California Free Press

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

Why is the Stock Market Surging in the Midst of Huge Unemployment

by John Lawrence

Simple answer is that the stock market has nothing to do any more with the Main Street economy. There are two economies: Main Street and Wall Street. There's the economy of rich investors, and the economy of the 90% who aren't investors. The stock market is dominated by large multinational corporations like Apple and Google, and is invested in by rich people from all over the world. As COVID has shown, we have a bifurcated economy. Secondly, interest rates for Treasury bonds are zero so why would an investor buy them when investing in stocks amounts to a self fulfilling prophecy? The more money going in, the greater the rate of return, and rich people are continuing to make huge amounts of money. Business Insider reported that billionaires saw their net worth increase by half a trillion dollars during the pandemic. All that money has to go somewhere. Meanwhile, middle class people with 401(k)s are draining them to meet expenses. Thirdly, the Federal Reserve has all but gifted rich investors trillions of dollars.

More than 1 in 4 Americans are raiding their retirement accounts after a coronavirus-related job loss. The unexpected loss in income is causing many Americans to tap their retirement savings just to make ends meet. And many people who lost a job — or have a spouse or partner whose income has declined — didn’t have much money saved in the first place. Half of Americans who were recently furloughed or let go have saved less than $500 for retirement in the past year — and 70% have saved less than $1,000, according to a report by fintech firm SimplyWise. Of those who have an individual retirement account, 401(k) plan or retirement savings account, 1 in 5 now plan to tap those funds. Of course rich investors don't suffer job losses because they don't have jobs other than managing their money. That they can do from home.

Some has been written about a K-shaped recovery from the pandemic. In a K-shaped recovery, the economic bounce-back is bifurcated like a "K": The wealthiest Americans are quickly rebounding, even thriving, while the middle- and lower-income set are not. As of the first quarter of 2020, the wealthiest 10% of American households owned 87% of all stocks and mutual funds, according to the Federal Reserve. So where does that leave the other 90%? Struggling. Waiting in line at food banks. Getting evicted and foreclosed on. Losing their small businesses in droves. The fact that a second relief package has not been implemented and in all probability won't be for another 2 months till after Biden takes office will hinder those people in the lower part of the K even more.

So what does this say about essential workers? Are rich investors essential workers? I don't think so. Are doctors and nurses? You bet. But they are being shafted by the American people who won't obey simple guidelines in the midst of a surge upon a surge in COVID. Many of them are committing suicide. Others will soon throw up their hands and quit their jobs rationalizing that their own families are more important than taking care of sick patients which puts them at risk. Multitudes of Americans traveled during the Thanksgiving holidays ignoring pleas to stay home. Now doctors and nurses will pay the price for those who exercised their "freedom" as Americans to ignore the pleas of others and only think of themselves. Even family members of these will pay the ultimate price. Another ghastly statistic: the US with 4% of the world's population has 19% of the world's COVID cases. An in November there were an average of a million new cases per week.

Having a President for the past four years who has dumbed down the American people has not been a big help in contributing to a better society for Americans or those in the rest of the world who had looked up to America. Now the question is to what degree the Biden administration can recover some semblance of American democracy and respectability among other world leaders and also economic equity for all Americans. A lot of it will hinge on whether or not Democrats will control the Senate after the two runoff elections in Georgia. If Republicans continue to control the Senate, we can expect four more years of gridlock and straitjacketing of Biden's ambitious agenda. This will be devastating for America and the world. The US will continue to diminish in importance in the world community. Economic inequality will be exacerbated, and global warming will get even worse as hurricane and fire seasons become normal year round events.

Off the Top of My Head

How Joe Biden and the Democrats Can Attract Trump's Base to Their Side

by John Lawrence, November28, 2020

Aside from the entertainment value of the Trump Presidency, his main appeal and the main appeal of Republicans in general is that they stand for reducing taxes. Democrats can co-opt this issue. Here's how: before the next election, they announce that, if elected, they will reduce taxes on everyone making less than $400,000. Joe said he wouldn't raise taxes on that group, but he didn't go far enough. He needs to reduce taxes on everyone making less than $400,000 while raising them on everyone making more than $400,000. Trump's base, I assume, are people making less than $400,000. They are attached party wise to the wealthy Republicans who make up the top 1% with whom they have nothing in common economically. How will Joe pay for this? Simple: the money raised by raising taxes on the rich, making corporations pay their fair share, closing loopholes like the "carried interest" loophole and a financial transactions tax (FTT). And it wouldn't have to balance out equally. In other words the money raised in increased taxes on the rich would not have to equal the money spent on tax breaks for everyone making less than $400,000. It would represent the destruction of the Republican meme: "Democrats will raise your taxes."

The Federal budget need not balance out exactly. It hasn't done that since President Clinton balanced the budget in 2001. He had budget surpluses for fiscal years 1998-2001, the only such years from 1970-2020. Clinton's final four budgets were balanced budgets with surpluses, beginning with the 1997 budget. Since then Republicans, supposedly the guarantors of fiscal conservatism, have deficit spent by means of tax cuts going mainly to the rich. Even before Clinton, Reagan deficit spent with tax cuts in the 1980s. This meme that Republicans represent tax cuts and fiscal conservatism needs to come to an end and be exposed by Democrats for what it is. Evidently, the middle class Republican voters are satisfied with a meager tax cut and don't mind that the rich are getting a more hefty one. That's why Democrats have to take over this meme by giving tax cuts to the middle class and tax raises to the rich. This is the only way finally to get economic inequality under control.

Modern Monetary Theory and the Federal Reserve's own history prove that Deficits Don't Matter. The US dollar is a sovereign currency. The Federal Reserve can just print money and spend it into the economic system without adding it to the national debt. This is exactly what Abraham Lincoln did during the Civil War when he printed greenbacks instead of borrowing the money at interest which would have created huge debts for the United States. So there are two ways that money can be created by the Fed. 1) They can buy US Treasury bonds which would require Congress to deficit spend. 2) They can just print the money and pour it into Federal coffers. This does not add to the national debt but goes on the Fed's balance sheet. The bottom line is what is the money to be used for? If it's for a good cause like building green infrastructure and creating jobs in the process if the economy is less than fully employed, it probably won't create inflation. If it's just a gift to people in an already fully employed economy, it will most definitely create inflation or even hyper inflation.

So in the long run deficits do matter in the sense that, if the money is spent frivolously, inflation and potentially a loss in the value of the dollar on international markets could occur. However, if the money is spent constructively on building and repairing of infrastructure and other useful purposes, deficits won't matter. It boils down to prudent and responsible spending by government. Is Congress up to this task? Is the Fed? At this point a deal between the Executive branch and the Fed would seem more appropriate than running the whole thing through Congress where political ambitions of one party or the other can get in the way. The problem is that there is no consensus in Congress unless one party holds control over both Houses and the Presidency. Barring that, each party will try to limit the other party's spending goals which are tax breaks for the rich (Republicans) or government spending on social programs (Democrats). One way to break this stalemate is for Democrats to be the party of tax breaks for the 99% and tax increases for the 1% while maintaining their commitments to the social safety net.

Off the Top of My Head

Going Green As Rapidly As Possible

by John Lawrence, November 27, 2020

Now is the time for a paradigm change on many levels. Our whole way of life needs to be redesigned. For instance, entrepreneurs are changing their mindsets from maximizing profits by any means necessary to inventing tools and methods to save the environment and the planet. We also need to design an economy so that the benefits which are widely available to the rich and the upper middle class are available to everyone, not only in the US but in the world in general. Instead of America First we need to think: Planet First. But there is resistance to the fact that government needs to guide this development so that it doesn't proceed haphazardly and is directed toward a greening of the economy because climate change on the planet is not waiting for us to take our sweet time. They are proceeding in Europe despite resistance from Poland's coal mining region. Justin Worland wrote:

The plan is simple yet bold. In December, the E.U. outlined plans to spend what would total €1 trillion ($1.17 trillion) on a “Green Deal” aimed at eliminating the bloc’s carbon footprint by 2050 and refashioning the economy around new, low-carbon industries. The investment, originally meant to be funded through the E.U. budget, private-sector financing and other country contributions, includes everything from retrofitting buildings to scaling up the infrastructure necessary for electric vehicles to investing in hydrogen-energy storage. After the pandemic struck, the E.U. structured its COVID-19 recovery package around accelerating the plan. “We need to change how we treat nature, how we produce and consume, live and work, eat and heat, travel and transport,” said Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, the E.U.’s executive body, in a September speech.

Correct. 1) How we treat nature. 2) How we produce and consume. 3) How we live and work. 4) How we eat and heat. 5) How we travel and transport. That about says it all. We need entrepreneurs who, in addition to wanting to make money, have the incentive to improve the environment and the planet. Those entrepreneurs who are entirely profit motivated might as well stay home. We don't need them. It's well known that, if all you want to do is to make money, the best way to achieve that is to come up with another novel alcoholic drink or another snack food loaded with sugar, salt and fat. Those are the roads to riches that we need to demolish, and instead build roads to new developments that are effective and safe for the planet just as a COVID vaccine must be safe and effective for human consumption. The economy must become a hybrid of private initiative combined with government participation. We need both. If you want to call that socialism, so be it.

Even in Europe there is resistance to going green despite the fact that polls show that 90% of the people support aggressive action on climate change. If the US is not to become the backwater of the world, we must get on board with rapid change because global warming is not waiting for us while we dilly dally around. Very soon fire and hurricane seasons are not going to be seasonal any more. They will be occurring year round. In transitioning away from fracking and fossil fuels in general we need to follow Europe's lead and create what they call a Just Transition:

So officials in Brussels crafted a so-called Just Transition plan to direct some €150 billion ($177 billion) to the regions most vulnerable to a move away from fossil fuels. The money is intended to act both as a catalyst for these regions to adapt and as an insurance policy to make sure the climate agenda maintains broad popular support. The Green Deal broadly—and Just Transition specifically—are altering the politics of climate change in Europe and the nature of the bloc’s economic development. It might determine the jobs and industries that employ workers across the Continent for the next century. In Poland, the Green Deal has already fueled a rush to chart a new path, one that honors the country’s coal-mining heritage while also preparing it for a new future. In September, the country committed to shutting down its coal mines for good. The question now is how to do that, and whether the country can move fast enough to meet the E.U.’s deadlines. “We are at a key, critical moment in the history of Poland and in the making of the European Green Deal,” says Michal Kurtyka, Poland’s Climate Minister.

Even the coal miners in Katowice are on board knowing that they will be taken care of when their coal mining jobs disappear. The US needs to follow the same path with emphasis on taking care of displaced workers in the fossil fuel industry. They can be transitioned to the renewable energy industry with minimal hardship if the process is done right. Joe Biden's idea to transition from the fracking industry is correct. Perhaps coordinating with European leaders will help so that we don't have to reinvent the wheel.

Off the Top of My Head

by John Lawrence, November 25, 2020

Why Janet Yellen is the Perfect Choice for Treasury Secretary?

Because as former Fed Chairman she knows where the bodies are buried, figuratively speaking of course. She was the first woman to head the Federal Reserve from 2014 to 2018, and now will be the first female Treasury Secretary. She knows that the Federal Reserve has the capacity to just print money and that money does not get added to the national debt or the deficit. The charade that goes on between Mnuchin and Nancy Pelosi represents an unnecessary exercise in futility The Fed has printed trillions of dollars to bail out the banks, and it has swallowed large amounts of Treasury bills if nobody wants to buy them at auction. The Fed's charter is 1) to insure full employment and 2) to check inflation. With all the money the Fed has printed so far with their policy of "quantitative easing", there has been no inflation. So money printing is a viable strategy to keep the economy functioning, but so far it has only functioned well for rich people. Now there can and should be a policy of "quantitative easing for the people." If Congress won't cooperate, Janet Yellen could do an end run around Congress and make a deal between her and the present Fed Chairman, Jerome Powell.

Joe Biden is going to need a lot of money to build green infrastructure, and Congress, if under Republican control, will deny him that money. Is that blunt enough? If MItch McConnell is leader of the Senate, he will make sure that what he did to Obama, he will do to Joe Biden, that is to deny him the wherewithal for any of his progressive programs even if they are less progressive than the left wing of the Democratic party wants. So let's expose this fiction that money is not available for a Green New Deal which amounts to doing what might not even be sufficient to forestall climate change. It would also create millions of good paying jobs by the way. What's wrong with that? Republicans will say that it will add trillions of dollars to the national debt. But did the trillions spent bailing out the big banks add trillions to the national debt? No, it didn't add a penny. That's because the Fed just printed the money, and it didn't increase inflation either. So the money is available for much needed social programs involving renewable energy and green infrastructure. A by product is eliminating unemployment and creating good paying jobs just like the Federal Reserve is tasked to do.

Fed Chairman Jerome Powell has spoken out to encourage more spending to help the economy. He knows that the Fed can and will pick up the slack by buying Treasury bills and deep sixing them on the Fed's balance sheet even as politicians keep up the fiction that Congressional leaders are concerned about the deficit:

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell on Tuesday urged Congress to spend more money to limit the economic damage of the COVID-19 pandemic, the latest in a chorus of current and past Fed officials to tell lawmakers that inaction could lengthen the recession.

“There’s a reasonable probability that more will be needed both from you, and from the Fed,” Powell told the Senate Banking Committee, echoing nudges he has made in nearly every public statement since the pandemic began.

Powell has noted that COVID-19’s economic devastation has fallen hardest on low-income workers — 40 percent of individuals making under $40,000 lost their jobs during the crisis.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., asked whether congressional spending would be a more effective response than the Fed’s monetary policy.

“In the short and medium term, yes: fiscal policy,” Powell said, adding that, in the long term, fiscal and monetary policies encouraging maximum employment were the way to go.

Powell’s urging has been voiced more explicitly by other Fed leaders past and present in recent days. Former Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke co-wrote a letter to congressional leadership Monday that was also signed by Janet Yellen, another former leader of the Fed, and 131 other economists.

“Insufficiently bold congressional policy responses to the Great Recession unnecessarily prolonged suffering and stunted economic growth,” Bernanke wrote, along with Washington Center for Equitable Growth CEO Heather Boushey and Cecilia Rouse, dean of the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton. “Congress should not make this mistake again.”

In the past week, regional Fed presidents have also asked Congress to do more — not just to respond to the pandemic, but to encourage more inclusive growth as Black Lives Matter protests continue across the nation.

“Systemic racism is a yoke that drags on the American economy,” Raphael Bostic, president of the Atlanta Fed and the only African American to lead a regional Fed bank, wrote in a blog post on the regional bank’s website. “A commitment to an inclusive society also means a commitment to an inclusive economy.”

Those comments have been matched by the heads of the Fed’s San Francisco, Richmond and Dallas branches in recent days.

These comments reveal the barely disguised fiction that Congress has to act first in order to open up the flood gates of Federal Reserve money printing. However, even if that is the case, Congress needs to get off its butt. Because of arcane laws, the Fed can't act directly. Powell's barely disguised Fed speak is implying that money is available for bailing out the economy, and that the powers that be should just go ahead and use it. The argument that it would add to the national debt is null and void. The secret that some Congressional leaders want to maintain is that the Fed's trillion dollar bailout of the big banks in 2008 did not add to the national debt. Nevertheless, some Congressional leaders are aware of Modern Monetary Theory which maintains that Deficits Don't Matter. In 2014 the author of this book, Stephanie Kelton, was designated as Chief Economist for the Democratic Minority Staff of the Senate Budget Committee and later became an economic advisor to the Bernie Sanders campaign.

So money is available for a massive Green New Deal which will benefit both the economy and the salvation of the planet from global warming. Other aspects of Joe Biden's and Kamala Harris' agenda are also doable if the US can get off its butt and use the facilities that were available to bail out the big banks for the benefit of middle class and poor Americans and save the planet while doing it.

Off the Top of My Head

What Can Joe Biden Do to "Restore the Soul of the Nation"?

by John Lawrence, November 24, 2020

The Biden Administration has its work cut out for them. Rejoining the Paris Accords on climate change, rejoining the World Health Organization, appointing a head to the Environmental Protection Agency who is actually not trying to destroy the Environment etc etc. All of these things while so necessary are kind of obvious. To restore the soul of the nation, the number one thing Biden needs to do is to demilitarize the nation. The US spends about a trillion dollars a year on its military more than the ten next highest spending countries combined. It's not just a question of the defense budget; it's all the spending in the military-industrial complex as well. This is at a time when the main threat to the US is domestic not foreign terrorism. Dwight Eisenhauer warned about the encroaching military-industrial complex. "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children... This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron."

The violence, discord and division that we see within the United States is a direct reflection of the violence and discord the US has perpetrated in Vietnam and Iraq, two wars which Presidents of the US lied about. The 80 million refugees living in horrible refugee camps in the world are a direct result of US military policy which currently stations soldiers at nearly 800 military bases in more than 70 countries and territories abroad. The US military is the largest employer in the US. The next largest employer, Walmart, employs 1.5 million people. There were a total of 1.3 million active duty military and more than 800,000 reserve forces as of September 2017, according to Defense Department personnel data. But this doesn't count the number of civilians in the military-industrial complex employed by companies like Lockheed Martin (110,000 employees), Boeing (161,133 employees), Raytheon (195,000 employees), BAE Systems (85,800 employees), Northrop Grumman (90,000 employees), General Dynamics (107,000 employees) and many more.

