Bernie Sanders and Reform: A Man and a Movement Part Ways in Philadelphia

Events in Philadelphia during the Democratic National Convention, which got underway on Monday, have exposed a defect in the way that the media has portrayed close to half of the people who voted in the Democratic presidential primaries.

The idea that the millions of Democrats who voted for Bernie Sanders were merely unthinking followers of a man was never very convincing.  But the news media kept characterizing them as "Bernie Sanders supporters," and nothing more.

On Monday in Philadelphia, that claim and that idea never looked more false.  Conspicuous inside the Convention were delegates for Sanders who were clearly unwilling to fall in line behind Clinton.  Many of them held signs that demonstrated their continuing support for Sanders and opposition to Clinton. 

Outside the Convention, in spite of sweltering heat and obstacles erected by the city reminiscent of the miniature police state it created for the Pope's recent visit, thousands also protested against the nomination of Clinton.  The protesters regard her devotion to a rigged political system and an unfair economy as akin to that of big-business Republicans.

Lest anyone should mistake Sanders' primary voters for blind followers of a leader, a crowd of them booed Sanders himself when he urged them to set aside their principles to get into the gutter with Clinton.

Sanders won as many votes as he did because he spoke for ideas that the mainstream of both major parties had long shunted aside.  Sanders' platform rejected a politics that forced voters to choose between two groups of self-interested rich people who could care less whether ordinary people live or die.  

Instead, Sanders called for restoring influence over the political process to ordinary Americans.  He also demanded that government intervention in the economy to make the outcomes it produced more fair for ordinary people.  

Sanders' demands for economic and political fairness reminded me of a time before the Clintons became dominant figures in the Democratic Party.  Back then, before the party's leadership turned its mainstream into nothing more than a second party of big business, it was possible for politicians like Sanders to occupy leading positions in the party.  

Sanders' campaign sounded a very different note from the trickle-down policies catering only to big business and the richest Americans that both the Republican and the Democratic Parties have pursued for a generation and more.  For people who demanded a fair political process and a fair economy, he was a hero.  For all the Clinton campaign's talk of making history, Sanders broke through a glass ceiling constructed by the Clintons' big-business wing of the party that had shut genuine opponents of corruption and privilege out of the Democratic Party's leadership.

Sanders led the many people animated by these ideas as far as a partisan politician could.  But his partisanship and the principles he espoused came into conflict on Monday. It's no surprise that many of his supporters were disappointed, and resolved not to do what he asked of them.  

Indeed, for people who sacrificed time and money and made strenuous efforts on Sanders' behalf, his apparent sellout to Clinton in exchange for easily forgotten platform promises was in some ways deeply offensive.  With the primary process already marred by a system of "superdelegates" designed to make a Clinton victory seem inevitable from the start, documents recently leaked on Wikileaks revealed that Clinton's allies in the Democratic National Committee also effectively worked to rig the primaries in Clinton's favor, and practiced just the kind of politics condemned by Sanders..

Those who worked hard for Sanders thus saw their work thwarted illegitimately by their own party's leaders.  Now, Sanders has asked them to vote for a candidate whom they had long regarded as a supporter of a rigged economy and politics after she essentially cheated to defeat them.

Donald Trump won't see Sanders' primary voters will back him in droves.  But neither will Clinton.  Until someone else is willing to stand up for the principles Sanders stood for during his campaign, they'll be there waiting like a fallen standard for someone else to pick up and carry forward.  Sanders' campaign showed that when that new person comes along, he or she will have a large following.

Clinton and her friends can be expected do everything possible to prevent the rise of anyone who might take Sanders' place at the national level.  Both Hillary and Bill Clinton built their political careers in important part on the votes of people who felt that they had nowhere to turn after the Clintons marginalized Democratic leaders who stood for ordinary people against big business.

Still, demand for the platform Sanders advocated will persist, and demand has its way of encouraging supply.  In time, someone will surely try again to deliver the goods.

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At the local level, it might be too difficult or time consuming for politicians of Clinton's ilk to stop every reformer.  What might that mean for Philadelphia?

People here are jaded, and many don't think the existing bosses can be overthrown even by democratic vote.  Ballot access requirements, the silent treatment from local news media, and property damage, intimidation, and physical violence are all likely to stand in the way of any serious effort to clean house at the top.  

