Why I DON'T support Bernie for President

[JDPriestly]

305. Bill Clinton was in the White House for 8 years. Hillary was with him.

They offered no solutions for these problems either. In fact, their tenure in the White House worsened a lot of situations.

And then after their tenure in the White House, they further shined up to people like Pete Peterson, major foe of Social Security. Bernie wants to raise the cap to pay for strengthening and expanding Social Security. As a retired person who has a lot of friends who are retired, I can tell you that 401(K)s are not where it is at for insuring the survival of people past the retirement age. Social Security is. It is reliable and although it pays very little, it means survival to the large majority of us. For many older people, it is their only income. And as world trade expands and swallows up the best paying jobs in America, the pittance that Social Security pays its recipients is going to mean the difference between food on the table or an empty stomach for many, many seniors. Hillary is weak on Social Security. Watch her response to Obama when he suggested raising the cap in the 2008 debates. She is way out of touch with the reality of seniors in America. Sanders is not out of touch.

Hillary does not get the big bucks for speaking to wealthy and corporate America for nothing. She is talking to the investor class for those big bucks. They know what they are buying when they pay her. I want someone who owes me favors, not someone who owes favors to Goldman Sachs.

I want Bernie Sanders. And so do a number of Americans like me.

Democrats in Congress need to learn on which side their voters' bread is buttered (and had better worry about whether it is being buttered). They need to stop worrying about Wall Street and the corporations and start worrying about Main Street and the American people.

It is not the job of us the voters, the people, to vote for a president that members of Congress and our party leaders like. It is the job of the members of Congress and the leaders of our party to support the president we like and elect.

Let's get our shoes on the right feet here. Congress serves us, not the corproations. That is, the members of Congress who want to be re-elected serve us and not them, not the corporations and the party elite.

Free college tuition.

As for the damage that a tax to fund college would do to 401(K)s? That is the concern only of people who have 401(K)s. The damage that greedy managers of 401(K) accounts do to your 401(K) should be of greater concern than the cost of a few pennies of tax per trade to fund your kids' college educations.

In the sum of things, it is probably cheaper to pay the tax and get free college. Someone needs to do the math, but be my guest. I like the idea of taxing Wall Street trades to fund free college for the next generation.

Many wealthy people take the money they make on Wall Street and set up trusts to fund their grandchildren's education. Why don't we do that as a nation? Isn't that what investment is about, putting money aside to fund a better future? So people who have money in the stock market take home a little less in order to put money in trust for other people's hard-working talented children. What is wrong with that idea? I really like it.

401(K)s are the domain of people making way over the minimum wage or even the average or median wage and a tax on them should be imposed to help pay for college.

We need higher capital gains taxes, not lower ones.

Here is the system we now have.

After high school (whether completed or not), young people go to university, technical schools, junior colleges, the military, straight to work or remain unemployed on the streets.

Most of those who attend post-secondary schools whether university, technical, or some sort of college graduate in debt. The interest rate varies from maybe 3% to 7 1/2 or 8 1/2 % (what I paid for one of my post graduate degrees). The debt adds up. If your parents aren't wealthy or at least middle class and you become a doctor, you graduate with enormous debt. If you graduate to become a teacher, your debt is very great compared to the income you will likely earn. Same for nurses, for technical jobs, same for all professions, all lines of work.

The weight of that college tuition, trade school tuition, post-high school tuition is weighing down our economy. It is preventing young people from being able to take jobs that help society but don't pay premium salaries. It is preventing young people from being able to have children and buy houses and live their lives.

Meanwhile the already rich are doing very well. As the interest paid on student loans flows into the general fund with tax revenue, Congress has voted to lower the taxes on the very, very rich. In effect, students whose families cannot afford to send them to college, are being asked to fund tax breaks for corporations and the very rich. I'm agin' that. I'm ain' it and there is no excuse for it.

Bernie tells us what the unemployment rates are for young people. Around 50% for young Americans who are identified as Black. That is horrendous. The justice issues that are killing POC and destroying their lives need to be dealt with as the most urgent and most serious of our issues, but the economic issues that lead to masses of Black people, especially men, who are homeless and jobless, hopeless and prison-bound are long-term issues that need to be dealt with.

The Clintons were in the White House for 8 years. Bill Clinton set up a commission to study race issues. Why has so little, next to nothing, changed when of the past 22-23 years, Third Way Democrats who claim to prioritize social issues have been in the White House? Why are we still talking about police brutality when we have a Black president in the White House?

