Yes. I do see where this is going. While it is of little comfort,
you are not alone.
Cathy and I each receive a pension from our years of Civil Service.
We each also receive Social Security Benefits. In addition, we earn
extra money through our rehab program. That money is also Federal
Funds. Back in 2006, sensing that times were headed for the cellar,
we withdrew our money that was mostly in the money market, and bought
property in a community near Port Townsend. We invested $108
thousand. Within two years our investment had earned us minus $48
thousand. It seemed like a bad decision, but in fact many of our
friends lost that much and more, through property devaluation of their
homes. And at least what we had left was a decent piece of property
that was ours, free and clear, while our friends still were making
huge monthly payments. We've been offered as much as $80 thousand for
it. It would be hard enough even if our bank had shared the loss with
us, but no, they did not seem prepared to do that.
The fact is, our nation is now, and has always been in the hands of a
very small, but very powerful group. None of them have lost, even any
where close to the percentage of our loss. And yet, when the huge
bailout trillions of dollars comes due, it will be us, the working
class Americans who will be expected to pay it back.
It's the old Carny game, now you see it and now you don't.
So the fact is, to my way of thinking, we're going to be ripped off
and then be forced to repay the very money that was ripped off from
us. Does it matter if the giuy...or the gal...sitting at the Helm of
our Ship of State is lying to us, or smiling at us? Either way, we
are the losers. Our place is to simply provide the resources the
Ruling Class decides it wants.
Carl Jarvis
On 3/25/20, miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I would like to believe that those negative human practices can be
eliminated. Some practices? Yes, that has been done. But natural impulses?
Having just finished listening to Richard Wolff explain what this economic
downturn is really about, I'm scared to death. Sometimes, for people whose
minds work like mine does, we need people who explain things in simple,
concrete terms. He explained, and now I understand how my whole income could
be wiped out, depending on how bad things get. But it all started with
investment firms and then, pension funds. There are people who were state
employees and now get pensions from state pension funds to which they
contributed for years. If the investment companies are in bad enough shape,
they won't be able to pay those pensions which depend on investments in the
stock market. One piece of my modest annual income is approximately $5,000
which was Fred's paltry pension from Helen Keller Services when he died in
1986. It comes from John Hancock and depends on their investments. Several
years ago, they sent me something, probably around 2008, explaining that
things were a bit risky. I really didn't understand what I was reading. But
whatever it was, nothing bad happened. But I can see the handwriting on the
wall. Most of my income comes from municipal bonds and they depend on the
fiscal health of various state entities. Do you see where this is going?
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Wednesday, March 25, 2020 5:28 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: The Demise of Bernie Sanders
And, as the old song said, "You gotta accent the positive, eliminate the
negative, latch onto the affirmative, and don't mess with mister in
between".
Of course the question could be, how much has been a change of Communism or
Socialism or Capitalism, and how much is due to how these forms have been
presented to us?
As a child, the history books always presented the USA as a democratic
Republic, or just as a Republic. But in truth it has always been an
Oligarchy.
Of course that Oligarchy has modified. What was originally a government of
White Males, mostly owners of vast lands and great individual wealth, has
been modified to include a smattering of non whites, a number of women, and
corporate persons.
But the Private Club has been maintained down trhrough the IUnion's history.
Just as violant and ruthless as it was when the first colony was settled.
Some insist that it is "Human Nature". Perhaps, but it's a Human Nature
that carried over from those old, Survival of the Fittest days, and like
other human practices it can be modified and even eliminated.
Anyway, Capitalism, along with our definitions of all other social systems,
only changes as the mixture of those in power changes.
