What Next?

 What do those who were harmed owe to those who harmed or desired to harm them (and living under threat is indeed a form to harm)? The short answer is nothing, at the very least until the intent, threat, or actual harm ends. I can forgive you for punching me but not until the punching stops, and your view that I should be punched and mine that I deserve dignity, safety and self-determination aren't reconcilable until you agree. So asking those who were menaced and harmed by the MAGA cult and policies to welcome and comfort those who sought their harm puts all the burden of the work on those who were harmed. There is, and I have seen this ten million times in gender relations, both a hierarchy about who is supposed to forgive and a way that forgiveness and excuse-making and buffering makes further abuse more likely.

Mayor of Durham, NC: "Now is the time for national unity. Those on the left, the right, and everyone in-between, must begin to work as ONE to create a more just America for all." What does that even mean?

I think there is value in leaving the door open for people to repent and change if that does not compromise your sense of safety, and those of us who were less harmed (hi, fellow white people!) might be a sort of welcoming committee for those purposes. Those 71 million Trump voters are in the same country as us, and the long job is to recruit them with better stories and happier ways of being. But as I wrote last night, there is no middle ground on what is right and true. The victim might want to understand the perpetrator, but she doesn't have to comfort him, especially not in ways that allow him to keep perpetrating harm. Nor does she have to accept his version of what happened.

The truth is not halfway between climate denial and climate science, and while we know that yelling and mocking don't recruit people we also know that abandoning or even softening up your facts doesn't help your cause; it just dilutes your purpose and its clarity for others. You don't need to get everyone on board to support, say, rights for LGBTQIA people; you need to stand firm that those rights are nonnegotiable and in time more and more people will agree with you. Most great changes in rights and policies began with a small minority on the margins, and consensus was built, and not by compromise. The example of passionate commitment and good argument does a lot.

We are not called upon to wage war in this moment but neither are we called upon to offer a unilateral peace. We just won something huge and we do not need to give it away to those who lost.

Rebecca Solnit

11/08/2020

How Big Money Corrupts Our Politics (And How to Fix It)

Corporate money is dominating our democracy.

It’s difficult to do anything – increase the minimum wage, reverse climate change, get Medicare for All, end police killings, fight systemic racism, shrink our bloated military – when big money controls our politics and dictates what policies are and aren’t enacted.

The pandemic has made that clearer than ever. The CARES Act, passed in late March as our pandemic response began, quietly provided huge benefits to wealthy Americans and big corporations. One provision doled out $135 billion in tax relief to people making at least half a million dollars, the richest 1% of American taxpayers. 

This $135 billion is three times more than the measly $42 billion allocated in the CARES Act for safety-net programs like food and housing aid. It’s just shy of the $150 billion going to struggling state governments, and vastly more than the $100 billion being spent on overwhelmed hospitals and other crucial public health services.

As Americans are still suffering massive unemployment and the ravages of the pandemic, lobbyists are crawling all over Capitol Hill and the White House is seeking continued subsidies for the rich and for corporations — while demanding an end to supplemental assistance for average working people, the poor, and the unemployed.

It’s corruption in action, friends. And it’s undermining our democracy at every turn.

Ask yourself how, during a global pandemic, the total net worth of U.S. billionaires has climbed from $2.9 trillion to $3.5 trillion, when more than 45.5 million Americans filed for unemployment benefits.

Is it their skill? Their luck? Their insight? No. It’s their monopolies, enabled by their stranglehold on American democracy… monopolies like Amazon, Google, and Facebook, which have grown even larger during the pandemic.

It’s also their access to insider information so they can do well in the stock market, like Senator Richard Burr, chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, and Senator Kelly Loeffler, whose husband happens to be chairman of the New York Stock Exchange. Both were fully briefed on the likely effects of the coronavirus last February and promptly unloaded their shares of stock in companies that would be hit hardest.

And it’s the tax cuts and subsidies they’ve squeezed out of government.

You are paying for all of this — not just as taxpayers but as consumers.

When you follow the money, you can see clearly how every aspect of American life has been corrupted.

