the democrat wolves...

wolves The reason Democrats are losing public support is not because of identity politics, progressives, Covid, the struggling economy, failing infrastructure, or even Donald Trump.

As someone who worked for the American Democratic Party and drank all the Kool-Aid – even giving it to others – I can tell you definitively that they do not need the Republicans to make them lose; the art of self-destruction seems embedded in the ethos of the party.

The basic lack of collective self-reflection is obvious in the media duck-and-cover after every crushing election loss.

By Tara Reade

It is astounding that even with the majority in the House, Senate, and the White House, Democrats still appear as losers, unable to pass legislation about animal welfare, much less tax reform. The bold left calls to tax billionaires became watered-down defensive bleats at Senator Joe Manchin’s yacht. The limousine liberals with all those wealth tax ideas threw all of those out along with the campaign literature after securing their seats in Congress.

Democratic Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema ran through airports and into bathrooms rather than talk to a constituent about her infuriating lack of representation.

The political troll farms light up on protection patrol for the status quo, fueling more divides and general chaos. All of this leads to where things stand now.

Democrats are losing because the lack of leadership led them to break campaign promises, lie to voters, and get nothing done. They are losing because they have to spend so much energy and money protecting the elites in the party from the exposure of their unchecked corruption.

The sexual misconduct by the former governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, and Biden are patterns well worn in the Clinton tradition, which is haunting the party who waved the MeToo banner and marched with ‘pussyhats’, apparently in between visits to Epstein’s island.

The hypocrisy is breathtaking and catching up fast, as even the corporate media is having to report more out about the elite’s nasty malfeasances.

The Democratic Party’s wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing approach to politics has voters turning away. Ironically, most voters want to be sheep; they do not want to have to critically think, they want Ma and Pa media to tell them their world is taken care of by those certain politicians they elected.

It is not just the Democrats with corruption issues, of course. The Republicans have their own deep-seated challenges and infighting in all the same ways the Democrats do. But there is a difference: Republicans know their candidates are human and make mistakes, you get what you get. In contrast, Democrats are always claiming they own the moral high ground, and that is also less than endearing to most citizens. As even loyal Democrat pundit Van Jones stated, Democrats have indeed become annoying.

The sanctimonious positions leading the way to cancel culture are a cover for their own rotten core values. The whole thing has grown as tiresome as the anti-Russia narrative. American voters have real domestic concerns. They want healthcare, jobs with a living wage, freedom from educational debt, affordable housing, and solutions regarding climate change.

Conversely, the establishment Democrats are about protecting their own access to wealth and not investing in the base values of most of their own party.

As the world faces the climate change crisis, world leaders toss coins (oddly symbolic) for luck into an Italian fountain. Alarmingly, Covid-19 variants are spreading. All of this has led to distrust of systems. Citizens have lost confidence in the government’s ability to effectively solve problems.

There is a collective loss of faith by citizens with the American Congress and White House due to the gridlock of legislative movement. Meanwhile, the media feeds from the trough of political division. The empty promises made by the Democratic candidates in the 2020 campaign of paid family leave, forgiving student debt, and expanded Medicare for all made fools of voters that followed, for believing the election rhetoric once again and voting for the “lesser evil.” I think I can speak for my fellow citizens when I say we are all tired of wading in evil as we mark our ballots.

Political tribalism is permeating the electorate so deeply that authenticity is lost behind the rhetoric to win with no substance involved. Democrats have a clear choice: continue to be disconnected from their voter bases and keep losing, or clean house at the leadership level.

Winter is coming, and then the midterms. Unless the Democrats stop blaming the symptoms and go for the cure, the 2022 midterm elections will be a bloodbath for their candidates.

Check out Tara Reade’s new podcast,The Politics of Survival.

build a better babel?...

Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, when people were first experiencing the “distancing effect” of lockdowns, the world had something of a cultural moment centred on the idea that we should “build back better”. The simple—and entirely sensible—proposal was that we should use the period of enforced social isolation to reflect critically on the status quo and consider how, instead of returning to normal after the pandemic, we could try to build a better, more equal and sustainable society.

The idea of “building back better” took off. Since it was first raised as a slogan back in March and April 2020—initially mainly in the world of progressive NGOs and “left” Twitter — it has been taken up by everyone from US President Joe Biden and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson to the OECD, the United Nationsa nd the NSW Public Service Commission.

The popularity of “build back better” as a slogan reflects that no-one in their right mind would be overly enthused by the idea of “building back the same”. Why, having been jolted for a moment out of our immersion in the ugly reality of a capitalist system piling one crisis on top of another, would we want everything to go back to being just as it was before?

When the pandemic hit Australia in late February last year, we were just emerging from the “black summer” of devastating bushfires. It would be strange, in that context, if anyone much wanted merely to get back to the kind of capitalist normality that devoured so much of Australia in flames, or to get busy rebuilding an economy that was sacrificing, in ever more obscene and blatant ways, the interests of the majority of poor and working-class people to the greed of the rich.

