Reich writes: "In her speech accepting the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton said the nation was at 'a moment of reckoning.' She's right, but the reckoning is not simply the choice voters face this fall between her and Donald Trump. The real reckoning is larger and it will extend beyond Election Day."
Former Clinton labor secretary Robert Reich. (photo: Steve Russell/Toronto Star)
The Real Reckoning
By Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Blog
02 August 16
n her speech accepting the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton said the nation was at “a moment of reckoning.”
She’s right, but the reckoning is not simply the choice voters face this fall between her and Donald Trump. The real reckoning is larger and it will extend beyond Election Day.
Yet Washington insiders expect a return to politics as usual.
I’m already hearing Republicans dismiss Donald Trump as a weird aberration. “Ordinarily, Trump wouldn’t have stood a chance,” a Republican operative told me. “He won because he didn’t have a clear opponent until the very end. And Cruz is almost as crazy as Trump.”
I get a similar story from Democrats trying to explain Bernie Sanders. “His campaign was a freak,” a longtime Democratic adviser told me. “Hillary will be elected and then Washington will go on as if nothing happened.”
They want to return to business as usual because many of them make their bread on that business – working for big corporations, Wall Street, or wealthy individuals as political consultants, lobbyists, corporate lawyers, government-relations specialists, public-relations specialists, trade association staff, and paid experts.
But Donald Trump isn’t just an aberration and Bernie Sanders wasn’t just a flash in the pan. Both, in very different ways, reflect a crisis in our political economy.
In a Gallup poll taken in mid-July, before the conventions, 82 percent said America was on the wrong track. In an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll just before that, 56 percent said they preferred a candidate who would bring sweeping changes to the way the government functioned, no matter how unpredictable those changes might be.
The major issue the public is reacting to isn’t terrorism or racism. We didn’t see these numbers after 9/11. We didn’t even get these sorts of responses in the late 1960s, when American cities were torn by riots and when the Vietnam War was raging.
It’s the rigging of our economy – the increasingly tight nexus between wealth and political power. Big money has been buying political clout to get laws and regulations that make big money even bigger.
As Hillary Clinton said in her acceptance speech, “I believe that our economy isn’t working the way it should because our democracy isn’t working the way it should.”
She’s correct, but she didn’t finish the logic. Democracy is not working the way it should because it’s being corrupted by big money. That big money is altering the rules of the game to generate even bigger money.
Americans now pay more for pharmaceuticals than the citizens of any other advanced nation because Big Pharma is setting the rules – extending the life of drug patents, prohibiting Medicare from using its bargaining power to get lower drug prices, and blocking consumers from buying cheaper drugs from Canada.
We pay more for Internet service, health insurance, airline tickets, and banking services because the increasing market power of key players in these industries lets them raise prices. Antitrust enforcement has been systematically weakened.
The biggest Wall Street banks continue to reap the financial benefits of being too big to fail. Hedge-fund partners make bundles from confidential information, trading on which used to be illegal.
CEOs cash in their stock options and grants just when they pump up the value of their company’s stocks with buybacks. It’s allowed because laws and regulations have been loosened.
Trade agreements are now designed to protect the intellectual property and foreign assets of giant corporations, but nothing is done to protect the incomes of Americans who lose their jobs to foreign competition.
This is business as usual in Washington.
Hillary Clinton has a long list of good proposals for helping average working people, but none of them is going anywhere if Washington stays the same and the economic game remains rigged.
Instead, Americans will become even more angry and cynical.
That’s the real reckoning – hers and ours.
Donald Trump didn’t come from nowhere. He is the loudest and clearest warning shot across the bow of the current American political economic system.
Hopefully he’ll lose in November. But unless that warning is heeded, the dark anger that has produced him will produce another homegrown demagogue, possibly far worse.
Movement for Black Lives Releases Detailed Policy Agenda
Tuesday, 02 August 2016 08:56
Excerpt: "August will soon mark the two-year anniversary of the killing of Michael Brown and the uprising of black youth in Ferguson, Mo. Many of us are asking ourselves, 'What has changed?'"
Supporters of Black Lives Matter. (photo: RSN)
Movement for Black Lives Releases Detailed Policy Agenda
By Charlene Carruthers and Janaé Bonsu, The Root
02 August 16
Your Take: Black Youth Project 100 speaks on the newly released “Movement for Black Lives” policy platform, reparations, voter disenfranchisement and the eradication of poverty.
ugust will soon mark the two-year anniversary of the killing of Michael Brown and the uprising of black youth in Ferguson, Mo. Many of us are asking ourselves, “What has changed?”
