Bernie the Bomber’s Bad Week

chlamor
Posts: 520
Joined: Tue Jul 18, 2017 12:46 am

Re: Bernie the Bomber’s Bad Week

Post by chlamor » Thu Nov 28, 2019 1:32 am

DEBATING “THE CASE FOR BERNIE 2020”
October 16, 2018

Charlie Post, a longtime socialist and activist in the Professional Staff Congress, the union for faculty and staff at the City University of New York, wrote this article in response to one by Neal Meyer and Ben B., headlined “The Case for Bernie 2020,” at the Socialist Call website. The article was submitted to the Socialist Call and Jacobin, and not accepted — and is published here to contribute to discussion on the left.

THE RECENT victories by socialists running in Democratic Primaries have once again put the question of socialists and electoral politics at the center of political debate on the left. While establishment Democrats won more primary races and will continue to dominate the party’s Congressional delegation, even if the Democrats “flip” the House or Senate in 2018, many on the socialist left are looking forward to a 2020 Bernie Sanders presidential campaign in the Democratic primaries.

Neal Meyer and Ben B.’s “The Case for Bernie 2020” published at the Socialist Call website puts forward a bold vision of how the socialist left can intervene in a new Sanders’ campaign to prepare the way for the emergence of an independent working class political party in the U.S.

Meyer and B. reject the two most common left approaches to the Democrats: “lesser evilism” and attempts to reform the Democratic Party. They understand that aligning the socialist left with whomever the Democrats nominate because they are not open reactionaries like most Republican nominees has been a disaster.

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This approach has led the U.S. left, almost continually since the 1930s, to give up independent organizing of working and oppressed people in order to “defeat the right.” As a result, the Democrats see no obstacle to their drift to the right, as they implement policies in office that materially hurt workers, people of color, immigrants, women and queer folks at home and abroad. As the segments of working people search for an alternative to the Democrats, the only one they find is the populist far right.

Neal and Ben also reject futile attempts to “reform” or “realign” the Democrats from a neoliberal capitalist party into a working-class party. They recognize that the Democrats today are nothing more than a fundraising cartel, dominated by unelected and unaccountable committees that serve as the conduit between capitalists and Democratic candidates.

In the place of these failed strategies, Neal and Ben, and others in the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), advocate running in Democratic primaries as open socialists.

On the one hand, they think this strategy will allow socialists to avoid being labeled “spoilers” who help elect Republicans by running on third-party lines. On the other hand, they believe that socialists challenging the neoliberals in the Democratic primaries will deepen the polarization between “a dominant corporate and an insurgent progressive wing” of the Democratic Party. This will prepare for what some have called a “dirty split,” in which a growing pro-socialist/pro-working class electorate will eventually withhold their votes from the pro-capitalist Democrats and support an independent working class party.

WHILE I am skeptical about the practicality of a “dirty split” from the Democrats in the early 21st century, let’s consider what implementing this strategy would involve. Put simply, it would involve building “a party within a party.”

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Socialists running in Democratic primaries will not only have to openly declare their politics, but make it clear that their primary loyalty is to their socialist organization. Practically, this would mean, first, refusing to support corporate Democrats in general elections — to call for their supporters to abstain from voting if socialists are defeated in the primaries. Second, if socialists won the primary and the general election, they would have to be prepared to caucus independently from the “regular” Democrats in various legislative bodies, so as not be prisoners of the pro-capitalist politicians.

In the case of the 2020 presidential elections, this strategy will require socialists to publically declare for “Bernie or Bust” from the beginning of the campaign. They will need to make it clear to all concerned that socialists will not, under any circumstance, support any candidate other than Sanders. They will need to distribute literature and hold public meetings to organize other Bernie supporters around this perspective throughout the campaign.

Put simply, socialists will have to build an independent campaign within the Sanders’ campaign that will refuse to support the corporate Democrats in the fall of 2020 at the same time as they are the “best builders” of the Sanders campaign.

Socialists will be building a “campaign within the campaign” under very different circumstances in 2020 than in 2016. While the “superdelegates” have been eliminated from the first ballot at the Democratic National Convention, Sanders will again face the sort of dirty tricks the Democratic establishment used in 2016.

Even more importantly, Sanders faces mainstream, corporate Democrats co-opting major elements of his platform. The strategy of Pelosi and the de facto Democratic leadership in the 2018 Congressional elections has been to “let a thousand flowers bloom.” Democratic candidates are free to campaign on the issues that are most likely to win House and Senate seats. Some, like Connor Lamb and other Democrats in the “Rust Belt,” barely raise any criticisms of Trump. Others, like committed neoliberals Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand and Kamala Harris are tacking left. They talk about supporting “Medicare for All” while actually defending the Affordable Care Act as the only “practical solution.”

It will be much more difficult for Sanders to establish himself as a clear, left-wing alternative in 2020, as establishments Democrats, in particular the chameleon-like Elizabeth Warren, appropriate the more popular elements of his platform. And even if no “frontrunner” emerges by the time of the national convention, the “superdelegates” will step in on the second ballot to ensure that a “safe” corporate Democrat is nominated in 2020.

UNDER THE best of circumstances, a “campaign within the campaign” will face enormous hostility from a variety of forces.

Most obviously, the corporate Democrats will use organizing for “Bernie or Bust” as a club against the Sanders campaign. They will argue that Sanders and his supporters are “not really Democrats” and are not truly interested in defeating Trump and his minions. Not only will this position give them cover for a new round of “dirty tricks,” but it will also be used to justify changes in party rules that will make commitment to the eventual Democratic nominee the prerequisite for running in party primaries.

Socialists will also face the hostility of the “Berniecrats” in Our Revolution and other “progressive” formations in the Democratic Party. These forces are thoroughly committed to yet another futile attempt to reform the Democrats and will argue that socialists must support whomever the Democrats nominate in 2020. Many DSA comrades, including many (if not most) of the DSA members who are elected officials, will also argue against a “Bernie or Bust” position because they, too, remain committed to reforming the Democratic Party.

We can already see the pressures of running as Democrats on the most important DSA candidate in 2018, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez. Within weeks of her upset victory over Joe Crowley for the Democratic nomination for a House seat from Queens and the Bronx, she was backtracking on her commitments to ending deportations, opposing U.S. aid to Israel, and opposing militarism.

More recently, she has endorsed the re-election of pro-corporate, neoliberal Democratic gubernatorial nominee Andrew Cuomo — as he dismissed her victory and those of other socialists and progressives in the Democratic Party. Ocasio-Cortez and other DSA comrades who have won Democratic primaries are generally not advocates of a “dirty break.” Not surprisingly, they have not committed to caucusing independently from the Democrats in state and national legislatures, a minimal precondition for laying the groundwork for a future split with the corporate Democrats. Despite the excellent statement by the New York City DSA criticizing Osacio-Cortez’s support for Cuomo, they have not been able to hold her accountable.

Finally, the majority of the newly radicalized young people who will flock to a 2020 Bernie campaign will be hostile to a “campaign within the campaign.” Most continue to believe that elections, not disruptive strikes and social movements, are the road to political power. They desire more than anything to remove Trump from the White House and will probably bend to the pressure to support whomever the Democrats nominate.

Even if socialists do not endorse or build an independent presidential campaign after Sanders’ likely defeat in 2020, they will still be cast as “spoilers” if they do not actively campaign for the Democratic nominee. The pressures of “lesser evilism” will be greater in 2020 than at almost any time in the past 90 years.

Especially if the Democrats can make gains in the 2018 Congressional elections, the prospect of possibly replacing the noxious orange-skinned monster in the White House will lead all Democrats — “establishment” and “progressive” — to demand every effort to “dump Trump.” If past experience is any indication, much of the socialist left will fall in line. It will be much more difficult for socialists to do what they did in 2016, when 74 prominent members of DSA refused to support Hillary Clinton against Donald Trump.

TO WITHSTAND these enormous pressures will require a much larger and more politically and organizationally cohesive socialist movement than exists today in the U.S. Ultimately, the main obstacle faced by both Mayer and B.’s strategy and independent electoral campaigns is the absence of a sufficiently large minority of working people who are willing to either not vote for a Democrat or “waste their vote” on an independent candidate.

Such an audience will emerge from the deepening and broadening of working-class struggle, both inside and outside the workplace. The “red state” teachers’ revolt will have to spread both to the “blue states” and to other sections of the working class. Struggle against police brutality, for universal amnesty for undocumented workers, reproductive rights and Medicare for All will have to be much broader and more powerful than they are today.

Only when a significant segment of working people experience their social power outside the electoral arena will there be mass support for either effectively boycotting the corporate Democrats or for an independent party of working people.

Building such struggles will require organizing a new “militant minority” in the labor and social movements that can act independently and, if necessary, against the forces of official reformism — the labor officialdom and the middle class leaders of the movements of the oppressed.

Neal, Ben and I agree on the need to build struggles that are democratically organized, attempt to unite working people on the basis of common solidarity, and confront the employers and the state through actions that break the law when necessary. We have already seen the impact small groups of socialists, armed with this vision, can have on real struggles in the teachers’ strikes in West Virginia and Arizona. For the first time in nearly 40 years, the socialist left has the capacity to impact mass movements and, possibly, begin to shift the terrain of U.S. politics.

However, this strategy for rebuilding the labor and social movements has been incompatible with support for the Democrats. Electoral campaigns, especially those that hope to ameliorate social problems by electing progressives have a very different logic than mass movements. Election campaigns that simply seek to win office have a simple goal — getting out 50 percent-plus-one voters to the polls on the lowest common denominator.

Mass strikes and disruptive social movements, on the other hand, require broader and broader layers of people willing to challenge both the employers and the state in often illegal actions. Historically, socialists attempts to combine building combative struggles in the workplace and the streets with Democratic Party election campaigns, including for candidates who espouse a social-democratic politics, have led to the abandonment of radicalizing struggles for an alliance with “progressive” Democrats.

THE TENSIONS between movement building and Democratic Party campaigns will impact the relationship between socialists and most progressive Democratic Party activists.

While socialists want to use their support of candidates like Sanders to build disruptive strikes and street actions, most Democratic Party campaigners simply want to win elections. Even the most left-wing Democratic Party organizer knows that winning elections requires winning “moderate voters” — those most likely to be alienated by militant mass struggles.

The tensions between a movement-building strategy and Democratic Party election campaigns, even the most progressive or socialist, can also undermine rank-and-file organizing.

It is not unimaginable that elements of the union officialdom and the leaders of the mainstream organizations of women, people of color and queer folks will again support “progressive” Democrats in the hope of increasing their influence in the party. This was the strategy of the leaders of the major industrial unions from the mid-1930s through the 1988 election, when most supported Jesse Jackson’s unsuccessful primary campaign for president.

