Dispatches

OUR 30TH YEAR (WITH AN ASTERISK). With this issue we mark the 30th year* of publication of The Progressive Populist. We started in November 1995 as a monthly attempt to restore the good name of progressive populism, and provide an alternative to the corporate “mainstream” media.

Among the writers appearing in the inaugural issue who are still writing for us are Jim Hightower, Hal Crowther, Jesse Jackson and Ralph Nader (as well as Jim and Art Cullen). Other inaugural columnists of note included Molly Ivins, A.V. Krebs, Charles Levendosky and Eugene McCarthy.

(The 30th year gets an asterisk because, for bookeeping and librarian purposes, the inaugural issue counted as the first volume of publication. The January 1996 issue counted as the beginning of the second year.)

In March 1996, Roberto Rodriguez and Patrisia Gonzales joined us with the Latino Spectrum column, which Roberto took solo in September 2008. New columnists in April 1996 included Joan Retsinas, Joel D. Joseph and Ted Rall. Margot Ford McMillen took over the Rural Routes column in June 1998 and Wayne O’Leary joined in September 1998.

We made the move to twice-monthly publication in November 1999 and since then, many distinguished writers have filled out our crew.

We still believe people are more important than corporations, and government of the people needs to be strong enough to keep corporations in line. We remain the antidote to your daily news and “social” media. If you’d like to keep us going, you may send a donation or suggest a friend or friends who might be interested in The Progressive Populist. And we hope you’ll stick with us through the 30th anniversary of our publication, in November 2025, and beyond.

HOUSE CHAOS CAUCUS OUTRAGED GOVERNMENT MIGHT NOT SHUT DOWN AFTER ALL. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Mike Johnson struck a deal on funding the government for the rest of the fiscal year. After months of House Republican chest-beating over funding cuts, and the ouster of former Speaker Kevin McCarthy when he didn’t make them happen, the agreement, announced Jan. 7, puts Congress right back where it was in May. Johnson agreed to basically the same funding toplines that McCarthy and Biden agreed to seven months ago in the deal that raised the debt ceiling, Joan McCarter noted for Daily Kos (1/8).

A deal between the two congressional leaders does not, however, fund government, and two big obstacles still stand in the way. The first one is time. There are two deadlines on funding the government—Jan. 19 and Feb. 2—and the House wasn’t going to start legislative work until Jan. 10. That’s a tight window to work through agreements on 12 appropriations bills.

The second obstacle is the Freedom Caucus’ vehement opposition to the deal.

“This is total failure,” the group tweeted after the deal was announced. They are furious that Johnson agreed to honor a “side deal” McCarthy and Biden made last year, which includes $69 billion to nondefense programs. The usual suspects are livid.

“That’s a hard no,” Rep. Chip Roy of Texas tweeted at Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who touted the deal. Rep. Bob Good of Virginia, the new chair of the Freedom Caucus, said it’s “nothing but another loss for America.” Montana Rep. Matt Rosendale, one of the eight GOP members who voted to oust McCarthy, said it reflects the “D.C. Cartel’s addiction to wasteful, unnecessary spending.” And Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene—who voted for the deal back in May—tweeted, “I am a NO to the Johnson Schumer budget deal. … So much for the power of the purse!”

Johnson tried and failed to win over extremists with a promise that he would “fight for the important policy riders included in our House FY24 bills.” Those riders would be the poison pills to restrict abortion and gender-affirming health care, and to ban books in libraries in military base schools.

The Freedom Caucus crowd probably is smart enough to comprehend that’s an empty promise because the only way that this agreement can be turned into passed funding bills is without those riders—after all, the bills must pass with Democratic votes. Also, Democratic leaders in the Senate and House promised “full-year appropriations bills, free of poison pill policy changes.”

The announced agreement sets aside the ongoing fight over border security and Ukraine funding, which is just another point of contention for the Republican maniacs. A good chunk of them (including some of the eight who ousted McCarthy) want to shut the government down over the border. “No more money for his bureaucracy until you’ve brought this border under control,” Arizona Rep. Andy Biggs declared. That group includes Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan of Ohio, who has tied funding the government to shutting down the border.

