Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

The Ambivalence of a Nice Day in February

2019-2020 appears to be likely to become another non-winter winter with little snow and high temperatures. But good weather comes at an awful price.

The Secret History of Superdelegates

Since its launch, a specter has haunted Bernie Sanders’ run for the Democratic nomination. It’s not his age, though at 74 he would be the oldest president in American history. And it’s not that he’s an avowed socialist, the label that a mere eight years ago was used to smear Barack Obama as a sinister, alien threat to the American way of life. Rather, it has been the so-called superdelegates—the 712 Democratic Party insiders who are free to vote at the nominating convention for the candidate of their choosing.

The corporate media’s early inclusion of the superdelegates in the delegate count created the impression of an inevitable Clinton nomination. Seventy-three percent of superdelegates—520 of the 712—have pledged their support to the former secretary of state, but superdelegates are free to change their minds any time before the Democratic National Convention in July.

By February 20, when only three states had held nominating contests, such reporting had conferred on the Clinton campaign an aura of insurmountability, leading some voters to question whether their votes truly mattered. Even as Sanders won a string of contests at the end of March to narrow Clinton’s lead, superdelegates in those states stubbornly clung to Clinton. Despite the second-biggest victory ever in a contested New Hampshire Democratic primary, Sanders was credited with the same number of total delegates as Clinton, thanks to superdelegates.

This has rubbed many the wrong way. There have been widespread calls to abolish the superdelegate system—and not all from the Sanders camp. Even Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign manager, Matt Rhoades, called the system “unfair.”

The attitude of Democratic Party bigwigs hasn’t helped. When a Sanders supporter criticized superdelegate Howard Dean for sticking with Clinton despite Sanders’ landslide victory in Vermont, Dean tweeted back: “Superdelegates don’t ‘represent the people’…I’ll do what I think is right for the country.”

In an added twist, the Sanders campaign suggested in April that if neither candidate reaches the 2,383-delegate threshold for victory from pledged delegates, it will attempt to win the nomination by flipping superdelegates with the argument that Sanders is more electable. Critics have called the strategy hypocritical, given Sanders’ invocation of democratic revolution and his earlier criticism of superdelegates.

The Democratic Party’s bizarrely undemocratic process raises an obvious question: Why did it choose to institute such a system? To answer that, you need to go back to the Hunt Commission, which in 1982, invented the superdelegate.

The proceedings of that Commission were never published, so In These Times went to the National Archives in Washington, D.C., to study the transcripts of the seven-month-long discussions. The records paint a picture of a party eager to win and convinced that, in order to do so, it must return control of the nominating process to top officials. It’s a strategy that reflects a shift in the party since the 1970s, away from the grassroots—a shift that has led to tensions within the party that are boiling to the surface with Bernie Sanders’ campaign.

A TALE OF TWO COMMISSIONS

In many ways, the Hunt Commission was formed as a rebuke to a commission convened by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) a decade earlier, also to overhaul the nominating process: the 1969-1970 McGovern-Fraser Commission.

Prior to 1970, the nominating process had been anything but democratic. Primaries, introduced at the turn of the century, were few and non-binding. Party members had carte blanche to select the candidate at the convention. At the 1968 Democratic convention, the pro-Vietnam War candidate Hubert Humphrey won the nomination over antiwar Sen. Eugene McCarthy by courting party honchos, having not run in a single primary—meanwhile, McCarthy had won more primaries than any other candidate.

Humphrey’s win outraged McCarthy supporters and exacerbated the split between pro- and antiwar camps. Fistfights broke out on the convention floor while police clubbed and tear-gassed protesters outside.

The melee prompted the formation of the McGovern-Fraser Commission, which rewrote the rules governing party nominations. Charging that voter participation in the 1968 election had been “illusory,” the commission’s 1970 rules shifted the balance of power from party leaders to the rank and file, mandating that delegates be chosen in forums open to all party members. These rules would lead to an explosion in the number of primaries. They more than doubled from 17 in 1968 to 35 in 1980. While only 13 million Americans participated in the 1968 nominating process, 32 million did in 1980. Previously pivotal, the Democratic National Convention became more symbolic.

Over the course of the next three elections, however, the party suffered two landslide losses. First, in 1972, liberal antiwar Sen. George McGovern (S.D.) suffered an unprecedented 49-state defeat to Richard Nixon. Then, in 1980, President Jimmy Carter lost to Ronald Reagan by a resounding 10 percent of the popular vote.

