Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) delivers a speech on the floor of the U.S. Senate on March 6, 2023. (Photo: Sen. Bernie Sanders/YouTube Screengrab)
“Of course we have the leverage,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders. “We are funding the war.”
Flanked by photos of hungry children and destroyed buildings, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders said in a speech Wednesday that the Biden administration must stop merely asking the Israeli government to halt its indiscriminate bombing of Gaza and begin using real leverage to bring about an end to the war and ensure the free flow of aid to the territory’s starving population.
“The U.S. government should make it clear that failure to open up access immediately and feed starving people will result in the Netanyahu government not getting another penny of U.S. taxpayer military aid,” said Sanders (I-Vt.), who noted that “right now we have the incredible situation where a U.S. ally is using U.S. weapons and equipment to block the delivery of U.S. humanitarian aid.”
“And if that’s not crazy,” the senator added, “I don’t know what is.”
More than a dozen children in Gaza have reportedly died of malnutrition and dehydration in recent weeks as U.S.-backed Israeli forces continue to obstruct the delivery of humanitarian aid—including by firing on aid convoys and crowds of desperate people gathering in the hopes of bringing sacks of flour back to their families.
In the absence of sufficient food and clean water, many people in Gaza have resorted to eating leaves, grass, and animal feed and drinking contaminated water. Gaza’s food production infrastructure has been decimated by Israeli bombing.
“If humanitarian organizations do not intervene urgently,” one Gaza doctor said last week, “you will find people and children dying in the streets.”
A spokesperson for the U.S. State Department admitted earlier this week that Israeli officials have blocked critical humanitarian aid, including flour, from entering Gaza. But the administration has refused to use its leverage to force the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to change course, relying instead on private meetings with Israeli officials and mild public criticism.
On Wednesday, The Washington Post reported that the Biden White House has approved more than 100 separate arms sales to Israel over the past five months, even as it has publicly expressed concerns about the staggering civilian death toll in Gaza. Citing unnamed U.S. officials, Axios reported Thursday that “the Biden administration has no plans to restrict military assistance to Israel at this time.”
Sanders said during his floor speech Wednesday that it is “absurd to criticize Netanyahu’s war in one breath and provide him another $10 billion to continue that war in the next.”
“But perhaps the most remarkable thing about this disaster is the fiction we tell ourselves here in Congress that there is nothing, just nothing, that we can do,” the senator continued. “Isn’t this awful, my goodness. Look how all of those buildings have been destroyed—70% of the housing units, terrible. Children going hungry, terrible. Children coming down with disease, terrible. Terrible. Nothing we can do.”
“Really? Everybody knows what is happening,” said Sanders. “We see it every day in the news and we see the pictures, the emaciated children, of people bombed while they sleep. And yet Congress pretends as if we are powerless to stop it. If we had the courage to stand up to some very powerful special interests, yes, we could stop it. We could stop the destruction and we can make sure that these kids do not starve to death.”
Sanders argued that ending the war and addressing the humanitarian emergency would require the Biden administration and Congress to “use the incredible leverage we have over the Israeli government to secure a fundamental change in their disastrous policies.”
“Of course we have the leverage,” Sanders said. “We are funding the war.”
Other members of the Senate Democratic caucus have joined Sanders in recent days in criticizing the Israeli government’s restriction of badly needed humanitarian aid and demanding that the Biden administration cut off weapons shipments to Israel if it refuses to end its suffocating blockade.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) said in a floor speech earlier this week that he asked the State Department why it is not applying a U.S. law that prohibits military exports to a country that is blocking the delivery of humanitarian assistance.
“I haven’t gotten an answer to the question I posed about three weeks ago,” said Van Hollen. “There is no good answer.”
It’s obvious PM Netanyahu & extremists in his govt like Ben-Gvir & Smotrich have restricted humanitarian aid to Gaza. They’ve said so. That’s why I recently took to the Senate Floor to call on the Biden Admin to use US law already on the books to get more aid to starving people⬇️ pic.twitter.com/8aT6jqBDH1
— Senator Chris Van Hollen (@ChrisVanHollen) March 5, 2024
Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) said Wednesday that “we must face the contradiction of what we are doing.”
