Who Is More Electable?

Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, and Bernie Sanders. (photo: Reuters)

By Scott Galindez, Reader Supported News

04 May 16
readersupportednews.org

 
on’t look now, but in the latest hypothetical general election poll conducted by Rasmussen Reports, Donald Trump leads Hillary Clinton.

According to the survey, which was conducted from April 27 to 28 among 1,000 likely voters:

Trump now has the support of 73% of Republicans, while 77% of Democrats back Clinton. But Trump picks up 15% of Democrats, while just eight percent (8%) of GOP voters prefer Clinton, given this matchup.

Among voters not affiliated with either major party, Trump leads 37% to 31%, but 23% like another candidate. Nine percent (9%) are undecided.

Hmmm, I do not think 32% are lining up to vote for Jill Stein or Gary Johnson. So these are voters who at this point are not supporting anyone likely to be on the ballot in November.

Give the voters the option of staying home and the same poll has the race tied.

Rasmussen Reports did not poll a hypothetical Sanders versus Trump matchup.

Other polls all show Sanders beating Trump by more than 10 points. Those same polls have the race closer between Clinton and Trump.

Talk about a race to the bottom, the two most unpopular candidates in either party will likely be the nominees of the two major political parties.

Now let’s look at some other indicators of electability.

Favorability: (Huffington Post average)

Sanders:	52%
Clinton:	47%
Trump:	35%

Unfavorability: (Huffington Post average)

Trump:	61%
Clinton:	55%
Sanders:	40%

Honesty: (yougov.com poll)

Sanders:	47%
Trump:	29%
Clinton:	27%

Dishonesty: (yougov.com poll)

Clinton:	56%
Trump:	52%
Sanders:	24%

When asked by Peter Hart and Associates in an April poll, all voters chose Sanders as the candidate they could support at higher levels than any other candidate.

Here is the exact question, Q13: “I’m going to mention a number of people running for president in 2016. For each one, please tell me, yes or no, whether you could see yourself supporting that person for president in 2016. If you don’t know the name, please just say so.”

Sanders:	49% yes	48% no
Clinton:	41% yes	58% no
Trump:	31% yes	68% no

If these numbers are true, why isn’t Sanders winning? The answer is simple: These numbers are among all voters, many of whom are shut out of the nominating process. Hillary Clinton’s numbers are better if you only ask Democrats. Donald Trump does better among Republicans.

I hear you: these are the party primaries not the general election. I would say you were right if there were a level playing field for all political parties. We have a two party system, and it is becoming clear that the two parties do not represent the views of the whole country.

According to the Pew Research Center, based on 2014 data 39% of Americans identify as Independents, 32% as Democrats, and 23% as Republicans. This is the highest percentage of Independents in more than 75 years of public opinion polling.

As we are seeing in the open primaries, Bernie Sanders beats Hillary Clinton with Independents in state after state. The strongest candidate for President in November is Bernie Sanders. If all voters had a chance to weigh in during the nominating process we would likely see a race between Trump and Sanders. If we had a multi-party system Sanders, would have a chance to win as an Independent or as a candidate of another party.

The reality is that the system is rigged in favor of the two major political parties, and we will probably be stuck choosing between the two most unpopular candidates for President. It is time for a democracy movement in America. We don’t have a real democracy now.

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Scott Galindez attended Syracuse University, where he first became politically active. The writings of El Salvador's slain archbishop Oscar Romero and the on-campus South Africa divestment movement converted him from a Reagan supporter to an activist for Peace and Justice. Over the years he has been influenced by the likes of Philip Berrigan, William Thomas, Mitch Snyder, Don White, Lisa Fithian, and Paul Wellstone. Scott met Marc Ash while organizing counterinaugural events after George W. Bush's first stolen election. Scott will be spending a year covering the presidential election from Iowa.

Wingnut Week In Review: Making Lemons Out Of ‘Lemonade’

April 29, 2016

Terrance Heath
Campaign for America's Future
ourfuture.org 

Nobody but nobody drops an album like Beyoncé. The lady single-handedly changed the game on how albums are released, and showed herself to be a savvy marketer.

