Donald Trump spent the Fourth of July weekend seeking to drive a wedge between his Republican base and those who are working to end his con game as Trump desperately seeks re-election.
In a July 3 speech at Mount Rushmore, S.D., the Great Misleader warned of “angry mobs” pursuing “far-left fascism” and a “left-wing cultural revolution” that is seeking to remove statues and monuments celebrating Confederate leaders and other US historical figures. “Our nation is witnessing a merciless campaign to wipe out our history, defame our heroes, erase our values, and indoctrinate our children,” he declared.
The following day, he told guests during an Independence Day celebration on the South Lawn of the White House, “We are now in the process of defeating the radical left — the Marxists, the anarchists, the agitators, the looters.”
Police brutality clearly doesn’t bother Trump, who in 2017 called on NFL owners to fire Colin Kaepernick and other NFL players who “took a knee” in protest of police misconduct toward people of color. “That’s a total disrespect of our heritage. That’s a total disrespect of everything that we stand for,” Trump said, apparently endorsing police brutality as part of American heritage. After the NFL in 2018 threatened to fine players who kneel during the National Anthem, he praised the ban, saying, “You have to stand proudly for the national anthem or you shouldn’t be playing, you shouldn’t be there, maybe you shouldn’t be in the country.”
Trump sees little need to reform police departments despite repeated abuses of minorities that have proved fatal. He appears to be more interested in protecting the memory of Confederate heroes whose rebellion against the United States, with the primary purpose of preserving slavery, cost more than 618,000 American lives.
Trump, who has shown reckless disregard for the truth throughout his presidency, wants to run as the “Law and Order” candidate against a threat he has created. He seized on a quote by a man who runs a fringe group that claims to be affiliated with Black Lives Matter in a June 25 tweet: “Black Lives Matter leader states, ‘If U.S. doesn’t give us what we want, then we will burn down this system and replace it’. This is Treason, Sedition, Insurrection!”
Trump was quoting Walter “Hawk” Newsome, who was a guest on Fox News earlier in the day. Newsome also said that BLM activists should be applauded for arming themselves with guns,
A BLM spokesperson told CNBC, “As BLM has told Mr. Newsome in the past, and as is still true today, Mr. Newsome’s group is not a chapter of BLM and has not entered into any agreement with BLM agreeing to adhere to BLM’s core principles.”
A review of the BLM website does not indicate support for attacking police, looting or burning businesses, toppling statues of former slaveholders, or changing the name of Washington, D.C., among controversial positions that have been attributed to the movement. BLM expresses a commitment to “struggling together and to imagining and creating a world free of anti-Blackness, where every Black person has the social, economic, and political power to thrive.”
And BLM appears to be winning public support. A national poll by Ipsos for Public Agenda and USA Today released June 29 found 58% say racial bias against Black Americans by police and law enforcement is a serious problem in their community and 55% of Americans want either major change or to redesign police departments completely. Only 7% want police to stay the same.
The poll also found 60% would support forcing officers to reapply for their jobs to help weed out bad cops and 63% would limit the scope of policing to focus on serious and violent crimes, but people were split over whether to cut off police departments’ ability to buy military gear, with 50% supporting demilitarization.
Media critic Eric Boehlert noted CNN labeled Trump’s address at Mount Rushmore as “impassioned,” the Associated Press reported Trump was merely “offering a discordant tone,” and the Minneapolis Star Tribune’s front page portrayed the event as “patriotic.”
Boehlert, who wrotes at Pressrun.Media, added, “Across the media landscape Trump’s bizarre, unsettling address was whitewashed and described as being ‘fiery’ ...
“There comes a point — and we’re way past it — when reporters covering Trump should be honest with what they’re witnessing. It shouldn’t be left to ‘opinion’ writers to note that Trump speeches aren’t merely ‘divisive’ as the New York Times reported on [July 3]. The speech was undemocratic as Trump demonized civil protesters, and dangerous as he portrayed them as lurking enemies of the state.”
While many African Americans are calling for the federal government to pay reparations to descendants of slaves, we don’t think it’s a practical way to address inequalities in the United States.
Americans have received compensation for injustices done to them, but we usually don’t wait more than 150 years after the injustice to pay the injured parties. Descendants of Union soldiers who fought and died to free the slaves might argue that they should not now be taxed to pay for reparations to the descendants of those freed slaves. An Ipsos poll conducted for the Associated Press in June found 73% of respondents oppose reparations for Black Americans whose ancestors were slaves as compensations for that slavery.
An alternative to reparations is a proposal that the federal government set up a “Baby Bonds” trust fund for every American child, which would provide an endowment that could be used for college or vocational training or to buy a house when the child reaches adulthood.
The concept of a government-funded nest egg is not unprecedented. Thomas Paine in 1797 called for the government to provide 15 pounds (approximately $1,800 today) to every 21-year-old.
Under the American Opportunity Accounts Act proposal by Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), roughly four million children born every year in the US would receive $1,000 in interest-bearing “American Opportunity Accounts” managed by the Treasury Department, with an estimated 3% annual return. The government would contribute up to $2,000 to each account every year, with lower-income children receiving the largest payments.
By age 18, the children from low-income families would have about $46,200 in their accounts, while the wealthiest children — those in families at five times the poverty level — or $147,100 for a family of four — would end up with $1,681 — the original $1,000 payment plus earnings accrued from the government investing it in low-risk funds, according to an analysis by Booker’s office. Blacks and Latinos would collect nearly twice the amount than whites would, on average, the analysis found. Booker’s plan also would fund existing children.
The program would cost about $60 billion per year, which could be paid for by restoring estate taxes on wealthy Americans to 2009 levels and closing the tax break for inherited capital gains.
The Baby Bond program should be attractive for working-class families of all ethnic descriptions and it has a lot more favorable prospects for passage than a reparations program that would generate considerable resentment. Baby Bounds would do more good for more people, at the expense of the 1%. What’s not to like? — JMC
From The Progressive Populist, August 1, 2020
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