Party higher-ups concluded that the 10-year experiment with democratization had been a failure. “The news for Democrats is not good,” read a 1981 report commissioned by the DNC. Not only were Democrats losing elections, but party membership was precipitously dropping. According to University of Michigan polling cited in the report, 41 percent of the electorate called themselves Democrats in May 1980; a year later, only 31 percent did, while those identifying themselves as Independents had shot up 8 points to 42 percent. More alarming, the proportion calling themselves Republicans increased from 23 percent to 27 percent. The Democrats were concerned their donkey was headed toward extinction.

There are many explanations for this decline—voter apathy, disillusionment with politics, the rise of more candidate-centered campaigns—but the DNC seized upon one that lay within its control: the McGovern-Frasier Commission reforms.

“By bringing the process ‘to the people,’ the Democratic Party has lost its leadership, collective vision and ties to its past,” stated a white paper produced by California’s 43rd and 44th Assembly District Democratic Councils in May 1981.

Enter the Hunt Commission. Winning elections was its goal. DNC Chair Charles Manatt told commission members at the first session, “Improving the nominating process will bring us victory in 1984, and by God...that’s what we’re all about.”

COVERT ORIGINS

From August 1981 to February 1982, the 70-member commission met in some of Washington, D.C.’s most storied hotels. From the Capitol Hilton to the Mayflower—a mecca for the capital’s rich and powerful, where Franklin Roosevelt’s right-hand man first penned the line “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself”—a group of labor leaders, high-ranking party functionaries, senators, representatives, governors and mayors hammered out the nitty-gritty details of reform.

The gathering got off on a light note when Minneapolis Mayor Don Fraser joked that the party could simply announce it wouldn’t nominate anyone selected through the primaries. This, the transcript notes, elicited “general laughter.”

The very democracy of the primary process appears to have made the Commission members nervous. They felt they had to give party elites—elected officials and high-ranking party members—a greater hand in choosing candidates, or as Xandra Kayden, a member of the Center for Democratic Policy (now Center for National Policy), put it, the power to “to regain control of the nomination.”

This was partly couched in a belief in elites’ superior judgment. “They bring to the convention a certain political acumen, a certain political antenna,” explained Connecticut state Sen. Dick Schneller, a liberal member of the party.

The inspiration for these words was likely Jimmy Carter, whose presidency cast a long shadow over the proceedings. The Georgia governor had won the nomination running as an outsider against “the political bosses.” Carter often bragged in his stump speech: “I’ve never worked in Washington. I’m not a senator or congressman. I’ve never met a Democratic president.”

As president, he passed over party insiders for appointments in favor of his close-knit team of Georgia unknowns. His strained relationship with his party was exacerbated by his reluctance to compromise on pork-barrel spending, which congressmen relied on to shore up support in their districts.

“[Carter’s] nomination at least would not have been possible under the old rules,” said Austin Ranney, an expert on elections who had worked on the 1968 Humphrey campaign and served on the McGovern-Fraser Commission.

Though his name was not invoked as often as Carter’s, these reforms were also a rebuke of George McGovern’s disastrous 1972 campaign. McGovern had won the nomination on the back of the grassroots-focused reforms he himself had helped institute in 1970. “The [Hunt] Commission doesn’t want a system that lends itself to a McGovern or Carter,” Rick Stearns, a member of the Commission’s advisory committee, would later tell the press in explaining the rationale for superdelegates.

Another fear was that the 1970 reforms led to nominees out of step with the party’s ever-shifting center—whether to its left, or, in the case of Carter, to its right. “Liberal-reformers realized that the same rules which made it easier for a liberal-insurgent like George McGovern to get nominated could be used successfully by a Southern-conservative-insurgent, which is how they perceived Carter,” wrote Commission member and Maryland Democratic Committeeman Lanny Davis not long after.

A concern was that primaries, with their lower turnout rates than general elections, could give undue power to single-issue “factions.” This was a standard complaint at the time (and since): that the Democratic Party was coming under the sway of groups devoted to narrowly focused causes, from gun control and environmentalism to feminism and civil rights.

“Our decisions will make the convention more representative of the mainstream of the party,” the Commission’s chair, North Carolina Gov. James Hunt, told the press shortly before the Commission finished. “We lost a lot of people in the last few years. Our actions should make mainstream Democrats feel better.”

“Mainstream” may have been code for the working-class voters who were fleeing the Democratic Party. The 1981 DNC report had noted significant differences between primary and general election voters; primary voters tended to be better-educated and middle-class.

While the loss of working-class support was a problem that would dog the party for decades, Commission members saw no illogic in addressing this disaffection by reinstating top-down control. Many seemed to truly believe that superdelegates could represent the will of the people more faithfully than the votes of the people could.

