especially those who call themselves “progressive,” to pay attention to the underlying perspective of those who speak or write in mainstream news outlets. What are their values? With whose interests do they identify?

Given the serial mendacity of the NYT, it’s important to look elsewhere to understand world events, and, in this case, what caused the crisis in Greece. Look for writers and journalists who identify with the struggles of the majority population, and who have a clear-eyed view of the rampant corruption in government, banks, and the private sector around the world. Look for writers who, at minimum, are not in awe of the wealthy and the powerful.

For starters, you might try Conn Hallinan’s “Europe’s Debt: Lies & Myths. Hallinan does a great job of countering Irwin’s myths by placing Greece’s plight in historical context. Here’s an excerpt, my emphasis:

Myths are dangerous precisely because they rely more on cultural memory and prejudice than facts, and behind the current crisis between Greece and the European Union (EU) lays a fable that bears little relationship to why Athens and a number of other countries in the 28-member organization find themselves in deep distress.

The tale is a variation of Aesop’s allegory of the industrious ant and the lazy, fun-loving grasshopper, with the “northern countries”—Germany, the Netherlands, Britain, Finland—playing the role of the ant, and Greece, Spain, Portugal, and Ireland the part of the grasshopper.

The ants are sober and virtuous—lead by the frugal Swanbian house frau, German Chancellor Angela Merkel—the grasshoppers are spendthrift, corrupt lay-abouts who have spent themselves into trouble and now must pay the piper.

The problem is that this myth bears almost no relationship to the actual roots of the crisis or what the solutions might be. And it perpetuates a fable that the debt is the fault of individual countries rather than a serious crisis at the very heart of the EU.
<snip>
In Greece’s case corruption was at the heart of the crisis, but not the popular version about armies of public workers and tax dodging oligarchs. There are rich tax dodgers aplenty in Greece, but Germany, Sweden, and many other European countries spend more of their GDP on services than does Athens. Greece spends 44.6 percent of its GDP on its citizens, less than the EU average and below Germany’s 46 percent and Sweden’s 55 percent.

And as for lazy: Greeks work 600 hours more a year than Germans. According to economist Mark Blyth, author of Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea, Greek public spending through the 2000s is “really on track and quite average in comparison to everyone else’s,” and the so-called flood of “public sector jobs” consisted of “ 14,000 over two years.” All the talk of the profligate Greek government is “a lot of nonsense” and just “political cover for the fact that what we’ve done is bail out some of the richest people in European society and put the cost on some of the poorest.”

There was a “score” in Greece. However, it had nothing to do with free spending; it was a scheme dreamed up by Greek politicians, bankers, and the American finance corporation, Goldman Sachs.

Greece’s application for EU membership in 1999 was rejected because its budget deficit in relation to its GDP was over 3 percent, the cutoff line for joining. That’s where Goldman Sachs came in. For a fee rumored to be $200 million (some say three times that), the multinational giant essentially cooked the books to make Greece look like it cleared the bar. Then Greece’s political and economic establishment hid the scheme until the 2008 crash shattered the illusion.

It was the busy little ants, not the fiddling grasshoppers that brought on the European debt crisis.

American, German, French, and Dutch banks had to know that they were creating an unstable real estate bubble—a 500 percent jump in housing prices is the very definition of the beast—but kept right on lending because they were making out like bandits.

When the bubble popped and Europe went into recession, Greece was forced to apply for a “bailout” from the Troika [The European Central Bank, the European Commission and the International Monetary Fund]. In exchange for 172 billon Euros, the Greek government instituted an austerity program that saw economic activity decline 25 percent, unemployment rise to 27 Percent (and over 50 percent for young Greeks). The cutbacks slashed pensions, wages, and social services, and drove 44 percent of the population into poverty.

Virtually all of the “bailout”—89 percent—went to the banks that gambled in the 1999 to 2007 real estate casino. What the Greek—as well as Spaniards, Portuguese, and Irish—got was misery.

The post Myths and lies about Greece appeared first on Occasional Planet.

On May 12, Joseph Stiglitz and the Roosevelt Institute published a new report titled “Rewriting the Rules of the American Economy: An Agenda for Growth and Shared Prosperity.” You can download the report and watch a two-hour presentation and panel discussion on it here.

Guest speakers at the report launch were Senator Elizabeth Warren and Mayor of New York city, Bill DeBlasio, along with a slew of really interesting panelists. I started watching the event over breakfast, thinking I would turn it off after I finished off my smoothie, but I kept watching—all two hours of it! Stiglitz offered one of the best explanations of what went wrong with the economy I have heard to date. And he offers a clear path for making it work for the majority of Americans.

