California Free Press

Off the Top of My Head

The Biden Plan for Senior Citizens

by John Lawrence, October 30, 2020

Joe Biden realizes that senior citizens are being underserved by social security. Many are receiving less in social security payments than what is considered necessary to be above the poverty line. One in four Americans rely on Social Security for all, or almost all, of their income. The Biden plan will "Implement a true minimum benefit for lifelong workers. No one who has worked for decades and paid into Social Security should have to spend their retirement in poverty. The Biden Plan will revolutionize the Social Security’s minimum benefit, which has deteriorated over time to the point of being entirely ineffective. Under the Biden Plan, workers who spent 30 years working will get a benefit of at least 125% of the poverty level." Additionally, the oldest Americans, those who have been receiving social security for 20 years will get an additional benefit. Right now some social security recipients are receiving as little as $500. a month after they pay the rising Medicare Part B premiums. That means they are in the homeless income range.

Republicans have been whittling down social security payments for years. The COLAs for social security have been going up slower than the rising premiums for Medicare Part B. I wrote this previously: "In 2016 I received a monthly social security benefit of $735.90. My Medicare monthly premium was $104.90. So the amount that the Social Security Administration deposited in my checking account each month was $631. Now despite the fact that I'm still working and paid $430. self employment tax in 2017, which should have given me an increase in my monthly social security check because the amount you get depends on the total amount paid in and I'm still paying in, the amount deposited in my account each month has gone down to $618. How could this be possible, you might ask? The answer is simple. I was given a paltry $1 a month increase in social security based on the fact that I paid $430 into it so the government made $418 off me in self employment tax for 2017. However, my monthly Medicare premium went up to $134. So my Medicare premiums are going up much more than the paltry amounts the government thinks I should get because I'm still working and paying into social security. In short I'm getting ripped off as an elderly person who still works."

So Joe Biden's plan makes the minimum social security payment 125% of the poverty level which is $12,760 for a single person. That means the minimum payment would be $15,950 a year or $1329.17 a month. This would more than double my current monthly payment. However, is this before or after they take out for Medicare Part B? Also The Biden Plan will provide the oldest beneficiaries – those who have been receiving retirement benefits for at least 20 years – with a higher monthly check to help protect retirees from the pain of dwindling retirement savings. I thought a previous version of Biden's website specified how much this amount would be. The current website doesn't. The bottom line is that older Americans should be provided with enough money to sustain themselves even if it is means tested. Many older Americans including myself have other income, but a lot have only social security and that's it. For them $1300. a month is not enough to live on with rents being as much as $1000. a month. At any rate Joe Biden wants to increase social security payouts to older Americans especially the oldest older Americans. That is a good thing.

Off the Top of My Head

Raising Taxes on Those Making More Than $400,000 While Lowering Them on Everybody Else - What a Novel Concept!

by John Lawrence, October 28, 2020

Politicians have been stuck for centuries in the mind set that you either have to raise taxes on everyone or lower them on everyone. Republicans have taken advantage of this by lowering taxes significantly more on the rich while giving the middle class a pittance of a tax break. Let's face it: this is the only arrow in Republicans' quiver! Now Democrats are finally getting smart. Joe Biden will raise taxes on the rich while keeping them the same on everybody else. This means that whatever break everyone making less than $400,000 got from the Trump tax breaks will remain in effect. Joe should have gone even further and lowered taxes on everyone making less than $400,000 while raising them on everyone making more than $400,000. Trump added a trillion dollars to the deficit with his tax cuts. Since then trillions more have been added to the deficit with coronavirus relief packages. But as we know from Modern Monetary Theory and from the Federal Reserve's own recent examples of Quantitative Easing, Deficits Don't Matter. They don't matter because the US dollar is a sovereign currency. The Fed can print money any time it wants. It's not a good idea to use this facility frivolously, but money is always available which should only be used for a good cause.

This makes the old antagonisms between "tax and spenders" and "deficit hawks" moot. There is no need to tax in order to spend. The need to tax at this point is only the need to address income and wealth inequality. Spending is not dependent on taxation and there is an almost limitless amount of money available. The old concepts of Left and Right, of Liberal and Conservative can be relegated to the scrapheap of history. The only political spectrum that makes any sense at this point is the one between progressives and regressives. For instance, there are those (like Trump) who want to preserve the fossil fuel industry even though we know the fossil fuel industry is destroying the planet. These guys I would call regressives. Then there are those (like Joe Biden) who want to phase out the fossil fuel industry while replacing it with renewable energy. These guys I would call progressives. Regressives want to preserve the status quo because their financial interests are with the status quo. Progressives want to replace jobs in the fossil fuel industry with jobs in the renewable energy industry.

Financial interests wedded to the fossil fuel industry will lose money, no doubt. However, investors are already divesting from fossil fuels and investing in renewables. The smart money is getting ahead of the inevitable curve in the knowledge that the fossil fuel industry is already on the way out due to the fact that renewables are already cheaper than fossil fuels. Progressives would hurry this process along in the knowledge that planet earth is not waiting for humans to sort this process out. Mother Earth has its own timeline, and will bring about change in the planet's ecosystem in a destructive way if humans cannot get their act together and stop emitting greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. We don't want to become another planet Venus where greenhouse gasses elevate the surface temperature to 900 degrees F.

Hopefully, in a few days the Trump era will be over, and we can get down to work rebuilding infrastructure, which Trump promised to do and then never did, while at the same time creating green infrastructure while at the same time creating good paying jobs. This is essentially what Joe Biden has promised to do. In order to do it, they need a Democratic Senate as well as a Democratic House. They also need to get rid of the filibuster rule as, if there is even one Republican in the Senate, he or she will torpedo every progressive act of legislation using the filibuster. I think this time Democrats will go for broke as Republicans have done for years using every bit of power available to them. Democrats should do the same and not let what happened to Obama, who was essentially neutered by the Republican filibuster, happen to them. Republicans will try to throw every roadblock in the way of Democrats' progressive legislation so those potential roadblocks have to be systematically removed or a Democratic administration will get nothing done.

Of course Republicans will take every legislative act to the Supreme Court in the hopes that a conservative court will squelch it there. That's why a Democratic administration should consider packing the court. Joe Biden would have been within his rights to say he wouldn't do it and then to go ahead and do it since Republicans swore up and down that in an election year the next President should fill a Supreme Court vacancy, and then totally did the opposite when it was in their interests to do so. But Joe is a more honorable man than Lindsay Graham and the other Republicans who put Amy Coney Barrett on the court at the last minute while saying they would never do such a thing. Instead Joe finally came up with a reasonable answer to the question demand "Would you pack the Court?". A bipartisan panel. Hmmm.

"Socialism" is the Slur du Jour

by Frank Thomas

 

I fully agree there's a dire need for an intelligent Democratic counter strategy, Jerry, to the non-sensical lashing out of  the label "socialism" by the right and its standard barrage of ad hominem one-liners. This labeling often reaches a desperate, severely insulting, even vitriolic level, e.g., calling Obama a fascist, and a socialist, and a communist - calling his health care plans a massive leap into central government planning and control. The right has become politically powerfully adept resorting consistently to attack ad hominems like, "socialism and socialistic," or  "any form of socialism leads to Big Brother government control and loss of freedoms."  Another example is Wayne LaPierre's (chairman of the NRA lobby syndicate) response to a public call for prompt, concrete, strict gun restrictions: "Socialists, in typical European style, want to take away our God given freedoms, the next one the right to own a firearm." Then he warns us, "You must be afraid." 

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"Socialism" is the slur du jour ad hominem of the conservative right to denigrate, demean, distort, deflect, demonize liberals and ideas the right disagrees with. We have a long history of lumping "socialism" with almost all things "liberal." Today for many, the label continues to serve as an effective, if cynical sledgehammer against civil, rational, constructive give-and-take policy decision-making. Now Trump is becoming the new master socialist-accuser by tweet. The conservative right's long standing traditional fear is that America will turn into a decadent, socialistic age-old Europe. Thus, given our nation's long history of anti-socialist sentiments, it's good conservative strategy, e.g., to associate universal health care with "socialism." This applies to most government interventions. So Medicare and Medicaid are carrying us into the abyss of run-away socialism as is happening in Canada and Europe - so goes the ideological rant! American conservatives hold this philosophy sacrosanct for most government interventions while the 2009 great financial meltdown crisis of all crises showed once again how laissez faire capitalism is prone to extremely dangerous, costly market failures - given pure capitalism's natural inclination of blatant abuses and concentration of money in fewer and fewer hands. And this leads to a concentration of power. 

 

Since the New Deal, ideological battle lines over socialist or governmental intrusions into American lives have increased. For conservatives the political cry is liberty through capitalism and free markets. For liberals the political cry is equality through equal opportunity, government oversight, and social responsibility. Both liberty and equality have made great contributions to our nation since its founding. As I've said in previous writings, it's all about getting the right balance between capitalistic and social elements that fit a particular culture.  In Europe, the  political norm is that, "Whatever promotes the general welfare will also promote personal happiness and motivation as well as economic progress." This contrasts with the U.S. indoctrinated conservative norm starting in 1980 that , "Whatever promotes the corporate and individual welfare promotes the general welfare."  

 

The reality is that democracy needs a healthy balance and tension between these two elements to survive. Looking way back, it seems a miracle that at the high point in our cold war with Russia, a limited form of socialized medicine - Medicare - passed Congress and resistance by the insurance industry and the American Medical Association. Those forces now have teams of lobbyists influencing every key (and bought) Congressman in the policy-making process. The ordinary American ends up in effect having: no right to life if an insurance firm can deny one's coverage because of a prior illness history or inability to pay; no right to elect his or her leaders if a fair election or governing process is unjustly compromised or corrupted; no right to an equitable income if tax cut programs are designed to overwhelmingly favor the upper social class with the greater material influence.   

 

The European Way sorts out conflicting and competing interests behind capitalism's tremendous wealth creating capacity so that income and social benefits are broadly and fairly shared. Europe's  social democracies and market economies embrace the principles of both pursuing a free market and serving humanity. As one researcher explained, social democracy is all about a healthy, well-managed, thriving public system in education, health care, transportation, clean environment, child care, libraries, parks. It's all about government programs and blends of policy in concert with a competitive capitalistic dynamic that improve (or do not improve) the conditions of people's lives. In Europe, It's in general a very self-critical, exceptionally transparent process supported in most countries by multi-party systems and coalition governance where constructive compromise is a sine qua non. But the American conservative right disingenuously derides Europe's social-economic democratic model with the idiotic ad hominem one-liner it's essentially a welfare state. A better one-liner is workforce state. 

 

Meaning all social networks operate as part of a comprehensive system of institutions and policy decision-making that's geared towards keeping individuals and families healthy, productive, free working individuals to insure a vibrant, sustainable economy. This approach was originally conceived as a security revolution, NOT a socialist revolution by the conservative politicians - Churchill, Monnet, Adennauer, Schuman. In the words of Monnet, "Europe  will be attained by concrete achievements generating an active community of interest." The result since 1950?  There are as many if not more European Fortune 500 companies than U.S. China or Japan. The Netherlands, for example, is a small land one-half my state of Maine with nearly 18 million people with some very reputable, innovative world firms including Unilever, Phillips, Royal Dutch Shell, Heineken, KLM, DSM, ASML.   

 

Europeans in general don't see their unique form of hybrid capitalism with its high degree of economic freedom AND socialist elements as a conflicting societal norm ... but rather as a mutually reinforcing norm for improving the lot of ALL citizens. The developed economies of mature European countries are in essence "hybrids" that are constantly being refined. The private management is capitalistic while being the home also of public oversight and social institutions, providing strong job protections, well-trained labor markets and centralized unions, affordable quality health care and good coverage, relatively low-cost trade schools and colleges. Success has NOT been achieved by being more Right or more Left, by being more Capitalistic or more Socialistic. Labeling people, policies, programs socialistic and capitalistic as a discussion norm is seldom if ever done to evoke emotional reactions or to make prejudgements or charges that distort reality. The degree to which American conservatives automatically invoke the frightful specter of "socialism" serves no constructive purpose in advancing inclusive, creative, balanced, policy discussions and actions in Europe within multi-party and coalition governing systems. 

 

Here are a few words on "socialism" in 2009 by Jefferson Cowie and Nick Salvatore, American History Professors, Cornell University  

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"When socialism can be used interchangeably with fascism - as it often is in the heat of contemporary political debate - Americans 

are playing with historical fires they do not understand. America has not had a politically meaningful socialist movement since that 

of Eugene Debs early in the last century. The Soviet Union has perished, the Berlin Wall has fallen, and capitalistic China is our 

No. 1 industrial competitor. Against such a political landscape, what meaning could socialism have even as an epithet?

 

Those who hurl the "s-word" misunderstand the role of the state in American history. While they accurately point to the enormous 

growth in government since the Civil War and claim that it has stripped Americans of their individualism and self-reliance, the focus 

of the state's activities has been subsidizing and promoting "private" enterprise. Government growth promoted by Gilded Age 

Republicans, New Deal Age Democrats, and Reagan revolutionaries has been one of the most enduring constants in American 

history. Despite regular election cycle pleas to shrink the size of government, a unifying theme of political experience has been the 

government's growing intervention in the market on behalf of the business community.

 

For an exceptional few decades, however, things were different. Sparked by the Great Depression and the rise of the New Deal, the 

government expanded its responsibilities to include working people as well as business. It was not accidental that between 1945 and 

1972, while business grew drastically, income inequality declined significantly for Americans while posing no threat to the nation's 

wealthiest. Nor was it accidental that in the decades of growth since the early 1970s, a reversion to uniformly pro-business policies

promoted a significant rise in income inequality with the top 1% of all incomes enjoying the largest percentiles of growth. This too is

partly a direct result of government's beneficience to the private sector (business).  

 

The issue, therefore, is not government intervention, yes or no; rather it is on behalf of whose interests government intervenes. When

the government assists business by bailing out the financial markets - as it often should - it is called supporting the market. When 

government helps regular folks, as with health care reform, it stirs fears of something called "socialism."

 

Republican Theodore Roosevelt understood the central role of property for American individualism and citizenship - much like those 

who wield the fear-laden charge of "socialism" today. But, he argued in 1910, when human rights are in conflict with property rights,

"human rights must have the upper hand, for property belongs to man and not man to property." Some today would call this "socialism." 

My summary one-liner advice to Democrats: they should stop hiding and running from the words "socialism" and "socialistic." They should make the policy blend of social welfare and capitalism their way to  best achieve a humanly, democratically and financially sound, just, equitable, social-economic-political environment. They should talk up the good parts of it, take the heat when necessary and be transparently on the offensive for ALL Americans every day - especially for the bottom 90% to counter our movement into autocracy.

