GAZED

Author: wpusername4300

  • No Equality without Economic Justice

    No Equality without Economic Justice

    Why are people with the same economic interests so divided?  It’s not “economic anxiety”; a vote in Iowa is the equivalent of 5 California votes. The answer is grounded in American history spanning back 300 years when racial animosity was harnessed by elite landowners to destroy class solidarity and prevent rebellions. Divided, those with the same economic interests fell. This covert phenomenon rooted in the Reconstruction Era when the KKK emerged with lynchings because slaves were seen as competition to poor whites, culminated in major whole redistributions of wealth as experienced in the 1980s – through Nixon’s Southern strategy of white political realignment. Not much has changed as “economically anxious” coal-country Trump voters march on the streets chanting nazi mantras, call brown countries “sh*tholes,” and tell minorities to get out of ‘their’ countries. Convinced that it’s not the bipartisan iron triangle of excessive corporate influence, it’s not the crony oligarchy corrupting the democratic process running their economic prospects, it’s minorities as they’ve been indoctrinated. Thus, the white working class American votes out of resentment, against their best interests for the party of slavery, Jim Crow, and segregation (they realigned) that pretends to care about said coal-country. While Democrats offer condescending rhetoric worthy of the “East-coast lib” caricature, tokenism, and identity politics over economic justice.

    “If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt

    During the Reconstruction Era, freed slaves were given “40 acres and a mule,” the first policy offering economic justice to African Americans in the form of land redistribution. But racist sentiment did not end with the 13th Amendment. Poor, non-land owning white men saw these policies being enacted and subsequently emerged the KKK. Equality of opportunity felt like oppression. Slaves were seen as competition too poor whites, and they became Southern Democrats (or modern-day Republicans), instead of standing in solidarity with other poor blacks. This, in short, is the history of racial class division, the source of the 1980s Southern strategy, and the 2016 election-winning Trump strategy targeting minorities.

    What does all of this well-curated racism mean? A skyrocketing wealth gap where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer as they fight over Muslim bans and border walls aiming to keep brown people out. It’s not the “swamp” ruining my economic prospects, it’s minorities. It’s not my grades ruining my chances of getting into college, it’s minorities. In this alternative-reality all brown people are threats to the in-group, the Muslim ban which bans zero of the countries that have caused terrorism in the US nor the one that caused 9/11 because Trump has business ties there, is good because screw refugees that have never caused a terrorist attack in the U.S. in the last 30 years in the US. A $35 billion safety-blanket of a wall rendered useless by net negative illegal-immigration, the fact that immigrants have a lower crime rate than native-born Americans, and half of illegals fly here and overstay Visas (meaning they’ve already been vetted) is good because it’s a monumental ‘screw you’ to more brown people.

    These are the real identity politics – the politics of fear, the politics of alternative facts raised as a modern-day Southern strategy to keep whites voting against their best interest, to keep them voting for their only interest under the imagined threat of immigrants.

    Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s revelation stands tall, “If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.” And empty their pockets they have: with transfer of wealth tax cuts in the ‘80s were the poor were left behind and the top 1% saw their income triple, with the Bush tax cuts which raised unemployment to 6%, and finally the failing Kansas trickle-down experiment of 2012 which caused job growth and personal income to lag the US economy. Most recently the MAGA tax-cut which laid off almost 10,000 employees and closed 63 Walmart stores. They’ll vote against job creation, against the Obamacare they’re on because “Obama,” and vote for cuts to their own Social Security.Who knew corporate tax cuts didn’t increase demand/a need for more hiring?

    While Republican appeals to racism drew aggrieved racists to the GOP, the Democratic party ensured they had no incentive to leave. By pushing for their interpretation of social justice without economic reform, they’ve shed the New Deal-style agenda which successfully gave birth to a middle-class and watched it flourish. Democrats don’t have actual solutions to address the causes of poverty, the causes of bankruptcy-inducing healthcare, of widening inequality – they have band-aids. They simply pad problems with government money instead of offering progressive solutions directly addressing the root cause, as well as corruption. Instead of cracking down on price gouging and regulating the oil industry more strictly, they increase LIHEAP funding. Instead of Regulating pharmaceutical prices to lower the cost of American medicine, they throw money at each other. It’s all thanks to the unbreakable, bipartisan, iron triangle. Both parties take money from the same donors and pretend to care about working-class interests.

    This, again, is not to say racists crawled to a white supremacist, historically incompetent Fuhrer because of economic anxiety of course. The Democratic party is still light years better than Republicans in terms of the working class (which isn’t saying much.)

    Pretending like the Midwest was driven to such extremes because of “jobs” is complete bullcrap. Are the 95% of Democrat-voting black people wealthy elites? Are there are no working class democrats desperate for jobs? Are they not desperate for jobs? There are, but they’re not driven by racism – much less driven by racism to ‘empty their pockets’ for the exploited rich whose wealth will ‘trickle-down.’ Low income minorities did not elect Trump, “cultural” anxiety did. In fact, “views on immigration, Muslims drove white voters to Trump.”

    As many tokens hiding corporatist, centrist agendas the Democrats posture for 2020 with the promise of change, there can be no equality without economic justice. The same people who gave us brought you winning Hillary are now pushing big Wall Street money recipients who decline to prosecute fraudsters like Munich for 1,000 cases of mortgage fraud, Senators who vote against lower pharmaceutical prices. They’re doing this and expecting something other than a rehashing of the 2016 election.

    After the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Martin Luther King Jr. felt that the de-jure fight wasn’t over. The Reverend held a radical bastion of economic justice as the ultimate goal, and in the weeks before his assassination, he was advocating around an economic message for all people.  “Now our struggle is for genuine equality, which means economic equality. For we know that it isn’t enough to integrate lunch counters. What does it profit a man to be able to eat at an integrated lunch counter if he doesn’t earn enough money to buy a hamburger and a cup of coffee?”He went on to start the Poor People’s Campaign in 1967 which demanded a progressive agenda based on jobs and higher wages.

    Although he went further in his calls for universal basic income, his message did not stray from the core truth – a man isn’t free if he can’t afford the basic necessities to survive. As Anatole France is quoted, “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.”

    The only way to lower partisan divide is through an economic message; no gimmicks, no pure opposition campaigns, and no identity politics. To stand behind ideas the majority of Americans support. Fifty-eight percent  of Americans support single-payer, 88% oppose cuts to Social security, voters in red states want Medicaid expanded, 68% think the wealthy pay too little taxes, 64% support regulating greenhouse gas emissions,58%  support breaking up big banks, 63% support raising the minimum wage to $15.00, 53% support labor union law, 64% think corporations don’t pay their fair share.

  • Trump’s History of Racism, Before Decrying Immigration from “Shithole Countries”

    Trump’s History of Racism, Before Decrying Immigration from “Shithole Countries”

    “Being president doesn’t change who you are. It reveals who you are.” As if it was possible to hit a new low, Donald Trump has managed it with a series of brazenly racist comments bypassing previous dog-whistles. In a meeting this past Thursday, as confirmed by Sen. Durbin and Sen. Graham, he expressed the desire to keep immigrants from “sh*thole countries” from entering the U.S. in favor of majority white countries “like Norway.” He did not lament the factual poverty and destabilization in those countries, he said he doesn’t want those people here. The hoods are off all over America and in the White House. Trump showed us who he was during the candidacy from the moment he launched a tirade against all Mexican immigrants by calling them rapists and drug traffickers, and America bought it. After all, he was telling it as every Fox News watching racist was thinking. Every racist whose huddled ancestors came to the U.S. poor, not speaking a word of English, and escaping persecution and/or a “sh*thole country.” Then genociding Native Americans and stealing their land of course. In fact, under  Trump’s new immigration rule, his own grandfather likely wouldn’t have gotten in.

    With a constant barrage of racist antics and political scandal, he’s created a desensitized space where derisively speaking about minorities is okay as long as skin color isn’t mentioned. The unconstitutional Muslim ban is okay because Muslim isn’t a race – nevermind that the countries on the ban are majority Arab. Wanting to ban immigrants from the entire continent of Africa and country of Haiti because they’re “sh*tholes” is fine because he didn’t say “Africans” or “Haitians.” Disparaging a continent full of black people is fine because much Africa suffers from poverty and corruption. Thus, saying Africans “live in huts” and Haitians “have aids” becomes alright.

    We’ve devolved to the point where explicitly stereotyping entire ethnic groups and countries full of them is acceptable, and not the dictionary definition of racism. Where wanting to prevent entire ethnic groups from entering the United States in favor of white Nordic countries is okay because the brown countries are ‘poor.’ Donald Trump didn’t state the fact that they were poor and destabilized, he decried letting people of color emigrating from them into the U.S. – and there lies the obvious problem.

    Arrogantly mocking their poverty and corruption like a sociopath isn’t so funny when it’s the natural result of centuries of Western colonialism and exploitation. It’s only hypocritical. America is a nation built by poor, non-English speaking masses escaping poverty or persecution. With the current administration’s agenda favoring wealthy, highly-educated, English-speaking immigrants, white-Americans would not be here nor would Trump. Their ancestors were “poor huddled masses yearning to be free.” Wealthy people moving here continuing their way of life didn’t create the famous “American Dream.” It was the poor Irish immigrants escaping famine and building the Transatlantic railroad alongside Chinese immigrants, it was the German immigrants who faced the same discrimination and hate crimes Latino immigrants do this century. During WWI they couldn’t even speak their language in schools, their last names were changed, and German Americans were beaten. The country has collectively revisioned history and said, “I’ve got mine, screw you.”

    Sixty-three million of us warned America. This egregious comment was not a new display of his character, he’s 71 years old. When you elect a notorious racist you get one. Here’s a history of his racist ideology, both verbatim, and through his heinous actions.

    -Defended actual neo-nazis: Trump defended killer Charlottesville nazis to David Duke and Richard Spencer’s delight, calling them “fine people” when it was a self-described neo-nazi march with people hailing Hitler and yelling “Jews will not replace us”

    -Sued twice by DOJ for housing discrimination against blacks

    -Pardoned Arpaio, a barbaric, convicted racial profiler who ran 120 degree concentration camps and let a prisoner give birth in handcuffs

    -Called Mexicans (NOT illegals) rapists and drug traffickers. “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”

    -Launched birtherism against the first black President lasting over 8 years; continues to obsessively legislate in spite of Obama.

    -Called Puerto Ricans going through a major natural disaster lazy. When people had no power, no fuel, no refrigeration, only one hospital operating, took eight days to adequately respond after relentlessly attacking the mayor & calling its people lazy.

    -He’s accused “millions” of voting illegally (and pointlessly?)  in blue states and when cited for proof pointed to the fact that Latino Americans were voting.

    –Endorsed child molestor Roy Moore who said America was great during slavery

    -He thinks all black people are on welfare: When meeting with the Congressional Black Caucus last Spring a member said regarding welfarerecipientss that “Not all,,are black,” and he replied “Really? Then what are they?”

    -Echoes white supremacist narratives:

    -“They’re trying to take away our history, our heritage.” He’s from New York and his family was not in the U.S. during the Civil War. He doesn’t mean Southern “heritage,” he means white.