The timeline, the border, and the extremely thin GOP majority in the House (made even smaller by the absence of Majority Leader Steve Scalise for cancer treatment) all combine to set Johnson up for potential failure. If he caters to his extremists, the government shuts down and the blame will be squarely on him and his inability to lead.

Alternatively, he navigates all this successfully and the government stays open and an enraged Freedom Caucus has more incentive to remove him. They’re already complaining that they booted McCarthy and still “failed to get a more conservative speaker.” Don’t be surprised if there’s more speaker drama in the year ahead, which would be fine, just as long as the government gets funded. It would make for a deliciously entertaining election year.

HOUSE GOP DISMISSES DEMS’ FINDING THAT TRUMP GOT $7.8M+ FROM FOREIGN GOVERNMENTS WHILE IN WHITE HOUSE. A report released Thursday by Democrats on the House Oversight Committee estimates that former President Donald Trump’s businesses received at least $7.8 million from foreign governments during his four years in the White House, payments that appear to violate the Constitution’s Foreign Emoluments Clause—which Trump once dismissed as “phony.”

Titled “White House for Sale: How Princes, Prime Ministers, and Premiers Paid Off President Trump,” the 156-page report uses documents from Trump’s former accounting firm to show that businesses owned by the former president received payments from at least 20 foreign governments during his White House tenure, including over $5.5 million from China, $615,422 from Saudi Arabia, $465,744 from Qatar, and $303,372 from Kuwait, Jake Johnson noted at CommonDreams (1/4).

Given that the documents underlying the report only cover payments to four of the more than 500 businesses Trump owned while simultaneously serving as president, the estimated $7.8 million total is likely just a fraction of the true total. In a report released in April 2023, Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington (CREW) estimated that Trump made up to $160 million from international business dealings while president.

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, wrote in the forward to the new report that “by elevating his personal financial interests and the policy priorities of corrupt foreign powers over the American public interest, former President Trump violated both the clear commands of the Constitution and the careful precedent set and observed by every previous commander-in-chief.”

“In the face of these stunning findings and conclusions, Oversight Committee Democrats are prepared to act in defense of the Constitution,” Raskin added. “We will develop a package of proposed legislative reforms to ensure that all occupants of the Oval Office abide by the Constitution’s unequivocal language commanding loyalty to the interests of the American people—not the interests of homicidal Saudi monarchs, totalitarian Chinese bureaucratic state capitalists, or other foreign actors looking to obtain policy favors and indulgences by paying off a president or his wholly owned businesses.”

Congressional Republicans responded dismissively to the new report, with House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.)—who is currently leading an impeachment push against President Joe Biden—saying in a statement that Trump has “legitimate businesses” and that it was “beyond parody that Democrats continue their obsession with former President Trump.”

JOB GROWTH EXPANDS IN DECEMBER, UNEMPLOYMENT STABLE AT 3.7%. Many voters still appear to be uncertain about the strength of the economy, but 216,000 jobs were created in December, exceeding most projections, economist Dean Baker noted (1/5). The unemployment rate remained at 3.7%, the 23rd consecutive month below 4% unemployment, the longest stretch in over half a century.

The strong December job gains were partially offset by downward revisions of 71,000 to the figures reported for the prior two months. This brings the average for the last three months to 165,000, a pace close to what should be sustainable.

It is also worth noting that job gains were widely spread across sectors in December. There were some concerns that, after adjusting for the return of striking workers, the November job gains were entirely in health care, government, and restaurants. By contrast, in December, most sectors reported job gains.

The second and third quarters also showed remarkably fast productivity growth, with annual rates of 3.6% and 5.2%, respectively, Baker noted. While no one expects these sorts of numbers to be sustained, it is plausible that with recent developments in AI and other technologies, we could be on a faster productivity growth path.

The average hourly wage jumped by 15 cents in December, bringing the annual rate over the last three months to 4.3%. This is likely somewhat faster than would be consistent with the Fed’s inflation target, although the data are erratic. (The pace through November had been just 3.4%.)