This week, after dropping multiple hints, Beyoncé finally dropped her latest, a 13-track collection called “Lemonade,” a deeply personal and boldly political meditation on infidelity, race and sexism that dares to embrace both anger and forgiveness. 

“Lemonade” is also a love letter to black women. In the hourlong HBO special and “video album,” the camera lingers on the faces of countless black women as Beyoncé gives voice to her own experience as a black woman, while honoring and validating those of others.

That all proved more than enough for wingnuts to exhibit the kind of derangement only First Lady Michelle Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton previously inspired.

None went nearly as crazy as conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. Somebody obviously slipped something in his lemonade:

● Jones claimed that “Lemonade” is part of a CIA plot to inspire “urban terrorism” to ensure that “young people go out and act like maniacs and try to start a race war in this country.”
● Not done, Jones denounced Beyoncé as a “psychopath” whose music is “designed to absolutely ruin [children’s] lives on purpose,” all because his daughter comes home singing Beyoncé’s songs.
● Bravely stepping up to tell black folks what’s good for them, Jones begged black parents to “stop killing your kids and get them in church, whatever, take them away from Beyoncé, who wants to eat their brain with the CIA, literally.” The CIA? Is that a new brand of hot sauce?
● Larry Tomczak (who?) declared “Lemonade” “scandalous,” an “outrage,” and “idolatry,” before moving on to do a “holy dance” on the graves of both David Bowie and Prince.
● Fresh from failing to make it on American television, Piers Morgan longed for the old Beyoncé and claimed, “The new Beyoncé wants to be seen as a black woman political activist first and foremost, entertainer and musician second.” Never mind that Bey hasn’t exactly been apolitical with her support for Barack Obama’s campaigns, and work on gun reform and police brutality. Twitter took care of him, tho’.

Fortunately, we have Stephen Colbert to white-mansplain it all.

Meanwhile, Beyoncé is selling “Boycott Beyoncé” merchandise at her concert. Making lemons into lemonade, natch.

Here’s the rest of the best of the worst in wingnuttery this week:

● Former House Speaker John Boehner is a bitter, bitter man – and it’s glorious. Boehner recently shared his thoughts on Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), calling Cruz “Lucifer in the flesh,” and “a miserable son of a bitch.”
● Fox News hosted “climate expert” Marc Morano to explain how a stuffed armadillo proved “there’s nothing to worry about global warming.”
● North Carolina state Republican Senator Buck Newton is running for state attorney general, with a great campaign slogan: “Keep our state straight.” All that’s missing are the white sheets.
● This Family Dollar cashier ranting and raving about how refusing to serve LGBT customers is a fine example of what laws like the ones in Mississippi and North Carolina are designed to protect.
● Bryan Fischer said that Target’s policy of letting transgender persons use the bathrooms appropriate to their gender identity would turn the story into a motel for “rebellious teenagers.”
● Meanwhile GOP presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) told a reporter he basically doesn’t want any transgender person using any public restroom anywhere.
● Caitlyn Jenner may once have declared her support for Cruz, but that didn’t stop her from trolling Cruz by stopping at Trump Tower to use the ladies’ room. “By the way Ted,” she quipped, “nobody got molested.”
● Jenner might want to avoid Oxford, Alabama. The town recently passed a law punishing individuals for using public restrooms that do not match the biological gender on their birth certificates. Each offense is a $500 fine and up to six months in jail.
● Meanwhile, Tennessee’s governor signed a bill allowing therapists to deny service to LGBT people.
● Oklahoma is becoming one of the worst states for women in America. First, the state assembly found an absurd new way to ban all abortions. Then an Oklahoma court ruled that forced oral sex is not rape if the victim is passed out drunk.
● Fox News host Greg Gutfeld said that you might be the real bigot if you’re thinking of moving to Canada if Donald Trump wins the presidential election.
● Maine’s Republican Governor Paul LePage told The Associated Press that Indian workers are the “hardest” and “the worst ones” to understand, but then made it all better when he added that they’re all “lovely people but you’ve got to have an interpreter.”
● LePage later stomped out of an open meeting at the University of Maine when he was confronted by students holding signs critical of him and his policies, but not before calling them “idiots.”
● Newtown conspiracy theorist Dr. James Tracy is suing Florida Atlantic University for firing him for failing to submit forms documenting the work he did outside of the University.
● Ben Carson called putting Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill a “cheap trick” to convince black people to support “a nearly bankrupt symbol of American debt.” I bet he says that every time he cashes an infomercial check.
● In a WorldNet Daily column, Don Feder objected to putting Tubman on the $20 bill, because “American history was made by white males.”

