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Off the Top of My Head

The Immigration Debacle - Part 4 - Congressman Vicente Gonzalez' Safe Zone Proposal

by John Lawrence

Similar to suggestions in this series, Congressman Gonzalez has proposed a safe zone in Guatemala from which asylum seekers could apply to enter the United States and take the pressure off the southern border. At the same time the law that allows admission to the US for anyone setting foot on the US would change. People doing this would be transported back to the safe zone. They could apply for asylum there. Congressman Vicente's proposal is the following:

“America is a haven for those looking to escape poverty, violence, and religious or political persecution,” stated Congressman Gonzalez. “It is time we address our flawed immigration process and ensure the safety of migrants and the security of our country. I am proud to introduce this legislation that allows individuals to apply for asylum in their home country—breaking the cycle of dependence on human traffickers and the deadly risk of trekking thousands of miles over harsh terrain. 

“The Safe Zones Act provides much needed relief to our border communities and gives a humane path to asylum seekers, removing their reliance on cartels for passage to our southern border. The Safe Zones Act allows people to apply for asylum legally and securely in a process that alleviates pressure on our Border Patrol personnel, border communities, and our immigration courts. The scenes we have witnessed from migrants dying in tractor-trailers to drowning in the Rio Grande are nothing short of horrific and heartbreaking. It is time we adequately address immigration reform with common-sense, bipartisan measures that provide actual results.  

“I urge my colleagues to join me and send this bill to President Biden’s desk. Seeking a better life in the United States should not be a death sentence for families. It is time we change the system for the better.” 

It goes on:

• Safe Zones are designated by the Secretary of State under section 207(g) to accept and process applications for refugee admissions to the United States.

• Safe Zones may include embassies, consulates, other diplomatic facilities, or other facilities as determined to be appropriate by the Secretary of State.

The only thing I would add is, considering conservative concerns, the border itself should be strengthened to discourage illegal immigration. If those attempting to cross the US border know that they will be caught and transported back to the safe zone, they will be disincentivized from doing so.

Off the Top of My Head

Manchin and Sinema Should Be Kicked Out of the Democratic Party

by John Lawrence

They have blocked Biden's agenda every step of the way. Biden and his team have spent countless hours "negotiating" with them to no avail. They have treated them with kid gloves to no avail. Now they should call them out. They are effectively blocking the codification of Roe v Wade, voting rights legislation, Biden's Build Back Better initiative and every other thing every other Democrat stands for. They are Democrats in name only - DINOs. Instead of being treated with kid gloves, they should be treated like the pariahs they are. Democrats are too nicey nice. Biden got a little testy and said he was open to ending the filibuster in order to codify Roe. Who's standing in the way of ending the filibuster? Manchin and Sinema. Who's standing in the way of every other thing Biden and most Democrats want to get done? Manchin and Sinema. If it weren't for them, Democrats could get rid of the filibuster today and codify everything the Supreme Court is torpedoing plus do a lot more. As it is, Biden is hamstrung by two quasi Democrats who are really Republicans in sheep's clothing.

The filibuster is an anti democratic rule of the Senate that prevents decisions being made by majority rule. There's no good reason for it to exist. Democrats think that, if they get rid of it, Republicans will go wild with their legislation when they control both Houses of Congress and the Presidency. But they are just wrong. When Republicans control both Houses of Congress and the Presidency but don't have 60 votes in the Senate (the number of votes necessary to overcome the filibuster), they can just vote to end or suspend the filibuster to get their legislation passed and signed into law. They don't care whether or not Democrats "observed" the traditions of the Senate by not voting to end the filibuster for their purposes. They will just do it themselves when it suits their interests. That's what the Democrats don't get. Democrats are afraid to end a "rule" when they theoretically have the power now to do so which is anti Democratic in order to get good things passed for the American people. And who are standing in the way of that? Not Republicans but 2 Democrats - Manchin and Sinema. If it weren't for them, abortion rights could be codified. A whole host of other things which the Supreme Court is casting to the wind, could be codified. In fact everything that was considered settled law is not because, if it hasn't been codified, it is under attack by the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court has pointed out that it's not enough to win a case before the Supreme Court. It must be codified by the Congress and signed into law by the President before it is "settled law." Therefore, the Supreme Court will throw out every so called "Constitutional protection" because nothing is constitutionally protected just because somebody has won a case before the Supreme Court. As sclerotic and underperforming as Congress is, the Supremes know that throwing things back to Congress effectively overturns every decision the Supreme Court has ever made! Forget about Roe v Wade. They are now attacking the EPA so that the US can do nothing about climate change except to sit back and let it happen. The US is fast becoming a backwater among nations and all because Trump had the power to appoint 3 conservative Justices to the Supreme Court. So what will be next on the Republicans' agenda? Getting rid of social security and Medicare? The Supreme Court will help them with that. Their only talent is using arcane language to do the Republicans' dirty work.

Off the Top of My Head

Why None of the Proposed Federal Legislation Will Stop Gun Violence

by John Lawrence

The proposed legislation is little more than a farce even if it passes. When the most radical item is raising the legal age to 21 for purchasing an AR-15, the whole context of gun control is rendered risible. There will still be 120.5 guns in circulation for every American. None of the proposed legislation will limit the number of gun sales let alone getting guns out of circulation and off the streets. The only effective legislation would be to outlaw the sale of AR-15s completely and initiate a mandatory buy back program to get rid of these guns. This is not even thinkable in terms of the rationality of American lawmakers. The proposed legislation is just skirting around the edges, and it will do nothing to curb gun violence.

After a mass shooting in Australia in 1996, Australia not only banned the sale of AR-15 type guns, it initiated a mandatory buy back program to get these guns off the streets. New Zealand did the same thing after a mass shooting in 2019. In both cases mass shootings and gun deaths in general plummeted. These two countries have demonstrated that the only effective way to counter the American culture of gun violence is to take the drastic step of banning assault rifles and getting the ones already in circulation off the streets by initiating a buy back program. The US, of course, will not take these "radical" steps, and so mass shootings and huge numbers of gun deaths will continue unabated. In a sense legislators are facilitating by means of their inaction the next slaughter of innocent school children. These people who are supposedly running this country fail to realize that gun violence is systemic now in American culture and their "solutions" will do little or nothing to eradicate it. Thank God my parents who were educators never had to even imagine this problem.

BBC News reported:

Firearms deaths are a fixture in American life.

There were 1.5 million of them between 1968 and 2017 - that's higher than the number of soldiers killed in every US conflict since the American War for Independence in 1775.

In 2020 alone, more than 45,000 Americans died at the end of a barrel of a gun, whether by homicide or suicide, more than any other year on record. The figure represents a 25% increase from five years prior, and a 43% increase from 2010.

I for one advocate getting rid of the Second Amendment to the Constitution. No country should enshrine in its Constitution any language which can be interpreted, as these words have been, to give any citizen the absolute right to own a gun. It has been pointed out again and again that there are more restrictive laws for car ownership than there are for gun ownership. The framers of the US Constitution made a big mistake when they didn't qualify the Second Amendment. They could have saved a lot of innocent people being killed if they had. The same thing applies to the First Amendment, but that is a subject for another day. Even the legal shooting of guns is no more than a "hobby" if you want to call the slaying of innocent animals a hobby. This is a hobby that has been elevated, unfortunately, to a Constitutional right with totally devastating results. Any other hobby that killed people would be legislated out of existence. The US needs to follow the example of countries like Australia and New Zealand which have treated gun violence in a sensible manner with the result that gun deaths in those countries have drastically diminished. But this is just another Problem of American Democracy which is putting the US on a downhill slide.

Off the Top of My Head

Problems of American Democracy - Part 4: The Easter Bunny Approach to Good Citizenship

by John Lawrence

Voters usually turn against the party in power in the mid term elections. Why? Because the party in power has promised voters all kinds of Easter goodies, and they haven't delivered on all of them. They haven't delivered all of them because the job of the party out of power is to prevent the party in power from doing so. Meanwhile, the party out of power promises voters a different bag of goodies if only they elect them. After all the party in power hasn't delivered all of the goodies promised. The result is the voters vote for the party out of power in the mid term elections. They've gotten all the goodies they're likely to get from the party in power, and their vote is cast in such a way that they are expecting a new bag of Easter goodies that has been promised by the party out of power if only the voters will vote for them which they willingly do. Why? Because voters don't vote for the party most likely to provide the country with good government. They don't vote for the party that is most likely to provide them with intelligent government. They vote for the party that has promised them a new and different bag of Easter goodies than the party in power which hasn't fulfilled all its promised goodies.

So the mid term elections are coming up. Republicans have done their job of obstructing many of Biden's campaign pledges. He did get an infrastructure package passed and got enormous COVID economic relief for citizens, but his hallmark campaign platform pledge, the Build Back Better plan has gone unfulfilled, thanks largely to the Republicans and two Republican wolves in Democratic sheep's clothing. The fickle voters do not assess how Biden has handled the chores of government, whether or not he's handled them in an intelligent and proficient manner. Their fickleness only assesses whether or not they've gotten all the Easter goodies Biden and the Democrats had promised. They have not. Therefore, it has been decreed by pundits, one and all, that Democrats don't have a snowball's chances in Hell of getting reelected in the Halls of Congress come this November.

Voters would rather elect a nincompoop like Trump who knew nothing about government except for the fact that it made him the most powerful man in the Free World, and, therefore, he could do and say most anything he wanted. He also promised voters the Republican bag of goodies - lowered taxes. Thoughtfully, Biden has carefully changed the Democratic meme from raising taxes on everyone to raising taxes only on the rich thus depriving Republicans of their main accusation towards Democrats: "They will raise your taxes." However, Biden doesn't seem to be getting very far in fighting inflation by raising taxes on the rich. Why? Because most Congress persons and Senators are the rich, and they've been lobbied very thoroughly by the rich. Of course this is all very legitimate. It's the American way of doing government unlike the Russian way where a rich businessman just offers cash to a member of parliament if they'll vote a certain way. In America the rich lobby and make generous campaign contributions in order to get Congress persons to vote a certain way. There's also an implied, though not explicit, wink, wink, nod, nod that the Congress person will get a lucrative job on a Fortune 400 Board when they retire from Congress in order to spend more time with their family. Of course this is not considered corruption, but the result is the same. In Russia politicians and government officials do the bidding of the rich; in America politicians and government officials do the bidding of the rich. What else is new?

Off the Top of My Head

Oh No, Joe, Say It Isn't So

by John Lawrence

Despite prior commitments to Joe Biden and House Democrats, Joe Mancin is a "No" on Biden's Build Back Better bill which will provide child care, eldercare, universal Pre-K and more. Dr. No made his position clear yesterday. He's tired of farting around aka negotiating. Democrats need all 50 votes in the Senate to pass the bill. 49 are on board and this gives Mancin extraordinary power. It's his way or the highway. Mancin has said he would support a bill totaling $1.5 trillion, but the house and Senate Democrats have been gingerly "negotiating" with Joe for more. Here's an idea: take what you can get and go home. Cuz you ain't gonna get no mo. Let Mancin write the bill. Throw in voting rights as well, and pass both in the same bill by reconciliation. Mancin has already essentially written a voting rights bill he would support. Again it's not everything progressives want, but it's better than nuttin.

Conservatives have traditionally broken inflation on the backs of the poor. The Phillips curve which is gospel among conservative economists says that you need to increase unemployment in order to rein in inflation. Problem is at this time there is hardly any unemployment. So what else can you do to keep poor people poor? Don't give them any more government benefits. That's the ticket. Of course, progressives say the Phillips curve is hogwash. All you need to do is to extract money from the economy by taxing the rich. But tell that to rich corporation who are spending billions on lobbyists to convince quasi conservative Democrats like Joe Mancin otherwise. And then there is conservative activist Paul Weyrich who famously said, "“I don’t want everybody to vote . . . our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.” Translate that into economic terms and you get, "I don't want everyone to be middle class. Who would do the necessary back breaking labor to keep the economy growing if not for the poor."

So conservatives don't want the poor to vote and they also don't want them to work their way into the middle class. They want to keep the poor poor so the economy has a goodly supply of backbreaking and menial labor which it badly needs, especially if you want to buy American. Otherwise, we would have to export the backbreaking labor to other countries where there is a plentiful supply of poor people. Right now conservatives are aghast at how the shortage of labor is fueling demands for higher wages. This is a blow to their very way of life which is predicated on keeping the poor poor. They don't want to be flooded with immigrants to take the menial labor jobs so those who came in 20 years ago can progress to the middle class like Joe Biden wants them to do. The best way to keep them poor is to not give them any more government benefits.

So progressive Democrats in the House and Bernie Sanders in the Senate have been screwed once again. The whole deal was that both the infrastructure bill and the Build Back Better bill were supposed to pass in tandem. Then after farting around (excuse me, "negotiating") for months and months, finally Joe Mancin has put the kibosh on Build Back Better after successfully delinking the two. Screwed again. Lucy with the football. So here's the solution. Stop negotiating. Let Mancin write the bill and then everybody genuflect. And while you're at it, throw  Mancin's voting rights, bill written by him, into the package and pass the whole ungodly stew by reconciliation and be done with it.

Off the Top of My Head

Problems of American Democracy - Part 1

by John Lawrence

When my father was a high school teacher in Highland Park, NJ, he taught a course - Problems in American Democracy. So I'm hopefully carrying on a family tradition by trying to elucidate these problems which, to put it mildly, are probably much different today than they were in 1941! The big problem today is that so many people are detached from reality in terms of being in touch with what the real problems are. One of the real problems is climate change, how to get from here to net zero carbon emissions before planet earth becomes uninhabitable. Another real problem is homelessness and affordability of housing. Another real problem is the 80 million refugees in the world. Another real problem is for Americans to be concerned about world problems and not just confine their attention to what goes on inside the borders of the US.  Another real problem is physical and social infrastructure which will be addressed by Biden's Build Back Better bills. But the biggest problem of all, as I see it, is that elections every 2 years make continuity of direction for the US impossible especially when the 2 parties have become diametrically opposed. So today we have the reality that the American government could possibly swing back and forth between Trumpism and what we might call Bidenism. Back and forth between ignorance and enlightenment. To boot the American people are no longer tuned in to authoritative news sources. Too many are only tuned into social media which is greatly responsible for cultivating the divide between two American tribes - the no nothings and the do somethings.

People in the Trump camp could care less about voting for or against their own economic interests. You would think a lot of them would benefit from the initiatives that the Democrats have put forward. But either they are ignorant of them or are willing to vote against their interests just because of the tribe they belong to or out of spite. They are completely irrational. Rationality is not even on the table. Their hate and their spite rules everything as far as they are concerned. They are willing to go down numerous rabbit holes and believe all kinds of conspiracy theories because critical thinking or a concern about human welfare, their own and others, has no place in their consciousness. Their concern and understanding remains at the level of symbols like the American flag. A deeper understanding or analysis of situations is beyond them. What's more this misinformed and ignorant part of the population is significant in number and can easily be responsible for electing ignorant and conspiracy theory infused lawmakers who will do whatever is necessary to pander to their constituents. Thus America as a nation could swerve back and forth between ignorance and rationality as exemplified by Trump's withdrawal from Obama's climate initiatives like the Paris accords and Biden's reinstating them.

Contrast the instability of American democracy with the Chinese system of government in which stability is of utmost importance. They don't want anyone rocking the boat including tennis stars. While this heavy handedness does curtail some of the aspects of western notions of freedom, it preserves the priorities of the long term interests of China itself which has been going in what most experts concede is a very positive direction. According to the World Bank: "Since China began to open up and reform its economy in 1978, GDP growth has averaged almost 10 percent a year, and more than 800 million people have been lifted out of poverty. There have also been significant improvements in access to health, education, and other services over the same period." China has had the goal of eliminating poverty altogether and claims as of 2021 to have done so. According to a Chinese source which admittedly may be biased: "Through continuous efforts, the final 98.99 million impoverished rural residents in China had all been lifted out of poverty, and all 832 impoverished counties and 128,000 villages had been removed from the poverty list by the end of 2020. The strategy of targeted poverty alleviation is China's strongest "weapon" in its final battle against poverty, and a major innovation in the theory and practice of poverty reduction. China's success in poverty alleviation has proven that the problem of poverty, in essence, is how the people should be treated: the people-centered philosophy is the fundamental driving force behind this cause." Independent confirmation of these claims is unclear. The World Bank which is an unbiased source essentially agrees with the Chinese government at to its elimination of poverty: "In 1990 there were more than 750 million people in China living below the international poverty line - about two-thirds of the population. By 2012, that had fallen to fewer than 90 million, and by 2016 - the most recent year for which World Bank figures are available - it had fallen to 7.2 million people (0.5% of the population). So clearly, even in 2016 China was well on the way to reaching its target. This suggests that overall, 745 million fewer people were living in extreme poverty in China than there were 30 years ago. World Bank figures do not take us to the present day, but the trend is certainly in line with the Chinese government's announcement."

So what weapons does the US have in its arsenal for the alleviation of poverty and homelessness? Not many. Biden's Build Back Better plan will help, but the US in recent years has been more interested in funding weapons systems built by the military-industrial complex, weapons that destroy rather than weapons that build. It's only "progressives" that even care about solving the problems of poverty and homelessness in America or in doing something about climate change or about the refugee problem in the world and not just at our southern border. I note that not one Republican voted for Biden's Build Back Better bill in the House. Instead Republican leader Kevin McCarthy went on an 8 hour diatribe in a futile attempt to prevent the bill's passage.

Off the Top of My Head

Why Manchin and Sinema Don't Trust Progressives in the House and Vice Versa: Earmarks

by John Lawrence

As Ronald Reagan said, "Trust, but verify." An earmark is some piece of legislation that a senator or congressperson slips into a bill in the middle of the night and hopes it goes unnoticed by everyone concerned. The theory is that no one will notice an unagreed upon paragraph in thousands of pages of legislation. The most famous earmark was the "Bridge to Nowhere." The Gravina Island Bridge, popularly known as the "Bridge to Nowhere", has become shorthand for frivolous earmarks. In 2002, it was proposed that a for-profit prison corporation, Cornell Corrections, build a prison on an Alaskan island. To connect the island with Ketchikan, it was originally planned that the federal government spend $175 million on building a bridge to the island, and another $75 million to connect it to the power grid with an electrical intertie. The Ketchikan Borough Assembly turned the proposal down when the administration of Governor Tony Knowles also expressed its disfavor to the idea. Eventually, the corporation's prison plans led to the exposure of the wide-ranging Alaska political corruption probe, which eventually ensnared U.S. Senator Ted Stevens. The bridge idea persisted. The 2005 Highway Bill provided for $223m to build the Gravina Island Bridge between Gravina Island and nearby Ketchikan, on Revillagigedo Island. Despite the demise of the bridge proposal, Governor Sarah Palin spent $26 million in transportation funding for constructing the planned access road on the island that ultimately served little use.

This is why Manchin and Sinema won't come out and say they support the House legislation on the Build Back Better plan until they see the actual legislation and not just a "framework." They want to make sure that progressives in the House don't slip Family Leave back into the framework in the middle of the night. Likewise, House Progressives want the two bills to go to the Senate "in tandem" so that Manchin and Sinema don't tank the Build Back Better bill while passing the conventional infrastructure bill. I don't understand why the pundits haven't figured this out. It makes perfect sense. Neither side wants to be screwed. Capische? I'm sure the bills will both be passed in tandem according to the framework that Joe Biden got both sides to agree on. I don't think either Manchin or Sinema will go back on their word to Joe Biden. However, they don't want to be put in the position of agreeing to a framework publicly, and then having the Progressives slip something into the bill at the last minute that they hadn't agreed to. They want to see the actual legislation first before they agree publicly that they will vote for it. Progressives want Manchin and Sinema to agree publicly to their legislation before they will vote on the bipartisan package.

I don't see why CNN's pundits haven't figured this out. It will get done but it needs to get done according to the process that both sides originally agreed upon and no sooner. That only makes sense. Why are the pundits in such a great hurry to get it done bemnoaning Biden's falling approval ratings? From Biden's viewpoint he knows that this legislation will be transformative, and he will go down in history for having negotiated a settlement between both sides. He could care less about his approval ratings. As he said, "It doesn't matter whether it takes 6 days or 6 weeks just so long as it eventually gets done." It will be quite an accomplishment given the fact that the Democrats have the slimmest of margins in the Senate. Biden probably won't run again anyway. Americans just need to be patient.

Capische?

How Trump Might Save the Democrats

by Robert Reich

Monday, October 11, 2021

[Please consider subscribing to my substack, at robertreich.substack.com, from which the following is drawn]

The unofficial kickoff of the former guy’s presidential campaign was a rally Saturday night in Des Moines. Unfortunately for the GOP, Trump’s speech focused on his Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen rather than on Joe Biden, whose approval ratings keep sliding because of the Delta variant’s continuing impact as well as fumbles at the border and in exiting Afghanistan.

All indications are that Trump is going to cast the midterm elections as a referendum on himself rather than on Biden. That’s hardly surprising, given Trump’s sociopathic ego. He cast his entire presidency as a referendum on himself. 

What’s surprising is how quickly the rest of the Republican Party is falling prey to this. We’ve already observed it at the state level: Trump’s Big Lie has moved 18 Republican-dominated states to enact 33 laws suppressing the votes of likely Democratic voters, on the false pretext of eliminating “voter fraud” that doesn’t exist. Several of these state laws will also let Republican legislatures ignore future electoral results they dislike. Under the same pretext, Republican states have undertaken bogus “audits” of the 2020 election.

But for a brief time it seemed as if senior Republicans in Washington would try to move the party away from Trump. They now appear to have given up. Several who in January criticized him for provoking the Capitol insurrection are now defending him and minimizing the attempted coup – including, notably, Senator Chuck Grassley, who showed up at Saturday’s Des Moines rally, and former vice president Michael Pence, who is now minimizing and excusing the riot.

For Trump to make the midterm elections into a referendum on himself and his Big Lie is useful for the Democrats. It takes the focus off Biden, reminds Americans how vile the former president is, and forces Republicans to try to defend him. If you watched Fox News Sunday, you might have seen Chris Wallace repeatedly ask House Minority Whip Steve Scalise whether he thought the 2020 election was stolen, and Scalise repeatedly squirm to avoid answering the question.

Scalise also refused to say whether he would vote to hold in contempt of Congress Trump advisers, such as Steve Bannon, who are resisting subpoenas issued by the January 6 Committee. Bannon is invoking executive privilege, at Trump’s request — an absurd position because by the 2020 election Bannon hadn’t worked in the White House for years. 

January 6 Committee Chair Bennie Thompson and Vice Chair Liz Cheney say they “will not allow any witness to defy a lawful subpoena or attempt to run out the clock, and we will swiftly consider advancing a criminal contempt of Congress referral.”

This means even more of an ongoing focus on Trump and his attempted coup. Before Congress can refer a criminal contempt to the Justice Department for prosecution, the full House has to vote on it. So you can expect a near party-line vote, which will put Republicans further on record as supporting Trump and, by implication, others who instigated the insurrection. 

The criminal contempt of Congress statute, enacted in 1857 and only slightly modified since, provides that any person who willfully fails to comply with a properly issued committee subpoena for testimony or documents is punishable by a substantial fine and imprisonment for up to one year. Once the House votes in favor of criminal contempt, the Speaker is required to report it to the Department of Justice, which then determines whether to prosecute. (Unfortunately, Attorney General Merrick Garland so far has not distinguished himself for holding Trump or his cronies accountable for anything.)

House Republicans could soon find themselves in an even more awkward position as the January 6 Committee investigates the roles several of them played in the insurrection. Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin has asked the committee to investigate the help Rep. Scott Perry gave Trump in pressuring the Justice Department to overturn the election, as well as Rep. Jim Jordan’s contacts with the White House before and during the insurrection. (You may remember that in the 2016 presidential election, Jordan, the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, dug into allegations of impropriety at the FBI and Justice Department, and defended the power of the subpoena to compel testimony from executive-branch officials.)

The January 6 Committee also issued a subpoena last week to Ali Alexander, the leader of the pro-Trump “Stop the Steal” organization, who has claimed he worked on the pre-insurrection rally with several GOP lawmakers, including Reps. Paul Gosar, Mo Brooks, and Andy Biggs.

Trump’s speech in Iowa Saturday night suggests we’re already in the gravitational field of the 2024 midterms. But in making that speech mostly about himself, Trump may have given Democrats more leeway to do what Americans – including most Trump supporters – need them to do.

