Today offered yet more evidence that Biden’s rejection of the Republicans’ supply-side economics in favor of investing in ordinary Americans is paying off with high growth, low unemployment, and strong wages. Today’s jobs report from the U.S. Department of Labor for the month of March showed higher job growth than analysts anticipated. Instead of the 214,000 jobs expected, the U.S. added 303,000. The government also revised its estimate of job growth in January and February upward by a combined number of 22,000. President Joe Biden noted that this report meant that the administration had created more than 15 million jobs since he took office.
Heather's relentless pursuit of knowledge and her willingness to explore new ideas without hesitation is inspiring. Her contributions not only enrich our understanding but also encourage others to embrace curiosity and intellectual rigor.
Thank you, Heather, for your unwavering commitment to excellence and your fearless pursuit of truth!
I agree! It is amazing that Dr. Richardson is a University Professor, writes books, interviews President Biden(twice), and writes this newsletter on a continual basis.
Every once in a while, when the Country is in dire straits the right people come along to save our Democratic form of Government. Dr. Richardson and President Joe Biden are just two of those people.
Importantly and with the facts, in today's Letter, HCR, pointed to the contribution of Immigration, of the IMMIGRANTS! to the US' economy.
'The unemployment rate was also good, dropping slightly to 3.8% in March. According to economist Steven Rattner of Morning Joe, the United States has now had 26 consecutive months—more than two years—of unemployment under 4%, the longest stretch of unemployment that low since the late 1960s.'
'Rattner pointed out that immigrants have helped to push U.S. growth since the pandemic by adding millions of new workers to the labor market. As native-born workers have aged into retirement, immigrants have taken their places and' “been essential to America’s post-COVID labor market recovery.” (Letter)
'How immigration has powered America’s miraculous job market growth' (Sources: Bloomberg and 'Chartbook' a substack newsletter from Adam Tooze)
'It’s the kind of headline that the worst people alive will probably warp to fit their narratives, but Goldman Sachs thinks that the answer to some puzzling US economic data is a jump in immigration. US economic growth was far stronger than most people expected last year, thanks to some absolutely monster jobs reports and consumer spending that made a mockery of fears that bad vibes might cause a recession. However, despite robust job creation the US unemployment rate has actually edged up from a five-decade low of 3.4 per a year ago to 3.9 per cent. At the same time, employment surveys of companies and households have been diverging sharply, further confounding many economists. Goldman Sachs reckons that the answer to “one of the biggest puzzles of the last year” is a sharp increase in net immigration, which has increased the size of the American labour force and enhanced US economic growth potential. Recent studies suggest that Census data used for the household survey of the employment report understated immigration in 2023. We estimate that immigration was 1½mn above the trend of roughly 1mn per year in 2023, which implies an 80k boost to the monthly breakeven rate of job growth to 155k. We expect immigration to be about 1mn higher than usual this year, implying breakeven job growth of around 125k and a 0.3pp boost to potential GDP growth in 2024 from faster labor force growth. The result is that Goldman — already one of the more optimistic investment banks on Wall Street — is once again lifting its actual US growth forecast for 2024.'
NO surprise here. Immigrants coming to the US can be expected to earn $30,000 a year at a minimum ($15/hour 40 hours a week = $600 but most work a lot more than 40 hours a week and often hold two jobs so that even a lower pay rate yields dollar income).
We have had about 1.5 legal immigrants and as many as 1.5-3.0 others (asylum seekers, illegal, or undocumented immigrants) per year. If you add 10 million every 5 years, the GDP impact is a base of $300 billion and if you use a multiplier (how many times the money circulates in the economy and results in the purchase and delivery of goods and services) of 3 you get $0.9 trillion.
Keeping in mind that much of the earnings of immigrants are not reported, the overall effect on the economy is probably even bigger. Here are some numbers from macrotrends:
U.S. gdp for 2022 was $25,462.70B, a 9.21% increase from 2021.
U.S. gdp for 2021 was $23,315.08B, a 10.71% increase from 2020.
U.S. gdp for 2020 was $21,060.47B, a 1.5% decline from 2019.
U.S. gdp for 2019 was $21,380.98B, a 4.13% increase from 2018.
The St. Louis Fed reports 2023 GDP or almost $28 trillion.
Think about it. Canada accepted over a million immigrants and refugees last year, in a country of 40 million. Imagine what that will add to the economy.
Not that much actually. You have to break down the immigrants to show how many are of working age and actually employed or productive in other measurable ways. If the one million represent families, you'd have to break those down by how many are working, and how many minors or elderly. Canada's GDP for 2024 is roughly $2.3-2.5 trillion. Even if you generously assume the $2.5 trillion number and 100% working and productive immigrants, and further that they will each contribute a pro rata and equivalent to GDP, at most you get a $575 billion additur. This is not necessarily trifling, but in the real world, you are probably looking at $200 billion and maybe $300 billion optimistically.
One of the things people forget when talking about the value of immigrants is that at least at the outset, there are HUGE expenses associated with amalgamating immigrants into a new culture.
It is also not valid to extrapolate from the US experience because we get a very large number of high skilled and entrepreneurial immigrants as compared with most other countries.
Fern, 100% of the increase in employment was part time. Imagine that. We still have Open Borders. Illegal immigration. We started a war in the Ukraine and a half a million are dead. War has ignited in the Middle East and the administration of the Elite has turned on the one Democracy in the region. I guess they had it coming no? And our debt, cumulative inflation and deficit have skyrocketed to unimaginable levels. Otherwise, if you take it from Heather, things are A OK . But hope runs eternal no? ;)
Everything good that Biden tries to do, MAGA Mike and his Republican henchmen try to block in their roles as handmaidens to Treacherous-treasonous-tantruming-traitor-Trump and as proxies for Putin. I wish them to implode further.
What's mind-numbing is that the low-to-middle-income side of the GOP base cares zero that their billionaires "pay an average of 8.2% [in] federal taxes" while they are paying 2 to 3+ times that to make up for it. HCR's knowledge of history always so beautifully shows us how the GOP has always used their culture wars of hate on racism, gender, immigration, religion, socialism, even foreign policy to disguise that they are forever fleecing even their own to make a buck. The lie of "trickle down" covers the reality that it actually "floods up".
Will Rogers knew on Nov 26, 1932 “Mr. Hoover didn’t know that money trickled up.” But Reagan knew in 1981 when he resurrected that scheme… a deliberate scam on the workers at the bottom and a windfall for the takers at the top. The junk bond fiasco of the later 80’s was proof enough.
I recently saw a device depicted that the Roman Catholics used during the Inquisition to crush the hands of those writers and artists who wrote and drew things that the Vatican didn't like. Reagan essentially did the same thing in a sense - he used the tax laws and the power of his position to crush the economic lives of everyday Americans. The war between capital and labor goes on, with capital now having the upper hand.
Yes, Richard, and the Inquisition was a golden opportunity to grab wealth from those you envied by making accusations. Now we just have hedge funds buying up everything and making life difficult for many lesser folks.
I was rereading Ken Follett's A Column of Fire, set in 1558-1605, where the Catholic Church and the Protestants can be so cruel to each other depending which faith the Monarchy supports. They burnt, drawed and quartered, beheaded, stretched on the rack, cut body parts off unanesthetised of course, etc... Yeech. It is mainly the Catholics at first, but the extremes of each group are just vicious. I agree about Reagan. When he became president I was in shock that Americans could vote someone basically for his star power into office even if he had done some seemingly good things as governor of California. I am so grateful that Biden finally is turning Reaganomics around. Yay!
In Spain, the Inquisition was established as a means of making money for the Spanish crown. Even saints like Teresa of Avila and Juan de la Cruz were wrongly regarded with suspicion. Spain ruined itself by expelling Jews from Spain, and as a Catholic it makes me ashamed they did so. Many headed for the Ottoman Empire, where they contributed to Ottoman prosperity and could openly practice their faith, despite having dhimmi status. Religious persecution often causes the persecuted to cling more to their faith. That was true under the penal laws in Ireland and England as well.
Richard, thank you. We can trace the demise of the average person and families to Reagan the petty, lazy minded , punch down charmer. He gave us the “ Welfare Queen “ and the beginning of union busting. George H W Bush nailed it “ voodoo economics “. Many people never experienced the US economy before Reagan and his buddies began trickling down on the opportunity it offered the common person.And those that do remember are constantly being gaslighted into wondering if it was just our imaginations. Believing is seeing. And they rub our noses in it.
Pres. G.W. Bush (an amateur narcissist when compared to TFFG) was correct when at the White House Correspondents' Dinner on 3/31/2001 he said: "You can fool some of the people all of the time, and those are the ones you want to concentrate on." Thomas Frank researched and proved this point in his 2004 book, "What's the Matter with Kansas?"
"Reagan's revolution" was indeed the point in time that 'all that' accelerated into high gear. Actual revolutions by and for the "haves" in our nation happened again and again following our major wars that had to be paid for by someone. Reagan's 'revolution' was an adoption of a revolution of, by, and for the "haves" from WW2 bill resolution. WW2 bill resolution added steam to resentments of the "haves" from resolutions costs of WW1 and the Great Depression - all of course 'blamed' upon dems to their 'flock.' The flock then spreads the stated disease of disinformation onward to those less educated; add in other large constituencies, stir well, and therein you can see the growing constituencies, and leadership 'coalitions' who strive to produce the foul, misinformed "stew" we suffer today. >>*edit* > As I read further down, I can't help but to re-offer a quotation by GW Bush, offered to us by our fellow Richard Sutherland elsewhere in this string, where he offers this direct quotation; what you need to know is that 'this' quotation 'is' the gop leadership coalition's thoughts and approach to all elections. To whit: "Pres. G.W. Bush (an amateur narcissist when compared to TFFG) was correct when at the White House Correspondents' Dinner on 3/31/2001 he said: "You can fool some of the people all of the time, and those are the ones you want to concentrate on." Thomas Frank researched and proved this point in his 2004 book, "What's the Matter with Kansas?"
Even at 17 I was able to see what Reaganomics would do, destroy the middle class to enrich the wealthy. Unfortunately, not too many wanted to see it. It’s not a surprise to me we’ve reached the point where some plutocrats and the Republicans themselves have come to believe that self-government is no longer desirable to them. This is actually what we’re up against, and manufacturers are engaging in greedflation and price hikes at the pump. They want to have us vote in a sociopath and narcissist who will destroy our republic for good and give them permanent control.
You were a wise teen, some oldsters in my family still haven't figured it out. They were like me, born poor, and had a struggle to make a decent life. Still they think the prosperity gospel is what Jesus advocated. And they can read...
Pastor Jim Wallis, author of the book, "The False White Gospel" said it perfectly. "If it's not good news for the poor, it's heresy. Period."
People mistakenly have believed that the morbidly wealthy will invest their tax cut funds and huge profits in their companies to generate more innovation, jobs, etc. But the morbidly rich don't do that; they buy back stock instead, a practice that used to be considered stock manipulation, which was illegal.
Nothing about supply-side, "voodoo" economics was good news for the poor or middle classes. It was and is reverse Robin Hood economics, stealing from the poor to further enrich the already rich.
I wasn’t poor, but times were hard for us economically then, and my dad had lost at least 2 jobs, and my mother was pregnant with my youngest brother at the time.
My family has never bought into the prosperity gospel, and I think it only works for people like Joel Osteen who sell it. People on fixed incomes send money they can ill afford to people like Osteen and the various televangelists, and it’s no wonder Osteen and televangelists can have such ostentatious lifestyles.
So true, my poor aunt (96) was sending five dollars to every idiot that sent her a "begging" letter. I said please don't do that, it's rich people stealing your money. She couldn't believe that people would lie about poor children. She was from another era.
Milton Friedman also deliberately ignored the spillover consequences of pursuit of shareholder benefit at any cost would have upon our communities. The decline of American manufacturing matters greatly, not only to the communities who lose the jobs, but to the nation as a whole. It leaves great social destruction in its wake.
".... at any cost..." needs placed in some stronger terms somehow Kathy, as it explains so much about the depths and pain of this "race to the bottom" we find ourselves caught within. If "race to the bottom" sounds familiar, it should; Ross Perot sounded that alarm when we approached the NAFTA agreement. He was right, as I soundly agreed at the time. Too much was ignored; 'fast track' of any sort will always ignore too much, and certainly did. The gop leadership deep thinkers laid a clever trap that dems and progressives, who themselves were certain 'they' were the smartest folks in any room, walked right into. Since then, in the privacy of their "self affirming echo chambers" they blame it all on dems, progressives, and lefties. It worked, and moreso because democrats insist on abandoning truth, honesty, and plain dealing, fearing that answers are "too complicated." Sadly, that's where we are still at this moment in time. I fear that if dems don't break out with an extreme case of honesty and forthcoming, even at the great risk of losing, election '24 will be in doubt. Our trade agreements so very deeply harmed the greatest majority of the U.S. psyche, dems may never win back the faith they so badly need to regain of those who saw family generations egregiously harmed economically and it seems irreparably. I'm not in the least being hyperbolic in all this and have not been; I just couldn't get anyone to listen - for decades now. Another related trap has dems merrily skipping to their dooms right now.. One can't help those who won't listen... sigh..
Thomas Frank explains it in his 2004 book, "What's the Matter with Kansas." The wealthy and extreme right wing organizations use wedge issues (abortion, women's rights, homophobia and xenophobia [immigrants]) to induce the white Protestants to vote against their own best social and economic interests. Our school systems over the past 50 years have failed to teach the essence of what a democratic government is and how it operates along with critical thinking skills. In short, our public and private education systems have failed us in this regard.
You are absolutely correct Richard, public education has totally failed to educate the youth of America on how a democracy really works and what the responsibilities of each of its citizens are. The lack of understanding is a colossal failure that is now manifesting and will continue to do so for a long time to come. We can’t blame people for not understanding what they weren’t taught, when you think of how our founders were able to put together this country with the rudimentary education most of them had, today’s repugnantkin party is is absolutely incompetent when it comes to offering solutions to modern day problems.
I think that our educators took too much for granted. They assumed that all of us would act fairly and with goodwill toward all. Again, the tension between capital and labor will not go away. Neither will the will to impose one's religious/racist beliefs on the body politic.
Or the desire of some to force their religious beliefs on others. Mikey Weinstein of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation rightly explained there are two types of Christians, those motivated by the Great Commissiom, and the Christian Nationalists, including tnose who belong to the military, are motivated to seek more followers for their version of Jesus. The others are more Great Commandment types, and I freely admit to being a member of this group. I don’t think everyone has to share my political or religious beliefs, but believe in action to help others who need it, not words.
Kathy, I was once a Christian, but we parted ways decades ago; but, I never left Matthew 25: 34-46. These few words encapsulate what government should be and do, in my opinion.
Just so you know, Republicans have been making war on public education for years. The Leandro case in NC was a suit against NC for failing to fairly educate students all across the state. NC lost that suit, but the legislature won't comply with school funding and instead gives public funds to charter schools, which do not perform any better than the public schools that have been inadequately funded at all levels from pre-K to higher education.
That was the doing of Paul Weyrich. Weyrich was a Roman-rite Catholic and extreme right winger who joined the Byzantine rite in Catholicism out of disgust with Vatican II. Evangelicals were indifferent on Roe v. Wade and the most prominent early anti-abortion advocates were Catholic, and I myself am Catholic, but also a Democrat. Paul Weyrich convinced the political Evangelicals to oppose abortion to disguise the fact that the political Evangelicals original opposition to Democrats was losing tax exemptions for segregation academies. Weyrich was opposed to ensuring that all Americans had the right to vote for the candidate of their choice, and openly said so. He also observed that his side did better when fewer people voted. The current Republican majority has gutted the Voting Rights Act, given its blessing to political gerrymandering, and is out to undo everything the civil rights movement achieved. Their allies in the states don’t want schoolchildren learning the darker facts in American history, including the truth about the harshness of slavery or the mass slaughter of Native Americans.
Yep; Another "wedge issue" as Richard Sutherland, above ↑, aptly names; "Wedge issues" that by design, set the bulk of us against each other. The opposition 'think tanks' literally 'brain storm' for this divisive stuff.
Starving public education of funds, steering the money to charter schools where the children are indoctrinated, is part of their plan to have a controllable and uninformed populace.
And they cause such chaos. The economic holes, the stepping stones, are miles apart. If a family isn’t able, there is isn’t anywhere to go. We can feed and help clothe children at school. But where do the children have to go when things are past difficult at home? To the ditches and alleyways, or to a friend’s place. Where do single parents go for support?
The level of arrogance playing out is astounding.
I teach in a very low income neighborhood. For 30 + years, I have been in the classroom. Never have I ever seen a year such as this. Even driving to work has become treacherous. I can handle a great deaI, but these days I am grateful for every day I make it back home.
Not to mention GOP followers spending hard earned money on golden sneakers and poor quality, word of Trump, bibles. I feel pity for the deluded fools who can’t understand where their best interests lie.
Have you ever heard of a president selling trivial like trump does? Presidents are supposed to be dignified not hucksters of Goya products on the Resolution Desk. I do know old actors sell life insurance.
Who would want to buy Trump’s tacky sneakers or his white nationalist Bible? Trump is as always out for his own well being. Raymond Arroyo of EWTN and sometimes Fox News (he periodically fills in for Laura Ingraham,) embarrassed himself by suggesting African American voters might be more likely to vote for Trump because of his gold sneakers. His racial ignorance was utterly embarrassing. African American voters are intelligent enough to know that voting for Trump is not in their best interests, and as a rule, they vote pragmatically, as Chauncey DeVega notes.
Meanwhile, the President is doing everything he can to improve the lives of the people. while the Mike Maga team is playing obstruction games. If only Joe can find a way to make the majority he's working for "feel superior" to the Big Lying bible grifter's worshippers.
And, I feel sorry for those of us who may be the recipients of the 'deluded fools' beliefs.
And here we are again....I hear people who are holding fast to their stories, who praised Trump for his early economic successes...which were really Obama's, not saying a word about Biden's. Or whose talking point after the undisputable success of Biden's economics is inflation. As it seems...even low inflation is still a talking point for them.
I don't feel pity for them. I try to get through to those I can by putting reality into words. If I get through to even one, it's worth the effort, but I don't pity any of them. I feel disgust more than anything.
In this world of moneyed power, as in the Robber Baron days, it’s time to reverse course. Time to learn from Europe where our childhood poverty would be a scandal.
exactly. no one gets too that level without exploiting others. NO ONE. Years of saying that taxes are theft of one's money go up and down the economic spectrum. The poor that support the conservative /libertarian agenda want to stick to the government not seeing that these same people professing their agenda are sticking it to them(the poor).
Rickey, while Sam Walton (founder of Walmart) did well by his vision of stores that combined groceries, automotive goods and other items, he was not ostentatious (drove an old pickup to drink coffee with folks in Rogers, Arkansas). A friend says that he didn’t employ the dirty tricks used today by his decendants and treated his initial employees well. Now the employees have different shifts weekly so that they can’t have a second job. There’s a reason that so many qualify for federal assistance (food stamps, Medicaid, etc ).
