Sunday, February 9, 2020
'Which Side Are You On?': Sanders Calls Out Buttigieg for Raking in Billionaire Donations
"Do you think if you're collecting money from dozens of dozens of billionaires you're going to stand up to the drug companies and you're going to throw their CEOs in jail if they're acting criminally?"
Jake Johnson, staff writer
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/02/07/which-side-are-you-sanders-calls-out-buttigieg-raking-billionaire-donations?
With just four days to go before the New Hampshire Democratic primary, Sen. Bernie Sanders on Friday sought to contrast his small dollar-fueled campaign with Pete Buttigieg's reliance on big money by highlighting the former South Bend, Indiana mayor's dozens of billionaire campaign contributors.
"I'm reading some headlines from newspapers about Pete Buttigieg: 'Pete Buttigieg Has Most Exclusive Billionaire Donors of Any Democrat.' That was from Forbes," Sanders said. "The Hill: 'Pete Buttigieg Tops Billionaire Donor List.' Fortune: 'Pete Buttigieg Takes Lead as Big Business Candidate in 2020 Field'."At a breakfast event at St. Anselm College in New Hampshire hours ahead of the sixth Democratic presidential debate Friday night, Sanders—who has rejected all billionaire campaign cash—rattled off the headlines of several recent news stories on Buttigieg's billionaire donors.
"I like Pete Buttigieg, nice guy, but we are in a moment where billionaires control not only our economy but our political process," said the Vermont senator. "Do you think if you're collecting money from dozens of dozens of billionaires you're going to stand up to the drug companies and you're going to throw their CEOs in jail if they're acting criminally?"
According to the December Forbes analysis Sanders cited, Buttigieg had received donations from forty billionaires and their spouses as of September 30th of last year.
Thirteen of those billionaires gave exclusively to Buttigieg, "by far the most of any Democrat running for president," Forbes found.
Sanders' presidential campaign, by contrast, has relied mostly on small donations averaging around $18. As Common Dreams reported Thursday, Sanders raised $25 million in January alone from over 1.3 million donations averaging $18.72.
Using the hashtag #PetesBillionaires, Sanders tweeted following the St. Anselm College event that "this election is fundamentally about whose side you are on."
Members of Sanders' presidential campaign also chimed in:
The Sanders campaign's effort to put Buttigieg's billionaire campaign contributors in the spotlight comes amid tightening poll numbers in New Hampshire. A Boston Globe/WBZ-TV/Suffolk University survey released Thursday showed Sanders leading Buttigieg by just one percentage point in the state—24% to 23%. The Emerson pre-primary tracking poll, meanwhile, still showed Sanders up in the Granite State, with the Vermont senator leading the former mayor by 9 points (32% to 23%).
In the wake of the Iowa debacle and with the New Hampshire primary just days away, Current Affairs columnist and Sanders supporter Paul Waters-Smith emphasized Friday that the senator's candidacy represents an "excellent opportunity to deepen a vision of a truly democratic society where working people own and control the economy and politics, all the while mobilizing behind an agenda which addresses our burning immediate needs."
"This election will affect the lives of millions who can't even vote or donate to the campaign," wrote Waters-Smith. "Given the stakes, we can afford to put our cynicism and dispassion aside. We can't let the nay-sayers, the dirty tricks, the smears, or the fear of failure hold us back from doing our part. We are on the brink of achieving something historic, and we can't let them stop us."
'Consistent With a Mass Extinction': New Study Warns Climate Chaos Driving Rapid Decline of Bumblebees
The research "adds to a growing body of evidence for alarming, widespread losses of biodiversity and for rates of global change that now exceed the critical limits of ecosystem resilience."
Jessica Corbett, staff writer
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/02/07/consistent-mass-extinction-new-study-warns-climate-chaos-driving-rapid-decline?
The rising frequency of extremely hot temperatures tied to human-caused global heating is creating "climate chaos" that drives widespread declines of bumblebees, some of the planet's most important pollinators, according to a new study published in the journal Science.
Researchers at the University of Ottawa in Canada and University College London in the United Kingdom developed a new measurement of temperature based on species' heat tolerance. "We have created a new way to predict local extinctions that tells us, for each species individually, whether climate change is creating temperatures that exceed what the bumblebees can handle," explained study co-author Tim Newbold.
The team applied their technique to data on 66 different bumblebee species across North America and Europe collected from 1901 to 1974 and 2000 to 2014. They concluded that more frequent extreme heat "is increasing local extinction rates, reducing colonization and site occupancy, and decreasing species richness within a region, independent of land-use change or condition."