Off the Top of My Head

America to End Forever War in Afghanistan Thanks to Joe Biden

by John Lawrence, April 15, 2021

So far Biden is making all the right moves, and I'm sure he has more up his sleeve. He's playing 3 dimensional chess while the Republicans haven't even learned to play checkers yet. The military-industrial complex is crying, "Oh, no," because they justify the huge expenditures on them by the need for continuance of forever wars. They are aghast at the prospect that their trillion dollar annual budget will be inevitably reduced. It has become obvious that the biggest threat to the US is not international terrorism but domestic terrorism. The FBI and the National Guard will deal with that very nicely; they don't need the Pentagon. The FBI is doing a remarkable job cleaning up the terrorists who took part in the January 6 bungled coup attempt. Over 400 arrests and counting so far. The idiots self videoed their own arrest warrants.

The US spends more on defense than the next 10 countries combined. As an added service they also train the Oath Keepers, Proud Boys and the Three Percenters. The military-industrial complex has done a lot to militarize the consciousnesses of young Americans, especially young non-college bound Americans. College graduates, especially in engineering, often end up, like I did, in the military-industrial complex working for companies like Lockheed Martin, Northrup Grumman and General Dynamics. As a country we have been spending our money in all the wrong places, but the military-industrial complex wants to hang on to its prerogatives. When I was an employee of General Dynamics many years ago, they encouraged you to vote Republican. Otherwise their budgets might be cut and there might be a RIF (Reduction in Force). When the military-industrial complex is cut down to size, right sized as they say, the Republican party will lose its raison d'être, its justification, because that's all in reality that it stands for - large defense budgets and tax cuts for the wealthy.

If we really want to compete with China, then we should cut our defense budget down to the size of China's and spend our money in more constructive ways like China is doing like building infrastructure with its Belt and Road initiative. The only infrastructure the US has been doing in foreign countries has been the building of military bases of which there are approximately 800 in practically every country in the world. Meanwhile, China has one military base in a foreign country - in Djibouti! If the US wants to compete with China, it will take a page out of China's book and build infrastructure not military bases. China and the US need to cooperate on problems facing the whole earth like global warming. It's no consolation to win the competitive war while the home we all live in goes up in flames or drowns as the case may be.

Republicans want Biden to tell them how he's going to pay for all his ambitious social programs? Let's see. Let me count the ways. Taxes on the rich - that's a good one. Reduce the size of the military-industrial complex budget. Even better. Military contractors, among others, provide the campaign donations for the Republican party as long as the guys they are providing the financial jet fuel for are hardliners for a "strong" defense. Well now, maybe they should stand up for transferring the money to the FBI so they can deal with domestic terrorism instead of a useless military engaged in forever wars which are only killing civilians, destroying real estate and creating refugees. The world doesn't need an America which thinks it has the self-appointed job of being the world's policeman or moral arbiter. There is something in the Bible about taking the beam out of our own eye before telling our neighbor to take the mote out of theirs.

The US bloated military is wasting our money while militarizing the consciousness of our young men many of whom think their patriotism justifies invading and laying waste to our Capitol. Lawmakers were shocked, shocked to find out that the invaders of the People's House were present and former members of the military and police forces! Patriots! This is what happens when you define patriotism in military terms. The true patriots are the doctors and nurses, supermarket workers, delivery drivers, meat packers and others who put their lives at risk to help us get through this pandemic. True patriotism consists of reducing our military-industrial complex and defense budget to a reasonable size comparative with other countries and the real threats in the world while building up our infrastructure assets and social safety net programs as every other advanced country has already done. Joe Biden is on the road to doing this. May he prosper and prevail. And God bless our doctors and nurses.

Off the Top of My Head

Unlike Trump, Biden's New Deal Will Actually Make America Great Again

by John Lawrence, April 4, 2021

GDP is the measure of national economic activity and is composed of 4 components: private consumer consumption, business investment, government investment and net of imports and exports. America's economy is 70% consumption compared to about 50% for most of our western allies. Government spending is about 17% compared to 40-50% for most of our allies. In fact for Norway, Belgium, Finland and France it's over 50%. Joe Biden's infrastructure plan will change all that bringing government spending on infrastructure both material and human more in line with the rest of the developed world. While most of our allies spend around 50% on consumption, America is primarily a consumer economy at 70%. That's about to change under Biden's New Deal. Government consumption and employment will increase while private consumption and employment will decrease. This is a good thing, but Republicans and states' rights advocates disagree. American infrastructure is falling to Third World status while Americans entertain themselves to death. Nothing has been invested and everything has been consumed. Biden's attempted change in these dynamics, which Mitch McConnell has vowed to fight "every step of the way" is a bid to preserve first world status for the US which is rapidly diminishing.

The one thing the US has going for itself right now is the fact that the US dollar is the world's reserve currency. As such the US can spend large sums - trillions of dollars in fact - without fear of the dollar losing its value. So it might as well "go big" on spending because the dollar may not always retain that status. China is becoming the world's largest economy with major spending on infrastructure not only in China, but, with its Belt and Road Initiative, around the world. Meanwhile, what the US has to offer in that regard is using its bloated military to police the world. So if you were President of your country, which would you rather have - policing or investment. The answer seems clear to many, even to many US allies. China is consistent and values stability and unanimity of its citizens. The US government is subject to radical change every 2 or 4 years with deep divides among its populace, and more and more can't be counted upon by its allies even to the extent that a sizable number of US citizens invaded its Capitol! Autocratic countries may be brutal towards political dissidents, but they would never tolerate a threat to their very existence.

Some Americans will have to be brought kicking and screaming into the Biden economy. Just as they were cavalier about wearing masks, they could care less about good jobs at good wages. They just want good beer and football games. Cruises, spectator sports and abundant entertainment is what Americans have come to expect, and they prefer that to safer roads and rebuilt bridges. They are viscerally opposed to doing anything to prevent climate change or global warming. They don't want to work hard to make America great again. They want it all given to them on a silver platter preferably by an entertaining and charismatic President rather than a plodder who has their welfare at heart. There is a looming war between states rights Republicans who want the US to remain a private consumption economy and Democratic neo-New Dealers who want government to play a larger role in investing in American infrastructure, both material and human.There will be more and better paying jobs working in government infrastructure projects than there will be working in the entertainment industry. This infuriates some people.

Taxing the rich also brings Republicans out of the woodwork to proclaim that Biden will end up taxing the middle class as well "to pay for it" even though he has said that everyone making under $400,000 a year will not pay one penny more in taxes. Republican lawmakers will chomp at the bit to naysay that bit of profundity by saying over and over on their media outlets that it is not true. The truth is that Biden wants to construct a stronger safety net while rebuilding and extending American infrastructure, and a lot of Trump supporters just don't care about any of those things. They just want to be entertained and to eat out while watching spectator sports.

Off the Top of My Head

If Two Democratic Senators Were Not Elected in Georgia Run-offs, There Would Be No COVID Relief Package Under Biden

by John Lawrence, March13, 2021

It was crucial that the two Georgia Democratic Senators were elected. Not one Republican voted for Biden's $1.9 trillion bill. If there were one less Democrat in the Senate, nothing like it would ever have been passed. Republicans are the Party of No. Not one Republican Senator will ever vote Yes on any legislation put forward by a Democrat so that Georgia election was crucial. That's why Republican legislatures not only in Georgia but around the country are scrambling to put restrictive Jim Crow voting regulations in place on the belief that Republican operative Paul Weyrich was right. He said, "So many of our Christians have what I call the goo-goo syndrome: good government. They want everybody to vote. I don't want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people, they never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down."

So now economist Larry Summers is worried about inflation due to the fact that trillions have been added to the deficit. So far, lawmakers have enacted six major bills, costing about $5.3 trillion, to help manage the pandemic and mitigate the economic burden on families and businesses. Even those economists know that the Federal government doesn't need taxes  in order to spend money. The Federal Reserve can create it with a few keystrokes on a computer just the way they did to bail out Wall Street banks during the Great Financial Recession (GFR) of 2008. Of course the public wasn't suppose to know about this "secret" bailout by the Fed. Authorities wanted you to believe that the $700 billion bill passed by Congress provided the bailout. In reality it was much more. Rolling Stone reported: "Washington Post “Fact-checker” columnist Glenn Kessler disputes the numerous studies showing the real bailout outlay was through the Fed, which the Sanders campaign had said was anywhere from $7.7 trillion (the number Bloomberg used in its coverage of secret Fed lending) to $29 trillion (the number the Levy Institute at Bard College calculated, including guarantees and other forms of aid).

So how is it that  Larry Summers was not so worried about inflation due to the Fed's trillions of dollars created and given to Wall Street? The answer is that that money was given to rich people which has caused no inflation because rich people are not going to spend money in ways that drive up the Consumer Price Index (CPI). They are mainly going to invest their money in ways that aren't included in the CPI. They are going to purchase assets like stocks and real estate. Consequence: no inflation at least as measured by the CPI. Instead the Wall Street bailout during the GFR as well as the $2 trillion tax breaks of the Trump administration produced asset inflation. It's the reason that home prices and rents are becoming increasingly unaffordable. But Summers is worried about inflation as measured by the CPI which is what happens when poor and middle class people get a trillion dollar bailout. They will spend that money at least partly on consumer goods that are included in the CPI and potentially drive up prices. However, much of the bailout money will go to pay off debts like past due rent and mortgage payments. This is not inflationary. So the real moral of the story is that, according to economists like Summers, bailing out rich people is good, bailing out poor people is bad.

So two lessons are to be learned here. 1) The Fed doesn't need taxes to create money and spend it into the economy whether that money is to bail out banks or to bail out the poor and middles class. 2) Democrats need to enact at the Federal level voting laws which encourage as many people to vote as possible and roll back Republican enacted restrictions on voting at the state level. In order to do the latter, Democrats will have to eliminate the filibuster at least for particular types of legislation. The only reason Biden's $1.9 trillion relief bill passed is that it was done by a process known as "budget reconciliation" which only requires a majority vote in the Senate. A national voting rights bill cannot be passed by that process and is subject to the filibuster which requires 60 votes. The Party of No wouldn't hesitate to use the filibuster to doom any voting rights legislation at the Federal level which means essentially that Jim Crow voting rights would again be put in place to discourage black people from voting. And don't worry about your children and grandchildren having to pay off the national debt. The Federal Reserve doesn't need their money.

Off the Top of My Head

The Two Strands of Modern Economic Theory

by John Lawrence, February 12, 2021

Ellen Brown with her book Web of Debt pointed out that public banks could save states and municipalities millions in interest compared to Wall Street banks. She also pointed out that money is created by banks when they make loans with fractional reserve banking. They just create the money with keystrokes; it doesn't come out of deposits. Ergo, all money comes from debt, but that's only half the story. The other strand explains how the Federal Reserve just creates money by keystrokes. In The Deficit Myth, Stephanie Kelton explains how countries with sovereign currencies can create money that really is not debt, despite the fact that conventional thinking says it is. When households or states or countries in the Euro zone take on debt, they do have to pay it back. When countries with sovereign currencies create money, they don't have to pay it back. It's as simple as that.

When European countries gave up their sovereign currencies and adopted the Euro, they gave up the right to create the money they needed to pay bills so they need to borrow on capital markets which can charge them whatever interest they want. This is how Greece and Italy and other European countries got into problems. On the other hand the U.K. which never gave up its sovereign currency can just create the money it needs without going to the debt markets. In the same way Orange County and other US municipalities got into trouble with spiraling debt which had to be paid back. This can get out of hand because the more indebted a debtor gets, the higher interest rate they get charged so that in the worst case they are just borrowing money to pay interest. The US can never get in this debt trap because it never has to borrow money on the open market and the Fed can set interest rates however it wants. Once authorized by Congress and required by law Treasury bonds are issued and can always be paid because the Fed can just create the money to pay them.

Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) has established that deficit spending, whether that comes from tax breaks or government programs or currently for coronavirus relief, is just an accounting entry on the Fed's balance sheet. The national debt never needs to be paid off. Also any country that owns Treasuries - for instance, China - could have them paid off tomorrow if they chose to cash them all in by the Fed just debiting money from the savings account of the People's Bank of China at the Fed and crediting their cash account also at the Fed. Countries with sovereign currencies, ^i.e. the US dollar, the British pound, the Japanese yen etc, can all create money in this way by having their central banks do it with keystrokes on a computer. Greece, Italy, California and New York can't do this because they don't have sovereign currencies.

So there is a difference between debt acquired by households, firms and countries which don't issue their own sovereign currency and countries which have central banks that do. The US Federal Reserve can buy up Treasury bonds as necessary to provide as much money as is authorized by Congress to the US Treasury. By law they can't buy them directly from the Treasury but must buy them on the open market. However, US primary dealers - mainly Wall Street banks - are required to buy them and the Fed can buy them from the primary dealers by providing "liquidity" - dollars which the Fed creates with keystrokes - to the Wall Street banks. The Fed also controls interest rates which at this time are 0.25% or almost zero. So the $1.9 trillion relief package proposed by Biden is no problem either for the US Treasury or the Fed. That money could just end up on the Fed's balance sheet the way the trillions of dollars it created to bail out the Big Banks in the Great Financial Crisis of 2008 did. The fact is that, when the US government deficit spends, that adds money to the private economy, and right now the private economy is hurting because so many are out of work and not able to pay rent or mortgages or car payments. Money added to the economy by deficit spending (deficit being really a misnomer) can be readily absorbed by unemployed workers to pay their bills. The point is that taxes are not necessary for government spending.

So Web of Debt applies to the private economy and The Deficit Myth applies to the national economy. The first book advocates public banking which can save states and municipalities money on interest because they do have to pay their debts. The second book describes how governments with sovereign currencies can just create money which need never be paid off. However, this money creation facility should, like alcohol, be used responsibly; otherwise, inflation can occur. But when huge numbers of people are unemployed and states are having a hard time paying their bills, it is incumbent on the central government to help them. The same applies to European countries in the Euro zone. US lawmakers need to get up to date on how the real economy actually works. In truth Republicans have lost all legitimacy when it comes to their harping on deficit spending.

Off the Top of My Head

The Republican Game Plan is No Mystery: Obstruct Democratic Attempts to Help the Poor and Middle Class

by John Lawrence, January 24, 2021

The Washington Post article said it best: Right on schedule, Republicans pretend to care about deficits again. When they are in power, they run up the deficit by giving tax breaks to the rich. When Democrats are in power, they use the filibuster if necessary to deny Democrats any success in helping the American people who need help the most. They are deficit hawks, supposedly, but only when Democrats are in power. Knowing how this game operates by now, Democrats are prepared to do whatever is necessary to thwart it. The main tool at their disposal to get the COVID relief package passed is budget reconciliation which escapes the filibuster and only requires a majority vote in the Senate, exactly what Republicans have used to get their tax cuts passed. It seems clear that what the Republican party really stands for is aiding and abetting the rich while denying financial help and opportunities to the poor.

Even conventional economists like Larry Summers advocate for more Federal spending since interest rates are low. "We note that in a world of unused capacity and very low interest rates and costs of capital, concerns about crowding out of desirable private investment that were warranted a generation ago have much less force today. We argue that debt-to-GDP ratios are a misleading metric of fiscal sustainability that do not reflect the fact that both the present value of GDP has risen and debt service costs have fallen as interest rates have fallen." His point is, since interest rates are near zero, the US debt is not going to increase much as a result of paying interest on Treasury bonds. Furthermore, pump priming to get the economy up to full capacity as quickly as possible results in more taxes being collected by the Federal government which lowers deficit spending. Also, since the Fed sets interest rates, it can keep them at zero.

Furthermore, the piece de resistance is that in the final analysis deficits don't matter. The US Federal government can never run out of money since the US dollar is a sovereign currency. It can just be created by a few keystrokes on a computer by the Federal Reserve as it was when trillions of dollars were created to bail out the big banks. It is the same process that is used when the Federal government needs money. Instead of the Fed creating the money and moving it into the accounts of the big banks at the Fed, the money is created and moved into the account of the US Treasury which also exists at the Fed. This is the process that takes place when the amount of Federal government spending exceeds the amount the Federal government takes in from taxes. Republicans know this because of the $2 trillion that was created this way due to the Trump tax cuts.

So Republicans basically are lying to the American people as they have done so many times before when they pretend that money is not available to accelerate the COVID response or to provide relief to the American people or to rebuild infrastructure or to combat climate change. They are deluding the public. Democrats need to reeducate the American people about how the economy really works. Government debt just ends up on the Fed's balance sheet the same way that the trillions to bail out the big banks ended up on the Fed's balance sheet. Since the US dollar is a sovereign currency, there is never a need to pay it off. The US can never be in a situation of dependency on China or Japan or be constrained to pay off the Treasury bonds that they own since they could be paid off tomorrow again by a few keystrokes if necessary by moving money to their accounts at the Federal Reserve. Modern Monetary Theory has unmasked the way that the US economy really works in terms of how the US currency is created or destroyed by the US central bank - the Federal Reserve. In her book The Deficit Myth, Stephanie Kelton details this process.

So are there limitations on the creation of money by the Fed. Of course, but, as long as there is unused productive capacity in human or material terms, deficit spending can benefit not only the economy in general in terms of increasing GDP, but it can benefit the actual lives of people who are suffering because of food insecurity, rent and mortgage insecurity, health care insecurity, crumbling infrastructure and a desire to save the planet as a habitable place to live for their grandchildren. As the article points out, "the greater risk now, as Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell and others have warned in recent months, is that policymakers will do too little, rather than too much, to prevent permanent damage to the country’s productive capacity."  Janet Yellen, U.S. President-elect Joe Biden’s nominee to run the Treasury Department and former Fed Chairman, has also said that the government must “act big” with its next coronavirus relief package. So do Fed Chairmen and current and former Treasury Secretaries know more than Republican hacks who are spewing deficit hawk propaganda? You bet they do. They know how the relationship between the Fed and the US Treasury actually works. And it works how Stephanie Kelton outlines in her book.

Off the Top of My Head

Was the Insurrection a Blessing in Disguise?

by John Lawrence, January 21, 2021

What could have been a horrible tragedy ended up being just a horrible spectacle. But what if, instead of showing up January 6, the mob showed up January 20 catching security off guard the way they did at the Capitol?  As it turned out, Congress persons, in a show of defiance, went ahead with their business on the same day, and the inauguration went off without a hitch restoring hope and confidence in government. Result: insurrection defeated with very little loss of blood. The second thing is that now domestic terrorists and white supremacists are on the FBI's radar the way they never were before.Those who broke into the Capitol will be rooted out and sent to jail. Others will be closely watched. I never thought I'd be singing the praises of the FBI, but I'm so happy that they, the Intelligence agencies and the American people are finally aware of the real threats to America and not just imagined ones.

The one possible shred of a rationale that the election was stolen from Trump is that election laws were changed—legally—by the states to allow more mail-in balloting. This was motivated by a need to save people from congregating due to the coronavirus. The net effect was that more people, especially poor working people, got to vote than ever before. This probably made the difference in who won, but in a democratic society ideally every legally qualified voter should be able to vote. Republicans have always used voter suppression techniques to prevent this from happening. Republican operative Paul Weyrich famously said, "I don't want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of the people. They never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down." Well, in this election, unfortunately for Trump, pretty close to a majority of people actually voted. Now Republicans will be doing everything in their power to roll back those election laws so that mail-in voting will not be available in the next election. Democrats need to work very hard to make sure that mail-in voting stays in place permanently and even is expanded. This will insure that the demographic change that favors Democrats will be reflected in the electorate.

I thought that, since the Democrats had majorities in both Houses of Congress, getting legislation passed and signed into law would be a breeze. The only hang-up would be the filibuster, but the filibuster can be nullified by a simple majority vote. Easy peasy. Well, not so fast. There are a couple of conservative Democrats, the most notorious of which is Joe Manchin, Democrat of West Virginia. He has already said he won't vote to suspend the filibuster rule. This leaves budget reconciliation as the only way to get a bill passed by majority rule in the Senate. This will probably be used for the COVID relief bill which will probably pass. It's unclear if it can be used a second time, and, if it were, would Manchin vote with the Democrats? Even then budget reconciliation cannot be used for non budgetary issues.  What it boils down to is that this one man, Joe Manchin, has extraordinary control over the legislative process. Republicans will probably be united in the Senate and be as obstructionist to Democratic initiatives as they were during the Obama administration.

Meanwhile, the FBI is rounding up the mob that violated the Capitol. I want every one of them that went beyond the police barrier, even if they didn't go into the Capitol, rounded up and brought to justice. Some of them are so stupid like one real estate agent from Dallas who even advertised her business live on social media as she was entering the Capitol! Shaman Qanon begged Trump for a pardon. Trump could have blanket pardoned all of them if he had wanted to. After all they attacked the Capitol in Trump's name and at his urging. But when all was said and done, Trump abandoned them to their own fates, something they can ponder while spending 20 years in jail. Something else - I want the FBI to track down everyone who calls or emails someone with a death threat. It seems that a lot of this is happening, and I want the FBI to track down and prosecute all these bozos too. If it takes a Federal law to make this legally all encompassing, then one should be enacted.

From Reconciliation to a 'Nuclear Strike on the Filibuster': Progressive Memo Details Steps Biden Can Take to Defeat GOP Obstruction

Published on Tuesday, January 19, 2021

by Common Dreams

"Biden was elected with a mandate to break gridlock and deliver results. He should use it."

by Jake Johnson, staff writer

 

21 Comments

President-elect Joe Biden, with Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, introduces nominees for their science team on January 16, 2021 in Wilmington, Delaware. (Photo: Angela Weiss/ AFP via Getty Images)

With Senate Republicans already indicating that they will attempt to block passage of President-elect Joe Biden's newly released $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package, a trio of progressive organizations on Monday released a memo outlining steps the incoming president can take to overcome GOP obstruction and "deliver tangible results that improve Americans' lives."

"We are glad President-elect Biden is ready to start addressing the desperate needs of the American people and put forth a Covid aid proposal which begins to address the many issues we face," reads the document (pdf) crafted by Justice Democrats, the youth-led Sunrise Movement, and New Deal Strategies. "We hope ten Senate Republicans will support it, but are not holding our breath. The big question is, what happens when Republicans block Biden?"

With Democrats set to take unified control of the federal government thanks to runoff victories by Sens.-elect Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff of Georgia earlier this month, progressives have argued that the party can no longer point to Republican intransigence as an excuse for failing to advance its agenda.

"A quick strike against the filibuster in January will set Biden up to shepherd his entire agenda through regular order, with full committee involvement and proper levels of oversight and transparency."
—Justice Democrats, Sunrise Movement, New Deal Strategies

In their new memo, the progressive organizations outlined several strategic paths available to the incoming Biden administration should Republicans stand in the way of coronavirus relief and other key legislation.

One option, the groups said, is to weaken the $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief offer in a bid to win Republican support, which Biden has committed to seeking out despite warnings against compromising with the party that abetted the deadly January 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol.

"We hope Biden rejects the first option out of hand," the groups said. "Watering down the proposals in a hunt for Republican support is a bad idea on both substance and politics. The package Biden has proposed is a start to the aid America needs and it is popular. We should not play into Republicans' hands by delivering less aid while making the bill less popular."

An alternative to watering down a relief proposal that has already been criticized as inadequate is to try to pass the package through budget reconciliation, an expedited process that is not subject to the filibuster and therefore requires only a simple majority vote.

The trio of progressive groups argued that "reconciliation is a tempting option but it is ultimately a path to creating two classes of issues, with civil rights, D.C. statehood, and many other critical issues relegated to second-class status," given Senate rules limiting the kinds of legislation that can be passed through reconciliation.

"If Biden uses reconciliation, which we hope he does not, he must do so aggressively," the groups said, "with the intent of using it as a backdoor to eliminating the supermajority threshold for all issues."

By far the best way to defeat GOP stonewalling, the progressive coalition argued, is to "get rid of the filibuster immediately," a rule change that would require a simple majority vote. To achieve that, every Senate Democrat would need to vote yes and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris would have to break the tie, assuming all Republicans oppose the move.

"A quick strike against the filibuster in January will set Biden up to shepherd his entire agenda through regular order, with full committee involvement and proper levels of oversight and transparency," the groups said.

While Biden has said he would be open to eliminating the filibuster, several Democratic senators—including Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), and Jon Tester (D-Mont.)—have voiced opposition to such a reform despite its popularity among Democratic voters.

Justice Democrats, Sunrise, and New Deal Strategies argued that Biden "has the credibility and the political capital to bring along" the senators currently opposed to scrapping the filibuster.

"Every other path leads to needless complications and worse results for the American people," the groups warned. "Biden was elected with a mandate to break gridlock and deliver results. He should use it."

