Wednesday, November 6, 2019
The world is getting wetter, yet water may become less available for North America and Eurasia
Plants will demand more water
in the future making less water available for people
November 4, 2019
Dartmouth College
With climate change, plants of
the future will consume more water than in the present day, leading to less
water available for people living in North America and Eurasia, according to a
new study. The research suggests a drier future despite anticipated precipitation
increases for places like the United States and Europe, populous regions
already facing water stresses.
With climate change, plants of
the future will consume more water than in the present day, leading to less
water available for people living in North America and Eurasia, according to a
Dartmouth-led study in Nature Geoscience. The research suggests a drier
future despite anticipated precipitation increases for places like the United
States and Europe, populous regions already facing water stresses.
The study challenges an
expectation in climate science that plants will make the world wetter in the
future. Scientists have long thought that as carbon dioxide concentrations
increase in the atmosphere, plants will reduce their water consumption, leaving
more freshwater available in our soils and streams. This is because as more
carbon dioxide accumulates in our atmosphere plants can photosynthesize the
same amount while partly closing the pores (stomata) on their leaves. Closed
stomata means less plant water loss to the atmosphere, increasing water in the land.
The new findings reveal that this story of plants making the land wetter is
limited to the tropics and the extremely high latitudes, where freshwater
availability is already high and competing demands on it are low. For much of
the mid-latitudes, the study finds, projected plant responses to climate change
will not make the land wetter but drier, which has massive implications for
millions of people.
"Approximately 60 percent
of the global water flux from the land to the atmosphere goes through plants, called
transpiration. Plants are like the atmosphere's straw, dominating how water
flows from the land to the atmosphere. So vegetation is a massive determinant
of what water is left on land for people," explained lead author Justin S.
Mankin, an assistant professor of geography at Dartmouth and adjunct research
scientist at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University. "The
question we're asking here is, how do the combined effects of carbon dioxide
and warming change the size of that straw?"
Using climate models, the
study examines how freshwater availability may be affected by projected changes
in the way precipitation is divided among plants, rivers and soils. For the
study, the research team used a novel accounting of this precipitation partitioning,
developed earlier by Mankin and colleagues to calculate the future runoff loss
to future vegetation in a warmer, carbon dioxide-enriched climate.
The new study's findings
revealed how the interaction of three key effects of climate change's impacts
on plants will reduce regional freshwater availability. First, as carbon
dioxide increases in the atmosphere, plants require less water to
photosynthesize, wetting the land. Yet, second, as the planet warms, growing
seasons become longer and warmer: plants have more time to grow and consume
water, drying the land. Finally, as carbon dioxide concentrations increase,
plants are likely to grow more, as photosynthesis becomes amplified. For some
regions, these latter two impacts, extended growing seasons and amplified
photosynthesis, will outpace the closing stomata, meaning more vegetation will
consume more water for a longer amount of time, drying the land. As a result,
for much of the mid-latitudes, plants will leave less water in soils and
streams, even if there is additional rainfall and vegetation is more efficient
with its water usage. The result also underscores the importance of improving
how climate models represent ecosystems and their response to climate change.
The world relies on freshwater
for human consumption, agriculture, hydropower, and industry. Yet, for many
places, there's a fundamental disconnect between when precipitation falls and
when people use this water, as is the case with California, which gets more
than half of its precipitation in the winter, but peak demands are in the
summer. "Throughout the world, we engineer solutions to move water from
point A to point B to overcome this spatiotemporal disconnect between water
supply and its demand. Allocating water is politically contentious,
capital-intensive and requires really long-term planning, all of which affects
some of the most vulnerable populations. Our research shows that we can't
expect plants to be a universal panacea for future water availability. So,
being able to assess clearly where and why we should anticipate water
availability changes to occur in the future is crucial to ensuring that we can
be prepared," added Mankin.
Researchers from
Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, Richard Seager, Jason
E. Smerdon, Benjamin I. Cook, who is also affiliated with NASA Goddard
Institute for Space Studies, and A. Park Williams, contributed to this study.
