Media: Stop Normalizing Fascism and Trump

 Robert Reich: Media; Stop normalizing fascism.  4 min.

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xds9WDUd1yc

 

Choosing Democracy: Donald Trump and the Threat to U.S. Democracy

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The Rise and Fall of Moms For Liberty

The Rise and Fall of Moms For Liberty: Reeling from school board losses, the “parental rights” organization is collapsing on itself, writes Maurice Cunningham.

The Rise and Fall of Moms For Liberty

The Rise and Fall of Moms For Liberty: Reeling from school board losses, the “parental rights” organization is collapsing on itself, writes Maurice Cunningham.

Choosing Democracy: Cease Fire Now

Choosing Democracy: Cease Fire Now:   The U.S. veto of the UN Security Council Resolution calling for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza gives a green light for Israel...

Sen. Chris Murphy: ‘This Party Has Not Made a Firm Break From Neoliberalism’

Sen. Chris Murphy: ‘This Party Has Not Made a Firm Break From Neoliberalism’: Connecticut’s junior senator launches a new interview series focused on monopoly power, part of his quest to understand American unhappiness.

Mainstream Media is Helping Trump

 The mainstream media is helping Trump and his authoritarian allies in four ways. 

First, it’s drawing a false equivalence between Trump and Biden — claiming that Biden’s political handicap is his age, while Trump’s corresponding handicap is his criminal indictments.

Rubbish. Trump is almost as old as Biden, and Trump’s public remarks and posts are becoming ever more unhinged — suggesting that advancing age may be a bigger problem for Trump than for Biden.

Why isn’t the mainstream media reporting on Trump’s increasing senescence?

Secondly, every time the mainstream media reports on another move by Trump and his Republican allies toward neofascism, it tries to balance its coverage by pointing out some fault in the Democratic Party (such as the ongoing federal corruption and bribery case against Senator Bob Menendez).

The net effect is for readers to assume all politics is rotten. A recent Washington Post article was headlined, “In a swing Wisconsin county, everyone is tired of politics.”

Voters who are turned off by politics are less aware of Biden’s accomplishments — and the media is hardly reporting on them. 

One person interviewed by the Post admitted, “I can’t really speak to anything [Biden] has done because I’ve tuned it out, like a lot of people have. We’re so tired of the us-against-them politics.”

As if the “us-against-them politics” is the fault of Democrats as much as it is Trump Republicans. In fact, Trump’s GOP is the party of dysfunctional politics.

Which brings us to the third way the mainstream media is quietly helping Trump. It makes it seem as if the dysfunction in Washington is coming from both parties. 

“How do Americans feel about politics?” The New York Times asked recently, answering in the same headline: “‘Disgust isn’t a strong enough word.’”

What the Times failed to report is that much of the GOP no longer accepts the rule of law, or the norms of liberal democracy, or the legitimacy of the opposing party, or the premise that governing requires negotiation and compromise.

Yesterday, the Times attributed the coming wave of departing lawmakers across both chambers and parties to the “breathtaking dysfunction on Capitol Hill,” without telling readers that the dysfunction is entirely due to the Republican Party.

Finally, blaming both sides for this chaos plays into Trump’s and his allies’ goal of wanting Americans to believe the nation has become ungovernable, so it needs a strongman. 

The worse things seem, the more convincing is Trump’s case for an authoritarian like him to take over. “I’d get it done in one day.” “I am your voice.” “Leave it all to me.”

Focusing on government dysfunction ignores Biden’s steady hand. This makes America more likely to fall into Trump’s and his allies’ neofascist hands.

As we head into the critical election year of 2024, the mainstream media must adapt to a new political reality: The contest is no longer between Democrats who want more government and Republicans who want less. It is between democracy and fascism. 

Robert Reich, 

Choosing Democracy: Tamales for Scholarships

Choosing Democracy: Tamales for Scholarships:               30th Annual Scholarship Fundraiser     League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC)        Lorenzo Patiño Council 2862   S...

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The Public doesn't understand the risks of a Trump Victory

  

 

 

 

 

‘Trump cannot be reelected if you want America to be a place where elections decide outcomes, where voting rights matter, and where politicians don’t baselessly prosecute their adversaries.’ Photograph: Brandon Bell/Getty Images

OpinionDonald Trump

The public doesn’t understand the risks of a Trump victory. That’s the media’s fault

Margaret Sullivan

 

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/nov/09/trump-president-democracy-threat-media-journalism?

