Nancy Marks, the former campaign treasurer for embattled Republican Rep. George Santos (New York), pleaded guilty to federal felony charges, admitting to fraudulent practices while bookkeeping for Santos’s campaign and implicating the lawmaker himself in at least one crime. Marks, who was a central figure in Santos’s congressional campaign, pleaded guilty to a felony count of conspiracy to defraud…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
The U.S. House of Representatives has approved a motion to vacate the office of Speaker of the House, removing Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-California) from the position nearly nine months to the day after he assumed the role. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Florida) filed the motion to vacate on Monday, citing McCarthy’s refusal to use the threat of a government shutdown to negotiate draconian cuts to social…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
As the Republican-led House continues its deep spiral into chaos, progressive lawmakers are mocking and criticizing Kevin McCarthy (R-California), who is facing the threat of losing his speakership this week. “Boy Math, Part 2: Motion to Vacate,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) wrote on social media on Monday, cracking a joke about the vote count calculus that McCarthy is having to…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a Democrat viewed as a national leader in voting rights, has received 67 death threats and over 900 threats of online abuse within just three weeks, according to a system used by her office that tracks harassment and threats against election workers. In 2020, Griswold’s office launched a “rapid response” election security unit, a team of election security…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Former presidential candidate Ralph Nader responds to Wednesday’s second Republican debate, saying, “It’s pretty embarrassing that this is what they put forward to become the president of the most powerful country in the world.” Nader discusses the debate’s topics of social media, former President Donald Trump and wealth inequality in America. Nader also calls for the Democratic Party to “stop…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
At this stage of the game, it looks like one of these folks will be our next President:
Or … DONALD J. TRUMP!
Now, if one of the “good guys” wins the presidential race — an individual who reports to the “people”, truly puts the the welfare of all citizens ahead of Wall Street, the big banks, the military-industrial complex, the ruling elite and other powerful special interests, thus serves the needs of the all citizens, not just the wealthy elite — then he or she will need a Congress that supports and promotes the “people’s agenda”.
And if one of the “bad guys” wins — as has happened for decades, subjecting our nation to economic plunder, endless war, corporate welfare, pay-to-play politics, divide-and-conquer tyranny, thus cheating everyday citizens out of their fair share of our vast national wealth — we need a Congress that will stop the decline and keep the worst from happening. We’ll need a Congress that will stop the looting of our economy, the wanton destruction of the environment, the promotion of militarization, the marginalization of everyday citizens, the attack on privacy and human rights, the concentration of wealth in the hands of a tiny elite.
Either way we need a “people’s Congress”, one that truly represents the people, reports to the people, works for the people, not Wall Street, not the MIC, not the Deep State, not the rich and powerful.
Congress creates and passes the laws that shape everything about our nation: how we treat our citizens, our freedoms, our responsibilities, our relations with every other country on the planet, how we treat the planet itself, war and peace, our economy, our politics, our infrastructure, our monetary and banking system … EVERYTHING!
What would a “people’s Congress” look like?
Currently there is an exemplary human being seeking election for president in 2024. He’s the son of Robert F Kennedy and nephew of John F Kennedy, both of whom gave their lives fighting the good fight for everyday citizens.
Let me be absolutely clear. While Robert F Kennedy, Jr represents a vast improvement over the current crop of swamp creatures seeking the presidency in 2024, my latest book is not per se an endorsement of RFK Jr for President. Realistically, there isn’t now and never will be a perfect person for the job. RFK Jr certainly means well but has some very indefensible and unevolved views, e.g. blind support for Israel, muddled thinking on health care. But in his defense and offering a solid justification for supporting his candidacy, he’s a thinking man, a good decent human being, and most importantly for the survival of the human race, he’s calling the endless US wars a fraud, and our entire foreign policy an abomination. He wants peace and cooperation, honesty and transparency, both here in America and abroad. He believes that government should work to the benefit of all citizens, not just the rich and powerful.
What my new book is saying is that WE DESPERATELY NEED A CONGRESS which embraces those values and that framework for governance, whether RFK Jr gets elected or not.
Many seem unable to wrap their heads around this simple, straightforward call to action.
I’ll unpack it.
If RFK Jr. is elected in 2024, THEN HE WILL NEED A CONGRESS THAT SUPPORTS AND PROMOTES AGENDA.
But if one of the “bad guys” wins, we will need a Congress that will prevent things from getting even worse.
So either way … WE NEED A “PEOPLE’S CONGRESS”!
Alternate iteration … WE NEED A KENNEDY CONGRESS!
It’s obvious, wouldn’t you agree?
My new book is short but intense and offers specifics on what a grassroots campaign must do to identify and support “good guys” to replace the current crooks, liars and lapdogs in Congress.
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
Polarization of the American public reflects the polarization of its political Parties, both of whom strive for ascendancy by demeaning, contradicting, and formulating proposals to wrong the other; each Party wrongs itself and the American public.
The recent and periodic arguments concerning the proposed federal budget, an entrance for initiating threats to “close the government,” highlight how both political sides of Congress wrongly portray the fiscal deficits that have become implicit in federal budgets. Two wrongs do not make a right, and, in this case, they have caused misunderstandings and problems.
Start with the Republican Party
Republicans refuse to admit that an expanded money supply is required to support the increased economic activity of a growing economy and increase the Gross Domestic Product (GDP ). This does not mean that an increase in money supply will increase GDP; the implication is otherwise ─ a given money supply is required to sustain a definite GDP. If production exceeds the money supply for purchasing the goods and cannot be cleared, prices will be cut and deflation will develop. A simple and accepted equation that describes the quantity theory of money certifies this proposition:
GDP = Money Supply x Velocity of Money
With the Velocity of Money constant, GDP cannot increase unless the Money Supply increases, and the Money Supply cannot increase without either banks issuing credit or the Federal Reserve purchasing government notes and bonds, both of which increase total national debt.
More appropriately:
GDP = Consumer spending + Business Investment + Government Spending + (Exports – Imports)
The United States has been running trade deficits for decades, and a portion of government spending equalizes the trade deficit.
TRADE BALANCE
A more significant figure is the Current Account, which is the sum of the trade balance (exports minus imports of goods and services), net factor income (interest and dividends) and net transfer payments (such as foreign aid). If the Current Account is positive, it adds purchasing power to the economy. Since the current account has been in negative for decades, it has been a subtractive figure and an equivalent purchasing power has been transferred out of the economy. The government issues debt to foreign nations and returns the purchasing power to the nation.
CURRENT ACCOUNT
The Republican Party has become the Party vocally rebelling against “big government.” Vocally is the correct word; in practice, Republican administrations have favored deficit spending ─ look at the record.
The federal debt grew slowly until the Ronald Reagan (RR) administration, in 1982, radically increased the slope of the debt curve and used deficits to recover from a recession and continue prosperity. This is the same Ronald Reagan who is credited with the phrase, “the government is not the solution but the problem,” and “believed that reducing the role of the government would lead to increased economic growth, which in turn would lead to higher revenues that would help pay down the national debt.” During RR’s time in office, the national debt almost tripled, going from $1.14T to $ 3.00T. His Republican successor, George H.W. Bush, continued the rising debt trend until Democrat President Bill Clinton ran surpluses. Republican George W. Bush reversed Clinton’s cautious policies and again rapidly increased the federal debt.
After the severe 2008 economic crisis, the Federal Reserve and Treasury Department forced the government into rescue plans that greatly increased the national debt and these plans continued through Democrat Obama, Republican Trump, and Democrat Biden administrations. The reasons for the escalated debt are apparent from an examination of the constituents of public debt.
Of the $30T debt, referenced to June 2021, only about $10T was held by American citizens; about $8T was in the hands of foreign creditors, and $6T was held by the Federal Reserve Bank. Intra-government holdings ─ debt between government agencies ─ of $6T, which is not a public problem, completes the total government debt. This breakdown shows that the fiscal policies are not responsible for the elevated debt; the need for elevated debt is responsible for the fiscal policies that drive the elevated budget.
The principal components of the debt are obligations to foreign institutions, including governments, which results from the negative trade balance ─ $850B in 2022 ─ and from Federal Reserve monetary policies of promoting maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term interest rates. From its Open Market Operations, the Federal Reserve accumulated a debt of $6T.
The causes of the negative trade balance are the consumer eagerness for imported goods and the lack of growth of U.S. exports. Due to the pause in consumer purchases during the COVID-19 emergency lockdown, exports had a brief spurt after the lifting of the lockdown and then remained stagnant. This is not a direct government problem; it is a direct problem of a private industry that cannot increase exports, competitively combat imports, and reduce the trade deficit. Private industry shifts the problem to the government, which is forced to retrieve the dollars that leave the country by selling debt.
The Federal Reserve opted to print money and finance debt in order to stimulate the economy during the sub-mortgage loan crisis in 2008 and the Covid crisis, and the federal government became a recipient of that debt. If the Republican Party is serious about reducing the debt, it would examine its sources, which are the negligence of private industry to compete with foreign products and the failure of the Federal Reserve to reduce its balance sheet.
The manner in which former Republican President, Donald Trump, approached the trade deficit demonstrated a lack of knowledge in understanding government debt and how to reduce it. Trump raised tariffs on Chinese imports, which made imports more costly to the American consumer and increased the trade deficit, which led to additional government debt.