“We are airdropping food to famine-stricken Gaza today and supplying bombs for Israel to drop on devastated Gaza tomorrow,” said Welch. “We call for humanitarian relief, but how can that call be meaningful when aid workers are killed in their effort to deliver it and Palestinians are killed in their effort to retrieve it?”
It's time for us to acknowledge what the entire world knows: It's impossible to deliver humanitarian aid in a very active war zone.
That's why I've called for a ceasefire and voted against supplying more bombs for Israel to drop in Gaza. pic.twitter.com/0CAoIA3ZEL
— Senator Peter Welch (@SenPeterWelch) March 6, 2024
In a social media post late Wednesday, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) wrote that she hopes President Joe Biden will listen “to his close friends in the Senate even if he won’t listen to his voters.”
“This is a catastrophe and he can’t keep going down this path,” Omar added. “Grateful for these senators who are pushing him to act like a president with serious leverage.”
An Israeli armoured personnel carrier (APC) moves near the Gaza Strip border in southern Israel, February 29, 2024
MORE than 200 lawmakers from 13 countries issued a joint call today against their countries’ arms exports to Israel.
In an open letter, co-ordinated by the Progressive International, 218 lawmakers from 13 countries declared their “commitment to end our nations’ arms sales to the state of Israel.”
The politicians, who serve in parliaments of countries that export weapons or parts to Israel, say they will “not be complicit in Israel’s grave violation of international law” and instead call for an arms embargo, pledging to “immediate and co-ordinated action in their respective legislatures to stop our countries from arming Israel.”
Protesters during a National March for Palestine in central London, January 13, 2024
THE government ignored “overwhelming evidence” that Israel was breaching international human rights laws in Palestine and continued to supply the murderous regime with weapons, including those being used in Gaza, legal documents have revealed.
A Foreign Office assessment unit reviewing UK arms sales to Israel in November raised “serious concerns” with Foreign Secretary David Cameron.
But the former PM recommended that arms sales continue, accepting Israel’s reasoning that it has a different interpretation of its international humanitarian law obligations.
The revelations are contained in a document in a case brought by the Global Legal Action Network (GLAN) and Palestinian human rights group Al Haq over UK arms sales to Israel.
What can we do about our oligarchy in the United States? President Biden’s blueprint for ones in Russia is a good place to start.
Republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) licence. Note by dizzy: There’s a photo of Jeff Bezo’s superyacht at the original article. He’s got a new one now of course requiring an historic bridge to be dismantled in Rotterdam.
12/3/22 ed: I’ve emphasized one paragraph in red typeface. That part is particularly important showing that we do not live in democracy. 13/3/22 The West is imposing it’s model of oligarchs on Russia by imposing sanctions. Western oligarchs control and dictate to Western governments but that’s not the case in Russia.
Tonight I say to the Russian oligarchs and corrupt leaders who have bilked billions of dollars off this violent regime: no more.
The U.S. Department of Justice is assembling a dedicated task force to go after the crimes of Russian oligarchs.
We are joining with our European allies to find and seize your yachts, your luxury apartments, your private jets. We are coming for your ill-begotten gains.
With these words, the president unintentionally laid out a blueprint for responding to the American oligarchs, superpredators who dwarf their Russian counterpoints in wealth and political power.
America’s oligarchs, like their Russian counterparts, have bilked billions—no, make that trillions—from their own regime.
Oligarchs in a Violent Regime
About that “violent regime” business: It’s possible to condemn the violence perpetrated by Russia’s government while at the same time recognizing and condemning of our own. Our direct attacks on Iraq and Afghanistan, among other countries, have been matched by the proxy violence we have funded in nations like Palestine and Syria. Our sanctions have taken countless lives around the world, a form of bloodshed we pretend isn’t warfare.
America’s oligarchs, like their Russian counterparts, have bilked billions—no, make that trillions—from their own regime. Some of their bilking comes directly from its violence, in the form of “defense” contracts to entities like Halliburton, Lockheed Martin, and the Carlyle Group.
