A Nation of Immigrants: Dehumanize, Deny, Fabricate & Deport

“It’s an unsolvable issue… The U.S. has a 2,000-mile border with Mexico. We need more asylum judges to process cases faster. People are waiting three and four years, and the geography of where they’re coming from is changing. The majority of people we’ve been seeing are Africans. We’re having to speak French instead of Spanish.” Nicholas Matthews, 24, a Tucson Samaritan who has opened his apartment to asylum seekers

There is no question that there are criminal immigrants at our southern border, but the statistics, for anyone seeking more than mere anecdotal evidence, tell us that such migrants commit far fewer violent crimes when they cross than American-born citizens. As our population contracts (US birth rates are 1.62 live births per adult women, while replacement requires 2.1), until recent years, immigration has been the growth safety valve that has kept out economy humming. As the US tightens immigration even for STEM-educated applicants, countries like Canada and UK can’t lap them up fast enough. Estimates suggest that we would lose about $5 trillion a year if Trump’s deportation initiative were implemented. For those who crossed from Latin America in recent years, they make up the backbone of our low-cost labor pool doing jobs Americans won’t take: agricultural stoop labor, grueling unskilled construction work, working in slaughterhouses, etc.

But for political reasons, immigration is now a topline issue. Assuming somehow, we can deport all those undocumented workers without a massive mega-billion-dollar program (a huge and unjustifiable assumption), what happens to some of our most basic costs – from food production to construction – if we have to replace those workers with US-born workers… probably at triple or more the cost? What happens when that massive cadre is pulled from the US consumer base? How much lost tax revenue do we suffer by forcing them to remain below the radar? But MAGA continues to refer to these hapless migrants as “vermin,” violent criminal drug dealers, “murders and rapists,” and other horrific epithets, renascent of WII-era Nazi descriptions of Jews, spewed to justify the Holocaust.

We easily forget that US addicts supply the dollars to fund cartels, who are powerful because of the firearms they were easily able to purchase in the US… easily smuggled south. Cartels with lots of money, lots of American-made weapons, making life in so many nations south of the border a hellish nightmare forcing their citizens to flee for their lives. We don’t even talk about that.

Obviously, there is a problem at our southern border. But there has been no major serious immigration reform since legislation passed in 1986 during the Reagan era. For Republicans, keeping that problem unsolved, has become a political issue that they have run on for decades. Trump went so far as to force his MAGA sheep in Congress to vote against their own immigration bill, one that Democrats were willing to accept, to keep the issue alive for the 2024 election. But with horrific problems all over the world – murderous conflicts to decimating realities as climate changes kills agriculture and habitability – migrants are now coming from everywhere.

Writing about this horror at our southern border for the October 23rd Los Angeles Times, Jeffrey Fleishman tells us: “[More] than 11 million undocumented people in the U.S. are at the volatile center of the November election… The number of migrant apprehensions and other encounters with Border Patrol agents at the southwestern border has fallen sharply — from nearly 250,000 in December to 58,000 in August — since President Biden’s crackdown on asylum seekers in June. Over that same period, the monthly number of encounters with migrants from Guatemala fell 81% — from 34,693 to 6,420 — and there was a 76% drop, from 18,993 to 4,465, in those from Honduras, according to a Pew Research Center analysis. But decades of failed policies and Republican Donald Trump’s incendiary rhetoric against migrants have kept the issue a top priority for voters, prompting Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris to take a tougher stand on the issue.

“A drive with Tucson [Arizona] Samaritans along 21 miles of the rust-colored, slatted border wall in Arizona highlights the economic, political and human complexities in stopping a flow of people at a time when climate change, authoritarianism and economic uncertainty grip much of the globe.

“Immigration animates the American conversation on schools, jobs, crime, housing and the cost of healthcare. It is an unsteady balancing act involving compassion, the nation’s economic needs and bipartisan calls for stricter regulations often distorted by weaponized statistics and divisive politics… For men such as Jim Chilton, whose 50,000-acre cattle ranch runs near the Arizona border, it’s a matter of security: “We need to finish the border wall,” he said. “Our nation is built on immigrants. We need them. But we have to have legally accepted ones, not people coming in and saying, ‘I’m here. Process me.’… “There’s some really bad guys coming onto our ranch,” he continued. They’re packing [fentanyl] and guns. I don’t like it. They’re coming to poison our country.’

“Chilton’s concerns resound in [Arizona, a] critical battleground state. Democrat Joe Biden won here by fewer than 11,000 votes in 2020. Although border encounters have fallen across the country, they remained persistent here over much of the last year, rising about 40% in the Tucson region to roughly 450,000. Those figures have dropped significantly in recent months, but furor over immigration has led to a November referendum, known as Proposition 314, that would allow state and local-level officers in Arizona to arrest and deport undocumented migrants…

“At the height of the migrant influx last year, up to 1,500 asylum seekers a day passed through Tucson, whose network of churches and nonprofits helped provide temporary shelter and supplies. Mayor Regina Romero said the U.S. ‘immigration system is completely broken. The House and Senate need to fix it.’.. A Democrat and daughter of immigrant farmworkers from Mexico, she said that Trump and Republicans have turned immigration into a ‘wedge issue’ while ‘spewing lies’ about migrants with ‘cruel and dehumanizing’ language.”

Yet his horror, which actually can be solved with well-funded preventatives and appropriate processes, just might elect a president whose stated disdain for immigrants (he married one!) and promised policies just might make the whole matter so much worse… while slamming the US economy. We choose not to… and it is a choice. We are talking about suffering flesh and blood human beings. To hate them and fight to harm them appears to be a wholesale condemnation of essence of Christian charity, the underlying vector of the entire New Testament of the Bible. Is the mission of MAGA evangelicals?

I’m Peter Dekom, and the scurrilous anti-immigrant rhetoric – mostly driven by fabrications and conspiracy theories – just might elect the most dangerous man to the presidency that we have ever had.

Avoiding Sanctions and Boycotts with a Little Help from Your Friends, It’s Gas

Avoiding Sanctions and Boycotts with a Little Help from Your Friends, It’s Gas

Putin is Hardly Alone

Yes, Western sanctions have had an impact, but not remotely to a level that has shifted policy. Further, Russia has a tradition of accepting suffering on behalf of the motherland that dates back over centuries. In WWII, Russia (technically the entire Soviet Union) amassed 70% of the casualties in the European theater. Despite exceptionally brief years of attempted democracy after the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia has never had a sustainable era of political democracy. Repeatedly, after centuries of repressive monarchs and a brutal communist regime, Russia has veered towards autocratic strongmen. The political system may have a plethora of political parties represented in her legislature (the Duma), but they each worship Putin in their own way.

Putin is wildly popular among fellow autocrats, many cheering him on in his effort to reunite and reconfigure Russia’s hegemony over the former Soviet territories, fractured into the CIS grouping. As the Baltic States, who despise that autocracy, have even joined NATO, Putin’s wrath has only escalated. One of Putin’s biggest fans, one who would love to mirror Putin’s control of everything, is Donald Trump. But unlike the easily manipulation of Trump and his narcissism, Vladimir Putin was schooled in manipulation, oppression and brutality under the expert aegis of the Soviet era KGB police/spy system. He rose to the rank of colonel in that murderous organization. Trump has always been mere putty in Putin’s world, a wannabe dictator easily controlled.

Russia has been accused of crass corruption in its efforts to control as many CIS countries as it can. Georgia and Belarus are prime examples where military force was applied when mere corruption failed. The war with Ukraine is merely an extreme example. The recent election in Moldova, a small CIS nation that borders Ukraine, is an example where Russian cash aimed at buying votes, plus strong messages of intimidation, failed by a hair’s breadth to stop the election of a pro-European Union administration. Is Moldova next for a Russian incursion?

Is Russia’s economy sinking her into oblivion? Writing for the October 20th Time Magazine, Suriya Jayanti provides his harsh reality check: “The U.S., U.K., and E.U. have enacted economic measures to punish the Kremlin. Over 2022 and 2023, Western powers fully or partially banned all imports of Russian crude oil by tanker, oil products, coal, pipeline gas, some liquified natural gas (LNG), and more, and eventually many of the financial mechanisms and technologies necessary to process trade transactions.

“These measures were not imposed all at once because the E.U. couldn’t survive a sudden and absolute cut off of its energy supply from Russia. LNG has remained mostly unrestricted, as have nuclear power resources. For oil, instead of banning it outright, the White House led an effort to impose a $60 a barrel price cap on Russian crude to limit Putin’s profits without overly constricting global supply in a way that could increase inflation. Natural gas pipeline exports dried up, with a trickle still passing through Ukraine and up to 38 billion cubic meters per year going to China. But overall, fossil fuel imports from Russia to Europe dropped from €16 to €1 billion a month—from 2022 to 2023, Russian oil and gas revenues dropped by nearly a quarter.

“But that’s where Western sanctions stopped working. In 2024, Russia is having a bumper year. Its GDP growth is on track to be above 4%, unemployment is at a record low, and military recruitment and soldiers’ salaries have in turn bolstered record wage growth. Much of this is because the Kremlin is pumping money into military-industrial sectors to support its war effort in Ukraine—40% of public spending is now on defense and security. But domestic war spending is only half the story.

“The other half is that the world has given up on giving up Russian energy. The embargoes on Russian energy products are not much more than sanctions theater. Austria is the most flagrant example, with Russian gas still accounting for the vast majority of its energy imports. But even where pipeline gas imports to the E.U. have stopped, the more expensive Russian LNG was never banned so its purchase has increased by almost 20%—leaving Russia as the second biggest seller of gas to the continent, and guaranteeing the Kremlin higher profits. Meanwhile, so-called ‘shadow fleet’ oil tankers carrying Russian oil have been pulling directly into European ports for several months, according to Greenpeace, in violation of Western sanctions. In total, the E.U. has paid Russia over €196 billion for oil, gas, and coal since February 2022, money that has kept the Kremlin flush—Russia has even managed to rebuild its military.

“These sanctions failures have also led to diminished global influence for the U.S. Turkey has developed considerable leverage as an energy middleman, and NATO member, which it is using to stymie both U.S. and E.U. foreign policy goals. Meanwhile, President Biden’s careful unwillingness to let Ukraine seize a military advantage for fear of ‘escalation’ has reenforced the impression that its support is far from absolute. China is likely factoring this into its calculations on Taiwan, as is Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, as he continues to expand Israel’s war across the Middle East.”

Sino-Russian ties have never been stronger. They’ve conspired to create a workaround financial trade network that sidesteps the main US-dominated SWIFT system. Combined Russian and Chinese fleets are jointly vying for domination of the Arctic seas, even the Northwest Passage. Russian support of Iran, now resulting in Iranian arms being sent to Russia, has skewered American influence in the region. Iran has successfully deployed her terrorist surrogates to isolate Israel from her potential alliances with many Arab nations. North Korea is even sending troops to fight against Ukraine. As Simone McCarty (CNN, October 20th) points out, Russian global power is rising again: “Nearly three years after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine saw Moscow condemned by countries globally, leader Vladimir Putin is staging a summit with more than a dozen world leaders – in a pointed signal from the autocrat that far from being alone, an emerging coalition of countries stands behind him.

“The three-day BRICS [a grouping emerging economies] summit, [started October 22nd] in the southwestern Russian city of Kazan… is the first meeting of the group of major emerging economies Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa since it expanded earlier this year to include Egypt, United Arab Emirates, Ethiopia, and Iran. Leaders [attending] include China’s Xi Jinping, India’s Narendra Modi, Iran’s Masoud Pezeshkian, South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa as well as those from outside the club, like Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was expected to join but canceled his trip after suffering an injury at home.

“Set to be by far the largest international gathering the Russian president has hosted since the start of the war in February 2022, the gathering of BRICS and other countries this week spotlights a growing convergence of nations who hope to see a shift in the global balance of power and – in the case of some, like Moscow, Beijing and Tehran – directly counter the United States-led West… It’s this latter message that Putin – and close partner and most powerful BRICS country leader Xi – [projected]: it’s the West that stands isolated in the world with its sanctions and alliances, while a ‘global majority’ of countries support their bid to challenge American global leadership.” Putin’s handiwork, combined with China’s huge global stature (despite her own economic woes), has redefined the major schism in global politics: the United States and her allies vs the new Sino-Russian political bloc.

I’m Peter Dekom, and not since WWII has the United States needed her traditional allies more in this clear Sino-Russian effort to emasculate American power and leave us isolated in a world with so many forces aimed at taking us down, politically and economically.

The Misery of Haiti – An American Gift to the Caribbean

"I will not be associated with the United States' inhumane, counterproductive decision to deport thousands of Haitian refugees." 

2021 Biden appointed Ambassador Daniel Foote, U.S. special envoy to Haiti, in his resignation letter.

The Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio – legally in the United States – were invited by local businesses to provide relief from a local labor shortage… and they have performed exceptionally well under most difficult times. They have become Trump’s hate fodder. But why did they have to leave their homeland in the first place?

Over a decade has passed since the natural disasters began to take down this country… and it is still in shambles, even as the nation that occupies the other part of the Island of Hispaniola – the Dominican Republic – has survived just fine. Why is life so bad in Haiti? Destruction from recent severe hurricane damage followed by a devastating earthquake? The collapse of the government and the ascendancy of war lords and gang dominance? Desperate poverty? Famine? “Yes” to all of these, but the true explanation has deep historical roots, and a whole lot of blame and underlying causation can be traced directly to US policies, even US occupation, and our support of European claims against this tiny island nation.

According to the Manchester Historian, in the 18th century, “The French colony of Saint-Domingue (contemporary Haiti) was heralded as ‘the Pearl of the Antilles’, the slave-driven sugar economy making it the richest of the French colonies and a central component in France’s imperial vision. This was largely to do with the ‘exclusif’, a trade deal that meant Haiti could only trade with France, monopolizing Saint Domingue’s main product, sugar – a highly lucrative import catering to Europe’s fledgling sweet tooth.” By the early 19th century, exporting those slaves was part of Napoleon’s masterplan to convert that vast French colony on the mainland, Louisiana, into a major and exceptionally profitable agricultural provider of exports for France. But in 1804, a slave rebellion – aided by malaria and yellow fever – defeated the French military and ejected or slaughtered the French landowners there.

Needless to say, the fledgling United States, with a very large agricultural industry based on slave labor, supported the French all the way, including a subsequent agreement between France and the new, slave-free Caribbean nation, to pay France “reparations” for lost “property.” Oh, the country was surrounded by French gunboats to seal the deal. The Franco-Haitian negotiation is pictured above; the other pictures are of Haiti today. Those reparations were paid over almost a century and a half, bore interest, such that the final payment to France was made in 1947!

Haiti was already a weak, subsistence economy after its 1804 “independence” (not recognized by the US), and robber barons and criminals had their way with the tiny country. Haiti had downs and further downs over the years. No ups! According to the US Department of State Archives, “Under interventionist policies of the early 20th century, President Woodrow Wilson sent the United States Marines into Haiti to restore order and maintain political and economic stability in the Caribbean after the assassination of the Haitian President in July of 1915. This occupation continued until 1934.”

But while this may have seemed like beneficial and stabilizing effort, the United States very much reconfigured Haiti as a subordinate trading partner, literally controlled by American interests on terms most favorable to the US, which only heightened Haiti’s socio-economic decline. An article by Greg Rosalsky in the October 5, 2021 NPR reminds us that: “Haiti is one of the poorest nations in the world, and rich countries have their fingerprints all over the nation's stunted development. The United States worked to isolate a newly independent Haiti during the early 19th century and violently occupied the island nation for 19 years in the early 20th century. While the U.S. officially left Haiti in 1934, it continued to control Haiti's public finances until 1947, siphoning away around 40% of Haiti's national income to service debt repayments to the U.S. and France.”

The post WWII Haiti suffered through horrific dictators (like the voodoo worshipping “Doc” and “Baby Doc” Duvalier regime); poverty and hopelessness spiraled to new depths. That these dictators were kept alive with US financial and military aid – to “keep the country from going communist” – further decimated this clinging-to-the-edge nation. But even after a few bouts with democracy, modern Haiti has become hell on Earth, worse still from a July, 2021 assassination of then President Jovenel Moïse: “[P]arts of Haiti are still struggling to recover from the August 2021 earthquake, various drought episodes and Hurricane Matthew, which struck Haiti as a Category 4 storm in 2016.

“Gang violence, however, accounts for most of the hunger, with gangs controlling 80% of [capital city] Port-au-Prince and the roads that lead to and from northern and southern Haiti… Nearly 6,000 people in Haiti are starving, with nearly half the country’s population of more than 11 million people experiencing crisis levels of hunger or worse as gang violence smothers life in the capital of Port-au-Prince and beyond, according to a report released Monday.

“The number of Haitians facing crisis, emergency and famine levels of hunger increased by 1.2 million in the last year as gang violence disrupts the transportation of goods and prevents people from venturing out of their homes to buy food, according to the report by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification… In addition, 2 million Haitians are facing severe hunger, according to the report.” Associated Press, October 2nd.

“The Haitian refugees hoped the United States, under President Biden, would offer them a lifeline. They were wrong. The Biden administration has been sending thousands back to Haiti, even though Haiti is a disaster zone, and many of the refugees fled it years ago. Some of those the U.S. government forcibly sent to Haiti are kids who have never lived there.” NPR. The quote in the opening of this blog came from Biden’s special envoy to Haiti, Daniel Foote. In the last few years, many Haitians have entered the United States, some illegally with others under a special US program that offered a right to earn a right to residency.

“[I]f the rich world wants to help right the wrongs done to Haiti in the past, perhaps the most effective policy right now would be to accept more Haitian refugees. This wouldn't only be a humane policy that would improve their and their future families' lives. It would also likely be a boost to the Haitian economy. According to the World Bank, Haitian expatriates sent $3 billion in remittances back home to Haiti in 2018, which was almost one-third of the island nation's entire GDP.” NPR.

Some of the Haitians legally allowed to remain in the US under that special post-natural-disaster program included those Haitians specifically requested by Republican Mayor of Springfield, Ohio, responding to his constituents’ desperate cry for workers to reignite their community. These Haitians did that job exceptionally well, God-fearing Christians who integrated quickly into that small Ohio town. Their reward for their decency and hard work: they became the “cat and dog eating criminals” that Donald Trump and JD Vance used to create heartless lies and thus fuel their hate-filled campaign rhetoric in the current campaign.

I’m Peter Dekom, and there is too much hate stirred up in the United States based on ignorant politicians, willing to sacrifice morality and Christian-mandated kindness, to fabricate hurtful lies just to grab and hold political power.

Water to Die For

   

Who can forget the images of blazing oil wells, fires set in Kuwait by Saddam Hussein’s retreating soldiers. The 1990-91 Gulf War was over a precious natural resource that been of particular focus in the Middle East and adjacent Asia. While I can challenge you to live without relying on petroleum for a week, and that may well be an inconvenience, change the word to “water” (in any beverage), and you just might not last that week. Apocalyptic water war movies are many, and while they were once considered science fiction epics, it ain’t fiction no more! Water is life… and to many who lack it or wage war or are willing to resort to violence to get it… death.

Whether it is a central valley payoff to state administrator in California to shunt state water to those who can pay, the sneaky way Los Angeles siphoned off Owens Valley water to slake Southern California’s thirst or that notorious 1922 agreement among Western states allocating water among and between themselves, ignoring Indigenous People and dividing up water well in excess of actually available Colorado River resources (still a huge bone of contention in the region), water is and always has been a huge political issue in this country. Read the signs along California’s 99 or the I-5 as farmers complain about lacking enough water to grow their crops. So far, the battle over water in the American West is less violent than the bigger wars all over the earth, as climate change sucks the life out of rivers, lakes, streams and aquifers. But give it time.

As Ian James, writing for the August 26th Los Angeles Times points out, water seems to be worth dying for across the Earth: “In Pakistan, two groups of farmers started arguing in the fields and attacked one another with axes, clubs and bricks in a bloody fight over water… In South Africa, hundreds of people protesting a water shortage blocked roads with burning tires and hurled rocks at police… In Ukraine, Russian attacks on infrastructure left a city of nearly 1 million people without water.

“These are some of the 347 water-related conflicts that researchers have documented during 2023, a year that saw violence over water increase dramatically worldwide… The number of incidents reached a record last year, far surpassing the 231 conflicts recorded in 2022 and continuing a rising trend that has persisted over the last decade… The newly updated data compiled by researchers at the Pacific Institute, a global water think tank in Oakland, show that water-related disputes — ranging from quarrels over water sources to protests over lack of clean water — have erupted into violence with alarming frequency, and that water systems have increasingly been targeted in conflicts… ‘The rise is very dramatic and disturbing,’ said Peter Gleick, Pacific Institute co-founder and senior fellow.