 

 

Choosing Democracy: Voucher Programs Defund Public Schools

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The Federal Budget: Funding Militarism

 FACT SHEET: Invest in Communities, Not Violence

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Nov. 9, 2023 - Download PDF Version

For far too long, the U.S. has clung to a budget that prioritizes war, deportations and detentions, and policing at the expense of human needs. It’s time to reinvest these taxpayer dollars into real human needs — healthcare, education, housing, and a just energy transition to name a few. Here’s how legislators have splurged on militarism, and what could happen if those funds instead benefited people and communities. 

$1.1 Trillion on Militarism in FY 2023

In FY 2023, out of a $1.8 trillion federal discretionary budget, $1.1 trillion — or 62% — was for militarized programs, including war and the military, deportations and detentions, and prisons and policing.

• Less than $2 out of every $5 in federal discretionary spending was available to fund positive investments in people and communities. 

• The U.S. spent $16 on the military and war for every $1 that was spent on diplomacy and humanitarian foreign aid. 

• The U.S. spent $51.1 billion for homeland security, half of which goes to the agencies responsible for detentions and deportations, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE, $8.8 billion) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP, $17.4 billion). This is nearly triple the spending for substance abuse and mental health programs. 

• The U.S. federal budget allocated twice as much for federal law enforcement, which includes federal prisons, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies ($31 billion), as for child care and early childhood education programs ($15 billion).

• Since 2001, the U.S. has added $2 to the discretionary budget for militarism for every $1 added to invest in communities.

$21 Trillion on Militarism Over Twenty Years

In the two decades following 9/11, the U.S. spent $21 trillion on foreign and domestic militarism. 

• Over those twenty years $16 trillion went to the Pentagon and more than half of that, $7.2 trillion, went to Pentagon contractors. 

• In its first twenty years, spending on the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) reached $1.4 trillion. Of that, about one-third, $442 billion, went to ICE and CBP.

• In the span of twenty years, spending on ICE and CBP more than doubled, from $12 billion in FY 2002 to more than $25 billion in FY 2021, adjusted for inflation.

• Federal prison funding has increased by more than 11 times since 1976, exploding from $901 million in 1976 to $10 billion in 2021, adjusted for inflation. The number of people incarcerated in federal prisons increased ninefold, from 24,000 in 1980 to more than 219,000 by 2013.

The Human Costs of Militarism

• The post-9/11 wars have contributed to 4.5 million deaths, including thousands of U.S. troops and civilian contractors, and the displacement of 38 million people.  

• More than 5 million people have been deported since the founding of DHS. There have been at least 287 fatal encounters with CBP since 2010.

• Every year, hundreds of thousands of immigrants are locked up in over 200 ICE detention centers, where they often face abusive conditions while they await determination of their immigration status. 

• In 2022, police killed 1,239 people — more than 3 people per day. 

• There are 1.9 million people currently incarcerated in the U.S.

A Better World is Possible (and Affordable)

• A $100 billion annual cut to military spending could have gone towards: 
• 10 times as many households receiving public housing (10.39 million), or
• More than 1 in 3 children aged 0-5 going to Head Start (7.81 million), or
• Nearly 1 in 3 veterans receiving medical care (5.88 million), or
• More than 7 in 10 uninsured adults receiving health care (20.24 million), or
• Solar power for every household in the U.S. (131.2 million), with billions of dollars to spare

• For the nearly $26 billion that ICE and CBP received in 2023, we could hire 230,000 registered nurses to address shortages, provide early childhood education for more than half a million kids, or build solar farms to power more than half the nation's households. 

• Over the long term, reinvesting in human needs over militarism could be transformative. For far less than the $21 trillion spent on militarism in the 20 years after 9/11, the U.S. could allocate enough funds to do ALL of the following:
• $4.5 trillion to fully decarbonize the U.S. electric grid
• $2.3 trillion to create 5 million jobs at $15 per hour with benefits and cost-of-living adjustments for 10 years
• $1.7 trillion to erase student debt
• $449 billion to continue the extended Child Tax Credit for another 10 years
• $200 billion to guarantee free preschool for every 3-and-4-year old for 10 years, and raise teacher pay

351 Pleasant Street, Suite B #442 Northampton MA, 01060 | (413) 584-9556 | info@nationalpriorities.org

 

National Priorities.org

On Tyranny:Twenty Lessons. Timothy Snyder

  

 

On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century.   Timothy Snyder.2017

 Advice from the book. 