Off the Top of My Head

Conservatives Argue That Phasing Out Fossil Fuels is Socialism. They Argue That Saving the Planet from Global Warming is Socialism. They Argue That Universal Health Coverage is Socialism. I Say Bring It On!

by John Lawrence, October 27, 2020

So anything that would benefit the people as a whole or the planet is socialism. Creating jobs by a government sponsored infrastructure program is socialism. Yet private enterprise has not built any infrastructure. It won't do so unless the money is provided by the government. Rebuilding roads and bridges is not something private enterprise is equipped to do. If it was, they'd build roads and bridges and then charge tolls to recoup their investment. Private enterprise is good at inventing things and starting entrepreneurial enterprises, but not large picture enterprises which are properly the domain of government or require government cooperation with the private sector. A government that makes sure that everyone has health care complements private enterprise. They want healthy workers after all. Private enterprise benefits from safe roads, tunnels and bridges more so than does the average citizen. They use infrastructure in the conduct of their business.

President Reagan declared that “government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem.” Yeah, it's the problem when it doesn't do its proper job. It's the problem when President Trump doesn't take any responsibility for the pandemic or attempts to do anything about it. Reagan also said that the nine most terrifying words in the English language were, "I'm from the government, and I'm here to help." Really? We could use a little help from the government in the midst of a pandemic. The private enterprise system is doing its part inventing a vaccine, but they're doing it with the help of government money. Pfizer got $1.95 Billion to produce a coronavirus vaccine by the end of the year. Johnson & Johnson got a billion dollars. Without government being "here to help" there would be no vaccine on the horizon. Private enterprise would not take that money out of its own research budget especially if it didn't figure to make a profit selling the vaccine.

So socialism will be responsible for developing a coronavirus vaccine and eventually ending the pandemic. It will be done with the "government help" that Ronald Reagan thought was so terrifying. The problem is that we have socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor. The rich spend tons of money lobbying Congress to pass legislation in their favor. In a truly free market they wouldn't be spending money making sure government was doing their bidding in their interests. They would be spending money on research, development and promoting their products. Rich people don't want government so small that they can "drown it in the bathtub" as Republican lobbyist Grover Norquist said. No, they are manipulating government everyday to get government just the right size to suit their financial interests. Defense contractors lobby to get the government to spend more money on the military-industrial complex. Pharmaceutical corporations lobby to get government not to allow Medicare to negotiate with them for lower drug prices. This is something Joe Biden said he would do: allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices with Big Pharma.

Most civilized nations have universal health care. The US is the only outlier. Most civilized countries want to do something about global warming. The US under Trump is the outlier. Most civilized countries have a social safety net so that people don't suffer needlessly. At the same time most countries facilitate a partnership between government and private enterprise that works for entrepreneurs and business people and the citizenry as a whole, in partnership and cooperation. There is a balance between capitalism and socialism that works for the benefit of all the people. That's what makes for a successful nation. Right now this is very out of whack in the US. A bloated military has wasted trillions of dollars on disastrous wars that have made the nation less safe. And yet the military was absolutely impotent to do anything about COVID-19. The money would have been better spent strengthening our knowledge and preparations for a pandemic and for better health among Americans so that they don't have so many underlying conditions that have led to more deaths from the coronavirus.

As jobs are being destroyed by automation, robotization and AI, it's imperative that jobs be created addressing the needs of infrastructure and the need for renewable energy. This endeavor can be in part a joint mission for both government and private enterprise, but without government's input the nation will keep on spewing fossil fuel emissions into the atmosphere because that's what's in the interests of existing corporations. That dynamic needs to change and government has to be instrumental in bringing about that change. That's why it's important to elect Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Many vested interests will continue making money by polluting and emitting greenhouse gasses unless government changes the dynamics of energy production. This means countering the demand of lobbyists and putting government in a direction that benefits the people as a whole and not just special interests.

VOTE!

 

 

How to Reverse the GOP’s Power Grab

by Robert Reich

Sunday, October 25, 2020

Barring a miracle, Amy Coney Barrett will be confirmed on Monday as the ninth justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. 

This is a travesty of democracy.

The vote on Barrett’s confirmation will occur just eight days before Election Day. By contrast, the Senate didn’t even hold a hearing on Barack Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland, who Obama nominated almost a year before the end of his term. Majority leader Mitch McConnell argued at the time that any vote should wait “until we have a new president.”

Barrett was nominated by a president who lost the popular vote by nearly 3 million ballots, and who was impeached by the House of Representatives. When Barrett joins the court, five of the nine justices will have been appointed by presidents who lost the popular vote.

The Republican senators who will vote for her represent 15 million fewer Americans than their Democratic colleagues.

Once on the high court, Barrett will join 5 other reactionaries who together will be able to declare laws unconstitutional, for perhaps a generation.

Barrett’s confirmation is the culmination of years in which a shrinking and increasingly conservative, rural, and white segment of the U.S. population has been imposing its will on the rest of America. They’ve been bankrolled by big business, seeking lower taxes and fewer regulations.

In the event Joe Biden becomes president on January 20 and both houses of Congress come under control of the Democrats, they can reverse this power grab. It may be the last chance – both for the Democrats and, more importantly, for American democracy.

How?

For starters, increase the size of the Supreme Court. The Constitution says nothing about the number of justices. The court changed size seven times in its first 80 years, from as few as five justices under John Adams to ten under Abraham Lincoln.

Biden says if elected he’ll create a bipartisan commission to study a possible court overhaul “because it’s getting out of whack.” That’s fine, but he’ll need to move quickly. The window of opportunity could close by the 2022 midterm elections.

Second, abolish the Senate filibuster. Under current rules, 60 votes are needed to enact legislation in that chamber. This means that if Democrats win a bare majority there, Republicans could block any new legislation Biden hopes to pass.

The filibuster could be ended with a rule change requiring a mere 51 votes. There’s growing support among Democrats for doing this if they gain that many seats. During the campaign, Biden acknowledged that the filibuster has become a negative force in government.

The filibuster is not in the Constitution, either.

The most ambitious structural reform would be to rebalance the Senate, and thereby the Electoral College. 

For decades, rural states have been emptying as the U.S. population has shifted to vast megalopolises. The result is a growing disparity in representation, especially of nonwhite voters.

For example, both California, with a population of 40 million, and Wyoming, whose population is 579,000, get two senators. If population trends continue, by 2040 some 40 percent of Americans will live in just five states, and half of America will be represented by 18 Senators, the other half by 82.

This distortion also skews the Electoral College, because each state’s number of electors equals its total of senators and representatives. Hence, the recent presidents who have lost the popular vote.  

This growing imbalance can be remedied by creating more states representing a larger majority of Americans. At the least, statehood should be granted to Washington, D.C. And given that 1 out of 8 Americans now lives in California – whose economy, if it were a separate country, would be the ninth largest in the world – why not split it into a North and South California?

The Constitution is also silent on the number of states.

Those who recoil from structural reforms such as the three I’ve outlined warn that Republicans will retaliate when they return to power.

That’s rubbish. Republicans have already altered the ground rules. In 2016, they failed to win a majority of votes cast for the House, Senate, or the presidency, yet secured control over all three.

Barrett’s ascent is the latest illustration of how grotesque the Republican power grab has become, and how it continues to entrench itself ever more deeply. If not reversed soon, it will be impossible to remedy.

What’s at stake is not partisan politics. It is representative government. If Democrats get the opportunity, they must redress this growing imbalance – for the sake of democracy.  

Consciousness is a Continuum

Dear friends,

Good old Marcus Aurelius with his stoicism. He often has just the right advice for us when we may be floundering a bit.  He said to do what is in front of you and to do it “as if it were the last thing you would ever do.”  Now, if we want to combine that with the wisdom of the Buddhists, we might add “because the way you do the last thing you do is the consciousness you will take with you into the next incarnation.”  I think the point Aurelius was making is that we do not have all the time in the world to get it right. He is encouraging us to be here now and to not wait to be happy, useful, kind and in love with things as they are.

Consciousness is a continuum.  It flows forward, like everything does. When I was teaching classes in New Thought spirituality, I would use the analogy of the cowboy hero in old westerns.  He would do what he came to do in the little town needing help, then we would mount his horse and ride out and he would ride into the next town on the same horse!

Nothing changes until we adopt some new ideas and act on them.  Do it now and do it in the consciousness of gratitude.  That is the best way to build a future, wherever that may be.

Stay tuned in,

Carol Carnes www.carol-carnes.com

Off the Top of My Head

The Future of Jobs

by John Lawrence, October 26, 2020

Any job done in a factory will be robotized. But when you call a plumber, they will not send a robot out to your house. That's a job that will be have to be done by a human being. Same for an installer whether it be solar panels or an electrician. Any job required for a household cannot be robotized. You're not going to greet a robot at the door. Any job that does not involve routine, repetitive movements at one location will probably never be robotized. Th robots must be firmly rooted on the factory floor.

Teachers will probably never be replaced by robots although some teaching materials can be filmed and put online. Doctors, nurses and caregivers will never be replaced by robots. Any job which requires a multiplicity of different movements combined with empathy for another human being cannot be entirely robotized. Entertainers and sports players will probably always be with us. You don't want to watch a bunch of robots play football, do you? Lawyers and judges will necessarily have to be human beings and not robots. Anything that requires negotiation and coordination will have to have a human not a robot involved. In fact robots are basically only good for taking manufacturing jobs away from humans. And driving jobs which involve mostly repetitive, routine movements. Driverless 18-wheelers are already on the road. Delivery drivers will probably be replaced by drones.

Psychiatrists and psychologists will of course have to be human beings. A robot cannot understand your emotions. Janitors and maids will also have to be humans. A robot cannot make a bed. Musicians, writers and artists - anything that requires human creativity can't be automated. As well, research will always require human beings although robots and Artificial Intelligence can help to do the job, but they shouldn't be making final decisions. Installation of solar and wind farms, installation of green technology upgrading of infrastructure all require a lot of human jobs. This is why a Green New Deal or Biden's New Deal is very important for the creation of jobs. There is no lack of work that needs to be done to bring the US into the 21st century and put the US on a par with other countries that are developing infrastructure rapidly. Wind and solar technicians are the jobs forecast to grow in the immediate future. Also nurses and physical and occupational therapists.

Robots will never replace most jobs that require a specific combination of rational thinking, common sense, flexibility, manual dexterity, worldly and special knowledge, empathy, and communication skills And people prefer and trust humans over machines for all jobs which require judgment, decision-making and, complex reasoning. Because no machine can replace a REAL HUMAN, any job that requires the human heart and brain will NEVER be fully automated.

The most vulnerable jobs are low-skill positions in very structured and predictable settings, such as heavy-machinery operations and fast-food work. Significant parts of white-collar jobs that involve collecting and processing information — paralegal work, accounting and mortgage origination, for example — are also likely to be automated. “The jobs that will go away are the jobs that are routine in nature,” said Joseph B. Fuller, professor of management practice at Harvard Business School. Jobs that don’t require much deviation from a central task, he noted, are the easiest to describe in an algorithm and thus prime candidates for automation.

This is why it's important to elect Joe Biden not just to create the middle class jobs but to make sure the jobs of caregiver and janitor receive a living wage. If we can harness all of our energy and talents, and unmatchable American innovation, we can turn this threat [of global warming] into an opportunity to revitalize the U.S. energy sector and boost growth economy-wide. We can create new industries that reinvigorate our manufacturing and create high-quality, middle-class jobs in cities and towns across the United States. We can lead America to become the world’s clean energy superpower. We can export our clean-energy technology across the globe and create high-quality, middle-class jobs here at home. Getting to a 100% clean energy economy is not only an obligation, it’s an opportunity. We should fully adopt a clean energy future, not just for all of us today, but for our children and grandchildren, so their tomorrow is healthier, safer, and more just.

HISTORICAL COMPOSITION OF WHITE, RACIAL, ETHNIC VOTING TRENDS AND 2020 ELECTION TURNOUT FORECAST

by Frank Thomas

Data below will give some "big picture insights" into VOTER TURNOUT in U.S. Presidential Elections and Changing Racial and Ethnic VOTER Mix.

In 2016, there were about 245.5 million of the voting age population of ages 18 and older. Turnout is usually calculated based on estimated voting-age population which was 137.5 million for a 55.7% turnout in the 2016 presidential election. However, political scientists define voter turnout as a share of the voting-eligible citizens after subtracting non-citizens, ineligible felons from the voting-age population and adding eligible overseas voters. This calculation approach gave a 2016 total U.S. turnout result of about 60% in the presidential election of 2016.

That result compared to 70% for the U.S. voting age citizens registered in 2016 - versus 91% in Canada (2015), 96% in UK (2017), 97% in Sweden (2017). Registered voters clearly represent a much smaller share of potential voters in the U.S. than just about any other OECD country. Millions of Americans are not registered millions are registered but do not vote.

CHART I. PEW U.S. TURNOUT DATA BY AGE GROUP – PAST PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS

AGE GROUP            2000            2004           2008           2012            2016

18 - 29                        40.3%         49.0%          51.1%         45.0%         46.1%

30 - 44                        58.5%         62.4%          61.8%         59.5%         58.7%

45 - 64                        67.8%         70.4%          69.2%         67.9%         66.6%

65 and Older             69.6%          71.0%         70.3%          72.0%        70.9%

2016 Actual Turnout = 60%

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Frank Thomas:  2020 WEIGHTED FORECAST OF TOTAL VOTER TURNOUT 

2020 Turnout %     Share of Total Registered Voters  2020 Forecast Voter Turnout

53.0%              x                20%                   =                    10.6% )

64.6%              x                25%                   =                    16.2% ) Weighted

71.9%              x                31%                   =                    22.3% ) Averages

74.4%              x                24%                   =                    17.9% )

  100%                                         67% = 2020 Total Turnout

The 67% FORECAST TOTAL VOTER TURNOUT % for the Nov. 3, 2020 presidential election may well be on the low side and could reach the 70% range! Americans are well aware this is perhaps one of the most important, if not the most important, presidential election in the history of our country. They are very likely coming out in record numbers not seen since WWII.

SOURCE: CHARTS I-IV - PEW Research Center - "The Changing Racial and Ethnic Composition of U.S. Electorate," by Ruth Igienik and Abby Budiman.

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CHART II. U.S. ELIGIBLE VOTERS BY RACE & ETHNICITY

                2000     2010     2018     Eligible Citizen Voter Population     TOTAL 2000-2018     Increase % of Total Increase

WHITE      67%      72%     76%                    157.5 Mil.                                  9.8 Mil.                                    24%

HISPANIC 7%       10%      13%                     29.8 Mil.                                   15.5 Mil.                                  39%

BLACK     12%      12%     13%                     29.2 Mil.                                    6.8 Mil.                                   17%

ASIAN      2%         4%        4%                     10.3 Mil.                                    5.7 Mil.                                   14%

OTHERS  2%         2%        3%                       6.8 Mil.                                    2.4 Mil.                                     6%

TOTAL INCREASE 40.3 Million 100%

The strong 24% increase in White voters is largely due to the sharp increase in women voters who will vote mainly for Joe Biden for president. Same applies to a strong 39% increase in Hispanic voters and high 31% increase in Black and Asian voters who will also vote mainly for Joe Biden. In short, these Race & Ethnicity voter trends benefit the Democrats in coming November 3 elections.

