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Off the Top of My Head

Democrats Should Get Rid of the Filibuster No Matter What They Have to Promise Joe Manchin

by John Lawrence, March3, 2021

They have nothing to lose by ending the filibuster and much to gain. Democrats are the party of getting stuff done, stuff that the country and the world needs. On the other hand Republicans are the party of No. With the filibuster in effect they will say no to everything. There is much that needs to get done that will go undone if the filibuster remains in effect. Democrats have nothing to lose, but they need the votes of every Democrat in the Senate including Joe Manchin who has said he's against ending the filibuster. What would Republican do if they were in power without the filibuster? Not much more than they have already done with the filibuster - give tax breaks to the rich which they can do with the budget reconciliation process which effectively nullifies the filibuster for budget related legislation. So Democrats don't have much to fear if Republicans regain control without the filibuster. But the Biden administration needs to do much more than budget related stuff. For example, a national voting rights act which clarifies on a national level voting procedures. Right now each state is rolling back voting procedures in an attempt to massively suppress poor and black and brown voters.

Also the Senate parliamentarian has ruled that the $15 an hour minimum wage increase cannot be part of the $1.9 trillion COVID relief act. She could be overruled by the President of the Senate, Kamala Harris, but this close to the beginning of his administration Biden doesn't want to do anything that radical. However, he has a deadline and that is 2022 when, if history is any guide, Republicans could regain control of one or both Houses of Congress. If that is the case, Biden will be neutered until his term is up in 2024 and will probably not be reelected after Republicans get done harping on him for 2 years that he has got nothing done (thanks to them). Unlike China which has continuity over 5 to 10 years in its policies, the US is in a situation now where it could likely swerve back and forth from left to right every 4 years. That does not lead to much admiration and respect from the other countries of the world which are already doubting how much they should trust and emulate America.

Trump undid as much as he could of what Obama had done by executive order, and now Biden has undid everything that Trump did also by executive order. Trump may have been an anomaly so that from now on good, consistent and stable leadership will prevail. But there is not much reason to believe in this happy scenario. Trump voters seem to be as hostile to the vision of Democrats as Democrats are hostile to the vision of Trump supporters. The two parties are at loggerheads. Will we swerve from belief in the necessity of doing something about global warming to denying global warming exists every four years? Will we go from extolling the benefits of fossil fuels to trying to get rid of fossil fuels every four years. Will we go from concern about the environment to allowing corporations to despoil the environment with impunity every four years? Will we go from tax breaks for the rich to government programs to support the poor every four years?

I'm thinking that, once Biden realizes that Republicans will not support his agenda on anything, he may support removal of the filibuster in 2022 before the next election so that he can force through all the legislation on his list that can't be passed by budget reconciliation. He'll have to buy off Joe Manchin somehow. His vaunted style of "working across the aisle" has been shown to be ineffectual even in his own eyes. That's the painful lesson he learned during the Obama administration when Republicans stalled and slow walked Obama for eight years, and, while they were doing it, they were at the same time putting Obama down for not getting anything done when they were not outright demonizing him. They will attempt the same thing with Biden, but I think Biden has learned his lesson. He will keep up the facade of wanting to work with Republicans, but he won't compromise in any significant way just to be a nice guy and get their support. The Republicans will not cooperate on anything unless they can diminish it and water it down. Obama thought he had to do just that. Biden has lost his naivete.

Off the Top of My Head

Republicans Are Restricting Voting Laws

by John Lawrence, February27, 2021

Republicans know that, if all eligible voters actually vote, they will lose. So they are busy at work at the state level to enact more restrictive voting laws making it as difficult as possible for people to vote. This will primarily affect Democratic voters, and they know that. They have been using voter suppression techniques ever since black people won the right to vote. They know that making voting easier will encourage more Democratic voters because many of them can't take a day off to go to the polls. So mail-in voting which was facilitated in many states because of the pandemic worked to their disadvantage. They are hurrying to correct that. Since Republicans control many state legislatures which set the voting rules, they are having a field day changing the laws so that they don't suffer any more humiliating defeats.

So Joe Biden needs to make the best of the two years he has during which Democrats control both Houses of Congress. Assuming that a Republican will be elected President in 2024, the nation will swerve to the right and disassemble all the Executive orders Biden has put in place. As a result of this division America will be seen, if it's not seen that way already, as unstable and inconsistent. World leaders will increasingly turn towards China for leadership because what China values most in consistency and stability. The US can't decide whether it wants to be a democracy or a republic. Democrats want a democracy in which it would seem appropriate that every citizen over the age of 18 should cast a vote. This should be made as easy and accessible as possible. Republicans, on the other hand, want a republic in which the levers of power are controlled by white Americans of European descant like they always have been and which the time honored methods of voter suppression of minorities and poor people remain fully in effect.

Paul Weyrich was an American conservative political activist and commentator, most notable for co-founding the Heritage Foundation and the Free Congress Foundation, both conservative think tanks.He 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." Quite a revealing quote. He identifies with "Christians" but chastens them that they shouldn't want everyone to vote. The question I ask is 'what would Jesus say?' Would Jesus want everyone to vote or not? Probably Jesus would be in favor of democracy as compared with a conservative minority that wants everything kept the way it has always been "from the beginning of our country." It makes me doubt the validity of the Christian religion as practiced by the "moral majority" of right wing Christians in this country. Jesus was for the poor and disenfranchised. They're not.

America can not remain a great country on the world stage if it swerves back and forth every two years between Democrats who genuinely want to make America and the world a better place and "America First" Republicans who don't give a hoot about the rest of the world except to dominate it with an outsized military establishment. The US is veering on the edge of autocracy if 74 million voters want Trump as their President in 2024 and Republicans are successful in suppressing 7 million voters because that was the margin between Biden and Trump. Trump did considerable damage not only to the US reputation vis a vis the rest of the world, but also within the US itself. It is a question of whether the US is a fact based country run by intelligent people or a no nothing country based on lies and conspiracy theories while the rich steal everything in sight and Republicans give their hoi polloi supporters political entertainment to keep their anger stoked. The rest of the world has looked to America as the Rock of Gibralter in the past because of its consistency and stability and its promotion of human rights (except the human rights having to do with economic rights). They may be looking now towards China for stability and consistency and be more concerned about intelligent leadership and economic human rights, especially if they observe that America's touting of human rights eliminates those of black people.

Off the Top of My Head

How to Throw Republicans for a Loop: Biden Should Propose Tax Breaks for the Middle Class and Tax Increases for the Rich

by John Lawrence, February 25, 2021

The proper use of taxation is to reduce income and wealth inequality. Instead Republicans use tax breaks to primarily benefit the rich. Democrats should modify this playbook. The increasing income and wealth inequality among American citizens cries out for redress. Robin Hood needs to come out and play. There's no law that says tax breaks have to go primarily to the wealthy or be based on some proportionate percentage over all incomes. Democrats should get into the tax break game too. We know that taxes aren't necessary to fund the government. Sure they're part of it, but the government can spend whatever Congress authorizes regardless of whether or not there is money from taxes to pay for it. The shortfall is made up with Treasury bonds most of which end up on the balance sheet of the Federal Reserve just like the Fed used Quantitative Easing (QE), a fancy name that signified that the Fed issued trillions of dollars to bail out the Wall Street banks in 2008. In that case the Fed took MBSs (Mortgage Backed Securities), most of which were worthless onto its balance sheet as "collateral." The Fed can lend money to any entity it likes as long as it takes collateral onto its balance sheet. Much of this collateral is worthless such as defunct MBSs and even old bicycles!

In the article, "Modern Monetary Theory and the Changing Role of Tax in Society," by Andrew Baker and Richard Murphy, published online by Cambridge University Press we find the following:

"Tax is traditionally viewed as the main funding mechanism for government spending. Consequently, social policy is often seen as something determined and constrained by tax revenue. Modern Monetary Theory (‘MMT’) presents a reversal of the tax-spend cycle, by identifying a spend-tax cycle. Using the UK as an example, we highlight that one of MMT’s most important, but under-explored, contributions is its potential to re-frame the role of tax from both a macroeconomic and social policy perspective. We use insights on the money removal, or cancellation function of taxes, derived from MMT, to demonstrate how this also creates possibilities for using tax to achieve social objectives such as mitigating income and wealth inequality, increasing access to housing, or funding a Green New Deal. For social policy researchers the challenge arising is to use these insights to re-engineer tax systems and redesign social tax expenditures (STEs) for creative social policy purposes."

MMT is a game changer. Conventional thinking is that government can only spend money collected from taxes. But that is not how the system really works. As a sovereign currency, the Fed can just create US dollars with a few keystrokes on a computer. The budget deficit and national debt just become accounting entries on the Fed's balance sheet. We are not mortgaging our children's and grandchildren's future. This is money that never needs to be paid back, that our children never need to pay back. China is not holding this debt over our heads; China could be paid back tomorrow if need be. The US government operates on a different set of principles than the US states, European countries in the Euro zone, and households. All these entities do need to pay back loans. The US government does not because it can just create or issue the money which is how the Fed operates on a daily basis. Even local banks create money when a loan is taken out without the need for deposits. They just have to have collateral - usually 10% of deposits - in their reserve account at the Fed. So money can just be created by the Federal Reserve, but, obviously, it does not do so willy nilly. Like alcohol, this facility must be used responsibly. So that is what the debate should be about, not the size of the deficit or the national debt.

The national debt was a problem when the US dollar was on a gold standard. The US promised to redeem dollars - paper currency - for gold up until 1971. Obviously, there was not enough gold if, all of a sudden, China, let's say, wanted to take all its US dollars and demand gold at $35 an ounce. But in 1971 President Nixon took the US off the gold standard. He said the US would forevermore not redeem US currency for gold. At that point the US dollar became a "fiat" currency. That means that a dollar was worth a dollar just because the US government said it was. The US dollar did not become immediately worthless. People continued to use it, and it continued to retain its value vis a vis other currencies. In fact it's the world's reserve currency as Nixon made a deal with the Saudis only to accept payment for oil in US dollars. That alone meant that the other countries of the world needed US dollars if for no other reason than to buy oil. As a matter of fact today most business dealings of foreign countries are settled in US dollars. So the US dollar has a bright future at least for now.

The conclusion is that US households, businesses, US states and European nations that use the Euro need to pay back loans when they borrow money. A nation with a sovereign currency such as the US, the UK, Japan, China and others creates its money when its central bank issues it by means of keystrokes. No one can demand repayment or exchange of dollars for gold or anything else. If China wants to be paid back for the Treasury bonds it holds, the money in its Treasuries (savings) account at the Fed will be debited and credited to its checking account at the Fed. It's as simple as that. That money can be exchanged for Chinese currency on the open market at the prevailing exchange rate. But probably the Chinese would want to keep much of their financial assets in dollars rather than renminbi since their currency is pegged to the dollar and many of their business dealings are settled in dollars.

Off the Top of My Head

Why Should Blue Collar Workers Have to Pay Taxes to Bail Out White Collar Student Loan Debt?

by John Lawrence

Short answer: There is no need for the Federal government to tax in order to spend. That has been demonstrated by Modern Monetary Theory. However, taxation, if imposed in order to fight inflation, needs to be imposed primarily on the rich and upper middle class, not on the poor or lower middle class. The smart thing for the Biden administration to do would be to decrease taxes on the lower middle class ^i.e. blue collar workers before 2022 thus drawing them away from the Trump camp. In general the American people need to be educated that deficits don't matter except just as accounting entries on the Fed's balance sheet. Biden's COVID relief initiative of $1.9 billion will not raise taxes nor will his follow-on trillion dollar initiative for the build-out of green infrastructure.

The question, "Can We Afford to Pay for the Green New Deal?" is equivalent to the question "Can We Afford to Pay the Costs of Avoiding Annihilation?". In the past we have been able to afford a massive build-up to pay for the Second World War. The climate challenge is the moral equivalent of war. If we lose this war we lose not just our freedom. We lose the habitability of the entire planet. Various attempts have been made to cost out the components of a Green New Deal. Green power generation and transportation are not sufficient in themselves to get to net zero carbon emission, but they are a start. As Bill Gates has pointed out in his recent book, How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, major industrial processes also generate much greenhouse gas emission. For instance, every ton of cement that is produced contributes one ton of carbon dioxide which goes into the atmosphere. Every ton of steel produced results in 1.8 tons of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere, and every ton of plastics produced emits 1.3 tons of carbon dioxide. So it's not enough just to deal with green transportation (electric vehicles) and green power generation (solar and wind).

The cost of "greening" these industrial processes is pretty steep. Capturing carbon dioxide at the site of the manufacturing process is possible, but there is no cheap way to do it. Bill Gates is investing in promising start-ups and is counting on innovation to come up with new processes and materials which will not result in so much carbon dioxide being released into the air. Gates points out that we need to electrify every possible manufacturing process and make sure that all that electricity is generated cleanly. He advocates a new generation of nuclear power sources as wind and solar can not possible fill every energy need mainly because they are intermittent. Nuclear can fill the gap for consistent power generation when solar and/or wind are offline. Smart nuclear power which Bill Gates has been instrumental in developing would solve the problems encountered so far of explosion and what to do with nuclear waste. As a last resort Direct Air Capture of carbon dioxide from the air is possible but also costly.

What it all boils down to is this: we will need on the order of a trillion dollars a year for 10 years commitment to address climate change if we have a prayer for avoiding the worst consequences. What's more a lot of this commitment must be made in cooperation with China which is one of the worst polluters. Rivalry and even a Cold War must be set aside if the world is to avoid the worst outcome from global warming. India and China are building coal fired power generation plants at a rapid pace because coal fired power plants are so cheap comparatively and those countries are developing so quickly. It's not enough just to "green" the US. It has to be cooperation on a world wide basis. Competition has to be set aside and replaced by cooperation. The ownership of intellectual property is irrelevant when it comes to saving the planet.

A national budget for a Green New Deal shouldn't contribute to inflation since there are currently so many unemployed people available for work, and particularly because so many of the small businesses that were lost during the pandemic are not coming back. Also further robotizing of manufacturing processes will eliminate whatever blue collar workers are left working in those fields. In World War II there was some postponement of consumption in order to fight inflation. That may be necessary for the moral equivalent of war which the Green New Deal represents. If so, workers in certain nonessential industries may have to be repurposed and retrained for industries involved in combating climate change.

'Words Are Not Enough': Biden Pushed to Take Bold Climate Action as US Returns to Paris Agreement

Published on Friday, February 19, 2021

by Common Dreams

"The livelihoods and dignity of billions of people who didn't create the climate crisis require that the Biden administration takes immediate and far-reaching climate action driven by justice, equity, and science."

by Jessica Corbett, staff writer

 

29 Comments

Activists demanding climate and racial justice marched in New York City on September 20, 2020. (Photo: Steve Sanchez/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images)

While Democrats and scientists across the United States applauded the Biden administration for officially rejoining the Paris climate agreement on Friday and figures from around the world said "welcome back America," climate campaigners and experts emphasized that the nation now needs to take bold, immediate action.

As the advocacy group Public Citizen put it: "We have a tremendous amount of catching up to do."

On his first day in office, President Joe Biden delivered on his campaign promise to begin the process of returning to the deal—ditched by his predecessor the day after the November presidential election—which aims to limit global temperature rise this century to "well below" 2°C, and preferably 1.5°C, compared to pre-industrial levels.

"We can no longer delay or do the bare minimum to address climate change. This is a global, existential crisis, and we'll all suffer—we'll all suffer the consequences if we fail," Biden declared Friday, addressing the virtual Munich Security Conference. "We have to rapidly accelerate our commitments to aggressively curb our emissions and to hold one another accountable for meeting our goals and increasing our ambitions."

Similar messages came from key members of the Biden administration. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement that "addressing the real threats from climate change and listening to our scientists is at the center of our domestic and foreign policy priorities. It is vital in our discussions of national security, migration, international health efforts, and in our economic diplomacy and trade talks."

Climate Envoy John Kerry—who, as the country's top diplomat during the Obama administration, played a key role of making the Paris agreement a reality—called climate change "among the most complex security issues we've ever faced." Pointing to the compounding crises in Texas this week, he added that "what these extreme weather events translate to on the ground should concern every single one of us."

Advocates of ambitious climate action welcomed the comments from the president and his allies, but they also made clear that "words are not enough."

"In a climate emergency, the only thing that will do is decisive action to dismantle the weapons of mass destruction that are #FossilFuels," tweeted Jennifer Morgan, executive director of Greenpeace International. "Now is the time to really act."

While thanking Biden for keeping his promise, Andrea McGimsey, senior director for Environment America's Global Warming Solutions campaign, said Friday that "as pleased as we are with our return to the Paris agreement, it must only be a start."

"From getting more electric buses on the road to installing more charging stations in our national parks, so much can and must be done," she continued. "We'll also need to electrify our buildings and all of our appliances, and power them with clean renewable energy. And it's time to stop subsidizing fossil fuels with Americans' tax dollars."

"Extreme weather continues to hammer communities across the country," added McGimsey, as Texans endured power, food, and water problems due to a winter storm. "It's clear that to protect our families' health and well-being today—and to achieve a stable climate for our children and grandchildren—we need to lean in now to meet the commitments of the Paris agreement and go far further."

Leading up to Friday, tens of thousands of people and scores of advocacy organizations backed a demand that the Biden administration commit the United States to doing its "fair share" to combat the climate crisis—both in terms of reducing emissions at home and helping developing countries reach their goals.

That call and the U.S. return to the agreement follow a study released last week which warned that countries' Paris pledges to cut emissions—called nationally determined contributions (NDCs)—should increase by 80% to meet even the deal's dangerously inadequate 2°C target.

