Friday, March 15, 2024

Social Security is On the Ballot this November

  

 

PAUL KRUGMAN

Social Security and Medicare Are on the Ballot

  

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/14/opinion/trump-biden-social-security-medicare.html?smid=url-share

 

More.

VIEWPOINT

Trump Plans to Make His Massive Tax Cuts for the Rich and Corporations Permanent

The 2024 election will help decide whether the U.S. extends provisions of the Trump tax cuts, which allow the wealthy to steal from the public.

SONALI KOLHATKAR  MARCH 13, 2024

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Description automatically generatedThe ultra-rich are betting big on Trump to return to the White House.(PHOTO BY SPENCER PLATT/GETTY IMAGES)

There are many issues on the line this election year but one that gets little attention is former President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax reform law that cut taxes on the wealthiest Americans and corporations. 

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act permanently reduced the tax rate for big corporations from an already-low 35 percent to a ridiculously minuscule 21percent. It also lowered tax rates for the wealthiest people from nearly 40percent to 37 percent. Several provisions of that law are set to expire in 2025, making this November’s Congressional and Presidential elections particularly critical to issues of economic fairness and justice.

A few months after Trump signed the bill, he boasted, ​We have the biggest tax cut in history, bigger than the Reagan tax cut. Bigger than any tax cut.” It became a common refrain for him when touting his achievements. But, Trump, who was known for breaking all records on lying to the public while in office, conflated many different facts to come up with a positive-sounding falsehood in a nation already primed by the likes of Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton to view taxation as anathema. Trump’s tax cuts as a whole were the eighth largest in history. But his corporate tax cut was in fact the single largest reduction ever in that category.

Wealthy corporations have for years lobbied for and won so many carve-outs and loopholes to the U.S. tax system, and hidden so much money in offshore tax havens that their pre-2017 effective tax rates were already far lower than the official rates. Then, Trump lowered them even more. Imagine telling the American public that you are responsible specifically for the biggest tax cuts to the biggest corporations in U.S. history. It wasn’t a good look. And so, he lied, saying that he signed history’s biggest tax cut overall.

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In the simplest terms, taxes are a way to pool collective resources so we can have the things we all need for safety and security. Progressive taxation is when wealthier individuals (and corporations) are taxed at higher-than-average rates because the richer one is, the less excess money one needs beyond one’s basic necessities. Progressive taxation ensures that wealth inequality doesn’t spiral out of control and helps ensure money that’s being sucked upwards gets redistributed downward. When wealthy elites pay fewer taxes, they are effectively stealing from the public.

Since the cuts have been in place, many studies have attempted to assess their impact on the U.S. economy. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities concluded in a March 2024 report that “[t]ogether with the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts enacted under President Bush (most of which were made permanent in 2012), [Trump’s] law has severely eroded our country’s revenue base.”

Trump’s law accelerated the draining of our collective revenues to fund the things we need. Even the fiscally conservative Peter G. Peterson Foundation concluded that, as a result of Trump’s law, ​The United States collects fewer revenues from corporations, relative to the size of the economy, than most other advanced countries.”

Trump’s tax cuts were quite literally regressive, rewarding the already rich. A 2021 ProPublica report found that just one last-minute provision to the bill demanded by Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) for so-called pass-through corporations benefited a handful of the wealthiest people in the nation: ​just 82 ultrawealthy households collectively walked away with more than $1 billion in total savings, an analysis of confidential tax records shows.” It only cost about $20 million in bribes to Johnson (i.e., donations to the Senator’s reelection campaign) to enact this windfall.

It’s unsurprising that wealthy elites are backing a second term for Trump. They want an extension of those tax bill provisions that are expiring in 2025, and perhaps an even bigger tax cut, if they can get it.

It’s no wonder that the rich were thrilled with Trump’s presidency and that his virulent white supremacy and fascist leanings were not deal breakers.

