Last week I suggested that Trump maintains a hold on a large fraction of America because he fills a void created by a system that has left them behind. I followed with the question raised by Frank Capra’s iconic film “It’s a Wonderful Life,” in which the greedy Mr. Potter tries to take over Bedford Falls: Do we join together or let the Potters of America own and run everything?

We’re well on the way to the Potterizing of America. To take one example, the expanded child tax credit payments will end next week. (Biden’s original “Build Back Better” package had extended it, but the package is on life support in the Senate.)

Republican critics, including Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri, claim that the child tax credit has contributed to inflation by giving people more money to spend when the supply chain is already strained. “Moderate” Democrats, like Joe Manchin, think it’s too expensive.

Rubbish. The benefit is tiny compared with the economy. Yet its payments have reduced child poverty by nearly 30 percent and have helped the working class. They’ve reduced hunger and lowered financial stress, especially in rural states that received the most money per capita (such as Missouri and West Virginia). Families spent the money on essentials like groceries and stashed some away for emergency savings.

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Others (including a few prominent economists like Larry Summers) blame inflation on the government’s pandemic spending, overall. In yesterday’s New York Times, Neil Irwin wrote that because “the government tried overheating the economy” we now have “soaring prices and many goods in short supply. Inflation has reached its highest levels in four decades.”

This misses the point. Expanded unemployment benefits ended in September (earlier in some states) and the last round of stimulus payments went out last spring. The spending was a great success story — keeping millions of Americans from falling into poverty. And it hasn’t been the major cause of inflation.

Still others (CEOs and business groups) blame inflation on wage increases. This is pure rubbish. Price increases are now running at 6.8 percent annually but wages are growing only between 3-4 percent. So real wages (what those wages can actually purchase) are actually declining for most Americans. This is why programs like the child tax credit and other government assistance are so important.

The biggest single reason prices are rising is the concentration of the American economy into the hands of a few corporate giants with the power to raise prices.

To be sure, supply bottlenecks have raised the prices corporations pay for some raw materials and components. But here’s the most important thing: Instead of absorbing these costs, corporations are passing them on to customers in the form of higher prices.

This is because most large corporations face little or no competition. If corporations in the same industry were competing vigorously against each other, they’d keep their prices as low as possible so as not to lose customers. They’d try to avoid passing increased costs to consumers in higher prices, for fear of losing customers to competitors that don’t raise prices. They’d absorb the costs, and their profits would fall.

The opposite is occurring. Corporations are raising prices even as they rake in record profits. Profit margins at large corporations are now at a 70-year high. Take a look at the following chart (from Bloomberg):

Big corporations face so little competition they can raise prices with impunity. They simply coordinate their prices increases with the handful of other big corporations in the same industry, who are happy to oblige. That way, all of them stay highly profitable.

Wall Street knows exactly what’s going on. Big investors are pouring money into corporations with the power to raise prices. “What we really want to find are companies with pricing power,” Giorgio Caputo, senior portfolio manager at J O Hambro Capital Management told Bloomberg. “In an inflationary environment, that’s the gift that keeps on giving because companies can pass along their pricing on the way up, and don’t necessarily need to get it back on the way down” [emphasis added].

The underlying problem isn’t inflation per se. It's lack of competition. Corporations are using the excuse of inflation to raise prices and make fatter profits. (Matt Stoller, who has an excellent Substack on monopolization, calculates that 60 percent of the increase in inflation is going to corporate profits.)

Blaming the child tax credit or pandemic assistance or wage increases is a cruel ruse that disguises what’s really going on.

This is what I mean when I say America has been Potterized: People at the top — top corporate executives and big investors — are doing better than ever. Everyone else is being squeezed.

What should be done about all of this? For one thing, raise taxes on big corporations and the wealthy in order to finance all sorts of supports and public investments needed by the majority of Americans (such as the expanded child tax credit). At the very least, repeal the Trump tax cut for big corporations and the wealthy.

But wait. Didn’t we just try to do this? Yes, and not even a Congress controlled by Democrats could get it done. Why not? Because in Potterized America, big corporations and the super-wealthy not only have the power to raise prices. They also have the power to get Congress to cut their taxes — and keep them cut.

Your thoughts?

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Before we turn to what I’m calling the "Potterizing” of America (the consolidation of wealth and power in the hands of a few at the very top), we need to deal with one of its shameful consequences that will be front and center this week: accountability for Trump’s ongoing attempted coup and the January 6 attack on the Capitol. Thursday marks the first anniversary of that attack.

Last Wednesday I discussed four truths underlying the attack: (1) Trump incited it, (2) it culminated two months of his attempted coup, (3) his attempted coup continues to this day, and (4) he and his accomplices must be held accountable -- and we must also respond to the reasons why so many Americans continue to support him and his Big Lie.

As Congress returns and the anniversary of the attack comes into view, the necessity of accountability presents itself in two forms. Democrats can and must act on both.

The first is voting rights. The Senate reconvenes today. Voting rights is the most important issue before it, considering that Republican-dominated states have used Trump’s Big Lie to justify a raft of measures to restrict voting and give their legislatures greater control over the administration of elections. More such measures are on the way.

The Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Enhancement Act, both now before the Senate, are critical to protecting American democracy from these and other incursions. But because no senate Republican supports these bills, they can be passed only if senate Democrats change the filibuster rule. One way (which even Joe Manchin seems receptive to) would be to carve out an exception for voting rights bills so they can be enacted by a simple majority.

Changing the filibuster is the first step to protecting voting rights and our democracy. Senate Democrats must take this step right away.

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The other form of accountability is criminal responsibility for the attempted coup and the attack on the Capitol. The Justice Department has already charged more than 700 people with participating in the attack. Although no case has yet gone to trial, many of the defendants have pleaded guilty and received sentences from probation to 41 months in prison.

Yet so far, the Department has charged no political figure, including Trump himself. To be sure, the Watergate scandal didn’t result in significant prosecutions and convictions for two years after the break-in. But if Republicans gain a majority in the House next November, you can bet they’ll close down the House’s January 6 committee now investigating the attack.

The critical political actors at this point are:

Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney, the committee’s vice chair. Cheney is focused squarely on Trump’s potential crimes. Yesterday she said of Trump: “Any man…who would provoke a violent assault on the Capitol to stop the counting of electoral votes, any man who would watch television as police officers were being beaten, as his supporters were invading the Capitol of the United States is clearly unfit for future office, clearly can never be anywhere near the Oval Office ever again.” She went on to warn her Republican colleagues that they “can either be loyal to Donald Trump or we can be loyal to the Constitution, but we cannot be both.”

Mark Meadows, Trump’s last chief of staff. After he failed to appear before the committee, Congress voted to hold him in contempt and referred him to the Justice Department for prosecution. As of today, the grand jury impaneled by the Department has not indicted Meadows (note that his is the same crime for which Trump adviser Steve Bannon was indicted).

Former assistant attorney general Jeffrey Clark. His testimony could also implicate Trump. Recall that when top Justice Department officials told Trump that no widespread fraud contributed to President Joe Biden’s win, Trump reportedly responded, “Just say that the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me” and his allies in Congress. Clark apparently took Trump up on his request, drafting a letter giving Georgia elections officials a road map to overturn the election’s results. When Clark appeared before the House committee about this, he refused to answer questions and has since missed several appearance dates (allegedly because of unspecified health issues).

Republican congressman Scott Perry. He reportedly assisted Trump in trying to install Clark as attorney general. (Perry and Meadows seem to have communicated via encrypted apps, presumably to hide what they were talking about.) Perry has refused the committee’s request for documents and testimony concerning the run-up to the attack on the Capitol, asserting that the committee is an “illegitimate entity.” (Hello? Multiple trial and appellate courts have ruled that the committee is doing precisely what it is authorized to do.)

Republican congressman Jim Jordan. When the Jan. 6 committee announced it was seeking testimony from Jordan about his conversations with Trump on the day of the Capitol attack, Jordan also refused, alleging that the committee “altered” punctuation in a text message Jordan had sent to Meadows urging former Vice President Mike Pence to disregard Electoral College votes Pence deemed unconstitutional. (Rubbish. An allegation of altered punctuation is not a defense against a congressional subpoena.)

Attorney General Merrick Garland. Responsibility for prosecuting Trump falls to Attorney General Merrick Garland. It would be good to know what he’s up to. Is he simply being extra careful in putting together a case against Trump? Is he waiting until the House committee makes its report? Or is he putting a brake on all of this so as not to further enflame Trump supporters?

Trump, meanwhile, has asked the Supreme Court to halt release of his White House records to the House select committee.

But the House committee will forge on.

My friends, the first anniversary of the attack on the Capitol will not be the occasion it should be: a day when the nation comes together to repudiate Trump and his co-conspirators whose treacherous acts led to it. That’s because Trump has divided America with his big lie. A new ABC/Ipsos poll shows that although 65 percent of Americans believe President Joe Biden’s 2020 victory was legitimate, 71 percent of Republicans believe Trump’s false claims that he is the rightful winner. The division in America over Trump’s attempted coup and the attack has no parallel in our nation’s history since the Civil War.

Yet if we do not strengthen voting rights, and if Trump and his accomplices are not held criminally accountable, we are inviting another attempted coup. Next time, it could succeed.

Your thoughts?

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Happy new year. I hope it’s a safe and healthy one for you and your family.

Over the last few days I’ve shared with you some facts and thoughts about Trump’s continuing attempted coup. I’ve also suggested that an answer to it (and to Trumpism in general) can be found in Frank Capra’s 1946 iconic movie “It’s a Wonderful Life” and the central question it posed: Do we join together, or let the Mr. Potters of America own and run everything?

Today, the first of 2022, struck me as an appropriate one to focus on how and why America came to be Potterized.

It’s not possible to change the future without understanding the past. The American system isn’t just politics or “the market” as we now experience it. It’s an evolving set of laws, rules, and norms that reflect a shifting structure of power. If we want to alter the road we’re on (and we must), we need to see how we got on it. If we want to alter the current structure of power (and we must), we have to realize how it came to be.