Bernie Sanders entering the race for president and Joe Stiglitz launching this report on how to fix the economy are truly hopeful events. I’m talking real hope here, something I have not felt in a long time. There’s been no shortage of ideas on how to fix the economy—break up the big banks, raise the minimum wage, raise the cap on Social Security taxes, raise taxes on companies that offshore jobs. But this slingshot approach is inadequate to what is really a systemic and structural problem. Stiglitz offers a fresh look at the causes of our economic downturn, and puts forward a comprehensive list of solutions, all of which have to be addressed, if the economy is to work for everyone.

Stiglitz’s list of the causes of growing income inequality:

• More market power, less competition
• The growth of the financial sector
• The ‘shareholder revolution,’ the rise of CEO pay, and the squeezing of workers
• Lower taxes for the wealthy
• The end of full-employment monetary policy
• The stifling of worker voice
• The sinking floor of labor standards
• Racial discrimination

Stiglitz’s solutions for rebalancing the economy:

• Make markets competitive
• Fix the financial sector
• Incentivize long-term business growth
• Rebalance the tax and transfer system
• Make full employment the goal
• Empower workers
• Expand access to labor markets and opportunities for advancement
• Expand economic security and opportunity

The report, clearly written and easy to read, goes in-depth on each topic. It refutes the idea that there is a mysterious market force, or “invisible hand” or “natural” business cycle, or changes in the global economy that is causing unemployment and stagnant wages. The economy is in shambles, Stiglitz says, because, for the last thirty years, the rich and powerful have written the rules that govern the economy. Both Republicans and Democrats have participated in this orgy of “rule making for the rich,” which has resulted in the systematic destruction of the middle class, and the increasing impoverishment of the working poor.

Inequality has been a choice, he says, made by the few and foisted on the majority who were sold a bill of goods. It is within our power to reverse those rules. Here’s an excerpt from the report, my emphasis:

Rules are the regulatory and legal frameworks that make up the economy, like those affecting property ownership, corporate formation, labor law, copyright, antitrust, monetary, tax, and expenditure policy, and other economic structures. They also include the institutions that perpetuate discrimination, including structural discrimination—an entire system of rules, regulations, expenditure policies, and normative practices that exclude populations from the economy and economic opportunity. Unequal socio-economic outcomes for women and people of color are rooted in this kind of structural discrimination, in addition to other forms of bias. . . .

Our challenge, then, is to rewrite the rules to work for everyone. To do so, we must re-learn what we thought we knew about how modern economies work. We must also devise new policies to eliminate the distortions that pervade our financial sector, our corporate rules, our macroeconomic, monetary, tax, expenditure, and competition policies, our labor relations, and our political structures. It is important to engage all of these challenges simultaneously, since our economy is a system and these elements interact. This will not be easy; we must push to achieve these fundamental changes at a time when the American people have lost faith in their government’s ability to act in service of the common good.

The problems we face today are in large part the result of economic decisions we made—or failed to make—beginning in the late 1970s.

The changes occurring in our economy, politics, and society have been dramatic, and there is a corresponding sense of urgency in this report. We cannot afford to go forward with minor tweaks and hope that they do the trick. We know the answer: they will not, and the suffering that will occur in the meantime is unconscionable. And, as we explain, this is not just about the present, but the future. The policies of today are “baking in” the America of 2050: unless we change course, we will be a country with slower growth, ever more inequality, and ever less equality of opportunity. Inequality has been a choice, and it is within our power to reverse it.

The good news is that Stiglitz’s report is not just an intellectual exercise. Along with the Roosevelt Institute, he will be releasing a series of specific proposals to help rewrite the rules of the economy in favor of ordinary Americans. As the presidential campaign heats up, I have no doubt that Bernie will be onboard, but will Hillary or Jeb Bush? Joe Stiglitz is one of many official advisors to the Clinton campaign, but I’m not holding my breath that she will embrace the kind of changes he envisions.

We are entering an interesting time in history, when the majority of voters are aware that, despite cheery statements from the Obama administration to the contrary, there has been no economic recovery for ordinary Americans. Also, the majority of voters know that banks and corporations will be spending obscene amounts of money to elect Hilary Clinton, or the GOP candidate, who will continue to write rules that favor the elite.

The time is ripe for genuine progressive ideas to take hold because, for once, they have a chance to resonate with people across the political spectrum. Bernie Sanders and Joe Stiglitz, together, offer real solutions to an economy, and a country, gone off the rails.

The post Joe Stiglitz wants to rewrite the rules of the American economy appeared first on Occasional Planet.

I watched Hillary’s slick ad announcing her 2016 presidential campaign. If you haven’t seen it, you can watch it here. Left writer and thinker Paul Street summed it up in a recent Facebook comment:

This is about as disingenuously fake-progressive as a candidacy announcement could be. A very slick production, combining a subtle undercurrent of pretend populism with less subtle appeals to racial, ethnic, sexual, and gender identity.

