I will talk education policy this week but first one day on elections----I usually do this one weekend but guess what? IT'S GARDENING TIME! I had a great day clearing winter from the garden.
I emphasize to the Democratic base we must be aware that Republican have for these few decades been posing progressive selling themselves as wanting to push a progressive issue with no intention of doing so. Maryland is tops at this---Baltimore does not even pretend ---pols are openly very, very neo-conservative with Johns Hopkins and its Wall Street Baltimore Development. Please pay attention to what candidates ARE NOT SAYING----THAT ARE MOST CRITICAL---and you can know who may be posing Democrat and progressive.
The article below is great in showing how Democratic base needs to be cautious for a few reasons. When Clinton started the war on universities pushing corporatization and declaring tenured professors ELITE as they are now doing to our public school teachers----the goal of global pols was to clear all of the structures tied to the long history of universities being the hotbed of political debate and discussion---of student movements----of holding power accountable because for centuries----that is where WE THE PEOPLE HAD OUR POWER AND VOICE IN POLITICS. These few decades pushed most tenured faculty and most professors from that humanities, arts, public justice curricula and made it all about business. That is why Cindy Walsh has been an academic as an independent and not university staff----I did not want to be involved in that corporate environment.
Cornel West is tenured Princeton. His tenure has allowed him to speak freely therefor he was able to out Clinton/Obama and neo-liberalism as bad for decades----HE COULD NOT BE FIRED FOR SPEAKING HIS MIND. Right now I think Cornel is the real deal. Let me show why that is done CAUTIOUSLY. Princeton is as Ivy League as it gets and I know the next phase of Clinton neo-liberalism will be a co-opted version of Bernie Sanders and social Democracy----Democratic Socialism. So, I will watch Cornel to see if he is backing Bernie with the goal of turning social Democracy into Democratic Socialism. The same was done with Elizabeth Warren from Harvard----she shouts all the popular political stances but she is right-leaning and a Clinton neo-liberal who will advance a Bernie Sanders social Democratic platform towards the far-right Democratic Socialism.
I know that of Warren---I am watching for that from Cornel West.
Dr. Cornel West: "We're trying to bring neoliberalism to a close.
Hillary Clinton is a neoliberal, but she poses as a progressive."
Dolores Huerta: "I think it is going to have to be an evolution rather than a revolution."
Watch the debate: http://owl.li/ZgiNr
Bernie or Hillary? Cornel West & Dolores Huerta Debate After Sanders' Upset Win in Michigan
March 09, 2016
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professor at Union Theological Seminary. He endorsed Bernie Sanders for president last summer. He is author of numerous books, most recently, Black Prophetic Fire.
Dolores Huertacivil rights activist and co-founder of the United Farm Workers of America with Cesar Chavez. She is president of the Dolores Huerta Foundation for community organizing. Huerta has endorsed Hillary Clinton for president.
This is viewer supported news
In the most shocking upset of the 2016 presidential campaign to date, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders defeated Hillary Clinton in the Michigan primary. Sanders won 50 percent of the vote to Clinton’s 48. During the campaign, Sanders focused heavily on his opposition to what he called "disastrous" trade deals like NAFTA which have hurt Michigan’s manufacturing sector. Opinion polls had projected Clinton would easily win the state by as much as 20 percent. We speak to professor Cornel West, who backs Sanders, and legendary civil rights activist and labor organizer Dolores Huerta, who backs Clinton.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.JUAN GONZÁLEZ: In the most stunning upset of the presidential campaign to date, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders defeated Hillary Clinton in the Michigan primary. Sanders won 50 percent of the vote to Clinton’s 48 percent. During the campaign, Sanders focused heavily on his opposition to what he called "disastrous" trade deals like NAFTA which have hurt Michigan’s manufacturing sector.
Opinion polls had projected Clinton would easily win the state by as much as 20 percent. On Tuesday afternoon, Nate Silver’s popular polling site FiveThirtyEight.com predicted Clinton had a greater than 99 percent chance of winning the Michigan primary. But late last night, Silver wrote that Michigan would, quote, "count as among the greatest polling errors in primary history."
AMY GOODMAN: Despite Bernie Sanders’ upset in Michigan, Hillary Clinton ended up winning more delegates Tuesday thanks to a lopsided win in Mississippi, where she won 83 percent of the vote. Clinton now has 760 pledged delegates to Sanders’ 546. In addition, Clinton has secured support from an overwhelming number of unelected superdelegates made up from the party establishment, though they could change their allegiance at any point. Sanders gave an impromptu news conference outside a hotel in Miami last night, before he learned of the results in Michigan.
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: I just want to take this opportunity to thank the people of Michigan, who kind of repudiated the polls that had us 20, 25 points down a few days ago, who repudiated the pundits who said that Bernie Sanders was not going anywhere. ... And what tonight means is that the Bernie Sanders campaign, the people’s—the revolution, people’s revolution that we are talking about, the political revolution that we are talking about, is strong in every part of the country. And frankly, we believe that our strongest areas are yet to happen. We’re going to do very, very well on the West Coast and other parts of this country.
What the American people are saying is they are tired of a corrupt campaign finance system and super PACs funded by Wall Street and the billionaire class. They are tired of a rigged economy in which people in Michigan, people in Illinois, people in Ohio are working longer hours for low wages, worried to death about the future of their kids, and yet almost all new income and wealth is going to the top 1 percent. And the people of America are tired of a broken criminal justice system, in which we have more people in jail, largely African-American, Latino, Native American—more people in jail than any other major country on Earth.
So, we started this campaign, as many will remember, 10 months ago. We were 60 or 70 points down in the polls. And yet we have—what we have seen is, in poll after poll, state after state, what we have done is created the kind of momentum that we need to win.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Hillary Clinton spent the evening in Ohio, which also holds a primary on Tuesday. She addressed supporters before the results of Michigan came in.
HILLARY CLINTON: I want to talk about what working families are up against across the country. I want to talk about how we have a new bargain, so you can get ahead and stay ahead in every—in every industrial city, small town, farm country, Indian country, every community that’s been hollowed out by lost jobs and lost hopes. Don’t let anybody tell you we can’t make it in America anymore. We can, we are, and we will. But in order to do that, we can’t be talking about building walls or turning the clock back. We have to build on what made America great in the first place: our energy and optimism, our openness and creativity.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re now joined by three guests.
Here in New York, Cornel West, professor at Union Theological Seminary, has endorsed Bernie Sanders for president last summer. He’s author of a number of books, most recently, Black Prophetic Fire.
Dolores Huerta joins us from San Diego, California, civil rights activist, co-founder of the United Farm Workers of America with Cesar Chavez, president of the Dolores Huerta Foundation for community organizing. Dolores Huerta has endorsed Hillary Clinton for president.
And in Los Angeles, we’re joined by Melina Abdullah, an organizer with Black Lives Matter, which has not endorsed any presidential candidate. She is also a professor and chair of Pan-African Studies at California State University in Los Angeles.
We welcome you all to Democracy Now! Well, Dr. Cornel West, we’re going to begin with you, because, at least for the pollsters, this is a stunning upset.
CORNEL WEST: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: I have to say, I think even Bernie Sanders was surprised. I have never seen him alone like that, just standing against a wall holding a news conference for the press, spoke for a few minutes. He didn’t yet know the primary results. It seemed to be coming a few minutes later. You were with him in Michigan this weekend.
CORNEL WEST: No, it’s true, we had no idea that we would have this kind of upset. We knew that we were going to fight based on integrity, based on principle. We know that we’re in a moment where we’ve got a neofascist in the making with Trump; we’re trying to bring neoliberalism to a close; we’ve got a neopopulist, a genuine populist, in Sanders; and Hillary Clinton is a neoliberal, but she poses as a progressive. And so there’s a sense in which we know that Bernie Sanders is the one to beat Trump. And that’s crucial, because we’re at a very, very deep moment in this country.
And I want to salute you all, because the corporate media has produced Trump, in a fundamental way—every minute he’s covered, every second he’s covered. Bernie Sanders hardly gets covered at all, but he has the same number of people following. Hillary Clinton gets covered more than Bernie but not as much as Trump. So, in that sense, I think we’ve got some real work ahead.
AMY GOODMAN: Last night, Trump--
CORNEL WEST: But I’ve got a smile on my face.
AMY GOODMAN: CNN and MSNBC—I’m not talking about Fox--
CORNEL WEST: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: CNN and MSNBC both ran the entire extended news conference that Donald Trump held.
CORNEL WEST: It’s a shame. They’re making money. They want to make money.
AMY GOODMAN: Now, Hillary Clinton actually spoke midway through Trump speaking. Usually, they switch from one to another.
CORNEL WEST: Right.
AMY GOODMAN: Here they held the tape of Hillary Clinton to run the entire extended news conference of Trump in Florida.
CORNEL WEST: No, I mean, I think it’s a very sad affair. But I’m also very sad that black America is not waking up in the way in which we should. We’ve got a spiritual rot and a moral cowardice in our neoliberal black political class and our neoliberal black intelligentsia, who don’t want to tell the truth about the underside of the Hillary Clinton campaign. And the underside really has to do with not just the Clinton machine and all of its corruptions and so forth, but, more importantly, the policies, the trade policies, the prison—the mass incarceration regime, the deregulating of the banks and so forth. But Brother Bernie is hitting this head on. It’s difficult for Hillary to somehow act as if she’s such a populist, when she’s been a centrist for so long.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Cornel, one of the things about the Michigan primary, in particular, was that since it was an open primary, that meant that independents could vote, not just Democrats.
CORNEL WEST: Yes, that’s right.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And some of the speculation is that at the last moment a lot of independents decided, "Well, let me go into the Democratic primary and vote for Bernie"--
CORNEL WEST: I think that’s true.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: —which is a sort of an indication of where—because the electorate in the United States is pretty much divided one-third Democrat, one-third independent, one-third Republican.
CORNEL WEST: That’s true. That’s true.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Where the independents are going?
CORNEL WEST: But I think given the class issues that Brother Bernie and all of us are trying to push, in Michigan, the class issues make a big difference. It’s generational, and it’s ideological. And it’s a beautiful thing to see.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, I’d like to bring in Dolores Huerta, longtime civil rights activist, co-founder of the United Farm Workers of America. Your sense of what happened yesterday in these primaries and why you think it’s so important for Democrats and others to vote for Hillary Clinton?
