By Mickey Friedman
May 12, 2016
We are once again in the midst of a war between the generations. If you missed the end of the stultifying fifties and the metaphorical and real explosions of the sixties, open your eyes.
Once young and at my own version of the front lines, I was committed to a new way. Desperate to end a war, driven to dismantle segregation, more interested in causes than cash. Looking for a reason to believe.
Substituting folk music, the blues, jazz for the wail of air raid sirens, we marched against mutually assured destruction, the criminal stupidity of Vietnam and heartbreaking loss of Americans and “the enemies” we saw on TV, the early days of the endless war.
Older now I watch this new miscommunication: the battle of Hillary and Bernie. A battle between what is and what could be, between what works for the few and what might work for the many.
When curiosity gets the better of good sense, I check out MSNBC or CNN just long enough to get disgusted.
And why should they offer meaningful analysis? Because wouldn’t that be testifying against themselves. CNN, after all, is owned by Time Warner, the folks you send money to every month so you can watch the Red Sox and the Food Network.
In 2014, Robert Marcus the CEO of Time Warner made 20 million dollars. MSNBC is co-owned by NBC Universal and Microsoft. The parent organization of NBC Universal is Comcast to whom many send money to watch MSNBC.
According to the AFL-CIO, in 2014 “the head of Comcast, Brian L. Roberts received $32,961,056 in total compensation. By comparison, the average worker made $35,239 in the year before. Brian L. Roberts made 935 times the average worker’s pay.”
Bloomberg says “the gap between pay for U.S. chief executive officers and the people who work for them has widened sevenfold in three decades.”
As of April 2016 Hillary received $16,582,999 from the Communications/Electronic sector of the corporate world compared to $2,873,948 for Bernie.
So when it comes to covering the campaign is it really a surprise that so much of the analysis discourages Bernie supporters from believing his cause is not only worthy but could be successful.
Then there’s the Dylanesque “Because something is happening here/But you don’t know what it is/Do you, Mister Jones?”
Don’t know, do you, Mr. MSNBC, why the already anointed Queen of the Democratic establishment has failed so miserably with the young?”
Because the real story, Bernie’s story, is the massive shift of power to those at the top. I mentioned self-incrimination because these self-imagined journalistic crusaders really work for those at the top. Do their bosses really want the curtains pulled back? Do they want this story told? And aren’t they also so very privileged?
As Howard Zinn taught us there are multiple versions of history and the history that most often is told is the story of the powerful, not the people who struggle to survive.
There’s the constant drumbeat that Bernie’s too negative. That his constant reminders of the massive amounts of money Hillary has made speaking to GE, Goldman Sachs, the banks is an attack upon her integrity. According to the press, Bernie needs to find the smoking quid pro quo, the clear unmistakable proof that Hillary has given GE and Goldman something back. As if they aren’t already confident, based on her record, she’ll do their bidding. Most Americans know that great gifts bring with them a sense of obligation. How is Hillary magically immune?
The young know firsthand that when income shifts so precariously from the working and middle classes to the top, life becomes ever so much more difficult for wage-earners. For parents, grandparents, and children. These young people forced to abandon apartments they can’t afford, looking for jobs they can’t find, to return home to their childhood bedrooms.
Hillary and her supporters mock the idea of Medicare-for-all and free college education as impractical because they have no need for it. Because they aren’t exhausted dealing with the crippling debt of student loans. Don’t know what a massive burden it is for well-meaning parents who struggle to survive, yet want so much to help their children get a higher education.
Hillary and many of her supporters don’t have to choose between the ridiculous costs of health insurance or food or rent or car repairs.
For Hillary, the Unaffordable Affordable Care Act is great progress. Certainly for the insurance companies and Big Pharma who wrote it. Less so for the many millions who have it, yet can’t afford it. So are you really surprised that Open Secrets reports that Hillary got $2,044,065 from the pharmaceutical industry and Bernie $132,708; that commercial banks gave Hillary $949,759 and Bernie $120,266. That lobbyists gave Hillary $919,477 and Bernie $11,949.
To many this race is about everyday politics; to the young, it’s about a reason to believe.
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For more information:
“Valuing CEOs” By Caleb Melby | Updated Aug 13, 2015
http://www.bloombergview.com/quicktake/executive-pay
The CEOs of 350 Standard & Poor’s 500 companies made 331 times more than their employees in 2013, up from a ratio of 46-to-1 in 1983, according to the AFL-CIO. That’s more than twice the gap in Switzerland and Germany, and about 10 times bigger than in Austria. In Japan, CEOs make about 67 times more than workers (although the country’s highest-paid woman earns only 25 times more). Australian CEOs get 93 times more. A global Harvard Business School survey found that most people think pay gaps are far smaller than they are. That was particularly true in the U.S., where survey respondents thought the ratio of CEO to average worker pay was 30 to 1; they put the ideal ratio at 7 to 1. In June 2015, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission narrowly approved a rule requiring companies to reveal the pay gap between their CEO and their typical employee. At McDonald’s, that ratio was 644 to 1 in 2014, according to a Bloomberg analysis.
http://www.aflcio.org/Corporate-Watch/Paywatch-2014
https://www.opensecrets.org/pres16/select-sectors.php?sector=B
https://www.opensecrets.org/pres16/select-sectors.php?sector=H
https://theintercept.com/2016/02/08/hrc-inner-circle-lobbyists/
http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2009/news/0909/gallery.highest_paid_worst_CEOs/3.html
“A Reason To Believe” was first published in the April 28, 2106 issue of The Berkshire Record
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