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CHART III. HIGH VOTER TURNOUT OF WHITE AND BLACK IN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS Percentage of Eligible Voters Who Say They Voted in 2016 - 2020 % Forecast of Voter Turnout

                      2000         2004         2008         2012         2016          NOTE: 2020 F. Thomas Forecast

WHITE          62%           67%           66%         64%         65%                 68%

HISPANIC    45%            47%           50%         48%         48%                 54%

BLACK        57%             60%           65%         67%         60%                71%

ASIAN         43%             44%            47%         47%        49%                 55% ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

CHART IV. ALL RACIAL & ETHNIC VOTER GROUPS FAVOR DEMOCRATS, EXCEPT WHITES

                                 2018/2019                                 1994                             NOTE: 2020 F. Thomas Forecast

                           Democrat Republican           Democrat Republican               Democrat Republican

WHITE                    42%       53%                      39%           51%                           46%       51%

HISPANIC               63%           29%                       57%           29%                           66%       31%

BLACK                   83%           10%                        81%          11%                           84%        11%

ASIAN                    72%           17%                        53%           33%                          75%          19%

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These Racial and Ethnic data trends strengthen the Democrat Voter Turnout much more than they do the Republican Party Voter Turnout base. The White Voter Group is the one notable exception, but current polls show this that this voter group is becoming more equally divided between both parties. This is in no small part due to the powerful Black, Hispanic, Asian Voter Groups, Young and Older Age Groups as well as the fast growing White Woman Voter sector.

These groups have always usually voted mainly for the Democrat Party. The extraordinary social-economic culturally polarized Mess our nation is in on many fronts has Americans coming out now in record droves to vote for MAJOR changes and improvements in our political leadership that will benefit ALL citizens - especially the well-being of the grossly marginalized Average Joe Doe now making up 90% of our working population.

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ADDED EXPLANATION OF HISTORICAL OF WHITE, RACIAL, ETHNIC VOTING TRENDS – 2020 ELECTION TURNOUT FORECAST

The CHART II 24% (2000-2018) increase of White eligible voters is mainly from higher the White women voter turnout for Democrats, thus helping Joe Biden. But White gender partisan preferences differ widely. As noted in Chart IV, partisan preference differences are evident across Racial and Ethnic groups, i.e., Black, Hispanic, Asian groups and the White women group benefit Democrats far more than Republicans do. The Black, Hispanic, Asian groups also benefit Democrats far more than White men do. In 2018/2019, the Democratic Party had a wide advantage with 56% of women identified as Democrats versus 38% of women identified as Republicans. In sharp contrast, 42% of men were identified as Democrats while 50% of men were identified as Republicans.

Since 1994, gender and party identification gaps in voter turnouts have grown, but especially during 2018-2020. This is due to women's greater support than men's for policy priorities associated with the Democratic Party, e.g., handling of Covid-19 pandemic, preserving the Affordable Care Act, fighting climate change, addressing discrimination against Black and LGBTQ Americans, implementing gun controls, protecting women's control of their bodies.

In general, experts say that gender role socialization differences make women sensitive and alert to policy issues involving human vulnerability and care. It would be societally healthy if one day Democrat, Republican, Independent male voters could catch up a bit with women’s social well-being sensitive qualities and concerns.

In CHART IV, I noted that the White Voter Group of men does not strengthen the Democrat Voter Turnout as much as Racial and Ethnic groups do. This is due in part to the historical and 2018-2019 weak 42% of the White Voter Group (from Chart IV) favouring Democrats versus 53% favouring Republicans. In my forecast, I increased the White Voter Group number for Democrats to 46% and lowered the number for Republicans to 51%. This reflects my expected increased women vote for Democrats. Despite this, the White male and female forecast 46% vote for Democrats is still below vote percentages of the Black, Hispanic, Asian voter groups and White women group.

In summary, the vast majority of both men and women voters in all Racial and Ethnic groups and White Voter Group will impressively come out in strong support for Joe Biden.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

NOTE: As already mentioned, given the treacherous new wave the Covid-19 pandemic is on and its impact on the economy , my forecast of a Total Voter Turnout of 67% may (hopefully) be much understated.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

'We're Rounding the Corner Beautifully,' Trump Lies Just Before US Hits Another Record: 85,000+ New Covid-19 Cases

Published on Saturday, October 24, 2020 by Common Dreams

"Trump's lies and his rejection of science have cost us tens of thousands of lives. We need a new president," said Sen. Bernie Sanders.

by Jake Johnson, staff writer

 

17 Comments

President Donald Trump speaks during his campaign event on October 23, 2020 in The Villages, Florida. (Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

President Donald Trump late Friday repeated his lie that the United States is on its way to defeating the coronavirus pandemic just before the country reported a single-day record of more than 85,000 new Covid-19 infections, nearly 10,000 more cases than were tallied at the height of the devastating surge in mid-July.

But the president's remarks during a campaign rally Friday at The Villages, a Florida retirement community, conveyed zero indication that the U.S. is entering what could be the worst phase of the pandemic yet.

"It's true that country is rounding the turn of the pandemic. We are spiraling out of control."
—Dr. Zoë McLaren,School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County

"I mean, you look at what's going on and we're rounding the turn. We're rounding the corner. We're rounding the corner beautifully," Trump said, recycling an egregious falsehood that has become a staple of his stump speech even as infections and hospitalizations surge nationwide.

The New York Times reported late Friday that "since the start of October, the rise in cases has been steady and inexorable, with no plateau in sight... By that measure, Friday was the worst day of the pandemic, and health experts warned of a further surge as cold weather sets in. The number of people hospitalized with Covid-19 has already risen 40 percent in the past month."

Consistent with his reckless downplaying of the pandemic from the very start, Trump once again peddled the lie that the U.S. is "rounding the turn" during a late Friday rally in Pensacola, one of many largely maskless and closely packed in-person campaign events the president has held in recent days against the warnings of public health officials.

Watch:

"It's true that country is rounding the turn of the pandemic," responded Dr. Zoë McLaren, associate professor in the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. "We are spiraling out of control."

In addition to the record number of cases, the U.S. also reported more than 940 coronavirus deaths on Friday, bringing the nation's death toll to nearly 224,000—the highest in the world.

"This is only getting worse," tweeted epidemiologist Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding, warning that the U.S. could soon reach 100,000 new cases per day as the winter months approach.

With the November 3 election less than two weeks away, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) tweeted Friday that "Trump's lies and his rejection of science have cost us tens of thousands of lives."

"We need a new president," Sanders said.

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The 4 Biggest Takeaways from The Final Debate

by Robert Reich

Friday, October 23, 2020

Biden was more passionate and forceful than he’s been in any debate so far – including in the primary debates. But Trump’s lies and bizarre outbursts were no less toxic. 

Here are the 4 biggest takeaways.

1. Trump tried to run the same campaign he did in 2016 – but it doesn’t work as an incumbent.

Trump accused Joe Biden of being a “typical politician.” He promised, again, that he would release his tax returns “as soon as possible.” He claimed that he would replace Obamacare with something “much better.” And he rehashed some of his favorite racist tropes, like calling some immigrants “low IQ.” 

Sound familiar? It should — he said exactly the same things in 2016. But then he was an outsider. Now that he’s been president for almost 4 years, we can see right through them. 

He’s had an entire term to release his tax returns and replace Obamacare – and he’s failed to do either. He’s filled his administration with lobbyists, corporate insiders, and his own family members — the exact opposite of draining the swamp. And he’s proven himself to be the very worst kind of lying, conman politician he used to rail against. 

They were the same old attacks, but they fell flat.

2. Trump’s conspiracy theories were beyond comprehension.

$3.5 million from Russia? Hunter Biden’s laptop? Spying on Trump’s campaign? 

We all know Trump has a penchant for conspiracy theo ries, but last night he took them to an incoherent low. The conspiracies he conjured up were indecipherable, even to the most ardent Fox News viewer. 

He’s slipping in the polls, his campaign’s cash is evaporating, and he can’t run on COVID or the economy or anything else that matters to the American people. So he’s latching on to more and more bizarre lies. Swing voters have no idea what he’s talking about when he rambles on about Hunter Biden’s laptop and the mayor of Moscow. They have more important problems on their minds, which Trump has failed to address – or has worsened.

3. Biden put a human face to the harm Trump has inflicted on our country.

Throughout the night, Biden refused to sink to Trump’s childish lows. Biden highlighted the human suffering that Trump’s failed coronavirus response has caused. 

He looked directly into the camera and spoke to the American people, talking about our staggering death toll of 220,000; about how firefighters, nurses, teachers, and first responders were going to lose their jobs because Trump was more concerned about playing politics than helping the country; letting them know he understands the grief so many are going through right now. 

And he promised to be a president for all Americans – not just those who voted for him. After four years of Trump’s divisiveness, malignant narcissism, and abject cruelty, Biden’s message of unity and healing could not be more of a contrast – and more welcome.

4. Trump’s lies were more outrageous than ever.

Trump claimed he was “the least racist person in the room,” and that he’d done more for Black Americans than any president since Abraham Lincoln. He also downplayed the devastating toll of coronavirus, and even declared that he knew “more about wind” than Biden. 

It was the performance of a desperate con man whose ignorance and racism have been on full display for far too long.

Look, the choice couldn’t be clearer. But we can’t be complacent. We know that Trump will do anything to hold on to power, and there’s no telling what he’ll do as he gets more unhinged. 

So please: Organize. Volunteer. Make a plan to vote. Mobilize your neighbors. We can’t afford anything less than a blowout victory for Joe Biden and Democrats all the way down the ballot.

Just 11 days to go. Let’s make every second count.

Off the Top of My Head

Trump Holds Super Spreader Events with Old People as COVID Sets Record in US

by John Lawrence

Yesterday a record was set: 83,000 COVID infections, the highest ever. Meanwhile, Trump was holding a mainly maskless event in the Villages, a retirement community in Florida.The New England Journal of Medicine reported on October 8, 2020:

Covid-19 has created a crisis throughout the world. This crisis has produced a test of leadership. With no good options to combat a novel pathogen, countries were forced to make hard choices about how to respond. Here in the United States, our leaders have failed that test. They have taken a crisis and turned it into a tragedy.

The magnitude of this failure is astonishing. According to the Johns Hopkins Center for Systems Science and Engineering, the United States leads the world in Covid-19 cases and in deaths due to the disease, far exceeding the numbers in much larger countries, such as China. The death rate in this country is more than double that of Canada, exceeds that of Japan, a country with a vulnerable and elderly population, by a factor of almost 50, and even dwarfs the rates in lower-middle-income countries, such as Vietnam, by a factor of almost 2000. Covid-19 is an overwhelming challenge, and many factors contribute to its severity. But the one we can control is how we behave. And in the United States we have consistently behaved poorly.

Is this Vietnam's revenge? Vietnam is the country we ravaged burning women and children alive with Agent Orange while affecting our own soldiers as well. The number of Vietnam veterans affected by the chemical Agent Orange is astonishing. Roughly 300-thousand veterans have died from Agent Orange exposure -- that's almost five times as many as the 58-thousand who died in combat. Be that as it may, the fact that the death rate from COVID in the US is 3000 times greater than the death rate in Vietnam is astonishing. Could it have to do with the fact that Vietnam is the least obese country in the world while the US is among the most obese? Out of 191 countries Vietnam has an obesity rate of 2.1% while in the US the obesity rate is 36.2%. As we know obesity is an underlying condition for COVID morbidity. The American diet may be the main underlying condition. Burgers, pizza and fast food may have been a contributing factor to the COVID death rate.

We also know that countries that have got the pandemic under control have been able to reopen their economies successfully. China is on track to expand by roughly 5% in the third quarter roughly at the same rate as in 2019 before the pandemic hit. On the other hand countries that haven't gotten the pandemic under control such as the US have not been able to reopen successfully see sawing back and forth between reopening and reshuting as the COVUD infection rate see saws back and forth. Consumers are wary to come out in public as long as the infection rate is high. Since consumption is 70% of the US economy, much larger than the European consumption rate of 50%, it is more important in the US that consumption remains high in order for the economy to sustain itself. After the election, providing Biden wins, there will probably be another installment of the CARES Act putting money directly in consumers' hands thus preventing the US economy from free fall.

Expert opinion holds that US leadership, namely Trump and his cronies, has abjectly failed in its response to the COVID pandemic. Elections have consequences. Electing clowns like George W Bush, who lied us into a tragic war in Iraq, and Trump who was Missing in Action with respect to the COVID pandemic shows the ignorant mistakes the American electorate has made. Gore and Hillary Clinton would have been infinitely more competent in dealing with the crises that America has had to face. Let's not make the same mistake again! This time we must elect Joe Biden or the US is finished as a world leader. A democracy is only as good as the competence and intelligence of the citizens comprising it. So far the American people - some of them - have displayed their ignorance and incompetence by not wearing masks and complaining that they have a right not to do so. Freedom may just be another name for nothing left to lose as the Kris Kristofferson song says.

Off the Top of My Head

Increase Taxes on the Rich. Reduce Taxes on the Middle Class

by John Lawrence, October22, 2020

Finally, the Democrats are getting smart. Republicans have won on one issue: reducing your taxes. Unfortunately, they reduce them a lot more on the rich than they do on the middle class. So now Joe Biden has introduced some nuance. Can the American people comprehend it? Reducing taxes on everyone making less than $400,00 per year and raising them on everyone making more than $400,000. What a great idea! What took them so long? It's absolutely necessary if we want to decrease economic inequality which is out of control. So Joe Biden would increase taxes only on the upper 1%. To be among the upper 1%, a family needs an income of $421,926. In terms of wealth the upper 1% owns 38.5% of the nation's wealth. The upper 1% owns more wealth than the bottom 90%. The bottom 80% of Americans are net debtors. Debt is negative wealth; that should be obvious, but many Americans are financially illiterate. Financial literacy should be a course in high school. Wealth and income are two separate but related issues. Middles class Americans who own homes pay a wealth tax: property taxes. Rich people don't pay wealth taxes on most of their assets which are in stocks and bonds.

Wealthier Americans don't spend all their income on consumption. A portion of it just goes to add to their wealth. Middle class and poor Americans spend all their income on consumption, even going into debt to consume. So the wealthy extract rent and interest from the middle class and the poor who devote a huge share of their incomes to rent and interest. Now more than ever, Americans are drowning in debt. Prior to the Great Recession of 2008, many Americans were struggling to keep their heads above water. When the bubble burst, those with the most debt were left drowning in a sea of financial insolvency. While the country has since recovered financially, the COVID-19 pandemic is threatening to derail the economy once more. In order to diminish not only income inequality but wealth inequality, policies should be undertaken to tax both the wealth and income of the wealthy while encouraging the middle class and poor to build wealth and get out of debt. A small financial transactions tax would tax the wealth of the rich which is mostly comprised of stocks and bonds and real estate. If every stock trade were taxed, this would create a huge pool of money which could be spent in more constructive ways than simply adding to the wealth of the rich.

While the rich can go bankrupt and bail themselves out with golden parachutes, most struggling student loan debtors have no such option. The laws preclude them from going bankrupt. They cannot discharge their debts in bankruptcy. In addition to student loan debt, most middle class people who own a home have a lot of mortgage debt. So they don't really own the home; the bank does. They have the privilege of making payments on a home which include a lot of interest. If they are successful in paying off their mortgage, they will have an asset which represents wealth. This is the main way the middle class creates wealth for itself. Unfortunately, this wealth takes a life time to create so is unavailable to most middle class people until it's too late to enjoy it. The good thing though is that their children can inherit it. This represents an intergenerational transfer of wealth so that their children or grandchildren start out not from zero, where most children of the poor start out, but from a positive accumulation of wealth no matter how small.

Since most Americans overconsume and under save in many cases by necessity but in some just by predilection, they have nothing to fall back on when there is a disruption in the economic system like a pandemic. Since American GDP is predicated on 70% consumption, the American economy cannot stay out of recession if people stop consuming. That's why the Republican controlled government, understanding this, came up with the CARES Act. It was not so much out of a concern for the middle class and the poor as it was a consideration to keep up consumption which is essential to maintaining GDP and hence a necessary economic statistic. A Joe Biden administration will get the economy back on the right track which will increase the income and wealth of the poor and middle class while diminishing that of the wealthy. Financial literacy should make clear the importance of not going into debt but of creating wealth no matter what your income statistics are at the beginning of this process.

Off the Top of My Head

Can American Democracy Survive?

by John Lawrence, October 21, 2020

Democracy is predicated on two things: an educated electorate and an ethical electorate. President Trump exemplifies the demise of both. The Founding Fathers were the most well read and educated people of their time, and also the most ethical despite the fact that a lot of them were Deists. Thomas Jefferson extracted Jesus' ethical principles from the Bible while leaving out everything having to do with belief systems. It's called the Jefferson Bible. Deists believed there was a Supreme Being that created the universe, but didn't interact with it. They also believed in Christian ethics while believing Jesus was only human, not divine. Today the ethos of America, while nominally Christian, is actually based on an extremely selfish version of Freedom. Christian ethics, as Thomas Jefferson believed, has to do with each citizen's responsibility to the demos, not with a solipsistic narrow view that the only thing that matters is yourself. "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Love your neighbor as yourself." This is the essence of Christian ethics that is a fundamental principle of democracy. Today's Americans, as exemplified by Trump, are more followers of Ayn Rand ("The Virtue of Selfishness") than they are followers of Jesus Christ's ethics. Americans have taken the value of freedom and have made it an absolute ideal instead of balancing it with equality and brotherhood as the French did with their slogan: Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite. Americans have totally forgotten about Fraternite.

Consider how American history would have been changed if Jimmy Carter had been elected in 1980 and Al Gore (who actually won) had been elected in 2000. Jimmy Carter put solar panels on the White House. Ronald Reagan took them down. If we had had a Jimmy Carter Presidency, we might have actually gotten a handle on global warming. Instead now it's too late to prevent destruction of the earth's environment even if we do everything right from now on. If Al Gore had been elected in 2000, we would have had a huge lead on dealing with global warming as Al Gore was a champion for an intelligent response to global warming. "An Inconvenient Truth" is a 2006 American concert/documentary film directed by Davis Guggenheim about former United States Vice President Al Gore's campaign to educate people about global warming. The film features a slide show that, by Gore's own estimate, he has presented over 1,000 times to audiences worldwide. Instead we got George W Bush who lied us into war with Iraq and squandered trillions of dollars and countless lives contributing to a world in which there are 80,000 refugees and turmoil in the Middle East.

This is from Time magazine, October 19, 2020 by Justin Worland:

American Presidents typically use their annual U.N. General Assembly speech to argue that U.S. leadership can shape the world for the better. Instead, on Sept. 22, President Donald Trump took the opportunity to condemn the global fight against climate change. "They only want to punish America, and I will not stand for it," he said, addressing the assembly virtually from the White House. The U.N. instead should "focus on the real problems of the world," he added.

Trump's rejection of climate change as a "real problem" is nothing new. But his comments, coming just weeks before Election Day, underscore the threat four more years of his leadership poses to the planet.

The Trump administration has rolled back myriad U.S. environmental regulations, including a rule designed to reduce power-plant emissions, another requiring energy companies to stop methane leaks and yet another mandating that automakers build more efficient vehicles. Internationally, Trump has pulled the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement, a multilateral deal meant to curb climate change; his decision will become official the day after November's election. (His rival, Joe Biden, has promised to undo Trump's environmental deregulation.) Trump has also pushed other countries to invest in fossil fuels. "There has been nothing like [this] Administration on the environment in the last 50 years," says William Reilly, who led the Environmental Protection Agency under President George H.W. Bush.

Climate experts consider the Trump years to be lost time - while also warning that we don't have four more years to waste. Scientists say we need to keep the rise in average global temperature well below 2 degrees C to avoid catastrophe - think collapsing ice sheets that raise sea levels and make many coastal cities uninhabitable, in turn driving mass migration.

What is driving Trump's antipathy to the remediation of climate change is a desire to maximize U.S. economic output, increasing U.S. GDP and making him palatable to his voters who selfishly value short term prosperity over long term habitability of the earth. Those who selfishly value their own perceived immediate well being over that of their children and grandchildren. This is exactly the kind of rejection of Christian values (aside from any actual Christian beliefs which many Trump voters claim to have) that the Founding Fathers and others consider to be necessary to maintain a democracy. A democracy can't exists for long if the ethos is everybody for themselves. If people only consider their own selfish interests and not the well being of the polity, the necessary substrate of democracy is missing. The preamble to the American Constitution, "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, ...", includes the words "to promote the general welfare." It's not just about a radical interpretation of "freedom" which encourages people to ignore the general welfare or to ignore the welfare of the planet earth. This solipsistic interpretation of freedom which encourages people to only consider their own selfish interests and to ignore the general welfare is conducive to the demise of democracy.

Off the Top of My Head

If You Thought American Inequality Was Bad Before COVID, You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet

by John Lawrence, October 19, 2020

Pandemics should be the great equalizer, but COVID has exacerbated inequality. The rich have gotten richer. The poor have not only gotten poorer, they've slipped into poverty and homelessness. Around the world the Economist estimates that about 100 million people are falling back into extreme poverty, that is they are living on less than $2 a day. In the US between 6 and 8 million people have been pushed into extreme poverty within the last few months. CNBC reported that nearly 40% of cash-strapped Americans can't last a month on their savings. But there are success stories if you want to call them that. Amazon has seen its market cap increase by $750 billion to around $1.7 trillion. Jeff Bezos' net worth is now around $200 billion. Clearly the COVID economic depression has not been bad for everyone.

Americans are not encouraged to save for a rainy day, and 2020 has seen a series of the all time rainiest of days. We are encouraged to consume, consume, consume. Consumption is 70% of GDP in the US, much higher than the 51% share in Europe and 57% in China. The problem now is that Americans can't consume if they don't have the money to do it. That is why the CARES Act  was so important and why a further relief package is as important. If people don't spend to consume, the US will go into a depression. Consumer spending is important for the US economy much more so than elsewhere in the world.

China's economy will be the only one to grow this year while the US economy shrinks. China got COVID under control months ago, and its economy now is in full swing. It goes to show the wisdom of getting COVID under control first no matter how severe the measures that have to be taken to do so. Then the economy can open with no problem. The US, under the leadership of President Trump, did a half ass job of getting COVID under control with the result that opening the economy was done in a half ass way also. Now COVID is on the upswing in the US, and Trump is holding super spreader event rallies as he seemingly wants to take his supporters down with him if he fails to win on election day. The economy is on a roller coaster of half openings and half closings.

Clearly, there has been a K shaped recovery with the rich doing very well and the poor slipping into poverty. Poor essential workers such as meat packers and agricultural workers presumably still have their jobs. Nonessential poor workers such as maids in the hospitality industry and restaurant and bar workers have lost their jobs as those industries have either shut down or are struggling. The worst thing for these struggling industries would be to have to shut down completely again although that may be necessary if COVID cases continue to spike. Although the situation is bad for poor people in the US, it's worse in the rest of the world. The World Bank has revised its analysis of the effects of COVID, and they now estimate that the COVID pandemic is likely to push between 88 and 115 million people into extreme poverty in 2020, setting back poverty reduction by around three years. Meanwhile, billionaires saw their wealth climb 27.5% to $10.2 trillion from April to July this year, according to a report from Swiss bank UBS.

The US' response to COVID has been among the poorest in the world with the result that America's influence in the world, already on the downswing, is further eroding. Inevitably China will take over as the world's largest economy just based on its superior response to the COVID pandemic alone. That makes this year's elections crucial to resuming some semblance of American influence and respect in the world community. Not to mention that if Trump is reelected there is no hope for a remediated response to global warming and climate change. Either the US will get on the right track in several different dimensions with Joe Biden as President or Trump, if he serves another 4 years, will take America and the world down with him.

Critics Say Deregulatory Rush Shows Even If Defeated the Trump White House Willing to 'Scorch the Earth Before They Go'

Published on Saturday, October 17, 2020

by Common Dreams

From bomb trains to biometrics to workers' rights, the administration is pushing for last-minute rollbacks that could prove hard for its successor to overturn.

by Brett Wilkins, staff writer

 

64 Comments

President Donald Trump signs an executive order in the White House. (Photo: Andrew Harrer/Getty Images) 

With President Donald Trump's re-election very much in doubt, his administration is rushing to ram through regulatory rollbacks that could adversely affect millions of Americans, the environment, and the ability of Joe Biden—should he win—to pursue his agenda or even undo the damage done over the past four years. 

Reporting by the New York Times details how the administration is cutting corners as it scrambles to enact as much of its agenda as possible before ceding power on January 20 if Trump loses the election. Required public comment periods and detailed analyses, according to the Times, are being eschewed in favor of streamlined approval processes that have left even staunch deregulation defenders sounding the alarm. 

"Two main hallmarks of a good regulation is sound analysis to support the alternatives chosen and extensive public comment to get broader opinion," Susan E. Dudley, director of the George Washington University Regulatory Studies Center and formerly head of regulation in the George W. Bush White House, told the Times. "It is a concern if you are bypassing both of those." 

Russell Vought, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, told the Times that the president has always "worked quickly... to grow the economy by removing the mountain of Obama-Biden job-killing regulations." 

However, critics are warning that some of the proposed changes are being rushed through with insufficient regard to the harm they might cause. Some of the issues that are raising red flags include: 

• Refusing to lower limits on dangerous particulate and ozone pollution, which cause thousands of annual premature deaths.
• Allowing so-called "bomb trains" that transport highly combustible liquefied natural gas on freight trains.
• Determining when workers can be classified as employees or independent contractors. 
• Exempting certain commercial drivers from mandatory hour limits and rest periods. 
• Placing limits on how science is used in the air pollution rule-making process.
• Expanding regulation of immigrants by requiring citizenship applicants to submit biometric data, by forcing sponsors of immigrants to stay off welfare and prove their financial independence.

In response to the reporting, critics of the administration like writer Matthew Kressel said that it helps make clear that if the Republicans in the White House cannot win reelection, they'll "scorch the earth before they go."

And Matthew Gertz, a senior fellow at Media Matters for America, tweeted: "I think people underestimate the amount of time and energy that is going to be needed just to climb out from under the mountain of shit this administration leaves behind."

Many of the changes reflect the agendas of the powerful corporate and other business interests whose key players have donated generously to Trump, belying the president's oft-repeated claim that he is "draining the swamp." Other regulator rollbacks come despite warnings from career officials within federal agencies about the harm they could cause. 

Alarmed by the administration's rushed rate of regulatory rollbacks, a group of over 15 Democratic senators earlier this month sent a letter (pdf) to Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia warning of "profound economic implications" for some 143 million U.S. workers that would result from curtailing public comment periods for the proposed rule change regarding independent contractors. 

"Workers across the country deserve a chance to fully examine and properly respond to these potentially radical changes, and a 30-day comment period is not nearly enough," the letter states.

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The Garden

Dear friends,

Ralph Waldo Emerson loved life. He was effusive in his joy at being alive. Here is a quote from him: “I will at least be glad of my days, I who have so many of them, and having been informed by God, though in the most casual manner that my funds are inexhaustible, I will believe it with all my heart.”

Can we be glad of our days?  Can we believe that our supply is inexhaustible? The casual manner he speaks of, I believe, is his intuition, his inner knowing, his relationship with Nature.  It is as if he were saying “look around, pay attention, Life is complete in and of itself.”  The error in most minds is our tendency to think little of ourselves.  This comes from religions that are rooted in sin’ those that teach us we are guilty of something terrible, which most of us have yet to define, yet we feel unworthy of the inexhaustible supply that we intuit to be real.

It seems to me that humans have misspent their days on earth trying to repent for something we did not do. How sad to be kicked out of the Garden because the feminine aspect of our nature said “eat the fruit! Be happy! Enjoy the days you are here!”  But the masculine had to make it into a battle with the natural forces of his body.  He had to see his freedom to name everything as some kind of retribution, as an obligation.   Without the influence of the Feminine he went to war with God, with his perception of evil, with Nature.

None of us knows how many days we have here.  Emerson’s advice would be to relish every moment, to be like a child discovering her freedom again and again.  We have never actually left the Garden. Only our perception of separation from God makes it seem so.

Stay tuned in,

Carol Carnes www.carol-carnes.com

Off the Top of My Head

Why Should Joe Biden Answer the Question?

by John Lawrence, October 18, 2020

Lindsay Graham effectively swore on a stack of Bibles that, if a Supreme Court vacancy occurred during an election year, the next President would get to fill that vacancy. Now he's presiding over getting President Trump's choice on the Court just a couple of days before the election. So Joe Biden would be totally within his rights to swear he would not pack the Court, and then go ahead and do it once elected. Or he's certainly within his rights to equivocate and not answer the question. After all it isn't even certain he will be elected. Second, it's not within his sole power to pack the court. Third, that might not be the most efficacious way to go. Then again, it might.

What's important here is that a progressive agenda gets implemented especially with respect to climate change. Republicans can be expected to block this agenda to the extent they have the power to do so. This whole drama is deja vu all over again. President Roosevelt faced the same dilemma over his New Deal. He had a Supreme Court not predisposed to approve his New Deal. So the whole issue of court packing came up way back in the 1930s. The Judicial Procedures Reform Bill of 1937, frequently called the "court-packing plan", was a legislative initiative proposed by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt to add more justices to the U.S. Supreme Court in order to obtain favorable rulings regarding New Deal legislation that the Court had ruled unconstitutional. The central provision of the bill would have granted the president power to appoint an additional justice to the U.S. Supreme Court, up to a maximum of six, for every member of the court over the age of 70 years and 6 months.

The Supreme Court that Roosevelt was faced with had 4 conservative judges, 3 liberals and 2 swing judges. The Supreme Court that a potential President Biden will face will have 6 conservative and 3 liberal judges. It seems a weak point in the US Constitution that the worst President in US history has gotten to appoint one third of the Supreme Court Justices. Be that as it may, and assuming the progressive legislation comes before the Supreme Court in a Biden administration, then the composition of the Court becomes of paramount importance. At that point it would be crucial to consider the question of appointing more Justices to the Court in order to change the conservative bias. First of all in order for any piece of legislation to get to the Supreme Court, Democrats would have to control both branches of Congress and they would have to get rid of the filibuster. Otherwise, if there were even one Republican Senator, he or she could quash any progressive legislation. So the issue of packing or not packing would be moot. Supposing that some Green New Deal legislation gets enacted into law, the court suits would begin and undoubtedly would come before the Supreme Court.

Whatever the political differences among the justices of the 1937 Supreme Court, the clash over the constitutionality of the New Deal initiatives was tied to clearly divergent legal philosophies which were gradually coming into competition with each other: legal formalism and legal realism. This debate spilled over into the realm of constitutional law. Realist legal scholars and judges argued that the constitution should be interpreted flexibly and judges should not use the Constitution to impede legislative experimentation. One of the most famous proponents of this concept, known as the Living Constitution, was U.S. Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., who said in Missouri v. Holland the "case before us must be considered in the light of our whole experience and not merely in that of what was said a hundred years ago". The conflict between formalists and realists implicated a changing but still-persistent view of constitutional jurisprudence which viewed the U.S. Constitution as a static, universal, and general document not designed to change over time.

Roosevelt did one of his famous Fireside Chats advocating for legislation that would pack the Supreme Court. The public was equivocal about its approval. On average, about 46% of each polling sample indicated opposition to President Roosevelt's proposed legislation. And it is clear that, after a surge from an early push by FDR, the public support for restructuring the Court rapidly melted. In the 18th and 19th centuries the size of the Court had been variously expanded and contracted so there is precedent for changing the size of the Court. Despite all this Roosevelt was unsuccessful in packing the Court. Yet he did win out due to the fact that some of the Justices died and some retired leaving FDR with the ability to appoint 8 new Justices to the Court. This enabled FDR's New Deal legislation to get Court approval and become accepted law. If not for this stroke of fate, there probably wouldn't have even been a New Deal.

There are a number of lessons here for Joe Biden if he gets to be President and attempts to pass a "Biden Green Deal." He and progressive Democrats should study the history of FDR's Court packing attempts and hopefully learn lessons thereby.

When Things Look the Worst

Dear friends,

Many of us are facing scary financial situations with the loss of income due to this pandemic. I remember the title of a book by Rev Chet Castellaw “When Things Look the Worst.” That is the time our beliefs are really put to the test. That is the time we must reinforce our spiritual connection to the Source of all. We may be tempted to think there is no way our coffers will be filled. With unemployment running out, no possibility of income looks real. My living mantra has always been “Spirit has never failed me and it won’t fail me now.” I look back on my life and see the many gifts that have come my way seemingly “out of the Blue” that were exactly what was needed in the moment.

The great Emmet Fox used to say God provides “money or molecules” depending on our situation.  With all that in mind I offer an affirmative statement regarding our supply:  Know this for yourself:

There is only One Life being all life, the Cause of the universe and everything in it. It is pure Love and Absolute Intelligence. That one life is right where I am, all the time, all of it, all at once. It hears my call and responds in kind. I declare that I am wealthy, debt free and always have plenty of money to spare and share. I know that my supply may come through many avenues here on earth. I am grateful and delighted at how creative Spirit is in fulfilling my request. I have everything necessary to live this life with boundless enthusiasm and with deep peace.  So it is.

Stay tuned in,

Carol Carnes www.carol.carnes.com

Off the Top of My Head

Has China Won?

by John Lawrence, October 16, 2020

Ian Bremmer wrote in Time magazine: "You might think 2020 had been a pretty good year for China, at least when compared with the West. Though COVID-19 began its global march there, China’s recovery has been remarkable. The government’s unprecedented capacity for surveillance, large-scale testing, contact tracing and quarantine helped contain the outbreak inside China within two months. That success allowed for the restart of supply chains and enabled a state investment-led rebound. China could be the world’s only large economy to grow this year. And as second waves of COVID-19 appear in Europe and the U.S., China hasn’t had any serious outbreaks over the past month. Life there is nearly back to normal."

The Chinese and the US economies were neck and neck prior to COVID. The fact that China has handled its response much better than has the US means that China will emerge as the world's largest economy by 2021. In his book, "Has China Won?", author Kishore Mahbubani sums up the strengths and weaknesses of both societies. He contends that the "Chinese Communist Party" is a misnomer. It should be called the Chinese Civilization Party as it owes more to China's 3000 year civilization than it does to communism. China values stability over chaos. It has pulled 800,000 Chinese citizens out of poverty in the last 40 years, largely because it has privatized large swaths of its society. Chinese citizens are well satisfied with their lot in life because among other things they have access to as wide a variety consumer goods as do the developed western societies.

So what has been the US response to China's rapid economic growth and expansion particularly with regard to its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) which is building infrastructure all over the world with the intention of recreating the ancient Silk Road trade route? Obama initiated the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) which would have been a trade alliance rivaling the BRI. Trump immediately withdrew from the TPP as well as withdrawing from other global initiatives and alliances under his America First go-it-alone philosophy with the result that even US allies are giving Xi Jinping and China more credibility than the US. Under the Trump administration the response to China's rise has been to try and put roadblocks in the way of Chinese corporations. They had Meng Wanzhou, the CFO of Huawei, China's largest privately held company, arrested on December 1, 2018 in Canada under the pretext that Huawei had sold equipment to Iran violating US sanctions. Subsequently, she was extradited to the US. On February 13, 2020 Meng was personally indicted by the DOJ on charges of trade secrets theft which carries a maximum penalty of 10 years' imprisonment.

Similarly, the Trump administration sought to prohibit the popular Chinese app Tik Tok from being downloaded by American consumers. Tik Tok, however, received a reprieve in September 2020 from an American federal court when a judge put a temporary stop to the Trump administration's ban. The government had argued that Tik Tok may have a "back door" through which it could share American data with the Chinese government. A ban would “be no different from the government locking the doors to a public forum,” said John Hall, a lawyer for TikTok. “We’re pleased that the court agreed with our legal arguments and issued an injunction preventing the implementation of the TikTok app ban,” a spokesman for TikTok said after the judge’s decision.

The American response to the success of Chinese private corporations might have been to cheer the at least partial privatization of the Chinese economy, a laudable development in accordance with US free enterprise, capitalistic principles. Instead, the US under Trump has sought to hinder Chinese corporations every step of the way even when they have won competitions fair and square. It is what I would call the Tonya Harding response. In January 1994, skater Tonya Harding became embroiled in controversy when her ex-husband, Jeff Gillooly, orchestrated an attack on her fellow U.S. skating rival Nancy Kerrigan. Both women then competed in the February 1994 Winter Olympics, where Kerrigan won the silver medal and Harding finished eighth. Harding was later banned from the sport. The US response to China over China's pulling ahead of it is reminiscent of Tonya's response to Kerrigan. If you can't beat your opponent with your natural talent, try to injure them (in this case sanction or ban them) instead.

This leaves aside the legitimacy of the US use of sanctions to demand that another country (in this case China) must not do business with some other country if the US says it can't. A Biden administration would reenter the Iran nuclear agreement which reduced sanctions against Iran, and, supposedly, Meng would be released. Tik Tok also would be allowed to continue its ability to sell its app all over the world. The US should engage constructively and diplomatically with China to allay any fears about "back doors." Diplomatic treaties and agreements are the way to go, not retaliation over imagined and ill defined fears. It's important that the US and China cooperate especially when it comes to global warming. They are the 2 largest greenhouse gas (GHG) emitters, and their cooperation is necessary in working with the rest of the world (in particular India) in bringing GHG emissions to net zero in the shortest time. The destructive effects of global warming are manifesting themselves now all over the world in addition to the wildfires on the US west coast and hurricanes in the Gulf states.

Off the Top of My Head

China Back to Normal. US COVID Surging.

by John Lawrence,, October 14, 2020

According to The Lancet: "As of Oct 4, 2020, China had confirmed 90,604 cases of COVID-19 and 4739 deaths, while the USA had registered 7,382,194 cases and 209,382 deaths." Clearly, China has had a much better response to the pandemic than has the US. Mike Ryan, executive director of the WHO Health Emergencies Programme, offered “deepest congratulations...to the front-line health workers in China and the population who worked together tirelessly to bring the disease to this very low level”. Fareed Zakaria in his excellent book, "Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World," writes:

The pandemic has accelerated America's selfish turn - its abandonment of its role as leader of the free world and provider of public goods within the multilateral system. Perhaps the most striking example came with its vaccine strategy. Far from coordinating a global effort, or even encouraging its allies to pool resources, the Trump administration was simply looking to "win," edging out other countries in a race to get the vaccine first. The German press reported that the American government offered "large sums of money" to secure a German company's vaccine "for the US only." Meanwhile, partners like France, Brazil and Canada accused the US of swooping in on deals to acquire critical medical equipment and outbidding them, or even blocking shipments.

But it has been to no avail. The Trump administration's botched handling of its response to the pandemic has landed the US up in the situation that COVID is on the upsurge 9 months after Trump first knew about it. The denouement is that China is surging ahead with its economy while the US is surging ahead with the virus. What's more is that people are dying at a rate of some 700 a day  while the President himself, having caught the virus, was given Regeneron's monoclonal antibodies cocktail which seems to have killed off the virus in short order. Unfortunately, that treatment isn't available to everybody.

Zakaria opines on the US relationship with China. Trump can't condemn China too much as a huge amount of American products from American corporations are manufactured in and imported from China. The two countries are intertwined despite Trump's "Made in America" push. American corporations will not make their products in America as long as they can get cheaper labor elsewhere. After all their imperative is the bottom line and maximizing profits. Wall Street has told them this is what they must do, patriotism be damned.

Zakaria details the US response to the rise of China, its growing influence in the world even among US traditional allies, who seem to have more respect for Xi Jinping than for Trump. Trump is considered a loose cannon in the world today. The US can degenerate into Cold War II with China or America can play a more constructive role with its chief rival, which rivalry has come about rather suddenly. For example, the US can quibble with China about the situation in the Xinjiang region with the Uighurs, an Islamic minority, while ignoring its own history of forcing the Indians off their lands and onto reservations. In the long run, more is at stake in the US-China relationship them petty rivalries. As the two largest emitters of greenhouse gasses (GHGs), the US and China must cooperate to achieve net zero carbon emissions in short order or the earth will become uninhabitable. Scientists think Venus was inhabitable for billions of years before runaway GHGs made it uninhabitable. The same thing could happen to earth unless we take the situation seriously. For this reason the US and China must cooperate, not compete. We must avoid Cold War II or else the winner of this rivalry will win nothing more than a scorched earth.

Off the Top of My Head

It's Not the Quantity of Government. It's the Quality.

by John Lawrence, October 13, 2020

Fareed Zakaria has written a brilliant book: "Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World." In it he says that the old debates between the Left and the Right are invalid. He notes that most major countries are a part of the world economic system. That system was set up after WWII by the US. China became a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001. The WTO deals with regulation of trade in goods, services and intellectual property between participating countries by providing a framework for negotiating trade agreements and a dispute resolution process aimed at enforcing participants' adherence to WTO agreements. So China which is arguably the world's largest economy is playing on the same field and under the same rules as the US, the EU and 123 other nations. It's fair to say that all countries party to the WTO are hybrids of capitalism and socialism, some leaning more one way and some leaning more the other way.

Zakaria writes: "... the old ideologies are obsolete. The divide that has organized politics for centuries has been between left and right. The Left has advocated a larger role for the state in the economy. The Right has staunchly defended free markets. For the twentieth century, the great political debate was about the size and role of government in the economy - the quantity of government. But what seems to have mattered most in this [pandemic] crisis was the quality of government." Zakaria argues that the US' response to the pandemic was hindered by the fact of US federalism. The creation of a national strategy for dealing with the pandemic was "complicated by the existence of 2,684 state, local and tribal health departments each jealously guarding its independence. To make matters even messier, the US has 90,126 units of state and local government, many of which were tasked with devising their own rules on mask-wearing and public gatherings."

Zakaria continues: "But this patchwork of authority is a nightmare when tackling a disease that knows no borders. The fragmentation of standards is especially acute when handling Covid-19 tests. ... (It is a far cry from Taiwan's system of 'health cards', which link up with a single data base for all relevant medical information.)" Imagine if every US citizen was covered by a health card that linked up with a national data base. It will never happen as long as the US remains a fragmented national state with so many conflicting jurisdictions. This fragmentation contrasts with a country like Canada which has one health card which any citizen can use anywhere, and the doctor can access all that patient's records. The medical visit costs the Canadian citizen nothing. This streamlining of medical records saves a lot of money and effort compared to the hodge podge of American medical record keeping.

This hodge podge and fragmentation of the US extends to many other areas. It has made police reform almost impossible as there are 18,000 police departments across the country. The fact of the matter is that this Federalism precludes any coherent national strategy when it comes to the COVID pandemic or much of anything else. It's the reason that the medical system in the US is so expensive while returning mediocre results. China and some other countries have handled the pandemic in an intelligent and coherent way with the result that they have controlled COVID. Therefore, their economies have gotten more or less back to normal while the US is still struggling to get a handle on the pandemic with the result that the US economy is still a shambles.

Is the US in the Grip of a Madman?

Frank Thomas thinks so. He sent me this:

News just out is that the FBI is charging six men accused in a plot to KIDNAP the Michigan Governor!!

This is an example of the extent Trump has been spreading hatred throughout the U.S. Just 3 days ago,

David Gergen, an admired advisor to a number of presidents said, very unexpected of him, that our nation 

is in the grip of a MADMAN! AMEN to THAT!!

Trump is a mentally sick man and 90% of the Republican House of Representatives and Senate are not

standing up to him. They are all bloody COWARDS willing to put our nation at risk by ignoring fact we 

are in the hands of a president who has been judged in a letter by 27 psychologists and psychiatrists as 

being UNFIT for the presidency because he is, obviously in their view, an extremely unstable leader

who has all the mental disabilities of a NARCISSISTIC SOCIOPATH. 

GOD HELP OUR NATION.

More and more, much respected men and women are coming out and saying more or less the same thing. Does it matter to Trump's base? Probably not. It might matter to some of the swing voters, however. There are indications that a lot of them have had it up to here with Trump's shenanigans. And the polls show Biden and Harris well ahead of Trump and Pence. But what really matters is just a few voters in battleground states where the vote was extremely close last time. Trump just squeaked by in a few states, even in those states where the polls showed Hillary was ahead. The popular vote will probably not even be close this time, but the electoral college distorts the popular vote making just a few key voters in a few key districts overwhelmingly important.

