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The ‘moral dilemma’ of the MSM regarding the coronavirus

 

For years the Main Stream Media (CNN, MSNBC, FOX News) have done pro-private health insurance propaganda about how single-payer Medicare for all is too radical, will cost too much etc. deliberately concealing the facts about the policy from the viewing public. Most people (to the extent they seek it) only get their information about who to vote for from these sources. A case in point regards the details of a single payer Medicare for all health care system (which most developed countries around the world enjoy).

 

Sorry to tell you, but the media have systematically lied to you about Medicare for all. This is not to accuse the media of ‘fake news’. Fake news is when the media spins some news event in a politically expedient way, in favor of one politician or other (Democrat or Republican). Fake news is real, and is a result of (Democrat) Bill Clinton’s 1990’s telecommunications act in which control of almost all media outlets in America was consolidated into the hands of five or six corporate distributors. Corporations now control America and what people believe to a large extent. The Clintons, Obama, Trump, Biden are all aware of this and have exploited/are exploiting it to their advantage as they see fit.

 

Prior to the coronavirus, when Buttigieg, Biden, Harris, Warren etc. spoke about the details of Medicare for all, there was no push back from MSM debate moderators. No one pressed Buttigieg about how you could lose your job and thus your health insurance, something Bernie had stressed. No moderators pressed Buttigieg about how he was part of a well known ‘stop Bernie’ coalition (led by Neera Tanden of the ironically titled ‘Center for American Progress’ etc.) and had taken money from many billionaires (including Seth Klarman and others, partly responsible for the development of the malfunctioning app in the Iowa caucuses). None of the moderators pressed Joe Biden regarding his misleading claim that Medicare for all would force people off their current health care insurance, when in fact this was an obviously disingenuous claim - it would force people from private health insurance onto a health plan where their coverage was much improved and was cheaper for them in the ultimate yearly scheme of things. Not only that, such insurance couldn’t be lost because one lost one’s job which millions are now suffering from due to the virus.

 

Warren Campaign Collusion With CNN: The Evidence

Just prior to the CNN / Des Moines Register 2020 January debate, the media started to focus attention on a breakdown in the entente cordial between Warren and Sanders that had existed all through the primaries. In the weeks and days before the debate Bernie had ultimately emerged as the front runner in Iowa whilst Warren’s poll numbers had slumped (following the revealing of her transition plan to Medicare For all which voters interpreted as her not being sincere about wanting to fight for that health care policy).

First, it was reported that Warren’s campaign was upset about Sanders’s campaign allegedly urging his supporters to portray Warren as primarily appealing to elitist educated voters.

Bernie apologized but claimed that his campaign was not doing what Warren’s campaign had claimed.

Two days before the debate (Sunday), CNN reported that four anonymous sources had claimed that Bernie had told Warren (when they met in a one to one private meeting in 2018) that he disagreed with her that a woman could win the WhiteHouse. The CNN implication was that Bernie was a ‘secret sexist’ (as Jill Stein remarked in her tweeted response about how the desperate Warren campaign was smearing Bernie).

Bernie replied that this allegation of sexism was ludicrous and that the anonymous sources who were not even in the room were lying. Bernie has been documented for decades as empowering women and defending their rights.

The day before the debate, Warren put out a statement which claimed that she and Bernie had met in December 2018 to discuss how they were both planning to run in 2020 etc. and that Warren had said she thought that a woman could win (in 2020) but Bernie disagreed. She would not be offering any more details about the context of their private discussion.

The Corporate duopoly media and Government interference in your life

An apparent equivalence has recently emerged in pieces disseminated by the main stream media in America, purporting to characterize the views of Trump/traditional Republican voters and Obama/Biden Democratic voters:

Gov taking away your guns (i.e. serious anti-NRA gun control legislation) = Gov taking away your private health insurance (Medicare for all)

Fox is typically against the former and CNN is typically against the latter but each network (both part of the same corporate duopoly) suggests in its propaganda that you shouldn’t be forced by government to relinquish a freedom. The so called ‘freedom’ in each case happens to be massively profitable to private corporations - gun manufacturers and the for-profit health care industry respectively. Needless suffering and death (from gun violence and inadequate health insurance) ensues as a result of these government policies.

Why only in America? No other major industrialized country suffers these sorts of problems.

Jimmy Dore with Tulsi Gabbard

The following text is a transcript of a reply to Jimmy Dore on YouTube regarding his interview with Tulsi Gabbard in which she purportedly clarified her position on healthcare. The reply was by cantonaahh (full e-mail address not disclosed).

