The Democratic Platform and Medicare for All: A Nod Is as Good as a Wink (To a Blind Horse)

Medicare for All has won the battle of ideas. Now we have to win the battle against entrenched economic and political power.

August 18, 2020 Mark Dudzic COMMON DREAMS

https://portside.org/2020-08-18/democratic-platform-and-medicare-all-nod-good-wink-blind-horse

Whenever our overcoat is ragged

you come running up and say: this can’t continue,
you must be helped in every possible manner.
And, full of zeal, you run off to the bosses
while we who freeze are waiting.
And you come back and in triumph
show us what you have won for us:
a little patch.

—Bertolt Brecht

I’ve spent a good part of the last forty years in the trenches as a union organizer and union rep. Believe me, I know that there are many circumstances in which the best that you can hope for is a little patch. But this is not one of those times. We are enmeshed in one of those unique historic moments where systemic crisis and emerging popular movements have generated the possibility of transformative change. I am convinced that a Democratic candidate who ran on a Medicare for All platform could have defeated Donald Trump and set the stage for an administration that opened up new possibilities to advance the interests and concerns of working class Americans.

Sadly, the draft Democratic Platform fails to rise to this historic moment. The draft platform was overwhelmingly approved by the Platform Committee, which rejected an amendment to add Medicare for All. All four national union presidents on the Platform Committee—including the presidents of three unions that had endorsed the Medicare for All Act of 2019—voted against the amendment. The Platform is slated to be approved at this week’s Democratic Convention, although a significant number of delegates have vowed to vote against it.While party platforms are often ignored in the heat of political campaigns and rarely serve as a guide for governance for victorious candidates, it is important for the future strategic orientation of the Medicare for All movement to reflect on why it is so hard to win even a symbolic concession on this issue from the Democratic establishment.

In announcing his intention to vote against the Democratic Platform, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) said, “…history teaches us that the Democratic Party has sometimes faced an issue so great that it alone should be the yardstick for measuring the wisdom of voting for or against the platform. This is one of those times.” The reason this defeat is so significant is because Medicare for All has become the defining issue between those who advocate for a progressive working class politics and those who seek to restore the neoliberal status quo ante Trump. As radio host Kyle Kulinski tweeted in response to the defeated platform amendment, “History will not judge this kindly.It’s like opposing the New Deal during the great depression. Unforgivable.”

What Good Is a Nod and a Wink?

It is true that the platform states that, “ We are proud that our party welcomes advocates who want to build on and strengthen the Affordable Care Act and those who support a Medicare for All approach.” Some progressives view this as a victory. The HuffPost proclaimed that, “Medicare for All Gets Nod In Democratic Platform for First Time Ever”. And Politico quoted the Sanders campaign political director, Analilia Mejia as saying, “Support for Medicare for All has never been mentioned in a Democratic Party platform. Its inclusion now is significant.” (While technically true—because they did not call it Medicare for All back in the day—it should be pointed out that robust support for “national health insurance” embodying the same principles as current Medicare for All legislative proposals was a regular part of Democratic Party platforms from the New Deal through 1980.)

This concession is weak tea indeed considering the depth of the crisis we are now in and the concomitant paradigm shift in Americans’ thinking about healthcare. Our for-profit, commodified healthcare system has proven woefully inadequate in the face of the worst public health disaster in over a century. The resulting economic crisis has accelerated the meltdown of our employment-based health insurance system. Workers will not soon forget how precarious their shrinking healthcare benefits really are. And the Black Lives Matter uprisings have brought to the fore the racial disparities that undergird the industrialized world’s most unequal healthcare system. Democratic primary voters overwhelmingly supported Medicare for All regardless of what candidate they voted for. A more recent poll conducted at the peak of the COVID pandemic pegged overall support at 68% with even 46% of Republicans supporting. So please excuse me for refusing to celebrate the nod and wink to the Medicare for All foot soldiers who will now be expected to do what it takes to elect a Democratic nominee who, at one point in the primary cycle, suggested he would veto Medicare for All legislation.

Don’t get me wrong. I fully understand the existential threat posed by the incompetent, authoritarian, racist madman in the White House. Come Labor Day I will do my part to work for his defeat. But first let’s take a moment to lament what could have been and figure out what needs to be done to advance the fight for healthcare justice in 2021 and beyond.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

The draft Democratic Platform's healthcare provisions contain a number of substantial policy proposals worthy of support. It calls for a massive expansion of community health centers and rural clinics, greater access to mental health and substance abuse treatment, improvements in long term care and it proposes a workaround to cover the working poor ineligible for Medicaid because of their state’s refusal to accept federal funding for ACA Medicaid expansion. It would fully fund the Indian Health Service and it asserts all healthcare workers’ right to a living wage and to bargain collectively free from employer coercion.

Consistent with the Democratic Party’s historic stance on these issues, the Platform reaffirms support for the full range of reproductive health services, including access to abortion. It also proclaims the Party’s commitment to address the healthcare needs of the LGBTQ communities. It stakes out a strong position on ending price gouging by Big Pharma by calling for drug price negotiation authority for all public and private purchases and a crackdown on anti-competitive behavior “by any means available.”

It also includes some puzzling provisions that seem to indicate either a lack of understanding of healthcare policy or a deliberate attempt to undermine the very proposals it claims to be advocating. For example, it repeats Joe Biden’s campaign plank to lower the eligibility age for Medicare down to age 60 but then treats Medicare as if it were just another insurance product by making it one “choice” that older Americans would be allowed to make. And it appears to view racial disparities as a problem caused by its victims’ lack of adequate knowledge rather than the result of systemic inequalities baked into the healthcare system (“To help close the persistent racial gap in insurance rates, Democrats will expand funding for Affordable Care Act outreach and enrollment programs so every American knows their options for securing quality, affordable coverage.”)

