Sunday, July 04, 2021

Donald Rumsfeld – War criminal, torturer-in-chief, enemy of the world’s people

July 3, 2021

Donald Rumsfeld, a primary architect of the criminal wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, died on June 30. Rumsfeld was best known for his terms as Secretary of “Defense,” 1975-77 and again in 2001-06.

As is standard practice for nearly all high government officials on their death, the corporate mass media, while not without mild criticism, treated Rumsfeld as a generally honorable person. He wasn’t. In reality, he was a mass killer, a co-conspirator in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people who never did or could threaten the United States.

Rumsfeld, with President George W. Bush, Vice-President Richard Cheney (a Rumsfeld protégé), Paul Wolfowitz, and National Security Advisor and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice along with others, constituted the core of a neo-con gang determined to reorder the world in their own twisted image. They failed but at the cost of millions of lives, vast destruction and trillions of dollars in wasted resources.

In his second tour at the Pentagon, Rumsfeld oversaw the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, the 2003 “shock and awe” massive air assault and occupation of Iraq and the institutionalization of torture in such infamous prisons as Abu Ghraib in Iraq, Bagram military base in Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, and many lesser known dungeons. He joked about torture and demanded to know why prisoners placed in prolonged stress positions – causing excruciating pain – were only kept in such positions for four hours at a time.

A 2009 Senate report stated: “The abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib in late 2003 was not simply a result of a few soldiers acting on their own . . . “Interrogation techniques such as stripping detainees of their clothes, placing them in stress positions and using military working dogs to intimidate them appeared in Iraq only after they had been approved for use in Afghanistan and at [Guantánamo] … Rumsfeld’s authorization of aggressive interrogation techniques [writer’s emphasis] and subsequent interrogation policies and plans approved by senior military and civilian officers conveyed the message that physical pressures and degradation were appropriate treatment for detainees in U.S. military custody.”

From the day they took office in 2001, conquering Iraq was at the very top of the agenda for Rumsfeld and his cohort. Rumsfeld’s immediate reaction to the September 11 attacks in New York and Washington was to see it as offering a possible opportunity to invade Iraq, even though there was zero proof that Iraq was the source of the attacks.

According to an aide’s notes, Rumsfeld said he needed, “best info fast. Judge whether good enough to hit S.H. [Saddam Hussein] @ same time. Not only UBL [Osama bin Laden].” Later the same day he advocated: “Go massive. Sweep it all up. Things related [to the 9-11 attacks] and not.”

Clearly, Rumsfeld was hoping that shocked U.S. public opinion in the aftermath of the attacks would allow carrying out assaults on Iraq and perhaps other “enemies” in addition to Afghanistan.

In fact Al-Qaeda, which claimed the attacks, and the secular government in Iraq were bitter enemies. That undeniable fact did not stop Rumsfeld, Cheney and others from seeking to make a false link right up to the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. In the lead-up to the war, they relentlessly promoted the fabricated “intelligence” that Iraq had “weapons of mass destruction” including nuclear weapons.

After the fall of Baghdad on April 9, 2003, Rumsfeld said the removal of Saddam Hussein “created a more stable and secure world.”

He also proclaimed: “I can’t tell you if the use of force in Iraq today will last five days, five weeks or five months, but it won’t last any longer than that.”

Twenty-eight months later, as the Iraqi resistance to occupation was gaining momentum by the week, Rumsfeld denied that the U.S. and allied forces were sinking into a quagmire. “I don’t do quagmires,” he said.

By then, public opinion was turning dramatically against both the war, Rumsfeld and the other war makers. After the 2006 mid-term election, Bush fired Rumsfeld in an attempt to defuse the opposition to the war.

U.S. forces, while much reduced in number, are still in Iraq today in defiance of the will of the Iraqi people and government.

Despite playing a key role in the catastrophic wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Rumsfeld never issued a word of apology to the people of those countries or to the families of thousands of U.S. troops killed or to the tens of thousands wounded in wars based on false pretences.

In 2004, Rumsfeld sent U.S. forces, along with those from France and Canada, to overthrow the elected Haitian government of Jean Bertrand Aristide and occupy the country. Haiti remains occupied to the present.