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Most importantly, we need to see why we made a giant U-turn from the road we were on during the first three decades after World War II — when America was on the way to building a robust democracy and the biggest middle class the world had ever seen, expanding civil rights and voting rights and creating a more inclusive society — to the road that led us to Trump.

If we figure out how we got from “It’s a Wonderful Life” of 1946 to the Pottersvilles that so many Americans are inhabiting in 2022, we have a fighting chance of getting back on the right road.

My personal journey — and the questions that have dogged me for years — parallels this larger one. I was born in 1946, the same year “It’s a Wonderful Life” was released. I grew up in the 1950s and 1960s during civil rights, voting rights, women’s rights, and a burgeoning if not wild-eyed youthful optimism about the future.

I witnessed the U-turn. I saw the system change, but didn’t know why.

In the 1970s, I represented the United States before the Supreme Court, and then I ran the policy team in the Federal Trade Commission. In the 1980s, I watched and chronicled what I saw happening under Reagan and Bush 1, and I taught brilliant students what I thought they needed to know about the system. In the 1990s, I advised Bill Clinton when he was a candidate for president, then headed his economic transition team and became his Secretary of Labor. Afterwards, I taught another group of terrific students. I advised Barack Obama. When Trump was elected, I became a staunch critic.

Through it all, I kept asking myself: why is this happening? How did we get on the wrong road? What can be done?

I have some preliminary answers that I’ll be sharing with you over the next weeks and months.

For now, here’s a video that was my first attempt to answer these questions as simply as I could. Please have a look. I’m interested in your thoughts and comments.

By the way, a number of you have asked for a still of “The Big Picture.” Here it is:

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My post yesterday on the real lesson of January 6 provoked a great discussion (many thanks to those of you who participated). It also prompted me to rewatch a movie that provides a hint of an answer — Frank Capra’s “It’s a Wonderful Life,” which was released 75 years ago this month.

When I first saw the movie in the late 1960s, I thought it pure hokum. America was coming apart over Vietnam and the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, and I remember thinking the movie could have been produced by some propaganda bureau of the government that had been told to create a white-washed (and white) version of the United States.

But in more recent years I’ve come around. As America has moved closer to being an oligarchy — with staggering inequalities of income, wealth, and power not seen in over a century — and closer to Trumpian neofascism (the two moves are connected), “It’s a Wonderful Life” speaks to what’s gone wrong and what must be done to make it right.

As you probably know (and if you don’t, this weekend would be a good time to watch it), the movie’s central conflict is between Mr. Potter (played by Lionel Barrymore) and George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart). Potter is a greedy and cruel banker. George is the generous and honorable head of Bedford Fall’s building-and-loan — the one entity standing in the way of Potter’s total domination of the town. When George accidentally loses some deposits that fall into the hands of Potter, Potter sees an opportunity to ruin George. This brings George to the bridge where he contemplates suicide, thinking his life has been worthless — before a guardian angel’s counsel turns him homeward.

It’s two radically opposed versions of America. In Potter’s social-Darwinist view, people compete with one another for resources. Those who succeed deserve to win because they’ve outrun everyone else in that competitive race. After the death of George’s father, who founded the building-and-loan, Potter moves to dissolve it — claiming George’s father “was not a businessman. He was a man of high ideals, so-called, but ideals without common sense can ruin a town.” For Potter, common sense is not coddling the “discontented rabble.”

In George’s view, Bedford Falls is a community whose members help each other. He tells Potter that the so-called “rabble … do most of the working and paying and living and dying in this community.” His father helped them build homes on credit so they could afford a decent life. “People were human beings to him,” George tells Potter, “but to you, they’re cattle.”

When George contemplates ending it all, his guardian angel shows him how bleak Bedford Falls would be had George never lived — poor, fearful, and dependent on Potter. The movie ends when everyone George has helped (virtually the entire town) pitch in to bail out George and his building-and-loan.

It’s a cartoon, of course — but a cartoon that’s fast becoming a reality in America. Do we join together or let the Potters of America own and run everything?

Soon after “It’s a Wonderful Life” was released, the FBI considered it evidence of Communist Party infiltration of the film industry. The FBI’s Los Angeles field office — using a report by an ad-hoc group that included Fountainhead writer and future Trump pin-up girl Ayn Rand — warned that the movie represented “rather obvious attempts to discredit bankers by casting Lionel Barrymore as a ‘scrooge-type’ so that he would be the most hated man in the picture.” The movie “deliberately maligned the upper class, attempting to show the people who had money were mean and despicable characters. This … is a common trick used by Communists.”

The FBI report compared “It’s a Wonderful Life” to a Soviet film, and alleged that Frank Capra was “associated with left-wing groups” and that screenwriters Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett were “very close to known Communists.”

This was all rubbish, of course — and a prelude to the Red Scare led by Republican Senator Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin, who launched a series of highly publicized probes into alleged Communist penetration of Hollywood, the State Department, and even the US Army.

The movie was also prelude to modern Republican ideology. Since Ronald Reagan, Republicans have used Potter-like social Darwinism to justify everything tax cuts for the wealthy, union-busting, and cutbacks in social safety nets. Rand herself became a hero to many in the Trump administration.