Read the full memo:

We are glad President-elect Biden is ready to start addressing the desperate needs of the American people and put forth a Covid aid proposal which begins to address the many issues we face. We hope ten Senate Republicans will support it, but are not holding our breath. The big question is, what happens when Republicans block Biden? Biden has chosen to reject austerity politics. We hope that he will continue to stick to that approach, and ​go big always​.

When Republicans deny Biden the ten GOP votes he will need to advance his Covid aid package, Biden will have three options:

1. Dramatically weaken the aid package and deliver worse results for the American people
2. Seek to pass the entire package through budget reconciliation
3. Reform Senate rules to get rid of the supermajority threshold, and pass the package through regular order.

Do not water down. ​We hope Biden rejects the first option out of hand. Watering down the proposals in a hunt for Republican support is a bad idea on both substance and politics. The package Biden has proposed is a start to the aid America needs and it is popular. We should not play into Republicans' hands by delivering less aid while making the bill less popular. When the Obama administration decided to deliver a smaller ARRA package in exchange for paltry Republican support, it was a bad trade. Democrats got no credit politically for a bipartisan deal,and Americans judged Democrats harshly in the 2010 midterms in large part because they did not see enough improvement in their own economic situation. The same is true now: Democrats will be judged in the 2022 midterms on whether they deliver tangible results that improve Americans' lives. Their guiding principle should be to always go big. As former Obama strategist David Plouffe ​said​, "If you do small things and you do the bare minimum, you're probably going to pay a price for that. It's bad for the country and bad politics."

Do not waste precious time. ​President Obama recently admitted that he and Democratic Party leadership wasted precious time negotiating with moderate Republicans like Chuck Grassley and Olympia Snowe in order to provide the Affordable Care Act bipartisan cover. Biden and Democratic Party leadership have essentially nine months to act before the 2022 election cycle kicks into gear. There's nothing that would please Mitch McConnell more than to allow Republicans to run out the legislative clock on key Democratic priorities.

Reconciliation relegates critical issues to second-class status. ​Reconciliation is a tempting option but it is ultimately a path to creating two classes of issues, with civil rights, D.C. statehood, and many other critical issues relegated to second-class status. If Biden uses reconciliation, which we hope he does not, he must do so aggressively, with the intent of using it as a backdoor to eliminating the supermajority threshold for all issues. While much of this bill might be able to be achieved through reconciliation, a package of this size is likely to run afoul of the rules. If Biden does use reconciliation, he should apply the principle of going big always, and be prepared to go nuclear to change reconciliation rules if and when the Senate Parliamentarian strikes down key provisions, rather than abandoning them.

The larger problem with reconciliation is that if we only use reconciliation and do not reform the filibuster, certain kinds of legislation will be allowed to avoid the filibuster while other critical issues like civil rights and statehood are left to die by the filibuster. This creates a first- and second-class status for progressive issues, with civil rights, statehood and many climate change solutions relegated to second-class status.

If reconciliation is pursued, it must be with a mind to either limbering up Senate Democrats for a full-blown nuclear strike on the filibuster, or expanding the use of reconciliation so extensively that it can be used for all issues (which is, in effect, going nuclear).

Get rid of the filibuster. ​It would be far healthier, cleaner, and easier to explain politically to simply reform or get rid of the filibuster immediately, and proceed to pass Biden's agenda through regular order—including must-pass civil rights bills, climate solutions and statehood. A quick strike against the filibuster in January will set Biden up to shepherd his entire agenda through regular order, with full committee involvement and proper levels of oversight and transparency. Biden has the credibility and the political capital to bring along the small number of wavering senators. Every other path leads to needless complications and worse results for the American people. Biden was elected with a mandate to break gridlock and deliver results. He should use it. Just do it—reform the filibuster and deliver results to the American people.

---

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Off the Top of My Head

Back From the Brink: You Only Get One Bite of the Apple

by John Lawrence, January13, 2021

Two things stand out: 1) how little bloodshed there was compared to the potential; 2) how much the rioters incriminated themselves. And they will pay the price for their little escapade. The extremest extremists will go to jail for a long time. They have already identified hundreds of them from the voluminous video evidence as they paraded themselves in front of tons of cameras. Stealth was not their strong suit. This was probably the most inept coup attempt in history, THANK GOD! The "USA. USA" people lost their bid to cause a revolution in the name of Trump and Congress won. Trump was the biggest loser. LOSER. LOSER. Trump, don't let the White House door bang you in the ass on the way out. Now even Republicans are up in arms so to speak because what Trump has really done is to destroy the Republican party. It will never be the same again. It might even bifurcate or disintegrate.

Trump will be silenced, neutered, taken off social media, disgraced, prosecuted and more. He brought disgrace to the USA long before he was impeached for the second time by withdrawing from and insulting our allies, refusing to cooperate with other nations of good will, cozying up to dictators and bullying those nations he decided he needed to use as enemies. Now the Republican rats are leaving the sinking Trump ship. They realize that he has destroyed the Republican party, but the Republican party has also destroyed itself long before Trump became President. They made a deal with the devil by embracing white supremicists because they needed a base, and the upper 1% wasn't big enough in terms of numbers. They went shopping for a base and they found latter day Ku Klux Klan descendents. Their grandpappies said, "Segregation Now. Segregation Tomorrah. Segragation Fawevah!" Later generations learned their lessons well, and thy found a home in the Republican party.

Proud Boys stand up and sit down. How does 20 years in an orange jump suit sound to you? This situation, as horrible as it was, as a spectacle and a possible disaster for Congress persons, staff, janitors, family members and others inside the Capitol building is also characterized by the gargantuan ineptness of the people who attempted to take it over. In the final analysis they did little more than incriminate themselves and put these domestic terrorists on the FBI's shit list. DOJ and the National Guard are on high alert. Now lawmakers in Michigan and elsewhere need to roll back the open carry laws. It's unconscionable that these assholes are currently able to bring their AR-15s into state Capitols. If you don't want an armed revolution in this country, guns need to be taken out of the hands of these domestic terrorists and white supremacists. Despite the Second Amendment, felons are forbidden to buy or own guns. That should be the fate of all the gun loving folks who invaded the Capitol of the US. No guns, boys. Sorry. your toys are being taken away from you. Maybe you can find Jesus in the penitentiary and change your thought processes. They need to be reprogrammed. Maybe they will even make friends with a black person when they find themselves in similar situations as they serve 20 years to life ... together! How ironic. Those who chanted "Lock her up" are themselves going to be locked up for many years.

The South's attempt at a second Civil War has failed abysmally. The nation's military assets are on high alert. Domestic terrorists will be on the no-fly list. They'll end up on the no everything list or in other words the shit list. Their favorite social media sites for conspiring together have been and will be taken away from them. Advertisers are withdrawing their funding for right wing media outlets. Threatening phone calls will be traced, and those jackasses will be thrown in jail. Meanwhile, the rest of the country will get to work with a massive bailout, defeating the real enemy - COVID - and putting people to work at good paying jobs building green infrastructure. Life will eventually be good again. Then we can deal with the real threats facing us - global warming, poverty and pandemics, not only in the US but everywhere on earth because in the final analysis we really are all in this together.

Accountability for the Attempted Coup

by Robert Reich

Sunday, January 10, 2021

Call me old-fashioned, but when the president of the United States encourages armed insurgents to breach the Capitol and threaten the physical safety of Congress, in order to remain in power, I call it an attempted coup.

Last week’ rampage left five dead, including a Capitol Hill police officer who was injured when he tangled with the pro-Trump mob. We’re fortunate the carnage wasn’t greater.

That the attempted coup failed shouldn’t blind us to its significance or the stain it has left on America. Nor to the importance of holding those responsible fully accountable.

Trump’s culpability is beyond dispute. “There’s no question the president formed the mob, the president incited the mob, the president addressed the mob. He lit the flame,” said Rep. Elizabeth Cheney, the third-highest ranking Republican in the House.

He should be impeached, convicted, and removed from office – immediately.  

To let the clock run out on his presidency and allow Trump to seek the presidency again would signal that attempted coups are part of the American system. If Senate Republicans can install a new Supreme Court justice in eight days, Trump can be removed from office within ten.

He should then be arrested and tried for inciting violence and sedition (along with Trump Jr. and Rudy “trial-by-combat” Giuliani).

Those who attacked the Capitol should also be prosecuted. They have no First Amendment right to try to overthrow the U.S. government.

Trump’s accomplices on Capitol Hill, most notably Texas Senator Ted Cruz and Missouri Senator Josh Hawley, should be forced to resign. Knowing Trump’s allegations of voting fraud were false, Cruz and Hawley nonetheless led an attempt to exclude Biden electors, even after the storming of the Capitol.

The United States Constitution says that “no Person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress” who “shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against" the Constitution, “or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.“

Both Cruz and Hawley are eyeing runs for the presidency in 2024. They should be barred from running.

Other abettors are now trying to distance themselves, but their conversions come too late.

Senator Lindsey Graham now says Trump must “understand that his actions were the problem, not the solution,” and criticizes the White House for making “accusations that cannot be proven.”

Graham had been one of Trump’s key attack dogs, even bullying state election officials to change voting tallies. If Graham is not forced to resign, he should at least be censured and stripped of his ranking membership on the Senate Judiciary Committee.  

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Vice President Michael Pence finally broke with Trump, but only after remaining mute as Trump lied and bullied his way through the last eight weeks, thereby signaling agreement with his preposterous claims.

McConnell should also resign or be censured and stripped of committee assignments. Pence should be barred from any future public office.

Some administration officials have already resigned in response to the attempted coup. Transportation secretary Elaine Chao said it was “entirely avoidable,” and education secretary Betsy DeVos told Trump there was “no mistake the impact your rhetoric had.” Other Trumpers are reportedly jumping ship, too.

Yet before Wednesday most of them defended Trump’s antics, lavished him with praise, and willingly did his dirty work. Their complicity should forever haunt their reputations and consciences.

Other accessories are Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, and Sundar Pichai,CEO of Alphabet, YouTube’s parent company.

For four years, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube have functioned as Trump’s megaphones, amplifying his every lie and rant. When pressured to remove Trump’s fabrications about the election, they labeled them “disputed.”  

Twitter has now permanently suspended Trump, preventing him from sending messages to his more than 88 million followers “due to the risk of further incitement for violence.” Facebook has banned him indefinitely. YouTube should be next.

But why did it take an attempted coup for them to act?

Many business leaders who are now denouncing the violence enthusiastically bankrolled Trump’s re-election campaign, knowing full well who he was and what he was capable of doing. And they’ve had no qualms about advertising on his largest megaphones, including Fox News. All are complicit because they knew Trump would stop at nothing.

Fox News’s mendacious hosts and producers have no excuse. After repeatedly telling Trump supporters the election was stolen, they’re now saying the attempted coup was “understandable” because Trump supporters believed the election was stolen. Morally, if not legally, they share responsibility for this travesty.

All are all part of the ecosystem that led to Trump’s sedition. That ecosystem is still in place.

Those who say we should “look forward” to a new administration and forget or dismiss what occurred last week are delusional. Unless all who participated in or abetted the attempted overthrow of the United States government are held accountable, it will happen again. Next time it may succeed.

Off the Top of My Head

Instead of Sanctioning Foreign Actors Sanction Domestic Terrorists

by John Lawrence, January 12, 2021

The best development so far post insurrection is taking away Trump's twitter account permanently. The FBI, CIA and other law enforcement are rounding up the insurrectionists and they should get lengthy jail sentences and sanctions. The biggest threat to American democracy is not out there; it's in here. Their gathering places on social media such as Parler have been taken down or will be taken down soon. If the terrorists can't meet to spout their vitriol as well as plan future insurrections, we'll be making progress. Rush Limbaugh and other domestic terrorists should be sanctioned. Anyone egging on, benefiting from, taking advantage of the poor mental health or encouraging hatred and violence of the American people needs to be sanctioned. The fact that these terrorists could overwhelm the Capitol Police was a huge security failure. The fact that it took the Pentagon three hours to supply troops shows the fact that we are wasting huge amounts of money on a worthless military establishment that does not confront the real threats to this country. Perhaps these domestic terrorists need to be reeducated. We don't have the moral authority to mock China any more for doing this with its domestic terrorists.

Right now security forces in the US are on high alert. The National Guard is out in force. There are more forces on the streets of Washington, DC now than there are in Afghanistan. They should stay on high alert for the time being. I think the situation will get under control. Massive arrests and the total deplatforming and isolation of Donald Trump and domestic terrorist social media sites needs to be carried out. If they don't have gathering places on social media, they won't be able to organize. That's important. There needs to be a recognition that the militarization of the mindsets of young Americans which happens in the military and the glorification and seeming ubiquity of war as the only way to deal with other nations is a cause of the recent problems. Instead of funneling all non-college bound youth into the military, there needs to be an upsurge in funding and encouragement for young people to go into the Peace Corps and AmeriCorps. We need to demilitarize the mindsets of the American people.

Terrorist and threatening phone calls need to be traced and the perpetrators brought to justice. No public official should have to live in fear for their lives and their family's lives because of death threats on phone calls or on social media. Social media is a big problem. They have gotten rich off the fact that their algorithms have encouraged, aided and abetted the domestic terrorists. Their business model showed that there was a lot of profit in encouraging conspiracy theories and other activities detached from reality. It's good that it has become evident by reporting on legitimate news outlets that social media is not subject to the First Amendment because that only applies to government hindrance of free speech. Social media platforms are private entities and they do not have to honor so-called free speech. Private entities also don't have to honor the Second Amendment so that there is space to restrict guns on private property which is probably 99% of the property in the US.

The next administration has its work cut out for them. Good leaders and good people will prevail. Deplatforming all right wing media and groups that espouse conspiracy theories and outright lies will be an important step. Sober analysis and critical thinking must replace narcissistic fantasy and entertainment values. This starts with children in school. They need to taught how to distinguish truth from lies. They need to be taught the value of peace and harmony not only in their daily lives but in the pursuit of that status among and between nations. They should be taught that the US has not always been but should aspire to moral and ethical behavior with regard to other nations and within its own country.

Money must be drained from the military establishment which is oriented towards either non-existant or phony threats and reoriented towards the real threats and funded at appropriate levels rather than be treated to carte blanche amounts of superfluous cash. Budgets both military and domestic need to be appropriate to their realistic needs. Right now the greatest need is in overcoming the pandemic and responding to the economic needs of the lower half of the population. Also eliminating energy production from fossil fuels needs to proceed post haste. It's obvious that the private economy can not do this at the rate necessary to save the planet from the ravages of global warming. Only big government programs in conjunction with the programs of other countries can possibly achieve the reality of zero carbon emissions by 2030.

The last word is that Trump must be denied any post Presidential influence or following by any and all legal means. This is the greatest thing that can be done to heal and deradicalize the country. America also will pay a heavy price if it doesn't get its promotion of gun culture under control.

Fools Rush In: Trump, Pardons and the Tyrant’s Cult

January 11, 2021 from Counterpunch

by Joshua Frank

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Trump insurrectionists laying siege to the Capitol building – January 6, 2021. (Tyler Merbler, CC BY 2.0)

There is little doubt among readers of this online magazine that Donald Trump, like all U.S. presidents before him, is a criminal. His grotesqueness and belligerence, however, has elevated Trump to Nixonian heights. With Bugsy Siegel’s mob swagger and the ponzi-salesmanship of Bernie Madoff, Trump, the petty grifter, is unlike almost any official we’ve witnessed in public life.

In his 1979 book, the Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations, social critic and historian Christopher Lasch all but predicted the dawn of Trumpian politics, writing:

“…the prevailing obsession with celebrity and a determination to achieve it even at the cost of rational self-interest and personal safety. The narcissist divides society into two groups: the rich, great, and famous on the one hand, and the common herd on the other … The narcissist admires and identifies himself with ‘winners’ out of his fear of being labeled a loser. … his admiration often turns to hatred if the object of his attachment does something to remind him of his own insignificance.”

The only point that Lasch perhaps missed in his pioneering work is the cultish atmosphere a specimen like Donald Trump is able to cultivate and exploit for his own personal and political gains. It’s this innate narcissism, emboldened by a coterie of abiding fools circling round him, that led to the invasion of the Capitol. His racist minions, not too unlike the conditioned and dutiful helter-skeltering Manson Girls, were more than willing to sacrifice their personal safety for what they believed was the greater good — in this case, a battle against the “injustice” Trump had faced at the hands of some mysterious electoral fraud. The sinister enemies were everywhere. The media. Mitch McConnell. Nancy Pelosi. The Georgia Secretary of State and even that smarmy Mike Pence. The lone truth-teller was Trump, the great defender of the supremacy of white America, and to his energetic fans, the only man able to save our fragile and dying Republic from the brink of collapse.

Understanding Trump as a cult leader is the only way to truly appreciate the power he wields and the idiocy he manifests. Few others could call upon their legions to storm government buildings with the dashing hope their efforts would make a difference, overturning what they falsely believed was a rigged election. No longer did police lives matter to these twisted Patriots. No longer did America’s legal system matter, which shot down one election lawsuit after another. No longer did common sense matter, if the Capitol stormers had any to begin with. Only their President mattered. Only fulfilling his delusional fantasies mattered, and this was worth risking imprisonment and even death for. While the refrain may have been “Make America Great Again”, the real mantra echoing through Washington last Wednesday was “Keep Trump President.” He had not, after all, lost, according to them. The multiple logics here were murky at best, but the essence of their rhetoric was not.

As an ice-cold Trump stood at his podium, cold air blowing against his puffy, orange cheeks, he bellowed nonsense to the assemblage below, which was largely made up of white men and women clasping red Trump flags and banners. Like so many of his election trail spectacles, his speech was long-winded, meandering, and bellicose. The crowd screamed “Fight for Trump! Fight for Trump! Fight for Trump!” At the end, he called on the riled-up crowd to parade with him to the Capitol building where Congress was meeting to certify Biden’s electoral victory. They would finally be heard. There would finally be justice.

“…we fight like hell, and if you don’t fight like hell you’re not going to have a country anymore … So we are going to–we are going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue, I love Pennsylvania Avenue, and we are going to the Capitol, and we are going to try and give–the Democrats are hopeless, they are never voting for anything, not even one vote but we are going to try–give our Republicans, the weak ones because the strong ones don’t need any of our help, we’re try–going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country. So let’s walk down Pennsylvania Avenue.”

We all know what transpired next. The broken windows. The stolen podium. The “QAnon Shaman” with his horns and fur hat. A self-proclaimed white nationalist kicking back at Pelosi’s desk. The woman, shot and killed by police as her fellow rioters violently attempted to break down a barricaded door. One cop was killed. It was chaos as numerous fascist groups converged for action. Trump, of course, did not march with his cult down Pennsylvania Avenue that afternoon. He never planned to. Instead, he stayed back, stoically watching the scene unfold on television screens safely under a white tent as Laura Branigan’s “Gloria” blared in the background. Everyone was packed in, smiling. Dancing. Celebrating. Maskless. Drunk on Trump madness.

Had the rioters had black or brown skin, armed or not, they would surely have been shot on the spot as they climbed walls and ransacked the congressional building. Instead, a few of Trump’s intruders were greeted by gleeful officers while hordes of off-duty cops hung out in the crowd. The breach was easy for the mob, as security forces holding the line futilely fired pepper spray. Their efforts failed miserably. They were outnumbered and ill-prepared. Why weren’t they ready for what so many knew was coming? Because these were wholesome white goons and not black rights activists? During last summer’s BLM protests in DC, there were far more stormtroopers present, an overwhelming show of force. The lack of police presence on January 9 appeared intentional.

As more photos are corroborated and verified, it’s becoming evident that a group of these fascist thugs, some with military backgrounds, had something even more sinister planned than smearing their feces on the walls of power. They planted pipe bombs and had a truck full of weapons at the ready. One instigator, as Ronan Farrow reported for The New Yorker, decked in full military garb and a handful of zip ties, was Air Force Academy graduate and retired Lt. Colonel. Ret. Larry Brock, a decorated combat veteran from Texas. He and his fellow Confederate flag-waving terrorists were out for blood. As the raid transpired, Trump, the pseudo-conductor, gleefully responded that he “loved” them and that they were “very special” but they could go home now. The National Guard, after Trump initially resisted, was finally called in. As of this writing, only 82 have been arrested for breaking into the Capitol. By comparison, DC cops arrested five times that number during last summer’s BLM protests.

There is little doubt, legal or otherwise, that Trump fomented this haphazard insurrection. While some of the planning was orchestrated in the darker corners of the web, Trump’s Twitter account acted as ground zero for the disorder. After months of claiming, falsely and without evidence, that the election was stolen, he tweeted on December 19, “Big protest in D.C. on January 6th.” This was one of several tweets he blasted out supporting the action. “Be there, will be wild!”

His cult, from the Proud Boys to QAnon, latched on quickly, and Pro-Trump forums across the web were exuberant about their “daddy’s” call (yes, some called him “daddy”) for an uprising against Congress. It was all out in the open. They were planning to be armed. They were planning to “arrest” members of Congress. They said Trump’s Tweet was a “marching order” and prepared themselves to shoot counter-protestors.

While the FBI ignored the threats, Twitter and other social media giants took note. Following the three-hour takeover, Facebook and Instagram blocked Trump. Twitter placed his account in jail for 12 hours, only to later ban him altogether. By the weekend, Twitter began to scrub those they deemed QAnon or promoters and supporters of Trump’s call for insurrection. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, an advocacy group that works to defend civil liberties in the digital world, was swift to respond:

“The decisions by Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and others to suspend and/or block President Trump’s communications via their platforms is a simple exercise of their rights, under the First Amendment and Section 230, to curate their sites. We support those rights. Nevertheless, we are always concerned when platforms take on the role of censors, which is why we continue to call on them to apply a human rights framework to those decisions.”

This social media blockade is the first real punishment Trump has faced for his actions since the failed impeachment attempt of last year. Could he receive more? The 25th Amendment is not going to be invoked and impeachment proceedings are facing hurdles. Once Trump vacates the White House he may be facing numerous charges in New York for financial crimes and even election finance fraud for his various payments to Stormy Daniels. But will he ever be brought to justice for inciting this ugly white nationalist riot? It’s possible. The New York Times reports the DOJ is open to pursuing charges. Others believe the charges could stick. “Based on everything I saw my 30 years as a federal prosecutor, it sure looks like there’s enough to charge him with inciting a riot,” says former Assistant U.S. Attorney Glenn Kirschner.

Of course, any criminal case against Trump would not transpire until he leaves office on January 20. But what of a self-pardon? There’s plenty of talk of Trump not only pardoning those around him who have yet to be accused of a crime (Ivanka, Rudy, Jared, etc.) but of pardoning himself as well. Such a pardon, however, may or may not hold up in court. In a 1974 opinion by the Dept. of Justice, written in response to Nixon’s dealings with Watergate and the potential for his own self-pardon, the DOJ responded that, “Under the fundamental rule that no one may be a judge in his own case, the President cannot pardon himself.”

For such a self-pardon to be litigated, Trump would first have to be charged. Such an indictment is no guarantee but still possible. On Friday, a DC City official, who was not authorized to speak on the matter, told me the City was discussing a charge against Trump for the mob disorder. On Sunday it was confirmed by Washington DC District Attorney, Michael R. Sherwin, who said he will be going after all those involved, including any elected officials. However, any prosecution in DC falls under federal jurisdiction. So any pardon challenge would go into effect and likely make its way to the Supreme Court, where Trump-leaning appointees now stack the bench.

Though it may be only a matter of days, we have a long road to traverse before we reach the end of this four-year-long dumpster fire. Already, scores of Trump’s acolytes are planning a violent confrontation on Inauguration Day and these fascists are more armed and crazier than ever. As Trump, the pathological narcissist that he is, finally loses grip on power, his significance will wane and breed further resentment in this sick and sinister faction of white America, energized by their vile settler mentality that has existed since these lands were first stolen from indigenous nations. It may take years before this latest chapter of our country’s history finally comes to a close, if it ever shuts completely. In the interim, there will be more sporadic madness and more bloodshed, until the day the Trump cult, outnumbered and on the ropes, has nothing tangible to fight for, no leader, no mythical wrong that can be righted. Hopefully, Trump’s white nationalist goons will be left with only a faint memory of their childish insurgency, shining dully like the fool’s gold they’ve been sold.

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JOSHUA FRANK is managing editor of CounterPunch. His most recent book, co-authored with Jeffrey St. Clair, is Big Heat: Earth on the Brink. He can be reached at joshua@counterpunch.org. You can troll him on Twitter @joshua__frank.

