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2016 United States Presidential Debate #3, Censored Under the Auspices of the Commission On Presidential Debates

19 Wed Oct 2016

Posted by ztnh in Democracy Deferred, Free Speech, Political Science, Presidential Election 2016

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Amy Goodman, austerity economics, battleground states, Chris Hedges Mdiv (b. 1956), Chris Wallace (b. 1947) (Democrat), Democracy Now!, Donald Trump, Dr. Eddie Glaude, Dr. Eric Foner (b. 1943), Dr. Jill Stein, Dr. Michael Froman (b. 1962), economic austerity, Green Party, Hillary Rodham Clinton, KPFA, Kristen Clarke, Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law (Est. 1963), leaked Podesta emails, Natasha Stoynoff, neoliberalism, Nermeen Shaikh, Pacifica Radio Network, Phyllis Bennis (b. 1951), police state, ranked-choice voting, Steve Schmidt (b. 1970), strategic voting, Supreme Court of the United States (Est. 1789), the surveillance state, transcript, Two-Party Dictatorship

Vote_12345LUMPENPROLETARIAT—The partisan, antidemocratic Commission On Presidential Debates has held the third and final 2016 presidential debate this evening.  And, as promised, popular alternative parties have been banned from participating.  The 2016 U.S. Presidential Elections have been hijacked and censored under the auspices of the partisan, antidemocratic, and dastardly Commission On Presidential Debates.  What does this mean for our democracy when two corporate-backed political parties, in concert with the dishonest corporate media, are able to saturate the media with unpopular candidates, cartelise the political process, and effectively shut out any and all competition?  And what does it say about the state of our political imagination when our leading intellectuals fail to challenge this travesty of democracy, this two-party dictatorship?

Free speech radio KPFA, per Democracy Now!, has promised to expand the debates. [1]  But, overall, coverage of the 2016 Presidential Election has been narrowly focused upon the two corporate parties, the Democratic and Republican parties and their rhetoric, both, in for-profit and non-profit media.  Even in free speech, non-commercial broadcasting, it seems we can’t break out of the narrow two-party framing of election news coverage.  There have been token gestures made to alternative political parties, so-called third-parties.  But, overall, the KPFA, Pacifica Radio Network, and Democracy Now! coverage, the nation’s leading progressive election coverage, has been hindered by an NPR-like editorial slant, which marginalises alternative rigged 2016political parties, legitimates a two-party system, and fails to comprehensively question the antidemocratic institutionalised banning of political alternatives and political diversity in the United States.  At free speech radio KPFA there is one faction, currently calling itself SaveKPFA, which is committed to this ideology.  They’ve captured most of the prime time-slots as well as KPFA‘s News Department.  So, consequently, the overall election coverage at KPFA, which radiates throughout the national Pacifica Radio Network, leans in favour of the Democratic Party, at the expense of countering the corporate media’s narrow two-party framing, and at the expense of raising the political consciousness and of broadening the political imagination of its audience.  And this, of course, is in contradiction to most of free speech radio KPFA’s own progressive narratives and political ideals, which are typically championed on the airwaves before and after election cycles, but which are lesseroftwoevilsfortunecookiebyflickrusergoatchildshunned and occulted during election cycles.  During election cycles, all issues are subordinated to the uber-issue of the bogeyman candidate, which everyone must fear, whether it’s Bush or McCain or Romney or Trump.  This cyclical fomenting, by the liberal and progressive media, of fear-based decision-making, which bolsters the ideological trope of voting for the least worst or the lesser of two evils, by which liberals and progressives then challenge themselves to push that evil Democratic president and Congress to do right, has only functioned to perpetually shift the political centre to the right.  Such liberals invoke President Roosevelt, who goaded his constituency:  Make me do it.  But they never do (perhaps, since 1963).  The typical liberal or progressive response to a failure to see meaningful progressive political change is that there has not been enough protest.  But such observers never seem to recall that when the Occupy Movement rose up to make Obama do it, and even became a global movement, the Obama administration crushed the Occupy Movement in the United States in a nationwide coordinated crackdown in concert obamaoccupyflickrusergoatchildwith many of the nation’s mayors.  Then, in 2012, Democracy Now! fixated on ostensible bogeyman Republican Mitt Romney, helping to steer attention away from the neoliberalism of the Obama administration, and helping to get him re-elected.  This created a sociological form of Stockholm syndrome, by which the same liberals and progressives, who suffered repression during Obama’s raids on Occupy Movement encampments, somehow turned around and voted for him again.  In 2016, it’s clear, for example, that Democracy Now! is ideologically aligned with Hillary Clinton‘s Democratic Party campaign, as they focus all of our attention on a dualistic narrative between Clinton and Trump, which casts Clinton as the sensible option, no matter how bad the evidence of her political record, and despite the common ideological thread of neoliberalism, which runs through Democratic and Republican administrations, whilst marginalising the Green Party, who promises a social justice alternative.

ChomskyRequiemforAmericanDream2016News and media outlets should just admit their political preferences, the way the press used to admit their partisanship openly, before media outlets began feigning political neutrality.  Or, perhaps, as progressive elder statesman Dr. Noam Chomsky has noted:  “The indoctrination is so deep, that educated people think they are being objective”.  Corporate journalism claims journalistic objectivity.  Yet, in reality, we know that most American media outlets are Democratic-leaning or Republican-leaning.  This is obvious when we look closer at Democracy Now!, the left‘s most popular daily newscast.  It’s obvious from their media coverage, news framing, lines of questioning, and commentary that their editorial board is dominated by Democrats with a political agenda to contain and manage political messaging to the left of the Democratic Party.  They should just admit it, so the people can have some semblance of political transparency.  The individuals, who control and operate media outlets, either, vote or they don’t.  They, either, care about politics or not.  It’s inevitable that such concern or indifference will influence editorial decision-making.  In any event, each political position one holds, personally or publicly, whether pa640px-howard_zinnssively or zealously, carries with it real political implications, which directly or indirectly influence the political environments of each political agent.  We recall historian Dr. Howard Zinn:  You Can’t Be Neutral On a Moving Train.  As for Democracy Now! and Pacifica Radio, the effect upon the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election, as with past elections, is to steer progressives away from alternative political parties and keep them corralled within the neoliberal Democratic Party, perpetually constraining political diversity and political imagination within a narrow two-party box.  Thinking outside the box, literally, becomes outlawed.

Messina

***

2016 United States Presidential Debate #3, which was censored by the antidemocratic Commission On Presidential Debates, using arbitrary rules to only allow Democratic and Republican candidates, took place on 19 OCT 2016 at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas.

***

[Working draft transcript of actual radio broadcast by Messina for Lumpenproletariat and Pacifica Radio.] [1]

PACIFICA RADIO—[19 OCT 2016]  [KPFA board operator:  “[…] and online at kpfa.org.  It is five o’ clock.  Flashpoints will be back tomorrow.  Now, we take you live to a Democracy Now! special of our third and final presidential debate.”]

AMY GOODMAN:  “[From Pacifica,] this is Democracy Now! [theme music]

HILLARY CLINTON: You know, it is—it’s just awfully good that someone with the temperament of Donald Trump is not in charge of the law in our country.

DONALD TRUMP: Yeah, because you’d be in jail.

MARTHA RADDATZ: Secretary Clinton—

AUDIENCE:  [cheers, applauds, and whoops]

rigged 2016AMY GOODMAN:  “Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton face off in Las Vegas tonight in the final debate before the presidential election.  We’ll air the entire debate live at 9pm (eastern) and host a roundtable discussion before and after the showdown, looking at the state of the race, from the mounting sexual assault claims against Donald Trump to the WikiLeaks disclosures about Hillary Clinton to Trump’s claim that the election has already been rigged.” [2]  (c. 1:04)

DONALD TRUMP: They even want to try to rig the election at the polling booths.  And, believe me, there’s a lot going on.  Do you ever hear these people?  They say, ‘There’s nothing going on.’  People that have died ten years ago are still voting.  Illegal immigrants are voting.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: I’d invite Mr. Trump to stop whinin’ and go try to make his case to get votes.

Amy Goodman 17 APR 2016 Berkeley, CAAMY GOODMAN:  “All that and more, coming up.  Welcome to Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, and our special, “War, Peace, and the Presidency.” [theme music fades out]  I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.”

NERMEEN SHAIKH:  “Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are preparing to face off tonight in Las Vegas in their final debate before next month’s presidential election.  We’ll be broadcasting the debate live in an hour.

“The final debate comes as Trump’s campaign is reeling from a series of accusations of sexual assault from nine different women.  Trump has denied these allegations.  On Tuesday, People magazine published an article quoting six different people who all corroborated People magazine journalist Natasha Stoynoff’s account of being sexually assaulted by Donald Trump in 2005 at his Mar-a-Lago resort.  Stoynoff says Trump pushed her against the wall and kissed her against her will.

“Clinton, meanwhile, is facing questions about newly released and leaked emails, which reveal everything from Clinton’s State Department prioritising friends of Bill Clinton, while assigning aid contracts after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, to Clinton bashing environmentalists and anti-fracking advocates during a meeting with the building trades union in 2014, where she said the activists should, quote, ‘get a life’.

AMY GOODMAN:  “We’ll talk about all this and more in this Democracy Now! three-and-a-half-hour special.  We’re broadcasting live for the next two-and-a-half hours—actually, three-and-a-half hours.

“In this first hour, we’re joined by seven guests.  Eric Foner, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, professor at Columbia University—his most recent book:  Gateway to Freedom: The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad.

“Eddie Glaude is chair of the Department of African American Studies at Princeton University.  His new book is Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul.

“Phyllis Bennis will be joining us from Washington, D.C., a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies.  She has written a number of books, including, most recently, Understanding ISIS and the New Global War on Terror.

“Chris Hedges will be joining us from the University of California-Berkeley, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist.  His most recent book, Wages of Rebellion: The Moral Imperative of Revolt.

“And Kristen Clarke will be with us, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.

“Megan Ming—Megan Ming Francis is joining us here in New York, assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Washington.  Her most recent book is Civil Rights and the Making of the Modern American State.

“Later in the broadcast, after we air the showdown at 9:00 (eastern) between Trump and Clinton, we’ll also be speaking with May Boeve, who is executive director of 350 Action.  We’ll be talking about whether or not the candidates or the moderator, Chris Wallace of Fox News, will raise the issue of climate change.

“So, we welcome you all to Democracy Now!  And we’re going to start with Megan Ming Francis.  Megan, what are you looking for the candidates to talk about?  And what do you think of the state of this race?” (c. 4:47)

MEGAN MING FRANCIS:  “Oh, man.  So, what I’m looking for them to talk about today is, I want them—this is their time to make a closing argument, right?  This is their closing statement.  And I think so much about campaigns is about: How strong do you close?  I think one of the biggest issues, that has been brought up in each of the debates are questions around the economy.  Right?  So, I expect them to discuss the economy.  There’s questions and issues I would like them to [delve] into much more around the economy, issues around predatory capitalism and getting back to, kind of, the Bernie Sanders arguments around the economy being rigged, not in terms of, kind of, the Trump arguments around the economy being rigged, but very much getting back to some of these Sanders arguments about the economy being rigged.

“I also am really curious, at least in this debate, about how they both take questions around the Supreme Court, about who they think and what is their criteria for deciding who should be on the highest court, and also for their vision of actually appointing federal judges.

“In terms of this last question, the state of this race—oh, my goodness.  It’s like I—you know, I teach elections; and I’ve taught it for now a decade.  And this is the craziest.  This is just the craziest election and campaign.  And it has changed the way, that I teach in my class, in terms of how you might get voters to the polls and capture voters and also the median voters as well.  So, I’m looking forward to the debate.  I think it’s a little crazy.  This debate—I mean, this whole election cycle has been something for the history books.”  (c. 6:27)

NERMEEN SHAIKH:  “Well, one of the reasons, just to bring in Professor Eric Foner, that this election season has been so extraordinary, as many people have pointed out, has to do with the rise of a candidate like Donald Trump.  So, as an American historian, Professor Foner, could you explain what you think accounts for this extraordinary rise?” [3]

DR. ERIC FONER:  “Well, you know, looking at history, I think Trump is almost a combination of a number of figures, both, in our history and abroad.  There’s no individual predecessor to Trump, really, but there are precedents.  And he didn’t just come out of the blue.  You might say he’s a combination of George Wallace, who really was the first to show how white resentment against the gains of the Civil Rights Movement, overt racism, could be really mobilised in a modern campaign and be pretty successful, not only in the South; but he did very well in primaries in Michigan and other states like that.  But Wallace was not really talking about the economic, issues that Trump is.  (c. 7:32)

“You might throw into the hopper Ross Perot in 1992, who is the model of the sort of businessman, who had no political experience, and came in with that as his selling point.  You know?  Nobody can bribe me.  I’m a billionaire.  And, you know:  I can fix things.  I know how to get things done.  But Perot was also the guy, who introduced trade into the political dialogue.  Perot was the first one to say:  We are losing jobs because of these trade agreements.  Trump, of course, has picked that up.

“But on the more personal element and the, really, you know, wilder element of Trump, you have to go to a guy like Berlusconi, maybe, in Italy, who also had this kind of sexual element—”

DR. MEGAN MING FRANCIS:  “Mm.”

DR. ERIC FONER:  “—to his appeal, with his going to sex clubs and parties with young prostitutes and, you know, kind of reveled in this.  And I think many of his supporters thought that was pretty cool, as—the male supporters, let us say—as many of Trump’s male supporters don’t seem to be pretty bothered by all the revelations, that have come out.

“So, there are precedents, but you put them all together, and, as was said, it’s a kind of oddball election, no question about it.”  (c. 8:39)

AMY GOODMAN:  “But, of course, sex clubs are different from women saying that he sexually assaulted them.” [4]

DR. ERIC FONER:  “No, that is true.  But underage prostitutes get pretty close to that; you know.  But it’s more the sexual component.  George Wallace, Ross Perot were pretty—pretty dull types, you know?  Nobody ever accused them of any of this stuff.  So, but, you know, it’s almost the maverick quality, that appeals to at least some of these voters.”

