The Stink of the New Republican Revolution

From The Nation: the powerful who deplore working class people who aren’t working are the ones who are getting rid of the jobs those people used to rely on.

The last time jobs went away was in the 30s, and FDR created the New Deal to help save working people from disaster. Now Newt Gingrich is bragging how Trump and the Republicans are planning to rip out everything FDR put in place. Reported by ThinkProgress.

Paul Ryan, the pious, serious-looking Republican who rules Congress is the guy who will take the big knife to the safety net. What do you call someone who benefits from a program and then takes it away from other people who need it? Hypocrite. Yeah, Ryan is a class-A hypocrite. He plans to take away Social Security from working people but he grew up on Social Security benefits. The whole hypocritical story reported by Alternet.

Republicans find working people useful for gaining power but are happy to ditch them when it’s convenient–––and they find it’s always convenient to ditch working people. In this time of Christian devotion they seem to think Jesus preferred rich people and disliked the poor. I’m not sure which part of the New Testament this is drawn from but it certainly shapes all of GOP policy––Praise God! The New Republic summarizes the Republican Revised Standard Version of the New Testament.

Notice the bad smell coming from North Carolina? Is it the hog industry’s vast lakes of pig poop or is it the politics? The politics do stink in NC. The Republicans redrew the voting districts to confine majority Democrats into a permanent legislative minority. A ghetto project if there ever was one. But this year a Democrat defeated the Republican for the governorship. The legi answered by stripping the governor’s office of its staff and its powers. PeeeeeeYeeewwwww. A lot of the Republicans’ power (and money) comes from the hog industry. Maybe the pig should replace the noble elephant. Of course the pig is much nobler than what we are seeing in this failed state.

Bill Moyers on the stink of North Carolina's hog-manure Republicanism.

SLATE on the Republican coup in NC.

Meanwhile, in another failed state, Wisconsin…. Republican governor Scott Walker, the college dropout who is busily turning the University of Wisconsin from a premier university into a second rate one, is now reshaping all state bureaus and departments so all their information conforms to his belief that climate change is a Chinese hoax, and the environment does best when we fill the air and water with industrial waste.

UrbanMilwaukee on the Republican censoring of the state environmental scientists.

Inside Vs. Outside in the Democratic Party

An article in the Guardian is saying the insiders might be able to install Hillary Clinton as the Democratic nominee whether she wins the popular vote in the primaries or not.

If true, if this is really happening, it is dead wrong and defeatist. A recipe for disaster. A big opportunity thrown away.

If it's just a perception it is a perception that needs to be debunked by the DNC.

The party machinery must be there to empower the voters not dictate to them or to tip the scales.

If Hillary wins the nomination legitimately, by getting the votes, she will need the Bernie voters behind her in November, just as Bernie will need the Hillary voters if he is the nominee.

Hillary stepped gracefully aside in 2008 and joined the Obama administration in 2009. She respected the voters. I admire that. She has a great resumé. She has incredible political gifts. Women all over the country feel a woman president is long overdue, as do I. But it isn't cynical or anti-feminist to feel that Bernie might be a better candidate, that he represents a larger slice of the electorate, reaching outside the core of the party, perhaps reaching people in other parts of the country who have never voted for a Democrat. We don't know who has the stronger chance at winning. Voting in primaries is how these things are sorted out.

But Bernie is the real deal. He's shown that. An authentic champion of the interests of Americans who work for a living against the entrenched power of the much smaller group of Americans who own for a living. He has tapped into something powerful by speaking honestly and bravely without worrying about big donors or powerful people. He represents the outsider, which is most of us, against the insider, which Hillary Clinton most definitely is. Her inside game could mean she'd achieve more. Bernie's outside game could mean he'd be able to remake our politics, strengthen the progressive side by sheer force of numbers. He might set up an off-year wave of upsets to retake the Congress and statehouses.

I think the Bernie Sanders phenomenon represents an even stronger version of the wave that brought Obama into office: the sudden and enthusiastic involvement of millions of previously disengaged voters is something we’d be fools to throw away.

We have gotten into the habit in this country of engineering our politics, of prearranging the winners or (as in 2000) anointing someone who hasn’t won the popular vote, of the elders deciding what the children should have for dinner. The children have grown up and won’t have that.