"We found that populations were disappearing in areas where the temperatures had gotten hotter," said the study's lead author, Peter Soroye. "Using our new measurement of climate change, we were able to predict changes both for individual species and for whole communities of bumblebees with a surprisingly high accuracy."
The researchers found that the rate at which bumblebees are declining is "consistent with a mass extinction." Over the course of a single human generation, the chances of a local bumblebee population surviving has fallen by an average of more than 30%. Soroye noted that the findings have implications for more than just the bees.
Although the study serves as a bleak warning about the need for urgent action to address the declines of bumblebees, the authors are hopeful that their technique for gauging the impact of extreme events like droughts and heatwaves can also aid with conservation efforts for other species."Bumblebees are the best pollinators we have in wild landscapes and the most effective pollinators for crops like tomato, squash, and berries. Our results show that we face a future with many less bumblebees and much less diversity, both in the outdoors and on our plates," he said. "If declines continue at this pace, many of these species could vanish forever within a few decades."
"We've known for a while that climate change is related to the growing extinction risk that animals are facing around the world," Soroye said. "In this paper, we offer an answer to the critical questions of how and why that is. We find that species extinctions across two continents are caused by hotter and more frequent extremes in temperatures."
"Perhaps the most exciting element is that we developed a method to predict extinction risk that works very well for bumblebees and could in theory be applied universally to other organisms," he added. "With a predictive tool like this, we hope to identify areas where conservation actions would be critical to stopping declines."
Study co-author Jeremy Kerr said that "predicting why bumblebees and other species are going extinct in a time of rapid, human-caused climate change could help us prevent extinction in the 21st century."
"This work also holds out hope by implying ways that we might take the sting out of climate change for these and other organisms by maintaining habitats that offer shelter, like trees, shrubs, or slopes, that could let bumblebees get out of the heat," he said. "Ultimately, we must address climate change itself and every action we take to reduce emissions will help. The sooner the better. It is in all our interests to do so, as well as in the interests of the species with whom we share the world."
Recent reports, including one published in November 2019 by University of Sussex biology professor Dave Goulson, have raised alarm about a decades-long human-caused insect "apocalypse" that has resulted from not only the climate crisis but also habitat loss and pesticide use.In a related "perspective" article published by Science, scientists Jon Bridle of the University of Bristol and Alexandra van Rensburg of the University of Zurich wrote that the new research "adds to a growing body of evidence for alarming, widespread losses of biodiversity and for rates of global change that now exceed the critical limits of ecosystem resilience."
Last month, 73 international scientists released a global roadmap to battle the "bugpocalypse," emphasizing that "insects are key to our own survival." Their recommendations included curbing planet-heating emissions; cutting back synthetic pesticides and fertilizers; limiting light, water, and noise pollution; and preventing the introduction of invasive and alien species.
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The Iowa Caucuses Are a Mortal Threat to Democracy
Bill Boyarsky
truthdig.com/articles/the-iowa-caucuses-are-a-mortal-threat-to-democracy/
The undemocratic and incompetently run Iowa caucuses remind me of a vampire — hard, if not impossible, to kill. While the process is unrepresentative and undemocratic, national political reporters and Iowa businesspeople will never let it die.
The first contest in the campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination ended in confusion. The messy result cast a shadow of mistrust over the nominating contests that will follow.
Chance didn’t bring us to this point. Pack journalism combined with the booster attitudes and greed of Iowa entrepreneurs is responsible. Because of them, the questions raised by the Iowa caucus failures extend far beyond the boundaries of that small Midwestern state.
Among the questions: Can we trust the vote counters in the many state contests ahead? Will fake posts on the internet, combined with the Iowa failure, add to the suspicion and mistrust now endemic to American politics? And, will each contest offer President Donald Trump a chance to portray as a fake every result not to his liking?
These developments could not have occurred to anyone when I first covered the Iowa caucuses in 1976. The caucuses had captured media attention four years before when Sen. George McGovern’s second-place finish there helped propel him to the Democratic presidential nomination. Four years later, the little-known Georgia governor, Jimmy Carter, having observed McGovern’s accomplishment, concentrated on winning the Iowa caucuses, succeeded, and won the nomination and the presidency.
That campaign cemented the unhealthy relationship between the national political reporting corps, who fell in love with Iowa, and the Iowa businesspeople, enamored with the reporters’ expense accounts and the publicity they gave the state.
