We Need a New Version of Capitalism

Republicans - especially Donald Trump - are eager to depict whoever the Democrat presidential nominee turns out to be as a socialist and a threat to capitalism and somehow an enemy of average Americans even though the Democrat agenda is to improve the lot of a majority of Americans, not just the wealthy and big corporations as the GOP made clear was its goal in the form of the Trump/GOP tax cuts and the Trump/Pence regime efforts to roll back safety regulations and clean air and clean water regulations while destroying labor unions.  The irony is that many in Trump's base long for the 1950's when life was better for many because of labor unions that upheld wages and the far higher taxes paid by the wealthy funded infrastructure projects such as the Interstate highway system. In short, today's version of capitalism has turned toxic for the majority - much as was the case in the Gild Age, a time the GOP seeks to seemingly restore.  Not all of the wealthy are content to see income disparities continue to rise as the wallow in greed.  David Walentas, a visionary New York real estate developer definitely not cut from the same cloth as Trump, just made a $100 million gift to the University of Virginia to benefit students from families where no one has ever attended college.  Then there is Marc Benioff who argues that a new capitalism is needed in a column in the New York Times.  Here are column highlights:

Capitalism, I acknowledge, has been good to me.  Over the past 20 years, the company that I co-founded, Salesforce, has generated billions in profits and made me a very wealthy person. I have been fortunate to live a life beyond the wildest imaginations of my great-grandfather, who immigrated to San Francisco from Kiev in the late 1800s.

Yet, as a capitalist, I believe it’s time to say out loud what we all know to be true: Capitalism, as we know it, is dead.

Yes, free markets — and societies that cherish scientific research and innovation — have pioneered new industries, discovered cures that have saved millions from disease and unleashed prosperity that has lifted billions of people out of poverty.

But capitalism as it has been practiced in recent decades — with its obsession on maximizing profits for shareholders — has also led to horrifying inequality. Globally, the 26 richest people in the world now have as much wealth as the poorest 3.8 billion people, and the relentless spewing of carbon emissions is pushing the planet toward catastrophic climate change. In the United States, income inequality has reached its highest level in at least 50 years, with the top 0.1 percent — people like me — owning roughly 20 percent of the wealth while many Americans cannot afford to pay for a $400 emergency. It’s no wonder that support for capitalism has dropped, especially among young people. To my fellow business leaders and billionaires, I say that we can no longer wash our hands of our responsibility or what people do with our products. Yes, profits are important, but so is society. And if our quest for greater profits leaves our world worse off than before, all we will have taught our children is the power of greed.

It’s time for a new capitalism — a more fair, equal and sustainable capitalism that actually works for everyone and where businesses, including tech companies, don’t just take from society but truly give back and have a positive impact.

What might a new capitalism look like?

First, business leaders need to embrace a broader vision of their responsibilities by looking beyond shareholder return and also measuring their stakeholder return. This requires that they focus not only on their shareholders, but also on all of their stakeholders — their employees, customers, communities and the planet. Fortunately, nearly 200 executives with the Business Roundtable recently committed their companies, including Salesforce, to this approach, saying that the “purpose of a corporation” includes “a fundamental commitment to all of our stakeholders.” Unfortunately, not everyone agrees. . . . . When asked whether companies should serve all stakeholders and whether capitalism should be updated, Vice President Mike Pence warned against “leftist policies.”

But suggesting that companies must choose between doing well and doing good is a false choice. Successful businesses can and must do both. In fact, with political dysfunction in Washington, D.C., Americans overwhelmingly say C.E.O.s should take the lead on economic and social challenges, and employees, investors and customers increasingly seek out companies that share their values.

Legislation to close loopholes in the Equal Pay Act have stalled in Congress for years, and today women still only make about 80 cents, on average, for every dollar earned by men. But congressional inaction does not absolve companies from their responsibility. Since learning that we were paying women less than men for equal work at Salesforce, we have spent $10.3 million to ensure equal pay; today we conduct annual audits to ensure that pay remains equal. Just about every company, I suspect, has a pay gap — and every company can close it now.

For many businesses, giving back to their communities is an afterthought — something they only do after they’ve turned a profit. But by integrating philanthropy into our company culture from the beginning — giving 1 percent of our equity, time and technology — Salesforce has donated nearly $300 million to worthy causes, including local public schools and addressing homelessness.

Globally, few nations are meeting their targets to fight climate change, the current United States presidential administration remains determined to withdraw from the Paris Agreement and global emissions continue to rise. As governments fiddle, there are steps that business can take now, while there’s still time . . . .

Skeptical business leaders who say that having a purpose beyond profit hurts the bottom line should look at the facts. Research shows that companies that embrace a broader mission — and, importantly, integrate that purpose into their corporate culture — outperform their peers, grow faster, and deliver higher profits.

Of course, C.E.O. activism and corporate philanthropy alone will never be enough to meet the immense scale of today’s challenges. It could take $23 billion a year to address racial inequalities in our public schools. College graduates are drowning in $1.6 trillion of student debt. It will cost billions to retrain American workers for the digital jobs of the future. Trillions of dollars of investments will be needed to avert the worst effects of climate change. All this, when our budget deficit has already surpassed $1 trillion.

That is why a new capitalism must also include a tax system that generates the resources we need and includes higher taxes on the wealthiest among us. . . . . Nationally, increasing taxes on high-income individuals like myself would help generate the trillions of dollars that we desperately need to improve education and health care and fight climate change.

The culture of corporate America needs to change, and it shouldn’t take an act of Congress to do it. Every C.E.O. and every company must recognize that their responsibilities do not stop at the edge of the corporate campus. When we finally start focusing on stakeholder value as well as shareholder value, our companies will be more successful, our communities will be more equal, our societies will be more just and our planet will be healthier.

Trump and his vulture capitalist cronies embody the direct opposite of this responsible proposal.

American Pharmaceutical Company Keeps HIV Risk High

One of the reasons for America's sky high health care costs is the daily gauging of consumers by large pharmaceutical companies.  Americans pay in some cases, thousands of times more for crucial drugs that cost a relative pittance in other countries.  A prime example is Truvada, the brand name for a type of HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, which is up to 99 percent effective at preventing HIV infection.  The cost in America?  Thanks to the monopoly of Gilead Sciences, over $20,000 per year, far outside the reach of even many affluent individuals even with insurance (assuming carriers do not deny coverage).  The cost elsewhere?  In other countries, a one-month supply of generic Truvada costs less than $6.00. If widely administered, PrEP could largely eliminate HIV/AIDS in America.  But just like the opioid manufacturers behind the crisis in many parts of America, money is Gilead Science's god.  Human lives mean little.  A piece in the New York Times looks at this shocking example of corporate greed.  Here are excerpts:

On July 3, 1981, this newspaper wrote about a “rare cancer” killing gay men in New York and California. . . . Today, after 37 years, we finally have a proven pathway to ending the AIDS epidemic in this country.

The only catch? Poor policy and pharmaceutical price-gouging have blocked the way, making critical drugs a luxury rather than an imperative.

The solution comes in a pill: Taken daily, Truvada, the brand name for a type of pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, is up to 99 percent effective at preventing H.I.V. infection; it also lowers the amount of H.I.V. circulating in infected patients' blood streams. Used as directed, it’s one of the most effective methods of preventing a viral infection ever discovered, as good as the polio vaccine, the miracle of modern medicine. When you combine that protection with the discovery that people with H.I.V. cannot transmit the virus to others once Truvada has suppressed it to undetectable levels, we could be on the verge of a swift end to the epidemic.

Truvada was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2012. But over six years later, the United States is failing miserably in expanding its use. Less than 10 percent of the 1.2 million Americans who might benefit from PrEP are actually getting it. The major reason is quite clear: pricing. With a list price over $20,000 a year, Truvada, the only PrEP drug available in the United States, is simply too expensive to become the public health tool it should be. Gilead Sciences, the company that makes Truvada, maintains a monopoly on the drug domestically. In other countries, a one-month supply of generic Truvada costs less than $6, but Gilead charges Americans, on average, more than $1,600, a markup from the generic of 25,000 percent. Infuriatingly, American taxpayers and private charities — not Gilead — paid for almost all of the clinical research used to develop Truvada as PrEP. Yet the price stays out of reach for millions, and will for at least several more years.

The disparities in PrEP access are astounding: Its use in black and Hispanic populations is a small fraction of that among whites. In the South, where a majority of H.I.V. infections occur, use is half what it is in the Northeast. Women use PrEP at drastically lower rates than men . . .

The ability of PrEP to greatly reduce new H.I.V. infections is no longer in question. In New South Wales, Australia, a program providing free access to PrEP led to a drop in H.I.V. diagnoses in the most vulnerable communities by a third in just six months, one of the fastest declines recorded since the global AIDS crisis began.

So how can we import such progress into the United States? Faced with more than half a decade of inaction by the federal government, activists have developed their own national strategy to begin the end of the H.I.V. epidemic. At the International AIDS Conference later this month, our organization, the PrEP4All Collaboration, will release its plan for a national PrEP program to ensure all Americans who need PrEP can get it.

A critical component of this plan is insisting that federal agencies use their statutory authority to break Gilead’s undeserved monopoly. With low-price, generic Truvada, the cost to cover every American who needs PrEP — including both drug costs and clinical care — would be less than a tenth the amount that the federal government already spends on H.I.V. care. The billions saved could pay for vital services to ensure those who need PrEP the most can get it and those living with H.I.V. can keep the virus suppressed. If the patent on Truvada remains, the plan will cost over $20 billion. Science has delivered answers, but Gilead’s greed and the government’s inaction are keeping it from those who need it most. There’s a pill that stops H.I.V. We can make it possible for everyone who needs that pill to get it.

Gilead's greed is replicated across the medical spectrum and is a prime reason why Americans pay far, far more for healthcare than in any other nation in the world.  We need a single payer system with government negotiation of drug prices. 

Welcome to the New Gilded Age

In numerous past posts I have argued that one of the ultimate goals of today's Republican Party is to restore the wild wealth disparities of the Gilded Age when Rockefellers, Goulds, DuPonts and others amassed huge fortunes, paid little in taxes, and the vast majority of the rest of the citizenry struggled to simply get by.   The new Republican tax plan is a prime example of how today's GOP - which bears no resemblance to the GOP of Eisenhower or even of Reagan - seeks only to benefit the wealthy while playing its base for fools by playing to base prejudices based on race and religion.  It's ugly, its the antithesis of Christian values, and it will harm the long term prospect of many Americans.  A column in the Washington Post lays out how the new tax "reform" delivers wealth to the wealthy while throwing crumbs at best to most of us.  Here are excerpts:

Corporations are people, my friend. And this is where they feed. Room 1100 of the Longworth Building, with its ionic columns, gilt-fringed curtains and eagle-topped frieze, has for 80 years been the home of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee. But perhaps never before have corporations wielded their power as openly as they have here this week.

As the panel moves to approve the Republican tax plan, this is the room where it happens — where the rich will get richer, where everybody else will be forced to shoulder a greater share of the tax burden, and where a trillion dollars of tax breaks for corporations are being passed by lawmakers who work for these very corporations.

In one case, literally.  On Monday afternoon, as the committee began its markup of the tax bill, there on the top level of the dais, three seats from the chairman, munching from a bag of potato chips, was Rep. Patrick J. Tiberi (R-Ohio). Tiberi announced last month that he’s quitting Congress to lead the Ohio Business Roundtable, a group of “the CEOs of the state’s largest and most influential business enterprises.” Tiberi filed a notification with the House Ethics Committee that he was negotiating terms of employment with the group.

This isn’t illegal or against House rules. But a lawmaker drafting and passing legislation that benefits the people with whom he is negotiating the terms of his employment? That stinks.

