Week of March 9, 2020

We cannot keep publishing without your help.           We rely on you to help us pay our monthly expenses. So please Donate Monday Bernie bashing By Stephen Lendman In a free, fair and open process, Bernie Sanders would be odds on favorite to become Dem standard bearer against Trump in November. According to polls, he’d likely defeat DJT and become the 46th US president. Trump vs. Sanders: A concise comparison for voters (and why Bernie wins hands down) When there is a conflict between big business and the public good, on labor rights, consumer rights, small taxpayer respect, and environmental protections, Bernie has stood with the people. By Ralph Nader It isn’t un-American for voters to do some homework before voting. Here’s a “concise guide” for the voter with limited time who might want more information. America’s two-headed one party system By Caitlin Johnstone There’s a scene from John Steinbeck’s The Pearl that’s been coming back to me over and over again ever since I started writing about US politics. I find it amazing that this scene hasn’t become a political meme yet, given Steinbeck’s fame and given its perfect illustration of the fake two-party system that we see in western so-called democracies. Why does Generation Z require so many workplace accommodations? By Martha Rosenberg Recently the Wall Street Journal reported on how many young people are now seeking “accommodations” at work for their anxiety, PTSD, depression, and other mental conditions. Continue reading ? All men are mortal By Dr T P Wilkinson My deceased mother-in-law, not a pious person but one of utterly conventional morals, used to say when someone over 70 —she died of heart failure somewhere in the mid-70s after our divorce—was diagnosed with some serious illness, “well at least they can’t die young.” I say she was conventional because she certainly had all the usual ideas about what to do and say among polite people. Maybe having lived through the Second World War—on the losing side—and knowing enough people who did die young just gave her a certain sobriety in matters of life and death. I mention this because in our age of exhibitionism and euphemism it is very difficult to conduct a sober, let alone rational discussion about the circumstances by which individual human beings die. Tuesday Joe Biden in 2020 duplicates Hillary Clinton in 2016 By Eric Zuesse Hillary Clinton, of course, received the Democratic Party nomination in 2016 and was widely expected to beat Trump but she lost to him (though she won California by 4,269,978 in the popular vote, and so beat Trump by 2,864,974 in the nationwide popular vote, while she lost all other states by 1,405,002 votes, and so she would have been California’s president if she had won, but the rest of the nation wouldn’t have been happy). The greatest threat to the radical left is the radical left By Dave Alpert The political left in the US is a political minority that is constantly misrepresented and abused. While the capitalist has captured the media and the political arena, flooding the country with its messages about the wonders of capitalism and the “American Dream” and the dangers of socialism and communism, the left has struggled to get its message out to the American people. I have an issue with how exit polls treat issues Polling questions that isolate ‘inequality’ do no justice to the social ills that ail us. By Sam Pizzigati We can’t seem to have an election these days without “exit polls.” News organizations—on every big ballot-box day—now routinely stop voters exiting polling places to ask who they voted for. How to respond to the national emergency By Robert Reich CEOs of the major Wall Street banks have been summoned to the White House to discuss the coronavirus its economic fallout. I’m told Trump administration is considering more corporate tax cuts, tax cuts targeted to the airlines and hospitality industries, and a temporary payroll tax cut. Final Israeli election results By Stephen Lendman Tabulating March 2 election results took time to include absentee ballots. Wednesday The president as political hit man Donald Trump attempts to take out his electoral adversaries one by one, Mafia-style. By John Feffer Donald Trump filed his paperwork to run for reelection only hours after his inauguration in January 2017, setting a presidential record, the first of his many dubious achievements. For a man who relished the adulation and bombast of campaigning, it should have surprised no one that he charged out of the starting gate so quickly for 2020 as well. After all, he’d already spent much of the December before his inauguration on a ”thank you” tour of the swing states that had unexpectedly supported him on Election Day—Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin—and visited Florida for a rally only a couple of weeks after he took the oath of office. In much the same way that Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky once embraced “permanent revolution,” Donald Trump embarked on a “permanent campaign.”