WHEN WILL WE REALIZE IT AIN'T GONNA HAPPEN?

The Voice of Rim Country

With the delay and possibly the cancellation of their plans to bring the ALA Charter School to Payson and the lack of any formal commitment from any university to build a campus in Payson, it seems that we are left with only one other possible institution of higher learning to occupy the land intended for "educational use only".  (Payson, AZ) Mayor Kenny Evans and ladies and gentlemen of the SLE, start your negotiations now. And bring your whoopee cushions.

What Is Bernie's Price for Playing Nice?

Sen. Bernie Sanders. (photo: Getty)

By Steve Weissman, Reader Supported News

01 May 16
readersupportednews.org

 
oor Hillary. She just doesn’t get it. Neither do the Very Important People who back her. Call it arrogance, willful blindness, or rotten judgment, their collective failure to understand Bernie Sanders and those of us who support him could cost Clinton the presidency – not to Bernie, but to Donald Trump.

To understate the case, a victory for bully-boy Trump would not be good news. Not for the planet. Not for women. Not for Mexicans, other Latinos, and blacks. Not for Muslim-Americans. Not for Jewish-Americans. Not for immigrants facing deportation. Not for disaffected white working-class men, whom he would inevitably betray. Not for the poor, whom he despises as losers. Not for the different or disabled. Not for the Supreme Court. And, not for those of us committed to continue our fight for a democratic socialist revolution.

On foreign policy, he will run well to Hillary’s left. His open support for improved relations with Russia and China, his skepticism toward NATO, which I share, his iffy opposition to the no-win war in Iraq and French-led intervention in Libya make him appear far more realistic than the hawkish Hillary. But he favors torture whether it works or not. He revels in targeted assassinations far more than do Obama and Clinton. He speaks too easily about using nuclear weapons. And he’s too xenophobic, simplistic, reckless, and unpredictable to be allowed anywhere near the CIA, the Pentagon, or the nuclear button.

Hillary is bad enough. Look at her history as an imperial warmonger long before the neo-cons backed her. Listen to her self-righteous avowal of “American exceptionalism,” which is just another form of too much nationalism. But, like her or not, she has shown herself more cautious, circumspect, and open to dissuasion by allies than Trump would ever be. She is indeed the lesser evil.

Trump has already sharpened his tongue against her, calling her “Crooked Hillary” and promising a devastating campaign against her supposed foreign policy strengths as well as her personal unpopularity, which easily rivals his own. I still don’t think he can win, but she would be a fool to underestimate him. This is especially true because he poses a threat that takes us into a very dark realm. By spouting his off-the-cuff racist, religious, and nationalist bigotry, Trump has opened wide the door to America’s venomous Ku Kluxers and other white supremacists, violent skin-heads, and Christian nationalists with all their armed militias. He has even begun to extend his hand to Europe’s neo-fascists, welcoming a visit and endorsement from Matteo Salvini, leader of Italy’s racist and anti-immigrant Northern League. Trump is still showing caution about getting too close to other of Europe’s neo-Fascists, many of whom have shown caution about getting to close to him. But, stay tuned.

In the meantime, Sanders understands that Hillary will almost certainly win the nomination and has once again promised that he would vote for her against Trump or any other Republican. He is playing nice, but he will not play dead. Asked on the Today show about Trump calling Clinton crooked, he condemned it as “an ugly statement.” But pressed on whether his own attacks on Hillary for taking money from Wall Street did not imply that she was crooked, he simply smiled. “In that case,” he said, “the entire United States government is crooked.”

He has also refused to call on his supporters to back Hillary, explaining – quite correctly – that he did not have the power to demand that they fall in line behind her. She would have to win them over, he said. How? He has told her quite clearly.

