Sunday, February 9, 2020
Of Course Michael Bloomberg Is an Oligarch
Richard Eskow / Common Dreams
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/of-course-michael-bloomberg-is-an-oligarch/
A recent exchange on MSNBC turned viral after Nina Turner, a national campaign co-chair for Bernie Sanders, described billionaire Michael Bloomberg as an “oligarch.” That drew a heated response from MSNBC contributor and political science professor Jason Johnson, who insisted that Turner’s word choice was unfair and inaccurate.
That’s absurd. By any common definition, Bloomberg’s an oligarch. He wants to buy your vote. Based on his record, he’s also coming for your Social Security.
After this exchange, Sen. Turner tweeted, “I may not have a PhD (yet!) but I DO have the good sense of knowing what makes for Oligarchy.”
Hey, I’m not a clockmaker, but I know what time it is.
My social media feed is filled with Democrats celebrating Bloomberg’s return to the Democratic Party, his candidacy, and his pledge to up to a billion dollars to defeat Trump. (Few, if any, of these Democrats are repeating a line of attack often used against Sanders—that he’s not really a Democrat—despite the fact that Bloomberg is a former Republican who only rejoined the Democratic Party two years ago.)
Think again.
The Video
A brief recap of the “oligarch” argument: Turner, Johnson, and Chris Matthews were discussing the Democratic National Committee’s last-minute rules change, which allowed Bloomberg into the next debate after he wrote it a large check.
“We should be ashamed of that as Americans, people who believe in democracy,” said Sen. Turner, “that the oligarchs, if you have more money you can buy your way.”
When asked if she thought Bloomberg was an oligarch, Turner didn’t hesitate. “He is,” she said, “buying his way into the race.”
Johnson insisted this was “name-calling,” and that a label like “oligarch” has “implications in this country that I think are unfair and unreasonable.”
But is it true? Some landmark political science studies—and most dictionaries—say that it is.
Is This Country an Oligarchy?
Merriam-Webster defines an “oli·gar·chy” as follows:
1 : government by the few
2 : a government in which a small group exercises control especially for corrupt and selfish purposes; also: a group exercising such control
3 : an organization under oligarchic control
Does that describe our government? Political scientists Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page found that “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.”
Gilens and Page didn’t use the word “oligarchy,” but those elites and groups represent only a small percentage of the population, so a number of the journalists who covered their work did.
In a related finding, political scientist Thomas Ferguson and his colleagues found “the relations between money and major party votes in all elections for the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives from 1980 to 2014 are well approximated by straight lines.”
Money doesn’t just talk, it votes. That’s oligarchy.
But is Michael Bloomberg an Oligarch?
An “oligarch,” according to the Cambridge American Dictionary, is “one of a small group of powerful people who control a country or an industry.”
Is Michael Bloomberg such a person? Maybe he’s just really rich and doesn’t control that much. But let’s have some background.
With an estimated net worth of more than $60 billion, Bloomberg is the twelfth-richest person on the planet and the ninth-richest person in the United States. That’s a pretty small group of people. But do they control the country? Ferguson et al. found that campaign cash drives election outcomes. That means campaign donors largely control the process.
Gilens and Page found that wealthy people and interests usually get what they want. The rest of us usually don’t, unless what we want is also what they want. The fact that progressives like some of Bloomberg’s positions doesn’t undermine these findings. In fact, it reinforces them.
Bloomberg hasn’t just given money to a number of campaigns. He also controls a media empire. In true oligarchical fashion, he decreed years ago that his news outlets would not cover his political career. He said recently that it would not cover his rivals’ campaigns, either — a move that drew criticism from journalists and an ethics professor. Less than a month later, however, Bloomberg News violated that edict by running a hit piece against Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.
That’s oligarchical behavior.
Bloomberg’s own political history is an exercise in the use of oligarchical wealth to change electoral outcomes. He was unpopular when he first ran for mayor of New York—a situation he rectified by dramatically outspending his rivals. Even so, Bloomberg only eked out a two-point victory against Democrat Mark Green in his first mayoral race, after outspending him five to one.
