The Progressive Populist Today Blog

Friday, March 24, 2023

Editorial: The Indictable Man

Donald Trump raised the hopes of a skeptical nation Saturday March 18, when he claimed on his failing social media platform that he would be arrested on the following Tuesday, March 21, for one of the many crimes grand juries are investigating in various jurisdictions.

Trump’s rambling ALL-CAPS message on “Truth Social” refers to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s expected indictment of Trump in connection to payments his lawyer made to two women in 2016, when Trump was running for president. Trump refused to testify before the Manhattan grand jury investigating those payments, which include $130,000 paid to adult film actor Stormy Daniels to buy her silence during the campaign, which would be a violation of election law. “WE MUST SAVE AMERICA!” Trump wrote on “Truth Social,” urging them to “PROTEST, PROTEST, PROTEST!!!” and “TAKE OUR NATION BACK!” sparking fears of more right-wing violence in a repeat of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riots.

In an internal email following Trump’s statements, Bragg said law enforcement would ensure that the 1,600 people who work in his office would remain safe, and that “any specific or credible threats” would be investigated.

“We do not tolerate attempts to intimidate our office or threaten the rule of law in New York,” Bragg wrote, adding: “In the meantime, as with all of our investigations, we will continue to apply the law evenly and fairly, and speak publicly only when appropriate.”

As news spread of Trump’s imminent arrest, however, it appeared that Trump was merely anticipating arrest. New York law enforcement authorities were making security plans for the possibility that Trump would be indicted, and barricades were installed near the Criminal Courts Building in New York City March 20, but a Trump spokesman said there was no notification of a pending arrest and the grand jury was still hearing witnesses. It was unlikely an indictment would be issued March 21, but it is expected to happen soon.

Trump may have been attempting to mount a pre-emptive defense by stirring his seditionist White supremacist supporters to issue threats against Bragg, who is Black. Trump also was ginning up contributions from those who have supported him through the past seven years of scandals.

But Republicans in Congress aren’t waiting for the Manhattan indictment to emerge before they start obstructing the prosecution of Trump. House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer and House Administration Chairman Bryan Steil sent a letter to Bragg March 20 demanding that the DA turn over all information about his investigation and testify before Congress. In a letter to Bragg, they call his investigation of Trump an “unprecedented abuse of prosecutorial authority”— even though Congress has no authority over state courts or district attorneys and Bragg’s office receives negligible federal funds.

The Georgia Legislature’s Republican majority also is working on legislation that would allow Republicans to remove Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, another Black Democratic prosecutor, who is thought to be nearing indictment of Trump on voter fraud charges for his attempt to get state officials to overturn Georgia election results.

Willis also has indicated that she is considering bringing charges under Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. RICO laws make it easier to go after organized criminal enterprises, and can be used against members of any group that engaged in a pattern of criminal activities with a common purpose. A conviction would carry a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison.

Federal Special Prosecutor Jack Smith also is leading investigations into Trump’s involvement in promoting the Jan. 6 coup attempt and his handling of highly classified government documents that were found at his resort at Mar-A-Lago, after Trump resisted efforts by government officials to get him to surrender the documents.

Unauthorized retention of national security documents could result in up to 10 years in prison for each document. Concealing records to obstruct an official effort could result in 20 years per offense. Concealment or destruction of official documents, whether or not they were related to national security — and Trump was notorious for ripping up government documents — could result in three years per offense.

The House Jan. 6 Committee last year argued Trump could be prosecuted on a charge of attempted corrupt obstruction of an official proceeding, punishable by up to 20 years in prison, for his role in summoning of supporters to Washington and urging them to march on the Capitol and “fight like hell.”

The committee also viewed as criminal obstruction the scheme to recruit “fake electors” from various states and pressuring Vice President Pence to cite their existence as a basis to delay certifying the election, even though Trump had been told that there was no truth to his claims of a stolen election. Trump could also be charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States and conspiracy to make false statements with the efforts to submit slates of false electors.

Is it worth it to break the tradition of ignoring crimes committed by presidents during their terms in office? We think Trump has abused the privilege, and he needs to answer for his many crimes.

Trump, who is revered by right-wing Christians, has cheated on all three of his wives so far, including affairs with porn star Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal in 2006, a year after he married Melania and just months after she gave birth to Barron.

Trump is expected to be charged in connection with $280,000 in payments his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, made to Daniels and McDougal to buy their silence before the 2016 election. The Trump Organization reimbursed Cohen $420,000 and called it a legal fee.

The investigation turned up evidence Trump had been aware of the payments, despite his initial public claims he knew nothing about them. On a recording he reportedly can be heard speaking to Cohen about efforts to buy McDougal’s continued silence.

Trump has cheated on taxes in New York State, as well as the federal government, when he wrote off the hush money payoffs as legal expenses, which also violated state and federal election laws, and he understated the value of his properties for tax purposes. New York Attorney General Letitia James, who also happens to be Black, is suing Trump’s company in state court for fraud.

For what it’s worth, Trump also has cheated his seditionist supporters. Jesse Kelly, a syndicated right-wing radio host, urged Trump supporters to stay away from any protests on his behalf. In a tweet, Kelly complained that Trump had not helped with the legal bills of those involved in the Jan. 6 “protests.” “The last time Trump’s biggest fans protested on his behalf, he left them all to rot in jail without so much as a penny from him in legal fees. Not a penny. Shame on him for this. Do NOT go to a blue area and protest for this man.”

If Trump is indicted, turns himself in and makes bail, his first large rally of the 2024 campaign as a defendant was planned for March 25 in Waco, Texas, on the 30th anniversary of the federal government’s deadly siege of a compound near Waco run by the Branch Davidian religious sect. That should appeal to Trump’s right-wing cult members and their sense of grievance. — JMC

From The Progressive Populist, April 15, 2023

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Selections from the April 15, 2023 issue

COVER/Dick Polman

America’s tragedy: A pandemic of willful ignorance

EDITORIAL
The indictable man

FRANK LINGO
Stop product testing on animals

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

DON ROLLINS
Big league baseball: You win some ... and might lose ‘em

RURAL ROUTES/Margot McMIllen
Why would a lab in Wuhan be studying the COVID virus?

DISPATCHES
Former Texas governor led Reagan’s effort to sabotage Jimmy Carter’s re-election, urged Iran to keep US hostages.
Republican attacks on SNAP could take food aid from 10 million.
DeSantis threw Trump under the bus.
Repubs agree ‘hush’ payments are crimes.
Media needs to get wise with DeSantis' bad-faith press operation
Biden says top execs of failed banks should face harsh penalties ...

ART CULLEN
Politicians want to snuff the light of information and cast you in darkness

ALAN GUEBERT
‘Right to repair’ fight between farmers and machinery giants just getting started

LINDA BENESCH
Inequality costs Social Security trillions. Here’s how we can fix it.

JOHN YOUNG
‘Woke’ phantoms behind school walls

THOM HARTMANN
Can we stop the greed-heads from their destruction of banking & more?

