Senator Elizabeth Warrren has created an online program called “DeVos Watch” to hold Betsy DeVos accountable for her oversight of student debt. The online platform will be hosted on Senator Warren’s website.
She wrote this opinion article for CNN:
http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/31/opinions/devos-watch-opinion-warren
The Trump administration is pondering whether to turn over responsibility for student debt collection to the Treasury Department. This has been debated for years. During the Clinton administration, Secretary Richard Riley turned the idea down,saying that “the move would be prohibitively expensive and that “since most borrowers default on their student loans because they are unable to make the payments, the IRS would be no more able to collect these payments than the Department of Education.” Mr. Riley added that perhaps large employers could make wage-withholding arrangements to streamline the process.”
Chester Finn, however, saw a benefit to making the Treasury the collection agency. He said,
Chester Finn, an assistant secretary of education during the Reagan administration, told a congressional committee that was considering the proposal that allowing the IRS to collect loans might encourage borrowers to repay them. “Perhaps the prospect of a stay in Leavenworth would finally reduce the multibillion-dollar loan-default problem,” he said.”
http://www.chronicle.com/article/What-if-the-Treasury-Dept/240218
Warren’s decision to create “DeVos Watch” was applauded by Ashley Harrington of the Center for Responsible Lending (CRL). She said,
“We applaud Senator Warren’s leadership for holding Secretary DeVos and the Department of Education accountable to students and parents. This new resource will be valued not only by education leaders and advocates, but additionally by the 44 million student loan borrowers who collectively share $1.4 trillion in debt.
“It is a matter of public record that higher education accountability at the federal level has suffered a series of setbacks since Secretary DeVos was confirmed earlier this year.
“From her senior-level appointees with close ties to the for-profit college industry, to the departmental regulatory reversals that favor for-profit colleges and loan servicers to the detriment of student borrowers, a growing concern has developed among consumer and civil rights advocates. We continue to call into question the quality, accessibility, and affordability of for-profit college institutions.
“Further, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the recently-released 2018 White House budget proposal would result in $26.8 billion in cuts that students and families will have to pay for over the next decade. Additionally, nine programs now operating within the Department would be eliminated at a cost of nearly $5 billion to students.
“No elected or appointed official should ever depart from or diminish the primary role of government: service to the American people. Instead, Secretary DeVos’ actions create a pattern of preference to private interests. Shedding further light on these practices is essential to protecting students and taxpayers.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Good luck holding her accountable for anything but filling her pockets. Check the money flow, her family will make billions on this mess.
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Education’s not Senator Warren’s sole interest when it comes to whistle-blowing. Here’s a video which she released just hours ago:
Blowing the Whistle on Keith Noreika
President Trump replaced the person in charge of making sure the big banks don’t ruin our economy with a man who spent his career defending them.
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DeVos Watch is a good idea.
But so is DeMos watch, to hold the Democrats accountable for similar policies.
Apart from that, it sounds like “Checker” Finn has lost his checkers if he wants to bring back debtors prison for students who can’t find a job to pay their loans.
Maybe someone can help him find them.
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Maybe Finn would also like to bring back indentured servitude for students?
Oh, I forgot, we already have that under both Republicans AND Democrats.
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So agree with you SomeDAM Poet!
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Eventually, Finn & his reformer friends reveal their true colors.
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Finn’s outrageous remark was actually made in 1995 when the same organizational change was being considered under Clinton (revisited under Bush & Obama’s admins). Apparently this flag gets run up the pole every few years– so far, never enacted because the change would cost a lot, but returns estimated to be negligeable.
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Bethree, Maybe he said it again. I can’t imagine that a reporter today would dredge up a 1995 remark without saying so. In 22 years, he might have changed his mind
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I’m not sure that’s what the reporter intended– the Finn quote is, actually, linked to a 1995 Chronicle article, & it’s cited within a description of ’90’s congressional debate on the issue. But the paragraph break makes it ambiguous, sounding as though Finn might have just said this to Congress recently. Maybe just a case of unfortunate editing.
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He has undoubtedly softened his stance since 1995.
Now he would probably only advocate throwing in jail those who have defaulted on loans of more than $20,000.
You know, cuz, as everyone knows, that’s the dividing line between the minor offenders and hardened, incorrigible student loan criminals.