One modest concession to single-payer aspirations is the Platform’s support for enhanced innovation waivers to remove “barriers to states that seek to experiment with statewide universal healthcare approaches.” A generous reading of this section might indicate that a Biden administration would support a single-payer-style reform such as the pending proposals in New York, California and other states. But even here the language is vague and fails to mention the actually existing legislative proposal to do just that: Ro Khanna’s State Based Universal Health Care Act.

What's Wrong With a Public Option?

The centerpiece of the Platform—which it claims will finally move us to the promised land of universal coverage—is the pledge to “give all Americans the choice to select a high-quality, affordable public option through the Affordable Care Act marketplace.” Like a bad penny, various iterations of this scheme always show up in corporate Democrats’ playbooks whenever a real Medicare for All solution is gaining momentum. The Platform proposes a fairly “robust” version that would be available to nearly everyone and cap premium costs at 8.5% of household income (although co-pays, deductibles and other out of pocket coasts could add substantial additional expenses).

The public option has been extensively critiqued (including here, here, and here). Suffice it to say that adding an additional public choice in a healthcare “marketplace” perpetuates the commodification of healthcare. There are intrinsic problems when public goods, like healthcare, are treated like commodities. A system designed to accommodate profit seeking and multiple payers can never achieve the efficiencies and cost savings of a social insurance model. Competing health plans with different costs, co-pays and deductibles reinforce inequality and disparity and make a single standard of care unachievable. Commodified health insurance products also generate all kinds of unanticipated consequences including the dreaded “adverse selection” in which decent coverage is undermined by shoddy insurance plans and for-profit insurers game the system by cherry picking the most healthy subscribers and finding ways to dump the sick ones on the hapless public plan.

Adding an additional choice will do nothing to bend the cost curve of the world’s most expensive healthcare system. Nearly all economists concur that Medicare for All would achieve 20%-30% savings because of lower administrative costs and limitations on profit taking. Without those cost savings, we would have to pay “market rates” to expand affordable coverage to the 40+ million uninsured Americans and the 50+ million underinsured ones. No one has even begun to calculate how much those additional costs would be.

Most importantly, the Democratic Platform does nothing to break the continued linkage of health insurance to employment. This failing system deprives working class Americans of the healthcare security that they want and deserve and is a major driver of wage stagnation. To seek to sustain such a system at a time when one million workers a week are losing their jobs—and hence any possibility to access employer-paid health coverage—is an indefensible failure of vision.


The stress test of the COVID pandemic has exposed all of the flaws of our dysfunctional healthcare system. It failed us at the time when we needed it the most. Reality calls for transformative change. The Democratic Platform offers up a few patches.

Fight for What We Want, Not What We Think We Can Get

I’m willing to bet that nearly all of the 125 DNC Platform Committee members who voted against the Medicare for All amendment would agree that a single payer Medicare for All system would cost less, cover more and deliver better healthcare. But they would maintain that Medicare for All is not politically feasible. Their mantra is, “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.” In effect, they are saying that the power of the medical industrial complex is so great that it can forever stifle the clearly articulated political will of the majority of the American people who support a demonstrably superior healthcare system.

The problem with this, as any shop steward who ever sat across the table from a boss knows, is that when you start negotiating by conceding your opponent’s points, you have nowhere to go but downhill. Frederick Douglass had it right: “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you will find out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them.”

Proponents of this approach believe that clever policy proposals will somehow get us to healthcare for all without the necessity of an all out fight. They are like Douglass’ sunshine soldiers who “want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.” But, as the history of the Affordable Care Act shows, once single-payer is taken off the table, the medical industrial complex will move to gut the public option and any restrictions on insurance and big pharma profits.

The Pathway to Victory


Michael Lighty, the mover of the Medicare for All amendment at both the 2016 and 2020 DNC platform hearings, said at this year's hearing, “It’s vital that we meet this moment that demands health justice and Medicare for All to address the health inequities exposed by the COVID 19 pandemic…Nobel Prize winning economist Angus Deaton has said has said that private insurance financing is an engine of inequality in our system…We cannot solve it with a public option.”

Medicare for All has won the battle of ideas. Now we have to win the battle against entrenched economic and political power. This fight won’t be made any easier by harboring illusions that we can somehow compromise our way to victory. Every country in the world that recognizes healthcare as a right for all of its citizens did so in response to a powerful working class movement backed by unions and grassroots organizations.

In the U.S., the passage of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965 was driven by an alliance between the labor movement and the civil rights movement. It was seen as the first down payment on the social and economic justice principles embodied in the Freedom Budget proposed by A. Phillip Randolph and Bayard Rustin. Our task today is to construct a similar movement that sees Medicare for all as the tip of the wedge in a broader fight for social and economic justice.

Such a movement will come together not in alliance with a deeply compromised Democratic establishment but in opposition to it. Labor must be central to this movement and part of our challenge is to work to extract union officials from their instrumental relationships with the Democratic Party. Likewise the movements for racial justice must contend with a Black political and managerial class that has made its own peace with neoliberalism.

Arguably these tasks will be somewhat easier when the country is not facing the stark political choice between barbarism and civilization. Furthermore the unfolding economic and public health crises will continue to thwart any return to normalcy. A newly installed Biden administration will face intense pressure to embrace an austerity program that will create immediate fissures in his electoral coalition and new opportunities for working class politics. These tensions cannot be papered over. This is why I am convinced that Medicare for All will continue to drive the political agenda no matter what the Democratic Platform or the Biden campaign has to say about it.

Let's Take Them at Their Word

So the Democratic Party “welcomes advocates of a Medicare for All approach”? Well then, why don’t we take them at their word?

