Sanders Leader Named Leader of Kentucky Democratic Party

So, the Kentucky Democratic (Republican) Party thinks it can fool the restive liberals in its ranks by naming a Sanders leader as executive director.

I sincerely hope that she knows better.  I sincerely hope she understands that party apparatchiks throughout the state are already sabotaging any effort to build a movement and organize members to elect real Democratic candidates. I sincerely hope she rallies the awakened and enraged progressives in the Commonwealth to take back the party that has betrayed us for decades.

But I doubt it.

From the AP:

The party announced Mary Nishimuta (Nish-ah-moo-tah) of Frankfort as the new executive director on Friday. She will serve under state party chairwoman Sannie Overly, a state representative from Paris.

Nishimuta was a national team leader for Sanders' 2016 presidential campaign and was a delegate for him to the Democratic National Convention.

SNIP

A graduate of Georgia Tech, Nishimuta has worked for various Fortune 500 companies and is the co-owner of the Kentucky Coffeetree Cafe in Frankfort. She said her goal is to build a strong party in all of Kentucky's 120 counties.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/latest-news/article145953894.html#storylink=cpy

The Ones Who Are With Her

KY Berners Are All Right

Maybe in states so blue that repugs can't win no matter what they do, Democrats can afford to vote third-party or to sit at home and not vote at all.

 

We Democratic voters in red states know better.  We have long experience voting for imperfect Democratic candidates because that candidate is the only thing standing between us and the repug catastrophe of Kansas and Louisiana and Wisconsin.

 

We will fight to the end for our preferred candidate, but when the convention does end, and our candidate has conceded, we know our responsibility.  We know our duty.

 

We KY Berners will be voting for Hillary.

From the Courier before the convention:

Kentucky Democrats split almost evenly between Sanders and Clinton during the primary earlier this year. Of the state’s 55 pledged delegates, 28 are for Clinton and 27 are for Sanders.

There are signs within the Kentucky delegation that the two camps are finding common ground. Several Sanders delegates stood and applauded speakers who endorsed Clinton Monday night, and several Clinton delegates waved Sanders’ campaign signs when the Vermont senator took the stage at the end of the night.

“It started with a decent amount of divisiveness and then it started to come together toward the end of the night,” Bugg said about Monday's convention action. Speeches by first lady Michelle Obama, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Sanders himself were helpful, he said.

SNIP

 

“I think if she continues to speak very boldly on those issues, articulates them as the deep moral center of Democratic Party, demonstrates she is committed, then she can earn many Bernie supporters and maybe even more importantly some of those volunteer hours,” Westphal said.

Two Clinton advocates who addressed the Kentucky delegation Tuesday morning used the specter of a Donald Trump presidency to woo Sanders voters and urge them to focus on electing Democrats at the state and local levels.

SNIP

 

Former Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear said the odds of Clinton winning Kentucky in the fall are long, but any efforts on her behalf will help the party in the long run.

“I’ve lost political races and I know how Bernie and his supporters feel, but in the end Sanders and Clinton supporters understand there really is no choice in November and that the only way this country is going to move forward is to elect Hillary Clinton,” Beshear said.

Yes, Paul: Your Insulting Labels Are Demonizing and False.

Not to mention missing me and all my Bern-feeling friends.

We're not all white, not all men, not all young, not disaffected, not bitter with Hillary-hate, not pie-in-the-sky dreamers, not BernieBros.

We supported Bernie out of hope for change, if you'll forgive the expression.  We never thought Bernie would get close to the nomination.  But we thought it possible he could change the conversation.

We always knew Hillary would be the nominee. We always knew we would vote for her.  Even those of us who opposed her in 2008 and who still see her militarism as the greatest danger to the republic know we cannot vote repug and cannot sit this one out.

But it gets more difficult to support her when Hillarybots like you insult us like this. It makes us think you don't want our votes.

The point is not to demonize, but, if you like, to de-angelize. Like any political movement (including the Democratic Party, which is, yes, a coalition of interest groups) Sandersism has been an assemblage of people with a variety of motives, not all of them pretty. Here’s a short list based on my own encounters:

1.Genuine idealists: For sure, quite a few Sanders supporters dream of a better society, and for whatever reason – maybe just because they’re very young – are ready to dismiss practical arguments about why all their dreams can’t be accomplished in a day.

