EXCELLENT ANALYSIS OF BERNIE'S SURPRISING RISE

Fascinating article about how Bernie Sanders has shocked everyone by surging after being written off as a fringe candidate by the political establishment. And I'm glad it mentions this shocking trend of how badly average Americans are doing despite the establishment press telling us the recession's over, unemployment is down and how many are now covered under a slightly improved but still shitty health care reform. I'm glad the author threw in a mention of how Obama tried to cut or "curtail" Social Security. You can't evaluate Hillary without discussing what a disappointment Obama was, because their establishment policies are very similar. Shafting American workers has gone on for decades and a vote for Hillary is a vote to continue that trend. Very interesting how the anti-establishment candidate is an older, white, jewish guy. And the establishment candidate, bloated with donations from the very financial institutions which Bernie vows to reform, is a woman known for her ties to Israel.

HUFFPO: "The "experts," in their typical blinkered way, overlooked or grossly underestimated some stark truths. Most Americans are poorer today than they were 45 years ago. Stagnant salaries may have left them on a par with or very slightly ahead of where they were in 1970 in absolute terms, but they have lost all purchase on the kind of lives led by those who are infinitely better off in relative terms. In America's status society where well-being is measured in life style terms, that counts for a lot. Especially so, when the outlook for your children is a struggle even to keep up with their parents. Moreover, tens of millions of earnest workers have seen themselves degraded and downgraded as "temps" and part-timers, shorn of job security and benefits, in the name of "productivity" and "efficiency." They are marooned in a limbo just a layer above migrant agricultural workers. This is taken by their leaders to be the inescapable price to pay in order to keep up with the Malaysians and the Chinese. Democratic President Barack Obama rubs their noses in it by promoting the Trans-Pacific commercial Pact, largely written by big business, which will undercut the authority of the United States government to alleviate their condition.

For the cognoscenti of the political class, this blunt reality is a revelation - ignored for decades and now filed away under the label "inequality." For them and for the candidates they promote, "inequality" is just another abstraction about which nothing practical will be done - like the Israeli-Palestinian "peace process." So long as they themselves are comfortably off, all is more-or-less right with the world.

Consider this: Apple and GE, two of America's most profitable corporations, are paying Zero federal taxes. Their aggregate taxes paid to governments worldwide is 0% and 3%. Apple -- always the most innovative -- declares itself headquartered somewhere in cyber space where no tax laws apply. That assertion is uncontested by Washington. President Obama has ignored this scandalous tax evasion, his administration has taken no Executive initiatives and proposed no legislative remedy. Democrat leaders in Congress are equally inert. Candidate Clinton ignores it.

Selling out means a number of things: actively allying with the vested Establishment interests; staying mute due to dependence on big money's campaign contributions; concentrating on cosmetic reform and minimal steps in a progressive direction (e.g. Dodd-Franks and its non-implementation). This has been institutionalized during the Clinton and Obama administrations in concert with Democratic Congressional leaders. An historic landmark of incalculable importance was the sequester initiative of President Obama whereby all federal spending was cut substantially across the board (with the notable exception of off-the-books military spending on the global wars against terror). This reckless action gave the Republicans a long dreamt of boon: a weakening of government programs in line with their laissez-faire ideology. Those cuts are now the baseline for the fights over further reductions."

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