We will do our part in working to drive this murderous regime from the White House.

We will work to turn this election into a referendum on the right of all Americans to healthcare. We will promote congressional and state-level candidates who have pledged to support real healthcare reform. We will continue to support robust social insurance fixes to the ongoing pandemic and economic crises such as the Health Care Emergency Guarantee Act.

On Election Day we will celebrate the defeat of Trump and work to excise Trumpism’s corrupting influences on our political institutions and civil society. And on Inauguration Day we will raise the flag of Medicare for All as the rallying cry for a new movement for social and economic justice.

How We Could Wind Up Banned from Discussing an October Surprise on Social Media this Election

https://consortiumnews.com/2020/08/18/how-we-could-wind-up-banned-from-discussing-an-october-surprise-on-social-media-this-election/







By Caitlin Johnstone
CaitlinJohnstone.com

In what it calls an effort to make itself “a more reliable source for election-related news and information,” YouTube has announced that it will be removing “content that contains hacked information, the disclosure of which may interfere with democratic processes, such as elections and censuses.”

“For example, videos that contain hacked information about a political candidate shared with the intent to interfere in an election,” adds the Google-owned video sharing platform.




This by itself is an alarming assault on human communication and press freedom. If there is authentic information out there about either of the candidates who are up for the most powerful elected position on the planet, the world is entitled to know about it, regardless of how that information was acquired. Monopolistic tech oligarchs have no business barring us from learning about and discussing that information.

Immensely powerful people should not be permitted to have secrets from the public anyway. The amount of power one has should be directly inverse to the amount of secrecy they are permitted to have. If you’re anywhere near the presidency of the United States of America, the secrecy you are entitled to should be zero.

Our Information

If a hacker is able to get ahold of accurate information about Donald Trump or Joe Biden, that information is ours. We’re entitled to it. Anyone who tries to obstruct our access to that information is stealing from us. It’s absolutely ridiculous that we have a society where people are permitted to both rule over us and keep secrets from us as it is without government-aligned tech plutocrats silencing our attempts to learn what those secrets might be.

Moreover, no YouTube moderator will be in any position to definitively say whether most information that comes out is hacked. They’d only be able to do what the mass media did with the 2016 WikiLeaks drops and cite unproven assertions by opaque intelligence agencies who have a proven track record of lying, assertions which turned out to be far more dubious than most Americans realize. Documents or video could be leaked about a candidate and U.S. intelligence agencies could just declare it a “hack” and have any YouTube videos about it immediately censored.

As Alan MacLeod explains for MintPress News:


“[T]he great majority of leaked information — the lifeblood of investigative journalism — is anonymous. Often, like in the cases of Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning or Reality Winner, whistleblowers face serious consequences if their names become attached to documents exposing government or corporate malfeasance. But without a name to go with a document, the difference between leaked data and hacked data is impossible to define. Thus, powerful people and organizations could claim data was hacked, rather than leaked, and simply block all discussion of the matter on the platform.”




So, this in and of itself is an outrage. But the way things are playing out it could wind up being a lot worse if damning information about a candidate surfaces prior to the November election.

Censorship Trend

We already know from experience that social media giants tend to follow in each other’s footsteps whenever there’s a significant step in the direction of censorship, like their coordinated cross-platform removals of alternative media outlets, accounts from US-targeted nations, and people who have been labeled “conspiracy theorists.”

There’s already reason to be concerned that YouTube’s new attack on press freedoms will spread to social media outlets like Twitter and Facebook. Add in the fact that these platforms are openly coordinating with each other and with the U.S. government to silence speech deemed “online meddling” and “election interference” and it looks a lot more likely.

The New York Times published an article last week headlined “Google, Facebook and Others Form Tech Coalition to Secure U.S. Election,” later changed to “Google, Facebook and Others Broaden Group to Secure U.S. Election.”

“Facebook, Google and other major tech companies said on Wednesday that they had added new partners and met with government agencies in their efforts to secure the November election,” NYT reports. “The group, which is seeking to prevent the kind of online meddling and foreign interference that sullied the 2016 presidential election, previously consisted of some of the large social media firms, including Twitter and Microsoft in addition to Facebook and Google. Among the new participants is the Wikimedia Foundation.”




So, if information emerges about a candidate in an “October surprise” in a way that can be credibly spun as a “hack” as the 2016 WikiLeaks drops were, it’s entirely likely that we will see some interference in people’s ability to communicate about it on not just one but multiple social media platforms. How much communication interference we’d be subjected to is unknown at this time, but it certainly looks like there are measures in place to at least implement some under certain circumstances.

Imagine if documents or video footage were posted online somewhere and we’d get blocked from sharing its URLs on Facebook or suspended for posting screenshots of it on Twitter. The way iron-fisted censorship practices are already unfolding, it’s a possibility that looks not at all remote.

Anyway, something to be on alert for.

Britain: Tories forced to u-turn after wave of student protests

Jack Tye Wilson18 August 2020

http://www.marxist.com/britain-tories-forced-to-u-turn-after-wave-of-student-protests.htm

After a weekend of militant protests and online campaigning against the A-level results fiasco, the government has backed down, scrapping the infamous ‘algorithm grades’ for both A-Level and GCSE students. This represents a victory for young people. But their anger will not subside so easily.

In the immediate aftermath of the exams fiasco – which saw close to 40% of A-level grades in England downgraded from their teachers’ predictions – Tory education secretary Gavin Williamson dug his heels in.

Williamson’s immediate response was to defend the grading system as the “fairest possible way” to assess students. Later, on Saturday, he stubbornly declared that there would be “no U-turn” and “no change”.