The best case scenario is that Biden-Harris voters show large returns early. The fact that more Democrats than Republicans seem inclined to vote by mail might show an early lead for Trump which will evaporate later as all the votes are counted. This could be problematic though as Trump might declare victory before all the votes are counted and then claim that the election was rigged when it becomes clear that Biden has won. In the final analysis, if Biden and Harris win decisively, there won't be much Trump can do but to leave office.

Off the Top of My Head

Quantitative Easing = Printing Money

by John Lawrence

In her book, "Deficits Don't Matter," author Stephanie Kelton makes the case that we don't have to worry about deficit spending. That's when the US government spends more than it takes in in taxes. So in a sense taxes don't matter either at least as far as balanced budgets go. The US dollar is a sovereign currency. This means we don't have to ask anyone's permission to print money. The US dollar was taken off the gold standard in 1971 under President Nixon. It is a fiat currency meaning that it is not backed by anything other than the word of the US government. The US has experienced the phenomenon of printing money to bail out the banks in the Great Recession of 2008. As of September of this year, the Fed's balance sheet was $7.1 trillion. As of January 2008, the Fed's balance sheet was less than $1 trillion. That means that the Fed has printed money to the tune of over $6 trillion since 2008. Yet there has been no inflation in the US economy which is the danger a lot of economists had predicted from printing so much money.

The Federal Reserve bank can print US dollars just by a few keystrokes on a computer. Approximately $3.5 trillion was printed to bail out the banks during the Great Recession. Another $2.5 trillion has been printed so far to deal with the COVID pandemic. The question arises that, if the Fed can print money any time it wants, why can't there be Quantitative Easing (QE) for the people? In other words, if the Fed can bail out the banks, why can't it bail out the homeless, why can't it bail out the $4 trillion deficit in infrastructure spending, why can't it bail out the hungry and the poor? The answer is that it can do all those things, but this tool, QE, for that is what it is - a tool - should be used judiciously. It should be used to accomplish useful and necessary goals. It should not be used frivolously. It should be used in conjunction with other tools like tax policy. It should be used to promote a full employment economy and achieve socially useful goals.

Tax policy should be used to raise most of the money needed for government spending, and it should be used to redress the balance of the high amount of inequality in the American economy. Taxing the wealthy both in terms of income and wealth while giving tax breaks to the middle class and poor while implementing policies to help them build wealth is one of the major things US Federal tax policy should do. Additional money can be obtained by reducing the bloated military and military-industrial complex budget. If, however, there are additional goals that should be met like hastening the switch to renewable energy or a fuller safety net for the American people, then QE for the people should be implemented. The goal is to have a balanced and useful economy, one that promotes net zero carbon emissions, one that promotes sustainable development on other parts of the world, one that hastens the day when no child goes hungry or uneducated, one that reduces financial inequality.

It has already been demonstrated that deficits don't matter because the Great Recession of 2008 was quelled by the Fed's policy of printing money with no adverse effects on the economy. We have seen again the salubrious effects pf printing money or QE, if you want to call it that, during the COVID pandemic during which another $2.5 trillion has been printed so far. There is no reason why any country that has a sovereign currency like the US does cannot print money. Since the US dollar is the world's reserve currency, other countries and individuals are willing to buy up most if not all of US debt. But if they didn't buy up any of it, the Fed could still take it - or as much as necessary - on its balance sheet. In other words the fact that other countries are buying US debt means that the Fed doesn't have to print as much money. Any country with a sovereign currency can do the same even if their currency is not much in demand on world markets. Since the US dollar is used a lot in world trade, other countries need a supply of US dollars and are willing to buy US debt to get them.

There is no reason why any American should go hungry or be homeless or lack health care. Speaking of health care, Medicare for All would not eliminate private health care as some have suggested. Even with Medicare some doctors refuse to see patients because they don't like the reimbursement Medicare provides. There would be a private market for the wealthy who would just pay out of pocket to doctors who refused to accept Medicare patients. The wealthy don't even need health insurance. It could not be made illegal for such a market to exist. So even though everyone would have health care under a Medicare for All plan, the wealthy would still hire private and presumably better doctors at their own expense.

The policy of the Fed's buying US debt, which is equivalent to printing money, should be used wisely and the money not wasted.  QE for the people combined with the fact that deficits don't matter should lead to a more productive society providing that those additional tools and resources are used in a constructive way and not used to further militarize the society and the world. Any tool can be used for good or for ill. QE for the people could be used for a more healthy, beneficial and well balanced society for all people, could eliminate poverty in the US and the world, bring US infrastructure into the modern era and combat global warming and future pandemics.

Health Experts 'Stunned' as Trump Says He Will Resume In-Person Rallies While Infected With Covid-19

Published on Friday, October 09, 2020

by Common Dreams

Trump and White House officials have repeatedly refused to say whether the president has tested negative for the coronavirus since his diagnosis last week.

by Jake Johnson, staff writer

 

16 Comments

President Donald Trump greets a crowd during a campaign rally at Smith Reynolds Airport on September 8, 2020 in Winston Salem, North Carolina. The president also made a campaign stop in South Florida on Tuesday. (Photo: Sean Rayford/Getty Images)

After refusing to say whether he has tested negative for Covid-19 since his diagnosis late last week, President Donald Trump told Sean Hannity of Fox News Thursday night that he is hoping to hold a pair of in-person rallies this coming weekend in the key battleground states of Florida and Pennsylvania despite the potential risk of spreading a virus that has now killed more than 212,000 Americans on his watch.

"I'll tell you, I took this Regeneron, it's phenomenal," Trump said, blowing past Hannity's question about whether he has recently tested negative for Covid-19. "Eli Lilly has something very comparable, it's phenomenal. It's a whole new day."

When asked later in the interview if he's had a coronavirus test since his diagnosis, Trump said, "Well, what we're doing is probably the test will be tomorrow, the actual test, because there's no reason to test all the time. But they found very little infection or virus, if any. I don't know that they found any—I didn't go into it greatly with the doctors."

Watch:

Amid ongoing questions about the president's condition following his release from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Monday, White House doctors and administration officials have repeatedly declined to say when Trump's last negative coronavirus test was, prompting concerns that the president is still contagious and poses a risk to others.

"I don't want to go backwards," White House physician Dr. Sean Conley said Monday when asked about the president's last negative test result. White House Deputy Press Secretary Brian Morgenstern told reporters that he doesn't know when the president last tested negative for the coronavirus and is not interested in finding out.

"We're not asking to go back through a bunch of records and look backwards," Morgenstern said, parroting Conley's line.

In a brief memo on Thursday, Conley—who has come under fire for evading reporters' questions and omitting crucial information during his briefings on the president's condition—wrote that "based on the trajectory of advanced diagnostics the team has been conducting," he believes Trump will be able to safely "return to public engagements" as early as Saturday.

 

But public health experts immediately voiced skepticism in response to Conley's proposed timeline. Dr. Leana Wen, an emergency physician and visiting professor of health policy and management at the George Washington University's Milken School of Public Health, said she was "stunned" by Conley's claim that the president is nearly ready to return to public activities.

Saturday is "day 10, according to White House's own time course," Wen noted. "Patients with severe Covid-19 can be infectious for 20 days."

Dr. Krutika Kuppalli, an infectious-disease physician based in South Carolina, told the New York Times Thursday that while "everyone is going to have a different point of view," he would "err on the safe side, and keep [Trump] isolated for 20 days."

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that "for most persons with Covid-19 illness, isolation and precautions can generally be discontinued 10 days after symptom onset and resolution of fever for at least 24 hours, without the use of fever-reducing medications, and with improvement of other symptoms." Based on the White House's public statements, it's unclear when Trump began showing coronavirus symptoms.

"This is bigger than him," Kuppalli said, alluding to the public health risks associated with the president resuming public events.

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4 Key Takeaways from the Harris-Pence VP Debate

by Robert Reich

Thursday, October 8, 2020

The Vice Presidential debate didn’t have the fireworks of the first presidential debate but Pence’s lies were just as egregious as Trump’s.

The only honest thing about Pence last night was the fly on his head.

From the moment he was tapped to be Donald Trump’s second-in-command, Mike Pence has served a single purpose: To put a placid, half-way respectable face on the disastrous, cruel policies of his boss. And that’s exactly what he did last night. Pence lied just like his boss, he flouted the debate rules like his boss, he evaded hard questions like his boss.

1. And just like Trump last week, Pence refused to condemn white supremacy.

After Harris highlighted Trump’s 2017 comments characterizing neo-Nazis in Charlottesville as “very fine people”, Pence attacked the media and tried to justify Trump’s despicable remarks. He touted the fact that Trump has Jewish grandchildren, as an apparent excuse for Trump’s repeated refusal to condemn white supremacy and tackle the lethal threat it poses. He concluded his non-answer by omitting any outright condemnation of white supremacy – instead claiming, outrageously, that systemic racism doesn’t exist.

2. He said he hoped Amy Coney Barrett would get a “fair hearing.”

As Kamala Harris pointed out, 4 million people have already voted in this election and 56 percent of Americans think the winner should fill the Supreme Court vacancy. Meanwhile, Pence’s boss has instructed Senate Republicans to stop negotiations over the stimulus, so Republicans can focus on ramming through Trump’s nominee, after they refused to give Obama’s nominee a vote for 293 days. There’s nothing fair about this process – and Pence knows it.

3. He doubled-down on Trump’s dangerous conspiracy theories. 

When asked about Trump’s refusal to commit to a peaceful transfer of power, he rehashed Trump’s conspiracies about impeachment and the Russia investigation, and pushed Trump’s absurd claim that mail-in voting creates a “massive opportunity for fraud.” Rubbish. The right-wing Heritage Foundation, after examining 36 years of mail-in ballots, found only 1,285 cases of voter fraud out of nearly two billion votes cast — a rate of .0000007 percent.

4. Most importantly, Pence refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power if Trump loses. This is a worrisome sign of what may be to come.

Throughout the entire debate, Pence talked over Kamala Harris and moderator Susan Page – who allowed him to go way overtime, avoid her questions, and lie endlessly. He showed utter contempt for the debate process. He even had the gall to demand Harris answer his own questions – in typical misogynistic fashion – even as he repeatedly evaded the moderator’s questions. 

Make no mistake: Pence is a slick version of Trump, and just as dangerous as the liar-in-chief.

Off the Top of My Head

There is No Such Thing as a National Solution to a Global Crisis

by John Lawrence, October 9, 2020

The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation announced its 2020 Goalkeepers report with the above words. COVID-19 has killed more than 850,000 people worldwide. Every year until this one the world has made progress towards reducing poverty and disease. Notice the Gates foundation emphasis on the world as one coherent unified organism rather than just on US national boundaries. The pandemic knows no national boundaries. Until it's stamped out worldwide, the US is vulnerable. The foolishness of spending a trillion dollars a year on the US military which was powerless to do anything about the pandemic has been demonstrated. International cooperation is crucial to ending this pandemic, as well as others which are likely to follow, and reducing the conditions of poverty and disease in the world which breed war and terrorism. When will the US get its priorities straight?

The Goalkeepers report tracked 18 indicators included in the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In recent years, the world has improved on every single one. This year, on the vast majority, we’ve regressed.There is also a worldwide recession that the military and military-industrial complex is powerless to do anything about. The US is not an island. Pandemics, global warming - these are problems affecting the whole world not just the US. Nations that have the resources need to assist other nations that don't have the resources. That means that the developed world has to help the developing world to combat these problems: disease, poverty, weaponization, global warming.

In 2015, 193 world leaders agreed to a series of 17 ambitious goals to end poverty, fight inequality, and stop climate change by 2030. The Global Goals are within our reach, but we must remain committed—embracing what works and addressing what doesn’t, while holding ourselves and others accountable. In 2016 President Trump dropped out of global cooperation with his America First policy. That has gotten the US nowhere. Whichever countries handle the pandemic intelligently are going to come out of the recession as world leaders. That won't be the US unless Joe Biden gets elected and is able to turn the shambles of Trump's response to the pandemic around.

The first and most important goal is ending poverty. Eradicating poverty is not a task of charity, it's an act of justice and the key to unlocking an enormous human potential. Still, nearly half of the world’s population lives in poverty, and lack of food and clean water is killing thousands every single day of the year. Together, we can feed the hungry, wipe out disease and give everyone in the world a chance to prosper and live a productive and rich life. The second goal is zero hunger. Hunger is the leading cause of death in the world. Our planet has provided us with tremendous resources, but unequal access and inefficient handling leaves millions of people malnourished. If we promote sustainable agriculture with modern technologies and fair distribution systems, we can sustain the whole world’s population and make sure that nobody will ever suffer from hunger again.

The third goal is good health and well-being. Over the last 15 years, the number of childhood deaths has been cut in half. This proves that it is possible to win the fight against almost every disease. Still, we are spending an astonishing amount of money and resources on treating illnesses that are surprisingly easy to prevent. The new goal for worldwide Good Health promotes healthy lifestyles, preventive measures and modern, efficient healthcare for everyone. The fourth goal is quality education. Education liberates the intellect, unlocks the imagination and is fundamental for self-respect. It is the key to prosperity and opens a world of opportunities, making it possible for each of us to contribute to a progressive, healthy society. Learning benefits every human being and should be available to all.

The fifth goal is gender equality. Gender bias is undermining our social fabric and devalues all of us. It is not just a human rights issue; it is a tremendous waste of the world’s human potential. By denying women equal rights, we deny half the population a chance to live life at its fullest. Political, economic and social equality for women will benefit all the world’s citizens. Together we can eradicate prejudice and work for equal rights and respect for all. The sixth goal is clean water and sanitation. This will require major infrastructure development. It's not rocket science. The techniques involved are well known in the developed world. One in three people live without sanitation. This is causing unnecessary disease and death. Although huge strides have been made with access to clean drinking water, lack of sanitation is undermining these advances. If we provide affordable equipment and education in hygiene practices, we can stop this senseless suffering and loss of life.

Actually I would put clean water and sanitation right up there with ending poverty. It would put an end to many of the diseases that occur in the underdeveloped world. The emphasis on healthy living and basic creature comforts needs to spearhead the use of resources worldwide. That means that developed nations have to give back to the underdeveloped ones instead of putting their further enjoyment and well being first which is the gist of America First. Global cooperation to combat global problems needs to take precedence over preparations for war and bullying other nations by the most powerful ones. The negligence and incompetence with which Trump has treated the COVID pandemic, the withdrawal of the US from universal institutions, almost assures that the US will assume a secondary status in the world unless the next administration can make up for the damage Trump has done and set us on a new and more constructive course.

Th Body Heals Wihout Our Knowing How

Dear friends,

I can’t get over how fast my fingernails grow. They were so long a couple of weeks ago that I had to cut them down.  Now they are long again! I did nothing to make this happen. I could not see the actual growing, only the results. Somehow the intelligence within took the food I ate and turned it into fingernails, and hair and tissue and bone.  Everybody knows this but how often do we stop to consider what a miracle it is and, furthermore, what else it implies?

