From jhwood1@srv.PacBell.COM Thu Mar 26 18:15:30 1992 Date: Thu, 26 Mar 92 06:41:48 PST From: jhwood1@srv.PacBell.COM (Joe Woodard) To: harelb@math.cornell.edu Transcribed by Joseph Woodard >From Z magazine, March 1992 CREATING A NEW POLITICAL AGENDA BERNIE SANDERS INTERVIEWED BY DAVID BARSAMIAN IN 1990 Bernie Sanders became the first independent elected to Congress in 40 years. He was a four-time Mayor of Burlington, Vermont's largest city. SANDERS: My major criticism of what takes place in Congress and of the two-party system is not simply that Congress and the President are not solving the enormous problems facing this country. They're difficult problems and not easily solved. My major criticism is that we are not even discussing the most important problems. Honest people will have differences of opinion as to how you resolve problems. But what is going on to a large degree in this country is that the enormity of the problem is being swept under the rug. The ramifications are that tens of millions of people in this country now have very little belief that the government is capable of resolving the enormous problems facing that country. We now have the lowest voter turnout of any industrialized nation on earth, ninety percent of the poor no longer vote, working people don't vote--not only is that a disaster, but it lays the groundwork for demagoguery and the likes of the David Dukes of this world. The challenge that I see is how do you bring people into the political process, especially working people and poor people, and how do you begin to resolve the enormous problems that people are facing. The difference between my politics and the politics of most of the people in the Congress, and certainly the President, is that my politics is based on a class analysis of what goes on in society. I think the fundamental problem is that we live in a nation where both political and economic life are controlled by very, very wealthy people and powerful institutions, and that politically what you end up having are two major political parties, both of which represent the interests of the wealthy. What we have been fairly successful in doing in Vermont and in the city of Burlington is giving people an alternative progressive agenda which represents them and not just the rich. That is what, it seems to me, people are crying out for on the American political scene. If you look issue by issue at President Bush, the interesting phenomenon is that on every major issue affecting the American people George Bush holds a minority position. The people of this camera want a national health care system guaranteeing health care to all people. Until a week ago, after Pennsylvania, George Bush was "studying" that issue. He represents the insurance companies. The people want change. There's Bush. Here's the people. The Cold War is over. The budget presented by both the Democrats and the Republicans and voted upon this week in Congress calls for a $290 billion budget for the military, over $100 billion to defend Western Europe, money for Stars Wars, money for B-2 bombers. That's not what the American people want. George Bush wants Star Wars, B-2 bombers, a big military budget. The American people want to significantly cut military spending, use that money for education, environmental protection, housing, dealing with domestic crises. In terms of tax reform, in the last 12 years what we have seen in the richest I percent of the people in this country more than double their income, the rich becoming much, much richer. The working class middle income people have become poor. Their standard of living and purchasing power have declined. The rich have gotten richer and pay less in taxes. The working class has gotten poorer and pays more in taxes. Poll after poll shows that people want the rich to start paying their fair share in taxes. George Bush wants to give more tax breaks to the rich. So if you have Bush over here, representing a minority, then the obvious question is, how the hell does this guy become president of the United States? The answer is that there really is no political opposition. That to a large degree, not completely, you live in a one-party system, where the leadership of both parties is responsible for the problems and is not prepared to stand up to the people who own and control this country. Within the Congress there are some very, very good people, progressive Democrats mostly, with whom I work closely. There are 20 or 30 of us trying to formalize the Progressive Caucus where we are going to lay out a progressive agenda: Canadian-style national health care, tax reform, significant cuts in military spending, reinvestment in America, reindustrialization, etc. The problem is that at the leadership level, Democratic views are not terribly different from those of the Republican Party. So our goal is to have the courage to stand up to the big money interests who dominate the media, who control both parties, and try to bring people in on a progressive agenda. The coalition must include the trade unions of this country, women, minorities, the environmental community, the peace community. What happens in this country, largely because of television, is that we don't have a progressive political movement. What we have are separate single-issue groups. You've got the women's community over here, the peace community over here, the labor unions over here. Each one goes to the President and says, "Please help us out a little bit." Each one loses, because they stand separately. So the political task of the future is to bring those groups together who, if you add them up, are the vast majority of the people of this country. My feeling is that it should be outside of the two-party system. We have a very good model with the New Democratic Party in Canada. They have done very much what I would like to see us do. As you may know, the New Democratic Party in Canada recently won landslide victories in British Columbia and