As Rachel Cleetus, policy director and lead economist for climate and energy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, wrote Thursday:

On April 22, Earth Day, President Biden will host a Leaders' Climate Summit, aiming to catalyze greater ambition ahead of COP26. The major emitters will be urged to raise their emissions reductions pledges for 2030 and add more detail on the domestic policies they will implement to achieve them. Developing countries—members of the Climate Vulnerable Forum—will also be there to remind the world of their dire plight and the moral imperative for richer countries to act quickly and boldly to help stave off existential threats to people and the planet.

The U.S. is expected to announce its updated NDC ahead of that summit. An ambitious U.S. NDC is the strongest signal the nation can send to show the global community that we are not just back in the Paris agreement, but in it to do our fair share. It is the single most important thing we can do to reestablish our credibility, foster trust, and catalyze greater action from other nations.

In an opinion piece for CNN on Friday, Alok Sharma, president of COP26—which was delayed until this November because of the coronavirus pandemic—celebrated the U.S. return to the Paris agreement and said, "I have been extremely encouraged by the conversations I have had with Kerry and White House National Climate Adviser Gina McCarthy—both formidable allies in the fight against climate change."

Sharma also emphasized that at the summit in Scotland, world leaders must contend with the fact that "developing nations, particularly those most vulnerable to the consequences of climate change, need financial support from developed countries to tackle its causes and effects—especially smaller island states like in the Pacific."

"Tackling climate change is a shared endeavor. And the clock is ticking ever closer to the point of no return," he wrote. "And so, I look forward to working as a matter of urgency with President Biden's administration and governments around the world, to deliver decisive climate action on the road to and at Glasgow. We owe that to current and future generations."

Organizers worldwide echoed that call for the Biden administration to approach the climate crisis on a global scale.

Meena Raman of Friends of the Earth Malaysia asserted that "the U.S. must not repeat its earlier bullying stance of blocking and undermining developing countries on issues such as equity between countries and the transfer of finance and technology, including for loss and damage."

"To be taken seriously, President Biden must go far beyond just rejoining the Paris agreement—he must listen and work cooperatively with developing countries in addressing the challenges they face in implementing more climate action in the face of the pandemic and growing indebtedness," said Raman. "The U.S. must be seen as a cooperative player, taking responsibility for its historical emissions and doing its fair share of action to phase out fossil fuels and increase its financial contributions."

Dipti Bhatnagar, international program coordinator for climate justice and energy with Friends of the Earth International, noted that "the United States' refusal to accept and address the high level of responsibility it bears for the climate crisis and encouragement of high-carbon lifestyles has resulted in untold suffering for women, men, and children throughout the developing world."

"Droughts are destroying crops, cyclones are leveling homes, and whole nations are literally disappearing," added Bhatnagar, who is from Mozambique. "The livelihoods and dignity of billions of people who didn't create the climate crisis require that the Biden administration takes immediate and far-reaching climate action driven by justice, equity, and science."

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Off the Top of My Head

Former Energy Secretary Proposes Going to Capital Markets for Money to Upgrade Energy Grid Infrastructure: Is This Wise?

by John Lawrence, February 21, 2021

Clinton's Energy Secretary, Bill Richardson, proposes going to the capital markets since the government has been spending so much money on COVID relief. He suggests a public-private partnership. Evidently, Mr. Richardson, like most politicians and dignitaries, is totally ignorant of Modern Monetary Theory. The Federal Reserve can create interest free money with a few computer keystrokes while the capital markets will charge interest, and not only that. Once you enter the Wall Street casino you're subject to all the vagaries of the financial markets like securitzation, credit default obligations, interest rate swaps, betting against the success of various programs and much more. These are the kind of financial activities that caused the 2008 Great Recession and the bankruptcy of Orange County, Birmingham, Milan Italy and the misery in Greece. What's more going to the capital markets causes the same inflation risks as having the Fed create the money because inflation is caused by the amount of money sloshing around in the economy not who supplies it.

Larry Summers is worried about Biden's big spending bills causing inflation. What he doesn't get is that these bills are targeted. It's not just money pumped into the economy. The money going to states and municipalities, for example, is going to pay off debts. That holds for all the money going to families who are behind on their rents and mortgages. Paying off debts is deflationary not inflationary. Money going to unemployment insurance is just money that allows people to consume as if they had a job. That is not inflationary. Money going to businesses to prevent them from failing and putting employees back to work is not inflationary because having these businesses fail and employees without jobs is deflationary. All those flights and cruises not taken, all the money not spent going to movie theaters, all the money not spent on consumption when consumption is 70% of the economy - is deflationary. In fact there is so much deflation during a recession that that is the main worry - not inflation.

But reorienting priorities should also play a part in controlling inflation. Decreasing the trillion dollar budget of the military and military-industrial complex would help to offset inflation and pay for infrastructure repair. It would also free up the human resources needed for a build out of green infrastructure because wage inflation is caused by not enough human resources being available thus bidding up wages. The integrity of the US dollar could also be increased by eliminating sanctions on other countries. The US is using the fact of sanctioning other countries because the US dollar is the world's reserve currency causing the diminution of the use of the US currency as sanctioned countries find workarounds using other currencies. In America's Other Forever War, Peter Beinart explains that these sanctions do not accomplish anything except to hurt the people that happen to be living in the countries that are sanctioned. The chickens will come home to roost as the US dollar looses value in the international currency markets as the euro, yen and reminbi are used more for international trade. As Beinart writes, "“It is past time,” Joe Biden pledged last year, “to end the forever wars.” He’s right. But his definition of war is too narrow."

A careful analysis of Biden's spending plans  as well as reorienting current spending priorities needs to be carried out so that runaway inflation does not occur. Certainly putting people back to work is not inflationary. Federal money targeted toward paying off debts by states, municipalities and families is not inflationary. Federal money spent on infrastructure is not inflationary providing that the human and material resources are available. Since the Federal Reserve can create US dollars without the need for taxes, Modern Monetary Theory has shown and economists widely agree that the only limit on Federal so-called "deficit" spending is inflation. Stephanie Kelton has explained that Deficits Don't Matter in her book, The Deficit Myth. People like Bill Richardson and most liberal and conservative politicians need to study up on economics. Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are some of the few people that already have.

Off the Top of My Head

Despite All the Talk, Practically Nothing Has Been Done About Global Warming

by John Lawrence

Every year 51 billion tons of Greenhouse Gasses (GHGs) go into the atmosphere. There has been no decrease in that number despite the Paris Accords, despite more hybrid cars, despite the build up of solar and wind renewables. 197 countries adopted the Paris Agreement at the COP21 in Paris on 12 December 2015, over 5 years ago and yet there has been no improvement in the number of tons of GHGs dumped into the atmosphere per year. Well, a couple of tons less this year due to the pandemic. In general it is slightly increasing according to Bill Gates in his new book, "How to Avoid a Climate Disaster." At the rate we are going, there is no way that the earth can escape the dire consequences of global warming. Should we just give up and enjoy the few remaining years of a habitable earth? I don't think so. What will it take to forestall catastrophe? Basically, it will take a Green New Deal or should we call it the Green Equivalent of World War II?

During World War II there was a huge amount of government deficit spending. Modern Monetary Theory has shown that this is no problem because a government such as the US which issues its own sovereign currency can never run out of money whether or not there are tax receipts to cover the spending. The problem is inflation which occurred in WW I despite more modest outlays. In the WW II years there were wage and price controls which effectively controlled inflation. There was also rationing. These measures made sure that all resources both human and material were devoted to the war effort. Everyone was on the same page. Is that possible for a Moral Equivalent of War (MEOW) today? Would people be willing to give up anything so that resources could be devoted to a MEOW as far as Global Warming is concerned? Many Americans are not even willing to wear a mask during a pandemic, and many also believe that global warming is a hoax. Would they sacrifice for a MEOW?

Bill Gates has invested his money in a variety of start-ups which have some promise of addressing the global warming issue. One of them is Direct Air Capture (DAC) in which carbon dioxide is removed directly out of the air. This is a feasible alternative which is already in use on a small scale. The problem is that it's the most expensive alternative out there. A combination of other methods to ameliorate GHGs in the atmosphere would not only be more feasible but cheaper. He estimates that removing 51 billion tons of GHGs per year would cost $5.1 trillion per year. This would be an upper bound on the cost of getting to zero GHG emissions. Actually this does not seem too unreasonable given the fact that between 2008 and 2015, the Fed’s balance sheet, its total assets, ballooned from $900 billion to $4.5 trillion. That means that the Fed "printed" $3.4 trillion with its Quantitative Easing (QE) program. The Fed has "printed" $3.5 trillion just in the year 2020 in response to the coronavirus pandemic to keep the economy from falling apart. This is the amount of money authorized by Congress in several spending bills. Add to that Joe Biden's $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill and you get a total of $5.4 trillion. And yet there has been no inflation.

So there is a little hocus pocus going on in the relationship between the Fed and the Treasury. The Fed by law is not allowed to buy US debt directly from the Treasury department. How it works is Congress authorizes a spending bill. The Treasury issues a Treasury bond if there aren't enough taxes to cover it. That bond is sold to the "primary dealers" which are mainly big Wall Street banks, and then the Fed buys the bond on the "open market" which means it buys them from the primary dealers. So by a roundabout method, the Fed buys up US debt by means of "printing" money although it's actually by means of a few keystrokes on a computer crediting the Treasury's account at the Fed and the Fed takes the bonds onto its balance sheet from which theoretically it could sell them some day. One little distinction: this is not QE. QE was a term coined when the Fed "printed" money to bail out the big banks aka providing liquidity. The Fed took all the toxic junk of mortgage backed securities and other assets onto its balance sheet and gave the banks all the money they needed to cover bets on credit default obligations and interest rate swaps and other casino garbage. So while it amounts to the same thing - the Fed "printing" money and adding it into the economy - the money injected now is going into the real economy whereas the QE went into the Wall Street economy.

But I digress. So Bill Gates says it would require at most $5.1 trillion to get our GHGs down to zero on an annual basis. In other words keep the goddam fossil fuels, cow farts and Keystone pipeline and just get those DAC machines humming. Seems reasonable to me. The Fed can just print up that $5.1 trillion and we're home clear. J.D. Alt estimates that solving the global warming crisis will cost $60 trillion over 10 years which is about the same amount per year that Bill Gates estimates although supposedly we will reach some point at which renewables and other technologies will result in zero emissions so we will not have to go on spending that amount in perpetuity. So why don't we just go ahead and do it? The Fed could just print the money. No inflation is in sight. Modern Monetary Theory has shown that any country with a sovereign currency (such as the US dollar) can never run out of money and as long as the resources are available (both human and material) the financial resources will always be available. The only problem is the stupidity of most of the US Congress (mainly Republicans) whose only response to any Democratic initiative is just to Just Say No as well as their economic ignorance. So it is of paramount importance that next year after the pandemic is over and before Republicans take over (hope not) one of the branches of Congress in 2022, that Congress passes a $5 trillion per year Green New Deal or a $50 trillion GND spread over 10 years.

Off the Top of My Head

Where Will the Republican Party Go From Here?

by John Lawrence

The Republican party is having an identity crisis. Will it be dedicated to the adulation of Donald Trump or will it be based on conservative principles? What are conservative principles? Is the US a Republic or a Democracy or an Autocracy? This whole situation comes about because of the shifting demographics of the US. Historically, the US has been based on rule by white European Americans who have been able to keep minorities including chiefly African Americans in check by various means including slavery, Jim Crow laws, domestic terrorism, red lining, exclusion from education opportunities, even unemployment which has been used by the Federal Reserve to control inflation. That is changing because now there are more educated minorities including immigrants from all over the world gaining positions of political and economic power. 216 companies on the Fortune 500 were founded by immigrants or their children.

Is it any wonder then that poor and middle class whites want to tamp down immigration and keep black people in their place which they have always successfully been able to do until now. A lot of Trump supporters are effectively saying to hell with democracy if it means a multicultural society in which we have to tolerate multiple religions and multiple ethnicities and multiple shades of skin so it's not a question for them of having a democracy or a republic or any kind of society based on some version of popular rule. They want white European American rule like they've always had. There is also the added impetus that most of the once good paying manufacturing jobs have gone elsewhere which leads to even more insularity. So Trump supporters are the real conservatives in the respect that they want to conserve a way of life in which white people and European Americans have all the advantages. They abhor a democracy in which their lifestyle, their religion and their prerogatives are not paramount.

The Mitch McConnell conservatives overlap with the Trump conservatives, but the former stand for the privileges not of the white majority necessarily but of the white elite, of the white wealthy. They are even liberal enough to let wealthy people of different colors into their club while assuring less fortunate Americans that they too, if they work hard enough, may one day gain privileged positions of power and wealth. Basically, they represent rich people and abhor the white rabble. The problem is that this branch of the Republican party is increasingly irrelevant to the problems that America and the world faces. They stand for a strong defense which has morphed into endless wars which have gone nowhere and have only made matters worse in areas of the world in which the US has inserted itself. They stand for a bloated military-industrial-intelligence complex which has proven its incompetence in that it wasn't even able to predict an insurrection at the US Capitol, much less even defend against it once the attack was underway. They have proven to be focused on the wrong problems despite having been lavished with trillion dollar budgets.

What else do "principled" conservatives stand for? Low taxes but modern economic theory has proven that government spending need not be predicated on or limited by tax receipts. They stand for maximizing the private sector and minimizing the public sector at a time when dealing with climate change and even traditional infrastructure rebuilding demands the opposite. They stand for aiding and abetting the rich which has driven economic inequality to new heights. So what would be the role of a revamped and principled Republican party? Probably just to be a Democratic party lite or a party that criticizes Democratic programs. But that wouldn't assuage the interests of most power hungry politicians nor would it excite many members of their base who demand an entertaining leader who is focused by means of dog whistle diplomacy on white power.

The Trump party is similar to the Know Nothing movement, formally known as the Native American Party (at that time meaning descendants of colonists or settlers, rather than Indigenous Americans) before 1855 and the American Party after 1855. It was a nativist political party and movement in the United States, which operated nationwide in the mid-1850s, originally starting as a secret society. It was primarily an anti-Catholic, anti-Irish, anti-immigration, populist and xenophobic movement. So naturally they would resent an Irish Catholic President even though now there have been two of them. Adherents to the movement were to simply reply "I know nothing" when asked about its specifics by outsiders, providing the group with its common name. Qanon anyone? Supporters of the Know Nothing movement believed that an alleged "Romanist" conspiracy was being planned to subvert civil and religious liberty in the United States, and sought to politically organize native-born Protestants in what they described as a defense of their traditional religious and political values. Sure enough sounds like the Trump base to me.

The question is will the US become a full fledged democracy and live up to its vaunted principles finally even though it traditionally never has or will it revert to some version of white European American rule by electing another entertaining autocrat. That may not be Trump who has been deplatformed from Twitter, his chief propaganda tool, and faces mounting legal challenges, but there are others waiting in the wings who will offer bells and whistles instead of sound programs that really benefit the American people as a whole. But do Americans want government based on democratic principles or neverending campaign rallies with flags, banners and chants? As my Dad used to say, we shall see what we shall see.

Off the Top of My Head

A Job Guarantee Would Win Over Trump Voters and Also Address Black Lives Matter

by John Lawrence, February 14, 2021

Joe Biden can win over disgruntled Trump voters with a job guarantee. There has been a lot of research indicating that, if government were the Employer of Last Resort (ELR) at say a wage of $15.00 an hour, this would save money on unemployment as well as setting a minimum wage. It's also the minimum wage called for in Biden's COVID relief bill. Robert Reich, Clinton's labor secretary says:

"[G]ive Republicans and independents every incentive to abandon the Trump cult.

"White working-class voters without college degrees who now comprise a large portion of it need good jobs and better futures. Many are understandably angry after being left behind in vast enclaves of unemployment and despair. They should not have to depend on Trump’s fact-free fanaticism in order to feel visible and respected.

"A jobs program on the scale necessary to bring many of them around will be expensive but worth the cost, especially when democracy hangs in the balance."

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said in his last letter requesting support for the “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom”:

“It was obdurate government callousness to misery that first stoked the flames of rage and frustration. With unemployment a scourge in Negro ghettoes, the government still tinkers with half-hearted measures, refuses still to become employer of last resort. It asks the business community to solve the problems as though its past failures qualified it for success.”

It's clear that an ELT program would solve many problems not the least of which is wooing Trump voters to the Democratic party. Trump's appeal to them was partly that they had been left behind because jobs had been moved to China and Mexico and he was going to bring good paying manufacturing jobs back to America, something he never did or had a clue how to do. The ELR program will act as an automatic stabilizer adding jobs during a recession and eliminating them during an expansion when jobs will shift back to the private sector. All private employers would have to do is pay a wage slightly higher than the program wage of the ELR program which would effectively set the minimum wage. It has been thought that a certain level of unemployment was necessary to fight inflation, but that's not necessarily the case as jobs in the ELR program would not compete with jobs in the private sector. The program wage would be a floor below which wages could not drop.

