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Tag Archives: Ralph Nader

Requiem for the American Dream: Noam Chomsky and the Principles of Concentration of Wealth & Power (2015)

13 Fri May 2016

Posted by ztnh in Anti-Capitalism, Anti-Fascism, Democracy Deferred, Documentary Film, History of Economic Theory, Political Economy, Political Science

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Abby Martin, Aristotle (384-322 BCE), class mobility, Democracy Now!, Dr. Noam Chomsky, George Monbiot (b. 1963), Gloria Steinem (b. 1934), James Madison, KPFA, Malcolm X, Marxian economics, Pacifica Radio Network, Ralph Nader, reserve army of labour, RogerEbert.com, UpFront

ChomskyRequiemforAmericanDream2016LUMPENPROLETARIAT—One of the most influential and widely cited intellectuals on the Left is linguist, activist, and political analyst Dr. Noam Chomsky.  In a 2015 documentary film, Dr. Chomsky’s radical analysis has been focused on the various adverse effects of capitalist modes of production upon contemporary life, namely the increasing concentration of wealth and power and the vicious punishment inflicted upon the working classes.

The film is entitled Requiem for the American Dream: Noam Chomsky and the Principles of Concentration of Wealth & Power.  Its filmmakers invested some four years researching the voluminous archives of Chomsky writings and audio recordings in order to bring this film to fruition.

From a Marxian perspective, among others, we observe how inequality of power and income distribution is fundamentally built into capitalistic social relations.  Dr. Chomsky’s arguments do not approach concentration of wealth and power from a formal Marxian perspective, but the conclusions at which he arrives are nevertheless very similar.  And, indeed, a number of the arguments Dr. Chomsky makes have largely come down to us from Dr. Marx (and Marxian analysis) beforehand, for example, the reserve army of the unemployed.  In Requiem for the American Dream, we find a composite narrative comprised of arguments made by Chomsky over the years, which the filmmakers have woven together, for the public record, into a compelling indictment of capitalist modes of production.

Free speech radio KPFA is in the midst of its 2016 Spring Fund Drive.  And it has broadcast excerpts of this documentary, which it is offering as one of the many thank-you gifts offered to incentivise listener support for free speech radio.  For example, this broadcast:  Listen (and/or download) here. [1]

UPDATE—[Summer 2016]  Requiem for the American Dream has now been added to the films available on Netflix and other video streaming services.  (Also see new notes added below.)

Messina

***

[Transcripts of excerpts from Requiem for the American Dream by Messina for Lumpenproletariat and free speech radio KPFA]

*

[Excerpts broadcast on UpFront for Friday, 13 MAY 2016, 07:00 PDT]  [2]

DR. NOAM CHOMSKY:  (c. 0:17)  “Each time, the taxpayer is called on to bail out the crisis, increasingly the major finance institutions.  If you had a capitalist economy, you wouldn’t do that.  In a capitalist system, that would wipe out the investors, who made risky investments.  But the rich and powerful, they don’t want a capitalist system.  They want to be able to run to the nanny state, as soon as they are in trouble and get bailed out by the taxpayer.  That’s called too big to fail.”

[SNIP]

[From the film’s introduction]

DR. NOAM CHOMSKY: “During the Great Depression, which I’m old enough to remember—and most of my family were unemployed, working class—it was bad, much worse, subjectively, than today.  But there was an expectation that things were going to get better, that there was a real sense of hopefulness.  There isn’t today.

“The inequality is really unprecedented.  I mean, if you look at total inequality, it’s like the worst periods of American history.  But, if you refine it more closely, the inequality comes from the extreme wealth in a tiny sector of the population, a fraction of one percent.  There were periods, like the Gilded Age in the ’20s and and the roaring ’90s and so on, when a situation developed rather similar to this.

“Now, this period is extreme ‘cos, if you look at the wealth distribution, the inequality mostly comes from super wealth.  Literally, the top one-tenth of a percent are just super wealthy.  Not only is it extremely unjust in itself, inequality has highly negative consequences on the society as a whole because the very fact of inequality has a corrosive, very harmful, effect on democracy.

“You opened by talking about the American Dream.  Part of the American Dream is class mobility.  You’re born poor; you work hard; you get rich.  It was possible for a worker to get a decent job, buy a home, get a car, help his children go to school.  It’s all collapsed.

[PRINCIPLE #1: REDUCE DEMOCRACY]

“Imagine yourself in an outside position, looking from Mars.  What do you see?  In the United States, there are professed values, like democracy.  In a democracy, public opinion is gonna have some influence on policy.  And, then, the government carries out actions determined by the population.  That’s what democracy means.

“It’s important to understand that privileged and powerful sectors have never liked democracy, and for very good reasons.  Democracy puts power into the hands of the general population and takes it away from them.  Now, it’s kind of a principle of concentration of wealth and power.  Concentration of wealth yields concentration of power, particularly so as the cost of elections skyrockets, which kind of forces the political parties into the pockets of major corporations.

“And this political power quickly translates into legislation, that increases the concentration of wealth.  So, fiscal policy, like tax policy, deregulation, rules for corporate governance, a whole variety of measures, political measures designed to increase the concentration of wealth and power, which in turn yields more political power do the same thing.  And that’s what we’ve been seeing.

“So, we have this kind of vicious cycle in progress.  You know; actually, it was so traditional that it was described by Adam Smith in 1776.  You read the famous Wealth of Nations.  He says, in England the principle architects of policy are the people who own the society—in his day, the merchants and manufacturers.  And they make sure that their interests are very well cared for, however grievous the impact on the people of England or others.  Now, it’s not merchants and manufacturers.  It’s financial institutions and multinational corporations—the people who Adam Smith called the masters of mankind.  And they are following the vile maxim:  All for ourselves and nothing for anyone else.  They’re just gonna pursue policies, that benefit them and harm everyone else.  And, in the absence of a general, popular reaction, that’s pretty much what you’d expect.

“Right though American history, there’s been an ongoing clash between pressure for more freedom and democracy coming from below and efforts at elite control and domination coming from above.  It goes back to the founding of the country.  James Madison, the main framer, was as much a believer in democracy as anybody in the world.  But they, nevertheless, felt that the United States system should be designed and, indeed, his initiative was designed so that power should be in the hands of the wealthy because the wealthy are the more responsible set of men.  And, therefore, the structure of the formal Constitutional system placed most power in the hands of the Senate.  Remember the Senate was not elected in those days.  It was selected from the wealthy—men, [who], as Madison put it, had sympathy for the property owners and their rights.

“If you read the debates at the Constitutional Convention, Madison said:  The major concern of the society has to be to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority.  And he had arguments.  Suppose everyone had a vote freely.  He said:  Well, the majority of the poor would get together and they would organise to take away the property of the rich.  And he said:  That would, obviously, be unjust.  So, you can’t have that.  So, therefore, the Constitutional system has to be set up to prevent democracy.

