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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 10 months

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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

July 6, 2023

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

JUL 7, 2023

The payroll processing firm ADP said today that private sector jobs jumped by 497,000 in June, far higher than the Dow Jones consensus estimate predicted. The big gains were in leisure and hospitality, which added 232,000 new hires; construction with 97,000; and trade, transportation and utilities with 90,000. Annual pay rose at a rate of 6.4%. Most of the jobs came from companies with fewer than 50 employees.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average, which is a way to measure the stock market by aggregating certain stocks, dropped 372 points as the strong labor market made traders afraid that the Fed would raise interest rates again to cool the economy. Higher interest rates make borrowing more expensive, slowing investment.

Today, as the Washington Post’s climate reporter Scott Dance warned that the sudden surge of broken heat records around the globe is raising alarm among scientists, Bloomberg’s Cailley LaPara reported that the incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act for emerging technologies to address climate change have long-term as well as short-term benefits.

Dance noted that temperatures in the North Atlantic are already close to their typical annual peak although we are early in the season, sea ice levels around Antarctica are terribly low, and Monday was the Earth’s hottest day in at least 125,000 years and Tuesday was hotter. LaPara noted that while much attention has been paid to the short-term solar, EV, and wind industries in the U.S., emerging technologies for industries that can’t be electrified—technologies like sustainable aviation fuel, clean hydrogen, and direct air capture, which pulls carbon dioxide out of the air—offer huge potential to reduce emissions by 2030.

This news was the backdrop today as President Biden was in South Carolina to talk about Bidenomics. After touting the huge investments of both public and private capital that are bringing new businesses and repaired infrastructure to that state, Biden noted that analysts have said that the new laws Democrats have passed will do more for Republican-dominated states than for Democratic ones. “Well, that’s okay with me,” Biden said, “because we’re all Americans. Because my view is: Wherever the need is most, that’s the place we should be helping. And that’s what we’re doing. Because the way I look at it, the progress we’re making is good for all Americans, all of America.”

On Air Force One on the way to the event, deputy press secretary Andrew Bates began his remarks to the press: “President Biden promised that he would be a president for all Americans, regardless of where they live and regardless of whether they voted for him or not. He also promised to rebuild the middle class. The fact that Bidenomics has now galvanized over $500 billion in job-creating private sector investment is the newest testament to how seriously he takes fulfilling those promises.”

Bates listed all the economic accomplishments of the administration and then added: “the most powerful endorsement of Bidenomics is this: Every signature economic law this President has signed, congressional Republicans who voted “no” and attacked it on Fox News then went home to their district and hailed its benefits.” He noted that “Senator Lindsey Graham called the Inflation Reduction Act ‘a nightmare for South Carolina,’” then, “[j]ust two months later, he called BMW’s electric vehicles announcement ‘one of the most consequential announcements in the history of the state of South Carolina.’” “Representative Joe Wilson blasted the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law but later announced, ‘I welcome Scout Motors’ plans to invest $2 billion and create up to 4,000 jobs in South Carolina.’ Nancy Mace called Bidenomics legislation a…‘disaster,’ then welcomed a RAISE grant to Charleston.”

“[W]hat could speak to the effectiveness of Bidenomics more than these conversions?” Bates asked.

While Biden is trying to sell Americans on an economic vision for the future, the Republican leadership is doubling down on dislike of President Biden and the Democrats. Early on the morning of July 2, Trump, who remains the presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee, shared a meme of President Biden that included a flag reading: “F*CK BIDEN AND F*CK YOU FOR VOTING FOR HIM!” The next morning, in all caps, he railed against what he called “massive prosecutorial conduct” and “the weaponization of law enforcement,” asking: “Do the people of this once great nation even have a choice but to protest the potential doom of the United States of America??? 2024!!!”

Prosecutors have told U.S. district judge Aileen Cannon that they want to begin Trump’s trial on 37 federal charges for keeping and hiding classified national security documents, and as his legal trouble heats up, Trump appears to be calling for violence against Democrats. On June 29 he posted what he claimed was the address of former president Barack Obama, inspiring a man who had been at the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol to repost the address and to warn, “We got these losers surrounded! See you in hell,…Obama’s [sic].” Taylor Tarranto then headed there with firearms and ammunition, as well as a machete, in his van. Secret Service agents arrested him.

