Robert Reich | Bernie or Biden?

03 March 20

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Robert Reich | Bernie or Biden?

Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Blog
Reich writes: "Is the Democratic Party's 'moderate' (or shall we say 'establishment') wing coalesces around Joe Biden to stop Bernie, the primary contest is starting to look a lot like 2016, when the same wing rallied around Hillary Clinton."

Today Amy Klobuchar quit the race to endorse Biden. Pete Buttigieg is endorsing Biden, too. As the New York Times’s David Leonhardt puts it in his column today, “if you’re a Democrat who doesn’t want Bernie Sanders to be the party’s nominee, your choice is now clear: you should vote for Joe Biden.”

But suppose you’re a Democrat who doesn’t want Donald Trump to have a second term? Suppose you’re a Democrat who suspects that Trump got elected in the first place because he exploited a deep sense of betrayal felt by tens of millions of Americans whose wages haven’t budged in 40 years and who know the system is rigged for the benefit of those at the top? Do you really vote for Joe Biden? 

I don’t think so. 

What do you think? 

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Bernie Sanders. (photo: The Daily Beast/Getty Images)

The Moderates Uniting Behind Biden Is Good News ... for Bernie
Erin Gloria Ryan, The Daily Beast
Ryan writes: "On Monday, Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg, two former future presidents who do not like each other, joined forces to campaign for Joe Biden, a man that neither of them seemed to feel that strongly about until about 12 hours ago."

Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar are falling into the trap. By racing to endorse the uninspiring Joe Biden they will fire up progressives to back Bernie.

n Monday, Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg, two former future presidents who do not like each other, joined forces to campaign for Joe Biden, a man that neither of them seemed to feel that strongly about until about 12 hours ago. For funsies, Beto O’Rourke joined in. This move represents a consolidation of the most ardently comme ci comme ça forces in the Democratic party, a fiercely lukewarm coalition of support for the one candidate who the establishment agrees might be able to beat Bernie Sanders. By the end of all this, they hope, America will unite to declare Joe Biden “okay, I guess.” 

It was about a week ago that Buttigieg, Klobuchar, and Biden shared a different stage, a debate stage where they spent fifty-seven hours shouting over, around, and about each other. This is one of many reasons this new affinity for Biden seems weird. On one hand, rivals becoming teammates is part of the political process. But on the other, the 2020 iteration of the rival-to-ally process of moderates dropping out and rushing to prop up Joe Biden’s staggering campaign is particularly uninspiring. 

This all feels so counterproductive. Amy Klobuchar radiates dislike at Pete Buttigieg in much the same way that my cat radiates dislike for my partner’s dog who won’t leave her alone. Carrying Joe Biden over the finish line has driven Klobuchar to Mayor Pete, and so it must, in her view, be pretty urgent. And Beto’s decision to jump in indicates that even skateboarding progressive-adjacents who sometimes drop tape of the f-bomb can get down with Biden. Is this going to discourage Bernie’s base of support? Absolutely not. Establishment apoplexy is to populists what spinach is to Popeye. Whipping America’s gooey ideological center into a froth is part of progressive candidates’ appeal. It’s why Chris Matthews’ (happy retirement, by the way) barking at Elizabeth Warren went viral among her supporters and why supercuts of party-line Democrat pundits on cable news wringing their hands about a possible Bernie nomination are gleefully shared among his supporters. The harder Joe Scarborough tsks, the better. 

The line from the Klobuchars-Buttigieg-style fall-in-line moderates is that a progressive nominee would inspire other people to either vote for Trump or stay home. First of all: who? Show me these actual people and establish to me that there are more of them than are former nonvoters turned out by their excitement about Bernie Sanders. Secondly, Amy, Pete, Beto, and lightly Republican Stephanie from sales who watches too much CNN and thinks she’s a pundit don’t know how other people are going to act on the other side of countless unknowable variables between here and Election Day any more than anybody else does. They assume that moderate fearmongering will convince Democratic voters to run away from scare-words they think Americans shouldn’t want (socialism) rather than toward policies that polling suggests Americans actually do want (socialized medicine, affordable education, a well-marbled billionaire in every pot). They must think that at the end of all this, Joe Biden will be president and we can pretend the entire Trump era never happened. 

