You Speak to Me

You speak to me in your sleep,

As your body merges with the beach.

The sand, the rocks, the moisture,

Your body offers to teach.

You speak the ways of the breeze,

As it stirs up the salt and weeds. 

You summon up the rip tides,

That drown me in your seas.

I need not know why,

You speak while you sleep.

Nor need to understand,

The meaning of your speech.

We simply need to embrace this breeze,

Which sweeps the ocean of our dreams.

I Just Know I Love You

 

There is nothing in the world that can explain, 

The meaning of love or what it is like.

There is nothing that makes sense to most folks.

Nothing at least to you or I or anyone we know. 

 

But I can tell you this… I love you.

And I, (not meaning to brag) have read many poets.

And, I can tell you, there are many love poems.

And, none of them can explain the meaning.

 

Which, of course, means it’s inexplicable. 

But, ok. (Putting that aside.) I love you. 

I don’t need to know the meaning of love.

Or what other poets know or not know. 

 

I just know I love you. 

 

RussiaGate Deniers – Red Herring

Photo: CNN

Like other conspiracy theorist, RussiaGate deniers believe they hold special knowledge which separates them from those that believe “the official account”. In the case of RussiaGate (Russian election interference and Russian links to the Trump campaign), the Mueller report and related investigations create the narrative for the “official account”. 

In an article published at CounterPunch, a popular leftwing media organization, Paul Street argues RussiaGate is essentially a nothingburger. Street’s arguments are meant to minimize the extent of the Russian election interference by making a series of red herring arguments, including claims like, “you can’t undermine a democracy that never was a democracy”  and “we do it too, so you can’t complain”. 

For example, Paul Street states, “First, there was no great US “democracy” for Russia to “undermine” in the first place. Domestic wealth and power structures, home-grown-oligarchy and plutocracy…and racist voter suppression…” 

This is true, in fact I’ll take this argument back even further. Scholar Robert Mickey argues in his book, Paths out of Dixie, that until the 1970s, with institutionalized slavery and Jim Crow,  the “southern states are best understood as 11 enclaves of authoritarian rule.” In other words, the deep south was never a democracy. 

It is no great secret US democracy has always been more of an aspiration than an actuality. News Flash: The Shining City upon a hill is not a real city.  Protecting and expanding our limited and challenged democratic institutions, which were handed off to us by our Founding Fathers, is a continuous enterprise.

Yes, this nation has never fully achieved true democracy. We’ve been fighting for democracy ever since the pregnancy of our nation. That doesn’t mean we should throw in the towel and stop struggling for democracy now. Paul Street’s argument is a classic red herring argument meant to divert attention away from Russian interference of our elections.

According to the Mueller report, the Russian’s “defrauded the US” in the 2016 elections in a “sweeping and systematic fashion”.  This is something new to US elections. The Russian cyber attack has dragged America’s democratic aspirations down further. The Russian’s have yanked us deeper into the mud, making democracy even harder to grasp. Foreign election attacks have added a new, deep, dark, ugly layer of muck on American democracy. 

Now, not only do we have to fight off the legal corporate corruption and supreme court sanctioned gerrymandering, we now have to deal illegal hacking, a monstrous disinformation (Russian Active Measures) campaign, trolls with manufacturing deepfakes, a foreign government invasion of our privacy, and even cyber attacks on State election rolls, data bases, and voting machine software. What’s next, vote changing by a foreign government?

RussiaGate deniers make red herring arguments to prime their unsuspecting audience for their slippery slope arguments follow. Paul Street will tell you, “Superpower Uncle Sam continues to regularly intervene in and otherwise impact the internal affairs of other nations (Russian included) all over the world..”

That may be true too. However, if you opposed US election interference abroad, wouldn’t you think to oppose election interference here in the US as well? If you haven’t opposed US election interference abroad before, maybe it time to rethink your position. 

For the RussiaGate deniers, once they have convince you a “sweeping and systematic” attack on our elections was nothing more than just a “slight”, unsuccessful, or hardly worth the time attempt, the deniers they will  take you down the rabbit hole like so many  other conspiracy theories.

They will introduce you to slippery slope claims like “they tired” but we don’t know if they succeeded. They will suggest the DNC’s emails might not have been hacked by Russian’s at all. They will tell you the emails could have been leaked. None of this is true. At this point, you know you are talking to a true RussiaGate denier.

The Mueller report made clear the Russians hacked the DNC emails and dozens of other private emails. Mueller makes clear the Russians continue to hack and steal data from State election offices, politicians, political organizations all across America all the while sowing discord through troll spreading harmful disinformation.   

RussiaGate deniers are working to minimize the impact of Russia’s ongoing cyber-attacks on our elections. They want Americans to minimize or outright dismiss the actual Mueller report findings. They will lure you into their red herring arguments then drag you down their slippery-slope. They’ll emphatically state, “nothing to see here, look away, Mueller found nothing, it’s no big deal”. As Trump repeatedly and falsely claims, “No Collusion, No Obstruction”. And that is definitely Not True and not what the Mueller report states.

 

In Front Of You

 

In front of you, all you have are wildflowers,

A thin dirt trail, and the crisp cold air.

Behind you, years of hard worn life,

Weighing in on your heavily grown bones.

 

It doesn’t matter if you climbed a mountain,

Or scored big on the stock market.

It doesn’t matter if you danced naked in the park,

And became famous or incredibly infamous.

 

All that matters now are the wildflowers.

The wild range poppies, daisies, and dandelions,

Snowy milkmaids and yellow buttercups,

Blue-eyed grass and purple stinging nettles.

 

They yell, “watch your damn step, be fucking kind,

and remember… what you leave behind”.

William Binney – Appeal to False Authority, Desperate Russiagate Deniers Cling Together, Do Great Harm

(AP Photo/Michael Sohn)

Back in 2001, National Security Agency (NSA) official William Binney was one of several whistleblowers to expose the NSA’s warrantless eavesdropping programs. For that, we should all be grateful. Fast forward to today, Binney is responsible for perpetuating dangerous myths that have harmed Americans and undermine our elections.

Since retiring from NSA, Binney has produced freelanced “intelligence products” with mixed results. In fact, the intelligence products Binney has recently been selling have been downright misguided and outright unreliable.  

Binney has found himself on the cutting-edge of conspiracy myths. Basking in the limelight, over the last 3 years Binney has been on Fox News Sean Hannity, widely quoted on Breitbart and InfoWars, and has even made appearances on left leaning media organizations like Democracy Now!.

Binney was widely considered an outside expert in cyber intelligence. So, during the 2016 elections, and especially after the Obama administration’s Intelligence Community (I.C.) released a joint statement accusing Russia of election interference, Binney became a frequent guest on both the far right and far left media to provide a counter-narrative to the I.C.’s findings and talk about the WikiLeaks dumps.

For example, from September 2016 to February 2017, Binney appeared on Hannity’s show 10 times questioning the I.C. findings. Binney’s was a guest on Hannity’s show after the WikiLeaks “Vault 7” dump. This infamous show is considered to have nationally birthed the now widely debunked myth that the DNC emails were leaked by DNC staffer Seth Rich. Binney (and others) claimed Rich handed-off the leaked emails to the CIA, which then forwarded them to Guccifer 2.0 and WikiLeaks.

While most remained uncritical, some in the media pointed-out Binney provided no real evidence to support his claims, just a word salad of discredited technical mumbo jumbo speculation provided by an unnamed source called “The Forensicator”. On her blogsite emptywheel, national security scholar Marcy Wheeler completely debunks Binney’s so-called “Intelligence product”, which he derived from The Forensicator:

“I noted this file was a proxy file back in October, and that before you got into the analysis of its forensics, you first had to account for the provenance of it. I also noted WikiLeaks’ role in sharing the file with the Trump campaign here. In this post, I noted that the files in question weren’t DNC files (nor were the earliest Guccifer 2.0 ones), so the entire exercise said absolutely nothing about who hacked the DNC, purportedly the central project of Leonard and his ilk (William Binney). And all that’s before I noted, over and over, that copying of files in the US would not prove a damn thing (as the GRU’s use of staging servers in AZ and IL make clear).”