So it goes in this new gilded age. The $1.5 trillion tax cut has $1 trillion in corporate tax breaks. The idea was that the corporate tax rate could be lowered if you eliminated corporate tax loopholes. Now corporations will have the lower rates and the loopholes.

Individuals lose the ability to deduct state and local taxes, tax preparation, moving expenses and most medical expenses. But corporations — think of them as Very Important Persons with superhuman privileges — can still deduct these same expenses.

“Will a teacher in my district who buys pens, pencils and paper for his students be able to deduct these costs from his tax returns under this plan?” He will not.

“Will a corporation that buys pens, pencils and papers for its workers be able to deduct those costs from its tax returns?” It will.

“Will a firefighter in my district be able to deduct the state and local sales taxes that she pays from her tax return?” She will not.

“Will a corporation be able to deduct sales taxes on business purchases?” It will.

As the corporate welfare is doled out, the same bill widens the gap between the rich and everybody else. The liberal Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy concluded that the middle fifth of Americans would get a modest tax cut of $460 (1.4 percent of their income) in 2018, while the richest 1 percent would have a cut of $64,720 (2.5 percent of their income). Even the conservative-leaning Tax Foundation, using a more favorable methodology, acknowledges the plan would cost the federal government $989 billion over a decade.

Corporations have had their way with Washington before. In 2003, Rep. Billy Tauzin (R-La.) caused an uproar when he quit Congress to become the top drug-industry lobbyist right after he helped to write and pass the Medicare prescription-drug expansion. He earned harsh denunciations as a symbol of Washington’s revolving door.

What’s different now is the reaction. Tiberi continues to help shepherd the corporate tax bill even after naming his corporate employer — and he is applauded. . . . . .  If only those financing his next endeavor didn’t benefit so handsomely from his current one.

How "Conservative Charities" Fueled Rejection of the Paris Climate Accord

Despite seeing evidence of climate change before our very eyes - the melting of the polar ice caps plus three simultaneous hurricanes fueled by much warmer ocean water than in the past are but two plainly visible examples -  one has to wonder how Donald Trump and far too many Republicans have been so willing to deny what is otherwise obvious.  As a lengthy investigative report in the Washington Post reveals, much of it is due to the work of "conservative charities" that masquerade as "educational charities" furthering  public education when in reality they are little more than propaganda fronts for large corporations or religious extremists.  Having followed various "conservative" and "Christian" charities for over two decades, they are one of the biggest scams on the public and further ignorance and the rejection of knowledge not to mention unrestricted vulture capitalism that cares nothing about future generations. How they are allowed to continue to scam the IRS rules is at first baffling until one realizes that they often pay larges sums to "conservative" politicians.  Here are highlights from the Post's story:

For nearly two decades, Ebell has led the Cooler Heads Coalition, an umbrella group of tax-exempt public charities and other nonprofit organizations in the vanguard of efforts to cast doubt on the gravity of climate change and thwart government efforts to address it.

Coalition members have called climate science a hoax and denounced environmentalists as “global-warming alarmists.” They have written letters, blasted out emails, pressured lawmakers, sponsored seminars, appeared on television and made a documentary movie.

It was all part of a wave that crested with Trump’s rejection on June 1 of the Paris agreement, a landmark accord by nearly 200 countries in 2015 to limit greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming.

The story behind the coalition illuminates the influential, little-known role that tax-exempt public charities play in modern campaigns to sway lawmakers and shape policy in the nation’s capital, while claiming to be nonpartisan educational organizations.

It also offers insight into the forces behind a Trump decision that infuriated scientists and environmentalists, mystified U.S. allies and went against the advice of some major corporations.

[T]he Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), which helped start the Cooler Heads Coalition in 1997. The coalition, with a rolling membership of more than three dozen groups over the years, describes itself on its website as “informal and ad-hoc,” and focused on education.

Interviews, tax filings, internal documents and news accounts show that its members are well funded and dedicated to advancing a conservative, free-market agenda.

The Post found that the coalition is part of a far larger network of tax-exempt nonprofit groups, linked by ideology and funding, that supported Trump while disparaging Democrat Hillary Clinton in last year’s presidential campaign.

The Cooler Heads have received more than $11 million in donations over the years from coal and oil companies. They’ve taken in tens of millions more from nonprofit foundations, such as those controlled by the wealthy Koch brothers, and the Scaife and Mercer families, according to interviews and Internal Revenue Service filings.

[M]embers of the Cooler Heads Coalition are allied with trade groups, public relations companies and lobbyists working to influence public debate about global warming.

“Public charities serve as so-called independent think tanks, providing analysis to create the appearance they are independent, third-party voices,”

Long dismissed as cranks by mainstream scientists and politicians in both parties, Ebell and his Cooler Heads colleagues were embraced last year by the Trump campaign. Ebell served as the transition director at the Environmental Protection Agency. This spring, he leveraged those connections to arrange a White House briefing in opposition to the Paris agreement, according to an email from Ebell to participants that was obtained by The Post.

Such advocacy is in effect supported by American taxpayers, because contributors to groups organized under 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code can deduct donations from their taxes, which means less revenue for the federal government. Under IRS rules, such organizations may not devote a substantial part of their work to lobbying. But the laws are vague and hard to enforce. And the IRS provides little oversight, because it is financially strapped and has too few auditors. Agency officials are also wary of enforcing prohibitions on political activity, after the conservative backlash triggered by the agency’s focus on tea party groups several years ago, according to knowledgeable officials.

After long questioning global warming, Ebell now acknowledges that “climate change is occurring and human beings have a role in it.” But he said global warming still is not a crisis. He frames climate change as an ideological issue, saying that giving the government more authority to address it would stimulate a “regulatory onslaught,” damage the U.S. economy and subvert human freedom.

Climate scientists said there is no doubt about the reality of climate change and its consequences, including melting polar ice caps, rising sea levels and the intensification of storms. Benjamin Santer, a scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory who received a MacArthur Foundation “genius” award for groundbreaking climate research, told The Post that Ebell and his Cooler Heads colleagues are attempting to turn back the clock on knowledge and science.