TOM CONWAY
Keep the DOL fighting for workers

ROBERT KUTTNER
There are worse things than mild inflation

KAREN DOLAN
Biden’s budget would level the playing field and reduce the deficit

ROBERT C. KOEHLER
Staying woke: Revering life

SONALI KOLHATKAR
Why student debt cancellation is reasonable, not radical

DR. CINTLI
The 1524 Dialogues Part II

GENE NICHOL
North Carolina’s supreme transgression

HEALTH CARE/Joan Retsinas
Dystopian health-speak: Medical freedom

SAM URETSKY
The rule of judges

JOEL D. JOSEPH
Silicon Valley Bank was killed by the Federal Reserve Board

WAYNE O’LEARY
The great distraction

GRASSROOTS/Hank Kalet
Eco-terrorism is real and driven by corporate capitalism

PAUL ARMENTANO
In the era of legal marijuana, the kids are alright

N. GUNASEKARAN
A world free of hunger: Is it achievable?

PETER CERTO
20 years on, what did the Iraq war truly cost?

BARRY FRIEDMAN
In defense of Julian Assange

SATIRE/Rosie Sorenson
Ron De Sanitization

JONATHAN THOMPSON
Chronicle of an abandoned oil and gas well — one of millions

ROB PATTERSON
‘Godfather of Harlem’ mixes fact and fiction with flair

ED RAMPELL
The best political movie since Z is runner-up for an Oscar
and more ...

From The Progressive Populist, April 15, 2023

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Friday, March 10, 2023

Editorial: GOP’s Borderline Failure

We had low expectations when the slim Republican House majority took 15 votes before they could settle on a speaker, and so far they have demonstrated they have no plans for making life better for working families, as they seek to govern by publicity stunts. The Border “Debate” is a case in point.

New House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) in February took a convoy that included more than a dozen Republican Congress members to the border between Arizona and Mexico near Yuma to bring attention to the hordes of aliens they claim seek to invade the US.

“As they rumbled along the entry port of San Luis, a dam along the Colorado River and more desolate sections of the U.S. border between Arizona and Mexico, though, their search came up empty,” a Cleveland Plain Dealer reporter on the scene described. “Hours later, immigration officials would spot a group crossing north, but it was long after Congress members had retired for the night.”

No Democrats participated in what ranking committee Democrat Jerry Nadler called a “stunt hearing,” though he did say some Democrats from the committee would go to the border in March to “hear from the community and government officials on the ground.”

The Judiciary “field hearing” was the third trip to the border by House Republicans, as Barely Speaker Kevin McCarthy had already traveled there to score points, as had members of the Energy and Conference Committee, Joan McCarter noted at DailyKos.com.

The Homeland Security Committee had what they called a “border bootcamp” for Republican freshmen members, and the Oversight Committee has plans to go in the near future, too. “That’s one way to stop illegal crossings: Just keep sending down convoys of GOP representatives to play border patrol,” McCarter noted.

But all that travel adds up, she noted. Jordan’s Judiciary Committee alone has requested $262,400 for travel this session. In 2022, with Democrats in charge, the committee spent $7,986.

Republicans complain the border is open and refugees keep showing up — but those “open border” claims are heard in Central and South America as an invitation. And those refugees are disappointed when they get to the border and find the Republicans lied.

In fact, federal agents along the southern border stopped migrants over 2.3 million times, a record high, in fiscal year 2022. And the number of migrants apprehended by the Border Patrol after illegally crossing the southern border dropped by roughly 40% in January, when the Biden administration announced a revamped strategy to discourage unlawful crossings.

In early January, the administration announced it would use a pandemic-related authority known as Title 42 to swiftly expel Cubans, Nicaraguans, Haitians and Venezuelans to Mexico without allowing them to seek asylum if they attempted to cross into the US without legal permission, CBS News reported.

Facts also undermine Republican claims that Biden’s lax attention to the border is responsible for the increase in fentanyl deaths in the US. In fact, Customs and Border Patrol are seizing record amounts of fentanyl at the border, and most mugglers are US citizens.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, from 2019-2021, fentanyl seizures at ports of entry nationwide quadrupled to 14,700 pounds as the US government’s ban on most legal cross-border traffic amid the public health emergency prompted narcotics traffickers to move the easier-to-conceal synthetic opioid, fentanyl.

In fiscal year 2022, 84% of the 14,104 pounds of fentanyl seized along the Mexican border were seized at ports of entry.

The Border Patrol seized 2,200 pounds of fentanyl, or 16% of all fentanyl seized along the southern border, in fiscal year 2022. And many of those seizures occurred at interior checkpoints, where Border Patrol agents screen commercial and passenger vehicles.

When it comes to actual border policy, rather than publicity and preening, Republicans have nothing. Instead, they’ve got an interparty fight, as Gabe Ortiz reported at Daily Kos Feb. 20. Their first go at an immigration bill “was so extreme it derailed itself, after so-called moderates refused to sign on.”

One of the “moderates,” US Rep. Tony Gonzales of San Antonio, condemned fellow Texas US Rep. Chip Roy’s bill gutting US asylum rules early on as “not Christian” and “very anti-American.” Gonzales added in a tweet, “Anyone who thinks a 3 page anti-immigration bill with 0% chance of getting signed into law is going to solve the border crisis should be buying beach front property in AZ.”

Talk like that, and a few votes that strayed from the party line, got Gonzales censured by the Republican Party of Texas, whose executive committee voted 57-5 March 3 to cite him for “lack of fidelity to Republican principles and priorities,” such as his vote for the modest gun bill that passed last year after the Uvalde school shooting in his district, as well as a bill codifying protections for same-sex marriage, and against the House Republicans’ rules package. He is in his second term representing the predominantly Hispanic West Texas district and the censure allows the party, which is otherwise required to remain neutral in intraparty contests, to support a challenger in Gonzales’ next primary. Two days later, Julie Clark, chairwoman of the Medina County GOP, where the censure resolution originated, announced she would challenge him, calling Gonzales “a real RINO!”

The GOP move against Gonzales might signal the growing Latino electorate in Texas to reconsider their recent move toward the party whose most recent president repeatedly cast slurs on Mexican and other dark-skinned immigrants. Donald Trump may have put a target on their back for armed White supremacists who don’t see much difference between illegal immigrants and brown-skinned US citizens.

Trump started his campaign in 2015 saying Mexicans were “bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.” At rallies before the 2018 elections, Trump repeatedly warned that America was under attack by immigrants heading for the border. “You look at what is marching up, that is an invasion!” he declared at one rally.

Nine months later, on Aug. 3, 2019, a 21-year-old White man from a Dallas suburb opened fire with a semi-automatic rifle in a Walmart in El Paso, killing 23 people and injuring 22 more, after writing a manifesto railing against immigration and announcing that “this attack is a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas” that is part of a “great replacement” of White people by people of color. Nearly all the victims had Latino last names, but many were US citizens. The shooter pleaded guilty in federal court to 90 crimes in connection with the massacre.

