Dispatches

TPP OPENS NEW CUSTOMER SERVICE OFFICE. With this issue (Sept. 1), The Progressive Populist is beginning the transition to a new subscription and customer service office, which will take over handling subscriptions, renewals and changes of address for our journal, relieving those tasks from our affiliated community newspaper in Storm Lake, Iowa. If you receive a renewal post card or letter, return the card or form, with payment, to the address on the letter, or call the phone number on the form to pay with a credit card. After this issue is mailed, the subscription and customer service office address will be Progressive Populist, PO Box 15786, North Hollywood CA 91606-5786. The new customer service phone number will be (818) 286-3104 and you can find more information online at populist.com. The Progressive Populist will continue to be edited in Manchaca, Texas, and published from Storm Lake, Iowa (and we’ll still process subscription renewals that arrive in Storm Lake), but we hope the new office will offer more systematic customer service.

TWO-THIRDS OF AMERICANS THINK TRUMP JAN. 6 CHARGES ARE SERIOUS, BUT LESS THAN HALF THINK TRUMP SHOULD DROP OUT. ABC News/Ipsos is the first outlet out of the gate with polling on Donald Trump’s indictment for his 2020 election interference which culminated in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, Joan McCarter noted at Daily Kos (8/4). The element that stands out most in the new polling is tribalism: Only a minority of Republicans think the Jan. 6 charges are serious and a tiny group of them thinks he should be charged.

While nearly two-thirds of the voters surveyed—65%—think the charges are serious, just 38% of Republicans think so, and just 14% of Republicans think he should be charged with a crime.

Discouragingly, only 52% of the total surveyed believe Trump should be facing criminal charges for everything he did leading up to and on Jan. 6. That’s down from a June 2022 ABC News/Ipsos poll conducted during the Jan. 6 committee hearings. In that survey, 58% agreed that, “Trump bears a good or great amount of responsibility for the events of Jan 6 and that he should be charged with a crime.”

In addition, just under half of all voters in the new poll—49%—think that Trump should suspend his campaign. A similar number, 46%, think the charges against Trump are politically motivated. Republican talking points about the Biden administration targeting Trump are clearly permeating the populace. In contrast, 60% of those surveyed last year thought that the congressional committee was conducting a fair and impartial investigation.

That’s as much a condemnation of the narrative the national media has been pushing as anything, including the fact that the poll and the ABC News story that goes with it also include questions about President Joe Biden’s approval ratings and, more problematically, the Hunter Biden investigation.

About one-third of this story is about about Biden’s low approvals (33% to Trump’s 30%) and his son Hunter Biden, including whether Biden should be investigated for impeachment over it (39% say yes) and whether they have confidence that the “Justice Department is handling its ongoing investigation of Hunter Biden in a fair and nonpartisan manner”; 46% say they are not.

That poll and the accompanying story are effectively equating Hunter Biden’s legal problems with Trump’s. The article provides absolutely no context or explanation of the fact that House Republicans have come up with nothing in their extensive investigation of Hunter Biden. The media is treating a conspiracy theory cooked up by Rudy Giuliani and his cohorts—that was proven to be nonsense even before the 2020 election—as equivalent to the very real allegations of a conspiracy by Donald Trump and his team to steal the election and violently overthrow the government.

DESANTIS SAYS HE WOULD START ‘SLITTING THROATS ON DAY ONE’ IF ELECTED PRESIDENT. Florida governor and raging anti-education autocrat Ron DeSantis is still running for president despite running into some problems: People don’t really care for his campaign, and it’s hard to generate the kind of money needed to keep a big campaign going when you aren’t nearly as popular among your constituents as the other guy, Walter Einenkel noted at Daily Kos (8/3).

But the guy who showed the world that if you attack historically marginalized children and revive Jim Crow-era voter suppression you will still get Republican votes in Florida has a solution: more of the same, but with a little bit of a DeSantis spin. DeSantis came out recently offering the same things that pass for policy in the Republican Party: blaming “elites” while offering up nothing more than cuts to programs relied upon by people who aren’t elites. However, DeSantis is adding his own special version of QAnon-adjacent rhetoric as a signifier that he’s someone the MAGA base can count on.

During a barbecue in Rye, N.H., DeSantis offered up a bit of the old ultraviolence when boasting about what he would do to the “deep state.” DeSantis told the audience he would start “slitting throats on day one.” What does that mean? I guess he’s not so much promising public executions as he is hinting at the kind of assassination techniques conspiracy theorists usually attribute to vague “deep state” actors?