Above all, Reagan Republicans, CEOs, and Trumpers have used the strategy of “divide-and-conquer” to generate division among Americans (a kind of political social-Darwinism). That way, Americans stay angry and suspicious of one another, and don’t look upward to see where all the money and power have gone. And won’t join together to claim it back.

What would Republicans say about “It’s a Wonderful Life” if it were released today? They’d probably call it socialist rather than communist, but it would make them squirm all the same — especially given the eery similarity between Lionel Barrymore’s Mr. Potter and you know who.

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I’m sorry to intrude on your holiday week with this, but I want you to be prepared for what’s to come next week.

January 6 will be the first anniversary of one of the most shameful days in American history. On that date in 2021, the United States Capitol was attacked by thousands of armed loyalists to Donald Trump, some intent on killing members of Congress. Roughly 140 officers were injured in the attack. Five people died that day.

But even now, almost a year later, Americans remain confused and divided about the significance of what occurred. Let me offer four basic truths:

1. Trump incited the attack on the Capitol.

For weeks before the attack, Trump had been urging his supporters to come to Washington for a “Save America March” on January 6, when Congress was to ceremonially count the electoral votes of Joe Biden’s win. Without any basis in fact or law (60 federal courts as well as the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security concluded that there was no evidence of substantial fraud), Trump repeatedly asserted he had won the 2020 election and Biden had lost it.

“Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!” Trump tweeted on December 19. Then on December 26: “See you in Washington, DC, on January 6th. Don’t miss it. Information to follow.” On December 30: “JANUARY SIXTH, SEE YOU IN DC!” On January 1: “The BIG Protest Rally in Washington, D.C. will take place at 11:00 A.M. on January 6th. Locational details to follow. StopTheSteal!”

At a rally just before the violence, Trump repeated his falsehoods about how the election was stolen. “We will never give up,” he said. “We will never concede. It will never happen. You don’t concede when there’s theft involved. Our country has had enough. We will not take it anymore.”

He told the crowd that Republicans are constantly fighting like a boxer with his hands tied behind his back, respectful of everyone — “including bad people.”

But, he said, “we’re going to have to fight much harder…. We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women, and we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them, because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong…. We fight like hell. And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore."

He then told the crowd that “different rules” applied to them. “When you catch somebody in a fraud, you are allowed to go by very different rules. So I hope Mike [Pence] has the courage to do what he has to do, and I hope he doesn’t listen to the RINOs [Republicans in Name Only] and the stupid people that he’s listening to.”

Then he dispatched the crowd to the Capitol as the electoral count was about to start. The attack on the Capitol came immediately after.

2. The events of January 6 capped two months during which Trump sought to reverse the outcome of the election.

Shortly after the election, Trump summoned to the White House Republican lawmakers from Pennsylvania and Michigan, to inquire about how they might alter the election results. He even called two local canvassing board officials in Wayne County, Michigan’s most populous county and one that overwhelmingly favored Biden.

He phoned Georgia’s Republican secretary of state to “find 11,780 votes,” according to a recording of that conversation, adding “the people of Georgia are angry, the people of the country are angry. And there’s nothing wrong with saying that, you know, um, that you’ve recalculated.”

He suggested that Georgia’s secretary of state would be criminally prosecuted if he did not do as Trump told him. “You know what they did and you’re not reporting it. You know, that’s a criminal — that’s a criminal offense. And you know, you can’t let that happen. That’s a big risk to you and to Ryan, your lawyer. That’s a big risk.”

He pressed the acting US attorney general and deputy attorney general to declare the election fraudulent. When the deputy said the department had found no evidence of widespread fraud and warned that it had no power to change the outcome of the election, Trump replied “Just say that the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me” and to Trump’s congressional allies.

Trump and his allies continued to harangue the attorney general and top Justice Department officials nearly every day until January 6. Trump plotted with an assistant attorney general to oust the acting attorney general and pressure lawmakers in Georgia to overturn the state’s election results. But Trump ultimately decided against it after top department leaders pledged to resign en masse.

Presumably, more details of Trump’s attempted coup will emerge after the House Select Committee on January 6 gathers more evidence and deposes more witnesses.

3. Trump’s attempted coup continues to this day.

Trump still refuses to concede the election and continues to assert it was stolen. He presides over a network of loyalists and allies who have sought to overturn the election (and erode public confidence in it) by mounting partisan state “audits” and escalating attacks on state election officials. When asked recently about the fraudulent claims and increasingly incendiary rhetoric, a Trump spokeswoman said that the former president “supports any patriotic American who dedicates their time and effort to exposing the rigged 2020 Presidential Election.”

Last week, Trump announced he will be hosting a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on January 6.

“Remember,” he said in the announcement “the insurrection took place on November 3rd. It was the completely unarmed protest of the rigged election that took place on January 6th." (Reminder: they were armed.) Trump then referred to the House investigation: "Why isn't the Unselect Committee of highly partisan political hacks investigating the CAUSE of the January 6th protest, which was the rigged Presidential Election of 2020?"

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He went on to castigate "Rinos," presumably referring to his opponents within the party, such as Republican Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, who sit on the January 6 committee. "In many ways a Rino is worse than a Radical Left Democrat," Trump said, "because you don't know where they are coming from and you have no idea how bad they really are for our Country.” He added, “the good news is there are fewer and fewer RINOs left as we elect strong Patriots who love America.”