The argument between Turner and Johnson involved another compelling example of Bloomberg-as-oligarch. The DNC’s rules said each candidate had to have a minimum number of donors to quality for the debate stage. That rule wasn’t overruled for Cory Booker or Julian Castro, despite calls for greater diversity in the race. But it was overturned for Bloomberg, who had donated more than $1 million to the DNC and a related organization a few short weeks before.
Will Michael Bloomberg Cut Your Social Security?
If you thought there were problems with Joe Biden’s Social Security record, wait until you see Bloomberg’s. His record of espousing austerity economics has including a special enthusiasm for cutting Medicare and Social Security.
As he told Face the Nation in 2013:
No program to reduce the deficit makes any sense whatsoever unless you address the issue of entitlements, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, interest payment on the debt, which you can’t touch, and defense spending. Everything else is tiny compared to that.
Bloomberg has called for raising the retirement age, a move that would cut Social Security benefits for all retirees and create physical hardship for many older workers.
These are bad ideas. They make for even worse politics. Voters love Social Security. A Pew study released in March 2019 found that “74 percent of Americans say Social Security benefits should not be reduced in any way.”
And voters don’t like entitlement cuts, or the Bloomberg-endorsed thinking behind them. That can be seen in a GBAO/Center for American Progress survey conducted in October 2019. Less than half of Republicans, one-third of Democrats, and roughly one-third of independents agreed with the Bloomberg-like statement that “our national debt is way too high, and we need to cut government spending on the biggest programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.”
Trump has given Democrats an opening on Social Security. His administration is currently engaged in a de facto program to cut Social Security disability benefits, by forcing millions of disabled people to endure the punishing process of eligibility screening as often as every six months. Newsweek reports that the Social Security Administration concluded that this would lead to $2.6 billion in benefit cuts and an additional 2.6 million case reviews between 2020 and 2029. It’s a brutal assault on the health and security of a vulnerable population.
Trump also said he intends to pursue additional cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid after the upcoming election, when he no longer has to worry about public opinion. Worse, he did so at the annual gathering of billionaires in Davos. That reinforces the perception that he’s imposing hardship on the majority to help a privileged few.
Most leading Democrats understand that there is wide support for protecting and expanding Social Security. Most leading candidates—including Joe Biden—have offered some form of Social Security expansion. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has embraced the idea in principle. There’s an opportunity here—if Bloomberg doesn’t stop them from taking it.
What about inequality?
Bloomberg has sometimes embraced tax increases, but he has long opposed tax hikes that reduce inequality by targeting the wealthy.
In fact, he called the idea “class warfare” in a 2012 op-ed for the Wall Street Journal. The op-ed was called “Federal Budgets and Class Warfare,” and it trotted out some hoary clichés about “class war”—which is more like asymmetrical warfare on behalf of the rich—along with other stale and debunked right-wing talking points. Bloomberg wrote, for example, that “the top 5% already pay 59% of all federal income taxes, while 42% of filers have no federal income tax bill at all.”
That statistic omits state, local, and sales taxes, so it doesn’t prove Bloomberg’s point. What it does demonstrate is the extent of today’s income inequality.
Now that he’s running, Bloomberg’s had a seeming change of heart. He has a plan to raise taxes on the wealthy and corporations—the same idea he bitterly condemned in 2012. It’s a modest plan, compared to Sanders and Warren, but it’s not bad. The question is, does he mean it?
Bloomberg has close ties with organizations that have long campaigned for deficit reduction and against Social Security and Medicare. His only recorded complaint against past bipartisan budget-cutting proposals, in fact, was that they didn’t go far enough—a statement that won him praise from the anti-entitlement “Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.” The Fiscal Times quoted Bloomberg as saying Democrats “have to face the reality that we need more spending cuts, including reasonable entitlement reform.”
(Bloomberg’s “class warfare” screed was posted on his website, but has since been removed.)
The text of his “this deal doesn’t cut spending enough” speech has also been removed from the CRFB website—(apparently there’s a lot of that going around.)
There are other reasons to worry about Candidate Bloomberg.