The decline of the labor and social movements has led most of their official leadership to slavishly support the every rightward-moving nominee of the Democrats, culminating in the early endorsement of Hillary Clinton by most unions in the 2016 primary season.

Even in 2016, several major unions did support Sanders — most importantly, the Communications Workers of America. Faced with renewed strikes, often initiated against their will, other union officials and the middle class leaderships of the movements of the oppressed may again embrace left-leaning Democrats against their corporate opponents in the party.

This will pose difficult choices for those who support both Sanders and a rank-and-file strategy in those unions. Do we prioritize the Sanders campaign and bury our differences with the union leaders? Or do we prioritize rebuilding militancy, solidarity and democracy, even if this “alienates” pro-Sanders officials?

I won’t be joining DSA comrades in the Sanders’ campaign or other socialist campaigns in the Democratic Party. I believe that a position of independence allows greater freedom to make the political arguments against lesser evilism, educate for independent politics and reorganize the “militant minority” in the labor and social movements.

Hopefully, we will find arenas to work together — including independent campaigns, like that of the Green socialists Howie Hawkins and Jia Lee for New York state governor and lieutenant governor, and other local independent and socialist electoral campaigns. No matter what our disagreements, we should all be working together to rebuild the militant minority in workplaces and communities and revive the mass struggles that are essential to making socialism a mass movement in the U.S. once again.

https://socialistworker.org/2018/10/16/ ... ernie-2020

chlamor
Posts: 520
Joined: Tue Jul 18, 2017 12:46 am

Re: Bernie the Bomber’s Bad Week

Post by chlamor » Fri Nov 29, 2019 1:51 am

On military industrial complex, Sanders’ actions diverge from his rhetoric
By Jasper Craven

Sep 11 2019 | 19 reader footnotes

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In February 2011, Sen. Bernie Sanders visited the Afghan National Police Academy in Kabul as part of a congressional delegation visiting the NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan supported training site. Photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class Ernesto Hernandez Fonte


On Sept. 4, 1985, then-Burlington Mayor Bernie Sanders held an impromptu press conference to announce that the city’s ambitious street and sidewalk upgrades were ahead of schedule.

After a few questions about Burlington street work, reporters turned to a more contentious topic: the recent arrest and imprisonment of Sanders’ former assistant city treasurer, Barr Swennerfelt.

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Earlier that year, more than 100 Vermonters had gathered in front of Burlington’s Federal Building on Elmwood Avenue to protest President Ronald Reagan’s interventionist military policy in Nicaragua. As part of the peace effort, three protesters, including Swennerfelt, scaled a fence at the General Electric plant in Burlington, just off Pine Street. According to an account by the Burlington Free Press, the protesters then “climbed atop a tank with Vulcan rapid-fire guns, and placed flowers in the barrels.”

“Guns produced at GE right now are killing people,’ Swennerfelt told the Free Press.



Sanders agreed with the protesters in spirit. In an unusual step for a mayor, Sanders had visited Nicaragua that summer to attend ceremonies marking the sixth anniversary of the Sandinista revolution that put anti-imperialist President Daniel Ortega in power. In El Salvador, U.S.-backed forces reportedly used helicopters equipped with guns made at GE. Yet Sanders took a hard line against the local protesters, and declined to criticize GE, one of the city’s biggest employers with a strong union and good-paying jobs.

Burlington police were dispatched to break up the protests, and some, including Swennerfelt, were arrested. Now 72, Swennerfelt told VTDigger that, in the wake of the protest, Sanders had demanded she pledge to cease any activism if she wanted to remain in his administration.

“I’m a Quaker, and had been led to these actions, which were part of a spiritual peace group,” Swennerfelt explained. “I told Bernie I couldn’t promise that, so I left my job.”

Swennerfelt was behind bars for a month or so, and was released from prison shortly before the 1985 road-paving press conference, and reporters pressed Sanders on whether his actions towards her had betrayed his own deeply held political beliefs.

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One reporter asked Sanders whether there “may have been a contradiction on your part as someone … who talks a lot about peace and justice and yet not supporting someone who acts on it.”

“Barr is entitled to her view,” Sanders said, before defending her arrest by police as the “appropriate thing to do.” He further insisted that his administration was waging a “fight for a peaceful world and for economic justice.” Then he abruptly ended the press conference and walked away.

The incident typified Sanders’ long-held attitude to the military. While the Vermont senator routinely rips on Pentagon spending and major defense contractors, insisting in campaign speeches that “we need to take on the military industrial complex,” he has held his fire on several defense projects inside the state’s borders.

Over his decades-long political career, Sanders has helped secure millions in federal grants for the GE Aviation plant in Rutland and wooed a Lockheed Martin solar research center to Burlington. Tens of millions of dollars worth of additional military earmarks were secured through Sanders’ quiet congressional work.

F-35
One of four F-35 fighter jets parked at the Vermont Air National Guard base at the Burlington International Airport on May 29. The jets were diverted from an overseas flight for refueling and because of weather and were at the airport for a few days. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger

He has also stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the state’s political leaders as a stalwart supporter of the Vermont National Guard and its controversial and troubled new plane, the F-35 fighter jet. The first two of those planes are expected to touch down at Burlington International Airport this month, despite strong opposition from community leaders and local activists.

“The military is a very complex issue for Bernie,” said Garrison Nelson, a political science professor emeritus at the University of Vermont who has known Sanders for 40 years. “It’s not an issue he’s comfortable with because of all the pressure he gets from the hard lefties. He can’t antagonize this core progressive base, but must also not come off as radical, which could scare people away.”

Nelson joked that Sanders’ support of the F-35 was directed “almost at the point of a gun”– essentially all but mandated once the two other members of Vermont’s congressional delegation came out in favor of the planes. “If the F-35 wasn’t on the agenda he’d be a lot happier not do this juggling act,” Nelson added.

Swennerfelt, who has long supported Sanders, said the commonly held assumption of him as a protester or peacenik is a media misconception. “It isn’t Bernie’s bailiwick to go out, hold a sign, and get arrested,” she said. “Bernie believes in the military. He’s not a pacifist.”

Sanders did declare himself a pacifist when he applied for (and was later denied) conscientious objector status during the Vietnam War. And when it comes to big picture military policy, Sanders has long prioritized economic sanctions and diplomacy over war, with a few high profile exceptions.

In a recent story examining Sanders’ foreign policy record, VTDigger reported that the Vermont senator was one of the few federal lawmakers who voted against the Persian Gulf War in 1991, but supported a NATO air campaign in Yugoslavia in 1999 to stop human rights abuses in Kosovo. He voted against the Iraq War resolution in 2002, but supported military action in Afghanistan the year before to track down the terrorists responsible for 9/11.

Sanders declined to speak with VTDigger for this story.

While Sanders is generally opposed to war, he appears to hold a fundamental appreciation for the strong benefits of a military job, and has pointed to two benefits in particular that he’d like to see extended to the general public — free college and socialized medicine — which already exist for the military community in the form of the G.I. Bill and the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Sanders, a former chairman of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee, has sought to further strengthen these and other military benefits in office. In 2008, Sanders was a co-sponsor of the Post 9/11 G.I. bill, which expanded college benefits and housing stipends for those who served. In 2014, he was a key player in killing congressional efforts to slash military pensions, and he’s authored legislation aimed at strengthening the Department of Veterans Affairs and securing new health benefits, including dental care, for veterans.

This work has earned Sanders numerous awards from veterans’ service organization and, in a 2016 Military Times poll, he was the most popular Democrat among active duty service members.

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Sanders is also popular with employees of the military industrial complex. According to a VTDigger analysis of federal campaign data, Sanders received more than $850,000 during his 2016 presidential campaign from employees of the 50 largest military contractors, though many came in amounts under $1,000. (So far this cycle, Sanders has taken in more than $31,000 from employees of this same group of defense companies.)

Separately, over the course of his congressional career, Sanders has received more than $85,000 in political donations from the four major contractors working on the F-35: Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, BAE Systems and United Technologies.

Moreover, Sanders’ former Senate chief of staff and senior 2016 campaign adviser, Michaeleen Earle Crowell, recently signed up as a lobbyist for Boeing, according to federal lobbying disclosures. Her work has included pushing for “funding for the F15X,” a fighter jet manufactured by the mammoth defense company. Sanders has not taken a public position on the F-15, and a spokesman for the senator said, per congressional ethics rules, no staffer has spoken to Crowell about Boeing.




Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., tours the Afghan National Police Academy with military leaders on Feb. 20, 2011. Photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class Ernesto Hernandez Fonte

Shortly before kicking off his first presidential campaign, in May 2014, Sanders was interviewed by John Nichols, a progressive columnist at The Nation magazine, before a generally friendly crowd in Northampton, Massachusetts.

However, near the end of the event, during a question-and-answer session, one attendee challenged the Vermont senator’s support for the F-35.

“In Burlington, there’s a lot of good people working hard to stop basing the F-35 — this is the military industrial complex at its strongest and you came out in favor of basing it there,” the questioner noted.

“The F-35 is the cutting edge plane, the fighter plane for the United State Air Force, Navy, and NATO,” Sanders retorted. “That’s a fact, do you deny that?”

After the questioner appeared to raise some of the plane’s significant safety concerns, Sanders interrupted him.“You may think it doesn’t work, but the Department of Defense does think it works.” Sanders then reverted to his longtime view on military projects: the economic benefits derived from the project outweigh any drawbacks.

“It employs hundreds of people, it provides a college education for hundreds of people,” Sanders said. “So for me, the question is not whether we have the F-35 or not: it is here. The question for me is whether it is located in Burlington, Vermont, or whether it is located in Florida.”

Ironically, when a small Florida community was faced with the basing of the F-35, a torrent of grassroots political action resulted in the Air Force making significant concessions to the community, including a drastic reduction in plane operations.

No F-35 nuclear bombers banner
Activists opposing the Burlington F-35 basing, which Bernie Sanders has supported, protest outside the senator’s campaign rally in Montpelier in May. Photo by Mike Dougherty/VTDigger

Opponents have raised concerns about the plane’s safety for years. The most recent problems were documented in a June multi-part series by Defense News.

Defense News found the version of plane coming to Vermont — the F-35A — risks losing both of its hydraulic brake lines when a tire is blown upon landing. Pilots have also faced obstructed views when flying at night with below-average levels of starlight.

There are also plane problems that don’t jibe with Vermont’s cold winter climate. The plane has faced battery failings in cold conditions. Its Engine Ice Protection System has also been found to be faulty. Facing problems, the military appears to have abandoned the de-icing program altogether, instead, “changing the technical orders to require pilots to shut down the aircraft if icing conditions are encountered on the ground.”

