July 25, 2014

That's nice n/t

July 20, 2014

Cuomo has a primary challenger from the left. Meet Zephyr Teachout

Teachout is a scholar who has studied the problem of political corruption. Her running mate Tim Wu is an attorney who formulated the argument that ISPs should be considered common carriers. They both favor public schools over charters and want to make it much easier to join a union.

What makes this race unusual is that Teachout and Wu have made addressing corporate power the centerpiece of their campaign. One of Teachout’s first specific policy proposals was to use New York government to block the Comcast-Time Warner merger in the state. This is more revolutionary than it looks. Everyone in New York City hates Time Warner, and telecommunications companies are among the least popular companies in the country. But when was the last time anyone got to vote against their cable company? That’s the chance Teachout and Wu want to give voters. They have also pledged to take on the perceived monopolistic power that Amazon is wielding over the publishing industry, which is centered in New York City. Their platform lists public financing of campaigns and caps on corporate contributions to political parties as critical mechanisms to root out corruption and run a government for the people.

They also represent perhaps the most strongly pro-labor ticket in the country, supporting striking workers at fast food joints, paid sick leave, a higher minimum wage and public schools over charter schools. Teachout even supports a freedom to unionize that is completely equal with any existing freedom to incorporate a business, which would be a truly monumental shift in labor relations. Paired with this is an aggressive plan for better infrastructure, such as better broadband, water, railroads, food distribution systems, as well as a ban on fracking for natural gas in New York state to preserve existing water and environmental assets....

After Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio threatened the unions that provide most of the Working Families Party funding, the WFP narrowly endorsed Cuomo. New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who, like de Blasio, describes himself as a stalwart ally of the progressive movement, also whipped for Cuomo. But Teachout then, in defiance of strong party pressure from bosses like de Blasio, decided to run on her own for the Democratic nomination.

De Blasio is routinely showered in praise by liberal magazines like The Nation. His election in New York City was trumpeted as representing a populist moment. But in whipping against Teachout, and then working aggressively behind the scenes against her campaign, de Blasio in particular has revealed himself as another ‘New Democrat’-style party boss. Just last week, the Working Families Party began attacking Wu on behalf of Cuomo and Hochul, indicating that progressive infrastructure is being inverted to help Wall Street-friendly and anti-immigrant politicians........

http://www.salon.com/2014/07/19/the_most_important_money_in_politics_race_this_year_why_lefty_tea_party_may_be_here/

They're also exposing alot of politicians who superficially appear progressive but never are in reality.

July 18, 2014

The Gulf of Tonkin Incident was the fraud that started the Viet Nam War

Good documentary about Daniel Ellsberg and the Gulf of Tonkin Incident.

http://www.pbs.org/pov/mostdangerousman/additional_video1.php#.U8l-nEBZqSp

People who fear the downing of this plane will be twisted to start a new war are not paranoid. They are most probably old enough to remember Tonkin, WMD in Iraq, or any number of other frauds that lead us into disaster.

But you can never interrupt a neocon in war freakout. Yes we do have neocon dems.

July 18, 2014

SF billboard threatens to replace workers with the ipad if 15 minimum wage is passed.

Surprise! Surprise! The effort is funded by Silicon Valley CEOs.

Its message — that minimum wage increases will lead to service workers being replaced by apps — is continued on an accompanying website — BadIdeaCA — which claims to be “holding activists accountable for minimum wage consequences.”

So who the hell pays for billboards threatening waitstaff with redundancy if they demand a living wage? A bit of digging and clicking reveals that the campaign is backed by Employment Policies Institute, the conservative lobbying group which regularly campaigns on behalf of the restaurant industry.

Followers of Pando’s Techtopus might remember the Institute for one of its key advisers, Kevin Murphy, aka “the man Silicon Valley’s CEOs turn to when they want to justify screwing workers“. As Mark Ames explained back in February…

[W]hen the heads of companies like Apple, Adobe, Google, Intel, Intuit, Microsoft and others, are called upon to explain why it’s okay to screw over employees—or their consumers—they know exactly who to call…

http://pando.com/2014/07/17/new-san-francisco-billboard-warns-workers-theyll-be-replaced-by-ipads-if-they-demand-a-fair-wage/

It is probable Silicon Valley jerks plan to do this irrespective of whether minimum wage is raised, since ipads are less demanding than even workers making the present minimum wage, but threats unfortunately work with many people. Fear is irrational.

One reply to this article says this will make workers aspire to improve themselves. That presumes many Silicon Valley execs started out as minimum wage workers. I am deeply skeptical about that.

July 17, 2014

Does anyone share Hillary's nostalgia for the cold war, other than the neocons?

I think she sounded like a neocon, in her Daily Show interview.

