Friday, October 29, 2021
Saturday, October 16, 2021
Editorial: Don’t Let the Big Liars Win
Joe Biden was elected president last November in the highest voter turnout in the US in more than a century, as 66.7% of eligible voters cast ballots despite the COVID-19 pandemic, and despite efforts to obstruct and harass likely Democratic voters. But Republicans have been conditioned by years of Donald Trump warning the only way Democrats could beat him was by stealing the election, even though Trump narrowly won the 2016 election with a minority of the vote and he never had majority approval as president.
Republicans tried to curtail voting by mail and closing easy absentee ballot drops, and Trump supporters tried to intimidate voters by brandishing guns and using trucks to block entrances at voting places, and screaming violent, racist threats at voters.
When vote counts showed Biden winning in Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Georgia and Wisconsin, threats were made against election workers and officials. Threats were even made against election officials in Vermont, where Trump’s loss couldn’t have been a surprise. The harassment and threats of violence moved Georgia voting system official Gabriel Sterling to warn that if the baseless accusations of fraud continue, “someone’s going to get killed,” and he called on President Trump and Georgia’s two Republican senators to denounce threats. They declined.
The Republican-dominated state Senate in Arizona in March ordered a pro-Trump firm, the Cyber Ninjas, to examine votes cast in Maricopa County. On Sept. 24, the Cyber Ninjas-led team finally reported to the Arizona Senate that Biden not only won the state’s most populous county, but he gained 99 votes, while Trump lost 261 votes.
That wasn’t enough to knock Trump off his Big Lie, as he told cultists at a Georgia rally, “We won on the Arizona forensic audit yesterday at a level that you wouldn’t believe!”
Charlie Sykes, the anti-Trump Republican editor of the Bulwark newsletter, wrote on Sept. 27, “If you have been living in a bubble of naivete or denial, you might have imagined that the results of the Cyber Ninja[s] audit in Arizona would usher in a New Era of Sobriety in our politics. Fat chance.”
Many Republicans apparently have rationalized that, if Democrats can “steal” elections (by turning out voters), Republicans can steal back better.
Republicans appear determined to stop “excessive” voting by Democrats from happening again. Between Jan. 1 and Sept. 27, 19 Republican-dominated states have enacted 33 laws that will make it harder for Americans to vote and easier for partisan officials to set aside votes they don’t like, the Brennan Center for Justice reports.
Trumpist Republican congressmen continue to cast doubt on Biden’s presidential election. In a hearing of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform Oct. 7, Rep. Andrew Biggs (R-Ariz.) replied. “I don’t know [who won the presidential election in Arizona]. We’ve not resolved the issues that took place.”
Trump at a rally in Des Moines Oct. 9 repeated the lie that his loss was the result of “election fraud,” which prompted the crowd to chant “Trump won! Trump won!”
Appearing alongside Trump were top members of the Republican establishment in Iowa, including Sen. Chuck Grassley, Gov. Kim Reynolds and Iowa Republican Chair Jeff Kaufmann.
Trump has held rallies since leaving the White House. But never have elected Republicans of such stature appeared with him, Meridith McGraw of Politico noted. And the presence of Grassley in particular, who offered a stinging condemnation of Trump’s behavior after the 2020 election, signified that whatever qualms the former GOP may have had with Trump are now faded memories; whatever questions they had about the direction of the party have been resolved.
Trump made a point of endorsing Grassley, who at 88 is seeking an eighth term, and any of Grassley’s past criticisms of the Great Misleader are no longer operative. “If I didn’t accept the endorsement of a person that’s got 91 percent of the Republican voters in Iowa, I wouldn’t be too smart,” Grassley told the crowd.
Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.), the second-ranked House Republican, stood by the “stolen election” hoax Oct. 10 on Fox News, where he said the states did not follow their own “rules” in conducting the election, despite each state certifying the validity of the election.
Senate Democrats, including Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) have drafted the Freedom to Vote Act (S. 2784), which would set national standards to protect access to the vote, end partisan gerrymandering of congressional districts, begin to overhaul the broken campaign finance system, and create new safeguards against subversion of the electoral process. But Senate Democrats need to change the filibuster rule, which requires “controversial” bills to have 60 votes to pass, and unfortunately Republicans are unanimously opposed to making it easier to vote.
Some Democrats, frustrated by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s inability to pass the Freedom to Vote Act or the Build Back Better Bill in the Senate, are demanding that Biden get involved in changing the filibuster rule to allow the voting bill to pass on a 51-50 vote, with Vice President Kamala Harris casting the deciding vote. They think Biden should force Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) to get in line, like President Lyndon Johnson is reputed to have done in the 1960s when he steered the passage of his landmark legislation, such as the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts and bills establishing Medicare and Medicaid. But Johnson was working with sizable Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, and he was able to make threats stick. If Biden or Schumer tried to threaten Manchin or Sinema, either one of them could make Mitch McConnell majority leader overnight by quitting the Democratic caucus, thereby killing Biden’s agenda until the next election.
Republican obstruction, lies and misdirection have taken a toll on Biden’s approval ratings, which have dropped from a high of 55% the week after his inauguration to 44.6% on Oct. 11, in the FiveThirtyEight average of polls. Republicans have obstructed Biden’s progressive initiatives and blamed the military under Biden’s command for “only” getting 122,000 evacuees out of Kabul after Trump surrendered Afghanistan to the Taliban. But a majority of voters still plan to support Democrats in next year’s elections. Asked whether they would vote for a Democrat or Republican for Congress in the midterms, as of Oct. 10, 44.4% would vote Democratic while 41.6% would vote Republican in the FiveThirtyEight average.
Republicans hope to gerrymander their way into a House majority in 2022, even if a majority of Americans actually vote for Democrats, but the Big Lie Party’s neo-fascist tactics might finally prove too much for longtime Republicans whose fathers and grandfathers actually fought and defeated fascists in World War II.
In Senate races next year, Democrats will need to protect vulnerable Democratic Senate incumbents in Arizona, Georgia, New Hampshire and Virginia, but they also have a shot at vulnerable Republicans in Florida and Wisconsin, as well as open seats in Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania, if the elections are free and fair. Iowa may be too far gone, but there’s always hope.
If Democrats can hold onto the House and add a couple seats in the Senate, Democrats will be able to pass bills in the Senate without letting Manchin and Sinema dictate terms. It would immeasurably help beat the Big Lie Republicans if Democrats can pass the Freedom to Vote Act, to stop the Jim Crow Jr. laws at the state level. — JMC
From The Progressive Populist, November 1, 2021
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Copyright © 2021 The Progressive Populist
Selections from the November 1, 2021 issue
Why do the wealthy pay a lower tax rate than everybody else?
EDITORIAL
Don’t let Big Liars win
FRANK LINGO
Stop Republicans’ attacks on voting
DON ROLLINS
John Shelby Spong: Passer of torches
RURAL ROUTES/Margot McMillen
Hard to find good help for cheap
DISPATCHES
Trump’s failed attempt to overturn the election is clear.
Trump hid payments from foreign governments, $70 million in losses on D.C. hotel.
AT&T wanted another Fox News, and OAN is what it got.
Economy adds 194,000 jobs in September, unemployment rate drops, but Wall Street is disappointed.
Amid calls to ‘fire DeJoy,’ 20 states sue over plans to sabotage Postal Service ...
ART CULLEN
Build back what? Sounds pretty expensive.
SONDRA YOUDELMAN
Big money’s war on the build back better plan
JOHN YOUNG
Fox News: Dialing up lies for dollars
BRIAN WAKAMO
To save jobs and fund infrastructure, close this loophole
SETH SANDRONSKY
Shakiness, Inc.: Tech and temp workers
BOB BURNETT
Extreme measures
GRASSROOTS/Hank Kalet
The ugly Face(book) of corporate capitalism
DR. CINTLI
Of juvenile pranks and insurrections
HEALTH CARE/Joan Retsinas
Immigrants: Keeping them healthy
SAM URETSKY
Twenty years of Republican obstruction on climate change
TAMMY ROJAS
With health care at stake, our voices should count
WAYNE O’LEARY
More southern discomfort
JOHN BUELL
Between the lines on Manchin
DAVID SCHMIDT
‘The United States of Latin America’: Mexico breathes new life into Simon Bolivar’s dream
BARRY FRIEDMAN
Cold as ice
BOOK REVIEW/Heather Seggel
Bread is not enough
ROB PATTERSON
‘The Many Saints of Newark’ blesses ‘The Sopranos’ with a fine prequel
SATIRE/Rosie Sorenson
Crispy critter
MOVIE REVIEW/Ed Rampell
Lights! Cameras! Action!: Academy Museum features Hollywood hoopla & inclusivity
GENE NICHOL
Democratic blindness and timidity assist Republican sedition
Friday, October 1, 2021
Editorial: Dems Are On Their Own
Republicans are united in holding the federal government hostage by refusing to support an increase in the debt ceiling to let the government pay for spending Republicans approved last year.
Republican leaders don’t care that most of the national debt accumulated during the past 40 years occurred during Republican administrations, including Trump.
The debt has increased from $997.8 billion when Ronald Reagan took office to $26.9 trillion at the end of Trump’s term in 2020, the Office of Management and Budget reports. Republican presidents were responsible for $15.95 trillion of that debt increase, while Democrats were responsible for $9.97 trillion. So which party is more fiscally responsible?
After Trump took over a recovering economy from Barack Obama, Republicans passed another tax cut for the wealthy in 2017 that, once again, failed to pay for itself with promised growth. That, along with increased costs associated with the pandemic, ballooned Trump’s deficit to $4.2 trillion in 2020. Trump added $6.7 trillion to the national debt during his four years.
But last year Republicans suspended the debt ceiling for one year, passing Trump’s $6.7 trillion debt to Trump’s successor.
The debt ceiling “debate” is just another distraction from the real controversy: the Republican Party’s efforts to deny Democratic voters the right to have their votes counted in future elections. Since the election, Republican-controlled legislatures in 18 states have passed laws to make it harder to vote and easier for courts or the legislatures to set aside those votes if they don’t like the looks of them.
Republicans have shown a willingness to deny reality by obfuscation and outright falsehood. They tell lies quicker than Democrats and mainstream media can correct the record, and members of the “GOP” cult accept those lies as a matter of faith.
The Washington Post counted a record 30,573 “false or misleading claims” by Trump during his four years in the White House. He certainly hasn’t stopped lying since he left office, as he has consistently maintained the Big Lie that Democrats stole the 2020 election for Joe Biden, and a majority of Republicans still believe the Great Misleader, despite the lack of any evidence to prove his claims. Even after the “audit” of Maricopa County election results ordered by the Republican Arizona Senate, which was finally released Sept. 24, showed Joe Biden won the county by a larger margin than originally reported, Trump claimed the results showed tens of thousands of “phantom” ballots were cast in the election.
Republicans are ginning up election audits in other states, including Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and even Texas, where Trump won, though his 52% share was a slimmer margin than he expected, so he demanded a “forensic audit.” Gov. Greg Abbott obliged, ordering the secretary of state to audit Dallas, Harris (Houston) and Tarrant (Fort Worth) counties, which Trump lost, as well as Collin County, a Dallas suburban county. which Trump won.
It might be a coincidence that the Arizona fraudit report was competing for public attention with videos of mounted Border Patrol agents trying to herd fleeing Haitian migrants who had been camping near Del Rio, Texas, hoping to gain admission to the US.
The Haitians may have been lured to Texas after the Biden administration in May extended protections for more than 100,000 Haitians who already were in the US, because of security concerns and social unrest in Haiti, but Trump associates may have been involved in getting Haitians to gather at Del Rio, a small city of 35,000 on the Texas border across the Rio Grande from Ciudad Acuña.
Many of the nearly 30,000 Haitians who arrived at Del Rio in mid-September came from Brazil, shortly after Trump adviser Jason Miller met with Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, an ally of Trump.
Many of the Haitians had fled their homeland after the devastating 2010 earthquake; they were drawn to Brazil’s and Chile’s once-booming economies, as well as Central American countries.
Why they suddenly ended up in Del Rio, which is out of the way for someone traveling from South America to Texas, is a good question. It may have been a coincidence, but, as intel expert Malcolm Nance says, “Coincidence takes a lot of planning.”
Right-wing Republicans showed up to accuse the Biden administration of failing to head off another crisis on the border, and video of the Border Patrol mounties (whose union supported Trump) generated public outrage and criticism of Biden’s immigration policies by advocates, including the Congressional Black Caucus. It looked like more propaganda by Republicans who were concerned that the crossing of Latinos at the border was not alarming enough.
The Haitians swarming Del Rio also coincided with Republican promotion of the neo-Nazi “Replacement Theory” on right-wing media, as commentators such as Tucker Carlson charged that Democrats plan to replace the White majority with people of color.
Early reports indicated most Haitians would be deported, but it turned out 13,000 were allowed to remain in the US to apply for asylum, while 8,000 voluntarily returned to Mexico and 4,000 were returned to Haiti, the Department of Homeland Security reported.
The makeshift camp under the bridge in Del Rio has been cleared and the bridge has been reopened to traffic. In the meantime, Republicans are determined to force a shutdown of the government, in the hopes of disrupting the stock markets and starting a recession, which they will then blame on the Democrats.
Democrats can and should avert the economic damage by including the debt ceiling increase as part of the $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation bill, which cannot be stopped by Republican filibuster. That Build Back Better bill includes more investments in dealing with climate change, expanding child care, pre-kindergarten, elder care, affordable housing, two years of free community college, expanding Medicare to cover dental and vision and other projects. It would be paid for through tax increases for the wealthiest households and increased tax enforcement of those wealthy households.
We hope the threat of the Republicans forcing default on the national debt will motivate Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Synema (D-Ariz.), who profess concerns over the economic impact of the Build Back Better spending, to get back in line with the Democratic caucus to pass the budget reconciliation bill.
While they’re at it, Democrats should suspend the filibuster on voting rights bills and pass the Freedom to Vote Act (S. 2784), the compromise bill Manchin drafted with Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) in negotiations with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and other Democratic senators.
The bill would set national standards to protect access to the vote, end partisan gerrymandering of congressional districts, begin to overhaul the broken campaign finance system, and create new safeguards against subversion of the electoral process.
Suspension of the filibuster, at least for voting rights bills, probably is necessary to get it through the Senate, since Republicans unanimously opposed the more sweeping For the People Act in June, and no Republican senator has agreed to support the Manchin compromise. Ten Republicans would be needed to overcome the filibuster, and Chuck Schumer is lucky to keep his 50 Democrats together.
God help us if the Senate Dems fail to get their act together. Because Republicans will be no help at all. — JMC
From The Progressive Populist, October 15, 2021
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Copyright © 2021 The Progressive Populist
Selections from the October 15, 2021 issue
‘The Gates of Hell’ — swinging wide?
