War v. Peace, Status Quo v. Real Change and Obfuscation v. Transparency

Dear Friends,

The debate between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders last night could not have done a better job of highlighting the choice that we have between these two candidates and their policies, opinions and positions.

War v. Peace

On foreign policy, except for a short discussion about NATO where the candidates are in basic agreement, the Middle East was the focus.  Senator Sanders laid out a very clear and articulate position that acknowledged the right of Israel to exist in peace and security, but also acknowledged the same right for the Palestinian people.  Senator Sanders made it clear that the Israeli  response to the latest conflict in Gaza was an over-reaction by Israel.  Secretary Clinton refused to acknowledge that Israel over-reacted.  You cannot achieve peace between Israel and Palestine until you acknowledge the atrocities on both sides.  Senator Sanders' approach is the only one that has any chance of bringing peace.

With respect to Syria, Secretary Clinton, who has frequently chastised Senator Sanders for criticizing President Obama, laid the blame for the Syrian situation on President Obama because he did not take her advice to more aggressively arm the "friendly forces" fighting against Assad and establishing a no-fly zone which virtually all experts say would lead to more US troops fighting in Syria.  She also refused to take any responsibility for the debacle in Libya.  President Obama has said that one of the biggest mistakes of his Administration was not planning for what happens after Gaddafi is deposed.  Secretary Clinton refused to accept any responsibility even though she was a strong proponent within the Obama Administration for regime change in Libya.  She blamed the Libyan people for failing to take her advice and accept American troops in Libya.

We have a clear choice - Secretary Clinton, a clear hawk or Senator Sanders, a thoughtful person who will acknowledge reality, seek peace and use force only as a last resort.

Status Quo v. Real Change

On issue after issue, it is clear that Secretary Clinton supports the status quo, with only incremental changes, and it is equally clear that Senator Sanders believes we need big and substantive changes now.  This difference represents a fight for the soul of the Democratic Party.  When Secretary Clinton says that Senator Sanders is not a real Democrat, what she means is that he is not part of the move to the right, Republican light, Democratic Party establishment founded by her husband.  There is a great sentence going around the internet - "There is only one moderate Republican running in this election, and she is running as a Democrat."  I have said before that President Obama is about as far right as President Eisenhower was.  Secretary Clinton is clearly to the right of President Eisenhower particularly on the use of force.  President Bill Clinton formed an unholy alliance with big business.  Secretary Clinton will continue that alliance.  Senator Sanders will break up that alliance.

Secretary Clinton claims that she wants to get to universal healthcare coverage but has only plans to add an incremental number of people and attacks Senator Sanders' plan for Medicare for all.  She says he would throw out Obamacare which is not true.  He would keep Obamacare until the Medicare for all was in place.  She wants incremental change and calls it pragmatism.  She says she supports the movement for a $15 minimum wage, yet she refuses to support Senator Sanders' bill to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 instead she supports a competing bill to raise the federal minimum wage to $12 an hour.  She claims that she wants to protect the economy from another melt down but continues to fight against breaking up the big banks even though they are bigger now than before the great recession and the Fed and FDIC have recently called them too big.  She continues to say we should regulate them but, in an implicit criticism of President Obama, says that she would be tougher.  However, she fails to acknowledge that the big banks have successfully stalled on developing "living wills" for more than five years.  She says that she stood up to the big banks before the great recession but fails to acknowledge that she completely failed in changing their behavior.  The time has come to stop coddling the big banks and break them up.

She uses the overturning of the Citizens United case as one of her two litmus tests for any Supreme Court nominee and states that big money is corrupting our political system but refuses to acknowledge that it has any impact on her.  Apparently she is immune to all the pressures that other politicians are not immune to.  She cannot answer the simple question of why she will not release the transcripts of her paid speeches to Wall Street.  Her only response is that she will not release them unless everybody does, obviously including all Republican candidates.  Senator Sanders has not made closed door speeches to Wall Street.  The only logical conclusion that I can reach is that she would be embarrassed by those speeches if the transcripts became public.

The most important area where Secretary Clinton's incremental only approach to change cannot be accepted is with respect to climate change.  With every new report we are closer to a cataclysmic tipping point than was previously thought.  The time for incremental action has passed.  We need big change now.  Senator Sanders would ban fracking, would ban further drilling on federal lands, would place a tax on carbon and would focus completely on moving to sustainable, renewable energy.  Secretary Clinton promoted fracking around the world as Secretary of State, she refuses to say she would ban fracking, she refuses to say she would stop drilling on federal lands, and she refuses to say that she would support a carbon tax.  She says we need to move to sustainable energy but will do it in a "practical" and "possible" way, which is to say with small incremental steps.  That approach will destroy the earth for my grandchildren and is unacceptable.