Still, the very Wall Street-friendly Hillary’s late entrance claiming to care that “the deck is stacked for those at the top” (or whatever the exact words were) is stiff and unconvincing. She just doesn’t have the magic and flair for the campaign trail, for the “manipulation of populism by elitism” that the formerly left [Christopher] Hitchens once identified as “the essence of American politics.”

Hillary’s ad vs. her record

Let’s just start with this. When Bill Clinton was in office, Hillary and Bill functioned as a powerful political team. She was intimately involved in, and approved of, his administration’s policy decisions. If and when she becomes president, we will get the same team. So let’s look at their record together, her record as a previous presidential candidate, and her record as a senator.

First of all, Hillary is no friend of children and families in need. In 1996, with Hillary’s encouragement, Bill Clinton signed a bill that destroyed the major federal program to help poor people and poor families—Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC). Seventy percent on that program were children. Thanks to the Clintons, poor children have dropped off the radar.

In a 2013 article in Dissent Magazine, Fred Block and Frances Fox Piven describe what happened to the poor under the Clintons:

The new legislation completely eliminated the AFDC program along with the entitlement to assistance that it had created, and replaced it with a new program called “Temporary Aid to Needy Families” that was administered at the state level, with substantial federal restrictions on how the money was to be spent. The program imposed a strict five-year time limit on welfare receipt, and states were encouraged (with both carrots and sticks) to set even more stringent limits. The biggest incentive was a guaranteed fixed-block grant from the federal government; if they moved recipients off the rolls, states could repurpose the grant funds to pay for other things. Now monies that once went to poor moms in the form of welfare checks go to for-profit companies.

This is just one example of what corporate Democrats like the Clintons have done to destroy the progressive legacy of the Democratic Party.

Hillary’s Goldman-Sachs problem. In Bill’s administration, Hillary was equally close to the action on economic policy. Ex-Goldman chairman, Robert Rubin, and his protege Lawrence Summers, were the people in the Clinton administration who deregulated Wall Street, a direct cause of the economic meltdown of 2008 and the misery that followed. Hillary Clinton was in full support of Bill signing the Wall Street friendly legislation that led to the Great Recession—the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, the Financial Services Modernization Act, which gutted Glass-Steagall. Rubin was also the architect of NAFTA, and other job killing trade deals.

No surprise that Goldman has donated between $250,000 and $500,000 to the Clinton Foundation. In 2013, Hillary, who carried water for Wall Street as a senator, gave two paid speeches to Goldman Sachs audiences at around $200,000 a pop.

Hillary’s buddies at Goldman hardly exemplify the values and principles she puts forward in her ad. In 2011, a senate investigative report concluded that Goldman had misled clients by selling complicated securities to customers that were secretly designed to fail.

The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission’s report also described Goldman as a first-class predator. It described the firm as knowingly peddling junk to suckers who trusted them. One expert compared Goldman’s wheeling-and-dealing to “buying fire insurance on someone else’s house and then committing arson.”

Last year, the New York Times reported that Goldman Sachs and other financial firms conspired to rig the aluminum market, costing consumers billions of dollars, and adding to the burden of already struggling middle-class families.

Remember, these are Hillary’s friends.

A year ago Hillary gave a policy speech at the New America Foundation in DC, where she talked about the financial plight of Americans who “are still barely getting by, barely holding on, not seeing the rewards that they believe their hard work should have merited. She talked about the “shadow-banking system” that caused the financial crisis. No surprise, she sounded a lot like Elizabeth Warren, because at that time Warren was seen as a threat to her candidacy. Yet she has very deep ties to Wall Street CEOs who will fund her campaign.

This is the cynical side of politics. She has to sound populist to get elected and Wall Street knows that, which is why you have to take what she says, how ever well-written and passionately delivered, with a grain of salt. The proof will be in who she brings into her administration, her actual policies, and who those policies serve.

On foreign policy and national security. One of my worst fears about Hillary is her simpleminded, warmongering attitude toward the rest of the world, and her unthinking dedication to the perpetuation of U.S. economic and military hegemony. During the 2008 presidential primary, the Guardian quoted her comments on Iran:

“In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them.”

My question is: What kind of human being talks about “totally obliterating” another country? And what will she do when she is “commander-in-chief, when she will have the power to do so?”

No surprise that after becoming a senator, Hillary voted for the Iraq war. Since then, she has worked tirelessly to build her cred as a hawk. As Doug Henwood writes at Harper’s:

She backed an escalation of the Afghanistan war, lobbied on behalf of a continuing military presence in Iraq, urged Obama to bomb Syria, and supported the intervention in Libya. As Michael Crowley wrote in Time, “On at least three crucial issues — Afghanistan, Libya, and the bin Laden raid — Clinton took a more aggressive line than [Defense Secretary Robert] Gates, a Bush-appointed Republican.”

