Amos's River of Justice

Our Season of Creation

  • I’m forcing myself to read The Republic. It’s painful. It is disturbing that apologists have been accepting Plato’s lies without hesitation for 2500 years and they would like to continue for another 2500 years.  In my opinion, we should expunge Plato and his student Aristotle from history.

    The Republic

    In this article I’ll talk about Melissa Lane’s 2007 introduction for the Penguin Classics edition. She begins with Karl Popper’s conviction that Plato is to blame for Western society’s totalitarian ideas of fascism and communism. That’s a good start to my way of thinking. But sometimes I think she gives Plato more of a positive spin than he deserves. Fortunately, she still leaves room for dissent. As it turns out the introduction is full of ammunition for critics of Plato.

    Thirty years before Plato wrote The Republic, his city-state, Athens, had been conquered by Sparta, a militaristic oligarchy. The coup occurred in 404 BC. In 399 BC the restored democracy executed Plato’s teacher, Socrates.

    It seems to me the Athenians knew what they were doing.  However Lane states that this series of events taught Plato something else entirely. They taught him that neither democracy nor oligarchy nor any other existing order, could achieve happiness or political stability for its citizens. All of them were founded on the inherently corrupting desire for power.

    Plato the Gaslighter

    It is difficult to see how Plato arrived at this conclusion from the execution of his teacher. Socrates was executed for treason. As his student, Plato would have known that Socrates favored Sparta and that he was teaching the youth of Athens to do the same. How does Socrates’ death condemn Athenian democracy?

    After the defeat by Sparta the democracy of Athens was restored and it flourished for seventy years more. During this period, Plato wrote The Republic. Athenian democracy finally ended with the conquests of Alexander the Great. Alexander was taught by Plato’s student, Aristotle.

    It seems that from the time of Socrates this cadre of men never wavered in its enmity toward Athens.  This puts The Republic in its proper perspective.

    Plato’s Politics

    In his treatise, Plato argued that a system where every citizen had the right to speak brought tension between the few rich and the many poor. His sympathies were obviously with the rich. He was one of them. He claimed that since the common people were numerically and ideologically dominant it generated ‘tension with the elite’. In addition, he blamed Athenian democracy for the establishment of an empire abroad.

    Plato’s uncle, Critias, and his cousin, Charmides, were would-be oligarchs who thought oligarchy was the solution. In fact, it was Critias who connived with the Spartans in 404 BC to install himself and his cronies as a junta called ‘the Thirty’. While in power they used their power to murder and expropriate. This effort excluded the vast majority of Athenians from citizenship.

    Plato: The Kinder, Gentler Oligarch

    Naturally, the ever philosophical Plato begged to differ with them, at least on paper. Oh, he also thought Athens should be an oligarchy, but he invented a form of it that no one had ever seen up until that time. And no one has seen it since. He invented an oligarchy governed by philosopher kings! And surprise of surprises—he pictured it very much like Sparta.

    “In Sparta, however, where oligarchical rule was longer-lasting and ingrained in the customs and way of life, Plato did find one clue to political health. This was the unity of the Spartan ruling class, maintained through strict discipline, including common meals, demanding military training and what we have come to call a ‘spartan’ (materially austere) lifestyle. But the Spartan elite used the power of their unity to oppress and terrorize the ‘helots’ – the serfs who did all their manual labour – and they were notoriously hostile to culture and philosophy. Nevertheless, the Republic adapts a version of the Spartan idea of a ruling class unified through austerity and collective living. By choosing only philosophers as rulers, it seeks to ensure that the power of the ruling elite will be used not to oppress (as in Sparta) but to benefit the common people, so establishing the regime of expertise, unity and happiness that Plato found wanting in the polities of his own day.”

    One would assume Plato didn’t advertise this plan in the market square. He would most certainly have shared the fate of Socrates.