The fact of the matter is that high school graduates who have neither the money nor prospects for college usually go into the military where many benefits await them like free advanced and specialty training, a guaranteed paycheck, free health and dental care, enlistment bonuses, free room and board, educational benefits, a pension and much more. Going into the military right out of high school does not deprive you of a college education. The military can help pay for college or pay off college loans. Most enlistees are eligible for up to 100 percent of college tuition through the Tuition Assistance Program (TAP) while on active duty. Additionally, the Air Force has the nation’s largest community college, the Community College of the Air Force for which enrollment is automatic upon enlistment in the Air Force. Armed Forces education benefit programs include the Forever GI Bill, Army, Navy, Marine and Navy College Funds, College Loan Repayment (including Student Loan Forgiveness) and Student Loan Deferment and Forbearance. As an Uber driver I pick up a lot of military people. One Navy guy told me he joined the Navy so that after 5 years he could get free training to become a helicopter pilot at a civilian school. They even can get a pension after 5 years.

Now the high school graduates like me who have college prospects often like me,, end up in the military-industrial complex. I worked at General Dynamics Convair Division in San Diego for several years, later at the Naval Electronics Lab on Point Loma which has changed its name several times to protect the guilty as they say. So many college graduates especially in the engineering fields end up in the milkitary-industrial complex while high school graduates that don't go to college end up in the military, not because they love the military, but because they love the generous benefits. When you add up all the people in the military plus all the people in the military-industrial complex, it's clear that the US is a militarist state whose employment base is military related. This is nonsensical when a greater threat is from domestic terrorism than foreign terrorism, and there is no threat from foreign nation states only from scattered terrorists which could be dealt with with a fraction of the military and military-industrial complex budget that presently exists.

Now consider the benefits accruing to those who join the peace Corps and AmeriCorps. What there still is a Peace Corps. You never hear a word about it in the media. The Peace Corps provides each Volunteer with housing and a living stipend that enables them to live in a manner similar to people in their community of service. Unlike other international volunteer programs, there is no charge to participate in the Peace Corps. There is no application fee, although costs may only be partially covered for required medical examinations during the application process. Upon completion of two years of service, the Peace Corps provides each Volunteer with more than $10,000 (pre-tax) to help with the transition to life back home. This money is yours to use as you wish. AmeriCorps has some educational benefits after completion. The Segal AmeriCorps Education Award is a post-service benefit earned by individuals who complete approved terms of national service in AmeriCorps programs. Well, suffice it to say, the benefits of joining the Peace Corps or AmeriCorps don't compare with the benefits of joining the military and the funding available for these two programs is meager compared to the military budget.

So what Joe Biden can do is to increase the benefits for Peace Corps and AmeriCorps while increasing the funding for those programs and decreasing the funding for the military and the military-industrial complex. This will have the effect of demilitarizing the consciousness of American citizens and will actually do a lot of good in America and the world. When I was in the military-industrial complex, they encouraged you to vote Republican because Republican administrations would increase military funding while, Democratic administrations would reduce it. The message was clear: If you wanted there to be funding for your job, you'd better vote Republican. That's why there should be a pathway for transitioning to a Peace economy from the Militarist economy which guarantees jobs in the Peace-Industrial complex for those presently employed in the military-industrial complex. In the same way there should be a guarantee of employment in the renewable energy field for those losing their jobs in the fossil fuel field.

A transition to a Peace economy away from the military economy in parallel with a transition to a renewable energy economy away from the fossil fuel economy will do a lot to make the United States and the world a better place, and also, by the way, to restore the soul of the nation.

Off the Top of My Head

Why Are Republicans Being So Deferential to Trump?

by Kay Oss and Pam Dennick, November 22, 2020

Why are Republicans still going along with Trump's fantasy that he won the election? Why aren't they speaking out telling him it's over and recognizing Joe Biden as the next President of the United States? The answer is that they realize that the Republican base is really Trump's base. 70 million Americans voted for Trump, and these people are more loyal to Trump than they are to the Republican party. If Trump wanted to, he could take these voters with him and form his own party. Then where would that leave the Republican party? It would be a head without a body. Trump could effectively decapitate the Republican party. That's why the Republican leadership is handling Trump with kid gloves.

The Republican party is an incongruous amalgam of an old line Republican head exemplified by Mitch McConnell, Lindsay Graham and Mitch Romney and a base consisting of white supremacists and other disgruntled people with a multitude of grievances. These two quasi Republican groups have little in common. The Republican head represents rich people and are mainly interested in using politics as a means to wealth and power. The Republican base, which is really Trump's base, consists of aggrieved and uneducated people who are readily amenable to conspiracy theories and the entertainment value of political theater. The problem with the Republican party is that the head needs Trump's base in order to even have a viable political party. Without this ill fitting base they represent very few people. So Trump only needs to repudiate the Republican party and tell his base that he is forming his own party. This spells doom for the Republican party which needs Trump's base to get elected.

Trump has already formed a PAC, and most of the money he is raising is money that he has complete control over. Trump is very interested in monetizing his popularity. This money could be used for political purposes or it could be used for paying off Trump's humungous debts once he leaves office. This is money that would be evacuated from Republican coffers and be used to fill Trump's personal coffers. If Republican leadership repudiates Trump, they will live to rue the day as Trump takes his base and goes home with it. Republican leadership must maintain the fiction that their values and the values of Trump's base are really compatible. They're not.

The fact is that the Republican party doesn't stand for anything but sheer ambition for wealth and power. On the other hand the Democratic party stands for helping the middle class and the poor and saving the earth from the ravages of global warming. We are very soon arriving at the stage of global warming where fire season and hurricane season are year round events. In other words they are no longer seasonal. The seasons are getting longer year after year. Nevertheless, despite the fact that wealthy Republicans are taking measures to protect their wealth from the ravages of global warming, they must keep up the fiction in public that global warming is a hoax. Hoaxes and conspiracy theories are the stock in trade which Trump uses to feed his base and keep them entertained. Without them there would be nothing to keep them interested. Reality just is not as much fun. Fact based science is boring. The problem is that fact based science will help us get better; conspiracy theories will lead us down the rabbit hole of self-deception and disaster.

It can only be hoped that Joe Biden and the Democratic party will have the courage to do what is necessary to get the United States on the right track, to build on a constructive agenda which benefits the American people and the world, extracts Trump's base from their rabbit hole and heals the underlying condition of the complete denial of reality which Trumpism represents. America has come very close to a fascist takeover of democracy, and we're not out of the woods yet. Trump is still a force to be reckoned with in or out of office.

Off the Top of My Head

Trump's Götterdämmerung

by John Lawrence, November 20, 2020

As Russian troops were entering Berlin in the last days of WW II, Hitler, deep in his bunker in Berlin, issued his final orders that all German bridges and roads were to be blown up. Anything of value in Germany was to be destroyed. He didn't want anything but a destroyed Germany turned over to the Allies. Fortunately, the German Generals ignored his orders. Similarly, Trump, still the most powerful man in the world, for the next two months, is taking his revenge for losing the election, as Hitler did for losing the war, by destroying as much of the US as possible before handing it over to Joe Biden. Hitler had lost faith in the German people because they had betrayed him by losing the war. Trump is showing his total disregard for America for turning him into a loser.

Götterdämmerung is the last in Richard Wagner's cycle of four music dramas titled Der Ring des Nibelungen in which Valhalla is destroyed by flames. It can be interpreted as a death wish for society if the leader himself must die. It has been interpreted as Hitler's wanting to destroy German society if he himself must be destroyed. If he could not prevail, he wanted to totally bring Germany down with him. Trump is acting in a similar manner. He is presiding over the worst pandemic in US history while steadfastly refusing to do anything about it. He will not do anything at this point to help the American people. There will be no stimulus or relief package as long as Trump remains as President. He has ordered an end to the Federal Reserve's emergency relief funds just today. Neil Bradley, US Chamber of Commerce VP & Chief Policy Officer said, "A surprise termination of the Federal Reserve's emergency liquidity programs ... prematurely and unnecessarily ties the hands of the incoming administration, and closes the door on important liquidity options for businesses at a time when they need them most." Of course Trump's main goal is to "tie the hands of the incoming administration." He wants to make Joe Biden's job as the next President as difficult and hamstrung as possible. Why do you think he won't let the GSA give access to the normal transition funds and office space? Why do you think he won't cooperate with the incoming Biden administration in any way?

As a LOSER, Trump is becoming the most dangerous man in the whole world. If he can't be America's Führer, he wants to destroy America just as Hitler issued orders to destroy Germany. It is the American Valhalla. Just as in Trump's America, Hitler's Germany was rife with conspiracy theories. The historian John Roberts suggested that the killing of Siegfried by Hagen with a stab in the back gave inspiration for the myth that the German Army did not lose World War I, but was instead defeated by a treasonous "stab in the back" from civilians, in particular Jews and Socialists. So Trump did not actually lose the election, but a vast conspiracy was concocted to overturn its results. How else could Joe Biden win? Richard Wagner himself was a notorious anti-Semite. In America circa 2020. there are too many conspiracy theories to shake a stick at, the flames of which are fanned by numerous conservative talk show hosts and passed around on social media, one of the biggest of which is that George Soros, a Jew, is responsible for the fact that the Democrats have defeated Donald Trump.

The New York Times reported:

On both sides of the Atlantic, a loose network of activists and political figures on the right have spent years seeking to cast Mr. Soros not just as a well-heeled political opponent but also as the personification of all they detest. Employing barely coded anti-Semitism, they have built a warped portrayal of him as the mastermind of a “globalist” movement, a left-wing radical who would undermine the established order and a proponent of diluting the white, Christian nature of their societies through immigration.

In the process, they have pushed their version of Mr. Soros, 88, from the dark corners of the internet and talk radio to the very center of the political debate.

As in Germany, so in America: conspiracy theories, the entertainment value of hate and anger purveyed by vitriolic blowhards including Hitler and Trump themselves, the blaming of "the other" for their problems. Trump could make his Götterdämmerung complete by launching a military strike on Iran thus starting World War 3. It has just been reported that Iran is stockpiling more fissile material than it was supposed to although Trump vacated the JCPOA nuclear agreement with Iran so he left them free to do so. Trump seems determined to leave Joe Biden an unholy, unmanageable, ineffably destructive mess. His determination to tie Joe Biden's hands as much as he possible can before he leaves office is apparent. If he cannot overturn the results of the election, Trump will pull America down with him.

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.

Off the Top of My Head

It's Almost Thanksgiving: Let's Talk Turkey

by John Lawrence, November 14, 2020

So what are Republicans saying about a Biden administration? That the progressive wing of the Democratic party will push him too far to the left. Well, what exact policies would be "too far to the left"? Defund the police? That's just a radical slogan that means about as much as "Lock her up." In other words it means nothing in terms of either Biden's agenda or progressives in the Democratic party. Reform the police - that would be more like where the Democratic party actually stands. As far as Medicare for All, Biden favors Medicare for All Who Want It. I guess there are those Republicans who so love their employer based health insurance that they are terrified by the possibility that it might be taken away from them and replaced with something better. So Biden's position is go ahead and keep it. He just wants to make it possible that those who do want it will be able to have it or a public option which amounts to the same thing.

So Republican concerns amount to whipping up a bunch of meaningless hysteria just like Trump has always done. It's his stock in trade. So what about the Green New Deal? Who could object to creating jobs to build infrastructure and combat global warming? Oh maybe it's that they fear their taxes will go up? There's actually no reason why anyone's taxes should go up based on the realities as they exist in the 21st century. The government has shown that any amount of money can be found and spent to bail out banks or to add to the debt to give people tax breaks. Trump's tax cuts added a trillion dollars to the debt. Quantitative easing and the money to bail out the big banks amounted to several trillion dollars and yet it has had no adverse effect on inflation or anything else. Modern Monetary Theory has shown that Deficits Don't Matter whether those deficits originate from bailing out the banks or a Green New Deal or Biden's Green Deal which is more or less the same. Expect Republicans to cry bloody murder any time government threatens to formulate a program to combat global warming or to create jobs for poor people or to raise wages for essential workers to $15. an hour.

Money spent constructively on infrastructure or other things will never cause inflation. What will cause inflation is money that is pissed away frivolously or unconstructively. Reorienting out priorities can and should be done even if deficit spending is required to do it. When the economy is rebalanced, it eventually will mean that the rich will have to pay their fair share of taxes in order to reduce inequality. That's the main thing that Republicans are afraid of - that eventually the rich will have to pay their fair share of taxes. In the meantime economic history since 2000 has demonstrated the fact that, if trillions of dollars were found to bail out the banks and give tax cuts to the rich, trillions of dollars can be found to repair and rebuild infrastructure and prevent the world from the disaster of global warming. Private enterprise has done nothing but accelerate global warming because private enterprise consists of the fossil fuel industry. Private enterprise profits from pollution that it doesn't have to compensate for. Therefore, it's up to government to balance out what private enterprise seems incapable of doing. That's not to say that private enterprise is unimportant. It does some things very well, some things that government does not do well. It's a matter of finding the correct balance between private enterprise and government enterprise.

Does any fossil fuel worker object to working in the renewable energy industry providing they are guaranteed a job in that industry? I don't think so. There's no one that loves fossil fuels per se or just because they are fossil fuels. They are not like Scrooge who just loves the look and feel of money. Are there people who so much like the look and feel of oil that they can't bear the thought of working in an industry that doesn't pollute the planet? There are new industries coming - a straw with the look and feel of a plastic straw that biodegrades and doesn't stay in the ocean for hundreds of years like the plastic straw does. These straws are being manufactured today. If government can assist in the ramping up of this private enterprise - Newlight Technologies - we will be all better off except for the plastic straw manufacturers which are using mainly robots to produce their straws so there are not that many jobs involved there.

Huntington Beach, California-based Newlight produces an ocean-degradable biopolymer called PHB using air and greenhouse gas. Newlight's methods are supported by more than a decade of research and development as well as an extensive patent portfolio. Newlight's Series F finance round coincides with the commissioning of a new commercial-scale production facility in California called Eagle 3 and the launch of branded products including a line of cutlery and drinking straws for the food-service industry. Newlight's foodware products deliver a unique level of material safety and certified sustainability, resulting in high-performance, ocean-degradable foodware that works for people and the planet. 

Government can provide an assist to private enterprise as long as that enterprise is headed in a new direction which doesn't pollute and which doesn't produce greenhouse gasses. Which is more important - hanging onto the familiar past or striking out in a new direction that saves the planet and makes it better for our grandchildren? Are we pioneers and adventurers like our ancestors or what?

Off the Top of My Head

Trump's Purported Coup d'Etat

by John Lawrence, November 12, 2020

Trump's path to a second term goes through the Courts and the Republican state legislatures. It is up to the state legislatures to choose the electors who cast the state's electoral votes. So far they have always chosen those electors that are committed to cast their votes for the candidate that won the popular vote. But, as the song says: "It ain't necessarily so." It is conceivable that Trump could win the electoral votes in states in which Biden won the popular vote. Take Georgia for example. Here's how it would work. The Republican Secretary of State decides that there will be a hand recount of all 5 million votes cast in Georgia. That takes time. If the hand recount doesn't get done by November 20, Trump's lawyers could step in and ask the Supreme Court, which is controlled by conservative justices three of whom Trump appointed himself, to decide the election. This is not unprecedented. In 2000 George W Bush asked the Supreme Court to stop the recount process in Florida which they did costing Al Gore the election. If the recount had continued Gore, who won the popular vote not only in Florida but in the US generally, would have been elected. If something like this happens this year, this would give Georgia's 16 electoral votes to Trump instead of Biden.

However, Georgia's 16 electoral votes would not be enough to change the results of the election. Trump's lawyers would have to do the same process in a number of other states as well. In particular they would have to overturn the results in Pennsylvania with its 20 electoral votes. Pennsylvania, it is to be noted, also has a state legislature controlled by Republicans so it is not inconceivable. Currently Trump has 217 electoral votes including Alaska. He is winning in North Carolina with its 15 electoral votes so let's give him that. If he could use the courts and the state legislatures to flip Georgia and Pennsylvania, he would then have another 36 electoral votes for a total of 268, still not the 270 required to win the election. He needs another 2 electoral votes. Where could he find them? Let's see. Arizona's state legislature is controlled by Republicans. Let's assume Trump can do the same thing there. That would give him another 11 electoral votes bringing him to 279. Ipso facto Trump wins the election.

When the framers of the U.S. Constitution outlined the workings of the electoral college system, they didn’t specify how presidential electors should or must be chosen, leaving it up to the various state legislatures to each decide for themselves how to appoint their electors. However, the courts have decided that the states can't change the way they choose their electors after an election. This would throw the whole process into chaos. But chaos is precisely what we have now with Trump refusing to concede the election. Conservative talk show host Mark Levin has tweeted the following:

REMINDER TO THE REPUBLICAN STATE LEGISLATURES, YOU HAVE THE FINAL SAY OVER THE CHOOSING OF ELECTORS, NOT ANY BOARD OF ELECTIONS, SECRETARY OF STATE, GOVERNOR, OR EVEN COURT. YOU HAVE THE FINAL SAY -- ARTICLE II OF THE FED CONSTITUTION. SO, GET READY TO DO YOUR CONSTITUTIONAL DUTY

— Mark R. Levin (@marklevinshow) November 5, 2020

So if Trump and his allies can sow enough confusion into the process of determining certain states' election results, for example, calling for recount after recount, it's conceivable that Trump's lawyers will then ask the Supreme Court to intervene, and they might do the same thing they did in Bush v. Gore in 2000 and award the election to Trump. They might go even further and decide that, since the US Constitution does not specify that state legislatures must pick a slate of electors dedicated to the popular vote, they can decide for any candidate they please. This would effectively make Trump dictator because no one could ever trust election results again. Trump has a considerable base of support in the American electorate and could rely on the fact of this tremendous public support although half the nation at least wants Biden to be the next President, not Trump. After all Biden won the popular vote by over 5 million votes. But Hillary won the popular vote in 2016 and Al Gore won the popular vote in 2000. Having delegitimized the democratic process with his refusal to concede among other things, Trump hardly needs widespread skepticism about the electoral college to sow doubt about the voting process itself. Many people feel that the electoral college should be abolished and that the President should be elected by popular vote. This is only the latest blow to the American political system which is based on the wisdom of a few white men and their understanding of how things should be over 200 years ago. Yet the process can not be changed without three quarters of the states agreeing to a Constitutional amendment.