Quotes

HILLARY CLINTON: Well, that's really why this book is something that I put my heart and soul into, because we can't practice diplomacy and define our foreign policy as leaders talking to leaders anymore because that's not the way the world works. Exactly as you said. People are empowered from the bottom up. And what I found when I became secretary of state is that so many people in the world, especially young people, they have no memory of the United States liberating Europe and Asia, beating the Nazis, fighting the Cold War and winning. That was just ancient history. They didn't know the sacrifices that we had made and the values that motivated us to do it.

We have not been telling our story very well. We do have a great story. We are not perfect by any means, but we have a great story about human freedom, human rights, human opportunity, and let's get back to telling it to ourselves first and foremost and believing it about ourselves and then taking that around the world. That's what we should be standing for..........

Because we did a much better job telling the world who we were back in the Cold War. You know, it was a simpler job, to be fair. We had the Soviet Union. We had the United States. We had a big information effort. We sent talent, we sent all kinds of poets and novelists and rock stars. I remember when Vaclav Havel, the great dissident and the first president of the Czech Republic told me that Lou Reed had been his inspiration. American culture, American ideas permeated the world.

Wll, fast forward. That ended, and we kind of thought, okay, fine, end of history, democracy won. You know that story. And in fact, we withdrew from the information arena. And look at what happened initially with Ukraine. Russian media was much more effective in sort of telling a story: it wasn't true, but they kept repeating it over and over again. So I think we have to get back to a consensus in our own country about who we are and what we stand for, and then get out there and tell that story.


http://thedailyshow.cc.com/extended-interviews/aw9j6p/hillary-clinton-extended-interview

Seriously. Why is she glossing over Viet Nam, and the overthrow of Allende, in favor of Pinochet and other Latin American travesties? Why no acknowledgement that our military spending during the cold war hurt America in other ways, like having to spend money on nukes in stead of our people? Why no acknowledgement, that the extreme free market shock doctrine we imposed on post Soviet Russia harmed the average person and made them poorer? It also encouraged the rise of the criminal oligarchs, who raided the country, with much help from Boris Yeltsin. Clintonistas still have some bizarre fondness for Yeltsin.

July 16, 2014

Honduran refugee children are fleeing a right wing coup Hillary supported.

Support for Iraq intervention and Isis in Syria aren't Hillary's only foreign policy fubars. She was also an active supporter of the Pinochet like dictators that took over Honduras in 2009.

From a recent Consortium News Interview with Adrienne Pine:

Hillary Clinton was probably the most important actor in supporting the coup in Honduras. In part, perhaps, one would assume because one of her best friends from law school, Lanny Davis, who had actually run her campaign for a while, her presidential campaign against Obama, was hired immediately following the coup by the most powerful business group in the country, that supported the coup, as the representative for the Micheletti coup government in Washington.

In that capacity he was able to organize hearings in Congress through his friend, Eliot Engel, who at the time was the head of the congressional committee for Western Hemisphere Affairs, and he was able to directly have Hillary Clinton’s ear. And, what that meant was that whereas the initial signals from the White House, from Obama were that yes indeed this was a coup and that this was illegal, and that the coup administration wouldn’t be recognized.

Hillary Clinton was able to veto that position, in effect, and alongside her friend, Lanny Davis, and the State Department took a couple of months to even admit that a coup had happened. But they made this, theretofore unknown differentiation saying that this had not been a military coup, it had just been a regular coup. It’s a difference that didn’t make much sense. The military, in effect, had carried out the coup.

Hillary Clinton played a huge role in propping up the coup administration. And it was the State Department that went against the Organization of American States, which actually has had a positive impact hemisphere-wide in that it provoked the creation of CELAC [Community of Latin American and Caribbean States] which is the new, sort of parallel organization of OAS that excludes the U.S. and Canada because they have had such a negative impact within the OAS, of really pushing back against the progressive governments in the region, that want to have a different kind of relationship with the north, and not just be in the sort of ongoing imperialism.


more

http://consortiumnews.com/2014/07/12/why-the-honduran-children-flee-north/

At least half the children come from Honduras. Many of the drug gangs that threaten them prop up this government.

July 14, 2014

Exclusive polling shows Chicago Union President Karen Lewis can beat Rahm

First The NEA, call for Arnie Duncan to resign, then the AFT joined in the chorus, now it looks like the head of Chicago Teachers Union will run against Rahmbo! All we need after that is for a teacher, possibly Diane Ravitch to toss their hat in against Cuomo, and I suspect many other unions will balk against the neoliberal dems. It will be a full on revolt. The one that we have needed for a long time, not the stupid teabag version.

http://politics.suntimes.com/article/chicago/exclusive-poll-karen-lewis-could-give-rahm-run-his-money/sun-07132014-302pm

If the mayoral election were held today, the lightning rod union leader who was the architect behind a 2012 teachers’ strike would beat Emanuel by 9 percentage points in a head-to-head contest, the survey found.

