New York Times disseminates false assumption that there will be assault weapons in the streets for at least a century even after a ban

By Marc Jampole

A signed New York Times editorial by Alex Kingsbury over the weekend presented the false assumption that even after outlawing automatic weapons, these weapons of mass destruction will be on the streets for at least another century.

The piece, presented as the lead editorial in the print edition of the Times only several days after it appear online, is titled “It’s Too Late to Ban Assault Weapons.” It makes the false assumption that there is nothing we can do to get existing guns off the streets, so we will have to live in a gun-clogged nation for generations to come, even if we ban assault weapons and pass other gun control laws.

Kingsbury’s harrowing factual beginning sets us up for his false premise: “With proper care and maintenance, an AR-15 rifle manufactured today will fire just as effectively in the year 2119 and probably for decades after that. There are currently around 15 million military-style rifles in civilian hands in the United States.”

So what.

If we can pass a law outlawing the sale of military style (assault) weapons, we can also pass a law making possession of one a federal crime, with penalties including a steep fine and jail time.

Don’t scoff at the power of such a law: if it were in place, when local police investigated a case of domestic violence and found an assault rifle, they could take custody of the weapon and the owner. We could create a computer program that goes through the rolls of every gun seller who does background checks to identify everyone to whom they ever sold an assault weapon and contact that individual to arrange the surrender of their now illegal weapons. A gun call-back program would represent no invasion of privacy, since at the time of sale the gun owner voluntarily surrendered his information for the purpose of registering the purchase.

The federal government could also provide funds for local task forces to stop illegal sales of the weapons that have been outlawed.

On the softer side, a law banning assault weapons could mandate and subsidize gun buyback programs. I am fairly certain that many large corporations would fund the buyback, either in hard cash or in gift certificates. About twenty years ago, deep in the heart of rural upstate New York, my public relations firm developed and coordinated a gun buyback program in Syracuse that was a joint effort of the Syracuse Mayor’s office, the police department and my client, the largest supermarket company in upstate New York at that time, P& C Foods, and its parent company Penn Traffic. P&C provided the buyback premium–$100 gift certificates, good in any P&C store. The results blew away our goals for the program, and also the P&C’s budget. The company didn’t mind, though, as the good will with both the public and municipal officials was very important to the company. In total, people handed in 316 weapons, a lot considering the small size of Syracuse and the fact that there was no legal mandate to surrender the weapons.

Imagine an assault weapons buyback with a premium of $250-$500 versus the authorities discovering you have illegally kept possession of your AR-15 and fining you $5,000 and throwing you six months in jail for six months.

There can be no doubt that no matter how many of these “fixes” we establish to make sure that outlawing assault rifles actually gets these horrible weapons off the streets, we will never collect all of the weapons out there. We can also assume that those already prone to commit crimes will be more likely to break the new law and keep their AR-15s.

Again, so what?

We should never make the impossible-to-achieve perfect the enemy of the achievable good. A combination of public relations, education and aggressive law enforcement will harvest virtually all of assault weapons out there. All research tells us that the more guns in a society the more people die or are injured by gun violence, and conversely, removing guns from society reduces those killed and injured. Thus, if a law outlawing the possession of assault weapons is passed and aggressively enforced leading to the collection of 12 or 13 million assault rifles it would assuredly reduce deaths and injuries.

Kingsbury ends his signed editorial with another typical Times effort to blame the “left” for pushing too hard and not understanding the mentality and needs of the rest of the country. He uses a classic club-the-reformer formulation: “Perhaps if gun control advocates frankly acknowledge that military-style rifles are going to be present in American society for many generations to come, it will help assuage fears of mass confiscation and give gun owners the space they need to support sensible safeguards that will save lives.”

Note the conflation of “gun” owners” with assault weapons owners; and the corresponding conflation of confiscation of assault weapons with “mass confiscation.” A mere one-third of the adult population owns guns—and not all of them own assault weapons. When surveyed, most gun owners are in favor of banning military style weapons. They are also in favor of increased background checks and other gun control and safety legislation. Once AR-15 are outlawed, the next step of getting them off the streets shouldn’t be that hard for responsible gun owners and the rest of the population to stomach. Keep in mind that after winning the battle to prevent the sale and possession of AR-15 and their ilk, the momentum will be on the side of gun control advocates. As long as hunters, shooting range enthusiasts and rural inhabitants who feel they need a firearm to protect their homes have other options, I don’t they are going to care that much about others having to surrender their illegal firearms.

Instead of giving space to hand-wringing and pessimism in way that is tantamount to saying “we might as well do nothing,” the Times should publish more information on the implementation of gun safety laws. Once gun owners see how convenient and easy it will be for responsible gun owners to register their legal weapons and once they understand how universal gun checks, a robust national no-gun list, the banning of AR-15 and the end of open carry and stand-your-ground laws protect everyone, including their families, most will “have the space they need to support sensible safeguards.” The National Rifle Association gains its power because of lies and loosey-goosey rhetoric. Instead of taking that rhetoric for granted, the Times should join in the battle to correct NRA mendacity. It should be helping to prepare the country for a program to confiscate assault weapons instead of assuming it’s impossible to implement.

Editorial: Hateful Words and Guns

The Trump White House went on full-tilt distraction mode after a gunman shot up a Walmart in El Paso near the Mexican border Saturday, Aug. 3, apparently trying to kill as many Mexicans as possible, in response to Trump’s repeated claims that immigrants were invading the US.

