November 22 and 23, 2016

News and Views


WHERE ARE THE DEMOCRATS?


https://www.laprogressive.com/clinton-deplorables/

Hillary’s Deplorables Struck Back
BY ROBERT M. NELSON
POSTED ON NOVEMBER 21, 2016

I am a longtime Pasadena grassroots Democrat. I saw firsthand the Clintons’ rise and fall.

In 1988, Pasadena voters selected me to be a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in Atlanta. I was one of many who supported Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition — a multiracial, working class coalition advancing peace and economic justice during mediocre economic times. In Atlanta, a young Bill Clinton was being pushed by Wall Street as “the future of the party.” He gave an unimpressive long-winded speech. Clinton argued that free trade was the solution. If we imported cheap goods, manufactured overseas under deplorable working conditions, costs would be reduced for American consumers.

In 1988, the Democrats nominated Michael Dukakis for president. Dukakis had misgivings about Clinton’s free trade ideas. American jobs were threatened. The Dukakis campaign was a disaster, best remembered by Dukakis riding around with his head bobbing out of a tank — a poor attempt at dog whistling to Wall Street’s military industrial complex.

Nevertheless, Dukakis’ tanks would be made in the USA. Wall Street deserted Dukakis. Free trade advocate George H.W. Bush was elected overwhelmingly.

In 1992, Pasadena Democrats again selected me as one of their delegates to their national convention in New York. I was a delegate for Jerry Brown, an anti-Wall Street candidate. Brown opposed Clinton and his North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Clinton won the nomination and became president in a three-way race against Ross Perot and Incumbent President Bush.

Progressive efforts to ensure the rights of American working people were spurned at the New York convention. During Clinton’s presidency NAFTA was passed. Millions of industrial jobs were deported. The wages of American workers declined. Hillary Clinton later joined the board of directors of Walmart, the place where cheap imports are sold.

To add insult to injury, Bill Clinton teamed up with Newt Gingrich to pass legislation that threw poor people off of welfare.

George W. Bush was elected in 2000. Jobs continued to leave. More cheap goods appeared on the shelves of local Walmart stores. Ultimately, unemployed working families, with no welfare checks, were unable to afford the cheap goods. This kindled the economic crash of 2008.

Democrats celebrated the election of Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012. Jobs kept leaving. At the behest of Wall Street, Obama oversaw the negotiation of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) — NAFTA on steroids, as critics call it. Yet Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called TPP the “gold standard” of trade deals.

To Obama’s credit, he did something Clinton was unable to do. He created compulsory health care coverage, backed by federal subsidies for those unable to afford bloated insurance premiums. Obamacare’s relief was not enough to offset the growing class cleavage. The children of parents savaged by NAFTA were only able to get educations by running up a huge student debt. Public universities that had once been tuition free jacked up tuition, passing the burden to students. After graduation, the students found few jobs available. The minimum wage remained stagnant at $7.25 percent hour. An underclass was growing.

In 2016, Democratic Socialist Bernie Sanders called the bluff of the Wall Street Democrats. He challenged Hillary Clinton for the presidential nomination. Sanders called for a $15 per hour minimum wage, universal tuition-free higher education and Medicare for all. He opposed TPP. Pasadena Democrats selected me a third time as a delegate to their national convention in Philadelphia supporting Sanders.

Sanders attracted significant support, gathering 45 percent of the delegates. Mrs. Clinton flip-flopped and opposed TPP. With the help of some shenanigans from Mrs. Clinton’s “good friends” Debbie Wasserman Shultz, Democratic National Committee chair, and DNC member Donna Brazile, Mrs. Clinton engineered her nomination.

Still, she refused to support a $15 per hour minimum wage, which, nevertheless, became a plank in the Democratic platform.

Donald Trump successfully responded to the 2016 economic crisis. He opposed TPP. He proposed massive infrastructure programs like Hitler’s autobahns along with high speed rail systems like those of Mussolini who made Italian trains run on time. Many working-class supporters of Sanders responded to Trump’s appeal, hoping that infrastructure projects would create jobs. Mrs. Clinton called them “deplorables.”

As a “good Democrat,” I supported my party’s nominee, Mrs. Clinton. I encouraged local Sanders supporters to volunteer at the United Democratic Headquarters in Pasadena. I did this fully aware that I am descended from people Mrs. Clinton called “deplorable.” My family was devastated by the Great Depression. My parents survived on public relief programs. They never went to college. I still hoped for the best.

On Election Day voters in Iowa, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Ohio changed the landscape.

We Democrats had three fair warnings: Jesse Jackson, Jerry Brown and Bernie Sanders. The Wall Street Democrats did not listen.

Goldman Sachs Democrats, are you listening?

Robert M. Nelson
Pasadena Weekly



EXCERPT -- “We Democrats had three fair warnings: Jesse Jackson, Jerry Brown and Bernie Sanders. The Wall Street Democrats did not listen. Goldman Sachs Democrats, are you listening?”


I do hope the Dems will get themselves straightened out and fast. I have a strong feeling that there is not enough scientific knowledge involved in the “science” of economics, and especially for predictive purposes or for selective and truly effective set of solutions, therefore we need to do some common sense things like FDR did. He wasn’t following a well-laid plan, but boldly tried several things, some of which worked better than others. I think the infrastructure plan (as Trump is now proposing again) was one of the best things because what poor people need is work first and foremost. Why those intelligent Dems and Republicans didn’t know that if the factory is not in the US, our people won’t get to work there, causing angst and real suffering among those who, due to no fault of their own, are already poor to Middle Class, tops. What really scares me is that the Middle Class was hit so hard in 2008 that they are dwindling in number, and not because they are getting richer, either.