It’s also unsurprising that wealthy elites are backing a second term for Trump. They want an extension of those tax bill provisions that are expiring in 2025, and perhaps an even bigger tax cut, if they can get it. If those provisions are left to expire, people making more than $400,000 a year — the top 2 percentof earners — will see an increase in taxation in 2025.

This is a demographic that is already prone to tax cheating given the IRS’s recent announcement that 125,000 Americans making between $400,000and $1 million a year have simply refused to file taxes since 2017.

If the GOP wins control of the Senate and the House of Representatives this fall, and if Trump beats President Joe Biden, those cuts will become permanent. A GOP sweep in November will also usher in a new wave of threats to people of color, LGBTQ people, especially transgender communities, labor rights, and reproductive justice, as well as an escalation to the already-dire Israeli genocide in Gaza that Biden is fueling. It’s hard to believe but many Americans seem to have forgotten the horrors of 2016to 2020.

But, at its heart, this election will be about money, for it will take a lot of money to fund the GOP’s reelection campaigns in order for moneyed forces to ensure they retain control of more money — democracy, justice, and equity be damned.

For Trump, this is even more important given his legal challenges. He’s relying on small-dollar donations from his base to cover his mounting legal fees and has had to post a $91 million bond to cover the fines he faces from a defamation lawsuit by E. Jean Carroll. The more desperate Trump gets in his bid to secure the White House, the more willing he and his party will be to sell the nation to the highest bidder. And, he will lie to the public by conflating tax cuts for the rich with tax cuts for all.

We ought to think of tax cuts in terms of public revenue theft. When the wealthy win lower taxes, they are stealing money from the American public as a whole. As per the U.S. Senate Budget Committee, permanently extending Trump’s tax cuts will result in a loss of $3.5 trillion in revenues through the year 2033. That’s highway robbery.

This article was produced via Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

 In These Times.

Monday, March 11, 2024

Trump, Capitalism, and the 2024 Election _ Reich

 Trump, American Capitalism, and the 2024 Election.

Robert Reich,

The Common good.  A book by Reich, 

At the first rally of his 2024 election campaign on March 25 in Waco, Texas — exactly 30 years after a deadly siege between law enforcement and the Branch Davidians resulted in the deaths of more than 80 members of that religious cult and four federal agents — Trump opened with a choir of men imprisoned for their role in the January 6 insurrection singing “Justice for All.” 

Their singing was interspersed with the national anthem and with Trump’s reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, his hand on his heart. Behind, projected on big screens, was footage from the Capitol riot.

Trump then repeated his bogus claim that the 2020 presidential election was “rigged.” He praised the rioters of January 6. He raged against the prosecutors overseeing multiple investigations into his conduct as “absolute human scum.” He told the crowd that “the thugs and criminals who are corrupting our justice system will be defeated, discredited and totally disgraced.”

Then he declared:

“Our enemies are desperate to stop us and our opponents have done everything they can to crush our spirit and to break our will. But they failed. They’ve only made us stronger. And 2024 is the final battle, it’s going to be the big one. You put me back in the White House, their reign will be over and America will be a free nation once again.”

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SINCE THEN, as indictments have piled up against him and his poll numbers among Republicans have risen, Trump’s “final battle” comes into ever sharper focus. 

It is a battle against the rule of law. It is a battle for the soul of America. It is a battle between democracy and neofascism. 

On an Iowa radio show, Trump warned it would be “very dangerous” if Special Counsel Jack Smith and Judge Tanya Chutkan put him in jail, since his supporters have “much more passion than they had in 2020.”

The Republican Party is uniting behind Trump’s side of this battle line. 

If not defending the January 6 rioters outright, Republican lawmakers are attacking Smith, the Justice Department, the Manhattan district attorney, and other current and prospective prosecutors seeking to hold Trump accountable.

Trump’s upcoming trial on charges of seeking to overturn the results of the 2020 election will make it harder for Republican candidates across the nation to run on their fake nemeses: “woke” teachers and corporations, trans youth, LGBTQ+ people, immigrants, and “socialism.” It will force them instead to defend Trump’s side in the final battle.

