Thursday, March 14, 2024

Editorial: Biden Goes Long and Scores!

 Joe Biden showed up for his State of the Union address in the House of Representatives March 7, facing low expectations after years of Republicans depicting the elderly president as in decline. 

But the President effectively jump-started his re-election campaign with a supposedly nonpolitical speech that kicked MAGA Republicans’ asses for more than an hour, taking shots at his unnamed predecessor, whom he accused of “bowing down to a Russian leader” in encouraging Russian President Vladimir Putin to do “whatever the hell you want” in Europe. Biden called the former guy’s remarks “outrageous, dangerous” and “unacceptable.” 

Biden talked about how “my predecessor” tried to “bury the truth” of the attempted insurrection on the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. He noted that his predecessor failed to take care as the pandemic began to rage across the nation four years ago, how his predecessor had done little to oppose China and how his predecessor had not acted to curb gun violence.

Biden listed his accomplishments in the past three years, but he also teased Republicans who were heckling his speech.

Biden departed from his prepared text to urge the former president to join him in reviving the bipartisan border reform bill that Trump had ordered Republicans to abandon after the deal was reached in the Senate. Instead, Trump hopes to keep the alleged border “chaos” issue alive in the campaign.

Biden also talked about codifying reproductive freedom, taxing billionaires and corporations, cutting health care costs and banning assault weapons in the hands of civilians. Biden gave Democrats in the chamber and progressives watching on TV plenty to cheer about, and restored confidence that there’s fight in the old man, after all.

Conservative commentators had to scramble for new talking points. Sean Hannity on Fox “News” said Biden was “frightening” and called him “Jacked-Up Joe.” Erick Erickson complained, “This whole speech is about rallying Democrats. Not persuading independents.” But Never Trumper and Bulwark publisher Sarah Longwell, quoting Erickson, observed, “The substance is about rallying Democrats. But the delivery is about showing hesitant swing voters he’s still up for the job. And I think it’s working.”

Taking credit for the economic recovery since the COVID pandemic, Biden boasted that “consumer confidence is soaring” and inflation was dropping. But he also called on voters to “remember” the depths of 2020, before he took over, and compare that to where the nation is now, with more than two years of record low unemployment. “I inherited an economy that was on the brink,” he said. “Now our economy is the envy of the world.”

He took a swipe at lazy reporting by media that have focused on his age and occasional stumbles instead of his successes, as he noted the economy is “the greatest comeback story never told,” but with the nation tuned in to the State of the Union speech, he was determined to tell it. 

Biden also predicted that the “power of women” would show itself in the 2024 election, as it did in 2022 and 2023, when Democratic candidates won elections the polls said they’d lose. “We’ll win again in 2024,” he said, as women are responding to Republican threats to their reproductive rights, including birth control, after Trump’s three appointees to the Supreme Court furnished the majority that overturned Roe v. Wade. 

“My God, what freedoms will you take away next?” Biden asked the Republicans.

Biden promised to “restore” the abortion rights Roe v. Wade had guaranteed if voters re-elect him, as well as a Congress that could pass such legislation.

The centrality of “reproductive freedom” was clear in the speech, as well as guests in the White House’s box, who included a woman who had to leave Texas to get an abortion to save her own life and an Alabama woman whose fertility treatments were suspended when the Alabama Supreme Court shut down in vitro fertilization treatments in that state.

He sparred with Republicans in the chamber several times, departing from his prepared text to ad-lib responses to hecklers. And as he neared the end of his speech, the president joked about his age.

“I know I may not look like it, but I’ve been around a while,” the 81-year-old commander in chief said, to chuckles in the audience. “And when you get to my age, certain things become clearer than ever. … The issue facing our nation isn’t how old we are, it’s how old are our ideas. Hate, anger, revenge, retribution are the oldest of ideas. But you can’t lead America with ancient ideas that only take us back.”

Republicans in the House Chamber were unmoved, but an instant poll CNN conducted that night showed 65% of viewers had a positive review of Biden’s speech. Viewers shifted 17 points toward believing the country is headed in the right direction — from 45% before the speech to 62% afterward.