It’s disingenuous marketing by Tulsi to say priv. health ins + Medicare for all = ‘single payer plus’ since that would be a worse healthcare system than single payer Medicare for all, not better (‘plus’). The existence of priv. health insurance in the U.K. and Oz is not to provide more choice for people (T claimed to Anderson C that a ban on priv. HI would be un-American bc less choice (which is false as far as choice about doctors is concerned.)).

Biden Hillary Trump Bernie - who is the odd one out?

Following months of speculation (and free pre-President Trump-like publicity) in the main stream media about if / when Joe Biden would formally announce his candidacy for the Democratic Party’s nomination for President, Biden finally announced the day before Easter Friday 2019. The first thing Biden did was to hold a meeting with Comcast executives (Comcast owns CNN). The following Monday (April 22) speaking to Teamsters Temple #249, 4701 Butler St., Lawrenceville, Joe then held a rally with Firefighters in Pittsburgh PA (having earlier being endorsed on live TV on CNN by Harold Schaitberger, the IAFF's General President). At the rally, Biden described the current zeitgeist using the terminology of Immanuel Kant i.e. that workers are unfairly being ‘used as a means to an end’ and were not being treated as ‘an end in themselves’.

This was very odd language coming from Joe Biden, as any politically aware undergraduate moral philosophy student would know. Joe was forced to drop out from his first (1988) run for President due to (inter alia) having been exposed as plagiarizing part of a speech by (socialist) Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock (U.K.). So why is he now taking the liberty of borrowing from an 18th century German philosopher, in his speech about ends in themselves etc. to a firefighter’s union? Not only does such talk risk re-opening old plagiarism wounds, it is just wildly out of keeping with Biden’s political record - the opposite of Kant’s in philosophical terms.

Open letter to Tulsi

stoningroll.com sent the letter below the following description of the problem for Tulsi’s position on healthcare to the Tulsi2020 website in August 2019 -

Some Tulsi surrogates on Twitter have recently suggested that Tulsi’s healthcare plan is a single-payer Medicare for all plan, arguing that other countries that have their version of single payer healthcare also have a role for private health insurance companies to provide duplicative care (forbidden under the plans of Bernie and Pramila Jayapal). The disingenuous suggestion of Tulsi surrogates (or trolls posing as such) is that Tulsi’s healthcare plan is compatible with other countries’ single-payer healthcare systems - you don’t have to ban private health insurance companies’ providing coverage for duplicative care in order to be single-payer. Neither Tulsi nor her surrogates (or trolls posing as such) publicly mention that she is a co-sponsor of Jayapal’s (house) bill on Medicare For All, which (like Bernie’s) bans private health insurance coverage of duplicative care - the same ban which she claims is ‘un-American’.

The key point to note is that in the primary case of another country with a single payer health care system (no premiums, no co-pays, no deductibles) which also has duplicative healthcare, that duplicative health care DOES NOT INVOLVE PRIVATE HEALTH INSURANCE! The country in question is Canada. In Canada, private health insurance companies are banned from providing coverage for health services covered by the single-payer system. Yet nobody comes south from Canada to the USA for basic healthcare.

Two philosophical pro-choice views

Disclaimer: The following is culled from a broad-ranging text written for students taking the general education requirement course in Moral Philosophy at Saint Joseph’s University, Philadelphia PA USA, circa 2006. Following a university wide ‘curriculum review’ shortly thereafter, the Catholic Jesuit university in question substantially revised the amount and content of required undergraduate courses in Philosophy, effectively ‘dumbing down’ the subject. Many philosophy lecturers at Saint Joe’s at the time voiced their opposition to this proposed change in the curriculum, as it applied to the Department of Philosophy.

The following was written prior to a period when wealthy contributors to Saint Joseph’s began to pay for the construction of new buildings at the university. During this time, the millionaires in question didn’t think of embellishing the name of Saint Joe’s by improving the lot of the majority of professors teaching there living in near poverty. Around 70% of the country’s university professors are adjuncts with no health benefits and an income (if they are lucky) of around a third of that of full time salaried professors.

This was a time when there was a push for Saint Joe’s to become the foremost catholic university in the region: there were massive ads in 30th street station in Philadelphia, ads on buses, on local TV etc. Saint Joseph’s is/was perhaps best known for its business school, whose students notoriously were not academically inclined.