The Cooler Heads Coalition was formed in the spring of 1997 by a group called Consumer Alert that drew funding from Chevron, Philip Morris and other large corporations. An allied public charity, the libertarian Competitive Enterprise Institute, soon took over management of the coalition, a cross section of nonprofit groups already fighting policies promoted by progressives and a growing number of liberal public charities and nonprofit organizations.

Joining later were groups such as the Heartland Institute, a libertarian group in the Chicago area, and an influential nonprofit organization, Americans for Prosperity, begun by the Koch brothers to “mobilize citizens” to press for economic growth through “government restraint,” tax filings show.

In early 1998, Ebell and others associated with Cooler Heads met with energy industry executives and lobbyists in closed-door meetings at the American Petroleum Institute, a trade association. Their goal was to convince the American people that climate science was purely speculative and that the scientists were “out of touch with reality,” according to a copy of an internal memo written by an API official who organized the meetings.

One former Cooler Heads member, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of fear of a punitive backlash, said the coalition’s mission under Ebell was to be a “Johnny-on-the-spot for climate denialism” and to simulate a “cacophony of voices” against climate-change science.

An article that spring [2005] by Mother Jones reporter Chris Mooney, now at The Post, revealed that ExxonMobil had cultivated an intricate web of nonprofits, news media outlets, columnists and activists who “have sought to undermine mainstream scientific findings on global climate change.”

A 2009 IRS filing for the Competitive Enterprise Institute — inadvertently made public without redactions — disclosed funding from two coal mining companies. 

In 2013, Brulle completed a study showing that between 2003 and 2010, energy companies, corporations and conservative foundations contributed hundreds of millions to 91 nonprofit “think tanks,” educational groups and associations involved in the fight against global-warming regulations — more than three quarters of them tax-exempt charities whose donors were largely anonymous.

From September to Jan. 19, 2017, Ebell worked on an “action plan” for the president [Trump]. It incorporated the promises Trump had made during the campaign, including the rejection of the Paris accord. Ebell also proposed gutting the agency by cutting thousands of EPA employees.

In effect, taxpayers have indirectly funded these organizations which are fronts for some of the worse polluters that care nothing about clean air and clean water or the nightmares suffered by cities and citizens as the impacts of global warming increase.  

The Koch Brothers' Top Operative Just Went to Work for Marco Rubio

While Marco Rubio continues to try to be all things to all the lunatic factions in the GOP base (some might say shamelessly prostitute himself to them), it increasingly appears that he is striving to sell his soul to the vulture capitalist faction of the Republican Party best represented by the Koch brothers - the very element in the GOP which has pushed failed GOP policies that have harmed the middle class.  As Mother Jones reports, Rubio just hired the top political operative of the Koch brothers.  As I have noted before, I don't like Rubio and view him as a lying empty suit.  Having just watched the Democrat town hall on CNN in South Carolina, I can't help but think that Hillary would eat Marcobit alive in a debate.  Here are highlights from Mother Jones:

Did Marco Rubio just pick up the biggest endorsement of all? Despite pledging nearly $900 million from their network of donors to fight the Democrats in the 2016 election, Charles and David Koch have been largely missing in action during the primary battle. But Politico is reporting today that their top political operative, Marc Short, is joining Rubio's campaign as a senior adviser.

It's not an actual endorsement by the Kochs, but nabbing Short is a big deal for Rubio. For the past few years, Short has served as the president of Freedom Partners, the nerve center of the Kochs' sprawling political operation. Freedom Partners has a lot of strengths, but the two biggest are arguably money and data. The group is organized as a membership-based organization, with Koch network donors kicking in a minimum of $100,000 per year—and many contributing much more than that. The group raised and spent at least $250 million during the 2012 election and almost $130 million in 2014. As the man at the forefront of the Kochs' vast political fundraising operation, Short may have the best Rolodex of donors in the world.

The second area where Freedom Partners has excelled is data—one of Short's specialties. Freedom Partners is an investor in i360 LLC, a sophisticated databank of voter information that has been augmented with personal information gathered by campaigns and commercial groups.

Short is a longtime political operative who got his start working for Colonel Oliver North's failed congressional campaign in 1994. He went on to a series of high-level staff jobs working for GOP lawmakers on Capitol Hill, including serving as chief of staff for the House's Republican Conference. As the head of Freedom Partners since 2013, he surely has a good grasp on the money and the data. It remains to be seen whether Short's move to the Rubio campaign is a sign that the Kochs and their donors are lining up behind the Florida senator. But nonetheless this is very good news for Rubio.

Can Paul Ryan Save the GOP From Itself?

As regular readers know, I do not hold House Speaker Paul Ryan in high regard.  He's a poster boy for the Republican Party's reverse Robin Hood policies that take from the poor and give to the wealthy.  What's frightening, however, is that in today's lunatic alternate universe in which the GOP base resides, Ryan in relative terms comes across as sane and almost principled.  The key words being, of course, "in relative terms" and "almost."  Despite such caveats, Ryan seems to be trying to prevent the GOP sliding completely into crazy land and Trumpist policies.   Personally, I think that the cancer has already metastasized too far for the GOP to be saved.  Moreover, I don't buy Paul Ryan's claimed conversion on social safety net issues. A piece in The Daily Beast ponders whether Ryan's apparent efforts are genuine and whether or not they will be futile.  Here are highlights:

In ways large and small, newly minted House Speaker Paul Ryan seems to be doing his best to prevent his fellow Republicans from throwing themselves and their party into an abyss they could never climb out of. 

In a cycle when the Republican presidential field has become mired in the nativist, the trivial, and the occasionally cruel, Ryan, along with Republican South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, sat six presidential candidates down in Columbia, S.C., Saturday to talk about the struggles of poor Americans and ways to lift them people out of poverty.

Twelve hours before the Ryan event began in Columbia, Donald Trump had rallied 6,000 further north in Rock Hill, S.C. When a 56-year-old Muslim woman stood silently behind Trump in protest, he stopped his event as security threw her out, to the roar of the crowd. 