And that was before Alabama Sen. Katie Britt delivered a cringeworthy performance as the Republican responder. The “highlight” was her story about a Mexican a woman who had been a victim of sex trafficking by cartels, which the senator implied had happened in the US under President Biden’s watch. “We wouldn’t be okay with this happening in a Third World country. This is the United States of America, and it is past time, in my opinion, that we start acting like it,” Britt said. “President Biden’s border policies are a disgrace.”

In fact, Britt’s story was based on abuse suffered by Karla Jacinto Romero in Mexico between 2004 and 2008 — while George W. Bush happened to be president. Romero, who has become an activist for victims of sex trafficking in Latin America, told her story to Congress in 2015 and later to three senators, including Britt, on the border in Texas in 2023. But among Republicans, facts are fungible and are twisted to suit their prejudices. 

So we’re heading into a presidential campaign matching two old men. One of them has a long career in public service and has surrounded himself with capable aides, and his accomplishments during his first three years invite comparisons with Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. His SOTU speech showed Old Joe may be channeling “Give ‘Em Hell” Harry Truman as he outpaces his detractors. 

The opponent is a disgraced real estate developer, con man, rapist, fraudster and aspiring dictator whose running commentary on “Truth Social” framed Biden as “angry” and “shouting,” which he said “is not helpful to bringing our Country back together!” The predecessor raged overnight with more than 75 posts in various stages of derangement. He has surrounded himself with dodgy aides, five of whom needed pardons for crimes before Trump was run out of office, and he has feverishly sought to delay his criminal trials until he can get back into the White House and fire special prosecutor Jack Smith. And now his team has brought the Republican National Committee into his racketeer influenced corrupt organization.

Thus, we propose a slogan for President Biden’s re-election campaign: “81 years is better than 91 felony indictments.” — JMC

From The Progressive Populist, April 1, 2024


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Selections from the April 1, 2024 issue

 COVER/Dana Milbank

Biden gave $90 billion to Rural America. The thank you went to spam.

EDITORIAL 
Biden goes long and scores!

JIM HIGHTOWER
Is ‘Icarus’ the solution to climate change? 
What if there was a natural substitute for plastic? There is! 
How corporate lobbyists can engineer a train wreck. 
What happened to the ‘miracle of meatless meat’?  

FRANK LINGO
Solar revolution is on the way

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

DON ROLLINS 
The southern border: When suffering begets suffering

RURAL ROUTES/Margot McMillen 
‘Show Me’ bad legislative ideas

DISPATCHES 
‘Social Security is on the ballot,’ say advocates, as Trump threatens cuts.
Trump team takes over RNC, slashes staff.
Trump’s affection for dictators is at heart of his plan for America — and Ukraine.
To regain youth support, groups say Biden must embrace ‘Finish the Job’ youth agenda.
Trump endorses Gaza genocide: ‘Finish the Problem.’ ...
Senators call for new ‘war profiteering’ panel.

ART CULLEN 
Iowa has robins in February and we can barely water the hogs

ALAN GUEBERT
The growing disconnect between hard numbers and soft policy

JOE CONASON 
Over congressional Republicans, Putin casts his dark shadow

MARTHA BURK
Backlash: Women’s History Month in a post-Roe world

JOHN YOUNG 
Tales of the embryonic highway patrol

SETH SANDRONSKY
Closing California prisons will save taxpayers money, budget watchdog agency reports

DICK POLMAN 
During the pandemic, his fraudulency got a lot of people killed. Has that slid down the memory hole?  