Carl Jarvis
On 3/25/20, miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Carl,
That's true. And what is most depressing, is that if you take any
model, given human nature, the ideal which might have influenced that
model to begin with, will most probably be degraded. The capitalism
that we have now is not the model that we learned about in school. The
socialism that we've seen practiced in Russia, China, even Cuba, is
not how Communism is supposed to work according to Marx. The state is
supposed to wither away. But given circumstances and human nature, it
never did. Or, look at the Catholic Church. I know the Church is not
something that either of us aspire to, but think about how it's
supposed to work, and then think about all those priests molesting
children. So when you talk about how the working class should rise up
and prevent politicians and corporations from stealing from it, it's
important to remember that the working class is composed of human
beings with the same capacity for good and evil as the wealthy elites or
the church hierarchy.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Wednesday, March 25, 2020 4:02 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: The Demise of Bernie Sanders
Miriam,
Understood. But in agreeing that it does make a difference in who is
in office, it is only a slight difference within the allowed boundaries.
Bernie Sanders, while no Radical, was too Progressive for the
Establishment to accept. Like Ralph Nader or Henry Wallace, the
Ruling Class felt threatened. Joe Biden does not threaten the Ruling
Class. In fact, the Ruling Class has worked very well with Joe, as vice
president.
The Working Class has allowed itself to be reduced to the level of
on-lookers. Organized Labor has been thoroughly trashed and either
bought off, or ignored. While some resistance still flares up, for
the most part only the public employees unions still have any backbone.
So while the people elected do have some impact on my and my family's
well being, the USA continues unchecked on it's slide toward Third World
Status.
Carl Jarvis
On 3/25/20, miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Carl,
I think that you're saying that Bernie Sanders was never a Communist.
He most certainly was a member of the working class because his
parents were working class people living in Brooklyn. He was a
supporter of socialist governments throughout the world, as a young
man. He never formally joined the Democratic party and remains an
Independent to this day. His politics at this time are akin to those
of European Democratic Socialists or of FDR's administration. As for
having a dog in this fight, I think that the appropriate way to
describe that, is that you have no control over the government that
is supposed to represent you and there is no political party with
power in this country, that is representing your interests. But you
and your family certainly will be profoundly affected by which people
are elected to power and by the policies that they put into effect.
It is, (you should excuse the expression), Communist propaganda to
say that it makes no difference who gets elected if the people who
are elected are not socialists. There are differences among
politicians. There are different kinds of Democrats. You can hate the
late stage capitalism that is engulfing us. But to then refuse to see
the differences, to choose something good if it's there, to even
choose the lesser of two evils, is like choosing suicide for the
people you care about. Within the rotten system that we have, it
matters which judges are appointed, what kind of financial assistance
legislation is passed, whether or not abortion clinics are closed,
whose vision for fighting the pandemic, (regardless of how faulty the
competing visions are), is adopted.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Wednesday, March 25, 2020 3:02 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: The Demise of Bernie Sanders
As I've said before, " I don't got no dog in this fight". The
political playing field has always been the property of the
Establishment, and you have to be a member in order to play. While
Bernie Sanders espoused his support for many of the issues near and
dear to the Working Class, he was never a Working Class Socialist.
Still, Bernie might have turned a corner or two, like a poor man's
FDR, but if he goes down, which appears to be where he is headed, and
he tosses his support behind Joe Biden, then his value to the Working
Class is done.
Carl Jarvis, sitting in the bleachers looking at the two teams of the
Establishment, and wondering what it matters as to who wins.
On 3/25/20, Roger Loran Bailey <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
https://socialistaction.org/2020/03/24/the-demise-of-bernie-sanders/
The Demise of Bernie Sanders
Socialist Action / 21 hours ago
(Photo by Scott Eisen/Getty Images)
By JEFF MACKLER
Bernie Sanders, face to face on March 16 with his often-proclaimed
“friend” Joe Biden, could only assert that “Joe,” voted for the 2003
Iraq War. True! Sanders scored a debater’s point that a
well-scripted and lying Biden brushed off in a few words. Sanders left
it at that.
Television debates are rarely meant for historical clarification of
events long past, even if the subject is genocidal war.
Following Biden’s “mistaken” vote, the U.S. imperialist war machine
and its deadly sanctions murdered 1.5 million Iraqis. That, too,
Sanders left unmentioned. Nor did he note that Iraq’s President
Saddam Hussein never had “weapons of mass destruction” that he was
supposedly planning to unleash against the U.S. This demonizing and
manufactured pretext, deployed with the entire corporate media in
tow, was employed to launch the most intensive bombing in world
history.