Texas Republican leaders deny Trump inspired the El Paso massacre or other attacks against Latinos, but Texas Gov. Gregg Abbott has the party’s support in his figurative war on immigrants, as he has sent the National Guard to support the Border Patrol, at a cost to Texas of more than $4 billion over the past two years. That includes $163 million for a border wall and $40 million to bus migrants north to Democrat-led cities. Meanwhile, Texas businesses complain they can’t find workers and Republican legislators are considering state tax credits to encourage more native births. — JMC

From The Progressive Populist, April 1, 2023

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Selections from the April 1, 2023 issue

COVER/Thom Hartmann

The outrageous new way Big Pharma is trying to rip us all off

EDITORIAL
GOP’s borderline failure

FRANK LINGO
Wind farms should tread carefully

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

DON ROLLINS
Satire: Just a tool for democracy

RURAL ROUTES/Margot McMIllen
Chinese balloons come and go down

DISPATCHES
Trump to his followers: I am your retribution.
Don Jr. confirms ‘Dark Brandon’ has been living in Trump’s head.
Poll finds majority of US voters want Fed to stop raising rates before it tanks economy.
Major US oil companies raked in $290 billion in profits last year.
‘New’ House Republican energy plan: Drill, baby, drill.
Trump has a vision for the future, and it’s ‘The Jetsons.’
Florida Republicans want to keep track of bloggers ...

ART CULLEN
Farm Bill could be a rare accomplishment for a divided Congress

ALAN GUEBERT
Paying the price for being sick, old, or poor in rural America

REBEKAH ENTRALGO
Rail workers warned us: Greed is dangerous

JOHN YOUNG
Biden arrives to save planet tied to tracks

ROBERT KUTTNER
A small victory over Big Pharma / How Monopoly Destroys Democracy

DICK POLMAN
The Fox rot starts at the top with Rupert Murdoch

TOM CONWAY
Working kids to death

DOMENICA GHANEM
The GOP wants to renegotiate women’s place in the economy

JAKE JOHNSON
Report shows big insurance profitting massively from Medicare privatization

LES LEOPOLD
Shareholder capitalism and the cruelty of mass layoffs

SONALI KOLHATKAR
Starbucks: Poster child for corporate abuse

DR. CINTLI
The consequential debate of 1524: On what it means to be human. Part I.

GENE NICHOL
Crushing judicial independence in North Carolina

HEALTH CARE/Joan Retsinas
The government: Erasing the X in prescribing Buprenorphine

SAM URETSKY
Republicans prefer to remain fast asleep

SETH SANDRONSKY
Seeking justice: California’s sterilization compensation program

WAYNE O’LEARY
Casey Jones meets Hunter Harrison

JOEL D. JOSEPH
Blowback from stock buybacks

MEL GURTOV
The coup in Israel

BARRY FRIEDMAN
Oklahoma’s education horror

SATIRE/Rosie Sorenson
D-I-V-O-R-C-E

DAVE MARSTON
Colorado conflicted about cutting its water use

ROB PATTERSON
The rich have their uses

PETER FUNT
Viewers should ask, what’s up with docs?

FILM REVIEW/Ed Rampell
‘Ithaka’ makes a personal appeal to free Assange

From The Progressive Populist, April 1, 2023

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Friday, February 24, 2023

Editorial: GOP’s Ammosexual Base

Republican leaders seem to think one of the major threats to the United States are people who support the rights of LGBT persons to live peacefully in our communities.

Republican legislative priorities increasingly seem to target transgender people for harassment, since lesbians, gays and bisexuals have become more accepted in society. We think the GOP is showing its backside and should pay more attention to the damage done by their own ammosexuals.

When the Florida Legislature in March 2022 was considering the “Parental Rights in Education” bill, which threatens criminal penalties for primary school teachers and librarians who expose students to information about gender identity or sexual orientation, Christina Pushaw, press secretary to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), accused Democratic critics of the bill, better known as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, of supporting pedophilia. She said it would be more accurately described as an Anti-Grooming Bill.

Other Republicans took up the talking point that Democrats were groomers for pedophilia, echoing the far-right fantasies of QAnon, which claims a secret cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophile power players control the government.

We think the Republican claims of Democrats promoting pedophilia are an attempt to distract from the ammosexuals who are a substantial portion of the base of the Greedy Oligarch Party. Our definition of “ammosexual” is “Someone who loves his or her guns more than they love their children.”

In the face of gunmen attacking schools, Republicans have offered thoughts and prayers but resisted practically all attempts to pass gun reforms since Democrats in 1994 passed the assault weapons ban, which prohibited the manufacture for civilian use of semi-automatic firearms that were defined as assault weapons, as well as high-capacity ammunition magazines. That ban expired in September 2004, and mass shootings and their death toll have risen since then.

In 2022, the US experienced 647 mass shootings, in which at least four people were killed or wounded, and more than 44,000 people died due to gun violence. The Gun Violence Archive has tallied 81 mass shootings this year through Feb. 21.

Everytown for Gun Safety has noted that one in three mass shooters were legally prevented from possessing a firearm at the time of the shooting, but they were still able to get their hands on a gun. When assault weapons are used in a mass shooting, more victims are shot.

Until Republicans get their ammosexuals under control, there is little chance of making schools and public spaces safe. And we’re starting to see mass-shooting survivors exposed to new mass shootings. On Feb. 13, when three students were killed and five were wounded at Michigan State University, two others had flashbacks.

One of the MSU students who was near the classroom invaded by the gunman was Jackie Matthews, now 21, who had been an 11-year-old student in a classroom in Newtown, Conn., in 2012, when another gunman killed 26 students, teachers and staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary. Matthews on TikTok recalled sitting crouched in an adjoining classroom when a gunman shot and killed kindergartners, Fox2 in Detroit reported. “The fact that this is the second mass shooting I have lived through is incomprehensible,” she said.

Emma Riddle, an 18-year-old freshman who with her roommate barricaded their dorm room at Michigan State, was a senior at Oxford High School near Detroit during a shooting that killed four students in 2021. “We just went through this 14 months ago. What is happening?”

Two days after the Michigan State mass shooting, one person was killed and three were wounded Feb. 15 in the Cielo Vista shopping mall in El Paso, Texas. Two men were arrested. The shooting was across the parking lot from the Walmart where 23 people were killed in a racist attack targeting Latinos in 2019.

Among those at the mall was former White House staffer Olivia Troye’s aunt, who also happened to be shopping in the Walmart when that shooting occurred, Troye tweeted after the shooting. The aunt was in hiding after the latest shooting. “She survived the 2019 Walmart El Paso shooting thanks to someone who pulled her to safety. What is it going to take to enact change?!” Troye wrote in a post cited by the El Paso Times.

In June 2022, after mass shootings at the Tops supermarket in Buffalo, New York, and Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, Congress passed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which provides assistance for health services, school security and crisis intervention programs. It did little to expand background checks to stop mentally disturbed people from getting guns. Semi-automatic AR-15-style assault rifles remain available. But Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) still came under heavy criticism from ammosexual Republicans for co-sponsoring those light gun reforms.

Republicans must do better.

Ukraine military forces have been fighting off Russia’s invasion for one year, as of Feb. 24. Ukraine has survived at least 362 days longer than Vladimir Putin anticipated when he ordered Russian armored forces to cross the border into the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine.

Putin hoped to take Kiev/Kyiv in three days and return Ukraine to the Russian embrace, as he seeks to rebuild the Russian empire. But Putin’s imperial ambitions were delayed, if not denied, by Ukrainian defenders, using armaments from the United States and other NATO member countries rallied by US President Joe Biden. The Russians invaders were stopped short of Kyiv and Ukraine defenders forced the Russians to retreat to the Donbas region.