TOM SCHALLER and PAUL WALDMAN/ The Daily Yonder 
Lack of political competition harms rural Americans

DAVID McCALL 
Defying the South’s corporate lackeys 

JOSEPH B. ATKINS 
Workers once again try to organize the South

MARK ANDERSON 
Support for aid to Ukraine is waning 


ROBERT KUTTNER 
Civil War II

THOM HARTMANN  
The Saudi & Putin scheme for screwing Biden’s election hopes


SONALI KOLHATKAR
Countering corporate propaganda


CHRIS MILLS RODRIGO  
We need a ‘Marshall Plan’ for public media 

HEALTH CARE/Joan Retsinas  
Welcome to the Twilight Zone: Strange rulings in family care

SAM URETSKY 
The pandemic has long-term effects on the economy

PHYLLIS BENNIS  
Gazans are starving — don’t cut aid now 

WAYNE O’LEARY
Big Pharma on the defensive

GRASSROOTS/Hank Kalet  
An assault on campus speech

JASON SIBERT 
Military rivals of the US in the second Cold War

JUAN COLE 
Trump, like Biden, supports Israeli campaign against Gaza: ‘You’ve got to finish the problem’

N. GUNASEKARAN  
‘The world cannot afford conflict in Asia’

JAMIE STIEHM 
The Roberts Supreme Court: Too exteme for voters

BARRY FRIEDMAN
Summer of discontent/Part 2

SATIRE/Rosie Sorenson  
Say it ain’t so, Joe

RALPH NADER
Count the real Gaza death toll


DAVE MARSTON
Glen Canyon Dam has created a world of mud

ROB PATTERSON
‘The Crown’ was a crowning TV achievement

ELWOOD WATSON 
The creep of Christian nationalism

FILM REVIEWS/Ed Rampell 
Pan African Film Festival offered new media for Black History Month

From The Progressive Populist, April 1, 2024


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As the Dominos Fall

 

Many are questioning whether Trump can cope with all his many indictments and court appearances, and still run an effective campaign for president.
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The New Republicans

 The Chubb Group has underwritten Trump's $91.6 million bond in the E. Jean Carroll judgement. Chubb Group CEO, Evan Greenberg's father, Maurice Greenberg, has close business ties to Vladimir Putin. Guess where Trump's money came from.
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Friday, March 1, 2024

There's a Senator in the Punch Bowl

 

Ex senator Joe Lieberman’s “No Labels” Unity Party is considering candidates to run in the 2024 election - possibly throwing the election to Trump. With our nation hanging in the balance, can we risk it?

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Trump's Cult

 

Donald Trump’s cult like followers continue to worship and send money to his campaign, in spite of the indictments and multi million dollar judgments against him. 

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Netanyahu: His Day of Reckoning


 By continuing to prosecute war in Gaza with Hamas and Hezbollah, Prime Minister Netanyahu is putting off his day of reckoning. He missed the cues that might have spared Israel the horrors of Oct 7.

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Editorial: Bill for Trump’s Lies Comes Due

 Donald Trump has been lying about his businesses for his entire career and now he’s squealing like a stuck pig since a New York court called him on it.

Manhattan Justice Arthur F. Engoron ruled Feb. 16 that Trump engaged in a yearslong conspiracy with top executives at the Trump Organization to deceive banks and insurers about the size of his wealth and the true value of such properties as Trump Tower in Manhattan and his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida.

Engoron ordered the disgraced former president to pay $355 million of his fortune, plus interest, which makes a total of $454 million. And that’s on top of $88.3 million he owes E. Jean Carroll for lying about his 1996 sexual assault of the writer. That includes $5 million in damages a federal jury in Manhattan assessed in May 2023 for the sexual assault, and $83.3 million by another jury in January for continuing to defame Carroll after the original verdict. 

Trump said the civil fraud decision was “election inference” and “weaponization against a political opponent,” complaining to reporters at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida that he was being penalized for “having built a perfect company, great cash, great buildings, great everything.”

New York Attorney General Leticia James sued Trump in 2022 under a New York statute that gives the attorney general wide scope to investigate and prosecute corporate fraud. She alleged that he lied for years about his wealth on financial statements he used to secure loans and make deals as he built the real estate empire that vaulted him to fame and the presidency. Trump has said repeatedly the loans were paid back and the banks he dealt with made money, and he accused James of singling him out for political reasons.

Trump claims he was singled out for prosecution, but the New York Times noted that the New York attorney general’s office has relied on the law for years in high-profile cases, including against UBS, ExxonMobil and Juul — as well as Trump University and the Trump Foundation, which forced Trump to shut down both scams and pay $25 million to Trump U clients.