DOLORES HUERTA: Well, I think one thing is that we seem to put a lot of blame on Hillary for things that Bill Clinton did in the Clinton administration, which I don’t think is right. I think the other thing, too, is that I know that Bernie’s got a very strong message—I respect him very much for his message that he’s bringing about the inequality in our economic system—but Bernie knows, as he’s been in the Congress for 26 years, that we also have to have a Congress to be able to bring to fruition some of the great ideas that he’s put forth. I do believe that Hillary Clinton—I do have a lot of faith in her, and I think she’s got the skills, she’s got the wisdom. You know, she’s got the experience to make things happen. When we compare the records of the two candidates, we see that Hillary Clinton’s record is much, much stronger than Bernie Sanders’ is. And I do believe that what Bernie is saying and what he wants to happen—and I believe in many, many of the ideas that he’s put forth, but I think it will take time, and we’ve got to really elect a good Congress. You know, people forget—and I—the Affordable Care Act, that when that passed the Congress, it only passed with four or five votes, even though we had a 25 Democratic majority at that time.
And I have to say that in terms of the Latino community, we are completely in support of Hillary, simply because Bernie just hasn’t been there for the Latino community. You know, he had a really good opportunity in 2007, when Senator Ted Kennedy, Hillary Clinton, Senator Durbin from Illinois—when they proposed a good immigration reform bill. And we had all of the momentum behind us at that time, because we had had all of these marches all over the country for immigration reform. And Bernie, unfortunately, came out against that bill. And that was very sad that he did that. And what he has said repeatedly is that he came out against the bill because it had the guest worker program in it. Well, wait a minute. When we passed the amnesty bill in 1986, we had guest workers in that bill, with protections—protections for the farmworkers, protections for the domestic workers. The bill that he voted on in 2013 also had the guest worker program in it. So I think he just wasn’t paying attention at that time, and I think we lost a great opportunity.
So, again, I believe in Bernie’s message, and I think we can make it happen. I think it’s going to have to be an evolution rather than a revolution. And I think all of us that are on the left and working people are going to be able to make it happen.
The other thing I want to point out, when we look at Hillary’s victories, especially in the South, they’re like 70 to 30, 70 percent to 30 percent. But we see the places that she has—where she has lost to Bernie Sanders, it’s in single digits, whereas where she is winning, where Bernie’s at, it’s actually two to one. So, I do have a lot of faith in Hillary Clinton. And I do believe that she will make a very, very strong president, because she is a very strong woman.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Cornel, I want to go to what Dolores mentioned about this issue of revolution, because, really, given the nature of Washington today with these huge Republican majorities in the House and the Senate, isn’t Bernie Sanders, to some degree, selling the idea of revolution, that he cannot deliver unless there’s a fundamental change in the Congress, as well?
CORNEL WEST: Well, Juan, I just salute Sister Dolores. She’s my dear sister. I just think she’s wrong. I think that it’s very difficult to have faith in a Hillary Clinton when she receives money from the GEO, which sustained the detention centers for precious immigrants, incarcerated them unjustly. I don’t see how one could make the case that somehow you’ve got a candidate that has the kind of integrity that we want. There is no doubt indeed that Bernie Sanders can win, because he recognizes he’s a politician that needs a social movement behind him. He is a thermostat: He shapes the climate. Hillary is a thermometer: She just registers and reflects the climate. We need somebody who’s shaping, the way that Occupy shaped the discourse around wealth inequality, the way Black Lives Matter has shaped the discourse around the vicious legacy of the white supremacy as it related to the repressive apparatus of the nation-state in regard to this trigger-happy policing going on with our precious young brothers and sisters.
DOLORES HUERTA: Well, I believe that Hillary has already come out for prison reform, and I think that she actually could help make that happen. And I think a lot of us that are out there, including yourself, Cornel, my dear brother--
CORNEL WEST: My dear sister.
DOLORES HUERTA: —whom I love dearly—I love you dearly.
CORNEL WEST: And I love you dearly, too, my sister, indeed, indeed.
DOLORES HUERTA: —we will be out there. You know, we will be out there organizing to make sure that some of these reforms will happen. I think we have—you know, when we compare our Democratic candidates to our Republican candidates, I think we can be so grateful that we have intelligent people that are running for the presidency. And I know—whichever of them wins, I know we’re going to have a good presidency. The one other thing I want to point out is that we have the Republicans that are putting a lot of money into Bernie’s campaign, to his independent campaigns, to make sure that they can defeat Hillary Clinton, because they figure that it will be easier to defeat Bernie than it will be to defeat Hillary Clinton in November.
CORNEL WEST: No, no. The polls say Bernie does better against Trump than Hillary does. But I know you want to get--
DOLORES HUERTA: Well, we’ll see.
CORNEL WEST: We’re going to get our other sister in here. We want to get our other sister in here.
_____________________________________
I stated earlier how Huerta is simply that small percentage of all voting groups that left the civil rights movement and went to the Clinton/Obama making the rich richer. Latino voters know this---but the Democratic base will look at this as Clinton having the support of Latino voters. Some will vote for Hillary and many times it will be the same as with black citizens not having access to public policy education---they vote as their captured leaders tell them.
All immigrants, but Latino for the long term have been pushed to this PATHWAY TO CITIZENSHIP never meaning to lead 95% of immigrants anywhere near citizenship. Corporate pols will only allow a small percentage become wealthy and they identify those who will stay with this global neo-liberal model. This is done for women, black citizens, disabled, former labor leaders, and VETS. Make a small percentage rich and place them as leaders telling others to follow these very bad Wall Street global corporate neo-liberal policies.
All Democratic base groups are seeing this so these global pols are going to get sneakier----KNOW YOUR CANDIDATES---CITIZENS IN COMMUNITIES KNOW WHO THE PLAYERS WILL BE!
Baby boomers did the revolution in the 1960s-70s that forced civil, labor, women, disability, VET rights and installed them as US Constitutional Amendments. It would not have been possible without that widespread political action. Huerta is trying to quell this----black pols in Baltimore say this same thing...they quell the revolutionary push. This does not mean violent revolution---it means mass political actions.
IT MUST BE A REVOLUTION BECAUSE WE HAVE WORKED ON EVOLUTION FOR THESE FEW DECADES.
Dolores Huerta: "I think it is going to have to be an evolution rather than a revolution."
Watch the debate: http://owl.li/ZgiNr
It is also not simply focused on Bernie----it is a social Democratic movement in Democratic primaries for Congress---State Assemblies---city halls.
The Bernie Sanders Revolution
By THE EDITORIAL BOARDMARCH 12, 2016 New York Times
You say you want a revolution? Well.…
“Revolution” is Bernie Sanders’s go-to word. The candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination uses it to celebrate primary victories and explain losses, to rally his young supporters and, most of all, to answer sticky questions about how he’ll get what he wants.
___________________________________________
Ilya Sheyman, the executive director of MoveOn.org, a political advocacy and action group that has endorsed Mr. Sanders, views his candidacy as “a reaction to the Tea Party standing in the way of everything the president wants to do, and a coming of age of a new wave of voters.”
MOVE ON was created by the Clinton Administration and continued with Obama because global pols needed the black citizens in US cities deemed INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC ZONES to support turning their cities into global corporate campuses with global FOXCONN factories bringing sweat shop enslavement with no US, state, or city sovereignty. It would have been harder to do this if not a black President in office. So, Hillary was not as daunted as appeared----they wanted Obama and his far-right third Bush term. MOVE ON has supported neo-liberal candidates all over the nation. Sheyman is part of this. So, why is MOVE ON backing Bernie Sanders? To co-op the social Democratic movement to Clinton's Democratic Socialism movement. See how global pols have been allowed to capture all political movements. Robert Reich is a Clinton neo-liberal posing progressive feeling the pain of the American people as he was Labor Secretary under Clinton saying for decades that NAFTA was good----now saying it was bad----and backing Bernie. This is how global pols confuse voters----they jump on the next populist movement and then run for office as leaders.
ROBERT REICH IS A NEO-LIBERAL POSER BEING PUSHED IN MEDIA AS FEELING OUR PAIN. PAUL KRUGMAN IS A GREAT BIG NEO-LIBERAL ECONOMIST FEELING OUR PAIN AND BACKING OBAMA AS GREAT.
You can tell Sheyman of MOVE ON is Clinton neo-liberal when he states it is the TEA PARTY standing in Obama's way as if everyone does not know Obama was the best Republican ever. These people and groups play on the Democratic base and while doing it steal local momentum and local leaders for these movements by being the structure Democrats connect to. Then they take all those Democratic base emails from petition drives and policy support AND SELL THEM TO CLINTON/OBAMA WALL STREET GLOBAL CORPORATE NEO-LIBERAL CANDIDATES.
GROW OUR SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC MOVEMENTS LOCALLY WITH REAL GRASSROOTS CITIZENS---IF WE KNOW THEM WHEN THEY BEGIN---THEY CANNOT CLIMB THE DEMOCRATIC LADDER INTO NATIONAL POLITICS AND ORGANIZATION LEADERS.
Of course Robert Reich is being pushed by Clinton neo-liberals to be that populist social Democrat to keep the party captured to Wall Street global corporate neo-liberals
NAFTA Supporter Robert Reich Proud Of What Clinton Did
by repost
Sunday Sep 22nd, 2013 1:49 PM
Liberal Clinton Supporter Robert Reich now argues that he is proud of what Clinton did. Clinton supported the supposed "reform" of welfare and NAFTA which is been a major tool for union busters and the multi-nationals in destroying the lives of working people.
reich_and_clinton.jpeg
NAFTA Supporter Robert Reich Proud Of What Clinton Did
http://www.sfchronicle.com/movies/article/Inequality-offers-education-on-economy-4827878.php
Q: You say in the film that when you were in the Clinton administration, "We didn't do enough." Enough of what?
Reich : "We didn't do enough to reverse these underlying trends. I'm proud of what we did do, but we set out to do much more. There's a distinction between the business cycle, the natural ups and downs of the economy, on the one hand, and these underlying structural trends.
I think we in the Clinton administration managed to help facilitate a very vigorous recovery, one of the best recoveries in American history, at least postwar. But we didn't do nearly enough to reverse widening inequality. The moment the recovery was over, we were back to the same underlying trend lines, but worse."
