Tag: Robert Reich

How To Make $50 Million a Year While Your Corporation Goes Down the Tubes | The Smirking Chimp

Zaslav came along at a time of establishment confusion over whether the old political center would return after Trump. America’s business establishment hoped it would. But that proved a pipe dream. The division between authoritarianism and democracy is now too deep. If anyone had any doubts, CNN’s disastrous Trump town hall should have erased them.

What seems to have confused Zaslav was the difference between being politically partisan, and standing up against authoritarian demagogues. He assumed that holding Trump accountable for what he did (and continues to do) was inconsistent with so-called “balanced journalism.”

Wrong. It is not partisan to stand up for decency and democracy. That’s where CNN’s audience wanted — and presumably still wants — CNN to be.

 

Source: How To Make $50 Million a Year While Your Corporation Goes Down the Tubes | The Smirking Chimp

What’s Really Motivating the Protests? | The Smirking Chimp

My conclusion: While protest movements are often ignited by many different things, and attract an assortment of people with a range of motives, this one is centered on one thing: moral outrage at the slaughter of tens of thousands of innocent people — most of them women and children — in Gaza.

To interpret these protests as anything else — as antisemitic or anti-Zionist or anti-American or pro-Palestinian — is to miss the essence of what’s going on and why.

Source: What’s Really Motivating the Protests? | The Smirking Chimp

Record Corporate Profits From Your Thinning Wallets | The Smirking Chimp

Biden and the Democrats must say this loudly and clearly, and tell the public what they are doing — and will do — to stop corporate monopolies and price gouging.

Source: Record Corporate Profits From Your Thinning Wallets | The Smirking Chimp

Seriously, Again, How Dumb Is Trump? | The Smirking Chimp

Only with the media assistance of the money-making media camp followers who regard him as a product to be used essential to their bottom line. This alters Robert Reich’s statement a little that Trump is so talented

To put it another way, Trump is an extraordinarily talented conman.

Source: Seriously, Again, How Dumb Is Trump? | The Smirking Chimp

The Case for Nauseous Optimism | The Smirking Chimp

Trump Republicans want us to be discouraged. They want us to despair. That’s part of their strategy. They figure that if we’re pessimistic enough, we won’t even fight — and they’ll win everything.

But I believe their backlash is doomed. The Republican Party has become a regressive cesspool, headed by increasingly unmoored people who are utterly out of touch with the dominant and emerging values of America. And most Americans are catching on.

I don’t mean to be a Pollyanna. We’re in the fight of our lives. It will demand a great deal of our energy, our time, and our courage. But this fight is critical and noble. It will set the course for America and the world for decades. And it is winnable.

The point is: It’s appropriate to be nauseously optimistic.

Source: The Case for Nauseous Optimism | The Smirking Chimp

Children in Gaza: Why Aren’t We Stopping the Deaths? | The Smirking Chimp

Tens of thousands have been killed, including thousands of children. Many more are starving. American taxpayers’ money is partly responsible. Where is the moral clarity? Where is the moral authority? Why aren’t we doing everything possible to stop the deaths?

Source: Children in Gaza: Why Aren’t We Stopping the Deaths? | The Smirking Chimp

Trump’s Poor Showing in New Hampshire | The Smirking Chimp

Trump will of course be the Republican nominee. But he’s likely to be an extraordinarily weak candidate in the general election, given that almost half the entire U.S. electorate is independent, while only 25 percent are Republican (and 25 percent are Democrats).

Trump’s base adores him. Most of the rest of America is justifiably afraid of what he might do with a second term.

Source: Trump’s Poor Showing in New Hampshire | The Smirking Chimp

Why the Mainstream Media’s Awestruck Coverage of Trump’s Campaign Is Deceptive and Dangerous | The Smirking Chimp

America was at one time a Dream it still is but a nightmare.

When Americans actually focus on the presidential election and the stark reality of choosing between Biden and Trump, I expect they will once again choose Biden.

Even if Trump is not yet criminally convicted, I doubt that a majority of Americans will want for their president a man who has 91 criminal charges against him, who has been impeached twice, who has orchestrated an attempted coup, who has profited financially while president, who has stolen top-secret documents, and who has been judged to be a rapist.

Period.