Hillary’s terrible record on civil liberties. When in the Senate, she voted for the Patriot Act and its reauthorization. She has defended NSA surveillance and accused whistleblower Edward Snowden of supporting terrorism.

Robert Sheer, in an interview with Democracy Now! comments:

She didn’t trust the State Department with her email, but she never told us that the State Department, the CIA and the NSA were spying on the emails of all Americans. No, but she thinks that’s fine. She’s just going to keep her email in her garage, you know, so I find her to be a center of cynicism and opportunism, and really quite reckless.

Should progressives vote for Hillary Clinton?

Her vicious record notwithstanding, I think we should consider voting for her for two important reasons: A) The Supreme Court will have vacancies to be filled, and B) a Republican president actually will be much worse.

I’ve grown to hate this notion, but, I think we have to vote for the “lesser of two evils.” I’m not using this phrase as a figure of speech. Both Democrats and Republicans hobnob with the power elite, take their billions, and do their bidding. Both candidates will lie and use populist rhetoric to manipulate us into voting for them. So, yeah, I think this constitutes “evil.” Unfortunately, we have a two-party system, and we have to struggle within that reality. Things are bad under corporate Democrats but they would be really bad under a Republican presidency.

We don’t have to be slavish, adoring groupies to vote for Hillary or to work for her campaign. We can engage strategically and pressure her on issues to force her to the left.

What progressives can do

Hillary is a political animal, and like all political animals, she responds to political pressure. What we progressives can do is educate ourselves on the power elites, how they function, and how she will be working with them. We can start by looking at her campaign advisors and whose interests they represent. We can be vocal in our criticism of her Wall Street alliances, and her record of undermining working people and the poor.

There is always the fear that criticism of a Democratic candidate from the left will cause him or her to lose, but that view comes from the all-or-nothing mentality of the personality-driven, groupie crowd that populates campaign offices. It’s time for grown-up, hardball politics. It’s not only OK to criticize a corporate Democratic candidate, it’s essential if we are to restore anything resembling a democracy.

It would not harm but rather strengthen Hillary’s candidacy if we call her on her fake populism and demand that she commit to real progressive policies—like, for starters, Medicare for all, the expansion of Social Security to an income the elderly could live on, raising the income cap on Social Security taxes, or the development of a national infrastructure bank. A genuine progressive would get a disengaged public to the polls. It would strengthen her candidacy if we call her out on her hawkish foreign policy and her support for Wall Street proxy wars, like the one being fought in Ukraine. We need to ask her, publicly, why the billions spent on defense (a form of government handouts to corporations and CEOs) would not be better spent on a peace economy that would benefit everyone. Finally, after she is elected, we can vow to be a constant thorn in her side until she delivers for the American people.

The post Hillary Clinton’s pretend populism appeared first on Occasional Planet.

It’s absolutely true that Mitch McConnell and the Republicans obstructed every Democratic initiative. On the other hand, Democrats didn’t give people a reason to go to the polls. Why should Democrats bother to vote when its clear their party chooses the needs of banks and corporations over the needs of its constituents?

Whatever you think of Ralph Nader, he made a lot of sense when he spoke with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now about Democratic losses in the midterm elections. He says there are plenty of excuses being made like being outspent by Republicans, and Republican obstructionism, but they don’t hold water.

The Democrats raised huge amounts of money this time around, and in 2012 . . . plenty of money to win. [But] . . . they didn’t get their own voters out, because although they finally came around to the only issue that Politico said is getting traction for the Democrats—raising the minimum wage for 30 million people, who are paid less now than workers in 1968 adjusted for inflation, 30 million people and their families, a lot of voters—they didn’t make it a big enough issue. . .

We got a president who spent almost two weeks in salons, from New York and Maine and San Francisco and Los Angeles, raising money for the Democrats, not barnstorming the country on an issue that has . . .80 percent support. . . .So, . . .they didn’t have a policy. They didn’t have an agenda. They didn’t have the message. They had tons of money to put on insipid television ads that didn’t move the needle. . .

In other words, people back home are not given enough reason to vote for the Democrats. But they’re given plenty of emotional reason to vote for the Republicans because of all the social issues—the school prayer, the reproductive rights, the gun control. The Democrats have dropped the economic issue that won election after election for Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry Truman. They can no longer defend our country against the most militaristic, corporatist, cruel, anti-worker, anti-consumer, anti-environment, anti-women, even anti-children party—the Republican Party.

A lot of soul searching is needed, and we shouldn’t let Citizens United and voting restriction laws . . . be used as alibis by the Democrats in Congress.

