Part 1
DEMOCRATS DEBATE WHAT THEY STAND FOR. We again welcome Bill Curry as our guest. He was twice the Democratic nominee for Governor of Connecticut and a White House advisor in Bill Clinton’s administration. We elaborate on some lessons from Tuesday’s Democratic presidential debate. It was the progressive candidates — Warren and Sanders — whose ideas were the dominant focus of the debate.
The candidates expressed either support for or opposition to the Warren-Sanders program, which seeks to achieve *systemic* changes in the government and in the Democratic Party. The progressives don’t want to simply push Trump out of office and return our country to the status quo as it existed before the 2016 election. Instead, they seek to restore a fair *balance of power* between the poor and the rich, between workers and employers, between ordinary people and the “elites” (sometimes referred to as the 1%).
Whatever one thinks about Pete Buttigieg’s skillful performance(s) on the debate stage, he has aligned himself with the centrist leaders of the Democratic Party. In addition to seeking big donor contributions, he, like Biden, Klobuchar and the other candidates, criticizes Warren and Sanders’s more progressive policies of system-change. They favor cautious incremental steps which, they assert, will make a big difference over time. They don’t explain how their incremental approach will actually succeed this time around, any more than it was succeeding over the last 50+ years. How could it possibly succeed, unless we eliminate dark money, corporate “capturing” of the agencies that are supposed to regulate them, and the dominance by one (or a few) mega-companies over the American (and world) economy?
We end with an in-depth discussion of the health care debate. How can we achieve our two goals: universal coverage of health care; and lowering the costs (both overall costs and the costs paid by people who can’t afford them)?
Part 2
We interview Michael Lewis, who recently wrote an article regarding Bail Reform in New Hampshire. Michael Lewis is a Concord NH attorney, former NH prosecutor. He has proposed a change in the bail policy, because the current policy is unfair to defendants who are poor.
The basics of bail were discussed. It is important that there is a presumption of innocence until the actual trial and conviction. Therefore, it hardly seems fair that accused people should be treated as guilty, and penalized by the bail requirements as they are. It may be some time before trial, sometimes months. Defendants that do not have any money may be held for that reason. Instead, the standards for bail that should be considered are that public safety should be preserved, that the defendant’s appearance is guaranteed, and the state’s laws should be observed. Bail should not be just monetary, for that reason. Currently, it appears to be the pattern that prosecution attorneys make the defendant look as bad as possible, supposedly for public safety reasons. That allows defendants who are unable to pay are incarcerated without a conviction. Bail includes more than money, but also conditions, such as “no contact” orders. For those defendants who have a long record of repeated crimes, perhaps no bail should be granted, because of the danger of violence. All of these reforms would require retraining police, attorneys, and judges.
