Imaginary Friends and Enemies

by Michael Kendall

For a few months now, I have watched the escalating bitterness in the Democratic Presidential Primary between my fellow Bernie supporters, and the Hillary supporters.  As you read this both sides draw battle lines, ask imaginary questions, declare imaginary answers, and challenge the sanity and good will of themselves and each other over a purely hypothetical question.  At its simplest the hypothetical question goes something like this:  “If Hillary wins the Democratic nomination in late July 2016, will you vote for Hillary against the Republican nominee?”  

        According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a “hypothetical” question is “based upon an . . . imagined situation rather than fact,”.  I call this imaginary question “The Great Hypothetical Question of 2016,” or the “TGHQ” for short.  The GHQ of 2016 is a perfect example of why only frustrated or devious people pose hypothetical’s, why they have disappeared in Law, and why only the witless answer them.

        For starters, think of what imaginary information is missing.  Who is the Democratic VP nominee?  How much of Bernie’s plans have made it into the platform commitments and promises?  Is Bernie the VP?  What if a moderate third person gets the Republican nomination?  Who is the Republican running mate?  And for good measure, what if Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn fail to align the first week in November and no one can see to vote?  You get it. 

        My modest plea to all of us who feel the Bern, and to Hillary supporters as well, is this:  Don’t ask and don’t answer hypothetical, imaginary questions from anyone. 

        Bernie supporters are their own worst enemies when the ask TGHQ as a ‘selfie’ in the mirror and answer it.  You loose your political power if you say “Yes” or “No” because you give up your power, which is great, and Hillary need do no more.  At best you feel good by telling the world how much you distrust, dislike, and deplore Hillary.  Journalists, pollsters, and Hillary supporters who ask the question use your answer to their advantage.”Yes” means she’s got you no matter what.  “No” means you have nothing to offer her and she need not pay much attention to your issues.  She will fish elsewhere for votes.

        Conversely, to the Hillary supporters and fellow travelers, I say stop asking TGHQ.  It only makes you seem arrogant, condescending, and patronizing—at best.  You learned better in sandlot baseball.  Imagine the bottom of the 5^th inning, a kid from the other team that is ahead 5-3, saunters over to your dugout and asks you to promise to come cheer for his team at the championship game after they beat you.  Think you’d say, “Sure!”?  Think the kid would get anywhere 5 innings from the game being over by calling you a sore loser?  Or do you think you’d redouble your efforts to beat the little bastard? 

        The Questioner is the powerful person in control of the conversation in all situations. For example, “Before answering ‘will I support Hillary if she’s the nominee,’ I’d like to know and perhaps you can tell me, when will she make the transcripts of her speeches to Goldman-Sachs, Verizon, and others available to me and the public?”

        The direct exam and cross-exam of witnesses have been called “the greatest truth seeking engine” developed by the Anglo-American legal system.  One reason it is so successful is the questions cannot be hypothetical, and the answers cannot be based on assumption or imagination.  The question must be based on fact and the answer must be based upon personal knowledge of facts.  The Law is interested in the Truth and the Question extracts it, or a lie, or reveals a dodge.   

        So Bernie supporters, please answer TGHQ of 2016 with your own factual question.  Ask for facts that take the imaginary out of the question.  Use your power to find out how badly she wants your vote, never answer the hypothetical, and see if she and her supporters really are as politically savvy as they perceive themselves to be.  You are being asked TGHQ because you have power (knowledge and the vote) and HRC wants it.  Don’t give it away by answering hypotheticals.  Use your power to force change.  Use it or loose it.  

Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow

by

Michael Kendall

MEMORANDUM

TO:  All Millennials and Other Bernie Supporters

FROM:  A Baby Boomer Bernie Supporter

SUBJECT:  Getting Power in a Democratic Election    

DATE:  Sunday, 21 February 2016, the Day After the Nevada Caucus

Today is my wedding anniversary date.  And although my wife and I are Democratic Socialists, we’re in our 60’s (as opposed to “in the Sixties…”) and we intend to exercise our “Convivial Rights” today over wine, gin, and tonic!  So tempus fugit; and I’ll get right to the point. 

