Saturday, November 16, 2024

Editorial: What to Expect from Trump 2.0

 Joe Biden actually did a great job steering the economic recovery after Donald Trump mismanaged the COVID pandemic. Biden got the vaccines out, resolved supply chain disruptions, got manufacturing back on track and the economy grew 16 million new jobs. Gross domestic product grew 15.5% while unemployment dropped to a 50-year low. But grocery bills were still too high. 

So, rather than elect Biden’s protégé, Vice President Kamala Harris, voters turned to the disgraced former president, who botched the pandemic response, as 450,000 Americans died from COVID-19 in his final year in office. The U.S. death toll was 40% higher than the average of other wealthy nations in the Group of Seven.. He presided over the loss of 2.7 million jobs and, after he lost the 2020 election to Biden, Trump claimed Democrats stole the election. He inspired a violent assault on the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to stop certification of the results. Trump was later indicted by federal prosecutor Jack Smith for his role in the Capitol attack and by Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney Fani Willis for his attempt to subvert Georgia election results. 

During his four years off the job, Trump was found liable for rape and fraud and he was convicted in New York of 34 felonies in connection with his misuse of business records to cover up a 2016 payment to stop Stormy Daniels from discussing her sexual relationship with Trump while Melania was nursing their infant son. But voters were willing to give the adulterous con man another chance, and he carried 31 states, including all seven swing states, to win a second term with 50.4% of the popular vote and a 312-226 margin in the Electoral College. Once again, as H.L. Mencken predicted in 1920, “The White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”

But the moron can do a lot of damage. Trump plans to replace the Affordable Care Act with a yet-to-be-determined concept. He’ll put inflationary tariffs on imported goods and seek to repeal the CHIPS Act, which Democrats passed in 2022 to provide $52.7 billion to promote computer chips research and manufacturing and strengthen US supply chain resilience. Also targeted is the Inflation Reduction Act, which Democrats passed in 2022 to let Medicare negotiate reduced prescription drug prices, and promoted domestic energy production, including clean energy resources to address climate change.

Trump has promised he won’t mess with Social Security and Medicare and other sacrosanct institutions, but writers of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 to reshape the federal government seem to have other ideas, and Trump tried to undermine Social Security in his first term. He certainly won’t promote clean energy.

Trump has demanded that Republicans let him make recess appointments of Cabinet members and federal judges, who would serve without Senate approval because he apparently believes even Republicans won’t be able to stomach some of his choices. He also has proposed to pull the U.S. back from overseas alliances, reverse longstanding health rules, prosecute his political adversaries and round up millions of immigrants living in the country illegally.

Trump also will try to replace as many as 50,000 career civil servants with political loyalists. At the end of his first term, he issued an executive order to replace senior civil servants, but Biden rescinded the order, so it has never been tested in court.

Brett Meiselas, co-founder of the MeidasTouch Network, noted Nov. 10 that Trump voters already were experiencing “buyer’s remorse” in the days after the election, as they considered how Trump’s proposed tariffs and other proposed policy changes would affect them directly.

In the hours after the election, data from Google Trends showed, searches for terms like “change my vote” and “are tariffs bad” surged, particularly in key battleground states, such as Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and North Carolina. Meiselas pointed to these searches as an indicator of the swift realization among voters about the potential consequences of Trump’s trade policies. Many Trump supporters mistakenly believed that tariffs would financially impact foreign producers rather than U.S. businesses and consumers—a misconception now being addressed as businesses adjust to expected cost increases.

The economic realities of tariffs are quickly setting in for small business owners, many of whom are directly affected. Meiselas noted an anonymous statement on social media that reported employees of a small manufacturing company in Pennsylvania were told they would not get holiday bonuses as the company hoped to buy a year’s worth of products before Jan. 21, when prices are expected to increase due to tariffs. The company’s president reportedly had to explain to workers what tariffs are and how they function, revealing a widespread misunderstanding of the economic policy.