Saskatchewan. Earlier this year they won a victory in Ontario. The provinces they control now have over half the people in Canada. And that's what we have got to do. We can't continue to be single-issue people. If you're concerned about the environment, it's not enough just to be concerned about the environment. You've got to be concerned about the fact that people are sleeping out on the streets, that working people are seeing a decline in their standard of living. If you're concerned about the peace movement and what goes on in the world where we're spending $290 billion dollars, you've got to be concerned that elderly people can't afford prescription drugs. I was out in California with Betty Friedan a number of months ago, and she made the point that the women's movement will fail unless it is part of a broad political movement. You want to go out on your own and be a women's libber? Fine, no problem. You'll fail. Concerned about world peace? Good. You'll fail. Concerned about the environment? You'll fail. Concerned about workers' rights? You'll fail. Our job is to say that what the fight is about is not the environment, is not peace, health care, what the fight is about is power. They've got it. Our people do not have it. How do you get it? You organize politically. You bring your people together, both for elections and for nonelectoral activities. In Vermont what we have is an agenda that has the support of the vast majority of people. We have organized politically around that agenda, and we're having some success. If you want to get money from rich people, you can't talk about tax reform. You can't talk about the abuse of corporate power. You can't take from one hand and stand up for working people. You've got to draw the line, which side are you on. Unfortunately the leadership of both parties is on the side of big money. So our job, as I see it, is to organize politically the different single-issue groups to see if we can't create a strong movement which will make radical changes in the priorities of this country. BARSAMIAN: What are your thoughts on Congressional term limits? SANDERS: I am opposed to it, with this caveat: term limits is a very bad solution to the problem. What's the problem? The problem is that rightfully people are outraged that 96 percent of incumbents get reelected. That's bad. There's no defense for that. We used to joke years and years ago, the Soviet Union in the good old days used to have elections where 99.4 percent of the People's Parliament was reelected overwhelmingly. Everyone laughed, Walter Cronkite used to laugh about that. And now you've got 96 percent of our people's deputies getting reelected, many without opposition. That is not democracy. People look at that and see quite correctly that the Congress becomes more and more isolated from the people. They're there for 20 years. They don't have any opposition. They're getting huge sums of money. They go to the fine dinners with wealthy people. They forget the folks back home. What's the solution? The problem with term limitations is that it says carte blanche that everybody is out of here in six or eight years. You're doing a great job. You're doing a terrible job. Everybody is out. I think that that's not particularly democratic because if I wanted to vote for you if you were doing a good job, I'm obligated not to vote for you. The second problem is, just cleaning house doesn't mean to say that the next crop coming in is going to be any better. Some of you may know that most, not all of the money behind this effort is right wing Republican money. So from a narrow point of view their feeling is that for a variety of reasons they can't beat the Democrats in Congress, so the way to do it is term limitations. I don't think that's the right way to go. The answer basically is to come up with serious campaign finance reform which does not give the incumbents the tremendous financial advantage they now have. Bradley, for example, ran in New Jersey. He beat the Republican by a point or two. He outspent her by ten times or whatever. You see this all over the place. What you've got to do, and what exists in Canada, in most industrialized democracies, is if you want to run for office and I'm the incumbent, you should have a fair shot at taking me on. I should not be able to spend any more money than you. There are various schemes we can develop on how to do that. But ultimately, the solution is: You want to throw me out? You've got a fair shot to do it and I can't raise more money than you. I think if you did that you'd probably throw out several hundred of the people down there. If you simply throw out everybody, I think rich people would end up having even more power. The rich like the idea of term limitations, because then people who have some power trying to represent working people will never become entrenched, will never have real power within the Congress. BARSAMIAN: I'm interested in your notion that the potential for political power in the United States rests in the working class and that it's union based. How would you promote that view in light of the fact that the United States has probably 16 percent of its organized work force in unions, one of the lowest rates of any industrialized nation, and an increasing hostility toward unions and organizing? SANDERS: I think you're quite right in saying that the percentage of workers in our unions has significantly declined. But one reason for that is not hostility on the part of workers to unions. It is that the manufacturing base in which unions historically function in this country has been obliterated. What has happened is that the number of workers who are engaged in manufacturing has significantly declined, and with that there has been a significant decline in trade unions. Also, what must be understood is that in terms of the capability of unions to organize, there are more legal hurdles that they have got to go through in this country than in any other industrialized