Yesterday we lost a close race in Nevada we thought we might win.  Today is a good time to reflect on how we got this far and where we go from here.  Tomorrow is the first day of the rest of our campaign and Lifetimes. Tomorrow is when we finish what we started and win the future for our Lifetimes.  In the words of that philosopher-king, Yogi Berra, “It ain’t over until it’s over.” 

Bernie and Your revolutionary Movement have won and are winning.  Nevada is a bump.  More bumps are coming before victory. But we have the Ideas, People, and Money needed to win. No one else has the Ideas and People.    

The Ideas of the Oligarchs, Conservatives, and Liberal Capitalists have turned our America into the Land for the One Percent. (FYI:  A “Liberal Capitalist” is a quasi-liberal in good times, a moderate in bad times, tells you what he or she thinks you want to hear, does something else if it suits him or her, and believes more and better welfare is a palatable, compromise, substitute for economic equality.)  Democratic Socialism is the Idea whose time has come and is attracting the People and the Money which reflects that fact. 

Now is the time to double down on Your future.  Understand how strong You are and how the Movement got to this point.  Ideas, People, and Money are the ingredients and any two are enough to make the smell of victory.

In 1968 California Democratic House Speaker, Jesse Unruh, supporter of Robert F. Kennedy, and proponent of the mass-based political ideas of the New Left, summarized the three forces at play in a democratic election.  You need at least two of the three to win and you need at least one to start and get at least one of the other two.  The three forces are:  (1) Ideas; (2) People; and (3) Money.  Bernie started with the first, which attracted the second, and led to the third.  He and the Movement now have all three and that is why we are winning, and not waning.

IDEAS:  First, You are winning the revolution for the battle of Ideas.  Conservatism is dying and Liberalism has failed to regain the throne.  You, Bernie, and the Movement have made Social Democrat and Democratic Socialism more respectable identifiers than Liberalism and Liberal Capitalist.  The political debate in America will never be the same and neither will the Democratic Party.  From 1912 to 1968 the Idea of Liberalism became the dominant philosophy and prevailing language of America.  Liberal philosophy dominated political thought, policy, and speech. From 1968 until Occupy Wall Street, the Idea of Conservatism replaced Liberalism to become the dominant philosophy and prevailing language of America.   After 1972, Conservative philosophy replaced Liberalism, and was enshrined by Reagan in 1980. Neither is dominant now because they have failed the People and America.  You are winning the battle of ideas because you have established Democratic Socialism as the Idea whose time has come to dominate political thought, policy, and speech.  That is why you have the People and Money needed to bring about Your democratic, socialist, revolution now.  Carpe Diem. 

PEOPLE:  Second, You are winning the battle for the People.  Nevada, and perhaps South Carolina, notwithstanding, 50% of the voters in Iowa, 64% of voters in New Hampshire, and 48% of the voters in Nevada felt the Bern.  A majority of voters polled now favor Bernie over Hillary and over any potential Republican opponent.  The electoral battle will go back and forth to the end. Super Tuesday, California, New York, and many other states are up for grabs between now and the Democrat Convention.  The proportionality of the delegate awards versus winner-take-all ensures a close race and a run to the Convention, where the nomination will ultimately be decided. And significantly, where the first openly Democratic Socialist Platform since 1944 under FDR can emerge, and long-range control of the Party be taken by Social Democrats.  Carpe Diem. 

MONEY: Third, You are winning the battle for Money.  Millions of small contributions from You and others allow Bernie to organize and fund the Movement.  California Democratic Speaker Unruh also said, “Money is the Mother’s milk of politics.”  (Today, see the Koch Brothers.)  The amount and nature of the Money make Bernie and the Movement independent, powerful, liberated, revolutionary, and deadly to Conservatives, Big Capitalists, and their Liberal fellow-travelers.  The Money allows Bernie and the Movement to reach and mobilize voters with Ideas that move more and more People to support, vote for, and fund him and the Movement. Carpe Diem. 

It won’t get easier, but only rougher, as the inevitability of the revolutionary Movement Bernie’s parented looms larger and closer on the horizon to the ruling Oligarchic and Political Classes (Establishment).  They will fight harder and harder once they realize what’s happening.  Bumps like Nevada give them a false sense of security and postpone their personal awakening.  For You it should be a window of opportunity to see the real landscape and the shape of things to come.  

