Why Did We Lose?

 After the devastating results of last week’s election it is no surprise that various and sundry talking heads and pundits have been offering their “analysis” of the cause. Turnout was down 6% in Texas even as more people were registered to vote then ever before. Nationally turnout was down about 1.5% and lower turnout is invariably bad for Democrats. 

I’ve read and seen a number of those critiques many of which blame Harris for running a bad campaign. Others say and I agree that Harris actually ran a technically great campaign yet those pundits aren’t entirely wrong. I think that Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor during the Clinton administration, and Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) have the best answer. Both Reich and Sanders have long promoted the idea that working stiffs like you and I are getting a raw deal from corporate interests, whether you work for one of those big corps or even run your own small business.

Businesses can right off expenses like corporate jets and even yachts if they claim they are for business use but you and I can’t even get a tax deduction for the interest payments on our student loans. Businesses can declare bankruptcy and essentially get all their loans forgiven or pay just pennies on the dollar but if you or I declare bankruptcy we still owe the entire balance of a student loan plus interest.

Reich and Sanders argue that the average American worker has every right to be fed up with neo-liberal Democrats who have passed legislation in favor of corporations while at the same time failed to pass even a long overdue increase in minimum wage. Yes, Joe Biden has been good to labor over the last four years but it hasn’t been near enough and it isn’t just his fault. Too many Democrats in Congress have been captured by the uber-wealthy donors who fund their political campaigns. It’s a lot like Stockholm Syndrome or the phenomenon known as regulatory capture, those legislators spend so much time schmoozing with big money donors that they start seeing the world through the eyes of those donors. Once their worldview aligns with big money they are more easily convinced that voting in the interests of their “friends” is a good idea.

I don’t excuse them for losing sight of the reason they were elected but I do understand how it can happen. That’s brings up another issue that Sen. Sanders points out in his analysis and has been campaigning against for a long time; which is the problem of money in politics. Campaign finance has always been problematic but ever since the Supreme Court decision known as Citizens United which overturned many of the limits on campaign donations at the federal level the amount of money donated and therefore the amount of money any campaign needs to win an election is 5 times what it was in 2000 and that’s after adjusting for inflation.

None of this is to say that Republicans have a better track record on labor issues just that Trump at least recognized it as a significant campaign issue. His “solution” was to blame immigrants just like he did in his to previous campaigns regardless of the fact that immigrants aren’t the problem. He certainly isn’t about to blame big business as those campaign donors favored him. While Trump isn’t actually going to do anything helpful many of the 60% of Americans who live paycheck to paycheck voted for him because they felt he at least was listening to them and Democratic candidates weren’t.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - November 13, 2024

Vote for Harris to Lower Grocery Bill

 Some of those complaining loudest about problems the Biden – Harris administration hasn’t solved are folks who voted for Republicans in 2022 which left Democrats with a single vote majority in the Senate and a Republican controlled House. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has such a thin majority that the high number of cranks in his party has left him unable to even pass budget bills in a timely fashion.

One of the complaints you’re likely to hear most often is that grocery bills have gone way up. There are voters who somehow believe that Trump’s policies would bring grocery bills back down, but let’s face it once inflation raises prices they rarely go back down more that a small amount. Trump’s proposed national sales tax Trump is proposing on all goods that are imported would increase prices for a typical family by thousands of dollars per year. We’re talking about staples like food, clothing, gas, and medicine. As an example, Trump would place tariffs on coffee, bananas, and seafood, of which there is little production of in the United States. Almost none of the coffee or bananas consumed and imports 75 to 80 percent of seafood are produced in the U.S. yet they are staples for many American households. In fact, an economist at the Tax Foundation, a business friendly non-partisan organization, has found that the Trump sales tax would raise costs for some families by as much as $6,000 each year.

