Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

AP’s Today in History for October 11th

Congress OK’s U.S. military force against Iraq; Former President Jimmy Carter wins Nobel Peace Prize; Anita Hill accuses Supreme Court pick Clarence Thomas; Second Vatican Council opens; ‘SNL’ premieres.

Breakfast Tune RUMBLE Web Exclusive: Rhiannon Giddens plays some old-timey banjo

Something to think about, Breakfast News & Blogs below

 
‘I Know This Is Shocking,’ Says Sanders, But Trump ‘Lying About Medicare for All’
Jon Queally, Common Dreams

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Backing up Sanders’ charge of blatant falsehoods in a fact-check response on Common Dreams, Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen, said the president is “dead wrong” and stated that while “lies and deceptions from Trump are nothing new,” the president’s falsehoods about Sanders’ proposal “are new, so it’s worth correcting his USA Today column.”

Among the “major lies and deceits” by Trump, Weismann documented the following:

1)Medicare-for-All would not “end Medicare as we know it and take away benefits that seniors have paid for all their lives.” The reason it’s called Medicare-for-All is because it would take the existing program and expand it to everyone. Seniors’ benefits would not be taken away – in fact, they would be improved, but everyone else would gain the benefits of Medicare, too.

2)Medicare-for-All is not going to cost an “astonishing $32.6 trillion” over 10 years, because it will introduce major savings not adequately accounted for in the study Trump cites. Significant savings would come from eliminating vast amounts of paperwork and bureaucracy imposed by the current dysfunctional system, and steeply dropping costs for brand-name pharmaceuticals. But even if Medicare-for-All cost as much as Trump alleges, that amount would be LESS than projections for our current system, which also leaves tens of millions of Americans without coverage.

3)Trump’s claim to have kept his pledge to maintain coverage for people with pre-existing conditions and create new health insurance options is completely deceptive. First, the protections for pre-existing conditions remain in place only because Trump failed to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA.) Meanwhile, a Republican-led lawsuit is challenging the ACA, including guarantee for pre-existing conditions, and there’s a real worry that, especially with Brett Kavanaugh now on the Supreme Court, it might succeed. As for new junk health insurance options Trump has authorized, they offer only the illusion of care, because they permit insurers to skirt the requirement to cover pre-existing conditions.

4)Medicare-for-All would not “lead to the massive rationing of health care.” It is the current system that rations care, based on the ability to pay. One-third of Americans say they had a problem accessing medical care because of cost in the last year. With Medicare-for-All, everyone will be able to see a doctor or access treatment, irrespective of how much money they have.

While denouncing Trump’s fearmongering for being exactly that, Sanders said that his Medicare for All proposal “would allow seniors and all Americans to see the doctors they want, not the doctors their insurance companies have a contract with.”

Overall, Sanders concluded, a system in which everyone is covered and nobody left out would be a vast improvement over the current “dysfunctional” healthcare system that leaves approximately 30 million people without insurance – a system in which huge profits for insurance companies and drug companies are given priority over providing quality care for every man, woman and child in the country.

“The time is now for the United States to join every other major country on Earth and guarantee health care to every American as a right not a privilege,” Sanders concluded, “and Donald Trump, the insurance companies and the drug companies will not stop us.”

• The Color of Economic Anxiety
  Malaika Jabali

• Theory 101: Patriarchy as a Structure of White supremacist Class Rule under Imperialism
  Danny Haiphong

• How Over-Priced Is the US Housing Market?
  Ian Welsh

• New Hampshire GOP candidate refuses to explain why he wants to force raped women to have babies
  DAVID EDWARDS

Something to think about over coffee prozac

 
What is the United States of America?
SAMEER DOSSANI, COUNTER PUNCH
 

Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed to a lifetime appointment on the Supreme Court despite being creditably accused of multiple sexual assaults and appearing to commit perjury. He will almost definitely make a number of decisions that serve to erode the accountability of big business in general and our Molester-In-Chief in particular.

All of this is deeply troubling and it’s been reassuring to see the level of outrage across the country. But there’s a deeper conflict going on here, one over a simple question: What is the United States of America?

Is the USA the home of the free? A settler colonial state? A country of equality? Or a place where Latina women earn only 54% of what white men do, where the state smiles on police killings of black people, and where a handful of billionaires control the majority of resources and poor people scrounge to survive?

Socialist organizers like myself have a set of answers to these questions. The USA is a patriarchal, colonial, oligarchic state built on dispossession of native peoples, on slavery, continuing exclusion of people of color, and on undervaluing, objectifying and profiting from women’s bodies. Gender privilege, race privilege and class privilege are the remnants of systems that were designed to enrich the very few. In meaningful ways, those systems have not ended.

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Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

AP’s Today in History for October 10th

Vice President Spiro Agnew resigns; Imperial rule ends in China; Achille Lauro hijackers forced to land; Movie legend Orson Welles dies; Opera composer Giuseppe Verdi born; Actor Christopher Reeve dies.

Breakfast Tune Kryptonite (Bluegrass Cover)

Breakfast News, Blogs & Something to think about, below

 
LEAKED TRANSCRIPT OF PRIVATE MEETING CONTRADICTS GOOGLE’S OFFICIAL STORY ON CHINA
Ryan Gallagher, The Intercept

“WE HAVE TO be focused on what we want to enable,” said Ben Gomes, Google’s search engine chief. “And then when the opening happens, we are ready for it.”

It was Wednesday, July 18, and Gomes was addressing a team of Google employees who were working on a secretive project to develop a censored search engine for China, which would blacklist phrases like “human rights,” “student protest,” and “Nobel Prize.”

“You have taken on something extremely important to the company,” Gomes declared, according to a transcript of his comments obtained by The Intercept. “I have to admit it has been a difficult journey. But I do think a very important and worthwhile one. And I wish ourselves the best of luck in actually reaching our destination as soon as possible.”

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It has been two months since The Intercept first revealed details about the censored search engine, code-named Dragonfly. Since then, the project has faced a wave of criticism from human rights groups, Google employees, U.S. senators, and even Vice President Mike Pence, who on Thursday last week called on Google to “immediately end development of the Dragonfly app that will strengthen the Communist Party’s censorship and compromise the privacy of Chinese customers.”

Google has refused to answer questions or concerns about Dragonfly. On Sept. 26, a Google executive faced public questions on the censorship plan for the first time. Keith Enright told the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee that there “is a Project Dragonfly,” but said “we are not close to launching a product in China.” When pressed to give specific details, Enright refused, saying that he was “not clear on the contours of what is in scope or out of scope for that project.”

Senior executives at Google directly involved in building the censorship system have largely avoided any public scrutiny. But on Sept. 23, Gomes briefly addressed Dragonfly when confronted by a BBC reporter at an event celebrating Google’s 20th anniversary.

“Right now, all we’ve done is some exploration,” Gomes told the reporter, “but since we don’t have any plans to launch something, there’s nothing much I can say about it.”

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• Spike in voter registrations after Taylor Swift pro-Democrat Instagram post
  Laura Snapes

• OBAMA’S RESISTANCE TO INVESTIGATING THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION ALLOWED BRETT KAVANAUGH TO SKATE ONTO THE SUPREME COURT
  Eoin Higgins

• GOP’s Brian Kemp Purged 1 in 10 Georgia Voters: I’ve Got the Names
  Greg Palast

Something to think about over coffee prozac

 
BERNIE SANDERS SHOWS HOW TO DO POLITICS
NATHAN J. ROBINSON, CURRENT AFFAIRS
 

When Bernie Sanders introduced his “Stop BEZOS Act” last month, he was mocked for Not Understanding Basic Economics. His bill required companies to pay back the costs of welfare benefits received by their employees, and was intended to highlight the fact that as Jeff Bezos has become the wealthiest man in the history of humanity, thousands of Amazon workers (in some places, nearly ⅓ of the workforce) have been earning so little that they are on food stamps.