Given his virtually unlimited resources, Bloomberg could theoretically win both the nomination and the presidency. By my calculation, Bloomberg could pay the same “unit price” he paid to make himself mayor of New York—$88 per voter—and make himself president for $12 billion. He’d even have $50 billion set aside for a rainy day.
The nomination would presumably cost less than the presidency, so he has a better shot at that. But it would be a bad look for the Democrats to become the first party in modern history whose candidate openly bought the nomination. But then, Bloomberg’s used to getting the rules changed just for him. When he wanted to run for a third term as mayor, Bloomberg used all the tools at his disposal (one of which led to an ethics complaint) to change the city’s rules. Once he got what he wanted, Bloomberg then pushed to change the rules back. It seems that some privileges should be labeled, “for oligarchs only.”
Democrats should also be troubled by Bloomberg’s authoritarian streak. As mayor, Bloomberg had a history of suppressing peaceful demonstrations, sometimes with brute force. His police spied on Muslim gatherings and engaged in racially-biased “stop and frisk” tactics that expanded sevenfold under his leadership. He took advantaged of privatized public spaces, including Zuccotti Park, to suspend basic liberties within them, while renting out his police force to the banks the movement was protesting. His unconstitutional suppression of Occupy even included the needless destruction of the movement’s library.
As Conor Friedensdorf writes in The Atlantic, comparing Bloomberg to Trump:
Had Trump spent years sending armed agents of the state to frisk people of color, 90 percent of them innocent, would you forgive him? How about if Trump sent undercover cops to spy on Muslims with no basis for the targeting other than the mere fact of their religious identity? What if he thwarted the ability of anti-war protesters to march in New York City?
But it’s okay to take his money, right?
If he doesn’t win the nomination, Bloomberg will once again play the role of billionaire donor. After lamely arguing that Bernie Sanders is a “rich guy”—as if a million or two means anything to billionaire—Prof. Johnson objected to calling Bloomberg an “oligarch” because it might make him decide to close his checkbook. Johnson said:
It’s the kind of thing that blows up in your face if you become the nominee and you have to work with Bloomberg three or four months from now. That’s the issue that Sanders’s people never seem to want to remember.
Johnson didn’t seem to realize that his argument—“Politicians shouldn’t make the billionaire mad or he won’t give them his money”—is a textbook example of oligarchy in action.
Maybe Sanders’ people do remember. Maybe they just don’t care.
Bloomberg says he’ll unconditionally offer financial support to any Democratic nominee, including Sanders and Warren. That sounds good. But “unconditional” isn’t Bloomberg’s usual M.O. As the New York Times reported in 2018, when he donated heavily to Democrats running for Congress (and one or two Republicans):
Bloomberg] has indicated to aides that he only wants to support candidates who share his relatively moderate political orientation, avoiding nominees hailing from the populist left.
If that means embracing Bloomberg’s views on Social Security and “class war,” Democrats could be trading electability for cash. Beware of billionaires bearing gifts—especially when one of those gifts is the billionaire himself.
#TomPerezResign: DNC Chair Under Fire for Iowa Disaster, Favoritism for Billionaire Oligarch Bloomberg
"The Dem establishment has been screaming that our movement is sowing divisiveness and is going to ruin party unity but they're nailing that to the wall all by themselves."
by
Eoin Higgins, staff writer
136 Comments
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/02/04/tomperezresign-dnc-chair-under-fire-iowa-disaster-favoritism-billionaire-oligarch?
Calls for Tom Perez to step down as the head of the Democratic National Committee grew louder Tuesday in the aftermath of the Iowa caucus fiasco in which party mismanagement of the process delayed the results from Monday night's contest and left the 2020 Democratic presidential primary in disarray.
"The Iowa caucus debacle is so insulting to the candidates, their volunteers, the caucus-goers, and the DNC's own process," tweeted HuffPost senior reporter Zach Carter. "Tom Perez has to resign."
Multiple petitions on Change.org called on Perez to relinquish his position as chair of the DNC. One of the most popular ones had over 13,600 signatures at press time. #ResignTomPerez trended on Twitter overnight.