TRUMP’S FAKE CURE FOR COVID RESPONSIBLE FOR NEARLY 17,000 US DEATHS. Donald Trump began shilling for the use of hydroxychloroquine at the very first of what became his daily White House updates on the COVID-19 pandemic. The drug is primarily used as an anti-parasitic, mostly in the treatment of malaria, and there was never any good evidence that it was effective in addressing COVID. Hydroxychloroquine can lower the number of infection-fighting white blood cells, making it possibly the worst type of medication for anyone trying to fight off an infection, Mark Sumner noted at Daily Kos (1/4).

In the earliest days of the pandemic, Trump declared the drug a “game changer” and began stockpiling millions of pills. Under pressure from Trump and TV host Dr. Oz, the FDA authorized emergency use of hydroxychloroquine as a potential treatment for COVID. The drug didn’t work. The US ended up with a mountain of worthless pills. But Trump went on promoting its use long after the FDA officially warned consumers not to use it.

A new study in Biomedicine and Pharmacotherapy puts an estimated number on deaths directly resulting from the use of this drug to treat COVID-19 patients: 16,990.

Those same results have now been confirmed by researchers in France who looked at the use of hydroxychloroquine across six countries. In all cases, the use of the drug with COVID patients increased the rate of deaths. Overall, patients who were administered hydroxychloroquine were 11% more likely to die than those who were not.

Due to the level of promotion hydroxychloroquine received, that 11% increased rate of death extends across millions of patients, both in the US and overseas. In some locations, as many as 84% of patients diagnosed with symptomatic COVID-19 were prescribed hydroxychloroquine.

The result is that an estimated 16,990 people died unnecessarily.

Because Donald Trump can never be wrong, plenty of other Republicans were happy to hop on the quack medicine train. That included Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

For his new surgeon general, DeSantis went straight to hydroxychloroquine promoter, anti-masker, and anti-vaccine guy Dr. Joseph Ladapo. ...

Lapado was back in the news in January after he appeared on Steve Bannon’s show to tell people to stop getting vaccinated. Because mRNA vaccines are an affront to God.

Thanks to his sage advice and the guiding wisdom of DeSantis, Florida ended up with its own unused stockpile of hydroxychloroquine. DeSantis bought 1 million doses from Israel, so the fact that the number of leftover pills was listed as “thousands” is disturbing. Nearly 87,000 people died of COVID-19 in Florida. How many of them were given ineffective snake oil rather than a vaccine that Ladapo finds spiritually offensive?

Overall, it seems clear that hydroxychloroquine is a killer, not a cure, when it comes to COVID-19. But still, it’s not as big a threat as Trump, DeSantis and Ladapo.

KEEPING UP WITH VACCINES GREATLY REDUCES CHANCE OF LONG COVID. The US is experiencing a surge in new cases of COVID-19. By some metrics, this is the biggest increase in new cases in over a year and one that is threatening to strain hospital capacity. In late December, hospital admissions for COVID exceeded 29,000 a week and deaths were up 10% week over week. The rise in cases, as well as rises flu and RSV, has caused some health care facilities to reinstitute mask mandates, Mark Sumner noted at Daily Kos (1/4).

And all these new infections are sure to result in new cases of long COVID. Estimates of how many Americans have suffered from long COVID vary wildly, from 7.5% to 41% among nonhospitalized adults. And even relatively minor initial cases can result in lasting disease, which can severely affect even healthy, young people for months or years.

With all of this bad news, there is some very good news. A new series of studies and meta-analyses have concluded that there is one thing everyone can do to greatly reduce the chances of getting long COVID: Keep up with the latest vaccines.

When COVID-19 vaccines first became available, many people expected the one-and-done, nearly perfect protection of many childhood vaccines. However, that isn’t the case. Not only does the protection afforded by existing COVID-19 vaccines wane over a few months, they are better at protecting people from developing severe symptoms than they are at preventing an initial infection. Getting a COVID-19 vaccination and then testing positive within a few weeks is a disheartening experience, one that might understandably lead to a reluctance to keep current with newer vaccines.