A 2014 Princeton political science study showed that government actions nearly always conform to the wishes of wealthy and powerful US elites. “Our central finding was this: Economic elites and interest groups can shape U.S. government policy — but Americans who are less well off have essentially no influence over what their government does,” wrote co-authors Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page.
America’s oligarchical influence extends from healthcare and fossil fuels to the industry of war itself. American companies account for more than half of all arms sales worldwide. The Center for Responsive Politics reports that “in the past two decades, (the arms industry’s) extensive network of lobbyists and donors have directed $285 million in campaign contributions and $2.5 billion in lobbying spending to influence defense policy.”
Arms manufacturers (more commonly known by the Orwellian appellation, “defense industry”) shrewdly concentrate on hiring ex-government officials to advance their agenda and pump up their “ill-begotten gains.” This ensures that their interests are represented by people who know the officials they’re lobbying. Even more importantly, it puts those officials on notice that there is a lucrative future in store for them if they play along. Arms oligarchs have hired more than 200 lobbyists who, in the report’s words, “have worked in the same government that regulates and decides funding for the industry.”
Arms manufacturers played a dominant role under Trump, but are also well-represented in the Biden Administration:
While Biden has touted strict ethics rules that attempt to thwart the influence of lobbyists on the administration, several of his earliest appointees, including Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Secretary of State Antony Blinken consulted for a private equity firmthat emphasized its “access, network and expertise” in the defense industry. Austin also had a seat on the United Technologies and Raytheon board, earning more than $250,000 from the now merged companies.
“Ill-Begotten Gains”
It’s not just the arms industry, of course. Other oligarchs have bilked the people of the United States in more creative ways. Jeff Bezos built his Amazon empire off his ability to sell products online without charging sales tax. This government-granted loophole made him an oligarch, a position he has used to further cement his power and influence. He has purchased the most influential paper in the nation’s capital—an oligarch’s move if there ever was one—while constantly extending his monopolistic power into new markets.
Despite the fact that he already possessed great wealth, Elon Musk has received billions in subsidies and contracts for his automobile and space ventures. Bill Gates parlayed a government contract and some aggressive patent strategies into his own oligarchical status. Insurance executives have bilked billions from the violence of our privatized healthcare system, which takes an estimated 45,000 lives per year.
Money, of course, is only part of an oligarch’s wealth. President Biden also mentioned the property that belongs to Russian oligarchs: “your yachts, your luxury apartments, your private jets. We are coming for your ill-begotten gains.” (He meant “ill-gotten,” but I suppose you could call such malapropisms part of Biden’s charm.)
If a “supertax” were levied against America’s oligarchs by the federal government, it would produce as much as $755 billion in revenue.
Russians own an estimated 7-10 percent of the world’s superyachts, leaving plenty for their American counterparts. Luxury apartments? Check out “New York Condo Sells for Close to $190 Million; Hedge-Fund Billionaire Doubles His Money.” Private jets? Jeffrey Immelt, job outsourcer and financial predator at GE, used to taketwo jetswhen he traveled so that he’d have a spare—and charged it back to GE’s shareholders.
Little Oligarchs, Big Oligarchs
We’re told that the Russians whose yachts have been seized include Alisher Usmanov, whose net worth is $20 billion, and Alexei Mordashov, whose wealth is described as “nearly” $30 billion. Compare that with Elon Musk, who’s worth nearly $300 billion, or Jeff Bezos at $202 billion. These guys are pikers.
Globally, in the US-led world financial order, billionaires have gained $5 trillion in wealth since the pandemic began. Think of our economic leadership as a “global endowment for oligarchy.” Oxfam reports that the ten richest men in the world (yes, they’re all men) own more wealth than the bottom 3.1 billion people (“six times more, in fact”). Oxfam also notes that “if the 10 richest men”—nine of whom live in the US—”lost 99.999% of their combined wealth, they would still be richer than 99% of the world.”
Now that’s oligarchy.
Making a Killing
No industry has taken more advantage of government-granted patent monopolies than Big Pharma. Even when its oligarchs misled the country into an opioid epidemic—one of the largest mass-casualty events in American history—they are able to escape criminal culpability for their actions.