I hope they will pay attention to Sanders and the other Progressives and ditch those who care more about their Wall Street masters than about our ever increasing “underclass.” We need a new FDR again to get this country moving in the right direction. I have hopes that Sanders and some others in the legislature can give a large and continuous push to really bring back jobs, rather than just promising it.

On surveys, Pew and others love to ask “Do you think America is going in the right direction?” Well, first that can mean darn near anything. That sometimes leads pollsters to say that we want “change.” That, too, can mean anything, and I definitely don’t want just any kind of change. It would be more interesting and helpful if they would ask some open-ended questions like “What do you think should be done,” give a sizable list of actions for us to pick from, and allow us more than the usual limit of the top three choices. There are usually at least 6 to 10 that I want to see change in.

Town meetings are traditionally popular in the Northern states, but I have never heard of any being held here in Florida. Maybe I just haven’t been paying attention. They could do it with a local political leader like a mayor instead of someone important and famous, so we could have regular and frequent meetings to discuss issues. I used to be in a Women’s Liberation Consciousness Raising group and it was stimulating, exciting, and educational. We need, as voters, to get our political blood moving up to our brains again. We are almost dead as active citizens go. We are moving farther and farther away from a participatory democracy/republic and I’m afraid we may have ground almost to a halt now.




GOLDMAN SACHS DEMOCRATS

https://theintercept.com/2016/10/11/warren-goldman-dccc/

UNOFFICIAL _SOURCES
Memo Shows What Major Donors Like Goldman Sachs Want From Democratic Party
Lee Fang, Zaid Jilani
October 11 2016, 12:14 p.m.

WALL STREET DONORS have used their financial relationship with the Democratic Party to complain bitterly about Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s, D-Mass., influence over the direction of the party, a new fundraising document reveals. At one point, the Democratic lawmaker in charge of raising cash for House Democrats attempted to reassure donors by pointing to a news story claiming that Warren does not speak for the party.

The document, a fundraising summary compiled by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, provides a window into the relationship between the Democrats and major interest group donors. The party held meetings with donors such as Goldman Sachs and General Electric and carefully compiled their concerns, even when they whined about core progressive goals. It’s an awesome example of how money greases the wheels of Washington, D.C.

The notes were compiled on behalf of Rep. Ben Ray Luján, D-N.M., the chair of the DCCC, providing a summary of his fundraising meetings with various corporate and union donors. The DCCC did not respond to a request for comment.

The nine-page document was found in a cache of files published last week by “Guccifer 2.0,” the anonymous hacker who has been accused by the Department of Homeland Security of having ties to the Russian government.

Goldman Sachs lobbyists Michael Paese and Joyce Brayboy complained to Luján that his party’s “rhetoric is problematic” and that they “don’t like Warren’s messaging,” a reference to populist Sen. Elizabeth Warren. Brayboy was a so-called “superdelegate” and at-large member of the Democratic National Committee. Warren, notably, has pushed her party to take a more aggressive stance on regulating the financial industry and prosecuting Wall Street crimes criminally.

The lobbyists’ access was likely influenced by significant contributions to the DCCC. In the 2014 election cycle, the Goldman Sachs PAC gave the DCCC $30,000; in 2016, it gave $20,000.

Similar concerns were brought to the DCCC by lobbyists for the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, a trade group that represents Goldman Sachs, Fidelity, Charles Schwab & Co., and other large financial companies. SIFMA lobbyists were “upset around messaging demonizing Wall Street,” the document notes.

Like Goldman Sachs, SIFMA lobbyists complained about Warren’s influence. In response, Luján referenced a news article about House Democratic Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi, declaring that Warren did not speak on behalf of the party — something the financial industry lobbyists saw as “an encouraging sign.” But the lobbyists warned that the attacks on the financial sector were creating “a larger problem when people don’t trust banks and financial institutions.”

The financial services trade group also raised concerns with the Department of Labor’s Fiduciary Rule, which prevents financial advisors from making retirement advice based on kickbacks from retirement funds. A vote earlier this year on legislation to obstruct the rule, proposed by House Republicans and supported by SIFMA, came down on party lines, with all Democrats opposing the effort.

SIFMA was not quite yet ready to give money to the DCCC “in large part due to messaging,” but offered to do “literacy events” with House Democrats. Indeed, campaign disclosures show that SIFMA’s political action committee donated to the committee supporting House Republicans this year, but not the DCCC. In the 2014 election cycle, they gave $30,000 to the DCCC.

General Electric was far more supportive than the banks, offering tips on tactics, campaign technology, and strategy around electing more Southern and pro-business Democrats. But the notes make clear that GE’s donations to the party would be influenced by lawmakers’ votes.

GE, the document notes, “gave $400,000 to House Dems last cycle, but they are facing headwinds this cycle.” Listed under the “headwinds” are an array of GE policy concerns, including the renewal of the Export-Import Bank, the repeal of the Affordable Care Act’s medical device tax, and changes regarding the Medicare reimbursement formula. The meeting, notably, was conducted not only with GE lobbyists, but also with Betsy Tower, the manager in charge of the company’s political action committee. GE’s PAC gave the DCCC $30,000 in 2014 and $20,000 this cycle.

The Laborers International Union of North America, the union for construction workers, warned that they were with Republicans supporting a “total repeal” of health reform, and that they were concerned about Democratic hostility towards the Keystone XL pipeline. The union gave $30,000 to the DCCC in 2014 and $15,000 in this election cycle.