In 1976, while working for the Los Angeles Times, I found a colorful change of scene in Iowa, and the flat geography made for easy travel — except when it snowed. Like other national reporters, I ate and drank well on the company’s tab and bunked at the best hotels. Iowans were friendly to us journalists. We were putting their state on the map and money in their pockets. It was, I observed, one of the few places in the country where people actually seemed to like to talk to reporters.
By 2008, I had retired from the Times and was covering the caucuses for Truthdig. No longer part of the mainstream journalism pack, I viewed the caucuses as an outsider, which permitted me to see the events for what they were.
“The caucuses are a travesty of the American political system,” I wrote in a 2007 column several days before the election. “They are … undemocratic, unfair, unrepresentative and overly complicated.” A few days later, with the caucuses fast approaching, I urged the media “to try to shed light on the process instead of helping Iowa keep this promotional device alive. Unmask the wizard, journalists, and set America free from the shackles of the Iowa caucuses.”
Of course, no one listened. The lure of the state’s rural geography, small towns, and eager-to-please Iowans was too irresistible to the press corps. So was the possibility of good assignments and promotions that often followed completion of an Iowa assignment the bosses liked.
So the media followed its usual pattern, trailing candidates from school auditoriums to coffee shops, interviewing prospective voters (whose answers seemed increasingly canned) and following the polls as if they were the Daily Racing Form.
Apparently, only a few of the most tech-minded paid attention to the most boring — and most important part — of an election, how the votes were counted.
Even more complications were added this year to the incomprehensible process I chronicled in 2008. A barely tested app was handed out to caucus chairs, purportedly to speed reporting of each caucus result. It proved difficult to download for the incompletely trained volunteers who run the caucuses. The app’s reporting capabilities were problematical. Days passed with no final results.
This has thrown the press into unknown territory. The scenario of a winner being crowned in Iowa, then heading into New Hampshire and other contests, has been shattered. Utter media confusion reigned Monday night through Wednesday.
More important than the inconvenience Iowa caused the press, however, is what the state means to public perception of the many U.S. primary elections, not to mention the big one in November, when the nation selects a president.
I live and vote in the most populous county in the nation, Los Angeles, which has more than 10 million residents. The county has long been afflicted with slow vote counts due to its size and to snafus by the vote tallying equipment installed by one of the few companies that do such work.
For this election, the county has created its own voting system, with voters given two options: voting by mail or going to a polling place and marking computer screens or hand-marking paper ballots. And, instead of using familiar local polling places, people who vote in person must travel to centralized voting centers.
The Los Angeles registrar-recorder, Dean Logan, and his staff have been working hard to make the new system work. But Libby Denkmann, who has been tracking the system, reported on LAist that “the county must meet a stack of requirements before primary election voters get their hands on the machines Feb. 22.”
I have watched enough elections and used computers long enough to know that, more likely than not, something will go wrong. The same is true for the other primary elections coming up around the country.
So let’s drive a stake into the heart of the Iowa caucuses. Let them die.
But reporters and their editors should not forget the real lesson of Iowa. The story of the 2020 election may end up being found in the back offices of voting officials and among the techies who create their voting systems. Reporting on them is tedious and complex. But it is the kind of journalism that is more important and necessary than chasing candidates around Iowa.
Democracy is at stake. More elections such as the one in Iowa will further erode the faith many Americans have in democratic institutions. If nobody believes election results, democracy, which is under assault every day, will whither and die.
The DNC Can't Slow Bernie Sanders' Momentum
Norman Solomon
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-dnc-cant-slow-bernie-sanders-momentum/
As a center of elite power, the Democratic National Committee is now floundering. Every reform it has implemented since 2016 was the result of progressive grassroots pressure. But there are limits to what DNC Chair Tom Perez is willing to accept without a knock-down, drag-out fight. And in recent weeks, he has begun to do heavy lifting for corporate Democrats — throwing roadblocks in the way of the Bernie 2020 campaign as it continues to gain momentum.
The fiasco in Iowa, despite its importance, is a sideshow compared to what is foreshadowed by recent moves from Perez. For one thing, he appointed avowedly anti-Bernie corporate operatives to key positions on powerful DNC committees. The flagrant conflicts of interest have included entrenching paid staffers for Michael Bloomberg’s presidential campaign on rules committees for the DNC and the upcoming Democratic National Convention.
Perez soon followed up by abruptly changing the official rules to allow Bloomberg to participate in the debate scheduled for three days before the Feb. 22 Nevada caucuses. The egregious decision to waive the requirement for large numbers of individual donors rolled out the blue carpet for Bloomberg to the debate stage.
