The Democratic presidential debate: A million miles from American social reality
14 September 2019
The presidential debate held in Houston Thursday night was a three-hour demonstration of the vast distance between the Democratic Party and the American working class.
The debate was held only 48 hours before the contract expiration for 158,000 autoworkers, in the most important US manufacturing industry. It came only six weeks after the ouster of the governor of Puerto Rico, a US territory, after mass demonstrations of hundreds of thousands directed against the two-party political elite and the Wall Street banks.
But nowhere in the interminable event broadcast by ABC was there any discussion of the conditions of life of the class that comprises the vast majority of the population of the United States. The millionaires seeking the Democratic presidential nomination and the millionaire “journalists” like George Stephanopoulos and David Muir who moderated the event inhabit a different world than the broad mass of working people.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (left), and former Vice President Joe Biden speak Thursday during the Democratic presidential primary debate hosted by ABC at Texas Southern University [Credit: AP Photo/David J. Phillip]
There was zero discussion of the issue that is invariably described as the number one concern in opinion polls: jobs and the economy. There was no discussion of poverty and rising economic inequality. And while two major industries came in for demagogic attack—the health insurance giants and the drug companies—there was not the slightest criticism of the capitalist system.
Instead, there was the usual combination of demagogic promises, canned one-liners and mutual backstabbing, followed by vacuous rhetoric about the need for unity and the desire to serve the people—the baloney offered up in every election cycle. The purpose is to cover up the class realities in America: the capitalist class controls the two major parties, while the working class, the vast majority of the population, is politically disenfranchised. It is given a “choice” in the presidential election between two equally right-wing representatives of the corporate elite.
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders began the debate by declaring that he would “tell you what you don’t hear much about in Congress or in the media … this country is moving into an oligarchic form of society where a handful of billionaires control the economic and political life of this country.”
Perfectly true, but while Sanders claimed that “as president, I am prepared to take them on,” he was not even able to “take them on” at the debate in Houston. No other Democrat addressed the issue, and Sanders himself never returned to it.
Nor did the panel of questioners take it up. That silence is predictable given that ABC News is owned by the Walt Disney Company, a media conglomerate with nearly $60 billion in revenue and $12.6 billion in net profits last year.
Sanders acknowledges that the dominance of the super-rich represents a growing threat to democracy. Yet he claims that the mere election of a president named Bernie Sanders will transform American capitalism into a Garden of Eden. The lion will lie down with the lamb, and the oligarchy will meekly accept the enactment of policies that take trillions of their wealth to pay for universal health care, child care, free college tuition, and the elimination of student debt.
Sanders plays a specific role in the Democratic Party. He provides a left cover for this right-wing, corporate-controlled organization. His prominence in the presidential campaign is invariably cited as proof that the party has moved to the left, under conditions where the Democratic Party has become the favorite of both Wall Street and the military-intelligence apparatus.
Particularly since Trump entered the White House, the Democrats have tried to channel all popular opposition to the administration in a right-wing direction. This has taken the form of the anti-Russia campaign, which through bogus allegations that Trump is a Russian stooge has sought to generate popular support for a more aggressive assertion of American imperialist interests against Moscow in the Middle East, Central Asia, Ukraine and Eastern Europe.
In Thursday’s debate, this right-wing imperialist orientation dominated the brief discussion on foreign policy. There was much criticism of Trump’s trade war with China, but purely of a tactical character—poorly organized, erratic, impulsive, etc. There was full agreement that China is the main threat to US world domination and must be fought at all costs.
Former Housing Secretary Julian Castro called for the use of human rights issues as “leverage” against China, claiming that “millions of Uighurs” are “right now are being imprisoned and mistreated” in China. Particularly blunt were the comments of former Vice President Biden: “[W]e’re in a position where, if we don’t set the rules, we, in fact, are going to find ourselves with China setting the rules. And that’s why you need to organize the world to take on China …”
While all the candidates claimed that they would withdraw from Afghanistan—a worthless pledge they made in previous debates—there was silence on Trump’s ratcheting up of economic and military pressure on Iran, his arming of Saudi mass killing in Yemen, the continuing civil war in Syria, and the sharp turn to the right in Israel, including the Trump-Netanyahu policy of annexation of the Golan Heights and, likely after the Israeli elections, large parts of the West Bank.
As for Trump’s campaign of economic and political subversion of Venezuela, there was general support, with Sanders calling President Nicolas Maduro a “tyrant” and being criticized by Castro for not using the word “dictator.” Sanders, who in the 1980s postured as a friend of the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua, said nothing about the long history of Yankee imperialist intervention throughout Latin America.
The other noteworthy feature of Thursday’s debate was the effusive praise for the record of the Obama administration. Biden, of course, has made his role as vice president under Obama central to his campaign—in large measure to divert attention from his long and thoroughly reactionary record in the US Senate.
In previous debates there had been some criticism of the Obama record, particularly on immigration, but in Houston, every candidate gave at least one shout-out to Obama and pledged to continue the “progress” supposedly made during his eight years in office. Typical was Elizabeth Warren, who said, “We all owe a huge debt to President Obama, who fundamentally transformed health care in America and committed this country to health care for every human being.”
In reality, Obamacare was a bonanza for the insurance companies, designed with their input and backed by the drug companies and for-profit hospital chains. It was part of an overall policy of favoring Wall Street at the expense of working people: Obama bailed out the banks, without a single CEO being prosecuted, and forced through the restructuring of the auto industry with a 50 percent wage cut for new-hires, setting the standard for the rise of new slave-wage empires like Amazon. His foreign policy extended the warmongering of the Bush administration, adding US intervention in Libya, Syria and Yemen to the ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
None of the candidates could address the fact that it was the eight years of Obama that made President Donald Trump possible. Hillary Clinton ran in 2016 as the continuator of the Obama administration, the candidate of Wall Street and the military-intelligence apparatus, and significant sections of working people either turned to Trump in despair or refused to vote at all.
The Biden campaign, still in the lead according to opinion polls, is based on re-running the 2016 campaign and hoping that Trump has sufficiently alienated voters in a handful of key Midwestern states. Sanders and Warren argue for a dose of “left” demagogy to win votes, knowing full well that the Democratic congressional leadership and the ruling class as a whole will torpedo their reformist proposals.
At the end of the day, no matter who was nominated, what would a future Democratic Party administration look like? It would be right-wing, pursuing the specific foreign policy obsessions of the Democratic wing of the ruling elite, directed against Russia and elevating the danger of war with a nuclear-armed antagonist.
None of the candidates calls for sweeping cuts in the massive military budget or challenges the role of America as the global military superpower, entitled to deploy its forces to every continent.
None is willing to deal with the reality that no serious improvements can be made in living standards and social services for the masses of working people without taking control of the wealth that has been created by labor, but which is now in the hands of the ruling elite.
Neither Sanders nor any of the others calls for confiscating the wealth of the billionaires—not Warren’s “two percent” tax, which would never be collected—and taking control of the banks and major industries, placing them under the democratic control of working people so they produce for the common good, not private profit.
The Democratic Party cannot be the vehicle for such policies. It is no alternative to the ultra-right politics of Trump and the fascistic movement he is seeking to build up.
The Democrats, no less than the Republicans, are a party of big business and American imperialism. The political task facing the working class is to break with the whole corporate-controlled two-party system and build an independent political movement based on a socialist and internationalist program.
September 14, 2019
The Housing Solution Democrats Are Missing
The U.S. has been struggling with a shortage of affordable housing for years, and the situation becomes more fraught every day. In fact, it’s one of the only things that Democratic presidential hopefuls can seem to talk about, though few have any real ideas beyond declaring housing a human right and then blocking development that would make it more accessible. None seem to be willing to admit that President Trump’s strategies surrounding housing -- specifically, his regulatory moves to eliminate barriers to new construction -- are the only meaningful way to resolve the situation.