It’s the kinder gentler Conservatism that we have come to know so well in recent decades.
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The for-profit loan sharks will not give up getting the most money possible. Warren is also interested in protecting some role for the Consumer Protection Agency that she helped to create. I think she knows that will also be a target.
As I have also noted, Warren is a sponsor of a bill that will force postsecondary institutions to tell students how much their graduates earn, and that must be reported by program and major. It is offered as a return on investment calculation. In my judgment, that will drive up enrollments in on-line degree and certificate programs and reduce enrollments in programs and majors in the arts, humanities, and social services where getting the most bang for the buck is not the primary driver of choice in postsecondary programs.
DeVos certainly needs to be monitored, but SomeDAM Poet also has a point about monitoring the Demos.
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Agreed. Holding higher ed accountable for their graduate’s earnings will effectively shrink enrollment in predominantly female professions. It’s a dumb idea. It allows the politicians to ignore the actual predators in the loan industry & for-profit degree mills. Neither the Dems nor the Repubs have the political will to take responsibility for failing to put an end to the entire corrupt industry.
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This is very good to see— maybe Senator Warren will add K-12 $$ shenanigans, skulduggery and chicanery to her repertoire in due course—
“No elected or appointed official should ever depart from or diminish the primary role of government: service to the American people. Instead, Secretary DeVos’ actions create a pattern of preference to private interests. Shedding further light on these practices is essential to protecting students and taxpayers.”
Certainly that applies there in a big way too. As it wold have to her predecessor(s) too of course to be fair, just turbo-charged these days.
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Michael Hudson: Are Students a Class?
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2017/06/michael-hudson-students-class.html
A little more in the weeds on this topic.
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“The spike in student loan defaults over the last decade has been fueled by students attending for-profit colleges and, to a lesser degree, community colleges, according to a new analysis of millions of federal student loan records.
The paper, released Thursday as part of the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, argues that the student loan crisis, to the extent there is one, is concentrated only among these “nontraditional” borrowers at for-profit and community colleges.
As students flocked to those institutions during the recession, they accounted for a huge surge in loan borrowing and the subsequent defaults on the loans as they faced poor job prospects and low earnings, the report says.
In 2011, the study found, borrowers at for-profit institutions and community colleges represented almost half of all federal loan borrowers leaving school and starting to repay their loans, but they accounted for 70 percent of defaults.”
If they’re serious about student debt they could start regulating for-profit colleges.
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/09/11/study-finds-profit-colleges-drove-spike-student-loan-defaults
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I wouldn’t put much if any stock in Warren making any dings in DeVos, and even if she did, everything is hyper-compartmentalized. Making a ding on loans won’t translate to making any kind of ding in vouchers or the broader privatization of K-12. Here are the reasons though not to expect anything substantive:
1) Trump himself dominates the news cycle. The daily third-worlding and Cops (TV show)-ing of the government of the United States will always be front and center. The college loan thing will get no media traction that won’t be fast overwhelmed with yet another tidal wave of awfulness. Warren is effective only insofar as she can be articulate to a broad audience. Won’t happen. The media will ALWAYS go with the daily insanity of Trump as he remakes our government into an episode of Dog The Bounty Hunter.
2) Our country and society is fast slipping into a deep third world posture. I mean this quite seriously. It’s been pretty evident for quite some time….the eroding infrastructure, the Dollar Store remake of consumer society, the privatization of everything in site, the normalization of poverty and poverty culture, and the ever-falling level of expectations for basically everyone aside from a narrowing band of giddy, tasteless, unread, gated-community elite. The Trump administration is accelerating this aggressively (though lets be sure to note that he did not initiate this!). In this framework and new reality, college education is going to be ever more increasingly something for an elite few and something that can be used to squeeze aspirants to an ever-shrinking middle. That’s the way the wind is blowing. Warren making a dent in the college loan thing is like repainting the back bumper of a car that was totaled in a head-on collision. The bigger, bleaker picture makes the whole loan thing look, well…smaller.