Indeed, those crossing the law for the former president are not faring well. More than 1,000 people have been arrested for their participation in the events of January 6, and those higher up the ladder are starting to feel the heat as well. Trump lawyer Lin Wood, who pushed Trump’s 2020 election lies, was permitted to “retire” his law license on Tuesday rather than be disbarred. Trump lawyer John Eastman is facing disbarment in California for trying to overturn the 2020 election with his “fake elector” scheme, a ploy whose legitimacy the Supreme Court rejected last week. And today, Trump aide Walt Nauta pleaded not guilty to federal charges of withholding documents and conspiring to obstruct justice for allegedly helping Trump hide the classified documents he had at Mar-a-Lago.

Trump Republicans—MAGA Republicans—are cementing their identity by fanning fears based on cultural issues, but it is becoming clear those are no longer as powerful as they used to be as the reality of Republican extremism becomes clear.

Yesterday the man who raped and impregnated a then-9-year-old Ohio girl was sentenced to at least 25 years in prison. Last year, after the Supreme Court overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision recognizing the constitutional right to abortion, President Biden used her case to argue for the need for abortion access. Republican lawmakers, who had criminalized all abortions after 6 weeks, before most people know they’re pregnant, publicly doubted that the case was real (Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost told the Fox News Channel there was “not a damn scintilla of evidence” to support the story). Unable to receive an abortion in Ohio, the girl, who had since turned 10, had to travel to Indiana, where Dr. Caitlin Bernard performed the procedure.

Republican Indiana attorney general Todd Rokita complained—inaccurately—that Bernard had not reported child abuse and that she had violated privacy laws by talking to a reporter, although she did not identify the patient and her employer said she acted properly. Bernard was nonetheless reprimanded for her handling of privacy issues and fined by the Indiana licensing board. Her employer disagreed.

As Republican-dominated states have dramatically restricted abortion, they have fueled such a backlash that party members are either trying to avoid talking about it or are now replacing the phrase “national ban” with “national consensus” or “national standard,” although as feminist writer Jessica Valenti, who studies this language, notes, they still mean strict antiabortion measures. In the House, some newly-elected and swing-district Republicans have blocked abortion measures from coming to a vote out of concern they will lose their seats in 2024.

But it is not at all clear the issue will go away. Yesterday, those committed to protecting abortion rights in Ohio turned in 70% more signatures than they needed to get a measure amending the constitution to protect that access on the ballot this November. In August, though, antiabortion forces will use a special election to try to change the threshold for constitutional amendments, requiring 60% of voters rather than a majority.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#Bidenomics #Joe Biden #economy #jobs #middle class #justice #Letters From an American #Heather Cox Richardson #infrastructure #climate change

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mostlysignssomeportents · 7 months

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Biden should support the UAW

On September 22, I'm (virtually) presenting at the DIG Festival in Modena, Italy. That night, I'll be in person at LA's Book Soup for the launch of Justin C Key's "The World Wasn’t Ready for You." On September 27, I'll be at Chevalier's Books in Los Angeles with Brian Merchant for a joint launch for my new book The Internet Con and his new book, Blood in the Machine.

The UAW are on strike against the Big Three automakers. Biden should be roaring his full-throated support for the strike. Doing so would be both just and shrewd. But instead, the White House is waffling…and if recent history is any indication, they might actually come out against the strike.

The Biden administration is a mix of appointees from the party's left Sanders/Warren wing, and the corporatist, "Third Way" wing associated with Clinton and Obama, which has been ascendant since the Reagan years. The neoliberal wing presided over NAFTA, the foreclosure crisis, charter schools and the bailout for the bankers – but not the people. They voted for the war in Iraq, supported NSA mass-surveillance, failed to use their majorities to codify abortion rights, and waved through mega-merger after mega-merger.