He was part of the U.S.-orchestrated coup against the Hugo Chavez-led government of Venezuela in April 2002, which was turned back by the mass mobilization of the Venezuelan people and revolutionary forces inside the military there.

Rumsfeld was a sworn enemy of Cuba, North Korea, the Palestinian people and all national liberation and progressive movements in the world.

While Rumsfeld is best known for wars and interventions, he was also an enemy of the working class here. Appointed by Nixon to be director of the new Office of Economic Opportunity in 1969, he immediately set out to slash recently enacted Medicare benefits, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamps) and other programs that met the needs of low-income people.

Like so many other high-ranking officials, Rumsfeld took full advantage of the revolving door between government and private business, amassing a fortune in the hundreds of millions.

Unlike so many of his victims, he lived out his life in luxury and was, unfortunately, never brought to justice. But history will remember him for the criminal he was.

Newspaper of the Party for Socialism and Liberation

Victory for Pavement Coffeehouse workers, first union coffee shop in Massachusetts
Malcolm Clark
June 30, 2021

Workers at Pavement Coffeehouse — a company with eight locations across the Boston area — have organized the first union coffee shop in Massachusetts. An organizing committee began meeting in late May with representatives from the New England UNITE HERE joint board and delivered a letter to management June 1 stating their intent to unionize. Now they have completed a card check this June 28 with more than 80% of workers in favor, winning the union.

Such rapid organizing was made possible by the overwhelming support of the workers. After just one day of collecting signatures, the organizing committee of the Pavement UNITED union had 60 out of about 90 eligible workers sign union authorization cards. Because of the unity of the workers, management was immediately forced to concede and recognize the union.

Conor, a member of the Pavement union organizing committee, told Liberation News that working at a coffee shop “takes skill, and it takes craft. … Other baristas who don’t work in specialty coffee shops, like Dunkin baristas, they also have a craft. There are people who work as short order cooks at a restaurant: that’s a really f***ing insane craft. Fast food workers at a McDonald’s, the whole spectrum of food service, the whole spectrum of service is skilled labor.”

“We are unionizing because we are people who deserve rights. … All labor deserves rights.”

Food service workers need unions

The food service industry employs over 9.3 million people nationally, with about 247,000 of those workers in Massachusetts. Many thousands of workers are paid “tipped wages,” meaning it is legal to pay them well below the federal or state minimum wage. Tipped wages start at $5.55 per hour in Massachusetts, and $2.13 is the federal minimum. Workers who are not tipped usually make only a few dollars more, around their state minimum wage. The median earnings for food service workers nationally is just $11 per hour.

Pavement Coffeehouse is the first unionized coffee shop in Massachusetts, and one of only a handful nationwide. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, only about 1.2% of workers in the food service sector are unionized. On average, union food service workers earn $100 more per week than non-union workers.

At SPoT Coffee, workers organized in 2019 and faced management retaliation, including the firing of two staff. They boycotted and picketed while gathering support from the community in Buffalo, New York. Eventually, management conceded and recognized their union.

Two other coffee shops — Augie’s in Southern California and White Electric in Rhode Island — became worker-owned cooperatives after workers attempted to unionize. The worker co-op Slow Bloom was created by former employees from Augie’s who were all fired for their organizing efforts.

Pavement, pay, and the pandemic

At Pavement, the lowest and starting wage is $13.50 an hour, which is the state minimum. Workers are eligible for a $0.25 raise if they pass a performance review after six months. Promotions can lead to a wage of anywhere from $14.00 to $15.25 an hour.

All of these are well below the living wage in Boston, which according to MIT’s living wage calculator is $19.17 per hour. Many workers at Pavement are in their 20s or in college, meaning they often have the additional burden of student debt or tuition fees.

Pavement’s sick time accrues slowly. Only their highest pay-grade employees get a small amount of paid time off, and management utilizes unpredictable scheduling, all to maximize their profits at the expense of workers.

During the pandemic, management at Pavement laid off all their staff ostensibly so they could collect unemployment benefits and quarantine at home. But when they were rehired later in 2020, their sick time and PTO were erased, and many workers were hired back at lower pay or were demoted.

Management made all COVID-19 safety policies without the input of workers. Changes in indoor capacity and the lifting of restrictions in stores were handed down from on high, while workers paid the price in stress and risk.

The road ahead

As workers enter contract negotiations with management, Pavement UNITED plans to bargain for paid mental health days, a more flexible break schedule, an audit of everyone’s salaries across the company with gender and race equity in mind, transparency in how revenues and profits are reported, and an increase in base pay for everyone.

Victory for the Pavement Union is a step forward in the struggle for workers’ rights across Massachusetts and the United States, particularly for exploited food service workers.

“There has been such an outpouring of support,” said Conor, “not just from the community, but there have been people from other shops — whether it be coffee shops or just general cafes or bakeries — who have come to us and said, ‘How do you do this? We need this.'”

A tweet from Jude, another member of the organizing committee.

US military training manual describes socialism as ‘terrorist ideology’ – report

Navy document, obtained by the Intercept, lists political philosophy alongside anarchists and neo-Nazis

The US navy document was entitled Introduction to Terrorism/Terrorist Operations. Photograph: REX/Shutterstock

Guardian staff

Tue 22 Jun 2021 20.46 BST

A US military training document has described the political philosophy of socialism – a relatively mainstream term in politics around the world – as a “terrorist ideology” akin to neo-Nazism.

The document, which was obtained by The Intercept news website, was used in the US navy. It was entitled: Introduction to Terrorism/Terrorist Operations, and aimed at some members of the navy’s internal police, the outlet reported.

On one page of the document, in a section titled Study Questions, the question is asked: “Anarchists, socialists and neo-Nazis represent which terrorist ideological category?”

The news is likely to come as a surprise to some of the increasingly popular mainstream US politicians who identify as democratic socialists, such as the former presidential candidate and Vermont senator Bernie Sanders and the star of the Democratic party’s left, New York congresswoman Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez.

Though socialism has long been demonized in the US, especially during the 1930s and the cold war, it has in recent years become more popular especially among young people. One poll last year found that slightly more Democrats viewed socialism favorably than they did capitalism.

Want Socialism? Try the US Military
Some of our top brass denounce socialism, but they run the most socialist organization on earth.

For officers, particularly those with experience in weapons acquisition, the gravy train doesn't end with retirement. (Photo: Scott Nelson/Getty Images)

MIKE LOFGREN

June 10, 2021

America's love affair with lunacy continues undimmed. Along with flat-earthers, anti-vaxxers, and fans of perpetual motion, according to a May 21 Ipsos poll, 53 percent of Republicans now assert that Donald Trump is the current president of the United States.

There is a tendency in the reality-based community to regard these folks as obscure lunatics who yell at their TVs in trailer parks when they're not ruining a relative's Thanksgiving dinner. Unfortunately, this epidemic of delusional belief embraces a more exalted layer of the social spectrum, a group on which the maintenance of our democracy—deeply flawed as it is—may hinge.

This May, 124 retired generals and admirals published an open letter claiming that President Joe Biden stole the election. Traditionally, this letter would have been unthinkable, but a sizable contingent of former flag officers—people whose decisions once held lives in the balance—has gone full QAnon, writing: "Under a Democrat Congress and the Current Administration our Country has taken a hard left turn toward Socialism and a Marxist form of tyrannical government which must be countered now by electing congressional and presidential candidates who will always act to defend our Constitutional Republic."

(A small but telling note: the letter employs the phrase "Democrat Congress," a grammatical barbarism that has done duty as a rhetorical device for Republican operatives for at least 40 years, demonstrating that the signatories are rabid political partisans rather than constitutional scholars).

The screed goes on, asserting that "we are in a fight for our survival as a Constitutional Republic like no other time since our founding in 1776," a claim that makes us wonder how the signers ever graduated from their service academies, since a little incident called the American Civil War is an important part of the academies' military history curricula.

They also question "the mental and physical condition of the Commander in Chief." Given the endorsement of the letter by a raving lunatic like Lieutenant General William Boykin and convicted Iran-Contra criminal Vice Admiral John Poindexter, one just might infer a degree of psychological projection on the part of the signers.