“The upsurge in violence, he said, reflects continuing disputes over control and access to scarce water resources, growing pressures on supplies driven by population growth and climate change, and ongoing attacks on water infrastructure where war and violence are widespread, especially in the Middle East and Ukraine… Details of last year’s incidents have been included in the latest update of the Pacific Institute’s Water Conflict Chronology , a comprehensive global database on water-related violence.

“The researchers collect information about the incidents from news reports and other sources and accounts. They classify instances into three categories: where water or water systems have been a trigger of violence, have been used as a ‘weapon’ or have been targeted and become a ‘casualty’ of violence… Many regions of the world saw increases in the number of conflicts in 2023, including South Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America and the Caribbean.

“There were 131 instances of water-related violence last year in the Middle East, more than in any other region. The Israel-Hamas war pushed the number of incidents involving Israelis and Palestinians to 91, up from 45 events the previous year… ‘Water is being used as a trigger and as a weapon and as a casualty, all three categories, in the Middle East,’ Gleick said. ‘It’s partly a reflection on the scarcity of water in the region. It’s partly a reflection on disputes over control of land in the West Bank. And it’s partly a reflection of the massive destruction of Gaza after the Hamas attack in October, where infrastructure of all kinds has been targeted — civilian infrastructure, schools, hospitals, water systems, energy systems. It’s a reflection of the broad violence in the region.”

Water has its own set of dangers, from coastal storm surges to heavy flood from tropical storms, occasionally punctuated by a failing dam. Polluted water, water-borne diseases, from mosquito-carried malaria to dengue fever, cholera, typhoid, parasitic infection and killer chronic diarrhea, to name but a few of water’s killing ability. But the biggest threats to life, human and otherwise, have even more to do with water as the lifeblood of agriculture and the quest for potable drinking water for life itself, particularly human beings. And remember, that fresh water only covers 3% of the Earth.

As climate change has already imposed intolerable heat waves in the American West and Southwest, water shortages are rapidly becoming life-threatening. I wonder if future anthropologists will recognize why so many vibrant 21st century American cities were abandoned and why so much of what was rumored to have once been very productive agricultural land turned into deserts.

I’m Peter Dekom, and too many here and in other affluent nations around the world simply believe not only that technology will totally solve the problem… but at least the affluent nations can buy their way out of harm’s way… and simply ignore the accelerating reality.

You Just Don’t Get It – Ultra-Rich Taxpayers Will Never Pay Their Fair Share!

You Just Don’t Get It – Ultra-Rich Taxpayers Will Never Pay Their Fair Share!

Yet Heavily Male Rank and File Unions Still Won’t Endorse Harris

While union leadership knows what’s best for labor, in male-heavy unions, sometimes the best that the Dems can get is no endorsement. The Teamsters, International Association of Firefighters, International Longshoremen’s Association, etc. are either holding back endorsing a candidate or officially not endorsing at all. Is it because these workers in heavily physical industries identify with an “anti-woke,” macho values embodied in the new MAGA-driven Trump GOP. Trump’s track record, discussed below, has been anti-union, anti-labor for most of his life. He has stated that “I hate to pay overtime,” suggesting that he typically finds a way to get some else to pay OT. In his several bankruptcies, he’s left small vendors and wage-earning employees in the lurch. While Trump tosses pet treats out during his rallies – we won’t tax tips or overtime – I suspect his MAGA House won’t be too happy to propose that.

CNN tells us that some 56% of Americans say the amount they pay in taxes is “more than their fair share,” up from 51% who thought so in 2019. Unsurprisingly, nearly two out of every three Americans feel the wealthy don’t pay their fair share of taxes, and 61% said they would support raising taxes on households earning over $400,000. Fair share: in terms of earnings, the top 1% pays proportionately more. But the analysis cannot simply be based on who earns the most; if you factor in the cost of living and the resulting percentage of truly discretionary spending, the mega-rich are living it up… while most of the rest of us struggle.

We live in an era where an individual American can aspire to and achieve trillionaire status! In the end, the mere fact that so many individuals can become multi-billionaires when we have rampant homelessness, deteriorating schools, accelerating climate change and even recent bills increasing infrastructure repair are at best, a band aid and a momentary respite from what’s really needed, is a testament to the supremacy of greed over need. With the exception of real property tax, we do not tax the accumulation of massive wealth until it is sold or transferred. Rich folks can borrow against that wealth, but while the loan proceeds are not taxable, the interest paid is deductible.

How’s that again? "[W]hile most of us live off our salaries, tycoons like Jeff Bezos live off their wealth," French economist Zucman wrote in the NY Times. "In 2019, when Mr. Bezos was still Amazon’s chief executive, he took home an annual salary of just $81,840. But he owns roughly 10 percent of the company, which made a profit of $30 billion in 2023." Elected MAGA members of Congress continue to cling to that “axiom” that has never, never been true, that if you reduce taxes to the rich, they create lots of “trickle down” good jobs.

It's bad enough that Trump history is to ladle costs on workers, reject labor collective bargaining rights, but loves to bring all kinds of special benefits to the rich, from capital gains and accelerated depreciation deductions for cherished industries (like oil and gas or farming) to treating fund managers as if they had invested money in a deal, even when they did not, under the “carried interest rule.” The Biden Harris administration has been pro-labor in every way, with Biden even being the first president to join a picket line.

On the other hand, companies found a very sympathetic National Labor Relations Board during the Trump years. Employers were forcing workers into anti-union presentations. Nick Romeo, writing for the September 27, 2024, Capital & Main (reprinted in the October 10th FastCompany.com) examined Trump’s actions against wage-earning labor during his term in office: “Perhaps the strongest indication of how workers seeking to organize would fare under a second Trump administration is the former chief executive’s record during his first administration. During Trump’s term, the NLRB — a quasi-judicial body with up to five members appointed by the president — acted on all 10 items in a 2017 corporate wishlist from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, according to a report by the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit nonpartisan think tank. The decisions made it easier for employers to fire or discipline employees, weakened rules to streamline union elections and restricted where and how workers can discuss workplace issues.

“The Trump board also proposed a rule that would have excluded graduate students from the category of employees. Under current board Chair Lauren McFerran, a Biden appointee, the proposed rule was withdrawn, protecting the right of student workers to organize. Since 2022, more than 44,000 student workers across the country have formed unions. ‘It’s certainly possible that they would resurrect that effort and try to take collective bargaining rights away from graduate students,’ said Sharon Block, professor of practice and executive director of the Center for Labor and a Just Economy at Harvard Law School and an NLRB member under President Barack Obama… Seth Goldstein, an attorney at Julien, Mirer, Singla & Goldstein, which represents the Trader Joe’s United union, was more pessimistic. ‘I think student organizing would be dead,’ he said.

