Greg Mitchell's Blog, page 5

February 9, 2016

Socialist "Bros": Upton Sinclair and Bernie Sanders

<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-tyu-yBd0j5..." imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="310" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-tyu-yBd0j5..." width="400" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">A famous longtime Socialist, the white-haired maverick led a grassroots movement to unexpectedly challenge the Democratic party establishment in a raucous primary campaign.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His opponent was a well-known pillar of the party with many years on the national stage and as an official in Washington who was the natural frontrunner.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He and others within the party admitted that they rather liked the challenger, and that many of his ideas were good ones, but wildly impractical.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Those policies called for full employment, redistribution of wealth, and expanding the social safety net for the many unemployed or infirmed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Party insiders said the challenger, if somehow elected, could never get any of that past Republican legislators, who outnumbered Democrats. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Far more likely, he would never get that far:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As the the Democratic nominee, he would drag the party down to certain defeat in November, even with a mass movement behind him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If nothing else, the "Socialist" tag would doom him, even with a liberal Democrat presently in the White House. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">We are talking, of course, of Senator Bernie Sanders--but also, famed muckraking author Upton Sinclair.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In Sinclair's case, the campaign was for governor of California.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The amazing grassroots movement was known as EPIC, for End Poverty in California. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And, surprise, Sinclair would win the Democratic primary, in a landslide.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His campaign would become one of the most influential of the century, echoing down to this day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The year was 1934; the president was Franklin D. Roosevelt. The economic crisis FDR faced was far worse than what President Obama confronts today, but some similarities exist. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sinclair was not Bernie Sanders, but his campaign provides many lessons for Sanders supporters and opponents--and media analysts--today.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Of all the left-wing mass movements that year, Upton Sinclair’s End Poverty in California (EPIC) crusade proved most influential, and not just in helping to push the New Deal to the left. The Sinclair threat—after he easily won the Democratic gubernatorial primary—so profoundly alarmed conservatives that it sparked the creation of the modern political campaign in America. Profiling two of the creators of the anti-Sinclair campaign, Carey McWilliams would later call this (in <i>The Nation</i>) "a new era in American politics—government by public relations." It also provoked Hollywood’s first all-out plunge into politics, which, in turn, inspired the leftward tilt in the movie colony that endures to this day. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Back in the autumn of 1934, political analysts, financial columnists and White House aides for once agreed: Sinclair’s victory in the primary marked the high tide of electoral radicalism in the United States. Left-wing novelist Theodore Dreiser wrote a piece for <i>Esquire</i> declaring EPIC "the most impressive political phenomenon that America has yet produced." The <i>New York Times</i> called it "the first serious movement against the profit system in the United States." </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Sinclair lost in November, but the inspiring success of his mass movement basically created the liberal wing of the state’s Democratic Party, which<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>endures to this day. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i> </i></span><br /><span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><i>(My book on the 1934 race</i>, The Campaign of the Century, <i>winner of the Goldsmith Book Prize, has been published in </i></span><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006IYBXL2&q... style="color: blue; font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">new print and e-book editions.</span></i></a><i><span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">)</span></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><br /><span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">* * * </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Nearly three decades after his classic novel <i>The Jungle</i> (1906) exposed dangerous and abusive conditions in the meatpacking industry, Sinclair decided, "You have written enough. What the world needs is a deed." Sinclair, who had moved to California in 1916, had written dozens of influential books while finding time to spark numerous civil liberties and literary controversies, get arrested and become perhaps the best-known American leftist abroad.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">He had twice run for governor of California on the Socialist line, to little avail, but the election of FDR in 1932 encouraged him to give the Democrats a whirl. While he backed the New Deal, he saw that it did not go nearly far enough. Hugh Johnson, who ran Roosevelt’s National Recovery Administration, had allowed big business to subvert its codes, and a national textile strike loomed. Nearly one in four people was on relief in New York, with the numbers only slightly better in many other large cities. Adequate relief payments and some form of social security were promised but still unrealized. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-de9QsPkoNe..." imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="136" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-de9QsPkoNe..." width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">So the country’s best-known member of the Socialist Party switched his affiliation to Democrat and used his pen one more time, writing and self-publishing a sixty-four-page pamphlet, <i>I, Governor of California and How I Ended Poverty</i>. Then he set out to make his fantasy true. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><br /><span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Although Sinclair could draw thousands of votes on name recognition alone, he considered a grassroots movement his greatest hope. Thousands quickly rallied to his cause, organizing End Poverty League clubs across the state. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Note to Obama: a detailed, step-by-step plan—"a way out," as Sinclair put it—and a steely will help. Recall the absurd limits and confusion of the Obama healthcare bill and then consider this promise: "End Poverty in California." It doesn’t obfuscate, qualify or compromise (at least in advance). And it doesn’t include an addendum, "if only we had the money or GOP support." </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Sinclair, in a nutshell, outlined a classic production-for-use plan, where all of the unemployed would be put to work in shuttered factories or on unused farms, with goods traded, providing necessities. No one would go hungry or homeless. The elderly and infirm would get relief or pensions. Co-ops would receive state aid. Another plank in the platform: open up discarded studio lots and help out-of-work movie people make their own films. Naturally, this caused most of the Hollywood studio chiefs to threaten to move their operations to Florida. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Many who sympathized with Sinclair—including his friend McWilliams, the young California writer and future <i>Nation</i> editor—found some devil in the details, but the candidate promised to junk what didn’t or couldn’t work. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">A pen his only weapon, Sinclair led an army of crazed utopians, unemployed laborers, Dust Bowl refugees and all-purpose lefties to take on "the vested interests." He noted, "Our opponents have told you that all of this is socialism and communism. We are not the least worried." <i>I, Governor</i> became the bestselling book in the state. EPIC clubs kept popping up like mushrooms, funded largely by bake sales, rodeos and rallies; and a weekly newspaper, the <i>EPIC News</i>, reached a circulation of nearly  1 million by primary day in August 1934. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Sinclair swept the Democratic primary. Dozens of EPIC candidates also won races for the party’s nod for the State Senate and Assembly, including Augustus Hawkins and Jerry Voorhis, both future Congressmen. "It is a spontaneous movement which has spread all over the state by the unpaid labor of tens of thousands of devoted workers," Sinclair noted. "They were called amateurs but they have put all the professional politicians on the shelf." All that stood between EPIC and the governor’s mansion was a hapless GOP hack named Frank "Old Baldy" Merriam, who had become governor after the death of "Sunny Jim" Rolph. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Where did FDR stand? A few days after winning the primary, Sinclair took a train east to meet with the president at Hyde Park, under the glare of national press coverage. The White House was torn. Sinclair was a true radical and a loose cannon. Roosevelt and his political director, Jim Farley, feared that the president, already accused by the right of being a socialist—led by Father Coughlin, the Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh of his day—could not afford this taint. Those tilting to the left, such as Eleanor Roosevelt and Harry Hopkins, were far more enthusiastic about EPIC. And then there was the rather significant matter of Sinclair being the party’s nominee in a year when controlling a major statehouse was vitally important. FDR believed the greatest challenge for the head of a democracy was not to fend off reactionaries but to reconcile and unite progressives. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">During the Hyde Park meeting FDR suggested that "experiments" within the overall New Deal framework could be valuable. Sinclair was elated, but the president held off any public endorsement. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><br /><span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Meanwhile, EPIC organizing surged in California. The number of local chapters was now more than 800, and circulation of the <i>EPIC News</i> reportedly hit a staggering 2 million. Black precincts that had reliably voted Republican (the legacy of Lincoln) now split down the middle. Even a few Hollywood screenwriters, such as Dorothy Parker, who normally kept their politics under wraps in the right-wing movie colony, spoke out for Sinclair. So did Charlie Chaplin. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">But "the vested interests" organized the most lavish and creative dirty-tricks campaign ever seen—one that was to become a landmark in American politics. There’s far too much to describe in this limited space (it’s the focus of my book), but it involved turning over a major campaign to outside advertising, publicity, media and fundraising consultants for the first time. What was left of the official GOP campaign was chaired by a local district attorney named Earl Warren. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><br /><span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">California’s newspapers, led by William Randolph Hearst and Harry Chandler, covered only Merriam’s activities, while mocking Sinclair day after day with quotes from books and novels taken out of context. (Chandler’s <i>Los Angeles Times </i>referred to Sinclair’s "maggot-like horde" of supporters.) Hollywood moguls, besides threatening the move to Florida, docked most employees a day’s pay, giving the proceeds directly to Merriam’s coffers. Millions of dollars to defeat Sinclair poured in from business interests across the country, all off the books. And then there were the attack ads (i.e., newsreels) shown in movie theaters around the state, created by the saintly film producer Irving Thalberg, causing near-riots in some places. (You can watch excerpts and other vintage video </span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://bit.ly/bDPTF3"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">here</span></a></span><span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">.) </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">FDR, displaying an Obama-like tendency, waited, refusing to make a bold move to help Sinclair ward off the savagely unfair assaults. As a result, Sinclair fell behind in the polls—and then the president was advised to not endorse a probable loser. Farley sent an emissary to California to strike a deal with Merriam: if the GOP governor promised to back the New Deal down the road, the White House would remain silent on Sinclair.