Senator Bernie Sanders and the Ongoing Fight For a Progressive Agenda vs. the Mythology of Progressive Politics in the U.S. Today

All,

During the so-called 'Age of Obama' (2008-Present) there has been an insufferable amount of sheer nonsense and brazenly dishonest assertions made by far too many people regarding what genuinely constitutes progressive politics' and even more idiocy has been expressed regarding what a truly 'progressive politician' is. In many quarters it's as if too many otherwise reasonably intelligent and concerned citizens have lost touch with what these terms even mean in today's corrupt and polluted political climate of crass opportunism, hubris, and the celebrity fixated commercial branding of individual politicians and their often hazy and manipulative self serving agendas.

Given this ugly and often depressing reality it is refreshing that we still at least attempt to not only remember but actually identify exactly what determines progressive politics and a progressive politician. One of the very few remaining exemplars of this still very proud but unjustly maligned legacy is Senator Bernie Sanders, the socialist independent from Vermont who along with Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts has a great career long track record of proven outstanding and PROGRESSIVE service to the masses of poor, working, and middle class people in this fading oligarchic Republic we all tragicomically and rather inexplicably still refer to as the "United States."

The fact that a man of the undeniable quality, integrity, honesty, intelligence, and compassion of Senator Bernie Sanders doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell of securing the Democratic Party's nomination for the Presidency in 2016 is a huge indictment of this country and its general political system which--as always--would much rather promote, support, and enable the selfish personal ambitions of bourgeois politicians like the ones presently controlling the White House, Congress, and the Supreme Court who--as always--promote, support, and enable the corporate capitalist control of Wall Street and the general relentless institutionalized criminality of the financial sector of our hijacked economy at the massive expense of the masses of poor, working, and middle class people who make up 99% of the American population. Meanwhile BILLARY, INC. and the straightup reactionary MadMen of the venal Republican right contend for the spoils left by the current managers of the political economy. That's not Senator Sander's fault of course.  IT'S OURS...

Kofi

http://www.thenation.com/article/bernies-burlington-city-sustainable-future/ 

What Kind of Mayor Was Bernie Sanders?
Peter Dreier and Pierre Clavel
June 2, 2015
The Nation

Bernie Sanders sits in his office at City Hall in Burlington, Vermont in 1981. (AP Photo/Donna Light)

John Davis remembers a meeting in 1986 when Bernie Sanders, then the mayor of Burlington, Vermont, confronted the owners of the city's largest affordable-housing complex. The federal program that had subsidized the Northgate Apartments for 20 years had a loophole that allowed the landlords to convert the buildings into market rentals or luxury condos.

"Bernie pounded his fist on the conference table in his office and told the owners, ‘Over my dead body are you going to displace 336 working families. You are not going to convert Northgate into luxury housing,'" recalled Davis, who was Sanders's key housing aide.

Under Sanders's leadership, the city adopted a number of laws to stifle the owners' plans. One ordinance required apartment owners to give residents two years' notice before a condo conversion. Others gave residents a pre-emptive right to buy the units and prohibited landlords from bulldozing buildings unless they replaced them with the same number of affordable units. (These measures lowered the selling price of the property.) Sanders then worked with the state government and Senator Patrick Leahy to get the $12 million needed to purchase and rehabilitate the buildings. The city allocated funds to help the tenants hire an organizer, form the Northgate Residents Association, and start the process of converting the complex to resident ownership. Today, Northgate Apartments is owned by the tenants and has long-term restrictions to keep the buildings affordable for working families.

The battle over Northgate Apartments illustrates Sanders's general approach to governing. In addressing this and many other issues, he encouraged grassroots organizing, adopted local laws to protect the vulnerable, challenged the city's business power brokers, and worked collaboratively with other politicians to create a more livable city.

Now that Sanders is running for president, the eight years he spent as Burlington's chief executive (1981–89) will be under close scrutiny. Although President Obama recently joked at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner that Sanders is a "pot-smoking socialist," he was actually a hardworking, pragmatic, effective mayor who helped transform Vermont's largest city (population: 38,000) into a thriving town.

Thanks to the enduring influence of the progressive climate that Sanders and his allies helped to create in Burlington, the city's largest housing development is now resident-owned, its largest supermarket is a consumer-owned cooperative, one of its largest private employers is worker-owned, and most of its people-oriented waterfront is publicly owned. Its publicly owned utility, the Burlington Electric Department, recently announced that Burlington is the first American city of any decent size to run entirely on renewable electricity.

* * *

Sanders grew up in Brooklyn and attended the University of Chicago, where he was active in the civil-rights movement. After a short stint living on an Israeli kibbutz, in 1964 he moved to Vermont, where he worked as a carpenter, filmmaker, writer, and researcher, and got involved in radical politics. In the 1970s, after joining the antiwar Liberty Union Party, Sanders ran for several statewide offices, including governor, US Senate, and the US House (Vermont has only one seat). He never garnered more than 4 percent of the vote, but he did better in Burlington than in Vermont's rural areas, which gave him hope that he had a shot at winning office in the local government.

In 1981, Sanders ran for mayor of Burlington as an Independent and defeated six-term Democratic Party  incumbent Gordon Paquette by ten votes in a four-way contest. Voters re-elected Sanders three times by increasingly wider margins: 52 percent in 1983, 55 percent in 1985, and 56 percent in 1987.

Burlington was no hippie counterculture enclave. Although the city attracted many young, educated people because of its natural beauty and the presence of the University of Vermont, it has always had a large working-class population (many of them from French Canadian stock) who, until Sanders came on the scene, tended to vote for moderate Democrats and Republicans. Each time he ran for mayor, Sanders attracted increasing support from the city's blue-collar precincts.

In his first two years in office, the City Council refused to allow Sanders to hire more than a handful of staff, while the entrenched bureaucrats in City Hall sought to thwart his initiatives. Randy Kamerbeek, the city's planning director, "tried to sabotage everything that Bernie proposed," recalled Michael Monte, who worked in that agency. "He told us not to allow Bernie to have any visible successes. He figured Bernie would be out of office after his first term."

After he was re-elected in 1983, and voters swept in a more progressive City Council, Sanders gained a stronger foothold in City Hall. With the support of local Republicans and business leaders, he created the Community and Economic Development Office (CEDO) to carry out his vision for more affordable housing, more locally owned small businesses, greater community engagement in planning, and job development.

When Sanders took office, Burlington's Lake Champlain waterfront was an industrial wasteland. Tony Pomerleau, an influential local businessman, planned a mega-project that included a 150-room hotel, retail space, a 100-slip marina, and 240 condominiums in 18-story buildings. In his first campaign, Sanders pledged to kill that plan. After Pomerleau withdrew his proposal, Sanders backed another waterfront plan that included some commercial development, affordable housing, and generous public access. But after voters defeated a bond measure for this proposal, Sanders went back to the drawing board to envision a "people's waterfront."

According to Monte, who worked on the waterfront project for Sanders and was CEDO director for 12 years, "Bernie wanted to make sure that it was a place with plenty of open space and public access, where ordinary people could rent a rowboat and buy a hot dog. That wasn't just for the elite. It was Bernie who set the tone that the waterfront wasn't for sale."

