Author: Steven D

My title is from the King James Version of the of the New Testament, Matthew 7:16-20, which relates Jesus’ parable of the Tree and its Fruits. Here is the full version:

16 Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?

17 Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.

18 A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.

19 Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.

20 Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.

Here are the words of Hillary Clinton, as quoted yesterday in the New York Times, when she spoke to Boeing workers in Everett:

With Mr. Sanders’s focus on income inequality and taking on Wall Street, Mrs. Clinton has continued to reach out to working-class voters, including holding a rally on Tuesday at a machinists and aerospace workers union hall at the Boeing factory in Everett, Wash.

“I was made an honorary machinist some years ago, so I feel a particular connection here to my brothers and sisters in the machinists,” she told the crowd. “I am no person new to this struggle. I am not the latest flavor of the month. I have been doing this work day in and day out for years.”

She feels “a particular connection” to her “brothers and sisters” in the machinists. She proclaims that she is not the flavor of the month. She’s says she has been working hard for the working class for years. A lovely sentiment and a compelling argument, if true. But to me, when you look at her record, the fruit she bears smells of disease and decay:

For example, her persistent efforts promoting the Trans-Pacific Partnership (until she decided to oppose it after declaring her candidacy) does not strike me as good fruit for the working class, especially the union members.

CNN noted 45 times Secretary Clinton pushed the trade bill she now opposes, i.e. the TPP. Here are a smattering of those 45 times she spoke in favor of it while she was Secretary of State.

January 31, 2013 – Leadership at the Council on Foreign Relations
Remarks on American Leadership at the Council on Foreign Relations

“We’ve used trade negotiations over the Trans-Pacific Partnership to find common ground with a former adversary in Vietnam.”

January 13, 2013 – Remarks With Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida After Their Meeting

“We also discussed the Trans-Pacific Partnership and we shared perspectives on Japan’s possible participation, because we think this holds out great economic opportunities to all participating nations.”

November 29, 2012 -Remarks at the Foreign Policy Group’s “Transformational Trends 2013” Forum

“In a speech in Singapore last week, I laid out America’s expanding economic leadership in the region, from new trade agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership to stepped-up efforts on behalf of American businesses.”

November 17, 2012: Delivering on the Promise of Economic Statecraft

“And with Singapore and a growing list of other countries on both sides of the Pacific, we are making progress toward finalizing a far-reaching new trade agreement called the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The so-called TPP will lower barriers, raise standards, and drive long-term growth across the region.”

November 15, 2012 – Remarks at Techport Australia

This TPP sets the gold standard in trade agreements to open free, transparent, fair trade, the kind of environment that has the rule of law and a level playing field.

… and so on and so forth, dating back to Janury 12, 2010

And what do we know about the draft provisions of the TPP regarding workers’ rights? It won’t be worth the paper it’s written on when it comes to improving labor rights in other countries. Why? Because, unlike corporations who will be able to sue countries in to protect their interests under the TPP, labor unions, trade federations and workers’ rights advocacy groups will have no independent forum to force the signatories to comply with the TPP’s provisions on labor rights.

A major concern about the TPP’s labor chapter is that it can only be enforced by governments. The TPP empowers member countries to bring legal disputes against other member countries for violating the labor chapter’s terms. But while unions, labor advocacy groups, and trade federations could lobby or petition the US or other governments to take formal action to enforce the TPP’s provisions, they will not be able to file a complaint under the agreement. This contrasts sharply with investors and corporations, who can bring dispute settlement proceedings against member countries under the agreement’s provisions on Investor-State Dispute Resolution (ISDR) mechanisms. […]

The example of Guatemala, which ratified the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) in 2006, highlights these problems. In 2008, Guatemalan and United States labor groups began petitioning the United States to bring a trade tribunal case against Guatemala for its failure to uphold core standards in CAFTA’s labor chapter. Seven years later, in 2015, the United States finally did so. This was the first and only time it has ever brought a case against another country for a labor chapter violation under a free trade agreement.

I know you are shocked to discover that Hillary Clinton, when she was in one of the most powerful positions in the Obama administration, worked relentlessly to promote a trade deal that she now opposes, sort of. Makes you wonder why any labor union would endorse her, all things considered.

In June 2015, Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton told 1,300 fast food workers, “I want to be your champion,” and that she supported their push for a $15 minimum wage.

Despite such a pledge, her support of their cause was more of a Faustian strategy than one of genuine interest. Ms. Clinton recently endorsed a $12 minimum wage. Her opponents, Senator Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley both voiced their support for a $15 minimum wage early in their campaigns, but it took until early November for Ms. Clinton to affirm her stance on the issue.

And yet, the SEIU, who has made the $15 minimum wage one it’s core issues, endorsed her anyway. They, and other unions that support her, have done so with full knowledge that she has never been a strong advocate for labor unions or workers’ rights in this country. On the contrary, she has been missing in action, to put the best face on her record on labor rights.