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-size: large;">The EPIC fervor continued right up to election day. Activists, looking at their numbers and energy, were certain their candidate would prevail. Sinclair, in fact, would receive almost 900,000 votes, twice the total ever for a Democrat in the state, but would still finish about 200,000 votes behind Merriam. Revealing the true strength of the grassroots movement, however, two dozen EPICs won election to the state legislature, including Hawkins and Culbert Olson. <the a="" after="" an="" any="" attempts="" barack="" becoming="" but="" challenge="" chances="" change.="" class="MsoNormal" concluded="" damaged="" decades="" defeat="" div="" doomed="" even="" existing="" happen="" his="" house="" instrument="" is="" later="" machine.="" maybe="" medium="" might="" nation="" no="" obama="" of="" old-party="" old="" on="" order="" party="" presidency="" radical="" reliance="" s="" say="" shows="" sinclair="" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;" taking="" that="" the="" through="" to="" true="" we="" what="" white="" who="" will=""><span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The legacy of the EPIC campaign? Merriam did embrace much of the New Deal, providing at least some fresh help for suffering Californians. Responding to the Hollywood moguls’ outrages during the campaign, actors and writers turned left and feverishly bolstered their fledgling guilds. </span></the></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">On the national scene, Sinclair’s strong showing encouraged Minnesota Governor Floyd Olson to predict an agrarian revolt that would bring down "the profit system," and five left-wing Congressmen called a conference to explore a third-party bid. Lewis Schwellenbach won a Senate contest in the Northwest on the End Poverty in Washington platform. The La Follettes and their Progressive Party pretty much took over Wisconsin, where a modern maverick, Senator Russ Feingold, faces a tough re-election fight this year. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Emboldened by the results of the midterm elections and Sinclair’s strong showing, Harry Hopkins near the end of 1934 proposed a comprehensive program, dubbed End Poverty in America, which the <i>New York Times</i> said "differs from Mr. Sinclair’s in detail, but not in principle." Along with other popular movements—from the Townsend Plan pension crusaders to Huey Long in Louisiana—EPIC exerted a leftward pressure on the New Deal, strongly influencing FDR’s groundbreaking legislation on Social Security and public works. The "Second New Deal," which also included the Works Progress Administration and National Labor Relations Act, would be more prolabor and antibusiness than the first. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">A lesson for today? Mobilizing to prove grassroots support for a "radical" option usually produces positive results, even if that’s not certain immediately. It wasn’t exactly an EPIC movement, but as Ari Berman showed in his book <i>Herding Donkeys,</i> Howard Dean’s 2004 race for president—and the once-mocked "fifty-state strategy" he carried out as Democratic Party chief two years later—led to Obama’s election in 2008. Berman also pointed out that part of Obama’s problem is that as president he ignored much of his grassroots operation, once in office.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Revealing another typical result, the EPIC campaign split over whether to remain in the election business or align with the co-op movement and other groups outside the party system. When Sinclair returned to writing books, the End Poverty League and the<i> EPIC News</i> slowly declined, revealing the dangers of depending too much on one inspiring figure to lead a mass movement. Of course, we saw this years later with Jesse Jackson and the Rainbow Coalition, not to mention with Ross Perot and his "movement." </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Still, a backlash against the GOP tactics in the ’34 campaign helped push Culbert Olson to election in 1938 as the state’s first Democratic governor in decades—defeating Merriam by 200,000 votes. Olson hired Sinclair’s pal McWilliams to direct the state immigration and housing agency. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><br /><span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Many years after the Sinclair race, McWilliams remarked that he still came across EPIC cafes "in the most remote and inaccessible communities of California" and EPIC slogans "painted on rocks in the desert, carved on trees in the forest and scrawled on the walls of labor camps." While he questioned Sinclair’s ability to govern, he hailed his "conviction that poverty was man-made, that you didn’t need it." </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">This is perhaps the greatest message of the EPIC campaign, but are Democrats listening today in Washington? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And as the Sinclair campaign showed, the Republican reaction to a popular grassroots campaign would be truly frightening. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In a <i>New York Times</i> column, Bob Herbert, with a touch of anger, declared a few years ago, "Election Day is approaching, but neither party cares to focus on the nightmare facing millions of Americans who have been laid low by unemployment, home foreclosures, personal bankruptcies, and jobs that offer only part-time work, lousy pay and absolutely no benefits…. Weirder still is that even Democrats who should know better are buying into this self-defeating austerity posture." Herbert concluded by calling on all of us to "take our cue from the best moments in American history, when the nation rolled up its sleeves and placed the interests of ordinary people at the top of its agenda." </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><br /><span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Surely, the EPIC crusade of 1934 was one of those moments. But the eternal debate—work within or outside the two-party system?—continues, as well it should. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div>