    –Believes in gene superiority

    -Appointed a band of blatant white supremacists to his cabinet of deplorables:

    –Gorka, a member of a nazi organization in Hungary called Vitezi Rend

    –Sessions – a man too racist to pass a Reagan-era confirmation hearing in the South as Attorney General

    -Hired Stephen Miller, a white supremacist, friend of Richard Spencer, who wrote regularly for the Duke Chronicle, where he denied systemic racism, called multiculturalism “segregation,” He’s railed against immigrants from non-European countries “not assimilating.” In high school he complained about the school’s celebration of Cinco De Mayo, and criticized a visit by a Muslim leader, and tormented Spanish speakers, telling them to go back to their countries.

    Trump on Jewish people:

    –Used the dog-whistle “America First.” A WWII-era anti-Semitic, xenophobic mantra used to enforce 1940s quota laws against Jews during their ongoing persecution in Germany.

    -Shuttered the State Department’s anti-Semitism monitoring office

    -Deliberately took out the word “Jew” from Holocaust Remembrance Day remarks

    On Blacks:

    ” Black guys counting my money! I hate it.”

    -”I think that the guy is lazy. And it’s probably not his fault because laziness is a trait in blacks. It really is, I believe that. It’s not something they can control.”

    -He thinks all black people are on welfare: When meeting with the Congressional Black Caucus last Spring a member said regarding welfare recipients that “Not all…are black,” and he replied “Really? Then what are they?”

    -His pitch for the black vote to a crowd full of white people: “What do you have to lose by trying something new like Trump? What do you have to lose?You live in your poverty, your schools are no good, you have no jobs, 58 percent of your youth is unemployed. What the hell do you have to lose?”

    –“Sadly, because President Obama has done such a poor job as president, you won’t see another black president for generations!”

    –Retweeted neo-nazi false crime statistic reports saying that white victims are murdered by black people 81% of the time.

    On Muslims:

    -Has called for tracking them using a database, shutting down mosques, and banning Muslims altogether from entering the country.

    On Mexicans:

    -“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”

    –“If you go to Fusion, you will see a story: About 80% of the women coming in, you know who owns Fusion? Univision! Go to Fusion and pick up the stories of rape. It’s unbelievable when you look at what’s going on. So all I’m doing is telling the truth,” Trump said. Lemon replied that the press stories are about women being raped, but not about criminals coming across the border. “Well, somebody’s doing the raping, Don! I mean somebody’s doing it! Who’s doing the raping? Who’s doing the raping?” he asked.

    – Called 1996 Latina Miss Universe “Miss Housekeeping”

    -Said federal Judge Fonzalo Curiel who was presiding over a Trump University lawsuit was unqualified to do his job because of an “inherent conflict of interest” due to his Mexican heritage

    –Wants to repeal the 14th amendment

    He’s not only wrong, he’s projecting. He claims Mexicans are rapists, but he has multiple lawsuits from women claiming sexual assault and multiple tapes where he proudly details his predatory behavior leading to assault have surfaced. He pushes the narrative of the tax-avoiding illegal, yet they pay more taxes than he does! 

    Legislative Nativism and Xenophobia: How Trump’s Curbing Legal Immigration

    Even more significant is his legislative nativism – he’s enacting white supremacist dreams of a white utopia and closing off immigration for minorities. While ending legal protections for Mexicans, Indians, Haitians, Salvadorans and more.  Which will cripple the economy. He’s deporting 200,000 Salvadorans who have been legally allowed to remain in the U.S. for over a decade back to the violence they escaped.  He’s deporting thousands of people who should be granted refugee status – who fled from the MS-13 lethal gang violence and sexual assault. To the “sh*thole” he doesn’t want any kind of immigration from.  Trump is a complete and utter disgrace to humanity. This is not how the leader of the free-world acts.

    The Sociopath in Chief is also ending a program allowing 59,000 Haitian refugees to live in the U.S.

    He’s curbing H-1B extensions which will lead to the deportation of thousands of skilled workers and a negative impact on the U.S. economy. Five-hundred thousand to 750,000 Indian visa holders could be kicked out. All because of his “hire American” plan which erroneously contends increased immigration takes jobs away from Americans.

    And such a view shows a lack of basic economic literacy.

    So much for Trump not being a racist xenophobe who only hates illegals, it turns out he doesn’t want legal immigration either. Like his white supremacist base, he wants a white ethnostate and is trying to ethnically engineer the flow of immigrants into this country.

    Proposing a skills-based immigration system thereby ending ‘chain immigration.’ This cuts back on family immigration by 85%, legal immigration by 50% over 10 years. Favoring ” applicants who can speak English, financially support themselves and their families and demonstrate skills that will contribute to our economy” per Nosferatu Stephen Miller. Limiting family-based migration to spouses and children.

    Thus far, he’s rescinded DACA, a program protecting 800,000 young, tax-paying professionals, army members, and college students with a 91% employment rate and no felonies or misdemeanors. (No it has never been ruled unconstitutional by any courts. It’s actually a lawful exercise of prosecutorial discretion.) Leaving these economically contributing individuals in legal limbo.

    America became a world power by allowing poor, non-English speaking, unskilled workers with nothing but an American Dream. With the current administration’s agenda favoring wealthy, highly-educated, English-speaking immigrants, white-Americans would not be here nor would Trump. Their ancestors were “poor huddled masses yearning to be free.” Wealthy people moving here continuing their way of life didn’t create the famous “American Dream.” It was the poor Irish immigrants escaping famine and building the Transatlantic railroad alongside Chinese immigrants, it was the German immigrants who faced the same discrimination and hate crimes Latino immigrants do this century. During WWI they couldn’t even speak their language in schools, their last names were changed, and German Americans were beaten. The country has collectively revisioned history and said, “I’ve got mine, screw you.”

    The “Hire American” agenda propagates the myth that immigrants “take jobs away”

    These decisions function under the guise of the multi-billionaire professional con-artist putting disenchanted coal-miners to work.  Nevermind that we are already at “full employment with more job openings than at any point in history.”   The idea that there is a fixed amount of jobs available falls under the “lump of labor fallacy.”  As population increases so does total employment; foreign workers do not crowd-out employment.

    They aren’t taking anyone’s jobs away. The US economy is actually seeking 6.2 million jobs at a time when general unemployment is at a 16-year low, which is even lower among college-educated.  The majority of Dreamers are students, 17 percent pursue an advanced degree., and they tend to be employed in higher-skilled jobs. Among this college educated group the market is higher than full employment, so the talking-point that low-skilled white and black workers are being squeezed out of an economy higher than full-employment is yet another lie.  The idea that unemployed native-born Americans are substitutes for these highly-skilled jobs is xenophobic propaganda.

    Furthermore, curbing H-1B extensions will create a skilled worker shortage in America in core fields like science and technology. ” I mean those workers were brought in because of a shortage to begin with. To hire an immigrant US employers must first prove a lack of qualified or willing workers in the US” No amount of “MAGA” idiots without scientific or tech training will replace them. No amount of economically anxious MAGAs will gain a job by deporting 700,000 skilled people.

    While Trump and his “made in China” company continues to bring in foreign workers to Mar-A-Lago on his 92 $48 million golf trips courtesy of tax-payers, we must recall the voice of old conservatism:

    “Miss Liberty, like the many millions she’s welcomed to these shores, is of foreign birth.” -President Reagan

  • DACA Myths Debunked

    DACA Myths Debunked

    The Trump administration has expressed a desire to kick out 800,000 young, tax-paying professionals, army members, and college students with a 91% employment rate and no felonies or misdemeanors by rescinding DACA,  to fulfill a racist utopia. To kick out young adults who had no jurisdiction over coming here. While ignoring the facts: DACA has not been ruled unconstitutional by any courts, there’s zero correlation between illegal immigrants and surging crime, and the Dreamers provide an economic boost to a market already at full employment all while not being eligible for welfare or student aid. There’s clearly no plausible reason to end DACA in the name of national or economic security. But it’s easy to see why President “fine people on both sides” might want to do so after years of degrading, heinous, and slanderous language directed towards Latinos. 

    The 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program allowed for people brought here illegally as children to receive a renewable two-year deference from deportation and obtain a work permit. 800,000 Dreamers. It was the culmination of 15 years of legal limbo after the 2001 DREAM Act – aiming to provide a path to full citizenship for those brought to the US illegally as children – failed to pass in the 2007 House. Then years later, failed to pass in the 2010 Senate. The executive action did not provide amnesty, immunity, or even a path to citizenship – yet Trump has launched an attack against it fueled solely by blatant xenophobic falsehoods reminiscent of 1940s Germany propaganda.

    Dreamers – The Model Minority (by Requirement)

    They are children who had no jurisdiction over their parents’ actions. They did not break the law. They must have been younger than 31 on June 15, 2012, and come when they were younger than 16, living here since 2007. In fact, 80% of Dreamers arrived when they were less than 10 years old.

    Immigration-status aside, they are law-abiding inhabitants.  To be eligible to the status, they must not have “convicted of a felony, significant misdemeanor or three other misdemeanors, or otherwise pose a threat to national security.”

    Much of the fear-mongering and sensationalist debate on the right stems from the belief that all immigrants are bringing a crime wave when there is no data showing such a correlation.

    Illegal immigrants do not increase crime.

    Data only shows the opposite despite Sessions’ claims that it “contributed to a surge of unaccompanied minors on the southern border that yielded terrible humanitarian consequences.”:

    Illegal immigrants overall, do not reside in the US illegally because they are criminals in fear of vetting, they have been vetted – an estimated 66% overstay Visas. (Which to be technical, is not a criminal offense.) Contrary to popular belief, there’s also no path to citizenship much less a “line.”

    Illegal immigrants have lower incarceration rates and crime rates than native-born Americans and native-White Americans. So people fleeing violence from economically stagnant countries actually come to the US in search of a better life for their families – shocking!

    Illegal immigrants are 44 percent less likely to be incarcerated than natives.

    Accordingly, “1.53 percent of all native-born adults (18-54) are incarcerated, compared with 0.85 percent of illegal immigrants in the same age range – including those incarcerated for immigration crimes and in immigration detention.”  That number drops to 0.50 percent when excluding them.  Furthermore, White, native-born Americans are incarcerated at a rate of 0.90 percent, illegal immigrants of every race and ethnicity are still less likely to be incarcerated, at a rate of 0.85 percent. Additionally, American cities with more illegal immigrants do not have a higher crime rate.

    Constitutionality of DACA

    Like any good propaganda minister, the Attorney General of the United States, Jeff Sessions, used a series of easily fact-checkable lies about DACA to justify rescinding it.

    First and foremost, it is not “unilateral executive amnesty,” it does not provide amnesty or even a path to citizenship.  “Immigration amnesty is a blanket pardon to all the members of a defined class, such as the kind Ronald Reagan introduced in 1986. “

    He went on the say that DACA was an “unconstitutional exercise of authority.” That is another brazen lie. Arguments that it’s not constitutional are based on the United States v. Texas ruling on the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents, not DACA. To which the court split its decision.

    Although over 100 law school professors proclaim that it’s a “lawful exercise of prosecutorial discretion,” no court ruling on the constitutionality of the program has been issued on the matter. Presenting such a statement as fact shows that the real fake-news is coming from inside the (White) House.