Story Source:
Materials provided by Dartmouth College. Note:
Content may be edited for style and length.
Journal Reference:
Justin S. Mankin, Richard
Seager, Jason E. Smerdon, Benjamin I. Cook & A. Park Williams. Mid-latitude
freshwater availability reduced by projected vegetation responses to climate
change. Nature Geoscience, 2019 DOI: 10.1038/s41561-019-0480-x
Elizabeth Warren unveils her “Medicare for All” electoral gimmick
By Kate Randall
5 November 2019
5 November 2019
Democratic presidential
candidate Elizabeth Warren released details of her “Medicare for All” plan on
Friday. The senator from Massachusetts has been pressed by her rivals for the
Democratic Party nomination to show how her plan would be financed without
increasing taxes on the middle class. Warren posted a lengthy explanation on
her campaign website, headlined “Ending the Stranglehold of Health Care Costs on
American Families.”
The plan is her version of the
Medicare for All Act, which she co-sponsored with Senator Bernie Sanders of
Vermont. The act would gradually do away with private insurance and end
employer-sponsored coverage. It would make the federal government the sole
insurer, creating what is called a “single payer” system.
Warren bases her plan’s cost
estimate on an analysis by the Urban Institute, which calculated that a plan
similar to Medicare for All would cost $59 trillion over a decade and require
$34 trillion in new federal spending. She says total costs could be held to $52
trillion and that $20.5 trillion in new funding would be necessary after other
savings are taken into account.
Warren’s plan has nothing in
common with socialism. It would not provide high-quality, universal health
care. The government would take on the role of insurer, but it would not do
away with private health care providers or the giant pharmaceutical industry.
It would not build or run new and upgraded facilities.
Medicare itself is a poorly
funded program that provides substandard care to seniors, who must purchase
supplemental coverage to subsidize office visits, prescriptions and other basic
medical needs. Medicare for All could be expected to be of even poorer quality.
Building on provisions of the
Affordable Care Act (ACA) implemented under the Obama administration, Warren’s
plan would seek to cut costs and ration care for the vast majority of
Americans. While the ACA, commonly known as Obamacare, forced individuals to
obtain insurance from a private insurer or pay a penalty, the insurer would now
be the government, which, at the behest of the ruling establishment and its
political representatives, would be under pressure to slash costs on the backs
of the working families Warren claims to champion.
Warren’s Medicare for All
would be financed through a combination of tax increases and “savings” obtained
by means of cutbacks to health care provision.
The cost estimate for Warren’s
plan was carried out by Don Berwick, a former director of the Centers for
Medicare and Medicaid Services under Obama, and Simon Johnson, the former chief
economist at the World Bank. Berwick was an advocate for the Independent
Payment Advisory Board, which was envisioned as a body to cut Medicare costs
and ration care under the ACA.
In the course of a decade,
Warren’s Medicare for All would achieve savings on the following basis:
• Private insurers currently
consume about 12.2 percent for “administrative costs” and profits. Warren
assumes this would fall to 2.3 percent, saving $1.8 trillion.
• Warren proposes cutting
payment rates for brand-name drugs by 70 percent, saving $1.5 trillion.
• All physicians would be paid
at current Medicare rates, and hospitals would be paid at 110 percent of that
rate, saving an estimated $600 billion.
• ACA-era payment “reforms”
would be implemented across the single-payer system, moving away from
fee-for-service. This would save an estimated $2 trillion.
• $1.1 trillion could be saved
by holding health spending growth to 3.9 percent over the next decade.
Additional funding would be
generated by raising taxes, including:
• A financial transactions tax
of 0.1 percent of the value of every stock, bond or derivatives transaction,
raising $800 billion.
• A 35 percent minimum tax on
foreign earnings, bringing in $2.9 trillion.
• A 6 percent wealth tax on
assets over $1 billion, generating $1 trillion.
• Taxing capital gains for the
top 1 percent at the same rate as normal income, and doing so annually, would
raise $2 trillion.