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Published on February 09, 2016 16:06

January 25, 2016

EPA Whistleblower Hits Agency on Flint

Almost forty years ago I met Hugh Kaufman, a youngish engineer at the Environmental Protection Agency in D.C. tasked with investigating toxic leaks at chemical dump sites around the USA, before that was a major national issue. The Love Canal case was just emerging and I was particularly interested because the crime scene was in my hometown of Niagara Falls, N.Y. Kaufman was playing a key role from inside EPA in exposing, for the press and for congressmen, such as Rep. Al Gore, the dangers at Love Canal and hundreds of other sites. I wrote about that, and him, in a major magazine piece and then in my first book, in 1981, Truth and Consequence: Seven Who Would Not Be Silenced.

Hugh continued to raise hell from and at EPA in this realm for years, decades, without losing his job. Somehow he is still there today. He keeps in touch with me on some key cases--amid the friendly back and forth on his Nats vs. my Mets (he has gained new fame as the "Chicken Man" at the Nats' ballpark, but that's another story).

He has been weighing in on the Flint water poisoning crisis for some time, of course, and today he has sent me an email he has written to two Washington Post reporters, praising them for their Flint story from yesterday but trying to point them to certain troubling aspects--his usual manner. Here it is:

Dear Mr. Bernstein and Mr. Dennis,
Kudos for your article in this mornings Washington Post on the Flint Water Contamination Case where you folks compared the Flint MI contamination case to the Love Canal NY contamination case.
I was one of the engineers who helped start the USEPA 45 years ago, and in the mid 1970's, when I was the chief investigator on Hazardous Contamination Cases at EPA, I was the EPA whistleblower on the Love Canal Contamination Case (I'm still at EPA working on Superfund and Emergency Response issues).
The Flint case is much worse than the Love Canal case.

In the Love Canal case EPA did NOT coverup contamination information to protect the financial interests of business "players" (eg. Occidental Petroleum) and politicians.
In the Flint case EPA DID coverup contamination information to protect the financial interests of business "players" (eg. American Cast Iron Pipe Company) and politicians.
Further, 40 years ago, EPA actively looked for and identified other Love Canal type cases, and took definitive action, with the support of Congress, to find and remedy other Love Canals throughout the pendency of that case and beyond.
There were numerous Congressional Hearings at the time which spurred Government at all levels on to do the right thing.
Today, EPA is NOT looking for other Environmental Justice cases like Flint, where minority populations are being poisoned in defiance of Federal laws and regulations, and there are ZERO Congressional Hearings planned.
I would respectfully encourage you folks to continue your excellent reportage on this terrible state of affairs, as the Washington Post did on the Love Canal case, and its ramifications, almost 40 years ago.
The Washington Post is credited with the term "follow the money." I respectfully request that you all consider following the money on the Flint Contamination case, as the Washington Post did on the Love Canal case, back in the 1970's.
Thanks for your consideration, Hugh Kaufman, USEPA