“They can positively bring to the convention the views of the grassroots who are their constituents,” explained New York Rep. Geraldine Ferraro, who would become the first woman vice-presidential candidate on a major-party ticket when she was tapped by Walter Mondale three years later. “No one is better able to represent them at the convention than a member of Congress.”

DISSENT IN THE RANKS

Not everyone was on board with these changes. Some Commission members questioned whether the focus on reforming rules ignored the broader factors behind the Democratic Party’s woes. “The other team was using the same system and the same process” when they won the 1980 election, noted Sen. Dick Schneller: “What was the difference?”

One difference, of course, was that the late 1960s and 1970s had occasioned an extraordinary conservative revival that helped sweep Richard Nixon and, later, Ronald Reagan into power. An interlocking network of grassroots campaigners, intellectuals, media, think tanks and advocacy groups formed what came to be known as the New Right, helping set the stage for four decades of conservative ascendancy.

Dissenting Commission members also foresaw pitfalls in the creation of superdelegates. New York state Democratic Committeewoman Barbara Fife pointed out that superdelegates would be mostly white and male, undermining the Democrats’ commitment to equal representation. That proved true: In 2008, about half of Democratic superdelegates were white men.

Oklahoma state Rep. Cleta Deatherage worried—presciently, it turns out—that creating different “castes” of delegates would create “dissensus” within the party, and wondered what would happen if superdelegates “begin to move against what is perceived to be a popular choice?”

It would be easy to caricature the Hunt Commission as a cabal of party bosses scheming in some smoke-filled room. But the record suggests that the participants were genuinely interested in doing the right thing. Throughout the hearings, they affirmed the importance of ensuring equal representation for women and minorities in the party. They believed the creation of superdelegates and the rolling back of primaries would better serve the party, its voters and the country. As the Commission’s final report pointed out, primaries had created a longer, more expensive and divisive nomination process, and the “frontloading” of states early in the process threatened to sew up the nomination prematurely.

Yet the Commission’s work was based on questionable assumptions. Commission advisor Rick Stearns’ cagey defense of superdelegates in 1982 illustrates this best: “It’s like Reagan’s economic policy. If you accept the premise, it’s good.” The premise, in this case, was that politics was the domain of those at the top, those most qualified and best placed to help achieve political victories.

The Hunt Commission ultimately approved a smattering of new rules that subtly rolled back earlier democratization, but the pièce de résistance was what came to be known as superdelegates. They would make up just over 14 percent of national convention delegates and include two-thirds of the Democratic members of Congress, as well as state and local party officials, state party chairs and vice chairs.

Whether the creation of superdelegates succeeded in its idealistic objectives is another question. For all the Commission’s envy of the GOP and its handwringing over party unity, Ronald Reagan became the Republican nominee over the efforts of his own party’s establishment, who loathed the former California governor. The Hunt Commission rules make it less likely that Democrats will elect the progressive equivalent of a Reagan, far off the center and hated by the party establishment, but a transformative president who secured his party’s ascendancy.

The Democrats’ new rules were put to the test during the 1984 election, when Mondale, the superdelegates’ overwhelming choice, received the worst drubbing in the history of the Democratic Party. If the Commission’s most important criterion for success was winning, the superdelegate strategy had failed.

THE SUPERDELEGATES’ KRYPTONITE

In recent months, momentum has been building on the Left to overhaul the Democratic Party nomination system, including superdelegates—part of the larger “battle for the soul of the Democratic Party” that has emerged in and around Sanders’ campaign.

“The superdelegates are an acid test for whether you think the Democratic Party should be democratic,” says Ben Wikler, MoveOn’s Washington director.

MoveOn petitions in 48 states urging superdelegates to support primary and caucus winners have drawn a collective 380,000 signatures and swayed a number of superdelegates. One is Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy, who recanted his early commitment to Clinton and promised to vote for whomever wins the most pledged delegates.

Superdelegate and Florida Rep. Alan Grayson took a novel approach, holding an online election to determine his vote, which attracted nearly 400,000 people and saw Sanders win 84-16.

And on April 4, a Sanders fan created a “superdelegate hit list” (since rechristened a “superdelegate list”) with the contact information of superdelegates, allowing voters to get in touch and persuade them to switch their votes.

Some are going a step further and trying to remove superdelegates from the Democratic nominating process altogether. It's the core demand of the March on the DNC, a convention protest organized by the Philadelphia-based Equality Coalition for Bernie Sanders.

The Sanders camp—which includes Grayson, campaign advisor Larry Cohen and Arizona Rep. Raúl Grijalva—and groups like MoveOn are also discussing plans to push for the abolition of superdelegates at the convention.