2.Romantics: This kind of idealism shades over into something that’s less about changing society than about the fun and ego gratification of being part of The Movement. (Those of us who were students in the 60s and early 70s very much recognize the type.) For a while there – especially for those who didn’t understand delegate math – it felt like a wonderful joy ride, the scrappy young on the march about to overthrow the villainous old. But there’s a thin line between love and hate: when reality began to set in, all too many romantics reacted by descending into bitterness, with angry claims that they were being cheated.

3.Purists: A somewhat different strand in the movement, also familiar to those of us of a certain age, consists of those for whom political activism is less about achieving things and more about striking a personal pose. They are the pure, the unsullied, who reject the corruptions of this world and all those even slightly tainted – which means anyone who actually has gotten anything done. Quite a few Sanders surrogates were Naderites in 2000; the results of that venture don’t bother them, because it was never really about results, only about affirming personal identity.

4.CDS victims: Quite a few Sanders supporters are mainly Clinton-haters, deep in the grip of Clinton Derangement Syndrome; they know that Hillary is corrupt and evil, because that’s what they hear all the time; they don’t realize that the reason it’s what they hear all the time is that right-wing billionaires have spent more than two decades promoting that message. Sanders has gotten a number of votes from conservative Democrats who are voting against her, not for him, and for sure there are liberal supporters who have absorbed the same message, even if they don’t watch Fox News.

5.Salon des Refuses: This is a small group in number, but accounts for a lot of the pro-Sanders commentary, and is of course something I see a lot. What I’m talking about here are policy intellectuals who have for whatever reason been excluded from the inner circles of the Democratic establishment, and saw Sanders as their ticket to the big time. They typically hold heterodox views, but those views don’t have much to do with the campaign – sorry, capital theory disputes from half a century ago aren’t relevant to the debate over health reform. What matters is their outsider status, which gives them an interest in backing an outsider candidate – and makes them reluctant to accept it when that candidate is no longer helping the progressive cause.

So how will this coalition of the not-always disinterested break once it’s over? The genuine idealists will probably realize that whatever their dreams, Trump would be a nightmare. Purists and CDSers won’t back Clinton, but they were never going to anyway. My guess is that disgruntled policy intellectuals will, in the end, generally back Clinton.

The question, as I see it, involves the romantics. How many will give in to their bitterness? A lot may depend on Sanders – and whether he himself is one of those embittered romantics, unable to move on.

Beware polls of Kentucky "Democrats"

Kentucky's primary is Tuesday.  Before pissed-off coal miners in West Virginia handed that state's Democratic primary to Bernie Sanders, I would not have given him a chance here in Clinton Country.

But apparently Secretary Clinton's misinterpreted remark about coal jobs hit hard in the Mountain State.  Coal miners - even unemployed ones - are a much smaller percentage of the population here in Kentucky than they are in West Virginia, so I still expect her to win.

Next Tuesday and in November.

Back in March, David Atkins wrote at Political Animal about a poll of Kentucky voters.

The poll also shows Donald Trump capturing a surprising percentage of Democratic primary voters in head-to-head general election matchups against both candidates. Donald Trump receives a shocking 37% of the Kentucky Democratic primary vote in a hypothetical contest against Clinton, and 38% against Sanders.

No.  Donald Trump received in this pretend vote precisely zero percent of the actual Democratic vote. If Donald Trump gets the actual repug nomination, he might possibly take Kentucky even against Hillary Clinton, but not because he'll get any actual Democratic votes. 

 

Kentucky conservatards have been registering Democratic since Jefferson beat Adams in 1800. They stopped voting Democratic in federal races in 1966. But they're still registered Democratic because that's what their traitors-in-defense-of-slavery great-great-grandpappies did, because it lets them fuck with the Democratic primary, because it lets them laugh every year at the pundits who think Kentucky's going blue because voter registration is majority Democratic and because it drives actual Democratic voters like me around the bend.

 

The Real Progressive Who Forced Change on the Democratic Party

Did you see the camera catch him in McArthur Park in Chicago that epic night in 2008?  The tears running down his face.  Tears, I thought, of joy but also regret and also pride.

Because 20 years earlier he had forced on the Democratic party the populist changes - proportional delegates - that made it possible for a black man to become president.

Not himself, though he fought hard and came damn close, but another who owes too much to ever repay.