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Published on January 25, 2016 06:15

January 19, 2016

When FDR Shafted Socialist-Democrat Candidate Upton Sinclair

As the Bernie Sanders campaign catches fire (at least in two early states): The following happened 82 years ago, just after muckraking author "Uppie" Sinclair, the former Socialist, swept the Democratic primary for governor of California leading one of great grassroots movements ever, EPIC (End Poverty in California)--and seemed headed for victory in November. His meeting with a very friendly FDR at Hyde Park seemed to clinch the deal. They even chatted about Teddy Roosevelt's response to Upton's The Jungle 30 years back. Then Roosevelt and his top aides screwed him, backing his right-wing dullard GOP opponent.

Eleanor backed Sinclair in epic race--but FDR instructed aides to tell her to remain silent, and she did. Sinclair wrote her a key private letter after meeting with the president, but she was away when it arrived, and the aides opened it and informed the FBI and J. Edgar Hoover, no less.

And the dirtiest, and one of the most influential, campaigns in USA history--it virtually created the modern campaign--emerged to defeat him. Hollywood took its first all-out plunge into politics and the saintly Irving Thalberg created the very attack ads for the screen. See a trailer below for my book on what led to all this:

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Published on January 19, 2016 06:00

January 16, 2016

My Book on Hollywood Politics

My recent e-book When Hollywood Turned Left (Townsend Books), is something borrowed, something new, yet all very entertaining--and revealing. It answers the question: Okay, we all know Hollywood has been pretty damn liberal for a long time, but how did it get that way? This book traces it back to the 1934 race for governor of California when the outrageous actions by the conservative studio bosses--such as docking every employee one day's pay for the GOP candidate--forced left-leaning (but still powerless) actors and screenwriters to organize and fight back, in spades. And the rest is history.

If this sounds fairly familiar--at least to my fans and/or longtime readers--it's because most of the book is taken from my 1992 "classic" The Campaign of the Century , although with a new Introduction and fresh material elsewhere. Ever since that earlier 620-page book (winner of the Goldsmith Book Prize and much other acclaim) appeared, many would-be readers have requested that I create a smaller, although still very substantial, volume focusing on the wild and wooly Hollywood angle. So, after a couple decades of hearing this, I've finally done it, thanks to the brave new world of e-publishing, and now with clickable links!

So now there's no excuse (such as "I won't read any doorstop books") to not enjoy this story and it's wonderful cast of characters, including Will Rogers, Charlie Chaplin, Louis B. Mayer, Katharine Hepburn, Billy Wilder, W.R. Hearst, Jimmy Cagney, and on and on. As some know, my major discovery was the trio of faked newsreels produced by the saintly Irving Thalberg to destroy Sinclair--the first full use of the screen to destroy a candidate, and precursor of TV "attack ads" today. Here's my video that covers some of that. But even that is just small part of this book ($3.79 for limited time only, for all Kindles, iPads etc.). Hooray for Hollywood! Of the full Campaign of the Century in print or ebook.

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Published on January 16, 2016 17:30

January 12, 2016

MoveOn Endorses Sanders Over Clinton

Just announced in an email to members, and it was overwhelming:

It's official: MoveOn members have voted to endorse Bernie Sanders for president. Now, with your help, we will mobilize and help him win.After more than 340,000 ballots were cast in a four-day membership vote, Bernie Sanders has earned our endorsement with an overwhelming 79% of votes cast, far more than the 67% threshold required for an endorsement. That's the best-ever performance of any presidential candidate in MoveOn's 17-year history.

This vote was not only decisive, but participation was broad based, with more ballots cast than any other endorsement vote in MoveOn's history.
It’s no surprise that Bernie Sanders has earned overwhelming support from MoveOn members. The issues his campaign is raising—tackling economic inequality, ending corporate influence over our politics, breaking up too-big-to-fail banks, expanding Social Security, fighting climate change, avoiding senseless wars, and more—are the same issues that MoveOn members have been fighting for for years.