It is a federal crime to make false statements on loan applications, but because James sued Trump and his business associates under the state law, the claims were decided in a bench trial — one decided by a judge, as the state law requires, rather than by a jury. 

Trump disregarded that explanation and complained that he was denied a jury trial. Still, knowing that Engoron would decide the case, Trump showed contempt for the 74-year-old judge throughout the trial, in an apparent attempt to provoke Engoron.

Engoron started the trial in late September 2023 with a summary judgment that ruled the Trump Organization had committed fraud by inflating property values by as much as $2.2 billion to get better loan and insurance terms. The bench trial began in October to examine other counts and determine penalties.

Engoron let Trump boil through the three-month trial with insults at the judge and Attorney General James, though Engoron fined Trump $15,000 for disparaging remarks about the judge’s clerk. Finally, on Feb. 16, Engoron ordered the former president and his company to pay $355 million, which he determined were savings from the lower interest rates and windfall profits from the recent sale of two properties, as “ill-gotten gains” that should be paid to the state, with interest.

“The frauds found here leap off the page and shock the conscience,” Engoron wrote in a 92-page decision. “The English poet Alexander Pope first declared, ‘To err is human, to forgive is divine.’ Defendants apparently are of a different mind,” he continued. “Their complete lack of contrition and remorse borders on pathological.”

He said the “defendants are incapable of admitting the error of their ways … Indeed, Donald Trump testified that, even today, he does not believe the Trump Organization needed to make any changes based on the facts that came out during this trial.”

Engoron added, “the Court intends to protect the integrity of the financial marketplace and, thus, the public as a whole. Defendants refusal to admit error — indeed, to continue it, according to the Independent Monitor — constrains this Court to conclude that they will engage in it going forward unless judicially restrained.”

Among other things, the court bans Trump and the Trump Organization and its affiliates from applying for loans from any financial institution chartered by or registered with the New York State Department of Financial Services for three years, and Eric and Don Jr. can’t serve as an officer or director of any New York corporation or other legal entity for two years. 

Meanwhile, Trumpublicans who narrowly control the House of Representatives continue to look for pretexts to impeach President Joe Biden, based on imagined corrupt relationships of the president to his son Hunter and brother Jim, even after a sketchy FBI informant, Alexander Smirnov, on whom the Trumpers were basing their case, was indicted on charges that he lied to federal investigators about the Biden family’s business dealings.

These lies included claims that Joe Biden and his son each sought $5 million bribes from Ukrainian energy company Burisma when Biden was vice president, in exchange for protecting the firm from scrutiny by Ukraine’s national authorities. Now, Smirnov, a 43-year-old Israeli American, has admitted that “officials associated with Russian intelligence” fed him that information. 

Republicans have based their attacks on President Biden on that apparent Russian disinformation. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), partnered with House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) in May 2023, demanding the Justice Department release an FBI-generated Form FD 1023, which could reveal a “criminal scheme involving then-Vice President Joe Biden … involving an exchange of money for policy decisions.” That form contained statements that the FBI warned were unverified, but the Republicans insisted it be published.

“That to me is really the heart of this matter,” House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) said Jan. 11 on Fox “News.” “The most corroborating evidence we have is … from this highly credible, confidential human source.” On Feb. 21, after the source of the information was disclosed, Jordan insisted the revelations about Smirnov’s Russian connection don’t “change the facts.”

But other witnesses have sworn under oath that President Biden wasn’t involved in any of his son’s or his brother’s schemes.

The facts that need to be established now include when Grassley, Comer and Jordan discovered that Smirnov, their “star witness,” was a Russian agent, and whether the Republican inquisitors suborned perjury during the investigation. For people who claim to be Christians, they sure do seem to bear a lot of false witness.

Republicans need to swear off the lies, the bullying and unfounded slurs about the “Biden Crime Family” and instead straighten up, drop the impeachment nonsense and pass the budget that should have made it through Congress six months ago. — JMC 

From The Progressive Populist, March 15, 2024


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Selections from the March 15, 2024 issue

 COVER/Art Cullen

Breaking the Red Wall

EDITORIAL
Bill for Trump’s lies comes due

JIM HIGHTOWER
What is a banker’s promise worth? 
The debacle of ‘God’s army’ at Eagle Pass. 
Abortion-ban extremists are using a slave law to repress women. 
Where did our local newspapers go? 

