Dispatches

REPUBLICANS JUST CAN’T HELP BUT TALK ABOUT CUTTING SOCIAL SECURITY AND MEDICARE. Republicans just can’t help themselves. They just can’t stop talking about how they want to end Social Security and Medicare. Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) did it when he released his dystopian platform that would sunset the programs after five years. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) has a plan to put the programs on the chopping block every year, making them compete with all the other programs and, inevitably, face cuts, Joan McCarter noted at DailyKos (9/23).

However hard Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has worked to make these guys shut up about Social Security and Medicare, these guys just won’t. He slapped back at Scott’s plan, saying, “We will not have as part of our agenda a bill that raises taxes on half the American people and sunsets Social Security and Medicare within five years. That will not be part of the Republican Senate Majority Agenda.”

A few months later, up pops Sen. Lindsey Graham arguing that because “we are not a social nation,” we need to start making some cuts. “Entitlement reform is a must for us to not become Greece,” he said in a June debate with Sen. Bernie Sanders. By “reform,” he means cutting benefits and disqualifying people.

McConnell doesn’t just have these guys to deal with—he’s got a bunch of would-be senators running for office who also just can’t stop going there. Even when they know it turns off voters and alienates the people they need the most: older voters.

Take New Hampshire’s nominee for the Senate, Don Bolduc. He told an August town meeting crowd that privatizing Medicare “is hugely important,” and said that he often talks about how important it is to “reform” Medicare and Medicaid, “Getting government out of it, getting government money with strings attached out of it.”

Bolduc’s spokesperson, Jimmy Thompson, insisted to *Politico* that since Bolduc made that statement six weeks ago, he’s changed his mind and now opposes privatizing Medicare, as well as Social Security and Medicaid. That’s quite the reversal for the guy who insisted he always tells people how important “getting government out of it” is.

Then there’s Arizona candidate Blake Masters, the guy who keeps wrecking McConnell’s train in that state. Back in June, he said in a candidate forum “We need fresh and innovative thinking. … Maybe we should privatize Social Security. Private retirement accounts, get the government out of it.” As if Republicans haven’t been talking about doing that for decades—“fresh” thinking. A few months later, he called Social Security and Medicare “the Gordian knot” that has to be cut for younger generations.

And in Ohio, J.D. Vance once cut his political teeth on arguing that “Medicare and Social Security … are the biggest roadblocks to any kind of real fiscal sanity.” Now, he told HuffPost via email, “I don’t support cuts to social security [sic] or Medicare and think privatizing social security is a bad idea.” Sure.

If it’s any consolation to McConnell, and it’s probably not because good lord what are these people thinking, House GOP leadership has joined the bandwagon with their “Commitment to America” plan that was accidentally prematurely leaked Wednesday.

The platform promises to “save and strengthen Social Security and Medicare,” though it gives no details on what exactly that means. But they already worked it out, as HuffPost explains. They had a June meeting of the Republicans on the Ways and Means Committee where the discussed cutting both coverage and benefits to seniors under the programs. Also the Republican Study Committee has put out its proposed 2023 budget that massively cuts Social Security.

REPUBLICANS CELEBRATE FASCIST COMEBACK IN ITALY. Much of the western democracies watched with alarm as the fascist Fratelli d’Italia party led a far-right coalition to victory in Italy (9/25), but Republican lawmakers in the US had a much different reaction: Open glee, Jake Johnson noted at CommonDreams (9/26).

Pointing to the far-right’s recent electoral surge in Sweden, US Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) tweeted that “the entire world is beginning to understand that the Woke Left does nothing but destroy.”

“Nov. 8 is coming soon and the USA will fix our House and Senate!” added Boebert, a loyalist to former US President Donald Trump. “Let freedom reign!”

US Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), a far-right ally of Boebert, also applauded the Italy results, which position Fratelli d’Italia leader Giorgia Meloni to become Italy’s next prime minister, even though her party won just around 25% of the vote in a low-turnout contest.

“Congratulations to Giorgio Meloni and to the people of Italy,” Greene wrote on Twitter, misspelling the right-wing leader’s first name.