“Another important action by the Biden-era NLRB reversed the Trump board’s decision on the issue of ‘joint-employer’ status. Some companies shield themselves from liability for labor law violations and the requirement to negotiate with unions by claiming that a subcontractor is the legal employer of workers, even if both companies in fact determine wages and working conditions. Trump’s NLRB made it harder for firms to be considered joint employers, but Biden’s board has taken the opposite approach. Just this month [September], NLRB Region 31 in Los Angeles ruled that Amazon is a joint employer with its delivery service providers, which could enable the Teamsters to bring the corporate giant to the bargaining table.” Seriously. Do these workers really believe Trump will stand and deliver for them? Stand back and stand by!

I’m Peter Dekom, and sometimes that which is obvious to many finds strange bodies of voters for whom the obvious isn’t.

And if Trump Wins, What?

And if Trump Wins, What?

A Mere Viktor Orbán-like “Illiberal Democracy” or…. What Trump Tells You He Will Do? Retribution

“In British and American law, a posse comitatus is a group of people who are mobilized by the sheriff to suppress lawlessness in the county. In any classic Western film, when a lawman gathers a ‘posse’ to pursue the outlaws, they are forming a posse comitatus. The [US] Posse Comitatus Act is so named because one of the things it prohibits is using soldiers rather than civilians as a posse comitatus.” 

Brennan Center (10/14/21)

“We have the outside enemy and then we have the enemy from within. And the enemy from within is, in my opinion, more dangerous than China, Russia and all these countries… I think it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard or, if really necessary, by the military.”

October 13th Trump interview by Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo, referencing Democratic “radical-leftists” like Adam Schiff & Nancy Pelosi

“We have safeguards in our system against lunatic things… Look, I’m not going to defend every single thing [Trump has] ever said in his lifetime. ... There’s a lot of things people say in overstatement. ... Overstatement is the mother’s milk of politics.” 

Ken Khachigian, Trump-supporter and former trusted speechwriter and strategist to Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon, LA Times, 10/17

I already have dealt with obvious economic realities that would of necessity make Donald Trump’s economic pledges a total disaster for the United States, far, far worse that the cost of implementing Kamala Harris’ platform – see my recent How to Screw Up a Solid Economy – Politics blog – so today I will focus on the main plank of his political agenda: retribution. Make no mistake about what many of his followers believe; a quarter of MAGA Republicans surveyed say that Trump should do “whatever it takes” to take the presidency on inauguration day. His own words speak of bloodshed and violence should he lose, militia are preparing to back him, election officials in too many states make it clear that they will not certify a Harris victory, phalanxes of lawyers across the land are ready to file immediate lawsuits in states where Trump may lose by a narrow vote, and while there was no measurable fraud in 2020, Trump has prepared for the “rigged” November, without mentioning that he and his followers are doing all of the rigging.

But for all that prospective violence, perhaps a full-on civil war, that horrible reality is not my major concern; my greatest fear is retribution he is committed to do, repeatedly, if elected. Indeed, neither the Posse Comitatus Act nor the Constitution are even mild deterrents to his coopting the Department of Justice to arrest, convict and incarcerate (or execute) his political opponents, and the military plus armed MAGA followers to arrest them. Trump has gone so far as to name high-ranking individual Democrats who will be targeted, news media whom he believes are biased against him to be shut down or lose their broadcast licenses and how he would otherwise treat anyone who has opposed him.

All the GOP apologists for Trump, those who dismiss his rhetoric as merely “political” posturing, have created a monster, a political candidate who literally is following the fascist playbook, even to use exactly the same verbiage of demonization (“lunatics,” Marxists,” “vermin,” “radical leftists/communists,” “perverts,” etc.) that Hitler used to gain and sustain power in WWII-era Germany. It’s no wonder that, excluding the existing autocrats in Europe, there is general concern and consternation on that continent if the once-hailed “capital of the democratic world” should truly succumb to fascism, if elected. Yes, like so many in the United States, including some of our recent military commanders at the highest levels, they call Trump’s agenda “fascist.”

Many in Trump’s inner circle when he was President, including his attorney general, defense secretary, and chairman of the joint chiefs, former congressional Republicans and even his Vice President, warn of the dangers if he is reelected. Yes Republicans who want to preserve their electability – the same people who called Trump dangerous and unhinged in 2021 or earlier – are willing to back Trump saying, as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and JD Vance (among Trump’s most vitriolic critics, even in recent times) have noted. “we’re on the same team now.” And when you realize that Trump faces criminal trials and probable conviction if he lacks the power to shut down those efforts, it just might be time to consider exactly how such a desperate president would wield his power. For those who think his threats as just “words,” they are living in an imaginary world.

As NY Times journalist Peter Baker said in an October 16th interview on Puck.com, using a “moderate” Virginia governor as an example of why he backs Trump: “Glenn Youngkin wanting to have a future in the Republican Party, I presume. He felt he was in that box and couldn’t avoid the question, so he had to reframe the question and give a different answer to the question that was actually asked… There’s been this long-standing argument on the part of a lot of folks, including Republicans, saying, Well, you know, Trump says stuff, he doesn’t really follow through, he doesn’t really mean it. And on some things, that’s true, if you go back and look at his four years. But there are quite a number of things he did follow through on, or at least tried to, and that he was talked out of or restrained by the people around him—who will not be around him in a second term. And I think for anybody who wonders whether Trump would go as far as his most provocative language, well, I think January 6 answered that question.” Trump has repeatedly stated he would “terminate” the Constitution if he deemed it necessary.

Trump’s retribution will even extend to entire “blue” states. As LA Times columnist, Mark Barabak noted on October 17th, “If elected, he vowed to punish [California] — which is to say its more than 39 million residents — by withholding federal disaster aid should California’s leaders refuse to give more water to farmers and cities. (That would come at the expense of the environment and others denied their share.)… ‘If [Governor Newsom] doesn’t sign those papers,’ Trump told reporters, ‘we won’t give him money to put out all his fires.’ It was unclear what papers Trump referred to, but there was no mistaking his strong-arm sentiment.” In blaming California for those fires, he fails to mention that the California forests under federal control are the biggest hazard.

Trump twists the 1782 Insurrection Act as justification for his massive use of force against his “enemies.” The Supreme Court’s presidential immunity ruling, also a clear distortion of the Constitution, has energized Trump into a belief that if reelected President, he has been handed an autocratic blank check by the highest court in the land. “‘It’s absolutely essential that Democrats have majorities and that we continue to do vigorous oversight and if necessary, hold him accountable again, because the Supreme Court has decided that he is unbound, unshackled by criminal law,” [California Congressman Adam] Schiff said… He can be whatever kind of criminal he wants as president and he is practically untouchable. So Congress’ role as the essential guardrail has only become more and more important.’

“Schiff said a Trump win would no doubt ‘elevate the personal risk’ for [the congressman] and Trump’s other critics, but they aren’t backing down… Schiff helped investigate Trump’s campaign ties to Russia at the start of Trump’s presidency, helped lead Trump’s impeachment for soliciting political favors while withholding military aid from Ukraine and helped investigate Trump’s incitement of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol by supporters intent on blocking the certification of President Biden’s election — for which Trump was impeached a second time… For that work, Trump has called Schiff a ‘traitor’ who should be ousted from office and severely punished. He also accused Pelosi of treason.” Kevin Rector for the October 19th LA Times.