[Hillary] served as a board member from 1986-1992, while the corporation waged campaigns against labor unions seeking to unionize store workers. There is no evidence she ever vocalized her support for labor unions, and ABC News obtained videos of several board meetings she attended and remained silent as her fellow board members worked out anti-union strategies. The New York Times reported in 2007 that Ms. Clinton maintains close ties to Wal-Mart executives, but omits her past affiliation with the company in her speeches and website. At the time of her appointment to Wal-Mart’s board, she held nearly $100,000 in stock and was a lawyer with the Rose Law Firm, which represented the company in several cases. Her current campaign treasurer, Jose Villareal, has also spent decades on boards of Wal-Mart and other companies run by their owners, the Walton family.

She’s still pals around with Walmart executives, and her campaign treasurer is a Walmart man to his very bones, but she wants us to believe she will transform herself as President into a champion for the working class? The same Hillary Clinton who said one thing about opposing charter schools and the use of standardized test scores to evaluate teachers in order to get the endorsements of teachers unions, but an entirely different thing to Eli Broad, a billionaire and the head of a controversial foundation for market driven “education reform” (some truly sinister reforms in my eyes) in order to get him to donate to her campaign.

Policy aide Ann O’Leary posted an essay on medium.com assuring that “yes, Hillary Clinton supports charter schools,” as long as they are high quality. Campaign spokesman Brian Fallon added that Mrs. Clinton supports federal funding to expand “high-quality charter schools.” But he said she doesn’t think the federal government should require school districts to tie teacher pay to student test scores.

Mr. Broad, who runs a foundation focused on education and has donated more than $2 million to Democrats in the last quarter century, said he rejected a request to contribute to the pro-Clinton super PAC Correct the Record, saying he needed reassurances about her views on education.

He said he was reassured after conversations with Messrs. Clinton and Podesta that Mrs. Clinton would in fact support charter schools, and he said he believes she will support teacher-accountability measures. He said he now expects to financially support her campaign.

“I think when push gets to shove, she’ll be more like Bill Clinton and perhaps [Obama Education Secretary] Arne Duncan than we think right now,” he said.

Bernie Sanders has been consistent in his support for workers’ rights for over his entire career as a politician. Bernie, from his earliest days as the mayor of Burlington, VT worked to support unions, workers and working class families.

As mayor, Sanders immediately hired a new human resources director for Burlington. This union-friendly lawyer worked to improve relations between city hall and municipal workers represented by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW).

During his four terms, Sanders continued to champion the cause of workers, tenants, the poor, and unemployed, while revitalizing the city. Under the Sanders administration, Burlington backed worker co-ops, affordable housing initiatives, new cultural and youth programs, and development of the city’s waterfront in a way that preserved public access and use.

Bernie never belonged to the board of directors of any multinational corporation with a track record of demonizing unions and doing all it could to ensure it’s labor costs are among the lowest in the nation. Nor has he taken contributions from big money donors whose ideas on education reform include the following:

What is a Broadie? It is someone, with or without an education background, who attended a series of weekend seminars sponsored by the Eli Broad Superintendents Academy. This “academy” has no accreditation. It focuses on management style, not education. The Broad Foundation picks people to learn its autocratic management style and places them in a district where Broad has influence and might even supplement the leader’s salary. Once placed, you may surround yourself with other Broadies to push decisions on unwilling teachers and principals who know more than you do about the local schools and students. […]

Broad and other market-driven reformers are stepping up the use of mass school closures to defeat teachers, unions, and parents who oppose them. … [T]hey impose a brutal policy where the highest-challenge students are crammed into the schools that were already the most segregated, under-resourced and low-performing. In other words, they sabotage the highest-challenge neighborhood schools in order to discredit educators in them who seek win-win school improvement policies.

That Hillary’s campaign made an effort to reassure this monster that she won’t really oppose his kind of education reform in order to get his donation to her campaign, frankly stinks. But then so does her long and sordid history with Walmart and the Walton family. Or to return to my original theme, the fruit of Hillary’s labors makes it evident to all but those who are willing to firmly hold their noses that she is a corrupt tree, one which bears rotten fruit that poisons the body politic.

I prefer the flavor of the fruit that comes from Bernie’s tree, for he is a good tree without any stain or rot of corruption.

Thus endeth today’s sermon.

Longer Title: Ryan Hughes, MI and PA Bernie State Director, Accused of Accepting Hillary Super Pac Money

I have been holding onto this information, but since Niko House has posted a video regarding this allegation, I’ve decided to lay out for you what I know.

Ryan Hughes was the Sanders campaign’s state director for Michigan, and is now the state director for Bernie’s Pennsylvania campaign, as well. Mark Craig, the founder of a grassroots volunteer group in Michigan that supports Bernie Sanders, Flint4Bernie.org, had many dealings with Ryan Hughes after Hughes came to Michigan. Mark Craig also said he was one of the principle organizers for Bernie’s March 2nd rally and speech to thousands of people at the Breslin Center on the campus of Michigan State University. His grassroots organization was started in 2015, long before Ryan Hughes showed up as the paid director for Bernie’s campaign in Michigan.