According to The Hill (8/3), this isn’t the first time DeSantis has used this harsh rhetoric. A few weeks ago, the Florida man spoke to Real America’s Voice (you can tell how far right this outlet is by how “real” and “America” it is) for an interview. Speaking about the need to completely change the Department of Defense (where this mythical “deep state” resides), DeSantis explained:

“You know, they may have to slit some throats. And it’s a lot harder to do that if these are people that you’ve trained with in the past or that you know. So we’re going to have somebody out there, you know, be very firm, very strong, but they are going to make sure that we have the best people in the best positions, and there’s not going to be necessarily prior relationships that would cloud that judgment.”

But the deep state isn’t the only target of his conspiracy theories and threats. DeSantis recently unveiled his 10-point “Declaration of Economic Independence” plan. It is basically the same plan as Trump’s. The Florida governor blamed big tech for the financial strains being experienced by the middle class. But before you go and call DeSantis a pinko, it is important to know that he wasn’t saying cutting taxes for the wealthy, taking away consumer protections, and not holding the richest corporations accountable helped lead to growing economic disparity.

No, DeSantis blames middle-class economic struggles on COVID-19 lockdowns.

“This was a major transfer of wealth, from middle-class people and small businesses, to a handful, maybe six or seven major corporations. You know, Apple’s market cap is $3 trillion now. Amazon, massive growth. Facebook, all these companies. You wonder why Facebook was censoring dissent about COVID lockdowns? Because they benefited from doing this.”

This version of MAGA-mollifying is the new normal for Republican candidates. The days of being able to simply say you don’t believe women should have rights (while not expecting to be held accountable) are over. DeSantis is simply one of the grosser iterations of this phenomenon.

BIDEN ADMINISTRATION DELAYS PLANS TO RESTOCK NATION’S OIL RESERVES. The Biden administration is delaying plans to restock the nation’s emergency oil reserve amid a price hike that has pushed oil above $80 a barrel, the Associated Press reported (8/2).

The Energy Department canceled a planned purchase of 6 million barrels for the Strategic Petroleum eserve, saying it wants to secure a good deal for taxpayers.

The administration said it remains committed to refilling the reserve, which President Joe Biden significantly drained last year in a bid to stop gasoline prices from rising amid production cuts by OPEC and a ban on Russian oil imports because of the war in Ukraine.

Biden withdrew 180 million barrels from the strategic reserve starting in March 2022, bringing the stockpile to its lowest level since the 1980s, as he sought to tame high gasoline prices in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Tapping the reserve is among the few actions a president can take by himself to try to control inflation, an election-year liability for the party in control of the White House.

The Energy Department began refilling the reserve earlier this year, purchasing 6.3 million barrels when benchmark West Texas Intermediate crude oil was selling at about $74 per barrel. Lately, benchmark West Texas Intermediate crude oil was selling at $81.85 per barrel (8/2) amid tighter global supplies.

Gasoline prices, meanwhile, have risen to about $3.80 per gallon, up from $3.53 per gallon in mid-May, according to the AAA auto club. Prices peaked at just over $5 per gallon in June 2022.

An Energy spokeswoman emphasized that the US maintains 350 million barrels in reserve that “stand ready should there be an emergency” that requires officials to tap into the stockpile held in huge salt caverns in Louisiana and Texas.

JULY JOBS REPORT: GOOD NEWS KEEPS ON COMING. It would be hard to imagine a much better jobs report than what we got (8/4), Dean Baker noted (8/6). The economy generated 187,000 jobs for July, somewhat fewer than the consensus. The jobs numbers for the prior two months were also revised down by 90,000. At the same time, the unemployment rate edged down to 3.5%, just 0.1 percentage point above the half-century low reached in April. We have now have had below 4% unemployment for the last 18 months. The last time we had a streak this long was in the ’60s.

In other times, the slowing job growth and the downward revisions might be bad news, but with unemployment at an extraordinarily low level and inflation remaining a problem, some cooling of the labor market means that the Fed will be less likely to raise interest rates further. The July rate of job creation should be sufficient to keep the unemployment rate from rising and to even pull some additional workers into the labor market.

Other aspects of the report were also positive. There was an increase in the size of the labor force of 152,000, bringing the year-over-year rise to 3.1 million. There had been some concerns that the labor force, as measured by the household survey, was not keeping pace with the rate of job growth reported in the establishment survey. These are now much more closely aligned.