First: Do not obey in advance.

Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do.

Anticipatory obedience is a political tragedy. Perhaps rulers did not initially know that citizens were willing to compromise this value or that principle. Perhaps a new regime did not at first have the direct means of influencing citizens one way or another. After the German elections of 1932, which brought Nazis into government, or the Czechoslovak elections of 1946, where communists were victorious, the next crucial step was anticipatory obedience. Because enough people in both cases voluntarily extended their services to the new leaders, Nazis and communists alike realized that they could move quickly toward a full regime change. The first heedless acts of conformity could not then be reversed.

In early 1938, Adolf Hitler, by then securely in power in Germany, was threatening to annex neighboring Austria. After the Austrian chancellor conceded, it was the Austrians’ anticipatory obedience that decided the fate of Austrian Jews. Local Austrian Nazis captured Jews and forced...

 

 

 

 

1.     Do not obey in advance.

2.     Defend institutions

3.     Beware the one-party state

4.     Take responsibility for the face of the world.

5.     Remember professional ethics

6.     Be wary of paramilitaries

7.     Be reflective if you must be armed

8.     Stand out

9.     Be Kind to our language

10.  Believe in Truth

11.  Investigate

12.  Make eye contact and small talk

13.  Practice corporeal politics

14.  Establish a private life

15.  Contribute to good causes

16.  Learn from peers in other countries

17.  Listen for dangerous words

18.  Be calm when the unthinkable arrives

19.  Be a patriot 

20.  Be as courageous as you can

Choosing Democracy: Thousands Protest APEC Summit

Choosing Democracy: Thousands Protest APEC Summit:   SAN FRANCISCO, CA -12NOVEMBER23 - Thousands of demonstrators protested the San Francisco meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation ...

Photos, 

Reich: What Is Wrong With American Capitalism?

 

Friends,

Do you recall a time when the income of a single schoolteacher or baker or salesman or mechanic was enough to buy a home, have two cars, and raise a family? I do. 

In the 1950s, my father, Ed Reich, had a shop on the main street, from which he sold women’s clothing to the wives of factory workers. He earned enough for the rest of us to live comfortably. We weren’t rich but never felt poor, and our standard of living rose steadily through the 1950s and 1960s. 

That used to be the norm. For three decades after World War II, America created the largest middle class the world had ever seen. During those years the earnings of the typical American worker doubled, just as the size of the American economy doubled. Over the last thirty years, by contrast, the size of the economy doubled again but the earnings of the typical American went nowhere.  

Then, the CEOs of large corporations earned an average of about twenty times the pay of their typical worker. Now they get substantially over two hundred times. In those years, the richest 1 percent of Americans took home nine to ten percent of total income; today the top 1 percent gets more than twenty percent. 

Then, the economy generated hope. Hard work paid off, education was the means toward upward mobility, those who contributed most reaped the largest rewards, economic growth created more and better jobs, the living standards of most people improved through their working lives, our children would enjoy better lives than we had, and the rules of the game were basically fair.

But today all these assumptions ring hollow. Confidence in the economic system has sharply declined. The apparent arbitrariness and unfairness of the economy have undermined the public’s faith in its basic tenets. Cynicism abounds. To many, the economic and political system seems rigged. 

THE THREAT TO CAPITALISM is no longer communism or fascism but a steady undermining of the trust modern societies need for growth and stability. When most people stop believing they and their children have a fair chance to make it, the tacit social contract societies rely on for voluntary cooperation begins to unravel. In its place comes subversion, small and large – petty theft, cheating, fraud, kickbacks, corruption. Economic resources gradually shift from production to protection. 

The nation becomes susceptible to demagogues such as Donald Trump. 

We have the power to change all this, recreating an economy that works for the many rather than the few. But to determine what must be changed, and to accomplish it, we must first understand what has happened and why.