Going back to how it was is not how progress works. It’s the opposite of progress. And nominating moderates out of fear is not how Democrats win. Klobuchar of all people should know this; one of her early mentors was the late Minnesota senator Paul Wellstone, a leading-edge progressive who introduced a single-payer healthcare bill into the Senate in 1993. Before it was cool! Part of me is convinced that if he hadn’t died in a plane crash in 2002, he’d be the president right now. 

Every election cycle, moderate Democrats and Republicans who call themselves “independent centrists”—because they don’t want to reckon with the fact that they vote like a racist—freak out over the unelectibility of progressive change. But when is the last time the consensus moderate candidate won a presidential election for Democrats? Obama campaigned on hope and coolness. Bill Clinton ran on change and horniness. The last Democratic president elected before that was Jimmy Carter, who ran on turning the thermostat down and wearing a nice sweater indoors. Hillary Clinton, winner of the popular vote, ultimately ran for president on a platform that contained many progressive tenets, including Lena Dunham. To rally behind a moderate is to do the opposite of the Dylan Thomas poem. Consider the electibility of rage, raging against the dying of the light, when you could instead go gently into that good night. 

As Amy and Pete shared a stage through dead-eyed D.C. smiles, as I read that Beto O’Rourke was joining them in spirit, I wondered what they were getting from all this. The idealist view is that they’re making a difficult decision in service of what they both personally believe is best for America. The cynical view is that they’ve had successful brand-building runs, and now it’s time to throw their support behind the guy who could one day appoint them to a cabinet post. The truth, in this case, at least, is probably somewhere in the middle.

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Jessica Cisneros. (photo: Thomas McKinless/Getty Images)

Meet the 26-Year-Old Immigration Lawyer Challenging "Trump's Favorite Democrat" in Texas Primary
Democracy Now!
Excerpt: "A wave of young progressives are campaigning in races across the U.S., following in the footsteps of Congressmember Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who unseated a 10-term incumbent Democrat in New York City two years ago."

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Betsy DeVos. (Photo: Getty)

Trump Administration Quietly Cuts Funding to the Nation's Poorest Schools
Andrew Naughtie, The Independent
Naughtie writes: "Thanks to an under-the-radar bookkeeping change at the Department of Education, hundreds of rural schools across the US are set to lose vital funds."
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The public puts in the money, and private companies keep whatever profits they can command.' (photo: Soohee Cho/The Intercept/Getty Images)

How the Senate Paved the Way for Coronavirus Profiteering, and How Congress Could Undo It
Ryan Grim and Aida Chavez, The Intercept
Excerpt: "Before a vaccine to combat the coronavirus pandemic is within view, the Trump administration has already walked back its initial refusal to promise that any remedy would be affordable to the general public."

EXCERPT:

Gilead Sciences, a drugmaker known for price gouging, has been working with Chinese health authorities to see if the experimental drug remdesivir can treat coronavirus symptoms. World Health Organization officials say it’s the “only one drug right now that we think may have real efficacy.” But remdesivir, which was previously tested to treat Ebola virus, was developed through research conducted at the University of Alabama at Birmingham with funding from the federal government.

That’s how much of the pharmaceutical industry’s research and development is funded. The public puts in the money, and private companies keep whatever profits they can command. But it wasn’t always that way. Before 1995, drug companies were required to sell drugs funded with public money at a reasonable price. Under the Clinton administration, that changed.

In the 1994 midterms, the Republican Revolution, built largely around a reaction to Bill Clinton’s attempt to reform the health care system, swept Democrats out of Congress. On its heels, in April 1995, the Clinton administration capitulated to pharmaceutical industry pressure and rescinded the longstanding “reasonable pricing” rule.