Off the Top of My Head

Pence Will Likely Not Pardon Trump Even If He Resigns

by John Lawrence, January 11, 2021

When Richard Nixon resigned his Presidency in 1974, his successor, Gerald Ford pardoned him for any and all crimes connected with the Watergate break-in. But this will not happen in Trump's case because he threw Pence under the bus in the January 6 insurrection. Trump has immense criminal and legal liability for his actions on that day. As Pence presided over the Senate, domestic terrorists were breaking in and chanting "Hang Mike Pence." Pence's life as well as those of Congress persons, staff and others were in danger. Pence's wife, daughter and other family members were in the Capitol that day. Yet Trump never called Pence to warn him, check on him, see how he was doing, make sure he and his family were safe. Reportedly, he hasn't spoken to Pence since.

So it remains to be seen how many people Trump will pardon on his way out the door. Probably family members and Rudy Giuliani but not any of the rioters. Even though they were doing his bidding, he cares nothing for them. He used them; they were just tools as far as he was concerned. The people who spoke at Trump's "Save America" rally, including Congressman Mo Brooks of Alabama who declared: “Today is the day American patriots start taking down names and kicking ass", are certainly culpable. But I don't think Trump will pardon him. He'll just be thrown under the bus like many of Trump's other friends and associates.

The people marching through the halls of Congress carrying flags and chanting "USA. USA." are not patriots. To be a patriot it is not enough to carry a flag and shout USA. The true patriots were the Congress persons themselves who didn't let a little insurrection that put their lives in danger prevent or deter them from carrying out the nation's business certifying Joe Biden and Kamala Harris as the next President and Vice President of the United States. I wrote previously, "What is patriotism? Is it just saluting the flag, singing the national anthem, getting choked up when the US wins a gold medal at the Olympics, stuff like that? All these expressions of patriotism are merely lip service. They are insubstantial. Or is it patriotic, as George W Bush said, to go shopping?"  I have suggested that what we need is a planetary patriotism. We must care about the whole planet and its peoples especially in view of the threats which affect the whole planet: pandemics and global warming. We need also to be concerned about people living in poverty planet wide, and about the 70 million people who are refugees largely due to US started wars in the Middle East and their continuations.

The US has lost the moral high ground and shouldn't be lecturing the rest of the world about human rights. The US has many human rights problems itself including the disenfranchisement of African American and Native Americans both politically and economically. I expect that the Biden administration will do much more to create peace in the world and use diplomacy than the Trump administration, which attempted to bully other countries. Sanctions also should be taken off the table. If we can have treaties with Russia over nuclear weapons, why can't we have a treaty over internet hacking? The  trillion dollars a year we spend on the military-industrial complex did nothing to stop the pandemic or domestic terrorism. The enemy is not so much out there as it is in here. The US needs to get on the right track and associate peacefully with other countries in order to combat our mutual enemy - global warming. We need to create peace in the world, not fuel petty animosities and cold wars. The true threat is domestic terrorism not terrorism from abroad. Money needs to be spent on the former rather than the latter.

I wrote previously:

Patriotism as now defined is based on militarism. Patriotic displays are expressions of militarism. Love of country is expressed in jingoistic terms: "We're number one!" Instead, war and militarism should be thought of as necessary evils instead of exalting them. The goal should be to eliminate them while at the same time building the foundations for peace and prosperity in the world. There should be opportunities for those who want to serve their country by eliminating poverty, building infrastructure, saving the environment, curing the sick and extending helping hands to the underserved and downtrodden."

"God bless America."

Off the Top of My Head

Congressional Republicans That Supported Insurrection Should Be Censured

by John Lawrence, January 10, 2021

Although it takes a two thirds majority to expel someone from the House or Senate, it only takes a majority to censure. Therefore, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley and Kevin McCarthy at the very least should be censured. They will lose their committee chairs and be publicly shamed because the politician must stand before his peers to listen to the censure resolution. Meanwhile, Trump should be impeached in the House, but there should be no trial in the Senate because that would be a media circus of which Trump would be the star, and this would steal Joe Biden's thunder just as he assumes the office of President of the United States. The page needs to be turned and Trump should be blacklisted from every form of media exposure. Twitter, Facebook and others have already banned him for life which is the best thing that could have happened. Right wing app Parler has been deplatformed. Rudy Giuliani and Don Junior need to be prosecuted for inciting to riot for the words they spoke at Trump's Save America rally that preceded the insurrection. "Trial by combat"? Indeed. Long story short, Trump should be denied any media exposure whatsoever. The focus should be on Joe Biden's Presidency and the reckonings of those that have committed prosecutorial crimes needs to be done offstage, so to speak.

We need a breath of fresh air come January 20 while in the background those who have committed crimes connected with the insurrection need to be brought to justice. Every one of the rioters need to serve jail time or be fined - even those who crossed the barriers but did not go inside the Capitol. Those who went inside the Capitol need to be dealt more severe penalties. None of these rioters should be left off the hook. The myth that these assholes are Patriots needs to be dispelled. The only ones who are innocent in my opinion are those who didn't cross the line that the barriers represented. I'm sure that over time they all will be penalized in one form or other because there is so much video and social media evidence including their own bragging on social media. The FBI has their work cut out for them. In the meantime security needs to be ramped up at state Capitals all across the country, and gun laws need to be augmented and strengthened. Probably the only thing that saved the Capitol from an armed insurrection was the fact that so many of them flew to Trump's event and weren't allowed to bring guns on the plane. You can't have people with machine guns threatening state Capitals or office holders of a party they disagree with. We've seen too much of that already. Security around Joe Biden and Kamala Harris needs to be extremely tight. We don't want what happened to Abraham Lincoln happening to either of them.

At the same time Joe Biden and his Democratic allies in Congress have to get a humungus aid package passed and into the hands of the American people - all of them - so that there are tangible benefits for all to see and benefit from including Trump, hopefully former, supporters. The coronavirus must be brought under control. The ineffective US intelligence agencies have a budget of about $75 billion and yet they had no intelligence relating to what an average American could plainly size up: a Trump rally attracting tens of thousands on the same day that Congress certified the election results. I wrote previously how like James Bond's arch villains, Trump would show up January 6 for one last stand even when we all thought the election was finally, after repeated certifications at multiple levels, over. Bond's villains do not give up and neither did Trump after he had tried every other trick in the book to overturn the election. I'm sure he had plans for the inauguration on January 20 as well. That's why security at the inauguration needs to be extremely tight.

Social media by and large has finally done the right thing banning Trump and right wing wack jobs and conspiracy theorists. But it is obviously too late. They should have done this long ago. There are much needed reforms that need to be undertaken regarding social media. They have in fact aided and abetted the worst impulses of American society as their algorithms favored conspiracy theories and other fantastic falsehoods as they brought more eyeballs to the platforms than did the plain unvarnished truth. We have to reckon with a model in the media that is basically centered on entertainment including the news. Bringing eyeballs to the media - all media - is what advertising is all about. Advertisers won't pay and media corporations won't make any money from sober analysis because it's not entertaining enough and people demand to be entertained. Although Trump's lies are being finally called out all over the media, let us not forget that lies perpetrated via the media are nothing new. The Willie Horton ads promulgated for George H W Bush's 1988 Presidential campaign typify the lying that political candidates have always partaken of with Trump just being the latest purveyor.

"Horton, an African-American man, was a convicted murderer who raped a white woman and stabbed her partner while furloughed from prison under a Massachusetts program in place when Dukakis, the Democratic nominee, was governor. The TV ad is now considered one of the most racially divisive in modern political history because it played into white fear and African-American stereotypes. In it, an off-screen narrator tells the story of Horton’s crimes while pictures of Bush and Dukakis and a menacing mug shot of Horton flash across the screen. The narrator notes that Bush supports the death penalty for murderers."

Clearly, there should be thought given to bringing about truth in media and what can be done to insure that the American people aren't sold a pack of lies by politicians or in any other kind of advertising. American culture has also been brutalized and vulgarized because this has been shown by advertisers to attract the most eyeballs. Violence in media runs rampant. It's almost like you have to watch movies from Europe to see something which doesn't contain violence and usually gun violence of the most graphic sort which pervades US entertainment. This is the stuff that media corporations produce because they think it's the most lucrative. Politicians supported Trump's lies because they thought it was the best way to get elected or reelected. Other societies have not put up with this crap. Violence and lies, although they may be entertaining, need to be restrained if America is ever to attain some degree of collective mental health. I for one will send up a cheer for sober analysis.

Off the Top of My Head

Why Are Home Prices Are So Expensive?: Asset Inflation

by John Lawrence, January 5, 2021

The government measures inflation based on a basket of consumer items including rent but excluding the price of homes. However, rents are a function of the cost of homes. As home prices go up, so do rents, and rents continue to go up despite people's ability to pay. The Federal Reserve could tackle increased home prices by raising interest rates, but this would discourage home sales and more not fewer homes and apartments are needed. MarketWatch reported: "While the Federal Reserve is busy worrying that wages might be rising too fast, the rest of us have a different concern: The rent’s too damn high. If we have an inflation problem, it’s that the cost of housing is rising faster than our ability to pay." Although there is little wage inflation, it is not hard to understand why there is asset inflation. So much money has been injected into rich peoples' pockets in the last couple of decades by means of tax cuts and the Fed's bailouts of the financial system among other things that the rich have increased their wealth many fold while the financial situations of the poor and lower middle class have stagnated. All this money floating around in the pockets of the rich has to go somewhere, and where it goes is not into consumption so much as into investing. So the financial assets of the rich are increasing while the poor have all they can do to pay increasing rent. One of the main assets that rich investors invest in is real estate which bids up the price of homes and, subsequently, rents.

If the rapid accumulation of wealth by the already wealthy continues to increase (they have accumulated an additional $1.8 trillion dollars just during 2020), asset inflation in terms of home prices and rents will continue to increase. However, the government doesn't seem to be as concerned with this form of inflation as they are with wage inflation. They are concerned with keeping the wages of working people down because this increases profits for business owners and keeps the cost of most consumer items low. If Walmart has to pay a living wage to its employees, it might have to raise prices, and this is the kind of inflation the current government is most concerned about. Perhaps those concerns will be mitigated under a new Biden Democratic administration which is more concerned about the wages and welfare of the poor and lower middle class than it is about the prerogatives of the rich and business owners.

As Stephanie Kelton points out in her book The Deficit Myth, inflation should not be a concern as long as there are resources which are laying idle. If government provided the money to utilize those resources, whether they are human resources or physical resources, this will not contribute to inflation. What does contribute to inflation is putting more money into the economy than can be soaked up by productive efforts. So while the unemployed represent a resource that is laying idle, and there is no lack of physical or material resources, putting people to work would not contribute to inflation whereas all the money that the Federal Reserve has used to bail out Wall Street banks, and also by virtue of low interest rates, there is a great deal of money sloshing around in the economy in the hands of the rich. That's why there is asset inflation (think real estate) and not wage inflation. The Federal Reserve has the capacity to print money and hand it to Wall Street without any other entity authorizing it. However, if the government needs money, for example, for programs to employ the unemployed building infrastructure, for example, Congress has to authorize it. If Congress authorizes it and tax receipts are not sufficient to cover the needed funds, deficit spending takes place automatically which means that the Treasury Department must sell Treasury bonds to cover the expenditures. They will never have a problem selling them because primary dealers (mainly Wall Street banks) are obligated to buy them. And the Fed stands ready to take these Treasury bonds off the Wall Street banks' hands if there is a "liquidity crisis." So by a round about process US deficits end up on the Fed's balance sheet if no one else wants to buy them where they disappear in a black hole although people believe erroneously that taxpayers are still obligated to pay them off at some point. They're not.

Deficit spending is somewhat of a misnomer. The spending could take place just by the Federal Reserve creating the money by a few keystrokes in a computer the way it does for Wall Street. The $4.5 trillion so created to bail out the Too Big To Fail Wall Street banks during the Great Recession did not require deficit spending. Some collateral in the form of mortgage backed securities went onto the Fed's balance sheet, but that collateral need not ever be sold back into the private economy. It can stay of the Fed's balance sheet forever and no entity has the authority to do anything about it. That's because the US dollar is a sovereign fiat currency. The thing to note here is that bailing out the banks did not add to the deficit, but government spending beyond tax receipts must be authorized by Congress and this does add to deficit spending. This is because of legal and political restrictions, but the final result is that the Federal Reserve just creates the money in both cases so that deficit spending is nothing to worry about any more than spending to bail out the banks, which is not deficit spending, is something to worry about.

So while financial deficits are nothing to worry about, Kelton points out that there are some deficits to worry about:

"The real crises that we are facing have nothing to do with the federal deficit or entitlements. The fact that 21 percent of all children in the United States live in poverty - that's a crisis. The fact that our infrastructure is graded at a D+ is a crisis. The fact that inequality today stands at levels last seen during America's Gilded Age is a crisis. The fact that the typical American worker has seen virtually no wage growth since the 1970s is a crisis. The fact that forty-four million Americans are saddled with $1.7 trillion in student loan debt is a crisis. And the fact that we ultimately won't be able to 'afford' anything at all if we end up exacerbating climate change and destroying the life on this planet is perhaps the biggest crisis of them all.

"These are real crises. The national deficit is not a crisis."

As Modern Monetary Theory points out, as long as there are real assets (human and material) not being used, deficit spending will not cause inflation and deficit spending in and of itself is nothing more than an accounting entry on the Federal Reserve's balance sheet. The Federal Reserve will provide whatever money Congress authorizes or is necessary to bail out Wall Street because it, as the Central bank, has the authority to issue money in the US financial system. The Federal government spends whatever monies Congress authorizes before the money is even made available. If some of it is not forthcoming from taxes, the rest of it will be created by the Fed in the form of deficit spending.

Off the Top of My Head

The US Central Bank Can Print Money; The State of California Can't

by John Lawrence, December 27, 2020

One of the central tenets of Modern Monetary Currency (MMT) as explained in Stephanie Kelton's book, The Deficit Myth, is that a nation with a sovereign currency can always pay its debts by a few keystrokes on a computer at its central bank - the Federal Reserve in the US' case. A nation or a state without a sovereign currency must pay its debts by taxes or out of income. She dispels the myth that the US government pays its debts out of taxes or by Treasury bonds. However, the state of California must pay its debts the old fashioned way out of taxes and income. This reality hit hard in recent years in the case of Greece which gave up its sovereign currency, the drachma, when its joined the European Union. Unlike the UK which maintained its sovereign currency, the pound, Greece has to borrow money from private investors and pay its debts from the collection of taxes. Eventually, after much hardship the IMF and the European Central Bank helped Greece get back on its feet.

It's a myth that the US national debt must be paid off by our children or grandchildren or that we must suffer because of all the money owed via US Treasury bonds to China or Japan. Unlike Greece which saw its situation go from bad to worse as private investors demanded higher and higher rates of interest, the US Federal Reserve sets the interest rate (currently around zero) on the bonds it offers for sale. Other countries buy them because most of the world's business is conducted in dollars, and those countries need dollars which they get from Treasury bonds to conduct business. The US government is not competing with private corporations for loans because, when it needs money, it just prints it. Right now the way the rules are written the Fed can print money and give it to the banks, the way it did during the Great Recession when it just gave the banking system $4.5 trillion, but it cannot print money and give it to the US government without Congressional approval. It can provide direct relief to the banks, but it cannot provide direct relief to the American people. That's why the COVID relief package is being held up because, even though Congress did give it its stamp of approval, the law also requires that the President sign the bill which he has not.

In "The Deficit Myth" Kelton writes:

You've probably already seen MMT's central insights in action. ... Whenever the topic of Social Security comes up, or when someone in Congress wants to put more money into education or health care, there's a lot of talk about how everything must be "paid for" to avoid adding to the federal deficit. But have you noticed this never seems to be a problem when it comes to the defense budget, bailing out banks, or giving huge tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans, even when these measures significantly raise the deficit.? As long as the votes are there, the federal government can always fund its priorities. That's how it works. Deficits didn't stop FDR from implementing the New Deal in the 1930s. They didn't dissuade John F. Kennedy from landing a man on the moon. And they never once stopped Congress from going to war.

In fact deficits don't matter as Kelton proclaims over and over again in her book. There are limits however. That limit has yet to be met as the huge bailouts of the 21st century for the Great Recession and COVID relief have yet to cause the least bit of inflation. Other big projects like a Green New Deal are pooh poohed by Congress because Congress is controlled by wealthy interests so tax breaks for the rich is no problem nor is going to war which benefits defense contractors, but anything that represents the interests of the average American is not favored by Congress. If and when Congress is controlled by the middle class, we will see large projects which promote the health and welfare of the American people in general and not just wealthy business interests.

The Chinese are building huge infrastructure projects all over China and even the rest of the world with its Belt and Road Initiative. They can do this because the Chinese renminbi is a sovereign currency and the money is available to keep the Chinese people fully employed doing constructive things. They have bought into MMT and know that Deficits Don't Matter. Besides they don't have to subject themselves to the whims of Congress. If the government wants to do it, it's full steam ahead. It seems to have worked for them as they have brought 850 million Chinese people out of poverty in the last 40 years. But as Pew Research reported, "But despite the strong labor market, wage growth has lagged economists’ expectations. In fact, despite some ups and downs over the past several decades, today’s real average wage (that is, the wage after accounting for inflation) has about the same purchasing power it did 40 years ago. And what wage gains there have been have mostly flowed to the highest-paid tier of workers." So to put a fine point on it, 850 million Chinese brought out of poverty in last 40 years; average Americans no wage growth in last 40 years.

It has become clear that the old way of thinking that national deficits have to be repaid out of taxes and Treasury bonds is incorrect. Any country with a sovereign currency can just print money by a few keystrokes on its central bank's computer. The US Fed does just that. The conversion to Green Infrastructure could easily be funded in this way if Congress approved. At the same time many good paying jobs could be created. Instead of competing with China by military threats or sanctions, we could instead compete by building Green infrastructure in the US and the rest of the world. Or maybe we could cooperate in saving the world from the ravages of global warming and also providing the same benefits to the average American which the average Chinese is increasingly able to enjoy.

Off the Top of My Head

Will Trump Take His Base With Him And Leave the Republicans a Rump Party?

by John Lawrence, December 26, 2020

It's obvious that Trump is at odds with the Republican party. The leader Mitch McConnell did not support him. He has railed against other Republican leaders. Now the piece de resistance is the fact that he has driven a wedge between himself and the Republican party by demanding a $2000 individual check to Americans as part of the COVID relief package after Republicans and Democrats had agreed on a much smaller individual relief check of $600. The entire relief package passed by both Houses of Congress is now up to Trump to sign, veto or do nothing (a pocket veto) in which case the whole package will become null and void and Congress will have to start over. Congress cannot override a pocket veto if it has adjourned. Obviously, Trump is holding Americans hostage, but also he is furthering the divide between him and the Republican party.

Trump believes that the 70 million voters who voted for him are more loyal to him than they are to the Republican party. Even though he has been defeated in his bid for a second term, he is still fund raising off his base. The Republican party is a mismatch between an elite upper 10% and a base of voters who are not rich, but are responsive to Trump's dog whistles of support for white supremacy. Trump could take this base with him in his own party loyal to him and ditch the Republican party which for him was just a vehicle to gain the Presidency. This leaves the Republican party as an unsustainable rump party with hardly any members, not much larger than the Green party or the Peace and Freedom party. In other words it spells the end of the Republican party as a viable force in American politics.

Trump has appealed to his loyal base with his demand for a $2000 individual payment because most of them are poor or middle class and don't care a hoot about the fiscally conservative rich Republicans who are all concerned about not adding to the deficit except when the issue is tax breaks for the rich. So Trump is seemingly allying himself with Democrats because his demand for the $2000 payments is a popular and a populist demand which leaves Republicans in the lurch with egg on their face. The Republican leadership's refusal to consider Trump's demand for the $2000 payments further alienates themselves from Trump and for that matter from Trump's base who are not so much loyal to the Republican party and their traditional concerns as they are to Trump's America First (White People First) ideology.

The upper 1% must be shitting their pants as they consider that Trump could essentially nullify the Republican party as a force in American politics. He could especially nullify the careers and aspirations of Republicans who haven't demonstrated a loyalty to him. They will be left with no option except joining the Democratic party which I'm sure Republicans like John Kasich will be soon to do if Trump pulls off this coup. Kasich has already stated that the Republican party as he used to know it no longer exists as it has been changed or transmogrified under Trump. Principled conservatism no longer exists in the Republican party - only naked power and wealth mongering on the one hand and Trump loyalists demanding white privilege on the other.

The only party with any sense of principles at this point is the Democratic party which represents the aspirations of most Americans. They are finally coming into their own as demographics are shifting and the formerly disenfranchised are finally coming out to vote. Let's hope that, if Trump takes his base with him and principled Republicans are left with no choice except joining forces with the Democratic party, that the resulting combination represents a larger demographic than does the Trump party.

Off the Top of My Head

How the Government Can Create Funds for a Green New Deal

by John Lawrence, December 18, 2020

In the 1930s Roosevelt financed the New Deal by means of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation. Ellen Brown writes: "Roosevelt’s New Deal was largely funded through the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC), a public financial institution set up earlier by President Hoover. Its funding source was the sale of bonds, but proceeds from the loans repaid the bonds, leaving the RFC with a net profit. The RFC financed roads, bridges, dams, post offices, universities, electrical power, mortgages, farms and much more; and it funded all this while generating income for the government." The same type of authority needs to be used to accelerate our response to the global warming crisis and provide jobs for those who have lost them due to the pandemic.

The Depression of the 1930s was a major American crisis, but it also affected the whole world. Today global warming definitely affects the whole world, and there is also a major economic crisis brought on by the global pandemic. Even when the pandemic is under control many Americans will not have jobs to go back to. So a Green new Deal can kill two birds with one stone so to speak. The money for this program needs to be found post haste soon after Biden becomes President because there is no time to waste if we are to launch a successful response to forestall global warming. In The Deficit Myth Stephanie Kelton writes:

"Whenever the topic of Social Security comes up, or when someone in Congress wants to put more money into education or health care, there's a lot of talk about how everything must be 'paid for' to avoid adding to the federal deficit. But have you noticed this never seems to be a problem when it comes to expanding the defense budget, bailing out banks, or giving huge tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans, even when these measures significantly raise the deficit? As long as the votes are there, the federal government can always fund its priorities. That's how it works. Deficits didn't stop Franklin Delano Roosevelt from implementing the New Deal in the 1930s. They didn't dissuade John F Kennedy from landing a man on the moon. And they never once stopped Congress from going to war."

The key phrase is "As long as the votes are there." Unless Democrats can gain control of both Houses of Congress, the votes will likely not be there. That's why the run-offs in Georgia are so important. It might make the difference between providing enough resources to launch a Green New Deal big enough to avoid catastrophic climate change or it may not. It's not a question of whether or not a Green New Deal is feasible or whether or not the money can be found for it, it's a question of who controls Congress and Congress' purse strings. The Federal Reserve has provided money for banks, hedge funds and corporations through its Quantitative Easing (QE) programs. It could do the same through a Quantitative Easing for a Green New Deal. Other countries are thinking along the same lines.

U.K. professor Richard Murphy adds another role for the central bank—as the issuer of new money in the form of “Green Infrastructure Quantitative Easing.” Murphy, who was a member of the original 2008 U.K. Green New Deal Group, explains:

"All QE works by the [central bank] buying debt issued by the government or other bodies using money that it, quite literally, creates out of thin air. … [T]his money creation process is … what happens every time a bank makes a loan. All that is unusual is that we are suggesting that the funds created by the [central bank] using this process be used to buy back debt that is due by the government in one of its many forms, meaning that it is effectively canceled."

The problem is that the way US institutions are set up, they only work in favor of the wealthiest people. That's why economic inequality is so great. The pandemic has only exacerbated inequality as there has been a K shaped recovery. The rich and those who can work from home have added to their wealth while the average American has suffered or even faced economic disaster and homelessness. So there are two problems here: saving the planet for future generations which requires massive and timely economic development of green infrastructure and reducing economic inequality while putting average Americans back to work in decent good paying jobs. A Green New Deal is at least as important now as the New Deal was in the 1930s. FDR's Reconstruction Finance Corporation provided the funds and actually made money in the long run. The same could be true for a Green Reconstruction Finance Corporation.

Off the Top of My Head

When Will Donald Trump Go Away?

by John Lawrence, December 16, 2020

There used to be a TV show - Search for Tomorrow. People wondered when everything would be resolved, the loose ends tied up and we would finally get to A Brighter Day, another soap opera. Well, we never found tomorrow or a brighter day, but simply the shows ended at the point that they were no longer profitable to their sponsors. In the same way the Trump road show/soap opera/reality show will end when it's no longer profitable. In the meantime it reminds me of a James Bond movie - Goldfinger. After Bond ruins Auric Goldfinger's evil empire and is relaxing on an airplane with a martini - shaken, not stirred, Goldfinger shows up on the plane with a gold plated revolver. There is always one final scene when you think everything has been resolved, but, think again, there is one last attempt by the villain to kill Bond. In this case the gun went off, blowing out a window, and due to the pressure differential,  Goldfinger who bears a striking resemblance to Donald Trump gets sucked out the window. Then the pilot, Pussy Galore, can make a safe landing and Bond can enjoy his martini ... and Pussy!