    They do not “steal jobs,” they drive economic growth.

    Sessions has claimed that DACA, “denied jobs to hundreds of thousands of Americans by allowing those jobs to go to illegal aliens.”

    There is again zero evidence pointing to that. And such a viewpoint shows a lack of basic economic literacy.

    Nevermind that we are already at “full employment with more job openings than at any point in history.” The idea that there is a fixed amount of jobs available falls under the “lump of labor fallacy.”  As population increases so does total employment; foreign workers do not crowd-out employment.

    They aren’t taking anyone’s jobs away. The US economy is actually seeking 6.2 million jobs  at a time when general unemployment is at a 16-year low, which is even lower among college-educated.  The majority of Dreamers are students, 17 percent pursue an advanced degree., and they tend to be employed in higher-skilled jobs. Among this college educated group the market is higher than full employment, so the talking-point that low-skilled white and black workers are being squeezed out of an economy higher than full-employment is yet another lie.  They idea that unemployed native-born Americans are substitutes for these highly-skilled jobs is xenophobic propaganda.

    We are at full employment and no one is being squeezed out of the job-market much less competing with 800,000 highly-skilled and educated Dreamers in it.

    DACA recipients actually fuel economic growth according to a myriad of studies. Again, this is essentially because high-skilled immigration does not crowd-out low-skilled native-workers nor compete with them, but only create new jobs and spending with their skills and education. In fact, within 5 years, ,GDP would shrink by $105 billion without DACA recipients. And by shrink by $380 billion without undocumented immigrants. Immigrants are also twice as likely than native-born Americans to start businesses.

    Evidently, there’s no plausible reason to end DACA in the name of national or economic security. Congress must stand up to protect these  800,000 young, tax-paying professionals, army members, and college students. They must protect these young adults with a 91% employment rate and no felonies or misdemeanor who had no jurisdiction over coming here.

    Congress must accept the facts: DACA has not been ruled unconstitutional by any courts it’s actually a lawful exercise of prosecutorial discretion. (It was not amnesty like Reagan’s policy.)  Recipients had no jurisdiction over breaking the law, and they are mandated to be law-abiding inhabitants for the status and pose zero threat to national security. Illegal immigrants overall have lower crime and incarceration rates than native-born Americans (1.53 to 0.85%.)

    Dreamers provide an economic boost to a market already at full employment all while not being eligible for welfare or student aid.  The number of US jobs are not fixed because as population increases so does employment (see the lump of labor fallacy.) Therefore, foreign workers overall do not crowd-out employment much less at a time when the US economy is at full employment seeking 6.2 million jobs (highest since 2001), much less within the majority student and highly skilled Dreamer population where the market is higher than full employment. (Those economically anxious unemployed Americans and coal-miners are not competing with 800,000 highly-skilled and educated young people.)

    This is a bipartisan issue worth fighting for. Supporting the protection of these exemplary young people who had no jurisdiction over coming here does not mean being for open borders or amnesty. It means having the basic human decency and logic to do what is both morally and economically right.

  • Bernie Sanders Myths Debunked

    Bernie Sanders Myths Debunked

    Nearing 2018, Clinton loyalists have taken it upon themselves to slander the most liked politician in America (who stands for the most statistically favorable issues.) Choosing to rehash the June 2016 primaries with slanderous narratives about Sanders while “Queen Hillary” drinks chardonnay in the woods, goes on a book blame tour, and turns down the Women’s Convention. All, has given rise to brazen North-Korea style propaganda outlets such as Verrit – the left’s own Breitbart. Thus, putting the proverbial nail in the coffin on a center-left already much indistinguishable from the right. At such a turbulent, pivotal time in American history post-election stress is best alleviated by pushing ‘Bernie tax-returns’ myths, not by fighting for healthcare, Puerto Rico, and real issues.

    This perpetual smear campaign against progressives by the elite is nothing new. The party establishment has been gatekeeping against populist insurrection since the late 1800’s, when unchecked capitalism-turned-cronyism had robber barons and party bosses annihilating the middle-class. To our own shrinking middle-class, rich TV pundits say, ‘don’t support your best interests.’ Debate-question-leaking media outlets do their best mental gymnastics to convince people single-payer tax hikes aren’t actually less expensive than premiums. They have them rallying against their best interests, and for corrupt politicians who oppose a $15 minimum wage (which doesn’t even match inflation), restoring Glass-Steagall, vote for interventionist regime change wars, and give secret speeches to Wall Street.

    It’s a cycle that will never break until politicians no longer have incentive to be beholden to anyone but their constituents. Just follow the money; corporations own politicians, Clinton-donors own the media, and undemocratic superdelegates are not a thing of the past. Nothing will change until the common factor is taken out of the equation and Citizens United is repealed. Until then, we’ve got to stand up for the truth and hold our representatives accountable. Which is why it’s important to fact-check the pettiest, most ludicrous claims from centrists.

    “Bernie made Hillary lose the election”

    Clintonites content that running a primary, opposition campaign.. against an opponent..in an election somehow made Hillary Clinton lose the general election. Among Russia, Barack Obama, Comey, sexism, self-hating women who voted “for the boys,” the Clinton-run media, voter suppression, the DNC which colluded with her, the Electoral College for not letting her know Wisconsin had electoral votes, Anthony Weiner who are also to blame of course. Pay no mind to the fact that a court conceded the DNC had the right to rig the 2016 primary against Sanders. Or that the left-wing media is run by Clinton Foundation donors, Hillary will find a way to victimize herself.

    The logic follows that Bernie Sanders made Queen Hillary look bad by comparison by contrasting her neo-liberal policies and history, with his own progressive history and vision for America. Bernie Sanders was a detriment to her in the general because he exhumed corruption in a broken system and factually outlined policy differences between the two candidates. Because logic. I mean he “promised ponies,” Clinton mocked, ponies which happen to be the where the numbers are at might I add.

    –Fifty-eight percent  of Americans support single-payer, 88% oppose cuts to Social Security, voters in red states want Medicaid expanded, 68% think the wealthy pay too little taxes, 64% support regulating greenhouse gas emissions,58%  support breaking up big banks, 63% support raising the minimum wage to $15.00, 53% support labor union law, 64% think corporations don’t pay their fair share.

    Did Donald Trump not face competition and relentless attacks from 16 other Republicans and the entire mainstream media? The entire idea that a primary candidate, running a campaign is to blame for a general election loss, is laughable, and drips of bitterness. Her loss was foreseeable to anyone who understands her polling numbers were scraping by within the margin of error. (While they showed Sanders handedly defeating Trump by at least 10 points.) To anyone who understands that centrism lost democrats sixty-nine House seats and 13 Senate seats. That (faux) populism won over a disenchanted electorate – many who had previously voted for Obama. Who else had a populist, working-class message and wasn’t absolutely lying about it? Sanders, who made economic inequality the platform of his campaign, would have obliterated policy-outline-free Trump. Centrism, is why she lost, not the only remaining beacon of honesty and integrity in Washington which her history pales in comparison to.

    Let’s blame the “damned emails” guy who wholeheartedly campaigned for her and has unwaveringly remained one of Trump’s toughest critics. Sadly, politics is not a gentleman’s nor an honest man’s sport.

    Gun Control

    Hillary propagated the narrative that Bernie Sanders ‘has been largely a very reliable supporter of the NRA,’ during the election. That is an outright lie. He has a D- rating from the NRA, supports increased gun control, wants instant background checks, and wants to eliminate the gun-show loophole. It’s literally on his website: he’s  “voted in favor of a nationwide ban on assault weapons, a nationwide ban on high-capacity magazines of over ten rounds, and nationwide expanded background checks that address unsafe loopholes.”

    Sanders has only been criticized for not blaming manufacturers for crimes committed with their product. Should car manufacturers be blamed if someone runs you over with their car? It a completely illogical attack. He’s voted for the Brady Bill when it finally called for instant background checks and supported it holding retailers who knowingly sold weapons to criminals accountable not when it punished those who sold weapons to those who passed background checks and later used them in crimes. It’s called nuance.

    Abortion

    He’s most recently been ostracized for endorsing Omaha mayoral candidate Heath Mello, a Democrat who co-sponsored a bill that requiring doctors to merely inform women of their right to an ultrasound prior to an abortion. Not mandating them to receive one. The Senator with a lifetime pro-choice record, who’s strong proponent of women’s healthcare – from contraceptives to voting no on restricting UN funding for population control policies – has been dubbed a misogynist republican. All for endorsing a Democratic candidate who supported a bill which inform women of their right to an ultrasound. The center-left is absolutely deranged.

    Bernie Bros Narrative

    Per Wikileaks, during the Democratic primary the Clinton campaign coordinated with columnists using identity politics to undermine Bernie Sanders through fabricated race and gender narratives. See Hillary’s heinously condescending remarks on women who didn’t vote for her because their “fathers and husbands and boyfriends and male employers not to vote for “the girl.” How sadly out of touch. She still can’t grapple with the fact that she lost to one of the most disliked candidates in history because she herself was one of the most disliked candidates in history.

    Data Shows High Favorability from Minorities Towards Bernie and Decreasing Favorability Against Democrats:

    This entire idea that leftists are nothing but straight white males is also a fabricated narrative attempting to whitewash the millions like us. In a leap of logic, it labors to label a diverse movement as ‘racist’ for being “too white” completely ignoring the real numbers. On top of remaining the most popular politician in America across the polling board (from Harvard to Fox), he is viewed favorably by 73% of African-American voters, and 68% of Hispanics. These are trajectionary election winning numbers. Furthermore, the data often shows these groups choosing that they “don’t know enough to rate,” which hits the nail on the head on why Bernie lost against the name-brand Clinton political

    Machine. All while surveys show a 38% favorability with the Democratic party across the board and “fewer black women saying that the Democratic Party ‘best represents’ their interests.”

    The mere need for debunking shows the extensive mental devastation the corporatist mainstream media has left behind.

    Could it be that economic inequality is decimating the middle-class as the wealth gap grows between minorities and Caucasian workers? African American women earn 64 cents and Hispanic women 55 cents for every dollar made by a white male. Despite what pundits might say, brown people are smart enough to think for themselves. They’re seeing past the corporatist Democrats identity-politics-entrenched bromides, and looking for real economic justice and the undertaking of corruption.

    Paid propagandists try as they might, to convince us tokenism is a measure of progressiveness while their candidates sell us wars, bail out banks, vote against lowering pharmaceutical prices, and decline to prosecute mortgage fraud criminals. This is their version of social justice. True equality, as democratic socialist Martin Luther King Jr. advocated, requires economic equality, which Democrats no longer pretend to address. (Per the ongoing DNC progressive purge.)

    “He Hasn’t Accomplished Anything”

    The center left loves pushing the soundbyte that Bernie was not an effective legislator. Nevermind that he was christened the “amendment king” from 1995-2007 when he “passed 17 amendments by a recorded roll call vote — more than any other member in the House.” Or that in the current Congress, he ranks fourth in the number of roll call amendments passed.