Those who care about democracy and the rule of law should welcome the battle, and not just because it will help Biden and the Democrats.

It will also help clarify what’s at stake for the nation in 2024 and beyond.

It will show how eager Trump and the Republican Party are to abandon democracy and the rule of law in order to gain power. It will show that the vast majority of Americans reject their position.

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FOR THE LAST 10 WEEKS, we’ve been examining American capitalism and asking why the common good has been so difficult to achieve in recent decades. 

We’ve seen that American capitalism is one of the harshest forms of capitalism on the planet. Its safety nets are in shreds. Its promise of equal opportunity has given way to deep cynicism and distrust toward all the major institutions of American society. 

We’ve also examined the reason for this. The moneyed interests — large corporations, Wall Street financiers, and ultra-wealthy individuals — have taken over much of our politics and media. They want Americans to be divided, to fight each other, so we don’t look upward and see where all the wealth and power have gone. 

At the same time, the countervailing powers that once balanced the moneyed interests have all but disappeared. 

Most obviously left behind have been Americans without college degrees who tend to live in rural areas, who are white and more religious and older than the typical American. As the heartland has been hollowed out — denuded of industry and good jobs — they have been the first casualties. As such, they’ve been particularly susceptible to Trump’s lies and Fox News’s propaganda, and the angry and often bigoted politics they’ve spawned. 

But these Trumpers are far from the only casualties. Most Americans now live paycheck to paycheck. They have no job security. No pension. Little or no child care or elder care. They worry about affording to send their kids to college. They’re reluctant to see a doctor because, even with health insurance, they pay through the nose. 

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AMERICAN CAPITALISM once considered the employees and host communities of businesses “stakeholders” — equal in importance to shareholders. As the economy grew, so did wages and benefits, as did the prosperity of the communities where corporations were founded and grew. 

But in the 1980s, corporate raiders transformed the purpose of the corporation into being exclusively and obsessively about maximizing shareholder returns. 

At the same time, and partly as a result, corporations lobbied for trade treaties that allowed them to outsource jobs abroad. They busted unions. They monopolized their markets. They moved to where they could find the lowest wages and biggest tax subsidies. 

Accordingly, shareholder capitalism siphoned off the economic gains to a relatively small group at the top. 

The Democratic Party — and Democratic presidents Carter, Clinton, Obama, and Biden — have been far better than their Republican counterparts in seeking to resist these forces, but they have not succeeded. 

They have not established a new countervailing power. They have not called out the moneyed interests, on which too many have relied for campaign financing. They have allowed too many Americans to be left behind. 

Donald Trump has exploited this void with anger, vengeance, bigotry, and lies. 

So now we come to the final battle. 

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AS A KID I WAS ALWAYS a head shorter than other boys, which meant I was bullied — mocked, threatened, sometimes assaulted. 

Childhood bullying has been going on forever. But over the last four decades, America has developed a culture of bullying that’s fiercer than anything I experienced as a kid. 

Wealthier Americans bully poorer Americans. CEOs bully their workers. People with privilege and pedigree bully those without. White people bully people of color. Authoritarian leaders (Putin, Xi, Modi, Netanyahu) bully ethnic and religious minorities. Men bully women. People born in America bully immigrants. 

Sometimes the bullying involves physical violence, but more often it entails intimidation, displays of dominance, demands for submission, or arbitrary decisions over the lives of those who feel they have no choice but to accept them. 

At its core, bullying is about power — typically the power of those who are rich, white, privileged, or male, or all of the above, to threaten and intimidate those who are not.

At some point, those who are bullied will fight back. 

I remember the exact day I did, when I had had enough. I was 10 years old. One morning when I was waiting for the school bus, a local bully started shaking me down. He wanted my lunch box and the change in my pocket. He began threatening me physically, as he had done several times before. I felt the rage well up inside me. I put down my lunch box and let him have it.

