Friday, November 05, 2021

The Rancid Carcass In The Middle Of The House

SHORT TAKES: Bad Signs for Climate Action--Investors Running The Show; The Billionaires Had Their Hands Out For Stimulus; Massive National Debts For Poor Countries Sinking The Planet

Jonathan Tasini

Nov 4

LONG TAKE

Well, I do want to thank Terry McAuliffe for one thing just before brutally savaging him as he fades into political irrelevance: he’s given us the ideal hook to ruminate on something that’s been marinating in the queue: the Rancid Carcass in the middle of our house that’s been stinking up the joint for, lo, many decades.

You, amd millions of others, know what it smells like even if it’s not always called out by its name.

You can pick any one of the reasons that appeals to your sense of who is right among the swath of Democratic Party folks who are hand-wringing about the party’s short-term electoral prospects, especially in light of Tuesday’s results:

Maybe it’s the “progressives” who want too much and aren’t in tune with “moderate voters” and use “identity politics” language that is foreign to suburban “swing” voters.

Or maybe it’s the “moderates” who are standing in the way of wildly popular ideas (for example, expansion of Medicare to include dental, vision and hearing) and, thus, are going to alienate many base voters.

Or maybe it’s the general abandonment by the party of so-called “factory towns”, the blue-collar pockets that a few folks say are key to winning in the industrial “heartland”.

Or maybe it’s the failure of Democrats to know how to talk about race—and leaving it to Republicans to shape the debate about race in the party’s own racist framework.

None of the above gets to the core of the problem: all of the conversations ignore the Rancid Carcass that is sitting in the middle of the political house.

The Rancid Carcass rarely gets mentioned explicitly. For good reason—because too many people benefit from the Rancid Carcass, or they are so used to it being part of their lives they just don’t smell it anymore (yeah, I’m wearing the metaphor out a little)

I am going to make an explicitly ideological observation but, do hang on for a relatively straightforward, detailed explanation.

The problem is clear: the Rancid Carcass is the tyranny of free-market capitalism.

Until there is a full-throated recognition about the deep damage the Rancid Carcass causes, that free-market capitalism is the engine of deprivation and frustration felt by voters no matter what political label a person might wear, the Democratic Party will always struggle electorally, letting the “messaging experts” hunkered down in front of their computer screens trying to cherry-pick a suburban voter here or another demographic there to create some temporary victories.

So, your examples of the Rancid Carcass at work start, in fact, with Tuesday’s elections.

Let’s start with Virginia. It isn’t simply that Terry McAuliffe is sleazy, always toeing the line between legal and illegal behavior— you would understand “toeing the line” between legal and illegal actions if you read deeply into the Global Crossing scandal. In short, McAuliffe played an insider role as a deal maker to secure financing for the fiber optics company, which gave him access to stock—before it went public—that rose in value to about $18 million. When the company collapsed:

Global Crossing's creditors may be lucky to get pennies on the dollar. Many employees lost significant parts of their 401(k) funds.

And:

''What they did is not a crime, but it so thoroughly favors corporate insiders,'' said Nell Minow, the editor of the Corporate Library, a corporate watchdog Web site, who first raised questions about Global Crossing's management practices two years ago.

And:

As the S.E.C. and the Federal Bureau of Investigation explore whether Global Crossing artificially inflated its revenue -- and thus its stock price -- during the boom times, the fortunes of its top executives and financiers stand in contrast to many Global Crossing employees who have seen their savings evaporate. Just last month, as the company filed for bankruptcy protection, employees who were laid off were told that they would receive no additional payments from their severance packages, and that they would have to stand in line behind other creditors. [emphasis added]

At best, in the Global Crossing scandal, if he didn’t break the law, McAuliffe was part of the same kind of legalized corruption in free-market capitalism that we see in virtually every corner of the economy: a small elite, of mostly white men, know how to game the system, and get preferential treatment over everyone else which allows them to become fabulously wealthy.

And this pisses lots of people off because the 99.9 percent of the people are not privy to how to make this corrupt system work for them—and, as important, they don’t have the resources to hire the lawyers, accountants and other factotums to exploit the loopholes and relationships embedded in the system.