That same intelligence heals major and minor wounds.  It grows new skin over abrasions, it digests our food and eliminates waste. Amazing!  Leading scientists who study this relationship are now realizing that the intelligence responds to our thoughts and energized feelings, such as fear and love.  It seems that we can, and do, interfere with its natural tendency to keep us in optimal health.  Here is the most intriguing part of this.  It is not the intelligence of the body, itself. It is the intelligence manifesting the body and maintaining it.

For me, this is a perfect example of Mind outside the body but operating as the body.  It’s first responder is the brain.  The initial impulse is to maintain wholeness; that signal is given to the brain to provide direction to the cells. However, the brain is so highly individualized that we each have a unique experience of our own wholeness. 

Depending on the quality of our thoughts, the signal either comes through as intended or it gets compromised en-route.  That is why New Thought spirituality puts such emphasis on healthy thinking, on affirmative beliefs, on cheerful expectation. It doesn’t ask us to be reckless with our health, rather to be grateful for it and mindful of its ongoing dedication to our well-being.

Know this: “My health is a given. It is the visible evidence of an incredible intelligence at work.  It is forever responding to my most energized thoughts. I think, speak and express Love for myself and all Life.”

Stay tuned in,

Carol Carnes www.carol-carnes.com

Off the Top of My Head

Let's Talk About the Communist Bogieman

by John Lawrence, October 8, 2020

After the vice Presidential debate last night Trump called Kamala Harris a communist. Let's be clear: communism is a system in which the government owns all property and makes all economic decisions. Let's also be clear about this: nowhere in the world today does communism exist. Not in Russia. Not in China. Not in Cuba. In Russia private ownership of enterprises and property had essentially remained illegal throughout the Soviet era, with Soviet communism emphasizing national control over all means of production. In the 1990s, during the Presidency of Boris Yeltsin, there was  large-scale privatization of Russia's state-owned assets, particularly in the industrial, energy, and financial sectors. Privatization shifted Russia from the Soviet planned economy towards a market economy, and resulted in a dramatic rise in the level of economic inequality. It facilitated the transfer of significant wealth to a relatively small group of oligarchs.

In China private property and state owned enterprises co-exist. According to the NY Times: "Today, the private sector contributes nearly two-thirds of the country’s growth and nine-tenths of new jobs, according to the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce, an official business group." In fact the reason why China has pulled 800,000 people out of poverty in the last 40 years is that the economy has been partially privatized. There are more billionaires in China than in the US. Many people in China went from being poor to middle class due to the privatization of the housing market. So although China is still ruled by the Chinese Communist Party, its government is communist in name only. They should probably eliminate the word "Communist" from the party's name.

Now consider Cuba. In 2010, Cuban leaders Fidel and Raul Castro made the decision to abandon the old Soviet model of centralized planning. In 2011, new laws were enacted to expand the right to private property. In 2019, a new Constitution was approved which officially recognizes the right to private property, while also reconfirming the central government's authority over the regulation of production and land.

So if the accusation that Kamala is a communist is ridiculous, what about socialism? There is not one definition of socialism. Many of the western democracies like France, Germany, the UK and Sweden, which are US allies, have been governed by democratic socialist parties. These societies have market economies including the encouragement of entrepreneurialism, but also have a government provided social safety net including universal health care, free or inexpensive education from pre-K through college, allowances for child care, elder care etc. Sweden's government even owned a hamburger chain until recently and owns Sweden's state-run alcohol monopoly Systembolaget. The democratic socialism advocated by Bernie Sanders and others is nothing more than a model based on Sweden where there are high taxes on the wealthy which provide a government sponsored safety net for the middle class and the poor. Today there is one more reason why there should be a strong social safety net: global warming. It is clear that private enterprise is not up to the job of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to zero within a reasonable amount of time, reasonable meaning before the earth becomes uninhabitable.

Today in the US we  have a nominal capitalist or free market economy, but even in this economy the government institutes the rules within which the economy operates. The rules are set up and tweaked by those in power, those who have the money to hire lobbyists to convince legislators to write the rules in their favor, namely large corporations and the very wealthy. Don't be fooled by the meme that the powerful don't want government regulations. They do want regulations, but regulations that favor their interests and not the interests, necessarily, of the average person who doesn't have the resources to influence legislation by hiring lobbyists.

Today Kamala Harris and other Democratic progressives are really taking the realistic middle ground when they advocate for government policies which will mitigate and reduce climate change and provide a social safety net for the American people. This goes against the interests of the oil and gas industry to be sure. To advocate for universal health care is to advocate for the health care system that Canada and all our allies already have in pace. To advocate for policies that reduce the out of bounds economic inequality by taxing the rich and spending the money on raising the economic level of the poor and lower middle class only makes sense. None of these policies make Kamala Harris a communist since communism doesn't even exist in the world today. Formerly communist countries have given way to hybrid economies in which private enterprise and state owned enterprises coexist with, in the case of China, private enterprise having been the significant factor in improving the lives of the Chinese middle class.

Today, the US has gone way overboard towards an economy controlled by the rich and powerful in their own interests. Economic inequality has gotten way out of hand. The balance needs to be redressed and only a government which uses its authority to diminish the economic power of the wealthy and augment the power of the poor and middle class can provide the necessary change. Good paying jobs can be created which address infrastructure and climate change needs. So more or less a Green New Deal or whatever else you want to call it is necessary. Too bad that Republicans have gone out of their way to demonize that name as they've gone out of their way to demonize Obamacare or any other initiative progressive Democrats put forth. That is their stock and trade - not discussing the merits but demonizing the name.

'Telling All Working People...to Drop Dead': Trump Ended Covid Relief Talks After McConnell Said Republicans Wouldn't Vote for Deal

Published on Wednesday, October 07, 2020

by Common Dreams

"Trump is turning his back on you," said Rep. Pramila Jayapal. "He doesn't care about workers and families. He only cares about himself."

by Jake Johnson, staff writer

 

64 Comments

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) walks from the Senate floor to his office on Thursday, July 30, 2020. (Photo: Caroline Brehman/CQ-Roll Call, Inc. via Getty Images)

President Donald Trump's abrupt decision Tuesday to order a halt to coronavirus relief negotiations despite widespread and growing economic suffering, hunger, and a looming mass eviction crisis came after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell reportedly told the president that any compromise deal would likely be doomed to fail in the Republican-controlled chamber.

On a call with Trump shortly before he fired off a series of tweets announcing the end of stimulus talks, McConnell "suggested to Trump that [House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi was stringing him along and no deal she cut with [Treasury Secretary Steve] Mnuchin would command broad GOP support to pass in the Senate," the Washington Post reported, citing two unnamed sources with knowledge of the conversation.

"We are looking at the potential of hunger in the United States exploding on a level that we have never seen since the Great Depression. And all of it is preventable. All of it."
—Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

McConnell publicly voiced agreement with the president's instructions to push off stimulus negotiations until after next month's election and focus fully on confirming right-wing Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, despite polling showing that even a majority of Republican voters want the Senate to prioritize another aid package.

"I think his view was that they were not going to produce a result and we needed to concentrate on what's achievable," the Kentucky Republican told reporters Tuesday, just 24 hours after Trump departed Walter Reed National Military Medical Center after a brief stay for coronavirus treatment.

For months, in the face of increasingly dire economic circumstances and nationwide desperation, McConnell and his GOP allies in Congress have obstructed progress on an additional aid package, allowing relief programs approved by previous stimulus legislation to expire and abandoning tens of millions of jobless Americans to drastically reduced incomes.

Last week, as Common Dreams reported, not a single Republican representative voted for a $2.2 trillion compromise version of House Democrats' HEROES Act. McConnell has dismissed the House-passed legislation as a "political stunt" and refused to allow the bill to reach the Senate floor for a vote.

"They are telling all working people, no matter who we vote for or what state we live in, to drop dead," tweeted the Working Families Party.

In an interview on MSNBC Tuesday night, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) warned that "if the president and the GOP follow through with walking away from Covid relief, we are staring down the barrel at one of the largest mass eviction crises in this country since the Great Depression."

"We're looking at a potential second wave [of the coronavirus] that could be catastrophic," said Ocasio-Cortez. "We are looking at the potential of hunger in the United States exploding on a level that we have never seen since the Great Depression. And all of it is preventable. All of it."

Just hours after killing negotiations over a broad relief package that likely would have included aid to state and local governments, stimulus checks, and an extension of the lapsed federal unemployment insurance boost, Trump took to Twitter once more to advocate stand-alone bills to assist the airline industry and provide another round of direct $1,200 payments.

"If I am sent a Stand Alone Bill for Stimulus Checks ($1,200), they will go out to our great people IMMEDIATELY," the president tweeted. "I am ready to sign right now. Are you listening Nancy?"

Following the president's earlier call for an end to relief negotiations, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.)—co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus—tweeted that "by walking away from the Covid package we just passed, Trump is turning his back on you—and on economic relief, expanded unemployment assistance, stimulus checks, eviction moratoriums, help for businesses."

"He doesn't care about workers and families," Jayapal added. "He only cares about himself."

Kyle Herrig, president of watchdog group Accountable.US, echoed Jayapal in a statement late Tuesday. "Economic experts and working Americans agree: the time for Congress to secure a new aid deal is now," said Herrig. "Unfortunately, President Trump and his Senate allies don't feel the same."

"While Trump and his friends in Congress prioritize Barrett's nomination over new coronavirus relief," Herrig continued, "American families and small businesses—and by extension, the nation's economy—continue to suffer."

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Off the Top of My Head

Emperor Nero Addresses the Roman Forum

by John Lawrence

This is Wolfimus Blitzerus of the Roman News Network (RNN). The Emperor is about to speak.

Friends, Romans, Countrymen I am here today to tell you not to let a little fire dominate your lives. We've had fires here in Rome before, and they are no big deal. They will be put out very quickly or they will just die out by themselves. We are turning a corner here. Get out your garden hoses and spray down your houses and chariots. There is no cause for concern. Romans are tough people. We've seen these small conflagrations before. Just go about your business. Go to restaurants. Go to bars. Go to Caesarland. Go to the Coliseum. We can't let a little fire shut down our economy.

I am making Rome great again. Don't forget your MRGA hats when you go out. Fly the Roman flag from your chariots. Rome is the greatest and most powerful country in the world. No other country comes close. I have built a wall to keep the Vandals and the Visigoths out of Rome. They are pillagers. They are rapists. They have no respect for our values. We have the most powerful military in the world. We have worked out the best trade deal with Egypt for the import of papyrus. We conquered all of Europe. Remember what our fearless leader Julius said: "I came. I saw. I conquered." or in the vernacular: "Veni, Vidi, Vici." The important thing is that I, Nero, have made Rome great again. Those Vandals don't stand a chance against our valiant military.

So, my fellow Romans, I say to you, go about your business, support small business in Rome. Don't let a little fire dominate your lives. Don't panic. Stay calm and we will get through this together. Have a good evening and God Bless Rome. The Best Is Yet To Come.

Off the Top of My Head

What's Wrong With This Picture: Essential Workers Depending on Food Handouts While Non-essential workers Paid Millions of Dollars

by John Lawrence

Are professional football players essential workers? I don't think so. Yet they are paid millions of dollars. Are agricultural workers essential workers? I think so. Yet they are standing in food lines. What's wrong with this picture? Essential workers are becoming homeless while non-essential workers are perusing their stock portfolios. 80,000 refugees in other parts of the world are homeless due to US wars in the Middle East. Yet the US spends a trillion dollars a year on its military and military-industrial complex. All this money did absolutely nothing to defend the American people from the coronavirus. Our priorities are absolutely distorted. Wildfires and hurricanes devastate parts of the US. Yet the President denies global warming. Trump holds a COVID super spreader event that has infected at least 18 people at this writing. Yet all he can think about is demonstrating his machoism in conquering the virus. But he's still not out of the woods, and the average American does not have the benefit of the "compassionate usage" of the drugs Trump had access to.

Trump's supporters, the WPP, (White Peoples Party) are a bunch of good ol' boys who drive around in pickup trucks with a gun rack, drinking beer, listening to WPM (White Peoples Music - Country & Western), and throwing the empty cans out the window. Some of the more environmentally conscious like those in liberal Austen, TX, throw their empty beer cans in a litter bag. Trump appeals to his base by trying to appear to be strong and macho. His party is the party of machoism. He is so strong that a little virus cannot defeat him. Yet 210,000 people have died from COVID. Were they all weak? Is it better then that they are no longer with us. Will the virus cull the herd of weak people leaving only the master race? Maybe they should change the name "compassionate use" to "strong stuff for strong people." Compassion has nothing to do with it.

Are we reevaluating what is important in American life? Some people are. They are thinking essential workers should be paid more than inessential workers. Otherwise, we are living in a semi-slave state. Here's what's essential: food, housing, medical care, transportation, education, the internet. Here are the essential workers: agricultural workers, house builders, doctors and nurses, caregivers, drivers and teachers. Here's what's inessential: professional and college sports, amusement parks, movie theaters, bars, cruises, music festivals. Entertainment including movies is available over the internet and is piped into all homes that have a TV and internet service. Beer is available in stores and can be drunk at home. Food can be eaten at home. Restaurants are inessential. It comes down to values. Living more simply and less luxuriously means that resources are freed up to provide homes for the homeless, food for those who are food insecure, good infrastructure replacing fossil fuel energy with renewable energy, proper sanitation for the 2.5 billion in the world that don't have it, repatriotizing refugees.

It's no longer commendable to think narrowly just in terms of what is good for America or Americans. COVID is a pandemic that affects the whole world. It does not recognize national borders. Global warming is a phenomenon that affects the whole world. It doesn't just go on a country by country basis. It becomes of paramount importance that the nations of the world cooperate and not dwell on the petty grievances they have with each other. They are quiveling over trivial matters when the fate of the world and human civilization is at stake. A change of heart, a change of lifestyle, a change of values is necessary so that people can eventually live in peace and harmony with a reasonable amount of creature comforts wherever they live in the world. Think globally, not nationally.

Trump’s Covid: Empathy for the World’s Least Empathetic Person?

by Robert Reich

Sunday, October 4, 2020

For about a minute today I found myself feeling sorry for Donald Trump. The poor man is now “battling” Covid-19 (the pugilistic verb is showing up all over the news). He’s in the hospital. He’s out-of-shape. He’s 74-years old. His chief of staff calls his symptoms “very concerning.”

Joe Biden is praying for him. Kamala Harris sends him heartfelt wishes. President Obama reminds us we’re all in this together and we want to make sure everyone is healthy.

But hold on: Why should we feel empathy for one of the world’s least empathetic people?

Out of respect. He’s a human being. And he’s our president.

Yet there’s an asymmetry here. While the Biden campaign has taken down all negative television advertising, the Trump campaign’s negative ads continue non-stop.

And at almost the same time that Biden, Harris, and Obama offered prayers and consoling words, the Trump campaign blasted “Lyin’ Obama and Phony Kamala Harris” and charged that “Sleepy Joe isn’t fit to be YOUR President.”