Take prescription drugs. We spend tens of billions of dollars on prescriptions every year, far more per person than citizens in any other developed country. Now that millions of Americans are unemployed and without insurance, they need affordable prescription drugs more than ever.

Yet even the prices of drugs needed by coronavirus patients are skyrocketing.
Big Pharma giant Gilead is charging a whopping $3,120 for its COVID drug, Remdesivir, even though the drug was developed with a $70,000,000 grant from the federal government paid for by American taxpayers.

Once again, Big Pharma is set to profit on the people’s dime. And they get away with it because our lawmakers depend on their campaign donations to remain in power.

As you watch this, Mitch McConnell is actively blocking a bill drafted by Senate Republicans to reduce drug prices — after taking more than $280,000 from pharmaceutical companies so far this election season.

Big Pharma is just one example. This vicious cycle is found in virtually every sector, and it’s why we continue to be met with politicians who don’t have our best interests at heart.

So how do we get big money out of our democracy?

A good starting point can be found in the sweeping reform package known as H.R. 1 — the For the People Act. The bill closes loopholes that favor big corporations and the wealthy, makes it easier for all of us to vote, and strengthens the power of small donors through public financing of elections — a system which matches $6 of public funds for every $1 of small donations.

The For the People Act would also bar congresspeople from serving on corporate boards, require presidents to publicly disclose their tax returns, and make executive appointees recuse themselves in cases where there is a conflict of interest.

These are just a few examples of tangible solutions that already exist to rein in unprecedented corruption and stop America’s slide toward oligarchy — but there’s much more we can and should do. 

The important thing to remember is that the big money takeover of our democracy prevents us from advancing all of the policies we need to overhaul our racist, oppressive system and create a society that works for the many, not the few.

Robert Reich

9/1/2020

Trump’s 40 Biggest Broken Promises

Trump voters. Nearly four years in, here’s an updated list of Trump’s 40 biggest broken promises.

1. He said coronavirus would “go away without a vaccine.” You bought it. But it didn’t. While other countries got the pandemic under control and avoided large numbers of fatalities, the virus has killed more than 170,000 Americans, and that number is still climbing.

2. He said he won’t have time to play golf if elected president. But he has made more than 250 visits to his golf clubs since he took office—a record for any president—including more trips during the pandemic than meetings with Dr. Fauci. The total financial cost to America? More than $136 million.

3. He said he would repeal the Affordable Care Act, and replace it with something “beautiful.” It didn’t happen. Instead, seven million Americans have lost their health insurance since he took office. He has asked the Supreme Court to strike down the law in the middle of a global pandemic with no plan to replace it.

4. He said he’d cut your taxes, and that the super-rich like him would pay more. He did the opposite. By 2027, the richest 1 percent will have received 83 percent of the Trump tax cut and the richest 0.1 percent, 60 percent of it. But more than half of all Americans will pay more in taxes.

5. He said corporations would use their tax cuts to invest in American workers. They didn’t. Corporations spent more of their tax savings buying back shares of their own stock than increasing workers’ wages.

6. He said he would boost economic growth by 4 percent a year. Nope. The economy stalled, and unemployment has soared to the highest levels since the Great Depression. Just over half of working-age Americans are employed—the worst ratio in 70 years.

7. He said he wouldn’t “cut Social Security like every other Republican and I’m not going to cut Medicare or Medicaid.” His latest budget includes billions in cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

8. He promised to be “the voice” of American workers. He hasn’t. His administration has stripped workers of their rights, repealed overtime protections, rolled back workplace safety rules, and turned a blind eye to employers who steal their workers’ wages.

9. He promised that the average American family would see a $4,000 pay raise because of his tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations. But nothing trickled down. Wages for most Americans have barely kept up with inflation. 

10. He promised that anyone who wants a test for COVID will get one. But countless Americans still can’t get a test.

11. He said hydroxychloroquine protects against coronavirus. No way. The FDA revoked its emergency authorization due to the drug’s potentially lethal side effects.

12. He promised to eliminate the federal deficit. He has increased the federal deficit by more than 60 percent.

13. He said he would hire “only the best people.” He has fired a record number of his own Cabinet and White House picks, and then called them “whackos,” “dumb as a rock,” and “not mentally qualified.” Six of them have been charged with crimes.

14. He promised to bring down the price of prescription drugs and said drug companies are “getting away with murder.” They still are. Drug prices have soared, and a company that got federal funds to develop a drug to treat coronavirus is charging $3,000 a pop.

15. He promised to revive the struggling coal industry and bring back lost coal mining jobs. The coal industry has continued to lose jobs as clean energy becomes cheaper.

16. He promised to help American workers during the pandemic. But 80 percent of the tax benefits in the coronavirus stimulus package have gone to millionaires and billionaires. And at least 21 million Americans have lost extra unemployment benefits, with no new stimulus check to fall back on.

17. He said he’d drain the swamp. Instead, he’s brought into his administration more billionaires, CEOs, and Wall Street moguls than in any administration in history, and he’s filled departments and agencies with former lobbyists, lawyers, and consultants who are crafting new policies for the same industries they used to work for.

18. He promised to protect Americans with pre-existing conditions. His Justice Department is trying to repeal the entire Affordable Care Act, including protections for people with pre-existing conditions.

19. He said Mexico would pay for his border wall. The wall will cost American taxpayers an estimated $11 billion.

20. He promised to bring peace to the Middle East. Instead, tensions have increased and his so-called “peace plan” was dead on arrival.

21. He promised to lock up Hillary Clinton for using a private email server. He didn’t. Funny enough, Trump uses his personal cellphone for official business, and several members of his own administration, including Jared Kushner and Ivanka, have used private email in the White House.

22. He promised to use his business experience to whip the federal government into shape. He hasn’t. His White House is in permanent chaos. He caused the longest government shutdown in our nation’s history when he didn’t get funding for his wall.

23. He promised to end DACA. The Supreme Court ruled that his plan to deport 700,000 young immigrants was unconstitutional, and DACA still stands.

24. He promised “six weeks of paid maternity leave to any mother with a newborn child whose employer does not provide the benefit.” He hasn’t delivered.

25. He promised to bring an end to Kim Jong Un’s nuclear program. Kim is expanding North Korea’s nuclear program.

26. He said he would distance himself from his businesses while in office. He continues to make money from his properties and maintain his grip on his real estate empire.

27. He said he’d force companies to keep jobs in America, and that there would be consequences for companies that shipped jobs abroad. Since he took office, companies like GE, Carrier, Ford, and Harley Davidson have continued to outsource thousands of jobs while still receiving massive tax breaks. And offshoring by federal contractors has increased.

28. He promised to end the opioid crisis. Americans are now more likely to die from an opioid overdose than a car accident.

29. He said he’d release his tax returns. It’s been nearly four years. He hasn’t released his tax returns.

30. He promised to tear up the Iran nuclear deal and renegotiate a better deal. Negotiations have gone nowhere, and he brought us to the brink of war.

31. He promised to enact term limits for all members of Congress. He has not even tried to enact term limits.

32. He promised that China would pay for tariffs on imported goods. His trade war has cost U.S. consumers $34 billion a year, eliminated 300,000 American jobs, and cost American taxpayers $22 billion in subsidies for farmers hurt by the tariffs.

33. He promised to “push colleges to cut the skyrocketing cost of tuition.” Instead, he’s made it easier for for-profit colleges to defraud students, and tuition is still rising.

34. He promised to protect American steel jobs. The steel industry continues to lose jobs.

35. He promised tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations would spur economic growth and pay for themselves. His tax cuts will add $2 trillion to the federal deficit.

36. After pulling out of the Paris climate accord, he said he’d negotiate a better deal on the environment. He hasn’t attempted to negotiate any deal.

37. He promised that the many women who accused him of sexual misconduct “will be sued after the election is over.” He hasn’t sued them, presumably because he doesn’t want the truth to come out.

38. He promised to bring back all troops from Afghanistan. He now says: “We’ll always have somebody there.”

39. He pledged to put America first. Instead, he’s deferred to dictators and authoritarians at America’s expense, and ostracized our allies—who now laugh at us behind our back.

40. He promised to be the voice of the common people. He’s made his rich friends richer, increased the political power of big corporations and the wealthy, and harmed working Americans. Don’t let the liar-in-chief break any more promises. Vote him out in November.

Robert Reich

August 27, 2020

Profiteering off the Pandemic

Since the start of the pandemic, American billionaires have been cleaning up. As more than 50 million Americans filed for unemployment insurance, billionaires became $637 billion richer. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg’s wealth has ballooned 59 percent. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos’s, 39 percent. Walmart’s Walton family has added $25 billion.

Big drug company CEOs and their major investors are doing nicely, too.  Since the start of the pandemic, Big Pharma has raised prices on over 250 prescription drugs, 61 of which are being used to treat Covid-19.  

Apologists say this is the “free market” responding to supply and demand – the barons of Big Tech, online retailing, and Big Pharma merely providing what consumers desperately need during the pandemic.  

But the market also operates under laws that ban profiteering, price gouging, and monopolizing, and that tax excess profits in wartime. Where did they go?

The Trump administration hasn’t enforced them.

Trump is also ignoring laws that ban trades on insider information. The White House is distributing billions in subsidies and loans to select corporations – enabling CEOs and boards to load up on stocks and stock options just before deals are announced, then rake in fat profits after stock prices surge.

Insiders from at least 11 companies have sold shares worth over $1 billion after such announcements, according to an analysis by the New York Times.

In late June, a San Francisco company called Vaxart announced that the Trump administration had selected it to develop a coronavirus vaccine. Presto. The value of stock options distributed to company insiders just weeks before increased six-fold. Stock options held by Vaxart’s CEO went from $4.3 million to more than $28 million.

Moderna, based in Cambridge, Mass., has never brought a vaccine to market, but company insiders have sold some $248 million of shares – most of them after the company was selected in April to receive Trump funding. (Moderna plans to sell its vaccine for profit although taxpayers have footed its research and development.)

The most blatant involves the venerable old camera and film maker, Kodak. On July 28, Trump announced a $765 million deal with the firm to bring drug production back to the United States. He called it “one of the most important deals in the history of the U.S. pharmaceutical industries,” even though Kodak isn’t even a pharmaceutical company.

Before the announcement, Kodak had handed its board of directors 240,000 stock options, and just the day before had given its CEO 1.75 million stock options. After Trump’s announcement, Kodak shares shot up more than 2,757 percent. Suddenly, the board’s stock options were worth about $4 million, and the CEO’s, about $50 million.

Is this sort of insider trading against the law? You bet. The Securities and Exchange Commission is looking into the deal, now temporarily on hold.

But the SEC’s co-director of enforcement, Steven Peikin, who had been investigating several of the deals involving the White House and corporate insiders – including Kodak – has resigned, without explanation. Another in the lengthening list of independent regulators and inspectors general forced out by Trump?

This much is clear: Trump and his Republican enablers won’t provide $600 per week to tens of millions of Americans who need the money to survive the pandemic, because Trump and the GOP believe the money undermines incentives to work. 

Yet Trump has no problem letting billionaires illegally profit off the pandemic. He thinks that as long as they buoy the stock market, they’re helping the American economy.

That’s pure rubbish. The stock market is not America. The richest 1 percent of Americans own half the value of all shares of stock held by American households. The richest 10 percent owns 92 percent. For years now, stock prices have risen largely because profits have been siphoned from the wages of ordinary workers.

In the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, stock prices are almost back to where they were before the pandemic began. Big corporations and major investors are doing fine. Billionaires are doing better than ever. But most Americans are sinking fast.

This isn’t just unfair. Much of it is illegal.

Robert Reich

Aug. 14, 2020

Betsy DeVos’ Deadly Plan to Reopen Schools

 

Trump education secretary Betsy DeVos is heading the administration’s effort to force schools to reopen in the fall for in-person instruction. What’s her plan to reopen safely? She doesn’t have one. 

Rather than seeking additional federal funds, she’s using this pandemic to further her ploy to privatize education — threatening to withhold federal funds from public schools that don’t reopen.

Repeatedly pressed by journalists during TV appearances, DeVos can’t come up with a single mechanism or guideline for reopening schools safely. She can’t even articulate what authority the federal government has to unilaterally withhold funds from school districts — a decision that’s made at the state and local level, or by Congress. But when has the Constitution stopped the Trump administration from trying to do whatever it wants? 

DeVos is following Trump’s lead — prematurely reopening the economy, which he sees as key to his re-election but is causing a resurgence of the virus.

Let’s get something straight: Every single parent, teacher, and student wants to be able to return to in-person instruction in the fall — but only if no one’s life is put at risk. 

Districts need more funding, not less, to implement the CDC’s guidelines. Given that state and local governments are already cash-strapped, it’s estimated that K-12 schools need at least $245 billion in additional funding to put safety precautions in place — funding that Republicans in Congress and the Trump administration refuse to give.

One might think an education secretary would be studying what kind of safety precautions would work best, and seeking emergency funding for those safeguards. Not DeVos. Just like her boss in the Oval Office, she’s been hard at work shafting working families to advance her personal agenda.

In late April, she issued rules for how states should use the $13 billion allocated in the CARES Act for schools. Her rules would divert millions of dollars away from low-income schools into the coffers of wealthy private schools. It’s such a blatant violation of federal law that several states are suing her and her department.

DeVos’ entire tenure has centered on shafting low-income students and their families — the very people she’s supposed to protect.

She has repeatedly empowered the predatory for-profit college industry at the expense of the students they prey upon. Why? She has considerable financial stakes that are rife with conflicts of interest. Her financial investments are a web of holdings in for-profit colleges and student loan collectors.

When DeVos took office, she repealed an Obama-era rule imposing stricter regulations and higher standards on for-profit colleges. She also stopped canceling the debts of students defrauded by these institutions — a move that has prompted 23 states to bring a lawsuit against her. In the process, she was even held in contempt of court for violating a federal court order.

Now, in the middle of the worst public health crisis in more than a century, she’s jeopardizing the safety of our students, teachers, parents, bus drivers, and custodians, while rerouting desperately needed public school funds towards the private schools she’s always championed.

Remember, when you vote against Trump this November — you’re voting against her, too. It’s a win-win.

Robert Reich

Aug. 11, 2020

How Mitch McConnell’s Republicans are Destroying America

Senate Republicans’ shameful priorities are on full display as the nation continues to grapple with an unprecedented health and economic crisis.

Mitch McConnell and the GOP refuse to take up the HEROES Act, passed by the House in early May to help Americans survive the pandemic and fortify the upcoming election. 

Senate Republicans don’t want to extend the extra $600 a week in unemployment benefits, even though unemployment has soared to the highest levels since the Great Depression.

Even before the pandemic, nearly 80 percent of Americans lived paycheck to paycheck. Now many are desperate, as revealed by lengthening food lines and growing delinquencies in rent payments.  

McConnell’s response? He urges lawmakers to be “cautious” about helping struggling Americans, warning that “the amount of debt that we’re adding up is a matter of genuine concern.” 

McConnell seems to forget the $1.9 trillion tax cut he engineered in December 2017 for big corporations and the super-rich, which blew up the debtdeficit.

That’s just the beginning of the GOP’s handouts for corporations and the wealthy. As soon as the pandemic hit, McConnell and Senate Republicans were quick to give mega-corporations a $500 billion blank check, while only sending Americans a paltry one-time $1,200 check.

The GOP seems to believe that the rich will work harder if they receive more money while people of modest means work harder if they receive less. In reality, the rich contribute more to Republican campaigns when they get bailed out.

That’s precisely why the GOP put into the last Covid relief bill a $170 billion windfall to Jared Kushner and other real estate moguls, who line the GOP’s campaign coffers. Another $454 billion of the package went to backing up a Federal Reserve program that benefits big business by buying up their debt.