    Of course, that pales in comparison to Hillary’s tremendous Iraq war and its subsequent hundreds of thousands child casualties. Or her great feat in making Honduras the murder capital of the world after her 2009 Honduran coup d’état.

    Tax Returns

    This is the laziest attack of them all. Bernie released his tax returns in April 2016 and they showed he made just $205,000 in income. According to all his financial disclosures he’s one of the poorest people in Congress. Calls for his tax returns only happened after the Sanders campaign called on her to release her secret Wall Street speech transcripts. I’m not even sure what the angle is in this attack. Hillary has made $13 million in Wall Street speeches but let’s attack the guy making $205,000 a year.

    The power of these relentless attacks crumbles against Sanders consistent fight for the majority of Americans – even those who’ve fallen victim to centrist propaganda. They’ve chosen to ostracize him and purge progressives from the DNC because as Sanders put it back in May, “They would rather go down with the Titanic so long as they have first-class seats.” The reason Democrats don’t mind losing political clout by ostracizing his base and his widely favorable ideas, is because it’s their duty to protect the interests of their campaign financiers.

    If they want to win, they must reject centrism which doesn’t win anymore as evidenced by the 2016 election. (Did Trump win by pivoting?) They must wholly embrace progressive policies (which is is where the electorate numbers are at), policies with majority support that will even court the most deep-red Trump counties. Democrats must embrace the fact that the parties have been moving apart for the last 40 years, and few and fewer moderates get elected. Centrism failed Democrats for the past 8 years, and Bernie-style-politics is the dying party’s last hope. Bernie Sanders now has higher favorability ratings than Hillary Clinton among her own voters for crying out loud.

  • Trickle-Down Economics Never Worked

    Trickle-Down Economics Never Worked

    Time and time again, history has proven our economy to be better under democratic presidents and, thus Keynesian economic policy. It’s no mystery as to why republican Congresses have been responsible for the last four major economic crisis in the: 1930s, 1970s, 2001, and 2008. Supply-side economics simply doesn’t work in non-Stagflation conditions. As it turns out, lower income tax rates for the wealthy and an increased tax burden for the lower classes doesn’t deliver to middle-class Americans – the driving force behind the economy with the largest MPC.

    The phrase “trickle-down” is a misnomer which obfuscates the dire effects the economic policy’s implementation has had on our US economy throughout history. From tripling the national debt, skyrocketing income inequality by solely serving as a transfer of wealth to the top 1% while the middle-class is left behind, and causing a deep recession in 1982 with an unemployment rate of 10.8%. To the Bush tax cuts which raised unemployment to 6%, and finally the failing Kansas trickle-down experiment of 2012 which caused job growth and personal income to lag the US economy. Logically, the President Trump thinks ‘lets do it all over again’ and bankrupt the US economy like one of his casinos by reducing corporate tax rates from 35 to 15 percent.

    Reaganomics is not effective at growing the economy – just lining the wealthy’s pockets. Yes, Reaganomics pulled the country out of a recession but only because it wasn’t just any recession – it was one marked by high inflation, and unemployment – aka ‘Stagflation.’ This occurs when aggregate supply goes down because there is a shortage of goods due to a supply shock which has caused cost-push inflation. Under such a double-whammy, supply-side economics is the only solution to restoring the economy back to equilibrium. It increases GDP without increasing the price level. However, Reagan’s failure was adding a detrimental twist to supply-side by combining tax cuts for the wealthy with big spending.

    Image result for stagflation graph

    But we haven’t experienced such a situation since the ‘70s therefore this economic policy should in way be looked at as precedent or a success story of economic prosperity – it wasn’t and never has been, not for the 99%.

    Under our current conditions where aggregate supply exceeds demand, demand-side economics should be enacted to push demand even further to full employment. Although we’re already pretty close, more growth can’t hurt us to the point where we’re needing contractionary policy yet. It’s proven successful with the past three democratic presidents, but it’s important to look back at what doesn’t work and why first.

    Although Ronald Reagan did end the left-over Stagflation, it’s by no means proof supply-side is the superior fiscal tool in boosting the US economy. Reaganomics as expansionary fiscal policy simply doesn’t work. As mentioned, it only works during periods of Stagflation to pull the country out of crisis but it does not propel tremendous growth or meet any of Republicans’ promises.

    President Reagan’s tax cuts coupled with increased spending in the 1980s turned out to be a disaster. He cut the top tax rate from 70% to 28%, the corporate tax rate from 46-40%, while increase government spending by 2.5% per year, thereby tripling the national debt ($997 billion-$2.85 trillion in 1989.) By not just cutting taxes and lowering spending to run surplus, he created a domino effect of financial crisis. The deficit skyrocketed (because expenditures exceeded revenue by far) which led to inflationary problems such as high interest rates and subsequent low consumer purchasing power. This sparked a recession in 1981 and 1982 with an unemployment rate of 10.8%. High interest rates made the value of a dollar rise and exports decreased.The market eventually balanced itself out, but there’s no shadow of a doubt Reagan’s brand of supply side had dire effects – especially on the middle class.

    As the consumerist 80s appeared to be outwardly flourishing as a nation, the middle-class trailed behind as income inequality worsened. This was a natural effect of cutting taxes for the wealthy and not for the majority of Americans who happen to have the highest marginal propensity to consume. Economic prosperity trickled up – as the transfer of wealth tax cut was designed to do – and the top 1% saw their income triple.

    Why doesn’t the middle-class benefit as promised – why didn’t wealth “trickle-down?” Well because corporations don’t increase hiring or invest more. Tax-dodging corporations such as Verizon, Exxon-Mobil, AT&T had job growth of less than 1% since 2008, compared to 6% for the private sector as a whole, and slashed hundreds of thousands of jobs.

    Who knew corporate tax cuts didn’t increase demand and therefore a need for more hiring? It’s astounding how Americans have been tricked into ignoring the basic rules of supply and demand to support the biggest scam. Corporations only hire people when increased demand requires it – when consumption by the middle-class increases, not when they receive massive tax cuts. No amount of tax cuts will increase demand for their goods.

    Not only aren’t corporate tax cuts stimulating the economy, but top tax bracket ones aren’t either. As Gordon Gekko explained, the wealthiest earners have a low marginal propensity to consume, they spend 5-10% of their earnings, while the middle and lower classes spend 100-110% of theirs because they have the highest velocity of money/MPC.

    The real growth-drivers in America should be the ones receiving tax cuts to increase demand, GDP, and actually incentivize (force) businesses to hire more people. By focusing on policies which allow working and middle-class Americans to have more spending money and increasing human capital through a focus on education we can drive economic growth through the roof. And that vision is precisely what Democratic economic policies are centered around – a vision which has proven time and time again to work.

    Not only have Keynesian policies been effective at pulling us out of recessions caused by republicans, but by every important measure, our nation’s economic performance after their implementation outpaces that of the early 1980s.

    Image result for average yearly job growth under presidents

    Bill Clinton managed to become the most successful in terms of economics, out of the past six presidents by increasing taxes by about 8% on the top 5% of households in 1993. Following that, our country gained a surplus of $236 million, cut unemployment in half, and experienced 7 years of vast growth. Of course, this was only possible with a decrease in federal spending. Something that worked then because of the existing inflationary gap which he had to combat by decreasing aggregate demand.

    Despite all of this, Wall Street savior Trump wants a rehashing of 1982, of the Bush tax cuts which increased unemployment to 6%, and of the Kansas trickle-down failure.  An experiment in wealth redistribution to the wealthy which left the state with an unsustainable billion-dollar deficit, withered services, and general lagging growth rates after taxes were slashed tremendously and business income taxes were completely eliminated. The tax-dodging  Con-Artist-in-Chief wants Kansas but on $35 billion dollar border-wall steroids. All while “eliminating” the $19 trillion national debt of course. By slashing the corporate tax rate from 35 to 15 percent he’ll cost the government $2.4 trillion over a decade. How’s that for conservative fiscal policy?

    It’s clear that Reaganomics does not work as expansionary fiscal policy and is detrimental to the middle class. A scam that has been packaged as nation-wide prosperity which has many believing giving the rich more money to save is going to somehow increase their economic prospects. Because logic. We haven’t experienced Stagflation since the 1970s but let’s give corporations a tax break because somehow that’s supposed to increase aggregate demand, therefore hiring, and GDP growth fueled by consumerism. Oh wait, that’s what Keynesian policy does.We are to ignore history and ignore basic laws of supply and demand, and that the only way to gracefull employment, is by stimulating demand.

  • How Conservatives Have Bastardized the Meaning of Patriotism

    How Conservatives Have Bastardized the Meaning of Patriotism

    “When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.”

    The Declaration of Independence, Statue of Liberty, Constitution, and general rule of law, are the new Communist flags to Russian flag-wielding, conservative, self-proclaimed “patriots.” In the past year, we’ve seen the political right launch a zealous campaign against American founding values – characterized by their attack on symbolic Americana, to our founding document. Epitomized by “would anyone care if he colluded” Fox News – practically state-television. Soon enough, the American flag itself will be “liberal propaganda” because it’s anti-Confederacy. We’ve seen the “patriots” who called Obama a “tyrant” and and traitor proudly support the curtailment of their own freedoms and rights to spite a brown man, and liberals. Modern-day conservatism truly has no grounding philosophy past affronting the other side of the aisle.

    A most shocking display of this, has been the egregious comments unabashed Fox News anchors have made – adversary to any rule of law – in order to defend President Trump.

    -“Technically the president cannot obstruct justice.”

    –“Even if somebody does suffer from a mental illness, that doesn’t invoke the 25th amendment.”

    –If the trump campaign communicated with and asked Russia to release hacked emails “is that a crime?”

    – “Even if the trump campaign did collude with Russia it’s not a crime”

    -“Would you even care if he was guilty?”

    -“The president can probably pardon himself.”

    -Grand juries are “an undemocratic face” (after calling for one for Clinton)

    –Gingrich calls Mueller worst of the “deep state” after praising his “impeccable” honesty and integrity

    -Jesse Watters: “ A lot of people wish President Trump was a dictator.”

    Birthers who called Obama a “tyrant,” a criminal, and a “dictator” that enacted many “unconstitutional” laws, now think that a treasonous cretin is above the law by virtue of his skin color. Never mind that archaic piece of parchment, never mind our amendments (except the 2nd of course!), or Article III Section 3, it’s all right, if you’re all white.

    Only in 2017 can the Constitutionalist party call themselves a patriot, attack the Statue of Liberty and be triggered by Declaration of Independence in the same breath. They lashed out on Twitter against NPR for spreading leftist “propaganda” attacks against the President after they literally just tweeted the document.  Why is anything patriotic taken as a slight to Trump?
    Well, because deep inside they know their President is the quintessential antithesis of our founding values.

    This all started with the proliferation of the “alt-right,” a misnomer for self-proclaimed white supremacist internet trolls,  around election time. A group with no founding values past affronting liberals which overtook  the conservative party. Take this for example –  as soon as nationwide conversation was sparked about racism and its legacy, white Americans felt like the shoe fit and instead of rejecting racism, lashed out against “SJW’s” and embraced it wholly, using every racial epithet and nasty stereotype in the book, thereby confirming the termed “social justice warrior’s” narrative. Epitomized by Fox News’ anchor Lou Dobbs’ poll:

    “Is your week better because dimms and globalists are having a lousy week?”