FRANK LINGO
Peace and the planet

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

DON ROLLINS 
A puzzle, a wonder and a miracle

RURAL ROUTES/Margot McMillen 
The weeds fight back. What’s next? 

DISPATCHES 
Trump underperformance in South Carolina is anti-MAGA triumph.
Trump’s weekend at CPAC was tour de force of bigotry and incompetence.
Childcare crisis grips US as IRS chief says wealthy tax dodgers cost $150B a year.
Trump will destroy health care, and his voters don’t care.
Make big money peddling COVID misinfo
Catholic leaders protest Texas AG’s lawsuit targeting El Paso migrant ministry.


ART CULLEN 
Vilsack’s lament

ALAN GUEBERT 
From ink to electrons, the retirement of print journalism


SARAH ANDERSON 
Poor, low-income voters are a sleeping giant

JOHN YOUNG 
Agent Orange’s inspiration: “Be like Vlad”


DICK POLMAN
Putin’s bootlicker condones political murder. He wants to bring Kremlin values to the White House. 

JOE CONASON
Behind the special counsel smear of Biden

JOHN CULLEN 
Old enough to know better

DAVID McCALL 
Solidarity saved him 

LES LEOPOLD 
Did Wall Street just end the class war?  


ROBERT KUTTNER
Dealing with the bad stewards

THOM HARTMANN
Why the corporate tax bracket should go back to 52%


SONALI KOLHATKAR
Cash bail system violates due process

HEALTH CARE/Joan Retsinas
Scrooge returns: No food for children during the summer

SAM URETSKY 
Supreme Court takes on ballot access

FARRAH HASSEN  
The rent is still too high 

WAYNE O’LEARY
The empire reenergized

LINDSAY K. SAUNDERS
Having a child shouldn’t cause financial catastrophe

JAKE JOHNSON
Labor leaders condemn GOP fiscal commission as anti-worker ‘power grab’

JUAN COLE
Biden, tired of being called ‘Genocide Joe,’ finally blinks

GENE NICHOL
The attorney general’s jam

ELWOOD WATSON
Women and the future of politics

JAMIE STIEHM 
Lincoln’s life lesson on saving democracy

BARRY FRIEDMAN 
The summer of our discontent/party one

SATIRE/Rosie Sorenson  
All Tuckered out

SUSAN HARLEY 
Free tax filing: A crucial step toward unrigging our economy

RALPH NADER 
Biden & Blinken — rule of illegal power over rule of law


JOHN CLAYTON 
You’re not the boss in wilderness

ROB PATTERSON 
Max is anything but that

SETH SANDRONSKY 
Book it: Reading about heterodox economics

FILM REVIEW/Ed Rampell 
‘Kipkemboi’: Kenya’s genius, from a mud hut to Wall Street

From The Progressive Populist, March 15, 2024


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Saturday, February 17, 2024

Editorial: Biden Floats in Flooded Zone

 The special counsel assigned by Attorney General Merrick Garland to investigate President Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents finally produced his report that concluded “no charges are warranted” in the case. But Robert Hur, a Republican appointee in Donald Trump’s Department of Justice, took the opportunity to criticize Biden’s mental acuity, portraying the president as “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” 

The slur went beyond Hur’s commission, particularly since Hur is not qualified to diagnose neurological conditions, but it blew up in the media to amplify questions about the president’s fitness for office at age 81.

We are expected to ignore that Biden’s all-but-certain opponent in November is a sociopath and compulsive liar who not only has trouble remembering which countries foreign leaders rule — Donald Trump also has said Nikki Haley was in charge of security at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, confusing his Republican rival with then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and he said Jeb Bush launched the war in Iraq after 9/11, among his recent “senior moments.” 