In that same edition, LZ Granderson, looks at how the Trump family looks at the world from the perspective of real estate developers: “Jared Kushner, a former White House advisor and son-in-law to Donald Trump, said, ‘It’s a little bit of an unfortunate situation there… Gaza’s waterfront property, it could be very valuable, if people would focus on building up livelihoods’… Whose livelihoods? It’s hard to imagine a scenario in which the livelihood of Palestinians is a priority for Netanyahu or Trump, who reportedly is exploring real estate opportunities in the region. For nearly 20 years, Gaza has been an open-air prison, according to the U.N.”

I did not even look at how Trump go is willing to go beyond ICE and (unlawfully) use National Guard, the US military and local law enforcement to round-up suspected immigrants to be sent to detention camps pending deportation with little or no review… by deputizing MAGA militia to join the quest for those “blood poisoning” illegals… by the millions. Fascism is ugly, and even uglier where the US Supreme Court itself has provided a ruling in favor a declared autocrat to be a brutal dictator. Brown shirts, anyone?

I’m Peter Dekom, and while many Americans do not believe Trump will actually be as extreme as he says, while others hope he is, I think voters should listen to Trump’s own words, repeated often, and BELIEVE HIM.

How to Screw Up a Solid Economy - Politics

 

“In the United States today, we have more than our share of the nattering nabobs of negativism. They have formed their own 4-H Club — the ‘hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history.'” 

 Republican VP Spiro Agnew spewing against criticism from the liberal media, September 25, 1970.

The prestigious UK periodical, The Economist, began (on October 17th) a series on the US economy, with headlines calling it “The envy of the world,” noting “America’s economy is bigger and better than ever,” while adding a cautionary “Will politics bring it back to Earth?” I have observed over the ages (yup, those ages) that spoiled children seldom think of themselves as spoiled; they live in a privileged world where “keeping up with the Joneses” makes a scion of wealth driving his/her M-class BMW down the street feel deprived when a classmate passes in a Porsche Turbo Carrera. Poor kid! Those $400 torn jeans just can’t compete with the young lady flashing her $30,000 Birkin handbag. That “reality” seems to be infecting MAGA adherents today.

We are the number one economy on earth, the most successful survivor in the post-pandemic economy, pay the lowest retail food prices on the planet, have truly low unemployment, high wages while inflation is fading as interest rates fall. Yes, for the reasons set out in my recent Food is Costing Too Much? Why? blog, prices for most retail goods, including food, have increased considerably since the pandemic. But we are in better shape than every other nation in the world. The interest rates, stimulus policies, the Biden inflation reduction and infrastructure investment bills, and the staggering levels of growth are not only taken for granted, they are lambasted by MAGA operatives with a never-ending and dramatically false narrative of how bad things are. Huh, the MAGA GOP seem to have become the 21st century “nattering nabobs of negativism” and “hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history.”

Indeed, as The Economist points out, Americans have often engaged in economic self-flagellation, as in in the waning years of the last millennium, and “some are again painting pictures of an American economy heading towards decline. China is now the rising juggernaut in the East. Donald Trump, instead of Bill Clinton, is the candidate for president lamenting the state of the economy (Mr Trump says it is ‘failing’, where Mr Clinton called it an ‘unpleasant economy stuck somewhere between Germany and Sri Lanka’). Ordinary Americans are anxious. Gallup, a polling firm, regularly asks Americans if they are satisfied with how things are going. From 1980 until the early 2000s, a little more than 40%, on average, said they were. Over the past two decades that has dropped to 25%...

“On a per-person basis, American economic output is now about 40% higher than in western Europe and Canada, and 60% higher than in Japan—roughly twice as large as the gaps between them in 1990.” Huh? While there are some negatives to our growth-driven success – income inequality and the wealth gap have indeed widened – the solutions proposed by candidates on both sides of the aisle, catering to political soundbites, could easily unseat our economic success.

As David Leonhardt points out in the October 17th The Morning (NY Times newsfeed): “We live in a time of cynicism about what government can accomplish. Most Americans say they don’t have much trust in Washington, regardless of which party is in charge. Even when the federal government sets out to do something that Americans support, many wonder whether it can succeed.” The Trumpian dark and unrelenting messaging of failure seems to caught-on like a flu epidemic. We’re in great shape, but the policies taking shape on the campaign trail, if implemented, will probably do more harm than good. But we like stabbing ourselves in the back.

For example: Exclude income from tips and overtime, create subsidies for a litany of social issues… but the supremely dangerous economy killers seem to be emanating from the Prince (King?) of Darkness, Donald Trump. Just think how expensive it would be to deport the lowest cost labor in the United States: 1. From the physical cost of deportation to 2. The loss of those low-cost workers, to be replaced by much more expensive US-citizen workers (who don’t do that kind of work at any price). And then there are the Trump pledges of tariffs on virtually all imports, and vastly higher tariffs on nations we hate. And how would that impact US consumers, Donald?

As artfully presented by Greg Ip, writing for the October 16th Wall Street Journal, “By one estimate, [such] tariffs could reach their highest level since the 1930s… In the short run, some prices in the U.S. would rise, and growth might suffer as consumers and businesses adjust to the new taxes on imported goods. The long-term impact depends crucially on whether other countries retaliate, and how far Trump would be willing to negotiate. The outcome could be anything from an all-out trade war, to a new trading system among U.S. allies united by their collective frustration with China.

“A new Trump term may assume that ‘the global trading system of the late 20th century is not sustainable,’ said Oren Cass, founder of American Compass, a conservative think tank that is close to Trump advisers and backs Trump’s tariff plan. ‘The endgame here isn’t some kind of negotiation where we all get back to 1995,’ when the World Trade Organization came into force. Rather, it’s a ‘fundamental rebalancing.’

“The free trade consensus that prevailed from 1995 until Trump’s election in 2016 isn’t going to return even if Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, wins. She may add to the mix of tariffs imposed on China during Trump’s first term and manufacturing support overseen by President Biden. But these would represent incremental changes, whereas a re-elected Trump could fundamentally remake the world trading system.

“Trump’s plans remain shrouded in uncertainty. He has called for an across-the-board tariff of 10%, later suggested 10% to 20%, and at least once even said 50% to 200%... He has proposed a tariff of 60% on goods from China, or maybe more. He has also proposed reciprocity, or U.S. tariffs that match those of its partners. That should spare Mexico and Canada, which under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement negotiated in Trump’s first term don’t charge tariffs on the U.S. But Trump has separately said autos from Mexico would face tariffs of 100%. Mexico imposes no tariffs on U.S.-made autos... In short, no one knows what Trump has in mind…

“If it turns out that the tariff on China is 60% and the rest of the world is 10%, the U.S.’ average tariff, weighted by value of imports, would leap to 17% from 2.3% in 2023, and 1.5% in 2016, according to Evercore ISI, an investment bank. That would be the highest since the Great Depression, after Congress passed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, which triggered a global surge in trade barriers.” Wow. And to think that most Americans trust that “bankruptcy king” and “convicted financial fraud meister” Donald John Trump is a better helmsman for the US economy than Kamala Harris? Even the projected budget deficits as to each candidate’s policies, reflected in the above chart generated by Trump’s alma mater (Wharton), give Harris the clear edge.