country on earth. It is very, very hard to legally form a union in this country. Then after you go through all of the difficulties involved in that, you deal with all of the well paid lawyers and union busting consultants, then you're going to have to sit down and negotiate a first contract. Twenty-five or thirty percent of those efforts fail because the companies refuse to negotiate. So I do not believe that working people are hostile to unions. You've got a media that's hostile to unions. You've got legal restrictions. And you have a decline in our manufacturing base. I think those are the major reasons why you're seeing a decline in trade union membership. BARSAMIAN: Let me give you two anecdotes, and tell me if I'm completely off base here. One is a personal one. My brother, who's been working since he was 16-years-old and is now 69, is a machinist in a factory in New Jersey. He is adamantly anti-union. He says he's not working class, when in fact by every objective standard he is. That's one. Two is an incident in 1988, in Smyrna, Tennessee, the UAW tried to organize a Nissan automotive plant. I recall the photographs after the vote, which was against forming a union, that the workers were wearing T-shirts saying Union-Free and Proud and waving American flags. SANDERS: I can't comment on your brother. I'm sure there are many people who feel the same way. But I think what you should also appreciate is that in terms of organizing efforts there is a whole lot of opposition. What the companies and their very sophisticated consultants say is, why do you want to pay union dues? Why do you want to have to participate in this national organization? We're going to treat you good. What do you need a union for? They put a lot of pressure on workers. It is no secret that today workers are being fired right and left who attempt to organize unions. So if we think that the climate for organizing is wonderful and free and workers have all kinds of protection, we're dead wrong. In fact, one of the areas that I want to make some progress in is labor law in this country to give workers who want to join unions--and I'm not going to argue with you that there are many who do not--but I have the feeling and believe very strongly that there are millions of workers in this country who would like to join unions but in fact there are enormous difficulties facing union organizers to develop union shops. BARSAMIAN: You've said that the political task of the future is to build a grass roots movement fusing all of these disparate groups the environmental group, the women's movement, etc. What are the ingredients present objectively to do that? SANDERS: I think what it takes is leadership which can bring people together on issues where there is a common agenda and also to make the point over and over again that functioning separately is not going to have success. If you're going to continue to have George Bush style government which represents the rich and the powerful, you're not going to only have government which ignores the rightful needs of women, but that's a government which ignores workers' rights, minority rights, etc. The big hurdle that people have got to understand -- and we need good leadership to do this -- is that the fight is not for women's rights, for environmental protection, but for political power. The fact of the matter is that on every issue facing the vast majority of working people, whether it is tax reform, national health care, cutting military spending and reinvesting in the United States for our environment, our infrastructure, our education, George Bush is horrible. And either you can continue to go up to his table and beg and say, do you think we can have a few dollars for Head Start? Oh, Mr. Bush gave us some money for Head Start, he's a nice guy. Or else you say, wait a minute, who is this guy representing? Who is this government representing? The vast majority of the American people? No. The rich and the powerful? Yes. Either you're prepared to stand with other people who are not getting a fair shake or you're going to nickel and dime him. That's what the issue is, and I'm absolutely convinced that we've got to get those groups together. Basically, what we have to understand, if you work for a living, if you're not getting a fair shake from government, you ' ve got to stand together with other working people, middle income people and poor people. If you have a different point of view on this or that issue than somebody else, fine. You can argue that point of view. But don't go off running away by yourself. BARSAMIAN: In terms of building that mass movement, to what extent did Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition do that, and what is your assessment of the coalition today? SANDERS: I happen to have a lot of respect for Jackson. I don't agree with everything that he does, and I disagree with his belief that he's got to stay within the Democratic Party. I think the concept of the Rainbow Coalition is exactly the right concept, and that's pretty much what I'm talking about. I think he has been criticized, perhaps rightly so -- and I'm not a member of the Rainbow Coalition. We don't function within the Democratic Party -- he had a very difficult time and there were feelings that that became a top-down organization rather than a grass roots democratic organization, and people were critical of him for that. My response is, when you're somebody in Jesse Jackson's position, it is very, very easy to be critical of him. Lo and behold he is not perfect. Don't criticize Jesse Jackson, go out and organize yourself. No one should want one leader. Instead of standing around criticizing Jesse Jackson for his inadequacies, organize within your own city, within your own state. Develop your own grass roots movement. I think that's where people should be turning their attention. I believe that we're going to develop a national political movement not by doing it, by having a relatively few