And although the bill was also intended to help small businesses, lobbyists connected to Trump – including current donors and fundraisers for his reelection – helped their clients rake in over $10 billion of the aid, while an estimated 90 percent of small businesses owned by people of color and women got nothing.

The GOP’s shameful priorities have left countless small businesses with no choice but to close. They’ve also left 22 million Americans unemployed, and 28 million at risk of being evicted by September. 

For the bulk of this crisis, McConnell called the Senate back into session only to confirm more of Trump’s extremist judges and advance a $740 billion defense spending bill. 

Throughout it all, McConnell has insisted his priority is to shield businesses from Covid-related lawsuits by customers and employees who have contracted the virus.

The inept and overwhelmingly corrupt reign of Trump, McConnell, and Senate Republicans will come to an end next January if enough Americans vote this coming November.

But will enough people vote during a pandemic? The HEROES Act provides $3.6 billion for states to expand mail-in and early voting, but McConnell and his GOP lackeys aren’t interested. They’re well aware that more voters increase the likelihood Republicans will be booted out.

Time and again, they’ve shown that they only care about their wealthy donors and corporate backers. If they had an ounce of concern for the nation, their priority would be to shield Americans from the ravages of Covid and American democracy from the ravages of Trump. But we know where their priorities lie.

Robert Reich

August 4, 2020

TRUMP'S WORST ATTACK ON WORKERS

Donald Trump campaigned as an insurgent outside of the political establishment who would restore the long-neglected working class. That was a lie. As president, he’s turned his back on working people, governing instead as a lackey for billionaires, CEOs, and corporations. Even during a public health and economic crisis, Trump has left working people in the dust.

Consider his signature tax law, sold as a benefit to working people. More than 60 percent of its benefits have gone to people in the top 20 percent of the income ladder. In 2018, for the first time in American history, billionaires paid a lower tax rate than the working class.

Trump said every worker would get a $4,000 raise, but nothing trickled down. Instead, corporations spent their tax savings buying back shares of their own stock, boosting executive bonuses and doing nothing for workers. To make matters worse, some of the richest corporations are paying nothing in federal income taxes, despite making billions in profits.

Meanwhile, Trump’s corporate lobbyists and industry shills have systematically dismantled worker protections – rolling back child labor protections, undoing worker safeguards from exposure to cancerous radiation, gutting measures that shield workers from wage theft, and eliminating overtime for 8 million workers.

Trump has even asked the Supreme Court to take away the health insurance of 23 million American workers by invalidating the Affordable Care Act – in the middle of a global health crisis, no less! If Trump gets his way, protections for people with pre-existing conditions will be eliminated.

Oh, and remember his promise to rein in drug prices so working people can afford the meds they need? Well, forget it. Remdesivir, a drug to reduce the severity of COVID-19, from pharma giant Gilead, was developed with $70 million of taxpayer funding, yet Trump is letting the company charge $3,000 per treatment. And he is omitting pricing protections from federal contracts to develop drugs for Covid-19 – making it likely that life-saving treatments and vaccines will be out of reach for people in need.

Donald Trump doesn’t give a fig for working-class Americans. He even wants to end the extra unemployment benefits that countless Americans are depending on to get through this crisis.

So whose side is Trump really on?

Well, here’s a clue: Tucked away on page 203 of the COVID stimulus package backed by Trump, is an obscure provision that delivers a whopping $135 billion in tax breaks to millionaire real estate developers and hedge fund managers. One real estate tycoon who stands to profit handsomely from the provision is none other than the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner.

In total, the cash secretly spent on tax cuts for millionaires in the COVID-19 package is more than three times as much money as was included for emergency housing and food relief.

Kushner isn’t the only Trump insider getting paid off during the pandemic. Forty lobbyists with ties to Donald Trump have helped clients secure more than $10 billion in federal COVID aid. And if Trump succeeds in getting the Supreme Court to repeal the Affordable Care Act, the richest 0.1 percent of Americans will get an average additional tax cut of $198,000 each per year.

Donald Trump is no working-class champion. He’s a corporate con man – the culmination of a rigged-for-the-rich system that’s shafting working Americans at every turn.

Robert Reich

July 28, 2020