Of course the debate was full of moments when Secretary Clinton obfuscated the facts while Senator Sanders was transparent about his positions.  While saying she would fight climate change, she refused to indicate immediate actions she would take that would have a significant impact, while saying she supports a $15 per hour federal minimum wage, she actually supports a move to $12 per hour, while claiming she supports Senator Sanders' policy of extending the life of the social security trust fund she refuses to support raising the income cap on social security taxes or endorsing any other particular approach, while saying she would be tough on the big banks, she refuses to support doing anything more than have the regulators be "tough" which has failed miserably so far and while saying she will work for peace between Israel and Palestine, she refuses to acknowledge the Israeli atrocities only the Palestinian ones.

She also continues to distort Senator Sanders' record.  She claimed that most of the gun deaths in New York resulted from guns from Vermont which is absurd.  While acknowledging that her statement was incorrect, she refused to apologize.  Instead she made the even more absurd statement that Senator Sanders does the bidding of the NRA in the Senate.  That statement is blatantly false as everyone including the NRA knows since it gives him a D- rating.

She claims that Senator Sanders could not answer the questions in the New York Daily News interview correctly even about breaking up the big banks.  I have actually read that interview in total and either Secretary Clinton is lying or she has not read the interview.  But you do not have to believe me, you can listen to this segment of Democracy Now today (here), it is entitled, "Juan González: Clinton Has 'Really Distorted' What Happened When NY Daily News Interviewed Sanders".  Senator Sanders answered the questions of the interviewer precisely and accurately.  The question to which he answered that he didn't know was whether the Fed has the right to break up the banks.  That is a correct statement, nobody knows for sure if the Fed does have that authority.  When asked about the President's authority to break up the banks, he correctly stated the process under Dodd-Frank by which the President can break up the big banks including that in the end the banks themselves determine exactly what assets to shed, etc.

We have a clear choice and in my opinion Senator Sanders is by far the better choice.

I should also point out that Senator Sanders will win a general election against any Republican while Secretary Clinton is quite vulnerable against any Republican other than Trump.  In the most recent polls reported by RealClearPolitics (here), both Clinton and Sanders beat Trump although Sanders beats him by quite a bit more.  The interesting results are that Clinton is in a statistical tie with Cruz beating him by 1 point in one poll and 3 points in another poll.  Sanders on the other hand defeats Cruz by 12 points in both those polls.  With respect to Kasich, Clinton loses to him by 9 and 6 points while Sanders beats him by 4 and 5 points.

Sanders is by far the better candidate both because of his positions and because of his electability.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal

Clinton/Sanders - Minimum Wage

Dear Friends,

The minimum wage has been getting more attention since there have been large protests primarily by fast food workers and their supporters demanding a $15 an hour minimum wage.  President Obama has called for an increase in the Federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour but has not exactly gone all out trying to achieve that increase.

Senator Warren has been a huge advocate for increasing the minimum wage.  She has given great visibility to how the minimum wage has failed to keep up with other increases.  There is short article in The Huffington Post (here) that describes Senator Warren's comments in a Senate committee meeting last spring.  Two of the points that she made were:

If the minimum wage had risen at the same rate as worker productivity since 1960, it would now be $22 an hour.  Since the minimum wage is now $7.25, that means that the other $14.75 an hour has gone to increased profits.

If the minimum wage had risen at the same rate as the incomes of the top 1% of Americans, it would now be $33 an hour.  That is over 4.5 times what the Federal minimum wage is today. Yet another of the ever growing statistics demonstrating the huge and increasing disparity in wealth and income in this country.

Individual cities and other municipalities are raising the minimum wage.  San Francisco raised its minimum wage above the Federal level over a decade ago, and it is now at $10.74.  A study done by the University of California, Berkeley demonstrated that there is no adverse impact on employment by raising the minimum wage at least up to $13.00 per hour.  The Seattle Times has an article about the study that is very interesting (here).  Seattle, of course, has decided to raise the minimum wage to $15 in increments, and most recently Los Angeles has raised its minimum wage to $15.00.

So do not let it be said that we cannot raise the minimum wage to $15.00 an hour so that no American working full time will be forced to live in poverty.

Bernie Sanders has been an outspoken advocate for a $15.00 per hour Federal minimum wage.  Hillary Clinton has now adopted the populist language of Senators Warren and Sanders on this subject.  In April she tweeted,

Every American deserves a fair shot at success. Fast food & child care workers shouldn't have to march in streets for living wages.

It is much easier to adopt the language than it is to actually indicate what you think the Federal minimum wage should be.  Senator Clinton has refused to say what she thinks the Federal minimum wage should be.  CNN Money published an article earlier this month on the subject (here).  After going through Senator Clinton's support for the idea of raising the minimum wage. The article concludes

Just how high a wage hike Clinton supports, however, remains a mystery. The candidate has not provided a figure yet. Her campaign did not return a request for comment Sunday night.