An Overwhelming Rental Shortage
In order to properly address the affordable housing crisis, the first step is to get at the root of the problem. In this case, there are several major problems, but the most important is the overall lack of available rental units. According to a report by the National Low Income Housing Coalition, the United States has a shortage of 7 million affordable rentals targeting extremely low-income tenants, and not a single state has enough to meet demand. Furthermore, because of a lack of construction workers, there also aren’t enough professionals to build new units, at least not under current financial and legal structures.
Without enough construction workers, investing more into renovating old buildings could help meet demand, but that will only go so far. Modified older buildings with their fresh polish are unlikely to come with low enough rents to actually serve as affordable housing. Instead, they’d likely attract wealthier tenants, raising rents in a given area, rather than driving them down as intended. Tiny homes have also been proposed as an option for low-income communities, but there are actually extraordinary amounts of red tape surrounding these units and most are more expensive than they should be, based on available amenities; they should be considered a solution of last resort.
Focusing on Consistent Funds
Another element that needs to be taken into account in order to address the affordable housing crisis is how the low-income population that would live in these properties will pay the rent. Housing ceases to be considered affordable once it consumes more than 30% of a household’s income, which is unrealistic for the lower-income households in many markets.
One possibility for ensuring tenants get paid for their properties is the Section 8 housing program. If more landlords choose to enter the Section 8 program, that would increase their access to government funds to cover costs and could even encourage development. What it wouldn’t do is help make people responsible for their own housing. Increasing development, on the other hand, could naturally drive market prices down, encouraging tenants to be independent. Just as we don’t want to welcome immigrants who are just going to become a “public charge” down the line, we also don’t want to build housing for people who won’t be able to live in it. We need to allow natural market forces to regulate all factors, including rents and wages.
The Regulation Trap
Another major problem with the Democratic proposals for solving the housing crisis is just how much regulation and red tape these plans would put in the path of any project. Even at current regulatory levels, 25% of new construction costs are purely regulatory. More red tape means more expenses, and those higher costs have to be passed on to consumers, or else they become the responsibility of taxpayers who already cover their own housing costs. Those taxpayers shouldn’t face a double burden because Democrats want to make housing more expensive.
Regulatory costs tend to be higher in cities where there’s also less buildable land, so building more affordable housing may mean reorganizing populations into more affordable regions. Midwestern states could benefit from the economic stimulus brought about by new development, the jobs would be an ideal fit for a region losing industrial jobs, and more people moving to the region could reinvigorate the area’s economy. It makes much more sense to feed a natural economic cycle than to create an artificial one and worsen problems. Housing costs are too high in many rural counties, yet no one ever talks about how the crisis shapes these communities or how they could be helped by new construction.
The Rent Is Too Damn High
President Trump has always had an eye on rural America and its needs, while Democrats treat that part of the country as though it doesn’t exist -- only cities seem to matter. By rethinking where we need new housing, how to finance it so that it’s self-sustaining, and how to build it with less red tape, we can meet the demands of the affordable housing crisis. The economy is strong right now, but after years of declining manual labor jobs, now is the perfect time to reinvigorate them, boost employment among the lowest earning groups, and help them pay market rents. A rising tide lifts all boats -- building affordable housing could be America’s rising tide.
Xavier Becerra breaks the
news, files suit against Trump administration public-charge rule.
August
19, 2019
More than 22 million
people are illegally present in the United States, according to a recent study
by scholars at MIT and Yale. Pew Research pegged the figure at 11 million, and for years
it stood as the official count for media and government. It now emerges that 11
million is more like the number illegally present in California alone.
“California is home to
over 10 million immigrants,” reads a chart displayed by California attorney
general Xavier Becerra and governor Gavin Newsom as they announced a lawsuit against the Trump administration’s public-charge rule.