Other union meetings were more friendly and supportive of a broader progressive agenda. A briefing with Service Employees International Union president Mary Kay Henry and political director Brandon Davis went over the need to organize communities of color, tying get-out-the-vote efforts to support for increasing the minimum wage, and other strategic imperatives. The SEIU gave $30,000 to the DCCC in the 2014 cycle and $15,000 so far in this cycle.

Lobbyists for the hospital industry similarly offered support, and thanked Democrats for help passing legislation to change Medicare reimbursement rates. The hospital industry also spoke to Luján about contingency efforts around the Supreme Court’s King v. Burwell, a case over whether the Affordable Care Act gave appropriate authority to the federal government to set up insurance exchanges and provide subsidies. The discussion suggests the document was authored in the months before June 25, 2015, when the court upheld the exchanges. The American Hospital Association gave $30,000 to the DCCC during the 2014 cycle and during the current one.

In a separate file, whose metadata suggests it was authored by a DCCC fundraising official, instructs Luján to congratulate Rick Pollack, the newly appointed head of the American Hospital Association. The note reminds Luján that he “met with Rick on April 13th when AHA made their $15,000 contribution to the DCCC for the year.”

The DCCC has raised $144 million so far this year, according to recent disclosures. The party committee raises the cash through frequent solicitations to small donors, but also through large donations made by wealthy individuals, lobbyists, and interest group representatives.

Top photo: Rep. Ben Ray Luján speaks as, from left, House Minority Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi, Rep. Steve Israel, and Rep. Donna Edwards listen during a news conference to announce new members of the House Democratic leadership team on Nov. 17, 2014.




https://www.laprogressive.com/trump-disaster/

Moving On from a Disaster
BY JOHN PEELER
POSTED ON NOVEMBER 20, 2016

Pushing aside the shattered remnants of firewalls and foolish assumptions, we survivors emerge to survey the wreckage. The Republican victory was, paradoxically, both narrow and sweeping. Trump won by carrying most of the swing states by very narrow margins, the Congress still has (smaller) Republican majorities, the GOP actually gained in governorships and state legislatures. All this in spite of the fact that the Democrats actually won more votes, in both the presidential race and those down-ballot.

Hillary Clinton was a flawed and tragic candidate. Among the best-qualified presidential candidates in history, she was weighed down by a generation of Republican character assassination, only abetted by her own errors of judgment such as the infamous private email server. She could never escape the doubts about her character, could never go on the offensive against a highly vulnerable Donald Trump. After being torpedoed by the New York office of the FBI at the last moment, she could not recover even when cleared. Undecided voters in the final week went overwhelmingly to Trump and tipped an election she should have won.

There is no excuse for the Democrats’ failure to recapture the Senate, given the huge imbalance in the numbers of seats the two parties had to defend. We should have won both Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, we could have won Florida, North Carolina and Ohio. Such an opportunity will not soon return.

Most essentially, we need to continue to stand for the diverse and inclusive society we believe in, for a vigorous and sophisticated response to the threat of global warming, for diplomacy before force in foreign policy.

As to the House and the state legislatures, the disaster of 2010 looms large as it allowed comprehensive, systematic gerrymandering that gives the GOP a lock on those chambers, until such time as Republican malfeasance reaches such massive dimensions that even their own partisans will vote them out. Wait for it, but don’t count on it.

So the Republicans can pretty much have their way. How should Democrats and progressives respond? Most essentially, we need to continue to stand for the diverse and inclusive society we believe in, for a vigorous and sophisticated response to the threat of global warming, for diplomacy before force in foreign policy.

We must continually focus on the complete, undiluted GOP responsibility for whatever bad things happen. We can allow them no excuses, no shifting of blame. They own it. In particular, Trump (“I alone can fix it!”) owns it.

During the campaign, Trump trumpeted Hillary’s alleged corruption with devastating effect. Now he must be held to those standards. What about conflicts of interest between his official duties and his businesses? How can it be credible that his children will be put in charge of his various enterprises? How can this not be a conflict of interest? How will his official decisions enrich Trump enterprises? What sorts of commitments has he made with foreign governments (particularly Russia)? What coordination was there between his campaign and the Russian hacking of the Democrats? There is an enormous record of self-serving dishonesty here that should be a fertile field for investigative journalism and aggressive questioning by members of Congress.


The Democrats in the Senate still have tools to delay and even block legislation, tools Republicans were happy to use when they were in the minority. Democrats should use those tools to the hilt. If they push the Republican leadership to change the rules to get rid of those tools, to make the Senate a majoritarian body, that will serve the long-term interests of democracy, even if in the short run it lets them pass legislation that Democrats oppose.

While it is the duty of the Opposition to oppose, we must also build a positive agenda aimed at rebuilding a society that will be much the worse for wear after the Trump years. Economic inequality will only have gotten worse: we need to keep pounding on that and rejecting Trump’s recycled trickle-down strategy that’s failed twice before (Reagan and Bush II).

But we also must rethink what has been fundamental to liberals and progressives for decades: the need for targeted benefits for racial and ethnic minorities. While we see the great civil rights laws of the 1960s as culmination of the New Deal, many working class whites see reverse discrimination. We must reframe the problem as opposing discrimination and assuring equal opportunity for all. We should not continue to drive a wedge between whites and minorities, when both face similar problems and both need a chance to succeed.

Trump’s hostility to trade pacts reflects the fact that they have been negotiated primarily in consultation with big business and without effective labor input. But by picking fights with our trading partners, he will likely provoke a global recession. We should be in position to offer a new approach to trade agreements that prioritizes labor rights and penalizes the sort of plant closures that have undermined popular support for previous agreements like NAFTA.