The shooter, identified as Patrick Crusius, reportedly drove more than 600 miles from a Dallas suburb looking for Mexicans and he found them teeming in the El Paso Walmart taking advantage of a state sales tax holiday to do their back-to-school shopping. Crusius allegedly killed 22, including 13 American citizens, eight Mexicans (most if not all of whom were in the US legally), and one German. The shooter wounded at least 24.

Before the shooting, the 21-year-old suspect apparently posted a manifesto that railed against a “Hispanic invasion” and laid out a plan to divide the US into territories based on race. He praised the Australian gunman who killed 51 Muslims at two mosques in New Zealand this past March, and Crusius wrote that he feared the growing Hispanic population in Texas will soon make it a solidly Democratic state, which he argues would all but assure repeated Democratic presidential victories. Sound familiar?

“The Democrat party will own America and they know it. They have already begun the transition by pandering heavily to the Hispanic voting bloc in the 1st Democratic Debate,” the manifesto says.

Early the next morning, in Dayton, Ohio, Connor Betts, 24, showed up in an entertainment district, wearing body armor, with an AR-15-style gun with a 100-round double-drum magazine, and opened fire. Nine people, including his sister, were killed and 27 were wounded. But the motives of Betts, who was killed in a firefight with police at the scene, were unclear. He was a registered Democrat who had supported Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Antifa, a militant group that protests far-right ideology, but neither Sanders nor Warren have called for militant activity and there was no sign of violent activity before Betts started shooting, and the day before his Twitter account “liked” several tweets about the El Paso shooting .

A week earlier, in another mass shooting in Gilroy, Calif., on Sunday, July 28, a gunman with an assault weapon and a bulletproof vest apparently snuck into the Gilroy Garlic Festival by cutting through a wire fence and killing three festivalgoers and wounding 13. The shooter, Santino William Legan, 19, carried out the attack with a 75-round drum magazine and five 40-round magazines. Police say he purchased the AK-47-style semi-automatic rifle legally in Nevada but, as an assault rifle, it was banned under California law.

Trump on Aug. 5 condemned “racism, bigotry and white supremacy” in a statement about the El Paso and Dayton massacres, but the Great Misleader didn’t acknowledge how his own anti-immigration rhetoric was echoed in the El Paso shooter’s manifesto and apparently has inspired other attacks on Latinos and Muslims.

Trump started his campaign in 2016 calling for a crackdown on Mexican immigrants, saying Mexico was “not sending their best.” Mexican immigrants, he said, “are bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.” In rallies held since 2017, Trump has used inflammatory words, such as “predator,” “invasion,” “aliens,” “killers,” “criminal” and “animals” more than 500 times while discussing immigration, USA Today reported after analyzing Trump’s remarks at 64 rallies since 2017.

The Gun Violence Archive, as of Aug. 12, recorded 9,094 deaths and 18,071 injuries due to gun-related violence so far this year, including 257 cases of “mass shootings,” where at least four people were wounded. The FBI reports 32 “mass killings,” where three or more people were killed in a single incident, in 2019 through the Dayton massacre.

Though the motives of many gunmen may be hard to determine, one thing that facilitates their massacres is the easy access to weapons of war.

There is a groundswell of public support to reinstate the assault weapons ban, which stopped the proliferation of semi-automatic rifles and high-capacity magazines from 1994 until 2004, when George W. Bush allowed it to lapse, but the National Rifle Association exists to maintain that easy access of civilians to weapons of war.

The Trace, which reports on guns in the US, noted in its NRA Campaign Spending Tracker that, in the 2018 election cycle, the NRA spent $5,362,861 supporting 265 candidates and $4,369,083 opposing 71 candidates in congressional races across 44 states. The NRA also donated $30.3 million to Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. Over the past decade, the NRA spent more than $100 million on political races. And where the money came from remains a secret.

If Congress can’t ban assault weapons, perhaps they could at least require people to obtain liability insurance for people they might injure, as a condition of owning an assault weapon.

The Insurance Information Institute noted in a May 2018 Background on Gun Liability that insurers rarely offer any separate gun liability insurance policy. Most individuals have some property and liability coverage for firearms in their standard homeowners’ policy. Additional liability coverage is available through a personal umbrella policy. A few policies cover losses from accidental shootings in excess of the homeowners’ coverage.

However, when there is liability insurance, it only covers accidental shootings and, in some cases, acts of self-defense. No insurance company covers criminal or other intentional shootings. But those are the incidents that sent wounded survivors to hospitals in Gilroy, El Paso and Dayton, with little recourse but to rely on their own insurance or charity to pay for their medical care.

Other sorts of coverage may be “triggered” by active shooting incidents, including general liability, business interruption and property insurance, the institute noted. Workers comp insurance is implicated in shootings in the workplace while commercial general liability insurance coverage might be implicated in shooting in a shopping center or a movie theatre.

Several states — including California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts and New York — have considered requiring that gun owners purchase liability insurance, but none have enacted such a bill.

US Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney, D-NY, since 2013 has introduced the Firearms Risk Protection Act, which, would prohibit a firearm purchase by or sale to a person who is not covered by a qualified liability insurance policy that would cover the purchaser specifically for losses resulting from use of the firearm.

US Rep. David Cicilline, D-R.I., is sponsoring a bill to reinstate the assault weapons ban. If it had been in place, Cicilline told the New York Times, both the El Paso and Dayton gunmen would not have been able to buy their weapons. Still, many Dems who remember that they lost the Democratic majority in Congress in 1994 after passing the assault weapons ban remain skittish about reinstating it.

