The Coffee Klatch with Robert Reich

Friends,

My good wishes to you on this Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.

I live in California, near the coast. Since the week after Christmas, we have been pummeled by eight “atmospheric rivers,” a weather phenomenon that summons moisture into a powerful band and then unleashes intense blasts of precipitation.

The stream next to my house has become a river and some of the roads I rely on are impassible. I’m one of the lucky ones. At least 19 people have died as storms continue to cause widespread flooding, mudslides and power outages. Another storm is hitting today. Millions of Californians are under a flood watch.

Among the most vulnerable are low-income people who live in fragile structures or are homeless, disproportionately people of color. We don’t talk nearly enough about the consequences of climate change for the most vulnerable among us. If Martin Luther King, Jr. were alive today, I’m sure he would be.

Why is the media so tentative about attributing the devastation here in California to climate change at all? Or the climate havoc all over America, and the world?

Saturday’s New York Times front-page story about what’s happening now in California didn’t even mention the words “climate change” until the 26th paragraph, the third from the last. Even then it didn’t blame man-made climate change but referred obliquely to climate scientists who “say” climate change “amplifies normal extremes” of drought and flooding.

A review of coverage by national TV news in the weeks after the storms began found that (with one exception) cable news and national broadcast networks failed to link California’s devastating storms to the global climate crisis.

It’s as if we’re living in two worlds carrying separate stories — in one, stories about the devastation occurring all around us; in another, stories about the findings and solemn warnings of climate scientists. Why aren’t they the same story, including the perils suffered by the most vulnerable?

To be sure, it's difficult to directly attribute specific storms to climate change. Meteorology isn’t precise when it comes to causes and effects. But is there any doubt that the Earth is warming due to human causes, resulting in more extreme weather exactly of the sort we’ve been experiencing on the West Coast?

Climate change did not directly produce the raging water that pulled a five-year-old boy from his mother’s arms as he was on his way to school in San Luis Obispo County last Monday, of course, but climate change was obviously behind this tragedy — as it’s been behind so many other tragedies that have been faithfully reported but whose underlying cause is being ignored or reported in the 26th or so paragraph.

I understood years ago why editors, publishers, and TV producers were reluctant to wade into the political fight over climate change. It was too charged, too partisan, too many facts were in dispute, and Republicans were adamant in their refusal to concede that human-created climate change posed a clear and present danger. The media were content to report on climate catastrophes and leave the debate up to the politicians.

But now? There’s no longer any legitimate dispute. News outlets have no excuse for temerity in connecting tragic weather events to the undeniable, violent changes in the Earth’s weather. It’s like journalists who report on the high rate of homicides in America without mentioning how easy it is to get guns in this country, or the reporters during the early stages of Trump’s presidency who didn’t want to come right out and say he lied. A failure to make such clear connections is itself misleading.

Each climate calamity we endure is another learning opportunity for the nation to understand the existential threat of climate change and why we must take the lead in reversing it. For the media to avoid talking about it is a loss for democracy.

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Welcome back to my Saturday coffee klatch with Heather Lofthouse, executive director of Inequality Media Civic Action (and my former student). In response to our discussion last week about work and family — and our New Year’s resolutions for how to better balance them — many of you asked how we actually spend our days. So that’s the topic of today’s klatch. (We’ll return to politics, economics, and all the other big topics next week.)

Please grab a cup and pull up a chair. And also take our poll.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit robertreich.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome back to my Saturday coffee klatch with Heather Lofthouse, executive director of Inequality Media Civic Action (and my former student), where we usually talk about the highs and low of the prior week. But with the new year just beginning and House Republicans tied up in knots, we thought we’d make today’s klatch a bit more personal: How we and others we know are trying to both do our work and still have a life.

Grab a cup and pull up a chair.

And please be sure to take our poll and add your comments.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit robertreich.substack.com/subscribe

Friends,

Welcome to the challenges of 2023. Today I want to talk about one of the first.

When the 118th Congress is sworn in tomorrow, Republicans will hold very narrow control of the House — 222 seats to the Democrat’s 213.

The first thing they’ll do is vote for the next Speaker (who’ll determine the agenda for the House, what bills make it to the floor, the fate of critical legislation such as spending bills, and the House’s negotiating positions with Senate leaders and the White House).

The most likely is the current Republican House Leader, Kevin McCarthy. He could squeak by with 218 votes, a bare majority of House members. But if just 5 Republicans vote against him, he won’t make it. (Technically, he could be elected with fewer than 218 votes if he persuades Republican lawmakers who don’t want to vote for him to instead vote “present” or to miss the vote entirely.)