In her post, Greene linked to a 2019 speech in which Meloni—who was a youth member of the fascist Italian Social Movement—railed against supposed attacks on “national identity” and “religious identity” and vowed to “defend God, country, and family.”

Rank-and-file House Republicans were hardly alone in applauding what’s likely to be the most right-wing government in Italy since the death of fascist dictator Benito Mussolini near the end of World War II.

US Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.), the House minority whip, said in a Fox News appearance (9/25) that “it’s interesting to see that Europe is leading the way by throwing out socialists with conservatives—and great bold conservative women like Meloni and [UK Prime Minister Liz] Truss.”

“We need to bring that kind of conservatism to the United States,” Scalise added.

US Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas.), for his part, hailed as “spectacular” Meloni’s 2019 address to the World Congress of Families, a far-right Christian fundamentalist organization that campaigns against LGBTQ+ rights globally.

Meloni is well-known to the right wing in the US, having spoken at the Conservative Political Action Conference and met with former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon, a far-right provocateur who has correctly described Meloni’s party—also known as Brothers of Italy—as “one of the old fascist parties.”

“You put a reasonable face on right-wing populism, you get elected,” Bannon said of Meloni in an interview in 2018, a year in which Brothers of Italy garnered just 4% of the vote.

Italy’s election of Meloni, who is also president of the European Conservatives and Reformists party, marks a continuation of the worrying trend of rising far-right, xenophobic, and anti-democratic parties across Europe. In Hungary and Poland, far-right parties are already in power, a situation that has proven to be a nightmare for migrants and other vulnerable populations that have seen basic rights stripped away.

Meloni has voiced admiration for the US GOP and right-wing parties in the United Kingdom and Israel, noting in a recent speech that she “shares values and experiences” with them.

“Hungary has a fascist leader. Sweden’s far-right party just won. And Italy has now elected a fascist leader,” Qasim Rashid, a human rights attorney, wrote on social media late Sunday. “Eighty years after WW2, fascism is rising across Europe. And if Americans aren’t careful, the MAGA GOP will usher in that same fascism here. We cannot let that happen.”

EPA’S NEW ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE OFFICE HAS ITS WORK CUT OUT FOR IT. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced (9/24) it was establishing an Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights, using $3 billion from the Inflation Reduction Act earmarked for climate and environmental justice. The announcement coincides with the creation of an office in Warren County, N.C.—the site of the North Carolina PCB Protest led by community members in the majority-Black town of Afton in protest of a planned hazardous waste landfill. The action is considered one of the earliest of the environmental justice movement, April Siese noted at DailyKos (9/26).

More than 200 EPA staff will work alongside communities impacted by environmental injustice in an effort to solve these issues across 10 regions. The agency itself will also “incorporate environmental justice into [its] programs, policies, and processes, as allowed by law.” From an external perspective, this means building off of initiatives announced following EPA Administrator Michael Regan’s environmental justice tour and pursuing cases against polluters and bad actors through creative means, such as Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Title VI states that “no person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.” As the Associated Press notes, using Title VI to combat environmental racism is a relatively new technique for the agency. This has been used in investigations related to wastewater issues in Lowndes County, Alabama, and illegal dumping in Black and Latino communities in Houston, Texas.

“At the heart of the Associated Press’ reporting is a community I hold near and dear to my heart: Reserve, Louisiana, in St. John the Baptist Parish in what is known as Cancer Alley,” Siese wrote. “The community has been overburdened for decades by polluters, including the former DuPont plant—now Denka—sitting mere walking distance from residential neighborhoods and an elementary school. The EPA earlier this year accepted three complaints against the synthetic rubber manufacturing plant, and a renewed focus has been directed at Denka’s flaring operations as well as other industrial facilities in Louisiana.”

The community was one of numerous sites Regan visited last year on his environmental justice tour. Activists and community leaders are encouraged not just by Regan’s willingness to meet with them, but by his commitment to fighting the very polluters putting their lives at risk. The Denka facility emits dangerous levels of a known carcinogen called chloroprene. Even short-term exposure can cause symptoms ranging from headaches and dizziness to gastrointestinal issues and heart palpitations.