I voted for Jesse Jackson in the Democratic presidential primaries in 1984 and 1988.  I was fortunate to live in an early primary state where he was still on the ballot. I cherish those votes almost as much as the ones I cast for Barack Hussein Obama.

Jackson got cheers from white people in places that shouldn't have been a surprise: coal country and farm country and cancer-causing factory strips where people felt abandoned by politicians, until Jackson stood up and spoke directly to their fears and their hopes.

PZ Myers remembers:

It’s good to see someone mention that the Democratic party has deep progressive roots. He mentions a lot of names that stirred up sad memories. Jesse Jackson, presidential candidate in 1984 and 1988; I supported him, although his campaign fizzled out in the primaries before I got to have a say out in Oregon (I really detest our system that gives Iowa and New Hampshire an undeserved excess of privilege in electoral politics). Howard Dean in 2004; he was my preferred candidate then, too. I have a long history of support for failed candidacies, I’m afraid.

I keep making these choices, and will keep on doing it, though. He quotes Jackson’s speech before the Democratic Convention, and yeah, it reminds me why.

We find common ground at the plant gate that closes on workers without notice. We find common ground at the farm auction, where a good farmer loses his or her land to bad loans or diminishing markets. Common ground at the school yard where teachers cannot get adequate pay, and students cannot get a scholarship, and can’t make a loan. Common ground at the hospital admitting room, where somebody tonight is dying because they cannot afford to go upstairs to a bed that’s empty waiting for someone with insurance to get sick. We are a better nation than that. We must do better. Common ground. What is leadership if not present help in a time of crisis? So I met you at the point of challenge. In Jay, Maine, where paper workers were striking for fair wages; in Greenville, Iowa, where family farmers struggle for a fair price; in Cleveland, Ohio, where working women seek comparable worth; in McFarland, California, where the children of Hispanic farm workers may be dying from poisoned land, dying in clusters with cancer; in an AIDS hospice in Houston, Texas, where the sick support one another, too often rejected by their own parents and friends.

Nothing has changed. It’s gotten worse for people like that, if anything.

It’s worth listening to the whole thing.



(It’s in multiple parts, sorry, but really, worth finding it all.)

I have to include a little more than Pierce did. Note that there’s a fair bit of God and Bible in it; if this militant atheist can forgive it for the greater message, than you can do it too.

Common ground. America is not a blanket woven from one thread, one color, one cloth. When I was a child growing up in Greenville, South Carolina and grandmamma could not afford a blanket, she didn’t complain and we did not freeze. Instead she took pieces of old cloth — patches, wool, silk, gabardine, crockersack — only patches, barely good enough to wipe off your shoes with. But they didn’t stay that way very long. With sturdy hands and a strong cord, she sewed them together into a quilt, a thing of beauty and power and culture. Now, Democrats, we must build such a quilt.

Farmers, you seek fair prices and you are right — but you cannot stand alone. Your patch is not big enough.

Workers, you fight for fair wages, you are right — but your patch labor is not big enough.
Women, you seek comparable worth and pay equity, you are right — but your patch is not big enough.

Women, mothers, who seek Head Start, and day care and prenatal care on the front side of life, relevant jail care and welfare on the back side of life, you are right — but your patch is not big enough.

Students, you seek scholarships, you are right — but your patch is not big enough.

Blacks and Hispanics, when we fight for civil rights, we are right — but our patch is not big enough.

Gays and lesbians, when you fight against discrimination and a cure for AIDS, you are right — but your patch is not big enough.

Conservatives and progressives, when you fight for what you believe, right wing, left wing, hawk, dove, you are right from your point of view, but your point of view is not enough.

But don’t despair. Be as wise as my grandmamma. Pull the patches and the pieces together, bound by a common thread. When we form a great quilt of unity and common ground, we’ll have the power to bring about health care and housing and jobs and education and hope to our Nation.

We, the people, can win.

We stand at the end of a long dark night of reaction. We stand tonight united in the commitment to a new direction. For almost eight years we’ve been led by those who view social good coming from private interest, who view public life as a means to increase private wealth. They have been prepared to sacrifice the common good of the many to satisfy the private interests and the wealth of a few.

We believe in a government that’s a tool of our democracy in service to the public, not an instrument of the aristocracy in search of private wealth. We believe in government with the consent of the governed, “of, for and by the people.” We must now emerge into a new day with a new direction.

Is it too late to vote for Jackson? Remember, he lost to Reagan in 1984 and George HW Bush in 1988. Imagine what a different country we’d be living in if those two establishment conservatives had been defeated.