Maybe it is because we have not dealt with the long-range economic issues and have not really tackled the tough social issues.

I do not deny that the social issues are very important. Bernie acknowledges that. There is nothing new in saying that. The justice system needs to be changed to insure that our police do not profile people based on race and do not think or feel that they have a license to harass, jail or kill people based on race or neighborhood.

LGBT issues are being dealt with as society changes its attitude toward LGBTs. That is not the problem of the moment. That will take a little time, but not much. The anti-LGBT crowd is literally dying out as I write. But the LGBT marriage issue was based on the precedent that marriage is a fundamental right and not on whether being LGBT triggers discrimination issues, whether LGBT status is immutable, is part of our birthright. There is a lot of work to do on that. But Bernie was in favor of recognizing the equal rights against discrimination for LGBT people long before Hillary broached the topic. And again, what did the Clintons do about LGBT rights during their time in the White House? Wasn't it during those years that the Defense of Marriage Act passed?

We have undergone an enormous technological revolution. It is comparable to the revolution we underwent in the late 19th century, the industrial revolution.

As then, the new technologies, the new production methods worked havoc on old labor/management and other economic relationships. As then, it took a social revolution, then the populist movement, to deal with the new technological reality and the effect on that technological revolution on families, on the workplace, on society as a whole.

Bernie is calling for that social revolution. Will it improve the lives of LGBT people, of people of color, the world, when it achieves its goals? Yes. It will.

As I posted elsewhere, I really don't get out a lot, but in the last few weeks, I have talked at length with 3 or 4 people of the limited number of people with whom I have talked who are scared, really scared of losing their jobs and their livelihoods. Two of the three are relatively young and have children. The third is an upper middle-aged single woman moving toward the end of her working career but not yet ready either financially or in any other way, to retire. (At this time, that, I believe is when you are most likely to lose a job. I don't have numbers on it, but I think the people in their late 40s through early 60s are most vulnerable to being fired right now. It is absolutely shameful that that is so.)

People are scared for their work because their work means survival. And their work, no matter how much they complain about it, gives meaning to their lives.

The TPP is going to displace yet another large slice of the workforce. And, no, I disagree with the OP. We do not have to go there. We do not have to agree to the kind of plundering of our economy that international trade now brings with it. We can have international trade without plunder. The international trade we now have is being and has been negotiated by corporations and their purchased spokespeople in Congress and in the administration.

Bernie has other plans for the inevitable move toward an international economy. I am solidly with Bernie on this issue. No to the TPP courts. Americans do not realize what those courts will mean to our nation. National parks anyone? I can readily envision scenarios under which corporations could force us to pay manifold just to be able to keep our national parks from them. And that is just one of many horrors that the TPP and even the existing international courts could impose on us. We do not want or need the TPP. We should not accept the imposition of TPP courts.

We cannot at this time afford to expand out involvement in international trade. That is not my opinion. One glance at our balance of trade deficit tells us that, no, we are not competing and we cannot compete at this time.

What do we need to compete in the global economy?

A better educated, better trained workforce?

A national strategy to compete that is decided upon through truly democratic means?

A government that is not bought out by corporations and Wall Street and big hedge funds?

I answer yes to these four key questions. So does Bernie.

Bill and Hillary Clinton had their four years. Bill signed NAFTA, the repeal of Glass-Steagall, the Welfare Reform Act and a draconian bill on crime that has resulted in our having the largest percentage of prisoners of any country in the world.

The passage of NAFTA brought with it some sort of re-education legislation. Obviously, considering, as Bernie points out, that real unemployment is high in our country, that re-education legislation did not accomplish much. We do not need to allow corporations to sell more of our jobs to the lowest bidder. We need to stay away from agreements that give us no case-by-case right to turn down offers of free trade, to refuse to trade if the trade does not serve our national interests. What a bunch of hogwash the corporations are selling us when they speak to us of free trade.

And then we get to environmental issues. Had the Clinton administration done its job, we would have far more solar panels, a lot more alternative energy than we have today. The Clintons are not the answer when it comes to environmental issues. Hillary even refuses to offer her opinion or answer a question about the XL pipeline near one of our most important aquifers. On that basis alone, she is unqualified to be the Democratic nominee for president.

Considering the record of the first Clinton administration, I certainly do not trust either of the Clintons with the leadership and representation of the US right now. No thanks.