Off the Top of My Head

Expand Habitat for Humanity in Honor of Jimmy Carter

by John Lawrence, November 11, 2020

The best way to build wealth among poor people is to expand a program that gets them into a house. The debt industry profits off of poor people whether it's Payday lenders, student loan debt, car loan debt, credit card debt or mortgage debt. The debt industry, aka the banking industry, profits off of poor people's debt. That's why the poor need to build wealth which will also close the economic inequality gap. Home ownership is the main way the middle class builds wealth which is then intergenerationally transferable. Habitat says "In fiscal year 2019, we helped more than 7 million people, and an additional 2.3 million gained the potential to improve their housing conditions through training and advocacy." It's not clear how many new houses that 7 million figure represents because they also help people by doing housing improvements. Looking at Habitat's Form 990 reveals some interesting data. They have annual revenues of approximately $300 million. Revenues less expenses for FY 2018 was about $13 million. Without doing an exhaustive analysis of this Form 990, it would seem that $13 million is a paltry amount of money to build new homes if in fact it all went to building new homes. It is to be noted that the CEO made about $400,000. They also seem to spend an enormous amount on advertising and fundraising.

A government program based on the Habitat model could magnify the number of new affordable homes built per year and could be combined with AmeriCorps which is already working with Habitat. Government service building affordable homes should be an alternative to military service with comparable benefits. One drawback of Habitat is that it does not serve homeless or low income families who can't afford a modest mortgage. So a government program based on the Habitat model should look at improving on the Habitat model. Another thing is that Habitat claims to be a "Christian organization." Does that mean that religiously nonChristian families are not eligible? A government program should not have connections to a particular religion but should be open to people of all or no religions. It should be nondenominational. The people who eventually own the homes have to put in a certain amount of "sweat equity." This is good because it makes the homes more affordable. A program based on FDR's Civilian Conservation Corps could employ youths in public service for 2 years building houses in return for free college education and other benefits. These homes need to be solarized and be built in such a way as to be non-emitting of greenhouse gasses.

The best way to co-opt Trump voters is to offer them economic opportunities. Promised economic opportunities (promised but not delivered) are the thing that pushed Trump over the top in 2016 in the rust belt states. A program of building houses ala Habitat not only would help poor people, who are disproportionately minorities, but would tend to placate poor whites who are mainly Trump voters. That's why programs helping the poor can't be labeled "Black Lives Matter" programs. They can't be just for black people although black people would disproportionately benefit. To design a program only for black people would further alienate Trump voters. Bringing this country together, as Joe Biden has professed he wants to do, means that all programs to help people must of necessity be color blind. Another benefit is that people who contribute to public service in AmeriCorps or the Peace Corps will tend to vote Democratic because they will have seen how Democratic programs have benefited not only themselves but other people as well.

Many people who join the military do so for the benefits and because they have no better prospects after high school. Military service for 5 years gains them a free college education plus many other generous benefits, even a pension. They also get brainwashed to vote Republican. Even those working in the military-industrial complex are brainwashed to vote Republican. As a college graduate the jobs available to me were mainly in the military-industrial complex. Once there I was pressured to vote Republican because it was believed that Republicans would expand funding for the military and hence the military-industrial complex. It was thought that a Democratic administration would cut funding for the military-industrial complex and we could be RIFd (Reduction in Force). Expanding programs in the peace industry should have the opposite effect. I left the military-industrial complex many years ago fortunately, and my economic future doesn't depend on future funding it. Many others are not in the same position.

As the nation transitions from fossil fuels to renewables, it's important that workers in the fossil fuel industry have a path to transition to new jobs. The same holds true in transitioning workers in the military-industrial complex to the peace-industrial complex. It's also important to give young people the possibility of serving their country in a way that contributes to peace and economic stability with comparable benefits instead of serving in the military. The peace industry (like building houses here and abroad) needs to become more important than the war industry. The issue of global warming in particular means that all nations of the world must cooperate and foster a spirit of cooperation while putting their antagonisms aside. Peace, renewable energy, economic development for poor and middle class people need to replace a power structure that fosters political antagonism among the nations of the world. Jimmy Carter not only wields a hammer for Habitat for Humanity in his nineties, but also put solar panels on the roof of the White House (which Ronald Reagan took down). If we had had Jimmy Carter for a second term and Al Gore instead of George W Bush (with his fossil fuel loving vice President, Dick Cheney), we would be further along the path toward replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy and further along the path of dealing with global warming.

Off the Top of My Head

Democrats: Don't Let Republican Narratives Define You

by John Lawrence, November 9, 2020

Labels and sloganeering are not important. Global warming is not a question of Left and Right. It's a question of Smart and Dumb. If science shows that we have to get to net zero carbon emissions by 2035, then we have to do whatever it takes to get there. It's not enough to compromise to get half way there. Half way is not good enough. Half way means that the destruction of the earth is a certainty. This is not a political football. It's something that needs to be done post haste. That's why it's important to force the appropriate legislation through Congress based on the power to do so. If Democrats win the 2 Senate runoff races in Georgia, they will have the power to do so. If not Republicans will still control Congress, and all bets are off.

Republicans are adept at defining people and issues with labels, and then getting us to fight over the labels even defining the labels as too far left or too far right or meeting in the middle. How is a Green New Deal too far left if it saves the planet from global warming? It is not constructive to fight over this label. We just have to do what needs to be done. Already we are seeing the destructive power of nature caused by global warming with intense and widespread wild fires all over the world and relentless, destructive hurricanes and flooding in the Gulf states and elsewhere. This year alone several powerful hurricanes have hit the Gulf states, and they are still coming. They are coming so frequently that people have not recovered from ones 3 hurricanes ago. We have to go full steam ahead on attacking global warming not half speed ahead. Call it a Green New Deal or a Biden Green Deal or whatever you want to call it. The label is unimportant. The action taken is.

What put Trump over the top in 2016 was his appeal to working class voters. Trump's support of the fossil fuel industry appealed to all the workers in that industry especially in Pennsylvania and Texas. Let's be clear. Workers in this industry are not wedded to that industry; they are wedded to their jobs. They don't want their jobs to go away. If Joe Biden and the Democrats guarantee fossil fuel workers jobs in the renewable energy industry at higher wages, they will abandon whatever allegiance they had to fossil fuels in a heartbeat. This needs to be the message. And with it will come a flip of Texas from red to blue. Pennsylvania will stay squarely in the Democratic column. Republicans know this so they will do whatever they can to obfuscate, confuse, demonize and obstruct a transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy. That's why it's so important for Democrats to control the Senate. Otherwise, Mitch McConnell will block any progressive legislation including legislation designed to get us to net zero carbon emissions by 2035.

Republicans obviously don't care about the issue of global warming. Their tactic is to demonize the label: "Green New Deal." That's how they operate. They have money at stake in fossil fuels. They could care less about the workers. They care about the investors and the financial class that's invested in fossil fuels. The Democratic strategy should be to care about the workers by guaranteeing them jobs in the renewable energy field and let the investing class fend for themselves. Once they see the profits to be made in renewable energy they also will flip in a minute and abandon fossil fuels investments. Already many of them are divesting. When humans discovered the efficacy of metals they left the stone age and left the remaining stones in the ground. We need to do the same thing with fossil fuels: leave them in the ground.

Joe Biden has been very careful about the slogan: Defund the Police. Republicans are trying to hang that label around the Democrats' necks also. Nobody in his right mind wants to defund the police. Allocate more funds to social workers who may be better able to deescalate mental health situations? Of course. So nuance is important, but Republicans don't deal in nuance; they deal in labels and in particular the use of labels to demonize the other side. Joe Biden has threaded the needle very agilely. Also Republicans have not demonized Joe like they did Hillary for 25 years or more. That's why Joe is considered "more likable." In the final analysis labels are not important. The label - socialism - is not important. What is important is to make contructive - I will not even say progressive - change in this country, first to save the earth from global warming, and, secondly, to put the US on a more constructive track with regard to a host of other issues. Let Smart win over Dumb!

Off the Top of My Head

Robots Will Not Replace Us

by John Lawrence

Joe Biden wants to bring the country together. Here are 3 programs guaranteed to do it. 1) Guarantee that every worker who loses his job in the fossil fuel industry, as the energy industry transitions to renewables, is guaranteed a job in the renewable energy industry including free retraining if necessary. 2) Free apprenticeship programs for electricians, plumbers and other occupations for which no robot can replace them. Let's change that white supremacist chant to "Robots will not replace us." 3) A huge build-up of a Habitat for Black Humanity program (open to participants of all races) in honor of Jimmy Carter who famously wields a hammer for Habitat for Humanity. At $171,000, the net worth of a typical white family is nearly ten times greater than that of a Black family ($17,150) in 2016. Gaps in wealth between black and white households reveal the effects of accumulated inequality and discrimination, as well as differences in power and opportunity that can be traced back to this nation’s inception. The black-white wealth gap reflects a society that has not and does not afford equality of opportunity to all its citizens.

Middle class Joe knows that the main way the middle class has built up wealth is through home ownership - equity in a home. This equity also facilitates the intergenerational transfer of wealth which the black community is notorious in lacking. Blacks are less likely to receive wealth transfers from parents than whites, and conversely, they’re under more pressure to transfer their own limited wealth to parents or relatives than whites. So whereas each white generation starts from somewhere above zero, each black generation is more likely to start from zero. A greater proportion of white adult children receive financial support from their parents than blacks in all three categories of parental support. The share of whites receiving financial support from their parents is 34% for higher education, 12% for home ownership, and 26% for other purposes. The comparable figures for blacks are 14%, 2%, and 19%, respectively.

Trump supporters in the Rust Belt could rest assured that their means of livelihood will not be taken away from them as the country transitions from fossil fuels to renewables. Biden has assured workers that he will not ban fracking. Then it's a logical next step to guarantee those workers a job as the country transitions away from fracking. Leave it in the ground should be our motto, but just because we do that, there is no necessity for workers to suffer. Biden has said that he will create millions of new jobs in infrastructure and green industries. Then let's guarantee that the first workers to get those jobs will be old fossil fuel workers. Let's transition the workers as well as the source of energy. This will go a long way towards placating Trump supporters in Pennsylvania and Texas and also adding supporters to the Democratic party which more represents the interests of workers than does the Republican party.

Similarly, the Black Lives Matter Movement should embrace the Black Home Ownership Matters movement. When we talk about creating wealth, it's not in the context of Lamborghinis or yachts or multimillion dollar houses. We're talking about wealth on the order of the price of a middle class house. Wealth distributed among a large number of people not just ridiculous amounts of wealth of the 1% and billionaire class. Reducing economic inequality starts with an ambitious program to create wealth among the 99%. Debt reduction and forgiveness is also important especially for student loan debtors. Joe Biden can redeem himself here. Formerly known as the Senator from MBNA (MBNA is now a subsidiary of Bank of America), Biden voted for a provision to take bankruptcy protection away from student loan debtors. The senator was a key supporter of a bill -- the "Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005" -- that actually made it harder for consumers to get protection under bankruptcy.

Joe Biden will resuscitate America's reputation in the rest of the world as he had a wealth of experience in dealing with foreign policy for 8 years in the Obama administration. He has to be careful both in how he treats black citizens and how he treats white former Trump supporters in order to build a coalition for the Democratic party. If he does it right, the Democratic party will predominate for a generation or more. The US dodged the bullet of fascism by voting Trump out of office. The US was heading down the rabbit hole of fascism and a second 4 years of a Trump administration would have sealed the deal. By the way including a public option in Obamacare would practically be a guarantee of a transition to Medicare for All. Many of Joe Biden's positions amount to the same as Bernie Sander's positions but in a less stark and abrupt way and for more care placed in the transition process. Let's hope that Democrats take control of the Senate with the two yet to be resolved Senate races in Georgia. Working across the aisles is nice, but Republicans have never backed away from using raw power to get their way. Democrats should follow that example also.

'Nightmare Coming to an End': Vanquishing Donald Trump, Joe Biden Wins US Presidential Election

Published on Saturday, November 07, 2020

by Common Dreams

"We, the voters, decided this!"

by Common Dreams staff

 

30 Comments

Beryl McCrainey Slevin from California and who voted using a mail in ballot stands in front of the mural of Joe Biden on November 7, 2020 as locals celebrate in anticipation of Biden being elected as the next US President in Ballina, Ireland. (Photo: Charles McQuillan/Getty Images)

After days of uncertainty amid concurrent global crises, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden was declared the winner of the closely-watched contest that denied President Donald Trump a second term Saturday morning, after votes tallied in the battleground state of Pennsylvania pushed Biden over the 270 electoral vote threshold.

According to NBC News: "The former vice president amassed 273 Electoral College votes after winning Pennsylvania’s 20 electors, according to NBC News, surpassing the 270 needed to win the White House and defeat President Donald Trump."

The Associated Press, which put both Arizona and Pennsylvania in Biden's column, also called the race:

The determination in Pennsylvania put Biden at 273 electoral votes to Trump's 214—a deficit the president has no way of overcoming even as five other states—Alaska, Georgia, Nevada, and North Carolina—continue to process their results. Adding Arizona's eleven electortal to Biden's column, put his electoral count to 284.

Shortly after the news broke, Biden said in a tweet addressed to the nation that he was "honored that you have chosen me to lead our great country."

"The work ahead of us will be hard," he added, "but I promise you this: I will be a President for all Americans—whether you voted for me or not. I will keep the faith that you have place in me."

Progressives immediately celebrated Biden's victory and expressed elation over Trump's pending departure.

"This nightmare is coming to an end. Despite every attempt to silence our voices and block our vote, the will of the people won," declared George Goehl, director of the grassroots advocacy group People's Action.

"We, the voters, decided this!" said Tamara Toles O'Laughlin, North America director for 350 Action, in a statement when the news broke. "By working together, our unapologetic movement for people and planet has been steadfast and patient as our votes were counted. People power stood up to Donald Trump's fascist vision for America and elected Joe Biden and Kamala Harris into the White House. The government we chose must be sworn in because this is the people's democracy."

The subject line in an email from the Sunrise Movement was expressive: "We fucking did it."

"Excuse my language," said the group's executive director Varshini Prakash, "but we fucking did it. It's official. We WON."

"We won. And this is a big win," said María Urbina, acting co-executive director and national political director of Indivisible. "A record number of voters turned out amidst a pandemic to express the will of the people, and to put a historic ticket in the White House by clear margins. Come January, we'll move forward together to swear in a President and Vice President who are serious about governing and will be expected to deliver on an agenda of dignity and justice for all."

"Together," Urbina added, "we can make good on the promise of an America that works for all of us, that prioritizes the most vulnerable, and that ensures we can all live with dignity. For now, we celebrate. This victory belongs to all of us."

Biden's victory comes in the midst of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and related economic crisis, a monthslong national reckoning over systemic racism, seemingly endless U.S. war, and the global climate emergency. There have been more than 9.7 million Covid-19 cases and nearly 236,000 deaths in the United States out of over 49 million infections and 1.24 million deaths worldwide.

On top of that is the broader crisis of Trump's presidency, which has featured rollbacks of environmental and public health protections at the behest of deep-pocketed polluters, a "pro-corporate, anti-worker agenda," efforts to degrade the rights of historically marginalized groups, inhumane immigration policies—including forcibly separating migrant children from their parents at the border—and constant lies.

Since Election Day, Trump has escalated his attacks on American democracy by falsely declaring victory early Wednesday, tweeting disinformation about the election, and delivering on Thursday evening what one reporter called "the most dishonest speech he has ever given." His campaign has also filed multiple lawsuits this week related to the race, validating pre-election warnings that he would try to steal the vote to retain power.

The president's actions sparked nationwide demonstrations demanding election officials "count every vote." Amid fears that Trump may refuse to concede, Biden campaign spokesperson Andrew Bates said in a statement on Friday that "the United States government is perfectly capable of escorting trespassers out of the White House."

Born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, in 1942, Biden studied history and political science at the University of Delaware then earned a law degree at Syracuse University. After practicing law as a public defender and at a firm, and entering local politics in Delaware's New Castle County, he was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1972.

Biden represented Delaware in the Senate for nearly four decades—with stints chairing the Foreign Relations and Judiciary committees—before serving as vice president for both terms of President Barack Obama's administration. After declining to run in 2016, Biden beat 27 primary competitors to secure the 2020 Democratic nomination.

Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), Biden's running mate, was among his primary competitors. Born in 1964, Harris hails from Oakland, California. After graduating from Howard University, she earned a law degree from the University of California, Hastings. She was district attorney of San Francisco and attorney general of California before being elected to the U.S. Senate in 2016. She will be the first woman, as well as the first Black and South Asian American, to serve as vice president.

Since Biden selected Harris in August, progressives have pledged to continue engaging with the pair and pushing them to embrace bold, popular policies including Medicare for All and a Green New Deal. As climate campaigners have pressured Biden and Harris to pursue more ambitious proposals, they have also emphasized that "Trump's climate policies are a raging dumpster fire." On Wednesday, the U.S. ditched the 2015 Paris climate agreement at Trump's direction; Biden has vowed to reenter the accord.

While progressives—including former primary rivals Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.)—have rallied behind Biden's bid to oust Trump, the future president has also faced extensive criticism for his political track record on numerous fronts, such as his support for the Iraq War, his primary role in the 1994 crime bill, and his refusal to back universal public healthcare or a ban on fracking for fossil fuels.

"The evident defeat of Donald Trump would not have been possible without the grassroots activism and hard work of countless progressives," Norman Solomon wrote in a column for Common Dreams early Friday. "Now, on vital issues—climate, healthcare, income inequality, militarism, the prison-industrial complex, corporate power, and so much more—it's time to engage with the battle that must happen inside the Democratic Party."