3) Democrats. Lets not forget the absolutely breathtaking ability for Democrats to lose. Lets also not forget the absolutely breathtaking ability for Dems to compartmentalize and focus on a big display against the loan thing while at the same time remaining quiet on the privatizing of K-12 thing. We must never forget that Democrats are the happy folks that really brought Ed reform into all of our lives! Warren never truly “came out” against Ed reform. Why? Because like most institutional, meritocratic-hero dems, she’s all for Ed reform.
Expect nothing here except some noise and posturing…..the only thing the Democratic Party is actually capable of accomplishing.
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Astute commentary NYSTEACHER!
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Or perhaps some progressives were willing to give Obama a pass for a multitude of reasons . When the choice is unacceptable even you and I vote for or with the alternative. How many issues were progressives willing to go up against Obama on . So I say lets see where they go from here . PS read the link from the Nation I just posted. We will not win on education, we can only win when education is part of a broad progressive agenda .
As for the noise keep it going for as long as it takes to hinder Trump/Pence and the rights objectives. Then impeach and imprison.
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Posturing like peacocks
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agreed—-especially point #3.
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“allowing the IRS to collect loans might encourage borrowers to repay them. ‘Perhaps the prospect of a stay in Leavenworth would finally reduce the multibillion-dollar loan-default problem,’ he said. ”
This Fascist Trumpist probably doesn’t know that there is a process through the IRS to file bankruptcy when you don’t have the money to pay off what you allegedly owe.
I have a former friend who filed bankruptcy to get out of paying the IRS $150,000 dollars he owed in taxes from his tax-exempt retirement fund (He didn’t have to pay tax on every dollar that went into that fund from his earnings – the tax would come later when he retired and started to live off that money) when he withdrew all of his retirement money very early and gambled it away to zero in the stock market.
He was convinced that he would end up a millionaire if he followed what he was learning from books he was reading, but it didn’t work out. Instead, he lost several hundred thousand dollars until every cent was gone and he could not, as he had planned, pay back the money he had borrowed from that retirement fund.
The thing is, how would the IRS define this loans as debt. Would they be considered federal taxes that the former students couldn’t pay or would the IRS be turned into a debt collection agency and the students would be denied the right to declare bankruptcy if they didn’t have the money to make the payments?
That former friend (a Koch brothers libertarian and fundamentalist Christian) filed for IRS bankruptcy and succeeded. Today at almost 72 his income comes mostly from Social Security and earnings from a network marketing company he joined not as an owner but as network marketing salesman of high-quality nutritional supplements.
Here is the IRS bankruptcy process explained on the IRS site.
https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/declaring-bankruptcy
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Is he still a Koch brothers Libertarian .
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Yes. His Alt-Right guru is Dennis Prager and he, that former friend, voted for the Kremlin’s Agent Orange. The day he told me that he voted for KAO, that was the end of our 60 year friendship.
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Education should be only one part of a total push to restructure the economy.We will only save Public Schools by changing the direction of the Nation. By correcting an economy, that has been on the wrong track since Nixon started gutting the Great Society, of LBJ’s dreams. A society that would grow the middle by shrinking the bottom . Putting disposable income into the hands of people who would spend it, thus increasing prosperity for all. Nothing novel about that idea Maynard . Its called Make America Great again like it was when taxes were high,unions were strong and government was growing and finance was a far smaller part of the economy. The goal is to produce goods and services not to produce finance.
I keep having this running debate with NYSPSP about the progressive vision being the winning path for Democrats, for workers and for the Nation. It is a little tiring.
So here is a piece from the Nation on Corbyn’s surge that may help settle the debate . The Brits may just kick the Neo liberals (conservatives) butts less than a year after they voted for a right wing populism. We shall see!
https://www.thenation.com/article/britain-also-feeling-bern/
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I believe in the progressive vision. What I don’t believe in is Democrats repeating the right wing memes to help defeat the progressive candidates when they run for office.
Obama won. Even now, I read your post above in which you could not be kinder to him. No screaming about how corrupt and co-opted he was. You have a disagreement about policy which can and should be debated. But you don’t attack his character. Never.
If only so-called “progressives” would do the same to other progressives or even moderates. And yes, Hillary Clinton was just as likely to support a progressive agenda as she was to support the Obama agenda that you are certain she intended to make even worse. You ignored her platform — far too the left of Obama and the most progressive in recent history — to focus on her so-called lying and corrupt nature. Sure, you grudgingly voted for the woman you didn’t trust worth a dime. As they say, with friends like these, who needs enemies?