No Donald, while the US government would collect the tariff on imported goods, it is after all a de facto sales tax, the cost would be borne by consumers; the foreign government where the goods were produced would not pay them. And while you think that’s enough to fund the government, as you continue to slash taxes for the rich based on the clearly disproven “trickle down” economic theory, you somehow forgot to mention what heavily tariffed nations would do in retaliation. And you know there will be retaliation… there always is.

I’m Peter Dekom, and while it doesn’t take a rocket scientist or an economics PhD to see how Trump’s plans could easily and seriously tank our economy, his followers are governed by catchy, if not very dark, buzzwords and conspiracy theories… versus dealing with obvious facts.

Weaponizing Jesus Christ – The Violent Christian Nationalists

Weaponizing Jesus Christ – The Violent Christian Nationalists

From democracy to “theonomy,” by force if necessary

“If you don’t fight like hell, you won’t have a country anymore.” Trump Jan. 6, 2021 Trump repeated at a September Wisconsin rally: If he doesn’t win, migrants “will walk into your kitchen. They will cut your throat…You won’t have a country anymore.”

Those words inspire violence. We live in a new era of the ends justify the means, where pastors with significantly large congregations instruct their flocks to do whatever is necessary to ensure liberalism is purged from our governance, structured so it can never return. With billionaires, including two who became “pastors” funding the effort (discussed below), there’s a new super-MAGA GOP that wants it clear: the United States is a Christian nation, and that was the intent of our founding fathers. It wasn’t, as Thomas Jefferson made abundantly clear. The new goal: unleash the economy from government, cut taxes to the bone, purge foreign engagements, shove undocumented immigrants out of the country by all means necessary and impose a fundamentalist Christian wall around all things cultural or scientific. They call that theonomy, masquerading as a new form of democracy, which it most certainly is not.

With assistance from Trump/Vance manufactured statistics, that body of immigrants with lower crime statistics than American-born citizens, is falsely presented in this Trumpian truth: “It was just revealed that 13,000 convicted murderers entered our Country during Kamala’s three and a half year period as Border Czar.” A non-existing alternative fact. Swallowed wholesale. The politics of fear generates “whatever it takes” election manipulation. “Tethering migration to murder not only creates an inaccurate impression of immigrants; it also wrongly suggests that violent crime is out of control more broadly. In fact, violent crime has remained at historical lows for the last two decades , according to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics.” Daniel P. Mears and Bryan Holmes for the October 21st Los Angeles Times. For those egging Christian faithful into “self-defense” violent usurpation, it is a powerful justification that goes beyond mere replacement theory.

Writing for the October 12th Mother Jones, Abby Vesoulis drills into this movement under the title of A Growing Movement Seeks to Dominate Not Just Religion, But American Life. Some excerpts: “There’s a quickly growing religious movement whose followers believe Christians are called to wage a spiritual battle for control of the United States. The New Apostolic Reformation [NAR], as it’s known, seeks an explicitly Christian command of the highest levels of the government, including the presidency and the Supreme Court—but its leaders are working on the hyper-local level, too… [We] traveled to a church in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, to see how these Christian nationalists have inserted their ideology into the very fabric of local civic life rather than merely be the ‘head-in-the-sand, Jesus-loves-you kind of Christians.’…

“[There is a growing message emanating from the pulpit of many evangelical churches, an] elusive, hard-to-pin-down New Apostolic Reformation movement whose followers believe that Christians are called to control the government and that former President Donald Trump was chosen by God… ‘Estimates of Christians influenced by NAR vary widely, from 3 million to 33 million,’ wrote Mother Jones reporter Kiera Butler… [who] noted, ‘Its laser focus on starting a spiritual war to Christianize America has led the Southern Poverty Law Center to call NAR ‘the greatest threat to US democracy that you have never heard of.'” As this dark message increasingly seeps into small town churches and beyond, an army of believers is preparing for an actual war.

The effort to demonize becomes far worse than mere labeling. “Christian nationalist leaders are telling followers that Vice President Kamala Harris is under the influence of a ‘Jezebel spirit,’ using a term with deeply racist and misogynistic roots that is setting off alarm bells for religious and political scholars… The concept is inspired by the biblical story of the evil Queen Jezebel, who persecuted prophets and was punished with a horrible death. The word ‘Jezebel’ was used during slavery and throughout U.S. history to describe Black women, casting them as overtly sexual and untrustworthy.

“In the context of ‘Jezebel spirit,’ the term has sinister connotations, suggesting the person is under the influence of demons in a spiritual battle between good and evil. People who have studied the Jan. 6 insurrection warn that similar rhetoric on spiritual warfare drove many to the U.S. Capitol that day… ‘People … are hearing this woman is possessed by a demonic spirit that is hardcore, terrible, hates men, hates authority, is going to do whatever she wants to do,’ said Anthea Butler, professor at the University of Pennsylvania and author of the book ‘White Evangelical Racism,’ who has studied the New Apostolic Reformation.” Isabella Volmert and Michelle R. Smith for the Associated Press, October 18th. Under the guise of some form of democracy (which is a complete misnomer), NAR seeks to replace the Constitution with a Christian-driven directive, while eliminating governmental regulations on business, from environmental to financial. Back to the funding billionaires with an un-hidden agenda.

As Ava Kofman, writing for the October 2nd NY Times, investigates how this movement has been implemented in Texas as two billionaires, self-imbued evangelical pastors, are reshaping what they believe is model for future America: “[State representative Glenn] Rogers, a 68-year-old rancher and grandfather of five, represents a rural district west of Fort Worth. He was proud to serve in a Legislature that, as he told me recently, ‘couldn’t be more conservative if it tried.’ Since entering office in 2021, he co-authored legislation that allowed Texans to carry handguns without a permit, supported the Heartbeat Act that grants citizens the right to sue abortion providers and voted to give the police the power to arrest suspected undocumented migrants in schools and hospitals. In a Statehouse packed with debate-me agitators, he was comparatively soft-spoken — a former professor of veterinary medicine with an aversion to grandstanding… [But Rogers was too independent and unwilling to ‘kiss the ring’ of the real powers in Texas. So…]

“In reality, Rogers had disappointed two men: Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks, billionaires who have made their fortunes in the oil industry. Over the past decade, the pair have built the most powerful political machine in Texas — a network of think-tanks, media organizations, political-action committees and nonprofits that work in lock step to purge the Legislature of Republicans whose votes they can’t rely on. Cycle after cycle, their relentless maneuvering has pushed the Statehouse so far to the right that consultants like to joke that Karl Rove couldn’t win a local race these days. Brandon Darby, the editor of Breitbart Texas, is one of several conservatives who has compared Dunn and Wilks to Russian oligarchs. ‘They go into other communities and unseat people unwilling to do their bidding,’ he says. ‘You kiss the ring or you’re out.’

