Glimmers

This week, a departure.

I won’t harp on Republican efforts underway in at least 45 states to restrict access to the vote. But, if you wish to dive in, a good place to start would be this interview with Georgia’s Senator Raphael Warnock. The newly elected Senator owes his job to the recent secure, fraud-free election in his state, plus Trump’s blatant, clearly documented efforts to overturn Georgia’s presidential results. But Georgia is now a state where Jim-Crow-style restrictions loom.

You won’t hear me lamenting the problem with COVID-19 vaccine resistance. It threatens to derail efforts to get the pandemic under control in the United States – home to the largest death toll, by far, among the world’s nations. For those wondering how the world’s richest nation could be laid low by the crisis, new clues are emerging. For instance, type 2 diabetes, so common across the country, seems to be a contributing factor to serious illness. But when it comes to vaccine resistance, I challenge you to listen to this NPR WESUN story without shouting. If you listen carefully, you will hear one of the quoted individuals prove that it really is possible to be stupid and pignorant (pretend-ignorant) at the same time. Along with others in the story, she first denies that COVID is even a serious problem, and then plays the familiar science denier/liar role: “How do they even know it (the vaccine) works?” That NPR story zeroed in on rural anti-vaxxers. This Alternet piece broadens the lens. Chief soldiers in this particular battle in the war against science? Forty percent of Republicans overall, and 49 percent of Republican men, say they won’t take the vaccine. If we want to make the pandemic permanent, this is a ‘winning’ strategy.

There will be no raging about us Americans refusing to clean up our own mess. But if you wish to learn more, check this New York Times story. In recent years, the United States has found it ever more difficult to find places to dispose of our scrap plastic. That is in large part because of China’s 2018 decision to stop accepting most plastic waste from the US, saying it no longer wanted to be the “world’s garbage dump.” Really, who can blame them? But, as you will see, though it is nearly impossible to enact sensible, meaningful controls on our profligate generation of single-use plastic, American ingenuity can overcome the challenge of where to find suitable places to discard our rubbish. Out of sight, out of mind.

No, this week, the post will be positive, in spite of everything.

The recent historic outbreak of snow and cold in Texas caused immense suffering and death and crippled the power supply system. It also raised an outcry at the state’s lack of preparedness for such an event, and offered the opportunistic, science denying Governor Greg Abbott a chance to take some (fact-free) jabs at alternative energy (only on Fox News, naturally.) But the crisis was not tough only on humans. That’s what makes this NPR Weekend Edition Saturday story so inspiring. If you give a listen, you will learn how a crowd of citizen volunteers, led by naturalists, managed to save about 4000 endangered sea turtles from certain death in the suddenly cold Gulf of Mexico waters. Scientists estimate that 12,000 of the cold-blooded reptiles were affected, so the effort saved about 35 percent from death.  It shows that people can make sacrifices in response to a crisis and produce a good result. For reasons other than their own enrichment.

The Biden Administration managed to shepherd its coronavirus relief package through the closely divided Congress – with not a single Republican in either the House or the Senate voting for the measure. The $1.9 trillion bill will provide much-needed relief to citizens and businesses adversely affected by the pandemic. This is, of course, good news and bad news for the country’s overall financial footing.  The obvious bad news first is the giant add-on to the federal deficit.  And, remember, this bill comes just four years after Trump and (then House Speaker) Paul Ryan pulled off a mega-heist (on behalf of their wealthy backers) promoted as ‘tax reform’ that was actually an addition of $2.3 trillion to the debt over ten years. The obvious good news is the welcome boost to the hard-hit economy, some sectors of which still lag, thanks to the lingering pandemic. The not-so-obvious good news is the populist target of the relief. This Washington Post story hits the nail on the head. If you look at nothing else in the piece, I recommend the imbedded chart. It compares in a single graphic the economic effects of the Trump heist and the Biden relief, based on various income levels. It is hard to imagine a starker difference. Business Insider’s Julia Kaplan details the provisions of the coronavirus relief bill, dubbed the American Rescue Plan. She and others point out its populist nature. Even Senator Bernie Sanders (my perennial presidential choice), the self-styled democratic socialist, is singing its praises.

And here is some qualified good news on the environment. President Biden has promised to undo most, if not all, of Trump’s changes to environmental regulations. This week, there was news from the Associated Press that negotiations are proceeding between the administration and a group of automakers. If a deal is reached, higher fuel economy and lower emission standards will be restored, but not to the level of those that had been enacted by the Obama Administration. So, considering the gravity and ever-growing urgency of the climate crisis, this is good but not nearly good enough. Environmental advocates are speaking up. Here is a quote from the AP piece:

“In a letter to the White House late last month, two dozen environmental and green-friendly groups including the Sierra Club and Natural Resources Defense Council urged acceptance of nothing less than the Obama standards as part of a longer-term path to make all new cars and light-duty trucks zero-emission by 2035. They described credits granted to automakers for electric vehicles as “loopholes” that do little to reduce emissions in the short term.