The so-called "Phillips Curve" maintained that there was a trade-off between employment and inflation, that to achieve lower inflation you had to increase unemployment. The Bureau of Labor Statistics defines full employment as an economy in which the unemployment rate equals the nonaccelerating inflation rate of unemployment (NAIRU), no cyclical unemployment exists, and GDP is at its [full] potential. The Federal Reserve considers a base unemployment rate (the U-3 rate) of 5.0 to 5.2 percent as “full employment” in the economy. So government economists have been willing to trade off the misery of approximately 16 million unemployed people in order to achieve stable money. Those 16 million are mainly composed of African Americans. However, Modern Monetary Theory claims that this is not necessary. There are other policy tools to fight inflation. Taxes, for example, mainly targeted on the rich. Other countries such as Argentine and India have implemented ELR programs. The money spent would eliminate the need for food stamps, unemployment insurance and other government programs necessary to deal with poverty and homelessness. Anyone wanting a job could have one, and these jobs would be in areas like child and elder care where there is a need for additional workers.

Off the Top of My Head

The Two Strands of Modern Economic Theory

by John Lawrence, February 12, 2021

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

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

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

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

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

Off the Top of My Head

China Has Been Taking Over the World ... Peacefully

by John Lawrence, February 11, 2021

As Trump was retreating from multilateralism with his America First approach, China was winning friends and influencing people by building infrastruture in countries around the world with its Belt and Road initiative. This model put excess Chinese labor to work pulling their families out of poverty and set up the groundwork for increased trade and friendly relations with with other countries. Latest example: Latin America. Meanwhile, the US has not even been able to build infrastructure in its own country. Every four years, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) publishes The Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, which grades the current state of national infrastructure categories on a scale of A through F. In 2017, the U.S. infrastructure earned a D+ average. Stay tuned for a new report later this year. Infrastructure looms large because now it must be built out as green infrastructure replacing fossil fuel infrastructure.

In Latin America, America's so-called back yard, 19 countries have signed up for China's Belt and Road Initiative. The value of trade between China and Brazil, Latin America's largest country is $100 billion. China is South America's largest trading partner. Only Paraguay is not on board because they're the only South American country that recognizes Taiwan and not Beijing as the legitimate Chinese government. In 2019 Chinese companies invested $12.8 billion in Latin America concentrating on regional infrastructure such as ports, roads, dams and railways. Meanwhile, America was focused on its entertainment and consumerist economy, now partially defunct due to COVID. Chinese purchases of minerals and agricultural commodities helped South America get through the worst effects of the 2008 financial crisis. While the US had an orgy of financial speculation that created the 2008 financial crisis, China was powering on keeping its shoulder to the wheel, ear to the ground and nose to the grindstone building infrastructure and providing full employment for the Chinese people. As the US was relying on its military power to maintain its influence in the world, China was employing peaceful means to expand its influence. In 2020 the US spent $738 billion on defense, an additional $35 billion on nuclear weapons and and additional $80 billion on intelligence programs, none of which by the way provided intelligence on the assault on the Capitol although it had been discussed widely and openly on the web in prior weeks. Meanwhile, China's 2020 defense budget was $178 billion.

China's Cosco Shipping is building a new $3 billion port in Peru, and there are plans for a transcontinental railroad linking South America's Atlantic and Pacific coasts. Diplomatic opportunities for China have also been opened up due to COVID since China produces most of the world's PPE. The US was caught flat footed because it had to go hat in hand to China for PPE not much of which is manufactured domestically. Mask diplomacy has caused Washington to worry that China is gaining influence during the pandemic as China has provided PPE to 150 countries and 7 international organizations around the globe. While the US struggles to get vaccine into the arms of Americans, China has agreed to provide Pakistan with half a million doses of its Sinopharm vaccine free of charge. Time magazine reported:

"Yet China has won influence not by wielding sticks but by deftly distributing carrots. In Brazil, the region’s largest economy, bilateral trade with China rose from $2 billion in 2000 to $100 billion last year. Today, Brazil sends 30% of all exports to China, including 80% of its soybean crop and 60% of its iron ore. These entanglements are typically tightest with nations with goods to sell; China has supplied over $17 billion in financing to Argentina since 2007, according to Inter-American Dialogue, and is the world’s top importer of Argentine soybeans and beef.

"China is also now a preferred lender across the region. It hosts two international development banks–the Beijing-led Asian Infrastructure Development Bank (AIIB) and the New Development Bank (NDB) in Shanghai–that are both expanding their remit across the region. “Infrastructure development has shrunk the distance between Asia and Latin America,” AIIB president Jin Liqun tells TIME in his Beijing headquarters."

While China was deftly distributing carrots, the US was wielding sticks with Trump and Secretary of State Pompeo bullying the rest of the world to get them to fall in line behind the US. The US needs to cooperate with China to stave off the next big crisis - global warming - not start a new Cold War in an effort to overtake or compete with China. For the most part China has already won any competition to speak of by gaining cooperation and friendship with the rest of the world and achieving the world's largest economy while the US still struggles with COVID, its economy in shambles. "No country has put itself in a better position to become the world's renewable energy superpower than China,"says a recent report by the Global Commission on the Geopolitics of Energy Transformation. In Brazil China's State Grid Corp. is the largest power generation and distribution company, while China's Three Gorges, the world's largest hydropower provider, controls 17 out of 48 hydro plants and 11 wind farms.

Joe Biden is doing his best to backtrack from Trump's disastrous America First policy, but American foreign policy is still on the track that it views China as a competitor rather than a nation that should be cooperated with in order to meet the challenge of global warming. Rather than gearing up for a military confrontation or quibbling and squabbling over human rights, the US must adopt a less belligerent foreign policy and learn to get along with the other nations of the world even those who have not been historic allies. The US should cut back on its bloated military and military-complex spending and devote the savings to virus research and green infrastructure implementation at home and around the world in cooperation with China and other nations.

Off the Top of My Head

Contrary to Larry Summers Biden's Relief Bill Will Not Cause Increased Inflation

by John Lawrence, February 8, 2021

Joe Biden's almost $2 trillion pandemic relief deal will not be inflationary despite Larry Summers' opinion. Inflation occurs when there is too much money sloshing around in the economy chasing too few goods, services and human resources. That is not the case here. First of all it will reemploy the unemployed. This is a presently unused resource. Secondly, it will suck up unused or unsold goods and services funding things that are currently unfunded like child care, and thirdly, it will serve to pay off debt and replenish savings. Any money going into savings or paying off debt is not inflationary. It's deflationary in the sense that the banks will lose money due to interest they won't collect if loans are paid off. The middle class that did have savings or credit in many cases has had to use those to survive the pandemic. That's why giving money to higher earning, but not wealthy, families is a good thing. To hear some people talk only money should be given to those who are desperate and living from paycheck to paycheck. Yes, those are the families most in need who should be given money first, but higher earning families who have depleted their savings or gone into debt need to be resuscitated also.

So here is what Larry Summers says about inflation:

"First, while there are enormous uncertainties, there is a chance that macroeconomic stimulus on a scale closer to World War II levels than normal recession levels will set off inflationary pressures of a kind we have not seen in a generation, with consequences for the value of the dollar and financial stability. This will be manageable if monetary and fiscal policy can be rapidly adjusted to address the problem. But given the commitments the Fed has made, administration officials’ dismissal of even the possibility of inflation, and the difficulties in mobilizing congressional support for tax increases or spending cuts, there is the risk of inflation expectations rising sharply."

Summers fails to take into account the deflationary effects of the relief bill. Money going to states and municipalities will actually be deflationary because much of it will be used to pay down debts and loans. Many state budgets are in horrible shape and employees such as police, librarians and firemen have been laid off. People paying back rents and mortgages will have a deflationary effect on the economy. People on the lower end of the economic spectrum who are living paycheck to paycheck will be able to get a little ahead and also save. This will not add a lot to inflation. Also money can always be withdrawn from the economy by taxing the rich, those who actually added to their wealth and income during the pandemic. This is the only reason that taxes might need to be raised because the US government has the ability to spend without raising taxes. The only reason to tax would be to fight inflation and those taxes can be targeted towards wealthier families and individuals. The Federal Reserve has not been able to achieve its target rate of 2% inflation recently despite maintaining almost zero percent interest rates. It wants more money sloshing around in the economy.

There are other ways to suck money out of the economy to offset inflation. Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) recommends Medicare for All which would result in much less money spent on health care while providing better health outcomes. This would be deflationary which would counteract any inflationary propensities of government deficit spending. Conventional economic thinking is that there is a tradeoff between unemployment and inflation. The more people unemployed there are, the more inflation is diminished. Therefore, full employment as defined by economists is not really employment where everyone is employed. It is that level of unemployment which just keeps inflation in check. However, according to "The Trade-off between Inflation and Unemployment in an MMT World: An Open Economy Perspective" by Emilio Carnevali and Matteo Deleidi, MMT it is contended that inflation "occurs when the system reaches the point of full utilization of its productive capacity, both in terms of capital utilization and in terms of availability of workers. At this point, the government should curb inflation forces cooling down the effective demand. This is another fundamental task of taxes." As long as there is unused capacity in human or production terms, increased employment will not be inflationary. So Larry summers need not worry that putting all those unemployed people back to work will lead to inflation.

Biden's putting a $15.00 an hour minimum wage in the relief bill is also what MMT advocates in relation to a Federal job guarantee. Real full employment at a minimum wage of $15.00 an hour does not need to be inflationary especially if it is in areas that don't compete with already employed workers. Biden's relief bill will have the effect of putting almost everyone to work with at least an hourly pay of $15.00 an hour. People who are living paycheck to paycheck and employed at $15.00 an hour are not going to contribute to inflation since their demands on the economy are those that can be easily accommodated by existing production and easily increased production. Deficit spending is not a problem. Former Chair of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan said, "The United States can pay any debt it has because we can always print money to do that. So there is zero probability of default." So the real limit on government spending is inflation which can be controlled by taxes on those sectors of the economy which are not easily upscaled to provide more supply.

There is much unused capacity in the current US economy both in human and material or physical terms. People should be put back to work with a minimum wage of $15.00 per hour. A follow-on bill that would address infrastructure rebuilding and a Green New Deal also needs to be done. Resources may have to be managed by government to control inflation, but the important thing is that work needs to be done in these areas and people need to be put back to work. Inflation can also be offset by the deflationary effect of withdrawing funds form a bloated defense sector.

Off the Top of My Head

The Left/Right Political Spectrum Is Irrelevant at This Point

by John Lawrence

The Extreme Right position on the pandemic is just to let it rip. This would mean ongoing disaster for the whole world into the indefinite future. The Extreme Left would advocate government spending as much money as necessary to defeat the pandemic and get the economy back to normal. The middle of the road would advocate doing half as much as necessary to sort of but not really get the pandemic under control. Result: the coronavirus would be mutating and popping back up for years just as SARS COVID-9 is a mutation of the original SARS virus and is related to the MERS virus. Whether the mutations occur in animals or in humans, it doesn't matter. Viruses mutate and doing a half ass job in getting rid of this pandemic which is the political "middle" insures that there will be more pandemics in the future. Not allocating increased funding for the study and research of viruses insures that there will be more threats to human lives and economies.

The Extreme Right position on global warming is to do nothing about it. That includes encouraging consumption of fossil fuels and not caring how many greenhouse gasses are emitted into the atmosphere. This virtually guarantees that the earth will become uninhabitable in 50 years or less. The Extreme Left position would be to do as much government spending as necessary to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to zero in about 10 years. This would prevent global temperatures from rising more than the amount that would destroy the habitability of the earth. The middle position would be to spend a piddling amount to combat global warming. The result would be that the earth would become uninhabitable in a slightly longer time frame.

Republicans want to limit Federal government expenditures to solve problems while maximizing the private sector in the economy. Problem is that dealing with the pandemic and climate change are problems private enterprise is not capable of solving or even leading the way. Is there a role for private enterprise? Certainly, but government must play the leading role or these major problems as well as a number of others will not be solved. Private enterprise won't engage in any activity for which there are no profits to be made. Some problems like the pandemic and global warming are not likely to yield much in the way of profits. Ergo, private enterprise will not be interested in dealing with them.

The COVID relief package that Biden has put forward is totally dependent on Democrats controlling both Houses of Congress. That in turn was totally dependent on the Georgia runoff elections for two Senators which produced two Democrats. Otherwise, there would be no COVID relief package or follow on projects to deal with global warming because not enough Republicans will be voting for any of Biden's projected spending to solve these problems. So the Extreme Left position of these issues which are totally necessary if they are to be dealt with successfully would not have been possible. Even successfully dealing with these two existential problems was hanging by a thread because the election of two Democratic Senators from the state of Georgia was heretofore unheard of. But now there is a chance.

What really needs to happen with regard to government spending is that the public, and that includes Senators and Representatives, need to be educated on how the economy really works. Deficit spending is not really a problem. Read The Deficit Myth by Stephanie Kelton. Republicans rely on the ignorance of the public while suggesting that adequately dealing with global warming or the pandemic will raise their taxes. It does not have to increase taxes which is the conventional understanding about it. The Federal government does not need to pay back Federal deficits because the US dollar is a sovereign currency. The Federal Reserve can just "print" the money - although it doesn't actually print it - it creates it by a few keystrokes on a computer. A household or private firm must pay back its loans. Even US states must pay back loans usually by raising taxes. Th Federal government does not have to raise taxes nor does it have to pay back loans. Treasury bonds can just end up on the Fed's balance sheet where in fact most of them do end up. So a government, any government, which has a sovereign currency can create as much money as necessary to solve any problem. The only caveat is that money creation under certain conditions can induce inflation.

Too much money sloshing around in any sector can produce inflation in that sector. What the US economy has created recently is asset inflation but not inflation in the real economy. Tax breaks for the rich has resulted in the bidding up of assets. Take the stock market, for example. Major corporations have used their tax breaks not to build production facilities but to buy back their own stock. This raises the stock price: ergo, asset inflation. The same holds for the real estate market. People, with more money than they are willing to put to productive use, use it to bid up the value of real estate. Ergo, inflation. This makes housing less affordable. The real economy has under utilized capacity in terms of all the unemployed and underemployed labor. Government spending which soaks up this capacity and puts it to productive use in converting to a reusable energy economy and upgrading to green infrastructure should not produce inflation. Neither will more government money spent on research on viruses produce inflation. What else produces asset inflation is money spent on the military-industrial complex. Think $600 toilet seats.

The US public needs to be enlightened on how the economy really works at the macro level. That being understood would take all the wind out of the sails of Republican objections to government spending. It does not have to raise your taxes because the US government can never run out of money. An understanding of Modern Monetary Theory leads to that understanding.

Off the Top of My Head

Republicans: The Party of No to Democratic Values

by John Lawrence, January 30, 2921

As Joe Biden goes through the Kibuki theater of trying to get Republicans to sign on to the COVID relief bill, realpolitik Democrats are preparing to pass it using budget reconciliation. Republicans will likely vote in a bloc against the bill, but they won't be able to use the filibuster to nix it. Good thing that the cliffhanger in Georgia produced two Democratic Senators which made Democrats the majority in the Senate. Now all Democrats have to do is vote in a bloc to pass it. But will they? There are a few conservative Democrats who don't always vote with the rest, the most notable of which is Joe Manchin of West Virginia. How is he going to vote? I suspect he will vote with the rest of the Democrats because West Virginia has a lot of poor, suffering people who need relief.

Republicans will lose this vote so why will they all vote against it? Aren't they concerned that some of their constituents will hold it against them - especially the ones who really need the relief? Evidently not. They believe they have a lock on power in their own states. Georgia should be a wake up call for them. Republicans at this point stand for nothing except loyalty to a would be dictator. They don't care about fiscal prudence or anything else except pure raw political and economic power and campaign donations from the rich. The rich want deregulation and tax cuts so that's what they stand for. They certainly don't stand for anything of value for most Americans. Supposedly, they are against deficit spending although they have no problem with deficit spending when it comes to tax cuts which benefit the rich.

So it comes to light that a great many of the insurrectionists were military or ex-military. Why should that be surprising? People that are processed through the military are proto-fascists because the military is not a democratic institution. It's a top-down command and control organization where people are trained to kill. This is the mindset to which they are trained and instructed. On the other hand I venture to guess that not too many of the insurrectionists were previously Peace Corps members. It's a totally different mindset when the group you belong too is structured so as to help people rather than to hurt, maim, kill or dominate them. The insurrectionists are jingoes, and this is the definition from dictionary.com which suits them to a T: "a person who professes his or her patriotism loudly and excessively, favoring vigilant preparedness for war and an aggressive foreign policy; bellicose chauvinist." Bellicose chauvinists are people trained in the military because the military trains them to be unquestionably subservient to those above them in command and unquestionably threatening towards anyone perceived to be the enemy. Social media and conservative media has made no bones about who they consider to be the enemy. That would be any prominent Democrat past or present.

For many ex-military their identity was forged in the military. Take retired Lieutenant Colonel Larry Rendall Brock, Jr., a Texas-based Air Force Academy graduate and combat veteran, for example. Brock was videoed in the Senate Chamber "wearing several patches on his combat helmet and body armor, including one bearing a yellow fleur de lis, the insignia of the 706th Fighter Squadron. He also wore several symbols suggesting that he lived in Texas, including a vinyl tag of the Texas flag overlaid on the skull logo of the Punisher, the Marvel comic-book character. The Punisher has been adopted by police and Army groups and, more recently, by white supremacists and followers of QAnon. ... Also found [was] a recently deleted Twitter account associated with Brock, with a Crusader as its avatar. “All those things together, it’s like looking at a person’s C.V. ..." And his C.V. was forged in the military.