Dems rigging things for establishment figure Biden? By Stephen Lendman The myth of moderate Joe belies his hardline agenda throughout a near-half century of public life as US senator and vice president. ‘Stealth attack on Social Security’: Trump condemned for exploiting coronavirus crisis to push payroll tax cut ‘This is a Trojan Horse attack on our Social Security system.’ By Jake Johnson Economists and progressive advocacy groups are warning that President Donald Trump’s proposal to cut or temporarily suspend the payroll tax in an effort to mitigate the economic impact of the coronavirus is “a Trojan Horse attack on our Social Security system” that will do little to help most U.S. households. The end of the Age of Enlightenment By Wayne Madsen The Age of Enlightenment had a pretty good run from the 17th to 19th centuries. It led to the Industrial Age and, in concurrence, the Space and Information Ages. These historical epochs advanced humanity to crowning breakthroughs in science, medicine, information exchange, and quality of life. Today, all of humankind’s advancements are being threatened by those who would have society return to an age marked by superstition, belief in magic and miracles, ignorance, racial and religious intolerance, and abject sexism. ‘People are being hunted down’—ICE launches rights-busting onslaught against sanctuary cities Rights are routinely being violated as hundreds of ICE agents storm New York City and other sanctuary cities in a fresh attempt to round up undocumented immigrants. By Alan MacLeod Operation Palladium has begun. Hundreds of agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have entered New York and other sanctuary cities in a fresh attempt to round up undocumented immigrants. The directive, according to officials, is simple: arrest as many undocumented immigrants as possible and “flood the streets” with officers. Beginning a 24/7 surveillance and detention program, ICE leadership has requested over 500 special agents who normally work fighting trafficking and organized crime to bolster the agency’s numbers. This follows an earlier decision to deploy immigration SWAT teams to round up undocumented immigrants in sanctuary cities. Thursday Dirty system triumphs on mini-Super Tuesday By Stephen Lendman Tuesday results in six states for Dems largely replicated Biden’s pre-scripted week ago Super Tuesday triumph over Sanders. ‘In a dark time, the eye begins to see’: The 2020 Bernie campaign represents a fight that must continue Corporate media and corporate Democrats want the Bernie 2020 campaign—and the grassroots energy behind it—to melt away. That's not going to happen. By Norman Solomon “In a dark time,” poet Theodore Roethke wrote, “the eye begins to see.” Freedom Rider: Coronavirus and the failed American state China built two coronavirus hospitals in just over one week. By Margaret Kimberley The United States has none of the systems or infrastructure that would allow it to accomplish what China has done to fight mass infection. Markets, viruses, petroleum,1% rule = democracy? By Frank Scott Reactions to the incredibly debt-ridden Ponzi Scheme that passes for thriving global capitalism range from joy over its positive nature in the cartoon version of reality presented by corporate media, to near panic over its pending doom from the best informed sources of the financial community. The sudden intrusion of a global health emergency beyond the normal one of people unable to afford health care has led to a sooner than expected market crisis with Wall Street fluctuations making president Trump’s intellectual state seem almost normal. The market drops a thousand points one day, rises two thousand the next, with sales of psychiatric drugs showing tremendous growth though only a few can afford to buy them. ‘Prejudential’ is a must-read to understand current presidential election debacle By Danny Haiphong Every four years, ruling elites aligned on either side of the two-party duopoly choose their most important political official, the president, to defend and protect their interests. Ordinary Americans are taught that the electoral process is a shining example of democracy at work. No other elected politician in the United States is more mythologized than the American president. George Washington couldn’t tell a lie. Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves. Historians, educators, and the mass corporate media have for centuries portrayed presidents as heroes of the people and the most powerful representatives of the “land of the free” and “home of the brave.” Friday The Fed’s baffling response to the coronavirus explained By Ellen Brown When the World Health Organization announced on February 24 that it was time to prepare for a global pandemic, the stock market plummeted. Over the following week, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped by more than 3,500 points or over 10%. In an attempt to contain the damage, on March 3 the Federal Reserve slashed the fed funds rate from 1.5% to 1.0%, in their first emergency rate move and biggest one-time cut since the 2008 financial crisis. But rather than reassuring investors, the move fueled another panic sell-off. Trump’s brand is chaos ‘Stupidity has a knack of getting its way.’ By Michael Winship Back in 1992, while running for re-election, President George H.W. Bush was speaking at a New Hampshire town hall and accidentally read aloud some stage directions handed to him by his staff: “Message: I care.” 20 top economists endorse Medicare for All as best plan to cut costs, save tens of thousands of lives each year ‘By eliminating insurance premiums and out-of-pocket expenses, and lowering overall healthcare costs, Medicare for All will result in enormous savings for almost all households, all except the richest households who will pay more in taxes.’ By Jake Johnson Rejecting “loose talk” from corporate Democrats, the media, and insurance industry that a single-payer system would be unaffordable, twenty leading U.S. economists on Tuesday released an open letter endorsing Medicare for All as the best way to reduce soaring national healthcare costs, significantly cut expenses for most U.S. households, and save countless lives. This is a test: How will the Constitution fare during a nationwide lockdown? By John W. Whitehead This is a test Freedom: Don’t let politicians tell you to EARN IT By Thomas L. Knapp The Wile E. Coyotes of the Internet—US Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT)—are sure that THIS time they’ve finally found a made-to-order tool that can take out the Roadrunn … er, those meddling ki … er, the First Amendment and Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.