The Republican endeavors to reduce the federal budget and slow the increase in debt have merit but it is being done without thought and only for political reasons. Each year some debt is repaid and the money supply accordingly shrinks. With a current account deficit showing no sign of returning to positive territory, to maintain the GDP, new debt must replace retired debt. If private borrowing cannot do more than keep debt constant, the GDP might remain constant. Lacking an increase in private debt, government debt moves GDP to positive growth. Far-right enthusiasts extol the capitalist system and belittle the government debt that anchors the capitalist system in a positive direction.
The chart shows GDP growing as a combination of consumer and government debt. In 1995, to prevent inflation, a sharp rise in consumer debt initiated a pause in government debt. The opposite occurred in 2008, when a drop in consumer debt prompted a massive uptick in government debt.
Continue with the Democratic Party
The U.S. has low unemployment, a more than-marginal economy, and high inflation. The Republicans have a good point: Inflation has too much money chasing too few goods, so why should the government run a deficit to invigorate the economy and provoke more inflation? Analyzing the budget is beyond the scope of this article. Cutting the budget is not beyond the scope of budget makers. A sharp eye with a sharp pencil can do it. If not, what’s wrong with a tax hike, except, of course, it might harm the Party’s election prospects.
Quote Oliver Wendell Holmes: “A good catchword can obscure analysis for fifty years.” Without proof, the Republican Party and Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform have pushed catchy expressions into our lexicon, casually and with absolute conviction. Two of the most prominent are:
Lowering income tax rates benefits the economy.
Raising income tax rates harms the economy.
These beliefs, which derive from the assumption that if present income tax rates are decreased then total spending in the economy will increase, are shibboleths and not supported by analysis or facts. A simple analysis exposes the fallacies of both expressions.
Taxes transfer money between the government and the taxpayers; neither method adds or subtracts new money nor allows more or less available spending to the economy; in both scenarios, the purchasing power stays the same. The spending may contain different goods and services, but the total purchases of goods and services are identical. Actually, lowering taxes can be detrimental to the economy, while raising taxes may provide definite benefits.
Raising taxes transfers funds from the consumer to the government.
The government assembles huge funds that allow the development and purchase of products, such as airplanes from Lockheed. The manufacturer hires workers to produce the aircraft. The total wages paid to the workers almost match the raised taxes. Spending by the new wage earners ripples through the economy, and, in its final appearance, will almost match the reduced consumer spending of the taxed individuals. Employment, production, and GDP (airplane purchases)have increased ─ give an advantage to tax increases.
Lowering taxes does the opposite; forcing the government to purchase fewer goods and services. The money and spending remain with the already employed and do not incentivize additional employment. Because lowering taxes lowers government revenue, budget considerations might demand an increase in budget deficits.
Lowering taxes mainly assists the already employed, and that is not the major priority. Who pays taxes ─ the employed. Who receives tax breaks ─ those who pay taxes. In effect, lowering taxes redistributes federal assistance from needy persons to the employed. Which is preferable, redistributing income so the employed have more to spend or redistributing the income so the underemployed have something to spend?
Conclusion
Maybe the Biden administration has a good reason for the estimated $1.8T deficit in the 2024 budget, but the present inflation rate of 3.67% encourages a cautious look at increasing demand and pumping an oversupplied economy. Evidently, the Dems fear that the high interest rates will induce a drop in private demand for credit, decrease spending, and trigger a recession. The politicos concluded that the risk of damaging election prospects is higher than the risk of accelerated inflation and getting elected comes before public need.
The last sentence describes the operations of both political Parties ─ their needs come before citizen needs and their policies are designed to benefit themselves. The GOP fails to understand the meaning of government debt and the Dems refuse to use it wisely.
Perceived as a financial evil that corrodes the American government, the green albatross of ongoing federal deficits is an essential element of the free enterprise system ─ a partner to all other debts in an economic order that runs on debt. National debt has a decisive role in maintaining the welfare capitalist system ─ ballast to keep the system floating and reserve energy to prevent it from total collapse. This anti-hero is a prominent savior of free enterprise and those who rail against temporary government deficits without examining its benefits are negligent in their understanding of a capitalist economy and guilty of pushing the economic system into ultimate decline.
Government Debt is not the Problem.
Government legislators are the problem,
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
If Joe Biden will become the Democratic Party’s nominee for the Presidency, then almost any Republican nominee would likely beat him because he had committed America’s Government to victory in Ukraine — done it is such a way that there can be no going back on it that won’t strip him of the public’s respect for him on account of America’s loss in that war:
21 February 2023: “Ukraine will never be a victory for Russia. Never. (Applause.)”
13 July 2023: “We will not waver … for as long as it takes”.
24 August 2023 “Our commitment to Ukraine’s independence is unwavering and enduring.”
21 September 2023 “Mr. President [Zelensky], we’re — we’re with you, and we’re staying with you.”
If Kamala Harris will become the Democratic Party’s nominee for the Presidency, then she will never be able to disassociate herself from having been his #2.
On the other hand: If RFK Jr. will be the Democratic Party’s nominee for the Presidency, then he will surely win the Presidency (unless he becomes assassinated) because he has been saying, all along, that Biden’s refusal for Ukraine to negotiate with Russia was serving only to increase the bloodshed in that war — which has been proven to have been correct. He not only criticized what Biden was doing but said that Biden’s saying that if Russia wins the war, then America loses the war, and that if America wins the war, then Russia loses the war, casts that war as being of existential importance to both countries, which is blatantly false because Ukraine has nothing to do with America’s national security. It’s thousands of miles away and poses no threat to America, but it is only 300 miles away from the Kremlin. It is, therefore, even closer to Russia’s central command than Cuba was to America’s central command in Washington DC in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. American missiles in Ukraine would pose an even bigger threat to Russia than Soviet missiles in Cuba would have posed to America. RFK Jr. has strongly opposed Biden’s Ukraine policy, which was Obama’s Ukraine policy — the policy aimed at conquering Russia — but Trump never did anything to reverse the Obama-Biden Ukraine policy. So, if America loses the war in Ukraine, then RFK Jr. would trounce Trump, but Trump would trounce Biden.
If Trump becomes the Republican nominee, then he would easily beat Biden as the opposite Party’s nominee but would lose to Kennedy as that Party’s nominee, because Trump, while he still was in office, did nothing to reverse the horror that Obama had done to Ukraine by grabbing it in his 2014 Maidan U.S. coup and installing there a rabidly anti-Russian government which produced the war in Ukraine, which started soon after that coup.
Biden was carrying out Obama’s Ukraine-policy against Russia, but Trump did nothing to reverse it and to end the war there that Obama had started by grabbing Ukraine.
Therefore, if Russia wins the war in Ukraine, then virtually any Republican would beat Biden as the Democratic nominee, but RFK Jr. would beat any Republican nominee. RFK Jr. has none of the taint of the Obama-Biden Ukraine policy, but Obama and Biden couldn’t have carried out that policy if it didn’t have virtually unanimous support from congressional Republicans. Whereas RFK Jr. can free the Democratic Party of the taint of the Obama-Biden Ukraine policy, there is no Republican who can free the Republican Party from the taint of that policy.
If Russia wins in Ukraine, then only RFK Jr. could beat any Republican nominee.
However, if America wins in Ukraine (which Russia won’t allow, because that would pose a severe existential threat to Russia’s national security; it would mean the end of Russia as an independent sovereign nation), then Biden (or another neoconservative Democrat) will (tragically for the entire world) win in 2024.
Of course: if Ukraine’s war drags on for as long as Biden is hoping it will, then the likelihood is high that he will win the nomination; and, then, he would stand a reasonably strong chance of again winning the Presidency. This is the reason why I’m expecting Russia to win the war on its terms and within the next few months (this year) — not allow it to drag on until the 2024 voting starts in America.
Former President Donald Trump has achieved a unique status in United States history. He is the first president to be indicted for conspiring to overturn a presidential election, defraud the U.S. and obstruct official proceedings by attempting to subvert the peaceful transfer of power. It’s now a matter of public record that Trump faces four indictments and 91 felony counts for his criminal…
At least two Republican lawmakers in Congress are speaking out against their own party’s failure to produce a spending bill to continue funding the government beyond the end of this month, stating that they’re willing to work with Democrats instead to produce a compromise. A federal shutdown will happen if lawmakers cannot craft a continuing resolution spending package to keep the government…
When examined individually, special elections (political races that happen between regular election cycles, which usually happen to fill vacant positions in government) are not typically indicative of national political trends — but an analysis of special elections over the past several months indicates that Democrats are outperforming Republicans in local races across the country.
Every few years, the public is force fed another manufactured attempt to rebrand the GOP as a party that is “no longer in lockstep with corporate America” and is “newly focused on winning over more of the working class.” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) triumphantly announced in Nov. 2020 that Republicans “are a working class party now. That’s the future.” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) has repeatedly heralded the Republican party as the most likely space for a “working class multiethnic party” to converge. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) has been auctioning off this talking point to any credulous or complicit media platform that will give him airtime. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) said in 2021 that “the most significant political change of the last decade has been that the heart and soul of the Republican Party—we are a working-class party now. We are a blue-collar party.”
But it’s easy to claim this mantle when the stakes are low and rhetoric is the only currency. It’s when there are actual points of significant class conflict—when history forces one to pick a side, when the chance comes to actually fight for workers, not just say you’ll fight for them—that this self-styled pro-worker branding is put to the test. And after last week’s United Auto Workers (UAW) strike began in earnest—marking the first time in history the union has struck all of the Big Three automakers at once—it’s clearer than ever that this branding is, at best, entirely hollow and, at worst, deeply calculated.
The talking point every single Republican has been handed, and all who have spoken on the strike have echoed, centers around a cynical divide-and-conquer strategy that pits organized labor against climate activists.
First off: Let’s discuss the working-class warriors who have been suspiciously silent. Sen. Tom Cotton and Sen. Ted Cruz haven’t mentioned the strike at all.
But what about the Republicans who have issued statements on the strike? All of them “support” it as an abstract thing in their head, yet they are throwing their backing behind a version of the strike that doesn’t exist. And they offer no support for the actual demands of the strikers or the duly elected representatives of the UAW membership.
The talking point every single Republican has been handed, and all who have spoken on the strike have echoed, centers around a cynical divide-and-conquer strategy that pits organized labor against climate activists and reflects entirely partisan, pro-fossil-fuel grievances that in no way represent the demands of autoworkers.
Let’s start with Sen. Marco Rubio. Rubio took five days since the strike began last Friday to finally release a statement. In those five days, though, he apparently had time to introduce a bill that would cut off “’radical gender ideology in healthcare systems,” demand military bases allow screenings of the popular QAnon-adjacent film Sound of Freedom, and pen an op-ed in The Miami Herald on Sept. 14, when the UAW’s contracts with the Big Three expired, about how “American men are falling behind.” That piece laments the decline in good-paying jobs, but somehow manages not to mention the UAW strike, the word “strike,” or even “union” once. How this disillusioned American Man is supposed to achieve economic gains beyond a tax credit and “borrowing” from his own social security fund (a discredited hare-brained right-wing stalking horse) isn’t explained. Rubio’s “working-class” politics don’t have any actual class politics in them, because he is (poorly) trying to fashion a class politics that avoids real class conflict, hence his attempt to indict selected “elites” without indicting the ruling class to which they belong, hence his attempt to subsume the systematic attack on the working class under some ill-defined attack on masculinity and “strong families and cultural values.” He hardly acknowledges class at all. Far from embodying a new political direction for the GOP, Rubio’s schtick is just another example of Republicans finding new ways to launder whatever Heritage Foundation policy points Corporate America approves through political pandering that, if you squint hard enough, vaguely gestures to the material needs of working people before swiftly diverting focus away from the true sources of their material immiseration.
When Rubio finally did say something this morning, it was, like all the other GOP statements, focused mainly on non sequitur complaints about green energy and manufacturing mandates. Beyond simply ignoring the strike, like many of his colleagues, Rubio actually went further and condemned the union. True Friend of the Worker that he is, Rubio went out of his way to admonish the primary instrument of power auto workers have at the most critical juncture of their struggle:
Rubio has claimed for the past three years that Republicans need to “jump start” labor by opposing the actual unions that represent laborers and replace them with company-approved unions. This is a favorite line of the faux-populist GOP set, because it allows them to rhetorically back workers while still being fervently anti-union, which is a requirement of the party and its attendant, ruling-class-serving ideology. Rubio loves to condemn “union bosses” because he’s hoping the average person still lives in 1975 and thinks Jimmy Hoffa is in charge. UAW president Shawn Fain was recently elected to lead the union as part of a reform slate after the UAW held its first truly democratic elections, and the strike itself was voted on directly by the workers last August with 97 percent support. The “union bosses” here were elected by the membership (and the fact that union leaders, unlike bosses, can be voted out by the rank and file is one of many reasons why the term “union boss” makes no sense) and their mandate to strike is virtually uniform. Rubio can’t acknowledge this, though, because it immediately undercuts whatever self-serving point he’s trying to make, so he has to support a group of workers and a slate of worker demands that simply don’t exist in our dimension of time-space.
One need only look at the slimiest of the all of these GOP “populists,” and the one most committed to the bit—Josh Hawley—to see why these ostensibly pro-worker talking points are nothing but vapid partisan pot shots with little to no bearing on the demands of actual workers:
Note how Hawley references “auto workers” here while omitting any mention whatsoever of the union to which they belong. This is deliberate: Hawley doesn’t actually support unions (ie, the tangible, worker-composed organizations that exist in reality right now, fighting for material improvements for the very workers Hawley claims to sympathize with); he only supports an idealized, hardhat-wearing archetype that exists as a branding reference. Hawley continues with vague demands for a “raise,” and “better hours,” but no specific numbers are mentioned. No mention of the 36 percent hike the union is demanding, which would be commensurate with the raises Big Three executives have given themselves since the last contracts were negotiated—a demand that accounts for skyrocketing auto industry profits, inflation and the rising cost of living, and the cuts and concessions the union suffered to keep the industry afloat during the Great Recession. The Big Three have all technically offered “raises” that are still well below the UAW’s demands, and those meager wage increases would seemingly satisfy Hawley’s squishy line about workers deserving a raise. Hawley’s keeping everything deliberately vague because he doesn’t want to upset the automakers that donate to his Super PAC. And he, after all, has a schtick to maintain.
One is welcome to check UAW press releases, public statements, interviews, and other public-facing material: Nowhere does the union or any of its representatives say anything about them having any issues with climate mandates.
Hawley’s “support” for auto workers then quickly veers into total non sequitur, focusing mainly on “climate mandates.” One is welcome to check UAW press releases, public statements, interviews, and other public-facing material: Nowhere does the union or any of its representatives say anything about them having any issues with climate mandates. What they’ve said, and what they’ve said for years, is that any transition to EVs and green tech must be a “just transition” that doesn’t leave American workers behind. As Sarah Lazare detailed in a recent piece debunking this narrative that is becoming increasingly popular on both the right and center-left, there is no tension between good, higher-paying jobs and saving the Earth. “Our tax dollars are financing a massive portion of this transition to E.V. We believe in a green economy,” UAW president Shawn Fain told Face the Nation on September 17. “We have to have clean water. We have to have clean air. Anyone that doesn’t believe global warming is happening… isn’t paying attention.”
Read Kate Aronoff’s excellent takedown of another faux-populist, Sen. JD Vance (OH-R), which exposes why his talking points, a carbon copy of Hawley’s, are just grafted-on, partisan point-scoring claptrap.
So what the hell are Hawley, Vance, and all the Republicans homing in on “radical climate demands” talking about? Credulous pundits and Beltway rags like Politico take these “Republican concerns” at face value without once mentioning this supposed conflict between labor and environmental requirements attached to the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), as Lazare lays out in detail, is a talking point being fed to our media by the CEOs themselves. The Hawleys of the world are repeating a company line crafted to undermine support for the union and presenting it as a pro-worker position. It’s not. The central demands of the union—significant raises, shorter workweeks, an end to the tier system—are ignored by Hawley in favor of a list of petty partisan grievances that are in no way reflective of what workers are demanding, in reality.
This isn’t to say that Democrats’ responses to the UAW strike have been ideal. One public statement of “support” by Rep. Elissa Slotkin of Virginia is genuinely amusing in its equivocation and feigned solidarity:
And who knows if the White House’s own nominal support will amount to anything ground-shifting in the coming weeks. The UAW, for its part, has pointedly stated that it will not automatically endorse Joe Biden’s re-election run to maintain its leverage, leading to an on-air meltdown by MSNBC Morning Joe anchors interviewing Fain the week prior to the strike:
The one thin example Hawley, Rubio, and Cruz like to point to as proof of their working-class bona fides was their vote opposing the Biden administration and Democratic leadership in Congress shutting down rail workers’ right to strike last fall. But their votes came after the passage in the Senate was already a fait accompli—again, it’s easy to vocalize support for workers when the stakes are low, and this oppositional vote was a totally inconsequential and preformative act largely designed to be used as a PR bludgeon later. But Biden and Pelosi’s anti-union, anti-democratic intervention in the rail dispute last year opened the door for Republicans in the Senate to outflank them and rack up a rare, seemingly substantive win for their Republicans-are-the-party-of-the-working-class rebrand. This is what makes the silence—or the bizarre focus on partisan, anti-climate non sequiturs—of Cotton, Hawley, Rubio, and Cruz so illustrative: When the rubber hits the road, when there is a moment of actual class tension and these “populist” senators must choose between the needs of their corporate funders or the working man they allegedly care about, they are either silent or lend support in ways that are superficial and irrelevant. Our media should be pointing this out, making this obvious fact clear, not running another dopey process piece about how the UAW strike is an “opportunity” for Republicans to make gains in the labor movement. Republican support for labor is nonexistent or entirely aesthetic. Reporters should center this fact rather than produce another update on the stale “Republicans are shifting their focus to winning the working class over” trend piece genre that simply, for some reason, just won’t die.
House Republicans unveiled a budget blueprint on Tuesday that proposes trillions of dollars in federal spending reductions over the next decade, specifically targeting Medicaid and federal nutrition assistance for steep cuts. House Budget Committee Republicans’ new resolution also calls for the establishment of a “bipartisan debt commission” to examine and propose changes to “the drivers of U.S.