Mr. Craig stated to me that knows a a senior employee who works for Priorities USA Action (“Priorities USA”), a Hillary Super Pac. In late February, after Craig casually mentioned to her that Ryan Hughes was running the Sanders’ campaign, that person told him Hughes was receiving direct payments from Priorities USA, all while Ryan Hughes worked as the Sanders’ campaign’s state director for Michigan, along with several other paid Sanders’ Michigan staffers.

Some context:

Priotities USA Action is a Super Pac, to which unlimited contributions may be made, that supports one candidate in this election cycle: Hillary Clinton. As noted in my post yesterday about Mayor Weaver of Flint MI endorsement of Hillary, the top donors to Priorities USA Action include many of Hillary’s wealthiest and most prominent supporters, including billionaires such as the J.B Pritzker and his wife, George Soros, James Simon (hedge fund manager worth over $15 Billion), Steven Spielberg, and many other wealthy individuals in the finance and entertainment industries.

If Ryan Hughes did receive payments from Hillary’s Super Pac, as Mark Craig alleges, this is more than just an ethical lapse in judgment. It would be even more evidence of Hillary operatives infiltrating Bernie’s campaign to sabotage it.

Mr. Craig certainly believes that Ryan Hughes did everything possible to destroy grassroots activism for Bernie in Michigan, including working against long standing groups that had formed to support Bernie back in 2015, and which were already coordinating with each other regarding each group’s activities and events (e.g., rallies and canvassing activities) among themselves. Among the many things Mark shared with me about Ryan Hughes performance are the following:

1. Refusing to requests by volunteers to politicize the Flint water crisis. Even though the Hillary campaign was doing so for months prior to the election, Hughes told volunteers not to make the water crisis a point of emphasis until only shortly before the date of the primary.

2. Telling volunteers they could no longer do door to door grassroots canvassing. Instead, volunteers in Flint were directed to canvas only those residential addressed that included likely Sanders’ voters. When volunteers went to those addresses they usually found abandoned homes, or people who were registered Republicans.

3. Ignored volunteers request to canvas in African American neighborhoods.

4. Kicked out all of the volunteers who were willing to work for free to staff the Flint office. Hughes replaced them with paid staff, many of whom had no Michigan ties.

Mark set up the Flint office, negotiating the lease and obtained internet service prior to Hughes arrival in Flint. He also paid for equipping the office out of his own pocket. Mark was never repaid by the campaign for these expenditures, even though he had relied on Hughes promise he would be reimbursed.

Obviously, many of the criticisms of Ryan Hughes could be attributed to incompetence, or simply an unwillingness to use a volunteer based model for the campaign. However, the charge that Hughes took money from Priorities USA, the largest independent Super Pac supporting Hillary, lends credence to the view that Hughes was actively working to hurt Bernie’s chances in Michigan. And in fact, Bernie won the Michigan primary largely on the strength of the vote in those counties where Hughes had no paid field staff on site and was forced to rely solely on volunteers, whom often disregarded his directives. Bernie lost the vote in those counties in the vicinity of Flint where Hughes’ was located, and where he had the most direct oversight over the actions of Bernie volunteers.

I hope to have more news for you soon, regarding the names of other Michigan staffers who may also have been receiving payments from Hillary’s Super Pac. Meanwhile, here is Niko House’s latest video about Ryan Hughes:

On January 19th, Mayor Karen Weaver endorsed Hillary Clinton. This was certainly beneficial to Clinton, because though she lost the state of Michigan to Bernie, she won Genesee County, which includes Flint. Obviously, the Mayor’s endorsement didn’t hurt. So, what did Mayor Weaver receive for the service she rendered?

Answer: $500,000, announced on March 6, 2016, just two days before the Michigan primary was held.

The Flint WaterWorks initiative, a program that will help provide young people with jobs to assist those impacted by the water crisis, was announced on Sunday by Flint mayor Karen Weaver and former first daughter Chelsea Clinton.

A story from the Detroit Free Press revealed that the project was created through a $500,000 donation from J.B. and M.K. Pritzker, who are among the top donors to outside groups that support the former Secretary of State.

So, in essence, Hillary got one of the top donors to her candidacy to come up with the money necessary to pay Mayor Weaver for her timely endorsement. Just out of curiosity, how much money have the Prizkers contributed to a Super Pac that supports Hillary Clinton? Two Million, Eight Hundred Thousand Dollars ($2.8 Million) to Priorities USA Action. The only candidate this Super Pac supports is Hillary Clinton, and the Pritzkers are determined to spend whatever it takes to see her elected President.

Pritzker and his wife, Mary Kathryn (known as M.K.), are among the top five donors to outside spending groups backing Clinton, contributing more than $2.8 million to Priorities USA, a political action committee (PAC) that supports Clinton and can legally take unlimited donations. Pritzker and his wife, who each donated $1 million in January, will contribute more, he says, if necessary. He declined to say exactly how much he’s willing to spend, but the 51-year-old Chicagoan, who is worth an estimated $3.3 billion, is calling this election “one of the most important of my life.”

I can’t imagine why a billionaire might consider Hillary Clinton a better candidate as the Democratic nominee than Bernie Sanders, can you? Well, maybe Sanders’ proposal to raise taxes on the upper 1% and corporations didn’t sit well with him. Maybe that has something to do with it.