“That’s just of some interest that this debate has a hoary tradition, that goes back to the first major book on political systems—Aristotle‘s Politics.  He says:  Of all of them, the best is democracy.  But, then, he points out exactly the flaw, that Madison pointed out.  If the essence were democracy for free men, the poor would get together and take away the property of the rich.  Well, same dilemma, they had opposite solutions.  Aristotle proposed what we would now call a welfare state.  He said:  Try to reduce inequality.

“So, the same problem, opposite solutions.  One is:  Reduce inequality, you won’t have this problem.  The other is:  Reduce democracy.

“If you look at the history of the United States, it’s a constant struggle between these two tendencies—that democratising tendency, that’s mostly coming from the population and pressure from below.  And you get this constant battle going on—periods of regression and periods of progress.  The 1960s, for example, were a period of significant democratisation.  Sectors of the population, that were usually passive and apathetic, they become organised, active, and started pressing their demands.  And they became more and more involved in decision-making, activism, and so on.  They just changed consciousness in a lot of ways:

“Minority rights:  ‘If democracy means freedom, then why are our people not free?  If democracy means justice, why don’t we have justice?  If democracy means equality, why don’t we have equality?’ [Malcolm X film clip]

“Women’s rights:  ‘This inhuman system of exploitation will change, but only if we force it to change and force it together. [Gloria Steinem film clip]

“Concern for the environment:  (c. 19:45) [Walter Cronkite audio clip]

“Opposition to aggression:  [SNIP] [Dr. Benjamin Spock film clip]

“Concern for other people:  [SNIP]  [Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. audio clip]

“These were all civilising effects.  Now, that caused great fear.  [SNIP]

[SNIP]  (c. 59:59)

Learn more at UPFRONT.

[This transcript will be expanded as time constraints, and/or demand or resources, allow.]

***

ROGER EBERT—[29 JAN 2016]  “Requiem for the American Dream,” a film by Peter Hutchison, Kelly Nyks and Jared P. Scott, might be subtitled “Professor Chomsky Explains It All for you.” As Errol Morris did with Robert McNamara in “The Fog of War,” the directors here point their cameras in close-up at Noam Chomsky for a feature-length disquisition that’s interspersed with snazzy graphics and illustrative archival footage. In large part because Chomsky is a very good speaker with a wealth of incisive ideas to share, the result is a film that feels less like a lecture than a provocative X-ray of current American political realities.

It couldn’t be more timely, not only because the idea that it is its heart—the impact of the concentration of wealth and power on our politics—has received so much attention of late, but more specifically because its animating concerns are central to the current year’s presidential election. For that reason, its appeal could be more ecumenical than might be assumed. How many Americans currently would agree that the American dream is in big trouble? A good percentage, recent polls suggest. That’s why Chomsky’s leftist analysis, as a starting point for discussion at the very least, could offer as much food for thought for the supporters of Donald J. Trump as it will sustenance for Bernie Sanders’ legions.

The film’s title aptly pinpoints its area of interest. Though Chomsky, a veteran MIT professor who first gained renown for his groundbreaking work in linguistics, comments frequently on global conflicts and America’s involvement therein, we hear almost nothing on those subjects here (which even the film’s admirers might consider a weakness). The upside to this decision, though, is that the discussion has a tight, logical focus that aids its clarity and organization.

In essense, Chomsky asks why America seemed to reach the zenith of its economic and civic vibrancy in the 1950s and ‘60s and then go into a decline that has left few except the top tenth of a percent of Americans truly fulfilled or satisfied. To answer the question, he constructs a narrative that entwines ideas and events, both harkening back to 1776. In that year, British moral philosopher Adam Smith published “The Wealth of Nations,” in which he argued that merchants and manufacturers dominate government in defense of their own interests regardless of how it affects the rest of society. In examining the government that resulted from the American Revolution, begun in the same year, Chomsky finds that even James Madison, whom he calls as a great a believer in democracy as anyone then, wanted U.S. society controlled by “the wealthy”—property owners might be a better term—which he thought was the most “responsible” element of the citizenry. Thus was launched a never-ending battle between those desiring more democracy from below against those seeking more elite control from above.

Learn more at ROGER EBERT.

***

Late August, 2016

Messina’s Notes on REQUIEM FOR THE AMERICAN DREAM: THE 10 PRINCIPLES OF CONCENTRATION OF WEALTH AND POWER

INTRODUCTION

Requiem for the American Dream opens with a pair of subtitles providing some context for Dr. Chomsky’s expertise in socioeconomic and sociopolitical critical analysis:

“NOAM CHOMSKY is widely regarded as the most influential intellectual of our time.  Filmed over four years, these are his final long-form documentary interviews.”

Those two statements are valid.  However, the first statement must be qualified by serious and valid complaints levelled against Dr. Chomsky in his role as celebrated public intellectual. [3]  Nevertheless, Dr. Chomsky speaks poignantly against socioeconomic injustice:

“Part of the American Dream is class mobility.  You’re born poor; you work hard; you get rich.  It was possible for a worker to get a decent job, buy a home, get a car, help his children go to school.  It’s all collapsed.”

Dr. Chomsky reminds us, very simply:

“In a democracy, public opinion is going to have some influence on policy.  And, then, the government carries out actions determined by the population.  That’s what democracy means.

“It’s important to understand that important and privileged sectors have never liked democracy, and for very good reasons.  Democracy puts power into the hands of the general population and takes it away from them. [4]  It’s kind of a principle of concentration of wealth and power.”  (c. 4:46)

[On money and wealth influencing government]

[Citing Adam Smith (1776) on ‘the masters of mankind’, back in the olden days it was the merchants, today it’s corporations and their rules for corporate governance in the absence of popular resistance.]

In Requiem for the American Dream, Dr. Chomsky opens by emphasising the widening inequality currently plaguing the United States and the contrast between the post-Great Depression sense of hopefulness among Americans for better living standards and the socioeconomic bleakness of the post-Global Financial Crisis.

“Not only is it extremely unjust in itself, inequality has highly negative consequences on the society as a whole because the very fact of inequality has a corrosive, very harmful, effect on democracy.”

Dr. Chomsky notes that he is old enough to remember the post-Great Depression years when most Americans still believed in the American way, which would provide prosperity for all, even those in blue collar jobs, as long as you were willing to work hard.  These days many are forced to work beyond their retirement years at minimal wage scales with paltry social services.  We see elderly and hobbled people working in our retail stores, unable to retire because of the high cost of living.