Reich Supported NAFTA
Gerald McEnteePresident of the 1.6 Million-Member AFSCME Union
Posted: April 18, 2008 02:09 PM
____________________________________
There is a difference between shouting against Trans Pacific Trade Pact and being against International Economic Zones and global corporate campuses. Warren, Reich, and others never mention International Economic Zones as California home of Reich and Massachusetts/Harvard home of Warren are installing International Economic Zones as fast as any! The idea being ---if we stop TPP which is the policy they pretend will end our US sovereignty and rights as citizens -----but allow global corporate campuses----we will somehow control these global corporations WHICH IS IMPOSSIBLE. These groups will yell at Wall Street---while International Economic Zone policies planned for decades goes without voice.
Those shouting against TPP and Wall Street are doing a good job---but they are supporting the ONE WORLD global structure---such consolidation of wealth and corporate power there will be no taming it. Listen to whom is educating on International Economic Zones----these leaders know what is happening----as does our state assembly and city hall pols.
If you know Baltimore was deemed a few decades ago-----International Economic Zone with all policies moving towards that----and all Maryland pols are supporting Trans Pacific Trade Pact----any Baltimore pols saying they don't while moving every policy in place for decades is posing progressive----then you know that these zones will allow global corporations to operate overseas ignoring all labor and environmental law----AND THAT INCLUDES MINIMUM WAGE. There will be no minimum wage---Baltimore barely enforces it already----so pols shouting
$15 AN HOUR AS BALTIMORE POLS ARE -----ARE POSING PROGRESSIVE KNOWING WAGES WILL BECOME THIRD WORLD WITH THE POLICIES THEY ARE PUSHING.
Mary Pat Clarke and others are claiming this at Baltimore forums----Robert Reich pushes it as San Francisco is the furthest along installing International Economic Zone policy. $15 an hour is a real progressive issue-----but not if you are pushing US cities as International Economic Zones.
Robert Reich on Trans-Pacific Partnership as " ...business-humanrights.org/en/robert-reich...nafta-on-steroids Robert Reich on Trans-Pacific Partnership as "NAFTA on Steroids" Robert Reich on Trans-Pacific Partnership as "NAFTA on Steroids" Share ...
'the Fight for $15 minimum-wage campaign',
*********************************************************
TPP Effect #1: Weakening of the Minimum WageThe most obvious way the TPP will hurt lower or middle class Americans is through the outsourcing of jobs. We have already seen the disastrous effect of NAFTA in this area. Now, American workers will have to compete with those in Vietnam (who get a minimum wage of around 52 cents an hour) and Mexico (who get a minimum wage of around 62 cents an hour) according to this source. Did you know that Brunei does not even have a minimum wage? Why would a corporation pay $15, $10 or even $7.25 when it could pay its workers less than 70 cents per hour?
How this will affect you: the TPP could well mean that many people working minimum wage jobs will have to work for less, or lose their job outright.
July 4, 2015
Learn The 5 Key Ways The TPP Will Affect You
(The TPP (Trans Pacific Partnership) is another elite power grab giving multinational corporations more control. Learn the 5 key ways it will affect you.)
Submitted to All News PipeLine by Makia Freeman at The Freedom Articles
The TPP (Trans Pacific Partnership) has moved one step closer to becoming law in the US after the Senate voted to give Fast Track authority to the President. The TPP however must really be considered as 1 of 3 mega treaties designed to give unprecedented control of the world’s trade to giant multinationals including there Big Pharma and Big Biotech companies. The other 2 parts are the TTIP (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership) and the TISA (Trade in Services Agreement); together the TTP, TTIP and TISA form the 3 T-Treaties to cement the corporatocracy as our global ruler. The TTP is focused on 12 countries in the Pacific which contribute 40% of the world’s GDP (US, Japan, Australia, Peru, Malaysia, Vietnam, New Zealand, Chile, Singapore, Canada, Mexico, and Brunei) while the TTIP harmonizes trade between the US and the EU. The TISA included the US, EU, Australia and other nations (totaling 24) and aims to privatize the worldwide trade of services such as banking, healthcare and transport.
Notably, none of the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) are included in any of the 3 T-Treates, as they have clearly challenged and disturbed the Anglo-American dominated NWO elite too much. Obama is now on the verge of pushing through 2 giant laws in his presidency: the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) and the TPP-TTIP-TISA (Obamatrade). How interesting then that Obama’s handler is Zbigniew Brzezinski, who serves the Rockefellers, who own Big Pharma and have major interest in the other corporations which will benefit most from this …
Notably, none of the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) are included in any of the 3 T-Treates, as they have clearly challenged and disturbed the Anglo-American dominated NWO elite too much. Obama is now on the verge of pushing through 2 giant laws in his presidency: the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) and the TPP-TTIP-TISA (Obamatrade). How interesting then that Obama’s handler is Zbigniew Brzezinski, who serves the Rockefellers, who own Big Pharma and have major interest in the other corporations which will benefit most from this …
The Very Word Secrecy is Repugnant in a Free and Open Society
All of the 3 T-Treaties being negotiated right now are being deliberately kept hidden from the public. We only know about them thanks to WikiLeaks. In fact, the secrecy has been so stringent that no electronic devices or note-taking is allowed, and access is restricted to only Congress staffers with a high enough security clearance. Look what US Senator Barbara Boxer had to say about the secrecy of the TPP:
“Well, let me tell you, what you have to do to read this agreement. Follow this. You can only take a few of your staffers who happen to have a security clearance because god knows why this is secure. This is classified. It’s nothing to do with defense. It has nothing to do with going after ISIS. It has nothing to do with any of that, but it is classified. So I go down with my staff that I could get to go with me, and as soon as I get there, the guard says to me, hand over your electronics.
Okay, I give over my electronics. Then the guard says, you can’t take notes. I said, I can’t take notes? Well, you can take notes, but you have to give them back to me, and I’ll put them in a file. So, I said, wait a minute. I’m gonna take notes, and then you’re gonna take my notes away from me, and then you’re going to have them in a file, and you can read my notes?”
If the TPP were really good for Americans, why the secrecy? Why not openly let anyone read the text and decide for themselves? “The very word secrecy is repugnant in a free and open society,” as JFK famously said in his 1961 Waldorf-Astoria speech where he exposed the insidious influence that Secret Societies were having on the USA. He was killed for going against these secret groups. Incidentally George H. W. Bush, who was heavily involved in the JFK assassination, just so happens to be part of Secret Societies like the Skull and Bones Club of Yale University, as well as others like the Bohemian Club which engage in mock (or real) Satanic ritual at Bohemian Grove.
The TPP is a major cause for alarm for ordinary citizens living in a TPP country. It targets some of your most fundamental rights relating to access to knowledge. It undermines the abilities of nations to make their own laws to protect their own businesses and citizens. As Julian Assange of Wikileaks wrote:
“If instituted, the TPP’s IP (Intellectual Property) regime would trample over individual rights and free expression, as well as ride roughshod over the intellectual and creative commons. If you read, write, publish, think, listen, dance, sing or invent; if you farm or consume food; if you’re ill now or might one day be ill, the TPP has you in its crosshairs.”
The following are 5 specific ways the TPP will affect you as an average citizen in the US, Australia, New Zealand or any other TPP nation.
TPP Effect #1: Weakening of the Minimum Wage
The most obvious way the TPP will hurt lower or middle class Americans is through the outsourcing of jobs. We have already seen the disastrous effect of NAFTA in this area. Now, American workers will have to compete with those in Vietnam (who get a minimum wage of around 52 cents an hour) and Mexico (who get a minimum wage of around 62 cents an hour) according to this source. Did you know that Brunei does not even have a minimum wage? Why would a corporation pay $15, $10 or even $7.25 when it could pay its workers less than 70 cents per hour?
How this will affect you: the TPP could well mean that many people working minimum wage jobs will have to work for less, or lose their job outright.
TPP Effect #2: More Censorship, Less Freedom of Expression
The internet has been a 2-edged sword in the battle for freedom. It has allowed the elite to conduct mass surveillance on the populace in an unprecedented amount; however, it has also allowed for fantastic freedom of expression and the swift sharing of information. Now, more than ever before, you can get real news and analysis about events as they break, rather than the usual mainstream media spin and propaganda. To counter this, the elite have bringing in their cherished tactic of “copyright” as a stealthy method to enact censorship and stifle freedom of expression. The less freedom of expression there is, of course, the more they can get away with their schemes of centralization of power.
The TPP’s chapter on IP (Intellectual Property) Rights shows the emphasis on extending copyright terms. As the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) wrote in its piece The TPP Copyright Trap:
“The ratcheting upward of copyright terms comes at a time when Internet and other digital technologies have spurred a revitalization of the world’s public domain: the treasury of works that has passed out of copyright. Thanks to digital distribution, public domain material is now globally available for almost zero cost for study, enjoyment and re-use … The additional 20 years of copyright protection amounts to a misappropriation from the public domain. It inhibits the creation of new works that build upon the past and exacerbates the orphan works problem. Even the U.S. Copyright Office has indicated that the copyright term may be too long, and proposed options for mitigating its deleterious effects.”
Even bloggers, authors, documentary makers and others who want to use excerpts of copyrighted work for purposes of criticism may be limited by the proposed “Three-Step Test” language which puts restrictions on fair use. This chapter of the TPP will also place new demands on your ISP (Internet Service Provider), requiring them to become digital police. They will be expected to surveil what their users access on the Internet and to enforce copyright law!
How this will affect you: the TPP will require the signing nations to adopt criminal sanctions for those found guilty of copyright infringement, meaning you could end up in prison for sharing music, videos or other things online.
The ISDS tribunal of the TPP would create corporate courts above national sovereignty.
TPP Effect #3: Private Corporate Courts
Another disturbing feature of the TPP is the pushing of IDIS (Investor State Dispute Settlement) tribunals as a replacement to the legal judicial courts of nations. It’s another stepping stone to the One World Government. The IDIS mechanism is essentially a private corporate court, an international tribunal of private lawyers, who would have the power to award compensation money to big corporations if they found that a TPP nation’s laws prevented that corporation from making money. In other words, big corporations would get “lost profit” dollars and the taxpayer of that nation would have to foot the bill!
