Tag: inflation

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Hiding Bad News — But the hand basket is still going to hell

Hiding Bad News

But the hand basket is still going to hell

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

August 14th, 2025

Karoline Leavitt, the stooge tasked with saying things that even El Presidente would be embarrassed to utter, said the other day that monthly job reports may be suspended “until they get the data and methodology in order.”

It’s a bit like suspending climatology reports from NOAA while they investigate to find out if thermometers can really measure temperature. It comes just a couple of weeks after the Trump clown show fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics for issuing a weak jobs report. They want to replace him with a libertarian hack from the Heritage Foundation willing to praise the Glorious Capitalistic Five Year Plan of Noble Leader. Sure. Minus ten percent unemployment! Take that, Obama!

The administration may not notice this little economic tidbit that came out yesterday because it isn’t as easy to understand as the unemployment rate or the inflation index: sales of cardboard shipping boxes dropped last quarter to the lowest level seen since 2001. That, in turn, is a strong indicator of anticipated shipping activity, which in turn is a central indicator of overall economic activity. A drop that big suggests people in charge of shipping are anticipating a sharp downturn.

I suspect that this administration is going to be shutting down every economic metric they can lay their hands on in order to tell reassuring lies about the state of the economy. I expect us to be in a recession by the end of the year (actually sooner, but you need three consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth before you are officially in a recession) and quite possibly in a depression by mid 2026.

Trump and his stooges honestly believe that people who go grocery shopping every week won’t notice inflation, or that more of their friends and neighbors might be out of work. Even sillier is the belief that businesses and factories will play along with fake “sunshine and roses” economic reports even though it’s costing them billions.

In addition to the utterly foolhardy tariffs regime, the Trump administration is working to remove all the economic governors put in place during and after the FDR “New Deal” to stop the economic boom-and-bust cycle. At a time when a move is under way to completely revamp what is taught in America as ‘history,’ the country’s real economic history, already downplayed massively, will probably vanish altogether.

A lot of people these days think of the Great Depression as something of an outlier, something huge and horrible that has been solved by enlightened business practices.

In the days before economic reform produced “the mixed economy” (nowadays called “Democratic Socialism”) depressions occurred every 10-15 years. Each one threw thousands of banks and other businesses out of existence, impoverishing and ruining the lives of millions. While we don’t have the numbers, it’s safe to assume that in any given depression, unemployment reached anywhere from 10 to 25% of the work force. Thousands of mortgages were foreclosed, many farms and small businesses failed. Inflation wasn’t a factor then because the value of the dollar was tied to gold, but it meant recovery was much more gradual and painful. The static value of the dollar CAUSED some depressions!

The New Deal reforms worked. The US went into the era of greatest economic growth in its history between 1934 and 1980, and by the 60s economists were beginning to hope the boom-and-bust cycle, already far milder than it ever had been, might be gone forever. (The math behind that cycle is strikingly similar to the math that explains the caterpillar-like motion of traffic jams.)

Unfortunately, the wealthy became convinced of their own wisdom and infallibility because, after all, they’re rich, aren’t they? In their eyes, it stood to reason that if they got richer, that would prove the system worked, and so let’s lift all those boats, baby! The economic poison of “supply-side economics” (aka “trickle down”) was born. It indisputably lifted the yachts.

The economy still grew, but most of that growth went to the top 1%. This created an imbalance of wealth and power, similar to such imbalances in 1780s France or 1910s Russia.

Such times are referred to as “end-stage capitalism.” The ceaseless concentration of wealth eventually leads to massive melt-downs, economic, social, and political. Most involve government collapse and/or violent revolution.

Trump’s policies are greatly accelerating that process, and like many other vain and foolish plutocrats before him, he hopes he can make the warning signs of the looming catastrophes go away simply by removing the tools used to measure the economy.

It’s a bit like solving climate change by banning the use of thermometers. And Trump is the guy who wanted to ease the COVID crisis by stopping testing.

It won’t work. Government metrics didn’t exist in all the other times of major economic upheaval, but then, people didn’t need them to know food was expensive, jobs were scarce, and everything was going to hell in a hand basket.

Economic convulsions are coming. All Trump is managing is to avoid letting people get any warning when they do come. But he thinks that they won’t notice when it happens because he didn’t tell them.

That will be the death of his movement.

Unfortunately, it could also be the death of many of the rest of us.

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Jerk Release Program — Child rapist 20 year sentence reduced

Jerk Release Program

Child rapist 20 year sentence reduced

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

August 12th, 2025

Just days after Trump’s corrupt lawyer/slash DoJ assistant attorney general met privately with convicted child sex felon Ghislaine Maxwell, then serving twenty years for child rape and child sex trafficking, she got moved to Club Fed, a luxurious minimum security prison reserved only for the nation’s wealthiest and most powerful criminals.