Some of our readers might consider us to be dupes of the US military-industrial complex in the service of capitalist imperialism, for supporting US aid to Ukraine. We realize that much US foreign policy is dictated by capitalist economic interests. But Ukraine and Russia both are at least nominally capitalist countries served by McDonalds restaurants. And Russia attacked Ukraine.

The US is rightfully helping an embattled nation, which has a relatively free press and a freely elected parliament, defend itself against a neighboring dictatorship. Putin has locked up a political rival after attempts to poison him failed. The Russian parliament has made it a criminal offense to publish “fake news” that does not conform with official government sources. Russia jails protesters and has shut down critical media organizations. It also bombs Ukrainian cities, including residential neighborhoods, with missiles and drones, and threatens use of “tactical” nuclear weapons if all else fails.

(For the record, we opposed the US invasion of Iraq, which was a dumb idea even before it arguably became a war crime.)

We hope for a quick resolution of the war in Ukraine. Russia, which lost an estimated 200,000 soldiers killed or wounded, as of early February, can end it at any time by withdrawing from Ukraine. Until then, as long as Ukrainians put up their own fight, the US should keep sending them arms until Putin eventually falls out of a window. — JMC

From The Progressive Populist, March 15, 2023

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Selections from the March 15, 2023 issue

COVER/Robert Kuttner

Breaking up (with China) is hard to do

EDITORIAL
GOP’s ammosexual base

FRANK LINGO
Nature’s rights are coming soon

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

DON ROLLINS
Freedom of the press: A primer and mission

RURAL ROUTES/Margot McMIllen
Too many kids lost to gun violence, with no relief in sight

DISPATCHES
GOP taking budget advice from Trump official who wants to cut $2 trillion from Medicaid.
Biden raises Social Security and Medicare awareness and makes GOP look like fools.
Amid Ohio nightmare, rail workers alliance urges labor to back railroad nationalization.
House Republican on Texas border says asylum bill ‘has 0% chance of getting signed.’
Gregg Abbott’s border photo op needs $460 million to get through the summer...

ART CULLEN
The Iowa way is really a big corporate con using Jesus as a prop

ALAN GUEBERT
Biggest foreign owner of US ‘Ag Land’ isn’t who you think

EVETTE CLEMONS
Credit card holders get protection from fraud. Shouldn’t EPT users, too?

JOHN YOUNG
Biden bets on 21st century

MARK ANDERSON
Banking services return to the post office

DICK POLMAN
Are we really surprised that Joe Biden kicked ass?

SETH SANDRONSKY
University of California and its union problem

TOM CONWAY
Knowledge and power

GRASSROOTS/Hank Kalet
Union power requires an activist workforce

KAREN DOLAN
Biden presented a bold agenda. Can he back it up?

DICK POLMAN
The IRS is taking your calls. So much for that MAGA lie about ‘an army of 87,000 agents.’

THOM HARTMANN
Is the “Horse & Sparrow” economic scam returning?

SONALI KOLHATKAR
Behold, the new GOP culture wars

DR. CINTLI
Breathing free, living free

BRETT WILKINS
Climate groups cheer bill to tax big oil windfall profits

HEALTH CARE/Joan Retsinas
The invasion of BIG E

SAM URETSKY
Keeping up with the infrastructure

FARRAH HASSEN
How the world can help after the Middle East earthquake

WAYNE O’LEARY
Union Joe rides again

JOHN P. GEYMAN
Chaos with dysfunction and inequality: What could go wrong?

BARRY FRIEDMAN
Dahlia Lithwick’s 30 hours in Tulsa

REBEKAH ENTRALGO
Biden is right: You shouldn’t pay a higher tax rate than billionaires

RICHARD KNIGHT
The West is an exploiter’s paradise

ROB PATTERSON
Keep funding Dick Wolf

SATIRE/Rosie Sorenson
Beware the chatter

FILM REVIEW/Ed Rampell
Review: ‘Killing County’

From The Progressive Populist, March 15, 2023

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Saturday, February 11, 2023

Editorial: DeSantis in Denial

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has been getting plenty of attention for his authoritarian moves to exercise control over the state’s educational institutions, from the earliest grades through the universities. He has threatened elementary schoolteachers and librarians with felony charges if they expose students to objectionable material, such as references to homosexuality, and he doesn’t want students to feel bad about actions by their ancestors.

In March 2022, the Florida Legislature enacted the Parental Rights in Education Law, better known as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill. According to DeSantis, the scope of the bill is limited and only prohibits “sexual instruction” directed at young students, but public records obtained by Judd Legum of Popular.Info revealed that several Florida schools have removed books with LGBTQ characters from their libraries, citing the Parental Rights in Education Act. Further, training materials produced by the Florida Department of Education for librarians reveal that the DeSantis administration is encouraging this expansive interpretation of the law.

Teachers in Manatee County (Bradenton), Florida, were told to make their classroom libraries — and any other “unvetted” book — inaccessible to students, or risk felony prosecution.

Duval County (Jacksonville) school officials also told its teachers under the new Florida law, all books in elementary school libraries (including classroom collections for independent reading) must be reviewed by a certified media specialist to make sure books are free from pornography; instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity in grades kindergarten through three; and discrimination in such a way that “an individual, by virtue of his or her race, color, sex, or national origin is inherently racist or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously.” Teachers were reminded that violation of this provision is a third-degree felony.

DeSantis also acts on grudges, which is a bad look for a fascist. After the Walt Disney Company opposed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, following pressure from its employees, DeSantis retaliated by ordering the Legislature to dissolve the Reedy Creek Improvement District, which was created by the state in 1967 to give Disney unfettered control over public services, zoning and land use decisions. The district covers nearly 40 square miles of Orange and Osceola counties, including Walt Disney World, other Disney parks and two “cities,” Lake Buena Vista and Bay Lake, home to a total of 53 residents, all Disney employees and their families. The Legislature was moving to put an independent commission in charge of the district as we went to press.

Normally, we wouldn’t object to the state withdrawing such a perk from a corporate behemoth such as Disney, but in this case, where DeSantis’ is punishing an opponent that formerly had supported him and other Republicans, we hope Disney, which has 70,000 employees in Florida, wields a hefty counter-punch against its fascist overlord.

The Stop W.O.K.E. Act, which the Florida Legislature also enacted in March 2022, two days after the Don’t Say Gay bill, is designed to to root out ideas DeSantis deems “woke.”

The law, whose official title is the “Stop Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees Act,” prohibits educational institutions and businesses from teaching students and employees anything that would cause anyone to “feel guilt, anguish or any form of psychological distress” due to their race, color, sex or national origin. DeSantis also tried to bar Florida university professors from testifying against changes in the state’s voting law to make it harder to vote; he claimed professors at public colleges have no right to freedom of speech; and he organized a “hostile takeover” of the New College of Florida with six right-wing appointees to the 13-member board of trustees with the mission to reverse its progressive elements.