The city has also no credible opposition party.  The Republicans here are tiny, distrusted, and as rotten as the Democrats.  The most likely place for any movement along the lines suggested by Sanders to emerge is within the Democratic Party among its many disaffected members, or alongside it as a local third party.

Despite the obstacles to change, I'll go out on a limb and say that Sanders-style politics might someday pose a threat to the current group of political bosses.  

It's no coincidence that none of them came out for Sanders, even though Democrats across the country did so.  The very problems he drew attention to-- a rigged political system and an economy designed to favor a small number of very well-off people-- are present in microcosm in Philadelphia.  Our existing political leaders are part of the problem.  Many people think so.

What's been lacking are people committed to making the political system fairer, and to making the city's economic and regulatory measures and administrative and hiring practices something other than a smorgasbord of giveaways to well-placed people.  Philadelphia still awaits its own group of reformers to make these changes happen.  If they appear, they should have no trouble making their case.

What Will the Cash-Strapped City of Philadelphia Pay for the Democratic Convention?

When poor people subsidize rich people, something is wrong.  Alas, with Philadelphia about to host the Democratic Party's National Convention, that's what is about to happen.

Mayor James Kenney's administration has pursued a policy of secrecy to keep the public from learning about the finances of the Democratic National Convention.  Anna Adams-Sarthou, the spokesperson for the Convention's local host committee, and Paul Deegan, an official at the city's industrial development authority PIDC-PAID, appear to have been handed the task of turning away requests for Convention-related financial information until the law unmistakably requires the city to disclose it by court order.  The Democratic National Committee (DNC) isn't saying anything either.

When it was announced that the Convention was coming to Philadelphia, big promises were made that millions of dollars would be raised from private sources to pay for the event's costs.  Private donors, former Mayor Michael Nutter and convention organizers promised, would bear the burden.  The supposedly brilliant fundraising talents of Ed Rendell and others associated with the Convention's local host committee were to be put to good use.  Rendell said then, in February 2015, that he felt "confident" they could raise the $84 million they estimated was needed, along with "a little cushion."

But news reporters from mainstream local sources including the Inquirer, the Daily News, and local television and radio stations did not bother to ask what should have been the most important question:  what happens if the fundraisers claim not to have gathered enough cash?

The answer, as it turns out, was pretty simple:  the city pays, and its taxpayers lose.  That would have been easy to report, but it might have led city residents to question the merits of holding the Convention in Philadelphia.  So local media companies, which took a friendly approach to former Mayor Nutter's administration and have been fanatically devoted to Kenney's, just didn't bother to mention that taxpayers would be liable if fundraisers dumped convention costs on the city and focus on fundraising for Hillary Clinton.  City taxpayers' liability for unpaid convention expenses went unmentioned at a time when city residents might have demanded action to change it.

The city is clearly undertaking extraordinary expenses for Convention purposes, including costs associated with event security, and the $1.2 million cost of a special insurance policy to cover the cost if the police beat up some of the many expected protesters.  Like information about what was raised, information about what's been spent is secret, too, so the Kenney administration may even be hiding cost overruns.

The DNC, meanwhile, has been collecting large sums of money from people who will attend the Convention and paid to have special access to politicians.  Political action committees, lobbyists, and individuals were asked to contribute hundreds of thousands of dollars, or raise as much as one and a quarter million dollars, for big-donor "packages" that let them enter exclusive events at the Convention and hobnob with politicians whom they hope will do their bidding.  While the DNC's goal is to raise money for the fall campaign, it would have to divert only a small fraction of what it would otherwise hand to Clinton's campaign to the city to save local taxpayers from bearing any burden.

But why should it?  Former Mayor Michael Nutter allowed the Host Committee to make a deal that put city taxpayers on the hook for unraised money, and Kenney refuses to call that arrangement into question.  The result, it appears, is that city taxpayers will soon be handed a bill for whatever Rendell and his friends didn't bother to raise.  