When Trump was asked recently about his plan to bring down food prices, he responded that he would block food imports from entering the country. Obviously the fool doesn’t understand supply and demand because when you cut supply prices go up unless demand goes down and I don’t see people eating less food. All blocking food imports would do is raise food costs and cause food shortages without increasing food production here in the United States. Many agricultural products that American families rely on every day, such as bananas and coffee, can only be grown in the United States at a much higher cost than if they were grown elsewhere. Simply demanding that American families can only buy food grown here in the United States would raise costs while reducing the variety of everyday food items that working families need.

Just look at Trump’s record to see that a second term would make consolidation in the food industry, which reduces competition and drives up prices, even worse. During Trump’s first term in office, he gave Big Ag corporations and the wealthiest Americans tax handouts. When it came to help farmers withstand his trade war with China nearly two-thirds of aid funding went to the top 10 percent of applicants rather than to family farms.

Kamala Harris has vowed to revitalize competition in food and grocery prices, because we all know that a healthy and competitive market means lower costs for consumers. She has promised to direct her Administration to crack down on unfair mergers and acquisitions that give big food corporations the power to raise food and grocery prices by instructing agencies like the Federal Trade Commission to specifically evaluate the risk that a proposed merger would raise grocery prices for consumers. On top of this, she’ll instruct her Administration to focus on investigating and prosecuting companies that illegally collude to set prices, up and down food supply chains. Finally, she will make sure the federal government has the resources to identify and take on anti-competitive practices in the food and grocery industries.

If your grocery bill is what drives your vote, then vote for Kamala Harris.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - October 30, 2024

There are so many reasons to get out and vote

When someone like my next door neighbor tells me they aren’t political and therefore they don’t vote I just want to bang my head on the wall. If you don’t vote you’re just saying that whomever those that do vote elect will be fine. That’s OK when figuring out where to eat lunch with your co-workers but it’s not so fine when the struggle for civil rights and women’s rights are at stake. We every citizen of voting age have a responsibility to ourselves, our children, our family, and our friends to vote so that the best possible people to lead our national, state, and local governments are selected.

Last week Donald Trump participated in a town hall on Univision and a 64 year old California farmer named Jorge Velazquez asked, “For many years, I have worked with these hands, hunched over picking strawberries and cutting broccoli. This tough job is mainly done by undocumented people. If you deport these people, who would do that job, and what price would we pay for food?” Trump rambled about farmers having it tough right now and how he was the best thing that ever happened to farmers but he never actually answered the question. I’ve wondered about this question myself and I’ll bet you have too, yet I have yet to see any journalist ask such a basic question of any Republican let alone Trump.

There’s no doubt that our immigration system is a huge mess. It can take over a decade for a foreign citizen to get through the hoops and hurtles even when they are the family member of a U.S. citizen. Not all applicants are successful. Our legislators keep talking about reform and even proposing legislation but as happened back in March of this year politics rears its ugly head and derails even bi-partisan efforts so that Trump can campaign on the broken system that he keeps broken because it gives him the opportunity to blame someone else.

Republicans always complain about inflation and government spending but let’s look at their solution. The Republican mantra is cut spending severely especially social programs. Argentina elected a new government early this year and their new president delivered on his campaign promises to drastically cut spending. Those spending cuts did indeed cut inflation from 26% to 4% but they also damaged the economy so much that now the poverty rate has jumped to 53%, the highest in over 20 years. Argentina’s president is an economist, though apparently a very poor one, and look at the mess he made of their economy. Trump made a mess during his first term and now he wants try again, this is a man who has filed bankruptcy 6 times. He can’t run businesses successfully so how can anyone believe he can do so for the entire American economy.

In this election we have a chance to choose between candidates, like Kamala Harris and Trump for president and Colin Allred or Ted Cruz for U.S. Senate. If elected Harris and Allred will move forward on reforming our immigration system while the same old Republicans who lie claiming that immigrants are all dangerous criminals will leave it broken or make it worse so they can continue to bash immigrants.

Even people who think their not political should recognize that letting Republicans wreck the economy over their spending cut fetish and anger to toward immigrants isn’t in their best interests.