By the way, this can be exhilarating and transcendental, in short, fun.  I’ve had the opportunity to run for Senate, coordinate Congressional, State, and Presidential campaigns, and get elected to office.  The more you work the more you learn.  The more you learn the more you win.  When you lose you learn even more.  The key is to keep your eyes open, your beliefs intact, and your heart…well, feeling the Bern.  (Besides, who wants to tell their kids that in the political revolution of 2016, they were so dispirited after the Nevada Caucus, where Bernie “only” got 48% of the vote, they dropped out, turned on, and tuned in to a loop of The Revenant for 40 days and nights?)

If you aren’t more motivated than when you started this Memo, try this.  A Friend on Facebook posted today that she pronounces a person’s name and adds “Attorney at Law” to see if it sounds professional.  Although meant to be self-deprecating about her ‘so-called life,’ I think it is quite profound.  Say the name of everyone running for President, and add “justice,” “equality,” “liberty,” “income equality,” or “leader” and see if it sounds like the future you really want in your Lifetime.  If you don’t feel the Bern then, good luck.

We are armed with the Ideas, People, and Money to win in our lifetimes today, the American promise of justice, equality and liberty, in our Lifetimes and  children’s Lifetimes, to come.  Another chance may not come again.  Don’t make the mistake we Boomers made after 1968 and 1972. 

Seize the Day.  Seize the Election.  Seize the Power.          

The Truth About Teachers Unions and Why the Indiana GOP Hates Them
by Teresa Kendall

1970s High School.

My first teaching job was the fall of 1977 in a small town in northern Indiana.  I was hired the same day as a nice young man, about my age (21).  He was a Social Studies teacher, I was Art.  This new guy was just down the hall from me.  He appeared to have the same number of students as I had; we both had extra duties before and after school.  He was married and a new dad, so he always left as soon as his contractual duties were done.  Being single, I had no other obligations at home, so I would stay an hour or two later and prepare for the next day.

Two weeks after the start of school I received my first pay check and I was excited.  In the late 70s it was hard to find a teaching job and I was as grateful as I was thrilled to be teaching and getting paid for it.  I can remember my summer meeting with the administration about the contract, and the odd phrase at the top near my name that described me as “a single female.”  But my name was on it and there was an amount that I didn’t quite comprehend and I signed.  With my first paycheck, I realized that not only was I making $5300 per year, but I was being paid less than my fellow hire, the man who was married with a kid.  The Social Studies teacher and I compared checks at lunch.  His salary of $7650 was over $2000 more than I made.   I taught at the school for one more week, but the reality of making $200 per week hit when I had no money to put gas in my car to drive to work and I resigned.

At the next school system I worked in, two women that became pregnant during the school year were made to leave.  That same school system fired a highly regarded female teacher for vague reasons, when it was revealed that she lived in the large neighboring city with a man and the two were not married.  Teacher friends, mostly women, have been fired for wearing slacks, having a part-time job at a bar, or dating a male colleague.  A fellow art major with me at ISU lost his job when a coach was hired and demanded the art position go to his wife.

All of this occurred in the late 70s and early 80s.  The teachers unions or “associations” as they were called then, didn’t have large numbers in the schools yet, and administrators were used to getting their way with teachers and their contracts.  By the mid-80s teachers and their unions were getting strong.  It was obvious that there were many inequities not only in pay, but in the treatment of teachers based on their subject matter, their age and their gender.  More union members meant schools had to correct the inequities and provide the type of educational environment that was beneficial to the teacher and the students.  Administrators railed against negotiating with union teachers, but their efforts brought about things such as, all teachers had to be licensed, and teach their certified subject (hard to believe, but I was made to teach a science class once in 1978).  Unions negotiated smaller class sizes, demanded that teachers be fully licensed in their subject area, that students have a daily recess and teachers get a half hour lunch.  Yes, we actually had to negotiate to get lunch. 