“We are in this campaign to win,” he told a crowd of students at Purdue. “But if we do not win, we intend to win every delegate that we can so that when we go to Philadelphia in July, we are going to have the votes to put together the strongest progressive agenda that any political party has ever seen.”

This is Bernie’s price. If Hillary refuses to pay it – as she is now doing by using her party apparatchiks to stand in the way of a truly progressive platform – she will lose many who voted and worked so enthusiastically for him. Some of us may put clothespins on our noses and vote for her, even as we build a movement to oppose much of what she or Trump would do as president. Others will vote for the Greens. A few will vote for Trump, damned fools they. And no one knows how many will write in Bernie’s name or just stay home. The choice is now Hillary Clinton’s, and she appears to be making the wrong one.

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A veteran of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and the New Left monthly Ramparts, Steve Weissman lived for many years in London, working as a magazine writer and television producer. He now lives and works in France, where he is researching a new book, Big Money and the Corporate State: How Global Banks, Corporations, and Speculators Rule and How to Nonviolently Break Their Hold.

97% of Endangered Species Threatened by 3 Common Pesticides

A man sprays a pesticide on plants. (photo: Center for Biological Diversity)

By Lorraine Chow, EcoWatch

09 April 16
readersupportednews.org

 
he U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has released its first-ever analysis on the effects of three common pesticides—chlorpyrifos, diazinon and malathion—on endangered and threatened species and designated critical habitat nationwide. The resounding conclusion? Pesticides are terrible for them.

According to the report, malathion and chlorpyrifos harms an astounding 97 percent of the 1,782 animals and plants protected under the Endangered Species Act. Diazinon harms 79 percent.

Malathion is often used on fruit, vegetables and plants for pests, as well tick removal on pets. Chlorpyrifos is used to exterminate termites, mosquitoes and roundworms. Diazinon is used against cockroaches and ants.

The three chemicals species are “likely to adversely affect” these species, the EPA found.

“For the first time in history, we finally have data showing just how catastrophically bad these pesticides are for endangered species—from birds and frogs to fish and plants,” Lori Ann Burd, environmental health director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement. “These dangerous pesticides have been used without proper analysis for decades, and now’s the time to take this new information and create common-sense measures to protect plants, animals and people from these chemicals.”

“The EPA has allowed chemical companies to register more than 16,000 pesticides without properly considering their impacts. That has to stop,” Burd said. “These evaluations are a huge step forward for the EPA. Now that we know the magnitude of danger these pesticides pose, it’s clear we need to take action. The EPA must move forward with analyses for other dangerous pesticides and also quickly implement on-the-ground efforts to prevent the extinction of rare and unique wildlife from these pesticides.”

Organophosphates aren’t just bad for wildlife, a number of studies have linked them to human health risks. According to the Center for Biological Diversity:

Organophosphates are widely used in agriculture on crops such as corn, cotton, watermelon and wheat. A recent study at the University of California at Berkeley found that an astonishing 87 percent of umbilical-cord blood samples tested had detectable levels of an organophosphate. Early childhood exposure to organophosphates has been linked to cognitive delay and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD. Organophosphates were also used as nerve agents in chemical warfare and have been linked to Gulf War syndrome, which causes fatigue, headaches, skin problems and breathing disorders.

Additionally, the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer also said last March that malathion and diazinon are classified as “probably carcinogenic to humans.”

The Center for Biological Diversity, as well as a number of farmworker, child-safety and environmental advocacy groups, sent a letter to the EPA last month urging it to ban several organophosphate pesticides that are currently under review.

“These pesticides pose unacceptably high risks to children, workers and wildlife, and really can’t be used safely,” Nathan Donley, a scientist with the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement. “In this letter farmworkers, child-safety and consumer advocates have spoken with one voice, asking the EPA to ban these relics of our toxic past.”

The EPA has released the analysis for public comment. Following the comment period, the EPA will finalize the assessment. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service will use the analyses and data from the biological evaluations in their final “Biological Opinions” for each of the three chemicals, the EPA said.