To the larger point beyond Tuesday’s elections, McAuliffe used this same “ethos” and corporate deal-making skills when he sold off the Democratic Party, piece by piece, to every corporate donor who he could shake down on behalf of Bill Clinton—starting as Clinton’s 1996 campaign manager, then, in his efforts to hold the party hostage to the Clinton machine when he was chair of the Democratic National Committee (2001-2005), after which he was the chairman for that wildly successful 2008 Hillary Clinton presidential campaign.

You may not like this fact if you are a Democrat but facts are facts: Modern-day corruption in politics over the past three or four decades was made into an art form by the Clintons, with McAuliffe as the day-to-day maestro.

Why, one could ask, at a time of crisis, fear and paralysis, would voters choose a man who exudes McAuliffe-like privilege? The answer was delivered on Tuesday—they won’t.

Especially if the Rancid Carcass is hard at work infecting every bit of policy making. Which allows me to pivot to my favorite topic, Fifth Columnist Joe Manchin. Courtesy of Manchin, and a few Sinema-ian sidekicks, every wildly popular proposal in the infrastructure bill (already diminished to a sub-$2 trillion-over-a-decade package) was lopped off or eviscerated—no expansion of Medicare to cover dental, vision and hearing (a middle finger to all those senior voters), dump free community college (and so young people stay home by the droves in Virginia, relative to turnout in 2020), toss out paid family leave (can you hear us now, suburban moms???), take a cleaver to as much of the climate change funding as possible and…well, the list goes on.

And I mean, who would have thunk it: voters don’t care for all that shrinking of a vision that was marketed to them in 2020, a shrinking that means more costs to average people and continued strain on the pocketbook (in favor of, instead, siphoning money to Big PHARMA—that should be a big hit!).

All this is done in service to the Rancid Carcass: using bullshit economics (as in, dead wrong economics: there is no debt or deficit threat, nor long-term inflation problem), Manchin is actually enforcing the fundamental principles of free-market capitalism on behalf of his donors—keep taxes so low that government stays small, make sure that the very wealthy and corporations dictate essentially every rule in the marketplace and, then, naturally, the government struggles to function at a basic level visible to real people which, in turn, gins up the “government doesn’t help me” perception. All the while the rich get richer.

And it’s worth lingering for a heartbeat more on the knifing, on behalf of the corporate donors to Manchin et al, of the proposal to allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices. Ponder that—this wasn’t a radical proposal to nationalize Big PHARMA (which should happen) or give prescription drugs away for free.

Nope—it was just a proposal to allow prices to go down modestly. I mean, c’mon!

It’s worth re-posting this snippet from last week’s newsletter edition:

Via Public Citizen:

U.S. sales of the 20 top-selling drugs worldwide totaled $101.1 billion while sales to the rest of the world totaled nearly $57 billion. In other words, the U.S. spent almost double what the rest of the world combined did on these top 20 drugs.
For 17 of the 20 top-selling drugs worldwide in 2020, pharmaceutical corporations made more money from U.S. sales than from sales to all other countries in the rest of the world combined.
For 11 of the 20 top-selling drugs worldwide, U.S. sales revenue was double revenue to the sales of the rest of the world or more.
11 of the 13 pharmaceutical companies selling these top drugs made more money in the United States from these drugs than they did in the rest of the world combined.

For context, a taste of some juicy pay packages in 2020:

Gilead Sciences CEO Daniel O’Day: $19 million (his base pay went up 34 percent; the previous year he made a total of $29.1 million)
Abbott Laboratories CEO Robert Ford: $20 million (In fact, the top seven executives at Abbott Laboratories received on average a compensation package of $11 million)
Merck CEO Kenneth Frazier: $27.6 million
Johnson & Johnson CEO Alex Gorsky: $30 million

The Rancid Carcass has its death grip on, in this case, the lives and health of tens of millions of people, turning people upside down and shaking every last nickel from their pockets and bank accounts.

Why, with all your fancy TV ads and robotic “on-message” talking points, would any sane person want to embrace a party that can’t take on one of the most corrupt industry’s ever to exist?

