Tag Archives: Senator Bernie Sanders

Striking For A Fair Deal

Posted on by under Economic issues, Law and justice, Political commentary, Social commentary

Most of the time I find that my views are very closely aligned with those of Senator Bernie Sanders, a self-described democratic-socialist.  I would like to share with you Bernie’s latest OpEd in The Guardian about the potentially upcoming autoworker’s strike and why we should all support the union.

The United Auto Workers may soon strike. Every American should support them

Workers at the big three carmakers earn less now in real dollars than they did 15 years ago – as their CEOs make more and more. Their fight is everyone’s fight

By U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders

12 September 2023

In the United States today, at a time of unprecedented income and wealth inequality, weekly wages for the average American worker are actually lower than they were 50 years ago after adjusting for inflation. In other words, despite a massive increase in worker productivity, despite CEOs now making nearly 400 times more than what their employees earn, despite record-breaking corporate profits, dividends and stock buybacks, average American workers are worse off than they were 50 years ago.

That morally grotesque and growing inequality is exactly what has been occurring in the automobile industry for decades. This time, however, under new union leadership, the members of the United Auto Workers (UAW) are fighting back. If the big three automakers (General Motors, Ford and Stellantis) do not provide reasonable contracts to address longstanding inequities in the industry, there will be a strike – and all of us should support the strikers.

The UAW members will be fighting not only for themselves but against a corporate culture of arrogance, cruelty and selfishness causing massive and unnecessary pain for the majority of working families throughout the country. Their fight against corporate greed is our fight. Their victory will resonate all across the economy, impact millions of workers from coast to coast and help create a more just and equitable economy.

What are some of the issues that are pushing UAW members to strike? At the top of the list is the extraordinary level of corporate greed shown by industry leaders.

In the first half of 2023 the big three automakers made a combined $21bn in profits – up 80% from the same time period last year. Over the past decade, these same companies made some $250bn in profits in North America alone.

Yet last year, the big three spent $9bn – not to improve the lives of their workers, not to make their factories safer, but on stock buybacks and dividends to make their wealthy executives and stockholders even richer.

Further, while many of their workers are struggling to survive financially, last year the CEO of General Motors raked in about $29m in total compensation, the CEO of Ford approximately $21m and the CEO of Stellantis over $25m.

Incredibly, over the last four years, CEO pay at the big three has increased by more than 40%.

While auto industry CEOs and stockholders make out like bandits, the workers who build the vehicles earn totally inadequate wages and, over the last several decades, have fallen further and further behind. There was once a time when a union job in the automobile industry was the gold standard for the working class of this country. Those days are long gone.

The average starting wage at the big three today is around $17 an hour – less than a number of non-union auto plants around the country. The top wage is $32.32 an hour. Unbelievably, over the last 20 years, the average wage for American autoworkers has decreased by 30% after adjusting for inflation. The reality is that autoworkers at the big three are earning less today than they did 15 years ago.

What the UAW is fighting for is not radical. It is the totally reasonable demand that autoworkers, who have made enormous financial sacrifices over the past 40 years, finally receive a fair share of the record-breaking profits their labor has generated.

What does that mean? It means that if the big three can afford to give a pay raise of more than 40% to their CEOs, they should be able to provide the same type of pay raise for the autoworkers who make their products.

And let’s be clear. While decent wages are a key demand for the UAW, there are other important contract changes that the union has proposed.

The union, quite appropriately, wants to get rid of the two-tier system under which newer workers earn lower wages and receive less generous benefits than others doing the same exact work. They want to end the use of “temporary workers” who are ruthlessly exploited and treated like second-class citizens.

They want to make sure that all autoworkers receive a decent pension plan and retiree health benefits so that they can retire with the respect and the dignity they deserve.

They want to make sure that autoworkers have the right to strike when the big three announce that they will be shutting down a plant. Over the past 20 years, the big three have shut down 65 factories and shipped tens of thousands of jobs overseas where they can pay workers starvation wages with no benefits.

The union also wants to make sure, as the industry proposes to build 10 new electric vehicle battery plants, that the workers in these plants become part of the UAW and receive the same wages and benefits as union members.

As we transition away from fossil fuels and move toward electric vehicles in the fight to combat the climate crisis, the UAW wants to make sure that the green jobs of the future are well-paying, union jobs.

