Trump’s Threat to Animals

BY JON HOCHSCHARTNER

 JULY 23, 2024

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Photo by Zahrin Lukman

I’ve been unsure how animal activists should orient themselves in the coming American presidential election. Obviously, in the United States’ two-party system we should vote for the Democratic nominee. But should we do more than simply cast a ballot for the candidate, whoever that ends up being?

I typically argue we should prioritize nonhuman interests to the greatest extent possible, as there are so few people who do. For me, that means picketing legislators and writing letters to newspapers in the hope of using the political process to accelerate the development of cultivated meat.

But, as the election approaches, I wonder if the threat Donald Trump poses to animals and our movement is so extreme we should pause our usual work and temporarily focus on helping to defeat him. I put this question and others to a group of animal advocates who were kind enough to share their time with me.

Merritt Clifton is editor of the Animals 24-7 website. Previously, he was news editor for Animals’ Agenda magazine, as well as the editor of the Animal People newspaper. When asked what a second Trump presidency might look like, Clifton referred to his coverage of the Republican’s first term.

“USDA Animal & Plant Health Inspection Service enforcement of the Animal Welfare Act all but ended; enforcement of the Marine Mammal Protection Act and Endangered Species Act was severely handicapped,” the Animals 24-7 editor said. “No significant new pro-animal legislation was passed.”

Delci Winders is associate professor of law and the founding director of the Animal Law and Policy Institute at Vermont Law and Graduate School. Her opinions are her own and she does not speak on behalf of Vermont Law and Graduate School. Winders highlighted some of the same things Clifton did.

“Deregulatory measures implemented during [Trump’s] presidency — including extreme speed slaughter, delegating oversight to slaughterhouse workers, failing to enforce the Animal Welfare Act, and keeping the public in the dark when the government documented animal welfare violations — harmed animals, people, and the planet alike,” she said.

John Sanbonmatsu is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts. He is editor of the book Critical Theory and Animal Liberation, and author of the forthcoming book The Omnivore’s Deception: What We Get Wrong about Meat, Animals, and Ourselves.

“A second Trump term will greatly accelerate the destruction of animals across the Earth by eliminating environmental laws and regulations, weakening or ignoring animal welfare laws, expanding oil drilling, accelerating greenhouse gases, and defending cattle ranching,” Sanbonmatsu said.

He added Trump would gravely weaken our democracy, encourage lawlessness on the far-right, and create an even more hostile operating environment for activists trying to gain traction with the public on animal issues. While Sanbonmatsu had plenty of criticism of Democrats, he believed the Republican would be far worse.

Christopher Sebastian is a journalist, technical writer, and adjunct lecturer. He teaches in the School of Journalism, Media, and Visual Arts at Anglo-American University in Prague. He writes about food, politics, media, pop culture, and animals. Sebastian had no doubt a second Trump term would be bad for nonhumans.

“Speaking as someone who has worked in environmental consulting for over 5 years, his climate policy alone clearly leads to undesirable outcomes for threatened and endangered species,” Sebastian said. “And with a Supreme Court that is committed to deregulation, I can’t see things improving for farmed animals either.”

Ronnie Lee is best known for launching the Animal Liberation Front and spending about 9 years in prison for ALF activities. In more recent years, though, he’s turned his attention to vegan outreach. I wrote a biography of the man in 2017, called The Animals’ Freedom Fighter: A Biography of Ronnie Lee, Founder of the Animal Liberation Front.

Lee also focused on the devastating effects of Republican environmental policy and how that would impact nonhumans. “My main concern is the huge harm that another Trump administration would cause to efforts to combat the climate crisis, which is already claiming the lives of billions of our fellow animals,” he said.

Vasile Stănescu earned his PhD from Stanford University and currently works as an associate professor of Communication at Mercer University. A committed vegan for over 20 years, his work on both animals and the environment can be found at winforanimals.org. Stănescu emphasized the climate stakes as well.

“Trump wants to increase energy exploitation,” Stănescu said. “He is an open climate change denier and has stated he would try and roll back all the progress President Biden has made in confronting climate change. Climate change is not an issue that only affects human animals, other animals would, if anything, be more affected.”

Stănescu noted Trump ruled, at the height of COVID, that meat-packing industries should stay open and be exempt from rules about public health because, in his view, they are essential for national defense. The associate professor believed the conservative would oppose any effort to help animals or reduce meat consumption.

Carol J. Adams is the author of The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegan Critical Theory, soon to appear in a 35th anniversary edition. Her articles have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Ms. Magazine, among others. She has been an activist in a wide range of causes.

“A Trump second term, God forbid, would have an enormous impact on all animals,” she said. “Those who support him, especially businesses, want a free enterprise unfettered by environmental laws. We can see how the Supreme Court, because of who he appointed, has already started eroding basic environmental protections.”

Adams pointed out animals also need those protections. As others had mentioned previously, she said efforts to reduce climate change would be impeded and animals, as well as humans, suffer from climate change. Adams couldn’t imagine Trump supporting any anti-cruelty laws or protection for endangered species.

“Trump’s right-wing, white-supremacist allies claim meat eating and milk drinking as an essential identity,” she said. “Meanwhile, Trump panders to them. Trump’s pro-authoritarian stance threatens our democracy. How would that play out? Civil liberties will be endangered, and along with that would be free speech about animals.”

Aidan Kankyoku is a researcher focused on developing new strategies for the social movement wing of the farmed animal advocacy space. He co-founded Pax Fauna for that purpose in 2021, which led in 2023 to the launch of Pro-Animal Future. Kankyoku seemed less concerned about Trump’s potential return than others I interviewed.

“I anticipate the same structural limitations that prevented Trump from enacting more dramatic changes (both good and bad) to U.S. policy in his first term will likely dominate in his second term,” he said. “Most advocates should operate on the assumption that consequences specific to Trump will not be permanent, and may be minimal.”

On the other hand, Kankyoku believed harmful long-term trends such as criminalization of protestors, journalists, and whistleblowers have been accelerating rapidly under administrations of both parties, and we should expect these trends to continue — to the animal movement’s detriment — regardless of the outcome in November.

Spencer Roberts is a science writer, ecologist, musician, and engineer. In his journalistic work, he focuses on the climate crisis, marine life and animal agriculture. Readers can find his writing in Wired, The Intercept, Jacobin and elsewhere. Roberts was similar to Kankyoku in his ambivalence about the election stakes.

“On issues affecting animals, Trump and Biden have remarkably similar policies,” Roberts said. “Even largely performative gestures made by past presidents, such as the slowing of slaughterhouse line speeds and designation of marine national monuments, appear of no importance whatsoever to either of the current major party candidates.”

Winders didn’t say how animal activists should divide their time between preventing a second Trump term and preventing animal exploitation. She insisted, however, it was important for activists to be working on all fronts. Winders emphasized the executive branch should guard against, rather than facilitate, harm to animals.

Sanbonmatsu thought there were so few people working to secure the rights of animals it would not make much difference whether activists turned more of their attention to the presidential election. He argued it was more important for activists to keep working on animal issues, but to do so in a more coalitional way.

“Animal liberation is not a single-issue campaign,” Sanbonmatsu said. “It is necessarily a campaign for universal emancipation and justice for all animals, including human ones. So the movement needs to be clear that it is against fascism in all its forms, including its Trumpian form.” He seemed to be calling for a rhetorical shift.