In an unprecedented move, the F-35 development and production phases are being conducted simultaneously, and some early F-35 shipments have been halted after serious concerns were identified. While the Government Accountability Office has advised that all of the F-35’s serious problems should be remediated before full-rate production is achieved later this year, no such action has taken place. (The planes coming to Vermont were built before this important metric is achieved.)

Vermont’s three-member congressional delegation has expressed no serious concerns or misgivings about their unified support of the basing despite Burlington’s shorter-than-average runway smack dab in the most densely populated part of the state.

Over the last year-and-a-half, as VTDigger has detailed significant health and safety concerns related to the plane’s impending basing, provided evidence that the selection process was improperly manipulated by political actors, and revealed a toxic culture of sexual misconduct in the Guard largely led by fighter jet pilots, Sanders has consistently declined to speak on these issues with the press, or the public.

Local stakeholders have found this unresponsiveness, which dates back many years, frustrating.

rosanne greco and burlington police
Rosanne Greco said after her arrest Monday for refusing to leave Sen. Patrick Leahy’s Burlington office in protest of the basing of the F-35 fighter jet in Vermont that she would be willing to get arrested again. Photo by Mike Dougherty/VTDigger


Retired Air Force Col. Rosanne Greco, a longtime opponent of the F-35, recalled inviting all three members of Vermont’s congressional delegation to public forums and meetings on the potential basing as far back as 2012, when she was the chair of the South Burlington City Council.

“Neither them nor any of their staff ever showed up,” Greco said. “It was especially odd for Bernie, who has always appeared to be on the side of the common folks and against the one percent. But here he stands with the military, and his own people are being shafted. He says he’s a man of the people, but he won’t talk to the people.”

Helen Riehle, the current chair of the South Burlington City Council, echoed Greco’s frustration.

“Our concerns seem to fall on deaf ears with the congressional delegation,” Riehle said.

She added: “It’s really quite surprising, because the basing disproportionately affects people of color, new Americans, low and working class residents,” Riehle said. “Bernie – all three of them, really — have been vocal about how important those constituencies are to the economy and to this state. For them to decide that the F-35 has to come, that there couldn’t be another mission for the Guard in Burlington that would also support our economy is mind-boggling.”

“Every state is required to have a National Guard,” Riehle concluded. “Our is not going to go away.”

A Sanders adviser who asked not to be identified insisted: “We have gone pretty far out of our way to meet with anyone who has thoughts or concerns around the F-35.”

While some plane supporters view their opponents as a small group of chronic protesters, the have produced identifiable results — the three cities most impacted by the planes have repeatedly passed resolutions in opposition. They have protested in political offices, conducted civil disobedience, and organized a comment-writing campaign during the Air Force’s environment assessment. Just this week, Greco was arrested after protesting at the Burlington office of U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy.

Earlier this year, the Vermont Senate passed a resolution in opposition to nuclear systems being based in Vermont; last month the Burlington City Council unanimously passed a similar resolution. (While the F-35 is nuclear capable, Sanders and other lawmakers have strenuously suggested that Vermonters need not worry about Vermont’s fleet taking up such arms.)

In recent weeks, after new noise maps were released that showed a tripling of homes impacted by dangerous F-35 noise, at least three new groups opposed to the planes have sprung up, and are planning multiple protests in the coming weeks.


Ben Cohen
Ben Cohen was arrested for broadcasting a simulation of the sound of F-35 fighter jets from a set of speakers through the city in Feburary 2018. The roar violated the city’s noise ordinance. Photo by Caleigh Cross/Stowe Reporter

Even some of Sanders’ top allies in the state have joined these efforts. Both ice cream magnate Ben Cohen, who is one of Sanders’ 2020 campaign co-chairs, and noted environmentalist Bill McKibben, a frequent Sanders surrogate, recently signed on to a group, led by Greco, that’s fighting against the planes. (Ironically enough, Sanders’ likeness was used in a pro-plane pamphlet created by the Green Ribbons for the F-35, a citizens group that supports the F-35 basing.)

Out of Sanders’ allies, Cohen has been most involved in this activism, bankrolling research, media and protest work. Last year he was arrested after blasting the sound of jet noise in downtown Burlington. During the last legislative session, he successfully lobbied on the Senate resolution opposed to nuclear bombers.

Cohen and Sanders have discussed the planes periodically over the years, but Cohen says he hasn’t been able to sway Sanders.

Cohen said he’s talked to his friend about the issue a few times, but to no avail. “That’s one thing he and I do not agree on,” he said. “And anytime I can find a politician with whom I agree 98 or 99 percent of the time, I’ll take that.”



It’s hard to track down exactly why Sanders has so vociferously supported the F-35, but it appears partially informed by the 1993 closing of Plattsburgh, New York’s Air Force base, formerly located on the western end of Lake Champlain. A Sanders adviser noted that the closing “had a significant negative impact on Plattsburgh as a city. Bernie saw that very real impact.”

In response, while he has repeatedly criticized military spending and weapons projects, Sanders has decoupled these issue from the F-35 — the biggest financial boondoggle in Pentagon history — as well as other defense projects with a Vermont connection.

As a House member in the mid-’90s, Sanders called out Lockheed Martin’s issuance of $92 billion in executive bonuses shortly after the company announced thousands of layoffs. Sanders tried to stop these bonuses through legislation, but was unsuccessful. In 2011, Sanders’ Senate office found that $300 billion was funneled over a three-year period to Pentagon contractors who had been convicted of fraud. Last year, when Congress passed a historically large Pentagon budget, Sanders was one of just 10 senators to vote against it.

Sanders has pledged to shrink the military budget if elected president, but, in an interview this year with Vox, would not commit to shutting down government or vetoing a Congressional budget should he be presented with a boosted defense budget.

Yet in 2014, when then-Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel sought to shrink the size of the National Guard, Sanders joined Vermont’s political class in opposing the cuts.

“The Guard already makes up nearly half of the Army’s combat personnel and more than a third of that of the Air Force, but accounts for just seven percent of the total defense budget,” Sanders said in a statement at the time. “To my mind, we should be growing – rather than shrinking – the National Guard.”

Most announcements on defense grants for Vermont have come from Sanders’ Senate counterpart, Patrick Leahy, who has long served on the Senate Appropriations Committee. Yet even early in his Senate career, before so-called earmarks were banned, Sanders quietly worked to secure millions in military money for his state.

Between 2008 and 2011, Sanders helped secure more than $74 million for military and defense projects in Vermont, far more than he earmarked for types of work he prioritizes in his rhetoric, like education or the environment. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, this work included everything from $1.6 million for Darn Tough to produce socks for the Marines Corps to more than $10 million to improve the Guard’s military firing range.

Sanders cuts yellow ribbon with big scissors
In October 2011, Former Adjutant Gen. Michael Dubie, Sanders, Wing Commander Col. Douglas Fick and Ken Pigeon, president of Engineers Construction, cut the ribbon for a Vermont Air National Guard solar power project. Photo by Tech. Sgt. Dan DiPietro


Sanders’ most public work to woo defense contractors occurred in 2011, when he helped bring a firm]managed by Lockheed Martin to Burlington. While the project was for solar energy, it rubbed some of Vermont’s lefties the wrong way, and violated the spirit of a recently passed Burlington City Council resolution that called for the city not to work with weapons producers or environmental polluters. Greg Guma, the former editor of the Vanguard Press, chronicled the development on his blog:

Despite concerns about Lockheed’s consistently bad behavior Sanders didn’t think inviting a subsidiary to the state would help them get away with anything. Rather, he envisioned Vermont transformed “into a real-world lab for the entire nation” through a strategic public-private partnership. “We’re at the beginning of something that could be of extraordinary significance to Vermont and the rest of the country,” he predicted.

This dissonance is not uncommon in politics, as Sanders made note of in a classroom discussion at the University of Iowa a few months after his talk in Northampton. In his remarks, Sanders openly suggested that politicians improperly refrain from criticizing some military contractors because of the jobs these companies produce back home.

“Any member of Congress that stands up and says, ‘Well, maybe we don’t have to spend $600 billion on the military,’ they get letters from people working in the military industry in their own state,” Sanders said.



While he has been tagged as disingenuous for his simultaneous support of peace and the Vermont National Guard, Sanders has suffused progressive policies into his advocacy for military.

In 2008, Sanders ventured to Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas, which then boasted the largest solar array in the country. The Vermont senator subsequently spoke to Pentagon officials about making the military more energy efficient, and helped secure more than $8 million for Vermont to create one of the largest solar power projects on any National Guard base. This project led the Vermont Guard to win a national award from Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED).

Sanders’ office has continued to advise and support the Guard on energy-saving projects, including its newly revamped maintenance shop, which was built with a state-of-the-art energy management system.

Sanders has also fought for better benefits for military members. Virtually all of the 39 bills Sanders has introduced relating to the military have been aimed at expanding or strengthening healthcare inside the Department of Veterans Affairs. Perhaps his most significant legislation to date is the 2014 VA Choice Act, which strengthened capacity at the VA while also opening up more private health care options to veterans.


VA Choice Act Sanders
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., receives the Veterans of Foreign Wars Congressional Award during a 2015 ceremony. Photo courtesy of Sanders’ office

This law, forged with late Republican Sen. John McCain, came in the wake of a scandal at a VA hospital in Phoenix in which administrators were doctoring wait-time data to make it appear as if veterans were accessing care much faster than was the case. Sanders was criticized for defending the VA in the wake of this scandal, and of being blind to the department’s significant problems. In countering this criticism, Sanders has pointed to Republicans’ longtime unwillingness to get on board with his comprehensive VA proposals, which he had introduced in the years before the scandal, to tepid support. (As VTDigger previously reported, the VA Choice Act created new problems for veterans across the country while doing little to ease longstanding concerns inside the agency.)

Sanders also worked earnestly to establish and support a family support network inside the Vermont National Guard that was hailed in the press as “a national model.” The web of programs includes everything proactive mental health and wellness outreach to free child care services.

Shortly after the invasion of Iraq, in 2004, Sanders attended a holiday party held for Vermont National Guard families that was hosted by the Pomerleau family, one of the largest developers in Chittenden County. Following a round of holiday tunes, Sanders spoke to the crowd, and pledged support and assistance.

It was classic Sanders: opposing war but supporting the soldier.

“We know that a lot of families are hurting right now, especially at this time of the year,” Sanders began. “I think I can speak for the entire delegation when I say we are going to do everything we can in Washington to make sure the men and women over there have the equipment and the training that they need — that we’re going to bring them as soon as possible and as safely as possible. And while they are over there, we’re going to do our best to make sure that the kids and the wives back home are never forgotten, not for one single day.”