Of course, Trump also faces 91 felony charges in state and federal jurisdictions and he has been found liable for rape and defamation of his sexual assault victim, as well as fraud in his financial dealings. And his evangelical Christian supporters believe he was sent by God, who apparently overlooked Trump’s cheating on all three of his wives, as well as hundreds of contractors he refused to pay for work during his business career, so we guess it shouldn’t bother us. 

The Former Guy is desperate to get back in the White House to stay out of prison. And if he gets back into the White House, the wannabe dictator has threatened to ignore the United States’ NATO responsibilities and let his friend, Russian President Vladimir Putin, take Ukraine and possibly Poland by force, as well as other Eastern European nations, as Putin tries to put the Soviet bloc back together. 

Trump’s political operation has embraced Russian-style disinformation, which uses media to produce enough distrust to ensure the public can never mobilize around a coherent narrative. “The Democrats don’t matter,” Trump’s political strategist, Steve Bannon, said in 2018 when he outlined plans to dismantle the “deep state.” “The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with sh*t.” 

The zone has been flooded ever since.

PolitiFact in January reached a milestone of 1,000 facts checked on statements made by Trump, when he claimed after his New Hampshire primary win that Democrats used the COVID-19 pandemic to “cheat” in the 2020 presidential election. The claim was rated “Pants on Fire.”

PolitiFact started examining Trump’s statements in 2011, when he was amplifying “birther” conspiracy theories to undermine then-President Barack Obama’s eligibility. Since then, about 76% of Trump’s statements examined by PolitiFact have earned ratings of Mostly False, False or Pants on Fire, which puts him in a class by himself. “It’s not unusual for politicians of both parties to mislead, exaggerate or make stuff up. But American fact-checkers have never encountered a politician who shares Trump’s disregard for factual accuracy,” PolitiFact reported Feb. 1.

Trump’s median rating of False is worse than a cross-section of frequently checked Democratic and Republican politicians. Politicians with median ratings of Half True include Obama, Biden and Hillary Clinton; three senators who ran for president, Mitt Romney, R-Utah, Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.; and two longtime congressional leaders, Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

“It’s been an astounding eight years in American politics,” said Jennifer Mercieca, a Texas A&M University communication professor and a historian of American political rhetoric. “He’s built his entire political identity on the fact that he doesn’t owe anyone the truth about anything.”

PolitiFact, for all its work, can’t match the Washington Post for comprehensive review of Trump’s contempt for the truth. The Post’s Fact Checker team recorded 30,573 “untruths” told by Trump during his presidency. The team, led by Glenn Kessler, noted on Jan. 24, 2021, “What is especially striking is how the tsunami of untruths kept rising the longer he served as president and became increasingly unmoored from the truth.”

Kessler noted that the Fact Checker staff has been unable to continue that comprehensive pace, but they did review all the public statements during Biden’s first 100 days, and counted 78 false or misleading statements. That compares to 511 such statements in Trump’s first 100 days. Fact Checker noted that, unlike Trump, Biden generally does not repeat claims that have been fact-checked as false.

Onr of Trump’s biggest lies was that the economy was never stronger than during his presidency. The facts: by just about any important measure, the economy under Trump was not doing as well as it did under Presidents Eisenhower, Johnson or Clinton — and, as Trump rode the economic recovery that started under Barack Obama, Trump also rode the COVID pandemic into the economic dumps. Unemployment shot up to 14.7% in April 2020. By the time Trump was turned out of the White House in January 2021, Trump left a 6.7% jobless rate, after a net loss of 2.67 million jobs.

Since then, Biden got the COVID pandemic under control, resolved supply-chain problems left over from Trump’s adminstration, passed an economic package that helped to create more than 14 million jobs, and unemployment dropped below 4% for the past two years. However, Republicans continue to undermine public confidence in Biden’s ability to manage the economy. 

People who have spent time with Biden know the president is in full possession of his faculties — completely lucid, with an excellent grasp of detail, Paul Krugman noted in the New York Times. “Of course, most voters don’t get to see him up close, and it’s on Biden’s team to address that. And yes, he speaks quietly and a bit slowly, although this is in part because of his lifetime struggle with stuttering. He also, by the way, has a sense of humor, which I think is important.” 