NERMEEN SHAIKH:  “And, Chris Hedges, you recently, just to continue with Professor Foner’s line, you wrote a piece recently, titled ‘Donald Trump: The Dress Rehearsal for Fascism.’  Could you lay out the argument there?” [5]

CHRIS HEDGES, Mdiv:  “Well, that’s what we’re watching.  Trump, for all his shallowness and narcissism and imbecility and self-destructiveness, nevertheless, has been able to run a fairly close race with Hillary Clinton.  We just saw from the leaked Podesta emails that the Clinton machine promoted, consciously promoted, especially through the press, what they call these ‘Pied Piper’ candidates, listing Trump, Cruz and—I forget the third—Trump and Carson.  And the idea was that they wanted to give them legitimacy.  They wanted to push the more mainstream candidates, like Jeb Bush, closer to the lunatic fringe.  And that’s because, fundamentally, there is no difference between Hillary Clinton and a figure like Mitt Romney.  You know, what they’re battling about is what Freud called the narcissism of minor difference. [6]

“And the danger with this election is that the longer the policies of neoliberalism, austerity, the security and surveillance state—in essence, the paralysis on the part of our corporate state to deal with the suffering, grievances, and mounting rage of now over half the country who live in poverty—the more these lunatic fringe candidates, like Trump, these figures of ridicule—reminds me very much of what happened in Yugoslavia—the economic meltdown of Yugoslavia vomited up figures like Radovan Karadžić, Slobodan Milošević, Franjo Tuđman, who were buffoonish figures before they achieved political power, much like much of the Nazi Party in Weimar.  And I think that’s what we’re watching. [7]

“And, if we don’t reverse the structural mechanisms by which we are disenfranchising and refusing to deal with the most fundamental rights and issues affecting, now, a majority of the American population, then we will get a fascist or a kind of quasi-protofascist, Christianised fascism, embodied in a figure with a little more intelligence and political savvy than Trump.  And that’s why I find this election so frightening and so dangerous.

“I think it’s the fact that the power elites, embodied by figures like the Clintons and Barack Obama, have been utterly, utterly tone deaf to what’s happening, and are playing a very, very dangerous game by, on the one hand, promoting a figure like Trump, because, of course, his outrageousness gives her a kind of credibility, without understanding that another four years of what’s been happening [i.e., a continuation of the Obama administration’s neoliberalism]—and it won’t be an effective political strategy anymore, and it won’t be funny.” [8] (c. 12:13)

NERMEEN SHAIKH:  “Professor Eddie Glaude, let’s get your perspective on this.  Earlier in the summer, you wrote a piece called ‘My Democratic Problem with Voting for Hillary Clinton.’ [9]  Now, some say that Clinton’s victory is now more or less a foregone conclusion.  You also talked about the necessity of strategic voting.  Can you talk about both the arguments, that you’ve made in light of where we stand today in the campaign and with the election less than a month away?”

DR. EDDIE GLAUDE:  “Sure.  You know, I think that it is—it is reasonable to conclude that Hillary Clinton is going to win. [10]  I think the internal polling for the Republican—on the Republican side suggests that Donald Trump is going to go down pretty badly, that it’s going to be a pretty decisive victory.  Some, like [Republican operative] Steve Schmidt, are predicting that she’s going to win upward to 400—get to 400 in the Electoral College, some at 380.  People are declaring that this is going to be the destruction of the Republican Party.

“And a lot of this has to do with—right?—the fact that Donald Trump moves between being, as I’ve said before, a lunatic and an adolescent.  And we can talk about him; but in kind of orienting us to this campaign, to this election cycle, by emphasising the ridiculousness of, and the bombasity of Donald Trump, we have turned our attention away from, I think, Hillary Clinton and the policies, that have defined the Democratic Party up to this point.  And I think Donald Trump is just an exaggerated indication of the rot that’s at the heart of the country, and that Hillary Clinton is the poster child for, I think, a failed economic policy, that has left so many fellow Americans behind, and particularly the most vulnerable. (c. 14:00)

“So, what I’ve said is that we needed to suggest to Hillary Clinton that—and suggest to the Democratic Party that—business as usual was no longer acceptable and that I couldn’t vote for her; and I couldn’t do that.  I can do that because I’m in a blue state, and that there are some who are in a red state, who can vote their conscience; but if you’re in a battleground state, it makes all the sense in the world, given who Trump is, to not vote for her—to vote for—to not to vote for Hillary Clinton—I mean, to not vote for Trump and to vote for Hillary Clinton.

“So, in this case, part of what I’m trying to suggest is that we need to be very mindful in this moment, even as we say she’s going to win.  We need to understand who she’s appointing as her transition team.  We need to understand that personnel is policy.  We need to see what her position will really be in terms of how she will govern economically, who she’s going to pick and choose for attorney general position.  Who’s gonna populate her government?  And I think once we get a better sense, or if we pay attention to what she’s doing, we will be even better mobilised and organised to bring pressure to bear on her presidency, once November 8th happens.” [11] (c. 15:08)

AMY GOODMAN:  “So, what do you think about this, Chris Hedges, this idea of strategic voting?”

CHRIS HEDGES, Mdiv:  “I think it’s an utter failure.  I mean, one of the things that the WikiLeaks Podesta emails show is that they were putting in place this neoliberal policy—Froman, who was then a—he’s now a U.S. trade representative—he, at the time, was at Citibank.  In October, before Obama even achieved power, he’s sending out a list of Cabinet positions, all of which—most all of which came to pass.  That’s certainly happening now.

“I think that we have to step outside this corporate two-party duopoly and begin to empower right now the third party, you know, that I think represents or challenges corporate power most effectively, is the Green.  It has issues; you know.  It functions well in cities like Richmond, California, doesn’t function as well in other places.  But, if they can poll 15 percent, that gives them ballot access in 2020 in a few dozen states, and it gives them $10 million.  I think that now is the time to, as Syriza did a decade ago, to fight back because we have very little time left.

“One of the things we have to remember is that we have a large number of supporters of Donald Trump who celebrate American violence through the gun culture, open racism, neo-confederist movements, nativist movements.  And Trump, I think, has made clear now, on the campaign trail, that he will essentially attempt to discredit the system if he loses.  And right now they are working within the system.  But unleashing that rage, you know, or essentially legitimising that rage and that kind of violence after the election will begin to really rend the fabric of American society. (c. 17:08)

“We have no more time to play around.  We haven’t even spoken about the issue of climate change.  We know, from the leaked emails, that Hillary Clinton is a fan of fracking.  She brags about promoting fracking in Poland and other places as secretary of state.  We just—the kind of weakness of the system itself cannot, I think, sustain much more of this assault without dramatic and frightening blowback and ramifications.  And I think Trump is systematic of that.

“So, as I’ve said many times, I think we have to do what many—Podemos and many parties in Europe—have done.  We have to walk into the political wilderness.  We have to build movements.  And we have to build alternative third parties that challenge this system because the inevitable result is a kind of frightening police state.  Legally, it’s already in place; physically, in marginal communities, they’ve been turned virtually into mini police states.  The system of mass incarceration will not be affected in any meaningful way.  Of course, it was the Clintons that put much of it in place.  We just saw this very courageous prisoner strike, where the prisoners did work stoppages because, they said, the only way to stop this system of neoslavery is to stop being a slave.  And I think that is a level of political consciousness, that the rest of us have to begin to attain.” (c. 18:40)

AMY GOODMAN:  “So, Professor Glaude, your response to Chris Hedges’ rejection of strategic voting?”

EDDIE GLAUDE:  “Well, I think we agree on principle.  And part of what I think—where we agree is that we have to keep Trump out of office. [12]  And the question for me is that: How do we do that?  And one of the ways I’m thinking we need to do it is to vote strategically.  And that is, in those places where we can—for me, blank out or—vote for Jill Stein, we should.  And in those places where—the battleground states, where it matters, where Trump has a chance to win, I think we need to turn out in massive numbers and make sure that he doesn’t win those states.  I think we have to do two things simultaneously.

“And I think he’s right in this regard:  I think that what we’ve seen and what we’ve witnessed in this moment is the bankruptcy of a particular economic ideological philosophy, that has left so many—so many people behind.  And I think we need to dare to imagine a new world.  But I think it’s going to require strategic and tactical thinking.  And I think, on its face, Chris and I aren’t disagreeing.  I just think there are ways to get to the same—to the same end.  There are different ways to get to the same end.” (c. 19:59)

AMY GOODMAN:  “We want to bring in—we want to bring in someone that people might not be expecting would weigh in.  And that is the legendary musician Bruce Springsteen, Bruce Springsteen who was interviewed on Channel 4 in Britain, who describes Donald Trump as a “flagrant, toxic narcissist.” [* Is Bruce S. the only one to weigh in?  Is he the most important?  If so, why?  Is it because he bashes Trump and feeds into the narrative, which implies Hillary Clinton is the sensible candidate?]

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN:  I mean, I know some Trump voters, you know.  But I think that he’s really—he’s really preyed upon that part of the country because he gives these very glib and superficial answers to very, very entrenched and very difficult problems; but they’re answers, that sound pretty good if you’ve struggled for the past 20 or 30 years. So—

MATT FREI: You can understand his appeal?

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: Yeah, yeah, I can understand that there’s somebody with simple answers to very complicated questions, who sound like they’re listening to you for the first time.

MATT FREI: Do you think the people who like him are racists?

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: No, no, I don’t believe that—you can’t generalise like that.  You know, I think—I think there’s all kinds of people that are interested in him for a variety of different reasons.

MATT FREI: Do you think that rage will go away after this election?

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: No, no.  I don’t know how it’s going to manifest itself, but it will manifest itself somehow, you know?

MATT FREI: Do you think there might be some trouble?  I mean, you know, we’ve already seen some strife on the streets and—

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: Well, the trouble at the moment is, is you have Donald Trump who is talking about rigged elections.  And he’s not—he has a feeling he’s going to lose now, which he—of course, he is going to lose.

MATT FREI: You’re confident?

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: Oh, yeah.  Oh, yeah.  He’s going to lose.  And he knows that.  He knows he’s going to lose.  And he’s such a flagrant, toxic narcissist that he wants to take down the entire democratic system with him if he goes.  If he could reflect on these things, maybe he’d have—but he’s such an unreflective person.  And he doesn’t—he simply has no sense of decency and no sense of responsibility about him.  And the words, that he’s been using over the past several weeks really are an attack on the entire democratic process.

MATT FREI: And is that dangerous?

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: Yeah, it is.  I think it’s very dangerous.  He does have a lot of people’s ears.  And I don’t think he’s going to go quietly into the—you know, gently into the good night.  I think he’s going to make a big a mess as he can.  And I don’t know what that’s going to mean, but we’ll find out shortly.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: That was Bruce Springsteen speaking to Britain’s Channel 4. So, Professor Eddie Glaude, you know, this election—tonight’s debates come as both Clinton and Trump are among the most unpopular candidates, I mean, in decades, in American history. And younger voters are reportedly especially dismayed by the state of the race. A recent survey, which was reported in the BBC, found that many younger voters would rather see a giant meteor destroy the Earth than vote for either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. So, Professor Eddie Glaude, can you talk about that, first what Springsteen said about Trump’s appeal and then where young voters stand today in this race?

[snip]

PHYLLIS BENNIS:  ” [pending] ”

JillSteinItsInOurHandsFlickrDemocracyChroniclesAMY GOODMAN:  “Candidates.  We are joined right now by Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein. [13]

“Dr. Stein, welcome back to Democracy Now!.  Can you respond to the debate, that you just watched for an hour-and-a-half?—the last presidential debate, that you were excluded from—all three of them—this one took place at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas.” (c. 3:21:26)

DR. JILL STEIN:  “You know.  What a—what a distressing, um, you know, hour-and-a-half to sit through:  Donald Trump‘s psychosis and Hillary Clinton‘s distortion of her record and what the future would look like.

“And the picture, they paint of unbridled militarism, which is already robbing us blind, taking up almost half of our discretionary budget, almost half of your income taxes, only making the world a more dangerous place.  That’s terrifying enough.

capitalist-venn-diagram-by-flickr-user-goatchild“Add, to that, what they want to do with the economy.  Trump is all about more trickle-up, actually, not trickle-down.  He wants more tax breaks.

“But, you know, Hillary is also not being clear with us about where we’re going and what her track record is.

“Hillary laid the groundwork for the financial crash of 2008—not Hillary alone, of course, but she was certainly supporting the policies of Bill Clinton, that not only sent our jobs overseas, but which also laid the groundwork for Wall Street deregulation and, in fact, enacted Wall Street deregulation, not to mention the anti-immigrant legislation, the anti-African American legislation, that opened the [door] to this racist War On Drugs and the endless expansion of mass incarceration procedures, particularly of people of colour.  It’s a very dystopic future.  (c. 3:22:57)

“And, you know, I think it’s really important for us, as Americans, to look at what we’re facing.  This is a race to the bottom.  We have to exit this incredible spiral downward.  The sooner we exit this the better.

“Those who would say that you have to vote for the lesser evil, now.  You know, it’s really important to look at the track record for that because the lesser evil simply paves the way to the greater evil because people just stop coming out to vote for lesser-evil politicians and a lesser-evil party, that’s throwing you under the bus. [14]  The base doesn’t come out.  So, the Congress flips from being blue to being red, as the Democratic Party has thoroughly established itself as a lesser-evil party.

if-not-now-when-bob-groves-coaching“So, when is it gonna get better?  You know?  If we don’t stand up to fight now, when exactly are we gonna stand up and fight?

“And what is really important to remember is that there are, actually, enough people right now 43 million young people right now locked in [student loan] debt, that if that word, alone, got out, we have the numbers.  That is a plurality.  That is a winning plurality, let alone 27 million Latinos, who have had it, who understand that the Republicans are the party of hate and fear and the Democrats are the party of deportatio, detention, and night raids, and imprisonment of children and families in these horrific private prisons. (c. 3:24:21)

“So, you know, we have a very bleak reality.  And, for people—you know, everybody knows Donald Trump is terrifying and dangerous.  But to think that we are secure with Hillary Clinton in the White House, where Hillary Clinton is telling us right now that she wants to start a war with Russia over Syria, creating a no-fly zone, which means, folks, get ready.  It’s going to be hard not to slide into World War III, here, with Hillary at the helm, starting off her four years or whatever her term is, starting off with declaring war on Russia by enacting a no-fly zone.