“Soul searching,” of course, means actually adopting a progressive agenda—one that serves the majority of Americans. And that means being willing to give up the corporate gravy train—the big campaign contributions, and the lucrative jobs upon leaving office. Most (although not all) Democrats are hooked into this money/power revolving door, so I don’t expect the money influence in the party to change, on its own, any time soon.

But there is some good news coming out of the midterms. The Republican “sweep” of Congress in no way represents the underlying mood of the country. Democratic losses came from a cocktail of Republican voter suppression and glaring Democratic Party policy failures.

While Republicans were claiming a mandate on the national level, there were plenty of local progressive victories that reveal a growing left-leaning electorate. If you’re bummed about the midterms, this laundry list of progressive victories complied by Bill Moyers.com will cheer you up. The dysfunctional, corporate-owned Democratic Party needs to sit up and take notice.

David beats Goliath in Richmond, California

Richmond, California is a small town of 100,000 and the home of Richmond Chevron refinery. For a hundred years, Chevron owned the Richmond city council. Then, in 2007, locals put forward a progressive movement to run local progressive candidates who pledged not to take a penny from corporations. Running on very little money, they won the mayor’s seat and five other local elections based on a progressive, anti-corporate message. Since then, the progressive controlled city council has accomplished a lot, including passing a $13 minimum wage and gaining an additional $114 million in taxes from Chevron. This year progressive candidates won again against extremely well funded Chevron-backed candidates. Chevron and Wall Street money failed to drive progressives out of office.

Richmond is a microcosm of what could happen on a larger scale in this country if progressives became focused and organized.

Minimum Wage measures pass in four red states

Voters in four “red” states—Arkansas, Alaska, Nebraska and South Dakota—approved measures on Tuesday to raise the minimum wage. They did this against the well-funded opposition big business groups. As a result, over 1.7 million workers will be getting a raise.

These victories didn’t come out of nowhere. Increasing grassroots pressure and demonstrations by low-wage workers around the country—especially employees of fast-food chains and Walmart—helped bring the issue to the attention of the wider public. Polls show that most Americans, Democrats and Republicans, support an increase in the federal minimum wage.

Worker’s rights expanded in two states

In Massachusetts a ballot measure passed giving paid sick days to about million workers. In Montclair and Trenton, New Jersey, voters passed ballot initiatives expanding paid sick leave to food service, childcare, and home health care workers.

Fetal personhood proposals defeated in Colorado and North Dakota

Planned Parenthood and its allies organized to beat back this extreme assault on women’s rights.

California voters say no to the prison-industrial-complex 

More than two-thirds of California voters approved revising some of the lowest-level petty crimes from felonies to misdemeanors. This was a major victory against the prison-industrial complex and the growing number of private corporations that now run state prisons and support legislation to incarcerate as many people as possible. Money for incarceration is money drained away from schools and other social needs.

Gun reform beats the NRA

Washington state voters defeated the National Rifle Association by approving a ballot measure to impose criminal background checks on people who purchase firearms online or at gun shows.

Soda tax passes in Berkeley California

Three quarters of voters in Berkeley, California adopted a tax on soda and sugary drinks to combat diabetes and other illness. The American Beverage Association spent $2.1 million to oppose the soda tax through full-page newspaper ads, television and radio spots, and telephone and door-to-door canvassing.

The “yes” campaign spent only $273,000, primarily on door-to-door canvassing and phone calls.

Public employees win in Arizona

Arizona voters defeated Proposition 487, put on the ballot by business and Republican interest groups to undermine public employee pensions.

Pot legalized in Oregon and Washington, DC

In Oregon, voters legalized recreational use of marijuana, joining Washington state and Colorado, who adopted similar measures in 2012. In Washington, DC, voters passed a measure to let residents grow cannabis indoors and possess as much as two ounces.

The post Midterms: Democratic Party didn’t give people a reason to vote appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Senator Elizabeth Warren has another brilliant and truly progressive proposal. It would help the more than 68 million Americans (25% of all households) who use payday loan services because they have no checking or savings account, and also help shore up the struggling U.S. Postal Service.

It’s not Warren’s idea, but one that she and others—even within the Obama administration—have championed for a long time. This past week, she penned an op-ed on Huffington Post on the heels of a new report by the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) of the U.S. Postal Service. The report explores the possibility of the USPS offering basic banking services—bill paying, check cashing, savings accounts, debit cards and even simple loans—to its customers. The Inspector General weighing in on postal banking moves it from a good idea being tossed around and going nowhere to a significant policy proposal.

Warren writes:

With post offices and postal workers already on the ground, USPS could partner with banks to make a critical difference for millions of Americans who don’t have basic banking services because there are almost no banks or bank branches in their neighborhoods.

Families rely on financial services more than ever, but those who need them most—who struggle to make ends meet—too often must contend with sky-high interest rates and tricks and traps buried in the fine print of their loan products.