Appeal to False Authority: Using an alleged authority as evidence in your argument when the authority is not really an authority on the facts relevant to the argument. 

Perhaps Binney just wanted to stay in the game? Try to stay relevant? Nonetheless, Binney was unable to publish a single shred of hard evidence to support his word salad of speculation. Yet, many in the media continued to promote Binney’s comments as if he were an authority on the facts relevant to the DNC emails, without mentioning Dr. Marcy Wheeler’s debunking of The Forensicator’s and Binney’s DNC leak myth years ago.

In reality, Binney had not offered even a sliver of real forensic analysis on the DNC server breach, nor any of the other hacked emails. Just some misguided gibberish based on a review of commonly shared files cobbled together from partisan Trump supporters. With the blessings of Binney acting as an “authority”, pushing the false conclusions from The Forensicator’s analysis of copied files, the Seth Rich leaker myth was birthed on InfoWars, Breitbart, and Fox News, then carried into the far left fringes of the media.

Back in 2017, local police and the Rich family released statements  requesting the media refrain from making false and misleading claims about Seth Rich. Like with the Sandy Hook Truthers, a statement from the Rich family painfully highlighted the continuing abuse Binney’s conspiracy myths and fake news have on real people, “As we’ve seen through the past year of unsubstantiated claims, we see no facts, we have seen no evidence, [of their son Seth leaking emails to WikiLeaks, yet]… we’ve seen that those interested in pushing conspiracies will stop at nothing to do so.”

Nearly two years after the Rich family statements, William Binney continues to promote the extremely harmful DNC leak/Seth Rich conspiracy myths on InfoWars, Breitbart, along with left leaning media organizations like the Intelligence Assessment and Russiagate deniers like Project Censored.

 

 

Russiagate Deniers Among Us

 

The pattern continues, cherry-pick a controversial topic and make fallacious arguments around it. Russiagate deniers have been doing this for the last two years. Many on the left, including myself, have long followed and shaking our heads after reading folks like Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept, Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone, Aaron Mate’ of The Nation, and a host of other left-wing alternative or independent media organizations engage in Russiagate denial.

For Russiagate, the term “collusion” was always a straw man argument. Anyone paying attention knows (especially constitutional lawyer Greenwald) collusion is not a crime and criminal conspiracy charges are extremely rare. One must prove intent to commit criminal conspiracy beyond a reasonable doubt. Well, we all knew the Trump’s can claim ignorance and sound completely believable. Glenn Greenwald knew that too, which is why, like Trump, he often hung his hat on the collusion argument. It was a win win for Trump and Greenwald.

However, other journalists, not acting like Trump’s left-wing defense attorney, including David Corn of Mother Jones, have long been accurately reported on all of the evidence, including non-criminal “collusion in plain sight” for years. These journalist are not buying Glenn Greenwald’s and Matt Taibbi’s Russiagate denial B.S.

Corn, calling out Greenwald directly, writes:

“For many of these scandal skeptics, it hasn’t seemed to matter that the charge against Moscow has been publicly confirmed by the Obama administration, the US intelligence community (which concluded that Putin’s operation intended to help Trump), both Republicans and Democrats on the congressional intelligence committees, and Robert Mueller, who indicted a mess of Russians for participating in this covert operation. True, there often is cause to question officialdom and government sources. Yet anyone citing the Mueller report, as it is narrowly capsulized by Barr, must also accept his key finding: Russia attacked the United States and intervened in the election. (They must also accept that, as the Barr letter disclosed, Mueller found evidence suggesting Trump obstructed justice but did not reach a final judgment on this question.)