Another major source of
revenue would result from private employers paying to the government the $9
trillion they would have spent on private health insurance for their employees.
There are many other
convoluted details, but it is the proposals to raise taxes on the wealthy that
have generated outrage on Wall Street and in corporate boardrooms. The ruling
elite is hostile to any infringement, however minimal, on its ability to
accumulate wealth at the expense of the working class. It will not willingly
relinquish any portion of its wealth. Nor will private insurance companies
voluntarily close up shop, or the pharmaceutical companies accept a cut in their
profits.
An editorial in the Wall
Street Journal, after bemoaning Warren’s plan to “raise the corporate tax rate
back to 35 percent from 2 percent and extend it to income earned worldwide with
no deferrals for foreign taxes,” claims that the scheme “doubles down on her
plans to soak the rich, assuming there are any left after her other tax
proposals.”
Similarly, the New York
Times notes in an article on Warren’s gains in the Democratic race for the
presidential nomination, “From corporate boardrooms to breakfast meetings,
investor conferences to charity galas, Ms. Warren’s rise in the Democratic
primary rolls is rattling bankers, investors and their affluent clients, who
see in the Massachusetts senator a formidable opponent who could damage not
only their industry but their way of life ” [emphasis added].
Warren’s Medicare for All plan
and railing against the corporate elite have also generated opposition from her
fellow candidates and other Democratic Party figures. House Speaker Nancy
Pelosi told Bloomberg Friday, “I’m not a big fan of Medicare for All,” adding,
“It’s expensive.” She said, “There is a comfort level that some people have
with their current private insurance.”
Pelosi is well aware that the
private insurance industry is reviled by the majority of the American
population, and that medical bills are a leading cause of personal bankruptcy.
Skyrocketing premiums, deductibles and co-pays are causing people to forgo
medical care, posing grave risks to health and premature death. It is this growing
opposition in the working class to social inequality and the bloated profits of
the rich that strikes fear in the hearts of Pelosi, Warren’s fellow candidates,
and Warren herself.
Elizabeth Warren and her
various plans to supposedly cut taxes, improve health care, and tackle student
debt do not pose a challenge to the ruling elite. She is a highly conscious and
self-declared advocate of the capitalist market economy—“a capitalist to the
bone,” as she told one interviewer—and an opponent of socialism.
She is a solid member of the
top 1 percent, with an adjusted gross combined income with her Harvard Law
School professor husband of $846,394. She espouses economic nationalism and
embraces the national security doctrine outlined by the Pentagon, in which great
power competition with China and Russia has displaced terrorism as the
principal concern of US imperialism.
Warren’s claim that she will
impose tax increases to improve health care for ordinary Americans is a fraud.
She and her fellow Democrats are well aware that her Medicare for All plan has
no chance of being passed by either big business party or signed into law by
any president.
Her hope is that such
proposals will appeal to working class voters and hoodwink them into believing
that she and the Democratic Party represent a genuine alternative to the Trump
administration’s policies.
The reality is that a
genuinely progressive and democratic overhaul of the health care system in
America requires a revolutionary socialist policy, which expropriates the
private health care industry—the insurers, drug companies and giant health care
chains—along with the banks and the parasitic financial industry, and places
health care under the control of a democratically elected workers government as
a social right. Anything short of a revolutionary solution is an empty promise
and deception.
Britain: the Corbyn surge begins – we can win!
This general election is going
to mark a fundamental turning-point in Britain. It will have colossal
ramifications internationally.
The political ground has begun
to shift as a result of Corbyn taking Labour’s election campaign out into the
country, raising the class issues and attacking capitalism.
A recent YouGov survey
for The Sunday Times found that Labour gained six points within a
matter of days into the campaign, slashing the Tory lead. The Liberal Democrats
slipped three points, demonstrating the sharp polarisation that is taking
place. And this is just the beginning.
It is clear that people are
beginning to see the election contest as one between Boris Johnson, the
Eton-educated multi-millionaire, and Jeremy Corbyn, who stands for a radical
left-wing programme.