Trump, Hillary, Warren

October 2018 was a month of crisis for Trump’s Presidency. Brett Kavanaugh had just been sworn in as a Supreme Court Justice, despite credible allegations that he had sexually assaulted at least one woman (Christine Blasey), was a heavy drinker in his youth and had lied to Congress during his confirmation hearing. After a mere week of F.B.I. investigation into the new allegations, Kavanaugh was confirmed.

On the meaninglessness of polls

Undergraduate students who have taken introductory philosophy courses may have heard of David Hume's problem of induction, which concerns our rational justification for believing that future causes will have the same effects as past causes. Hume’s argument is usually described as being a problem for the rationality of science - one has no rational justification for believing that the sun will rise tomorrow, or more generally that the laws of physics will continue to apply in the future. I argue here that Hume’s argument has application in the context of political science; in particular, with respect to the importance of political polls in primary and general elections.

Money, Guns, War and Money

(The following is a draft excerpt from a forthcoming book.)

One important issue that prominent pre-constitution pre-Americans were concerned about was the tyranny of the English government and of how to preclude the possibility of a similar tyranny amongst a conglomeration of the thirteen east coast English colonies which then existed. Ten years prior to their drafting of the constitution in 1786, there had been a loose sort of formal relationship between these colonies (which at the time and for many years hence had the status of different countries with different currencies and laws) inscribed in a document called The Articles Of Confederation. Then, no executive (president) or judicial (supreme court) branch of government existed. The educated, wealthy people at the time (reminiscent of the philosopher-kings of Plato’s Republic) had for decades just made the laws for their individual colonies without any vote or debate. Despite this, perhaps surprisingly, the colonies prospered. According to Benjamin Franklin:

“There was abundance in the Colonies, and peace was reigning on every border. It was difficult, and even impossible, to find a happier and more prosperous nation on all the surface of the globe. Comfort was prevailing in every home. The people, in general, kept the highest moral standards, and education was widely spread.”

The Loan Shark Prevention Act

In May 2019, Senator Bernie Sanders (supported by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez-Cortez) introduced a piece of legislation to Congress called the ‘Loan Shark Prevention Act’. The primary purpose of the legislation is to fight against modern day usury in which poor people who have desperate financial needs are charged extortionate interest rates on loans from credit card companies (the interest rates of ‘pay-day loan’ companies advocated by disgraced ex- DNC chair and 2016 pro-Hillary liar Debbie Wasserman-Schultz are significantly worse).

Joe Biden (a.k.a. Joe ‘Hillary’ 2.0) is a well-known defender of credit card companies. In April 2019 Elizabeth Warren, when asked about Biden’s announcing his run for the Democratic nomination said:

“Our disagreement is a matter of public record. At a time when the biggest financial institutions in this country were trying to put the squeeze on millions of hardworking families who are in bankruptcy because of medical problems, job losses, divorce and death in the family, there was nobody to stand up for them . . I got in that fight because they just didn’t have anyone and Joe Biden was on the side of the credit card companies.”

Regarding credit card companies, Bernie, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Elizabeth Warren are in agreement.

Tulsi, Warren and Bernie

Following her appearance in the second round of Democratic debates (Wednesday July 31) Tulsi Gabbard garnered a fair amount of media attention and was the most googled candidate during the debate. (Google had blocked people from searching for her after the first debate, which resulted in Tulsi suing Google for $50M. That would go a long way in helping her campaign.)

One of the main tenets of Tulsi’s campaign is to end regime-change wars. She shares this view with that of Jill Stein in 2016 and also Bernie Sanders 2016 and 2020. Indeed, Tulsi endorsed Bernie in 2016 and resigned from her position in the DNC following the corruption that was exposed within that organization at the time (actively sabotaging Bernie’s primary campaign). This was in contrast to Elizabeth Warren in 2016 who chose to endorse no-one in the primaries (hedge funding her bet) then endorsing Hillary Clinton in the general election.

Bernie, Hillary and Joe

One may remember the pressure put on Senator Bernie Sanders to drop out of the 2016 race for the democratic nomination. Appeals for Senator Sanders to concede defeat by the main stream corporate media were universally couched (explicitly or implicitly) in terms of such concession being a moral requirement. That Bernie should support Hillary (and urge his supporters to do the same) has been described as ‘the right thing to do’ and necessary in order to defeat Donald Trump in a general election. To this end, invisible olive branches were extended by Hillary to Bernie’s supporters. At the time, CNN and MSNBC blamed those supporters for not being able to see the invisible, in order to explain their lack of enthusiasm to fall in line behind Hillary.