So fast forward 40 or so years and our state legislature is doing all they can to dismantle public education and break the teacher’s union all under the guise of fixing the teacher shortage.  The latest attack is HB 1004, a bill disguised as a way to fix the shortage, but in reality it is way to make one more deeper cut in the teacher’s union.  Not only does this bill change teacher retirement so that it will destroy the retirement system, but it allows for teachers to negotiate their own contract for higher pay outside of the union-bargained contract with a school corporation to fill subject areas of high demand.  And guess who pays for that higher salary – the teachers.  We all take a pay cut so a few can make some extra pay.

 

HB 1004 is not intended to do anything to entice teachers to come to work or stay in Indiana.  It is a tool to diminish the ISTA and AFT so that the state legislature can sell off our public schools and relieve them of any responsibility to educate our children.  Teachers’ unions advocate what is best for the school; teachers’ working conditions are the student’s learning conditions, so this is about more than money. 

There are state legislators that want to privatize public education.  The only thing standing in their way is the AFT, ISTA and a whole lot of parents and public education advocates.  The teacher’s union is not the bad guy, it is the delusional members of the legislature, mainly Bob Behning that will do anything, including destroying public schools, to dismantle the union.   Help stop HB1004, contact your legislator.  Don’t allow these people to take away your public school and your public school teachers.

THE BEST OF TIMES AND

THE WORST OF TIMES

By

Mike Kendall

Charles Dickens’ 19^th Century novel about London, Paris, reform, revolution, and justice, A Tale of Two Cities, speaks to our state’s 21^st Century politics, reform, and justice as if it were written yesterday.  “It was the best of times and it was the worst of times,” the novel begins.  Why?  Because the cause of liberty, fraternity, and equality was breaking out all over Europe and still tyranny, fear, and loathing were rife trying to impose the good cause by the evil Madame Guillotine. 

Today is our best of times and the worst of times.  Today the Senate Republican leadership lopped off the head of S.B. 344.  They said it was because there aren’t enough votes among 40 out of 50 Republican Senators to have any hope of passing this all-Republican-sponsored reform bill, voted out of committee with seven Republican votes.  They said a week ago it was the best of times because S.B.  344 would advance civil rights for lesbians, gays, and bisexuals.  It would advance religious freedom and matters of conscience for all people of good will.  And it would advance the reputation and esteem of Indiana nationally, showing ‘Hoosiers don’t have a prejudiced bone in their bodies.’  But today is our worst of times because the Republicans lack the ability to govern, the courage to lead, and 26 votes for reform, justice, and political comity.

The bill was amended in, and reported out of, a Republican-controlled committee last Wednesday night by a majority of  Senators and a minority of supporters who spoke and testified that S.B. 344 had serious problems but needed to advance to the floor of the Senate to allow a full, public debate by Senators representing all citizens of Indiana, the full airing of the still-conflicting views of the LGBT and religious community, an opportunity for developing a consensus, and second reading amendments from floor of the Senate.  No one who testified out of about 28 speakers, nor the bill’s sponsors, thought the existing bill was great.  22 people testified against the bill.  Six testified for it, critiqued it, and said let’s keep it moving and work more on it in Senate and eventually the House to improve it by further debate.  The Republican Chair of the hearing (Speaker Pro Tem Long), the bill’s sponsor, and the witness for Eli Lilly all supported this rationale, recognizing that only one person from the LGBT community testified in favor of the bill, one Republican Senator and four Democratic Senators voted against it, and 22 citizens and organizations representing the LGBT and religious communities testified against the bill. 

How, when, and why did the Republican Senate leadership, especially the Speaker Pro Tempore, come to the realization today it was the ‘worst of times’ in Indiana, because the bill was imperfect, unpopular, and in need of further change? Why did he guillotine his Republican vehicle this week because it was not likely to get 26 votes Wednesday, but supported putting the bill up for full Senate deliberation, debate, and amendment knowing full-well it was a bill in search of salvation the week before?  Instead, today, Tuesday, February 2^nd, 2016, he halted the democratic process of debate and consideration he himself put forward as the reason to swallow hard, keep the bill in play, and allow the people to decide how to improve it. 