The “Well, actually” brigade was on top of Sanders instantly. Sanders “seems more focused on embarrassing the online giant than helping its workers,” and “his plan seems to be much more about grandstanding and pointing fingers than about actual solutions to help vulnerable American workers.” Sanders was lectured by the Heritage Foundation: “wages are contingent on the additional value that a given worker contributes to the company,” and the bill would (tell me if you’ve heard this one before) Hurt The Very People It Was Trying To Help. Here’s a Cato Institute libertarian writing in USA Today:

“However much Sanders insists otherwise, in competitive industries, workers’ pay and benefits tend to match the value of the work they’re doing. Firms cannot “underpay,” or else they risk losing employees to other businesses, while “overpaying” would be financial suicide. …Of course, Sanders is right that wages at major corporations do not always guarantee a decent standard of living, particularly for part-time workers, those with many children, or high rent. But shareholders and customers of companies should not be responsible for every factor of their workers’ lives. Companies pay people for the work they do, and it is unrealistic to expect them to pay people based on the number of children they have, where they live or their medical bills. … My research estimates a program of liberalization in land use planning and zoning laws, child-care regulations, cost-inflating food programs, fuel standards and car dealership laws, tariffs on clothing and footwear and occupational licensing, could directly save poor households anywhere between $830 and $3,500 per year.”

First, I think it shows you just how limited libertarianism is as an ideology that when the Cato guy tries to suggest alternatives, he says that if you got rid of regulations on child-care, fuel standards, occupational licenses, city planning and zoning laws, then maybe you could save poor families a couple thousand bucks a year. It’s also true that if you let anyone be a doctor, the cost of going to the doctor would plummet! If you stopped requiring cars to be roadworthy, their cost would drop too. There are reasons we do not do these things.

Second, here’s what happened last week, for those of you that missed the news: Amazon raised the starting wage for all its employees to $15 an hour. Here’s what Jeff Bezos said: “We listened to our critics, thought hard about what we wanted to do, and decided we want to lead… We’re excited about this change and encourage our competitors and other large employers to join us.”

This shows you two things:

1)Bernie Sanders is not an idiot, and actually knows how to do politics.

2)The theory of economics that the criticisms were based on is balderdash.

The criticisms of the “Stop BEZOS” bill are interesting in light of the outcome. I think they show how a lot of people confuse “politics” with “policy”: the bill was not a good policy, therefore it was not good. That’s not necessarily the case though, and I think one of the reasons liberals have failed politically is that they think of politics as “designing the optimal policy” and have no clue how to actually build the political power that allows you to pass and implement the optimal policy. Bernie Sanders does know a thing or two about building political power—that’s why he managed to be the “Amendment King” in the House of Representatives, passing more roll call votes in a Republican Congress than any other member despite being a radical democratic socialist.

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The Amazon change also shows how silly the theory that “companies pay employees the value of their labor” is. Clearly they don’t, since Amazon was just able to raise wages across the company under pressure. The Cato writer said that it would be “financial suicide” for a company to “overpay,” but I doubt Amazon is committing financial suicide here. Bosses—and the intellectuals who justify everything bosses do—always say they can’t afford to pay more, whether it’s true or not. Sometimes it is true. At Amazon, it’s definitely not. If Bernie had listened to Mr. Economics 101, Amazon workers might well be making less money.

I shouldn’t imply that Bernie Sanders was singlehandedly responsible for this, actually. Quite the opposite: the reason Amazon picked $15 is because the workers in the Fight For $15 movement have put in so much effort making the seemingly impossible a reality. But I do think Bernie deserves credit for understanding how politics works: it’s about power. Who has it, and who doesn’t. If Bezos sees a potential regulatory threat and a public embarrassment, then he will make concessions that he otherwise would not have. It’s up to us to exert the pressure that produces the results. What Amazon’s raise shows is that shaming corporations and billionaires is not just morally correct but practically useful, and we should continue to escalate it.