Sam had good intentions, however, money corrupts. As the empire grew from those small stores and into the larger and now super, that all changed. That one company was responsible for hollowing out rural America with their market strength. Not so sure that Sam ever meant for that to happen, but it did start while he was alive. I saw in some communities in the plains of Texas where after stores that had been in some communities for years, they began closing shop leaving a wasteland of retail possibilities behind them. This causes residents to have to drive further for goods. Amazon then came in to provide in that void and you can hardly not see Amazon trucks now along with FedEx and UPS delivering goods that people could once get locally. This works well for most things, except fresh food which is the lifeblood of the human body.
The scheduling of workers is right on target for most all retail. In some companies, they offer employees some say in scheduling so they can do other jobs or have family time. A much better solution- pay a livable wage, but that would mean less bloated profits available for shareholders and executives.
Yep....watched the individual owned dress shops, shoe stores, hardware stores disappear from main street after Walmart came to town in rural Kansas. It was so hard to watch those families close the doors of their business which supported their and other families for decades.
Rickey, a major additional downside to the retail deserts beyond fresh food deserts is the effects on the environment of all those additional Amazon, UPS, and FedEx trucks spewing their exhausts and the mountains of added packing materials many of which are not recyclable. Shopping via Amazon and general mail order is bad for the environment!
Oh man Mary, is this a reason why low wage workers are put on rotating schedules? To keep the government money supporting them coming in? I had no idea. Sheesh.
Sam Walton is a union busting shithead. Germany got rid of Walmart quick, because they did not want to follow German labor standards of benefits. Also, Walmarts were buying German cars for less in Italy and then selling them under the price German dealers were selling them for, and they got rid of Walmart quickly. Too many cultural differences of standards. To me Walmart coming into a town and destroying all their businesses is awful. It is a Catch 22 as well. People in these towns are too poor to afford mom and pop businesses, so they go to Walmarts, which makes there be no competition so then Walmart can do whatever it wants, and keep everyone working for them poor, while they live on the obscene wealth they rake in off of everyone's backs.
Sam is dead, and the family owns shares in WalMart, but they don’t run the company any more. That being said, Sam was very antiunion, and so are the executives who run the company. The one thing the current execs do that Sam didn’t do was to eliminate Sam Walton’s preference to buy American made products in favor of Chinese made products.
BK, this has always been the way of plutocrats who used the idea of white vs. black to make it difficult for poorer whites to make common cause with slaves and free blacks, the old divide and conquer and let's keep the pot boiling with culture wars while large problems go unsolved. As for trickle down, that has always looked to me like something yellow. We have a large sewer/street project going on in front of our house and the length of our street. It is mostly funded with federal dollars, yet large numbers of the workers who aren't doing the scut work have items on their cars that indicate that they are MAGAs. Of course, any scut work is done by people speaking Spanish. They did the finishing work on the cement sidewalks, the roof on the pump house, and the landscaping.
This tactic goes all the way back to the end of Bacon’s Rebellion in the 17th century, when slaveholders and landowners set out to destroy any potential solidarity between poor indentured white servants and enslaved people.
BK, you also need to remember that the top 50% of income tax payers bring in almost all federal income tax collected, with the top few percent covering the lion's share of that. This has been true for a long time, and it's also an indication of the degree of wealth inequality in America. The lower third of earners get tax credits and rebates. Payroll and sales taxes on the other hand are a different matter. They are generally regressive, falling as a greater share of spending income on the less well to do. However common grocery items and prescription drugs are tax free.... mixed bag. It remains however that historic tax rates need to be re-asserted and made effective. Lower taxes paid by the super rich remember are legally provided as economic incentives by governments, of all stripes, and have been for the longest time.
Frank, it's good in theory (lower taxes for the wealthy) but in practice it doesn't work. How do we know this? Look at the $34 trillion federal debt. When Reagan took office in 1981 the federal debt was less than $1 trillion. Trump and those formerly known as Republicans, passed a $2 trillion tax break for the wealthy. Trump bragged about it and the debt increased another $8.2 trillion during his four years in office. When the marginal tax rate was 95% back in the 1930's, it didn't deter the wealthy from engaging in economic activity. It may have even made them strive harder. We need to tax the wealthy and the large corporations much, much more. No one in 1,000 lifetimes can spend $1 billion on personal effects.
Correct. The other thing Reagan did was to tax Social Security benefits to make up for that shortfall. We must fight Republican efforts to destroy Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. We also need to remove the tax on Social Security and remove the income cap on the amount of income taxable to Social Security. For many of us, 401ks are not going to help us and we won’t have enough in benefits to avoid living in poverty. More people will forego retirement, while it will become a benefit available to the wealthy only. Nikki Haley’s call to raise the age for collecting Social Security is a bad idea because for many blue collar workers who do physical labor, their bodies are worn out by the time they reach their mid or late fifties. Trump is sociopathic enough to eliminate Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and he will do it. What you’ll see is an increase in the number of dying and homeless people unable to afford medical care or housing.
Ours is/are the lucky generation(s) in that we could earn a reasonable living. I read recently from our generation(s) is/are providing financial support to our grown children. I certainly have. A lot.
thanks Richard, but i was in no way advocating lower taxes for the wealthy, actually the opposite. I do remember those days, long ago, when marginal topmost tax rates were 95%.
I agree. The wealthy can and should pay a lot more. They take advantage of the benefits of our government and infrastructure and they can well afford to pay a lot more as their fair share for what they use.
“…the top 50% of income tax payers bring in almost all federal income tax collected,”
You speak of this like they’re doing us some kind of favor.
If all that income was not flowing to the top 1-3%, but trickled down (as R’s famously promise ALL THE DAMN TIME!! AND NEVER PRODUCE IT) taxes would still be paid into our government. In fact, MORE taxes would be paid on that pot of income because low/mid income earners do not offshore their money nor do they spend gazillions of $$ looking for ways to avoid paying taxes.
Proving once again that concentrated wealth is a pox on our country.
My concern is that it will wind up costing us our polity and we will become a theocratic dictatorship under a narcissistic sociopath like Trump and his followers.
note, i did say the current situation also reflects wealth inequality, I'm not trying to be an apologetic for this. You might not like to hear this, but most of that wealth is tied up in working capital essential to running these large corporations, not that this concentration doesnt free up a lot of personal luxury spending. Curiously, political spending is a relatively small fraction of all this available wealth, though it certainly undermines the concept of "one person one vote".
We need to reverse the three decisions that helped to tilt the playing field in favor of unlimited funding and dark money. Citizens United, and also Buckley v. Valeo (1976) and First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti (1978.) The Buckley in Buckley v. Valeo was James Buckley, the elder brother of William F. Buckley. James wanted to spend an unlimited amount of his own money on his NY senate campaign, and he lost. It reminds me of how Steve Forbes spent an unlimited amount of his own money on his presidential campaign, but he never could win primaries.
Another thought is about republicans do not to increase funding for the IRS. Basically, it would make it more efficient BUT it would have more auditors to audit the BIG tax payers like trump. This cost more, but the payoff is much bigger. us middle class are prime targets-easy tax returns to check but smaller dividends.
I advocate getting rid of the income tax and replacing it with a VAT similarly administered via reporting requirements that would cover all business transactions including services at a flat rate. See New Hampshire's Business Enterprise Tax. Also the Michigan Single Business Tax, now repealed. A consumption tax, yes, but not a Sales Tax on goods alone at the point of retail sale. The largest component of base being payroll. You could also call this the GNP tax since collectively the tax base sums to private sector GNP. What else is there to tax ?
.....Unfortunately there is no point in discussing tax policy.
Incorrect. Sales taxes on retail goods are regressive. Services make up a proportionally larger share of the rich man's consumption budget than that of the poor. Taxing the provision of services along with goods at every level in the supply chain and across all sectors in the economy is not regressive. Consumption. It's what Americans do. Consume. Voraciously. And since WWII the US economy has steadily shifted to services and continues to do so. Increasingly that is where wealth is generated as the affluent pay other people to do things for them. Lawyers, accountants, cleaning services, psychoanalysts, fortune tellers, tatoo artists, entertainers, captains and crews for private planes and boats. That is where the money is in this economy characterized by great income and wealth inequality. Tax spending on this along with everything else. Tax the generation of wealth in America via consumption. Don't tax wage earners.
"What's mind-numbing is that the low-to-middle-income side of the GOP base cares zero that their billionaires "pay an average of 8.2% [in] federal taxes" while they are paying 2 to 3+ times that to make up for it."
Great alliteration Linda! I also think that if the S__t Show Caucus is so interested in tying aid to Baltimore to cuts in other parts of government spending, and "unpausing" the development of LNG (Liquid Natural Gas) use, they could propose ways to offset burning more LNG with reductions in the use of other fossil fuels. Not on their radar, I'm afraid.
Their new use of refusals clearly labels for whom they are working. Although WE are paying their salaries, they are working to support Mr Putin. Each individual voter who votes for them also puts a lot of effort into supporting another country, against their own country. It is Trump supporters who are traitors.
Yes. You are correct.We are paying the salaries of the Putin wing of the Republican Party but they are working to aid Putin himself.The stark contrast to how quickly and efficiently Biden is handling the Francis Scott Key bridge disaster compared to how Trump threw paper towels to residents of Puerto Rico a few years ago as his response to a powerful hurricane that decimated the island is a study in contrasts.
I was disgusted by Trump’s behavior at throwing paper towels, and at many of his other antics and inaction, but Trump is a sociopath and they don’t possess any empathy. President Biden does have empathy, and it shows. Trump is also a narcissist who thinks all attention has to be on him at every opportunity. Trump’s primary concerns have been himself, his money, and now his political power.
What radar Steve, radar gives you the ability to see beyond what you can see with your eyes, if a person has their head up their ass all the way to their shoulders how are they going to see anything except their own crap. We may very well be having this discussion on the Titanic after it hit the iceberg. We have allowed some of our elected to stop our prevention of WWIII, it’s not going to matter what kind of government you are in favor of, if we no longer have a country, and WWIII will eliminate most countries as we know them. 🤷♂️
Yesterday CSpan featured a Libertarian head and the Green Party presidential candidate. Neither can be dismissed. But I will just say the Libertarian tried to walk the line between her party's absolutely no government and effectively no government wings, tied herself in knots, and fell on her face. Hey boys and girls, let's get together and ... wait, no, whatever it is you'll do it yourself - or someone will.
So on to the inevitable Jill Stein. Whose boilerplate by now is seamless, delivery is hypnotic, and because she said it so many times, really wants you to know - they are "shoving it down your throat." Your throat evidently a capacious ark for everything Stein doesn't like about the duopoly. Stein's ire at RFK Jr splitting her constituency is cute. Stein has said straight-facedly "The answer to neofascism is stopping neoliberalism." And if you can swallow that, all I can say is, gag me with a spoon.
A perpetual candidate since 2002, Stein has won one office, coming in first of 16 candidates to win a seat on the Lexington Town Meeting with 539 votes.
Stein's 2016 financial disclosure, indicated that she maintained investments of as much as $8.5 million, including mutual or index funds holdings in big carbon, big financial (including Trump fave the money laundering Deutsche Bank), big pharma, tobacco, and defense contractors. There's no news that she's divested.
On CSpan, I heard Stein both feint and brag on performing for Vladimir Putin at a Moscow conference and gala dinner celebrating Russia Today's tenth anniversary. (RT widely promoted Stein's 2016 campaign for president. A fact she uses to chastise American media.) Stein was seated at the head table with Putin and Michael Flynn (whom RT had paid $45,000 to speak.) Previously Stein has claimed she had nothing to do with Putin and it was a non-event. On CSpan Stein claimed it was a journalism conference, she just happened to attend the evening event, and that she was there to plead with Putin not to let Russia become an "international bully like the United States." Good thing Putin has the standard issue KGB poker face. It wasn't a journalism conference. Sitting with Putin doesn't just happen. Just imagine if Jill Stein were an independent Russian politician criticizing Russia. Oh wait, we don't have to imagine. We already know. But Jill Stein and the voters who love her may very well give Trump the win, again. And we also know what he will do with anyone opposing him. That's OK with Stein, she's safe.
I never trusted Jill Stein. As for glibertarianism, which is my name for libertarianism, it works on paper but not in real life, much like Communism or Fascism.
“Less self centered “ equals really listening to what the Bible really says. We are, according to the book they say they are following, commanded to take care of each other (everyone), and the earth, which has been given to us to take care of!
It goes to show how few people are really taking to heart the actions Jesus showed during Jesus’s earthly ministry. The theocratic and integralist contingent seem to have sacrificed their professed Christianity in the pursuit of political power.
Spot on JL, and good defining name for the era we find ourselves in. *edit > Not funny that "it's the economy stupid" , brought us to this divisive era, and will continue.
I like your a answer. But mine was if only Putin , Trump, Orbán, Erdoğan, Kim Jung-un, Xi Jinping and a few others along with their loyal cronies and loyal followers would implode, like @Linda Weide suggested.🤣🤣🤣
Stress must follow all of them, but not the stresses we regular people have of worrying about getting things done or worrying if we will catch the train on time, but those of worrying whether someone in their immediate circle will betray them as they do everyone whom they perceive as not loyal, and stress from a certain sort of isolation. We can only hope for implosion of dictators, but I'd be happy is it started with Treacherous-treasonous-traitorous-tantruming-Trump!
Linda, those quail eggs of Putin reminds me of “let them eat cake!” And evidence shows that their entitled children need a taste of the knowledge and empathy of living conditions that Biden possesses. We’ve got problems when students think the average wage is at least $250,000 (it’s closer to $50,000).
To protect American democracy, reach out to millions of unregistered likely Democrats using a dedicated database using every outreach method possible (phone and text, postcard, email and targeted ad, and in-person too), where new Democratic voters will make the most impact – in the most flippable states and districts.
Does these corporate billionaires even have a clue that when this autocrat Mob Don gets in power their taxes may get lowered but their payment to the “Boss” will be significant
Linda, if, as you term it the "Treacherous-treasonous-tantruming-traitor-Trump" regains power there will be a mass migration from the U.S., benefitting the receiving countries with billions of dollars in accounts, just as we are currently benefitting from the labor of immigrants coming to this country. I have already selected the country that I will go to, having a permanent residency card there already. MAGAs are not to be trusted in the least.
No, it’s not. You have to have a sufficient amount of capital and marketable skills the country is seeking. In a way, it reminds me about one aspect of Hungary you don’t hear about, and that is young and educated Hungarians are leaving Orbán’s Christian Nationalist “paradise” for freer nations like Germany. Orbán seems to have modeled himself and his government on the government of Miklós Horthy after the short lived governments of Mihály Károlyi and Béla Kun. Kun’s origins unfairly led Protestant and Catholic Hungarians to blame all Jews for Kun, when many of them didn’t support Kun at all, and around 5,000 were slaughtered in the wake of Kun’s fall.
Horthy called himself “regent” of Hungary even though he expelled Hungary’s last King Charles IV (Karl I of Austria) on two separate occasions when Charles and his wife Zita tried to return as monarchs. Charles was unwilling to engage in bloodshed to regain his crown, and after Charles’s death in Madeira in 1922, his son Otto didn’t attempt to reclaim the crown. The victors of World War I were unwilling to see another monarch in Hungary, and Horthy was himself opposed to Charles’s return. Horthy was essentially dictator of Hungary and ran a national Christian conservative government with anti-Semitic policies. Hitler thought Horthy’s anti-Semitic policies insufficiently stringent, and Hitler’s armies invaded Hungary in 1944, establishing the Fascist Arrow Cross party, killing some Jewish Hungarians (including a notorious slaughter where Jews were forced at gunpoint to jump into the icy Danube, where many drowned,) and deporting many to death in the gas chambers of Auschwitz and other concentration camps. The Communists took over with Stalin’s assistance in 1946. Horthy died in the 1950s in Portugal, where he had fled with his wife and most of their family in 1944 after the Nazis invaded.
Orbán got into power after the Socialist Party got caught lying about economic conditions in Hungary. Orbán and his Fidesz Party were originally pro-democracy and George Soros paid for Orbán to study at Oxford in order to how civil democracies are governed. The right wing considers Soros as some sort of bogeyman, but Soros supports civil and social democracies. He does not support fascism, Communism, or Socialism. The real problem is,that the extreme right doesn’t support democratic government. Orbán shamefully turned on Soros once he got into power, and he immediately set about to cement his power by turning press ownership over to his cronies, gerrymandering parliamentary districts to guarantee Fidesz’s dominance and expelling the Central European University from Hungary to Austria. I really don’t know if Orbán intended to run Hungary as an “illiberal democracy” all along, or whether he acquired his ambitions along the way. In my view, he’s dangerous and the EU needs to cut off their funding of Hungary until Orbán is expelled.
Thank you for this lesson. All I knew is that Orbán is a Roma and an opportunist. I was not aware he was mentored by Soros. Now he has strong opposition by Peter Magyar, who is polished and eloquent. I hope he does not get killed, like Navalny. Hungarians are waking up and Magyar is being listened too.
I’ve never heard any talk about Orbán being Roma. I have heard that his government is discriminatory toward Roma. His father was an agronomist, engineer and construction engineer and his mother a teacher and speech therapist. His grandfather was a docker and farmer. I am about a week older than he is.
Kathy: I apologize. I have good Hungarian friends in Croatia, who insist they know the family. They told me and I believed it. I have done the research. For three generations there's no evidence of Roma roots but, there are mention of "urban legends. " IT IS NEVER TOO LATE TO LEARN A LESSON.
I wrote you a reply....it is here somewhere. Now I cannot find it.
Summarising, and I double checked.
He was mentored by Soros in 1989. His turning on Soros has labeled him as anti-semitic. But he has stated he will not tolerate antisemitism (2017) and he iis VERY friendly with Netanyahu.
The man is an opportunist and a con man. His government has been labeled as a kleptocracy.
It boggles the mind that the Republicans in Congress want to fight over reopening one of the busiest ports in the US, so they can blame Biden for the inevitable ripple effects the port's closing will have on supply chains and the economy. They really want to burn the whole country to the ground. It's madness.
What aggravates me more than anything is that we Americans never seem to look at the long term consequences of the negative choices to enrich the wealthy, support certain wars, to regard business and property as more important than human life, and to use human needs to profit off human misery. I am not fond of the CCP or Xi Jinping, but former President Carter has noted that the Chinese do take a longer view of history than we Americans do, and that we could learn from that example.
In the history of the world, the US is a toddler and a spoiled one at that. The Chinese can take the long view because as a civilization, they have been at it, for good and ill, for the better part of 5,000 years. I think they may have forgotten more than we have learned.
When Hillary Clinton originally said half of trump supporters were deplorable, I said that was not true . . . 100% of trump supporters are deplorable!! Time has shown that all republicans fall into the deplorable basket!
So many things they do are deplorable. There are thousands of examples of Congress stepping up to help rebuild and recover after catastrophic events, whether it be a hurricane, flood or infrastructure failure. Bridges, dams, derailed trains, polluted superfund sites or mass shooting.