    As long as liberals are “whining,” they’ll poetically cheer Trump’s policies -which wouldn’t have blown by in a “tyrannical” Obama administration – into America’s collective demise.  They’ll cheer as they’re stripped of their health care (as long as it doesn’t have the word Obama in it) and cheer as Florida is underwater because “take that globalists!” and Trump “represents the citizens of Pittsburgh.” (Which he lost.) They’ll cheer as he wastes $63 million in taxpayer money to spend 34% of his time at Trump properties, as he fills the swamp with the monsters who caused the 2008 financial crisis, as he fights over and over to uninsure 24 million and rolls back Dodd-Frank literally to help his “friends” and gut Medicaid which many rely on. As as he fails to bring “jobs back,” gives companies million-dollar tax cuts anyway, then simply takes credit for Obama’s “fake unemployment numbers.”  As Mexico won’t pay for his “transparent” border wall, pollutes our water, and as he makes “yhuggge” slashes to education funding to keep Americans stupid and voting red.

    No one won in this election, so why are they so zealously rallying behind him/his agenda which solely serves the 1%? Because none of it matters as long they can stick it to minorities and Obama while they’re at it.

    “If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.” – Lyndon B. Johnson

    The President has done just that – played pure identity politics while he cons the American people. From calling Mexicans rapists (even though there is zero correlation between increased immigration and crime and immigrants have a lower crime rate than natives), to defending white supremacists, calling them “very fine people” to David Duke’s delight, to the Muslim ban (which bans zero of the countries that have caused terrorism in the US nor the one that caused 9/11 because Trump has business ties there),  to pardoning Arpaio, to proposing a  nativist legal immigration bill which echoes “white genocide” narratives from the alt-right,

    to wanting to remove white supremacists from the homeland terror watch list, to defunding groups protecting against white supremacists, and shuttering the State Department’s anti-Semitism monitoring office.

    He’s accused “millions” of voting illegally (and pointlessly?) in blue states and when cited for proof pointed to the fact that Latino Americans were voting. He’s rolling out a voter suppression commission with plans to purge voters. Has dog-whistled plenty against Jews when he deliberately took out the word “jew” from planned holocaust remarks on Holocaust Remembrance day and used the phrase “America First,” a WWII era antisemitic, xenophobic mantra which was used to enforce quota laws against Jews during their ongoing persecution in Germany.

    From healthcare to internet privacy they’ll happily vote away their rights and freedoms to spite a black man. Obama was gonna put them in “FEMA camps,” and enact a police state. Now that Trump is busy encouraging police brutality by telling officers to “rough up” suspects, pardoning convicted racial profilers and barbarians who ran concentration camps and hold the 4th amendment in absolute contempt, and militarizing local police, conservatives cheer. No self-awareness or subtleness at all. It’s no surprise, our Birther in Chief, like his supporters, is obsessed with Obama and erasing his legacy, even the most bipartisan pieces of legislation. Whether it takes unwinding healthy school lunch regulations, scrapping protections for endangered whales, rolling back girls’ education programs, anti-water pollution regulations, consumer protections, and taking away the ability for the elderly to sue nursing homes. European diplomats have confirmed this quoted saying that he will ask, “Did Obama approve this?’ And if the answer is affirmative, he will say: ‘We don’t.’ He won’t even want to listen to the arguments or have a debate. He is obsessed with Obama.”

    They don’t care about our democratic institutions – Trump’s repeatedly attacked our checks and balances system calling it “obstructionist”  – lambasting GOP senators in Twitter tirades for not treating him as a dictator, calling for a change in senate rules after failing at the hands of his own incompetence, gone after federal judges on their race for doing their job, and finally fired former FBI director James Comey for investigating him as he admitted on live television. The Bill of Rights-touting party also holds the First Amendment in contempt – Trump’s called it the “enemy of the American people” like any good fascist does in attempt to make his word the only truth. Even going as far as proposing locking up reporters to Comey. They also want to do away with the 14th and 17th amendments but god forbid we do background checks for people with mental illnesses.

    These faux patriots clearly do not care about “law and order,” they care about protecting white supremacy. The law does not apply for Trump and it cannot protect minority Americans – per the rejoicing of Arpaio’s pardon. They feel above the law by virtue of skin color. Impeachment proceedings would already be happening if Obama went after the free press for reporting his presidency, repeatedly violated the Emoluments Clause, wasted $63 million on golfing and trips to Margo-lago (where he buys access to the presidency) through taxpayer money & bankrupted the Secret Service with his trips, sold arms to saudis, attacks checks and balances & calls for changing senate rules like a “tyrant,” and obstructed justice.

    You cannot claim love for you country without respect for the law of the land and all that is wholly just. Conservatives can not cherry-pick our values and laws when it fits their narratives.

  • Trump Didn’t Just Embolden White Supremacists, He Sided with Them

    Trump offers a defense of white supremacists which injured nineteen and killed Heather Hayes at Charlottesville: “What about the alt-left that came charging at us?”

    The events in Charlottesville undeniably solidified what some knew and many denied – racism, moreover, nazi ideology is alive and well in America and President Trump was the awakening force. White supremacists groups rebranded as the virulent “alt-right” misnomer,  now emboldened by campaign and White House rhetoric, marched openly without their hoods, sporting nazi paraphernalia and spouting nazi slogans. The economic anxiety was practically oozing out of their angry faces as they terrorized university students at a prayer service over the removal of a treasonous vestige of slavery. This very economic anxiety culminated in the deaths of three people and injuries of 19, as police defended their hate speech.

    Coming right after the Trump administration removed white supremacists from the homeland terror watch list, and White House nazi-organization member Gorka, berated the media for criticizing white supremacists. Trump’s initial response to the events was an inadequate dog-whistle that played quite favorably to his base. The golden nail on a series of actions by Trump which emboldened white supremacists (that support him) to drop their figurative hoods and air their imagined grievances much  like Dylan Roof did. Since the events, he’s gone past sending racial dog-whistles to white supremacists, practically retracting his condemnation of them by defending those “fine people”, siding with their beliefs, comparing George Washington to Robert E. Lee, and attacking the victims of Charlottesville. As the KKK dropped their hoods, the President of the United States dropped any pretense of a moral authority,, any pretense of not being a nefarious racist.

    This self-proclaimed white-supremacist crowd usually operates under the pseudonym “alt-right” – a badge of honor that gives young, anime-loving fascists with self-esteem issues, a false sense of self-worth by sole virtue of complexion. But that night they took to UVA, wielding tiki torches with their ideology on full display. Surrounding a small groups of students near the statue of Thomas Jefferson, whilst chanting racist & nazi slogans”:”jews will not replace us”,”our streets, whose streets”, ”blood and soil” ,”heil trump, “One people, one nation, end immigration, and ”Hitler did nothing wrong,”

    At one time, revealing the true meaning behind “white lives matter” after a white supremacist shouts back “black lives do not matter.”  As if the slogans weren’t dead-on-the-nose nazi enough, they also did  nazi salutes, wore nazi t-shirts and waved nazi flags.

    Charlottesville’s mayor wasn’t wrong, there is a direct line between Trump’s campaign and the white supremacy rally. The flirtatious relationship between nazis and Trump has been well documented since he was literally badgered to disavow the KKK back during the election when the KKK paper, The Crusader, endorsed Trump for president, and the US Nazi Party endorsed Trump’s decision to hire Bannon.

    These demonstrators in particular love him as well.  Terrorist Alex Fields for one, is a Trump supporting white supremacist who registered as a republican for the 2016 election, and also happens to be “infatuated with nazis” according to his old high school teacher. Going on to say “It was quite clear he had some really extreme views and maybe a little bit of anger behind them...Feeling, what’s the word I’m looking for, oppressed or persecuted. He really bought into this white supremacist thing. He was very big into Nazism. He really had a fondness for Adolf Hitler.”

    The general sea of disgruntled neckbeards sported MAGA hats, and many dressed as mammoth ass Trump at the golf-course. To top it all off, former grand wizard of the KKK, David Duke talked to reporters about how the  hate rally “fulfills the promises of Donald Trump.” They are no longer a fringe group on the socially inept corner of the internet, they clearly feel represented in the White House.

    Sadly, these beliefs spread it’s virulent wings past the White House seeped into our institutions. The dissonance between the way sign-wielding Black Lives Matter protestors are treated versus how belligerent assault-rifle carrying nazis are, is disconcerting to say the least.This demonstration was quickly declared an unlawful assembly and a state of emergency. Leading up to the 19 injured and 3 dead, were a series of heinous attacks against counter-protesters like Deandre Harris, who was beat by a white supremacist with a pipe. Moreover, 18 USC §2101(a)(3) makes it a federal crime to travel to another state to commit an act of violence in furtherance of a riot. Assault-rifle wielding militia showed up playing soldier yet strangely, no cops feared for their lives.

    Yet, police were nowhere to be found at the sites of violent conflict, they were busy surrounding and protecting the white supremacists’ first amendment right. They sat there inactive as the college town descended into violent chaos, assisting no injured people. No militarized police in riot gear, no National Guard, no rubber bullets, no tear gas, no arrests, nothing. When in Ferguson, militarized police arrested and shot people with rubber bullets for simply shouting “Black Lives Matter.” You see, the torches and assault rifles weren’t cigarillos or a wallet.

    Black Lives Matter grew from children getting shot in the streets, this uncivil, deadly rally was about the removal of a traitorous, vestige of slavery. Take that in, self-proclaimed white supremacists rioted, assaulted people, and killed a woman over a statue of slave-owning, traitorous Robert E. Lee. Tell me again how Confederacy symbols are about (revisionist) “Southern pride” when nazis will kill for them. Tell me again how Trump won over a woman with extensive, outlined economic plans because of “economic anxiety,” when these people salute him and a former KKK leader gushes over him.

    Their perceived white man plight serves as a means of justification by which to hate minorities. Their ‘civil rights movement’ is not about gaining any rights back, except for the right to strip others of theirs of course. It’s the 1940s all over again except we’re not the ones fighting nazi ideology. It’s not the “swamp” ruining my economic prospects, it’s minorities. It’s not my subpar grades ruining my chances of getting into college, it’s minorities. I didn’t hear these people yelling about tax-breaks or a living wage – they yelled “blood and soil” and “heil Trump.” In this alternative-reality all brown people are threats to the in-group, the Muslim ban which bans zero of the countries that have caused terrorism in the US nor the one that caused 9/11 because Trump has business ties there, is good because screw refugees that have never caused a terrorist attack in the last 30 years in the US. A $35 billion safety-blanket of a wall that is rendered useless by the fact that illegal immigration is net negative, immigrants have a lower crime rate than native-born Americans, and half of illegals fly here and overstay Visas (meaning they’ve already been vetted) is good because it’s a monumental ‘screw you’ to more brown people. As Stephen Hawking once said, “The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.”