The CEOs of the big three and their masters on Wall Street must understand they cannot have it all. Decade after decade their greed has decimated the middle class, hollowed out communities throughout our country and caused massive economic suffering for the working class of America. These CEOs have created a destructive race to the bottom in a global quest for cheap labor and lax environmental standards.

Enough is enough! Let us stand together to put an end to corporate greed and start rebuilding our struggling middle class. Let us stand in solidarity with the UAW and create an economy that works for all, not just the privileged few.

Skewed Priorities?

Posted on by under Economic issues, education, Environmental Issues, Law and justice, Political commentary, Social commentary

When Bernie Sanders speaks of social issues, of education, childcare, poverty, etc., I nearly always agree with him.  You see, Bernie is labelled a ‘socialist’, as if it were some sort of a bad thing, and many have been indoctrinated to back away from anything that even remotely speaks of equality, of social welfare issues.  In an OpEd in The Guardian today, Bernie makes known his views on the latest defense spending budget … and he makes a good deal of sense with what he says.  We have heard of the ludicrous additions to the defense spending bill that would discriminate against women and LGBTQ people in the military, and those were enough to make me hope this bill does not pass, but Bernie gives even more cause to question the bill …

The Pentagon doesn’t need $886bn. I oppose this bloated defense budget

As a nation, the time is long overdue for fundamental changes to our national priorities

By Senator Bernie Sanders

24 July 2023

The US Senate is now debating an $886bn defense authorization bill. Unless there are major changes to the bill, I intend to vote against it. Here’s why.

As everyone knows, our country faces enormous crises.

As a result of climate change our planet is experiencing unprecedented and rising temperatures. Along with the rest of the world, we need to make major investments to transform our energy system away from fossil fuels and into more efficient and sustainable energy sources, or the life we leave our kids and future generations will become increasingly unhealthy and precarious.

Our health care system is broken. While the insurance companies and the pharmaceutical industry make hundreds of billions in profit, 85 million Americans are uninsured or underinsured, our life expectancy is declining, and we have a massive shortage of doctors, nurses, mental health practitioners and dentists.

Our educational system is teetering. While we have one of the highest rates of childhood poverty of almost any major country, millions of parents cannot find affordable and quality childcare. The number of our young people who graduate from college is falling behind many other countries and 45 million Americans are struggling under the weight of student debt.

Our housing stock is totally inadequate. While gentrification is causing rents to soar in many parts of our country some 600,000 Americans are homeless, and 18 million are spending more than half of their limited incomes on housing.

These are some of the crises our country faces. And we’re not dealing with them.

And then there is defense spending. Well, that’s a whole other story. The proposed military budget that the Senate is now debating would increase defense spending by $28bn to over $886bn, an all-time record. The total is over $900bn if you include nuclear weapons spending through the Department of Energy.

I will oppose this bloated defense budget and efforts to further increase military spending through a defense supplemental for three main reasons.

First, more military spending is unnecessary. The $886bn in defense spending agreed in the debt ceiling deal matches the Pentagon’s budget request and is more than sufficient to protect the United States and our allies. The United States spends more than three times what China spends on its military. This record high defense spending would come in spite of the end of the war in Afghanistan and despite the fact that the United States spends more on the military than the next 10 countries combined, most of whom are allies.

Second, the Pentagon cannot keep track of the dollars it already has, leading to massive waste, fraud and abuse in the sprawling military-industrial complex. The Pentagon accounts for about two-thirds of all federal contracting activity, obligating more money every year than all civilian federal agencies combined. Yet the Department of Defense (DOD) remains the only major federal agency that cannot pass an independent audit. Last year, the department was unable to account for over half of its assets, which are in excess of $3.1tn. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) reports that DOD still cannot accurately track its finances or post transactions to the correct accounts. Each year, auditors find billions of dollars in the Pentagon’s proverbial couch cushions; in fiscal year 2022, Navy auditors found $4.4bn in untracked inventory, while the air force identified $5.2bn worth of variances in its general ledger. A serious effort to address this waste should be undertaken before Congress throws more money at the Pentagon.