Sebastian wasn’t sure what animal activists could do to prevent a second Trump term. He also questioned how many activists wanted to prevent the outcome. Sebastian believed a significant portion of the professional animal movement was aligned with right-wing extremists and those who weren’t were ill-equipped to address the problem.

“Trump, and by extension Trumpism, is part of a growing trend,” Sebastian said. “And instead of challenging fascist power, many in the animal rights movement are following it in order to remain relevant, maintain or get access to new sources of funding, or because they share fascist beliefs themselves.”

Lee was shocked at the number of animal-protection advocates who supported Trump. He thought it was important other animal activists educate these Republican sympathizers about how much the climate crisis is harming our fellow animals and how a second Trump term would make that crisis so much worse.

“Having said that,” Lee continued, “I think that a [Democratic] administration would only be the lesser of two evils and that our main focus should always be vegan outreach, if we are ever to create an animal liberationist society.”

Stănescu seemed to argue in favor of a temporary focus on election work, but didn’t agree this meant less time, energy and resources for work directly focused on animals. For him, it was one struggle. Preventing Trump from returning to the Oval Office also helped prevent animal exploitation.

“We are passing tipping points in terms of both climate change and species extinction which, as far as anyone knows, can never be undone,” Stănescu said. “We are simply out of time to waste on nonsense. While any democratic nominee is far from perfect, there is no comparison to four more years of Trump.”

Further, regression on human rights makes progress on animal rights more difficult. Stănescu pointed out an activist who can achieve a livable wage has more time to focus on fighting for animals; likewise, an activist who is worried about racism or sexism or transphobia has less time to fight for animals.

Adams struck a similar note: “Women are the vast majority of the animal rights movement; as our status is eroded and forced pregnancies imposed, many women will be facing basic issues of survival, and will have less time to work on behalf of the other animals,” she said. “We must deny Trump a second term.”

Kankyoku didn’t think the animal movement was powerful enough to alter the outcome of the election, even if the entire movement solely focused on that. Instead, he hoped animal advocates would stay focused on accumulating small wins and building a strategy so they might one day be so powerful.

Jon Hochschartner is the author of a number of books about animal-rights history, including The Animals’ Freedom Fighter, Ingrid Newkirk, and Puppy Killer, Leave Town. He blogs at SlaughterFreeAmerica.Substack.com.

Trump’s Project 2025 abolishes Medicare; We need to Fight Back and Expand it

By F. Douglas Stephenson

July 21, 2024

Source: Informed Comment




LONG READ


Gainesville, Florida (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) — The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, framed by former Trump administration staffers and secretly endorsed by Trump himself, proposes changes in Medicare benefits that could destroy Medicare as we know it. Instead, we must fight back and expand it.

On July 30, 1965, at the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library in Independence, Missouri, former President Harry S. Truman and his wife, former First Lady Bess Truman, became the first recipients of the new Medicare health insurance program. President Lyndon Johnson and the U.S. Congress enacted Medicare under Title XVIII of the Social Security Act to provide health insurance to people age 65 and older, regardless of income or medical history and Medicaid for those whose incomes were below specific levels.

Medicare was a momentous act because it provided new health insurance for people ages 65 and older and the disabled regardless of income or medical history. In the 59 years since, Medicare has become living proof that public, universal health insurance is superior to private insurance in every way. Medicare is more efficient than private health insurance and is administered at a cost of 3 percent to 4 percent, as opposed to private, for-profit health insurance, which has administrative costs above 15 percent.

Following the successful 1965 grassroots campaign to enact Medicare, many believed that the dream of a full national, single-payer health insurance system that included all age groups, “Medicare for All”, was right around the corner. Unfortunately five decades later, Medicare still has not been expanded. Most of the changes have been contractions with higher out-of-pocket costs for beneficiaries and repeated attempts at privatization by Big Pharma, Big health insurance industry companies/oligarchs/profiteers and their champions in the White House and Congress.

Big insurance and Big Pharma continue opposing legislation for the new Medicare for All because these resistant, self-serving industries have the most to lose if their huge profits are redirected to direct patient care for all. Individual and corporate predators regard democracy, government and community as obstacles to their greed and avarice, always placing profits over individual patients, families and public health. It’s no wonder so many beholden members of Congress want to protect the interests of Big Insurance and Big Pharma.

WEALTH ADDICTION OF BIG HEALTH INSURANCE/BIG PHARMA/CONGRESSIONAL PROFITEERING COMPLEX:

“Money is like salt water. The more you drink, the thirstier you get”. Roman proverbs say that the more money a rich man has, the more driven he is to accumulate more. Limitless greed for money the Greek dramatists said, becomes a disease of the psyche. In the 388 B.C. play, “Ploutos”, Aristophanes writes that a person may become over-saturated with food….but no one ever has enough wealth. Wealth addiction is a greedy compulsion to obtain more and more wealth, and specifically obtain what belongs to others. The net effect is to injure others because it is adversarial/harmful to society as a whole.

Although health insurance affordability for the majority of US citizens still remains elusive, President Biden’s health insurance plan still wants to shift many more dollars into private, Wall Street insurance industry hands. The takeover of public health insurance, as with Medicare Advantage plans and others, by private Wall Street entities continues apace as Democrats/Biden propose to increase taxes and give it to the private profit insurance industry—the basic source of our profound administrative waste, along with the costly administrative burdens they place on the delivery system that requires large profits. Profiteering continues unabated as private insurance sells us services we don’t need/want , such as deductibles and other cost sharing, maintenance of narrow networks, requiring prior authorization with increased administrative costs, excessive ongoing paperwork/documentation requirements, all while avoiding paying for surprise bills and other denied benefits.

ABC News Video: “What to know about Project 2025”

PROFITEERING SURVEY FROM GOVERNMENT PROGRAMS: (data from ” BIG INSURANCE 2022: Revenues reached $1.25 trillion thanks to sucking billions out of the pharmacy supply chain – and taxpayers’ pockets”, Wendell Potter, HEALTH CARE-uncovered,02/23/2023)

1). Big Insurance revenues and profits have increased by 300% and 287% respectively since 2012 due to explosive growth in the companies’ pharmacy benefit management (PBM) businesses and the Medicare replacement plans called Medicare Advantage.

2). The for-profits now control more than 80% of the national PBM market and more than 70% of the Medicare Advantage market.

3). In 2022, Big Insurance revenues reached $1.25 trillion and profits soared to $69.3 billion.

4). That’s a 300% increase in revenue and a 287% increase in profits from 2012, when revenue was $412.9 billion and profits were $24 billion

5). More than 90% of health-plan revenues at three of the companies come from government programs as they continue to privatize both Medicare and Medicaid, through Medicare Advantage in particular.

6). Enrollment in government-funded programs increased by 261% in 10 years; by contrast commercial enrollment increased by just 10% over the past decade.

7). Commercial enrollment actually declined at both UnitedHealth and Humana.

8). 85% of Humana’s health-plan members are in government-funded programs; at Centene, it is 88%, and at Molina, it is 94%.

9). The big insurers now manage most states’ Medicaid programs – and make billions of dollars for shareholders doing so – but most of the insurers have found that selling their privately operated Medicare replacement plans is even more financially rewarding for their shareholders.

10). This is especially apparent when you see that the Big Seven’s combined revenues from taxpayer-supported programs grew 500%, from $116.3 billion in 2012 to $577 billion in 2022.