In a more lengthy article in the New Republic, David Dayen writes that post offices could deliver the same services as payday loan operations at a 90 percent discount, saving the average household over $2,000 a year in interest and fees and provide the struggling USPS with $8.9 billion in annual profits.

Instead of partnering with predatory lenders, banks could partner with the USPS on a public option, not beholden to shareholder demands, which would treat customers more fairly. As the report says, “the Postal Service could greatly complement banks’ offerings,” and in turn help drive out of business some of the most crooked companies in America, while promoting savings and expanding credit for the poor.

The Post office is well positioned to deliver simple financial services. After all, it once was a bank. Dayen explains:

The postal service, with public trust earned over generations and 35,000 outlets in the best real estate in practically every city in America (in fact, the report notes, 59 percent of all post offices are in “bank deserts” with only one bank branch or less), is well-positioned to deliver simple financial services. In fact, it did for over 50 years. Begun in 1911, the Postal Savings System allowed Americans to deposit cash with certain branch post offices, at 2 percent interest. By 1947, the system held deposits for over four million customers. Though dismantled in 1967 (after banks offered higher interest rates and eroded its market share), the post office continues to issue domestic and international money orders, including $22.4 billion worth in 2011, as well as prepaid debit cards through a deal with American Express.

The OIG proposal is an amazing win-win proposition. It would shore up the postal service under attack by corporations and politicians who want to privatize postal services and it would save hundreds of thousands of jobs by stabilizing one of the biggest employers in the country. It would provide financial services to the poor and working poor giving them a better chance to get ahead. As Dayen says, “it’s classic inequality reducer.”

In his very thorough report, “Providing Non-Bank Financial Services for the Underserved” Inspector General David C. Williams makes the case that the USPS could potentially start providing banking services immediately without congressional approval. But there are significant political problems and hurdles to clear to make this happen, not the least of which is the current Postmaster General, Patrick Donahoe who, according Dayen, has not been open to innovative ideas that would save the post office and expand its services. Rather, he has concentrated on things like closing facilities, cutting staff, and raising rates. To get an idea of how bad Donahoe’s leadership is, read Ralph Nader’s 2012 “Letter to Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe—It’s Time to Resign.” The letter is co-signed by Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen, Judy Lear acting director of Gray Panthers, and other activists.

So far, no post office official has endorsed the IG report. Dayen thinks it’s time for President Obama to step in:

He’s been looking for something to show he can help improve the lives of ordinary Americans, regardless of Congress’ inaction. Here’s a perfect opening on an issue of equal access, of affordability, of saving an American institution. Sure, the banks will squawk: the chief counsel of the American Bankers Association has already pronounced himself “deeply concerned”—but as the IG report shows, they have no interest in serving this community. So surely that won’t stop the President from urging the USPS to take advantage of this lucrative and worthwhile option. Unless he values payday lenders and greedy middlemen more than the financial security of the Postal Service and millions of poor Americans.

Given Obama’s less than stellar record on helping the working poor, and given he owes his presidency to big banks, I will be surprised if he provides the leadership necessary to make this happen. I hope I’m wrong. Meanwhile, I’m betting on Elizabeth Warren. She ends her op ed with this:

The Postal Service is huge—employing more than a half million people—and its history is long and complicated. Any change will take time. But this is an issue I am going to spend a lot of time working on—and I hope my colleagues join me. We need innovative ways to create pathways for struggling families to build economic security, and this is an idea that falls in that category.

The post Elizabeth Warren: The post office could become a bank, replace payday lenders appeared first on Occasional Planet.

While browsing YouTube, I came across this video by Canadian environmentalist David Suzuki. He explains the concept of exponential growth and how it applies to the growth of world population.

OMG! Well, I had to explore this further. On to Wikipedia, the “World Population” entry, and an amazing collection of charts and graphs on population growth through time including projections for the future.

I chose the year 10,000 BC as a starting point. At that time only 1 million people inhabited the entire planet. Fast-forward 10,000 years to the year 1 AD, and the Earth’s population had “ballooned” to 2 million. As a point of comparison, the greater metro area of St. Louis, MO, the city where I live, has a population of 2.8 million.

Leaping ahead—way ahead—I chose my mother’s birth year, 1915, as the next milestone. No entry for 1915, but Wikipedia says in 1900, the world’s population was 1.65 billion. My mother died in 2009 at the age of 93. By 2010 the world’s population had reached 6.9 billion. On March 12, 2012, the United States Census Bureau estimated the world population had exceeded 7 billion.

Where do we go from here?

Environmentalists are warning we are doomed to a dangerous and ultimately suicidal population explosion beyond what the Earth can support. Can that be true? Let’s try another YouTube video.