Today, nobody really thinks a blue collar job can provide prosperity or even sustain a single-income household, nor that they may even find a blue collar job.  Today, everyone must have an intellectual type of job to avoid poverty, or live in a multiple-income household, sacrifice parenting time, both parents must find jobs, or find some kind of hustle, flipping houses, stock trading, selling retail merchandise online, or starting some kind of small business, which hopefully can become a big business, which can capture market share from competitors and, ultimately, drive them out of business.  In capitalism, of course, big fish eat little fish.

It would have been nice to see Dr. Chomsky’s arguments, in their critique of widening inequality, include a Marxian perspective and a clear understanding and explication of capital.  Here, Dr. David Harvey or Dr. Richard Wolff, or any other scholar of Marxian political economy, could have explained that the extraction of surplus value in capitalist employer-employee relations depends always upon the exploitation of the worker.  Since capitalist social relations begin with uneven relations of power, the working classes are doomed from the start to be at the mercy of the owning, or capitalist, classes, which employ them, and which can only desire to drive wages down or to engage in a global race to the bottom in terms of finding the lowest wages on Earth in order to undercut their competition.

As a student of economics, Marxian political economy has provided your author with the clearest analysis of how capital functions in circuits and how capitalist modes of production shape our societies.  But, admittedly, Marxian political economy and heterodox economics, generally, is still not unanimously embraced by all academics and universities and colleges.  And the debate rages on about the true dynamics of capitalist modes of production, or capitalist economies, which endure largely mystified to the general public.  Unfortunately, as Dr. Michael Hudson has often lamented, many economists, and other intellectuals, may have Dr. Marx’s political economy texts on their bookshelves.  But when you open them up, you notice that they have no margin notes.  You notice few have actually read Dr. Marx, despite the tremendously influential legacy of his writings.  Dr. Chomsky’s introduction provides a compelling critique of inequality and its “corrosive, very harmful, effect on democracy”.  But, unfortunately, it doesn’t give the audience an opportunity to question the nature of capital, which drives inequality.

PRINCIPLE #1:  REDUCE DEMOCRACY (c. 7:00)

“Right through American history, [SNIP]  ”  [4]

[On the struggle in American history between the competing interests of the ruling classes versus the working classes]

[On Madison arguing to protect the opulent minority against the impoverished working classes.  So, the Constitution must prevent the poor from organising against the rich a democratic struggle.]

[On Aristotle’s Politics, which celebrates democracy as the best political form of organisation, so long as it included means for reducing inequality.]

[Periods of democratisation, animated by pressure from below, are cyclically countered by periods of antidemocratic governance.  For example, the 1960s and ’70s show popular uprisings for democracy, or socioeconomic justice is followed by COINTEL-PRO, assassinations, and police state repression, and so forth buttressed by equally repressive laws.]

PRINCIPLE #2: SHAPE IDEOLOGY  (c. 12:59)

“There has been an enormous, concentrated, coordinated business offensive beginning in the ’70s to try to beat back the egalitarian efforts, that went right through the Nixon years.”

[On the Powell Memorandum, as an expression of right-wing, or conservative, reaction to the ‘democratising wave’ represented by the Civil Rights movement and subsequent identity politics single-issue campaigns.  Also see the documentary film Heist: Who Stole the American Dream on the Powell Memo…]

[On the Trilateral Commission and the book entitled The Crisis of Democracy, which bemoaned “an excess of democracy”, as a similar expression of liberal internationalist, or center-left, reaction to the ‘democratising wave’ of the ’60s and ’70s.  Many of these liberal internationalists staffed the Carter administration: Brown, Vance, Blumenthal, Mondale, and Young.  Also see Dr. Laurence Schoup on the Council On Foreign Relations.]

[On the Carter administration and the anti-intellectual reaction against egalitarian-minded students]

[The ruling elites conclude the people are becoming too educated, so the schools must be brought under control.  Academic autonomy for schools and academic freedom for educators come under increasing attack.  As the ’70s give way to the ’80s, flower power gives way to investment power.  The American national culture largely shifts from a more egalitarian worldview to a more individualistic, or depoliticised and/or apathetic, consumerist worldview.]

PRINCIPLE #3: REDESIGN THE ECONOMY  (c. 16:35)

“Since the 1970s, there’s been a concerted effort on the part of the masters of mankind, the owners of society, to shift the economy in two crucial respects.”

[If one studies the history of economic thought, or, more pointedly, the history of economic theory, from the earliest ancient texts through today, we find that there has been a perpetual ideological struggle over how societies should design their economies, whether it respects the contributions of the working classes through prosperous wages, or whether it seeks to exploit and devalue them.  Admittedly, we humans often didn’t understand capital, money, credit, international trade, the democratising potential of labour relations, and so on.  But, wherever economic theory and policy has helped reduce income inequality, the ruling classes have responded furiously through think tanks, which work to increase the influence of money in political processes by which they can then increase the power of the wealthy over the working classes.  For example, as Ilan Ziv’s Capital, A Six-Part Series, demonstrates Keynesian policy, which helped capitalist economies get out of the Great Depression, were soon rolled back by the neoclassical economics and their top-down policies favoring the owning classes over the working classes.]

[Chomsky discusses the financialisation of the American economy, as manufacturing declines as major source of employment for Americans.  See Hyman Minsky, et al, on financialisation.  See Boom Bust Boom!]

[Bureau of Economic Analysis graph:  Value of Sector % to GDP, 1950:  Manufacturing 28%, Finance 11%]

[On the decline of the manufacturing sector in the USA and the rise of the financial sector.  Banks, which once were intermediaries serving a useful function in society, lending for productive activity, increasingly become speculative institutions, who dominate society through financial trickery, complex financial instruments, and such.  (Enter David Harvey on fictitious capital.)]

[On financial deregulation.]

[Bureau of Economic Analysis graph:  Value of Sector % to GDP, 2010:  Manufacturing 11%, Finance 21%]

[By the 1970s, corporations, such as General Electric, “could make more profit playing games with money, than you could by producing in the United States.”]

(c. 20:14)  “You have to remember that General Electric is substantially a financial institution today.  It makes half its profits just by moving money around in complicated ways.  And it’s very unclear that they’re doing anything that’s of value to the economy.  So, that’s one phenomena, what’s called financialisation of the economy.”

[On offshoring of production, or the global race to the bottom of the labour barrel, which pits workers to compete against one another to lower wages.  “Meanwhile, highly paid professionals are protected.”]

“And, of course, the capital is free to move.  Workers aren’t free to move, labor can’t move, but capital can.”

Enter immigration debates, which are devoid of any foundation or basis in economic reality.  Yet, the classics, reminds Dr. Chomsky, such as Adam Smith have long argued that “free circulation of labour is the foundation of any free trade system; but workers are pretty much stuck.”