But pressure from below has today resulted in a “screeching U-turn”. Now, many young people are demanding that the Education Secretary be sacked for the disruption and dismay he has caused. Hashtags like #DowngradeGavin have been trending on social media.

Backed into a corner

As students gathered in their thousands in a number of cities over the weekend, the cracks began to show in the ranks of the Conservative Party. Over 20 Tory MPs raised concerns about the grading system, and Tory MP Simon Hoare said that the situation was “beyond a joke” and “smacks of naive incompetence”.

Even members of Ofqual – England’s exams regulator – were denouncing their own algorithm! Sources from the exam ‘watchdog’ rightly pointed out that their grading system had led to a “hemorrhaging of public trust”. They urged Downing Street to follow Scotland’s lead and scrap the calculated grades altogether.

Boris Johnson responded to the situation in his typical fumbling manner. The Prime Minister declared that both Ofqual and Williamson had his full support – despite each being at loggerheads with the other!

Under fire from all sides, the government had no choice but to back down. This U-turn serves to show the immense power that young people have when they organise, take to the street, and make their voices heard.

The chair of Ofqual, Roger Taylor, even admitted as much in his grovelling apology on BBC News. “What changed was seeing young peoples' distress and anxiety” Taylor stated. “Seeing this we realised we had taken the wrong road.”
Militancy pays!

It should come as no surprise that the systematic downgrading of students led to unfathomable levels of anxiety and distress. But far from this cowering students, these anxieties about the future – and an already seething resentment towards the Tories – exploded into hardened struggle.

Despite protests being called at the last minute, thousands gathered outside of the Department of Education HQ in Whitehall over the weekend. Chants of “justice for the working class” and “fuck the system” filled the streets. Student networks coordinating protests have since mushroomed.

This display of anger shows that young people see straight through the claims that this was simply a ‘mistake’ or a problem with this or that grading system. The class nature of this latest injustice is plain for all to see. This debacle is the product of a deeply classist education system, which is set up to fail working-class youth.

Inequalities in education

The education system ultimately reflects the needs of the capitalist system. Private schools simply would not exist if they did not confer an advantage onto those that come from more affluent backgrounds.

Similarly, those students that are set up to fail – year in year out – are what is required to keep the so-called ‘unskilled’ workforce in precarious, poorly-paid employment.

This reversal does nothing to address the deep-seated inequality in Britain's classrooms. Indeed, this Tory U-turn itself reveals the problems at the heart of the education system, as BTECs and other vocational qualifications are not included in the government’s latest decision.

We must demand that no student is left behind. The fact that the grading algorithm had to factor in attainment gaps between schools in the first place is a damning indictment of a broken system.


The truth is that the class divide begins at birth – and widens with every hurdle that the working class faces in order to achieve the same opportunities as those born into wealth.

After years of cuts, severe underfunding, and ever-inflating classroom sizes in state schools, the Tories would be mistaken to think they can wash their hands clean with one rushed policy change and a hollow apology.

And let us not forget that Centre Assessed Grades are far from immune to the biases that were present in the algorithm grades. Teachers from state schools are often pressured into not predicting grades that are ‘too high’ for their students. As a result, classism will inevitably remain present, even with the grades that students will now receive.

There is still much to be done to uproot the class divide in our schools. Ultimately, under capitalism, working-class students will always be at a disadvantage.

But this scandal has opened many people’s eyes to the fact that meritocracy is a myth – that hard work is not enough to overcome the systemic inequalities facing the working class.
Join the Marxists!

These latest events are another potent blow against this chaotic Tory government. And this, in turn, should give confidence to activists looking to fight back.

Young people – often a reliable barometer for the moods in society – have seen the power they possess by taking to the streets and demanding an end to injustice. This must now be a spark for a wider movement of workers and youth, against this rotten Tory government and their entire rigged system.

If this is what can be achieved with a weekend of hastily-arranged demonstrations, imagine what could be achieved if students joined up with the organised working class to create a mass fighting force.

We must continue the fightback against the ravaging cuts that have been carried out against our class. The first step must be to reach out to the teacher’s unions and labour movement at large. After all, teachers have already been on the frontline in the battle against Tory recklessness. And today’s students are tomorrow’s workers.

The measure of any decent society is the way it is able to nurture and prepare the next generation. A society that cannot offer young people a future is fundamentally flawed.

In the last instance, that is the lived and crushing experience of students and young workers today. With the recent NEU campaigning and UCU strike action as a backdrop, students are realising that organised, united, and militant struggle is our most powerful weapon.

The struggle for a free and fair education system – one that does away with classism and competition – is inextricably tied to the struggle for socialism. That is what the Marxist Student Federation is fighting for. Join us in the fightback!

Britain: ruling class in crisis – our modern day Ancien Régime

The mood amongst ordinary people is rapidly shifting as the Tory government lurches from scandal to crisis. The widening class divide in society is being exposed by events, preparing the way for revolutionary explosions.

“It was all this hatred, coming to a head after long years as the selfishness of the rich became more and more apparent,” wrote P.A. Kropotkin about the mood on the eve of the French Revolution.

At its core, the key question in France at the end of the 18th century was who was going to pay for the national debt, which had risen astronomically. Certainly not the nobles, clergy or the rich. The French people had to pay! But they had other ideas.

“The people still declare that they will pay nothing, neither taxes, nor dues, nor debts”, stated a report from the governors. It was this that provoked the revolution.

Today, the British budget deficit and national debt are rising relentlessly. But who is going to pay? Certainly not the rich and privileged. The British working class must pay!
Austerity on the cards

The ruling class and their political representatives are preparing plans for a new wave of austerity, the likes of which we have never seen. Of course, these plans are kept under wraps for the moment. But there will come a time when they will announce TINA: There is no alternative!