Thanks to Sanders, the Burlington waterfront now has a community boathouse and other facilities for small boats. There's also a sailing center and science center, a fishing pier, an eight-mile bike path, acres of parkland, and public beaches. The commercial development is modest and small-scale. On May 26, Sanders kicked off his presidential campaign with a rally at Waterfront Park.

Most of Burlington's business leaders initially distrusted Sanders. They didn't know what a socialist would do once he held the reins of power. But even many of Sanders's early opponents came to respect and even admire his willingness to listen to their views and his efforts to adopt progressive municipal policies.

Pomerleau was then—and remains today, at 97—one of Burlington's richest residents. A longtime Republican, he made his money developing supermarkets, hotels, and shopping centers, and he owns much of Burlington's commercial real estate. For decades, he has wielded considerable political influence, served as chair of the city's police commission, and been its most generous philanthropist.

"When [Sanders] first ran for mayor, he was running against guys like me," Pomerleau recalled in a recent interview.

Pomerleau, who voted against Sanders in 1981, knocked on his door the day after that election. "I said, ‘You're the mayor, but it's still my town,'" he recalled.

Pomerleau wasn't happy when Sanders opposed his waterfront development plan, but he gradually got to know the mayor and came to admire his pragmatism, his bulldog tenacity to get things done, and his support for the local police.

"Bernie and I worked very well together for the betterment of the town," Pomerleau said. "We were the odd couple."

Pomerleau voted for Sanders in his three successful bids for re-election. And Sanders frequently called Pomerleau to ask his advice. They stayed in close contact, even after Sanders was elected to Congress.

Pomerleau expressed his pleasure that for the past 35 years Sanders has never missed one of his annual Christmas parties for underprivileged children. He also praised Sanders for being a stalwart supporter of America's military veterans.

"If more rich people were like me," Pomerleau said, "Bernie would feel better about the wealthy."

* * *

"When Bernie first got elected, the local media said he was anti-business," recalled Bruce Seifer, an architect of Sanders's economic development efforts. "They called us the ‘Sanderistas.'"

After Sanders's re-election victory in 1983, business groups concluded they could not defeat him and thus had to work with him. But many businesspeople also saw that Sanders shared their interest in "development"—what he saw as "good development"—while opposing projects that would hurt middle- and working-class neighborhoods or victimize low-wage workers.

"Bernie was never anti-growth, anti-development, or anti-business," explained Monte. "He just wanted businesses to be responsible toward their employees and the community. He wanted local entrepreneurs to thrive. He wanted people to have good jobs that pay a living wage. If you could deal with that, you could deal with Bernie and Bernie would deal with you."

The Sanders administration provided new firms with seed funding, offered technical assistance, helped businesses form trade associations (including the South End Arts and Business Association and the Vermont Convention Bureau), focused attention on helping women become entrepreneurs, funded training programs to give women access to nontraditional jobs, and lobbied the state government to promote business growth.

When Sanders took office, Burlington had no supermarket in the downtown area. The major grocery chains told city officials that they would invest in a new store only if they could build a mega-market that residents believed was too large. Instead, the Sanders administration put its hopes in the local Onion River Cooperative. With 2,000 members in its former location, some thought it was a risky venture. It turned out to be a good investment, and under Sanders's successor it became City Market, a thriving enterprise with more than 9,000 members.

Under Sanders, Burlington became a magnet for attracting and incubating locally owned businesses, many of which expanded into large enterprises. Burton, the nation's largest snowboard company, has its headquarters (as well as a snowboard museum) in Burlington. The city assisted Seventh Generation, a green cleaning-products firm, when it started in 1988. Today, with its downtown waterfront headquarters in a LEED-certified building and over $300 million in annual sales, it is one of Burlington's largest employers. With the city's help, Gardeners Supply Company, which sells environmentally friendly gardening products, moved to Burlington in 1983. Four years later, its founder, Will Raap, began the process of selling the firm to its workers. It now has over 250 employee-owners.

As he was transitioning Gardeners Supply to employee ownership, Raap also began organizing volunteers to clean up a largely derelict floodplain north of the store. Eventually CEDO, Sanders's development agency, helped arrange the purchase of the area and provided the capital for irrigation systems, farm vehicles, and washing stations for vegetables. By the end of the 1990s, it was home to a dozen urban farms, annually producing over 500,000 pounds of food for local homes and stores. Today it generates over 10 percent of the food sold in Burlington.

"Bernie realized that the economy doesn't have to be dominated by bad guys," explained Raap, a founder of the 750-member Burlington-based Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility, an alternative trade association. "He saw that and he fostered it."

Burlington's strong economy and population growth put pressure on the city's housing supply, threatening to displace low- and middle-income families. Under Sanders, the city adopted policies to create permanently affordable housing. The city channeled a large portion of its federal block grant funds to nonprofits committed to that goal, and cultivated a constituency of these small development organizations. The first key move was support for the Burlington Community Land Trust with an initial $200,000 grant. Now named the Champlain Housing Trust, the nonprofit has over $290 million in assets;  manages a portfolio of 2,800 price-controlled houses, condos, co-ops, and rentals; and owns over 120,000 square feet of commercial space and nonprofit facilities.

To provide funding for new housing initiatives, the Sanders-led city created a housing trust fund, capitalized in part by a 1 percent increase in property taxes. A year after Sanders left office, the coalition he built successfully pushed the City Council to enact an inclusionary zoning law. Market-rate residential projects were required to set aside 10–25 percent of the units at rents and prices affordable to families with modest incomes and to keep them affordable for 99 years.

The Sanders administration carefully nurtured neighborhood planning assemblies (NPA) in each of the city's six wards, providing them with modest budgets to deliberate and advise on projects affecting their neighborhoods. The NPAs had a voice over the use of federal Community Development Block Grant funds in their neighborhoods. Today, Burlingtonians credit the NPAs with raising the level of resident participation and discussion in local politics.

Sanders jump-started the city's participatory energies in other ways as well. Early on he established a Youth Office, an Arts Council, and a Women's Council, whose first major initiative was an ordinance requiring 10 percent of all city-funded construction jobs to be filled by women.

* * *

Sanders's track record as mayor was so successful that Burlington voters elected his CEDO director, Peter Clavelle, to succeed him in 1989. (He was voted out in 1993 but re-elected in 1995, and served until 2006.) During his 16 years in the mayor's office, Clavelle expanded Sanders's agenda. A Republican held the office from 1993 to 1995, and another independent progressive, Bob Kiss, served from 2006 through 2012. After a controversy erupted over the city-owned Burlington Telecom, Kiss declined to run for re-election.

In 2012, for the first time since Sanders's first campaign in 1981, Burlington elected a Democrat—Miro Weinberger—to serve as mayor. Although more conservative than Sanders, Clavelle, and Kiss, he has been reluctant to reverse their policies because they've been so popular. Burlington's progressives have not only held on to their main policy achievements but, after the most recent election, have gained seats on the City Council and catapulted Progressive Party member Jane Knodell into the presidency of that body.