But don’t kid yourself. The only way to get control over the assault weapon crisis is to vote Democratic for president and Congress. It’s particularly important for Democrats to regain control of the Senate. If Moscow Mitch McConnell remains Senate Majority Leader, we might see some feints at expanding background checks, and minor reforms on the edges, but as long as young, disturbed white men have ready access to assault rifles and extended magazines, we’ll continue to see a numbing increase in the numbers of massacres, whether racially motivated or just reflecting discontent and grievances. — JMC

From The Progressive Populist, September 1, 2019

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Selections from the September 1, 2019 issue

COVER/Bill Curry
Are the Democrats divided? No — they’re poised to win big if they don’t screw it up

EDITORIAL
Hateful words and guns

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 

DON ROLLINS
Toni Morrison: Prophet with a sharp pen

RURAL ROUTES/Margot McMillen
Don’t count on trees to capture carbon

DISPATCHES
Most Americans think white nationalism poses threat to US;
Gun control support rises, one mass shooting at a time;
Trump tops 12,000 lies;
NH GOP gov vetoes bipartisan redistricting plan;
Big bank: writing on the wall for oil industry;
Trump will ban poor immigrants;
Trump tariffs cost US households $500 each
White House violated law with plan to move hundreds of USDA workers;
China tries to teach Trump economics ...

ART CULLEN
Time to change is now

PABLO PRATT
The value of community college

JILL RICHARDSON
You don’t save money by forcing people to go hungry

JOHN YOUNG
GOP, religious right wedded in moral rot

BOB BURNETT
The Russians are coming, the Russians are coming!

DR. SANJEEV K. SRIRAM
Republican attacks on the Social Security 2100 Act are an assault on public health

ANDREA GERMANOS
Bolstering call to expand Social Security, new reporting reveals how corporations are offloading pensions

GLORIA OLADIPO
Trump’s new coal rules will bury rural America

WILLIAM MINTER
The Green New Deal must be global

TOM CONWAY
Trump’s lies to labor

GENE NICHOL
Missing Barbara Jordan

HAL CROWTHER
No turning back: Trump crosses the Rubicon

HEALTH CARE/Joan Retsinas
Incremental: The verboten word

SAM URETSKY
Mule-headed Republicans

BOOK REVIEW/Heather Seggel
Making the news

WAYNE O’LEARY
Why Trump may win

JOHN BUELL
Neoliberalism from table to gut

KENT PATERSON
Trump-AMLO ‘lovefest’ jeopardizes Mexico’s fourth transformation

JASON SIBERT
Populists on right and left struggle with globalists

FR. DONNELL KIRCHNER
Is the old order passing away?

ROB PATTERSON
‘The War’ is still going on

SATIRE/Rosie Sorenson
Trouble right here in River City

MOVIE REVIEW/Ed Rampell
The Rock gets back to his roots as Samoa gets the Black Panther treatment: South Seas cinema stars in action series spin-off

BOOK REVIEW/Seth Sandronsky
Rethinking the GDR

and more ...

Real reason for new Trump policy not to admit poor immigrants is to “make America white again.” Won’t work since no non-poor European would want to come here

By Marc Jampole

The proposed Trump Administration rule to deny entry into the United States to immigrants who would likely need public assistance—the so-called means test—is an incredibly dunce-headed policy change for the simple reason that it will not accomplish its objective. 

The objective—unstated, but understood by everyone—is to keep non-Europeans AKA non-whites out of the United States. But this mean-spirited attempt to make America white(r) again will never work. Why would anyone from Europe want to come to the United States? Sure, taxes are a little lower in the United States, but most “white” countries offer cradle-to-grave healthcare; inexpensive and sometimes free college and vocational training schools; great unemployment and employee benefits; and decent pensions. In the 21st century, there is more socio-economic mobility in virtually all other “white countries,” meaning someone from the middle class has a better chance of getting rich in Europe than in the United States. Only the very rich in European countries could possible find the United States an attractive place to live. For everyone else already in the middle class, it just doesn’t make any sense.

Odds are that the effect of the new rule may thus be to increase the number of middle class coming from autocratic countries in Africa and the Middle East, plus the overspill of educated workers in India and the Far East. In other words, more non-whites, albeit with more financial means than refugees from Central America and Syria.

The meanness and small-mindedness of the new policy are closely intertwined with the racism of Trump, Steven Miller and others supporting it. Racism creates a lesser class of humans. Because they are “lesser,” we don’t have to apply the same rules of jurisprudence or civility to them. We can treat them with cruelty, because they are no longer “poor people,” whom the Jewish and Hebrew bibles tell us to cherish and protect. No, they aren’t poor people, because they aren’t people at all, but something other and inferior. The difference between the goodness of a “poor person” and the badness of a “poor other” was underscored when Ken Cuccinelli, acting director of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, made the contrast between the poor Italians—his ancestors—who once came to the United States with nothing and our current stock of immigrants. 

