Democrats need more than ‘We’re better than awful’

 

Bill Knight column for 1-18, 19 or 20, 2021

 Fourteen of Illinois’ 18 Members of Congress voted to impeach President Trump Wednesday, including Republican Adam Kinzinger of Channahon. Four other GOPers – Mike Bost, Rodney Davis, Mary Miller and Darin LaHood voted with Trump.

Kinzinger and nine other Republicans made it a bipartisan effort, but the 232-197 tally underscored how the action was driven by Democrats. Now, with electoral victories adding the White House and Senate to Democrats’ House majority, a political challenge presents itself to them: What does the Democratic Party stand for in a post-Trump nation?

(Another reckoning looms in Springfield, where Chris Welch last week became Speaker of the House, replacing Mike Madigan, who held that post since 1983 except for two years when the GOP was the majority.)

In November, 74 million people – almost a third of whom came from households making less than $50,000 – voted for Trump. That means many working-class people voted against their own economic interests. More amazing and alarming are the union members attracted to Trumpism. Before the 2016 election, Democratic presidential candidates for years prevailed in union homes by comfortable margins, but Trump divided and conquered workers.

Perhaps in anger, confusion or frustration, too many observers have ignored Trump supporters as not worth engaging or a lost cause. But the regular working people who back Trump are neighbors, colleagues and co-workers. (Many Trump supporters, after all, had voted for Barack Obama, polls show, which suggests that some of Trump’s “base” isn’t racist.)

It’s all concerning. After all, Republicans authored “Right-to-Work” (for less) laws that hurt union organizing and serve corporate power. However, Democrats’ power brokers pushed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and “free trade” deals that contributed to declining wages and standards of living, and/or to employers moving operations overseas, and some also have been too beholden to big-bank campaign contributors.

Democratic Party leaders orchestrated the 2016 nomination of Hillary Clinton despite her backing NAFTA and globalization, coziness with Wall Street, and vote for the Iraq War. So rather than past double-digit leads in union households, Clinton carried them by just 8% in 2016 (compared to Obama’s 18% four years earlier). That was one huge reason she lost Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin – and the election. With labor efforts, Biden won union households by 16%.

Still, for some working people, the Democratic message doesn’t connect or is vague.

Of course, most Americans hold a baffling mix of political beliefs that don’t fit within political platforms. When the organization Working America held focus groups with about 2,000 working-class voters in swing states in 2016 and 2017, beliefs didn’t conform to assumptions. We want to protect the environment and also save jobs in the coal industry; we think health care should be a right but resent “freeloaders,” whether immigrants or the poor; we consider ourselves religious but church attendance and involvement plummeted (before the pandemic); we believe in the Bill of Rights but want some gun control.

Many working-class voters are moderate on social issues while progressive on economic issues, like raising the minimum wage and raising taxes on the wealthy. In 2016 and 2020, for example Trump voters often expressed disappointment, worry or rage about jobs, pay and the economy as driving their decisions to back the Republican.

For Democrats to better engage working people, a long-time core constituency, the party must revive its roots in economic populism while showing that justice can be achieved alongside a solid, fair economy.

Also, progressives must illuminate the darkness of disinformation by “educating, organizing and agitating,” led by informing Americans with the truth about systemic problems ranging from the lies of “trickle-down economics” to the scourge of racism.

The 21st century’s politics is tough for labor and the Democratic Party alike. While union leaders have backed Democrats in hopes of reciprocal support, Establishment Democrats remain tied to business centrists. Plus, Democrats have made promises to labor that weren’t kept, from Obama to Jimmy Carter.

Democrats can’t waste another opportunity of having a thin blue line in the Senate, House and White House. If Dems don’t realize that failing to serve everyday Americans – especially workers and unions – led to disaster before, and that they need to rally the grassroots to much more than “We’re not Trump!” they could re-create past vulnerabilities and risk losing power, positions and public-interest progress.

Student debt is a big, long-time problem needing a solution

 

Bill Knight column for 1-14, 15 or 16, 2021

 No one can say President Trump accomplished nothing in four years. His administration’s First Step program started some prison reforms; it improved generic-drug approval to lower prescription prices; it got treaties between a few Arab nations and Israel; it ensured 5G networks rely on non-Chinese technology.

