Suggestions for Biden

Updated - Madison, Wisconsin — Here's a few things Joe Biden and Democrats can do before Kamala Harris takes over the reigns of executive power in the ailing president-elect's term.

Some involve communications, some involve policy, all of this political moment. [See also Washington Post, Bill Moyers, and Chomksy in TruthOut.]

Read what I'm saying here, Dems — this will help you. It's written in an eighth-grade level.

In no order:

Jill Biden has to drop the 'Dr' and educator title from all references.

This need to vest honorary and Doctorate of Education degrees with reverence is the wrong message to voters whether the degree comes from Concordia University or the University of Delaware.

Consider that Gov Tony Evers (D-Wisconsin) does not parade his Doctorate of Education degree and identify himself as Dr. Tony Evers. Despite several degrees from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Evers mentions his doctorate in the last graf on his official bio page because he knows folks in small-town Wisconsin, which is to say Wisconsin, retain a revulsion of cant and sticks up rectums, features of Evers that are, anyway, already costing him politically.

Had Evers campaigned as Dr. Tony Evers, we would be suffering the third term of Scott Walker bequeathed to us by Democrat incompetence.

Most Americans do not have college degrees, and associate education (unfairly) with the imbecilic identity politics popular with corporatist Democrats who have labored over the last 40 years to enslave as many black and brown people as possible into a prison "leviathan unmatched in human history," as noted by Glenn C. Loury in Boston Review. (See also Race, Incarceration, and American Values. Glenn C. Loury, with Pamela S. Karlan, Loïc Wacquant and Tommie Shelby.)

So, don't show me your resume, CV or degrees.

Do generalize from this Jill Biden imperative and connect with people living in the world.
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Drop the word "conservative" from your vocabulary.

It's a semantical coincidence, but right now and for the near future, the term conservative has positive connotations.

So, stop branding Republicans with positive impressions. Stop saying 'conservatives on the Supreme Court ...,' 'conservatives are ... .'

You know why Frank Luntz, Republican language maven, convinced Republicans to refer to the Democrat Party as the Democrat Party? Because Frank Luntz knows what the hell he's doing.

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Treat all liberty claims as sacred. Some white Republican makes a liberty claim, listen to what the hell he's saying. Listen. Then many Republican-voting countrymen will not hate you so much.

The same goes double for minority folks whom the Democrat Party works assiduously to appear to be helping while screwing us over.

As Noam Chomsky writes:

A careful study by political scientist Larry Bartels reveals that Republicans feel that 'the traditional American way of life is disappearing so fast that we may have to use force to save it, and more than 40 percent agree that 'a time will come when patriotic Americans have to take the law into their own hands.'

Trump has also skillfully tapped reservoirs of anger and economic resentment among the working and middle classes who have been subjected to the bipartisan neoliberal assault of the last 40 years. If they feel that they have been robbed, they have good reason. The Rand Corporation recently estimated transfer of wealth from the lower 90 percent to the very rich during the four neoliberal decades: $47 trillion, not small change. Looking more closely, the transfer was primarily to a small fraction of the very rich.

Many Republican-voting Americans know corporations are screwing them, and they also believe the Democrat Party is helping.

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Economic populism. Do this. Do economic populism, and as often as practical tell the Democrat donor class to go fuck itself.

Listen to Bernie Sanders and the Squad.

Dems, realize you are kind-of stupid about policy and politics. It's okay. My wife knows little about the complexities of the blitz in football, but she is really brilliant and knowledgeable about just about everything else.

So, know your weaknesses and learn. Economic industrial policy has to be more than policy recommendations, it must be your mission.

Economic, social, racial and environmental justice? These are good things. Do these things.

Congratulations to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris for their historic win. In this incredibly difficult moment in American history, I wish them the best as they attempt to bring our nation together around an agenda of economic, social, racial and environmental justice.

— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) November 7, 2020

Just a few more. South American rightwing dictators bad. Democracy good. War bad. Peace good. Classical liberalism good. Oligarchy bad. Bars and restaurants good. Small-business devastation bad.

I'll be in touch.

Photo from Milwaukee Independent

And listen to Krystal Ball:

Resistance liberalism and its fixation on cultural elite obsessions like Russiagate, impeachment and identity politics is one of the most off-putting parts of the Democratic Party. @SpanbergerVA07 and co may want to think that over in their election post mortems.

— Krystal Ball (@krystalball) November 8, 2020

Police Lying Comes to Light

Prosecutors and police routinely lie and
break the law in America—a fact.

A systemic failure from the Making a Murderer documentary series that has come to light is the fact police regularly lie; police are dishonest, and only a fool would trust them.

The Appleton Post Crescent runs an important and telling piece today by Duke Behnke of the USA Today Network-Wisconsin (Gannett Co).

The law enforcement interrogation of 16-year-old Brendan Dassey was critical in the conviction of Dassey and Steven Avery, and is typical of false admissions across the nation.

Writes Dehnke:

Criminal defense attorneys say U.S. courts have given police plenty of freedom in the ways they can extract information from suspects. Police can interview minors without parental consent. They can imply they have evidence they don't have, a technique called baiting. They can employ the 'good cop, bad cop' routine to gain cooperation.

They also can use 'strategic deception,' according to the 1990 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Illinois vs. Perkins.

'The cops can lie,' said Rob Bellin, a Neenah attorney with more than 20 years of experience in criminal defense and personal injury litigation. 'Absolutely they’re allowed to lie.'

A hostile and deceitful domestic police force, a careerist, conviction-at-any-costs prosecutorial ethos, racism and taboo ethics in the criminal justice system, and a commitment of district attorneys to defend wrongful convictions irrespective of truth or any consideration of justice present conditions perfect for mass incarceration constituting a "leviathan unmatched in human history," (Glenn C. Loury, Boston Review).