    Plato’s Psychobabble Phase

    And now begins Plato’s foray into psychobabble—a perpetual wheedling away at the sensibilities of the common people. For example, there is his claim that only psychic justice is self-sustaining. Psychic justice is, of course, beyond the capabilities of most people because even when they perform just actions they do it for the wrong reasons. So they are not really ‘just’ at all! Wisdom is a matter of expertise.

    Restructuring Education and Culture

    Plato was directly contradicting Athenian democratic principles when he taught that people need to be ruled. Only through surrogates could the common people have access to reason. This naturally led to the necessity for a radical surgery on existing methods and content of Greek education and culture.

    Reinventing Human Psychology

    In addition he challenged existing understandings of human psychology. The Athenians exalted indignation and anger as key to the demand for legitimate equality of respect.  But the Republic is all about restraining indignation and anger.

    A New Radical Account of the Soul

    Plato was also developing a new, radical account of the soul, made possible by articulating a parallel account of the city. Among other things, this allowed him to posit that souls have parts, like cities. Or rather, like Plato’s definition of cities.

    Division of Labor

    In Plato’s time it was controversial as to which elements a city should have. There were rich and poor but the rich had financial obligations to the poor and there was no separate ruling elite or military caste. All male citizens could occupy the major positions of power, speak in Assembly, and speak and vote in the law court. And they all fought in the city’s battles. Socrates, however, proposed a division of political labor.

    At first the division depends merely on a specialization of roles. He began by saying that there should be a class of guards to protect luxury. But then he slipped in a crucial move: he subdivided the guards into two parts: the younger guards would be military supporters or auxiliaries; the older guards would be ruling ‘guardians’ who would later be Identified as philosophers. And again, he claimed this division had a parallel with the soul: The guardians represent reason; the auxiliaries represent indignation and anger; and the workers, merchants and doctors represent bodily appetites.

    What Will Deter the Abuses of the Rulers?

    You are probably wondering what there is to deter the abuses of the rulers. According to Plato, Socrates envisioned an institutional deterrent, like the one found among Sparta’s elite.  But Athens’ would have an additional deterrent. Athens’ rulers would be natural philosophers who had no material desires.  Other than that, the ideal city had all the Spartan high points: girls exercising naked with boys; qualified women as warriors and guardians; deprivation of property, for guardians that is, meaning that the common people would have to support them; families and children held in common; and selective breeding.

    No Social Mobility

    Socrates/Plato felt that education is important but it will never make a philosopher out of a common man. Philosophers are born, not made.

    Not only is this a direct contradiction of Athenian democracy, it is a direct contradiction of religion—especially the Christian religion. Strange isn’t it, how some versions of Christianity have virtually enshrined the Greek philosophers as founding fathers of the religion?

  • We’re all aware of the conflict in the Catholic Church between those who want the Church to be more modern and those who want it to maintain traditional discipline and forms of worship. For those of us on the outside, the public comments have been so cryptic and contradictory it’s impossible to know which way it is headed. That’s probably why a recent news story on Crux Now took me by surprise. The writer congratulated the pro-life faction on the election of Donald Trump because Trump plans to cut funding to Family Planning. This was published shortly after the bombs were dropped on Syria and Afghanistan. Apparently the Church is fine with Trump’s military brutality even as it applauds his pro-life agenda. This is very disappointing.

    I’m sure you’ve heard the pro-life claim that protecting life in the womb will assure world peace. I would argue instead that the frantic determination to conquer the womb is the root cause of disorder in our society. For forty years conservatives in the United States have been using the abortion issue to attack our democracy. One of their most effective strategies has been electing presidents who will appoint Scalia-type justices to the Supreme Court. Now we can see where this has led us. Their persistent efforts have finally brought our republic to its knees.