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Filed under:
POLITICS
Tags: Ben Cohen, Bernie 2020, Bernie Sanders, Bernie Sanders military, Bernie Sanders veterans, F-35, Garrison Nelson, Helen Riehle, military spending, military spending in Vermont, Rosanne Greco, U.S. military, Vermont National Guard
Jasper Craven
About Jasper
Jasper Craven is a freelance reporter for VTDigger.

A Vermont native, he first discovered his love for journalism at the Caledonian Record. He double-majored in print journalism and political science at Boston University, and worked in the Boston Globe’s Metro and Investigative units. While at the Globe he collaborated on Shadow Campus, a three-part investigative series focused on greed and mismanagement in Boston’s off-campus student housing market. The series was a finalist for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize.
He also spent two years at MuckRock, a news site dedicated to investigation and analysis of government documents.

Craven covered Vermont’s U.S. congressional delegation for the Times Argus in the summer of 2014, and worked as a Metro reporter for the Chicago Tribune before joining the staff of VTDigger from 2015-2017.

Email: jcraven@vtdigger.org

Follow Jasper on Twitter @Jasper_Craven

Latest stories by Jasper
The Deeper Dig: With F-35 landing scheduled, protesters press on
On military industrial complex, Sanders’ actions diverge from his rhetoric
Q&A: Before F-35s’ arrival, Mayor Weinberger stands by his support
View all stories by Jasper Craven

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roger tubby
Thank you Jasper for keeping the spotlight on the effect of money on our elected representatives.

The common response from the supporters of this boondoggle is that it creates/saves jobs. Yes, there may be a few more or less because of stationing the F-35 in Burlington. I doubt there has been a rigorous independent study of how many.

I do believe that none of the fiercest wealthy and politically-connected supporters live within 5 miles of BTV. Maybe they should volunteer to live in that expanded after-burner noise zone for a few years with their young children/grandchildren.

38-492 months ago
Steven Schlussel
Bernie is the best answer we have right now. Who doesn’t have contradictions in their life? Who doesn’t change their plans.?

19-782 months ago
ArtSpellman
……….”Sanders declined to speak with VTDigger for this story.”………That say’s it all!

77-132 months ago
Deb Bouton
Another excellent piece of reporting by Jasper Craven. THANK YOU for diving deeply into this topic. Bernie’s hypocrisy on the F-35 in particular is unfathomable and reason enough for me to withhold my vote, forever.

52-152 months ago
George Cross
The United States Air Force after careful study and consideration stated in its Environmental Impact Statement;

‘“With 18 (the number of F-35s designated for BTV) planes there will be no increase in jobs and with 24 planes there would be an increase of 266 military personnel primarily comprised of part-time traditional guardsmen… Any increase in secondary employment as a result of the increase in personnel would be minor…”

Let’s read that again, “no increase in jobs.” Thus anyone, including Senator Sanders and Senator Leahy, as well as others, either refuse to believe the USAF or simply play loose with the truth for political purposes. There can be no other explanation for their claim of jobs, jobs, jobs.

38-132 months ago
rosemarie jackowski
Manufacturing weapons of mass destruction can never be justified as a ‘jobs program’.

Lockheed Martin won. The human race lost.

21-602 months ago
Tiffany Summers
Politics! Hypocrisy. Welcome to America is 2019

36-42 months ago
sandra bettis
“He can’t antagonize this core progressive base, but must also not come off as radical, which could scare people away.” Bernie, the ‘radical’ left is your base – please live up to our expectations – you will not scare any of your supporters away – in fact, you will energize us in your support.

6-422 months ago
Patrick Cashman
“…free college and socialized medicine — which already exist for the military community in the form of the G.I. Bill and the Department of Veterans Affairs. ”

Uh, no.
The GI Bill is a hiring and retention incentive. It provides funding for education and housing, paying tuition up to the resident tuition rate for 36 months. The cost is one Honorable Discharge. It is hardly “free”.

The VA does not serve the military. The VA serves private citizens who are Veterans for injuries and disabilities that result from their service. Military members are served by Tricare. Which is socialized medicine in a way, but with a crucial difference: instead of covering everyone, if you have negative habits (drugs, obesity, alcoholism) or chronic illness or long term injury,you are kicked out.

48-32 months ago
william Farr
After reading this quite long story on Bernie Sanders political leanings, I am left with the opinion that VTDigger is apparently pro Bernie or at least the reporter is. What this bit of historical political history tells me is Mr Sanders is quite the ” HAWK ” & not that much different from his least favorite political ” HAWK, ” Hillary Clinton. In fact I will go so far as to say he is playing her playbook to a tee… Which may help to explain why VT’s left leaning liberal electorate repeatably vote him back into office, year in, year out…
Thank you & have a nice day… :~)

26-42 months ago
Karen McIlveen1
Jasper you are the bomb! People who blindly worship political figures get what they deserve. Keep up the digging the manure pile is very deep and stinky in VT.

36-42 months ago
John Greenberg
This otherwise excellent article leaves out a pretty vital piece of the picture. As noted here, Bernie often supports the military industrial complex and specifically endorses the F-35. At the same time, the article fails to mention Bernie’s repeated claims about the need to address climate change.

The US military is one of the world’s largest creators of greenhouse gases and other environmental p0llution, as are all the others in the world. Interestingly, at various times and to its credit, the military itself has recognized its own outsize contribution and the urgency of the problems it has created.

By far the easiest way to combat greenhouse gases is to stop creating them. By supporting the F-35, for example, Sanders is directly contradicting his support for addressing global warming. This makes no more sense than supporting fossil fuel development to address global warming. They are not compatible positions.

10-282 months ago
sandra baird
Senator Sanders stance to support the F35’s is horrifying. Beyond the thousands of affordable housing that will be destroyed, beyond the tax increases that will be imposed on us to pay for the mitigation of the noise of war, beyond the possibility of nukes in our neighborhoods which will make us a target of war, the F35’s will spew more poisonous emissions into the environment than any other cause.
However, I will support Sen Sanders at this moment. Sanders alone is capable of owning up to his errors and changing his mind. We know that in Burlington. When he was defeated in a vote against his plans to develop the waterfront he went on to fight in court for the Public Trust doctrine to keep the waterfront public; lately, he has changed his silence and has criticized the government of Israel for its treatment of the Palestinians a difficult position for any politician.
He alone might change his position on the F35’s . A tiny but not zero hope.

5-192 months ago
Andrew Christiansen
Perhaps a better question to ask is why the military-industrial complex has such a hold on ALL politicians of every party? I would be curious to know if there is ANY U.S. Representative or Senator who hasn’t supported military projects and bases in their own state. A quick look at Elizabeth Warren shows https://www.politico.com/story/2015/02/ ... tts-115157 and a story similar to this one (just change the name from Bernie to Warren) appears here – https://www.mintpressnews.com/shes-hot- ... ex/253542/

9-62 months ago
Robert Kenney
Getting personal flights on a UH-60 Blackhawk creates a whole lotta carbon emissions. Plus it cost taxpayers about $3500 an hour for the flight operation.

16-32 months ago
Kasey Child
Fantastic article by Jasper. Unless I missed it, I think the nearly trillion dollar price tag of the F-35 is extremely relevant to the discussion. Avoiding exorbitant military price tags like a trillion dollars for the F-35 are perfect examples of how progressives could justify their proposed social programs. Except for Bernie, I forgot he has been advocating for this endless military spending on developing a new plane.

Bernie truly is a complicated, contradictory figure.

10-32 months ago
Hale Irwin
I see Bernie as an angry old man without leadership qualities. His words are not mirrored by his actions. Has Bernie become the Left wing reflection of our Right wing President? Alike in many ways except political views.

21-52 months ago
John Briggs
Bernie is always right, much like what’s his name in the White House. And, like that man, he dislikes and reviles the press, which never manages to accurately describe his greatness. Difficult questions, as about the F-35, irritate him.
Like virtually every member of Congress, Sanders bleats concern for bloated budgets, but throughout his career he has not managed any effective challenges to the Pentagon and the industries it supports (and supplies with lobbyists in the form of retired officers).
Thanks, Digger, for this story. Sanders expects a free pass in Vermont and usually gets it, though he doesn’t deserve it.

https://vtdigger.org/2019/09/11/on-mili ... ialWarfare

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blindpig
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Re: Bernie the Bomber’s Bad Week

Post by blindpig » Wed Feb 05, 2020 5:41 pm

US elections: the tasks of revolutionaries in 2020

John Peterson 05 February 2020

The debacle around the Iowa Caucus has once again highlighted the true nature of the Democratic Party: a party of the US ruling class whose interests are directly opposed to those of the workers and the youth. We will publish a full comment on these events tomorrow. In the meantime, we are publishing an editorial by the US Marxists of Socialist Revolution, originally written on 24 January. Readers may also be interested in this article on the 2016 Iowa Caucus, which remains entirely relevant today.

With the impeachment distraction as a backdrop, the 2020 elections are in full swing. Is it possible Trump could win again? Nothing can be ruled out categorically. Like war, electoral politics is an incredibly complex equation, and much can and will happen between now and November. Suffice it to say that the Democrats are experts at snatching defeat from victory—and may even prefer to scuttle their own party’s chance—treating Trump himself as the “lesser evil”—if they feel they cannot fully control their candidate.

Image
Sanders' recent rise in the polls is a serious cause for concern for the US ruling class / Image: Flickr, Matt Johnson

With the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary just a few weeks away, the latest polls from CNN and the Des Moines Register are cause for concern for the ruling class, which has a lot riding on these elections. For the first time, Bernie Sanders is outpolling establishment favorite, Joe Biden, albeit by a small margin, not only in Iowa and New Hampshire but nationally. He also leads by a large margin over Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg, and by double-digits over Michael Bloomberg, Amy Klobuchar, and Andrew Yang. Sanders is seen as “the candidate who most agrees with voters on the issues that matter most to them”—so it’s no surprise that polls also show that if the presidential election were held today, he would be almost certain to defeat Trump.

After years of trumpeting the vital importance of these early contests—both in small, rural states with limited Electoral College clout—we can be sure they will downplay their relative weight if Sanders comes out on top. However, victory or even just a strong showing would give him tremendous momentum heading into “Super Tuesday” on March 3, when 14 states, including California, Texas, Virginia, and North Carolina, will decide who to support as the Democratic nominee. If he does well, then also, it could be too late for the Democratic Party establishment to derail him “fair and square.”

Knives out for Bernie
This is why the knives are out for Bernie, with none other than Hillary Clinton leading the charge. Calling his program “baloney,” she claimed in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter that “nobody likes him” and declined to say whether she would endorse and campaign for him if he’s the Democratic nominee. For its part, The New York Times has played the “it’s time for a woman president” identity card by co-endorsing both Warren and Klobuchar—who they see as much safer pairs of hands for their liberal-capitalist agenda.