Unlike the fact-free frenzy that the Trump phenomenon has become, complete with policy proposals like “We’ll have more of everything,” the Ryan-Scott forum was an attempt to focus on a critical issue without easy answers. It will need Democrats and Republicans alike to solve the problem, the kind the Ryan has said he’ll make the focus of his agenda as Speaker.

The event was named after the late Jack Kemp, Ryan’s mentor, who traveled extensively throughout inner cities during his time in the House of Representatives to meet with people in poverty, particular African Americans, and push Republicans to produce policies that could give them a way out.  

“In this country, the condition of your birth does not determine your outcome in life,” Ryan said. “But if it is not true for everybody, then it’s really not true at all.”

It’s a perspective some Democrats approach with skepticism from Ryan, pointing to the federal budget blueprint Ryan offered in 2012 as evidence that Ryan is ready to gut Medicare, Social Security, and crucial safety net programs for the poorest Americans.

But Ryan’s epiphany is not his party’s. While candidates like Ben Carson and Marco Rubio talk about their own families’ struggles, frontrunner Donald Trump has largely ignored the issue, aside from offering his opinion that wages are too high. Whether Ryan can bring his party along on his crusade with him is an open question, particularly in a year when Trump’s rabid populism and personal insults, not civil conversations about poverty, is the fuel for the fire with the GOP base. 

Whether Republicans as a party can, or even want to, address the needs of poor Americans is a pivotal question for many in the GOP, and one many believe will decide the long-term viability of the party.   

“Our leading candidate has a 80 percent disapproval rating with Hispanics, with a growth potential,” Sen. Lindsey Graham told The Daily Beast. “But I think Paul Ryan embracing Jack Kemp is a good thing. The party of Jack Kemp needs to reemerge, you have to have a heart and a brain.”

John Lettieri, the co-founder of the Economic Innovation Group, a nonpartisan think tank that co-sponsored the event, said the forum had revealed two possible paths for the GOP.

“There are leaders within the party who are working aggressively to reframe the way voters consider Republicans when they think about the question that really cost Mitt Romney, ‘Who cares about people like you?’” Littieri said. “You have those people like Ryan, Bush, Rubio, Kasich—they are not going to give up their party without a fight.” 

 Although Ryan won wide praise at the forum, he’s already gotten calls for a primary challenger from grassroots conservatives who says he’s just another version of former House Speaker John Boehner, a deal-maker who many derided as insufficiently conservative.

As noted many times before, the GOP claims to be the party of "Christian values," yet all one sees on display id hatred towards others, efforts to slash the social safety not, and the praise of greed and vulure capitalism as embodied in Donald Trump.  To be a Republican nowadays, if one is Christian, it is essential that one be a modern day Pharisee. 

Why Pope Francis Terrifies the Right and GOP

No one has done more to inject religion into politics than the Republican Party and its masters among the Christofascists and the nations plutocrats such as the Koch brothers.  The former have done so in an effort to force their increasingly foul religious beliefs on all Americans - and to crush out anything that threatens the fairy tale world they live in - while the latter have do so out of cynicism and a desire to feed their greed and push a vulture like version of capitalism.  While Francis drinks from the dame Kool-Aid when it comes to obsession with all things sexual, on most other fronts he remains in touch with objective reality and part of that reality is that the far right's efforts to build a new Gilded Age and to rape the Earth of its resources run directly afoul of the Gospel message.  Stated another way, Francis sees the so-called "prosperity gospel" so loved by the professional Christian crowd (with themselves a prime beneficiaries) as a lie and blasphemous.   His pounding of the idols of the far right terrifies them because (i) the fear others will see that their economic policy emperor has no clothes, and, worse yet, (ii) that they are utterly wrong.  A piece in Salon looks at this phenomenon.  Here are excerpts: 

Republican legislators who attended Pope Francis’ address to Congress were apparently relieved that he didn’t threaten them with fire and brimstone, and that he said that human activity is causing “environmental deterioration,” rather than using the dreaded words “climate change” or “global warming.” What remains clear, however, is that they won’t listen to anyone about this subject – not the overwhelming majority of scientists, not economists, not public policy analysts, and not the world’s most famous religious leader.

All of this raises an interesting question: Why exactly are the Republicans so determined to ignore reality? Why won’t they listen to anyone? The answer is actually simple: The reality of climate change demonstrates that progressives are right and they are wrong. Not just wrong about the effect of human activity on the environment, but wrong about their basic approach to the problems of the modern world.

Republican ideology is based on the idea of freedom for capitalists (another concern voiced by Pope Francis). For progressives, freedom involves the ability of ordinary people to express themselves, to choose their own level of religious observance and, increasingly, to receive the education and healthcare that they need to function in modern society. For conservatives, it means the ability of property owners and large corporations to use their economic power any way they wish, to determine exactly how they will treat their employees and what they will say to the consumers who depend on the products they produce.

Americans have rejected this approach for over 100 years, perhaps since the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt. . . . . we have insisted that the impact of these enterprises on the environment needs to be regulated as well, and that they cannot be permitted to pour poison into our waters and fumes into our air at will.

Recognizing the reality of climate change will necessarily lead to further forms of regulation. That reality emphasizes what physical and social scientists have come to recognize in recent years: that the most recent geological era (usually called the holocene) has ended, and that we are now in an entirely new situation, often described as the anthropocene – the era of human domination.

All this means that conservatives are simply wrong. We’ve gone past the point where the large enterprises that determine the health of the economy, our working people, our environment, and now our planet, can be left to do what they wish.

People don’t like to admit that they are wrong, however. Children stamp their feet or burst into tears. Adults concoct bizarre conspiracy theories (tens of thousands of scientists, from all over the world, have joined together to perpetrate a hoax), engage in outright denials in the face of overwhelming evidence (Marsha Blackburn says that someone – she won’t say who — told her that the Earth is getting cooler) and insult anyone who tells them something they don’t want to hear (even if that person is the leader of a religion they’ve been touting as the truth for decades). But the conservatives are wrong — wrong about climate change and wrong about their entire approach to governing our nation. It’s time for everyone else to stop listening to them.