Philly, mind you, is the same city that is by some measures the poorest in the country.  It's the same city that has lately resorted to gimmick taxes on cigarettes and soda to supplement a host of others not commonly charged beyond city borders, and the same city that goes to Harrisburg every year to plead for more state money.  It's the same city that recently forced its main public-sector union, District Council 33, to accept a deal that will leave many future workers without an adequate retirement pension.  And it's the same city as to which City Council will hold hearings (after the Convention, of course) on the city's "true financial health."  The members of DC 33 don't know it yet, but they may never receive pay increases they're being promised in exchange for selling out new hires who won't get meaningful retirement pensions.  The city may simply go bankrupt like Detroit, and DC 33 workers will be denied the benefit of their union leaders' unwise bargain.

One item on the bill city taxpayers will receive will be a contract awarded to a firm co-founded by Jesse Rendell, Ed's son.  The Host Committee paid Jesse's firm to make a cell phone app to help visitors find donkey statues that have been placed around the city.  The cost of Jesse Rendell's firm's very important contract to the city is still a secret.  Although it seems to me scandalous that Jesse even got the contract, both local and national media seem uninterested in pursuing the matter.    

When the city pays Convention contract awardees, however, and forces its taxpayers to bear the burden, Jesse's app won't be needed at all, because it will be no challenge for city residents find the jackasses.  Under the terms of the sweetheart agreement between the city and the DNC, city taxpayers will just have to look in the mirror.

What Rich People Paid for Political Access at the Democratic National Convention

What do rich people and companies pay for access to politicians?  Yesterday's leak of documents from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) posted on WikiLeaks contains one showing what it cost rich people for a voice at the Democratic National Convention, which will be held in Philadelphia this coming week.

The Convention tickets described in the leaked document may well be the most expensive tickets to any event ever held in Philadelphia.  Four possible "packages" named after Philadelphia-area sites were available to contributors.  The cost of the packages ranged from $66,800 for the "Main Line" up to $467,600 for the "Rittenhouse Square."  As an alternative, you could get the same range of packages by raising between $250,000 and $1,250,000.

If you paid for one of the packages, you're entitled to special access at the convention.  For instance, the "Main Line" package bought this:

• Preferred booking for one hotel room within the National Finance Committee room block • 2 credentials to Democratic National Convention proceedings • Tickets to stadium/arena VIP lounges on select night(s) • 2 tickets for an exclusive preview and photo opportunity at the 2016 Convention podium • 4 VIP tickets to the official Convention Welcome Party • Invitations to select National Finance Committee events • 2 reserved place for an exclusive roundtable and campaign briefing with high-level Democratic officials • Participation in business roundtables and industry panels throughout the Convention

The more expensive packages, which included the "Fairmount" (give $133,600, or raise $500,000) and the "Society Hill: (give $267,200, or raise $750,000) conferred the right to more goodies.  The most expensive, the "Rittenhouse Square," offered these:

• Priority booking in a premiere hotel within the National Finance Committee room block • VIP credentials for all Democratic National Convention proceedings • Nightly access to stadium/arena VIP lounges • 6 tickets for an exclusive preview and photo opportunity at the 2016 Convention podium • 20 VIP tickets to the official Convention Welcome Party • VIP invitations to all exclusive National Finance Committee events • 6 tickets to an exclusive VIP party • 6 reserved places for an exclusive roundtable and campaign briefing with high-level Democratic officials • Participation in business roundtables and industry panels throughout the Convention

In WikiLeaks, the document appears as an attachment to a short email between two DNC staffers sent in May 2015 under the subject line "Re:  wendy abrams." Draft versions of it also appear among the leaked documents, but this version is apparently final.  You can view it by going to the link above, clicking the "Attachments" link, and choosing the first attachment.  

By the looks of the document, its file name, and the email to which it was attached, it received limited distribution to rich people thought to be potential contributors.  One might infer from the email and attachment that someone named Wendy Abrams had asked, or was being asked, to buy one of the packages.  It so happens that there's a big Democratic contributor named Wendy Abrams.

In October 2015, the political news website The Hill wrote about a gathering of DNC leaders and lobbyists in Washington to raise money to pay for the Convention.  The Hill's article by Megan R. Wilson included links to two documents similar to the leaked one showing packages available for lobbyists and political action committees.   But they had to pay up by December 31, 2015, to get their special access.  The rich individuals who received the recently leaked document had five more months to get the cash flowing.  If you compare the documents, you can also see that the packages on offer to the rich individuals suggested larger contributions.