Some news outlets, such as Vox and Business Insider, declared Biden victorious on Friday morning, based on a determination from their election-calling partner, Decision Desk HQ, at 8:50 am ET that the former vice president had won Pennsylvania—hours before other election-calling operations or major news network announced a winner.

"The race is over, as far as our call is concerned, because of the vote totals coming out of Philadelphia this morning," Drew McCoy, the president of Decision Desk, told Vox senior politics correspondent Andrew Prokop. "It became pretty obvious that as the remaining votes across the state and in Philadelphia are counted, Biden's lead will continue to grow."

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Off the Top of My Head

Whither Goeth the Republican Party?

by John Lawrence, November 11, 2020

It may be whimsical for me, a Democrat, to speculate about the future of the Republican party, but I am a speculator at heart and curious to see how all this plays out after the demise of Donald Trump. The Republican party, as it exists today, is an unholy alliance of Trump's base - mainly white supremicists - and the financial elite, the wealthy. The party could split in two which would result in Trump's cult like following which I've labeled the WPP (white people's party) and an assortment of principled and unprincipled conservatives. The unprincipled conservatives are only in it for the money and the power. Their problem is that they are a small minority while the WPP represents the vast majority of Republicans.

But let's examine for a moment what a principled conservative represents: fiscal prudence and propriety. A principled conservative wants government to only spend the money that it takes in in taxes and no more. In other words principled conservatives don't want the government to run deficits and further increase the national debt. Given that there are still decisions to be made about what to spend the money on, that is also what conservatives need to be concerned about. Here, in the past, conservatives have mainly made the wrong decisions. In short they've mainly decided to spend it on the military instead of on the well being of the American people. This has clearly been a major mistake on the disbursement of government monies when you consider that in the last 50 years the US has engaged in two disastrous wars - the Vietnam and the Iraq wars. These wars have involved duplicity and mendacity on behalf of two US Presidents - Lyndon Johnson and George W Bush - not a particularly good track record. The money might have been better spent. Principled conservatives, who want taxpayer money spent wisely, should be more alarmed.

So going forward I see the role of principled conservatives as being making sure that the government spends its money wisely. We have seen that the issue of deficit spending is moot. If the government can add a trillion dollars to the deficit (and hence the debt) to give tax breaks to the rich, as Trump and formerly Reagan have done, and government can spent a few trillion bailing out the too big too fail banks with its continued policy of quantitative easing, it has been made clear that deficits don't matter as Modern Monetary Theorists maintain. The US has a sovereign currency and the Federal Reserve can print as much money as it wants although this power should not be used frivolously for a number of reasons. But there is much flexibility here. So if the money is available for government to spend, the question for principled conservatives is how to spend that money wisely not how little to spend. What is clear is that spending a trillion dollars a year on the military is not spending money wisely. What's also clear is that taxation policy is necessary to redress the balance between rich and poor because economic inequality is getting out of hand. This also means that there will be less and possibly no reliance on deficit spending at all.

The wise use of government money at this point in time is exactly what is contained in Joe Biden's agenda. Addressing global warming by creating green infrastructure as well as repairing and rebuilding existing infrastructure is of paramount importance. Mitigating the effects of global warming by undergrounding utilities so that violent storms don't consistently take down the power grid is important. Creating more renewable energy installations and power plants as well as modernizing the power grid is important. Repairing roads, bridges, levees and dams is important. More dams should be built in areas where considerable rainfall is experienced. This can prevent flooding and prevent potable water just going to runoff. It also generates renewable power. Wise use of government money would also be relief of student loan debtors since this would also mean that money would be in private hands which then would go into expanding GNP. Building a reasonable national health care system which contains the runaway costs of drugs and hospitalizations would be a wise use of money that conservatives should be in favor of. Other countries have better health outcomes at half the cost of the US fragmented system. Conservatives are concerned about getting the most bang for the buck. Currently, that's not the case with our health care system. Spending government money on virus research and pandemic prevention should be an obvious investment at this time.

Some people think that Trump will continue to be a major player in Republican politics, but I don't. First of all he will lose a lot of followers just because he will be proven to be a loser. Their whole ethos is based on winning and power, and, when it becomes clear that Trump has neither power nor has he won, many of his followers will turn on him. Secondly, an out of power Trump will have to face numerous lawsuits over his taxes and his debts. The hundreds of millions of debt which Trump is personally liable for (no liability limitations for this debt) cannot be paid so he will go down as not only a loser but a deadbeat debtor with millions in tax liabilities as well, not to mention lawsuits over his sexual peccadilloes. So I suspect that the thankfully shortlived Trump era will be soon over and at last sanity will be restored to the White House. Biden has a long road ahead of him restoring the respect and prestige that the US formerly had with regard to the other nations of the world, and I think he will make much progress in this area. Rejoining the Paris Accords on global warming and the JPCOA will be the first steps.

Off the Top of My Head

The Urbanization of the Electorate Means That the US is Turning Left

by John Lawrence, November 6, 2020

Urbanization is happening not only in the US but all over the world. In the US the phenomenon is that the rural/urban split signifies also a liberal/conservative split. People in the rural hinterlands supported Donald Trump and people in the cities supported Joe Biden. As the country urbanizes, there are now more people living in cities than in rural areas. The voting maps in some states showed huge areas of red and only small areas of blue, and yet there were more people in the blue areas who voted Democratic than there were in the red areas who voted Republican.

This election was notable because of the huge turnout which was facilitated by the extensive use of mail in balloting. It's clear at this point that Biden will win the Presidency. What's not clear is how the crucial Senate races will pan out. If Republicans maintain control of the Senate, their leader Mitch McConnell will do to Biden what he did to Obama. He said after Obama was elected that his number one priority was to make Obama a one term President. He did this by blocking almost every progressive measure that the Democratic controlled House put forward. These measures never reached Obama's desk for his signature. In order for any progressive legislation to be enacted into law, it must be passed by both the House and the Senate. Mitch McConnell saw to it that no progressive legislation got passed the Senate. So a lot of the things that Obama would have liked to have done didn't stand a chance because of one man who in the last analysis is as powerful or more powerful than the President of the United States.

Right now two Senate races in Georgia are headed for run offs. If the Democrats win both races, it's possible that there would be a 50 - 50 tie in the Senate. In this case vice President Kamala Harris would cast the deciding vote in any legislation. This would be a good thing since it means that progressive legislation developed by the House could not be blocked by the Senate. The only caveat is that the filibuster rule would have to be eliminated because, if it were not, any Republican Senator could nix any legislation. It's not clear how this would play out with the Supreme Court whether or not they would play the role of declaring any progressive legislation unconstitutional. At any rate with Joe Biden as President we will be rejoining the Iran nuclear deal - the JCPOA. What is also clear is that we will be rejoining the Paris Accords on global warming. These are two crucial things that Joe Biden can do singlehandedly.

What is clear about this election is that there was a record turnout. The massive use of mail in ballots favored Democrats. Traditionally Republicans have won elections by suppressing the vote of the other side. Conservative political activist Paul Weyrich famously 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." That quote says it all. Leaving Aside the fact that Weyrich was encouraging Christian voters to go along with him in suppressing the voting rights of some Americans - a not very Christian thing to do, Republicans have always used voter suppression as a tactic. This year, thanks to mail in voting, that Republican strategy was not so successful. Many essential workers who would probably vote Democratic have had to work rather than taking off a day to wait in long voter lines at the polls. This year they did not have to make that decision to lose a day's pay in order to vote. That's why the voter turn out was so high.

It is clear that a new era is dawning. What is not clear yet is whether or not Democrats will be able to go full steam ahead with Joe Biden's agenda to strengthen Obamacare by adding a public option, something Republicans blocked in the original legislation, launching a full on attack on global warming, augmenting social security for seniors, easing student loan debt for debtors, launching a massive infrastructure program, reducing economic inequality by taxing the rich and other progressive measures. This will depend on how much control Democrats wield in Congress.

Off the Top of My Head

Trump Campaign Rallies COVID Superspreader Events

by John Lawrence, November 2, 2020

A Stanford study concluded that Trump's campaign rallies ultimately resulted in more than 30,000 confirmed cases of Covid-19 and likely led to more than 700 deaths, though not necessarily among attendees. One benefit of the election no matter how it turns out is that Trump will not be holding any more superspreader events thus saving the American public from even more cases and deaths from COVID. Today I will be glued to the tube (except for my 11:15 AM reservation for a lane at the Y pool). This election like no other will set the course for human history on planet Earth. Will we have a humane society or will we have a super narcissistic egotist at the helm? Four more years of Donald Trump will doom the Earth to a fiery and a watery (depending on where you live) demise. The effort to mitigate global warming will be for nought and it will be full steam ahead for the superspreading of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere.

Bishop Gerald Green a 66 year old prominent evengelical pastor in Chesterfield, Virginia, exhorted his congregation on the fourth Sunday in March not to fear the virus. Like many ecumenical leaders, Glenn, a former police officer, didn't heed the advice of Virginia governor Ralph Northam and others who warned against gatherings of more than 10 people. "I firmly believe that God is larger than this dreaded virus," Glenn told his parishioners. "If I had to deliver my own eulogy, I'd say, 'God is greater than any challenge you and I face.' That would be my epitaph." Glenn died from COVID-19 three weeks later. His religious faith never appeared to waver, but neither did the deadly resolve of the virus.

I wonder if his preferred epitaph is emblazoned on his gravestone. It seems that Glenn's beliefs about God were somewhat invalid. After all God created viruses as well as every other living being or entity (is the virus a being?) on planet Earth. Perhaps we would be better served by a belief in God that acknowledged that we better take care of the planet or else suffer the fate of extinction as many other animals have. Perhaps God wants us to heed his warnings or else suffer the consequences. So far humans have exploited the planet for profit. We have not been good stewards. Money has been more important than saving the environment. Trump has exemplified this by putting lobbyists for the fossil fuel industry in charge of the Environmental Protection Agency. His message is hardly indecipherable: go ahead pollute all you want and maximize your profits. President Trump's first EPA Administrator, Scott Pruitt, resigned effective July 6, 2018, amid a series of scandals. Deputy Administrator Andrew Wheeler, a former coal industry lobbyist, started serving as Acting Administrator on July 9, 2018. Wheeler was confirmed as EPA Administrator on February 28, 2019.

Before his short stint in the Federal government, Scott Pruitt was elected Attorney General of Oklahoma. In that role, he opposed abortion, same-sex marriage, the Affordable Care Act, and environmental regulations as a self-described "leading advocate against the EPA's activist agenda." In his campaigns for Oklahoma Attorney General, Pruitt received major corporate and employee campaign contributions from the fossil fuel industry, taking in at least $215,574 between 2010 and 2014 even though he ran unopposed in the latter year. As Oklahoma's Attorney General, Pruitt sued the Environmental Protection Agency at least 14 times regarding the agency's actions. In 2012, Pruitt was elected as chairman of the Republican Attorneys General Association and re-elected for a second term in February 2013.

How ironic that a pandemic which arguably came about due to environmental degradation was unleashed on a nation the President of which didn't give a damn about the environment, and then President Trump completely mismanaged the response to this pandemic. He doesn't deserve another 4 years as the most powerful man on the planet when he clearly has no regard for the planet. Anyway today's outcome will be known soon enough. The American citizens will decide which road they want to go down, the road of a narcissist who cares about nothing but himself or the road of a man dedicated to making the country and the world a better place.

I voted for Joe Biden. I hope you did too. I think God gave us a brain so that we could figure out the correct way to take care of planet Earth. If we could figure out how to use fossil fuels as an energy source, we are intelligent enough to know when we should stop using them. Instead of a nation led by a self serving President and his cult like followers, I pray we elect a President who is not only religious but compassionate and intelligent.

Off the Top of My Head

Trump's 'Cull the Herd' Philosophy wrt COVID

by John Lawrence, November 2, 220

Trump's philosophy is that people who succumb to COVID are 'suckers and losers' which is what he said about those who die in war. He himself exemplifies this survival of the fittest philosophy. Take him as an example. He got COVID and bounced back within a couple of days. He's out there doing four or five campaign rallies a day, quite remarkable for a 74 year old man. So he must have some superior constitution to overcome the virus and be bouncing back big time. His example is that people with superior constitutions will hardly be affected with COVID, and that the US should cull the herd of suckers and losers that are so affected. Especially since most of the suckers and losers that succumb to COVID are blacks Latinos and old people who were going to die anyway.

Hitler had a somewhat similar philosophy. In addition to Jews, he was culling the herd of mentally defectives, homosexuals and non-Aryans, in other words people he considered to be weaklings or inferiors. Trump has the same philosophy: why let the American economy go down the tubes in order to try and save the lives of suckers and losers especially since a preponderance of them are minorities ^i.e. non-Americans. Beyond that Trump and his followers are only interested in short term profits for themselves. They adhere to the Ayn Randist philosophy of extreme selfishness. Nobody counts for anything except themselves. It's the extreme opposite of the philosophy of caring which the Biden campaign represents. Trump and his cultlike following don't care about anyone but themselves.They don't want to diminish their own prospects in order to do anything (example: mask wearing) to help anyone else, especially those whom they consider inferior to themselves. Hitler would smile on this philosophy.

The Trumpistas worship power whether that power is political, financial or athletic. They relish powerful pickup trucks flying Trump flags, sports bars, football and anything else that represents power and winning. They could care less about what happens to the earth 10 years or 100 years from now. They want their selfish interests to be realized now. They're not interested in doing anything about gloabal warming because it's not in their immediate interests. Wall Street seconds this emotion by only promoting those who can demonstrate short term profits. As in football winning is the only thing that matters, winning by any means necessary. The values of Trumpistas are that people who care for those who are poor or sick or vulnerable are suckers and losers. People who succumb to COVID are weaklings. People like Trump who get over it in a few days are the winners. They want to cull the herd of the losers who get COVID and die.

There are those like Joe Biden and mostly other Democrats who want to take care of those like the elderly and the sick and the weak rather than letting them die and have the herd culled from their prescence. After all they are someone's loved ones too. Nixon had a philosophy of "benign neglect." In other words just let them die. And let the earth die as well if it gets in the way of corporate profits which it does if respect and caring for the environment is taken into consideration. So let's just have another maskless motorcycle rally or campaign event and see who is superior and who is a loser that gets COVID and dies. After Trump's Tulsa rally Herman Cain, former black Presidential candidate and Trump supporter, got COVID and died. In Trump's view probably he was just another loser. Since mostly minorities are doing the dying, this just proves the superiority of the white race. Hitler would seem to be vindicated.

So the opposite philosophy from the philosophy of power and selfishness and winning is the philosophy of caring. It is exemplified by the Hippocratic Oath which all doctors take. It requires doctors and health care professionals to save every life if at all possible. If it were not for this attitude and philosophy, in a Trumpian value system, doctors might make the decision to let people die who couldn't pay for their services or to let people die who weren't of the same race or to let old people die who were going to die shortly anyway or to let people die who they considered to be suckers and losers. Joe Biden and the Democrats generally have the opposite philosophy, the philosophy which the Pope has called a  'preferential option for the poor,' a philosophy of caring for the weakest among us. In a few days we shall see which philosophy will hold sway in America and quite possibly in the rest of the world as America sets the example.

Off the Top of My Head

The Biden Plan for Senior Citizens

by John Lawrence, October 30, 2020

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

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

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

Off the Top of My Head

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

by John Lawrence, October 28, 2020

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

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

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

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

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

Off the Top of My Head

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

by John Lawrence, October 27, 2020

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

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

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

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

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

VOTE!

 

 

Off the Top of My Head

The Future of Jobs

by John Lawrence, October 26, 2020

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

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

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

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

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

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

The 4 Biggest Takeaways from The Final Debate

by Robert Reich

Friday, October 23, 2020

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

Here are the 4 biggest takeaways.

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

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

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

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

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

2. Trump’s conspiracy theories were beyond comprehension.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Off the Top of My Head

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

by John Lawrence

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

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

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

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

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

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

Off the Top of My Head

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

by John Lawrence, October22, 2020

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

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

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

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

Off the Top of My Head

Can American Democracy Survive?

by John Lawrence, October 21, 2020

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Off the Top of My Head

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

by John Lawrence, October 19, 2020

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

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

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

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

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

Off the Top of My Head

Why Should Joe Biden Answer the Question?

by John Lawrence, October 18, 2020

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

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

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

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

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

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

Off the Top of My Head

Has China Won?

by John Lawrence, October 16, 2020

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

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

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

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

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

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

4 Key Takeaways from the Harris-Pence VP Debate

by Robert Reich

Thursday, October 8, 2020

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Off the Top of My Head

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

by John Lawrence, October 9, 2020

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Off the Top of My Head

Let's Talk About the Communist Bogieman

by John Lawrence, October 8, 2020

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Off the Top of My Head

Is Ruth Bader Ginsburg Looking Down on Us?

by John Lawrence, October 3, 2020

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

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

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

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

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

Donald Trump Ensures First Presidential Debate is National Humiliation. A Shitshow.

from the Guardian

Cry, the beloved country. Donald Trump ensured Tuesday’s first US presidential debate was the worst in American history, a national humiliation. The rest of the world – and future historians – will presumably look at it and weep.

More likely than not, according to opinion polls, his opponent Joe Biden will win the November election and bring the republic back from the brink. If Trump is re-elected, however, this dark, horrifying, unwatchable fever dream will surely be the first line of America’s obituary.

Only one man looked remotely presidential on the debate stage in Cleveland, Ohio, and it was not the incumbent. He interrupted, ranted, raged, spewed lies and interrupted some more. Oh, and he passed on an opportunity to condemn white supremacists, instead telling them to “stand back and stand by”.