The people vs the billionaires
Labour has hit the ground
running, correctly denouncing Johnson’s hidden plans to hand the NHS over to
the clutches of American pharmaceutical corporations.
Corbyn has highlighted the
staggering wealth of the super rich, with the top 10 percent of people owning
44 percent of the wealth. The giant corporations are getting away with murder,
with the likes of Amazon paying only £220m tax on £10.9bn profits last year.
At Labour’s campaign launch
meeting, Corbyn attacked the billionaires and promised that a Labour government
would go after the wealthy elite who exploit a “rigged system” to amass their
fortunes.
This has a big impact. Britain
has around 150 billionaires – 0.0002 percent of the population – who flaunt
their wealth and ill-gotten gains. Meanwhile, 14 million people live in
poverty.
These billionaires have
amassed their wealth and power by waging a relentless class war against working
people.
We have the example of Jim
Ratcliffe, Britain’s third-richest man, who is worth £18bn as head of Ineos –
the petrochemicals group that employs 17,000 people. He has slashed the wages
of his workforce, cut holidays, and driven down conditions to boost his
profits.
Or take Mike Ashley, the owner
of the Sports Direct empire, which employs almost 30,000 people. Ashley’s
employees are subjected to Victorian conditions in his warehouses, all to boost
his obscene wealth.
Even if they didn’t spend a
penny of their wages, it would take the average British worker more than 40,000
years to become a billionaire. This period is equivalent to the entire
existence of Homo sapiens in Britain.
Boris Johnson has tried to
frame this election as “Parliament vs People”. But Labour has correctly
responded by posing it as a contest of the “people vs the billionaire elite”.
The spectre of Blairism
A sneering Tony Blair recently
lamented the demise of the “middle ground”, arguing for “tactical voting” (i.e.
not voting Labour). He shows his true Tory colours when he says “Parliament
would be worse without the Conservative independents”.
Blair goes on to say that
Labour’s attack on poor old “dodgy landlords”, “billionaires” and a “corrupt
system” is “textbook populism”. This snake in the grass then continues, saying
that: “It is no more acceptable in the mouth of someone who calls themselves
leftwing than in the mouth of Donald Trump’s right.”
This is rich coming from the
mouth of a multi-millionaire, warmonger, and poodle of US imperialism.
It is only with radical
policies – aimed against what Blair cynically describes as the “pantomime
villains of capitalism” – that Labour can win the election.
Tory campaign stalls
Ironically, this has been made
easier by the decision of Nigel Farage and the Brexit Party to fight all the
seats in this election. This will take more votes away from the Tories than
Labour, handing victory to Labour in many seats. In fact, Labour estimates that
it could gain an extra 40 seats as a result. This has provoked panic in the
Johnson camp.
With the Brexit Party entering
the fray, the road to Number 10 is narrowing by the hour for Boris Johnson.
Furthermore, after ten years of Tory austerity, people are very wary of voting
Conservative, despite Johnson’s bluff and bluster.
This will certainly cut across
Tory hopes of winning Labour seats in the North, Midlands and Wales. No matter
how much they promise to increase spending, it all sounds rather hollow after
years of Tory cuts.
Tory strategists can see that
their tactic of running a “parliament versus people” campaign has already
largely flopped. “Getting Brexit done” is also wearing thin as a slogan.
For these reasons, Johnson
could end up having the most short-lived tenure of Downing Street in history.
Preparing for power
We can envisage a repeat of
the 2017 election. At this point two years ago, Labour was 24 points behind the
Tories. But by polling day Labour had gained 30 seats, almost gaining the keys
to Number 10.
Labour is starting from a much
better position this time round. Hundreds of thousands of people – particularly
young people – have registered to vote. Corbyn is likely once again to
overwhelmingly win the youth vote.
Given all this, Corbyn could
easily be propelled into power. Even if Labour does not win an outright
majority, it could still be the biggest party in Parliament. The SNP, who are
likely to take a big majority of seats in Scotland, would support a Labour
government from the outside. And Swinson, who hates Corbyn, will nevertheless
have great difficulty in supporting a Johnson Tory government. Corbyn would
therefore still become prime minister.
