Ted Talks on Democracy

SAGE course coming in February to the comfort of your own home via ZOOM.

Dates and Time: Tuesdays, February 2, 9, 16, 23, 9:30-11:30.

Description: Using videos and discussion, this course will explore questions about democracy ranging from basic to more complex and thorny issues: What is democracy? Why does it matter? What role does it play in our government? What are the constitutional issues? What are benefits and risks? What are threats to it that pundits keep warning us about? And more as the interests of the class dictate.



Instructor bio:
Alice Bolstridge, Ph. D. is a retired English instructor, writer, and activist for peace and justice.

Registration
 https://msad1.coursestorm.com/course/sage-membership-registration3   

 

Message to Maine Land Use Planning Commission

September 16, 2020 

Dear Chairman Wooster and members of the Land Use Planning Commission:

For nearly 5 years, I was involved as a volunteer foot soldier in the struggle to save Bald Mountain in my home-town area from water pollution and other environmental, health, social, and economic damages of metallic mining. Now Wolfden Mining Company poses a similar threat to Pickett Mountain alarmingly close to my home area, and is petitioning the LUPC to rezone the area to allow metallic mining. I write to urge you to deny WMC their requests to “exclude from its evaluation of ZP 779 considerations that the MDEP Chapter 200 rules address, including noise, financial practicability, waste disposal at the mine, surface water quality, groundwater quality, and avoidance or mitigation of impacts on natural resources.”  

I know workers in the original exploration of Bald Mountain in the 1970s who were sickened just from the drilling. From extensive research during the Bald Mountain threat, I know that mining massive sulfide deposits anywhere in the world pollutes surrounding waters to such a degree that they destroy an economy such as ours dependent on clean water for sustainable outdoor sports of fishing and hunting. The highest paid miners are migrant, brought in from outside and leaving when the mine closes. Any possible economic boom from metallic mining is always temporary, leaving the area as soon as the metals are depleted or the company goes bankrupt and leaving behind a legacy of social disruption and pollution that extends into perpetuity.

I urge you to deny the WMC petition to rezone this area so close to Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument.

Covid 19 Exposes Systemic Failures

Lisa Savage, Maine candidate for the U.S. Senate, promises the most comprehensive plans for systemic changes needed to meet escalating crises exposed and worsened by the Covid 19 pandemic, crises that have been building for decades. We in Aroostook are as vulnerable to these crises as those elsewhere.

This pandemic exposes justice inequalities that lead to increased crime, social unrest, drug addiction, and mental illness, all problems that are increasing here in Aroostook. In both local news and News Hour reports, I hear almost daily how Covid 19 disproportionally afflicts racial minorities and the poor. Lisa promotes changes that will directly address causes of these problems: police brutality targeting minorities; mass incarceration of black and brown people; and discrimination against women, LGBTQs, native Americans, immigrants. Her changes will provide justice equality for all.

Extreme income inequalities in our economic system victimize the poor regardless of race. Lisa will work for a minimum wage of $15 an hour, greater democratic involvement of workers in business and banking, fair-share taxing of the rich, and trade agreements that treat workers fairly. Competing with Canadian workers, Aroostook woods workers are especially vulnerable to trade agreements with Canada.

Covid 19 exposes inequities, inefficiencies, and poor outcomes of our Health care system. Millions are uninsured. According to Physicians for a National Health-Care Program and Dr. Sachin Shah of Doctors for America more than 30 % of health-care expenses go to administrative costs, much of that in the form of outsize profits and executive salaries for the health-care industrial complex. Lisa promotes expanded and improved Medicare for All that will provide cost savings in the system and better health outcomes for all. Such a system will help to level the playing field for woods workers here. Canadian workers can work here for lower wages because they have a universal, single-payer system and don’t have to pay the high premiums and co-pays that we have to pay.

In various PBS News Hour interviews, Jane Goodall explains how environmental health and human health are closely related. She says habitat destruction forces greater interaction between wild animals and humans that allow increased transmission of disease which is what scientists think happened with Covid 19. We now have to worry about ticks and Lyme disease creeping into Maine because of global warming. Covid 19 won’t be the last pandemic we face. We need to pivot to the Green New Deal Lisa will work for that will employ millions in clean energy solutions improving health and the economy as well as turning the disastrous tide of climate change.

Injustices in our elections system have been growing for decades here in Maine as well as in the nation: voter suppression; an undemocratic electoral college system; campaign finance laws that result in the richest big-money interests controlling legislators. These problems have led to politicizing and worsening the pandemic.  Dark-money powers are financing both Susan Collins and Sara Gideon with attack ads against each other that inflame division in the legislature and in the country. These ads neither educate the public about the full context of the most serious problems we face nor offer much by way of solutions. Refusing to take corporate campaign contributions, Lisa Savage is the one with immunity to big-money corruption. Her website states that she will promote “a government that works for us, not the big banks, weapons manufacturers, fossil fuel giants, and corporate lobbyists,”  and she will “work for a new system that puts people, planet, and peace over profit.”