For larger companies, the impact of tariffs is no less stark. Automotive companies like Nissan and Stellantis are already bracing for cost increases and have announced impending layoffs to mitigate anticipated losses. CNN recently highlighted that prices of common goods are expected to rise as companies pass along the cost of tariffs to consumers. Leaders from major U.S. corporations, including AutoZone, have confirmed that price increases are on the way, with some anticipating hikes as early as next year, MeidasTouch noted.

Trump’s plans to order immediate deportation of immigrants, including many who are awaiting review of their applications for asylum, are causing distress for immigrants who supported Trump. Meiselas told of a Trump supporter from Guatemala who underestimated the likelihood that Trump’s policies would jeopardize his status, a realization echoed by business leaders who rely on immigrant labor and are now bracing for challenges in finding workers to replace those who are taken from jobsites. 

Inflation in groceries was noted in 2020 through 2022 as the nation struggled with the pandemic. Big bacon producers like Smithfield Foods and Tyson Foods closed plants in spring 2020 after thousands of workers got sick and some died, Fast Company noted. 

Plant closures led to shortages as home-bound Americans were shopping for more breakfast bacon. Bacon prices peaked in October 2022 at $7.60 a pound, up 30% from October 2019. By September 2024, bacon averaged $6.95 a pound, a reduction of 8.5%. 

Eggs were impacted by avian flu in 2022-23, as the average price of a dozen large eggs rose from $1.46 in January 2021 to a peak of $4.82 in January 2023, but dropped 20% to $3.82 in September 2024. 

Immigrant sweeps are likely to have a big impact on agriculture and food processing. Mass deportations won’t make bacon or eggs any cheaper and are more likely to reverse the relatively modest reductions that were achieved under Biden. 

Employers of undocumented immigrants who think Trump was just kidding about the mass deportations will find out soon enough. 

Trump wants to scare us, but in two years we’ll get a chance to hold Trump-enabling Republicans in Congress accountable. In addition to all House members, 21 Republican senators and 13 Democrats will be up for election, including a special election for the seat Vice President-elect J.D. Vance is giving up. The 2026 election will be our opportunity to make Trump a lame duck. — JMC

From The Progressive Populist, December 1, 2024


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Copyright © 2024 The Progressive Populist

Selections from the December 1, 2024 issue

 COVER/Molly ReddenAndy Kroll and Nick Surgey

‘Put them in trauma’: Inside a key MAGA leader’s plans for a new Trump agenda

EDITORIAL
What to expect from Trump 2.0

JIM HIGHTOWER
Can our elections be made even more vapid? Some are banking on it | Bezos bombs in his role as newspaper owner | The shame of TD Bank’s jolly bankers | CEOs show us how to raise everyone’s pay | Lilly Ledbetter fought the bastards — and won for all of us | Yes, the system is rigged against the working class

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

DON ROLLINS
Remember the poor

RURAL ROUTES/Margot McMillen
Lessons from the election

DISPATCHES
Biden and Democrats are already fighting Trump’s second administration.
Unions say building worker power is only way to defeat Trump’s fascist right.
Progressive forces vow ‘unprecedented resistance’ to Trump 2.0.
Crypto’s $40 million defeat of pro-worker Sen. Sherrod Brown called ‘obscene.’
After $16 billion election, nonprofit tracking money in politics lays off 1/3 of staff.
Wall Street giddy over merger boom as Trump expected to fire Lina Khan.
US postal workers fight massive service cuts.
GOP prepares to shed rules to give Trump his radical cabinet.
Trump spokesperson affirms Day 1 plans for mass deportaton.

ART CULLEN 
Waiting and wondering

ALAN GUEBERT 
Buy more deck chairs or chart a different course

SARAH ANDERSON
State victories against inequality to celebrate despite bleak election day

JOHN YOUNG 
The horse is right where I left it

SABRINA HAAKE 
Trump didn’t win. Disinformation did. First Amendment law needs to catch up with weaponized social media

ELWOOD WATSON 
What about Trump’s mental fitness? 