 Imagine the country we can still live in if we support the progressive movement that is rolling across the country right now.

The Last Socialist President

Via Down with Tyranny:

The Possible Tomorrow

David Atkins at Political Animal:

Politics isn’t just the art of the possible today. It’s also about shaping the realm of the possible tomorrow. When the opposition is willing to compromise, pushing the envelope might come at the expense of real gains in the moment. But when the opposition is intransigent, advocating for the impossible might just be the most productive thing a president can do to lay the groundwork for gains in the future.

Wake Me When Popey Frankie Says Women Are More Important Than Blastocysts

On second thought, better wake me when he goes back to the vatican, 'cause he's never gonna say adult women matter as anything other than walking wombs.

Think Progress:

A papal visit to the United States is cool and all, but should progressives even care?

The short answer: Yes. Yes, you should. Especially if you want legislative action on immigration reform, climate change, or income inequality.

No. No you shouldn't.  And for the same reason you should reject any smiling offers from self-described "libertarians" who claim that Rand Paul attracts the same voters that Bernie Sanders does.

Bernie Sanders and his supporters are pro-choice, pro-gay-rights and pro-civil-rights-for-minorities. The Tribble-Toupeed One and his supporters are violently opposed to all three.

Catlicks and other freakazoids are not progressive - just as "libertarians" are not libertarian - and never will be until they accept the full humanity and bodily autonomy of women, gay people and non-white people.

And may they all hang from a rope until they do.

Yeah, the Wall Street Journal Is Lying About Bernie Sanders' Economic Plan

By $15 trillion.

Kevin Drum:

The Wall Street Journal says Bernie Sanders' domestic policy plan would cost $18 trillion over ten years. Is this true?

It depends on how you look at it. First, there's a set of proposals that the Journal estimates would cost about $3.4 trillion. That's not pocket change, but it's about as much as Jeb Bush's tax cut. The big difference is that Jeb's tax cuts mostly benefit the rich, while Bernie's proposals mostly benefit the poor and the middle class. You can decide for yourself which you prefer.

Then there's the $15 trillion price tag for universal health care. Is this a fair estimate? It's probably in the ballpark. Private health insurance accounted for about $1 trillion in spending last year, and assuming reasonable growth that will probably come to around $15 trillion over the course of a decade.

But here's the thing: this is money we already spend. Right now, employers and workers pay insurance companies $1 trillion for health care. Under Bernie's plan, we'd instead pay that money to the federal government. Generally speaking, this would be invisible to most of us. Behind the scenes, our dollars would flow to a different place, and that's about it.

So the Sanders plan wouldn't actually take money out of our pockets. It's a wash. It needs to be evaluated instead on all the usual metrics. Would the government do a better job of holding down costs? Would government control distort market signals? Would innovation suffer? Would most of us have more choice in health care providers? Would more people be covered? Etc.

Bottom line: You should think of the Sanders plan as costing about $3.4 trillion. You may or may not like the idea of universal health care, but it wouldn't have much impact on how much money you actually take home each week.

Sanders Berns the Village

Have to agree with the youtube commenter who calls this the best Bernie video yet. Pass it on.

The Socialistic Policies Huge Majorities of Americans Want

It's almost as if a major political party in cahoots with the billionaire class and the Military-Industrial Complex spent last 70 years lying to Americans about what Socialism really is.

Digby:

This is a great piece by Paul Rosenberg at Salon about what really constitutes "mainstream." (Also too about how Sanders agenda exemplifies it.)

Here's just a taste:

You can get a strong sense of this from the results of the “Big Ideas” poll commissioned by the Progressive Change Institute in January, which has thus far gotten far less attention than it deserves. (Full disclosure: I’m a former blogmate with Adam Green, co-founder of PCI’s affiliate, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee.) PCI first solicited ideas online through an open submission process (more than 2,600 specific proposals were submitted) and then let people vote on them (more than a million votes were cast). This bottom-up process was then tested out in a national poll. The following all received 70% support or more:

Allow Government to Negotiate Drug Prices (79%)
Give Students the Same Low Interest Rates as Big Banks (78%)
Universal Pre-Kindergarten (77%)
Fair Trade that Protect Workers, the Environment, and Jobs (75%)
End Tax Loopholes for Corporations that Ship Jobs Overseas (74%)
End Gerrymandering (73%)
Let Homeowners Pay Down Mortgage With 401k (72%)
Debt-Free College at All Public Universities (Message A) (71%)
Infrastructure Jobs Program — $400 Billion / Year (71%)
Require NSA to Get Warrants (71%)
Disclose Corporate Spending on Politics/Lobbying (71%)
Medicare Buy-In for All (71%)
Close Offshore Corporate Tax Loopholes (70%)
Green New Deal — Millions Of Clean-Energy Jobs (70%)
Full Employment Act (70%)
Expand Social Security Benefits (70%)

All of the above are in line with Bernie Sanders’ politics and all are extremely popular, with support across the political spectrum. For example, the infrastructure jobs program (a key element of Sanders’ platform) had 91% support from Democrats, 61% from independents and even 55% support from Republicans—compared to only 28% who were opposed. Donald Trump can only dream of being that popular among Republicans.

If people voted strictly on issues, Sanders would be a bipartisan dream. Unfortunately, the calculation that goes into voting is much more complex. But it's always good to know how people look at this stuff in the abstract. All Democrats should pay heed. So should Republicans but they are hamstrung by a base that's driven by the propaganda they've been feeding them for the past 40 years and they no longer have any actual idea of what government policies are or what the government does. But Democrats do ...

I'd Love to Think That Americans Trust Atheists More Than Socialists

But the poll is probably just stupid.

Ed Kilgore at Political Animal:

In one of the dumber public opinion exercises in recent memory, Gallup has asked a polling question that tests whether Americans would vote for an “otherwise qualified” candidate for president nominated by their own party if she or he had a particular identification, and then listed the following: Catholic; A woman; black; Hispanic; Jewish; Mormon; Gay or Lesbian; An evangelical Christian; Muslim; An atheist; A socialist.

And—shocker!—after mixing one and only one label associated with a political ideology with ten associated with race, gender, ethnicity, religion and sexual orientation, Gallup discovers “socialist” is the only one which a majority is unwilling to support (though not by much: 50 to 47). Here’s the heavy-handed conclusion from Gallup’s Justin McCarthy:

Independent Bernie Sanders, who is seeking the Democratic nomination, is the only Jewish candidate in the race. And while a large majority of Americans are willing to vote for a candidate of his faith, Sanders’ self-identification as a socialist could hurt him, as half of Americans say they would not vote for someone with that background

I have a feeling “constitutional conservative” might have done as or more poorly.

Frankly, the most interesting data-point to me was that 26% of Republicans say they’d vote for “a socialist’ if the GOP found an “otherwise qualified” one to nominate. But they wouldn’t, of course, which is one of the things that makes this question stupid.

I’m a big believer in the “more data” theory of politics and of life, and rarely reject any polling data as useless. But this comes pretty close.

Rude Advice to Hillary Clinton

Actually, I think Hillary Clinton may have finally figured this out.  At least she's campaigning like she's already figured it out.

 

But it can't be repeated often enough.

 

The Rude Pundit:

The center is a lie, filled with people who are pussies about saying what they really are - they're fucknuts who want to act like they are so independent when all they're really doing is licking the asses of rich Republicans or they're people who want to call themselves Democrat but were raised Republican and don't know what to do.

So the Rude Pundit offers the opposite advice to Clinton: Fuck being reasonable. Look where that got you in 2008. Punch the yahoos in the balls and preach to the converted, who want to feel good about going to church.

Update: Let's be honest here, too. Bernie Sanders is the real liberal in the race, whatever you think his chances are. Hillary Clinton has taken some positions on issues that are to the left of Republicans, which, of course, puts conservatives into a froth, even if her ideas are not particularly radical. Most of the things Clinton says (or that Sanders says, for that matter) are very popular positions among, you know, the majority of voters.

Dare You to Watch This

Via Down with Tyranny:

In 180 seconds you will be voting for Bernie Sanders.

Name one plank in Sanders' platform that is not supported by a majority of American voters.

So Few Have So Much

Via Down with Tyranny: 

Bernie Sanders, making the One Percent wish he were gone (image source; image artist; more images here)

by Gaius Publius
- See more at: http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/#sthash.5JMk7Y0Z.dpuf

 

 

To Anonymous who won't leave a name with his insults: what exactly about this do you find so threatening?