11). Changes in health-plan enrollment over the past decade show how dramatic this shift has been. Between 2012 and 2022
enrollment in the companies’ private commercial plans increased by 10%, from 85.1 million in 2012 to 93.8 million in 2022.

12). By comparison, growth in enrollment in taxpayer-supported government programs increased 261%, from 27 million in 2012 to 70.4 million in 2022.

13). Within that category, Medicare Advantage enrollment among the Big Seven increased 252%, from 7.8 million in 2012 to 19.7 million in 2022.

14). Nationwide, enrollment in Medicare Advantage plans increased to 28.4 million in 2022 (and to 30 million this year). That means that the Big Seven for-profit companies control more than 70% of the Medicare Advantage market.

MEANWHILE, AS BIG INSURANCE THRIVES:(data from Potter)

**27.5 million people remain uninsured in the United States. Up to 14 million more will lose their Medicaid coverage once the pandemic emergency period ends later this year.

**100 million of us – almost one of every three people in this country – now have medical debt.

**In 2023, U.S. families can be on the hook for up to $18,200 in out-of-pocket requirements before their coverage kicks in, up 43% since 2014 when it was $12,700.

**44% of people in the United States who purchased coverage through the individual market and (ACA) marketplaces were underinsured or functionally uninsured.

**46% of those surveyed said they had skipped or delayed care because of the cost.

**42% said they had problems paying medical bills or were paying off medical debt.

**Half (49%) said they would be unable to pay an unexpected medical bill within 30 days, including 68% of adults with low income,

**69% of Black adults, and 63% of Latino/Hispanic adults.

**In 2021, about $650 million, or about one-third of all funds raised by GoFundMe, went to medical campaigns. That’s not surprising when you realize that in the United States, even people with insurance all too often feel they have no choice but to beg for money from strangers to get the care they or a loved one needs.

**62% of bankruptcies are related to medical costs.

**Even as we spend about $4.5 trillion on health care a year, Americans are now dying younger than people in other wealthy countries.

**Life expectancy in the United States actually decreased by 2.8 years between 2014 and 2021, erasing all gains since 1996, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

WENDALL POTTER CONCLUDES:
“The companies that comprise Big Insurance are vastly different from what they were just 10 years ago, but policymakers, regulators, employers, and the media have so far shown scant interest in putting their business practices under the microscope. Changes in federal law, including the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003, which created the lucrative Medicare Advantage market, and the Affordable Care Act of 2010, which gave insurers the green light to increase out-of-pocket requirements annually and restrict access to care in other ways, opened the Treasury and Medicare Trust Fund to Big Insurance. In addition, regulators have allowed almost all of their proposed acquisitions to go forward, which has created the behemoths they are today. CVS/Health is now the 4th largest company on the Fortune 500 list of American companies. UnitedHealth Group is now No. 5 – and all the others are climbing toward the top 10”

OPPOSING MEDICARE BY PRIVATIZING PUBLIC SERVICES:

The U.S. Congress/government permits private health insurance companies to exact large profit from its cItizens, Wall Street banks and investors who back Big Insurance turn public money into a bonanza of private riches. High health insurance costs are the result of a political decision to essentially allow Big Insurance to do what they want and charge whatever they want.

Fully backed by Wall Street, the for- profit, private insurance industry thoroughly dominates our national health insurance system and defines the basic concept and purpose of health insurance . The U.S. subscribes to a private business model of health insurance that defines insurers as commercial entities. Private insurers maximize profits by mainly limiting benefits, maximizing health policy premiums or by not covering people with health problems. Like all businesses, their goal is to make money. Under the addictive business model, the greed of casual inhumanity is built in and the common good of the citizens and nation is ignored; excluding the poor, the aged, the disabled and the mentally ill is sound business policy, since it maximizes profit .

INCREASED CORPORATE POWER/PRIVATIZATION OVER PUBLIC RESOURCES:

A new report from OXFAM, 01/24/24, “Inequality. Inc.”, describes how “around the world, corporate power is relentlessly pushing into the public sector, commodifying and segregating access to vital services such as education, water and healthcare, often while enjoying massive, taxpayer- backed profits.This can gut governments’ ability to deliver the type of high-quality, universal public services that can reduce inequality.

The stakes are huge. Essential services constitute trillion- dollar industries and immense opportunities for generating profit and wealth for rich shareholders. The World Bank and other development finance actors have prioritized private service provision, effectively treating basic services as asset classes and using public money to guarantee corporate returns rather than human rights. Private equity firms are snapping up everything from water systems to healthcare providers and nursing homes, amid a litany of concerns about poor and even tragic outcomes”.

OXFAMS “inequality Inc.” report further warns that ”privatization often entails giving corporations control over significant areas of policymaking, as well as access to public resources and capacity that could otherwise be dedicated to providing universal services and reducing inequality. Despite the promotion of privatization as a cost-saving measure, many contemporary arrangements such as PPPs and outsourcing can be highly costly to the state and require taxpayers to guarantee private sector profits. The fiscal risks of PPPs are particularly extreme, earning them the nickname ‘budgetary timebombs’. That such arrangements often place a high burden on public coffers and routinely cost more than public delivery undermines arguments that privatization is necessary because the public sector lacks sufficient resources.

Institutional investors are turning to PPPs and other forms, (eg., Medicare Advantage, ACOs) of privatized services to generate stable returns. Major development agencies and institutions, many of which have adopted policies that prioritize private provision of services, have found common ground with investors by embracing approaches that ‘de-risk’ such arrangements by shifting financial risk from the private to the public sector. This new ‘Wall Street Consensus’ reframes the ‘Washington Consensus’ in the language of contemporary development speak, and envisions the transformation of basic services such as education, healthcare and water into financial assets backed by public resources”.

STRATEGY OF PRIVATE INSURANCE INDUSTRY:

To protect and enhance high profits by opposing improved Medicare for All 2024, the private health insurance industry has mounted a huge campaign using myths, scare and fear tactics ever since ‘Obamacare’, the Affordable Care Act (ACA), was enacted in March, 2010. The U.S. health insurance industry lobbied Congress hard at that time to enact a requirement that most non-elderly Americans become compulsory customers of the private insurance industry and approve taxpayer financing of massive subsidies for that industry. The private insurance industry is very happy that with ACA, Americans are forced to purchase the product of their private industry plus give huge tax-financed subsidies to their industry in the amount of a half-trillion dollars per decade.

FEAR: The expedient health insurance industry seeks to protect high profits using scare/fear tactics against new and improved Medicare for All 2024 legislation. One tactic deliberately confuses the public by not telling individuals what would change if their private insurance is replaced by the new Medicare for All health insurance program. Lack of specificity and avoidance behavior promotes confusion, misunderstanding and great fear because it conflates loss of private health insurance with loss of their own physicians, other health professionals and hospitals. The for-profit health insurance industry knows full well that people are most interested in keeping their own doctors and that the new Medicare for All 2024 does not interfere with that. By conflating private health insurance with the direct provision of medical treatment itself, many patients are mislead into thinking they could lose all their health professionals. Fortunately, once folks understand that losing their expensive, for-profit private insurance plans is the only thing that will change, support for Medicare for All sharply increases. The huge profits of Big Insurance and Big Pharma are threatened once folks become aware of this tactic.