EDITORIAL
Democrats are on their own
FRANK LINGO
Plastic is poisoning the planet
DON ROLLINS
Best defunding model we’ve never heard of
RURAL ROUTES/Margot McMillen
Finding the consequences in pesticides
DISPATCHES
Trump campaign knew Big Lie was baseless, memo reveals.
Coup plan called for Pence to declare Trump winner by leaving out 7 states.
Violence from far right anti-vax/anti-maskers keeps ratcheting higher.
Supreme Court brief gives away the right’s aborion game.
COVID cases, deaths rising among children across the US.
Media still plays down Afghanistan evacuation.
Hacker group 'Anonymous' spills secrets of extreme right. ...
ART CULLEN
Conservation agriculture buoys an Iowa farmer through drought
JOHN YOUNG
Requiem for an anti-vax evangelist
JILL RICHARDSON
Spreading vaccine misinformation is dangerous and wrong
DICK POLMAN
For at least one day, MAGA was reduced to MehGA
GRASSROOTS/Hank Kalet
Crisis? What crisis?
REBEKAH ENTRALGO
Unemployment insurance isn’t holding back the economy. Inequality is.
THOM HARTMANN
Why threats of violence are epidemic in America
DR. CINTLI
A Denny’s experience
SATIRE/Rosie Sorenson
The nose knows
HEALTH CARE/Joan Retsinas
Vaccines: Beyond mandates
SAM URETSKY
Wonder drugs for COVID leave scientists wondering
GABE BANKMAN-FRIED
Prepare for the next pandemic today
WAYNE O’LEARY
Southern discomfort
JOHN BUELL
Secrecy’s deadly toll
JASON SIBERT
We need to prioritize security needs
N. GUNASEKARAN
‘Inequality virus’ strikes Asian poor
BARRY FRIEDMAN
Trump on Tulsa time
BOOK REVIEW/Heather Seggel
Not both, but all
ROB PATTERSON
Ali, soul of the sweet science
BOB BURNETT
What did we learn from the California recall?
MARK ANDERSON
Can you count on your digits in a cashless society?
SETH SANDRONSKY
Protecting workers and communities
GENE NICHOL
Reminding Texas that it is part of the United States
Saturday, September 18, 2021
Editorial: Republicans Own Delta Surge
Republicans have been clearing the way for the coronavirus since early April 2020, when they found that COVID-19 seemed to be hitting Democratic cities and states hardest, with Black and Latino frontline workers particularly vulnerable in the early days of the pandemic.
Donald Trump and his minions apparently calculated the virus would kill more Democrats than Republicans in the election year, so the White House canceled plans to send cloth masks to every US household, which would have protected against transmission of the virus, in April 2020. By January, 400,000 Americans had perished, the economy had fallen off the cliff and Trump was out of a job.
After Joe Biden became president, he found the Trump administration had not developed a system to deliver to the American people the vaccines that were becoming available. Biden’s first priority was to organize the distribution of the vaccines, free of charge, across the country.
The pandemic had peaked in January 2021, when an average of more than 3,100 people died from COVID-19 every day. More than 246,000 new cases were reported daily in the week before Jan. 8. As the Biden administration rolled out the vaccines, the pace of shots grew to more than four million on some days in April. By July more than half the US population had received at least one dose of vaccine and new daily cases had dropped below 12,000 in June and early July, raising hopes that a return to normalcy was possible.
Meanwhile, right-wing media, led by Fox “News,” amplified concerns that the vaccines were rushed into production and masking requirements violated civil rights. Vaccines were welcomed in the “blue” Democratic cities but treated with relative indifference in “red” Republican areas. As numbers of COVID cases and deaths declined in the summer, Republican governors, with a few exceptions, continued to follow Trump’s lead in playing down the usefulness of getting the shots and wearing masks to prevent the infection of others, and the vaccination rates trailed those of states governed by Democrats.
When the Delta variant emerged in July and caused a surge of COVID infections the month before schools reopened, Republicans doubled down on resistance to anti-COVID measures, denying schools and businesses the authority to require employees or customers to be vaccinated, or to require teachers, staff and students to be vaccinated or wear masks to prevent transmission of COVID.
In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott, who faces Republican primary challengers from the right next year, asked hospitals to halt non-emergency medical procedures as COVID-19 patients strained wards already struggling with a shortage of nurses. But he still banned local governments from implementing mask and vaccine mandates.
In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis threatened to defund school districts that defied his executive order prohibiting mask mandates for students — while the state saw its rates of hospitalization from COVID surge past the worst levels of 2020.
And in South Dakota, Gov. Kristi Noem welcomed an estimated 525,000 mainly unmasked revelers to the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally again Aug. 6-15. Last year the rally was credited with helping spread the virus throughout the Midwest. In the weeks after this year’s rally, COVID cases rose dramatically, from an average of 54 new cases per day in early August to 440 new cases per day in early September.
Republicans tripled down after President Biden, in response to the Delta surge filling hospital ICUs with COVID patients, issued an executive order on Sept. 9 to force businesses with more than 100 employees to provide a safe workplace by requiring employee to be vaccinated (or be tested weekly for COVID). He also threatened to withhold federal funding from hospitals and nursing homes; as well as federal contractors. More than 100 million workers would be affected by Biden’s order.
Republicans complained that Biden’s initiative was unacceptable. They continue to oppose government efforts to control the coronavirus pandemic, which by that time had killed more than 650,000 Americans. Republican governors vowed to sue the administration to block the requirements.
Biden replied, “Have at it.” He added, “I am so disappointed, particularly that some of the Republican governors have been so cavalier with the health of these kids, so cavalier with the health of their communities.”
The authority of governments to impose vaccines has been established since at least 1905, when the Supreme Court issued a 7-to-2 ruling, in Jacobson v. Massachusetts, that Cambridge, Mass., could require all adults to be vaccinated against smallpox.
It is questionable whether the president could require all Americans to get shots. But the president can use the authority of the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 to require that companies maintain safe workplaces with vaccination, under the federal government’s well-established constitutional power to regulate commerce.
Republicans argue that Biden’s plan is a big-government attack on states’ rights, private business and personal choice, reflecting their appeal to neo-Confederate and neo-fascist voters that Trump brought into the party, and who now hold the balance of power in Republican primaries.
Texas Gov. Abbott, for whom 60,000 COVID deaths was no cause for alarm, called Biden’s actions an “assault on private businesses.” Abbott issued an order protecting Texans’ “right to choose” whether or not they would be vaccinated, an ironic turn of phrase given the controversial new Texas law to remove women’s right to choose abortion. “Texas is already working to halt this power grab,” Abbott wrote, referring to the federal public health requirements.
Gov. Doug Ducey of Arizona, whose state has 19,187 COVID deaths so far, wrote, “The Biden-Harris administration is hammering down on private businesses and individual freedoms in an unprecedented and dangerous way.” He questioned how many workers would be displaced, businesses fined, and children kept out of the classroom because of the mandates, and he vowed to push back.
In a fund-raising email, Florida Gov. DeSantis, with 48,772 deaths, wrote, “Joe Biden has declared war on constitutional government, the rule of law, and the jobs and livelihoods of millions of Americans.”
The Republican Governors Association hopes to use the anti-COVID policies as a wedge issue against vulnerable Democratic governors up for re-election in 2022. “Let’s see who Democrat governors side with: Joe Biden or the families and businesses they were elected to represent,” the group said in a Sept. 9 statement.
If Republicans want to be known as the pro-COVID party, so be it. Recent polls suggest that a solid majority of Americans support vaccinations and, at least in schools, they support mask mandates for staff and children to protect those who can’t get vaccinations.