However, Trump in May vetoed a bipartisan resolution to overturn an Education Department policy making it difficult for students defrauded by for-profit schools to have their federal loans forgiven, and, of course, the administration’s 2017 tax cut added $1 trillion to the national deficit while doing nothing to alleviate the $1.6 trillion in student debt.

Second only to mortgages, student loans are increasing. They totaled $500 billion in 2006; last year alone, $105 billion was borrowed. The most undergrad dependents can borrow is $31,000 (although parents can borrow thousands more for their children’s college costs). But with higher education’s price tags rising in recent decades, there’s little choice. About 17% of Illinoisans (more than 2 million people) carry student debt, according to the State Treasurer’ office. They average almost $30,000; 12 % of them have their loans in collections.

That’s confirmed by the Department of Education’s online “College Scorecard,” which reports that 16% of Northwestern University students graduate with loans of some $30,000; at Knox College it’s 62% and $27,000; at SIU/Carbondale it’s 66% and $27,000.

Conventional wisdom criticizing borrowers is mistaken, like “they should work their way through college” and “it’s just a problem for young people.”

However, the College Board says the average in-state cost for tuition, fees, room and board at a public four-year university was $21,370 last year. Given that the federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour, a student would have to work a full-time job WITH 10 hours of overtime at time and a half, every week of the year to pay for college. Not a lot of time to study.               

Elsewhere, AARP says that Americans 50 years old and up together have a student-loan debt of $290 billion – more than five times the amount for the demographic in 2005.

Illinois’ Student Investment Account Act went into effect last August to help borrowers refinance student loans.

“It will provide Illinois families with additional financial capacity to purchase homes, start families, save for education and retirement, start businesses, and invest in their potential,” said State Treasurer Michael Frerichs.

Nationally, potential reforms include extending the pandemic “pause” beyond its Jan. 31 expiration; canceling a big chunk of student debt (Joe Biden suggested $10,000 as a possibility; Sens. Chuck Schumer and Elizabeth Warren favor forgiving $50,000); restoring borrowers’ eligibility to cancel student loans through bankruptcy; offering tax credits to employers that help workers repay student loans.

Warren said, “All on his own, President-elect Biden will have the ability to administratively cancel billions of dollars in student-loan debt using the authority that Congress has already given to the Secretary of Education.

“This is the single most effective economic stimulus that is available through executive action,” she continued.

“That would be beneficial for everyone across the country,” reported Rich Smith, associate editor of The Stranger, a Seattle newspaper, “– and just imagine what would happen there in terms of economic stimulus.”

Joe Biden also has suggested changing the current means-tested repayment program of 10% of discretionary income with a hefty tax penalty on the balance after 20 years to 5% of discretionary income with no tax penalty at the end.

Apart from executive orders issued under the Higher Education Act of 1965 – which created the federal student-loan program and authorizes the Education Secretary to “compromise, waive or release” federal student-loan debts – legislation may be needed, too. Although polls say 58% of registered voters back eliminating all student-loan debt, such support could grow and encourage help on Capitol Hill if reforms extend to non-college instruction such as vocational training.

Whichever approach is undertaken, student-loan debt is a crisis that affects everyone and attracts level-headed policymakers of different political persuasions.

“You do stand to see longer-term negative effects on people who can’t pay off their student loans,” said Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell, a conservative Republican economist. “It hurts their credit ratings; it impacts the entire half of their economic life.

“As this goes on, and as student loans continue to grow and become larger and larger, then it absolutely could hold back growth,” Powell added.

Did they make America great again?

 

Bill Knight column for 1-11, 12 or 13, 2021

 What did you expect?

And what do you expect next?

Next week, Joe Biden will be inaugurated where Capitol chaos ensued Wednesday. Will truth-telling finally persuade President Trump’s followers and enablers to stand up for the country?

After years of lies, months of false claims of a stolen election, and threats, Trump promising that Wednesday protests “will be wild” and his lawyer Rudy Guiliani stoking the morning rally by calling for “trial by combat,” hundreds overran the Capitol, chased representatives and staff from their chambers, and temporarily stopped the count of electoral votes to certify Biden’s election.

            A day before the riot, Trump supporter Ashli Babbit tweeted that “nothing will stop us” and “the storm is here.” The apparent adherent to the QAnon conspiracy theories was shot and killed; others were injured, and damage was done.

“Today’s attempted coup has been years in the making as Donald Trump consistently spews venom, conspiracies, hate and lies to his supporters,” said AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka. “They are carrying out his wishes, and far too many Republican lawmakers have enabled and even encouraged this violent threat.”

A frequent Trumka foe, National Association of Manufacturers president Jay Timmons (ex-director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee!), agreed, commenting, “Armed violent protestors who support the baseless claim by outgoing President Trump that he somehow won an election that he overwhelmingly lost have stormed the U.S. Capitol today because Trump refused to accept defeat in a free and fair election. Throughout this whole disgusting episode, Trump has been cheered on by members of his own party, adding fuel to the distrust that has enflamed violent anger. This is sedition and should be treated as such. The outgoing president incited violence in an attempt to retain power, and any elected leader defending him is violating their oath to the Constitution and rejecting democracy.”

Yes, Trump is responsible, as are Fox and enablers Dobbs, Hannity and Ingraham, plus Limbaugh, Bannon, Breitbart, the NRA and Right-wing evangelicals. They all encouraged phony allegations of rigged elections or silently went along. They’re traitors, too.

Trump’s ex-Defense Secretary James Mattis said, “Today’s violent assault on our Capitol, an effort to subjugate American democracy by mob rule, was fomented by Mr. Trump.”

Mattis said Trump has tried to “destroy trust in our election and to poison our respect for fellow citizens. Our Constitution and our Republic will overcome this stain and we the people will come together again in our never-ending effort to form a more perfect union, while Mr. Trump will deservedly be left a man without a country.”

Some Trump apologists accuse Democrats of the same tactics in 2016, but Clinton conceded to Trump the next day, Democrats didn’t demand a nullification of ballots, and they didn’t advocate violence.

No, the riot was “the logical trajectory of the last four years of President Trump’s leadership,” according to Catholic Bishop Robert McElroy of San Diego. “We have stood by without giving greater witness to the terrible danger that leadership rooted in division brings to a democratic society. Today we see the face of insurrection. It is ugly and calls us to action.”

Trump finally made a statement hours after the riot.

“Even though I totally disagree with the outcome of the election, and the facts bear me out, nevertheless there will be an orderly transition on January 20,” Trump said about 3 Thursday morning (after Congress certified his loss). “I have always said we would continue our fight to ensure that only legal votes were counted. While this represents the end of the greatest first term in presidential history, it’s only the beginning of our fight to Make America Great Again.”

Besides the riot, bombs were found at the Washington offices of the Democratic National Committee and the Republican National Committee but neutralized before exploding. Days earlier, reformed neo-Nazi Frank Meeink was interviewed by my old friend Jeff Stein of SpyTalk.com and said Trump’s rhetoric invites “another Timothy McVeigh” to conduct a mass-casualty bombing.

“I believe out of the 75 million that voted for Trump, 1 million of them are now radicalized hardcore, but about 10,000 to 50,000 of them are like me, or what I was,” said Meeink, the 45-year-old inspiration for the film “American History X” who’s now an advocate for racial justice. “That’s really dangerous.”

Elsewhere, long-time GOP consultant Steve Schmidt last week said “Trumpism” is an autocratic movement that fits a historic pattern: a cult of personality for a Leader, Thug supporters, Elite backers, Propagandists, Financiers, Religious extremists, and “Sheep,” those who won’t “stand up against Trump’s mean tweets and indecent, corrupt, cruel and incompetent acts.”

John Kelly, Trump’s former White House chief of staff, on Thursday said, “We need to look infinitely harder at who we elect to any office in our land – at the office seeker’s character, at their morals, at their ethical record, their integrity, their honesty, their flaws, what they have said about women, and minorities, why they are seeking office in the first place, and only then consider the policies they espouse.”