[Images of a document dated February 26, 1997 with the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System seal, entitled Monetary Policy Report to the Congress, Pursuant to the Full Employment and Balanced Growth Act of 1978, and signed by Alan Greenspan, the Chairman of the Board.]

“Policy is designed to increase insecurity.”

[Alan Greenspan argued in official testimony that “greater worker insecurity” had helped keep wages down in the late 1990s.]

[The two forces of financialisation and off-shoring have helped fuel the concentration of wealth and power, argues Dr. Chomsky.]

[(c. 23:22)  On Chomsky’s history of anti-war activism and association with the New Left]

[On the totalitarian notion of ‘anti-Americanism’, a subtle survey of Dr. Chomsky’s anarchist tendencies, or anarcho-syndicalist perspectives.]

PRINCIPLE #4: SHIFT THE BURDEN  (c. 27:03)

[On the egalitarian nature of the economic growth of the 1950s and 1960s in the United States, when the manufacturing sector was at its peak.]

[On the plutonomy.]

[On the precariat, or the precarious proletariat, the working people, or working classes.  Notably, either, Dr. Chomsky or the filmmakers avoid the language of class analysis, preferring for the more nebulous terms of plutonomy and precariat or middle class.]

[(c. 30:23)  On the shifting tax burdens in American society.  Tax Foundation statistics graph on Tax Rates.  The marginal tax rate for the highest earners has steadily declined since the 1960s.]

[On regressive tax policies, such as shifting taxes to wages and consumption and away from dividends and capital gains.  For example, General Electric pays zero taxes.]i 

(c. 31:34) “So, in fact, General Electric, are paying zero taxes and they have enormous profits.  Let’s them take the profit somewhere else, or defer it, but not pay taxes.  And this is common.

“The major American corporations shifted the burden of sustaining the society onto the rest of the population.”

PRINCIPLE #5: ATTACK SOLIDARITY  (c. 32:14)

“Solidarity is quite dangerous.  From the point of view of the masters, you’re only supposed to care about yourself, not about other people.”

[On the distortion of Adam Smith and classical notions of capitalism, missing Adam Smith’s foundation of sympathy and empathy for others, as articulated in his Theory of Moral Sentiments.]

[On public schools being based on the principle of solidarity.  Privatisation of public education represents a clear attack on the principle of solidarity.  Free and affordable education was a central element of the American economic growth of the 1950s and 1960s.]

[On the burdens of student loan debt, which also diminish civic engagement and the capacity for political consciousness.]

PRINCIPLE #6: RUN THE REGULATORS  (c. 37:12)

***

[1]  Terrestrial radio transmission, 94.1 FM (KPFA, Berkeley, CA) with online simulcast and digital archiving:  UpFront, hosted by Brian Edwards-Tiekert, Friday, 13 MAY 2016, 07:00 PDT.

Also see these broadcasts, which feature Requiem for the American Dream:

  • Against the Grain; 13 DEC 2016.

[2]  For example, consider the archives at Media Roots:

  • “Ralph Nader & Abby Martin on US Rigged Corporate Elections” by Media Roots, 21 DEC 2015.
  • “MR Original – The Two-Party Dictatorship Post-OWS” by Felipe Messina, Media Roots, 17 OCT 2011.
  • “Ralph Nader Audience Q & A at Berkeley’s Hillside Club” video by Media Roots with transcript by Messina, 17 OCT 2011.
  • “Media Roots Interview with Ralph Nader” by Abby Martin, 6 OCT 2011.

[3]  One complaint many of us on the Left have long held against Dr. Chomsky is his tepid critique of the Democratic Party and the anti-democratic nature of the two-party system, or two-party dictatorship.  Few people on the Left would deny that the Democratic Party, since at least the 1990s, has worked against the interests of progressives and the working classes, for example, with Bill Clinton’s ‘Reinventing Government’ initiatives, which Law & Economics expert Dr. William K. Black has long demonstrated provided drastic deregulation of financial institutions, which laid the foundation for the Global Financial Crisis of 2007/2008.  Yet, few people on the Left have been willing to openly critique or challenge electorally the Democratic Party, particularly during presidential elections.  They myth of the so-called spoiler vote has only been challenged courageously, on a national level, by a few public figures, of which Ralph Nader is an early pioneer. [2]  Your author has followed Noam Chomsky’s speeches, articles, and publications somewhat closely.  But Dr. Chomsky’s public statements in broadcast media have rarely, if ever, mounted an open challenge to the anti-democratic nature of the Democratic Party’s collusion with the Republican Party to obstruct alternative political parties from their full political expression on a national stage, particularly regarding the presidential debates.  In this regard, Dr. Chomsky has failed to live up to his reputation as an intellectual champion of the people, of the working classes.

Another valid complaint many on the Left have also long held against Dr. Chomsky is his wilful refusal to display any meaningful curiosity about the origins, causes, and perpetrators of the crimes of 9/11.  Your author must admit to having held a similar aversion to the 9/11 Truth Movement, initially perceiving it as a hobby of comfortable suburbanite liberals, which was of secondary order importance to the issues plaguing front-line communities, such as police state terrorism, gentrification, the school-to-prison pipeline, racial residential segregation, and so forth.  But during your author’s time working with Media Roots (circa 2011-2013), the importance of critically analysing the crimes of 9/11 became increasingly obvious.  In a recent Seattle town hall, entitled “Why Do Bill Moyers and Robert Parry Accept Miracles?“, Dr. David Ray Griffin, a leading scholar on the crimes of 9/11, called out public intellectuals and media figures, such as Dr. Noam Chomsky and the Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi.  Dr. David Ray Griffin argued:

(c. 5:48)  “A few people, from the beginning, started saying that the official account of the attacks, according to which they were carried out by foreign Muslims in other countries was false and that 9/11 was an inside job carried out by people and agencies in our own government.  An emerging movement to make this case came to be called the 9/11 Truth Movement.  This movement argued from the beginning that 9/11 was a false flag attack designed to allow the Bush-Cheney administration and its Pentagon to attack Afghanistan and then Iraq.

“But most of the traditional anti-war journalists, such as Noam Chomsky, George Monbiot, Norman Solomon, and Matt Taibbi, along with the writers at CounterPunch, In These Times, The Nation, Mother Jones, The Progressive, and Democracy Now! did not endorse the 9/11 Truth Movement.  Most of them, in fact, attacked it.

“In the first years, to be sure, we did not have a very impressive membership.  The movement had few professionals in the relevant disciplines, such as physics, architecture, and engineering.  But, in 2005, physics professor Steven Jones started explaining why the World Trade Center buildings could not have come down without explosives.  Due to some books and coverage by C-SPAN, professional organisations began to form, including Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth.  By now we have a dozen professional organisations, including Firefighters for 9/11 Truth, Intelligence Officers for 9/11 Truth, Journalists for 9/11 Truth, Medical Professionals for 9/11 Truth, Military Officers for 9/11 Truth, Political Leaders for 9/11 Truth, Religious Leaders for 9/11 Truth, Scientists for 9/11 Truth, and Veterans for 9/11 Truth.”

