Bernie and the Super Delegates

http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/03/09/bernie-and-the-super-delegates/

by Nathan Riley

A specter is haunting Democratic superdelegates – the specter of Obama in 2008 – the members of Congress, the governors the political consultants, the journalists, and lobbyists entered into an alliance to anoint Hillary Clinton, the first woman to succeed the first black.

But victory eludes Clinton; in Michigan Bernie had a surprising win. It calls Hillary’s popularity into question. If she can’t enlist the support of Democratic primary voters, how can she convince the nation? Clinton’s early lead evaporated. Bernie took first with a last minute surge. The more the voters learned about him the more they liked him.

Superdelegates are Democratic elected officials and other party insiders allowed to support whichever candidate they like. They are there to prevent a kook from leading the ticket. Their interests diverge from Secretary Clinton; they are less concerned about the top of the ticket. They ask will the Presidential candidate help Governors, Members of Congress and the state legislatures win in November. They are as interested in the fate of the Democratic Party as they are in the Presidential candidate. Like Bernie, they need a big turnout of voters.

Clinton’s lopsided lead in delegates comes from pledges made by these party insiders. They are not written in stone. A Democratic victory requires massive turnouts of the young. Bernie has this vote. The issues of income inequality and fighting the Wall Street oligarchy favor Sanders, not Clinton. The superdelegates will assess Hillary’s appeal.

Like Obama, Bernie is winning the battle for enthusiasm. He draws the crowds and he is likeable. Hillary is thoughtful serious and loved by many, but she can’t shake her history. The Clintons prospered by milking the rich, and the charge she is bought and paid for burdens her candidacy.

While she and her husband created the Clinton foundation, Bernie remained an independent socialist. He condemned inequality and his leftwing demands nettled his colleagues with their implied criticism of go-along-to-get-along politics.

His day has come – the voters have turned against the parties. Republican and Democratic voters echo this call they want far-reaching change. Hillary’s experience and training is moderate change. Her supporters value these traits, but in 2016 these qualities are losers, and the superdelegates will come to recognize it.

Sanders populist appeal is hard for rich white educated people to duplicate. In Florida, on Tuesday, he held a rally. He shouted Wall Street, the crowd jeered. The event drew the young and had the energy of a rock concert or a football rally. It was lowbrow, and the audience felt at home with Bernie. Bernie is convincing as a man of the people. The superdelegates know he is honest; he has spent decades slamming the injustice of inequality. This is not a campaign message; it is Bernie’s core belief.

Anyone who has been to a left-wing event would recognize this Florida crowd of black, white, brown young with many old. This is the post-2010 Democratic Party. In that off-year election, the Republican picked up a spectacular 63 seats to become the majority that bedeviled Obama. The losers were conservative Democrats who were shy about reproductive justice, opposed taxes and government spending. In defeat, the Democratic Party moved left. Bernie Sanders is ratifying that change. This Democratic Party is proud of its diversity and eager for equality.

Republicans tried to stifle this change and failed. Passage of voter id laws to intimidate black and brown voters created a backlash that increased their turnout in 2012. Trump calling Mexicans rapist and demanding a wall is bringing a surge Hispanic registration. His hostility to Muslims boosts their participation.

Bernie Sanders is gaining black support. Had 70/80% of this vote gone to Hillary, he would have lost. He responded to the poisoning of Flint Michigan’s water supply by demanding the Governor resign. He identified the culprit; his response was so popular Hillary adopted it. The movement is clear, to know Bernie is to like him.

The superdelegates know about these changes, by the time the Democratic Convention roles around they can chose Bernie to maximize turnout.

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Nathan Riley is a columnist for Gay City News and a veteran of numerous New York State Campaigns.