    What is the real threat to them then? Equality. America not being all white. “When you’re accustomed to privilege, equality (of opportunity) feels like oppression.” Simply taking the boot off minorities backs was enough to send them on a violent frenzy. Imagine if they faced actual oppression.As a Twitter user succinctly put it:

    “Nobody is trying to legislate away their right to marry. Nobody is trying to make them buy insurance to pay for ‘male health care.’The law never enslaved their great-grandparents, robbed their grandparents imprisoned their parents, shot them when unarmed, there is no massive effort at the state and local level to disenfranchise them of the vote. There is no history of centuries of bad science devoted to ‘proving’ their intellectual inferiority. There is no travel ban on them because of their religion. There is no danger for them when they carry dangerous weaponry publicly. Their mothers aren’t being torn away by ICE troopers and sent away forever. They won’t be forced to leave the only country they ever knew.

    They are chanting ‘we will not be replaced.’ Replaced as … what? I’ll tell you.Replaced as the only voice in public discussions.Replaced as the only bodies in the public arena.
    Replaced as the only life that matters.THIS is ‘oppression’ of white Christians in this country. Christmas used to be the only holiday acknowledged, now it’s not.”

    Their imagined oppression and subsequent reactionary politics stem from demanding 1950s superiority for themselves, and second-class citizenry for others. Equality is oppression to them. This is their discrimination. The difference is WWII-era nazis were clear about their motives and didn’t operate under the guise of “oppression.”

    Despite all of this, there remain a few sympathizers to these nefarious creatures justifying the violence by detracting to “violent antifa leftists.” Guess who also argued he was standing up to “violent leftists”? Hitler did. Nazis could be beating someone to death, running people over but they’ll feel compelled to say a person resisting nazis are just as bad. Black people demanding equal protection under the law are now likened to white supremacists – who are the actual fascists – self-identifying ones. The Charlottesville terrorist was a member of Vanguard, a literal fascist alt-right group. These are the same people who proclaimed the Black Panthers and resisting Civil Rights activists to be “violent thugs” in the segregation era. Times have changed but attitudes haven’t. It can be labeled an act of terrorism by the Justice Department but they’ll continue pivoting with false equivalencies as they always do. These un-American detractors should come as no surprise as they’ve been slandering the Charlottesville victim, threatened to attack during a vigil, and are planning to send nazis to Heather Heyer’s funeral. Thus a movement seeking for law-enforcement to stop murdering black people is compared to one advocating an ethnic cleansing.

    None of this would be happening if they didn’t feel accepted by those in power, if they didn’t feel like “PC” barriers of common decency have been eradicated. The heinous proliferation of these groups of people can only be attributed to Trump. To this day, he continues to embolden them after botched condemnations established on racial dog-whistles from a man with a well-document racist history.

    After much pressure from politicians to denounce, the first unscripted time he condemned “hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides.” It’s enough to note that white supremacists felt vindicated saying, “We are now at war” & “Trump comments were good…no condemnation at all” and “He said he loves us all.” Then came the criticisms from many GOP politicians for his refusal to denounce it by name. This goes past the fact that he refused to denounce it by name when  he’s very specific and quick when he wants to criticize someone – Mika for a “facelift”, Meryl Streep, Hamilton, Nordstrom for not selling his daughter’s China-made bags, gold-star dad Khizir Khan, “housekeeper” Alicia Machado, Mcconnell, The Apprentice ratings, a Mexican judge, the “nazi” CIA, etc. This hypocrite’s refusal to utter the words “domestic radical white terrorism”, much less denounce the perpetrators of the attacks was chilling to watch. Imagine if Obama said there was many sides to the whole ISIS thing. He was quick to attack London’s mayor for terrorist attacks and attack Islam when terrorists ran vehicles into crowds in Europe. How was this any different?  They wore MAGA hats and sieged “heil Trump.” It’s odd that the only two groups he would not condemn are the Kremlin and white supremacists.

    What’s more, his “both-siding,” propagated alt-right false-equivalencies that victim blame and equate those resisting hate and violence to those perpetrating it. A WH official and aide double down:  “The President was condemning hatred, bigotry and violence from all sources and all sides.” And that groups “on both sides” showed up looking for trouble in Charlottesville.”

    Did civil rights protestors show up looking for trouble for daring to stand up to white supremacy? Were the Little Rock Nine bigots for standing up against bigotry? Was there violence on “both sides” during the Warsaw Ghetto uprising? Both sides did not kill people & injure nineteen, both sides don’t call for an ethnic cleansing, both sides don’t hate millions of Americans for their skin color. Only one side brought weapons and improvised with a vehicle as killing device that day. The ‘other side’ brought signs. It is an insult to tell sign-wielding non-hateful Americans to “unite” and “love” evil. He told us to hold hands with nazis and accept it.

    After being called out by many GOP lawmakers for not making a clear condemnation and normalizing such vile hatred with vague statements cheered by nazis, he went on to make a second condemnation (with a teleprompter.)  A belated condemnation that although “clear,” rang empty due the environmental pressure he made it under and of course the fact that he’s a white supremacist himself

    A condemnation that was practically completely retracted after going on a KKK-esque tirade at a press conference where he literally defended white supremacists, calling them “very fine people” and attacked protesters. And for a third time he was praised by nazis, this time David Duke said” Thank you President Trump for your honesty & courage to tell the truth about #Charlottesville & condemn the leftist terrorists in BLM/Antifa.” Leaving no question on whether he sided with nazis. There was no dog whistles this time. Trump verbally unleashed his fury on the made up “alt-left” that “came charging” with “clubs” defending the nazi-slogan-chanting nazis, which injured nineteen and killed a Heather Heyer, claiming they were “protesting very quietly, the taking down of the statue.” As if those videos of torch-wielding, assault-rifle carrying nazis chanting “blood and soil,” “heil Trump” and “Jews will not replace us were not plastered all over the internet. He went on to say the “alt-left” bared “some responsibility” for violence in Charlottesville.

    So the first “many sides,” nazi-sentiment-carrying statement still stands. Nonchalantly adding, “you can call it terrorism..you can call it whatever.” Imagine if Obama had said there were “many sides to the whole ISIS thing, you can call it terrorism, you can call it whatever.” Then, lamented the taking down of the Confederacy Robert E. Lee statue saying, “This week it’s Robert E. Lee…is it George Washington next week?” This craven, racist lunatic is completely off his meds and has openly sided with Confederacy-loving nazis using their false-equivalency “b-bbut the violent left” defense. There are no words. Today the President of the United States blamed both sides,for violent nazis which left many injured and three dead and defended their ideology. He said it was Heather Heyer’s fault for standing in front of that terrorist’s car.

    It looks like Richard “cleanse all the ethnics” Spencer was right to say that Trump “didn’t condemn[them],” and  “only a dumb person would take his statement seriously.”  

    We’ve never seen such an unambiguous racist tirade from Trump, but it should come as no surprise given his history. He was pressured into issuing a second phony statement after a history of not responding to Portland train stabbings, Kansas engineer shootings, and murder of 2nd Lt Collins.  As if the dog-whistles in his statement weren’t loud enough, he’s now “seriously” considering pardoning notorious racist criminal Joe Arpario, retweeted two alt-right accounts one a friend of richard spencer’s, another an alt-right activist who spread Pizzagate, and denounced the CEO of Merck, an African American man, before he forcefully denounced neo-nazis by name.

    To America, we warned you, all 63 million of us. The white supremacists have dropped their hoods and so has Trump. This was not a new display of his character, he’s 71 years old. When you elect a notorious racist you get one. He’s a birther that’s obsessed with Obama and erasing his legacy. He had to be shamed into denouncing the KKK. He refused to condemn alt-right racism because according to Bannon they, “Polled the race stuff and it doesn’t matter.”  He believes in gene superiority and has spouted eugenics bullcrap for decades as nazis do. His father was arrested at KKK rally in the 20s. He kept a Hitler book by his bedside. Called all Mexican immigrants “rapists” and drug traffickers. He was sued twice by the Justice Department for housing discrimination.He wants to pardon Joe Arpario, a former Arizona sheriff with criminal charges for his racist behavior. He called Alicia Machado a “housekeeper” for being Hispanic. His legal immigration bill is nativist legislation that echos “white genocide” narratives from The Daily Stormer circles and “One people, one nation, end immigration,” and “blood and soil.” Has retweeted neo-nazi false crime statistic reports saying that white victims are murdered by black people 81% of the time and  accuses blacks on twitter 3 times more of racism than whites.

    He removed white supremacists from the homeland terror watch list, defunded groups protecting against white supremacists, and shuttered the State Department’s anti-semitism monitoring office. He’s accused “millions” of voting illegally (and pointlessly?)  in blue states and when cited for proof pointed to the fact that Latino Americans were voting. He’s rolling out a voter suppression commission with plans to purge voters. Has dog-whistled plenty against Jews when he deliberately took out the word “jew” from planned holocaust remarks on Holocaust Remembrance day and used the phrase “America First,” a WWII era antisemetic, xenophobic mantra which was used to enforce quote laws against Jews during their ongoing persecution in Germany. (Anne Frank and her family were denied entry in the US as refugees.)

    And of course there’s his evil cabinet with the most deplorable, alt-right people carefully selected from every corner of the US. Gorka is a member of nazi organization in Hungary called Vitézi Rend.  Miller is a white supremacist, friend of Richard Spencer, who wrote regularly for the Duke Chronicle, where he denied systemic racism, called multiculturalism “segregation,” and railed against paid family leave, which he believed resulted in men being laid off.  At DCU meetings, Miller denounced multiculturalism and raved against immigrants from non-European countries “not assimilating.” In high school he complained about the school’s celebration of Cinco De Mayo, and criticized a visit by a Muslim leader, and tormented Spanish speakers, telling them to go back to their countries. Then there’s Leninist Bannon, the ex-CEO of Breitbart, a white supremacist website which largely founded the “alt-right” movement and also  wants to “destroy the state.’ Together they’re the three horsemen of the apocalypse.

    Trump showed us who he was clearly, and America accepted it. He isn’t racist by association, he isn’t just playing to his base, he genuinely holds these beliefs. Is America finally waking up? More GOP politicians are denouncing his comments, five CEOs have resigned from Trump’s manufacturing council, and three Confederate statues will be taken down. When election hacking, violent nazi rallies, mosques being bombed don’t worry Trump, but Americans voting do there must be a bipartisan resistance against such an ‘unpresidented’ display of evil and incompetence.

  • The Supreme Constitutionality of Affirmative Action

    The Supreme Constitutionality of Affirmative Action

    The politics of fear and hate has manipulated many Americans into feeling like the discriminated class because of perceived systemic ” reverse racism” — an ideology which has coincidentally proliferated since the civil-rights movement. White-Americans began feeling oppressed when African-Americans gained equal rights with the Brown v. Board ruling, Kennedy’s 1961 Executive Order, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Johnson’s 1965 Executive Order. Since minorities were granted equal opportunity and began attending schools and working alongside them. Thus, equality of opportunity (not outcome) – taking the boot off minorities’ backs – became a form of systemic oppression for whites. Minorities in the workplace and higher education became “unqualified” for the sake of being minorities, and the misconception that Affirmative Action operates on a quota system grew through factoids. Why the rise in this social attitude?