…The Russiagate detractors and the Trump champions are deliberately and deceptively narrowing the question to focus only on direct conspiracy between the Trump camp and the Kremlin, pertaining specifically to the attack. They are embracing Trump’s own self-serving standard. They are studiously ignoring what has already been established: Moscow waged information warfare against the United States, Trump’s campaign enthusiastically engaged with Russians while the attack was transpiring (conveying to Moscow that it did not mind the Kremlin’s intervention), and Trumpists lied about these interactions and misled the public about the Russian operation. All these gleeful Russiagate deniers now exploiting the minimalist Barr letter to diminish or suppress the Trump-Russia scandal are conducting an exercise of diversion that is of tremendous benefit to two men—Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin—and a disservice to the American public.”  

Let’s be clear, “Russiagate” encompasses all of the counterintelligence investigations, including Mueller’s appointment to investigate, “Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election” and “any link and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald J. Trump” and “any matter that arose or arise directly from the investigation…”.  Nowhere in Mueller’s charge does it narrowly, specifically, or exclusively call for Mueller to investigate President Trump’s personal “criminal conspiracy” accusations pushed by Russiagate deniers.

As David Corn points out, anyone citing AG “Cover-Up” Barr’s chopped-up little letter of the Mueller report must now accept Russiagate is not a hoax.

Unfortunately, there are still some left-wing Russiagate deniers still mimicking Trump’s talking points.They are now making even more outrageous claims, as Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi have, in claiming Russiagate (“hoax” as they claim) is a bigger “deep state conspiracy” than the neocons WMD lies that took the US into the second Iraq War and killing more than a million people.

To put this kindly, that’s just B.S.

There is a clear argument, made by Kathleen Hall Jamieson in her book Cyberwars, How Russian Troll and Hacker Help Elect a President What We Don’t, Can’t, and Do Know, that suggests Russian interference in the 2016 helped Trump in key swing  states and districts contributed to Donald J. Trump becoming the 45th President of the United States.

If you care about issues of climate change, health care, education, and especially the fairness in our elections you should care if our elections are free and fair of illegal hostile foreign influence. The Russians are already attempting to influence the 2020. Russiagate is real. The Russiagate deniers among us are akin to climate change deniers. We all need to speak out against them. 

The Devil is in “THE” Details

Beware of Left Wing Fake News

Finally motivated to write new articles. As a writer and poet of 35 years, I’ve long been a supporter of media literacy organizations, including Project Censored. It breaks my heart to see an organization, whose mission I believe in deeply, develop a sad pattern of confirmation bias. Becoming everything they once stood against. I’m starting a new series I’m thinking about calling, Project Censored: Left-Wing Purveyors of Fake News.

…The pattern continues: Cherry-pick a controversial data point, take it out-of-context, and then make fallacious arguments around it. Wordsmiths, like a group of college professors, can change just one word and accomplish this trick.

Project Censored: “New Knowledge… the source of information for the Senate Intel Committee on Russian Meddling in the 2016 election”. Therefore, (slippery slope logic) if New Knowledge is compromised so to must the Senate Select Intelligence Committee’s work. They should stop looking into Russia meddling and Putin.

Fact Check: The Senate Select Intelligence Committee has reviewed more than a dozen reports from social media, other online platforms, and now comprehensive third-party reports, including one from the University of Oxford and Graphaki. Every one of those reports confirm the findings in the New Knowledge report. The conclusions unanimously agree Russia meddled in the 2016 elections. The New Knowledge report was not “the source”, rather just one of many that continue to confirm the Russian meddling conclusion. According to the Oxford and Graphaki conclusions, “Russia’s Internet Research Agency (IRA) launched an extended attack on the United States by using computational propaganda to misinform and polarize US voters.”