Trump has endorsed a primary challenger to Cheney, while Kinzinger will leave Congress at the next election. Trump and other Republicans have also moved to punish 13 House Republicans who bucked party leadership and voted for a bipartisan infrastructure bill in November.

4. All of this reveals an underlying problem in America.

Trump and his co-conspirators must be held accountable, of course. Hopefully, the Select Committee’s report will be used by the Justice Department in criminal prosecutions of Trump and his accomplices.

But this in itself will not solve the underlying problem. A belligerent and narcissistic authoritarian has gained a powerful hold over a large portion of America. As many as 60 percent of Republican voters continue to believe his lies. Many remain intensely loyal. The Republican party is close to becoming a cult whose central animating idea is that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.

Trump has had help, of course. Fox News hosts and Facebook groups have promoted and amplified his ravings for their own purposes. Republicans in Congress and in the states have played along.

But even with this help, Trump’s attempted coup could not have gotten this far without something more basic: A substantial portion of the American population feels an anger and despair that has made them susceptible to Trump’s swagger and lies.

It is too simplistic to attribute this solely to racism or xenophobia. America has harbored white supremacist and anti-immigrant sentiments since its founding. The despair Trump has channeled is more closely connected to a profound loss of identity, dignity and purpose, especially among Americans who have been left behind – without college degrees, without good jobs, in places that have been economically abandoned and disdained by much of the rest of the country.

The wages of these Americans have not risen in forty years, adjusted for inflation, even though the economy is now three times larger than it was four decades ago. The norm of upward mobility has been shattered for these Americans. Through their eyes, the entire American system is now rigged against them.

This part of America yearns for a strongman to deliver it from despair. Trump has filled that void. To be sure, he’s filled it with bombast, lies, paranoia, and neofascism. But he has filled it nonetheless. The challenge ahead is to fill it with a democracy and economy that work for everyone. Unless we understand and respond to this fundamental truth, we will miss the true meaning of January 6.

**

Do you agree? If not, what do you think is the real meaning of January 6?

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My father once said that at the 1939 World’s Fair he saw an exhibit about the future featuring “picture phones” that allowed people to talk and see each other. He predicted the gadgets would fail because users would find them awkward and unnerving.

Well, that future is now — and it’s not awkward in the slightest. I just had FaceTime calls with my two sons and their families (including two wonderful daughters-in-law and a granddaughter) – one in New York, the other in Los Angeles. I can’t tell you how happy it made me to see and hear all of them. They looked relaxed. They’re enjoying the holidays. They’re safe and healthy.

We’ve been exchanging text messages and regular phone calls during the holiday. But to see them — to watch and interact with them — is different. Not as good as being with them, of course, but the next best thing when family members live thousands of miles away and the pandemic makes travel difficult.

Like my father, I’m a bit of a technophobe. I’m a late adapter of e-everything. When it comes to Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon, or Microsoft, I harbor deep suspicions bordering on loathing. I hate the part of “connectivity” that threatens our autonomy and privacy and undermines our democracy.

But I love the part that just moments ago allowed me to see their faces light up, watch them laugh and joke, and be there with them, even for a few minutes. My granddaughter is growing and changing so fast I almost can’t bear not being with her. And yet there she was on my phone, her eyes dancing directly into the eyes of her delighted grandfather!

When my sons were her age and a bit younger, I went to Washington to join Bill Clinton’s cabinet. I missed the precious years when they were turning from youngsters to teenagers — separating from their parents and discovering their independent selves. Sure, I saw them on weekends and on holidays. But I was often preoccupied with the Nation’s Business. Had FaceTime existed then I doubt it would have made much difference. During the week I worked twelve-hour days.

Over and over again I told myself the grandiose lie that the nation needed me. Yet deep down I knew they needed me more.

I left the Clinton administration because the truth finally caught up with me. But by then we had only a few years left together before they went off into the world — first one, then the other.

And now some two decades later they have their own families, their own responsibilities, their own lives. They live and work thousands of miles away. Even during this holiday week, their aging dad can’t be with them. A fierce pandemic continues to rip its way through the world.

I sometimes wonder if I made the right decision years ago — spending those years in meetings, on the phone, traveling around the country, managing a vast bureaucracy, racing up and down Pennsylvania Avenue between the White House and Capitol Hill — instead of with them. I tell myself not to dwell on what can never be relived or retrieved, but the question lingers.

All I know right now is that I miss them and my daughters-in-law and granddaughter terribly. I’m grateful to be able to share small slices of their lives, even on FaceTime.

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‘Tis the time to cash in gift certificates, shop for post-Christmas bargains, and fill shelves and closets with more stuff.

I for one don’t want anything more, thank you. My shelves are already overflowing with books. My attic is full of old chairs and tables, chafing dishes, pictures, games, children’s toys, ski equipment, stereos, a broken easel. My closet can’t fit any more clothes, most of which I haven’t worn in years. I’m drowning in stuff.

Once a year (usually around the holidays), I drop off as much stuff as I can at Goodwill Industries or the Salvation Army.