The Stop W.O.K.E. Act requires lessons on race to be taught in “an objective manner,” and not “used to indoctrinate or persuade students to a particular point of view.” It also says students should not be made to “feel guilt” because of actions committed by others in the past. DeSantis and other proponents of the law, which went into effect last summer, contend some teachers have inserted political beliefs into lessons related to race.

The new law doesn’t prohibit teaching about historic events like lynchings, Lori Rozsa noted in the Washington Post Jan. 21, but teachers in several parts of the state said they fear it will compel them to water down or gloss over uncomfortable truths about Florida’s past.

But uncomfortable truths won’t stay down. “I can’t tell the story of the Newberry Six without expressing my disgust for the lynching of a pregnant woman,” said Marvin Dunn, 82, a professor emeritus at Florida International University who has spent years documenting the case of the lynching of the Rev. Josh J. Baskin and five other Black Floridians, who were hanged from an oak tree by a White mob in 1916 after an accusation over a stolen hog sparked two days of terror.

Dunn takes students and their parents to the Pleasant Plain Cemetery tucked in the north Florida woods to see the victims’ tombstones, and it’s hard not to take sides. “As a teacher who has spent 30 years going from place to place in Florida where the most atrocious things have happened, I don’t know how to do that. And I don’t want the state telling me that I must.”

Dozens of states have enacted or considered laws banning or restricting “critical race theory” in the classroom, but Florida has gone a step further than most, Rozsa noted. DeSantis has also targeted academic programs and initiatives embraced elsewhere and appointed like-minded officials to state and local boards.

The Florida Department of Education recently rejected an Advanced Placement African American studies course offered by the College Board after determining that it is “inexplicably contrary to Florida law and significantly lacks educational value.” The White House called the decision “incomprehensible.”

In Duval County, school administrators recently held back 26 books from elementary schools — including “Roberto Clemente: Pride of the Pittsburgh Pirates” and “Climbing Lincoln’s Steps: The African American Journey” — until a committee determines if they meet the standards of the new state law.

The DeSantis administration required all state colleges and universities to submit details about “campus activities” and costs of anything “related to diversity, equity, and inclusion, and critical race theory.”

Dunn is one of eight plaintiffs in a lawsuit over the W.O.K.E. Act. A federal judge ruled against the state in November 2022, ordering a temporary injunction against portions of the act that restrict how college and university professors teach about race.

“Listen, if there is such a thing as the woke mob in Florida, I aspire to lead it,” Dunn told Rozsa.

DeSantis, who is expected to run for president in 2024, has made “anti-wokeism” a cornerstone of his governing philosophy in the past two years, Rozsa noted. His staff has described the term “woke” as “the belief there are systemic injustices in American society and the need to address them,” and said DeSantis doesn’t believe that theory.

If that’s the case, DeSantis is just a bully in denial of the lingering effects of racism. But being a jerk works for Gov. Ron.

DeSantis’ major accomplishments are making transgender people targets of state harassment and whitewashing history at the cost of academic freedom. Plenty of ambitious Republican officeholders are willing to follow his example. Don’t be like Ron. — JMC

From The Progressive Populist, March 1, 2023

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Selections from the March 1, 2023 issue

COVER/Cassandra Jaramillo,Lauren McGaughy and Allie Morris

Promoters of election lies also hyped a hospital for Ukraine. That never happened either.

EDITORIAL
DeSantis in denial

FRANK LINGO
Let’s be more like bonobos

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

DON ROLLINS
Let’s not be the party of rote

RURAL ROUTES/Margot McMIllen
Reduce the birth rate to control climate change

DISPATCHES
Red state Republicans push voucher-style ‘school choice’ assistance.
Job growth soars in January, as unemployment rate hits new half-century low.
Job growth in 2022 reflects strong but unevent economic recovery.
Unionization increased by 200,000 in 2022.
Florida female student athletes ask why they should report menstrual cycles.
Seething Rick Scott vows not to ‘back down’ after McConnell ejects him from key panel.
Calls for windfall tax grow as ExxonMobil smashes Big Oil profit record with $56 billion haul.
Court: Wife beating was legal when the Constitution was written, so wife beaters can own guns ....

ART CULLEN
Rural diner menu choices are limited

ALAN GUEBERT
US may have the muscle in a trade fight, Mexico may have the law

TRACEY L. ROGERS
Teach Black history — don’t ban it

JOHN YOUNG
‘Equity’ is not a four-letter word

SAM PIZZIGATI
The clearest case for taxing billionaires yet

KENNY STANCIL
‘Drought profiteers’ under fire as Wall Street targets Colorado River water

DEAN BAKER
Biden gets a solid ‘A’ at his midterm

THOM HARTMANN
A media ceiling is about to fall in on Democrats

DR. CINTLI
Guns, hate & roses

HEALTH CARE/Joan Retsinas
Guns: Geico, Amica, Aetna to the rescue

SAM URETSKY
The health care system is failing its providers, too

PAMELA M. COVINGTON
Don’t let politicians cut housing aid

GENE NICHOL
A Democratic duty

N. GUNASEKARAN
Pakistan: ‘At the end of the road.’

JASON SIBERT
South Korea looks at getting its own nukes

LAWRENCE S. WITTNER
The Ukraine war and international law

BARRY FRIEDMAN
What if Hitler did meet the press

SETH SANDRONSKY
The criminalization of Emily

TIM LYDON
The housing crisis is harming my town

ROB PATTERSON
Who tells a favorite performer it’s time to go?

SATIRE/Rosie Sorenson
Wherefore art thou, Pinocchio

FILM REVIEW/Ed Rampell
Would Florida’s fascistic governor ban this play and burn the script?

and more ...

From The Progressive Populist, March 1, 2023

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Monday, January 30, 2023

Editorial: Don’t Buckle to Terrorists

Republicans appear determined to risk defaulting on the nation’s debts in their effort to force Democrats to agree to cuts to Social Security and Medicare as well as other social spending that the right simply can’t stand.

One of the promises Kevin McCarthy made to seditionist “Freedom Caucus” Republicans to gain their support to elect him House Speaker was to hold the debt ceiling hostage.

The national debt hit the statutory debt limit of $31.4 trillion Jan. 19, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said, as the government began using “extraordinary measures,” moving money around government accounts to allow the government to meet its financial obligations as long as possible.

“The period of time that extraordinary measures may last is subject to considerable uncertainty, including the challenges of forecasting the payments and receipts of the US government months into the future,” Yellen said. “I respectfully urge Congress to act promptly to protect the full faith and credit of the United States.”

It’s true that $31 trillion is a lot of money. But Paul Krugman noted in the New York Times that a better way to think about debt is to ask whether interest payments are a burden on the budget. In 2011 those payments were 1.47% of gross domestic product — half of what they were in the mid-1990s. In 2021 they were 1.51%. “This number will rise as existing debt is rolled over at higher interest rates, but real net interest — interest payments adjusted for inflation — is likely to remain below 1% of G.D.P for the next decade,” Krugman wrote.

But House Republicans have vowed to hold the line on the borrowing limit until President Biden agrees to steep cuts in federal spending. Biden has ruled out negotiating for a debt-limit increase, noting that the money is going to cover spending previous Congresses authorized.