Like establishing the tariffs against China, pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal and the Paris Accord and publicly hammering the Federal Reserve Board, adding a means test to the requirements for immigration to the United States strikes a heavy blow to the American economy. The economy depends on a supply of workers at every level, and for a long time—certainly since the end of slavery—immigrants have supplied large numbers of our lowest paid employees. Many farmers are already complaining about not having enough workers to pick crops. Recent reports also highlight a growing shortage of home health workers in many metropolitan areas. Impoverished immigrants are a major part of the workforce serving the construction, home care, home cleaning, agricultural and hospitality industries. That’s a pretty large chunk of the economy that will suffer from worker shortages and increased labor costs. Note that many of these jobs consist of doing things that most people don’t want to do—hauling debris away from construction sites; changing great grandma’s catheter; picking grapes and lettuce in hot fields; cleaning the vomit off the walls and floors of hotel rooms left by binge-drinking guests.   

As usual for the Trump Administration, this new policy not only is not based on facts, it goes against what we know to be true. Studies show that immigrants end up contributing more to the American economy than the cost to process and care for them. What they pay in taxes far outweighs what the country spends on social welfare spending for immigrants. To be sure, every year, a group of recently arrived immigrants cost their local and the federal government money. And there must be some number of immigrants who never successfully integrate into our economy and remain a burden on American society all their lives. But overall, immigrants—rich ones and poor, both legal and undocumented—are essential to the American economy.

One common theme underlies many Trump economic actions such as trade policies, support of dying industries like coal instead growth industries like solar and wind power, cutting the flow of immigrants, and giving the wealthy a tax break paid for by cutting programs and deficits. That theme is shrinkage. All will tend to shrink the base of the economy. Our current economic leadership is the most ill-informed since at least the Hoover Administration. Their headlong rush to lead us into a severe recession is mind-bogglingly dim-witted.

They are, in short, stupid people blinded by their prejudices.

That is, unless Trump, Mnuchin, Ross, Kushner, et. al. are secretly buying up puts, selling stocks short and loading up on cash to take advantage of a crash of financial markets. 

Idiots or traitors? Doesn’t that always seem to be the final two choices when considering what Trump and his entourage do? 

One thing that we can be sure of though: whatever the goal, the motive and driving principle behind Trump is usually racism.

To paraphrase GOP, now is not the time to blame Trump for racially-inspired mass murders. No, now is the time to blame the real culprit—GUNS!

By Marc Jampole

It’s inaccurate to blame Donald Trump’s racist spewing for the latest mass murders in El Paso and Dayton. As incendiary as Trump’s words have been, it’s not his fault.

Nor is the white supremacist ideology professed by both Trump and the El Paso killer to blame. 

Nor can we blame racism in general.

As for those—mostly rightwingers—who want to put the blame on the mental illness of the perpetrators of the 255 mass murders that have occurred in the United States so far this year, they’re barking up the wrong tree and they know it.

Quite obviously, the culprits identified by cultural wingnuts such as violent video game, homosexuality and a decline in church attendance are not to blame.

No, it’s none of these things that is the primary cause for El Paso, Dayton, et. al. 

Only one place to point the finger for virtually all mass murders: guns. Or should I say, the large number of guns in our society and the ease at which people—including religious fanatics, crazies and racists—can get them.

Every other country has mental illness. Many other countries have seen an uptick in racism over the past few years. Many other countries have leaders who make divisive remarks that are de facto calls for violence. 

What’s so different about the United States? Only that it has loose gun control laws and is already awash in weapons, many of them military grade.

Those who respond that when guns are outlawed only outlaws will have guns have it wrong on two levels. In theory it would seem as if outlaws would go to great lengths to get weapons, but that doesn’t explain the small number of mass murders—and all gun injuries and gun deaths, for that matter—in France, Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Great Britain, Italy, Canada, Japan, the Philippines and just about the rest of the world. The plague of mass murders has really only stricken the United States. The real world shows that when guns are outlawed, fewer outlaws have guns. When there are fewer guns in society, there are fewer guns for outlaws to steal, buy black market or do what most of them do now, just pick one up on the Internet without a background check.  

The “when guns are outlawed” argument has a second message to it—that non-outlaws can and should use guns for protection. But again, statistics disprove the idea that citizens are safer when they own (and carry) a firearm. Year after year, studies show that the number of lives saved because a citizen was carrying a gun is a miniscule portion of the number of civilians killed or maimed by friendly fire. Whether nonprofessionals can learn how to use a gun well enough to protect themselves remains an open question. What is not open is the undisputable fact that owning or living in a household that contains a gun puts one in more danger of injury or death than not owning one.

Many Republicans are getting behind a “red flag” bill to keep guns out of the hands of people identified as nut jobs. What a convoluted and inefficient way to stem just one of the many reasons people commit mass murder. Looking for mental illness won’t identify the religious fanatic, the racist, the white supremacist or the anti-government activist. 

The single most important piece of legislation for reducing the number of mass murders in the future would be to ban military-style weapons, assault weapons and conversion kits. They are the weapon of choice for the American mass murderer. If, however, we want to reduce gun violence, injury and deaths ubiquitously, we would institute a national licensing system as strict as drivers’ licensing, requiring all gun owners to have an up-to-date license. It goes without saying that 21 would be the minimum age for license eligibility. We should also require gun owners to carry gun insurance and modernize and expand our national registry of those not allowed possess firearms. A 10- or 15-day waiting period for all gun sales seems reasonable, as would banning all Internet sales of guns and ammo.

Surveys have shown that virtually all Americans agree with those proposals. I personally would go further by limiting gun ownership to those with a need, which essentially means people in rural areas for safety reasons. Cities and most suburbs are well enough patrolled and densely enough inhabited so that people are safe without guns. Hunters and target shooters only need weapons when in pursuit of their hobby, and so could rent firearms at gun lodges and shooting ranges. 