It should be noted that this Pritzker foundation’s $500,000 grant was not contributed directly to the City of Flint but to an organization controlled by Mayor Weaver and Chelsea Clinton:

According to Weaver, the Flint WaterWorks initiative was developed in partnership with Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, whose team helped the mayor establish the public-private partnership program.

The initiative is being started with a $500,000 contribution from J.B. and M.K. Pritzker to the Community Foundation of Greater Flint.

“For my mother and for me, this is not political,” Chelsea Clinton said at a news conference. “It is deeply personal and I think it should be personal to every American. … (We want) to see the children of Flint as our children and to see the youth in Flint, as the mayor says, as being a promising youth for Flint and really our country.”

Of course it is not political! Just because Hillary was publicly asking her supporters to contribute to the Community Foundation of Greater Flint back in February, a group with which Mayor Weaver has long had close ties did not make it not political. And the fact that this Clinton/Weaver Flint Waterworks Initiative was announced two days prior to the primary election in Michigan, one where Hillary hoped her victory would knock Bernie Sanders out of the race, could not possibly be political. No sirree bob!

I absolutely believe Chelsea Clinton when she said this was a very personal matter for her and her mother. After all, what could be more personal than doing whatever it takes to ensure Hillary wins the Presidential election in November? And if that means getting her good friend, “The other Mayor of Chicago,” to dig into his deep pockets to pay for it, so what? I’m sure it was personal to him, as well.

The above title speaks for itself. It does not contain my interpretation of Sanders nor that of any Bernie Bro, or Berner or Millenial or Hobbit, either.

The title refers to a quote from a high profile Clinton supporter, Simon Rosenberg, the President and Founder of the NDN, a center-left think tank based in Washington, D.C. It’s mission is to understand and interpret a “new politics” – driven by enormous changes in demography, media and technology, economics and geopolitics” and “explain … and offer innovative solutions to help policy makers and elected officials meet the new challenges presented by these new times.” They are big into studying “globalization and macro-economic policy, clean energy, immigration and border issues, Latin America, US demographic change, and the impact of new mobile technology on civil society.”

Here is what Rosenberg’s bio at NDN has to say about him:

Simon Rosenberg is President and founder of NDN, a leading, center-left think tank in Washington, DC. Rosenberg, a veteran of two presidential campaigns, including the 1992 Clinton War Room, got his start as a writer and producer in network television. He is a leading political thinker and commentator with a unique ability to identify important trends and decipher changes transforming American politics well before others.

… Together with Dr. Rob Shapiro, President Clinton’s Under Secretary of Commerce for Economic Affairs and Chair of NDN’s Globalization Initiative, he has fashioned a unique set of messages and policies around focusing on the economic well-being of everyday people based on Shapiro’s early analysis that even as GDP and productivity rose during the Bush years, wages stagnated and incomes declined.

Rosenberg is a member of the Aspen Institute’s 2001 Class of Henry Crown Fellows, and the Advisory Board of the Jonathan M. Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service at Tufts University. He won the national election prediction contest held by the Hill Newspaper in both 2012 and 2008. In 2007, he was named one of the 50 most powerful people in DC by GQ Magazine.

Rosenberg and his wife, Caitlin Durkovich, an Assistant Secretary at the Department of Homeland Security, live in Washington, DC with their three children and Tug, a spirited bulldog.

So Mr. Rosenberg has been with the “Clinton team” since 1992. He been named one of the most powerful people in DC. He’s a member of the gosh darn Aspen Institute whose members include Republican billionaires, multinational corporate managers in the finance, real estate, defense and high tech industries, as well as Walter Isaacson, CNN’s CEO and Bill Clinton’s Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, among others. His wife, Caitlin Durkovich, is President Obama’s Assistant Secretary for Infrastructure Protection at the Department of Homeland Security.

Clinton supporters, he is “one of your own,” and to be honest I’m using that term loosely, since I suspect 99.999% of you do not run in the same political and social circles Simon does. So when he talked to the New Yorker about Bernie Sanders, I paid close attention. Maybe you should, as well. Here’s what he had to say:

Sanders “is tapping into something that is very deep and very profound inside the Democratic Party, which is this discontent with the system that is no longer producing for everyday people,” Simon Rosenberg, a Hillary supporter and the head of NDN (formerly the New Democrat Network), a liberal think tank in Washington, told me. “He has characterized Hillary as a champion of that system and as somebody who is actually a leader of the system, while he is the one that wants to change it.” Rosenberg added, “He’s not being perceived as a leftist. He is being perceived as somebody who is deeply in touch with a sense that something has gone wrong and that the system isn’t working.”

Obviously, he’s no idiot. He recognizes the enormous appeal Sanders has for many people who vote Democratic or lean Democratic in election years. He knows the demographics are shifting, and soon the young people, the same people you so casually dismiss as stupid, idealistic, easy to manipulate and be “scammed” kids are about to become a major force in American politics. Certainly if the Democratic party is to thrive, it will need to attract them in large numbers.

So slam Bernie all you want. Call him a far left Democratic Socialist, friend of Castro (yes, some of Clinton supporters have made that claim) and an outsider not in touch with the real concerns of real Democrats. Mr. Simon doesn’t view him that way. Rosenberg, quintessential Clinton insider, looks at Bernie Sanders and sees a threat to the very system in charge of the party that Rosenberg, the Clintons and other DLC/Third Way/New Democrats helped create in the 90’s, a system that controls the national party leadership to this day, as noted by the very same article in the New Yorker in which Rosenberg is quoted:

Clinton’s 1992 campaign and his Administration reflected two political strains that still define the Party: one is populist, anti-Wall Street, and pro-regulation; the other is more austere, more oriented toward the New York financial world, and more laissez-faire. Clinton’s Labor Secretary, Robert B. Reich, pressed for more government spending, but the top economic adviser in the White House, Robert Rubin, a former Goldman Sachs executive and later the Treasury Secretary, ultimately persuaded Clinton to abandon many of the liberal spending priorities that he championed during his campaign and to focus instead on reducing the deficit. Later, Rubin also pushed to deregulate the financial industry. That polarity remains. Hillary Clinton is surrounded by Rubin’s acolytes; Reich, an old friend of Bill Clinton’s from their days together at Oxford as Rhodes Scholars, recently endorsed Sanders.

It is the same system that allows Simon Rosenberg to hobnob with the wealthiest and most powerful people in America, many of whom support Hillary, but many of whom support Republicans, or who just hedge their bets and support both sides to insure that whichever party is in power, the “system” will keep running smoothly. A system that benefits people like Simon Rosenberg, who caters to policy makers and elected officials, such as — well such as Hillary Clinton who has been one in the past and hopes to become one again in November. No surprise that Rosenberg supports Hillary and has supported her and her husband for a very long, long time.

I can understand why Simon Rosenberg supports Hillary. He has much to gain if Hillary is elected, and a lot more to lose if Bernie becomes the new face of the Democratic Party. What I didn’t expect was for him to be so honest in admitting that, yes, his candidate, Hillary Clinton is perceived by a broad spectrum of Democratic voters as the “champion of the system” that is failing the very people whose votes she is counting on to win in November. I didn’t expect to hear him admit openly and on the record that Bernie Sanders has indeed tapped into the discontent among so many Democrats and Democratic leaning voters have with that very same system they believe has failed them.

So thank you, Simon Rosenberg for your honesty. It’s a rare commodity from anyone these days among our power elites and their courtiers.

Well, this must be true because it is in the New York Effing Times. No one else is to blame for her failing to have already put away her only opponent for the Democratic nomination, a little known Democratic Socialist with no media coverage and no support from the Democratic establishment.

White men narrowly backed Hillary Clinton in her 2008 race for president, but they are resisting her candidacy this time around in major battleground states, rattling some Democrats about her general-election strategy.

While Mrs. Clinton swept the five major primaries on Tuesday, she lost white men in all of them, and by double-digit margins in Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio, exit polls showed — a sharp turnabout from 2008, when she won double-digit victories among white male voters in all three states.

She also performed poorly on Tuesday with independents, who have never been among her core supporters. But white men were, at least when Mrs. Clinton was running against a black opponent: She explicitly appealed to them in 2008, extolling the Second Amendment, mocking Barack Obama’s comment that working-class voters “cling to guns or religion” and even needling him at one point over his difficulties with “working, hard-working Americans, white Americans.”

You know, there are certainly white men who probably are not voting for her because she is a woman, just as there were white men who voted for her in 2008 because her primary opponent was a black man. But to make the leap that her main problem with Democratic primary voters is all due to the sexism of white men, is a pretty big leap. Especially when she polls so poorly among young women, especially young white women. These young women are even writing open letters explaining to their parents why they do support Hillary over Bernie.

You taught me about being a baby boomer, about the Vietnam war, about being “freaks” instead of “hippies”, about getting drafted, and about not being someone’s “chick.” You taught me that music & art are political tools. That your parents generation just didn’t understand. That equality is more important than security. That political action is imperative as a citizen of this country. That it was cool to vote for Ralph Nader. That change doesn’t need a precedent to be viable. That the establishment has rarely, if ever, been right. That we serve those less fortunate and we never, ever, ever stop debating.

Most importantly, you taught me that women should never be under anyone’s thumb.

So, why are you voting for Hilary Clinton?

Clinton biggest supporters, regardless of gender, are older voters, and among older voters, older women are her strongest supporters, though a majority of older Democratic men also support her over Sanders.

Clinton commands majorities over Sanders among those 50 and older (65 percent to 32 percent), those who are not white (63 percent to 34 percent), self-identified Democrats (60 percent to 38 percent) and women (61 percent to 37 percent). Among women 50 and older, Clinton leads Sanders by 48 points—73 percent to 25 percent.

So, for the New York Times to claim that it is mostly white men who oppose her candidacy, with the implication that they will not vote for a woman, is misleading, at best. She has tremendous name recognition, a ton of money raised in 2015 in the invisible primary and the Clintons’ developed long term political relationships over the last two decades with leaders in the African American community.

Bernie came into the race a virtual unknown with no money, and no backing from the Democratic establishment. In any other year he would have been a fringe candidate who dropped out after only a few months, at best. But this year played out differently. Far more of Sanders’ support comes from people under the age of 50, with his largest group of support among those under 30.

That is the defining difference between Hillary’s supporters and Bernie’s: it’s generational, not a gender.

Despite the irrational exuberance of certain self-proclaimed gate crashers, the Democratic Party has a serious problem with young voters, i.e., the so-called Millenial and Gen X generations. Take a look at this report by the Pew Research Center and tell me they shouldn’t be concerned about voter turnout and support for Hillary Clinton.

Among Millennials, the youngest generational group (born 1981-1994), 45% say they are independents, a jump of six points since 2008. At the same time, the share of Millennials who identify as Democrats has dropped from a peak of 35% in the year Obama was elected to 31% today.

There is a similar pattern among Gen Xers (born 1965-1980). Currently, 42% say they are independents, 29% are Democrats and 24% align with the GOP. In 2008, 34% each said they were independents or Democrats, while 25% said they were Republicans.

So, since 2008, the election that swept Obama and many Democrats into office, due in large part to the votes of young people, with 66% of those who voted voting for him, we’ve seen a not insignificant decline in Millenials and Gen Xers who say they are Democrats. This is occurring even in liberal bastions such as California, as reported by the Los Angeles Times on February 29th of this year. The title of the article is quite apt: A threat ahead: California Democrats losing the fight for younger voters

The state Democratic Party convention held here over the weekend presented an occasionally jarring contrast: Democrats gathered at what seemed like a 50th college reunion for veteran politicians, and at the same time one of the biggest rounds of applause came at the mention of Bernie Sanders, the presidential candidate few of those politicians support.

At a Saturday convention panel focused on millennial voters — roughly those 35 and under — voting analyst Paul Mitchell issued a warning to Democrats. […]

“… Democrats aren’t converting … young minority voters who are the base of the Democratic Party.”

Of the 10 cities with the highest percentages of independent voters, he said, all but one are Latino-majority cities. That is jarring, since Democratic strength in the last generation has been built on the growing Latino population. […]

“Regardless of whether you’re with Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton, there’s no question that right how Bernie Sanders has the overwhelming majority of the millennials,” said [Eric Swalwell (D-CA 15th Dist.)], who endorsed Clinton after his first choice, former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, dropped out. “Whoever is the candidate, as a party we have to understand why that is the case.”

Why that’s the case is the candidates themselves. To young voters for whom she has been a life-long presence, Clinton looks like a captive of establishment politics. Sanders, with his call to “political revolution,” is the blunt-speaking fresh face.

Among millenials voting in the Democratic party, Bernie Sanders has consistently won the millenial vote by a wide margin, even among women and minority millenials. Even though Sanders lost 4 states (with one tie) on Tuesday, he dominated Clinton among younger voters. In Illinois, North Carolina, Ohio, Missouri and Florida. Here’s the breakdown by state:

Florida: Sanders won 65% of voters under 30.

Illinois: Sanders won 86% of voters under 30, and 58% of those 30 – 44.

Missouri: Sanders won 78% of voters under 30, and 61% of those 30 – 44.

North Carolina: Sanders won 81% of voters age 17-24. He also won 65% of those aged 25-29 age group, and 51% of those 30-39.

Ohio: Sanders won 87% of voters aged 18-24; 76% aged 25-29; and 57% aged 30-39.

But that is only among millenials who voted in the primaries. Unfortunately, more millenials are independents than belong to either party by a large margin. Arizona is a typical example, with “… 50.5% of all voters under the age of 30 … registered independent.” And in 2016, millenials have surpassed Boomers as the largest voting bloc in the country. Yet in the 2014 election, only 21% voted. That is a shocking statistic.

Now, it’s true that in presidential election years, turnout among all groups is higher, and in 2012 around 55% of millenials voted, with 60% of them voting for Obama (down from 66% of the youth vote he won in 2008, but still significant). However, Obama was a once in a lifetime candidate who brought record numbers of Americans to the polls either to vote for him or against him. Thankfully, because of high voter turnout among minorities and millenials, he won those two elections handily. But can the current front runner for the Democratic Party’s nomination, Hillary Clinton, realistically hope to achieve the same level of participation and support among the largest group of voters in America in 2016? That is a question still to be answered.

Obviously, this year, only one campaign and one candidate has inspired millenials to become passionately involved in the political process in 2016: Bernie Sanders. However, what if he is not on the ballot come November? One can hope that millenials will turn out in large numbers this year to vote for Clinton, if only to defeat the presumptive Republican nominee, Donald Trump, but there are no guarantees that will indeed happen, despite some recent polling that shows her leading Trump among by “a margin of 52-19 percent among voters under the age of 35.”

A lot can happen between now and November. Even many Clinton supporters recognize she is a deeply flawed candidate with many vulnerabilities, including her ties to Wall Street. Those ties are an anchor on her ability to woo Sanders supporters. Indeed, in the recent Wall Street Journal/NBC poll, 33 percent of Sanders’ supporters stated that they would not vote for her in the general election. Again, it is early, and who knows what will happen over the course of the next 7 months. But to suggest that Clinton will have little difficulty gaining the trust and support of younger voters is, frankly, delusional thinking on the part of her supporters.