By contrast, the left wing of the party has consistently fought monopoly, war, spying, privatized education and elite impunity – but forever in the shadow of the triangulation wing, who hate the left far more than they hate Republicans. But with the Sanders campaign, the party's left became a force that the party could no longer ignore.

That led to the Biden administration's chimeric approach to key personnel. On the one hand, you have key positions being filled by ghouls who cheered on mass foreclosures under Obama:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/06/personnel-are-policy/#janice-eberly

And on the other, you have shrewd tacticians who are revolutionizing labor law enforcement in America, delivering real, material benefits for American workers:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/06/goons-ginks-and-company-finks/#if-blood-be-the-price-of-your-cursed-wealth

Progressives in the Biden administration have often delivered the goods, but they're all-too-often hamstrung by the corporate cheerleaders the party's right wing secured – think of Lina Khan losing her bid to block the Microsoft/Activision merger thanks to a Biden-appointed, big-money-loving judge:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/14/making-good-trouble/#the-peoples-champion

These self-immolating own-goals are especially visible when it comes to strikes. The Biden admin intervened to clobber railway workers, who were fighting some of the country's cruelest, most reckless monopolists, whose greed threatens the nation:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/11/dinah-wont-you-blow/#ecp

The White House didn't have the power to block the Teamsters threat of an historic strike against UPS, but it publicly sided with UPS bosses, fretting about "the economy" while the workers were trying to win a living wage and air conditioning for the roasting ovens they spend all day in.

Now, with the UAW on strike against the monopolistic auto-makers – who received repeated billions in public funds, gave their top execs massive raises, shipped jobs offshore, and used public money to lobby against transit and decarbonization – Biden is sitting on the sidelines, failing to champion the workers' cause.

Writing in his newsletter, labor reporter Hamilton Nolan makes the case that the White House should – must! – stand behind the autoworkers:

https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/whose-fault-is-it?

Nolan points out that workers who strike without the support of the government have historically lost their battles. When workers win labor fights, it's typically by first winning political ones, dragging the government to the table to back them. Biden's failure to support workers isn't "neutral" – it's siding with the bosses.

Today, union support is at historic highs not seen in generations. The hot labor summer wasn't a moment, it was a turning point. Backing labor isn't just the moral thing to do, it's also the right political move:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/14/prop-22-never-again/#norms-code-laws-markets

Biden is already partway there. He rejected the Clinton/Obama position that workers would have to vote for Democrats because "we are your only choice." Maybe he did that out of personal conviction, but it's also no longer politically possible for Democrats to turn out worker votes while screwing over workers.

The faux-populism of the Republicans' Trump wing has killed that strategy. As Naomi Klein writes in her new book Doppelganger, Steve Bannon's tactical genius is to zero in on the areas where Democrats have failed key blocks and offer faux-populist promises to deliver for those voters:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/05/not-that-naomi/#if-the-naomi-be-klein-youre-doing-just-fine

When Democrats fail to bat for workers, they don't just lose worker votes – they send voters to the Republicans. As Nolan writes, "working people know that the class war is real. They are living it. Make the Democratic Party the party that is theirs! Stop equivocating! Draw a line in the sand and stand on the right side of it and make that your message!"

The GOP and Democrats are "sorting themselves around the issue of inequality, because inequality is the issue that defines our time, and that fuels all the other issues that people perceive as a decline in the quality of their own lives." If the Democrats have a future, they need to be on the right side of that issue.

Biden should have allowed a railroad strike. He should have cheered the Teamsters. He should be on the side of the autoworkers. These aren't "isolated squabbles," they're "critical battles in the larger class war." Every union victory transfers funds from the ruling class to the working class, and erodes the power of the wealthy to corrupt our politics.

When Democrats have held legislative majorities, they've refused to use them to strengthen labor law to address inequality and the corruption it engenders. Striking workers are achieving the gains that Democrats couldn't or wouldn't take for themselves. As Nolan writes:

Democratic politicians should be sending the unions thank you notes when they undertake these hard strikes, because the unions are doing the work that the Democrats have failed to accomplish with legislation for the past half fucking century. Say thank you! Say you support the workers! They are striking because the one party that was responsible for ensuring that the rich didn’t take all the money away from the middle class has thoroughly and completely failed to do so.