Unexpected ways climate change harms health

A man rests during a heat wave in Manhattan, New York. (photo: Eduardo Munoz/Reuters)

By Rebecca Leber, Grist

01 May 16
readersupportednews.org

 
limate change is bad for your health. There’s no question that the impacts of a warming world — harsher heat waves, increased flooding — will put a strain on our nation’s public health. Take one example: studies predict some 11,000 additional heat-related deaths during summers about 15 years from now.

But other health-related climate consequences have proven more difficult to tease out and thus more difficult to quantify. The White House released a scientific report on Monday that draws on research from eight federal agencies to provide the most comprehensive look yet at climate’s health impacts.

“I don’t know that we’ve seen something like this before, where you have a force that has such a multitude of effects,” U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy told reporters when previewing the report. “As far as history is concerned, this is a new type of threat that we’re facing.”

Here are some of the more unexpected consequences of climate change identified in the report:

Americans are at greater risk of eating contaminated food. Higher temperatures and more extreme weather create perfect conditions for dangerous contaminants to make their way into the food supply. For example, researchers found a link between higher ocean temperatures and mercury accumulation in seafood. Warmer weather and flooding also raises the chance for foodborne illnesses like salmonella.

More of the water we drink may be unsafe. The same problems in food affect water quality, with extreme weather and floods raising the risk of bacteria, pathogens, and other contaminants. Plus, higher temps give harmful algae the opportunity to thrive in new, more widespread parts of the country. Compounding the problem is when flooding overwhelms our existing and quite creaky water infrastructure.

Mosquitoes and ticks will be more than an itchy nuisance. Mild winters and early warmer seasons allow insects to travel further and faster, carrying illnesses like Lyme Disease with them.

Disasters will compromise mental health for already-vulnerable populations. Just think about the stress that extreme weather events like Hurricane Katrina or Superstorm Sandy add to people’s lives: displaced families, economic losses, ruined livelihoods. For children, the elderly, and pregnant women, who are among the most vulnerable, these conditions can lead to post-traumatic stress, anxiety, and depression.

The air you breathe is dirtier. Fossil fuels make our air dirtier — that’s obvious. But greenhouse gases can impact air quality in other ways. Climate change affects weather and precipitation patterns, changing how smog and particulate matter moves over cities. More wildfires add pollution  to the air, too.

Lives are literally at stake if we don’t act on climate change. Even a small global change in average temperature can hurt people at the extremes, and the same holds true for health — affecting the poor, indigenous, very young, and very elderly people the most.

“The public health case for climate action is really compelling beyond words,” Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy said. “It’s not just about glaciers and polar bears. It’s about the health of our kids.”

Today Is Our Day - Take To The Streets

People celebrate the passage of the minimum wage increase for fast-food workers. (photo: AP)

By Jonah Walters, Jacobin

01 May 16

readersupportednews.org

 

This May Day, we should celebrate the historic triumphs of the labor movement and the struggles to come.

he first May Day was celebrated in 1886, with a general strike of three hundred thousand workers at thirteen thousand businesses across the United States. It was a tremendous show of force for the American labor movement, which was among the most militant in the world.

Many of the striking workers — who numbered forty thousand in Chicago alone — rallied under the banners of anarchist and socialist organizations. Trade unionists from a variety of ethnic backgrounds — many of them recent immigrants — marched shoulder-to-shoulder, making a unified demand for the eight-hour day.

The movement to limit the workday posed a significant threat to American industrialists, who were accustomed to demanding much longer hours from their workers.

In the late nineteenth century, successive waves of immigration brought millions of immigrants to the United States, many of whom sought work in factories. Because unemployment was so high, employers could easily replace any worker who demanded better conditions or sufficient wages — so long as that worker acted alone. As individuals, workers were in no position to oppose the dehumanizing work their bosses expected of them.

But when workers acted together, they could exercise tremendous power over their employers and over society as a whole. Working-class radicals understood the unique power of collective action, fighting to ensure that the aggression of employers was often met by a groundswell of workers’ resistance.