“Like the Koch brothers, the Mercer family and other conservative billionaires, Dunn and Wilks want to slash regulations and taxes. Their endgame, however, is more radical: not just to limit the government but also to steer it toward Christian rule. ‘It’s hard to think of other megafunders in the country as big on the theocratic end of the spectrum,’ says Peter Montgomery, who oversees the Right Wing Watch project at People for the American Way, a progressive advocacy group.” Darkness and fear are rising like floodwaters from recent hurricanes, doing even more damage.

I’m Peter Dekom, and while the violence likely to come if Trump does not win, it may be even worse if he does.

Who Knew "Greed is Good" was a Pharmaceutical Term

Who Knew “Greed is Good” was a Pharmaceutical Term

“Creeping Socialism” vs an “Unsustainable” Healthcare System

StatHealth.com asked this question two years ago: “How is it possible to have a prescription drug price crisis when 90% of prescriptions are filled with generic drugs that cost, on average, $1 a day? The answer: The remaining 10% of prescriptions have an average cost of $20 a day and account for 80% of all prescription drug spending [two years ago!].

“High prices for branded medicines are one consequence of the Drug Price Competition and Patent Term Restoration Act of 1984, better known as the Hatch-Waxman Act, the same law that made low-cost generic drugs widely available. To pass that law, Congress yielded to demands from the powerful pharma lobby for longer and stronger monopolies for new drugs. This payoff to an already highly profitable industry has wiped out the savings that the widespread use of generic drugs should have produced.”

Well, Hatch-Waxman celebrated its 40th anniversary this past September, and while that law has saved consumers billions, maybe even trillions, on 90% facilitating generic and biosimilar prescription drugs - streamlining the FDA approval process on generics and knocking down some serious monopolist practices – somehow, the aggregate costs of drugs to consumers have actually risen. The flies in the ointment come from several directions on that other 10% and the cheating that is rampant in pharma-world.

There are so many ways to cheat, like this: Combine specific middlemen, employed by healthcare systems to increase the efficiency of patient coverage and access to fairly priced prescription drugs (called “Pharmacy Benefits Managers” (PBMs) with unscrupulous drugmakers who find ways to extend the expiration date on the patents by adding new “patent” improvements, keeping the “generic” prices pretty much the same. That the “improvement” generating a new long patent is often nothing more than a revised bottlecap is never revealed! The middlemen profit by directing patients to that “new” prescription… except only the bottle cap is new.

To some, it’s really hard to compete in the level generic playing field, if you don’t cheat. “One after another, generic-drug makers have gone bankrupt or moved their operations overseas or cut the number of products they offer. The number of facilities making generic drugs in their final form in the U.S. has dropped by roughly 20% since 2018, to 243, according to federal data.

“Drug shortages have become common. Today, 300 medicines are in short supply, according to the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists. Regularly now, hospitals and patients must scramble to find doses of the drugs they need if there is one hiccup in a pinched supply chain or a quality problem shuts down a manufacturing line.” Wall Street Journal, July 26th. But as new wonder pharmaceuticals come out, like the new generation of diabetes/weight loss drugs, demand soars… and the prices on successful new drugs more than cover the expiration of earlier drug patents. So ,the profits on that 10% of drug sales is the explosive statistic.

Back in 2010, when the Affordable Care Act was passed, the Obama administration got pharma support by including a provision that the new resulting healthcare exchanges would not be allowed to use their bargaining power to reduce the price pharmas charged on prescription drugs. Now, using other back doors (like under the federally controlled Medicare and Medicaid systems), costs for drugs like insulin and certain blood thinners, lifesavers for those who need them, are beginning to come down. Republicans in Congress assert that this is nothing more than “creeping socialism” that will destroy the quality of our healthcare system. Huh?

First, we are the only developed nation without universal healthcare. Hard to think of Germany and Switzerland as socialist – meaning that governments all the wealth, land and businesses – and, second, as I pointed out in my October 4th We Have the Best Healthcare in the World, if You are Rich, if You are Rich blog, we actually have the worst healthcare system in that universe. We pay double per capita over what even the other most expensive systems cost, and our prescription drugs can cost multiples of what the citizens of other nations pay for the same products.

For those diehards of private capitalism without restrictions, you may have noticed how private equity firms have bought up small rural hospitals or the emergency services in these hospitals, aggregated them, reduced inventories of medicine required on an emergency basis to save lives, cut medical staffing to the bone (like doctors, technicians, nurses, etc.)… all to increase the profits on the backs of Americans who have no other choice… competing facilities may be hours and hours away.

But there are other segments of the healthcare system that are in a death spiral, especially national pharmacy chains. Alana Semuels, writing for the October 14th Time Magazine tells us: “Pharmacies are struggling partly because of changes to consumer behavior. After the pandemic drove more shoppers online, customers bought less and less from brick-and-mortar stores like pharmacies. Although in-person shopping has resumed in many other types of stores, pharmacies have not seen the same boost, says Brittain Ladd, a retail and logistics analyst. ‘Even if they come in to have a prescription filled, consumers are rarely buying anything in the store because they know they can buy it cheaper online,’ he says. Pharmacies have reacted by cutting prices, which then puts them even more in the red, Ladd says. This then leads to more cost cutting…

“Rite Aid said on Sept. 3 that it had emerged from bankruptcy protection after closing about a quarter of its stores.. CVS closed 900 stores over three years, citing changes in consumer buying patterns, while Walgreens is planning to close about a quarter of its 8,600 stores because ‘the current pharmacy model is not sustainable,’ CEO Tim Wentworth said in a June earnings call. Chain stores also say they’ve been plagued by shoplifting, which has motivated them to lock up many products behind plastic shields, a practice that has backfired by driving away even more customers…

“But there’s a bigger and more complicated reason that pharmacies are struggling right now. It has to do with how pharmacies are compensated for the medications they dispense. Most patients are covered by insurance, and insurers use [PBMs], to manage their prescription drug benefits. PBMs are essentially middlemen, but they have a huge amount of power because they determine how much pharmacies get compensated for each drug they dispense. Every year, pharmacists say, PBMs are offering less and less to pharmacies for the drugs they sell, sometimes forcing them to operate at a loss on popular drugs like Ozempic.”

Virtually all of these issues, including the number of fully insured Americans who still struggle with co-pays, premiums and deductibles, can be fixed (and costs contained) with an American national healthcare system. To the extent that we can ferret out what the Trump healthcare concepts are, and he has no real healthcare plan, the MAGA solution is to have those are insured get priced based on what is not covered… like preexisting conditions which afflict 40% of adult Americans. So younger folks would pay less… until they have a chronic condition… and those with any prior issues may well be priced out of affordable coverage at all. In the end, as I have blogged many times before, having viable access to healthcare while still preserving the big profit centers does not work and has not and will not work… it is unraveling and only get worse.

I’m Peter Dekom, and if you have tried for decades to make our profit-driven healthcare system work… and it has become the worst in the developed world… maybe you need to choose between two dramatically mutually exclusive choices: quality healthcare for all at a reasonable price vs making sure the big incumbent healthcare powerhouses remain wildly profitable.