Congress is almost certainly headed for another government shutdown due to Republican infighting that is preventing budget measures from being passed, says Ryan Grim, the D.C. bureau chief for The Intercept. The revolt is led by far-right members who oppose Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. “What they’re fighting for, whether they win, whether their situation actually gets worse as a result…
I’m reposting this article about the Democratic Party five years after it was published because after re-reading it, I wouldn’t change a thing. In addition, the Democratic Party has become even more right-wing since it gained power in 2020. At the end of the article I will name the many ways it has gotten still worse.
How to Conceive of the Two-party System
Lesser of two evils
Among liberals and all the different types of socialists, when the subject of the Democratic Party comes up, there are at least two variations. One is the familiar liberal argument that the Democratic Party is the “lesser of two evils”. For them, the Republican Party is the source of most, if not all, problems while the Democratic Party is presented as shortsighted, weak and/or incompetent bumblers. Among some of the more compromising members of the Green Party, the lesser of two evils manifests itself when it implores its voters to “vote in safe states”
There are a number of reasons why I will claim that the Democratic Party is not the lesser of two evils. But for now, I want to point out that the lesser of two evils has at its foundation a political spectrum which is organized linearly with conservatives and fascists on the right. Along the left there are liberals, followed by social democrats, state socialists, and anarchists on the extreme left. All the forces moving from liberals leftward are broadly categorized as “progressive.” What this implies is that there are only quantitative differences between being a liberal and being any kind of socialist. In this scenario, being a liberal is somehow closer to being a socialist than being a liberal is to a being a conservative. However, there is an elephant in the room, and the elephant is capitalism.
What unites all socialists – social democrats, Maoists, Trotskyists, council communists and anarchists – is opposition to capitalism? What divides us from liberals, whether they are inside or outside the Democratic Party, is that liberals are for capitalism. In relation to the economic system, liberals are closer to conservatives than they are to socialists of any kind. So, the “lesser of two evils “argument is based on the expectation that socialists will ignore the capitalist economic system and make believe that capitalism is somehow progressive. It might have been possible to argue this case 60 years ago, but today capitalism makes its profits on war, slave prison labor and fictitious capital. Characterizing this as “progress” is ludicrous.
The parties are interchangeable
Most anarchists and various varieties of Leninists claim there is no difference between the parties. They say that capitalists control both parties and it is fruitless to make any distinctions. I agree they are both capitalist parties, but what most socialists fail to do is point out that, in addition to protecting the interests of capitalists as Republicans do, the Democratic Party: a) presents itself as representing the middle and lower classes; and (b) stands in the way of the formation of a real opposition to the elites.
The second reason I disagree with the idea that the two parties are simply interchangeable is that it fails to make a distinction between the interests of the ruling and upper classes (Republicans) on the one hand, and the upper middle class (mostly Democrats) on the other. There are real class differences between elites that should not be dissolved.
The Democrats are the greater of two evils
The argument I will make in this article is that the Democratic Party is worse than the Republican Party for about 85% of the population. I make this argument as a Council Communist, and my argument in no way implies voting for Republicans, Greens or even voting at all. Before giving you my reasons for why the Democratic Party is worse for most people I want to give you a sense of how I came up with the figure of 85% .
Old money vs new money and the class composition in the United States
Sociologists have some disagreements over how many classes there are in the United States and what occupations cover what social classes. While some might have a bone to pick about my percentages, I am confident that I am at least in the ballpark. The ruling class constitutes the 1% (or less) of the population and the upper class another 5%. What these classes have in common is that they all live off finance capital and do not have to work. This is what has been called “old money”. This old money had its investments in extractive industries like oil, mining and the war industry. This is the stronghold of the Republican Party.
The upper middle classes consist of doctors, lawyers, architects, and senior managers who make a lot of money, but have to work long hours. It also includes scientists, engineers as well as media professionals such as news commentators, magazine and newspaper editors, college administrators and religious authorities Yet there are tensions between the elites and the upper middle class. The upper middle class represents “new money” and makes their profits from scientific innovation, the electronics industry, including computers and the Internet, among other avenues. This class constitutes roughly 10% of the population. The upper middle class is the stronghold of the Democratic Party.
A number of economists from Thomas Piketty to Richard Wolff have argued that for these social classes there has been an “economic recovery” since the crash of 2008. For all other classes there has been decline. The role of the Democratic Party is
Far be it for me to say that the Republicans and Democrats represent the same thing. There is real class struggle between the interests of the ruling class and the upper class on the one hand and the upper middle class on the other. My point is that for 85% of the population these differences between elites are irrelevant. What the top three classes have in common is a life and death commitment to capitalism – and this commitment is vastly more important than where the sources of their profits come from.
Who are these remaining 85%? Poor people, whether they are employed or not, constitute about 20% of the population. When they are working this includes unskilled work which simply means no previous training is required. Working class people – blue and white collar – represent about 40% of the population. This includes carpenters, welders, electricians, technical workers, secretaries, computer programmers, and X-ray technicians. Middle class people – high school, grammar school teachers, registered nurses, librarians, corporate middle management, and small mom-and-pop storeowners – are about 25% of the population. Most poor people don’t vote and in a way, they are smart because they understand that the Democratic Party can do nothing for them. While many working-class people don’t vote, highly skilled working class people do vote, and many will vote Democrat. Middle classes are also more likely to vote Democrat with the exception of small business owners. In fact, research by labor theorist Kim Moody into the voting patterns of the last election showed that a high percentage of this petty bourgeois voted for Trump.
The Democratic Party has nothing to offer the middle class
When I was growing up in the 1950’s and 1960’s, my father worked as a free-lance commercial artist about 40 hours per week. My mother stayed home and raised my sister and I. One income could cover all of us. My parents sent me to Catholic grammar schools and high schools, which were not very expensive, but they had to save their money to do it. They helped pay for part of my college education after I dropped out and then came back. They helped my partner and I with a down payment on a house in Oakland, CA. Today both parents in a middle-class family need to work and the work-week for middle class workers is at least 10 hours longer. As for savings, if a middle-class family buys a home, it is much more difficult to save for their children’s education.
In 1970 I was living in Denver, Colorado and had my own studio apartment for $70/month. I worked 20 hours a week at the library as a page and could afford to go to community college part-time. Twenty years later I tried to communicate this to my stepdaughter who was 20 years old and then compared it to her experience. She was working full-time as a waitress, had to live with two other people and could only afford to take a couple of classes without going into debt. Reluctantly and seemingly defeated she had to return home to live if she were to ever graduate from a community college. The Democrats did nothing to stem the tide of the decline of the middle class. Working class and middle class people may continue to vote for Democrats, but that doesn’t mean Democrats are delivering the goods. It just means these classes don’t want to face that:
Now on to why I believe the Democratic Party is worse that the Republican party for this 85% of the population.
The Democratic Party has nothing to do with being liberal
Most people who support the Democratic Party don’t really consider the party as it actually is, but how they imagine it should be according either to political science classes they’ve picked up in high school or college or from what they have picked up unconsciously through conversations. They have also gotten this from Democratic Party members themselves who talk about liberal values while in practice acting like conservatives. These voters think the Democratic Party is liberal. What do I mean by liberal? The term liberal has a long political history which I have traced elsewhere (Counterpunch, Left Liberals Have No Party) but let’s limit the term to what I call “New Deal Liberals”.
These New Deal liberals think that the state should provide essential services like pensions, food stamps, natural disaster relief as well as road and bridge construction. They also think the state should intervene to minimize some of the worst aspects of capitalism such as child wage work or sex slavery. These liberals think that Democrats should support the development of unions to protect the working class. This class deserves an adequate wage and decent working conditions. They also think – as it is in the American dream – that in order to justify their existence, capitalists should make profit from the production of real goods and services. These liberals think that the Democratic Party should support the development of science and research to create an easier life so that the standard of living for the American population should go up from generation to generation. These are the values of New Deal liberals. If the Democratic Party acted as if it supported these things, I could understand why liberals would say voting for the Democratic Party is the lesser of two evils. The problem is that these New Deal liberals are trapped in a 50-year time warp when the last real liberal Democratic president was Lyndon Johnson. The Democratic Party hasn’t been liberal in 50 years. This is one reason why the program of New Deal liberal Bernie Sanders had been so popular.
It does not take a Marxist to argue that the United States has been in economic decline since the mid 1970’s. It won’t do to blame the Republicans alone for this 50-year degeneration. The Democratic Party has had presidents between 1976 and 1980, in addition to eight years of Clinton, as well as eight years of Obama. They have had twenty years’ worth of chances to put into practice liberal values and they have failed miserably. Under the Democratic Party:
Please tell me in what sense is this party liberal?
The Democratic Party is not an oppositional party: the Republicans play hardball; the Democrats play badminton
It is right about this time that a liberal defending the Democratic Party would chime in and say something about the Supreme Court. The line is “If we don’t get so and so elected, then the evil right-wing judge will get appointed and Roe vs Wade will be threatened.” This line has been trotted out for the last 45 years. What it conveniently ignores is that the Democratic Party has been in power for at least 40% of the time, whether in the executive or any other branch. It has had forty years to load the Supreme Court with rabid liberals so as to bury the right-to-lifers when they had the chance. An oppositional party would have done this. The Democratic Party has not.