Smooth-talking Rishi Sunak, the Tory Chancellor, has made it plain that there will be no further handouts. “It’s wrong to keep people trapped in a situation and pretend there is a job they can go back to”, he recently told the BBC.


Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey also made a similar point. “I don’t think we should be locking the economy down in a state that it pre-existed in.”

In other words, unemployment is going to rise dramatically and living standards are about to collapse for millions.

But the Tories face grave dangers in imposing further austerity, as the French monarchy found out in 1789.

As then, public anger is already rising. The shine has rapidly worn off from the Tory government and Boris Johnson. The veneer of ‘national unity’ in face of the pandemic has quickly dissolved. There is little, if any, trust in the government or politicians. Social divisions are again on the increase.
Mood shifts

A number of new surveys show that the public mood has rapidly changed already. In particular, the hypocrisy exposed over Dominic Cummings’ trip to Durham was a significant turning point, according to a report by the British Future think tank.

This scandal clearly showed that there was one rule for the government and their hangers-on, and another for the rest of us. The widening divisions between rich and poor are also a growing concern.

In answer to the question ‘Is the country now more divided?’, one respondent said: “More divided, two reasons. The first is the Dominic Cummings saga. The vast majority of people see it as one rule for those in charge and one rule for everyone else…Others are…worried about government advice and whether to trust them.”

“In short: undoubtedly more divided”, explained a further respondent. “More detail: it was relatively easy to persuade the country to go into lockdown. Easing the restrictions has produced a whole spectrum of differing opinions, never mind the uproar the Dominic Cummings saga has added to the debate.”

The British Future report stated that: “The perception that the prime minister’s adviser, Dominic Cummings, had broken the lockdown rules was a highly salient issue that appeared to damage trust in politicians.”

It warned that tensions could re-emerge in the coming recession over issues such as the gap between rich and poor. “That sense of togetherness is starting to fray”, said the report’s author, Jill Rutter.
Class divides

There is now plenty of talk about ‘the next stage of the crisis’, which is looming. In the foreword to the aforementioned report, the Bishop of Leeds, Nick Baines, wrote:


“We are entering a period of deep economic uncertainty, one that will heighten existing inequalities and strain our society further still.

“We must start to disagree better: Recognising and respecting our differences while remembering our common humanity and citizenship, with all the mutual obligations these demand of us.”

But these sickly-sweet words from the bishop are an attempt to save the capitalists and their system, by stressing “our” society and “our” obligations – as if we were all in the same boat. But we are not.

Britain, as elsewhere, is a deeply divided class society. The ruling class – who hold the reins of power – have never been so rich and divorced from the rest of us. They live on a completely different planet.

The overwhelming majority of people in society are working class, living from pay-cheque to pay-cheque. The capitalist class live by systematically exploiting the working class. Their wealth – their accumulated profits – are parasitically obtained from the unpaid labour of the working class.

The only “obligation” that the capitalists have is to make money. Our “obligation” is to earn a living. But the capitalist system is in deep crisis and can’t even provide us with a living. Millions are about to lose their jobs. The ruling class will demand that the workers – and not them – pay for the crisis through cuts and austerity.

The mood of anger will certainly increase as the impact of the crisis bites. This experience will turn millions against the capitalist system. In the process, as in France 1789, revolution will be placed on the agenda in one country after another, including in Britain.
Battles ahead

We have to prepare for what is coming.

Things will not develop in a smooth process. We are in a period of sharp turns and sudden changes. Consciousness – which tends to lag behind – will catch up with a bang. All the old illusions will be burnt away by the white heat of events.

We have to fight for a socialist programme to answer the crisis; for a programme that will do away with capitalism. No half-measures will suffice.

Only by taking over the 100-or-so giant monopolies that dominate the economy can we plan the economy in the interests of the majority, and not for the profits of the few. This must include the banks and big financial companies, along with the other ‘commanding heights’ and major industries, run under workers’ control and management.

To achieve this, we need to build up the forces of Marxism – a determined, militant leadership – for the battles that lie ahead. In this spirit, we urge you to join us in the fight to change society!




Originally published 13 August at socialist.net |

Did Americans Want A Political Revolution?

Sanders frankly admitted that struggle is required to face down crises. By contrast, Biden promised an easy path back to a mythical normal. Democrats rejected the honesty and picked the fantasy.


David Sirota
Aug 18




Editor’s note: This essay below about the 2020 Democratic primary just came out in the new print edition of Jacobin magazine, where I am an editor at large. The piece draws on my work Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign speechwriter. In solidarity with the ongoing work of this newsletter, Jacobin is providing this special coupon exclusively for TMI subscribers to get a discount on an online and/or print subscription to the magazine. Click here to get the discount. I’m a huge fan of the magazine and hope you’ll consider subscribing. - Sirota



At this point, the autopsy process has almost run its course — most of the postmortems about the 2020 Democratic primary have been written, and the sniping, mocking, and football-spiking is dying down on social media. If there is any lasting political lesson from the yearlong race, it is probably a simple and boring one: former vice presidents are tough candidates to defeat in nominating contests.

Still, the primary does leave open a question — one that has nothing to do with ideology and everything to do with honesty.

Can elections be won by telling Americans the truth about what we must do to survive the crises threatening our survival?

The contrast between Senator Bernie Sanders, for whom I was a senior adviser and speechwriter, and former vice president Joe Biden was muted by the two candidates’ personal affinity for each other. While their disputes on specific issues occasionally took center stage, they were most often in the background (and they were further muddled by Biden lying about the basic facts of his own conservative record).

And yet there was a huge difference in visions that did define the race.