It is true that the popular vote can be dangerous, as we see on the GOP side where it has been so divorced from our better angels and become pure ID, chasing a reality TV racist and sociopath, a billionaire who plays to our hatreds and our fears.

It is unfair and untrue to create a false equivalency between Bernie and Trump. They are both populists but Bernie is not one to rev up fascist emotions in the voting public. Trump is.

It's the GOP that divides us up by class and race and gender in order to control us.

The DNC should be the opposite of that.

I think it's time for both candidates to sit with the DNC and establish a process that will see fair play and a true expression of the will of the voters, an open nomination process without cronies, without the insider machinery, without resorting to the ill-named SuperDelegates.

I seem to remember this idea of Super Delegates emerged as a tool to prevent coups similar to the Lyndon LaRouche phenomenon which messed up our process in the 1980s. Bernie is not Lyndon LaRouche. He is tapping into decades of very legitimate anger and grievance but he is not exploiting these emotions to force the 12-tone scale onto classical orchestras or to create a right wing monster out of far flung parts of the Democratic Party. The Super Delegate is a relic. It echoes the Orwellian phrase about some pigs being more equal than others. It gives the party sages a feeling of involvement but the party is not about them, it is about the voters.

If the DNC is setting up a pre-ordained nomination they, and we, are throwing away an enormous wave of energy. New voters, fresh blood, fresh enthusiasm, a chance to build on what Barack Obama began in 2009, which the Republicans did their damnedest to block at every turn. The GOP seeks to divide us up and suppress the will of the voters. That is the sort of thing that makes voters cynical and disengaged. That is the GOP’s strategy. We shouldn’t be playing that hand too.

I will vote for whoever wins. Gladly. Hillary is a strong candidate. Bernie is a strong candidate. But if we split, we lose. We can't afford to lose this one.

Plutocrats Explain What's Wrong With Working Americans

Jeb Bush’s unending cascade of clueless tactless and gormless remarks rubbishing working people has been unfairly ignored because of Donald Trump’s far more impressive and much louder tsunami of clueless tactless and gormless remarks about every group that doesn’t include billionaires.

To even things out, here’s Jeb in his own words...

"Americans need to work longer hours” ~Jeb Bush (And some feedback from Americans, via the Guardian)

“The American economy needs more immigrants because they’re more fertile.” ~Jeb Bush (There’s been less feedback on this one, possibly because people are laughing...via the Washington Post)

That’s enough Bushism for one meal. There are commentators who are less gormless than Bush. Here are a few:

Robert Reich writes about the biggest myths about poverty.

Paul Krugman writes about the myth that Americans are “living on welfare”. You know, moochers.

Interesting fact: most of those lazy selfish folks living off food stamps are white and living in Republican districts. (Via a recent report in TIME magazine)

The whole Trickle Down Philosophy that has shaped post Reagan America has created enormous prosperity among a tiny percentage of very rich people ––you know, the people who own for a living––and an epidemic of anxiety among the rest of us who work for a living. (Courtesy of the Atlantic)

Even in the Magic Kingdom life is getting very mean. Before they fire you they ask you to please train the imported worker who will be replacing you. (From the New York Times)

In case you’ve bought the propaganda about Climate Change being a “good thing,” consider this (and it’s fairly big): Scientists are now predicting mass malnutrition because of the warming climate. (Via the Washington Post)

David Brooks, the Explainer of the Working Class

Today’s Fun Facts. How deeply unfair has the American system become? Read on.

Libertarianism is an invention of a mischievous corporate cabal. It’s about their liberty not yours. Read and Learn Here.

David Brooks: “Bernie Sanders doesn’t get the working class…” Priceless omniscience from Brooks can be enjoyed here.

And David Brooks understands the working class completely. Like God. Underneath that smooth expensively suited Brooksian facade is a true working man, complete with sweat, weariness, worry about paying the mortgage, fears about some venture capitalist looting his pension, concern about his kids’ lives being poorer than his own. Yeah, Brooks is the working man personified. He knows that the triumph of the working man will only come when he realizes his interests are best served by following instructions. People who work for a living are meant to serve the people who own for a living.

Here ends the Gospel.

Why democracy isn’t working has something to do with the antidemocratic unAmerican concentration of wealth and power. Learn more here.