  • The political process is important and necessary but we’re long past the point where anything worthwhile can be said about this election. All that’s left to us is bad theater played by bad actors. At some point you have to let it go–just tell the truth about it and move on. In Thursday’s town hall the lead actor would be Senator Jeff Flake. However I think the cast also includes grandstanding members of the opposition and the bloodthirsty media whose job it is to make a partisan mountain out of every molehill.

    It’s been reported that Senator Flake bravely withstood a drubbing by a liberal audience, which sort of discounts the audience’s responses in my opinion.  However, it must also be said that Senator Flake gave as good as he got, both during the meeting and in the interminable years leading up to it. After postponing this inevitable confrontation with his cuckolded constituents as long as he possibly could, he arrived at the arena armed only with his trusty list of non-answers and his famous smile. It’s not surprising that this smile was perceived by said long-suffering constituents as disrespectful rather than jovial. As one man explained when it was finally his turn at the mic, everything of importance has already been said, so he commented instead that the senator seemed to be smiling an awfully lot.  All things considered, serious self-reflection would be more appropriate.

    Of course, serious self-reflection had no part in Mr. Flake’s battle plan on Thursday. His sole purpose seemed to be sticking to his guns regardless of what the bad people did to him, and stick to his guns he did. Some in the media counted the public’s outrage a victory of some kind. I have a different take on it. If Jeff Flake’s goal was to deliver a lesson in futility to the unruly masses, the evening was a smashing success–for him.

    I’m not denying that the masses were gloriously unruly. I’m just saying the Senator was going through the motions. He was there because of the petition that was signed by his constituents.  He’s still the same guy who spent his career ignoring their wishes. So naturally the smiling delivery of his all too familiar non-answers worked like a knife in the heart and the people responded by the only means at their disposal—howls, cat-calls and chants. None of it had any effect on the good senator however, who often ended his responses by stating, “I disagree,” which is patently absurd coming from a representative of said masses.

    Somewhere in the middle of this standoff things got really…interesting. A young girl stepped up and delivered her line with the timing of a vaudeville straight man, “I’m a sixteen-year-old girl of color and you’re a white man of privilege,” or something to that effect, at which point I suddenly lost my concentration.  I can’t quote her exactly—find a clip of it on the web. But the gist of her comment was, Jeff Flake is a powerful bully who ignores the needs of the underprivileged. Unfortunately for her this turned out to be a perfect setup, because it allowed the senator to wryly muse about being the middle child of eleven children, implying that he grew up in a poor family.

    An awed silence fell over the crowd as scenes from The Grapes of Wrath flashed before our eyes. We were so stunned it didn’t occur to us that eleven children is not a natural disaster like an earthquake or the weather; nor is it a national disaster, like a depression. Last but not least, being born into a poor family with eleven children is not even a social handicap–not in Mormon country. Dang! This guy is good!

    I left feeling sorry for the town component of this town hall. I still do, even after learning about the Democratic establishment’s email instructing people to ‘put Jeff Flake in their grill’. That pretty much describes what happened but this was no victory for the people. Jeff Flake and the Democratic establishment got what they wanted—the continuation of the status quo–but the people who continue to languish under the policies of Senator Flake and his cronies, got zip. I’m sorry Senator, but that is the very definition of privilege.

  • Senator Jeff Flake has scheduled a town hall Thursday from 7:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. PT. According to the email sent out by his office, which includes a code of conduct, the venue seats 1,750 people. This town hall is bound to go a little differently than his telephone town hall in March. These are my notes from the last town hall. There were no responses to his answers so I assume the callers were no longer on the line.