people coming together to contemplate a national effort. I think what you're going to see is a coming together of local grass roots movements, statewide grass roots movements, who are talking about the issues that are relevant to the people in those communities. That's what we've got to do. So instead of criticizing Jesse Jackson--and the criticism may be valid--forget that. Go out and organize in your own community. Sometimes I get very tired of people on the left who are very good at sitting around and criticizing the whole world. You want to do the job? Go out and knock on doors within your community. Organize around housing, around workers' rights, around the environment. Bring people together. That's what we've got to do. BARSAMIAN: It seems certainly since the 1988 Willie Horton election, as it were, that the politics of race and class have been accelerated in the United States. You have the David Duke phenomenon in Louisiana, problems in Brooklyn, your hometown, between blacks and Jews. What's going on here? SANDERS: It's a very, very pathetic and tragic situation. I think what you have is; country very clearly in deep crisis People are losing faith in the ability of the government to deal with the enormous problems that they are facing. For working people in this country now there is a growing realization that the standard of living is in rapid decline For the first time in the history of this country, our children will have a lesser standard of living than we will have. Twenty or thirty years ago there were decent manufacturing jobs. People had union jobs. They were earning a decent wage. They looked forward to a better future for their kids. It's no longer the case today. Then you have the crisis in health care. You have many serious problems. People do not see the government responding in an honest ef fort to resolve these problems. Therefore, what happens is that demagogues like Duke come along and what they say is, are you having problems now earning a decent living? Their answer is not that corporations are throwing American workers out on the street and running to Mexico for slave labor in the Third World. It's not that corporations are not reinvesting in the United States. It's not that corporations are forcing giveback contracts. That's not the problem. It's the black people. It's the Jewish people. That's what the problem is. And because we don't have political leadership in this country which is articulating the real causes of our problems, you lay the groundwork for demagogues like Duke to come along and provide obviously dishonest and absurd causes. The blacks are not the cause of the decline of the American economy. Why are we declining as a world power? This should be discussed on television every night. There should be serious debate about this in all of our communities. Why are we one of two nations in the industrialized world that does not have a national health care system? Why are we spending $290 billion on the military when we no longer have a major adversary? Why do we have five million children who are hungry? Why do you have too many people on the streets? These are questions that need answers. But if the political leaders of this country, the Democrats and the Republicans, aren't talking about these issues, then you have the Dukes coming along: We know the answer. It's the blacks and the Jews. That's nice and simple. So it is absolutely imperative that we have the courage to talk about who owns this country and what is happening economically in this country, that we force those political debates and make government begin to respond to the needs of the people. Duke says, what does the government do for you? We're hard pressed to give him an answer. What does the government do? What does the United States Congress do, other than send out press releases and six-second sound bites? BARSAMIAN: Take, for example, the Savings & Loan scandal, arguably the greatest political-economic scandal in the history of this country. It's flowing into the BCCI scandal now. You would think that this would be something that would attract a lot of attention, indignation, outrage. Yet people want to talk about the NEA getting too much money, and is Mapplethorpe's art obscene or not obscene? Those are the issues that are engaging the Congress. SANDERS: Don't even get me going about the Savings & Loan situation. I'm going back to Congress on Monday, and we are going to be discussing a $150 billion bailout for the Savings & Loan industry and the commercial banks, two separate bailouts, and there are people who think there are going to be tens of billions of dollars more coming down the tube. That is the greatest financial rip-off in the history of humanity. The people who are responsible for this, these distinguished gentlemen in their three piece suits, have done irreparable harm to this country. They are directly responsible for the deaths of thousands of people who cannot get the health care they need because governments have cut down on providing health care to people. They are responsible for people sleeping on the streets because we are spending money bailing out these institutions rather than building affordable housing. These people are responsible for the fact that hundreds of thousands of young people can't go to college because the government is bailing out these institutions rather than putting federal aid into education. What these people have done...I don't believe in capital punishment. If I did, they should be lined up. Where are they? What are their names? We don't talk about them terribly much. Why not? For two reasons. Because unlike petty criminals who break into shops and rob $100, these are distinguished, upstanding members of the Chamber of Commerce. They're our leading citizens. They even give to charity. They're wonderful people. Yes, they were punished. Some of them even got a couple of years in a country club jail. They'll be back in business in a couple of