    This zealous, warped view of reality, built on a foundation of “alternative facts” and unadulterated racial spite, has infiltrated the White house, and it’s airing its perceived grievances. It’s time for the white establishment to regain power lost in systemic disenfranchisement, the Trump administration has proclaimed. As the DOJ plans to curtail Affirmative Action policies in universities, (sexual predator) Bill O’reilly’s revealing words about protecting the “white establishment” become reality.  

    https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/12/bill-oreilly-electoral-college-white-establishment

    “When you’re accustomed to privilege, equality (of opportunity) feels like oppression.”

    An important distinction detractors can’t seem to make is that Affirmative Action makes equality of outcome (literal equality) illegal. Therefore, simply removing the chains, lifting the boot of oppression which kept children from getting quality educations and blacks from even being in the same establishment as whites, was enough to send many white-Americans into an angry frenzy of victimhood.

    So what exactly is Affirmative Action and do these narratives hold any truth? First, I’d like to clarify that I’m a proponent for substituting current Affirmative Action policies with ones based on socioeconomic status, which is a more accurate and objective equalizer. As the law stands today, it attempts to counteract pre-collegiate educational discrepancies between races, but it’s a band-aid solution that doesn’t address the root cause of the problem –poverty. Poor students across the board underperform on standardized tests due to our property-based tax educational system which leaves many with a  subpar education. Students across America don’t start off the race to college at the same starting line. The temporary solution to account for this, while we work on fixing our educational achievement ranking, is to account for economic background.

    It was a product of its time period – when segregation existed and employers and admissions officers were part of the opposition – but like any ineffective relic of an antiquated time, it must be phased out. Not that racism isn’t rampant anymore, but economic status is a better equalizer which doesn’t condescendingly contend minorities are too incompetent to get in on their own merit. So that instead, it becomes, “we see you already started out from a disadvantaged place but have the potential to excel, you just need the opportunity to.” This would give grant many the equality of opportunity the public education system robbed them of.

    Yet there remains something even more condescending and insulting, deep-seated in white supremacist ideas is the idea that minorities in college are unqualified for the simple fact that they’re minorities.

    <blockquote class=”twitter-tweet” data-lang=”en”><p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”>In grad school, I had grown ass white folks saying they wish they had a &quot;diversity scholarship&quot; like me WHILE I WAS TUTORING THEM</p>&mdash; Vann R. Newkirk II (@fivefifths) <a href=”https://twitter.com/fivefifths/status/892727675089027074″>August 2, 2017</a></blockquote>

    <script async src=”//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js” charset=”utf-8″></script>

    <blockquote class=”twitter-tweet” data-lang=”en”><p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”>Do you know how many white people truly and genuinely believe that black people get to go to college for free?</p>&mdash; Ashley C. Ford (@iSmashFizzle) <a href=”https://twitter.com/iSmashFizzle/status/892557827675480064″>August 2, 2017</a></blockquote>

    <script async src=”//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js” charset=”utf-8″></script>

    Much like the “25% unemployment rate,” and a myriad of other outlandish Trump conspiracies, the myth of the “unqualified minority” being awarded spots while whites are discriminated or at a disadvantage in the college admissions process is quickly dismantled with statistics and facts. Not Facebook fake-news factoids with a racist frog as a background.

    Affirmative Action Myths Debunked

    Quotas Do Not Exist

    Foremost, Affirmative Action as it stands, does not, nor has it ever allowed quotas which have been ruled unconstitutional since 1978 (Regents of the University of California v. Bakke.) The Supreme Court & federal courts have repeatedly doubled-down, ruling in favor of Affirmative Action and against racial quotas or race-based point systems (2001 Johnson v. University of Georgia and 2003 Gratz v. Bollinger.) Claiming that in order to have a diverse student body “race can be used as a factor among many in a ‘holistic’ evaluation.” So no, schools are not filling themselves up with hoards of unqualified minorities to fill a “quota.” Much less are they snubbing white applicants in favor the mystical “unqualified minority,” as college population and scholarship recipient data (which I’ll get into later) shows.

    Affirmative Action is a program designed to increase diversity within organizations by considering their underrepresented status. A piece of legislation whose creation was imperative at a time when half of America was physically blocking the desegregation of schools, and other public organizations would not accept minorities no matter their qualifications. In President Kennedy’s words it “ensure[s] that applicants are employed, and employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin.” This executive order’s intent was to create equal opportunities for all qualified people at a time when equal rights didn’t even exist. It was later amended by Johnson’s Executive Order 11246 which prevented discrimination based on race, color, religion, and national origin by organizations which received federal contracts and subcontracts.

    Whites Are Not Discriminated, They Are Overrepresented in College Population and Scholarship Recipient Data

    Not only are there no quotas, nor was it created with the idea of accepting unqualified minorities rather as a response to employers and admissions officers in a freshly desegregated time, but whites are not being discriminated nor are they at a disadvantage in the application process.

    In admissions, whites are “overrepresented,” making up 62.3% of college students while 15-24-year-old Caucasians are only 59.7% of the population. For minorities the same age-group, it follows: Hispanic 12.5% and 18.3%, Black 14.3% and 15.6% other. Where is that systemic discrimination right-wing circles consistently and loudly decry?

    The white victimhood narrative becomes even more facepalm-worthy upon a quick look at scholarship recipients. White students “make up three-quarters of all private external scholarship recipients in four-year bachelor’s programs, almost two-thirds of all institutional grants and scholarship recipients, and over three-quarters of all merit-based grants and scholarships.” Despite making up 62% of the college student population. There’s zero evidence of white students being snubbed by unqualified minorities, nor minorities at all. Just like there’s zero evidence Trump’s voter fraud conspiracy, JFK conspiracy, and inauguration crowd size.

    What’s left after all the rhetoric crumbles is a foundation of vitriolic resentment built by rejected applicants – with subpar grades and numbers. It speaks to a culture of entitlement when numbers in the 25th percentile don’t get you in and you blame minorities. This victim complex was best exemplified by Farmer v. Ramsay where Farmer “held that his grades and test scores were higher than those grades and test scores of accepted black students.” The case was later dismissed by a federal judge who stated that Farmer’s rejection was not based on race, but on his academic ability.

    This faux victimhood complex is further corroborated by the infamous Fisher v. UT case where an low-performing white applicant thought Affirmative Action was to blame. Her grades and test scores were mediocre compared to those of the incoming class. Moreover, there were 42 white students with poorer performance who were accepted.

    There clearly is no institutional discrimination against white Americans in the college applications process yet “57 percent of all white people believe that discrimination against white people is as big a problem in America as discrimination against black people.” (Many citing Affirmative Action to support their grievances which I already debunked.) The mere fact that the belief in reverse racism began during the civil-rights movement truly proves that “when you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.” Trump is playing the race card to his base finely and they’re hearing the segregation-era-originating-dog-whistle loud and clear. The war on Affirmative Action is nothing more than a diversion away from the never-ending White House chaos; one based on nothing but politics of fear and more faux perceived threats no different than the $35 billion safety blanket or any other of his empty proposals.

  • Why Moving Left is the Only Democratic Winning Strategy

    Why Moving Left is the Only Democratic Winning Strategy

    The democratic party has been completely decimated. Democrats have moved too far right and suffered tremendous losses because of it. Sixty-nine, House seats gone, 13 Senate seats gone, and a White House gone. Nine-hundred-and-ten seats total gone under 8 years of a Democrat-controlled White House, handing over complete legislative power to the Tsar in chief. To any rational being, it’s evident that being a center-left corporatist politics no longer work, to mainstream media hacks, the solution  is to move further right or ”center.” Because to gain back your disenchanted voting base you have to further alienate them by fully and openly embracing neo-conservatism just to pander to right-wingers who would never vote blue in a million years. The solution to a low-voter turnout epidemic in the 2016 election is to adopt more of the things that made them stay home, as part of your campaign.  How is it possible that the party of Medicare cuts won the largest majority in Congress and state legislatures since 1928 when the majority of Americans support progressive policies?

    It’s simple, Democrats have abandoned the illusion of being the party of progress in favor of big corporate interests. They’re ignored where the numbers are at. Ignored the last saving grace and future of the democratic party. By doing so, gave way to a pseudo-fascist who secured the election via a populist facade and a party they’re united through by donor money.

    It’s impossible to talk about what works, without mentioning Bernie Sanders and the well-substantiated theory that he would’ve won the 2016 general election. Detractors obtusely point to the inane fact that he lost the primaries without considering the fact it was one, rigged, and two, general elections are a completely different ball-game. The electorate is another game, but I digress.

    The independent senator from Vermont with zero campaign money, name recognition, and a self-proclaimed (democratic) socialist label not only ran the most progressive campaign in US history but ran the most successful independent, grassroots campaigns in modern history.Against the brand-name Clinton machine at that. The crowds upwards of 20,000 were a sign of the changing political climate and rising populist revolt. His immense, insurgent success despite the political establishment’s relentless smear campaign was a physical manifestation of polls showing tremendous favorability towards progressive policies and a growing independent base. All of this ultimately forcing the DNC to to deliver the most progressive party platform in history.

    If democrats want to continue on an enlightened path and ditch their corporatist ways – which lead them to vote against legislation to make bankruptcy-inducing prescription drugs cheaper – they have to get with the winning team. The 2016 election showed people wanted populism and a platform for the working class, not career politicians grappling with being in the pockets of big money interests and trying to get reelected. Populism won no matter how much of a lie it turned out to be.

    Evidence that moving further left, or back left I should say, wins elections, vests in the unequivocal idea that Bernie would have won.

    Starting off with the obvious, let’s examine polling. Polls during the primary season consistently showed  Sanders handily defeating Trump by 10 points or more, while Clinton led him by only a few points. This is easy to fathom considering Trump secured the nomination when Hillary lost the three historically blue states that Bernie did well in during the primaries. Sanders beat Clinton in Wisconsin and Michigan. And the DNC chosen candidate lost Pennsylvania.  Narrow margins of eight-tenths, three-tenths, and 1.2% in these three Rust Belt states respectively, where Sanders’ message resonated, handed the election to Trump.

    What happened? These states usually swing blue. Well, working-class whites who previously voted for Obama were fed up with establishment politics and an unresponsive plutocracy in general so they voted for the only general election candidate who wasn’t bought by Wall Street and promised to remedy working-class struggles. Who else had an populist, working-class message and wasn’t absolutely lying about it? Sanders who made economic inequality the platform of his campaign would have obliterated policy-outline-free and economically illiterate Trump. But he won, and the country lost thanks to democrat hubris.

    Left-wing policies are were the numbers are at. And analyzing the historical loss is key to avoiding the same mistakes. Unfortunately, most pundits and strategists are tone-deaf and incapable of any self-reflection. So not only did Hillary fail to draw Obama voters, but she also experienced the downfalls of low-voter turnout that come with a centrist, No-Hope, purely opposition campaign. She won 55% of the vote, Obama 69% in 2012, seeing a decrease in support from black, Latino,  young voters and white women. The first female to win the nomination for president couldn’t even garner 50% support from white women against the most heinous sexual assaulter and unabashed misogynist. Garnering 88% of the black vote vs Obama’s 93% over Romney against a candidate who was sued twice by the DOJ for not renting to African Americans. And 65% Latinos vs 71% for Obama against a candidate who called them rapists. Most damaging, 54% millennial support, compared to obama’s 60%. Guess who draws millennials? Bernie Sanders and his progressive policies. In fact, more young people voted for Sanders than Clinton and Trump combined. Not to mention there wouldn’t have been a spoiler effect in Florida from disgruntled Bernie bros voting for kook Jill Stein if he would’ve been the nominee.