Rand Paul loves to try to block funding for any disaster, yet when there's a disaster in Kentucky he's up there begging for money.
Why do the Republicans not want billionaires to pay the 28% the rest of us are expected to pay while their employees have no loopholes?
We could tell that to Jeff Bezos except he's probably out on the water in his $500 million yacht that he paid cash for in 2023.
In the final analysis, referring to what those who now claim to be Republicans, they are simply not nice. My Texas aunts, born in the early part of the 20th century, would disapprove of their rude, crude and vicious behavior. Is it a case of there "being no there there?"
Of course she was right … still, based upon her experiences, roles and positions - was/is the most qualified [temperament is an important quality consideration - among others] person to have sort the position of POTUS!
This is true, but the wingnuts demonized her successfully. I also think the writer Ta-Nehisi Coates was correct in observing that Trump was the price we paid for electing President Obama.
Agreed, and there remains in the US an aversion to women who think and act independently, are intelligent, question/challenge men and are unapologetic about it. Racists came out, and have remained out in droves in support of the former racist in chief.
Unfortunately, both racism and misogyny are still rampant in American society. The racism is a problem that we white citizens have to eliminate, and the misogyny is a problem men must eliminate. Misogynoir is a combination of racism and sexism African American women often face. Trump flaunts his racism and misogyny in public, and both attitudes are unacceptable and should be publicly scorned. Unfortunately, there are enough MAGA voters that think it’s OK for Trump to publicly express his racism and misogyny. His campaign against Hillary Clinton reeked of misogyny, as did the wingnuts’ successful campaign to demonize Ms. Clinton.
'Saif. Zomi. Damian. Jacob. John. Jim. James. The seven World Central Kitchen team members killed in the April 1, 2024 attack in Gaza existed at their very core to serve others. They were from different corners of the world, but they were all humanitarians. They were also sons, daughters, sisters, brothers, fathers, partners. We honor their contributions to the world they made brighter and to the mission of WCK to nourish people in their hardest moments.'
“These are people I served alongside in Ukraine, Turkey, Morocco, The Bahamas, Indonesia, Mexico, Gaza, and Israel. They were far more than heroes,” said WCK founder and Chief Feeding Officer José Andrés. “Their work was based on the simple belief that food is a universal human right. It is not conditional on being good or bad, rich or poor, left or right. We do not ask what religion you belong to. We just ask how many meals you need.” 'Read José’s opinion piece in the New York Times' (See gifted link below)
'WCK coordinated everything correctly with the IDF in advance. Despite that, our convoy was hit as it was leaving the Deir al-Balah warehouse, where the team had unloaded hundreds of tons of humanitarian food aid brought to Gaza on our newly established maritime route from Cyprus.' “This is not only an attack against WCK, this is an attack on humanitarian organizations showing up in the most dire of situations where food is being used as a weapon of war. This is unforgivable,” said Erin Gore, CEO of WCK.'
'Read the full statement from World Central Kitchen' (See link below)
'The IDF has acknowledged its responsibility and its fatal errors in the deadly attack on our convoy in Gaza. It is also taking disciplinary action against some of those in command and committed to other reforms. These are important steps forward. But without systemic change, there will be more military failures and more grieving families. In addition to the tens of thousands of Palestinians killed, nearly 200 humanitarian workers have lost their lives during this conflict. That is why World Central Kitchen is demanding the creation of an independent commission to investigate the killings of our WCK colleagues.'
'Read WCK’s statement about the IDF preliminary investigation'
'While we continue to demand full accountability for what happened to our team—our friends—we continue to mourn the loss of their incredible hearts and smiles. WCK’s leadership is in close contact with their families, and we are doing everything we can to support them in this unimaginable time. Please stay tuned to our social media channels for information about the WCK global community honoring the lives of these heroes and ways you can participate. In the coming days, we will be sharing heartfelt tributes to remember their vibrant lives and indelible impact on the world.'
Thank you again FERN for your research deliverables. I was not able to access the Jose Andres "Let People Eat" article but, I am looking for the details of the WCK targeting attack & whether more-than-one precision guidance weapon may have been used.
I am aware of satellite, high-tech imaging & well check-in with Bellingcat sort of an 'Intelligence Agency for the People' as one book about them was titled. More later.
Thank you, Ally, for that fascinating report on the possible use of US made missiles deplored by Israel's military. Another deeply troubling story from The Washington Post follows:
'Israel offers a glimpse into the terrifying world of military AI' (WAPO)
Analysis by Ishaan Tharoor
'A new report published by +972 magazine and Local Call indicates that Israel has allegedly used an AI-powered database to select suspected Hamas and other militant targets in the besieged Gaza Strip. According to the report, the tool, trained by Israeli military data scientists, sifted through a huge trove of surveillance data and other information to generate targets for assassination. It may have played a major role particularly in the early stages of the current war, as Israel conducted relentless waves of airstrikes on the territory, flattening homes and whole neighborhoods. At present count, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, more than 33,000 Palestinians, the majority being women and children, have been killed in the territory.'
'The AI tool’s name?' “Lavender.”
'This week, Israeli journalist and filmmaker Yuval Abraham published a lengthy expose on the existence of the Lavender program and its implementation in the Israeli campaign in Gaza that followed Hamas’s deadly Oct. 7 terrorist strike on southern Israel. Abraham’s reporting — which appeared in +972 magazine, a left-leaning Israeli English-language website, and Local Call, its sister Hebrew-language publication — drew on the testimony of six anonymous Israeli intelligence officers, all of whom served during the war and had “first-hand involvement” with the use of AI to select targets for elimination. According to Abraham, Lavender identified as many as 37,000 Palestinians — and their homes — for assassination.' (The IDF denied to the reporter that such a “kill list” exists, and characterized the program as merely a database meant for cross-referencing intelligence sources.) 'White House national security spokesperson John Kirby told CNN on Thursday that the United States was looking into the media reports on the apparent AI tool.'
“During the early stages of the war, the army gave sweeping approval for officers to adopt Lavender’s kill lists, with no requirement to thoroughly check why the machine made those choices or to examine the raw intelligence data on which they were based,” 'Abraham wrote.'
“One source stated that human personnel often served only as a ‘rubber stamp’ for the machine’s decisions, adding that, normally, they would personally devote only about ‘20 seconds’ to each target before authorizing a bombing — just to make sure the Lavender-marked target is male,” he added. “This was despite knowing that the system makes what are regarded as ‘errors’ in approximately 10 percent of cases, and is known to occasionally mark individuals who have merely a loose connection to militant groups, or no connection at all.”
'This may help explain the scale of destruction unleashed by Israel across Gaza as it seeks to punish Hamas, as well as the high casualty count.' (WAPO) Gifted link below.
Thank you, Fern, for posting this information. What a tragedy. I feel that this whole war in Gaza has become a deadly game of ‘whack-a-mole. Bombing everything above ground as Hamas scurries through the tunnels below, and collateral destruction and death to everyone above.
Andrew Bacevich has written that Netanyahu will not achieve what he wants to achieve in Gaza. Hamas will survive even though it shouldn’t, and non-combatants are paying the price. I don’t think Netanyahu or senior Israeli intelligence and military officials were paying attention to the possibility that Israel might be attacked, rather like Bush and Cheney ignored the intelligence about September 11, 2001.
And the war would end if Hamas would surrender and release the hostages. I don’t imagine that Hamas would cease firing thousands of rockets into Israel if Israel stops fighting back. They have been doing this for decades, as well as suicide bombing crowds, even when there is no active war. This is the reason for Israel’s iron dome, which intercepts rockets. Islamist groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah, even Isis have been terrorizing Israelis since its existence.
Yes, the billionaires will be anti-environment, anti-government action, anti-safety, anti-workers.
Any middle class and working-class prosperity just seem to billionaires like personal affronts to them.
They revert, as Heather notes here, to the hoary old and repeatedly disproven supply side economics theory. They must. It's a theory -- a false one -- but were the billionaires to deal with reality, they'd have to account for the workers they ignore, the workers whose jobs they offshore, the workers whose well-being government action can improve.
So, theory wins. Bad theory.
But it's a dangerous slope. Start doing things to aid actual people -- like government programs for that -- and soon enough people might see the value of all those humanities that track actual people. Soon enough, people might want schools again to feature those humanities.
And schools might cease serving all the interests of the billionaire classes, from the deadly reign of standardized testing K-12 to the group identity programs in higher ed, the neutered silos there, and the predation of the banks in indebting students.
we were successfully sold a quack cure. When in all of history did plutocracy ever make life better for the preponderance of the public? Where was the proof of concept before we handed the keys to the rich? The founding of this nation is awash with contradictions, but the choice of a republic was a reaction to aristocratic feudal oppression, and, of you strip away the nonsense, so-called (and Orwellianly misnamed "Supply Side Economics" is just a return to the canards and corrupt injustices of feudalism. Follow the money, not just between individuals, but as a dynamic system, the way meteorologists study weather patterns globally, as well as regionally. How has the whole system of commerce and of society been affected? Not the way Reaganomics was billed.
Recall how Eisenhower acknowledged how "H.L. Hunt (you possibly know his background), a few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas" wanted to end Social Security, unemployment insurance and other programs that aided what Leona Helmsley called "the little people". For some people (Ike called them "stupid" it's not enough to have more money than one could possibly every spend; they want it ALL.
And they will buy politicians, and sell out anyone and anything in order to get it.
Nice, J L -- you've got exactly "the canards and corrupt practices of feudalism."
Those words of yours also denote the Clarence court, its bribed, perjured, corrupted.
Ike saw the decencies, the pluck in the face of sacrifice of the millions of normal, working-class Americans under his military command. Marine Major General Smedley D. Butler, a generation before Ike, also lambasted the U.S. schemers of what you term "aristocratic feudal oppression." Sheldon Whitehouse in 2022 wrote the book on them today doing that, "The Scheme."
And yes, J L, I know H. L. Hunt.
Faulkner called him, them, the Snopeses. (Funny, as I enter their name, my computer's otherwise persistent spell-checker does not recognize them. Well, can't expect many of our elites, tech or otherwise, to know any humanities, let alone those most key, vital.)
Yes, J L -- fine words of yours on what one of a certain trio used to term "another fine mess you've gotten us in."
You honor our Heather, who so meticulously follows their sordid trail today.
Your conclusion, "they will buy politicians, and sell out anyone and anything" -- again encapsulates our oh-so-corrupt Clarence court.
I think that "corruption" in the governmental abuse of power sense needs to be a lot more keenly discussed and identified. If you are around something foul for too long, you start to stop smelling it.
It's the anesthetization that comes when we allow ourselves to become dehumanized.
In "Politics and the English Language," Orwell describes how we blind ourselves, numb ourselves, by allowing ourselves "bad language," language for instance as now when our elites all leave school with no capacity to see, imagine, let alone use any humanities.
Nothing can ever satisfy their greed, and it’s up to us to stop them at the ballot box, as gerrymandered as many of our states are, and regardless of the dead hand of the unnecessary and hoary electoral college. It was designed to give slave states an advantage, and at that time, slavery existed in the North, although it was of less economic importance as it was in the South. Alexander Hamilton supported it in the mistaken belief it would prevent voters from electing a demagogue. Instead, it gave us a demagogue in Donald Trump.
The Supreme Court effectively adopted H.L. Hunt’s advocacy for one dollar, one vote when they decided Citizens United. Hunt, who died in 1974, wrote a cheaply published paperback describing a mythical country named Alpaca in the early 1950s, and in Alpaca’s political campaigns, the people with the most money had the most votes. Hunt’s sons from his first marriage to Lyda Bunker Hunt, Herbert and Bunker Hunt were members of the John Birch Society and funded the Council on National Policy until they lost much of their wealth in trying to corner the silver market in the late 1970s. Both brothers are now dead, although one of them managed to recover his fortune by investing in the Bakken oil shale project before he died. Their sisters, Margaret and Caroline, managed to hang onto their wealth before their own deaths. The eldest son, Hassie, didn’t do much of anything. His father had him undergo a lobotomy and he lived at Hunt’s estate until his own death.
Hunt made a bigamous marriage to Frania Tye and had four children with her. Frania left Hunt when she found out he was already married and went to live in Atlanta. After Hunt’s death, they sued and got a share of the family fortune. Hunt’s third wife, Ruth Ray Hunt, was his mistress before Lyda’s death in the 1950s, and married him after Lyda died. He had four children with Ruth and she got him involved in Evangelicalism. Hunt’s three families were not close at all. H.L. thought he was a superior being with great genes, and like Trump, he felt himself above the normal rules of human behavior. The difference was that H.L. was able to make money and better at business at business than Trump.
Money is not speech, and it should never be treated as speech. Television and radio outlets should be required to run campaign ads free of charge, and campaigns should be limited in time and scope, as they are in Europe. There also should be standards against lying or half-truths and distortions about other candidates (like I know it won’t happen.) The problem is that instead of governing for the common good, politicians are forced to spend most of their time fundraising in place of governing for the common good. The Senate’s powers need to be reformed to eliminate the severe gerrymandering of its votes, and powers like effectively requiring 2/3 of the senate to pass any legislation (thanks for nothing, McConnell) filibusters and senatorial holds on judges eliminated. We also need to enlarge the House based upon the current number of Americans in the country. The current number of members is based upon our population 100 years ago.
and America's great traditions in crime writing including Ross Macdonald, Patricia Highsmith, Elmore Leonard, Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain, Raymond Chandler, and many, many more who've brilliantly got apt fingers on our most cynical, criminal, predatory elites.
Saddest of all, it's not really fiction.
Everything taught in biz ed is fiction -- fabulist, insane, as demented as everything that now passes for normal on the Clarence court.
And anyway, the market in the EU for U.S. gas will decline soon as they continue to shift to renewables. LNG is a lose-lose proposition in any meaningful long-term analysis, particularly to increase our odds of having a recognizable, livable world for our grandchildren.
Thank you for the article, Jason. This is Big Picture stuff. Your point of LNG being a "lose-lose" means the pause is a win-win, keeping energy prices down here in the US and not assisting our adversaries abroad plus the reality our friends in the EU's demand is to decline anyway. Agree that Team Biden should be promoting this esp as a major campaign issue.
As the prospect of the end of my life no longer seems as distant as it did growing up, my principle solace in bowing out would be the prospect of one child born and that this world would carry on; at least in the sense of muddling though, not a frickin' nightmare.
Well said, JL. I'll share with you what someone shared with me over at my newsletter recently, a quote from the great writer Robert Macfarlane: "[The Anthropocene] is, perhaps, best imagined as an epoch of loss – of species, places and people – for which we are seeking a language of grief and, even harder to find, a language of hope."
Absolutely. There is much to be hopeful about in terms of good work being done at the policy and personal levels, but it will be hope within the grief over what is, and will be, lost.
An interesting quote from the article: “Reduced European demand means without Biden’s pause, LNG exports could flow to nations that oppose our national security interests: From January 2022 through September 2023, China was the top destination for new American LNG contracts, 13% of the global total, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance.”
@ Jason Anthony. The irony is that the prices are fixed by OPEC/Saudi et al and the Saudis have been undermining our economy since 1973. They own our largest refineries and control domestic energy companies like Exxon Mobil.
Meanwhile, high prices fund the Russian economic war in the Ukraine and Iranian proxy wars in Yemen, Syria, and Gaza.
Yes, Saudis own the largest refinery in the US, but it by itself represents a small fraction of the US refining capacity. That's not different from Honda, Toyota and Volkswagen building factories in the US. It's not different ftom Taiwan Semiconductor building chip factories here in the US. The US is a significant importer of oil and that will remain so until we can wean ourselves off of economic activities that depend on it.
Also, ExxonMobil is not controlled by Saudi Arabia. However, all oil companies must adhere to rules set by individual producing companies for operations within those countries. ExxonMobil is a publicly traded company that follows laws and regulations that exist in the US. No OPEC country controls anything about it outside of its borders.
2. The Japanese government actively tried to undermine our economy, starting with Youngstown Sheet and Tube/monopoly of seamless pipe in the 1970s. All profits from sales in foreign owned products leave the US.
3. At present Nippon Steel is trying to take over US Steel. For many of us this is deja vu.
5. Most of the inflation in the word can be traced to OPEC increases during the pandemic ( with Trump's help) which was like a snowball at the top of a mountain creating an avalanche. Of all industrial countries we have fared best. We'd have been better off had Biden been authorized to sue for price fixing and price gouging.
Thom Hartmann sees a possibility of Trump pulling a nasty stunt like convincing MBS to hike oil prices just before the election, in the hope Biden would lose. It would be the sort of thing I could see him doing .
To answer #6 first. I'm a centrist who will vote against Republicans until the MAGA cancer is excised. The fact that you are assuming in somehow against you when I'm putting out what I know to be based on fact and basic economics tells people more about you that it does about me.
That article said nothing about the Saudis. From where do you get the idea that they control ExxonMobil? Just look at the SEC filings for XOM stock. They are a public company, which means that investors large and small can vote on certain governance policies. That the Rockefeller family (and it wasn't all of them) lost means that they lost an election just like Trump did.
Regarding US producing enough oil to replace OPEC oil, that's true, but to do that we'd have to replace to many refineries that can handle U.S- produced oil. Go ahead and try to get a permit to build a new refinery. Or go ahead and just stop all oil imports anyway and see if you will still find life affordable.
Number 5 is overly simplistic. Remember supply chain disruptions? Remember when spot prices for West Texas Intermediate crude dropped to less than $0 in March 2020 and XOM stock fell to about $30 from roughly $80?
Finally, #4. I leave that for last because I know little about the steel business. I will read the Washington Post editorial from about a week ago, but the headline and first paragraph tell me that the story is more complex. I do know that any foreign company with operations in the US starts that operation with the intent to serve the huge US market, and employs US workers and pays US taxes on the income. I am not sophisticated enough to know who "should" owm US Steel, but do acknowledge that US Steel is effectively a US monopoly or close to it.
Your statement about Nippon Steel assumes that Japan is a colonial power and that the US is the colony, with its resources stolen and sold outside of the country. That is not how it all works. There may be ideological or economic reasons to not accept Nippon's bid, but stealing from the US is not one of them
What people don’t know is that the creators of OPEC modeled it on the Texas Railroad Commission, which is the Texas state agency tasked with regulating the state’s oil and gas production.
Our representatives are not hired as soldiers in a war for domination of our fellow citizens. Yes, if I vote for candidate D versus candidate R, I expect to see significant differences of priorities and methods, but always with the bounds of responsible behavior; responsibility to the whole town, the whole country, the whole planet. Liberty allows us to fight like cats and dogs, but not at the peril of the common good. I don't see my youth as the "good old days" that I would by any means care to indiscriminately return to, but I do think that drawing a line when it came to the common good was more commonly acknowledged if not always observed; the notion that we in this county are in some sense all people in the same boat, and to pause our personal agendas when it comes to our stewardship of unalienable human rights.
That means that you don't use a threat of harm to others as a means to extort you own agenda. That's the MO of organized crime, and is irredeemably corrupt. If you are hired to be an ambulance driver, you don;t threaten to leave a victim lie unless the agree to some perform some service for you. Emergencies are traditional times for people and communities to come together.
We seem to have forgotten the whole concept of the common good. Newt Gingrich did a lot of harm to Congress by gutting Congressional staff and relying on lobbyist reports to research legislation, and deliberately encouraging language and action that demonized Democratic members of Congress. He lost his position as Speaker over his intended memoirs, much as he had unseated Jim Wright as Speaker for the same reason. Newt and Mitch McConnell both have done considerable harm to our government and the concept of the common good during their respective tenures as Speaker and Senate Majority leader.
The Republican dominated Kentucky House and Senate have stripped their Democratic governor, Andy Beshear, of his power to appoint McConnell’s successor as senator. Republican dominated legislatures in Wisconsin and North Carolina used similar tactics against their Democratic governors. It shows the extent to which Republican dominated states have become laboratories for one-party dictatorship or illiberal “democracy” of the type that Viktor Orban has created in Hungary and Vladimir Putin in Russia.
"As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy." - Lincoln
How many Reprehensibles are in this freedom concoction of in-breeding, stupidity, and cupidity? 🤭
OOOPS: How many Representatives does the freedom caucus have? 🤭 I did not think there would be enough to hold all of Congress hostage during one tantrum after another. 🤢
I realize you are likely being facetious but it only takes one for a motion to vacate the speaker under the current house rules put in place when Kevin McCarthy was trying to get seated as speaker. The Freedom Caucus doesn’t disclose their members directly but the current count from Wikipedia based on those who self-identify and other reports is at least 42.
That would be 42 out of 220 rethuglicons shivering in their shoes. And those 42 aren't allowed to bring their AR-15's into the House of Representatives (poor babies)
Ned, look at what a single U.S. senator was doing to [or continues to] the top ranks of our military leadership. Yes, a U.S. senator can have a much greater influence on governmental operations than a member or several members of Congress - but yes, it only takes a few … look at what our current House Speaker is doing by not letting key funding bill(s) passed by the Senate not be brought to the floor for a vote in the House. I had the opportunity of working with a former chairman of the House Rules Committee; another position where a single member of the House can exert tremendous influence and pressure on the “smooth functioning” of our country’s legislative processes.
it only takes a few well placed people inside of a representative form of government to bring it down. For decades the libertarian cult has been working to do what is happening using the plan laid out in the Lewis Powell Memo.
Thank you all for your answers, Sioux, Fay, J.L., and Rickey. My sense had been around forty; likely had read that somewhere. If it requires but one Representative to vacate the Speakership, ¿why are moderate Democrats and Republicans not forming a coalition and coming to the Speaker and saying, "If you do not pass those aid and border bills right now, pallie, ¡you're outta here!"? This looks like the death throes of the Third Republic leaving France exposed to Hitler.
The moderate Republicans have left the party in disgust at Trump. Some refused to run again, like Adam Kinzinger, and Liz Cheney (who is conservative) was primaried out by MAGA backer and oil lobbyist Harriet Hageman. Now even some former Trump backers like Ken Buck (Jenna Ellis’s former boss) are refusing to run again. The improperly named “Freedom” Caucus is wasting time by pursuing impeachment of President Biden, and there is not a scintilla of evidence to pursue it, especially since their prize witness was one of Putin’s spies who’s been charged with espionage.
I do not hand-write notes to many politicians, only to those whom I particularly admire like President Ford, Senator Dole, President Carter, Senator Flake, as well as, presently, Representatives Buck and Gallagher. As you surmise, I am a crest-fallen conservative. Thank you for your thoughtful comment, Kathy.
George H. W. Bush correctly attacked ‘supply side’ economics as ‘voodoo economics’ in his 1980 presidency nomination contest with Ronald Reagan. Then followed the ‘trickle down’ falsity that major tax cuts, especially on the wealthy (citizens and corporations), would tinkle down from the major tax beneficiaries to the ordinary folks. PSHAW!
Reagan’s director of the Bureau of the Budget confessed that this was bull shit and didn’t work. President George W. Bush tried this ‘tinkle down’ economic foolery as did Trump, in which the rich got richer at the expense of a great majority of Americans. Meanwhile the Democrats sought ‘fair share’ taxation.
While the Republicans—now the Trumpublicans—oppose any new taxes and seek another Trump tax cut giveaway, President Biden and his professionals continue with their gutsy common sense. Much to the surprise of many economists (and Republicans), the American economy is doing surprisingly well in recovering from the impacts of Covid, supply shortages, and short term inflation spikes.
Who could have imagined, when Biden assumed the helm of the US ship of state from Trump’s unsteady hand, that, more than three years later, the United States would have had the largest increase in employment in its history, inflation would have plummeted, the unemployment rate was at a low, and real wages were ion the rise.
ALL OF THIS IS PRETTY DAMNED GOOD! While I applaud it, the economically constipated Trumpublicans (and many in the media) seek to diminish these surprisingly positive results.
The state of the economy should be a political plus for President Biden in November.
President Biden can’t control oil prices or the greedflation occurring in housing and grocery prices, which is pinching people hard despite his successful efforts to benefit ordinary Americans. My concern with this is that Trump might successfully use this against the President. I don’t doubt Trump could convince MBS to raise Saudi oil prices to cause economic pain that Trump could benefit from.
This is much like the issues that President Carter had to deal with. He had to deal with the political fallout from the 1953 coup in Iran that enabled the Shah to stay in power until 1978. Iran’s religious hardliners were the only group with the political cohesion and strength to take power, and they have been in power ever since, and young people in Iran are becoming more disillusioned with the heavy hand of the theocrats.
Carter also had to deal with continuing oil price increases from Iran’s theocratic regime, and also the continuing stagflation of the 1970s. This had been a problem that came about because of the economic fallout of the Vietnam war funding, and Nixon convinced then Fed chair Arthur Burns to hold off on raising interest rates until after the 1972 election. It was a pain point that convinced many Americans wrongly that Reagan would be better for the U.S. Unfortunately, he wasn’t.
Kathy You trigger memories of past presidential elections. As a member of Nixon White House Enemies List in 1972, I don't believe that Arthur Burns holding off on Fed rates had a major affect on the election. Nixon was riding high with his Russian and China diplomat coups, Watergate had not criminally exploded, and the Plumbers Unit had killed Senator Muskie’s candidacy and the Dems had McGovern.
With Carter, in addition to the hostage situation, the economy was truly dreadful. I remember inflation and unemployment over 10% and interest rates even higher. ‘Malaise’ and Rust Belt were popular terms.
As for Trump, I am reminded of the young gullible kids who were tricked to go over to Treasure Island. Now they are older and are just as gullible when they listen to Donnie Babble.
I remember it too as my father had lost 2 jobs at that time. I wasn’t fooled by Reagan, and Volcker raised interest rates to high levels, which was one of the things that cost Carter the election. In retrospect, Carter was correct but no one wanted to hear it. It is a big thing because we are seeing the negative consequences of failing to deal effectively with climate change.
Kathy Paul Volcker used drastic measures to strangle inflation. It produced ‘stagflation’ under Carter. To Reagan’s credit, he supported Volcker’s brutal squeeze and Reagan’s popularity plunged, affecting the 1982 congressional elections. Then the economy turned around and it was ‘Morning again in America.’ At the same time Reagan ejected 11,000 air controllers who struck and was most unpleasant to unions.
I found Reagan perhaps the toughest president to teach. Still, he brought back pride in America and, with Gorby, ended the Cold War with a whimper rather than a bang. Still, he was bizarre in many ways.
With Trump I have difficulty in identifying any upsides that might balance his bizarreness. Reagan was 100% for America while Trump is 100% for Triump.
Thank you, Heather! The obvious success of Biden's policies for everyday Americans is difficult to ignore, but the GOP seems mired in the belief that supply-side-economics would work, when it never has. I think it was Pope Francis who also called this out, saying that the wealth doesn't trickle down, it just expands the pockets of the wealthy. (I'm misquoting that, but that was the idea.) But I also have to wonder how these do-nothing obstructionists keep getting re-elected? We've all got to do a better job of focusing on and amplifying the positive changes we are making as a country, and what we're achieving. Not that we don't have a long way to go, and many issues to address. We also need to be more vocal about the fact that we NEED immigrants, and that most of us ARE immigrants or descended from immigrants. It's our diversity that makes us strong, the fairness we still have to work on. Somehow we have to pull our country together, united. And we can do that.
From what I understand, gerrymandering by Republicans has created districts where the right wingnuts will be elected no matter how crazy they are or what damage they do because nearly everyone in their district is also a right wingnut. This didn't happen overnight; they have been working on it for years and we are now seeing the results.
Tell me about it. We have an extremely gerrymandered Republican state government in Ohio, where I live. The General Assembly has felt free to ignore previous orders from our state supreme court ordering it to correct illegal senate redistricting, and they did nothing to implement the voter referendum passed in favor of nonpartisan redistricting. Our last election brought us a 5-2 Republican dominated state Supreme Court which will do nothing to fix the problem.
We managed to defeat Secretary of State Frank LaRose’s bid to make citizen initiatives more difficult to pass, and we passed both Issue 1, putting reproductive rights in the state constitution, and Issue 2 on statutory legalization of recreational marijuana use. Not surprisingly, a few General Assembly members tried to thwart implementation of Issue 1, and I am certain they’ll continue to drag their feet. Frank LaRose also lost his bid to run against Sherrod Brown. I want to keep Sen. Brown, because he actually cares about his constituents. I don’t want Trump-endorsed Bernie Moreno to become senator. Our other senator, J.D. Vance, is a wingnut embarrassment who dumped on his fellow Appalachians in “Hillbilly Legacy” and became totally pro-Trump once Vance took Peter Thiel’s money. I do think Ryan could have run a better campaign, but he didn’t.
Other problems Ohio has include the First Energy scandal, in which our former speaker Larry Householder was sentenced to 20 years in Federal prison, and former Ohio GOP chair Matt Borges received 5 years in Federal prison for accepting bribes from First Energy to introduce and pass legislation to stick Ohio taxpayers with the costs of fixing First Energy’s outdated power plants. The legislation is still law even though it was passed by illegal conduct. Householder is now facing charges in Ohio state court. The former head of Ohio’s Department of Energy, Sam Randazzo, is now facing bribery and embezzlement charges in Federal court in connection with the First Energy scandal. DeWine is term limited as governor, and I think his lieutenant governor Jon Husted (also no prize) wants to run for governor next. I suspect DeWine and Husted know a lot more about the First Energy scandal than they’re willing to publicly admit. This is not the first scandal our gerrymandered state has endured, for there was Coingate, in which the some members of the Board of Workers Compensation wanted to use the Bureau of Workers Compensation money to invest in rare coins with a former Toledo area coin dealer, Tom Noe. Noe was convicted on criminal charges related to the Coingate scam.
Our current General Assembly speaker, Mark Huffman, is not much of a prize either. Public schools are having to call for special levies, which sometimes lose. This is happening because Huffman prefers to use public school tax dollars to fund private schools, and particularly private religious schools. This leaves Ohio public schools, who have to take all students, at a considerable disadvantage. Ohio legislators also want to pass legislation to misinform and miseducate Ohio students on American government, history, and economics.
Our former Chief Justice, Maureen O’Connor, retired from the bench in 2022. She is a Republican, but to her credit, she detests the blatant gerrymandering designed to give Ohio Republicans advantages in the General Assembly and Senate. She wrote the majority opinion in the case that ordered the General Assembly to redistrict three illegally gerrymandered Senate districts, and the General Assembly then ignored her order. For,er Justice O’Connor is now working to get a ballot initiative which would require citizen nonpartisan redistricting, like what they have in California. The problem is that our Republican Attorney General Dave Yost, keeps finding the wording of the initiative unacceptable. I think that he is so invested in keeping the Republicans in power in Ohio that he would find any language unacceptable. I certainly hope this initiative can go to the voters. Partisan gerrymandering is why we have Republican domination of state government and a predominantly Republican contingent of Federal representatives, including the embarrassing Gym Jordan. The gerrymandering also has a spillover effect in who gets elected to statewide Federal and state offices.
Kathy, a lot of what you write about here has been in the news, but seeing it all put together is maddening, heartbreaking and disgusting all at once. Somehow these criminals are able to justify their behavior to themselves so that they can still sleep at night, but it's a wonder how they do it. It's encouraging that the people of Ohio are fighting back.
Thank you, Dr, Richardson, for continuing all that's being done correctly by the Democratic administration for the benefit of the bottom 99% of us. 43 years is long enough to experiment with "supply side economics" - it fails to help anyone except the top 1%. There are 326,700,000of us vs 3,700,000 of them. So why does the part of trump continue to offer more tax cuts for the already deplorably wealthy 3 million, while cutting Social Security, Medicare, and other Social Services programs; open concentration camps for immigrants and refugees - you know like the ones Hamas runs in Gaza - all so the rich can get richer and the poor get poorer?
We need to roll back the secrecy behind Citizens United and publish every single corporate donation. Recently I learned that these 50 companies have donated over 23 million to election deniers after promising not to. Spoiler alert - The list includes Walmart, AT&T, Microsoft, Boeing, The Home Depot, Koch Enterprises, Lockheed Martin & UPS. They all publicly made a promise to us and they broke their promise.
This is certainly no surprise! They don't want to lose their customers, hence the lies. And they don't want to lose their henchmen who give the huge tax breaks, hence the donations. Gotta keep your foot in both doors, you know.
Professor; Regarding the bridge and national interest. CAN president Biden do ANYTHING in way of Executive Order? REPUBLICANS in Congress ignoring National interests are truly nauseating!
BIDEN: It’s my intention that federal government will pay for the entire cost of reconstructing that bridge, and I expect ... Congress to support my effort.
Thank you, Heather, for bringing up the Louisiana liquid natural gas export terminals. Aside from the fact that they are all at current, and soon to be, below sea level, they are environmentally unsound. While Trump pushed natural gas by rail and sea, Biden knows the danger and makes the right calls. The people of Louisiana must understand the real danger of these terminals to their lives and future generations.
A few selected articles:
LNG export terminals pose a growing and invisible threat: air pollution
Yes, those future generations of Louisianans who will know higher cancer rates, those that survive. But the pushers of the LNG expansion don't give a damn about them. Mike Johnson does not represent the people of Louisiana: he represents the criminal class.
Your dedication to these daily letters is so greatly appreciated, HCR. 💙
Yes indeed!
Heather's relentless pursuit of knowledge and her willingness to explore new ideas without hesitation is inspiring. Her contributions not only enrich our understanding but also encourage others to embrace curiosity and intellectual rigor.
Thank you, Heather, for your unwavering commitment to excellence and your fearless pursuit of truth!
Add Heather thank you for being willing to share you exceptional wealth of knowledge! Remarkable...
Ditto
I agree! It is amazing that Dr. Richardson is a University Professor, writes books, interviews President Biden(twice), and writes this newsletter on a continual basis.
Every once in a while, when the Country is in dire straits the right people come along to save our Democratic form of Government. Dr. Richardson and President Joe Biden are just two of those people.
A regular Mildred Gillars
A Nazi propagandist? BS.
AMEN
Importantly and with the facts, in today's Letter, HCR, pointed to the contribution of Immigration, of the IMMIGRANTS! to the US' economy.
'The unemployment rate was also good, dropping slightly to 3.8% in March. According to economist Steven Rattner of Morning Joe, the United States has now had 26 consecutive months—more than two years—of unemployment under 4%, the longest stretch of unemployment that low since the late 1960s.'
'Rattner pointed out that immigrants have helped to push U.S. growth since the pandemic by adding millions of new workers to the labor market. As native-born workers have aged into retirement, immigrants have taken their places and' “been essential to America’s post-COVID labor market recovery.” (Letter)
'How immigration has powered America’s miraculous job market growth' (Sources: Bloomberg and 'Chartbook' a substack newsletter from Adam Tooze)
'It’s the kind of headline that the worst people alive will probably warp to fit their narratives, but Goldman Sachs thinks that the answer to some puzzling US economic data is a jump in immigration. US economic growth was far stronger than most people expected last year, thanks to some absolutely monster jobs reports and consumer spending that made a mockery of fears that bad vibes might cause a recession. However, despite robust job creation the US unemployment rate has actually edged up from a five-decade low of 3.4 per a year ago to 3.9 per cent. At the same time, employment surveys of companies and households have been diverging sharply, further confounding many economists. Goldman Sachs reckons that the answer to “one of the biggest puzzles of the last year” is a sharp increase in net immigration, which has increased the size of the American labour force and enhanced US economic growth potential. Recent studies suggest that Census data used for the household survey of the employment report understated immigration in 2023. We estimate that immigration was 1½mn above the trend of roughly 1mn per year in 2023, which implies an 80k boost to the monthly breakeven rate of job growth to 155k. We expect immigration to be about 1mn higher than usual this year, implying breakeven job growth of around 125k and a 0.3pp boost to potential GDP growth in 2024 from faster labor force growth. The result is that Goldman — already one of the more optimistic investment banks on Wall Street — is once again lifting its actual US growth forecast for 2024.'
by Robin Wigglesworth Alphaville FT
***
Fern
NO surprise here. Immigrants coming to the US can be expected to earn $30,000 a year at a minimum ($15/hour 40 hours a week = $600 but most work a lot more than 40 hours a week and often hold two jobs so that even a lower pay rate yields dollar income).
We have had about 1.5 legal immigrants and as many as 1.5-3.0 others (asylum seekers, illegal, or undocumented immigrants) per year. If you add 10 million every 5 years, the GDP impact is a base of $300 billion and if you use a multiplier (how many times the money circulates in the economy and results in the purchase and delivery of goods and services) of 3 you get $0.9 trillion.
Keeping in mind that much of the earnings of immigrants are not reported, the overall effect on the economy is probably even bigger. Here are some numbers from macrotrends:
U.S. gdp for 2022 was $25,462.70B, a 9.21% increase from 2021.
U.S. gdp for 2021 was $23,315.08B, a 10.71% increase from 2020.
U.S. gdp for 2020 was $21,060.47B, a 1.5% decline from 2019.
U.S. gdp for 2019 was $21,380.98B, a 4.13% increase from 2018.
The St. Louis Fed reports 2023 GDP or almost $28 trillion.
Thank you Anil Madan for these numbers from Macrotrends!
Think about it. Canada accepted over a million immigrants and refugees last year, in a country of 40 million. Imagine what that will add to the economy.
J. Nol
Not that much actually. You have to break down the immigrants to show how many are of working age and actually employed or productive in other measurable ways. If the one million represent families, you'd have to break those down by how many are working, and how many minors or elderly. Canada's GDP for 2024 is roughly $2.3-2.5 trillion. Even if you generously assume the $2.5 trillion number and 100% working and productive immigrants, and further that they will each contribute a pro rata and equivalent to GDP, at most you get a $575 billion additur. This is not necessarily trifling, but in the real world, you are probably looking at $200 billion and maybe $300 billion optimistically.
One of the things people forget when talking about the value of immigrants is that at least at the outset, there are HUGE expenses associated with amalgamating immigrants into a new culture.
