California Democrats failed to pass any major police reforms before the end of the legislative session despite having supermajorities in both houses of the state legislature, adjourning early Tuesday morning with little to show.
The San Francisco Chronicle reported :
Legislators did not advance a spate of policing bills introduced following nationwide protests over racial inequality after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody.
The most far-reaching proposal, SB731 by Sen. Steven Bradford, D-Gardena (Los Angeles County), sought to strip badges from police officers who break the law and eliminate their legal immunity for killing a suspect.
…
A separate measure to open up investigative records about police misconduct, SB776 by Sen. Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley, also died when the Senate adjourned without giving it final approval. The bill would have made public the records for complaints of excessive force, sexual assault, dishonesty on the job, discrimination or wrongful arrests and searches.
The Chronicle blamed “tensions” among legislators, as well as the difficulty of operating during the coronavirus. Laurel Rosenhall of CalMatters.org wrote that “even as the nation roiled after a Minneapolis police officer killed George Floyd — and lawmakers introduced several bills in response — advocacy inside the statehouse largely withered. Activists filled the streets but couldn’t fill the Capitol.”
In Washington, Democrats killed efforts at bipartisan police reform when Senate Democrats filibustered a bill proposed by Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), refusing to allow it to be debated on the floor.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor- at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). His new book, RED NOVEMBER , tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak .
The
selection of Kamala Harris and the degradation of American politics
13 August 2020
With the selection of Kamala Harris to be the running mate
of Joe Biden, the framework of the 2020 elections has been set. As was to be
expected, the Democrats have chosen the most right-wing candidates to run the
most right-wing campaign possible.
There is a certain inevitability to the
choice of Harris. In July of last year,—based on a survey of who would be the
worst, most reactionary and at the same time most suitable choice for second
spot on the Democratic Party ticket— predicted that Harris would most likely be
named the vice presidential candidate if she failed to win the nomination. She
had all the ruthlessness, narcissism and careerism requisite for the job, plus
the ethnic background to suit the Democrats’ obsession with racial and gender
identity.
Kamala Harris is a dyed-in-the wool political reactionary.
This year has seen mass demonstrations throughout the
country in response to the police murder of George Floyd. As a direct result of
the policies of the ruling class, nearly 170,000 people have died to date in
the coronavirus pandemic, with the daily death toll now at more than 1,000.
There is growing anger in workplaces over the homicidal back-to-work campaign
and broad opposition among teachers to the efforts to reopen the schools. Tens
of millions of people are unemployed, and they have been cut off from federal
benefits and face being evicted from their homes.
In the midst of this monumental political, economic and
social crisis, and against the backdrop of so much suffering, the American
people are to be offered the “choice” between the fascistic Trump, the conman
from New York, and a Democratic Party ticket headed by a corporate shill from
Delaware and an ex-prosecutor from California. This says everything about the
degraded state of American politics.
Following the announcement by Biden on Tuesday, the media
leapt into action with its nauseating effusion of state propaganda. The
selection of Harris has been universally proclaimed to be “historic,” a
watershed moment.
In terms of her politics, there is clearly nothing
“historic” about Harris. As district attorney in San Francisco (2004-2011),
attorney general in California (2011-2017), and, finally, US senator (2017 to
the present), Harris has compiled a track record of backing the police , locking
up workers and immigrants, covering up for the banks and supporting militarism
and war.
Wall Street is certainly happy with the
choice. “A VP pick that big business can back,” ran a headline on the inside
pages of the New York Times . As for the military, its main
concern is what will happen if the aging Biden doesn’t make it through a full
term. Since the beginning of the Trump administration, opposition from the
Democratic Party has been focused on issues of foreign policy. Harris, who has
no other agenda than her own self-promotion, will be silly putty in the hands
of the military-intelligence apparatus.
The “historic” character of the Harris nomination is
premised entirely on her race and gender. She would be the “first
African-American vice president,” the “first Asian-American vice president” and
the “first female vice president.” She already is the “first Black woman on the
national ticket of the Democrats or Republicans.” Everything is about the
symbolism involved in the choice of Harris, with not a word about the program
of a Democratic Party administration.
As if any of this makes a bit of difference for workers,
whatever their race, gender or ethnicity. As if, moreover, the world has not
already had the example of Obama, not to mention Clarence Thomas, Condoleezza
Rice, Susan Rice, Hillary Clinton and many others.