The letter garnered condemnation from other retired officers and military analysts, but also a surprising complacency from former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Admiral Mike Mullen, who noted that no retired four-stars signed it and only a handful of three-stars: "It's not very senior… In our world it's not very significant in terms of people."

It may be cold comfort that there are "only" retired three-stars on the letter, but what about those officers who are still serving?

It turns out that the same month the letter appeared, a lieutenant colonel was removed from his command after appearing on a conservative podcast touting his book Irresistible Revolution: Marxism's Goal of Conquest & the Unmaking of the American Military, which claims that Marxist ideologies have infiltrated the military.

It is noteworthy that he was only cashiered after the podcast, whereas the book already was in print. Previously, it would have been inconceivable that a military officer could even receive permission to write an ideological screed like that. Ordinarily, they are allowed to write freely on military or technical topics, but political diatribes are strictly off-limits. Someone in the command structure was very lax.

All these self-styled guardians of the Republic, whether retired flag officers luxuriating in their beach-front homes in San Diego, or active-duty military vandalizing the capitol building, are beneficiaries of socialism.

Nevertheless, it was predictable that the Right would see him as a persecuted member of the military who fell afoul of political correctness. And sure enough, Matt Gaetz came through.

There is considerable irony in the fact that both the letter and the colonel's rant denounce "socialism," the premier bugaboo of right-wingers everywhere. At one level, it is of course the usual childish nonsense that has been disseminated for decades by the kind of mentality that once denounced fluoridation as a Bolshevik plot. Yet in a sense that is quite the opposite of what they intend, these people might have a point about socialism infiltrating the military.

All these self-styled guardians of the Republic, whether retired flag officers luxuriating in their beach-front homes in San Diego, or active-duty military vandalizing the capitol building, are beneficiaries of socialism. Their profession has a 20-year retirement, free lifetime health care for retirees, housing allowances, food allowances, privileges at heavily-subsidized commissaries and PXs (which, fittingly, somewhat resemble the special stores the old Soviet nomenklatura had), free fitness centers, golf courses, and the list goes on.

With the demise of the Soviet Union and the capitalist transformation of nominally "Red" China, socialism as a hegemonic political system is confined to backwaters like North Korea. The U.S. military is now the biggest socialist enterprise remaining on earth.

For officers, particularly those with experience in weapons acquisition, the gravy train doesn't end with retirement. Aside from their retirement pay and other continuing benefits, they can snag a job with a defense contractor to peddle influence with their former colleagues. Far from being private enterprise, defense firms like Lockheed Martin or Northrop Grumman are hothouse plants, sustained only by the contracts the military steers to them; they would wither and die if subjected to the cold winds of actual market competition.

Proof of this is the F-35 fighter. The most expensive weapons program in history, the plane has been a snake-bitten fiasco from its inception, and it demonstrates that nothing succeeds like failure—as long as it's too big to fail. As an engineering disaster, the F-35 ranks with the Soviet reversal of the flow of rivers into the Aral Sea.

No one can seriously argue that those who bear the brunt of battle should not be adequately compensated and granted all necessary benefits. The problem is that the vast majority of combat casualties are enlisted personnel, and only a small percentage of these will serve long enough to receive retirement pay, whereas colonels and generals by definition have enough service to receive retired pay as well as all the other benefits.

It doesn't end there. Congress usually appropriates an annual military pay raise. The brass, of course, insist that these be across-the-board. Let's say the pay raise is 3 percent. That means a buck private at $21,420 per year base pay gets a modest increase—$643—while a lieutenant general, at $199,296 base pay, receives almost $6,000. It amounts to socialism for the better-off, and it is curiously just like all the tax cuts of the last four decades: a windfall for the rich, crumbs for the working stiff. Each succeeding year of military pay raises will only increase the disparity.

The rationale for across-the-board pay raises is as an incentive in hold onto those with valuable skills. While this makes sense to keep a jet engine mechanic for whose talents a commercial airline will pay a premium, I am unaware that we have any difficulty retaining generals. In the case of my hypothetical lieutenant general, he also will likely be provided with a representational house, complete with an enlisted cook and driver, in order to ease the strain of command.

We can be rather safe in assuming that those 124 retired flag officers who wrote the letter decrying socialism knew whereof they spoke from their own deep personal experience: at the commissaries where they shop, and from the free health care they receive to the cut-price gin fizzes they drink at the local officers' club.

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

Mike Lofgren is a former congressional staff member who served on both the House and Senate budget committees. His books include: "The Deep State: The Fall of the Constitution and the Rise of a Shadow Government" (2016) and "The Party is Over: How Republicans Went Crazy, Democrats Became Useless, and the Middle Class Got Shafted" (2013).

How Disney Accidentally Made A Socialist Masterpiece With ‘Mary Poppins’

by JOSEPH EARP 2 JULY 2021

Partway through Mary Poppins, a piece of mass-market entertainment created and distributed by one of the biggest media conglomerates in the world, a young boy demonstrates the fragile nature of global capitalism.

His name is Michael Banks, and he is the film’s cherubic hero, a well-meaning but chaotic lad who finds himself in possession of a tuppence. He wants to spend the money on a bag of seed to feed to the pigeons, but his father, the stern Mr Banks, has other ideas, and takes him to the bank at which he works. There, Mr Banks says, the boy will learn the importance of saving, of interest, and of the financial concerns that keep the wheels of the British Empire turning.

But the bank is no shining example of the British spirit. As depicted by director Robert Stevenson, the place is a kind of bureaucratic hell, populated by powerful old men who are virtually indistinguishable from one another. The oldest and most powerful of the men, Mr Dawes, played under heavy prosthetics by Dick Van Dyke, can barely support himself without the aid of a cane. When his attention is called to the Banks boy’s tuppence, he becomes obsessed by it, snatching the coin from his hands.

In his age, and in his greed, Dawes is capitalism. And, like capitalism, his power is illusory. When he is challenged by the young Banks boy, he has no method of recourse — as Michael begs for his coin back, other bank customers hear him. Fearing that the system of the bank is failing, they desperately begin to withdraw their money, prompting a mass bank run, in turn actualising the very failure that they feared. The once clean and sterile world of the bank becomes a mass of screaming customers, papers flying, notes fluttering to the floor.

The financial system of the bank dissipates not through force. It dissipates because people stop believing in it. In that way, the scene calls to mind the words of anarchist David Graeber: that the secret truth of the world is that we have made it, and can remake it however we want. All it takes to unpick a system that has become so ubiquitous to seem totally lacking in alternatives is one young boy, begging for the return of his tuppence.

Class Consciousness And Spoonfuls of Sugar

The scene is not an anomaly. A similarly subversive piece of social commentary occurs early on, when we meet Mrs Banks, the film’s matriarch and an active member of the women’s liberation movement. Dressed in a sash, singing about the activism of Emmeline Pankhurst, she claims to love men “individually”, but to distrust their power structurally.

The depiction of Mrs Banks’ activism alone is a daring position for a film to have taken in 1964, but Mary Poppins goes further. Though devoted to the cause of liberation, Mrs Banks still relies on housekeepers, a team of maids and cooks. When she convinces them to sing along with her about the need to further equality, they roll their eyes. They understand, as the film does, that Mrs Banks’ activism lacks class consciousness.

THE DEPICTION OF MRS BANKS’ ACTIVISM ALONE IS A DARING POSITION FOR A FILM TO HAVE TAKEN IN 1964.

Her calls for equality are narrow in scope — she wants the vote, but she has not yet analysed her own role in the systems that oppress and undermine authority. Singing is all well and good, but it means nothing if it isn’t backed up with an understanding of the way capital subjugates. And when the song is over, Mrs Banks triumphant, the cause seemingly furthered, the ignored maids scuttle back to the kitchen, their needs not considered, let alone met.

The End Of The Ideological Blockbuster

Of course, Mary Poppins is an imperfect film, at least ideologically. Though the titular hero teaches Mr Banks that work isn’t everything, she still believes that it is something — her call is for one of balance, not the destruction of the systems of power that subjugate. The film ends on a note of unity, yes, but the unity of the nuclear family, one still deeply coded with the values of the patriarchy and the capitalistic work ethic.