By the time we are done with Trump, the environmental crisis will be increasingly evident, and there will be more support for the kind of rational policies that he will reject, such as shifting to renewable energy. So we should keep advocating for those policies, making sure Trump and Republicans are shackled to their own environmental failures.

Trump will directly assault the rights of women and the LGBTQ community. Roe v. Wade will probably be overruled by a Trump-dominated Supreme Court, shifting the issue back to the states. The Anti-Choice crowd would then attack freedom of choice at the state level. The doctrine that freedom of religion gives businesses the right to deny services to gays, could well be enshrined in law. We must then be ready to fight on these fronts as well.

Thus a progressive alternative to Trump will have to combine reaffirmation of much of our current stance, with some basic rethinking about how we frame discrimination and opportunity, the better to enable us to reach out to a critical Trump constituency.

John Peeler



EXCERPT -- “How should Democrats and progressives respond? Most essentially, we need to continue to stand for the diverse and inclusive society we believe in, for a vigorous and sophisticated response to the threat of global warming, for diplomacy before force in foreign policy. We must continually focus on the complete, undiluted GOP responsibility for whatever bad things happen. We can allow them no excuses, no shifting of blame. They own it. In particular, Trump (“I alone can fix it!”) owns it.”


Peeler says we have to “keep the faith,” and bulldog the Republicans on what they do wrong or aren’t doing that should be done, unremittingly. Stand up for our natural friends, the poor and Middle Class. Let’s hope that Trump actually does make useful progress, like the infrastructure projects. What I saw mentioned was a Texas rapid transit rail project, but I would like to see bridges and highways all over the country. I haven’t forgotten the bridge up North, in Minnesota maybe, that simply fell down with hundreds of cars on it due to lack of repair.

We humans think we’re very smart, but to me we often seem, as my father used to say, “half smart.” A technological achievement like a large bridge must be physically maintained. There is a smaller one in Jacksonville right now that had one of the lanes fall down into the water, and the road has been closed for something approaching a year with nothing being done. There is plenty of work we can put people to doing in many places across the country, not just one big megaproject like Trump likes to start. JOBS, JOBS, JOBS!




https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/obama-grants-79-more-commutations-to-federal-inmates-pushing-the-total-past-1000/2016/11/22/1c7b5710-b0db-11e6-840f-e3ebab6bcdd3_story.html?pushid=breaking-news_1479841415&tid=notifi_push_breaking-news

National Security
Obama grants 79 more commutations to federal inmates, pushing the total past 1,000
By Sari Horwitz
November 22 at 2:00 PM

Photograph – President Obama pauses as he speaks at the El Reno Federal Correctional Institution


President Obama granted commutations to another 79 federal drug offenders Tuesday, pushing the number of inmates he has granted clemency to past 1,000.

Obama’s historic number of commutations was announced as administration officials are moving quickly to rule on all the pending clemency applications from inmates before the end of the year. The Trump administration is not expected to keep in place Obama’s initiative to provide relief to non-violent drug offenders.

“The President’s gracious act of mercy today with his latest round of commutations is encouraging,” said Brittany Byrd, a Texas attorney who has represented several inmates who have received clemency since Obama’s initiative began in 2014. “He is taking historic steps under his groundbreaking clemency initiative to show the power of mercy and belief in redemption. Three hundred and forty two men and women were set to die in prison. The President literally saved their lives.”

[How a first crack cocaine offense led to a life sentence]

The White House and the Justice Department were criticized by sentencing reform advocates earlier this year for moving too slowly in granting commutations to inmates serving harsh sentences who met the criteria for clemency. The administration has greatly picked up the pace, but advocates still want them to move faster before time runs out.

“At the risk of sounding ungrateful, we say, “thanks, but please hurry,” said Kevin Ring, vice president of Families Against Mandatory Minimums. “We know there are thousands more who received outdated and excessive mandatory sentences and we think they all deserve to have their petitions considered before the president leaves office. Petitioners are starting to get anxious because they know the president is, in prison parlance, a short-timer.”

Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates said in a conference call with reporters Tuesday that the Justice Dept will continue to recommend more commutations through the end of the Obama administration.


Photograph and Bio --

Sari Horwitz Verified account
@SariHorwitz

Sari Horwitz covers the Justice Department for The Washington Post. Co-author of Finding Chandra and Sniper. Find my bio and stories: http://wapo.st/sarihorwitz

Washington, DC



EXCERPT -- “Kevin Ring, vice president of Families Against Mandatory Minimums. “We know there are thousands more who received outdated and excessive mandatory sentences and we think they all deserve to have their petitions considered before the president leaves office.”


When the issue is drugs, especially crack cocaine, the move for a mandatory minimum is strong, but when it’s rape or worse, the sexual assault of a child, it is often shockingly light. There is a different set of scales for crimes of human abuse than for things that are probably seen as “law and order” issues. As for crack cocaine, though, it is often pointed out that crack is almost always consumed by a Black person, and there could be a racial issue in this.



HOW TO DITCH AN UNSATIFACTORY PRESIDENT IN FRANCE

https://fee.org/articles/5-things-you-should-know-about-the-french-presidential-elections/?utm_medium=push&utm_source=push_notification

5 Things You Should Know About The French Presidential Elections
Bill Wirtz
Tuesday, November 22, 2016

The Republicans might nominate a candidate running on slashing government spending

On Sunday, the French Republican party held the first round of its open primary, in which 7 candidates competed for the nomination. The polls predicted that the mayor of Bordeaux, Alain Juppé, an establishment centre-right candidate with a great appreciation for the European Union, would be the clear winner, with former president Nicolas Sarkozy right on his tail. In a stunning upset, Sarkozy's former Prime Minister, François Fillon, won 44.1% of the vote, while Alain Juppé finished second with 28.6%.