Now, with just 20 days until voting begins in the 2016 presidential primary, we're adding our millions of collective voices in support of this historic campaign.

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Published on January 12, 2016 09:37

January 11, 2016

Bowie Up Against the Wall

Bowie song inspired something he witnessed at the Berlin Wall--two separated lovers....and my upcoming book indeed looks at "heroes... just for one day." Building tunnels under the Wall to reunite, in many cases, lovers.

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Published on January 11, 2016 19:22

'Never Wave Bye-bye"

I was never a big fan of David Bowie, going back to 1971 when edited one of the first major profiles of him for Crawdaddy. I was a little old for (and wholly uninterested) in Ziggy and "glam-rock" and then electronica, white R & B, and so on. Just never connected but he was purportedly a nice guy and obviously broadly influential. Always loved and still love 'Modern Love," however, as well as his more recent "Wake Up" with Arcade Fire. R.I.P.

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Published on January 11, 2016 10:15

'The Nation' Adopts Metered Pay Wall

Katrina Vanden Heuvel, editor and publisher of The Nation, announced today that the 150-year magazine (I was a daily blogger there from 2010-2014) has now adopted a "metered pay wall" for its previously "free" Web site. Here is an excerpt from the email:

In the past, the only way to read everything The Nation publishes (including our 150-year digital archive) was to subscribe. Unlike most magazines that rely on advertising to pay their bills, The Nation has always depended on the support of our readers and the generosity of our donors. But beginning today, January 11, 2016, we’re switching to a model based on metered access to our online content. We think this new system will better suit casual readers and give us the ability to share our most important work in a timely manner at critical news moments (we’re working to build a movement here, after all). Here’s how it works:

Everyone will be able to read 6 articles for free over a 30-day period.After the first 3 articles, you’ll be asked to sign up for one of our newsletters so that we can stay in touch with you about our journalism.After 6 free reads in 30 days, you’ll be asked to subscribe at our special, introductory rate of $9.50 for 6 months of unlimited digital access. (That’s less than 37 cents per week!)All print and digital subscribers can log in to enjoy unlimited access. For more details on the meter or on how to create or manage your subscription, go to our handy FAQ.Many of you already subscribe (thanks!). Some of you have let your subscriptions lapse (now’s a great time to renew!). And for others of you, this will be the first time you’ve been asked to pay for access to our articles. Because we only do journalism that matters, we believe our regular readers should be proud to subscribe—and to help keep The Nation accessible to new readers. Over the next few months, we’ll be keeping a close eye on how this is all working, as well as answering customer queries.

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Published on January 11, 2016 07:10

December 31, 2015

63 Years On: The Death of Hank Williams

One of the great tragedies of modern music, the sudden death of Hank Williams at the age of 29--in the back seat of a Caddy, the cause still disputed (see recent Steve Earle novel)--happened 63 years ago today. Well, as Hank sang, he did not get out of this world alive. Here are few links and videos marking the day.

Radio announcement of his death. A small part of his funeral service, including Roy Acuff and Bill Monroe and others singing Hank's "I Saw the Light." A fuller part of the service. Trailer for recent movie The Last Ride starring Henry Thomas of E.T. fame and great song about that ride from Emmylou Harris. Hank (and Emmylou) doing one of his greatest, "Alone and Forsaken." Some home movies of Hank as he sings "Long, Gone Lonesome Blues." Rare TV clip as Hank does "Hey Good Lookin.'" Alan Jackson's hit tribute, "Midnight in Montgomery." Waylon's classic, "Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way?"

Below, June Carter introduces sister Anita singing duet with Hank on his "I Can't Help It (If I'm Still in Love With You)."

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Published on December 31, 2015 12:00

The Band, 44 Years On

One of the epic live gigs ever opened tonight at NYC's Academy of Music in 1971, featuring The Band (plus Allen Toussaint leading the horn section). And I was there one night. A box set appeared a few years ago. A highlight:

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Published on December 31, 2015 05:30

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