The hallmark of the Rancid Carcass in Congress, on a day-to-day basis, is that corrosive concept called “bi-partisanship”, which includes an acceptance of the “free market” system that has gotten the people into a deep hole over many decades. I wrote about the bi-partisan scam back in February, noting the sad reality that “bi-partisanship” is a feature not a bug because it sustains those in power.

Manchin provides a glaring “tell”, via a recent snippent in Politico:

Manchin also reminisced at the dinner about the good ol’ days of bipartisanship — “wining and dining” Republicans and Democrats on his houseboat — and evenings full of singing and good cheer. He told a story about bringing together two senators in particular: The first time he had TOM HARKIN on the boat, Harkin, ecstatic to be there, told him he’d never been on the Potomac at night. Then, as Manchin told the room, “here comes TED CRUZ and [Harkin] said, ‘I’m getting off this damn boat!’ And I said, ‘Come on Tom, it’s going to be fun! You’ll be fine!’ He said, ‘Get me another glass of wine!’ … Before the night was over I couldn’t separate them.” And then they introduced legislation together a few days later.
“We just don’t know each other,” Manchin complained of the current Washington climate.

To Manchin, “bi-partisanship” is the Holy Grail on its own (along with “wining and dining” on a yacht…now, that’s your Everyman caucus at work). The search for “bi-partisanship” is a thing because all parties to the “bi-partisan” dance among those holding elected office (with the notable exception of the small number of economic progressives) accept the outlines of free-market capitalism—the Rancid Carcass—and the fraudulent ideas baked into the system for decades.

To reiterate from my piece months ago, every day, there is a grand consensus—that tax cuts are good, especially if tax cuts help “small business” and “the middle class” (most Democrats will abide that view, leavening the position with a call for higher taxes on billionaires but not, god forbid, anyone making less than $400,000-per-year, which, I’ve pointed out many times, is the president’s foolish flawed position, along with his praise of the American system that allows billionaires to exist); CEOs are bright people who should be treated with over-the-top respect (as opposed to the actual workers who create society’s value); the “free market” is American Exceptionalism’s gift to the world; if you are unemployed it’s mostly your fault so unemployment benefits should be kept meager to make sure you get your ass back to work and don’t sit on your couch eating bon-bons; “free trade” is forward looking and good, while “protectionism” is backwards and bad; and…the list goes on and on.

An insight into how the Rancid Carcass endures is, oddly enough, found in a goofy report which purports to have the secret to the Democratic Party’s weakness. It’s called “Factory Towns: A 10-State Analysis of the Democratic Presidential Vote Decline in Working-Class Counties, 2012-2020.” I read it. Yawn. Did you know that manufacturing jobs have been lost throughout the country, that unions are weaker because of Republican attacks and rural counties have become more Republican? No! Really!!!??? And similar factoids you’ve read a gazillion times before.

What is revealing here, and the reason to even mention this weak sauce, is that, indeed, the report conducts an “autopsy” and, then, has conclusions—but never calls out the Rancid Carcass by name. For pete’s sakes, everything in this pedestrian report is precisely about the corruption and failure of free-market capitalism. You can read:

In 2001, after a very public lobbying effort by then-President Clinton in 2000, China was admitted into the World Trade Organization (WTO). This change, combined with NAFTA and similar trade agreements, had a devastating, decades-long impact on U.S. manufacturing jobs due to outsourcing, plant relocations, growing trade deficits, increased efficiencies, and cheap imports that displaced American workers.

And:

Job losses on their own don’t always cause sizable shifts in political support – after all, these manufacturing job losses happened over 20 years under Democratic and Republican administrations. But when the anger of job losses and community down-spirals is paired with a candidate presenting himself as an economic populist and a champion of the little guy, partisan support can shift quickly and significantly.

Well, what is that about, folks? Yup. Free market capitalism (and you can see the in-the-news “supply chains” play at part of this charade in my discussion here)

Truth is, the authors/promotors of this verbiage can’t quite come out and finger the culprit, even if they could see it, for at least one simple reason: this report, and others like it, fall off the policy conveyor built to basically get people jobs and consultancies. You can’t call out the real enemy here because that is a sure-fire way to never get hired and never get paid to be a “strategist” or “analyst” or…whatever. It’s careerism—and it is part of the fuel that helps keep the Rancid Carcass in place. Mild criticism but never quite call it by its name.

Via Gabriel Zucman, associate professor of economics at UC Berkeley, who focuses his work on inequality, is the graph below which gives us the stripped-down picture of the effect of the Rancid Carcass, starting with the observation by Zucman:

In 1913, the top 0.00001% (= Rockefeller, Frick, Carnegie, Baker) owned 0.85% of total US wealth. Today the top 0.00001% owns 1.5% of total US wealth. Their share is sky-rocketing

Just one thought to leave you with. Climate change, and the urgent need for decarbonization, is a chance to actually *transform* the economic system, stick a shiv in free-market capitalism and burn the Rancid Carcass to a crip.

And you can do it by starting with a call, as part of confronting climate change, to nationalize energy, transportation, communications, and health care systems—you’d have better economic outcomes (not just for peoples’ pocketbooks but for, if you must, economic efficiency).

SHORT TAKES

This should set off anyone’s bullshit meter, via the Financial Times:

The Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (Gfanz) — which is made up of more than 450 banks, insurers and asset managers across 45 countries — said it could deliver as much as $100tn of financing to help economies transition to net zero over the next three decades.
“We now have the essential plumbing in place to move climate change from the fringes to the forefront of finance so that every financial decision takes climate change into account,” said Carney, the former governor of the Bank of England who has been chair of Gfanz since its launch in April.

Speaking of the Rancid Carcass—in what universe would the future of the planet be put into the hands of the very people who manufactured the crisis? Manufactured by vaccuming up resource-after-resource, pillaging community-after-community and fanning the appetite of free-market-led consumerism—the need to have more and produce more—which is at the heart of the planet’s sickness.

Insane.

Heh, Heh… the chutzpah—and the legal raiding of the public till, another feature of the Rancid Carcass—via ProPublica:

ProPublica, using its trove of IRS records, identified at least 18 billionaires who received stimulus payments, which were funded by U.S. taxpayers, in the spring of 2020. Hundreds of other ultrawealthy taxpayers also got checks.
The wealthy taxpayers who received the stimulus checks got them because they came in under the government’s income threshold. In fact, they reported way less taxable income than that — even hundreds of millions less — after they used business write-offs to wipe out their gains.
ProPublica found 270 taxpayers who collectively disclosed $5.7 billion in income, according to their previous tax return, but who were able to deploy deductions at such a massive scale that they qualified for stimulus checks. All listed negative net incomes on tax returns.

Of course, all you heard from the people who wanted to stop giving people a check was about those lazy people who were pocketing the stimulus check and were happy to sit on their couches eating bon-bons and not work—I argued in early 2020 that actually people should get their full incomes paid for a full month and keep everyone at home to stop the pandemic.

Where is the outcry?

I’m going to write more about this. But, for now—the vast majority of countries in the world are struggling with massive national debts. These are largely debts that were imposed on countries by banks and institutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
There is simply no way most of these countries have the wherewithall to fund climate change efforts—and the piddling amounts of money being talked about (in the past and in these days at COP26 in Glasgow) are just nowhere near the need.
“Debt Relief for a Green and Inclusive Recovery” tells us part of the story (“DSSI” refers to Debt Service Suspension Initiative, which was started during the pandemic when the global economy shut down—but note “suspension” of debt, NOT forgiveness):

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) sees 72 countries at high risk of external debt distress; of these, 19 are described as severely vulnerable (Jensen, 2021). Among the 72 countries identified as highly vulnerable to external debt distress, only 49 are eligible under the conditions of the DSSI and the Common Framework. Indeed, the vast majority of countries at risk in the middle-income category are not covered by the DSSI or the Common Framework.

And:

All too often, debt service is hampering crisis responses and worsening development prospects. In many developing and emerging countries, external public debt service is greater than health care expenditure and education expenditure (Munevar, 2021a). Thus, instead of being able to support their people to weather the crisis and invest in a sustainable recovery, governments are required to repay their creditors. UNDP estimates that close to US$1.1 trillion is due in debt service payments by developing and emerging countries in 2021 alone (Jensen, 2021). Just 2.5% of that amount would be enough to vaccinate two billion people under the COVAX initiative. [emphasis added]

And your graphic representation for sub-Saharan Africa tells the tragic story—