October 1, 2021
For those of you exhausted by this week’s news, you can take a break tonight. Lots of moving pieces are in play, but nothing that would hold a historian to her desk a hundred years from now, so skip this letter with a clean conscience.
For those of you who do want some reflections, I am struck today by the media’s breathless recounting of how the ongoing negotiations over the two infrastructure bills shows that the Democrats are in disarray and President Joe Biden’s agenda is crashing and burning. The New York Times called a delay in the vote on the measures “a humiliating blow to Mr. Biden and Democrats” and wondered if “Biden’s economic agenda could be revived.”
Exactly a year ago, the news reported that Trump adviser Hope Hicks had coronavirus and that she had recently traveled with White House personnel on Air Force One. The stock market dropped 400 points on the news. The previous day had been the infamous presidential debate when Trump yelled and snarled at Biden, while his entourage, including Hicks, refused to wear masks despite a mandate that they must do so. We did not know who else might be infected.
Hours later, we learned that the president and First Lady were both sick, and within hours the president would be hospitalized.
The rest of the news provided a snapshot of the Trump presidency:
•A study of more than 38 million English-language articles about the pandemic between January 1 and May 26 showed that Trump was “likely the largest driver of…Covid-19 misinformation.”
•Trump’s former national security adviser, retired Lt. General H.R. McMaster, told MSNBC that Trump was “aiding and abetting Putin’s efforts” to disrupt the November election.
•We learned that Amy Coney Barrett, Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court, had not disclosed that in 2006, she signed an anti-abortion ad in the South Bend Tribune. It appeared near another ad from the same organization that called for putting “an end to the barbaric legacy of Roe v. Wade and restore laws that protect the lives of unborn children.”
•A tape leaked of Melania Trump complaining about having to decorate the White House for Christmas—“I’m working… my a** off on the Christmas stuff, that you know, who gives a f*** about the Christmas stuff and decorations?”—and then said of criticism that she was not involved with the children separated from their parents at the southern border: “Give me a f****** break.”
•News broke that Donald Trump, Jr.’s girlfriend, Kimberly Guilfoyle, had left the Fox News Channel after an employee complained of sexual harassment, saying she required the employee to work at her apartment, where she would sometimes be naked, and where she would share inappropriate photos of men and discuss her sexual activities with them. She denied any misconduct, but FNC settled the case against her for $4 million.
•The House of Representatives, controlled by Democrats, passed a $2.2 trillion coronavirus relief measure. No Republicans voted for it.
•Right-wing conspiracy theorists Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman were charged with four felonies in Michigan for intimidating voters, conspiring to violate election laws, and using a computer to commit a crime.
•Claiming he wanted to prevent “voter fraud,” Republican governor Greg Abbott of Texas limited the number of locations for dropping off mail-in ballots to one site per county. While Republican counties tended to have just one location already, Democratic Harris County, the third largest county in the country, with a population of more than 4.7 million and an area larger than the state of Rhode Island, had previously used 12. Democratic Travis County, which includes Austin, previously had four.
That was one single day in the Trump presidency.
In contrast, today, the Democrats are trying to pass an extremely complicated package, consisting of two major infrastructure bills, backed by different constituencies, that will alter the direction of our country by investing in ordinary Americans and revising the tax code to claw back some of the 2017 tax cuts the Republican Congress gave to corporations and the very wealthy. Although there is no guarantee they will pass, the bills are currently still on track, and all the relevant parties are still at work discussing them, exactly as one would expect.
What is the unusual piece in this process is that the other major American political party—the Republicans—is refusing to participate in the crafting of a major bill that is extremely popular.
This infrastructure package is huge, but it is hardly the only item in Biden’s agenda. In March 2021, the Democrats passed the American Rescue Plan, a $1.9 trillion economic rescue package that has helped the administration produce more jobs in its first six months than any other administration in American history.
Not a single Republican voted for that bill; it passed while they were focusing on the ungendered Potato Head kin and the decision of the Dr. Seuss estate to stop the publication of some of Theodor Geisel’s less popular books.