There was a drop of 191,000 in the number of people who reported working part-time involuntarily. That is not huge, but this drop suggests that the 450,000 jump reported for June was just an anomaly, as opposed to the start of a trend.

The share of unemployment due to voluntary quits rose to 14.6%, a second consecutive monthly rise. This is a high level, indicating workers are confident enough to quit a job without having a new job lined up already, but it is below the peaks hit last year and also below pre-pandemic peaks.

Wages rose 0.4% for the month, bringing the annual rate of wage growth over the last three months to 4.9%. This means workers likely again came out ahead of inflation in July, although the Fed may consider the pace of wage growth to be too rapid, and use it to justify further rate hikes.

And, it looks like workers at the bottom continue to be the biggest gainers. Wage growth for hotel and restaurant workers rose at a 7.3% annual rate over the last three months.

This is consistent with the biggest drops in unemployment being for less-educated workers. The unemployment rate for workers without high school degrees fell by 0.8 percentage points to 5.2%. For workers with just a high school education, the unemployment rate fell by 0.5 percentage points to 3.4%, tying the record low hit in April of 2019.

But the jobs report was not the only good economic news that we’ve gotten in the last couple of weeks. The second quarter GDP report showed GDP growing at a 2.4% annual rate. This is solid growth by any measure.

Perhaps even more important than the rate was the composition. Consumption growth slowed to a 1.6% rate, after growing at a 4.6% rate in the first quarter. Investment made up the gap, rising at a 7.7% annual rate. This was driven largely by investment in structures, especially factory construction, which grew at an incredible 94% annual rate. This is the clean energy and chip boom, resulting from the Inflation Reduction Act and CHIPS Act.

We also got data on second-quarter productivity, which showed it rising at a 3.7% rate. This was stronger than most projections, although we have to recognize that quarterly productivity data are highly erratic and subject to large revisions. In the first quarter, productivity fell at a 1.2% rate. Nonetheless, we have averaged 1.4% annual growth since the pandemic. This is a bit lower than the 1.6% rate in the four years preceding the pandemic, but better than the 1% average over the full decade before the pandemic.

PRO-TRUMP MEGADONOR BOOSTS RFK JR. CAMPAIGN. A super PAC supporting Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s long-shot Democratic campaign for president is boosted in large part by a GOP megadonor, campaign finance reports disclosed. NBC News reported (7/31) that of the $9.8 million raised by the pro-Kennedy super PAC “American Values 2024” this year, $5 million of it was a donation from perennial megadonor Timothy Mellon, who has contributed millions to Republican candidates and causes in the past, including a whopping $20 million to the America First Action Super PAC supporting former President Donald Trump’s re-election bid in 2020.

American Values 2024 Super PAC also got $4.7 million from Gavin de Becker, a security specialist listed in the FEC report as an author and founder of the Gavin de Becker Association. The Guardian reported de Becker contributed to Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI)’s re-election campaign last year, as well as 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang, who has since helped found the Forward Party. In a separate statement circulated by the pro-Kennedy super PAC (7/3), de Becker indicated that he aligns with the Democratic Party.

The New York Times reported (8/2) Patrick Byrne, the former chief executive of Overstock.com — and one of the most prominent supporters of the effort to overturn the 2020 election — gave $100,000 in Bitcoin to Common Sense, another PAC supporting Kennedy. Common Sense reported a total fund-raising haul of about $711,000 in the three-month period ending in June.

GOP’S ‘FISCAL VANDALISM AND POLITICAL SABOTAGE’ PROMPTS SECOND-EVER US CREDIT DOWNGRADE. Democratic lawmakers and economists placed the blame squarely on the Republican Party after Fitch downgraded the United States’ long-term credit rating, citing repeated standoffs over the nation’s debt ceiling in recent years, Jake Johnson reported at CommonDreams (8/2).

The downgrade from AAA—the highest possible rating—to AA+ came months after President Biden and House Republicans reached an agreement to lift the debt ceiling until January 2025, setting the stage for another potentially damaging fight just after the presidential election.

Earlier this year, Republicans—led by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.)—used the need to raise the debt ceiling and avoid a catastrophic default as leverage to pursue sweeping federal spending cuts, more punitive work requirements for aid recipients, and other right-wing priorities.

Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.), the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee, said Tuesday that the credit downgrade “rests on the shoulders of Speaker McCarthy and the extreme MAGA Republicans who openly rooted for default.”