The Financial System is a Larger Threat Than Terrorism

by Paul Craig Roberts

http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/03/09/the-financial-system-is-a-larger-threat-than-terrorism/

In the 21st century Americans have been distracted by the hyper-expensive “war on terror.”  Trillions of dollars have been added to the taxpayers’ burden and many billions of dollars in profits to the military/security complex in order to combat insignificant  foreign “threats,” such as the Taliban, that remain undefeated after 15 years.  All this time the financial system, working hand-in-hand with policymakers, has done more damage to Americans than terrorists could possibly inflict.

The purpose of the Federal Reserve and US Treasury’s policy of zero interest rates is to support the prices of the over-leveraged and fraudulent financial instruments that unregulated financial systems always create.  If inflation was properly measured, these zero rates would be negative rates, which means not only that retirees have no income from their retirement savings but also that saving is a losing proposition.  Instead of earning interest on your savings, you pay interest that shrinks the real value of your saving.

Central banks, neoliberal economists, and the presstitute financial media advocate negative interest rates in order to force people to spend instead of save.  The notion is that the economy’s poor economic performance is not due to the failure of economic policy but to people hoarding their money. The Federal Reserve and its coterie of economists and presstitutes maintain the fiction of too much savings despite the publication of the Federal Reserve’s own report that 52% of Americans cannot raise $400 without selling personal possessions or borrowing the money.

Negative interest rates, which have been introduced in some countries such as Switzerland and threatened in other countries, have caused people to avoid the tax on bank deposits by withdrawing their savings from banks in large denomination bills.  In Switzerland, for example, demand for the 1,000 franc bill (about $1,000) has increased sharply.  These large denomination bills now account for 60% of the Swiss currency in circulation.

The response of depositors to negative interest rates has resulted in neoliberal economists, such as Larry Summers, calling for the elimination of large denomination bank notes in order to make it difficult for people to keep their cash balances outside of banks.

Other neoliberal economists, such as Kenneth Rogoff want to eliminate cash altogether and have only electronic money.  Electronic money cannot be removed from bank deposits except by spending it. With electronic money as the only money, financial institutions can use negative interest rates in order to steal the savings of their depositors.

People would attempt to resort to gold, silver, and forms of private money, but other methods of payment and saving would be banned, and government would conduct sting operations in order to suppress evasions of electronic money with stiff penalties.

What this picture shows is that government, economists, and presstitutes are allied against citizens achieving any financial independence from personal saving.  Policymakers have a crackpot economic policy and those with control over your life value their scheme more than they value your welfare.

This is the fate of people in the so-called democracies.  Any remaining control that they have over their lives is being taken away. Governments serve a few powerful interest groups whose agendas result in the destruction of the host economies. The offshoring of middle class jobs transfers income and wealth from the middle class to the executives and owners of the corporation, but it also kills the domestic consumer market for the offshored goods and services.  

As Michael Hudson writes, it kills the host.  The financialization of the economy also kills the host and the owners of corporations as well.  When corporate executives borrow from banks in order to boost share prices and their performance bonuses by buying back the publicly held stock of the corporations, future profits are converted into interest payments to banks.  The future income streams of the corporations are financialized.  If the future income streams fail, the companies can be foreclosed, like homeowners, and the banks become the owners of the corporations.

Between the offshoring of jobs and the conversion of more and more income streams into  payments to banks, less and less is available to be spent on goods and services.  Thus, the economy fails to grow and falls into long-term decline.  Today many Americans can only pay the minimum payment on their credit card balance.  The result is massive growth in a balance that

can never be paid off.  It is these people who are the least able to service debt who are hit with draconian charges.  The way the credit card companies have it now, if you make one late payment or your payment is returned by your bank, you are hit for the next six months with a Penalty Annual Percentage Rate of 29.49%.

In Europe entire countries are being foreclosed.  Greece and Portugal have been forced into liquidation of national assets and the social security systems.  

So many women have been forced into poverty and prostitution that the hourly price of a prostitute has been driven down to $4.12.

Throughout the Western world the financial system has become an exploiter of the people and a deadweight loss on economies.  There are only two possible solutions. One is to break the large banks up into smaller and local entities such as existed prior to the concentration that deregulation fostered.  The other is to nationalize them and operate them solely in the interest of the general welfare of the population.