This one is a BBC documentary on world population by Swedish professor of international health, Hans Rosling. The title, “Don’t Panic,” drew me in. Rosling made the film to specifically counteract the population doomsday predictions of Microsoft scientist Stephen Emmott. I won’t embed “Don’t Panic” here as it is about an hour long. But, click here if you want an amazing and informative presentation on the facts about the health, wealth and population of 200 countries over the last 200 years. Rosling has been dubbed the “Jedi master of data visualization,” because of the innovative animated graphics he uses to explain complex data.

Using projections from the UN Population Division, Rosling suggests that global population will indeed continue to grow dramatically, but will level off at about 11 billion by the end of the century. He admits we will have to face huge challenges, but that we have reason to hope—that the problems associated with such a huge increase are “surmountable.” “Don’t Panic” informs a mostly uninformed Western audience that many Third World countries have, for decades, been working to decrease birth rates while simultaneously providing better healthcare and reducing poverty.

From the  Telegraph’s review of Rosling’s documentary:

And we’d all better hope that [Rosling] is right. Because a near 50 per cent increase in global population by the end of the century is already a done deal. In the BBC programme, [he] explains that the mechanism that will power population growth on such a scale has already—and irreversibly—been put into motion, and to suggest that efforts should be made to limit its growth is to effectively propose a “holocaust” and prepare “the intellectual ground for killing people”. This is because of a phenomenon that Rosling describes as “Peak Child”.

Briefly put, the surge in the number of people on Earth isn’t any longer being caused by more people being born, but is because of those who are alive. There are now more children on the planet than ever (about two billion under the age of 15) but the global decline in birth rates means that the number has leveled off, and is not expected to increase. The reason the global population will continue to rise until around 2100 is because of a “demographic lag” and longer life expectancies.

As an example of the “Peak Child” phenomenon, Rosling uses modern-day Bangladesh, one of the most densely populated countries in the world. For decades, Bangladesh has made great efforts to educate its population about the benefits of smaller families and has provided free birth control. As a result, since 1972, the average number of children per woman has fallen dramatically from seven to a little over two. In fact, the world birth rate has dropped from an average of 6 per two adults in 1800 to 2 today. According to Rosling, it’s the worldwide drop in fertility rates that will save us.

The environmentalists have a very valid point—the Earth’s resources are limited. But, I agree with Rosling that the problems are surmountable. That is, if in the next century, the world moves away from capitalism to a more equitable and humane economic model, perhaps yet to be invented, that prioritizes the human needs of the many over profit making by a few. In such a new economic system, the belief, for example, that every human being deserves clean, safe, adequate housing would take precedence over the capitalist understanding of housing as a vehicle for investment and speculation. In other words, human use value has to trump exchange value. Democratically run, cooperative work places would supplant for-profit corporations, providing meaningful work and a living wage for everyone. If basic human needs are met first—and they can be—then our children, grandchildren and great grandchildren will inhabit a livable world. If we fail to grow beyond capitalism—a system that depends on unsustainable economic growth punctuated with boom and bust crises, funnels money to the top 1%, and drives the real doomsday scenario of climate change—then all bets are off.

The post Should we freak out about population growth? appeared first on Occasional Planet.

I’m not alone in being burned out on MSNBC.  The complaints vary from “there’s too much opinion and not enough news,” to “I’m tired of the shrill, manic delivery of MSNBC hosts like Rachel Maddow, Chris Hayes, and Melissa Harris-Perry.” Personally, I enjoy hyper-articulate, big-brained people, and I don’t mind opinion rather than straight news. And I admit that I have very much enjoyed some of their commentary. That said, I cut cable because I realized I had stopped watching MSNBC. Over the past year, I had gradually started getting all my news online and from more progressive sources. For me, the evening rehash of partisan politics wasn’t getting to the bottom of why the middle class has been, in Elizabeth Warren’s words, “hammered.”

Progressive vs. partisan news analysis

So, I started looking for progressive analysis—not partisan analysis but analysis from outside the system, from the left, such as it is. I now go to  Truthdig, Naked Capitalism, and Americablog for my news and opinion. I read  Ian Welsh, at ianwelsh.net and a variety of other left news commentary like Crooks and Liars, Firedoglake and Canada’s GlobalResearch . I still scan the New York Times and Huffington Post to keep up with headline news. But I don’t spend a lot of time there. I do read the Guardian, which unlike American corporate media companies has been guaranteed, by its owner, Scott Trust limited, financial and editorial independence in perpetuity.

I’m looking for news and opinion that questions, confronts, and exposes government institutions, politicians in both parties, and corporate entities that are at the source of the economic, environmental, educational, healthcare, military, and infrastructure problems we have today. It’s no mystery that the political/economic system we have is not working for the majority of Americans. Corporate media is a part of that system so, for me, it’s not really a reliable source for critique and analysis. At times good progressive reporting will leak through, but not often enough. And of course, progressive protests of all kinds against the political/economic system we have are rarely covered and often suppressed. Especially unwelcome are examples where people have taken their economic lives into their own hands in opposition to corporate or bank interests.