    An unspoken of conundrum  is the astounding number of left-wingers which crossed over, when Bill Clinton-voting republicans were expected to per a NYT exit poll. Funnily enough, not only would Bernie have not suffered this problem from progressive loyalists, but he would’ve made a robust number of republicans cross party lines.

    Sanders has also proven to be an effective, mediating, bipartisan voice, reaching across the aisle in CNN townhalls and making Trump voters ‘feel the bern.’ Time and time again, his centered economic message has reached coal country effectively with none of the ‘liberal east coast elite’ condescension.  Recall the West-Virginia townhall where a county of Trump voters thanked Bernie and clapped for raising taxes, Medicare for all, and free college. His working-class message would’ve obviously resonated with disgruntled Trump voters on it’s own, but his ability to effectively communicate across the aisle would’ve done numbers.

    There is a reason Sanders, who proudly calls himself a socialist, remains the –most popular politician in America per a Fox News poll.  There’s a reason he has a higher approval rating than any democrats or republicans on the hill. It’s not just his unwavering earnestness, pseudonym as the “amendment king,” or clean corporate-interest free record. It’s media obfuscated fact that the majority of the country supports progressive policies and the majority of the electorate identifies as independents.

    What’s so radical about ideas the majority of Americans support? Fifty-eight percent  of Americans support single-payer, 88% oppose cuts to Social security, voters in red states want medicaid expanded, 68% think the wealthy pay too little taxes, 64% support regulating greenhouse gas emissions,58%  support breaking up big banks, 63% support raising the minimum wage to $15.00, 53% support labor union law, 64% think corporations don’t pay their fair share.

    Sanders put it best back in May, “They would rather go down with the Titanic so long as they have first-class seats.” The reason Democrats don’t mind losing political clout by ostracizing him as a fringe socialist with “pie-in-the-sky” ideas, is because they’re gate-keeping for their wealthy interests. Reformers in the progressive era did get called loonies by party bosses & robber barons too for daring to dream big against corruption. Except now it happens within their own party.

    If Democrats want to win in 2018 they must reject centrism which doesn’t win anymore as evidenced by the 2016 election. (Did Trump win by pivoting?) They must wholly embrace progressive policies (which is is where the numbers are at), policies with majority support that will even court the most deep-red trump counties. Democrats must embrace the fact that the parties have been moving apart for the last 40 years, and few and fewer moderates get elected. Centrism failed democrats for the past 8 years, and Bernie’s platform is the dying party’s last hope.

  • The Bipartisan Case for Single-Payer

    The Bipartisan Case for Single-Payer

    It’s time to stop putting political ideology over the welfare of the country. In the world-power that is the United States, medical expenses have long been the number one cause of bankruptcy, with 78% of filers already having health-insurance. It should be considered a serious issue when inhabitants of the wealthiest country have to choose between death or bankruptcy, food or medicine. The healthcare industry has turned into a for-profit business, which despite having skyrocketing costs, leave us at 33rd place in life expectancy and outcomes that are not notably superior. To put it simply, Americans are paying more tax money per capita and getting less. Whether one thinks healthcare is a right or not, you should favor the most fiscally responsible choice, a choice which happens to save millions of Americans lives. And that is the core of a single-payer system. People must wake up and smell the ‘red-scare’ the GOP has been harping on us, they’re beholden to their corporate donors – not fiscal conservatism or what’s best for the country. Healthcare is a basic human need that’s been served as a privilege and run as a business, a business profiting off the very ill it’s meant to help.

    The hasty, botch-job Congress tried to pass as an Affordable Care Act replacement failed for a reason. That reason being that the culmination of 7 years of GOP temper-tantrums was a plan to uninsure 24 million, provide a $300 billion tax break for their swamp monsters, cut Medicaid, cut coverage,& raise premiums to a point where 64-year-old making $26,000 a year, would see a staggering $13,000 increase. Promoted by “policy wonks” who just literally have no idea how healthcare works. Per Satan himself, Sean Spicer: “I think if you’re an older man you can generally say that you’re not going to need maternity care.” And the party’s collective intellect/brain, Paul Ryan: “The whole idea of Obamacare is…the people who are healthy pay for the…sick. It’s not working, & that’s why it’s in a death spiral.” (It’s not.) A man who’s been dreaming about medicaid cuts since he was “drinking out of kegs.” A plan so villainous and nonsensical it made emergency services, maternity care, pediatric care, and even hospitalization optional for health insurance companies. Whenever you’re wondering why the government is doing something incredibly heinous, just follow the money. Ryan’s second largest campaign donation contributor is Blue Cross/Blue Shield. And he’s owned by billionaires in general, of course he’s pushing for their tax cuts, but I digress.

    Here’s where the numbers come in. Our healthcare spending crowns us with the title of the most expensive and ineffective system in the world. We currently spend $20 trillion a year; $15 trillion through insurance premiums and $5 trillion through co-pays. With the government spending an amount per capita far more than any other nations at $3.2 trillion a year, 17% of our GDP, $10,000 per person. That’s double what the United Kingdom spends, and more than Germany and Canada, for a whole lot of medically induced bankruptcy here.

    Contrary to popular American-exceptionalist-belief, this does not give us better healthcare:

    “Despite having the most expensive health care system, the United States ranks last overall among 11 industrialized countries on measures of health system quality, efficiency, access to care, equity, and healthy lives, according to a new Commonwealth Fund report.”

    In a study, 68% of adults 65+ were found to have at least two chronic conditions compared to 33% in the United Kingdom and 56% in Canada. We are also 33rd in life expectancy and our healthcare outcomes are “not notably superior.”

    At this point, you should be asking yourself, who’s to blame for this cost-ineffective system bringing us subpar care? The answer is – the for-profit industry sustained by insurance companies. We’ve created a broken system where the goal is maximizing profit. This inevitably leads to over-treatment, inflated prescription drug prices, and 30 million drastically uninsured. We’re quite literally profiting off illness. It’s a system where the same procedure is charged different amounts depending on your insurance.  For many, this industry pushes them into a house foreclosure or death. We’ve twisted the definition of ‘care’ into a greedy, bureaucratic one, antithetical to the reason why people become healthcare providers in the first place. Why are we okay with all of this? Why are we okay with investors and CEO’s making billions of off the most vulnerable in our society while they suffer then inevitably die?

    It’s not cost-effective, it’s not outcome effective. The only people this crony system benefits is insurance and pharmaceutical industry CEO’s. Not the people providing healthcare, not the people receiving it. The only reason it stays, is because money has corrupted the democratic process and congressmen are paid to gatekeep for this absolute failure of a system. Done in part by fear mongering about “socialism” to people who can’t even define socialism. It’s an endless circle of misinformation and corruption that’s ruining systems designed to better society.

    There’s also no “trickle-down” healthcare. Giving a $300 billion tax break to billionaires and hiking premiums is not the solution to such a disaster. Single-payer is. People dying, foreclosing their houses, and going bankrupt do have jobs (given that 78% of filers had health insurance.) We are the only industrialized nation that doesn’t guarantee healthcare to its people because we’re too busy running it like a business. Yes, other countries have higher taxes but that’s nothing more than a soundbite excuse considering a larger amount of ours go towards healthcare for inferior returns. Recall we spend more per capita for this failed system. And the majority of that goes straight to the insurance industry CEO’s pockets. Other countries cut out the middleman, and don’t spend more on healthcare but simply spend their money efficiently. Since when is that socialism? The United States must enact healthcare reform in this model, saving billions while doing it.

    Under single-payer, not only are millions no longer dying because they can’t afford cancer medication, but the citizenry reaps a myriad of economic benefits any fiscal conservative should get behind. We’d all be at townhalls demanding medicare for all already if it hadn’t been smeared by gate keeping corporate shills and their propaganda machines. Single payer saves us trillions, stimulates the economy by helping small businesses and causes salaries to increase – all through a small tax hike. Math is free from passion, so here it goes.

    As mentioned, we currently spend $20 trillion in healthcare costs – $6 trillion of that stemming from insurance costs, and $3.1 trillion in tax subsidies to employers. By eliminating the useless middleman insurance companies are through single-payer, we save $9 trillion total from that annual $20 trillion budget. There’s $11 trillion of costs left to take up that can then be covered by a 6.2% income-based premium from employers, and 2.2% income surtax from households. If we look to Bernie Sander’s plan, families of four making under $28,800 would see no such increase. So yes, taxes would increase for everyone else, but by paying a relatively small amount more in taxes for full-coverage healthcare, we’re all saving the enormous amount of $20 trillion we would otherwise pay. By enacting such a tax increase and eliminating the nonsensical insurance industry from the picture, Americans would save $9 trillion a year they would otherwise spend for premiums that don’t cover a papercut.

    The economic benefits are endless. An average middle-class family of four, making $50,000 a year, would go from paying $5,600 a year for healthcare to $466 under a 2.2% tax hike. Does that sound like socialism? Moreover, those who would normally be covered by employer-sponsored healthcare would see a salary increase because they’d no longer have it deducted from their paycheck.  Small businesses wouldn’t be forced to spend time and money negotiating coverage with insurance companies thus increasing productivity. It’s preventative – saving people from having to go through extended hospital visits and chronic illness treatments. Single payer would also slash costs imposed on hospitals by the industry, to the tune of $400 billion a year. Which is already “enough to cover all the uninsured.”

    Furthermore, all the problems under our current system, the shortcomings of the Affordable Care Act, bureaucratic nightmares, disappear. All medically necessary services are covered: doctor, hospital, preventive, emergency, long care, psychological, dental, vision, prescription drugs. People can choose their own provider. Priorities are no longer distorted and better quality of healthcare is provided no matter how much money you make. People would no longer be overtreated because they can pay more.

    In addition, single payer would reduce incentives to over treat and lower drug prices according to the PNHP.

    Healthcare is a human need, not a luxury. It’s utterly despicable and nonsensical for Americans to pay more per capita than any other nation for people to be led to medically induced bankruptcy, 27 million to be uninsured, 30 million underinsured, and to rank 33rd in life expectancy. To pay more and get less because the health insurance industry must butt in the middle of it so billionaires can line their pockets.

    It’s a sad state of affairs when math is a partisan issue, and ideology is more important than what’s best for the country. When in Canada single payer surpasses party lines and conservative prime ministers have made no effort to move in our disastrous direction, yet we can’t have an honest conversation about single payer. When $4 trillion wars aren’t pie in the sky, but properly using our tax system to reduce costs and improve care is. And most of all when the most expensive and cost-ineffective healthcare system in the world is kept around for the benefit of a few multi-billion dollar insurance companies. Healthcare doesn’t trickle down. Single payer is our only saving grace. We must join the rest of the developed world by guaranteeing people healthcare and stop profiting off the sick.