The US needs to own up to the fact that it has trained generations of bellicose chauvinist jingoes because it has become, despite General Eisenhower's warnings, a militaristic state that seeks to control the whole world with bullying tactics whether they be sanctions or actual military force. Despite recently closing hundreds of bases in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States still maintains nearly 800 military bases in more than 70 countries and territories abroad—from giant “Little Americas” to small radar facilities. The insurrectionists that attacked the Capitol were just trying to make US domestic policy mirror US foreign policy most exemplified by Mike Pompeo dictating orders to other countries. They liked the military; they loved the military, and they want US domestic policy to reflect the life they knew in the military. That's where their characters were formed, not in the Peace Corps. The Republican party has become a party of proto-militarists who yearn for a strong Commander-in-Chief who demonstrates military values. That would be a dictator or Supreme General as exemplified by Donald Trump or so they thought.

Off the Top of My Head

Taxing the Rich Will Lessen the Need for Deficit Spending

by John Lawrence, January 29, 2021

Billionaires are upset because their hedge fund ploys in the Wall Street casino went awry when a group of average Joes countered their short sales of GameStop. Oh the tears that were shed. Billionaires losing millions gambling? Outrageous! Bernie Sanders tweeted: "Oh look, another billionaire is mad that he might have to pay more taxes while children in America go hungry and veterans sleep on the street. Cry me a river," Joe Biden's $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill will mean a lot of deficit spending which can be offset, however, by taxing these billionaires. A financial transaction tax would raise $2.4 trillion over the next decade—"enough to make public colleges tuition free and cancel student debt."

Casino Capitalism Lesson 1: Selling short. Here's how billionaire hedge fund managers planned to make a killing. They knew that GameStop was losing money and probably going out of business. GameStop closed 321 stores in 2019 alone and planned on closing even more stores by the end of 2020. So knowing that GameStop's stock was going down (it didn't take a big brain to figure that out), they sold its stock short. What that means is that they "borrowed" the stock from people that already owned it. Then they sold the stock at its value at that time. Some time later when they would have to "return" the stock to those they borrowed it from, they planned to buy it back at a lower price (it having gone down in the meantime) and pocket the difference. One might ask why the original owners of the stock would loan it in the first place since they must have known that the stock would be worth less when it was returned to them.

However, a group of "amateur" investors foiled the plans of the billionaires by buying GameStop stock thereby bidding up the price making it worth more when the short sellers had to return it, not less. That would mean that the short sellers would lose money instead of making money. That's when the billionaires cried, "Ouch!" Then the "amateurs" who bid up the stock could sell it at the higher price and make money. Woo Haa! Leon Cooperman, whose net worth is estimated to be around $3 billion, sniffed that "the reason the market is doing what it's doing is, people are sitting at home, getting their checks from the government, basically trading for no commissions and no interest rates." In other words average people trading stocks are making the money that billionaires like him should have made. Boo Hoo!

Modern Monetary Theory maintains that all the money for the COVID relief bill could be raised from deficit spending because deficits don't matter without any need for increased taxation. Yet it would be prudent to raise taxes on the mega rich in order to decrease economic inequality which represents an enormous chasm between the billionaire class and everyone else. A new report found that the world’s 2,153 billionaires have more wealth than 4.6 billion people, underscoring the degree of global inequality. This would also offset any decrease in the value of the dollar that large deficit spending might bring about. In The Deficit Myth by Stephanie Kelton, she points out that the Federal Reserve which creates US dollars can never run out of money since the US dollar is a sovereign currency, but there is a concern about inflation if too much money is created which doesn't have a productive purpose in the economy. Since so many are unemployed and since there is a huge infrastructure deficit, this is not in danger of happening any time soon. There is no lack of money for government programs since they don't depend on tax flows, and money created by the Federal Reserve that ends up on the Fed's balance sheet never has to be paid back.

While the Fed can create as much money as it likes to bail out the banks without Congressional approval, which it did during the 2008 banking crisis, money created for government spending, such as the $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill, must have Congressional authorization. Fortunately, there is a process known as budget reconciliation which only requires a majority vote and the Democrats have the majority in the Senate. Therefore, the COVID relief bill cannot be filibustered by Republicans which they surely would do if they were in the majority. So it's clear that Republicans only represent the interests of the rich who will contribute to their campaigns and enrich them in return as long as they vote to nullify everything that might help the average person or raise taxes on them.

10 Bold Moves Biden Can Make Without Congress

by Robert Reich

 

Tuesday, January 19, 2021

We did it. We took control of the Senate from Mitch McConnell. Even so, Republicans may still be able to block key parts of Joe Biden’s agenda. But there are plenty of critical policies he can and must enact without them.

Biden’s first task is to undo Trump’s litany of cruel and disastrous executive orders. He has already announced he’ll rejoin the Paris Climate Accord, re-enter the World Health Organization, and repeal Trump’s discriminatory Muslim travel ban. And there are at least 48 other Trump policies that he can reverse on day one.

In addition, here are 10 critical policies Biden can implement without Congress:

FIRST: He can lower drug prices through Section 1498 of the federal code, which gives the government the power to revoke a company’s exclusive right to a drug and license the patent to a generic manufacturer instead. 

SECOND: He can forgive federal student loans – thereby helping to close the racial wealth gap, giving a financial boost to millions, and delivering a major stimulus to the economy. 

THIRD: He can use existing antitrust laws to break up monopolies and prevent mergers -- especially in Big Tech and the largest Wall Street banks.

FOURTH: He can institute pro-worker policies for federal contractors – who are responsible for a fifth of the economy – such as requiring a $15 minimum wage and paid family leave, and refusing to contract with non-union companies.

FIFTH: He can empower the Labor Department to aggressively monitor and penalize companies that engage in wage theft and unpaid overtime, and who misclassify employees as independent contractors – as Uber and Lyft do.

SIXTH: He can make it easier for people to get health care by eliminating Medicaid work requirements, reinstating federal funding to Planned Parenthood, and expanding access to Affordable Care Act plans. Then it’ll be up to us to push him to enact Medicare for All.

SEVENTH: He can ban the sale of public lands and waters for oil and gas drilling. He can further tackle the climate crisis by reinstating the 125 environmental regulations rolled back by Trump and directing federal agencies to deny permits for new fossil fuel projects, and halting all fossil fuel lease sales and permits.

EIGHTH: His Securities and Exchange Commission can reinstate its ban on stock buybacks – so that corporations are more likely to use their cash to invest in workers instead of enrich their shareholders. And he can rein in Wall Street by strengthening the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and other financial regulators, while his Treasury Department can close many tax loopholes.

NINTH: He can address the cruelty of capital punishment by granting clemency to everyone on federal death row, effectively ending the death penalty with the stroke of a pen. He can address other injustices by having the Department of Justice implement mass commutations for low-level drug offenders, strengthening the department’s Civil Rights Division, and reining in rampant police misconduct through consent decrees. And he can undo some of the damage wrought by the racist war on drugs by directing his Attorney General to reclassify marijuana as a non-dangerous drug.

TENTH: He can reverse Trump’s cruel immigration agenda by restoring and expanding DACA and raising the yearly number of refugees who can be admitted. 

Even with control of the Senate, Democrats’ slim majority means that Republicans can still obstruct Biden’s policy agenda at every turn. Biden can and must wield his presidential powers through Executive Orders and regulations. The problems America is facing demand it. 

Off the Top of My Head

Why Joe Manchin is Crucial to Biden's Climate Plan

by John Lawrence, January27, 2021

Joe Manchin is a conservative Democrat from West Virginia, probably the most conservative Democrat in the Senate. So why would Joe, who has already signaled his opposition to getting rid of the filibuster, and represents a coal mining state, go along with Biden's climate plan? The answer is that Biden's plan for converting to renewable energy will create a helluva lot of jobs in West Virginia transitioning all those coal related jobs to renewable energy jobs. Make no mistake. Joe Manchin will become a team player after these assurances of massive job creation in West Virginia. Similarly, Biden will target other fossil fuel generating states and communities with massive renewable energy projects so that workers in the fossil fuel industry will be placated and mollified. They will become his biggest fans as millions of good paying, union jobs are created for them. The oil industry's attempts to push back will be futile. They can save money by not lobbying because it won't get them anywhere. Joe Biden holds all the cards.

The genius of going all out for climate change is that Biden is making it an issue of job creation. Not that climate change in and of itself is not the main issue of paramount importance. It's just that reframing it as a jobs issue will take the air out of the oil industry profiteers who are making millions off of the status quo. They like things just the way they are despite the global warming catastrophe that awaits us if we don't act post haste. Joe Biden: "When I think of climate change, I think of jobs." Making John Kerry a Climate Change Envoy to the rest of the world is important because climate change cannot be forestalled within the borders of the US alone. There must be a coordinated, cooperative effort, and, in particular, China, Russia and India must be brought into the deal. What, you mean we can't afford to have any more enemies? We must make friends out of enemies using diplomacy rather than the bullying tactics of the Trump administration if we and the rest of the planet are to survive. Yes and it will nullify the ratinale of the bloated military-industrial complex. Instead of defunding the police, we should defund or reduce the funding of it to help pay for the Green New Deal.

So how are we going to pay for it? That seems to be the outstanding question. Thankfully, we have a former Chairman of the Federal Reserve as Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellin. She knows where the bodies are buried, so to speak, at the Fed. She knows that taxes do not have to be raised to pay or it, at least taxes on the poor and middle class. Taxes on the rich need to be raised, but more to reduce inequality than to pay for the response to climate change. Modern Monetary Theory has demonstrated that the US can never run out of money because it is a sovereign currency issuer. The Fed, as Janet Yellin well knows, can just create the money with a few keystrokes on a computer. This power, however, cannot be used irresponsibly. Inflation must be dealt with, and there are a number of arrows in the Fed's quiver to do this as was done during the build-up to WW II. As Stephanie Kelton has pointed out in her book The Deficit Myth, deficits don't matter. They are simply an accounting entry on the Fed's balance sheet. An unlimited amount of money was available when the banking crisis that caused the Great Recession in 2008 occurred. The Fed doesn't need tax receipts in order to create money which can then be transferred to the Treasury's account at the Fed. However, such transfers do have to be authorized by congress whereas the bank bail-outs did not require such authorization since the Fed is the loaner of last resort to the banks. The Fed can provide liquidity to the banking system whenever it thinks that that is prudent.

In the How to Pay for the Green New Deal the authors write: "Further, in what follows we do not assume that we need to raise taxes simply because government spending rises. The position we take is that taxes should be raised to fight inflation that would result from excess demands on resources. We would not raise taxes merely to balance spending with tax revenue. If more spending does not generate inflationary pressure, we do not need to raise taxes. In any event, we argue below that tax hikes are not necessarily the best way to counteract inflationary pressures should they arise." So tax increases are not necessary to fund a Green New Deal except possibly if the increased government spending would cause increased inflation, but there are other tools available to deal with inflation. Tax increases on the rich, however, are necessary in order that inequality doesn't get even worse than it is now. A recent report showed: "At $4.1 trillion, the total wealth of America’s 660 billionaires is two-thirds higher than the $2.4 trillion in total wealth held by the bottom half of the population, 165 million Americans." Creating new jobs to fight global warming ill help to mitigate both the climate crisis and the inequality crisis, but taxes on the rich will both decrease the need for money creation by the Fed and help to fund a Green New Deal.

Off the Top of My Head

Which is better: A Universal Basic Income (UBI) or a Government Job Guarantee (JG)?

by John Lawrence, January 22, 2021

Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) favors a JG where the government is the employer of last resort employing people that the private economy cannot accommodate. Now Larry Summers, Secretary of Treasury for Clinton, is coming around to the MMT view. Especially now when there is so much work that needs to be done (infrastructure, renewable energy) and so many idle workers, a JG makes much sense. One might ask where will the money for this come from? Answer: from the same place it came from for Reagan's $100 billion tax cuts, Bush 1's $125 billion tax cuts, Bush 2's $1.2 trillion tax cuts and Trump's $1.5 trillion tax cuts, all of which benefited the rich a lot more than they benefited the poor. Surprisingly, MMT maintains that government spending whether in the form of tax cuts or government programs benefit the private sector economy whether or not they are "paid for" out of tax receipts. Since the US dollar is a sovereign currency, the Federal Reserve can just create the money by a few keystrokes on a computer and move it into the US Treasury's account at the Federal Reserve. This process does not depend on tax receipts or money generated from the sale of Treasury bonds.

Either way - tax cuts or government programs - benefits the private economy. It's just that tax cuts benefit the rich more and government programs benefit the poor more. The fact that both entail deficit spending is irrelevant because the Fed can never run out of money. Don't believe me? Read: The Deficit Myth by Stephanie Kelton. She explains it better. Larry Summers says:

"The impulse behind the latest “big” progressive idea of creating a federal job guarantee is entirely valid. Studies show that those without jobs are much more likely to be dissatisfied with their lives, to become addicted to alcohol or drugs and to be abusive within their families than even those working at low wages they find inadequate.

"On this point, the U.S. economy is falling short of its potential. The fraction of the adult population between ages 25 and 54 that is working or seeking work has declined over the past 20 years. Despite America’s vaunted labor-market flexibility, the chance that a 25- to 54-year-old man will be out of work is much greater than it is in France and not very different than what it is in Spain . And in sharp contrast to the rest of the world, the fraction of adult women working in the United States has been declining since 1999 .

"These trends are important causes of the increasingly bitter nature of U.S. politics and of resistance to technological change and overseas trade. President Trump received disproportionate support in parts of the country where joblessness increased most.

"If the United States could guarantee jobs in even a modestly efficient manner and in a way that significantly increased employment, it would be a very good thing. I want to be enthusiastic about job-guarantee proposals. But at a time when cynicism about government runs strong, it is important for progressives to avoid making promises that they cannot keep. We must rigorously examine the practicality of a job guarantee."

Here's how the Fed's money creation process works. Tax receipts are deposited into the US Treasury's account at the Fed. The US Congress authorizes either spending programs or tax cuts. The US government spends money. When the Treasury's account at the Fed gets down to zero (spending equals tax receipts), the Fed injects money into the Treasury's account. It is impossible for the US government to ever run out of money. Then Treasury bonds are sold by the Treasury Department which are bought by "primary dealers" (mainly big Wall Street banks) which are obligated to buy them. Some are sold to investors whether they be private individuals or governments like China and Japan.

When the point is reached that the banks don't have enough liquidity (cash - because they've been buying up Treasury bonds)), the Fed creates liquidity by buying up the Treasury bonds from the Wall Street banks in return for cash. Where did it get the money to do this? It created it by a few keystrokes on a computer. So by a roundabout process the Federal Reserve makes sure that the US government has all the money it needs as authorized by Congress regardless of any considerations for deficit spending or the total amount of the US national debt. Those are just accounting entries on the Fed's balance sheet. The Fed buys and sells Treasuries every day as a means of setting the interest rate or of providing liquidity as it did in the Great Recession of 2008. The Fed is the loaner of last resort to the US banking system, and it stands ready to create as much money as is necessary to keep it running smoothly. It also stands ready to provide the same guarantees for the US government, but the money has to be authorized first by Congress.

The takeaway is that Deficits Don't Matter. The private sector benefits from government deficit spending whether those deficits are created by tax breaks or government programs. Government spending programs primarily help the poor while tax cuts primarily help the rich. A government Job Guarantee in which the government becomes the employer of last resort is better than a Universal Basic Income because a job provides one with more dignity than a handout and there is much work to be done. Congress - not taxes - is the limitation to government spending. Republican obstructionism is the only thing that can limit economic benefits to the American people because, while the Fed can directly benefit the Big Banks without Congressional approval, it cannot benefit the American people without Congressional approval. Democrats want to benefit the American people, convert to renewable energy, provide jobs and income for the American people and prevent the earth from burning up due to climate change. Republicans want simply to hold on to political power by preventing Democrats from being successful.

Off the Top of My Head

Was the Insurrection a Blessing in Disguise?

by John Lawrence, January 21, 2021

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

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

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

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

Off the Top of My Head

The Sweet Serendipity of Joe Biden

by John Lawrence, January 20, 2021

He is no longer a young man with raging ambition, but an old man trying to reconstruct democracy. His young man ambitions didn't pan out, but he was still available to save a nation from itself. Biden comes to the Presidency after the most destructive administration in American history. Biden is there to serve, not to aggrandize himself. There is so much low hanging fruit that Biden will go down as a great President just for picking up the pieces. There is so much to do and there is so much that will get done rather quickly. Biden is known for working across the aisle, but don't be fooled that that will be a sign of weakness. He won't have to go hat in hand to Republicans this time. If Republicans don't want to cooperate, the Democrats have the tools to say "OK, we're going to go ahead and do it anyway." They won't be able to slow Joe down the way they slow walked Barack Obama for 8 years. They won't be able to get him to "triangulate" the way they had Clinton do. No, Democrats are wise to Republican obstructionism. In short Republicans will not be able to block the Democratic agenda.

Finally we have an administration that wants to just get the work done as opposed to one that just wanted to aggrandize itself. That version of solipsism flamed out  two weeks ago when a bunch of wahoos tried to take over the US Capitol, egged on by the last President. So America has turned a page, and the stark difference is black and white. Instead of "making America great again" Trump trashed America. Now it is up to Joe Biden and his fellow Democrats to actually make America great again both at home and in the eyes of the rest of the world. And it's not just about America. It's about whether or not the planet is to survive as a habitable home for human beings. This means cooperating with other countries, not ginning up another Cold War to justify a bloated military establishment. In a sense the outcome of the militarization of America was seen two weeks ago as many of its products tried to perform a coup d'etat and the military establishment itself was caught flat footed.