By all means, everyone, and especially the 20 Democratic candidates for president—should vociferously call out Trump for his odious racism. But to paraphrase a standard bromide piously proffered by National Rifle Association factotums after every mass murder, Now is too soon to condemn Trump regarding El Paso.

No, now is the time to raise our voices as loudly as possible in favor of stronger gun control laws.  

Big takeaway from Dem second round of debates is that we’d be better off if each debate were on a single topic

By Marc Jampole

The second round of debates between the Democratic candidates for president demonstrated how imperfect the presidential debate system is. The candidates basically repeated the talking points that they had mouthed in the first round. Important issues such as taxation of the rich were all but ignored, while issues such as healthcare and immigration tended to focus on distortions that left out important facts, e.g. Medicare coverage is much better than most commercial policies or seeking asylum is not a crime. There was the usual amount of deviousness, most specifically the focus on the cost of Medicare for all—the more rightwing candidates such as Biden and Bennet focused only on the increase of what would be taken out of pocket A without considering that it would cost less money to society overall.   

The inability to drill down to the facts and truth of any issue had nothing to do with the large number of candidates and everything to do with the decision not to have topic-specific debates. Topic specific debates would solve all but one of the structural problems that the debate system currently has. Individual debates could cover immigration, climate change, foreign affairs, the economy, social issues and wealth inequality. By focusing on one topic, the viewers and the American public would get more information about what the candidates will really do. We would also get to see how similar all 20 Democratic candidates are on most issues, with differences only concerning the speed with which each wants to move ahead. Candidates would have time to dismantle the false rhetoric of their opponents on an issue instead of merely trading slogans. 

In a single topic debate, we would also learn which candidates have only talking points and which have an in-depth understanding. Candidates with detailed plans, such as O’Rourke and Booker on immigration, Inslee on the environment, Harris on health care and Warren on everything, would have time to explain them. Other candidates could disagree on specifics, or get on board.

The one problem not solved by going to a one-topic-per-debate format is the desire of the moderators to create arguments and magnify differences. That seems to be the motivation behind Tapper’s insistence on spewing bad math by asking candidates whether they supported raising taxes on the middle class to pay for single-payer healthcare insurance. The question was inflammatory and wrong-headed, since under a single payer system premiums, and maybe even deductibles and copays, would disappear to be replaced by taxation resulting in a lower total cost to society that would translate to lower costs for healthcare than most people currently pay. Tapper knows these facts, but like most of the mainstream news media, he poses questions based on Republican message points. It also was a trivial detail in the grand scheme of things—the main point is that virtually all 20 of the candidates want some form of universal health care.

Talking from the Republican playbook certainly is behind the disdain that the mainstream news media retains for straight-talking, truth-telling Bill De Blasio. New York’s Mayor certainly made the best points of the second night. He reminded everyone of the fairness of and necessity to raise taxes on the wealthy. He also pointed out how inadequate health insurance coverage is for most people, the ready answer to those who are worried that people with commercial insurance won’t want to have Medicare instead. 

If the constant interruption by the moderators when candidates’ time ended seemed especially irritating this round, it was because in an overwhelming majority of the cases, the candidates already knew they were running out of time and were obviously winding down their remarks. While we would never want a Trump-like demagogue to take control of a debate, it seems to disruptive not to give a candidate an extra 5-10 seconds to complete her or his thought.

As to the debates themselves. Warren and Bernie won the first night, with no other candidate really distinguishing her or himself. The second night featured a much stronger set of secondary candidates—I could imagine Castro, Gillibrand, Yang and especially De Blasio being excellent presidents, but can’t say the same for O’Rourke, Delaney, Bullock or Ryan. Forced to declare “winners,” I would give the second night to Cory Booker and Kamala Harris. 

Biden showed himself to be gracious and good-natured, but did not distinguish himself as either an issues wonk or a brilliant speaker. The contrast with the other “Silent Generation” candidate—Bernie Sanders—was stunning. Bernie maintains the energy, sharp wit and enthusiasm of a young person; Biden looks ready to sign whatever order his advisors put in front of his face without reading it to be followed by nine holes of golf. To be sure, a Reagan or Bush II type of disengaged leader managing a Democratic administration would be a lot better than a sociopathic, ignorant, mendacious racist who surrounds himself with yes-white-men. But I like the person in charge to actually be in charge, and I’m not sure that would be the case with Biden anymore.

The biggest losers were O’Rourke and Buttegieg, because the debates tested their superficial appeal and they failed to show anything special under the charisma. Unless Buttegieg can turn a little of his horde of money into support in the polls, what could have been a Big Five or a Big Six rolling into the primaries and caucuses is already down to just a Big Four: Biden, Bernie, Warren and Harris.

For the record, my first choice at this point is Elizabeth Warren, followed in order of preference, by Inslee, De Blasio, Harris, Castro and Bernie. I would like to say that Biden, Beto, Williamson, Delaney, Bennet and Bullock are absolutely unacceptable, but I would vote for any of them over Donald Trump (or most other Republicans). Today, more than perhaps any other time in U.S. history, the party matters more than the candidate. The biggest lesson from these first two rounds of debates is that to save the country and the planet—literally—we must vote straight Democratic for every office from president down through dogcatcher.