If you were like me and couldn't raise $250,000 or give $66,800 to the DNC by June 1, 2016, as the cheapest package required, it appears that you won't be rubbing elbows with anyone important at the Convention.  If you know someone who's going, politely ask them how much they paid for their ticket.  If it wasn't anything like these amounts, you may have to inform them, regrettably, that they got the cheap seats.

Incidentally, Philadelphia's Democratic leaders are attending the Convention.  Mayor Jim Kenney, Governor Tom Wolf, Senator Bob Casey, Representative Bob Brady and Representative Brendan Boyle are all speaking.  If you get the rare opportunity to ask your elected officials questions to which they must respond publicly, feel free to inquire about the "package" holders they met at the Convention.  Who were they, and what did they want?  

If they won't tell you, it's not because they're not allowed.  There's nothing that legally requires them to keep their discussions with donors at the Convention confidential.  If they won't tell you, it's because you didn't pay enough to join in the discussion.

The Democrats may be less effective at preventing leaks than the Republicans, but the Republicans must have charged similar sums to rich people who wanted special opportunities to have their voices heard.  If that is so, it's one more reason to think that politicians in both parties are totally beholden to rich people.  Anyone who can't pay enormous sums has no real voice in either party, and can't expect anything from either party's politicians.

Keep Northeast Philly Voters at a Safe Distance: Boyle, Sabatina, White, and Telephone Town Halls

People in Northeast Philadelphia often get phone calls from elected officials inviting them to so-called "telephone town hall meetings."  Congressman Brendan Boyle held the most recent one yesterday.  State Senator John Sabatina and State Representative Martina White have held them, too.  During an expensive campaign this spring against Sabatina, Kevin Boyle, who is Brendan's brother and also a State Representative, even invited people from outside his own district to his telephone town hall meeting.

These fake town halls are no substitute for face-to-face meetings with assembled audiences of voters at which officials field questions and explain and defend their policies.  At an in-person, public meeting, it quickly becomes clear whether a politician's handlers are trying to filter out tough questions, and whether they've tried to stack the meeting with stooges and shills who will sing their praises and throw them softball questions.  No wonder Boyle, Sabatina, and White don't hold them.

On the phone, things are different.  It's impossible to know for sure who is asking a question, and hard to identify connections between the politicians and the participants.  It's more likely that all or part of a telephone call can be staged, worked out in advance to make the politician look good, or to exclude hard questions.  Important physical cues that people always examine in order to tell if another person is lying or equivocating are impossible to see over the phone.

In addition, when politicians elsewhere hold real town hall-style meetings, they take place on evenings or weekends, at times when ordinary people can actually attend them.  But the fake telephone meetings are often scheduled when the only working people likely to be on the line are those who work for the politician.  For instance, Brendan Boyle's recent meeting was held at 10:00 AM on Thursday-- not a very convenient time for workers, unless they happened to be on Boyle's payroll.

Elected officials who rely on telephone meetings to interact with their constituents behave in a cowardly fashion.  They know that their districts are full of people with tough questions for them, people who have good reason to think their representatives at every level of government don't care about them, but only do the bidding of donors and bribe payers.  For the politicians, the point of telephone meetings is to pretend to satisfy widely held expectations that they be willing to explain themselves, while keeping serious questions from ever being asked.  

The DNC, the Philadelphia Police, and Hillary Clinton's Racist Buddies

The head of the union representing Philadelphia police officers, John McNesby, posted a message yesterday about an interesting omission from the program of the Democratic National Convention that his rank and file will be called upon to protect next week.  McNesby noted that presumptive nominee Hillary Clinton and party leaders were "excluding the widows... and other family members of Police Officers killed in the line of duty who were victims of explicit, and not implied racism."

The Fraternal Order of Police's Lodge 5 leadership is evidently annoyed at the fact that family members of fallen police won't appear at the DNC even as the family members of seven black people killed around the country over the last few years have been tapped as DNC speakers.  

The speakers' relatives died in circumstances that seem unjust, in some cases at the hands of police.  Sadly, surviving members of their families chose to respond by creating a group, Black Lives Matter, that advertises racism in its name and on its website.  The group appears to condemn any encounter a black person has with the law that doesn't end well for them as "state violence" and the work of anti-black racists.  That a large proportion of the police force in big cities like Philly is black, that many of the allegedly racist encounters blacks have with police involve black police, and that several of the police who gave their lives in recent violence are black are all facts that seem lost on the group.