years. But those are the distinguished men of our community, and of course we are not going to speak harshly of them. From a political point of view, why is this issue not dealt with more forcefully? For two simple reasons. Number one, both the Democrats, and number two, the Republicans were equally involved in creating this fiasco. So it's not an issue that is comfortable for either political party. As you recall, Ronald Reagan was the guy who for years was saying, we've got to deregulate industry, including the banking industry. We've got to get the government off the backs of these wonderful bankers. Let them go out and invest, be free to make a buck. That's what the country is all about. Let's get the regulators off of them, cut down on the number of regulators, ease up on regulation. Let them start investing. In the old days, savings and loans had to invest in affordable housing. What kind of way is that to run a business? Now we can give them the opportunity to invest in junk bonds, shopping malls, get involved in speculative real estate, to really make a killing. That's what it's all about, right? When you had the Republican administration saying this, what were the Democrats doing? People were beginning to catch on, good people in government were saying, we've got to move forward and deal with this S&L crisis and cap it right now, or else it's going to become a cancer. It was the Democrats in Congress. That's what Jim Wright was about, of course, who protected these institutions. The Democrats were involved in deregulating the S&Ls in the beginning as well. You have both political parties heavily involved in it, and neither political party wanting to talk about it, and the taxpayers of this country are going to be spending perhaps a trillion dollars to bail out both institutions. It is at the very top of the reasons why this country cannot reindustrialized, cannot deal with education, because of this horrendous thing. BARSAMIAN: I'm curious if you think that there's a race/class division here on this issue as well. Take, for example, the putative welfare mother in Harlem that Reagan regaled us with throughout the 1980s. Why was there so much attention to that and so little attention to something that enormously dwarfs that? SANDERS: You're absolutely right. When you talk about the crime problem, the first issue that anyone should talk about is the Savings & Loan fiasco and the irresponsibility of many of the commercial banks. That's crime. But the problem with that is that that's crime dealing with hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars, and through the media and through our political processes it's very hard for people to deal with. It's just too much. As I indicate, I'm going to be asked to vote, and will vote against, $150 billion for the bailout. What in God's name is $150 billion? No one can deal with that. That's too much money. But that welfare person down the street, we saw that she bought a six pack of beer with her food stamps. We understand that. We can deal with three bucks. So what the system does--is it racism? Of course it's racism. David Duke is playing on welfare. More white people are on welfare than black people, but what the system portrays is everybody on welfare is black. Clearly the white working class are very, very angry. The political leadership of this country, instead of focusing that anger on the real causes of the problem, such as these miserable people who destroyed the Savings & Loan industry and the irresponsible commercial bankers, and asking why that happened, how that happened, let's not let that happen again, what they do is focus anger on the black youth, on welfare recipients. Rather than the system making the profound critique of the system itself, that is to say, we expect NBC, which is owned by General Electric, to be making the critique of the system of which they are an integral part. We can't expect the corporate media to do that, or the Republican and Democratic Parties. BARSAMIAN: Speaking of the corporate media, it seems that they play a vital role in formulating public opinion. It's not glamorous or sexy to see an executive coming out of a bank wearing a three piece suit and speaking before some reporters. But if you've got some cops collaring some kid on 146th Street and Broadway. that's hot. That's sexy. SANDERS: You've got two things going here. I must tell you, I heard a very high ranking television executive, a very powerful man, say exactly what you said. He said, S&L scandal, it ain't good TV. It's boring! Explain the S&L fiasco? How many people know about banking at all. Very few people do. High finance is complicated, boring. But if you can get a cop arresting some kid out in the street, that's good TV. It's dramatic, quite exciting, a wonderful 15 second sound bite. Try to explain the collapse of the American banking system on a 12 second sound bite. Good luck to you. It can't be done. That's what this guy said. He was quite frank. The S&L industry cannot be dealt with by television. So we don't hear about it. But I think it's for two reasons. Number one, the people who own the industry assume that the American people are fairly stupid and not interested in that, so give them entertainment, violent TV shows and violence on the news. That's good. that's what works. I think probably some day we'll learn that NBC was financing all the terrorist organizations in the world in order to get exciting television. It's not the Libyans, it's not Qaddafi, it's NBC. But the other thing is that it is very clearly class biased. We do not expect General Electric and the other large corporations that control the mass media to tell the people that the ruling class of this country is rotten, corrupt, and is costing them great sums of money. I don't expect that to happen. What they would rather tell the people is, the black kid down the road committed a crime, and the welfare people are taking their tax dollars. That's why they would