To be totally honest, I don’t just off-load stuff I no longer need. I also prowl around thrift stores on the off-chance I’ll find some quirky thing I’ve been looking for (or maybe a friend or relative would love to have) — say, a vinyl recording of Leonard Cohen from the late 1960s, a funny tie, memorabilia from one of FDR’s presidential campaigns.

A few months ago my neighbors began putting stuff they no longer want on the sidewalk at the end of the street, hoping others will pick it up. I’ve started putting stuff there, too. I’ve even picked up a few things there, like some exercise weights I’d been looking for.

In all these ways, I’ve become a small part of a recycled economy. Maybe you have, too.

At different times of our life we want different things. When kids are small, they have certain needs; as they grow up, different needs and wants. When they leave home and we downsize, lots of stuff goes into the attic. Tastes change over the years, too. Technologies alter or advance. Besides all this are the gifts that don’t suit, the clothes that no longer fit, the purchases that are later regretted. All create a need for recycling.

This got me wondering: What if we were all more intentional about recycling stuff? What if there were a systematic way of donating things we no longer need and of finding stuff we’d like to have?

I’m talking about something far more radical than just recycling our garbage or waste. Imagine an entire system based on continuously recycling stuff — without any of it being bought or sold.

Something like this already up and running in the form of “Buy Nothing” groups. Started in 2013 as a local network in Bainbridge Island, Washington, “Buy Nothing” groups now comprise 4.3 million members in 44 countries. Members can offer or request any item or service, as long as it’s legal. (Buying, selling and bartering are prohibited.) A Buy Nothing app, launched last month, has already been downloaded more than 125,000 times. If you’re curious, you might take a look here.

Economic systems tend to be divided into “capitalist” and “socialist,” with gradations in between. Under capitalism (to drastically simplify) people buy stuff with the income they get from selling stuff. Under socialism, people share stuff. To state another way: Capitalism focuses on production and consumption. Socialism focuses on distribution.

But what if there’s a third model — a recycling system in which all the stuff people no longer want is continuously recirculated to people who want it?

This third model could be increasingly important as we face a worsening clash between infinite wants on a planet with finite resources.

Imagine how much less waste there’d be if the stuff already out there were continuously recirculated. The United States now produces more plastic waste than any other country, according to the National Academy of Sciences. The average American generates about 287 pounds each year. And think of the greenhouse gas emissions we’d avoid in a recycled economy. A 2020 paper published in Nature attributes overconsumption and the relentless pursuit of economic growth to the explosive rise in greenhouse gas emissions now threatening our planet.

But wait, you might say. Consumer spending is about 70 percent of gross domestic product. Our economy depends on consumption. Remember George W. Bush telling Americans that the most patriotic thing we could do after 9/11 was to buy? If consumer spending were substantially reduced because we recycled lots more stuff, the Gross Domestic Product would take a dive. Tens of thousands of retailers and wholesalers might close. Millions could lose their jobs and livelihoods. Hell, we just lived through a pandemic-induced recession that showed how bad things can get.

But that’s not the inevitable tradeoff, for one simple reason: Life in a recycled economy would be a lot cheaper. We wouldn’t need to buy nearly as much. So we wouldn’t need to work and earn nearly as much. We’d stop measuring our wellbeing by the Gross Domestic Product or even by the unemployment rate, because part of our wellbeing would be outside the production-consumption system of capitalism.

Nor would we be relying on generosity or social solidarity. Most of us already have too much stuff — or we have the wrong stuff for this particular time in our lives. We just need a better system for reallocating stuff already produced that’s not wanted or not being used by the people who have it, and getting it to the people who do want it.

Not only would this generate less waste and a cleaner environment. It might also make a dent in poverty by more systematically getting stuff to people who really need it.

Stuff is now inundating us. It’s strangling the world. Could a recycled economy be part of the solution?

What do you think?

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Friends,

The reason I write this newsletter is not just to inform (and occasionally amuse) you, but also to arm you with the truth so you can fight more effectively for the common good.

The forces undermining our democracy, polluting our planet, and stoking hatred and inequality have many weapons at their disposal — lobbyists, media megaphones, and money to bribe lawmakers. But their most powerful weapon is cynicism. They’re betting that if they can get us to feel like we can’t make a difference, we will give up — and then they can declare total victory.

Which is why we have to keep up the fight even when feeling deeply discouraged.

I’m not going to pretend. There’s a lot to be discouraged about right now — from Manchin’s torpedoing of “Build Back Better” to the surging Omicron variant of COVID-19 and the politicization of public health, from the Republicans’ assault on voting rights to environmental disasters all over the world. My message to any of you who feel overwhelmed, disappointed, or ready to drop out: I get it.

I’ve been in the trenches for five decades and sometimes I despair as well. Again and again over the years I’ve seen hard-fought dreams go up in smoke. Or been sidelined. Or ridiculed. Or I’ve watched them succumb to bribery and corruption. Two of the leaders I counted on most in my lifetime were assassinated.