Early voting has begun, make a plan to vote soon and bring your family, remind your friends.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - October 23, 2024

The Economy is Strong Due to Democrats

 No one likes inflation, I certainly don’t like that my grocery bill has gone up $40 or so per week in the last 5 or 6 years. Having said that many have gotten pay increases that either cover the difference are at least significantly reduce the impact. The fact is that those on the lower end of the wage spectrum have gotten the greatest increases. The reason for that is increased demand for workers.

During the Biden administration, not only is unemployment near historically low levels but overall employment is way up because the labor force has grown to meet demand. The growth is due to people who had given up looking for a job or retired coming back into the labor market, in addition there are more immigrants with work permits employed as well.

If you still want to gripe about the price of goods consider that Trump’s tariffs on Chinese goods are paid by consumers, meaning you and me. Tariffs are essentially a surcharge added to the cost of goods purchased by U.S. businesses from Chinese businesses. Unless the seller chooses to lower their price to absorb the charge in order to maintain market share the buyer has to pay more for the goods and while they too could absorb the increase rather than pass it on to you and me when we ultimately buy those goods in the stores they rarely do. You can tell that U.S. businesses haven’t absorbed the tariff costs because the prices for Chinese goods have gone up and U.S. corporate profits are at record levels. Trump’s tariffs are coming out of our pockets not China’s. Does that remind you of Trump’s border wall that “Mexico will pay for”? It should because as usual he lied.

When I was in college as a business major it was made very clear that free trade lowered costs for consumers. Apparently that lesson didn’t stick in Trump’s small brain. Trump’s latest pandering on economic issues is his supposed plan to make auto loan interest tax deductible like home mortgages. While that sound nice at first glance, the reality is that 90% of U.S. taxpayers don’t itemize their taxes so most car buyers won’t be able to take advantage of that deduction. Those earning more than $100,000 per year are much more likely to do itemize and even then only about 10% do. Like many of Trump’s tax policies the people who really get to take advantage are the ones already quite wealthy.

The Federal Reserve has done a remarkably good job of driving down inflation while maintaining a strong job market. Yes, mortgage interest rates are still higher than they were for the previous 20 odd years but that was actually a historically low period. Even a year ago when mortgage rates reached the recent high of over 7% that’s still significantly lower than the rates seen from 1973 to 2000. For the last years mortgage rates have been trending down again and now stand around 6.3%. The strong Biden economy continues on with more Americans enjoying the benefits of decent wages and the purchasing power that comes with those wages. Kamala Harris has proposed economic policies that are at least as strong as Joe Biden’s and with momentum of the economy suggests that between Americans can look forward to continued improvement in their living standards. 

Early voting starts Tuesday next week, vote Kamala Harris for president, Colin Allred for U.S. Senate and all the Democrats if you want to see a continually improving economy.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - October 16, 2024

New Gilded Age or New Era

The period from the end of the Civil War in 1865 until just after the turn of the century is known as the Gilded Age, it is the time of big railroads, big banks, and big steel. Men like J.P. Morgan and Andrew Mellon made themselves wealthy by monopolizing trade and corrupting government then built grandiose homes and earned the appellation robber baron. Economic inequality reached historic levels and children starved while Morgan and Mellon decided where to build their next 75 room mansions. Teddy Roosevelt earned a reputation as a trust buster through his efforts to curb the most egregious excesses of such men. Roosevelt didn’t attack all trusts or monopolies, only those he felt took excess profits and failed to provide good, efficient services or high quality products. While his public face was that of a protector of the common man he was very much a supporter of capitalism who believed that strong government provided necessary balance. Economic inequality continued to increase through the Roaring 20’s proving that Teddy Roosevelt didn’t go far enough.

Just two decades after Teddy Roosevelt’s presidency the national economy took a nose dive into what became known as the Great Depression. It took reformers like Teddy’s nephew Franklin Delano-Roosevelt and his vice-president, Texan John Nance Garner, to push back against the avarice of the robber barons’ successors and set the stage for the rapid growth in the middle class after the end of World War II. Roosevelt and Garner were forced to compromise with southern Democrats and withhold some of the protections and benefits from domestic help and farm workers, who were often minorities, in order to pass their legislation. Those left out were unable to fully enjoy the benefits of the vibrant economy.

Two decades later another reformer was needed and Texan Lyndon Johnson took up the banner to expand those benefits to the grandsons and grand-daughters of slaves and other minorities. Like all reformers before him he also had to be pushed by those who suffered under the existing system and he had to accept compromises in order to move forward.

While each of these great reformers efforts were necessary they have never been enough and soon after LBJ left office the legislation and regulations that protected the middle class were weakened or reversed. It has been 50 years since LBJ and once again economic inequality has reached record levels with just three men holding as much wealth as the bottom 50% of Americans combined.

In 2020 we have an opportunity to elect a reformer who will turn back the tide of avarice that threatens the fabric of our society and prevent another Gilded Age or Great Depression. I hope you watched the two nights of Democratic presidential candidate debates and recognized that some of them will move us forward while others just offer the status quo. Sanders, Warren, Harris and a few others offer a chance to restore balance to our economy. Biden, Hickenlooper and the rest would happily settle for scraps off the table of the new robber barons of Facebook, Amazon, and Apple.

Democrats Must Do Better Than Biden

I’m convinced that Donald Trump can be beaten in the 2020 election by several of the potential nominees. Recent polling even shows that Joe Biden can beat him here in Texas. Biden currently has the highest national ranking among Democrats who are running for the nomination. I’m just not sure he can actually win because this will be an election much like 2016 where turning out voters is more important that persuading so called swing voters and Biden isn’t that inspiring to the folks who too often don’t vote.

I don’t see him getting support from the people who we need to get to the polls in Texas in order to win a majority for president or possibly more importantly providing the coat tails to win the federal and state legislature. His support is primarily older voters who already turn out to vote in most elections. The people Democrats need in order to win the majority in the state and federal legislature are the young and minority voters. Many of those voters find Biden too middle of the road and his recent statements claiming that Republicans will work with him as well as telling business executives that not much will change just prove he’s not the change so many were looking for when they voted for Obama then Trump. That’s not to say Biden won’t get the nomination or even win in 2020 but if he does I worry he’ll end up with a Republican controlled Senate which will prevent him from achieving even slight reforms and that will lead to another Trump like president in 2024 as voters continue to look for change.

Even if Biden wins and gets to work with a majority in both houses of Congress his own statement that not much will change suggest his administration won’t provide the push to move forward on climate change, social justice, or any of the other reforms our nation so sorely needs. Yes, it would be more minority friendly, more LGBTQ friendly, less reactionary, and a better international partner but that won’t be enough for people who don’t see our government as responsive to their needs. It won’t be enough to inspire them to vote again in 2022 and 2024 and if they do vote it won’t keep them from turning to another charlatan selling snake oil in the hope that they’ll shake things up.

I’ll vote for whoever is the Democratic nominee in 2020 because none of the candidates can be worse than Trump or for that matter anyone who could possibly win the Republican nomination. I simply fear that having a “moderate” win our nomination and then the presidency invites disaster for the future of our nation. Next Wednesday and Thursday on NBC the public will have a chance to hear from twenty of the candidates and I hope that readers will take that opportunity to begin getting to know the candidates.

Wednesday, June 26, will start at 8pm and the candidates on stage will be: Sen. Cory Booker, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, former Rep. John Delaney, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, former US Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro, Rep. Tim Ryan, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee.

The following night, Thursday June 27, also starting at 8pm, the lineup will be: Sen. Bernie Sanders, Sen. Kamala Harris, former Vice President Joe Biden, South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Sen. Michael Bennet, author Marianne Williamson, Rep. Eric Swalwell, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, entrepreneur Andrew Yang, and former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - June 21, 2019