NY Daily News attacks Sanders after interview

An example of Media bias against Bernie 

(Above: Some of the stories run by the New York Daily News after

 their editorial board interview with Senator Sanders)

After his win in the Wyoming caucus earlier this month, Sanders extended his winning streak to cover 8 of the last 9 contests, closing the delegate gap between Sanders and Clinton to roughly 200 delegates (counting only pledged delegates, not "superdelegates", see here for an explanation of superdelegates and why they shouldn't be included in the count thus far). The stakes are now raised considerably, with the New York primary tomorrow, with a whopping 247 pledged delegates up for grabs it is undoubtedly a critical state for either candidates to lock down.

We now turn to earlier in the month, on the 1st April Bernie Sanders met with the editorial board of the NY based print publication, the New York Daily News. Unfortunately for Sanders, the editorial board had laid out an ambush for the Senator, with their first question asking him directly if companies, specifically Apple, are "destroying the fabric of America" and had laid out the context for the question in a way that would frame Sanders response in a negative light, by highlighting that Apple was a company that "grew from nothing to 115,000 permanent employees" and in its 40th year anniversary as a company. Sanders repeatedly tried to include nuance and context in his answers, but was pressed a further 2 times to answer if they were "destroying the fabric of America". The height of the interview focused on Sanders proposal to break up the large Wall Street banks responsible for the financial crisis of 2008, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America etc. The editorial board pressed Sanders on how exactly he would go about breaking up the large banks, first with questioning who exactly would have the authority to break them up (asking if the Fed or the Secretary of Treasury would be able to), and then strangely focusing on which specific statutes would be used in legal proceedings, i.e statutes from existing legislation, which is something that no candidate would be able to tell the media, without having spent considerable time consulting experts, because you know, the Constitution, and as Sanders said "The President is not a Dictator". Sanders responded by pointing out that he also has the option of going after Wall Street banks on fraud charges, as they were selling Subprime mortgages that had false ratings, see this exchange between Sanders and the editorial board. 

The rest of the interview followed a similar trend, with the board trying to guide Sanders towards the rocks on several issues, from Israel to Gun Control, later running stories on those topics with incredible headlines such as "Bernie's Sandy Hook Shame". The real headline of this story is the possible motivation for the NY Daily News obvious bias against Bernie, which leads us to the Billionaire owner of the Daily News, Mort Zuckerman. On the matter of Israel Zuckerman happens to be of the right-wing state of thinking that holds that Israel is never at fault, even when Israeli settlers are illegally moving into Palestinian lands. What is interesting are his ties to Hillary Clinton, with him contributing to the Clinton Foundation, its also probably coincidental that the Daily News endorsed Hillary Clinton sometime after the interview with Sanders. With this kind of blatant bias from the Daily News and other "establishment" publications such as The Washington Post, The Hill, The New York Times, aswell as practically all cable networks (save Fox), its no wonder why Americans, especially young Americans, are leaving traditional media for new, independent and online media, 

You can read the entire transcript of the Interview here.

Additional reading:

On the attacks regarding Israel

Sanders policy on breaking up Wall St. Banks

Book Review: Saving Capitalism

Saving Capitalism-For the many, not the few

By Robert B. Reich 

Written by former Secretary of Labour (In Bill Clinton's administration) Robert Reich, Saving Capitalism is a highly informative piece of work which lays out in great detail and context, how the American political process has been altered throughout the years in order to be incredibly responsive to the needs of Corporations, wealthy individuals and other special interest groups, and the effect that has on the American middle class, which is the weakening of workers rights, their right to unionize, and that such massive inequality of wealth stacked at the top of society hurts the economy, leading to economic crisis in which the American taxpayers bail out big businesses, with little accountability on their part for the role they played in causing such crisis.

Throughout the entire book, Reich takes a methodical approach to providing a wealth of context for the problems he tackles. The book is divided in 3 parts, the first in which he rigorously debunks the myth of the "free market" which holds that Governments should not regulate intrusively, since the rules of the free market will determine which financial endeavors will succeed, and which will fail, based on consumer choice/opinion and which businesses can outperform the competition. Reich takes a sledgehammer to this notion, and explains that there is no naturally occurring free market, it is always legislation that determines the conditions of the market, and the more pertinent question is who the market is regulated in favor of, which Reich later points out, is toward giant Corporations, and certain monopolies in their respective industry, such as cable companies Time Warner and Comcast. The current conditions of the "free market" heavily favor these monopolies, and perpetuate their continued success, as consumers have the illusion of choice.

In Part Two of Saving Capitalism Reich continues the debunking, this time turning his focus to the myth of work and worth, the idea that you are paid what you are worth, which fails miserably to explain the massive pay inequality between workers and CEO's. Reich explains that CEO's are not worth the work they perform, that it is corporate mechanisms and cronyism that gives them their outrageously high income. Reich also lays out the decline of the American middle class worker, and gives context to the days of FDR and the New Deal which saw American workers at their strongest point in U.S history, which is a stark contrast from todays American workers, where there is now a new class, the working poor, who work full time jobs, even multiple jobs, yet whose wages have not been matching the productivity of the American workers and the inflation rate over the years.

It is in Part Three of the Book that Reich lays out his recommendations as how to save capitalism, by reinforcing the bargaining power of the working class through Unions, and other methods of Countervailing Power by which to force Corporations to negotiate fair wages for their workers, which in turn benefits the economy in the long term, as the middle class have purchasing power by which they further economic growth by spending money on products manufactured by the titans of industry, such as car manufacturers. Reich also brings focus to threats to capitalism from other areas, such as globalization, the prospect of  workers from less economically prosperous nations willing to do the same work for lower wages, and also the growing robotics industry, which could see the replacement of certain jobs with an automated workforce, these make for fascinating topics to find solutions to.

I highly doubt I could do this book justice as to how well it lays out the problems in American politics and economics, and how closely woven they can become, so here is renowned economist Joseph Stiglitz' take of Saving Capitalism.

"Robert Reich has written a riveting guide to how our economic and political system has become so badly flawed, distorted by pervasive rent seeking and monopolies. He explains our rising inequality and our poor economic performance. Wholesale reform is needed- far beyond the usual prescriptions of raising the minimum wage and spending more money on education."

And if that doesn't give you enough of a tease as to the contents of this book, I have a few quotes that Robert cites within the book that sometimes perfectly capture Americas current reality.

"There are two modes of invading private property; the first by which the poor plunder the rich - sudden and violent; the second, by which the rich plunder the poor, slow and legal." - John Taylor: Foreword

"We can have a Democracy or we can have great wealth in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both"- Louis Brandeis

"Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me - and I welcome their hatred." Franklin D. Roosevelt, on attacks against him from Wall Street and other big business.