Black people and our allies have since taken to the streets by the thousands and a massive online movement proclaimed that “Black lives matter.” But two years later, the killings of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, La., and Philando Castile in Falcon Heights, Minn., a suburb of St. Paul, Minn., remind us of the continuing violence visited on black communities by our criminal-justice system.
At a moment like this, we must reflect: Why haven’t we seen more progress? Why hasn’t our presence online and in the streets resulted in the power to end something as basic as state-sanctioned killings of black people?
Our challenge has been one of leadership. We have marched, tweeted and made critical interventions in the presidential race and local politics, but our political leadership doesn’t have the courage to meet our demands. Those with the power to create structural change would rather crop around the margins of our current systems while doubling down on the same approaches that got us here.
Our elected representatives continue to think that further investment in police departments that have historically criminalized black communities to feed mass incarceration is the solution for justice and safety in black communities. Elected representatives at the local, state and federal levels have invested millions more in more equipment, technology and officers for police departments.
To fill this void in leadership and intervene in this current political moment, dozens of local and national organizations have come together for over a year to build our own platform to repair the harm caused by centuries of racial and economic oppression of black people. We know that no political party or candidate will save us, and it is time for us to articulate our ambitions and vision on our own terms. The result of that effort is the Movement for Black Lives Platform. Our agenda is simple.
I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free
We demand an end to the war against black people and reparations for the centuries of harm inflicted upon black people and our communities. Black communities have never been able to flourish without the impediments of slavery, segregation and mass incarceration. Separate and unequal schools, redlining, black codes, voter suppression, COINTELPRO, forced sterilization, subprime mortgages, the war on drugs, privatization of schools, prisons, and detention centers. This list could go on forever.
Black communities have been devastated by the same failed approaches to delivering on the empty promises of American equality and prosperity. Meanwhile, private prisons, big banks, police unions, the bail bonds industry and so many other defenders of the status quo are turning our pain into profit.
At the March on Washington, Martin Luther King Jr. spoke about a “bad check” that America has given black people, and we are still waiting on payment on these American promises. Well, we believe the time has come for payment and the M4BL Platform is the bill.
Pay Me What You Owe Me
We demand investment in black communities and an economy based on collective ownership, not just access. The solutions for safety and justice for black communities do not lie in more spending on police or corporate takeovers of education. The answer is in investing in black communities.
Black people have overcome the most cruel and persistent treatment at the hands of the United States government and corporate powers. In the face of exclusion, persecution, and terror, black people have built vibrant communities and culture only to have many of our gains dismantled to perpetuate the race, gender and class hierarchy in the United States.
Our policy vision suggests the opposite approach. To make black communities safer, bring black children out of poverty and end the disparities in health, wealth and education, make real investments in black communities. Better yet, take the ridiculous spending on militarization and mass incarceration and use it for quality public schools, comprehensive care (e.g., health, mental, child and elder care) and economic programs.
Power to the People
We demand political power and community control over the institutions that impact our communities. Black people in the United States have never had full access to self-determination. Our access to full citizenship, humanity and democratic rights have been under constant political attack. The power of the police and surveillance state have been used to undermine our movements for freedom.
Still, we have led America through a painful and ongoing struggle to recognize the full humanity of every person. Our cultural and social movements have paved the way for and been woven together with the fights for immigrant justice, queer and trans liberation, workers’ rights and others.
Now we must demand an end to efforts to deny black power through voter suppression, felon disenfranchisement and corporate takeovers of school districts and public access to clean water. Instead, we demand aggressive measures to increase black political power, including expanded voting rights and community control of law enforcement.
Power Concedes Nothing Without a Demand
We know that not all of our collective needs can be addressed through policy. But we know that our destinies are tied together and we seek to strengthen our bonds through our struggle for collective justice, strength and power.
We invite you all to join us in endorsing the Vision for Black Lives here.
My Life Collapsed When My Daughter Died. That Didn't Stop the Debt Collectors
Tuesday, 02 August 2016 08:51
Excerpt: "When you lose a child, you don't really care about what you still owe Sallie Mae. I had to change my phone number and ignore the world to stay sane."
Anxiety-inducing calls from collectors became commonplace. (photo: Getty Images)
My Life Collapsed When My Daughter Died. That Didn't Stop the Debt Collectors
By Priscilla Blossom, Guardian UK
02 August 16
When you lose a child, you don’t really care about what you still owe Sallie Mae. I had to change my phone number and ignore the world to stay sane
Debt: $80,000+
Source: College
Estimated years until debt free: Uncertain
was young, pregnant, married and happy. I had just moved into a beautiful apartment in a tranquil neighborhood. My husband had landed a well-paying job. Then one day, I started to bleed. Days later I learned that my baby, at only five months’ gestation, would not make it.