Third, much of this additional military spending will go to line the pockets of hugely profitable defense contractors – it is corporate welfare by a different name. Almost half of the Pentagon budget goes to private contractors, some of whom are exploiting their monopoly positions and the trust granted them by the United States to line their pockets. Repeated investigations by the DOD inspector general, the GAO and CBS News have uncovered numerous instances of contractors massively overcharging DOD, helping boost these companies’ profits to nearly 40% – and sometimes as high as 4,451% – while costing US taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. TransDigm, Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Raytheon are among the offenders, dramatically overcharging the taxpayer while reaping enormous profits, seeing their stock prices soar and handing out massive executive compensation packages. Last year, Lockheed Martin received $46bn in unclassified federal contracts, returned $11bn to shareholders through dividends and stock buybacks, and paid its CEO $25m a year. TransDigm, the company behind the 4,451% markup, touted $3.1bn in profits on $5.4bn of net sales, almost boasting to investors about just how fully it was fleecing the taxpayer. The fact that a share of the profits from these lucrative contracts will flow back to the congressional backers of higher defense budgets in the form of campaign contributions – America’s unique system of legalized bribery – makes the whole situation even more unconscionable.

Let’s be clear. Defending the American people is not only about pouring money into the Pentagon. It’s about making sure our children go to good schools and will have a habitable planet when they get older. It’s about making sure that every American has a decent standard of living and can enjoy quality health care and affordable housing.

As a nation, the time is long overdue for fundamental changes to our national priorities. Cutting military spending is a good first step.

While Congress seems all too willing to hand over nearly a trillion dollars to the military, We the People will have to fight tooth-and-nail to keep them from cutting our Social Security & Medicare, to get funding for climate change, schools, helping the poor, and more.  Something seems wrong here … very wrong.

Time To Move Into The 21st Century!

Posted on by under Economic issues, Environmental Issues, History, Law and justice, Political commentary, Racism & Bigotry, Social commentary

One of the biggest disgraces of this nation is that the federal minimum wage rate has not been raised since July 2009 – fourteen years, during which time the overall cost of living has increased by more than 23% and the cost of housing by 47% in the same time frame.  Republicans in Congress have repeatedly refused to budge on raising the minimum wage.  Why?  Well, for one thing their biggest donors are wealthy corporations whose profits might be slightly reduced if they had to actually pay a living wage to the people who are doing all the work!

Senator Bernie Sanders wrote an OpEd for The Guardian that sums it all up better than I ever could …

We must raise the minimum wage to a living wage

In the richest country on earth, if you work 40 hours a week you shouldn’t have to live in poverty

Bernie Sanders

17 April 2023

Congress can no longer ignore the needs of the working class of this country. At a time of massive and growing income and wealth inequality and record-breaking corporate profits, we must stand up for working families – many of whom are struggling every day to provide a minimal standard of living for their families.

One important way to do that is to raise the federal minimum wage to a living wage. In the year 2023, nobody in the US should be forced to work for starvation wages. It should be a basic truism that in the US, the richest country on earth, if you work 40 hours a week you do not live in poverty. Raising the minimum wage is not only the right thing to do morally. It is also good economics. Putting money into the hands of people who will spend it on basic needs is a strong economic stimulant.

When over 60% of American workers are now living paycheck to paycheck, when the life expectancy of low-income Americans is in decline, when we have the highest rate of childhood poverty of almost any major country, we can no longer tolerate a federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, a wage that has not been raised since 2009. Incredibly, the federal minimum wage has lost over 27% of its purchasing power since it was last raised 14 years ago. That is unacceptable. Millions of Americans cannot be allowed to fall further and further behind economically, unable to afford the housing, food, healthcare, childcare and education they desperately need in order to live in health and dignity.

Whether they are greeting us at Walmart, serving us hamburgers at McDonald’s, providing childcare for our kids or waiting on our table at a diner in rural America, there are too many Americans trying to survive and raise families on $9, $10 or $12 an hour. It cannot be done. This injustice must end. Low-income workers need a pay raise and the American people want them to get that raise.

Poll after poll shows overwhelming support for raising the minimum wage to a living wage. But it’s not just polls. In 2021, the Democratic majority in the US House of Representatives voted to increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour. The bad news is that we lacked the votes to pass this legislation through the equally divided Senate. Not only did a $15-an-hour minimum wage bill fail to win the vote of a single Republican in the Senate, eight Democrats voted against it as well.

That was then. Now is now. And things are changing. As a result of years of congressional inaction, cities and states all across the country are taking the low-wage crisis into their own hands and raising their minimum wage. Some are doing it through legislative action. Others are doing it through ballot initiatives.