Editorial: Call It Fascism

It probably was not a coincidence that Donald Trump tweet-attacked four Democratic congresswomen of color July 14, just two days after Alex Acosta announced he was quitting as labor secretary in the controversy over his extraordinarily lenient handling of wealthy businessman Jeffrey Epstein for sex crimes 12 years ago when Acosta was US attorney for southern Florida.

Acosta announced his departure July 12 while standing next to Trump outside the White House. Trump said it was Acosta’s decision to quit. Of course, Trump may have nudged Acosta, since he had no wish to keep Epstein’s name connected with him and the two dozen women who have accused Trump of sexual misconduct since the 1970s. Also, a big roundup of undocumented immigrants who had been ordered removed from the US, which Trump had promised, was a bust, and the continued holding of refugees, including children, for weeks or months in overcrowded facilities along the border without basic amenities, such as showers, drinking water or even space to sleep, was an embarrassment. So the Great Misleader distracted the American public, as he often does, with a series of tweets.

“So interesting to see ‘Progressive’ Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to be run. Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.”

Of the four congresswomen Trump referred to, Ilhan Omar, a Somilia native, was the only member of “the Squad” born outside the US. She immigrated to New York with her family in 1992 at age 10 and she now represents Minneapolis. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, born in the Bronx, N.Y., represents the Bronx and Queens, Rashida Tlaib, is a native of Detroit, Mich., which she represents in Congress, and Ayanna Pressley, is a native of Cincinnati, Ohio, and now represents Boston. And if it can be argued that, as Trump said, their government is the “most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world,” the Squad, and their colleagues in the House, are trying to fix it.

Then Trump doubled down in a rally in North Carolina that was originally called because he expected to be distracting from Robert Mueller’s testimony at House committee hearings, which had been scheduled for July 17. Mueller’s testimony was rescheduled, but Trump put on a show anyway, including crowd chants of “Send her home,” in response to his attacks on Omar.

Trump based his 2016 campaign on fear of brown immigrants, including Latinos, blacks and Muslims, and he wants to make the Squad the faces of the Democratic Party. While their support for issues such as health care for all, tuition-free public colleges, environmental protection, living wages and support for basic human rights appeal to a broad base of voters, Trump believes stoking fear and resentmeent of people of color can unify white people and carry him to re-election.

Frank Bruni warned in the New York Times that the Squad members only represent their districts, and they replaced Democrats in solidly blue districts, so “their victories had zilch to do with why or how Democrats regained control of Congress and have dubious relevance to how Democrats can do the same with the White House in 2020. The House members they replaced were Democrats, not Republicans, so their campaigns weren’t lessons in how to move voters from one party’s column to the other.”

Other first-term House Democrats who defeated Republicans in districts where Trump had prevailed by four to 10 percentage points just two years earlier include Lauren Underwood in the exurbs of Chicago, Xochitl Torres Small in southern New Mexico, Abigail Spanberger in the suburbs of Richmond, Va., and Antonio Delgado in upstate New York. “None of them ran on the Green New Deal, single-payer health insurance, reparations or the abolition of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency,” Bruni said. “They touted more restrained agendas. And they didn’t talk that much about Trump. They knew they didn’t need to. For voters offended by him, he’s his own negative ad, playing 24/7 on cable news.”

Of the roughly 90 candidates on the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s list of 2018 challengers with some hope of turning a red House district blue, just two made a big pitch for single-payer health care. Both lost. But candidates who picked up seats campaigned on protecting the Affordable Care Act, and coverage for people with pre-existing conditions, which Trump and the Repulicans tried to kill in 2017 and are still trying to destroy.

Republicans want to label the Democrats as socialists heading into the election year. Democrats shouldn’t pick up that bait, but they should remind voters the GOP still targets Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. A Kaiser Health poll in January found widespread support for expanding Medicare and Medicaid:

• 77% of the public, including 69% of Republicans, favor allowing people between the ages of 50 to 64 to buy health insurance through Medicare;
• 75%, including most Republicans (64%), favor allowing people who aren’t covered by their employer to buy insurance through their state’s Medicaid program
• 74%, including nearly half of Republicans (47%), favor a national government plan like Medicare that is open to anyone, but also would allow people to keep the coverage they have if they want to; and
• 56%, including nearly a quarter of Republicans (23%), favor a national plan called Medicare for All in which all Americans would get their insurance through a single government plan.

However, views on Medicare for All turn negative when people hear the arguments that it would eliminate private health insurance companies, require most Americans to pay more taxes, threaten the current Medicare program, and/or lead to delays in some people getting medical tests and treatments. And even if those arguments are misleading, they get plenty of airplay on corporate news channels and right-wing radio talk shows.

Republicans have been calling Democrats socialists ever since the New Deal. In the Trump era, the rhetoric has become more extreme, as Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who knows better, called the Democrats “a bunch of communists” during an appearance on “Fox and Friends” July 15. “Well, we all know that (New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) and this crowd are a bunch of communists, they hate Israel, they hate our own country,” Graham said.

US Rep. Liz Cheney (R-S.C.), the third-ranking Republican in the House, agreed with the sentiment, tweeting, “We will never stop fighting the communist wing of the Dem party.”

It’s not just about Trump; it’s the whole party Trump has co-opted, few of whose “leaders” have the courage to separate themselves from his racist rhetoric (and many of whom may have thought it was a good strategy to unify his base).