For a quarter century, I’ve offered in books and lectures an explanation for why average working people in advanced nations like the United States have failed to gain ground and are under increasing economic stress: Put simply, globalization and technological change have made most of us less competitive. The tasks we used to do can now be done more cheaply by lower-paid workers abroad or by computer-driven machines.

My solution has been an activist government that raises taxes on the wealthy, invests the proceeds in excellent schools and other means people need to get ahead, and redistributes to the needy.  These recommendations have been vigorously opposed by those who believe the economy will function better for everyone if government is smaller and if taxes and redistributions are curtailed.

WHILE THE STANDARD EXPLANATION for what has happened is still relevant, it overlooks a critically important phenomenon: the increasing concentration of political power in a corporate and financial elite that has been able to influence the rules by which the economy runs.  

And the governmental solutions I have propounded, while I think still useful, are in some ways beside the point because they take insufficient account of the government’s more basic role in setting the rules of the economic game. 

Worse yet, the ensuing debate over the merits of the “free market” versus an activist government has diverted attention from several critical issues: how the market has come to be organized differently from the way it was a half-century ago, why its current organization is failing to deliver the widely shared prosperity it delivered then, and what the basic rules of the market should be.

The diversion of attention away from these issues is not entirely accidental. Many of the most vocal proponents of the “free market” -- including executives of large corporations and their ubiquitous lawyers and lobbyists, denizens of Wall Street and their political lackeys, and numerous multi-millionaires and billionaires -- have for many years been actively reorganizing the market for their own benefit, and would prefer these issues not be examined.  

MARKETS DEPEND for their very existence on rules governing property (what can be owned), monopoly (what degree of market power is permissible), contracts (what can be exchanged and under what terms), bankruptcy (what happens when purchasers can’t pay up), and how all of this is enforced.

Such rules do not exist in nature. They must be decided upon, one way or another, by human beings. These rules have been altered over the past few decades as large corporations, Wall Street, and wealthy individuals have gained increasing influence over the political institutions responsible for them.

Simultaneously, centers of countervailing power that between the nineteen-thirties and nineteen-eighties enabled America’s middle and lower-middle classes to exert their own influence -- labor unions, small businesses, small investors, and political parties anchored at the local and state levels -- have withered. 

The consequence has been a market organized by those with great wealth for the purpose of further enhancing their wealth. This has resulted in ever-larger upward distributions inside the market, from the middle class and poor to a minority at the top. Because these distributions occur inside the market, they have largely escaped notice.

The meritocratic claim that people are paid what they are worth in the market is a tautology that begs the questions of how the market is organized and whether that organization is morally and economically defensible. In truth, income and wealth increasingly depend on who has the power to set the rules of the game.

CEOs of large corporations and Wall Street’s top traders and portfolio managers effectively set their own pay, advancing market rules that enlarge corporate profits while also using inside information to boost their fortunes. 

Meanwhile, the pay of average workers has gone nowhere because they have lost countervailing economic power and political influence. The simultaneous rise of both the working poor and non-working rich offer further evidence that earnings no longer correlate with effort. 

All of this has brought us Donald Trump and America’s lurch toward fascism. 

The solution is not less government. The problem is not the size of government but whom the government is for. The remedy is for the vast majority to regain influence over how the market is organized. This will require a new countervailing power, allying the economic interests of the majority who have not shared the economy’s gains. The current left-right battle pitting the “free market” against government is needlessly and perversely preventing such an alliance from forming.

The biggest political divide in America in years to come will be between the complex of large corporations, Wall Street banks, and the very rich that has fixed the economic and political game to their liking, and the vast majority who, as a result, have found themselves to be in a fix. 

The answer is not to give up on democracy. 

To the contrary, the only way to reverse course is for the vast majority who now lack influence over the rules of the game to become organized and unified, in order to reestablish the countervailing power that was the key to widespread prosperity five decades ago.

While I focus on the United States, the center of global capitalism, the phenomena I describe are increasingly common to capitalism as practiced elsewhere around the world, and I believe the lessons drawn from what has occurred here are as relevant to other nations. 

Although global businesses are required to play by the rules of the countries they do business in, the largest global corporations and financial institutions are exerting growing influence over the make-up of those rules wherever devised. And the cumulative frustrations of average people who feel helpless and powerless in the face of economies (and market rules) that are not working for them are generating virulent nationalist movements, sometimes harboring racist and anti-immigrant sentiments, as well as political instability in even advanced nations around the globe.

