Episodes
Wednesday Feb 05, 2020
Class Warfare by the DNC on behalf of Corporate Elites?
Wednesday Feb 05, 2020
Wednesday Feb 05, 2020
Here’s what the Corporatocracy is up to today, FEBRUARY 4th, 2020
In our podcast today, we’re gonna do a thought experiment with you. It’ll be instructive as to what the democratic leadership is up to regarding the primary results in Iowa this week. And it’s something that any of us who care about truth, freedom and democracy in America- whether Democrat or Republican- all of us should be thinking about...
Probably the best way to set this up is to reference our podcast from yesterday where we discussed the latest DNC Committee appointees. If you caught that podcast, you’ll recall that the DNC committees set the agenda for the democratic party, including foreign and domestic policy, etc. No surprise there. But that agenda also shapes how the democrats’ superdelegates will vote at the Democratic Convention next July.
Superdelegates are VIP democrats who are handpicked by the DNC leadership. At the convention in July, if the voting in the democratic state primaries has not produced a nominee with an overwhelming majority of delegates in state voting, then the super delegates cast their votes to determine the final nominee.
And the power of superdelegates to determine the final nominee is much more a near certainty than the DNC would have us believe. Most folks don’t realize that it was the super delegates who pushed Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton in the 2008 election. And it was state-by-state superdelegates who influenced Hillary Clintons’ win over Bernie Sanders in 2016.
Especially after the #IowaDebacle, most observers agree that no democratic candidate will be able to garner enough delegates to overwhelm the influence of the superdelegates at the Demcoratic Convention in July. So, it’s pretty much a foregone conclusion that the superdelegates will decide the democratic nominee. Further, it’s widely accepted that the superdelegates pretty much all vote in lockstep with the guidance of the DNC committee members. Even Bernie’s own campaign aides admit this.
And as we explained on our podcast yesterday, the committee members are a virtual Who’s Who list of neoliberal corporate elites, dominant insiders from BigBanks, BigPharma, BigDefense and the CIA. Further, two members of the DNC committees are actually simultaneously working for the campaign of billionaire candidate Mike Bloomberg. One was just nominated as vice-chair of the powerful Convention Rules Committee.
So, with those foundational, immutable facts established, let’s begin our thought experiment…
Most indie experts agree that the DNC has loaded its rules committees to ensure that Bernie Sanders does not become the Demcoratic Nominee. But for our thought experiment, let’s assume that by some Yuge act of protest, the DNC committees and super delegates went against everything they were appointed for and instead allowed Bernie to proceed as the nominee. Ok? We’ll call that MIRACLE #1 of our thought experiment.
So Bernie goes on to run in the general and beats Donald Trump, as all the polls say he would easily do. And along the way, Bernie also inspires 100s of people to run for the US Congress and even the senate. And by the sheer excitement of Bernie’s momentum, when he enters the presidency, he also has a majority-friendly House and Senate to work with. Also huge, because he’ll need a friendly majority in both houses to pass all the reforms he’s been running on, like Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, and the elimination of student debt by taxing Wall Street speculators.
So let’s assume that Bernie’s miracle presidency coincides with a majority-friendly House and Senate. We’ll call that MIRACLE #2. And with that, let’s assume that by the end of his first year, Bernie works with both houses to pass his signature reform: a Medicare for All, single-payer, national health insurance program that provides everyone in America comprehensive health care coverage, free at the point of service. In 12 months, the Medicare for All Bill clears both houses and reaches his desk and he signs it into law. We’ll call that MIRACLE #3 in our thought experiment.
Now remember– to afford M4A, Bernie says that the US Government will have to force BigPharma to lower prices on prescription drugs. This is a critical aspect, because BigPharma currently charges Americans on average three times the price that it charges for the same drugs in other developed countries. It’s basically a massive price-fixing scam on Americans. And thanks to Barack Obama BigPharma basically has a triple firewall of legal protection. Here’s why— when Obama was president, he sponsored certain laws and court appointees to protect BigPharma profits. He effectively made both the FDA and the Dept of Justice revolving-door agencies for BigPharma. And Obama appointed judges who were friendly to BigPharma to set legal precedents that protect BigPharma’s price-fixing powers.
Of course, all that can be reversed through various legal actions taken ultimately to the Supreme Court. And as we all know, the Supreme Court has been stacked with corporate-friendly judges over the past decade. So, if we assume that all that legal maneuvering could happen in favor of Medicare for All, we would definitely need to consider it a miracle and a Yuge one at that- but f*ck it- it’s our thought experiment, So, let’s call that MIRACLE #4.
Now, if we’re accounting for all these miracles and putting them on an aggressive timeline, but still sorta keeping it real, it’d take at least the first three years of Bernie’s presidency to get all the way there- and that’s being very generous. So we’ll need to account for another miracle– that by his midterm, Bernie still has enough mojo to somehow keep corporate BigMedia at bay. And in the Midterm Elections, he’s able to retain a command majority in both the House and the Senate. That’d be crucial to getting to the finish line on Medicare for All by the end of year three. So, we’ll call that success in Midterm Elections MIRACLE #5.
We could keep going– but you get the picture, right? If we’re being straight up and forthright about the battles ahead, we’ve got some massive obstacles to overcome. And that’s just Medicare for All. That set of miracles and aggressive timeline are roughly the same for the Green New Deal and for taxiing Wall Street to pay off student debt and fund free college tuition.
But this thought experiment isn’t simply about identifying the battles ahead. It’s about identifying the enemy that we’re up against, so we’re best prepared to fight those battles. And it’s not simply a battle against the Republicans, as the DNC paints it. As we mentioned at the outset, the so-called corporate democrats have stacked the DNC committees to ensure that Bernie is not the nominee. It’s a betrayal of our democracy, and the so-called corporate BigMedia has not even mentioned it.
So if we’re trying to identify the true enemy that we’re up against– the enemy of democratic reforms and programs that Bernie and the other few anti-establishment candidates like Tulsi Gabbard, Andrew Yang and Elizabeth Warren have proposed– we have to look at the industries that those reforms target. That’s who the corporate democrats represent.
We know that Medicare forAll will end the price-fixing schemes of BigPharma corporations. We know that pledges to end the grotesque overspending on regime-change wars for oil will diminish profiteering by both BigDefense and BigOil corporations. And BigOil will also be weakened by the Green New Deal, because of its aggressive plan to invest in new alternative energies that replace fossil fuels.
Which brings us to BigBanks… BigOil is the lifeblood of BigBanks. As we have explored in previous podcasts, the profitability of BigBanks is highly dependent on global sales of oil in US dollars. It’s called the petrodollar system, and foreign oil is the #1 reason that the CIA and CIA front groups like USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy are constantly instigating regime change wars in oil-producing countries. Most folks don’t realize that Wall Street pretty much built the CIA back in the 1940s and has dominated its agenda ever since. It’s all well documented and clarifies why the primary agenda of US foreign policy is to force nations like Venezuela, Syria, Iran, Libya, Iraq and African countries including Nigeria, Angola and the Congo– it’s to force the sale of their oil in US dollars.
Of course, the forced sale of global oil in US dollars forces global demand for US currency. Global demand for US currency props up the value of the US dollar in global financial markets and empowers BigBanks as predatory lenders to debtor nations who need to buy oil to fuel their national economies.
And the buck stops there with BigBanks. The financial elite among BigBanks, Wall Street and related financial institutions are the controlling shareholders of pretty much all major corporations across all major industries, including BigOil, BigDefense, BigPharma, BigChemical, BigMeat&Dairy, and yes, BigMedia. 90% of all major media outlets are controlled by just six major corporations, and the controlling shares of all those corporations are owned by just a handful of financial institutions.
The financial elites at the top of this corporate hierarchy are variously called “the billionaires”, “the Top 1%”, “the oligarchs”, or more specifically, who indie scholar and author, Naomi Klein refers to as “the plutocrats”. Klein is right to make this distinction. As she recently tweeted in reference to billionaire Michael Bloomberg buying his way into the democratic primary, late- she wrote: “plu·toc·ra·cy [is] Government by the wealthy. [A] plu·to·crat [is] a person whose power derives from their wealth.” “[For example],” she continues -quote- "He had long been an oligarch but he longed to be a true plutocrat. So he dipped into his billions to buy an election."
Indeed, as Princeton University researchers have determined, that over the past 40 years, the average working class American has had “a near-zero statisitically non-significant impact on public policy. But when the Top 10% want to stop any new policy, there is a 100% chance they’ll get their way.” That’s Billionaires and the upper “professional class” that dominate US domestic and foreign policy. As Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Chris Hedges has written, “The Coup D'etat Is Over, the Corporations Won.” The US is no longer a representative democracy. “Corporations now control all levers of democratic reform in America, including both political parties, the mass media and the courts.”
As the Princeton Study proves, the US is no longer a representative democracy but a corporate plutocracy, or Corporatocracy as some call it. It is agents of the Corporatocracy who are pulling the strings of the democratic party. All the while, its corporate media outlets like CNN and MSNBC distract and divide us for social control. Just as they are doing now with the absurd spectacle of the Iowa primary, holding back results, slowing revealing cherry-picked returns to steal the predictable bounce that Bernie would have gotten from that win. And instead, propping up establishment-favorite Pete Buttiegeig as the winner in Iowa. It’s a clever tactic and “We the People'' are seemingly helpless but to watch it unfold as it distracts the electorate from Bernie’s momentum.
But we’re not helpless– we just need to understand the enemy and the battlefield...
It’s class warfare. And it is war, y’all... People are getting killed. Our military is endlessly bombing poor nations, killing masses of poor people with bombs funded by our tax dollars– all so BigBanks can force those nations onto the petrodollar system. And here at home, people are needlessly dying too. It’s because so many can’t afford overpriced drugs by BigPharma. BigPharma charges Americans 3-times or more for medicines there in America than in other developed countries. And we’re sick and diseased because the corporate-controlled USDA promotes a food pyramid based on meat and dairy foods, which are the leading cause of death and disease: 18 of the Top 20 pharmaceutical products sold worldwide are medicines that treat diseases associated with animal-based foods. It’s a disease-for-profit food system.
And please be clear, healthcare spending in the US accounts for 20% of US GDP. That’s about $4 TRILLION dollars per year. That’s huge! It means healthcare spending in the US is greater than the entire GDP of Germany, the world’s fourth largest economy. And do you think if Germany’s economy was threatened, they wouldn’t get on a war footing? That’s how the Corporatocracy sees Bernie Sanders. His Medicare for All program threatens BigPharma’s death grip on Americans’ health; it threatens 20% of annual revenues for the Corporatocracy. They know Bernie will end the revolving door of BigPharma into the FDA and Department of Justice. They know he’ll end the regime-change wars for oil and his Green New Deal will signal the beginning– finally– to replacing fossil fuels with clean, renewable energies. And the BigBanks aren’t having it. It’s why they have stacked the DNC committees with Wall Street insiders and CIA associates. Anyone who can’t see it- or who looks away at this point is just being wilfully ignorant. But we can no longer afford the luxury of willful ignorance.
We have to wake up to this moment in history. Indeed, we are at war. It’s class warfare by the billionaire class of the Corporatocracy on the working class people. It’s playing out right now in the wake of election fraud in Iowa– the Corporatocracy and its corporate media are intentionally disrupting the election process to confuse and distract the electorate. And if you’re listening to this- or reading this on our website in disbelief, then they are winning. Don’t let them win– think for yourself- look at the facts. Look at history. What they are doing now in the democratic primary is right out of the CIA playbook psychological operations or psy-ops. It’s political warfare or information warfare, and it is supremely effective, because its victims don’t know how to fight it.
Voting in a rigged system will not win it. And protesting in the streets won’t either. We’re not saying don’t vote or protest. We’re saying we must combine voting and protest with real political leverage. And the only real political leverage we have in a corporate plutocracy is economic boycott.
Indeed, Mass Organized Boycott (MOB) is the only political will that has ever effectively challenged such entrenched and moneyed power. It was the Salt and Textile Boycotts led by Gandhi that won India her Independence. It was the mass picket lines and sit-down strikes in the 1930s that won American workers a 40-hour work week, sick leave and overtime pay. It was the bus boycotts and restaurant sit-ins in the 1960s by Black Americans that won civil rights reforms. It was the Grape Boycotts and Salad Boycotts in the 1960s and 70s that won migrant farm workers economic justice. And it was the divesment boycotts on college campuses in the 1980s that finally ended Apartheid in South Africa.
If we understand that our enemy today is the Corporatocracy, and we investigate its vulnerabilities to boycott, we will find that there are two industries most susceptible to mass boycott– and most strategic to our cause: BigMedia and BigMeat&Dairy. A mass organized boycott of corporate BigMedia would effectively muzzle the corporatocracy. And combined with a mass Buycott of indie journos on social media who support our Just Revolt, we would elevate the bold diverse voices of independent journalism and hasten a global awakening.
And with a mass organized boycott of BigMeat&Dairy (what we’ll call BigMAD from hereon), we would send shockwaves throughout the Corporatocracy. Check this out: BigMAD consumption and production are the leading drivers of sales and profits for two other major industries– BigPharma and BigChemical. As we mentioned before, 18 of the Top 20 BigPharma products sold worldwide are medicines that treat diseases associated with animal-based foods. And re BigChem, the sales of fertilizers and pesticides made by BigChem companies like Monsanto-Bayer are used primarily to grow feed crops for farmed animals. For example, 70% of the grain grown in the US is used as feed crops for animal agriculture. So a mass organized boycott of BigMAD will directly threaten profits for BigPharma and BigChem as well.
And a mass organized boycott against BigMAD combined with a mass Buycott of plant-based foods would greatly improve our collective health, empower small local farmers, and open up mass tracks of land for reforestation. Global animal agriculture now uses about 60% of all lands used by humans to graze farmed animals and grow feed crops for famed animals. Recent research has shown that if just half those lands (41%) were restored to native forest, those recovered forests would sequester more carbon than has been put into the atmosphere since the beginning of the industrial age! That would not only halt climate change, it would reverse it, at least for a few decades while we transition from fossil fuels to renewable energies. That would be huge.
Further– all three industries BigMAD, BigPharma and BigChem are huge customers of BigOil. Petrochemicals are the building blocks of most pharmaceuticals for BigPharma. And most all the synthetic fertilizers and pesticides made by BigChem are petroleum-based products. So a boycott of BigMAD will also significantly impact BigOil profits. And when oil sales drop, THAT is how we can finally challenge BigBanks and force the corporate elites and their political shills to the People’s bargaining table.
If we don’t invest ourselves in such comprehensive leverage now, we will never sustain the dozen or so miracles it’ll take to win Medicare for All and the Green New Deal– not in our lifetimes. Without applying real economic leverage, it’s a fantasy that the Corporatocracy will allow us. As long as we’re just voting and marching in the streets, we do not challenge their economic power. When we combine our voting and marching with mass organized boycott, we will have a substantive strategy that will command their reckoning.
We’ll leave it there for today. We hope you enjoyed the podcast... If you want to learn more about how all of us in the work of Global Justice can join together in strategic boycott and finally force this corporatocracy to the People’s bargaining table, to end all this injustice and corruption– to save our democracy and to help save our planet– please visit our website at WakingJustice.org. You can check out our ABOUT Page and listen to our first podcast. And while you’re there, you can sign up to get your #DailyWakeUp Call– delivered free right to your inbox each day. Just fill out the quick form at the Top/Right of our home page. And each morning – by 4:20 AM ✊🏽 – we’ll email you a link and quick description of the podcast for that day. And if you want more info on how you can get involved, you can email us at info@wakingjustice.org. We’d love to hear from you.
We’re running out of time, y’all... Join us... Peace.
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