News — reform

Grassroots activists are taking over city councils and are opposing the taxpayer funded boondoggles that benefit the 1 %. For example , the Seattle city council refused to buy a new basketball arena for the Supersonics, and they even demanded that their previous loans for the earlier basketball arena be repaid. Local activists are opposing growth subsidized by the 99% to benefit the 1 %. Some giant office buildings and expensive chain stores being stopped in favor of supporting the local community with its local relationships. H e also spoke about how some large banks and financial institutions have been pushing "payday loans" on developing countries. For example Puerto Rico was given a $ 100 million with no principal or interest due for 47 years. But the interest and principal accumulate for 47 years and then $1 billion is due. So the banks actually accumulate about 5 % per year in more money being owed to them. Some big banks were dong this kind of thing with Greece and other countries, where they get the current politicians to sign up for huge debt that is not due until after the politicians have left office. On 5-17-18 at 8:35 am KGNU's "A Public Affair" hosted Juan Gonzalez's talk.

A Public Affair, Thursday, 5/17/2018

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New "Autopsy" report says that Democrats need to focus on helping working people (white, black and brown) people and young people, Not on favors for Wall Street, hedge funds, big Pharma, health insurance companies, and huge corporations. The "Clinton-Obama crowd tilted the action away from the party’s core voter blocs—labor, people of color, and young people—in order to court suburban voters and maintain the party’s alliances with high finance and multinational corporations." "Emerging sectors of the electorate are compelling the Democratic Party to come to terms with adamant grassroots rejection of economic injustice, institutionalized racism, gender inequality, environmental destruction and corporate domination." Also, the leadership refused to spend the money on state races and get out the vote efforts. Over 1,000 state legislature seats were lost under Obama. Instead Dems focused most of their money and time on the presidential races. Hillary was harmed by voter suppression, mysogyny, the antiquated electoral college bias, the media free coverage of Trump's outrages, and the corporate and right-wing funding of campaigns. But the Dem party needs to reform. Recently, the California Democratic Assembly speaker Rendon killed single-payer health care in California, ex-DNC honcho Gephardt has been blocking single-payer, DNC chair Perez has been ousting young progressives, and Pelosi has been saying that single-payer is not feasible. Obama and other Dem leaders had been buddying up with job offshorers like GE's head Immelt instead of keeping jobs in the US. Obama was trapped by the financial meltdown in 2008, but he appointed Goldman Sachs cronies to run the Treasury and bail out big banks. Sanders and Warren and Sanders keep up the good fight,but the leadership wants to keep itself leading the losing Democrats and getting power and money, rather than let in some new Democratic leaders with vision and enthusiasm. The Dem leadership doesn't want to be replaced by working people, minorities, or idealists. They would rather stay in power as leaders of the losing Democratic party even as they lose the presidency, the supreme court, and the Congress to corporate Republicans and oil companies. They would rather have the Republicans, oil companies, and large corporations in power than to lose their leadership of the Democratic party. It is normal behavior for entrenched political leaders. But it needs to be overturned. https://democraticautopsy.org/ https://democraticautopsy.org/wp-content/uploads/Autopsy-The-Democratic-Party-In-Crisis.pdf https://www.thenation.com/article/what-killed-the-democratic-party https://www.democracynow.org/2017/11/8/voters_reject_republican_candidates_as_new https://www.salon.com/2017/07/07/single-payer-falls-short-in-california-at-least-for-now-and-activists-are-angry

Also: Confront Global Warming, Subsidize College, Increase Taxes, Restore the Draft, Spend More on People and Less on the Military, Start a New Party- These are the ideas of Andrew Bacevich. https://www.commondreams.org/views/2017/08/08/slouching-toward-mar-lago