It’s not like Mickey Huff didn’t know of the University of Oxford and Graphaki report, the many other sources, nor the history of the committee. I told him about them and even sent him links (Huff is a History professor after all). Yet, Huff continued to support the false claim that the New Knowledge report was “the source of information for the Senate Intel Committee on “Russian” meddling in the 2016 election”.

When presented with the FACT that the New Knowledge report was just one of many, and if he just changed the “THE” to an “A” the statement would be more transparent and factual, Mickey Huff responded,  “Mickey Huff Dean Walker My statement stands as a matter of fact.”

Clearly, Mickey Huff and Project Censored has chosen an agenda to spread disinformation over accurate reporting. The leadership at Project Censored has shown a pattern of taking facts and quotes out-of-context and then making fallacious arguments around them. For this reason, Project Censored has degenerated into the very animal they spend so much time harping against…fake news.

Below is the full context of Mickey Huff’s statement (slippery slope argument) along with the press release from the Senate Select Intelligence Committee on the release of the New Knowledge report. Judge for yourself.

Mickey Huff, Director of Project Censored, “Would someone please tell MSNBC’s Maddow and the new techno determinist PropOrNot-like firm New Knowledge (the one that got caught meddling in the AL Senate race that made it look like Russian bots were trying to help elect alleged pedophile Roy Moore- yes, faking it, while also being “THE” (emphasis added) source of information for the Senate Intel Committee on “Russian” meddling in the 2016 election…can’t make this shit up, folks) that Putin was not involved (hasty generalization, an assumption Huff makes without enough information) and they maybe should spend more time looking for actual vulnerabilities in our election systems.”

SSCI Press Release, December 17, 2018:

“WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, third-party experts released two independent analyses of social media tactics used by Russia’s Internet Research Agency (IRA) in their attempts to influence U.S. political discourse. The reports are the first comprehensive analyses of their kind conducted by entities other than social media companies themselves, and are based in part on data provided by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI).

The reports, titled “The Tactics and Tropes of the Internet Research Agency” and “The IRA and Political Polarization in the United States, 2015-2017,” were authored by New Knowledge, and University of Oxford and Graphika, respectively.”

To learn more about the FACTS on the SSCI reports and their findings (so far) I suggest starting with the University of Oxford and Graphika. Not Project Censored’s Fake News.

comprop.oii.ox.ac.uk/…

Project Censored: Assumption # 1, Straw Man

The left doesn’t need fake news. Project Censored (P.C.) claims to be a “media literacy and critical thinking” organization. Their radio program is aired nationwide on Pacifica Radio and other left leaning stations. Yet, Project Censored has abandoned their mission and have become the very same monsters they feed on criticizing, “Fake News”.

In P.C.’s review of Kathleen Hall Jamieson’s book, Cyberwar,  written by Dr. Rob Williams, once again we see Project Censored’s pattern of taking a controversial data point out-of-context and creating a fallacious argument around it.

In this case, P.C. cherry-picked the most controversial Russian linked hack (that of the DNC) and conflates all of the Russian linked hacks into one controversial hack. In doing so, PC takes Jamieson’s arguments in Cyberwar out-of-context in order to promote a debunked and nonsensical straw man argument.

Project Censored:

Assumption #1: Jamieson implicitly asserts in Cyberwar that the Russians “hacked” into the Democratic National Committee (DNC) computer servers (as well as other hacks) and obtained digital copies of thousands of what became publicly damning emails from members of the DNC leadership team – Clinton campaign advisor John Podesta, HRC herself, and others – and then (by extension) tried to leverage the contents of these stolen documents for months in US social media spaces (and, by extension, influenced the shaping of US news narratives about HRC.)