“Now suddenly a guy comes in who does not campaign one bit in Iowa, New Hampshire, he’s not on the ballot I guess in Nevada or South Carolina, but he’s worth $55 billion,” Sanders said Thursday when asked about the rules change. “I guess if you’re worth $55 billion you can get the rules changed for a debate. So, to answer your question: I think that is an absolute outrage and really unfair.”
Inconvenient facts — such as the reality that Bloomberg fervently endorsed President George W. Bush for re-election in 2004 (in a speech to the Republican National Convention, no less) or that as mayor of New York he championed racist stop-and-frisk police policies — are less important to party chieftains than the humongous dollar signs that self-financing Bloomberg is bringing to the table.
The mayors of San Francisco, Washington, Anchorage and Albany, among others, have already succumbed to Bloomberg’s wealthy blandishments and endorsed him, as has former Black Panther and longtime disappointment Congressman Bobby Rush. To corporate elites, the moral of the sordid Bloomberg story is that most people can be bought, and Bloomberg might be the deus ex machina to lift them out of an impending tragedy of Sanders as nominee.
The glaring subtext of all this is the now-frantic effort to find some candidate who can prevent Sanders from becoming the party’s nominee at the national convention in July. Early corporate favorites like Beto O’Rourke, Cory Booker and Kamala Harris fizzled and flamed out. Joe Biden appears to be sinking. Amy Klobuchar staked her hopes on Iowa without success. That appears to leave Pete Buttigieg and Bloomberg as the strongest corporate contenders to prevent the corporate Democrats’ worst nightmare — the nomination of an authentic progressive populist.
A traditional claim by corporate Democrats — the assumption that grassroots progressive campaigns are doomed — is oddly matched by the assumptions of right-wing media and some on the left that the DNC can successfully rig just about anything it wants to. Fox News has been feasting on the Iowa meltdown, pleased to occasionally invite leftists on the air to denounce the DNC, immediately followed by routine denunciations of Democrats in general and Sanders in particular as diabolical socialists eager to destroy any and all American freedoms with a collectivist goal of tyranny.
Meanwhile, some progressives have such an inflated view of the DNC’s power that they propagate the idea that all is lost and Bernie is sure to be crushed. It’s the kind of defeatism that’s surely appreciated by right-wingers and corporate Democrats alike.
Perhaps needless to say, if Bernie Sanders had such a fatalistic view of electoral politics, he never would have run for president in the first place. People on the left who say the DNC’s elite power can’t be overcome with grassroots organizing are mirroring the traditional scorn from corporate Democrats — who insist that the left can never dislodge them from dominance of the party, let alone end corporate dominance of the nation.
Like millions of other progressives who support Bernie 2020, I realize that the forces arrayed against us are tremendously powerful. That’s the nature of the corporate beast. The only way to overcome it is to organize and fight back. That’s what the movements behind the Sanders campaign are doing right now.
In the words of a Latin American graffiti writer, “Let’s save pessimism for better times.”
Bloc of Muslim Nations Warns Trump Israel-Palestine Plan 'Destroys the Foundations of Peace'
The Organization of Islamic Cooperation emphasized that "peace and security in the Middle East region, as a strategic option, will only be achieved with the end of the Israeli occupation."
by
Jessica Corbett, staff writer
8 Comments
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/02/03/bloc-muslim-nations-warns-trump-israel-palestine-plan-destroys-foundations-peace?
Joining global critics of a plan that President Donald Trump unveiled last week to address the decades-long Israel-Palestine conflict, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation on Monday rejected the "biased" proposal and urged members states not to cooperate with U.S. efforts to enforce it.
At a meeting in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, the OIC executive committee adopted a resolution which decried Trump's so-called "Deal of the Century," reaffirmed support for the Palestinian people and the Palestine Liberation Organization headed by Mahmoud Abbas, and emphasized that "peace and security in the Middle East region, as a strategic option, will only be achieved with the end of the Israeli occupation."
The 57-member body of Muslim-majority countries declared that Trump's plan "lacks the minimum requirements of justice and destroys the foundations of peace, including the agreed legal and international terms of reference for a peaceful solution and the need to respect and recognize the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people, including the right to national independence and of Palestine refugees to return."
The resolution expressed "regret at the biased approach of the 'plan' that fully adopts the Israeli narrative and endorses the annexation of vast areas of the occupied land of the State of Palestine, under the pretext of security for Israel, the illegal occupying power, in flagrant violation of the principles of international law, the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by force, the United Nations Charter, and relevant international resolutions."