The use of the “debt ceiling” by Republicans in the House to stop the administration from paying bills Republicans ran up in the preceding administration flouts the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which states, “The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law ... shall not be questioned.”

The “debt ceiling” became a thing when Congress passed the Liberty Bond Act of 1917, which gave the president budgetary discretion to sell bonds to fund US participation in World War I, while imposing control over that discretion by limiting how much debt could be incurred. It was not used as a political weapon until Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich tried to use it in an attempt to extort budget cuts from President Bill Clinton in 1995.

In 2011, the Republican House majority nearly caused the US to default on its debt before President Obama agreed to caps on future spending increases in exchange for lifting the limit. Still, the brinksmanship resulted in a credit downgrade for Treasury bonds that raised US borrowing costs by $18.9 billion over the next 10 years, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center.

The debt increased $7.8 trillion during Donald Trump’s time in office, including Trump’s tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, which were projected to cost $1.9 trillion over 11 years, and COVID-pandemic-related stimulus cost $3 trillion. The Congressional Budget Office projects deficits of $3.8 trillion so far under Biden.

Robert Hockett, who teaches law and public policy at Cornell University, wrote at Forbes.com Jan. 19 that President Biden and Treasury Secretary Yellen can simply ignore the debt ceiling

Since Republicans started trying to use the debt ceiling as a hostage in the 1990s, all appropriations laws have directed Congress to incur public debt to purchase and pay for everything the federal government does. “Biden and Yellen, I claim, can simply ignore the would-be hostage-taker this time, leaving the ball in their ‘court’ to haul Treasury into our Courts and then watch the Supreme Court annul it. Unless President Biden actually wants House Republicans to pretend to ‘take us to the brink,’ then – letting them thereby commit political suicide as their predecessors did back in 1995, 2011, and 2013 – he should simply announce that the ‘debt ceiling’ just ‘isn’t a thing’ and instruct Janet Yellen to disregard it.”

Since enactment of the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974, Congress has had ultimate control over the federal budget process, treating as merely advisory the President’s proposed budget each year.

“That the ‘debt ceiling’ regime was never intended to apply to present circumstances, especially after 1974, of course is revealed by the fact that it wasn’t fought over by White Houses and Congress during the decades following 1917 … until opportunistic politicians beginning with Newt Gingrich in 1995 rediscovered it in the US Code and decided to try their hands at employing it for stunt-performing purposes like shutting down the government. Be that as it may, the important point right now is that both (a) the 1974 budget regime trumps the 1917 budget regime, and (b) the current budget trumps any putative ‘debt ceiling’ imposed after that budget became law.

“The President should therefore just say that the last putative ceiling was implicitly repealed by the current budget, then note while at it that this also accords with Section 4 of the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution … ratified by the former Confederate States as a condition on readmission to the Union. That provision prohibits questioning of the US national debt, which compliance with any putative ‘debt ceiling’ imposed after debts are already incurred would amount to.”

Hockett also notes, “The Republican abuse of the debt ceiling also raises Constitutional issues under the Constitution’s ‘Take Care’ Clause found in Article 2, Section 3, pursuant to which the President is required to ‘take care that the Laws [including the federal budget] be faithfully executed,’ and the Separation of Powers doctrine, pursuant to which Congress, not the President, determines under Article I how funds shall be spent and how taxes shall be raised. Republicans’ apparent interpretation of the debt ceiling of course (a) would obstruct the President’s execution of the law in the ways mandated by the budget — which, again, is duly enacted Congressional legislation — and (b) confer on the Treasury, via the ‘extraordinary measures’ that it would have to take, a de facto line item veto of the kind the Supreme Court has ruled violates Article I and the Separation of Powers.”

Some of the billionaire oligarchs who bankroll the Republicans might welcome the opportunity to make money off global financial disorder that the US government default would cause, but most of them are no more interested in causing financial market chaos than the rest of the world is. Big Money should tell McCarthy and what remains of sane Republican members of Congress to knock it off, and just increase the debt limit.

In the meantime, as Hockett suggests, Biden should continue to hold the line at not negotiating with Republican terrorists. He certainly should not agree to any cuts to Social Security or Medicare — which are funded separately from the general treasury, and need to be expanded, not cut back. Biden should let people know what is at stake. Let Republicans sue him and let the courts — even Trump’s MAGA justices — explain what the plain language of Article 14 and Article 2 means.

Republicans who want to stop the government from paying our debts are not “populists” or “conservatives.” They’re deadbeats. — JMC

From The Progressive Populist, February 15, 2023

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Selections from the February 15, 2023 issue

COVER/Hal Crowther

A very American tragedy

EDITORIAL
Don’t buckle to terrorists

FRANK LINGO
Lies that damage Earth

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

DON ROLLINS
Dianne Feinstein’s botched send-off

CRISTA V. WORTHY
Banning books is for bullies

DISPATCHES
GOP ‘Fair Tax’ proposal is anything but.
House GOP fracturesover first immigration-related proposal.
More than 70% of Dems back government-run universal healthcare: poll..
Watchdogs warn House GOP bill owuld ‘lock in another century of oil and gas.
Trump goes full QAnon, offers one of his resorts for conspiracists’ spring conference.
Pelosi office trespasser says his conviction was unfair because jury members ‘weren’t peers ...

ART CULLEN
I think I know what my old man would have said

ALAN GUEBERT
Any new Farm Bill must navigate the unruly 2023 House GOP — again

FARRAH HASSEN
Beyond the ‘border crisis’

JOHN YOUNG
‘Servants of the damned’ tend to get their way

SARAH ANDERSON
America’s inequality problem in one statistic

JENNIFER GOLLAN
Websites selling abortion pills are sharing sensitive data with Google

TOM CONWAY
Building the essential supply chain

DICK POLMAN
MAGA house plots to stop Uncle Sam from paying bills, because this is what extortionists do

MITCHELL ZIMMERMAN
Republicans turn to mugging Social Security

ROBERT KUTTNER
Turning the debt ceiling crisis against McCarthy’s Republicans

THOM HARTMANN
Will Americans embrace the politics of fear or trust?

DR. CINTLI
Normalization of killings is not normal; neither is invisibilization

HEALTH CARE/Joan Retsinas
The business of optimism, or health-hype

SAM URETSKY
Artificial intelligence still needs some work

WENDELL POTTER
Here is the truth: Medicare Advantage is neither Medicare nor an advantage

WAYNE O’LEARY
False equivalence

JOEL D. JOSEPH
Five reasons there will not be a recession in 2023 in the United States

GENE NICHOL.
Women and low-income work

SETH SANDRONSKY
California prison spending grows as incarcerated population falls

BARRY FRIEDMAN
Money and mediocrity in the NCAA

GRASSROOTS/Hank Kalet
Labor militancy is in the air

ROB PATTERSON
George & Tammy: They couldn’t hold on

SATIRE/Rosie Sorenson
Allemande left and do si do

FILM REVIEW/Ed Rampell
‘On Sacred Ground’

From The Progressive Populist, February 15, 2023

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Sunday, January 15, 2023

Editorial: Clown Car’s In Gear

We can’t expect much out of a Congress where Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz and Lauren Boebert are calling the shots. But that’s what we have in the US House in the 118th Congress. The good news is they won’t get much done.