    1. He was asked about Arizona’s plans for public land. He said land trades were common in the past and that they were only talking about 6,000 acres of BLM land out of 137,000.
    2. On immigration, he said policy should be based on national security, not nationality.
    3. On the environment, he began by saying that he loves the outdoors. However he thinks we need common-sense regulations and that Arizona is being penalized for dust storms that have nothing to do with development or human activity.
    4. When asked how he could vote for Betsy DeVos, he said “Elections have consequences,” and the president deserves his cabinet. After all, he said, he confirmed Obama’s Attorney General even though she was unqualified.
    5. On the concern that a border wall will split a reservation in Tucson, he said that is one of the complexities about the wall that people don’t understand.
    6. When asked why he didn’t hold a town hall the previous week, he said that he had to stay in Washington because of the nomination process.
    7. One caller asked how he could say he cares about veterans when bills that would restore military retirement pay don’t get a hearing. He said he thought they had already made the situation better. He added that Senator McCain is concerned about the problem and is still working on it.
    8. When asked how he was going to pay for infrastructure spending he agreed that more spending is necessary, but that we have to be fiscally responsible. He would support lowering corporate taxes. This would bring all the corporate money parked overseas flowing back to the United States.
    9. Another caller was concerned about the possibility of turning Social Security over to Wall Street. He replied that the current program will be bankrupt unless it is reformed. The Republican legislation won’t affect retired or near retired people, and it will tag benefits to prices, not wages. However the retirement age will continue to increase.
    10. He is against a special committee to investigate Trump’s Russia ties.
    11. To another question about the wall, he said 750 miles of it has been funded since 2013; that the terrain won’t allow the wall to be built everywhere; and that in many areas the water shed flows north, not south. (It’s not clear if he thinks the border should be left open in those areas.) He said we also need more interior enforcement.
    12. On the proposed increase in defense spending, he said he’ll support McCain. We need to spend more, budget better, and pay people properly so that the economy continues to grow.
    13. He’s against a border tax. He thinks it would not be good for either side.
    14. Social Security should not decide who’s mentally fit to have a gun.
    15. One caller said he hoped Republican healthcare reform would keep the rule on preexisting conditions. Flake said Obama Care is not sustainable and he praised Ryan’s plan.
    16. Responding to a call about School Choice, he said he advocates choice. Competition makes schools better and state control is better than federal control.
    17. Senator Flake assured another caller that Gorsuch is not pro-corporate and that he will follow the law. Then he praised him for being an Originalist. He thought Gorsuch would probably be confirmed in early April.
    18. A caller said we should not privatize the VA. Flake answered that he doesn’t think that’s where we’re going. He said seniors can pay for private care and be reimbursed later.
    19. In response to the idea of increasing taxes for the wealthy to remedy the national debt, Flake said we need economic growth. He thought we could accomplish that with a proper tax and regulatory environment. Instead of increasing taxes for the wealthy we should reform entitlements. They are the drivers of debt and deficits. He pointed to the stock market, which he said is responding to what has been done so far. (The stock market has nothing to do with economic growth.)

    Tonight’s in-person town hall is Flake’s response to a petition circulated by Change.org, which got 5,886 signatures. Although the petition requested a central location in Phoenix, the meeting will take place at the Mesa Convention Center in the East Valley. (I believe this area is predominantly Mormon). And although the petitioners asked for at least two hours, Flake scheduled one and a half hours.

    The location is 201 N. Center Street, Mesa, Arizona. Doors open at 6:00 p.m. Parking and lines at the door are not allowed before that time. Seating is first-come, first-served.

  • If you’re looking for a good source of information on water protectors and their activities across the nation, check out the YouTube channel: The One and Only Power. Here you can get important news from all over the country as well as educational outreach.

    In addition, I want to share the following video from Unesco announcing its 2017 World Water Development Report and World Water Day hosted by Unesco’s world water Assessment Program. World Water Day is tomorrow, March 22, 2017. If you are not familiar with Unesco see the website at: 1. [http://en.unesco.org/about-us/introducing-unesco]↩

    The 2017 World Water Development Report deals with treating waste water to take forward the 2030 agenda for Sustainable Development Goal 6: To assure access to water and sanitation for all. The report shows that wastewater management can facilitate access to sanitation, provide an alternative water source for cities, support farmers with water and nutrients and generate clean energy. This is the key message of the 2017 World Water Day. It will be hosted this year by the government of South Africa.