“For years, Republicans were warned that their repeated brinksmanship and deficit-funded tax giveaways for the wealthy and big corporations would have consequences and now, for the second time in American history, Republican extremism and recklessness has undercut the American economy,” said Boyle, referencing a 2011 downgrade by the ratings agency Standard & Poor’s.

“We need to address the root cause of this downgrade: Congress must pass my Debt Ceiling Reform Act to put an end to Republican brinksmanship and hostage-taking once and for all,” the congressman added.

Fitch said its decision to downgrade the United States’ credit rating—a move that could increase borrowing costs for the federal government—stemmed from “a steady deterioration in standards of governance over the last 20 years, including on fiscal and debt matters.”

“The repeated debt-limit political standoffs and last-minute resolutions have eroded confidence in fiscal management,” the agency said.

Justin Wolfers, a professor of economics at the University of Michigan, wrote that the downgrade is “the direct result of a multi-decade campaign of fiscal vandalism and political sabotage by Republicans, and the rest of us are left footing the bill.”

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) expressed the same view, saying in a statement that “the downgrade by Fitch shows that House Republicans’ reckless brinksmanship and flirtation with default has negative consequences for the country.”

“Republicans need to learn from their mistakes and never push our country to the brink of default again,” said Schumer.

The Biden administration, for its part, said it “strongly” disagrees with Fitch’s decision, which rattled global markets. Janet Yellen, the secretary of the US Treasury Department, argued in a statement that the downgrade is “arbitrary and based on outdated data.”

“Fitch’s decision does not change what Americans, investors, and people all around the world already know: that Treasury securities remain the world’s preeminent safe and liquid asset, and that the American economy is fundamentally strong,” Yellen added.

GOP WAGES WAR ON FOOD AID, DATA SHOWS 35% RISE IN HUNGER. Data recently published by the US Census Bureau shows that more than 27 million people across the country didn’t have enough food to eat during a one-week period in late June and early July, a 35% increase over the same period in 2021, Jake Johnson noted at CommonDreams (8/2).

Joel Berg, the CEO of Hunger Free America, said the surge in food insecurity was likely caused by a combination of elevated costs and the expiration of benefits enacted during the coronavirus pandemic, such as the expanded child tax credit.

Berg also pointed to congressional Republicans’ ongoing attacks on Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits. In May, House Republicans secured a deal with President Joe Biden to impose new work requirements on older adults receiving federal food aid—a move that experts say will put 750,000 people at risk of losing benefits.

The White House-GOP deal came months after SNAP benefit enhancements implemented during the pandemic expired, slashing aid for tens of millions of people. Food banks across the country subsequently reported a surge in demand, according to a survey by Feeding America.

“No one should be shocked that when the government takes away food, as well as money to buy food, hunger increases,” Berg said. “Given that the gaps between wages and living costs are still so great that tens of millions of Americans can’t afford enough food, the mass deprivation in the midst of an overall recovery is one key reason why the U.S. public still tells pollsters they have a negative view of the U.S. economy.”

“This new data should be a wake-up call for elected officials at the national, state, and local levels that they need to take bold, concrete actions to raise wages, make quality housing and childcare more affordable, and strengthen—not cut—the food safety net,” Berg added. “The ongoing push by key congressional conservatives to further slash these programs is both morally appalling and economically counterproductive.”

Members of the far-right House Freedom Caucus are reportedly pushing for additional SNAP benefit restrictions as part of the annual farm bill, which authorizes the critical and effective anti-hunger program.

In addition to targeting SNAP, House Republicans are also proposing cuts to the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) in their fiscal year 2024 agriculture appropriations bill.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimated last week that if the House GOP’s bill becomes law, “650,000 to 750,000 eligible people—primarily toddlers, preschoolers, and postpartum adults—would be turned away” from WIC and an additional 4.6 million would face benefit cuts.

House Republicans failed to pass the agriculture bill before leaving town for August recess.

In a scathing statement, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) said Republicans couldn’t rally sufficient GOP support for the measure “because it was not extreme and dangerous enough.”

“Apparently—for House Republicans—it did not take enough food out of the mouths of women and children, it did not prevent enough farmers from buying homes and accessing clean water, it did not prevent enough rural homes from accessing the internet, it did not prevent enough women from accessing an abortion, and it did not protect enough billionaires and corporations from paying their taxes,” DeLauro added.

From The Progressive Populist, September 1, 2023

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