And while Sanders has vociferously ruled out an independent run, vowing to support the eventual Democratic nominee, Michael Bloomberg is another matter. An independent, well-financed campaign by the billionaire former mayor of New York City may well be the ruling class’s desperate “trump” card if Sanders overcomes the odds the Democratic National Committee has stacked against him.

Image
The establishment’s worry over Sanders’s rising popularity reflects their fear and loathing of the workers, youth, and poor who stand behind him / Image: Flickr, Andrew Seaman

The establishment’s worry over Sanders’s rising popularity reflects their fear and loathing of the workers, youth, and poor who stand behind him. If Sanders is catapulted to power on the back of a mass grassroots movement, millions of ordinary Americans would demand even more—or worse yet, begin to take matters into their own hands.

What does all of this signify? First of all, it is proof positive that there is widespread interest in socialism and that a self-described socialist could be elected president of the United States of America. This, in itself, is of tremendous symptomatic importance. Does this, however, justify working within the Democratic Party? Not by a long shot. On the contrary, it highlights the thoroughly reactionary nature of the Democratic Party and the liberal establishment, which are unreformable pillars of support for capitalist rule in the US and around the world.

Reformists of the Jacobin type, desperate to remain caged within capitalist constraints, maintain that support for Sanders as a Democrat represents the extreme limit of what Americans are willing to support. Never mind the breathtakingly rapid changes in consciousness we’ve seen in just the last few years! Marxists, on the other hand, dialectically analyze the genesis and trajectory of social processes, which are not static, but ever-changing. We can confidently predict that millions of American workers can and will move even further to the left on the basis of events and their own experience.

Even many of those currently trying to reform the Democrats from within are inching towards the conclusion that this is like trying to square the circle. As an example, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently candidly commented that the Democratic Party tent is “too big” and that in any other country, she and Joe Biden would not be in the same party. This is absolutely correct! If a mass socialist-labour-workers’ party existed in the US, we can be sure she would be on the reformist right wing of that party instead of in the capitalist Democrats. Then, more recently, she stated that the Democrats are a “center or center-conservative” party and how there currently isn’t a “left” party in this country. Again, she is correct in the sense that the Democrats represent big business, while the working-class majority has no party of its own.

Like Trump’s election, support for Sanders’s is an expression of the simmering anger at the status quo and the search for a solution that goes beyond it. What is lacking is an audacious lead that can harness the growing discontent into revolutionary action to change society, starting with a break with the Democrats and the building of a mass socialist party. People like Sanders and AOC, and publications like Jacobin could play an important part in this if they so desired. To be sure, such a party would almost certainly be reformist from the outset. But it would embolden the working class and provide Marxists with an unprecedented arena in which to argue for our ideas and program.

Unfortunately, many reformist socialists think they can pull a fast one on the Democratic Party—and on the working class. They advocate working within the Democrats—but “only” so as to pull off a so-called “dirty break” later down the line. This is the line of the “Ackerman Thesis” advocated by Jacobin magazine. We should be clear that the only thing “dirty” in this “tactic” is its class collaboration and dishonesty. By building up illusions that there is an “easy” way forward through the Democratic Party, they are muddying the waters and tainting their credibility as “socialists.” Only by standing firm on the principle of class independence today, and by keeping our political banner clean—not “dirty”—will revolutionary socialists be able to attract hundreds and then tens of thousands of workers in the future.

Does this mean that we should have nothing to do with the millions of people who have been radicalised by Sanders and his call for a “political revolution against the billionaire class?” Does it mean we shouldn’t attend his rallies and have friendly discussions with those looking for more radical ideas? Of course not. Only hidebound sectarians would cut themselves off from leftward-moving workers and youth in the name of “revolutionary purity.”

It is normal and natural that people will begin by seeking solutions within, not outside the system, and that they look to familiar parties and politicians, even if they’re not in full agreement with them. We must extend a friendly hand to these layers and engage them in a political discussion, convincing them with facts, figures, and arguments that preparing for the socialist revolution is the only way out of the systemic impasse.

Image
Bernie Sanders AOC Image Matt Johnson
If Sanders or AOC were to break with the Democrats, run as independents, launch a new party, and call on the unions to back them, this would dramatically transform the political landscape / Image: Flickr, Matt Johnson

We must explain that even if Sanders is elected, he would lead a government of crisis. Even if he managed to provide a few cosmetic crumbs through executive orders, he would be sabotaged by his own party and by corporate America. He would be mercilessly savaged in both the conservative and liberal media if he so much as lifted a little finger against the fundamental interests of capital. Whatever his intentions, he would be under fierce pressure from the ruling class to implement its policies—and to save the system from itself.

Under the countervailing pressure of the working class, he could, in theory, go further than he presently intends. The only way to keep his ship from sinking would be to mobilise the working class for revolution and a decisive break with the system and its limits. However, given the pitiful track record of reformists throughout history, this is not at all the most likely scenario. Far more likely, he would cave to the pressure of the capitalists and implement austerity—and deeply discredit the idea of socialism in the process.

If individuals like Sanders or AOC were to break with the Democrats, run as independents, launch a new party, and call on the unions to back them, this would dramatically change the political landscape, and our position to their candidacies would have to be reassessed. Millions support Sanders despite his running as a Democrat—not because he is running on that party’s ballot line. Many others—including many workers who today identify as Republican—would support him if he ran as an independent and worked to build a new party. However, this is, again, not at all the most likely scenario.

As the pressure to support “anyone but Trump” builds, we must remain firm in our convictions and look confidently to the future. Revolutionary Marxists are in no position to meaningfully influence the outcome of the 2020 caucuses, primaries, or general election. We must, therefore, have a sense of proportion as to our tasks in the year ahead. Our task is to patiently explain to workers that the root cause of the problems they face is systemic—whether a Democrat or a Republican sits in the White House. We must never forget that we have a unique and indispensable role to play as the historical memory of the working class. We must not get swept up in the search for shortcuts to building the forces of revolutionary socialism—no such shortcuts exist! The surest way between two points is not always the shortest, and many shortcuts lead directly off a cliff.

Above all, we must have faith in the workers—millions will eventually come searching for revolutionary ideas and a revolutionary organisation. The real question is: will we be ready when that time comes? What we do throughout the course of 2020 will go a long way towards answering that question.

https://www.marxist.com/us-elections-th ... n-2020.htm

The good part of this analysis is that we should engage with these liberals/progressives, despite the aggravation we will suffer and perhaps tone down our sharp edge a little(I should talk...). Benefit of the doubt & all that. For what it's worth. I don't really see much advantage but ya never know. One thing that Bernie sez that's correct(even though I doubt he believes it)is that the untapped support of the nonparticipating voters is the big prize. I don't think either party wants that, it would muddy the waters of the current easily manipulated electorate. That should be our primary target.

The two final paragraphs are good.

The bad part of this analysis is that it assumes(mebbe for sake of argument?) that people like Bernie & AOC are honest. This can only be based upon their pronouncements, because their voting record speaks differently. They continually support imperialist war and that is unforgivable. Talk is cheap but votes can have bloody consequences.Bernie showed what he was made of in 2016, when after being shit on and cheated he stepped up & endorsed his tormentor whose politics he claimed to abhor. He'll do it again and so will his junior sheepdogs. They will not bite the hand that feeds them.

Bernie winning the primaries will not be allowed. As he is associated with socialism there can be not even the least indication of approval of that odious system. It's bad enough they gotta play footsie with it in the primaries to keep the big tent up but once that's done, well, just kidding folks.

And the possibility of Bernie 'going rogue' independent & swinging hard left are so ridiculously small that if it happens I will shit myself in a youtube video.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

solidgold
Posts: 68
Joined: Mon Aug 07, 2017 7:36 pm

Re: Bernie the Bomber’s Bad Week

Post by solidgold » Thu Feb 06, 2020 12:07 am

blindpig wrote:
Wed Feb 05, 2020 5:41 pm

The good part of this analysis is that we should engage with these liberals/progressives, despite the aggravation we will suffer and perhaps tone down our sharp edge a little(I should talk...). Benefit of the doubt & all that. For what it's worth. I don't really see much advantage but ya never know. One thing that Bernie sez that's correct(even though I doubt he believes it)is that the untapped support of the nonparticipating voters is the big prize. I don't think either party wants that, it would muddy the waters of the current easily manipulated electorate. That should be our primary target.

The two final paragraphs are good.

The bad part of this analysis is that it assumes(mebbe for sake of argument?) that people like Bernie & AOC are honest. This can only be based upon their pronouncements, because their voting record speaks differently. They continually support imperialist war and that is unforgivable. Talk is cheap but votes can have bloody consequences.Bernie showed what he was made of in 2016, when after being shit on and cheated he stepped up & endorsed his tormentor whose politics he claimed to abhor. He'll do it again and so will his junior sheepdogs. They will not bite the hand that feeds them.

Bernie winning the primaries will not be allowed. As he is associated with socialism there can be not even the least indication of approval of that odious system. It's bad enough they gotta play footsie with it in the primaries to keep the big tent up but once that's done, well, just kidding folks.

And the possibility of Bernie 'going rogue' independent & swinging hard left are so ridiculously small that if it happens I will shit myself in a youtube video.
In the analysis, I find it ironic they warn against "revolutionary purity." Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez socialism is the morally "pure" version socialism compared to the evil communists. That's THEIR game. Point well taken that any interest in socialism is a nice thing, but I'm not exactly sure politeness is given to our side... at least not to me, anecdotally. :[

One of the best things Bernie has done is shown how futile working within the system is. The softest socialist who evokes the US constitution and endorses a Clinton. Imagine a real left party...

chlamor
Posts: 520
Joined: Tue Jul 18, 2017 12:46 am

Re: Bernie the Bomber’s Bad Week

Post by chlamor » Fri Feb 14, 2020 3:33 pm

Sanders tells New York Times he would consider a preemptive strike against Iran or North Korea
By Jacob Crosse and Barry Grey
14 February 2020

Bernie Sanders has won the popular vote in both the New Hampshire and Iowa presidential primary contests in considerable part by presenting himself as an opponent of war. Following the criminal assassination of Iranian General Qassem Suleimani last month, Sanders was the most vocal of the Democratic presidential aspirants in criticizing Trump’s action. His poll numbers have risen in tandem with his stepped-up anti-war rhetoric.

He has repeatedly stressed his vote against the 2003 invasion of Iraq, reminding voters in the Iowa presidential debate last month, “I not only voted against that war, I helped lead the effort against that war.”

However, when speaking to the foremost newspaper of the American ruling class, the New York Times, the Sanders campaign adopts a very different tone than that employed by the candidate when addressing the public in campaign stump speeches or TV interviews.