Since 2013, the people of 12 states – New Jersey, South Dakota, Arkansas (twice), Alaska, Washington, Maine, Colorado, Arizona, Missouri, Florida, Nevada and Nebraska (twice) – have voted on ballot initiatives to raise their state’s minimum wage. Every single one of these initiatives passed, none with less than 55% of the vote. And these are not just strong “blue states” voting for economic justice. In the recent November 2022 midterm election, two states that voted in Republican governors, Nebraska and Nevada, voted to raise the minimum wage. In 2020, the citizens of Florida, with a Republican governor and two Republican senators, also voted to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour.

The MIT living wage calculator estimates a living wage as a salary that is adequate enough to support a family without luxuries. For two working adults and one child, a living hourly wage for each adult would be $18.69 in West Virginia, $17.55 in South Carolina, $21.57 in Maryland, $20.01 in Utah and $19.33 in Wisconsin. Even in my own state of Vermont, the living wage is $19.58, more than $6 above the current state minimum wage.

But there are many families that do not have two working adults and rely on single moms who are raising their children on their own. In that case, the required living wage is much higher. As an example, a single mother in West Virginia would need to make $33.39 an hour to support herself and one child.

So it is not radical to suggest that raising the minimum wage to $17 an hour over a period of several years is the right thing to do. In fact, had my 2015 bill to increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour that was indexed to median wages became law, the federal minimum wage this January would be at least $17.40 an hour. And while we deal with the minimum wage, we must also address the scandal of the tipped wage, which has been stuck at an abysmally low $2.13 an hour for more than 30 years thanks, in large part, to the powerful restaurant lobby which has spent millions in campaign contributions and lobbying expenses since 1991 to keep workers in poverty.

Together, these two proposals would provide an increase in pay for tens of millions of desperate Americans – disproportionately women and people of color. It would also be a huge boost to single moms. Let us not forget that these are the essential workers who kept the economy going during the worst of the COVID pandemic. At that time we called them heroes and heroines. Well, rhetorical praise is nice. A livable paycheck is better. Let’s do it.

How The World Sees Us …

Posted on by under Bits 'n Pieces, education, Global Issues, guns, Law and justice, Political commentary, Racism & Bigotry

We’ve all heard people say that the United States is “the leader of the free world”, right?  We grew up being told that we were that shining example of democracy that other nations hoped to emulate.  Looking back, I don’t know if that was ever quite true, but I strongly suspect that at one point we were respected more than we are today.  Until last night, I don’t recall ever reading anything by Christine Emba, but her editorial hit my inbox and, intrigued, I read it.  I was glad I did, for it was enlightning.  Ms. Emba is an opinion columnist and editor for The Washington Post and a published author. Before joining the editorial staff at The Post in 2015, Christine was the Hilton Kramer Fellow in Criticism at the New Criterion and a deputy editor at the Economist Intelligence Unit.  She recently attended a global conference where she learned some of the international views of the U.S. today, and I think what she learned is worthy of consideration, for it matters how our allies, how other nations, view us …

The world is taking America’s decline seriously. We should too.

By Christine Emba

29 August 2022

HAMBURG — “It’s frightening, what’s happened to you,” a Bavarian civil society organizer shared with me over a stein of German pils. “America has become smaller.”

The theme of this year’s Bucerius Summer School on Global Governance, a Hamburg-based international conference consisting of dozens of young leaders from around the world, was “Facing New Realities: Global Governance Under Strain.” The reality this American observer had to face? That in the eyes of much of the world, the United States’ light has dimmed.

We are still watched intently and remain a major power. But it was clear that to many of the conference’s attendees — hailing from Germany to Mongolia, Ghana to Ukraine — the United States has become shorthand for democratic decline and disinformation, home to citizens who react to dissatisfaction by rejecting reality, and to institutions that are increasingly hollowed out.

“We don’t want the people who lose jobs during the climate transformation to end up as Trump voters or the equivalent,” a European foreign minister said during a discussion of economic retooling amid climate change. My fellow conference-goers looked my way apologetically, pity on their faces.

“I thought about settling in the U.S.,” one attendee, an Ivy League- and Oxbridge-educated internationalist now working for the United Nations, told me. “But I couldn’t imagine living in a place where my children would have to practice” — here, she made mocking quotation marks with her fingers — “active shooter drills.”