Of course, Labour could gain
enough seats to not have to rely on the support of other parties. That would be
the best option. Whatever the outcome, Labour must not enter into any
coalitions or pacts. Instead, it should stand by its promises, challenging the
other parties to vote against the radical and popular demands on offer.
We can’t take things for
granted. There are weeks to go before the polls close. The political situation
is very volatile. We must still mobilise and fight for every vote.
Big business sabotage
A Corbyn Labour government
will be faced by many obstacles – including from the Fifth Column of Blairites
in the Parliamentary Labour Party. These Tories in disguise will attempt to
sabotage all attempts to carry out radical policies.
In the words of Tony Blair:
“There is a core of good Labour MPs who will not be whipped into supporting policy
they do not believe in.” They will act as the reliable representatives of big
business. When the time comes, they will stab Corbyn in the back.
The bosses and bankers will
also attempt to undermine the government in every way they can. They not only fear
Corbyn, but also the millions of workers behind him, desperate for real change.
They fear that a Labour government will be pushed even further than it intends.
And they are right.
“I want you to know,” stated
John McDonnell to Labour conference last year, “that the greater the mess we
inherit, the more radical we have to be.”
Well, Britain has been ravaged
by a decade of capitalist crisis and Tory austerity. No amount of tinkering is
going to turn this around. Only a bold programme of socialist policies can
offer a way out of this great mess.
For a socialist Labour
government!
Furthermore, the whole world
economy – including Britain – is facing a new slump. Mervyn King, the former
head of the Bank of England, when addressing a recent meeting of the IMF,
stated that we are “sleepwalking with our eyes closed into another crisis”.
King warned that we are facing
a new “financial Armageddon”. And he should know – after all, he was at the
helm when the bankers “sleepwalked” into the 2008 crash.
Such a catastrophe can only be
solved by clear socialist measures. Labour will need to take control of the
economy out of the hands of the billionaires. This means taking over the
commanding heights of the economy, the banks, finance houses, the land, and
giant monopolies, all under workers’ control and management.
A Corbyn government will have
to mobilise the working class in response to the sabotage of big business, in
order to carry through the socialist transformation of society. That is the
only answer to the crisis of capitalism.
Only in this way can Labour
carry through its programme and radically transform the lives of the majority
in Britain. This is what we must fight for.
Map of CO2 emissions per capita by country
November 5, 2019
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CO2_emissions_per_capita,_2017_(Our_World_in_Data)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CO2_emissions_per_capita,_2017_(Our_World_in_Data)
It’s the DNC, Stupid: Democratic Party, Not Russia, Has Delegitimized the Democratic Process
November 4, 2019 • 5
Comments
With the U.S. presidential cycle
gearing up, Elizabeth Vos takes stock of lessons from 2016.
By Elizabeth Vos
Special to Consortium News
Special to Consortium News
Establishment Democrats and
those who amplify them continue to project blame for the public’s doubt in
the U.S. election process onto outside influence, despite the clear history of
the party’s subversion of election integrity. The total inability of the
Democratic Party establishment’s willingness to address even one of these
critical failures does not give reason to hope that the nomination process in
2020 will be any less pre-ordained.
The Democratic Party’s bias
against Sen. Bernie Sanders during the 2016 presidential nomination, followed
by the DNC defense counsel doubling down on its right to rig the race during
the fraud
lawsuit brought against the DNC, as well as the irregularities in the races
between former DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Tim Canova, indicate
a fatal breakdown of the U.S. democratic process spearheaded by the Democratic
Party establishment. Influences transcending the DNC add to concerns regarding
the integrity of the democratic process that have nothing to do with Russia,
but which will also likely impact outcomes in 2020.