The power of the people in Indiana moved our state through LGBT marriage rights, past a collision with RFRA I, hitched a ride on RFRA II, and to the open debate seeking resolution and comity on freedom of sexual orientation and identity with religious freedom.  The power of one Republican Senator, posing as a leader of  the one-party Republican rule in the Senate and a champion of personal and religious freedom and reform, thwarted the will of the people, rotted from within the underpinning of our elected, representative legislature, and ran from the duty his job demands. 

Dickens’ besotted hero and Barrister in A Tale of Two Cities cast aside his worldly cynicism for the life of an unrequited love by risking and ultimately losing his human life, but not his dignity and soul, saying before the guillotine, “It is a far, far better thing I do today than I have ever done before.”  The Speaker Pro Tempore of our Indiana Senate can still redeem his political soul without losing his human life by a far easier act requiring far less courage.  The Speaker Pro Tempore must    reconsider his abandonment of all he’s said for more than a year and promptly recant today’s cowardly betrayal of the power of the people.  The Republican leadership must move their imperfect bill, knowingly voted out of their committee, to a free debate in an imperfect legislature that is 80 percent Republican, in the hopes of improving sexual and religious rights as they promised in an imperfect world.

Don’t kick civil rights, religious freedom, sexual freedom, and reform to the curb, Mr. Speaker.  If you don’t recant, then it’s just going to be “the worst of times.”          

         

               

When is a Right not a Right?

By Mike Kendall

Is a theoretical right a real right if 90% of our citizens lack the economic ability to exercise that right?  Most liberal capitalists would say “yes” and all social democrats would say “no.”  This is the fundamental division in the American left.  Its origins go back to the late 19^th Century, and the division has grown broader and deeper since 1968-1974.  Both liberal capitalists and social democrats support the same theoretical political and civil rights.  They part company on whether economic opportunity is enough, or economic rights are essential to make the civil rights real.

The social democrats see no rights where the rich man and the poor man have equal rights to sleep under the bridge at night.  Words like “civil rights” and “constitutional rights” are dear to the traditional liberal and socialist alike, but unaccompanied by words like “income equality,”  “guaranteed living wage,” “wealth redistribution,” and “distributive justice” they are an illusion to the thinking of social democrats. Liberal capitalists support the protection and expansion of individual civil rights, but social democrats believe you can’t have meaningful civil rights and if you don’t have relative economic parity and economic justice.   

            There is an example in our own state among the left that illuminates the division.  Liberal capitalists are an enormous part of the LGBT coalition.  They and the social democrats both support amending Indiana’s Civil Rights Act to prohibit discrimination based upon sexual orientation.  However, the social democrats want the Act greatly strengthened as part of the amendment.  Merely including sexual orientation as a protected category will not provide any more substantive protection to LGBTs, nor raise an economic legal threat against discriminators, because the Indiana Act is toothless.  Merely adding sexual orientation to the Act’s protected categories will be a huge symbolic victory for the LGBT community.  However, it will have no life changing benefit for middle class and less prosperous LGBTs.  Not a single lesbian worker, gay wait staffer, bisexual retailer, or transgender person will be any better off than they are today.  It will only make the left feel good, the right feel bad, and the capitalist managerial class feel relieved.

            There are also examples in our nation.  The Supreme Court is more racially diverse and gender diverse than at any time in its history.  But it is not as jurisprudentially diverse and socially democratic as it was from the 1930’s to the 1970’s.  This summer it is poised to abolish the right of public sector unions to charge non-members money for representing them in collective bargaining about their jobs and terms of their employment, even where they are not charged for union funds spent on political matters.  In fact the union has to work for non-members and members alike to protect their free riders’ employment under the guise of free speech. 

Such a ruling is myopic and class biased.  Virtually the same justices disdain allowing shareholders to ask for money back or dividends awarded for their corporation’s use of the shareholders’ investment for political activity.  The straight-faced rationale—lawyers call it a “factual distinction”—are ‘it's easier to quit and find a new job in protest than it is to sell stock.’  This is a characteristic liberal capitalist position repugnant to every social democrat.  It reflects some justices’ view from Mt. Olympus where they hold life-time jobs, hire and fire at will, and put their investments in blind trusts.

            The left needs to stand for equality and liberty meaningful to those who are not rich.  The left should eschew self-identification with the more cultured, feted, affluent, and sophisticated social strata and class.  Cowboy capitalism’s free-market economics is protected and supported by, and intertwined with this class, in and out of government.       