The United States’ most famous exports used to be Coca-Cola, Levi’s and jazz — not to mention such ideals as freedom, civil rights and the rule of law. Now, we’re best known for rampant gun violence and gruesome school shootings.

Yet glimmers of respect for what we used to (and sometimes still) stand for do exist.

Sen. Bernie Sanders’s 2016 presidential run was brought up again and again as an example of the American political system’s openness to outsiders and capacity to surprise. The George Floyd protests of 2020 and the successes of the Black Lives Matter movement were commended as rare examples of truly free expression.

A Kenyan participant reminisced fondly about a year studying in the United States, including a summer spent interning in the local offices of a Republican congressman. He remembered his incredulity at realizing that a government official could campaign door to door without a driver or a bodyguard and would personally return his constituents’ phone calls; direct democracy, not as common in his home region, still seemed possible in the United States.

(Incidentally, that congressman, Fred Upton of Michigan, was one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Donald Trump after the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection. Upton announced his retirement this spring in the face of redistricting and a MAGA-backed primary challenge.)

The United States’ reputation has been deteriorating for at least two decades. During the Iraq War, as Bush-doctrine foreign policy was derided across the globe, the trope of American backpackers abroad pretending to be Canadian to avoid shame by association became something of a cliche.

Yet, the past six years have seen an unprecedented acceleration. Our geopolitical rivals have always had ammunition, but the old embarrassments pale in comparison to the new. The idea that credence is still given to arguments about whether the 2020 election was “stolen” — the settled view of the rest of the world is that this is obvious nonsense — is a source of alarm.

After the 2016 election, European leaders warned that the United States could no longer be relied on as a partner in defense and security. More recently, statements such as those from Ohio Senate candidate J.D. Vance — “I got to be honest with you, I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or the other” — have made their way around the world, reconfirming the United States’ continued unseriousness and withdrawal from international engagement and moral leadership.

Our country is famously self-centered. It’s possible, or perhaps probable, that most Americans, only 20 percent of whom speak a second language — compared with 65 percent of the European Union’s population — don’t care what people in Europe or the rest of the world think.

But they should. As the United States fades, our competitors — a seemingly inexorable China, an unpredictable and aggressive Russia — wait hungrily in the wings.

In 2008, Fareed Zakaria wrote: “At the politico-military level, we remain in a single-superpower world. But in every other dimension — industrial, financial, educational, social, cultural — the distribution of power is shifting, moving away from American dominance.” In 2022, that vision of a “post-American world” has gone from theory to truth.

It might not be too late to effect a reversal. But if we want to preserve our stature, we should begin to act — holding our former president accountable to the rule of law would be a start — and realize that as we do so, the next generation of leaders is watching.

The world is taking our decline seriously. It’s time we did the same.

The Rich Get Richer … And We Help Them!

Posted on by under Law and justice, Personal, Political commentary, Social commentary

One of my pet peeves these days is the income disparity in this country … in the words of Percy Bysshe Shelley, “the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.”  Of late, I have been having an ongoing battle with my conscience regarding my relationship with Amazon.  I have been a member of Amazon Prime for a number of years now.  I buy most all of our household products such as toilet paper, Tide pods, dish detergent, etc., from Amazon’s “Subscribe & Save” program.  I own a Kindle and purchase a book or two most weeks.  Amazon has become my ‘go-to’ place for most of our non-food needs, for it is convenient — delivery to my doorstep, most often the next day — and I save money.  But of late, I feel guilty every time I hit the button to give more money to Mr. Jeff Bezos.

A letter I received this morning from Senator Bernie Sanders added fuel to the fire burning in my guilty conscience.  An excerpt from that letter …

Yet in the midst of all of the crises we currently face, Congress will likely be voting next week on a bill that provides tens of billions in corporate welfare to some of the most profitable corporations and wealthiest people on the planet. This bill provides $53 billion to the profitable microchip industry with no taxpayer protections and, if you can believe it, another $10 billion to Blue Origin, a space company owned by Jeff Bezos.

Amazon, which is owned by Bezos, is a company which, in a given year, pays nothing in federal income taxes after making billions in profits. And, by the way, in a given year Bezos has himself paid nothing in federal income taxes despite being worth nearly $200 billion.

Jeff Bezos has enough money to buy a $500 million yacht.

Jeff Bezos has enough money to buy a $23 million mansion with 25 bathrooms in Washington, D.C.

No. I do not think that the taxpayers of this country need to be providing a $10 billion bailout to Jeff Bezos to fuel his space hobby.