Republicans are completing their rebrand from the Party of Lincoln into the Party of Trump, and from the Grand Old Party (GOP) to the Grand Sociopathic Party (GSP) and the Big Lie Party (BLP). They scorn masks as a sign of their resistance to public health requirements. They appear willing to die on that hill (or, to be more accurate, let their supporters die, as most Republican “leaders,” and all the Fox “News” hosts, have been vaccinated).
The rest of us can thank science that we can take the vaccine to protect ourselves and wear a mask in public to protect our neighbors from what has become the Republican Flu. — JMC
From The Progressive Populist, October 1, 2021
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Copyright © 2021 The Progressive Populist
Selections from the October 1, 2021 issue
40 Million people rely on the Colorado River. It’s drying up fast.
EDITORIAL
Republicans own Delta surge
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
FRANK LINGO
Privileged block climate progress
RURAL ROUTES/Margot McMillen
Sustainability needed now more than ever
DISPATCHES
Majority of Republicans say belief in Trump election ‘steal’ hoax is important part of Republicanism.
Trump led a fascist purge of the Republican Party; now his base is finishing what he started.
Alabama heart attack victim, turned down at 43 hospitals, ends up dead 200 miles away in Mississippi.
‘Oath Keepers’ under investigation for Jan. 6 ‘seditionist conspiracy,’
FBI search warrant reveals. Proud Boys show up at local school protests, following a larger far-right blueprint.
Child COVID hospitalizations reach a new high schools reopen.
House Dems would fund $3.5T budget with tax hikes.
Repubs' trust in national news drops by half in just 5 years ...
ART CULLEN
Clipped wings, tiny pretzels
ALAN GUEBERT
Hold the sickle, CRP needs a new, bigger hammer
JILL RICHARDSON
Preventing an American Pinochet
JOHN YOUNG
Road to Kabul via Saigon
GRASSROOTS/Hank Kalet
Fertile soil
ROBERT KUTTNER
Infrastructure summer: Chuck Schumer, China, and Build Back Better
DICK POLMAN
Kudos to the guy who foresaw the ravages of climate change. Too bad he was mocked.
TOM CONWAY
Investing in American families
BOB BURNETT
Afghanistan: 10 takeaways
DAVID SCHMIDT
Critical race theory is the new communism: Lessons from an older conservative bogeyman
DR. CINTLI
Leaving, seeking, finding home
HEALTH CARE/Joan Retsinas
The telenovela that is COVID: Waiting for the last episode
SAM URETSKY
Democracy, if you can keep it
WAYNE O’LEARY
End of the American empire
JOHN BUELL
In Afghanistan and Iraq, guerillas’ improvised explosive devices defeated the mighty US military machine
BARRY FRIEDMAN
Markwayne Mullin and Donald Trump: A love story
SATIRE/Rosie Sorenson
The revenge of Roe
BOOK REVIEW/Heather Seggel
Follow the money and the smell of gas
ROB PATTERSON
Dylan & McCartney deliver goods like the finest vintage wine
SETH SANDRONSKY
Families and Big Pharma
MOVIE REVIEW/Ed Rampell
Ed Asner was a proud socialist in Hollywood
GENE NICHOL
Surrendering without a fight
Friday, August 27, 2021
Editorial: Trump Botched Afghan Exit
When Donald Trump reached a withdrawal deal that enabled the Taliban to overrun the demoralized Afghan government, while US troops and diplomats were packing to leave, it made the chaotic scenes at the Kabul airport inevitable. Then the withdrawal was left for Joe Biden to carry out.
The media, eager to show they would hold Biden to account, jumped on those horrible images of desperate Afghan refugees rushing US planes. There was less accountability for past presidents: George W. Bush, who started the war but got distracted in Iraq, Barack Obama, who continued the war, even after Osama bin Laden was found — in Pakistan — and disposed in the Arabian Sea, and particularly Trump, who wanted to finish the war in the worst way, and may have sabotaged the situation for his successor.
For those who are keeping score, the Trump administration negotiated with Taliban leaders at a neutral site in Doha for 18 months in 2018 and 2019, without consulting Afghan President Ashraf Ghani or requiring the Taliban to cease fire on Afghan troops. While the talks progressed, Trump in December 2018 ordered the Pentagon to plan removal of half the troops in Afghanistan, at the same time Trump abruptly announced withdrawal of US military from Syria. Those moves prompted James Mattis to quit as defense secretary.
After the US negotiator announced the US had reached a deal “in principle” with the Taliban, Trump invited Taliban leaders to Camp David to meet with Ghani to settle the deal on Sept. 11, 2019. But that invitation was cancelled after a Taliban car bombing killed 12 people, including a US soldier, as part of a surge of violence in Kabul.
Talks continued between the US and the Taliban in Doha, and in February 2020, Trump announced there was a deal. Basically, the US would get out of Afghanistan in 14 months. In exchange, the Taliban agreed not to let Afghanistan become a haven for terrorists. The Taliban, whose forces were attacking Afghan government forces throughout the talks, agreed to start peace talks with the Afghan government and consider a cease-fire with the government. (That never happened.)
Trump said US troops had been killing terrorists in Afghanistan “by the thousands” and now it was “time for someone else to do that work and it will be the Taliban and it could be surrounding countries.” He added, “If bad things happen, we’ll go back with a force like no-one’s ever seen.”
The US agreed to reduce troops from 14,000 to 8,600 in the first 100 days and leave five military bases to the Afghan army. Over the next nine months, the US would vacate the rest.
The Taliban pledged to not harbor terrorists, but the deal did not require them to denounce al-Qaeda. It contained only a weak pledge by the Taliban “not to cooperate with or permit international terrorist groups or individuals to recruit, train, raise funds … transit Afghanistan,” or use Afghan passports.
“The peace deal was transparently an effort to paper over an American retreat,” wrote Paul Miller, a professor at Georgetown University. H.R. McMaster, Trump’s second national security adviser, recently called it “a surrender agreement with the Taliban.”
Months later, the UN judged that the Taliban retained ties to al-Qaeda after signing the peace deal, and US intelligence warned that al-Qaeda was “integrated” into the Taliban, but the Trump administration kept withdrawing US troops.
On Oct. 8, 2020, with the election a month away, Trump tweeted that all US troops would be out of Afghanistan by Christmas. His tweet surprised Defense Secretary Mark Esper, Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Afghan President Ghani.
After Joe Biden beat Trump in the election, the Great Misleader relaxed the pace of withdrawal, but he brought the level down to 2,500 at the end of his term. By that time, all the US bases were under Afghan government control.
While Trump was drawing down US troop presence in Afghanistan, his minions were undermining efforts to get Afghan interpreters and other allies out of the country. Trump adviser Stephen Miller spread “racist hysteria” about Iraq and Afghanistan in cabinet meetings, according to Olivia Troye, a former national security aide to Vice President MIke Pence. Miller and his allies were placed the departments of Justice and Homeland Security and other security agencies to stymie special immigrant visas (SIVs) for Afghans who worked with the US government or troops in Afghanistan, Troye said. “The number of SIVs dropped dramatically during the Trump administration,” she said. “We knew the offices were under-resourced and overwhelmed.”
“Trump had FOUR years—while putting this plan in place—to evacuate these Afghan allies who were the lifelines for many of us who spent time in Afghanistan,” Troye said, according to Business Insider. “The process slowed to a trickle for reviews/other ‘priorities’ — then came to a halt.” Biden’s folks had to re-start the process.
Miller was Trump’s point man for blocking brown refugees. On Fox News Aug. 17, Miller said “those advocating for mass Afghan resettlement are doing so for political and not humanitarian reasons,” adding that it would also be too expensive, Business Insider reported.