That the U.S. continues to occupy Iraq today also went unmentioned.
Biden, and indeed all the Democrats’ primary contest contenders,
supported that war which they now proclaim was a “mistake!”
Forgive me, readers, but if I, or any serious antiwar activist had
the opportunity to stand on the world stage at that moment, I/we
would have thoroughly shed Biden’s political blood and pilloried
both of capitalism’s parties of war, death and destruction.
And the Vietnam War that Sanders’ Democratic Party “friends” now
admit was also a “mistake?” Sanders declined to comment, not even to
make a debater’s point. The nature of this “mistake” has never been
seriously examined. Silence largely prevails! In truth, it was the
now undeniable fact that after ten years of genocidal slaughter –
replete with napalm carpet bombing, poison gas, agent orange
defoliation and indiscriminate terror bombing of civilian
populations – the U.S.
government lost! That was the mistake! After murdering four million
Vietnamese and countless tens of thousands of Cambodians, Laotians
and Thais, the imperialist war machine failed to impose U.S. rule. “We”
were forced to withdraw! No apologies for the genocide! The U.S.
lost in Vietnam because the courageous Vietnamese would not cease
their national liberation struggle, because the vast majority – 75
percent of the American people – mobilized for a decade in
unprecedented numbers to demand “U.S. Out Now!” and because a
demoralized U.S.
military felt a greater kinship with the Vietnamese people than they
did with the racist warmakers at home.
Sanders’ list of items to score points against Biden included the
latter’s support for the infamous and racist
mass-incarceration-oriented
1994 crime bill the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act.
The well-coached Biden blithely dodged that debaters point as well
while Sanders declined to drive his point home with an accounting of
the literal millions of poor and oppressed people who have been
herded into the nation’s racist, increasingly for-profit and
privatized prison-industrial complex.
Sanders stands mute on Cuba and Nicaragua
But Sanders silence was not matched by his repeated reference to his
“longtime friend Joe,” to whom he repeatedly pledged his support
should Biden win the Democratic Party nomination, an increasing
certainty at that point in the primaries.
The March 16 televised debate spectacle included Bernie Sanders
failure to counter Joseph Biden’s accusations that Sanders supported
the “authoritarian governments” of Cuba and the Sandinistas of
Nicaragua.
That the U.S. armed and financed the universally hated, corrupt,
Mafia-connected Fulgencio Batista dictatorship was not mentioned.
That revolutionary Cuba, under Fidel Castro, defeated and removed
that government and proceeded to conduct the largest land reform in
the modern era, nationalized capitalist property and used it for the
common good, that Cuba’s literacy campaign and free healthcare for
all system are the envy of the world’s people, were not mentioned by
the “democratic socialist” Bernie Sanders. Biden emerged unscathed
because Sanders accepted his “authoritarian” red-baiting without
question. He stood mute on national television while the imperialist
warmaker and Vice Presidential accomplice in Obama’s seven wars
pilloried him for refusing to denounce Cuba and Nicaragua. Sanders
was lost for words when Biden demanded that he renounce the
revolutions that removed these previous U.S. neo-colonies from
imperialist domination.
That Nicaragua’s U.S.-backed Anastasio Somoza dictatorship murdered
80,000 Nicaraguans in its final months in 1979 went unmentioned by
Sanders. That the U.S. invaded Cuba in 1961, introduced dengue
hemorrhagic fever in 1981, and then swine flu that devastated Cuba’s
pig population, and then a plague that devastated Cuba’s banana
crop, went unmentioned.
Sanders’ claimed longtime friend “Joe,” Obama’s anti-school-bussing,
anti-abortion, warmongering VP, was let off the hook, except for
Sanders’ staccato single-phrase recitation of Biden’s “voting record,”
which the lying Biden denied and the corporate media dismissed as
either irrelevant or long ago superseded by Biden’s more “progressive”
views today. Why dwell in the past?
Democrats and corporate media close ranks
There was no Sanders rage against the iron-disciplined Democratic
Party machine that united to defeat him in 19 of the past 24 primary
contests.