“Most important is that Biden has been a remarkably effective president. Trump spent four years claiming that a major infrastructure initiative was just around the corner, to the point that ‘It’s infrastructure week!’ became a running joke; Biden actually got legislation passed. ... Biden’s technology and climate policies — the latter passed against heavy odds — have produced a surge in manufacturing investment. His enhancement of Obamacare has brought health insurance coverage to millions.

“If you ask me, these achievements say a lot more about Biden’s capacity than his occasional verbal slips,” Krugman wrote. We agree. — JMC

From The Progressive Populist, March 1, 2024


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Selections from the March 1, 2024 issue

 COVER/Hal Crowther 

An incurable disease? The mystery of MAGA

EDITORIAL 
Biden floats in the flooded zone

JIM HIGHTOWER
The Right Wing’s program to solve childhood obesity. 
The Supreme Court’s six corporate sumpremacists ridge again.
Justwhat we need — another border wall! 
The shameful greed of the Solano County gold rush. 
Rebranding CAFOs as PFOs is corporate BS. 
Why you were not invited to Davos.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 

DON ROLLINS 
Student absenteeism: Fixes and frustrations

RURAL ROUTES/Margot McMillen
The race doesn’t always go to the Swifties (but that’s the way to bet)

DISPATCHES 
RFK Jr.’s apology over Super Bowl ad doesn’t pass sincerity test.
Trump echoes Hitler final solution rhetoric.
Poll: most Republicans are fine with Trump getting away with anything.
Trump attacks another military family. That’s who he is.
Changes in child tax credit would have outsized impact on rural children 

ART CULLEN 
Calm yourself: What would Mel Brooks do?

ALAN GUEBERT 
America’s love/hate relationship with one of our biggest trading partners

CANDACE BAKER 
Lawmakers must fully fund the WIC program

JOHN YOUNG
Swifties are the least of GOP’s problems

JAKE JOHNSON
‘Hell no’: Trump allies’ plan to privatize Medicare draws alarm and outrage

DICK POLMAN 
It’s unanimous! ‘Citizen Trump’ is just like ‘any other criminal defendent’ facing federal prosecution.

JOE CONASON 
What Taylor Swift is teaching us now

DAVID McCALL 
Fighting for time to heal

SVANTE MYRICK 
This Black History month, fight for the freedom to learn

SAFIYA SIMMONS, LAURA
COLLINS & SUZETTE GARDNER 
Changing the culture around paid leave starts at school


FRANK LINGO 
Exciting ecological innovations

THOM HARTMANN 
Do the rich dudes want the court to ban Trump or not?


SONALI KOLHATKAR 
The real reason your grocery bill is still so high


GRASSROOTS/Hank Kalet 
Criminalizing the homeless again

BOOK REVIEW/Ken Winkes 
Hard work over the decades

HEALTH CARE/Joan Retsinas 
What would Kant do? A brake on renegade individualism

SAM URETSKY
Pets keep us young

KATIE KLINGSPORN 
Where have all the doctors gone?

WAYNE O’LEARY 
The corporatization of American health care

ROBERT C. KOEHLER 
Diversity in the crosshairs

GENE NICHOL 
Violating academic freedom, again

JUAN COLE 
Top 3 things Biden could do instead of intensively bombing Iraq and Syria

JOEL D. JOSEPH 
US should recognize a Palestinian state

JASON SIBERT 
No turning back on Iran’s nukes

JAMIE STIEHM 
The woman driving Trump mad

BARRY FRIEDMAN 
Trump’s inner voice

SATIRE/Rosie Sorenson 
Pieces of Ron

RALPH NADER 
Provoking Trump to defeat himself Jujitsu style

LAURA PRITCHETT 
They struggle to come to America: One woman’s story

ROB PATTERSON 
Support the workers in the entertainment industry that helps us get by

SETH SANDRONSKY 
Langston Hughes and language of human liberation

FILM REVIEW/Ed Rampell
A filmic feast for the eyes: The gastronomy of L’Amour

From The Progressive Populist, March 1, 2024


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