The counter narrative to the “Russia hacked into the DNC computers” story? Information was “leaked” from inside the DNC, not hacked from the outside. How might we know? Former NSA cryptographer Bill Binney, former CIA official Ray McGovern, and many other members of the 2003-founded Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) argue that, based on their review of computer bit rate information, the stolen DNC content traveled at bandwidth rates too high to have been an external “hack,” but rather an internal “leak.” The reality? We’ll never know for sure, because the DNC refused to hand over their compromised computer servers to the FBI, instead contracting with Crowd Strike, a private US cybersecurity firm, to ascertain affirmative Russian hacking involvement (#Surprise!). For interested readers, NSA whistleblower Bill Binney discusses his “leak versus hack” conclusions on this recent episode of Brass Check TV between 1:27 – 1:37 here.…” www.projectcensored.org/cyberwar-russiagate.

Fact Check:

“Podesta never chaired the DNC, nor had any involvement in the DNC’s handling of their email server”, according to DNC spokesperson Adrienne Watson.

“I had nothing to do with the Democratic National Committee — I chaired Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign,” Podesta wrote in an op-ed for the Washington Post. “So there was no DNC server for me to refuse to give, and I was never asked for one.”

Once again, Project Censored radio show and articles cherry-picked a controversial data point (DNC’s emails hack/leak) and made a fallacious argument (this time a straw man).  

Not only did John Podesta have nothing to do with the DNC and their stolen emails, Podesta’s stolen emails had nothing to do with the DNC. Podesta’s personal Gmail was one of the many “other hacks” which Project Censored conflates into the DNC hacks.

According to the threat researchers at Dell SecureWorks, hired by Google (not the DNC), Podesta’s personal Gmail account was one of many hacked accounts yielding from an aggressive Russian “GRU spearphishing campaign”.

Project Censored intentionally takes Jamieson’s book Cyberwar out-of-context, conflates the unrelated the DNC hacks with Podesta’s Gmail hack, and then creates a false narrative. Thus, creating a straw man argument with their “Assumption #1”.

Equally egregious, Project Censored’s counter narrative intentionally omits the fact that Cyberwar directly addresses the so-called “DNC leak theory” controversy in some detail.

Instead, Project Censored’s “Assumptions #1” chose to cite Bill Binney, a frequent guest on Alex Jones’ InfoWars, as their source. Bill Binney openly claims DNC employee Seth Rich may have been murdered because he “leaked” (as Project Censored’s counter narrative suggests) the emails.

Project Censored omits the fact that Jamieson’s fully debunks much of this DNC leak conspiracy theory. Jamison’s book even provides links to her organization Factcheck.org for additional information: Gingrich-spreads-conspiracy-theory.

The left doesn’t need their own InfoWars style fake news sites. This is especially true for so-called academic organizations claiming to teach our kids media literacy and critical thinking. Unfortunately, Project Censored’s fake news radio show can be heard on Pacifica Radio nationwide. That is a problem.

 

Nina and I

We met when the leaves were turning, dropping off the vines.

I had become a craggy vineyard clinging to trestles and stakes.

She seemed familiar, the sweet stoic cabin I passed by each day.

Yet a brief conversation over coffee consummated our first date.

 

Next I knew I was eating pumpkin pie and artichoke casserole,

With a family I just met. Living life in our modest homes,

We had great adventures climbing Great Walls, feeding the soul,

Chasing Sandhill cranes, and sleeping inside teardrop domes.

 

And now we spend our days meandering along jagged coasts,

And majestic old growth redwoods, along the Avenue of Giants.

And I don’t know which is more giant..the tallest trees on earth,

Or my love for Nina? …But that doesn’t matter.

 

We met when the leaves were turning, dropping off the vines.

And together, we survived. And now, in love, we thrive.

 

Wall Street Banks Shower Washington Politicians

I’m not a Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders supporter. I’m not a Democrat or a Republican. Nearly 30 years ago I registered as a Green Party member and have been one ever since. As a person that politically leans to the progressive left, I would say I tend to agree more with Sanders than any of the other candidates running for president on both the Dem and Repug tickets.

Nonetheless, I will defend any and all candidates (Trump included) if they are being falsely attacked. The main reason why I do this is because I believe to end the divisive nature of political discourse we must seek to have a more honest dialogue. Sadly, false accusations seem to be a mainstay in American politics.