“The United States of America never, ever, made a promise, written or unwritten, to the people of Afghanistan that if after 20 years, they were unable to secure their own country, that we would take them to ours. That is nonsense. That has never been US government policy,” Miller said, rebutting the pledges made by American veterans of the Afghan war.
Also, with Trump’s refusal to transfer power, his administration refused to brief Biden’s incoming national security appointees during the transition, so Biden and his aides entered the White House playing catch-up.
When Biden took office on Jan. 20, after Trump supporters failed their Jan. 6 coup attempt, the Taliban was making gains against the Afghan government forces, al-Qaeda enjoyed safe haven in Pakistan, and commentators wondered how long the Afghan government would last before collapse. Biden faced the choice: repudiate Trump’s peace deal with the Taliban, escalate US troop presence in Afghanistan and put those US troops in the Taliban crosshairs — or complete the withdrawal and leave Afghanistan to the Afghans.
Biden pushed back the date of the withdrawal from May 1 to Sept. 11, the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. He later said he expected US troops to be out by Aug. 31, which should have given US forces plenty of time to evacuate refugees, since most of his advisers felt the 300,000 Afghan government forces could hold out at least until the end of August. But as the Taliban swept through the country, the Afghan troops dropped their guns and scattered. The Taliban entered Kabul virtually unchallenged, leaving US forces to hold onto the airport, Afghan President Ghani fled to the United Arab Emirates, reportedly with $169 million in cash. Meanwhile, US forces evacuated more than 120,000 people from the end of July to Aug. 30. That’s actually a remarkable showing, but Trump, in a last bid to undermine the evacuation, said Biden should “resign in disgrace for what he has allowed to happen to Afghanistan, along with the tremendous surge in COVID, the Border catastrophe, the destruction of energy independence, and our crippled economy.”
Irony may be dead. But a lot of Afghan refugees are still alive, outside the reach of the Taliban, no thanks to Donald J. Trump. — JMC
Blog | Current Issue | Back Issues | Essays | Links
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Copyright © 2021 The Progressive Populist
PO Box 819, Manchaca TX 78652
Selections from the September 15, 2021 issue
Climate change keeps wildfires coming back
EDITORIAL
Trump botched the Afghan exit
FRANK LINGO
Hell on Earth: Warming gone wild
DON ROLLINS
Remembering Trumka, labor champion
RURAL ROUTES/Margot McMillen
Seek reconciliation, not revenge
DISPATCHES
Trump enablers try to rewrite their own Afghanistan history.
Who opposed helping US allies in Afghanistan?
Ending unemployment benefits early didn’t reduce unemployment.
Trump suggests vaccination, his cultists boo.
Pfizer vaccine gets full FDA approval.
Poll shows 81% welcome Afghan allies who helped us,
Report says Feds targeted Black Lives Matter protesters.
Saying crazy stuff all the time has consequences ...
ART CULLEN
We will not be denied our freedom to consume ourselves
ALAN GUEBERT
Like a SNAP
JILL RICHARDSON
The GOP’s election lies are stale, but the stakes are high
JOHN YOUNG
‘COVID slide’ is the least of our concerns
JASON SIBERT
Curb chemical weapons
ROBERT KUTTNER
Biden’s 180-degree shift on trade policy
DICK POLMAN
On Afghanistan, can we all just take a chill pill?
TOM CONWAY
Keeping storms at bay
REBEKAH ENTRALGO
A chance to protect our essential workers
SETH SANDRONSKY
Contract this
BONNY GARDNER
Politics of loss and grievance: Why whites in the rural south support Donald Trump
THOM HARTMANN
Why conservatives want government to fail everywhere
ROBERTO RODRIGUEZ
A triple code red for humanity
HEALTH CARE/Joan Retsinas
Mark of sanity in health-news
SAM URETSKY
Developing killing machines
GRASSROOTS/Hank Kalet
We’ve seen this movie before
JOHN BUELL
Neoliberal hierarchies and Cuomo’s toxic workplace
MOVIE REVIEW/David Schmidt
‘New Order’: Dystopian Mexican film draws from the real-life horror of military dictatorships
BARRY FRIEDMAN
Reinstatement day in America
BOOK REVIEW/Heather Seggel
Joining our struggles
JOSEPH B. ATKINS
Edwin Edwards, the last of the Louisiana populists?
SATIRE/Rosie Sorenson
Cuomo 2.0
MOVIE REVIEW/Ed Rampell
Prometheus unbound: ‘Not going quietly’ is an ode to activism
GENE NICHOL
North Carolina untroubled by high child poverty
Saturday, August 14, 2021
Editorial: R’s Test Positive for Hate
Republican leaders aren’t ashamed of Donald Trump’s deep vein of lies. Far from it: They’re vying to become the next Trump, following his example of misleading and distracting.
Texas Gov. Greg Abott (R) got an early start on blaming President Biden for the COVID resurgence, accusing him in March of “recklessly releasing hundreds” of COVID-positive undocumented immigrants into the country. Biden had condemned as “Neanderthal” Abbott’s decision to “reopen” Texas and restrict local governments from requiring mask use. He also signed a bill that prohibits Texas businesses from requiring “vaccine passports.” At that time, cases were declining in Texas as vaccines spread among the population.
Then, on July 28, as the Delta variant led a surge in infections, Abbott took the initiative of issuing an executive order instructing the Texas National Guard to assist law enforcement officers in stopping civilian drivers, including federal contractors, who appeared to be transporting migrants. If drivers refused to cooperate, Abbott’s executive order instructed that officers might seize their vehicles.
That order lasted a week before US District Judge Kathleen Cardone blocked Abbott’s order, ruling that it posed “irreparable harm,” after US Attorney Gen. Merrick Garland filed a lawsuit that called Abbott’s order unconstitutional, stating that it threatened to impede contractors working on behalf of the federal government, as well as interfering with the federal government’s “broad, undoubted power over the subject of immigration.”
Abbott’s order had stakeholders, including city and county officials, confused about how it would be carried out. Civil rights and legal experts warned the order would cause racial profiling. “Would any car carrying Latino passengers in Texas be subjected to a traffic stop? Given that the state is home to more than 11 million Latinos, according to the US Census, comprising more than 40% of the population, that seems like a Texas-size recipe for the violation of Latinos’ civil rights,” wrote CNN columnist Raul Reyes.
Meanwhile, in Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) rejected any responsibility for the surge on COVID cases in his state after he had forbidden state or local officials from requiring masks to be worn in public. He even threatened businesses that tried to require customers to provide proof of vaccination. Instead, DeSantis also blamed Biden for the surge. “Joe Biden has the nerve to tell me to get out of the way on COVID while he lets COVID-infected migrants pour over our southern border by the hundreds of thousands. No elected official is doing more to enable the transmission of COVID in America than Joe Biden with his open borders policies,” DeSantis wrote in a fundraising letter Aug. 4. In a bit of projection, he also suggested Biden was a “power-hungry tyrant.”
In a news conference, DeSantis added, “He’s imported more virus from around the world by having a wide-open southern border.” He challenged Biden, “Why don’t you do your job? Why don’t you get this border secure? “And until you do that, I don’t want to hear a blip about COVID from you.”
DeSantis insisted he’s handled the crisis well, even as he has fought against COVID vaccine mandates and barred schools from requiring students and staff to wear masks, while hospitals fill up.
Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds (R), who sent state troopers to Texas to help Abbott patrol the border, also dodged responsibility for the COVID surge in her state by blaming immigrants entering the country over the US-Mexico border. “Part of the problem is the southern border is open and we’ve got 88 countries that are coming across the border and they don’t have vaccines so none of them are vaccinated and they’re getting dispersed throughout the country,” Reynolds said at an Aug. 3 news conference.