Republican's can't win elections by fighting on the class war. Democrats should acknowledge that this is the defining issue of our day and lean into it.

Whose fault is a strike at the railroads, or at UPS, or in Hollywood, or at the auto companies? It is the fault of the greedy fuckers who took all the workers’ money for years and years. It is the fault of the executives and investors and corporate boards that treated the people who do the work like shit. When the workers, at great personal risk, strike to take back a measure of what is theirs, they are the right side. There is no winning the class war without accepting this premise.

Autoworkers' strikes have been rare for a half-century, but in their heyday, they Got Shit Done. Writing in The American Prospect, Harold Meyerson tells the tale of the 1945/46 GM strike:

https://prospect.org/labor/2023-09-18-uaw-strikes-built-american-middle-class/

In that strike, the UAW made history: they didn't just demand higher wages for workers, but they also demanded that GM finance these wages with lower profits, not higher prices. This demand was so popular that Harry Truman – hardly a socialist! – stepped in and demanded that GM turn over its books so he could determine whether they could afford to pay a living wage without hiking prices.

Truman released the figures proving that higher wages didn't have to come with higher prices. GM caved. Workers got their raise. Truman touched the "third rail of American capitalism" – co-determination, the idea that workers should have a say in how their employers ran their businesses.

Co-determination is common in other countries – notably Germany – but American capitalists are violently allergic to the idea. The GM strike of 45/6 didn't lead to co-determination, but it did effectively create the American middle-class. The UAW's contract included cost-of-living allowances, wage hikes that tracked gains in national productivity, health care and a defined-benefits pension.

These provisions were quickly replicated in contracts with other automakers, and then across the entire manufacturing sector. Non-union employers were pressured to match them in order to attract talent. The UAW strike of 45/6 set in motion the entire period of postwar prosperity.

As Meyerson points out, today's press coverage of the UAW strike of 2023 is full of hand-wringing about what a work-stoppage will do to the economy. This is short-sighted indeed: when the UAW prevails against the automakers, they will rescue both the economy and the Democratic party from the neo-feudal Gilded Age the country's ultrawealthy are creating around us:

https://doctorow.medium.com/the-end-of-the-road-to-serfdom-bfad6f3b35a9?sk=207d6afdb89b0351b92233cc3318ab94

There's a name for a political strategy that seeks to win votes by making voters' lives better – it's called "deliverism." It's the one thing the Trump Republican's won't and can't do – they can talk about bringing back jobs or making life better for American workers, but all they can deliver is cruelty to disfavored minorities and tax-breaks for the ultra-rich:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/10/thanks-obama/#triangulation

Deliverism is how the Democrats can win the commanding majorities to deliver the major transformations America and the world need to address the climate emergency and dismantle our new oligarchy. Letting the party's right wing dominate turns the Democrats into caffeine-free Republicans.

When the Dems allowed the Child Tax Credit to lapse – because Joe Manchin insisted that poor people would spend the money on drugs – they killed a program that had done more to lift Americans out of poverty than anything else. Today, American poverty is skyrocketing:

https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/4206837-poverty-made-an-alarming-jump-congress-could-have-stopped-it/

Four million children have fallen back into poverty since the Dems allowed the Child Tax Credit to lapse. The rate of child poverty in America has doubled over the past year.

The triangulators on the party's right insist that they are the adults in the room, realists who don't let sentiment interfere with good politics. They're lying. You don't get working parents to vote Democrat by letting their children starve.

America's workers can defeat its oligarchs. They did it before. Biden says he's a union man. It's time for him to prove it. He should be on TV every night, pounding a podium and demanding that the Big Three give in to their workers. If he doesn't, he's handing the country to Trump.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/18/co-determination/#now-make-me-do-it

#pluralistic #uaw #bidenomics #strikes #united autoworkers #labor #unions #union strong #evs #now make me do it #deliverism #democrats #hamilton nolan

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