Jesse A. Myerson:

It was difficult enough eight years ago when Hillary Clinton only had to defend her vote for the Iraq War. This time around, the insurgent candidate she faces, in important ways outpacing even the last guy, talks about “revolution” and “the working class” in the same sentence, and thus puts her in the unenviable position of having to defend capitalism itself.

Not to worry: Clintonian triangulation is nothing if not versatile. Reminding the audience that “we are not Denmark,” Clinton deployed the frame lately popularized by her husband’s one-time labor secretary, Robert Reich, that it is imperative to “save capitalism from itself.”

Sure she wants to “rein in the excess of capitalism so that it doesn’t run amok and doesn’t cause the kind of inequalities we’re seeing in our economic system.” But the baby mustn’t go out with the bathwater: “We would be making a grave mistake to turn out backs on what built the greatest middle class in history,” she said, praying in aid “all the small businesses that were started because we have the opportunity and the freedom in our country for people to do that.” The characteristically Clintonian drive to pander to everyone at once was so strong as to enable her to gracefully drop the implication that there are no small Danish businesses and move right along.

She tipped her hand, though: pressed repeatedly to agree or disagree with Sen. Sanders’s preference for expanding Social Security, Clinton insisted that she’d rather “enhance the benefits for the poorest recipients of Social Security.” Similarly, as to whether she agrees with Sanders’s health care approach, extending Medicare to everyone, Clinton declined to answer (she doesn’t, though), insisting vaguely that “we agree on the goals, we just disagree on the means.”

Here was the vintage neoliberal approach with which the Clintons are justly associated, unchanged by the financial crises and social movements that have shifted the political terrain since its heyday in the 1990s. The means Sanders favors, the ones that work in Denmark and elsewhere, are universal programs aimed at providing the working class with relief from our dependence on capitalist firms for deriving the means of our own subsistence: public pensions so we aren’t at the mercy of a perfidious “savings industry” and public health care, so we go not merely by the grace of a sector Clinton cited as one of her most prized enemies, but which has contributed more than $11 million to her over her career.
(With enemies like this . . .)

Clinton, instead, clings to the idea that small, politically vulnerable, means-tested programs are preferable to large, universal ones, and that the mediation of a marketplace of profit-obsessed firms is just what America’s sick need to help them heal. The question of means is crucial, and we should take great heart that the grassroots foment — the movement for black lives, the climate movement, Occupy Wall Street, the low-wage worker movement — whose salience was in constant evidence throughout the debate, are wide open to unconventional means.

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/10/hillary-clinton-bernie-sanders-democratic-primary-debate/

JetBlue Opens Urban Farm at JFK Airport to Feed Passengers and Local Food Banks
EcoWatch
Lorraine Chow | October 8, 2015

JetBlue’s Terminal 5 (T5) at New York’s John F. Kennedy is now home to a 24,000 square-foot farm that will provide a variety of fresh produce for the terminal’s restaurants and to local food banks.



According to a report from the Associated Press, “the airline expects to grow 1,000 potato plants, yielding more than 1,000 pounds of spuds every four to six months, along with an additional 1,100 plants such as mint, arugula, beets, garlic, onions and spinach.”

Unlike a traditional crop field, the produce at T5 grow in plastic milk crates inside a structure that’s strong enough to withstand 160 mph hurricane-force winds, a requirement of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the AP reported.

........"We know people like green space. It's what they have at home. Why not put that at an airport if that's what they love and want?" says Sophia Leonora Mendelsohn, the New York-based airline's head of sustainability. "Your flying experience starts on the ground."

Building a farm at an airport is not simple: It took JetBlue three years to get approval.

Airports are concerned about anything that would attract wildlife, especially birds. That means no growing tomatoes, corn, berries, seeds or sunflowers in its new garden. (The airline originally wanted to grow wheat and use it to make its own JetBlue JFK beer.)

So instead, JetBlue is focusing on potatoes, chives, basil, carrots and other plants deemed safe.

...The project is in partnership with GrowNYC, a non-profit environmental group that focuses on improving New York City block by block. Students will be brought in from local schools to learn about gardening.

Some of the herbs and produce will be used by restaurants in JetBlue's terminal, others will be donated to local food banks....

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/8084f70a7c31486090d0321fcf111259/jetblue-plants-seed-farm-tray-table-concept

Elizabeth Warren torches Big Oil in a signature Elizabeth Warren moment: “We weren’t sent here to work for them”
SALON
10/7/2015

Republicans want to lift the ban on crude oil exports -- but Warren demands to hear from the experts first

by
Sophia Tesfaye

Big Oil would like to export unlimited amounts of crude oil outside of the U.S. to increase their profits, but there is a longstanding ban on crude oil exports standing in the way. What’s a Big Oil executive to do? Spend millions to lobby Congress to change the rules, of course.

...Snip..........

The oil industry has financed organizations whose scholars have generated reports praising the proposal. It has placed op-eds in Capitol Hill newspapers and paid for television spots in key markets..........Industry executives have even pressed foreign governments to communicate their support through “diplomatic channels.” And they have enlisted help from lawmakers from major oil-producing states...........Think tanks have been a critical part of the repeal effort, with prominent centers like the Brookings Institution and the American Enterprise Institute issuing reports or sending scholars to Capitol Hill endorsing the move. These same organizations have taken large donations — in some instances exceeding $1 million a year, as was the case for Brookings — in combined contributions from industry donors.........



While the offensive will likely work in the Republican-led House, which is set to vote on repeal this Friday, the White House has already intimated it has no interest in reversing the ban, citing environmental concerns associated with increased production, and at least one Senate Democrat is fed up with the so-called “experts” Big Oil has trouted out before Congress to downplay the effects of climate change.

“We’ve held a hearing on the export ban in July,” Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren said during a hearing of the Senate Banking Committee last week. “But the only witness — the only witness testifying on the climate effects of this bill was a conservative economist who thinks, quote, ‘No one really knows’ the extent to which humans are causing climate change,” she added incredulously.

“The most obvious effect of lifting the crude oil export ban would be to produce enormous profits for a number of big oil companies,” Warren continued. “And that is a reason by itself to be skeptical of study after study and expert after expert that have been funded by big oil to try to sell this deal.”.........

http://www.salon.com/2015/10/07/elizabeth_warren_torches_big_oil_in_a_signature_elizabeth_warren_moment_we_werent_sent_here_to_work_for_them/

....Why are Democrats affiliated with a group which works so strenuously to gut Democratic programs?....

This is not an "inside baseball" story about politics. It's a battle for party control whose outcome could affect every household in the country. If this quarrel is to be remembered -- and it's incumbent upon genuine progressives to make sure that it is -- it should be remembered as an attempt by a the corporate class to retain control of the Democratic Party and limit the leftmost limits of political and economic debate.

To learn more & end being low-information, please read more here~
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rj-eskow/the-democrats-third-way-q_b_4410394.html

Elizabeth Warren Made Washington Angry Again

It's been a tough week for Beltway insiders.

Posted: 10/02/2015 12:03 PM EDT | Edited: 10/02/2015 12:35 PM EDT

WASHINGTON -- The American political elite have never really been riled up over Elizabeth Warren's policy positions. They're just frightened by the culture war she's waging against the soft corruption of Beltway careerism.

Sure, Warren is tough on Wall Street. But such left-wing radicals as Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and former Citigroup CEO Sandy Weill support reinstating Glass-Steagall and its restrictions on risky securities trading. On most issues outside economic policy, Warren is a conventional Democrat. She doesn't talk about foreign policy much, and when she does, she gives progressives little to cheer.

But when she takes on the revolving door between Washington policymaking and corporate cash-outs, tempers flare all over the city.

Her campaign against Wall Street tax-inversion guru Antonio Weiss? "Political grandstanding" and "fratricide" from a know-nothing eager for a "scapegoat," they say. Her letter highlighting corporate conflicts of interest in the research of (now former) Brookings Institution scholar Robert Litan? That's "bullying" and "McCarthyism," a "crusade" born of a "power rush," they claim.

***********************

Podcast, listen here~

https://soundcloud.com/so-that-happened-1/elizabeth-warren-vs-thistown-trump-has-a-tax-plan-and-congress-vents-near-cecile-richards

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....big snip....

The Beltway outrage directed at Warren for sending the letter, of course, has nothing to do with the quality of Litan's research or his ability to publish it. The First Amendment has not been repealed. Nothing prevents Litan from doing all the industry-funded research he wants and letting the public evaluate its merits.

What Litan can no longer do, however, is capitalize on Brookings' centrist, scholarly reputation when performing favors for flush corporate clients. This is a scary thing in the nation's capital, where this sort of thing happens all the time. Corporate interests pay for a lot of economic studies that end up being used as lobbying cudgels.

People in Washington are accustomed to cashing in on their reputations and those of prestigious institutions.

....big snip....

One could be forgiven for concluding that work of this caliber had been corrupted by the corporate interests who paid for it. Indeed, a blog post from Brookings fellow Jane Dokkow titled "Caveat Emptor: Watch where research on the fiduciary rule comes from" is one long, implicit dig at Litan's study. (Warren cited the post in her letter to Brookings.) Dokkow says low-income savers can already get good, unbiased and unconflicted investment advice from both people and software, and that these sources won't dry up with the DOL rule. At a Brookings forum this week, Harvard behavior economist David Laibson and MIT economist Antoinette Schoar also backed the DOL rule.

These are not wild visions of egalitarian utopia or issues of intellectual freedom or thought-policing.

In a way, Warren's critics are selling themselves short by accusing her of waging an ultraliberal witch hunt.

Cheating your investment clients and peddling corrupt research aren't conservative values -- they're Washington values.



The "So, That Happened" podcast is produced and edited by Adriana Usero and Peter James Callahan, and engineered by Brad Shannon, with assistance from Christine Conetta. To listen to the podcast later, download it on iTunes, where you can rate, review and subscribe to the show.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/elizabeth-warren-corruption_560e7ef1e4b0768127019278