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

AP’s Today in History for October 9th

Guerrilla leader Che Guevara executed in Bolivia; Anthrax-laced letters sent to Capitol Hill; Achille Lauro hijackers surrender; Andrei Sakharov wins Nobel Peace Prize; Musician John Lennon born.

Breakfast Tune When I’m Sixty-Four

Something to think about, Breakfast News & Blogs below

 
Jamal Khashoggi: Turkey hunts black van it believes carried body
Officials search for vehicle they say was part of convoy belonging to Saudi hit squad
Martin Chulov in Istanbul and Patrick Wintour, The Guardian

Turkish authorities are examining motorway cameras in the search for a black van they believe carried the body of Jamal Khashoggi from the Saudi consulate in Istanbul last week – one of six cars investigators say belonged to a Saudi hit squad thought to be behind the suspected murder of the dissident journalist.

Officials say the convoy left the consulate around two hours after Khashoggi entered. Security camera footage shows boxes being loaded into the van, which carried diplomatic number plates. After leaving the consulate grounds, three cars turned left on to a main road while the remaining three turned right. Investigators say one of the vehicles, a van with blacked out windows, has become the focus of the investigation, and was briefly tracked to a nearby motorway.

Nearly a week since Khashoggi disappeared, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan stepped up his calls for Riyadh to explain what happened to the high-profile critic of the Saudi leadership. The Turkish president had struck a measured tone when pressed on Khashoggi, while allowing government officials and state media to drip-feed allegations. Details of the convoy were disclosed by the pro-government Daily Sabah newspaper.

“We have to get an outcome from this investigation as soon as possible,” Erdoğan said from Budapest. “The consulate officials cannot save themselves by simply saying: ‘He has left.’”

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Saudi Women Who Fought for the Right to Drive Are Disappearing and Going Into Exile
Sarah Aziza, The Intercept

ON THE EVENING of September 26, 2017, 28-year-old Loujain al-Hathloul sat at home in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, eyeing her smartphone. A stream of notifications cascaded down the screen as her social media feeds erupted with messages of shock, joy, and speculation. Moments before, an ordinary Tuesday had turned historic: King Salman al-Saud took to state-run television to issue a stunning royal decree: Saudi women, at long last, would be granted the right to drive. The abrupt announcement, orchestrated in concert with a simultaneous press event in Washington, D.C., and a warm commendation from U.S. President Donald Trump, had sent millions of Saudis reeling. For decades, the government had remained intractable on the issue of women’s right to drive, siding invariably with conservative clerics who justified the ban on religious grounds. Human rights groups viewed the ban — unique the world over — as an emblem of a broader oppressive stance toward women, and had long called for its repeal. Yet even the most earnest advocates would have thought such a reversal unthinkable mere hours before.

Al-Hathloul, a women’s rights activist with thick, dark hair and penetrating brown eyes, had felt her own flood of emotions on that balmy evening one year go, but surprise was not among them. She’d already had days to process the news, having been tipped off to the coming reform by the Saudi government itself. The phone call from the Royal Court, however, had not been a pleasant one: After informing al-Hathloul of the impending announcement, the government official had instructed her to refrain from making any public comment on the reform, even in praise.

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TILL, AS RECENTLY as a year ago, al-Hathloul and those like her held out hope that the state-endorsed push for reform could create conditions for progress on other issues, such as the rights of political prisoners and the kingdom’s male guardianship laws, which subject women to the will of their male “custodians” in various areas of social and civil life. “We weren’t sure how serious the government was about its promises, but we thought, maybe we can work within the system and use their own words to push for change now,” said one woman activist, speaking of last year. “We thought we could present ourselves as allies, to support their work, and maybe they would accept us.”