Unfortunately for her, many of Bernie’s supporters at the time regarded the idea of supporting Hillary Clinton as anathema (especially given the fact that the DNC had not repudiated the bogus declaration by NBC and AP of Hillary being the presumptive nominee on Monday June 6, the day before the California primary; nothing short of voter suppression), and what we now know about how the primaries were rigged against Bernie since before their start.

On the absurdity of the MSM coverage of the Dem debates round 2

The mainstream media devoted considerable time before the second round of Dem debates in covering the issue of Bernie needing to distinguish himself from other candidates. For instance, pseudo-journalist and MSNBC millionaire Chuck Todd interviewed David Kos (of the Daily Kos which masquerades as a leftist outlet but which is actually centrist). Kos in effect complained that Bernie was too consistent - he needed to change his message a bit from 2016 in order to have an effective strategy for 2020. Similarly, CNN ran numerous segments in which panelists (all conservative, pro-corporate agenda) suggested that Bernie needed to try to prove to the people watching the debates how he differs from his rival candidates.

What the corporate-media have proved to the American public in following this strategy is that they are much more of a threat to American Democracy than Russia ever was. In 2016 Bernie changed the political landscape, so that the plethora of mostly corporate-duopoly politicians who have chosen to agree to pollute the 2020 Democratic Party Presidential debate stages are forced (inconsistently) to try to sound like Bernie in order to seem popular whilst (absurdly) also disagreeing with him. The corporate media pundits are left looking typically disingenuous or just stupid, in trying to reconcile this inconsistency.

For instance:

Jefferson, Bernie, Buttigieg and Biden

(The following is a draft excerpt from the introduction to a forthcoming book. Amongst other things, the excerpt touches on Thomas Jefferson’s philosophical influences in drafting the Declaration of Independence, the notion of a human right and why Jefferson would vote for Bernie rather than Biden or Buttigieg.)

Drafters of the Declaration Of Independence and the U. S. Constitution were strongly influenced by philosophers of the European enlightenment in the 18th century. As is well known, Thomas Jefferson, the main architect of the Declaration Of Independence was particularly influenced by the English enlightenment philosopher John Locke and the latter’s notion of a natural right (in contrast to the alleged divinely granted right of the king to arbitrarily take away life liberty or property).

Famously, Jefferson amended Locke’s phrase ‘life, liberty and property’ (from the latter’s 2nd Treatise on Government) to the phrase ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ in the former’s list of what he regarded as self-evidently inalienable rights with which all men have been endowed by their creator. This was a sentiment soon to be echoed in the motto of the French revolution: ‘liberte, egalite, fraternite’.*editor’s note - Joe Biden referred to Jefferson’s phrase above in his Easter Thursday 2019 video announcing his candidacy for Democratic Party nomination for President in 2020. Looking at Joe Biden’s political record, he is not a staunch advocate of human rights. When rights and corporate profits conflict, he is on the side of corporate profits. Similarly, Pete Buttigieg is a media creation backed by billionaires - he is the acceptable boyish face of the sort of neo-liberalism that gave us Trump in the first place.

The Squad: an Essay on Racism, the Corporate Duopoly and the Planet

Thursday June 27 - AOC criticizes House Speaker Pelosi’s plan to endorse Mitch McConnell’s senate version of a border bill which would provide no oversight into how money was spent.

Monday July 1 - AOC, Ayanna Pressley, Rashida Tlaib etc. visit ‘concentration camps’ at the southern border, prompting major msm coverage (listen closely to one or two people who shout ‘liar’ during Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’ press statement about what the delegation witnessed during their visit - sounds like someone was paid off to subliminally discredit her claims in the mind of the non-critical viewer).

Friday July 12 - AOC, Tlaib testify under oath in Congress about the inhumane conditions they witnessed at migrant detention centers at the southern border of the USA.

Thomas Nagel and why Bernie is best on the reparations issue

Bernie was asked about the issue of reparations for contemporary African American ancestors of slavery, in his CNN town hall in April 2019. The media got some mileage out of criticizing Bernie on this issue on tv shortly afterwards. Regarding Sanders’ response, CNN op ed contributor LZ Granderson noted that Bernie did not mention the word ‘reparations’. Why not? The overall tenor of Granderson’s opinion piece is that the term ‘reparations’ is unclear (just as Bernie had alluded to on live TV) so Bernie’s response was completely justified. However, the political hit and run happened in real time on CNN and is not to be remedied by an obscure op ed which virtually nobody who watched the town hall will ever see.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/05/opinions/reparations-democratic-candidates-2020-granderson/index.html

Furthermore Granderson’s op ed (on CNN’s web-site) is a subtle smear on Bernie, masquerading as a compliment.