“Immigrants,” is California code for “illegals,” a term the state’s ruling
class has banned. As Rachel Bovard notes at American Greatness, even a legal
immigrant’s ability “to stay off the welfare system must be taken into account
when considering qualifications for a green card.”
California heaps welfare
benefits on those illegally present, including nearly $100 million for health care in the recent budget. Many of those 10 million illegals
came to California specifically to get those taxpayer-funded benefits. It
disturbs Becerra and Newsom that this disqualifies the recipients from any
future legal status, but there’s more to it. As attorney Madison Gesiotto explains in The Hill, voting must also be taken
into account.
“Voting as an illegal
alien in federal elections is a crime punishable by fine, imprisonment,
deportation, or inadmissibility.” According to a State Department investigation, false-documented illegals have been voting in federal,
state and local elections for decades. In 1996, illegals cast 784 votes against Republican Robert Dornan in a congressional race
Democrat Loretta Sanchez won by only 984 votes.
If Newsom and Becerra are
certain that more than 10 million people illegally reside in the state, they
doubtless know how many voted in 2016. Trouble is, California Secretary of
State Alex Padilla refused to release any voter information to a federal voter-fraud
probe.
Back in 2015, Padilla
told the Los Angeles Times, “At the latest, for the 2018 election
cycle, I expect millions of new voters on the rolls in the state of
California,” with “new voters” code for ineligible voters. True to form, by
March, 2018, more than one million “undocumented” immigrants received driver’s licenses from the state Department of
Motor Vehicles, which automatically registered them to vote under the “Motor
Voter” program.
Padilla is now claiming
that only six “California residents” were erroneously added to voter rolls for 2018, that it
was all due to DMV errors, and that none was guilty of “fraudulently voting or
attempting to vote.” To paraphrase John Goodman in The Big Lebowski,
this is what happens when the governor’s own department of finance, not the
official state auditor, investigates the DMV.
In reality, California
officials know full well how many non-citizens voted in 2016 and 2018. With
more than 10 million illegals in the state, the ballpark figure of one million
illegal voters is probably low. In California, illegals are the Democrats’
electoral college, and the Democrats reward them with welfare benefits and
protection from deportation through sanctuary laws. This raises another issue.
Illegals’ use of welfare
benefits and practice of voting in federal elections disqualifies them from
legal residency and citizenship. This makes for a permanent group of more than
10 million foreign nationals in California alone. In these conditions, Congress
should start pushing back.
Public officials who
apportion taxpayer-funded benefits for foreign nationals should be required to
register as agents of the governments of those foreign nationals. The primary
candidates would be the governments of Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, which Gavin Newsom visited before he had even toured his own state.
State and federal
governments should also bill the foreign governments for welfare, medical,
education and incarceration costs. Some of this could be alleviated by a
tax on remissions, such as the 33.4 billion Mexicans
abroad sent back last year. That amount is impossible without massive
inputs from U.S. taxpayers. Legitimate citizens and legal immigrants have no
obligation to relieve foreign governments of responsibility for their own
citizens.
Meanwhile, as Rachel
Bovard also notes, the Trump administration’s new rule only updates a 1996 law
proclaiming “inadmissible” those aliens likely to become a public charge. The
law was supported by Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Joe Biden and other leading
Democrats. The Trump administration measure gives more definition to what
constitutes a welfare benefit, food stamps, Medicaid, public housing assistance
and such. Those benefits are all for legitimate citizens and legal immigrants
but Bovard cites Census data showing that 63 percent of non-citizens use the
welfare system.
Those who thought there
were only 11 million illegals nationwide were mistaken. Thanks to Jerry Brown
crony Gavin Newsom, and Xavier Becerra, once on Hillary Clinton’s short list as
a running mate, Americans now understand that “more than 10 million” illegally
reside in California alone, and that might understate the figure.
The MIT-Yale estimate
ranges as high as 29.1 million nationwide, more than the population of Australia, with 25,088,636 and a veritable occupation. To all but the willfully
blind, politicians have abandoned the rule of law, and made false-documented
illegals a protected, privileged class.