25 bathrooms???  Seriously???  Who in hell needs 25 bathrooms???  We have a 1,190 square foot townhouse that we pay $1,281 in rent for every month, with 2.5 bathrooms and we feel that is a luxury!  My daughter works 60+ hours a week as a nursing manager to pay the rent and recently received a promotion – with additional responsibilities, but no increase in pay!  And we’re helping support a man who has 25 bathrooms in one house, a half-billion-dollar yacht, and pays NO taxes?  It’s high time for Dickens’ ghosts of Christmas to pay Mr. Bezos a visit and see if he can be changed as Mr. Scrooge was!

In all good conscience, I do not think I can continue feeding the dragon.  Granted, the amount of money I spend on Amazon in a year is but a drop in the bucket for Mr. Bezos, but … a lot of drops are what fills the bucket, and Mr. Bezos’ bucket runneth over already.

And just for a bit of humour …

A Day Late And A Dollar Short

Posted on by under Environmental Issues, Law and justice, Political commentary

Getting legislation passed in both chambers of Congress is and has always been a game of give-and-take, compromise, meeting halfway.  Neither Democrats nor Republicans will get everything they hoped for in a given bill, but it is to be hoped that the hammering out process leads to something positive for the nation and for We the People.

For months, Congress has made half-hearted attempts to come to terms on a new stimulus bill that would help people and small businesses survive the winter of this pandemic.  Yes, I did say half-hearted, for the two sides have been miles apart and no concerted effort was made that I can see to come together, to put aside their own petty grievances and do their jobs.  To an extent, that was the fault of Donald Trump, who insisted he would sign no stimulus bill that didn’t guarantee immunity from liability for companies who failed to take proper precautions to protect their employees during the pandemic.  I’m sure there were other hurdles and stumbling-blocks, but this was the one that stuck in my craw.  WHY should businesses be allowed to put their employees in danger and be held harmless when one or more employees contract the coronavirus because there was no company-wide mask mandate, or staff was not kept adequately distant from one another?

So, the democrats gave in on the employer liability immunity issue and progress was made.  One barrier after another was somehow knocked down and eventually it looked like a deal would be struck.  The Republicans, however, had one demand from which they absolutely refused to budge.  It’s referred to as the “three-martini tax deduction” and what it does is allows business executives a full 100% tax write-off for the cost of business lunches, including alcoholic beverages, tips, etc.  Until now, the limit has been a 50% deduction.

Initially, the bill did not include stimulus payments to individuals, but thankfully Senator Bernie Sanders stood his ground and demanded a $1,200 payment to each person earning under $75,000 per annum.  Through compromise, it was chiseled down to $600.  The country thanks you, Senator Sanders!  Would that others had his cojones.

Negotiations continued and ultimately Democratic leaders agreed to the provision in exchange for Republicans agreeing to expand tax credits for low-income families and the working poor.  Yes, folks, this is how these things work, but seriously … more than 3,000 people in this country are dying of the coronavirus every damn day, 20 million are out of work, lines at food banks stretch for miles, millions are in danger of losing their homes, and the bill to provide minimal assistance might well have failed if Democrats hadn’t agreed that the taxpayers … those of us who actually PAY taxes … should foot the bill for some billionaire executive to take another billionaire executive out to lunch and drink the finest vodka in the place?  This is the very definition of the word ‘unconscionable’, and it is obvious, if it weren’t already, that the Republicans in Congress do not give a damn about the people of this nation unless we have millions of dollars.

At any rate, after the Democrats caving on some things, the bill has now been passed by both House and Senate and is on its way to the desk of Donald Trump for his signature.  The effect for the average person is to be a $600 stimulus check, similar to the one earlier this year, but only half the amount, $300 enhanced unemployment benefits for 11 weeks, extension of eviction protection until January 31st, some rental assistance, and a 15% increase in food stamp benefits.  All indications are that Trump will sign the bill, but at this stage of the game, given his blatant lack of concern for We the People, nothing would surprise me.

I am reminded of that old Schoolhouse Rock video …

A “Power Grab” or Democracy?