So much has become evident in a very short time. The FBI is tracking down the rioters who will soon face American justice in a jail cell. I don't think Trump pardoned the Shaman who had his face all over the media despite his plea to his "great leader". America is about to be saved from itself. Even most of those who voted for Trump are suffering from economic inequality and the ravages of COVID. Their problem is that they will have to adjust to a demographic shift in American society. It doesn't mean that they will be lesser, but they will have to be content with being equal and sharing this remarkable country with brown, black and people of foreign cultures. As their lots in life improve during an administration that will do its best to lift up all Americans especially the poor, impoverished and lower middle class "deplorables", their mindsets will change. They will start to realize how they've been duped by the last President. As media outlets that spew conspiracy theories and lies are clamped down on, their diet of angry raw meat will dry up. Twitter feeds will vanish. As Americans realize that their military and intelligence establishments are misdirected, the true threats to America will be acknowledged and budgets will be right sized. White supremacy and domestic terrorism are finally on the radar of the FBI and American intelligence establishments. They've had their moment in time when they were encouraged and enabled by an American President.

Joe Biden is a devout Catholic. I admire the Catholic church for its emphasis on Jesus' social gospel although I'm not a member. I'm not a member of any church although to the extent that any religion is in the business of lifting up "the least of us", I honor it. The words of Pope Francis are appropriate here.

"True, a worldwide tragedy like the Covid-19 pandemic momentarily revived the sense that we are a global community, all in the same boat, where one person’s problems are the problems of all. Once more we realized that no one is saved alone; we can only be saved together. As I said in those days, “the storm has exposed our vulnerability and uncovered those false and superfluous certainties around which we constructed our daily schedules, our projects, our habits and priorities… Amid this storm, the façade of those stereotypes with which we camouflaged our egos, always worrying about appearances, has fallen away, revealing once more the ineluctable and blessed awareness that we are part of one another, that we are brothers and sisters of one another”."

Joe Biden is here to serve, to make the world a better place. You can't ask for more than that. There is much to be done.

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

Published on Tuesday, January 19, 2021

by Common Dreams

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

by Jake Johnson, staff writer

 

21 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read the full memo:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Why Biden Can’t Govern from the Center

by Robert Reich
Sunday, January 17, 2021

I keep hearing that Joe Biden will govern from the “center.” He has no choice, they say, because he’ll have razor-thin majorities in Congress and the Republican party has moved to the right.

Rubbish. I’ve served several Democratic presidents who have needed Republican votes. But the Republicans now in Congress are nothing like those I’ve dealt with. Most of today’s GOP live in a parallel universe. There’s no “center” between the reality-based world and theirs.

Last Wednesday, fully 95% of House Republicans voted against impeaching Trump for inciting insurrection, even after his attempted coup threatened their very lives.

The week before, immediately following the raid on the Capitol, more than 100 House Republicans and several Republican senators objected to the certification of Biden electors in two states on the basis of Trump’s lies about widespread fraud.

Prior to the raid, several Republican members of Congress repeated those lies on television and Twitter and at “Stop the Steal” events.

Trump has remade the Republican party into a white supremacist cult living within a counter-factual wonderland of lies and conspiracies.

According to various surveys, more than half of Republican voters – almost 40 million people – believe Trump won the 2020 race or aren’t sure who won; 45% support the storming of the Capitol; 57% say he should be the Republican candidate in 2024.

In this hermetically sealed cosmos, most Republicans believe Black Lives Matter protesters are violent, immigrants are dangerous and climate change doesn’t pose a threat. A growing fringe openly talks of redressing grievances through violence, including QAnon conspiracy theorists, of whom two are newly elected to Congress, who think Democrats are running a global child sex-trafficking operation.

How can Biden possibly be a “centrist” in this new political world?

There is no middle ground between lies and facts. There is no halfway point between civil discourse and violence. There is no midrange between democracy and fascism.

Biden must boldly and unreservedly speak truth, refuse to compromise with violent Trumpism and ceaselessly fight for democracy and inclusion.

Speaking truth means responding to the world as it is and denouncing the poisonous deceptions engulfing the right. It means repudiating false equivalences and “both sidesism” that gives equal weight to trumpery and truth. It means protecting and advancing science, standing on the side of logic, calling out deceit and impugning baseless conspiracy theories and those who abet them.

Refusing to compromise with violent Trumpism means renouncing the lawlessness of Trump and his enablers and punishing all who looted the public trust. It means convicting Trump of impeachable offenses and ensuring he can never again hold public office – not as a “distraction” from Biden’s agenda but as a central means of reestablishing civility, which must be a cornerstone of that agenda.

Strengthening democracy means getting big money out of politics, strengthening voting rights and fighting voter suppression in all its forms.

It means boldly advancing the needs of average people over the plutocrats and oligarchs, of the white working class as well as Black and Latino people. It means embracing the ongoing struggle for racial justice and the struggle of blue-collar workers whose fortunes have been declining for decades.

The moment calls for public investment on a scale far greater than necessary for Covid relief or “stimulus” – large enough to begin the restructuring of the economy. America needs to create a vast number of new jobs leading to higher wages, reversing racial exclusion as well as the downward trajectory of Americans whose anger and resentment Trump cynically exploited.

This would include universal early childhood education, universal access to the internet, world-class schools and public universities accessible to all. Converting to solar and wind energy and making America’s entire stock of housing and commercial buildings carbon neutral. Investing in basic research – the gateway to the technologies of the future as well as national security – along with public health and universal healthcare.

It is not a question of affordability. Such an agenda won’t burden future generations. It will reduce the burden on future generations.

It is a question of political will. It requires a recognition that there is no longer a “center” but a future based either on lies, violence and authoritarianism or on unyielding truth, unshakeable civility and radical inclusion. And it requires a passionate, uncompromising commitment to the latter.

Off the Top of My Head

Voltaire: Those who have the power to make you believe absurdities have the power to make you commit atrocities

by John Lawrence, January 19, 2020

Twitter took away Trump's source of power when it deplatformed him. He'll never have the same soapbox again. This was the most significant move in silencing Trump, more so than even an impeachment conviction. He must be deplatformed from all social media. I don't think someone who cried fire in a crowded theater is entitled to free speech just as someone who has murdered someone with a gun isn't entitled to own a gun despite the Second Amendment. So there you go. All this will happen in the background as Joe Biden rescues the US from COVID and a sucky economy. The economy is just fine for the rich. It's terrible for the poor and has been for years. For most U.S. workers, real wages have barely budged in decades. So Trump is well on his way to becoming a footnote to history, an incompetent grifter, who gained a following through entertaining lies appealing to lower middle class grievances. My prediction is that he won't pardon any of the people involved in the Capitol riot because, like him, they are losers. Winning would have been a complete takeover in a coup d'etat, not just a break-in and subsequent removal. When he told his followers "I will be there with you" what he probably meant was that he would come down there after Mike Pence had been hung and Nancy Pelosi had been executed. Then he would declare himself President for Life and install the My Pillow guy as vice President. Instead the name Trump is being eliminated from all the entities that Trump had branded like Trump Tower. The name has lost its cachet.

Joe Biden will put competent people into positions of power and responsibility not loyal political hacks like Trump did. A lot of this will go on behind the scenes while Joe implements the big initiatives: 100 million vaccinations in the first 100 days and a $1.9 trillion economic relief bill. Everything else is relatively minor. Money will be no object; incoming Treasury Secretary Janet Yellin, former Chairwoman of the Federal Reserve has said, "Go big." She knows what hitherto Fed Chairmen and Treasury Secretaries did not want you to know and that is that Deficits Don't Matter. (See The Deficit Myth by Stephanie Kelton.) They are by a roundabout process merely accounting entries on the Fed's balance sheet. As long as there is unused productive capacity in the economy, deficits can put people back to work doing productive things that the private sector will not do like building and repairing infrastructure. On Biden's first day he will rejoin the Paris climate accords. Money must be made available in a second massive economic bill after the $1.9 trillion relief bill so that the country can be transitioned from a fossil fuel economy to a renewable energy economy. So there will be a lot of deficit spending although a revision of the tax structure that makes the rich and corporations pay their fair share will offset some of this.

Trump faces a financial reckoning. In the book, Dark Towers, Deutsche Bank, Donald Trump and an Epic Tale of Destruction, we find that in 2016 "Trump by now owed the bank about $350 million, representing half of all of his outstanding debt. Deutsche was by far his biggest creditor, and Trump was the single biggest borrower from the private-banking division. To borrow that money, Trump had provided Deutsche with his personal financial guarantees. If he failed to pay the loans back, the bank could come after his personal assets, making his life—and his ability to project the public impression of massive wealth—exceedingly difficult." Those loans are coming due in about two years. Deutsche will probably take Trump to court to get their hands on that $300 million slush fund that Trump raised from his followers to supposedly "Save America."  Trump's golf courses and other properties are losing money because of the pandemic. A few miles south of the namesake tower where Donald Trump began his run for president, New York prosecutors are grinding away at an investigation into his business dealings that could shadow him long after he leaves office. The probe led by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. is one of several legal entanglements likely to intensify when Trump loses power — and immunity from prosecution — upon leaving the White House.

Off the Top of My Head

Bernie Sanders, Budget Reconciliation and Modern Monetary Theory

by John Lawrence, January 18, 2021

Joe Biden will have no trouble from Congress in passing his $1.9 trillion relief bill. That's because Democrats control all 3 branches, and the filibuster is neutered due to "budget reconciliation." This allows a spending bill to be fast tracked through Congress without the possibility of a filibuster. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities: "The Senate can consider and pass reconciliation bills relatively quickly and with only a simple majority, rather than the three-fifths majority often needed for controversial legislation. That’s because reconciliation legislation isn’t subject to filibuster. Under general Senate rules, legislation can be stalled by virtually unlimited debate and the offering of numerous amendments, with a three-fifths majority vote required to invoke “cloture,” thereby limiting debate and blocking non-germane amendments. For a reconciliation bill, however, the Congressional Budget Act limits Senate debate on the bill to 20 hours and limits debate on the subsequent compromise between the two houses to ten hours."

Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) has shown that deficits don't matter. At least George W Bush didn't think so when he used the budget reconciliation process to give huge tax breaks to the rich which significantly increased the deficit and reduced income to the Federal government from taxes. The use of budget reconciliation did an end run around PAYGO which requires the Federal government to balance its budget and the debt limit which also constrains Federal spending. Both conservatives and liberals will be enthused over the fact that MMT proclaims that either tax reduction or government spending is good for American society (up to a point) even though the debt limit or PAYGO may be violated. This is because government is effectively adding money to the private sector which drives economic activity.

Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are very familiar with not only budget reconciliation but also MMT because one of its chief adherents, Stephanie Kelton who wrote the book, The Deficit Myth, previously was a Senate advisor to Bernie on the Senate Budget Committee. On December 26, 2014, Kelton was designated as Chief Economist for the Democratic Minority Staff of the Senate Budget Committee, a post that she held in 2015 and early 2016, when she left that position to become an economic advisor to the Bernie Sanders campaign. So the American economy is about to get a shot in the arm that will mostly benefit poor and middle class people (whereas the Bush tax cuts primarily benefited the rich) much to the chagrin of conservatives that hold to the idea that government deficit spending should only benefit the rich through tax cuts.

MMT contends that, since the Federal Reserve creates money by keystokes on a computer and the US dollar is a sovereign currency, the US government can never run out of money. Treasury bonds can always be sold to cover deficits, and, if they can't be sold to the general public, they will end up on the Fed's balance sheet where they may remain forever as an accounting entry. Even the interest paid on Treasury bonds, which is now approximately zero, is not a consideration. Interest on Treasuries owned by the Fed is remitted to the Federal government anyway. So now is the time for massive spending by the US Federal government to 1) expedite recovery from COVID; 2) jump start the economy; and 3) expedite a global response to global warming by converting to renewable energy on all levels including:

"replacing fossil-fuel engines with electric in all public and private transport, super-insulating buildings and replacing inefficient HVAC systems, establishing regional photo-voltaic micro-grid electric networks, replacing gas cooking ranges with electric induction units, buying regenerative-produced farm products and 'meatless meats', replacing all small engine appliances and tools with battery electric power"

And this is not to mention that solar, wind and other forms of renewable energy need to replace fossil fuel electric generating plants.

There is no time to lose. The incoming administration has a lot on its plate. In addition to that they have to run an impeachment trial in the Senate. Let's hope it doesn't slow down any of Joe Biden's initiatives. With Bernie as the Chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, armed with a knowledge of MMT, we can look forward to restoring the US' standing in the world community as well as restoring an economy that works for the poor and not just the well heeled, getting the pandemic under control and mitigating climate change. Thank you Bernie and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Off the Top of My Head

Problems of American Democracy

by John Lawrence, January 16, 2021

My Dad taught a course once with the above name. The major problem now is social media. Social media allows like minded folks to find each other, and, if they are the type that wants to overthrow the government, social media allows them to organize. In addition the First and Second Amendments enable them. Free Speech must be limited and those limitations need to be made clear and evident. As for the Second Amendment, it has to be made clear that this doesn't give gun owners carte blanche. It's ridiculous that they should be able to open carry inside a state Capitol. As for social media, their algorithms encourage the gathering of like minded domestic terrorists in the same way it allowed ISIS to conspire and attract disaffected Muslims.

Facebook in particular has allowed white supremacist and domestic terrorist groups to find each other, conspire and flourish. They encourage like minded people to "friend" as many people as possible. Then if one of them makes a cleverly hateful or conspiratorial poster, they can "share" it with everyone in their group of friends. Even a Russian hacker could put up a hateful poster and share it among hundreds or thousands of people. The more people it's shared among, the more Facebook brings eyeballs to their app, and the more money they make. Facebook's profits are predicated on an advertising model in which they get paid every time a person clicks on their app. People are routinely notified by email and other means that one of their "friends" has posted something even though their friend may only have "shared" it. Empty headed sympathizers of domestic terrorists or white supremacists have only to share someone else's original creations. Meanwhile, Facebook doesn't want to diminish their profits by either changing their highly profitable algorithms or hiring more people to police their site and take down hate speech, untruthful conspiracy theories or the organizing of domestic terrorists. That would diminish their profits.

Time magazine reported:

"At a hearing of the House Committee on Homeland Security in September 2019, Soufan urged lawmakers to take the threat more seriously. The following month, 40 members of Congress signed a letter calling—unsuccessfully—for the U.S. State Department to designate Azov [ a right wing group based in Ukraine] a foreign terrorist organization. “Azov has been recruiting, radicalizing, and training American citizens for years,” the letter said. Christopher Wray, the director of the FBI, later confirmed in testimony to the U.S. Senate that American white supremacists are “actually traveling overseas to train.”

"The hearings on Capitol Hill glossed over a crucial question: How did Azov, an obscure militia started in 2014 with only a few dozen members, become so influential in the global web of far-right extremism? TIME, in more than a dozen interviews with Azov’s leaders and recruits, found that the key to its international growth has been its pervasive use of social media, especially Facebook, which has struggled to keep the group off its platform. “Facebook is the main channel,” says Furholm, the recruiter.

"In a statement to TIME, Facebook defended its recent attempts to deal with the proliferation of right-wing extremists, saying it has banned more than 250 white-supremacist groups, including Azov. “As they evolve their efforts to return to the platform, we update our enforcement methods with technology and human expertise to keep them off,” the statement said."

Well, I guess Facebook isn't trying hard enough. It doesn't want to change its lucrative model and the lucrative and profitable algorithms that have made them billions of dollars. What was purportedly supposed to be a platform for sharing family pictures among real actual friends and perhaps original free speech has become a model that's used by groups seeking to organize to overthrow governments. Facebook and YouTube played a role in creating, aiding and abetting ISIS. As the story continues:

"[Azov adherents] were not the only extremists to embrace social media in 2014. When the Islamic State declared a caliphate in the Middle East that year, it began posting propaganda on social networks—mashing together memes, religious verses and scenes of gratuitous violence. The approach took the platforms by surprise, and for a time the caliphate was able to lure a class of disaffected young Muslims to fight. But by 2017, both Facebook and YouTube had developed algorithms to detect Islamic extremist material, after facing significant pressure from Western governments to act.

"No government, least of all that of the U.S., put similar pressure on social media platforms to stamp out white supremacy. One legacy of the 9/11 attacks was that many counter-terrorism agencies equated terrorism with Islamic extremism, allowing white supremacy to fly under the radar just as social media platforms like Facebook were giving the movement access to a bigger audience than ever before. “In a way, Facebook tracked the failed counter-terrorism policies of the Western world,” says Heidi Beirich, the director of an advocacy group called the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism.

"In its statement to TIME, Facebook said it began using its algorithms to detect Azov content after designating it a dangerous organization in 2016. But well after that date, members of white-supremacist groups, including Azov, were still able to evangelize on the platform.

"In some cases, Facebook’s algorithms actually nudged users into joining these groups. In an internal presentation in 2016, its analysts looked at the German political groups on the platform where racist content was thriving. They found that within this segment of Facebook, 64% of the people joining extremist groups were finding them through the platform’s own recommendation tools. “Our recommendation systems grow the problem,” the analysis states, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal that cited the internal document. In its statement to TIME, Facebook said the report was limited in scope and suggested the findings were misleading. It said it had adjusted its algorithms to stop pushing people toward known extremist groups."

Facebook has allowed right wing hate groups to proliferate on its platforms while doing too little, too late to eliminate their presence. It and other social media giants need to be regulated by government in order to rid the world of the threats to domestic order and constitutional government that they represent. “Because this material was allowed to proliferate so long, in particular on Facebook, we now have thousands, millions of people who have been sucked into the world of white supremacy and other forms of extremism,” says Beirich. “That problem now exists. That’s the fallout from not having acted originally.” Meanwhile, social media allows "friends" to schedule "events" that may or may not be gathering places for domestic terrorists and white supremacists. Friends, indeed!