It is far past the time that conservatives cease being afforded credibility.  Sadly, lazy  journalists cling to their "fair and balanced" fantasy which allows them from having to do the work to challenge bullshit statements and lies from both Republicans and foul Christofascists such as Tony Perkins. Pope Francis may be wrong on matters of sexuality and the control of women's bodies - why is it the celibate men with no sexual or head of family experience claim to be the authorities? -  he is right on the basic falsehood the conservative agenda in America. 

Pope Francis And The Right-Wing Bubble

While Pope Francis has yet to do anything to change the Roman Catholic Church's anti-gay, anti-women, and sex obsessed dogma - much of which traces back to the 13th century - it is nonetheless most entertaining to see him making pin pricks to the GOP bubble that is (i) tethered from objective reality, and (ii) mostly in direct contradiction to the Gospel message.  A piece in  Salon looks at the phenomenon. Here are excerpts:

Despite all the talk that Pope Francis’ address to Congress wouldn’t be political or partisan, it turns out it was both. And, as I predicted here in Salon, it definitely leaned to one side of the aisle. In fact, if you were a conservative Republican, Thursday morning in the Congress was not your finest moment, as Pope Francis laid bare all the ways that the Republican agenda counters Catholic social teaching, from its harsh treatment of immigrants to its fossil fuel-burning disdain for the natural world.

And Francis’ call for politicians to work for the common good was an implicit rebuke to the do-nothing, obstructionist GOP agenda that’s in service to their corporatist, Chamber of Commerce overlords.
Here are the five key moments in Francis’ speech that made conservatives squirm more than any others:

The shout-out to Dorothy Day. Francis commended four Americans in particular, whom he held up as examples of pursuing the common good: Abraham Lincoln, for his pursuit of liberty; Martin Luther King Jr., for his commitment to nonviolence and pluralism; Trappist monk Thomas Merton, for his commitment to dialogue and peace; and Dorothy Day, for her “social activism, her passion for justice and for the cause of the oppressed.” . . . None of them are exactly conservative, but Day in particular is noted as a radical social activist. . . . Day was outspoken in her support of pacifism and labor rights.

 The abortion switcheroo. In defiance of the specific guidance not to try to score political points by clapping at partisan applause lines in Francis’ speech, congressional conservatives leapt to their feet the moment Francis delivered the Vatican’s standard coded language about abortion, mentioning “our responsibility to protect and defend human life at every stage of its development.” Imagine their shock when he immediately followed that with, “This conviction had led me, from the beginning of my ministry, to advocate at different levels for the global abolition of the death penalty.” Psych.

Calling arms deals “money drenched in blood.” Speaking of death, what about all those arms deals the Republicans are so fond of? Francis wanted to know who is selling the bad guys all these weapons and why: “Why are deadly weapons being sold to those who plan to inflict untold suffering on individuals and society?” The answer, according to the pontiff, is “money: money that is drenched in blood, often innocent blood. In the face of this shameful and culpable silence, it is our duty to confront the problem and to stop the arms trade.” I’m sure the GOP and all the defense contractors who give them money will get right on that.

Reminding the GOP we’re all foreigners. As in his speech at the White House on Tuesday, Francis felt the need to once again remind those who are making intolerance toward immigrants their political stock-in-trade that they, like him, are likely the descendants of immigrant families.
In one of the most moving passages of his speech, Francis said, “Let us seek for others the same possibilities which we seek for ourselves. Let us help others to grow, as we would like to be helped ourselves. In a word, if we want security, let us give security; if we want life, let us give life; if we want opportunities, let us provide opportunities.”

Confronting the climate naysayers. Francis made it clear that combating climate change, development and technology can coexist. He explicitly rebuked many conservative critics of his climate change encyclical “Laudato si,” who claim that he is anti-commerce and wants to stifle development or reduce the world to subsistence-level farming to stop climate change. “The right use of natural resources, the proper application of technology and the harnessing of the spirit of enterprise are essential elements of an economy which seeks to be modern, inclusive and sustainable,” he said, adding, “In this regard, I am confident that America’s outstanding academic and research institutions can make a vital contribution in the years ahead.”

On the plus for conservatives side, Francis did talk about the need for “the voice of faith to continue to be heard,” but in the case of this particular voice, conservatives probably wish he would just be quiet.

Pope Francis Poses a Threat to the GOP Economic Order

Up until now, Republicans have been only too happy it inject religion into politics and make one's adherence - at least outwardly, if not in fact - a litmus test for running for office and, most of all, to hold public office. Ben Carson's recent anti-Muslim statements illustrate this reality.  Now, however, the same folks who readily prostitute themselves to Christofascists as a means to garner votes are up in arms that Pope Francis is pushing for action on climate change and arguing that religion and churches, such as the Catholic Church, have no business in raising the issue of, much less discussing climate change.  They take similar offense at the Pope's targeting the evils of vulture capitalism and support for labor unions.  A column in the Washington Post looks at the GOP hostility towards Francis and his message.  Here are excerpts:

The pope addresses Congress Thursday, and conservatives are fearing the worst. Their belief systems can tolerate a lot — laissez-faire economics, xenophobia — but Pope Francis’s emphasis on the Roman Catholic Church’s historic antipathy to capitalism has them in a dither.

The Wall Street Journal laments his overt embrace of the “progressive political agenda of income redistribution.” My Post colleague George F. Will writes that, “Americans cannot simultaneously honor him and celebrate their nation’s premises.”

It’s not clear, however, whether the Journal and Will’s argument is with the pope or with the Christianity of the saint whose name he took, or even more fundamentally, with the Nazareth carpenter whom Christians believe was the son of God.

Suppose, for instance, that the pope elects, in his address to Congress, to repeat one of that carpenter’s most famous quotes: “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.”