“We need a weapons embargo to the Middle East.  We need to put a freeze on the bank accounts of our supposed allies, who are continuing to fund terrorist enterprises.  We got this mess going.  We can shut it down.  We need a new offensive in the Middle East.  It’s called a peace offensive.

“We’re not gonna hear that from either of the corporate sponsored political parties, who are rolling in dough from the weapons industry, from the fossil fuel giants, from the war profiteers, from the big banks.

“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.  In the words of Alice Walker, the biggest way people give up power is by not knowing we have it to start with.” (c. 3:25:45)

AMY GOODMAN:  “Um, let me ask you the question, that was put to Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton around whether you will accept the results of the November election, Dr. Jill Stein.” [15]

DR. JILL STEIN:  “Well, put it this way.  If there’s evidence of fraud, we would certainly challenge that in court.  And, in the Green Party, we have sort of led the charge in pursuing election fraud.  So, we wouldn’t be—we wouldn’t hesitate to do that to the extent, that it is possible.

no-in-free-speechflickrgoatchild“However, let me just tell you.  There’s no question about there being a rigged election here.  Not in the terms, that Donald Trump is saying.  But, you know, the media, actually, has been enormously rigged on his behalf—four billion dollars of free prime-time media.  Hillary had over two billion.  Bernie Sanders had under half a billion.  And, of course, I’ve had practically zero.  So, you know, between that and the rigged debates, which the League of Women Voters, themselves, called a fraud being perpetrated on the American voter, the silencing of opposition voices through the fear campaigns and the smear campaigns.

“We don’t create a better democracy out of our wounded democracy by silencing opposition voices.  We could move to a ranked-choice voting system in the blink of an eye.  That could be done right now on an emergency basis, so that we actually liberate voters to vote their values.  They can rank their choices.  If your first choice loses, your vote is automatically reassigned to your second choice.  But the Democrats won’t pass it.

“My campaign had filed this bill in the Democratic legislature in Massachusetts 16 years ago.  They won’t let it out of committee—” [Amy Goodman cuts in swiftly to interrupt Dr. Jill Stein]

AMY GOODMAN:  “Let me ask you—”

DR. JILL STEIN:  “—because they rely on fear, because they’re—”

AMY GOODMAN:  “Let me ask you something very quickly before the end of the show, Jill [since we didn’t bother to have you on until the last eight minutes of this three-and-a-half hour broadcast].”

DR. JILL STEIN:  “Sure.”

AMY GOODMAN:  “And that is:  Five percent of the vote, nationally, that is a very important threshold.  Can you talk about what would happen, what the Green Party needs to reach and how much money they would get in matching funds from the government?” (c. 3:27:53)

DR. JILL STEIN:  “Thank you, Amy.  Five percent would be an absolute game-changer. [16]  And the polls suggest we are something under that, but not by far.  And, in fact, the polls do not tap unlikely voters, which is our base, that is millennials, that is people of colour and Latinos, really disenfranchised voters.  That’s who will be coming out to vote for us.

“So, we may be, actually, very close to that five percent threshold.  We could even be beyond it.  So, it’s really important that people—” [Amy Goodman cuts in swiftly to interrupt Dr. Jill Stein]

AMY GOODMAN:  “But if you get it what happens?” (c. 3:28:23)

DR. JILL STEIN:  “If we get that five percent, we not only have ballot access, then, in most states, so that when we begin the election campaign, not only in the next presidential [election], but on all the down-ballot races as well.  We have to first fight for ballot status, which has taken us like the first year of the campaign.  It means we can hit the ground running.  It also means that we are, then—we receive ten million dollars as a legitimate major party.  With ten million dollars—” [Amy Goodman cuts in swiftly to interrupt Dr. Jill Stein]

AMY GOODMAN:  “Well, we have to leave it there.  We have to leave it there.  I wanna thank you for joining us, Dr. Jill Stein, as well as all of our guests.  That does it for our special.  I’m Amy Goodman with Nermeen Shaikh.

“This is Democracy Now!, DemocracyNow.org, War, Peace, and the Presidency.  Thank you so much for joining us.”  (c. 3:29:06)

[KPFA CART, i.e. announcement for a ‘new age’ show airing on Sundays]  (c. 3:29:40)

Learn more at PACIFICA RADIO.

[This transcript will be expanded as time constraints, and/or demand or resources, allow.  In the meantime, you can see Democracy Now!’s transcript working draft, except don’t count on them to transcribe Dr. Jill Stein’s epic final salvo.  As of Monday, 24 OCT 2016, 07:59 PDT, Democracy Now!’s transcript hasn’t been updated, or expanded, since the initial transcription on 19 OCT 2016.  Just as Democracy Now! stealthily marginalised Dr. Jill Stein and the Green Party, they didn’t bother to transcribe the most important and meaningful political platform campaigning of the final debate.  And, of course, they only gave Dr. Jill Stein less than ten minutes to attempt to undo the damage of being totally shut out of the debates and even out of the consciousness of Democracy Now!’s editorial agenda.]

[As of Wednesday 26 OCT 2016, 12:48 PDT, Democracy Now! has completed the transcript.  It is freely accessible for the time being.]

***

[1]  Terrestrial radio transmission, 94.1 FM (KPFA, Berkeley, CA) with online simulcast and digital archiving:  Special Programming: Presidential Debate – October 19, 2016, this three-and-a-half hour broadcast co-hosted by Democracy Now! co-hosts Amy Goodman and Nermeen Shaikh, Wednesday, 19 OCT 2016, 17:00 PDT.

[This ‘Expanding the Debate’ Democracy Now! special covering the final presidential debate (of three) is also available from Democracy Now! as an archive for the time being.]

Also see the following related articles:

  • 2016 United States Vice Presidential Election Debate; 4 OCT 2016.
  • 2016 U.S. Presidential Debate #1, Censored Under the Auspices of the Partisan Commission On Presidential Debates; 26 SEP 2016.
  • Ralph Nader Radio Hour Presents Green Party Presidential Candidate Dr. Jill Stein; 19 SEP 2016.
  • Commission On Presidential Debates Will Ban Alternative Political Parties In Upcoming 2016 U.S. Presidential Debates; 19 SEP 2016.
  • CNN Hosts 2016 Presidential Election Town Hall Featuring the Green Party; 18 AUG 2016.
  • 2016 Green Party National Convention; 6 AUG 2016.
  • Clinton Cash:  The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich (2015) by Peter Schweizer; 1 AUG 2016.
  • “Why Hillary Clinton Doesn’t Deserve the Black Vote” by Michelle Alexander; 27 JUL 2016.
  • Democratic National Convention 2016, Day One; 25 JUL 2016.
  • Republican National Convention 2016, Day One; 18 JUL 2016.
  • Flashpoints:  2016 California Presidential Primary Election Special; 7 JUN 2016.
  • Hard Knock Radio: Presidential Election 2016, A Failed Democracy; 7 JUN 2016.
  • California Presidential Primary Election 2016, Tuesday, June 7, 2016; 7 JUN 2016.
  • Green Party Presidential Candidate Dr. Jill Stein Joins Rally Against Privatisation of the U.S. Postal Service; 6 JUN 2016.
  • Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! Discusses Election 2016 on PBS; 26 MAY 2016.
  • Why Is Election Day Not a Federally Recognised National Holiday?; 24 MAY 2016.
  • The Secret History of Superdelegates by Branko Marcetic; 17 MAY 2016.
  • Dr. Michael Eric Dyson’s Democrat Partisan Apologia 2016; 16 MAY 2016.
  • Bernie Sanders Rally Held In Sacramento’s Cal Expo Bonney Field, 9 MAY 2016; 9 MAY 2016.
  • Dr. Glenn Greenwald on Hillary Clinton’s Support for Brutal Dictators and More; 24 MAR 2016.
  • The Trump Party by Political Prisoner Mumia Abu Jamal; 23 MAR 2016.
  • The Green Party’s Dr. Jill Stein on Democracy & Ranked Choice Voting; 21 MAR 2016.
  • Activist and Indigenous Leader Nelson García Assassinated; 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 Imperialism, & 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.
  • Hillary Clinton & USA Imperialism Versus Honduran Democracy; 17 JAN 2016.
  • Dr. Laurence Schoup On the Empire of Neoliberal Geopolitics; 15 JAN 2016.
  • Project Censored: Ann Garrison, Edward Herman, Rwandan Genocide, & Burundi; 1 JAN 2016.
  • US News:  Presidential Candidates Given Topics Ahead of Time

[2]  By invoking, here, Donald Trump’s cries about a rigged election, Amy Goodman seems to dismiss any notion of electoral malfeasance, especially, as Democracy Now! then plays a clip of Trump complaining of election-rigging, followed by a clip of Obama admonishing him to “stop whining”.  Yet, isn’t it, essentially, rigging the election to shut out all competition to the two corporate political parties?  Isn’t it election-rigging when broadcast media and the press engage in grossly uneven election coverage, which heavily favours the corporate candidates?  Isn’t it election-rigging to have presidential debates with only the same two corporate political parties every single election?  Isn’t it election-rigging when the popular will of the people can legally be overridden by super delegates or an electoral college?  Wasn’t it election-rigging when Obama called Bernie Sanders to the White House for a meeting, prior to the Democratic National Convention, which marked the transition of Bernie Sanders campaigning against Hillary Clinton to campaigning for Hillary Clinton?  Isn’t it election rigging when Hillary Clinton cheated during the Democratic Primary, as revealed by WikiLeaks, and colluded with the chair of the DNC Debbie Wasserman Schultz to undermine Bernie Sanders’ campaign?

And, then, there are the many Election Protection reports Greg Palast has filed about problems with the election process, which strategically invalidate ballots to game the election.  (See Greg Palast book and documentary film:  The Best Democracy Money Can Buy (2016).)  But, for some reason, Democracy Now! has avoided Greg Palast during this 2016 Presidential Election cycle.  If one searches Greg Palast within Democracy Now!‘s website, the most recent election protection reports available by Greg Palast are from 2012.

[3]  We notice that co-host Nermeen Shaikh leads with a question about the extraordinary rise of Donald Trump.  Just as the corporate media gives disproportionate airtime to Trump, somehow a similar phenomenon occurs on Democracy Now! (as well as on the KPFA News Department and most liberal).  Only, here, in liberal or progressive media, there is a fixation on Donald Trump so as to foment fear of a Donald Trump presidency amongst liberals and progressives to steer them toward voting for Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party and away alternative political parties, such as the Green Party or Libertarian Party, which can increase political diversity and possibility.  Instead, Democracy Now! engages in the false dilemma fallacy when it comes to their general line of electoral analysis.

[4]  We see, by this point in the discussion, the Democracy Now! hosts have managed to set the discussion’s train of thought squarely on the Donald Trump bogeyman track, as Amy Goodman is able to chime in another tidbit about the evils of Trump.  Yes, Donald Trump is evil, but so is Hillary Clinton and her neoliberal agenda.  But even more evil than the two of them combined is the erosion of democracy manifested by the narrowing of political discourse to two political parties, especially when they’re both funded by, essentially, the same corporate funders.

[5]  With this question, co-host Nermeen Shaikh attempts to make it seem as if she’s innocently continuing the previous guest’s “line” of thought, as if she’s not fixating on Trump.  But, in actuality, the line of thought being followed is the fixation on Trump-as-bogeyman initiated by co-host Amy Goodman and continued by Nermeen Shaikh.  Meanwhile, larger questions of erosion of democracy are ignored by the apparently partisan pro-Democratic Party agenda of Democracy Now! (and many liberal and progressive media outlets).

[6]  Continuing from footnote [5], it’s as if Chris Hedges is resisting being set up to be a shill for Hillary Clinton’s campaign by resisting contributing to a political framing, which casts Donald Trump as the bogeyman with Hillary Clinton as the implicit savior.  We see Hedges shift the focus away from his recent article, which was rightly critical of Trump and toward his less frequently aired critique of Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party.  Throughout this pre-debate discussion, Chris Hedges seems to provide the only sincere voice of reason.

[7]  This is a good point by Chris Hedges.  And it is true because of an argument your author has been making for years about one of the biggest problems with a two-party system, especially as it’s manifested in the United States.

This argument has to do with a perpetual rightward shift of the political center over time.  In the United States, political extremes, such as Donald Trump (or George Bush before him or Ronald Reagan before him), are allowed on the right-wing of the political spectrum.  But they are not allowed on the left.  Political extremes on the left are demonised, attacked, and marginalised in the dominant national political discourse.  What this does over time is shift the political center rightward, such that we have had two terms of an Obama presidency, which is literally to the right of Ronald Reagan.

[8]  The issue of credibility is a very real one for Hillary Clinton.  This last remark by Chris Hedges reminds us of other comments we’ve heard about Donald Trump’s campaign ground team, which seems to be virtually nonexistent.

Donald Trump seems to have no substantive political campaign staff, no local campaign offices where supporters could plug in.  His campaign seems to be entirely artificial, only held afloat by the millions, or billions, of dollars worth of free advertising awarded to him by an uncritical corporate media machine.  That is, the same corporate media machine, which has virtually erased alternative candidates from the 2016 presidential election.

So, if Donald Trump has no real campaign staff or strategy, then his campaign smacks of political opportunism.  It is not out of the realm of possibility that Donald Trump is working as a shill for the Hillary Clinton campaign.  In other words, since we know the Democratic and Republican parties have colluded to block out competing political parties from the presidential debates, they have colluded to agree to stage the questions to be asked, and so on, that both parties may have long been also colluding to coordinate talking points and memes, which are promoted through the corporate media echo chamber and ancillary outlets.  (And we are now learning more about such public relations, as with the Omnicom Group, the world’s largest public relations and propaganda firm in the world, such collusion is documented fact, not speculative fancy.)  Such a political-historical trend could very well have laid the groundwork for a new level of political theatre by which a decision has been made to coronate Hillary Clinton.  We know that political candidates, who win by an electoral landslide claim a political mandate to enact sweeping policy changes.  With Hillary Clinton going up against the weak opponent in Donald Trump, and not having to debate an astute and well-informed candidate, such as Dr. Jill Stein, on the debates or in public appearances, Hillary Clinton can appear more presidential, which is a silly and superficial descriptor or criterion for making an electoral decision.  But it’s a criterion, which many people use.