Off the Top of My Head

Pence Will Likely Not Pardon Trump Even If He Resigns

by John Lawrence, January 11, 2021

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

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

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

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

I wrote previously:

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

"God bless America."

Off the Top of My Head

My Horse, My Horse, My Kingdom for a Horse

by John Lawrence, January 9, 2021

Only in Trump's case: My Twitter Account, My Twitter Account, My Kingdom for a Twitter Account. Trump has been emasculated. He's been banned from Twitter, Facebook, Shopify and God knows what else. As well he should be. This guy was not so much a President as he was a Tweeter-in-Chief and rabble rouser. He roused a lot of rabble a few days ago when he almost had Congress persons killed and taken hostage. Who thought it was a good idea to have a rally on the day the votes for the next President were to be certified? Well, Donald Trump of course. He knew what he was doing. It's just that his doofus supporters were inept at coup planning or the outcome might have been entirely different. Trump, Rudy Giuliani ("trial by combat"? he was wrong and, according to his own words, has been made a fool of and should go to jail) and Don Jr should be criminally implicated for inspiring to riot. Trump should be criminally implicated also for not calling out the National Guard till it might have been too late. It seems that only he had the authority to do so, and he was allowing sufficient time for his acolytes to do their dirty work.

Joe Biden definitely has his work cut out for him. He has to deal with a global pandemic which may be mutating. He has to deal with 40 years of neoliberal economic policies which have made the rich richer and the poor homeless. And he has to deal with a cult of domestic terrorists. To those who think that China, Russia and Iran are the problems, I've got news for you: the American people, a huge contingent of them, are the problem. Gun violence is the problem. Trillions of dollars wasted on a sitting military, on the grounds that we have enemies who justify this, is the problem. The policies of George W Bush who caused millions of deaths in the Middle East with the result of ongoing chaos is the problem. It's enough to make your head spin. While the US is in chaos as a society, the rest of the world is moving forward. While Joe Biden must play catch up, the rest of the world is moving ahead. While much of the US citizenry is composed of cultish dingbats, the rest of the world are very clear eyed by comparison. While the US culture and militarization of mindset is descending into a cesspool of self indulgence, people in the rest of the world are using their brains and feelings of compassion for their fellow inhabitants of earth to move ahead. While religious bigots use Jesus as an excuse to do dastardly deeds in the same way that the Ku Klux Klan has always done, the rest of the world is coming from a more enlightened attitude toward ethics and morality, religion or no religion.

The result is that the US has become the equivalent of a Third World country with an outsized and bloated military. Pride goeth before a fall, and the US, if it cannot get its act together, will go the way of the Roman Empire when it descended into chaos. The best the US can hope for coming out of the putrefaction of the Trump era is to be a good partner with the rest of the world as we solve enormous problems including climate change and poverty. No more yelling "We're Number One" when clearly a significant number of us are spoiled brats and worse. Let's turn the military culture into a peace culture. Let's take megaphones away from demagogues the way Twitter has denied Trump his Twitter account. Let's police social media.

Social media has not ennobled the American people; instead it has allowed a large number of Americans to be turned into a cult the way radio allowed Hitler in the 1930s to encultify, to coin a word, the German people. Cults demand that people pay obeisance to a leader. Kim Jong Un is sitting there thinking that the US is just as big a cult as North Korea. The remedy for this is that people have to be educated to think critically and not to follow some powerful figure with a huge megaphone whether it be Hitler, Mussolini or Donald Trump. Trump's megaphone has been taken away the way a parent takes away a child's favorite toy if he or she misbehaves. Trump's following have a militarized mindset. I would lay dollars to doughnuts that most of them have served in the military the way Ashli Babbit, the rioter who was shot, did. Perhaps if young Americans were required to do two years of national service or service in the Peace Corps instead of being incentivized to become Marines, sailors and airmen, attitudes would change. Instead of their minds being molded to taking commands from superior officers, they might develop an alternative mindset in which serving the poor and unfortunate of the world would be their highest priority.

The US has become a degenerate society, composed of unthinking followers of a strongman who had promised them that they're number one, Americans are number one and we're the greatest society and nation on earth. This is misguided thinking doomed to failure. This is the fall of the Roman Empire, the people of which had become a bunch of degenerate spoiled brats. There are good people here of course. The new administration represents a great many of them. There are many changes that need to be made in US society that they will try to change. It will be a sisyphean effort. Much of what has been seen as essential to American culture will have to be discarded and we will have to join the rest of the world's nations humbly in a cooperative effort to combat global warming and create a culture of love, peace and compassion.

Off the Top of My Head

We Have Met the Enemy, Sir, And It Is Us

by John Lawrence, January 8, 2021

Why are we spending a trillion dollars a year on a defense establishment when the biggest threat to the republic is domestic terrorists? The failed coup attempt by inept Trump supporters could have ended a lot worse. Congress persons could be dead. Vice President Pence could be dead. Hundreds of Trump conspiracy theorists could be dead. The Capitol could have gone up in flames. And they will probably give Trump a slap on the wrist. He needs to go to prison. In other countries failed coup attempts end quite differently. The best outcome so far is the suspension of Trump's Twitter and Facebook accounts. It needs to be made permanent. Social media is responsible for spreading Trump's lies and conspiracy theories. They have profited from spreading lies.  Everything connected with Qanon should be taken down and accounts canceled. These white people (were there any blacks or Latinx in  the insurrection) need to be reeducated. I wonder if the Chinese have any room in their reeducation camps for the Uyghurs?

During the Jim Crow era in the South, African Americans by design occupied the lowest rung of the social ladder. The next rung up were people other southerners referred to as "poor white trash." The poor white trash were the most avid racists and white supremacists because their only point of pride was that they were better than African Americans. They did the dirty work for the Ku Klux Klan. Basically, Trump supporters and especially those that broke into the Capitol building are poor white trash. I have called the Republican party the WPP - White People's Party - and it's evident that that is what it really is. It remains to be seen whether they will remain loyal to Trump, but he has certainly exploited their grievances and pandered to their racism, white supremacy and demands that they be given supremacy over blacks, Latinx and immigrants. They are one rung up the ladder from minorities and immigrants, and they have demonstrated that they will go to great lengths to stay there just like the poor white trash of a foregone era.

Social media needs to be reigned in. The internet at this point has done more harm than good when you consider the hacking of government secrets and the harm social media has done in spreading conspiracy theories, falsehoods and lies. In the early days of the internet I taught a course at Palomar college. In our discussion I remember there were several layers of protocol that the internet was supposed to provide. One of them was security. Security then was mostly ignored by commercial software developers because it subtracted from their profits and didn't add to the commercial appeal - the bells and whistles - of the product. They need to go back and redesign the internet from scratch making security the number one concern. As far as social media is concerned, it needs to be tightly regulated by Congress with Federal authority to take down websites and cancel social media accounts. We now have seen a demonstration of what can happen when we let these wahoos run rampant. People exploit other people for profit, and even though that has been the American way, it needs to be stopped. Cults need to be taken down from social media. Free speech needs to have limits. So far this has been ignored, and it has been at our peril. It's a miracle that only one policeman was killed in the insurrection. What if the entire Congress had been taken down. There was practically no police presence and certainly not in the numbers required to withstand the mob that was incited to riot by Trump.

Hopefully, America has been chastened. Hopefully, this near coup has been a wake up call. Some of the people most likely to benefit from Joe Biden's initiatives are Trump supporters whether they know it or not. Of course they will have to occupy the same rungs of the ladder as minorities and immigrants, and this is what this latter day poor white trash of the WPP will hardly consent to do. Federal law makes it a crime to engage “in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof.” Someone who violates this statute faces a fine and up to 10 years in prison. Perhaps while these domestic terrorists are serving their 10 year jail sentences, they can be reeducated. At the very least their social media accounts should be taken down, and Trump should never be allowed to Twitter again.

Off the Top of My Head

They Should Have Seen It Coming. What Happened Yesterday Was a Failed Coup Attempt.

by John Lawrence, January 7, 2021

Miraculously, very few people were hurt. The inadequate police force was totally overwhelmed. Why wasn't the National Guard there in the first place? Why did it take hours for additional police to show up? The rioters could have taken over and held the Capitol if they had had weapons. They could have taken Congress persons hostage. These guys are Second Amendment advocates. Each of them could have had a gun under their winter coats. A good question is why didn't they? I'm assuming Trump's intention was a coup, but it failed because of ineptness on the part of the leaders. It might have been a dry run for January 20. Why are our leaders so naive? Why is the decision to activate the National Guard up to the President who had to be "convinced" to call up the Guard. Really? He was the one inciting the riot in the first place. Why would he call in troops to disperse it? The only way he would want any troops there is if they were loyal to him and were there to protect and enable the rioters. Remember the military presence at the Black Lives Matter movement when Trump wanted to cross the road and hold up a Bible in front of a church. Where were the helicopters yesterday? Why doesn't the Mayor of Washington DC have the authority to call in the National Guard?

January 20, the day President elect Biden is inaugurated, should see a sufficient police and military presence to insure that everything goes according to plan without the threat of disruption by any person or group. The perimeter for the event should be extensive and well guarded. No fooling around. It is a travesty that people were able to get inside and rampage in the Capitol building putting the lives of Senators, Congress persons, staff people, media and the vice President at risk. These rioters had been egged on by President Trump, Rudy Giuliani who called for "trial by combat" and Don Junior. "It should be a message to all the Republicans who have not been willing to actually fight, the people who did nothing to stop the steal," he. said at a "Stop the Steal" rally on the National Mall. "This gathering should send a message to them: This isn't their Republican Party anymore. This is Donald Trump's Republican Party."

I half expected Trump to come on TV, proclaim martial law, suspend the Constitution and declare the election invalid, as troops, loyal to him, held Nancy Pelosi hostage on her knees and blindfolded. This is how coups are done, but, fortunately, the ineptness of the planners contributed to their not being able to go all the way. Also the fact that Trump didn't have any military units loyal to him, although he has put people loyal to him in important positions in the Pentagon, doomed Trump's coup attempt. In the final analysis I guess some people in important positions took their oaths to protect and defend the Constitution more seriously than their loyalty to Trump.

Now it's up to the FBI to track down all those people who invaded the Capitol and give them lengthy jail sentences. They have tons of visual records from cameras in the Capitol, and they have hotel records although a lot of them stayed at Trump's hotel. They probably have already destroyed those records. A lot of them flew there so they have those records. It's a credit to the Congress persons that they reconvened and got their business done even though they had to stay there most of the night. The election of President Biden has finally been certified. What an excruciating ordeal! By the way, Biden should not keep saying in regard to the rioters, "That's not who we are." The question is who do you mean by "we", Mr. President elect? Obviously, it is who some of us are. There are now two classes in America who are at war with each other. It has nothing to do with capitalists and proletarians. It has to do with those who have the decency of Biden and his followers and those who are basically latter day Ku Klux Klanners and white supremicists, who also by the way used the slogan "America First".

Now we have to be concerned about January 20. As Yogi Berra said, "It's not over till it's over."

Off the Top of My Head

Good-Bye Mitch McConnell: Democrats Win Control of Senate. Now They Need to Get Rid of Filibuster to Get Anything Done.

by John Lawrence, January 6, 2021

Nothing turned off GOP voters more than seeing their hero call for a $2000. payment to individuals while Mitch McConnell stood there on the Senate floor and said repeatedly, "Object. Object." Jon Offoss told his supporters that, if he were to be elected and Democrats controlled Congress, Biden had promised to implement the $2000 payments. That would be incentive enough for many Republican voters, especially the non-rich, to vote for a Democrat. Thank God, Democrats will control the Senate and the Roadblocker-in-Chief, will not get the chance to block all progressive Democratic legislation coming forward from the House in the next 4 years. Now there is one more potential roadblock that the Senate has the ability to do away with: the filibuster rule. Meanwhile, on the day Joe Biden is certified by the Congress, Trump, while completely neglecting the fact that yesterday the most people ever died from COVID, is holding another shit show and super spreader event in Washington so his supporters can get off on their collective anger that their hero wasn't reelected in a free and fair election. By the way I noticed in the excellent CNN film about Jimmy Carter (Rock and Roll President) that the Ku Klux Klan in white robes protested openly at one of his campaign events and one of them was carrying a sign, "America First." So that's where Trump got the idea for that slogan.

Even when Democrats gain control of the Senate, opposition party senators can filibuster the majority’s agenda. That means that any one Republican senator can filibuster any progressive piece of legislation that Joe Biden and House Democrats put forward including the Green New Deal, or more appropriately - the Biden New Deal, a public option for Obamacare which would allow anyone to choose Medicare, the elimination of part or all of student loan debt, $2000 COVID relief payments to most Americans and more, much more. The filibuster is not part of the Constitution; it is simply a rule of the Senate which can be changed by a majority vote. Eliminating the filibuster has been characterized as the so-called "nuclear option." Wikipedia notes:

"According to the Supreme Court's ruling in United States v. Ballin (1892), Senate rules can be changed by a simple majority vote. Nevertheless, under current Senate rules, a rule change could itself be filibustered, requiring two-thirds of senators who are present and voting to end debate. (This differs from the usual requirement for three-fifths of sworn senators.)

"Despite the two-thirds requirement described above being written into the Senate rules, any Senator may attempt to nullify a Senate rule, starting by making a point of order that the rule is unconstitutional or just that the meaning of the rule should not be followed. The presiding officer is generally expected to rule in favor of the rules of the Senate, but under rule XX, "every appeal therefrom shall be decided at once, and without debate" and therefore by a simple majority as there is no need for a vote on cloture.

"This happened in 2013, when Harry Reid of the Democratic Party raised a point of order that "the vote on cloture under rule XXII for all nominations other than for the Supreme Court of the United States is by majority vote". The presiding officer overruled the point of order, and Reid appealed the ruling. Mitch McConnell of the Republican Party raised a parliamentary inquiry on how many votes were required to appeal the chair's ruling in that instance. The presiding officer replied, "A majority of those Senators voting, a quorum being present, is required." Reid's appeal was sustained by a 52–48 vote, and the presiding officer then ruled that the Senate had established a precedent that cloture on nominations other than those for the Supreme Court requires only a simple majority. On April 6, 2017, that precedent was further changed by McConnell and the Republican majority, in a 52–48 vote, to include Supreme Court nominations."

Long story short. Democrats can eliminate the filibuster if they really want to. And they really need to do that because the Republican game plan will be to block all progressive legislation by means of the filibuster. Even without Mitch McConnell as chief roadblocker, Republicans will stymie Joe Biden and block all his initiatives. The result is that Biden's initiatives will go nowhere. It would be a total waste of Democratic power now that they have it. Republicans have shown no hesitancy to use their power to the full extent without any pretense of cooperating or compromising with Democrats. Now that Democrats have the power, they should use it starting with getting rid of the filibuster rule. Nobody knows more - from personal experience actually - than President Obama about how the filibuster rule can impede social progress. Republicans used it to effectively neuter Obama during his 8 year Presidency. Washington Post reported:

"Former President Barack Obama called on Thursday for eliminating the filibuster, joining a growing chorus of Democrats who portray the Senate’s signature procedural weapon as an obstacle to social progress that must be abolished if the party captures the Senate and White House.

"The appeal by Mr. Obama to do away with a tactic that Senate Republicans used to thwart him and the Democratic agenda for much of his eight years in office came during his eulogy in Atlanta for Representative John Lewis, the civil rights icon. The former president seized the moment to cast the filibuster as a vestige of a grim period in the United States when Southern lawmakers used it to impede voting rights and other advances for African-Americans."

“Once we pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, we should keep marching,” Mr. Obama said, referring to legislation Democrats are pushing on Capitol Hill in the face of opposition from Republicans. “And if all this takes eliminating the filibuster — another Jim Crow relic — in order to secure the God-given rights of every American, then that’s what we should do.”

So the writing is on the wall. Do we want this democracy to represent the interests of the majority of its people or only the upper 10%? Do we want to save the planet from global warming? If so the Republican call for "moderation" or "compromise" or "not being too radical" will not work. There is a limited time frame for us to act or the planet will soon - in our lifetimes and the lifetimes of our children - become uninhabitable for most people. We have failed to act on this in a timely manner. Now we must play catch up, and there is no time to waste. We have about 10 years to get global warming under control. Don't listen to people that say the Green New Deal is too radical. It's too radical only if we want to let the planet become virtually uninhabitable.

Trickle-Down Economics Doesn’t Work but Build-Up Does – Is Biden Listening?

by Robert Reich
Sunday, December 20, 2020

How should the huge financial costs of the pandemic be paid for, as well as the other deferred needs of society after this annus horribilis?

Politicians rarely want to raise taxes on the rich. Joe Biden promised to do so but a closely divided Congress is already balking.

That’s because they’ve bought into one of the most dangerous of all economic ideas: that economic growth requires the rich to become even richer. Rubbish.

Economist John Kenneth Galbraith once dubbed it the “horse and sparrow” theory: “If you feed the horse enough oats, some will pass through to the road for the sparrows.”

We know it as trickle-down economics.

In a new study, David Hope of the London School of Economics and Julian Limberg of King’s College London lay waste to the theory. They reviewed data over the last half-century in advanced economies and found that tax cuts for the rich widened inequality without having any significant effect on jobs or growth. Nothing trickled down.

Meanwhile, the rich have become far richer. Since the start of the pandemic, just 651 American billionaires have gained $1 trillion of wealth. With this windfall they could send a $3,000 check to every person in America and still be as rich as they were before the pandemic. Don’t hold your breath.