While Perez and the DNC were not technically in charge of the process Monday night, the national party's influence on the process likely led to the caucus meltdown. Top-level party officials' concerns about Russian interference in the 2016 election have created a cottage industry of technology security experts offering protective services for elections.
On Monday an app developed to report results by little-known but party-connected tech company Shadow encountered problems, throwing the entire process into chaos.
As Common Dreams reported, secrecy around the app, its developer, and the process by which it failed have sown distrust in the primary process among the Democratic rank and file. Perez's position at the head of the party has made him the focus of that anger and frustration.
The anger at Perez had been brewing for days.
On Friday, news that the DNC was going to adjust its debate rules to allow billionaire Mike Bloomberg onstage drew outrage and accusations that the party was allowing the former New York City mayor to buy his way into the election—and the beginning of the latest wave of calls for Perez's resignation. Activist Shaun King, a supporter of the Democratic presidential bid of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), referred to both issues in a tweet on Tuesday.
"I'll be glad to see Tom Perez step down from the DNC," said King. "After a clusterfuck of an election in a state the DNC had a year to prepare for, that was preceded by the DNC changing the rules for a billionaire to buy his way into the race, the man has lost the respect of millions."
Sanders supporter and Democratic Party activist Kat Brezler echoed King's concerns over the direction of the party and emphasized the damage the DNC was doing to the institution.
"The Dem establishment has been screaming that our movement is sowing divisiveness and is going to ruin party unity but they're nailing that to the wall all by themselves," tweeted Brezler. "Changing rules for the DNC threshold for debate access to allow billionaires but not PoC candidates and this!"
Ultimately, Vice senior staff writer Laura Wagner tweeted, the lesson is that the party will stymie Sanders' chances one way or another and the Vermont senator's supporters will need to accept the need to fight on a number of fronts to succeed.
"The DNC is corrupt or incompetent or both and if Bernie Sanders wins the nomination it will be in spite of his party's leadership," said Wagner.
Senate Republicans Acquit Trump in 'Cowardly and Disgraceful Final Act to Their Show Trial'
"Make no mistake about it, this was nothing more than an attempted partisan coverup for the shameless and illegal conduct of Donald Trump."
by
Jon Queally, staff writer
72 Comments
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/02/05/senate-republicans-acquit-trump-cowardly-and-disgraceful-final-act-their-show-trial?
In what critics called the final act of a "ham-handed coverup" by Republican lawmakers, President Donald Trump was acquitted by the U.S. Senate on Wednesday on both impeachment counts—one for abuse of power and one for obstruction of Congress—approved by the U.S. House of Representatives last month.
In the first vote on abuse of power, the vote was 48 in favor of conviction and removal of the president with just one Republican, Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, joining with the 47 members of the Democratic caucus. All 52 other Republicans in the Senate voted to acquit.
In the second vote on obstruction of power, the vote was 47-53, strictly along party lines.
Immediately following the vote, progressives expressed outrageand condemned the senators who voted to acquit the president.
Karen Hobert Flynn, president of Common Cause, was among those who said that while the outcome was not unexpected, it would not soon be forgotten.
"Americans deserved the truth, but they got a ham-handed coverup instead," Hobert Flynn said. "The Republican majority in the United States Senate denied the American people the truth and violated their oaths of office in a fruitless attempt to sweep Trump's illegal acts under the rug."
"In a cowardly and disgraceful final act to their show trial," she continued, "Senate Republicans—with the notable exception of Mitt Romney—buried their heads in the sand and voted to condone President Trump's blatant abuse of the powers of the presidency. Make no mistake about it, this was nothing more than an attempted partisan coverup for the shameless and illegal conduct of Donald Trump."
"This is not an 'acquittal,' this is a cover-up," said Stand Up America founder and president Sean Eldridge in a statement. "What Republican senators just did threatens the foundation of our democracy and upends the rule of law."
Eldridge called the Senate vote part of a "sham trial that hid evidence from the American people," and accused Republicans of choosing "partisan cowardice over patriotism."