It is also not valid to extrapolate from the US experience because we get a very large number of high skilled and entrepreneurial immigrants as compared with most other countries.
Fern, 100% of the increase in employment was part time. Imagine that. We still have Open Borders. Illegal immigration. We started a war in the Ukraine and a half a million are dead. War has ignited in the Middle East and the administration of the Elite has turned on the one Democracy in the region. I guess they had it coming no? And our debt, cumulative inflation and deficit have skyrocketed to unimaginable levels. Otherwise, if you take it from Heather, things are A OK . But hope runs eternal no? ;)
David, possibly the trump tax cuts and his handling of the economy during the COVID epidemic had something to do with our high debt.
HCR's letters are great, absolutely agree with all the kudos!!
Everything good that Biden tries to do, MAGA Mike and his Republican henchmen try to block in their roles as handmaidens to Treacherous-treasonous-tantruming-traitor-Trump and as proxies for Putin. I wish them to implode further.
What's mind-numbing is that the low-to-middle-income side of the GOP base cares zero that their billionaires "pay an average of 8.2% [in] federal taxes" while they are paying 2 to 3+ times that to make up for it. HCR's knowledge of history always so beautifully shows us how the GOP has always used their culture wars of hate on racism, gender, immigration, religion, socialism, even foreign policy to disguise that they are forever fleecing even their own to make a buck. The lie of "trickle down" covers the reality that it actually "floods up".
Will Rogers knew on Nov 26, 1932 “Mr. Hoover didn’t know that money trickled up.” But Reagan knew in 1981 when he resurrected that scheme… a deliberate scam on the workers at the bottom and a windfall for the takers at the top. The junk bond fiasco of the later 80’s was proof enough.
I recently saw a device depicted that the Roman Catholics used during the Inquisition to crush the hands of those writers and artists who wrote and drew things that the Vatican didn't like. Reagan essentially did the same thing in a sense - he used the tax laws and the power of his position to crush the economic lives of everyday Americans. The war between capital and labor goes on, with capital now having the upper hand.
Yes, Richard, and the Inquisition was a golden opportunity to grab wealth from those you envied by making accusations. Now we just have hedge funds buying up everything and making life difficult for many lesser folks.
How the nazis were so prosperous. I still heave at the mention of Mnuchin...
I was rereading Ken Follett's A Column of Fire, set in 1558-1605, where the Catholic Church and the Protestants can be so cruel to each other depending which faith the Monarchy supports. They burnt, drawed and quartered, beheaded, stretched on the rack, cut body parts off unanesthetised of course, etc... Yeech. It is mainly the Catholics at first, but the extremes of each group are just vicious. I agree about Reagan. When he became president I was in shock that Americans could vote someone basically for his star power into office even if he had done some seemingly good things as governor of California. I am so grateful that Biden finally is turning Reaganomics around. Yay!
I would be happy to hear what "seemingly good things" Reagan did as governor of California. I was one who did not see him as a savior.
They do it with velvet gloves so the pain will be muted and the perps seemingly innocuous, or even supportive...
In Spain, the Inquisition was established as a means of making money for the Spanish crown. Even saints like Teresa of Avila and Juan de la Cruz were wrongly regarded with suspicion. Spain ruined itself by expelling Jews from Spain, and as a Catholic it makes me ashamed they did so. Many headed for the Ottoman Empire, where they contributed to Ottoman prosperity and could openly practice their faith, despite having dhimmi status. Religious persecution often causes the persecuted to cling more to their faith. That was true under the penal laws in Ireland and England as well.
Richard, thank you. We can trace the demise of the average person and families to Reagan the petty, lazy minded , punch down charmer. He gave us the “ Welfare Queen “ and the beginning of union busting. George H W Bush nailed it “ voodoo economics “. Many people never experienced the US economy before Reagan and his buddies began trickling down on the opportunity it offered the common person.And those that do remember are constantly being gaslighted into wondering if it was just our imaginations. Believing is seeing. And they rub our noses in it.
Pres. G.W. Bush (an amateur narcissist when compared to TFFG) was correct when at the White House Correspondents' Dinner on 3/31/2001 he said: "You can fool some of the people all of the time, and those are the ones you want to concentrate on." Thomas Frank researched and proved this point in his 2004 book, "What's the Matter with Kansas?"
"Reagan's revolution" was indeed the point in time that 'all that' accelerated into high gear. Actual revolutions by and for the "haves" in our nation happened again and again following our major wars that had to be paid for by someone. Reagan's 'revolution' was an adoption of a revolution of, by, and for the "haves" from WW2 bill resolution. WW2 bill resolution added steam to resentments of the "haves" from resolutions costs of WW1 and the Great Depression - all of course 'blamed' upon dems to their 'flock.' The flock then spreads the stated disease of disinformation onward to those less educated; add in other large constituencies, stir well, and therein you can see the growing constituencies, and leadership 'coalitions' who strive to produce the foul, misinformed "stew" we suffer today. >>*edit* > As I read further down, I can't help but to re-offer a quotation by GW Bush, offered to us by our fellow Richard Sutherland elsewhere in this string, where he offers this direct quotation; what you need to know is that 'this' quotation 'is' the gop leadership coalition's thoughts and approach to all elections. To whit: "Pres. G.W. Bush (an amateur narcissist when compared to TFFG) was correct when at the White House Correspondents' Dinner on 3/31/2001 he said: "You can fool some of the people all of the time, and those are the ones you want to concentrate on." Thomas Frank researched and proved this point in his 2004 book, "What's the Matter with Kansas?"
Even at 17 I was able to see what Reaganomics would do, destroy the middle class to enrich the wealthy. Unfortunately, not too many wanted to see it. It’s not a surprise to me we’ve reached the point where some plutocrats and the Republicans themselves have come to believe that self-government is no longer desirable to them. This is actually what we’re up against, and manufacturers are engaging in greedflation and price hikes at the pump. They want to have us vote in a sociopath and narcissist who will destroy our republic for good and give them permanent control.
You were a wise teen, some oldsters in my family still haven't figured it out. They were like me, born poor, and had a struggle to make a decent life. Still they think the prosperity gospel is what Jesus advocated. And they can read...
Pastor Jim Wallis, author of the book, "The False White Gospel" said it perfectly. "If it's not good news for the poor, it's heresy. Period."
People mistakenly have believed that the morbidly wealthy will invest their tax cut funds and huge profits in their companies to generate more innovation, jobs, etc. But the morbidly rich don't do that; they buy back stock instead, a practice that used to be considered stock manipulation, which was illegal.
Nothing about supply-side, "voodoo" economics was good news for the poor or middle classes. It was and is reverse Robin Hood economics, stealing from the poor to further enrich the already rich.
“Morbidly rich” is so descriptive. How many multi-million dollar yachts do they need anyway?
Boy, did he nail it. My Mom used to say (often), the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. She nailed it too.
“If it’s not good news for the poor, it’s heresy. Period”. That says a lot, right there.
I want to read Rev. Wallis’s latest book. I am a subscriber to Sojourners Magazine.
"If it's not good news for the poor, it's heresy. Period." > I like that a lot Jenn. Thanks
I wasn’t poor, but times were hard for us economically then, and my dad had lost at least 2 jobs, and my mother was pregnant with my youngest brother at the time.
My family has never bought into the prosperity gospel, and I think it only works for people like Joel Osteen who sell it. People on fixed incomes send money they can ill afford to people like Osteen and the various televangelists, and it’s no wonder Osteen and televangelists can have such ostentatious lifestyles.
So true, my poor aunt (96) was sending five dollars to every idiot that sent her a "begging" letter. I said please don't do that, it's rich people stealing your money. She couldn't believe that people would lie about poor children. She was from another era.
Milton Friedman also deliberately ignored the spillover consequences of pursuit of shareholder benefit at any cost would have upon our communities. The decline of American manufacturing matters greatly, not only to the communities who lose the jobs, but to the nation as a whole. It leaves great social destruction in its wake.
Old Milton was at the head of a pack of financial wolves who preyed upon the population, pretending to be the "smartest men in the room."
Kathy, I've always admired your ability to say so much, with so few words. You may have missed your calling.
".... at any cost..." needs placed in some stronger terms somehow Kathy, as it explains so much about the depths and pain of this "race to the bottom" we find ourselves caught within. If "race to the bottom" sounds familiar, it should; Ross Perot sounded that alarm when we approached the NAFTA agreement. He was right, as I soundly agreed at the time. Too much was ignored; 'fast track' of any sort will always ignore too much, and certainly did. The gop leadership deep thinkers laid a clever trap that dems and progressives, who themselves were certain 'they' were the smartest folks in any room, walked right into. Since then, in the privacy of their "self affirming echo chambers" they blame it all on dems, progressives, and lefties. It worked, and moreso because democrats insist on abandoning truth, honesty, and plain dealing, fearing that answers are "too complicated." Sadly, that's where we are still at this moment in time. I fear that if dems don't break out with an extreme case of honesty and forthcoming, even at the great risk of losing, election '24 will be in doubt. Our trade agreements so very deeply harmed the greatest majority of the U.S. psyche, dems may never win back the faith they so badly need to regain of those who saw family generations egregiously harmed economically and it seems irreparably. I'm not in the least being hyperbolic in all this and have not been; I just couldn't get anyone to listen - for decades now. Another related trap has dems merrily skipping to their dooms right now.. One can't help those who won't listen... sigh..
I thought Perot was correct then as well.
You, being you, I'm not the least surprised that you thought so. From my training, I knew so.
Thomas Frank explains it in his 2004 book, "What's the Matter with Kansas." The wealthy and extreme right wing organizations use wedge issues (abortion, women's rights, homophobia and xenophobia [immigrants]) to induce the white Protestants to vote against their own best social and economic interests. Our school systems over the past 50 years have failed to teach the essence of what a democratic government is and how it operates along with critical thinking skills. In short, our public and private education systems have failed us in this regard.
You are absolutely correct Richard, public education has totally failed to educate the youth of America on how a democracy really works and what the responsibilities of each of its citizens are. The lack of understanding is a colossal failure that is now manifesting and will continue to do so for a long time to come. We can’t blame people for not understanding what they weren’t taught, when you think of how our founders were able to put together this country with the rudimentary education most of them had, today’s repugnantkin party is is absolutely incompetent when it comes to offering solutions to modern day problems.
I think that our educators took too much for granted. They assumed that all of us would act fairly and with goodwill toward all. Again, the tension between capital and labor will not go away. Neither will the will to impose one's religious/racist beliefs on the body politic.
Or the desire of some to force their religious beliefs on others. Mikey Weinstein of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation rightly explained there are two types of Christians, those motivated by the Great Commissiom, and the Christian Nationalists, including tnose who belong to the military, are motivated to seek more followers for their version of Jesus. The others are more Great Commandment types, and I freely admit to being a member of this group. I don’t think everyone has to share my political or religious beliefs, but believe in action to help others who need it, not words.
Kathy, I was once a Christian, but we parted ways decades ago; but, I never left Matthew 25: 34-46. These few words encapsulate what government should be and do, in my opinion.
Just so you know, Republicans have been making war on public education for years. The Leandro case in NC was a suit against NC for failing to fairly educate students all across the state. NC lost that suit, but the legislature won't comply with school funding and instead gives public funds to charter schools, which do not perform any better than the public schools that have been inadequately funded at all levels from pre-K to higher education.
“You’ve got to be carefully taught”. They knew it well.
They knew this from the time of Bacon’s Rebellion.
Yep, they basically manufactured the whole abortion issue to bring them to the table.
That was the doing of Paul Weyrich. Weyrich was a Roman-rite Catholic and extreme right winger who joined the Byzantine rite in Catholicism out of disgust with Vatican II. Evangelicals were indifferent on Roe v. Wade and the most prominent early anti-abortion advocates were Catholic, and I myself am Catholic, but also a Democrat. Paul Weyrich convinced the political Evangelicals to oppose abortion to disguise the fact that the political Evangelicals original opposition to Democrats was losing tax exemptions for segregation academies. Weyrich was opposed to ensuring that all Americans had the right to vote for the candidate of their choice, and openly said so. He also observed that his side did better when fewer people voted. The current Republican majority has gutted the Voting Rights Act, given its blessing to political gerrymandering, and is out to undo everything the civil rights movement achieved. Their allies in the states don’t want schoolchildren learning the darker facts in American history, including the truth about the harshness of slavery or the mass slaughter of Native Americans.
Yep; Another "wedge issue" as Richard Sutherland, above ↑, aptly names; "Wedge issues" that by design, set the bulk of us against each other. The opposition 'think tanks' literally 'brain storm' for this divisive stuff.
The funding to public education is dismal. The higher the need, the more they cut. I see it first hand.
Starving public education of funds, steering the money to charter schools where the children are indoctrinated, is part of their plan to have a controllable and uninformed populace.
And they cause such chaos. The economic holes, the stepping stones, are miles apart. If a family isn’t able, there is isn’t anywhere to go. We can feed and help clothe children at school. But where do the children have to go when things are past difficult at home? To the ditches and alleyways, or to a friend’s place. Where do single parents go for support?
The level of arrogance playing out is astounding.
I teach in a very low income neighborhood. For 30 + years, I have been in the classroom. Never have I ever seen a year such as this. Even driving to work has become treacherous. I can handle a great deaI, but these days I am grateful for every day I make it back home.
Holy s***, Jeanie. That is horrifying.
Absolutely. Wish this were not so blatantly obvious.
I think it has failed our children miserably.
It absolutely has. Much of my education was achieved outside the classroom when it came to historical matters.
Yes
Not to mention GOP followers spending hard earned money on golden sneakers and poor quality, word of Trump, bibles. I feel pity for the deluded fools who can’t understand where their best interests lie.
No pity on my part. Instead I am angry that they are so willing to sell out in order to worship an Idiot who makes them feel superior!
I think it isn't always willingness. I think tffg is such an experienced corrupt con artist he actually has conned a bunch of the less informed.
It makes me sad to think the system, which has been stacked against so many for so long, has made people so desperate they would believe this garbage.
I remember asking a friend who the whacko snake oil salesman was that came down a gold looking escalator announcing his presidency.
Have you ever heard of a president selling trivial like trump does? Presidents are supposed to be dignified not hucksters of Goya products on the Resolution Desk. I do know old actors sell life insurance.
Karen, you are so right! There is absolutely nothing dignified about treacherous-treasonous-traitorous-tantruming-Trump!
Who would want to buy Trump’s tacky sneakers or his white nationalist Bible? Trump is as always out for his own well being. Raymond Arroyo of EWTN and sometimes Fox News (he periodically fills in for Laura Ingraham,) embarrassed himself by suggesting African American voters might be more likely to vote for Trump because of his gold sneakers. His racial ignorance was utterly embarrassing. African American voters are intelligent enough to know that voting for Trump is not in their best interests, and as a rule, they vote pragmatically, as Chauncey DeVega notes.
Meanwhile, the President is doing everything he can to improve the lives of the people. while the Mike Maga team is playing obstruction games. If only Joe can find a way to make the majority he's working for "feel superior" to the Big Lying bible grifter's worshippers.
If by "superior" you mean "brighter" then I think it is working.
And, I feel sorry for those of us who may be the recipients of the 'deluded fools' beliefs.
And here we are again....I hear people who are holding fast to their stories, who praised Trump for his early economic successes...which were really Obama's, not saying a word about Biden's. Or whose talking point after the undisputable success of Biden's economics is inflation. As it seems...even low inflation is still a talking point for them.
I don't feel pity for them. I try to get through to those I can by putting reality into words. If I get through to even one, it's worth the effort, but I don't pity any of them. I feel disgust more than anything.
Celeste, I don't feel pity either in ways because death star has given them carte blanche to be openly the nasty people they have always been.
Hate fueled by all the "truth" they listen to 24/7 and swallow without chewing.
In this world of moneyed power, as in the Robber Baron days, it’s time to reverse course. Time to learn from Europe where our childhood poverty would be a scandal.
Terry, this always reminds me of the scene in Repo Man when the guy's parents are watching a TV evangelist and sending him all the money.
Loved that film. Yes, great scene.
exactly. no one gets too that level without exploiting others. NO ONE. Years of saying that taxes are theft of one's money go up and down the economic spectrum. The poor that support the conservative /libertarian agenda want to stick to the government not seeing that these same people professing their agenda are sticking it to them(the poor).
Rickey, while Sam Walton (founder of Walmart) did well by his vision of stores that combined groceries, automotive goods and other items, he was not ostentatious (drove an old pickup to drink coffee with folks in Rogers, Arkansas). A friend says that he didn’t employ the dirty tricks used today by his decendants and treated his initial employees well. Now the employees have different shifts weekly so that they can’t have a second job. There’s a reason that so many qualify for federal assistance (food stamps, Medicaid, etc ).
Sam had good intentions, however, money corrupts. As the empire grew from those small stores and into the larger and now super, that all changed. That one company was responsible for hollowing out rural America with their market strength. Not so sure that Sam ever meant for that to happen, but it did start while he was alive. I saw in some communities in the plains of Texas where after stores that had been in some communities for years, they began closing shop leaving a wasteland of retail possibilities behind them. This causes residents to have to drive further for goods. Amazon then came in to provide in that void and you can hardly not see Amazon trucks now along with FedEx and UPS delivering goods that people could once get locally. This works well for most things, except fresh food which is the lifeblood of the human body.
The scheduling of workers is right on target for most all retail. In some companies, they offer employees some say in scheduling so they can do other jobs or have family time. A much better solution- pay a livable wage, but that would mean less bloated profits available for shareholders and executives.
Yep....watched the individual owned dress shops, shoe stores, hardware stores disappear from main street after Walmart came to town in rural Kansas. It was so hard to watch those families close the doors of their business which supported their and other families for decades.
Rickey, a major additional downside to the retail deserts beyond fresh food deserts is the effects on the environment of all those additional Amazon, UPS, and FedEx trucks spewing their exhausts and the mountains of added packing materials many of which are not recyclable. Shopping via Amazon and general mail order is bad for the environment!
Oh man Mary, is this a reason why low wage workers are put on rotating schedules? To keep the government money supporting them coming in? I had no idea. Sheesh.
That is one reason, another is for the convenience of the employer at the expense of the employees.
Sam Walton is a union busting shithead. Germany got rid of Walmart quick, because they did not want to follow German labor standards of benefits. Also, Walmarts were buying German cars for less in Italy and then selling them under the price German dealers were selling them for, and they got rid of Walmart quickly. Too many cultural differences of standards. To me Walmart coming into a town and destroying all their businesses is awful. It is a Catch 22 as well. People in these towns are too poor to afford mom and pop businesses, so they go to Walmarts, which makes there be no competition so then Walmart can do whatever it wants, and keep everyone working for them poor, while they live on the obscene wealth they rake in off of everyone's backs.
Sam is dead, and the family owns shares in WalMart, but they don’t run the company any more. That being said, Sam was very antiunion, and so are the executives who run the company. The one thing the current execs do that Sam didn’t do was to eliminate Sam Walton’s preference to buy American made products in favor of Chinese made products.