It was only recently that folks began to recognize a phenomenon known as birth-related post-traumatic stress disorder, but I’ve lived with it every day since I lost my daughter Margaret in 2012. It wasn’t her death that initially brought debt into my life. I had already accumulated debt from student loans and credit cards to help me pay my way through school. Though I made timely payments for a while, I was forced to stop paying when I was faced with two options: pay for food in my stomach, or pay my bills and starve. I chose the former.
Before my daughter’s death, my intention was to begin freelancing and use my supplemental income to pay my debts. But everything happened so fast. We’d only been in that new apartment for a month when she died, many of our belongings still in boxes. Losing our daughter left us broken; and now we had to figure out how much it would cost to cremate our baby, decide if we wanted to spring for the more expensive urn. I could barely stop crying long enough to take a Xanax let alone figure out all these financial logistics. This is how it all went wrong.
We lost Maggie in late September and on 1 December, my husband (who was only given one week to grieve) was let go from his job. I attempted to keep us afloat by taking the first gig I could find, but the money wasn’t enough and we lost our apartment. This meant breaking our lease and subsequently being charged thousands for the rent we would have paid had we kept our old lease. That is, of course, on top of the old card and loan debt I still owed. With every passing day, our debts grew into sizeable monsters lurking inside credit reports, waiting for the moment we might want to do something important like buy a car or find a home.
More debts accumulated any time we had a lapse in health insurance, a side-effect of lacking stable employment, which is hard to come by when your mental health is suffering. Funny thing is that you need insurance coverage in order to help battle issues like PTSD. How’s that for a catch-22?
Calls from collectors became commonplace, filling me with constant anxiety. My mailbox was full of bills or letters congratulating me on the birth of my child from companies who didn’t realize she was now a pile of ashes in a box inside my closet. I changed my phone number, moved into my parent’s house, ignored the world for a while. When your kid dies, you really can’t care much about what you still owe Sallie Mae. And that joke about being so in debt they’ll want your firstborn? It’s not funny any more.
Life has improved somewhat since my daughter’s death. I’ve started writing freelance on a regular basis and my husband has finally landed a job that will hopefully prove to be stable in the long run. We also now have a two-year old son who, though having spent two months in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, is now a happy, healthy toddler. But I still live with PTSD, from the birth and death of my daughter, and the complicated birth of my son.
Some days it’s hard to make deadlines and juggle clients, hard to be a good mom, hard to breathe. I’m lining my ducks in a row to start repaying my loans and rebuilding my credit. I’m hoping this is the year we can finally move into our own place, and more importantly, the year we can finally get regular, uninterrupted care for our mental health.
Here's What 7.8 Billion Gallons of Toxic Coal Ash Sludge Looks Like
Tuesday, 02 August 2016 08:45
Moyer writes: "Coal sludge contains a scary assortment of chemicals - from manganese to cadmium, lead and mercury and more. And we're standing in front of a 7.8 billion gallon 'lake' of it."
The aftermath of a coal ash spill. (photo: Wade Payne/AP)
Here's What 7.8 Billion Gallons of Toxic Coal Ash Sludge Looks Like
unior Walk and I are standing where a mountain used to be. We're on a pile of rocks surrounded by even more piles of rocks and boulders. But that's not what has our attention.
"There it is—the largest earthen dam in the western hemisphere," Junior said.
We're looking at the Brushy Fork impoundment—a massive dam holding back 7.8 billion gallons of toxic coal sludge. Coal sludge contains a scary assortment of chemicals—from manganese to cadmium, lead and mercury and more. And we're standing in front of a 7.8 billion gallon "lake" of it. Down below the sludge are hundreds of homes, filled with people hoping that dam never breaches.
Our journey to this shocking site started on a much lighter note down at the Coal River Mountain Watch office in front of a four-wheeler. Junior tossed me a helmet and had me get on the back. I'd never been on an ATV, so I was a little nervous and excited.
"Do you want to go slow or not-so-slow?" he asked with a grin.
You only live once, so I said, "Step on it."
To say the trail to Brushy Fork was a gut-rattler would be an understatement.
It's too bad such a fun, muddy ride included such awful stops along the way. We reached a fork and stopped so Junior could show me acid mine drainage. He told me about the man we'd just waved at before heading up the trail.
"He used to get his water from the creek—but look at it now," Junior said.