Now Maxwell’s on a work release program. The sort of thing someone gets if they get a speeding ticket and can’t pay the fine.

Frankly, I don’t expect her to live long, and I’m perfectly fine with that. Someone’s going to kill her—one of her nearly a thousand victims, perhaps, or relatives of same. Or one of millions of Americans who feel death is about the correct penalty for child rapists.

Or, of course, at the orders of Donald Trump. There’s a saying, attributed to Arabia, that goes, “It is unwise to know the secrets of a king.” And Maxwell has known Trump extremely well for many decades; there cannot be any possible doubt in her mind as to what a loathsome and vicious creature Trump is, and she also no doubt suspects he had something to do with the death of her partner, Jeffrey Epstein. I’m sure Trump would love to order her murdered.

I have absolutely no doubt that she has tons of evidence of her exploits, and Trump’s role in them, stashed away somewhere very safe and secure, held in abeyance by a “dead man’s switch.” She probably told Todd Blanche, Trump’s fixer, that someone, somewhere, had the files and other evidence, and they would remain hidden only for as long as she stayed alive.

It wouldn’t have worked with the Biden administration because there wouldn’t have been any evidence to incriminate them. While there were doubtless some Democratic politicians who availed themselves of her young charges, none had the power to entrap the US government into such a sleazy and sordid deal as the one Maxwell was able to wrangle with the once-proud Department of Justice. Yes, Clinton is on a lot of people’s lists of perpetrators involved with all this, but he’s been out of office for twenty-five years. There’s very few Democrats who won’t agree that if he was involved, then they should throw his ass in jail, too.

I suspect Trump effectively put the National Capitol under martial law because he knew this work-release was coming, and he wanted to try to distract the public. I think he has very badly miscalculated, based just on the initial responses I’ve seen on line.

Trump’s relations with his cult following were already badly strained before this. Most were betrayed by his flip-flop on the Epstein files, and this is going to blow that deep unease sky-high. It comes at a time when the general public is deeply fed up and disgusted with his incompetence, his cruelty, and his obvious lack of interest in anything other than scamming more money.

The military are deeply unhappy with him. Many suspect—correctly—that he doesn’t have the national interest in mind, and regard this week’s meeting with Putin with serious apprehension. His stunt of imposing federal troops on Washington DC on the transparently false excuse of a crime wave is going to result in American soldiers being taunted and booed by their fellow Americans. Further threats to deploy troops in New York and Chicago, following the fiasco in Los Angeles, have further angered military leadership.

And with the on-again off-again tariffs finally in place, and the farm labor force effectively scared out of the fields, the economy is going to take a huge hit and prices are going to explode. People who were whining about 12% inflation in 2016 better brace for 20% inflation starting now.

The possibility that Trump may be brought down by a coup is increasing to levels not seen in America since the crisis of 1933. That was a time when the economy was in utter collapse, and nearly a third of states were using scrip and barter, because they didn’t expect the dollar to be around for much longer.

People were pissed at the incompetence and lack of willingness by the Hoover administration to fix the economy back then, and it was several years, and one half-assed coup attempt, and a strong economic recovery on the strength of the New Deal, before the government was out of the woods.

Now, we face similar factors, combined with a deep and rapidly growing moral disgust with the government. Trump is every bit as incompetent and ineffectual as the hapless Hoover was, but at least people respected Hoover as a human being. Trump is moral filth, and his followers are now realizing it, and they, and an appalled military, realize that Congress and the Court are too compromised by the moral rot and cowardice to solve the matter.

Trump must go, or America dies. There’s no middle road any more.

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Written with Witt — An expansion on liberal principles

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Written with Witt

An expansion on liberal principles

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

July 30th, 2025

 

Lori Gallagher Witt writes:

I’m a liberal, but that doesn’t mean what a lot of you apparently think it does. Let’s break it down, shall we? Because quite frankly, I’m getting a little tired of being told what I believe and what I stand for. Spoiler alert: not every liberal is the same, though the majority of liberals I know think along roughly these same lines:

Long time readers know that I’ll sometimes take a laundry list of talking points that some right winger has posted, usually in lists of ten. I take that list and address the points in sequence, eviscerating them. Most of the them tend to be pretty mindless, not because the author is stupid, but because the author thinks his target audience is. The results are like shooting fish in a barrel for me. It’s rare that a point is raised that requires pondering, let along ones that require research in order to rebut. It’s the writing equivalent of a cheap date.

Something different appeared this week. A list, written by one Lori Gallagher Witt, and for some reason it has been attributed to Ron Howard, the movie director. While the attribution is plausible—Howard is forthcoming about his opinions and I doubt he would take exception to the contents of the list—Witt is apparently the person deserving of the credit.

While the lists I’ve used in the past are usually grievances and/or utter falsehoods, Witt’s collection is basically a statement of principles; it reflects how she believes our society should be. It’s a very American sort of document, and even in these dark times would have the support of a large majority of people who read it.

Of course, there is a contingent who will declaim the document as being “socialism” or even “communism.” Many are ignorant and brainwashed, and have no idea what either term actually means. (Unfortunately, nobody ever told them what fascism actually is, either) But most are a privileged group who regard efforts at diversity, equality, and inclusion with gimlet eyes and respond with such fear mongering tactics as “if all are equal, nobody is rich” or “your hard work subsidizes the unworthy.” Most aren’t even trying to protect profits—they have simply lost perspective and want to endlessly extend their power and wealth. And every social reform, according to them “costs jobs” or “takes away your job” or “puts the undeserving above you hard-working people.”

So I’m working with a complementary response, wherein I’ll try to give short and effective elaboration on the points that hopefully will aid in convincing others to implement them. It’s one thing to express principles; in the political arena, you have to promote them in such a way that derails the inevitable attacks and provides a foundation for those principles.

Even if you are familiar with Witt’s list and agree with all of it, read on. Hopefully I can provide some ammunition for defending them and deflecting the attacks. Witt’s points are in italics.

1. I believe a country should take care of its weakest members. A country cannot call itself civilized when its children, disabled, sick, and elderly are neglected. PERIOD.

The primary attack on this is that the government will be giving the idle and the poor your hard-earned money. The foundation for that isn’t based on a concern for your well-being, it rests on the basic idea that anyone incapable of contributing to the economy, whether because of age, infirmity, or lack of skills, is of no value. In short, no person is worthwhile if they can’t be monetized. It is the psychotic cruelty of Ayn Rand’s libertarianism, one that devolves to the old slander against Inuits that the elderly should be left on ice floes to die.

2. I believe healthcare is a right, not a privilege. Somehow that’s interpreted as “I believe Obamacare is the end-all, be-all.” This is not the case. I’m fully aware that the ACA has problems, that a national healthcare system would require everyone to chip in, and that it’s impossible to create one that is devoid of flaws, but I have yet to hear an argument against it that makes “let people die because they can’t afford healthcare” a better alternative. I believe healthcare should be far cheaper than it is, and that everyone should have access to it. And no, I’m not opposed to paying higher taxes in the name of making that happen.

I’m always amazed at people who grouse that their taxes might go up a couple of thousand dollars even when it means they save twice that or more in health insurance premiums. For those lucky enough to be working for a large company that provides health insurance as part of your “benefits package” that “luck” comes at a cost; not only is the company using funds that might actually go to your salary, but you’re also absorbing the costs and time needed to deal with the health insurance companies. The company isn’t doing it for free; someone has to pay. You’re being double dipped.

Privatized health coverage is fantastically inefficient. In addition to the 30% in profits the shareholders expect, there’s the fact that every company has their own forms, their own rules, and countless, usually competing, divisions for implementing those. It’s a massive burden on the actual health providers, physicians and hospitals.

In addition, there’s the corporate charter of every insurance company, which requires the company to maximize profits while reducing expenses. YOU, the client, are an expense, so they aren’t doing this for your benefit. Entire divisions are paid to find ways to deny or reduce the benefits you’re already overpaying for.

Universal not-for-profit medicare, conception to grave, would save over a trillion dollars a year. That money would work to your benefit, rather than vanishing into the off-shore accounts of wealthy parasites.

Finally, you would end up with a healthier, longer-lived society.

3. I believe education should be affordable. It doesn’t necessarily have to be free (though it works in other countries so I’m mystified as to why it can’t work in the US), but at the end of the day, there is no excuse for students graduating college saddled with five- or six-figure debt.

Student loans are a huge and vicious racket, second only to health insurance. Basically, it turns the vast majority of people with marketable skills into wage slaves. There’s no escaping the debt, and often the exorbitant interest rates eat up a large part of what normally would be a comfortable salary. Bankruptcy is not permitted. So if someone graduates with $50,000 in annual interest payments and can’t find work that pays six figures, all they can do is watch the debt—and interest on the debt—grow and grow and grow. It’s turned millions of ambitious young lives into nightmares.

Privatized schools are often a racket—remember Trump University—and church-funded schools are an entirely different sort of racket, one that gives religion an unwonted ability to control and suppress young minds. As Witt notes, other countries can provide universal education. There’s no reason America can’t, but for greed and lust for power and control.

4. I don’t believe your money should be taken from you and given to people who don’t want to work. I have literally never encountered anyone who believes this. Ever. I just have a massive moral problem with a society where a handful of people can possess the majority of the wealth while there are people literally starving to death, freezing to death, or dying because they can’t afford to go to the doctor. Fair wages, lower housing costs, universal healthcare, affordable education, and the wealthy actually paying their share would go a long way toward alleviating this. Somehow believing that makes me a communist.

There is a huge difference between “wanting to work” and “being able to work.” The bureau of Labor Statistics lists those unable to work in the following categories: “ill health or disabled; retired; home responsibilities; going to school; could not find work; and other reasons.” That’s a sizable chunk of the population.

Put it this way: right now we have what the economists term “full employment” with the official unemployment rate at 4.1%. But the percent of the overall total population who are employed is 59.7%. That means that under ideal circumstances, the economy humming and booming, over 40% of the population is unable to work. Nor is that unique to America: it’s true of all civilized societies. And with baby boomers retiring coupled with a dropping birthrate (last year was the lowest birthrate in American history) that ratio is going to worsen.

Are we a decent people? Do we understand that people who can’t work aren’t lazy, but just people caught in various human afflictions, be it age, parenting, or infirmity?

Are we a society that exists to serve the economy, or an economy that exists to serve the society? If the latter, expect a great deal of privation and misery and a parasitic class of unimaginable wealth. You know, like France in the 1780s, Russia in the 1910s, or America now.

5. I don’t throw around “I’m willing to pay higher taxes” lightly. If I’m suggesting something that involves paying more, well, it’s because I’m fine with paying my share as long as it’s actually going to something besides lining corporate pockets or bombing other countries while Americans die without healthcare.

Few people know that the average private pension has overhead (mostly administrative costs) ranging from 15-30% of their revenues. Or that about a third of them go bust anyway. Social Security’s administrative costs are less than 1%, and it’s been going strong for nearly a century. It is the greatest deal in American history. Raising the income limit on SS paycheck taxes would ensure it goes on for as long as there is an America. Given the profiting and inefficiency costs of most privatized services, an alternative of raising taxes is almost always a way of saving money. Government has a much higher rate of return than private industry.

6. I believe companies should be required to pay their employees a decent, livable wage. Somehow this is always interpreted as me wanting burger flippers to be able to afford a penthouse apartment and a Mercedes. What it actually means is that no one should have to work three full-time jobs just to keep their head above water. Restaurant servers should not have to rely on tips, multibillion-dollar companies should not have employees on food stamps, workers shouldn’t have to work themselves into the ground just to barely make ends meet, and minimum wage should be enough for someone to work 40 hours and live.

It’s a fact of a capitalist economy that inflation is built in. Without inflation, a necessary mechanism to spur growth is missing. It’s the ultimate ‘necessary evil.’

In 1963, the minimum wage was $1.25. It’s $7.25 in quite a few states now. So if a 40 hour week paid $50 then, to have the same purchasing power today, that paycheck would have to be $530.35, according to the CPI calculator. The minimum wage, just to meet the standards set in 1963 for a lowest-paid full time worker, would be $13.25 an hour!

The CPI tends to understate the actual costs for people on the bottom economic rung. Rents have increased by about 50% over and above the median income since 1980, and close to 300% compared to minimum wage. So someone who might be spending 25% of their paycheck for lodging would be spending 75% now.

The wealthy and corporations were taxed much more heavily. Investors expected a lower, albeit more stable ROI. And the sixties were the greatest economic boom for the working class in economic history! The whole country flourished! The rising tide truly did lift all boats.

Finally, every time the minimum wage has been raised, there has been a surge in economic activity. People with more money to spend will spend it. Against all expectations, restaurants are often the biggest beneficiaries of a minimum-wage hike.

7. I am not anti-Christian. I have no desire to stop Christians from being Christians, to close churches, to ban the Bible, to forbid prayer in school, etc. (BTW, prayer in school is NOT illegal; *compulsory* prayer in school is – and should be – illegal). All I ask is that Christians recognize *my* right to live according to *my* beliefs. When I get pissed off that a politician is trying to legislate Scripture into law, I’m not “offended by Christianity” — I’m offended that you’re trying to force me to live by your religion’s rules. You know how you get really upset at the thought of Muslims imposing Sharia law on you? That’s how I feel about Christians trying to impose biblical law on me. Be a Christian. Do your thing. Just don’t force it on me or mine.

We’re living in an era of religious overreach, one that threatens to turn us into a grubby, corrupt, inefficient and cruel theocracy. While claiming to only be “saving the lives of unborn babies” (philosophical twaddle flat out disputed by their own Bible) they’ve passed a huge volume of laws in various states that abrogate the rights of women to control their lives and their bodies. It was never about children—it was about control. Christian Nationalists are Christian fascists. They’ve always been around, a toxic form of Christianity, and always have been a threat to freedom.

Like government and corporations, religion is a “good servant but a terrible master.” The founders wanted a government responsive to the people that existed to curtail the power of the church and the aristocracy. Not just a wall of separation, but a demand that “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States,” in terms that make it the only phrase in the Constitution that cannot be amended. They believed that everyone has a right to their religion, and that everyone also has a right not to be subject to any religious power.

8. I don’t believe LGBT people should have more rights than you. I just believe they should have the *same* rights as you.

Rights aren’t a zero-sum game. “Letting others have rights” doesn’t detract from your rights. Quite the opposite: if the rights of all are respected, your rights are stronger. If they aren’t, yours are on the chopping block. And no, it’s not up to you: people have those rights, regardless of your opinion. Grow up and recognize that. Note this one: I refer to it two more times further on.

9. I don’t believe illegal immigrants should come to America and have the world at their feet, especially since THIS ISN’T WHAT THEY DO (spoiler: undocumented immigrants are ineligible for all those programs they’re supposed to be abusing, and if they’re “stealing” your job it’s because your employer is hiring illegally). I believe there are far more humane ways to handle undocumented immigration than our current practices (i.e., detaining children, splitting up families, ending DACA, etc).

Calling people “illegals” is a Naziesque phrase revealing a Naziesque mind-set. They haven’t even broken any law coming here, despite what the haters claim. But they DO contribute over a trillion dollars a year to the national GDP, and they do pay taxes because the people employing them don’t want to get in trouble with the IRS. So they’re already getting cheated without small-minded people trying to deny their humanity—or the huge benefit they create for America. Oh, and the crime rate among undocumented aliens is much lower than among native-born Americans.

10. I don’t believe the government should regulate everything, but since greed is such a driving force in our country, we NEED regulations to prevent cut corners, environmental destruction, tainted food/water, unsafe materials in consumable goods or medical equipment, etc. It’s not that I want the government’s hands in everything — I just don’t trust people trying to make money to ensure that their products/practices/etc. are actually SAFE. Is the government devoid of shadiness? Of course not. But with those regulations in place, consumers have recourse if they’re harmed and companies are liable for medical bills, environmental cleanup, etc. Just kind of seems like common sense when the alternative to government regulation is letting companies bring their bottom line into the equation.

Everyone agrees regulations can be a pain in the ass. But nearly everyone has had their lives saved by regulations at various times, many times over. Take autos: there’s all sorts of safety regulations for vehicles, many of which the auto manufacturers fought tooth and nail against, such as seat belts and airbags. In 1921, the first year such statistics were kept, there were 24.09 fatalities for every hundred million vehicle miles traveled. In the most recent year, 2023, there were 1.27 such fatalities. Without safety rules and regulations, the annual death toll could easily be twenty times higher now than it actually is.

As for food safety, just read Upton Sinclair’s “The Urban Jungle.”

11. I believe our current administration is fascist. Not because I dislike them or because I can’t get over an election, but because I’ve spent too many years reading and learning about the Third Reich to miss the similarities. Not because any administration I dislike must be Nazis, but because things are actually mirroring authoritarian and fascist regimes of the past.

Doctor Lawrence Britt in 2003 wrote “The Fourteen Characteristics of Fascism.” I’ve referred to it many times over the twenty years since I first read it. If you haven’t already read it, please do so.

12. I believe the systemic racism and misogyny in our society is much worse than many people think, and desperately needs to be addressed. Which means those with privilege — white, straight, male, economic, etc. — need to start listening, even if you don’t like what you’re hearing, so we can start dismantling everything that’s causing people to be marginalized.

See my reply to point 8.

13. I am not interested in coming after your blessed guns, nor is anyone serving in government. What I am interested in is the enforcement of present laws and enacting new, common sense gun regulations. Got another opinion? Put it on your page, not mine.

If Trump consolidates power, he WILL come for your guns. The clowns who brayed they were America’s “Second Amendment solution” to the rise of a dictatorial regime have gone missing in action now that we actually have one. But all it will take will be one assassination of a member of the Trump regime, and the great clamp-down will begin, and yes, it will be very bloody. But gun owners, spare me your posturing; your chance came, and you chickened out.

14. I believe in so-called political correctness. I prefer to think it’s social politeness. If I call you Chuck and you say you prefer to be called Charles I’ll call you Charles. It’s the polite thing to do. Not because everyone is a delicate snowflake, but because as Maya Angelou put it, when we know better, we do better. When someone tells you that a term or phrase is more accurate/less hurtful than the one you’re using, you now know better. So why not do better? How does it hurt you to NOT hurt another person?

I have no problem with laws designed to prevent bullying, intimidation, or abuse. If you do, you should ask yourself what sort of person you really are.

15. I believe in funding sustainable energy, including offering education to people currently working in coal or oil so they can change jobs. There are too many sustainable options available for us to continue with coal and oil. Sorry, billionaires. Maybe try investing in something else.

Clean energy, and a clean economy, make for efficient energy and economy. The billions the filthy fuels industry spent on lies about climate change and for raising illiterate monsters like Trump aren’t being spent for your benefit. Corporations are not your friend, they are not here to serve you, and they are, by the terms of their charters, psychotic. Giving them trillions of dollars to mold a society to their ends is the height of stupidity. And we subsidize those trillionaires, because without those subsidies, they couldn’t compete with wind and solar. For decades we subsidized them just because they thought it would be nice to have the extra money. They didn’t even need it up until very recently.

16. I believe that women should not be treated as a separate class of human. They should be paid the same as men who do the same work, should have the same rights as men and should be free from abuse. Why on earth shouldn’t they be?

Again, see point 8. Either rights are absolute for all, or they are absolute for none.

“I think that about covers it. Bottom line is that I’m a liberal because I think we should take care of each other. That doesn’t mean you should work 80 hours a week so your lazy neighbor can get all your money. It just means I don’t believe there is any scenario in which preventable suffering is an acceptable outcome as long as money is saved.”

Agreed.

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On the Sunny Side of the Street — Biden and the new New Deal brings about new hope

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

December 16th 2023

www.zeppscommentaries.online

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about why, if the economy is doing so well, a lot of people are sour on it. I discussed the six-pronged attack of the fascist movement designed to strip workers and consumers of power and hand it to corporations and plutocrats: Deregulation; Tax “Reform”; “Tort Reform”; State’s rights; Freedom of (certain) religions; and the Takeover of channels of information by moneyed interests and fascists.

The result is that average people like you and me have been stripped, not just of power and security, but even agency. We have been told for decades that questioning the right of the rich to having it all amounts to treason. I know I’ve been called a communist for arguing for public campaign funding, or improving public schools. I’m sure most of you have, as well.

Dating back to the White Revolution in 1917, the aristocracy have worked hard to utterly control the lot of both employees and shoppers. When their excesses caused the Great Capitalistic Collapse of 1929 (the original Black Friday and subsequent Great Depression) they had to back off from the mess they themselves had created and Franklin Delano Roosevelt was able to implement his New Deal. The result was the strongest and richest economy in the history of the world, since his reforms and the rise of unions help mold a vast middle class, and what I call “demand-side economics,” unlike trickle-down, really did raise all boats—including, paradoxically, the rich.

Unfortunately, the rich tend to be stupid and greedy, and can never understand that ripping off the rest of society undermines their own wealth and power. They would rather have 90% of grinding poverty than 20% of massive abundance. 90% of almost nothing is better than 20% of a lot, right? As I said, stupid and greedy. When a society’s wealth concentrates to a small enough portion of the population, the whole thing implodes. Over and over, throughout history. The Great Depression wasn’t a fluke; it was a built-in design flaw.

Yes, their depredations sour the rest of us. But there are signs that even here, change is coming, and with any luck at all, we won’t need another Great Depression or communist revolution to effect that change.

Workers are taking back their power. Backed by President Biden, unions scored a massive victory when the government implemented a new rule that any company caught tampering or interfering with workers’ efforts to organize would immediately become a union shop. No ifs, ands, or buts. It won’t stop sleazy employers like Amazon or Starbucks, but it will make them a hell of a lot more careful. This NLRB directive (https://www.nlrb.gov/news-outreach/news-story/board-issues-decision-announcing-new-framework-for-union-representation), which got almost no attention at all in the captive corporate press (let alone in the fascist propaganda outlets, except for the Wall Street Journal, who were alarmed!) was hailed by organizers. The NLRB took a victory lap, writing, “The new standard will promote a fair election environment by more effectively disincentivizing employers from committing unfair labor practices.”

Unions are on the rise already, with resounding victories in recent months against the Big Three Auto Makers, American Airlines, Kaiser Permanente, UPS and other delivery services, the LA School District, and Providence Hospitals in Portland, OR. According to the Guardian, “Feeling angry and emboldened, workers have been flexing their muscles. There were 301 strikes in the first nine months of his year, up from 172 over the same period in 2021, according to ILR Labor Action Tracker.” Even Tesla, with some of the worst labor abuses in the world, is in deep trouble, with union sentiment growing not just in the US, but in Europe as well.

This is partially why for the first time in ten years, average wages this year rose faster (4.2%) than the rate of inflation (3.2%).

Democrats in Congress have been pushing to make the ongoing thievery of so-called “contract workers” a thing of the pass. If they gain control next year, expect to see the sleaziest and most abusive outfits either have to give their workers decent pay and rights, or go out of business. (And any outfit that can’t afford even minimum wage and overtime pay needs to go out of business and won’t be missed.)

Consumers are starting to make their voices heard. Biden is still challenging the organized theft and ruination known as ‘student loans’ and bringing pressure to bear on those usurious payday-loan and other predatory outfits. Other protections are taking effect in blue states. I benefited from one such: a medium-sized snow storm caused my solar panels to crash to the ground last March, and the contractor’s response was “Gee, hope you have home owners’ insurance.” But California mandates full warranty of home construction projects for a period of ten years. A friend made me aware of the law (again, not mentioned in the media) and as a result, not only were the panels repaired, but the installation beefed up so as to survive similar storms in the future—at no cost to me.

And another sign of emerging change: the fascists are learning that they cannot lie to us with impunity. Fox News shelled out $787 million in damages for the lies they told about Dominion Voting Systems and the election supposedly being stolen from Trump. (I’m amused how fast Fox gets rid of the lying clowns—including the ex-President—who come on and still try to claim the election was stolen. But then, they have other lawsuits pending for their lies. So do some of the other propaganda outfits). Giuliani just got dinged to the tune of $148 million for defaming and ruining the lives of two election precinct volunteers. Trump himself lost a suit for battery and defamation to E. Jean Carroll, and now faces another suit for $50 for repeating the same lies he told about her that led to the first case.

The United States is willing to fight for its right to exist in the face of the “I-live-America-but-hate-the-US” crowd. Over a thousands individuals participating in the January 6th insurrection have been fined or imprisoned.

Mainstream media, for all its faults, sees the writing on the wall, and some have dropped the pretense that “conservatives” or “libertarians” are anything other than fascists, and are using the word. It’s about time.

Trump, beset on all sides by the fruits of his vile actions, is watching his support slowly erode. You can only lose so much before your followers start noticing and wondering if it really is all a deep-state conspiracy.

The Solstice is coming, and I always write a piece where the central theme is “the sun will be back, don’t lose hope.” Well, I’ve already written the one for this year (and you’ll have to wait until the 21st to read it. Deal), but hope is definitely a factor in discussion about how people feel about living in America today. There is hope, and the reason for the hope gets stronger by the day.

Never lose hope.

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The Economy is Great — Except for 90% of us, that is

The Economy is Great

Except for 90% of us, that is

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

December 4th 2023

www.zeppscommentaries.online

One thing I hear fairly often—and I wager you do, too—is a plaint from liberal and/or Democratic pundits that goes something like this: “The economy is doing great. Unemployment is down, inflation is down, productivity is up, and the stock market is roaring. Why doesn’t Biden get credit for that?”

That’s all true as far as it goes. Part of it is that the media doesn’t much report good news because it’s boring. Having some idiot on Faux News winge that he paid $90 for a turkey is much more entertaining than noting that turkeys cost less than they have in five years. (We paid $23 for ours, and it was a damned good turkey). It’s easier to remember what some overpriced bird cost some overstuffed and self-important pundit than what people’s own turkeys cost in the checkout—or that such things as eggs, milk, and veggies had shown similar declines.

Part of it is a historical oddity in social psychology: societies as a whole become more discontented and restive as things begin to improve. We really are making our way back from the twin disasters of COVID and Trump. The dim light of early dawn is somehow more depressing than the depth of darkness a few hours earlier.

The main part of the answer is in the part of that quote, “productivity is up, and the stock market is roaring.” Both usually come at the expense of middle class people. They aren’t good news for the very people who are most sour on the economy.

The indicators cited really don’t speak to the welfare of the working class. Yes, there are more jobs. But by the standards of other developed nations, they remain shit jobs. Minimum wage remains $7.25 an hour in the most backward states. Most jobs don’t offer health insurance (and shouldn’t—that should be a public sector function). Many offer no vacation time. Maternity benefits remain crappy even as the GOP moves to outlaw abortion and birth control. There’s no job security; in most states an employee can be laid off without warning, and for no reason given. Then there’s the sleazy low-end outfits that call their victims “independent contractors” which eliminates otherwise legally required things such as overtime, minimum wage, or scheduled hours, and the shittiest ones even require their subjects to provide and/or pay for work related items, such as computers. Because regulation was pared down beginning with Reagan, the government does little to combat such abuses as wage theft, cheating employees on overtime, and job safety and health measures. The lowest states are fighting to bring back child labor, an absolute disgrace in what is purportedly the richest country on Earth. Who can love a system that enslaves children but where plutocrats whine loudly about having to pay to provide those children with food? Even in the Confederate south, most slaveowners had more decency than that, and man, is that one fucking low bar!

Even with full employment, 80% of full-time workers have less than $400 in their bank accounts in case of emergency. Most have none, and are skipping meals to pay rent, feed the kids, and pay $150 a month for TV so rich assholes can pontificate to them about how good they have it, riding on the backs of beleaguered billionaires.

Plutocrats spend billions on that propaganda, and on the legalized bribery of elected officials to push the notion that only they are deserving and that the poor are nothing but a burden. Faux News has spent billions and billions of dollars persuading us that single mothers on welfare are the problem and carefully don’t mention the thousand or so billionaires who have been dismantling the economic system and raping it to death.

The Koch brothers tried rebranding fascism as “Libertarian Party” and when that failed, simply started taking over the once-sane GOP and populating it with the same broken and twisted creatures and fought so hard against civil rights, worker rights, compassion or fairness, beginning with Donald Trump. Those crazy bastards that have paralyzed Congress didn’t come out of nowhere; they were homegrown by the fascistic plutocracy. Most of the mainstream media is owned by corporate entities that are part of this same cabal, and they lean heavily on their “journalistic” outlets to complain that the problems are liberalism and throwing money at social problems, and not Wall Street types dismantling, destroying, and packaging out once-useful companies. Look at what Musk has deliberately done to destroy Twitter, once a semi-respectable source of information. Everyone has tales to tell of good companies that provided decent jobs and good service that fell apart after being bought out by some semi-anonymous hedge fund entity.

Most people sense the system is deeply flawed and purposefully broken. And the very worst problems remain unaddressed.

This attack on the US has been going for decades, and featured six major prongs by the interests that wanted to create a power vacuum by destroying the peoples’ government:

Deregulation: lots of whines about the burden of regulation that somehow failed to create the richest and most powerful country on Earth. Now we have deregulation. Feeling particularly rich or powerful now? Ninety-nine percent of you will say no.

Tax Reform: AKA trickle down, or supply side. Top tax brackets fell from 90% to 20%. Working people made up a bit of the difference. But we’re still $23 trillion in the hole. It wasn’t school lunches for kids that caused that: it was billionaires cheating the country.

Tort Reform: essentially makes it impossible for regular people to sue major corporations.

State’s rights: take power from the federal government and give it to corrupt, petty, venal states like Mississippi or Louisiana. Gape in amazement as civil rights vanish along with worker rights and environmental protections.

Freedom of religion: Make pets out of gullible zealots and promise to let them inflict their idolatry on others in return for their votes. Notice that you aren’t free from religions you don’t believe in any more?

Combine liberalism and social justice with communism and other authoritarian regimes in the public mind. Spend billions on propaganda to promote this and all the other prongs.

It all leads to plutocratic authoritarianism.

A lot of people, including one of the main architects of this attack, David Koch, have looked at Donald Trump and his followers, and the vicious excesses of the so-called Christian Right, and realized that, in line with historical precedent, their movement has attracted a dark element of broken and twisted creatures who revel in the suffering of others and live only to serve their masters and share a few crumbs from the table. Scratch a strutting and bellicose MAGAt and find a cold concentration camp prison guard, or the block party commissar.

Fascist regimes, like theocratic regimes, begin as cruel and incompetent, and go downhill from there.

I’m not sure it can be reversed. But it must be if we are to avoid the fate of such regimes.

But even though Biden can’t wave a magic wand and fix all these things, he at least wants to. And you can bet your life (and you probably are) that Trump and his lot in the GOP will only make things worse.

You want a decent job that pays for a good home, security and decent medical care? Reject the GOP.

And yes, that includes people who cheered for that six pronged attack and expected a sane outcome. The dream is over. Time to wake up.

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