GENE NICHOL
Getting back in the fight

GRASSROOTS/Hank Kalet
Mourn first, then organize

FRANK LINGO 
80 Great songs from 80 years of rock ‘n’ roll


ROBERT KUTTNER 
Tales from the crypt

THOM HARTMANN  
The great dismatling: Trump’s coming attack on America’s economic backbone


SONALI KOLHATKAR 
Trump and Musk are a match leading us to hell

THE BIG PICTURE/Glynn Wilson 
Trump rocks the free world, stunning the American establishment again in apparent Electoral College win

HEALTH CARE/Joan Retsinas  
A mini fine for an airline; a major victory for the disabled

SAM URETSKY 
Getting Jeff Bezos’ attention

JOE CONASON 
Meet Jack D. Ripper, the new health czar

WAYNE O’LEARY 
The donors

LES LEOPOLD
Why did the Democrats lose? Because they gave up on the working class 40 years ago

JUAN COLE
Trump would be an ‘extinction-level event’ for the planet, turbocharging climate change

EGBERTO WILLIES
It isn’t Kamala Harris who failed. It is America that showed the world who we are.

JAMIE STIEHM 
A long time comin’: On history’s clock

BARRY FRIEDMAN 
Election night in America

SATIRE/Rosie Sorenson  
The battle of the billionaire bros

RALPH NADER 
Electing an American Fuhrer as Wall Street cheers and soars

WENDY KEEFOVER and KRISTIN COMBS 
Grizzly 399 was a bear for the ages

ROB PATTERSON
Don’t fall for music snobbery

BOOK REVIEW/Seth Sandronsky
Reformation and liberation

FILM REVIEW/Ed Rampell 
“Unstoppable” is an unbelievable, upbeat biopic


AMY GOODMAN 
Hatred and racism: Trump’s ominous closing argument

From The Progressive Populist, December 1, 2024


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Thursday, October 31, 2024

Hitler's Halloween by Kevin Kreneck

 


Hitler's Halloween:

Trump's recent hate filled rhetoric and threats to use military force against those who disagree with him have reminded all of us just how much he and his campaign have borrowed from the Nazi Party of old.

Trump's not just a Fascist. Trump is a Nazi.

For more Graphics and Greeting Cards, go to: https://kkreneck.wixsite.com/mysite


Friday, October 25, 2024

Editorial: Time to Crush Trumpism

The election is too close for comfort, but there’s no turning back. It’s time to vote, not only to save democracy, but also to crush Big Lie Trumpism, which has transformed the Republican Party into a personality cult operating as a subsidiary of the convicted felon’s Trump Organization. 

In the closing weeks of the campaign, Vice President Kamala Harris has been indefatigably traveling across the country seeking to display her qualifications for office and her plans to put the middle class and small businesses at the heart of the US “opportunity economy.” Her proposals include a $6,000 tax credit for families during the first year of a child’s life; a $3,600 tax credit per child for working families; and holding off from increasing taxes on households with less than $400,000 of annual income.

Her economic proposals also include a $25,000 tax credit and other incentives for first-time home buyers, expanding a small business creation tax break, while taxing long-term capital gains for wealthy individuals at 28%, universal childcare and paid family leave, and enacting a federal ban on corporate price gouging. She also proposes to include home health care as part of Medicare, which would help seniors, as well as their children who otherwise would face the financial burden of caring for their elderly parents. In contrast Trump plans to renew tax cuts for billionaires, cut corporate tax rates and impose tariffs to protect US companies from foreign competition and raise the costs of imported goods in the U.S.

The right-leaning Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) analyzed Trump’s economic proposals and found that, if enacted, Trump’s agenda would worsen Social Security finances by $2.3 trillion over 10 years, requiring a 35% benefit cut in 2035.

Trump has threatened to strip TV networks of their right to broadcast news because of coverage he doesn’t like, regardless of First Amendment protections of the press and news media. 

“CBS should lose its license,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. “60 Minutes should be immediately taken off the air.” He has repeated his demands in speeches and in interviews, echoing his earlier calls for ABC’s license to be “terminated” because of his displeasure with how the network handled his debate against Kamala Harris.