We're there, people.

Consider if your daughter, brother, father or mother were wrongfully convicted. Who stands with you then?

Think it could not happen to you?

Ask the family of U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska, 1968-2009) (1923-2010), (Cary, Rollcall). The reader will have a full-blooded understanding of a Brady violation. Or ask the mother of Madison, Wisconsin's Penny Brummer: Interrogated, defamed, arrested, convicted and sentenced to a life sentence for being an out lesbian in an anthology of the criminal justice system.

Personally, I'll contend for the sake of argument that systemic failures in law enforcement, (hell, President Obama acknowledged the problem last night, saying "So I hope we can work together this year on bipartisan priorities like criminal justice reform ... "), are the culprits.

But contrary to popular wisdom we live in a land of the Sovereign (the people of the state and not the law) and bad faith and deceit on the part of law enforcement are a huge part of the problem.

I'm thankful for the Richard Posners, the Sidney Powells (there is a force of nature), and the Alex Kozinski(s) of this experiment in democracy. And am always mindful of I.F. Stone's admonition: "Every government is run by liars. Nothing they say should be believed." First read the quote in 1985 on a large poster that used to occupy a prominent place of the late Erwin Knoll's (NYT) wall at the Progressive Magazine, a journal carrying out this legacy and reporting the truth to this day.

UW-Milwaukee Study: One in Eight Wisconsin Black Men Incarcerated Between Ages, 18-64

The American Leviathan

Blacks, when you go to prison, your lives deserve to be a "living hell," said Tommy Thompson during his gubernatorial runs. Tommy used racially coded language that fit nicely into Wisconsin's conception of the most segregated urban area in America—Milwaukee. We got to stick it to those guys! We did. It worked well, and continues today.

Those blacks have no one to blame but themselves of course, the Republicans and Tea Partiers assure us.

Racism is pretended to be some long-gone ugliness even as the Republicans and Tea Parties directly appeal to racism every election.

Segregation, that's not racism.

Poverty, that's not racism.

The war on blacks' voting, that's not racism either.

And incarceration rates in the putative American society, the "leviathan unmatched in human history," pay no mind to race.

Wisconsin is Number One in black
incarceration rates.

Michael M. O'Hear has a piece up, Wisconsin #1 in Black Incarceration; How Did We Get Here?

Writes O'Hear:

A new report from the UWM Employment and Training Institute shows that Wisconsin leads the nation in incarcerating black males. Based on data from the 2010 U.S. census, Wisconsin incarcerates about one in every eight of its black men between the ages of 18 and 64. This includes individuals held in state and local correctional facilities. The Badger State’s black incarceration rate is, in fact, about one-third higher than that of the second-place state, Oklahoma, and nearly double the national average.

The UWM Employment and Training Institute (prepared by John Pawasarat and Lois M. Quinn) should be read in its entirety by the entire Wisconsin Republican legislative caucus.

I don't believe it will. The GOP are not big readers. They outsource that kind of thing.

From the study:

Among the most critical workforce issues facing Wisconsin are governmental policies and practices leading to mass incarceration of African Americans men and suspensions of driving privileges to low-income adults. [Note: See why the GOP wants only GOP-prescribed voter IDs as a constitutional qualification for voting in Wisconsin. The Wisconsin SC upholding the Voter ID law is likely too naked a corrupt power grab. We'll see.] The prison population in Wisconsin has more than tripled since 1990, fueled by increased government funding for drug enforcement (rather than treatment) and prison construction, three-strike rules, mandatory minimum sentence laws, truth-in-sentencing replacing judicial discretion in setting punishments, concentrated policing in minority communities, and state incarceration for minor probation and supervision violations. Particularly impacted were African American males, with the 2010 U.S. Census showing Wisconsin having the highest black male incarceration rate in the nation. In Milwaukee County over half of African American men in their 30s have served time in state prison.

Jimmy John's—Supporting Rape and Prison-Industrial Complex

Brueghel's The Blind Leading the Blind

Getting ready this morning, and on comes a commercial for Jimmy John's restaurant.

Intro features a harmless-looking, scared young man walking into a jail filled with menacing-looking characters, one of whom suggestively alludes to the coming prison rape for the scared, young man.

But the kid calls Jimmy John's restaurant and a delivery saves the day.

Jimmy John's restaurant evidently believes the coming prison rape is funny.

And that America leading the world in its total prison population and rate of incarceration [Iran, Russia are pikers] is fodder for what it finds is an amusing lede-in to its commercials.

"Criminologists and legal scholars in other industrialized nations say they are mystified and appalled by the number and length of American prison sentences," notes Adam Liptak in a recent Times piece.

"The .... current American prison system, is a leviathan unmatched in human history," notes Glenn C. Loury in Boston Review.

That's fine with your local Jimmy John's restaurant. Rape is funny. Massive denial of liberty is equally amusing.

Britain and America Leading the World in Jailing Their Populations

One can read Glenn C. Loury in The Boston Review analysing the increasingly putative nature of the American criminal justice system.

Britain has the same problem.

Nigel Morris has a piece in The Independent: As the Government plans to build more jails, the shocking state of crime and punishment in Britain is revealed.

America and Britain leading the world in putting its' populations behind bars; something is wrong with this picture.

Writes Morris:

The Government was accused yesterday of trying to build its way out of the prisons overcrowding crisis as it outlined its vision for the construction of three supersize jails which would bring the number of offenders behind bars to almost 100,000.

Despite stark reminders from penal reform experts that more people are already locked up in England and Wales than anywhere else in western Europe, Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, said he was pressing ahead.

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