The economy has recovered in large part because of the Biden administration’s enormous success at distributing the coronavirus vaccines to every American who wanted one.
Republican lawmakers have worked against this process, and today we crossed the unthinkable line of 700,000 officially counted deaths from Covid-19.
Now, the administration has begun to put vaccine mandates into effect, and they are working. Those who insisted they would never get vaccines changed their minds when employers and public venues required them. Today, California governor Gavin Newsom announced that the state will require coronavirus vaccines for school children, along with the ten others it already requires, as soon as the Food and Drug Administration fully approves them for use in children.
Meanwhile, Republican-dominated state legislatures are following through on the voter suppression noted a year ago, passing measures to cut down Democratic voting and install Republican operatives in key election posts before the 2022 election.
As political scientist and foreign relations expert David Rothkopf tweeted: “Are the Dems the ones in disarray when they are crafting specific programs while the GOP offers up only cynical Tweets & obstruction? The only GOP agenda items are voter suppression, defending the worst president in history & when they have power, pushing tax cuts for the rich.”
For my part, I’m not sure what is driving the stories that seem to paint Biden’s work as a lost cause: The recent position that Democrats are hapless? That it’s safer to be negative than positive? That our news cycle demands drama?
Whatever it is, I continue to maintain that the issue right now is not Democrats’ negotiations over the infrastructure bills—regardless of how they turn out—but that Republican lawmakers are actively working to undermine our democracy.
—
Notes:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/06/24/nightmare-scenario-book-excerpt/
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/01/us/amy-coney-barrett-abortion.html
https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/01/us/california-students-covid-vaccine-requirement/index.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/30/us/politics/infrastructure-democrats-pelosi.html
As of October 1, 2021, the population of the United States was 333,421,330.
Joe Manchin, is attempting to dismantle President Biden’s proposal to spend $3.5 trillion for things like education, housing and child care that actually HELP ordinary Americans. He is the Senator from the state of West Virginia which has only 1.8 million residents. Kyrsten Sinema, who also opposes the plan, is from Arizona with a total population of 7.3 million.
Together, these two represent only 2.7 percent of Americans, and yet they are going to stop legislation that would change the lives of countless millions of men, woman and children in our country for the better.
On Thursday Manchin sneered that if liberals want to pass more bills, they should “elect more liberals.”
Here’s an idea: Have two Democrats —one in West Virginia and one in Arizona— each launch a campaign for the United States Senate next week to replace Manchin and Sinema when their terms expire in 2025. They can start the race now!
Let the candidates tell the people of their states why they are running: so ordinary folk can have some of the same benefits their counterparts in Europe
have enjoyed for decades.
These are some of the things your Senators don’t think you should have, the candidates can declare:
Universal pre-kindergarten education for 3- and 4-year-olds,
affordable child care for working families,
tuition-free community college,
an expansion of Pell Grants for higher eduction so students
will not be burdened by massive student debt.
Hundreds of billions to build affordable housing and establish
community land trusts
$107 billion to address the climate crisis, including forest fires,
the effects of droughts and the need to reduce carbon emissions
$198 billion to develop clean energy and create millions of jobs
in the process
If candidates like this for the U.S. Senate were to emerge right now when Manchin and Sinema are trying to sink the Biden agenda, it would be a news sensation. Every TV network, newspaper and internet venue would run the story. The two would become instant household names. Campaign funds would pour in from all over the country.
And the two Senate challengers have only to repeat over and over
and over what President wants to do for the people of America with his two infrastructure plans that will cost a total of $5.5 trillion over 10 years.
(They can compare this amount to the $14 trillion the Pentagon has spent since 9/11, according to National Public Radio. In a September 13 story, NPR also reported that Brown University Cost of War study revealed that some $7 trillion of that money went to for-profit defense contractors.)
The two Senate challengers can investigate and report exactly what special interests have financed the campaigns of Manchin and Sinema. They
can focus particularly on the largesse to the two Senators from the fossil fuel industry which certainly does not want hundreds of billions spent to fight climate change and develop clean energy.