            The liberal capitalist works very well with the conservative capitalist.    Corporate capitalist interests are advanced by social stability, especially if it produces political and economic acquiesance.  At the end of January, a group of eight U.S. Senators—four Republicans, three Democrats, and one Independent—introduced legislation to slow and complicate regulatory oversight of business and industry by federal agencies such as the Financial Protection Bureau, bank regulators,  and product, investor, environmental, and workplace, safety regulators.   The Democrats were Senators Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.), Mark Warner (D-Va.), and Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), and the “Independent” Angus King, Jr. (I-Ma.). 

            Social democrats believe the right of the LGBT community to invest, buy a home, or have a job is chimerical if the investment, home, job, and pay are unavailable to 90% of the LGBTs.  Such a right for 10% is a wrong for the 90% who lack the economic right to make it real.  Civil rights and economic rights together make Human Rights, the only real rights.

Poison
                  by Teresa Kendall

Poison.  Webster defines it as something such as an idea, emotion or situation that is very harmful. 

Poison has been in the news lately when it was discovered that the public water supply in Flint Michigan had been poisoned by Governor Rick Snyder’s appointees that run the city, decided to switch the water source from lake water from Detroit to river water in Flint.  This heavy-handed administrative policy approved by the Michigan Governor, despite warnings of possible lead poisoning caused by caustic river water, was ignored all for the sake of ideology.  Snyder is one of those reform types of politicians that seem to know what is best for people, provided they are poor and preferably a minority.  Even though he was made aware of the problem in February of 2015, nothing was done to correct the problem despite the cries of numbers of state staffers, the press, along with the Mayor and citizens of Flint.

Rick Snyder finally apologized for the mistake and has declared Flint a “man-made disaster”.  Man-made for the bad ideology based decisions that will take billions of dollars to fix for everything from an entire new water system to the long term care of all of the children who were poisoned- just so a politician could point to his “fiscal responsibility.”

Indiana has its own poison, a man-made disaster that is costing us billions.  Our public education system is being poisoned by the same kind of ideologues – politicians that implement heavy-handed top down mandates based on nothing more than the preferences of their wealthy donors.  The ones poisoning public education stretch from the state house to out of state billionaires looking to make a profit on the tax-payers backs.

The purveyors of this destruction start with Mitch Daniels’ budget cuts to education, and continue on with the Indiana State House Education Committee Chairman Bob Behning who has brought us unlimited private school vouchers that bleed funds from local school districts for students that have never even attended a public school;  and with Dennis Kruse, the Indiana State Senate Education Committee Chairman who along with Behning allowed “reforms” like forgiving loans to charter schools that fail, and changing laws that take away the powers of the elected State Superintendent.  And we can’t forget how much damage Mike Pence has brought to Indiana’s education system by loading the State Board of Education with charter school administrators and relatives of Republican House members, all so he can increase the number of charter schools that can be profit makers for his wealthy donors.  Pence brought the public school destruction to a new level by making ISTEP the “dumpster fire” that has been a complete waste of time and $24 million by insisting that the state continue with a flawed test that is no longer valid and will only brand schools and communities with a failing label that do not deserve. 

There is a long list of elected state officials that are leading the charge to take down our public schools such as Pence, Behning, and Kruse.  But there many Republican legislators along with a few Democrats that are responsible for enabling the destruction.  Legislators that pass laws to allow a private charter school company to take ownership of a public school building for one dollar; representatives that find it acceptable to cut educational funding for public schools, and then take even more from the public education budget to finance private schools.   State Senators that insist the state spend millions on testing but refuse to provide enough funding to allow public school kids to have art and music classes. 

Since Mitch Daniels started his destruction there have been 111 new laws passed that have poisoned public education.  It’s time we look at the damage and hold people responsible.  While both parties have had a hand in the reforms, the GOP has been the leader and they have to own it.  With low voter turnout, and uncontested elections, the Republican’s tight grip on the Statehouse will continue unless voters decide to stand up and make a change.  

It could take billions of dollars and decades to recover from the damage caused by these ideologues.  Let’s vote Pence, Behning and Kruse out of office.  Stop the poison.