The selection of Harris exposes the utterly reactionary
character of politics that bases itself on race, gender and other forms of
identity—anything but class. In response to the eruption of protests against
police violence, the Democrats did everything they could to obscure the class
issues, promote racial divisions and propagate the lie that the violence of the
police is an expression of the oppression of “black America” by “white
America.” The outcome of this racialist campaign is the selection as their
vice-presidential candidate of a right-wing ex-prosecutor who once covered up
evidence to keep an innocent man on death row and worked to tear immigrant children
from their parents.
Those invested in the racialist campaign
have jumped on the bandwagon to declare the selection of Harris “historic.”
Ibram Kendi, author of How to Be An Antiracist and one of
the chief inspirers of the New York Times ’ 1619 Project, wrote on
Twitter that “the Democrats now have a presidential ticket that reflects the
American people better than the GOP ticket and every presidential ticket in US
history.”
According to Kendi, politicians “reflect” the American
people not because of the socioeconomic forces they represent, but solely by
their racial and ethnic background and their gender. Interests are determined
by race. This is not progressive politics, but right-wing and racialist
politics, which shares much in common with the fascistic politics of Donald
Trump.
Black Lives Matter activist Shaun King wrote that he was
“incredibly proud to see a brilliant Black woman, and HBCU [historically black
colleges and universities] grad, chosen as a vice presidential nominee.” This
was, he added, the stuff “dreams are made of.”
Commenters on Twitter quickly pointed to the contrast
between this statement and his declaration in November 2018 that he would never
support Biden or Harris because “they both helped build & advance mass
incarceration.”
Political principles have never been a strong suit of
Democratic Party hacks. They look forward to positions within the Biden
administration and other opportunities that will reap financial rewards.
Then there is Bernie Sanders. In the Democratic Party primaries,
Sanders won widespread support for his attacks on social inequality and his
calls for a “political revolution” against the establishment. On this basis, he
emerged as the main contender against Biden for the Democratic Party
nomination. In the end, however, the “Sanders wing” of the Democratic Party got
nothing.
BLOG EDITOR: SANDERS ALSO ENDORSED
BANKSTER-OWNED CROOK ON THE LAM, HILLARY CLINTON!
This has not, however, stopped Sanders from praising the
outcome. Sanders tweeted that Harris “will make history as our next vice
president.”
Since packing in his campaign in mid-March, Sanders has
assumed his assigned role as principal cheerleader for the Biden campaign,
along with Elizabeth Warren, et. al. The more that social anger grows, and the
more the Democrats are exposed, the more determined is his support for the
Democratic Party.
What an exposure of the Democratic
Socialists of America (DSA), Jacobin magazine and other
political agents of the Democratic Party who claimed that Sanders was the path
to the transformation of American politics and even the realization of
socialism! They make fools of themselves every election. They will tag along
with the Democratic Party in one form or another, no doubt accompanied by talk
about how they are building a “progressive movement” inside that party of
American imperialism, along with other varieties of political fraud. Every four
years, the same play is performed.
There is something incredibly degrading and shameful about
the whole process, testifying to the intellectual and cultural collapse of
American politics.
Certain conclusions must be drawn from this experience, not
only about Sanders, but about an entire type of pragmatic politics that hopes
for easy answers to the crisis confronting the working class without a direct
challenge to capitalism and its state apparatus.
The politics of the working class must begin with a serious
theoretical understanding, rooted in a Marxist and class analysis. The
Democratic Party is a party of Wall Street and the military-intelligence
apparatus. The politics of race and gender identity, which it relentlessly
promotes, gives expression to the interests of layers of the upper-middle
class, which employ this right-wing ideology in their fight for positions of
power and privilege in the state, academia and corporate boardrooms. The
pseudo-left, including the DSA and associated organizations, represent this
social layer.
All of this is directed against the
working class and the development of a genuine movement for socialism. Objective
conditions, however, have created the conditions for a powerful eruption of
class struggle, in the United States and internationally. The coronavirus
pandemic, as the Socialist Equality Party has explained , is a “trigger event
in world history that is accelerating the already far-advanced economic,
social, and political crisis of the world capitalist system.”
Nothing progressive will emerge except through the
intervention—the interference—of the working class. The Socialist Equality
Party and our election campaign are oriented to the development of a socialist
leadership in the working class. Our campaign is the only campaign that raises
critical questions of perspective, exposing the reactionary promoters of racial
conflict and the cheerleaders of Sanders’ “political revolution.”
The SEP is spearheading the organization of workers against
the homicidal policy of the ruling elite, in opposition to all factions of the
ruling class, on the basis of a revolutionary program to put an end to
inequality, war, dictatorship and the capitalist system. This is the way
forward.
To support our election
campaign and join the SEP, visit socialism2020.org .
Joseph Kishore—SEP candidate for US president
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