The water was orange due to a leak from an underground mine in the mountain in front of us. The man successfully sued the coal company ("Thanks to Coal River Mountain Watch," added Junior) and now the company has to bring him all his water.
As we stood staring at the grotesque orange stream, a frog moved in the water. Junior told me how biodiverse the region is and listed different kinds of frogs, salamanders, newts and more that he's seen.
We rode up a very steep trail to a cabin Junior's family and others had built years before he was born. It's a nice little getaway—but just through the trees you can see the Edwight mountaintop removal site the next mountain over. You can't get away from coal in coal country.
As we rounded another steep trail, the massive Brushy Fork coal sludge lake came into view. Its size is mind-boggling. When we first saw it through the trees I thought we'd stop to look there. Instead it took another 15 minutes to come around to an entrance point.
Standing near the edge was breathtaking. We were surrounded by high steep walls made by blasting away parts of the mountain. Trees teetered on the edges. It was like someone had taken a knife and sliced around them, like they were the middle of a cake and the other pieces had been cut away.
Junior pointed out how close the company had been blasting next to the impoundment—a scary thought considering the devastation a breach would cause.
"This impoundment has been here for years, but they're still adding to it," he said.
Again, I was struck with silence. What words should one have when seeing something so awful?
All that happened because I want the lights to turn on when I flick the switch. Because I want to watch TV and use my computer. And people die underground or get black lung for the same reasons.
This is all pretty sobering.
"What do you think of it all?" Junior asked as he got back on the ATV.
"I have no words besides 'this is f**king awful,'" I replied.
"That about sums it up."
There are sites and sludge impoundments like this all over the region—and even more mountains are permitted for this devastation. How do you not just sit down right there where the mountain used to be and cry and give up?
Back at the Coal River Mountain Watch office I chatted more with Junior and director Deb Jarrell. Their work is an uphill battle, but they do find positives.
Their new office in Naoma, for example. They don't get harassed as much as they used to, said Debbie and some neighbors are even supportive at times.
"Many of them do like coal, but some of them have quietly told us that they're on our side," she explained. "I think the biggest issue here is that people don't like what mountaintop removal coal mining does, but it provides their family a job, so they aren't going to speak out."
A paycheck vs. mountains and clean water. It's an age-old battle in coal country.
The Coal River Mountain Watch staff does provide as many opportunities as possible for the public to speak out against coal. They regularly spar with state and coal company officials to ask for public hearings on new permits being issued in the area.
I asked what those hearings are usually like and get noises of frustration from both Junior and Debbie. Debbie shook her head. Junior rolled his eyes. "It's like talking to a brick wall," he said of all the officials involved.
But they keep fighting. Their latest battle is against the familiar foe of Alpha Natural Resources. The company is in the process of applying for permits to blow the top off of another 5,000 acres of Coal River Mountain.
Neither Debbie nor Junior can imagine not doing this work to protect the mountains they love so dearly. It's their mission—their calling. And they welcome anyone to come see what they love so much and join them in the work.
Did Putin Out the Dems? Did American Spooks Out Trump?
Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=5494"><span class="small">Steve Weissman, Reader Supported News</span></a>
Monday, 01 August 2016 13:14
Weissman writes: "If Washington wants to blame Putin for hacking and leaking the DNC emails through Guccifer 2.0 and Julian Assange's WikiLeaks, American intelligence agencies should present their evidence to Congress or directly to the American people. Any conscientious journalist would demand that they do this, or at least highlight that his sources have offered no proof, though I would not hold my breath waiting for anything like that to happen."
Vladimir Putin and Hillary Clinton. (photo: AP/Reuters/Rainier Ehrhardt/Salon)
Did Putin Out the Dems? Did American Spooks Out Trump?
By Steve Weissman, Reader Supported News
01 August 16
resident Barack Obama, the CIA, FBI, and other government officials have so far “stopped short” of openly blaming Vladimir Putin and his Russian spy services of hacking into the computers of the Democratic National Committee and making public emails that show how the unrepentant former chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz and other pro-Clinton party officials worked to sabotage the presidential campaign of Senator Bernie Sanders. But, writes David Sanger in The New York Times, “private investigators have identified the suspects, and American intelligence agencies have told the White House that they have ‘high confidence’ that the Russian government was responsible.”
According to Sanger and others in the mainstream media, the Russians similarly hacked computer systems at the Clinton campaign and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
Did the Russians really do all this?