SOCIALIZED MEDICINE: Another industry scare tactic is to stoke public fear and confusion by conflating the “socialized medicine” label with single-payer, “socialized (public) health insurance”. Socialized medicine is a system in which doctors and hospitals work for and draw salaries from the government. The U.S. Veterans Administration is an example. In contrast, most European countries, Canada, Australia and Japan have ‘socialized health insurance’, not ‘socialized medicine’. The term “socialized medicine” is often used by the private insurance industry and politicians to manufacture frightening images of government bureaucratic interference in medical care. In countries with socialized health insurance, health and mental health professionals and patients often have more clinical freedom. This is in sharp contrast to the U.S., where private health insurance bureaucrats attempt to direct/interfere with care .

Manufactured confusion and fear of socialism by the health insurance industry and their political spokesmen impede the public’s ability to differentiate and thereby reduce support for Medicare for All . This allows the private health industry to successfully maintain control of the U.S. health care system for its own profitable purposes.

SEE “PLAYING THE ACE OF FEAR CARD” IN MMT SECTION BELOW: Playing “as if we can’t afford” M4A with the “ace of fear” card, opponents of M4A 2024 use the scary myth that large, confiscatory tax hikes will be needed to “pay for” M4A.

PREJUDICE AGAINST GOVERNMENT: Opposition to Medicare for All is also based on irrational fears, folklore/myth and general prejudice against government programs. Fear-mongering about waiting lists, bankrupt doctors and hospitals, and socialism is exactly the same fearful/false rhetoric used in the campaign to block LBJ’s original Medicare program in the mid-1960s. The Wall Street Journal then warned about “patient pileups,” and the American Medical Association mounted a campaign featuring Ronald Reagan that smeared Medicare as creeping socialism that would rob Americans’ freedom.

Unfortunately many government leaders from both political parties share the same ‘profits over public health’ ideology, even though the Covid-19 pandemic clearly showed how our economic system failed to serve our citizens by allowing these groups to privatize, sabotage, fragment and cripple our health, public health and other social services. No greater disconnect exists between the public good and private interests than in the U.S. system of for-profit health insurance. Using dark money, Big Insurance and Big Pharma are very powerful private interests that have shaped public policy in national health insurance and public health for the past 40 years.

U.S. SUPREME COURT: Strong support for the U.S.Supreme Court, ‘Citizens United’ decision, by unaccountable/unregulated large Big Insurance and Big Pharma corporations and ultra-wealthy individuals/families. is based on their Machiavellian understanding of the purpose of dark money in politics: to use dark money to change political outcomes to favor themselves, the 001% oligarchs and becomes a threat to democracy because its source is not made public. Dark money is corruption that erodes confidence and trust in local, state and national government and in both major political parties. It’s used to throw referendums and elections from which can come many of today’s social, economic, public health, mental health and environmental problems. Dark money is used to hide conflicts of interests and further enhance self promotion with bogus scientific controversies, fake news and fake grassroots campaigns.

REDUCE GOVERNMENT CAPACITY TO RESPOND: To reduce governments capacity to respond to public health problems/environmental crises such as Covid-19, single-payer national health insurance and other social services, these companies fund right-wing think tanks to attack public health/social policy. By presenting government as a threat to freedom, the distinguished writer for The Guardian(U.K.),George Monbiot, described how right wing groups and big business create a narrative by reframing responsible government as the “nanny state”, the “health police” and “elf ‘n’ safety zealots”. They dismiss scientific findings and predictions as “unfounded fears”, “risk aversion” and “scaremongering”. Public protections are recast as “red tape”, “interference” and “state control”.

Although some have negative feelings toward government, and examples of government inefficiency exist, the record of private health insurers is far worse. The only thing that exceeds government inefficiency is the private health insurance industry itself. Dozens of financial profiteering scandals have wracked private insurers and HMOs in recent years. Everyone should categorically reject myths about ‘Medicare for All’ that try to frighten seniors and others by telling them they will lose Medicare benefits under a new M4A program, that pointy-headed government bureaucrats will make medical decisions, determine the cost vs benefits of procedures, including age and quality of life considerations and medical personnel will be in short supply.

TRADITIONAL MEDICARE THREATENED BY NEW PRIVATE PROFITEERS: Private profit “Medicare Advantage” present new threat to Traditional Medicare.

WHAT IS MEDICARE ADVANTAGE? Medicare Advantage is a managed care program offering private health insurance plans as options to replace traditional Medicare. Medicare Advantage plans differ from traditional Medicare in that they are paid with capitation (per member), they are required to limit enrollees’ out-of-pocket spending and can offer extra benefits (e.g. gym memberships, $900 worth of groceries, dental benefits). They almost always offer prescription drug coverage and use a defined and often restricted network of providers that can require enrollees to pay more for out-of-network care. Utilization management techniques are used ,such as prior authorization, and they can also fund special programs such as rewards for beneficiaries to encourage healthy behaviors. The deceptively innocent hope is that these differences will lead to improved care at lower cost compared to Traditional Medicare.

In reality, “Medicare Disadvantage”is a better, more accurate name for the programs however, as insurance companies push Congress to corporatize all of Medicare, yet keep the name for the purposes of marketing, deception, and confusion.

Dismantling Medicare with Medicare Advantage: Over 50% of Medicare beneficiaries now have for-profit corporations in charge of their care through Medicare Advantage (MA). Insurance companies are paid handsomely for these plans, and much of that money goes to corporate profits instead of care. The companies running MA plans want to take over Medicare entirely, leaving patients with no option but to give their money to private insurers.

Denying Treatment: Investigations into claim denials in MA found that insurers were inappropriately denying treatments and tests that should be covered under Medicare. Physician surveys show that these practices often cause patients to suffer unnecessarily, and can even be life-threatening. In some cases, MA insurers were found to spend just seconds on each claim, and even denied claims using artificial intelligence instead of medical experts.

Deceiving Patients and Taxpayers: Reports from journalists, researchers, and government agencies have shown that health insurance companies like UnitedHealth and Cigna overcharge Medicare by giving patients exaggerated or entirely false diagnoses. Several companies have been fined, or sued, and agreed to large settlements. MA insurers are taking citizens tax dollars for conditions they aren’t even treating.

Bottom Line: Medicare Advantage is not the same Medicare program that Americans have come to know and love. The private insurance industry has spend millions on advertising in order to hide the ugly truth: their MA plans raid taxpayer funds and routinely fail to deliver the care that patients expect and deserve.

Terminate Medicare Advantage: Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP), concludes tnat the Center for Medicare Services (CMS) should terminate the Medicare Advantage program. It would be far more cost-effective for CMS to improve traditional Medicare by capping out-of-pocket costs and adding improved benefits within the Medicare fee-for-service system than to try to indirectly offer these improvements through private plans that require much higher overhead and introduce profiteers and perverse incentives into Medicare, enabling corporate fraud and abuse, raising cost to the Medicare Trust Fund, and worsening disparities in care. These problems are not correctable within the competitive private insurance business model, and the Medicare Advantage program should be terminated.

MODERN MONETARY THEORY- MMT AND MEDICARE FOR ALL:

The US healthcare system is notorious for its high costs and below par outcomes. We already spend 18 percent of GDP on healthcare, and that is projected to reach 20 percent soon. This is approximately twice as much as our peers, other rich, developed, capitalist countries with no discernably better health outcomes (and even worse on a number of measures). Our excessive spending when compared to that of our peers can be attributed to the use of for-profit private insurance to pay for healthcare, higher pharmaceutical and provider costs, and higher administrative costs. Study after study has confirmed that prices and administrative costs in the US are out of line with those in the rest of the developed world, and especially compared to countries that have some type of a single-payer.

The Ace of Fear Card: Playing “as if we can’t afford” M4A with the “ace of fear” card, opponents of M4A 2024 use the scary myth that large, confiscatory tax hikes will be needed to “pay for” M4A. Economists at the Levy Institute of Economics of Bard College alert us how opponents of M4A typically warn of the high financial costs, and hence of prospective dangerously high government deficits. From the perspective of Modern Money Theory (MMT) however, these fear mongering arguments are beside the point and are a myth. A sovereign government’s finances are not like the budgeting by households and firms; the government uses the monetary system to mobilize the nation’s real resources and to move some of them to pursuit of public purposes, such as social welfare programs, public health, public health insurances, Medicare for All, etc. Whatever the financial costs, we already have a financial system that can handle them.

Distinguished Professor of Economics L. Randall Wray, Levy Economic Institute of Bard College and Yeva Nersisyan, Associate Professor of Economics at Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, PA, maintain that :“a sovereign government like the USA is not financially constrained; it spends by fiat, i.e., printing money, and/or through creating electronic computer entries in bank accounts and can neither run out of them nor save them for the future. What should constrain the spending of a sovereign government is the nation’s available real resources. Excessive spending, therefore, creates problems not in terms of higher government deficits and debt, but in terms of true inflation. Similarly, taxes are used not to finance government spending, but to withdraw demand from the economy, creating space for government spending to move resources to the public sector without causing inflation”.

Professor Wray notes that“the adoption of a single-payer system (replacing for-profit private insurers) would significantly reduce the resources devoted to our unusual way of paying for healthcare. It would eliminate the private insurance sector’s participation, reduce employers’ costs of administering healthcare plans, reduce the costs incurred by doctors and hospitals due to billing insurers as well as pursuing patients for uncovered costs, lower the costs of appealing denials, and cut costs associated with patients avoiding early treatment of diseases (because of the actual or expected out-of-pocket costs) that become chronic and expensive maladies. If M4A could control prices and lower administrative costs, we could spend significantly less on healthcare than we do currently, while expanding coverage to everyone. All else equal, if we were able to reduce our spending on healthcare to the level of our peers, we would be creating deflationary pressures, not inflation”.

Nersisyan and Wray estimate that “in the short term M4A could save about 3.7 percent of GDP while providing healthcare to the whole population. Even if we lowered healthcare spending by 3.7 percent of GDP, we would still be spending more on healthcare than all of our peers. “We believe our estimates are just the savings possible in the short term. In the long term, increased use of healthcare could reduce spending on chronic diseases. With universal access, cost controls, and elimination of a highly inefficient private insurance system, the single-payer system could shrink US spending on healthcare by much more, bringing us in line with other rich countries at about 10 percent of GDP.”

“Some will object that the savings largely accrue to the private sector, while the government will face additional costs. While it is true that the distribution of spending between the private and public sectors would change”, economist Wray assures us that. “there is nothing about government spending that necessarily makes it more inflationary than private spending. If private spending on healthcare costs falls by more than the increased government spending, the movement to single payer will be deflationary, not inflationary. Only a net increase in demand for resources would be inflationary.”

CONCLUSIONS:
The common good of our nation is ignored because the U.S. subscribes to a private business model for health insurance that defines insurers as commercial entities. Private health insurers maximize profits by limiting benefits or by not covering people with health problems. Like all businesses, their goal is to make money. Under this business model of health insurance, the greed of casual inhumanity is built in and the common good of the citizens and nation is ignored. Excluding many in the middle class, the poor, the aged, the disabled and the mentally ill is sound business practice policy since it maximizes profit.

Today we still have tens of millions of individuals without insurance, many more who are underinsured, many who have impaired access to their physicians and other health/mental health professionals because of insurer network restrictions, many who face financial hardship when health needs arise, and an outrageously expensive system due to the profound administrative waste of the insurers and the burden they place on the health care delivery system when immense profit is required. For example, statistics show that nearly 41% of adults (or nearly 100 million) are forced to get a medical loan to cover their health-care debt because they don’t have enough savings, and nearly 12% of them owe more than $10,000. Also, these data don’t take into account such forms of debt like credit cards or installments offered. When millions lost their jobs due to Covid-19, the dangers of connecting health insurance to employment also became painfully clear. Health insurance must not be tied to employment.

Almost none of these problems would exist if the government, instead of the private insurers, served us as a single-payer, health insurance financing authority. It is inhumane to allow consumer-directed, moral-hazard based private health policies to erect barriers to health care for millions of citizens with minimal or modest resources.

We now have several decades of experience with the conversion of health/mental health care into a business. Our health care is being rationed, with care guidelines determined by profitability and secrecy decided in private Wall Street corporate boardrooms. To realize large profits demanded by Wall Street investors, our health system must attract the healthy and turn away the sick, disabled, the poor, many of the old, and the mentally ill.

To maintain corporate control of U.S. health care insurance, our system is privatized and unregulated. Private, big insurance companies are in the business of making money, not providing full health care, and when they undertake the latter, it is likely not to be in the best interests of patients or to be efficient. Administrative costs (and immense profiteering ) are greater in the private health care insurance system, and even Medicare itself is weakened by having to work through the private system.

The USA is a country where health insurance for medical and mental health care is a function of socio-economic status. Everyone knows that this inhumane system should have been corrected long ago, but the death and illness ravages of the pandemic crisis makes it impossible to any longer avoid reality. We must immediately end our moral crime of having one of the the greatest health systems in the world, but only for those who can afford it. We must support the common principles that health care is a human right, must be free from corporate profit, and must be achieved through national legislation.

Let’s never forget that universal Medicare for All is a solid investment, not an expense, in and for our country by simply promoting a social service for universal access to affordable health care insurance for all. Aren’t we a society that cares enough to see that everyone receive the health care they need? That’s the basic purpose of Medicare for All. The 59 year history of our most successful national health insurance program, Medicare, provides one of the best arguments for expanding the program to cover everyone. It’s time to end inadequate and dangerous health insurance programs. Insist on real health insurance reform essential for all individuals and families.

American history is filled with examples of fundamental, democratic change brought about by successful mass action and public pressure against the counseling of the wealth addicted, neoliberal, privatization, 1% self-serving oligarchs/vested interest/profiteering/crowd. Professor of Economics L. Randall Wray notes that the US healthcare system still has significant gaps in coverage—all while facing the highest healthcare bill in the world. Dr. Wray convincingly argues that the underlying challenge for a system based on private, for-profit insurance is that basic healthcare is not an insurable expense. He concludes that It is time to abandon the current, overly complex and expensive payments system and reconsider single payer for all. Social Security and Medicare provide a model for reform.

Today, the very best way forward is, without ambivalence, avoidance behavior or any further delay, to immediately implement new legislation now filed in Congress, “The Medicare for All Act of 2023” House Bill (H.R. 3421) and Senate Bill (S. 1655) that would establish this long overdue reform.

President Harry S. Truman once said,”There is nothing new in the world except the history you do not know”. Attempts to transfer ownership and control of economic programs/services/financial resources from the government into private, greedy hands have existed in many societies for thousands of years. Father Lactantius, c.250-c.326, an early Christian author and advisor to the Roman Emperor Constantine I, wrote in “ The Divine Institute”, a timely piece about Roman society that well applies to 21st century USA society:

In order to enslave the many, the greedy began to appropriate and accumulate the necessities of life and keep them tightly closed up so that they might keep these bounties for themselves. They did this not for humanity’s sake which was not in them at all but to rake up all things and products of their greed and avarice. In the name of justice, they made unfair and unjust laws to sanction their thefts and avarice against the power of the multitude. In this way they ruled as much by authority as by strength of arms and overt evil.

LINKS: Full text U.S.House of Representatives – H.R. 3421

Full text U.S. Senate – S. 1655

Once Enemies, Trumpists and Mainstream Conservatives Are Now Chillingly United

The Heritage Foundation’s president announced in January that the foundation’s role is “institutionalizing Trumpism.”

By Sam Rosenthal

July 21, 2024

Source: TruthOut


This week, delegates to the Republican National Convention (RNC) officially voted to adopt their new platform. Looming large behind the formal adoption of the party’s platform is Project 2025, a “governing agenda” that, by its own description, seeks to “rescue the country from the grip of the radical Left.” Press coverage of Project 2025 has ramped up considerably over the last few months, as has anxiety outside of the Republican Party about what the agenda could mean for the future of the country. Media attention has grown to such a fever pitch in recent weeks that Donald Trump felt obligated to distance himself, professing to have “no idea” who was behind the initiative. While a cursory look at the authors behind the policy guide easily gives the lie to Trump’s claim, it is less clear at first glance what the relationship between Project 2025 and the official RNC platform is. A closer examination reveals that whatever daylight once existed between the more clinical, stuffy conservatism of the inside-the-Beltway class and Trump’s red meat populism has all but evaporated in the 2024 Republican Party platform.

The tenets of Project 2025 are concretized in the Heritage Foundation’s current version of the Mandate for Leadership, now in its ninth edition. The Mandate has been published by the Heritage Foundation — arguably the most prominent conservative think tank in the U.S. — since the early days of the Reagan administration. These books, which often run for hundreds of pages, are essentially right-wing policy wish lists, fleshed out with statistics, talking points and history lessons. The books have a long track record of providing the basis for policy in various Republican administrations. As far back as the Reagan presidency, in fact, authors who had worked to craft the first edition of the Mandate for Leadership were subsequently hired to work directly under Reagan, establishing a trend that continues in Republican politics to this day. The Mandate for Leadership series is also noted for its extreme specificity and for providing an extraordinarily detailed playbook that incoming Republican administrations can begin to use immediately to execute right-wing policy objectives.

In this sense, Trump’s adoption of the recommendations in the Project 2025 book would not represent much of a departure from decades of Republican policy making. What is different, though, is the extent to which Trump’s particular brand of politics has informed the text of Project 2025, which has in turn refined and operationalized Trump’s nativist, autocratic and anti-bureaucratic impulses, creating a feedback cycle of increasingly far right policy.

At the highest level, Project 2025 and the RNC platform are united in one, overarching goal: destroying the administrative state. Where the RNC platform promises to “slash Regulations that stifle jobs” and vows to shutter federal agencies like the Department of Education, Project 2025’s authors are more overt: “Dismantle the administrative state and return self-governance to the American people” reads the heading of one of the four promises that it suggests a Republican president should make to voters. Both documents, though, are united in their opposition to regulation and bureaucratic administration, blamed variously for stifling business innovation, hastening inflation and hindering technological advancement.

The parallels between the two documents continue in this fashion. The RNC platform, written in Trump’s unmistakable cant, traffics in folksiness, braggadocio and ad hominem attacks on perceived enemies (e.g. “foreign Christian-hating Communists, Marxists, and Socialists”). Meanwhile, the Mandate uses language more typical of an august Washington, D.C. institution. Where Project 2025’s authors write, “Illegal immigration should be ended, not mitigated; the border sealed, not reprioritized,” The RNC platform promises to “reverse the Democrats’ destructive Open Borders Policies that have allowed criminal gangs and Illegal Aliens from around the World to roam the United States without consequences.” While the packaging and intended audience of these documents might differ, the actual contents of each are remarkably similar.

The connections between Trump’s orbit and Project 2025 go far beyond similarities in platform, too. According to Newsweek, 31 contributors to the Project 2025 blueprint served in various capacities in Trump’s first administration. That includes Paul Dans and Steven Groves, who edited the entire 920-page blueprint document. Former administration officials now involved with Project 2025 served in a range of roles under Trump, representing a wide breadth of experience and area expertise. Where earlier Republican administrations had routinely hired Heritage staff who had worked on the Mandate series, the communion between Trump’s underlings and the ninth edition is unique: Former administration officials have authored a policy document to inform the incoming Trump administration, which in turn may employ them again to implement and execute the very policies they recommended.

The close working relationship between the Heritage Foundation and once and future Trump bureaucrats is even more remarkable when one considers how intensely the Heritage Foundation opposed Trump’s candidacy in the early days of his first campaign. In the run up to the 2016 Republican primary, Heritage members openly disparaged Trump, with one senior member calling Trump a “clown” who “needs to be out of the race” on Fox News. As the 2016 election approached, Heritage’s then-President Jim DeMint declined to make a recommendation regarding whether to support Trump’s candidacy. Trump’s brand of firebrand populism was aesthetically foreign to Heritage and his muddled ideology raised fears that he was an unreliable standard-bearer for Heritage’s brand of conservative policy making. As a vice president at Heritage put it, “Donald Trump is not a conservative—he’s a reality TV star.”


At the highest level, Project 2025 and the RNC platform are united in one, overarching goal: destroying the administrative state.

By the middle of the first Trump administration, though, Heritage’s leadership was singing a different tune. Despite their contrasting approaches, the Trump administration and Heritage had cultivated a mutually beneficial relationship in the early days of his presidency: Trump, coming off a threadbare effort lacking the deep bench of advisors typical of a presidential campaign, desperately needed staff, and Heritage had a slew of recommendations. Heritage has long maintained a roster of “trusted movement conservatives” and was eager to have these pre-vetted ideologues staff the ranks of the incoming administration. By 2018, Heritage was bragging to the media that two-thirds of its agenda had been adopted by the Trump administration.

To say that the influence between Heritage and Trump has been unidirectional would be a gross oversimplification, though. In fact, the newly adopted RNC platform presents a kind of synthesis of Heritage’s more traditional conservatism and Trump’s populist nativism. The collaboration between the conservative think tank and the ultra-right outsiders who have been drawn into Trump’s orbit has culminated in a new brand of politics for the Republican Party.

Take, for example, the approach to military spending and European military alliances recommended by Heritage in the previous edition of the Mandate for Leadership, released in 2016. In that edition, the authors recommended emboldening NATO to “send a strong message to Russia” and encouraged shoring up military spending in Europe to check “Russian adventurism in Eastern Europe.” Trump’s NATO-skepticism, though, has clearly had an impact on Heritage’s approach to so-called strategic alliances in Europe. Project 2025, while acknowledging that “one school of conservative thought” still promotes a bellicose stance towards Russia, recommends instead a third-way approach that foregrounds the question “What is in the interest of the American people?” Heritage goes on to recommend a restrained spending policy in Ukraine that shifts significant amounts of the fiscal burden for carrying on the Ukraine war effort to European allies. In other words, “America First” is the new slogan of conservative military policy.

Heritage is well aware of the critical role it has played in threading Trumpism into longer running conservative political traditions. Heritage’s current president, Kevin Roberts, told the New York Times in January that the foundation’s role is “institutionalizing Trumpism.” Roberts clearly feels Heritage has succeeded in this effort. As the RNC opened on July 15, he crowed to an audience at Heritage’s all-day Policy Fest, an official part of the RNC programming in Milwaukee. “For once in modern American history, we have a plan among a unified movement,” he said. Policy Fest was one of two events sponsored by Heritage at the RNC; the only other outside organization allotted that much hosting time in the official RNC schedule is the America First Policy Institute, Trump’s own public policy institute.

Ultimately, this all points to the degree that not only the Republican Party, but also significant chunks of the conservative think tank complex in the U.S. have realigned under Trump. While Heritage and its allies in traditional conservatism once viewed Trump and his coterie with suspicion and alarm, they have since developed a cozy symbiosis. And, with the Heritage Foundation now back at the forefront of right-wing policy making, a second Trump administration is surely prepared to implement the Project 2025 recommendations to the hilt.


Sam Rosenthal is RootsAction’s political director.

The Supreme Court Immunity Ruling Has Supercharged the Imperial Presidency

The Supreme Court decision will embolden presidents to undertake an even more reckless foreign policy.

By Robert Pallitto

July 21, 2024

Source: Foreign Policy in Focus




Last week’s immunity decision by the U.S. Supreme Court will strengthen presidential power in multiple domains, including foreign policy. Given the already robust state of institutional power and autonomy the office has come to possess in recent years, this ruling’s new departure from existing limits is troubling.

By declaring that the president is immune from prosecution, the Court goes beyond existing safeguards in criminal law. As Justice Jackson explains in her dissent, immunity in criminal cases is distinct from the other protections provided by law to a criminal defendant, such as presumption of innocence beyond a reasonable doubt, access to legal counsel, trial by jury, due process generally, and affirmative defenses. An affirmative defense allows, among other things, for defendants to say that even if the elements of a criminal offense can be shown by the facts, their conduct was nonetheless justified. The “public authority” defense, for example, suggests that an official should not be found guilty if acting on the basis of state (public) authority. That defense was already available to Trump, but the immunity shield is fundamentally different because, as Jackson explains, a president is now immune from all suits. There is no need for a trial court to assess what defenses might apply in a given criminal case because immunity prevents the case going forward at all. Such a barrier is obviously helpful to a president-as-defendant, but is it good for the republic? A closer look at the components of the decision reveals reasons to worry.

There are three parts to the new presidential immunity. First, actions taken under core constitutional powers are absolutely immune: for example, use of the pardon power or the appointment power stated explicitly in Article II. The reasoning here is that presidents cannot effectively do their job with a threat of prosecution looming, and therefore the principle of separation of powers requires that those core powers be unfettered, beyond the reach of criminal statutes. Second, official presidential acts are also immune up to the “outer perimeter” of a president’s official functions (that is, defining “official” very broadly). Thus, even if an action does not proceed directly from an expressly stated power, it will be protected by immunity even to the outer limit of what is reasonably considered official. Unofficial acts do not qualify for immunity under the Court’s holding, but the realm of the unofficial has been narrowly circumscribed. And there is one more wrinkle. Even in prosecutions involving unofficial acts, evidence of motive may not be derived from presidential acts categorized as official. Here the majority opinion is most opaque—and in fact, one of the six majority justices (Barrett) declined to join the motive-related section of the opinion, leaving it at a bare majority of five.

The Trump v. U.S. decision is unprecedented in stating that a president is now immune from criminal prosecution as detailed above. But it is also unprecedented in the strictly legal sense. The majority concedes that the Court had not ruled previously on the criminal immunity of presidents. It had, in a case involving Richard Nixon, found civil immunity from a suit for damages against a president. In fact, that case is where the term “outer perimeter” in reference to official acts originates. Whatever one thinks of the Nixon case, civil litigation is a far cry from the prosecution of an alleged felon on behalf of the public interest in safety (even if the alleged felon is/was a president). Transposing that civil immunity into a criminal context is a radical (and activist) step for a court to take. The majority concedes, once again, that constitutional history as well as caselaw precedent is lacking. So, it relies on arguments about the separation of powers to ground its ruling. However, although separation of powers is a universally acknowledged principle, there is no necessary link between that principle and its broadest possible application here. Multiple other resolutions would safeguard a separate sphere of action for the president; why choose the one that comes with the greatest risk to the equally important value of public accountability for criminal acts?

In addition to being unprecedented, the ruling was also unnecessary. The Supreme Court reviews and decides cases at its own discretion, taking about 70 each year from among the thousands of petitions it receives. There are no binding rules for which cases the Court will hear, though federal rules provide discretionary guidelines. But if four of the nine justices signal a desire to hear a particular case, the Court will do so. In this instance, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled on the immunity question in an opinion that was well-reasoned and consonant with existing law, finding no basis for the claims of presidential immunity raised below. Had the Supreme Court declined review, that lower court decision would have stood as precedent only in the D.C. Circuit, not nationwide. The principles of judicial economy (using the decisional power sparingly) and incrementalism (ruling on narrow grounds rather than sweeping ones) would have counseled against wading into the troubled waters of the Trump case. Ironically, the majority justices noted that this case was not merely about Trump, but also about writing a “rule for the ages.” In other words, observers should not be so focused on Trump’s accountability for the January 6 violence but rather about the future contours of the presidency. And yet they authored a decision that does harm to both. Declining review would have been the far wiser course.

The new presidential criminal immunity compounds an already-existing construction of broad presidential authority in foreign affairs. Dating back at least to the 1936 decision in the Curtiss-Wright case, the Court has recognized a distinction between domestic and foreign spheres of presidential action, allowing a president far wider latitude of discretion in the latter. Consistent with and extending this view, members of the Court have recently urged a hands-off approach to evaluating presidential actions in foreign policy generally, citing a lack of institutional competency in that sphere. On the one hand, the latest decision continues a trend of broadening power and decreasing accountability of presidents; on the other, it will likely embolden presidents further in undertaking reckless foreign policy adventures. Examples abound of the consequences of aggressive use of executive power worldwide, for instance Duterte’s extrajudicial punishments in the Filipino anti-drug campaign, Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, Netanyahu’s authorization of attacks on civilians in Gaza, and Truman’s use of the atomic bomb against Japan.

What can be done to restore any accountability to Trump and future presidents? Aside from amending the Constitution to strip immunity from the president or relying on presidents to police themselves—both unrealistic—government prosecutors will likely try to narrow the scope of the immunity created by the Court. The litigation over Trump’s election-subversion is ongoing. Trial courts must now apply the rules created by the Supreme Court. For now, acts at the periphery of presidential functions are not absolutely immune, meaning that immunity in such instances can be overcome when the public interest so requires. This is a form of balancing whose outcome is far from certain, but it represents at least the possibility that the standard will evolve in a way that restricts immunity rather than preserving/expanding it. Second, the majority notes that even if evidence of motive is excluded from prosecution of unofficial criminal acts, publicly available motive evidence could be used. The murkiness of this part of the opinion represents an opening for developing the standard in a way more restrictive to defendants, both Trump and others.