According to the resolution, Israel is "responsible for the deterioration of the situation on the ground because of its denial of relevant agreements, its defiance of international legitimacy and the continuation of the policies of colonization, annexation, settlement expansion, discrimination and ethnic cleansing, which have been perpetrated against the Palestinian people in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem."
Along with warning Israel against making any further moves "to consolidate its colonial occupation in the territory of the State of Palestine," the OIC called on the international community to reject and confront "any action or proposal that is inconsistent with international law and relevant United Nations resolutions."
The resolution came just two days after the Arab League also rejected Trump's proposal, concluding that "it does not meet the minimum rights and aspirations of Palestinian people," and vowed to not cooperate with the U.S. efforts to implement the plan.
Abbas, the Palestinian Authority president, announced at the Arab League meeting that in the wake of the plan's unveiling, "we've informed the Israeli side ... that there will be no relations at all with them and the United States including security ties." The Palestinian leader has declined to communicate with Trump by phone or letter.
Other critics of the proposal—which Trump introduced at the White House week with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by his side—have denounced it as an "annexation plan." Last week, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) called it "shameful and disingenuous" while Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a 2020 White House hopeful, warned that the plan "will only perpetuate the conflict."
The OIC resolution also came as Agence-France Presse reported that the United States requested a closed-door United Nations Security Council meeting Thursday for a presentation by Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser, who oversaw the development of the administration's plan.
That meeting would occur just days before Abbas is set to arrive at the U.N. on Feb. 11 "to express opposition to the U.S. plan and to demand adherence to international law," AFP noted. "On the occasion of Abbas' visit, the Palestinians have indicated they plan to submit a draft resolution to the Security Council, through Tunisia, a non-permanent member of the council."
'My Word Stands': Sanders Co-Chair Nina Turner Offends MSNBC Pundits by Calling Billionaire Bloomberg an 'Oligarch'
"Not sure why this is even a discussion but by any reasonable historical or comparative standard Michael Bloomberg is literally the definition of an oligarch."
by
Eoin Higgins, staff writer
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/02/03/my-word-stands-sanders-co-chair-nina-turner-offends-msnbc-pundits-calling?
Nina Turner, a national co-chair of the Bernie Sanders campaign, left an MSNBC panel in shock Monday evening after she referred to billionaire Mike Bloomberg as an "oligarch" who bought his way into the presidential race.
"We should be ashamed of that, as Americans, as people that believe in democracy, that the oligarchs—if you have more money, you can buy your way," said Turner.
Turner referred specifically to the Democratic National Committee (DNC) opening the door for the billionaire financier and media mogul to participate in upcoming debates. The allowance for the former mayor of New York City was not one afforded to Sens. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.) or to former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro, as Turner pointed out when pressed on her language by MSNBC's Chris Matthews.
"He is" an oligarch, said Turner. "He skipped Iowa. Iowans should be insulted. Buying his way into this race, period. The DNC changed the rules. They didn't change it for Senator Harris. They wouldn't change it for Senator Booker. They didn't change it for Secretary Castro."
"Not sure why this is even a discussion but by any reasonable historical or comparative standard Michael Bloomberg is literally the definition of an oligarch," tweeted historian Patrick Wyman.
Intercept editor Glenn Greenwald, quoting Wyman, explained why the term was under discussion: American exceptionalism and centrist fears of a rising Sanders.
Turner's response provoked outrage and upset from MSNBC contributor and The Root editor Jason Johnson, who took issue with Turner's assertion that Bloomberg, who has spent $250 million of his own money on his campaign and whose exception to the debate rules came just months after donating $325,000 to the DNC, was an oligarch.
"Calling Mike Bloomberg an oligarch has implications in this country are unfair and unreasonable," said Johnson.
Johnson claimed that the word would evoke "a rich person who got their money off of oil in Russia, who is taking advantage of a broken and dysfunctional system."
As Common Dreams reported in October, the 400 richest Americans have a lower tax rate than the rest of the country.
"It's dismissive, unfair and the kind of thing that blows up in your face if you become the nominee and you have to work with Mike Bloomberg three or four months from now," Johnson added. "That's the issue Sanders people never want to remember."
Turner dismissed the criticisms after a lengthy back and forth when Matthews asked her if she wanted to use a different word to describe the mayor.
"No, he doesn't tell me what to say or how to change my words," she said of Johnson. "My word stands!"
The former state Senator doubled down on Twitter.
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