The banks are too powerful currently for either solution to occur.  But the greed, fraud, and self-serving behavior of Western financial systems, aided and abetted by governments, could be leading to such a breakdown of economic life that the idea of a private financial system will become as abhorent in the future as Nazism is today.

Paul Craig Roberts is a former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal. Roberts’ How the Economy Was Lost is now available from CounterPunch in electronic format. His latest book is The Neoconservative Threat to World Order.

What Was Hillary Thinking? A History of Poor Decision-Making

03/11/2016 08:17 pm ET | Updated 11 hours ago

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ben-cohen-ben-and-jerrys/what-was-hillary-thinking-a-history-of-poor-decision-making_b_9442158.html?utm_hp_ref=bernie-sanders

What was Hillary thinking when she supported Barry Goldwater -- a dyed-in-the-wool Republican who voted against the Civil Rights Act -- for president in 1964?

What was she thinking when she voted to authorize the war in Iraq despite having access to confidential information from the intelligence community that clearly stated that Iraq did not represent an imminent threat to the United States?

What was she thinking when she supported NAFTA? A bad trade deal between the US, Mexico, and Canada that cost American's over 700,000 good manufacturing jobs because it made it easy, inexpensive, and cost effective for manufacturers and big businesses to relocate or outsource their workforce.

Or when she called the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) "the gold standard in trade agreements"? The same trade agreement that would force American workers to compete for jobs with South East Asia workers who earn $0.56 per hour?

What was she thinking in 2009 when, as Secretary of State, she went to Switzerland to help UBS -- one of the most powerful banks in the world - and cut a sweetheart deal with the IRS to protect tens of thousands of US customers with secret bank accounts? Following her help, UBS paid Bill Clinton $1.5 million in speaking fees.

And what was she thinking when she retired from public service, walked right through the revolving door to Wall Street (That would be the same guys she bailed out in 2008) and collected six figure speaking fees in addition to the whopping donations that lined her super PAC in preparation for her presidential campaign?

There is no single experience that can prepare a person to be president of the United States. Instead, we should look for a candidate with a proven record of good judgement in face of pressure, adversity, and challenges.

Where was Bernie when Hillary was busy making bad decisions?

For over 30 years, Senator Bernie Sanders has fought against the despicable game of pay-to-play politics that defines Washington where lawmakers sell access and influence to the highest bidder. The same pay-to-play game that Hillary mastered in order to transform her life of public service into a multi-million dollar fortune.

Bernie led the fight against NAFTA and the TPP because they hurt American workers and would kill American jobs by encouraging multi-national corporations to outsource jobs and production.

Bernie led the opposition to the Iraq War citing insufficient evidence of weapons of mass destruction, the unintended consequences of destabilizing the Middle East, and the astronomical cost of war - both in terms of blood and treasure.

And in 2008, after Wall Street lost big on series of bad bets, Bernie led the fight against a Wall Street bailout that used tax payer dollars to float the big banks and even fund golden parachutes for morally bankrupt CEOs -- some to the tune of 18 million dollars.

But let's rewind the clock even further. What was Bernie doing in the 1960's? The same time that Hillary was campaigning for Republican Barry Goldwater? In 1962, Bernie was arrested for protesting segregation in Chicago public schools. The next year, he joined Martin Luther King Jr. and millions of American's in the March on Washington.

We might excuse Hillary for a youthful indiscretion (If ever there was a position she should have walked away from this was it) but incredibly in 1996, in an interview with NPR, Hillary reaffirmed that "I am very proud that I was a Goldwater girl."

We cannot afford to elect a president with a history bad judgement, inconsistent positions, and who has used public service as a vehicle for private gain. In other words, we cannot afford the status-quo.

The only candidate -- and I emphasize only -- that meets the criteria of honesty, consistency, and good judgement is Sen. Bernie Sanders. That's why I support Bernie for president.

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