Then came Covid-19. As Forbes reported in January, US billionaires held an estimated $3.5 trillion before the pandemic struck, a figure that reached nearly $5.3 trillion two years later. That’s $1.8 trillion in gains, divided among only twenty oligarchs. Musk led the pack, with Bezos in second place. The billionaires’ list is a cavalcade of monopolists and speculators whose wealth has been fueled by their government’s benign view of their predatory business practices.
Once the pandemic hit, Big Pharma’s oligarchs were able to parlay their political power into exclusive patent rights for Covid-19 vaccines. Moderna made $17.7 billion from its vaccine in 2021 and anticipates making $22 billion this year, from a formula developed with $2.5 billion in funding commitments from the US government. The money from these government-granted profits could vaccinate the entire world, but they’ve been used to enrich shareholders instead. That’s oligarchy.
Restoring the Balance
What can Americans do about their oligarchy? President Biden’s blueprint is a good place to start. A “dedicated task force to go after the crimes of American oligarchs” is an excellent place to start. It could address questions such as:
1. Why have nine American billionaires acquired more than $755 billion during the Covid pandemic, while so many other people struggled?
2. What role did government and central bank policy play in this enrichment?
3. What unethical or illegal actions, if any, were undertaken in amassing this wealth?
4. What effect will these levels of economic inequality have on social justice, political power, social mobility, and the rights of consumers and workers?
5. Is there any reason why this money should not be taxed at 99 or 100 percent?
Item #4 would not be unprecedented. It would revive a proposal from President Franklin D. Roosevelt for a “100 percent war supertax” on extremely high incomes and would echo the 94 percent top tax rate passed during World War II. (The top marginal tax rate stayed above 90 percent for the next two decades.)
We certainly face a World War-level emergency. Oxfam observes that “a 99% windfall tax on the COVID-19 wealth gains of the 10 richest men could pay for enough vaccines to vaccinate the entire world and fill financing gaps in climate measures, universal health and social protection, and efforts to address gender-based violence in over 80 countries, while still leaving these men $8bn better off than they were before the pandemic.”
I don’t hate these oligarchs. I see them.
If a “supertax” were levied against America’s oligarchs by the federal government, it would produce as much as $755 billion in revenue. That’s enough to pay for the original, ten-year “Build Back Better” proposal—twice.
To See, and to Act
It’s striking that the current debate about American democracy ignores its biggest antagonist: the oligarchs who have undermined the political process and drained the nation of its wealth. Restraining the oligarchs would help build true democracy. It would be good politics, too.
“We know from polling that (anti-oligarchical) policies and rhetoric like these are wildly popular,” writes Eleanor Eagan of the Revolving Door Project. “In our deeply divided country, anger at elite impunity and a desire to see it end are among the rare uniting forces that we have left.”
Not that we can expect an anti-oligarchical agenda from this government any time soon. Politicians know that America’s oligarchs, unlike Russia’s, have the ability to crush their careers at any time. But the rest of us are free to speak out and demand an end to oligarchical rule anywhere in the world. Our condemnation of other country’s oligarchs will ring hollow until we do.
Someone once asked me, “Why do you hate billionaires?” The answer is, I don’t. I’ve met a few, and they were always sociable enough (unless you worked for them). I don’t hate these oligarchs. I see them. As we build the anti-oligarchical movement here in the US, Noah Liebman’s handy browser add-on (for Firefox only) helps everyone see them. It replaces the word “billionaire” with “oligarch” on every web page, producing headlines like “Bloomberg’s Oligarch Index,” “Forbes’ Oligarchs 2021,” “Inside the Financial Holdings of Oligarch Betsy DeVos” … you get the idea.
Another headline now reads, “Oligarch investor Bill Ackman says Russia’s attack on Ukraine means World War III has ‘likely already started.'” Maybe it has, or maybe it will start soon. The best way to prevent it is by eliminating all oligarchies, foreign or domestic, and replacing them with genuine democracy.
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
Richard (RJ) Eskow is a freelance writer. Much of his work can be found on eskow.substack.com. His weekly program, The Zero Hour, can be found on cable television, radio, Spotify, and podcast media. He is a senior advisor with Social Security Works.