Black Lives Matter's founders have been asked to speak as a group at the DNC.  McNesby drew attention to DNC organizers' seeming endorsement of Black Lives Matter.  It gets a national platform while police survivors likely to present a different view will be kept silent.

Clinton's campaign responded to McNesby's statement by noting that two people it considered spokesmen for police would speak at the DNC, and a general statement about how much she claims to like police.  But it's not clear that either police speaker (one of whom is former Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey) will speak to the issues raised by recent violence against police, at least some of which seems to be racially motivated.  Nor will their words be as poignant as the words of survivors of slain officers, especially when other DNC speakers who are survivors of individuals killed by the police are likely to portray police generally in a very negative light.

One might accuse McNesby of being publicity hound, and his characterization of Black Lives Matter as a "terrorist group" makes them sound more significant than racist cranks.  They don't deserve that.  But he is right to call attention to Clinton's strange decision to showcase a racist group while excluding survivors of police who died under circumstances no less unjust than those of the racists' relatives.

Why would Clinton do this?  Here's my take.  Clinton owes her nomination to the votes of black people in Southern states that no Democrat will be able to carry in November.  She thinks that black votes will also be essential to her in November, so she is taking steps to focus her party's attention on issues affecting black people. In doing so, she has overreached and placed her stamp of approval on a group that advocates racism as long as non-black people are the targets.

Looking back at the Democratic primaries, Clinton scored her biggest wins over Bernie Sanders in Deep South states where black people form by far the most important Democratic-voting group, and won across the wider South, where blacks' numbers make them more influential in the party than elsewhere in the country.  Almost all of these states have mostly Republican electorates that send Republicans to Washington.

Throughout the rest of the country, including states where Democrats are dominant or competitive, Sanders ran strong and often defeated Clinton.  She needed wins in Southern states that will be unwinnable in the fall to secure the nomination.  Clinton owes black people much for  big victories in the South that offset her weakness elsewhere.

Attempting to pay back that debt by pandering to an unrepresentative, outspokenly racist black group at the DNC could cost Clinton in November in her race against Donald Trump. McNesby won't be the only person to call Clinton out for racist demagoguery. 

Indeed, within Clinton's own party, most members are of a kind Black Lives Matter purists would regard as racially inferior. They aren't black.  And members of this genetically compromised majority of Democrats were much more likely to vote against Clinton in the primaries than were black Democrats.  If too many of them are turned off by Clinton's attempt to turn out the hate vote among black people, she will lose close races in states outside the South, Pennsylvania included.  

Wasted Money in Far Northeast Philly's 5th Senate District Primary

Democrats in Northeast Philly, what are your votes worth?  A lot, to some people.

The primary election in the 5th State Senate District held on April 26, 2016, in which the incumbent John Sabatina, Jr. defeated the challenger, State Representative Kevin Boyle, cost more than $1,516,175.12. According to campaign-finance filings searchable on the Pennsylvania Department of State's webpage, that's how much these two candidates and the outside groups supporting them spent between March 8 and May 16, when the bulk of the bills generated by the primary campaign likely came due.  Since 34,209 total votes were cast, a minimum of roughly $44.32 was spent for each vote.

I say "more than" and "a minimum" because these numbers don't include any money spent on the election by or on behalf of either candidate prior to March 8, 2016,  Due to the way Pennsylvania's campaign finance reporting requirements are written, pre-March 8 spending won't have to be reported until candidates and the outside organizations and PACs that make independent expenditures on their behalf complete their annual filings months from now.  Also, some outside groups might not have reported their spending on either candidate's behalf yet.

Even $1.5 million, though, is a lot of money, both in absolute terms and relative to what is commonly spent in similar races.  And the spending isn't over.  Sabatina will continue to spend money to defeat a Republican opponent, Ross Feinberg, in November.  Boyle ran for his State House seat even as he challenged Sabatina for the Senate.  That act of cowardice may have cost Boyle the close Senate election by losing him the votes of people who don't like cowards.  But it also means that Boyle, too, will continue to spend money on his House race against a Republican in the fall.