ISDS poses a grave danger to the law. As US Senator Elizabeth Warren points out in this video, ISDS allowed the following things to happen:
– A French company sued Egypt because Egypt raised its minim wage;
– A Swedish company sued Germany because Germany tried to phase out nuclear energy after the Fukushima disaster;
– A Dutch company sued the Czech Republic because it didn’t bail out a bank that the Dutch company partially owned; and
– Philip Morris is trying to use ISDS to stop Ecuador introducting new laws to protect its consumer from cigarettes/tobacco.
How will this affect you: the TPP will mandate that your nation will no longer be able to make laws banning toxic products (e.g. pharmaceutical drugs, GMO-laden food, etc.) and that you will have little or no legal recourse if you hurt, damaged or poisoned by them.
TPP Effect #4: Stronger Patents, More Control for Big Pharma
John D. Rockefeller, the instigator of the Rockefeller Empire, is reported to have said the competition is sin. His oil empire became the backing for Big Pharma, still owned by the Rockefellers to this day. It is no surprise that the game is still the same: try to eliminate competition and gain a monopoly. The TPP’s chapter on Transparency (Transparency and procedural fairness for pharmaceutical products and medical devices), according to this analysis by Deborah Gleeson, is about more power for Big Pharma:
“The purported aim of the Annex is to facilitate ‘high–quality healthcare’ but the Annex does nothing to achieve this. It is clearly intended to cater to the interests of the pharmaceutical industry. Nor does this do anything to promote “free trade”: rather it tightly specifies the operation of countries’ schemes for subsidizing pharmaceuticals and medical devices with the aim of providing greater disclosure, more avenues for pharmaceutical industry influence and greater opportunities for industry contestation of pharmaceutical decision making”.
She later states that the TPP “is clearly intended to target New Zealand’s Pharmaceutical Management Agency (PHARMAC)” while others have discussed how other nations in the TPP like Australia may be forced to adopt US-style healthcare – a system which kills around 225,000 per year (including 106,000 from adverse effects of Big Pharma drugs) according toDr. Starfield’s study. This provisions also aims to make it very difficult for makers of generic drugs to compete with Big Pharma’s brand-name drugs. The idea is to force all the other TPP nations outside the US to use only brand-name drugs. Additionally, did you know that Big Pharma through the TPP is pushing for patents on animals and patents on surgical methods? How can Big Pharma possibly claim any basis for being able to patent an animal given the longstanding tradition of patents not been granted for things in and of Nature?
How this will affect you: How would you like it if your surgeon told you he/she could not operate on you because a particular surgical technique was copyrighted and private property? How would like having to pay more for “brand-name” medicine because the exact same kind (the generic kind) is deliberately unavailable?
TPP Effect #5: Less Environmental Protection
The TPP’s Environment Chapter functions more as a PR exercise than anything else. There are little or no enforcement mechanisms contained within it. The Sierra Club, World Wildlife Fund and National Resources Defense Council released a joint analysis which concluded the TPP was a step backward from a 2007 agreement under the Bush administration. As they write:
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WE NEED FENCE-SITTING INDEPENDENTS REGISTERING AS DEMOCRATS FOR THIS DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY IN STATES LIKE MARYLAND THAT DO NOT ALLOW INDEPENDENTS TO VOTE IN DEMOCRATIC PRIMARIES!
Below you see the big issues unfolding in our Democratic primary races. As Clinton Wall Street global corporate neo-liberals captured the Democratic Party, the Democratic base stopped voting and many moved out of the party to Independent status. The same occurred in the Republican Party as the Bush/Hopkins neo-conservatives took the party the base moved to Independent. So, all states across the nation have large Independent voters while states handle those voters differently. Below you see Michigan where Independents not figured into voting stats came out largely for a social Democrat in Bernie=====able to vote in either primary.
Also, some states allow delegates to be split between candidates according to percentage won----other states are WINNER TAKES ALL.
Maryland has installed policies that block against both of the above---and they do it on purpose to keep any social Democrat from taking all of those Independent voters----Independents cannot vote in Republican or Democratic primaries---they are forced to wait to general election. Second, Maryland is a winner takes all state regarding delegates----Hillary could win by only 51% and she would get all of Maryland's delegates and Bernie none. With Clinton/Obama Wall Street global corporate neo-liberalism taking Maryland's Democratic committees----or Baltimore's neo-conservative Johns Hopkins/Baltimore Development Corporation pols running as Democrats-----
SOCIAL DEMOCRATS LIKE BERNIE WILL NEED MARYLAND INDEPENDENTS LEANING DEMOCRATIC TO REGISTER TO VOTE AS A DEMOCRAT IN THIS COMING PRIMARY FOLKS! YOU CAN CHANGE BACK NEXT ELECTION IF YOU WANT.
'Another big blind spot in the polling was its handling of independent voters. Michigan primary voters don't need to be registered Democrats to vote, and several of the polls projected that they'd only account for about 10 percent of the primary electorate.
In fact, independents — who broke for Sanders by a 71-28 margin — made up closer to 28 percent of the electorate, according to NBC News's exit polling'.
You also see the national election polling corporations skewing the election data away from a candidate not a global Wall Street poll as they do in state and local elections and luckily----MICHIGAN VOTERS PAID NO ATTENTION TO FAKE POLLING STATS AS WE HAVE HERE IN BALTIMORE AND MARYLAND.
Why the polls totally underestimated Bernie Sanders in Michigan
Updated by Jeff Stein on March 9, 2016, 2:30 p.m. ET
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Bernie Sanders at Michigan State in early March. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)Last night, Bernie Sanders pulled off a stunning upset in Michigan that almost no one expected — after all, he had been trailing by more than 20 points in much of the polling mere days before.
Why were the polls so wrong?
Here's one factor that helps explain what happened: Far more young people turned out to vote in Michigan's Democratic primary than most experts had assumed beforehand, according to Matt Grossmann, director of the Institute for Public Policy and Social Research at Michigan State University.
"Clearly, there was a breakdown in the models we used," said Steve Mitchell, one of the many pollsters who projected Clinton up by more than 20 points in Michigan. "It looks like there were a lot more young voters than we thought, and they voted in stronger numbers for Bernie Sanders."
A particularly dramatic example: One poll that put Hillary Clinton up by 28 points in the race expected voters ages 18 to 39 to make up only 8.9 percent of the electorate.
It turned out that 21 percent of Michigan's primary electorate was ages 18 to 29, according to exit polling cited by Grossman. Voters ages 30 to 44 accounted for another 25 percent of the vote share.
Sanders won the youth vote by an 81-19 margin. In other words, this demographic — the one most favorable to him — ended up being a greater share of the electorate by about four times what had been expected.
But that's not the only reasons polls were so off
There were at least two other major factors for Sanders's stronger-than-expected performance in Michigan.
Sanders also had a surprising ability to close the gap among black voters in Michigan. Mitchell, the pollster, said his firm projected Clinton would win African Americans by a 50-point margin — similar to margins in other states.
Sanders in Warren, Michigan. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)
But according to initial exit polls, he said, Clinton ended up winning black voters in Michigan by something closer to 35 points. That's a good sign for Sanders's competitiveness in many of the delegate-rich states that lie ahead, like Ohio and Illinois, and it also partially explains why polls were so off.
Another big blind spot in the polling was its handling of independent voters. Michigan primary voters don't need to be registered Democrats to vote, and several of the polls projected that they'd only account for about 10 percent of the primary electorate.
In fact, independents — who broke for Sanders by a 71-28 margin — made up closer to 28 percent of the electorate, according to NBC News's exit polling.
Of course, everyone and their mother can come up with a pet theory for why Sanders was able to move the needle so dramatically.
Many have cited Sanders's debate performance in Flint on Sunday. Others have pointed to Clinton's misleading attack on Sanders's auto bailout position, Sanders's message on free trade, and even the idea that some Democratic voters "crossed over" to vote Republican on the assumption that Clinton is guaranteed to win the primary.
"I think when Sanders gets a cultivated state he can do pretty well," added Kyle Kondik of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics. "He also ran more ads than Clinton, particularly near the end, and that might have been helpful."
Why did the polls so badly underestimate the youth vote?
Polling firms have a number of ways to project how many young people will turn out to vote, and that leads them to different conclusions.
There are a few variables at play here. One is whom the polling firms decide to interview — some screen out for unregistered voters on the assumption that this group is less likely to vote. Others don't screen for registered voters (or are less strict about doing so) and instead look to gauge the adult population as a whole.
A separate question is how the pollsters take their interview samples and use them to create a projection of the electorate. Some pollsters create their models to give greater weight to voters who actually participated in previous elections. Other models, like Grossmann's, base their projections on whether someone says he or she is going to vote.
There is also the question of how the pollsters find the people who make up their sample. Many pollsters are still heavily reliant on landline phone calls, which probably undercounts young people, who tend to only have cellphones.
Grossmann's firm found Sanders and Clinton polling within the margin of error the week of the election. Grossmann said his results were probably more accurate in part because the firm used a very "lenient" screen for its interviews — rather than filtering out unregistered voters — and were generous in taking voters at their word when they said they planned to vote.
These factors help explain why some pollsters so dramatically underestimated the youth vote. But that doesn't say, Grossmann added, whether this is necessarily the "better" way to project vote totals — or if this was a particularly unusual result.
"[In] most elections, whether you voted last time is a better indicator than whether you say you're going to vote," Grossmann said.
How pollsters are hoping to get it right next time
Grossman noted this election was particularly difficult to forecast in part because this is the first competitive Democratic presidential primary in Michigan for more than a decade.
In 2008, Barack Obama's name did not appear on the ballot against Clinton because he never put his name on the ballot. In 2012, Obama ran unopposed.
There was also, Grossmann said, a wrong dismissiveness of the meaning of Sanders's youth outreach efforts. "The turnout operation that everyone was somewhat making fun of, including me, turned out to be successful," he said.
Mitchell raised other theories for why estimates of the youth vote were off, speculating that the particularly nice weather on election day encouraged young voter turnout more than had been predicted.
"Well, who would have voted if it was 18 degrees and cold? It was 70 and sunny, so anyone who is thinking about it did," Mitchell said.
Mitchell said his firm would be reevaluating how it gathered its samples to try to improve the accuracy of its polling ahead of the next set of primaries.