Recently, a friend of mine and a Hillary Clinton supporter, (whom I consider to be an honest and fair participant in political discourse,) took issue with a Sanders ad. He claimed the ad lacked any evidence to support its claims. Here is the complete text to the Sanders ad.

“Wall Street banks shower Washington politicians with campaign contributions and speaking fees. And what do they get for it? A rigged economy, tax-breaks, and bailouts. All held in place by a corrupt campaign finance system. And while Washington politicians are paid $200,000 an hour for speeches, they oppose raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour. $200,000 for them, but not even 15 bucks an hour for all Americans. Enough is enough. I’m Bernie Sanders and I approve this message.”  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEv5zSF11q4

My friend responded to the above 30 second ad as follows.

“The ad commits the fallacy of BEGGING THE QUESTION! Claim X assumes X is true. Therefore, claim X is true. The statement presumes the WSB [Wall Street banks] gets something for the contributions and speaking fees. No evidence is offered to support the claim; no verifiable examples are cited”

In the comment thread, my friend goes on to state.

“Enough with epithets masquerading as evidence and accusations passing for arguments. It is time to put up or shut up! On this point, I don’t believe Senator Sanders or any of his allies and supporters have sufficient, competent evidential matter to do so. Evidence, logic, and truth matter – get real or get gone…I am saying the repeatedly insinuated quid pro quo has never been substantiated. Another name for the fallacy I cited is “ignoring the common cause.” All manner of people make generalized accusations, but I have rarely seen enough detail to discern the substance, much less, the veracity of the charge. The “revolving door” is a variation on the same thing…Having impact does not mean accepting bribes or whatever the Hell else the constant carping on speaking fees and contributions are meant to imply. I have had it with that trope. Sounds a lot like envy to me.”

In the above quotes, my friend is essentially suggesting two things. One, the Sanders ad “insinuated quid pro quo” or even that Clinton might be guilty of “accepting bribes”. (The ad actually never mentions Clinton). Two, there is no proven connection between the contributions given by  wealthy elites (like Wall Street Banks) and favorable government policies toward the rich, like the “rigged economy, tax breaks, and bailouts”.  

I’d like to address these two claims.

In a recent opinion piece in The Guardian, Trevor Timm gets right to the point. The Clinton supporters are falsely suggesting that critics of the billionaire donor system are  essentially insinuating a system of quid pro quos and bribery.  This, in fact, is the Clinton supporters own fallacious reasoning. Yes, Sanders suggests Wall Street banks are getting something in return for their donations in the ad. However, Sanders does not go so far as to suggest quid pro quos or bribes. What the Clinton supporters seem to be intentionally doing here is taking Sanders words out of context and twisting them. Sanders, and his supporters, are clearly making a more nuanced statement. Here is how Timm explains the Sanders position on this matter.

“Sure, even hardcore Sanders supporters will admit there is no evidence of direct quid pro quo when talking about large donations various parties made to the Clinton Foundation when Clinton was secretary of state. But it would be difficult not to worry about at least the potential for a conflict of interest, when weapons manufacturers and Saudi Arabia were making donations to the Clinton Foundation while their weapons deals were approved by the State Department, oil companies were doing the same before the State Department approved the oil sands pipeline project, and other fossil fuels donated at around the same time the secretary was advocating increased fracking abroad.

But of course there is no quid pro quo – that has never been the prime criticism of wealthy individuals using their vast resources to “buy” elections, push candidates in one direction, or influence office holders in much more subtle and nuanced ways than outright bribery.

And by taking this position that only quid pro quo equals corruption, Clinton supporters are essentially adopting the reasoning of the Roberts court that they claim to abhor – that unless there is direct evidence of overtly trading money for votes, corruption doesn’t exist.”