And ruining educational systems continues to keep those at the financial bottom clueless.
BK, this has always been the way of plutocrats who used the idea of white vs. black to make it difficult for poorer whites to make common cause with slaves and free blacks, the old divide and conquer and let's keep the pot boiling with culture wars while large problems go unsolved. As for trickle down, that has always looked to me like something yellow. We have a large sewer/street project going on in front of our house and the length of our street. It is mostly funded with federal dollars, yet large numbers of the workers who aren't doing the scut work have items on their cars that indicate that they are MAGAs. Of course, any scut work is done by people speaking Spanish. They did the finishing work on the cement sidewalks, the roof on the pump house, and the landscaping.
This tactic goes all the way back to the end of Bacon’s Rebellion in the 17th century, when slaveholders and landowners set out to destroy any potential solidarity between poor indentured white servants and enslaved people.
BK, you also need to remember that the top 50% of income tax payers bring in almost all federal income tax collected, with the top few percent covering the lion's share of that. This has been true for a long time, and it's also an indication of the degree of wealth inequality in America. The lower third of earners get tax credits and rebates. Payroll and sales taxes on the other hand are a different matter. They are generally regressive, falling as a greater share of spending income on the less well to do. However common grocery items and prescription drugs are tax free.... mixed bag. It remains however that historic tax rates need to be re-asserted and made effective. Lower taxes paid by the super rich remember are legally provided as economic incentives by governments, of all stripes, and have been for the longest time.
Frank, it's good in theory (lower taxes for the wealthy) but in practice it doesn't work. How do we know this? Look at the $34 trillion federal debt. When Reagan took office in 1981 the federal debt was less than $1 trillion. Trump and those formerly known as Republicans, passed a $2 trillion tax break for the wealthy. Trump bragged about it and the debt increased another $8.2 trillion during his four years in office. When the marginal tax rate was 95% back in the 1930's, it didn't deter the wealthy from engaging in economic activity. It may have even made them strive harder. We need to tax the wealthy and the large corporations much, much more. No one in 1,000 lifetimes can spend $1 billion on personal effects.
Correct. The other thing Reagan did was to tax Social Security benefits to make up for that shortfall. We must fight Republican efforts to destroy Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. We also need to remove the tax on Social Security and remove the income cap on the amount of income taxable to Social Security. For many of us, 401ks are not going to help us and we won’t have enough in benefits to avoid living in poverty. More people will forego retirement, while it will become a benefit available to the wealthy only. Nikki Haley’s call to raise the age for collecting Social Security is a bad idea because for many blue collar workers who do physical labor, their bodies are worn out by the time they reach their mid or late fifties. Trump is sociopathic enough to eliminate Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and he will do it. What you’ll see is an increase in the number of dying and homeless people unable to afford medical care or housing.
Ours is/are the lucky generation(s) in that we could earn a reasonable living. I read recently from our generation(s) is/are providing financial support to our grown children. I certainly have. A lot.
thanks Richard, but i was in no way advocating lower taxes for the wealthy, actually the opposite. I do remember those days, long ago, when marginal topmost tax rates were 95%.
I agree. The wealthy can and should pay a lot more. They take advantage of the benefits of our government and infrastructure and they can well afford to pay a lot more as their fair share for what they use.
A lot of the so called tax breaks are meant to be economic incentives or subsidies, it'd be interesting to see a notated laundry list on this
“…the top 50% of income tax payers bring in almost all federal income tax collected,”
You speak of this like they’re doing us some kind of favor.
If all that income was not flowing to the top 1-3%, but trickled down (as R’s famously promise ALL THE DAMN TIME!! AND NEVER PRODUCE IT) taxes would still be paid into our government. In fact, MORE taxes would be paid on that pot of income because low/mid income earners do not offshore their money nor do they spend gazillions of $$ looking for ways to avoid paying taxes.
Proving once again that concentrated wealth is a pox on our country.
My concern is that it will wind up costing us our polity and we will become a theocratic dictatorship under a narcissistic sociopath like Trump and his followers.
note, i did say the current situation also reflects wealth inequality, I'm not trying to be an apologetic for this. You might not like to hear this, but most of that wealth is tied up in working capital essential to running these large corporations, not that this concentration doesnt free up a lot of personal luxury spending. Curiously, political spending is a relatively small fraction of all this available wealth, though it certainly undermines the concept of "one person one vote".
We need to reverse the three decisions that helped to tilt the playing field in favor of unlimited funding and dark money. Citizens United, and also Buckley v. Valeo (1976) and First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti (1978.) The Buckley in Buckley v. Valeo was James Buckley, the elder brother of William F. Buckley. James wanted to spend an unlimited amount of his own money on his NY senate campaign, and he lost. It reminds me of how Steve Forbes spent an unlimited amount of his own money on his presidential campaign, but he never could win primaries.
Another thought is about republicans do not to increase funding for the IRS. Basically, it would make it more efficient BUT it would have more auditors to audit the BIG tax payers like trump. This cost more, but the payoff is much bigger. us middle class are prime targets-easy tax returns to check but smaller dividends.
Very good points👍
I advocate getting rid of the income tax and replacing it with a VAT similarly administered via reporting requirements that would cover all business transactions including services at a flat rate. See New Hampshire's Business Enterprise Tax. Also the Michigan Single Business Tax, now repealed. A consumption tax, yes, but not a Sales Tax on goods alone at the point of retail sale. The largest component of base being payroll. You could also call this the GNP tax since collectively the tax base sums to private sector GNP. What else is there to tax ?
.....Unfortunately there is no point in discussing tax policy.
These taxes are regressive.
Incorrect. Sales taxes on retail goods are regressive. Services make up a proportionally larger share of the rich man's consumption budget than that of the poor. Taxing the provision of services along with goods at every level in the supply chain and across all sectors in the economy is not regressive. Consumption. It's what Americans do. Consume. Voraciously. And since WWII the US economy has steadily shifted to services and continues to do so. Increasingly that is where wealth is generated as the affluent pay other people to do things for them. Lawyers, accountants, cleaning services, psychoanalysts, fortune tellers, tatoo artists, entertainers, captains and crews for private planes and boats. That is where the money is in this economy characterized by great income and wealth inequality. Tax spending on this along with everything else. Tax the generation of wealth in America via consumption. Don't tax wage earners.
"What's mind-numbing is that the low-to-middle-income side of the GOP base cares zero that their billionaires "pay an average of 8.2% [in] federal taxes" while they are paying 2 to 3+ times that to make up for it."
Mindboggling to say the least.
Great alliteration Linda! I also think that if the S__t Show Caucus is so interested in tying aid to Baltimore to cuts in other parts of government spending, and "unpausing" the development of LNG (Liquid Natural Gas) use, they could propose ways to offset burning more LNG with reductions in the use of other fossil fuels. Not on their radar, I'm afraid.
Their new use of refusals clearly labels for whom they are working. Although WE are paying their salaries, they are working to support Mr Putin. Each individual voter who votes for them also puts a lot of effort into supporting another country, against their own country. It is Trump supporters who are traitors.
Yes. You are correct.We are paying the salaries of the Putin wing of the Republican Party but they are working to aid Putin himself.The stark contrast to how quickly and efficiently Biden is handling the Francis Scott Key bridge disaster compared to how Trump threw paper towels to residents of Puerto Rico a few years ago as his response to a powerful hurricane that decimated the island is a study in contrasts.
Yet it is rarely mentioned. I was mortified every single day of those four years.
A lot of us were and still are at his horrific antics everyday.
Every hour of every day. Yet the cult slobbers over his stupidity, word salad, and sacrilegious nonsense.
Mortified-and thoroughly disgusted.
Yep
I was disgusted by Trump’s behavior at throwing paper towels, and at many of his other antics and inaction, but Trump is a sociopath and they don’t possess any empathy. President Biden does have empathy, and it shows. Trump is also a narcissist who thinks all attention has to be on him at every opportunity. Trump’s primary concerns have been himself, his money, and now his political power.
What radar Steve, radar gives you the ability to see beyond what you can see with your eyes, if a person has their head up their ass all the way to their shoulders how are they going to see anything except their own crap. We may very well be having this discussion on the Titanic after it hit the iceberg. We have allowed some of our elected to stop our prevention of WWIII, it’s not going to matter what kind of government you are in favor of, if we no longer have a country, and WWIII will eliminate most countries as we know them. 🤷♂️
Yesterday CSpan featured a Libertarian head and the Green Party presidential candidate. Neither can be dismissed. But I will just say the Libertarian tried to walk the line between her party's absolutely no government and effectively no government wings, tied herself in knots, and fell on her face. Hey boys and girls, let's get together and ... wait, no, whatever it is you'll do it yourself - or someone will.
So on to the inevitable Jill Stein. Whose boilerplate by now is seamless, delivery is hypnotic, and because she said it so many times, really wants you to know - they are "shoving it down your throat." Your throat evidently a capacious ark for everything Stein doesn't like about the duopoly. Stein's ire at RFK Jr splitting her constituency is cute. Stein has said straight-facedly "The answer to neofascism is stopping neoliberalism." And if you can swallow that, all I can say is, gag me with a spoon.
A perpetual candidate since 2002, Stein has won one office, coming in first of 16 candidates to win a seat on the Lexington Town Meeting with 539 votes.
Stein's 2016 financial disclosure, indicated that she maintained investments of as much as $8.5 million, including mutual or index funds holdings in big carbon, big financial (including Trump fave the money laundering Deutsche Bank), big pharma, tobacco, and defense contractors. There's no news that she's divested.
On CSpan, I heard Stein both feint and brag on performing for Vladimir Putin at a Moscow conference and gala dinner celebrating Russia Today's tenth anniversary. (RT widely promoted Stein's 2016 campaign for president. A fact she uses to chastise American media.) Stein was seated at the head table with Putin and Michael Flynn (whom RT had paid $45,000 to speak.) Previously Stein has claimed she had nothing to do with Putin and it was a non-event. On CSpan Stein claimed it was a journalism conference, she just happened to attend the evening event, and that she was there to plead with Putin not to let Russia become an "international bully like the United States." Good thing Putin has the standard issue KGB poker face. It wasn't a journalism conference. Sitting with Putin doesn't just happen. Just imagine if Jill Stein were an independent Russian politician criticizing Russia. Oh wait, we don't have to imagine. We already know. But Jill Stein and the voters who love her may very well give Trump the win, again. And we also know what he will do with anyone opposing him. That's OK with Stein, she's safe.
I never trusted Jill Stein. As for glibertarianism, which is my name for libertarianism, it works on paper but not in real life, much like Communism or Fascism.
Yes, please. The world would be a better place if only......
If only we were less self-centered and more forthright with each other, I think.
“Less self centered “ equals really listening to what the Bible really says. We are, according to the book they say they are following, commanded to take care of each other (everyone), and the earth, which has been given to us to take care of!
A book of tales is not needed for people to do right for their fellow man.
Strong parenting, family and community plus good education for all gives our population the base it needs. From that we help those with less.
It goes to show how few people are really taking to heart the actions Jesus showed during Jesus’s earthly ministry. The theocratic and integralist contingent seem to have sacrificed their professed Christianity in the pursuit of political power.
Yep;.... "And by God those faithless Dems dared to call us out early on; we who've got God on our side"! Sheesh...
Or to put it another way there is no patent on morality.
That in a nutshell is what Christianity means to this former Christian.
Spot on JL, and good defining name for the era we find ourselves in. *edit > Not funny that "it's the economy stupid" , brought us to this divisive era, and will continue.
A lilting litany.
I like your a answer. But mine was if only Putin , Trump, Orbán, Erdoğan, Kim Jung-un, Xi Jinping and a few others along with their loyal cronies and loyal followers would implode, like @Linda Weide suggested.🤣🤣🤣
I wish them all toasty warm prison cells- sadly I don't get too many of my wishes.
I will ask the Universe to grant you a change in your luck!!
Agreed. Unfortunately, Putin takes good care of his health in a weird way. Are those quail eggs that he eats as omelets really so great for him?
https://www.afr.com/world/europe/the-private-habits-of-vladimir-putin-20140808-j75jm
Stress must follow all of them, but not the stresses we regular people have of worrying about getting things done or worrying if we will catch the train on time, but those of worrying whether someone in their immediate circle will betray them as they do everyone whom they perceive as not loyal, and stress from a certain sort of isolation. We can only hope for implosion of dictators, but I'd be happy is it started with Treacherous-treasonous-traitorous-tantruming-Trump!
Linda, those quail eggs of Putin reminds me of “let them eat cake!” And evidence shows that their entitled children need a taste of the knowledge and empathy of living conditions that Biden possesses. We’ve got problems when students think the average wage is at least $250,000 (it’s closer to $50,000).
https://www.thestreet.com/personal-finance/wharton-students-think-six-figure-salaries-are-american-average
" I'm melting! Melting! Oh, what a world! What a world! Who would have thought a good little girl like you could destroy my beautiful wickedness!"
@ Linda. To block them, we need to sweep.
To protect American democracy, reach out to millions of unregistered likely Democrats using a dedicated database using every outreach method possible (phone and text, postcard, email and targeted ad, and in-person too), where new Democratic voters will make the most impact – in the most flippable states and districts.
https://www.fieldteam6.org/actions
Does these corporate billionaires even have a clue that when this autocrat Mob Don gets in power their taxes may get lowered but their payment to the “Boss” will be significant
He’ll demand large amounts from the plutocrats for protection money, rather like Putin gets large handouts from Russia’s oligarchs.
Linda, if, as you term it the "Treacherous-treasonous-tantruming-traitor-Trump" regains power there will be a mass migration from the U.S., benefitting the receiving countries with billions of dollars in accounts, just as we are currently benefitting from the labor of immigrants coming to this country. I have already selected the country that I will go to, having a permanent residency card there already. MAGAs are not to be trusted in the least.
I have been wondering if there will be a great exodus between the time he may be elected and the inauguration. I just updated my passport.
We did that in 2020…
Can we go with you? ;) I don't even want to think about what we'll do if that man regains power.
It’s not necessarily easy to immigrate to other countries these days.
No, it’s not. You have to have a sufficient amount of capital and marketable skills the country is seeking. In a way, it reminds me about one aspect of Hungary you don’t hear about, and that is young and educated Hungarians are leaving Orbán’s Christian Nationalist “paradise” for freer nations like Germany. Orbán seems to have modeled himself and his government on the government of Miklós Horthy after the short lived governments of Mihály Károlyi and Béla Kun. Kun’s origins unfairly led Protestant and Catholic Hungarians to blame all Jews for Kun, when many of them didn’t support Kun at all, and around 5,000 were slaughtered in the wake of Kun’s fall.
Horthy called himself “regent” of Hungary even though he expelled Hungary’s last King Charles IV (Karl I of Austria) on two separate occasions when Charles and his wife Zita tried to return as monarchs. Charles was unwilling to engage in bloodshed to regain his crown, and after Charles’s death in Madeira in 1922, his son Otto didn’t attempt to reclaim the crown. The victors of World War I were unwilling to see another monarch in Hungary, and Horthy was himself opposed to Charles’s return. Horthy was essentially dictator of Hungary and ran a national Christian conservative government with anti-Semitic policies. Hitler thought Horthy’s anti-Semitic policies insufficiently stringent, and Hitler’s armies invaded Hungary in 1944, establishing the Fascist Arrow Cross party, killing some Jewish Hungarians (including a notorious slaughter where Jews were forced at gunpoint to jump into the icy Danube, where many drowned,) and deporting many to death in the gas chambers of Auschwitz and other concentration camps. The Communists took over with Stalin’s assistance in 1946. Horthy died in the 1950s in Portugal, where he had fled with his wife and most of their family in 1944 after the Nazis invaded.
Orbán got into power after the Socialist Party got caught lying about economic conditions in Hungary. Orbán and his Fidesz Party were originally pro-democracy and George Soros paid for Orbán to study at Oxford in order to how civil democracies are governed. The right wing considers Soros as some sort of bogeyman, but Soros supports civil and social democracies. He does not support fascism, Communism, or Socialism. The real problem is,that the extreme right doesn’t support democratic government. Orbán shamefully turned on Soros once he got into power, and he immediately set about to cement his power by turning press ownership over to his cronies, gerrymandering parliamentary districts to guarantee Fidesz’s dominance and expelling the Central European University from Hungary to Austria. I really don’t know if Orbán intended to run Hungary as an “illiberal democracy” all along, or whether he acquired his ambitions along the way. In my view, he’s dangerous and the EU needs to cut off their funding of Hungary until Orbán is expelled.
Thank you for this lesson. All I knew is that Orbán is a Roma and an opportunist. I was not aware he was mentored by Soros. Now he has strong opposition by Peter Magyar, who is polished and eloquent. I hope he does not get killed, like Navalny. Hungarians are waking up and Magyar is being listened too.
I’ve never heard any talk about Orbán being Roma. I have heard that his government is discriminatory toward Roma. His father was an agronomist, engineer and construction engineer and his mother a teacher and speech therapist. His grandfather was a docker and farmer. I am about a week older than he is.
Kathy: I apologize. I have good Hungarian friends in Croatia, who insist they know the family. They told me and I believed it. I have done the research. For three generations there's no evidence of Roma roots but, there are mention of "urban legends. " IT IS NEVER TOO LATE TO LEARN A LESSON.
How could it be that Orban was mentored by Soros? They have completely opposite political views, plus Orban is not fond of Jews.
I wrote you a reply....it is here somewhere. Now I cannot find it.
Summarising, and I double checked.
He was mentored by Soros in 1989. His turning on Soros has labeled him as anti-semitic. But he has stated he will not tolerate antisemitism (2017) and he iis VERY friendly with Netanyahu.
The man is an opportunist and a con man. His government has been labeled as a kleptocracy.
THERE ARE A FEW!! I HAVE BEE.N CHECKING!!
I fear that I am stuck if Trump becomes dictator, and I will lose my job. I won’t go into details as to why.
Kathy, we need to be afraid, of Trump AND his supporters. They are vicious and vengeful, at least many are.
I am willing to take that chance.
Richard, since my Social Security income doesn't give me a decent quality of life in the USA, I am already there with my permanent resident card.
Love your alliteration!
It boggles the mind that the Republicans in Congress want to fight over reopening one of the busiest ports in the US, so they can blame Biden for the inevitable ripple effects the port's closing will have on supply chains and the economy. They really want to burn the whole country to the ground. It's madness.
I agree. I sure hope the people of Baltimore (and all of Maryland) are paying attention!
Stark, raving madness at that.
What aggravates me more than anything is that we Americans never seem to look at the long term consequences of the negative choices to enrich the wealthy, support certain wars, to regard business and property as more important than human life, and to use human needs to profit off human misery. I am not fond of the CCP or Xi Jinping, but former President Carter has noted that the Chinese do take a longer view of history than we Americans do, and that we could learn from that example.
In the history of the world, the US is a toddler and a spoiled one at that. The Chinese can take the long view because as a civilization, they have been at it, for good and ill, for the better part of 5,000 years. I think they may have forgotten more than we have learned.