Source: Why the Mainstream Media’s Awestruck Coverage of Trump’s Campaign Is Deceptive and Dangerous | The Smirking Chimp

Trump’s Brownshirts: Violence and Threats of Violence Have Become Inherent to Trumpian Politics | The Smirking Chimp

Kristallnacht is coming to America. They voted Hitler in and called it a Socialist Democracy.

Trump clearly said Mein Kamph was a favorite book he read with great attention.

That Donald Trump still has not been held accountable for encouraging the attack on the U.S. Capitol, or for provoking his followers with his blatant lie that the 2020 election was stolen, continues to galvanize an army of potentially violent Americans.

Source: Trump’s Brownshirts: Violence and Threats of Violence Have Become Inherent to Trumpian Politics | The Smirking Chimp

What’s the “Chevron Doctrine” and Why Should You Want To Preserve It? | The Smirking Chimp

Desperation is to create Trillionaires Trump will they are so so needed

Since Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration, regulatory agencies have protected the public from corporate harms. The only reason to end these protections is to give corporate America even higher profits by shifting the risks of harms to individual people. Watch your wallets.

Source: What’s the “Chevron Doctrine” and Why Should You Want To Preserve It? | The Smirking Chimp

How Trump Is Exploiting Our Scarcest Resource | The Smirking Chimp

Is this going to continue to be Murdoch’s America ?

 The danger is that Trump will capture so much of the public’s attention that he will appear to be the more dominant and stronger candidate, and Biden will be left with so little attention that he appears to be the more submissive and weaker of the two. If Trump dominates the battle of attention, Biden will effectively disappear.

Source: How Trump Is Exploiting Our Scarcest Resource | The Smirking Chimp

Powerful donors managed to push out Harvard’s Claudine Gay. But at what cost? | Robert Reich | The Guardian

Dr Claudine Gay, President of Harvard University, testifies before the House Education and the Workforce Committee at the Rayburn Building in the US Capitol, Washington, DC, USA, 05 December 2023.

No free speech at Harvard the Creme del a Creme of Private Institutions in the US shows the very notion of education in America has been severely diminished. If you add to it Alan Dershowitz’s name currently Israel’s choice of defense lawyer attached to a book he put his name to but seems never to have read just plagiarized you get a picture of Israeli education. Norman Finkelstein has shown for years that there has been a war of influence ongoing among America’s wealthy Jewish donors. Many of them have unwittingly been promoting the very antisemitism they claim to be battling

I can understand the frustrations of these donors. But to use their influence to force the ouster of these university presidents is an abuse of power

Yet not until now have major donors so brazenly used their financial influence to hound presidents out of office for failing to come out as clearly as the donors would like on an issue of campus speech or expression.

As a Jew, I also cannot help but worry that the actions of these donors – many of them Jewish, many from Wall Street – could fuel the very antisemitism they claim to oppose, based on the age-old stereotype of wealthy Jewish bankers controlling the world.

Source: Powerful donors managed to push out Harvard’s Claudine Gay. But at what cost? | Robert Reich | The Guardian

Why Can Only the Rich and Powerful Go Bankrupt? | The Smirking Chimp

The real question is whose interests those lawmakers are pursuing. Are they working for the vast majority of Americans, or are they beholden to those at the top? The recent history of bankruptcy — right up to Rudy Giuliani’s use of it last week — provides a clear answer.

Source: Why Can Only the Rich and Powerful Go Bankrupt? | The Smirking Chimp

What About Trump’s Dementia? | The Smirking Chimp

If Biden’s age is fair game, why aren’t Trump’s age and apparent mental decline? Biden may appear frail at times, but he’s rational.

The growing evidence of Trump’s dementia and paranoia, on the other hand, poses a potential danger to the future of America — if he’s reelected. At the least, the media should be investigating and reporting on it.

Source: What About Trump’s Dementia? | The Smirking Chimp

The GOP’s Death Cycle | The Smirking Chimp

The Republican Party is in an integrity death cycle. As the GOP is taken over by Trump’s enablers and sycophants, the few remaining principled Republican lawmakers want out. As they depart, the Trump rot spreads.

Republican lawmakers who remain are the most self-aggrandizing and least principled. Which in turn causes the GOP to degenerate further.

Tragically and frighteningly, this means that if Trump regains the presidency, Republican lawmakers in Congress and the states will be even readier to do his bidding.

Source: The GOP’s Death Cycle | The Smirking Chimp

The Connection Between Neofascism and Capitalism (and Happy Birthday, Joe!) | The Smirking Chimp

But if capitalism and its moneyed interests are in charge, those excesses grow to the point where they are able to extinguish democracy and ride roughshod over the common good.

Hence the reason Trump’s neofascism, and the complicity of today’s Republican Party with it, are attracting the backing of some of the richest people in America.

What’s the alternative? A loud pro-democracy movement that fights against concentrated wealth at the top, enormous CEO pay packages, a politically powerful financial sector, and tax cuts for the wealthy and large corporations.

And fights for higher taxes on the top (including a wealth tax) to finance Medicare for all, affordable housing, and accessible child care and elder care.

The willingness to make this a fight — to name the moneyed interests backing neofascism, explain why they’re doing this, and mobilize and energize America against their agenda and in favor of democracy — is critical to winning the 2024 election and preserving and rebuilding American democracy.

Source: The Connection Between Neofascism and Capitalism (and Happy Birthday, Joe!) | The Smirking Chimp

What Is Trump Planning if He Gets a Second Term? Chaos and Consolidation. | The Smirking Chimp

As I said, I’m skeptical of any “planning” going on inside Trump’s head. But I’ve become convinced that a small band of Trump sycophants (likely including the lapdog authoritarian trio of Roger Stone, Mike Flynn, and Steve Bannon) is right now clearing the runway for an even more neofascist regime than was Trump 1. As I said, I don’t believe he’ll be reelected.

But if he is, there’s reason to be worried. Very worried.

Source: What Is Trump Planning if He Gets a Second Term? Chaos and Consolidation. | The Smirking Chimp

Putin, Trump, Netanyahu, Johnson: The Neo-Fascist Spectrum | The Smirking Chimp

The next U.S. presidential election is almost exactly one year from now. All of us have a moral duty to do everything we can — non-violently — to ensure that our democracy endures.

Source: Putin, Trump, Netanyahu, Johnson: The Neo-Fascist Spectrum | The Smirking Chimp

The Inhumanity of Humans Toward Other Humans | The Smirking Chimp

Many of us feel overwhelmed by the brutality and hatefulness around us — in Israel and Gaza, in Russia’s continued attacks on Ukraine, in mass shootings here at home, in the violence and hostility that erupted at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, and continues to divide Americans, in Trump’s vicious lies and rants that fuel racism, xenophobia, and misogyny.

How can human beings behave so inhumanely?

Source: The Inhumanity of Humans Toward Other Humans | The Smirking Chimp

Do Billionaires Have a Right To Exist? | The Smirking Chimp

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not arguing against big rewards for entrepreneurs and inventors. The possibility of making a bundle has elicited innovations that benefit us all.

The question is one of scale. Do entrepreneurs and inventors need the incentive of billions of dollars? Wouldn’t, say, a hundred million do?

The social costs of billionaires is substantial. Billionaires have purchased right-wing extremists on the Supreme Court, bought and either destroyed or subverted news organizations (such as the former Twitter), and turned their relationships with politicians into patronage troughs.

All of this has undermined the common good.

If capitalism were working as it should, billionaires wouldn’t exist. Shawn Fain is correct.

What do you think? ( Robert Reich )

Source: Do Billionaires Have a Right To Exist? | The Smirking Chimp

The Horrible Price of Lies, Paranoia, and Distrust | The Smirking Chimp

We can attribute a similarity of this to Peter Dutton who has with strategic effort divided the public by spreading baseless lies about the fear of Replacement, Reverse Racism, the poverty of Indigenous Culture, and lies about irresponsible Corporate “elites” trying to ingratiate themselves with a woke ignorant public.  Using these tactics Dutton is intentionally fermenting chaos and division for a win-at-all-cost political strategy with no good reason other than self-interest and not any real sense of duty to public service.

A glance at his past Cabinet history tells that Dutton was the worst Minister appointed to each of his portfolios. Health under the Howard government. Immigration which is a current disaster when Dutton was little more than the ventriloquist’s doll on partisan Mike Pezzullo’s knee. Who, he then chose to take with him to Home Affairs and leaked National Security. Look Dutton’s attitude to our Indigenous Pacific Neighbours was displayed at “Boom Gate” which says it all. To Dutton, they are just a joke and there to be laughed at.

Indigenous Australians have historically been a political football and are simply asking to be heard. They would like an advisory voice constitutionally recognized because for over a century it hasn’t. A history of on-and-off legislation that has been applied to them looks more like a political yo-yo than any real attempt at service or effort in “closing the gap”. They aren’t migrants! If they were they’d be better off. Australia was built on their land and even a racist’s glance at the history of social and statistical facts would be left shame-faced. We can’t deny that the colonial mindset remains embedded in our Institutions and has done more harm by way of generational trauma and little to close the gap. To say otherwise or blame their culture for the divide in material and psychological dysfunction is simply blinkered victim blaming.

The point is this: Whether named Netanyahu, Trump, or Putin, when authoritarian leaders gain power by dividing the public, spreading baseless conspiracy theories, and accusing opponents of being “deep state” traitors, they weaken a society’s capacities to protect itself from all sorts of threats.

They undermine the public good, which is the wellspring of a society’s true strength.

Netanyahu, Trump, and Putin have imperiled each of their nations by filling them with lies, paranoia, and distrust.

Source: The Horrible Price of Lies, Paranoia, and Distrust | The Smirking Chimp

Trump’s Chaos Agenda | The Smirking Chimp

Chaos is the same strategy being applied by the opposition LNP to this referendum, Chaos has been based on the avoidance of truth of any kind in order to fragment the minds of the nation. They have the money, the media, and have forgone any obligation to history, context, and truth. It’s the Trump/ Bannon strategy of “flooding the zone with shit”. Since Morrison left the nation in a shambles Albanese has been getting no media credit for doing the job he was appointed to do. To repair the damage done and make Australia a fairer place by returning this country and moving forward once again to the notion of the Common Good rather than protecting the interests of a limited few. Winning isn’t their only priority

Biden is not getting credit — that the public sees and reads mostly about dysfunction and crises, created largely by Republicans and fomented by Trump — is not just politically disadvantageous for Biden and the Democrats.

It is part of an increasingly effective strategy by Trump and his allies to foment public disgust with our democratic system of government. It is an essential component of Trump’s authoritarian agenda.

Source: Trump’s Chaos Agenda | The Smirking Chimp

Capital vs. Labor Under Biden | The Smirking Chimp

The largest and oldest class struggle in America has been between capital and labor — between the owners of big corporations and the people who work for them, between those who live off their investments and those who live off their wages.

Source: Capital vs. Labor Under Biden | The Smirking Chimp

Is the Trump Fever Starting To Break? | The Smirking Chimp

Well played, Judge Engoron! Trump tried to tell reporters yesterday that Judge Engoron had thrown out most of his case — and Judge Engoron put him in his place today right to his face — and in front of the entire country.

America owes a great debt of gratitude to the judges, prosecutors, grand jurors, and prospective jurors who refuse to be intimidated by Trump’s threats, and who will not back down from defending our democracy.

Even as the mainstream media continues to treat Trump as a politician rather than a peril, normalizing his dangerous threats, the nation’s judges and prosecutors are holding the fort — protecting the rule of law.

They — along with Saturday’s bipartisan majority vote in Congress against MAGA extremists — give me some hope that the fever of Trumpism may be starting to break.

What do you think?

Source: Is the Trump Fever Starting To Break? | The Smirking Chimp

New Proof That Poverty Is a Policy Choice | The Smirking Chimp

It’s not a “lifestyle” choice as the LNP claim

Poverty is a policy choice. Congress has chosen to have a significant percentage of our population impoverished, including — especially — our nation’s children.

Source: New Proof That Poverty Is a Policy Choice | The Smirking Chimp

The Axis of Authoritarianism | The Smirking Chimp

Bad enough that Trump praised Putin during Trump’s presidency. To grant Putin any moral authority now on the subject of political repression is further evidence of Trump’s sympathies for, if not complicity in, an authoritarian axis.

Source: The Axis of Authoritarianism | The Smirking Chimp

No Labels, No Fables, No Third-Party Betrayals | The Smirking Chimp

But whatever it says it aims to be, No Labels will help Trump.

But if a third-party candidate takes even a small part of the anti-Trump vote away from Biden, Trump is likely to be returned to the White House.

Source: No Labels, No Fables, No Third-Party Betrayals | The Smirking Chimp

How Private Equity Is Destroying the Labors of Love | The Smirking Chimp

When I published my first book decades ago, the purpose of most publishing houses was to publish books. Publishers made money in order to publish books. They earned enough on their big bestsellers to take chances on unknown authors like me and put out books that delighted small numbers of enthusiastic readers but never showed a profit.

Source: How Private Equity Is Destroying the Labors of Love | The Smirking Chimp

The Fourth Indictment, and Trump’s Willful Refusal To Stop Intimidating Witnesses | The Smirking Chimp

Hours later, Trump called Judge Chutkan “highly partisan” and “very biased and unfair,” adding, “She obviously wants me behind bars.”

Friends, Trump is daring Judge Chutkan and other judges involved (or soon to be involved) in these four proceedings to revoke his release pending trial. He believes he can get away with intimidating and harassing potential witnesses, jurors, prosecutors, and judges. He is confident he is above the law.

He must be shown he is not above the law. His release pending trial must be revoked.

What do you think?

Source: The Fourth Indictment, and Trump’s Willful Refusal To Stop Intimidating Witnesses | The Smirking Chimp

Donald Trump, Samuel Bankman-Fried, and the Rule of Law | The Smirking Chimp

Donald Trump Screams He’s America’s Number One Victim

A prominent billionaire is arrested on criminal charges. At his arraignment, the presiding judge releases him pending trial on condition he not to try to influence potential witnesses and orders him not to speak with the media about the pending trial. He repeatedly violates the order. Eventually, the judge has had enough. He revokes bail and orders him jailed pending trial.

Source: Donald Trump, Samuel Bankman-Fried, and the Rule of Law | The Smirking Chimp

If Bosses Are Raking It In, Shouldn’t Employees, Too? | The Smirking Chimp

In Australia and in Victoria the Fire Fighters want a 25% rise over 4 years. The CEOs have no Union so we really have no global systemic comparisons. How is it the big three American automakers don’t have boards equally represented by Shareholders, Labor, Men, Women, and other interested parties to resolve company issues less adversarially? Germany and Italy do. They manage to offer worker’s conditions far, better, and at a greater cost, but these companies were able to negotiate it more equitably and peacefully. Without a comparison of these differing structures, nothing will change.

The new leadership of the United Auto Workers is demanding that the Big Three automakers give its members a 40 percent raise over the four years of its next contract. The demand stems from the 40 percent increase in compensation raked in by the corporations’ CEOs over the past four years.

Only fair, right?

Source: If Bosses Are Raking It In, Shouldn’t Employees, Too? | The Smirking Chimp

Will Donald Trump Go to Jail Before His Trial Even Begins? | The Smirking Chimp

One might well ask why Stuart Robert has never been charged with corruption after the number of times he was caught with his hand in the cookie jar?

That’s what the rule of law is all about. At this moment, 400,000 criminal defendants in the United States are awaiting trial in jail because they didn’t meet a condition of their release.

Source: Will Donald Trump Go to Jail Before His Trial Even Begins? | The Smirking Chimp

Hello? You Can’t Be President if You’ve Tried To Overthrow the U.S. Government | The Smirking Chimp

Secretaries of state and other state election officials should not allow Trump on the ballot in their states. If you agree, please consider signing the petition to tell election officials to keep Trump off the ballot now. (Just click on this link.)

No one is above the law, including Donald Trump.

What do you think?

Source: Hello? You Can’t Be President if You’ve Tried To Overthrow the U.S. Government | The Smirking Chimp

Trump vs. Democracy: Let the Final Battle Begin | The Smirking Chimp

The pustule of Trump has been growing since 2016, and the authoritarian impulses underlying this infection have been allowed to fester for decades.

Folks, it is finally time to lance this boil. It is time to decisively rescue democracy and the rule of law. It is time to defeat Trump and his enablers, who are determined to defy the core values of America.

Let the battle begin.

Source: Trump vs. Democracy: Let the Final Battle Begin | The Smirking Chimp

Trump’s Path to Dictatorship | The Smirking Chimp

Trump allies have threatened that if he regains the presidency, he will invoke the “unitary executive” theory as the basis for using the Justice Department to persecute his political enemies, take over the FBI, usurp the authority of independent agencies like the FTC and even the Federal Reserve, and substitute loyalists for independent civil servants.

Source: Trump’s Path to Dictatorship | The Smirking Chimp