Sanders told America that if he won the White House, it would not be the end of the battle — it would be the beginning of a protracted war to defeat the elite and transform US society. He leveled with the country by acknowledging that taxes would have to go up and systems would have to be rebuilt or built from scratch. But he went further than merely challenging our conception of policy — he asked America to think beyond its psychological affinity for the path of least resistance. He told us that there is no easy path to attaining the kinds of policies that are necessary to save millions of lives as well as our democracy.

“This struggle is not just about defeating Donald Trump — this struggle is about taking on the incredibly powerful institutions that control the economic and political life of this country,” he said in the speech launching his campaign. “I’m talking about Wall Street, the insurance companies, the drug companies, the military-industrial complex, the prison-industrial complex, the fossil fuel industry, and a corrupt campaign finance system that enables billionaires to buy elections. Brothers and sisters: we have an enormous amount of work in front of us.”

Biden told America the opposite story. Evoking Warren G. Harding’s famed “return to normalcy” theme, he insisted that there is an easy path. The former vice president essentially argued that Donald Trump is the singular problem in the United States, and that once Trump is defeated, the battle is over — we can restore stability and go back to the kind of incrementalism that has defined Democratic presidencies for more than forty years.

“I believe history will look back on four years of this president and all he embraces as an aberrant moment in time,” Biden said at the beginning of his primary campaign, and a year later, he capped off that primary run by telling NBC News that “Americans aren’t looking for revolution.”

In the interim, Biden’s campaign spent months telling voters that we can solve climate change with a “middle ground” policy, we can solve the health care crisis with an incremental public option and we can solve economic inequality even if we make sure that “nothing would fundamentally change” for billionaires.

If the Sanders-Biden battle was perceived as a choice between Sanders’s daunting promise of an exhausting revolutionary struggle and Biden’s promise of a glide path back to normal, then it’s no mystery why Biden ultimately prevailed. Easy street was an understandably alluring vision for an electorate already tired out by Trump’s never-ending conflicts and controversies.

In reality, though, this was not a choice between two possibilities — it was a choice between honesty and fantasy, and Democratic voters picked the latter.

That’s a problem, because Sanders was giving voice to truths that we cannot keep avoiding, omitting, or rejecting at the ballot box if we hope to survive the disasters engulfing our society.

The fossil fuel industry isn’t going to voluntarily stop exacerbating the climate crisis. The health care industry isn’t going to voluntarily stop profiting off sickness. The private prison industry and the police are not going to voluntarily stop fortifying an inhumane and racist criminal justice system. Billionaires and corporations are not going to voluntarily stop using an army of lobbyists to rig the tax system for the wealthy, and they are not going to voluntarily stop exploiting a system of legalized bribery to buy our elections.

Fixing our country and our world will require transformational policies — or, as Sanders calls it, a “political revolution.” And yes — enacting those policies will require exactly the kind of struggle that Sanders envisioned and earnestly acknowledged during the Democratic primary. Those crises will not just go away or get better by replacing Trump with a Democratic president who prioritizes comity, decorum, and incrementalism over struggle, conflict, and radical change.

But can candidates win office while admitting that?

In every contested primary, progressives will inevitably face Joe Bidens — corporate-backed moderates who reassure us that there is no need for a slog, who tell us a fantastical and inspiring tale about how we can fix the country through half measures, bipartisanship, and polite requests for national unity.

In the face of that appealing sales pitch, can progressive candidates up and down the ballot win power while leveling with voters about how hard it will be to actually save our country and the planet?

On that score, the results of the 2020 Democratic primary were not a hopeful sign. However, reality may finally be overwhelming the power of fantasy.

Since Biden became the presumptive nominee, more than 167,000 Americans have died in a lethal pandemic, and millions have lost their existing health care coverage — all as the economy has continued to enrich billionaires. At the same time, an explosion of police violence and mass protest has spotlighted the bigotry and inequality tearing apart the social fabric of communities across the country. Meanwhile, the climate crisis helped create a 100 degree day in the Arctic Circle.

In light of these emergencies, politicians face an altered political topography. They risk looking tone-deaf if they try to pretend that the panacea is some easy half measure or singular electoral victory. The converse is also true — candidates may end up seeming more authentic and electable by fessing up to impending cataclysms and echoing the call for the kind of struggle that will be necessary to rescue ourselves.

In short, events occurring outside of the political arena in the terrestrial world — in the streets, hospitals, schools, and communities we live in — are intervening to change elections in a way that could make honesty a winning strategy.

If that shift continues, it will be unfolding at too late a moment to put Sanders in the White House — but if we are lucky, it will happen in time to save the world.

PROTECT THE VOTE AND END PRIVATIZATION OF THE POSTAL SERVICE

https://popularresistance.org/protect-vote-end-privatization-usps/

By Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, Popular Resistance.August 16, 2020
| , NEWSLETTER



As we warned earlier in the year, the US Postal Service is failing due to a long term effort to weaken it plus the confluence of the COVID-19 pandemic, recession and intentional efforts by the Trump administration to suppress the vote.

Members of Congress and state leaders are starting to take notice because of the magnitude of the crisis and public outcry, particularly over valid concerns that mail-in voting will be disrupted. Now is the time to not only protect the vote but to end privatization and selling off of the US Postal Service and expand it as a critical public institution that provides high-quality jobs and services to all communities, rich and poor, urban and rural, across the country.


March in 2014 to save the Post Office.

The Long Push to Dismantle and Privatize the Post Office

The Post Office is mandated in the Constitution (Article 1, Section 8, Clause 7). It is a critical service and a public good that has been provided to all people. With the passage of the 1981 budget, the US Postal Service was required to be self-funded from its revenues alone without support through taxes, which it was able to achieve until the pandemic. In fact, for more than 200 years, it has been solvent despite being the target of big banks and profiteers.