Republicans have managed to convince 32% of respondents to an Axios/Ipsos poll that “people from other countries traveling to the US” are to blame for the current surge in coronavirus cases. But 58% of respondents correctly blamed unvaccinated Americans and 28% noted former President Trump shares the blame.
The Washington Post noted in an Aug. 6 Fact Check that there has been an increase in the number of people seeking to cross the southern border, but the US Border Patrol has apprehended more than a million migrants since last October, and the Department of Homeland Security expects a record number of encounters this fiscal year. But under a public health emergency declaration, the department also is returning a record number of migrants to Mexico. For example, the Border Patrol caught 178,416 in June, and expelled more than 100,000 of them — mainly individual adults traveling alone.
The Rio Grande Valley has experienced a disproportionate share of those encounters, and city officials in McAllen, in Hidalgo County, said 87,000 migrants have passed through the city limits so far in 2021. Mayor Javier Villalobos, a Republican, has joined fellow Republicans in blaming migrants for an increase in COVID cases, with more than 7,000 migrants confirmed positive for coronavirus since February (a positivity rate of about 8%). But even as the COVID positivity rate among migrants increased to 13.1% in late July, that is still lower than the 18.55% positivity rate among tested residents in Hidalgo County. And migrants who test positive for the virus are immediately quarantined, along with any family members who might have been exposed but test negative. They are not released until they test negative, so infected migrants have little interaction with the community.
Philip Bump of the Washington Post noted that the current surge in coronavirus cases doesn’t overlap with the surge in immigration or with the locations where those immigrants end up. “The surge in new cases began in late June. The increase in immigration began in March, when coronavirus cases in the United States were going down.”
Then there’s the geography. “The places that are hardest-hit by the virus at this point are mostly not along the border with Mexico. Instead, they’re on the Gulf Coast, in Florida and stretching north from Louisiana up through Arkansas and Missouri.”
Bump added, “Of the 10 counties that are currently experiencing the highest rates of new infections relative to population, eight are more densely White than the United States as a whole and nine are less densely Hispanic. That doesn’t suggest that they are likely destinations for migrants.”
“Obviously, there will be migrants who have COVID, and it would be ridiculous for anyone to say that migrants are not susceptible to COVID. Of course they are,” US Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-El Paso, told the Dallas Morning News. “But based on the numbers I’ve seen, the percentages of migrants who have COVID are very low. … The governor of Texas knows that this kind of xenophobia, racism and hate fuels hate crime. That’s something we in El Paso know all too well.”
On Aug. 3, 2019, a gunman, apparently inspired by Trump’s rants about invading immigrants, drove 10 hours from a Dallas suburb to El Paso, where he killed 23 people and wounded dozens more at a Walmart. In a manifesto the alleged shooter posted online before the shooting, he echoed Trump’s comments on immigration and said he made the trip to “stop the Hispanic invasion of Texas.”
Abbott, DeSantis and other GQPers should know better than accuse immigrants of spreading COVID, given the Republican Party’s recent history of race-baiting, but they went there anyway. — JMC
From The Progressive Populist, September 1, 2021
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Copyright © 2021 The Progressive Populist
PO Box 819, Manchaca TX 78652
Selections from the September 1, 2021 issue
Willing workers are right at the border
EDITORIAL
R’s test positive for hate
FRANK LINGO
Dialogue with Delta
DON ROLLINS
GOP putting lives at risk, with or without Trump
RURAL ROUTES/Margot McMillen
Deconstructing industrial ag
DISPATCHES
Senate Judiciary Committee hears testimony on Trump coup attempt.
Biden vehicle plan would cut US emissions by one-third.
UN panel says climate change must be reversed.
Postmaster general’s ex-company gets $120 million USPS contract.
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka dies.
Dems must raise debt limit on their own.
Voters aren't clear about Biden's economic success. Senate Dems plan to change that ...
ART CULLEN
Auctioning off rural America
JILL RICHARDSON
Dial down the panic over ‘critical race’ theory
JOHN YOUNG
Deadly disease is no trolling matter
SETH SANDRONSKY
Exploiting immigrant labor
THOM HARTMANN
Civilization-ending climate change is knocking on our door
DICK POLMAN
Abbott and DeathSantis, the sluggers of murderer’s row
BILL JOHNSTON
Unions aren’t rebuilding in communities
ROBERTO RODRIGUEZ
Thinking and acting locally and globally
SHEA LEIBOW
To save the planet, we need to demilitarize the police
HEALTH CARE/Joan Retsinas
Shrinking the insured/uninsured schism
SAM URETSKY
The great inflation scare
GRASSROOTS/Hank Kalet
The dangers of anti-terror laws
WAYNE O’LEARY
Florida is as Florida does
JOHN BUELL
The politics of unemployment insurance
PHYLLIS BENNIS
The triumph and tragedy of the Olympic refugee team
BARRY FRIEDMAN
Statement by Donald J. Trump, 45th President of the United States of America
BOOK REVIEW/Heather Seggel
Carrots and sticks
ROB PATTERSON
The return of David Crosby
SATIRE/Rosie Sorenson
What a send-off
MOVIE REVIEW/Ed Rampell
New Zealand Maori movie about family separation and land rights
GENE NICHOL
Foxhole folks
Friday, July 30, 2021
Editorial: Pelosi Keeps Probe Going
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was right when she rejected two provocative House members whom Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy had nominated to the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection.
Among the five Republicans McCarthy nominated for the committee were Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), who participated in the pro-Trump rallies that immediately preceded the Capitol attack and was a potential material witness to the investigation, and Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.), who made public statements indicating he intended to disrupt the committee’s work by demanding it probe Black Lives Matter and other events unrelated to the Jan. 6 violence.
Pelosi already had asked Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), who already had been dumped from Republican leadership because she supported Trump’s impeachment, to serve on the committee. Pelosi said she would seat the other three Republicans McCarthy proposed. But McCarthy pulled those nominations in a fit after Jordan and Banks were rejected, and he said, “Unless Speaker Pelosi reverses course and seats all five Republican nominees, Republicans will not be party to their sham process and will instead pursue our own investigation of the facts.”
Pelosi got a second Republican on the committee when Rep. Adam Kinziger (R-Ill.), another Republican on the outs with party leadership, announced he accepted her request that he serve. When asked if he would punish Cheney and Kinziger for agreeing to participate in the probe, McCarthy replied, “We’ll see,” and dismissed them as “Pelosi Republicans.”
Nominating Jordan and Banks for the select committee was McCarthy’s attempt to distract from the real purpose of the committee. McCarthy apparently hoped to discredit any work the committee could do, and he succeeded in suckering some Washington pundits into believing Pelosi was the problem. Chris Cilliza of CNN was one of the first taking the bait, noting, after she rejected Jordan and Banks, “Nancy Pelosi just doomed the already tiny chances of the 1/6 committee actually mattering.” As if the Republicans ever showed good faith in probing Jan. 6.
Republicans have been lying about the election results since before the election; they’ve lied about the insurrection since Jan. 6, at first claiming members of Antifa and Black Lives Matter led the riots, even though we all saw it on TV and the rioters were almost all White, many of the rioters wore Trump/MAGA paraphernalia and many of them were eventually caught by the FBI because they proclaimed on social media that they had gone to DC to overturn the election. Now Republican lawblockers are seeking to obstruct the investigation of who is responsible for the violent attacks on Capitol and Metro DC police, the storming of the Capitol during a joint session of Congress, attempts to find and capture members of Congress and the vice president during the riot, breaking into congressional offices and literally smearing their feces in Capitol hallways.