However, as Scientific American reports, those who have had multiple COVID-19 vaccines have an enormous benefit when it comes to preventing long COVID. One analysis looked at the long-term health of 775,931 people across 32 studies and concluded that those who had two vaccine doses reduced their chances of long COVID by 36.9%. Those who had three doses, though, saw a reduction of 68.7%. Cutting the chances of what could be a long-term, life-altering disease by another third is well worth going back for an extra jab.

A second study in The BMJ backs up these latest results. In a study involving 589,722 people in Sweden, those who had a single vaccination were 21% less likely than the unvaccinated to develop long COVID. Two doses brought this to 59%. Three or more doses reduced the chances of long COVID by a whopping 73%.

It’s worth noting that multiple infections do not have the same protective effect. According to a recent study, each new COVID infection increases the chance of developing long COVID. And each new infection increases the chance of serious, long-term illness including kidney disease, diabetes and mental health issues.

$8.5T IN UNTAXED ASSETS SHOWS WHY WE NEED BILLIONAIRE TAX. An analysis released Jan. 3 shows that in 2022, the wealthiest people in the United States collectively held a “staggering” $8.5 trillion in wealth that is not—and might never be—subject to taxation, Jake Johnson noted at CommonDreams (1/4).

Examining recently released data Federal Reserve data for 2022, Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF) found that the roughly 64,000 US households with at least $100 million in wealth—less than 0.05% of the population—controlled more than one in every six dollars of the country’s “unrealized gains,” profits that aren’t taxable until the underlying asset, such as a stock position, is sold.

“But the ultra-wealthy don’t need to sell to benefit: They can live off low-cost loans secured against their growing fortunes. And once inherited, such gains disappear completely for tax purposes,” ATF’s Zachary Tashman and William Rice explained in the new analysis. “While most Americans predominantly live off the income they earn from a job—income that is taxed all year, every year—the very richest households live lavishly off capital gains that may never be taxed.”

That small, ultra-rich fraction of US society is sitting on more unrealized capital gains than the bottom 84% of the country—roughly 110 million households—combined, Tashman and Rice noted.

Most of the typical US household’s unrealized capital gains are in the form of their homes, which face state and local property taxes. But 93% of the unrealized gains of America’s wealthiest are tied up in businesses, stock portfolios, and mutual funds, ATF found. As a result, mega-rich individuals wind up paying little to nothing in federal income taxes.

Between 2013 and 2018, leading US billionaires paid an average federal tax rate of just 4.8%, according to a previous ATF analysis.

“This is why we need a billionaire income tax,” the group wrote on social media Jan. 3, pointing to legislative proposals reintroduced late last year in both chambers of Congress.

Sen. Ron Wyden’s (D-OR) Billionaires Income Tax would tax tradable assets of individuals with more than $100 million in annual income or more than $1 billion in assets for three consecutive years.

In the House, Reps. Steve Cohen (D-TN) and Don Beyer (D-VA) unveiled a bill that mirrors President Joe Biden’s call for a minimum income tax for billionaires. The legislation would require ultra-wealthy households to pay a 25% annual tax rate on their income, including unrealized gains.

In December, the US Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case backed by right-wing groups aiming to preemptively outlaw any tax on unrealized gains.

The justices—with the notable exception of Samuel Alito, who was urged to recuse from the case due to his connection to a lawyer representing the plaintiffs—appeared unlikely to issue the kind of sweeping ruling demanded by right-wing organizations such as the US Chamber of Commerce.

ADVOCATES GET SIGNATURES TO PUT ABORTION RIGHTS ON FLORIDA BALLOT, BUT ATTORNEY GENERAL CHALLENGES WORDING OF PROPOSITION. Floridians Protecting Freedom has gained enough voter signatures to qualify the proposed constitutional amendment for the November ballot, despite forced-birth advocates’ “Decline to Sign” efforts.

Qualifying for the ballot is just the first step in restoring reproductive rights in Florida, however, Joan McCarter noted at Daily Kos (1/5). The proposed constitutional amendment has to clear the state Supreme Court because the state’s Republican attorney general, Ashley Moody, has challenged the language of the proposed amendment.