"The American people will not take this assault on our democracy sitting down," said Eldridge. "We will organize like never before to hold Donald Trump and Senate Republicans accountable at the ballot box this November."
Rahna Epting, executive director of MoveOn Political Action, echoed the call for electoral payback. "Republican senators may have failed to do their job, but voters won't fail to do ours," said Epting. "We have one message for Donald Trump and the Senate Republicans who time and time again have helped cover up his abuses: We will see you at the ballot box."
"This trial may close, but this movement continues," said By the People executive director Alexandra Flores-Quilty.
Flores-Quilty added that her group and others would continue to push to hold both Trump and Republican lawmakers accountable.
"Just as past Americans came together to defeat kings and Jim Crow, we will unite to make this country what it should be," said Flores-Quilty. "A government of, by, and for the people."
'No Better Distillation of Washington': Democrats and GOP Join Trump in Standing Ovation for Failed Venezuelan Coup Leader Juan Guaidó
"Intervening in Venezuela's internal politics is the one thing that is bipartisan! How sad," said CodePink co-founder Medea Benjamin.
by
Jake Johnson, staff writer
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/02/05/no-better-distillation-washington-democrats-and-gop-join-trump-standing-ovation?
In a moment observers described as a telling display of the bipartisan support for regime change that pervades Washington, D.C., congressional Democrats applauded along with their Republican colleagues after President Donald Trump used his State of the Union address Tuesday night to praise Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó, who headed a failed U.S-backed coup against his country's elected president last year.
Trump hailed Guaidó—who was in attendance for the address—as the "true and legitimate president of Venezuela," a line that was met with a raucous standing ovation from members of both political parties, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), the top Democrat in Congress.
As NPR reported, "Guaidó received an extended bipartisan standing ovation. It was one of the few times that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Democrats stood to applaud during Trump's speech."
Watch:
Keane Bhatt, policy adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), tweeted in response to the show of unity that "there is no better distillation of Washington, D.C. than a State of the Union in which Nancy Pelosi—having just led the impeachment of Donald 'All Roads Lead to Putin' Trump—twice joins in a rousing standing ovation of Juan Guaidó, Trump's appointed 'president' of Venezuela."
CodePink co-founder Medea Benjamin reacted with dismay to the bipartisan standing ovation for Guaidó, whose coup attempt against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro quickly collapsed last year despite support from the U.S. and other nations.
"The Democrats, including Pelosi, just got up to applaud the self-proclaimed 'president' of Venezuela Juan Guaidó," tweeted Benjamin. "Intervening in Venezuela's internal politics is the one thing that is bipartisan! How sad."
'Because I Got 6,000 More Votes': Bernie Sanders Declares Victory in Iowa Caucus
"From where I come, when you get 6,000 more votes that's generally regarded to be the winner."
Jake Johnson, staff writer, Jon Queally, staff writer
303 Comments
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/02/06/because-i-got-6000-more-votes-bernie-sanders-declares-victory-iowa-caucus?
Touting his 6,000-vote lead over Pete Buttigieg with 97% of Iowa Democratic caucus precincts reporting, Sen. Bernie Sanders on Thursday declared victory in the first-in-the-nation presidential contest and slammed the state Democratic Party's handling of the process as "extremely unfair to the people of Iowa" and the entire 2020 Democratic presidential field.
"What I want to do today, three days late, is to thank the people of Iowa for the very strong victory they gave us at the Iowa caucuses on Monday night," Sanders said during a press conference in Manchester, New Hampshire. "Even though the vote tabulations have been extremely slow, we are now at a point with some 97% of the precincts reporting where our campaign is winning the popular initial vote by some 6,000 votes."
The latest batch of caucus results released by the Iowa Democratic Party early Thursday morning show Sanders ahead of Buttigieg in the first alignment popular vote 42,672 to 36,718—a lead of 5,954 votes. In the final alignment popular vote, as Common Dreams reported ealier, Sanders is leading Buttigieg by more than 2,500 votes—44,753 to 42,235."In other words, some 6,000 more Iowans came out on caucus night to support our candidacy than the candidacy of anyone else," the Vermont senator added. "And when 6,000 more people come out for you in an election than your nearest opponent, we here in northern New England call that a victory."