This issue sums up the problem that I have with Hillary.  She is walking a tightrope between the liberal wing of the Democratic party and the Wall Street and big business money that she courts and is rapidly becoming part of.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal

EQ7: America ≠ Equality or Justice or Opportunity

Dear Friends,

While reading The New York Times this morning, I was struck by what different worlds people live in within the United States.  In the business section there was an article about executive pay which focused on how hard it was for women to become CEOs, but once they did they were paid the same as men.  There was also a table of the 200 highest paid chief executives in America (here) for 2013.  The high was just under $142 million, the low was $12.4 million, the median was $17.3 and the average was $20.7.  Just for a quick comparison if we were to miraculously raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour as Seattle did, a person working full time (8 hours a day, 5 days a week, 52 weeks per year or 2,080 hours a year) would earn $31,200.  At the current minimum wage of $7.25, a full time worker earns $15,080 a year.

There was also an ad for penthouses at the Puck Building in SOHO that are listed between $21 million and $60 million.  Here is a link to a story about the Puck Building from last September (here).

There was also an article about President Obama's plan to ease student debt (here).

All of this made me think about the incredible disparities in wealth, income, opportunity and justice in America.  According to the Census Bureau (here) in 2012, there were 46.5 million Americans living in poverty, and almost 22% of children under the age of 18 were living in poverty.

According to a study by the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development on any given night there are over 600,000 Americans who are homeless and almost 25% of those are children under the age of 18.

Last December the Huffington Post ran an article entitled "United States Is Now the Most Unequal of All Advance Economies" (here).  Think about this paragraph from that article:

The most authoritative source comparing wealth-concentration in the various countries is the successor to the reports that used to be done for the United Nations, now performed as the Credit Suisse Global Wealth Databook. The latest (2013) edition of it finds (p. 146) that in the U.S., 75.4% of all wealth is owned by the richest 10% of the people. The comparable figures for the other developed countries are: Australia 50.3%, Canada 57.4%, Denmark 72.2%, Finland 44.9%, France 51.8%, Germany 61.7%, Ireland 58.4%, Israel 68.9%, Italy 49.8%, Japan 49.1%, Netherlands 54.6%, New Zealand 57.6%, Norway 65.9%, Singapore 61.1%, Spain 54.0%, Sweden 71.1%, Switzerland 71.5%, and U.K. 53.3%. Those are the top 20 developed nations, and the U.S. has the most extreme wealth-concentration of them all. However, there are some other countries that have wealth-concentrations that are about as extreme as the U.S. For examples: Chile 72.5%, India 73.8%, Indonesia 75.0%, and South Africa 74.8%. The U.S. is in their league; not in the league of developed economies. In the U.S., the bottom 90% of the population own only 24.6% of all the privately held wealth, whereas in most of the developed world, the bottom 90% own around 40%; so, the degree of wealth-concentration in the U.S. is extraordinary (except for underdeveloped countries).

With disparities like these, there can be no justice nor equal opportunity.

In 1956 when I was just a boy, the maximum federal income tax rate was 91% and it applied to income over $200,000.  In 1966, when I had just stopped being a teenager, the maximum federal income tax rate was 70% and it applied to income over $200,000. In 1976, when I turned 30, the maximum federal income tax rate was 50% and it applied to income over $203,200.  The maximum rate has essentially dropped ever since until now when it is 39.6% on income over $400,000 or so depending on filing status.  During that same period the wealth disparity in the United States has climbed dramatically.  In 1956 the wealthiest 0.1% owned about 10% of the wealth.  Now the wealthiest 0.1% own about 22%.  (See).

The wealthiest among us, those who have received the most economic benefits from this great country need to pay their fair share, and they are not doing so.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal

Bravo, President Obama

Dear Friends,

A few days ago at dinner with some friends I was roundly criticized for never writing about the good things that President Obama does.  The criticism was, of course, well founded, and I will try to improve in order to present a clearer picture of how President Obama is doing.

There are two very obvious great things that President Obama has done recently to make the lives of American workers better.  The first is that he now supports raising the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour and tying it to inflation.  Learn more here.  By executive order, he also raised the minimum wage of federal contract workers to $10.10.  Learn more here.

$10.10 translates to about $21,000 for a 40 hour per week 52 week worker.  So this increase in the minimum wage is not sufficient, it is, however, a long overdue and important step in the right direction.

The second great thing that President Obama has done lately to make the lives of American workers better is to direct the Labor Department to issue new rules to increase the eligibility for overtime pay.    The general rule is that supervisors and management personnel are exempt from the requirement to pay overtime pay.  Unfortunately, in practice, millions of American workers who should receive overtime pay do not because their employer can claim that they are "supervisors".  Fortunately, there is also a provision that says if the worker makes less than a certain amount per week, that worker must be paid overtime pay if she/he works more than 40 hours in a week.  The weekly amount set in 1975 if adjusted for inflation would now be $980 per week.  Unfortunately, the current amount is $455 a week set by the Bush Administration in 2004.  If that amount were increased by inflation it would now be $560 a week.

President Obama has not yet said what that weekly pay amount should be, but he has started a process that should lead to an increase.  I hope that President Obama is aggressive and gets the level back to where it would have been if the 1975 level had tied to inflation.  A worker making less than about $50,000 a year should be eligible for overtime pay.  You can learn more here.

President Obama does many good things, and we should keep them in mind as we consider how he is doing as President.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal