377 Comments

Just a quick comment on current events.

The definition of UNPRECEDENTED : never known to have happened before.

I’m 70 and my wife is 66. Before Trump entered the political scene my wife and I had never heard the word unprecedented before! Now we are both totally sick of hearing it.

It sure seems like everything Trump does or says is unprecedented. What a misfit!!! He is an American anomaly.

WARNING- he is a carnival barker for a party who have sold their souls to the American Oligarchs who want to control everything and everyone

Expand full comment

He’s also getting away with everything! Why? Put his disgusting ass in prison! Enough!

Expand full comment

Strip his American citizenship and kick him out of the country.

Expand full comment

Like HE said: if you doesn't like OUR justice system, he can LEAVE!

Expand full comment

Sadly, since he was born in your country, you cannot deport him. You can (and should) put him in jail, depending on the crimes with which he can be found guilty. I hope treason is among them.

Expand full comment

The government should let the people vote on it!

Expand full comment

Keith Olson ; It should be self enforcing!

Expand full comment

SHOULD be, yes. Too bad Bunkerboy and his ilk made him essentially immune to prosecution! I'm niave though, so I still believe we're going to see him shriek, "I DON'T WANNA' GO!!! I DON'T WANNA' GO! EHHHHHHHH!!!"

Expand full comment

Hoping he’s dead by then. 🙏

Expand full comment

Betty Moyers ; It would be justice if he finally sees and experiences being given a good time out, in the form of having consequences that do not include being bailed out by bad billionaires. Our Democracy needs to see the Commander in Chief held accountable! It is an important precedent to set, right along with ethics rules for the Supreme court! It's time that our Democracy grows up!

Expand full comment

He is so gross and unhealthy and his skin is so sickly looking, I can’t believe he hasn’t dropped dead already.

Expand full comment

Daniel H Laemmerhirt ; I think we will see justice!

Expand full comment

The people should demand a vote on it! We are paying them to work for US!

Expand full comment

Yup- afraid I'll die before seeing any accountability...

Expand full comment

Betty,

"getting away with it'? is he?

then grab him by the cojones and make his feel the pain!!!!!!

Expand full comment

I’m still praying he chokes on a Big Mac. Happiest day of my life will be when I wake up and that SOB is dead. The only way we won’t have to hear about him 24/7. I’m having a party! 🎉🎈

Expand full comment

Saving some very nice champagne for the celebration. I look forward to it DAILY!

Expand full comment

Blame Trump on Reagan and the Southern vote. After WWII, American corporations became world-famous, each steered by a CEOs who might have a house in the country by a lake where he could zip around in a boat with an Evinrude on the back. No private spaceships, no oceangoing yachts. Life was simple and rich.

1981. Enter the Mule. Ronald Reagan, imbued with Ayn Rand, early Alzheimer’s, a goofy grin, and Milton Friedman, a creepy sidekick who rejected Adam Smith in favor of trickledown. Top income tax was cut from 80% to 20%, unions busted, and government vilified with racist slurs about its malignant effects on “negroes.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rls8H6MktrA. The table was now set for private equity firms like Bain and McKinsey, led by snooty Ivy Leaguers, to eliminate jobs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AiOUojVd6xQ (8:58), in order to increase share prices. Real wages withered, as the income of the top 0.1% - including CEOs who relied on stocks - skyrocketed. Middle class families came to rely on two breadwinners, as traditional CEOs were replaced by corporate raiders like Romney, Icahn and Welch, who destroyed iconic companies by firing workers. Americans grew angrier, but were uncertain of where to direct their rage, finally settling on an orange buffoon who exploited them further. Deep distrust of government had by now so obscured the real enemy, that it begat vaccine skepticism, Fauci hatred, even Q’Anon.

Oliver Anthony is a white southerner with a hit song about "Rich men north of Richmond” paying him “bullshit wages” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5x35Ee1ftE. What fucking irony. People like Anthony elected Reagan in revenge for Civil Rights, then W, then Trump, while Clinton and Obama simply obeyed rich men north of Richmond, men who would never have held power without the Anthonys of the world. Indeed, southerners have exacted such a price for Civil Rights that decent people can be forgiven for not wanting to cover their fucking food stamps.

Unions may rescue us from fascism, but we also may need secession. Eh, Marjorie?

Expand full comment

Coming from Marj's neck of the woods, I can tell you that most people there have had hard lives and not enough education. Sports? Plenty. Religion? Even more. For years, the economy was mostly textile mills. My parents told me that a man was shot in a labor demonstration during the Great Depression, and unions could never get a toehold after that. Eventually, the mills hired black people as well as well as whites, and then the Democrats made it easy to move the mills away. Gone! A few went back to farming the depleted soil, but many people drive a long way to any job they can find. Education funding shrank. A lot of people speak Fox now.

Expand full comment

"Democrats made it easy to move the mills away." I assume you mean Clinton. But he just did what he was told by the "Rich men north of Richmond." Clinton will go down in history as a really bad president. NAFTA was a very bad trad deal. But remember, Clinton was made possible by Reagan, and Reagan was only possible because southern whites began voting against their economic interests in the 1960s.

Regarding the man shot in a demonstration during the Great Depression, that was the end of the gilded age. It was a Democrat, FDR, who began the long road to a liberal democracy where people would be held accountable for such atrocities.

Agree with you about Clinton, though. He could have vetoed the repeal of Glass Steagall - one of FDR's greatest accomplishments - but chose not to because he was already beholden to the Rich men North of Richmond. The Lehman crash came just 8 years later...

Expand full comment

Agree with what Michael Hutchinson stated. What I’ve always found ironic is how the GOP vilified Clinton, when early in the 1992 election cycle with a dozen Democrats showing interest in the presidency, Clinton was noted as one of the most conservative and the most business friendly. What he did with NAFTA and destroying Glass-Steagall is unforgivable. Bring back Glass!

Expand full comment

He couldn't veto Glass-he instigated it! His buddy Sandy Weill at CitiCorp had bought Travelers Ins in violation of Glass but had gotten the blessing of the Federal Reserve...how the Fed got the power to overrule federal law I've no idea. Weill got Clinton to gut Glass in order to solidify his purchase, setting the stage for a slew of mergers/buyouts between investment banks, commercial banks and insurance companies, resulting in the CMO's that brought us 2008. Clinton should be in jail with Bush & Trump.

Expand full comment

We can all see NOW that his booming economy was a farce! We loved him in the 90s though.

Expand full comment

Gotta say I loved him. I thought he was a breath of fresh air after Reagan, but that was overlooking a lot. And, as Professor Reich who went to school with both Bill and Hillary, says she was more conservative. ( I wish we could come up with a replacement word for conservative; it really doesn't cover the threat.)

Expand full comment

Who's this, "we," Daniel? I always thought the Slick Willy epithet suited him perfectly, because he was a sharp dealer who was not to be trusted. Especially after NAFTA.

Expand full comment

You have to admit: the economy was BOOMING under him! We had an historically good economy, but as you say, he was FAR from perfect. (And in my defense, I was born in '87.)

Expand full comment

YES, about Clinton, Michael!

Expand full comment

Sounds similar to a place where I lived in the South when I was 8 to 11 years old (family moved a lot due to civil engineer father sent to oversee projects only until complete). There were several cotton mills in town, and most people worked for the mills and most people lived in houses owned by the mills and rented to them. (Such a deal...)

One day I walked with a friend to take lunch to her father. He worked at a nearby mill. We did not go through a door, nor did we enter. He was working double shifts temporarily. There were no unions, and work breaks were few and far between. One of his coworkers was watching for us, and he signaled to her father when the coast was clear. He father climbed out the large open window, slid along the old brick wall to a place where he would not be seen, and gulped down food and soda like a man starving. It was summer in North Carolina and hot. Work areas were kept ventilated with large open windows, and had no air conditioning. (Most places did not including our houses.) I wanted to cry seeing the condition of her father, soaked with sweat, almost ready to collapse, and barely able to speak.

This place became unionized a few years after we moved away. The movie "Norma Rae" is based on events there. The movie replicated the deafening clatter of machinery, but they did not replicate all the grimy cotton lint floating in the air and settling on everything inside and outside (sweaty skin, vegetation, neighborhood houses, etc.)

It should have been a great victory for mill workers to unionize, but the mills, or at least large cotton milling components, moved away. I visited this place on a recent road trip. The town is not large, and I was taking photos of old mills, careful to park outside property boundaries where signs warned of severe penalties for trespassing. I started noticing a police car at various side streets ahead, or crossing in front of us. When I stopped for gas at the bottom of a hill, a police car pulled into an empty parking lot halfway up the hill facing us. When I drove away I asked my traveling companion (Chicago-born-and-raised) if he had noticed the police car. "Hun?" He thought I was being paranoid. Perhaps. Anyway I took us to other historic sites far from the mills and no longer noticed police.

I hope your town finds some revitalization.

Expand full comment

That's quite a memory to have had before you were eleven, and I'm happy those workers finally unionized. Even though our town was small, there was a separate elementary school for kids in the "mill village." When their mothers came to the business district to shop, they were frequently called "lint heads" because the lint would cling to their hair. But one of the mills did sponsor a nurse, who ran a clinic and was our Girl Scout leader. And about five miles up the road was another mill town with a company store. I was told they had only started taking money in the fifties rather than credit against wages for what they sold. They ran a whole separate school system for their population there was heavy football rivalry. I'm not sure what life is like there any more. The main street of our town is mostly empty of stores now, with Walmart just north of it and CVS to the south. We tried to find out who lives in our old house, and the next door neighbors didn't know. But before manufacturing was shipped off shore, I surely wish they had consulted the people who worked there.

Expand full comment

Wow, it's sad that people working at the mill in your town were treated that way.

I do keep vivid memories of these places. Location is a good memory aid, so recalling place and memory together helps me keep them straight. (It was a lifestyle I would not recommend for children, though it is interesting now!)

There were too many mills in my town to limit workers to one area or school. There were four or five cotton mills throughout the town, and there also paper mills by a river. The paper millls were huge. One very large modern looking paper mill remains.. If they could, people would avoid living downwind from paper mills, because it was known that people in the area had unusually high health issues. Paint would peel prematurely from siding on houses in this area as well. Smoke from the old paper mills emitted a horrible stench that probably the presence of various sulphur compounds. On my recent visit, the area by the new large paper mill looked like a park, and there was no stench! Some changes are very positive.

The family with the father who worked in the cotton mill was remarkable. Both parents worked separate shiftl so my friend and her brother always had parents at home. Her father and uncles had built their tidy, sturdy house themselves, so they avoided renting from mill owners. They had indoor plumbing while the relatives still used outhouses. (Still common in South then.) They cared for an invalid grandmother at home. They planted a huge garden on the empty lot next to them and canned everything that could be canned. Her father always enjoyed growing plants and had built his own greenhouse in the backyard. When I-95 was extended by the town, he managed to get landscaping contracts with most of the hotels. He was now his own boss and they could quit the mill! (I learned the last information later from my father who visited one time.)

Hope it hasn't been too long winded. The family whom I knew for only three years has inspired me for years, though I had to be older to appreciate it. Cheers.

Expand full comment

Thank you for sharing this. I had several friends whose parents were upper management in these mills, so my perspective was perhaps not as compassionate as it might have been, but one of my mother's best friends taught in the school in the mill village, and she was full of stories that made me realize how fortunate I was.

Expand full comment

Biting commentary. Well written.

Expand full comment

You know, I agree with most of what you have written, except I don'[t think Clinton and Obama "simply obeyed rich men north of Richmond". Other than that, your account of Regan et al is spot on, IMHO.

Expand full comment

KMcGady - Obama didn't allow single payer at the healthcare debate table. That alone speaks to whom he obeyed. The "solution" they came up with was a huge gift to the medical industrial complex. It essentially cemented their power, and the resulting travesty of medical "care" is the result. So yes, he obeyed those rich white men.

Expand full comment

I dont know all that much about the affordable care act. I do know of the idea that corporations can come up with better solutions than those of the people. It doesnt work. The way a corporation works is it will figure out how to benefit from whatever system is put in place in order to always maintain dominance and power over that industry. Thus never breaking the vicious cycle of corporate greed and abuse causing the problems that make symptoms they are trying to fix.

Expand full comment

Should've read your comment before I submitted mine, Paul. Exactly so!

Expand full comment

Read Anand Ghiradas Winners Take All The Elite Charade of Changing the world. Clinton believes in helping people, its how they are helped is the problem in his thinking. He believes private corporations can make up in philanthropy for what the government cant afford to do. Of course if it wasnt for all the corporate and billionaire tax breaks the government could help people oddles more than private citizens or corporations ever would care too. Obama wise, ugg, read Robert Reichs The System. Who Rigged it and how we fixed it. During the mortgage lending crisis of 2008 Obama bailed out a buttload of millionaire bankers and big banks that were (to important to fail). Zero of the people who had bad mortgages were given anything and many were heavily debt ridden and many lost their homes leading to a great reduction of wealth for the middle class. Affordable health care I applaud (I think it should go farthe). Bailing out banks that had shoddy loans no so much.

Expand full comment

The ACA was a bone thrown to the people so Obama could renege on his promise of universal healthcare while handing billions to the insurance companies. The ACA has helped millions of people, no question, but overall, the coverage is sketchy and the premiums go up every year. If you're not completely destitute, ACA coverage can cost more than employer-paid coverage.

Expand full comment

Succession would only make things worse. The South has to learn about degrees of responsibility. Kindergarten teaches gradients. Then negotiation becomes possible, and you get what you want without violence.

Expand full comment

We need to add to the “Enter the Mule” description of Ronnie, that all the policy decisions needed to also be vented by Nancy and her astrologer.

Expand full comment

Could not agree more on all points, Michael. Excellent summary!

Expand full comment

Amen! Thank you Michael!!!😳

Expand full comment

"Unprecedented" is like how "Breaking News" got abused.

Expand full comment

"Unconstitutional" would be a better way of putting it...

Expand full comment

It is scary how "Unconstitutional" has been normalized.

Expand full comment

And "unlawful"

Expand full comment

Yes, exactly.

Expand full comment

The amount of money being paid to the controlling officers of various concerns is a sticking point between labor and management. There is absolutely no justification for the vast sum of money being paid to these people. This gross inequity acts like a wedge that further separates mind from muscle. There was a situation in the past that spoke to this problem, the people in power suggested the less fortunate should "eat cake." With the transparency given to all positions within a company, pay levels are no longer a closely guarded secret. I understand the importance held by a CEO in any company but the unacceptable inequalities found in their pay levels only breeds resentment. I feel bonuses instead of inflated pay scales would serve to balance the differences found in any company. People have a basic need to feel wanted, needed, and respected. Supplementing their income partially through a bonus system would take a certain amount of pressure off of management by asking labor to accept quarterly checks based upon their overall efforts geared toward production. The bottom lines for these companies would spell the size of the checks given to its employees. Again, transparency would go a long way in letting labor see their true worth in any work situation. Share the wealth, a content labor force produces a better product hands down.

Expand full comment

Our government should not enact a law governing executive pay. It would be too much interference with free enterprise. Instead, we should tax capital gains as ordinary income. We should examine how my proposal would work, including its affect on investment in new ventures.

Expand full comment

Enact the law AND tax capital gains at the same rate as salaries.

Expand full comment

Gerald--We have common ground--

Expand full comment

Perhaps the Board of Directors pay should be limited to a certain percentage.

Expand full comment

Donald ,

Publicly traded companies must post reports that shed light on their operations. Private equity firms inflict at least as much damage on

us and are essentially immune from the requirements to share information about CEO pay and a host of other issues.

Expand full comment

Paul--Thanks for the info--

Expand full comment

There is not a CEO worth $20-30 million a year!

Expand full comment

Gaile--I totally agree. They should be on a bonus system like everyone else.

Expand full comment

Absolutely 👍🏻

Expand full comment

I would say he is an "anomaly" per se, Mr. Olsen. He is simply what the Trumplican party HAS BEEN since the first dementia-addled president dribbled all over us in the 1960s: corrupt, shameless, supremely bigoted, hateful, stupid and yes, EVIL.

Bush and much moreso his son, Dubbya', just hid their bigotry and coruption a little better! (Dubbya' didn't hide his stupidity too well though.)

Expand full comment

A carnival barker for a >"Killer Klowns" show<, to be sure!

Expand full comment

I wish trump were an anomaly but this country has always been full of hucksters and carnival barkers. After all, Europe sent only their finest minds and citizens to these shores, right? Likewise, PT Barnum said, “There’s a sucker born every minute”. Rachel Maddow’s current work as well as plenty of historians have laid out for us how tfg is the farthest thing from the exception but rather the rule. The ‘unpresidented’ part about him is, he ran for President-and won! The suckers and Russia wedged him into the Oval Office for four, excruciating years.

Expand full comment

First I've ever heard of anyone not knowing the word "unprecedented." But that's okay. Your description of Trump is dead on.

Expand full comment

I’m a country bumpkin who was never good @ vocabulary, sorry 😞

Expand full comment

No apologies necessary. It was a good submission

Expand full comment

Thank you

Expand full comment

I find it difficult to believe you’d never heard “unprecedented” before trump, but I deeply agree with the rest.

Expand full comment

Trump isn't an anomaly he's merely another power hungry person prepared to do evil things to gain dominance. He cares only for his own large arse. He's Mr. Bear Squash You All Flat from the childrens book circa 1950. That s__t got defeated when the other animals moved into an unsquashable abandoned truck tire. Our truck tire is the coming election. Now lets quit wringing our hands, organize, and vote Dump and his co-conspirators onto the next bus to Siberia.

Expand full comment

All that EVIL needs to succeed is for good people to do nothing

Expand full comment

ALL ABOARD

Expand full comment

Keith,

Why does everyone who writes the word SHOULD also have a sub stack...I don't even know that that is...BUT WHENEVER I HEAR "SHOULD" I RUN THE OTHER WAY...for obvious reasons...

Instead of should, I recommend DO...do you want something? get up and make it... or in our society, buy it....

Thanks for listening!!!

your buddy, avi

Expand full comment

Should would could must are words teachers are encouraged not to use with children. But I read them as suggestions, and in a conversation with adults, I accept them as that

Expand full comment

Will DO. Thanks

Expand full comment

I’m sick of hearing it too. The only unprecedented event to take place was probably the bite of the apple thing in the Garden of Eden. It was all downhill after that.

Expand full comment
Comment removed
December 4, 2023Edited
Comment removed
Expand full comment

Let me see if I can fix this.

Expand full comment

Same problem here. Kept giving me error messages.

Expand full comment

It works now!

Expand full comment

Same here.

Expand full comment

I can’t use the form. When I enter my information, and click the “Start Writing” button, I get the message that an error has occurred...please try again. I don’t think the script works for MACs.

Expand full comment

Same here and I don’t have a MAC.

