A View From The Left-WARS ABROAD, WARS AT HOME

WARS ABROAD, WARS AT HOME

KRUGMAN: Health Care in a Time of Sabotage

Is Trumpcare finally dead? Even now, it’s hard to be sure, especially given Republican moderates’ long track record of caving in to extremists at crucial moments. But it does look as if the frontal assault on the Affordable Care Act has failed…  But now the federal government itself is run by people who couldn’t repeal Obamacare, but would clearly still like to see it fail — if only to justify the repeated, dishonest claims, especially by the tweeter in chief himself, that it was already failing. Or to put it a bit differently, when Trump threatens to “let Obamacare fail,” what he’s really threatening is to make it fail…  As reported byThe Daily Beast, the Department of Health and Human Services has diverted funds appropriated by law for “consumer information and outreach” and used them instead to finance a social media propaganda campaign against the law that H.H.S. is supposed to be administering — a move, by the way, of dubious legality. Meanwhile, the department’s website, which used to offer helpful links for people seeking insurance, now sends viewers to denunciations of the A.C.A.   More

THE NEW WORKING CLASS

The principle of neoliberal governance—democratic politics as mere theater, markets as the real governors—became literal here: the Democrats banked their hopes on someone pretending to be a politician on the TV.  This dismal outcome—and, beneath it, the fantasy of grafting the Democratic Party onto an electoral base of affluent moderates in areas like Ossoff’s Atlanta suburbs—are a product of historical forgetting. Elite Democrats seem not to remember where they came from, or what it was like when working-class people actually turned out for them. Today’s Democratic leadership and its strategy are the offspring of a process of social transformation in the late twentieth century. Yet they seem to be blissfully unaware of this historical process, and thus unable to grasp that it has become a trap—much less why it has, or how to escape it…  The danger that the Democratic Party and elite liberalism now face is that they cannot conceive of the American working class as it actually is, insisting instead on addressing a specter from decades ago. The right-wing hard-hat, the eternal Reagan Democrat—such anachronistic images provide a way of not engaging with questions of class inequality. So long as these ghostly figures are what “working class” means, there can be no working-class force in political life, and the cycle of programmatic dilution and mass demobilization can continue, with increasingly horrifying consequences.   More

Quit Your Job for a Better One? Not if You Live in Idaho

Idaho achieved a notable distinction last year: It became one of the hardest places in America for someone to quit a job for a better one.  The state did this by making it easier for companies to enforce noncompete agreements, which prevent employees from leaving their company for a competitor.  While its economy is known for agriculture — potatoes are among the state’s biggest exports — Idaho has a long history as a technology hub. And the new law landed in the middle of the tech world, causing a clash between hungry start-ups looking to poach employees and more established companies that want to lock their people in place…  Alex LaBeau, president of the Idaho Association of Commerce and Industry, a trade group that represents many of the state’s biggest employers, countered: “This is about companies protecting their assets in a competitive marketplace.”   More

Worker Wages Flat, But Since 1978 CEO Pay Has Soared by 937%

Wages for most American workers have remained basically stagnant for decades, but a new report published on Thursday by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) shows that the CEOs of America's largest firms have seen their pay soar at a consistent and "outrageous" clip…  "While the 2016 CEO-to-worker compensation ratio of 271-to-1 is down from 299-to-1 in 2014 and 286-to-1 in 2015, it is still light years beyond the 20-to-1 ratio in 1965 and the 59-to-1 ratio in 1989," the report observes. "  … EPI proposes several policies that would curtail executive pay and potentially put more money into the pockets of workers, including "higher marginal income tax rates at the very top" and higher taxes for companies with high CEO-to-worker pay ratios. The Trump administration, however, has indicated that it intends to do precisely the opposite.   More

HOW MUCH IS A BOSS WORTH?

As a 2016 nationwide survey reveals, 74 percent of Americans believe that top corporate executives are overpaid. This public dismay with CEO compensation exists despite the fact that Americans drastically underestimate what top corporate executives are paid every year. In fact, the survey found that CEO compensation at Fortune 500 companies was approximately ten times what the typical American thought it was.  What are these CEOs actually paid? According to a study for the Associated Press by the executive data firm Equilar, in 2016 the typical CEO at the S&P 500 companies received $11.5 million in salary, stock, and other compensation.  Of course, this was the median CEO income. Some were paid a great deal more…  Against this backdrop, it’s striking that the Republicans controlling Congress and the White House championhuge tax cuts for the wealthy and oppose any increase in the minimum wage.   More

