Month: April 2016

Another indication of how crazy this primary season has become: the one guy who makes total sense is Bernie Sanders, but he is being attacked from every quarter, including, believe it or not, the whole Democrat party and their surrogates. There is not one of his ideas that have been proven to be unworkable. Even so, you hear terms like “pie in the sky” and any other deprecation they can think of. Bernie would beat any Republican alive, but the total Democrat party effort is focused on a candidate whose negatives are so numerous, and serious, that she cannot possibly win a general election. Crazy!

It is nice to know that at least one letter-writer (in this case Peter Gelblum, April 14, 2016) knows enough about how the economy works to describe the overall effect of a higher minimum wage, to wit: more money in circulation, more consumer spending, a healthier economy, more people enjoying what the world has two offer. That can’t be all bad.

(personal attention: Paul Krugman)
Shame on you, Paul Krugman! You know darn well the Democrat Party leadership stacked the deck against Sanders by scheduling the earliest primaries in locations where Clinton is known to be heavily favored. You know this, yet you have the nerve, the gall, actually, to imply that the calendar “front loaded some states very favorable to Sanders,” when all the front loading was done to favor Clinton. The strategy, of course, was to give Clinton such a big early lead that competitors would be discouraged from entering the race, and even if they did enter, the bulk of the campaign financing and the delegate commitments would already be gobbled up by Clinton. The strategy is working. And were it not for the very unexpected presence of a guy named Sanders (who is not offering more of the same), there would be no primary at all. In that case, we could expect a succession of laudatory speeches by sycophantic politicians and a final coronation at the Democrat convention, only to be followed by a stinging defeat in the general election by a Republican Party with no compunction against bombarding Clinton with all her numerous negatives. Sanders changed that scenario by simply telling it like it is, so to speak, which is: America is desperately ready for drastic, real, not cosmetic nor incremental change. Obviously a large portion of voters agree with Sanders. The essential fact has become obvious: Sanders is gaining and has gained from the very beginning while Clinton is losing ground everywhere. If the Democrat party had not so cynically engineered such an early lead for Clinton, there would be no contest. Sanders would win the nomination easily. As it is, he has the difficult challenge of keeping the momentum going against the full force of everything the Democrat party can throw at him, including the likes of your April 16, 2016, article.You told so many whoppers, it would take too long to enumerate them here. Suffice it to say, Sanders has a hard enough task getting his message across without the need to fight off attacks from people who should be supporting him and his ideas.

When Hillary first announced her candidacy, the Democrat party apparatus nearly went ballistic with excitement. The first woman president of the United States will be a Democrat! In fact, the party was so gaga over the “first woman” prospect, that no one bothered to ask: “Is she the right woman? Can she win?” If they had asked, cooler heads might have prevailed and the party might have waited to see if other, less tainted, women might come forward. The party could have done more vetting but they did not. The Democrat party shut the door, so to speak, by making it known that “she is our gal”, and woe to anyone who might dare challenge her. When Sanders realized what was happening, that the Democrats were putting up a middle-of-the-road, more-of-the-same candidate who represented the absence of change at a time when the country badly needed not only change, but radical change, he jumped in. The party responded with a strategy to defeat Sanders chances right out of the box. They scheduled the early primaries in states known to favor Clinton heavily, to build an early lead so large that no one, not even Bernie, would have a chance. But something unexpected happened along the way. Sanders’ support soared while Clinton’s started inexorably to shrink. In other words, Americans knew Clinton even if the Democrat party did not. Now the party hierarchy is pulling out all the stops, tying up as many delegates and super delegates as possible in a desperate attempt to get Sanders out before he builds up any more momentum. I One day I will be in the and return labelf they succeed, they will have destroyed our last best hope.

(dear editor: I am trying to stay relevant, so my last two letters are designed to reflect the current headlines.)
Clinton claims Sanders “has not done his homework” and “his numbers do not add up” and “he can’t deliver what he’s proposing.” Well, have you ever heard a politician propose something that depends on Congress and is thus doubtful of ever being accomplished? Sanders is proposing things that desperately need to be done if America is to get back on the track it was on before Ronald Reagan’s disastrous policies. How these ideas might finally become reality does indeed depend on Congress; but, likewise, nothing will ever happen until someone, like Sanders, with faith in America’s “can do” attitude starts the ball rolling. That is Sanders in a nutshell. Clinton has not been able to identify one, not one, of Sanders ideas that cannot be done, or that should not be done. Judging by the Sanders effect on voters so far, his ideas stand a decent chance of getting us past that “more of the same” that Clinton offers. sosbee.com

Actually, that is the wrong question. First, one should ask: is she really electable? The answer to that question, of course, can only be answered if she does, indeed, become the Democrat nominee. If so, Clinton’s negatives, the surface of which have only been barely scratched so far, would be massive red meat for the Republican hate machine. Sanders does not have this baggage, but he does have the progressive base that Clinton and Obama have ignored for years. That base, which largely stayed home in the elections of 2010 and 2014, will totally make the difference in 2016. Of course, progressive Democrats will vote the ticket, but wouldn’t it be nice if their enthusiastic support made the 2016 election a decisive landslide?( As it would be for Sanders)

Do we really need a “revolution”? Or do we simply need to put America into “reverse”? For example: if we could reverse practically everything Ronald Reagan ever did (as well as that of all his copycats) we could restore the time when America really was great: a time when labor unions were an effective bulwark against corporate greed, when a college education did not mortgage a student’s entire future, when America was not trying (in vain) to be the boss of the world, and when the two party system used debate and compromise instead of divide and conquer to govern the country. As it is now, Republicans simply want to control everything, to paint the entire country red .

Any time you have people like Hank Garcia and Consuelo Alba working to restore something as rare and beautiful as one of the old movie palaces that blossomed all over America in the 20s and 30s, these people deserve the support of the entire community. Is there some way us ordinary Santa Cruzans can contribute, financially, even in small amounts, to the cost of renovation, perhaps a PO Box to receive checks or a PayPal account? And will the sentinel keep us informed of the progress in this attempt to bring back to life one of those grand places where regular people can occasionally experience something enchanting?