Trump has been on a tear destroying what was left of US international diplomatic relations put into place by Kissinger and Brzezinski. His “policies” are consistently right wing “interventions”, whether they succeed or not. At the same time, domestically Trump has been consistently right wing on every issue from public schools, to immigrants to social programs. What he has done has destabilized international and domestic relations. Conservatives have been doing this kind of thing for 50 years, but with more diplomacy. If the Democratic Party were really an oppositional party, I would expect to find liberal interventions that are roughly the reverse of what Trump and the conservatives have done. There have been no such interventions.
Examples of what an oppositional party would look like
Under an oppositional Democratic regime we would have found a normalization of trade relations with Cuba. There would be scientists and engineers sent to Haiti to build and repair roads and bridges destroyed by natural disasters. There would be normalization of relations with Venezuela and bonds built with the social democratic parties of the Latin American left. Domestically the minimum wage would be restored to at least the standard of 50 years ago. After all, statistics show “productivity” has gone up in the late 50 years. Why wouldn’t the standard of living improve? Social Security and pensions would be regularly upgraded to keep up with the cost of inflation. Bridge and road repair would have been undertaken and low-cost housing would be built. A real liberal president might be so bold as to deploy US soldiers to build them since most of them would no longer be employed overseas. They might also have put forward bills implementing a mass transit system, one that is as good as those of Europe or Japan. Has the Democratic Party done any of these things?
This is “opposition”?
Internationally the Democratic Party’s policies have been indistinguishable from the Republicans. Obama did try to normalize relations with Cuba but that was in the service of the potential for foreign investment, not out of any respect for the social project of building the socialism Cuba was engaged in. The US Democratic regimes have done nothing for Haiti. Its attitude towards the Latin American “pink tide” has been hostile while supporting neoliberal restoration whenever and wherever possible.
Domestic Democratic regimes have done nothing to stem the tide of longer work hours and marginalization of workers as well as the temporary and part-time nature of work. Social Security and pensions have not kept up with the cost of inflation. The Democratic Party has had 20 years to repair the bridges, the roads and the sewer systems and what has it done? The Democrats had 20 years to build low-cost housing and get most, if not all, the homeless off the streets. What have Democrats done? Like the Republicans, the Democrats have professed to have no money for infrastructure, low cost housing or improving mass transit. Like the Republicans they have gone along in blocking Universal Health Care that virtually every other industrialized country possesses. But just like the Republicans they suddenly have plenty of money when it comes to funding seven wars and building the prison industrial complex. Time and again Democratic politicians have ratified increasing the military budget despite the fact that it has no state enemies like the Soviet Union.
In 2008 capitalism had another one of its crisis moments. Marxists and non-Marxist economists agree that the banks were the problem. The Democrats, with that classy “first African American president” did not implement a single Keynesian intervention to reign in the banks. No banker has even gone to jail. What a real Democratic opposition would have done is to tell the banks something like, “look, the public has bailed you out this time, but in return for this collective generosity, we require that you make your profits from undertaking all the infrastructural work that needs to be done, like building a 21st century mass transit system and investing some of your profits in low cost housing.” This is what an oppositional party would do. Notice none of this has anything to do with socialism. It’s straight New Deal liberalism.
In sum, the last 45 years have you ever seen a consistent left liberal intervention by Democrats that would be the equivalent of what Trump is doing now or any conservative regime has done in the last 50 years in any of these areas? Has Carter, Clinton I or Obama done anything equivalent in their 20 years of formal power that Republicans have done in their 30 years? No, because if they ever dreamed of doing such a thing the Republicans would have them driven from office as communists. When was the last time a Democratic candidate drove a Republican from office by calling them a fascist? The truth of the matter is that the Republicans play hardball while the Democrats play badminton.
The second reason the Democratic Party is not an oppositional party is because “opposition” is a relative term. The lesser of two evils scenario works with the assumption that parties are partisan: all Republicans vote in block and all Democrats vote in block. This, however, is more the exception than the rule. Most times some Republicans support Democratic policies and most times some Democrats support Republican measures. Many Republican policies would not have been passed had the Democrats really been an oppositional party. In 2004, when Ralph Nader ran for president, he was raked over the coals for “spoiling” the elections. Yet as later research proves, more people who were registered Democrat voted for Republicans than the total number of people who voted for the Green Party.
The Democratic Party is a party of the elites
Those politicians and media critics who inhabit the nether worlds between left liberal and social democracy such as Robert Reich, Bernie Sanders, Cornell West are tenacious in their search for the “soul” of the Democratic Party. They insist on dividing Democrats into conservative and liberals. The latest version is to call right-wing Democrats “corporate” Democrats as compared to some other kind of Democrat labelled “progressive”. The implication is that it is possible not to be bought hook line and sinker by corporations if you are in the Democratic Party. I am skeptical that any person can run as a Democrat candidate win an election and not make some compromises with corporations even at a local level, I am cynical this can be done at a state or national level. Corporations are ruling class organizations and they own both parties. There is a reason why Martin Luther King, Malcolm X never joined the Democratic Party.
If the last Democratic primaries in which Clinton II was handed the nomination over Bernie Sanders was not enough to make you leave the party, the World Socialist Website published two major articles on how the CIA is running its own candidates as Democrats this year. When a world terrorist organization runs candidates under a liberal banner, isn’t that enough to convince you that the Democratic Party is a party of the elites?
Earlier I stated that the upper middle class represents the Democratic Party and the upper class and the ruling class represent the Republican Party. While each may have interclass differences it is essential for all three social classes that their struggle be seen by the 85% as something this 85% has a stake in. It is important for the ruling class and the upper class that there is a party that appears to represent the unwashed masses (the Democrats). The ruling class and the upper class need the Democratic Party even if they have differences with the upper middle class, whom the Democrats represent. They need the Democratic Party to help create the illusion that voting is an expression of democracy. But the Democratic Party has as much to do with democracy as the Republican Party has to do with republicanism.
The Democratic Party’s presence is an obstacle to building a real opposition to elites
By far the greatest reason the Democratic Party is worse than the Republican Party is the way in which the presence of the Democratic Party drains energy from developing a real opposition to the elites and the upper middle class.
The Democratic Party attacks the Green Party far more than it attacks Republicans
While the Democratic Party plays badminton with Republicans, it plays hardball with third parties, specifically the Green Party. It does everything it can to keep the Greens off the stage during the debates and makes things difficult when the Greens try to get on the ballot. After the last election, Jill Stein was accused of conspiring with the Russians to undermine the Democrats.
If the Democratic Party was a real liberal party, if it was a real opposition party, if it was a party of the “working people” rather than the elites, it would welcome the Green Party into the debates. With magnanimously liberal self-confidence it would say “the more the merrier. May all parties of the left debate.” It would welcome the Greens or any other left party to register in all 50 states and simply prove its program superior.
The wasted time, energy and loss of collective creativity of non-elites
About 10% of the 40% of working class people are in unions. Think of how much in the way of union dues, energy and time was lost over the last 50 years trying to elect Democratic candidates who did little or nothing for those same unions. All that money, energy and time could have been spent in either deepening the militancy of existing unions or organizing the other 30% of workers into unions.
Think of all untapped creative political activity of working class people who are not in unions that was wasted in being enthusiastic and fanatical about sports teams because they see no hope or interest in being part of a political community. Instead of being on talk show discussion groups on Monday morning talking about what the Broncos should have done or could have done on Sunday, think of the power they could have if instead they spent their time strategizing about how to coordinate their strike efforts.
Think of all the immigrants and refugees in this country working at skilled and semi-skilled jobs that have wasted what little time they had standing in line trying to get Democratic Party politicians elected. That time could have been spent on more “May Days Without An Immigrant” as happened thirteen years ago
Think of all the middle class African Americans whose standards of living has declined over the last 45 years who wasted their vote on Democrats and put their faith in the Black Caucus. Think of the wasted time, effort and energy of all middle class people who often actively campaign and contribute money to the Democratic Party that could have been spent on either building a real liberal party or better yet, a mass socialist party.
For many years, the false promise that the Democratic Party just might be a party of the working people has stood in the way of the largest socialist organization in the United States from building a mass working class party. Social Democrats in the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) who should have known better continue to blur the line between a real socialist like Eugene Debs and left liberals like Bernie Sanders. With 33,000 members there are still factions of DSA that will not break with the Democrats.
Are there real differences between the neoliberal Democrats and the neoconservative Republicans? Are there differences between Soros and the Koch brothers? Yes, but these differences are not, as Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Claire have said, “a dimes worth of difference”, especially compared to what the presence of the Democratic party has done for 50 years to 85% of the population. Their fake opposition has stood in the way of building a mass left political party.
The Democratic Party is a parasite on social movements
Can you remember a time when the Democratic Party had an innovative program of their own that was clearly separate from the Republicans yet distinct from any left wing social movements?
I can’t. What I have seen is a Democratic party that does nothing but sniff out the flesh and blood of social movements and vampirize them. I have no use for identity politics, but I can remember a time when the Democratic Party wanted nothing to do with it. Now it runs candidates based on identity politics. Black Lives Matter is now part of the Ford Foundation, a Democratic Party think tank. The Occupy Movement term “occupy” was taken as a name for a Facebook page sympathetic to the Democrats, Occupy Democrats, as if the Democratic Party could be occupied. The Democratic Party, which did nothing for feminism while it was attacked and marginalized by the right wing since the 1980’s, has suddenly “discovered” feminism in the Pink Pussy cats. This is an upper middle class party that sings “We Shall Overcome” fifty years too late.