Lewis was leading Emanuel 45 percent to 36 percent with 18 percent of the likely voters undecided.

And Emanuel could face an even steeper hill if he faces Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, long considered his most formidable challenger.

A head-to-head contest found Preckwinkle in a romp vs. Emanuel by a stunning 24 points.................

It can't happen soon enough for me!

July 8, 2014

Unlike the Roosevelts and the Kennedys

The Clinton dynasty has hurt the average person. The Clintons admit they don't believe in the New Deal and their reforms have undermined it. Glass Steagall and Welfare Reform were both reforms that undermined the New Deal. Nafta harmed the working class and the Unions.

There were several Presidential terms between TR and FDR, and we never had more than one Kennedy as President.

July 7, 2014

NYTimes notices Hillary's natural affinity toward the neocons.

This kind of followers two other posts I have made on this topic. Here and Here

Mr. Kagan has also been careful to avoid landing at standard-issue neocon think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute; instead, he’s a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, that citadel of liberalism headed by Strobe Talbott, who was deputy secretary of state under President Bill Clinton and is considered a strong candidate to become secretary of state in a new Democratic administration. (Mr. Talbott called the Kagan article “magisterial,” in what amounts to a public baptism into the liberal establishment.)

Perhaps most significantly, Mr. Kagan and others have insisted on maintaining the link between modern neoconservatism and its roots in muscular Cold War liberalism. Among other things, he has frequently praised Harry S. Truman’s secretary of state, Dean Acheson, drawing a line from him straight to the neocons’ favorite president: “It was not Eisenhower or Kennedy or Nixon but Reagan whose policies most resembled those of Acheson and Truman.”

Other neocons have followed Mr. Kagan’s careful centrism and respect for Mrs. Clinton. Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, noted in The New Republic this year that “it is clear that in administration councils she was a principled voice for a strong stand on controversial issues, whether supporting the Afghan surge or the intervention in Libya.”

And the thing is, these neocons have a point. Mrs. Clinton voted for the Iraq war; supported sending arms to Syrian rebels; likened Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, to Adolf Hitler; wholeheartedly backs Israel; and stresses the importance of promoting democracy.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/06/opinion/sunday/are-neocons-getting-ready-to-ally-with-hillary-clinton.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&_r=1

Is that what she means about "wooing republicans" and "taking a more assertive stance toward the global crisis?"

July 3, 2014

Memories: Reid promises Lieberman seniority after he declares an indy run against Lamont more.......

My memory of this time isn't perfect, but it isn't altogether inaccurate either. While many dems tepidly endorsed Lamont, behind the official facade many actively supported Lieberman's run. Here is an excerpt from old Mydd.

In the Lieberman-Lamont fight, there has been a fair amount of handwringing over why Lamont isn't blowing Joe out of the water. Why, if Joe lost to Lamont, isn't he losing in the general? Why did Lamont let Joe get away? Well there are a number of reasons, but among the most prominent is the total abandonment of Lamont by the party establishment. And let's be very clear - this is not Lamont that they are abandoning, it's the party primary voters that they are abandoning.

Whether it was a standing ovation at a caucus meeting when Joe got back to the Senate after his primary loss, or Obama refusing to come to Connecticut or criticize Joe in any way, or Bill Clinton praising Lieberman on Larry King, or Harry Reid promising Lieberman seniority, or Chuck Schumer refusing to get involved and practically being forced to not back Lieberman after the primary, or insiders telling Lamont's campaign that they would talk Joe out of the race if Lamont didn't go on the attack, it's very clear that the Democratic Party leadership is rotten to the core. With the exception of John Kerry, Chris Dodd, Ted Kennedy, and Wes Clark, no high profile Democrats have been there for Lamont. (John Edwards is a bit more complicated, but the jury's still out.)

Here's the latest on Lieberman bragging about the seniority he'll have if he wins reelection. Make no mistake, these DC Democrats are only our temporary allies. They have total contempt for the rules of the party, and they cheered Joe after he faced us in the primary. It is no longer reasonable for them to call for party unity, because they no longer have any legitimate claim to call themselves leaders of the party. They may be leaders for the next few decades simply due to inertia, but it's very clear that Bill Clinton and Barack Obama are liars who think nothing of insulting Democratic primary voters who play by the rules.

http://mydd.com/2006/10/29/senate-democrats-and-bill-clinton-stab-us-in-the-front

Not nice memories, but that seems a good summation of the horrid event.