“Not only are the automakers rejecting standards they agreed to 10 years ago, they are even refusing a weaker deal that five carmakers cut with California,” said Dan Becker, a director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “The administration should follow the science. We need to have much stronger national rules so we’re not guilty of looking global warming in the eye and blinking.””

So, you see, “better than Trump” is a pretty low standard, and “better than Trump” will not get us very far. And you can see, as well, that it is hard to be completely positive in these times.

Back to coronavirus relief, the honest question must be asked. How in the hell are we going to pay for all this, in the long run?  I will direct you to a writer that I never thought I would link to. The Minneapolis StarTribune’s D.J. Tice, I know from personal connections, is a notorious gate keeper for the paper’s opinion page. He keeps the page free from any pieces that rock the boat too violently by, for instance, exposing wrongdoing or hypocrisy on the part of the paper’s advertisers, or simply questioning deregulated capitalism too pointedly. Nevertheless, his opinion piece in today’s paper rightly points out the political theater involved in the two major parties’ approach to deficit spending. I think he is too harsh on progressives. After all, the kind of deficit spending they favor tends to be skewed toward the common good, the less powerful. But he asks that tough question: How in the hell will we pay for this?

The obvious answer is that things will have to, somehow, be brought back into balance. Our system has, especially over the past four decades, made those at the top richer and richer, while income and wealth have stayed pretty level or in some cases declined for everyone else. And the pandemic has only exacerbated this inequality.

On Friday, March 12, I heard a welcome voice on NPR Marketplace. Senator Elizabeth Warren (my other perennial presidential choice) was discussing a wealth tax. That is, a small annual tax of say, two percent on portfolios over a certain level of millions – about 50 mill.  Here is my favorite quote from the interview. When host David Brancaccio raised an objection on behalf of the Tax Foundation – that such a tax could crimp economic growth, the good Senator was ready:

“I’m sorry, really? By charging a 2-cent wealth tax on the great fortunes — the fortunes that are already growing at 6%, 8%, 10% a year in normal times, the fortunes that grew last year by 40% (that’s how much richer billionaires are right now than they were a year ago) — the Tax Foundation is worried that we’re somehow going to crimp growth?

Keep in mind that the 2-cent wealth tax is about putting that money where it’ll really go to work. It’s about funding universal childcare and universal pre-K. It’s about quadrupling the money that we put into Title I schools. It’s about money that we can put into infrastructure. It’s about money we can put straight back into this economy where it will build real opportunity, where it will give more of our children, more of our young people, a real chance to get started in this economy. This is going to be good for our economy.”

Brancaccio dug further – about prospects for passage – and Warren persisted.

“Well, you don’t get what you don’t fight for. But look, if people don’t want to do the wealth tax, then I really want to say to them, why not? Just give me the explanation. Why should it be the case that the 99% in America paid, last year about 7.2% of their total wealth in taxes, but that top one-tenth of 1% only paid about 3.2% — less than half as much? A 2-cent wealth tax — shoot, they’re still getting a great bargain. And look, somebody’s got to pay to make this country run. Somebody’s got to pay for the roads and the bridges. Somebody’s got to pay to keep our armies fed. Somebody’s got to pay for our scientific research and vaccine distribution. Why should the wealthy be freeloading off America’s middle class? That’s just not right.”

She is damned right about that not being right.  A wealth tax, along with getting the marginal tax rates back to some reasonable level – certainly not 90 percent (Eisenhower years), but higher than the current 37% would go a long way toward restoring balance. That, and closing loopholes, which has been promised so many times without success.

Where Marketplace did not go on the feasibility question is here – how would such a change get through Congress?  The answer is never, ever. Not with the anti-democratic filibuster in place. Which brings us full circle back to what I have been writing about for the past several weeks. As long as Mitch McConnell is armed with the filibuster, meaningful progress is a non-starter.  The only reason the American Rescue Plan passed is that it went through ‘reconciliation,’ which requires only a simple majority in both houses. And that is all Democrats can count on.

How will the crucial bust-the-filibuster campaign play out? Stay tuned.

Well, there it is. I tried mightily to emphasize some glimmers of hopeful sunshine among the persistent clouds.

How did I do?  All comments welcome.

Thanks for reading. And thinking.

Michael Murphy
Saint Paul MN