How many times do the votes have to be counted and recounted? How many times do the votes have to be certified and recertified? How many lawsuits have to be thrown out of court that tried to overturn the election. They tried at the state level to get legislatures to appoint Trump electors instead of Biden electors based on the fact that the state legislatures had to appoint the electors, and legally they could overturn the will of the voters and just do it. Trump finally got his "standing" before the Supreme Court. Surely they would throw out the votes of the election and certify Trump as the winner. After all Trump appointed 3 of them. Those ungrateful Supreme Court Justices! They threw out not one but two Trump law suits to overturn the results of the election. At every stage Democrats were asking "now will they agree that Biden has won and Trump has lost." It never happened, and just like in Search for Tomorrow, tomorrow never came and there was never A Brighter Day, the day when everyone agreed that Trump had lost and Biden had won. Finally, all the states selected the Biden electors rather than Trump electors although hope was still held out that faithless electors would still vote for Trump when the electors cast their votes before the US Congress on January 6. But wait a minute. Congress has to agree to accept the electors' votes on January 6. What if they don't?

Just like in Goldfinger Trump could swoop down on Congress on January 6 while all the Republican legislators who remain loyal to Trump will object to the electors' votes. According to the New York Times there could be one final showdown just as Joe Biden is enjoying his martini - shaken, not stirred. Goldfinger, aka Trump, could show up at Congress and some members of Congress could just not accept the results of the election.

"The Electoral College’s certification on Monday of President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory left just one final venue for President Trump and his supporters to challenge the results of the 2020 election: a joint session of Congress in January.

"Every four years, the House and Senate come together to formally tabulate the electoral votes and raise any final concerns about the results. Normally, it is a perfunctory confirmation of the Electoral College vote. But this year, some of the president’s most strident supporters are threatening to transform it into a messy last stand by objecting to the results."

The Constitution gives Congress the final say in the election. Just as Goldfinger shows up at the last minute to take on Bond in hand to hand combat, Trump could show up in Congress, and, as the votes are tallied state by state, if even one Congressional member from each House objects to that state's electoral vote count, it could mean that Biden will not have won the election. If that occurred, the joint session would immediately pause so lawmakers could go back to their respective chambers to debate the objection for up to two hours. They would then vote on whether to toss out the electoral results of the state in question. Both chambers would have to agree to reject the votes. It could happen but it's unlikely. At the very least it could gum up the works. Two hours here two hours there,  50 states times two hours per state, pretty soon you've delayed the final certification of the election indefinitely, especially since Congress will adjourn for the holidays. When January 20 rolls around, there still might be no winner of the election to be sworn in. Please note that many Republican Congressmen have not agreed that Biden won the election.

The Times article continued:

"Mr. Trump’s allies, led by Representative Mo Brooks of Alabama, have their sights set on challenging five states — Arizona, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Georgia and Wisconsin — where they claim that widespread voting fraud occurred, despite the fact that all five states have certified that the results are valid and there is no evidence of any widespread impropriety.

"The key will be recruiting a Republican senator to join them, and so far none has publicly committed to doing so. Without a senator, their efforts will quickly fail and Mr. Biden could be formally declared president-elect in under an hour.

"If a senator did sign on to challenge the results, Republicans could force Congress into a final, messy debate over Mr. Trump’s refusal to concede defeat and his baseless claims of election fraud, which have been roundly rejected in court."

It's not over till it's over as Yogi Berra might have said. It's definitely "deja vu all over again." The final battle might still ensue. Just as Auric Goldfinger (Donald Trump) showed up to challenge James Bond one more time, when everyone in the viewing audience thought Bond had vanquished the evil empire for good, just as he was enjoying his well shaken martini, Auric Trump could show up and his henchmen could create such turmoil in the hoary halls of Congress that the American people will rue the day that the Founding Fathers didn't put something in the Constitution to prevent this mess. When will Donald Trump finally go away? The correct answer is when the money and the sponsorship deals run out. There will be No Brighter Tomorrow till then.

Off the Top of My Head

Biden Could Eliminate Student Loan Debt on Day 1 by Executive Order

by John Lawrence, December 2, 2020

Total U.S. student loan debt is $1.67 trillion, and 2018 college grads with loans owe $29,200 on average. $1.54 trillion of this is held by the Federal government. The rest is held by private companies. During his campaign, Biden said he would forgive $10,000 of federal student loans as part of his Emergency Action Plan for the economic recovery. He could do even more. He could forgive all government held student loan debt outright. He probably won't do that, but what he might do is lower monthly payments in accordance with monthly incomes. He could also lower interest rates. He also has said that he would forgive more for people who had done or are doing community or national service. Elizabeth Warren in her Presidential campaign said that she would forgive all federal student loan debt on Day 1. Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Warren in September called on the next president to forgive $50,000 in student loans for every borrower as soon as he entered the White House. In an interview earlier this month with The.Ink, Schumer said Biden could cancel the debt “with the pen as opposed to legislation.” More than 230 organizations and non-profits, including Americans for Financial Reform, the NAACP and the National Consumer Law Center, signed a letter on Nov. 18, calling on Biden to cancel student loans on his first day as president.

It would be appropriate if Joe Biden forgave all student loan debt on Day 1 since he voted in 2005 for the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act, a law that made it vastly more difficult for struggling former students to rebuild their lives by discharging the debts and starting over. This was a gift to the credit card companies many of which had given Joe Biden campaign contributions. Many of them are registered or headquartered in Delaware. Biden was even known as the Senator from MBNA. So it's ironic that Biden will be the one to give relief in one form or other to student loan debtors.

What is so pernicious about student loans is that they can be given to anyone without any consideration given to the person's ability to repay, and since they can't be discharged in bankruptcy, the for profit schools piled on encouraging students in subjects which had no financial future to take on as much debt as they wanted. It seemed like a free lunch which is always what debt seems like until it comes time to repay Many students got deferments or forbearance putting off the day when they would have to start paying even further into the future. That made the deal that much sweeter, but to paraphrase James Baldwin, a debt deferred one day becomes a nightmare. When you make a deal with the devil what always happens is that eventually it comes time to pay.

The Guardian reported:

Despite his protestations, it is indisputable that Biden was an avid supporter of the 2005 bill as a whole and of its overall thrust of tightening up the bankruptcy code largely to the benefit of lenders at the expense of distressed families who would find it harder to file for bankruptcy.

“Biden was one of the most powerful people who could have said no, who could have changed this. Instead he used his leadership role to limit the ability of other Democrats who had concerns and who wanted the bill softened,” said Melissa Jacoby, a law professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill specializing in bankruptcy.

Other leading Democrats and consumer advocates did say no. In the Senate debate on the 2005 bill, Ted Kennedy was scathing about its implications.

“This legislation breaks the bond that unites America, it sacrifices Americans to the rampant greed of the credit card industry,” he said. Kennedy warned that even before the new provision kicked in young people were dropping out of college “because of the costs of student loans – they can’t pay them”.

So now Joe Biden gets a chance to redeem himself. He doesn't need campaign contributions from the credit card companies any more because he will never be in another campaign. He should rise to the occasion and forgive the student loan debt held by the government on Day 1, but he also needs to restore bankruptcy protection for privately held debt. This might require the cooperation of Congress, and, if Republicans maintain control of Congress, they will put roadblocks in the way of everything Joe Biden tries to do. Let's hope that the Democratic candidates in the runoffs in Georgia both win. Only then will Democrats control both Houses of Congress. If that comes to pass, the Senate will have to vote to eliminate the filibuster rule as well. Unless they do that, as long as there is one Republican in the Senate, that Republican will filibuster anything and everything Biden and the Democrats want to do. This is despite Joe's supposed ability to "work across the aisle."

Off the Top of My Head

Will Trump Detach His Base From the Republican Party?

by John Lawrence, November 15, 2020

It is becoming clear that the base of the Republican party is more loyal to Trump than they are to the Republican party. The base has really become the Trump party and old guard Republicans like Mitch McConnell are getting nervous that they will not remain loyal to the Republican party. That's why Republicans are showing deference to Trump and his pique that the election was illegitimate. They know he lost the election, but they won't come out and say so. Trump's base even held a huge post election rally last Saturday showing their loyalty to Trump not necessarily the Republican party. This makes it more likely that Trump will take his base with him when he leaves office. Effectively, they would become the Trump party. Whether Trump creates his on media empire or associates himself with Fox news or some other media empire, it's clear that there is an audience he can count on.

The Republican party made a deal with the devil in the 1960s after the Democrats passed the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. Hitherto southern white supremacists and racists had been loyal to the Democratic party.They decided en masse that, if the Democrats were not going to continue to represent their racism and white supremacy, they would switch parties. Republicans then made a deal with the devil and accepted them with open arms because, while Republicans basically represent the interests of the rich, there are not enough of them to form a majority in a constitutional democracy. So far Trump has represented the interests of the old line Republicans by signing into law huge tax breaks for the rich and deregulating everything that could be regulated. His base hardly noticed except for the pittance of a tax break they got. They were more interested in Trump's conspiracy theories and ongoing campaign rallies where Trump sowed his racist and nativist sentiments and stoked their anger. Now it's clear that, if Trump so desired, he could detach his base that is the Republican base and take them with him forming a separate party devoted to Trump and his conspiracy theories. Trump and his henchmen in the alternative and social media world could create their separate entity and reality, which they've already to a large extent, created. So doing would continue the deep divides within the United States and further sow discord and division.

Aligning themselves with Mitch McConnell and a Republican controlled Senate, if the elections in Georgia don't result in two Democratic Senators, will hamper Joe Biden's attempts to enact any of his agenda in the same way that they blocked Obama's agenda for eight years. Then Trump and/or his family members could storm back in 2022 and 2024 to win back what they perceive they have unfairly lost in the 2020 election. They have labeled any middle of the road Democratic programs as far left or socialist and they will use the same tactics to demonize Joe and particularly Kamala as not representative of their racist and white supremacist values. Meanwhile, all the good work which Joe Biden's agenda represents will not get accomplished just like Obama's agenda was prevented from getting much of anything done except for a watered down version of Obamacare which they demonized ever since its enactment. Democrats, heretofore, have tried to cooperate with Republicans and be nice guys while Republicans have been playing hard ball using every bit of their power to promote their interests without any compromise whatsoever. They even went to the extent of denying Ruth Bader Ginsburg's dying wish that the next President replace her on the Supreme Court. This was after they swore up and down that the next President should replace a Supreme Court Justice a year before the end of the Obama Presidency thus denying Obama that privilege.

Joe Biden could fall into the same trap of watering down his agenda just to please Republicans under the guise of cooperation. He supposedly wants to "work across the aisle." He thinks he can get Mitch McConnell to cooperate with him. My advice is to "speak softly and carry a big stick" in the immortal words of Teddy Roosevelt. He mustn't fall into the same trap that Obama - and for that matter Bill Clinton - fell into by playing nice with Republicans. Trump's base will continue to be more loyal to Trump than they will be to Mitch McConnell or the Republican party. Trump will be more concerned about staying out of jail and deferring his $431 million debt repayment so he will enlist his base along those lines. Trump knows that his personal concerns will diverge from legitimate Republican party concerns once he's out of office, and he will enlist his minions to give him their support. Prodigious and ongoing conspiracy theories will fuel the anger of Trump's base, and there will be demands for his reinstatement as the rightful President of the United States.

Listen to the 'Calls Ringing Out in the Streets Across the World,' Says George Floyd's Brother in Emotional Testimony Before Congress

Published on Wednesday, June 10, 2020

by Common Dreams

"The people marching in the streets are telling you enough is enough."

by Jake Johnson, staff writer

 

13 Comments

Philonise Floyd, brother of George Floyd, gives his opening statement during a House Judiciary Committee hearing to discuss police brutality and racial profiling on June 10, 2020 on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. (Photo:  Michael Reynolds/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

Philonise Floyd, the younger brother of George Floyd, implored Congress in emotional testimony Wednesday to heed "the calls ringing out in the streets across the world" and take meaningful action against police brutality and racial injustice in the United States.

"If his death ends up changing the world for the better, and I think it will, then he died as he lived. It is on you to make sure his death is not in vain." —Philonise Floyd

"George called for help and he was ignored," Philonise said during a House Judiciary Committee hearing. "Please listen to the calls I'm making to you now. To the calls of our family... People of all backgrounds, genders and races have come together to demand change. Honor them, honor George, and make the necessary changes that make law enforcement the solution—and not the problem."

Philonise's testimony came just two weeks after George's killing at the hands of Minneapolis police officers, which sparked a nationwide uprising against law enforcement brutality and galvanized demands for systemic changes to policing in the U.S.

"The people marching in the streets are telling you enough is enough," Philonise said. "The people elected you to speak for them, to make positive change. George's name means something. You have the opportunity here today to make your names mean something, too. If his death ends up changing the world for the better, and I think it will, then he died as he lived. It is on you to make sure his death is not in vain."

Watch Philonise Floyd's full testimony:

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Was the Fed Just Nationalized?

Published on

Friday, April 03, 2020

 by

Common Dreams

Did Congress just nationalize the Fed? No. But the door to that result has been cracked open.

 

 

by 

Ellen Brown

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 13 Comments

 It took only a few days for Congress to unanimously pass the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, which will be doling out $2.2 trillion in crisis relief, most of it going to Corporate America with few strings attached.  (Photo: Public domain)

Mainstream politicians have long insisted that Medicare for all, a universal basic income, student debt relief and a slew of other much-needed public programs are off the table because the federal government cannot afford them. But that was before Wall Street and the stock market were driven onto life-support by a virus. Congress has now suddenly discovered the magic money tree. It took only a few days for Congress to unanimously pass the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, which will be doling out $2.2 trillion in crisis relief, most of it going to Corporate America with few strings attached. Beyond that, the Federal Reserve is making over $4 trillion available to banks, hedge funds and other financial entities of all stripes; it has dropped the fed funds rate (the rate at which banks borrow from each other) effectively to zero; and it has made $1.5 trillion available to the repo market.

It is also the Federal Reserve that will be picking up the tab for this bonanza, at least to start. The US central bank has opened the sluice gates to unlimited quantitative easing, buying Treasury securities and mortgage-backed securities “in the amounts needed to support smooth market functions.” Last month, the Fed bought $650 billion worth of federal securities. At that rate, notes Wall Street on Parade, it will own the entire Treasury market in about 22 months. As Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari acknowledged on 60 Minutes, “There is an infinite amount of cash at the Federal Reserve.”

In theory, quantitative easing is just a temporary measure, reversible by selling bonds back into the market when the economy gets back on its feet. But in practice, we have seen that QE is a one-way street. When central banks have tried to reverse it with “quantitative tightening,” economies have shrunk and stock markets have plunged. So the Fed is likely to just keep rolling over the bonds, which is what normally happens anyway with the federal debt. The debt is never actually paid off but is just rolled over from year to year. Only the interest must be paid, to the tune of $575 billion in 2019. The benefit of having the Fed rather than private bondholders hold the bonds is that the Fed rebates its profits to the Treasury after deducting its costs, making the loans virtually interest-free. Interest-free loans rolled over indefinitely are in effect free money. The Fed is “monetizing” the debt.

What will individuals, families, communities and state and local governments be getting out of this massive bailout? Not much. Qualifying individuals will get a very modest one-time payment of $1,200, and unemployment benefits have been extended for the next four months. For local governments, $150 billion has been allocated for crisis relief, and one of the Fed’s newly expanded Special Purpose Vehicles will buy municipal bonds. But there is no provision for reducing the interest rate on the bonds, which typically runs at 3 or 4 percent plus hefty bond dealer fees and foregone taxes on tax-free issues. Unlike the federal government, municipal governments will not be getting a rebate on the interest on their bonds.

The taxpayers have obviously been shortchanged in this deal. David Dayen calls it “a robbery in progress.” But there have been some promising developments that could be harnessed for the benefit of the people. The Fed has evidently abandoned its vaunted “independence” and is now working in partnership with the Treasury. In some sense, it has been nationalized. A true partnership, however, would make the printing press available for more than just buying toxic corporate assets. A central bank that was run as a public utility could fund programs designed to kickstart the economy, stimulate productivity and generally serve the public.

Harnessing the Central Bank

The reason the Fed is now working with the Treasury is that it needs the Treasury to help it bail out a financial industry burdened with an avalanche of dodgy assets that are fast losing value. The problem for the Fed is that it is only allowed to purchase or lend against securities with government guarantees, including Treasury securities, agency mortgage-backed securities, debt issued by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and (arguably) municipal securities. To get around that wrinkle, as Wolf Richter explains:

[T]he Treasury will create (or resuscitate) a series of special-purpose vehicles (SPVs) to buy all manner of financial assets, backed by $425 billion in collateral conveniently supplied by the US taxpayer via the Exchange Stabilization Fund. The Fed will lend to SPVs against this collateral which, when leveraged, could fund $4-5 trillion in asset purchases.

That includes municipal bonds, non-agency mortgages, corporate bonds, commercial paper, and every variety of asset-backed security. The only things the government can’t (transparently, yet) buy are publicly-traded stocks and high-yield bonds.

Unlike in QE, in which the Fed moves assets onto its own balance sheet, the Treasury will now be buying assets and backstopping loans through SPVs that the Treasury will own and control. SPVs are a form of shadow bank, which like all banks create money by “monetizing” debt or turning it into something that can be spent in the marketplace. The SPV decides what assets to buy and borrows from the central bank to do it. The central bank then passively creates the funds, which are used to purchase the assets backing the loan. As Jim Bianco wrote on Bloomberg:

In other words, the federal government is nationalizing large swaths of the financial markets. The Fed is providing the money to do it. BlackRock will be doing the trades. This scheme essentially merges the Fed and Treasury into one organization. …

In effect, the Fed is giving the Treasury access to its printing press. This means that, in the extreme, the administration would be free to use its control, not the Fed’s control, of these SPVs to instruct the Fed to print more money so it could buy securities and hand out loans in an effort to ramp financial markets higher going into the election.

Of the designated SPVs, none currently serves a public purpose beyond buoying the markets; but they could be designed for such purposes. The taxpayers are on the hook for replenishing the $425 billion in the Exchange Stabilization Fund, and they should be entitled to share in the benefits. Congress could designate a Special Purpose Vehicle to fund its infrastructure projects, and to fund those much-needed public services including Medicare for all, a universal basic income, student debt relief, and similar programs. It could also purchase a controlling interest in insolvent or profligate banks, pharmaceutical companies, oil companies and other offenders and regulate them in a way that serves the public interest.

Another possibility would be for Congress to fund these programs in the usual way by issuing government bonds, but to enter into a partnership agreement first by which the central bank would buy the bonds, roll them over indefinitely, and rebate the interest to the Treasury. That is how Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has funded his stimulus programs, with none of the predicted inflationary effects on consumer prices. In fact the Japanese consumer price index is hovering at a very low 0.4%, well below even the central bank’s 2 percent target, although the Bank of Japan has monetized nearly half of the government’s debt. Half of the US debt would be over $11 trillion. Assuming $6 trillion for the current corporate bailouts, that means another $5 trillion could safely be monetized for programs benefiting individuals, families and local governments. (How to do this without driving up consumer prices will be the subject of another article.)

Relief for State and Local Governments

State and local governments, which are on the front lines for delivering emergency services, have for the most part been left out of the bailout bonanza. While we are waiting for action from Congress, the Fed could make cheap loans available to local governments using its existing powers under Federal Reserve Act Sec. 14(2)(b), which authorizes the Fed to purchase the bills, bonds, and notes of state and local governments having maturities of six months or less. Since local governments must balance their budgets, these loans would have to be repaid, but the loans could be extended by rolling them over for a reasonable period, as is done with repo loans and the federal debt; and the loans could be made at the same near-zero interest rate banks can borrow at now. State and local governments are at least as creditworthy as banks – they have a taxpayer base and massive assets. In fact the private banking industry would have been insolvent long ago if it were not for the deep pocket of the central bank and the bailouts of the federal government, including the FDIC insurance scheme that rescued the banks from bankruptcy in the Great Depression.

There is a way state and local governments can take advantage of the near-zero interest rates available to banks even without federal action. They can set up their own publicly-owned banks. Besides giving them the ability to borrow much more cheaply, having their own banks would allow them to leverage their loan funds. A $100 million revolving fund issuing loans at 3% would gross the state $3 million per year. If that same $100 million were used to capitalize a bank, it could issue ten times that sum in loans, grossing $30 million per year. Costs would need to be deducted from those earnings, including the cost of funds; but the cost of funds is quite low for banks today. They can borrow to meet their liquidity needs from their own deposit pool, or at 0.25% in the fed funds market, or at about the same rate in the repo market, which is now backstopped by the central bank.

The blatant disparities in the congressional response to the current crisis have shone a bright light on how our financial system is rigged against the people in favor of a wealthy elite. Crisis is when change happens; this is the time for advocates to unite in demanding change on behalf of the people. As Greek economist Yanis Varoufakis admonished in a recent post:

[T]his new phase of the crisis is, at the very least, making it clear to us that anything goes – that everything is now possible.… Whether the epidemic helps deliver the good or the most evil society will depend … on whether progressives manage to band together. For if we do not, just like in 2008 we did not, the bankers, the spivs [petty criminals], the oligarchs and the neofascists will prove, again, that they are the ones who know how not to let a good crisis go to waste.

Ellen Brown is an attorney and founder of the Public Banking Institute. She is the author of twelve books, including the best-selling Web of Debt, and her latest book, The Public Bank Solution, which explores successful public banking models historically and globally.

 

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'An Utter Disgrace': GOP Stimulus Plan Would Cut Taxes for Corporations While Denying Benefits to Poorest

Published on Friday, March 20, 2020

by Common Dreams

"Senate Republicans are using the COVID-19 pandemic to cut corporate taxes again and stop you from getting paid sick leave."

by Jake Johnson, staff writer

 

20 Comments

Senate Majority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) speaks to members of the media during a news conference at the U.S. Capitol on March 17, 2020 in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images)

"Heartless," "cruel," and "appalling" were just some of the adjectives progressive critics and analysts used late Thursday to describe the Senate GOP's newly unveiled trillion-dollar economic stimulus package which—by design—would completely deny direct cash payments to the poorest Americans while cutting taxes for corporations, dishing out tens of billions in bailout funds to major industries, and restricting paid leave benefits that were just signed into law this week.

"The Senate GOP package is an utter disgrace," tweeted Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO. "It gives free money to corporations, ignores the health crisis, and does nothing to keep people working or help the unemployed. The labor movement will oppose this Main St. bailout of Wall St. with everything we have."

"I don't know how else to describe this but wantonly wicked. The poorest get zero; low-income households get half of what middle-income households get; and a kid counts for 40% of an adult."
—Daniel Hemel, University of Chicago Law School

The Republican plan, released as the economic fallout from the coronavirus outbreak continues to worsen, would provide means-tested cash payments of up to $1,200 per adult and $500 per child, with the precise amount dependent upon 2018 tax filings.

"Taxpayers with little or no income tax liability, but at least $2,500 of qualifying income, would be eligible for a minimum rebate check of $600 ($1,200 married)," the Republican proposal states. "Qualifying income includes earned income, as well as Social Security retirement benefits and certain compensation and pension benefits paid to veterans."

Observers were quick to point out a gaping hole in the Republican plan: Adults with no qualifying income would get nothing.

"I don't know how else to describe this but wantonly wicked," said Daniel Hemel, a tax expert at the University of Chicago Law School. "The poorest get zero; low-income households get half of what middle-income households get; and a kid counts for 40% of an adult."

Kyle Pomerleau, an economist and resident fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, estimated that "roughly 64 million filers earning less than $50k would not receive the full rebate amount of $1,200/$2,400" under the GOP proposal.

"For a single filer, income must be at least about $23k to get the full $1,200," Pomerleau noted. "For married couple filing jointly, [adjusted gross income] must be about $47k to get the full $2,400."

Phase-in is bad, bad, bad (and so cruel.) Giving less to people who have less at a time of desperation is completely unacceptable.

Really, is now the time to say people who are struggling deserve less? https://t.co/Eyy5lfk6OR

— Charlie Anderson (@EconCharlie) March 19, 2020

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) pitched the GOP proposal as a starting point for stimulus negotiations with the Democratic Party, but Democratic leaders quickly dismissed the plan as a non-starter.