Can you imagine if Biden had contracted Covid rather than Trump? Trump would be all over him. He’d attack Biden as weak, feeble, and old. He’d mock Biden’s mask-wearing – “See, masks don’t work!” – and lampoon his unwillingness to hold live rallies: “Guess he got Covid in his basement!”

How can we even be sure Trump has the disease? He’s lied about everything else. Maybe he’ll reappear in a day or two, refreshed and relaxed, saying “Covid is no big deal.” He’ll claim he took hydroxychloroquine, and it cured him. He’ll boast that he won the “battle” with Covid because he’s strong and powerful.

Meanwhile, his “battle” has distracted the nation from revelations that he’s a tax cheat who paid only $750 in taxes his first year in office, and barely anything for fifteen years before that; and that he’s a failed businessman who’s still losing money.

And from his vicious, cringeworthy debate performance last week, in which he didn’t want to condemn white supremacists.

It even takes our mind off the major reason Covid is out of control in America: because Trump blew it.

He downplayed it, pushed responsibility onto governors, and then demanded they allow businesses to reopen – too early – in order to make the economy look good before the election.

He has muzzled and disputed experts at the CDC, promoted crank cures, held maskless campaign events, and encouraged followers not to wear masks. All of this has contributed to tens of thousands of unnecessary American deaths.

Trump’s “battle” with Covid also diverts attention from his and Mitch McConnell’s perversions of American democracy.

This is where the asymmetry runs deeper. McConnell is now moving to confirm Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, after having prevented Obama’s nominee from getting a Senate vote for almost a year on the basis of a concocted “rule” that the next president should decide.

Yet Biden won’t talk about increasing the size of the court in order to balance it, and Democratic leaders have shot down the idea.

Nor do Biden and top Democrats want to suggest making Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico into states – a step that would remedy the bizarre inequities in the Senate where a bare majority of Republicans representing 11 million fewer Americans than their Democratic counterparts are able to confirm a Supreme Court justice.

It would also help rebalance the Electoral College, which made Trump president in 2016 despite losing the popular vote by more than 3 million.

Democrats worry this would strike the public as unfair.

Unfair, when Trump won’t even commit to a peaceful transition of power and refuses to be bound by the results?

When he’s already claiming the election is rigged against him and will be fraudulent unless he wins?

When he’s now readying slates of Trump electors to be certified in states he’ll allege he lost because of fraud? When he’s urging his followers to intimidate Biden voters at the polls?

Whether responding to Trump’s hospitalization this weekend or to Trump’s larger political maneuvers, Democrats want to act decently and fairly. They want to protect democratic norms, values, and institutions.

This is admirable. It’s also what Democrats say they stand for.

But the other side isn’t playing the same game. Trump and his enablers will do anything to retain and enlarge their power.

It’s possible to be sympathetic toward Trump during his “battle” with Covid-19 while acknowledging that he is subjecting America to a profound moral test in the weeks and perhaps months ahead.

What kind of society do we want: one based on decency and democracy, or on viciousness and raw power?

Off the Top of My Head

The Economy Will Come Back But With a Different Paradigm

by John Lawrence, October 4, 2020

It's not enough to have a full employment economy. What's also important is what those jobs and industries consist of. Are the jobs socially useful and constructive or are people fully employed fighting wars and polluting the environment? The American economy pre-pandemic consisted of 70% consumption. So people were employed selling stuff to other people. Investment in infrastructure was minimal. What's needed now is to put people to work building a green economy. Government will have to play a bigger role in this development. Some people are worried that this will add to the national debt. They didn't worry when the Federal Reserve spent a couple trillion bailing out the too big to fail banks. Also trillions have been added to the debt as stimulus during the pandemic. The fact of the matter is that deficits don't matter not because the US dollar is the world's reserve currency, but because the US has a sovereign currency and can print money whenever it pleases.

Historically, the US has had no problem selling US debt in the form of Treasury bonds to other countries. Because the dollar is the world's reserve currency, other countries purchased Treasuries so they would have dollars because most business is conducted in dollars worldwide. So what happens if other countries don't want to buy US debt? The same thing that happened during the Fed's trillion dollar bailout during the Great Recession. The Fed just printed the money, that's all. If it can print money to bail out banks, it can print money for government programs to rebuild infrastructure in accordance with a Green New Deal of Joe Biden's Green Deal which amount to about the same thing. The US does not need other countries to buy its debt. It can just be swallowed by the Fed's money printing machine and disappear on the Fed's balance sheet.

With the government spending money to build a green economy, it does not all have to be deficit spending, but, if it were, like I've explained above, this is no big deal because the US dollar is a sovereign currency. However, money can also be generated by revising the tax code so that the rich pay their fair share. Some enterprises will generate a return on investment as the Tennesee Valley Authority did which was created by the original New Deal. Also the bloated military budget can be reduced. Socially useful jobs can be created replacing the many socially useless jobs that comprised the full employment economy before the pandemic. The limitation of Fed money printing is 1) inflation and 2) the value of the dollar. So far the Fed's prolific money printing has not been cause for concern since there has been no inflation and the dollar has not lost value vis a vis other currencies.

In order to combat the nation's real enemies - global warming and future pandemics - the US needs to reorient its priorities. This means that the government will have to play a larger role in the economy and limit some economic activities that now exist, for example, fracking and oil production. This does not mean that jobs will be subtracted from the economy. They will be replaced by different jobs, more constructive and socially useful jobs. In terms of consumption, American consumption should probably be reduced to be in line with consumption in other major developed countries like the EU, for example. As other countries develop, they will emulate the US in terms of consumption and lifestyle. Americans have historically overconsumed with respect to their share of the earth's finite resources. Consumption worldwide needs to come into balance as developing countries start consuming more. Because of this Americans need to consume less. Instead of the present level of US consumption and the concomitant lack of saving, Americans need to start saving more and building wealth for the middle class instead of going into debt to maintain a certain overconsuming lifestyle.

The good news is that there's no reason for a Biden administration not to go full steam ahead in converting the economy from an oil based one to one run on renewable energy. For sure government would play a bigger role than it has in an economy in which many socially destructive activities provide jobs. A Green New Deal (or Biden's Green deal if you prefer) can provide enough jobs for a full employment economy. They would also be better paying jobs than many jobs were in the pre-pandemic full employment economy. The quality of the jobs would be better and the output would be more socially constructive in terms of combating global warming among other things. Providing the money for a full employment green economy would be no problem as deficits can be taken on the Fed's balance sheet. The Fed can print money as necessary which in fact it has been doing consistently at least since the Great Recession with its policy of quantitative easing.

'Postpone the Hearing': Democrats Demand Delay in Barrett's Confirmation Process After Third GOP Senator Tests Positive for Covid-19

Published on Saturday, October 03, 2020

by Common Dreams

"Rushing to have the hearing under these circumstances just shows that Republicans know they won't have the votes after Election Day."

by Julia Conley, staff writer

 

0 Comments

Seventh U.S. Circuit Court Judge Amy Coney Barrett, President Trump's pick for the Supreme Court, meets with Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) in the Mansfield Room of the U.S. Capitol on September 30, 2020 in Washington, D.C. Tillis announced he had tested positive for Covid-19 on Friday. (Photo: Bill Clark-Pool/Getty Images)

Democratic lawmakers and progressive advocates demanded on Friday and into Saturday that the Senate Judiciary Committee postpone Judge Amy Coney Barrett's confirmation hearing for the U.S. Supreme Court after at least three Republican senators tested positive for the coronavirus.

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) announced his positive result on Saturday morning, a day after two Senate Judiciary Committee members—Sens. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.)—were also diagnosed with Covid-19. 

Johnson did not attend the White House gathering last Saturday where President Donald Trump announced his nomination of Barrett, but he has been attending lunches with other Republican senators three times per week, including this past week. Lee and Tillis have also been attending the gatherings, suggesting that they may have exposed several of their Senate colleagues. Democratic senators have suspended their in-person lunches in light of the coronavirus pandemic. 

The progressive advocacy group Demand Justice was among those who called on the Senate Judiciary Committee to postpone Barrett's hearings, which are set to begin Oct. 13. 

"They need to postpone the hearing because voting on Barrett before the election would gravely damage the legitimacy of the Court itself," wrote Susan Hennessey, executive editor of Lawfare. "Rushing to have the hearing under these circumstances just shows that Republicans know they won't have the votes after Election Day."

Johnson's diagnosis calls into question—even if the Senate Judiciary Committee moves forward with a virtual hearing—whether Barrett could be confirmed before Election Day, one month from Saturday. 

As CNN reported Saturday, "If the three senators remain out this month, it would effectively prevent Barrett from being confirmed to the Supreme Court until they return, which could be after Election Day during a lame-duck session."

"A lame-duck confirmation is a situation that GOP leaders are eager to avoid in case they lose control of the chamber next month," reported Manu Raju and Lauren Fox. "The fear is that one or two GOP senators may break ranks after seeing the election results and citing the will of the voters." 

Two Republican senators—Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) have already indicated they do not support moving forward with Barrett's confirmation process before the election, but have not ruled out a confirmation during a potential lame-duck session should Trump lose to Democratic candidate Joe Biden.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) tweeted late Friday that with at least two Covid-positive Judiciary Committee members, "The Senate cannot safely proceed on the Supreme Court nomination. We must focus on containing this virus to protect members and staff."

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, issued a joint statement Friday along with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), noting the "bipartisan agreement that a virtual confirmation hearing for a lifetime appointment to the federal bench is not an acceptable substitute" for an in-person hearing and calling on committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) postpone the hearing. 

"All circuit court nominees have appeared in person during the pandemic, and there is far more at stake for the American people with this Supreme Court nomination, including the Affordable Care Act being struck down and more than seven million Covid survivors being denied health coverage," the lawmakers said. "It’s critical that Chairman Graham put the health of senators, the nominee and staff first – and ensure a full and fair hearing that is not rushed, not truncated, and not virtual. Otherwise this already illegitimate process will become a dangerous one.” 

The statement followed Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's indication that Republicans intend to move "full steam ahead" with Barrett's confirmation. McConnell made his statement before Tillis announced his positive test result.

"How many Senate Judiciary Committee members need to test positive to get Lindsey Graham to postpone Amy Coney Barrett's confirmation hearing?" asked UCLA political scientist Miranda Yaver after Tillis's diagnosis became public.

David Segal, executive director of progressive campaign group Demand Progress,called for the hearing to be postponed while urging voters to "prepare to push for further postponement thereafter."

Yep postpone the hearing - and prepare to push for further postponement thereafter. Call your senators, no matter where you are, at 202-899-8938. (Will get script to use once you dial.) https://t.co/hj8UeClo5p

— David Segal (@DavidSegalRI) October 3, 2020

"Call your senators, no matter where you are," Segal tweeted.

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The Highest Image of our Shared Future

Dear friends,

Trust the process. It is all unfolding exactly as it must. There is a critical mass of us holding the highest image of our shared future. Nothing less can manifest. Things must come unglued before they are recreated in a new shape. The glue that holds everything together is Love. In this sense Love is attention, commitment, caring, energy, inclusiveness.  If these are missing what has appeared will dissolve into the nothingness from whence it came.

We are in the dissolution phase of everything that does not include Love. Racism, sexism, homophobia, greed, violence, fascism, inequality, inequity; they are all coming apart in our collective consciousness. We cannot thrive with them in place. Often the epitome of everything we do not want is revealed so that we can be resolute in our refusal to put up with it any longer. We see that now.

Our votes this year are not for a person. They are votes for the future of humanity.  We will not allow a world without Love. We are better than what is before us.  We are greater than anything we have ever done. We are more aware of our interdependence than ever. We are the ones with the truest voice, and we shall be heard.

Stay tuned in,

Carol Carnes www.carol-carnes.com

Off the Top of My Head

Is Ruth Bader Ginsburg Looking Down on Us?

by John Lawrence, October 3, 2020

People say when people die, they are looking down on us. I'm not sure this is true, but if it is, I'm sure RBG and God are totally pissed that Trump ignored this woman's dying wish that the next President pick her replacement. In a flagrant disregard for a woman's dying wish, Trump and a whole bunch of hypocrite Republicans including Lindsay Graham ("mark my words") went full steam ahead with putting their pick on the Supreme Court. Now it looks like RBG will get her dying wish as 2 Republican Senators who are on the Senate judiciary committee have come down with COVID. So it looks like Republicans don't have their majority after 2 others said they wouldn't vote with them. If this is the fallout from Trump and cohorts coming down with COVID, I'm sure that RBG, looking down on us, is saying Mazel Tov!

In a flagrant disregard for the health and safety of the American people, not to say of his own health and the health of other Republicans and his "base", Trump has ignored science and the advice of medical experts at his peril. Now it's time to pay the piper. I have mixed feelings about the President of the US coming down with COVID, but I can't say I'm praying for him. If I were a praying man, which I am to a small extent, I would pray for the 200,000 plus families who have lost a loved one due to Trump's misleading the American people. He mocked Joe Biden for wearing a mask as if he were the fearless macho man and Joe was just a wimp. In an attempt to appear strong and powerful, Trump has been reduced to the lot of 7 million ordinary individuals who have been laid low by a common virus. We dodged a bullet with SARS when it broke out in 2002. Over the next several months, SARS infected more than 8,000 people, killed 774, and threatened a worldwide pandemic. The crisis was averted only when cutting-edge science was combined with sophisticated communications strategies and close international cooperation. None of that was present this time thanks to Donald Trump. So I can't feel sorry for him.

Joe Biden is a compassionate and intelligent man. Trump considers this a sign of weakness. He tries to represent himself as a macho man and brings this out in his followers. Science be damned. Intelligence be damned. Compassion be damned. USA. USA. Lock her up. Lock her up. OK, Trump, now you've got what you so richly deserved. I can't feel sorry for you just because you're President of the US. You've put children in cages and separated them from their families. You've put nincompoops, toadies and sycophants in positions of power, people whose only qualification was their loyalty to you. You've gutted every environmental regulation you could get your hand on. You've denied the most looming crisis of our time - global warming.

Is Trump's diagnosis divine retribution? Is it God's punishment? I can't bring myself to think so. However, it is retribution for ignoring the advice of medical experts. It is retribution for ignoring science. It is retribution for not taking COVID seriously. I think this is the end of Trump's campaign. In a sense he has proven himself wrong in the eyes of any intelligent voter by coming down with COVID himself. He has held superspreader events with fellow Republicans sitting shoulder to shoulder with no masks on like the event in the Rose Garden when he presented his pick for RBG's replacement. Was this RBG's revenge for ignoring her dying wish? Was this God saying, "Too much. I have to intervene." Trump's swaggering hubris, his towering stupidity - all has come to nought for him. Pride comith before a fall. And now large numbers of Republicans including Senators and Congressmen and women and one Catholic priest, the President of Notre Dame, are coming down with COVID.

All I can think, hope and pray for is that RBG's dying wish will come to fruition, the election will come soon with Joe Biden being elected, Democrats will take control of both Houses of Congress, Joe Biden's Green Deal will be implemented (amazing how little time it took for Republicans to demonize "Green New Deal") and Trump will become a footnote in history.