What should be done?
Rather than focusing on the evil Republican Party, which makes the Democrats seem merely wishy- washy or inept, the policies of the Democratic Party should be attacked relentlessly while paying little attention to Republicans. In the election years, the Green Party should abandon its strategy of soliciting votes in “safe states”. Instead, the Greens should challenge those who claim to be “left-wing” Democrats to get out of the party as a condition for being voted for. In my opinion, there needs to be an all-out war on the Democratic Party as a necessary step to building a mass party. The goal of such a party should not be to win elections, but to use public opportunities as a platform for deepening, spreading and coordinating the commonalities of the interests of the poor, working class and middle class people.
How the Democratic Party Has Gotten Worse in the Last Five Years
On the other hand the Democratic Party has embraced New Deal liberalism in the following ways….ummm…it’s okay, I’ll wait.
• First published in Socialist Planning Beyond Capitalism
This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Bruce Lerro.
The headlines on climate catastrophes are becoming more informative as they become more ominous. For years the media headlines have been describing record floods, droughts, wildfires, heatwaves, hurricanes and other fossil-fueled disasters of an abused Mother Nature. The immediate human casualties are devastating.
Very recently, the headlines have been steering us toward what happens in the aftermath of natural disasters in afflicted regions around the world.
The Washington Post yesterday front-paged a huge headline “Climate-Linked Ills Threaten Humanity,” followed by the sub-headline: “Pakistan is the epicenter of a global wave of climate health threats.” The reporters opened their long analysis with almost biblical language: “The floods came, and then the sickness.”
The record heat wave and flooding that left one-third of Pakistan under water have unleashed “dark clouds of mosquitoes” spreading malaria. Food supplies were reduced by drenched fields unable to grow crops. The article depicted a world map with color-coded measures of dangerous heat waves. The Indian sub-continent is registered as having one of the longest annual heat-intense periods. Over 40 million Pakistanis will endure dangerous heat for over six months a year “unless they can find shade… Extreme heat, which causes heatstroke and damages the heart and kidneys” is just one consequence.
Dengue fever surged in Peru. Canadian wildfires poured smoke and particulates into the U.S. triggering asthma attacks. Famine lurks in East Africa’s worst drought in 40 years, while contaminated water takes its toll on many diseases, especially horrifying for infants and young children.
Another consequence recorded by the Post with the headline “Amid Record Heat, Even Indoor Factory Workers Enter Dangerous Terrain” in Asia. Public Citizen’s Health Research Group, led by Dr. Sidney Wolfe, was a pioneer in petitioning OSHA to issue regulations to protect workers against extreme heat. Corporate OSHA stalled. Then the Biden Administration proposed modest regulations that are facing corporate opposition and years of delay by corporate attorneys.
Until overturned by a Texas court, Governor Greg Abbott overrode some ordinances that were passed in large Texas cities requiring drinking water breaks for construction workers laboring under 100-degree temperatures.
Abbott, arguably the cruelest governor in the United States – unless Florida Governor Ron DeSantis out-snarls him – thought he could get away with this bit of brutishness. After all, he is in Texas, where the oil and gas lobby (Exxon Mobil et al.) is pushing to increase North American exploration, production, and burning of these well-documented omnicidal sources of global warming and climate violence.
The oil, gas and coal industry’s tentacles have encircled a majority of the 535 lawmakers in Congress to shield and maintain huge tax subsidies behind the industry’s lethal drive for increased production. Its marketeers see their profitable circular death dance intensify as hotter days lead to higher air conditioning loads.
Running berserk with their bulging profits, these giant energy companies worldwide are forging a suicide pact with an abused Mother Earth. The projections for what climate eruptions will do to humans and the natural world continue to be underestimated. The realities each year exceed scientists’ predictive models.
With no other driving value system than short-term profits, these artificial entities or companies, and corporations controlling different dangerous technologies, cannot be allowed equal justice under the law with real human beings driven by other far more important life-sustaining and morally enhancing values. For over 2000 years, every major religion has warned about subordination by the merchant class of civilized values. The great “soft energy” or renewable energy prophet and physicist, Amory Lovins, put this critical declaration in modern, secular language when he wrote: “Markets make good servants, but bad masters.”
Our Constitution never once mentions “corporation” or “company” – it only speaks of “We the People” and “persons.” Our national charter needs amending to deal with big corporations, which in turn requires a mass movement. Since ravaging corporations impact people with indiscriminate harm, not caring whether the victims are liberals or conservatives, the political prospect for a decisive left/right coalition is as auspicious as ever.
The pressure for such a coalition is growing daily. Insurance companies, citing climate disaster claims, are skyrocketing homeowners and auto insurance premiums, or worse, either redlining areas or altogether pulling out of some states such as Florida. Some coastal areas will soon be private insurance deserts, requiring entry by state-run insurance coverage, at least for reinsurance purposes.
Overpaid insurance company CEOs are starting to demand bailouts without even guaranteeing coverage for consumers.
Faster and faster, the second, third and fourth waves of after-effects of these man-made natural disasters will become all-enveloping punishers of societies that are failing to head off the looming dangers, now maturing into evermore desperate states of living.
On Capitol Hill, a domestically paralyzed Congress only comes together every year to hoopla its bipartisan mega-billion-dollar additions
Meanwhile, back home, tens of millions of hard-pressed American workers have given up on themselves securing a government that works for them, instead of for short-sighted, greedy corporations. These Americans continue to ignore the historically validated truth – no more than one active percent of the citizenry, representing the majority public opinion, can quickly make a large majority of those 535 Congressional Senators and Representatives fight first and foremost for the public interest.
“The Republican Party is the most dangerous organization in human history,” says Noam Chomsky. It seems like a ridiculous statement. “Has there ever been an organization in human history that is dedicated, with such commitment, to the destruction of organized human life on Earth? Not that I’m aware of.” He has a point. Even the Nazis didn’t want to destroy civilization itself; they wanted to kill millions of people and dominate civilization, not bring it to an end. The Republican Party is much more ambitious, and more nihilistic: it is the capitalist id, or rather the capitalist death instinct, adopted as the organizing principle of a vast political force. Profit over people at all costs, including acceleration of global warming—not to mention demolition of organized labor, the welfare state, the regulatory state, progressive taxation, public resources like education and transportation, and the whole legacy of the New Deal. For Republicans even more than Democrats, enslavement to the business oligarchy is the highest good.
This being the case, one might be perplexed that “postliberals” and other conservatives who pride themselves on their concern for “the common good” do not devote all their energy to defeating Republicans and organizing a popular movement for social democracy. In fact, they tend to do the opposite: they praise and endorse Republicans (especially pseudo-populists like Donald Trump, Josh Hawley, and J. D. Vance) while denouncing the “progressives” or “democratic socialists” who are struggling to build movements that will defend the common good and repair the social fabric rent by hyper-capitalism. On issue after issue, from protection of the environment to the resurrection of labor unions to the dismantling of psychopathic mass incarceration, it is organizers on the left, not the right, who are actually trying to conserve society. In this sense, it is leftists who are the true conservatives.
The political attitudes of most postliberals are approximately those manifested in Patrick Deneen’s new book Regime Change: Toward a Postliberal Future. It’s a very flawed book, as I explain in a forthcoming review. Here, I want only to note the incoherence of its political stance, which is that of right-wing postliberalism in general (as opposed to left-wing postliberalism, such as Adrian Pabst’s). As in his earlier book Why Liberalism Failed, Deneen deplores the atomization of modern society and the decline of community, stability, family, and traditional norms of social obligation. But he blames this social crisis on “liberalism,” a constellation of ideologies (some of which, historically, are mutually contradictory), rather than the material social relations of capitalism, as Marxists have done since the Communist Manifesto of 1848. In Marx’s famous words, “The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations… All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned…” Since capitalist class structures are the real basis for a way of life—an atomized, profit-obsessed, consumerist, hedonistic way of life—postliberals have gotten the very name of their philosophy wrong. It should be called postcapitalism, assuming the goal really is to create a cohesive, communal society.
What a postcapitalist world would look like is hard to imagine, but it would at least do away with the antagonistic and exploitative production relations that are ultimately responsible for the atomization postliberals lament. Ordinary people would control their work, in the form of worker cooperatives and democratic government coordination of large industry (possibly still in a market-oriented economy). The 1912 platform of Eugene Debs’ Socialist Party isn’t a bad place to start. If the notion of some degree of “government planning” seems unrealistic or tyrannical, we should remember that even today, the U.S. government engages in economic planning on a colossal scale, for instance through its subsidies to high-tech industry, its trade and tariff policies, its military procurement programs, and its regulation of all sectors of the economy. During World War II, in fact, government planning was remarkably successful, leading to full employment and setting the stage for the prosperous 1950s and 1960s. We don’t live in a true market economy.