For al-Hathloul, this hope would be short-lived. Beginning on May 15, 2018, just weeks before the end of the ban on female drivers, the government began a series of arrests targeting prominent activists. Al-Hathloul was among the first to disappear into custody, along with Eman al-Nafjan and Aziza al-Yousef, fellow advocates for human rights and reform. Simultaneously, photographs of the women began to circulate on local media and online, accompanied by state accusations of treason and collusion with foreign governments. A hashtag, #AgentsofEmbassies, went viral, as did speculations that al-Hathloul was a Qatari operative intent on harming the Saudi state.

The arrests were the latest example of a new and expanding tactic in Saudi Arabia of the state using anti-terrorism laws to silence dissent. “In the past few years, there has been an increasing trend of using nationalist rhetoric and accusations of terrorism to squelch anyone who might question the state,” said Zayadin. Such allegations allow for the authorities to hold people for months without trial and prosecute them in the so-called Specialized Criminal Court, where they could face heavy sentences for nonviolent crimes. “We’ve seen it used against conservatives and liberals alike,” Zayadin added, citing a slew of arrests in September 2017 during which the government rounded up a group of clerics, academics, and journalists under similar charges of treason. (The Saudi embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment.)

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Officer Who Killed Tamir Rice Hired by Rural Ohio Police Department
Daniel Politi, Slate

The police officer who shot and killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice in Cleveland has found a new job in law enforcement. Timothy Loehmann is one of the new officers hired in the small Ohio village of Bellaire, which has a population of about 4,170.

In November 2014, Loehmann was one of two officers who responded to a 911 call about a man waving a gun around at a recreation center in Cleveland. When the officers arrived they encountered Rice, who was playing with a pellet gun. But Loehmann fired his service weapon twice. A grand jury declined to indict Loehmann, who was later fired in 2017 for being untruthful on his job application.

Tamir Rice’s family members criticized the hiring. “Ms. Rice believes that Timothy Loehmann does not belong on any police force, anywhere, period,” said Rice family attorney Subodh Chandra. “Someone with his record should not be subjected upon the citizenry. But she does hope that this means that he will not ever return to Cleveland.”

…

• Forgoing a Celebration of Colonization and Stolen Land, Cities Across the Country Opt to Recognize Indigenous Peoples Day
  Julia Conley

• Partisan Pollsters Fail Black Progressive Candidates
  Pete Tucker

• With Brett Kavanaugh’s Confirmation, Roe v. Wade Could Be Doomed: Here Are 5 Ways to Prepare
  Alex Henderson

• Homeless America
  Chris Hedges

• Waiting for Iceland’s Brave Stance Against Neoliberalism, 10 Years Later
  Sam Knight

Something to think about over coffee prozac

 
Carolina Panthers Win On 63-Yard Field Goal; Kicker Graham Gano Might Be a Witch
Nick Greene, Slate
 

The Carolina Panthers blew it. Down a point late in the fourth quarter to the New York Giants, Carolina head coach Ron Rivera inexplicably opted to run the ball, which bled the clock and marooned his team near the 50-yard line. Their only hope to salvage a win would be a 63-yard field goal, which is less a hope than it is a delusion. Nonetheless, Carolina kicker Graham Gano stepped up to give it a shot, and I believe the ball just landed near Asheville. The Panthers didn’t blow it. They won, 33-31

Just look at that kick. It’s downright unnatural. Did Gano make a deal with the devil? Is he casting spells with his foot? If we throw him off a cliff, will he fly away?

Prior to Sunday, Gano’s best kick was a 59-yarder in 2011. His game-winner against the Giants was just a yard short of the NFL record for longest-ever field goal (and that effort happened in Denver, which is essentially space). Graham Gano is a witch, and the Carolina Panthers’ record is now 3-1 because of it.