Will Hurd - but questions to squad not heard

July 15: Trump in a WH garden statement claimed that the four progressive Democratic Party House Representatives who had just recently criticized the treatment of migrants legally seeking asylum at the southern border could “go back to the places from which they came”. Trump’s remarks overall in his address were widely seen as racist. Later that afternoon Congress women Rep. Ayanna Pressley, Rep. Ilhan Omar, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rep. Rashida Tlaib gave a press conference on live TV (during the ‘Situation Room’ with Wolf Blitzer) in which they responded to Trump’s comments.

Prior to the conference with the four Congress women, Blitzer had interviewed black Republican Representative Will Hurd (a former CIA employee). Blitzer repeatedly asked Hurd if he thought Trump was a racist but Hurd refused to affirm that idea. Instead he asserted that he didn’t know how many times someone needs to say something racist in order to count as a racist, admitting that Trump had made some racist claims (including those against the American citizens and Congress women that Trump had disparaged).

Hurd was implicitly appealing to the philosophical notion of vagueness in his non-answer to Blitzer. How many dollars must you have in your name at the bank before you count as middle-class? How old must you be before you count as middle-aged? What height must you be until you count as tall (relative to some specified category e.g. modern American Wall Street bankers?).

Biden’s con in Pittsburgh

Monday April 29:

Joe Biden did his first rally since officially announcing his candidacy the previous Thursday. Speaking at a local Labour union in Pittsburgh PA (I.e. teamsters local 409, having earlier been endorsed by the International Association Of Firefighters), he was portrayed by the main stream media as the presumptive democratic nominee. (The online video of his speech is not widely anonymously available e.g. on YouTube - rather one has to sign up for JW player to watch his ‘for the worker’ speech online. Red flag).

The MSM focused on his Twitter spat with Trump that day, claiming that Biden had gotten under Trump’s skin regarding blue-collar working people, inferring that Biden was the Democratic candidate Trump feared most. Shades of 2016 were apparent, when the media gifted the presidency to Trump by arrogantly ignoring the progressive voice in America.

During the course of his speech, Biden incorporated a somewhat scripted sounding claim indirectly referencing a well-known idea in moral philosophy, originally espoused by Immanuel Kant (a corollary of his ‘categorical imperative’). Biden suggested that American employers in general had been guilty of treating employees as a means to an end, not as an end in themselves. Their value and dignity as human beings was not being respected: they were being used.

Even setting aside his plagiarization (lies) in his first presidential campaign, this was a very odd claim for Biden to make, despite his attempt (in concert with the corporate media) to portray himself as a friend of the worker. Biden voted for NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) in which American companies out-sourced their labor, taking jobs away from Americans and giving them to people in other countries. (Bernie voted against NAFTA.) Biden’s vote was one that favored the interests of American corporations, not working Americans.

July 14 - two revolutions

July 14, 1789 - the storming of the political prison in Paris now referred to as the Bastille, sparking the French Revolution against the monarchy heralding a new age of freedom.

July 14, 2019 - the president of the country that was gifted the Statue of Liberty (made in and shipped from France) as a symbol of freedom from the tyranny of monarchy, racially attacks (via Twitter) four politically progressive Congress members. This president who would be king also heralded a Kristallnacht (‘Crystal night’ - referencing the broken glass of Jewish stores, synagogues etc. in Germany in 1938) neo-Nazi type crack down on undocumented immigrants in ten cities around the country on July 14 - a country originally inspired by France to declare independence from the British monarchy.

In 1886, (according to Wikipedia) a dedication for the statue was performed:

“Shortly after the dedication, The Cleveland Gazette, an African American newspaper, suggested that the statue's torch not be lit until the United States became a free nation "in reality":

"Liberty enlightening the world," indeed! The expression makes us sick. This government is a howling farce. It can not or rather does not protect its citizens within its own borders.

No more Biden his time

On Thursday April 25, Joe Biden finally stopped Biden’ his time and officially announced his 2020 Presidential run. This, his third campaign, was launched with a Clintonesque YouTube video which included no policy ideas whatsoever. Instead he decided to rail against Trump’s failure to denounce neo-Nazis at a ‘Unite The Right’ rally in Charlottesville August 12, 2017 (in which one of the peaceful protestors was killed and 28 injured). Trump infamously claimed in response that there were ‘very fine people’ on both sides (neo-Nazis on one side, anti-fascist peaceful protestors on the other).