Gone in an instant were the likes of millionaire or billionaire
racists and warmongers Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, Michael
Bloomberg, Tom Steyer and Elizabeth Warren. They had all been thrown
into the orchestrated charade to dilute and undermine Sanders’
potential, only to pull the plug when the time was right to clear
the way for a failing Biden to emerge unimpeded on center stage.
No rage against the kept corporate media that red-baited Sanders at
will in virtually every media outlet across the country. Indeed,
Biden, who repeatedly lied about his record with impunity at every
opportunity – fully cognizant that he had Sanders beaten – extended
the olive branch to his bewildered friend “Bernie,” so they could
unite against Donald Trump.
Said Biden a few days after the debate, “Let me say, especially to
the young voters who have been inspired by Senator Sanders: I hear
you. I know what’s at stake. I know what we have to do. Our goal as
a campaign and my goal as a candidate for president is to unify this
party and then to unify the nation.”
CNN and the New York Times, if not the entire “liberal” media cabal,
similarly switched gears to congratulate “Bernie” for raising
important issues while Sanders repeatedly consoled himself with
remarks to the effect that the trend showed that he had “won the
ideological debate”
while “losing the debate over electability.”
Sanders imminent withdrawal
The 1,991 delegates Sanders needs to win the Democrat’s nomination
at its summer convention are all but out of reach. Biden currently
leads in pledged delegates 1,132 to 817. Sanders’ fundraising
efforts have all but ceased. His aides daily proclaim that he is
“assessing his options.”
Some Sanders’ advisers indicated that he intended to stay in the
race to affect the Democratic Party platform at the national
convention and to continue his “political revolution.” Sanders did
this after losing to Hillary Clinton in the 2016 primary race. The
Democratic Party’s platform, adopted during its convention
proceedings, is worth less than the paper it is printed on. The real
platform of the Democrats, and the Republicans, is decided behind
closed doors by the direct representatives of the 0.1 percent, who
daily hammer out ruling class multi-trillion dollar budgets, trade
agreements, corporate and bank bailouts and imperialist war
strategies. The hodgepodge of delegates who are sequestered in small
rooms during the Democrats’ conventions decide nothing of substance.
Sanders’ chief campaign strategist, Faiz Shakir, stated that
“Sanders is focused on the government response to the coronavirus
outbreak and ensuring that we take care of working people and the most
vulnerable.”
Ever playing the election time game of one-upping your opponent’s
proposals, Sanders is now calling for a $2,000 monthly payment to
every American until the end of the COVID-19 pandemic.” Needless to
say, Biden’s advisers will not be far behind Sanders’ paper
proposals, none of which will see the light of day.
Sanders is no socialist
Media red-baiting notwithstanding Bernie Sanders is not now and has
never been a socialist. During the 2015 primary contests and ever
since he has cast himself in the tradition of Democrat President
Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his “New Deal” politics that had the
effect of saving a failing Depression-era U.S. capitalism rather
than abolishing it. Roosevelt’s social reforms were aimed at
countering the deepening radicalization of U.S. workers, half of
whom were unemployed or barely employed part time. FDR’s limited
social measures notwithstanding, he transformed U.S. industry into a
war machine that had no rival on earth.
With an estimated 60 million dead by the war’s end in 1945 and the
infrastructure of U.S. allies and enemies alike in ruins, the intact
U.S. industrial behemoth emerged as the sole world superpower. Three
quarters of a century later, war production stands at the center of
U.S.
capitalism’s “stability.”
In a 2015 speech, Sanders stated that his politics “builds on what
Franklin Delano Roosevelt said when he fought for guaranteed
economic rights for all Americans.” In truth, the rights that
workers won in the 1930s and beyond emerged from pitched battles
with the boss class aimed at the unionization of capitalism’s major
industries (See:
“Labor’s Giant Step: The First Twenty Years of the CIO: 1936–55” by
Art Preis, Pathfinder Press 1972).