This is how a nation loses
its sovereignty.
Census Bureau:
Immigration Driving Half of
U.S. Population Growth
JOHN
BINDER
2:43
Immigration to
the United States is now driving nearly half of all population growth in the
country instead of increased birth rates, the U.S. Census Bureau finds.
The latest Census Bureau
estimates on the U.S. population reveal that about 48.5 percent of all
population growth is driven by the country’s mass illegal and legal immigration
policy, where more than 1.5 million foreign nationals are admitted to the
country every year.
(Axios)
Axios analysis by Stef Knight details the growing share to which
immigration is increasingly driving population growth across the U.S. Since
2011, for example, the level to which immigration has accounted for overall
population growth has increased more than 13 percent.
According to the Wall
Street Journal analysis, about nine percent of U.S. counties
are growing solely because of immigration.
This concludes that about nine percent of counties have regional birth rates
that do not exceed the annual number of deaths in the area.
Similarly, the Wall
Street Journal notes, more than half of all population growth in
states like Florida, Ohio, Virginia, Kansas, and Michigan, among others, is
because of immigration.
Though pundits have
claimed that the country’s admittance of 1.2 million legal immigrants a year is
necessary to increase birth rates, researchers have found that the growth of
the immigrant population has little impact on birth rates.
Center for Immigration
Studies Director of Research Steven Camarota discovered in his latest study this year that
“immigrant fertility has only a small impact on the nation’s overall birth
rate,” citing that immigrants in the U.S. raise the nation’s birth rate for all
women by two births per 1,000 women.
“Immigration has a minor
impact because the difference between immigrant and native fertility is too
small to significantly change the nation’s overall birth rate,” Camarota noted
in the study.
At current legal
immigration levels, the U.S.
population is set to hit an unprecedented 404
million residents by 2060 — including a foreign-
born population of 69 million.
The U.S. does not have
to rapidly increase its total
resident population and foreign-born population,
as legal immigration moratoriums have
arrivals to properly assimilate to American life.
Halting all immigration to the country would
stabilize the population to a comfortable 329
million residents in the next four decades.
John Binder is a
reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
OF COURSE,
THEY REALLY HAVE NO IDEA HOW MANY HAVE JUMPED OUR BORDERS!
“Between 2005 and 2017, chain
migration, alone, brought nearly 10 million foreign nationals to the U.S.”
As Breitbart News reported, though non-U.S.
citizens represent just seven percent of the total U.S. population, they
accounted for 15 percent of all federal arrests and 15 percent of all
prosecutions for non-immigration related crimes in 2018. This indicates that
non-U.S. citizens were about 2.3 times as likely to be arrested or prosecuted
for non-immigration related crimes.
For non-immigration offenses, the total of federal arrests for
non-U.S. citizens between 1998 and 2018 increased nearly eight percent, and
between 2017 and 2018 rose almost ten percent.
Non-U.S. citizens were most likely to be prosecuted for illegal
re-entry, that is illegal aliens who have been previously deported, drugs,
fraud, alien smuggling, and misuse of visas.
A 2018 Government Accountability
Office (GAO) report discovered nearly all
illegal and legal immigrants in U.S. federal prisons are from Mexico, Honduras,
El Salvador, the Dominican Republic, Colombia, and Guatemala.
Between 2010 and 2015, the average annual cost to incarcerate
criminal illegal and legal immigrants slightly decreased — as the criminal
alien population slightly decreased as well — from $1.56 billion to about $1.42
billion. That cost is paid for by American taxpayers who are forced to offset
the costs of mass immigration to the country.
Every year, the U.S. admits more
than 1.5 million foreign nationals, with the overwhelming majority arriving
through the process known as “chain migration,” whereby newly
naturalized are able to bring an unlimited number of foreign relatives to the
country. Between 2005 and 2017, chain migration, alone,
brought nearly 10 million foreign nationals to the U.S.
John
Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
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