News, Opinions & Events
“Axios interviewed two dozen autoworkers who were striking in Michigan and expressed their displeasure with the top two presidential candidates joining them at the picket line during campaign season.
“‘I think it’s political fodder,’ Fuller said of Biden and Trump’s appearances. ‘Not like any of them will actually help working-class folks.'”
True enough…Go to a panel discussion at any of the elite Washington, DC think tanks funded to feed policy ideas to the political party duopoly and see if anyone speaks from the perspective of the bottom 50%. You most likely will hear about a world as perceived and framed by top 20% professionals and business interests.
More than 75,000 Kaiser Permanente workers prepare for three-day strike – Spokesman-Review
“A union proposal submitted in early August calls for 7 percent annual raises for the first two years of a four-year contract, tapering down to 6.25 percent in the third and fourth year. It would also set a $25 per hour minimum wage across the company and create a joint committee to handle retirement investments.
“The company’s Sept. 25 proposal includes wage increases of 4 percent in each of the first two years and 3 percent in the third and fourth years for Northern California and Washington, with 3 percent annual raises for facilities in other parts of the country. Kaiser wants to set minimum hourly pay rates of $21 to $23 for 2024, to be increased by $1 each year until 2026.”
The red bourgeoisie – Branko Milanovic/Global Inequality
“…They bought villas in the Riviera, and then, either disappointed at the treatment they received in their Summer resorts by their new Western neighbors, or having overgrown their infatuation with the things Western and the United States in particular, moved to the other side, championing nationalism not only as a way to stay in power, but to create an ersatz ideology that would justify their continued rule.”
An 1850 inventory of enslaved people from the Pleasant Hill Plantation in Mississippi.
“…recently, historians have pointed persuasively to the gnatty fields of Georgia and Alabama, to the cotton houses and slave auction blocks, as the birthplace of America’s low-road approach to capitalism.
“Slavery was undeniably a font of phenomenal wealth. By the eve of the Civil War, the Mississippi Valley was home to more millionaires per capita than anywhere else in the United States. Cotton grown and picked by enslaved workers was the nation’s most valuable export. The combined value of enslaved people exceeded that of all the railroads and factories in the nation. New Orleans boasted a denser concentration of banking capital than New York City. What made the cotton economy boom in the United States, and not in all the other far-flung parts of the world with climates and soil suitable to the crop, was our nation’s unflinching willingness to use violence on nonwhite people and to exert its will on seemingly endless supplies of land and labor. Given the choice between modernity and barbarism, prosperity and poverty, lawfulness and cruelty, democracy and totalitarianism, America chose all of the above…”
Desmond expanded his analysis of the impact of slavery on the structure of the US government in his chapter entitled “Capitalism” in the book, The 1619 Project, which was based on the NYT articles including the one cited above:
“…if Washington often feels broken, that’s because it was built that way. A 2011 study of 23 long-standing democracies identified the United States as the only country in the group that had four “veto points” empowered to block legislative action: the president, both houses of Congress, and the Supreme Court. Most other democracies in the study had just a single veto point. In those nations, parties govern, pass policies, and get voted in or out. Things happen at the federal level. But the United States government is characterized by political inaction — and that was by design. By creating political structures that weakened the federal government’s ability to regulate slavery, the framers hobbled Washington’s ability to pass legislation on a host of other matters.”
And so? …
US Congress tees up votes in last-minute scramble to avert shutdown – Reuters/yahoo
Private opulence, public squalor: How the U.S. helps the rich and hurts the poor – NPR
“Desmond’s 2017 book Evicted, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize, examined the nation’s affordable housing crisis through the lens of those losing their homes. His new book, Poverty, by America, studies various factors that contribute to economic inequality in the U.S., including housing segregation, predatory lending, the decline of unions and tax policies that favor the wealthy. Desmond says that affluent Americans, including many with progressive political views, benefit from corporate and government policies that keep people poor.
“‘Most government aid goes to families that need it the least,’ Desmond says. ‘If you add up the amount that the government is dedicating to tax breaks — mortgage interest deduction, wealth transfer tax breaks, tax breaks we get on our retirement accounts, our health insurance, our college savings accounts — you learn that we are doing so much more to subsidize affluence than to alleviate poverty.'”
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McCarthy & Co. offer themselves up on the cross to help motivate lazy poor people back to work
Thanks to the Washington Post for running our letter:
“Letting Americans Down”
“How can House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), President Biden and Senate leaders claim to represent the working class and poor when Medicaid work requirements are a focal point in the debt ceiling standoff and the Trump-era tax cuts are not? According to the Congressional Budget Office, the work requirements in the Limit, Save, Grow Act would have a tiny impact (about $5.6 billion in fiscal 2025) on the nation’s $31.4 trillion national debt, but they would increase the number of uninsured and state costs and have no effect on hours worked by Medicaid recipients.
“In contrast, ending the Trump-era tax cuts, which disproportionately benefit the wealthy, could put a major dent in the national debt….”
Because most of this site’s readers won’t be able to get through the newspaper’s pay gate, here’s the draft of the letter sent to the Post:
Debt ceiling negotiators focus on a ‘speck’ in benefits for the poor, ignore the ‘logs’ in their own eyes.
“Legislative Choices for Paying Promised Social Security Benefits”
Statement of Karl Polzer, Center on Capital & Social Equity,
U.S. Senate Budget Committee hearing: “Protecting Social
Security for All: Making the Wealthy Pay Their Fair Share”
Has DT crossed the line into delirium tremens?
“It came out of his mouth during a campaign speech last month.”