Ellen Brown describes the long history of the plan to dismantle and privatize the US Postal Service (USPS) going back to 1910 when the Postal Savings Bank Act was passed to provide a safer alternative for people after the banking crash of 1907. The big banks were upset by the competition from a postal bank. In 1966, the postal banks were dismantled after a series of laws were passed, beginning in the New Deal Era, which strengthened the private banks and gave them an advantage over postal banks.

Profiteers searching for more public entities to loot, as they have done with water, education, healthcare, and more have long viewed the Post Office as a fertile field for making money if they could weaken it enough so it would fail. A serious step in this direction was taken in 2006 with the so-called ‘Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act‘ (PAEA).

The PAEA was sponsored by two Republicans and two Democrats. It passed in the House with the full support of the Democrats (including Congressman Bernie Sanders, one Democrat abstained). Most of the Republicans supported it; twenty voted against it. It then went to the Senate where it passed with unanimous consent (a procedure used when Senators do not want to be held accountable for their vote).

A requirement of the PAEA is that the Postal Service must pre-fund all of its retirement funds including health benefits for the next 75 years (for people who have not been born yet). No business is required to go to this extreme and two-thirds of Fortune 1,000 businesses don’t pre-fund retirement at all. This costs the USPS over $5.5 billion each year. It is a way to “fatten the cow” for its eventual sell-off to private corporations.

One of the first impacts of the PAEA was that 65,000 postal workers lost their jobs in 2009. The USPS is one of the largest employers of African Americans in the US. This continued throughout the Obama administration as almost half of the postal processing plants were shuttered, local post offices had their hours reduced by 25 to 75% and 3,700 post offices were closed. The move to end Saturday mail delivery was attempted and stopped. A total of 150,000 postal workers lost their jobs under Obama and those who remained had their wages cut.

Under Obama, mail sorting and trucking were sub-contracted to private entities that pay their workers less. Activists began to protest in 2013 by delivering petitions and occupying post offices. In Berkeley, CA, people occupied the main post office for 33 days to prevent the historic New Deal Era building from being sold. This was part of a year-long successful campaign that gained tremendous public support, media attention, and support by local and state elected officials.

In 2015, A Grand Alliance to Save the Post Office, created by the four postal worker unions and other organizations, including Popular Resistance, formed under the leadership of APWU President Mark Dimondstein (Listen to our interview with him on Clearing the FOG in April). The Alliance lobbied Congress to repeal the 2006 PAEA and to stop the sell-off to private corporations.

The Alliance successfully organized to stop Staples from being allowed to provide USPS services. The campaign used protests outside Staples’ stores, a boycott of Staples, and a complaint filed with the National Labor Relations Board. A judge ruled in favor of the USPS in November of 2016 and Staples was ordered to shut down its postal services by March 2017. If Staples had been allowed to continue, it would have led to the closing of more post offices and the loss of more jobs.


Mailboxes being removed in Oregon.

The Future of the Post Office is Uncertain

The US Postal Service has continued to face the same struggles throughout the Trump administration. Despite a majority in the House and enough Senators to have power over the passage of any legislation in the Senate, the Democrats did not take steps to save the post office until it threatened their re-election in 2020.

The COVID-19 pandemic and recession created an emergency situation for the Post Office. The closing of businesses and record bankruptcies has meant a sharp decline in the quantity of mail. Postmaster General Megan Brennan started putting out the warning early in the year that the situation is dire and that the USPS could run out of funds during the summer. The Postal Service board of governors asked Congress for a $75 billion rescue package that would provide $25 billion in immediate funds and the rest as credit and financing for modernization projects.

Instead, the CARES Act, passed in late March, provided a measly $10 billion, which has been held up by the Trump administration and used to pressure the board of governors to elect Louis DeJoy as the new Postmaster General in June. On March 30, President Trump said on FOX if there was a high voter turnout “you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.” Trump was explaining why he opposed more money being spent to help states conduct the 2020 election during the pandemic.

The Democrats offered $25 billion in aid and relief of the yearly $5.5 billion in retirement funds in their House version of the bill but did not use their power in the Senate to demand relief for the USPS. Meanwhile, Amazon received tens of millions of dollars in support of its private delivery providers through the Payroll Protection Program for small businesses.

A new Institute for Policy Studies report found that when cuts are made to the USPS, it is rural communities that are hit the hardest. Rural residents rely on the postal service for medication deliveries, bill paying (because they often do not have internet access), and voting (because many don’t have polling places). Private delivery companies like Amazon and FedEx won’t deliver to rural areas and use the USPS to do it for them instead.

Under the new Postmaster General DeJoy, changes have been made that are slowing down mail service and delaying the delivery of medications and other necessities. Almost 700 mail sorting machines were removed and people showed photos on social media of blue mail receptacles being taken away in trucks. On Friday night, top executives in the Postal Service were fired or reassigned. This sparked a large ‘noise demonstration‘ early Saturday morning outside Louis DeJoy’s home in Washington, DC.

President Trump made it clear last week that his actions are intended to suppress the vote in the November election. There is a large push for universal mail-in voting because of the pandemic. People are reluctant to vote in person and states are having trouble finding people willing to work the polls. Although President Trump requested an absentee ballot for himself in Florida, he said that mail-in voting is subject to fraud and can only be trusted in Republican states. He denied a request for emergency aid for universal mail-in voting saying, “They want $3.5bn for something that will turn out to be fraudulent. That’s election money, basically.”

States are reporting that they’ve received letters from the Postal Service saying they will not be able to handle the influx of mail-in ballots in a timely manner. AP News reports 46 states plus Washington, DC are impacted by this and millions of voters will be disenfranchised if action is not taken.