On Oct. 20, Trump ratcheted up his threats against CBS. “We’re going to subpoena their records,” he told Fox News in an interview, repeating his claim that the network’s edit of Harris’s recent appearance on “60 Minutes” was misleading. Asked if revoking a broadcast license was a “drastic punishment,” Trump did not answer directly, instead lobbing a string of insults at Harris, whom he called “incompetent” and “a Marxist,” The New York Times reported.

Broadcast networks like ABC, CBS and NBC do not actually need licenses to produce or publish news content. But local affiliate stations that carry network broadcasts do need licenses, which are overseen by the Federal Communications Commission. The FCC is independent from the White House, but a commissioner appointed by Trump, Nathan Simington, wrote on X, “Interesting. Big if true.” Trump later shared a screenshot of Simington’s post on Truth Social.

Since 2022, Trump has issued more than 100 threats to investigate, prosecute, imprison or otherwise punish his perceived opponents, including President Joe Biden, NPR reported.

Trump has repeatedly indicated he would use federal law enforcement as part of a campaign to exact “retribution.”

Trump also has suggested he would use military tribunals to try his political opponents, including former U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, and use the military to round up immigrants, regardless of the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits the use of military for law enforccement.

Meanwhile, Trump has been increasingly erratic as he has cut back his rallies and interviews, showed signs of mental lapses, such as when he shut down audience questions at a “town hall” and instead shuffled aimlessly to music for 39 minutes. He also baselessly slurs Harris’s intellectual capabilities and continues to lie shamelessly about activities of the Federal Emergency Management Agency in response to Hurricane Helene, which resulted in threats against FEMA workers in North Carolina. 

A 12-minute ramble on the late golfer Arnold Palmer, at an Oct. 19 rally in Palmer’s hometown of Latrobe, Pa., concluded with a tribute to the golfer’s penis. “Arnold Palmer was all man, and I say that in all due respect to women, and I love women,” Trump said. “But this guy, this guy—this is a guy that was all man. This man was strong and tough, and I refuse to say it, but when he took showers with the other pros, they came out of there, they said, ‘Oh my God. That’s unbelievable.’ I had to say it. I had to say it.”

Trump sought to burnish his credentials with White supremacists Oct. 18 when he said on Fox News Abraham Lincoln was “probably a great president,” but he could have been better if he had “settled” the Civil War by cutting a deal with the South.

He was returning to a theme he brought up during the primary campaign, when he said history could have been different, if only Lincoln had read “The Art of the Deal.” “The Civil War was so fascinating, so horrible,” Trump said at a January event in Newton, Iowa. “So many mistakes were made. See, there was something I think could have been negotiated, to be honest with you. I think you could have negotiated that. All the people died, so many people died. You know, that was the disaster.”

Civil War historian Charles B. Dew noted in the Tampa Bay Times Jan. 13 that Trump was talking nonsense. When Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated on March 4, 1861, seven states of the Deep South already had left the Union. Beginning with South Carolina on Dec. 20, 1860, and ending with Texas on Feb. 1, 1861, these states (which also included Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana) had sent delegates to a constitutional convention in Montgomery, Alabama, and formed the Confederate States of America, with a provisional president, Jefferson Davis of Mississippi, and Vice president Alexander H. Stephens of Georgia and a Confederate army had been rapidly assembled from state militia units. Confederate forces amassed heavy ordnance that threatened Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor before Lincoln’s inauguration.

On April 12, 1861, Confederate forces fired on Fort Sumter and two days later, with supplies nearly exhausted and his troops outnumbered, Union Major Robert Anderson surrendered Fort Sumter to Brig. Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard’s Confederate forces. Anderson and his men were allowed to sail to New York. Six more Southern states joined the Confederacy. Both the North and South mobilized for war, which lasted four years, cost the lives of more than 620,000 Americans, and freed 3.9 million enslaved people from bondage. Many in the South still can’t deal with it. — JMC

From The Progressive Populist, November 15, 2024


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Selections from the November 15, 2024 issue

 COVER/Wren Opperman

and Molly Egan/The Daily Yonder
Alternative voices/alternative reality: How does talk radio affect Pennsylvania rural voters? 