In the latest poll, only 4% of people regarded the work of the incumbent socialist president François Hollande as "satisfying."

The upset is not only that an alleged outsider turned out to qualify for the knockout vote next Sunday, whereby disproving pollsters and political commentators, but also that this candidate's proposals advocate a much smaller government. François Fillon wants to get rid of 500,000 public sector jobs in five years, lower the burdens of taxation and social security contributions by €50 billion and reduce spending by €100 billion. Fillon also intends to considerably increase school autonomy and wants to scrap François Hollande's tax on large incomes.

But let's not get too excited. Fillon's spending cuts distract from the fact that he supports a 2% increase in sales tax, encourages the War on Drugs, suggests an annual cap on immigration through parliament, wants to ban the burkini, and wants to reintroduce mandatory sentencing in criminal law cases. François Fillon was Sarkozy's prime minister from 2007 to 2012, a time period characterized by tax increases and the massive 2008 bank bailout.

2. François Hollande could be overthrown by his own party

In the latest poll, only 4% of people regarded the work of the incumbent socialist president François Hollande as "satisfying." With ratings lower than the alcohol percentage of a bottle of Bordeaux red wine, Hollande brought him and his party in serious trouble. Current polls show that Hollande would be eliminated by the first round in the general election, dividing his fellow party members.

It is usual in France that the incumbent president goes unchallenged in his leadership for the next election, yet Hollande unpopularity lead the Socialist Party last June to organise a primary. Hollande's chief rivals in this race are his own Prime Minister Manuel Valls, and his former minister of the Economy, Arnaud Montebourg, known for his Keynesian approach to government spending. According to polls, both of them would defeat the president in the primary vote in January.

3. Yes, Marine Le Pen has a clear chance of winning

She's probably by far the biggest elephant in the room. Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right National Front, has made such a jump in popularity that her party did not even bother to organize a primary. Opinion polls show that she could easily make it to the knockout round, bringing her as close to the presidency as her father Jean-Marie Le Pen in 2002.

Infighting among the various political groups favors the rise of the extreme nationalists.

There effectively is no room for improvement for Marine Le Pen, no change of message would make her climb the ladder of favorability. Her political agenda is on the table: halting immigration, leaving the euro and the European Union as well as introducing old-school protectionism. The only factor that can advance Le Pen and the National Front are the variables of her political opponents. The knockout of Nicolas Sarkozy in Sunday's Republican primary means an influx of the more radical supporters of the former president. As Le Figaro titles on Monday: "The National Front hopes to pick up Sarkozy's orphans".

The under-performance of the Socialist Party will be Le Pen's most important asset. Her economic agenda is highly interventionist and at odds with both the more laissez-faire approach of François Fillon and the convictions of the europhile Alain Juppé.

Infighting among the various political groups favors the rise of the extreme nationalists.

4. An independent free-marketeer is polling in double digits

Emmanuel Macron, former minister of the Economy, quit the socialist government and is now running as an independent candidate. He is widely known for the Macron Law (officially: Law for growth, effectiveness and equality of economic opportunities). This law contained a myriad of changes to legislation regarding Economic law, Labor law and Transport law. Macron opened up the intercity bus market, a measure that created competition on the market, lowered transportation costs and created 13,000 private sector jobs. Furthermore, there was the reform of labor regulations regarding work on Sundays: Macron not only extended the exceptions made to allow businesses to open on Sundays, but also increased the total number of permits granted by local authorities. Another measure intended to induce flexibility into the profession of notaries, most importantly through creating 247 zones so-called "free establishment zones" throughout France, in which notaries don't have to be sworn in by the government and can freely exercise their profession. This basically liberalizes the notary market and brings down costs for consumers.

GDP per capita has not increased between 2007 and 2015.

Macron is currently polling in double digits, drawing his supports from all sides of the political spectrum.

5. The tipping point for the country is here

National security is extremely important to the French right now, as several Islamic terrorists have committed horrible attacks resulting in hundreds of deaths. GDP per capita has not increased between 2007 and 2015. Although multiple administrations have promised to combat unemployment, the unemployment rate has yet to drop under 10% and an alarming number of unemployed people havn't worked since the economic crisis of 2008. Reimbursement of the interest on public debt is two-thirds of the national education budget, and terrifyingly close to 100% of GDP. Deficit spending is out of control and entitlement reform seems unlikely due to the immense political influence of the unions.

France is at a crucial juncture and there is no doubt that the consequences of this election will last for decades.

Bill Wirtz

Bill Wirtz studies French Law at the University of Lorraine in Nancy, France.



“fee.org” is an interesting website with thought-provoking articles. They aren’t as “politically correct” as I would like, which is a problem in that no one should be mistreated. Libertarians are what I call “free thinkers,” which I am as well, and whose company I enjoy. My favorite people have been gentle free thinkers.

Fee.org is a libertarian group, and they are interesting if not always people I approve of or like. My favorite is Bill Maher, who is no longer claiming to be a Libertarian. A very interesting article from fee.org is below, talking frankly about a range of Libertarians, some of whom are called “Humanitarians,” and others are called “Brutalists.”

Tucker’s description of the Brutalists sounds quite a lot like some of the Trump following, the “Militias” and the Sovereign Citizen groups that are trying to take over in some mainly rural or very small town areas. They don’t strike me as being insane or unintelligent, but they are “quirky.” At any rate, though they do tend to be socially liberal, they are economically very conservative. Personally, I’m sticking with Bernie Sanders for now. He’s quirky and imaginative, but a really decent person who does not abuse anyone for no good reason.



https://fee.org/articles/against-libertarian-brutalism/

Against Libertarian Brutalism
Jeffrey Tucker
Wednesday, March 12, 2014

Why should we favor human liberty over a social order ruled by power? In providing the answer, I would suggest that libertarians can generally be divided into two camps: humanitarians and brutalists.