To get the votes he needs, McCarthy will have to cozy up to the MAGA “Freedom Caucus,” which includes bizarro extremists like South Carolina's Ralph Norman (who as late as January 17, 2021 urged Trump to invoke martial law), Andy Biggs of Arizona, Ohio's Jim Jordan, Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, Paul Gosar of Arizona, Georgia's Marjorie Taylor Greene, Colorado’s Lauren Boebert, and some 30 others, none of whom you’d want to invite to dinner.

For their support, the Freedom Caucus is demanding that any member be able to call a vote at any time to oust McCarthy (a “motion to vacate the chair”) if he strays from their hard MAGA line. (Under current rules, only party leaders can bring such a motion.)

Which would put McCarthy on a very short leash controlled by the Freedom Caucus (with Trump indirectly controlling them).

In effect, Trump and the Freedom Caucus would call many of the shots — on committee assignments, investigations (Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, the FBI), and key issues like raising the debt ceiling (they’ll demand that McCarthy refuse — imperiling the credit of the United States and catapulting the nation into an economic crisis). 

Does this mean the rest of us have to sit back and allow a tiny minority of extreme rightwing MAGA House Republicans controlled by Donald Trump to hijack congressional Republicans, who in turn will hijack the entire House, and thereby much of Congress?

No. There’s an alternative, and I urge House Democrats and the few remaining “moderate” Republicans to take it: Make Ohio’s Republican Rep. David Joyce the Speaker of the House.

House Dems and moderate Republicans could come up with the 218 votes to put Joyce over the top.

Why Joyce? He’s the new chairman of the Republican Conference Group, a group you probably never heard of (years ago it was called the “Tuesday Group”) because it flies under the radar. It’s a collection of the remaining 40 or so Republican moderates. I say “moderate” only in comparison to the rest of the Republican House. The Conference Group at least wants the government to function.

Joyce would be acceptable to most current Republican representatives, even though the Freedom Caucus won’t want anything to do with him. During Trump’s presidency, he voted in line with Trump's stated position 91.8% of the time. And he voted against impeaching Trump for his role in the Jan. 6 insurrection. In other words,

But Joyce is not a MAGA Republican. He refused to sign the Texas amicus brief that tried to overturn the results of the presidential election. He was also one of the few Republican House members who did not object to the counting of electoral college votes on January 6, 2021.

Since Biden became president, Joyce has voted in line with Biden’s positions over 30 percent of the time. He was one of 35 Republicans who joined all Democrats in approving legislation to establish the January 6 commission to investigate the storming of the US Capitol. He and 46 other Republicans voted for the Respect for Marriage Act, codifying the right to same-sex marriage in federal law.

Overall, Joyce’s politics are similar to Democratic Senator Joe Manchin’s. “Everybody’s a Joe Manchin,” Joyce said a few weeks ago.

Joyce wants to keep swing-district Republicans out of the harm’s way coming from the Freedom Caucus and other MAGA conservatives. He saw what happened to Ohio Republican candidates viewed as too close to Trump’s MAGA wing: The state’s House delegation shrank from an eight-member edge for Republicans to just five because voters rejected several MAGA GOP candidates. “There’s some exotics that like chaos, they thrive in chaos because that’s how they get the media,” Joyce told the Washington Post.

Given that the likeliest alternative will be a Speaker McCarthy beholden to the Freedom Caucus, Joyce should be Speaker — and he could be if House Democrats support him.

I urge them to do so.

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My friends,

It has been quite a year. Some of the regressive forces undermining our democracy, polluting our planet, widening inequality, and stoking hatred have been pushed back. This is a worthy accomplishment and cause for celebration. It offers hope that the Trump years are behind us and the hard work of building a decent society can resume.

But this is no time for complacency. No one should assume that the battle has been won. The anti-democracy movement is still fulminating. Trump is still dangerous. Corporate malfeasance continues. The climate catastrophe is worsening. Inequality is widening. Reproductive rights have been dealt a major setback. The haters and bigots have not retreated.

These regressive forces have many weapons at their disposal — lobbyists, money to bribe lawmakers, giant media megaphones, the most rightwing Supreme Court since the 1930s, a GOP that has lost all moral bearings and, starting soon, a Republican-controlled House of Representatives.

But their most powerful weapon is cynicism. They’re betting that if they can get most of us to feel like we can’t make a difference, we’ll stop fighting. Then they can declare total victory.

We must keep up the fight.

Here’s the thing to keep in mind. Notwithstanding setbacks, we are better today than we were fifty years ago, twenty years ago, even a year ago.

We’ve strengthened labor rights and LGBTQ rights. Most Americans are intent on strengthening women’s rights and civil rights. Most also want to extend Medicare for all, affordable childcare, paid sick leave, and end corporate monopolies and corporate dominance of our politics. We have clean water laws and clean air laws. We’ve torn down Confederate statues and expanded clean energy.

And we’ve got a new generation of progressive politicians, labor leaders, and community organizers determined to make the nation and the world more democratic, more sustainable, more just.

They know that the strongest bulwark against authoritarianism is a society in which people have a fair chance to get ahead. The fights for democracy, social justice, and a sustainable planet are intertwined.

The battle is likely to become even more intense this coming year and the following. But the outcome will not be determined by force, fear, or violence. It will be based on commitment, tenacity, and unvarnished truth.

It is even a battle for the way we tell the story of America. Some want to go back to a simplistic and inaccurate narrative where we were basically perfect from our founding, where we don’t need to tell the unpleasant truths about slavery, racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, and all the other injustices. 

But there is another story of America, one of imperfection but progress. In this story, which is far more accurate, reformers have changed this nation many, many times for the better.

From Martin Luther King, Jr. to Ruth Bader Ginsberg to, more recently, Stacey Abrams, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Chris Smalls (who led the victory of Amazon’s Staten Island warehouse workers), Jaz Brisack (who led Starbucks workers), and Maxwell Alejandro Frost (the first Gen-Z elected to Congress), and many others — individuals have repeatedly changed the course of history by refusing to believe that they could not stand up to repression, bigotry, and injustice.

You don’t have to be famous to be an agent of positive change. You don’t have to hold formal office to be a leader. Change happens when selfless individuals, some of whose names we will never know, give their energies and risk their livelihoods (and sometimes their lives) to make the world more humane.

Small actions and victories lead to bigger ones, and the improbable becomes possible.

Look, I know: The struggle can be exhausting. No one can go all in, all the time. That’s why we need to build communities and movements for action, where people give what effort they can, and are buoyed in solidarity with others. 

That’s what we’re doing in a small way in this forum. Building community. Sharing information and analyses. Fortifying our commitment.

The reason I write this newsletter is not just to inform (and occasionally amuse) you, but also to arm you with the truth — about how the system works and doesn’t, where power is located and where it’s lacking, and the myths and lies used by those who are blocking positive social change — so you can fight more effectively for the common good.

Here’s my deal. I’ll continue to give you the facts and arguments, even sprinkle in drawings and videos. I’ll do whatever I can to help strengthen your understanding and resolve, and give you the information you need.

In return, please use the facts, arguments, drawings and videos to continue the fight. To fight harder. And enlist others. (And, if you can, support this effort with a paid or gift subscription.)

If at any time you feel helpless or despairing, remind yourself that the fight for democracy, social justice, and a sustainable planet is noble. The stakes could not be higher. And we will — and must — win.

Wishing you a good 2023.

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Welcome back to my Saturday coffee klatch with Heather Lofthouse, executive director of Inequality Media Civic Action (and my former student), where we look at the highs and lows of the week. But since today is Christmas Eve we thought we’d talk about what Christmas means to us. Please grab a cup and pull up a chair. And also take our poll.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit robertreich.substack.com/subscribe

Friends,

Congress is on track in the coming week to give final approval to a national military budget for the fiscal year that is expected to reach about $858 billion — or $45 billion more than President Biden had requested and 8 percent more than last year.

This is its highest level of military spending (adjusted for inflation) since the peaks in the costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars between 2008 and 2011. It’s the second-highest military spending since World War II. It’s more than the budgets for the next 10 largest cabinet agencies combined. It’s larger than the military spending of the next 10 largest military powers in the world combined.

Expect it to be even more. Congress is considering an extra $21.7 billion for the Pentagon to resupply materials used in Ukraine.

Don’t fall for the myth that this humongous sum is going to our troops. What’s spiking is spending on weapons (including a 55 percent jump in Army funding for new missiles and a 47 percent jump for the Navy’s weapons purchases).

All told, more than half of this giant spending budget is going to for-profit companies (such as Lockheed, Raytheon, Boeing, General Dynamics, BAE, and Northrop Grumman) whose stock prices are surging. The profits are going into executive pay, shareholder dividends, and stock buybacks.

This is the military-industrial complex that Dwight Eisenhower warned of *— on steroids.

And yet, there’s almost no debate. Why?

Most Americans aren’t aware of what’s happening. And many of those who do know aren’t tracking the humongous size of this relative to previous military spending. And no one is hearing any arguments on the other side.

Yes, of course, America has to worry about Putin, China, Iran, and North Korea. But before deciding to spend so much, we might at least expect some, er, discussion.

How on Earth are we supposed to believe we “can’t afford” paid family leave, an expanded child tax credit, Medicare for all, or universal pre-K when our politicians are willing to spend $858 billion on the military without batting an eye?

Worse yet: No one knows where all this the money is going.

The Pentagon just failed its annual audit for the fifth year in a row. “I would not say that we flunked,” said DoD Comptroller Mike McCord, although his office did admit that the Pentagon only managed to account for 39 percent of its $3.5 trillion in assets.

The U.S. military is the only U.S. government agency to have never passed a comprehensive audit.

Cost-overruns are legion. The Pentagon’s failed F-35 program has exceeded its original budget by $165 billion to date. It’s projected to cost more than $1.7 trillion.

“Guns versus butter” is the old story. Now it’s extraordinary bloat versus unnecessary misery for American families struggling with a cost-of-living crisis exacerbated by inflation.

A recent study by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas found that most American workers have become poorer over the past year because their real wages haven’t kept up with inflation.

Nearly two-thirds of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck.

So back to my question: Why no real debate?

Because support for military spending is bipartisan. No lawmaker wants to be portrayed as weak on national defense. Democrats have been jumping onto the military spending bandwagon as fast as Republicans.

Bipartisanship is not always good. In fact, it’s a problem when, as now, the lack of political conflict means no news. Absent political conflict, there’s no story. Without a story, there’s no debate or discussion in the media. Absent any debate in the media, most Americans have no idea what’s happening.

We’re sleepwalking through history.

___

* Eisenhower’s words from April 16,1953: "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.".

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Friends,

That Donald Trump is now hawking digital trading cards featuring images of himself as a superhero for $99 each tells you all you need to know about Trump and about NFTs.

The recent implosion of Samuel Bankman-Fried’s FTX crypto market offers another case in point. Months ago, FTX was huge. Now it’s a hole in the pockets of countless people who had put their money into it. (Until a few week ago, Bankman-Fried was one of the world’s richest people.)

Crypto as a whole is proving to be little more than a giant zero-sum game. Like NFTs, crypto’s current value depends on whether buyers believe future buyers will be even bigger suckers.

A large and growing sector of the U.S. economy produces nothing of value. Nada. Zilch. Every winner comes at the expense of a current or future loser. The only things this “zero-sum” sector produces are many of the nation’s ultra-wealthy. Money moves from one set of pockets into another — mostly upward, into the pockets of the ultra-wealthy.

Much of Wall Street is expanding this zero-sum economy. Derivatives, private equity, hedge funds, and funds of funds, are creating a few fabulously wealthy people who could vanish tomorrow and be barely missed for all the net value they produce.

Corporate law is another part. High-paid lawyers representing one corporation battle high-paid lawyers representing another. Huge sums of money are spent on these escapades. But there are no societal gains unless you equate one corporation’s victory over another with justice.

Management consulting? Advising corporations how to make more money by cutting payrolls, abandoning communities, busting unions, outsourcing abroad, and pushing more jobs into contract work doesn’t add value. Some economists dub these “efficiencies” but if the social costs inflicted on everyone else are included, it’s zero-sum.

Public relations? How much value is created by convincing the public that a particular corporation or wealthy individual is nicer or worthier than we otherwise believe?

Then there’s the so-called “wealth management” industry — advising rich people where to park their money and how to avoid paying taxes. More zero-sum games.

In reality, the vast and growing zero-sum economy costs us dearly. It uses the time and energies of some of the nation’s best-educated people. They do it because zero-sum work pays so much compared to, say, teaching or social work or healthcare or journalism or art or science or many other things that improve peoples’ lives.

You might think a rational society would heavily tax zero-sum work while subsidizing work that generate lots of social good.

But you’d be wrong because the political power of the zero-sum economy generates an even bigger zero-sum game.

At this moment, for example, lobbyists for big corporations and private equity are pushing Congress for a retroactive tax break that would repeal limits on how much corporations can deduct in interest payments on their debts. (The limits went into effect this year as part of the compromise that gave us Trump’s big 2017 giveaway to the rich.) If the lobbyists get their way, the revenue loss could be about $20 billion per year, or around $200 billion over 10 years.

A big portion of that windfall will wind up in the pockets of private equity mavens who take over companies using piles of debt they then deduct from the companies’ income in order to minimize tax payments. These individuals already get special treatment in the tax code because they’re allowed to treat their incomes as capital gains subject to a lower tax.

I just got off the phone with a staffer for the House Ways and Means Committee who told me she thought it likely that this tax break will be attached to the omnibus funding bill now working its way through the last days of this Congress. She admitted there was “no justification” for it but sighed “that’s how the game is played.”

And who do you suppose pays more in taxes to make up for what these corpulent felines don’t pay? The rest of us.

Zero-sum.

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My friends,

As Congress ends its first post-Trump term, the biggest political question hanging over America is this: When will the GOP finally reach its anti-Trump tipping point — when a majority of Republican lawmakers disavow him?

Again and again, it looks like the tipping point is near but the GOP remains under Trump’s thumb.

What about last month’s dinner at Mar-a-Lago, with Ye, formerly Kanye West, the man whose fame as a rapper has been dwarfed by his antisemitic and racist declarations, along with infamous Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes?

It didn’t come near tipping the scales.

What about Trump’s December 3 declaration that the “Massive Fraud” of the 2020 election would allow for the Constitution to be “terminated?”

Nope.

Both events caused grumbling among a few Republican lawmakers but most avoided criticizing Trump (as they’ve avoided it in the past — as they avoided doing so the moment the furor over January 6 had died down) for fear of his wrath.

But what’s to fear, now? Didn’t the midterms reveal how weak he is?

After all, most of his endorsees flamed out, including celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania, Tim Michels in Wisconsin, Blake Masters in Arizona, Adam Laxalt and Kari Lake also in Arizona, and Herschel Walker in Georgia. (Walker’s campaign even asked Trump to stay away in the final weeks.)

Many election-deniers hit the skids. Michigan’s legislature swung to the Democrats for the first time since the 1980s.

Democrats defied almost all doomsday prophesies as well as the historic pattern of presidents losing midterms — and why? In large part because so many voters fear and loathe the former president. Nearly as many viewed the midterms as a referendum on Trump as who saw it as a referendum on Joe Biden. As Mitch McConnell explained, voters “were frightened” by the Trump-induced GOP rhetoric, “and so they pulled back."

And it’s only going to get worse for Trump, right?

His business has been found guilty of criminal fraud. Investigators have found more classified documents in a storage unit near Mar-a-Lago. A criminal case is pending in Georgia. The January 6 committee is likely to make a criminal referral to the Justice Department, whose special counsel is already building a criminal case against him. Several leaders of the January 6 attack have already been convicted of seditious conspiracy.

Even the kingpins of the GOP, including the rightwing media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, have switched their allegiance away from him — to Florida governor Ron DeSantis or Ted Cruz or another GOP hopeful.

So why hasn’t the Republican Party as a whole tipped? Why aren’t almost all Republican lawmakers publicly disavowing the former sociopath-in-chief?  

In two words: The base.

Utah’s Republican senator Mitt Romney, no friend of Trump, put it bluntly last week:

“I think we’ve got, I don’t know, 12 people or more that would like to be president, that are thinking of running in 2024. If President Trump continues in his campaign, I’m not sure any one of them can make it through and beat him. He’s got such a strong base of, I don’t know, 30% or 40 % of the Republican voters, or maybe more, it’s going to be hard to knock him off as our nominee.”

That’s the problem in a nutshell, folks.

It’s not so much the size of Trump’s base. Even 40 percent of Republican voters is a relatively small group nationwide, especially considering that fewer than 30 percent of all voters are registered Republicans.

It’s also the intensity and tenacity of their support, which gives them effective control over the Republican Party. They worship him. They won’t budge.

But until they budge, most Republican lawmakers won’t budge either (Romney and Liz Cheney being notable exceptions, and we know what happened to her).

The problem isn’t some highfalutin moral issue, such as Republican lawmakers putting their party over their country. It’s something far more prosaic. They want to keep their jobs.

Which means the GOP continues to rot as a political party, as a governing institution, and as a moral entity. That may be good for Democrats in 2024, but in the larger sense it’s bad for us all.

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Welcome back to my Saturday coffee klatch with Heather Lofthouse (Executive Director of Inequality Media Civic Action, and my former student) — when we review the week’s highs and lows. Please grab a coffee and pull up a chair.

Today, we consider:

Kyrsten Sinema’s exit from the Democrats.

Raphael Warnock’s embrace by the Democrats.

Donald Trump’s latest disgrace.

Heather’s and Bob’s views about the holidays.

Plus much more.

And please take our latest poll:

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit robertreich.substack.com/subscribe