Kevin McCarthy wanted to be House Speaker in the worst way. It took 15 ballots over four days, but he finally achieved his goal, albeit with an asterisk. Republicans hold a 222-212 majority in the House, with one vacancy after the death of Rep. Donald McEachin (D-Va.) on Nov. 28.

McCarthy needed 218 for a majority, but 20 far-right “Freedom Caucus” Republicans balked at voting for him. After 11 ballots on Tuesday and Wednesday, Jan. 3-4, showed McCarthy trailing Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries, who got votes of all 212 Democrats, McCarthy finally conceded to right-wing demands and outscored Jeffries on Thursday, Jan. 5, but he was short of the majority of members voting, as six insurrectionist Republicans remained obstinate.

Among the far-right demands McCarthy agreed to was a rule change to allow any member of Congress to force a vote on ousting the speaker. He also agreed to place more Freedom Caucus members on the House Rules Committee, which decides which legislation moves to the floor and what amendments can be attached to bills. McCarthy said he would allow floor votes to institute term limits on members and hold the debt ceiling hostage to force budget cuts.

But even after McCarthy surrendered to virtually all the “Freedom Caucus” demands, math tripped up the attempted finale on the 14th vote. Gaetz waited until after the initial round of alphabetical voting. When Gaetz finally voted “present,” instead of voting for McCarthy, the consensus Republican candidate had 216 votes, but two insurrectionists voted for Andy Biggs (Ariz.) and two voted for Jim Jordan (Ohio), which left McCarthy with only half of 432 votes cast.

McCarthy and some of his allies confronted Gaetz, and Mike Rogers (Ala.) had to be physically restrained, but one of McCarthy’s allies, Patrick T. McHenry (N.C.) moved to adjourn until the following Monday, to give them time to nail down Gaetz and the five other holdouts. But during the voting, Gaetz and Boebert indicated they finally had decided to play along, so Republican leaders killed the motion to adjourn and proceeded with the 15th and final roll call vote, in which McCarthy again got 216 votes but the six holdouts simply voted present, so McCarthy got a majority of the 428 votes cast.

McCarthy also accepted rules that include a call for significant cuts in the federal government budget, and raise the vote threshold needed to approve tax increases to a three-fifths supermajority.

The rules allow new committees to explore US competitiveness with China, examine what Republicans call “weaponization” of federal law enforcement agencies in politically charged investigations and assess the federal government’s handling of the COVID pandemic.

The package also allows lawmakers to use spending bills to defund specific programs and fire federal officials or reduce their pay. It also imposes term limits of eight years for the eight board members of the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE), an independent body established in 2008 that investigates complaints about sitting members of Congress. It also requires the OCE board to appoint staff within 30 days and that hiring and compensation of staff members must be approved by at least four board members. Democrats and public-interest groups protested that the changes would hobble the way the OCE functions.

The rules package also supported restrictions on presidential authority to draw down the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Republicans apparently resent that the reserve was used to drive down oil prices in the past year, which coincidentally resulted in a drop in gasoline prices before the midterm elections. That foiled the plans of Russian and Saudi leaders to help Republican capitalize on high gas prices to capture both chambers of Congress.

The rules were passed 220-213 Jan. 9 with only one Republican voting no. So much for “moderate” Republicans.

The rules also allow lawmakers at least 72 hours to review legislation before it goes to the floor for a House vote, but that didn’t stop a bill coming before the House on the heels of the rules passage Jan. 9 that would rescind $80 billion of IRS funding in last year’s budget, which Democrats had added to allow more audits of wealthy tax cheats, as well as improve service to taxpayers and replace retiring IRS staff. The bill passed 221-210.

Republicans appear to be oblivious to the fact that any such bills must also pass the Democratic-majority Senate and be signed by President Biden. Republicans still are determined to force the budget cuts, including major cuts to Social Security and Medicare, as a condition for increasing the debt ceiling later this year.

Trumpist Freedom Caucus members are neither conservative nor populists.They are anarchists. But the rest of the caucus are not much better. “No significant GOP faction can be described accurately as ‘moderate’ or ‘mainstream’ or even ‘conservative,’ although media outlets persist in using those familiar terms to frame them,” Joe Conason wrote after McCarthy finally was awarded the gavel. “They’re nearly all crazies now.”

Conservatives wouldn’t threaten to refuse to increase the national debt ceiling, putting the national debt in default to score a political point if Democrats don’t agree to major cuts ini Medicare, Social Security and other vital programs, but the Republican caucus appears determined to do. Populists don’t put themselves in the service of big corporations and plutocrats, as “GOP” has come to mean Greedy Oligarch Party, where high-dollar contributors get their calls returned and workers and consumers are on their own.

The 20 members of the Freedom Caucus who resisted McCarthy’s promotion were among the most vocal supporters of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, but remember that 147 House Republicans voted to reject Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election and most of the rest went along with Trump’s election denialism over the past two years.

The clown show will continue in the House with investigations of Hunter Biden, Dr. Anthony Fauci and federal law enforcement agencies who dared to investigate Trump. A special Judiciary subcommittee will investigate the special House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Republicans plan to bring in Hunter Biden for a public grilling about his service on the board of Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian gas company, while his dad was vice president. Senate Democrats should bring in Jared Kushner to answer questions about how his service as Donald Trump’s emissary to the Middle East may have benefited Kushner’s family businesses. After all, Trump’s son-in-law got a Qatari-financed investment fund to bail out the Kushners’ troubled property at 666 Fifth Ave. in New York City in 2018 and Kushner got $2 billion from a fund led by Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman for a new investment firm Kushner formed six months after he left the White House. Trump’s tax returns also are of interest, of course.

“I find positively delicious the prospect of hauling Jared Kushner in front of the Senate for every time Hunter Biden is summoned to the Clown Show,” Charles P. Pierce wrote at Esquire.com Jan. 9. “I know it’s not exactly good government, but that ship sailed over the horizon last weekend. And tempering the unruly temperament of the House is actually what the Senate was originally designed to do.”

We agree. Voters decided Congress won’t get anything done in the next two years. We might as well get some entertainment. — JMC

From The Progressive Populist, February 1, 2023

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Selections from the February 1, 2023 issue

COVER/Jennifer Oldham

Wildfires in Colorado are growing more unpredictable. Officials have ignored the warnings.

EDITORIAL
Clown car’s in gear

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

DON ROLLINS
The proper and the questionable

KELSEY WELLINGTON
Wildlife watching has been getting a free ride

DISPATCHES
Unemployment falls to half-century low, but wage growth and inflation slows.
Democratic lawmakers push Biden to protect renters.
During Biden visit to border, Abbott cries he ‘desperately needs more money’ after wasting billiosn on stunts.
FTC proposes ban on noncompete clauses.
Report shows promise of greener jobs for former fossil fuel workers
Who could run to succeed Sen. Debbie Stabenow? Pretty much everybody ...

ART CULLEN
Gimme some of that old-time socialsim

ALAN GUEBERT
Commodity markets see winter thaw, securities markets remain in deep ice

FARRAH HASSEN
A year of global displacement

JOHN YOUNG
Two who flunked dictator school

DICK POLMAN
A New Year’s resolution: Do not underestimate Uncle Joe. Ever again.