The humanitarians are drawn to reasons such as the following. Liberty allows peaceful human cooperation. It inspires the creative service of others. It keeps violence at bay. It allows for capital formation and prosperity. It protects human rights of all against invasion. It allows human associations of all sorts to flourish on their own terms. It socializes people with rewards toward getting along rather than tearing each other apart, and leads to a world in which people are valued as ends in themselves rather than fodder in the central plan.

We know all of this from history and experience. These are all great reasons to love liberty.

But they are not the only reasons that people support liberty. There is a segment of the population of self-described libertarians—described here as brutalists—who find all the above rather boring, broad, and excessively humanitarian. To them, what’s impressive about liberty is that it allows people to assert their individual preferences, to form homogeneous tribes, to work out their biases in action, to ostracize people based on “politically incorrect” standards, to hate to their heart’s content so long as no violence is used as a means, to shout down people based on their demographics or political opinions, to be openly racist and sexist, to exclude and isolate and be generally malcontented with modernity, and to reject civil standards of values and etiquette in favor of antisocial norms.

These two impulses are radically different. The first values the social peace that emerges from freedom, while the second values the freedom to reject cooperation in favor of gut-level prejudice. The first wants to reduce the role of power and privilege in the world, while the second wants the freedom to assert power and privilege within the strict confines of private property rights and the freedom to disassociate.

To be sure, liberty does allow both the humanitarian and the brutalist perspective, as implausible as that might seem. Liberty is large and expansive and asserts no particular social end as the one and only way. Within the framework of liberty, there is the freedom to love and to hate. At the same time, they constitute very different ways of looking at the world—one liberal in the classical sense and one illiberal in every sense—and it is good to consider that before you, as a libertarian, find yourself allied with people who are missing the main point of the liberal idea.

Humanitarianism we understand. It seeks the well-being of the human person and the flourishing of society in all its complexity. Libertarian humanitarianism sees the best means to achieve this as the self-ordering social system itself, unimpeded by external controls through the violent means of the State. The goal here is essentially benevolent, and the means by which it is achieved put a premium on social peace, free association, mutually beneficial exchange, the organic development of institutions, and the beauty of life itself.

What is brutalism? The term is mostly associated with an architectural style of the 1950s through the 1970s, one that emphasized large concrete structures unrefined by concerns over style and grace. Inelegance is its main thrust and its primary source of pride. Brutalism heralded the lack of pretense and the raw practicality of the building’s use. The building was supposed to be strong not pretty, aggressive not fussy, imposing and not subtle.

Brutalism in architecture was an affectation, one that emerged from a theory robbed of context. It was a style adopted with conscious precision. It believed it was forcing us to look at unadorned realities, an apparatus barren of distractions, in order to make a didactic point. This point was not only aesthetic but also ethical: It rejected beauty on principle. To beautify is to compromise, distract, and ruin the purity of the cause. It follows that brutalism rejected the need for commercial appeal and discarded issues of presentation and marketing; these issues, in the brutalist framework, shield our eyes from the radical core.

Brutalism asserted that a building should be no more and no less than what it is supposed to be in order to fulfill its function. It asserted the right to be ugly, which is precisely why the style was most popular among governments around the world, and why brutalist forms are today seen as eyesores all over the world.

We look back and wonder where these monstrosities came from, and we are amazed to discover that they were born of a theory that rejected beauty, presentation, and adornment as a matter of principle. The architects imagined that they were showing us something we would otherwise be reluctant to face. You can only really appreciate the results of brutalism, however, if you have already bought into the theory and believe in it. Otherwise, absent the extremist and fundamentalist ideology, the building comes across as terrifying and threatening.

By analogy, what is ideological brutalism? It strips down the theory to its rawest and most fundamental parts and pushes the application of those parts to the foreground. It tests the limits of the idea by tossing out the finesse, the refinements, the grace, the decency, the accoutrements. It cares nothing for the larger cause of civility and the beauty of results. It is only interested in the pure functionality of the parts. It dares anyone to question the overall look and feel of the ideological apparatus, and shouts down people who do so as being insufficiently devoted to the core of the theory, which itself is asserted without context or regard for aesthetics.

Not every argument for raw principle and stripped-down analytics is inherently brutalist; the core truth of brutalism is that we need to reduce in order to see the roots, we need sometimes to face difficult truth, and we need to be shocked and sometimes to shock with seemingly implausible or uncomfortable implications of an idea. Brutalism goes much further: the idea that the argument should stop there and go no further, and to elaborate, qualify, adorn, nuance, admit uncertainty, or broaden beyond gritty assertion amounts to a sell out or a corruption of purity. Brutalism is relentless and unabashed in its refusal to get beyond the most primitive postulates.

Brutalism can appear in many ideological guises. Bolshevism and Nazism are both obvious examples: Class and race become the only metric driving politics to the exclusion of every other consideration. In modern democracy, partisan politics tends toward brutalism insofar as it asserts party control as the only relevant concern. Religious fundamentalism is yet another obvious form.

In the libertarian world, however, brutalism is rooted in the pure theory of the rights of individuals to live their values whatever they may be. The core truth is there and indisputable, but the application is made raw to push a point. Thus do the brutalists assert the right to be racist, the right to be a misogynist, the right to hate Jews or foreigners, the right to ignore civil standards of social engagement, the right to be uncivilized, to be rude and crude. It is all permissible and even meritorious because embracing what is awful can constitute a kind of test. After all, what is liberty if not the right to be a boor?