"We all got it wrong; we all got it wrong," he said. "And we have to figure out why we got it wrong, so we can figure out how to get right."
I emphasize to the Democratic base we must be aware that Republican have for these few decades been posing progressive selling themselves as wanting to push a progressive issue with no intention of doing so. Maryland is tops at this---Baltimore does not even pretend ---pols are openly very, very neo-conservative with Johns Hopkins and its Wall Street Baltimore Development. Please pay attention to what candidates ARE NOT SAYING----THAT ARE MOST CRITICAL---and you can know who may be posing Democrat and progressive.
The article below is great in showing how Democratic base needs to be cautious for a few reasons. When Clinton started the war on universities pushing corporatization and declaring tenured professors ELITE as they are now doing to our public school teachers----the goal of global pols was to clear all of the structures tied to the long history of universities being the hotbed of political debate and discussion---of student movements----of holding power accountable because for centuries----that is where WE THE PEOPLE HAD OUR POWER AND VOICE IN POLITICS. These few decades pushed most tenured faculty and most professors from that humanities, arts, public justice curricula and made it all about business. That is why Cindy Walsh has been an academic as an independent and not university staff----I did not want to be involved in that corporate environment.
Cornel West is tenured Princeton. His tenure has allowed him to speak freely therefor he was able to out Clinton/Obama and neo-liberalism as bad for decades----HE COULD NOT BE FIRED FOR SPEAKING HIS MIND. Right now I think Cornel is the real deal. Let me show why that is done CAUTIOUSLY. Princeton is as Ivy League as it gets and I know the next phase of Clinton neo-liberalism will be a co-opted version of Bernie Sanders and social Democracy----Democratic Socialism. So, I will watch Cornel to see if he is backing Bernie with the goal of turning social Democracy into Democratic Socialism. The same was done with Elizabeth Warren from Harvard----she shouts all the popular political stances but she is right-leaning and a Clinton neo-liberal who will advance a Bernie Sanders social Democratic platform towards the far-right Democratic Socialism.
I know that of Warren---I am watching for that from Cornel West.
Dr. Cornel West: "We're trying to bring neoliberalism to a close.
Hillary Clinton is a neoliberal, but she poses as a progressive."
Dolores Huerta: "I think it is going to have to be an evolution rather than a revolution."
Watch the debate: http://owl.li/ZgiNr
Bernie or Hillary? Cornel West & Dolores Huerta Debate After Sanders' Upset Win in Michigan
March 09, 2016
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professor at Union Theological Seminary. He endorsed Bernie Sanders for president last summer. He is author of numerous books, most recently, Black Prophetic Fire.
Dolores Huertacivil rights activist and co-founder of the United Farm Workers of America with Cesar Chavez. She is president of the Dolores Huerta Foundation for community organizing. Huerta has endorsed Hillary Clinton for president.
This is viewer supported news
In the most shocking upset of the 2016 presidential campaign to date, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders defeated Hillary Clinton in the Michigan primary. Sanders won 50 percent of the vote to Clinton’s 48. During the campaign, Sanders focused heavily on his opposition to what he called "disastrous" trade deals like NAFTA which have hurt Michigan’s manufacturing sector. Opinion polls had projected Clinton would easily win the state by as much as 20 percent. We speak to professor Cornel West, who backs Sanders, and legendary civil rights activist and labor organizer Dolores Huerta, who backs Clinton.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.JUAN GONZÁLEZ: In the most stunning upset of the presidential campaign to date, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders defeated Hillary Clinton in the Michigan primary. Sanders won 50 percent of the vote to Clinton’s 48 percent. During the campaign, Sanders focused heavily on his opposition to what he called "disastrous" trade deals like NAFTA which have hurt Michigan’s manufacturing sector.
Opinion polls had projected Clinton would easily win the state by as much as 20 percent. On Tuesday afternoon, Nate Silver’s popular polling site FiveThirtyEight.com predicted Clinton had a greater than 99 percent chance of winning the Michigan primary. But late last night, Silver wrote that Michigan would, quote, "count as among the greatest polling errors in primary history."
AMY GOODMAN: Despite Bernie Sanders’ upset in Michigan, Hillary Clinton ended up winning more delegates Tuesday thanks to a lopsided win in Mississippi, where she won 83 percent of the vote. Clinton now has 760 pledged delegates to Sanders’ 546. In addition, Clinton has secured support from an overwhelming number of unelected superdelegates made up from the party establishment, though they could change their allegiance at any point. Sanders gave an impromptu news conference outside a hotel in Miami last night, before he learned of the results in Michigan.
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: I just want to take this opportunity to thank the people of Michigan, who kind of repudiated the polls that had us 20, 25 points down a few days ago, who repudiated the pundits who said that Bernie Sanders was not going anywhere. ... And what tonight means is that the Bernie Sanders campaign, the people’s—the revolution, people’s revolution that we are talking about, the political revolution that we are talking about, is strong in every part of the country. And frankly, we believe that our strongest areas are yet to happen. We’re going to do very, very well on the West Coast and other parts of this country.
What the American people are saying is they are tired of a corrupt campaign finance system and super PACs funded by Wall Street and the billionaire class. They are tired of a rigged economy in which people in Michigan, people in Illinois, people in Ohio are working longer hours for low wages, worried to death about the future of their kids, and yet almost all new income and wealth is going to the top 1 percent. And the people of America are tired of a broken criminal justice system, in which we have more people in jail, largely African-American, Latino, Native American—more people in jail than any other major country on Earth.
So, we started this campaign, as many will remember, 10 months ago. We were 60 or 70 points down in the polls. And yet we have—what we have seen is, in poll after poll, state after state, what we have done is created the kind of momentum that we need to win.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Hillary Clinton spent the evening in Ohio, which also holds a primary on Tuesday. She addressed supporters before the results of Michigan came in.
HILLARY CLINTON: I want to talk about what working families are up against across the country. I want to talk about how we have a new bargain, so you can get ahead and stay ahead in every—in every industrial city, small town, farm country, Indian country, every community that’s been hollowed out by lost jobs and lost hopes. Don’t let anybody tell you we can’t make it in America anymore. We can, we are, and we will. But in order to do that, we can’t be talking about building walls or turning the clock back. We have to build on what made America great in the first place: our energy and optimism, our openness and creativity.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re now joined by three guests.
Here in New York, Cornel West, professor at Union Theological Seminary, has endorsed Bernie Sanders for president last summer. He’s author of a number of books, most recently, Black Prophetic Fire.
Dolores Huerta joins us from San Diego, California, civil rights activist, co-founder of the United Farm Workers of America with Cesar Chavez, president of the Dolores Huerta Foundation for community organizing. Dolores Huerta has endorsed Hillary Clinton for president.
And in Los Angeles, we’re joined by Melina Abdullah, an organizer with Black Lives Matter, which has not endorsed any presidential candidate. She is also a professor and chair of Pan-African Studies at California State University in Los Angeles.
We welcome you all to Democracy Now! Well, Dr. Cornel West, we’re going to begin with you, because, at least for the pollsters, this is a stunning upset.
CORNEL WEST: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: I have to say, I think even Bernie Sanders was surprised. I have never seen him alone like that, just standing against a wall holding a news conference for the press, spoke for a few minutes. He didn’t yet know the primary results. It seemed to be coming a few minutes later. You were with him in Michigan this weekend.
CORNEL WEST: No, it’s true, we had no idea that we would have this kind of upset. We knew that we were going to fight based on integrity, based on principle. We know that we’re in a moment where we’ve got a neofascist in the making with Trump; we’re trying to bring neoliberalism to a close; we’ve got a neopopulist, a genuine populist, in Sanders; and Hillary Clinton is a neoliberal, but she poses as a progressive. And so there’s a sense in which we know that Bernie Sanders is the one to beat Trump. And that’s crucial, because we’re at a very, very deep moment in this country.
And I want to salute you all, because the corporate media has produced Trump, in a fundamental way—every minute he’s covered, every second he’s covered. Bernie Sanders hardly gets covered at all, but he has the same number of people following. Hillary Clinton gets covered more than Bernie but not as much as Trump. So, in that sense, I think we’ve got some real work ahead.
AMY GOODMAN: Last night, Trump--
CORNEL WEST: But I’ve got a smile on my face.
AMY GOODMAN: CNN and MSNBC—I’m not talking about Fox--
CORNEL WEST: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: CNN and MSNBC both ran the entire extended news conference that Donald Trump held.
CORNEL WEST: It’s a shame. They’re making money. They want to make money.
AMY GOODMAN: Now, Hillary Clinton actually spoke midway through Trump speaking. Usually, they switch from one to another.
CORNEL WEST: Right.
AMY GOODMAN: Here they held the tape of Hillary Clinton to run the entire extended news conference of Trump in Florida.
CORNEL WEST: No, I mean, I think it’s a very sad affair. But I’m also very sad that black America is not waking up in the way in which we should. We’ve got a spiritual rot and a moral cowardice in our neoliberal black political class and our neoliberal black intelligentsia, who don’t want to tell the truth about the underside of the Hillary Clinton campaign. And the underside really has to do with not just the Clinton machine and all of its corruptions and so forth, but, more importantly, the policies, the trade policies, the prison—the mass incarceration regime, the deregulating of the banks and so forth. But Brother Bernie is hitting this head on. It’s difficult for Hillary to somehow act as if she’s such a populist, when she’s been a centrist for so long.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Cornel, one of the things about the Michigan primary, in particular, was that since it was an open primary, that meant that independents could vote, not just Democrats.
CORNEL WEST: Yes, that’s right.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And some of the speculation is that at the last moment a lot of independents decided, "Well, let me go into the Democratic primary and vote for Bernie"--
CORNEL WEST: I think that’s true.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: —which is a sort of an indication of where—because the electorate in the United States is pretty much divided one-third Democrat, one-third independent, one-third Republican.
CORNEL WEST: That’s true. That’s true.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Where the independents are going?
CORNEL WEST: But I think given the class issues that Brother Bernie and all of us are trying to push, in Michigan, the class issues make a big difference. It’s generational, and it’s ideological. And it’s a beautiful thing to see.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, I’d like to bring in Dolores Huerta, longtime civil rights activist, co-founder of the United Farm Workers of America. Your sense of what happened yesterday in these primaries and why you think it’s so important for Democrats and others to vote for Hillary Clinton?