Trump is America’s bully-in-chief. He exemplifies those who use their wealth to gain power and celebrity, harass or abuse women and get away with it, lie and violate the law with impunity, and rage against anyone who calls them on their bullying. 

Trump became president by exploiting the anger of millions of white working-class Americans who for decades have been economically bullied. Even as profits have ballooned and executive pay has gone into the stratosphere, workers have been hammered. Their pay has gone nowhere, their benefits have shrunk, their jobs are less secure, their health has worsened. 

Trump has used this anger to build his political base, channeling their frustrations and anxieties into racism and nativism. He has encouraged Americans who have been bullied to feel more powerful by bullying people with even less power — poor Black people, Latinos, immigrants, Muslims, families seeking asylum.

This bullying game has been played repeatedly in history by self-described strongmen who pretend to be tribunes of the oppressed by scapegoating the truly powerless. 

Trump is no tribune of the people. He and his enablers, mostly but not exclusively in the Republican Party, work for the oligarchs — cutting their taxes, eliminating regulations, allowing some of them to profit off public lands and coastal waters, and slashing public services.

Eventually those who are bullied will gain the courage to fight back and reclaim economic and political power. 

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AMERICANS HOLD DIFFERENT VIEWS about many things, but most of us oppose authoritarianism. We reject fascism.

We value the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. We are committed to democracy, even with its many flaws. We support the rule of law.

We want to live in a nation where no one is above the law. We want to be able to sleep at night without worrying that a president might unleash armed lackeys to drag us out of our homes because he considers us to be his enemy.

The pustule of Trump has been growing since 2016, but the authoritarian impulses underlying this infection have been allowed to fester for decades.

It is time to lance this boil. 

It is time to decisively rescue democracy and the rule of law. It is time to defeat Trump and his enablers, who are determined to defy the core values of America. 

It is also time to craft a capitalism that works for the many rather than the few — to achieve a common good whose benefits are widely shared. American capitalism does not have to be as rotten as it is. It can be reformed. 

This second goal of reforming American capitalism cannot be separated from the first. The common good can thrive only when the rule of law is powerful and democracy is strong. 

Trumpism can be overcome totally and finally only when American capitalism works for the many, not the few. 

Understanding what is happening and why is a prerequisite for positive change. But the change must come from the people — from you and me and millions of other Americans. In order for real change to occur, the locus of power in the system will have to change as well. 

I’m hopeful. Despite the anger, fear, and bigotry released by Trump, I believe we will come out of this stronger, more united, more sure of our ideals. 

The arc of American history shows that when privilege and power conspire to pull us backward, we rally and move forward. Sometimes it takes an economic shock like the bursting of a giant speculative bubble. Sometimes we reach a tipping point where the frustrations of average Americans turn into action. 

Look at the progressive reforms between 1900 and 1916; the New Deal of the 1930s; the civil rights struggle of the 1950s and 1960s; the widening opportunities for women, minorities, people with disabilities, and LGBTQ+ people; the environmental reforms of the 1970s and more recently under Joe Biden; and the recent resurgence of labor activism.

Look at the startling diversity of younger Americans. Most Americans now under 18 years old are Hispanic, Asian or Pacific Islander, African American, or of more than one race. In a very few years, most Americans under 30 will be. In fewer than three decades, most of America will be. 

That diversity will be a huge strength. Hopefully, it will mean a more tolerant, less racist, less xenophobic society. 

Our young people are determined to make America better. I’ve taught for more than 40 years, and I’ve never taught a generation of students as dedicated to public service, as committed to improving the nation and the world, as is the current generation. Another sign of our future strength.  

Meanwhile, most college students today are women, which means even more women will be in leadership positions in coming years — in science, politics, education, nonprofits, and corporate suites. That will also be a great boon to America.

As I tell my students, we are the leaders we’ve been waiting for. The future is up to us. 

This concludes my 10-week series on capitalism and the common good. But it’s really just the beginning of our work together toward a better and more just society. 