The content of the DNC and Podesta emails published
by WikiLeaks demonstrated that the DNC acted in favor of Hillary
Clinton in the lead up to the 2016 Democratic primary. The emails also revealed
corporate media reporters acting as surrogates of
the DNC and its pro-Clinton agenda, going so far as to promote Donald Trump
during the GOP primary process as a preferred “pied-piper candidate.” One cannot
assume that similar evidence will be presented to the public in 2020, making it
more important than ever to take stock of the unique lessons handed down to us
by the 2016 race.
Social Media Meddling
Election meddling via social
media did take place in 2016, though in a different guise and for a different
cause from that which are best remembered. Twitter would eventually admit
to actively suppressing hashtags
referencing the DNC and Podesta emails in the run-up to the 2016 presidential
election. Additional reports indicated
that tech giant Google also showed measurable “pro-Hillary Clinton bias” in
search results during 2016, resulting in the alleged swaying of between 2 and
10 millions voters in favor of Clinton.
On the Republican side, a
recent episode of CNLive! featured
discussion of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which undecided voters were
micro-targeted with tailored advertising narrowed with the combined use of big
data and artificial intelligence known collectively as “dark strategy.” CNLive! Executive
Producer Cathy Vogan noted that SCL, Cambridge Analytica’s parent company,
provides data, analytics and strategy to governments and military organizations
“worldwide,” specializing in behavior modification. Though Cambridge Analytica
shut down in 2018, related companies remain.
The Clinton camp was hardly
absent from social media during the 2016 race. The barely-legal activities
of Clintonite David Brock were previously reported by
this author to have included $2 million in funding for the creation of an
online “troll army” under the
name Shareblue. The LA Times described
the project as meant to “to appear to be coming organically from people and
their social media networks in a groundswell of activism, when in fact it is
highly paid and highly tactical.” In other words, the effort attempted to
create a false sense of consensus in support for the Clinton campaign.
In terms of interference in
the actual election process, the New York City Board of Elections was shown to
have purged over one hundred
thousand Democratic voters in Brooklyn from the rolls before the 2016 primary,
a move that the Department of Justice found broke federal law.
Despite this, no prosecution for the breach was ever attempted.
Though the purge was not
explicitly found to have benefitted Clinton, the admission falls in line with
allegations across the country that the Democratic primary was interfered with
to the benefit of the former secretary of state. These claims were further bolstered
by reports indicating that
voting results from the 2016 Democratic primary showed evidence of fraud.
DNC Fraud Lawsuit
The proceedings of the DNC
fraud lawsuit provide the most damning evidence of the failure of the U.S.
election process, especially within the Democratic Party. DNC defense lawyers
argued in open court for the party’s right
to appoint candidates at its own discretion, while simultaneously
denying any “fiduciary duty” to represent the voters who donated to the
Democratic Party under the impression that the DNC would act impartially
towards the candidates involved.
In 2017, the Observer reported that the DNC’s
defense counsel argued against claims that the party defrauded Sanders’
supporters by favoring Clinton, reasoning that Sanders’ supporters knew the
process was rigged. Again: instead of arguing that the primary was neutral and
unbiased in accordance with its charter, the DNC’s lawyers argued that it was
the party’s right to select candidates.
The Observer noted
the sentiments of Jared Beck, the attorney representing the plaintiffs of the
lawsuit:
…“People paid money in
reliance on the understanding that the primary elections for the Democratic
nominee —nominating process in 2016 were fair and impartial, and that’s not
just a bedrock assumption that we would assume just by virtue of the fact that
we live in a democracy, and we assume that our elections are run in a fair and
impartial manner. But that’s what the Democratic National Committee’s own
charter says. It says it in black and white.”