  • The question that keeps coming up in regard to our country’s oil policy is why? Why would policy makers want to remain dependent on oil when they know it’s contributing to climate change? Why would they risk destroying the water and the land when there are alternative sources of energy? And why the expensive militarization of the police against peaceful demonstrators? I think of it as an addiction. We were all witness to the specter of Standing Rock and the addictions of dominant capital.

    According to Jonathan Nitzan and Shimshon Bichler, 1 oil has become inseparable from the power structures of dominant capital. It is part of the process of ‘differential accumulation’ by which dominant capital controls everyone and everything else. What’s even more ominous is that it has formed an uneasy alliance with the arms trade.

    The Power Aspect of Capital is a Social Dimension

    Nitzan and Bichler disagree with the neoclassicists who say that capital is nothing more than material wealth. For them the power aspect of capital is a social dimension independent from tangible wealth. They redefine accumulation as a broader tension between productivity and power.

    “In this sense, large-scale business enterprise is driven by the same principal force which animated all previous power civilizations – namely the quest to control nature and people.”

    Accumulation is not enough for Dominant Capital

    But it’s worse than that. Simple accumulation will not do the job. Real power is in differential accumulation, which is the rate of return relative to the average. In order to accumulate more than everyone else, dominant capital implements strategic sabotage against non-dominant capital. Various methods are used for this purpose. These are not corporate strategies, but social regimes. They may look different from the outside, for example when comparing the period in the United States when there was a thriving middle class to our time of the disappearing middle class, but they’re all based on the ‘needs’ of a narrow group. I’ll include a brief summary of the regimes because I think it’s important in light of the efforts by the Trump administration and others throughout U.S. history to blame the economy on migrants and minorities.

    Social Regimes: Breadth and Depth Regimes

    There are two main regimes: breadth and depth. In a breadth regime a firm augments the size of its organization by having more employees. In a depth regime it increases its elemental power, which means getting more profit per employee. Breadth is relatively more stable and easier to maintain, while depth involves social antagonism and is more likely to spin out of control.

    Each Regime can be subdivided into Internal and External Subroutes

    Each regime can be subdivided into ‘internal’ and ‘external’ sub-routes. The following is a reproduction of a chart on page 49.

      Regimes of Differential Accumulation

    Breadth
    External: Green-field; Internal: Mergers & Acquisitions
    Depth
    External: Stagflation; Internal: Cost Cutting

    Green-field investment is building new capacity and hiring new employees faster than the average in order to increase market share. This is considered ‘external’ because it involves hiring additional employees from outside the firm. Excessive green-field growth has certain disadvantages. It creates surpluses, downward pressure on prices, and a decrease in profit per employee.

    Mergers and Acquisitions is Internal

    Mergers and acquisitions is the most potent form of differential accumulation. However it is limited by the availability of takeover targets and by social, political and technological barriers. M&A is considered ‘internal’ because it redistributes control over existing capacity and employment.

    Cost Cutting is Internal

    Cost cutting is internal because it redistributes income shares within a given price. Firms constantly practice cost cutting but it usually only helps them to meet the average rate rather than beat it, because of the difficulty of monopolizing new technology and controlling input prices.

    Stagflation is an Alternative Regime to Mergers and Acquisitions.

    Stagflation is an alternative regime to mergers and acquisitions. It is inflation practiced not by a single firm but by dominant capital, increasing its profit margin relative to non-dominant capital. Dominant capital can benefit from inflationary prices if it works in concert, while single sellers cannot. The result is a distribution of income to the bigger firms.

    What Does This Have to do With Standing Rock?

    Ok so what does all this have to do with the pipeline conflicts in the United States? It’s shocking to see these things here because we don’t realize that for dominant capital there is no difference between the Middle East and North America. The Middle East conflicts were not outside of the system. They were part of the system.