In the 1970s and '80s, Sanders was one of a handful of mayors—including Paul Soglin of Madison, Wisconsin; Gus Newport of Berkeley, California; Ruth Goldway of Santa Monica, California; Chicago's Harold Washington; and Boston's Ray Flynn—who sought to use the levers of local government to adopt enlightened progressive policies. More than in any other city, Burlington's progressives consolidated those reforms over the long haul. The coalition that coalesced around Sanders in 1981 governed Burlington for all but two of the next 31 years.

Burlington is now widely heralded as an environmentally friendly, lively, and livable city with a thriving economy, including one of the lowest jobless rates in the country. Burlingtonians give Sanders credit for steering the city in a new direction that, despite early skepticism, proved to be broadly popular with voters.

A growing number of cities—including Seattle, New York, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Newark, and others—are now led by progressive mayors. They are adopting municipal minimum wage laws, requiring developers to build mixed-income housing, strengthening regulations against corporate polluters, and enacting other policies to address the nation's growing economic inequality and environmental crises.

What they can learn from Sanders is that good ideas are not sufficient. Creating more livable cities requires nurturing a core of activist organizations that can build long-term support for progressive municipal policies.

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/31168-global-capitalist-crisis-and-the-north-american-free-trade-agreement-reflections-twenty-one-years-on

Global Capitalist Crisis and the North American Free Trade Agreement: Reflections 21 Years On
Thursday, 04 June 2015
by William I. Robinson
Truthout | News Analysis   
 

Recent US Senate approval won by President Obama for "fast-track" negotiation of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal has thrust "free trade" and capitalist globalization again into the headlines. Often referred to as "NAFTA on steroids," the TPP is but the latest in more than two decades of "free trade" agreements that have helped open up the world to transnational corporate plunder.

If we want to understand such deals we would do well to reflect on the first of these, the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, which went into effect in January 1994. We cannot understand NAFTA without understanding the larger picture of which NAFTA and the TPP form part: the new system of global capitalism and the crisis of that system.

NAFTA, and by extension, capitalist globalization, were outcomes of the last great crisis of world capitalism, that of the 1970s. Emergent transnational capital responded to that crisis by "going global," which paved the way for NAFTA. To understand NAFTA and the TPP, we must grasp four novel features of world capitalism in this epoch of globalization:

1. The rise of truly transnational capital and the integration of every country into a new globalized production and financial system. NAFTA served as a midwife for Mexico's integration into this system;

2. The appearance of a new transnational capitalist class, a class group grounded in the new global control over national circuits of accumulation. NAFTA and Mexico's globalization involved the rise of a powerful group of Mexican capitalists, epitomized by Carlos Slim, currently the richest man in the world. These emergent transnationally oriented Mexican elites led the charge in Mexico's globalization and used NAFTA to join the ranks of the transnational capitalist class.

3. The rise of transnational state apparatuses, comprised of dense networks of nation-states and supranational and transnational institutions that promote transnational over national accumulation in each country and act as the collective authority of the transnational capitalist class - as the new global ruling class. NAFTA was drawn up and imposed on the peoples of North America by this transnational state;

4. The appearance of novel relations of inequality and domination in global society, including the spread of new transnational class inequalities, the farcical wars on drugs and terrorism, as well as the wars on immigrants, youth "gangs" and social movements, all part and parcel of capitalist globalization in North America and elsewhere.

Capitalist Crises and "Free" Trade

Capitalism experiences major episodes of crisis about every 40 to 50 years as obstacles emerge to ongoing accumulation and profit-making. These are "structural" or "restructuring" crises because the system must be restructured in order to overcome the crisis. As opportunities for capitalists to profitably invest dry up, the system seeks to open up new outlets for surplus capital, typically through violence, whether structural or direct. NAFTA constitutes one such form of structural violence, whereas the "drug wars" and US militarization on both sides of the border are a form of direct violence. Both have the function of opening up new opportunities for capitalist expansion and control in North America.

Structural crises of capitalism involve social upheavals, political and military conflict, and ideological and cultural changes. The last major crisis of world capitalism prior to the 2008 global financial collapse began in the late 1960s and hit hard in the early 1970s.

"Free trade" and neoliberalism are fundamentally programs of transnational capital liberated from the nation-state through globalization.

The year 1968 was a turning point. That year saw the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in the United States in the midst of expanding Black and Chicano liberation movements, the countercultural and antiwar movements, and an escalation of militant worker struggles. The Tlatelolco massacre of students took place in Mexico City that same year, at a time of great campesino, worker and student upheavals across the country. Further away, 1968 saw the Prague Spring, the uprising of students and workers in Paris, the height of the Cultural Revolution in China, the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, which marked the beginning of the first major defeat for US imperialism, and the spread of anti-colonial and armed liberation movements throughout Africa and Latin America.

All this reflected a crisis of hegemony for the system - a crisis in its political and cultural domination. Then came the economic dimension. By 1973, the US government had to abandon the gold standard; the recently formed Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) imposed its oil embargo, which sent shock waves through the world economy; and stagflation (stagnation plus inflation) set in everywhere. This was, in a nutshell, a severe structural crisis of world capitalism, a crisis of 20th century nation-state capitalism.

Stepping back even further in history, at the time of the 1970s crisis, working and popular classes all around the world had accumulated a significant amount of power relative to dominant groups. Why? The  world had seen a prolonged period of international conflict involving world wars and social and class struggles from the 1890s into the 1960s. Working and popular classes were able to make social and economic gains in many countries, leading to the so-called social-democratic "class compromise" of the mid 20th century, whereby the capitalist system was forced to make a number of concessions to significant sectors of the international working class. By the early 1970s, a pre-revolutionary situation was percolating in many countries and regions. The popular classes were able to resist attempts by the dominant groups to shift the burden of the 1970s crises on to their shoulders.

But as the crisis intensified, these dominant groups sought ways to liberate themselves from the "class compromise." Analytically speaking, capital sought to free itself of any reciprocal responsibility to labor in the capitalist system and capitalist states sought to shed themselves of the social welfare systems that were established in preceding decades. Elites in the rich countries also sought ways to integrate emergent Third World elites into the system.

NAFTA was but one small part of a vast restructuring of world capitalism.
These dominant groups launched the "neoliberal counterrevolution," an attempt to roll back the social welfare state, to resubordinate labor and to reconstitute their hegemony at the global level through a newfound transnational mobility of capital and a transformation of the interstate system. The roots of NAFTA are to be found in this response of economic and political elites to the 1970s crisis.

The model of "savage" global capitalism that took hold in the late 20th century involved a new capital-labor relation based on the deregulation, informalization, deunionization and flexibilization of labor as more and more workers have swelled the ranks of the "precariat" - a proletariat existing in permanently precarious conditions. NAFTA and other trade agreements along with neoliberal policies have played a key role in the subordination of labor worldwide and the creation of this global flexible labor market.

The new model of global capitalism has also involved a renewed round of extensive and intensive expansions of the system. The former socialist countries and the revolutionary states of the Third World were integrated into the world market in the late 20th century. Free trade agreements such as NAFTA and neoliberal programs have lifted restrictions to this expansion of transnational capital. A third aspect of the new model is the creation of a legal and regulatory structure for the global economy, characterized by such agreements as NAFTA and the creation of the World Trade Organization. "Free trade" and neoliberalism are fundamentally programs of transnational capital liberated from the nation-state through globalization.