Without that support, and in light of all the barriers to voting by minorities and other Democratic party constituencies created by Republican controlled statehouses across the nation, Hillary’s path to the Oval Office is far from a sure thing, regardless of her opponent in the Fall.

Update: Laureate Universities International, to which the Clintons have a direct connection, apparently gets most of its income from its schools overseas. During the period 2010 -2012, and after Bill Clinton received a $4 million plus a year payment from Laureate as an “Honorary Chancellor,” the State Department approved millions of dollars in grants to International Youth Foundation, a non-profit chaired by Laureate’s CEO, Don Becker:

[While] IYF had received government grants (mainly from the U.S. Agency for International Development) as far back as 2001, they “exploded since Bill became chancellor of Laureate,” accounting for the vast majority of the nonprofit’s revenue. In 2010, “government grants accounted for $23 million of its revenue, compared to $5.4 million from other sources. It received $21 million in 2011 and $23 million in 2012.” The link between International Youth Foundation and Laureate has not been previously reported, he said. […]

A Bloomberg examination of IYF’s public filings show that in 2009, the year before Bill Clinton joined Laureate, the nonprofit received 11 grants worth $9 million from the State Department or the affiliated USAID. In 2010, the group received 14 grants worth $15.1 million. In 2011, 13 grants added up to $14.6 million. The following year, those numbers jumped: IYF received 21 grants worth $25.5 million, including a direct grant from the State Department. […]

… Hillary Clinton’s financial disclosure forms in 2012 revealed only that her husband received nonemployee compensation of more than $1,000 from [Laureate] that year. The Clinton Foundation’s donor disclosures showed that Laureate cumulatively gave between $1 million and $5 million through 2014. […]

Laureate plays up its Clinton ties in a big way. Its homepage prominently features a photo of Clinton speaking this month at a new campus in Panama. Other pages detail Clinton’s role at Laureate and the company’s relationship with the Clinton Global Initiative.

I think this provides further damning evidence of the pay-to-play connections between Laureate and the Clintons while Hillary was Secretary of State.

* * *

The for profit college industry is one of the worst scams going, at least if you are one of their students. They have a much lower graduation rate than traditional colleges, and an absurdly high number of their students rely on student loans to fund their education. On average, tuition costs are much more expensive. Many are rife with fraud and deceptive business practices. Their business model relies heavily on federal funding, and many exploit veterans and low income students.

Candidate Hillary Clinton has stated repeatedly on the stump that she will crack down on these for profit higher educational scam artists. However, not so long ago, she was much less concerned about the for profit college industry. In fact, she actively favored one particular for profit college while she was Secretary of State, Laureate International Universities:

[In 2009] Clinton wrote in an email to a top aide that she wanted to add Laureate Education to the guest list for the event. Describing Laureate as “the fastest growing college network in the world,” Clinton said the company was “started by Doug Becker who Bill likes a lot.”

“It’s a for-profit model that should be represented,” she added in the August 2009 email. A senior vice president at Laureate was added to the guest list, a separate email shows.

Former President Bill Clinton several months later became an honorary chancellor for Laureate International Universities, a role for which he was paid $16.5 million between 2010 and 2014. Clinton stepped down from the position earlier this year.

That’s right, she did a favor for Laureate, and they, in return just happened to appoint her husband to a honorary position that paid him $16.5 million over four years for whatever honorary chancellors do. To give you an idea just how much Laureate Universities rakes in from their students, let’s look at one of their five schools in the United States, Walden University in Minneapolis, which charges students up to averages $60,000 in tuition and fees per quarter per degrees! That comes to $120,000 per academic year.

Now my daughter attends a prestigious science and engineering school in the Northeast that charges a lot in tuition and fees, also. She pays roughly $60,000 for the entire academic year (i.e., half what Walden charges), which includes tuition, fees, books and on campus room and board. Graduates with a Bachelor’s degree have a 89.4% success rate (either employment in their chosen field, acceptance into a graduate program or join the Military). Average starting salary equaled 62,509 (data for Class of 2014).

The four year graduation rate at her college is 74%. On average, online for profit colleges average only a 22% graduation rate. Hard to imagine that Walden provides an educational experience equal or better than the one my daughter receives. And by all accounts they don’t even come close:

[C]ritics of Laureate’s Walden University in Minnesota claimed professors were inaccessible and that continual delays stretched out the time — and thus money needed — to earn an advanced degree. Three students have filed a lawsuit against Walden, hoping to make it a class-action suit, alleging breach of contract, unjust enrichment, violations of state consumer protection and unfair competition laws.

Of course, Bill was far from the only person to benefit from a connection to the for profit college industry. After Hillary stepped down as Secretary of State, she gave a speech (sound familiar?) that paid her $225,000 to address “Academic Partnerships, a for-profit education company in which Jeb Bush held an ownership stake and on whose board he served.”