Why Bernie? Because He Wants to Tax the Rich Out of Existence

It's not just the right thing to do. It's not just the only thing that will restore a middle-class economy.  It's the thing you know you really, really want.

Think Progress:

In an interview with CNBC’s John Harwood, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), who is running for the Democratic presidential candidacy, said he could back a 90 percent top marginal tax rate.

Harwood brought up that some have likened efforts to combat income inequality to Nazi Germany. Sanders noted sarcastically, “When radical, socialist Dwight D. Eisenhower was president, I think the highest marginal tax rate was something like 90 percent.”

Harwood followed up by asking, “When you think about something like 90 percent, you don’t think that’s obviously too high?” to which Sanders replied, “No.”

He continued, “What I think is obscene…when you have the top one-tenth of one percent owning almost as much as the bottom 90.”

Sanders is right that the top marginal tax rate, that paid by the wealthiest Americans, was around 90 percent under Eisenhower — it was actually 92 percent in the 1950s. Today, the top marginal tax rate is 39.6 percent, although the richest 1 percent end up paying less than that on average and the average rate actually fell for many years.

Republicans have consistently claimed that higher tax rates on the wealthy will hold back economic growth, while lowering rates further will spur it forward.

But that’s not likely the case. Last year, economists found that the point at which the top tax rate is high enough to maximize government revenues but not so high that it discourages the rich from trying to earn more is quite high: about 95 percent for the 1 percent. History bears that out. Economists have pointed out that post-war American growth has been higher during periods with much higher top marginal tax rates and lower when tax rates were substantially lower. When the top rate was more than 90 percent in the 50s, economic growth averaged more than 4 percent a year. But recently when the top rate has been closer to 35 percent, growth has been less than 2 percent a year on average.

The point of higher tax rates isn’t just to penalize the rich, of course. They would need to serve a policy function. For Sanders, that’s combatting income inequality. “If you have seen a massive transfer of wealth from the middle class to the top tenth of one percent, you’ve got to transfer that back,” he told Harwood.

A 90 percent top tax rate could achieve that goal. The same economists who found that the rich can swallow a 95 percent rate also found that a 90 percent tax rate for the 1 percent could significantly reduce the Gini index, a measure of income inequality. It would also help lower wealth inequality. Meanwhile, everyone’s wellbeing would improve, rich and poor alike.

So far, many Republican presidential candidates have proposed a radically different approach: a flat tax. Sen. Ted Cruz (TX), Sen. Rand Paul (KY), and Ben Carson have all backed this idea. The details of each proposal differs, but the basic premise is an attempt to simplify the tax code by only having one rate that everyone pays, rather than the current system rates increase as income increases. An analysis of one flat tax plan put forward by Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) found that it would raise taxes for those at the bottom of the income scale by between $102 and $462, while the tax bill for those making more than $1 million a year would decrease by about a half million dollars.

It would also lower government revenue by between $500 and $1 trillion a year. If a candidate wanted to maintain the current level of revenue, it would require taxing everyone, rich or poor, by at least 25 percent.

New Published Confession: The Rich WILL Seize Power to Restore Feudalism

They don't even care about hiding it any more; lords-n-serfs is what they want, and lords-n-serfs is what they're going to get. 

So when Bernie Sanders talks about taxing the billionaires out of existence, maybe now you'll hear it as middle-class self-preservation.

 

Think Progress:

Charles Murray, an author who GOP presidential candidate Jeb Bush recently named first when he was asked which books have had a big impact upon him, is not an elected official, so he is free to rail against democracy to his heart’s content. And that is exactly what he does in his new book, By The People: Rebuilding Liberty Without Permission.

Pay no attention to the title. Government “by the people” is the last thing Murray cares to see. Murray admits that the kind of government he seeks, a libertarian fantasy where much of our nation’s regulatory and welfare state has been dismantled, is “beyond the reach of the electoral process and the legislative process.” He also thinks it beyond the branch of government that is appointed by elected officials. The Supreme Court, Murray claims, “destroyed” constitutional “limits on the federal government’s spending authority” when it upheld Social Security in 1937. Since then, the federal government has violated a “tacit compact” establishing that it would not “unilaterally impose a position on the moral disputes that divided America” (Murray traces the voiding of this compact to 1964, the year that Congress banned whites-only lunch counters).

SNIP

So when Murray speaks, powerful and influential men (and his acolytes are, almost invariably, men) listen, including men who shape our nation’s fiscal policy and men who could be president someday.