We need legislators with an expansive view of how all of our most serious problems are connected and with a vision of the future focused on solving the problems. Lisa Savage has that view and vision.  Please mark her # 1 on your Ranked Choice Voting ballot which allows voting your values without fear of the spoiler effect.

Published in "The County," 8-5-2010.

SomeSources:

https://pnhp.org/resource/pnhp-research-the-case-for-a-national-health-program/

http://www.drsforamerica.org/blog/the-cost-of-for-profit-health-care

https://lisaformaine.nationbuilder.com/

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/why-jane-goodall-says-human-disregard-for-nature-led-to-the-coronavirus-pandemic

Lucy Pulls the Ball on Charley Brown Again

"Lucy can only pull the ball so many times before Charley Brown punches her in the face" (Wesley Lowery on "Face the Nation" today). The murder of George Floyd challenges my pacifist soul--along with all the previous incarnations of police brutality against Afro-Americans, and along with all continuing discrimination against all other racial, ethnic, religious minorities, "essential workers," and the desperate poor. And what about Lucy? What motivates her cruelty? Shouldn't we pay attention to that, too?

BERNIE BEST FOR ALL OF US

            In retirement, I have spent the last twelve years of my life researching causes and solutions to our most pressing social and economic problems and advocating for the best most evidence-based solutions I can find. In this election, Democrats agree that a top priority is defeating our incumbent president.

            However, I believe this president is a symptom, not the cause of our most pressing problems, and just defeating him in this election will not solve continuing problems caused by the negative power and influence of big money. This influence is not only on our elections but on every other priority of Democrats: climate change and the environment, health care, education, and income inequality. Big money influence has been increasing on all these issues and eroding progress in all of them at least since Ronald Reagan and trickle-down economics which only trickled down to top tiers of power.

            So, while defeating the incumbent is a top priority, it is not the top priority. Equal in importance is to elect a candidate who will best turn the tide of big-money influence and begin to make bold systemic changes needed in our most important institutions. Regardless of Joe Biden’s surge in the polls and in Super Tuesday elections, his record shows that he is not the candidate who promises to make those changes. He promises at best piece-meal reforms on the issues and a continuation of policies that have kept big-money power growing. He told a room full of big-money donors, “No one's standard of living will change, nothing would fundamentally change”(https://inthesetimes.com/article/22344/democratic-establishment-bernie-sanders-joe-biden-super-tuesday-2020)  when he is elected.

            With every election since Ronald Reagan, we have seen moderate Democrats lean increasingly to the right on the issue of big-money influence on our systems. Even Obama. In the great recession, bailouts to big corporations and banks and a continuation of the Bush tax cuts for the richest mitigated the benefits of his Affordable Care Act. And that important legislation ended up benefitting big insurance and big pharma more than the middle classes and working poor—more than 90% of us.  This movement to the right on the economy and big money influence conflicts profoundly with the historic trend of Democrats to move toward greater economic justice for all.

            Bernie Sanders is the only candidate in this race who has consistently resisted that tide of big-money power and fought for social and economic justice in all of our most important institutions. I understand he is not lovable in style as Biden is. He is sometimes brash in his tone, and he points his finger a lot, but he is the candidate I trust to do the important work of reining in big-money power and influence.  I trust him because of his lifelong record of fighting for social and economic justice for all. In addition, until Super Tuesday, he was consistently strongest in national polls to defeat the incumbent president, and this election is still in flux. Democrats can still get Bernie elected if we understand the important differences between the two on addressing the causes of our most pressing problems with systemic change instead of just putting band aids on the symptoms.

Treat Systemic Causes of Injustice

In all the 20/20 elections, please keep in mind that our president is a symptom, not the cause, of all our ills. Not excusing his bad behavior nor suggesting we don't need to treat the symptoms, but defeating him by itself is neither a treatment nor a cure for the disease that will continue to worsen if we do not seriously address the deep systemic causes:

• economic injustice; 
• threats to democracy, election integrity, civil discourse, the environment, health care, and  education; 
• tribalisms including racism, ethnicism, sexism, and homophobia; 
• endless wars;
• and more.   

Look for candidates who can best understand and work to solve these crisis problems with bold systemic and cultural reforms.

Dysfunctional Capitalism: Reform or Revolution?

Reading Richard Wolff in Democracy at Work: a Cure for Capitalism is like a whack on the side of my head. It jars something loose in my brain that needed to surface, so this post is a manifesto of sorts. For all my years as a volunteer activist for economic justice, I have been resisting growing wealth inequality, But I have not taken on capitalism as the cause of economic inequities. Like FDR in his bold new-deal programs, I have been working for reforms in the capitalist system, not a revolution to an alternative. Wolff explains that President Roosevelt, a capitalist himself, required a new deal of government programs, not only to put people to work, but also to save capitalism from the increasing communist threat .  

I had sympathetically read and taught Marx and Engels' Communist Manifesto to Global-Issues classes, but it was not until I read Wolff, that I thought seriously of the capitalist system as the cause of our economic injustice.   Before Wolff, I thought capitalists, rather than capitalism caused income injustice with their greedy power-hungry billionaires spending millions in advertising, campaign contributions, and lobbying. I thought flaws in human character were the cause; uncontrolled capitalism was an effect; and reform, regulation, and control of capitalists and their institutions were the solutions. I eagerly read Richard Reich,Capitalism for the Many, Not the Few. I read books about profit making banks and other financial institutions created to loan money to micro businesses in 3rd world countries as a way of making capitalism work for the poor in the U.S. and around the world. 