The debate moderator, Chris Wallace of Fox News, did not cover himself in glory either. He was a like a school supply teacher, hopelessly out of his depth as unruly children run riot. He did not enforce the rules or cut the president’s mic.

Facing this asymmetric bullying, Biden showed self-control and stood his ground. He spoke for tens of millions of Americans when he demanded: “Will you shut up, man?” – the Biden campaign rushed out this slogan on a T-shirt before the debate was even over.

Five weeks before the election, the debate pitted an ageing white male against an ageing orange male sweating like Richard Nixon in 1960. Anyone hoping for elegant verbal jousting or rapier-like wit was in for a disappointment.

Perhaps it was just as well that coronavirus guidelines ensured the men stood apart at separate lecterns on blue carpeted stage beneath an eagle symbol with the words “The union and the constitution forever”. No handshakes, no prowling by Trump as he did behind Hillary Clinton’s back in 2016, no physical violence. Katie Hill, a former Democratic congresswoman, tweeted: “I literally don’t know how Biden is not running over and punching him in the face.”

Trump looked more like a challenger than an incumbent, butting in and hurling petty insults such as: “Don’t ever use the word ‘smart’ with me … There’s nothing smart about you, Joe.” The hapless Wallace struggled to gain control as viewers heard only a cacophony of voices. “I am the moderator of this debate, let me ask my question,” he almost pleaded.

Sometimes Wallace was too easy on Trump, though he did tell him at one point: “Frankly, you’ve been doing more interrupting.”

Biden mostly kept his cool, preferring to laugh in world-weary bemusement. “That was really a productive segment, wasn’t it?” he said sarcastically early on. “Keep yappin’, man.”

Other memorable lines included: “You are the worst president that America has ever had”; “The fact is that everything he’s saying so far is simply a lie. I’m not here to call out his lies. Everybody knows he a liar”; “It’s hard to get any word in with this clown – excuse me, this person”; “President Trump wouldn’t know a suburb unless he took a wrong turn.”

And, on the coronavirus crisis, which has killed more than 200,000 people in the US: “‘It is what it is’ because you are who you are,” Biden said as he blamed Trump for mishandling the pandemic, and added: “Maybe you can inject some bleach into your arm, that would take care of it.” At moments Biden cut through the chaos by looking directly at the camera and appealing to voters: “This isn’t about his family or my family,” as the attacks turned highly personal. “It’s about your family.”
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He also avoided some of the missteps that plagued his Democratic primary debate performances. He brushed off the Trump campaign attack that he is beholden to the far left, insisting: “I am the Democratic party right now.”

Biden condemned Trump over recent reported comments denigrating dead soldiers as “losers” and “suckers”. He said of his late son Beau, who served: “My son was in Iraq. He spent a year there. He got the Bronze Star. He got Conspicuous Service Medal. He was not a ‘loser’. He was a patriot.”

Trump clumsily tried to change the subject to Biden’s son Hunter. Biden retorted: “I’m talking about my son Beau Biden,” and then addressed the attack on Hunter, in which Trump falsely claimed he was dishonorably discharged from the military.

“My son, like a lot of people … had a drug problem,” Biden shot back. “He’s overtaken it. He’s fixed it. He’s worked on it. And I’m proud of him.”

There was not on iota of sympathy from the president or effort to pay tribute to Beau Biden, who died of a brain tumor in 2015.

It was a brief moment of emotional clarity in an otherwise nightmarish, incoherent mess. Worst of all, when Wallace asked Trump if he was willing to condemn white supremacists and militia groups, the president couldn’t do it, saying: “Proud Boys, stand back and stand by! But I’ll tell you what, somebody’s got to do something about antifa and the left.”

It is hard to imagine Trump won over a single voter in the suburbs, where he is particularly trailing Biden, or anywhere else. Most viewers will have probably been left feeling angry or sad and may have switched off long before the end.

Wallace mused earlier this week: “If I’ve done my job right, at the end of the night, people will say, ‘That was a great debate, who was the moderator?’”

The near universal verdict was - expressed in the words of CNN’s political correspondent Dana Bash – a “shitshow”.

Bernie Sanders: Ruinous 2020 Debate Showcased Why Trump Is 'Most Dangerous President' in US History

Published on Wednesday, September 30, 2020

by Common Dreams

"If you believe in democracy, if you believe in the Constitution and in the rule of law, Trump has got to go."

by Jake Johnson, staff writer

 

26 Comments

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) speaks at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. on September 24, 2020. (Photo: Nicholas Kamm/AFP via Getty Images)

Sen. Bernie Sanders said following Tuesday night's 2020 debate that President Donald Trump's performance—including his refusal to condemn armed white supremacists, attack on the legitimacy of the election, and rejection of science—showcased why he is "the most dangerous president in the history of the United States of America" and must be defeated in November.

"This is a guy who continues to say he may not lose office," the Vermont senator said in an appearance on "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" late Tuesday. "You wanna be shocked, Jimmy? What about learning that you got a guy in office now who says, 'Well, maybe I will lose the election. So what? That doesn't mean to say I'm gonna leave office because, as you know, everything is fraudulent. If I lose, by definition the election is rigged.' Think about that."

Sanders was referencing Trump's false claim—which he has made numerous times in recent weeks, including during the Republican National Convention—that the election is "rigged" against him due to the increase in mail-in voting driven by the coronavirus pandemic.

"If you believe in democracy," Sanders continued, "if you believe in the Constitution and in the rule of law, Trump has got to go."

Watch:

 

While Sanders didn't shy away from his disagreements with Democratic nominee Joe Biden on the Green New Deal, Medicare for All, and other progressive policy goals, the Vermont senator said the differences between the former vice president and Trump on climate, healthcare, and other crucial issues are stark and were on full display Tuesday night.

"I happen to think, and I think people saw this tonight, that in Donald Trump, we have the most dangerous president in the history of this country, somebody who not only lies all of the time, Jimmy, but really doesn't believe in science," Sanders said.

"We have a president who continues to reject science. That's true for the coronavirus, that is true for climate change as well," the senator continued. "What we need, and I think Biden will give us, is a government that at least listens to science and develops legislation based on science... He understands that climate change is an existential threat to the planet."

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'Clarion Call to All Progressive Environmentalists': To Defeat Trump's Planetary Destruction, Climate Heavyweights Endorse Biden

Published on Thursday, September 24, 2020

by Common Dreams

"After four years of chaos, tragedy, and absolute corruption, the choice we face in November could not be any clearer or more important."

by Jessica Corbett, staff writer

 

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A political poster favoring U.S. presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) is placed on a front lawn September 11, 2020 in Scranton, Pennsylvania. (Photo: Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images)

Condemning President Donald Trump's demonstrated hostility toward environmental protections and agenda actively exacerbating the climate emergency, the political action arms of both 350 and Friends of the Earth on Thursday endorsed Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.

"The stakes are clear and present. The planet cannot withstand four more years of Trump."
—Tamara Toles O'Laughlin, 350 Action

Biden and his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), "are running on the strongest climate platform of any presidential ticket, ever," 350 Action North America director Tamara Toles O'Laughlin said in a statement. "We are confident that they will meet the scale of the climate crisis, and respond to the compounding crises of Covid-19, a failed economy, and systemic racism."

"The stakes are clear and present. The planet cannot withstand four more years of Trump," declared Toles O'Laughlin. "For the sake of our democracy, we must seize this moment to make every vote count and elect leaders who will rebuild a framework that is accountable to science and justice."

Friends of the Earth Action president Erich Pica recognized in a statement Thursday that his group declined to fully endorse former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee in 2016. "We underestimated Donald Trump's ability to win the electoral college," he explained. "We will not make this mistake again."

"After four years of chaos, tragedy, and absolute corruption, the choice we face in November could not be any clearer or more important," Pica said. "That is why Friends of the Earth Action is endorsing Vice President Biden for President. We must elect him in November, and we need every progressive voter to join us."

While the climate groups know full well that a Biden-Harris administration will need to be aggressively challenged to go further on the issue once in office, they say grassroots pressure at least has a chance of moving them toward the kind of solutions scientists say are necessary.

"In the primaries, we pushed the Biden campaign hard for people and the planet. And with time and relentless pressure, we have seen the campaign take up the demands of our movement," said Toles O'Laughlin. "The fingerprints of long standing environmental justice, community leaders, energy justice advocates, and youth pushing for change are all over Biden's climate plan."

"Together we will continue to demand a swift end to fossil fuel subsidies; hold fossil fuel companies accountable; transition to a 100% clean energy economy, and achieve real gains on net zero emissions by 2035," she added.

 

Pica specifically pointed to the $2 trillion green energy and environmental justice proposal that Biden unveiled in July as evidence that he "clearly listened to community members, activists, and scientific experts and adjusted his plan so it more closely matches the scale of the crisis we face."

"While there is no doubt that we will continue to have deep disagreements with Vice President Biden over policy, personnel, and ambition, he has already shown willingness to shift his approach," Pica said. "He heeded progressive calls to center environmental justice and overhauled his climate and energy plans to match the scale of the crisis we face."

Friends of the Earth Action's endorsement "is a clarion call to all progressive environmentalists," he added, including those who supported Biden's progressive primary rivals, Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.)—who both now back the nominee—as well as those who may not have voted in 2016, or those who voted third party.

As early in-person and absentee voting has kicked off in some states this month, the Biden-Harris ticket has continued to stack up support from climate experts and advocates who believe, as the editors of Scientific American put it in their historic endorsement of the former vice president last week, "the 2020 election is literally a matter of life and death."

350 Action executive director May Boeve echoed that message Thursday, emphasizing the importance of electing political leaders who are willing to "show up on the international stage to tackle the climate breakdown we face, and seize opportunities to build a world rooted in just recovery and real action."

"We are faced with the election of our lifetime and the outcome will have considerable impacts for the United States and the world," Boeve said. "With scientists saying we have eight years to avert the worst impacts of the climate crisis, we are endorsing Biden and Harris because they are best positioned to make the United States a global leader on climate action."

"In the last four years, we've seen the intensification of climate impacts across the U.S., including devastating wildfires, hurricanes, floods, and droughts," she noted. "This crisis has been further exacerbated by four years of federal climate rollbacks that have set us back significantly. Biden and Harris must reverse the current administration's dismantling of climate policies and set in place a robust climate agenda that phases us off fossil fuels."

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Off the Top of My Head

China Leads the Way on Electric Vehicle Production

by John Lawrence, September 19, 2020

A Chinese company has developed an electric car that can go 438 miles without recharging. They have developed an infrastructure of charging stations. China surpassed the United States to become the world's largest automobile market in 2009 with a record 13.9 million vehicles sold in the country, compared to 10.43 million cars and light trucks sold in the United States. China leads the world in deployment of electric vehicles. At the end of June 2019, almost half the electric cars and 99% of the electric buses in the world were in China. China reached its goal of 5 million electric vehicles on the road by 2020. China is both the largest manufacturer and consumer market for electric vehicles in the world, accounting for more than half of all electric cars made and sold in the world in 2018. China also makes 99% of the world's electric buses. China manufactured and sold about 1.2 million plug-in electric vehicles in 2018, which was more than three times the sales in the US. China has become the fastest and largest growing market for electric vehicles in the world. New electric cars had a market share of 4.2% of new cars sold in China for the entire year of 2018. Big cities like Shenzhen and Beijing are rapidly adopting electric vehicles -- for example, all of Shenzhen's 16,000 public buses are now electric, and soon all of its 22,000 taxis will be electric cars as well.

You see, dear reader, the US needs to play catch up. That's exactly what Joe Biden wants to do. China subsidizes its electric vehicle industry and subsidizes the purchase of electric vehicles by the public which can be purchased for $30 to $40 thousand US before subsidies of $8000 or so making them very cost competitive with gas guzzling vehicles. So China has an industrial policy which is so far anathema in the US. For the US government to have an industrial policy or to subsidize certain industries smacks of socialism. But without Joe Biden's plan or some other plan, the US will fall far behind China in electric vehicle production and for the necessary R&D and infrastructure. China's EV production is also part of their plan for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. They also need to replace their numerous coal fired electricity generating plants with renewables.

The number of EV charging stations in China is growing rapidly. In January 2019, the Chinese Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure Promotion Agency (EVCIPA) reported 808,000 EV chargers in China (an 80% increase in one year). Of these, roughly 330,000 were public chargers, and 480,000 were home chargers. China has hundreds of auto manufacturers, many of which are owned in whole or in part by provincial or local governments. According to some reports, as many as 200 Chinese auto manufacturers have produced electric vehicles. In 2018, 1527 fuel cell electric vehicles also were sold in China, bringing the country’s total fuel cell electric vehicle fleet to 3428.

But it's not only China's government or SOEs (State Owned Enterprises) that are investing in China's EV market. It's China's private sector as well. In 2019 Evergrande, a Chinese firm believed to be the biggest real estate company in the world and backers of electric vehicle startups like Faraday Future and NEVS, announced a massive $23 billion investment in the production of 1 million electric cars and 500 GWh of batteries per year. With a valuation at more than $100 billion and revenues of over $40 billion, Evergrande is now looking to expand into electric vehicles. After acquiring large stakes in two electric vehicle companies, Evergrande claims to have “acquired key technologies in the sector” and now plans to launch its own production of electric vehicles in China in a big way. So why aren't American corporations making investments like these? They still seem committed to producing gas guzzlers. The Trump administration even has challenged California's attempts to set higher emissions standards. Trump revoked a longstanding waiver that allows California to set higher fuel emission standards than the federal government. The US is going backwards on greenhouse gas emissions. Meanwhile, the earth burns and floods.

The waiver revocation is also part of the Trump administration’s longstanding attempt to roll back federal fuel economy standards for cars and light trucks. Californians buy more cars than people in any other state, which means the emissions standards it sets for itself have big repercussions on the US economy as a whole. Thirteen states and the District of Columbia have also adopted California’s vehicle emissions rules. So the California waiver was a big impediment to the Trump administration’s larger goal of rolling back regulations that were implemented to combat climate change. As a global warming denier, Trump is committed to dumping more rather than less greenhouses gasses into the atmosphere.

China's economy is a fusion of a socialist and free market economy so it's somewhat unique in the world. Like the US Federal Reserve, the Chinese central bank, the People's Bank of China, can print yuan, the Chinese currency. The Chinese market is more devoted to manufacturing for both internal sales and export while the US economy is now focused more on financialization which means making money off of money or betting in the Wall Street casino. The US is devoted to making money by any means necessary which has led to increasing inequality. The Chinese market is more devoted to making money from sales of actual goods and services and is less financialized. So US capital doesn't go so much into manufacturing as it goes into financial markets. China is more dedicated to decreasing greenhouse gas emissions while the Trump administration doesn't even believe in global warming and is a full steam ahead fossil fuel supporter.

Off the Top of My Head

Joe Biden's Green Deal

by John Lawrence, September 18, 2020

Just as soon as progressives come up with something called a Green New Deal, Republicans set out to demonize it, the name that is. They don't even bother to argue the merits; they just demonize the name. That's their MO. So Joe Biden, not being a dummy, doesn't say that he's for a Green New Deal. He says he's for Biden's Green Deal. That phraseology is not as easily demonizable, but it amounts to the same thing. Here's the thing (as Biden would say): the jobs created by revolutionizing the US infrastructure in such a way that we reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050 is not only a Green New Deal, it's a big deal for job creation. The "full employment" economy pre-pandemic, which Trump likes to tout as being so great, was like a house built upon sand. 40% of the population could not cover an emergency expense of $400. It was an economy in which there were a few good jobs, but the rest of the jobs were service sector jobs like baristas, tattoo artists, bartenders, servers, nail salon artists and uber drivers. All these jobs didn't even exist when there was a full employment economy consisting of manufacturing jobs in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.

Now Joe wants to recreate the equivalent of those manufacturing jobs, good paying union jobs recreating American infrastructure in such a way that reduces greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2050. One of his signature pet projects is the installation of electric car recharging stations on a massive scale. Joe has also committed to carbon free electricity generating plants by 2035. Right now many of these plants are powered by fossil fuels which emit tons of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. Putting electric vehicles on the roads and building pollution free power generating plants will go a long way toward America becoming free of greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. So call it what you want - a Green New Deal or Joe Biden's Green Deal, it amounts to the same thing. In reality it's a Big Fucking Deal, as Biden himself once so famously said.

Another BFD is student loan debt forgiveness. Joe is committed to Elizabeth Warren's plan for student loan debt forgiveness. Right now there is over $1.5 trillion in student loan debt. This means that so many young people cannot afford to get married, start a family and get a mortgage on a house. They have to move back home and live in their parents' basement or sleep on their parent's couch (in my case). A lot of this money is money owed to the government which the government is even making a profit on. It's not right. Senators Schumer and Warren have called on President Trump to forgive student loans. He won't do it. Biden will. You can see the proposed legislation here.

There are so many new technologies that can be developed that will not only create solid American jobs (not gig work and tattoo artists), but will also create industries that will stay right here on American soil and not be sent to China like US corporations did with their outsourcing spree starting in the 1990s. Keep those industries here. Keep the jobs here. Keep the manufacturing here. This is what Joe Biden is all about. If this is socialism, so be it.

Off the Top of My Head

Worldwide Greenhouse Gas Emissions Must Decrease 3.33% Per Year To Get To Net-Zero by 2050

by John Lawrence, September 17, 2020

This is just simple mathematics: 30 years times 3.33% = 100%. Instead GHGs have been increasing year over year every year since 1990 with the exception of 1992 (tied with 1991), 1998 (.1 Gt Eq lower than 1997) and 2009. In 2018, the world spewed 51.8 Gt CO₂ eq of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Gt is a billion tons. CO₂ eq includes methane and other greenhouse gasses. That means that on average there must be a 1.72 Gt CO₂ reduction every year from now to 2050 to get to net zero by that date. In 2009 there was a reduction of .5 Gt CO₂ from the year before. That was the only year with a substantial reduction and it does not even come close to 1.72. Meanwhile, in the last 10 years GHGs have been increasing not decreasing. Obviously, radical change throughout the world is required if planet earth is to reach net zero by 2050.