Poll coverage on MSM

Remember how in 2016, the main stream media used the notion of ‘super-delegates’ to push the narrative that Bernie couldn’t possibly win the nomination even though his policies were far more popular than Clinton’s? After the corruption of the DNC was exposed (Debbie Wasserman-Schultz being forced to resign, CNN pundit and super-delegate Donna Brazile being exposed as a cheat etc.) the Democratic Party wants to appear to voters as being more transparent than in 2016. However, although they want to appear as if they have cleaned up their act they still have an ace up their sleeve i.e. super-delegates if needed at a second ballot. That is, if none of the twenty or so candidates achieve a plurality of votes at the first ballot, as is likely - the super-delegates can select the party’s preferred corporate candidate.

However, before super-delegates in a second ballot become relevant, the Democratic Party’s affiliated corporate main stream media have another card to play first - coverage of polls.

First, did you know that the Biden (CNN) poll in April didn’t reflect the views of anyone under the age of fifty? Younger people were questioned in the poll but not enough were included in the poll in order to statistically extrapolate from with any reliability, so their views were not reflected.

CNN on Bernie’s view about felons & voting

On Tuesday April 23rd, 2019, CNN on at least four occasions focused their propaganda lens on Bernie Sanders’ view about whether incarcerated felons in general should be allowed to vote whilst still incarcerated. Sanders’ view was given in response to a question during his CNN town hall event of the previous night (the third of five consecutive town halls featuring Amy Klobuchar, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris and Pete Buttigieg respectively).

Notably, the question at issue for Bernie was rhetorically phrased i.e. should the Boston marathon bombers have the right to vote whilst incarcerated? The tendentious suggestion underlying the question is that if one thinks all citizens, even bad people, have the right to vote, then one supports the Boston Marathon bombers and murder. This is an obviously fallacious inference since one can consistently reject murder but support universal suffrage.

Despite this obvious fallacy, this question for Bernie was apparently conceived by a student at Harvard University. It strains credulity to think that students at Harvard are so uninformed about basic logical fallacies: the naive are then forced to face the possibility that perhaps the questioner may have been politically motivated to ask a tendentious question (to make Bernie look bad to the viewing public).

Biden’s segregationist gaffe

Joe Biden’s campaign strategy thus far has been to portray himself as someone who can work with people whose views he does not share, i.e. Republicans. This middle ground centrist image is one that he hopes will be attractive to voters in a general election battle against Trump.

Three problems with this strategy: first it is out of touch with the modern progressive part of the Democratic Party and with their voter base. Biden risks doing a Hillary (when in 2016 she gave her middle finger to progressives, ultimately losing to Trump). Just like in 2016, the corporate media are now doing what they can to help their corporate stooge. Unfortunately (as Barack Obama recognized) Biden (unlike Hillary) is not the sharpest pencil in the box.

Biden his time tick tock

The state of play, April 2019: 19 candidates have officially declared their candidacy for the Democrat nominee for President 2020. A similar number of Republican candidates vied for the GOP nominee in 2016, as if this number of candidates in either party is normal. It isn’t. What’s going on?

Whilst the main stream media portray this amount of choice as good for democracy, the opposite is true. Most of these candidates (Dem or GOP) are there to subvert genuine democracy as far as citizens being able to vote for genuine alternatives is concerned. Since third party candidates were barred from being on a televised debate stage, there is only a corporate duopoly available to vote for. Dem or GOP, there’s not much difference as far as foreign war and domestic economic policy is concerned.

What both main parties (the corporate duopoly) are scared of is the progressive movement and people like Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and most of all Bernie Sanders.

John Delaney v AOC

At the California Democratic Convention (CADEM) of early June 2019, John Delaney was booed for more than a minute due to his claim that Medicare for all is neither good policy or good politics. (Unsurprisingly Joe Biden did not even attend the convention - one can only imagine how his lies, plagiarism and vague Republican slurred sound-bite speech would have been received.)

John Delaney is a corporate stooge, in bed with the health insurance companies. His claim that Medicare for all would throw 150 million people off their health insurance is a disgracefully disingenuous scare tactic since it would do the opposite of what he claims. Delaney’s lie is that losing private health insurance under Medicare for all means losing access to health care. On the contrary, people would have better health care and have more flexibility to keep the doctor they like rather than be subject to arbitrary employer changes to health insurance plans. On top of that, everyone would have free point of service access to heath-care, eliminating the sort of health-care bankruptcy situation that many Americans are in today.