These kinds of arguments make the libertarian humanitarians deeply uncomfortable since they are narrowly true as regards pure theory but miss the bigger point of human liberty, which is not to make the world more divided and miserable but to enable human flourishing in peace and prosperity. Just as we want architecture to please the eye and reflect the drama and elegance of the human ideal, so too a theory of the social order should provide a framework for a life well lived and communities of association that permit its members to flourish.

The brutalists are technically correct that liberty also protects the right to be a complete jerk and the right to hate, but such impulses do not flow from the long history of the liberal idea. As regards race and sex, for example, the liberation of women and minority populations from arbitrary rule has been a great achievement of this tradition. To continue to assert the right to turn back the clock in your private and commercial life gives an impression of the ideology that is uprooted from this history, as if these victories for human dignity have nothing whatever to do with the ideological needs of today.

Brutalism is more than a stripped-down, antimodern, and gutted version of the original libertarianism. It is also a style of argumentation and an approach to rhetorical engagement. As with architecture, it rejects marketing, the commercial ethos, and the idea of “selling” a worldview. Liberty must be accepted or rejected based entirely on its most reduced form. Thus is it quick to pounce, denounce, and declare victory. It detects compromise everywhere. It loves nothing more than to ferret it out. It has no patience for subtlety of exposition much less the nuances of the circumstances of time and place. It sees only raw truth and clings to it as the one and only truth to the exclusion of all other truth.

Brutalism rejects subtlety and finds no exceptions of circumstance to its universal theory. The theory applies regardless of time, place, or culture. There can be no room for modification or even discovery of new information that might change the way the theory is applied. Brutalism is a closed system of thought in which all relevant information is already known, and the manner in which the theory is applied is presumed to be a given part of the theoretical apparatus. Even difficult areas such as family law, criminal restitution, rights in ideas, liability for trespass, and other areas subject to case-by-case juridical tradition become part of an a priori apparatus that admits no exceptions or emendations.

And because brutalism is the outlying impulse in the libertarian world—young people are no longer interested in this whole approach—it behaves the way we’ve come to expect from seriously marginal groups. Asserting the rights and even the merits of racism and hate, it is already excluded from mainstream conversation about public life. The only people who truly listen to brutalist arguments, which are uncompelling by design, are other libertarians. For that reason, brutalism is driven ever more toward extreme factionalism; attacking the humanitarians for attempting to beautify the message becomes a full-time occupation.

In the course of this factionalism, the brutalists of course assert that they are the only true believers in liberty because only they have the stomach and the brass necessary to take libertarian logic to its most extreme end and deal with the results. But it is not bravery or intellectual rigor at work here. Their idea of libertarianism is reductionist, truncated, unthoughtful, uncolored and uncorrected by the unfolding of human experience, and forgets the larger historical and social context in which liberty lives.

So let’s say you have a town that is taken over by a fundamentalist sect that excludes all peoples not of the faith, forces women into burka-like clothing, imposes a theocratic legal code, and ostracizes gays and lesbians. You might say that everyone is there voluntarily, but, even so, there is no liberalism present in this social arrangement at all. The brutalists will be on the front lines to defend such a microtyranny on grounds of decentralization, rights of property, and the right to discriminate and exclude—completely dismissing the larger picture here that, after all, people’s core aspirations to live a full and free life are being denied on a daily basis.

Further, the brutalist believes that he already knows the results of human liberty, and they often conform to the throne-and-altar impulses of times past. After all, in their view, liberty means the unleashing of all the basest impulses of human nature that they believe the modern state has suppressed: the desire to abide in racial and religious homogeneity, the moral permanency of patriarchy, the revulsion against homosexuality, and so on. What most people regard as modernity’s advances against prejudice, the brutalists regard as imposed exceptions from the long history of humanity’s tribalist and religiously based instincts.

Of course, the brutalist as I’ve described him is an ideal type, probably not fully personified in any particular thinker. But the brutalist impulse is everywhere in evidence, especially on social media. It is a tendency of thought with predictable positions and biases. It is a main source for racist, sexist, homophobic, and anti-Semitic strains within the libertarian world—at once denying that this sentence is true while asserting with equal passion the rights of individuals to hold and act on such views. After all, say the brutalists, what is human liberty without the right to behave in ways that put our most precious sensibilities, and even civilization itself, to the test?

It all comes down to the fundamental motivation behind the support of liberty itself. What is its overarching purpose? What is its dominant historical contribution? What is its future? Here the humanitarians are fundamentally at odds with brutalism.

Truly, we should never neglect the core, never shrink from the difficult implications of the pure theory of liberty. At the same time, the story of liberty and its future is not only about the raw assertion of rights but also about grace, aesthetics, beauty, complexity, service to others, community, the gradual emergence of cultural norms, and the spontaneous development of extended orders of commercial and private relationships. Freedom is what gives life to the human imagination and enables the working out of love as it extends from our most benevolent and highest longings.

An ideology robbed of its accoutrements, on the other hand, can become an eyesore, just as with a large concrete monstrosity built decades ago, imposed on an urban landscape, embarrassing to everyone, now only awaiting demolition. Will libertarianism be brutalist or humanitarian? Everyone needs to decide.

Jeffrey Tucker

Jeffrey Tucker is Director of Content for the Foundation for Economic Education and CLO of the startup Liberty.me. Author of five books, and many thousands of articles, he speaks at FEE summer seminars and other events. His latest book is Bit by Bit: How P2P Is Freeing the World. Follow on Twitter and Like on Facebook. Email. Tweets by @jeffreyatucker.