Both Grayson and Cohen point out that the Democratic superdelegates are uniquely undemocratic in the American party system. The Republican equivalent—168 party members who are guaranteed a vote at the convention—must vote in line with their respective states and only comprise 7 percent of the total delegates, compared to the DNC superdelegates’ 15 percent.

The Sanders campaign’s new superdelegate-courting strategy, however, raises questions about its ability to call for the abolition of superdelegates come July. Following Sanders’ April 19 defeat in New York, campaign manager Jeff Weaver confirmed that if Sanders trails Clinton in pledged delegates going into the convention, the campaign will attempt to win the nomination by appealing to superdelegates. “It’s going to be an election determined by the superdelegates,” he told MSNBC. “They’re going to want to win in November.” Asked about this, Cohen told In These Times the “campaign strategy is evolving.”

Some argue that superdelegates would never dare overturn the popular will. They point out that superdelegates have never supported a candidate who didn’t win in pledged delegates, as in 2008, when they began flocking to Obama once he started amassing primary victories. Reformers shoot back: Then what’s the point of having them at all?

Cohen also notes the “false momentum” created by superdelegates who support a candidate early—ironically, a problem created by primaries that the Hunt Commission created superdelegates to combat.

R.T. Rybak, DNC vice chair and a superdelegate himself, says there’s no backroom dealing behind superdelegates’ early support for Clinton. “That reflects in large part elected officials with constituencies who are going largely for Clinton,” he says.

Of course, influence is rarely as simple as quid pro quo. Clinton has been a central figure and fundraiser for the Democratic National Committee for two decades, and is actively raising money for the party now via her joint fundraising committee with the DNC, the Hillary Victory Fund. Many superdelegates are Democratic officials who are in her debt.

Rybak points to the GOP’s current Trump woes as an example of superdelegates’ necessity. “There are times where strictly who voted in that year’s primaries is not completely representative,” he says.

Whatever happens, it’s clear the Hunt Commission’s vision is falling out of favor with many of today’s rank-and-file Democrats. But this current battle is nothing new. Party activists have battled against the party’s drift toward the right and away from the grassroots since the 1970s.

“The Republicans adopted a populist appeal at the same moment Democrats walked away from populism,” says Thomas Frank, author of Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People?

Did the Republican Party’s cultivation of its grassroots give it the edge over the Democratic Party?

“That is the big question of our time,” Frank says.

Whether or not the Hunt Commission reforms hurt the Democrats electorally, it’s clear that the party’s focus on winning gave it tunnel vision. The Commission discussions were peppered with hopeful declarations that if only the party could win back the enthusiasm of its elected officials by giving them more of a stake, victory would be assured. But there was no discussion of doing the same for the base.

For those seeking reform, the superdelegate issue, like so much else in the Democratic Party, comes down to democracy. “Either we have a populist-based Democratic Party, or we have a party of the elite,” says Cohen. “It can’t be both.”

Reddit tests forcing users to login or use the app to read content
https://reclaimthenet.org/this-community-is-available-in-the-app/

#Beavers cut #flooding and #pollution and boost #wildlife populations | #Environment | The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/feb/17/beavers-cut-flooding-and-pollution-and-boost-wildlife-populations

#Devon #England #UK #Nature

Bloomberg Unleashes Warren’s Rage—At Last

For supporters of Elizabeth Warren, the last several months have been tough: frustrating and often painful. The pro-Warren momentum that had been gathering steam through the summer and early fall came to a halt, and her poll numbers fell as she was dogged by attacks on her Medicare for All plan and the controversy over whether Bernie Sanders had or had not told her, in a private meeting, that a woman couldn’t beat Trump. She managed to claw her way to a respectable third place finish in Iowa, but in New Hampshire she couldn’t even crack double digits and placed a distant fourth. New Hampshire voters preferred even the empty suit mediocrities Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar over Warren, and that hurt. Ominously, he media began treating her as an also-ran, frequently erasing her from campaign coverage. In an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released earlier this week, she was statistically tied for second place, yet blatantly excluded from questions about head-to-head matches between the Democratic candidates and Trump.

What was maddening to so many of Warren’s supporters is that her core strengths as a candidate were not coming through. Her answers in debates were always intelligent and well-formulated, but her presence seemed subdued. Long stretches of time would go by without Warren being called on, but she didn’t proactively try to insert herself back into the conversation. Her campaign had adopted a not especially compelling “unity” message and she seemed reluctant to criticize or even draw sharp contrasts between herself and the other candidates. The persona that came across was that of a nice but ineffectual, overly idealistic professor lady. Increasingly, pundits and voters were expressing fears that Warren could not beat Trump.

Warren supporters began asking one another: where was the Warren we came to know and love from viral videos of Congressional hearings where she savaged dirtbag CEOs, chiseling bankers and slimy government officials, turning them into quivering bowls of jello?

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If Warren has a superpower, it is her anger, a righteous, coruscating fury that beautifully clarifies the moral stakes of a rigged economy that enables the rich to suck up vast resources of money and power at the expense of everyone else. But of course, coming from a woman, a rage that powerful can frighten people, and it’s likely that the staff in charge of Warren’s debate prep advised her to keep it under wraps.

But a Warren without her rage is like a boxing champion with one hand tied behind her back. All women running for office face a delicate balance of trying to defuse sexism by appearing pleasant and unthreatening on the one hand, while also having to present themselves as tough and powerful enough to lead on the other. Up to this point in her campaign, Warren mostly refrained from attacking other candidates. But it’s interesting to note that the one time the abortive campaign of Kamala Harris showed any life was her masterful takedown of Joe Biden in an early debate. Similarly, Amy Klobuchar got a significant boost from her attacks on Peter Buttigieg in the New Hampshire debate, which buoyed her to a surprise third place finish in that state.

It was clear that the neutered version of Warren wasn’t working for her. She is not running for Miss Effing Congeniality, she is running for President of the United States—and specifically, as the warrior queen who will take down the monstrous Donald Trump. She needed to prove to voters that she can do that. She needed to bring the steel and the fire, and she needed to aggressively insert herself into the conversation instead of politely waiting for the moderators to call on her.

Last night was a high-stakes moment for Warren, an event that had the potential to become the turning point of her campaign. Her back was against the wall and especially in light of the virtual media blackout of Warren of late, she badly needed a breakout moment. The Nevada debate might prove to be her last chance to create one. Luckily, fate provided her with the perfect foil: the racist, misogynist, former Republican billionaire Michael Bloomberg, the living embodiment of the corruption and capitalist excesses that Warren has been railing against for her entire career. It marked the first debate appearance for Bloomberg, a late entry into the race.

Bloomberg, who in so many ways is eerily similar to Trump (the racism! the sexism! the bullying and arrogance! the refusal, so far, to release his tax returns!), was effectively a stand-in for Trump in the debate. And if the debate was an audition for the role of the candidate who has what takes to bring down Trump, Warren was the hands-down winner. She owned that stage like a boss. I can’t remember any other debate where one candidate dominated as much as Warren did. Her confrontations with Bloomberg were brutal, fearless and unsparing.

Here’s a sample:

On Bloomberg’s stop and frisk policy: “No, this isn't about how it turned out. This is about what it was designed to do to begin with. ... You need a different apology here, Mr. Mayor.”

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On the numerous allegations of sexual harassment that have been made against Bloomberg personally and the company he’s in charge of: “So, Mr. Mayor, are you willing to release all of those women from those nondisclosure agreements, so we can hear their side of the story? ... We are not going to beat Donald Trump with a man who has who knows how many nondisclosure agreements and the drip, drip, drip of stories of women saying they have been harassed and discriminated against.”

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Bloomberg ... did not respond well. When Warren spoke, his eyes were full of cold fury and his lips were pursed as if he were sucking on a lemon. When Warren talked about the sexual harassment lawsuits against his company, he literally rolled his eyes.

Two things Warren accomplished in the debate are especially notable. First, she insistently included a racial analysis even in questions that didn’t ask directly about race, such as the discussion about globalization. She also performed a brilliant jujitsu by bringing up the electability question, which has often been used against her, to turn it on Bloomberg instead: “Democrats are not going to win if we have a nominee who has a history of hiding his tax returns, of harassing women and of supporting racist polls like redlining and stop and frisk.”

Will Warren’s debate performance help her regain momentum and her foothold as a top contender in the race? That is not clear. It might not have much of an impact on the outcome in Saturday’s Nevada caucus, since thousands of people have already participated in early voting.

And for a female candidate, a performance as fierce as Warren’s was has the potential to backfire. Like clockwork, centrist media scolds took her to task for being “mean and angry.” But while it’s likely that such a combative performance would have been poorly received if she were leading in the polls, it plays differently now that she’s an underdog candidate. Even Warren critics like MSNBC’s Chris Matthews declared her the winner of the debate. Matthews said that “Democrats have to find someone who can coalesce the left and center left. Elizabeth Warren can do that.” The debate earned her an outpouring of social media love, and anecdotally a number of voters on my Twitter feed who had previously said they’d been undecided declared that they would be voting for Warren. Perhaps most significantly of all, Warren’s campaign announced that yesterday was their “best debate day of the entire campaign, raising more than $2.8 million.”