Democrats should start calling out the Republicans for what they have become: a fascist organization that will increase the power and privileges of big businesses and billionaires by any means necessary. House Democrats should step up hearings on Trump’s alleged “high crimes and misdemeanors,” from his apparent violation of the Federal Election Campaign Act to keep his extramarital affairs secret before the election, to his attempts to obstruct the federal investigation of his campaign’s involvement with Russian and other foreign individuals before and after the election.

Democrats still might not get 20 Republican senators they would need to remove Trump from office after impeachment, but the people still deserve the truth — while we can still get it. — JMC

From The Progressive Populist, August 15, 2019

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Copyright © 2019 The Progressive PopulistPO Box 819, Manchaca TX 78652

Selections from the August 15, 2019 issue

COVER/Dr. Caroline Poplin
Medicare for All — What’s necessary and what’s not

EDITORIAL
Call it fascism

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 

DON ROLLINS
Betsy DeVos on education: Voucherize, privatize and segregate

HEALTH CARE/Margot McMillen
Terrorizing immigrants

DISPATCHES
Sex trafficking prosecutions plummet under Trump;
Budget deal outrages hawks;
Trump lags in ‘battleground’ states;
Mitch McConnell is only senator more unpopular than Susan Collins;
Federal agencies’ plans to move out of D.C. slammed as ‘anti-science’;
Trump heat wave: Just a taste of what’s to come;
Trump’s EPA favors chemical industry over kids;
Trump wants to profit off meeting with world leaders;
Coal towns face financial collapse;
Rural hospital closures affect empoyment and wages ... 

ART CULLEN
Rural vote is about abortion, not immigration

JOSEPH B. ATKINS 
Kissing industry’s butt in Laurel, Miss.

JILL RICHARDSON
Weapons of the weak

JOHN YOUNG
That oath was Trump’s first lie in office

LEO GERARD
Is there a future for unions?

GRASSROOTS/Hank Kalet 
The real race card

GENE NICHOL
The best friend of North Carolina fire breathers

JOEL D. JOSEPH  
Gerrymandering and the Supreme Court

D.H. KERBY
ICE holds activist after poetry reading

BOB BURNETT
The economy and the election

MARK ANDERSON
Texas bans pipeline protests

HEALTH CARE/Joan Retsinas 
The true demons

SAM URETSKY
Little-known democratic presidential contendors deserve a look, too

BOOK REVIEW/Heather Seggel 
The battle continues

WAYNE O’LEARY
American conservatism’s China dolls

JOHN BUELL
Neoliberalism down on the farm

DAVID SCHMIDT
Pluralism, partnerships and prosecutions: Church and state in contemporary Mexico

ROSS ROSENFELD
My daughters will not grow up with Disney. Here’s why.

ROB PATTERSON
Woodstock at 50

SATIRE/Rosie Sorenson 
Pandora, the box

MOVIE REVIEW/Ed Rampell 
Tenement lament’s testament

Trump making racist statements about the Squad is not a reelection strategy, but a temporary tactic in the southern strategy the GOP has employed since the 1950’s

By Marc Jampole

Now that the initial stench of Donald Trump’s racist comments about four freshman Democratic female Congressional representatives has lifted, most analysts are discussing this series of racist tweets as if they represented an overall election strategy: make these four progressives candidates the “face” of the Democratic Party. This gambit—if it is one—attempts to take the focus away from the inherent and obvious racism of the comments and place it on presenting the Congresswomen’s views as radical and un-American—“socialism” and “communism” are the words being bandied about by Trump, Mark Meadows, Lindsay Graham and the usual gang of idiots (apologies to the soon-to-be-defunct Mad Magazine). 

In my view, calling a series of disgusting tweets the beginning of a strategy of identification is just typical Republican backfill of their leader’s stupidity and virulent racism. It’s a silly idea to base the election strategy on making Representatives Ocasio-Cortez, Pressley, Omar and Tlaib—known as the Squad—the face of the Democratic Party for two big reasons: 1) As soon as the Democrats have a nominee or an unbeatable frontrunner, she or he will be the face of the Democrats, no matter what the GOP wants.  2) The more times that Republicans label as “socialist” positions that most people agree with such as universal healthcare insurance, support of government action to address global warming, cheaper college and making the rich pay their fair share of taxes, the less people are going to care about what you call it. Recent surveys show this process kicking in, especially among millennials and Gen-Zers. Many people are happy to call it socialism, as long as they get healthcare.  

The mainstream media has been happy to go along with the idea that making four minority Congressional representatives the face of the Democratic Party constitutes a strategy because it plays into their current obsession with splitting the Democratic Party into two warring factions—the crazy left-wingers and the centrists. On most issues, all that separates these two groups is the speed with which they want to get to the ultimate goals and their willingness to piss off entrenched interests. The real internal problem for the Democrats, of course, is that the large funders of the Party have a slightly different agenda than do Democratic voters and small donors. The Dem fat cats are happy to clean up the environment, provide good healthcare to all and raise wages—as long as they (the big donors) don’t have to pay for it, or can make money from it, as in the case of union-busting charter schools. 

Even those pundits who have kept their aim zeroed tightly on the obvious racism of Trump’s remarks—another in a long line of crude Trump attempts to create an us-versus-them mentality among his core—have missed the target to a certain degree. The real point of the Trump anti-Squad remarks involves not just racism and economic issues, but misogyny and fundamentalist Christian values as well. As University of Arkansas professors Angie Maxwell and Todd Shields point out in their recent The Long Southern Strategy, from its inception after the Supreme Court declared segregation illegal in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, the Republican “Southern Strategy” has combined racism, sexism, revivalist-tent religion and right-wing economics in almost equal measures. 