Sanders: “I don’t believe the government should own the means of
production”
Sanders’ 2015 speech continued, “So the next time you hear me
attacked as a socialist, remember this. I don’t believe the
government should own the means of production, but I do believe that
the middle class and working families who produce the wealth of
America deserve a fair deal.
I believe in private companies that thrive and invest and grow in
America instead of shipping jobs and profits overseas.” (For the
full Sanders speech, see:
https://www.vox.com/2015/11/19/9762028/bernie-sanders-democratic-socialism).
Simply put, Sanders, in his own words is no socialist! There is no
socialism in the framework of a capitalist society where an elite
handful of multi-billionaires own and control more wealth than the
combined holding of the majority of the population. Sanders’
so-called democratic socialism consists in his campaign pledge to
tax the wealth of the super-rich at the rate of one percent, and
impose this tax only on their wealth that exceeds $32 million!
Sanders proclaims that under his policy “a married couple with $32.5
million would pay a wealth tax of just $5,000.” Pocket change for
billionaires!! “There will always be billionaires in this country,”
Sanders promises the ruling class.
Sanders’ statement that “private companies that thrive and invest in
America” are welcome as opposed to those that “ship jobs and profits
overseas” is sheer demagoguery. Leaving aside that any
self-respecting capitalist enterprise that “thrives and grows” in
the U.S. or anywhere else in the world, does so at the expense of
its always exploited workers, no serious socialist advocates pitting
foreign workers against U.S. workers. We might add that even when
U.S. corporations return their production to the U.S. it is a
qualitatively new production based on state-of-the-art factories
where robots replace human beings en masse and wages remain at
near-poverty levels.
That’s the nature of the system that Sanders in incapable of
addressing.
The entire complex of today’s globalized capitalism, without
exception, and in the context of ever-sharper and intensified
competition, is compelled to operate with the cheapest labor force
and raw materials obtainable, the least government restrictions and
the resulting highest profit rates possible. Those capitalists that
do otherwise are effectively, if not brutally driven from the
marketplace. These irrefutable fundamentals of capitalist production
everywhere are of no concern to Sanders, for whom the class struggle
is to be subordinated to his dreamlike fantasies where he promises
today’s trade unions that he personally – not a fighting working
class in alliance with the oppressed! – will “double union membership.”
Sanders will tour nation for Biden
Sanders and his “political revolution” are now dead in the water.
His multi-trillion-dollar paper proposals did have the effect of
inspiring a radicalizing generation with bleak future prospects to
question “the system” and to search for solutions that appear to
challenge the status quo. His use of the term “socialism,” however
much his politics have nothing to do with its liberating, humane and
majoritarian class content, served to open the minds of millions to
further investigation.
But like all “good Democrats,” Sanders will soon tour the nation on
behalf of a man whose policies he has long repudiated and whose
ingrained hatred of socialist revolution has been evidenced
throughout his career. Sanders proposed “solutions” were based on
herding the innocent, and the not so innocent groups on the left,
into the graveyard of the Democratic Party where the
“left/progressive” and right/centrist wings are indistinguishable
regarding which class shall rule society.
All are dedicated to the imperialist system and its wars against
working people at home and abroad. It has never been otherwise.
Indeed, Sanders and his supporters, the AOC gang included, supported
every Democratic Party candidate in the 2018 mid-term elections!
They are pledged to do the same in 2020 when Biden will undoubtedly
be presented as the latest of capitalism’s “lesser evils.”
For serious fighters today there is a serious alternative. It lies
in a commitment to organize and mobilize working people
independently and in opposition to the parties and polices of
capitalism. It lies in breaking with the two-party duopoly and
fighting to re-build and transform the present labor movement into
fighting organs of struggle on behalf of the vast majority. Start
today by joining a revolutionary socialist party that seeks to sink
deep roots in all the struggles of the oppressed and exploited!
Join Socialist Action! Donate to Socialist Action’s Jeff Mackler for
president in 2020 national campaign.
socialistaction@xxxxxxx
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March 24, 2020 in Uncategorized.
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“God is an ever-receding pocket of scientific ignorance.”
― Neil DeGrasse Tyson