But in the end, Warren had no choice but to come out swinging. If she’d given another subdued performance she would have run the risk of being completely disappeared by the media. And also? It was clearly the right thing to do. Elizabeth Warren is a fighter, and fighters fight. At best, it will help her turn the tide of the race and create the kind of momentum that will result in victory. At worst, she performed a major public service by taking down a despicable billionaire with horrendous politics who is trying to subvert democracy by buying his way into the White House. What’s not to like?

Scientists develop open-source software to analyze economics of biofuels, bioproducts

Perennial grasses can be converted into everything from ethanol to bioplastics, but it's unclear which bioproducts hold the greatest potential. BioSTEAM, a new open-source simulation software package in Python gives scientists, engineers, biotechnology companies, and funding agencies a fast, flexible tool to analyze the economics of producing different biofuels and bioproducts -- in a matter of seconds.

Methane emitted by humans vastly underestimated

Researchers measured methane levels in ancient air samples and found that scientists have been vastly underestimating the amount of methane humans are emitting into the atmosphere via fossil fuels. The researchers indicate that reducing fossil fuel use is a key target in curbing climate change.

"Rankin warned that tech giants were now "redefining the word "privacy" in their own marketing." While they may claim to protect it, what they really want is to protect privacy from their competitors, he added. "They add security measures to their software and services so only they can capture, view and sell all of your data and others can't.""

https://www.dw.com/en/smartphone-startups-take-on-google-apple-and-put-privacy-first/a-52369255

Think all BPA-free products are safe? Not so fast, scientists warn

Using 'BPA-free' plastic products could be as harmful to human health -- including a developing brain -- as those products that contain the controversial chemical, suggest scientists.

'Wood' you like to recycle concrete?

Scientists studied a method for recycling unused concrete with wood fibers. They found the conditions that produce new building materials with bending strength even greater than the original concrete. This work may help reduce the CO2 emissions associated with manufacturing new concrete.

Seattle, WA: PSPS Statement on Recent FBI Activity https://itsgoingdown.org/seattle-statement-on-recent-fbi-visit/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

Jersey of truth?

Where the Ongoing Mass Protests Against Neoliberalism in Chile Came From

In recent months, common people in Chile have taken to the streets not to pursue an ideological project or concrete cause—but as the result of the fragility and insecurity of everyday life, and the injustice of the political system. We have seen this with the Occupy Wall Street movement, in the context of the Arab Spring and the Indignados Movement in Spain. Although more than two months of social mobilizations forced the right-wing billionaire Sebastian Piñera government to implement policies it has previously opposed such as the reform of the constitution and the increase in public social spending, none of the major political forces were able to channel the movement giving rise to questions about the durability of these mobilizations in the long term. The political debates have increasingly focused on questions of institutional reforms and transparency, which although important for framing future political struggles, tend to mask more urgent economic reforms such as greater taxation of wealth and universal access to social services. Such policy changes are indispensable for the reduction of Chile’s exorbitant inequalities.

The explosion

The social explosion started in Santiago on October 18 following clashes between the armed police and students who were evading raised metro fares. Mobilizations quickly spread throughout the country demanding justice and change of the highly unequal economic model, bringing together a range of qualms that are typically discussed in isolation: low pensions, highly unequal healthcare, underfinanced education, political corruption and frequent cases of economic collusion between producers to raise consumer prices. The mobilizations boasted unprecedented social support: surveys conducted at the end of October demonstrated that close to 85% of the public supported the protests and after two months of mobilizations, support for them still stood at around 77%.

Pinochet’s legacy

Chile’s current economic model was established during the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship (1973-1989) by a group of Chilean economists educated at the University of Chicago under Milton Friedman. The country’s economy is widely considered to be the first attempt in the world at the introduction of a thorough program of neoliberal restructuring—many of the reforms established by Ronald Reagan in the United States and by Margaret Thatcher in the UK were first “tested” in Chile during the second half of the 1970s. The reforms included unprecedented liberalization of trade, the establishment of a new labor code which practically prohibited collective bargaining, financial liberalization, privatization of public companies, diminished per capita social spending, regressive tax reform and privatization of pensions. When it came to education and healthcare, reforms led to the creation of dual public and private systems, making access to education and healthcare the responsibility of individuals through their participation in the market.

The reforms carried out during the dictatorship (as well as the 1982 economic crisis) contributed to increased inequalities and a ballooning poverty rate (in 1987 close to 45% of the population lived under the poverty line), a greater concentration of wealth, a fall in real wages and an increase in unemployment.