The answers provided by Sanders’ campaign to a foreign policy survey of the Democratic presidential candidates published this month by the Times provides a very different picture of the attitude of the self-styled “democratic socialist” to American imperialism and war. In the course of the survey, the Sanders campaign is at pains to reassure the military/intelligence establishment and the financial elite of the senator’s loyalty to US imperialism and his readiness to deploy its military machine.

Perhaps most significant and chilling is the response to the third question in the Times’ survey.

Question: Would you consider military force to pre-empt an Iranian or North Korean nuclear or missile test?

Answer: Yes.

A Sanders White House, according to his campaign, would be open to launching a military strike against Iran or nuclear-armed North Korea to prevent (not respond to) not even a threatened missile or nuclear strike against the United States, but a mere weapons test. This is a breathtakingly reckless position no less incendiary than those advanced by the Trump administration.

Sanders would risk a war that could easily involve the major powers and lead to a nuclear Armageddon in order to block a weapons test by countries that have been subjected to devastating US sanctions and diplomatic, economic and military provocations for decades.

Moreover, as Sanders’ response to the Times makes clear, the so-called progressive, anti-war candidate fully subscribes to the doctrine of “preemptive war” declared to be official US policy in 2002 by the administration of George W. Bush. An illegal assertion of aggressive war as an instrument of foreign policy, this doctrine violates the principles laid down at the Nuremberg Trials of Nazi officials after World War II, the United Nations charter and other international laws and conventions on war. Sanders’ embrace of the doctrine, following in the footsteps of the Obama administration, shows that his opposition to the Iraq war was purely a question of tactics, not a principled opposition to imperialist war.

The above question is preceded by another that evokes a response fully in line with the war policies of the Obama administration, the first two-term administration in US history to preside over uninterrupted war.

Question: Would you consider military force for a humanitarian intervention?

Answer: Yes.

Among the criminal wars carried out by the United States in the name of defending “human rights” are the war in Bosnia and the bombing of Serbia in the 1990s, the 2011 air war against Libya that ended with the lynching of deposed ruler Muammar Gaddafi, and the civil war in Syria that was fomented by Washington and conducted by its Al Qaeda-linked proxy militias.

The fraudulent humanitarian pretexts for US aggression were no more legitimate than the lie of “weapons of mass destruction” used in the neo-colonial invasion of Iraq. The result of these war crimes has been the destruction of entire societies, the death of millions and dislocation of tens of millions more, along with the transformation of the Middle East into a cauldron of great power intervention and intrigue that threatens to erupt into a new world war.

Sanders fully subscribes to this doctrine of “humanitarian war” that has been particularly associated with Democratic administrations.

In response to a question from the Times on the assassination of Suleimani, the Sanders campaign calls Trump’s action illegal, but refuses to take a principled stand against targeted assassinations in general and associates itself with the attacks on Suleimani as a terrorist.

The reply states:

Clearly there is evidence that Suleimani was involved in acts of terror. He also supported attacks on US troops in Iraq. But the right question isn’t ‘was this a bad guy,’ but rather ‘does assassinating him make Americans safer?’ The answer is clearly no.

In other words, the extra-judicial killing of people by the US government is justified if it makes Americans “safer.” This is a tacit endorsement of the policy of drone assassinations that was vastly expanded under the Obama administration—a policy that included the murder of US citizens.

At another point, the Times asks:

Would you agree to begin withdrawing American troops from the Korean peninsula?

The reply is:

No, not immediately. We would work closely with our South Korean partners to move toward peace on the Korean peninsula, which is the only way we will ultimately deal with the North Korean nuclear issue.

Sanders thus supports the continued presence of tens of thousands of US troops on the Korean peninsula, just as he supports the deployment of US forces more generally to assert the global interests of the American ruling class.

On Israel, Sanders calls for a continuation of the current level of US military and civilian aid and opposes the immediate return of the US embassy from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv.

On Russia, he entirely supports the Democratic Party’s McCarthyite anti-Russia campaign and lines up behind the right-wing basis of the Democrats’ failed impeachment drive against Trump:

Question: If Russia continues on its current course in Ukraine and other former Soviet states, should the United States regard it as an adversary, or even an enemy?

Answer: Yes.

Question: Should Russia be required to return Crimea to Ukraine before it is allowed back into the G-7?

Answer: Yes.

Finally, the Times asks the Sanders campaign its position on the National Security Strategy announced by the Trump administration at the beginning of 2018. The new doctrine declares that the focus of American foreign and military strategy has shifted from the “war on terror” to the preparation for war against its major rivals, naming in particular Russia and China.

In the following exchange, Sanders tacitly accepts the great power conflict framework of the National Security Strategy, attacking Trump from the right for failing to aggressively prosecute the conflict with Russia and China:

Question: President Trump’s national security strategy calls for shifting the focus of American foreign policy away from the Middle East and Afghanistan, and back to what it refers to as the ‘revisionist’ superpowers, Russia and China. Do you agree? Why or why not?

Answer: Despite its stated strategy, the Trump administration has never followed a coherent national security strategy. In fact, Trump has escalated tensions in the Middle East and put us on the brink of war with Iran, refused to hold Russia accountable for its interference in our elections and human rights abuses, has done nothing to address our unfair trade agreement with China that only benefits wealthy corporations, and has ignored China’s mass internment of Uighurs and its brutal repression of protesters in Hong Kong. Clearly, Trump is not a president we should be taking notes from. [Emphasis added].

In a recent interview Ro Khanna, a Democratic congressman and national co-chair of the Sanders campaign, assured Atlantic writer Uri Friedman that Sanders would continue provocative “freedom of the seas” navigation operations in the Persian Gulf and the South China Sea, while committing a Sanders administration to “maintain some [troop] presence” on the multitude of bases dotting “allied” countries from Japan to Germany.

Millions of workers, students and young people are presently attracted to Sanders because they have come to despise and oppose the vast social inequality, brutality and militarism of American society and correctly associate these evils with capitalism. However, they will soon learn through bitter experience that Sanders’s opposition to the “billionaire class” is no more real than his supposed opposition to war. His foreign policy is imperialist through and through, in line with the aggressive and militaristic policy of the Democratic Party and the Obama administration.

The Democrats’ differences with Trump on foreign policy, though bitter, are tactical. Both parties share the strategic orientation of asserting US global hegemony above all through force of arms.

No matter how much Sanders blusters about inequality, it is impossible to oppose the depredations of the ruling class at home while supporting its plunder and oppression abroad.

Sanders is no more an apostle of peace than he is a representative of the working class. Both in foreign and domestic policy, he is an instrument of the ruling class for channeling the growing movement of the working class and opposition to capitalism back behind the Democratic Party and the two-party system of capitalist rule in America.

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/0 ... d-f14.html

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Re: Bernie the Bomber’s Bad Week

Post by blindpig » Mon Feb 24, 2020 12:46 pm

Scandalize his Name: The Red-baiting of Bernie Sanders
Recent weeks have given witness to a decided growth of the Anyone-But-Bernie (ABB) syndrome-- the promotion by top Democrats of any candidate remaining in the Democratic primary race whose first name is not “Bernie.”

Perhaps the most obvious examples were the outrages of the recent Iowa caucuses. Apart from the $800,000 anti-Bernie ad campaign by an operative of AIPAC and pro-Israel zealots, the brazen attempt to undermine Sanders’s victory and promote a new ABB champion stands out. With Biden faltering, though still polling top numbers in Iowa, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) through its Iowa surrogates, manipulated the results to dump Biden and install a younger, glitzier opponent to the grumpy, stoop-shouldered Sanders. Out of nowhere, the energetic, but hollow small-town mayor, Pete Buttigieg, was boosted into the primary lead by hook and by crook.

The anti-Sanders crowd thought that the media would press the bogus Iowa “victory” into an unstoppable wave for Mayor Pete. But that wave broke on the shoals of the Sanders victory in New Hampshire, sending the ABBers into a panic.

Of course they still have the many-times-a-billionaire Michael (now just “Mike”) Bloomberg as a backstop. While he has shamelessly reached third place in the polls by spending more in nine weeks than all the other Democratic candidates combined and even more than the entire Republican National Committee did for Donald Trump in 2016, he comes with much baggage.

Even the most cynical voter has to reflect upon the affront to the flimsiest concept of democracy that permits the naked, crass purchase of the US Presidency. But that hasn’t stopped Bloomberg from hiring thousands, creating a shortfall of political operatives for the other candidates, from purchasing high-profile endorsements, from asking wealthy donors to refrain from supporting other candidates, and from generously paying thousands on social media to spread his message. His “meddling” in the US electoral process makes all other accusations of meddling, including foreign meddling, appear ludicrous.

But as my comrade Joe Jamison so perceptively points out, this is only one of many ambushes that the Democratic Party elites have prepared for the Sanders campaign. Apart from DNC dirty tricks (as seen in Iowa, also with the stacking of the Convention Rules Committee, and with changing the debate rules to accommodate Bloomberg), the DNC is attempting to narrow the field to the most promising “moderate” or “centrist” candidate to oppose Sanders.

Should Sanders get by these hurdles and the second-ballot Superdelegates, there is the donor strike and the “cutting” by Party loyalists that handed the 1972 election to Nixon and away from McGovern. Even a loss to Trump is worth keeping Sanders from the White House with his modest social democratic program.

Perhaps the most insidious tool that the corporate Democrats, their Republican counterparts, their compromised collaborators, the monopoly media, and other ossified institutions wield is the tried-and-true practice of red-baiting.

In the post-war history of the US, every step, every motion toward even a modicum of social justice, has been met with the cry of “Communism!”. Even many dedicated anti-Communists have felt the sting of red-baiting when they stepped out of line from the capitalist consensus.

So it comes as no surprise that celebratory commentator, Chris Matthews, slung mud at Sanders in a recent public meltdown, suggesting that he and other capitalist apologists would meet their demise should Red-Bernie be elected.

Top-dollar political consultant, James Carville, also recently called Bernie a Communist, as has candidate, Amy Klobuchar, on different occasions.

And a fulminating MSNBC “personality,” Chuck Todd, came up with a different wrinkle, denouncing young Sanders supporters as “brown shirts” (he may have been influenced by the hopefully short-lived, scurrilous alarm of a “red-brown alliance”).

What does a targeted red-baiting campaign, like the one directed at Bernie Sanders, mean?

✱ In the first place, it means desperation. Like its dialectical counterpart, false patriotism, it can be said that “it is the last refuge of scoundrels.” When hard pressed and owning no argument, scream “Communism!”