Globally, the obscenities of capitalist normality were even more extreme. Who would want to go back to a world in which total annual military spending was almost US$2 trillion—one in which countries everywhere, led by major powers like the US, were competing to ensure their stockpile of deadly weapons and new technologies of mass murder were built up faster than those of their rivals? Who would want a world in which the number of forcibly displaced people had doubled in less than a decade, and in which an estimated 25 million refugees faced increasingly brutal treatment from governments determined to deny them any hope of resettlement? Who would want to “build back” to a world in which millions were dying from hunger every year?

No matter how popular the idea of “building back better” became as a slogan, however, it was unlikely that anything much would change unless we fought for it. More than a year and a half on, the pandemic continues to rage along its deadly course, with no end in sight. In June 2020, the average (official) daily death toll from COVID-19 was fewer than 5,000. In October this year, it was around 7,000. In the meantime, governments around the world have been more or less successful in convincing people that we should accept this ongoing burden of death and disease as part of the “new normal”.

On top of the ongoing suffering inflicted by the pandemic, we’re seeing a return of all the old social, economic and environmental ills that we were supposedly going to “build back better” from. COP26 is a marker of that depressing reality. The sight of world leaders gathering in Glasgow to engage in what Greta Thunberg aptly described as a “global North greenwashing festival” and “a two-week celebration of business as usual and blah, blah, blah” shows the extent to which the normal, pre-pandemic functioning of global capitalism has returned.

“Nature is healing”, as the saying goes—but in this case it’s the “nature” of a system that is rapidly destroying the planet on which we depend so that the fossil fuel industry and other big business interests can go on more or less in the manner to which they’ve grown accustomed. Reflecting the lack of any shift away from the pre-pandemic “normal” on climate, global emissions are, according to the Global Carbon Project, set to rise nearly 5 percent this year—almost completely wiping out the 5.4 percent drop recorded in 2020 due to lockdowns and associated restrictions on travel and other emissions-intensive activities.

And when it comes to greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the pandemic had no impact at all. According to the latest Greenhouse Gas Bulletin from the World Meteorological Organization, concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere hit a new high of 413.2 parts per million (ppm) in 2020—a rise of 2.5 ppm from 2019, slightly above the average annual increase of 2.4 ppm over the past decade.

On every other issue, it’s the same story. Instead of a fairer and more equitable distribution of society’s wealth, we’ve got a return to the most naked and brutal inequality. Welfare in Australia and elsewhere—raised in the early period of the pandemic as part of government stimulus packages—has been slashed back down close, or equal, to pre-pandemic levels. Meanwhile, inflation is rising in many countries, outstripping sluggish wage growth and eating into living standards. There’s been a lot of talk, in the past two years, about the value of “essential workers”. But when it has come to actually paying those workers more, it’s a different story.

At the same time, the wealthiest section of society has never had it so good. Big businesses, along with anyone with a significant share and/or property portfolio, have done very well out of government stimulus measures targeting the top end of town. According to the 2021 Australian Financial Review Rich List, Australia’s richest 200 individuals and families increased their collective wealth by $55.6 billion in the first year of the pandemic—rising from $424 billion to $479.6 billion. Since 2019, Gina Rinehart’s wealth alone has risen by $17 billion (from $13.8 billion to $31 billion)—enough to pay the annual salaries of 232,876 nurses.

Ultra-low interest rates have also contributed to an unprecedented property boom. Sydney’s median house price is approaching $1.5 million, having risen by more than 30 percent in the past 12 months. That equates to an increase of $6,700 a week, or $967 a day. Property investors are laughing all the way to the bank. But for young and working-class people who don’t have wealthy parents to support them, the prospect of ever owning a home is rapidly disappearing over the horizon.

Adding to the deep anxieties felt by so many is the increasing threat of war. Instead of more global cooperation on issues of common concern (another popular inclusion in various “build back better” lists), the world of geopolitics is more fractious than it has been for decades. At the centre of it all is the growing drive by the US and its allies for war with China.

The Australian media have made much of the claim that Prime Minister Scott Morrison lied to French President Emmanuel Macron about the submarines deal. It’s a classic case of not seeing the wood for the trees. The big problem facing Australians isn’t that we’re led by a lying clown like Morrison—in this day and age, being led by lying clowns is to be expected—but that we’re led by one who is loudly beating the drums for a potential Third World War.

How long can it go on like this? The short answer is: as long as we let it. Nothing will change while the widespread public opposition to the destructive status quo of capitalism is expressed merely through “calling on” world leaders to do this or that. No number of comment pieces, tweets or glossy brochures about how we should “build back better” is actually going to make it happen. All that’s likely to occur is what has, in fact, transpired. Those in power will take the slogan and turn it into a meaningless catchphrase designed—just like all the “net zero by 2050” talk—to rebrand, rather than actually change, the existing system.