Maybe Obama won elections because people like you did him the courtesy of talking about him as if he was someone you had a policy disagreement with and not someone you despised who wasn’t to be trusted. You certainly bend over backwards not to attack Obama’s character as did many other people who showed a remarkable disconnect in the words they used to describe Obama’s character and the words they used to describe Hillary Clinton’s.
And don’t tell me that doesn’t matter. I saw Gore and Kerry both destroyed with the same kind of attacks on their character. They didn’t deserve the nasty portrayal — Gore’s “propensity to lie and exaggerate” and Kerry’s to lie about being a hero when he was the world’s biggest coward” — any more than Hillary did.
Let’s have policy disagreements with other Democrats and stop attacking their characters. You did it with Obama so I know you are capable of doing so.
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I voted for Obama twice actually manned phone banks and gave speeches to some small groups of labor voters encouraging them to vote for him the second time. As I did for Clinton. When somebody says National Right to Work . It tends to get my attention no matter how I feel about the failings of my candidate.
That said my disillusionment with Obama started in his first Transition,
when he picked Walmart cheerleader Jason Furman to be the economic advisor to the Transition Team . It started heading down hill fast when he went to the Caterpillar plant that broke the UAW to announce the stimulus. The equivalent of Reagan going to Bitburg . Went further downhill when he announced the debt commission, went even further when the Employee Free Choice act did not even make it into committee no less out of committee. Of course expanding drilling in the Gulf the week before the BP spill was a real highlight. By the time he started attacking the most loyal supporters of Democrats, Americas teachers Unions, inviting charter teachers to teacher appreciation week rather than Public School teachers.. I was through with him. . I could give you a hundred reasons why I loath the policy of the man, I was forced to vote for a second time. Perhaps the most Damaging email I read was that of Michael Froman, a former Citibank executive,who picked the entire first cabinet, while his bank was
But you are correct his personal behavior and that of his family were exemplary. I have my doubts about a 400 grand speech to Cantor Fitzgerald almost as soon as he is out of office.
Democrats have lost over a thousand seats since 08 . Was it Obamacare that had only the positive features kick in in 2010 and did not become mandatory till 2014 . I suspect it was policy failures that kept the Democrats home. Policy like get out of jail free cards for Bankers. Reagan who should rot in hell put a thousand in jail . I doubt these voters could come up with a long list . They looked at the water pipes in Flint and stayed home. Looked at Obama and TPP and stayed home. Clinton was dragged kicking and screaming to the left . Would she have been more Progressive than Bill and Barrack maybe , but not many believed it .
Clinton was right Trumps voters were by and large deplorables
or Republicans that sought to cash in . This election was lost to the 45 percent of voters who do not vote, a number that keeps on growing .
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” his personal behavior and that of his family were exemplary. I have my doubts about a 400 grand speech to Cantor Fitzgerald almost as soon as he is out of office.”
talk about a disconnect. “doubts”??!!!
We already know that Obama enacted every single policy his rich wall street friends wanted. Including school reform. Obama didn’t even have the curiosity to say even once during his 8 years in office “wow, I wonder if these are working the way I was told they would”. He said “whatever you want, I’m good”. And then he is paid huge amounts of money? You sound like John McCain talking about Trump expressing “doubts”. Talk about mild rebukes.
Meanwhile, the attacks on Hillary for making paid speeches after leaving her position as Secretary of State because she MIGHT (4 years in the future) do the bidding of Wall Street like Obama definitely did engenders 1,000,000X more than “doubts”. More like Hillary gets the harsh attacks for things she never did but “might” and Obama gets “doubts” when he spent 8 years actually doing those things.
I wonder where Elizabeth Warren will fall on the spectrum. Will the Bernie lovers repeat the alt right attacks and start turning Warren into the next corrupt Hillary? Or will they treat her like Obama and use mild criticism to express a disagreement on policy with a woman who they know is a good person?
After all, if you want to blame anyone for all the corruptions in the Democratic party in the last 8 years and the policies that they took, why would you want to blame that upright and lovely Obama when you know it was corrupt, money-hungry, tool of Wall Street Hillary who bears all the blame?
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NYC public school parent
I have little doubt about the inappropriateness of that action. What part of loath policy did you not understand or a hundred areas of disagreement . I will save us the complete list.
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It’s about character.
Your criticisms about Obama were always framed as a disagreement in policy. Not an attack on his character. I know you disagree strongly with his policies — even hated them — and you think they are too conservative. But you also made it absolutely clear that you don’t have a problem with his character. Re-read again what you wrote about him — you did not like his policies and you made that clear. You never once implied that he chose those policies because he was corrupt and wanted to reward his friends in the banking industry. You never once impugned his motives.
You despised Obama’s policies, not his character. And your criticism of him makes that clear. People often vote for candidates even when they disagree with their policies. And they often vote against candidates who they don’t trust even if they like their policies better (but since they don’t trust them, it doesn’t matter). No one knows that better than the Republican consultants who specialize in destroying the trust Americans have in Democratic candidates. Gore. Kerry. Hillary. As Democrats we MUST stop the character assassination of decent people or we will continue to lose. Disagree with their policies like you do with Obama. But stop helping the right wing turn them into untrustworthy, corrupt, co-opted politicians. Watch the language you use and recognize when you are being played by the alt right. That’s what I hope all progressives/moderates and even conservative Democrats who believe in this country start to do.
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Then there’s this to consider from a post written over a year ago:
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She not only does not topple the house. She helps hold it up.
She plays the role of someone that Democrats who are disgusted with party leaders can look to with hope when they would otherwise leave the party.
Warren keeps the potentially wayward sheep rounded up.
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I returned from a trip to Spain a few weeks ago. Because of our current situation, Franco was on my mind, as he is still a very real reminder to the Spanish people of a painful period.
I was struck by something a young tour guide in Madrid said .
“the Republicans should have easily defeated the Nationalists but the left was too divided fighting among themselves. to do it. ”
If Warren is not pure enough , for some Sanders not pure enough. . Then we will live with the reality of an authoritarian Christofascist nation as the world burns and drowns.
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The issue is not purity.
It’s self-reflection and self-criticism.
The physicist Richard Feynman once said that “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself …and you are the easiest person to fool”.
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For what its worth, there is a certain sadness here….when seen from a bit of altitude. So many of us on the left want Warren to be the powerful spokeswoman for all of our Progressive leanings, especially on education. She has a remarkable ability to articulate, forcefully and clearly, the fundamental workings of an economy and markets…..that the right wing of our country pushes an ahistorical and irrational view of markets and has confused the public discussion on the economy has made her fundamental, basic articulations seem deeply radical to us. Make no mistake however that when she says things about how no wealthy American got rich on his own, she is saying something that any 1950s Republican would agree with! Elizabeth Warren is a clear-speaking politician on the basics of an economy. That we see her as a strong progressive is not evidence of her progressive ideological depth, but rather the decades-in-the-making ideological bankruptcy of the Democratic Party and large swaths of the left. Her elevation to “progressive soul” of our side is simply evidence of the broad left’s failure to counter the right’s domination of public dialog and narrative, and the HARD right wing turn our society, culture, and politics have taken in the last 30 years. The honest center-right of basic political and economic ideology is now what passes for an American Left Wing and Democratic Party.
Warren is great but we cannot ever expect her to be a savior. There are no saviors on our side folks. Before we go much further, we must apprehend the notion that we have, quite possibly, lost public education for whatever remains of the years ahead of this former republic.
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NYSTeacher,
The idea that supporting public education requires courage shows how far to the right our politics and culture have gone. Not one Senator and only a small number of Democratic governors have taken a stand against privatization.
We won’t find a champion. We have to use our votes to take control of the House away from the anti-public school forces in 2018. That’s the beginning. Parents and educators must create political organizations in every state to support public education.
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I am afraid single issue politics will not work. They will divide and conquer as they always do . A broad based progressive coalition is the only way to defeat them . Education issues are part of a much larger neo liberal, right-wing assault on working class Americans (the 85-90% ) and have to be fought on that basis.
The Billionaires for education reform have one thing in common none of them have a progressive economic agenda. Bill Gates big time liberal (LOL). Can not even support increasing the minimum wage .
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The Democrats may not realize it, but this is an all encompassing issue.
Privatization threatens virtually every part of our Democracy.
It cedes control to those with the most money.
The public schools are a proxy for democracy. Wherever go the public schools, there goes democracy.
The Democrats either fail to recognize this or are doing it quite purposefully because they don’t believe in democracy.
It doesn’t really matter which because the end result is the same.
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SomeDAM Poet
I do not disagree with you . The fundamental issue is the economy and who it serves . Education being a critical piece of that economy. .
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Warren may not be a savior but there are times in history where public figures inspire movement in public opinion. Thomas Paine, comes to mind. If the mantra is to believed Trump is the rejection of the status quo by a disenchanted American voting public. I do not quite believe that from my personal contacts . Trump is the result of disenchantment by the non voting American public. The 45% who stayed home. As Sanders has stated poor people disproportionately don’t vote.
I believe that Sanders/ Warren … … represent a progressive populist message that the Nation is ready for. Sanders won the heart of the future of the Democratic party . Voters under 50, independents an increasing majority. Those that the economy has increasingly let down . Clinton a big time winner of the over sixty crowd, that had enjoyed far more prosperous careers, seniority shielding them. As many industries were decimated and the pain fell on mostly younger workers . .
Clinton’s victory was based on machine politics that had the Black political leadership abandon principal for career . 90% margins in Southern States among black voters against a civil rights activist is hard to fathom. . John Lewis twisting himself to see the Goldwater girl in 63. The Clinton machine had become as powerful in the party as Boss Tweed. That may win primaries but it does not win the hearts and minds of the American people and get them to show up. It did not even get Black voters to show up in those swing states in the numbers they had for Obama .
Before Warren had entered the political arena she had exquisitely detailed the plight of the working class in “The Two Income Trap” .
A consistent left-wing message may get far more support than we think . As the Orange haired ass say’s “What do you have to lose”
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Wow, could you be more insulting to the African-American voters in the south?
Because they aren’t “smart” enough to recognize that Hillary’s support of Goldwater in 1963 trumps everything she has done since then. And no, it’s not about BILL’s crime bill. It’s about every single thing that HILLARY has done since she was working for Marian Wright Edelman in the 1970s to uncover racial discrimination in the south.
And they aren’t smart enough to realize that they are supposed to be enamored with Bernie the “civil rights activist”??
One reason those voters “didn’t show up” was a determined effort at voter suppression in those states.
Ironically, if you asked Sen. Warren herself, she’d probably dress you down for your outrageously misguided attacks on Hillary Clinton and her non-white supporters you BLAME for the fact she won every southern state and the primary. If only those Midwestern white working and middle class folks who supposedly loved Bernie and couldn’t switch their allegiance to Trump fast enough could have been allowed to choose a “like-minded” candidate like Bernie.
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NYCPSP
You are exhausting. 90% support is not normal. 70% is an extreme number. Hillary clearly wasn’t seen by John Lewis at the DC march .
But the Black political class was only one part of the story . The other you will find in chapter 8 of Cornell West’s “Race Matters”
But I would be interested in your explanation of why she got between 85 and 90 % support in every Southern State must have been the 3 months she spent at the Children’s defense fund . Because it wasn’t her husbands economic record in or for the Black community . Bill can take that Sax and shove it .
“Hopefully, one day, we’ll muster the courage to join together in a revolutionary movement with people of all colors who believe that basic human rights and economic, racial, and gender justice are not unreasonable, pie-in-the-sky goals. After decades of getting played, the sleeping giant just might wake up, stretch its limbs, and tell both parties: Game over. Move aside. It’s time to reshuffle this deck. ”
https://www.thenation.com/article/hillary-clinton-does-not-deserve-black-peoples-votes/
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NYC public school parent
They didn’t switch to Trump . They stayed home as did Black voters in the Mid West . What they could not do is what I did ,vote for Hillary .
And if that is the choice they are given again we will have 8 years of Trump .
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Joel,
It’s fascinating that you don’t even realize when you are being a hypocrite.
So you give Bernie Sanders a pass because he was such an outrageously poor candidate that he could not even muster more than 10% of the Black votes down south. It’s not his fault, you say, but the fault of the corrupt black leadership and their corrupt embrace of Hillary Clinton, the woman who would throw every person of color under a bus but they are all too idiotic to know it. Why did only 10% of them realize that Bernie was really their savior? Why, that’s not Bernie’s fault! It’s that those people are sheep who vote for whoever their leaders tell them to. And you know that is true because otherwise you might have to address the fact that maybe, just possibly, Bernie was so focused on making sure those white working folks were on his side that he ignored the fact that maybe race IS an issue and maybe civil rights ARE still important.
I was never prouder of a Democratic candidate than when Hillary Clinton embraced the Black Lives Matters movement at the convention. Instead of running away from race as fearful Democratic candidates so often do, Hillary and her team said “we are doing what is right”. It was the first convention I had watched where the Democrat didn’t try to hide their support of of the issues that made them easy targets for the right. Shh, let’s not mention race or abortion or the fact that there are way too many killings by police of innocent Black citizens. Let’s pretend we’re just like the Republicans. As if supporting those issues was something to be ASHAMED of. If Hillary was going to lose, I am darn proud of her for losing the right way. For supporting the right things and not being afraid to say it loud and clear. And it’s a crime that she got pilloried as a corrupt money-hungry greedy woman when she actually was one of the bravest politicians we’ve had in recent memory. (Before you attack me on that, I’m not saying she is perfect. I disagreed with some of her policies. But she was BRAVE in a way that too many Democrats are not. Bernie is brave, too, on economic matters, but when it comes to what is really the third rail of politics – race – he is MIA with the excuse that it’s all about the economy. Which is very easy to say when it isn’t your sons getting shot for the “crime” of being the wrong race.)
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By the way, that Nation article was ridiculous. It consisted of 2 arguments:
Hillary Clinton should be judged entirely on the Presidency of her husband 20 years ago and blamed for a statement she made over 20 years ago even though she disavowed that statement decades ago. And she should be blamed for the policies that her husband enacted 20 years ago and everything she did as her own woman — HER record — in the last 20 years should be ignored because that is far less relevant than what her husband did 20 years ago.
When we talk about Bernie Sanders we will only mention the positives because Bernie’s record and votes as a Congressman and Senator in the last 20 years are not nearly as important as what Bill Clinton did in the 1990s. So it’s fine Bernie voted against the Brady Bill and he didn’t join in with progressives who wanted longer background checks and making gun manufacturers liable. That gets a pass but if his spouse had been President 25 years ago then it would be fair game to hold Bernie responsible for everything his spouse did and that would be much more important than Bernie’s own record. But since Bernie spouse only mismanaged a college and walked away with a large chunk of money while the college went bankrupt and seemed to get unusually favorable treatment regarding a loan that I’m sure had nothing to do with her husband’s prominent position, we should never mention her. So again, none of those things regarding his spouse matters. When it comes to Bernie. But Hillary is only to be judged on Bill’s record and smeared accordingly.
Did I get that right?
The truth is that I voted for Bernie over Hillary in the primary because I preferred his positions on the issues. Period. I didn’t think Bernie was more “honest” than Hillary and I didn’t think he was a better man or a braver one. I liked his position on the issues more than I liked Hillary’s. And I was enormously pleased that Hillary’s platform did something I had never seen before and tilted LEFT when she won the nomination. And I was pleased that she didn’t just put those issues in the platform and ignore them — she RAN on them. Which is why I was so upset that she was getting attacked by both the left and the right with the same dishonest smears as was done to Gore and Kerry. But the fact that it worked? I’m under no illusion that it won’t work again and again until we stop playing right into their hands.
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We can keep scapegoating the red wankers, Devos, POTUS (fill in the blank)
’till it finally sets in. Scapegoating leaves exploitation unresolved. We may use
our votes to change the faces, but have our votes ever undermined the ceded
power of the unelected “leaders” dictating policy? Politically appointed are
beholden to NONE.
Isn’t it obvious by now that the slogans and myths within the government
approved “advertising” agencies are part of the obfuscation and distraction
from the reality of vested interests?
“The answer to oppression, injustice and tyranny is the same today as it was 50 years ago: if you want freedom, you have to begin by freeing your mind. That will mean rejecting violence, politics and anything that DIVIDES.”
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