✱ It is a sign of ideological bankruptcy. Bernie brings class issues into the Democratic Party conversation that might come at a cost to some capitalist interests. Medicare for All, for example, when properly understood, would drive private insurance out of healthcare delivery. This is not consistent with the political program adopted by the Democratic Party since its surrender to the conservative Democratic Leadership Council in the 1980s, a program that stresses private, market solutions that keep profits and concentrated wealth largely intact. This ideological surrender to capital was ably captured by the ludicrous slogan: “a rising tide lifts all boats.” Since such thinking is largely in disrepute, the only recourse is to yell “Red!”

✱ It is a sign of compromised values. While many workers see the Sanders movement as friendly to minorities, the working class, and the poor, all too many of organized labor’s leaders fear the prospects of class confrontation, of class struggle. They see Sanders's campaign as threatening their cozy relations with corporate bosses and Democratic Party elected officials. Red-baiting is the crucial tool in driving a wedge between militant unionists and those more easily alarmed by false threats.

✱ It is a sign of fear of a Democratic Party realignment. Since the loss of the South to the Republican Party in the late 1960s and 1970s, the Democratic Party needed new alliances. Assuming that labor and minorities could be neglected because they could only cash their political capital within the Democratic Party in the existing two-party system, party elites began a long courtship of middle and upper strata urban and suburban liberals. To entice their votes and their dollars, the Democratic Party embraced fiscal conservatism and social liberalism. New Deal-style public programs were replaced with private agencies receiving public funding (so-called public-private partnerships); “efficiency” and budget austerity were the new watch words; and encouragement and tolerance of diversity in civil society replaced compensatory programs directed to raise oppressed minorities. From the 1970s on, the Democrats offered little resistance to the depressed, eroding living standards of working people, the oppressed, and the poor. Red-baiting distracts voters from these disruptive facts.

For the party bosses who supervised this shift, the prospects of a new, energized, progressive campaign behind Sanders is a nightmare. A campaign that places issues relevant to the vast majority of working people, that promises to regulate corporations, that might shift the existing extremely one-sided balance in power, and that could redistribute some income and wealth is completely out of step with the existing Democratic Party alignment. Painting Sanders’s program red is the hysterical response to that danger.

✱ It is a sign of the crisis of the two-party system. For some time, the two existing, corporate-dominated parties have been stretched to the limits, attempting to contain divergent, rebellious factions. The Republican Party faced a hard-right, uncompromising insurgency dubbed “the Tea Party” that questions the leadership’s commitment to fighting for its vision of conservative values. The rise of Trump has further challenged party unity with its distinctive anti-globalist, national self-interest agenda.

In recent years, the dominance of corporate Democrats has been challenged by a youth-driven, progressive faction seeking relief from the human devastation left in the wake of declining social services, enforced austerity, and a deep economic collapse. This rising has coalesced around the candidacy of Bernie Sanders, a self-described “democratic socialist.”

How the Democratic leaders manage this insurgency will determine the future of the Democratic Party. Can the insurgents be contained? At what cost? Or will they lead many workers and minorities somewhere else?

For the short term, red-baiting is seen as a way to cauterize this threat.

But suppressing the insurgency may well lead to an even greater militancy. Most young people have shed the knee-jerk anti-Communism of the Cold War; the fear of socialism is receding, as many are exposed to the inequalities and injustices of capitalism and search for radical alternatives.

Democratic Party leaders may well smother the Sanders campaign. They have smothered other insurgent campaigns in the past. But the movement behind this campaign is another matter. While it may dissipate out of frustration with the likely treachery of a thoroughly corporatized Democratic Party, it may, on the other hand, emerge in a new, independent, and even more radical direction.

We should do all we can to see that the latter happens.

Greg Godels
zzsblogml@gmail.com

http://zzs-blg.blogspot.com/

There's a lot to agree with here and my main bone of contention is, 'What is Bernie actually up to?' Is he a flat out sheepdog? A well-meaning SD? An inept opportunists? Going by his voting record I'd say the former, but things can change. God knows if(?) I were a crusty old fuck getting shitted around by my team (again!) I might get resentful. These numbers he's running up might inspire genuine ambition.

Something gotta happen pretty soon because if there's no one left to surrender to what's a sheepdog to do?

As for 'greater militancy' and 'radical direction', that ain't gonna happen spontaneously, nothing of worth does. We don't need another useless 'Occupy'. Time to dig up and clean ideological weapons, sharpen the bayonets of ruthless criticism. Might be a first step. Timing is everything.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Bernie the Bomber’s Bad Week

Post by solidgold » Mon Feb 24, 2020 2:32 pm

But suppressing the insurgency may well lead to an even greater militancy. Most young people have shed the knee-jerk anti-Communism of the Cold War; the fear of socialism is receding, as many are exposed to the inequalities and injustices of capitalism and search for radical alternatives.
My generation (American) and seemingly below are less reflexively anti-communist, at least theoretically. There's the hump we need to get over: the knee-jerk dismissal of communist movements in real life.

I feel like all my Bernie posts seem cynical, but I'm with you BP. What is he up to? Unlike Occupy, at least the Bernie movement focuses on organizing a "party" of some sort. I'm trying to be critical and not cynical.

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Re: Bernie the Bomber’s Bad Week

Post by blindpig » Mon Feb 24, 2020 3:42 pm

There's the hump we need to get over: the knee-jerk dismissal of communist movements in real life.
The thin gruel that passes for history in capitalist society is no match for the detailed, logical history which we know. It ain't esoteric knowledge, it's just suppressed. Confronted with actual, documented events their megaphones ring hollow. It's part of what we must do, and do it well as possible, which means solid materialist grounding.

Today we only need point to China's excellent handling of the corona pneumonia. From what I'm hearing the only complaints the State Dept approved outlets can generate is 'lifestyle infringement' and it's bad for business. The difference in priorities is stark. It is mostly governments with skewed priorities that are the main cause of the contagion spreading now.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Bernie the Bomber’s Bad Week

Post by blindpig » Tue Feb 25, 2020 4:11 pm

FEBRUARY 25, 2020 · NEWS > NORTH AMERICA > USA

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SANDERS CELEBRATES THE TRIUMPH IN NEVADA HIGH FIST.

The triumph of Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary of Nevada already places him as a favorite to win the Democratic candidacy for the presidency. In that case the polls predict his victory over Trump . Sanders addresses a "multiracial and intergenerational front" and defines himself as "socialist." But what is Sanders's "socialism"? What would change in the world if he acceded to the presidency?


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POSTER AT THE ENTRANCE OF A STORE IN THE US ANNOUNCING THAT IT ACCEPTS FOOD STAMPS.

In internal politics, your program does not seem very socialist in the original meaning of the word. The main axes of his campaign promise to end the most brutal forms of state violence against refugees and migrants, a public health system more similar to the Spanish model, the "green new deal", a cancellation of the debt bubble of university students , strengthen unions in companies and expand - not universalize - access to retirement pensions.

That is to say, Sanders' social promise is only to reduce the difference with the European model of public social services, widely recognized as much less dysfunctional than the American and in any case as much more capable and at a lower cost, of ensuring minimum cohesion basic social. If the postwar US could bypass the construction of the state social hulkthat then developed in Europe was because American capital not only won the war, but also turned the reconstruction that followed it into the basis of a successful accumulation cycle. This cycle, which required the eradication of a whole world war to be able to take place, although it showed waterways since the late 1970s, allowed for its own dynamism for quite some time that the working class as a whole did not feel pauperizationas a general threat but as the result of "individual elections." Today the absence of an efficient health system is a danger to the capitalist machinery itself and the lack of an educational system capable of training workers in the university according to the needs of an automation production is seen as a «competitive disadvantage».

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And yet, reading under the reorganization of social services is no longer socialism, but the move to a system like Spanish, which has nothing socialist, would be an exaggeration. As Paul Krugman claimed in an article under the meaningful title of " Bernie Sanders is not socialist ":

One-payer medical care [the state] is (a) a good idea in principle and (b) very unlikely to happen in practice, but by making "Medicare for All" the centerpiece of your campaign, Sanders It would take away the focus of the Trump administration's determination to remove the social security network we already have.

Krugman does not say that Sanders is not socialist to disqualify him, on the contrary, he considers such a definition in Sanders as a personal snobbery, a rest of youth that is counterproductive now. And if he criticizes him for it, it is within the framework of a personal campaign to show that the American bourgeoisie has nothing to fear from Sanders, waiting for them :

And if you are worried about your economic agenda, what is your concern, exactly? May the taxes of the rich increase to what they were under Dwight Eisenhower? That has budget deficits? Trump is already doing it, and the economic effects have been positive.

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SANDERS AND OCASIO LAST NOVEMBER CAMPAIGNING FOR THE «GREEN NEW DEAL»

So far Sanders could be interpreted as a rationalizer of the US state social and economic apparatus that wants to prevent the social fracture and the exclusion of millions from becoming free. But to understand what makes social spending, hitherto despised by the American bourgeoisie, return to occupy a central place in the discourse, we must go to the bottom line in industrial policy that proposes: the "Green New Deal", estimated at 16 Millions of dollars . The green pact to the US would, like its European correlate, a massive transfer of income from labor to state-mediated capital and aimed at promoting a new cycle of accumulation by renewing the entire productive base of the country.

It is not surprising that in order to face it, it wants to centralize and reinforce the social security and welfare system. The tear that such volume of transfers can generate is equivalent to that of a recession that will last for years.

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MEME OF THE SANDERS CAMPAIGN ON TWITTER CALLING THE "CORPORATE AMERICA" ​​TO REPATRIATE PRODUCTION.

What Sanders is no different from Trump is in his conception of international trade . For Sanders, the main objective of foreign trade policy is to renationalise productive chains and although the forms and formulas were probably less violent, the compass would be the same: the reduction of the foreign deficit.

That is why the American bourgeoisie is clear about it: even if the commercial war fell in tune, a Sanders presidency would not only mean a danger to its imperialist interests, but it is the spokesperson for a story much more useful than Trump's to constitute a block against China and Russia: the "expansion of democracy." Today an article in the New York Times was pleased to quote the candidate extensively in a long plea:

Sanders, on the other hand, believes that US foreign policy should be geared towards the expansion of democracy against what he called "a new authoritarian axis." [...]

"There is currently a struggle of enormous consequences in the United States and around the world," Sanders said in a 2018 speech. "In it we see two competing visions. On the one hand, we see a growing worldwide movement towards authoritarianism, oligarchy and kleptocracy. On the other hand, we see a movement towards strengthening democracy, egalitarianism and economic, social, racial and environmental justice ». [...] "As the richest and most powerful nation on earth, we must help lead the fight to defend and expand an international order based on rules in which the law, not force, does the right thing," he said in 2017. [...]

Building a multiracial social democracy is one of the great political challenges of our time. Few nations on earth have discovered how to create, in heterogeneous populations, the solidarity needed to sustain a solid public sphere. Putin has exploited this difficulty, fueling tribal fears in countries with demographic changes to make liberalism look like a form of social dissolution.

