Dispatches

CONSERVATIVE THINK TANK FINDS TRUMP PLANS WOULD WRECK SOCIAL SECURITY. Republican nominee Donald Trump’s claim that he wants to “fight for and protect Social Security” was called into further question after a conservative think tank analysis projected that the former president’s economic proposals and mass deportation plan would significantly damage the New Deal program’s finances, Jake Johnson noted at CommonDreams.org (10/21).

The new analysis from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) specifically focuses on Trump’s proposals to end taxes on tips and corporate bonuses, Social Security benefits, and overtime pay; implement sweeping tariffs on imports; and launch what he’s described as the “largest domestic deportation operation in American history.”

The think tank projected that, if enacted, Trump’s agenda would “increase Social Security’s 10-year cash shortfall by $2.3 trillion through FY 2035” and “lead to a 33% across-the-board benefit cut in 2035, up from the 23% [the Congressional Budget Office] projects under current law.”

Trump’s plans would also “increase Social Security’s annual shortfall by roughly 50% in FY 2035” and “advance insolvency by three years, from FY 2034 to FY 2031.”

“Trump has said he would close Social Security’s long-term shortfall by increasing drilling for oil and natural gas and by growing the economy,” the analysis notes. “However, we’ve shown that increased energy exploration is unlikely to have a meaningful effect on Social Security—even if the gains were deposited into the trust fund. We’ve also shown that it would require unrealistically fast economic growth to close Social Security’s existing long-term funding gap.”

Social Security Works, a progressive advocacy group that supports expanding the New Deal program, highlighted CRFB’s analysis in a social media post on Oct. 21, writing, “Donald Trump plans to slash $2.3 TRILLION from Social Security while giving massive tax handouts to Wall Street billionaires.” (The Social Security Works Political Action Committee has endorsed Democratic nominee Kamala Harris for the presidency.)

Max Richtman, president and CEO of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare—which endorsed Harris in July—said it is “not surprising that Donald Trump’s ill-conceived plans would devastate the financial health of Social Security and lead to huge benefit cuts.”

“Trump’s plans are of a piece with his overall recklessness with Social Security. He suspended the payroll tax that funds the program during COVID—and hoped it would be eliminated,” said Richtman. “His White House budgets would have slashed Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) by billions of dollars. He said earlier this year that he was ‘open’ to ‘cutting entitlements,’ then tried to walk it back. He once called Social Security a ‘Ponzi Scheme.’ Time and again, Trump has chosen political expediency without considering—or caring about—the consequences. Despite his posturing, Donald Trump is no friend to Social Security or American seniors.”

According to the latest report from Social Security’s Board of Trustees, the program is currently positioned to fully pay all benefits and administrative costs until 2035. Thereafter, even if Congress does nothing to shore up the program, it would be able to pay 83% of scheduled benefits.

To bring in more revenue and ensure Social Security’s solvency through the end of the century, progressives in Congress have called for raising or scrapping the payroll tax cap, which allows the rich to stop contributing to the program just weeks into each year while ordinary Americans pay year-round.

The Harris campaign has broadly signaled support for that approach, saying in its economic policy platform that the Democratic nominee would “shore up Social Security and Medicare so that these essential programs will stay solvent in the long run by making corporations and the wealthiest Americans pay their fair share in taxes.”

TRUMP AND HIS ALLIES TRY TO RALLY EARLY VOTE, WHILE CRYING FRAUD. Once again, Donald Trump is trying to have it both ways: falsely claiming that Democrats will commit election fraud while also telling his own supporters to go … vote in the election. But unlike in 2020, Trump is now encouraging people to vote by mail, a voting method he has long criticized, Morgan Stephens noted at DailyKos (9/21).

“Christians must register to VOTE now,” Trump posted on X on Oct. 21, including a link to a website called Swamp the Vote, which is paid for by the Republican National Committee. The page includes a video of Trump telling viewers they “must use every appropriate tool available to beat the Democrats. … Whether you vote early, absentee, by mail, or in person, we are going to protect the vote.”

This vote-by-mail push comes despite Trump’s lies about mail-in voting. Ahead of the 2020 presidential election, he called mail-in voting a “disaster” and falsely accused it of being “substantially fraudulent.”

However, Trump also pushed vote-by-mail in a post on his Truth Social platform on Oct. 21, telling Pennsylvanians the deadlines to request and return mail-in ballots in their state.

So which is it? Is he saying that voting is rigged or that it’s secure? (Of course, in reality, it is secure, with no sign of widespread voter fraud.)

This year, Trump and the Republican Party are hedging their bets, priming their base for supposed “fraud” (i.e., Trump losing) amid polls that show a neck-and-neck race between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. And so far? The base seems to be buying it. Republicans are more likely to trust Trump about election results than they are the government or news outlets, according to a recent poll from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and USAFacts.

Worse, according to data from the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute, 19% of Republicans believe that if Trump loses, he should declare the results invalid and “do whatever it takes” to get into office. And while 12% of Democrats troublingly say the same thing about what Harris should do, only one of the two candidates has a history of trying to overturn election results to hold onto power.

TRUMP ALSO WANTS TO DESTROY AMERICAN EDUCATION SYSTEM Donald Trump said on Oct. 18 that schools that teach the accurate history of slavery and racism’s role in America should not receive funding from the federal government, Oliver Willis noted at DailyKos (10/20).

Trump’s statement on education policy came during a friendly interview with the hosts of “Fox & Friends” on the conservative Fox News, continuing Trump’s trend of appearing before sympathetic audiences. He also mentioned dismantling the Department of Education.

During a discussion about allowing states to determine educational priorities with minimal federal oversight, co-host Brian Kilmeade asked Trump what would happen if a “liberal city” decided to teach history that said, “this is America, built off the backs of slaves, on stolen land.”

“Then we don’t send them money,” Trump replied.

The forced labor of enslaved Black people was a key factor in America becoming an economic powerhouse, and land was forcibly and systematically taken away from the Native American population by European colonists to build the United States. These are historical facts that are a part of U.S. history.

Trump’s dismissal of historic abuses is in line with his history of praising the pro-slavery Confederacy and arguing in favor of historical monuments and building names that honor the Confederate movement.

During his time as president and after, Trump and other Republicans have attacked education programs that seek to inform students about the role discrimination based on race, gender, and sexual orientation has played in American history.

In another education-related statement, Trump also told the “Fox & Friends” hosts that he is in favor of dismantling the federal Department of Education.

“We’re moving it all out of Washington, and we’re going to let the states run the schools,” Trump said. “Department of Education, I’m going to have one person working there, maybe with a secretary.”

Trump also said that he wanted to limit schools to teaching English and teaching “reading, writing and arithmetic, not transgender.”

His policy prescription is directly out of the Project 2025 agenda, which calls for dismantling the existing federal education infrastructure and ceding control of local school curricula to right-wing interests. The National Education Association described the plan as a strategy to “deny our most vulnerable students the resources they need to succeed.”

Additionally, the NEA said the plan would “gut federal education funding, sanction discrimination against LGBTQ+ students, divert taxpayer funds to private schools, and codify book bans and classroom censorship on a national level. That’s just the beginning.”

Trump has attempted to distance himself from Project 2025 but his endorsement of the plan​​—which was formulated by a group consisting of many of his former subordinates and current allies—further ties him to the initiative.

CENTRAL PARK 5 SUE TRUMP FOR DEFAMATION. The men once known as the Central Park Five—five men who were wrongfully convicted of rape and assault over 30 years ago—filed a lawsuit against Donald Trump on Monday in federal court, alleging the former president acted with “reckless disregard” for the truth when he attacked them during the presidential debate in September, Emily Singer noted at DailyKos (10/21).

At the debate, Vice President Kamala Harris attacked Trump for his history of racism, bringing up the fact that he refused to apologize for calling for the death penalty for the men—Antron Brown, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana, Korey Wise and Yusef Salaam—even after they were exonerated in the 1989 rape and assault of a jogger in Central Park. The five men, now known as the Exonerated Five, had their convictions vacated in 2002, after another man confessed to the crime and DNA evidence confirmed it.

Trump responded to Harris’ comments about the Exonerated Five at the debate by defending himself for taking out full-page ads in New York City newspapers that called for the men to receive the death penalty.

“They admitted, they said they pled guilty and I said, ‘Well, if they pled guilty, they badly hurt a person, killed a person ultimately ... And they pled guilty, then they pled not guilty,” Trump said at the debate.

But none of the five men ever pleaded guilty to the raping and beating of the female jogger. And none of the men were ever convicted of murder, as the victim in the Central Park jogging case did not die.

“Defendant Trump’s statements were false and defamatory in numerous respects,” attorneys for the five men wrote in the lawsuit. “Plaintiffs never pled guilty to the Central Park assaults. Plaintiffs all pled not guilty and maintained their innocence throughout their trial and incarceration, as well as after they were released from prison.”

“Defendant Trump falsely stated that Plaintiffs killed an individual and pled guilty to the crime,” the lawsuit added. “These statements are demonstrably false.”

In the lawsuit, attorneys for the men brought up Trump’s long history of lobbing false attacks, saying his comments at the debate were “part of a continuing pattern of extreme and outrageous conduct dating back several years, thus constituting a continuing tort.”

Members of the Exonerated Five spoke at the Democratic National Convention in August, where they slammed Trump for his history of lies and racial division.

“Forty-five wanted us unalive. He wanted us dead,” Salaam, who is now a member of the New York City Council, said in his remarks at the DNC, referring to Trump. “Today we are exonerated because the actual perpetrator confessed and DNA proved it. [Trump] says he still stands by the original guilty verdict. He dismisses the scientific evidence rather than admit he was wrong. He has never changed, and he never will.”

“That man thinks that hate is the animating force in America,” Salaam added. “It is not.”

TRUMP NEEDS NIKKI HALEY, BUT HE CAN’T STOP HATING ON HER. Donald Trump’s campaign is reportedly in talks with frenemy Nikki Haley to stage an event together, amid his poor numbers with women voters and general misogyny. And on Friday, Trump was asked on “Fox & Friends” about enlisting Haley, the former ambassador to the United Nations whom he called “birdbrain.”

“Let me just tell you,” Trump said. “Nikki Haley and I fought, and I beat her by 50, 60, 90 points. I beat her in her own state by numbers that nobody’s ever been beaten by. I beat Nikki badly,” Walter Einenkel noted at DailyKos (10/18).

Trump then complained that nobody ever asks him about Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Trump’s other main rival during the Republican presidential primaries.

“And they keep talking about Nikki, Nikki. I like Nikki,” he said. “Nikki, I don’t think she should have done what she did. And that’s fine that she did it. But even in her own state, in South Carolina, where she was the governor, I beat her by a number that nobody ever heard, like 50 points or something.” (For the record, he beat her by 20 points.)

During the interview, Trump inadvertently fed the narrative of his erratic and seemingly diminishing cognitive state, offering up this strange set of thought-dots:

TRUMP: “And then they say, ‘Oh, when is Nikki coming back in?’ And Nikki is in. Nikki is helping us already. But it’s just, people keep saying, ‘When do you bring—‘ They don’t say when you bringing this one. Everybody is in. And Nikki is already in. You know, she’s out campaigning and Elon Musk is campa— Look, I watched a rocket ship land four days ago.”

“FOX & FRIENDS” HOST STEVE DOOCY: “That was stunning!”

Stunning, indeed!

In May, when Haley endorsed the man she’d previously described as “unstable and unhinged,” it was disappointing but not surprising. Just as unsurprising was how Trump treated the news—and her—with the same dismissive, misogynistic condescension that repels the women he needs to vote for him. Nothing has changed.

BOEING UNION WORKERS WIN CONTRACT WITH 35% WAGE HIKE. Striking union members who work for the aerospace giant Boeing reached a tentative contract agreement after nearly six weeks on the picket line demanding better wages and benefits, Jon Queally reported at CommonDreams.org (10/19).

The International Association of Machinists (IAM) and Aerospace Workers District 751, which has been on strike since Sept. 13, announced the breakthrough in a statement and Boeing also confirmed that a deal had been reached.

The tentative agreement—which will have to receive a majority from union members before finalized—includes a 35% wage increase over four years of the contract, a larger signing bonus of $7,000, guaranteed minimum payouts in a new annual bonus program, and increased contributions to worker 401(k) retirement plans.

“With the help of Acting U.S. Secretary of Labor Julie Su, we have received a negotiated proposal and resolution to end the strike, and it warrants presenting to the members and is worthy of your consideration,” IAM’s negotiating committee said in a message to members.

The union said it plans to hold a ratification vote as early as Oct. 23 and that a 50%+1 majority is all that’s needed to approve the deal.

“The fact the company has put forward an improved proposal is a testament to the resolve and dedication of the frontline workers who’ve been on strike—and to the strong support they have received from so many,” the machinists union said.

“Like many workers in America, IAM members at Boeing have sacrificed greatly for their employer, including during the pandemic when these workers were reporting to the factory as executives stayed at home,” they wrote. “These workers deserve to have all of those sacrifices recognized.”

HARRIS EDGES OUT TRUMP ON KEY ECONOMIC QUESTiONS, NEW POLL SHOWS. Donald Trump has lost his advantage over Kamala Harris on who is best qualified to manage the economy, new polls suggest.

With millions of voters already casting early ballots for the presidency ahead of Nov. 5 election day, a new Associated Press/NORC poll says Harris (D) has taken a slight lead when it comes to key economic questions that concern middle-class voters, Robert Tait reported at The Guardian (10/21).

The finding consolidates a trend from the the same poll in September, which showed Harris had almost closed a previously large deficit with Trump, the former US president and Republican nominee, on who could best handle economic issues. The economy consistently tops voters’ priority list.

The latest poll asked more detailed questions than the previous survey, concluding that 46% prefer Harris’s policies on taxes for the middle class, compared to 35% for Trump. The US vice-president also has a slight edge on the cost of housing, while voters are evenly split on which of the pair has the better policies on the prices of groceries and gas, and creating jobs or addressing unemployment.

The boost to Harris comes even as a majority of voters, 62%, believe the economy is in poor condition, compared with 38% who say the opposite. The outlook is more positive than in October last year, when nearly three in four people said the economy was in poor shape.

The Trump campaign has long sought to make inflation and rising living costs a focal point of its critique of Joe Biden’s presidency. Harris, since replacing Biden as the Democrats’ nominee in July, has launched a counteroffensive that involves putting proposals for an “opportunity economy” at the heart of her campaign message – including a pledge to give first-time buyers $25,000 towards a down payment on a new home.

TRUMP USED D.C. HOTEL TO ENRICH HIMSELF, FLEECE TAXPAYERS WHILE PRESIDENT, PROBE CONCLUDES. Democrats on the House Oversight and Accountability Committee on Oct. 18 published a staff report detailing how, while in office, former U.S. President Donald Trump—the 2024 Republican nominee—used his Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. to enrich himself with hundreds of illegal or questionable payments from federal and state officials, job-seekers, and presidential pardon recipients, Brett Wilkins noted at CommonDreams.org (10/18).

The report, “Room Rates May Vary: How Donald Trump Violated the Constitution by Fleecing Taxpayers With Unlawful and Exorbitant Hotel Charges,” was released by Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), who in 2021 managed Trump’s historic second impeachment for inciting the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol insurrection.

Offering “a glimpse into President Trump’s domestic emoluments rackets,” the publication accuses the former president of violating the Constitution’s Domestic Emoluments Clause “as he used the Secret Service as his personal ATM and repeatedly took payments that raise the specter of pay-to-play corruption from individuals who sought and, in many cases obtained, favors from the commander-in-chief.”

“From the time he became a candidate and launched his campaign as ‘the greatest infomercial in political history,’ Donald Trump has used the presidency—and his yearslong pursuit of it—as the world’s greatest get-rich-quick scheme,” the report states.

“Earlier this year, the Democratic staff of the Committee on Oversight and Accountability released a staff report documenting the nearly $8 million former President Trump received through just four of his businesses and over just parts of a two-year period from at least 20 foreign governments that sought—and in many cases received—favors from the Trump administration,” the report notes.

“This figure is clearly just a fraction of the total amount of unconstitutional foreign emoluments President Trump collected while in office—a total that still needs to be fully accounted for,” the paper contends.

Documents from Trump’s former accounting firm revealed that businesses owned by the former president received payments from at least 20 foreign governments during his White House term, including over $5.5 million from China, $615,422 from Saudi Arabia, $465,744 from Qatar, and $303,372 from Kuwait.

The new report continues:

“This follow-up report is based on a single set of records: guest logs for a single Trump property, Donald Trump’s Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., covering just an 11-month period between September 2017 and August 2018 (excluding July 2018). Thus, the results would presumably represent less than one-quarter of Trump’s ill-gotten gains from a single hotel over the course of his four-year term. While this is an exceedingly small window into the opaque web of more than 500 corporations, limited liability companies, and trusts that Donald Trump carried with him into the presidency, it is enough to reveal hundreds of unconstitutional and ethically suspect payments he accepted while in office from domestic sources—including a federal agency, numerous federal and state officials, and individuals who sought, and frequently obtained, federal offices as well as presidential pardons from him.”

“The Constitution makes clear: Beyond a salary, the president may not receive any additional payments from federal or state governments,” Raskin said in a statement. “This is a non-waivable prohibition against exploiting the office to convert and pocket public funds.”

“While we still do not know the full extent of the unconstitutional payments Trump pocketed while fleecing American taxpayers, one thing is certain: We must put legal barriers in place now to prevent the kind of ripoff corruption our Founding Fathers so strongly opposed,” Raskin added. “Given the need to enforce the U.S. Constitution against both foreign and domestic emoluments corruption, in the coming days, I will work with my Democratic colleagues on a legislative fix and hope that my Republican colleagues will join us in this effort.”

The report notes that “Trump was very clear that he did not believe that the Constitution’s prohibitions on either foreign or domestic emoluments applied to him. For example, in 2019, when public outrage forced him to reverse his plan to hold the following year’s G7 summit at his ‘foundering Doral resort,’ he publicly denigrated what he called the ‘phony Emoluments Clause.’”

“And far from expressing contrition for cashing in on the presidency, Donald Trump has made explicit his intent to expand his commodification of federal office if re-elected—including by gutting the federal civil service and replacing professional, expert, nonpolitical federal employees with a cadre of yes-men, sycophants, and loyalists,” the paper adds.

BIG OIL DISHES OUT RECORD $54.2 MILLION TO BOOST GOP CANDIDATES. The fossil fuel industry has pumped a record sum this election cycle into a pair of super PACs dedicated to securing GOP control of the House and retaking the narrowly Democratic Senate Nov. 5, the investigative outlet Sludge reported (10/17).

Citing Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings made public earlier this week, Sludge noted that oil and gas giants such as Chevron and ConocoPhillips as well as the American Petroleum Institute—the industry’s largest lobbying group—donated more than $20 million total to the Congressional Leadership Fund (CLF) and the Senate Leadership Fund (SLF) in the third quarter of 2024, Jake Johnson noted at CommonDreams.org (10/17)

“The latest wave of donations brings the fossil fuel industry’s total to more than $54.2 million given to the CLF and SLF during the 2023-24 election cycle through September, according to Sludge’s analysis,” the outlet reported. “The two super PACs have launched tens of millions of dollars of ads in the month before Election Day, with control of both chambers of Congress up for grabs.”

The new analysis of Big Oil’s spending in the final stretch of the 2024 campaign came months after Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump urged major fossil fuel industry players to raise $1 billion for his White House bid. In exchange, Trump—who has campaigned on the slogan “drill, baby, drill”—said he would work to roll back climate rules put in place by the Biden-Harris administration.

One watchdog group called on the FBI and Department of Justice to investigate Trump’s offer as possible criminal bribery, and congressional Democrats are currently probing what they described as the former president’s “quid pro quo solicitations.”

According to OpenSecrets, the oil and gas industry has spent over $152 million on campaign contributions this election cycle, with over 88% of that total going to Republican candidates.

The Washington Post reported in August that Harold Hamm, the billionaire founder of Continental Resources, “has become Trump’s point person in raising funds from oil industry donors and relaying to the ex-president what the industry wants.”

So far, the industry has given over $21 million to Trump’s campaign committee and PACs supporting his candidacy, and Big Oil lawyers are already reportedly drawing up executive orders for him to sign should he defeat Democratic nominee Kamala Harris next month.

The newly released FEC filings show that Trump’s campaign has also received a substantial fundraising boost in recent months from just a handful of billionaires, including Tesla CEO and X owner Elon Musk and Energy Transfer Partners chair Kelcy Warren.

Joshua Graham Lynn, CEO of the anti-corruption group RepresentUs, said in a statement Thursday that “the latest super PAC filings show that a handful of billionaires are spending staggering amounts of money to influence the outcome of our elections.”

“In 2010, the courts opened the floodgates for individuals and corporations to spend unlimited amounts of money on our elections,” Lynn said, alluding to the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling. “It’s no coincidence that American politics has grown more and more polarized and divisive since then. Our system is broken, and we won’t be able to fix it until we eliminate the influence of money in politics and root out the corruption that comes with it.”

From The Progressive Populist, November 15, 2024

Populist.com