And yet there is still something miraculous about Mary Poppins‘ social messaging, even if it comes through only in fits and bursts. Indeed, it is not clear how the social subtext of Mary Poppins got past Disney at all; one gets the sense that the big-wigs may have simply failed to notice it.

What is clear is that in the years since the film’s release, the conglomerate has issued something of a course correction. Mary Poppins Returns, the ill-received sequel starring Emily Blunt, contains nothing in the way of the original’s class consciousness.

In the film, the bank is still a symbol of insidious power — Returns opens with the Banks family learning that they are in significant debt, and that their house may soon be repossessed — but this power is never challenged. Indeed, the film ends with the bank’s needs being fulfilled — not the Banks’ — as the house is saved by the very tuppence that young Michael invested all those years ago in the original film — the subversive coin that undid an entire system is now propping it back up.

Saving Mr Banks, a film about the making of Mary Poppins, goes even further. In that film, Walt Disney is depicted as a kindly benefactor. He is as rich as Mr Dawes, and as powerful, but there are no cracks in his suit of armour — only kindness. The systems of capital that he lords over are disguised as neon-tinted dreams of stardom and success.

Nor are Mary Poppins Returns and Saving Mr Banks anomalies. Fearing social backlash, Hollywood has become less adventurous in its social messaging. One need only look at the process of de-politicisation that takes place when Marvel comics are adapted for the screen; the stripping away of the subversive subtext of comic book writers like Grant Morrison or Alan Moore. Captain Marvel, a vision of Utopic equality, is now an advert for the American air force. Villains are now grand, uncomplicated titans, their roles in vast systems of capital and control rarely analysed.

Cinema doesn’t have to be like this. If Mary Poppins proves anything, it’s that mass-entertainment and ideological critique do not need to be pulled apart; that we can take our socially-conscious subversion with, if necessary, a spoonful of sugar to help it go down.

Joseph Earp is a staff writer at Junkee. He tweets @JosephOEarp.

Opinion: Missouri politicians said COVID fight was socialism.

Now the state is No. 1 in new cases

The Kansas City Star Editorial Board

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson.Missouri Governor's Office

The COVID-19 crisis isn’t over, and we shouldn’t act as if it is.

Yes, yes, we’re tired of masks and social distancing. Crowds at the Truman Sports Complex, in the 18th & Vine Jazz District and at the neighborhood pool reflect the hunger for normalcy. At the grocery store, the movie theater, churches and synagogues, masks are gone and grins are back.

Yet the latest numbers in Missouri suggest such overconfidence can be dangerous, or even deadly. The state has led the nation in its rate of new COVID-19 cases over the past week, worrisome evidence that the viral disease is still a problem.

The outbreak is especially concerning in rural areas, where vaccination and isolation are far less common. The new COVID-19 cases include the so-called delta variant, a highly contagious mutation first found in India.

“It is clear that the variant has become prevalent in communities throughout Missouri,” the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services said last week. The viral load found in recent wastewater surveys — a marker for the extent of community spread — has increased dramatically in southwest Missouri, including Springfield and Joplin.

There have been spikes in the Kansas City region as well.

Some of this can be easily blamed on relaxed regulations in cities and in the state. While we would not suggest mayors and Gov. Mike Parson reinstate all previous restrictions, the government must review the new data and be ready in case a partial shutdown is needed.

Missouri’s state of emergency remains in effect until the end of August. Parson should focus on the lingering challenge of the pandemic this summer, instead of engaging in foolish photo ops to endorse anti-constitutional folderol.

But governments can only do so much, particularly since Republican lawmakers have spent the year linking COVID-19 abatement with predatory socialism.

The plain fact is going back to widespread masks and enforceable quarantines is politically impossible in Missouri and other Midwestern states.

That means individuals must take responsibility for protecting themselves. Vaccinated Missourians should be cautious as the new variant spreads — masks can be worn, and contact limited, particularly with the elderly and very young.

But the biggest single step Missourians could take to quash this COVID-19 upturn — and avoid more drastic restrictions — is to get a full round of vaccination against the virus.