Thank you for joining me. I urge you to add your comments, take part in our discussion, and share with others.

Also, if you are able, please consider a paid or gift subscription. Subscribers to this newsletter keep it going.

 

 

Working With the unhoused

 


Team:
This webinar is on the study around who in California is unhoused. The knowledge and narrative group recommends that you watch it in order to prepare yourself to dispel any misconceptions you might have or the people we come in contact with (formally or informally) might have. Knowledge is a helpful tool in our work.
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Hazel Watson
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American Fascism

American Fascism: Author and scholar John Ganz on how Europe’s interwar period informs the present

Wednesday, March 6, 2024

Bernie Sanders : What Is To Be Done ? Today !

 

Last night, Donald Trump swept through the Republican Super Tuesday presidential primaries (with the exception of Vermont). His one major opponent has dropped out, putting the most dangerous president in American history one step closer to returning to the White House.

The primary is over. This is it. The election will once again be between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. And, frighteningly, at this point most polls have Trump in the lead.

The question we now face is a simple one. How do we defeat Trump and his right-wing extremist allies in the House and Senate? How do we elect more Progressives to Congress?

And, frankly, the answer is complicated by the reality that the Democratic establishment is ill-prepared to do that. They have relatively little support within the working class. Their support among the Latino community is declining. And they are even seeing a drop In support from the Black community - historically the Democrats strongest base of support. Their support among young people is declining. The Democrats are also weak in terms of generating grass-roots activism or excitement. 

We have to do things differently. 

While most Democrats will focus their attention on Trump's indictments, his insults and outrages, our job is to be laser-focused in reminding people of the fraud and pathological liar for working people we all know Trump to be.

For instance: 

This is a president, Donald Trump, who said he was going to provide health care to everyone, yet tried to throw 32 million people off of health care and has pledged to continue to try and accomplish that goal. 

This is a president who said he was going to stand up for working families and who promised to pass tax reform legislation designed to help the middle class, yet 83 percent of his tax benefits go to the top 1 percent.

This is a president who promised to take on the pharmaceutical companies. He said they were "getting away with murder." Yet, drug prices continue to soar and he appointed a drug company executive as the Secretary of Health and Human Services.

This is a president who promised to take on the greed of Wall Street, but then proceeded to appoint more Wall Street titans to high positions than any president in history.

This is a president who appointed vehemently anti-labor members to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). 

This is a president who believes climate change is a "hoax", and appointed agency leaders and judges who consistently undermined our ability to move toward sustainable energy and protect the environment.

This is a president who said he would do "everything in my power to protect our LGBT citizens," yet went out of his way to attempt to deny them from getting the health care they need and allow discrimination against them in the workplace.

This is a president who brags about his role in overturning Roe v. Wade and denying reproductive rights to millions of women across the country.

This is a president who said that if he won that America would be respected again around the world, yet as a result of his anti-democratic and incompetent policies has succeeded in significantly lowering the respect that people all over the planet have for the United States, all while embracing right-wing authoritarian rulers around the world. 

This is a president who not only rejected his own defeat and attempted to incite an insurrection to stop Congress from certifying the election, but worked overtime to make it harder for people to vote and easier for billionaires to buy the outcomes of elections. I happen to believe that if Trump is elected once again this November, the 250 year old experiment of modern democracy in this country may very well come to end. 

The truth is, Donald Trump sold out the working families of this country once, and if he wins again all of the anti-worker, anti-democratic policies he pursued during his first term will only be magnified. He is a menace to working people whose rejection of climate science threatens the future of this planet. We have to appreciate how unbelievably severe the current moment is.

This is not the message most Democrats trying to defeat Trump will communicate, but it one we must relentlessly remind the working people of this country about ahead of November's elections.

So there it is. A lot of important work ahead of us. 

Now, you know that since our presidential campaign I have rarely asked directly for contributions, but today I am once again asking for your financial support: