Dispatches

MORE JOBS DROP UNEMPLOYMENT RATE FURTHER. The Department of Labor showed another strong jobs report Dec. 8, which showed the economy added 199,000 jobs in November, dropping the unemployment rate to 3.7%, marking the 22nd straight month under 4% unemployment. The job tally included 30,000 United Auto Workers returning from their strikes at the Big Three automakers and 15,000 actors returning after the end of the Screen Actors Guild strike.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics also reported that, in the third quarter, labor productivity rose at annual rate of 5.2%, which is “really, really fast,” economist Paul Krugman noted in the New York Times (12/7). “[T]here is increasing reason to hope that our economy is capable of growing considerably faster than we previously thought.”

The average hourly wage grew at a 3.4% annual rate over the past three months, which indicates the moderation in wage growth seen throughout the year is continuing, economist Dean Baker noted. This pace is very much consistent with the Fed’s 2% inflation target. It should also allow a decent pace of real wage growth if inflation is close to 2%.

Economists tout the strength of the economic numbers, with low unemployment, much lower inflation, and significant growth—and, even better, a reduction in inequality, meaning the benefits are accruing more to those who need it most. And when people talk about this good news in the press or on social media … the pushback is ferocious and intense.

“Nonetheless, many Americans continue to have very negative views of the economy,” Krugman wrote. “Some of this may reflect the fact that while inflation has come way down, prices are still high compared with the recent past.”

On the other hand, he added, “inflation has been a global phenomenon, but the huge gap between favorable economic indicators and grim public perceptions is unique to the United States, where people believe many bad things about the economy that simply aren’t true.”

The latest reading of inflation for groceries stands at 2.1% on an annual basis. That means that, on average, Americans paid $102 for groceries this October that would have cost them $100 a year ago. This is a small difference, and most people would be hard-pressed to notice this change.

However, when asked what has happened to grocery prices in their area in the past year, almost everybody in a Daily Kos/Civiqs survey conducted Dec. 2-5 — 88% of those surveyed — said prices had gone up in the past year. Indeed, groceries In October 2022 cost 12.4% more than they did in the previous year.

The survey also found that 50% of Americans think the problem of inflation won’t be solved until prices drop back down to where they were a few years ago. But Daniel Donner of Daily Kos noted that if prices fell by around 20%, a reversal of the increases since the pandemic began, “that would imply something pretty grave has happened in the economy, and likely result in—or be caused by—a severe recession.”

STUDY SHOWS CORPORATE PROFITEERING ‘AMPLIFIED’ GLOBAL INFLATION. A pair of London-based think tanks released research (12/7) showing corporate profits contributed substantially to the high inflation that the US, Germany, the UK and other major nations experienced amid recent global shocks, including the coronavirus pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The new report by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) and Common Wealth argues that while corporate profiteering was not the “sole driver of inflation,” the market dominance of a few powerful companies “amplified” economywide price increases, Jake Johnson reported at CommonDreams (12/7).

Examining the profits of major firms listed on the stock exchanges of five countries, the analysis shows that many large corporations were able to keep their margins stable or even boost them—as in the case of major oil and gas companies like ExxonMobil—during pandemic-related turmoil and global energy market disruptions caused by Russia’s attack on Ukraine.

Researchers estimated that the profits of major corporations, bolstered by a relatively small number of companies, were at least 30% higher at the end of 2022 than they were at the end of 2019, prior to the coronavirus crisis.

As corporate executives and rich shareholders reaped the benefits of rising profits, ordinary people around the world suffered the consequences of soaring fuel, food, and housing costs.

“Our analysis of companies suggests many large firms, beyond just the commodities sector, are using their power to preserve their profit margins,” said Chris Hayes, chief economist at Common Wealth and a co-author of the new report. “This pushes the shocks downstream to workers, consumers, and labor-intensive industries that are less able to absorb them.”

The new report—which adds to a growing body of research on the role of corporate profits in driving inflation—offers several possible explanations for the coinciding rise of consumer prices and profit margins.

One explanation, the report says, is that “an inflationary environment might give firms cover to hike prices.” Some corporate executives admitted on earnings calls that high inflation was good for business.

The report authors also suggested that corporations’ growing market power gave them the ability to “increase prices more than inflation,” thus maintaining or adding to their margins.

“Our research finds that markets aren’t working efficiently, enabling large companies to make profits that likely amplified inflation,” said Carsten Jung, a senior economist at IPPR and report co-author. “This has made the cost-of-living crisis worse for most people, and for many smaller firms across the economy.”

Jung argued that economists have focused “too much on the labor market” as a source of inflationary pressure. The U.S. Federal Reserve and other central banks have explicitly targeted job markets by jacking up interest rates in a bid to rein in inflation, which has cooled substantially from its peak.

“In fact, most wage earners have taken real losses while many businesses protected their profit margins or even raised them,” Jung noted. “We should be scrutinizing the role profits have played in amplifying inflation.”

To prevent corporations from exploiting future inflation shocks, Jung and Hayes called for a “new international approach to taxing excess profits,” which they said would help “reduce inefficient behavior by dominant corporations.” The Economist estimated in July that excess corporate profits globally hit around $4 trillion over the past year.

Other interventions, such as price caps, could “help stabilize markets during economic emergencies,” Jung and Hayes added.

IT’S HIGH TIME, AS 6 DEMOCRATIC GOVERNORS URGE DEA TO RESCHEDULE MARIJUANA BY YEAR-END. Six Democratic governors sent a letter to President Joe Biden urging the administration to push the Drug Enforcement Administration to “reschedule” marijuana as a less dangerous Class III drug by the end of the year, a move that could be one of the biggest changes in federal drug policy in decades, Charles Jay noted at Daily Kos (12/7). The letter, sent Dec. 5, was signed by Govs. Jared Polis of Colorado, Kathy Hochul of New York, J.B. Pritzker of Illinois, Wes Moore of Maryland, Jon Bel Edwards of Louisiana, and Phil Murphy of New Jersey.

With Republicans lining up in opposition to any rescheduling, marijuana policy could become an issue in the 2024 presidential election if the DEA moves to change the drug’s classification. That could prove a boost to the Biden campaign’s efforts to boost flagging support among young voters.

In October 2022, Biden asked the secretary of Health and Human Services “to review expeditiously how marijuana is scheduled under federal law.” Biden also issued a pardon for all those convicted on federal charges of simple possession of marijuana and urged state governors to do the same.

“Too many lives have been upended because of our failed approach to marijuana. It’s time that we right these wrongs,” Biden said in his White House statement.

The DEA currently classifies marijuana under Schedule 1 of the Controlled Substances Act, the classification meant for the most dangerous substances such as heroin and LSD, considered to have a high likelihood of abuse and no medical uses.

Biden’s request initiated an official review process. The Food and Drug Administration conducted the review, which was then sent to the National Institute on Drug Abuse and HHS. In late August, HHS recommended that the DEA move marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III, which would significantly loosen federal restrictions on the drug, Politico reported. DEA has the option of rejecting the recommendation. Schedule III includes such substances as ketamine and testosterone which are categorized as having “moderate to low potential for physical and psychological dependence.”

The DEA has yet to act on HHS’s recommendation. The governors wrote that federal law has failed to keep pace with the huge changes over the past decade in state cannabis policies and public opinion. They wrote:

“We hope that DEA will follow suit and reschedule cannabis to Schedule III this year, given that 88 percent of Americans are in favor of legalization for medical or recreational use,” the governors wrote. “Rescheduling cannabis aligns with a safe, regulated product that Americans can trust.” …

The governors said that rescheduling marijuana will increase public health and safety, and is a “big win for states, especially helpful for the 38 states that have some form of state-regulated cannabis policies in place, which represent 72% of the population.”

The biggest impact of rescheduling would be to remove financial and legal barriers to the emerging marijuana industry. Since marijuana is a Category I substance, cannabis businesses are not federally legal, and are prohibited from taking typical tax exemptions for business expenses. Businesses also have difficulties accessing banking services and raising cash.

Gov. Jared Polis, who led the governors’ letter initiative, said federal rescheduling would allow cannabis-related businesses to take ordinary tax deductions, like any other business. The cannabis industry generated an estimated $30 billion dollars in sales revenue in 2022 and is estimated to generate over $71 billion by 2030. Rescheduling cannabis will not only alleviate financial and safety concerns for businesses but allow a thriving industry to play a full role in the American business environment.

RURAL JOBS GREW IN SEPTEMBER, BUT THEY’RE STILL LAGGING. Rural America added more than 200,000 jobs over the past year but is still below pre-pandemic employment levels, according to a Daily Yonder analysis by Sarah Melotte (12/6).

The failure to reach full recovery three and a half years after the start of the pandemic is related to larger trends, including an aging population, lack of childcare, and lower levels of formal education, according to an economist.

Rural employment grew to 20.4 million in September 2023, the latest month for which county-level jobs data is available from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s an increase of 1% from last year. But rural America still has 64,000 fewer jobs this year than it did the same time in 2019, before the pandemic.

Meanwhile, metropolitan counties have gained back more jobs than they lost during the pandemic.

“Rural areas took a hit,” said Elizabeth Davis, Ph.D., professor of applied economics at the University of Minnesota.

Rural counties haven’t fully recovered from the 2008 financial crisis, much less the drop in employment brought on by the pandemic, Davis said.

At the start of the pandemic in early 2020, rural counties initially didn’t suffer as much job loss as urban counties. Employment dropped 13% in April 2020 compared to 2019, while urban counties had a 15% decrease for the same period.

By May 2020, employment nationwide began to recover. Rural counties were actually ahead of urban ones in employment recovery for the first year of the pandemic. After that, urban gains eclipsed rural gains in employment, with the gap widening noticeably in January 2022.

As of September of 2023 (the most recent data available), urban employment recovery was 2.5 percentage points higher than rural recovery.

Davis said it can be hard to generalize about rural employment because rural areas are so different from each other. But a few demographic factors might be at play in employment recovery.

“We hear a lot of employers concerned about the lack of childcare because they can’t find workers,” Davis said. “They hear from their workers and their families that they can’t find childcare so they can’t work, or can’t work full time.”

A greater share of the rural population is also moving into retirement, which reduces the number of employed people.

Not only are employers having trouble finding employees of working age who can afford childcare, but lower levels of formal education in rural America can also shrink the pool of potentially employable people.

Although education levels are on the rise in small towns and rural places, they still haven’t caught up with urban levels. Twenty-one percent of rural residents over the age of 25 have a bachelor’s degree, up from 15% in 2000. The share of the urban population with a bachelor’s degree increased from 26% to 36% during the same time period, which widened the gap between rural and urban education levels.

SENATE REPUBLICANS HAND PUTIN PROPAGANDA VICTORY. Vladimir Putin’s pet pundits were thrilled with Senate Republicans and their unanimous vote against advancing aid to Ukraine, as well as their efforts to extort concessions on immigration from President Joe Biden and Democrats. The delay, and possibly even the end, of US support of Ukraine means Putin’s Russian allies see Russia’s military victory at hand, Joan McCarter noted at Daily Kos (12/8).

Senate Republicans’ performative tantrum Dec. 6, when they yelled at US officials and stormed out of a classified briefing on Ukraine, “prompted jubilation in Moscow,” The Daily Beast’s Julia Davis, who closely monitors Russian media, reports. “During Wednesday’s broadcast of a state TV program 60 Minutes, Evgeny Popov said Ukraine was now in ‘agony’ and it was ‘difficult to imagine a bigger humiliation.’”

During his morning show Full Contact on Dec. 6, top pro-Kremlin propagandist Vladimir Solovyov joyfully noted: “[Janet] Yellen screamed, ‘Don’t you dare!’ [Joe] Biden screamed, ‘Don’t you dare!’ but Republicans said, ‘Go to hell! We won’t give your khokhols [slur for “Ukrainians”] any money.’” The segment was entitled, “No one needs Ukraine anymore—especially the United States.”

Appearing on his program, America analyst Dmitry Drobnitsky noted, “The downfall of Ukraine means the downfall of Biden! Two birds with one stone!”

The Senate voted later that day on attempting to advance Ukraine funding, and every Republican voted to block it from getting a final vote. That got the Russian pundits even more excited.

Dmitry Abzalov, director of the Kremlin-affiliated Center for Strategic Communications, crowed that “deal about additional aid has collapsed” over border issues. “It looks like [Chuck] Schumer is still trying to push it through, but it’s not happening, because Republicans are presenting harsh demands,” he continued. “Without a decision about the borders, even [Mitch] McConnell won’t vote for the deal. None of the Republicans will vote for the deal.”

CHATTANOOGA VW WORKERS ANNOUNCE PUSH TO JOIN UAW. Workers at Volkswagen's only US plant in Chattanooga, Tenn., announced they're launching a public organizing committee with the goal of joining the United Auto Workers, which is aiming to expand its membership to include employees at more than a dozen nonunion car companies after winning historic contracts at the Big 3, Jake Johnson reported at CommonDreams (12/7).

In less than a week, more than 1,000 workers at the Volkswagen plant signed union authorization cards, giving the nascent union drive more than 30% support so far at the Chattanooga location.

The UAW narrowly failed to organize the plant in 2014 and 2019. But leaders of the new unionization push expressed confidence that the outcome would be different this time around as the newly emboldened UAW puts special emphasis on the South, where the unionization rate is significantly lower than in the rest of the country.

“People are standing up like never before,” said Steve Cochran, a lead organizer of the Chattanooga union drive. “There are a lot of young workers in the plant now and this generation wants respect. They’re not okay with mistreatment by management. They see what's happening at Starbucks and Amazon. They know that standing up to join the union is how you win fair treatment, fair pay, and a better life.”

Organizers pointed to the $184 billion in profits that Volkswagen Group has brought in over the past decade while workers' wages have stagnated or declined.

“In the last three years, we’ve seen VW make nearly a trillion dollars in revenue and $78 billion in profit, but we haven’t seen our fair share in Chattanooga,” reads the union campaign's website. “Now we're ready to fight for a better job, a better life, and a better future.”

DEJOY’S USPS LEADERSHIP IS DEADLY. On June 20, Eugene “Gino” Gates collapsed on the lawn of a house in an affluent Dallas, Texas, neighborhood and died. The 66-year-old military veteran was a mail carrier who died of heatstroke while on his route. A homeowner attempted CPR but failed to revive him. Gates’ body temperature at death was 104.6 degrees, and the temperature in Dallas that day was a humid 98 degrees, Joan McCarter noted at Daily Kos (12/11).

The Texas Observer and The Nation reported on the aftermath and “found that in the months following Gates’ death, US [Postal Service] seems to have gone back to business as usual.” That meant letter carriers were still pressured to work faster, log overtime, and not take breaks despite the record-breaking heat of the summer of 2023. They also found that the USPSs “continues to violate the standards of its own Heat Illness Prevention Program (HIPP)—some mail carriers say they have not yet completed training for this program, which would violate the standards of the USPS own HIPP.”

What’s more, the investigation found allegations that in Texas, USPS officials were falsifying records to show that carriers had completed the training when they had not. And it’s not just Texas, according to Politico’s E&E News, which conducted a three-month nationwide investigation “involving hundreds of pages of internal union documents and federal workplace complaints and in interviews with 18 carriers, union officials and experts.”

Gates was one of those carriers who didn’t receive the training, which is intended to alert workers to the signs of heat illness, how to prevent it, and what to do if they start feeling ill. His widow, Carla, along with leaders of the National Association of Letter Carriers, told E&E News that the USPS falsified his records as well, saying he had received the training when he had not. He had also been reprimanded by management just weeks before his death for taking too long to complete his route.

His widow didn’t know about the reprimand at the time of his death but believes that was a factor because he was a veteran, and he was going to follow orders. “Any human being, if they were written up for something, would push themselves after that,” she said. “They should have prepared him for being out there.”

E&E found this pattern in “at least 10 states, including Texas, New Jersey, Utah and Illinois,” with workers not receiving the training and their records being falsified to say that they had. “In Chicago alone, the union alleges postal managers have falsified records of more than 2,000 couriers, pointing to what mail carriers describe as an epidemic of policy violations at a time when global temperatures are soaring,” E&E found. In at least three cases, local officials have admitted that they doctored the records.

E&E also found nearly a decade’s worth of OSHA citations related to heat illness, citations the USPS has been fighting. For example, in a 2016 incident, they hired an expert witness to argue that one carrier’s excess sweating was “not in any way” related to work and his supervisors weren’t at fault for not securing his safety

Meanwhile, in May, the USPS began using trackers in some areas to monitor carriers on their routes, track their movements, and make sure they keep the pace up. This summer, an OSHA inspector in Minnesota reported that while management was telling carriers to take breaks as needed, the carriers said, “[I]t was frowned upon if they did not finish their route,” because their supervisors were under pressure about “numbers and completion of routes daily.”

This is pressure coming from the top, from Postmaster General Louis DeJoy—who should not still be in this job—to deliver faster. Just 10 days after Gino Gates died, supervisors at the Oak Lawn Post Office in Dallas sent out this message to carriers via the scanners they have to carry: “BEAT THE HEAT!!! NO STATIONARY EVENTS,” it said. “KEEP IT MOVING!”

Congress needs to investigate this national problem, and to put the USPS on notice that protecting carrier safety is paramount before the next record-breaking summer heat.

DISARRAY ALERT: HOUSE REPUBLICANS STRUGGLE WITH SLIM MAJORITY AND CHAOS. With the exit of Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the ejection of George Santos and the impending resignation of Rep. Bill Johnson, House Republicans’ bare majority is getting delectably precarious, Kerry Eleveld noted at Daily Kos (12/6).

Daily Kos Elections political director David Nir games it all out, concluding that Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson will likely end up having a two-vote margin of error on any given measure.

Wherever the numbers end up, Republicans’ exceedingly thin majority throughout the 118th Congress has proven to be a blessing in disguise, despite Democrats’ failure to keep the majority last cycle. Rarely, if ever, has America seen a more pathetic display of governance than that offered by House Republicans this Congress. The chaos of multiple leadership battles amid the daily display of internecine warfare within the GOP caucus has been both instructive for voters and good for America heading into, yet again, the most consequential election of our lifetimes.

As former Rep. Liz Cheney bluntly noted, “A vote for Donald Trump may mean the last election that you ever get to vote in. ... People have to recognize that a vote for Donald Trump is a vote against the Constitution.”

Cheney also called the prospect of Mike Johnson still being speaker in 2025 “terrifying” in an interview with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow.

One of the reasons the race for control of the House is so critical is because it’s the 119th Congress that will certify the 2024 election, and House Democrats can serve as a backstop to any Republican election-stealing efforts if Democrats control the chamber.

To the benefit of the pro-democracy side, House Republicans have revealed themselves as completely incapable of leading anything. The message appears to be sinking in, based on Navigator Research polling of roughly 60 battleground districts that will decide control of the House in next year’s elections, with nearly 7 in 10 respondents recently saying Republicans have prioritized “the wrong things.”

In November, pro-Trump Rep. Chip Roy of Texas summed up House Republican rule nicely.

“Explain to me one material, meaningful, significant thing the Republican majority has done,” Roy said during a floor speech.

REPUBLICANS ADVANCE PLAN FORCING TAXPAYERS TO CLEAN UP BIG OIL’S MESS. Fossil fuel industry-funded Republicans on the US House Natural Resources Committee voted (12/6) to advance Rep. Lauren Boebert’s bill that would saddle taxpayers with the massive cost of cleaning up oil and gas wells on federal lands, Jessica Corbett reported at CommonDreams (12/6).

“Corporations awarded a lease to drill on federal land must post a bond. If the leasing corporation abandons an exploration site, goes bankrupt, or fails to plug a well securely, the posted bond covers the cost of doing so,” Public Citizen explained in a statement opposing the proposal.

The Colorado Republican’s Restoring American Energy Dominance Act (HR 6009) would block a proposed rule from the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) revising federal regulations “to update the fees, rents, royalties, and bonding requirements related to oil and gas leasing, development, and production” in line with the Inflation Reduction Act signed by President Joe Biden in 2022.

Based on a BLM review of the costs to plug orphaned wells, the rule—strongly opposed by polluting oil and gas companies—would raise the minimum lease bond amount to $150,000 and the minimum statewide bond to $500,000. It would also end the use of nationwide bonds.

“Without these crucial protections, the oil and gas industry could stick taxpayers with a massive bill of between $2.9 billion and $17.7 billion,” Public Citizen’s Alan Zibel warned in a report published (12/5) in anticipation of the House committee vote.

“We already allow far too much climate-destroying fossil fuel drilling on public lands in Western states,” Zibel added in a statement Wednesday. “The least we can do is ensure taxpayers don’t get stuck subsidizing the fossil fuel industry’s cost of doing business.”

From The Progressive Populist, January 1-15, 2024

Populist.com