It's a disgrace that more-- possibly a lot more-- than $1.5 million had to be wasted to decide between two totally uninspiring and unappealing political insiders.  Households in the district received lots of expensive cardboard mailers and leaflets from both candidates, along with a bunch of annoying robocalls,  This rush of advertising was supposed to convince people that Boyle and Sabatina are hardworking (a favorite buzzword of both candidates) and very much like the people they're supposed to serve.

In fact, both Sabatina and Boyle owe their careers to family connections.  Both are followers in the state legislature rather than leaders.  Neither has been the moving force behind any broadly significant adopted legislation.  Both claim to pride themselves on the constituent services they provide at their local offices.  In reality, they're great places to stop for free state maps, but if you aren't a campaign contributor, don't expect much help with other problems.  Literally every politician in the state does the same thing; there's nothing special or particularly good about either Boyle's or Sabatina's offices.  Their offices' main purpose is to let them hand jobs to their favorite toadies.  For all their backbreaking hard work, both Boyle and Sabatina look like they need to hit the gym.  At the end of the day, a corporatist acceptable to rich donors was going to win no matter which one came out on top.  Why was it necessary to throw so much money down a rat hole?

The reason has nothing to do with any difference of principle between the candidates.  It was hard to tell what issues, if any, separated Sabatina and Boyle.  Rather, upwards of $1.5 million had to be wasted because of a power struggle between two cliques of Far Northeast Philly Democrats.  One is led by Congressman Brendan Boyle and his brother Kevin.  The other is led by Sabatina, his father John, Sr., who is a ward leader, and Lieutenant Governor Mike Stack, III.

Make no mistake:  neither of these factions in any sense consists of reformers.  Both are entrenched groups that depend upon keeping others off the ballot rather than upon their own appeal to voters. If voters were permitted other alternatives, there's a good chance both of these worn-out factions would be defeated.  The differences between them boil down to a contest between two smug, self-centered groups who feel entitled to run things.  Both groups consist of pay-to-play men who sell access and votes to campaign contributors. 

Each faction has its toadies.  If you live in the Northeast, you might know one of them.  If you do, but you're unsure who pats them on the head and pays them beer money for standing at the polls on Election Day, ask their opinion of the Boyles, Stacks, and Sabatinas.  They're likely to tell you how good one clique is, and how bad the other is.  Hearing that ought to tell you something about these toadies.  They can be bought for beer money.

Alas, the Boyle faction may not have had enough toadies to help sell out their neighbors in the recent primary election.  Kevin Boyle's campaign reportedly had a talent agency issue a casting call for actors to stand at the polls and pretend to support him.  Sabatina, by contrast, was helped out by some rich friends in Washington, where a PAC called the Turnout Project is based.  They spent more than $180,000 on his behalf, making them the biggest single contributor in the primary.

The other principals in this wasteful dispute don't look any better.  Brendan Boyle managed to get out of his seat in the state legislature and into Congress shortly after voting for the huge state gas tax increase that explains why gas prices in Pennsylvania seem much higher than in other nearby states.  Now that Boyle is in Congress, he has sat idly while a Federal program, the Housing Choice Voucher Program (Section 8), gradually turns neighborhoods in his district into grim, poorly maintained, absentee-owned, renter-occupied areas with sinking property values.  Boyle could propose laws to reduce or divert the impact of this program, but he might well believe that the program benefits him electorally by changing the demographics of his district.  As for Stack, he seems to have bailed on Northeast Philly, leaving his family's perennial ward leader post last year.  One wonders whether his uneventful tenure in the State Senate in what is now Sabatina's seat had more to do with learning about potentially lucrative property investments like the ones down on Beach Street in Fishtown than with any higher motives.

None of this makes either the Boyle or the Sabatina-Stack faction different from, or worse than, other Philadelphia politicians.  Nor is there any reason to think that the Republicans would do a better job. But it's pretty discouraging to see so much money spent on a race in which voters have no real choice.  The Northeast badly needs new leaders to emerge both within the Democratic Party and beyond it who can provide an alternative to these two failing groups.

Until that happens, I wish both factions would stop wasting money at election time. Instead, they should put all of the money they raise together, and mail a check to every voter who bothers to waste their time showing up to vote for either group's lackluster candidates in an amount no less than $44.32.  Everyone might as well get some beer money from these two rotten groups.