With a recent victory against a proposed Formosa facility an encouraging sign for front-line communities locked in this battle, established facilities like Denka will require a whole lot of work to hold accountable. With an actual, functional budget, a new office to do the work, and Regan’s commitment and follow-through, those dreams of environmental justice don’t seem all that far off.

FEDERAL GOVERNMENT SHOULD FULLY FUND PUERTO RICO’S RAPID SHIFT TO SOLAR POWER. If the US media had spent half as much time covering the 3,000 deaths and nightmare aftermath in Puerto Rico from Hurricane Maria in 2017 as it did covering the death of Queen Elizabeth II and the uncertain destiny of the various surviving British royals, perhaps it might have spurred action to prevent a repeat, Meteor Blades noted at DailyKos (9/22).

Mercifully, only two people were killed Sept. 18 when rain-heavy Hurricane Fiona roared ashore. But once again—just as in 2017—the storm plunged the island into the dark. Well, not the whole island. Although Hurricane Irma had mostly skirted Puerto Rico Sept. 7, it knocked out electricity for 1 million of the US territory’s citizens, and most of them still had no power when Fiona arrived. Nor were they expected to have any for months.

Sadly, that is probably true for much of the island now. After the ferocious Maria slammed Puerto Rico, some people still didn’t have power a year later. Renewing their access to drinking water took a long time too. Denise Oliver-Velez has been fulfilling the role the media should be playing by cataloguing at DailyKos all the disaster’s continuing atrocities ever since.

Big economic trouble these days made worse by the burdens of colonial legacy, weak government, and a crumbling, rickety infrastructure. Particularly its electricity grid, which is afflicted with the impacts of deferred maintenance, underinvestment by the previous government-run authority, and privatization fueled by a massive input of federal disaster money.

Washington has provided $16 billion to fix the grid, but so far that money has mostly gone to replacing stuff Maria took down rather than making the upgrades and changes essential for a 21st-century operation that runs efficiently from distributive sources like rooftop solar and microgrids. At this late date, given what we know, it ought to be a crime to replicate the same centralized system that has been the source of carbon emissions that wreck the climate and other pollutants that wreck people’s health, has electricity costs higher than any US state, and the unreliability of which creates a continuous crisis.

When it’s actually running, the grid is currently fed almost entirely by electricity generated from fossil fuels. A law passed in 2019 mandates that 40% of the island’s electricity come from renewable sources by 2025. However, right now, just 3% does. As we know from a few instances, people with solar panels had power after Fiona: Solar is a lifeline in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Fiona knocks out power and “We’re Fine.” How Solar Kept the Lights On After Fiona Left Puerto Rico in the Dark. Yep. That’s how it works.

In an excellent report, Maria Gallucci at Canary Media writes that Puerto Ricans are powering their own rooftop solar boom. But the numbers are small. As April Siese wrote, there’s grassroots support to accelerate the spread of solar with Queremos Sol, a 2018 plan for the island’s electricity to be 50% generated with renewable sources by 2035.

“We should make an example of Puerto Rico. A shining example. Show compassion, smarts, and commitment by turning that 40% renewables target that’s unreachable by the 2025 deadline into, say, a firm 60% by the end of Biden’s second term and 100% by 2035. Doing that will take federal action,” Blades concluded..

PANDEMIC SAFETY NET PROGRAMS PREVENTED A RISE IN POVERTY IN EVERY STATE. Social insurance programs—such as Social Security, economic stimulus checks, a strengthened unemployment insurance (UI) system, and the expanded Child Tax Credit—kept more than 25 million people out of poverty as the nation emerged from the pandemic lockdown in 2021, the Economic Policy Institute reported (9/16) in an analysis of Census Bureau data on poverty and other economic conditions across the country.

In 2011, the Census Bureau began releasing the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM), which djffers from the official poverty rate because it accounts for major government benefits, such as Social Security and child tax credits, and uses a more holistic measurement of modern costs of living and geographical differences in those costs. The latest data show that the 2021 SPM rates are the lowest on record for all years for which SPM estimates are available, starting from 2009. This is even more remarkable considering that the economic hardships and disruptions brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic were still very present during 2021.