This has gotten the Democrat’s attention and they are now planning to hold an emergency meeting on Monday. They have also scheduled a hearing for when they return to work in September to bring Louis DeJoy in for questioning. Some members of Congress are calling for DeJoy to resign.


Protest outside Louis DeJoy’s house in Washington, DC.

Fight Back

It is important to acknowledge that while lawmakers are upset now with the attack on the US Postal Service, this is likely because it is an election year. The Post Office is the most popular government institution so this stance is not only favorable to voters but it also protects the election. Both major parties are responsible for the situation that exists today and, after the election, they will likely return to their previous apathetic positions.

Saving the post office requires a popular movement with a vision of what needs to happen and mobilization to support that vision. The protest at DeJoy’s house was a good one, but it is the bipartisan Postal Service board of governors who have the power to remove Dejoy and Congress that has the power to provide financial support.

The steps that are required to save the US Postal Service over the short term include:
Immediate appropriation and release of $75 billion in pandemic relief funds and credit.
Provision of funds for universal mail-in voting.
Repeal of the 2006 PAEA requirement to pre-fund 75 years of retirement benefits (in fact if those funds are allowed to be used by the USPS, it likely won’t need the pandemic relief).

Then, over the longer term, steps include:
Reopening and modernizing postal offices, especially in rural areas, and reinstating normal operating hours.
Rehiring postal workers at all levels and providing pay increases.
Prohibiting private contracting of postal services and policies that give advantages to private corporations such as Amazon, FedEx and UPS.
Expanding postal services to include more financial services, especially for the 28% of people who are underserved by banks.
The return of the Postal Savings Bank to provide direct banking services, including loans, throughout the country.

We wrote about future possibilities for the USPS in 2013, “Don’t Shrink the US Postal Service; Expand it.”

A Grand Alliance to Save the Postal Service is holding a meeting on Tuesday that we will attend and report back actions. For now, you can join the US Mail Not for Sale campaign here. And you can contact your members of Congress (look up their websites) and the members of the USPS board of governors, see below:

Calls For Nationwide Sickout As Arizona School District Cancels Reopening

Arizona public school district forced to abandon plans after more than 100 teachers and staff members called in sick


August 16, 2020 Lois Beckett THE GUARDIAN

https://portside.org/2020-08-16/calls-nationwide-sickout-arizona-school-district-cancels-reopening

An Arizona public school district was forced to cancel its plans to reopen on Monday after more than 100 teachers and other staff members called in sick.

“We have received an overwhelming response from staff indicating that they do not feel safe returning to classrooms with students,” Gregory Wyman, district superintendent, said in a statement on Friday.

Now some activists in Arizona, which saw a high-profile teachers’ strike in 2018, said they hope teachers across America will adopt a similar strategy to keep educators safe, as some parents and politicians continue to push for schools in the US to reopen during the coronavirus pandemic.

“I’d love to see a nationwide sickout,” Kelley Fisher, an Arizona kindergarten teacher who has led protests in the state, told Reuters on Friday.

In San Tan Valley, a suburb of Phoenix, the JO Combs unified school district’s board of governors had voted to resume in-person classes on Monday. Another school district nearby had made a similar choice, pressured by some parents who argued that reopening schools would be best for their children.

The president of the Arizona Education Association, a teacher’s union, told the Arizona Republic that the two districts both decided to reopen despite not meeting the health metrics as recommended by Arizona’s department of public health.

Not a single district in Arizona currently meets all three metrics for a safe resumption of mixed in-person and online learning, the Arizona Republic reported, citing the most recently available state public health data.

By late Friday afternoon, 109 teachers and other staff members from JO Combs had already called in sick, a district spokeswoman said. That number represents nearly 20% of the district’s total staff of about 600.

“Due to these insufficient staffing levels, schools will not be able to reopen on Monday as planned,” Wyman, the superintendent, said, noting that “all classes, including virtual learning, will be canceled” until further notice.

Debates over when or how to reopen schools for in-person instruction have flared across the US. In Arizona, even as teachers are protesting to delay reopening schools, citing safety concerns, some parents have rallied to open classrooms, arguing that choice is best for their children.

Hundreds of parents and students held a rally in Phoenix last week in support of resuming in-person classes, Reuters reported. Among them was parent Christina DeRouchey, whose son is in first grade.

“We just want the choice that is best physically, mentally and most importantly emotionally for our children,” DeRouchey said.

Elsewhere in Arizona, the debate over when to reopen schools remained at a standstill. In Lake Havasu, Arizona, the local school district pushed back the discussion of when to reopen schools to this coming week, the local paper reported.

“At some point, we are going to have to come up with an acceptable casualty rate, and nobody wants to have that conversation,” one school board member said during last week’s discussion over reopening schools, a comment the editor of Today’s News-Herald, the local paper, called “chilling”.
America faces an epic choice ...

... in the coming months, and the results will define the country for a generation. These are perilous times. Over the last three years, much of what the Guardian holds dear has been threatened – democracy, civility, truth.

The country is at a crossroads. Science is in a battle with conjecture and instinct to determine policy in the middle of a pandemic. At the same time, the US is reckoning with centuries of racial injustice – as the White House stokes division along racial lines. At a time like this, an independent news organisation that fights for truth and holds power to account is not just optional. It is essential.

Like many news organizations, the Guardian has been significantly impacted by the pandemic. We rely to an ever greater extent on our readers, both for the moral force to continue doing journalism at a time like this and for the financial strength to facilitate that reporting.

We believe every one of us deserves equal access to fact-based news and analysis. We’ve decided to keep Guardian journalism free for all readers, regardless of where they live or what they can afford to pay. This is made possible thanks to the support we receive from readers across America in all 50 states.