The goal of the Southern Strategy has always been to change voting patterns in the south from straight Democratic to straight Republican. This multi-decade strategy has involved pandering not only to racist views, but also to old-fashioned ideas that women should stay at home cooking and raising children and to an extreme religiosity based on accepting the words of the Bible without interpretation. The GOP infused these long-time core “southern” values with its brand of small-government capitalism by attaching racial code words to discussions of government efforts to help the poor, aged and down-trodden, to make racist voters believe that social welfare programs primarily benefited minorities. As Maxwell and Shields write, “Poor southern whites have long been conditioned to forfeit a personal battle in the service of winning an imagined war from which they do not benefit.” In this historical context, Trump’s anti-Squad tweets, full of venomous lies, e.g., that these women said they hate Jews, is not the beginning of a strategy, but another tactic in the GOP’s long southern strategy.

Maxwell and Shields take a complicated approach to their telling of history. Instead of a straight chronology, each chapter follows a single theme from the 1950’s until today and then presents a series of recent studies that show how different the south is from the rest of the country and how open the south was to receiving the racist, sexist fundamentalist message spouted to a larger or smaller extent by Goldwater, Nixon, Ford, Reagan, both Bushes, McCain, Dole, Romney and Trump. The themes include southern racism, southern white privilege, the myth of a post-racial country, traditional southern sexism, the southern white patriarchy, the gender gap in voting, the revival-tent roots of contemporary southern religion, southern white fundamentalism and the myth of the social conservative.

The professors analyze literally hundreds of surveys and studies on attitudes and beliefs. The surveys show what we always knew: There are racists, misogynists, Christian fundamentalists and economic right-wingers everywhere, but in all cases, there are more in the south. What is eye-opening, however, is the degree to which these four social characteristics are correlated, among both southerners and northerners. Some examples: The more likely people are to believe that blacks are inferior, the more likely they are to think that women should not hold elective office. The more likely they are to be against the Equal Rights Amendment, the more likely they are to think that whites are currently discriminated against because of affirmative action. Those who believe in fundamentalist religion tend to express greater racial resentment and sexism. These many connections between strands of belief create a tightly woven culture, resistant to change.

The economic aspect of this nexus of beliefs is particularly weird, as it has become a mask for racism even as GOP economic policies have hurt virtually all Americans, especially its large army of southern white voters. As it turns out, the 2016 decision of a majority of Electoral College voters to cast their ballots for Trump in and of itself immediately assuaged the feelings of economic insecurity among Trump voters. Several surveys show white perceptions of competition from minorities and general economic anxiety among whites decreased dramatically just by virtue of Trump assuming office. It’s the perverse mirror image of the emergence of the Tea Party movement almost within days of Obama’s inauguration. As Maxwell and Shields write, “The economic masks the racial so much so that many do not even see it.” The economic positions become a coded substitute for racial ones, which explains why those who manifest racist attitudes so often vote against their own economic best interest.

Trump’s strategy for reelection in 2020 is the same as his strategy was in 2016 and the same as the strategies of every other Republican candidate for president since Goldwater in 1964—summon a large turnout by a core of supporters throughout the country defined by the traditional values of southern society: the inferiority of non-whites, the subservience of women to men throughout society and a fundamentalist religion that enforced both misogyny and racism.  It’s the long southern strategy that has seen the south flip from solidly Democratic to solidly Republican in the course of a lifetime.  

The one thing that Trump has added to the mix is his virulent anti-immigration stand that he has racialized by only going after immigrants and refugees from non-European countries.  Reagan and Bush II in particular had much more humanistic approaches to legal and illegal immigration, and all the former Republican presidents and presidential candidates steered clear of racializing Muslims, although many other Republican office holders and candidates have not refrained from virulent anti-Islamic rhetoric. The anti-Squad tweets and follow-up thus make for a great reinforcement of the long southern strategy. 

The flaw in Trump’s campaign to add people from the Middle East and Central and South American countries to the legion of the despised, inferior, un-American “other” is that it has more than doubled the size of “America’s internal enemies.” That also means more voters in opposition to the Republican program, including not only the Latino and Muslim minorities, but the many industries that depend on immigrant employees with a variety of educational backgrounds, the families into which these minorities marry and the communities where they have established deep roots. It might even convince a number of upper middle class and wealthy voters who supported Trump solely to get tax breaks and regulatory relief to now vote against what has been for them a useful rouge. 

That doesn’t meant that Trump is destined to lose the 2020 election. Voter suppression laws will still keep many Democrats home. Russian interference may include fixing the ballot box, as some believe happened in Michigan, Florida and Pennsylvania in 2016.

But by including immigrants in the southern strategy, Trump has hastened the process by which the majority of Americans embrace both diversity and western European social democracy. As immigrants from everywhere and educated young people fill thriving cities and high tech capitals throughout the country, Virginia has already turned from red to blue, while Georgia, North Carolina and Florida are purple with Texas headed in the same direction. The future of an American democracy lies only in a diverse mixed economy with lots of government regulation and programs and a highly progressive tax system. Note that I wrote “the future of an American democracy,” and not “the future of America.” Those who support an economy tilted towards those already wealthy and the 21st century version of the nexus of southern values—AKA Republicans—have shown time and again that they care less about having a democracy than they do about imposing their will on American society.