DICK POLMAN
Burning down the house: For the gang that can’t govern, it’s been a long time coming.

TOM CONWAY
Living proof

JAKE JOHNSON
No matter who leads House GOP, advocates say, ‘They all want to cut your Social Security’

ROBERT KUTTNER
Who will talk Jay Powell off the ledge?

THOM HARTMANN
What the final stage of Reaganism looks like

SONALI KOLHATKAR
Fixing the broken American healthcare system is not actually hard

DR. CINTLI
The unthinkable and inevitable civil war?

HEALTH CARE/Joan Retsinas
The battle for America’s soul: The dilemma of the poor

SAM URETSKY
Get the facts right on contraception

FRANK LINGO
Over-engineering food and energy

WAYNE O’LEARY
The real inflation

PETER ELKIND
What to know about cellphone radiation

JOSEPH B. ATKINS
Geopolitical death in Ukraine

BARRY FRIEDMAN
Losing Trump

SATIRE/Rosie Sorenson
The great brain robbery, Elon style

GRASSROOTS/Hank Kalet
Free speech, not corporate control

ROB PATTERSON
When politics becomes entertainment, call for Robert Draper

SETH SANDRONSKY
UC strike over, but questions remain over new contracts

FILM REVIEW/Ed Rampell
‘Chile ’76’

From The Progressive Populist, February 1, 2023

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Saturday, December 17, 2022

Editorial: Get Ready for 2024

Democrats did much better than expected during the midterm elections, gaining a real majority in the Senate and only losing the House by a handful of seats despite aggressive Republican gerrymandering, but they hardly get a pause before the 2024 campaign season starts.

Georgia Republicans tried to suppress the votes of working voters, making it more difficult to use mail-in ballots and cutting the early vote in the runoff to one week, but Sen. Raphael Warnock prevailed with 51.4% of the vote, 2.8 points ahead of Herschel Walker.

The midterms showed that the 2020 election that put Joe Biden in the White House and Democratic majorities in Congress was not a fluke. With Warnock’s victory, voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania elected Democratic senators. Voters in Wisconsin re-elected Gov. Tony Evers (D) and stopped Republicans from achieving a veto-proof majority in the heavily-gerrymandered state Assembly, as the Republicans fell two seats short of a two-thirds majority in the House. Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly (D) was re-elected with 49.6% of the vote but Republicans maintained a two-thirds majority in the Legislature. And Massachusetts and Maryland replaced outgoing Republican governors with Democrats.

The red wave that swept through Iowa carried Sen. Chuck Grassley (R) to his eighth term in the Senate. After 42 years in the Senate, Grassley, 89, took a race that polled tight three weeks before the election and he finished 12 points ahead of Democrat Mike Franken. Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) easily won re-election, the Legislature remains firmly in GOP control and US Rep. Cindy Axne lost to Zach Nunn by 0.8% of the vote, giving Republicans a sweep of Iowa’s four congressional districts for the first time since 1994.

The red wave in Iowa may have washed out the last argument for keeping the Hawkeye State’s position as the first-in-the-nation caucuses to kick off the 2024 presidential campaign.

The Democratic National Committee, at the urging of President Biden, is moving to displace Iowa’s leadoff caucuses with South Carolina’s primary in the first spot on the presidential primary calendar, to give Black voters a greater role in the process. The DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee Dec. 1 approved the proposal, which will take several months before it comes before the full DNC. Under the plan, New Hampshire and Nevada would be second in line, casting their ballots the same day. Georgia and Michigan would follow.

Biden is beholden to Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.), who jump-started Biden’s campaign in 2020 after he finished among the also-rans in Iowa and New Hampshire and placed second behind Bernie Sanders in Nevada. Clyburn’s glowing endorsement got Biden a big win in South Carolina and propelled him in following states.

But, for the record, Biden didn’t carry Iowa or South Carolina in the general election. He did carry New Hampshire and Nevada.

Iowa was valuable as a leadoff contest for 50 years when it was a swing state, where a candidate could campaign on a face-to-face level with an educated population that was interested in dialog with presidential wannabes. And sure, voters had to put up with the caucus process, which can take a couple hours to play out — but what else is an Iowan going to do on a frostbit Tuesday night in February?

Anyway, if the DNC is going to move the leadoff primary—and insist that it be an election, not a caucus—the leadoff should be a swing state where a candidate can campaign on a budget and have a chance to build a following. Nevada would be a good place to start, since candidates would spend most of their time in Las Vegas and Reno, sweet-talking Culinary Workers Union members. New Hampshire could bat second. Then South Carolina, Michigan and Georgia.

Maybe Iowa Democrats can work their way back into the lineup.

Railway Workers Deserve Paid Sick Leave

In the spirit of fair play and ensuring a safe workplace, President Joe Biden should issue an executive order to require freight railroads to grant paid sick leave to workers. Biden urged Congress to prevent a national railway strike by imposing a contract negotiated with the railroads and the unions by the White House, after the membership of four unions, representing a majority of freight rail workers, rejected the contract, mainly because it failed to provide paid sick leave. Eight other unions accepted the contract.

Democrats in Congress tried to add seven paid sick days to the deal, and that resolution passed the House but was filibustered in the Senate and 42 Republicans and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) upheld the filibuster. Without the paid sick leave provision, the resolution was passed.

More than 70 Democrats in Congress Dec. 9 sjgned a letter whose main author was Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) calling on President Biden to take executive action to ensure railroad workers are afforded the paid sick leave.

“While this agreement was much better than the disastrous proposals put forward by the rail industry, it still does not guarantee a single paid sick day to rail workers who work dangerous and difficult jobs, have risked their lives during the pandemic to keep our economy moving, and have not received a pay raise in over three years,” the letter states.

The Association of American Railroads said it believes the question of sick days should be addressed in negotiations with the unions, but when those negotiations came to an impasse, the railroads turned to the federal government to impose the deal on workers. If the federal government takes away the workers’ right to strike, it owes the workers consideration for their role in keeping the economy moving.

The railroads insist that the workers can use personal or vacation days if they are too sick to report to work, but union representatives say deep staff cuts in recent years (which have greatly increased railroad company profits) have left the railroad crews so lean that workers can’t get approval to take time off if they’re not feeling well. If they take unauthorized time off, they risk losing pay and being disciplined.

The letter noted that the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) authorizes the US Secretary of Labor to set mandatory safety and health standards for businesses that affect interstate commerce.

In 2015, then-President Barack Obama signed an executive order requiring companies with federal contracts to grant a minimum of seven days of paid sick leave to workers—but excluded rail workers from the protections.

“We can think of few things that threaten the safety and health of workers more than being required to come into work sick and exhausted,” the Democrats wrote, “and we can think of few industries more quintessential to interstate commerce than freight rail.”

Greg Hynes, national legislative director for the transportation department of the Sheet Metal, Air, Rail Transportation Union, the largest rail union representing about 28,000 conductors, told CNN the Biden administration has been helpful. “Of course, they want to do this. Whether they can do it, we’re going to find out.”

Make it so, Joe — JMC