Instead of taking their “communitarian” values to their logical, anti-capitalist conclusion, however, most postliberals remain on the level of culture, identity politics, and other half-measures. Deneen, like his co-thinkers Gladden Pappin, Chad Pecknold, Adrian Vermeule, Yoram Hazony, and others, advocates restrictions on immigration in the hope that this will somehow shore up the national community and protect wages. (He disregards the fact that the presence of undocumented immigrants and refugees stimulates the economy and creates jobs.) He argues that we have to renew the “Christian roots of our civilization” by making politics “a place for prayer” and reinfusing religion into public and private activities. Broadly, “an ennobling of our elite,” such that it is selflessly concerned with the well-being of “the people” and “work[s] to improve the[ir] lives, prospects, and fate,” will revitalize society and community. He fails to explain how such an ennobling of the ruling class can ever occur in the context of advanced capitalism, characterized by the global hegemony of unfettered greed.
In fact, Deneen even deprecates social democracy and its “progressive liberalism,” claiming without evidence that redistribution of wealth to workers has “led to extensive damage to the broader economic order.” He seems unaware that postwar social democracy, created through overwhelming pressure by unions, socialists, and communists, was the closest modern society has ever come to protecting families, communities, and social stability.
It isn’t hard to criticize the idealism, political naïveté (as if class conflict isn’t endemic to capitalism!), and historical ignorance of postliberalism. But the basic incoherence of the ideology is that its attacks on liberalism and the left, and its defense of conservatism, only serve to empower the forces most dedicated to sabotaging the very values postliberals claim to uphold, values like “national resilience,” “common purposes,” and the “social covenant.” Republicans and business reactionaries love to keep the political focus on things like the decline of religion, the ostensible immigrant invasion, and the excesses of liberal identity politics, so that they can go on smashing the working class, appropriating most of the world’s wealth, privatizing and atomizing society, and destroying the prospects for human survival. Postliberals are in danger of being useful idiots for the most insatiable sociopaths on the planet.
Will it be denied that the Republican Party is as bad as all this? Consider the evidence. Donald Trump is supposedly a populist, someone trying to turn Republicans into the party of the working class. It turns out that his administration, like all Republican administrations since Reagan’s, was utterly slavish to the most misanthropic sectors of business. His NLRB waged an “unprecedented” attack on workers’ rights. He weakened or eliminated over 125 policies that protected the country’s air, water, and land. His budgets savagely slashed benefits for low-income Americans, continuing a longstanding Republican practice. All this is the exact opposite of protecting the “common good” that postliberals say they value so much.
What about the great “populist” senators Hawley and Vance? They give, at best, tokenistic and rhetorical support to the working class: neither has even cosponsored the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, and Hawley, according to the AFL-CIO, has almost always voted against the interests of workers. Vance, a venture capitalist, finds it much more congenial to spew racist “great replacement” nonsense—an identity politics of the right—and blame those with a low income for their own failures than to actually do anything to help the latter. If this is the record of Republicans who present themselves as pro-worker, it isn’t hard to imagine how bad establishment Republicans are.
Perhaps the greatest crime of the Republican Party is that it is almost rock-solidly opposed to even the mildest proposals to address global warming, which threatens not only working people but all life on earth. The sweltering summer the world has just experienced will likely be seen as a gloriously mild one thirty years from now, when wildfires are raging everywhere, ocean levels are much higher, and whole continents are descending into chaos. The Republican plan to address the coming cataclysms is…to make them worse. Project 2025, a conservative blueprint for the next Republican president, calls for “shredding regulations to curb greenhouse gas pollution from cars, oil and gas wells and power plants, dismantling almost every clean energy program in the federal government and boosting the production of fossil fuels.” The inadequate Inflation Reduction Act, which provides $370 billion for investment in clean energy, would be repealed. Allied nations would be encouraged to use more fossil fuels, and the National Security Council would be forbidden to consider climate change worthy of discussion.
Nihilism on this scale, an explicit embrace of something close to species-suicide by a major political party, is unheard-of in history. It is collective criminal lunacy, worse than Nazism, as Chomsky rightly notes. And yet how many postliberals, how many conservative proponents of the traditional values of family, community, and morality, are strongly speaking out against it, against this brazen threat to all families, communities, and morality itself? Their priority, rather, is to denounce “critical race theory” and keep out immigrants, as if that will heal the country.
Postliberals claim to favor policies that support marriage and family, singling out for praise Hungary’s initiatives to offer paid leave for parents and financial incentives for three or more children. They also support government spending on large infrastructure projects. So why didn’t they aggressively lobby Congress to pass Biden’s original Build Back Better bill in 2021? This bill, which couldn’t pass because of Republican opposition, would have been an immense boon to working families through its investments in childcare and preschool, paid family and medical leave, community college, child tax credits, physical infrastructure, affordable housing, health care, and environmental protection. It was the most ambitious measure in generations to repair the social compact and encourage family formation. Not a single Republican supported it.
It is hard to imagine that any party has ever been more committed to destroying families than the Republican, yet the self-proclaimed defenders of family values aim their ire at Democrats. However bad Democrats are, they are the party responsible for the New Deal, for Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, for the almost-passed Build Back Better bill, for Biden’s NLRB that is as supportive of unions as Trump’s was hostile towards them. We should recognize, then, a perhaps unpalatable truth: since Republicans will never do a single thing opposed to the interests of the billionaire class, the only hope for the United States is to keep them out of power at the same time as popular movements are pushing Democrats to the left. Had the Democratic Party won a few more seats in the Senate in 2020, transformative laws on voting rights, union organizing, family welfare, and environmental protection that were passed in the House might have been enacted. It was a tragic missed opportunity, but, with the defeat of Republicans and the election of leftists, such opportunities can appear again.
Postliberals can contribute positively to politics, but only if they follow the recent example of one of their own: Sohrab Ahmari, who has written an impressive book on corporate America’s plunder of the working class, entitled Tyranny, Inc: How Private Power Crushed American Liberty—And What to Do About It. Ahmari still seems to have some illusory hope regarding the likes of Hawley, Vance, and Marco Rubio, who wouldn’t be in the Republican Party if they really wanted to help people. (Token populist moves shore up their voting base.) But at least Ahmari has apparently realized that the battle against liberal identity politics is less important than the battle for a left-wing economic agenda—and in fact that the right-wing crusade against wokeness sabotages the struggle for workers’ rights and a livable future, since it empowers Republicans.
One hopes that more postliberals will, similarly, come to their senses.
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
More than four years ago, then-President Donald Trump declared an ambitious goal that had bipartisan support: ending the HIV epidemic in the United States. Now, that Trump program is one of several health initiatives targeted for substantial cuts by members of his own party as they eye next year’s elections. Pushing a slate of conservative political priorities that also takes aim at sex education…
More than four years ago, then-President Donald Trump declared an ambitious goal that had bipartisan support: ending the HIV epidemic in the United States. Now, that Trump program is one of several health initiatives targeted for substantial cuts by members of his own party as they eye next year’s elections. Pushing a slate of conservative political priorities that also takes aim at sex education…
According to a newly unveiled memo from Michigan Republicans, workers shouldn’t be guaranteed paid leave from work to care for one’s newborn or a seriously ill family member — instead, the party says it’s akin to taking “summer break.” This week, Michigan’s Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer called on the Democratically-controlled legislature to pass guaranteed paid family and medical leave for…
Tennessee State Rep. Justin Jones decried the “authoritarianism” of House Republicans on Monday after they voted to silence him for the remainder of the day’s floor session, using newly enacted chamber rules aimed at shutting down members who are deemed out of order. The Tennessee House’s GOP supermajority barred Jones (D-52) — a member of the so-called ” Tennessee Three” — from speaking for the…
Child gun deaths hit a record high in 2021, breaking the previous record set just one year before, new research finds. A total of 4,752 children in the U.S. died gun-related deaths in 2021, a new study found using Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data. This is an 8.8 percent increase in the pediatric gun mortality rate for 2020 and a staggering 41.5 percent increase from 2018.
The Republican Party has rarely shied from testing its powers to the fullest possible extent, up to and past the point of unscrupulousness and rank hypocrisy. Defending socioeconomic hierarchy has always been its central task, but the GOP in its current incarnation can seem particularly rabid. The Trump presidency seems to have perceptibly eroded decorum and staid political procedure while at the…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
A recent campaign ad targeting West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin shows the centrist Democrat standing alongside President Biden, applauding the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act. Ominous music plays as the words, attributed to Biden, “I guarantee you we’re going to end fossil fuel” splash across the screen. The spot, from a dark money group aligned with Republicans, paints Manchin as a…
I should probably be ashamed to admit this but my favorite part of any presidential election season is the Republican primaries, especially the debates. Since Republicans rarely have an incumbent president running (they have only had three Republican presidents in the last 35 years) the primaries are usually a free-for-all that features some very eccentric fringe characters as well as the…
The Far-Right takeover of the Republican Party has readied a battle plan for 2025 that will crucify commitments to fight global heat; namely, Project 2025 / Presidential Transition Project, a 920-page formal proposal to take over and reconstruct government via abandonment and/or defunding of federal agencies that protect the nation’s health and environment.