“An extensive review of this matter over the past year indicated that the pricing clause has driven industry away from potentially beneficial scientific collaborations with [Public Health Service] scientists without providing an offsetting benefit to the public,” the National Institutes of Health said in a 1995 statement announcing the change. “Eliminating the clause will promote research that can enhance the health of the American people.”

The move was controversial, and a House member from Vermont, independent Bernie Sanders, offered an amendment to reinstate the rule. It failed on a largely party-line vote, 242-180.

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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stands next to his wife, Sara, following the exit poll announcement. (photo: Amir Cohen/Reuters)

Likud's Netanyahu in Lead After Israel's Third Election in Less Than a Year
Mersiha Gadzo, Al Jazeera
Gadzo writes: "With 90 percent of votes counted, the Joint List has so far won a record 15 Knesset seats in Israel's election, a historic success for the Palestinian-majority electoral alliance."
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Protests against the illegal timber trade in Brazil have highlighted the number of people killed while defending the forest. (photo: Eraldo Peres/AP)

World's Biggest Meat Company Linked to 'Brutal Massacre' in Amazon
Dom Phillips, Guardian UK
Phillips writes: "A new investigation has linked the world's biggest meat company JBS, and its rival Marfrig, to a farm whose owner is implicated in one of the most brutal Amazonian massacres in recent memory."

Investigation traces meat sold to JBS and rival Marfrig to farm owned by man implicated in Mato Grosso killings

new investigation has linked the world’s biggest meat company JBS, and its rival Marfrig, to a farm whose owner is implicated in one of the most brutal Amazonian massacres in recent memory.

The report by Repórter Brasil comes as JBS faces growing pressure over transparency failings in its Amazon cattle supply chain.

On 19 April 2017, nine men were brutally murdered in what became known as the “Colniza massacre”. The men had been squatting on remote forest land in the state of Mato Grosso when their bodies were found, according to court documents. Some showed signs of torture; some had been stabbed, others shot.

According to charges filed by state prosecutors in Mato Grosso, the massacre was carried out by a gang known as “the hooded ones”. The aim, they said, was to terrify locals, take over land they lived on and extract valuable natural resources. The first reporter to reach the lawless, far-flung region only got there a week later.

On 15 May 2017, prosecutors said they had charged Valdelir João de Souza, a farmer who owned two timber companies on neighbouring land, and four others with homicide and forming or being part of an illegal paramilitary group. Prosecutors said de Souza had ordered the massacre, although he had not been present when it occurred. 

Since then de Souza has been a fugitive. But in April 2018 two adjacent areas of land – Três Lagoas and Piracama farms - in nearby Rondônia state were registered under his name (one of the oddities of the Brazilian property system is that landowners register their own land and boundaries). The two farms covered 1,052 hectares (2,599 acres) in an area set aside by the government for low-income agricultural workers. Satellite images show extensive deforestation on the Três Lagoas farm in 2015. 

Government sanitary records seen by Repórter Brasil show that on 9 May 2018 143 cattle were sold by the Três Lagoas and Piracama farms to a farm owned by Maurício Narde.

Minutes later Narde’s farm sold 143 animals of the same sex and age – 80 female cattle between 13– 24 months old and 63 female cattle over 36 months old – to a JBS meatpacker.

In June 2017, according to court documents in a separate case, Narde worked at a sawmill owned by de Souza in Machadinho d’Oeste in Rondônia state. He still works at the same sawmill, although it has since changed its name and is no longer controlled by de Souza. Reached by telephone by the Guardian, Narde confirmed the transaction but did not explain why he had sold the cattle after buying them minutes beforehand.

“We buy and sell, just to keep things moving,” he said, before deciding not to answer any more questions and concluding the interview.

The quick sale of the cattle suggests what environmentalists call “cattle laundering” – when cattle from a farm that has environmental issues sells cattle to a “clean” farm. This gets around monitoring systems because meat companies including JBS do not monitor these “indirect suppliers”.

“This series of coincidences suggests a common practice, which is the triangulation of animals,” said Mauro Armelin, director of Friends of the Earth Brazil. “It is a practice that could indicate cattle laundering.”