Since China and the US are the two largest GHG emitters, they must cooperate to lead the world in reducing GHGs. Particularly in India which is developing rapidly, coal fired electricity generating plants are increasing GHGs. China also has a lot of coal fired electricity generating plants, but is developing renewable energy rapidly. The US is using natural gas more and coal less, but natural gas, which is methane, is responsible for increased emissions of methane so it's no panacea. There are serious concerns about methane leakage in distribution systems and in fracking. At this point the US is producing more GHGs from methane than from coal.

This is from "All-Electric America":

Transforming the United States' current electricity capacity, which is roughly one million megawatts, will require developing approximately 60,000 megawatts of new renewable capacity a year over a thirty-five year time frame to supply all of our energy needs in 2050. In 2015 China planned to install roughly 40,000 megawatts of new renewable power and by 2030 is committed to add a total of 800,000 to one million megawatts, the equivalent of today's total US electrical capacity. There is no doubt that America can do the same if we decide to.

Joe Biden has a plan to develop the electrical recharging infrastructure equivalent to today's network of gas stations so that electric vehicles can be much more prevalent. There will also be incentives for people to purchase electric vehicles. Hydrogen fuel cells are also a technology that can power trucks, ships and even airplanes. Hydrogen is a renewable energy since when it burns, the only by product produced is water. An all electric train system is also possible if the US is determined to do it.

Solar and wind power can serve all of America's needs. Storage of renewable power is also under development. Tesla's Powerwall is available today. It stores energy from solar panels when the sun is shining and delivers the power when the sun isn't. The problem isn't that renewable energy isn't available. The problem is that fossil fuel energy is cheap and plentiful, but if the earth is to remain a habitable planet, 75% of it must remain in the ground. The notion of a carbon budget is that there is an amount of GHGs that can be deposited in the atmosphere between now and 2050 that, if we go beyond that budget, earth's temperature increase will rise above 2 degrees C. As of 2018, the budget for staying below the 2°C threshold has been calculated at approximately 1170 Gt. Calculating approximately 100 Gt added in 2019 and 2020, we have approximately 1079 Gt left. That means we have approximately 20 years at the current rate before earth's temperature rises above 2 degrees C and all hell breaks loose.

As if all hell hasn't broken loose already. 12 million acres burnt in Australia in 2020; 6 million acres burnt in California in 2020. Major hurricanes landing in the Gulf coast faster than people can recover from the last one. Huge chunks of Arctic and Antarctic glaciers breaking off. The Antarctic glaciers have the potential of raising sea levels by 10 feet. What is President Trump doing? Hiding his head in the sand. He has stripped the EPA of environmental regulations and is a global warming denier. Meanwhile, our carbon budget is being exhausted while the US is literally doing nothing about it. That's why it's so important that Joe Biden is elected. He has promised to get us to net zero by 2050.

Off the Top of My Head

Will Conspiracy Theories Determine the Next Election?

by John Lawrence, September 7, 2020

Conspiracy theories are as old as time. Did Moses really get the stone tablets given to him by God on Mount Sinai that contained the Ten Commandments? Or did Moses make the stone tablets containing the commandments himself and make up the story that God gave them to him? Was this a conspiracy theory fashioned to make people believe in the importance of the Ten Commandments? That made it unthinkable to question their validity? Fast forward to today and we see conspiracy theories at the heart of right wing politics, particularly at the heart of Trump's campaigns both for the 2016 and 2020 election cycles. Going back through history we see conspiracy theories at the heart of Republican politics during Senator Joseph McCarthy's investigations of communists in the 1950s. He had a lot of people believing there were communists everywhere until his allegations were eventually proven to be without any basis whatsoever.

More alarmingly, Trump's embracing of conspiracy theories is reminiscent of the days when Hitler had a hold on the minds and hearts of the German people. The Nazi party was comprised of a few old men drinking in a Munich beer hall until Hitler wandered in and started speaking. Very soon the beer hall was too small to hold the crowds that flocked in to hear Hitler speak, and we know the rest of the story. Trump is certainly not as dynamic a speaker as Hitler, but he knows the value of showmanship as Hitler certainly did. Hitler developed the symbols of the Third Reich, the flags, the torchlight parades , the entertainment value of telling the Germans that it wasn't their fault they lost the First World War. It was a Jewish conspiracy. Trump deals in racism as well. He gives his followers a good deal of symbolism and entertainment. His cohorts make up for the fact that Trump is not a great speaker like Hitler since social media amplifies whatever conspiracies anyone comes up with that give comfort and consolation to his followers who seem to need something to believe in even if it is at odds with the truth and with facts. In the process the truth gets distorted or forgotten about altogether. Fiction is so much more entertaining.

While the Ten Commandments have arguably had a constructive effect on history even though the story of how they were obtained may be apocryphal, this is not true of a lot of conspiracy theories including the ones Trump embraces today. The latest is Qanon which seems to be spreading like wildfire on social media. One Republican politician, Marjorie Greene, is getting herself elected to Congress as an upholder of that particular theory. It seems that nothing is too far fetched for right wing conspiracy theory followers to embrace. The most egregious example is that of Pizzagate. Proponents of the Pizzagate conspiracy theory falsely claimed that several high-ranking Democratic Party officials and U.S. restaurants were engaged in a human trafficking and child sex ring. One of the establishments allegedly involved was the Comet Ping Pong pizzeria in Washington, D.C. One true believer in this theory, Edgar Welch, went so far as to drive to Washington, DC, armed to the teeth, in an attempt to put an end to what he believed to be a child sex trafficking ring. He fired some shots into the restaurant, but luckily no one was hurt and Welch is now serving a four year term in prison as part of a plea deal while others are serving much longer sentences for possession of marijuana. This case shows, not only that one armed true believer could have done a lot of damage, but also how many people while enjoying the entertainment value of this conspiracy were not foolhardy enough to actually do something about it.

Don't underestimate the entertainment value of Trump's campaign rallies and symbolism and how that mirrors the entertainment value of Hitler's campaign rallies and symbolism. Trump came to most Americans' attention as an entertainer on a TV show, The Apprentice, and he clearly relishes the rallies he has held regularly during his Presidency until the coronavirus put a cramp in his style. The loss of these in person campaign rallies will probably hurt Trump's chances of reelection. In fact it may be a lucky break for the Biden Harris campaign. Hitler suffered from no such pandemic so he was able to entertain, spin conspiracy theories, console and comfort the German people many of whom came under his sway as true believers.

It is no joke that so many of the conspiracy theory true believers are also gun nuts. They represent the culture in which we find ourselves in which consists almost entirely of guns and criminality portrayed as entertainment in movies and on TV. Immersed in this gun culture some people come to see it as representative of real life in America today. Fortunately, not everyone acts on what for most represents entertainment, but some come to take politics, as espoused by Trump, as necessitating taking things into their own hands by means of a gun. From Timothy McVeigh to Edgar Welch to the Charleston church shooter, Dylan Roof, these people are usually white supremacists to whom Trump has given a dog whistle telling them it's OK to believe what they believe and for some to act on those beliefs.

Can the Democratic Party Landslide the Criminal Tyrant Trump?

Published on Saturday, September 05, 2020

by Common Dreams

Why has the Democratic Party been losing again and again at the federal and state level to the worst, cruelest, soft on corporate corruption, war-mongering, anti-worker Republican Party in history?

by Ralph Nader

 

20 Comments

Former vice-president and Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden (L) and Senator from California and Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris greet supporters outside the Chase Center in Wilmington, Delaware, at the conclusion of the Democratic National Convention, held virtually amid the novel coronavirus pandemic, on August 20, 2020. (Photo: Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images)

Why can't the Democratic Party landslide the serial corporate criminal and government outlaw Donald Trump? He is a servant of Wall Street and, by his deeds favoring the powerful, a proven "enemy of the people."

Why has the Democratic Party been losing again and again at the federal and state level to the worst, cruelest, soft on corporate corruption, war-mongering, anti-worker Republican Party in history?

"Biden should be thirty points ahead in the polls against the delusional, falsifying, lawless, selected occupant of the White House who spends most of his time tweeting insults, lies, and fictional accusations when he isn't watching the Fox News adoring bloviators. Instead, Biden's lead is in single digits."

 

The answers are many. The Democratic Party is indentured to monied interests and is incapable of taking responsibility for its losses and mistakes. Democratic operatives resist organized grassroots pressure and the party excludes/punishes any dissent inside its ranks. The shrinking trade unions that have historically pushed the Democratic Party are increasingly content with crumbs for workers and afraid of union members who have swallowed the Trump lies.

The two-party duopoly and an electoral system that obstructs challengers from smaller parties lets the Democratic Party stagnate. Unfortunately, the fate of the nation and our Constitutional Republic is in its hands. Joe Biden should be thirty points ahead in the polls against the delusional, falsifying, lawless, selected occupant of the White House who spends most of his time tweeting insults, lies, and fictional accusations when he isn't watching the Fox News adoring bloviators. Instead, Biden's lead is in single digits and he is having a hard time getting the offensive Trump on the defense. Here are some suggestions for the Democratic Party's quivering leaders:

1. Organize a mass demand for Trump/Pence to Step Aside and let experienced pandemic scientists and managers run the federal response to Covid-19, saving tens of thousands of lives and allowing the economy to recover. Trump's Virus, spreading daily owing to Trump's bungling, fabricating, quackering, chaos, denials, and grinding government scientists through his ignorant, ego-obsessed shredders, requires such a demand. It will encourage more people and state and local governments to be more assertive and insist on professional management and critical coordination by Washington.

   There are many Republicans in Congress who privately dread how the daily Trump Virus Show is diminishing their own electoral poll numbers.

2. Stop Coddling, Aiding, and Abetting Corporate Crooks who are cheating and endangering the health/safety of red state and blue state Americans alike. Demand Law and Order enforcement and greater funding for the corporate crime police. By massively dismantling government law enforcement, Trump is intensifying the corporate crime wave with subsidies, handouts, bailouts, and huge tax escapes. How's that for putting Big Business over Main Street? Let them steal, let them pollute, let them park their profits in tax havens abroad are elements of the Trumpian mantra which he brazenly applies to his own business interests.
   
   
3. Stop Trump from committing big-time violations of our Constitution and our federal laws in order to deepen his dictatorial regime. Trump illegally uses federal employees and property to promote his political campaign – a federal crime under the Hatch Act. He seizes the "power of the purse" from Congress, spending money for unauthorized domestic and foreign objectives thereby violating the criminal statute known as the Anti-Deficiency Act. He fires prosecutors and Inspectors General closing in on his and his crony's crimes and egregious misdeeds.

   Take on Trump when he declares phony national emergencies to grab more dictatorial powers making him the largest national emergency of them all. Trump makes it easy for the Democrats when he declares "I have an Article II, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president."Nixon was about to be impeached and convicted in 1974, before he resigned, for a tiny fraction of what the Democrats are letting Trump get away with.

4. Announce it is time to Vote Trump Out and Vote in the long-overdue Pay Raise. Ending the freeze on the $7.25 per hour federal minimum wage and raising some 25 million workers' wages to $15 per hour would answer the question: "Whose Side are You On?"  The House of Representatives has passed a $15 an hour minimum wage bill, though with a long implementation schedule. The Republican Senate, however, blocks passage and it has blocked the $600 a week relief payment to many millions of Americans without jobs due to Trump's Virus.
    

   Shouldn't the Democrats make these contrasting, notorious corporate-driven cruelties more vivid, and more front and center? Repetition is what reaches people who are numb to years of empty rhetoric and who want authenticity. Comparing Walmart's CEO making $12,000 an hour while many of his workers languish well under $15 per hour sharpens what should be the authentic contrast between the Republicans and Democrats.

5. Make Mitch McConnell, the self-styled "Grim Reaper" toady of big business, who buries scores of good bills passed by the House, the number two Ogre in the campaign. The evil McConnell is the worst suffocator of necessities for the American people, their children, and retirees in American congressional history. The Democrats have listed scores of bills under McConnell's chokehold – such as protections for poor children, fragile worker and retiree pensions (including those for coal miners in his state of Kentucky), lowering drug prices and expanding health care coverage, controlling climate disasters – to name a few. Yet, once again, they have not made "Moscow Mitch's" record (including blocking safeguards for election security and voter's rights) vocal, vivid, and front of center. The Democrats certainly have the campaign money to do so.

   The arrogant McConnell is up for re-election against a hyper-cautious conservative Democratic opponent. Democrats should take McConnell's pompous boast "The one thing I get to do that the other 99 /Senators/ don't get to do, is decide what we're going to do." and flood Kentucky with the truth about this malicious, destructive tyrant of the Senate and his  200 confirmed right-wing and corporate judges. McConnell's lapdog delivery of the Senate has made possible Trump's monarchical drive to repeal the American Revolution against Kings and for "a new birth of freedom."

6. Last November, 61% of women in a national CNN poll wanted Trump impeached and convicted. Certainly on their minds was Trump's long history of being a publicly bragging sexual predator and a terrible example for boys and young men. Over twenty brave women have come forward with credible accusations of sexual assaults by lying Donald. Why aren't the Democrats making this a campaign issue and making Trump pay a political price for such disgusting outrages? Democrats can turn the Republican Party's campaigns on "values" against Trump and his apologists.
   
   
7. The Democratic Party must choose to stand with the people by presenting a solemn covenant that improves all the livelihoods of all Americans and addresses the widespread anxiety, dread, and fear where they live, work, and raise their families. Help make people's dreams of a secure, fulfilling future a reality. This specific covenant would show that the Democratic Party stands for much more specific changes than not being Trump. Make it vivid and memorable, including empowering the people in distinct ways.

If you like these suggestions, add some of your own, and call or email Democratic National Chairman Tom Perez, Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and the House Democratic Caucus leader Hakeem Jeffries.

To Contact Chairman Tom Perez
Visit: https://democrats.org/contact-us/
or call (202) 863-8000

To Contact Members of Congress, call the Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121

Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate and the author, most recently, of The Seventeen Solutions: Bold Ideas for Our American Future. His new book, Wrecking America: How Trump’s Lies and Lawbreaking Betray All, co-authored with Mark Green, is out next month.

Off the Top of My Head

Black Lives Ain't A Gonna Matter if Trump Gets Reelected

by John Lawrence, September 5, 2020

Right now peaceful protesters need to get off the streets in the lead up to the election. Why? Because they act as human shields for the rioters, looters, arsonists, gun nuts and counter protesters who come right in behind them and who have more nefarious purposes. Getting the protesters off the streets takes away Trump's law and order issue. People sitting on the fence are going to vote for Trump if they see cities going up in flames. It's as simple as that. We need calmness to prevail in American cities. When people see visuals of burning buildings on nightly news, it plays right into Trump's playbook.

I don't dispute the fact that black people have been treated differently by the police than white people. There is no question that there needs to be police reform, that there should be no choke holds, no 'no knock' warrants, that more social workers need to be dispatched to deal with people with mental health issues. However, it's no secret that at least some of these black men who have been shot and killed by police would be alive today if they had simply obeyed the cops' orders. Resisting arrest, giving the cops verbal back talk, physically struggling, trying to run away - all these things tend to make it more probable that a black person or any person is going to get killed. Rayshard Brooks, the man shot and killed in a Wendy's parking lot in Atlanta, would be alive today if he hadn't struggled with police and then tried to get away. When a situation escalates, things can get out of hand. Cops don't always act in such a way as to deescalate the situation. They should of course, but they are human beings. They can lose their cool. There is no question that police need more training as to how to handle tense situations and how to better control their emotions.

Right now this situation is playing out in Rochester. Mainly peaceful protesters are acting as cover for a relative few to do more dastardly deeds. There are skirmishes with the police. Tear gas spews out. Bottles are thrown. Trump tweets the whole scene. He couldn't be happier. Trump compared the cop's shooting of Jacob Blake to a golfer "choking" over a 3 foot put. While this is a horrible analogy, there is a kernel of truth there. The cop in question probably wishes he had handled the situation differently. However, if Blake had obeyed his orders in the first place, he wouldn't be paralyzed today.

There are 2 sides to every situation, and a lot of people sitting on the fence about who to vote for are people who just want to go about their lives as peacefully as possible. They are not necessarily Trump's base supporters. In battleground states, Trump won in 2016 by just a handful of votes. These fence sitting voters are very important to the outcome of the election. All those concerned that black lives matter have already been convinced and especially by the example of John Lewis who represented non violence and working within the system to vote, take power and get results that way. At this stage of the game it is totally redundant to react with street protests over every questionable situation in which a black man is killed by police. We have seen this movie many times before. And Trump's counter protesters are getting very active because they know that the more violence that occurs, the more this is only going to help Trump's chances of being reelected.

Sorry to put it this way, but that's the truth as I see it. I am totally in favor of police reform, economic reform, universal health care and a Green New Deal. But first Joe Biden has to get elected. I would have preferred Bernie Sanders, but he would have been an easier target for Trump to take down. The importance of this election is not only for the future of America. It is important for the whole world. The US and China are the world's 2 leading greenhouse gas emitters, responsible for about 40% of total world emissions. If these 2 countries don't cooperate to reduce GHGs and get the world using renewables, nothing else will matter. If Trump is reelected, not only will the US go up in flames, the entire earth will burn and very soon. The tension that the Trump administration is creating with China makes it less likely that GHGs will be reduced especially in light of the fact that Trump does not even believe in global warming and is telling the fossil fuel industry, in effect "Full steam ahead!"