    “Interestingly, when we look at the history of the region from this particular perspective, the lines separating state from capital, foreign policy from corporate strategy, and territorial conquest from differential profit, no longer seem very solid. Many conventional wisdoms are put on their head. State policies, ostensibly aimed at advancing the national interest, often appear to undermine it; company officers and government officials, moving through a perpetually revolving door, sometimes simultaneously cater to several masters; arms races are fuelled for the sake of ‘stability’; and peace is avoided for being ‘too expensive’.”

    The Weapondollar-Petrodollar Coalition

    About 65 years ago the oil companies lost some of their control in the Middle East due to nationalism and industry competition. In the 1970s they formed a Weapondollar-Petrodollar Coalition with large U.S. and European-based manufacturing companies that were struggling with global competition. The strategy of the manufacturing part of this coalition was to turn to military contracts and arms exports. The strategy of Big Oil was to demand a strong state capable of protecting the dominant firms. Weapons, which used to be given as aid and controlled by the government’s foreign policy, became privatized and commercialized while oil became politicized.

    War and Capitalism Are Compatible: John Hobson

    It had already been observed by the late nineteenth century that war and capitalism were compatible. Their connection with wealth and income inequality was also known. The authors cite John Hobson’s ‘Imperialism’ (1902), on this point.

    Capitalism in the leading countries was moving from atomistic competition to concentration and monopoly, and tended to redistribute income from wages to profits, creating a problem of oversavings and underconsumption. This profit would normally have gone to green-field investment, but since people had less to spend there was less need for investment. That left imperialist expansion as the only outlet for excess savings.

    This doesn’t make much sense in the big picture since imperialism is a net loss to society. The explanation is that it made perfect sense to those who led the charge–a narrow coalition of arms producers, trading houses, the military and imperial apparatus, and the financiers. The financiers led the coalition in the late nineteenth century, enlisting key politicians and the possessing classes on the threat of redistribution at home, and they counted on the newspapers to provide the necessary atmosphere of nationalism and racism.

    Rudulf Hilferding on How The Bourgeoisie Stopped Being Peace-loving

    Marxist writers were influenced by Hobson although most of them rejected his belief that capitalism could be reformed. According to Rudulf Hilferding (1910) Finance Capital, an amalgamate of industry and finance controlled by the big banks, is a natural outcome of the monopoly stage of capitalism.

    “The demand for an expansionary policy revolutionizes the whole world view of the bourgeoisie, which ceases to be peace-loving and humanitarian. The old free traders believed in free trade not only as the best economic policy but also as the beginning of an era of peace. Finance capital abandoned this belief long ago. It has no faith in the harmony of capitalist interests, and knows well that competition is becoming increasingly a political power struggle. The ideal of peace has lost its luster, and in place of the idea of humanity there emerges the glorification of the greatness of and power of the state…The ideal now is to secure for one’s own nation the domination of the world, an aspiration which is as unbounded as the capitalist lust for profit from which it springs…Since the subjection of foreign nations takes place by force – that is, in a perfectly natural way – it appears to the ruling nation that this domination is due to some special natural qualities, in short the garb of natural science, a justification for finance capital’s lust for power, which is thus shown to have the specificity and necessity of a natural phenomenon. An oligarchic ideal of domination has replaced the democratic ideal of equality.” (Hilferding 1910: 335) As cited by Nitzan and Bichler. (205)

    Summary

    Nitzan and Bichler occasionally use Marxist analyses, but they are critical of it when it falls short of explaining a given problem. What do they think about the possibility of salvaging capitalism? On page 65 they state:

    “In summary, there is a long but crucial link leading from capitalism, to differential accumulation, to amalgamation, to capital mobility (Proposition 5). From this perspective, the present process of globalization is inherent in capitalist development and therefore not easily reversible without altering capitalism or moving away from it altogether. Moreover, contrary to popular perception, the underlying force here is not greater efficiency, but the control of efficiency, and the purpose is not aggregate but differential gain. Over time, particularly since the 1980s, foreign investment has come to rely less on green-field and more on cross-border mergers and acquisitions, as firms increasingly break through their national ‘envelope’. The big winners are the large ‘distributional coalitions’ of dominant capital. For society as a whole the picture is less cheerful, as the emphasis progressively shifts from green-field to amalgamation, causing growth to recede and stagnation to creep in (Proposition 3).” (For the list of 8 propositions, see pages 51-2.)