“The 9/11 Truth Movement is now very impressive in, both, size and professional membership.  Nevertheless, the traditional anti-war leadership has continued to distance itself from the 9/11 Movement.  There have been a few notable exceptions, including Richard Falk and former CIA analyst Bill Christison and Ray McGovern.

“Most of the anti-war leaders have maintained the stance, that they took in the first years after 9/11, in spite of all the changes in the 9/11 Truth Movement in the intervening years.

“For example, when I was interviewed on Democracy Now! in 2004, the main argument against my position was that I could not name one structural engineering expert, who said it is not feasible that the planes caused the towers to come down.  The movement’s lack of architects and engineers at that stage constituted a persuasive argument.  But, now, there are 1,500 members of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, who say it is not feasible that the planes caused the towers to go down.  So, one would suppose that Democracy Now! would have reassessed its position.  But it has not.

“Progressive journalists, in general, have not availed themselves of the evidence provided by the 9/11 Truth Movement to argue against the legitimacy of the so-called War On Terror.  If any major journalist could have been expected to do so, it would have been Bill Moyers.  (c. 9:55)  [SNIP]

[SNIP]

Dr. David Ray Griffin went on to make his case for the intellectual dishonesty perpetrated by the so-called ‘Left Gatekeepers’, whose stamp of approval or disapproval of a particular cause or issue can, either, elevate or suppress that issue.  Although Dr. Griffin focuses on Bill Moyers and Robert Parry as his two case studies, Dr. Noam Chomsky is one such ‘Left Gatekeeper’, who can be celebrated for taking courageous stances on U.S. imperialism and domestic socioeconomic justice, but must also be very seriously criticised for his avoidance of key issues, such as the two-party dictatorship and 9/11.  Granted, had Dr. Chomsky held nothing back (assuming he is willfully censoring himself), his fate may have gone the way of Gary Webb or Martin Luther King, Jr. or Malcolm X or Fred Hampton or any public figure who dares to take a fearless and principled stand against tyrannies of the state.  But, political assassinations aside, intellectual honesty or dishonesty is a choice one makes, which ultimately defines one’s public legacy.

[4]  This is what one finds when one undertakes a critical study of the history of economic theory, a more or less bifurcated academic discipline with contending theories and contending interests.  In modern academia, we’ll find mostly neoclassical economics departments throughout the nation, with a few alternative, or heterodox, economics departments.  The heterodox economics departments usually provide superior economics training because of their pluralistic approach, which allows them to study the dominant neoclassical perspectives alongside heterodox, or Post-Keynesian, Institutional, or Marxian perspectives.

***

[13 MAY 2016]

[Last modified  12:11 PDT  13 DEC 2016]

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The Green Party’s Dr. Jill Stein on Democracy & Ranked Choice Voting

21 Mon Mar 2016

Posted by ztnh in Democracy Deferred, Democratic Party (USA), Political Science, Presidential Election 2016

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2016 Democratic National Convention, Bernie Sanders, Dr. Jill Stein, Green Party, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Huffington Post, Inside Sources, KPFA, Pacifica Radio Network, Ralph Nader, ranked-choice voting, Rising Up with Sonali, Sonali Kolhatkar, transcript, Two-Party Dictatorship

321px-Jill_Stein_by_Gage_SkidmoreLUMPENPROLETARIAT—For years now, some of us have argued that we need a serious overhaul of our anti-democratic electoral system.  The two dominant political parties in the USA, the Democratic and Republican parties, serve the highest bidders to their campaigns.  Yet, when political alternatives present political positions, which prioritise the needs of working class families over those of the rich and powerful, such as Ralph Nader or Jill Stein, Democrats call them spoilers.  This is to argue that no political alternatives to the left of Democrats deserve an opportunity to be heard or elected by the people.

Yet, we know that political extremes on the right, such as Mussolini-invoking Donald Trump, are not only allowed, but given the most airtime in our nation’s broadcast media.  Given this imbalance in our nation’s political spectrum, the political center can only shift rightward over time, such that Democrat president Obama is widely understood to be to the right of Republican president Ronald Reagan.  But we can do better as a nation.  We only need a little imagination to think beyond the status quo.

This morning on free speech radio, 2016 Green Party Presidential Candidate Dr. Jill Stein discussed the anti-democratic nature of the Democrat and Republican parties’ collusion to block political alternatives from competing against them, their fear-based politics, voting for the lesser of two evils, and long overdue democratic ideas, such as ranked choice voting and proportional representation.  Listen (or download) here. [1]

Messina

***

[Working draft transcript of actual radio broadcast by Messina for Lumpenproletariat and Rising Up with Sonali]

RISING UP WITH SONALI—[21 MAR 2016]  (c. 35:34)  “Welcome back to Rising Up with Sonali.  I’m your host, Sonali Kolhatkar.  If you’re just tuning in, you’re listening to, and watching, the debut episode of my new show, Rising Up with Sonali.

“Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has been an outsider for most of his senate career.  The outsider is attempting to use insider status by joining the Democratic Party to secure the nomination.  But, as he and his supporters are finding out, it’s not easy to do so, even if you happen to be the most popular candidate in the nation.

“The system is simply rigged by the two major parties.

“My guest knows what it’s like to be an outsider in politics.  For the second time, the Massachusetts-based Dr. Jill Stein is running for the presidential nomination for the Green Party.  In 2012, she was that party’s nominee.  She has also run as Green Party candidate for governor of Massachusetts in 2002 and 2010.

“She’s a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Medical School and has practiced internal medicine before turning to politics.  I’m very pleased to welcome, to Rising Up, Dr. Jill Stein.”

DR. JILL STEIN:  “Thank you so much, Sonali.  It’s really an honour to be a part of this maiden voyage here with—”

SONALI KOLHATKAR:  “Thank you.  (c. 36:41)

DR. JILL STEIN:  “—your show. [SNIP] ”

(c. 42:40)

SONALI KOLHATKAR:  “It shouldn’t surprise us that [Bernie Sanders] hasn’t responded this campaign, though—because I can imagine he doesn’t wanna tip his hat at all until the [Democratic] Convention, or it will give people the opening they’re looking for to undermine his chances at the nomination.

“And I wonder what you make of all the Hillary Clinton supporters, who are already demanding from Sanders that they should pledge their votes to Clinton, if he doesn’t get the nomination.  Interesting that the flip side is not commonly heard.