On 25 June 2018, according to government sanitary records, Três Lagoas also sold 153 head of cattle to the Morro Alto farm in Monte Negro, Rondônia, owned by José Carlos de Albuquerque.

In the following months de Albuquerque sold dozens of head of cattle to JBS and Marfrig slaughterhouses.

De Albuquerque told Réporter Brasil that the sale had never been completed – but the report cited sanitary records showing the cattle had, in fact, entered the Morro Alto farm. Contacted by the Guardian by phone and email, he declined to answer questions.

The Repórter Brasil investigation highlights the difficulties that Brazil’s big meat companies have in monitoring their supply chains.

JBS and other big companies such as Marfrig committed to not buying from farms involved in illegal deforestation in two separate agreements signed with Greenpeace and Brazilian prosecutors in 2009 and subsequent years. Under the Greenpeace deal, the companies also promised to remove producers accused of land grabbing or convicted in rural conflicts from their suppliers lists. The deal with federal prosecutors similarly bans farms that have been convicted of involvement in rural conflicts, or that are being investigated.

Greenpeace quit their deal in 2017, after JBS was fined for buying cattle from farms in illegally-deforested areas in the Amazon state of Pará. An audit by federal prosecutors found that 19% of the cattle JBS purchased in the state in 2016 had “evidence of irregularities”.

In the years following the cattle agreement, JBS made enormous progress in improving its monitoring of Amazon suppliers and the company defended its sustainability in a statement.

“We monitor over 280,000 square miles, an area larger than Germany, and assess more than 50,000 potential cattle-supplying farms every day, as well as conducting daily checks of all purchases to ensure compliance with strict standards. To date we have blocked more than 8,000 cattle-supplying farms due to noncompliance,” it said.

But while the company now has a complex system in place to monitor its direct suppliers, it is still unable to monitor its indirect suppliers – those farmers who sell to farms that then sell on to JBS.

De Souza’s case has yet to be concluded. Ulisses Rabaneda, a lawyer representing de Souza, told the Guardian that he had decided not to reply to questions from the media at this stage in the court proceedings. 

In an interview with the Gazeta Digital in 2019, de Souza said he was innocent of all charges, had never been involved in death squads, and remained a fugitive because he was scared he would be murdered by the real killers if he handed himself in.

“I never went around armed, so why at my age of 41, with solid companies, a peaceful life, no debts, without any problems, would I do something so barbaric?” de Souza said in the interview. “I built everything with the honesty and effort of my family. Why would I throw it all away?”

JBS told Réporter Brasil that de Souza was not a supplier and that it does not “acquire cattle from farms involved in deforestation of native forests, invasion of indigenous reserves of conservation, rural violence, land conflicts, or that used slave or child labour”.

“JBS reiterates that any attempt to link the company to the person mentioned in the report, who was never on its list of suppliers, is irresponsible,” the company told the Guardian.

Marfrig declined to comment on the investigation and sent the statement it had previously sent to the Guardian in December in which the company recognised that 53% of its Amazon cattle comes from indirect suppliers.

“Marfrig is fully aware of the challenges related to the livestock production chain and recognises its role as an important transformation agent to ensure production vis-à-vis the conservation of Brazilian biomes, especially the Amazon,” the company said.

It detailed measures including a supplier monitoring platform and its Request for Information (RFI) tool, in which suppliers voluntarily list the farms they may have acquired animals from. The company says a third of the cattle it sources in the Amazon come with an RFI, and it is now working to improve the process with World Wildlife Fund.

In 2017, a Greenpeace report published after the Colniza massacre said a company owned by de Souza, called Madeireira Cedroarana, had accumulated around $150,000 (£116,000) in unpaid fines over a decade from Brazil’s environment agency, Ibama.

Between January 2016 and October 2017 the company exported thousands of cubic metres of timber to the US and Europe. In 2018 it changed its name to Colmar Madeiras; it continues at the same address, but de Souza is no longer its controlling partner. In the interview with Gazeta Digital, he said his company had challenged fines it had received.

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