So, if Donald Trump is a shill for Hillary Clinton, then his apparent self-destructive gaffes make more sense, as his primary directive would be to espouse political positions far to the right of Hillary Clinton, whilst discrediting himself with adolescent gaffes to insure Clinton wins on Election Day.  Thus, with Dr. Jill Stein out of the dominant media picture, Hillary Clinton would be likely to win by a landslide, then claim a political mandate by which she could continue pursuing more of the same neoliberal policies, which the Obama administration has pursued, like the Bushes, like the Clintons, like Reagan, like the two-party establishment, and so on.  In such a scenario, it’s a win-win for them because Hillary gets the White House and Trump gets new levels of celebrity.  There’s even talk about a Trump TV Network being in the works already.  This further seems to corroborate the argument that Trump’s campaign has been political theatre designed to give Hillary Clinton credibility and a political mandate.

It seems Chris Hedges was suggesting this in his response.  But, of course, public figures must choose their words carefully, lest they’re smeared as conspiratorial.

[9]  Okay.  Here it seems as if Nermeen Shaikh is posing a question, which is critical of Hillary Clinton.  However, Professor Glaude is a Hillary Clinton supporter, who argues for fear-based voting, also known as strategic voting.  This, of course, is a political strategy, which insures that progressives will always be trapped in the neoliberal Democratic Party because they always fear a Republican presidency, which means that such thinking will always justify voting for the least worst in battleground states, instead of questioning our electoral process and advocating for ranked-choice voting and proportional representation in congress.

In Professor Glaude’s opinion piece in Time, he opens by outlining a decent critique of the status quo, which the Obama administration and the Clinton dynasty represent, correctly identifying neoliberalism as the defining feature.  But, then, he turns around and expresses deep fear of a Trump presidency because “Trump is worse”.  But, then, he continues to oscillate between ideals and fears, ultimately leaving the reader with more fear than idealism.  And Professor Glaude never shows interest in addressing, or grappling, with the antidemocratic problem of the two-party system.  Professor Glaude writes about “the function of politicians”, but he doesn’t seem interested in the function of political parties.  And this keeps his political imagination and discourse confined within a narrow two-party dualism.  But Professor Glaude writes poetically, as he dismisses in a passing remark at the end, the better alternatives to neoliberalism.  “The Sanders’ campaign was just one bloom.”  One imagines liberals taking delight in their ability to pick off such blooms every election, as they undermine all political challenges from the left in the Democratic Party.  The Democratic Party can co-opt the rhetoric from their competitors on the left, persuade voters to trust them, only to soon abandon campaign promises.  One may wonder why Professor Glaude completely ignores the Green Party, or alternative political parties, in general.  One may wonder why Professor Glaude doesn’t mention Dr. Jill Stein and her compelling campaign agenda and platform or the fact that Dr. Jill Stein has ballot access in enough states to win the electoral college.  Lumpenproletariat does.

[10]  But, for some reason, it doesn’t seem reasonable for Professor Glaude to question the electoral fraud and abuse on the part of the Hillary Clinton campaign, which would’ve disqualified the Bernie Sanders campaign.  Where’s Greg Palast when you need him?

[11]  Boom.  There it is right there.  This is that same old strategy, which has failed in the past.  Liberals argue that activists must create a huge wave of protest to ‘push’ the president to do right.  This was said about Obama’s presidency.  Yet, when the people did mobilise for massive socioeconomic justice around the Occupy Wall Street movement, President Obama coordinated a nationwide crackdown with many city mayors.  Activist encampments were raided and people were arrested and beaten.  Scott Olsen was shot in the head with a teargas canister at the Occupy Oakland encampments.  So, this is a bankrupt strategy, which liberals keep bringing up.  It never works.  The political center only shifts rightward overtime, such that we are likely to see a Hillary Clinton presidency, which is more conservative than even the Obama administration, which is widely understood to be to the right of the Ronald Reagan administration.

[12]  No.  Professor Glaude is promoting strategic voting, as a way of preserving some form of political legitimacy for the Democratic Party.  Chris Hedges, on the other hand, is calling for building alternative parties and supporting third parties, such as the Green Party, which has a much clearer and more progressive platform.

When Professor Glaude says they agree on opposing Trump, he attempts to associate Chris Hedges with strategic voting and all of the Democratic Party apologism, which goes with it.  It’s quite an insidious move, intellectually speaking because for Hedges to attempt to extricate himself from the Stop Trump meme, he’d likely appear sympathetic of Trump.

And it’s also quite a bizarre non-response to the question posed by Amy Goodman:  What do you think of Chris Hedges’ rejection of strategic voting?  And Glaude’s response is:  I think we agree on principle.  We agree we must stop Trump.  Therefore, how do we do that?  Well, through strategic voting.  It’s quite a convenient and circular line of logic Professor Glaude finds there and, in so doing, completely dodges the question and just gets back on track to repeating his argument for strategic voting.

[13]  For those of us, who view Democracy Now! and the Pacifica Radio Network, as the most important progressive daily news broadcasting, which radiates out to thousands of free speech radio stations throughout the nation, it is very disappointing and frustrating to see Democracy Now! ignore the Green Party and Dr. Jill Stein until the final eight minutes of the three-and-a-half hour broadcast.  And it borders on cruelty to only give Dr. Stein eight minutes to thoughtfully address as many issues as possible around the final presidential debate, which would make anybody sound like a crazed zealot of some sort.

And to further rub this in Amy Goodman never engages with any of the valid points, which Dr. Jill Stein makes, as if implying through her (and her co-hosts’) silence:  Yeah, whatever.  You’re right.  But you’ll never win because you are so thoroughly marginalised and kept hidden from the public, even on the Pacifica Radio Network and Democracy Now!.

Given only eight minutes to make her case, yes, it’s better that Amy Goodman just let Dr. Stein speak uninterrupted.  But Democracy Now! should have featured Dr. Stein throughout the broadcast, as done during the second debate, in which Democracy Now! interjected Dr. Stein’s responses, in real time, to the debate prompts.  It was clumsy, but it was better than nothing.  Or, better yet, Dr. Stein should have been invited to co-host the pre- and post-debate roundtable discussions, which could have helped keep the focus on the structural crimes of the Democratic and Republican parties and their collusion to stifle and suppress any and all political competition.  After all, the name of the show is Democracy Now!, as in the demand for true democracy, now!, as in we don’t have true democracy.  And part of the reason is that our most progressive and forward-thinking broadcasters, such as Democracy Now! tone down their critique of the two-party system and their neoliberal politicians during election cycles.  We have seen this ever since Democracy Now! began in 1996.  After the first 2016 presidential debate, Democracy Now! gave alternative presidential candidates a chance to expand the debate by replaying the debate the following day and, then, interjecting responses from alternative candidates willing to participate.  (Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson and vice presidential candidate William Weld were unable, or unwilling, to take advantage of Democracy Now!‘s invitations to expand the debates to get their political messaging out to the American people.)

[14]  On being thrown under the bus:  Even Amy Goodman has acknowledged, earlier this year, the importance of comparing the political track records of the candidates and comparing that to campaign promises, instead of focusing on trivial details and he said-she said gossipping and name-calling.  But, as the 2016 election campaigning got underway, we observed Amy Goodman and Democracy Now! contradict that logic of focusing on the political track records because they have completely given neoliberal Hillary Clinton a pass.

[15]  As noted above, Amy Goodman never engages with any of the valid points, which Dr. Jill Stein makes, and which Amy Goodman and the editorial board of Democracy Now! surely agrees with.  As Dr. Stein mentioned, for example, war profiteers, we may recall Amy Goodman’s New York Times bestseller, The Exception to the Rulers: Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers, and the Oily Politicians Who Love Them.  But, for various partisan reasons, Amy Goodman cannot recall such things, or any points of agreement.  Instead, Amy Goodman can only play devil’s advocate and place spike strips in Dr. Jill Stein’s logical, intellectual, political discourse.

In this case, Amy Goodman attempts to derail Dr. Jill Stein‘s stump speech, in much the same way that Chris Wallace derailed Donald Trump‘s valid complaints against Hillary Clinton, who, as Trump said, should never have been allowed to capture the Democratic Party primary, as she cheated and the DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz was thereby disgraced (as much as the apologist corporate media would allow).  Bernie Sanders was cheated.  And the American people were cheated.  The only question (or comment) Amy Goodman saw fit to ask Dr. Stein was:  Will you concede?  Will you accept the results of the election?  That is, will you accept the status quo?  Evidently, for Amy Goodman, uncritical acceptance of electoral outcomes is more important than critical analysis of electoral issues and electoral fraud.  This was a dirty move by Amy Goodman, which is probably why they won’t bother to transcribe it at Democracy Now!‘s website.  Democracy Now! is focusing on, and magnifying, the issue of Donald Trump complaining about election-rigging and not vowing to uncritically concede.  So, this question seems part of a strategy to associate Dr. Jill Stein with some sort of unreasonable, or antidemocratic, electoral sabotage, which is in line with Donald Trump’s discredited rhetoric.

But, thanks to WikiLeaks, we know Hillary Clinton cheated during the Democratic Primary election.  But the biggest problem with the leaked Podesta emails, which exposed Hillary Clinton’s hidden skeletons, was not her collusion to undermine Bernie Sanders’ campaign, which was antidemocratic enough.  But the biggest problem was Hillary Clinton’s use of private, unsecured servers, for official government business.  This cynical evasion of public accountability by Hillary Clinton, who installed secret computer servers at her house to avoid having her communications publicly documented is the biggest crime of all.  And experts have described the consequences of this as literal treason.  (We’ll provide a link here to an interview, which addresses this.)  That is the biggest crime, for which Hillary Clinton has thus far evaded accountability, which in a just world would have held her to account and disqualified her from running for president.

[16]  Of course, Dr. Ralph Nader has talked about this during his five presidential candidacies.  But, instead of incorporating this knowledge into their broadcasts, Democracy Now! has largely fed into the two-party dictatorship and the antidemocratic spoiler vote meme, rather than talking about ranked-choice voting or educating the public about the various antidemocratic policies and rules and regulations, which perpetuate a cartelised two-party dictatorship.  For years, Democracy Now! has refused to truly educate their audience about basic ideas, which could dramatically change progressive politics.  But, instead, they’ve mainly acquiesced to the status quo.  That is a travesty of free speech media.

***

[Dr. Howard Zinn image by Jared and Corin, used via Creative Commons (BY-SA 2.0)]

[‘Rigged’ image by source, used via fair use.]

[‘Lesser of two evils’ fortune cookie image by Flick user GoatChild, used via Creative Commons.]

[‘Obama Occupy’ image by Flickr user GoatChild, used via Creative Commons.]

[‘Requiem for the American Dream’ image by source, used via fair use.]

[‘Amy Goodman poster’ image by source, used via fair use.]

[Image entitled “Vote 12345” by UkraineToday (English Wikipedia, transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons by Shizhao, using CommonsHelper, public domain).]

[‘In not now, when?’ image by source, used via fair use.]

[‘There’s no $ in free speech’ image by Flickr user GoatChild, used via Creative Commons.]

[21 OCT 2016]

[Last modified 13:02 PDT  26 OCT 2016]

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Ralph Nader Radio Hour Presents Green Party Presidential Candidate Dr. Jill Stein

19 Mon Sep 2016

Posted by ztnh in Anti-Fascism, Anti-Imperialism, Democracy Deferred, Political Science, Presidential Election 2016

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Tags

auster, austerity economics, C-SPAN, Dr. Jill Stein, federal job guarantee program, Hofstra College (Long Island), instant-runoff voting, job guarantee programme, Judy Woodruff, KPFA, KPFK, Media Research Center, Mitch Jeserich, MMT, Modern Monetary Theory, Modern Money Theory, MSNBC, Pacifica Radio Network, PBS, PBS News Hour, Ralph Nader (b. 1934), Ralph Nader Radio Hour, ranked-choice voting, Senator Bernie Sanders, Steve Skrovan (b. 1957), the 'Filthy Five', Tom Ashbrook, transcript, vote-splitting

kpfa-free-speech-take-it-back-logo-121199LUMPENPROLETARIAT—On this week’s edition of the Ralph Nader Radio Hour, Green Party presidential candidate Dr. Jill Stein joined host Dr. Ralph Nader for the entire hour. [1]  Listen/view (and/or download) here. [2]

Messina

***

[Working draft transcript of actual radio broadcast by Messina for Lumpenproletariat and The Ralph Nader Radio Hour.]  [3]

ralph-nader-radio-hourRALPH NADER RADIO HOUR—[19 SEP 2016]  “From the KPFK studios in southern California, it’s the Ralph Nader Radio Hour.  [theme music]

“Welcome to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour.  My name is Steve Skrovan, along with the man of the hour.  Ralph Nader, how are you doing today?” 

DR. RALPH NADER:  “Very good.  We have a great programme coming up with the Green Party candidate for [U.S.] president.”

STEVE SKROVAN:  “That’s correct.  And, if recent activity in our Facebook page is any indication, this is a very anticipated show in what we hope will be a series of interviews with national candidates before Election Day.  We have sent invitations to all of the presidential candidates, who have made it on enough state ballots to have a mathematical chance to win the United States Presidency.  That includes, of course, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump and Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson.

JillSteinItsInOurHandsFlickrDemocracyChronicles“The first to accept our offer to engage with Ralph is Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein.  Dr. Stein is a physician, who graduated from Harvard Medical School and practiced internal medicine for 25 years in Massachusetts.

“In the 1990s, Dr. Stein became increasingly concerned about the links between illness and environmental toxins, especially exposures to lead and mercury and dioxin contamination, that comes from the burning of waste.  She helped lead the fight to clean up coal plants in Massachusetts, then known as the Filthy Five.  This ended up setting an example for how other states could raise the standards for their own coal plants.

“Her first foray into electoral politics was in 2002, when she was recruited by Green-Rainbow Party activists to run for governor of Massachusetts against Mitt Romney.  She’s the co-author of two significantly praised reports, ‘In Harm’s Way: Toxic Threats to Child Develpment’ and ‘Environmental Threats to Healthy Aging’.  She was the Green Party president in 2012 and, again, here, in 2016.