Clinton’s newly filed personal financial disclosure shows that she was paid $225,500 on March 24, 2014 by Academic Partnerships. At the invitation-only event in Dallas, Texas, Clinton reportedly said, “today a student doesn’t need to travel to Cambridge, Mass., or Cambridge, England, to get a world-class education.”

Academic Partnerships assists universities in converting their academic degree programs into online versions that can be taken by students around the world.

Yet, she wants us to believe that now when she is elected to the Presidency, she will crack down on an industry that provided her and her husband with such lucrative sinecures. Color me — skeptical, at best. And you wonder why young people, many of them crushed under a heavy burden of student loan debt, and their parents, as well, don’t trust her?

…in Minnesota and find a photograph of a black man about to be hung by the neck until dead on the top of their table. Quite the appetizer:

The tabletop photo shows white people watching the public execution of at least one African-American man in Groesbeck, Texas, in 1895. A hand drawn bubble above the condemned man’s head read, “All I said was that I didn’t like the gumbo.”

The diners who discovered the photo, Tyrone Williams and Chauntyll Allen, were at Joe’s Crab Shack for Ms. Allen’s pre-birthday dinner when they noticed the photo. […]

“This type of blatant racism should not be tolerated in this country, or in our local and national eating establishments,” Williams told reporters. “I have felt sick to my stomach and stressed out since seeing that image on the table where I was planning to eat my food.”

Allen agreed, saying, “Seeing a picture of two black men being lynched was the last thing that I expected to see at what was supposed to be a family-friendly restaurant. As you can imagine, seeing that image ruined my appetite and my pre-birthday dinner. It is hard to believe that this type of racism is still going on in 2016.”

Ah, another American tradition continues in the 21st century. Racism – it’s what’s for dinner. Bon Appétit.

Yes, that title is a direct quote from this BBC article online. It’s beyond frightening. The greenhouse gas needle is way past the red dial danger zone. And no one in the media during this election campaign is talking about it. Because, horse races are easier to cover, I guess. Meanwhile planet earth is not waiting around for our media and political elites to take notice of the world of sh*t that we are mucking around in as I write these words.

Measurements at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii went up by more than three parts per million(ppm) in 2015.

Scientists say the spike is due to a combination of human activities and the El Niño weather pattern.

Put another way, this represents an explosion in the growth of CO2 in our atmosphere.

In another first, NOAA found that 2015 was the fourth straight year in which carbon dioxide concentrations grew by more than 2 ppm, according to Pieter Tans, who leads NOAA’s Global Greenhouse Gas Reference Network.

“Carbon dioxide levels are increasing faster than they have in hundreds of thousands of years,” Tans said in a press release. “It’s explosive compared to natural processes.” […]

According to Tans, the current rate of increase in carbon dioxide levels is 200 times faster than the last time the planet saw such a sustained increase, which was between 17,000 and 11,000 years ago, when there was an 80 ppm increase during that timespan.

Two hundred times faster than the last time there was a sustained rise in the levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Back then, it took 6000 years for atmospheric CO2 levels to rise 80 parts per million. That works out to .013 ppm a year. Our current rate over the past five years exceeds 2 ppm per year.

Is it any wonder that the hottest year on record was 2015, beating the prior record which occurred in — 2014. Or that of the ten hottest years on record, nine of them occurred since 2003. Yet, no one in the media is talking about this threat to our nation and the world, and certainly little if any attention during the current campaign is being spent on addressing the threat of climate change, not even during the Democratic Party debates.

Leonardo DiCaprio spoke about climate change for a longer amount of time at the Academy Awards than the presidential candidates have in the debates. In the 18 debates held so far, moderators have asked about everything from Super Bowl picks to flower arrangements, while posing only a handful of questions on climate. They ignored it entirely in the December debates, even though the world had just united around the landmark climate agreement in Paris. This must change. […]

People are paying attention. A bipartisan group of 21 Florida mayors, whose constituents are already coping with impacts of climate change, sent a letter to the debate moderators calling on them to ask questions on sea level rise and climate change. The news outlets– Washington Post, Univision and CNN– should follow-through.

I do not care who you support, this is a topic that needs to be brought up at every debate going forward. We know the Republicans are not going to bother, but why are the Democratic debates ignoring climate change? As even the author of The Hill article noted, this must change. Unfortunately, the next scheduled Democratic Party debate is not until April 9th, far too long to wait. I urge you to contact the DNC and your Congressional representatives and demand a separate debate on Climate Change be held at the earliest opportunity.

DNC contact page

The DNC Main phone number: 202-863-8000

Twitter accounts: @TheDemocrats, @DWStweets, @BernieSanders, @HillaryClinton

Spoke to Martin on the phone. Our memories are both fuzzy. However, Martin does have an email record that
I do not have. I need to review those carefully.

The main point I wish to make is that the email record Martin sent me does not support the claim that he asked me not to write about Markos and Kathy Sierra. That is on me, and I accept full responsibility for the prior post that was incorrect on Martin’s role in what went down. After I review all the emails I will re-post to reflect a more accurate representation on what occurred regarding Kathy Sierra.

My apologies to the entire community for not having all my ducks lined up in a row, and for going off half-cocked.