Expand full comment

Same here

Expand full comment

It doesn't work on my Windows computer. I get a "Don't Panic" message and that they are working on the problem.

Expand full comment

....ditto !

Expand full comment

The same thing happened to me, and I’m using an Apple machine.

Expand full comment

Didn't function with Mac/Safari or Mac/Firefox on this end of things as well (good catch nonetheless Elizabeth Zelinger!)...

Expand full comment

You can go directly to the U.S. House or Senate website and use the form your own representative provides. Letters in your own words are taken more seriously than submitting a letter prewritten by someone else.

Expand full comment

Thank you for writing, Carolyn. Earlier this morning, I did precisely as you suggested, and, frankly, was able to write a more persuasive letter because I could work from text Reich had provided.

Expand full comment

Sorry. Let me see if I can fix this.

Expand full comment

Functioning now (thank you!)...

= )

Expand full comment

It doesn’t work on an iPad either.

Expand full comment

That's where I tried it -- didn't work.

Expand full comment

Same here, using a Mac. Could it be that someone rigged the site?

Expand full comment

I had the same problem. Tried doing it on my iPhone. I also have a Mac

Expand full comment

Same thing happened to me and I use a PC.

Expand full comment

I just posted the same thing and I'm using an Android tablet.

Expand full comment

Same error on my iPhone

Expand full comment

I don't need to receive any more daily emails from all those organizations sponsoring the message, so I just used my reps' government websites. If you are used to writing/calling your reps, it's not hard at all.

Expand full comment

It just worked for me on my IMac. Try again.

Expand full comment

I have an I pad. I,too, was rejected.

Expand full comment

apparently this error is non platform or browser specific because i tried it w/ 4 different browsers on 2 different devices, my desktop pc and android phone... Action Network (the host) has to fix it.

Expand full comment

I would support this, but I’d prefer to see a Wealth Tax and remove the income cap for payroll tax contributions.

Expand full comment

why not both?

Expand full comment

Even better.

Expand full comment

The latter being an easy fix for SS and Medicare solvency that never seems to enter the discussion.

Expand full comment

Absolutely.

Expand full comment

Wealth has already been taxed when earned. Taxing it again would be unfair. Instead, a more reasonable tax would be to tax capital gains as ordinary income.

Expand full comment

That would also harm middle class Americans

Expand full comment

Also, studies have shown that chief executive decisions are only right about 50% of the time. So, no, they are NOT worth the premium they are being paid.

Expand full comment

Then the shareholders can vote our the CEO. We do not want our government to do this.

Expand full comment

Yes, that's about as effective as "Vote the bums out!" when gerrymandering ensures that we can't vote the bums out. I can easily see corporate charters and rules written to achieve the same ends.

Expand full comment

Hi Constance, do you believe Congress has the power and/or is willing to write a law that would govern CEO pay of private corporations like XOM and APPLE?

Expand full comment

The courts would slap down every effort at such legislation, either by saying it violates the interstate commerce clause, or by stating they don't have jurisdiction because they are not American companies. They are global. And again, that's one more way to evade this law - relocate their CEOs on paper to one of their non-U.S. business addresses.

Expand full comment

The ratio has squared between 1965 & now -- from 20:1 to 400:1

Expand full comment

These graphs from wikipedia say it best. What does 400:1 one look like compared to 20:1. We are the flat line the black and red on...

Net personal wealth in the U.S. since 1962. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_the_United_States#:~:text=As%20of%20late%202022%2C%20according,a%20total%20of%20%2443.45%20trillion.

The black and red lines equals 300 milllion people. Lorded over what is about 22,000,000 millionaires and billionares. Which is only 6.5% of the population. 1 feudal lord billionaire and 30,000 millionaire pyscofants for every 420,000 (black/red and 3.5% green) people. Id like to see if the same percentages lineup in company CEO boards as well.

Expand full comment