In short street protests are counter productive at this time. Someone other than me needs to tell the protesters that.

Off the Top of My Head

Protesters Better Get Off the Streets if They Want Biden to Win

by John Lawrence, September 3, 2020

Right now street protests are counterproductive. They are giving Trump his main 'law and order' issue. The visuals of street violence only work in Trump's favor. There is a high probability that armed protesters and counterprotesters will clash with deadly results as they already have. #BlackLivesMatter has made its point. Now the protest movement is just helping Trump win. And it's giving cover to those who are looting and burning. I'm with John Lewis. He was willing to be beaten and jailed to make his point without fighting back. His way has been more successful than that of the others who have advocated violence. The Black Panthers made a splash for a few years. Then they were gone. There was no lasting influence or presence. Co-founder Huey Newton was murdered on the street allegedly because of a drug deal gone wrong. Stokely Carmichael took over the leadership of SNCC from John Lewis because John was non-violent and Stokely wanted to be more militant.

Unlike Huey Newton Stokely Carmichael had a fairly long life. He created the slogan #BlackPower which was the #BlackLivesMatter slogan of the 1960s. He was allied with the Black Panthers for a period of time until Huey Newton accused him of being a CIA agent. This idea was probably planted by J Edgar Hoover's FBI which was actively trying to destroy black leaders with its COINTELPRO operation. In his writings Carmichael espoused a separate black and white America, but many of his criticisms are valid today. From Wikipedia:

He promoted what he calls "political modernization." This idea included three major concepts: "1) questioning old values and institutions of the society; 2) searching for new and different forms of political structure to solve political and economic problems; and, 3) broadening the base of political participation to include more people in the decision-making process." By questioning "old values and institutions", Carmichael was referring not only to the established Black leadership of the time but also to the values and institutions of the nation as a whole. He criticized the emphasis on the American "middle-class." "The values," he said, "of that class are based on material aggrandizement, not the expansion of humanity."  Carmichael believed that blacks were being lured to enter the "middle-class" as a trap, in which they would be assimilated into the white world by turning their backs on others of their race who were still suffering. This assimilation, he thought, was an inherent indictment of blackness and validation of whiteness as the preferred state. He said, "Thus we reject the goal of assimilation into middle-class America because the values of that class are in themselves anti-humanist and because that class as a social force perpetuates racism."

Today we can be sure that the FBI and other government agencies are following in the footsteps of J Edgar Hoover and his COINTELPRO operation. The power of the American government is vast, and this is one reason why the way forward as suggested by the life of John Lewis and Martin Luther King is he best way. Rather than alienate white America John Lewis was non-violent and non-threatening while at the same time altogether willing to get into "good trouble." Stokely was right about the need to search for "new and different forms of political structure to solve political and economic problems." Who can argue that the gridlock and stalemate of the last 12 years in which one man, Mitch McConnell can block any legislation not to his liking represents an ideal democratic political system? Who can argue that an economic system in which 3 men have more wealth than half the American population represents an ideal economic system?

Solving poverty in the US would not only do the most to improve black lives, it would do the most to improve brown lives, Native American lives and poor white lives. The homeless situation in America is a disgrace and represents a dystopian American Dream. But even as important as making changes to the American political and economic systems are, even more important is the need to remedy and mitigate the issue of global warming or we will not have a planet and its resources to even fight over. That's why it's imperative to get Trump out of there and put someone and someones in who will address the global warming issue in a constructive way. That's why it's important to take away Trump's main issue - law and order - by getting peaceful protesters as well as rioters, counterprotesters and guns off the streets. The debate between capitalism and socialism will be moot if the earth becomes uninhabitable. It's no longer acceptable to go on peacefully protesting as long as this increases Trump's chances of being reelected.

With Biden-Harris Ticket Set, Climate Groups Demand 'Transformative Action From Day One' If Elected

Published on Wednesday, August 12, 2020

by Common Dreams

"Let's do our part to end this era of chaos and defeat Republicans up and down the ballot. Then, let's turn up to make a Biden-Harris administration lay the groundwork for a Green New Deal."

by Jessica Corbett, staff writer

 

6 Comments

Then-Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) speaks at a campaign rally in Davenport, Iowa on August 12, 2019. (Photo: Alex Edelman/AFP/Getty Images)

Since presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden on Tuesday announced Sen. Kamala Harris as his running mate, green groups have responded by welcoming the choice and expressing hope that the California Democrat will push for ambitious, justice-focused climate and environmental policies if they win in November.

As a 2020 presidential primary candidate until late last year, Harris "showed her responsiveness to activist and movement pressure to make climate a top priority, and demonstrated her willingness to be held accountable," Sunrise Movement co-founder and executive director Varshini Prakash said Tuesday. "She took our No Fossil Fuel Money Pledge, ran on the Green New Deal as a core part of her platform, and mentioned it more in the presidential debates than almost any other candidate."

Harris was an original co-sponsor of the Green New Deal, a resolution introduced in February 2019 by Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) that calls for creating a 100% renewable U.S. energy system along with millions of jobs. She also signed on to a resolution urging Congress to declare a climate emergency and initiate a major mobilization in response to it.

Noting that Harris is a sponsor of that latter resolution, Matt Renner of the Climate Mobilization said that "her addition to this ticket is a good first step toward the future that the people are demanding, and serves as an opportunity to continue to push the Democratic Party toward emergency climate mobilization."

In recent weeks, Harris has also partnered with Ocasio-Cortez to unveil the long-anticipated Climate Equity Act and with other congressional colleagues for the Environmental Justice for All Act.

The Climate Equity Act "demonstrates her willingness to tackle environmental and racial injustice head on and we applaud her prioritization of communities most impacted by the climate crisis," said 350 Action North America director Tamara Toles O'Laughlin. "We're confident that Harris' stated commitments to climate action means that she will work with Biden to implement a Green New Deal that prioritizes Black, Indigenous, and communities of color and builds in a just transition that phases out fossil fuels by 2021 for our health and safety."

Greenpeace USA climate campaigner Charlie Jiang declared that "the Biden-Harris administration must take transformative action from day one to advance a Green New Deal and end the era of fossil fuels."

"The baseline for ambitious climate action has shifted dramatically for Democrats over the past year—it will be up to both Biden and Harris to move beyond false solutions like carbon capture and storage (CCS) and tackle social, environmental, and economic injustice at their roots," he said. "The evolution of Senator Harris' climate platform as a presidential candidate speaks to her commitment to holding big polluters accountable for their role in the climate crisis."

Jiang, whose group ranked Harris one spot above Biden in its 2020 primary climate scorecard, added that "we hope to see her continue this pursuit of climate justice for vulnerable communities as a vice presidential nominee and double down on ending fossil fuel production in the United States and around the world."

"Notably, she was one of the first candidates to publicly commit to abolishing the filibuster in order to make a Green New Deal the law of the land," Prakash said of Harris. "She took on Big Oil as California Attorney General, has consistently shown a strong record on ensuring environmental justice for Black, Brown, and poor communities, and has worked together with frontline communities, environmental justice organizations, and Rep. Ocasio-Cortez over the course of the last year to develop legislation that would ensure Green New Deal investments benefit and prioritize those communities."

Prakash also acknowledged concerns about Harris' past as a prosecutor, for which she faced criticism even before the latest wave of protests demanding systemic reforms to address how the U.S. criminal justice system impacts people of color:

Over the past few months, our country has had a reckoning over issues of policing and racial justice, and our movement has taken to the streets alongside allies demanding transformative change. As a young Indian-American woman, I am holding the significance of this moment to see the first mixed-race Black and Indian woman on a presidential ticket. I'm also deeply aware of Sen. Harris' record as a prosecutor and the ways in which a number of her decisions harmed communities of color, which our movement has spoken out about in the past and will continue to. We hope that she has learned from her past mistakes and continues listening to the activists who have taken to the streets as she has joined alongside them.

While praising Harris for showing "a solid understanding of the scale of the climate crisis" and committing to hold the fossil fuel industry accountable, Toles O'Laughlin concurred that "as the contest unfolds, Harris has work to do to prove her support for the movement for Black lives, considering her record on police and prosecutorial misconduct. We need leaders who are ready to address the compound crisis of climate, racial injustice, economic inequity, and human health."

Given that Harris "has been known to be somewhat of a political chameleon" with a "habit of aligning her stance with the prevailing political winds," climate action advocates hope she will respond positively to political pressure for progressive policies. The impact of the planetary emergency on her home state of California, which Harris has previously discussed, could also compel her to act.

Harris "has come up against the effects of climate change firsthand in California, where wildfires, rising sea levels, and drought are near-constant sources of concern," Grist reported Tuesday. "As a result, her state has become a leader of the charge to tackle rising emissions in the United States. Let's hope Harris brings a little bit of that urgency to the ticket."

Biden—who is expected to formally accept the nomination to take on President Donald Trump next week—recently put forth a $2 trillion green energy plan that progressives celebrated as a "major step forward" and a signal that he is responding to calls for bolder climate policies from activists and Democratic voters who backed Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) or Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) in the primary race.

"Meanwhile, Trump's climate policies are a raging dumpster fire," said Jiang of Greenpeace. "Communities across the United States are reeling from the compounding crises of climate change and the Covid-19 pandemic. But instead of taking action to prevent further suffering, Trump and his cabinet are bending over backwards to bail out fossil fuel CEOs."

Sunrise's Prakash vowed that "our movement remains committed to defeating Trump and Pence this November and hope to hold her accountable in office—just like we will with Joe Biden."

"Let's do our part to end this era of chaos and defeat Republicans up and down the ballot," she said. "Then, let's turn up to make a Biden-Harris administration lay the groundwork for a Green New Deal."

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Off the Top of My Head

How Ya Gonna Pay For It?

by John Lawrence, July 27, 2020

This is the question they often asked Bernie Sanders when he talked about the various programs that he would seek to implement as President. Programs like a Green New Deal, Medicare for All, forgiveness of all student loan debt, free college, free pre-school etc. Bernie never really had a good answer except for taxing the rich. Well, that was a pretty good answer, but it is not even necessary to raise taxes on the rich to implement all of Bernie's programs. Modern Monetary Theory maintains that the US, as a currency issuer, can just issue the money into the economy. The US dollar, actually a Federal Reserve Note, is issued by the Federal Reserve bank. The Fed has created or "printed" trillions of dollars bailing out the banks in 2008, with its quantitative easing programs since then and now to fund the response to the coronavirus pandemic. It's obvious that the Fed can just print money and add it to the economy. It can buy up the national deficit and debt. There is no need to worry that the US, which has a sovereign currency can ever run out of money. While you and I, states and countries which do not have a sovereign currency or which have loans in other currencies do have to pay them off, any nation like the UK, Japan, the European Union and China do not have to worry about running deficits.

Republicans have traditionally run on the mantra that Democrats will raise your taxes. Remember George H W Bush's pledge: "Read my lips. No New Taxes." Then he did go ahead and raise taxes after he got elected. Well now it is becoming obvious that Americans don't have to worry about new taxes. Social programs as well as the military can be funded by the Fed just printing the money. Of course it would not be a good idea simply to flood the economy with money for which there is no good purpose. That would lead to inflation and to a loss of trust in the dollar. Under current conditions, however, the dollar is the world's reserve currency and that is not going to change any time soon. So prudent and responsible spending is still necessary. It's just that the US does not have to worry about deficit spending. Other central banks like Japan's are doing the same. In fact Japan has a greater deficit to GDP ratio than the US does.

Which brings us to social security. The conventional wisdom is that the Social Security Trust Fund is in deficit and will be exhausted by 2035. Modern Monetary Theory says that this is rubbish. The US as a sovereign currency issuer can never run out of money. Al Gore used to talk about putting social security in a lockbox. Not necessary. It is not even necessary to debit everyone's paycheck to provide revenues for social security. This is not a program that people who have worked all their lives have "earned." It is a social welfare safety net program pure and simple. To apply basic accounting to social security as if people's payroll tax contributions were necessary to fund it is not necessary or desirable. To argue over whether or not the payroll tax needs to be increased or whether the cap (the payroll tax is just taken on the first $137,700 of a person's earnings) needs to be lifted is pointless. There was an old saw about you can't have both "guns and butter." Well, you can have both and tax relief too! We just have to determine the prudent balance between guns and butter based on other criteria. It is not true that there is only a finite amount of money based on tax revenues that determines total expenditures.

Look at reality. The US has been running deficits for years. Now we're running trillion dollar deficits. Is any creditor coming after us? I don't think so. And there is no inflation. So we don't have to limit our thinking to the Federal government's just spending what it takes in in taxes. In fact we haven't done this in years since Clinton balanced the budget when he was President.

Joe Biden has some good benefits proposed for older retirees. From his website:

"The Biden Plan will provide the oldest beneficiaries – those who have been receiving retirement benefits for at least 20 years – with a higher monthly check to help protect retirees from the pain of dwindling retirement savings."

and

"Under the Biden Plan, workers who spent 30 years working will get a benefit of at least 125% of the poverty level"

The poverty level for a single individual is $12, 760. 125% of that is $15,950. So a minimum monthly payment would be $1329. This is over twice what I am now receiving so I would be very happy if Joe is able to implement this plank of his platform. There is no way a person can live on $641 a month. Fortunately, I don't have to. Currently, the minimum monthly payout for a single individual is $510 a month. That amount is approximately $2,000 less than the annual poverty threshold for an aged individual. Bringing monthly payments for the elderly up to snuff is something Republicans have resisted for years. Then, they have tried to defund all social and welfare programs. However, funding for the military-industrial complex has been relentlessly increased come hell or high water. For that expenditure, deficits don't matter. They shouldn't for infrastructure development and social safety net programs either.

Off the Top of My Head

It's Out of Control

by John Lawrence, July 19, 2020

The Trump policy is now clear: Let 'er rip. They are not going to spend any more money on testing, contract tracing and the CDC. The Obama administration had a plan in place to deal with a future pandemic. Trump did away with it, pulled the CDC out of China, withdrew the US from the World Health Organization. He is willing to sacrifice about 2% of the American people to get his economy back on the road before the election and hope that a vaccine will soon be available which would solve all his reelection problems. It's not going to work.

Biden has better plans not only for the pandemic, but also for the economy. His foreign policy, however, vis a vis China is still stuck in an antagonistic, competitive stance. It should be clear now that the major problems in the world including climate change in addition to the pandemic can only be resolved by cooperation, not competition. First of all the US is in no position to try and outcompete China. Both countries were essentially tied for the world's largest economy before the pandemic. Now China will be pulling ahead while the US languishes due to Trump's disastrous response to the pandemic. Instead of quibbling with China over the South China Sea, Hong Kong and the Uighuers, issues which amount to judging China's internal affairs and/or affairs in China's immediate territory, the US essentially should mind its own business and let China resolve the situations with its neighbors. There is much that China could criticize about America's internal affairs concerning human rights including both political and economic rights - #BlackLivesMatter, for instance. It is not constructive to be criticizing another country's internal affairs when a more constructive, cooperative and diplomatic approach could resolve the major issues between the countries instead of harping on issues within a country that don't affect the US at all.

China has achieved a lot in recent history even though it is a 5000 year old civilization, much older than either America or Europe. Disrespecting China at a time when China is actually becoming the most respected and dominant world player could be a disaster for America and also the whole world. If the world is to solve the climate change situation, all the world's players especially the most powerful and leading nations, must be on board, not indulging in criticism of one another. China is willing to do that. Is the US under either Trump or Biden?

There are seemingly intractable problems in every country of the world including the US and China. Working together, however, instead of alienating each other is something that is absolutely necessary at this time in human and world history. Otherwise, whoever wins the battle will surely lose the war as far as climate change is concerned. Other problems are trivial by comparison. It would be just like the human race to harp at each other while the planet Earth goes up in flames. Sorry but that's my opinion based on human history so far. Will the so-called 'better angels' of humanity rise up and do an about face with regards to that history?

'More Work to Do' But 'Major Step Forward': Progressives Welcome Biden's $2 Trillion Green Energy Plan

Published on Tuesday, July 14, 2020

by Common Dreams

"Biden gets a lot right... but he's still got a lot of room for improvement in increasing the scale, scope, and speed in which he addresses the climate emergency."

by Jessica Corbett, staff writer

 

44 Comments

Former Vice President Joe Biden, a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, speaks during a CNN climate crisis town hall on Wednesday, September 4, 2019. (Photo: CNN/Screengrab)

U.S. environmental and climate activists on Tuesday welcomed presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden's "Plan to Build a Modern, Sustainable Infrastructure and an Equitable Clean Energy Future"—a proposal that is notably bolder than what he called for earlier in the primary.

"It's no secret that we've been critical of Vice President Biden's plans and commitments in the past. Today, he's responded to many of those criticisms."
—Varshini Prakash, Sunrise Movement

 

"Biden will make a $2 trillion accelerated investment, with a plan to deploy those resources over his first term, setting us on an irreversible course to meet the ambitious climate progress that science demands," his campaign website says, detailing related polices on agriculture, the automobile industry, buildings, electricity, environmental justice, housing, infrastructure, public transportation.

The plan calls for creating a million new jobs in the American auto industry, shifting to a power sector free from carbon pollution by 2035, and upgrading four million buildings and weatherizing two million homes over four years. Those building upgrades would create more jobs, as would the construction of 1.5 million sustainable homes and initiatives in "climate-smart agriculture, resilience, and conservation."

The New York Times reported that "in a call with reporters on Tuesday morning, senior Biden campaign officials said the proposal was the product of discussions with scientists, climate and environmental justice leaders, union members and leaders, mayors and governors, and representatives from the small-business and manufacturing communities."

In response to reporting on the proposal ahead of its official unveiling Tuesday, meteorologist and climate correspondent Eric Holthaus tweeted: "Wow. And wow in a good way." Julian Brave NoiseCat, vice president of policy and strategy at Data for Progress, acknowledged the plan's overlap with the Green New Deal.