prefer to talk about. But the whole issue of the mass media is an issue dear to my heart, an I believe very strongly that you are no going to have any profound political changes in this country until the people demand that television be much more responsive in terms of dealing with the very serious problems facing this country. Understand that television, certainly network broadcasting, is a highly sensitive medium. We saw that played out during the Persian Gulf War. But not only that. If a filmmaker were to write a serious television production or film dealing with the crisis facing working class Americans today and would suggest that maybe working people should come together to fight for democratic socialism, for example do you think that that program would be allowed on TV? Of course not. Everybody assumes and understands through self censorship that that will not be allowed on television. So you don't even have to reject it. No one writes the program. You can get all the sitcoms you want, all the violent shows the rapes, murders, that's no problem. But if somebody were to write serious programming really portraying what's going on in working class America, critical of corporate control over this country, would that be allowed on television? No. So I think people serious about politics in this country have got to make the mass media part of the political debate. You can't sit around and not understand the enormous power of television, who owns television, and make that a debate. Does that mean that the government should run television? No, I don't think so. But I think you'll find in most Or the world the television industry being much more open in terms of allowing a divergent point of view than it is in our case, and that's a political issue that we have to deal with. BARSAMIAN: Starting in 1983, with Ben Bagdikian's The Media Monopoly, since then there have literally been a whole string of books documenting corporate concentration and control over the mass media. We're not talking about esoteric information here. I know your view that it's not useful to try to work within the Democratic Party because it's essentially corporate oriented and money controlled. Are you advocating that people try to penetrate the mass media, or do you advocate alternative media? SANDERS: I think both. I think the show that you do is important, and in cable television, for example, when I was mayor of Burlington, we funded and helped get started a public access station which has done a very good job. Not only will they televise the city council meetings and school board meetings, which is very important, but anybody basically who wants to get on can, and that opens up the air waves. What you want to do is two things: number one, you want to give support to alternative media, but the second thing you want to do is to raise the issue of what the function of the mass media, especially television, is in this country. The FCC, as you know, regulates television. You may not say dirty words on television because you are offending our sensibilities. On the other hand, you are allowed to have on Saturday morning the most grotesque type of violence that millions of children watch. You are allowed to provide a commercial onslaught to the kids of this country, bouncing off them 30 second commercials, which psychologists and teachers tell us have a profound impact on their cognitive capabilities. It's very hard to teach kids to concentrate, to think things through, when you're competing against the kind of hysteria and constant commercials. But that's okay. That's not an issue. I'm going to be raising that issue in Congress, but frankly there are not many people talking about this issue. So when I say politicize that issue, the next time you go to a meeting or talk to your member of Congress or your Senator, say, what are you going to do about television? And the Senator will give you a blank look and say, What are you talking about. You say, Senator, the average American watches television 40 to 45 hours a week. Most of what we see is junk. There is no serious debate. Do something about that. It will probably be the first time that Senator has gotten that question. We assume that it's not a political issue. It is a political issue. BARSAMIAN: But then you'll get people like Jesse Helms determining what people are going to watch. How are they going to control that? SANDERS: What we've got to do is begin the debate. Obviously Jesse Helms has the right to have his and his friends' point of view on the air, but so do different people, I think in one way or another -- Ralph Nader is talking about this, and others -- we've got to create a situation where the television networks allow for a much greater diversity of programming than they do right now. I'll tell you another area that interests me is the whole question of PBS. There was a theory at one point that the reason that PBS was created was the feeling that commercial stations were out to make a buck, they're not going to provide serious programming. The alternative will be a public broadcasting system which will be serious television. We understand as a result over the years of more and more federal cutbacks that you've made that network dependent on corporate America. So what you see there is William Buckley, McLaughlin, Wall Street Review, and you see that station dominated by the oil companies and the corporate interests as well. I remember a couple of years ago I was talking to somebody in PBS about the possibility of doing a program, actually hosting a program. They said it's a good idea. It's pretty clear we don't have left wing point of view. If you could raise something like $30,000 or $40,000 for each program, I think we could work something out. They were very serious about it. So all that I would have to do is go to AUGHT or General Electric, get a couple of million dollars a year, and I could have my own television program. It's no problem at all. But that's exactly