McCarthy has reversed his position from the week after the insurrection, when he said Trump “bears responsibility for [the Jan. 6] attack on Congress by mob rioters.”
McCarthy called Trump during the riots, asking him to speak out to stop the mob, but Trump was unmoved. “He should have immediately denounced the mob when he saw what was unfolding,” McCarthy said Jan. 13. “These facts require immediate action by President Trump to accept his share of responsibility, quell the brewing unrest and ensure President-elect Biden is able to successfully begin his term.”
At that time, McCarthy said he supported a censure resolution against Trump. Sen. Mitch McConnell, who was still Senate majority leader, also signaled his openness to conviction in the impeachment. But accountability for the outgoing president didn’t last long for either of them, and in the past six months other Republicans also have unified in obstruction of the investigation, as they realize the investigation will yield nothing good for their party. After McCarthy was summoned to Mar-A-Lago to meet with Trump Jan. 28, he returned chastened, with renewed loyalty to the Lost Cause of the Great Misleader.
When Democratic congressional leaders offered to give Republicans equal representation and share subpoena power on a joint committee to investigate Jan. 6, both McCarthy and McConnell rejected it, on the instructions of Trump, and the minority blocked it in the Senate with a filibuster May 28. So Pelosi got the House to authorize the select committee on a nearly party-line vote.
Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), one of seven Republican senators who voted to remove Trump from office in February, is retiring and doesn’t need to pander to Trump, but he joined the obstructionists July 25, as he said on CNN investigating Jan. 6 “is politically to the advantage of Democrats, to try to keep this issue in the forefront” and argued “it is a constant reminder about a terrible episode in our history ... rather than looking at the policies of the current President.”
(Tim O’Brien noted that this is the same Pat Toomey who pushed hard in 2012 and 2013 for the sham Benghazi investigation. “I have long supported a congressional investigation and want to get answers to important questions,” Toomey said back then.)
The Justice Department had arrested and charged 590 people in the Capitol insurrection as of July 23, but there are still plenty of questions to be answered. Among those questions:
• Who organized the Jan. 6 rally at the Ellipse, where Trump told the crowd to march on the Capitol?
• What role did Trump or the White House play in organizing the rally?
• What happened at a Jan. 5 meeting of Trump family members, Trump administration officials, Trump campaign advisers, Jan. 6 rally organizers and at least one US senator at the Trump International Hotel in Washington the night before the insurrection?
• Did members of Congress have communications with the insurrectionists? Who were they, and what role, if any, did they play? Did they give tours of the Capitol in the days before the insurrection?
• Did Trump prevent any law enforcement agency from responding to appeals for backup? Who was responsible for restricting the DC National Guard from responding to the riot?
• Was Vice President Mike Pence requested to overthrow the election results? What did he know about efforts to target him for refusing to steal the election? Did the vice president’s Secret Service security detail request assistance?
But the insurrection is not history. It’s not even over, as Trump is still rallying crowds with the Big Lies that ignited the insurrection, that Democrats “stole” the election. “In my opinion, there’s no way [Democrats] win election without cheating,” Trump said at a Phoenix rally July 24, even as Republican legislators across the country are fixing state laws to allow legislatures or courts to overturn elections. As Aaron Rupar of Vox.com noted, tweeted, “Irony just suffered a mortal wound.”
Trump still claims he’ll be returned to the White House after state-level “audits” of the 2020 election results, and he threatened that if Republican officials don’t amplify his claims about election fraud, Republican voters won’t want to vote for Republican candidates in future elections.
Trump and his Republican enablers must be held accountable. The House Select Committee must get the facts in public testimony and follow the facts where they lead. — JMC
From The Progressive Populist, August 15, 2021
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Copyright © 2021 The Progressive Populist
PO Box 819, Manchaca TX 78652
Selections from the August 15, 2021 issue
Chaos theory: When madness gains momentum
EDITORIAL
Pelosi keeps probe going
.
FRANK LINGO
A political ad we need now
DON ROLLINS
Complicating Roe: An intersectional approach
RURAL ROUTES/Margot McMillen
COVID’s back, but what about the bookshelves?
DISPATCHES
Republicans freak out because Delta variant they fostered is killing Republicans.
Doctor describes COVID-19 patients begging for vaccine.
Green energy shift would net 8M energy jobs.
Evictions, loss of unemployment aid threaten millions while COVID resurges.
Water is essential; companies trying to turn a buck on it are not.
Laredo celebrates wall termination.
Arizona lawmaker booed off stage by her own party.
Texas Senate says Klan had its good side.
Texas weighs sanctions against Ben & Jerry's overits boycott of Israeli settlers.
Union wins bargaining vote at Texas chicken plant ...
ART CULLEN
Rebuilding the food chain
ALAN GUEBERT
Riding the metal wave left by my iron-bending Uncle Honey
JILL RICHARDSON
Farm workers are dying. Blame our exploitative food system.
JOHN YOUNG
Comparing whom to Nazis?
RICHARD D. WOLFF
US underestimates China’s economic challenge at its own peril
ROBERT KUTTNER
When the chips are down, we need an industrial policy
TOM CONWAY
US must bolster retraining for workers harmed by unfair trade
SHAILLY GUPTA BARNES
Don’t go small on infrastructure
DOMENICA GHANEM
The mom and pop tax break
THOM HARTMANN
When does the greed stop?
ROBERTO RODRIGUEZ
A pandemic of disinformation continues to kill
SETH SANDRONSKY
California burning
BOB BURNETT
Global climate change
SAM URETSKY
Dealing with your emojis
GRASSROOTS/Hank Kalet
Pay now to ensure there is a later
WAYNE O’LEARY
Looking for the union label
JOHN BUELL
Our task is to transform, not predict
JASON SIBERT
Foreign policy and nukes
DICK POLMAN
Galileo would behold our climate change folly and say, ‘I’m not surprised.’
GARY PAUL NABHAM
Hard lessons from the border
SATIRE/Rosie Sorenson
What’s up with bats?
BOOK REVIEW/Heather Seggel
Getting out, coming out, moving on
ROB PATTERSON
Bletchley circle decodes crime again
ELISA McCARTIN
Rein in private equity before it destroys more jobs
MOVIE REVIEW/Ed Rampell
One solitary whale, heard for decades, never seen
MEDEA BENJAMIN and LEONARDO FLORES
Cubans are suffering. Biden need to end the embargo.
Friday, July 16, 2021
Editorial: Different Paths to Progress
Republicans’ hopes to return to power in Congress in 2022 and prevent President Joe Biden’s re-election in 2024 largely depend on blocking Democrats from accomplishing anything in the next year and a half. That’s why Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) was caught in a video as looking forward to “18 more months of chaos” so Republicans would have a shot at reclaiming Congress in the 2022 midterm election.
“For the next 18 months, our job is to do everything we can to slow all of that down to get to December of 2022 and then get in here and lead,” Roy said in a video recorded by a Democratic activist.
Roy added: “Nobody knows what anybody’s gonna do right now. That’s the thing; this is the problem. I actually say, ‘Thank you, Lord, 18 more months of chaos and the inability to get stuff done.’ That’s what we want.”
Roy, a former chief of staff to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), is a member of the ultra-conservative House Freedom Caucus but he committed the sin of voting, after the Capitol riots Jan. 6, to certify the election results that put Biden in the White House. After House Republicans stripped Rep. Lynn Cheney (R-Wyo.) of her third-ranking position in May, Roy sought to replace her but lost a bid to Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) after Trump not only endorsed Stefanik but called for Roy to face a primary opponent. So Roy is trying to climb back into good graces with the Trumpers.
