Bernie Sanders Comes Face to Face With the Hack Gap

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Poor Bernie Sanders has fallen victim to the hack gap. A few days ago he proposed the Stop BEZOS Act, which would require large companies to effectively reimburse the federal government for any welfare benefits used by its workers. Now, make no mistake: as policy, this is a pretty dumb idea. If you want the details, CBPP has you covered here.

But apparently Sanders and his allies aren’t taking criticism of his plan well:

HuffPost rounded up a few other critics:

Several progressive policy types ― such as Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research and Mike Konzcal of the Roosevelt Institute ― sounded sour notes on Twitter.  “It’s ham-fisted,” Betsey Stevenson, a labor economist at the University of Michigan who served on the Obama administration’s Council of Economic Advisers, told HuffPost.

Can you imagine this happening in the Republican Party? Think tanks and politicians would all chime in to support this great plan. The RNC would post YouTubes. The con men would send out fundraising appeals. The most intellectually honest of them would just stay quiet. This is because they know it’s not policy that matters to voters, it’s hating the right people—and if Jeff Bezos is on the list, then whatever plan most obviously hurts him is a good one. It sends the right message to your voters, and anyway, it’s not like it’s ever going to go anywhere.

But Democrats? If it’s lousy policy, they just can’t help themselves. They have to write white papers and appear on TV and explain in excruciating detail why stopping Bezos is a bad idea. So the voters never hear about it, Bernie is pissed, and once again the most interesting idea Democrats have is to expand the EITC in some obscure way.

Which is probably great, although Democrats tend to carry this idea to extremes sometimes. But if you’re going to be a Democrat, it’s just part of the deal. The Democratic wonk class really, really cares about policy that actually works and actually helps people in a tolerably efficient way. They demand to know where the funding is going to come from, even though they know this is a lose-lose proposition. Basically, if you’re a Democrat, you have to accept that there’s a limit to how dumb an idea the party will support. If this doesn’t work for you, you’ll have to join the GOP. They have no such restraints.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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