DOLORES HUERTA: Well, I think one thing is that we seem to put a lot of blame on Hillary for things that Bill Clinton did in the Clinton administration, which I don’t think is right. I think the other thing, too, is that I know that Bernie’s got a very strong message—I respect him very much for his message that he’s bringing about the inequality in our economic system—but Bernie knows, as he’s been in the Congress for 26 years, that we also have to have a Congress to be able to bring to fruition some of the great ideas that he’s put forth. I do believe that Hillary Clinton—I do have a lot of faith in her, and I think she’s got the skills, she’s got the wisdom. You know, she’s got the experience to make things happen. When we compare the records of the two candidates, we see that Hillary Clinton’s record is much, much stronger than Bernie Sanders’ is. And I do believe that what Bernie is saying and what he wants to happen—and I believe in many, many of the ideas that he’s put forth, but I think it will take time, and we’ve got to really elect a good Congress. You know, people forget—and I—the Affordable Care Act, that when that passed the Congress, it only passed with four or five votes, even though we had a 25 Democratic majority at that time.
And I have to say that in terms of the Latino community, we are completely in support of Hillary, simply because Bernie just hasn’t been there for the Latino community. You know, he had a really good opportunity in 2007, when Senator Ted Kennedy, Hillary Clinton, Senator Durbin from Illinois—when they proposed a good immigration reform bill. And we had all of the momentum behind us at that time, because we had had all of these marches all over the country for immigration reform. And Bernie, unfortunately, came out against that bill. And that was very sad that he did that. And what he has said repeatedly is that he came out against the bill because it had the guest worker program in it. Well, wait a minute. When we passed the amnesty bill in 1986, we had guest workers in that bill, with protections—protections for the farmworkers, protections for the domestic workers. The bill that he voted on in 2013 also had the guest worker program in it. So I think he just wasn’t paying attention at that time, and I think we lost a great opportunity.
So, again, I believe in Bernie’s message, and I think we can make it happen. I think it’s going to have to be an evolution rather than a revolution. And I think all of us that are on the left and working people are going to be able to make it happen.
The other thing I want to point out, when we look at Hillary’s victories, especially in the South, they’re like 70 to 30, 70 percent to 30 percent. But we see the places that she has—where she has lost to Bernie Sanders, it’s in single digits, whereas where she is winning, where Bernie’s at, it’s actually two to one. So, I do have a lot of faith in Hillary Clinton. And I do believe that she will make a very, very strong president, because she is a very strong woman.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Cornel, I want to go to what Dolores mentioned about this issue of revolution, because, really, given the nature of Washington today with these huge Republican majorities in the House and the Senate, isn’t Bernie Sanders, to some degree, selling the idea of revolution, that he cannot deliver unless there’s a fundamental change in the Congress, as well?
CORNEL WEST: Well, Juan, I just salute Sister Dolores. She’s my dear sister. I just think she’s wrong. I think that it’s very difficult to have faith in a Hillary Clinton when she receives money from the GEO, which sustained the detention centers for precious immigrants, incarcerated them unjustly. I don’t see how one could make the case that somehow you’ve got a candidate that has the kind of integrity that we want. There is no doubt indeed that Bernie Sanders can win, because he recognizes he’s a politician that needs a social movement behind him. He is a thermostat: He shapes the climate. Hillary is a thermometer: She just registers and reflects the climate. We need somebody who’s shaping, the way that Occupy shaped the discourse around wealth inequality, the way Black Lives Matter has shaped the discourse around the vicious legacy of the white supremacy as it related to the repressive apparatus of the nation-state in regard to this trigger-happy policing going on with our precious young brothers and sisters.
DOLORES HUERTA: Well, I believe that Hillary has already come out for prison reform, and I think that she actually could help make that happen. And I think a lot of us that are out there, including yourself, Cornel, my dear brother--
CORNEL WEST: My dear sister.
DOLORES HUERTA: —whom I love dearly—I love you dearly.
CORNEL WEST: And I love you dearly, too, my sister, indeed, indeed.
DOLORES HUERTA: —we will be out there. You know, we will be out there organizing to make sure that some of these reforms will happen. I think we have—you know, when we compare our Democratic candidates to our Republican candidates, I think we can be so grateful that we have intelligent people that are running for the presidency. And I know—whichever of them wins, I know we’re going to have a good presidency. The one other thing I want to point out is that we have the Republicans that are putting a lot of money into Bernie’s campaign, to his independent campaigns, to make sure that they can defeat Hillary Clinton, because they figure that it will be easier to defeat Bernie than it will be to defeat Hillary Clinton in November.
CORNEL WEST: No, no. The polls say Bernie does better against Trump than Hillary does. But I know you want to get--
DOLORES HUERTA: Well, we’ll see.
CORNEL WEST: We’re going to get our other sister in here. We want to get our other sister in here.
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I stated earlier how Huerta is simply that small percentage of all voting groups that left the civil rights movement and went to the Clinton/Obama making the rich richer. Latino voters know this---but the Democratic base will look at this as Clinton having the support of Latino voters. Some will vote for Hillary and many times it will be the same as with black citizens not having access to public policy education---they vote as their captured leaders tell them.
All immigrants, but Latino for the long term have been pushed to this PATHWAY TO CITIZENSHIP never meaning to lead 95% of immigrants anywhere near citizenship. Corporate pols will only allow a small percentage become wealthy and they identify those who will stay with this global neo-liberal model. This is done for women, black citizens, disabled, former labor leaders, and VETS. Make a small percentage rich and place them as leaders telling others to follow these very bad Wall Street global corporate neo-liberal policies.
All Democratic base groups are seeing this so these global pols are going to get sneakier----KNOW YOUR CANDIDATES---CITIZENS IN COMMUNITIES KNOW WHO THE PLAYERS WILL BE!
Baby boomers did the revolution in the 1960s-70s that forced civil, labor, women, disability, VET rights and installed them as US Constitutional Amendments. It would not have been possible without that widespread political action. Huerta is trying to quell this----black pols in Baltimore say this same thing...they quell the revolutionary push. This does not mean violent revolution---it means mass political actions.
IT MUST BE A REVOLUTION BECAUSE WE HAVE WORKED ON EVOLUTION FOR THESE FEW DECADES.
Dolores Huerta: "I think it is going to have to be an evolution rather than a revolution."
Watch the debate: http://owl.li/ZgiNr
It is also not simply focused on Bernie----it is a social Democratic movement in Democratic primaries for Congress---State Assemblies---city halls.
The Bernie Sanders Revolution
By THE EDITORIAL BOARDMARCH 12, 2016 New York Times
You say you want a revolution? Well.…
“Revolution” is Bernie Sanders’s go-to word. The candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination uses it to celebrate primary victories and explain losses, to rally his young supporters and, most of all, to answer sticky questions about how he’ll get what he wants.
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Ilya Sheyman, the executive director of MoveOn.org, a political advocacy and action group that has endorsed Mr. Sanders, views his candidacy as “a reaction to the Tea Party standing in the way of everything the president wants to do, and a coming of age of a new wave of voters.”
MOVE ON was created by the Clinton Administration and continued with Obama because global pols needed the black citizens in US cities deemed INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC ZONES to support turning their cities into global corporate campuses with global FOXCONN factories bringing sweat shop enslavement with no US, state, or city sovereignty. It would have been harder to do this if not a black President in office. So, Hillary was not as daunted as appeared----they wanted Obama and his far-right third Bush term. MOVE ON has supported neo-liberal candidates all over the nation. Sheyman is part of this. So, why is MOVE ON backing Bernie Sanders? To co-op the social Democratic movement to Clinton's Democratic Socialism movement. See how global pols have been allowed to capture all political movements. Robert Reich is a Clinton neo-liberal posing progressive feeling the pain of the American people as he was Labor Secretary under Clinton saying for decades that NAFTA was good----now saying it was bad----and backing Bernie. This is how global pols confuse voters----they jump on the next populist movement and then run for office as leaders.
ROBERT REICH IS A NEO-LIBERAL POSER BEING PUSHED IN MEDIA AS FEELING OUR PAIN. PAUL KRUGMAN IS A GREAT BIG NEO-LIBERAL ECONOMIST FEELING OUR PAIN AND BACKING OBAMA AS GREAT.
You can tell Sheyman of MOVE ON is Clinton neo-liberal when he states it is the TEA PARTY standing in Obama's way as if everyone does not know Obama was the best Republican ever. These people and groups play on the Democratic base and while doing it steal local momentum and local leaders for these movements by being the structure Democrats connect to. Then they take all those Democratic base emails from petition drives and policy support AND SELL THEM TO CLINTON/OBAMA WALL STREET GLOBAL CORPORATE NEO-LIBERAL CANDIDATES.
GROW OUR SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC MOVEMENTS LOCALLY WITH REAL GRASSROOTS CITIZENS---IF WE KNOW THEM WHEN THEY BEGIN---THEY CANNOT CLIMB THE DEMOCRATIC LADDER INTO NATIONAL POLITICS AND ORGANIZATION LEADERS.
Of course Robert Reich is being pushed by Clinton neo-liberals to be that populist social Democrat to keep the party captured to Wall Street global corporate neo-liberals
NAFTA Supporter Robert Reich Proud Of What Clinton Did
by repost
Sunday Sep 22nd, 2013 1:49 PM
Liberal Clinton Supporter Robert Reich now argues that he is proud of what Clinton did. Clinton supported the supposed "reform" of welfare and NAFTA which is been a major tool for union busters and the multi-nationals in destroying the lives of working people.
reich_and_clinton.jpeg
NAFTA Supporter Robert Reich Proud Of What Clinton Did
http://www.sfchronicle.com/movies/article/Inequality-offers-education-on-economy-4827878.php
Q: You say in the film that when you were in the Clinton administration, "We didn't do enough." Enough of what?
Reich : "We didn't do enough to reverse these underlying trends. I'm proud of what we did do, but we set out to do much more. There's a distinction between the business cycle, the natural ups and downs of the economy, on the one hand, and these underlying structural trends.
I think we in the Clinton administration managed to help facilitate a very vigorous recovery, one of the best recoveries in American history, at least postwar. But we didn't do nearly enough to reverse widening inequality. The moment the recovery was over, we were back to the same underlying trend lines, but worse."