IF WE DISPENSE with mythologies that have distracted us from the reality we find ourselves in, we can make the system work for most of us — rather than for only a relative handful. 

History provides some direction as well as some comfort, especially in America, which has periodically readapted the rules of the political economy to create a more inclusive society while restraining the political power of wealthy minorities at the top. 

In the 1830s, the Jacksonians targeted the special privileges of elites so the market system would better serve ordinary citizens. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, progressives enacted antitrust laws to break up the giant trusts, created independent commissions to regulate monopolies, and banned corporate political contributions. In the 1930s, New Dealers limited the political power of large corporations and Wall Street while enlarging the countervailing power of labor unions, small businesses, and small investors.

The challenge is not just economic but political. The two realms — economics and politics — cannot be separated. Indeed, the field on which I draw used to be called “political economy” -- the study of how a society’s laws and political institutions relate to a set of moral ideals, of which a fair distribution of income and wealth was a central topic. 

The emergence of economics as a discipline distinct from political economy began in 1890 with the publication of Alfred Marshall’s Principles of Economics. The new discipline sought to identify abstract variables applicable to all systems of production and exchange, and paid little or no attention to the distribution of those resources or to a specific society’s legal and political institutions.

The study both of economics and of many other aspects of society thereafter began shifting from historically-specific political, moral, and institutional relationships to more universal and scientific “laws.” John Maynard Keynes’ General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (1936) dominated American economic policy from the end of World War II until the late 1970s.

After World War II, under the powerful influence of Keynesian economics, the focus shifted away from questions of politics and morals and toward government taxes and transfers as means of both stabilizing the business cycle and helping the poor. For many decades this formula worked. 

Rapid economic growth generated widespread prosperity, which in turn created a buoyant middle class. Countervailing power fulfilled its mission. We did not have to attend to the organization of the political economy or be concerned about excessive economic and political power at its highest rungs. Now, we do.

In a sense, then, these essays harkens back to an earlier tradition of inquiry, and a longer-lived concern. My optimism is founded precisely in that history. Time and again we have saved capitalism from its own excesses. I am confident we will do so again.

***

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

Thank you for joining me on this expedition. 

Subscribers to this newsletter are keeping it going. If you are able, please consider a paid or gift subscription. And we always appreciate your sharing our content with others and leaving your thoughts in the comments.

What Can You and I Do This Year ?

Things you and I can do to turn this country around after seeing the current inequality, the political economy of our nation and taking this seminar.

1.   1.  Vote against the candidates preaching  austerity.

2.    2.Vote for the funding of public education. See. www.choosingdemocracy.blogspot.com

3.    3. Search for progressive democrats. Search for candidates honestly discussing the economy.  You can use social security as a test case. 

4.     4.Talk to your neighbors about the issues.

5.    5.Recognize authoritarian behavior in politicians.  Oppose authoritarian movements. 

5.     6. Shut off Fox News.

6.    7. Move your money to a credit union or a local bank.

7.     8. Join a union.  Or, a union support group. www.aflcio.org,http://www.workingamerica.org/join/

8.    9.  Sit quietly for 10 minutes per day. Shut off all radio, TV, telephone. Think about additional ways to promote economic democracy.

 

9.    10. Copy this list.  Give it to friends, neighbors, colleagues. ( do not send via e mail. Personally give it to them).

 

1.  11. Post suggestions of  Facebook, twitter ( X) , etc. Respond to crazy ideas posted there.

11 12.Practice strategies for dialogue with those people you may not agree with.

1.  13.Sit down and read.  Prepare yourself.  Then take action. Consistently read material from outside the corporate owned media.  ( ie.PBS, NPR, ., Common Dreams, The Real News Network.)

1114.  Understand the issues of pensions and public pensions. 

1115.Join an organization working for economic and social justice. ( Poor People;s Campaign,  Third Act.)

Belonging to a group, working with a group, keeps you motivated. 

1 16.Think of 2 additional ways to promote economic justice. Insist that government deal positively with the homeless. 

1 17. Begin now to participate in the 2024 elections.  Select and support democratic candidates.

1   18. Think ahead.  What could we  do if there was a coup after the 2024 election, like the Jan.6, 2021 effort ?