The Breakfast Club (4 More Potatoes!)

Welcome to The Breakfast Club!

AP’s Today in History for April 12

President Franklin Roosevelt dies; The American Civil War begins with the attack on Ft. Sumter; Yuri Gagarin is the first man to fly in space; Space Shuttle Columbia lifts off on its first mission; Late night TV host David Letterman born.

Breakfast Tune Angel From Montgomery – John Prine – Banjo Cover

Something to think about, Breakfast News & Blogs below

Sanders Says Congress Must Stop Trump From Exploiting Covid-19 Crisis to ‘Bankrupt and Privatize the Postal Service’
Jake Johnson, Common Dreams

Sen. Bernie Sanders on Sunday urged Congress to act immediately to stop President Donald Trump from using the novel coronavirus outbreak “as an opportunity to bankrupt and privatize the Postal Service,” a longstanding goal of the conservative movement.

“Now, more than ever, we need a strong and vibrant postal system to deliver mail 6-days a week,” tweeted Sanders, a senator from Vermont. “Congress must act now to save it.”

Sanders’ call comes as the Postal Service is warning that it will completely run out of cash within the next several months if Congress doesn’t act swiftly to provide relief. The USPS has been hit hard by the sharp decline in mail volume caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, Postmaster General Megan Brennan told the House Oversight and Reform Committee in a briefing Thursday.
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• Will We Ever Live In Bernie Sanders’ America?
  Tara Golshan

• When “Moderate” Democrats Lead the Ticket and Win, Down-Ballot Candidates Soon Suffer Losses
  RICK BAUM

• Trump, the pandemic and “the economy”: How progressives can fight his message
  PAUL ROSENBERG

• Voters Won’t Risk Their Lives for Joe Biden
  CARL BEIJER

• “If You Want to Keep Your Car, You Drive”
  JONAH WALTERS

• Op-Ed: Refusing To Vote For Truden Is The Same As Voting For Bimp
  CAITLIN JOHNSTONE

• The Week We Should Not Forget for Our Own Sake
  RALPH NADER

• Biden? Seriously?
  ANDREW LEVINE

• Democratic Money and the New Corona Virus Economy
  PAT RYAN

• Last Chance to Save the Euro?
  MARSHALL AUERBACK

• OPEC+ deal won’t save Covid-19 crashed oil prices
  TIM DAISS

• Pentagon worries Capt. Crozier’s concern for his sailors may be contagious
  Major Crunch

• Hundreds of U.S. Meat Workers Have Now Tested Positive for Virus
  Isis Almeida and Vincent Del Giudice

• The Most Important Thing Media Can Tell Us Is How We’re Getting Infected
  JIM NAURECKAS

• Bangkok Post: Free treatment for all virus patients
  ONLINE REPORTERS

Something to think about over coffee prozac

 
Nonvoters Are Not Privileged. They Are Disproportionately Lower-Income, Nonwhite, and Dissatisfied With the Two Parties.
Glenn Greenwald, The Intercept

NOT EVEN 24 HOURS have elapsed since Bernie Sanders announced that he was suspending his presidential run, and already a shaming campaign has been launched against those who are contemplating abstaining from voting due to dissatisfaction with the two major party candidates. The premise invoked for this tactic is that only those who are sufficiently “privileged” have the luxury of choosing not to vote — meaning that nonvoters are rich and white and thus largely immune from the harmful consequences of a Trump presidency, which largely fall on the backs of poorer and nonwhite Americans.

This tactic rests on a caricature: It is designed to suggest that the only people who make a deliberate and conscious choice not to vote due to dissatisfaction are white trust fund leftists whose wealth, status, and privilege immunize them from the consequences of abstention. By contrast, this “You Must Vote” campaign insists, those who lack such luxuries — poorer voters and racial minorities — understand that voting is imperative.

This assertion about the identity and motives of nonvoters is critical not only to try to bully and coerce people into voting by associating nonvoting with rich, white privilege, but also to suppress any recognition of how widespread the dissatisfaction is for both parties and the political system generally among poor and nonwhite citizens.

But the problem with this claim is a rather significant one: It is based on the outright, demonstrable falsehood that those who choose not to vote are primarily rich, white, and thus privileged, while those who lack those privileges — voters of color and poorer voters — are unwilling to abstain. This is something one can believe only if one’s views of the country and its electorate are shaped by social media and cable news bubbles.

The truth is exactly the opposite. Those who choose not to vote because of dissatisfaction with the choices offered are disproportionately poorer and nonwhite, while rich white people vote in far larger percentages. And the data also makes clear that the primary motive for nonvoting among those demographic groups is not voter suppression but a belief that election outcomes do not matter because both parties are corrupt or interested only in the lives of the wealthy.

Thus, those who try to demean, malign and shame nonvoters are largely attacking poorer voters and voters of color, not the New York and California leftist trust-funders of their imagination.
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