👀 https://t.co/Z4gg2h3sbg pic.twitter.com/2nhrhN5Jsg

— Julian Brave NoiseCat (@jnoisecat) July 14, 2020

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, a former challenger in the Democratic presidential primary race who ran with the climate crisis as his top priority and endorsed Biden in April, praised the proposal in a series of tweets Tuesday, saying that it "shows that he's serious about defeating climate change, and has a roadmap to become the climate president that America needs."

Evergreen Action, which is led by some former Inslee staffers, also welcomed the plan. In a Tuesday Medium post, Sam Ricketts, the group's co-founder, highlighted that Biden's proposal calls for major investments in a clean power-led economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic; includes enforceable, sector-specific benchmarks for a rapid transition to 100% renewable energy; and aims to hold polluters accountable for environmental injustice.

In a speech about his proposal Tuesday, Biden drew clear contrasts between himself and President Donald Trump. Climate reporter Emily Atkin, who tweeted some of his remarks, observed that "Biden's strategy here is to frame Trump's climate denial as costing America tons of money and jobs. And, to frame his climate plan as an economically exciting, job-heavy solution."

Biden's strategy here is to frame Trump's climate denial as costing America tons of money and jobs.

And, to frame his climate plan as an economically exciting, job-heavy solution

— Emily Atkin (@emorwee) July 14, 2020

Biden: When Trump looks at renewable energy, he sees “windmills somehow causing cancers.”

Biden sees “American manufacturing” and “dominating the global market”

— Emily Atkin (@emorwee) July 14, 2020

 

Evan Weber, co-founder and political director of the youth-led Sunrise Movement, also noted the contrast that Biden drew between himself and the current president and pointed out the popularity of job-creating climate policies. As Common Dreams reported Tuesday, new Data for Progress polling shows majorities of U.S. voters support transitioning to a clean energy economy by 2035 and incorporating green infrastructure into the nation's recovery from the ongoing pandemic.

This was always the major narrative intervention at the heart of @sunrisemvmt's strategy: when people think climate change, they need to think "jobs," & if we achieve that we win.

If @JoeBiden runs aggressively on this through Nov 3, we can defeat Trump & maybe save society, too https://t.co/1DWfi9miiA

— Evan Weber 🌅🔥 (@evanlweber) July 14, 2020

Varshini Prakash is executive director of the Sunrise Movement—which endorsed Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in the presidential primary race—and served on the Sanders-Biden Unity Task Force, which released its policy recommendations on climate and other key issues last week. She addressed Biden's new proposal in a statement Tuesday that noted her group's efforts to pressure every single candidate in this cycle to put out climate plans that matched the severity of the crisis.

"It's no secret that we've been critical of Vice President Biden's plans and commitments in the past," Prakash said. "Today, he's responded to many of those criticisms: dramatically increasing the scale and urgency of investments, filling in details on how he'd achieve environmental justice and create good union jobs, and promising immediate action—on day 1, in his first 100 days, in his first term, in the next decade—not just some far off goals."

"Our movement made this possible, but there's more work to do, and the urgency of this crisis demands that we keep pushing," she continued. "Vice President Biden must build on these commitments and make these actions an immediate and urgent priority on day 1. Our movement, alongside environmental justice communities and frontline workers, has taught Joe Biden to talk the talk. Now let's defeat Trump and mobilize in mass after the election to get Biden to walk the walk."

We previously gave Biden a 15% on Environmental Justice on our #GreenNewDeal scorecard b/c he lacked details.

Now he's filled in gaps, commiting to 40% of all investments going to frontline communities, establishing a new division in the DOJ, & more: https://t.co/iqsn4GcVPe

— Sunrise Movement 🌅 (@sunrisemvmt) July 14, 2020

Members of The Climate Mobilization also praised elements of Biden's new plan in a statement Tuesday while urging him to deliver concrete action addressing the planetary emergency and to consider even more ambitious policies in the future.

"Biden gets a lot right, especially around in the areas of racial and climate justice and equity for historically marginalized groups and working people; but he's still got a lot of room for improvement in increasing the scale, scope, and speed in which he addresses the climate emergency," said Matt Renner, the group's executive director. "Support for a Biden presidency from the climate movement should be contingent on his commitment to actually achieving climate safety in a just and equitable way, not simply going beyond what is considered politically possible."

Laura Berry, director of research and policy for The Climate Mobilization, argued that the proposed decarbonization targets don't go far enough.

"The last twelve months were the hottest we've ever experienced—an average of 1.3ºC above pre-industrial temperatures. Vice President Biden's plan, while a clear departure from the market-based solutions of the past two decades, ultimately fails to reckon with the massive climate risks we face within the next decade," Berry said. "Eliminating greenhouse gas emissions from the power sector would only cut domestic emissions by 27%—but we need to be eliminating emissions across the economy as quickly as possible."

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After Attacking Medicare for All as 'Unrealistic' During Primary, Biden Says Healthcare a 'Right for All' Amid Pandemic

Published on Thursday, June 25, 2020

by Common Dreams

"And the natural idea that follows from that is....?"

by Julia Conley, staff writer

 

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden gestures as he delivers remarks about healthcare on June 25, 2020 in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images)

Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden left some progressives perplexed Thursday when he spoke at length about healthcare during a campaign stop in Lancaster, Pennsylvania—making a number of points that would suggest he supports Medicare for All, a proposal he denounced as "unrealistic" throughout the Democratic primary.

Washington Post reporter Jeff Stein noted that Biden mentioned the unemployment crisis that's grown out of the coronavirus pandemic in his speech, suggesting that the loss of employer-based health coverage has made a powerful case for the federal government to guarantee healthcare to all Americans.

Joe Biden notes in speech today that many people are losing their health insurance during the pandemic because it is tied to their employment

— Jeffrey Stein (@JStein_WaPo) June 25, 2020

"Families are reeling right now," the former vice president said, "losing their employers' plans in droves as their employers go out of business, or have to suspend business—they need lifelines now."

Thomas Kennedy, Florida state coordinator for the immigrant rights group United We Dream, suggested expanding the popular Medicare program to cover all Americans would be an effective lifeline for the 43 million people who could lose their employer-based health insurance during the pandemic, according to the Economic Policy Institute.

There is this thing called Medicare For All that would fix this. Biden should support it. https://t.co/kZtSFDKWqA

— Thomas Kennedy (@tomaskenn) June 25, 2020

However, Biden tied the crisis to his push for a public healthcare plan which would exist alongside the for-profit health insurance industry—not Medicare for All.

"We need a public option now more than ever, especially when 20 million people are unemployed," Biden said. "The public option will allow every American, regardless of their employment status, the choice to get a Medicare-like plan."

Biden is reportedly revamping some of the specifics of his healthcare plan in the coming weeks after forming a joint task force with former advisors to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who continues to advocate for Medicare for All following his presidential run. 

In his speech, Biden said Americans would have to pay no more than 8.5% of their income on healthcare costs; under the Affordable Care Act, the current limit is 9.86%, and was lower in previous years. Deductibles and out-of-pocket costs on top of premiums would still exist under Biden's plan, and as written, roughly 10 million Americans would remain uninsured. 

During the primary, Biden derided Sanders' Medicare for All proposal—which a Yale University study in February showed would save over $450 billion in healthcare costs annually—as "unrealistic." In an interview with MSNBC in March, days before the coronavirus pandemic was declared a national public health emergency and millions were left jobless overnight, Biden suggested that even if Medicare for All legislation were to pass in both chambers of Congress during his potential presidency, he would not necessarily sign it into law, citing concerns over cost.  

Objections to Medicare for All over its potential costs have been particularly irksome to proponents of the single-payer solution, with study after study showing overall expenditures would be less while providing comprehensive coverage to everyone in the country.

On social media during his appearance in Pennsylvania—where a 2018 Morning Consult/Politico poll found a majority of voters supported Medicare for All—Biden suggested that Sanders was correct to demand that the federal government ensure every American have healthcare coverage, referring to healthcare as a "right for all."

Health care is a right for all — not a privilege for the few.

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) June 25, 2020

Medicare for All advocates implored Biden to commit to fighting to expand healthcare to all Americans—rather than just borrowing rhetoric from politicians who have pledged to do just that.

Health care is a right for all — not a privilege for the few.

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) June 25, 2020

"So what are you going to do about that?" asked Lauren Ashcraft, a democratic socialist who ran for Congress in New York's 12th district this year.

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America Self-Destructing From the Malignant Neuroses of its President & Republicans Gone Inhumanely Conservative

by Frank Thomas

A year ago, Trump told a crowd that he might remain in office “at least for 10-14 years.” He tweeted, “After serving two terms, do you think the people would demand that I stay longer?” Trump, the Great Divider, Liar, Egoist, revels in his megalomaniac illusions of being the Great Saviour who fits the footsteps of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, even Churchill.

As crazy as Trump’s question and his self-proclaimed greatness are, the craziness gets wilder with a question addressed by Daniel Block of Washington Monthly: “How Could Trump Lose the Presidential Election and Remain President?” What would it look like if Trump refused to concede to a loss? Such a maddening prospect is scary as would also be his election to a second term. Daniel Block’s analysis obviously concludes the likelihood of that happening is NIL. (https://washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/april-may-june-2019)

Whatever happens, the above dramatizes the absolute necessity the Democrat Party captures the maximum registered and unregistered voter potential in November. In the 2016 presidential election, total voter turnout was 60.1%. As I noted in an earlier analysis, if the total voter turnout is in +65% range in November, Joe Biden will win the election for president. The Independent vote is well over 25% of the total voter turnout today. And at least 60% of that share (hopefully far more), will likely vote Democrat. The 18 to 34 and over 65 voter age groups are strongly behind Joe Biden as are the non-white Black/Latino voters, women voters, and white college-educated working class voters. The GOP’s suburban white non-college voters are shrinking; Trump has alienated Hispanic and minority voters in a number of states where the non-white share of the vote is growing. In states like Texas, Colorado, Virginia, Georgia, Arizona, Republicans are doing poorly in urban-suburban districts with growing non-white and white college educated voters. However, the Democrats must do a much better job of winning the loyalty of the white non-college educated working class voters.

Current polls show that in the race to win the Senate back, the Democrats have women candidates with good leads over the Republican opposition. And 3 or 4 other Senate races can go either way. Current polls show Biden to be nationally ahead in all swing states except North Carolina. In 2016, Trump won 30 out of 50 states, by a slim vote margin in some key states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Florida, Ohio, Iowa – all won by Obama in 2008 and 2012. Here are Trump’s winning popular vote margins:

	Winning Vote	Margin %	Electoral Votes
Pennsylvania	44,292	0.72%	20
Michigan	10,704	0.23%	16
Wisconsin	22,748	0.77%	10
Florida	112,911	1.20%	29
Ohio	446,841	8.13%	18
Iowa	147,314	9.41%	6
Arizona	91,234	3.54%	11
North Carolina	173,315	3.66%	15
Margin 50 States	2,868,686	2.09%
(Won By Hillary)
TOTAL VOTES
Hillary	65,853,514	48.17%	227 =42.8%
Trump	62,984,828	46.09%	304 =57.2%
			531

If Biden wins any four of above key states, he will win the presidency. Each state has as many electors in the Electoral College as it has Representatives and Senators in the Congress. (The District of Columbia has three electors). Given how well the Democrats won back the House of Representatives in 2018 and will likely maintain that margin in 2020 and possibly win at least 2 more Senate seats (or 49 Senate seats in total), this will help the Democrats win the Senate electoral majority vote in November.

With a sinking economy made worse by Trump’s late response to and mismanagement of the Covid-19 pandemic and the George Floyd protest movement, it’s no surprise his campaign strategy is hell-bent focused on suppressing voter turnout – e.g., by demonizing Joe Biden and by falsely discrediting mail-in voting as inherently fraudulent. He’s now repeating that mail-in voting is responsible for “thousands and thousands (later increasing that to millions and millions) of fake ballots.” When asked what’s the evidence, his deceitful reply was, “I think just common sense would tell you that massive manipulation can take place.”

This outrageous charge has led Trump to threaten to withhold government support funds from Michigan and Nevada – if they go ahead with plans to send absentee ballots to voters to help avoid the Covid-19 crisis. In his words: “People cheat … mail-in ballots are a very dangerous thing for this country because they (the voters) are cheaters.” Reckless, lying remarks like this now are now also being made in his calling Governors weak in controlling protesters and his pushing Governors to put protesters in prison for 10 years.

Stunningly, Republican Party members remain dead, dumb, and blind to all of Trump’s neuroses and deranged, misleading tweets. Once upon a time after WWII up to 1980, there were traditional moderate, pragmatic Republican norms that balanced individual and community interests. That supported prosperity and opportunities that raise all ships equitably. There was a spirit of mutual cooperation and plain decency in the country. That constructive, moderate relatively egalitarian period was uprooted by an army of angry men who rose to power through pure politics. Their ultra-conservative spokesman, Grover Norquest summed this up: “Bipartisanship is another term for date rape. I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.” Conservatives call it “starving the beast”, ^i.e.shrinking government by huge tax cuts for corporations and the Top 10% - ultimately causing net federal tax revenue losses offset by cuts in government spending, including basic social programs like Medicare, Medicade, Social Security, Welfare Support, etc. 

And now we have Trump carrying on the purest-ideology, survival-of-the-fittest, right-of-center Republican transformation – with his 24-hour tweeter drumbeat of warnings, alarms, insults, sudden policy switches, and personal harassments. All to keep the public uneasy, divided and distracted from his latest failing or deception.

We have a politically authoritarian and fundamentalist bully who wants to jail whistle blowers, journalists and protesters. A nihilist in golf pants who governs by surrounding himself with boot licking sycophants – many ending up in jail or fired for criminal acts or insubordination to their omnipotent RULER. To Hell with everyone who opposes him! Welcome to our DISUNITED democracy at work, thanks to Trump Inc.!

CONCLUSION:

Trump’s form of leadership is by nature a pernicious disuniting force – always adding oil to the endemic societal fires and problems stemming from the rampant tribalism, anger, inequality and racism tearing our nation apart. Empathy, mutual respect, harmony, common sense cooperation, plain decency amongst politicians, supporters, the public are becoming harder and harder to find. This is a great nation that wasn’t made so by an angry, shockingly divided people who felt that their country’s opportunities and prosperity weren’t raising the well-being of all equitably. In this regard, what a relief to hear now our esteemed Military Generals speaking up on our built-up SOCIETAL MESS, DIVISIONS & The CONSEQUENCES for our constitutional democracy that Trump’s dis-unifying, disarrayed, disingenuous leadership is only making worse.

Garrison Keiller had some ‘right-on-the-mark slams’ of conservative politics in past times that still apply to what’s happening now under Trump’s presidency:

“Lies pop up like toad stools in the forest! Wild swine crowd round the public through! Outrageous gerrymandering! Pocket lining on a massive scale! Paid lobbyists sit in committee rooms and write legislation to alleviate the suffering of billionaires! Hypocrises shine like cat turds in the moonlight! O Mark Twain, where art thou at this hour? Arise and behold the Gilded Age, reincarnated gaudier than ever, upholding great wealth as the sure sign of DIVINE GRACE. The wealth and power in the hands of the few is the death knell of democracy. No republic in the history of humanity has survived this!

ADDENDUM: My and The Economist’s Similar Forecast Conclusions: Biden Will Defeat Trump in Electoral College By Winning Key States

The Economist has just reported its study results, citing 9 key swing states for Biden to reach the minimum required 270 electoral votes (and more) to win the presidency in November. The Economist’s June 11th list of swing states is exactly the same as my June 3rd list above from my independent study, except for the addition of Georgia. Here’s the Economist’s ‘Big Picture’ conclusion on Biden’s chances of winning key swing states:

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Key Swing States	Probability Biden Wins	Probability %	2016 Electoral Votes
Pennsylvania	LIKELY	65-85%	20
Michigan	VERY LIKELY	85-99%	16
Wisconsin	LIKELY	65-85%	10
Florida	LIKELY	65-85%	29
Ohio	UNCERTAIN	50-65%	18
Iowa	UNLIKELY	WELL BELOW 65%	6
Arizona	UNCERTAIN	50-65%	11
North Carolina	UNCERTAIN	50-65%	15
Georgia	UNCERTAIN	50-65%	16

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As stated in my June 3rd writing, if Biden wins any 4 of the first 8 states above or any 4 of the Economist’s 9 states, he will win the required minimum of 270 electoral votes to become president. Most polls now show Biden ahead in the first 5 states and is moving closer to Trump in the Iowa race with its very small electoral votes. These are the very same six states Obama won in 2008 and 2012! Overall, Biden has an average polling margin lead of 6.7 percentage points. Races in Arizona, North Carolina and Georgia are also now getting closer between Biden and Trump.

The Economist predicts Biden will LIKELY WIN Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Florida and is VERY LIKELY to WIN Michigan. My study of these states concludes the same, especially if there is a +65% total voter TURNOUT compared to 60.1% in the 2016 presidential election. If total voter TURNOUT is in the +65% range, my analysis indicates Biden will win at least 1, perhaps 2 , of the last 5 swing states, namely Ohio, Iowa, Arizona, North Carolina, or Georgia. That scenario will surely bring Biden well over the minimum 270 electoral votes required to win the presidency (although Iowa and North Carolina are still ‘long shots’).

NOTE – Study Details 

The Economist: “Meet Our US 2020 Election-Forecasting Model,“ June 11, 2020.

https://www.economist.com/united-states/2020/06/11/meet-our-us-2020-election-forecasting-model

https://projects.economist.com/united-states/2020/06/11/meet-our-us-2020-election-forecasting-model

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-latest-swing-state-polls-look-good-for-biden    

Frank Thomas, The Netherlands, June 3, 2020