Opening North America for the Transnational Capitalist Class

US, Mexican and Canadian elites turned to negotiating and implementing NAFTA so as to open up new opportunities for expansion in the face of stagnation and to appropriate resources in Mexico and beyond. Capitalist globalization in North America created outlets for a mass of accumulated capital following the stagnation and decline in the profit rate as a result of the 1970s crisis and helped to reverse the worldwide correlation of social and class forces that throughout the 1960s and 1970s had become adverse to capitalist expansion and elite interests.

Yet NAFTA was but one small part of a vast restructuring of world capitalism. NAFTA and free trade are components of neoliberalism, which in turn is an integral component of the project of transnational elites in North America to restructure the system, restore the class power of an emergent transnational capitalist class, and lift obstacles and barriers to new transnational circuits of accumulation opened up by capitalist globalization. NAFTA must be seen in this larger context of capitalist globalization as an attempt to resuscitate the North American and world economy and to restore capitalist hegemony after the great crisis of the 1970s. It is not separate from other free trade agreements around the world; NAFTA is simply the North American regional variant of the project of capitalist globalization.

"To a certain extent, we are armoring NAFTA."
As many have documented, global capitalism has produced an unprecedented concentration of wealth in Mexico and the rise of 24 new billionaires, some of the wealthiest people in the world. Carlos Slim's worth went from $6.6 billion in 1994 to $73 billion in 2014. It generated a high consumption Mexican middle class that identifies more with its counterparts in the United States and elsewhere than it does with the mass of impoverished Mexicans.

At the same time, living conditions for most in Mexico plummeted in the wake of NAFTA's implementation. From 1992 to 1999, extreme poverty increased from 16 to 28 percent of the total population, and in 2012, the poverty rate stood at 52.3 percent, slightly higher than it was at the time of NAFTA's approval. Some 2 to 3 million families were thrown off their land in the wake of NAFTA and millions more were made unemployed in urban areas, creating a mass labor force for maquiladoras, agribusiness projects, mining operations and service sectors. A major portion of those displaced became transnational migrants, servicing the US and global economy outside of Mexico.

NAFTA thus generated for transnational corporate capital new pools of exploitable labor and access to vast new reserves of land and resources in Mexico. The treaty opened up new markets in Mexico and access to Mexican resources for the transnational capitalist class, but also allowed this transnational capitalist class to attack the working class throughout the region. It allowed the transnational fraction of the Mexican capitalist class and elite to globalize and consolidate its hegemony over the Mexican political system. In this sense, NAFTA has been an incubator of the transnational capitalist class in Mexico.

The War on Drugs and Immigrants as Counterparts to NAFTA
 
NAFTA has its counterpart in the ongoing militarization of North America, including the militarization of borders, the drugs wars, the war against immigrants and the repression of social movements. North America is "a shared economic space," declared then-US Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Thomas Shannon in 2005, when the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America went into effect. "To a certain extent, we are armoring NAFTA." In 2007, the Security and Prosperity Partnership was replaced by Plan Merida, also known as Plan Mexico, a more sweeping program for militarizing Mexico, including the country's southern and northern borders, with hundreds of millions of dollars in US military and security assistance.

The "drug war" has been a critical mechanism for accumulation and social control in both Mexico and the US.

It is noteworthy that the Security and Prosperity Partnership and Plan Merida brought leading transnational corporations, especially from the military-industrial complex, into coordination with US and Mexican military and security forces, and provided new opportunities for militarized accumulation throughout North America.

The so-called "drug war" has been a critical mechanism for accumulation and social control in both Mexico and the United States, and highly functional for the transnational capitalist class. As Canadian journalist Dawn Paley shows in her important new study, Drug War Capitalism, this war is an instrument of primitive accumulation, social cleansing and profit-making through militarization and conflict. It has allowed, among other things, for:

--the social control of the North American working and popular classes; 

--repression of Mexican social movements;
--vast profit-making through military forms of transnational corporate accumulation, such as the production and deployment of military equipment and forces, border walls, surveillance systems, prison-industrial and immigrant detention complexes;
--the expulsion of communities from rural and urban conflict areas, the appropriation of lands, and establishment of agribusiness and mining operations in place of small-scale agriculture;
--the creation of a system of mass incarceration in the United States disproportionately targeting the African-American population as surplus labor.
 

This "war on drugs" is reciprocal to the war on immigrants, itself an integral part of the story of NAFTA. The campaign of control and repression against Mexican (and Central American, Asian and other) immigrants in the United States has three key functions for transnational elites. First, it is a system for criminalizing this population, and therefore making it a cheap and tightly controlled labor supply. Second, it allows more generally for control over the transnational working class, including political, cultural and ideological mechanisms of social control; the conversion of immigrants into scapegoats for the crisis; and the sublimation of social tensions that may otherwise be directed against systemic sources of the crisis. And third, together with the farcical wars on drugs and terrorism, the war on immigrants justifies ongoing militarization and "securitization," generating widespread opportunities for transnational corporate profit-making through militarized accumulation.

NAFTA has had the effect, in sum, of generating an almost limitless supply of immigrant labor for the North American economy, in the context of the restructuring of global labor markets. Criminalization of immigrants in the United States has played a key role in pushing immigrant workers underground, making them more vulnerable to super-exploitation and less able to resist, and keeping them deportable.  Racist anti-immigrant laws, the immigrant detention complex and militarized borders all reproduce a reserve army of immigrant labor and at the same time open up new sources of profit-making for the transnational corporations that are actually contracted to build border walls, supply military equipment to the state military and security forces, and establish and run surveillance systems and detention centers.

US Colonization or Transnational Capitalist Class Conquest?
 
Some have argued that NAFTA aimed to close off North America from other regions and to allow US capital to face European and Asian competitors. This thesis of "regionalization" and a tripolar world in competition, however, does not correspond to reality over the past 20 years. The evidence shows that NAFTA has served as a platform for ever-greater transnational integration and globalization of North America. Transnational corporations from all over the world have poured into Mexico (as well as the United States and Canada) over the past two decades in order to have direct access to North American labor and consumer markets. NAFTA opened the region to greater integration with Asia. China, in fact, is currently funding the "NAFTA super highway," that is, the construction of vast new highway and rail networks integrating the entire North American region.

With the collapse of the Doha round of negotiations at the World Trade Organization, the strategy pursued by the transnational capitalist class has been to negotiate a multiplicity of bilateral and multilateral regional and interregional trade deals, the latest of which is the TPP. We have seen an accelerated transnationalization of the entire North American region since NAFTA went into effect.

We have seen an accelerated transnationalization of the entire North American region since NAFTA went into effect.

Others have portrayed NAFTA as a recolonization of Mexico by the United States. But this image, too, is demonstrated to be false. NAFTA allowed the transnational fraction of the Mexican capitalist class to transnationalize. The Mexican contingent of the transnational capitalist class has been just as much a protagonist and beneficiary of NAFTA and capitalist globalization as has its US and Canadian counterparts.