The DNC defense counsel’s
argument throughout the course of the DNC fraud lawsuit doubled down repeatedly
in defense of the party’s right to favor one candidate over another, at one
point actually claiming that such favoritism was protected by the First Amendment. The
DNC’s lawyers wrote:
“To recognize any of the
causes of action that Plaintiffs allege would run directly contrary to
long-standing Supreme Court precedent recognizing the central and
critical First Amendment rights enjoyed by political parties, especially
when it comes to selecting the party’s nominee for public office.” [Emphasis
added]
The DNC’s shameless defense of
its own rigging disemboweled the most fundamental organs of the U.S. body
politic. This no indication that the DNC will not resort to the same
tactics in the 2020 primary race,
Tim Canova’s Allegations
If Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s
role as disgraced chairwoman of the DNC and her forced 2016 resignation wasn’t
enough, serious interference was also alleged in the wake of two contests
between Wasserman Schultz and professor Tim Canova in Florida’s 23rd
congressional district. Canova and Wasserman Schultz first faced off in a 2016
Democratic primary race, followed by a 2018 general congressional election in
which Canova ran as an independent.
Debacles followed both
contests, including improper vote counts, illegal ballot destruction,
improper transportation of
ballots, and generally shameless displays
of cronyism. After the controversial results of the initial primary race
against Wasserman Schultz, Canova sought to have ballots checked for
irregularities, as the Sun-Sentinel reported
at the time:
“[Canova] sought to look at
the paper ballots in March 2017 and took Elections Supervisor Brenda Snipes to
court three months later when her office hadn’t fulfilled his request. Snipes
approved the destruction of the ballots in September, signing a certification
that said no court cases involving the ballots were pending.”
Ultimately, Canova was granted
a summary judgment against Snipes, finding that she had committed what amounted
to multiple felonies. Nonetheless, Snipes was not prosecuted and remained
elections supervisor through to the 2018 midterms.
Republicans appear no more
motivated to protect voting integrity than the Democrats, with The
Nation reporting that the GOP-controlled Senate blocked a bill this
week that would have “mandated paper-ballot backups in case of election machine
malfunctions.”
Study of Corporate Power
A 2014 study published
by Princeton University found that corporate power had usurped the voting
rights of the public: “Economic elites and organized groups representing
business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government
policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no
independent influence.”
In reviewing this sordid
history, we see that the Democratic Party establishment has done everything in
its power to disrespect voters and outright overrule them in the democratic
primary process, defending their right to do so in the DNC fraud lawsuit. We’ve
noted that interests transcending the DNC also represent escalating threats to
election integrity as demonstrated in 2016.
Despite this, establishment
Democrats and those who echo their views in the legacy press continue to
deflect from their own wrongdoing and real threats to the election process by
suggesting that mere discussion of it represents a campaign by Russia to attempt
to malign the perceptionof the legitimacy of the U.S. democratic process.
Hillary Clinton’s recent
comments to the effect that Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard is being “groomed” by
Russia, and that the former Green Party Presidential candidate Dr. Jill Stein
is a “Russian asset”, were soon echoed by DNC-friendly pundits. These
sentiments externalize what Gabbard called the
“rot” in the Democratic party outward onto domestic critics and a nation across
the planet.
Newsweek provided a particularly
glaring example of this phenomenon in a recent op-ed penned by columnist Naveed
Jamali, a former FBI double agent whose book capitalizes on Russiagate. In an
op-ed titled: “Hillary Clinton Is Right. Tulsi Gabbard Is A Perfect
Russian Asset – And Would Be A Perfect Republican Agent,” Jamali argued:
“Moscow will use its skillful
propaganda machine to prop up Gabbard and use her as a tool to delegitimize
the democratic process.” [Emphasis added]
Jamali surmises that Russia
intends to “attack” our democracy by undermining the domestic perception of its
legitimacy. This thesis is repeated later in the piece when Jamali opines: “They want to see a retreat of
American influence. What better way to accomplish that than to attack our
democracy by casting doubt on the legitimacy of our elections.” [Emphasis
added]
The only thing worth
protecting, according to Jamali and those who amplify his work (including
former Clinton aide and establishment Democrat Neera Tanden), is the perception of
the democratic process, not the actual functioning vitality of it. Such
deflective tactics ensure that Russia will continue to be used as a convenient
international pretext for silencing
domestic dissent as we move into 2020.
Given all this, how can one
expect the outcome of a 2020 Democratic Primary — or even the general election
– to be any fairer or transparent than 2016?
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