You can download his books in epub format for free here:
A Beautiful Anarchy
It's a Jetson's World
Bourbon for Breakfast
Liberty.me: Freedom Is a Do-It-Yourself Project
Bit by Bit: How Peer-to-Peer Technology Is Freeing the World





VIEW VIDEO

http://www.msnbc.com/the-last-word/watch/david-duke-attacks-dem-senator-over-trump-win-811038275748

Video -- Sen. Barbara Boxer and the rising profile of the alt-right. Duration: 3:49
11/16/16
David Duke attacks Dem senator over Trump win
Lawrence talks to Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, about David Duke’s latest attack on Jewish



THE SHADOW – DEEPAK CHOPRA

Message body
Here is the article: Sharing Dr Chopra's analysis posted in June of this year


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/deepak-chopra/americas-shadow-the-real-_b_10319848.html

America's Shadow: The Real Secret of Donald J. Trump
In SF Gate,Politics - On June 6, 2016

Deepak Chopra
CoAuthor, ‘Super Genes’; Founder, The Chopra Foundation

By Deepak Chopra, MD

There's a powerful way to explain the rise of Donald Trump that most commentators have missed entirely or undervalued. The standard line describes Trump as a bizarre anomaly. Beginning as an improbable celebrity candidate, he has defied all the conventional rules of politics, which should have been fatal. Instead Trump has swept all before him on the Republican side. Possessing a "genius" for grabbing the limelight, he continues to dominate the scene in ways no previous politician ever has in modern times--so the conventional view goes.

But in reality Trump isn't bizarre or anomalous. He stands for something universal, something right before our eyes. It's an aspect of the human psyche that we feel embarrassed and ashamed of, which makes it our collective secret. Going back a century in the field of depth psychology, the secret side of human nature acquired a special name: the shadow.

The shadow compounds all the dark impulses--hatred, aggression, sadism, selfishness, jealousy, resentment, sexual transgression--that are hidden out of sight. The name originated with Carl Jung, but its basic origin came from Freud's insight that our psyches are dualistic, sharply divided between the conscious and unconscious. The rise of civilization is a tribute to how well we obey our conscious mind and suppress our unconscious side. But what hides in the shadows will out.

When it does, societies that look well-ordered and rational, fair and just, cultured and refined, suddenly erupt in horrible displays of everything they are not about: violence, prejudice, chaos, and ungovernable irrationality. In fact, the tragic irony is that the worst eruptions of the shadow occur in societies that on the surface have the least to worry about. This explains why all of Europe, at the height of settled, civilized behavior, threw itself into the inferno of World War I.

If Trump is the latest expression of the shadow, he isn't a bizarre anomaly, which would be true if normal, rational values are your only standard of measure. Turn the coin over, making the unconscious your standard of measure, and he is absolutely typical. When the shadow breaks out, what's wrong is right. Being transgressive feels like a relief, because suddenly the collective psyche can gambol in forbidden fields. When Trump indulges in rampant bad behavior and at the same time says to his riotous audiences, "This is fun, isn't it?" he's expressing in public our ashamed impulse to stop obeying the rules.

But the fun of world War I, which almost gleefully sent young men off to fight, quickly turned to horror, and the shadow closed an insidious trap. Once released, it is very hard to force the shadow back into its underground bunker. The Republican party has kept the shadow on a slow simmer for decades, ever since Nixon discovered how to make hay form Southern racism, law-and-order aggression against minorities, and us-versus-them attitudes to the Vietnam anti-war movement. In order to make themselves feel unashamed, the good people on the right found figureheads after Nixon who exuded respectability. The irony is that as with civilized societies that seem the least likely to allow the shadow to run free, the more benign a Reagan or Bush acted, the stronger the shadow became behind the facade.

Trump has stripped away the facade, intoxicated by the "fun" of letting his demons run and discovering to his surprise (much as Nixon did) that millions of people roared with approval. Yet by comparison, Nixon retained relative control over the forces he unleashed, while Trump may be riding a tiger--that part of the story has yet to play itself out.

If the shadow refuses to go back underground, which is always the case, what outcomes can we anticipate over the next six months? The present situation finds us trapped between denial and disaster. Denial is when you ignore the shadow; disaster is when you totally surrender to it. Without being at either extreme, right now many Americans feel the unsettling symptom of being out of control. Trump glorifies being out of control, and until this outbreak runs its course--which no one can predict--he will remain immune to all the normal constraints.

What to do in the meantime? A few things come to mind.

1. See Trumpism for what it is, a confrontation with the shadow.
2. Instead of demonizing him, acknowledge that the shadow is in everyone and always has been.
3. At the same time, realize that the shadow never wins in the end.
4. Find every opening to reinforce the value of returning to right and reason in your own life.
5. Don't fight the shadow with the shadow, which means not stooping to play by Trump's nihilistic rules--he will always be willing to go lower than you are willing to go.

America has been fortunate in our ability to let off steam and recognize that we have demons. In the Great Depression bank robbers became folk heroes, but nobody suggested electing Bonnie and Clyde president. The rational constraints that allow for human evolution have been successful for millennia, as the higher brain became dominant over the lower brain. That dominance still holds good, no matter how close we flirt with the primitive areas of the mind. Trump represents something authentic in human nature, and in troubled times he's the bad boy who becomes a folk hero. No one can predict if his Wrong=Right stance will carry him to the White House. The contest with our own shadow isn't over yet.



“We have met the enemy and he is us.” Pogo, Walt Kelly. http://www.bpib.com/kelly.htm