In the Senate, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is pretty open about his intention to stop any progress. “One hundred percent of our focus is on stopping this new administration,” he said May 5. “We’re confronted with severe challenges from a new administration, and a narrow majority of Democrats in the House and a 50-50 Senate to turn America into a socialist country, and that’s 100 percent of my focus.”
Progressive Democrats are frustrated by the resistance of Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) to doing away with the filibuster so the slim Democratic majority in the Senate can proceed with bills that, among other things, would stop Republican legislatures from suppressing votes and allowing legislatures to set aside votes they don’t like.
Current Senate rules allow the minority to stop bills with a bloc of 41 or more senators, so Democrats would need to find at least 10 Republican senators to pass the “For the People Act,” and there are only a few that will even admit they are considering supporting portions of the bill that would re-enact and strengthen the Voting Rights Act.
Biden on June 24 announced a bipartisan $579 billion deal negotiated with moderate Republicans and Democratic senators that includes $309 billion for transportation, including $109 billion for roads, bridges and other “major projects”; $49 billion for public transit; $66 billion for passenger and freight rail; and $266 billion for other infrastructure, including water systems, broadband infrastructure, environmental remediation and power grids.
The bipartisan bill made substantial cuts from Biden’s American Jobs Plan, which proposed roughly $2.2 trillion in new infrastructure spending over the next eight years. Some of those items tossed from the bipartisan bill may have ended up in the $3.5 trillion budget package Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), chair of the Senate Budget Committee, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) got out of the Budget Committee (down from a $6 trillion wish list), which includes Medicare expansion, safety-net programs, green energy and other progressive agenda items, which would be passed in the reconciliation process, which only requires a simple majority for budget-related items.
Biden initially tied the bipartisan infrastucture passage to the success of the reconciliation bill, but he backed down on his veiled threat after criticism from Senate Republicans. But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told reporters that the lower chamber will not vote on bipartisan infrastructure legislation until the Senate also passes the reconciliation bill containing those Democratic priorities.
McConnell is trying to scuttle the bipartisan compromise. “The era of bipartisanship on this stuff is over … This is not going to be done on a bipartisan basis,” he said at an event in Kentucky. “This is going to be a hell of a fight over what this country ought to look like in the future and it’s going to unfold here in the next few weeks. I don’t think we’ve had a bigger difference of opinion between the two parties.”
In the meantime, Biden is trying accomplish as much as he can through executive orders. On July 9, Biden rejected the pro-monopoly world view of the last 40 years, issued 72 directives to over a dozen executive agencies, and created a council to make sure agencies do their job in rulemaking to achieve this vision.
“Biden directed agencies to use their rulemaking authority aggressively to stop corporate monopolies in agriculture, defense, pharma, banking, and tech—to name a few,” Zephyr Teachout noted at TheNation.com. “For instance, he directed the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to ban noncompete agreements, so that employers can’t trap employees but have to actually provide benefits that make them choose to stay. He ordered the Department of Agriculture to use its full power under the Packer and Stockyards Act to break the stranglehold of distributors and other corporate giants that crush farmers and farmworkers. He directed the Consumer Financial Protection Board to issue a rule that would allow bank customers to take their financial transaction data with them to a new bank. He directed federal health officials to enable importation of cheaper drugs from Canada in a direct confrontation with Big Pharma.”
Biden’s appointment of LIna Khan as chair of the Federal Trade Commission was also a move in that direction of realigning the Democratic Party back to the New Deal era of the 1930s through the ’70s, when the party stood for workers, small businesses and producers against the “middlemen” and corporate monopolists. “They understood that anti-monopoly laws were partly about keeping prices down—but also about preserving equality and dignity, and making sure that everyone who contributed to the production of goods and services got a fair cut,” Teachout wrote.
After the Reagan and Bush administrations increased corporate power at the expense of unions and other Democratic constituencies, some Democratic officials were co-opted by advocates of monopolization and offshoring industry. “Since Bill Clinton became president, corporate Democrats have been in the driver’s seat when it comes to economic policy, and shut down all dissenters in the antimonopoly policy, Teachout wrote. One key anti-monopoly question remains for the president: his choice as assistant attorney general for the Antitrust Division. “Biden has a chance to be the first trust-busting presidency in over 50 years—and we keep getting strong signals that he’s got it in his sights. That’s great news for workers, for small businesses, and for the small communities that have been left out in the collapsing concentration of our country for the last 50 years. He’s well on his way, but a strong appointment at the Department of Justice would go a long way towards finishing the job.”
That, and strong jobs and infrastructure bills should put the Democrats in good shape to keep their majority in the House and add to their Senate majority. And if McConnell manages to derail the bipartisan compromise, he might just finally convinces Manchin and Sinema that the filibuster is a corrupt relic that is used to stop good bills — such as the For the People Act that would stop voter suppression tactics being enacted by Republican legislatures. — JMC
From The Progressive Populist, August 1, 2021
Blog | Current Issue | Back Issues | Essays | Links
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Copyright © 2021 The Progressive Populist
PO Box 819, Manchaca TX 78652
Selections from the August 1, 2021 issue
GOP threatens American Democracy as Trumpers press for voter suppression
EDITORIAL
Different paths to progress
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
DON ROLLINS
College athletes: One step closer
RURAL ROUTES/Margot McMillen
Justice for black farmers
DISPATCHES
Biden fires Trump’s Social Security boss.
CPAC has become the place Republicans go to scare themselves sillier.
A sanctions hearing on the baseless ‘Kraken’ lawsuit ws a disaster for Trump’s lawyers.
Black Texan arrested on felony charges for voting in 2020 primary while fraudulent White voters get wrists slapped.
Eviction tsunami looms despite $46 million in rental relief.
Trump's tariffs caused drop in exports that hasn't recoverd. ...
ART CULLEN
Crisis breeds bipartisanship
ALAN GUEBERT
Ag politics of being agriculturally apolitical
JILL RICHARDSON
A dangerous moment for academic freedom
JOHN YOUNG
A valedictory about pride — and prejudice
THOM HARTMANN
How the Reagan revolution collapsed America & the Florida condos
JOEL D. JOSEPH
Water in all the wrong places
TOM CONWAY
Closing the digital divide will strengthen America and help US workers
DICK POLMAN
Yo, Delta dolts: Is it worth getting sick or dead just to own the libs?
SARAH ANDERSON
Now’s the time to unrig the tax code
ROBERTO RODRIGUEZ
How to teach race in Brown
GRASSROOTS/Hank Kalet
The abortion wars
HEALTH CARE/Joan Retsinas
Hospitals: When Wall Street steps in
SAM URETSKY
Republicans think America can’t handle truth
JAMES M. CULLEN
The world was his country
WAYNE O’LEARY
Clawing back the giveaways
JOHN BUELL
We’re here because you were there
FRANK LINGO
Budging Big Oil
BOOK REVIEW/Kristian Williams
Abuse by police is an international problem
KAREN DOLAN
Historic relief for American families is on its way to your bank account
BOOK REVIEW/Heather Seggel
With Amazon, resistance isn’t futile
ROB PATTERSON
Tina Turner survived turbulent times with class and dignity
SETH SANDRONSKY
Harlem’s forgotten festival
MOVIE REVIEW/Ed Rampell
Freewheeling: Wheelchair-bound for glory
SATIRE/Rosie Sorenson
Dueling Jax
GENE NICHOL
Supreme Court joins the fight against Democracy