Project 2025’s call to arms: “The long march of cultural Marxism through our institutions has come to pass. The federal government is a behemoth, weaponized against American citizens and conservative values, with freedom and liberty under siege as never before.” 1
“That ‘cultural Marxism’ is a crude slander, referring to something that does not exist, unfortunately does not mean actual people are not being set up to pay the price, as scapegoats to appease a rising sense of anger and anxiety. And for that reason, ‘cultural Marxism’ is not only a sad diversion from framing legitimate grievances but also a dangerous lure in an increasingly unhinged moment.” 2
Project 2025 wants to “save the country” by marshalling forces on “day-one” of a newly elected Republican administration, pulling the plug, deconstructing/destroying the administrative state. The Heritage Foundation, which compiled the plan, intends to speak for the people of the nation via enactment of Project 2025 hitting the ground running on the day of the swearing-in of the next Republican president, anticipated January 2025 in a hopeful repeat of the Republican idealized presidency of 1981-89 when Ronald Reagan served as “the embodiment of the ideas and principles Heritage holds dear.” 3
Heritage Foundation’s enduring influence strikes hard, but at times subtly, hidden, secretively far and wide throughout America’s political landscape, like a sponge soaking up and spewing out agenda for all of America, school boards, local, state, and federal positions of influence over lives of Americans, often times, whether they know it or not. So therefore, is Heritage positive or negative for the country? Hmm. Regardless, no other NGO’s clout compares, as Heritage buys, with hard (and dark) dollars, governmental policy as easily as shopping at Costco.
Therefore, as a result, and certainly inclusive of Heritage, America harks back to the feudal vassal socio-economic system of a 1,000 years ago, a simplistic lifestyle with the monarch providing defense for vassals that, in turn, obey the monarch’s every wish/command, rugged individualism reigns supreme, overlaying governmental functionaries not required. Grin and bear it, you’re on your own, buster!
Project 2025 has its sights set on the Biden Inflation Reduction Act with massive volleys of canon fire loaded, cocked, and directly aimed at Biden’s plans to reduce emissions and fund clean energy. “More than 350 right-wing thinkers” (hmm, really?) contributed to Project 2025 tactics designed to (1) block wind and solar power from the electrical grid (2) gut the EPA (3) eliminate the Dept. of Energy’s renewable energy offices (4) prohibit universal adoption of California’s tailpipe standards (5) transfer federal environmental duties to states (6) increase fossil fuel infrastructure.
Project 2025 is the consummate antithesis of Paris ’15, and so much more by taking a baseball bat to the federal bureaucracy and shifting very tenuous authority to individual states. In Project 2025’s own words: “If enacted, it could decimate the federal government’s climate work, stymie the transition to clean energy and shift agencies toward nurturing the fossil fuel industry rather than regulating it.” 4 Once again, repeating the obvious, it’s the primo absolute perfect antidote to Paris ’15.
Essentially, Project 2025 is a major fundamental shift in government, moving federal agencies away from public health protection and environmental regulations that interfere with free market capitalism, under a manifest plan: Why should government dictate policy to the free market? With Project 2025, this impediment of federal government regulation over free enterprise is severely reduced or removed, for example, gutting the Dept. of Energy via huge cuts in key divisions that pertain to clean renewable energy and cuts to the DOE’s Grid Development Office, stopping grid expansion of renewable resources; meanwhile, natural gas infrastructure will be expanded???
But if renewables are evil (no federal support) and natural gas is good (gobs of federal support) then where and how is a distinction drawn between governmental influence “hands on” versus “hands off” don’t tread on me? So then, is Project 2025 a case study in contradictions?
Moreover, the plan adheres to a long-standing feudalistic practice of snitching to gain favor with the mighty monarch. One proposed snitch idea offers incentives to untrained non-professional vassals that “identify scientific flaws and research misconduct.” This incentivizes opponents of governmental regulations to target research. For example, challenging EPA regulations about risks to public health from industrial pollution. Proposal 2025 will turn the screws ever harder by requiring scientific studies to be “transparent and reproducible,” making it nearly impossible to produce credible analyses of public health issues that require private data that cannot legally be disclosed to the public. Ipso facto, critical scientific studies that could/should protect the public are hog-tied and tossed into a humongous dust bin.
Already, Project 2025 is assembling thousands upon thousands of vassals that will dependably follow orders, with razor-sharp salutes, starting day-one. This is a powerful overwhelming surprising departure from the lead-up to the 2016 presidency election: “Project 2025 is not a white paper. We are not tinkering at the edges. We are writing a battle plan, and we are marshalling our forces.” 5 A battle plan including 20,000+ combatant black shirts.
In tacit support of Project 2025, GOP presidential candidates, when queried about global warming, express indifference: 6 No guts, no opinion.
While in office, Trump unwound more than 100 existing environmental regulations, setting a record for dismantling federal agencies. Project 2025 is perfectly sculpted for his return with sledgehammer in hand to pummel federal agencies with much more gusto than before!
Still, a hard question remains whether Americans will vote to goose-up global heat.
Will they?
END NOTES:
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
For years, Oregon Republicans have been blocking bill after bill in the state legislature through a drastic tactic: skipping town to break quorum. Now, Oregon officials are saying that the Republicans who have obstructed votes this way at least 10 times are going to be barred from running for re-election in 2024. This week, Oregon Secretary of State LaVonne Griffin-Valade confirmed that she…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Take your pick from two definitions of modern-day Republicans: foolish hypocrites or hypocritical fools. When it comes to America’s $32 trillion federal deficit, each one is as fitting as the other. They’re hypocrites for saying one thing and doing another. They’re fools because the actions they take are driving the deficit ever higher.
Let’s listen to the words Republicans mouth. Let’s look at the laws they pass and propose. Let’s zero in on their special ways of spending—and spurning—tax dollars.
Off we go, into a world of debt created by the party that claims to be concerned about debt.
Just a couple months back, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and the GOP created a debt ceiling crisis. McCarthy and President Biden ultimately forged an agreement to avoid a U.S. default, but it didn’t impress Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis. “After this deal,” DeSantis warned, “our country will still be careening toward bankruptcy.”
Not two weeks later, the GOP-led House was doing everything it could to turn DeSantis into a prophet. With classic hypocrisy, it “released a plan that would slash taxes for corporations and the wealthy” and cost the government $240 billion over the next decade. With classic foolishness, it went all out to cut double-digit billions from Biden’s long-term funding for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Altogether, via three separate cuts, the GOP proposed slashing more than $21 billion from the IRS allocation.
Surprise, surprise: Short-changing America’s tax collection agency won’t save a penny. In fact, it’ll likely cost about $120 billion.
It’s simple arithmetic: In fiscal 2022, “the IRS collected $72.4 billion through enforcement programs, a return on investment (ROI) of about $6 to $1.” The real ROI is almost certain to be greater, since the $6 to $1 ratio doesn’t include the deterrence effect—the additional billions that come in because audit-fearing taxpayers file more honest returns.
Republicans actually delight in starving the IRS. Here’s Rep. Dave Joyce, an Ohio representative, making GOP happy talk a while back: “I know that when we were in the majority [from 2010 – 2018]…we took great pleasure in cutting the amount of money that was going to the IRS every year.”
They’re in the majority again, taking great pleasure again, and their foolishness has become more costly than ever. A new paper by tax experts and former Treasury officials Natasha Sarin and Mark J. Mazur addressed the ever-higher costs and what keeps pushing them up.
As the authors point out, “about 15% of the taxes that are owed are not voluntarily remitted and ultimately not collected.” That’s led to an annual tax gap of $600 billion—a gap that directly reflects the gutting of IRS budgets. Audit rates have been declining every year since 2010, the agency is operating with 22 percent fewer people, and it’s been forced to stick with outmoded systems and equipment.
It’s plain common sense that more money for the IRS can cut that $600 billion gap. It’s especially true when the audits focus on high-income taxpayers.
The agency’s return of $6 for every $1 spent, cited earlier, was an overall figure. According to a study published just last month, “an additional $1 spent auditing taxpayers above the 90th percentile [i.e., the top 10 percent] yields more than $12 in revenue.” Audits of high-income taxpayers do cost more money, “but the additional revenue more than offsets the costs.”
The 12:1 return includes the deterrence effect, and it’s humongous: deterrence raises an estimated three times as much revenue from high-income taxpayers as the initial audits.
Getting back to the federal deficit, the GOP is far from alone in its hawkishness. The latest long-term projections from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) “reveal deep structural problems… that will keep the debt on an unsustainable path and diminish the opportunities and choices of future generations.”
Republicans, though, are in a class all by themselves at minimizing federal revenues. They expand the deficit by penny-pinching the IRS. They cost the Treasury trillions with tax cuts for people who don’t need them. They resist and vote down every Democratic effort to make the rich pay “their fair share”.
All of which makes them hypocritical fools or foolish hypocrites: take your pick.
Addendum: Newly-released figures underscore the folly of playing politics with IRS budgets. The agency collected $38 million in unpaid taxes from certain high-income taxpayers in the past few months, an average of roughly $215,000 per case. The revenue came in through an initiative paid for with the first infusion of new agency funding. “It just shows you,” said IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel, “how much money is out there in delinquent taxes.”
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
Four years ago, a gunman drove across Texas and committed a racist massacre at a Walmart in El Paso to thwart what he claimed was a “Hispanic invasion.” Now, an advocacy group launched by former Vice President Mike Pence to support his floundering presidential campaign is setting off alarm bells. The first point on the Pence group’s immigration policy platform? Direct Congress to pass legislation…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.