For the last decades of the nineteenth century, industrial titans like Andrew Carnegie and George Pullman could get no peace. Periodic explosions of working-class activity provided a check on their power and prestige. But industrialists and their allies in government often responded with brutal force, quelling waves of worker militancy that demanded a fundamentally different kind of American prosperity, one in which the poor and downtrodden were included.

The movement for the eight-hour day was one such mass struggle. On May 1, 1886, workers all over the country took to the streets to demand a better life and a more just economy. The demonstrations lasted for days.

But this surge of working-class resistance ended in tragedy. In Chicago’s Haymarket Square, a police massacre claimed the lives of several workers after someone — likely a provocateur working for one of the city’s industrial barons — tossed a homemade bomb into the crowd. The Chicago authorities took the bombing as an opportunity to arrest and execute four of the movement’s most prominent leaders — including the anarchist and trade unionist August Spies.

It was a severe setback to the workers’ movement. But the repression wasn’t enough to douse the struggle for good. As August Spies said during his trial:

[I]f you think that by hanging us you can stamp out the labor movement — the movement from which the downtrodden millions, the millions who toil and live in want and misery, the wage slaves, expect salvation — if this is your opinion, then hang us! Here you will tread upon a spark, but here, and there and behind you, and in front of you, and everywhere the flames will blaze up. It is a subterranean fire. You cannot put it out. The ground is on fire upon which you stand.

These words would prove prophetic. The next May Day, and every May Day since, workers across the world took to the streets to contest the terms of capitalist prosperity and gesture towards a fundamentally different world — a world in which production is motivated not by profit, but by human need.

Today, the power of the American labor movement is at a low. Many of its most important gains — including the right to the eight-hour day — have been dismantled by the anti-labor neoliberal consensus. But May Day still looms as a lasting legacy of the international movement for working-class liberation.

Obviously, a great deal has changed since those explosive decades at the end of the nineteenth century. The defeats suffered by the American workers’ movement may seem so profound that it can be tempting to regard the militancy that once rattled tycoons and presidents alike as a nothing more than a piece of history.

But we don’t have to gaze so far into the past for inspiring examples of struggle. Far more recent May Days provide glimpses at the transformative potential of worker movements.

Just ten years ago, in 2006, immigrant workers across the country stood up to restrictive immigration laws and abusive labor practices, organizing a massive movement of undocumented laborers that culminated in the so-called Great American Boycott (El Gran Paro Estadounidense). On May Day of that year, immigrant organizations and some labor unions came together to organize a one-day withdrawal of immigrant labor — dubbed “A Day Without Immigrants” — to demonstrate the essential role of immigrant workers in American industry.

Protests began in March and continued for eight weeks. The numbers are staggering — 100,000 marchers in Chicago kicked off the wave of demonstrations, followed by half a million marchers in Los Angeles a few weeks later, and then a coordinated day of action on April 10, which saw demonstrations in 102 cities across the country, including a march of between 350,000 and 500,000 protesters in Dallas.

By May Day, the movement had gained momentum, winning popular support all over the United States and around the world. On May 1 of that year, more than a million took to the streets in Los Angeles, joined by 700,000 marchers in Chicago, 200,000 in New York, 70,000 in Milwaukee, and thousands more in cities across the country. In solidarity with Latin American immigrants in the United States, labor unions around the world celebrated “Nothing Gringo Day,” a one day boycott of all American products.

Ever since, May Day has been recognized as a day of solidarity with undocumented immigrants — a fitting reminder of May Day’s origins in a movement that saw native-born and immigrant workers standing together to defend their common interests.

And this year, May Day presents us with more opportunities to mobilize support around an American labor movement showing signs of revitalization — this May Day, workers and activists across the country will stand in solidarity with the almost forty thousand striking Verizon workers, whose  intransigent managers have thus far refused to bargain with the union in good faith.

This May Day we follow in the footsteps of generations of labor radicals. These radicals saw in capitalism the horrors of an unjust economy, but dared to dream of something different — a reimagined economy in which the fruits of prosperity could be shared equally, among all people, in a just and democratic society.

Despite the setbacks of the labor movement — at home and worldwide — that dream is still living. The struggle continues.

Happy May Day. Take to the streets.