Posted on by under Election 2020, Political commentary, Racism & Bigotry, Social commentary

Elections in most countries are held on a weekend.  Why?  Because people don’t have to worry about how to make it to the polls after work or on their lunch break.  Because it makes it more convenient for voters.  And thus, it makes it more likely that more people will get off their arses and vote!  The United States is one of the few exceptions, where elections are held on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November.  Out of 68 nations that hold regular elections, the only ones that do not hold them on weekends are Canada, Denmark, Ireland, Israel, the Netherlands, Norway, the Philippines, South Korea, and the United States.  Some of the countries that hold weekday elections declare election day a public holiday, others permit across-the-board absentee ballots or postal votes.

The voting date in the U.S. makes it harder for poor people and minorities to vote, thus concentrating the vote and expanding the impact of the upper class, the wealthy voters, the WASPS.  In addition, we’ve made it harder for those people by closing many polling places in poorer neighborhoods, thus requiring some to make a trip by bus.  Add to that the restrictive voter ID laws that exist in some states and, well, what we end up with is the majority of the voters being middle or upper income and white.

US voter turnout trails most developed countries. During the 2016 presidential election, less than 56% of the estimated voting-age population in the US voted.  While the majority of US states have voter leave laws that guarantee certain employees a modicum of time off to vote, no federal law currently mandates that employees get time off to cast their ballots. So, when faced with choices like having to take unpaid time off work to vote, waking at the wee hours of the morning to vote so that they’re not late to work, standing in hours-long lines with everyone else who waited until after the workday to cast their ballot, or simply not voting at all, many choose the latter. Of the nonvoters surveyed by the US Census Bureau about the 2008 presidential election, the 2012 presidential election, and numerous other elections, the most commonly cited reason for not voting was being too busy or having conflicting work schedules. Obviously, we need to make some changes.

This month, House democrats introduced a bill known as the For The People Act, or HR1. It is a 571-page compendium of existing problems and proposed solutions in four political hot zones: voting, political money, redistricting, and ethics.  Obviously, I cannot address the entire bill in this post, but one portion of the bill calls for election day to be made a federal holiday in order to make it easier for everyone to vote.  Because of the large number of issues covered by HR1, it is highly unlikely that it will become law any time soon, for it would need to pass the Senate and be signed into law by Trump.  The #2 Fool on the Hill, Mitch McConnell, has already mocked and criticized the idea, saying “Just what we need, another paid holiday for federal workers”.  And how many days off do you take, Mitchie???  And then this …

“So, this is the Democrats’ plan to ‘restore democracy. A political power grab that’s smelling more and more like what it is.”

A “power grab” to ensure that everyone has a chance to vote?  I think not.  I think it’s called “democracy”, Mitchell.  Last September, Senator Bernie Sanders proposed a bill in the Senate, S.3498, titled The Democracy Day Act of 2018, that would have declared election day to be a federal holiday.

“Election Day should be a national holiday so that everyone has the time and opportunity to vote.  While this would not be a cure-all, it would indicate a national commitment to create a more vibrant democracy.”

Needless to say, Sanders’ bill was DOA in the republican-controlled Senate led by Mitch McConnell.

Other points in HR1 pertaining to voting:

  • Voter registration would be made easier. Citizens could register online or get registered automatically, via data from driver’s licenses or other government sources. For federal elections, states would have to provide same-day registration and at least 15 days of early voting. Election Day would be a federal holiday.

  • The bill would crack down on efforts to take voters off the rolls or prevent them from casting ballots. Felons could regain their voting rights after finishing their sentences.

  • Federal elections would require paper ballots to prevent computer tampering. State chief election officials couldn’t get involved in federal campaigns.

  • The bill would declare an intent to revive core anti-discrimination provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that were effectively shut down by the Supreme Court six years ago. It would also state that failing to vote isn’t grounds for taking away a person’s voter registration.

There is much more of substance in this bill that I cannot cover in a single post, but NPR has a highly informative, easy-to-understand article covering the highlights that I suggest you take a look at.  Campaign finance, ethics, and gerrymandering are also covered, all of which sorely need to be addressed if we are to have a chance at fair elections.  Sadly, as I noted before, I don’t think the bill has a snowball’s chance of passing the Senate, for the reality is that if every eligible voter had cast a vote in 2016, we would be writing today about President Hillary Clinton, and McConnell and his band of merry thugs are well aware of it.  Mitch and his cronies are well aware that those disenfranchised voters would put an end to this picnic they’ve been having and hold them accountable for their responsibility to ALL the people of this nation, not only those who hold the nation’s wealth in their dirty hands.