“She joins us just before a rally at the University of Maine.  Welcome to Ralph Nader Radio Hour, Dr. Jill Stein.”  (c. 2:20)

DR. JILL STEIN:  “Thank you so much, Steve.  Thank you, Ralph.  It’s really an honour to be with you.”

DR. RALPH NADER:  “Well, I can say that you’re my successor on the Green Party ticket.  So, I know a little bit about what you’re going through.  And I’m sure our listeners are eager to hear you out.  You don’t have to engage in soundbites, here, as you may have experienced with some of the mass media. [4]

“A little background here:  The Green Party is going to be on how many state ballots, Jill Stein?”

DR. JILL STEIN:  “It will be approximately 48.  So, we’re currently on, I believe, 46.  And I think we expect two more.”

DR. RALPH NADER:  “That’s very good.  That could be a high water mark for the Green Party in its history.  What two states, I can only guess, aren’t you gonna be on because of horrendous obstacles to getting on the ballot?”

DR. JILL STEIN:  “I believe it’s Oklahoma and South Dakota.  And we’re on as a write-in [option] in North Dakota, in Georgia, and Indiana.

“So, you know, it’s the states which are, you know, just having insurmountable hurdles.  We’ve spent money, you know, to augment our volunteer effort.  But we are still largely a people-powered campaign.  So, we don’t have whatever it is; I think, it was like $30 million dollars, the Libertarians talk about, that it cost them to get on the ballot.  We don’t have $30 million dollars.  We’re a people-powered campaign.  So, where the states are dead set on suppressing political opposition, it’s very hard to overcome that.”  (c. 3:55)

DR. RALPH NADER:  “Right.  Well, you’re on the ballot for the states where our listeners are, overwhelmingly.  Let’s get to the next point, which is your platform, as I read it.  And I’m gonna summarise it.  Either, it has majoritarian support in this country or very close to majoritarian support.

“For example, you want a public works program dealing with public transit, sustainable agriculture conservation, renewable energy.  I think most people would like that,  That probably comes in about 90%.  They see their public works crumbling, services inadequate, they have libraries and schools and bridges and highways that have not been repaired.

“You also believe in a full employment policy.  That was the majority Democratic Party policy in 1946.  They actually passed a law to that effect.  You want to end poverty.  And when people see how relatively easy it is to end poverty.  And one way is to increase the minimum wage—catch up; it’s been frozen for so many years—$15 dollars-an-hour minimum wage.  That was one of the reasons why so many people flocked to Bernie Sanders’ candidacy. [5]  (c. 5:05)

“Full Medicare-For-All, free choice of doctor and hospital.  That comes in 60- to 70% without even further explanation.  And, if you ever explained it, given all the trouble people are having qualifying and not qualifying for all these healthcare, so-called, insurance plans, it would go up even higher.

“You want to do something about student debt.  And that affects conservative and liberal students.  That’s going to be a majoritarian position.

“You want a global treaty to halt climate change, that adds teeth and ends destructive energy extraction.

“Ending police brutality and mass incarceration.  There’s a growing left-right support for criminal justice reform.

“I suppose the Green Party doesn’t care for the anti-civil libertarian provisions of the notoriously named P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act, invading privacy, and being able to search your home, and not tell you for 72 hours.  I think most Americans are against illegal surveillance of their emails and telephone calls by the government.

“And I think most Americans are ready for waging peace and not just brutalising our foreign policy, which is boomeranging against us.

“And you want to abolish corporate personhood.  I think the more people learn that corporations are not people, that have all the equal rights and even more privileges and immunities than we have—.  (c. 6:32)

“So, here we start out, Dr. Stein, with a majoritarian platform.  We live in a two-party tyranny, that doesn’t believe in competition, can enforce it with penalties and obstructions.  And they’re getting closer and closer to being, both, one corporate party with two heads having different labels.

“So, how do you explain to the American people why they don’t vote their conscience enough and why they don’t vote for majoritarian issues, that you represent, and which mostly are off the table by the Republican-Democratic Party—off the table, undiscussable?”  (c. 7:10)

DR. JILL STEIN:  “Absolutely.  You know, I think we’re at a really unique moment right now because the American people are waking up to the fact that it is a race to the bottom between these two corporate parties, that are sending jobs overseas, putting downward pressure on wages, starving people out of healthcare, locking an entire generation into unpayable predatory student loan debt.

“So, you know, we’re at a point now where we don’t have to convince people how screwed they are.  In my experience, what I’m hearing from people, now, is that they are just desperate to hear about something else.  The two majority candidates right now, the Democratic and Republican candidates, Trump and Clinton, are the most disliked and untrusted presidential candidates in our history with more than majority disapproval.  At the same time, you have 76% of voters saying they want to open up the debates.  They want to be able to hear about something else.

“You know, it’s rather remarkable.  Donald Trump has had over $4 billion dollars of free prime-time media.  Hillary’s had over $2 billion worth.  My campaign has had, essentially, zip.  Yet, we are still pushing up around 5% in the polls, which is unprecedented for a non-corporate party without the big money to get the word out.  We’re getting out there simply by word of mouth, by networking among desperate people.  The largest bloc of voters, now, has divorced the Democratic and Republican parties, which are now minority parties and the plurality of voters, now, are independent.  They’re looking for something else.

“So, you know, it’s no surprise that the corporate media, and many of the nonprofits, that are dependent on the big money, they are not allowing our campaign the real alternative to see the light of day.  (c. 9:06)

“So, the key here, in my view, is not having to change people’s minds.  It’s just allowing them to know. [5]  In fact, I was in a debate, Ralph—I don’t know if I ever mentioned this to you.  But, back in 2002, we fought our way into a governor’s debate in Massachusetts where, you know, this was televised and I articulated our usual agenda:  Cut the military; put the dollars into true security here at home; provide healthcare, as a human right; raise wages, which needed to be living wages; green our energy system; equal marriage.  We were the only ones talking about it back in 2002.  That agenda went over like a lead balloon inside of the little TV studio, which is just candidates and moderator.  But when we walked out, I was mobbed by the press, who told me I had won the debate on the instant online viewer poll.  You know, just in the course of an hour, people didn’t need to be persuaded.  They just needed to hear.  Oh, my god!  There is another plan here, which is about the public interest.  (c. 10:09)

DR. JILL STEIN:  My campaign filed the bill [on ranked-choice voting] back in 2002 in the Democratic legislature, 85% Democratic—they could have prevented any possibility of a split vote.  [The Democrats] could have preempted any possibility of bypassing ranked-choice voting.  They refused. The fact that they refused is very revealing.  It tells you they rely on intimidation and fear in order to gain your vote.  And the fact that they rely on fear tells you they are not your friend and do not deserve your vote!.

“So, for me, that was like the lights went on.  You know?  That was like the moment of revelation for me that, in fact, we are not the lunatic fringe.  We really are, we represent, the core of basic American community values.  And the name of the game is getting the word out.  You know?  And they are quaking in their boots, which, of course, is why they will not pass ranked-choice voting.

“We could solve this problem of a divided vote, or an unintended consequence of your vote, to a voting system, which uses your name, where I am right now, they’ve got it on the ballot for a statewide referendum—”

DR. RALPH NADER:  “Explain that.”

DR. JILL STEIN:  “—that enables people—”

DR. RALPH NADER:  “Yeah.  Explain that.”

DR. JILL STEIN:  “Okay.  You go into the voting booth.  And you can rank your choices.  So, if your first choice is an underdog, that might not win, you know that your choice number two, which might be your lesser evil, your safety choice, your vote is automatically reassigned from your first choice to your second choice if your first choice loses and there’s not a majority winner.

“So, it, essentially, eliminates, [vote-]splitting.  It eliminates having to vote your fear instead of your values.  It allows us to actually bring a moral compass to our democracy.  Democracy cannot function just on:  Who do we fear the most?  You know?  Or:  Who do we hate the most?  We need an affirmative agenda.  (c. 11:33)

“The fact that the Democrats will not allow this to be passed—and, in fact, my campaign filed the bill back in 2002 in the Democratic legislature, 85% Democratic—they could have prevented any possibility of a split vote.  And, you know, it was a close vote.  And the votes for me, you know, might have made that difference.  But it turned out they didn’t.  But the gap was bigger than—”

DR. RALPH NADER:  “Yes.”

DR. JILL STEIN:  “—the votes, that I got.  But, in any event, they could have preempted any possibility of bypassing ranked-choice voting.”

DR. RALPH NADER:  “Yeah.”

DR. JILL STEIN:  “They refused. The fact that they refused is very revealing.  It tells you they rely on intimidation and fear in order to gain your vote.”

DR. RALPH NADER:  “Yeah.”

DR. JILL STEIN:  “And the fact that they rely on fear tells you they are not your friend and do not deserve your vote!”  (c. 12:20)

DR. RALPH NADER:  “It’s worse than that.  Worse than relying on fear is they’re excluding you from the seat at the table.  One of the ways they exclude you is what you just said:  Instant-runoff voting.

“They always talk about spoilers, a political bigoted word, that should be called that.  It’s only aimed at third-party candidates, never any others with the major parties.  And they got an opportunity to deal with that with instant-runoff voting.  And they don’t.

On the mass media censorship of the Green Party and other alternative political parties

“Let’s run through the various ways they’re trying to marginalise the Green Party, and even the Libertarian Party.  One way is to keep you off the mass media.  In 2004, Professor Stephen Farnsworth put out a report saying that I got about five minutes on all the networks after Labor Day to election day, only five minutes, even though I, like you, were representing majoritarian issues.  Okay?

“So, have you gotten any time on the following, the national, CBS, ABC, NBC, Fox News?”

DR. JILL STEIN:  “Media Research Center just put out a report, like, last week and what they showed was that I’ve gotten three seconds worth of coverage on major media evening news.  Gary Johnson has had eleven seconds.  And Donald Trump has had approximately 35,000 times as much coverage, Hillary Clinton about 20,000 times as much coverage.”

DR. RALPH NADER:  “Right.  And these networks are using public properties, the public airwaves.

“Alright; the next question is:  How about the cable shows?  Let’s talk about the so-called liberal MSNBC.  Have you been on any of those shows?  Chris Matthews, Chris Hayes, Larry O’Donnell, any of these shows and others on MSNBC?”

DR. JILL STEIN:  “None of the major shows.

DR. RALPH NADER:  “Okay.  Let’s go to the radio now.  Have you been on NPR?”

DR. JILL STEIN:  “Briefly, yes.  I was on Tom Ashbrook.  I did have one hour on Tom Ashbrook.  And that was really—that’s about it.”

DR. RALPH NADER:  “Okay.  Have you had any C-SPAN coverage?”

DR. JILL STEIN:  “Yes.  C-SPAN covered our, you know, our major events.  They covered the convention.”  (c. 14:34)

DR. RALPH NADER:  “Yes.”

DR. JILL STEIN:  “And they covered our announcement.”

DR. RALPH NADER:  “Yes, they were very good in presidential campaigns.  That’s why they’re trusted.” [6]

“How about the following shows?  Charlie Rose on PBS?  Diane Rehm Radio, NPR?  Terry Gross, NPR?  And have you been on those shows?”

DR. JILL STEIN:  “Well, I had, approximately, a ten-minute segment on Diane Rehm.  That’s all.”

DR. RALPH NADER:  “Well, that’s more than I got [as presidential candidate].

“The point here, Jill Stein, is—and I’ll make it in a personal way—over 80% of the people, when I ran for President, knew about me.  But, then, I realised that, when I was running, 80% of the people didn’t even know I was running.”

DR. JILL STEIN:  “Right.”

DR. RALPH NADER:  “So, you see that gap is exactly how they can marginalise and exclude people from giving the voters more voices and choices.”

On the anti-democratic nature of the two-party system, or two-party dictatorship, and its systematic exclusion of alternative political parties

“Alright, the third way they block competition and continue the two-party duopoly is with the phony name called the Commission on Presidential Debates, which is a nonprofit corporation created by the Republican and Democratic parties, as you know, in 1987 to get rid of the League of Women Voters’ supervision of debates.  And it is funded by corporations.  The debates are greased by companies like Ford Motor Company, AT&T, Anheuser-Busch.  And, except for letting Ross Perot on in 1992, they haven’t let anybody on.  And they get the cooperation of these networks, who make money from the ratings, to keep everybody off.

“Now, have there been any polls asking the American people whether they want you, the Green Party candidate, Jill Stein, or Gary Johnson, the Libertarian Party candidate, on those debates?  In 2004 and 2000, too, the majority of people wanted me and Buchanan on the debates in 2000, and me on the debates in 2004.  Have there been any polls?”  (c. 16:31)

DR. JILL STEIN:  “Yes.  And the numbers have gone up from where they were when you were running.  It’s now 76% of the American public, that says they want Gary Johnson and myself included in these [presidential] debates.”

DR. RALPH NADER:  “So, there you are. What’s happening is that the will of the people, the declared opinion of the people, who want more agendas, more ideas, more sensible re-directions for reforms in our country, are being thwarted by the mechanism of keeping third-party candidates, who are on more than enough States, theoretically, to get an electoral vote majority, to keep them off the mass media, the commercial media, to keep them off the debates.

“Now, unless you have billions of dollars, it’s impossible to reach tens of millions of the American people, no matter how hard you campaign.  And you’ve been campaigning non-stop, Jill Stein.

“So, if you’re kept off the debates, you can’t reach more than 2% of the people, even if you campaign every state and fill the big conventions like Madison Square Garden.

“So, it is basically a strategy to destroy the essence of democracy, which is the competitiveness and choices of candidates on the ballot.”

“Now, you have been on Democracy Now! haven’t you?”  (c. 17:52)

DR. JILL STEIN:  “Yes.  We had good coverage.  And, you know, let me just add to what you said about the Commission, that fake Commission, a very public and official sounding name.

“The League of Women Voters quit after the two corporate parties took over this Commission.  And they quit saying that this is a fraud being perpetrated on the American voter.  There’s the pretense that this is official when it’s actually the two parties who are colluding in order to silence political opposition.  This is true two-party tyranny.  And it locks people in, especially outrageous at this time, that people feel like they are being thrown under the bus by these two political parties and are demanding, you know, other options in large numbers.”  (c. 18:42)

DR. RALPH NADER:  “Let’s get back to the debates.  The first debate, which you are excluded from, Dr. Jill Stein—and Gary Johnson as well—is September 26.  It’s coming up fast, at Hofstra College in Long Island.  And, then, they have two more debates, at the presidential level, and one at the vice presidential level.