EDITORIAL
Time to crush Trumpism

JIM HIGHTOWER
Sordid story: Corporate executives get self-gratification from M&As | Holy Donald Trump! An Oklahoma Bibles story | To fight right-wing book bans, read banned books! | Isn’t it odd that public officials support corporate price gouging?  

FRANK LINGO 
Trump’s willing executioners 

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

DON ROLLINS 
Cussing comes to CNN

RURAL ROUTES/Margot McMillen 
Keep your eyes on the prize, voters

DISPATCHES 
Conservative think tank finds Trump plans would wreck Social Security.
Trump and his allies try to rally early vote, while crying fraud.
Trump also wants to destroy American education system.
Central Park 5 Sue Trump for defamation.
Boeing union wins contract with 35% hike.
Harris edges Trump on economic positions.
Trump used D.C. hotel to enrich himself, fleeced taxpayers while president: probe ...


ART CULLEN
What do pork, quartz and saline solution have in common? 

ALAN GUEBERT 
Big mac bites big meat over alleged ‘artificially higher prices’


SONALI KOLHATKAR
Scapegoating immigrants hurts all of us — except elites

JOHN YOUNG 
Down the stretch in a cloud of lies

CLAIRE CARLSON and LANE WENDELL FISCHER
Walz assails ag monopolies and touts healthcare policy in speech on rural plan 

DICK POLMAN 
The sultan of stupid strikes again! This time, he flunked the most basic mathematics

JOE CONASON 
Trump, Musk and the hideous campaign of hate


A.J. SCHUMANN 
Who’s reallyl a populist? Henry Wallace set the standard

LES LEOPOLD 
135.9 million reasons why the working class is so angry

ELWOOD WATSON 
Obama’s condescending message to Black men


ROBERT KUTTNER 
How hurricanes are a profit center for insurers

THOM HARTMANN  
No one has ever been as dangerous to America as Trump — it can happen here


SABRINA HAAKE 
Oil billionaires, not taxpayers, should pay for climate destruction


THE BIG PICTURE/Glynn Wilson 
Lilly Ledbetter of Alabama, champion of pay equality, dies at 86

HEALTH CARE/Joan Retsinas  
Cruelty cloaked in morality

SAM URETSKY 
Be wary of covid ‘cures’

SATIRE/Rosie Sorenson
True grift

WAYNE O’LEARY
Crumbling wall of ivy

JOEL D. JOSEPH 
Ten simple things you can do to reduce plastic pollution

SETH SANDRONSKY 
Reviewing ‘Rez Ball’

JUAN COLE 
Blinken and Austin scold Netanyahu over Gaza atrocities, playing cynical presidential politics

N. GUNASEKARAN 
Taxing corporations for social, economic justice

LEW KINGSBURY 
Lawsuit challenges restrictions on church political activities

JAMIE STIEHM 
Waves and walls higher for Harris’ catwalk

BARRY FRIEDMAN 
The Trump biopsy


RALPH NADER
Last clear chances for November


JONATHAN THOMPSON 
Wyoming shoots itself in the foot

ROB PATTERSON 
The family helps Willie Nelson keep going

RED SCHOMBURG
The tipped wage system is failing us. Removing taxes on tips won’t save it. 

ED RAMPELL 
When John and Yoko seized TV


AMY GOODMAN 
Medical workers demand a ceasefire in Gaza

GENE NICHOL 
A finale

From The Progressive Populist, November 15, 2024


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The Trump-Witch:

 

The Trump-Witch:

The Trump campaign is attempting to conger up the impression of a failed socioeconomic, dystopian world. According to Trump, it was created by the Biden administration and can only be remedied by the Nazi police state described in the Project 2025 manifesto. 


Art by Kevin Kreneck. For more Graphics and Greeting Cards, go to: https://kkreneck.wixsite.com/mysite

The Hollow Party

Trump has essentially hollowed out the Republican Party. It stands for nothing. 

Instead, Trump has replaced its values with those expressed in the Project 2025 Manifesto. Project 2025 would replace our republic with an authoritarian regime - a police state.


Art by Kevin Kreneck. For more Graphics and Greeting Cards, go to: https://kkreneck.wixsite.com/mysite