“People are, of course, bringing up the Ralph Nader presidential run in 2000 as a reason.  And I’m sure you’ve gotten so tired of hearing that excuse as a reason to simply fall back into the two-party system.  But we’re seeing echoes of that again.  I’m seeing, like, pictures of Nader supporters cropping up in Facebook feeds, almost as these tools of guilt, that Clinton supporters are using against Sanders supporters.”  (c. 43:36)

DR. JILL STEIN:  “Yeah.  Yeah, I know.  It’s pretty funny in a tragic kind of way.

“I think there is little doubt.  Bernie Sanders has spent his life trying to build reform inside the Democratic Party.  The Green Party had approached him when he was floating the idea of a presidential run and there was a debate about:  Would he be doing it independently or inside the party?  And the party approached him, I know, at that point.  And he declined to respond.  And the party encouraged him to run independently with the party.  And there was no response.

“But, you know, it was not only our campaign.  There are other independents, who have also attempted to make contact with Bernie Sanders over the years.  And it’s not been Bernie’s thing.  You know?

“He’s dedicated to trying to build change inside the Democratic Party.

“From my point of view, that is very difficult.  Not that our task, of change from outside the Democratic Party—that’s very difficult as well.  But we’re not forced to do that in the course of a year and, then, turn our resources and our momentum back into the Democratic Party, that has just squashed us.

“I mean that’s the whole rationale for having independent politics, so that you can continue to build.

“And, clearly, in our campaign, making the second time around, we are far ahead of where we were the first time because we are building this movement, which has a social dimension.  And it also has an independent political dimension because, in the words of Frederick Douglass, power concedes nothing without a demand; it never has and it never will.  That [inaudible] needs to be independent.” (c. 45:17)

SONALI KOLHATKAR:  “Jill, how did you do in the 2012 election?  Because, even though the Green Party still doesn’t have the kind of name recognition that it would like to have, I understand that, historically speaking, compared to previous runs, you, actually, did pretty well as a Green Party candidate.”

DR. JILL STEIN:  “We, basically, tripled our vote over the prior one, and possibly two election cycles.  You know, we had done very well, relatively well [chuckles], during the Nader run.

“But there was the enormous backlash around Bush, Bush’s election.  But I want to point out that we’re in a different historic moment.  And you have to, you know, you have to, like, invoke amnesia in order to forget what happened under Barack Obama and two Democratic Houses of Congress, which I think is a very important part of this discussion.  (c. 46:15)

“You know, I’d be glad to have a much longer discussion about each of the arguments, that are used to try to intimidate us into voting our fears, rather than our values.

“To make a long story short, the politics of fear have delivered everything we were afraid of.  All those reasons we were told to vote for the lesser evil, because you didn’t want the massive bailouts of Wall Street, and the off-shoring of our jobs, the meltdown of our climate, the attack on our civil liberties, and on immigrants, all that.  We got it by the droves because we allowed ourselves to be silenced.  Silence is not a political strategy.

“Democracy does not need more fear and silence.  It needs values and voices.  It needs a moral compass.

“We have to inject that moral compass into the, you know, crisis, that we’re in.  It’s not gonna get solved by silencing ourselves and allowing lesser evils to speak for it. And, in fact, history shows that lesser evil paves the way to the greater evil.

“And that happened after Obama’s election, when, first, one House and, then, the other House of Congress flipped from blue to red.  It happened in state after state.  (c. 47:20)

“Lesser evilism is getting us further away from the solution, not closer.

“We could solve this in a heartbeat by passing ranked choice voting.

“There is an electoral solution, that can be passed without a constitutional amendment—it doesn’t have to go through Congress; it can be passed at the state level—that insures that, basically, that liberates your vote and insures that, if your first choice doesn’t win, your vote is automatically reassigned to your second choice.

“So, the issues here could be solved, except that the Democratic Party is committed to using fear because that is its only tool right now.

“You know, we have to—”

SONALI KOLHATKAR:  “And, Jill, I’m so glad you brought up these issues because whenever we—whenever voters argue with one another about, you know—they may share all your progressive values, but the strategy is where they differ.  They tend to blame one another and the Green Party, rather than the system, that the Democratic Party and, of course, the Republican Party are invested in.

“And I also wanna bring up the fact that the mainstream media is invested in it as well.  It’s not just the Democratic Party, that is rigged against an outsider candidacy.  The mainstream media have been so fixated on Donald Trump because they claim that he drives ratings.  So, all he has to do is act belligerent.  They’ll air his speeches.  And everyone watches.

“I mean one could argue it’s a natural outcome of our warped system of media.  That’s a whole ‘nother conversation.  But what it does for, of course, our electoral system is that the worst rises to the top.  And somebody like yourself or a Bernie Sanders, had he not turned to the Democratic Party, are simply shut out of the mainstream media.

“And, even Sanders, through the Democratic Party is getting short shrift from the media.”  (c. 48:59)

DR. JILL STEIN:  “Exactly.  And, in the same way, you know, we recognise that fascism is, essentially, the merger of corporatism and government—that’s, you know, essentially, the definition of fascism—I think there’s another dimension of fascism here, which is the merger of media and corporatism.  It drives toward exactly what you described.  That is, an electoral process, that is fundamentally driven by ratings and advertising sales.  And this is a very dangerous development, extremely dangerous to our democracy.

“And I think we’re seeing in this election, where Donald Trump has the highest disapproval ratings of any candidate and has yet to really attain a majority in any vote.

“If ranked choice voting were actually used and there’d been, you know—some groups have taken a close look at head-to-head ratings and have, basically, extrapolated a ranked choice vote in the Republican elections, in the primaries, and found that Trump would have lost most of his victories, had a fairer system of voting been in place.  (c. 50:06)

“So, I just want to underscore that Donald Trump is, really, the reflection of an extremely toxic corporatised media.  It really doesn’t reflect the American public.

“There’s one other point, I think is really important here.  We, the progressive voices, are accustomed to the propaganda, that tells us we are the fringe.  You know?  We’re the lunatic fringe.  Why bother standing up?  We’re just a footnote in this political process.

“The reality is that we, actually, reflect the basic values and visions of the American public.  And we see that in polls, that, for example, show that 50% of voters have, actually, rejected the Democratic and Republican parties.  They are now minority parties.  Also, in polling about issues where the desire to cut the military; to provide the right to a job, even if it’s a government job; health care as a human right; etcetera.  This is where the public is truly at.

“And there’s one very compelling force in this race.  And that is that there are 43 million young people—and, now, not-so-young people—who are locked into predatory student loan debt, for whom there is no escape, and for whom our campaign is the one ticket to liberation.  43 million is a winning plurality in a three-way presidential race.”  (c. 51:31)

SONALI KOLHATKAR:  “So, let’s talk about that.  I’m so glad you brought that up.  How does someone like you break into this system?  The Green Party is left out of the debates.  After the conventions, whoever the nominees are, you’re not gonna be let into the debates. [2]  You’re not gonna get the kind of media exposure, that you need.

“How do you reach the 43 million people?  And, even when you do reach them, how would their votes propel you into a position of power?”

DR. JILL STEIN:  “Well, put it this way.  There couldn’t be a more perfect demographic for self-organising than young people, who are, basically, slammed by the Democratic and Republican parties.  This is the perfect demographic for self-organising on social media.

“And we have won public interest victories before, like stopping the privatisation of the internet.  When the millennial generation understands that its risks, or that its lives, are seriously threatened, on one hand, and that there is a real solution, that is achievable, on the other, that is really the perfect scenario for a completely out of left field major development in this campaign, which has been, in this election, which has been so full of surprises to start with.

“You know, this would be, sort of, the ultimate in an independent and truly revolutionary campaign, were the millennial generation to fully engage and throw off the chains of the Democratic and Republican parties and really open the gates to generational justice here.  And general generational justice is, not only, ending student debt, which we are the only campaign to advocate for.  By the way, we did this for the bankers to the tune of $16 trillion dollars, now.  Bankers and Wall Street, according to the General Accounting Office, have received $16 trillion in zero-interest loans and near-zero and the various forms of bail-out.

“These are the crooks, the crooks who crashed the economy.  Isn’t it time to bail out their victims, the young people, who are, basically, held hostage now by their debt in an economy, in which it can’t be repaid.

“So, of course, we should bail out the students.  They have the numbers to do it.  And they have the means of self-organising.  They’ve done it before around the internet, around the FECC ruling, as well as legislation, that was very close to passing a few years ago.  It was stopped.

“We stopped the first bombing campaign in Syria through a similar social media-organised campaign, when toxic corporate media wouldn’t cover it with a ten-foot pole.  We were able to stop that first bombing campaign in Syria back in 2013.

“We’ve been able to stop the Trans-Pacific Partnership and to delay it into an election season when it doesn’t stand a chance of passing.

“So, we have had major successes, that are not acknowledged by the prevailing mythology.  You—”

SONALI KOLHATKAR:  “And we don’t acknowledge it, ourselves, sadly.”

DR. JILL STEIN:  “Yes, exactly.  In the words of Alice Walker, the biggest way people give up power is by not knowing we have it to start with.

“We have just begun to prioritise this issue, as our campaign trail, you know, schedule.  We are going to the campuses.  We are setting up campus-based chapters.  And the young people, themselves, are beginning to get the word out.  Our social media is really exploding, just in the last couple of weeks.  And—”

SONALI KOLHATKAR:  “So, give out all of that information: your website, your social media handles, how you, you know—there are hash tags you would like people to use, as they talk about your candidacy.”  (c. 55:13)

DR. JILL STEIN:  “Great.  So, our website is Jill2016.com.  The Facebook page is Dr Jill Stein.  And that’s D-R, no period, Jill Stein.  And the Twitter handle is @DrJillStein.  And—”

SONALI KOLHATKAR:  “And we’ll post all of those on our website as well, RisingUpwithSonali.com.  So, I wish you the best of luck, Jill Stein.  And I’m sure we’ll have you back on a few times between now and November.  Thanks for joining us.”

DR. JILL STEIN:  “Thanks, Sonali.  Great talking with you.”

SONALI KOLHATKAR:  “My guest is Dr. Jill Stein.  She is the Green Party presidential candidate.  In 2012, she was that party’s nominee.  She’s also run as the Green Party’s nominee for governor of Massachusetts in 2002 and 2010.  She’s a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Medical School and has practiced internal medicine before turning to politics. [SNIP] ” (c. 59:51)

Learn more at RISING UP WITH SONALI.

[This transcript will be expanded as time constraints, and/or demand or resources, allow.]

***

THE HUFFINGTON POST—[14 MAR 2016]  “The course of recent events has made it apparent we need to go outside of the Democratic Party to effect real change,” Dr. Jill Stein said in a phone interview last week.

American politics is a two party system. The country is roughly split down geographic lines that mirror an ideological divide: urban liberal elites versus rural conservative populists.

Democrats versus Republicans.

The deadlocked split between the two main forces in American politics hasn’t allowed for a viable third party movement. The Republican Party has successfully absorbed right wing movements and the Democrats have absorbed left wing movements.

“The idea that the Democrats are going to save us is ridiculous,” said Stein. She points to trade deals as evidence of this.

“Who is pushing the Trans Pacific Partnership? President Obama and the Democrats.” Stein said that the legislation would have lasting detrimental consequences for the US and the world.

“The TPP is putting investors on same level of nation states,” Stein explained. “Anyone who supports it should be taken to court and accused of treason. The TPP is dismantling of the framework of democracy. And the fact is, the Democrats are leading the charge.”

Learn more at HUFFINGTON POST.

***

INSIDE SOURCES—[4 DEC 2015]  With the explosion in the last decade of 24/7 political coverage over airwaves and the Internet, the country’s once-every-four-years presidential sweepstakes might seem more open and transparent than ever.

But if there remains one secretive, smoke-filled backroom in the process of picking an American president, says Peter Ackerman, it’s the Commission on Presidential Debates — a powerful, privately-funded nonprofit that does much of its work behind closed doors.

Ackerman, a millionaire financier who heads up a third-party advocacy group known as Level the Playing Field, says the CPD cultivates its low profile because its primary purpose isn’t just staging debates every four years — it’s protecting the status quo for Republicans and Democrats by keeping alternative candidates off the stage and out of the national spotlight.

“The current [CPD] rule makes it impossible for independent and third party candidates to gain the name recognition necessary to become leading candidates,” Ackerman and Level the Playing Field supporters wrote this week in a critical letter to CPD co-chairmen Frank J. Fahrenkopf and Michael D. McCurry.

In the Dec. 5 letter, Ackerman’s advocacy group — its roster of supporters is a bipartisan Who’s Who of American politics, including one-time Democratic Party vice presidential nominee Joe Lieberman, former Republican Gov. Jon Huntsman, former CIA Director Michael V. Hayden and former Clinton administration Cabinet member Bruce Babbitt, among others — criticizes the CPD for using its status as a nonprofit 501(c)3 to “reject public requests for disclosure of your deliberations and avoid Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.”

The commission — which did not respond to requests from InsideSources for comment on this story — shares far too little information about how its panel of leaders make their decisions, says another Level the Playing Field backer, former State Department official and longtime Washington news executive James K. Glassman.

“Their lack of transparency is a betrayal of American democratic values,” Glassman, a former Atlantic Monthly and New Republic publisher, told InsideSources. “They are very, very powerful and yet they are a self-perpetuating body that keeps its deliberations and the results of its deliberations secret.”

Level the Playing Field and other third-party advocates, including the Green Party and the Libertarian National Committee, filed a lawsuit earlier this year against the Federal Election Commission, which is charged with overseeing the rules for the nonprofit CPD.

Learn more at INSIDE SOURCES.

***

Also see related Lumpenproletariat articles, relevant to the USA’s 2015-2016 presidential campaigns, such as:

  • “Activist and Indigenous Leader Nelson García Assassinated“, 16 MAR 2016
  • “Dr. Michel Chossudovsky: State Terrorism, Franco American Style“, 16 MAR 2016
  • “Presidential Election 2016: Voting Democrat to Vote Socialist“, 16 MAR 2016
  • “Economic Journalist Doug Henwood Assesses the USA’s Right“, 7 MAR 2016
  • “Activist Berta Cáceres Assassinated“, 3 MAR 2016
  • “Hillary Clinton, US/NATO, & the Lynching of Gaddafi“, 3 MAR 2016
  • “Historical Archives: Third Party Challenge to Unconstitutional Prop 14“, 2 MAR 2016
  • “Black Agenda Report: On the USA’s Black Electorate, Circa 2016“, 1 MAR 2016
  • “My Turn: Hillary Clinton Targets the Presidency (2015) by Doug Henwood“, 29 FEB 2016
  • “Heterodox Economist Dr. Richard Wolff Hosted by KPFA’s Sabrina Jacobs“, 10 FEB 2016
  • “Hillary Clinton & USA Imperialism Versus Honduran Democracy“, 17 JAN 2016
  • “Project Censored: Ann Garrison, Edward Herman, Rwandad Genocide &, Burundi“, 1 JAN 2016
  • “Hillary Clinton for USA Presidency: Pros and Cons“, 13 APR 2015

***

[1]  Terrestrial radio transmission, 94.1 FM (KPFA, Berkeley, CA) with online simulcast and digital archiving:  Rising Up with Sonali, hosted by Sonali Kolhatkar, for Monday, 21 MAR 2016, 08:00 PDT.

The Dr. Jill Stein segment begins circa 35:38, i.e., around minute 35 of the hour-long broadcast.

During this particular broadcast, host Sonali Kolhatkar announced that the 13-year run of her show Uprising has come to an end on Friday, 18 MAR 2016, and that she has now launched a new show entitled Rising Up.  Admittedly, Rising Up sounds identical to Uprising.  The only difference, perhaps, as Kolhatkar noted, Rising Up will also be televised.  Apparently, free speech radio KPFA hasn’t yet updated their online audio archives to reflect the programme’s name change.

[2]  Stalwart presidential candidate Ralph Nader has long emphasised the corruption of the Commission on Presidential Debates, a now for-profit private, privatised, corporation, which used to be neutrally conducted by the League of Women Voters.  Not since 1992, when Ross Perot ran as an independent presidential candidate, has an independent or alternative candidate been allowed to debate in the presidential debates.  Both, Ralph Nader and Jill Stein have even been arrested by police for simply trying to attend the presidential debates from which they were banned from participating.

The one complaint I will lodge against the Green Party is its own obeisance to the Democratic Party.  Ralph Nader started building momentum with the Green Party as a presidential candidate, perhaps moreso than Dr. Jill Stein has done, but a certain faction within the Green Party won a particular internal debate, which led the Green Party bosses to insist that Ralph Nader agree to, either, pull out of the presidential race or pledge his votes to the Democratic candidate.  This was something Ralph Nader, nor his supporters were willing to concede.  So, Nader, then, had to move further left than the Green Party for a political party to support him.  Ultimately, Ralph Nader had to run as an independent.

(I believe David Cobb was the one who acted as a scab, as it were, filling in for Nader by agreeing to pull out at the last minute to avoid being a spoiler for the Democratic Party.  I will provide more details on this episode of USA electoral history, as time constraints allow.  In the meantime, please look it up.)

Ever since then, I couldn’t be bothered to trust the Green Party, as they have often acted as an appendage to the Democratic Party.  Yes, and here we have Bernie, running for the Democratic Party nomination.

It’s interesting that the Green Party’s Dr. Jill Stein criticises Bernie Sanders for agreeing to support Hillary Clinton and not running as an independent, should he fail to win the Democratic Party presidential nomination.  The Green Party has been guilty, and as far as we know, is still guilty, of not being in it to win it, until the end.

***

[Image entitled “Jill Stein” by Gage Skidmore used via Wikipedia/Creative Commons.  Jill Stein was photographed at a Green Party Presidential Town Hall in Mesa, Arizona circa March 2016.]

[21 MAR 2016]

[Last modified  23:29 PDT  21 MAR 2016]

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Historical Archives: Police State Brutality: The Story of Kenneth Harding

20 Mon Apr 2015

Posted by ztnh in Democracy Deferred, Free Speech, Historical Archives

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Abby Martin, Alexa O'Brien (US Day of Rage), Bonnie Faulkner, Breaking the Set, Democrat Party, Dennis Bernstein, Felipe Messina (Media Roots), KPFA, Michael Hudson, Nora Barrows Friedman, Occupy Wall Street, Pacifica Radio, Ralph Nader, RT, UMKC

LUMPENPROLETARIAT—This article was originally published at MediaRoots.org on 27 JAN 2012.  We have tried to archive it here at Lumpenproletariat.org.  Unfortunately, it seems to have been deleted.  Unless MediaRoots have dramatically changed their politics since 2013, when we last spoke with Abby Martin[*], we doubt they have deleted the article.  Unfortunately, we’ve lost contact with MediaRoots since Abby went to work for RT.

We will work to re-establish contact with Abby to recover as many of Messina’s articles for safe archival and preservation at Lumpenproletariat.org.  (Otherwise, we will have to reconstruct—after final exams—a historical report of the brutal killing of Kenneth Harding by SFPD police.  Warning:  Video of Kenneth Harding’s murder, at the very bottom of article, by SFPD in San Francisco’s Bay View Hunter’s Point district is very graphic.)

-Lumpenproletariat

***

MEDIA ROOTS—You’ve likely heard of Scott Olsen, the Iraq War veteran shot in the head by a police tear gas canister at point blank range during the nationwide crackdown on the Occupy Movement. The tragic event transformed him into an international symbol of police brutality, and it continues to be an important story signifying state repression. Yet, you …

***

“Press Conference: SFPD killing of Kenneth Harding“

***

“Muni Shutdown Kenneth Harding Jr. Vigil – Alana Turner 7/16/12“

***

[*] I haven’t spoken with Abby since I left for university (or scarcely any human beings, given the academic isolation of the proverbial academic reading room).

***

***

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