“I wonder why they’re rationing debates.  You want to talk about people wanting more debates at this stage of the election.  It’s probably 95%.

“What are you gonna do about the Hofstra debate?  Are you gonna go there?”

DR. JILL STEIN:  “Yes, I’m going there.  We now have over 100,000 people who are signed up on our campaign and our petition to open up the debate.  And we’re encouraging people to come and to join us and to insist that we need to be included.

“So, exactly what the plans are at Hofstra, we will be advising people as the time gets closer.  But we are not just going to go quietly into this dark night.

“In this election, we are not just deciding what kind of a world we will be, but, arguably, whether we will have a world or not going forward.  If my campaign is not in the debates, we will not have a real discussion of the emergency of climate change and why, in fact, we need a Green New Deal type national mobilisation at the scale of a wartime mobilisation in order to address this emergency.

“If my campaign is not in the debates, we will not be talking about how we really fix this problem of endless and expanding war, why we need to cut the military budget by 50%, why we need to bring back our troops scattered overseas—the police force of the world—in over a hundred countries, something like eight hundred bases—but who’s counting?—why we need to, basically, bring those troops home, and why we need to stop this policy of regime change, these wars on terror, which only create more terror.  This needs to be debated.

“And a third issue, Ralph, that is potentially putting us all in the target hairs, now, is the reactivation of a new nuclear arms race.  This arms race and this cold war is potentially hotter than it’s been at any time in my lifetime.  And we have 2,000 nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert right now.  And Hillary Clinton wants to start an air war with Russia, a nuclear-armed power over Syria, as the means of addressing ISIS and the crisis in Syria.  This kind of stuff, nuclear weapons, needs to be on the table.  And it won’t be, if I’m not in the debate.”  (c. 21:20)

DR. RALPH NADER:  “That’s true because, both, Trump and Hillary want bigger military budgets.  And Hillary supports President Obama’s $1 trillion dollar expenditure to, so-called, upgrade nuclear weapons.

“President Eisenhower warned us—five star general—”

DR. JILL STEIN:  “That’s right.”

DR. RALPH NADER:  “—he said:  Watch out for the military-industrial complex.  That’s a threat to our freedom and to our economy.  And what we have, now, is a gigantic taxpayer draining empire, that is devouring itself, which, as you say, it’s creating more resistance, more fighting against us overseas.  The threats are coming to this country, which will, of course, increase the massive industry known as the anti-terrorism industry and crush our civil liberties and civil rights.  And it’s devouring our priorities, here, in communities all over the country, which are in such disrepair and are so neglected in terms of public works and public services.  (c. 22:15)

“In the meantime, the big corporations are fleeing America for tax havens in places like Ireland and Luxembourg and the Grand Cayman Islands; the rich are finding more tax loopholes to expect; so, when are the people going to, basically, roll up their sleeves and say?  We’ve had enough.  We’re going to recapture Congress.

“As you know, Jill, a lot of progressives, they have great agendas and they have great solutions, but they don’t pay enough attention to recapturing Congress.  And recapturing Congress—535 men and women, who put their shoes on every day, like you and I—is the key to begin turning this whole process around.

“And I hear people who are worried about climate change tell me:  Oh, Congress.  That’s gridlock.  That’s not where the action is.  Hello?  That’s where the action is when I go up there.  I see coal lobbyists, oil lobbyists, natural gas lobbyists, nuclear power lobbyists.  Somehow, they think that’s where the action is in Congress.  (c. 23:19)  [7]  (c. 23:19)

[KPFA’s Mitch Jeserich cuts into the broadcast, as this broadast took place during a fund drive period, to appeal for financial support for free speech radio KPFA, so that it doesn’t have to go off the air or sell out by succumbing to corporate money and influence]  (c. 26:59)

“So, I want to ask you this question.  How do you read the Bernie movement, the Bernie Sanders movement before and after he endorsed Hillary Clinton?  Without qualifications, I might add.  And how is it going to help you?  So, how do you read before, after, and how’s it going to help you?”

DR. JILL STEIN:  And what we learned, in the course of Bernie’s campaign, is that you cannot have a revolutionary campaign in a counter-revolutionary party.  The party pulled out its kill switch against Bernie and sabotaged him.  As we saw from the emails revealed, showing the collusion between the Democratic National Committee, Hillary’s campaign, and members of the corporate media.

And it wasn’t the first time.  This happened to Dennis Kucinich. It happened to Jesse Jackson. They did it even to Howard Dean, creating the ‘Dean Scream’.  This is how they work.  And it’s been a huge wake-up moment.

DR. JILL STEIN:  “Well, let me just say that on the day that Bernie endorsed Hillary, the floodgates opened into our campaign.  Our fundraising went up about a thousand percent.  And that’s, largely, been sustained.

“Our Facebook went off the charts.  And volunteers poured into our campaigns and actually helped us achieve the ballot access status, that we have now on the ballot in just about 48 states.  And this has continued.

“So, Bernie, is a team player.  He made it known from the very start that he would be supporting the Democratic nominee, presumably Hillary Clinton. (c. 27:50)

“And what we learned, in the course of Bernie’s campaign, is that you cannot have a revolutionary campaign in a counter-revolutionary party.

“The party pulled out its kill switch against Bernie and sabotaged him.  As we saw from the emails revealed, showing the collusion between the Democratic National Committee, Hillary’s campaign, and members of the corporate media.

“And it wasn’t the first time.  This happened to Dennis Kucinich.  It happened to Jesse Jackson.  They did it even to Howard Dean, creating the ‘Dean Scream’.

“This is how they work.  And it’s been a huge wake-up moment.

“And Bernie’s campaign was very principled in most regards, I think.  You know, he certainly didn’t go far enough in questioning the military policy, the military-industrial complex, and so on. [5]  But, you know, I think that’s the price you pay for being in the Democratic Party.  And Bernie has to pay that price.  If he were liberated from the Democratic Party, it might be a whole new ballgame.

“You know, as he said himself, it’s a movement, not a man.  And that movement continues to move into our campaign.  It’s going strong.  I think it’s a marriage made in heaven.  The Green Party provides the infrastructure, kind of, the culture of watchdogging the electoral bureaucracy and how you participate, how you get on the ballot, stuff like that, which is very difficult to do, unless you have billions of dollars.

“So, with the passion and the vision of the Berners coming into the Greens—we call it Berning green—and the events, that I’m going to, that are being created around the country right now, it’s the Bernie folks, who are showing up in huge numbers along with the traditional Green.  It’s very powerful.  (c. 29:24)

On the 43 million Americans with student loan debt, who, if only they voted for their own interests in having public education be truly public and cancelling all student loan debt, could easily elect Dr. Jill Stein for President of the United States, if only they woke the folk up…

“There’s one other element I just want to be sure to mention here.  That is that there are 43 million young people who are locked into predatory student loan debt, for whom there is no way out in the foreseeable future, given the economy that we have: this predatory, Wall Street-driven, financialised, low-wage, service-industry economy. [5]  The jobs, that have come back have been extremely insecure low-wage, benefit-poor, temporary jobs. [5]

“Young people are screwed.  They don’t have a way to pay off this debt. [8]  And when they discover that they could come out and vote Green to cancel that debt, that I am the one candidate, who will bail out the students, like we bailed out the crooks on Wall Street, then it becomes an irresistible motivation to actually come out and vote Green.

“And I just want to note that 43 million young people in debt is enough to win a three-way Presidential race.

“So, when they tell us that resistance is futile, just remember that is the toxic kool-aid.  That is the propaganda, that they’re trying to use to keep people from self mobilising.”

RALPH NADER:  “Right.”

DR. JILL STEIN:  “If ever there was a mobilising energy, it is the millennial generation.”

RALPH NADER:  “Yes.”

DR. JILL STEIN:  “So, we have the power to turn out and even to win this race, not to split the vote, but to flip the vote.”

DR. RALPH NADER:  “You know, we’re trying to convey how much easier it is than most people think, especially young people, to turn the country around, if they focus on the levers, if they focus on Congress and state legislatures.

“If a hundred people in each congressional district started a Congress watchdog club with a letterhead and a summons to the members of Congress to come to town meetings, even just a hundred people out of 690,000 people in each congressional district, they will begin to feel their power and feel how they go to 200, 500, 700, how they can challenge these corporations, that control a majority of the members of Congress, even though they don’t have any vote.  We’re the ones that have the vote.

“So, we have to convey the sense that in American history it’s always been a few people, that started movements against slavery, women’s right to vote, the farmer-labour revolutions in the late 19th century.  And always third parties have been first, Jill Stein, as you say to your own audiences, they have been first with the great issues, way before the two major parties.  They were first to recommend a social security program, a medicare program.  They were the first to push for a 40 hour week, for progressive taxation.

“And that’s one reason why they are discriminated against and repressed.  It’s because they want to shift power from the few to the many.  So, why don’t you give the website.  I’m sure our listeners are saying:  How do we get in touch?  How do we become part of this justice movement?”  (c. 32:18)

DR. JILL STEIN:  “Great.  So, go to Jill2016.com or, on social media, go to DrJillStein—and that’s D-R, no period—and join the team, because we’re here for the long haul.

“And, you know, 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 it, just to look at the power of fighting student debt or 25 million Latinos who’ve learned that the Republicans are the party of hate and fear, but Democrats are the party of deportation and detention.

“We have all the numbers we need to turn this system on its head.  The anti-slavery parties were also called spoilers, including the Republican party, that went on, not just to abolish slavery, but to, actually, take over the presidency, moving very quickly from third-party into the presidency.

“At a time of great social upheaval, all things are possible.  We must challenge, as Ralph was saying, you know, to fight at every level, including Congress, and to make that challenge political and to organise as a political party is how we get traction.

“In the words of Frederick Douglass, power concedes nothing without a demand; it never has and it never will.  We must be that demand.  We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.”  (c. 33:34)

DR. RALPH NADER:  “So—”

DR. JILL STEIN:  “Don’t let them talk you out of your part.

On Dr. Jill Stein’s main opponents, the two dominant, establishment, corporate candidates..

DR. RALPH NADER:  “So, that’s your opening statement, if you’re on the presidential debates at Hofstra on September 26th [2016].

“Let’s get your view on the two major candidates.  Let’s start with a question, that I have to you about Donald Trump.  He has made every mistake possible, any one of which would have destroyed his candidacy, if he was an ordinary candidate.  He has been a bigot against Hispanic-Americans, Muslim-American.  He wants to build the wall.  He engages in repeated, daily, factual misstatements, where even people on Fox News have to follow up and correct his false statements again and again.  And he never corrects them himself.  (c. 34:12)

“He’s cheated about everything and everybody he’s dealt with.  He’s cheated against his workers, his consumers, Trump University, that fraud.  He’s cheated against his small business suppliers.  He’s cheated against his investors with his bankruptcies.  He’s cheated against his creditors.  He even has boasted about cheating against his matrimony.  And he’s cheated against taxpayers, by being a corporate welfare king and not paying any taxes, refuses to disclose his tax returns, which would show all kinds of interrelations, that might lead to his disapproval by people.

“Now, given all that, and given the so-called conservative values of his supporters, why is he now surging on Hillary Clinton?  The latest poll, he’s five points ahead in Ohio; he’s almost tied in Florida, when, a few weeks ago, he was ten points or more behind?  What does this say, first, about the voters, who are supporting him?  And what does this say about the media, that is replaying, as you say, billions of dollars of free propaganda by him?  What does this say about the Trump movement?”  (c. 35:32)

DR. JILL STEIN:  “Well, you know, as Bernie Sanders himself said, you know, the Trump movement reflects the economic despair and misery that’s been inflicted, not only, on the American people, but people around the world, as we have been subject to globalisation and financialisation and austerity and workers have been thrown under the bus, while the 1% is rolling in dough.

“You know, the way that you address this right-wing extremism is actually by putting forward a truly progressive agenda.  That’s the only solution here.

“And the economic misery—who passed NAFTA?  You know, Bill Clinton signed that, with Hillary’s support.  Who passed Wall Street deregulation, that enabled the meltdown of Wall Street and the disappearance of nine million jobs, the theft of 5 million homes?

“You know, we have Democratic centrists here to blame for the economic conditions driving this right-wing extremism.

“So, the solution here, you know, is not Hillary Clinton and more of the Clintonism centrists, the centrist Clinton philosophy, that is breeding this economic misery.  (c. 36:42)

“But let me put this another way.  Polls show that a majority of Trump supporters don’t actually support Donald Trump.  They actually dislike Hillary Clinton.  They’re looking for something else.  So, what we need to do is to give them something else.

“And in terms of the role of the media, that is my candidacy, which does provide that truly progressive agenda, that gets to the heart of what is driving this right-wing extremism.

“It’s not just Donald Trump.  Hillary Clinton is not gonna be the solution here.  She’s gonna be more of what is driving this incredible economic insecurity and this shift to the right.

“The media factor was summed up by the CEO of, I think, it was CBS, who said: Donald Trump may be bad for the country, but he sure is good for our bottom line.  And it reflects, Ralph, I think, how important it is, what you’ve said before, that it’s time to use the antitrust laws and to break up this conglomerate corporate media, that has now poisoned our democracy to the point that our very survival is at risk for the kinds of monstrosities, that are flourishing in our corporate media-dominated discussion.”  (c. 37:57)

DR. RALPH NADER:  “It’s amazing how the media has degraded itself to the level of the Republican primary—scurrilous back and forth.  And, the media—I keep telling people in the mass media:  You’ve got a privileged position in the First Amendment.  And you should have a higher estimate of your own significance and not just be ditto-heads for political scum and political slander.