Continuity and change

During much of the post-dictatorship period Chile was governed by center-left coalitions (between 1990 and 2009 and then 2014 and 2017, with the first right-wing Sebastian Piñera government in the interim), which focused on addressing extreme poverty and Chile’s rampant inequalities, but within the framework of the economic model inherited from the dictatorship.

Members of the coalitions have frequently pointed to the 1980 Constitution—written by Pinochet’s advisers and approved in a fraudulent plebiscite—as a structural limitation on any major reforms to the economic model. The constitution limits the state’s absolute ability to provide social services such as health, education and pensions, virtually prohibits strikes of public sector employees, obliges workers to join private pension funds, gives the president substantial control over Congress and makes it extremely difficult to reform the armed forces and the police, as well as the electoral and educational systems, because of extremely high quorum required for the approval of the reforms.

The governments of center-left coalitions did manage to decrease poverty and income inequalities. However, access to quality social services remains highly unequal and the relative poverty rate is very high. Chile’s tax system also features regressive characteristics while public social expenditure is tiny, translating into low quality public social services. In addition, the job market is highly segmented and a high share of the population works with temporary contracts or is self-employed in low skilled jobs, meaning their access to social services is also limited.

What’s next?

The recent mobilizations practically paralyzed the Chilean economy, which helped force the right-wing government of billionaire Sebastian Piñera to make concessions, such as paving the way toward the replacement of the 1980 Constitution (a plebiscite on whether a new constitution should be drafted is scheduled for April), scrapping plans to lower corporate taxes and increasing cash transfers to the poorest including modest cash subsidies to employees earning the minimum wage and those receiving the basic pension. The government also announced projects to increase sentences and fines for corporate collusion and fraud.

Social mobilizations have shaken the political system and demonstrated that the injustice of the neoliberal economic order is felt across Chilean society. But it is so far uncertain how the solutions to this broader issue will be achieved—and who will implement them. After the social explosion, the political Left has emerged highly divided and unable to channel social demands. According to a recent poll, although the president has record low approval rates (only 11%), the most popular political figures are associated with the political right and support has dropped for young left-wing politicians who have won elections by promising to transform Chile’s economic model.

Protesters have continued flowing to the streets but their dissociation from political parties and unions makes their calls increasingly appear as individual demands which can be satisfied through occasional cash transfers and reforms. Without a broader political movement, however, these reforms may simply consecrate the unequal status quo.

Bloomberg Wants To Take Your Student Loan Payments Directly Out of Your Paycheck

Billionaire Michael Bloomberg launched his campaign for president by spending hundreds of millions of dollars on advertisements to boost his poll numbers. Yesterday, he released a policy proposal to address the cost of higher education. 

Unsurprisingly, Bloomberg would not cancel student debt or make all public colleges free (as Bernie Sanders proposes). Instead, he would place all student debtors in an income-driven repayment plan so that payments are taken directly from borrowers’ paychecks. 

This plan is a neoliberal technocrat’s wet dream. It would treat student debtors as isolated individuals who must make payments tailored to their specific situations and according to means-tested formulas. 

Bloomberg’s education payment plan would also eliminate the possibility of student debt strikes. This is an outcome that I am particularly concerned about. 

In 2015 I helped organize the first student debt strike in U.S. history as part of the Debt Collective, an organization for debtors that I co-founded. That strike helped win more than $1 billion in debt relief for people who had attended predatory for-profit colleges. 

What does it mean to go on a student debt strike and why is now the time for millions of student debtors across the United States to join together to refuse to pay their loans?

First, it’s important to understand how deep the crisis has become. Today, there are 45 million people are carrying $1.6 trillion in loans. What’s worse, student debt has a disproportionate impact on people of color and women, precisely those groups for whom education was supposed to provide a path to a better life. It turns out that a college degree alone can’t address racial, gender or economic inequality, particularly when education has been turned into a consumer product instead of what it ought to be: a public good. 

While everyone knows that servicers like Navient make a bundle collecting on student loans, what a lot of people don’t realize is that millions of us are already not making payments. The Department of Education reported that, as of March 2019, 20% of student debts were in default, meaning borrowers have not made a payment in 270 days. This trend shows no sign of slowing down. According to the Center for American Progress, about a million new borrowers go into default every year. As the number of people who are forced to debt finance their college degrees has risen, so has the number of those who can’t—or won’t—pay.

But defaults are only part of the story. The federal government has reported that only 36% of people with student debt are making progress repaying their loans. Millions are not even making payments because we are enrolled in deferral, forbearance or in one of the “income driven repayment” plans that allow many low-income people to pay nothing. 