Moody is trying to muddy the waters about what is fundamentally a medical issue—the point at which a fetus is viable outside the womb—and claims to take guidance from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists on the issue. Politico reports that Moody characterized ACOG’s position as saying “it is not always clear when a fetus is viable outside the womb, that it doesn’t depend solely on the length of gestation, and that it requires a ‘nuanced’ determination by doctors using several factors.” ACOG is having none of that, filling a brief with the court to make it clear that Moody was citing their work “in support of a claim that is inconsistent with that guidance.”

After the success of abortion-rights proponents in Ohio, Kansas, Kentucky, and Montana, red-state GOP officials and forced-birth groups are in a panic.

Anti-abortion groups in Arkansas, Nebraska, and South Dakota are using the now-failed tactics Florida groups used to block petitions and prevent the issue from getting onto ballots. “The Nebraska Catholic Conference, for example, is urging its members to not only refuse to sign but also to hamper canvassers’ efforts to get signatures from others,” Politico reported. Officials in these states are, like Florida’s Moody, trying to use semantics to fight.

In Arkansas, the state’s Republican attorney general recently rejected the name and ballot title of a proposed constitutional amendment to restore abortion rights in the state up to 18 weeks after conception, saying it was misleading, contradictory and possibly redundant. And in Missouri, GOP state officials spent months challenging the wording of multiple competing abortion-rights amendments. Conservatives also fought to change the ballot language in both Michigan and Ohio, and succeeded in the latter, but amendments there still passed overwhelmingly.

A lawmaker in Oklahoma has gone so far as to suggest that the legislature and governor need to take over the state’s Supreme Court to prevent it from upholding the rights of citizens. “We really are not going to be able to solve the abortion issue in Oklahoma until we solve the issue of a Supreme Court that does not reflect its people,” state Sen. David Bullard said, according to Politico. “How they ruled recently on abortion has really fired off a lot of concern.”

In the US Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, which eliminated the constitutional right to abortion and kicked off these abortion-rights fights, Justice Samuel Alito wrote that the previous courts had overstepped in establishing federal abortion rights and that this court was “return[ing] that authority to the people and their elected representatives.”

Those Republican lawmakers are making it absolutely clear that the people need to be cut out of that decision-making.

TRUMP DECLINES TO SIGN ANTI-PUTSCH PLEDGE—ANOTHER WARNING THAT HE PLANS TO DISMANTLE US DEMOCRACY. When Donald Trump and his campaign registered for the Illinois state primary this year, they refused to sign a voluntary loyalty oath stating that Trump wouldn’t advocate for overthrowing the government.

The Biden campaign pounced on the news, which was broken by WBEZ/Chicago Sun-Times on the third anniversary of Jan. 6.

“For the entirety of our nation’s history, presidents have put their hand on the Bible and sworn to protect and uphold the constitution of the United States – and Donald Trump can’t bring himself to sign a piece of paper saying he won’t attempt a coup to overthrow our government,” said Biden campaign communications director Michael Tyler. “We know he’s deadly serious because three years ago today he tried and failed to do exactly that.”

The news played right into President Joe Biden’s speech Jan. 5 emphasizing the existential threat Trump poses to American democracy.

Trump reportedly signed the Illinois pledge in 2016 and 2020. But instead of opting to rectify the situation by agreeing to sign it following the news, the Trump campaign chose to focus on the oath of office Trump would take after a potential win in November.

“President Trump will once again take the oath of office on January 20th, 2025, and will swear ‘to faithfully execute the office of president of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States,’” said Trump spokesman Steven Cheung.

Kelly Eleveld noted at Daily Kos (1/8), however, “that oath of office didn’t stop Trump from inciting the riot at the Capitol, nor did it compel him to take swift action to rein in the violence once it had begun. Not only did he wait more than three hours to ask the insurrectionists to leave the Capitol, Trump actually shrugged off the fact that his vice president had to be evacuated, responding, ‘So what?’ according to newly released information.”

From The Progressive Populist, February 1, 2024

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