“And, in substantial presentations, Hillary has been seen by the commentators as one of the reasons, as you say, her weakness as a candidate, her duplicity, her untrustworthiness, her more Wall Street and more war.  You could have a button with a nice picture of Hillary in the middle, and on the top is ‘More War’, and on the bottom is ‘More Wall Street‘, and you’d be very prophetic.  She just can’t disentangle herself from those two.  She gave Bernie Sanders a few slogans in order to mimic him; but she’s back again, becoming more aggressive overseas.  And even Obama—and she scares the generals.  (c. 38:58)

“So, we’re at a very, very serious point, as you’ve said, around the country, Jill, in this country.  I know every four years they say ‘serious point’.  But, when you’ve got these two candidates, all of whom want more militarism and more corporate power and who knows what else Trump wants—he takes everything personally.  I can see him attacking a country, whose leader insulted him.  He has no self-control.  He has no impulse self-control.  He has very serious personality defects.”  (c. 39:29)  [10]

[KPFA‘s Mitch Jeserich cuts into the broadcast, as this broadast took place during a fund drive period, to appeal for financial support for free speech radio KPFA, so that it doesn’t have to go off the air or sell out by succumbing to corporate money and influence]  (c. 42:50)

[Begin transcript segment, which comes to us from William Brighenti, the “Barefoot Accountant“, as it was cut out of the KPFA broadcast, apparently to make room for fundraising pitching.]

“And, so, here we are.  We have a few weeks left before the election and people have got to rally Hofstra.  You want to go and rally Hofstra.  A lot of people in the New York City area on September 26, Monday, September 26th, the first Presidential debate.  The media is going to all be there.  If there are 20, 50, 100 thousand people there, saying, open up the debates for the third parties, I think that will begin getting the attention of the mass media.

“So, I urge listeners in the greater New York City area to go to these peaceful rallies, and with your placards.  And make your demands known because the press is all there.  You go where the press is.

“What do you say, Jill?”

DR. JILL STEIN:  “Yes, definitely.  This is where the American people are.  This is what we demand.  Over three-quarters of the American people are saying:  It’s time to open up the debates.  We have rejected these two candidates at the highest levels of disapproval in our history.

“What’s wrong with this picture?  You know, what’s wrong with this picture is that Americans not only have a right to vote, we have a right to know who we can vote for.  It’s time to override this fraud being committed on the American voter of the two-party tyranny, of this private corporation, of the Commission on Presidential Debates.  We the voters demand the right to be in charge here, to be informed, to be empowered.

“And let me add that, at this moment, we are seeing before our very eyes a political realignment.  We’ve seen the Republican Party come apart at the seam with Donald Trump taking the remnants over the cliff.  We’ve seen the basic foundation of the Republican Party move into the Democratic Party inside of Hillary’s campaign.

“And you have endorsements, everyone from Meg Whitman to the neocon John Negroponte and others, who are all saying, you know:  We’re with Hillary now.  So, we’ve got a big happy, one corporate family now uniting the corporate Democrats and the corporate Republicans.  The people of integrity inside the Bernie campaign have split off and are unifying with the Greens.

“So, this is actually a transformative political moment.  That realignment, that has been in the works here for quite some time.  It has to be.”

DR. RALPH NADER:  “As I was saying, half a democracy is showing up and people have got, not only, to agree with this agenda, some of these third party listeners, they’ve got to show up.  People have got to show up, showing up at meetings, rallies, marches, city council, courtrooms.  You’ve got to show up.

“We have a Democratic Party, that cannot defend the American people from the worst Republican Party in history because it’s a Democratic Party of war and Wall Street.  And we have two parties, who are basically hijacking our country for their corporate paymasters.

“And, if we focus on 535 members of Congress—that’s not all that many—we’re going to see a fast turnaround.  So, focus all your concerns, all the information, the kind of agenda the Green Party has, turn it right on your Senators and Representatives.

“So, I want to ask—Steve, Steve, wants to ask a question of Jill.”

STEVE SKROVAN:  “Dr. Stein, talk a little bit about your vice presidential running mate Ajamu Baraka.  Who is he?  And how does he compliment you, as a candidate?”

DR. JILL STEIN:  “Great.  So, Ajamu Baraka is a human rights advocate and an international human rights advocate, who’s been defending racial justice, economic justice, worker justice, indigenous justice, and justice for black and brown people all over the world, and, in the United States, has been helping to lead the charge against the death penalty here, and is an extremely eloquent and empowering person.  And one of the great things about running with him is that we speak to all of America.

“He comes out of the tradition of the African-American intellectuals, the people who’ve really been standing up for African-American rights and economic rights and workers rights.  And, because he speaks in the language of his community, and makes no bones about it, he really invites in a whole new demographic of voters who have been locked out—African-American and black and brown people and indigenous people—who have felt like this system has no place for them.  And he is unapologetic about standing up for the rights of the oppressed people and against colonialism and against imperialism.  And he’s very inspirational.

“And it is so much fun to be out there on the campaign trail with him because who comes out is totally different from anything I have seen before in progressive campaigns because he is so empowering and inspiring.”

DR. RALPH NADER:  “When I’ve heard him, he talks in a very calm voice, too.  He talks in a very steady, calm voice, full of facts.”  [11]

[End of transcript segment, which comes to us from William Brighenti, the “Barefoot Accountant“, as it was cut out of the KPFA broadcast, apparently to make room for fundraising pitching.  Resume KPFA broadcast transcript.] (c. 42:50)

“Now, as we close, Jill Stein, the presidential candidate for the Green Party, tell our listeners how they can get to read your agenda, how they can get to your website.  And say it slowly and twice.”

DR. JILL STEIN:  “Okay.  So, again, the website is Jill2016.com.  That’s Jill2016.com.  And our social media is DrJillStein and that’s D-R, no period, D-R-Jill-Stein, all one word.  And you can see our media appearances as well as connect to our Power to the People agenda, our Green New Deal, our plan to abolish student debt, and our plan to, actually, create a whole new foreign policy based on international law and human rights.

“That means we don’t supply $100 billion dollars worth of weapons to the war criminals in Saudi Arabia, nor do we supply $8 million dollars a day to the Israeli army, that is also violating international law and human rights.  So, there are real solutions right now for us.  If we stand up with the courage of our convictions, there is no stopping us.

“So, join the team.  Come out to Hofstra, again, on September 26 [2016].  And let’s begin to take our democracy back.  We are in the target hairs in this election.  We are all asking whether we are going to have a world at all or not going forward.

“If we are going to save our hides, we need to start with democracy.  Democracy needs to start with an open presidential debate.  So, come on out.  And let’s take back the promise of our democracy.”  (c. 44:48)

DR. JILL STEIN:  I had a taped interview [with Judy Woodruff of PBS], which was approximately six or seven minutes long.  And it was actually posted—I think it was live-streamed, in fact—on Facebook.  And, then, it was played on the News Hour that night.  And some of our astute watchdog supporters compared the two.  And they discovered that some of my most important statements critiquing Hillary Clinton […] was cut out, and also my discussion about the Trans-Pacific Partnership […].

DR. RALPH NADER:  “And, listeners, you can call your local newspaper, your local TV, radio station, say why aren’t they putting third-party candidates on.  Call NPR.  Call PBS.  Why aren’t they putting third-party candidates on?”

“You had an experience recently with Judy Woodruff of PBS.  Can you explain that to our listeners?  This is the Public Broadcasting System, Judy Woodruff on the News Hour.”

DR. JILL STEIN:  “That’s right.  I had a taped interview which was approximately six or seven minutes long.  And it was actually posted—I think it was live-streamed, in fact—on Facebook.  And, then, it was played on the News Hour that night.

“And some of our astute watchdog supporters compared the two.  And they discovered that some of my most important statements critiquing Hillary Clinton and why she is not going to save our hides, whether it was her war policy or for shipping our jobs overseas with NAFTA, her history of dismantling the social safety net and supporting the destruction of aid to families with dependent children, putting millions more children and families in poverty.  You know, I told some hard truths about Hillary Clinton and why the lesser evil is not okay, that, apparently, my discussion of Hillary Clinton was cut out and also my discussion about the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and why it is an absolute betrayal of our democratic sovereignty and why it must be stopped, and why anybody supporting the Trans-Pacific Partnership is, essentially, betraying the basic principles of democracy.

“So, those two discussions were cut out of the PBS broadcast, which essentially took the teeth out of it.  So, yeah, I think PBS needs to have us on again for a longer segment, in fact, so that we can tell the whole truth.”  (c. 46:49)

[KPFA broadcast of Ralph Nader Radio Hour is interrupted here, as Mitch Jeserich cuts in to appeal for listener support for free speech radio KPFA]  [12] (c. 50:03)

DR. RALPH NADER:  “What’s interesting is this election year has made the citizen groups off-limits.  All these citizen groups—local, state, national—that really do things and improve the country, they’re never asked to be in these electoral campaign discussions.  It’s all these pundits, all these consultants, and the candidates, as if they’re in a bubble leaving democracy off-limits.

“Now, you campaign around the country, Jill Stein.  You connect with local issues.  You connect with local citizen groups, don’t you?”

DR. JILL STEIN:  “Oh, absolutely.  And, you know, we’re not out holding fundraisers in the Hamptons or in Beverly Hills.  My running mate, Ajamu Baraka, was out camping out with the homeless in Baltimore last night.  We were both recently at the Standing Rock Sioux encampment, where, in fact, we are both now, a warrant is out for our arrest for participating in civil disobedience to support this very critical stand being taken on behalf of our water, on behalf of human rights, on behalf of our climate.

“We were out there with the people, whose homes were flooded out in Southern Louisiana.  We are out there on the front line with everyday people fighting the real frontline battle, that real Americans are fighting.

“And let me support what you just said, Ralph, about everyday Americans really having the power here.  People may remember, or you may have heard, if you weren’t there during the Nixon years, we had one of the worst presidents ever on record.  But, we, the American people, have the sense of our own power.  We were in the driver’s seat.  We forced Richard Nixon and the Congress who established—and thanks to your leadership, Ralph.  We supported you; and we got the Environmental Protection Act and Agency.  We ended the war in Vietnam, and brought the troops home.  We got OSHA established with your leadership.  We got the Supreme Court.  We pressured the Supreme Court into supporting a woman’s right to choose.

“So, there should be just no end to what we can do when we operate with the courage of our convictions and we get out there in the street, in the voting booth, we assert our power and we take our democracy back.

“And I’m getting the sign now from my campaign, that we are about to run into our next event here at the University of Maine in Orono.  So, I will have to bid you adieu.  But it has been really wonderful and inspiring as always talking with you, Ralph, and you.  Steve and I just so greatly appreciate, in fact, I give you credit or perhaps the blame for my candidacy.

“From the very start, you have been the inspiration to me to get involved with politics, someone who was not politically active for the first 50 years of my life.  I think, for the next 50 years, I’m not going to be able to stop because of the light, that you shine for me and so many millions of Americans.  You may have been ahead of the curve, but the curve is catching up to you, Ralph Nader, right now in a big way.  Well, we can’t thank you enough.”

DR. RALPH NADER:  “Well, thank you very much, Dr. Jill Stein.  We’ve been talking with the Green Party Presidential candidate.  She is at Orono, Maine, as we record this interview.  And she’ll be at Hofstra on Monday, September 26 for the big first Presidential debate.  And we’re looking for a huge peaceful protest when the eyes of the mass media are focused on that location.  Thank you very much, Jill Stein.”

DR. JILL STEIN:  “Thank you so much, Ralph. Take care, all the best.”

STEVE SKROVAN:  “We have been speaking with Green Party Presidential candidate, Jill Stein.  For more information on her candidacy, go to Jill2016.com.  We will also link to it on the Ralph Nader Radio Hour website.” 

[SNIP] (c. 59:59)

Learn more at RALPH NADER RADIO HOUR.

***

[1]  On Dr. Ralph Nader’s professional title:  Dr. Nader holds a Bachelor of Arts from Princeton (1955) and an LL.B., or Bachelor of Laws, from Harvard University (1958), which is equivalent to a J.D., or Juris Doctor professional doctorate.

Many law schools converted their basic law degree programmes from LL.B. to J.D. in the 1960s, and permitted prior LL.B. graduates to retroactively receive the new doctorate degrees by returning their LL.B. in exchange for a J.D. degree.  (Evidently, Dr. Nader was too modest to ask to exchange his Bachelor of Laws for a Juris Doctor degree.  But we’ll emphasise the equivalency of Dr. Nader’s credentials with other professional doctorates.  Dr. Nader is just as much a Doctor of Law as any other attorney, or just as Dr. Jill Stein is a Doctor of Medicine.)

Yale graduates who received LL.B. degrees prior to 1971 were similarly permitted to change their degree to a J.D., although many did not take the option, retaining their LL.B. degrees.

[2]  Terrestrial radio transmission, 94.1 FM (KPFA, Berkeley, CA) with online simulcast and digital archiving:  The Ralph Nader Radio Hour, this one-hour broadcast hosted by Ralph Nader, Monday, 19 SEP 2016, 11:00 PDT.

Summary from KPFA.org archive page:

“We are joined this week by Green Party presidential candidate, Dr. Jill Stein,who talks with Ralph about Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, third parties, the media, the TPP, the Presidential debates, and much, much more!”

UPDATE—[21 SEP 2016]  This broadcast featuring Dr. Jill Stein was rebroadcast:

  • Fund Drive Special, Tuesday, 20 SEP 2016, 19:00 PDT.

[3]  I got through transcribing a portion of this transcript, which is no small task, when I realised that the combination of Dr. Ralph Nader interviewing Dr. Jill Stein about her 2016 presidential campaign might just be popular enough to have inspired some other kindhearted soul out there to have transcribed at least some of this broadcast.  And, lo and behold, William Brighenti, the “Barefoot Accountant”, has done us all a great service by roughly transcribing this historic broadcast (or having it transcribed).

This gave us at Lumpenproletariat a great boost in our transcription process.  But we still went through the entire broadcast and cleaned up and edited and verified the transcription as per our usual transcription style, including enriched text with embedded links to aid in learning, comprehension, and to encourage deeper analysis and study of the content.

[4]  Even KPFA’s Mitch Jeserich on Letters and Politics seemed to reduce, or truncate, Dr. Stein’s responses to mere soundbites, such as, for example, on 18 AUG 2016.

[5]  On this point of public works programmes and the goal of full employment, not to mention the Fight For 15 activism, of which Dr. Ralph Nader spoke, which drove many people to Bernie Sanders’ campaign, it’s important to point out that two of your author’s former UMKC economics professors actually went on the campaign trail with Bernie Sanders:  Dr. Stephanie Kelton and Dr. William K. Black.