Reich Supported NAFTA
Gerald McEnteePresident of the 1.6 Million-Member AFSCME Union
Posted: April 18, 2008 02:09 PM
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There is a difference between shouting against Trans Pacific Trade Pact and being against International Economic Zones and global corporate campuses. Warren, Reich, and others never mention International Economic Zones as California home of Reich and Massachusetts/Harvard home of Warren are installing International Economic Zones as fast as any! The idea being ---if we stop TPP which is the policy they pretend will end our US sovereignty and rights as citizens -----but allow global corporate campuses----we will somehow control these global corporations WHICH IS IMPOSSIBLE. These groups will yell at Wall Street---while International Economic Zone policies planned for decades goes without voice.
Those shouting against TPP and Wall Street are doing a good job---but they are supporting the ONE WORLD global structure---such consolidation of wealth and corporate power there will be no taming it. Listen to whom is educating on International Economic Zones----these leaders know what is happening----as does our state assembly and city hall pols.
If you know Baltimore was deemed a few decades ago-----International Economic Zone with all policies moving towards that----and all Maryland pols are supporting Trans Pacific Trade Pact----any Baltimore pols saying they don't while moving every policy in place for decades is posing progressive----then you know that these zones will allow global corporations to operate overseas ignoring all labor and environmental law----AND THAT INCLUDES MINIMUM WAGE. There will be no minimum wage---Baltimore barely enforces it already----so pols shouting
$15 AN HOUR AS BALTIMORE POLS ARE -----ARE POSING PROGRESSIVE KNOWING WAGES WILL BECOME THIRD WORLD WITH THE POLICIES THEY ARE PUSHING.
Mary Pat Clarke and others are claiming this at Baltimore forums----Robert Reich pushes it as San Francisco is the furthest along installing International Economic Zone policy. $15 an hour is a real progressive issue-----but not if you are pushing US cities as International Economic Zones.
Robert Reich on Trans-Pacific Partnership as " ...business-humanrights.org/en/robert-reich...nafta-on-steroids Robert Reich on Trans-Pacific Partnership as "NAFTA on Steroids" Robert Reich on Trans-Pacific Partnership as "NAFTA on Steroids" Share ...
'the Fight for $15 minimum-wage campaign',
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TPP Effect #1: Weakening of the Minimum WageThe most obvious way the TPP will hurt lower or middle class Americans is through the outsourcing of jobs. We have already seen the disastrous effect of NAFTA in this area. Now, American workers will have to compete with those in Vietnam (who get a minimum wage of around 52 cents an hour) and Mexico (who get a minimum wage of around 62 cents an hour) according to this source. Did you know that Brunei does not even have a minimum wage? Why would a corporation pay $15, $10 or even $7.25 when it could pay its workers less than 70 cents per hour?
How this will affect you: the TPP could well mean that many people working minimum wage jobs will have to work for less, or lose their job outright.
July 4, 2015
Learn The 5 Key Ways The TPP Will Affect You
(The TPP (Trans Pacific Partnership) is another elite power grab giving multinational corporations more control. Learn the 5 key ways it will affect you.)
Submitted to All News PipeLine by Makia Freeman at The Freedom Articles
The TPP (Trans Pacific Partnership) has moved one step closer to becoming law in the US after the Senate voted to give Fast Track authority to the President. The TPP however must really be considered as 1 of 3 mega treaties designed to give unprecedented control of the world’s trade to giant multinationals including there Big Pharma and Big Biotech companies. The other 2 parts are the TTIP (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership) and the TISA (Trade in Services Agreement); together the TTP, TTIP and TISA form the 3 T-Treaties to cement the corporatocracy as our global ruler. The TTP is focused on 12 countries in the Pacific which contribute 40% of the world’s GDP (US, Japan, Australia, Peru, Malaysia, Vietnam, New Zealand, Chile, Singapore, Canada, Mexico, and Brunei) while the TTIP harmonizes trade between the US and the EU. The TISA included the US, EU, Australia and other nations (totaling 24) and aims to privatize the worldwide trade of services such as banking, healthcare and transport.
Notably, none of the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) are included in any of the 3 T-Treates, as they have clearly challenged and disturbed the Anglo-American dominated NWO elite too much. Obama is now on the verge of pushing through 2 giant laws in his presidency: the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) and the TPP-TTIP-TISA (Obamatrade). How interesting then that Obama’s handler is Zbigniew Brzezinski, who serves the Rockefellers, who own Big Pharma and have major interest in the other corporations which will benefit most from this …
Notably, none of the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) are included in any of the 3 T-Treates, as they have clearly challenged and disturbed the Anglo-American dominated NWO elite too much. Obama is now on the verge of pushing through 2 giant laws in his presidency: the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) and the TPP-TTIP-TISA (Obamatrade). How interesting then that Obama’s handler is Zbigniew Brzezinski, who serves the Rockefellers, who own Big Pharma and have major interest in the other corporations which will benefit most from this …
The Very Word Secrecy is Repugnant in a Free and Open Society
All of the 3 T-Treaties being negotiated right now are being deliberately kept hidden from the public. We only know about them thanks to WikiLeaks. In fact, the secrecy has been so stringent that no electronic devices or note-taking is allowed, and access is restricted to only Congress staffers with a high enough security clearance. Look what US Senator Barbara Boxer had to say about the secrecy of the TPP:
“Well, let me tell you, what you have to do to read this agreement. Follow this. You can only take a few of your staffers who happen to have a security clearance because god knows why this is secure. This is classified. It’s nothing to do with defense. It has nothing to do with going after ISIS. It has nothing to do with any of that, but it is classified. So I go down with my staff that I could get to go with me, and as soon as I get there, the guard says to me, hand over your electronics.
Okay, I give over my electronics. Then the guard says, you can’t take notes. I said, I can’t take notes? Well, you can take notes, but you have to give them back to me, and I’ll put them in a file. So, I said, wait a minute. I’m gonna take notes, and then you’re gonna take my notes away from me, and then you’re going to have them in a file, and you can read my notes?”
If the TPP were really good for Americans, why the secrecy? Why not openly let anyone read the text and decide for themselves? “The very word secrecy is repugnant in a free and open society,” as JFK famously said in his 1961 Waldorf-Astoria speech where he exposed the insidious influence that Secret Societies were having on the USA. He was killed for going against these secret groups. Incidentally George H. W. Bush, who was heavily involved in the JFK assassination, just so happens to be part of Secret Societies like the Skull and Bones Club of Yale University, as well as others like the Bohemian Club which engage in mock (or real) Satanic ritual at Bohemian Grove.
The TPP is a major cause for alarm for ordinary citizens living in a TPP country. It targets some of your most fundamental rights relating to access to knowledge. It undermines the abilities of nations to make their own laws to protect their own businesses and citizens. As Julian Assange of Wikileaks wrote:
“If instituted, the TPP’s IP (Intellectual Property) regime would trample over individual rights and free expression, as well as ride roughshod over the intellectual and creative commons. If you read, write, publish, think, listen, dance, sing or invent; if you farm or consume food; if you’re ill now or might one day be ill, the TPP has you in its crosshairs.”
The following are 5 specific ways the TPP will affect you as an average citizen in the US, Australia, New Zealand or any other TPP nation.
TPP Effect #1: Weakening of the Minimum Wage
The most obvious way the TPP will hurt lower or middle class Americans is through the outsourcing of jobs. We have already seen the disastrous effect of NAFTA in this area. Now, American workers will have to compete with those in Vietnam (who get a minimum wage of around 52 cents an hour) and Mexico (who get a minimum wage of around 62 cents an hour) according to this source. Did you know that Brunei does not even have a minimum wage? Why would a corporation pay $15, $10 or even $7.25 when it could pay its workers less than 70 cents per hour?
How this will affect you: the TPP could well mean that many people working minimum wage jobs will have to work for less, or lose their job outright.
TPP Effect #2: More Censorship, Less Freedom of Expression
The internet has been a 2-edged sword in the battle for freedom. It has allowed the elite to conduct mass surveillance on the populace in an unprecedented amount; however, it has also allowed for fantastic freedom of expression and the swift sharing of information. Now, more than ever before, you can get real news and analysis about events as they break, rather than the usual mainstream media spin and propaganda. To counter this, the elite have bringing in their cherished tactic of “copyright” as a stealthy method to enact censorship and stifle freedom of expression. The less freedom of expression there is, of course, the more they can get away with their schemes of centralization of power.
The TPP’s chapter on IP (Intellectual Property) Rights shows the emphasis on extending copyright terms. As the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) wrote in its piece The TPP Copyright Trap:
“The ratcheting upward of copyright terms comes at a time when Internet and other digital technologies have spurred a revitalization of the world’s public domain: the treasury of works that has passed out of copyright. Thanks to digital distribution, public domain material is now globally available for almost zero cost for study, enjoyment and re-use … The additional 20 years of copyright protection amounts to a misappropriation from the public domain. It inhibits the creation of new works that build upon the past and exacerbates the orphan works problem. Even the U.S. Copyright Office has indicated that the copyright term may be too long, and proposed options for mitigating its deleterious effects.”
Even bloggers, authors, documentary makers and others who want to use excerpts of copyrighted work for purposes of criticism may be limited by the proposed “Three-Step Test” language which puts restrictions on fair use. This chapter of the TPP will also place new demands on your ISP (Internet Service Provider), requiring them to become digital police. They will be expected to surveil what their users access on the Internet and to enforce copyright law!
How this will affect you: the TPP will require the signing nations to adopt criminal sanctions for those found guilty of copyright infringement, meaning you could end up in prison for sharing music, videos or other things online.
The ISDS tribunal of the TPP would create corporate courts above national sovereignty.
TPP Effect #3: Private Corporate Courts
Another disturbing feature of the TPP is the pushing of IDIS (Investor State Dispute Settlement) tribunals as a replacement to the legal judicial courts of nations. It’s another stepping stone to the One World Government. The IDIS mechanism is essentially a private corporate court, an international tribunal of private lawyers, who would have the power to award compensation money to big corporations if they found that a TPP nation’s laws prevented that corporation from making money. In other words, big corporations would get “lost profit” dollars and the taxpayer of that nation would have to foot the bill!