The impact of government safety net programs can be seen across the country, as the SPM was lower than the official poverty rate in 38 states when looking at a 3-year average of 2019–2021. In fact, the SPM was higher (where the difference was statistically significant) than the official poverty measure in just three states (California, Maryland and New Jersey), likely a reflection of these states’ higher costs of living.

Comparing the 2019–2021 estimates to 2017–2019 rates, poverty as measured by the SPM decreased in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The state SPM poverty rate fell the most in Louisiana, by 4.5 percentage points. This is followed by New Jersey and Maine, which saw 4.4 and 4.2 point decreases, respectively.

US SUPREME COURT APPROVAL PLUMMETS TO RECORD LOWS AS COURT EXPANSION GAINS MAJORITY SUPPORT. What’s a lot more popular with voters than the Supreme Court? The right to have an abortion. That’s the finding of two national surveys from the Marquette University Law School Poll released Sept. 21-22, Joan McCarter noted at DailyKos (9/22).

Marquette finds the Supreme Court’s approval has plummeted in the past two years from 66% approval in September 2020 to 40% this September. That means just 40% of adults approve of the job the US Supreme Court is doing. That’s across the board—all ages and gender identifications disapprove of the court by large margins.

It is brutal. But it also means that the majority of people believe the court needs to change. That includes a slight majority of 51% who support increasing the number of justices on the court.

Looking at the crosstabs is instructive: 62% of people 18-29 want to see the change, and 60% of people 30-44 support it. The 72% of Democrats who want expansion isn’t too surprising, but the 51% of independents who support it is. Court expansion gets 54% approval from people who consider themselves “moderate.”

People have begun to stop thinking about the court as a nonpartisan, unbiased, above-the-fray institution and start seeing it for what it is, leading to this interesting result.

“Members of the public have come to think the Court should pay more attention to public opinion in reaching its decisions than was their view in September 2020, when 44% said the Court should consider public opinion and 55% said it should not. By contrast, in the current survey, two years later, 61% say public opinion should be considered and 39% say it should not be considered.”

JUDGE STRIKES DOWN ARIZONA LAW THAT BANNED BYSTANDERS RECORDING POLICE. A federal judge who had put a temporary stop on a new Arizona law banning bystanders from recording police turned it into a permanent injunction (8/16). According to Reuters, Judge John Tuchi issued a ruling that the law was “unnecessary, unreasonable and simultaneously over-inclusive and under-inclusive,” Aysha Qamar noted at DailyKos (9/26)

House Bill 2319, was signed into law by Gov. Doug Ducey in July, but Tuchi blocked it from taking effect as scheduled on Sept. 9.

The legislation faced significant criticism since its drafting. Original drafts wanted a 15-foot restriction to recording; this was amended due to issues of constitutionality. Advocates against police brutality noted not only the unconstitutional aspects of the law, but also that it granted police too much discretion and did nothing to enhance transparency.

Sponsored by former police officer and Republican state Rep. John Kavanagh, the law was intended to protect officers from potential harm or distraction outside of the incident they are already involved in, Kavanagh wrote in an op-ed.

Exceptions to the law included people considered to be at the center of an interaction with police, including anyone standing in an enclosed structure on private property where police activity is occurring, and occupants of a vehicle stopped by police.

According to Reuters, Judge Tuchi granted the request for the preliminary injunction from the ACLU of Arizona and news organizations, including the Arizona Broadcasters Association, Fox Television Stations LLC, NBCUniversal Media LLC, and the National Press Photographers Association.

“If the goal of HB 2319 is to prevent interference with law enforcement activities, the Court fails to see how the presence of a person recording a video near an officer interferes with the officer’s activities,” Tuchi wrote.

A week after Tuchi’s block was announced, Arizona legislators in both the Senate and House said they would not intervene in the case, resulting in a permanent injunction on Sept. 16, the Associated Press reported.

From The Progressive Populist, October 15, 2022

Populist.com