"We are beginning to review Senator McConnell's proposal, and on first reading, it is not at all pro-worker and instead puts corporations way ahead of workers," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said in a joint statement Thursday night.

Even two Republican lawmakers—Sens. Mitt Romney (R-Utah.) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.)—dismissed the plan as regressive.

Relief to families in this emergency shouldn’t be regressive. Lower-income families shouldn’t be penalized

— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) March 19, 2020

While skimping on aid low-income Americans, the Republican proposal—formally known as the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act—contains generous gifts for big corporations and billions in relief for industries hit hard by the coronavirus crisis, including $50 billion for airlines.

The 247-page Republican legislation, according to the New York Times, "includes a raft of temporary changes to the tax code that would reduce the tax liability of large corporations, many of them overriding provisions in the 2017 tax overhaul that were meant to raise revenue to offset corporate rate cuts."

The bill would also "place new limits on a paid-leave program that Congress passed and Mr. Trump signed into law this week," the Times reported, "shielding small business owners from any costs of paid leave for workers affected by the virus—and limiting how much pay those workers could receive if they are forced to stay home."

"Senate Republicans are using the COVID-19 pandemic to cut corporate taxes again and stop you from getting paid sick leave," tweeted advocacy group Swing Left. "They called it the CARES Act because Mitch CARES about big businesses, not you."

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'Right Now Is the Moment to Decide If You Are Pro-Peace or Not': Ocasio-Cortez Joins Progressive Chorus Against War With Iran

Published on Friday, January 03, 2020

by Common Dreams

"Congress now has a moral and legal obligation to reassert its power to stop this war and protect innocent people from horrific consequences."

by Eoin Higgins, staff writer

 

70 Comments

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) attends Women's March 2019 on January 19, 2019 in New York City. (Photo by John Lamparski/Getty Images)

Progressives on Friday, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, called for Congressional action to rein in the administration after a drone strike ordered by President Donald Trump killed Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani, a move seen by observers as an act of war that is nearly certain to exacerbate a historically tense moment in the Persian Gulf region.

"Right now is the moment to decide if you are pro-peace or not," tweeted Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat.

Last night the President engaged in what is widely being recognized as an act of war against Iran, one that now risks the lives of millions of innocent people.

Now is the moment to prevent war & protect innocent people - the question for many is how, publicly & Congressionally:

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) January 3, 2020

"Congress now has a moral and legal obligation to reassert its power to stop this war and protect innocent people from horrific consequences," the congresswoman added.

Ocasio-Cortez joined a growing chorus from the left urging restraint and diplomacy from the U.S. and Iran. 

"There is no military solution to this crisis," Reps. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) and Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), co-chairs of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said in a statement. "Instead, we must pursue meaningful diplomacy to achieve peace and stability in the region."

There is no military solution to this crisis — instead, we must pursue meaningful diplomacy to achieve peace and stability in the region.

Full statement from @repmarkpocan & @RepJayapal ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/x5Yz3o40pI

— Progressive Caucus (@USProgressives) January 3, 2020

Jayapal added in a tweet that Soleimani's killing "dangerously doubles down on reckless military brinkmanship."

The attack on Soleimani, one of the leaders of Iran's Quds Force and a major figure in the Iranian government, and Iraqi militia leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis came on Friday morning near the Baghdad airport. 

By striking the Iranian leader, Ploughshares Fund director of programs Michelle Dover told Common Dreams in an email, the U.S. "has imperiled any near term chances for diplomacy."

"The primary question now is whether the U.S. government is prepared for the Iranian response," said Dover. "The U.S. public should be calling on Congress to assert its authorities and oversight roles to prevent an unintentional slide into war." 

Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) in a statement called for peace and noted that the Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), first passed by Congress in 2001 days after the 9/11 attacks with Lee as the sole dissenting vote, was used by the White House as the justification for the strike. 

"We must work to prevent further military action in the region," said Lee. "We have known for years that there is no military solution, and it's past time to return to a diplomatic strategy with our allies. We must protect our national security, our brave troops, our allies, and the American people."

Lee included in the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) an amendment which would have repealed the AUMF, but, as Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) pointed out on Twitter, that language was stripped from the final bill delivering the president billions in war funding, which passed Congress with bipartisan support. 

There were two amendments stripped from the NDAA that could have prevented tonight's escalation.

My amendment to prevent funding for war with Iran without Congressional approval.@BLeeForCongress's amendment to repeal the 2001 AUMF.

— Ro Khanna (@RoKhanna) January 3, 2020

Liberal advocacy group MoveOn on Friday launched a petition asking Congress to halt the march to war. 

"Congress is the only branch of government that has the constitutional power to decide where and whether to send U.S. forces into harm's way," the group said. "We urge you to act immediately to stop a catastrophic war with Iran."

The Nation's Jeet Heer warned Friday that Congress has not been known recently for its bravery in the face of war-time presidents.

"Trump's petty motives and incoherent policy have been enabled by a Congress that has long been derelict in its duty to provide oversight over foreign policy," said Heer. "This abdication of responsibility is all too typical of American politics since the 9/11 terrorist attacks—under both Democratic and Republican presidents."

There is no justification for starting a war w/ Iran.

Endless wars kill innocent people and put trillions of $ in the pockets war profiteers.

We can't allow Trump to thrust us into another costly & deadly war.

Sign here to Stop War with Iran:https://t.co/7NafViabSq

— jordan (@JordanUhl) January 3, 2020

In a statement to Common Dreams, Alliance for Peacebuilding president and CEO Uzra Zeya said that the correct response to the continuing tensions is trying to find a way forward without violence.

"We must reject retribution and military action towards all-out war that endangers the future of Iranians and Americans alike," said Zeya. "Peacebuilding—in the form of de-escalation, dialogue, restraint, and diplomacy—is now more important than ever."

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Off the Top of My Head

Seeking Dirt on a Political Opponent from a Foreign Government is Enough to Impeach

by John Lawrence

It doesn't matter whether or not Trump was holding up military aid until he got what he wanted. It doesn't matter whether or not he "pressured" Zelensky. Just the fact that he tried to get a foreign government to dig up dirt on Joe Biden is enough. If he gets away with that, the US is on its journey down the rabbit hole to dictatorship and fascism. Don't forget Adolph Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany by President Hindenburg in 1933. After Hindenburg died in 1934, Hitler assumed the role of President. All this happened very democratically. However, after Hitler assumed power, things moved very quickly as Hitler took control to become the Fuhrer or dictator of Germany.

Donald Trump has set the stage for his taking absolute power in the US. Congress has become totally ineffective and stalemated thanks to Trump's henchman, Mitch McConnell. The only thing holding Trump back is the judiciary although Trump's stacking the Supreme Court with Republican supporters means that that domino is going to fall as well. If the House does not impeach Trump over this offense, it means he can get away with practically anything just as Adolf Hitler did in the thirties. Hitler adopted what amounted to a "Germany first" policy just as Trump has adopted "America first."

The last bulwark of democracy in the US is the House of Representatives controlled by the Democratic Party. If they can't stop the Trump steamroller by impeaching him, they're sending a clear message that it's OK for the President of the US to use the mantle of the Presidency to further his own political and personal interests at the expense of the people of the US. He's already done this in myriad ways by his tax cuts for the rich that's putting the US into more debt to the tune of a trillion dollars a year which is just about the amount that interest on the debt is costing. Trump has already stripped the US of environmental protection and ignored the looming threat of climate change.

It will take awhile even if a Democrat is elected President in 2020 to repair the damage Trump has done and then get on with the business of recreating a democracy that could have the moral values that the rest of the world would look up to again.

The Most Impeachable President in US History vs. The Most Hesitant Congress.

Published on Saturday, November 16, 2019

by Common Dreams

What are the Democrats waiting for? Trump is the most impeachable tyrant in the country's history—hands down.

by Ralph Nader

 

5 Comments

US President Donald Trump delivers remarks at the White House in Washington, DC on November 15, 2019. A"lexander Hamilton described 'high crimes and misdemeanors' as 'violations of the public trust,'" writes Nader. "Trump is the poster boy for this yardstick." (Photo illustration: Brendan Smialowski / AFP / Getty Images & CD overlay)

Amid the worst Republican President and Republican Party in modern times, the Democrats are playing the politics of low expectations. This is not the time for Democrats to be in disarray. On Capitol Hill, the prevailing view of most Democrats is that they will cling to their House majority and they shouldn’t expect to regain the Senate in the 2020 elections. The Democrats should be using massive rebuttal evidence, relayed with invincible vibrant rhetoric, toward a “wave election win” as occurred in 1936, when President Roosevelt won 61 percent of the popular vote and the Democrats won large majorities in both the House and Senate.

Tyrant Trump is the most impeachable president in the country’s history—hands down. Before he resigned, Richard Nixon was sure to be impeached and convicted in 1974 due to his obstructions of the Watergate scandal investigation. Selected president Donald Trump has committed many more serious offenses than Nixon. Trump’s abuses amount to repealing the gains of the American Revolution against monarchical rule, and they eviscerate the U.S. Constitution’s “separation of powers” system of presidential accountability. Moreover, major protections for the American people against big corporate crime, power and greed are all on Trump’s unlawful chopping block.  His offenses and violations are more than enough to require his removal from office!

"This is not the time for Democrats to be in disarray."

 

The Democrat’s narrow impeachment move on Trump focuses on his attempted extortion of Ukraine for personal political gain. The current House inquiry does not yet include the far more serious systematic “high crimes and misdemeanors” he is brazenly committing. These affect the daily livelihoods, freedoms and just treatment of all the people where they live, work and raise their children.

A president who lies and fabricates by the hour is destructive to life-preserving science, reason, truth, and public trust. Trump separates those who believe his delusionary tweets and rantings from the realities they need to confront. No family, neighborhood, community, or workplace can operate under such thunderous falsifications. Trump even lies about his promises when challenged—such as his claim that Mexico will pay to build the wall.

Alexander Hamilton described “high crimes and misdemeanors” as “violations of the public trust.” Trump is the poster boy for this yardstick. He tells Americans they have cleaner air, water, food, forthcoming wonderful health insurance, tons more manufacturing jobs and “clean, beautiful coal.” He continues to maintain these fictions when just the opposite is occurring due to his deliberate destruction of existing health, safety and economic protections. He is subordinating people to increased corporate control. Trump caves to corporate demands for more tax escapes, taxpayer subsidies, stalled or frozen minimum wages and other mechanisms to stop the people from getting what they have earned.

"A president who lies and fabricates by the hour is destructive to life-preserving science, reason, truth, and public trust."

 

Trump’s income taxes on corporations and his own businesses are the lowest in modern U.S. history. Some companies—like the big banks and General Electric are nearing tax-exemption, so little do they pay into the U.S. Treasury. And Trump’s use of the presidency to enrich himself and his businesses is shameless.

 

Remember all the factories that he said were coming back to America and the trade deficit he was going to diminish and the federal deficit he was going to reduce? Well, his actions have made a mess of all these matters. Manufacturing output and manufacturing jobs are down, the trade and federal deficits are up. Irregular Gig economy jobs with low pay and no-benefits are replacing good jobs. Consumer debts, including student debt, are at an all-time high.

Overall, average inflation is low, but this is not helping low-income people paying higher rent, rising uncovered health care bills and public transit hikes. Home ownership is sliding, especially for African-Americans. Average life expectancy in America is declining for the first time.

Hand it to Donald Trump. Sometimes he really means what he says.  His cruel attacks on immigrants who take tough jobs, such as being home health care aides that nobody else wants, and his brutish treatment of women and minorities matches his rhetoric. He really has illusions of megalomania. “I am the chosen one,” he said recently.

Trump trumpeted dictatorially: “Under Article 2, I can do whatever I want as President.” Which is what he is doing in violation of many sections of our Constitution, starting with sweeping contempt of exclusive Congressional authorities under our Constitution. These violations involve the appropriations, war and confirmation powers. He has violated surveillance rules, campaign finance laws and encouraged voter suppression of citizens likely to vote against Republicans. He is engaged in an attempted coup, not the Democrats.

"What are the Democrats waiting for? Present to the American people the many demonstrable impeachable offenses, which entail very harmful “kitchen table” impacts. A comprehensive impeachment inquiry will engage more of the public and will produce the critical broader public support for impeachment."

No other president has regularly violated more provisions of our Constitution, some of which also involve statutory crimes. No other president has engaged in more personal violence against women, openly incited violence against critics and reporters at his mass rallies. No other president has been more ineffective regarding fulfilling his boastful promises to his betrayed supporters.

There is never a “last straw” fulmination by Donald Trump. The winner thus far is his latest incitement that “If the Democrats are successful in removing the President from office (which they will never be), it will cause a Civil War like fracture in this Nation from which our Country will never heal,'” Trump quoted from a Baptist pastor’s statement. Such a crazy, dangerous incitation would have been decisively actionable to our founding fathers, not to mention Mr. Republican himself – Abraham Lincoln, whose presidency was engulfed by Civil War.

What are the Democrats waiting for? Present to the American people the many demonstrable impeachable offenses, which entail very harmful “kitchen table” impacts. A comprehensive impeachment inquiry will engage more of the public and will produce the critical broader public support for impeachment.

Send ‘Trump and company’ back to Mar-a-Lago so they can contemplate the rising sea levels which he calls a “Chinese Hoax.” Set the stage for the crucial election of 2020 to end the supremacy of grasping corporations placing their “Tories” in what Thomas Jefferson called “the People’s House.”

Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer, and author. His latest books include: To the Ramparts: How Bush and Obama Paved the Way for the Trump Presidency, and Why It Isn’t Too Late to Reverse Course, How the Rats Re-Formed the Congress, Breaking Through Power: It's easier than we think, and Animal Envy: A Fable

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Off the Top of My Head

Quid Pro Quo: A False Dichotomy?

by John Lawrence, November 13, 2019

President Trump himself set up this false dichotomy by saying right off the bat, "There was no quid pro quo." Trump successfully got everyone arguing over whether or not there was one.The point is whether or not there was a quid pro quo is irrelevant. What he did by extorting Zelensky was a "high crime and misdemeanor." If it wasn't, what the heck is? The Constitution doesn't define in detail what high crimes and misdemeanors actually are. Therefore, it's left up to the Congress. But what Trump did looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck. Therefore, it's a duck.Trump's strategy from the very beginning was to act like nothing of significance happened. He took pains not to look like he was hiding anything. He took pains to sound like it was just another day in the office. Ho. Hum.

However, the evidence is mounting. The real nitty gritty is Trump's tax returns which he has been fighting in court to prevent the release of. When these come to light, this will be the coup de grace on Trump's Presidency. The arcane legal arguments are almost too difficult to follow for the average layperson. Here are the key points thanks to CNBC:

1) A federal judge in Washington, D.C., on Monday [November 11] dismissed President Donald Trump’s legal effort to bar a House committee from using a New York state law to obtain his state tax returns.

2) The ruling by Judge Carl Nichols does not mean that Trump’s state tax returns will be released to the House Ways and Means Committee anytime soon. The committee has not tried to use the new law to get his state returns.

3) The committee sued the U.S. Treasury Department and the IRS in early July to obtain Trump’s federal income tax returns.

The question might be asked why the House committee has not used the New York state law to get Trump's returns which mirror his Federal returns. Can't they walk and chew gum at the same time? There are always a myriad legal workarounds and by passes and subterfuges that can be used by skillful lawyers to keep this game or any legal game going as long as possible. The longer it goes on, the more money lawyers make. "A federal judge in Washington, D.C., on Monday dismissed President Donald Trump’s lawsuit seeking to bar a House committee from using a New York state law to obtain his state tax returns, suggesting the president’s legal action belonged in another courthouse." There you go. If you can't win in one courthouse, there's always another courthouse you can try. Just try the wrong courthouse first. This eats up the clock. There are other avenues, other approaches when that one fails. Just because one judge threw out Trump's lawsuit, doesn't mean anything. The judge as much as said, "Go try your luck elsewhere." Nothing is ever definitive; nothing is ever final. There's always another way to deal with the problem as long as you keep on paying the lawyers.

As it turns out, neither of three House committees has invoked the New York State law to get Trump's tax returns. What were they waiting for? "[Judge] Nichols’ ruling in Trump’s own suit had failed to establish that a judge in Washington federal court had jurisdiction over a challenge to New York’s law, known as the TRUST Act." So what did the Judge's ruling establish? Not a heck of a lot to be sure. Who can challenge New York's law? Nobody knows. This is just all too convoluted to understand for the average layperson. It is a labyrinth of lawyerly mumbo jumbo and a mire of obfuscation There are just too many courts at too many levels so that no court knows what the other court is doing or is capable of doing or has the jurisdiction to do.

"Nichols’ ruling said that Trump did not establish a conspiracy between the Ways and Means Committee and New York officials, which could have established that a Washington court had jurisdiction over the suit." Why should the House Ways and Means Committee have to conspire with New York officials to get Trump's state tax returns in the first place, but if it did, that would mean a Washington court had jurisdiction over the suit? Well since they didn't conspire, that should mean that a New York court has jurisdiction over the suit, but a New York court just said that it didn't have jurisdiction over the suit. What is this a freakin' merry-g-round? Around and around we go, and where we stop, nobody knows. The ball is in your court; no, the ball is in your court. Let's toss the ball around some more.

It only makes sense that Congress should be able to get ahold of the President's tax returns since every President prior to Trump has voluntarily released them. Where is a whistleblower when we need one? Couldn't someone just leak Trump's tax returns? Now Judge Nichols is suggesting that Trump could refile his suit alleging said conspiracy since his lawyers failed to mention said conspiracy in the original suit. Judge Nichols, you are just wasting we taxpayers' time. Either Trump should be compelled to cough up his tax returns or the IRS or the state of New York should just be compelled to hand them over without Trump even having to be involved. After all both New York State and the IRS have the tax returns in their possession. But the judges and lawyers just want this game to continue going round and round in court. After all they make more money that way.

Off the Top of My Head

Dems Need to Flip Senate, Cancel Filibuster Rule in 2020

by John Lawrence, May 7, 2019

22 Republican Senate seats are up for election in 2020. Right now the Repubs hold 53 seats, the Dems 47. The Dems need only hold on to their 12 seats that are up for election and flip 4 Repub seats to gain a majority. If the Dems can flip the Senate, the first thing they should do is to change the rules of the Senate so that only a majority is required to pass a bill. In other words they should end the filibuster rule. This is the so-called nuclear option. There is nothing in the Constitution that requires the filibuster. It almost doesn't matter which Dem is elected President. Controlling the Senate and keeping control of the House is the most important aspect of the 2020 election. Why? The years from 2020 to 2024 are crucially important insofar as using all governmental resources to reduce greenhouse gasses and forestall climate change. Secondly, the health care situation is simply out of control expense wise.

Even those with employer provided health care are finding that their premiums are going up faster than their wages. CBS news reported: "Health care premiums continue to take up more of employees' paychecks, according to Kaiser data. Since 2008, average family premiums have jumped 55 percent, twice as fast as workers' earnings and three times as fast as inflation. " So I'm thinking that even those with employer based health care - some 150 million - are not as happy with their plans as right wing propaganda might suggest. So it's the Dems, in particular Bernie Sanders, to the rescue. He is so bold as to suggest that Americans need not be ripped off over health care the same way Europeans are not.

But as important as providing a sane policy regarding health care is, converting to renewable energy at a much more rapid pace is exponentially more important. A Bernie Sanders Presidency with a Kamala Harris vice presidency - as I recommend - would hasten the day when the US is totally powered by renewables both on and off the road. Almost 50 countries that would be adversely affected by climate change have agreed to make their energy production 100% renewable by the year 2050 and countries all over the world are actively embracing solar, wind, and geothermal energy. Scotland is able to produce enough wind power to supply over 100% of Scottish households. Neighboring Ireland also continues to set new records, with enough energy to power more than 1.26 million homes being created on just one windy day in 2015. Iceland and Costa Rica are almost at the 100% renewable level. It can be done in the US, but it will take a Green New Deal to do it in such a way that there is the least disruption to the economy.

It will take a Democratic President elected in 2020 as well as Democrats controlling both Houses of Congress together with the elimination of the filibuster rule if the US is ever to get on track to eliminate greenhouse gasses and do its part to minimize the disastrous effects of climate change.

WATCH: Medicare for All in the Spotlight at Historic Congressional Hearing

Published on Tuesday, April 30, 2019

by Common Dreams

"We are creating a movement that makes it clear that when we win Medicare for All, it will be because of the people's movement!" said Rep. Pramila Jayapal

by Jake Johnson, staff writer

 

1 Comments

A Medicare for All supporter holds a sign on Capitol Hill. (Photo: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images)

After many years of tireless grassroots activism led by nurses, doctors, and ordinary Americans fighting for a just healthcare system, Medicare for All will finally get its first-ever congressional hearing on Tuesday before the House Rules Committee.

"Who has ever created change by thinking small? The scale of the crisis in healthcare is so enormous that we have to think big and be bold," Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), the lead sponsor of the Medicare for All Act of 2019 in the House, said ahead of Tuesday's hearing. "We are creating a movement that makes it clear that when we win Medicare for All, it will be because of the people's movement!"

Ady Barkan, who is battling terminal ALS, is one of just two Medicare for All supporters testifying at the hearing.

Watch:

No longer able to speak due to his condition, Barkan will make the case for Medicare for All "using a computer system that tracks his eye movements and subsequently converts text into speech."

 

Speaking out against anything less than Medicare for All, Barkan told the Washington Post: "Incremental reforms will leave millions of people without healthcare... Which community are you willing to sacrifice in favor of enriching insurance industry executives?"

"All ill people deserve the option to receive care in their home and community," Barkan tweeted. "That's why I pushed to ensure that Medicare for All will cover long-term services and supports, and why I'll be testifying at 10am. Tune in!"

Ahead of Tuesday's hearing, Barkan released his full testimony online.

"The ugly truth is this: healthcare is not treated as a human right in the United States of America," Barkan's statement reads. "This fact is outrageous. And it is far past time that we change it. Say it loud for the people in the back: healthcare is a human right."

Off the Top of My Head

The Media Loved Yesterday's Dog and Pony Show

by John Lawrence, September 28, 2018

Literally, the whole nation was glued to the tube yesterday as Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh was confronted with his accuser. First of all, if her name was not Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, a college professor, but was instead Jemima Pancakes, a college dropout with $30K in student loan debt, do you think she would even be invited to testify in the hallowed halls of Congress? Well, media spectacles, reality shows are what this nation loves. Kavanaugh said it was a national disgrace. No, the national disgrace is that we have a sexual predator in the White House, an environmental predator as head of the Environmental Protection Agency and warmongering predators as Congressmen elected primarily from red states.

Trump's attitude was what's the big deal, you elected me and I'm a sexual predator. Why not him, too? What did you expect, an altar boy? While the US is bombing innocent women and children in Yemen and starving them to death, the ones the bombs don't kill outright, we are all concerned about a sexual predator on the Supreme Court? Well, that makes two of them including Clarence Thomas. That's legal precedent for you!

Meanwhile, nobody is making a media spectacle out of the fact that the group that took down the twin towers, ISIS, are now our friends in Syria because they are fighting against Bashar Assad who is our enemy. So the enemy of our enemy who was once our enemy too is now our friend because the US government is so fucked up that they can't keep their friends and enemies straight.

Well now everyone is concerned that the Supremes who are increasingly becoming just another bad joke, will overturn Roe vs Wade. Well, if they do it will only affect poor women. If Kavanaugh's daughter got pregnant unexpectedly, he'd just fly her to Europe where abortion is legal. While there she might also tour Paris, Amsterdam and Rome. Poor women would just have to have their babies. Rich Republicans don't want poor women having babies at taxpayer expense anyway. That makes their blood boil so they will be happy to outlaw legal abortion, and, while they're at it, do away with Medicaid altogether. They can't stand the thought of poor people getting anything from the government for free, much less an abortion.

The American people love a good show; they love to be entertained, and that's what yesterday's dog and pony show was all about. A documentary about Yemen or about our trillion dollar defense budget wouldn't have been half as entertaining. Trump is the consummate US President because he entertains us while fulfilling government's most crucial function: lowering taxes.

A Time for Integrity

by Robert Reich

Saturday, July 21, 2018

To: Senators Jeff Flake, John McCain, Bob Corker, and Susan Collins

From: Robert Reich

Senators, I write you not as a Democrat reaching out to Republicans, or as a former cabinet member making a request of sitting senators.

I write you as a patriotic American concerned about the peril now facing our democracy, asking you to exercise your power to defend it.