By The People, however, rejects outright the idea that Murray’s vision for a less generous and well-regulated society can be achieved through appeals to elected officials — or even through appeals to unelected judges. The government Murray seeks is “not going to happen by winning presidential elections and getting the right people appointed to the Supreme Court.” Rather, By The People, is a call for people sympathetic to Murray’s goals — and most importantly, for fantastically rich people sympathetic to those goals — to subvert the legitimate constitutional process entirely.

“The emergence of many billion-dollar-plus private fortunes over the last three decades,” Murray writes, “has enabled the private sector to take on ambitious national or even international tasks that formerly could be done only by nation-states.” Murray’s most ambitious proposal is a legal defense fund, which “could get started if just one wealthy American cared enough to contribute, say, a few hundred million dollars,” that would essentially give that wealthy American veto power over much of U.S. law.

Murray, in other words, would rather transfer much of our sovereign nation’s power to govern itself to a single privileged individual than continue to live under the government America’s voters have chosen. It’s possible that no American has done more to advance the cause of monarchy since Benedict Arnold.

Your Occasional Bernie

This is how you fight a class war.  This is how you win.

 

Via Down with Tyranny:

You Don't Deserve President Sanders, America, But You Do Need Him

Or as Wonkette Commenter LizzeTish put it: "Now I have to go change my panties."

Wonkette:

Rejoice, Liberal-Americansians, for Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders (Socialist and proud of it!) officially declared on Tuesday that he is running to be president of U.S. America. Awwwwww yeah! And lest you think Sanders is just some silly vanity candidate — like, for example, every single Republican in the race or pretending to maybe be planning to get into the race to boost ratings or sell books — nope, he is dead serious about this, and he’s already raised millions of dollars since announcing in April that he is seeking the Democratic nomination. 

 

SNIP

“We begin a political revolution to transform our country economically, politically, socially, and environmentally. Today we stand here and say loudly and clearly, Enough is enough. This great nation and its government belong to all of the people, and not to a handful of billionaires.

ADVERTISEMENT

On his website, Sanders describes his three main campaign issues, and none of them are about whether he’d go to a gay wedding or which countries he will bomb to smithereens. Nah, he is all about income inequality, breaking up the big banks, and saving the environment from the “planetary crisis” that is climate change.

“American democracy is not about billionaires being able to buy candidates and buy elections,” he said during his speech. He reminded his audience that the Koch brothers intend to spend more on the election than the Democratic or Republican parties and that, Sanders said, “is not democracy, that is oligarchy.”

As for climate change? Duh:

The debate is over. The scientific community has spoken in a virtuously unanimous voice. Climate change is real, it is caused by human activity, and it is already causing devastating problems in our country and around the world.

He called for a massive federal jobs program, a huge investment in infrastructure, equal pay for women, expanding Social Security benefits, and universal single-payer healthcare. And of course Sanders has already been speaking about his plan to tax the bejesus out of Wall Street so everyone can get a college education for free.

You want more? There is more. He will also play nice with the other countries, to defeat terrorism through diplomacy instead of doing war to everyone all the time. And, he reminded his audience (cough cough), he voted against the Iraq War because he knew at the time that it was bad and wrong, AHEM.

You can read all of his words, which will make you liberals liberal-swoon and then swoon some more. Sanders is hitting the road and heading to the early primary states, just like any other presidential candidate, but without ginormous corporate super PAC sponsorship, and he is going to have a civilized debate with the other Democratic candidates, like a grown-up, what a novel idea!

In conclusion, vote Bernie Sanders, for socialized healthcare, killing the banks with fire, making the government give everyone free stuff, saving the middle class and the planet, and a pint of Ben & Jerry’s in every freezer.

Excuse me, I choked up there for a minute.  I'm an Oldz, and I have not heard a liberal platform like that from a Democratic candidate in my lifetime - no, not from Jack Kennedy and not even from Bobby Kennedy. Jesse Jackson came close.

Bernie is the candidate we thought Barack Obama was.  Bernie is the candidate my parents grew up worshipping FDR for being.  Only better.

But most importantly, Bernie Sanders running a real, serious campaign for president means that the mainstream media has to actually cover actual liberal policy positions.  You know, the ones actual majorities of actual Americans have held for DECADES.

And no, Wonkette Commenter GayerThanThou, Martin O'Malley is NOT more fap-worthy.