ISDS poses a grave danger to the law. As US Senator Elizabeth Warren points out in this video, ISDS allowed the following things to happen:
– A French company sued Egypt because Egypt raised its minim wage;
– A Swedish company sued Germany because Germany tried to phase out nuclear energy after the Fukushima disaster;
– A Dutch company sued the Czech Republic because it didn’t bail out a bank that the Dutch company partially owned; and
– Philip Morris is trying to use ISDS to stop Ecuador introducting new laws to protect its consumer from cigarettes/tobacco.
How will this affect you: the TPP will mandate that your nation will no longer be able to make laws banning toxic products (e.g. pharmaceutical drugs, GMO-laden food, etc.) and that you will have little or no legal recourse if you hurt, damaged or poisoned by them.
TPP Effect #4: Stronger Patents, More Control for Big Pharma
John D. Rockefeller, the instigator of the Rockefeller Empire, is reported to have said the competition is sin. His oil empire became the backing for Big Pharma, still owned by the Rockefellers to this day. It is no surprise that the game is still the same: try to eliminate competition and gain a monopoly. The TPP’s chapter on Transparency (Transparency and procedural fairness for pharmaceutical products and medical devices), according to this analysis by Deborah Gleeson, is about more power for Big Pharma:
“The purported aim of the Annex is to facilitate ‘high–quality healthcare’ but the Annex does nothing to achieve this. It is clearly intended to cater to the interests of the pharmaceutical industry. Nor does this do anything to promote “free trade”: rather it tightly specifies the operation of countries’ schemes for subsidizing pharmaceuticals and medical devices with the aim of providing greater disclosure, more avenues for pharmaceutical industry influence and greater opportunities for industry contestation of pharmaceutical decision making”.
She later states that the TPP “is clearly intended to target New Zealand’s Pharmaceutical Management Agency (PHARMAC)” while others have discussed how other nations in the TPP like Australia may be forced to adopt US-style healthcare – a system which kills around 225,000 per year (including 106,000 from adverse effects of Big Pharma drugs) according toDr. Starfield’s study. This provisions also aims to make it very difficult for makers of generic drugs to compete with Big Pharma’s brand-name drugs. The idea is to force all the other TPP nations outside the US to use only brand-name drugs. Additionally, did you know that Big Pharma through the TPP is pushing for patents on animals and patents on surgical methods? How can Big Pharma possibly claim any basis for being able to patent an animal given the longstanding tradition of patents not been granted for things in and of Nature?
How this will affect you: How would you like it if your surgeon told you he/she could not operate on you because a particular surgical technique was copyrighted and private property? How would like having to pay more for “brand-name” medicine because the exact same kind (the generic kind) is deliberately unavailable?
TPP Effect #5: Less Environmental Protection
The TPP’s Environment Chapter functions more as a PR exercise than anything else. There are little or no enforcement mechanisms contained within it. The Sierra Club, World Wildlife Fund and National Resources Defense Council released a joint analysis which concluded the TPP was a step backward from a 2007 agreement under the Bush administration. As they write:
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WE NEED FENCE-SITTING INDEPENDENTS REGISTERING AS DEMOCRATS FOR THIS DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY IN STATES LIKE MARYLAND THAT DO NOT ALLOW INDEPENDENTS TO VOTE IN DEMOCRATIC PRIMARIES!
Below you see the big issues unfolding in our Democratic primary races. As Clinton Wall Street global corporate neo-liberals captured the Democratic Party, the Democratic base stopped voting and many moved out of the party to Independent status. The same occurred in the Republican Party as the Bush/Hopkins neo-conservatives took the party the base moved to Independent. So, all states across the nation have large Independent voters while states handle those voters differently. Below you see Michigan where Independents not figured into voting stats came out largely for a social Democrat in Bernie=====able to vote in either primary.
Also, some states allow delegates to be split between candidates according to percentage won----other states are WINNER TAKES ALL.
Maryland has installed policies that block against both of the above---and they do it on purpose to keep any social Democrat from taking all of those Independent voters----Independents cannot vote in Republican or Democratic primaries---they are forced to wait to general election. Second, Maryland is a winner takes all state regarding delegates----Hillary could win by only 51% and she would get all of Maryland's delegates and Bernie none. With Clinton/Obama Wall Street global corporate neo-liberalism taking Maryland's Democratic committees----or Baltimore's neo-conservative Johns Hopkins/Baltimore Development Corporation pols running as Democrats-----
SOCIAL DEMOCRATS LIKE BERNIE WILL NEED MARYLAND INDEPENDENTS LEANING DEMOCRATIC TO REGISTER TO VOTE AS A DEMOCRAT IN THIS COMING PRIMARY FOLKS! YOU CAN CHANGE BACK NEXT ELECTION IF YOU WANT.
'Another big blind spot in the polling was its handling of independent voters. Michigan primary voters don't need to be registered Democrats to vote, and several of the polls projected that they'd only account for about 10 percent of the primary electorate.
In fact, independents — who broke for Sanders by a 71-28 margin — made up closer to 28 percent of the electorate, according to NBC News's exit polling'.
You also see the national election polling corporations skewing the election data away from a candidate not a global Wall Street poll as they do in state and local elections and luckily----MICHIGAN VOTERS PAID NO ATTENTION TO FAKE POLLING STATS AS WE HAVE HERE IN BALTIMORE AND MARYLAND.
Why the polls totally underestimated Bernie Sanders in Michigan
Updated by Jeff Stein on March 9, 2016, 2:30 p.m. ET
Tweet Share (2,517) +
Bernie Sanders at Michigan State in early March. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)Last night, Bernie Sanders pulled off a stunning upset in Michigan that almost no one expected — after all, he had been trailing by more than 20 points in much of the polling mere days before.
Why were the polls so wrong?
Here's one factor that helps explain what happened: Far more young people turned out to vote in Michigan's Democratic primary than most experts had assumed beforehand, according to Matt Grossmann, director of the Institute for Public Policy and Social Research at Michigan State University.
"Clearly, there was a breakdown in the models we used," said Steve Mitchell, one of the many pollsters who projected Clinton up by more than 20 points in Michigan. "It looks like there were a lot more young voters than we thought, and they voted in stronger numbers for Bernie Sanders."
A particularly dramatic example: One poll that put Hillary Clinton up by 28 points in the race expected voters ages 18 to 39 to make up only 8.9 percent of the electorate.
It turned out that 21 percent of Michigan's primary electorate was ages 18 to 29, according to exit polling cited by Grossman. Voters ages 30 to 44 accounted for another 25 percent of the vote share.
Sanders won the youth vote by an 81-19 margin. In other words, this demographic — the one most favorable to him — ended up being a greater share of the electorate by about four times what had been expected.
But that's not the only reasons polls were so off
There were at least two other major factors for Sanders's stronger-than-expected performance in Michigan.
Sanders also had a surprising ability to close the gap among black voters in Michigan. Mitchell, the pollster, said his firm projected Clinton would win African Americans by a 50-point margin — similar to margins in other states.
Sanders in Warren, Michigan. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)
But according to initial exit polls, he said, Clinton ended up winning black voters in Michigan by something closer to 35 points. That's a good sign for Sanders's competitiveness in many of the delegate-rich states that lie ahead, like Ohio and Illinois, and it also partially explains why polls were so off.
Another big blind spot in the polling was its handling of independent voters. Michigan primary voters don't need to be registered Democrats to vote, and several of the polls projected that they'd only account for about 10 percent of the primary electorate.
In fact, independents — who broke for Sanders by a 71-28 margin — made up closer to 28 percent of the electorate, according to NBC News's exit polling.
Of course, everyone and their mother can come up with a pet theory for why Sanders was able to move the needle so dramatically.
Many have cited Sanders's debate performance in Flint on Sunday. Others have pointed to Clinton's misleading attack on Sanders's auto bailout position, Sanders's message on free trade, and even the idea that some Democratic voters "crossed over" to vote Republican on the assumption that Clinton is guaranteed to win the primary.
"I think when Sanders gets a cultivated state he can do pretty well," added Kyle Kondik of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics. "He also ran more ads than Clinton, particularly near the end, and that might have been helpful."
Why did the polls so badly underestimate the youth vote?
Polling firms have a number of ways to project how many young people will turn out to vote, and that leads them to different conclusions.
There are a few variables at play here. One is whom the polling firms decide to interview — some screen out for unregistered voters on the assumption that this group is less likely to vote. Others don't screen for registered voters (or are less strict about doing so) and instead look to gauge the adult population as a whole.
A separate question is how the pollsters take their interview samples and use them to create a projection of the electorate. Some pollsters create their models to give greater weight to voters who actually participated in previous elections. Other models, like Grossmann's, base their projections on whether someone says he or she is going to vote.
There is also the question of how the pollsters find the people who make up their sample. Many pollsters are still heavily reliant on landline phone calls, which probably undercounts young people, who tend to only have cellphones.
Grossmann's firm found Sanders and Clinton polling within the margin of error the week of the election. Grossmann said his results were probably more accurate in part because the firm used a very "lenient" screen for its interviews — rather than filtering out unregistered voters — and were generous in taking voters at their word when they said they planned to vote.
These factors help explain why some pollsters so dramatically underestimated the youth vote. But that doesn't say, Grossmann added, whether this is necessarily the "better" way to project vote totals — or if this was a particularly unusual result.
"[In] most elections, whether you voted last time is a better indicator than whether you say you're going to vote," Grossmann said.
How pollsters are hoping to get it right next time
Grossman noted this election was particularly difficult to forecast in part because this is the first competitive Democratic presidential primary in Michigan for more than a decade.
In 2008, Barack Obama's name did not appear on the ballot against Clinton because he never put his name on the ballot. In 2012, Obama ran unopposed.
There was also, Grossmann said, a wrong dismissiveness of the meaning of Sanders's youth outreach efforts. "The turnout operation that everyone was somewhat making fun of, including me, turned out to be successful," he said.
Mitchell raised other theories for why estimates of the youth vote were off, speculating that the particularly nice weather on election day encouraged young voter turnout more than had been predicted.
"Well, who would have voted if it was 18 degrees and cold? It was 70 and sunny, so anyone who is thinking about it did," Mitchell said.
Mitchell said his firm would be reevaluating how it gathered its samples to try to improve the accuracy of its polling ahead of the next set of primaries.
"We all got it wrong; we all got it wrong," he said. "And we have to figure out why we got it wrong, so we can figure out how to get right."
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