Sanders' declaration of victory came just hours after Buttigieg, in a conference call with supporters Wednesday night, claimed victory in the Iowa caucus and called himself "the momentum candidate."
Asked Thursday why the public should believe his victory declaration over Buttigieg's, Sanders responded, "Because I got 6,000 more votes."
"And from where I come," Sanders added, "when you get 6,000 more votes that's generally regarded to be the winner."
Sanders brushed aside news that Democratic National Committee chairman Tom Perez demanded that the Iowa Democratic Party immediately "recanvass" the results of the caucus, emphasizing that he won the popular vote and that he and Buttigieg are likely to emerge from the process with the same number of national pledged delegates.
"We won an eight-person election by some 6,000 votes," Sanders said. "That is not going to be changed."
Watch full the press conference:
"The 2020 Iowa caucus was never about the number of DNC delegates. It was always about the momentum story," tweeted Becky Bond, a former aide to Sanders who worked on Beto O'Rourke's presidential campaign last year, following Thursday's press conference.
Major news outlets and prominent journalists covering the primaries should "change their criteria for declaring a winner in Iowa to the popular vote," Bond added, and should do so "while it still matters."
'Something Big Is Shifting': As Georgetown Announces Fossil Fuel Divestment, Students Across US Demand Their Schools Follow Suit
The decision came after 90% of students who voted on a referendum voted in favor of divestment.
Julia Conley, staff writer
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/02/08/something-big-shifting-georgetown-announces-fossil-fuel-divestment-students-across?
Student-led anti-fossil fuel campaigns at universities across the country pointed to Georgetown University Friday as the school's board of directors announced it would divest from fossil fuels and redouble its efforts to invest in renewable energy instead.
The university's decision came after a sustained pressure campaign from Georgetown University Fossil Free (GUFF), a student group which submitted multiple proposals to the Georgetown Committee on Investments and Social Responsibility before the panel recommended the divestment this week. The school community also voted on a referendum regarding divestment on Thursday, withn more than 90% voting in favor.
GUFF issued a statement thanking the board of directors for its decision to divest and the school community for participating in the campaign.
"We are thrilled that our university has taken this important step in supporting climate justice, student voices, and financial accountability," GUFF wrote.
Similar groups at other schools called on administrators to follow suit:
Under Georgetown's new policy, the board of directors said, "the university will continue to make investments that target a market rate of return in renewable energy, energy efficiency and related areas while freezing new endowment investments in companies or funds whose primary business is the exploration or extraction of fossil fuels."
The school will divest from public securities in fossil fuel companies in the next five years and existing investments in those companies in the next decade.
"Divestment allows us to divert more capital to fund development of renewable energy projects that will play a vital role in the transition away from fossil fuels—part of the long-term solution required to prevent the most dangerous effects of climate change," Michael Barry, Georgetown's chief investment officer, said in a statement.
Climate action advocates including 350.org co-founder Bill McKibben and author Naomi Klein applauded the move.
"Something big is shifting," Klein wrote.
In November, hundreds of Harvard and Yale students stormed the field during the two schools' annual football game to demand the institutions divest from fossil fuels. The University of California system announced it would divest last September, and more than 1,000 other institutions around the world have committed to divestment in recent years.
As Georgetown students and faculty were celebrating the board's decision Friday, the Sunrise Movement chapter at George Washington University two miles away expressed frustration with the school's board of trustees, which announced it would form an "environmental, social, and governance responsibility" task force without naming divestment from fossil fuels as an immediate goal.
"There is absolutely no need to 'explore' whether or not GW's endowment should divest from fossil fuels," wrote the group. "The moral imperative is clear and does not need a moment's thought as to whether or not it is actively contributing to the degradation of our planet."
The Sunrise Movement chapter vowed to make sure it was "sufficiently considered in this process" and demanded the university join Georgetown in fully divesting from fossil fuels.
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