Well, I was of course intrigued and did teh Google.
And, yes it is very relevant.
Indeed, some parts of it are relevant to Jane Sanders' tenure as president of Burlington College and her tres brilliant land ideas, now under federal investigation, as I have described in detail.
It's a long read indeed.
But, if you're a Berniecrat and want to know more about him, and about what might be myth and what might be reality on his think-tank/rebranded lobbying group the Sanders Institute, which I tackled a bit more here, and you want more insight than you might find from the knee-jerk angrified Actual Flatticus (Alan Smithee) any time it is insinuated the feds might fid a hint of impropriety in Jane's actions, or indirectly in Bernie's, you've got time to read, don't you?
To whet your appetite, I’ll give you this:
SANDERS’ WATERFRONT PLAN is burdened by a highly convoluted a history that would take an article in itself to unravel. The 24.5-acre property, owned partly by the Vermont Central Railroad, the Alden Corporation (a consortium of wealthy locals), and the city itself, faces one of the most scenic lake and mountain areas in the northeast. Paquette, Sanders’ predecessor, planned to "develop” this spectacular site with highrise condos. Sanders has made the demand for a “waterfront for the people” a cardinal issue in all his campaigns. Civic democracy was ostensibly served when an open meeting was organized by the administration in February, 1983, to formulate priorities which the public felt should be reflected in any design. Broken down by wards in NPA fashion, the meeting’s priorities centered around walkways, open space, public access, restaurants and shops, even a museum and wildlife sanctuary — and, in addition to similar public amenities, mixed housing. Whether these priorities could have been met without a UDAG is highly problematical. What is fascinating about Sanders’ response, even before the UDAG was refused, was the clutter of structures that grossly compromised the whole thrust of the public’s priorities: a second version of a Radisson-type hotel, a retail pavilion that spanned half the length of the city’s pedestrian mall, a 1200-car parking garage, an office building, a narrow public walkway along the lakeside — and an ambiguous promise to provide three hundred mixed housing units, presumably “available for low and moderate income and/or handicapped people:” Even so, this housing proposal was hedged by such caveats as "to the extent feasible” and the need to acquire “below-market financing” and rent-level “subsidies.”
Following the refusal of the UDAG, the plan resurfaced again from City Hall with two notable alterations. Mixed housing disappeared completely even as a promise — to be replaced by 150 to 300 condos priced at $175-300,000 each (a typical Burlington houses sells for $70-80,000) and public space, meager to begin with, was further attenuated. From a residential viewpoint, the “waterfront for the people” had become precisely an “enclave for the rich,” one of the verbal thunderbolts Sanders had directed at the Paquette proposal.
The privileges accorded by the waterfront plan to moneyed people are a reminder that only token aid has been provided to the poor. The methods employed by Sanders to engineer public consent for the plan have been especially offensive: the blitz of ads favoring the mayor’s and Alden Corporation’s version of the scheme, in which Sanderistas found their names listed with those of the most notorious union-busters in the state, stands in sharp contrast with the relatively weak campaigns launched by City Hall on behalf of rent control and improved housing.
And that part, indeed, is at least indirectly relevant to Jane as well as Bernie.
The piece includes a response to Bookchin and a counter-response by him.
For Berniecrats pondering foreign policy more than the typical Democrat, the piece, and the two addenda, will further shatter ideas that Sanders is a peace-lover, antiwar in any general way or anything similar.
And, speaking of both Counterpunch and antiwar, since that's a foreign policy issue, Andrew Stewart flailed him in 2015 for not having any foreign policy issues of concern (other than, of course, Hillary Clinton voting for the Iraq War) months after his officially entering the presidential race.
Stewart then pivots back to the Bookchin article above along with the relationship between Bookchin and Sanders, which had gotten pretty frosty by the end of Bernie's mayorality.
Glenn Ford at Black Agenda Report also covered this recently.
ReplyDeleteI think Sanders being bad on guns and specifically bad on liability for gun manufacturers in the wake of Las Vegas might be a bigger deal, but I believe that mostly because WWIII is likely to occur before we elect someone that is capable of addressing American imperialism, the defense contractors, the Pentagon's budget, etc.
Gotcha on all of that.
ReplyDeleteA lot of the Berners (including Twitter's Smithee) just don't want to talk about the idea that Bernie might have "to play along, pay along" type ideas, let alone for decades.