But notwithstanding all this, we are better today than we were fifty years ago, twenty years ago, even a year ago. I can point out so many examples in our own country, or all across the world, where movements that were once small and stacked against seemingly impossible odds, ended up winning and making America and our earth a better place to live. From Martin Luther King, Jr., to Mahatma Gandhi, to more recent examples like Stacey Abrams and Greta Thunberg, people have repeatedly changed the course of history by refusing to believe that they couldn’t make a difference.

It’s not only the famous leaders who are agents of change. Movements are fueled by individuals giving their time, energy, and hope. Small actions and victories lead to bigger ones, and the improbable becomes possible.

Nothing strikes fear in the hearts of those who want to prevent progress more than a resistance that is undeterred. 

This fight, this struggle, all these big problems, 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 can give what effort they can, and can be buoyed in solidarity with others. That’s what we’re doing in a small way in this forum. Building community. Strengthening our resolve. Sharing information and analyses. Fortifying ourselves.

Over the next few years the fight will become even more intense. We are even battling for the way we tell the story of America. There are those who 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. We got labor rights, civil rights, women's rights, and LGBTQ rights. We got clean water laws and clean air laws, and health insurance for most Americans. We’ve torn down Confederate statues and expanded clean energy. We’ve got a new generation of young, progressive politicians determined to make the nation better. The list goes on and on. 

The outcome of the fight ahead will not be determined by force, fear, or violence. It will be decided on the basis of commitment, tenacity, and unvarnished truth.

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 your resolve. Please use the facts, arguments, drawings and videos to continue the fight. To fight harder. To enlist others.

If at any time you feel helpless or despairing, remember that the struggle is long, that progress is often hard to see in the short term, and that for every step forward regressive forces are determined to push us backwards. Also remind yourself that the fights for democracy, social justice, and a sustainable planet are necessary and noble, that the stakes could not be greater or more important, and that we will — we must — win.

I wish you a restful, enjoyable, restorative Christmas holiday.

PS: Here’s a video I just did with my wonderfully talented young colleagues at Inequality Media (who fuel my optimism every day). Feel free to share!

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Democrats still hope they can salvage pieces of their ambitious tax agenda even after Sen. Joe Manchin blew up the legislation that included it. I’m sick of trying to fathom Manchin’s mind or motives but senate Democrats think he’s sincere about tax reform. In a Monday interview on a West Virginia radio station, Manchin pointedly said that ensuring people pay “their fair share” of taxes is the main reason he’s come this far in negotiations. “You have a chance to fix the tax code that makes it fair and equitable.”

Well, if Democrats are willing to take another stab at tax reform, I’ve got just the candidate: Get rid of the “carried interest” loophole that lets private equity managers – among the wealthiest people in America – pay a tax rate lower than most Americans. The “carried interest” loophole is huge, and it’s a pure scam. Private equity managers get this tax break even though they invest other peoples’ money. They don’t risk a penny of their own.

Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama all promised to get rid of it. They didn’t.

Hell, even Donald Trump promised to get rid of it. He didn’t, either. “I don’t know what happened,” said Larry Kudlow, the conservative economist who crafted Trump’s tax plan. “I don’t know how that thing survived,” he said, adding, “I’m sure the lobbying was intense.”

You’d think that the carried interest loophole would be high on the Democrats’ list of revenue-raisers. After all, closing it could raise $180 billion over the next decade from among the richest Americans. That’s $180 billion that could go toward supporting vulnerable Americans and investing in America’s future.

Think again. The loophole – which treats the earnings of private equity and hedge-fund managers as capital gains, taxed at a top rate of just 20 percent, instead of personal income, whose top tax rate is 37 percent – remains as big as ever. Bigger.

Astonishingly, some influential Democrats, such as House Ways and Means Committee chair Richard Neal, defend the loophole. They say closing it would hobble the private equity industry, and, by extension, the US economy.

This is pure rubbish. In fact, private equity firms generate huge social costs. They buy companies they see as ripe for “turnarounds” – a polite way of saying that once they buy these companies they’ll cut wages, outsource jobs, strip assets, and then resell what’s left, often laden with debt.

Look no further than the strike by Alabama’s Warrior Met Coal mineworkers that’s been underway since April 1st. Warrior Met is owned by a group of private equity firms led by New York-based Apollo Global Management. Mineworkers gave up their pension plan, retiree health care and wages to make Warrior Met’s mines mines profitable, as Apollo and other private equity investors siphoned off hundreds of millions of dollars for themselves in special cash dividends.

Since the pandemic began, private equity has been using the flood of cheap money to buy companies at a record pace, and then squeeze them (and their workers) dry. 2021 has been private equity’s biggest ever — reaching a record $1.1 trillion in deals.

So why are Democrats subsidizing private equity’s predatory behavior with this tax loophole? How did the loophole survive the Clinton and Obama administrations when the Democrats controlled both houses of Congress? Why isn’t it even on the current list of tax reforms Democrats went to use to pay for the Build Back Better package, if they can resurrect it in January?

What’s the dirty secret?

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“This is a loophole that absolutely should be closed,” said Biden adviser Jared Bernstein. But “when you go up to Capitol Hill and you start negotiating on taxes, there are more lobbyists in this town on taxes than there are members of Congress.”