Dr. Kelton was then Chair of the Economics Department at the University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC), one of the few heterodox economics departments in the United States, when your author took lectures (circa 2014) on intermediate macroeconomic analysis with Dr. Stephanie Kelton (as well as auditing some of her graduate level lectures).  Dr. Kelton went on to be hired by Senator Bernie Sanders to work as Chief Economist in the Senate Minority Budget Committee.  Then, when Sanders ran for the Democratic Party nomination for the U.S. Presidency, Dr. Kelton continued on as a chief economist in Bernie Sanders primary campaign.  Dr. William K. Black also joined the Sanders campaign team, providing his expertise in law and economics.

Dr. Stephanie Kelton, Dr. William K. Black, and Messina. Most Fridays at UMKC featured economics seminars, which often invited economists from around the world to speak at UMKC. Then we would often have dinner gatherings afterwards, such as this one.

Dr. Stephanie Kelton, Dr. William K. Black, and then-econ-undergrad Messina. Most Fridays, our UMKC Econ Club featured economics seminars, which often invited economists from around the world to speak at UMKC. Then we would often have dinner gatherings afterwards, such as this one.

This was all very exciting for us coming out of UMKC and the world of heterodox economics because of the radical policy proposals UMKC economics has been proposing for years, including modern monetary theory (MMT, or modern money theory) and the Job Guarantee Programme (or ELR programme, Employer of Last Resort).

We hear a lot of talk across the political spectrum about the need for jobs and to combat poverty.  Yet, amazingly, somehow, perhaps due to cowardice, Bernie Sanders never once—as far as we know—mentioned MMT or the Job Guarantee programme.  Basically, Sanders could have gone on the campaign trail and promoted the Job Guarantee programme, which can literally end involuntary unemployment immediately.  Then, Sanders could have easily defeated Hillary Clinton in the primary.  Even without including MMT and the Job Guarantee programme, Sanders could have contested Hillary Clinton’s primary election violations.  But Sanders seems to have sold out, or have been intimidated into conceding to Hillary Clinton, because after Sanders was called into the principal’s office and sat down behind closed doors with President Obama, he shifted gears to conceding to Hillary Clinton and endorsing her without qualification.  That doesn’t even make sense, unless he was seriously compromised in some way, either through fear or intimidation.

And, now, Dr. Jill Stein has continued on the campaign trail and talking about jobs.  But it’s a shame that, somehow, the world remains in the dark about MMT and the fact that we could literally end involuntary unemployment today.  I’ve also emailed various programmers at KPFA about this.  But none of them have responded.  Actually, Mitch Jeserich replied once, but only to say that he didn’t know much about macroeconomics, but that he would ‘look into it’.

It’s somewhat ironic, now, that Politico.com has published their list of 50 most influential people with Bernie Sanders in the #1 spot and Dr. Stephanie Kelton in the #44 spot.  I guess it doesn’t reflect negatively on Dr. Kelton that Bernie Sanders refused to inform the American people about MMT or how sovereign monetary systems work or how the USA’s sovereign monetary system means the state can afford to spend without fiscal constraints.  The only constraints are real resource constraints.

Modern money theory (MMT), as taught at heterodox economics departments, such as at the University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC), proves that the USA’s state monetary system can afford to spend for public purpose because it is the sovereign currency issuer of its own currency, namely the US dollar.  Also, the fact that the US dollar is a major international reserve currency further buttresses the USA’s monetary sovereignty.

Essentially, the USA can afford to spend without fiscal constraints.  The only government spending constraints are real resource constraints, as Dr. Kelton often says.

“MMT emphasises the relationship between the state’s power over its money and its power to do things, real things, to conduct policy in an unconstrained way.  It emphasises that the state, because of its power over money, has a form of power to command resources in the economy.”  —Dr. Stephanie Kelton 

“The ‘Angry Birds’ Approach to Understanding Deficits in the Modern Economy” presented by Dr. Stephanie Kelton at the Student Union Theatre, University of Missouri-Kansas City on 19 NOV 2014

[6]  Point of information:  CNN hosted a 2016 Presidential Town Hall Featuring the Green Party’s presidential candidate Dr. Jill Stein and vice presidential candidate Ajamu Baraka.

[7]  MITCH JESERICH:  (c. 23:19)  “And Ralph Nader would know.  His office is just down the street from the United States Congress on Capitol Hill.  [SNIP]”

[8]  Most economists agree that the next economic bubble to burst and devastate the American economy is the looming student debt bubble.

[9]  MITCH JESERICH:  (c. 39:29)

[10]  MITCH JESERICH:  (c. 46:49)

  • (c. 50:02)  Mitch Jeserich and/or Quincy McCoy cut back to the section, which they previously cut out above.  This time, skipping the critique of Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party and jumping to a safe and tepid question by co-host Steve Skrovan about identifying Dr. Jill Stein’s vice presidential running mate. Ajamu Baraka.
  • (c. 51:55)  Mitch Jeserich and/or Quincy McCoy

***

[Ralph Nader Radio Hour image via KPFA.org.]

[Dr. Jill Stein image with quotation by Flickr user Democracy Chronicles.]

[19 SEP 2016]

[Last modified  10:24 PDT  22 SEP 2016]

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The Nation: Jill Stein Should Be Part of a 4-Way Presidential Debate

19 Fri Aug 2016

Posted by ztnh in Democracy Deferred, Free Speech, Presidential Election 2016

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Chris Hedges Mdiv (b. 1956), Dr. Jill Stein, Green Party, John Nichols (b. 1959), ranked-choice voting, The Nation

rigged 2016LUMPENPROLETARIAT—The Nation is the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the United States, and the most widely read weekly journal of progressive (or liberal) political and cultural news, opinion, and analysis.  John Nichols is their current Washington, D.C. correspondent.  Among other things, Nichols is a familiar voice in liberal and progressive media, and is often featured on free speech radio KPFA, and throughout the Pacifica Radio Network.  It’s interesting, however, that the usually Democrat-leaning Nichols, has actually called for opening up the 2016 presidential debates. [1]

In an article for The Nation, John Nichols argued for political diversity, pointing out the importance (and fairness) of including all presidential candidates who have national ballot access, such as the Green Party’s Dr. Jill Stein and Ajamu Baraka.  This message is not one we usually associate with the politically liberal John Nichols.  But, of course, for someone who calls himself a progressive, such as Nichols does, to not point out the obvious antidemocratic nature of a two-party system begins to strain credibility.  And, unfortunately, Nichols cannot resist perpetuating the spoiler vote meme, nor apologising for the anti-democratic fear-based decision-making, which succumbs to fearmongering about a Trump presidency.  Candidates outside the two-party cartel, such as in the Green Party, make clear that it’s important to vote one’s conscience now, not tomorrow.  The Green Party states:  It’s important to vote Green in blue (and red) states.  You don’t have to vote for Hillary to defeat Trump. [2]  About voting based on fear of a spoiler vote or a Trump presidency, Nichols writes:

“There is nothing wrong with this discussion; it is entirely reasonable, for instance, for progressives who are frightened by Trump’s candidacy to urge voters to support Clinton as the strongest alternative to an extremist Republican.”

Vote_12345Nichols attempts to qualify this “reasonable” perspective by emphasising to his audience that the “United States needs a broader politics”.  But this seems insincere because he avoids any specifics.  Nichols chose not to mention ranked-choice voting (also known as instant run-off voting).  He doesn’t mention proportional representation in Congress, nor public financing of elections, nor many important electoral solutions, which have been abandoned or ignored.  Nichols doesn’t expose the electoral fraud being perpetrated against the American people, as the League of Women Voters has complained, when they refused to go along with the political theatre being staged by the Commission On Presidential Debates, an antidemocratic creature of the Democratic and Republican parties.  And Nichols perpetuated the flawed status quo ideology of voting for the lesser of two evils.  Dr. Jill Stein, for example, has made strong arguments for deepening our democracy in these areas, which have historically functioned to prevent alternative political parties from participating meaningfully in our political process.  Nichols provides us with a nice headline, but digging deeper into his writing (or sophistry), we find much of the same old anti-democratic two-party thinking.

It’s good that Nichols has called for opening up the 2016 presidential election debates.  But it’s only a footnote to a body of presidential election analysis from a liberal perspective, mainly framed in a conventional two-party framework, in much the same way as done by Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! and the SaveKPFA faction at free speech radio KPFA.

Messina

***

THE NATION—[19 AUG 2016]  Jill Stein Should Be Part of a 4-Way Presidential Debate

John Nichols

After the Republicans and Democrats finished their conventions in late July, the Green Party gathered this month to nominate Dr. Jill Stein for the presidency. Stein’s campaign—with her party on ballot lines in the majority of states, and her poll numbers surging ahead of Green numbers from recent presidential elections—has the potential to be a breakthrough bid for the Greens, and for a more robust democracy.

Stein recognized the prospect in an optimistic yet urgent acceptance speech in which she spoke of “unstoppable momentum for transformational change.” The candidate who talks of ushering in a “Green New Deal” told the Green Party Convention that the party has “an historic opportunity, an historic responsibility to be the agents of that change. As Martin Luther King said, ‘the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.’ I know that arc is bending in us, and through us. And we are actors in something much bigger than us as we struggle for justice, for peace, for community, for healing.”

Stein’s appeal drew an enthusiastic response from her supporters, and she gained a good deal of media attention.

But there are no guarantees that her candidacy will succeed—along with that of Libertarian Gary Johnson—in clearing the way for the more diverse and competitive multi-party politics that is common in other countries but relatively rare in the recent history of the United States.

For that to happen, supporters of the Green nominee, as well as progressives who will be inclined to back Democrat Hillary Clinton in order to block the candidacy of Republican Donald Trump but who still want a broader debate, will have to advocate for something that is rare in presidential politics: fair play.

[snip]

Learn more at THE NATION.

***

[1]  Perhaps, Mr. Nichols is finally coming around to realising (or to building the courage to admit) the antidemocratic nature of the political cartelisation of our democratic process by a two-party system.  Perhaps, Nichols may finally reject the two-party system this year, or by 2020, after he sees what a mess the two party-dictatorship will have made after the 2016 elections.  That would be nice because it would represent an improved level of intellectual honesty for The Nation, which has historically engaged in Democratic Party apologism.  Even if Nichols became an outspoken supporter of third-party politics, the predominant editorial slant at The Nation would likely continue to be Democrat-leaning.  But we gotta call it like we see it.  Nichols wrote sympathetically in prose, which evokes some degree of emotion.  But he chooses not to apply the full rigour of his intellectual abilities when it comes to intellectually rocking the boat of electoral politics in the United States.  This is what we call holding back.

As Dr. David Ray Griffin has asked regarding intellectual dishonesty around analyses of the crimes of 9/11:  Why do Bill Moyers and Robert Parry accept miracles?  Dr. Griffin pointed out how courageous and clear some public intellectuals are on certain issues, but then uncharacteristically weak on other, more controversial, issues, such as the crimes of 9/11 or the facts, which evidence our democratic process as rigged.  Of course, this disparity in intellectual rigour, as applied to more or less controversial issues, smacks of intellectual dishonesty.

Your author recalls how frustrating it was to see such fine thinkers and intellectuals consistently fall for the lesser of two evils scam during past election cycles.  For example, we may recall back in 2008 (perhaps also 2012), when progressives, such as Chris Hedges, were backing then-Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, despite knowing full well the horrible political track record of the Democratic Party.  We could say the same thing about Dr. Cornel West.  They were both once on the wrong side of history.  Another example, is Hillary Clinton apologist Dr. Michael Eric Dyson.  He is still cashing in his access to the White House inner sanctum, at the expense of making political arguments, which will tarnish his legacy as an intellectual.  Fortunately, Chris Hedges and Dr. Cornel West have finally come out against the Democratic Party, as an anti-progressive and anti-working class party.  May Nichols, and other such liberals, finally come to see the light as well.

[2]  See Green Voter Guide (Green Party 2016 Election voter guide, page 3):

It’s Important to Vote Green in Blue (and Red) States (or Why You Don’t Have to Vote for Hillary to Defeat Trumplethinskin)

“We can list all the reasons people are told to silence themselves and vote for a lesser evil candidate: . . . jobs going overseas, the climate meltdown, expanding wars . . . Look around. This is exactly what we’ve gotten, much of it under a Democratic White House. The lesser evil … merely paves the way to the greater evil.”

– Interview with Dr. Jill Stein, “Thinking and voting outside the two-party box,” Socialist Worker, May 9, 2016 https://socialistworker.org/

Despite the consequences of lesser-of-two-evils voting, many are persuaded by the admonition to not “waste their vote” on a Third Party — this time, the “practical” urgency of defeating Donald Trump must override the principle of voting one’s conscience. But whatever its merits, the logic of the “spoiler effect” does not apply in California.

In California, we live in a deep blue state. This means that statewide, the vote is overwhelmingly likely to go to a Democrat. Our state is so blue that the only two choices in the Senate race are Democrats. California’s Electoral College votes are awarded as “winner-take all.” This means that effectively we don’t have a say in who wins the presidency. If Hillary wins the state by one vote, or ten million, she gets every Electoral College vote.

You may ask, “In this close election, what if Drumpf von Clownface wins the state?” Remember that California won’t be voting in a vacuum: if he can even get close to winning California, Trump will overwhelmingly carry the major “battleground,” or “swing” states in the East.

But, you may ask: “Don’t we have to vote for The Hillary to stop The Donkey of the Decade?” Not if you live in a deep blue or deep red state. It might be a question worthy of discussion in the battleground states, but not here. In deep blue or deep red states, you are free to vote for someone you believe in, not just the “lesser of two evils.”

And if millions of Bernie supporters and others, vote for Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein, it will signal to the new Democratic administration that the political revolution Bernie’s voters started is far from over. The more votes Jill gets, the more powerful the signal.

Whether or not you choose to vote for Jill Stein, you can exert powerful political pressure by registering with the Green Party. The Green Party, like Bernie Sanders, rejects corporate money, and the Green platform has all the good stuff the Bernie folks couldn’t get the Democrats to accept, and more. In addition to the policy statement registering Green makes, it also plants a progressive flag for candidates and just plain folks wishing to organize using the voter registration rolls. You may not get as much junk mail before the next election, but the quality will be much better.

***

[2 NOV 2016]

[Last modified 19:15 PDT  3 NOV 2016]

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