A foreign power has attacked our democratic institutions and, according to American intelligence, continues to do so.

Yet the President of the United States is unwilling to fully acknowledge this, or aggressively stop it. Most of your Republican colleagues in the Senate will not force his hand. As a result, because your party has control of the Senate, there is no effective check on the President – or on Putin. 

What is America to do? We will exercise our right to vote on November 6. But by that time our system may be compromised. The President must be constrained, now. Putin’s aggression must be stopped, now. 

If just two of you changed parties – becoming Independent, and caucusing with the Democrats – the Republican Party would no longer have a majority in the Senate. The Senate would become a check on the President, as the Framers of the Constitution envisioned it would be. And the President could be forced to defend the United States, as the Framers intended. 

I implore you to do so.

There is precedent. I’m sure you remember Jim Jeffords of Vermont, who served as a Republican senator from 1989 until 2001. He then left the GOP to become an Independent and began caucusing with the Democrats. Jeffords’ switch changed control of the Senate from Republican to Democratic.

Jeffords left the Republican Party because of issues on which he parted with his Republican colleagues and the Bush administration. As he said at the time, “Increasingly, I find myself in disagreement with my party… Given the changing nature of the national party, it has become a struggle for our leaders to deal with me and for me to deal with them.”

I knew and admired Jeffords years before he switched parties. We worked together on a number of initiatives when I was secretary of labor. He was a humble man of principle and integrity. He retired from the Senate in 2007, and died in 2014.

I appeal to the four of you to follow his noble example.  

The stakes for the nation are far higher than they were in 2001. The issue today is not one on which honorable people like Jeffords may reasonably disagree. The issue now is the fate of our system of government.

All of you recognize the danger. All of you have expressed deep concern about what is occurring.

Senator Flake recently introduced a non-binding resolution acknowledging Russian involvement in the 2016 elections, expressing support for the Justice Department investigation and calling for oversight hearings about what happened in Helsinki. But Flake’s fellow Republicans blocked that resolution, and it failed.

Senator McCain said the President has “proved not only unable, but unwilling to stand up to Putin;” that Trump “made a conscious choice to defend a tyrant against the fair questions of a free press, and to grant Putin an uncontested platform to spew propaganda and lies to the world;” and that the President has “failed to defend all that makes us who we are—a republic of free people dedicated to the cause of liberty at home and abroad.”

Senator Corker has likened the Republican Party to a “cult,” and conceded “it’s not a good place for any party to end up with a cult-like situation as it relates to a President that happens to be of purportedly of the same party.”

Moreover, the three of you have decided against seeking reelection. You have no reason not to follow your consciences.

Senator Collins represents a state that has had a long and distinguished history of independent-minded politicians (the other current senator from Maine, Angus King, is an Independent). Her constituents will surely forgive her if she leaves the Republican Party.

There is a scene in Robert Bolt’s play “A Man for All Seasons,” in which Thomas More, having angered Henry VIII, is on trial for his life. After Richard Rich commits perjury against More in exchange for the office of attorney general for Wales, More says: “Why, Richard, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world . . . But for Wales!”

You have not pledged yours souls to the Republican Party. You have pledged yourselves to America. Now is the time to deliver on that pledge.

Off the Top of My Head

There's a Brou Ha Ha a'Brewing

by John Lawrence, January 24, 2018

Since The Repubs and the Dems kicked the can down the road on immigration, there's another government shutdown scheduled for less than three weeks. MItch McConnell is going to bring it to the floor. Big deal. It'll never pass because the Repubs don't want it to pass. So there will be another government shutdown while Chuck Schumer tries to deal with the Dealer-in-Chief who don't wanna maka da deal. If he done wanna maka da deal, Chuck Schumer will be running around in circles trying to make an irrational guy be rational.

Trump wants to send the Dreamers home so they can dream in their native lands. He loves the Dreamers and he will love them even more when they are safely home in Mexico on the other side of the Great Wall. After the next government shutdown the twitter sphere will be all lit up with twitters about how the Dems are making our poor military fighting men and women suffer by not paying them while forcing them into battle. Their wives and Mums will not even get their $100, 000. death bonus after they're shot down by the Taliban.

Will the Dems go to the mat for the Dreamers while the Repub propaganda machine grinds out the alternate facts about how the Dems are hurting our fighting men and women? And the Statue of Liberty will be closed. That great symbol of the free and the brave will only be able to be seen from afar. You will have to blow kisses at it instead of stepping right up and hugging it. Park rangers will be furloughed. It'll be terrible. All the while the Dems championing of the Dreamers will be pitted against the Repubs standing tall for our military.

When it's over, the Dreamers will be left twisting in the wind which has always been Trump's intention no matter how much he loves them. It has always been the Repubs' intention as well. Hidden up Mitch McConnell's sleeve is the so-called nuclear option by which is meant he will change the rules of the Senate to eliminate the filibuster for just this one vote. Of course, the Dems will not be able to do that when they have a majority. McConnell did it once to get Gorsuch onto the Supreme Court. He'll do it again with impunity guaranteeing a vote that opens the government without resolving the Dreamer crisis. After that the deportations of the Dreamers will begin.

Trump's base will be happy.

'Tax the Rich, Not the Sick!': Hundreds Storm Capitol Hill Offices to Denounce GOP Tax Bill

Published on Tuesday, December 05, 2017 by Common Dreams

Outraged demonstrators arrested outside of Republican lawmakers' offices as House and Senate prepare #GOPTaxScam for conference committee

by Julia Conley, staff writer

 

22 Comments

Demonstrators descended on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, demanding that Republican lawmakers who voted for the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act hear their concerns about the legislation. (Photo: @riseandresistny/Twitter)

Opponents of the Republican tax plan moving through Congress showed they were not backing down on Tuesday as hundreds of protesters chanted "Kill the bill!" and "Tax the rich, not the sick!" as they assembled outside the offices of GOP lawmakers.

While numerous arrests were made in the crowded hallways, the demonstrators made it clear that the fight to defeat the bill is not over yet.

Hundreds of demonstrators protested the House GOP tax bill. They targeted @RepRyanCostello (R-Pa) congressional office. Many got arrested as they took over a hallway in the Cannon building shouting #KillTheBill pic.twitter.com/8xo4fmaJeT

— Jenny Vasquez 🎄 (@JennVasquez_DC) December 5, 2017

“Tax the rich, not the sick!” Major demonstrations happening on Capitol Hill today to protest the #GOPTaxScam pic.twitter.com/gQbJpkmfvt

— Brynna Quillin (@brynnaquillin) December 5, 2017

Demonstrators targeted Reps. Ryan Costello (R-Penn.), Barbara Comstock (R-Va.), and other Republicans who voted for the tax plan, visiting their offices and telling staffers how they would be impacted by the law. Both Costello and Comstock are up for re-election in 2018.

https://t.co/QCDgadsDy7

— BooneCoIndvisible (@BooneIndvisible) December 5, 2017

Capitol Police began arresting protesters at about 2:30pm outside Costello's office, with chants of "Kill the bill, Costello!" continuing as people were led away in handcuffs.

The Senate passed its bill in the middle of the night on Saturday, after finalizing the proposal just five hours earlier. Democrats protested that no hearings had been held about the potential impact of the bill, which a number of bipartisan groups found would raise taxes on middle-class families by 2027. A Quinnipiac University poll released on Tuesday found that 53 percent of Americans disapprove of the legislation, while just 29 percent support it. 

The Senate and House must still reconcile their two versions of the bill in a conference committee which was formed on Monday. Nine Republicans and five Democrats from the House have been named to the panel, with the Senate expected to send members later this week. The committee will debate the two bills with the goal of sending one piece of legislation to President Donald Trump's desk by Christmas.

With continued pressure in the coming days and weeks, said opponents of the #GOPTaxscam on social media, there is still a chance of keeping the bill from becoming law:

🚨🚨🚨 Tax bill not finalized yet. Needs reconciliation. Swarm the Capitol. Protest in Washington DC on 12/5! ✊✊✊#TaxScamBill #TaxBillScam #TaxReform #TaxReformScam https://t.co/AaiK9F3n4u

— Daniel Convissor (@danielconvissor) December 3, 2017

We need a massive march on Washington to protest the tax bill. Massive. Let's encircle the Capitol Building as part of it.

— BlueberryT (@BlueberryT1) December 2, 2017

Members of Rise and Resist are in Washington as part of a large coalition to protest the Republican Tax Scam pic.twitter.com/N9B0WjDm2X

— Rise and Resist (@riseandresistny) December 5, 2017

Happening outside rep. Costello’s Office as Dems protest tax bill pic.twitter.com/vH238K07Sd

— Ylan Q. Mui (@ylanmui) December 5, 2017

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

Why Giving Republican Bullies a Bloody Nose Isn’t Enough

by Robert Reich

Saturday, October 12, 2013                

Now is the time to lance the boil of Republican extremism once and for all. 

Since Barack Obama became president, the extremists who have taken over the Republican Party have escalated their demands every time he’s caved, using the entire government of the United States as their bargaining chit.  

In 2010 he agreed to extend all of the Bush tax cuts through the end of 2012. Were they satisfied? Of course not. 

In the summer of 2011, goaded by an influx of Tea Partiers, they demanded huge spending cuts in return for raising the debt ceiling. In response, the President offered an overly-generous $4 trillion “Grand Bargain,” including cuts in Social Security and Medicare and whopping cuts in domestic spending (bringing it to its lowest level as a share of gross domestic product in over half a century). 

Were Republicans content? No. When they demanded more, Obama agreed to a Super Committee to find bigger cuts, and if the Super Committee failed, a “sequester” that would automatically and indiscriminately slice everything in the federal budget except Social Security and Medicare. 

Not even Obama’s re-election put a damper on their increasing demands. By the end of 2012, they insisted that the Bush tax cuts be permanently extended or the nation would go over the “fiscal cliff.” Once again, Obama caved, agreeing to permanently extend the Bush tax cuts for incomes up to $400,000.

Early this year, after the sequester went into effect, Republicans demanded even bigger spending cuts. Obama offered more cuts in Medicare and a “chained CPI” to reduce Social Security payments, in exchange for Republican concessions on taxes.

Refusing the offer, and seemingly delirious with their power to hold the nation hostage, they demanded that the Affordable Care Act be repealed as a condition for funding the government and again raising the debt ceiling. 

This time, though, Obama didn’t cave — at least, not yet. 

The government is shuttered and the nation is on the verge of defaulting on its debts. But public opinion has turned sharply against the Republican Party. And the GOP’s corporate and Wall Street backers are threatening to de-fund it. 

Suddenly the Republicans are acting like the school-yard bully who terrorized the playground but finally got punched in the face. They’re in shock. They’re humiliated. They’re trying to come up with ways of saving face.

With bloodied nose, House Republicans are running home. They’ve abruptly turned negotiations over to their Senate colleagues.

And just as suddenly, their demand to repeal or delay the Affordable Care Act has vanished. (An email from the group Tea Party Express says: “Are you like us wondering where the fight against Obamacare went?”) At a lunch meeting in the Capitol, Senator John McCain asked a roomful of Republican senators if they still believed it was possible to reverse parts of the program. According to someone briefed on the meeting, no one raised a hand — not even Ted Cruz.

It appears that negotiations over the federal budget deficit are about to begin once again, and presumably Senate Republicans will insist that Obama and the Democrats give way on taxes and spending in exchange for reopening the government and raising the debt ceiling for at least another year. 

But keeping the government running and paying the nation’s bills should never have been bargaining chits in the first place, and the President and Democrats shouldn’t begin to negotiate over future budgets until they’re taken off the table.

The question is how thoroughly President Obama has learned that extortionist demands escalate if you give in to them.

Why Congress’s Gridlock Doesn’t Paralyze Government but Gridlocks Democracy

by Robert Reich

Thursday, August 15, 2013                

CONGRESS began its summer recess last week and won’t reconvene until after Labor Day. You’d be forgiven for not noticing a difference. With just 15 bills signed into law so far this year, the 113th Congress is on pace to be the most unproductive since at least the 1940s.

But just because the legislature has ceased to function doesn’t mean our government has. Political decision making has moved to peripheral public entities, where power is exercised less transparently and accountability to voters is less direct. What we’re losing in the process isn’t government — it’s democracy.

Take the Federal Reserve. Absent any Congressional legislation to speak of — no short-term spending to increase job growth, no long-term plan to reduce the budget deficit — the nation’s central bank has been forced to do all the heavy lifting with the economy. The $85 billion of bonds it buys each month is now the main form of government stimulus to the economy as well as the linchpin of continued job growth. Congress’s inability to pass effective fiscal policy means that the Fed’s monetary policy, to keep long-term interest rates as low as possible, has become the only game in town for boosting private spending and investment.

But the strategy also poses serious risks: asset bubbles, if borrowers use the cheap money to speculate; bond collapses, if the Fed slows its bond buying too quickly and spooks the market; and inflation, if low interest rates cause buyers and sellers to expect prices to rise. It could also increase income inequality, by giving wealthy investors a cheap source of funds to expand their portfolios. Forcing the Fed to become the sole decision maker on the economy is also why the selection of a new Fed chairman has become so important — even more important than it ought to be.

Congress’s paralysis has also encouraged the Supreme Court to enter the political fray. Normally the judicial activism of recent years might be checked by Congressional action in response. But not now. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy’s opinion for the majority in the 2010 “Citizens United” case, which struck down limits on corporate campaign contributions, rested partly on the presumption that Congress would require corporations to disclose their political expenditures. But no bill requiring full disclosure has stood a chance of making it through the quagmire.

The court’s decision this summer in “Shelby County v. Holder” handed Congress the task of coming up with a new, updated formula for deciding which states and localities need permission from the Justice Department, under the Voting Rights Act, to make changes to their election processes. But legislative paralysis makes the passage of any new formula highly unlikely. Seen in this light, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.’s deciding vote last year to uphold the Affordable Care Act probably reflected his reasonable fear that the court would otherwise be viewed, not unfairly, as just another political battleground.

Or consider climate change. It’s a public debate the nation briefly embarked on in the 2008 presidential race, when John McCain and Barack Obama presented different plans for cap-and-trade systems. Naturally, gridlock in Congress put an end to it. After the election, Mr. McCain backed off any cap-and-trade plan, and the two parties have been at loggerheads over the environment ever since.

The issue ultimately lost the spotlight to a debate over Mr. Obama’s choice for administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, Gina McCarthy, who is expected to use the E.P.A.’s authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate the carbon emissions of power plants; and to a Congressional showdown, motivated in part by Mr. Obama’s E.P.A. appointment, over the use of the filibuster on presidential nominees.

Mr. Obama won the skirmish and got his administrator, but don’t expect much public deliberation over carbon emissions from here on. The E.P.A. will handle the issue through regulatory rule making, mostly unseen by Congress and the public.

A final displacement of national politics has been onto state governments, now grappling with everything from undocumented immigrants and gun control to gay marriage and abortion. While many political matters should be left to the states, these cry out for federal standards because of the relative ease with which undocumented immigrants, gun sellers, gay couples and women seeking abortions can transport themselves to more accommodating jurisdictions — depending, of course, on their pocketbooks. 

What’s more, these institutions — the Fed, the Supreme Court, giant regulatory agencies like the EPA, and the states — aren’t even understood by the public to be making political decisions with national implications. Media coverage tends to be narrowly drawn for insiders — macroeconomists, constitutional scholars, E.P.A. watchers, the residents of a particular state — or trivialized for outsiders: Should the next Fed chief be female? Are Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas too openly partisan? Is Ms. McCarthy too much of a firebrand? Are “red” states diverging from “blue” states?

The Republican right — mostly new House members who are supported by the Tea Party and who are in open rebellion against the rest of the right — are probably pleased with the gridlock in Congress. They would like nothing better than to stop the federal government from functioning. But they may not fully grasp that their efforts have only shifted power elsewhere in the system.

Some of the institutions gaining power may be making decisions consistent with conservative values: the Supreme Court and some state governments, for instance. But hardly all (the Fed and the E.P.A.).

In any event, it’s bizarre that a self-styled populist insurrection would end up making our government less accountable to the people. But that’s exactly what it’s done. What’s really gridlocked now is democracy.

[This appeared in the New York Times of 8/14/13]

 

                                                  

            

The Quiet Closing of Washington

by Robert Reich

Saturday, June 8, 2013                

Conservative Republicans in our nation’s capital have managed to accomplish something they only dreamed of when Tea Partiers streamed into Congress at the start of 2011: They’ve basically shut Congress down. Their refusal to compromise is working just as they hoped: No jobs agenda. No budget. No grand bargain on the deficit. No background checks on guns. Nothing on climate change. No tax reform. No hike in the minimum wage. Nothing so far on immigration reform.

It’s as if an entire branch of the federal  government — the branch that’s supposed to deal directly with the nation’s problems, not just execute the law or interpret the law but make the law — has gone out of business, leaving behind only a so-called “sequester” that’s cutting deeper and deeper into education, infrastructure, programs for the nation’s poor, and national defense.

The window of opportunity for the President to get anything done is closing rapidly. Even in less partisan times, new initiatives rarely occur after the first year of a second term, when a president inexorably slides toward lame duck status.

But the nation’s work doesn’t stop even if Washington does. By default, more and more of it is shifting to the states, which are far less gridlocked than Washington. Last November’s elections resulted in one-party control of both the legislatures and governor’s offices in all but 13 states — the most single-party dominance in decades.

This means many blue states are moving further left, while red states are heading rightward. In effect, America is splitting apart without going through all the trouble of a civil war.

Minnesota’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, for example, now controls both legislative chambers and the governor’s office for the first time in more than two decades. The legislative session that ended a few weeks ago resulted in a hike in the top income tax rate to 9.85%, an increased cigarette tax, and the elimination of several corporate tax loopholes. The added revenues will be used to expand early-childhood education, freeze tuitions at state universities, fund jobs and economic development, and reduce the state budget deficit. Along the way, Minnesota also legalized same-sex marriage and expanded the power of trade unions to organize.

California and Maryland passed similar tax hikes on top earners last year. The governor of Colorado has just signed legislation boosting taxes by $925 million for early-childhood education and K-12 (the tax hike will go into effect only if residents agree, in a vote is likely in November).

On the other hand, the biggest controversy in Kansas is between Governor Sam Brownback, who wants to shift taxes away from the wealthy and onto the middle class and poor by repealing the state’s income tax and substituting an increase in the sales tax, and Kansas legislators who want to cut the sales tax as well, thereby reducing the state’s already paltry spending for basic services. Kansas recently cut its budget for higher education by almost 5 percent.

Other rightward-moving states are heading in the same direction. North Carolina millionaires are on the verge of saving $12,500 a year, on average, from a pending income-tax cut even as sales taxes are raised on the electricity and services that lower-income depend residents depend on. Missouri’s transportation budget is half what it was five years ago, but lawmakers refuse to raise taxes to pay for improvements.

The states are splitting as dramatically on social issues. Gay marriages are now recognized in twelve states and the District of Columbia. Colorado and Washington state permit the sale of marijuana, even for non-medical uses. California is expanding a pilot program to allow nurse practitioners to perform abortions.

Meanwhile, other states are enacting laws restricting access to abortions so tightly as to arguably violate the Supreme Court’s 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade. In Alabama, the mandated waiting period for an abortion is longer than it is for buying a gun.

Speaking of which, gun laws are moving in opposite directions as well. Connecticut, California, and New York are making it harder to buy guns. Yet if you want to use a gun to kill someone who’s, say, spray-painting a highway underpass at night, you might want to go to Texas, where it’s legal to shoot someone who’s committing a “public nuisance” under the cover of dark. Or you might want to live in Kansas, which recently enacted a law allowing anyone to carry a concealed firearm onto a college campus.

The states are diverging sharply on almost every issue you can imagine. If you’re an undocumented young person, you’re eligible for in-state tuition at public universities in fourteen states (including Texas). But you might want to avoid driving in Arizona, where state police are allowed to investigate the immigration status of anyone they suspect is here illegally.
And if you’re poor and lack health insurance you might want to avoid a state like Wisconsin that’s refusing to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, even though the federal government will be picking up almost the entire tab.

Federalism is as old as the Republic, but not since the real Civil War have we witnessed such a clear divide between the states on central issues affecting Americans.

Some might say this is a good thing. It allows more of us to live under governments and laws we approve of. And it permits experimentation: Better to learn that a policy doesn’t work at the state level, where it’s affected only a fraction of the population, than after it’s harmed the entire nation. As the jurist Louis Brandies once said, our states are “laboratories of democracy.”

But the trend raises three troubling issues.

First, it leads to a race to bottom. Over time, middle-class citizens of states with more generous safety nets and higher taxes on the wealthy will become disproportionately burdened as the wealthy move out and the poor move in, forcing such states to reverse course. If the idea of “one nation” means anything, it stands for us widely sharing the burdens and responsibilities of citizenship.

Second, it doesn’t take account of spillovers — positive as well as negative. Semi-automatic pistols purchased without background checks in one state can easily find their way easily to another state where gun purchases are restricted. By the same token, a young person who receives an excellent public education courtesy of the citizens of one states is likely to move to another state where job opportunity are better. We are interdependent. No single state can easily contain or limit the benefits or problems it creates for other states.

Finally, it can reduce the power of minorities. For more than a century “states rights” has been a euphemism for the efforts of some whites to repress or deny the votes of black Americans. Now that minorities are gaining substantial political strength nationally, devolution of government to the states could play into the hands of modern-day white supremacists. 

A great nation requires a great, or at least functional, national government. The Tea Partiers and other government-haters who have caused Washington to all but close because they refuse to compromise are threatening all that we aspire to be together.

Earth to Washington: Repeal the Sequester

by Robert ReichFriday, April 26, 2013                

Economic forecasters exist to make astrologers look good. Most had forecast growth of at least 3 percent (on an annualized basis) in the first quarter. But we learned this morning (in the Commerce Department’s report) it grew only 2.5 percent.

That’s better than the 2 percent growth last year and the slowdown at the end of the year. But it’s still cause for serious concern. 

First, consumers won’t keep up the spending.Their savings rate fell sharply — from 4.7% in the last quarter of 2012 to 2.6% from January through March.

Add in March’s dismal employment report, the lowest percentage of working-age adults in jobs since 1979, and January’s hike in payroll taxes, and consumer spending will almost certainly drop. 

Median household incomes continues to decline, adjusted for inflation. Another report out today showed consumer confidence fell in April.

Second, the recovery continues to be wildly lopsided. The only thing really keeping it going is the rip-roaring stock market. But the stock market only boosts the wealth of the richest 10 percent of Americans, who own 90 percent of stocks (including 401-K retirement accounts).

But no economy can maintain momentum just on the spending of the richest 10 percent.

Third, American exports can’t possibly pick up the slack. In fact, they’re dropping. Europe is falling into recession because of austerity economics. Japan is still a basket case. China’s economy is slowing. Much of the developing world’s economy is dependent on exports to the developed world – so don’t hold your breath for developing countries to bail us out.

So what is Washington doing? Worse than nothing. It has now adopted the same kind of austerity economics that’s doomed Europe — cutting federal spending and reducing total demand. And the sequester doesn’t end September 30. It takes an even bigger bite out of the federal budget next fiscal year.

Earth to Washington: The economy is slowing. The recovery is stalling. At the very least, repeal the sequester.

You don’t have to be an astrologer to see the dangers ahead.

Congressional Hypocrites Add $77 Billion of Pork to Deficit Reduction Bill

by John Lawrence from San Diego Free Press

The most important thing to Republicans is deficit reduction. It's the chief thing they talk about. It's their main concern, it's their singular issue. Right? Right.... Then why did they vote to add $77 billion in pork to the so-called 'fiscal cliff' bill? But don't get me wrong - Democrats not only voted for it but were instrumental in adding it to the bill as well. But why were the American people kept in the dark and not told that this bill like a lot of others was all about the pork. It's not that this bill was not discussed at great length by the punditry. Bloviators were bloviating non-stop for months. Pontificators were pontificating full time. Purveyors of bovine excrement were shoveling constantly. But no one saw it coming. Not Dick Gregory of Meet the Press, not Bob Schieffer of Face the Nation, not Ed Schultz or Rachel Maddow of msnbc. It's not like pork is a recent phenomena. But it takes sheer gall to add $77 billion in tax break loopholes for the rich to a deficit reduction bill!