If enough Americans unite across racial borders to replace Trump with a Jewish socialist, it could mean that our country is discovering how to transcend the liberalism of our era. I still find it hard to believe that Sanders can do it. But if he does, Putin will not be satisfied for long.

"Sanders socialism" as a block ideology?

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US SOLDIERS ARE DEPLOYED IN KOREA IN 1949.

The enthusiastic attention that Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, a former Sanders assistant, received from the European media when she was elected as a congressman by New York, points out that European imperialisms would be willing to receive a speech like Sanders' "socialism" ... especially if it is accompanied by a recovery of the negotiation of the trade agreement abandoned by Trump ...

Thus, if Sanders won the elections and resumed the Atlantic alliance as the main imperialist axis in his policy against China, however improbable the "socialism" seems, he would have options to become a block flag again. This time from the US and European powers against Russia and China. He would then change the supposedly "socialist" flag of hands on each block, but it would be just as false as when teeth were first shown during the Korean War .

https://nuevocurso.org/que-cambiaria-co ... e-sanders/

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***********************************************************

WHY WERE THE "WELFARE STATE" AND THE LEFT SO DIFFERENT IN THE US?

MAY 25, 2019 · HISTORY > HISTORY OF CAPITALISM

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US state capitalism is surely the one that has given the least relevant role to unions in their institutional and political architecture. Unlike the fascisms - from Italy to Argentina - and the postwar models - from the Stalinist to the so-called "welfare states" in Europe - it hardly gives them a secondary role. To understand the cause, which is in turn the origin of so many differences in political discourse and the justification and distribution of social coverage, we have to go back to the 1929 crisis and the Second World Imperialist War.

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When the crisis of 29 erupts there are no massive "class" unions in the US. The fastest growing industries - automation, mining, iron and steel industry - still do not have "industry" organizations with similar capacity to their European equivalents. The American bourgeoisie, which had already begun to evolve at full speed towards state capitalismwith Hoover, he accelerates the process with Roosevelt and his «New Deal». The effort will be to frame workers in "representative" unions empowered and inflated from the government. In 1933, collective bargaining was legally enshrined and in 1935 the National Labor Relations Act (known as the Wagner Act) enshrined the Rooseveltian "harmonism" forcing companies to negotiate "in good faith" with any union supported by the majority of its workers. The new framework encourages unions to massively affiliate non-specialized workers and strikes normalize during the 30s and until the beginning of the second imperialist war. Everything seems to indicate that the United States is heading for a state capitalism in all similar terms in terms of union leadership, that of European countries.

The first major blow to union power would come in the middle of the imperialist war, in 1943, with the "Labor Conflicts Act during the War" of 1943. The law had been proposed by two Democratic congressmen but was fundamentally supported by the "National Association of Manufacturers »(NAM), who hoped to stop strikes. The law also incorporated a ban on unions to devote funds to support candidates in elections and although it was repealed within six months of the end of the war, this particular provision was incorporated into the Taft Hartley Act of 1947 that remains in force until the today. This prohibition did not affect the AFL, the old large trade union, which abstained from any political action, but CIO ("Congress of Industrial Organizations") that signed business and sector congresses.

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ELEANOR ROOSEVELT IN ONE OF THE PUBLIC WORKS PROGRAMS CREATED BY THE NEW DEAL.

The CIO was a union linked to the Democratic party and committed to the defense of the "New Deal." He supported, for example, the "National Labor Relations Board" (NLRB), the state body born of the "New Deal" and entrusted with enforcing wage agreements in each industry to avoid "unfair competition" between companies. The AFL, on the other hand, opposed, as it saw how the homogenizing tendency of working conditions, inherent in state capitalism and accelerated by this institution, led to the cancellation of ex officio agreements with validity in a single company, which were signed by its affiliated unions.
The CIO had already created in 1942 -year of legislative elections- a «PAC» (Political Action Committee) to channel union funds to Democratic candidates without giving them donations directly, a path that would serve to avoid the legal prohibition of financing campaigns to from 1943. However, the result of these elections was interpreted as a blow to the "New Deal" and with it the CIO. A coup that would be reinforced in 1945 with the abolition of the "National War Labor Board." The unions had been a mainstay of the war effort and the Board was the apex of that collaboration. Their dissolution led them to a much less important role in reconstruction. The union president, Philip Murray, after consummated, said, "There was nothing you could do with the government,

Despite the legal prohibition and union effort to avoid strikes, years 44 and 45 saw a new awakening of independent strike movements. Faced with union powerlessness to contain it, President Truman - who had succeeded Roosevelt - threatened a direct offensive against labor rights: “Subversive attacks on essential production are the most serious threats to the permanent success of the Bill of Rights of Job". The Charter, the "Wagner Act," guaranteed the right to strike and this was an obvious danger to the war, unsustainable without a submissive and well-framed proletariat.

The postwar period also did not begin easily for workers. Mass demobilization and the end of war demand increased unemployment month by month. The government boosted inflation to free itself from the burden of the tremendous amount of debt issued to finance the war effort. The daily life of workers developed between unemployment, instability, precariousness and real wages down. The discontent was not limited to the government but began to spread to a trade union apparatus debtor of a "New Deal" whose promises never seemed to be fulfilled.

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WESTINGHOUSE 1946 STRIKE

The economists of the unions had concluded that a 30% wage increase was what the workers needed to compensate for the reduction in hired hours and inflation, so they took that flag. As soon as the "Labor Conflict Law during the War" was repealed, they proposed an increase in salaries to the government in exchange for the promise not to strike for a year. But the government did not accept. The CIO then reacted to the growing rejection by the workers, putting themselves at the head of the strikes, although they broke out many times without their contest. One of these strikes was that of the "Trade Union of Automotive Industry Workers" (UAW) of 1945-1946, in which 320,000 General Motors workers went on strike demanding the 30% rise. In addition, 750. 000 steel workers went on strike for 25 days. And 400,000 workers of the "Mining Workers Union of America" ​​(UMWA) ended up closing the coal industry. As if that were not enough, 250,000 engineers and railway workers went on strike for two days, which precipitated a national crisis, and there were many other wild strikes throughout 1945 and 1946.
In 1946, Congress has a Republican majority. The American bourgeoisie considers a new war imminent, now with Russia and believes that the time has come to "discipline" the workers again. Strikes are disqualified as a product of "communism" and the "New Deal" is criticized for giving too many "privileges" to unions that create more problems than they fix for capital. In 1947, the Taft-Hartley Law was passed: the right to strike was restricted and, among other things, wild strikes, conventions and strikes that restricted the hiring of union members, strikes of one union against another and solidarity strikes were prohibited. . The same law reinforces the ideological control of public officials under the new parameters of the cold war: members of the "National Labor Relations Board" (NLRB) are obliged to pledge loyalty every year and have to make a sworn statement of no be communists

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STRIKERS IN 1946

All this offensive is directed against the workers, whose struggles have put a war-oriented capital on the defensive. But, within the state, the coup is first received by the unions. Their inability to keep the workers disciplined in the final years of war and their wage activism in recovery, had made the horizon that Roosevelt had given them, to be considered as expendable by the bourgeoisie. Seen from the American bourgeoisie, the unions did not guarantee "social peace" in time of war because they had no real control of the workers of all the productive sectors and when they tried to obtain it it was based on increasing a conflict that they were not yet to admit on the eve of a new world war.
Of course, state capitalism did not recede one iota, only the Rooseveltian shell of social harmonism was obsolete. The omnipresence of what will end up being called the Cold War, takes more and more prominence. They are years of mad development of militarism to the point that power over the political apparatus of the "military-industrial complex" comes to frighten President Eisenhower himself .

The final result will differentiate the speeches of the American political apparatus from the European one. In Europe, the central role of trade unions in the state will attribute to the "social dialogue" the "conquests" of the "welfare state" that arises during reconstruction. It is the famous "social democratic consensus." In the US, however, the absence of "strong unions" in the state apparatus during the years of reconstruction will lead the Democrats to replace the "welfare" discourse with the "defense of minorities" as a discursive articulator of the system of distribution of public income among the working class. Republicans, meanwhile, will make the rejection of unions an essential part of their positioning.

https://nuevocurso.org/por-que-el-estad ... s-en-eeuu/

Google Translator

Not too, too bad for Trots.....
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Bernie the Bomber’s Bad Week

Post by kidoftheblackhole » Tue Feb 25, 2020 9:39 pm

solidgold wrote:
Mon Feb 24, 2020 2:32 pm
But suppressing the insurgency may well lead to an even greater militancy. Most young people have shed the knee-jerk anti-Communism of the Cold War; the fear of socialism is receding, as many are exposed to the inequalities and injustices of capitalism and search for radical alternatives.
My generation (American) and seemingly below are less reflexively anti-communist, at least theoretically. There's the hump we need to get over: the knee-jerk dismissal of communist movements in real life.

I feel like all my Bernie posts seem cynical, but I'm with you BP. What is he up to? Unlike Occupy, at least the Bernie movement focuses on organizing a "party" of some sort. I'm trying to be critical and not cynical.
Materialism on full display. Not an accident that generations who fully anticipate having no social safety net congeal around the issue. The DP is still pushing the same watered down half measure "solutions" as 50 years ago -- and only on the "fringe". Rather than getting hung up on the outcome it is instructive to consider McGovern in '72. New Deal holdover who went "grass roots" (just as Bernie has small internet donors, McGovern had direct mail contributions in the 100,000s -- a strategy pioneered, ironically, by Barry Goldwater). For context, Jimmy Carter was one of the leaders of the "Anybody but McGovern" movement. Lots of similarities -- although McG was a pacifist which puts Bombs Away Bernie to shame. In a stark reminder of how class intersected with race is THE schism in American society, McG got blown out in the general -- while wining over 70% of the black+hispanic vote.

Good thing to remember -- the parties have far less control than you might imagine. By all bourgeoisie rights, Trump should've been handed the "gentleman's sweep (49-1 loss). Even the much vaunted Fox News was only behind him in a luke-warm way (FN is wildly misunderstood. Its footprint is FAR smaller than widely imagined and it exists for two purposes 1) turnout Republican votes and 2) launder shitty reactionary ruling class ideas courtesy of there echo chamber being picked up and carried by "legitimate" outlets). Like BAR has said repeatedly, you can't have social and economic crises perpetually without an eventual political crisis to go with it.

It certainly seems that part of the issue at the moment is that the Ruling Class is too completely dependent on an ever increasing level of exploitation (in the Marxist sense) to endure even the smallest of setbacks. One domino could fell them all. Everything they RC is doing speaks to the weakness of its position rather than its strength as is commonly perceived.

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