The Mexican-based Cemex conglomerate, the largest producer of cement in the world, not only operates on every continent, but also is the principal supplier of cement to the US market. While mining companies from the United States and Canada, as well as from Asia, Europe and elsewhere, have poured into Mexico over the past two decades, the largest of these companies are actually owned wholly or in part by Mexican capitalists. Carlos Slim's Grupo Mexico and Grupo Carso conglomerates hold major shares in Saks Fifth Avenue, Best Buy, The New York Times, Philip Morris, Apple and Alcatel, not to mention holdings in companies on every continent.

The case of the "corn tortilla circuit" is instructive. Those who say NAFTA represents a US takeover of Mexico point to how US-based agribusiness subsidized by the US state has flooded the Mexican market with cheap corn and displaced millions of small farmers. This is true. However, these lands have been taken over as much by Mexican and transnational agribusiness, mining and other concerns from around the world as by US-based investor groups. Mexican agro-export and mining capitalist groups have proliferated in Mexico.

Specifically, when NAFTA went into effect, the price of bulk corn dropped - yet the price of tortillas actually rose. This is because NAFTA allowed Mexican transnational capitalists to gain monopoly control  of the corn tortilla market. Just two Mexican companies, GIMSA and MINSA, captured 97 percent of the industrial corn flour market in the country, with the help of Mexican state subsidies. These two companies also control major shares of the US tortilla market (e.g. Mission brand is owned by GIMSA). NAFTA facilitated a shift from small-scale to transnational corporate control of the corn tortilla circuit on both sides of the border, with both Mexico and the US, as transnational state apparatuses, subsidizing both Mexican and US members of the transnational capitalist class.

Twenty-one years into NAFTA, world capitalism is again in deep crisis. Globalization, free trade and neoliberalism may have facilitated a renovated round of capitalist expansion, but they have also generated new contradictions that the system has not been able to resolve. These processes have helped to bring about a transnational working class in North America and globally that is increasingly moving from the defensive to the offensive. The great challenge for transnational elites is how to contain the real and potential rebellion of this mass of dispossessed humanity. As the battle heats up around the TPP, reflections on NAFTA 21 years on can be instructive.

This article is an edited version of a speech William I. Robinson gave at the National Autonomous University of Mexico on April 16, 2015. The analysis is drawn from his latest book, Global Capitalism and the Crisis of Humanity (Cambridge University Press, 2014). Thanks to Steven Osuna and Kevin Robinson for their contributions to this article.

Copyright, Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.


William I. Robinson is professor of sociology, global studies and Latin American studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara. His most recent book is Global Capitalism and the Crisis of Humanity.
 
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Progressive Senator Bernie Sanders On Breaking the Domination Of Big Money in American Politics And Zoe Carpenter On the Mega-Donor Class and the Oligarchic Role of Super PACs in Elections

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/27197-bernie-sanders-on-breaking-big-money-s-grip-on-elections

https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Panopticon-Review/342702882479366

Bernie Sanders on Breaking Big Money's Grip on Elections

Monday, 03 November 2014
By Bill Moyers, Moyers & Company | Video Interview


http://vimeo.com/110546752: 
  
Video of interview with progressive Senator Bernie Sanders

Bernie Sanders, Vermont’s independent senator, is angry about what he sees as big money’s wholesale purchase of political power. It’s a grave threat, he believes, not only to our electoral process but to democracy itself.

Two weeks ago, Sanders visited a town hall meeting in Richmond, California, to fire up supporters of Mayor Gayle McLaughlin and a slate of progressive city council candidates. They’re running against a ticket backed by the energy giant Chevron, the third largest corporation in the United States. Chevron owns an enormous refinery in Richmond and is spending $3 million to defeat the progressives, who have charged the oil company with damaging the city’s economy and environment.

Bernie Sanders. (Photo: Moyers & Company)

Chevron’s Richmond money – they’re spending more than $100 per voter – is just a fraction of the billions being spent this year on the most expensive midterm elections in history, money unleashed by Citizens United, McCutcheon and other court decisions that have turned voting into what feels more like an auction than ‘one person, one vote.’ Because the Supreme Court says money is speech and big business can buy all it wants, corporations are trying to drown out the voice of anyone trying to speak out against them, whether in Congress or a state legislature, on a judge’s bench or in city hall.

TRANSCRIPT:

BILL MOYERS: Welcome. This just in from the prophetic Andy Borowitz: With midterm elections a few days away, “a new poll indicates that billionaires are likely to retain control of the United States government…proxy candidates of billionaires are likely to win ninety-eight per cent of next Tuesday’s races, with the remaining two per cent leaning billionaire.”

Now Andy Borowitz is one of our leading humorists and I figured he was joking. But now I’m not so sure. And neither, I’d guess, is United States Senator Bernie Sanders. Because a couple of weeks ago, Bernie Sanders was in Richmond, California, a small city of just over 100,000 in the Bay Area of San Francisco. He was speaking out against the energy giant Chevron and the big money it’s spending to influence the local elections there.

SENATOR BERNIE SANDERS in Richmond, CA: And if Chevron can roll over you, they and their buddies will roll over every community in America. If you can stand up and beat them with all of their money, you're going to give hope to people all over America that we can control our destinies.

BILL MOYERS: Chevron’s the Fortune 500 company that has a big refinery in Richmond and acts like it owns the place. After that refinery erupted in fire two years ago, the city, led by Mayor Gayle McLaughlin, sued Chevron for what it alleges is a long history of negligence. Chevron’s fighting back, spending an incredible $3 million plus to beat McLaughlin and her allies and replace them with a more pliable city council that will protect the oil company’s interests.

All that cash for one small election – but it’s just part of a spending frenzy of perhaps $4 billion all across the country, making this the most expensive midterms in history; money unleashed by a series of Supreme Court decisions allowing millionaires and billionaires to drown out the voice of anyone who tries to speak against them.

And that’s why Bernie Sanders is with me now. He’s not a Democrat. He’s not a Republican. He’s an independent in his second senate term, after 16 years in the House of Representatives, and eight as the mayor of Burlington, Vermont. Welcome back.

BERNIE SANDERS: Great to be with you.

BILL MOYERS: It's a long way from Burlington, Vermont, to Richmond, California. And there's a lot of other places you could've been going. Why did you go there?

BERNIE SANDERS: Because it disgusts me and angers me to see a huge, multinational corporation like Chevron try to destroy a local government, which is standing up for the working people and standing up for the environment. The idea that just because they have unlimited sums of money, they can toss aside and defeat people who are trying to do the right thing. It's not what America is supposed to be about and it upset me very much.

BILL MOYERS: You were very upset. Let me play you another excerpt from the speech.

BERNIE SANDERS: Unlimited sums of money from one of the largest corporation in America who says, 'How dare you ordinary people, working class people, people of color, young people, how dare you think you have a right to run your city government? Who do you think you are? We're going to teach you a lesson. We're going to tell you who owns this community, who controls this community.' And that's what this fight is about here in Richmond. And you damn well better win that fight.

BILL MOYERS: So what is the fight?

BERNIE SANDERS: The fight is for the future of democracy in America. What you're seeing in Richmond is one small part of what's going on in this country today, Bill. And let me just say this. If people think the situation is bad now, and it is horrendous, the chairman of the Republican Party now, he wants to take it further. He thinks Citizens United did not go far enough. So the Koch brothers and he want to eliminate all campaign finance legislation, all regulations, and have a situation where the billionaires will say to somebody, 'You want to run for governor of California? Here's a check of a half a billion dollars. You work for me. No longer independent expenditures, we own you completely.'