The concept of executive immunity derives from the sovereign immunity claimed by English kings, resting on the premise that “the king can do no wrong.” As Justice Sotomayor notes in her strongly worded dissent, the majority decision threatens to put in place the very principle of monarchical supremacy that this nation rejected at its founding. This concern cuts across partisan lines, as any future president will take office with a new and expansive power standing ready for use.

Robert Pallitto is an associate professor of political science at Seton Hall University and a former trial attorney. His latest book, Bargaining with the Machine, was published in August 2020 by the University Press of Kansas.

Until the Pips Squeak

Here’s why the government should tax the rich and tax them hard.

By George Monbiot

July 22, 2024

Source: George Monbiot blog



Never let your opponents define the terms of a debate. All too often, Labour has allowed the Conservatives and the billionaire press to demonise the notion of “tax and spend”. It went to great lengths before the election to assure voters it had no such intention. Now it drives home the message: instead, our needs will be met by “growth, growth, growth”. But tax and spend is the foundation of a civilised society.

Few of the changes this country requires can be achieved while adhering to the “tough spending rules” the new government has imposed on itself. We urgently need massive public investment in the NHS, social care, schools, environmental protection, social housing, local authorities, water, railways, the justice system and virtually all functions of government. We need a genuine levelling up, across regions and across classes. The austerity inflicted on us by the Conservatives was unnecessary and self-defeating and Labour has no good reason to sustain it.

The new government insists it is ending austerity. It isn’t. As the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) pointed out in June, Labour’s plans mean that public services are “likely to be seriously squeezed, facing real-terms cuts”. Similarly, the Resolution Foundation has warned that, with current spending projections, the government will need to make £19bn of annual cuts by 2028-29. However you dress it up, this is austerity.

We are constantly told: “There’s no money.” But there is plenty of money. It’s just not in the hands of the government. The wealth of billionaires in the UK has risen by 1,000% since 1990. The richest 1% possess more wealth than the poorest 70%. Why do they have so much? Because the state does not; they have not been sufficiently taxed.

There are two reasons for taxing the rich and taxing them hard. The first is to generate revenue: this is the one everyone thinks about. But the second is even more important: to break the spiral of patrimonial wealth accumulation. Unless you stop the very rich from becoming even richer, it’s not just their economic power that continues to rise, but also their political power. Democracy gives way to oligarchy, and oligarchy is intensely hostile to everything Labour governments seek to achieve, including robust public services and a strong economic safety net. When oligarchs dominate, you can kiss goodbye any notion of the public good.

Last year, I tried to estimate how much it would cost to restore a viable, safe and inclusive public realm after 14 years of Tory vandalism. While my effort was very rough, the sum came to between £65bn and £100bn of extra spending a year: between seven and 10 times more than Labour’s total. It’s a lot, although it’s dwarfed by the money the previous government spent on the pandemic: between £310bn and £410bn over two years.

While these sums are ambitious, and would require expanded borrowing (which Labour has foolishly ruled out) as well as taxation, there are plenty of opportunities to raise taxes on the rich. The government could, for example, replace inheritance tax with a lifetime gifts tax kicking in at £150,000, a level that would affect only wealthy people. This would increase revenue while ending a major form of tax avoidance. The government should raise capital gains taxes: it’s perverse that unearned income is taxed at a lower rate than earned income. It should close the carried-interest loophole, which ensures that private equity bosses pay less tax than their cleaners: a pledge on which it already seems to be backtracking.

The government could also levy a wealth tax, a luxury goods tax and a tax on second homes and holiday homes. It could make the windfall tax on fossil fuel revenues permanent. It could replace business rates with land value taxation, and council tax with a progressive property tax based on contemporary property values: both shifts would be fairer and would raise more money. But the only extra taxes the government propose are, as the IFS remarks, “trivial”.

By seeking to raise revenue through economic growth rather than redistribution, Labour avoids the necessary confrontation with economic power. Not only is the strategy uncertain of success (economic growth here is subject to global forces); not only does growth load even more pressure on the living planet; but this approach also fails to break the grip of the ultra-rich. Isn’t this the whole damn point of a change of government, after 14 years of Tory appeasement? Unless you seek to change the structures of power and redistribute wealth, the rich will continue to harvest the lion’s share of growth while using some of their money to buy the politics that expands and fortifies their dominion.

Labour’s fiscal policy is mirrored by its housing policy. Instead of addressing the deep problems with this dysfunctional sector, it will expand the dysfunction by deregulating the planning system. But, as an analysis by the previous government showed, even if housebuilding rose to the planned 300,000 homes a year, after 20 years (across which 6m homes would be built), prices would be reduced by only 6%. In other words, good housing would remain unaffordable to most.

To make homes more accessible, you need to change the structure and incentives of the market. In our report for the Labour party in 2019, Land for the Many, a team of us showed how it could be done. While building is still required, everyone can be well housed without the need for such a massive programme. Among other measures, the government should use the tax and planning system to discourage under-occupancy, set up public development corporations to assemble land and harvest most of the uplift in its value when planning permission is granted.

But this too means confronting powerful interests. As the Tories (heavily funded by property developers) and Reform (chaired until last week by a property developer) have found, it’s much easier to deflect blame from the massive failures of the property industry on to immigrants. Unless the new government defies this predatory sector, it leaves the door open to the extreme right.

The government’s approach to raising revenue and building housing and infrastructure while keeping the structures of injustice intact might seem like a shortcut to the change it seeks. But it strengthens the hand of Labour’s opponents.

Some of the most effective movements in history – campaigns for both the male franchise and the female franchise, workers’ rights, civil rights, gay rights – have sapped the rhetorical power of their opponents by adopting the labels thrown at them. The government should wear the “tax and spend” badge proudly. It must know, as we all do, that it is the only way out of this mess.





George Monbiot

George Monbiot is the author of the best selling books Heat: how to stop the planet burning; The Age of Consent: a manifesto for a new world order and Captive State: the corporate takeover of Britain; as well as the investigative travel books Poisoned Arrows, Amazon Watershed and No Man's Land. He writes a weekly column for the Guardian newspaper.

During seven years of investigative journeys in Indonesia, Brazil and East Africa, he was shot at, beaten up by military police, shipwrecked and stung into a poisoned coma by hornets. He came back to work in Britain after being pronounced clinically dead in Lodwar General Hospital in north-western Kenya, having contracted cerebral malaria.

In Britain, he joined the roads protest movement. He was hospitalised by security guards, who drove a metal spike through his foot, smashing the middle bone. He helped to found The Land is Ours, which has occupied land all over the country, including 13 acres of prime real estate in Wandsworth belonging to the Guinness corporation and destined for a giant superstore. The protesters beat Guinness in court, built an eco-village and held onto the land for six months.

He has held visiting fellowships or professorships at the universities of Oxford (environmental policy), Bristol (philosophy), Keele (politics) and East London (environmental science). He is currently visiting professor of planning at Oxford Brookes University. In 1995 Nelson Mandela presented him with a United Nations Global 500 Award for outstanding environmental achievement. He has also won the Lloyds National Screenwriting Prize for his screenplay The Norwegian, a Sony Award for radio production, the Sir Peter Kent Award and the OneWorld National Press Award.

In summer 2007 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Essex and an honorary fellowship by Cardiff University.