I damned sure don’t know. Neither do you. Neither do the user-friendly reporters who happily provide an echo chamber for whatever their unnamed administration sources want them to tell readers and viewers. Neither do any of the shoot-from-the-lip commentators, classic Kremlinologists, and a Nobel Prize-winning economist rushing to tell us all the ins and outs of a Russian hacking campaign that has yet to be proved.
No one should doubt that Putin and his spooks regularly hack computers in the United States or that they would meddle in American elections. Nor should anyone doubt that Obama and his surveillance state regularly do the same in Russia and other countries around the world, as former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden and other whistleblowers have taken enormous risks to expose.
But, if Washington wants to blame Putin for hacking and leaking the DNC emails through Guccifer 2.0 and Julian Assange’s WikiLeaks, American intelligence agencies should present their evidence to Congress or directly to the American people. Any conscientious journalist would demand that they do this, or at least highlight that his sources have offered no proof, though I would not hold my breath waiting for anything like that to happen.
The stakes here could hardly be higher. All governments lie, as journalist I.F. Stone taught us during the first Cold War, and the untruths, half-truths, and bullshit now get deeper by the day. This should come as no surprise. In my view, which does not appear to be widely shared, this is all part of the buildup to a new period of sustained confrontation between the United States and Russia, primarily in Eastern Europe and the Middle East.
Given the competition between the world’s two leading nuclear powers to rouse popular support for their side in the new Cold War, ordinary Americans have every reason to remain skeptical of whatever our intelligence agencies may or may not say to reporters about who hacked the DNC computers and why they did it. This remains true whether the spooks talk directly to reporters or pass on their messages through other officials in the know, especially when the government fails to provide any hard evidence that the public can judge for itself.
Even the so-called “private investigators” from CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity experts whom the DNC called in to examine its computers in early May, have to remain suspect. CrowdStrike claims to have discovered on the DNC computers two different Russian hacking efforts, one by Russian military intelligence, the GRU, and the other by Russia’s Federal Security Service. Circumstantial evidence suggests they may be on the right track, but their evidence has yet to undergo any comprehensive public investigation. In other words, the public really does not know if CrowdStrike is playing straight or playing us, either to boost their business or to go along with government intelligence agencies, with whom they work closely.
Where, then, does this leave us? A major clue will be how much the Clinton campaign continues to target the Russians. Clinton supporters would much prefer to shift the discussion away from how the party set out to sabotage the Sanders campaign, and talking up Russian hacking helps them do that.
The campaign has also started to smear Trump as a Russian puppet, a tasty tale that American spooks and mainstream media have joined forces to encourage. Trump has certainly supported Putin’s views on NATO, Ukraine, Brexit, and a whole host of other issues, and his idiotic call for Russia to reveal Hillary’s lost emails certainly provide some ready-made ammunition to use against him. It also made it more difficult to give serious consideration to some of the issues he has raised, as I’ve tried to do in previous columns.
But, as much as Trump and his campaign manager Paul Manafort have done business with Putin’s rich Russian and Ukrainian friends, money-grubbing does not make Trump a Russian agent. New evidence might still emerge. But, unless it does, to suggest that Trump is the Siberian candidate, as Paul Krugman did, is simply a new take on old-fashioned red-baiting.
How vigorously will Clinton pursue the smear? It is still too early to tell. But if Russian-baiting Trump becomes central to her campaign, it will only add to a widespread belief that a Clinton presidency would significantly escalate the new Cold War, with all the dangers that entails.
Like many of you, I will still hold my nose and vote for Clinton, but only because I see Trump as a much greater threat, especially to Muslim and non-white minorities and to women. It will not be a happy choice.
A veteran of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and the New Left monthly Ramparts, Steve Weissman lived for many years in London, working as a magazine writer and television producer. He now lives and works in France, where he is researching a new book, Big Money and the Corporate State: How Global Banks, Corporations, and Speculators Rule and How to Nonviolently Break Their Hold.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
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n her speech accepting the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton said the nation was at “a moment of reckoning.”
ugust will soon mark the two-year anniversary of the killing of Michael Brown and the uprising of black youth in Ferguson, Mo. Many of us are asking ourselves, “What has changed?”
unior Walk and I are standing where a mountain used to be. We're on a pile of rocks surrounded by even more piles of rocks and boulders. But that's not what has our attention.
resident Barack Obama, the CIA, FBI, and other government officials have so far “stopped short” of openly blaming Vladimir Putin and his Russian spy services of hacking into the computers of the Democratic National Committee and making public emails that show how the unrepentant former chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz and other pro-Clinton party officials worked to sabotage the presidential campaign of Senator Bernie Sanders. But, 