BILL MOYERS: I read one account that says Chevron is spending over $150 for every, quote, "likely” voter. What do they get back for their investment?

BERNIE SANDERS: Well, what they're going to get back, clearly, is a city council which will be less attentive to the environmental needs of that community. They are the largest employer. They have, as you've mentioned a moment ago, there was a terrible fire there a couple of years ago. People there are very concerned about the environmental impacts of Chevron, and they will get a much more docile city council if they win.

BILL MOYERS: Chevron would tell you they're just protecting those interests they have there. And that they will also tell you that they create jobs and pay taxes there for public services.

BERNIE SANDERS: Do they create jobs? Of course they create jobs. But the point is, corporations all over this country create jobs. But they cannot run and dominate our democracy.

BILL MOYERS: I wager that just about everybody watching this show knows what you and I think about this issue. And yet, while you're speaking and I'm reporting, those folks are out there creating a reality on the ground with their money. And things get worse.

BERNIE SANDERS: Things are getting worse. You know, when you look at this campaign, and you realize the enormously serious issues this country faces, right, we got a collapsing middle class. We have more wealth and income inequality today than we've had since the 1920s. We have all of these enormous issues. And what big money can do is put an unbelievable amount of TV and radio ads out there to deflect attention from the real issues facing the American people.

BILL MOYERS: Well, that's interesting. Because, you know, I've seen you quite recently on television. It’s always the same questions and always the same five headlines. What's the story that the corporate press is not letting you tell?

BERNIE SANDERS: Oh, my God. You see, this is the issue. I mean, I've been on a million of these shows. They say, 'Here's the story of the day. What do you think about the Secret Service? What do you think about this? What do you think about Ebola?' All of those issues are important.

But the issues that impact ordinary people, is they’re asking why, despite all of the productivity, people are working longer hours for lower wages. Have we had that discussion, Bill? Have you ever heard anybody talking about it? They're asking how come we've had this unfettered free-trade policies that have resulted in the loss of millions of good-paying jobs and you got both parties still saying, well, that's pretty good.

And this issue of income and wealth inequality, wow. One percent owning 37 percent of the wealth in America. Bottom 60 percent owning 1.7 percent. One family, the Walton family of Wal-Mart, owning more wealth than the bottom 40 percent. Do you think we should be talking about that issue? You can't get the discussion going on TV.

BILL MOYERS: Why?

BERNIE SANDERS: Because it's not in the interest of the corporations who own the networks to actually be educating the American people so that are debating the real issues. It's much better to deflect attention away from those issues and get into the story of the day.

There was some guy who was a football fan who walked halfway across the country. Boy, that's a really big story. Or, Chris Christie yelled at somebody. History will certainly remember this as one of the important issues of the 21st century.

BILL MOYERS: This, to me, is this fundamental question facing Bernie Sanders. How do you get your message directly to those who need it most? And you know who they are. They're conservative working people, who don't realize that their party has been sold all these years to the financial and business interests that are rigging the rules against them. How do you reach those people?

BERNIE SANDERS: Well, believe me, I wish I had the magic answer. You're asking exactly the right question. There are parts of this country, Bill, where the only information people get is on radio. You got Rush Limbaugh. 95 percent of talk radio is extreme right wing. You got Fox Television, which does an extraordinary job of deflecting attention away from the real issues.

The idea that you have these working-class people who are voting for candidates who refuse to raise the minimum wage, who refuse to provide health care for their kids, who want to send their jobs to China, who want to give tax breaks to corporations, it blows my mind. And that is the issue that we have to figure out.

BILL MOYERS: But is there no way to make a concerted effort to reach out conservative working people, people who share, I think, a populous bias in behalf of government by, and for the people. Wouldn't you bolster your credentials as someone willing to really shake things up, get beyond this distracting tedium of left and right and horserace mentalities that you're asked about all the time on the radio. Is there a way to make a campaign out of that?

BERNIE SANDERS: This is something that I'm thinking about hard. When they ask Tea Party people, and I've seen some of the polls, do you think we should cut Social Security? You know what they say overwhelmingly? No. Should you cut Medicare? No. Tea Party working-class people will be shocked to know that the people who founded the Tea Party, the Koch brothers, want to eliminate Social Security, Medicare, the concept of minimum wage. In other words, the ideology of the Koch brothers, who put the initial money in to found the Tea Party, is very different from the average, working-class person. And you're saying how do we reach out to get to work in coalition with those folks is something that we have got to do.

BILL MOYERS: I heard Morning Joe ask you if you're going to run for president. And you've been asked that everywhere. And I don't want to beat a dead horse. I particularly don't want to beat a dead dark horse. But if you were to do it, and I'm not going to play games with you about saying, are you, or are you not? If you were to do it, would you run as a Democrat or an Independent?

BERNIE SANDERS: I haven't resolved that yet. There are advantages and disadvantages of both. There is strong contempt now for both the Democratic and Republican parties. All of the elections that I have won in Vermont have been as an independent.

So, that speaks to running as an independent. The problem is that the deck is really stacked against independents. You would have to spend an enormous amount of time, money, energy just getting on the damn ballot in 50 states in this country. And then, the media would probably marginalize you. And you may not be able to get into some of the debates.

That's what I'm kind of weighing. But the main issue that I'm trying to figure out, and I'm going around the country talking to people, is there support for a candidacy which is really prepared to take on the billionaire class? Is it, in fact, possible to do what you just said?

It's easy to talk about, let's reach out to working-class tea party people. Can you do it? How do you do it? How do you get the resources to do it? How do you build the grassroots organization? This is what I do believe from the bottom of my heart. In this election coming up right now, the estimate is that 60 percent of the people are not going to vote, 60 percent.

BILL MOYERS: Midterm election?

BERNIE SANDERS: Yes. 80 percent of low-income, working people are not going to vote. Bill, what I am absolutely sure of is that we do not change this country unless there is a political revolution, there is a radical change in consciousness where working people are not only voting, they're participating in the political process, they understand how important politics and government is for the future of this country and for their kids.

BILL MOYERS: So, what's your strategy? I mean--

BERNIE SANDERS: The strategy--

BILL MOYERS: I know you care about, I know you want to make a difference. But I know the system is against your making a difference.

BERNIE SANDERS: You have to bring people together who may not agree on every issue, but who understand that the middle class is collapsing and we are moving toward an oligarchic form of society, where the billionaires will control the economy and the political life of this country.

So, that means reaching out to people from different walks of life and say, you got to overcome this difference and that difference. So, I think what we have to do, Bill, is lay out an agenda which says we are going to take on the billionaire class. You know what? We're going to overturn Citizens United. We're going to move to public funding of elections so these guys don't buy elections.

BILL MOYERS: Are you going to ask them to join a third party?

BERNIE SANDERS: That's a question we have--

BILL MOYERS: It's a difficult question.

BERNIE SANDERS: It's a difficult question. You know, I have, that's been my life, as an independent. And that's one I'm wrestling with, Bill. But given, I, the answer is I just don't know. But what I do know is you need a strong progressive agenda which says, you know, why is it that in a country like Denmark, everybody has health care as a right?

Why is it that higher education is free? Why is it they have a great childcare system? Why is it that they're leading the world in terms of environmental protection and fighting global warming? Can we do that in this country? The answer is we can. But you're not going to do it when 60 percent of the people don't vote in an off presidential election.

BILL MOYERS: How do you make the Hillary wing of the Democratic Party pay attention to the power of a populist message unless you're in the debates in 2016, when most of the public is paying attention to political messages?

BERNIE SANDERS: This has been my political experience. When you rally the grassroots of the country or the city or of your state, when people begin to stand up and say, 'Enough is enough. We want to do well by our kids. We want to protect the environment. We believe we should join the rest of the world in terms of having health care for all, single-payer health care for all, et cetera, et cetera.'

When people begin to move, the people on top will follow them. So, whether it's Hillary or anybody else, what we have got to do is mobilize the American people in a way that we have not seen in recent history around a progressive agenda. Bill, every poll that I have seen, when they ask the American people, what is the most important issue that you're concerned about? You know what they say? Jobs and the economy.

How come we are not investing heavily in rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure. $1 trillion invested in rebuilding roads, bridges, water systems, rail creates 13 million decent-paying jobs. You know what? The American people want us to do that. They want us to raise the minimum wage. So, you need a very strong agenda. You need a mechanism. And you've asked a hard question. Easier to say than to do, to rally people around that agenda. And once you do that, things will take care of itself.

BILL MOYERS: This is what Barack Obama did in 2008. He asked people to take over the Democratic Party, progressives and populists, everyday people that you describe in your speech out in Richmond. He asked those people to come in and, elect me and we'll do just exactly what Bernie Sanders would do if he were president. Hasn't happened.

BERNIE SANDERS: I have lot of respect for Barack Obama. But, his biggest mistake is that, after running a brilliant campaign in 2008, where millions of people in fact were galvanized, young people, people of color came out and said, 'Hey, we're going to make some real change.' The day after the election he said, okay, thank you very much. Now I'm going to work inside the Beltway and we're going to start negotiating with Republicans and all that stuff. The simple truth is, in my view, nothing gets done unless millions and millions of people will demand it. Politics is 365 days a year.

BILL MOYERS: Not just voting?

BERNIE SANDERS: Exactly. And anyone, you can have the best person in the world as president of the United States, that person will accomplish nothing unless millions of people are standing behind him or her. Just an example, Bill, everybody, all the young people in this country are worried about student debt. The fact that hundreds of thousands of young people can't even afford to go to college.

You have a million people, a million young people marching on Washington saying, there's a vote coming up. And if you vote the wrong way, we know who you are. We actually are paying attention. You aren’t going to get reelected. We will lower the cost of college substantially and deal with the student debt crisis. It will not happen. It will not happen unless millions of people are activated.

BILL MOYERS: The practical issue is how do you get millions of people mobilized if in fact both parties are on the side of money? You know, you're making the right argument, I know, and people are responding. But they don't know what to do. If they do what they did with Barack Obama and come out for the Democratic Party, they stand to get betrayed again. If the independent party, third party is difficult to organize and get on the ballot, what do they do?

They're frustrated. You know, even your own wife says she gets depressed when she hears you make another speech like you did in Richmond. And people write me and say, 'I'm depressed watching your show because I don't know what to do.'

BERNIE SANDERS: Number one, we are, in fact, a very, very difficult moment. But let's also look back on history. Bill, if you and I were chatting here 30 years ago and we would say, you said to me, you know, 'I think that the United States, people of our country are going to overcome the deep racism in this country and elect an African American,' you said that 30 years ago, people would say, 'Bill, you're crazy. That'll never happen.'

Thirty years ago we had two women in the United States Senate. Today we have 20 and that number is certainly going to go up. In terms of gay rights. If you and I were sitting here ten years ago and you were to say to me, 'Bernie, you know, I think in conservative states in 2014, they're going to be passing gay marriage.' Would you have dreamed of that ten years ago? You wouldn't have. I would not have, okay?

Right now, we're engaged in a huge fight. It is the economic struggle against the billionaire class who wants it all. They want to kill Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the whole thing. Can we beat them? We can. Now, here's some good news. I know, in the middle of all the bad news. I'll never forget this as long as I live. I was elected mayor of Burlington in 1981. I made promises to the people of my city. Two years later, Bill, we doubled, almost doubled voter turnout.

How's that? And you know why? Because I kept my word and people said, you know what? He is making a difference. He didn't lie to us. So if you have leadership which delivers, or at least says, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, remember what he said? He said, 'These are the economic royalists. They hate my guts and I welcome their hatred because I'm on your side.' That's the kind of policy and language we need.

BILL MOYERS: I apologize for being tedious but you're right, you know? We-- a lot of changes. Black rights, women's rights, gay rights. But here in New York, we have a governor who's been really good on gay rights and he's a handmaiden of Wall Street. I mean, Hillary Clinton, Chuck Schumer, their constituency is Wall Street. So people who want to come out and do what you want to do, are led by people who say, well, we'll go only so far because our loyalty remains to money.

BERNIE SANDERS: Yes. The only point, there is a difference between social issues and the economic issues. And I will not deny for one moment that taking on the ruling class of this country and the billionaire class, it's tough stuff. It is tough stuff. So I don't have any magical solutions. But what I do know is that if we do not create an economy that works for ordinary people, if we do not end the fact that 95 percent of all new income now goes to the top one percent. We've got to end it, and the only way I know to do that is to rally ordinary people around the progressive agenda. So our job is to create a 50 state, grassroots movement around a progressive agenda.

BILL MOYERS: And then would the purpose be, as the tea party's purpose was to take over the Republican Party, would the purpose be to take over the Democratic Party?

BERNIE SANDERS: That is certainly one of the options. I mean, the options are to--

BILL MOYERS: Because I don't see how you could do it just as an independent outside, stiff-armed by both parties, ignored by the press.

BERNIE SANDERS: Well, let's be very clear. Now, the Tea Party has been enormously successful. Enormously successful. They've taken kind of a center right party and made it a right wing extremist party. If you had a grassroots movement, if you had the trade union people, if you had the environmental community, the women's community and ordinary working class people standing up, can you take the Democratic party and make it into a progressive party? I think there's a chance you can.

BILL MOYERS: But to do that. You have to have some way to respond to neutralize Citizens United. Is there a form of, and I know people's eyes go dead when I say campaign finance reform, but is there an answer to Citizens United that you think is achievable?

BERNIE SANDERS: Well, people's eyes should not go dead when you talk about campaign finance reform because if they're concerned about any issue, they've got to be concerned about campaign finance. Give you an example. State of Vermont, we have our candidate for lieutenant governor right now getting public funding running for election. It's not a huge sum of money, but he's running a credible campaign. So I think the alternative has got to be to do everything that we can to overturn Citizens United. But move to a public funding of elections. States can do some of that.

BILL MOYERS: There's a recent poll. More than half of all people in this country do not believe the American dream is real. 59 percent of the people polled in June agreed, quote, the American dream has become impossible for most of us to achieve. And more and more Americans believe, quote, "there's not much opportunity to get ahead. " A living wage, retirement security, the opportunity for your children to get ahead are increasingly out of reach. Why aren't people furious about this?

BERNIE SANDERS: I would say they are furious and Republicans take that anger and channel it against people who are even worse off than working class people. And I think also people don't see an option, they've kind of given up in seeing, yeah, I'm working longer hours for lower wages. Yeah, my kid can't afford to go to college. Yeah, my aunt does not have any health insurance. What can I do about it?

And also there has not been, because of media, because of weak politics on the part of the Democratic Party, the kind of focus that we need to say, you know where the problem is? These guys are getting richer and richer. You're getting poorer and poorer. Have you heard that kind of discussion? Have you heard that type of focus? I don't think so.

BILL MOYERS: What's wrong, what's gone wrong with the Democratic Party?

BERNIE SANDERS: In one answer I'd say money. Time after time we see a hesitancy on the part of the Democratic Party to stand up to the billionaire class because you can't do that when you're out hustling campaign contributions.

So whether the issues are disastrous trade policy, lowering the cost of prescription drugs, all of these special interests have enormous power and influence to the Democratic Party. Instead of having public meetings with people, you have Democratic candidates running all over the place, trying to raise money to keep up with the Koch brothers. So I would say, you know, money is corrupting, certainly has taken over the Republican Party, has significantly impacted the Democrats.

BILL MOYERS: How do we get money out of politics?

BERNIE SANDERS: Well, first thing is we need a massive grassroots movement to have state after state, and we have, I think, 16 of them already onboard saying, we support a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United. I think there's something like 500 communities around America saying the same thing. Then when we do that, we move to public funding of elections. You want to run? I will not be able to outspend you.

BILL MOYERS: Senator Bernie Sanders, thank you for being with me.

BERNIE SANDERS: Great to be here.

BILL MOYERS: At our website, BillMoyers.com, there’s a web exclusive interview with Gayle McLaughlin, the mayor of Richmond, California, where Chevron is spending those millions trying to defeat her and other progressive candidates.

And we have a guide to everything you need to know to cast your ballot on Tuesday. And what to do if someone tries to keep you from exercising your right.

That’s all at BillMoyers.com. I’ll see you there and I’ll see you here, next time.

ANNOUNCER: Funding is provided by:

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And by our sole corporate sponsor, Mutual of America, designing customized individual and group retirement products. That’s why we’re your retirement company.

Producer: Gina Kim. Segment Producer: Robert Booth. Editor: Rob Kuhns. Intro Editor: Sikay Tang. 

 

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/27199-who-s-buying-the-midterm-elections-a-bunch-of-old-white-guys

https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Panopticon-Review/342702882479366

Who's Buying the Midterm Elections? A Bunch of Old White Guys
By Zoë Carpenter
Monday, 03 November 2014
The Nation | Report 

Paul Singer, a New York hedge fund manager, as he exits a vehicle in New York, Nov. 1, 2007. (Photo: Rob Bennett / The New York Times)

This is the year of the mega-donor: just forty-two people are responsible for nearly a third of Super PAC spending in the 2014 election cycle. Super PACs, meanwhile, are outspending the national parties. The list of would-be kingmakers includes Tom Steyer, the former hedge-fund manager who’s poured out $73 million to elect environmentally friendly Democrats; Michael Bloomberg, who’s distributed upwards of $20 million on behalf of both sides; and Paul Singer, the “vulture-fund billionaire” and powerful Republican fundraiser.

Take a look at the list of top donors. They might have distinctly different political agendas, but they have one thing irrefutably in common: they’re almost exclusively old white guys. Only seven women made it into the forty-two, and not a single person of color.

One of the things highlighted in the aftermath of Michael Brown’s death in Ferguson, Missouri, is how poorly America’s political leadership, from city councils to the US Senate, reflects the diversity of the country. According to data compiled by the Reflective Democracy Campaign, white men make up 65 percent of elected officials—more than twice their proportion in the general population. Only 4 percent of our political leaders are women of color. As Jelani Cobb writes in The New Yorker, the midterm elections won’t right this imbalance between demographics and political representation, no matter which party wins the Senate.

In fact, the midterms suggest that white men are gaining clout, at least behind the veil. As campaign-finance laws erode, political power is increasingly concentrated among the billionaires playing the strings of the electoral marionette—a pool that looks less diverse even than Congress. (Given the prominence of dark-money groups, it’s likely that some of the biggest individual players in the midterms are anonymous. But there’s no indication that secret donors are any more diverse than others.)

It’s shrinking, too. Between 1990 and 2010, the number of individual donors increased each election cycle. This year, the pool contracted from 817,464 individual contributors in 2010 to 666,773 as of late October, according to a new analysis from CRP. “Despite only a slight increase in the cost of the election, outside groups, which are overwhelmingly fueled by large donors, are picking up more of the tab, candidates are cutting back on their spending, and there are fewer large (over $200) individual donors contributing overall to candidates and parties,” reads the report.

Politicians should be accountable to the electorate, which is growing more diverse. But the fact that candidates are growing more dependent on a narrow group of contributors means that they may be responsive to a limited set of concerns. There are many factors blunting the political impact of demographic changes, but certainly laws that amplify a less diverse group of people’s voices over others’ in an election is one of them.

The unfettering of big money also makes it harder to elect minority candidates. “Why is it that the Congress we have right now doesn’t look anything like the rest of the country? A lot of it has to do with our campaign-finance laws and the fact that there’s so much money in the system and you need so much money to run for office,” said Lawrence Norden, deputy director of the Democracy Program and the Brennan Center for Justice. “There’s no question that it makes it more difficult for people who aren’t connected to these very wealthy donors to run for office.”

Candidates raise money from people they know, Norden explained, and American social circles are deeply segregated. Three-quarters of white Americans, for example, don’t have any non-white friends. Neighborhoods remain segregated by race and class. “If you don’t have a lot of money to begin with, you’re not interacting with the people who can provide that money,” said Norden.

A number of structural changes have been proposed to right lopsided representation, many of them focused on increasing turnout among minority voters. Those suggestions are particularly salient in response to the GOP’s campaign to pass laws that make it more difficult for low-income people and people of color to vote. But turnout won’t affect the diversity of elected officials if the pool of candidates isn’t diverse to begin with. As long as the financial bar for running a viable campaign keeps rising, it’s going to be more difficult for people of color, women and low-income people to appeal for votes at all.

There’s some evidence that public campaign financing increases proportional representation. Connecticut implemented a voluntary public-financing system in 2008, which provides a fixed amount of funding to candidates who rely on small donors. A study by Demos found that the program led to a more diverse state legislature and increased Latino and female representation. Another study found that the percentage of women elected in five states with public financing was significantly higher than the national average. Unfortunately, in several states recently politicians have set to dismantling, not strengthening, public financing.

“It’s really clear that that’s a major barrier to women and people of color, in particular, that can happen on all levels, even the local level,” said Brenda Carter, director of the Reflective Democracy Campaign, about the growing power of outside money. Still, she noted that there’s been little research into the specific ways in which the influence of money in politics has a disproportionate effect on minority candidates. “Adding a race and gender lens to the money-in-politics conversation is a really important thing,” she said.