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/apr/14/money-hillary-clinton-banks-oil-links-presidential-campaign

The fact is, political corruption does exist. However, wealthy corporate elites do not need to use illegal tactics like quid pro quos or to engage in bribery in order to influence government policies. That’s not how it works. Nor is that what the Sanders ad is claiming. Remember, Clinton’s name is not even mentioned in Sanders ad. Sanders ad was referring to the entire political system, not just one politician.  

The non-profit organization the Sunlight Foundation helps to explain the Sanders position, “(T)he question has always been: what do rich political donors get for their contributions? One argument is that these individuals are buying special favors, including ambassadorships and other prime posts.

And while one can find occasional examples of the above, to my mind the more convincing claim has always been the more subtle one: that relying so heavily on rich donors leads candidates to be more sympathetic to the general concerns of their donors.

To raise money from a bunch of rich investors is to also take the time to listen to a bunch of rich investors and what they think about tax and financial policy. And to keep the campaign donations coming requires a certain policy sensitivity to what these donors think.  It’s not so much a quid-pro-quo as it is a process of self-enlightened worldview osmosis.”

But the Sunlight Foundation doesn’t stop there. Like anyone truly trying to understand the mechanism behind the corporate corruption of our government, they turn to the Princeton studies by Martin Gilens.

So it’s good to read Martin Gilens’ excellent work showing convincingly that where rich people and poor people disagree on policy, the federal government pretty much always sides with the rich people.

What this shows that it doesn’t really matter what low-income or middle-income voters think about a policy. They might favor it. They might oppose it. It has no real effect on how likely the policy is to happen.

But among high-income individuals, there’s a clear pattern. If rich people are in favor, the policy is significantly more likely to become law. (The y-axis in both charts is logit regression coefficients. The coefficients translate into about a 65% increase in the probability of a policy passing when it goes from 0% to 100% support among rich people)

https://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2012/08/15/what-do-rich-political-donors-get-for-their-contributions/

 

 

Martin Gilens’ is a Professor of Politics at Princeton University. His studies provide us with the empirical data that supports Sanders’ claims. If the Clinton supporters are actually looking for evidence, they need only look to Gilens.

“My data cast further doubt on the notion that representational inequality arises from the greater knowledge or better judgment of those with higher incomes. If government responds not simply to the most affluent but to the most knowledgeable citizens, we would expect education to be a stronger moderator of the preference/policy link than income. In fact, I find the opposite: when both are taken into account, income is a far stronger determinant of influence over policy outcomes than is education.”

http://themonkeycage.org/2012/08/economic-inequality-and-political-power-part-3-of-3/

In 2014, Professors Martin Gilens and Benjamin I Page released a eyeopening study titled, Testing Theories of American Politics, Interest Groups and Average Citizens. The study concluded, “Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence. The results provide substantial support for theories of Economic-Elite Domination and for theories of Biased Pluralism, but not for theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy or Majoritarian Pluralism.”

My Clinton and friends are emphatically stating Sanders and friends have no evidence to support their claims that Wall Street banks get favorable treatment for their contributions and paid speeches. However, the empirical evidence provided by the Princeton studies suggest otherwise. According to the data, tax cuts, bailout and a rigged economy are examples of that favoritism.

Wealthy elites do not have to demand a quid pro quo. Nor do they have to bribe their local politicians. They know that by simply financing the political campaigns of our elected officials the elites will gain all the access and influence they need to lend a sympathetic government ear to their best interests. And this simple guilt-free corrupt system has been working just fine for the politicians and corporate elites for decades now.

Yes, even after 7 years of the Obama presidency we still have a the rich Wall Street banks favored by a “rigged economy, tax cuts, and bailouts”. If Clinton supporters think anything will be different under a Clinton administration they are only kidding themselves. Meanwhile, they should stop smearing Sanders and his supporters with the false accusation that they are insinuating Clinton is engaging in illegal quid pro quos and bribery. That’s not what Sanders is saying in the ad and the Clinton supporters know it. On this issue, the Clinton supporters should either “get real or get gone.”