Based on past performance, can we expect some Republican congressman to leap to his feet and shout, “You lie,” or Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. to shake his head in dissent? Both occurrences greeted addresses to Congress by President Obama, speeches that were nowhere remotely as inflammatory as those in a recent papal encyclical, much less the Sermon on the Mount.

In place of our current system, Francis has recommended giving workers more power — in particular, promoting worker-owned and -run cooperatives. . . . . On the U.S. political spectrum, this kind of advocacy for worker control plunks you down firmly on the left: Indeed, the primary author of legislation that would promote worker co-ops if Congress ever sought fit to pass it is one Bernie Sanders. But Francis’s critiques of capitalism aren’t peculiar to the left wing of the church. 

Where Francis has departed from his predecessors is that he has moved from talking the talk to walking the walk. The simplicity of his lifestyle, his emphasis on spending time among the poor and giving workers more control of economies where the deck, as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has said, is stacked against them, are all radical departures from past papal practice. So, too, is the tolerance he has shown to gays, lesbians and divorcees — a tolerance that has roused the ire of church conservatives, for whom intolerance to these and kindred groups seems to express the essence of their Catholicism.

These conservatives lament that Francis has de-emphasized the church’s traditional fear and loathing of women and sex. How a church governed by male celibates should have come to view its areas of core competency as gender relations and reproduction is a good question.  By returning to the kind of issues that St. Francis and the Nazarene focused on — stewardship of the Earth, championing of the have-nots — Francis has been a great disappointment to those Catholics nostalgic for the spirit, if not the letter, of the Inquisition. 

A pope infused by the spirit of St. Francis of Assisi and Jesus poses a threat to the current economic order. Conservatives are right to fear and despise him, as they would be right to fear and despise his role models.

The final scene of George Bernard Shaw’s play “Saint Joan” places Joan of Arc in a dream sequence in which all her persecutors, once she’s safely dead and canonized, praise her and acknowledge her sainthood. When she asks them if she should return to Earth and live again, however, they answer with fear, loathing and a resounding “no.” That, in essence, is the conservatives’ response to Pope Francis, and to the spirit and faith he embodies. 

It would be delicious to see the tables turned on the GOP which has insidiously used religion to do evil and support greed.

Vulture Capitalism and Pharmaceutical Companies

In the 2012 election cycle Mitt Romney was his own symbol of vulture capitalism - the GOP's god after tax cuts for the wealthy - and it came back to haunt him.  Now, as we begin the 2016 election cycle, Martin Shkreli, the former hedge fund manager known as the “Pharma bro,” has singlehandedly underscored the evils of unfettered capitalism.  Shkreli accomplished this by buying the rights to Daraprim, a drug used to treat severe infections in AIDS patients and infants, and then increasing the price to consumers by 5000%.  Drug prices in America are out of control - one can get the identical drugs in Canada for far less - and perhaps Shkeli's greed will trigger some much needed oversight of the shockingly greedy pharmaceutical industry.  A piece in Think Progress looks at the phenomenon.  Here are highlights:

Is the “Pharma bro” coming to Congress? He will if Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) gets his way.

Cummings, the Ranking Member of the House Committee On Oversight And Government Reform, has requested a hearing next week to question Martin Shkreli, the former hedge fund manager known as the “Pharma bro.”

Shkreli has attracted attention since he hiked the price of Daraprim, a drug used to treat severe infections in AIDS patients and infants, by 5000%. Shkreli is the CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals.
In an interview, Cummings called Shkreli’s actions “criminal.”

As a member of the Democratic minority, Cummings cannot unilaterally call the hearing. But he wrote a letter to Chairman Jason Chaffetz on Tuesday, requesting a hearing be scheduled.

Cummings notes that the committee had previously “agreed unanimously to investigate the increasing price of certain prescription drugs” but “has held no hearings and has issued no document requests to drug companies this year.”

Tuesday night, Shkreli told ABC News he would reduce the price of Daraprim. He would not specify the new price.

We need a national health care system that would bar sleaze bags like Shkreli from engaging in such vile conduct.

The GOP’s Absurd Anti-Pope Crusade

Not to beat a dead horse, but the growing Republican angst over Pope Francis' visit is becoming almost comical - it's as if the self-proclaimed party of God realizes that it is about to be called out in much the manner that Christ called out the Pharisees in the Gospel stories.  Other than perhaps arguably on the issue of abortion, nearly every policy currently pushed by the Republican Party goes against the message of caring for the poor, the hungry, the sick and the homeless.  Instead, the GOP worships greed, vulture capitalism, denigration of the poor and a mindset that sees those deemed "other" by the shrinking angry white party as little more than human garbage.  A piece in Salon looks at the meltdown over taking many in the Republican Party.  Here are excerpts:

Faced with the distinct possibility that the man who is currently the world’s most beloved and respected moral authority will publicly shred their governing ideology and rebuke their position on issues from immigration to climate change, conservatives are responding by having a complete meltdown over Pope Francis’ impending visit.

In the equivalent of putting your fingers in your ears and singing “La! La! La!”

Republican Catholic Congressman Paul Gosar announced that he will boycott Pope Francis’ Thursday speech to Congress because the pope may talk about climate change. As he writes in Time, he was super psyched to hear Francis talk about the persecution of Christian minorities in the Middle East, the “enslavement, belittlement, rape and desecration of Christian women and children,” and the “condoned, subsidized, intentionally planned genocide of unborn children by Planned Parenthood.”

But, to his eternal disappointment, Francis reportedly “instead intends to focus the brunt of his speech on climate change—a climate that has been changing since first created in Genesis.” Even worse, according to Gosar, is the fact that “this climate change talk has adopted all of the socialist talking points, wrapped false science and ideology into ‘climate justice’ and is being presented to guilt people into leftist policies.”

Gosar’s objections seem positively statesman-like compared to the stream of anti-Francis vitriol unleashed by Washington Post columnist George Will, who accuses a man beloved for his humbleness and sincerity of “embod[ying] sanctity” but “trail[ing] clouds of sanctimony” and embracing “ideas impeccably fashionable, demonstrably false and deeply reactionary.”