You’re correct about that.
Hillary was right. They are deplorable. Throw in despicable and disgusting as well.
Give em hell, Joe!
When Hillary Clinton originally said half of trump supporters were deplorable, I said that was not true . . . 100% of trump supporters are deplorable!! Time has shown that all republicans fall into the deplorable basket!
I now use the word "republican" as an insult.
So many things they do are deplorable. There are thousands of examples of Congress stepping up to help rebuild and recover after catastrophic events, whether it be a hurricane, flood or infrastructure failure. Bridges, dams, derailed trains, polluted superfund sites or mass shooting.
Rand Paul loves to try to block funding for any disaster, yet when there's a disaster in Kentucky he's up there begging for money.
Why do the Republicans not want billionaires to pay the 28% the rest of us are expected to pay while their employees have no loopholes?
We could tell that to Jeff Bezos except he's probably out on the water in his $500 million yacht that he paid cash for in 2023.
In the final analysis, referring to what those who now claim to be Republicans, they are simply not nice. My Texas aunts, born in the early part of the 20th century, would disapprove of their rude, crude and vicious behavior. Is it a case of there "being no there there?"
Of course she was right … still, based upon her experiences, roles and positions - was/is the most qualified [temperament is an important quality consideration - among others] person to have sort the position of POTUS!
Absolutely!
☮️
This is true, but the wingnuts demonized her successfully. I also think the writer Ta-Nehisi Coates was correct in observing that Trump was the price we paid for electing President Obama.
Agreed, and there remains in the US an aversion to women who think and act independently, are intelligent, question/challenge men and are unapologetic about it. Racists came out, and have remained out in droves in support of the former racist in chief.
Unfortunately, both racism and misogyny are still rampant in American society. The racism is a problem that we white citizens have to eliminate, and the misogyny is a problem men must eliminate. Misogynoir is a combination of racism and sexism African American women often face. Trump flaunts his racism and misogyny in public, and both attitudes are unacceptable and should be publicly scorned. Unfortunately, there are enough MAGA voters that think it’s OK for Trump to publicly express his racism and misogyny. His campaign against Hillary Clinton reeked of misogyny, as did the wingnuts’ successful campaign to demonize Ms. Clinton.
From: World Central Kitchen
'Honoring our team members
& calling for justice'
'Saif. Zomi. Damian. Jacob. John. Jim. James. The seven World Central Kitchen team members killed in the April 1, 2024 attack in Gaza existed at their very core to serve others. They were from different corners of the world, but they were all humanitarians. They were also sons, daughters, sisters, brothers, fathers, partners. We honor their contributions to the world they made brighter and to the mission of WCK to nourish people in their hardest moments.'
“These are people I served alongside in Ukraine, Turkey, Morocco, The Bahamas, Indonesia, Mexico, Gaza, and Israel. They were far more than heroes,” said WCK founder and Chief Feeding Officer José Andrés. “Their work was based on the simple belief that food is a universal human right. It is not conditional on being good or bad, rich or poor, left or right. We do not ask what religion you belong to. We just ask how many meals you need.” 'Read José’s opinion piece in the New York Times' (See gifted link below)
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/03/opinion/jose-andres-let-people-eat.html?unlocked_article_code=1.iU0.xIc1.BWJenqQXZNOS&smid=url-share
'WCK coordinated everything correctly with the IDF in advance. Despite that, our convoy was hit as it was leaving the Deir al-Balah warehouse, where the team had unloaded hundreds of tons of humanitarian food aid brought to Gaza on our newly established maritime route from Cyprus.' “This is not only an attack against WCK, this is an attack on humanitarian organizations showing up in the most dire of situations where food is being used as a weapon of war. This is unforgivable,” said Erin Gore, CEO of WCK.'
'Read the full statement from World Central Kitchen' (See link below)
https://wck.org/
'The IDF has acknowledged its responsibility and its fatal errors in the deadly attack on our convoy in Gaza. It is also taking disciplinary action against some of those in command and committed to other reforms. These are important steps forward. But without systemic change, there will be more military failures and more grieving families. In addition to the tens of thousands of Palestinians killed, nearly 200 humanitarian workers have lost their lives during this conflict. That is why World Central Kitchen is demanding the creation of an independent commission to investigate the killings of our WCK colleagues.'
'Read WCK’s statement about the IDF preliminary investigation'
https://wck.org/news/preliminary-investigation
'While we continue to demand full accountability for what happened to our team—our friends—we continue to mourn the loss of their incredible hearts and smiles. WCK’s leadership is in close contact with their families, and we are doing everything we can to support them in this unimaginable time. Please stay tuned to our social media channels for information about the WCK global community honoring the lives of these heroes and ways you can participate. In the coming days, we will be sharing heartfelt tributes to remember their vibrant lives and indelible impact on the world.'
***
BiBi is a war criminal! Enough!
Thank you again FERN for your research deliverables. I was not able to access the Jose Andres "Let People Eat" article but, I am looking for the details of the WCK targeting attack & whether more-than-one precision guidance weapon may have been used.
I am aware of satellite, high-tech imaging & well check-in with Bellingcat sort of an 'Intelligence Agency for the People' as one book about them was titled. More later.
Bryan Sean, thank you very much. I just edited my comment to place a gifted link for reading chef Jose Andres' "Let People Eat".
You are a most excellent advocate.
Salud!
Super Salud.
After reading Jose, the Founder of WCK, Words:
🔺 "43 Million meals have been served" by WCK.
🔺WCK welcomes the "promise" of an investigation".
🔺"Investigation needs to start at the top".
🔴 Israel need to remember ... what strength truly looks like".
Counselor, this was an interesting read:
https://open.substack.com/pub/luciantruscott/p/top-secret-us-flying-ginsu-missile?r=3hlhv&utm_medium=ios
Thank you, Ally, for that fascinating report on the possible use of US made missiles deplored by Israel's military. Another deeply troubling story from The Washington Post follows:
'Israel offers a glimpse into the terrifying world of military AI' (WAPO)
Analysis by Ishaan Tharoor
'A new report published by +972 magazine and Local Call indicates that Israel has allegedly used an AI-powered database to select suspected Hamas and other militant targets in the besieged Gaza Strip. According to the report, the tool, trained by Israeli military data scientists, sifted through a huge trove of surveillance data and other information to generate targets for assassination. It may have played a major role particularly in the early stages of the current war, as Israel conducted relentless waves of airstrikes on the territory, flattening homes and whole neighborhoods. At present count, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, more than 33,000 Palestinians, the majority being women and children, have been killed in the territory.'
'The AI tool’s name?' “Lavender.”
'This week, Israeli journalist and filmmaker Yuval Abraham published a lengthy expose on the existence of the Lavender program and its implementation in the Israeli campaign in Gaza that followed Hamas’s deadly Oct. 7 terrorist strike on southern Israel. Abraham’s reporting — which appeared in +972 magazine, a left-leaning Israeli English-language website, and Local Call, its sister Hebrew-language publication — drew on the testimony of six anonymous Israeli intelligence officers, all of whom served during the war and had “first-hand involvement” with the use of AI to select targets for elimination. According to Abraham, Lavender identified as many as 37,000 Palestinians — and their homes — for assassination.' (The IDF denied to the reporter that such a “kill list” exists, and characterized the program as merely a database meant for cross-referencing intelligence sources.) 'White House national security spokesperson John Kirby told CNN on Thursday that the United States was looking into the media reports on the apparent AI tool.'
“During the early stages of the war, the army gave sweeping approval for officers to adopt Lavender’s kill lists, with no requirement to thoroughly check why the machine made those choices or to examine the raw intelligence data on which they were based,” 'Abraham wrote.'
“One source stated that human personnel often served only as a ‘rubber stamp’ for the machine’s decisions, adding that, normally, they would personally devote only about ‘20 seconds’ to each target before authorizing a bombing — just to make sure the Lavender-marked target is male,” he added. “This was despite knowing that the system makes what are regarded as ‘errors’ in approximately 10 percent of cases, and is known to occasionally mark individuals who have merely a loose connection to militant groups, or no connection at all.”
'This may help explain the scale of destruction unleashed by Israel across Gaza as it seeks to punish Hamas, as well as the high casualty count.' (WAPO) Gifted link below.
https://wapo.st/4aLy2Qb
Thank you greatly Officer & FERN excellent work At this point I believe the BBC analysis has it right-- a modified, car roof piercing R9X.
I am general aware of the IDF use of an AI powered database in many strikes. But, I will carefully read the capable YOUVAL ABRAHAM's analysis. ✔️
Thank you, Fern, for posting this information. What a tragedy. I feel that this whole war in Gaza has become a deadly game of ‘whack-a-mole. Bombing everything above ground as Hamas scurries through the tunnels below, and collateral destruction and death to everyone above.
Andrew Bacevich has written that Netanyahu will not achieve what he wants to achieve in Gaza. Hamas will survive even though it shouldn’t, and non-combatants are paying the price. I don’t think Netanyahu or senior Israeli intelligence and military officials were paying attention to the possibility that Israel might be attacked, rather like Bush and Cheney ignored the intelligence about September 11, 2001.
And the war would end if Hamas would surrender and release the hostages. I don’t imagine that Hamas would cease firing thousands of rockets into Israel if Israel stops fighting back. They have been doing this for decades, as well as suicide bombing crowds, even when there is no active war. This is the reason for Israel’s iron dome, which intercepts rockets. Islamist groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah, even Isis have been terrorizing Israelis since its existence.
Yes, the billionaires will be anti-environment, anti-government action, anti-safety, anti-workers.
Any middle class and working-class prosperity just seem to billionaires like personal affronts to them.
They revert, as Heather notes here, to the hoary old and repeatedly disproven supply side economics theory. They must. It's a theory -- a false one -- but were the billionaires to deal with reality, they'd have to account for the workers they ignore, the workers whose jobs they offshore, the workers whose well-being government action can improve.
So, theory wins. Bad theory.
But it's a dangerous slope. Start doing things to aid actual people -- like government programs for that -- and soon enough people might see the value of all those humanities that track actual people. Soon enough, people might want schools again to feature those humanities.
And schools might cease serving all the interests of the billionaire classes, from the deadly reign of standardized testing K-12 to the group identity programs in higher ed, the neutered silos there, and the predation of the banks in indebting students.
we were successfully sold a quack cure. When in all of history did plutocracy ever make life better for the preponderance of the public? Where was the proof of concept before we handed the keys to the rich? The founding of this nation is awash with contradictions, but the choice of a republic was a reaction to aristocratic feudal oppression, and, of you strip away the nonsense, so-called (and Orwellianly misnamed "Supply Side Economics" is just a return to the canards and corrupt injustices of feudalism. Follow the money, not just between individuals, but as a dynamic system, the way meteorologists study weather patterns globally, as well as regionally. How has the whole system of commerce and of society been affected? Not the way Reaganomics was billed.
Recall how Eisenhower acknowledged how "H.L. Hunt (you possibly know his background), a few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas" wanted to end Social Security, unemployment insurance and other programs that aided what Leona Helmsley called "the little people". For some people (Ike called them "stupid" it's not enough to have more money than one could possibly every spend; they want it ALL.
And they will buy politicians, and sell out anyone and anything in order to get it.
Nice, J L -- you've got exactly "the canards and corrupt practices of feudalism."
Those words of yours also denote the Clarence court, its bribed, perjured, corrupted.
Ike saw the decencies, the pluck in the face of sacrifice of the millions of normal, working-class Americans under his military command. Marine Major General Smedley D. Butler, a generation before Ike, also lambasted the U.S. schemers of what you term "aristocratic feudal oppression." Sheldon Whitehouse in 2022 wrote the book on them today doing that, "The Scheme."
And yes, J L, I know H. L. Hunt.
Faulkner called him, them, the Snopeses. (Funny, as I enter their name, my computer's otherwise persistent spell-checker does not recognize them. Well, can't expect many of our elites, tech or otherwise, to know any humanities, let alone those most key, vital.)
Yes, J L -- fine words of yours on what one of a certain trio used to term "another fine mess you've gotten us in."
You honor our Heather, who so meticulously follows their sordid trail today.
Your conclusion, "they will buy politicians, and sell out anyone and anything" -- again encapsulates our oh-so-corrupt Clarence court.
I think that "corruption" in the governmental abuse of power sense needs to be a lot more keenly discussed and identified. If you are around something foul for too long, you start to stop smelling it.
Exactly, J L.
It's the anesthetization that comes when we allow ourselves to become dehumanized.
In "Politics and the English Language," Orwell describes how we blind ourselves, numb ourselves, by allowing ourselves "bad language," language for instance as now when our elites all leave school with no capacity to see, imagine, let alone use any humanities.
for these people "enough is never".
Nothing can ever satisfy their greed, and it’s up to us to stop them at the ballot box, as gerrymandered as many of our states are, and regardless of the dead hand of the unnecessary and hoary electoral college. It was designed to give slave states an advantage, and at that time, slavery existed in the North, although it was of less economic importance as it was in the South. Alexander Hamilton supported it in the mistaken belief it would prevent voters from electing a demagogue. Instead, it gave us a demagogue in Donald Trump.
The Supreme Court effectively adopted H.L. Hunt’s advocacy for one dollar, one vote when they decided Citizens United. Hunt, who died in 1974, wrote a cheaply published paperback describing a mythical country named Alpaca in the early 1950s, and in Alpaca’s political campaigns, the people with the most money had the most votes. Hunt’s sons from his first marriage to Lyda Bunker Hunt, Herbert and Bunker Hunt were members of the John Birch Society and funded the Council on National Policy until they lost much of their wealth in trying to corner the silver market in the late 1970s. Both brothers are now dead, although one of them managed to recover his fortune by investing in the Bakken oil shale project before he died. Their sisters, Margaret and Caroline, managed to hang onto their wealth before their own deaths. The eldest son, Hassie, didn’t do much of anything. His father had him undergo a lobotomy and he lived at Hunt’s estate until his own death.
Hunt made a bigamous marriage to Frania Tye and had four children with her. Frania left Hunt when she found out he was already married and went to live in Atlanta. After Hunt’s death, they sued and got a share of the family fortune. Hunt’s third wife, Ruth Ray Hunt, was his mistress before Lyda’s death in the 1950s, and married him after Lyda died. He had four children with Ruth and she got him involved in Evangelicalism. Hunt’s three families were not close at all. H.L. thought he was a superior being with great genes, and like Trump, he felt himself above the normal rules of human behavior. The difference was that H.L. was able to make money and better at business at business than Trump.
Money is not speech, and it should never be treated as speech. Television and radio outlets should be required to run campaign ads free of charge, and campaigns should be limited in time and scope, as they are in Europe. There also should be standards against lying or half-truths and distortions about other candidates (like I know it won’t happen.) The problem is that instead of governing for the common good, politicians are forced to spend most of their time fundraising in place of governing for the common good. The Senate’s powers need to be reformed to eliminate the severe gerrymandering of its votes, and powers like effectively requiring 2/3 of the senate to pass any legislation (thanks for nothing, McConnell) filibusters and senatorial holds on judges eliminated. We also need to enlarge the House based upon the current number of Americans in the country. The current number of members is based upon our population 100 years ago.
Your real-life account horrifies, Kathy.
But then, for corroboration, there's fiction:
Booth Tarkington's "The Magnificent Ambersons";
Lillian Hellman, "The Little Foxes";
F. Scott Fitzgerald, "The Great Gatsby";
Robert Penn Warren, "All the King's Men";
and America's great traditions in crime writing including Ross Macdonald, Patricia Highsmith, Elmore Leonard, Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain, Raymond Chandler, and many, many more who've brilliantly got apt fingers on our most cynical, criminal, predatory elites.
Saddest of all, it's not really fiction.
Everything taught in biz ed is fiction -- fabulist, insane, as demented as everything that now passes for normal on the Clarence court.
Thank you.
Stopping the massive build-out of LNG export terminals in the Gulf isn't only a necessary step to slow emissions and bring the fossil fuel industry to heel. It's also an economic issue that the White House and Democrats would be wise to keep talking about. Creating an ever-larger export market drives up methane prices here in the U.S. (Plenty of articles on this, including from the liberal mudslingers at Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/energyinnovation/2024/02/11/us-gas-prices-could-spike-14-without-bidens-pause-on-new-lng-export-terminals/?sh=2cfdebc25115)
And anyway, the market in the EU for U.S. gas will decline soon as they continue to shift to renewables. LNG is a lose-lose proposition in any meaningful long-term analysis, particularly to increase our odds of having a recognizable, livable world for our grandchildren.
Thank you for the article, Jason. This is Big Picture stuff. Your point of LNG being a "lose-lose" means the pause is a win-win, keeping energy prices down here in the US and not assisting our adversaries abroad plus the reality our friends in the EU's demand is to decline anyway. Agree that Team Biden should be promoting this esp as a major campaign issue.
As the prospect of the end of my life no longer seems as distant as it did growing up, my principle solace in bowing out would be the prospect of one child born and that this world would carry on; at least in the sense of muddling though, not a frickin' nightmare.
Well said, JL. I'll share with you what someone shared with me over at my newsletter recently, a quote from the great writer Robert Macfarlane: "[The Anthropocene] is, perhaps, best imagined as an epoch of loss – of species, places and people – for which we are seeking a language of grief and, even harder to find, a language of hope."
I have not abandoned all hope, but a rough ride is guaranteed.
Absolutely. There is much to be hopeful about in terms of good work being done at the policy and personal levels, but it will be hope within the grief over what is, and will be, lost.
An interesting quote from the article: “Reduced European demand means without Biden’s pause, LNG exports could flow to nations that oppose our national security interests: From January 2022 through September 2023, China was the top destination for new American LNG contracts, 13% of the global total, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance.”
@ Jason Anthony. The irony is that the prices are fixed by OPEC/Saudi et al and the Saudis have been undermining our economy since 1973. They own our largest refineries and control domestic energy companies like Exxon Mobil.
Meanwhile, high prices fund the Russian economic war in the Ukraine and Iranian proxy wars in Yemen, Syria, and Gaza.
Yes, Saudis own the largest refinery in the US, but it by itself represents a small fraction of the US refining capacity. That's not different from Honda, Toyota and Volkswagen building factories in the US. It's not different ftom Taiwan Semiconductor building chip factories here in the US. The US is a significant importer of oil and that will remain so until we can wean ourselves off of economic activities that depend on it.
Also, ExxonMobil is not controlled by Saudi Arabia. However, all oil companies must adhere to rules set by individual producing companies for operations within those countries. ExxonMobil is a publicly traded company that follows laws and regulations that exist in the US. No OPEC country controls anything about it outside of its borders.
@ Jerry. 1. The Rockefellers tried to regain control and lost to the Saudis. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/mar/27/rockefeller-family-tried-and-failed-exxonmobil-accept-climate-change
2. The Japanese government actively tried to undermine our economy, starting with Youngstown Sheet and Tube/monopoly of seamless pipe in the 1970s. All profits from sales in foreign owned products leave the US.