I first began to think of Bernie Sanders for President when he filibustered for 8 hours in opposition to Obama's extension of the Bush tax cuts. Not even then did I think of his call for a revolution to be a threat to capitalism as the dominant power in our politics. Wolff explains that the capitalist system created an economy that is unstable. 
History shows that it fluctuates between boom and bust periods in the economy with a lower middle class and the poor always suffering the effects most. For a brief time in the 20th century between FDR and Ronald Reagan, a middle class strengthened by powerful union action created a prosperous buffer between the richest and the poorest. Now that middle class is disappearing into the lower middle classes and poor. 

At the same time, we are in a boom economy right now for the richest, a boom rivaling the one of Clinton's neo-liberal  '90s, the era that continued into the Bush years, inspired the drastic Bush tax cut for the richest, and crashed in the great financial recession of 2007. While bailing out the big corporations and financial institutions, Obama extended those tax cuts, and Trump increased them. If we continue on this economic trajectory for the next 5 years, I expect the crash following this boom to be more devastating than the one in 2007.  

Wolff explains that capitalism is a threat to democracy as well as to economic stability. With the aid of tax-free organizations such as the American Legislative Exchange Council and the Chamber of Commerce, capitalists promote and finance voter-restrictive laws, gerrymandering, big money contributions to political campaigns, and lobbying. In switching to a view of capitalism as the cause of economic injustice, I do not excuse capitalists for their bad behavior, but I no longer look for solutions in reforming them. Instead, I will work for a transition away from capitalism to a new system.

 Wolff's solution to the problem of an ailing capitalism is to transition to "Workers Self Directed Enterprises" (WSDEs)  In capitalist businesses, owners or shareholders sit on boards of directors and make all the decisions of the company. Workers in these business have no say in wages, production, or organization of the business, especially now
 with the drastic decline in unions since Ronald Reagan. Wolff sees a transition to WSDEs as a revolutionary cultural shift  that would change education, health care, protection of the environment, income equity, community life, and democracy for the better. In WSDEs, workers are the directors and decision makers in all companies, and they are provided with the education, time, and resources to take an active role in company management, politics, and community life.

Until a Wolff type vision is realized, we are left with the struggle to reform capitalism in piecemeal and incremental fashion with legislation such as the bill before the Maine legislature this session, LD 1611, to develop a healthcare system that covers all Mainers. At the same time as working for reforms in the system, I mean to work for a new world order to materialize. The first baby step is a simple one: vote for and work for the presidential candidate who will aggressively move us toward a more equitable and just economic system. 

Of the current Democratic candidates, most lean right about the capitalist system and advise, at best, piecemeal and incremental reforms that do not threaten the dominance of capitalism. Elizabeth Warren wants to take on the big corporations with the piecemeal reform of a wealth tax to pay for other piecemeal reforms. She doesn't challenge the capitalist system that creates and sustains big-money interests. Even Eisenhower's taxes of up to 90% on the richest did not threaten that system.

Only Bernie Sanders pushes for a Wolff type solution—an economic, political, and cultural revolution that will improve the quality of life for all.  

Affordable Health Care for All, Cradle to Grave

            I am a “consumer” of health care with a Medicare Advantage plan. I would much rather be a “patient” like I was in the late 1950s when I birthed my 3 babies in a 4-day stay for each at a local hospital. With insurance then from a nonprofit Blue-cross, Blue-shield, we—a working class, one-income family—did not worry about how to pay for health care with birthing or when our son suffered a kidney disease at 4 years old and required treatment for 4 years through several lengthy hospital stays.
            Then profit and advertising entered the system and created the Health Care Industrial Complex. Since then the quality, accessibility, and affordability have become increasingly cruel and unsustainable for the vast majority of consumers. I am a mother, grandmother, and neighbor of working consumers who must decide with health-care needs to seek care or pay for housing or heating because they can't afford the co-pays and deductibles of insurance or have no insurance at all.
            There is a solution to this unsustainable situation in Maine. The Maine Center for Economic Policy conducted “a study of the costs and economic impacts of a health care model that would cover all Maine residents through a state-level public plan, with no fee at point of service.The results of the study show that total yearly healthcare spending could decrease by $1.5 billion under a new public plan, delivering significant benefits to Maine residents, cities, towns, and employers, along with fiscal stability for healthcare providers and hospitals."
            There are 4  bills currently in the legislature to create such a model for Maine. I believe the best of these is LD 1611. Health insurers and other big-money stakeholders of the health-care industrial complex are lobbying our legislators hard and contributing big money to political campaigns. The only voice in the legislature more powerful than these stakeholders is the voice of voters. I will write my Senator and Representative and urge them to support LD 1611.  And I will be voting in the next election for candidates who pledge support for a single-payer universal health care plan.

A version of this post appeared as a Letter to the Editor in The Star Herald 1-15-2020