Last year 4,108 individual lobbyists formally registered to lobby Congress and the executive branch on taxes. The private equity industry alone has contributed hundreds of millions of dollars to congressional campaigns – $600 million over the past decade, according to a New York Times analysis earlier this year.

But here’s the thing. Most of these campaign contributions (bribes) have gone to Democrats. Nearly 60 percent of campaign donations from partners in the private equity industry during the 2020 election went to Democratic candidates for federal office. During the 2020 election, Biden’s presidential campaign received over $3 million from people working in private equity and related investment funds, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. Biden was the top recipient of campaign money from this industry.

The dirty secret is Democrats have depended on campaign funding from private-equity partners — hugely wealthy people who are shafting workers across the land. Back in 2010, some courageous House Democrats squeaked through a tax plan that closed the loophole, but Democrats who controlled the Senate wouldn’t go along. Senator Charles Schumer was among those who argued against closing it. The United States, he said, “should not do anything” to “make it easier for capital and ideas to flow to London or anywhere else.” Oh, please. As if Wall Street needed billions in annual bribes to stay put.

When I publicly criticized Schumer for this, he explained to me that he didn’t think it fair to close the loophole for private equity and hedge fund partners but to leave it in place for other partnerships, such as housing developers.

Well, one person’s view of fairness may differ from another’s. But I don’t think there’s any question that the carried interest loophole is unfair to everyone except the fabulously rich who benefit from it.

Democrats must close this loophole. Now.

Your thoughts?

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When it comes to the surging Omicron variant of COVID, just about all I’m hearing is advice about holiday planning. Should one attend a holiday party? Travel? Meet friends at a restaurant?

Much of the answer boils down to how to calculate one’s tolerance for risk when so little is known about Omicron except that it spreads easily. Experts are throwing around a lot of numbers. Columnists are sharing their own personal calculations.

I understand. We’re all a bit spooked and don’t know exactly what to do. Calculations offer a degree of reassuring certitude.

But why does America need to turn this latest COVID surge — as we do so much else — into a question of individual risk, personal calculation, and self-concerned choice? Personal responsibility is important, of course. But I worry that this hubbub over individual risk assessment is distracting us from what we need to do now as a society to be readier for Omicron than we were for Delta or for the first COVID surge.

It also plays directly into the hands of anti-vaxxers who want to believe COVID is only about personal choice. On Friday's Fox Business, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis was asked if he was getting the booster. DeSantis smirked, shook his head no, and then went into a long harangue about why people should make vaccine decisions “for themselves.”

This past weekend, at Turning Point USA, the MAGA college Republican spin-off (whose founder died from COVID-19 last summer), Sarah Palin said it would be “over my dead body” that she got vaccinated (no pun intended). And Tucker Carlson (perhaps the most harmful person in America these days) railed against those who are urging vaccination, saying they just want to “punish people.” Carlson then praised the “naturally immune” who “earned it.”

It’s too easy for the rest of us to respond to this rubbish by telling ourselves that anti-vaxxers will pay the price because they’re putting themselves at much higher risk of being hospitalized and even dying. But this kind of thinking reflects the same dangerous fallacy — that each of us must make such life-or-death decisions for themselves.

On Friday, Jeff Zients, the White House COVID coordinator, inadvertently promoted this fallacy by telling reporters that while the administration will work to minimize Omicron disruption for the vaccinated, the unvaccinated should expect “a winter of severe illness and death for yourselves, your families....”

In reality, all of us are in this together. And so far, all of us together are failing. America's rate of deaths from COVID is the highest of all advanced nations. Fewer than 62 percent of us are fully vaccinated — the lowest of all advanced nations.

Those who continue to refuse to get vaccinated are endangering the rest of us — and not just because they’re increasing the risk of a “breakthrough” infection in those of us who have been fully vaccinated. As Omicron surges, the unvaccinated are likely to overwhelm hospitals throughout the land, making it harder for our entire health system to respond to all health needs and emergencies.

The unvaccinated are also incubators for the next variant.

Anti-vaxxers aside, the emphasis on individual risk is allowing us to forget the social needs that became exposed when the pandemic first hit in early 2020 — most of which are still unmet.

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We’re still doing almost no contact tracing compared to other advanced nations. Rapid COVID tests are still difficult to find, and too expensive. (The free tests that the Biden administration is touting won’t be available until next month.) N95 masks are still in short supply. There’s still little or no coordination among different levels of government. Biden’s order that large businesses require employees to be vaccinated remains stuck in the federal courts. Hospitals in many places still don’t have enough Intensive Care Units. We could once again face a shortage of ventilators.

In addition, too many workplaces are still unsafe. They’re still not required to test employees and report all COVID infections. They still don’t have to provide personal protective equipment. Workers still can’t stay home for fear getting the Omicron variant at work because we still don’t have a national system of paid leave (thanks to Joe Manchin and senate Republicans). They can’t quit their jobs because extended unemployment insurance has run out.  

I’m unable to advise you about whether you should attend that holiday party or cancel your travel plans. But I can assure you that what we’re facing is not just a matter of personal choice or individual risk tolerance. We’re facing another test of America’s capacity to respond to a public-health crisis. And the safety of every one of us depends on the nation doing better this time than we did before.

What do you think?

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