what the problem is. The only people that GE and General Motors and AT&T are going to fund are the William Buckleys of the world and the right-wing people. That's why, among other things, we do need a 100 percent federally-funded station so that the directors of those stations in a non-partisan way can allow all points of view without having to beg money from corporate America and do the bidding of corporate America That's a real problem. I think you've got to deal with the commercial networks, but also we need a network which is really public and not corporate. BARSAMIAN: You know the joke about PBS, what the "P" stands for? Petroleum Broadcasting System. Are you concerned about the proliferation and pervasiveness or religious broadcasting, again using the public airwaves? Is that an issue? Some of the stuff is borderline anti-Semitic and some of it is just openly so. SANDERS: Sure it is. What concerns me more than that is the lack of proliferation of trade unions using television, of television programming which represents the best interests of working people. For the love of me, I don't understand why that is so. BARSAMIAN: It's probably like the old A. J. Liebling line, anyone's free to open up a press in this country, as long as you have a million dollars. SANDERS: I understand that. But I think also that the trade unions themselves, who do have money, should pay more attention to that. It is not impossible for the trade unions to have a cable television network all over this country, to get out an alternative point of view. But I think they haven't paid enough attention to that. But again, my concern is not only with the proliferation of right wing TV programs, but the lack of presence of progressive type programs. BARSAMIAN: I usually read bios of people I'm going to interview and ignore them totally, just sort of as background information. But there are a couple of things in your bio that caught my attention. One was that you saw Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman and that it had an impact on you. Could you talk about that? SANDERS: As it happened, my father was a salesman. He sold paint. I think if he had been alive for much longer, although the company that he worked for was a fairly good company and treated him fairly well, he would have been perhaps in the position of a Willy Loman, of a man who had no money and had outlived his usefulness. So from a financial point of view, as well as from a personal and emotional point of view, nobody should, until the day you die, be allowed to outlive your usefulness as a human being. You've got to be treated with respect and dignity. What does disturb me so much is you have such powerful tools for cultural advancement and understanding, such as television. There's nothing wrong with television itself. The problem is what's on television. We have many people who could give us a portrayal and an understanding of what's happening to us as a people, but they're not allowed to write. Maybe they can put on a play off Broadway. But they're not allowed to write or direct for the mass media. There are a few exceptions. I don't want to overdo it. We don't live in a fascist society, and occasionally you are amazed to turn on the TV and there's something that's very good. But what they do which is so sad and so tragic is that so many good people out there give up the belief that they can write seriously and say, why should I write something seriously? It's never going to be seen. I'll go out and write jingles for a soap company and 30 second commercials. The President says we're not in a recession. If I could only lift myself up by my own bootstraps. Must be my problem. I don't know why I'm not feeling better. They're not allowed to learn that their problems--whether it's that they can't afford health care, how they're treated on the job--are shared by the vast majority of the people. That's the secret. We don't talk about it. It's not just your problem. Tens of millions of Americans also have that problem. The kids, themselves. It must be very difficult to be a kid today. The world is changing rapidly. When I was in high school, if you graduated college you were on your way to a decent job. I'm not sure that a college degree means terribly much any more. What's open to you? What kind of jobs are open to the kids? Why should they study? Who's talking about that to the kids? What kind of programming is going on TV that kids can say, yes, that's true. That is what my life is about. When the kids can't see that, when they can't see that what they're experiencing is experienced by many other people, the causes of what they're experiencing, that they're not crazy, it leads to an alienation, to psychological problems because they're not aware of what the causes of our problems are. BARSAMIAN: The other thing that interests me is your experience in Israel on a kibbutz. What was that like? SANDERS: It was interesting. It was a long, long time ago, 1964. What I saw there is a glimpse of democratic socialism at work. Kibbutzim today are in very serious economic troubles, but I remember seeing people who were 50 or 60 being very vital, intellectually alive. They would have, in the evenings, serious discussions about books, people were reading and talking about them. You could see in the mannerisms and the well being of the people there the difference between working for yourself, which was what a kibbutz was, it was owned by the people, they elected their own leadership, as opposed to working for somebody else. People were different. Sixty-year-old people were more alert than sixty-year-olds in the United States. It was quite impressive. Things have changed tremendously in Israel and on the kibbutz, but that did leave an impression with me. BARSAMIAN: Did you have any contact with Palestinians? SANDERS: No. Never. BARSAMIAN: You're in the process of forming a progressive caucus in the House. Can you talk about that? SANDERS: What some of us are