What Will and Gosar have in common with other conservative critics of Francis is their assertion that it’s fine for the pope to be politically involved in issues that top their agenda, such as banning abortion or fighting the legalization of same-sex marriage, but not OK for the pope to be involved in progressive political issues, especially those that undermine the fundamentals of libertarian capitalism. Then the church is being “political” and can be ignored; apparently it’s just a matter of whose politics you are promoting.

At the root of the venom directed against Francis is the fear that he will decouple the carefully cultivated alliance between free-market, anti-government conservatives here in the U.S. and the leadership of the Catholic Church, which for decades has assured Catholics that they could merrily back anti-redistributive, anti-environmental, and anti-labor policies as long as they opposed abortion. The removal of the anti-abortion trump card is an existential threat to the existing political alignment and the free reign of the free market.  . . . . that’s an endgame that conservatives can’t tolerate, even if a comes from a leader they once considered infallible.

The GOP needs to be called out.  The party has become something incredibly ugly, and it's largely due to the falsely pious "godly Christians."

 

The Republican War on Wages

With wealth inequality in America now at levels rivaling the banana republics of the past and many working Americans having seen no increase in the buying power since 1979, both political parties are talking about the need to spur economic growth and jobs.  The problem, as laid out in a piece in Politico Magazine by former Congressman Barney Frank, the supposed solutions being offer by the Republicans is in reality more of the same policies that have spurred soaring wealth for the few and wage stagnation for the many.  How do they get away with it?  In a number of ways.  First, much of the GOP base is ignorant and uneducated in contrast to the country club Republicans who are benefiting from toxic GOP policies.  Perhaps more importantly, the GOP cynically use appeals to religious - read Christian - extremism, racism and mindless patriotism to sucker voters into voting against their own best financial interests.  Here are column highlights:

The conflict between the two major parties over inequality has given rise to the most fundamental debate about economic issues since the end of World War II. Superficially, there has been some convergence. The reality that our increasing national wealth has gone disproportionately to a small percentage of the population has become impossible to ignore — even by Republican candidates seeking to appeal to a very conservative primary electorate. Yet the proposed solutions suggested to the problem by the two parties are even more diametrically opposed than often realized.

To a great extent, the inequality debate has been presented as a choice between Democrats advocating specific interventions to diminish the wealth and income gaps, and Republicans countering that this will only exacerbate the situation; instead, they call for removing obstacles to economic growth. 

But this is a very incomplete picture of the Republicans’ agenda. What is too infrequently made explicit is that prominent on their list of impediments to that growth are both that wages earned by many working people are too high, and that several legal and institutional factors obstruct efforts to lower them.

The Republican tax agenda actually seeks to increase the inequality gap, both by diminishing the share of taxes paid by the wealthiest, and in turn, reducing the revenue available for paying public sector salaries, subsidizing higher education for working and middle-class families, providing income supplements to the working poor and easing the cost of health care.

Republicans actively pursue efforts to restrain wages — and push them lower. One of the most important is the assault on the bipartisan efforts of the Federal Reserve under Ben Bernanke and Janet Yellen to combat unemployment through quantitative easing and low interest rates. Paul Krugman has documented the persistence of conservative predictions that these policies would somehow simultaneously cause inflation, recession and general economic malaise — outcomes in total contradiction to the impact they have actually had since their adoption in 2010.

Some other Republican income-depressing initiatives are more familiar: fighting any increase in — or even the very concept of — the minimum wage; denouncing any move toward local efforts to require a “living wage”; repealing Davis-Bacon so that construction workers can be paid less; and their general assault on unions both in the public and private sectors. 

Collectively, these efforts add up to a comprehensive, intellectually interlinked program to diminish the compensation paid to a very wide range of wage earners. The efforts are given greater force by the interaction of two important factors: the conservative drive to dismantle federal programs and send their missions to the states; and the interstate competition for economic activity that then ensues.

Once again, this first phenomenon is an indication of how far right the Republicans have moved. Prominent among the Federalizers of public functions whose work they now seek to undo is Dwight Eisenhower, whose signal accomplishment of the interstate highway program would be essentially de-federalized and turned back to the states by today’s conservatives. One the main attractions this effort holds for its advocates is the substantially lower pay for those who build highways.

[O]ne of the most significant and least generally recognized examples of the Republicans assault on working people’s wages I have seen: The use of public money by Tennessee Republicans to coerce the company and the workers at a Volkswagen factory there to abandon what had been a mutual desire to recognize the United Auto Workers as the bargaining agent at the plant.

[T]he Tennessee Republican Party intervened, using public money as an anti-union club. State Sen. Bo Watson, a Republican from Chattanooga, said in a statement, “Should the workers choose to be represented by the United Auto Workers, then I believe additional incentives for expansion will have a very tough time passing the Tennessee Senate.” Tennessee had planning to give VW public funds to increase its manufacturing capacity — funds which, evidently, were to be withheld if the majority of workers exercised their federal statutory right to support union representation.

The last crucial part of this tale is why Corker and his colleagues used so much muscle to protect Volkswagen from a union it welcomed. Why was this a victory for his “community … state … (and) … citizens”? The answer he and others give is that it helped hold down wages, not just at the Volkswagen plant, but throughout the state. Had the UAW won, they said, it could have boosted pay for their members. This, in turn, would have put upward pressure on wages elsewhere in the state, and this, in turn, would have made it harder for Tennessee to lure businesses from other, higher wage jurisdictions.

The morals — and morality — of this sordid story are too important not to emphasize. First, it stands as a repudiation of the argument that unions do not help raise wages.

Second, it is an even more explicit acknowledgment that keeping wages lower than they might otherwise be is a deliberate part of the conservatives’ strategy for economic development in their states.

Finally, it demonstrates that if Republicans succeed in having more and more programs conducted at the state as opposed to the national level, it would make it easier and easier to depress the wages of those who carry them out — and that’s an agenda that should concern every working family in America.