The Washington crowd would have us believe that this whole Shakespearian drama came down to the wire, and that, if we went over the cliff, the middle class would be ruined, we'd go back into a recession and the whole global economy would go down the tubes. Each of the central cast of actors took their turn at center stage: John Boehner, Harry Reid, Eric Cantor and a whole host of lesser lights. But none of them mentioned the impending pork that would be added to whatever bill they came up with. But what they came up with at the last minute was a 157 page bill, most of which, while raising tax rates for the richest Americans, was devoted to tax breaks for the rich. Now the punditry and the politicians would have us believe that this was a last minute deal. No it wasn't. How do you write a 157 page bill at the last minute? Most of it was a preconceived pork bill lying in wait to be added on to whatever last minute deal they came up with to prevent us from going over the fiscal cliff.

Wendy Caputo of Riverside was outraged. She wrote a letter to the editor of the East Bay RI which said the following:

"Dozens of tax breaks for business and industry including about $70 million for a cost-recovery program for “motorsports entertainment complexes”; i.e. racetracks! Tax breaks for Hollywood producers who shoot movies and TV shows in the US at a cost of about $430 million over the next 2 years. Legislation allowing US corporations to defer taxes on some income earned from their overseas subsidiaries costing the US Treasury $10.8 billion over this year and next. An agreement to subsidize the domestic production of rum by sending federal tax revenue collected from rum production in Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands back to them. A $15 million dollar-a-year tax break to the asparagus industry to compensate for a cheaper product from South America. A tax break for people who buy electric scooters, Segways, and such! And, the list goes on . . ."

It takes a lot of unmitigated gall to add all this pork to a bill that was supposedly all about deficit reduction in the first place. You remember the whole purpose of the fiscal cliff was to force deficit reduction, don't you? The pork was at the heart of the bill and consumed the most paperwork, but no politician ever spoke about it. Oh yeah, it did things like "raise tax rates on the rich  while keeping middle class tax rates the same," "keep extended unemployment insurance the same", and "index the alternative minimum tax to inflation." All this stuff could have been written on two pages. That leaves 155 pages of the bill for pork. Such is the nature of compromise in Washington, DC. What this all boils down to is that, while Republicans go apoplectic over the deficit, what they really care about is tax loopholes for the class they represent - the very rich. And Democrats are totally misguided if they think that the pork that they added represents an economic stimulus. The whole American Taxpayer Relief Act was a sham. It gave taxpayers relief on the one hand while giving them a migraine on the other!

A feature of the "tax relief" bill was a $100. million tax giveaway to NASCAR race track owners (you know, Mitt Romney's friends) and other "motorsport entertainment complexes" in the form of "accelerated depreciation." Now most Americans don't have a clue about how accelerated depreciation for businesses raises tax bills for the middle class, but here's how it works. Say you, like NASCAR, build a racetrack. Then you charge people to come and see automobiles race. You make money. Therefore, you have to pay taxes. But wait a minute. First you get to take a tax break because your asset, the race track, has lost value or depreciated, and it depreciates more with each passing year. So you subtract the amount of that depreciation from your tax bill. Now accelerated depreciation lets you subtract this depreciation at a faster rate. Even though your race track has only depreciated a little bit the first year after you built it, you get to deduct a whopping amount from your tax bill. You might not even have to pay any taxes at all.

The rationale for accelerated depreciation is guess what? It creates jobs. Only problem is that that is not true. David Cay Johnston in The Fine Print says:

"...future Nobel Prize winner Robert Solow showed that accelerated depreciation deductions do not increase economic growth. Other studies by leading tax economists, including Dale Jorgenson of Harvard University and Robert Hall of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University ... came to the same conclusion. Most compelling of all, the coauthor of the study that was behind the 1954 accelerated depreciation law, Evsey Domar, acknowledged in 1957 that Solow was right and he was wrong - accelerated depreciation does not produce faster economic growth."

Johnston goes on to say, and I paraphrase, that even that antibusiness socialist, Barack Obama, sponsored 100% immediate writeoffs of all new investment during most of his first term which should have made him a darling of the pro-capitalist business crowd. Meanwhile, as you, the American people, have your taxes taken immediately right out of your paycheck, the big business crowd gets to defer them. This means that you, the 99%, have to pay more taxes to maintain the same level of public services. Of course, the right wingers think you should go without them at all thus keeping the cost of government down while all the while they add tax breaks for themselves to deficit reduction bills.

But to be fair the pork was sponsored by both Republicans and Democrats according to an article in the New York Times.

"The tax break in the new federal law closely resembles the language of racetrack tax bills introduced by Senator Debbie Stabenow, Democrat of Michigan, home to the auto industry and the Michigan International Speedway; Representative Vern Buchanan, Republican of Florida, home of the Daytona International Speedway; and Dean Heller, a Republican senator and former representative from Nevada, home of the Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

"Among the co-sponsors, or chief backers, were Senator Pat Roberts, Republican of Kansas, home of the Kansas Speedway, and the senators from North Carolina, home base for many race teams and the Nascar industry — Richard M. Burr, a Republican, and Kay Hagan, a Democrat.

"Also supporting the legislation was Senator Jon Kyl, Republican of Arizona, whose love for the sport earned him the nickname Mr. Nascar. Mr. Kyl, who just retired from Congress, used to volunteer at the Phoenix International Raceway.

"Ms. Stabenow’s Web site includes pictures of her at a Nascar race at the Michigan track in August."

In addition to NASCAR, the pork in the American Tax Relief Bill is helping to fund Goldman Sachs' new headquarters in lower Manhattan and subsidize the very profitable Disney corporation. Nascar, Wall Street and Hollywood came out the big winners. But nobody in the media even mentioned it. Like it was not important. Like we should just accept it without comment. Hey, it's just the cost of doing business. It's "normal." Deficit reduction be damned. Hey, vaunted punditry, why don't you wake up and publicize the pork in each bill before it goes down or is it top secret?

Our Do-Almost-Nothing Congress

By Dana Milbank, Wednesday, May 2, 5:35 AM The Washington Post

If you were to stroll by the House chamber today — or tomorrow, or the next day, or the day after that — you would arrive at the ideal time to see what the lawmakers do best: absolutely nothing.

It’s another recess week for our lazy leaders. Oh, sorry: “Constituent Work Week” is what they’re calling it these days, as if lawmakers were filling potholes and making calls to Social Security rather than raising campaign cash.

By the time the Republican-led House returns next week, members will have been working in Washington on just 41 of the first 127 days of 2012 — and that was the busy part of the year. They are planning to be on vacation — er, doing “constituent work” — 17 of the year’s remaining 34 weeks, and even when they are in town the typical workweek is three days.

Good work if you can get it — but the behavior is doing quite a job on the rest of us. On those infrequent occasions the House is in session, the Senate, also enamored of recess, often isn’t, which helps explain why the two chambers can’t agree on much of anything.

To call this 112th Congress a do-nothing Congress would be an insult — to the real Do-Nothing Congress of 1947-48. That Congress passed 908 laws. To date, this one has passed 106 public laws. Even if they triple that output in the rest of 2012 — not a terribly likely proposition — they will still be in last place going back at least 40 years.

Doing nothing would arguably be preferable to what the House is actually doing. Lawmakers have staged 195 roll-call votes so far this year, which sounds like a lot until you realize that boils down to only about 60 pieces of legislation, including post-office namings. Among the 60:

●The Mark Twain Commemorative Coin Act.

●The Sportsmen’s Heritage Act of 2012.

●Legislation requiring the Treasury to mint coins commemorating the 225th anniversary of the U.S. Marshals Service.

●The World War II Memorial Prayer Act.

●The Permanent Electronic Duck Stamp Act.

The few pieces of important legislation of this Congress, such as the payroll-tax break and the debt-limit increase, have been passed by the Republican majority under pressure and duress. Republican leaders claim that a heavy schedule means bigger government, but the lax schedule has been challenged by no less a conservative than firebrand freshman Allen West.

This is not to suggest that the Democratic-controlled Senate is blameless. The Post’s Paul Kane went through Senate roll-call votes from this year and found that, of the 87 votes, the majority were on just three bills: 25 on the highway bill, 16 on the postal bill and 13 on an insider-trading bill. Sixteen others were on confirmations.

But there is a crucial difference: While a simple majority in the House can pass pretty much anything without agreement of the minority, the Senate is traditionally where bills go to die. Because the Democrats lack a filibuster-proof majority, they can bring virtually nothing to a vote without the blessing of the Republicans. Even with that high hurdle, the Senate has been able to slog through a number of bills in recent weeks: a long-term renewal of the surface transportation bill, renewal of the Violence Against Women Act, postal reform and a bill making it easier for companies to go public.

The last of those passed the House, too, but the other three are awaiting action. Of those, the failure to pass a long-term highway bill is particularly glaring. House Speaker John Boehner announced in November that he was proceeding with the bill, but so far he has been able to pass only a short-term extension. The House also has yet to act on the China currency bill the Senate passed last fall. Instead, House Republicans have voted repeatedly on budgets that will never be followed and similarly doomed attempts at repealing Obama priorities.

With such a lean agenda, filling even 41 days has been a challenge. House Republicans are now devoting full floor debates to bills such as H.R. 2087, “To remove restrictions from a parcel of land situated in the Atlantic District, Accomack County, Virginia.” That issue — allowing development on a 32-acre property — was so crucial to the Republic that lawmakers had five roll-call votes on the topic.

They dressed it up and called it a “jobs bill” — but really it was another bill showing that House Republicans aren’t doing theirs.

danamilbank@washpost.com

 

Romney’s Gift From Congress

by David Cay Johnston

from Reuters

Jan 31, 2012 11:09 EST

When the Romney campaign disclosed in December that the couple’s five sons had a $100 million trust fund, I suspected that, in setting up the fund, the Romneys used a tax strategy that allows some very rich people to avoid paying gift taxes. But it was impossible to know if this was the case without seeing their tax returns going back years.

So when Mitt Romney released the family’s 2010 tax return last week, I went looking. I found a hint on pages 132 and 134 of the return. It showed that the value of property placed that year into another family trust, the Ann D. Romney Blind Trust, was, for tax purposes, zero. The Ann Romney trust is not the same trust as the one that holds the Romney sons’ $100 million, but I wondered if the Romneys used the same approach in prior years when it came to valuing property placed into the sons’ trust.

Reuters emailed the Romney campaign spokeswoman to ask how much the Romneys paid in gift taxes on assets put into the sons’ trust over the last 17 years. The spokeswoman, citing Brad Malt, the Romney family tax lawyer, answered: none.

The idea that someone could pay zero gift taxes on contributions to a $100 million trust fund may surprise people who have heard arguments that the wealthy are overburdened by gift and estate taxes. But the Romneys’ gift-tax avoidance strategy is perfectly legal.

Under tax rules, wealthy people must pay a gift tax of 35 percent on gifts above a lifetime limit known as the “unified estate tax credit.” That limit was $1.2 million for a married couple in 1995 when the sons’ trust was created and $2 million in 2009, but is now $10 million.

So, if the limit is, at most, $10 million, how did the Romneys create this $100 million fund without paying gift taxes?

The explanation may stem from how the Romneys were able to value the assets put into the trust. If I’m right, it involves a special tax deal that Congress gives to people who manage investment partnerships, as Romney did at Bain Capital from 1984 to 1999.

This deal allows these managers to receive a kind of compensation known as “carried interest.” As the tax law sees it, carried interest does not represent ownership of stock or other securities, only the right to receive future profits. Because there is no ownership, the IRS lets people value their carried interest at zero for gift tax purposes if they meet certain technical rules. We asked the Romney campaign if carried interest was involved several times in emails. The campaign declined to comment about this and other specifics.

VALUING A GIFT AT ZERO

To understand how this works conceptually, imagine your employer gave you a bonus in company stock.

You would owe income taxes immediately on the stock as compensation, and it would be taxed at the same rate as a cash bonus. And if you gave the stock to your children, you would owe, on stock above $10 million, a gift tax of 35 percent of the market price on the day you gave it away.

Now imagine that instead of giving you stock outright, your employer gave you only the right to future increases in the value of company shares – which, like carried interest, is just a right to some potential future income. You could give that right to your children and legally tell the IRS that its value was zero provided they hold onto it for several years.

This would be legally true, even if the company’s stock had been steadily rising for years and was virtually a sure bet to continue going up in value. Of course as a matter of economics it would be a very valuable gift to your children.

The scenario of transferring a right to something of value in the future and valuing it at nothing shows up on the Romneys’ 2010 tax return, which reveals two contributions to the Ann D. Romney Blind Trust. Both contributions were valued at zero.

NO COMMENT

The Romney campaign declined to confirm that this is what happened with the sons’ trust. Malt, the family tax lawyer, and spokeswoman Andrea Saul have declined to go further than Malt’s statement that the contributions fell below the unified credit.

The campaign, which set up an email address for journalists with questions about the tax returns, did not offer any comment nor did it respond to specific questions, including whether any of the personal or trust returns had been audited, whether any adjustments had resulted and whether the gifts to the sons had been completed more than three years ago, which would put them beyond any review by the IRS.

There are other perfectly legal techniques that would also allow many millions of dollars to be passed on while avoiding gift taxes.

The Romneys could attain the same result by putting into the trust any asset whose value was expected to rapidly increase. They could also use a trust that creates an annuity for themselves for a few years provided the trust assets grew much faster than the minimum interest rate payout set by the IRS each month. In each of these cases the parents would pay any income taxes and that is just what the Romneys’ 2010 and preliminary 2011 tax returns show. They report the trust income as their own and pay the taxes on the income the trust earned from its rapidly appreciating assets — but no gift taxes.

How much income will flow from these gifts is known only to the Romney family and to Malt, who works at the Ropes & Gray law firm in Boston.

Mitt and Ann Romney appear to have complied with the law. What’s at fault is the law. Congress treats ordinary taxpayers one way and managers of private equity and hedge funds like Mitt Romney another. It’s also a fiction that there is a lifetime limit on tax-free gifts of $10 million when Congress lets unlimited sums pass untaxed this way.

Will this change? It’s hard to say, given the gridlock in Washington. But President Barack Obama’s State of the Union message could signal a new direction. In a speech that mentioned taxes 34 times, he proposed sweeping changes in the tax code, a message that could resonate in the 2012 campaign and in Congress in 2013. Watch this space.

PHOTO: Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney (L) introduces his sons Tagg (2nd L), Craig (3rd L), Josh (2nd R) and Matt, as his wife Ann (C) looks on, at a campaign rally in Des Moines, Iowa January 3, 2012, the day of the Iowa caucus.   REUTERS/Brian Snyder

“Occupy Congress” Begins – Week-Long Demonstration Will Be the Largest Gathering of the Occupy Movement

by Frank Gormlie

from the OB Rag, January 17, 2012

Occupy Congress/DC protesters hold a banner in front of the U.S. Capitol during a rally in Washington, January 17, 2012. Reuters.

It has begun – “Occupy Congress” is in its first day – the first day in a week of demonstrations, lobbying and occupying Washington DC.  It will be the largest ever gathering of Occupy Wall Street activists from around the country – including over a dozen from right here in San Diego.  Tuesday, January 17th, is the day that Congress reconvenes. And the occupiers are ready to give them an earful.

Here’s from various news sources:

Occupy Protesters Swarm US Capitol in Washington

By Ben Nucklols/ AP

Protesters affiliated with the Occupy Wall Street movement are meeting outside the Capitol for what participants hope will become the largest gathering of Occupy activists from around the country.

A few hundred protesters gathered outside barricades around the Capitol on a cold, rainy Tuesday morning. U.S. Capitol Police say one person has been arrested and charged with assault on a police officer.

Participants say they are decrying the influence of corporate money in politics and want to show the House of Representatives what real democracy looks like. The House reconvenes Tuesday after its winter recess.

The protest comes as the nation’s capital has emerged as one of the strongest bastions of the Occupy movement, in part because the National Park Service has allowed protesters to maintain their encampments.

_____

Hundreds of Occupy protesters rally at US Capitol

By Ian Simpson / Reuters

Several hundred demonstrators with the Occupy movement rallied outside the U.S. Capitol building on Tuesday to denounce what they called the influence of money in Congress.

“It’s important to let people know we’re not going to take it anymore. People are really mad about the way things are going and we want Congress to understand that,” said protester James Cullen, 30, an unemployed social worker from Greenbelt, Maryland.

The demonstrators were part of a movement that started with the Occupy Wall Street protests in New York last year and spread to some other U.S. cities.

The protesters gathered on a lawn outside the Capitol to greet members of Congress returning from a holiday break with a day of rallies and protests they said would include attempts to occupy lawmakers’ offices.

They carried signs saying, “Face it liberals, the Dems sold us out,” “Congress for sale” and “Banksters of America.”

The morning demonstration was generally peaceful. Police said one protester was arrested for allegedly assaulting a police officer.

“Corporations and government have been so inextricably linked that it’s not a true democracy anymore, and people have to realize that,” said David, 16, a high school student from New Haven, Connecticut, who gave only his first name.

‘Occupy Congress’ protesters arrested

 By Seung Min Kim / Politico

 One man was arrested for assault on a police officer Tuesday during day-long ‘Occupy Congress” protests on Capitol Hill.

 Capitol Police Sgt. Kimberly Schneider confirmed the arrest, but did not have a name for the man, who was being processed at Capitol Police headquarters.

 Demonstrators affiliated with the Occupy Wall Street are camped out at the West Front Lawn of the Capitol for what they call a “day of action against a corrupt political institution.” The group also plans to march later to the Supreme Court and the White House.

 Earlier Tuesday, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) offered some advice to the protesters during POLITICO’s Playbook Breakfast interview.

 “It’s important to note what they have said, and that is: the status quo is not acceptable,” Pelosi said. “If I were they, I would have wedded this directly to the role of money in politics.”

 UPDATE: Schneider said Tuesday afternoon that four people had been arrested in connection with the protests. William Griffin was charged with assaulting a police officer, she said, while Nathaniel Schrier, Clinton Boyd and and Heron Boyce were charged with other charges.

The Shocking Truth About the Crackdown on Occupy

Published on Friday, November 25, 2011 by the Guardian/UK

The violent police assaults across the US are no coincidence. Occupy has touched the third rail of our political class's venality.

by Naomi Wolf

US citizens of all political persuasions are still reeling from images of unparallelled police brutality in a coordinated crackdown against peaceful OWS protesters in cities across the nation this past week. An elderly woman was pepper-sprayed in the face; the scene of unresisting, supine students at UC Davis being pepper-sprayed by phalanxes of riot police went viral online; images proliferated of young women – targeted seemingly for their gender – screaming, dragged by the hair by police in riot gear; and the pictures of a young man, stunned and bleeding profusely from the head, emerged in the record of the middle-of-the-night clearing of Zuccotti Park.

Oakland, California riot police advance on peaceful Occupy Oakland, November 3, 2011.

But just when Americans thought we had the picture – was this crazy police and mayoral overkill, on a municipal level, in many different cities? – the picture darkened. The National Union of Journalists and the Committee to Protect Journalists issued a Freedom of Information Act request to investigate possible federal involvement with law enforcement practices that appeared to target journalists. The New York Times reported that "New York cops have arrested, punched, whacked, shoved to the ground and tossed a barrier at reporters and photographers" covering protests. Reporters were asked by NYPD to raise their hands to prove they had credentials: when many dutifully did so, they were taken, upon threat of arrest, away from the story they were covering, and penned far from the site in which the news was unfolding. Other reporters wearing press passes were arrested and roughed up by cops, after being – falsely – informed by police that "It is illegal to take pictures on the sidewalk."

In New York, a state supreme court justice and a New York City council member were beaten up; in Berkeley, California, one of our greatest national poets, Robert Hass, was beaten with batons. The picture darkened still further when Wonkette and Washingtonsblog.com reported that the Mayor of Oakland acknowledged that the Department of Homeland Security had participated in an 18-city mayor conference call advising mayors on "how to suppress" Occupy protests.

To Europeans, the enormity of this breach may not be obvious at first. Our system of government prohibits the creation of a federalized police force, and forbids federal or militarized involvement in municipal peacekeeping.

I noticed that right-wing pundits and politicians on the TV shows on which I was appearing were all on-message against OWS. Journalist Chris Hayes reported on a leaked memo that revealed lobbyists vying for an $850,000 contract to smear Occupy. Message coordination of this kind is impossible without a full-court press at the top. This was clearly not simply a case of a freaked-out mayors', city-by-city municipal overreaction against mess in the parks and cranky campers. As the puzzle pieces fit together, they began to show coordination against OWS at the highest national levels.

Why this massive mobilization against these not-yet-fully-articulated, unarmed, inchoate people? After all, protesters against the war in Iraq, Tea Party rallies and others have all proceeded without this coordinated crackdown. Is it really the camping? As I write, two hundred young people, with sleeping bags, suitcases and even folding chairs, are still camping out all night and day outside of NBC on public sidewalks – under the benevolent eye of an NYPD cop – awaiting Saturday Night Live tickets, so surely the camping is not the issue. I was still deeply puzzled as to why OWS, this hapless, hopeful band, would call out a violent federal response.

That is, until I found out what it was that OWS actually wanted.

The mainstream media was declaring continually "OWS has no message". Frustrated, I simply asked them. I began soliciting online "What is it you want?" answers from Occupy. In the first 15 minutes, I received 100 answers. These were truly eye-opening.

The No 1 agenda item: get the money out of politics. Most often cited was legislation to blunt the effect of the Citizens United ruling, which lets boundless sums enter the campaign process. No 2: reform the banking system to prevent fraud and manipulation, with the most frequent item being to restore the Glass-Steagall Act – the Depression-era law, done away with by President Clinton, that separates investment banks from commercial banks. This law would correct the conditions for the recent crisis, as investment banks could not take risks for profit that create kale derivatives out of thin air, and wipe out the commercial and savings banks.

No 3 was the most clarifying: draft laws against the little-known loophole that currently allows members of Congress to pass legislation affecting Delaware-based corporations in which they themselves are investors.

When I saw this list – and especially the last agenda item – the scales fell from my eyes. Of course, these unarmed people would be having the shit kicked out of them.

For the terrible insight to take away from news that the Department of Homeland Security coordinated a violent crackdown is that the DHS does not freelance. The DHS cannot say, on its own initiative, "we are going after these scruffy hippies". Rather, DHS is answerable up a chain of command: first, to New York Representative Peter King, head of the House homeland security subcommittee, who naturally is influenced by his fellow congressmen and women's wishes and interests. And the DHS answers directly, above King, to the president (who was conveniently in Australia at the time).

In other words, for the DHS to be on a call with mayors, the logic of its chain of command and accountability implies that congressional overseers, with the blessing of the White House, told the DHS to authorize mayors to order their police forces – pumped up with millions of dollars of hardware and training from the DHS – to make war on peaceful citizens.

But wait: why on earth would Congress advise violent militarized reactions against its own peaceful constituents? The answer is straightforward: in recent years, members of Congress have started entering the system as members of the middle class (or upper middle class) – but they are leaving DC privy to vast personal wealth, as we see from the "scandal" of presidential contender Newt Gingrich's having been paid $1.8m for a few hours' "consulting" to special interests. The inflated fees to lawmakers who turn lobbyists are common knowledge, but the notion that congressmen and women are legislating their own companies' profitsis less widely known – and if the books were to be opened, they would surely reveal corruption on a Wall Street spectrum. Indeed, we do already know that congresspeople are massively profiting from trading on non-public information they have on companies about which they are legislating – a form of insider trading that sent Martha Stewart to jail.

Since Occupy is heavily surveilled and infiltrated, it is likely that the DHS and police informers are aware, before Occupy itself is, what its emerging agenda is going to look like. If legislating away lobbyists' privileges to earn boundless fees once they are close to the legislative process, reforming the banks so they can't suck money out of fake derivatives products, and, most critically, opening the books on a system that allowed members of Congress to profit personally – and immensely – from their own legislation, are two beats away from the grasp of an electorally organized Occupy movement … well, you will call out the troops on stopping that advance.

So, when you connect the dots, properly understood, what happened this week is the first battle in a civil war; a civil war in which, for now, only one side is choosing violence. It is a battle in which members of Congress, with the collusion of the American president, sent violent, organized suppression against the people they are supposed to represent. Occupy has touched the third rail: personal congressional profits streams. Even though they are, as yet, unaware of what the implications of their movement are, those threatened by the stirrings of their dreams of reform are not.

Sadly, Americans this week have come one step closer to being true brothers and sisters of the protesters in Tahrir Square. Like them, our own national leaders, who likely see their own personal wealth under threat from transparency and reform, are now making war upon us.

© 2011 Naomi Wolf

Author, social critic, and political activist Naomi Wolf is the author of The New York Times bestseller "The End of America" (Chelsea Green) and, more recently, Give Me Liberty: A Handbook for American Revolutionaries. Wolf’s landmark international bestseller, The Beauty Myth, challenged the cosmetics industry and the marketing of unrealistic standards of beauty, launching a new wave of feminism in the early 1990s.

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