Many are shocked that Donald Trump announced he is going to Mexico today. That misses the real ironies here: NAFTA -- and how this should be a boon to the Green Party.
First the obvious stuff: Donald Trump is playing to xenophobic sentiments. His "solutions" are in large part twisted or beside the point, for example, U.S. government has largely already built the wall.
One real irony is that Trump is appealing for votes based on trade issues. His criticism of NAFTA rightly resonates with many in the U.S. Lots of workers have lost out because of NAFTA and other so-called "trade deals." These deals are actually largely investment protection agreements that help the huge corporations and the wealthy in the U.S., Mexico and other countries. That's people like Trump and people and corporations like those who fund Hillary Clinton. Meanwhile, these secretive deals often rook regular folks wherever they live.
But Trump -- and many other critics in the U.S. -- only talk about how NAFTA has hurt U.S. workers. Largely unacknowledged in the U.S. is how it has devastated Mexican family farms and small industry -- which leads to desperate migration from Mexico to the U.S. (along with the drug war).
So, redoing NAFTA would actually help stem desperate migration that is the source of much of Trump's support.
As several writers have noted -- before and after the furor surrounding quarterback Colin Kaepernick's refusing to stand for “The Star-Spangled Banner" -- the national anthem is racist. Specifically, the third stanza:
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave,
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Even less well know, the song originates in slaveowner Francis Scott Key's "When the Warrior Returns" -- which was set to the same tune.
An early version of the “Star Spangled Banner” by Francis Scott Key, written in 1805 amid the routing of the Barbary states, offered a view of Islam markedly different from Obama’s uplifting sentiments in Cairo:
From The Real News: "How Disenchanted Democrats and Republicans Together Can Break the Two Party Duopoly"
The Washington Post -- and much of the establishment -- wants you to buy a lifetime subscription to the politics of fear.
Dana Milbank, a columnist for the paper, popped up at Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein's news conference that focused on climate change. After Stein noted that Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have gotten billions in free media, he chimed in: "Dana Milbank with the Washington Post segment of the corporate media. I have a conundrum I want to present to you. I could write about today and others could report here about what an important issue climate change is. And we would publish it or broadcast it. The fact is very few people will read it. They will go read or view stories about Trump's staff machinations or Clinton's e-mails. I'm not sure the issue is necessarily a corporate media but what people are demanding. Why is that? What is the way around that if there is one?"
Milbank is pretending to be so concerned about what it is people want. What came to mind for me was John Milton's aphorism: "They who have put out the people's eyes reproach them of their blindness."
I may write more about this later, but here's a transcript (based on the C-Span transcript) of my questioning Green Party candidate Jill Stein at a news conference today at the National Press Club that largely addressed climate change and the election. Recommend people see the full video -- there were several interesting exchanges. I tried and failed to get another question in later in the news conference.
This week, the bipartisan Commission on Presidential Debates announced what polls it will utilize in excluding candidates from its debates.
The CPD says candidates like the Libertarian Party's Gary Johnson and the Green Party's Jill Stein must get 15 percent in polls conducted by "five national public opinion polling organizations" -- ABC/Washington Post, CBS/New York Times, CNN/Opinion Research Corporation, Fox News, and NBC/Wall Street Journal.
Not only -- as several have correctly argued -- is the 15 percent threshold arbitrary and exclusionary, but these polls don't actually ask voter preferences at all.
They all ask "If the presidential election were being held today for whom would you vote?" or some minor variation of that.
Who you want or prefer and what you would do in the voting booth may be very different things. These "public opinion polls" don't actually measure opinion -- they are a non-opinion polls. They ask a false hypothetical regarding a future action.
They all ask "If the presidential election were being held today for whom would you vote?" or some minor variation of that.
Who you want or prefer and what you would do in the voting booth may be very different things. These "public opinion polls" don't actually measure opinion -- they are a non-opinion polls. They ask a false hypothetical regarding a future action.
A better public opinion question would be: "Who do you want to be president" or "Who do you prefer to be president?" or "Who is your first choice to be president?"
By contrast, the question that the CPD relies on from these media organizations -- if held today, who would you vote for -- is a tactical question. As has become increasingly clear, there are many people who would like Gary Johnson or Jill Stein to be president. However, many who fear Trump or Clinton are currently planning on voting for Clinton or Trump.
Each of the dominant candidates is using fear of the other to prevent public opinion from manifesting itself.
Our voting system puts voters in a bind, making it difficult for them to vote their true preference.
But public opinion polling should be a relief from that. Such polling should find out what the public thinks and wants -- especially if the electoral system doesn't allow for those choices. But that's not what's happening. The "tracking" poll question that's being used over and over and obsessed over by all these organizations is actually disguising public opinion. And then the CPD, acting on behalf of the two major parties, is using that to exclude third party candidates from the debates, further marginalizing any public thinking that questions the establishment parties.
This is more egregious since the CPD has basically asked for the "who do you want/prefer to be president" question to be used. When some suggested alternative criteria for inclusion in presidential debates, like if a majority wanted another candidate to be in the debates, the heads of the CPD rejected the effort. Then-CPD Director and former Republican Senator Alan Simpson said: "The issue is who do you want to be president. It's not who do you want to do a dress rehearsal and see who can be the cutest at the debate." Similarly, Paul Kirk, the then-co-chair of the CPD (now co-chairman emeritus) and former head of the Democratic National Committee, said: "It's a matter of entertainment vs. the serious question of who would you prefer to be president of the United States."
Below is the wording of the questions used by each of the polling organizations that the Commission on Presidential Debates is utilizing as best as I could determine from internet searching. (Two of them -- Fox News and CBS/New York Times -- apparently currently exclude Jill Stein altogether.)
I submitted a Proposed Brief in the case Level the Playing Field, Peter Ackerman and the Green and Libertarian parities filed against the Federal Election Committee regarding the CPD. Here's the argument I made:
In remarks from the Democratic National Convention stage applauded by big media, Sarah Silverman lauded the Democratic Party primary process as "exemplary".
I guess that's why she's a comedian.
Perhaps she doesn't know who Debbie Wasserman Schultz is. Perhaps she doesn't know that Schultz just resigned as head of the Democratic National Committee after the release by WikiLeaks of DNC internal emails showing evidence of them conspiring against Sanders. Of course, Schultz was then immediately named "honorary chair" of the Clinton own campaign. Schultz as "honorary" anything -- now that's funny.
Perhaps she doesn't know who Debbie Wasserman Schultz is. Perhaps she doesn't know that Schultz just resigned as head of the Democratic National Committee after the release by WikiLeaks of DNC internal emails showing evidence of them conspiring against Sanders. Of course, Schultz was then immediately named "honorary chair" of the Clinton own campaign. Schultz as "honorary" anything -- now that's funny.
Last night, Pence addressed the Republican Convention: "And if the world knows nothing else, it will know this: America stands with Israel."
I've heard him say that before.
Being a journalist based in the Washington, D.C. area, I try to ask tough questions of political figures when I can. Perhaps my favorite question is some variation of "do you acknowledge that Israel has nuclear weapons?" I've asked this of many political figures and virtually none have given me a straightforward response.
But the most surreal -- almost comical -- response came from Donald Trump's VP pic, Mike Pence, in 2011. At the time, he was a congressman and vice-chair of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia:
But the most surreal -- almost comical -- response came from Donald Trump's VP pic, Mike Pence, in 2011. At the time, he was a congressman and vice-chair of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia: