After much thought and filings with the FEC, Weisman PAC is back, registered, and 100% official. All pages have been updated to remain current and accurate. With that being said, much has transpired since our last post. The Democratic and Republican primaries have taken center stage of the political world and this post will feature one of three prominent political figures, as part of a three part series, that each have interesting, non-conforming views toward our current pool of presidential candidates of both parties. This is the first part of the three part series.

Noam Chomsky comments on Trump and Sanders

In a recent interview with Alternet.org’s Aaron Williams, prominent MIT linguistics professor and political commentator gave readers some insight into his analysis of Trump’s rise and Sanders’ plan to break up the big banks.

Williams: What are your opinions on the surprising progress of Donald Trump? Could it be explained by a climate of fear? Chomsky: Fear, along with the breakdown of society during the neoliberal period. People feel isolated, helpless, victim of powerful forces that they do not understand and cannot influence. It’s interesting to compare the situation in the ‘30s, which I’m old enough to remember. Objectively, poverty and suffering were far greater. But even among poor working people and the unemployed, there was a sense of hope that is lacking now, in large part because of the growth of a militant labor movement and also the existence of political organizations outside the mainstream.”

While Chomsky’s point here is a valid one, this interview did not exactly go into the details to explain such success in Trump’s delegate count. His linkage to the political climate of the ‘30s is certainly an interesting one but still relatively lacking in concrete correlations to Trump’s current success. The key point to focus on here would be the lack of current political organizations outside of the mainstream. Chomsky implies here that the current lack of outside political organizations gives leeway toward those with more extreme stances in our current political climate. Senator Sanders has also surely benefited from taking a more extreme stance compared to his establishment challenger Hillary Clinton. While on the topic of Bernie Sanders, Chomsky offers insight, albeit in limited words, as to his opinion on a cornerstone to the Sanders campaign.

Williams: Bernie Sanders has been quite outspoken about breaking up banks that are “too big to fail.” Rolling Stone recently published an article that speculated on the idea ultimately doing more harm than voters may realize, with corporate bank spinoffs making much more money than they would before a breakup, with some people being driven out of banking to form much less regulated hedge funds. What is your opinion on this? Do you think banks that are “too big” should be broken up? Chomsky: The consequences should be carefully explored. I haven’t done so.

While the modesty here is certainly appreciated, Chomsky’s response certainly asks the question if Sanders’ proposed action of breaking up the big banks is what’s truly best for our economy and our country as a whole. While it is certain that big banks acted irresponsibly in the recent past, going as far as sending our country into a recession, what remains uncertain are the repercussions of doing something as large as breaking up the big banks. This is especially relevant given the recent open letter published by four past Council of Economic Advisers chairs.

We are concerned to see the Sanders campaign citing extreme claims by Gerald Friedman about the effect of Senator Sanders’s economic plan—claims that cannot be supported by the economic evidence. Friedman asserts that your plan will have huge beneficial impacts on growth rates, income and employment that exceed even the most grandiose predictions by Republicans about the impact of their tax cut proposals. As much as we wish it were so, no credible economic research supports economic impacts of these magnitudes. Making such promises runs against our party’s best traditions of evidence-based policy making and undermines our reputation as the party of responsible arithmetic. These claims undermine the credibility of the progressive economic agenda and make it that much more difficult to challenge the unrealistic claims made by Republican candidates.

This is a truly disturbing find. The authors credentials certainly play a role in their findings, all being distinguished academics. The point here could not be any more explicit, the Bernie Sanders campaign is greatly exaggerating the potential effects of a large-scale economic plan that involves breaking up the big banks. While surely the American people would love to see some sort of Wall Street financial reform, the precise course of action to be taken is still up in the air. Bernie Sanders is still a great, revolutionary, presidential candidate, but at the same time, more research needs to be done before such grand claims can be made. This is certainly a topic worth following in the next stretch of the primaries.

Noam Chomsky Alternet.org Interview

An Open Letter from Past CEA Chairs to Senator Sanders and Professor Gerald Friedman