Stock markets have been hitting record highs. More initial public stock offerings have been launched this year than in over two decades. A wave of hi-tech IPOs has delivered gushers of money to Silicon Valley investors, founders and employees.

Oh, and tax rates are historically low.

Yet at the same time, more than 20 million Americans are jobless, 8 million have fallen into poverty, 19 million are at risk of eviction and 26 million are going hungry. Mainstream economists are already talking about a “K-shaped” recovery – the better-off reaping most gains while the bottom half continue to slide.

You don’t need a doctorate in ethical philosophy to think that now might be a good time to tax and redistribute some of the top’s riches to the hard-hit below. The UK is already considering an emergency tax on wealth.

Biden has rejected a wealth tax, but maybe he should be even more ambitious and seek to change economic thinking altogether.

The practical alternative to trickle-down economics might be called build-up economics. Not only should the rich pay for today’s devastating crisis but they should also invest in the public’s long-term well-being. The rich themselves would benefit from doing so, as would everyone else.

At one time, America’s major political parties were on the way to embodying these two theories. Speaking to the Democratic National Convention in 1896, populist William Jennings Bryan noted: “There are two ideas of government. There are those who believe that, if you will only legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, their prosperity will leak through on those below. The Democratic idea, however, has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous, their prosperity will find its way up through every class which rests upon them.”

Build-up economics reached its zenith in the decades after the second world war, when the richest Americans paid a marginal income tax rate of between 70% and 90%. That revenue helped fund massive investment in infrastructure, education, health and basic research – creating the largest and most productive middle class the world had ever seen.

But starting in the 1980s, America retreated from public investment. The result is crumbling infrastructure, inadequate schools, wildly dysfunctional healthcare and public health systems and a shrinking core of basic research. Productivity has plummeted.

Yet we know public investment pays off. Studies show an average return on infrastructure investment of $1.92 for every public dollar invested, and a return on early childhood education of between 10% and 16% – with 80% of the benefits going to the general public.

The COVID vaccine reveals the importance of investments in public health, and the pandemic shows how everyone’s health affects everyone else’s. Yet 37 million Americans still have no health insurance. A study in the Lancet estimates Medicare for All would prevent 68,000 unnecessary deaths each year, while saving money.

If we don’t launch something as bold as a Green New Deal, we’ll spend trillions coping with ever more damaging hurricanes, wildfires, floods and rising sea levels.

The returns from these and other public investments are huge. The costs of not making them are astronomical.

Trickle-down economics is a cruel hoax. The benefits of build-up economics are real. At this juncture, between a global pandemic and the promise of a post-pandemic world, and between the administrations of Trump and Biden, we would be well-served by changing the economic paradigm from trickle down to build up.

Biden Needs to Spend Big—And Fast. Here Are 4 Immediate Priorities.

Published on Sunday, December 20, 2020

by In These Times

Forget about the debt. Boosting the economy and sending people money isn’t just good policy, it’s smart politics.

by Max B. Saw­icky

 

9 Comments

"There is a lot of new spend­ing we need, and ele­vat­ing the most urgent pri­or­i­ties is an impor­tant polit­i­cal task," Saw­icky writes. (Photo: Roberto Schmidt/AFP via Getty Images)

Expec­ta­tions are high for the incom­ing Joe Biden admin­is­tra­tion, not because the polit­i­cal cir­cum­stances are advan­ta­geous, nor because of Biden him­self, but because our trou­bles are so great. 

Tens of mil­lions of Amer­i­cans are unem­ployed. The death toll from Covid-19 in the Unit­ed States now tops 300,000. An avalanche of evic­tions and fore­clo­sures is on its way. And this is on top of our ongo­ing polit­i­cal cri­sis: A stub­born minor­i­ty of vot­ers refuse to rec­og­nize the results of the elec­tion, while many of Pres­i­dent Trump’s sup­port­ers remain unwill­ing to observe ele­men­tary safe­ty mea­sures to reduce the fur­ther spread of the virus. In Wash­ing­ton, D.C. last week, a ram­pag­ing mob of fas­cist goons assault­ed ran­dom passers-by and van­dal­ized black church­es — osten­si­bly as a way to show feal­ty to Trump. To put it mild­ly, Amer­i­ca is in bad shape.

"No cred­i­bil­i­ty should go to any Demo­c­ra­t­ic stuffed shirt who bleats about restor­ing norms. Work­ing peo­ple are des­per­ate. This is class war, folks."

Much of the Biden administration’s abil­i­ty to respond to the health and eco­nom­ic crises we face depends on the out­come of the Jan­u­ary 5 run-off elec­tions in Geor­gia that will deter­mine which par­ty con­trols the Sen­ate. But even with vic­to­ries in both of those races, cen­trist Democ­rats in Con­gress will con­tin­ue to oppose major pro­gres­sive poli­cies. And Democ­rats’ nar­row major­i­ty in the House (and, if we’re lucky, the Sen­ate) will make it dif­fi­cult for Pres­i­dent Biden to spend as much mon­ey as necessary. 

Nev­er­the­less, there is a lot of new spend­ing we need, and ele­vat­ing the most urgent pri­or­i­ties is an impor­tant polit­i­cal task: It applies pres­sure on cur­rent Demo­c­ra­t­ic offi­cials, includ­ing the pres­i­dent him­self, and edu­cates and moti­vates peo­ple who can vote for a new, more pro­gres­sive Con­gress in 2022. 

Here are four of the top priorities:

1. Send mon­ey now! When it comes to stim­u­lus, there are always dual objec­tives: boost­ing the econ­o­my, and pro­vid­ing relief for those in the great­est need. Send­ing checks to every­body, extend­ing unem­ploy­ment ben­e­fits, and bail­ing out belea­guered small busi­ness have already been shown to be effec­tive. The reces­sion and pan­dem­ic are far from over, so these poli­cies should con­tin­ue. The skin­ny com­pro­mise that might be struck in Con­gress pro­vides no more than a small respite. To speed up a return to eco­nom­ic health, the first step is to avoid sink­ing deep­er into the cur­rent rut. 

Just as impor­tant is pro­vid­ing relief to state and local gov­ern­ments, which pro­vide ser­vices of vital impor­tance to work­ing peo­ple. These gov­ern­ments nev­er quite recov­ered from the Great Reces­sion of 2007 – 2008. They are oblig­ed to bal­ance their bud­gets, so unlike the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, their bor­row­ing capac­i­ty is restrict­ed. The triple hit to state and local finance — reduced tax rev­enue, added reces­sion-relat­ed spend­ing, and addi­tion­al virus-relat­ed expens­es — has deplet­ed their reserves.

2. Pub­lic invest­ment and the Green New Deal: do every­thing. A reces­sion is always an oppor­tune time to ramp up pub­lic invest­ment on a per­ma­nent basis. Many pos­si­bil­i­ties will com­pete for fund­ing. Two impor­tant angles should be kept in mind.

The tra­di­tion­al sort of invest­ment in ​“infra­struc­ture” — roads, bridges, school build­ings, air­ports and rail sys­tems — has been neglect­ed for decades. A revival, how­ev­er, needs to be done through the lens of cli­mate change aware­ness. Among oth­er things, this means a pref­er­ence for pub­lic, mass tran­sit rather than roads; the upgrade of pub­lic facil­i­ties (includ­ing rail sys­tems) with a view towards reduc­ing car­bon emis­sions; and the mod­ern­iza­tion of the nation’s pow­er grid. 

The oth­er con­sid­er­a­tion is to take seri­ous­ly what might be called an infra­struc­ture of care: work­ers and facil­i­ties devot­ed to hous­ing and car­ing for those unable to do so for them­selves, includ­ing the per­sis­tent­ly unem­ployed, the indi­gent elder­ly, the dif­fer­ent­ly abled, those in fail­ing men­tal health, those with­out hous­ing, the incar­cer­at­ed, and belea­guered immigrants.

3. The Peace Div­i­dend. Cur­rent­ly, the fed­er­al bud­get devotes $697 bil­lion to nation­al defense. When it comes to the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment actu­al­ly doing things oth­er than mail­ing checks to indi­vid­u­als and med­ical care providers — what is clas­si­fied as ​“dis­cre­tionary spend­ing” — defense takes near­ly half. Much of this mon­ey is devot­ed to sup­port­ing the capac­i­ty to wage war, and we have to ask, against whom? The inter­ven­tions in Iraq, Syr­ia, Libya and Yemen have not gone well, to say the least. 

It is pos­si­ble to over­state how quick­ly a peace div­i­dend could be pried out of the defense bud­get. Work­ers and uni­formed mil­i­tary can­not be sum­mar­i­ly dis­missed — they will need tran­si­tion assis­tance. Big-tick­et hard­ware con­tracts that are set for a peri­od of years can­not be instant­ly can­celed. Even so, there is an oppor­tu­ni­ty to redi­rect a large quan­ti­ty of fund­ing to non-defense purposes.

4. For­get about the nation­al debt. In a down­turn, the econ­o­my los­es more than it gains by fail­ing to ramp up fed­er­al deficit spend­ing. Of course, Repub­li­cans have shown them­selves to be com­i­cal hyp­ocrites when it comes to wor­ries about deficits. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, some influ­en­tial Democ­rats may actu­al­ly believe such non­sense. They would be well-advised to read a recent paper by Jason Fur­man, Obama’s chief econ­o­mist, and Lar­ry Sum­mers, omnipresent Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty econ­o­mist, where­in they basi­cal­ly admit every­thing they used to say about bud­get deficits was hog­wash and is par­tic­u­lar­ly inap­pro­pri­ate under cur­rent cir­cum­stances. As far as elite eco­nom­ic think­ing is con­cerned, there should be no obsta­cle to mas­sive increas­es in non-defense deficit spending.

Biden will also have impor­tant tools that do not depend on Con­gress. A recent col­umn by Dave Roberts pro­vides a nice overview, both tech­ni­cal and polit­i­cal. Biden can issue exec­u­tive orders, make recess appoint­ments of nom­i­nees the Sen­ate refus­es to approve, fumi­gate Trump’s ter­mites from the wood­work of the fed­er­al civ­il ser­vice, re-reg­u­late what has been dereg­u­lat­ed, and un-fire good peo­ple who were dis­missed by Trump. 

Trump flout­ed every con­ceiv­able legal and infor­mal con­straint on his rule, to the utter silence of the Repub­li­can Par­ty. He has giv­en Biden a license to do like­wise. No cred­i­bil­i­ty should go to any Demo­c­ra­t­ic stuffed shirt who bleats about restor­ing norms. Work­ing peo­ple are des­per­ate. This is class war, folks.

Max B. Saw­icky is a Senior Research Fel­low at the Cen­ter for Eco­nom­ic and Pol­i­cy Research (CEPR​.net).

© 2020 In These Times

Off the Top of My Head

The Relationship Between the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department

by John Lawrence, December 20, 2020

The Federal Reserve has set up a lot of Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs) in conjunction with the Treasury Department as ways to provide money to the economy during emergency situations such as the 2008 Great Recession and the current pandemic crisis. Although most of the Fed's money has gone to bail out banks and provide financial liquidity, the Fed under chairman Jerome Powell has signaled a willingness to provide more money to Main Street and not just to Wall Street. This is what the current holdup in the relief package is all about. Senator Toomey (R-PA) was concerned that the Fed might actually be willing to print money to be used for the welfare of the people under a Biden administration. He intended to put a stop to any such project. While the Fed provided Quantitative Easing for the Big Banks, it would not be allowed to provide Quantitative Easing for the People.

The relationship between Treasury and the Fed amounts to Kibuki Theater in which the plain fact that the Fed is capable of printing money and injecting it into the economy is concealed. Although the Fed is free to inject money into financial institutions, it is legally constrained from injecting it directly into the economy. The theory is that the money would "trickle down" from Wall Street to Main Street which never happened after the 2008 Great Recession. So now the Fed has expressed a willingness to deal directly with Main Street bypassing Congress in the sense that Congress wants to be the supreme controller of budgetary outlays for the American government. The crucial thing to bear in mind is that Congress maintains (incorrectly) that government spending must come from taxes or the sale of Treasury bonds which is equivalent to greater deficits and national debt. If the Fed just prints the money which it can because the US dollar is a sovereign currency, it wouldn't add to the national debt. This is crucial.

When a private bank makes a loan it just conjures up the money by means of a few keystrokes on a computer. The loan does not come from money already sitting in the bank's vaults. The bank uses fractional reserve banking to create the money for the loan only constrained by reserve and capital requirements set by the Federal Reserve. Similarly, the Federal Reserve itself can print money with a few keystrokes on a computer because the money isn't backed by gold or anything else. It is so-called fiat money. It's worth something by fiat just because the US government says it is. The US dollar is also a sovereign currency which means that the money supply isn't subject to any limitations other than those imposed by man made legal requirements. This is what the last ditch fight with Senator Toomey was about. Stephanie Kelton explains in The Deficit Myth:

"For one thing, members of Congress routinely face pressure from voters seeking more generous funding for health care, education, and so on. The budget rules give them political cover. Instead of explaining that they are philosophically opposed to boosting Pell Grant funding to help low-income students attend college, lawmakers can feign empathy with their constituents while claiming their hands are tied because of the deficit. If they couldn't hide behind the deficit myth, what excuse would they used to justify withholding support? It helps to have a bad cop."

The truth of the matter is that Republicans in Congress don't want Joe Biden to be able to do an end run around Congress and get money for a Green New Deal directly from the Federal Reserve. This money would not add to the deficit or the debt. It would be spent directly into the economy benefiting the workers involved in building new and rebuilding old infrastructure. This would be done similarly to the way FDR financed the New Deal by means of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation or the way Lincoln funded the Civil War with Greenbacks, dollars that didn't have to be appropriated by Congress. Since Fed Chair Jerome Powell and incoming Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, formerly a Fed Chair, know the ropes, Republicans are wary that they might have too cozy a relationship which would enable Joe Biden to fund a Green New Deal and other social programs which would benefit average Americans. What it boils down to is this: Republicans represent wealthy Americans, the upper 1%, who have disproportionately benefited under current government programs and Republican tax cuts, and they will do everything in their power to see to it that the Biden administration will not be able to implement any programs which will benefit average Americans.

Off the Top of My Head

China is the only country to land successfully on the moon in the 21st century, and has done it three times

by John Lawrence, December 19, 2020

While the US is in the midst of the greatest public health and economic crisis it has ever faced, China is surging ahead economically and in the space race. This December 2020 China's Chang’e-5 spacecraft gathered about 4.4 pounds of lunar samples in a three-week operation that underlined China’s growing prowess and ambition in space. It was China’s most successful mission to date; yet there was nothing reported about it on the nightly news. What has been reported on the nightly news is the fact that Russia has hacked into our defense department and other sensitive institutions. The fact that this is even happening represents sheer stupidity on behalf of the Defense Department. The internet is a public space that represents, as far as the Defense Department is concerned, a direct pipeline between itself and Russian hackers. It is asking for trouble.

Why hasn't the Defense Department detached itself from the internet and created a private intranet disconnected from anything Russian hackers could access? They could have an intranet which would just be a connection among those American actors and institutions that would need to interact with each other. If they need to interact with people in other parts of the world, they have had secure communication networks at least for the last 70 years. No one hacked them during the Second World War although the British were able to hack the Nazis. For American sensitive institutions to be using the public internet or even to be connected to the public internet is a travesty. There are different levels of internet communications that could be used. For nonsensitve communications and data storage a more public internet can be used, but for sensitive systems a private internet not connected to the public internet that Russian hackers have access to is more appropriate. Then hacking is a non-issue.

The US is falling behind China economically and in many other ways. China has mastered the art of using its public banks to build infrastructure at home and abroad. It has lifted 800 million people out of poverty in the last 30 years. Meanwhile, US infrastructure is rated a D+ by the American Society of Civil Engineers. Ellen Brown writes:

A publicly-owned national infrastructure bank, on the other hand, would be mandated to lend into the real economy; and if the loans were of the “self funding” sort characterizing most infrastructure projects (generating fees to pay off the loans), they would be repaid, canceling out the debt by which the money was created. That is how China built 12,000 miles of high-speed rail in a decade: credit created on the books of government-owned banks was advanced to pay for workers and materials, and the loans were repaid with profits from passenger fees. 

Unlike the QE pumped into financial markets, which creates asset bubbles in stocks and housing, this sort of public credit mechanism is not inflationary. Credit money advanced for productive purposes balances the circulating money supply with new goods and services in the real economy. Supply and demand rise together, keeping prices stable. China increased its money supply by nearly 1800% over 24 years (from 1996 to 2020) without driving up price inflation, by increasing GDP in step with the money supply.

In the US the Federal Reserve has poured money into banks, hedge funds and various other financial entities but is forbidden by law from helping average Americans or Main Street businesses. There is Quantitative Easing for the banks, but not Quantitative Easing for the People. China has no such legal barriers for their central bank and public banks. While the US Congress quibbles endlessly over minuscule issues, China is going full steam ahead with economic development which benefits large majorities of its people as well as people outside of China with its Belt and Road initiative. The World Bank reports: "If implemented fully, the initiative could lift 32 million people out of moderate poverty—those who live on less than $3.20 a day, the analysis found. It could boost global trade by up to 6.2 percent, and up to 9.7 percent for corridor economies. Global income could increase by as much 2.9 percent. For low-income corridor economies, foreign direct investment could rise by as much as 7.6 percent."