It is time that we call this massive non-repayment what it is: a debt strike. Indeed, that is exactly what the Debt Collective aims to do. Debtors who are not making payments, whether they are in default, forbearance or $0 income-based repayment, can join the campaign as bona-fide debt strikers. By joining together with others in their situation, student debtors can send a message to the federal government, lenders, collectors and especially to those running for president that they have had enough.

Why is now the time for a national student debt strike? First, collective action by debtors brings people together. With an election in full swing and many people divided over the right way forward, one thing is certain: More of us need to get involved. The fact that millions are struggling with educational debt can unite us across our differences and give us a reason to get involved in the political process. I saw this type of shared struggle firsthand five years ago during the strike that I helped to launch with former for-profit college students. People from all walks of life including Democrats, Republicans and those who don’t identify with either party came together to demand justice from the federal government—and they won! Now is the time for student debtors to rise up with one voice.

What do student debtors want? The Debt Collective has long been demanding a student debt jubilee and free public college. A decade ago, such proposals were considered totally outside the mainstream. Today, thanks in part to the Debt Collective’s work, top presidential candidates have signed on to both policies. First, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) proposed cancelling a portion of student debt. Then, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), along with Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Ilhan Omar (D-Mich.), introduced bills that would cancel all student debt, both federal as well as private loans, and make public college free. 

Such proposals represent a stunning shift in public policy, and they were made possible by ordinary people rising up and refusing to pay. In fact, the Debt Collective has already identified the mechanism by which federal student loans can be cancelled. One of our founders co-wrote a legal brief on the Higher Education Act of 1965, which gives the Department of Education the authority to decide not to collect federal student debt, without going through Congress. 

We are closer than ever to liberating tens of millions from the burden of student loans and to assuring that future generations have a right to a quality education without going into debt.   

The Debt Collective has helped to normalize the idea that student debt can be cancelled. We also showed that it can be done. Indeed, for thousands of former for-profit college students who have been freed from their debt, joining a debt strike had a profoundly positive impact on their lives. 

I attended a public university. But I have much in common with former for-profit college students who believe education is a right and a public good. Regardless of where we went to school—whether it was a private college, a public university, or a predatory for-profit—the fight for debt cancellation, free education, as well as for public goods more broadly, must include all of us. That’s why, this time, in addition to helping to organize the strike, I’ve joined it. I believe it’s time to follow the example of those who already refused to pay and won. More and more people are recognizing the power of collective action by debtors. This is precisely the kind of collective action that Bloomberg’s higher education plan intends to stop in its tracks. And that is why he must—and will—be stopped. 

DMV’s sell your data to insurance companies, data brokers, private investigators, and bulk marketers—“a serious intrusion on the privacy of the public” that needs to stop, EFF Senior Staff Attorney @Adam_D_Schwartz tells @jocefromthenews. https://wjla.com/news/spotlight-on-america/depending-on-where-you-live-your-dmv-may-be-selling-your-personal-information

#Oil and #gas firms ‘have had far worse climate impact than thought’ | #Environment | The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/feb/19/oil-gas-industry-far-worse-climate-impact-than-thought-fossil-fuels-methane

#FossilFuels #GlobalWarming #ClimateChange

The Next Big Grocery Strike Is Knocking on Safeway and Giant’s Door

Last April, more than 30,000 Stop & Shop grocery workers across the Northeast won a raucous 11-day strike against the company, beating back health care and pension cuts. Now, another major grocery strike has become a serious possibility, this time in and around the nation’s capital.

On Wednesday, UFCW Local 400 announced that it will be holding a strike vote early next month for more than 25,000 workers at hundreds of Giant Foods and Safeway stores across DC, Maryland, and Virginia. The union has separate contracts with Giant and Safeway, but both of those contracts have been expired since last October. Negotiations in the ensuing months proved fruitless, and now the union is preparing for what could become the first large strike of 2020. 

Giant is owned by Ahold Delhaize, the same European conglomerate that owns Stop & Shop. Safeway is owned by Albertsons, the national grocery holding company controlled by the private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management. As is common in private equity deals, Cerberus is reportedly eyeing an IPO for Albertsons—placing great pressure on the company to spiff up its balance sheet, including labor and pension costs. Not coincidentally, those issues are now fueling the contract dispute that has brought these UFCW members to the point of a strike vote. In addition to pension cuts, the union says that the companies are pursuing cuts to health care funding, tight restrictions on benefit access for part time employees, and a plan to keep many new hires locked in a minimum wage salary for years.