To date, just 38% of Missourians are fully vaccinated against the coronavirus. That’s far below the vaccination rate in Virginia, Colorado or California. It’s below the national rate. It’s below the rate needed to protect the state against the upsurge in COVID-19 cases.

In Pemiscot County, in Missouri’s Bootheel, fewer than 20% of residents age 12 or older are fully vaccinated.

“Vaccinations are the best way to stop this virus in its tracks,” said a statement from Robert Knodell, acting director of Missouri DHSS.

To date, Missouri has not offered blanket incentives, such as money or gifts, for those who get vaccinated. At some point, the state may want to provide those incentives. Sadly, for some residents, protection against a deadly disease apparently isn’t incentive enough.

There is simply no good reason to remain unvaccinated. The shot is free, and now widely available. It has proved remarkably effective. For most, there are no serious side effects. And a fully vaccinated population is the best way to slow the spread of new variants.

The COVID-19 crisis is now more than a year old. Life is slowly returning to normal, but it will never be normal unless all of us do what we can to stop the spread of the virus.

That means diligence, caution — and getting the damn shot.

Ron Johnson called Joe Biden 'a liberal, progressive, socialist, Marxist.' Can someone be all those things?

Bill Glauber

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson has been serving up opinions and quotes in various forums the last few weeks, including TV interviews, a virtual press conference and a telephone town hall meeting.

He has said a lot of things as he ponders whether to run for reelection next year.

But perhaps Johnson's most unusual statement came at the beginning of an interview Thursday night with Sean Hannity on Fox News.

Johnson was asked about recent Biden administration moves to block the Keystone pipeline, waive sanctions on the company behind Russia's Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, and drop a Trump administration order targeting Tik Tok.

Johnson replied: "Because he's weak. And don't ask me to get inside the mind of a liberal, progressive, socialist, Marxist like President Biden."

That's a lot of political ideology heaped on one political figure, let alone Biden, who has been in national politics for nearly a half-century.

When asked by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel to elaborate on his comments Friday, Johnson didn't go for the big four: liberal, progressive, socialist, Marxist.

In a statement released by his office, Johnson said: “President Biden is exacerbating the problems facing this nation. Border crisis, national debt, international weakness. Who knows what label to apply to these policy catastrophes, but we certainly know he’s no moderate.”

He later tweeted the response.

Let's define the words

Liberal and progressive are often used interchangeably to describe those who believe in using government to back social and political change.

Franklin Roosevelt and the Kennedy brothers were liberals. "Fighting Bob" La Follette was a Wisconsin progressive and leader in an era of social activism and political reform.

Socialist often refers to those believe in socialism, where the state takes responsibility for the health and welfare of their citizenry.

A Marxist refers to those who support the political, social and economic theories of German philosopher Karl Marx, who sought to overturn capitalism.

Joe Biden: 'left liberal'

Kennan Ferguson, at UW-Milwaukee political science professor, said: "I don't think anybody can be all those things. Certainly the last three are like nesting dolls. Almost all Marxists are socialists and many socialists are progressives. But liberalism in the United States was developed as an anti-Marxist political theory."

Ferguson said by his usage of the words, "Johnson means them all as epithets rather than ideological descriptors. You can see that in that he doesn't know the differences between them."

Richard Avramenko, a UW-Madison political scientist and director for the Center for the Study of Liberal Democracy, said Johnson would have been more accurate to describe Biden as a "left liberal."

"Liberals, socialists and Marxists are, by definition, progressives," Avramenko said in an email. "But Biden is not a 'classical liberal' (i.e., libertarian) — he’s a 'left liberal.' "

Avramenko added, "If he said, 'Don't ask me to get inside the mind of a liberal, progressive, socialist, Marxist — whatever you want to label him — like President Biden' it would have been less questionable."

So, what's really going on here?

Charles Franklin, director of the Marquette University Law School Poll, said that "for folks on the right, at this point those labels have become more or less synonymous regardless of what their dictionary meanings are. From my point of view it represents the blending together of these terms without much care or concern for the actual substantial differences in meaning in those four words."

"But from Senator Johnson's point of view they're kind of indistinguishable from one another and therefore stringing them together in one label is not that stunning," Franklin said.