With New D.C. Policy Group, Dems Continue to Unify With Bush-Era Neocons

While the rise of Donald Trump, whom neocons loathe, has accelerated this realignment, it began long before the ascension of Trump and is driven by far more common beliefs than contempt for the current president.  A newly formed and, by all appearances, well-funded national security advocacy group, devoted to more hawkish U.S. policies toward Russia and other adversaries, provides the most vivid evidence yet of this alliance. Calling itself the Alliance for Securing Democracy, the group describes itself as “a bipartisan, transatlantic initiative” that “will develop comprehensive strategies to defend against, deter, and raise the costs on Russian and other state actors’ efforts to undermine democracy and democratic institutions,” and also “will work to publicly document and expose Vladimir Putin’s ongoing efforts to subvert democracy in the United States and Europe.”  It is, in fact, the ultimate union of mainstream Democratic foreign policy officials and the world’s most militant, and militaristic, neocons. The group is led by two longtime Washington foreign policy hands, one from the establishment Democratic wing and the other a key figure among leading GOP neocons.   More

Americans’ Massive Disapproval of Both Parties

The “Monthly Harvard-Harris Poll: June 2017” is the latest poll in that series, and it scientifically sampled 2,258 U.S. registered voters, of whom (as shown on page 30) 35% were “Democrat,” 29% were “Republican,” and 30% were “independent”). It indicates (page 24) that 37% “approve” and 63% “disapprove” of “the way the Republican Party is handling its job.” It also indicates (page 25) that 38% “approve,” and 62% “disapprove,” of “the way the Democratic Party is handling its job.” So: despite there being 6% more self-described “Democrat”s than “Republican”s, there was only 1% more disapproval of the Republican Party than of the Democratic Party; and, this indicates that there was a substantial disapproval of “the Democratic Party” by Democratic voters (more disaffection by them for ‘their’ Party, than by Republicans for theirs).   More

NBC News Poll: AMERICAN FEARS OF WAR GROW

An overwhelming majority of Americans — 76 percent — are worried that the United States will become engaged in a major war in the next four years, according to a new NBC News|SurveyMonkey National Security Poll out Tuesday. The number has jumped 10 points since February, when 66 percent of Americans said they were worried about military conflict…  While concerns about Russian meddling in the 2016 election have divided the country in recent months, Democrats and Republicans agree that North Korea is the most urgent threat. Among Democrats and Democratic-leaners, 42 percent say North Korea is the most immediate threat, and a similar number of Republicans and Republican-leaners (45 percent) agree. [And, contrary to all the MSM/Trump Administration hype, only 2% saw Iran as an immediate threat to the US.]   More

HOUSE PASSES BUDGET-BUSTING DEFENSE POLICY BILL

The fiscal 2018 National Defense Authorization Act H.R. 2810 (115) was approved 344 to 81, gaining the support of 117 Democrats and all but eight Republicans.  The bill would exceed the president's $603 billion defense budget request. But it also would blow past the $549 billion cap on defense spending set under the 2011 Budget Control Act by about $72 billion. For the funding scheme to work, lawmakers would need to strike a deal to increase or repeal the budget caps…  The House measure would authorize $621.5 billion for national defense programs, including the Pentagon's base budget and nuclear programs under the Energy Department, as well as another $75 billion in war funding.  It also would tap $10 billion from the war-related Overseas Contingency Operations account to pay for base budget items, including $6 billion to boost Navy shipbuilding. The NDAA funding levels mirror a budget blueprint being crafted by the House Budget Committee…  And the administration urged lawmakers to cut spending elsewhere in the federal budget to make up for the bill's $18.5 billion increase in base defense spending over the president's budget request.    More

ROLL CALL: YES Keating, Lynch, Moulton; NO Capuano, Clark, Kennedy, McGovern, Neal, Tsongas

How to Sustain Perpetual War? Easy: Hide the Bodies

Sustaining America’s state of post-9/11 perpetual war requires skillful manipulation of the public at home. The key tool used for this purpose is the bloodless narrative, a combination of policy, falsehoods and media manipulation that creates the impression that America’s wars have few consequences, at least for Americans.  How can the American government sustain its wars in the face of dead soldiers coming home? Why is there no outcry among the American people over these losses? The answer is the narrative of bloodless war.  The bloodless war narrative’s solution to the dead is a policy of don’t look, don’t tell…  Death, when it is reluctantly acknowledged, must still follow the bloodless narrative as closely as possible. Death must be for a good cause, freedom if possible, “for his buddies” later when public opinion weakens.   More