Talkin’ ‘bout My Generation

 by Mike Kendall

  

  Many Americans of my Baby Boomer generation complained our political system offered no chance for choice or change.  We later opted for the illusion sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll was “The Revolution,” and material goods were the icing on the marijuana brownie. 

  Eligible voters today are even less persuaded they can effect change.  Election studies show those who don’t vote do not believe the election will effect local, state, or national governance change.  A canyon of futility, frustration, and indifference separates the weltanschauung s of voters and nonvoters.

  The eligible citizens who do not vote are such a large percentage of the electorate that we are ruled by tiny minority governments constituting about 12-14% of eligible voters.  Contrary to public pronouncements, the two dominant political parties in America have a vested interest in the turnout status quo.  Neither party knows what will happen if there is a significant, let alone a dramatic, shift in voter turnout.  

  

  The nonvoting majorities’ futility arises out of the structure of our single general election, two-party primary system.  Various viewpoints are cut out in the primaries leaving the chosen candidate closer to either party’s center.  In the general election slightly left of center and slightly right of center nominees’ move toward dead center.  The resulting choice is between conservative free market capitalism and liberal free market capitalism protecting those already powerful and protected. 

  The oligarchs are shielded by a global imperial foreign policy which requires a military larger than the rest of the world combined because of the shear geographical scope of our foreign policy commitments.  Its consumption and domination, combined with a tax structure that favors making money out of money rather than progress out of ideas, starves the scientific research, education, social programs, environmental correction, and infrastructure that is the long-term source of national wealth, health, power, and security. 

  Enter Bernie Sanders.  Sun Tzu said a successful, winning “leader must learn to sail against the wind” to win.  Bernie Sanders’ candidacy is the biggest threat to the establishment that runs this country since Robert F. Kennedy’s 1968 campaign.  The powers-that-be know it so they hide it by saying ‘Bernie ‘can’t win.’ 

  An Independent United States Senator from Vermont, he was elected on a platform of “democratic socialism.”  He is running for the Democratic Party’s Presidential nomination.  Bernie is tied with Hillary Clinton in the influential primary state of New Hampshire, hopes to also win Iowa, and is running second to her in many national and state opinion polls. 

  Thursday, November 19^th, he made an important speech comparable to and John F. Kennedy’s speech on Roman Catholicism in 1960 by tackling the electability of a self-proclaimed, “democratic socialist” head on.  The speech demonstrates what Mr. Sanders offers is unlike anything anyone else is offering:  Electability because he has the faith, courage, and skill “to sail against the wind.”

 

  Senator Sanders began and ended by declaring himself the heir to the successful, winning traditions and policies of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (elected President  four times) and Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. (who changed the face of equality in America), through their respective priorities of democratic socialism and social and democratic equality.  He made three major policy points that no one else running will declare:

·         The government bailouts of big business and banks, and the lack of any prosecutions of their executives was a form of state socialism propping up the wealthy.  Quoting Rev. King, Mr. Sanders echoed, “This country has socialism for the rich, and rugged individualism for the poor.”

·         Democratic socialism is not a soviet-style command economy and government ownership of the means of production but is a system where government provides the individual entitlements such as free public colleges, and $1 Trillion Dollars in infrastructure and public works.

·         He is not a pacifist and democratic socialism does not preclude war to protect our country, but only in self-defense, national interest, and as a last resort.

   Sanders hopes to win more voters by showing he, and his political philosophy of “democratic socialism,” are both sincere and electable.  He’s a leader who “means what he says and says what he means,” to paraphrase Dr. Seuss, “who will be faithful 100%” guarding our nest.

  How many times have we in our generation been offered no real choice, or settled and voted for the winnable candidate, thus failing to bring about change to prevent Viet Nam, Race Riots, Inequality, Poverty, Climate Change, the Iraq Wars, Afghanistan, and Assassinations 1, 2, and 3?  We should know better.  If we haven’t figured that out yet, we might actually “need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.”

  As one of the oldest of the Baby Boomers, I have made the same mistake and now I have learned from it.  “Don’t get fooled again.”  Feel the Bern.  If not now, when? 

If not now, “A Hard Rain’s Gonna’ Fall.”