While China has mastered the technique of generating money for infrastructure development inside and outside of China while also increasing world trade and economic well being, the US has only increased poverty and destroyed infrastructure with its never ending wars. It has squandered money on a military infrastructure which is larger than the next 10 countries combined. The US dollar is still the world's reserve currency and major world financial institutions like the IMF are still oriented towards the dollar. This could all change, however, as the Chinese renminbi gains ground. The US has a chance to reconstruct itself under a Biden administration and reorient itself towards a middle class democratic society which benefits its people rather than its elite. It's a tall order but maybe Joe Biden and his appointees can pull it off. A Green New Deal is necessary not only for the sake of reestablishing the middle class but also for saving the planet from global warming.

Off the Top of My Head

How the Government Can Create Funds for a Green New Deal

by John Lawrence, December 18, 2020

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Off the Top of My Head

When Will Donald Trump Go Away?

by John Lawrence, December 16, 2020

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Times article continued:

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

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

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

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

Off the Top of My Head

"We're Only going To Be Secure If Everyone Is Secure"

by John Lawrence, December 13, 2020

These words spoken by Fareed Zakaria regarding the pandemic could as well apply to war as well. What a novel idea! If everyone is secure with access to a vaccine, the pandemic will be gone. Perhaps if every nation is secure in their relations with other nations, war will be gone. Of course there will a colossal drop in GDP if the war industry goes away and an increase in unemployment if everyone in the military is civilianized. War and the threat of war is caused by mistrust and insecurity with regards to the intentions and good (or bad) will of other nations towards us. That's why it's important to build friendship and trust between and among nations instead of threatening other nations by economic means such as sanctions or in terms of direct military threats.

Nations who have solved the pandemic problem within their borders are surging back economically. This year the US will decline in GDP relative to last year while China will have positive growth in its economy. While Trump backed out of the Trans-Pacific partnership which would have brought about free trade among 12 countries, China has recently signed the world's largest free trade agreement - the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement - among 15 countries. The signatory states account for 30% of global GDP, larger than NAFTA or the EU. In addition China's massive Belt and Road initiative is an agreement with 70 countries for China to build infrastructure which will enable greater trade relationships among those countries benefiting China the most. Also China owns about $1.1 trillion in US debt. It seems that the only advantage the US has is the fact that the dollar is the world's reserve currency. But that situation is subject to change especially as nations find ways to outmaneuver US sanctions. It seems that China is becoming the world's preeminent nation not by virtue of its military prowess but by virtue of its aggressive trade and infrastructure building policies. Washington has not been able to respond except by threats and sanctions. Sanctioning Tik Tok and Huawei is a pathetic response to China's bid for world leadership.

Vaccine development for COVID-19 is a massive cooperative effort among scientists and companies throughout the world. Most of the PPE used in America was manufactured abroad. Global supply chains have been absolutely crucial in supplying the US with needed products which aren't manufactured here. One of the hallmarks of capitalism is free trade. It represents the idea of free markets applied to international trade. So while China has exemplified leadership in increasing free trade, the US under Trump has backed off from free trade, invoked protectionism, and hence negated its free market capitalist principles. However, that's about to change under a Biden administration. We can expect a lot more global cooperation and diplomacy rather than the bullying policies represented by Pompeo and Trump. It's especially important now that global warming is a looming global threat. Biden wants a $1.7 trillion deal to combat global warming.

China, the world's largest emitter of carbon, has vowed to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060. Joe Biden has vowed to achieve carbon neutrality in the US, the world's second largest emitter, by 2050. The EU has agreed to spend a half a trillion dollars on global warming projects. If all these massive commitments are actually followed through on, the world might limit the increase in global warming to 2.1 degrees Celsius which is about what they had agreed on in the Paris Accords was necessary to prevent disaster. A lot will depend on whether Biden can get his programs through Congress. If the Senate is controlled by Republicans, all bets are off. That is why the run-offs in Georgia for two Senate seats are so important.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/people/fareed-zakaria/

 

Off the Top of My Head

Is Democracy a Previously Fashionable Fad We've All Become Tired Of?

by John Lawrence, December 9, 2020

Democracy is hanging by a string in America thanks to Trump's assertions that the election in which he lost was a  fraud. In his mind if only he could get to the Supreme Court, they would surely overturn the results because after all didn't he select three of its members? Shouldn't they be grateful to him for giving them a lifetime position in the highest court of the land? Weren't they loyal to George W Bush giving him the election in 2000 despite the fact that Al Gore won the popular vote? Well, the Supreme Court has expressed the fact that it doesn't want to touch this hot potato with a ten foot pole. So that's pretty much it. Sorry Donald. Now will you pick up your stuff and go?

Now can we get back to normal, please? At least in terms of the country's Federal leadership. The recent election brought out the fact of just how fragmented and disorganized our country really is. It's really a country of 50 independent states each one with its own government with different laws and different priorities. Attaining some sense of unity is almost impossible. There are red states and blue states and almost every color in between. There are a lot of loopholes many of which Trump exploited to almost pull off a right wing coup. Thank God there is still enough institutional integrity that this creaky ship of democracy finally held together despite the storm swirling around it.

Now all eyes are on Georgia. The two runoffs there will determine control of the Senate and whether or not Biden will be able to go full steam ahead or whether he will be hampered at every turn by the real President of the US, Mitch McConnell. If Republicans maintain control of the Senate, they will set up roadblocks at every turn so that Biden will effectively be hamstrung and pinned down. Does Gulliver's Travels come to mind? This will be the same playbook that they worked off of during the Obama administration. Biden will have to use his extensive experience to try and get anything done. At least he is not as naive as Obama was despite his professed willingness to "work across the aisle." As Republicans have demonstrated again and again, they have no interest in working across the aisle. They are only interested in using raw political power to get their way on behalf of the rich and powerful.

The Republican dilemma is what to do with the Republican base which has really become Trump's base. Trump will basically be able to control the rich conservatives who are only interested in tax breaks and deregulation by manipulating his base to his own advantage. That's why top ranking Republicans don't want to offend him. That's why they are humoring him. They know that their base which is really Trump's base is more loyal to him than they are to the rich elitist wing of the Republican party which is very small in comparison. In short they need Trump's base to win elections and maintain themselves in power. Trump's coattails are very large.

Biden will have to shore up democracy the best he can so that the recent flirtation with right wing authoritarianism is less likely to occur again. After all Trump might be back in 2024 with a determination to continue his assault on democracy and install himself in the American Presidency as a sort of American Putin. In the meantime the issue is will the US remain a democracy in the largest sense where so many crucial issues will be able to be dealt with in a Democratic administration? Issues like economic inequality. Issues like global warming. Will the money and the Congressional authorization be forthcoming? If not America will soon become a backwater. Already China will have the only growth economy this year. China is now one of the biggest traders, funders, infrastructure builders, and preferred lenders in Africa, Latin America, and Central and Southeast Asia. In November it minted a 15-country free-trade alliance, the world's largest, that includes Australia and New Zealand.

It's time for the US to get real. The only thing the US has going for it at this time is the fact that the US dollar is the world's reserve currency, but that is subject to change as the Chinese renminbi  gains ground in world trade. To regain its role as a world leader, the US needs to be able to implement Biden's goals in terms of global warming and economic reform which diminishes the great divide between the rich and the poor. The big question is whether he will be able to work constructively in a timely and meaningful way or whether there will be gridlock with Republicans determined to impede his success.

Biden Says He’ll Take on Inequality. Good! You Need to Hold Him to It

by Robert Reich

Monday, December 7, 2020

“It’s time we address the structural inequalities in our economy that the pandemic has laid bare,” President-elect Joe Biden said last week, as he introduced his economic team.

It’s a good team. They’re competent and they care, in sharp contrast to Trump’s goon squad. Many of them were in the trenches with Biden and Barack Obama in 2009 when the economy last needed rescuing.

But reversing “structural inequalities” is a fundamentally different challenge from reversing economic downturns. They may overlap – last week the Dow Jones Industrial Average hit a record high at the same time Americans experienced the highest rate of hunger in 22 years. Yet the problem of widening inequality is distinct from the problem of recession.

Recessions are caused by sudden drops in demand for goods and services, as occurred in February and March when the pandemic began. Pulling out of a recession requires low interest rates and enough government spending to jump-start private spending. This one will also necessitate the successful inoculation of millions against Covid-19.

By contrast, structural inequalities are caused by a lopsided allocation of power. Wealth and power are inseparable – wealth flows from power and power from wealth. That means reversing structural inequalities requires altering the distribution of power.

Franklin D Roosevelt did this in the 1930s, when he enacted legislation requiring employers to bargain with unionized employees. Lyndon Johnson did it in the 1960s with the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, which increased the political power of Black people.

Since then, though, not even Democratic presidents have tried to alter the distribution of power in America. They and their economic teams have focused instead on jobs and growth. In consequence, inequality has continued to widen – during both recessions and expansions.

For the last 40 years, hourly wages have stagnated and almost all economic gains have gone to the top. The stock market’s meteoric rise has benefited the wealthy at the expense of wage earners. The richest 1 percent of US households now own 50 percent of the value of stocks held by Americans. The richest 10 percent, 92 percent.

Why have recent Democratic presidents been reluctant to take on structural inequality?

First, because they have taken office during deep recessions, which posed a more immediate challenge. The initial task facing Biden will be to restore jobs, requiring that his administration contain Covid-19 and get a major stimulus bill through Congress.  Biden has said any stimulus bill passed in the lame duck session will be “just the start.”

Second, it’s because politicians’ time horizons rarely extend beyond the next election. Reallocating power can take years. Union membership didn’t expand significantly until more than a decade after FDR’s Wagner Act. Black voters didn’t emerge as a major force in American politics until a half-century after LBJ’s landmark legislation.

Third, reallocating power is hugely difficult. Economic expansions can be a positive-sum game because growth enables those at the bottom to do somewhat better even if those at the top do far better. 

But power is a zero-sum game. The more of it held by those at the top, the less held by others. And those at the top won’t relinquish it without a fight. Both FDR and LBJ won at significant political cost.

Today’s corporate leaders are happy to support stimulus bills, not because they give a fig about unemployment but because more jobs mean higher profits.

“Is it $2.2tn, $1.5tn?” JPMorgan Chase chief executive Jamie Dimon said recently in support of congressional action. “Just split the baby and move on.”

But Dimon and his ilk will doubtless continue to fight any encroachments on their power and wealth. They will battle antitrust enforcement against their giant corporations, including Dimon’s “too big to fail” bank. They’re dead set against stronger unions and will resist attempts to put workers on their boards.

They will surely oppose substantial tax hikes to finance trillions of dollars of spending on education, infrastructure and a Green New Deal. And they don’t want campaign finance reforms or any other measures that would dampen the influence of big money in politics.

Even if the Senate flips to the Democrats on 5 January, therefore, these three impediments may discourage Biden from tackling structural inequality.

This doesn’t make the objective any less important or even less feasible. It means only that, as a practical matter, the responsibility for summoning the political will to reverse inequality will fall to lower-income Americans of whatever race, progressives and their political allies. They will need to organize, mobilize and put sufficient pressure on Biden and other elected leaders to act. As it was in the time of FDR and LBJ, power is redistributed only when those without it demand it.

Off the Top of My Head

Beware of Slogans Like "Defund the Police"

by John Lawrence, December 4, 2020

Sloganeering can do more harm than good. Protesters were their own worst enemies when they came up with the slogan, "Defund the Police." Republicans seized on it and put it in their ads to show their base how dangerous and reckless the other side was. The net result was that the protesters just gave ammunition to the other side. Some protesters would tell you that that's not what they really meant. They just wanted more funding to go to social workers. Well, a slogan is a slogan, and Republicans appeal to their base primarily by means of slogans like "Lock her up." So Protesters, Democrats and Countrymen, lend me your ears. Don't indulge in slogans which provide ammunition for ads on the other side. Now "Black Lives Matter" is a good slogan. It's heartfelt, it sums up the situation and can't be used to strike fear into Trump's base. All they can say is "All Lives Matter". Why sure.

Barack Obama had it right. According to The Hill:

Former President Obama said political candidates lose support when using “snappy” slogans like “defund the police,” in an interview scheduled to be released Wednesday.

Obama told Peter Hamby, who hosts a Snapchat political show “Good Luck America,” that those who use the slogan could jeopardize their goals of enacting meaningful reforms for police.

"You lost a big audience the minute you say it, which makes it a lot less likely that you're actually going to get the changes you want done," the former president said in the interview scheduled to go live at 6 a.m. on Wednesday, according to Axios.

"The key is deciding, do you want to actually get something done, or do you want to feel good among the people you already agree with?" Obama added.

The former president’s comments align with other top Democrats who have considered the phrase to be damaging to the Democratic Party.

House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) told NBC News’s “Meet the Press” last month that he believed the slogan hurt some Democratic candidates, like Rep. Joe Cunningham (D-S.C.) who lost to Rep.-elect Nancy Mace (R-S.C.).

The phrase was widely used in connection with the racial justice protests over the summer, following George Floyd’s death in May after a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for several minutes, pinning him to the street.

The killing of Floyd, who was Black, triggered calls to defund the police across the country.

The slogan refers to reallocating funding for police departments to social services for minority communities.

Of course. Let me repeat Obama's words: "The key is deciding, do you want to actually get something done, or do you want to feel good among the people you already agree with?" That should always be kept in mind, and those words of wisdom are often forgotten. It's important to strike the right tone when you're trying to get your point across. There has been a huge, by and large successful, push to end the Trump nightmare years and put people into positions of power in this country who want to do something positive for the American people and for the planet Earth. It could have been predicted that Republicans would run ads showing angry mobs burning and looting while shouting "Defund the Police." I said at the time that as the election was getting near, the protesters should get off the streets. After a certain point they were doing more harm than good.

So while some Republicans undoubtedly were elected in the last election cycle because some people recoiled at the sloganeering of the protesters, it all came out OK especially in view of the fact that Trump was defeated. The WPP (White Peoples' Party) still represents a lot of people in this country. After all some 70 million of them voted for Trump. The trick now is for Joe Biden to show in very tangible ways that he wants to accomplish positive things for all the people, the white middle class as well as minorities. He can't just do things for minorities at the expense of white people. His programs must be undertaken with the goal of improving everyone's lives. All Lives Matter. That's the way he will unify the American people and pull people away from Trump's base. When white people can see that their economic lives have improved, then Trump's rhetoric of grievance and fear will lose its power over them.

Off the Top of My Head

Will Trump Hold a Rival Campaign Rally on Inauguration Day?

by John Lawrence, December 3, 2020

Contrary to tradition, Trump will probably not attend Joe Biden's inauguration on January 20. Instead he will probably have his own campaign rally attended by Trump supporters including open carrying, tattooed bikers, Qanon conspiracy theorists, Proud boys and girls and various Freedom loving non-mask wearing denizens shouting "4 more years" and "USA, USA". Imagine the split screen on television - Joe Biden solemnly swearing to uphold the Constitution and Trump haranguing his supporters about the supposed fact that the election was rigged, it was a fraud and there was no way that Joe Biden got 80 million votes. We can hear voices on the Trump side chanting "Lock Joe up Lock Joe up" while on the Biden side we hear "I solemnly swear to uphold the Constitution of the United States of America."

They say "Old soldiers never die. They just fade away." Well, Trump is no old soldier, but he's not going away. As long as the Trump road show has entertainment value, the media will be happy to present it, because after all they get their paid advertisers as a function of how many eyeballs they can get glued to the screen just like social media, and Trump has demonstrated the capacity to get eyeballs glued to the screen with his outrageous behavior. He is raising money hand over fist with his PAC better known as a slush fund which he has complete control over, and he can use for any purpose he sees fit. He will take every opportunity he can to voice the supposed fact that Joe Biden is an illegitimate President. He will probably continue to hold campaign rallies throughout Joe Biden's Presidency at which his followers with AK-47s slung over their shoulders cheer him on.

Trump will be able to monetize his popularity as his followers continue to contribute to his PAC. He will be able without too much effort to pay off the $421 million he owes to Deutsche bank and various other debts. A book no doubt is in the works. Past Presidents have been able to become millionaires by monetizing their post Presidential notoriety by giving speeches, writing books etc. Trump will be no exception to this trend, but he will probably take it to the next level. It will be fund raising on steroids. The US Attorney for the Southern District of New York will probably only pursue Trump half heartedly since we know from prior history that, in James Comey's words, they are "chickenshit" attorneys who don't really go after white collar criminals. Instead they use the Department of Justice as a way station to a more lucrative job as a defense attorney for corporate criminals of which Trump certainly is one.

All eyes are on the Georgia runoffs because those elections for two senators will determine control of the Senate and whether or not Mitch McConnell gets to block every initiative that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris campaigned on. Given the opportunity McConnell will "Obama" him which is to say that he will make sure that Biden fails at everything he has said he will to do to benefit the American people. That way loyal Trumplicans will get control of American government back in four uneventful years in which the American people twist slowly in the wind. Gridlock will be the order of the day as McConnell refuses to compromise over every last bit of progressive legislation that Nancy Pelosi puts forth. Of course the military budget will be increased even though the greatest military in the world could do nothing to stop the devastation of the coronavirus which has probably mutated by now. How many shots of vaccine the American people will be required to take is an unknown at this point for this and future pandemics. Hopefully, the pandemic will be under control by next summer, but fully funding the White House’s National Security Council Directorate for Global Health Security and Biodefense which is the office responsible for forestalling epidemics and pandemics will probably have a difficult time getting up to speed again after Trump closed it.

Trump will probably not go gentle into that good night as the poet Dylan Thomas said. Old age should burn and rave at close of day. Rage, rage against the dying of the light. As long as there are people willing to listen and watch, Trump will be raging that the election was rigged and Joe Biden is an illegitimate President and making money doing it.

 

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.