Liberal Democrats are afraid to be critical of Democrats, and especially of Obama, because they believe—against a mountain of evidence to the contrary—that Democrats are the party of ordinary Americans who are fighting the good fight against obstructionist Republicans. That’s the characterization you get on MSNBC. Yet, Democrats and Republicans are  co-architects of our problems. Barack Obama has backed policies friendly to Wall Street that have led to the worst growth in income inequality in the history of the country.

How elected representatives and government cause income inequality

Ian Welsh describes how government has caused the income gap we have today:

Be clear that distribution of goods and money in an economy is almost entirely unrelated to any ethical idea of merit or deservedness.  The bankers, amongst the best paid people in the world economy, destroyed far more money than they earned in the 00s, and yet are still paid billions of dollars in bonuses every year.  They receive the money they do because they had the power to make the government make them whole after they lost everything, then the power to make the government make them even richer than before.  They control a bundle of valuable rights from the state: the right to borrow at prime, the right to value assets to model (fantasy); the right to huge leverage; and the right lend, which is how money is actually created in our economy (aka. they can print money.)

This is why they’re rich: not because they produce net value: they destroy value; but because they have the power to make the government do what they want it to do and to make it not prosecute them when they break the laws, and even to change the laws so they can take even more money.

How corporate owned news limits debate

Noam Chomsky, in his book The Common Good, describes the role of corporate news outlets like MSNBC and CNN:

The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum.

The spectrum of acceptable opinion embraces banks, corporations, “free market” capitalism, the stock market, and the military industrial surveillance complex as fundamentally good, but in need of tweaking and regulation to make them all work better for everyone. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) is an example of a tweak to our still dysfunctional for-profit healthcare insurance system. Another is the watered down Dodd-Frank bill that failed to meaningfully reign in the reckless speculation on Wall Street or stem the growth of too-big-to-fail banks. The ACA crafted by Democrats and passed without a single Republican vote, and the toothless Dodd Frank bill passed by Democrats and Republicans, do not come close to delivering what the majority of people really need and want—single payer health care and an economic system that provides dignified work, safe housing and education for everyone. When Democratic senators, congressmen and a president allow themselves to be held captive by the rich and powerful, this is what you get.

The liberal corporate media usually lays all blame at the feet of Republican obstructionism. By doing so they conveniently avoid the long history of Democratic complicity in enacting destructive government policies that, first and foremost, like their Republican colleagues across the aisle, serve the wealthy and the powerful and wreak havoc on everyone else.  Republicans ethics are beyond the pale. Democrats use populist rhetoric to get elected but are in bed with big money.

What does the pope have to do with it?

Pope Francis recently shocked the world with his genuinely progressive comments. The pope’s pontificating on on the capitalist myth of trickle down economics and the “sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system” was a stunning blow for the wealthy and powerful who have always counted on the Vatican for support, and a a much needed refresher for a public that has forgotten what truly populist, progressive analysis sounds like.

 Just as the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” sets a clear limit in order to safeguard the value of human life, today we also have to say “thou shalt not” to an economy of exclusion and inequality. Such an economy kills.

. . . some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world. This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system. Meanwhile, the excluded are still waiting.

I encourage financial experts and political leaders to ponder the words of one of the sages of antiquity: “Not to share one’s wealth with the poor is to steal from them and to take away their livelihood. It is not our own goods which we hold, but theirs”. . . . A financial reform open to such ethical considerations would require a vigorous change of approach on the part of political leaders.

If Obama, the Democratic leadership and all Democratic senators and congressmen adopted a “vigorous change of approach,” they would be taking to the microphones on a daily basis, demanding Medicare for all,  calling for reigning in NSA surveillance and lowering student loan interest, or calling for raising the minimum wage and increasing social security benefits. After all, these policies are wildly popular with the electorate. With a few exceptions, like Bernie Sander, Alan Grayson and Elizabeth Warren, the lack of ethics and leadership in the Democratic Party has been the flip side of the coin of Republican obstructionism. But watching MSNBC, you wouldn’t know that.

The pope isn’t afraid to criticize American and European corporate controlled economic systems and the politicians and governments that support them, so why can’t the news media, including MSNBC, practice journalism as it should be practiced? That is, holding power to account in service to, and in defense of, the ordinary citizen.

What the world needs now is a deeper analysis of systemic problems that are threatening the United States and the world at large. And that means challenging the hold of the rich and powerful over our government. That reporting and analysis, in general, is not going to come from a media company owned by a large corporation.

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