According to recent polls, the $3.5 trillion-dollar package is extremely popular among voters in West Virginia and Arizona when the benefits are explained fully, along with the President’s plan on how to finance them.
The Charleston Gazette-Mail reported that “a poll of 600 registered West Virginia voters found 48% support Biden’s plan. After polled voters were given the option of raising taxes on the richest Americans and corporations, while closing the loopholes that have caused significant wealth disparities, support for the plan rose as high as 70%.”
Who is ready to stand up and do battle against the tyranny of this ridiculously tiny minority of the nation?
And let’s stop calling Manchin and Cinema “moderates” for heaven’s sake. Congress members with records like theirs are certainly at least “conservative” and might even be termed “right-wing” at a time when life on earth is being destroyed and threatened every moment by the climate emergency we humans and especially our children and grandchildren are facing.
Reading Heather's "reflective" piece this morning, I did some reflecting myself about her ongoing efforts to present the evidence about how "Republican lawmakers are actively working to undermine our democracy." Ever since she began her endeavor, famously known as Letters from an American, she has been the voice of democracy for me and countless others as the forces of fascism have gathered to undermine the power of the people as established by the Constitution. On September 15, 2021, she posted a letter about how the blog was born and expressed her gratitude to her readers for their support.
"I write these letters because I love America," she stated in part. "I am staunchly committed to the principle of human self-determination for people of all races, genders, abilities, and ethnicities, and I believe that American democracy could be the form of government that comes closest to bringing that principle to reality. And I know that achieving that equality depends on a government shaped by fact-based debate rather than by extremist ideology and false narratives."
The post evoked a flood of reader responses reflecting the power and passion of her words. Richardson has a way of inspiring readers to participate, to think, to write back in response to the issues she raises and to join the chorus of We, the People, singing the great song of Democracy throughout the land. I acknowledged in my own response to her beautiful letter how I admired the way she continues to stand up for democracy in the face of a fascist assault unprecedented in American history, also noting how the legacy of the lone, self-sufficient individual (most likely a Reagan Republican) riding off into the sunset drags on, as does what Lewis Mumford called the predatory corporate "megamachine," the industrial regime that's destroying the planet.
These are the forces that diminish the aspirations of every civic-minded citizen yearning to participate in the process of governing this nation, which is what democracy is all about. The enemies of democracy today are the same ones that coalesced around the Republican Party and enabled it to launch the class war against FDR's New Deal and the rise of democracy during the 30's. In the current era of what I call Bozo Republicanism, Richardson's voice has become the clarion call of democracy and social justice for thousands who read her letters, and when a recent Financial Times profile revealed that she had considered giving up this beautiful thing she does, I was horrified at the thought of not having Letters from an American in my email inbox to get my motor running every morning. It seems to me that her writing transmits on the same frequency as Cicero, Tom Paine, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglas, Susan B. Anthony, Millicent Fawcett, Ralph Nader, Lewis Lapham, Thomas Frank, Robert Scheer, Chris Hedges, Matt Taibbi, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Rep. Barbara Lee, and many other inspired luminaries who have taken a stand for democracy and the rule of law. Chris Hedges once said a person really has only two choices when push comes to shove: either serve money and power or truth and justice. Heather Cox Richardson's choice is clearly the latter, which explains the high regard readers have for her work. She relentlessly tells the truth in support of a just, democratic society the thrives for everyone, not just a cabal of wealthy elites.
When Richardson published the September 15 thank-you letter, the gratitude flowed both ways with a torrent of appreciative sentiment coming from the multitude of Letters from an American readers. That fact speaks volumes about the respect readers share for her integrity and passion for equality. Albert Einstein famously said "a student is not a container you have to fill, but a torch you have to light up." As a writer and an educator, "lighting up torches" is what Heather is all about, empowering the hearts and minds of a growing number of like-minded people yearning for democracy and uniting together to make it a reality. Power to the People!