The Australian government hasn’t—as a recent article by Marian Wilkinson in the Saturday Paper argued—been “captured” by the gas lobby or any other particular big business interests. The Australian government, and this applies whether it’s the Liberals or Labor in power, isn’t a neutral body that can easily be influenced this way or that. “The executive of the modern state”, as Marx wrote in the Communist Manifesto, “is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie”. The government isn’t the hostage, but the hostage-taker. It is working hand in glove with big business and the rich to hold the rest of society captive to their interests.

To really start to “build back better”, whether on climate change, inequality, war or anything else, we need first to rid ourselves of any remaining illusions that those holding us hostage within the death machine of global capitalism can be convinced to drive the radical change we need. “When the rulers have spoken”, German poet and playwright Bertolt Brecht wrote, “then the ruled will start to speak”.

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW √√√√√√√√√√√√

By Gus Leonisky at 9 Nov 2021 - 7:08pm
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ideals versus reality...

It wasn’t the high taxes in Nassau County, or the recent changes to New York’s bail laws that drove Lizette Sonsini, a former Democrat, to vote Republican this year.

Her reasons were more overarching.

“I don’t like the president, and the Democrats are spending too much money on things like infrastructure, when really we need politicians who are going to bring more money back into this country,” said Ms. Sonsini, 56, of Great Neck.

“Maybe if Democrats see how we’re voting in these local elections,” she said, “they will see we’re not happy with the way things are going.”

Across the country, Democrats witnessed an intense backlash on Election Day, as the party suffered major losses in Virginia and in many suburban communities like Nassau County, where Democratic leaders were swept from office by Republicans — even though registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by 100,000.

The Democratic county executive, Laura Curran, trailed her Republican opponent, Bruce Blakeman, by more than four percentage points; Mr. Blakeman has declared victory, but Ms. Curran has not conceded.

The race for district attorney, a post that has been held by a Democrat since 2006, was won by the Republican Anne Donnelly, a 32-year veteran of the district attorney’s office with little prior political experience. She coasted to a 20-point win over Todd Kaminsky, a Democratic state senator and former federal prosecutor. And the race to replace the outgoing Democratic county comptroller went to a Republican, Elaine Phillips.

Off-year elections are often hard for the party of the sitting president, but the results defied candidate expectations and bolstered arguments that President Biden’s unpopularity and the Democratic Party’s internecine battles were undermining its viability in the suburbs.

“It’s almost like we’re back temporarily to the ’60s and ’70s,” said Lawrence Levy, executive dean of the National Center for Suburban Studies at Hofstra University, referring to a time when Republicans ruled the Nassau County roost. “The real question is how long this will last.”

Four years ago, Democratic voters in Nassau County treated the 2017 election as an early referendum on President Donald J. Trump. They staged postcard-writing campaigns and held living-room fund-raisers, and an energized electorate pushed Ms. Curran to become only the third Democrat in 80 years to be county executive in Nassau.

This year, the roles were reversed: The county has more than a million registered voters; 264,000 showed up and they voted overwhelmingly Republican, seemingly ousting Ms. Curran after one term.

“There was a wave, there’s no doubt about it, even for an unapologetically pro-business, pro-public safety Democrat,” Ms. Curran said in an interview, referring to herself.

In conversations with more than a dozen Nassau County voters this week, they cited their overall disapproval of the president, their distaste for vaccine mandates and a fear of funds being diverted from the police as factors in their decision to vote Republican. Concerns over Mr. Biden’s handling of Israel also arose several times.

Among those voting Republican was Audrey Alleva, a 64-year-old Garden City resident with family in the military, who cited the president’s performance as a factor in her decision.

“I don’t like the way President Biden handled the country leaving Afghanistan,” Ms. Alleva said.

Sam Liviem, a 70-year-old Great Neck resident, cited other recent Democratic pushes as reason to cast his ballot for Republicans.

“When liberals try to push ‘defund the police,’ when they try to take down statues of people from the past, when they want to wipe out history, you are going back to the law of the jungle,” Mr. Liviem said.

Nassau County was recently ranked the safest county in the United States by U.S. News and World Report. But the Nassau Republican Party exploited fears about crime to drive voters to the polls, particularly in the case of Mr. Kaminsky, who supported changes in state bail laws that Republicans blame for the county’s recent rise in shootings, which have increased across the country during the pandemic.

In 2019, New York State curtailed bail for many nonviolent defendants, who might otherwise have stayed in pretrial detention because they could not pay. But law enforcement authorities argued the law was overly broad and faulted it for not granting judges more discretion to detain defendants they considered a risk to public safety.

Mr. Kaminsky supported the original bail reform bill. And, in a video of the 2019 Senate proceedings widely circulated by the Donnelly campaign, the senate deputy majority leader, Michael Gianaris, explicitly thanks four senators, including Mr. Kaminsky, for their support. That vote came to haunt Mr. Kaminsky during his campaign.

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW √√√√√√√√√√√√√√√√√√

By Gus Leonisky at 10 Nov 2021 - 6:05am
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