hoping to do is to bring together the most progressive members of the Congress to see if we can focus on a number of issues and in a sense force the Congress as a whole to start dealing with our agenda. The truth of the matter is that people like Newt Gingrich and the right wing of the Republican Party have been very successful. I give them their due. They have raised their issues, pounded away at their issues, used C-Span to develop their issues, and forced the Congress to start dealing with their issues. What some of us want to do is focus on issues that we think are important to working people in America, national health care, for example, to keep talking about it, to demand that the Congress deal with a single payer, Canadian-style health care system, to focus on the need to significantly reduce military spending, and redirect that money toward education, environmental protection, health care, rebuilding American industry, to say to the Congress, it's absurd. You're spending $290 billion on the military and over $100 billion a year defending Westem Europe, and the Warsaw Pact is no longer in existence. That's insane. You can spend that money back home. And the more you talk about it you force the discussion, the American people say, yes, that makes sense, and it filters on up and hopefully the leadership begins to discuss those issues. So I am working with people like Ron Dellums of California, Maxine Waters of Califomia, Laine Evans of Illinois, Peter De Fazio of Oregon and others. We've probably had some 20 members of Congress to one or another of the meetings. I think we're making some progress. BARSAMIAN: You must have had a lot of notions and ideas about Washington before you went there to serve in the Congress. Has anything really surprised or astounded you? SANDERS: It's hard to say. I, unfortunately, have the personality that after a while you begin to see things and take them for granted rather than being shocked by them. But there are several things. A point that I often make is that it is astounding to see the lack of urgency that Congress has. You go home to my state of Vermont, farmers are being driven off the land and it is a terrible personal tragedy for the farmers, an economic tragedy for this country, because food production is going to rest in a few multinational corporate hands, and Congress is incapable of addressing the issue at all. Health care prices, they're talking and talking. The Republicans of course won't deal with it at all. The Democrats--I do not want to suggest that there are not some who are very serious. There are. But for the leadership it's a lot of phraseology. It makes a good sound bite: "Health care is the right of all people." Yes, well, you guys control both houses of Congress, so do it. "Well, we can't do it, but health care is the right of people. We're going to give speeches all day to embarrass the President." That's good. Do it. So I think the lack of urgency is one thing. The second thing that comes to mind is that the House -- people assume that the House and the Senate know each other. They don't. They could be a million miles away, on the other side of this building, but no one ever talks to the Senators. For a conference committee they get together, but the Senate is over there, the distinguished "other body" is over there. No one knows what they do. So the House moves along and the Senate moves along, and they finally occasionally get together on an issue. That also has surprised me. But the House itself is very inefficient as a functional operation. I forget how many subcommittees there are. A lot of the work gets done in subcommittees. I think there are several hundred. What ends up happening is there's a real Balkanization of the entire process. Here's an example. The cost of pharmaceutical drugs in this country is an outrage. Our people often pay twice as much for a drug manufactured in the United States as Canadians or Europeans. So you might think that a committee would get together and say, we're going to deal with the pharmaceutical industry and we're going to resolve this issue. It doesn't happen that way. You have this subcommittee literally dealing with this drug, a drug dealing with AIDS, you're literally going drug by drug instead of dealing with the whole problem. And what happens when you have the distinguished gentleman who is the chair of this distinguished subcommittee, they focus on their minute little issue, and everybody else has their issue. After 14 years somebody says, "Well, I did it! I got eight million dollars to address this problem in this area. Isn't that fantastic?" The process of each person having their little subcommittee lends itself to that Balkanization, to looking at each minute problem rather than the overall problem. Instead of the Speaker saying, we're going to deal with health care as a whole..I'm on the Banking Committee. We are asked to come up with legislation to reform the American banking system. We are asked to vote on legislation to deal with the bailout of the Savings & Loan industry. We are not allowed to make a suggestion as to how that bailout will take place. That's the House Ways and Means Committee. What we can do is suggest that the taxpayers will come up with $80 billion. We are not allowed to suggest how that money will be raised. That's the other committee's subject. Let me tell you the truth, and it's common knowledge: legislation is framed in certain ways because certain chairs do not want to go through other subcommittee chairpersons. If you know that this person ain't going to do nothing, and it's within his jurisdiction, then you frame and write your legislation to avoid that person's jurisdiction. It's quite unbelievable. That has surprised me, the absurdity of not saying, here are the eight different issues. The American industry is declining. How do we reindustrialized the United States? I want a plan out of here in six months. Let's do it. There's no one talking about that. Z