  • Arizona’s Republican-controlled legislature is advancing a bill to silence future protesters and financially punish the organizers. The bill is justified by state Representatives’ claims that ‘paid protesters’ are intentionally starting riots (these claims have been debunked) and their apparently genuine indignation over having to deal with irate constituents at town halls, whom they also claim are being paid. The Senate passed Senate Bill 1142 along party lines this week after heated debate with Democrats over its effects on free speech.1. [Alia Beard Rau, Arizona protest bill: What you need to know, The Republic, Feb. 23, 2017. Available: http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/legislature/2017/02/23/5-things-know-arizona-bill-arrest-protesters-riot/98302932/]↩

    Rioting, defined as ‘two or more people using or threatening force or violence in a way that disturbs the peace’, is already illegal in Arizona, but SB 1142 would expand the definition to allow charges if the force or violence results in property damage. Because rioting is defined as ‘two or more people acting together,’ this bill could allow protest organizers to be prosecuted if someone else is involved in the rioting, even if that person isn’t part of the organizing group. It cold also lead to organizers to being prosecuted just for planning an event that prosecutors believe could result in rioting. The bill would also add rioting to the list of offenses that can be addressed under state racketeering statutes. If a case is made for racketeering, the sentence would include more than a year in prison and seizure of protesters’ or organizers’ assets.  In addition, it would make them financially responsible for any property damage.

  • Update: This is the kind of thing that drives people apart and makes them give up.

    Can anyone back up these claims?

    February 19, 2017:

    I published these videos after they showed up in my YouTube feed. Sorry to say, I wasn’t suspicious about them until after I published them. As you probably know by now, this YouTube channel supports Donald Trump.   Now I see that my suspicions were justified.  Since Trump owns shares in the Dakota Access Pipeline it’s not likely his supporters would be concerned for the water protectors–it’s more likely they would try to scare them off.

    I guess this is nothing new—lies have been filling up the airwaves these days. What really gets to me is the gleeful way the lies are carried out. The monetary rewards alone can’t explain it in my opinion. None of the things we’ve been seeing make sense in the context of what we were trying to accomplish in this election.

    Maybe they assume we’re as cynical as they are and that we didn’t mean what we said. Or maybe they don’t need an excuse. Maybe they just enjoy making mischief.

    (more…)

  • There is lasting value in Bernie’s campaign–his progressive support.   For Abraham Lincoln  this kind of support was the basis for a new party.   Judging from the continuing bad behavior of establishment Democrats it looks like it’s time for Bernie to go the way of Lincoln.  If nothing else it will keep his supporters from getting lost in the political wilderness.  Fourteen million Democrats have already left the party.

    This would not be a replay of the last election. The Green Party and the Libertarians didn’t have the kind of support that Bernie has.  He could make it could work.  What can you do?  Go to the website: draftbernie.org.  Or go to FaceBook: Draft Bernie for a People’s party.

    https://youtu.be/7f28dVrtEWA

  • This was published today by Democracy Now.

    It is encouraging that the former Interior Secretary, Sally Jewell, has stepped in to this fight.  Jewell said Wednesday that the Army Corp of Engineers is violating its legal obligations as well as its promises to indigenous leaders to complete the environmental impact study.  The Army Corp is legally required to abide by the National Environmental Policy Act and the National Historic Preservation Act.  That has not been done in this case.

     

     

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