3. At present Nippon Steel is trying to take over US Steel. For many of us this is deja vu.
4. We have enough domestic supply of oil to kiss OPEC goodbye. I support NOPEC, and would sue to regain lost profits. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Oil_Producing_and_Exporting_Cartels_Act
5. Most of the inflation in the word can be traced to OPEC increases during the pandemic ( with Trump's help) which was like a snowball at the top of a mountain creating an avalanche. Of all industrial countries we have fared best. We'd have been better off had Biden been authorized to sue for price fixing and price gouging.
6. Whose side are you on?
Thom Hartmann sees a possibility of Trump pulling a nasty stunt like convincing MBS to hike oil prices just before the election, in the hope Biden would lose. It would be the sort of thing I could see him doing .
Trump just met with MBS.
To answer #6 first. I'm a centrist who will vote against Republicans until the MAGA cancer is excised. The fact that you are assuming in somehow against you when I'm putting out what I know to be based on fact and basic economics tells people more about you that it does about me.
Regarding number 1, you wrote, "The Rockefellers tried to regain control and lost to the Saudis. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/mar/27/rockefeller-family-tried-and-failed-exxonmobil-accept-climate-change "
That article said nothing about the Saudis. From where do you get the idea that they control ExxonMobil? Just look at the SEC filings for XOM stock. They are a public company, which means that investors large and small can vote on certain governance policies. That the Rockefeller family (and it wasn't all of them) lost means that they lost an election just like Trump did.
Regarding US producing enough oil to replace OPEC oil, that's true, but to do that we'd have to replace to many refineries that can handle U.S- produced oil. Go ahead and try to get a permit to build a new refinery. Or go ahead and just stop all oil imports anyway and see if you will still find life affordable.
Number 5 is overly simplistic. Remember supply chain disruptions? Remember when spot prices for West Texas Intermediate crude dropped to less than $0 in March 2020 and XOM stock fell to about $30 from roughly $80?
Finally, #4. I leave that for last because I know little about the steel business. I will read the Washington Post editorial from about a week ago, but the headline and first paragraph tell me that the story is more complex. I do know that any foreign company with operations in the US starts that operation with the intent to serve the huge US market, and employs US workers and pays US taxes on the income. I am not sophisticated enough to know who "should" owm US Steel, but do acknowledge that US Steel is effectively a US monopoly or close to it.
Your statement about Nippon Steel assumes that Japan is a colonial power and that the US is the colony, with its resources stolen and sold outside of the country. That is not how it all works. There may be ideological or economic reasons to not accept Nippon's bid, but stealing from the US is not one of them
What people don’t know is that the creators of OPEC modeled it on the Texas Railroad Commission, which is the Texas state agency tasked with regulating the state’s oil and gas production.
Our representatives are not hired as soldiers in a war for domination of our fellow citizens. Yes, if I vote for candidate D versus candidate R, I expect to see significant differences of priorities and methods, but always with the bounds of responsible behavior; responsibility to the whole town, the whole country, the whole planet. Liberty allows us to fight like cats and dogs, but not at the peril of the common good. I don't see my youth as the "good old days" that I would by any means care to indiscriminately return to, but I do think that drawing a line when it came to the common good was more commonly acknowledged if not always observed; the notion that we in this county are in some sense all people in the same boat, and to pause our personal agendas when it comes to our stewardship of unalienable human rights.
That means that you don't use a threat of harm to others as a means to extort you own agenda. That's the MO of organized crime, and is irredeemably corrupt. If you are hired to be an ambulance driver, you don;t threaten to leave a victim lie unless the agree to some perform some service for you. Emergencies are traditional times for people and communities to come together.
I would like to pass this on. Well stated.
Especially all of it.
We seem to have forgotten the whole concept of the common good. Newt Gingrich did a lot of harm to Congress by gutting Congressional staff and relying on lobbyist reports to research legislation, and deliberately encouraging language and action that demonized Democratic members of Congress. He lost his position as Speaker over his intended memoirs, much as he had unseated Jim Wright as Speaker for the same reason. Newt and Mitch McConnell both have done considerable harm to our government and the concept of the common good during their respective tenures as Speaker and Senate Majority leader.
The Republican dominated Kentucky House and Senate have stripped their Democratic governor, Andy Beshear, of his power to appoint McConnell’s successor as senator. Republican dominated legislatures in Wisconsin and North Carolina used similar tactics against their Democratic governors. It shows the extent to which Republican dominated states have become laboratories for one-party dictatorship or illiberal “democracy” of the type that Viktor Orban has created in Hungary and Vladimir Putin in Russia.
"Freedom is slavery" so slavery = freedom.
"As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy." - Lincoln
How many Reprehensibles are in this freedom concoction of in-breeding, stupidity, and cupidity? 🤭
OOOPS: How many Representatives does the freedom caucus have? 🤭 I did not think there would be enough to hold all of Congress hostage during one tantrum after another. 🤢
I realize you are likely being facetious but it only takes one for a motion to vacate the speaker under the current house rules put in place when Kevin McCarthy was trying to get seated as speaker. The Freedom Caucus doesn’t disclose their members directly but the current count from Wikipedia based on those who self-identify and other reports is at least 42.
That would be 42 out of 220 rethuglicons shivering in their shoes. And those 42 aren't allowed to bring their AR-15's into the House of Representatives (poor babies)
Ned, look at what a single U.S. senator was doing to [or continues to] the top ranks of our military leadership. Yes, a U.S. senator can have a much greater influence on governmental operations than a member or several members of Congress - but yes, it only takes a few … look at what our current House Speaker is doing by not letting key funding bill(s) passed by the Senate not be brought to the floor for a vote in the House. I had the opportunity of working with a former chairman of the House Rules Committee; another position where a single member of the House can exert tremendous influence and pressure on the “smooth functioning” of our country’s legislative processes.
it only takes a few well placed people inside of a representative form of government to bring it down. For decades the libertarian cult has been working to do what is happening using the plan laid out in the Lewis Powell Memo.
Thank you all for your answers, Sioux, Fay, J.L., and Rickey. My sense had been around forty; likely had read that somewhere. If it requires but one Representative to vacate the Speakership, ¿why are moderate Democrats and Republicans not forming a coalition and coming to the Speaker and saying, "If you do not pass those aid and border bills right now, pallie, ¡you're outta here!"? This looks like the death throes of the Third Republic leaving France exposed to Hitler.
The moderate Republicans have left the party in disgust at Trump. Some refused to run again, like Adam Kinzinger, and Liz Cheney (who is conservative) was primaried out by MAGA backer and oil lobbyist Harriet Hageman. Now even some former Trump backers like Ken Buck (Jenna Ellis’s former boss) are refusing to run again. The improperly named “Freedom” Caucus is wasting time by pursuing impeachment of President Biden, and there is not a scintilla of evidence to pursue it, especially since their prize witness was one of Putin’s spies who’s been charged with espionage.
I do not hand-write notes to many politicians, only to those whom I particularly admire like President Ford, Senator Dole, President Carter, Senator Flake, as well as, presently, Representatives Buck and Gallagher. As you surmise, I am a crest-fallen conservative. Thank you for your thoughtful comment, Kathy.
BIDEN’S ECONOMIC SUCCESS TRUMPS VOODOO ‘SUPPLY SIDE’ ECONOMICS
George H. W. Bush correctly attacked ‘supply side’ economics as ‘voodoo economics’ in his 1980 presidency nomination contest with Ronald Reagan. Then followed the ‘trickle down’ falsity that major tax cuts, especially on the wealthy (citizens and corporations), would tinkle down from the major tax beneficiaries to the ordinary folks. PSHAW!
Reagan’s director of the Bureau of the Budget confessed that this was bull shit and didn’t work. President George W. Bush tried this ‘tinkle down’ economic foolery as did Trump, in which the rich got richer at the expense of a great majority of Americans. Meanwhile the Democrats sought ‘fair share’ taxation.
While the Republicans—now the Trumpublicans—oppose any new taxes and seek another Trump tax cut giveaway, President Biden and his professionals continue with their gutsy common sense. Much to the surprise of many economists (and Republicans), the American economy is doing surprisingly well in recovering from the impacts of Covid, supply shortages, and short term inflation spikes.
Who could have imagined, when Biden assumed the helm of the US ship of state from Trump’s unsteady hand, that, more than three years later, the United States would have had the largest increase in employment in its history, inflation would have plummeted, the unemployment rate was at a low, and real wages were ion the rise.
ALL OF THIS IS PRETTY DAMNED GOOD! While I applaud it, the economically constipated Trumpublicans (and many in the media) seek to diminish these surprisingly positive results.
The state of the economy should be a political plus for President Biden in November.
President Biden can’t control oil prices or the greedflation occurring in housing and grocery prices, which is pinching people hard despite his successful efforts to benefit ordinary Americans. My concern with this is that Trump might successfully use this against the President. I don’t doubt Trump could convince MBS to raise Saudi oil prices to cause economic pain that Trump could benefit from.
This is much like the issues that President Carter had to deal with. He had to deal with the political fallout from the 1953 coup in Iran that enabled the Shah to stay in power until 1978. Iran’s religious hardliners were the only group with the political cohesion and strength to take power, and they have been in power ever since, and young people in Iran are becoming more disillusioned with the heavy hand of the theocrats.
Carter also had to deal with continuing oil price increases from Iran’s theocratic regime, and also the continuing stagflation of the 1970s. This had been a problem that came about because of the economic fallout of the Vietnam war funding, and Nixon convinced then Fed chair Arthur Burns to hold off on raising interest rates until after the 1972 election. It was a pain point that convinced many Americans wrongly that Reagan would be better for the U.S. Unfortunately, he wasn’t.
Kathy You trigger memories of past presidential elections. As a member of Nixon White House Enemies List in 1972, I don't believe that Arthur Burns holding off on Fed rates had a major affect on the election. Nixon was riding high with his Russian and China diplomat coups, Watergate had not criminally exploded, and the Plumbers Unit had killed Senator Muskie’s candidacy and the Dems had McGovern.
With Carter, in addition to the hostage situation, the economy was truly dreadful. I remember inflation and unemployment over 10% and interest rates even higher. ‘Malaise’ and Rust Belt were popular terms.
As for Trump, I am reminded of the young gullible kids who were tricked to go over to Treasure Island. Now they are older and are just as gullible when they listen to Donnie Babble.
I remember it too as my father had lost 2 jobs at that time. I wasn’t fooled by Reagan, and Volcker raised interest rates to high levels, which was one of the things that cost Carter the election. In retrospect, Carter was correct but no one wanted to hear it. It is a big thing because we are seeing the negative consequences of failing to deal effectively with climate change.
Kathy Paul Volcker used drastic measures to strangle inflation. It produced ‘stagflation’ under Carter. To Reagan’s credit, he supported Volcker’s brutal squeeze and Reagan’s popularity plunged, affecting the 1982 congressional elections. Then the economy turned around and it was ‘Morning again in America.’ At the same time Reagan ejected 11,000 air controllers who struck and was most unpleasant to unions.
I found Reagan perhaps the toughest president to teach. Still, he brought back pride in America and, with Gorby, ended the Cold War with a whimper rather than a bang. Still, he was bizarre in many ways.
With Trump I have difficulty in identifying any upsides that might balance his bizarreness. Reagan was 100% for America while Trump is 100% for Triump.
Thank you, Heather! The obvious success of Biden's policies for everyday Americans is difficult to ignore, but the GOP seems mired in the belief that supply-side-economics would work, when it never has. I think it was Pope Francis who also called this out, saying that the wealth doesn't trickle down, it just expands the pockets of the wealthy. (I'm misquoting that, but that was the idea.) But I also have to wonder how these do-nothing obstructionists keep getting re-elected? We've all got to do a better job of focusing on and amplifying the positive changes we are making as a country, and what we're achieving. Not that we don't have a long way to go, and many issues to address. We also need to be more vocal about the fact that we NEED immigrants, and that most of us ARE immigrants or descended from immigrants. It's our diversity that makes us strong, the fairness we still have to work on. Somehow we have to pull our country together, united. And we can do that.
From what I understand, gerrymandering by Republicans has created districts where the right wingnuts will be elected no matter how crazy they are or what damage they do because nearly everyone in their district is also a right wingnut. This didn't happen overnight; they have been working on it for years and we are now seeing the results.
What’s truly astounding is how the Supreme Court has attempted to gerrymander the uterus.
I think that is exactly so. We need to continue to address it.
Tell me about it. We have an extremely gerrymandered Republican state government in Ohio, where I live. The General Assembly has felt free to ignore previous orders from our state supreme court ordering it to correct illegal senate redistricting, and they did nothing to implement the voter referendum passed in favor of nonpartisan redistricting. Our last election brought us a 5-2 Republican dominated state Supreme Court which will do nothing to fix the problem.
We managed to defeat Secretary of State Frank LaRose’s bid to make citizen initiatives more difficult to pass, and we passed both Issue 1, putting reproductive rights in the state constitution, and Issue 2 on statutory legalization of recreational marijuana use. Not surprisingly, a few General Assembly members tried to thwart implementation of Issue 1, and I am certain they’ll continue to drag their feet. Frank LaRose also lost his bid to run against Sherrod Brown. I want to keep Sen. Brown, because he actually cares about his constituents. I don’t want Trump-endorsed Bernie Moreno to become senator. Our other senator, J.D. Vance, is a wingnut embarrassment who dumped on his fellow Appalachians in “Hillbilly Legacy” and became totally pro-Trump once Vance took Peter Thiel’s money. I do think Ryan could have run a better campaign, but he didn’t.
Other problems Ohio has include the First Energy scandal, in which our former speaker Larry Householder was sentenced to 20 years in Federal prison, and former Ohio GOP chair Matt Borges received 5 years in Federal prison for accepting bribes from First Energy to introduce and pass legislation to stick Ohio taxpayers with the costs of fixing First Energy’s outdated power plants. The legislation is still law even though it was passed by illegal conduct. Householder is now facing charges in Ohio state court. The former head of Ohio’s Department of Energy, Sam Randazzo, is now facing bribery and embezzlement charges in Federal court in connection with the First Energy scandal. DeWine is term limited as governor, and I think his lieutenant governor Jon Husted (also no prize) wants to run for governor next. I suspect DeWine and Husted know a lot more about the First Energy scandal than they’re willing to publicly admit. This is not the first scandal our gerrymandered state has endured, for there was Coingate, in which the some members of the Board of Workers Compensation wanted to use the Bureau of Workers Compensation money to invest in rare coins with a former Toledo area coin dealer, Tom Noe. Noe was convicted on criminal charges related to the Coingate scam.
Our current General Assembly speaker, Mark Huffman, is not much of a prize either. Public schools are having to call for special levies, which sometimes lose. This is happening because Huffman prefers to use public school tax dollars to fund private schools, and particularly private religious schools. This leaves Ohio public schools, who have to take all students, at a considerable disadvantage. Ohio legislators also want to pass legislation to misinform and miseducate Ohio students on American government, history, and economics.
Our former Chief Justice, Maureen O’Connor, retired from the bench in 2022. She is a Republican, but to her credit, she detests the blatant gerrymandering designed to give Ohio Republicans advantages in the General Assembly and Senate. She wrote the majority opinion in the case that ordered the General Assembly to redistrict three illegally gerrymandered Senate districts, and the General Assembly then ignored her order. For,er Justice O’Connor is now working to get a ballot initiative which would require citizen nonpartisan redistricting, like what they have in California. The problem is that our Republican Attorney General Dave Yost, keeps finding the wording of the initiative unacceptable. I think that he is so invested in keeping the Republicans in power in Ohio that he would find any language unacceptable. I certainly hope this initiative can go to the voters. Partisan gerrymandering is why we have Republican domination of state government and a predominantly Republican contingent of Federal representatives, including the embarrassing Gym Jordan. The gerrymandering also has a spillover effect in who gets elected to statewide Federal and state offices.
Kathy, a lot of what you write about here has been in the news, but seeing it all put together is maddening, heartbreaking and disgusting all at once. Somehow these criminals are able to justify their behavior to themselves so that they can still sleep at night, but it's a wonder how they do it. It's encouraging that the people of Ohio are fighting back.
As an Ohio voter, it’s beyond frustrating! I have also served as a Democratic voting place observer in two of the most recent elections,
Thank you.
Thank you, Dr, Richardson, for continuing all that's being done correctly by the Democratic administration for the benefit of the bottom 99% of us. 43 years is long enough to experiment with "supply side economics" - it fails to help anyone except the top 1%. There are 326,700,000of us vs 3,700,000 of them. So why does the part of trump continue to offer more tax cuts for the already deplorably wealthy 3 million, while cutting Social Security, Medicare, and other Social Services programs; open concentration camps for immigrants and refugees - you know like the ones Hamas runs in Gaza - all so the rich can get richer and the poor get poorer?
Amen Fay well said.
We need to roll back the secrecy behind Citizens United and publish every single corporate donation. Recently I learned that these 50 companies have donated over 23 million to election deniers after promising not to. Spoiler alert - The list includes Walmart, AT&T, Microsoft, Boeing, The Home Depot, Koch Enterprises, Lockheed Martin & UPS. They all publicly made a promise to us and they broke their promise.
https://www.msnbc.com/ayman-mohyeldin/watch/these-50-companies-have-donated-over-23-million-to-election-deniers-since-jan-6-208050245634
@Fay and Gary. To fix things, we need to sweep.
Millions of unregistered women nationally trend heavily Democratic. Register Democrats -- save Democracy. https://www.fieldteam6.org/mission
This is certainly no surprise! They don't want to lose their customers, hence the lies. And they don't want to lose their henchmen who give the huge tax breaks, hence the donations. Gotta keep your foot in both doors, you know.
Professor; Regarding the bridge and national interest. CAN president Biden do ANYTHING in way of Executive Order? REPUBLICANS in Congress ignoring National interests are truly nauseating!
BIDEN: It’s my intention that federal government will pay for the entire cost of reconstructing that bridge, and I expect ... Congress to support my effort.
TRUMP: Not on MY watch.
Thank you, Heather, for bringing up the Louisiana liquid natural gas export terminals. Aside from the fact that they are all at current, and soon to be, below sea level, they are environmentally unsound. While Trump pushed natural gas by rail and sea, Biden knows the danger and makes the right calls. The people of Louisiana must understand the real danger of these terminals to their lives and future generations.
A few selected articles:
LNG export terminals pose a growing and invisible threat: air pollution
https://lailluminator.com/2023/02/06/lng-export-terminals-pose-a-growing-and-invisible-threat-air-pollution/
Natural gas terminals are an increasing threat to marginalized communities in “sacrifice zones”
https://prismreports.org/2023/02/20/lng-climate-sacrifice-zones/
Secrecy around gas export terminals leaves public in the dark on dangers
https://www.wwno.org/coastal-desk/2024-03-04/secrecy-around-gas-export-terminals-leaves-public-in-the-dark-on-dangers
Yes, those future generations of Louisianans who will know higher cancer rates, those that survive. But the pushers of the LNG expansion don't give a damn about them. Mike Johnson does not represent the people of Louisiana: he represents the criminal class.
The people in the Gulf Coast’s Cancer Alley area already know the price all too well.